[Mend](common) evolution requirements met.

  View evolution options?

  Yes/No

  To say Matt was surprised was an understatement. He had some guesses in mind when he had seen the notification, but a skill upgrade was probably near the bottom of his list, let alone that skill being [Mend].

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  Yes, it had been level 10, and while Tara’s words about skill evolutions had mentioned some skills requiring a different path to evolve, he never thought [Mend] would be one of them. Especially since the skill, at heart, was a simple heal. Evolving into a stronger version of itself felt like the normal conclusion, so a different path being required was wholly unexpected.

  He stared at the notification for a few more seconds before sighing. What Lara had done probably triggered something in the skill. The problem was he had no clue what could’ve possibly caused this, and the hall’s atmosphere was still far from friendly.

  In the end, he decided to simply bite the bullet. His time in the temple was limited, and the cats did owe him some answers regarding what had happened. They may not be happy about it, but neither was he, and at some point they would all have to be adults about it.

  He took a deep breath, turned his head towards Tara, who had her eyes closed and head resting on her paws, and asked. “So, the thing with Lara. Mind telling me what happened?”

  “Nothing you should concern yourself with. She overreacted and was punished for it. Nothing more, nothing less,” Tara answered, disinterest clear in her voice.

  “I’d still like to know,” Matt insisted without trying to sound too eager.

  Tara opened an eye and looked at Matt with slight suspicion. “I’m sensing there is more to it than you just wanting ‘to know’.”

  Matt didn’t respond to her insinuation. He despised lies and liars and wasn’t gonna do it himself, and Tara was obviously smarter than she let on, so he wasn’t going to insult both of them with half-truths, instead choosing to remain silent and let her come to her own conclusion.

  Tara sighed, seemingly relenting. “Fine. She used a combination of her presence and aura skills to pressure you, yet somehow you managed to resist despite the sheer difference in power,” she answered, skepticism filling her voice, as if she wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself.

  Matt tried not to let his frustration show on his face. He knew exactly what Tara was trying to do, and he didn’t like it.

  “Let this be a demonstration,” Tara added, confirming Matt’s thoughts. “If you want more, you’re gonna have to give something in return,” she finished, revealing what she truly wanted.

  He didn’t like it, but it was true. She didn’t have a reason to tell him, but at the same time he didn’t like being strong-armed into revealing information that he had no idea the value of. Still, he needed to know. [Mend] reaching evolution after that interaction meant it was the reason for it, so knowing what had happened, or what he had done, could be invaluable in deciding what to do next.

  Sighing, he decided to reveal something to the cat, hoping it would show some goodwill on his part, which would hopefully help. “One of my skills can now evolve after what happened,” he simply stated, not revealing more than he needed to.

  However, that small bit of information seemed to wake Tara right up as she raised her head, seemingly more interested in the conversation now. “Isn’t that something,” she smiled, a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Let me guess, it was a healing skill,” she correctly guessed.

  Matt, who was doing his utmost to put on his best poker face, couldn’t even respond before Tara continued.

  “You don’t need to say anything, I’m fairly certain I know what happened now,” Tara waved a paw at him, putting Matt in an awkward position, where apparently what he thought was little information, ended up telling an entire story.

  “Mind filling me in then?” Matt asked in as steady a voice as he could muster.

  Tara got up and started circling around Matt. “How badly do you want to know?” She teased, apparently in a much better mood already.

  “Bad enough to endure this, not bad enough to beg,” Matt smiled, too exhausted for the cat’s games.

  “Fair enough,” Tara chuckled. “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start from the top,” Matt immediately answered. “What you said before made absolutely zero sense to me, so just… explain like I’m five,” he added.

  “I…” Tara seemed to be lost for words at his comment. “You humans have some weird terminology, but fine, let’s ‘start from the top’. And Matt, to me you are five,” she winked, continuing to tease him.

  “As I had said before, she used a combination of her presence and aura skills, and before you frown at me, I’ll explain exactly what that means,” Tara said, stopping Matt, who was indeed about to frown. “To explain what that means, first we’ll need to go over how stats work in the system, which I’m guessing you don’t know since you haven’t been to a tutorial?” she asked.

  Matt nodded at the cat before realizing something. “Wait, how did you know that I haven’t been to a tutorial? In our earlier talk, you seemed to be aware of my circumstances.”

  She had been too sure for it to simply be attributed to an educated guess, so he was missing something.

  “You entered as a level 4 with no skills, no resources, and no preparation. You unlocked your mana core inside of a dungeon. And you’re a healer,” she stated.

  “I…” Matt was about to see her point until he heard the last part. “Wait, what’s wrong with being a healer?” he frowned.

  “Let us get back to the stats,” Tara dodged the question.

  “You can’t drop a bombshell like that and just leave me hanging. What’s up with healers?” he asked insistently.

  “Let me explain how the stats work, then you’ll understand,” she answered, not really dispelling any of his worries.

  With a reluctant nod, he signaled for Tara to continue.

  Tara nodded back at him approvingly. “I’ll give you a quick rundown since we don’t have time to go into detail right now, so try to keep up.”

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  Matt braced himself. He was as ready as ever to finally learn more about how things worked in the system.

  “First off, stats don’t add flat numbers. They are inherently a percentage increase that increases thanks to a few different things. For example, more points in Strength makes Strength points slightly more impactful, but that’s not all. At different milestones, each stat provides a bonus, like at 500 Strength humans get a trait called [Iron Skin], and no, traits and skills are different. Traits are basically a passive skill that never levels up. Like [Iron Skin] provides you a 30% physical damage resistance by combining your skin cells with the iron in your blood, and the only reason I’m telling you this is because it’s practically common knowledge. Which brings us to another point: compatible stats complement each other, like Strength and Agility, Endurance and Vitality, Intelligence and Wisdom, Willpower and Spirit. Then, every two compatible stats complement the other two but to a far lesser degree, so to a person with a lot of Strength and Agility, a point in Vitality or Endurance will be much more impactful than to a person with a lot of Intelligence and Wisdom,” Tara was pacing back and forth as she went into full on lightning lecture mode, not giving Matt time to process or even ask questions. “Are you keeping up?” She asked.

  “I–” Matt stammered before being interrupted.

  “Good. Now for what the actual stats do,” Tara continued, leaving no room for questions or, well, anything really. “Once again, going into detail will take us three of your lifetimes, so we’ll go with a quick summary. Strength gives you physical power and physical defense. Agility improves speed and reaction time. Intelligence improves your brain’s capabilities, like handling new information, or splitting your focus, and no, it doesn’t provide magic resistance, no stat does. Wisdom improves your mana pool, Vitality your health pool, and endurance your stamina pool. Each of those three also improve that specific resource’s regeneration,” she shot rapidly like she was running from someone, making Matt question if she was even breathing during all of that.

  “Anything unclear so far?” She asked.

  “I…” Matt stammered, expecting her to interrupt him again, but he only received a raised eyebrow and a look that seemed to question his mental state. “Ehm,” he coughed. “Nope, everything is… well, I wouldn’t say clear but, understandable at least,” he shrugged.

  “That’s good,” she nodded. “Now for the less ‘understandable’ part, and the one pertaining to you the most, Spirit and Willpower.”

  Matt focused all his attention on her next words. He’d wanted to know since day one what Spirit did. It was his highest stat by far, and with his class and the modifiers he had from his titles, the gap was only widening. He had his guesses, but having it confirmed would go a long way in helping him move forward, especially since he had a lot of free stat points he was still holding on to that he wanted to distribute sooner rather than later.

  “Before I tell you, I want you to keep something in mind,” Tara said ominously, prompting Matt to give a questioning look. “Everything I told you so far isn’t factual.”

  Matt was about to complain, but Tara raised a paw, stopping him. “It doesn’t mean it’s not true. It just means that there are a lot of components and outliers that make it almost impossible to know for sure what a stat does or how much difference it makes. Even your race and species play a major role. Like if we both had the same Strength, the simple fact that I’m a cat means I get less value than you. That’s why you won’t find many cats walking around with battle axes and greatswords,” she explained. “So while some information is known, no one can truly know because of all the variance, especially when it comes to stats that you can’t easily quantify, like Spirit and Willpower,” she finally reached the heart of the subject, giving Matt a serious, unwavering look, to which he returned her intense look with a nod.

  Knowing something is better than knowing nothing, so even if her knowledge wasn’t 100% accurate, it would at least give him a foundation to base the rest on, especially since he was severely lacking in options.

  Tara looked at him for a few seconds longer before continuing. “Simply put, Willpower helps you defend your mind, and Spirit helps you defend your soul. So, while everyone has to have some points in both stats to protect against soul and mental attacks, they almost never reach the milestones. The stats are simply not important nor valuable enough since their benefits are hardly felt, even for those who use mental and soul magic. So essentially, while people don’t know everything about the other stats, they don’t know anything about Spirit and Willpower. Even if you asked the wisest of scholars or searched in the grandest of libraries, the best you’re going to find will be a research by an abstract scholar who managed to reach the first milestone of either stat. Anything else, you’ll have to find out on your own,” she finished, her eyes not breaking away from his.

  “What about other healers? Don’t they have to invest points in those stats?” Matt asked, slightly worried that he couldn’t learn anything about his two highest stats. The rest he could’ve guessed on his own, but Spirit and Willpower had been the big question marks, and for the two to simply provide mental and soul resistance was a big blow.

  Tara gave Matt a sympathetic smile as she dropped the biggest bomb of the entire conversation. “There aren’t other healers…”

  “I think I misheard you. It sounded like you were saying there aren’t other healers in the system,” Matt remarked with a slight chuckle, refusing to believe what he had heard, which was soon replaced by growing panic at Tara’s next words.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, the apologetic words feeling like daggers through his heart.

  “How can there be no healers? Healers are invaluable. Are people supposed to just power through wounds and injuries?” Matt asked, disbelief evident in his voice.

  “With how vitality works, how cheap, and abundant, potions and antidotes are, and the fact that you don’t even need to be a healer to have a simple healing spell, people stopped relying on dedicated healers, which resulted in people stopping being healers. Now the only healers you will find are either slaves who were forced to pick the class, or people like you, who didn’t know better, and neither tend to make it far,” she finished, hammering in the last nail in Matt’s coffin.

  The revelation hit Matt like a truck. He had never wanted to be a healer, but he was learning to live with it, accept it, maybe even like it a little, it had been the reason for his continued survival after all. Now though, not only was he told that four out of the six stat points he was getting per level were essentially useless in battle, but that his entire class could be substituted with a handful of pills and potions.

  That didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound fair.

  If it was so useless, then why was it offered to him? And not only that, all his options had been healers.

  Matt felt the world spin around him. Stumbling to the wall, he leaned against it as he slid down, hugging his knees. The only thought on his mind being, I’m fucked.

  Tara looked at Matt pityingly as he struggled to digest the information she had just dropped on him.

  She did feel bad for the boy. Healers were almost non-existent. Not only amongst humans, but even races with an innate talent for the class like Elves, Dryads, and Angels, who have historically had numerous healers before the boom of alchemy across the universe that came at the end of the second Era.

  At first, when she and her sisters had seen Matt use healing magic, they had just assumed he had gotten an early heal, which made sense for someone entering the trial alone with no spatial storage. But when no other spells were used for his entire trial run, it had become clear. Matt was a healer.

  Truth be told, she liked Matt. He was bold, motivated, resourceful, and quite powerful for his level. All qualities needed to survive and climb through the tiers in the system, and it had shown during his run.

  Killing floor bosses 8 levels higher than your own was incredibly rare, but doing it as a healer with high Spirit and Willpower? That was unheard of.

  Each fight was meant to test a different attribute in the trial taker.

  The first floor tested mental fortitude and the ability to deal with magic users.

  The second floor was a brawl. The scorpion’s magic barrier made it so that mages would have to find alternative ways to fight.

  The third floor was a test of awareness and speed. Ixari had been a promising trial taker with speed second to none at her level. Her traps and ambushes were also a nightmare that had taken the lives of many. Facing her as his third floor boss was incredibly unfortunate, yet even that hurdle he had managed to overcome.

  The fourth and final floor was a test of ingenuity and adaptability. Fighting an opponent you could see was simple enough, but one that made it its purpose to remain hidden was a tall task.

  All throughout the floors, Matt had managed to impress. His actions had been questionable at times, yet he had always come out on top, which was all that mattered.

  Sadly, a lot of his success could be attributed to high starting stats, a common trait amongst the newly initiated. Things would only get more difficult from here on out, especially with his Strength and Agility stagnating.

  At the end of the day, Matt was just a healer. Whether by choice or not, it was something he was now stuck with, which was unfortunate, because, funny enough, healers lacked longevity in the system.

  He was talented, and she had hoped he’d go far, but alas, some things were not meant to be. “A pity,” she muttered in a low voice, staring into the night sky. His survival wasn’t her responsibility. She would set him on the path, and the rest… was up to him.