There was nothing, and then there was everything. His eyes snapped open, and he vaulted to his feet, his mind still fully engaged in combat. But his senses quickly revealed that the fight was over. The triskelion bodies were scattered around the ship, apparently killed by his SOULFIRE, but Duke was not yet able to process what happened.
I was knocked out? No, that’s not right. They all blasted me in my forehead. I felt my ARMOR SKIN fail. I felt the blast tear through my skull, and then there was just nothing. And now I’m on my feet. Duke’s hand involuntarily went to the back of his head. It felt wet and he brought it around to the front to look at it. What he saw was blood and grey matter.
He stood in frozen silence for a long moment before looking at the ground behind him to see the splatter of his own brains on the ground. Shouldn’t that have killed me? Am I fucking immortal? I need some answers. Duke looked at his hand again and shuddering, reflexively CLEANSED himself.
A quick glance at his INVENTORY showed that he didn’t have room for the triskelion’s ship but he remembered that he didn’t need to place it in his INVENTORY, he had a ready-made place to store it. A TELEPORT placed the ship in the dungeon hangar with the others he had accumulated. The triskelion bodies were left behind to feed the wildlife that he could already see and hear coming closer. Duke himself arrived in the hangar a moment later.
“Well, that was unexpected, now, wasn’t it?”
“Hello again, Overmind. Can you explain to me what happened?”
“For the most part, yes. It really came down to your rather remarkable Ability to REGENERATE yourself. Now that you have pushed it to Master rank, you can come back from most anything that doesn’t utterly destroy you. Depending on how much of you is left, it could take a long time to come back. This is not how such an Ability usually works. Most such Abilities cease if the brain is destroyed at anything less than the Guru rank. The blessing you are under sped up the process some too.”
“Blessing? Oh, right. Divine interference in my life. What was that about a Guru rank?”
“Yes, the rank that follows Grandmaster. Did no one ever explain this to you?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Well, Guru follows Grandmaster and Divine follows that. I don’t expect you to reach either of those two ranks anytime soon. Reaching Grandmaster in any Ability like you have in TELEPORTATION is an achievement that not more than a handful of Tier Five mortals have ever claimed. I know you’re a Tier Six now, but you achieved it at five.”
“I could have taken my TELEPORTATION to Guru with the Ability rank increase I could have taken at Tier Six?”
“No, a Tier rank up can’t take an Ability to that level. They max out at Master. You being able to rank up your Ability to Grandmaster was a rather special circumstance that you took advantage of beautifully. And I fully agree with your choice of Class Ability at your Tier-up.”
“So, no more shortcuts there, eh?”
“I’ll not say never, but it is exceedingly unlikely. But enough on that. Are you ready for the Contest?”
“Is it time already?”
“Almost. The first Contestants will be arriving within a week. You have three, maybe four weeks until I will pull you there. Reaching Tier Six was a strong step. I doubt you can make Tier Seven before then but among the first arrivals will be a Tier Eight monster of a competitor. You need to be able to at least fight them off or evade them if you can’t beat them. That is why I am telling you again to push yourself. I have to go now, but check your notifications. There’s something there that I think you will find interesting.”
Duke stared at where the Overmind’s avatar had been standing. Shrugging, he pulled up his notifications.
*** Attention! The contract placed on you by the Twin Entities has been fulfilled. In a coincidental quirk of fate, the individuals who fulfilled the contract were slain before they could acknowledge the contract’s completion and claim the prize. ***
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“The fucking shits! They cancelled the contract without paying it out. Not that I’m mad that the contract is gone but damned that’s some slimy shit to not pay it out. Kinda fits them though. OK, on to the rest.”
*** For defeating 61 creatures ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 4 of various levels, you receive 533,225 experience. You are now level 104 and have gained 105 Characteristic Points.
You have increased several of your Abilities. Since you have declined to view the details, the greatest change has been selected for display:
Your ARMOR SKIN has increased to Adept 87
You may delve into your individual Abilities to see any other specific changes you desire. ***
Duke was thankful that he had found the option to turn off the majority of his Ability changes. The list was getting too long and now he could see anything that increased by 10 or more or ranked up at a glance. Yeah, good call on that one. System spam is no better than email spam – always hiding the important things in a wall of text. Well, got a few more Characteristic points. Time to increase that Psyche some more. It just ties into too many Abilities. OK, back to business. Let’s see if Madrigal is still in the throne room. Duke didn’t notice when the option toggled itself off again.
As it turned out, Madrigal was just finishing up with the last of the petitioners, sending them on their way. As they left, the Duke’s shoulders slumped and he sat down heavily in his chair.
“Rough day?” Duke asked.
“Your Majesty!” Madrigal started to stand but Duke interrupted him.
“Stay in your chair. It looks like you could use the rest.”
“Indeed, yes. Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“OK, you have exceeded your honorifics for today.” Duke pulled a chair out of his INVENTORY and sat down opposite the duke. “So, give me the run-down of what’s been happening in the kingdom.”
“Perhaps this is something better discussed in your office, or even my office, Duke?”
“Right you are. Let’s use your office since I imagine it has all your notes and such in there.”
“Indeed it does.”
The pair were soon seated more comfortably around Madrigal’s conference table where he had laid out his kingdom map for Duke.
“The kingdom has taken several hits since you have been gone. First, we are being steadily invaded by creatures from beyond Teldin. I can tell you this, my understanding of the world has expanded significantly since you left.”
“Yeah, the Cosmos is a whole lot bigger than our kingdom and its surroundings. It seems that our whole planet is considered backwards and on the fringes of everything. There are things out there that I am not sure could be imagined here.”
Madrigal nodded, “That would align with the creatures we have seen that have weapons that we have no understanding of and Abilities like nothing we have seen before. But that’s not the worst of it. Our economy nearly crashed. I have nearly emptied the treasury keeping things afloat.”
“Well, that’s not good.”
“No, Duke, it is not. We rely too heavily on Havenreach to fund the rest of the kingdom. When their income dried up, we were all impacted. Especially since productivity plummeted across the whole kingdom. That is what most of the petitioners have been coming here about. They’re worried and on the brink of collapse out there.”
“That is my fault, I suppose,” Duke responded. He held up a hand to prevent Madrigal from interrupting, “I have an Ability called Aura of Prosperity that improves productivity across the whole kingdom, but it only works when I am in range. So, while I was gone it shut down and things returned to normal productivity. Now that I am back things will ramp up quickly.”
“How much of a ramp-up and how far does the Ability reach?”
“Here’s where it’s going to create another problem for the kingdom.”
“Another problem?” Madrigal put his head in his hands, waiting for Duke to elaborate.
“Yes, the Aura has grown a LOT stronger than it was before I left. It will now provide more than a twenty-five THOUSAND percent boost to productivity and could cover most of the planet.”
Madrigal looked up to Duke, “You’re serious?”
“Yes. The kingdom needs to make warehouses, grain silos, all manner of storage areas. In fact, that is something I can help with as well. Shit. I should have thought of this earlier. I’ll make a massive warehouse off the Hall of Possibilities so that you can access it from any of the Portals that can reach there.”
“We only have the one Portal that leads there, you know.”
“Damn. I’m really shit at all this. Show me where it would be helpful to have more Portals and I’ll get them set up before I leave again.”
“Before you leave again?”
“Yes, in a few weeks I am going to have to leave again for an indeterminable length of time so the kingdom needs to spend this time to build up a ridiculous amount of resources in storage. I know it’s not ideal but it’s not something I can put off or ignore. The best I can do is get us all prepared for my absence. I have already consulted with Mayor Shellenberger to get him started on increasing Havenreach’s storage capacity.”
“You are quite the source of chaos in the kingdom.”
“And I really wanted to be a stabilizing force. But we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
“No, we certainly don’t. But regardless, you have made the kingdom far better than it was when you came to it.”
“Thank you for that. Now show me where the invaders are on the map. I have some aggression to get out of my system. And uninvited guests who are not behaving need to be evicted. Forcibly in this case.”
“I’m not going to argue with that, but these invaders are beyond the capabilities of the Legions to handle. Are you sure you want to or even can take them on by yourself?”
“Deadly certain. Now show me who I need to kick off our planet.”