Infinite Awakening: 10,000x EXP Converter!

The bathroom tiles were cold against his back. The golden code had stopped streaming. Version 2.0 was online. And Alvian Vance could not sleep.

He looked at the new menu floating in the dark. The second proficiency wheel was right below the main spin wheel, glowing with shiny brass and steel. Every swing of his sword would now spin this wheel. Every use of his Skills would generate proficiency EXP that could be multiplied, pooled, and detonated through Gambler’s Delay.

[Short-Sword (Novice): 0/100 Proficiency EXP]

Zero out of one hundred. The starting line.

His mind thought through the ideas faster than his heart beat. The System did not care if he was in real fights or just practicing. It only cared about action. If he swung his sword at empty air, the wheel would spin. If he swung it a hundred times and saved up the proficiency EXP with Gambler’s Delay, one good multiplier could shoot his Short-Sword Mastery through every rank in one huge burst of growth.

He needed to test this now. Not tomorrow. Not after Helen Croft’s meeting. Now.

Alvian quietly left the apartment at 0330. The Undercity’s thirteenth level was dead quiet at this hour, even the scavengers asleep in their holes and the black market shutters locked tight. His boots made no sound on the wet concrete as he went down through the tunnel paths toward the Lower Warrens.

The air grew thicker as he went deeper.

He found a broken subway platform half a kilometer away from the closest monster nest. The room was wide and open, with broken ceiling beams forming walls on both sides. Cracked old-world tile covered the floor, showing faded ads for products that were long gone.

No creatures. No witnesses. Just silence and old ghosts.

Perfect.

He pulled out his short-sword. The blade was chipped from the tournament, and the edge was dull from blocking Torsten’s Graviton-enhanced sledgehammer. But the steel was still strong, and the blue lines of Clearwater energy ran along its body, glowing softly in the dark like something alive inside the metal.

He planted his feet. Basic form. Horizontal slash.

Whoosh.

[Swing 1: Short-Sword proficiency +1. Rolling proficiency multiplier... 3x. Proficiency EXP: 3.]

Three proficiency EXP. Tiny but real. The System had registered the swing and spun the secondary wheel without hesitation. The brass reels had clicked through their cycle and landed on a Common roll, awarding triple the base value.

Vertical slash.

Whoosh.

[Swing 2: Short-Sword proficiency +1. Rolling... 7x. Proficiency EXP: 7.]

Thrust.

Whoosh.

[Swing 3: Short-Sword proficiency +1. Rolling... 1x. Proficiency EXP: 1. KP +1.]

One times. The lowest possible roll. The cosmic slot machine’s way of saying it did not give a damn about his enthusiasm or the hour he had chosen to swing a sword in a dead subway station. But the Karma Point notification was a consolation prize, the System’s pity currency for garbage luck.

’Thanks for nothing,’ Alvian thought dryly.

He kept swinging. Reverse grip slash. Horizontal. Vertical. Thrust. Repeat. The tunnel echoed with the rhythmic whoosh of steel cutting stale air. Each swing took about one second, and each swing gave one base proficiency EXP multiplied by whatever number the brass wheel landed on.

The rolls were random and very average. A 12x multiplier felt like a gift. A 4x gave him another KP. Then an 8x. A 2x (KP +1). A 15x made his eyes go wide before the next three rolls dragged his average down again. The second wheel’s luck was just like the main one: mostly Common rolls, a few Rare spikes, and nothing above 50x.

After fifty swings, his shoulders burned. Swinging a short-sword was hard work, putting stress on his shoulders, stomach, and arms. His STR 28 and VIT 39 made the hard work easier, but it still was not effortless. Sweat lined his forehead despite the cold air in the tunnel, and he began breathing harder.

He switched to one-handed swings to save energy. His left hand hung relaxed while his right hand kept up the steady rhythm. Slash, slash, thrust, slash. Doing the same movement again and again made his mind drift, balancing the steady swings with the quick math in his head.

At swing seventy-five, he paused. He pressed his right palm against the tunnel wall and channeled Clearwater Palm. A small pit of corroded concrete appeared, hissing softly as the acid ate into pre-Cataclysm construction material.

[Clearwater Palm use: Proficiency +1. Rolling... 4x. Proficiency EXP: 4. KP +1.]

The System counted it as a Skill action. The second wheel treated Skill uses the exact same way as sword swings. One base proficiency EXP, multiplied by the roll. He got another KP from getting under a 5x roll. The Clearwater Palm proficiency saved up separately from the Short-Sword, building its own hidden pool.

He started swinging again. At swing one hundred, he stopped. His shoulders hurt with a deep, throbbing pain. His sword arm shook from the constant movement, and his hands were slick with sweat. He checked his saved proficiency.

[Short-Sword (Novice): 342/100 Proficiency EXP]

Three hundred forty-two. One hundred base proficiency EXP, multiplied one by one by the wheel’s rolls, had given him three hundred forty-two total. That was an average of about 3.4x for each swing. His mastery level had cleared the Novice mark of one hundred. He had already leveled up to Adept without even noticing.

But rolling one swing at a time was a huge waste of time. The multipliers were small because they multiplied just one base point every time. A 7x roll on 1 base point gave seven proficiency EXP. A 2x gave two. Growing this way was painfully slow.

’If I saved up the base EXP first and rolled once on the total amount,’ he realized, ’a hundred base proficiency EXP multiplied by even a decent Rare roll would give ten thousand or more. I wasted a hundred swings rolling one by one like an idiot.’

A scavenger’s instinct screamed at him. Resources were wasted. Efficiency was lost. In the Undercity, wasting resources meant starving. He fixed his breathing and opened the extra menu he found during the Version 2.0 update.

[Gambler’s Delay (Proficiency) activated. Pooling base proficiency EXP. Release command: "Spin."]

The interface confirmed. From this point forward, every swing would add one base proficiency EXP to the pool without triggering an individual roll. The multiplier would apply to the entire accumulated pool when he released it.

He planted his feet. Raised his sword. And swung.

Whoosh. One.

Whoosh. Two.

Whoosh. Three.

The rhythm took over. Horizontal, vertical, thrust, reverse grip. The tunnel echoed with the steady sound of steel cutting air. His muscles burned with tiredness from the first hundred swings, but he pushed through. Every swing added another base point to the hidden counter.

[Proficiency Pool (Short-Sword): 47 base EXP]

[Proficiency Pool (Short-Sword): 68 base EXP]

[Proficiency Pool (Short-Sword): 83 base EXP]

At swing one hundred, his arm felt heavy like lead. His shoulders hurt with every swing. His grip on the sword handle was slipping because of sweat. But the counter showed what he needed.

[Proficiency Pool (Short-Sword): 100 base EXP]

One hundred base proficiency EXP. Pooled. Waiting. The Clearwater Palm test from earlier sat in its own separate pool with one base point, which would spin automatically when he activated the Short-Sword pool.

He had two Karma Points saved from the low rolls during his first try. It was a small amount, but real. Every little bit counted when you started with only twelve credits and a sick mother.

He stared at the proficiency wheel. Brass and steel, polished and waiting. Shiny brass and steel, ready to go. The reels showed weapon pictures and skill icons, all blurry until the spin started. He had one hundred base proficiency EXP, enough to pass the Novice rank and maybe jump through several ranks above it.

If the multiplier was high enough, the Short-Sword Mastery could evolve. The System had said so explicitly: Skills and Weapons that reach maximum proficiency can evolve, mutate, or ascend in rank. The evolution outcome depended on his Stats, his Talent energy, and the multiplier he got when passing the max. limit.

His Clearwater Talent was not normal water magic. It was acid and melting power. Whatever his Short-Sword Mastery evolved into would carry that acid property, shaped by the power hidden in his Talent that the Academy had never cared to check.

He held the sword handle with both hands. The blue lines in the steel glowed along with his heartbeat, growing faster now. Excitement built up in his chest like water behind a dam.

Somewhere far above him, Martha coughed in her sleep, her harsh breath softer than a week ago, but still there. Leo dreamed of stick-figure fighters holding glowing swords.

"Spin," he whispered.

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