A Person with Morals gets Transported to Another World [LitRPG] [Satire]

Ever the peacemaker, Loftus tried to switch the topic to something a little less contentious. Indicating above my head with his eyes, Loftus said, “You’re still only level 19, Yarm? Most of us are between 25 and 30. Are you sure you don’t want to join back into the main party? You’ll get much more XP that way.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “I’ll pass.” I couldn’t bear the thought of joining them and standing idly by as they killed monsters. “There are things I’m curious about, though.” I wanted to learn more about the System, but it felt somewhat awkward to ask for help after criticising everyone here.

“Fire away with any questions you have,” said Loftus. “The whole purpose of these nightly meetings is to share information. If there’s something you want to know, we’d be happy to answer.”

I expected the others to disagree with Loftus. I thought they’d ostracise me for how I spoke to them, but surprisingly they were all all-ears. “If you lot are fine with it, I want to know about status effects. Earlier someone used some sort of mind control on me. My body just started doing whatever they asked.” If I hadn’t used Cleanse, my life would have been over. If that boy, Coleford, knew about my ability, he could’ve told me not to use it and there would have been nothing I could do to stop him. “Is there a way to prevent that from happening?”

“Mind control, huh?” Were you Charmed or Possessed?” someone asked.

“The former,” I answered.

The pink-haired girl let out a verbal shudder. “I hate monsters that can do that. It’s so freaky being under their spells.”

“It was a human who did it to me.” It was interesting to learn that monsters were capable of it too. I had wrongly assumed it was something exclusive to humans. If a goblin did afflict me with Charmed, would I still follow their commands despite the language barrier?

“A human Charmed you?” said Loftus.

“That’s horrible!” said pink-hair.

“You should report them to the guards. That’s a serious crime,” said Blyth.

Unfortunately, it seemed that us Earthlings were somewhat immune to the law. If I reported him, I doubted the guards would take action unless I was made to do something horrendous. “So is there any way to avoid being Charmed?”

“It’s a tricky topic.” Loftus opened up his System and showed me his Blinding Touch skill. “Remember this? It inflicts you with Blinded.”

I jumped away before he had a chance to use it on me.

Giggling, he said, “Don’t worry. I won’t perform a demonstration again. I just wanted you to read it as an example of a skill that inflicts a status effect.”

[Blinding Touch]

[Upon physical contact with another creature, cause the Blinded status effect. Uses 30 MP. (Soul)]

Loftus pointed his pointer finger towards the ceiling. “Pop quiz, Yarm: how do you think someone could avoid me using this on them?”

Reading it, I saw one obvious answer. “I guess if someone kept a safe distance from you, you couldn’t cast it on them.”

“Pin pon! You’re correct.” Loftus flipped his hand into a thumbs up.

Ping pong? Why was he mentioning table tennis all of a sudden? And his pronunciation was way off.

“Powerful skills like this one usually have a range limit.”

I thought back to when I was Charmed. Coleford had shot out a small bolt of pink lightning at me from merely inches away. If I were further from him, he would not have been able to zap me. “But I can’t live my life avoiding all contact with people. Isn’t there another way?”

“Sure there is!” Loftus said with a puke-inducing amount of cheer in his voice. “In the case of my skill, I can’t use it on anything that’s already blind like a giant mole-rat. And it’s far less effective on creatures that have other strong senses, like dire wolves who rely heavily on scent. Plus, things that are incorporeal can’t be afflicted with it. You know, like ghosts.”

“Ghosts exist in this world?” I made a mental note to stay clear of graveyards. “None of those seem like realistic solutions for me. It’s not like I can leave behind my physical form and just use astral projection to go about my life. And if creatures that are already blind can’t be blinded, do you mean for me to already be charmed so I can’t get charmed? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“True,” Loftus drawled. “Hmm.” He twirled his blond hair around his finger. “I guess you could buy items that give you immunity to certain status effects. Like an anti-charm pendant of some kind.”

“How much would that set me back?”

“Upwards of 100,000 GP. They’re very rare.”

I leant back into my chair and groaned. “So there’s no realistic solution for me to avoid being mind-controlled?”

Loftus shrugged. “If you’re in a party, your teammates can kill the monster who Charmed you. Aside from that, I can’t really think of anything.”

“I can,” said Blyth as she adjusted her glasses. “I didn’t really want to release this information until I fully confirmed it, but I guess knowing little is better than knowing nothing. I gathered some volunteers to run some tests earlier today. We were testing the duration of status effects. Everyone knows that status effects last longer when your corresponding stat is higher.”

I did not know that.

“So in Loftus’ case, the duration of his Blinding Touch increases with his Soul level. However, the user’s stat is not the only factor that goes into the duration calculation.” Blyth held up a piece of paper with a bunch of scribbles on it for all of us to look at. Her handwriting was so atrocious that none of us could read it. “These are the results of today’s testing. It turns out that the afflicted’s stats are also taken into account. If you had a high Soul level, Yarm, the blindness that Loftus could cast on you would end much quicker than if you had a low Soul level.”

“Interesting. I didn’t know that stats worked like that.” The more I learned about stats, the more useful they seemed to become. And it made me that much more regretful that I invested into a seemingly useless stat.

“I only had limited resources to work with, but I was able to confirm that the Stunned and Slowed effects are reduced by a greater Body level. Charmed and Blinded are reduced by Soul.”

“And what about Mind?” I asked eagerly. “What does that reduce?”

“Erm…” Blyth looked like she did not want to dash my hopes. “I’ll have to wait on further experimentation before answering that.”

“In the first place, do we even know of any skills that cause status effects scaling off of Mind?” asked pink-hair.

Everyone at the table started looking at each other, wondering if anyone had an answer.

“Wait a minute.” I scratched my head. “You’re telling me I was mind-controlled, and my levels in Mind didn’t help me? Mind is literally in the word!”

“Technically it was a charm, not mind-control,” said Loftus.

“Oh, shut it.”

“If it’s any consolation,” began Blyth, “I do not believe Mind is as useless as most seem to think. I was looking it up and it is useless for battle, yes, but many genius inventors and scientists have invested into it. Because they were already quite smart, the levels in Mind had a multiplicative effect on their intelligence. They were able to accomplish much more by levelling it up.”

“Wow.” That got my hopes up. I stroked my beard. I might not have been able to do anything on the battlefield, but I was on track to becoming a super genius. With my newfound intelligence, I could surely think of a way to change this world for the better. I became a little giddy at the thought. “Hold on, did you say multiplicative?”

“Yes. If a person had 10 levels in Mind their increase in brainpower would depend on if they’re a brainiac or a peabrain. The stupid person would only become a little smarter, whereas the genius would have far greater gains in their mental faculties.”

My smile disappeared and I slumped further into my chair. “So a dumbass like me is just wasting his points by investing into Mind?”

Blyth looked at me sympathetically. “No… well yes… but don’t think of it as a binary system. It’s not that either you have intelligence or you don’t. Einstein said if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will think itself to be stupid. Intelligence comes in many forms.”

I appreciated her attempt to cheer me up, but it wasn’t helping.

A brawny boy sat two seats away from me said, “Think of it the same way as Body. A person who is strong will gain more strength when they level Body, and a person who is flexible will become more flexible when they level Body. I’m sure that Mind will improve some aspect of you in a positive way.”

“And besides,” said pink-hair, “whenever you pick a skill or a title that scales off of Mind, your investment value increases. It’s all about making the most of your build.”

“Thanks guys.” I didn’t really want to mope around about how the System was screwing me. I had to make the most of what I had. “By the way, is anyone else putting their points into Mind?” I didn’t believe there was, but there was no harm in asking.

“Nope.” Loftus shook his head. “I’m going half into Body and half into Soul. The majority of the others are going heavy into Soul. Everyone wants to cast magic after all.”

“I don’t see why,” said the brawny boy. His toned legs were placed on the table. “Body is the obvious choice for anyone who’s put any thought into theorycrafting. With Body, you increase your damage output and max HP. If you invest into Soul, you end up being a glass cannon. I can one-shot any mage. Let’s see them try to do the same against my 2200 HP.”

I had no idea what this man was saying. Was ‘glass cannon’ some new-age lingo?

A girl with a yellow witch hat said, “We’ll see how well your 2200 HP stacks up against my percent-health-damage magic missiles. And who needs HP when you can cast a barrier to protect yourself?”

“Why not have the best of both worlds and multiclass like me?” interrupted Loftus.

The two stared at Loftus for a moment and then laughed.

“Stats increase more with each successive point invested into them, so anyone who diversifies like you is an idiot,” said the witch girl.

“Hmm, should I put another point into Body which will give me 210 extra HP or put a point into Soul which will give me 5 MP? Such a hard choice,” the brawny boy said sarcastically while looking at Loftus.

The two who were at odds were now ganging up on Loftus. He brought it on himself by intervening. Seeing him being ridiculed brought a huge smile upon my face. I could stand to see much more of it.

While the three of them bickered, Blyth asked me, “Do you have any information to share with us? It’s not a problem if you don’t. I just thought that you might know a thing or two since you seem to be doing stuff that none of us are.”

I did have a bunch of knowledge, but I wasn’t sure how much of it was known by the others. Deciding on a random titbit, I said, “Do you know about study mages? They’re people who reject the System and learn magic through studying.”

Blyth’s mouth dropped a little and revealed a small gap between her two front teeth. “You can learn magic without the System?”

“Yeah. You didn’t know?”

“No. It’s my first time hearing about it.”

I was surprised by that, but I shouldn’t have been. It had only been around a week or so since we all came to this world. These people were all focused on levelling and figuring out the System. They hadn’t been doing much research into other facets of the world. “Apparently, it’s very difficult to cast magic through studying. I have a friend who tried to learn healing magic, but he was not able to heal much at all.”

Blyth absorbed this information and analysed it. “If it’s true what you say, can magic be taught to anyone?”

“I think so.”

“Then that means everyone has a different capacity to learn and understand magic, right? Just like how a person can be good at mathematics or have a strong memory, some people must be better suited to magic.”

“That tracks.” I had no idea where she was going with this.

“Meaning that capacity for magic is another form of intelligence.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said. Blyth gesticulated with her hands a lot when speaking. I was too distracted by her movements to follow along with her words.

“There’s verbal intelligence, logical intelligence, social intelligence, and so on. If magical intelligence is a thing, wouldn’t that mean that a high Mind would affect it?”

“Indeed. I concur.” My Mind was definitely increasing my intelligence if I was using words like ‘concur’.

“Don’t you get it, Yarm? If propensity for magic can be increased by increasing Mind, what should you do?” Blyth looked a little frustrated by me.

I tried with all my intellectual prowess to figure out what she was getting at, and it finally clicked. “Oh… I understand now. You want me to tell the Mages Society to invest into Mind.”

Blyth’s glasses fell off her face as she slammed her fist with incredible force into the table. The loud thud quietened everyone. “I’m telling you to try and learn magic, idiot!” she yelled.