Code accepted. Opening...
Monolith
User: Alexa Huga Francis
Coins: 5000
|Shop|
|Trade|
|Auction|
|Communicate|
Mm. It was nice to finally regain access to the Monolith. The interface looked as dull as she remembered. A good thing, really.
She sighed. It felt a bit odd to have access to it this early, but she wasn’t complaining. In her previous life, she’d only gained access to the Monolith after a year and a half of combing through keywords and phrases. In the end, she’d only found it when she received a Sub-Scenario with her Monolith Code as its reward.
Oh well. Artificial difficulty had always been something the Scenarios loved.
That aside,
Shop. The general marketplace of the Monolith. A Unit can buy items at a constant price, and sell items at a constant price. Useful for beginner Units that have no idea what the Monolith offers in the first place, but would degrade into a quick place to sell items for veterans.
Trade. The option to trade all manners of things with another Unit, whether it be an item, skill, coins, or even information. Using the Trade option ensures the offered and received products are delivered safely. Any outside attempts to intercept the trade would be met with violent consequences.
Auction. A place for Units from varying worlds to sell items to other Units. Items not found in the Shop can be found here. It’s also the easiest for a Unit to find a Unit from another world and establish communication.
Communicate. A function for Units to communicate with other Units, whether through text or through speech. All conversations done through this function are encrypted. Any outside attempts to view the contents or to intercept the conversation would be met with violent consequences.
She stared at her options for a few seconds before she made her choice.
|Auction|
[LIVE]
[BIN]
LIVE. Items sold here would come and go much like the auctions she knew. Units would place their bids, and when the time ran out, the Unit who’d placed the highest bid would receive the item, and those that lost would receive their Coins back. This was the easiest source of Coins for any Units.
BIN. A similar function as the Shop, just for items that couldn’t be found there. These were usually items that had been placed LIVE, but had failed to attract any attention. Items placed here would be purchasable indefinitely until a Unit bought it. An option used only for items that had failed when sold LIVE.
The latter was her next choice. A jumble of words suddenly appeared, and she quickly tapped the Filter option before her panel could get crowded.
Placing Keywords:
Magic, Technology, Magitech,
Crystal, Magicule
Searching...
With a blip, another surge of words came onto the panel, before they organized themselves into a readable list. She scrolled down her given options for a few minutes before she came onto what she’d wanted,
Crystallized Magicule
Rank: F
A crystal of Magicule, formed through gathering Magicules and applying tremendous pressure. Often used as a source of energy. Extremely diluted with contaminants.
Cost: 2700 Coins
She smiled. Bingo. A crystal of Magicules, and at a bargain price at that. Even the most diluted crystals would go for around 3500, but the seller must be rather desperate at the moment. That was an extra 800 Coins she could save.
She bought it, and like magic, it popped into her hands with a small burst of light. She brought out her phone and shone some light onto it. The crystal looked as she’d expected. It was a perfectly cut diamond, colored a dull grey and black, with the barest signs of blue.
But it was enough.
She stood up, and stopped. She’d completely forgotten that she didn’t have anything to grind the crystal down to dust, nor did she have anything to sift out the Magicule dust she’d get after.
She grimaced. Did she have a mortar and pestle? She’d completely forgotten what things she had back in her apartment. She did cook her own meals, but would that have pushed the old her to buy a mortar and pestle for herself?
She sighed. There wasn’t any point wondering.
She hopped off the roof and ran back to her apartment. The place was deserted. She climbed the steps and locked the door behind her. She gave her light switch an experimental flick, and her room remained dark. Not unexpected. The Svels had probably damaged the power lines in their initial rampage.
Using her phone as a flashlight, she began searching through every cabinet in her small room.
It was more interesting than she expected. The old her kept some rather strange things. There was a book on Chinese poems sitting in the cabinet under the sink, a clearly rotten apple kept at the back of her fridge, and a stack of loan papers placed precariously in front of an exposed wire. The collection didn’t include a mortar and pestle unfortunately.
She eventually nabbed a couple plates and a spatula as a replacement.
She spent a couple more minutes exploring the place before she went back to her roof. She set down her plate, grabbed her crystal, and began grinding it down using her spatula. It was by no means smooth, and she had to keep a tight hold on the crystal to make sure it didn’t fly off as she was crushing it.
But she eventually managed to crush the entire thing down into a pile of dust. She wasn’t done though. The pile of dust was a mix of colors, and the only dust she wanted was the bright specks of blue interspersed between the dull black and grey.
There was an easy way to seperate the contaminants though.
She grabbed one of her many bottles of water and filled the plate with as much water as she could. She swirled the water with her finger, and the black and grey dust immediately began dissolving into the water. The blue dust remained, floating above the waters as they flowed around.
Using her spatula, she did her best to move the blue dust into her other plate. It took her several minutes, and she nearly snapped the plate in half at one point, but she did it. With her spoils ready, she grabbed the bottle of water she’d used earlier and placed all the blue dust into it.
They floated aimlessly atop the water, glowing a dim blue against the night. She harshly shook the bottle for a minute. The blue dust remained, but they were now floating inside the water. With a breath, she twisted the cap off and drank the entire thing in a single swig.
And then came pain.
The empty bottle fell onto the roof as she writhed in place, teeth harshly grit as she shut her eyes. Her chest burnt, as if someone had jammed lava into her ribcage. The heat grew with every passing second, slowly spreading to the rest of her body, and her body shook as her body fell into shock.
Her sight was blurring. Static was filling her ears. She could taste the distinct metallic tang of blood on her tongue. Her throat was clogging up. She could feel something wet trailing down her cheeks. She was crying. Or maybe blood was falling out of her eyes. She didn’t really know. She couldn’t see, nor could she move.
Everything hurt.
Then, everything stopped. Alex fell onto the roof and she could finally breathe.
Unit: Alexa Hugo Francis Lv 5 Exp: 0/405 Health: 10/10 Mana: 10/10 Strength: 5 Endurance: 2 Spirit: 2 (+2) Resistance: 1 (+1) Dexterity: 6 Charm: 5
She smiled thinly. At least it worked.
She sighed. It wasn’t the easiest way to unlock her Spirit, nor was it the simplest, but this was the fastest. That, and she was used to pain. Not numbed. Just used to it.
She wasn’t sure if that made it any better.
She raised her hand, and remembering that feeling of lightning her mana created in her head, she called forth her mana. A moment of pain struck her when she tried so, but a small blue spark began to light from the tips of her fingers, and she found herself smiling.
Now, to regain her skills.
Ugh. That’ll take forever.
…
Mm. She’ll leave that to the future. She was exhausted.
----------------------------------------
The second day started as any day should. Except there were no people on the streets, and the thrumming of engines and chatter faded into silence. Instead, the day started with a tremor, followed by the waking of thousands of Svels, each hungry and eager to feast on anything they came upon.
But the Svels would be joined by a new species of monsters today. When a region on Earth reached noon, rifts would begin to form and new monsters would begin flooding into the region to heighten the difficulty of the scenario.
Thankfully, this monster wasn’t airborne, and would sooner fall into a pit of sand than find some way to scale up buildings.
They could destroy buildings though.
Vlaids. They were, essentially, giant dogs with a monkey-like face, and a brain dumber than a rock. Aside from hunting for food, it would rush towards anything that moves. They had no sense of spatial awareness, and would gladly jump into a pit of spikes in their chase for a moving object.
They were tough though, and if they slammed into a building at just the right angle, a small pack of Vlaids could easily bring a building down. And as good as she was at killing Svels, those rats were nothing compared to Vlaids.
Fighting them directly wouldn’t do her well.
So she made another purchase.
Weapon Rebound
Rank: F
Allows the Unit to call back a Bound Weapon of the Unit’s choice back into their hands. Distance between Unit and Weapon is irrelevant. Weapon Bound Limit: 1
Cost: 2000 Coins
It was from the regular Shop this time. Normally a Skill bought by those who fought at range, but it’d do her just as well. And perhaps it might lead to something more interesting as she ranked it up. She would’ve tried upgrading it now, but she was short of 1000 Coins for the next Rank. She’d need to gain some more Coins for that.
She sighed and gave a quick glance at her phone.
07:46, 13th October 2022
She’d woken up just about an hour before. She had four hours before the Vlaids would appear. More than enough time to practice her new strategy.
She ran from rooftop to rooftop, silently enjoying the way the winds brushed past her hair, and stopped at the roof of one of the higher buildings in the neighborhood. With the knowledge burnt into her head, she ‘Bound’ her sharpened rebar into her, and she could feel an odd weight settle in her chest. It was as if she was adding the weight of the rebar into her own soul.
She took a breath. She could do this.
She pulled her now Bound rebar from her waist and held it like a javelin, its sharpened edge held forward and her arm slowly pulled back. Her eyes turned to the streets below, and she could see a solitary Svel eating through a decaying corpse just a distance away. She narrowed her eyes, took a step forward, and threw.
The rebar stabbed into the concrete just inches from the Svel’s head. The Svel turned, frightened by the loud noise, and found nothing but a small hole in the street.
The Rebar had magically appeared back in her hands. It’d returned to her in a matter of moments.
She smiled.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She threw her rebar again, and this time it struck true. The Svel, still panicked by the sound, hadn’t noticed anything. Then her rebar stabbed into the concrete once again, pinning with it the punctured head of the Svel. The rat died in seconds.
Alex called the Rebar back into her hands. Blood was still dripping from it.
Slain: Svel Lv - 1
Gained 5 Exp
Her aim wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. She could probably wipe out a good number of Svels just by throwing her rebar at their heads.
So she did.
The sound she made had attracted a pack of Svels, and she quickly raised her rebar and began throwing.
The Svels could only watch in confusion as their kind began dying one by one.
Hmm. If only they had the spatial awareness to just look up.
Slain: Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, 7 more…
Gained 80 Exp
Unit: Alexa Hugo Francis Lv 6 Exp: 0/1215 Health: 10/10 Mana: 15/15 Strength: 6 (+1) Endurance: 2 Spirit: 3 (+1) Resistance: 1 Dexterity: 7 (+1) Charm: 6 (+1)
She blinked. Her Spirit increased? Did it count using Weapon Rebound as magic? Hmm. Curious.
She shook her head. Not the time. Another pack had arrived due to the commotion. She pulled her arm back and began throwing again.
Slain: Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, 3 more…
Gained 60 Exp
The last Svel of that pack died just in time for another to arrive. Alex called her Rebar back into her hands, reared her arm back, and stopped. Her rebar felt lighter than she remembered. Frowning, she took a glance at her weapon.
She blinked.
The sharp edge had dulled into a jagged stump.
She grimaced. Right. Stabbing a bar of rebar into the concrete over and over would do that. She could still snap a Svel’s neck by swinging her rebar at its neck, but it wouldn’t do so well at stabbing straight through their heads. And it’d do even worse against the Vlaids that would soon come.
She needed a new weapon.
She could do that later however. For the Svels, sharpening the edge of her rebar should do just fine.
And now she had her mana to aid her. She no longer needed to scrape the edge against concrete for an hour or so. Thankfully.
She called up her mana, and the tip of her finger began to light up with sparks of bright blue. She raised the dull edge of her rebar towards it, and like a blowtorch, her mana began to melt through the coiled steel. She traced her finger against the edge, moving at a slanted angle, and the dull edge was easily sharpened.
Mhm. Mana was great. Tasted great when mixed with strawberry jam.
But directly eating mana was bad. It was like digesting the wrong type of blood. All sorts of horrible things would happen. She’d need to purify the mana before mixing it together with strawberry jam. Done wrong, and she would end up sick for a week at least. Done right, and she’d be eating the best breakfast for the next couple weeks.
Ah, no. Bad thinking. Not the time to get hungry.
She subtly wiped her lips as she raised her rebar. The previous pack of Svels had already wandered away, but another pack had come to the area, curious as to why so many of its kind had died there. Her lips quirked up to a small smile as she began throwing.
The Svels died with little fanfare.
Slain: Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, 4 more…
Gained 65 Exp
And like moths to a flame, even more Svels appeared, drawn in by the commotion. Her hand was caked in blood. Her recently sharpened rebar had already begun to dull. But she was far from tired, and the blue sparks burning from her palms burnt bright.
Slain: Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, 12 more…
Gained 105 Exp
Throw. Retrieve. Throw. Retrieve. Repeat.
Slain: Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, 1 more…
Gained 50 Exp
The edge had dulled. Her fingers burnt alight with blue sparks, and she easily burnt the dull edge back into a sharp point. The sunlight glimmered bright against it, and she flipped the slowly shortening rebar around. The thing had been reduced to just above half of its original length. Just about the length of her forearm.
She took a glance at her phone.
10: 27
An hour and a half before noon.
She frowned. The Svels gave far too little Exp. Even if she was to spend the rest of her time hunting Svels from the rooftop, she wouldn maybe only come halfway to her next level. It was better to rest up for the upcoming arrival.
She turned to the rebar in her hand, and stared at it. She remembered that weight that had settled in her chest when she Bound the rebar to her, and now she pictured dragging that weight out. It took some time, but she eventually felt her chest lighten, and the rebar in her hand felt…fuller, for a lack of a better word.
She smiled thinly as she placed the rebar down. It’d served her well.
She traced her path back home, hopping from roof to roof as she scrolled through the many weapons sold in the Shop.
And as she landed back on her rooftop, she settled on the best choice she could afford.
Steel Sword -Enchanted-
Rank: F
An ordinary steel sword forged through fire and effort. It was later enchanted.
Enchantment: Rotting -Extremely effective against unenhanced flesh-
Cost: 300 Coins
A sword made to deal with organic beings. Costing all the Coins she had left. A perfectly suitable weapon against the first monsters that would appear on Earth. It wouldn’t be fit against the stronger monsters that would arrive, and it was essentially useless against inorganic beings, but it was enough for the time being.
She made her purchase, and a steel sword fell into her hands. It was perfectly ordinary, with nothing but a small rune engraved in its guard to indicate the enchantment placed on it. She gave it a couple quick swings and nodded.
It’d do her just fine.
She spent the next hour resting. Another pre-prepared meal was consumed. Another bottle was drunk clean. She was getting slightly tired of eating the cold, unappetizing thing, but there was little she could do for the moment. She’d do a supply run down to the nearby grocery store when night fell.
Maybe she’d be able to grab some bread and strawberry jam on the way.
She took a glance at her phone.
11:32
Half an hour remained. She sat down, idly scratching at a building itch on her leg. She glanced at the sword propped up against her backpack, and she reached over for it. Her eyes turned down to the rune engraved at the center of its guard. It was an unfamiliar one. Not that she had any knowledge in runes.
She sighed as she Bound the sword to her. That now familiar weight settled into her chest. It felt somewhat heavier compared to when she Bound her rebar.
She frowned slightly. Did stronger weapons ‘weigh’ more? Or was this odd weight in her chest determined only by actual mass? The sword was heavier than the rebar, even if not by much.
Hmm. An interesting thought. She’d save it for a rainy day.
11: 39
The Vlaids would arrive soon. A large dog with a monkey-like face that looked wholly inappropriate. A stubborn monster, akin to a bull, and would gladly slam their faces over and over into anything if it meant even a chance of getting a meal. Not amazingly strong nor fast, but their stubbornness made up for it.
Fighting them head on was…doable, but ill-advised. Vlaids travelled in packs, and there was definitely a chance she’d become overwhelmed. Fighting them from atop a building was also ill-advised. The Vlaids would just start ramming themselves into the building, and that could lead to the building crashing down, which would attract even more Vlaids.
Fighting them on the streets would be needed, but she would do so from a distance. She’d throw her sword and let her sword’s enchantment corrode through them. She’d call her sword back into her hands and repeat. If any Vlaids came close, she would deal with them as normal.
That was in a perfect scenario. Some running away would probably also happen.
11:47
She sighed.
She wondered what happened after she died. Did what remain of her group manage to escape and report back? Did they eventually find a solution to that unbeatable final scenario? Or did they fail? Could they have done nothing but wait for the eventual deactivation of every and all Units on Earth?
She supposed it didn’t matter. That wasn’t her world. It had never been her world. She hadn’t been alive then. She’d just been…there.
11:52
Ah. Her mind was wandering again.
She tended to do that when she had nothing to do. Was it something about getting old? From what little she remembered of her grandparents, that was what they always joked about when she came to their house.
She wondered where they were. Had they taken shelter somewhere? Had they been devoured in the Svels’ initial arrival? How about her mother? Had she somehow made it out? If everything followed her previous life, then they had probably died. She had never met them, even as her brother’s name spread all across the world.
Her brother. Where was he? They had never been the closest, and they had never bridged the gap. That was fine. Had they not been connected by blood, she would’ve never made any effort to come to know him. They were just too different. Their lives were too different.
It didn’t matter. It never mattered.
11:58
She glanced at her sword. It was clean, pristine. It had never been used. A new blade. A youngling rushing into battle.
How fitting.
11:59
She took a breath, and let herself enjoy the crisp, untainted air. This first week would be the last time the air would ever be this clean. The Second Scenario would render the air toxic for normal humans, and those that hadn’t levelled up to a certain point would be corroded by the toxic air.
She stood up, sword tightly held in hand, and she set her lips to a thin frown as she looked at the skies above.
It was time.
12:00
And the sky split open for the second time. A beam of light fell from the heavens, and the earth below her shook as thousands of rifts opened up all across the area. And from them came beasts, their bodies similar to that of a large dog and their face similar to a monkey. Their fur was an intimidating black, and their human-like eyes glowed a bright yellow.
The Vlaids had arrived.
The Svels turned to the new arrivals, initially surprised, before they turned away and continued to scrounge around for food. The two monsters aren't enemies or allies. Simply competitors for food.
She watched the Vlaids begin to spread out, their tongues dangling in the air as they ran, pulled along by the smell of corpses. They didn’t care what corpse it came from, nor how decayed it was. A corpse once belonged to a living being, and living beings had mana. As long as the corpse was still edible, some mana would remain.
Alex watched as they began to thin out, keeping her eyes at a pack of three Vlaids just to her left. Soon they came upon a pair of corpses, and with no monsters surrounding them, Alex leapt off the roof and threw. Her sword sailed across the air, and her target managed to turn its head around just in time for her sword to stab right through its head.
She could see the skin around her sword decaying just as the Vlaid fell over. She recalled her sword back into her hands as she landed, and she readied another throw as the other two Vlaids turned to her and growled.
They began charging at her and she threw her sword in reply. It stabbed cleanly through one of them, and it dropped dead. She called her sword back to her hands and quickly ducked. The other Vlaid soared just inches above her, and she spun and stabbed up. Her blade cut cleanly through the Vlaid’s abdomen, and it let out one last whimper before it died.
She threw the Vlaid onto the street, the skin around the wound flaking away like pieces of paper.
Slain: Vlaid Lv - 4, Vlaid Lv - 4, Vlaid Lv - 4
Gained 120 Exp
It was a joke. Most Units would be at level 3 or 4 by the second day, and they were throwing thousands of Level 4 enemies. It was spartan, done to weed out the weak and the unlucky. Even she could only do as she did because of her sword, and that was something she obtained because she had Coins.
Most other Units didn’t have Coins yet.
An unfair game. Except this wasn’t a game at all, and nothing in life was fair.
Growls came from her left. She turned to see another pack of Vlaids, a group of four this time. They growled at her, clearly hungry but also wary. They could see the corpses of their kind strewn around her, and though limited in their intelligence, they could feel the danger this human possessed.
She turned to them. Her fingers sparked a bright blue, her mana coiled and eager. One of the Vlaids took a step back, before it growled and began running towards her.
It lived for another second before her sword was thrown right through its forehead.
The other three Vlaids finally began to move, sharp teeth barred as they charged. One fell with a sword stabbed between its eyes, and she quickly swerved to the side as the two Vlaids sprung by. She called her blade to her hands and slashed down at one of the Vlaids’ neck. The enchantment did its work, and its decapitated head fell onto the street.
The last remaining Vlaid turned to her, and it choked as it saw its three brethren dead on the street. It managed one last growl before she threw her sword at its head. It swayed in place, skin rotting as the sword in its head disappeared. It dropped dead a second later.
Slain: Vlaid Lv - 4, Vlaid Lv - 4, Vlaid Lv - 4, Vlaid Lv - 4
Gained 160 Exp
She sighed. Another four were down. And so easily too.
She glanced down at her sword. It was still just as sharp, as if she hadn’t used it to puncture through several skulls.
She smiled wanly. That was to be expected, she supposed. Anything recognized by the Monolith and given a Rank would be leagues stronger than anything unrecognized. Even if it only cost 300 Coins and sat at the lowest possible Rank, it was still a Ranked Weapon.
Only 300 Coins. Right. She was most likely one of the minority who’d even gotten some Coins. No one else had it as easy as she did.
It was somewhat frustrating, really. She could still remember how she’d been in that previous life. Fighting tooth and nail against a slowly worsening world, watching people die and being able to do nothing but watch. Had she been alone, there was no doubt she would’ve died.
And now here she was, surrounded by the corpses of monsters that old her had once feared.
Mm. It was both a liberating and frustrating feeling.
…
Ah. Her mind was wandering again.
A loud screech sounded behind her, and she turned to see a large pack of Svels before her, shaking slightly as they faced her. There was hunger in their eyes, but their bodies shook. They seemed reluctant to move.
She smiled thinly, and moved.
Slain: Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, Svel - Lv 1, 2 more…
Gained 55 Exp