[Level 100 Achieved]

  So here we were.

  Mafu did not feel like saying "finally," as he knew his growth was abnormal. Reaching level 100 was something most humans never achieved.

  In general, people had an average level around 70. It was due to many reasons, but one of them was the hidden stat "potential" that everyone possessed but few people knew of.

  Anyways, the choices for level 100 were:

  [Magic Mushroom Kingdom] Magic will be easier to unlock, for you and for the subjects in your kingdom. Magical effects are randomly added to crafts with a low occurrence rate. Mana is easier to accumulate for the subjects of the kingdom, and the maximum mana capacity for subjects is increased in proportion to the increased accumulation rate.

  [Warring Mushroom Kingdom] Subjects of your kingdom achieve better physical health easier. Strength is increased for your kingdom's subjects. Subjects of your kingdom attain martial skills easier. Weaponcrafters unlock skills and gain experience faster. Experience rate increased as long as a war has been declared.

  [Elemental Mushroom Kingdom] Subjects of your kingdom attain at least one element suitable for their class and personality. Craftsmen infuse their crafts with elemental affinities easier, with a low chance of adding an elemental effect to crafts. Elemental magic is easier to unlock for you and subjects of your kingdom.

  Right off the bat, Mafu thought the first choice to be the best. If magic were easier for his people to unlock, it would overcome some of the physical superiority that dwarves and orcs had.

  But then again, humans were moving in. Humans were adaptable and were not skewed towards either physical or magical power. Then maybe the humans would make magic their niche?

  If orcs and dwarves were to attain magic skills, they would always be worse than a race that did not have the drawbacks of the orcs and dwarves. So maybe the first choice was a trap.

  And Mafu did not like the sound of the second choice. Even though he knew that wars would be fought, he did not want to feel obligated to drive his people toward war. The benefits were good for both the orcs and the dwarves, though.

  But the third choice was the wild choice. Mafu did not know much about the elemental skills. He had a fire affinity, and Jod had dark and light. Other than that, he did not really know of any others with it.

  But Jod had skills based on the light and dark elements, and it was something he valued highly. Mafu also valued his fire affinity, as the forgefire mushroom and his fire skills had been useful from the start.

  If every single one of his people had an element, it would most likely help them quite a lot. The big drawback to this choice was that it had no passive increase to the growth for either experience or mana.

  But it was the right choice. Mafu chose the third choice after a few days of contemplation.

  [Elemental Mushroom Kingdom] chosen.

  The effect was immediate, as colorful lights appeared out of the ground, swirling upwards. The particles of colorful light then swirled around, and most of them flew into town.

  Mafu watched as each light entered one person, and the people started to emit a faint glow of color for a couple of seconds. The people reacted with fear at first, but after a second or two, they relaxed as they were informed that they had acquired an element by the system.

  Many of the orcs and dwarves dropped to their knees, putting the palms of their hands to the ground in prayer. The prayer was directed towards Mafu, of course.

  Even before they had decided to make a religion, some of the orcs and dwarves had regarded Mafu as a sort of deity. But now that Dyani had been going around for a week or two spreading a few of her first stories, the number of people worshipping Mafu had increased.

  "It seems you've chosen," Jod said as he was sitting on the stairs on his front porch.

  He had been waiting for more than a day for the choice, inspecting Mafu's thoughts and giving a little bit of input here and there. After all, they were connected too deeply for him to not have opinions.

  Mafu welcomed it. He had a history of being scatterbrained and not organized. Jod helped keep him focused.

  "Hopefully it was the correct choice. I expected the second gate to specialize me, but that was not truly what it did," Mafu answered.

  "No, I've noticed that as well. It seems your choices are not about specialization. I have no idea why, but this choice will help everyone immensely," Jod answered.

  He had been voting for the third choice since the first day. He considered the other two to favor either warriors or mages too much, respectively. He valued making everyone stronger rather than one specific niche.

  But it was true that Mafu's choices rarely specialized him. Oran had specialized himself fully to hunt great beasts. And though he, as a side effect, was very good at siege battles, he was most likely worse as an archer than a general archer archetype at level 70.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Otek, as well, had focused on his illusions and stealth skills, and as such did not gain some of the general warrior skills. He did not have the passive skill [Battlescars] that Parek had after all.

  That was a skill that drew power from wounds attained in battle to increase toughness. So therefore, Otek was less defensive than Parek, even though Otek was over level 100 and Parek was under.

  But Mafu thought it might be because he was a territory. So far he knew that the Hollow had a territory, and Doloran had one as well.

  But neither of them existed as the territory itself. Mafu was a thinking, living territory. Thus, his skills would focus on affecting exactly that, the territory.

  And how would a territory grow in strength? By empowering those belonging to it. With choosing [Mushroom Kingdom] at level 50, the system might consider Mafu as choosing the subjects of the kingdom rather than his mushrooms and mycelium powers as more important.

  Of course, Mafu still had the mycelium and mushrooms to use, but they had not grown stronger.

  Either way, Mafu was happy both with his choice today and with his choice of Mushroom Kingdom. He saw people not only as useful but also as a welcome diversity.

  If he had simply chosen his mushrooms over people, he'd be a lonely, thinking mushroom in a forest eventually.

  He would monitor the people of the kingdom over the next few days as they got used to their new elements.

  ---

  Tenia stopped her hammer from striking the hot iron on her anvil as multiple colorful lights flew into the smithy.

  She stood up as a brown light dove into her chest. At first she tried to scratch it out, but the feeling of the light warming the inside of her chest felt peaceful.

  The next moment she was informed that she now had acquired the earth affinity. With it came earth mana.

  She looked at Tillaka, her right-hand woman in the smithy. She was glowing faintly red, and then Tenia looked down at her hands and realized she had a brown light about her.

  The light slowly faded, and Till asked Tenia,

  "You got an element as well?" She was smiling in confusion.

  "Yup. I don't know why, though." Tenia responded in the same confusion.

  They stood there for a few moments and then sat down at their respective workstations.

  "It must be Mafu. He must have given us elements," Till reasoned.

  "Probably. But how?" Tenia wondered.

  "Who knows, we can't begin to understand him now, can we?" Till responded. She was one of the people who had regarded Mafu as somewhat of a deity since the beginning.

  "True. Let's take a break; I'll ask Jod about it." Tenia dropped her hammer on her workbench and stood up.

  "I'll go to the tailors to check if they got it too," Till responded. The tailoring workshops were across the road from them.

  As they both left the smithy, they saw many people standing around looking confused. It seemed that all of them had gotten an element.

  It did not take long for Tenia to get home to her house; she and Jod lived quite close to the smithy.

  He was sitting on the front porch stairs, clearly talking to Mafu. She waited a little bit but then decided to walk up to him and ask him about it.

  "So was it Mafu's doing?"

  "Yes. Which element did you get?" Jod asked, smiling.

  "Earth. Did you get a third one?" Tenia asked. She had always been a little jealous of Jod for having two elements.

  "Nope. I am just one up on you now!" Jod said, with an even bigger smile.

  She playfully punched his shoulder as she sat down next to him.

  "How do I use it, though? I got no skills to accompany the element." She asked.

  "What I learned when I was a kid was to infuse my attacks with my elemental mana. And then to imagine what the skill would look like. That was how I could swing my sword, and light mana would form an arc that flew towards the enemy." Jod responded with sword-swinging movements to show.

  "But I am a blacksmith; I can't use attacks like that." Tenia responded.

  Then she felt Mafu enter her mind; it was not the first time, but it unsettled her far more this time than before. It felt oppressive, and like she was disappearing into his mind.

  "Infuse your hammer with elemental mana, and strike the hot iron with it. Imagine your hammer striking the mana into the product you are working on."

  He left soon after giving his advice, and Jod put his arm around her shoulder.

  "He doesn't mean to be so scary." Jod knew exactly what Tenia's slightly horrified face meant. He had heard Mafu speak as well, of course.

  Jod was the most familiar with the weird and horrifying experience of enduring Mafu's thoughts. And as he looked at Mafu's thoughts now, he realized it had a more oppressive feeling to it. More than usual.

  "Your thoughts have increased in weight. You might need to lessen your impact some more," Jod said to Mafu.

  Mafu did not respond, but Jod felt him start to examine his voice immediately. Jod knew from hours of exchanging thoughts that Mafu did not want to scare people.

  He knew that he liked that he could use that "voice" against enemies, but for the people of his territory, Mafu wanted to lessen it so that he could have conversations.

  Tenia had gotten over it quite quickly but now looked deep in thought.

  "What are you thinking of?" Jod asked.

  "Mafu said to infuse the products by infusing my mana into my hammer. I don't know how."

  "Well, let us think of the earth element, though. What do you think it does?" Jod asked, also thinking of applications of it.

  "Creating dirt?" Tenia looked at Jod, and her eyes showed that she was almost in panic.

  Jod laughed a little bit.

  "Well, you could probably use it like that? But I figure it has more to it than that. My light mana feels sharp and ephemeral. It has no weight and no true form. It is slightly warm, but not in a comfortable way."

  Jod then thought about his dark mana.

  "The dark mana is like a blanket; it covers everything. It smothers and is cold. What do you feel when you think of your earth mana? You can try channeling it into your hand. Think of how it feels when you use a skill and mana is consumed. That feeling of something moving through you. Focus that into your hand."

  "Okay. I'll try, but don't you dare laugh if I fail!" Tenia said, and she was quite serious.

  "I won't," Jod said with an understanding smile.

  They sat there for a few minutes, and eventually Tenia succeeded.

  A brown glow seemed to surround her hand for a few seconds before disappearing.

  "So? How did it feel?" Jod asked impatiently.

  "Solid. Unyielding. It was as if the mana did not want to move. It allowed nothing to pass it. It stiffened my hand, and it felt as if it had a strength of its own, as if it could throw me if I was not careful." Tenia responded.

  "Then, if you use an infused product, you can try choosing which one of those characteristics you want to infuse. It might not work out; you might get one of the other effects you felt. But what you felt is what the earth affinity is. Some of that can probably be infused into your crafts."

  Jod thought for a bit more and then added:

  "Don't try to make it all at once. For example, try infusing an item with "Unyielding" only. If you try to do it all at once, you will fail spectacularly." As Tenia looked at him a little bit angry as he said those last words, he also added:

  "I speak from experience."

  That caused her to lose her anger at Jod for saying she would fail.

  "I need to get to the smithy and try it right now." Tenia stood up, kissed Jod goodbye, and ran off all in one movement.

  Jod chuckled as he got up to go find the dukes and talk about the elements.