The Succubus

Matt looked at the result blinking on the screen in front of him. It was unbelievable, unacceptable.

Unchangeable.

He had done everything right. Followed every instruction. Pushed himself until the instructors forced him to rest. When his group of orphans turned nine, and the physical conditioning and rift-training tests began, he never slacked off or skipped lessons.

The one hundred and eighty-seven children of Warrington’s Upper East Side Orphanage #3 had trained hard for their Awakening. Every profession was covered, and every combat role was touched upon. Even the more obscure variations were at least mentioned, if not directly trained for.

Matt could answer any question about any role or their sub-variations. He had studied every extra book his instructor’s thought might be the slightest bit useful. Unwilling to be unprepared for a Talent that could change his weapon of choice, he practiced with every weapon the training armory had.

He preferred a longsword but was familiar with one-handed and shield combinations, dual-wielding daggers, weighted gloves, staffs, and even had practice time with the fake wands that simulated casting spells.

Matt was ready no matter what uses his Tier 1 Talent had.

However, Matt had not prepared for his Tier 1 Talent to be useless. Or worse than useless. He had not prepared for his Talent to be so bad the Empire's AI would officially rate it as ‘detrimental.’ That was a death blow to any potential career with an established guild.

Matt sat in the testing chair, wires still connected to his arm. Staring at the display that doomed him.

Tier 1 Talent determined.

Mana Regeneration inversely proportional to current mana, directly proportional to Maximum Mana.

Secondary Effect: Essence cannot be applied to mana cultivation. Mana Regeneration is decoupled from mana cultivation.

Tertiary Effect: Anomaly detected…

…

…

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Anomaly processed.

Maximum Mana is substantially below average levels.

Additional review required. Please, wait until a higher authority can be contacted.

Matt felt the blood drain from him. He was lightheaded, couldn’t breathe. The screen blurred, words merging, sealing his fate with their little white proclamations.

Everything was falling apart and there was nothing he could d—

He focused on his primary effect! If that was good enough, then nothing else would matter. Heart pounding, Matt pulled up the complete description of the first aspect of his Talent.

He blinked when, in addition to the paragraphs he was expecting, a complicated mathematical formula and graph popped up. Apparently, the amount of mana he naturally regenerated varied dramatically depending on how full his pool was.

Matt froze when he noticed the percent signs on the graph. His Mana Regeneration was being measured as a percentage of his Maximum Mana. He could generate mana at a rate equal to his Maximum Mana per second while below 1% of his total mana.

What this meant was he could channel mana endlessly at an extremely high rate but any single use mana spells were effectively useless.

That was… insane. At low tiers, Mana Regeneration was usually so slow it was better measured in mana per hour. That was why mages dedicated massive amounts of their cultivation to improving their Mana Regeneration. Improving only the size of your pool and not how fast it filled led to mages constantly running out of mana.

Mages were forced to spend most of their cultivation on three separate, non-physical attributes from all the research he had done prior to his Awakening. This made them physically weaker and more vulnerable to melee attacks, though many considered this a fair trade-off for the ability to summon fire out of nowhere. Matt certainly did.

Regenerating a percentage of his Maximum Mana meant Matt could completely sidestep this issue. By the time he dumped enough cultivation into his Maximum Mana to double the size of his mana pool, he would automatically have doubled the amount of mana he regenerated each second without spending anything on his Mana Regeneration.

Secondary Effect: Essence cannot be applied to mana cultivation.

Just like that, Matt’s fantasy crumbled to pieces.

Before they raised tiers and began cultivating, people could typically hold only 100 mana in their pool, unless their Talent applied some boost to it. Conventional logic said the initial size of someone’s mana pool barely mattered in the grand scheme of things. Even if Matt only started with 10 mana, by focusing a slightly heavier ratio into Maximum Mana, he could just stay at relatively low mana permanently while still casting endless spells. However, conventional logic assumed people could add essence into mana cultivation.

Matt looked back at his projected Mana Regeneration graph hopelessly. According to the AI, he would regenerate at a flat rate equivalent to his entire Maximum Mana per second for as long as his current mana was less than 1% of his maximum capacity.

Starting at zero mana, Matt needed only a fraction of a second to regenerate his pool to 1%. The instant he exceeded 1% of his Maximum Mana, though, his regeneration rate started plummeting below 1% of his capacity.

The AI even provided a little table showing how long it would take to reach certain benchmarks. It would take exactly ten minutes for Matt to reach 10% capacity but reaching 25% or 50% would take him months or years respectively.

While these rates were ludicrous, they were also irrelevant. With normal mages, getting to full capacity was important because it meant more spells to cast during a delve. In Matt’s case, if he could raise his maximum up to 1,000 mana, then he’d regenerate 10 mana near instantaneously whenever he dropped under 10 mana. That was enough to endlessly cast a basic [Fireball] spell with a cost of exactly 10 mana.

No mage could cast any spell endlessly. Even if they had 100,000 mana, it would eventually be exhausted since normal Mana Regeneration was still calculated in mana per minute.

Secondary Effect: Essence cannot be applied to mana cultivation.

Those damning words shredded any hope Matt had still carried. Even melee fighters dedicated at least 30% of their essence to mana cultivation, just so they could use skills in battle. The most aggressive cultivation ratio he had heard of, from an actually successful rift delver at least, was 80% to physical and 20% to mana. And that was only possible because that particular delver’s Tier 3 Talent let him negate the mana cost of skills based on his physical abilities.

Tier 3 Talent. That was his ticket out of this debacle. Matt never heard of a Talent set being purely detrimental. The ones that seemed useless at Tier 1 usually had synergy with that person’s Tier 3 or Tier 25 Talents.

Matt could do thi—

Higher authority reached.

…

Anomaly resolved.

…

Tertiary Effect: Lowered starting Maximum Mana.

Maximum Mana determined to be 1.

Matt felt as if he'd been punched in the gut yet again. A starting Maximum Mana less than what was needed to cast a [Fireball]. And he could never increase it. His stomach roiled with renewed vigor once the reality of his Tier 1 Talent’s secondary effect set in again.

He stood out of the chair once the wires disconnected from his arm and the screen flashed and said, “Please, have a nice day,” as if it was mocking him.

Looking around at the seemingly unfamiliar world, Matt tried to find anything or anyone that could fix him.