Interlude Chapter: Generic Hero Part V
The realization that it was possible to potentially get a harem was something really exciting for Ethan, and it changed him immediately. not necessarily in how he treated Leona and Amy, but more in how he saw himself. The bullies in his past life had ingrained a feeling of being worthless in him, and for the longest time he thought himself to be the same bullied child he had been in his last life. Knowing that people acknowledged him and might even see him as someone he would have classified as a cool guy in his last life gave him a great boost to his confidence. After the realization, he became increadibly more aware of how people, and especially girls, looked at him. He noticed that he might even be classified as handsome with his black hair, smooth skin, tall build, and a face he could proudly classify as manly. At least for his age.
The week had progressed smoothly, and Ethan had spent most of his time with the girls and managed to level the spell skills he took to level 20 without even investing much effort. It had slowed down after they had overtaken his headstart skill, but they were still rising steadily. He, Amy, and Leona had somehow become an inseparable trio. The main reason for that was that Amy still hadn't given up on the whole future Quidditchstar business and had followed him for three days and mentioned it at any possible time. Within these days, it became a habit for them to do everything together, and despite finding the continuous pestering a bit annoying, he liked having them around. The fact that he thought that both of them would turn into beautiful women within the next few years had little to do with it, but it didn't hurt either. The girls were even willing to help him start his business as a memory potion merchant. After asking around a bit, they realized that the fifth to seventh year, despite some of the students being able to brew the potion themselves, would be the ones that would have the most interest as they needed to start studying for their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. The other years, especially the first years, had other things to think about than studying. The only exception might be a few eager Ravenclaws.
After testing the potion, Amy and Leona were so convinced that everybody would want to get their hands on it that they were willing to talk to a few older students, but despite their enthusiasm, most students were not willing to try a potion brewed by a first-year who had only been in Hogwarts for a few days.
So despite having prepared a stock of potions to sell, after he had finished the ones to send to his grandma and even ordered new ingredients after getting the necessary connections by asking Professor McGonagall, he hadn't sold a single one yet. Well, except for two that went to Amy and Leona. He wasn't sure if they only bought the potion because they wanted to support him or if they genuinely thought it was worth it. Either way, he was thankful for their support.
Things changed in the next week. With his incredible studying speed, he practically absorbed the knowledge of the first-year curriculum and got points in all subjects. Even Professor Bins had given him five points, which caused an uproar in the school as this was the first time that anyone had ever heard about Bins giving out points. Even the professors were shocked, but Ethan thought it wasn't really that big of a deal. In his opinion, the only reason no one ever received points from Professor Bins was that they didn't even try to actively participate in his lessons. The reason for that was equally obvious, as the lessons were increadibly boring, but Ethan didn't want to be another student who just sat in that class trying to fight against falling asleep. He used the lesson to level up his skills instead. And as the lessons had no room for any practical magic, the only method was to read about history and discuss the topic with the teacher and eventually the other students. His teaching bonus leveled faster the more people learned from him. It wasn't really additive, but teaching five people was twice as effective as teaching or learning with only one person, and in the class were over forty people, which increased the leveling speed by at least 3,5 times. It also had the side effect of making the lessons more interesting for other people, which just meant that it was easier for them to not fall asleep.
After two weeks and much effort in all lessons, he had earned over thirty points from various lessons, and his classmates began to joke that he could win the house cup on his own if he kept that pace. The fame that came with it made it easier to sell his potions as well, and he finally had his first real customer. It was a first-year Ravenclaw girl who tried to awkwardly start a talk with him in the library while he was studying with Amy and Leona.
The girl apparently thought that his success was only because he was drinking these potions like water, and because she had rich parents, she thought it was at least worth a try to use the potions to help her get the grades her parents expected her to get. Ethan had kept the fact that he hadn't drunk a single potion himself yet to himself, as he didn't want to ruin his first trade, but when she told him that, he realized that the girl's idea definitely had some merit.
If the potion helped him study and maybe even improve his memory skills, then it was definitely worth it. He had discarded the idea at first because he thought that it would be a waste to use a potion until he got a steady income, but if he could use himself as an example of the effectiveness of the potion, then it would increase his sales as well. It was a "two birds with one stone" scenario, so he took the opportunity when only a few people were around to drink a potion. He even put a label on the flask to make sure everyone saw it.
The experience was far stronger than he expected. He began to remember things he didn't even knew he had forgotten. Every meal he had and what it tasted like was like a fresh memory from just minutes ago; every talk with his grandmother, every word said, became present again, and he even began to remember how his birth parents of this world placed him on the doorstep of Grandma Brown. The bad thing about a memory that good was that one not only remembered the good things but also the irrelevant and bad ones. He also remembered every embarrassing moment of his past life, every type of bullying he had to get through, and every wound he ever received. He wasn't sure if it was his memory skill or the potion's effect, but the memories felt so real that he imagined for a moment that he was feeling all that pain again.
At first, he promised himself not to drink the potion again, but after a few hours, the pain lessened. Not because he didn't remember it but more because he became able to differentiate between reality and his memories again. Another fact also played into his desire to drink the potion again. He remembered watching the Harry Potter movies with his mother and even a few things she said that were different about the books. He was a bit sad that he hadn't shared his mother's enthusiasm for the franchise, especially after his memories showed him that the time his mother talked about it, it was the only time she showed real, burden-free happiness. Despite all the negative feelings about the potion, another side effect of the potion was that his sensory memory skills were leveling like crazy. With just one potion, he had increased the skill by two levels, which would have taken him weeks otherwise.
In the next few weeks, after showing that he was drinking the potions, he got a few regular customers, and after the first fifth-year student bought a potion, the requests he got doubled the next day and doubled again within the next week. At that point, he noticed a problem. The profit he made barely managed to cover his expenses, which included the potions he sent to his grandma. Any real expansion of his business wasn't really possible unless the other houses started to buy from him too. But even then, he wanted more than just being brake even. His experiences in the medicine branch had shown him that in the end, it was money that decided everything, so if he wanted to accomplish something, he needed money more than anything.
As he couldn't increase the prices until his potion-making skill made his potions matchless, he thought about decreasing his costs. The first thing that came to his mind was growing his own ingredients, as he couldn't really cut down on any other costs as he didn't really have any workers.
He knew that students could grow plants in the greenhouses, but unless he had a greenhouse of his own, the spots he could use wouldn't cover his needs.
In the end, the solution he came up with was the Room of Requirements. He was quite proud of himself for realizing that the room could be used for more than just hiding something or studying spells. It was one of his mothers' comments about the room that gave him the idea, as she told him that Harry and his friends were wasting the potential of the room. Till now, he had also only used the room for spell training. As he trusted Amy and Leona, he had also shown them the room, and they quite often trained with him there, but he had asked them to keep it a secret from anyone else. He wasn't particularly fond of other people competing with him to use the room, and if everyone knew about it, it was bound to always be in use. Amy and Leona were also quite surprised that he even showed them the room, and they were quite thankful for his trust. It connected them even more than they had already. And the room somehow became the place they visited the most after the library.
After doing some calculations, he noticed that even with the quite large greenhouse the room could create, it would still take weeks and months to get his first batch of ingredients, which caused him to think about his last skillslot and the skill he got offered in the second week of herbology class, but what made the decision somewhat difficult were the options he got offered.
Herbology: Tier: 1
Skill Level: Unavailable
Level up requirements: Plant or harvest 10 plants.
Description: Increase the speed at which plants you have planted grow.
Base level + Skill Level * 1%
Herbology Increase the speed at which plants you have planted grow
General 1% per level
In a greenhouse 2% per level
Magical plants 2% per level
Mundane plants 2% per level
Magical plants in a greenhouse 3% per level
Mundane plants in a greenhouse 3% per level
Magical plants in the room of requirements 4% per level
Mundane plants in the room of requirements 4% per level
If it had been just this, then it would have been easy for him, but at the same time, he got offered three more skills that were equally enticing and had the same variations.
Planting
Tier 1
Skill Level: unavailable
Level up requirements:
Plant 10 plants.
Description:
Increase the speed at which you can plant plants.
Baselevel + Skill Level * 2%
Harvesting
Tier 1
Skill Level: unavailable
Level up requirements: Harvest 10 plants.
Description:Increase the speed at which you can harvest.
Baselevel + Skill Level * 2%
Fertilizing
Tier 1
Skill Level: unavailable
Level up requirements: fertilize 10 plants.
Description: Increase the speed at which you can fertilize.
Baselevel + Skill Level * 2%
Planting/Harvesting/Fertilizing
Increase the speed at which you can plant/harvest/fertilize.
General 2% per level
In a greenhouse 3% per level
Magical plants 3% per level
Mundane plants 3%per level
Magical plants in a greenhouse 4% per level
Mundane plants in a greenhouse 4% per level
Magical plants in the room of requirements 5% per level
Mundane plants in the room of requirements 5% per level
The more specialized skills naturally gave a greater boost per level, but the herbology skill was easier to level as it would increase in level by harvesting and planting. The choice made him once again lament the limited number of skill slots he had and how slowly his skills leveled at the higher levels. The three basic spells would have been perfect to fuse together and create an overpowered farming skill. Maybe even with the normal herbology skill included. But with the way things were, taking the herbology skill for magical plants in a greenhouse was the most reasonable choice. He was sure that the greenhouse in the room of requirements would count as one, and while the skill that increased the boon in the room was greater, the skill would become useless after leaving Hogwarts.
But the skill options had shown him that he would have another problem. The planting and harvesting will take time. While it wouldn't be a problem to plant and harvest a few plants, the amounts he needed would be in the hundreds or even thousands after expanding his business. Especially the harvesting could take a few minutes per plant, so he would spend more than a day just harvesting these amounts of plants. The problem was that he had no open tier one skillslot, and no skill was even close to being high enough to tier up.
Looking at his status screen, he got an idea that might relieve some of this burden.
Name: Ethan Brown Age: 11
Stats:
Health: 100% Mana: 100% Stamina: 100%
Tier 1 Skills:
Thinking: Level 83
Sleeping (in bed): Level 46
Headstart: Level 19
Experimenting: Level 68
Spellcasting (With a wand and an incantation): Level 21
Brewing (Memory Potion): Level 5
Potion Making: Level 4
Spellcasting (Protego): Level 21
Spellcasting (Petrificus Totalus): Level 21
Herbology: Level 1
Tier 1 Skillpoints: 292
Tier 1 Skills (Stagnant):
Breathing: Level 122
Walking: Level 121
Reading: Level 200
Talking: Level 138
Calculating: Level 104
Studying: Level 179
Writing: Level 106
Memorize: Level 100
Teaching: Level 100
Punching: Level 80
Tier 2 Skills:
Collaborative Learning: Level 42
Pleasing Voice: Level 100
Jab: Level 97
Sensory Memory: Level 43
Marathon: Level 72
Precise Calculation: Level 60
Elaborate Writing: Level 31
Enduring Respiration: Level 87
Contextual Perception: Level 90
Empty: -
Tier 2 Skillpoints: 622
Tier 3 Skills (Locked):
Empty: -
...
Tier 3 Skillpoints: 0
Tier 4 Skills (Locked):
Requirements to Unlock: Collect 50 Tier 3 Skillpoints
He had 292 Tier 1 Skillpoints and he could use them to level up and tier up a single skill. That would naturally give him the new problem of needing to increase the other skills to a higher level to tier them up, but he decided that if he were to level up the headstart skill and tier him up, he would be able to level up his other skills faster and could earn the points back faster.
His precise calculations and calculating skills were running at high speed as he tried to calculate the best rate. In the end, he realized that unless he wanted to spend decades on a skill, he would never increase a skill beyond level 200. Naturally, the headstart skill might change that depending on what he did on higher tiers, so it was a bit of a gamble.
In the end, he decided to level the skill to 201. The cost of 182 Tier 1 Skillpoints was heartbreaking, but he knew that it would pay off in the long run. He then used another 100 points to tier up the headstart skill.
Headstart II
Tier 2
Skill Level: 1
Level up requirements: Level Up 0/10 skills
Description: Increases Level up speed of all skills lower than this skill by 50%
The skill didn't change much from the Tier 1 version. The requirements had increased from 4 to 10, and the leveling speed went up from 25% to 50%. The thing he needed to test was if the skill would change the Tier 1 version bonus to the Tier 2 version or if the bonus was additive or even multiplicative. Regardless, he simply continued with his spending spree and invested a whole 200 Tier 2 Skillpoints into the skill. And then another 100 Tier 2 Skillpoints to Tier the skill up again, as he would need the Tier 2 Skillslot soon for his brewing or memory potion skill.
Headstart III
Tier 3
Skill Level: 1
Level up requirements:
Level Up 0/25 skills
Description:
Increases Level up speed of all skills lower than this skill by 100%
New Skills start at 1+ 1/10 of this skills level. The maximum level of this effect is 40.
He never would have guessed that the headstart skill would be his first Tier 3 skill. To his surprise, the skill was more than just a straight upgrade from the previous version. The additional effect of the skill was quite interesting. At first, he thought the limitation of the skill was a bit weird. Who in their right mind would level that skill to level 400+? But then he realized that if it weren't for that cap, it would definitely be worth it to invest every single skillpoint in that skill to get that skill to level 1000+. After reaching that point, you could simply take on new skills and immediately tier them up infinitely. While a boost to level 40 would be nice, it would still mean that you would need to spend time to increase the level to 100+ and couldn't glitch yourself an infinite amount of skill points. Still, with this skill being the only tier 3 skill he had and a requirement of 25 level ups just for the first level, he thought the skill would stay at this level for some time and only become useful after he boosted the skill with other Tier 3 skills.
With a smile, he realized that the Tier 3 headstart bonus would count for every Tier 3 skill he had and would count till the end as he could immediately invest the points as he gets them.
So while the increase in requirements for Tier 3 skills seemed high, it should be manageable.
Now, after spending so many points, he once again had one Tier 1 and one Tier 2 skillslot open. He then decided he would take the harvesting skill, as harvesting was the thing that would consume the most time in his herbology project.
He once again checked his status page and was satisfied, and for once he was able to relax as he didn't have in mind that he wanted to fill up his open tier 1 skillslot.
Player Information:
Name: Ethan Brown Age: 11
Stats:
Health: 100% Mana: 100% Stamina: 100%
Tier 1 Skills:
Thinking: Level 83
Sleeping (in bed): Level 46
Harvesting (Magical plants in a greenhouse): Level 1
Experimenting: Level 68
Spellcasting (With a wand and an incantation): Level 21
Brewing (Memory Potion): Level 4
Potion Making: Level 3
Spellcasting (Protego): Level 21
Spellcasting (Petrificus Totalus): Level 21
Herbology (Magical plants in a greenhouse): Level 1
Tier 1 Skillpoints: 8
Tier 1 Skills (Stagnant):
Breathing: Level 122
Walking: Level 121
Reading: Level 200
Talking: Level 138
Calculating: Level 104
Studying: Level 179
Writing: Level 106
Memorize: Level 100
Teaching: Level 100
Punching: Level 80
Headstart: Level 201
Tier 2 Skills:
Collaborative Learning: Level 42
Pleasing Voice: Level 100
Jab: Level 97
Sensory Memory: Level 43
Marathon: Level 72
Precise Calculation: Level 60
Elaborate Writing: Level 31
Enduring Respiration: Level 87
Contextual Perception: Level 90
Empty: -
Tier 2 Skillpoints: 323
Tier 2 Skills (Stagnant):
Headstart II: Level 201
Tier 3 Skills (Locked):
Headstart III: Level 1
...
Tier 3 Skillpoints: 1
Tier 4 Skills (Locked):
Requirements to Unlock: Collect 50 Tier 3 Skillpoints
Looking at his new harvesting skill, he immediately noticed that it didn't start at 0% progress but already had 10% progress for the next level. It was a nice side effect, even though 10% of level 1 just meant he needed to harvest one plant less.
The thing that he wanted to test as soon as possible was if the headstart II would override the headstart skill, so he looked at the progress of his marathon skill and noticed that after 100 steps, his progress had increased by 175 steps, which meant it worked additively, which was better than an override but worse than multiplicative boosts.
Equipped with his new skills and a 75% enhancement to his leveling speed, he did his best to grind his new skills and increase his income. Luckily, the herbology skill was leveled by planting and harvesting, so he didn't need to wait for the first harvest for the skill to give him results. Still, besides the ingredients he needed for the memory potion, he ordered a few seeds for a few fast-growing magical plants like fluxweed or knotgrass that could be used in the polyjuice potion. After first planting, it grew like any other weed and could be harvested every two weeks. That was before his skills took effect.