The Invest tab opened to an empty page.
Not completely empty. There was a prompt at the top in the same clean text as the rest of the system.
[Select an asset to invest in.]
[Assets: Skills / Equipment]
Below it, under Skills, three entries sat waiting.
[Ignition (F) - Proficiency 1]
[Heat Control (F) - Proficiency 1]
[Combustion (F) - Proficiency 1]
Under Equipment the list read: None.
He scrolled back up and looked at the tab headers again. [Invest] [Boost] [Fuse] He had 47 VP and no idea what any of them actually cost or returned. He was not going to touch anything until he understood what he was touching.
He opened Boost first.
The description was short.
[Boost: Temporarily enhance physical stats using VP. Duration and intensity scale with VP spent. Efficiency increases with cumulative usage.]
Below that, a cost table.
[10 VP: Minor boost. +5% to all physical stats. Duration: 3 minutes.]
[25 VP: Moderate boost. +12% to all physical stats. Duration: 5 minutes.]
[50 VP: Significant boost. +25% to all physical stats. Duration: 8 minutes.]
He read it twice. The efficiency note at the top was the part that mattered. Cumulative usage. It got cheaper or more effective the more he used it, which meant the value of it changed over time rather than staying fixed. He filed that and moved on.
[Fuse]
[Fuse: Combine two or more invested assets into a single new asset. Combined compounded value is merged and a multiplier is applied to the result. Minimum: 2 assets with active investment.]
A second line beneath it, greyed out.
[No eligible assets. Assets must carry active investment before fusion is available.]
So [Fuse] needed him to Invest first. The order was fixed. Invest, then Fuse, not the other way around. He went back to the Invest tab and read the description properly this time.
[Invest: Allocate VP into a skill or item. The asset will begin compounding passively. Returns scale with time and total VP invested. No limit on simultaneous investments.]
No limit on simultaneous investments.
He read that line again.
He had 47 VP. Three skills available. He could put something into all three right now if he wanted to spread it, or concentrate on one. He did not know the return rate yet so he did not know which was smarter. He looked at the three sub-skills and thought about which one had actually done anything useful in the fight.
Combustion had startled the creature. Ignition had given him the reach to land it. Heat Control had done nothing because he had not been calm enough to use it deliberately.
He selected Ignition and a VP input prompt appeared.
[Invest in: Ignition (F)] [Available VP: 47] [Amount to invest:]
He typed 20.
[Confirm investment of 20 VP into Ignition (F)?]
He confirmed it.
Nothing dramatic happened. The panel updated.
[Ignition (F) - Proficiency 1]
[Invested: 20 VP]
[Compounding: Active]
[Current return value: 20 VP]
[Next return estimate: increasing]
A small indicator sat at the bottom of the entry, a narrow bar with a faint pulse moving through it at a slow steady rhythm. He watched it for a few seconds. Nothing visible changed in the number. The return value still read 20. But the bar kept pulsing.
He closed the panel and stood up properly, testing his ribs. The hit he had taken was going to be uncomfortable for a while. HP sat at 67 out of 100 according to the Record and he had no idea how natural recovery worked in this body yet or how fast it moved. In games HP regenerated over time. He assumed something similar applied here but he was not going to count on it.
He picked up the branch and started moving again.
He had been walking for around twenty minutes when he smelled it.
Something sweet underneath the general smell of the forest. Floral but concentrated, the kind of scent that did not belong to background undergrowth. He slowed down and followed it off the main line he had been walking.
It led him to a cluster of plants growing at the base of a wide tree where the light came through in a stronger column than the surrounding canopy allowed. Low to the ground, broad flat leaves, and growing up through the centre of each plant a single stem ending in a flower he did not have a name for. Deep red, almost black at the edges, with a faint light inside the petals that was not quite a glow but was close to one.
He crouched in front of the nearest one and looked at it without touching it.
The [Compound System] pulsed.
He had not opened it. It opened itself, a single notification appearing unprompted at the edge of his vision.
[Resource detected: Emberveil Bloom]
[Rarity: Rare]
[World value: High]
[Convert to VP? Y/N]
He stared at the notification for a second. The system had seen the plant before he even decided what to do with it. It had already appraised it, assigned it a value and was waiting for a decision.
He looked at the cluster. Six plants. All of them carrying the same flower.
[Y]
[Emberveil Bloom x1 converted.] [VP received: 340]
He blinked.
Three hundred and forty VP from one flower. He looked at the remaining five plants.
[Emberveil Bloom x1 converted.] [VP received: 340]
[Emberveil Bloom x1 converted.] [VP received: 340]
He converted all six and stood up. The flowers were gone, reduced to whatever the system had taken from them, leaving only the stems and leaves behind.
[Total VP: 2,067]
He opened the Invest tab.
The number sitting there was different enough from forty seven that he stood still for a moment just looking at it. Two thousand and sixty seven. From six plants and one creature. He did not know if Emberveil Blooms were common in this forest or if he had stumbled across something rare. He did not know if 2,067 VP was enough to do anything meaningful or if the system scaled in a way that made it a small number at any real level of progression.
What he did know was that the compounding indicator on Ignition was still pulsing.
He opened the entry.
[Ignition (F) - Proficiency 1]
[Invested: 20 VP]
[Compounding: Active]
[Current return value: 21.4 VP]
[Time since investment: 24 minutes]
Twenty minutes of sitting in his pocket and the 20 VP he had put in had already returned 1.4 VP on top of itself. He did not know the rate formula. He did not know how it accelerated over time or whether grade affected it or whether proficiency mattered. He did not know any of the underlying numbers.
But it had gone from 20 to 21.4 in twenty four minutes without him doing anything.
He looked at the two thousand VP sitting in his balance and then looked at the two remaining empty skill slots and thought about what happened if he put serious VP into all three of them and then left them alone for a day.
He selected Heat Control.
[Invest in: Heat Control (F)]
[Amount to invest:]
He typed 500.
[Confirm investment of 500 VP into Heat Control (F)?]
Confirmed.
The indicator appeared. Same pulse as Ignition but wider, the bar slightly fuller at the start given the larger input. He watched it for a moment and then selected Combustion.
[Invest in: Combustion (F)]
[Amount to invest:]
He was about to type a number when the compounding bar on Ignition caught his eye again.
[Current return value: 21.8 VP]
Four minutes since he last checked. 0.4 VP in four minutes on a 20 VP investment. He did not have the maths in front of him but he could feel the shape of what that meant if the rate held or increased over hours rather than minutes.
He looked at the 1,547 VP still sitting unallocated.
He understood now what the system was doing. It was not a battle tool, not primarily. It was not something designed to make him hit harder in the next fight. It was something that rewarded patience. The longer he left it alone the more it returned and the more he had to reinvest the more the cycle accelerated.
He typed 800 into the Combustion input and confirmed it.
Three skills compounding simultaneously. 1,320 VP deployed. 247 remaining.
He pressed his back against the tree where the Emberveil Blooms had been growing and looked up through the gap in the canopy where the light came through strongest.
The indicators pulsed in the corner of his vision. All three of them. Slow and steady and already climbing.