Guardian 2.1

The week passed in relative peace as nobody bothered me in school. Not the trio, nor anybody else.

It was a little bit surprising, actually, considering Sophia's warning to me. But I supposed that Jun's group had made such a ruckus with police coming over that everyone who might otherwise have bothered me was laying low for a while.

Madison continued to hang with Emma and Sophia, and I let her. For my part, I still thought it was too early for me to try and get more followers, so I just quietly built up my mana reserves.

Madison had tried to ask me to give her a top up of the [Endure] enchantment a few times, but I didn't want to waste it on her so I refused. An active cast was just plainly wasteful, and she wasn't contributing enough Power for me to give her an item. I also hesitated to ask her to actively pray to me for more MP because I worried that she might think I'm Mastering her and report me.

But by Saturday morning I was feeling really tempted to ask her to do just that. I was even having second thoughts about maybe accepting Emma as my follower, what with her high faith and all.

I had grossly underestimated the amount of gold needed to make the altar. Because I never measured the weight of the gold and silver on mom's stuff I took apart for the first altar, and because I wasn't even fully conscious in the process of building it, I never realized just how much it was.

Over the last few days I'd crafted a second altar base, but without any of the gold or silver. By comparing this to the first one, I was able to determine a better estimate for how much gold and silver I really needed.

It was looking like I needed a minimum of 50 grams of gold and 100 grams of silver to have a functional altar. Silver was cheap enough that I didn't feel bad about asking dad for cash to buy it. A few hundred dollars was easily enough.

But gold was over sixty times the price of silver, and I couldn't actually buy raw gold at the prices I'd found online at the library. Those were the prices it was traded at on commodity markets in bulk.

After searching it up, it turned out that I'd have to pay a big premium to get the amount I needed from local shops or online retailers, so if I tried to buy with cash locally it'd be like double the price or more.

With iron to gold transmutation, that was still like 750 MP for a single altar. Even if I saved every single point of mana, it would still take a few more days. But if I got Madison or Emma to pray for an hour each day, I could maybe even double my Power right away even without the altar…

With cash, I'd need something like $3000-$5000 dollars to pay for one altar. My previous guess of 1 or 2 months as a Ward on part-time wage was way off. It was more like half a year. Good thing I eliminated that as an option.

The PRT would probably agree to fund me once they found out just how useful it was and why I needed the money, but letting them know the mechanics of my power was not acceptable.

Even if I hid the praying aspect, the fact that I relied on an external power source was a critical weakness.

Anybody who found out about my altars could indirectly defeat me by destroying or stealing my source of power, as I did not produce any mana on my own.

Even if I got followers, I still needed the altars to channel their prayers to me, otherwise only people who prayed in my immediate vicinity would give me any Power.

I almost regretted telling my father in so much detail. Unfortunately, I didn't have a spell to erase his memory. All I could do was warn him about the danger and trust that he would never tell anyone.

In a way, the challenge I faced was similar to Tinkers. But there was one big difference, an advantage I had. Tinkers had to build a workshop, then they relied on their equipment.

I had to build a similar infrastructure, and used enchanted items, but I also had mana. Tinkers might generate energy in the form of electric power, but other than being an energy source they couldn't do anything with it without Tinkertech. Their tech was the core of their power, and everyone knew that.

For me, mana was the core. But I could cast spells on my own without items, and I could store mana as personal reserves.

Just as important, I didn't need an actual workshop to make new items.

And mana was an untouchable, possibly undetectable, even unbelievable thing for everybody else. They couldn't know that I needed mana or where I got it from, unless I told them myself. So unlike Tinkers, this critical weakness wasn't obvious. The closest analog to what I could do with enchanted items was Dauntless, who could apparently power up his equipment regularly. Maybe some Tinkers also used exotic energy sources, but none of them were like me who could do all sorts of magic with it even without equipment.

Therefore, secret of mana was something I had protect at all costs. As long as nobody knew the weakness existed, they couldn't take advantage of it.

The more I thought about it, researched capes, and really went through a real planning process, the more I felt that I had to be more patient, careful, and rely on myself.

What was the rush, anyways? I was eager to be a hero, but it's not like I had any enemies coming to attack me if I didn't power up fast enough. As long as I stayed relatively unknown, I could take my time.

So that was one reason why, after the meeting with Officer Berger, I didn't complete the registration.

I got a lot more information and started the process of negotiating with them, but hadn't signed any anything.

I also declined scheduling any tests because I didn't want them to see my power in action until I was ready for it. Because they never asked me to demonstrate my power before, there was still ambiguity over whether I was really even a cape, and that was just the way I liked it.

Even if I did register and finalize the deal, it would take quite a while to get paid, so I didn't want to spend the mana on making a healing item. With all the testing and bureaucratic processes in place for getting the approvals, and the time needed for David the purchasing manager to contact the other branches and wait for them to send in requests…all in all, it probably wouldn't take less than two weeks for me to see my first paid patient, and even longer to actually get the money because I had to invoice them and they'd only pay within 15 days.

Heck, they'd started by asking for 30 days to make payments, and I had to negotiate them down to 15, and that was only if the other branches individually accepted too, because they had to pay our branch before our branch could pay me. It was appalling to learn from my dad that 30 days for making payments was actually standard in business to business supply contracts, with some big businesses like WowMart taking over 90 days!

Comparing the two, building up mana on my own up to 750 MP took just over a week total and there was only a few more days before I'd have enough. If I made a healing item with 3 charges that would cost 185 MP and set me back by 2 days, but I wouldn't see any return on the investment until over a month later. In the long run, the money per MP point spent might be higher with the PRT once I was fully set up and in business, but for now, I was more interested in a faster return on the mana spent.

With my rogue plans on hold and the need to save up MP, I turned my attention to other aspects of my power. Getting more buffs was tempting, but it was clearly more important to build up my economy when there was no pressing need to strengthen myself further, considering that I wouldn't be going out as a hero just yet.

Mirror

Taylor Hebert: [3(0) attack, 3(0) defense, 3(1) max health, 3(0) resistance, 5(0) speed]

Abilities: [****] [Administrative Intellectus] [Wizard]

Experience Level: Elite (LV4) 4/10 to Recruit (LV1)

Champions: None

Gold Reserve: Bankrupt (0g)

Mana Reserve: (429 MP)

Power: ~93

Soul Capacity: 2

Upkeep: 0

Equipment: Armlet of Heroism, Armlet of Speed +3

Then, the only other thing I could work on was my EXP. While I did have [Heroism], it wouldn't hurt to reach Elite on my own so I wouldn't be dependent on it, and have the potential to go beyond.

Besides, I was going to level myself up if only because it might lead to getting more spells. My power hadn't told me how to get new spells but I'd searched it up and that was how it worked for many games with magic characters. Given that the information my power presented had many similarities to role-playing games' interfaces, it seemed like a reasonable place to look.

There were also games where you had to find or buy spells in the form of scrolls or books to read, but where was I going to find that in real life?

So for now, leveling up was the only option.

I had tried to start running and doing exercises to train like a normal person but that didn't raise my EXP at all. Maybe it was just too slow for there to be any measurable difference because my power only counted EXP in discrete units.

The only time it went up was that day when Sophia "tested" me and Jun's guys attacked me in the halls. I wasn't sure which caused the increase, or if both did, because I hadn't thought to check my stats in between nor did I get any notifications, but the indicator went from 2/10 to 4/10.

Based on that, I figured I had to get into more fights to get EXP, just like how it worked in video games. And wasn't that strange?

I could see the EXP levels on my [Friendly Units] so if that was how it worked for me, what about them? Was it possible that I had a natural Trump effect on all my followers, allowing them to gain EXP to level up like characters in a game?

It was an interesting thought, but after really considering what that would mean, it didn't seem like a big deal. I already had [Heroism] to turn people Elite, LV4. How much stronger could people get after that?

After I saw Madison's and Emma's stats the other day, I went back to check my dad's stats as well.

Daniel Hebert: [2 attack, 3 defense, 2 max health, 2 resistance, 1 speed]

Experience Level: Veteran (LV3) 65/100 to Elite (LV4)

In general, it seemed that each level provided just 1 point in about half the visible stats, and it was slightly different for each person, maybe based on how they trained or exercised in life. Then there were stats like Morale that I couldn't check, so I didn't know how they improved.

If the stat gain per level after Elite—assuming such levels existed—was similar to the previous levels from LV0, then any more levels after still wouldn't make people much better than having a minor Brute or Mover power.

The impact of adding more buffs and the stat raising equipment seemed to be much bigger.

But, how big exactly? That was what I was going to find out today.

Strength was the first. I didn't have weights at home and I couldn't afford a gym membership, nor did I want to test myself out in the open, so I could only resort to packing boxes of books and putting them on a weight scale.

As a point of reference, I had looked up statistics on how women much women in general could lift at various body weights. There was a lot of technique that went into lifting weights, and it was much more complicated than I initially thought. Even though I instinctively knew some of it under [Heroism], they weren't things I could previously articulate or envision without actually getting into a position where I was about to lift something.

I was only 110 lbs right now, having lost a lot of weight after the locker prank and the following months of depression I felt into before I built the first altar. [Heroism] didn't change my weight even though it made me look more muscular, which was very strange because I thought muscles weighed more than fat.

And, another thing to note was that the [Heal] I cast on myself didn't make me gain weight either, even though I was arguably still not healthy due to being underweight for my height at five foot seven based on the body mass index.

With these boxes, the closest type of lift I could compare to was the deadlift. There were probably still significant discrepancies here because I didn't have handles and the boxes concentrated weight in the centre, but it was the best I could find.

For 110 lbs girls, the standard of reference ranged from 68 to 295 lbs depending on their experience at lifting.

I started with a box that weighed 50 lbs, and comfortably lifted it. As I was trying to make stack 100 lbs I saw the cardboard bottoms bending and realized that I had a problem. First of all, books didn't weigh enough individually so I had to pack a lot and I needed huge boxes. But then there wasn't a strong enough support to keep the boxes in one piece, and they were likely to break before I could get them to the higher ranges.

I stood around for a moment scratching my head thinking of ideas, then I tried to pile smaller cardboard boxes together one on the other.

But once again, once I stacked 3 boxes with 30-40 books each to reach nearly 100 lbs, the tower looked rather dangerously tall to be lifting.

In the end, I scrapped the idea. I was starting to see the appeal of power testing at the PRT. This would be so much easier with the proper equipment.

Without any other ideas blaring out at me, I looked at my other stats. Defense and max health, these didn't seem possible to test without specialized equipment or other people. I needed a way to measure incoming force, hardness of the materials used, and also the area of impact. It all seemed quite complicated in my head, so I skipped it.

Resistance was something I still didn't understand, so that was off the table too.

That just left speed. While my reflexes and the speed with which I could move my limbs was rather difficult to measure, I could definitely measure my running speed.

Simple reaction time was also something I'd already measured while in my computer class and I had the free time. Using a few different online apps, I'd determined that my reaction time with 5 speed was somewhere around 120 milliseconds, after a rough estimate for lag. It was a lot faster than the general average, which was 250 ms. I'd repeated the test after going to the washroom to take off my Armlets, then again on another day wearing only the Heroism or Speed Armlets.

At 0 speed, I was getting 260 ms.

At 2, 190 ms.

At 3, 160 ms.

Based on these figures, the scale looked almost linear, but I doubted that it would stay that way with higher speed numbers. It wouldn't make sense when reaction time got closer to zero.

What made these numbers really interesting was that despite being 3 higher than the speed of the average Elite, I still hadn't broken past the fastest time thought to be possible for humans, and was a ways off even if I severely underestimated the lag.

I told my dad I was going out for a run, which was actually true for once. Then I geared up with my hoodie and face mask and went to Winslow.

During the week, I had already checked the track schedule and there wouldn't be anybody using the field today, so it was a good time to use it when the school was otherwise empty.

An hour later, I found that I could run the 100m dash at different speeds by equipping and unequipping my Armlets of Heroism and Speed as follows:

0 speed: 18 seconds

2 speed: 13 seconds

3 speed: 10 seconds

5 speed: 7 seconds

Timing myself through multiple trials, my best at 5 speed was 6.8 seconds, and that was almost a two and a half seconds faster than the world record. Even accounting for the reaction delay from somebody else giving the signal, I was still firmly in Mover territory.

But at the same time, this was not as impressive as I'd hoped. Elites had average 2 speed, so I thought having more than double that would be way faster. Based on these numbers, I would probably only qualify for Mover 2 or even 1.

My only consolation was that, most Movers weren't like Velocity who sped up at everything. They were usually limited to a single aspect of speed, such as being able to fly—most of New Wave—or run a lot faster in a different form—Hookwolf. I was fairly sure that my own speed applied to everything, such as fighting reflexes and close quarters agility.

And I might be able to reach higher stats in the future, unlike other capes whose powers didn't really grow much.

From the speed tests, it became clear to me that "Elite" wasn't actually the limit of human ability. It was, as I should've expected from the name, only an elite, well-trained, person. That meant there was probably at least 1 level above Elite representing world-class ability. My time at speed 3 broke the world record for female runners but not male runners.

If the same pattern held true for attack and defense, then I'd probably need 6 or 7 points to get a Brute rating. Would max health also work similarly? How much damage could somebody take even if they trained all their lives for it? Couldn't anybody die from being stabbed or shot?