System Upgrade II

Freya couldn't help but be disappointed. She had received a wonderful skill and she couldn't learn it. She instantly asked Art about the reason, as he answered calmly, 'It's because you still have completely formed a third circle inside your mana core. So you cannot learn the spell just yet.'

'Don't worry about that too much, though.' He continued, 'with my help, you will be able to form it in a few days at least or a week at max.'

That's right. In her excitement at getting a third circle spell, she had completely forgotten about forming a magic circle in her mana core. It was the most basic requirement of advancing to the next circle, after all. In her defense, she performed only done this process only twice before in her life so she could be forgiven for this oversight.

A smile graced her lips as she remembered the first time she did so. She had just turned fourteen at that time, and her mother had sat her down, telling her that the mana in her body was finally enough to form a circle in her mana. She vividly remembered how excited she had been to hear that. Freya had seen her mother perform magic since she was a little kid and couldn't wait to learn magic herself. She had screamed in joy once she learned that she was about to become a mage.

Her mother, Adeline, was an alchemist by profession but had become a first circle mage to use spells related to alchemy. In fact, those were the only kind of spells she knew, but the young Freya had been still eager to learn from her mother.

It had taken almost a month for Freya to form her first circle with her mother's help. It had taken significantly longer to form her second circle, almost five years after her mother passed away. At the memory of her mother's death, a fire raged in her eyes and her thirst for revenge grew even more.

'When can we start?' the adventurer asked with determination, ready to advance to the next circle.

'All in good time, but meanwhile, why don't you check out the new system update?'

'You are right. I almost forgot about that?' Freya quickly searched for the notifications and with a single thought from her the original messages reappeared before her.

[System update was successful. The System of Archana (Replica) v1.01 is now active.]

[The system will now display visual quantitative indicators for the following resources:

i) Health

ii) Mana

iii) Stamina]

When Freya the first change, she instantly wished to see it, and a menu similar to the stats window opened up before.

[Resource Window

Player: Freya Einar

Health: 11000/11000

Mana: 6750/6750

Stamina: 6000/6000]

The three resources were each shown with numbers and a single bar below each of them. Red for health, blue for mana and green for stamina. Each bar had a silver outline and just below the resource window another message.

[Would like resource indicators to be displayed on the HUD? Y/N]

Freya curiously pressed the Y and instantly three bars appeared at the bottom of her vision. Blue to the left, red in the middle and green to the side. Seeing this, she immediately thought that despite being quite small, they may obstruct her vision during fights.

As soon as she thought this, the bars turned almost transparent and the miniscule portions of her vision were no longer obscured. With one more thought, the bars completely disappeared and with another returned to opaque.

'Nice, I can now keep an eye on my mana and stamina during fights.' Freya thought as she set the bars to only activate during battle at a semi-transparent setting. After completely understanding the new resource system, she now understood why the system had meant by the mana cost in the skill window she had viewed a few moments ago.

Being a mage, she fully appreciated the value of being able to quantify one's mana reserves. On top of that, her stamina also had its own bar. Many would argue that it was a useless addition as any person would realize their exhaustion on their own overtime, but Freya saw its true value. If a person could see their stamina consumption in real time, they would be able to manage their stamina much more efficiently.

After that, Freya turned towards the next notification to appear after the resource system

[The Skill Exchange System has been activated.]

Confused by the name, Freya clicked on the notifications to learn about the new system in details.

[Skill Exchange System

Description: As the player progresses through the system, they may receive skills that are of no use to them or are too low level for them. The can exchange such skill books for credits points using this system, which can be later used to level up other skills or buy a random skill book.]

The description revealed this new system to be a simple but a useful. Freya had early on realized that at this rate, she may just receive too many skills in the future and she may not have any use for them. In fact, she already felt somewhat overwhelmed by the recent influx of skills.

Recently, she barely had enough time to get competent in using a skill, let alone mastering it, before she already had a new skill to practice. Although the system was a great help and increased her learning speed by a factor of ten, it could do only so much before Freya was overwhelmed.

With this system, Freya could easily exchange any unwanted skill books and not let them sit in her bag, collecting dust.

However, the description did make her curious and she opened up the new system function to check what she could buy with her credit points.

[Skill Exchange System

Credit Points: 0

Available skills

Random Rare Active Skill book 100 points

Random Rare Passive Skill book 80 points

Random Epic Active Skill book 1000 points

Random Epic Passive Skill book 800 points

Random Master Active Skill book 10000 points

…

Epic Skill Rank up Card 750 points

…]

Freya was surprised to see that she could even exchange the points for skills up to the Master rank. It would require almost, 10000 points and she was almost certain they wouldn't come easy. Yet just for a moment, the mage imagined herself with multiple Master ranked skills.

Even the Epic ranked skills that she had received were preposterously strong, and one was even a powerful third circle spell. She was already a very strong opponent to beat, just with her Epic and Rare ranked skills. So, she couldn't even imagine how strong master ranked skill would be.

Luckily, she didn't have to imagine, as she just recently obtained a Master ranked skill. It was the bonus reward for completing the Orc Extermination. Thankfully, her stats had increased just enough that she didn't have to use magic against the orc leader and had completed the bonus objective, earning the skill.

Freya refocused on the final notification of the system update, she would look at the Master ranked skill after she was done with these notifications.

[The Inventory Function has been activated.]