October 24, 2022
Day 5
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As Daniel left, Mark’s face regained its smile as he went over the events that occurred over the last 36 hours. Things really couldn’t have gone any better.
Representative of the Layson Bastion, be informed that the first trial of the tutorial will commence in 6 hours. Your settlement will be attacked by a neighbouring bastion. Your objective is to survive the attack for 2 hours. Upon the completion of the 2 hours, you can go to your settlement menu and finish the trial at any point. However, your rewards will scale based on how long you can hold out against the attack and how many enemies you slay.
When two nights ago, Mark got the above notification informing him about the first tutorial event, he had a decision to make. He could either warn the settlement, making sure they are better prepared to fight the threat, and not taken by surprise. Or he could keep everything to himself, counting on the first tutorial event being easy enough to be handled unprepared.
Surely, they could survive for two hours.
In the end, he had decided that he would stick to his original plan. He needed to continue selling his lies. He needed people to believe that the only power that the representative of a bastion had was the ability to spend settlement points. Revealing anything might have opened a can of worms. Everyone would start asking questions, start wondering. Why did this notice come to Mark and no one else? What other information might be there which the system only gave to the representative of the bastion, and not the members.
He decided he would rather risk the settlement being taken by surprise than risk raising suspicions. He had made this decision knowing that some of his colleagues may pay for it with their lives. But if he had to weigh the life of everyone on the island against that of his wife, he would choose her in a heartbeat. While Mark would be ruthless in his pursuit for the Elixir of Ascendance, he was not heartless. So when the battle ended without a single casualty or debilitating injury, Mark was relieved.
He had taken away from his colleagues their right to make informed decisions and choices, effectively taking away their autonomy. They will only have the information he would feed them, true or false. But a part of him still hoped that by the end of the tutorial, autonomy was the only thing he would have taken away from them.
Mark hoped that he could still be himself when all this was done.
But he knew that was just wishful thinking. He had chosen a path and he would walk it, no matter the cost. This time, there was no cost. All his gambles had paid off, and they hadn’t just passed the trial, they had absolutely crushed it.
Representative of the Layson Bastion, you have finished the first trial of the tutorial. Please find below the rewards-
Survived 2 hours : +1,000 settlement points
Survived 6 hours : +1,000 settlement points
Survived 12 hours : +1,000 settlement points
Survived 24 hours : +1,000 settlement points
2,000,000 Level 1 Cocoi Frogs killed : +2,000 settlement points
0 Defender casualties : -0 settlement points
Optional objective completed - Eliminate Enemy bastion - +100% to all rewards
Total rewards - 12,000 settlement points.
If he had simply settled for meeting the minimum requirements of the trial and ended it then, his rewards would have been a tenth of what he gained now. The settlement points were for his own use, but it wasn't like everyone else gained nothing from the trial. The entire settlement had gained levels. Pretty much everyone had reached level 7, and a select few had reached level 8 too.
Focusing at the total settlement points once more, Mark felt he could notice his own heart beating a little easier. He had been making a show of expanding the cavern every day, but in reality had not spent a single settlement point on that. There was no way for anyone other than him to figure out where the cavern was, and so they could not check whether it was changing at all. Mark had accumulated 3000 points in the last 3 days, and the sudden windfall of 12,000 brought him to 15,000. In a few hours, at the exact time of day when the tutorial had began 4 days ago, he would add today's 1000 SPs, taking the total to 16,000 SPs.
It was just 1.5% of his goal, but it was progress. Mark will just have to keep raising the stakes in every event to get better and better rewards.
As he made his plans, one thing was clear. To accomplish his goals, Mark needed to make sure that when the next attack happened, Layson Bastion would be ready to make an even more dominating display. That thought drove him to the last notification he received. This would be the path to more power.
New Quest Received : Consolidate Your Domain
You have eliminated an unnamed shallow water bastion within your settlement domain. Eliminate, claim or subjugate every independent bastion in your settlement domain to upgrade the settlement from unranked to barony rank.
Progress - 1/26 bastions eliminated
An unranked settlement can only be associated with a single bastion
At barony rank a settlement can be associated with a single bastion called the barony capital and at most 100 other lesser bastions.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Then he looked at the settlement information window.
Settlement Overview
Settlement Name
Laysan
Settlement population
168/1000
Bastion
Laysan Bastion
Unique bastion bonus
Allows any humans within the domain of the colocated settlement to drink salt water without any adverse effects
Settlement bonuses
Expanded settlement domain III, Dungeon Spawn II, Amphibious IV
Settlement domain highlights
Unnamed inland hypersaline lake, unnamed cavern, unnamed coral reef formation
Other bastions within settlement domain
1 avian bastion, 1 shallow water bastions, 23 deep sea bastions
Mark recalled that the "Other bastions within settlement domain" section used to have 2 shallow water bastions. One down, one to go, he thought, while at the same time wondering which among the remaining bastions to target first.
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When Rahul woke up again, the sun was about to set. Before anything else, he looked at his stats.
Character Overview Name Rahul Sharma Race Human (F) Class N/A Level 8 HP 150/150 MP 250/250 Stamina 73/250 Strength 17 Endurance 25 Dexterity 15 Vitality 15 Intelligence 25
He had risen to level 8. He also checked the experience needed for the next level and free stat points.
3800/20000 experience to the next level.
You have 5 free stat points available.
He was a fifth of the way to the next level, not a lot but also nothing to scoff at. However, with the attack now over, he did not know how he would gain experience to advance anymore. He also decided not to assign the free stat points right away. Increasing stat points with physical and mental training got progressively harder as his stats grew. He would increase his strength, dexterity and vitality with physical training as much as possible until he hit a bottleneck, and only then assign the free points.
With that, he went out to look for Daniel. A conversation about what happened yesterday morning was long overdue, and Rahul was now growing restless.
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Rahul walked up to Daniel on the roof of the castle, who greeted him.
“Hey Rahul. Are you doing okay? You seemed quite exhausted in the morning, I hope you feel better now.”
Rahul replied, perhaps a bit too casually.
“Yeah, I was quite spent, but nothing some good shut-eye can’t fix."
Then he paused a second before continuing in a more serious tone.
“Actually I was here to talk about what happened yesterday morning.”.
Rahul paused again, unsure of the right words to say. Before he could hesitate any longer, he blurted out loud.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry. You were lying there, a dozen feet away from me, and I could have helped. But I did nothing, and if it weren’t for Ivan, you could’ve died.”
Then, Rahul stopped, immediately regretting his last three words.
Daniel thought for a few seconds, as if considering his words. The he spoke.
“I won’t lie. I am not coping well with what happened that morning. I get sudden pangs of fear whenever my footing is anything less than solid. It makes me feel like I'm losing balance, I feel like I’m one shaky step away from death. I'm afraid they are still there, waiting to ambush me. I'm afraid that the moment I trip and let down my guard, they will be all over me.”
The former manager took a pause before continuing.
“I was lying there helpless for only a few seconds. But those seconds lasted much longer in my head. I really thought I was going to die. I waited for the door to close on me any second and to be left alone to be devoured by the frogs. It was terrifying. “
Taking another, longer pause, Daniel continued. Rahul had started to lose some of his color by this point.
“Don't worry, just listen till I'm done speaking. I have lived a longer life than you and have faced many trials of my own. But those trials were trials of love, of relationships, of family, of work, of health. I am basically just a software engineer. No amount of experience working on a desk could prepare someone for a situation like this. But that doesn't mean I am not going to do anything about it. I don’t know exactly how, but I will deal with my emotions. I'll take professional help if I can find any here. “
Then adding a final pause to stress the importance of his next words, Daniel finally said.
“There is only one thing that I do know for certain. You are just as inadequately prepared for a life and death situation as me, if not more. I have no doubt that if our places were switched, I’d have been unable to act too. There aren’t many among the odd 165 of us that could do what Ivan did. I’m lucky he was there, I owe my life to him. But, I couldn't possibly blame you for not saving me, couldn't possibly blame you for not being good at a reacting to a situation you never expected to deal with."
"The whole event was horrible, but it taught me a lesson. We are woefully unprepared to deal with actual life and death situations, and our training needs to go beyond the physical training, meditation and skill training regiment. We will need to work on our fortitude and courage, we will need to learn how to act decisively and with confidence in any situation. “
He thought for a long time, not speaking, but clearly intending to finish his line of thought.
“You should know that you are not the only one who froze up that morning. I did too. I could have gotten up after that fall and rushed back inside, dragging a few frogs with me if they clung on too tight. Physically, I was strong enough to do that. Mentally, I had already accepted my death the moment I fell. I regret what happened, and if you do too, let’s work together and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else again.”
Finally feeling a heavy weight off his chest, Rahul replied to Daniel’s long explanation with just two words, “Thank you”.
He didn’t need to say more. Daniel understood.
Rahul was ready to dive into training again. He'd see if he can't get the remaining stats to 25 without using any of his free stat points. And if he needed a break from that, he'd get in touch with Claudie and see if she made any progress with enhancing stamina control to push more power into arrows rather than less. He had already grown his Stamina Control 1 from its most basic form, and unlocked a hidden effect. He was curious to see how else the skill could expand.
Next time when someone was in need, Rahul would be strong enough to face that danger and come out on top.
Next time when someone was in need, Rahul would be brave enough to move towards danger. Not stand frozen, nor crawl away from it. Move towards it.