CHAPTER THREE
----------------------------------------
As it so happens, the resources freely given to Super Easy Mode participants are surprisingly, almost infuriatingly, informative.
All it took was a mental request for “help,” and all manner of questions could be answered in a flash. An intuitive interface with a clearcut layout, a plethora of convenient drop down menus, and interactive search functionality appearing right before one’s eyes. An ease of access to once coveted information which he couldn’t help but feel more than a little envious of.
It was entirely contrary to the sink or swim mentality he’d been forced to adopt during his own tutorial. There, he and fifteen others had effectively been dropped into the middle of a beast infested forest with no food, no water, and no idea what to do next. Their only goalpost coming in the form of the floor quest, the occasional side quest, and the four year timer everyone received at the beginning of their tutorial.
Meanwhile, these people got spoon fed information like it was about to go bad.
It’d be more apt to call it Baby Mode at this point. Seriously. How spoiled for choice can you possibly be? So unbelievably unfair.
He knew a choice few A rankers that would’ve slain entire kingdoms, burned its buildings to the ground, and salted the earth for good measure, just to get their hands on this level of system interactability.
And while sure, the information on offer was all rather shallow, extemporizing to little of realimport, it was still chock full of little tidbits and helpful hints he would’ve killed for in the past.
Or is it the future?
It even had a full ninety part crash course on every thing you needed to know to be an “informed member of the multiverse.” Which, while it might have sounded intimidating at first, considering most videos didn’t even hit the two minute mark, it was entirely doable to knock them all out in a day.
As for why you would want to do such a thing—apart from out of a genuine love for the simple pursuit of knowledge—that was where the third most surprising development of the day came into play.
Besides the wealth of informative content and the nightmare entity acting as dubious guide and caretaker, there was one more change to the status quo which shocked him down to his very core.
The addition of participation points.
A currency exclusive to the Baby Tutorial, seeing as he’d never heard of it’s like before now. These points could be earned in a manner of ways—though the most lucrative of them all naturally involved the slaying of monsters—and could be used to purchase a variety of things. Things they’d likely need in the days to come.
•—|-Participation Point Catalogue-|—•
+|—SURVIVAL—|+
Standard Toiletries: 1 point
Standard Water Ration: 3 points
Standard Milk Ration: 3 points
Standard Meal Kit: 5 points
Standard Dessert: 10 points
Basic Camping Gear: 15 points
Basic Campfire Kit: 20 points
Basic Clothing Kit: 25 points
Basic Backpack: 40 points
Basic First Aid Kit: 100 points
+|—COMBAT—|+
Whetstone Token: 10 points
Simple Club: 25 points
Dull Dagger: 50 points
Worn Axe: 75 points
Chipped Sword: 100 points
Broken Spear: 200 points
Ragged Leather Vambraces: 250 points
Worn Leather Greaves: 300 points
Punctured Leather Cuirass: 450 points
Weapon Repair Kit: 500 points
Armor Repair Kit: 500 points
Chainmail Hauberk: 1000 points
+|—LUXURIES—|+
1 Week Safe-Zone Renewal Token: 500 points
Premium Culinary Vending Machine: 1000 points
Premium Dessert Vending Machine: 1500 points
Premium Armament Vending Machine: 10,000 points
Permanent Safe-Zone Token: 15,000 points
Poor Safe-Zone Facility: 25,000 points
Modest Safe-Zone Facility: 50,000 points
Rich Safe-Zone Facility: 100,000 points
Opulent Safe-Zone Facility: 500,000 points
Send Aid to a Loved One: 1,000,000 points
For whatever reason, everyone seemed to take that last item particularly hard.
The first to come back to her senses was their de facto leader, Robin he thought her name was. Just as it was she who quickly deduced that, by going through the complete ninety part crash course, they could each earn a cool one hundred participation points. Which was, effectively, where he found himself now. Cradled in the arms of the business woman as she and the other preteens and above, scoured through video after video.
He left them to it. He had far more pressing issues to tend to.
More specifically:
What on earth is going on here?! This is not at all what I’d been promised! Tell me! How am I meant to last five minutes inside Devil’s Arcadia, let alone save the entire human race, when the universe itself seems swell bent on sabotaging me?! How in the ever loving fork am I supposed to cope-?!
He smartly cut himself off there.
Not exactly what I’d call satisfying, but I suppose it’ll have to do.
He’d promised himself five seconds to vent his frustration, as was only natural given the circumstances, but no more. It was all he’d felt he could afford. The future wasn’t going to wait on him, and complaining would gain him little. It was time to check and verify. What did he know? What was he missing? And how had he erred in his assumptions?
First and foremost, he now knew where all the young children and pregnant women disappeared to at the very beginning of the apocalypse. In those early days, back when the first major gathering of humanity was joined, it had been a rather contentious topic.
It was kind of hard to miss. Where were all the kids?
Of course, there were those that simply assumed the inhospitable conditions of the unforgiving tutorial had, naturally… trimmed the herd, shall we say. After all, a bog filled with swamp monsters was the kind of thing you tell a kid to scare them before bedtime, not the kind of place you plop a lad of only two years old into without so much as a pocketknife, and somehow expect them to survive.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
It was a bleak thought that ended many a would be high ranker’s climb prematurely. The only thing keeping them going till that point swiftly snatched out from under them. Oh, if only they’d known. So much would’ve been different.
So many genius talents preserved…
Ah well. The past is in the past. Future? Whatever. As it was, it really wasn’t worth thinking about. After all, it’s not as if he could send word in the pitiful state he was in.
And finally we come to the crux of the issue.
He was a child. Worse than that, he was an infant. Helpless. Almost entirely dependent on strangers he did not know, nor trust.
Not great.
Although… now that he really thought about it, this might not be as bad as it looks.
Clearly this was not his body. No, the real him, the twenty seven year old sales rep for a failing paper company, was off somewhere in his own tutorial. Likely shirting bricks and jumping at shadows.
If I’m even still there in this timeline whatsoever. I came back with my soul fully intact after all. If he’s over there, and I’m over here, how exactly does that add up mathematically? I can’t have two souls, can I?
His point being that, since this wasn’t his body, there was a chance, if a very slim one, he might be blessed with more talent than he’d had in his first timeline.
And while true, most of this was wishful thinking at best, the possibility of easy power at no cost to himself just wouldn’t seem to exit his mind. If he could’ve been born a Duke instead of a lowly Lord. Been blessed with a B or even A ranked Master Formation, instead of the shirty D rank he’d been saddled with…?
Ahh, the possibilities….
A better than average foundation, coupled with the knowledge he possessed…? He could easily see himself rising to unexplored heights in record time.
Trying to temper his expectations, Richard took a deep, steadying breath, and, like he was tearing off a bandaid, opened up his status screen for the first time in this timeline.
-|—Status—|-
Name: Richard Penn
Level: 0
Age: 1 month old
Class: None
Body Grade: G
Soul Grade: G
Core Grade: Blank (1st Level Purity)
Master Formation: G
Peerage: Lowly Serf
Noble Regalia: None
Strength: 1
Endurance: 1
Resilience: 30
Regeneration: 1
Control: 1
Mana Capacity: 1
Free Points: 0
Abilities: (0/2)
Class Skills: (0/3)
Equipment: (0/7)
Title: |Liora’s Embrace| [Legendary]
Wow. I… genuinely do not believe that could’ve gone any worse.
It was almost impressive, in a cripplingly depressing sort of way.
Flat ones in literally everything. Well, everything but resilience that is. Yippee…!
Because strong mental fortitude was surely going to win him the day here. After all, who needed overwhelming power when a “can-do attitude” would serve just as well if not better!
Said no one ever. Seriously, with talent like this…? Well, needless to say, it pretty much throws all of my carefully laid plans into the toilet.
Devil’s Arcadia.
With these stats? Not likely. In fact I might just have to abandon the idea entirely. Selection rounds begin in a month, and I need to be at least lvl 50 to even qualify.
Even if I completely ignored things like equipment gathering, class selection, or prestige, and instead focused all my time on leveling, 24/7, it’s still unlikely I’d make it in time. Maybe if I had a year, but in a month? With a Master Formation below F Grade?
There was just no way.
And considering he’d initially planned on his gains from Devil’s Arcadia, snowballing into political capital during The Peerage Games, accolades from which he’d intended to pivot into high tiered patronage during The Gods’ Tournament and beyond, fumbling on step one left him somewhat at a loss.
Even when compared to the lower than average talent he’d boasted of in his previous timeline, this right here was remarkably poor. Just about as low as you could get, really. An absolute base level status with no frills or notable outliers whatsoever. Well, with one, very key exception.
His title.
|Liora’s Embrace| [Legendary]
As all the worlds children are as if birthed from her own womb, so too is her embrace freely given to those little ones in need.
(Passive Effect: A constant aura of cleanliness envelops the user, preventing all manner of disease, muddy footprints, and soiled diapers.)
(Active Effect: When the user perceives themselves to be in mortal danger, envelop them in an impenetrable bubble that resists all forms of damage.
(Lasts for 3 hours. Cooldown: 24 hours))
Unfortunately, it was mostly useless for now. Granted, the passive effect was rather convenient. He hadn’t exactly been looking forward to, ahem, let’s just say, certain complications that arose when you couldn’t properly wipe yourself. Definitely a bullet dodged there.
Good looking out Liora, oh glorious goddess of fertility. I’ll be sure to deliver a birth in your name one of these days.
…or maybe not. He already had more than enough problems on his hands as is.
Legendary or no, I can’t help but feel like it’s cold comfort though. Without a means to properly capitalize- hmm… no. No I can’t think like that. It’s an inconvenience for sure, but there has to be a way to turn things around. There just has to be.
What he really needed was to look toward actionable steps. Items he could check off the ever expanding list.
One month. I still have one month to succeed.
To overcome the challenges of his unique circumstances, despite a less than ideal start. Already he had a few ideas, though they were entirely dependent on whether a very crucial ability had followed him back through time as he’d intended. Again, relying on factors almost entirely out of his control.
Oh joy. Really, because what could possibly go wrong? I’ve already had my hopes dashed twice now, so surely a third time must be out of the question!
Yeah. He would just pretend that was how probability worked.
Unable to stand the suspense a moment longer, Richard closed his eyes, and attempted to enter his soul palace. When next he opened them, he was once more standing upon one of many opulent, sunlit balconies that overlooked his tiered library, exactly as he’d left it.
Richard reached up and drew a hand across his face, trying very hard to wipe away the giddy smile plastered there. He was ultimately unsuccessful.
Body trembling ever so slightly, he rested shaking hands on the mahogany railing, and looked out over the vast library in his soul.
And if this is here, that must mean my other class skills transferred over too, right? Master of Myriad Languages and Truth Seeker’s Sixth Sense. Such an unbelievable stroke of good luck, finding an item capable of grafting parts of my class directly onto my soul. Hurt like nothing I’ve ever experienced, but, looking at all this, I can’t seem to complain.
Shelves were arranged like the spokes on a wheel, extending back and back into faded obscurity. Meanwhile a yawning abyss stretched on for seeming infinity in place of axle. Each balcony like a jutting ring repeating above and below.
Here.
Right here, in this mental palace he’d managed to graft onto his soul, was the accumulation of all the knowledge he’d dutifully compiled in the full decade he’d spent post-ascension.
Significant events, scientific discoveries, hidden quests and objectives. Technique scrolls, cultivation manuals, ability formations, and so, so much more. Basically everything he could cram into his head following his discovery of Opon’s Coin all the way back in D Grade.
Xeroxed directly from his superhuman brain at the peak of its informational bandwidth.
Well, technically, it’d been more of a “brutal draconian lobotomy,” than a, uh, “quick & easy copy paste job.” Needless to say, the transfer had been anything but gentle, and his memory banks had not at all been spared. Resulting in acute memory loss across the board. In effect, this meant that without his soul palace, all of thar priceless knowledge he’d accumulated over the years was hazy at best. He knew the gist, the sticking points, but that was about it.
With it, however, not only did ensure he’d never forget a thing, but, cherry on top, it was even in alphabetical order.
Everything sorted and catalogued, with not a hair out of place. Copied with a level of perfect precision only someone with a photographic memory could match. Bookshelves on top of bookshelves on top of bookshelves on top of- hold on a moment. What was that?
Richard lifted off from the balcony, physics, much like his appearance in this place, entirely subject to his will. Rising to hover inches from where his balcony bled into the one above, he was disturbed to find an impenetrable wall of fog blocking his way. Annoyed, he attempted to shove away the fog, only to feel a sharp twinge in his soul in response. He staggered, not having expected the sudden stab of agony.
So it was like that then, huh?
Taking a second to feel out the internal structure of his soul palace, he could immediately tell that the rest of the balconies hadn’t gone anywhere. Instead, it was almost as if they were off limits to him. But why? Why then, did he suddenly only have access to one of the several hundred balconies he’d built, when the balconies themselves were still there?
And then it hit him.
Ahh, so it all comes back to talent after all.
Back when he’d made the majority of his plans, he hadn’t accounted for such an abysmally low soul grade. With an average persons talent, it was likely he’d have had access to all but the most powerful sections immediately upon awakening. With his soul grade a rank below F, something he hadn’t even thought possible, even a single balcony more than he already had access to would likely prove more than enough to cripple his soul.
Hmm… how bothersome.
Which ultimately led him back to why he’d come here in the first place. To qualify for Devil’s Arcadia, he needed detailed information. Ability formations, cultivation manuals, body altering elixir recipes. And yet to get to any of that, he needed to improve his soul grade. To improve his soul grade, he would need experience. And in order to gain experience, at least in the short term, he would need more than a single point in mana. A whole lot more, if his current string of bad luck was anything to go by.
Thankfully, he had just the thing for that. Stretching out a hand and focusing intently, it was but a moment before an aged looking scroll slapped into his palm.
•-|—Ling Dynasty Universal Breathing Technique—|-•
[Azure Dew Collects in Open Palms]
It wasn’t the most effective mana cultivation method, not by a long shot. No, those scrolls were on the higher floors. The ones he currently didn’t have access to. Still, he’d made sure that, on each and every floor, there existed one or two basic necessities. Lifelines squirreled away in the unlikely event he ever found himself in a particularly difficult spot. Some might have called his precautions overtly paranoid.
Had called them paranoid on more then one occasion.
Well, rubbing his thumb along the wax seal of this “needless precaution,” what would soon prove his salvation, his only response was a very humble, yet emphatic…
I told you I wasn’t crazy! In your face! Finally! Something finally goes my way!