Aki would have liked to say that he was smart, but that’s not true. Perhaps that’s why he was having nightmares. Doing it more than forty times was simply not healthy even if he healed every biological problem from the did.
He was neither delusional, dense or stupid however, so there was no surprise in his face when he passed through the patchwork nightmare if only to clean his head a bit only to wake up to two dead bodies inside his inn room. The skill to keep him asleep had not actually succeded as much as he let it affect him. With over a hundred willpower it wouldn’t have mattered if the other guy had spent every second after leaving the tutorial killing higher level beasts, it’d simply not have worked.
“Lala, get me a list of every illusionist, witch doctor and dreamer kind of class in the village. And don’t pretend you don’t have it recorded somewhere, I know that the upgrades aren’t only for the physical side of the village.” He told the spirit manager through a voicemail. The message function of the system was just that useful, and it’d been unlocked with the communicator center, available to every citizen and temporary citizen.
He took his time looking through the stuff the assassins had, but their hoods and armor was pretty useless with an icicle sized hole at the chest, his grimoire on automatic mode was that good, neither their boots or pants did anything, and their only accessory was a ring that increased the effectiveness of their stealth by a set amount up to a certain point.
It didn’t even take until he hit the front door to get the list he asked.
There much he could do just now though. A new beast horde was coming, around three fifty strong. He needed a fucking domain already, so why not take the chance to test for one?
What could he do about it? Sing? That wasn't feasible with his organ distribution. Burn everything around him? He'd be fucked against anything with immunity, but it was a start. If he made it an electrical domain then he'd even be able to add some good stat buffs and some small paralysis, though he should probably start with the damage part and continue developing the spell when he had the time. It should be… well shit, of course it'd be a horde of bugs. Nope. Niet. No. Vá fuder a tua mãe. He wasn't throwing himself in there.
Today he was learning to explode things from afar better. Even better, he should start making bubbles or mirrors that can disperse super heated light so he can just burn the whole thing with lasers.
On a more serious note, he wasn't the only one extremely reluctant to jump down the walls and hold it from the charging insects. Some people did do it, but considering the increasing discrepancy between classers participating in the defence and the monsters, they were in real danger of dying.
Some people simply had no sense of responsibility, though there were also a few crafters picking up their classes, though they weren't of much use yet as there was simply too high a demand for too few people to cover.
He didn't much mind it, but he understood there was a need for creating a proper force. He simply couldn't be everywhere, nor did he want to try. Even now he was intellectually aware that criminal shit was happening in his village, yet was unable to do much about it. He simply didn't have the power and social smarts to deal with it immediately.
He couldn’t just automatically shove the soul of the dead inside dirt and just make golems or something, and the fast response alarm system was locked for another…
“Weird, those three didn’t immediately die to my simple spells.” Aki commented as he looked at two giant beetles and one giant mantis each cutting down a defendant. Immediately, he killed each one with a prison of earth spikes. He wasn’t very good at healing at a distance despite the additional control either though, one of the defendants died due to being too far away for him to fix the fact he had been bisected in half instead of impaled on the stomach or torn open like the other two. “Well, shit. That guys’ dead.” He shrugged, drinking a ‘potion’ and shooting a monster about to eat someone’s face.
A good part of the front had noticed their first casualty. Honestly, he had expected more of a reaction, but then again, a shit ton of the global population had probably died during the tutorial despite the magical equipment empowering them.
Of the area he lived in, there had been around two hundred thousand people plus something because of other nearby cities, yet he didn't expect to get even ten thousand survivors despite his plans indicating otherwise. The abysmal difference between tutorial takers was rather jarring, and his village barely had more than two thousand people despite taking every human in the area. Even if people wanted to take their time though, the tutorial apparently had a hard cap of a week. Whoever was still inside would die or be sent somewhere else, no one really knew, not even the people temporarily working as guides inside.
Then again, you could probably milk the place for benefits if you got strong enough and stayed to the last minute. He really fucking wished he got lucky and his area got another person who’d got some cheats, but what was the chance of that? He’d taken most of the general foundation improving paths.
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Except perhaps beating the tutorial in impossible mode and fighter V, which was public stuff. Or figuring ‘Aether’, but it was far more likely that said person would be removed from the playground and put on more dangerous environments instead. He couldn’t even work with space and time yet though, barely any electromagnetism even.
The system, on the other hand, could probably wield even the dark energies of the universe, probably even having better names for the theorized part of the universe without light.
And the horde was done for. He was free to get busy creating armor after armor of the craziest alloys and elements he could stabilize into a human-ish shape….. That was going to suck a lot more than it sounded like it would.
…….
[Folded steel armour of place holding (Orange) Lv 30- A crude armor made from folded steel, only made to be worn for a few hours or before something better came along. Despite the ridiculous weight for the protection it actually offers, this armour has great versatility when worn by a mage of enough physical and mental strength.
+9 Endurance. +5 Vitality. -4 Strenght. -1 Agility.
Force of the mind I: +2 to Control and Wisdom. This armour is ten percent easier to manipulate by whoever imprints on it.
Binding metal: This armour is easy to imprint as a controlled material for both storm and metal mages.
Semi-perfect bind: +2 Vitality and Endurance. This armour is ten percent harder to manipulate by any who hasn't imprinted on it.]
It'd taken him around fifteen minutes to make it Aki shaped and five more to make all joints and detachables. He had rings and other future magical ware to use after all, so of course he made a space to hold rings.
His normal silver one hadn't been in the best of shapes since he'd gotten out of the dungeon, but he'd fixed it. Mixing metal was surprisingly easy when you could create directed force and heat with your mind.
Some precision tools and measurements for used units of energy would probably bring him to a much more efficient method of creation, but crafting was honestly not even as interesting as creating new spells, nor did he have the drive to tackle it's challenge.
He did have the whole periodic table available for purchase now, though their prices depended on the availability of the resource locally, and even the base price was crazy high, so now he had to figure out how to get all his teenage fascination for extreme reactions out of his brain and into reality so he could make a good enough armour.
Despite developing a new skill for it with his efforts, Aki was having plenty of trouble with replicating Kevlar material, nevermind strengthening it, though he did have some success in alloying some folded steel with niobium.
That ridiculous platinum-gold alloy was rather far away from him still.
Still, it'd be fine even if he couldn't make underwear armour, he could always use something looted from the invaders.
[Congratulations! You have completed the Arcane II path (500/500)! +20 mental stat points. Your skill Arcane affinity (Y) Lv 125 has evolved into the skill Improved arcane affinity (G) Lv 125.]
Even as he put his points into increasing his Wisdom score, Aki couldn't help but feel like he needed someone to teach him natural sciences all over again. It was ridiculous how hard he had to force himself to remember even simple stuff, and surely it couldn't be that bad now that he had a willpower score of over a hundred.
Probably.
"How in fuck are you doing that?" Questioned one of the several people mutedly watching as he span several orbs of metal and separated the substances to the best of his abilities.
"How much technical jargon do you want in that answer?" He smirked. The process was mostly boring, and every failure needed him to decompose the final result, so it was only a matter of time rather than concentration. He had two skills to help him teach humans anyway, why not make it so he got a teaching skill to go with them?
To his surprise, his students seemed to learn rather quickly, though he had to stop several people from hitting their own heads with lumps of metal. His skills all grew a bit, but not nearly at what he considered a more normal speed.
Considering how little interest he has on those skills though, he half suspected the existence of an XP multiplier in one of his mental skills or in some kind of bullshit 'talent' multiplier.
'Actually, let's try… nope, no hidden skill, but I can manipulate my display somewhat.' He determined, having moved most of his skills related to one craft or the other into a new column with only a small difficulty.
And so, he spent the whole day crafting, grinding skill levels and upgrading his place holder armour whenever he made a small breakthrough.
Apparently that was one of the advantages of his creation method. Even if he kept reforging the same set of materials, there would be no drawbacks to the final item unless he royally screwed up.
While it may not sound like much, saving a shit ton of money was a great benefit to any crafter, especially if they were dealing with rare materials.
At the end of it, he'd been called to watch a new group of farvit joining their community, but Melala took care of it without even getting them into fight, so there was one more possible worry while he'd managed to give another responsibility away.
Up until the beast horde, the day was perfectly good as any in the apocalypse could be.