The Morality System

When Abby absorbed her grimoires, pink light came out of her body and tinted the air, bubbles formed and popped, and the grimoires floated around her before entering her chest in a bright pink light. Sparkles shot out of her and glinted in the light.

When I absorbed my grimoire, the color drained from the room, and bones showered down from above, clattering on the ground. When the grimoire absorbed into my chest, it made gross squelching sounds.

"Well, that wasn't as awesome as yours Abby, but at least I can heal now, right?" I smiled.

"Actually, you can't yet. New grimoires start at Level 0 just like when you're a new adventurer," Granny said.

"Oh. That's a little underwhelming, but I'll make it work. So how do you level them up?" I said.

"You just gain experience. The experience gets split among all your grimoires. The new grimoires will level up quickly, and then it'll take a while for them to catch up with your other ones depending on your level when you gained them," she said.

[That is the case for most people, but since you have a system, you can choose how to spread out your experience among grimoires and skill books]

"So I can choose to only give experience to my healing grimoire, to get it up to the same level as my bone mage grimoire?'

[Yes]

'Then let's do that. I've been thinking about getting a skill book. Should I get one now?'

[I would advise against that. This bookstore is likely to only have standard class skill books. If you run enough dungeons, you should find a rarer one. Rarer is almost always better]

'Thanks. Wait, when is rarer not better?'

[Rope Master. It's a very rare skill book, but its applications are specific only to rope. So unless you have a way to carry around a ton of rope, the usefulness runs out when you run out of rope]

'Assuming you have infinite amounts of rope, are the skills any good?'

[The skills are great. The ability to supply the skills with rope is the hard part]

"Ok. Note to self, find rope master book and then get infinite rope.'

[Good luck]

"What do we do if we need to find you again?" I asked.

"Just say 'Granny's Grimoires' and my bookstore will show up, as long as it's not already busy," she said.

"Thanks. Alright. I think we're set for now. Have a good rest of your day Granny," I said. Abigail and I walked toward the door.

"You too, guy and girl. What are your names?" She said.

"I'm Tom and this is—"

"Abigail!" Abigail said.

I was going to use a fake name for Abigail, but I guess it couldn't hurt that she gave away her real name to a bookstore owner who barely knew the name of the city we were in.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Tom and Abigail. Good luck with your new grimoires!" She said.

"Thanks!" Abigail said as we walked through the door.

We ended up back in the undercity, but Granny's Grimoires was gone. In its place, was just a run-down house.

"That went well," I said.

"Yeah, I think so too," Abigail said. "What's next?"

"We need to level up our grimoires. Dungeon run?" I said.

"Yeah! Let's do it," she said.

As we walked to the dungeon, I did system stuff. Experience Plunder had been bothering me for a while. I was going to ask the system if we could fix it somehow.

'Is there anyway to make Experience Plunder only take from evil people rather than all people?'

[Yes! We can adjust it by leveling it up. Why don't you try doing that now?]

'How many justice points do I have?'

[10]

'How?'

[Dorian was 4 points, Bruno was 3, and Dulce was 3. That equals 10]

'Oh right. He died so quickly, I forgot about Dorian.'

[Seems logical]

'Ok. Let's just go ahead and spend all 10 justice points on Experience Plunder.'

[Excellent choice. You have upgraded Experience Plunder 10 times!]

[Experience Plunder changed to "Take 50% of all experience and stats gained by evil people. Then it increases to 60%, 70%, 80%, then 90%. With the next upgrade, this was added, "Take 1% of the accumulated experience and stats of evil people."]

[With 4 more upgrades, the radius of effect increased from 10 miles to 14]

'Nice! That's perfect.'

[I'm happy you're satisfied]

[You gained 50 good aura by changing your ability to a good effect (-35)]

That effect was overpowered beyond belief, but I did upgrade the ability 19 times. I thought the overpowered-ness was appropriate and earned.

I mean, not only is it going to give me a ton of stats, but it's also a denial of future experience points and stats for evil people. I also get the ability to steal some of their accumulated stats, not just future stat gains. So not only am I preventing them from getting stronger, I'm also weakening my enemies.

'So, we won't be able to do the dungeon multiple times today will we? Since it respawns daily.'

[You will. Dungeons respawn daily or when they are completed. As long as you complete the dungeon every time, you can go again]

'Oh, nice.'

Abigail and I arrived at the dungeon. We entered the dungeon without any packs this time. We didn't want to collect any crystals and the cores we would just pop as we went.

When we encountered the bats and giant rats, we destroyed them. Abigail trapped them all in floating bubbles and I pierced each of them with multiple bone spikes.

We picked up all the cores and split them down the middle, trying to evenly distribute the different stats. Red cores were strength, blue cores were agility, green was stamina, and yellow was intelligence. I popped all of the cores at once.

[You have gained 22 strength (207), 24 agility (199), 23 stamina (227), and 250 intelligence (572)]

Holy crap! My stats were starting to get reasonably impressive. An experienced C-rank adventurer with strength as their primary stat would probably have between 200 and 300 strength. Their other stats would all still be less than 125.

I was already able to compete against any C-rank adventurer's primary stat. After a few dungeon runs, I might be able to compete against B-rank adventurers in all stats.

My intelligence was so high, that I could probably compete against B-rank intelligence stat adventurers now. My spells would be insanely powerful now. And this was just the beginning. By the time we finished this dungeon my intelligence would be over 1,000.

"This is incredible! My intelligence is 255! And my other stats are increasing too! Look at my arms!" She flexed her arms.

"They look the same," I said. They did. She had dainty princess arms. They were cute and adorable, but in no way scary or intimidating.

"I know! And yet I'm a lot stronger! Isn't it great?" She said.

"Yeah. That is pretty great, I guess," I said.

I guess it was great. If she gained muscle equal to her strength, she'd be buff as hell in no time. Not that I wasn't into muscle mommies, but I liked her as she was, and I thought her dainty figure perfectly matched her personality. And by matching, I mean, they weren't similar at all.

As we continued through the dungeon, killing creatures as we went, my shirt felt tighter and tighter, and I kept having to adjust my pants.