Confirm.
I re-entered the code and froze, awaiting our new future.
Epilogue
The Crystal Sphere
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AGRION MARKET SQUARE was uncrowded. Not many players online today. Only the NPCs continued living their own computer-generated lives.
For them it was business as usual: merchants praising their wares, a crooked old lady shuffling her feet past the swordsmiths’ row. She leaned heavily on her staff and mumbled something to herself as she cast watchful glances around in search for any newbs whom she might reward with a social quest for their penny’s worth of alms.
Nothing had changed.
The sun shone brightly in the clear sky.
I used my key to unlock Dimian’s old shop, walked out into the back yard and activated a teleport scroll with the coordinates of Hinterwood already entered.
* * *
A sad girl stood by the pond. A giant Black Mantis hovered protectively next to her, casting watchful glances around.
“Enea!”
She swung round. Her eyes glinted with recognition. She ran toward me. “Alex!”
Love had returned to our world.
From now on, your dreams will come true, my sweet love. We’ll have it all. We’ll embark on new adventures and discoveries. Love will be for real. Death will be for fun. For ever and ever.
One day we might want to expand our horizons and sample the boundless star paths of the Founders.
But that will be a totally different story.
End of Book Three
The Neuro Development Branch:
Secret Knowledge:
Observational Skills, 4
Spell Interception, 3
Unity of Schools, 3
Acquisition of Blows and Combos, 5
Reflex Optimization, 10
Unity of Origin, 5
Legacy, 3
Artifact Building, 5
The Founders’ Successor, 5
Evolution:
Intense Training, 3
Pain Threshold, 5
Synergy, 5
Crit, 7
Shield of Reason, 10
Spell Building, 10
Power of Reason:
Insight, 5
Self-Control, 4
Enhanced Perception, 5
Energy Transfer, 3
Elemental Control, 5
Steel Mist, 5
Secret Knowledge:
Eons ago, the Ancient Gods (sometimes also called the Founder Gods) tampered with our ancestors' evolution, endowing them with a number of abilities which are now almost completely extinct. Only occasionally do they resurface in certain individuals known as Neuros.
You're one of them. Both your body and mind harbor a potential yet unlocked.
+1 to Strength
+1 to Intellect
+1% to XP per each invested Ability pt.
Observational Skills:
You're highly perceptive. Whether reading ancient manuscripts or watching other people, you pay attention to every detail, immediately grasping the technique of a combat blow or a spell incantation. You can then enter the knowledge you thus receive into special books or dedicated parchment scrolls for further study.
Warning! The level of the blow or spell you intend to study cannot exceed that of your character.
Each Ability point invested gives +2% to your chances of studying the blow or the spell (regardless of whether the object of your study is an NPC or another player).
Spell Interception:
The fact that all spells are recited in the Founders' language combined with your ability to lip read allows you to learn any spell.
Warning! In order to successfully intercept a spell, the caster (observation target) should be located within your direct line of vision. At level 1, your lip-reading range is set at 30 feet.
Each Ability point invested adds 2 ft. to your lip-reading range.
Spell Interception does not preclude other possible ways of spell studying.
Acquisition of Blows and Combos:
You effortlessly memorize new movements while watching combat practice or live combat. Later, this allows you to make a drawing of the blow or even combo technique from memory, recreating both attack and defense maneuvers.
Requires Observational Skills and Intense Training.
Each Ability point invested adds +2% to your chances of studying a blow or a combo.
Unity of Origin:
According to legend, all living beings in the Universe used to have a single ancestor. Some might snicker saying that an orc and a human being can't possibly share ancestry. Still, every legend harbors a grain of truth.
Each Ability point invested adds +2% to your chances of intercepting a spell or learning a new blow typical of other races, regardless of their affiliation (Light vs. Dark).
Unity of Schools:
Some time ago, you chanced upon an ancient book. As you struggled through it, trying to make sense of the faded writings on its crumbling pages, you were surprised to discover the writer's heretic ideas. According to the book's author, all types of magic and sorcery, including elemental and mind control, are firmly rooted in the long-forgotten school of Chaos.
Later, as you watched the effects produced by various schools of magic, your conclusions confirmed the ancient author's ideas. The powers of Chaos had been the foundation of all modern schools and practices.
Each Ability point invested adds +2% to the Range, Strength and Duration of every spell you study, as well as removes all bans and penalties for combining various kinds of magic and sorcery.
Reflex Optimization:
As you watch wildlife species (whose survival depends on their highest levels of ergonomics), you can learn and adopt their energy preservation skills. Your movements become more precise and calculated.
Each Ability point invested gives -2% to your mental and physical energy expenditures in combat.
Evolution:
The activation of this particular characteristic allows you to receive a small but continuous boost to your main stats, depending on the type of your daily activities. These changes will be visible as special boost bars situated opposite their respective characteristics in your character panel. For instance, if you read a lot you might notice the increase of your Intellect boost bar. Once the bar is full, you will receive +1 pt. to its respective characteristic.
The above boost does not cancel traditional characteristic leveling. Neither does it affect your items' bonuses.
Intense Training:
Each spell or blow you study requires constant perfecting. In order to improve your attack and defense skills, you need to practice a lot, creating your own combinations and turning new moves into reflexes.
Ability bonus: your damage, defense, mob control and aura range will improve. This only applies to the physical and magic skills you use on a regular basis, without affecting those you've learned but failed to apply.
Each Ability point invested adds +5% to attack strength.
Pain Threshold:
You learn to control pain. You might have already discovered, by extreme trial and error, that you don't experience pain as long as your Health is above 80%. As your HP dwindle, you start experiencing an increasing pain.
Each Ability point invested raises your pain threshold 3%. The maximum pain threshold allowed is 50% HP.
Synergy:
Everything in our world is interconnected. You can use various sources of energy, including elements, ancient artifacts and places of power marked by megalithic monuments. As you study them and listen intently to the world around you, you begin to tune in into various energy currents, allowing you to locate their sources and use them to restore your powers and even life.
Starting at level 20, you'll be able to trap and store any excess physical or mental energy within energy crystals.
+5% to your physical and mental energy regeneration speed.
Power of Reason:
; A Neuro's intellect affects everything he or she does.
Every 30 pt. Intellect add +3% to both attack and defense and +5% to the XP received for successfully using the blows or spells you've learned from other characters. All such blows or spells will add +3% to your chances of dealing critical damage or, when used in defense, to your chances of reusing the blow or spell with decreased cooldown times and -50% of required energy expenditure.
+10% to your mental energy regeneration speed.
Insight:
You're constantly busy studying everything around you, analyzing the nature of all events and perfecting your abilities and skills. Your goal is to get to the bottom of everything trying to work out how things work instead of mindlessly using them, be it a spell, a blow or a professional skill.
Each Ability point invested gives -3% to cooldown times and energy expenditure required for all types of physical and mental attack, defense and impact.
+2% to profession leveling speed for all farming and manufacturing professions.
Self-Control:
You have a natural 25% resistance to all kinds of magic and mind control. You can successfully resist mental attacks, preserving clarity of mind.
Each Ability point invested adds +2% to your chances of repelling a negative effect or boosting a positive one, be it a spell or your opponent's ability. +2% to your chances of successfully casting a spell when attacked. +3% to mental energy regeneration speed.
On reaching level 5, this ability will allow you to consciously control your mental energy distribution between several recipients — for instance, a magic artifact or an item of gear.
Enhanced Perception:
You learn with remarkable ease. Your outlook isn't limited by racial or class prejudices. You're free from all phobias and superstitions.
As a result, you see and notice a lot compared to others. Your night vision and reduced visibility navigation skills are considerably superior to theirs. At level 20, you will receive a new primary skill, Twilight Vision, which you can consequently level up and improve.
Enhanced Perception allows you to detect danger before others can. It also adds +20% to your chances of seeing a stealthed-up enemy stalking you. Each Ability point invested adds +1 to your Field of Vision Range.
Legacy:
From now on, you can control the ancient blood magic which exists in synergy with nature. The Founders' artifacts will reveal their secret properties to you alone.
Any acquired spells will be available 3 levels earlier than required.
-5% to Mental Energy required to cast a spell.
Crit:
+10% to your chances of dealing a critical hit. +5% to your chances of dealing damage with the Element of Chaos in a successful (i.e., not blocked by the enemy) attack. Every new level of the ability adds +3% to your chances of dealing elemental damage.
Energy Transfer:
You've learned to accumulate the surrounding Elements' energy in order to transfer it to stones or charge up magic scrolls. Every new level of the ability adds +5% to both energy accumulation and energy transfer rates.
Elemental Control:
Activated ahead of schedule
+20 to Resistance to the Elements
Currently, in order to interact with the elements, you're required to use one of the Founders' artifacts built for that purpose. Direct interaction is available from level 10.
Requirements:
Intellect, 25
Willpower, 25
Artifact Building
You’ve acquired Secret Knowledge, mastered Elemental Control, grasped Synergy and found the long-lost Object Replication spell. From now on, you can replicate artifacts. Replication type: simple (halves the artifact’s properties). Each XP point invested into the ability will improve the replicated object’s properties by 10%. That is to say, once you reach level 5 of the ability, the replicated artifacts won’t suffer any loss in their properties. Further leveling can even improve their properties but no more than +130% of the original object’s bonuses.
Restriction: The only items you can copy for the time being are those built by the ancient masters. You cannot create your own artifacts yet.
Shield of Reason
By having mastered Evolution, Power of Reason and Secret Knowledge, you’ve come to realize that each of us grows to become a unique universe best described as Ego.
The death of a human body isn’t fatal. The disintegration of one’s identity is.
You’ve spent a lot of time studying ancient scrolls which describe various methods of mind protection from any destructive external influences.
By repeatedly experimenting with the Elements within your control, you’ve managed to retrieve an ancient protection spell which prevents the enemy from controlling your mind. The protection spell has become your unique ability granting +70% to your immunity to all kinds of mind control. Each XP point invested into the ability adds +3% to the said immunity.
Once you reach level 10 of the ability, you’ll be able to cast the spell on any one chosen item of your gear.
The Founders’ Successor
You’ve perfected the control of your mind to the point where you’ve successfully managed to keep it together, saving your identity from disintegration.
This ability will allow you to train others in the basics of the Neuro development branch. It will also enable you to stabilize your allies’ identity matrices in case of emergency. Cooldown: 1 hr.
Every new ability level you receive will shorten the cooldown time by 5 minutes. Once you reach level 5, you’ll be able to create a Shield of Reason spell and copy it to a scroll.
Spell Building
You’ve used your Spell Interception ability to study various schools of magic and their practices. Your knowledge of Synergy as well as your mastery of Elemental Control will now allow you to combine the elements of various spells in order to build your own. You can, for instance, create an illusion capable of dealing Elemental damage.
Every new ability level you receive will increase both the duration and the effects of the spells you build.
Steel Mist
You’ve mastered the long-lost magic practice of substance manipulation.
Whenever mortal danger threatens you, select a gear item of your choice which will disintegrate, its particles forming a damage-absorbing spherical shield around you.
Cooldown: 1 hr.
Every new ability level you receive will improve the damage-absorbing properties of the Steel Mist while also increasing its duration.
If you like what you've read, check out other LitRPG books and series published by
Magic Dome Books:
The Dark Herbalist LitRPG series
by Michael Atamanov:
Video Game Plotline Tester
Stay on the Wing
A Trap for the Potentate
The Way of the Shaman LitRPG series
by Vasily Mahanenko:
Survival Quest
The Kartoss Gambit
The Secret of the Dark Forest
The Phantom Castle
The Karmadont Chess Set
Shaman’s Revenge
Clans War
The Hour of Pain (a bonus short story)
Dark Paladin LitRPG Series
by Vasily Mahanenko:
The Beginning
The Quest
Restart
Phantom Server LitRPG Series
by Andrei Livadny:
Edge of Reality
The Outlaw
Black Sun
The Neuro LitRPG Series
by Andrei Livadny:
The Crystal Sphere
The Curse of Rion Castle
The Reapers
Perimeter Defense LitRPG Series
by Michael Atamanov:
Sector Eight
Beyond Death
New Contract
A Game with No Rules
Mirror World LitRPG Series
by Alexey Osadchuk:<
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Project Daily Grind
The Citadel
The Way of the Outcast
The Twilight Obelisk
About the Author
Andrei Livadny is a popular Russian science fiction author. Born on May 27 1969 in the city of Pskov, he was an avid reader from an early age. But it was the Russian translation of Robert A. Heinlein's The Orphans of the Sky that decided his choice of future occupation. The story has become a pivotal moment in the boy's life, leaving a lasting impression on him.
Andrei wrote his first book at the age of eight. Since then, he's never stopped working on new books. His passion for science fiction has gradually become his career.
In 1998, Andrei debuted in Russia's leading publishing house EKSMO with his novella The Island of Hope. Since then, he has penned over 90 books that have enjoyed a total of 153 editions.
Andrei has created several unique worlds, each unlike the previous. He wrote The History of The Galaxy with humanity itself as a protagonist. This sixty-book series creates a history of our future civilization and its contacts with alien races, forming a convincing and logical picture of humanity's development for two millennia from now. The English translations of the first books of The History of The Galaxy are now available worldwide.
The Reapers (The Neuro 3) Page 29