Chapter Ten: Plans
A hollow feeling followed Rahesh’s departure. I was…sad, simply put. Sad and disappointed that such a cool person, someone who could have been my peer and friend under different circumstances, was destined to walk a different path. I hadn’t felt this way after leaving Sahndo partly because of the obvious fear he and his recruits displayed most of the time we’d spent talking. It had never left Sahndo’s mind that I was potentially dangerous. The other part was because he didn’t strike me as someone who pursued ever greater heights.
In that moment I wished that the road to the top wasn’t so lonely.
Then I shook my head and sucked it up.
‘I’m no baby. Sure, everything can always be better for me, but I’m already living many times better than probably every other Human on this planet. Everyone always has their time to complain, but this isn’t one of mine.’
I took in the destruction our battle had wrought on this little patch of forest. Trees missing bark and branches, and their trunks riddled with holes. Undergrowth shredded to little bits. Pockmarks covering the ground. Sections of earth that were blackened from heat.
This was the last trace of the kid that I’d see for a long time.
‘At least I have my new Titles and Speck to ease the pain.’
[Titles]
Beast Wave Survivor: For every beast wave you fight through you will receive more points. Rewards vary according to how much danger you were in and how much you participated. +1 Attribute Points.
Honorable Prey: For being honorable in your Hunts you lose the physical prize and Title gained by killing your opponent, but instead acquire this Title. For every Hunter you spare you gain +1% to one Attribute of your choosing. You will permanently lose this Title’s benefits if you ever purposefully execute a Hunter. +1% (Choose)
[Daos]
Kindling Speck (Early): +10 Wisdom
Sharpness Speck (Early): +5 Strength, +5 Wisdom
Seeing [Honorable Prey] I immediately began looking forward to the next Hunt. If my first had taken place on my third day, and our Race protections would last an entire fifty years…I salivated at the idea of winning 10 Hunts, then 30, then 80… Would the System really be that generous, though? I hoped, because I learned from Sahndo that Vitality and Agility were the hardest Attributes to train, and I used one of them! Vitality required that you heal from significant injuries naturally and through your own efforts—so no pills, potions, or assistance from a healer—while Agility required exerting your speed to its fullest…which didn’t sound difficult to me until I remembered that I couldn’t just move at full speed in an instant. It took time sprinting in a straight line to build it up and changing directions did slow me down enough to not count toward training. While I remained in a forest, finding the space to run like that wouldn’t easy.
Thus if I put all my bonuses from [Honorable Prey] into Agility I could focus more time training Wisdom without feeling like I was neglecting my main Attribute.
‘Speaking of neglecting Attributes…’
I glanced at my now-80 unused points. I didn’t plan on failing any future Hunts but if they restricted me similarly to how this one against Rahesh had then I’d be risking too much, because I doubted that the System would prevent my opponents from spending the huge stack of points if I punched them on instinct or something.
Which meant that I now had decisions to make. Choices to think over.
Having been moving the entire time I was thinking, I arrived at the grocery store compound and sighed in relief. I saw wounded individuals, but no Human bodies laying motionless on the concrete, nor anybody sobbing. Everyone capable of physical exertion was out moving the corpses of spirit beasts, dragging them back out to be dumped amongst the birch trees. Without a second thought I joined in on the body removal efforts, and we were all done within minutes.
“Niko,” a feminine voice called out, and I turned to find Diana approaching. “First, don’t be surprised if some people give you weird looks because somebody spread the word that you ran away, apparently.”
She looked at me nervously, but I just shrugged.
“Figured that would happen. Everything’ll get sorted out later today, though, so no worries.”
Diana failed to hide her relieved sigh. “Umm, good…so, second was… Oh yeah, Agatha wanted to have another meeting at your convenience. Didn’t say what for.”
I nodded and thanked Diana before flashing across the parking lot and jumping onto the roof to escape the nauseating smell of blood. I wasn’t particularly bothered by all the blood in the air, but it was better to avoid it than not. Plus, I didn’t want anybody bugging me while I figured out what to do with my points.
‘If I use them all, or at least most, then I’ll definitely be in yet another weight class—so to think—and even stronger people will be sent to hunt me. Is that worth it? Which risk is better for me to take? That a very experienced warrior instead of a talented kid is tasked with killing me, or that I accidentally punch someone and they gain enough points to utterly obliterate me?’
I mentally reviewed the odds of each happening and quickly found that both situations were equally likely, on the assumption that the System would continue giving me such Quests. After all, the System wouldn’t send someone too weak to fight me, and with enough fights with that only-defense penalty I was bound to slip up.
The more troubling situation would be if I rose my Agility to 200 and was hunted by someone who also had that much speed, because any Hunter with such stats would have gained them through a long life of battles and training, unlike me, who was taking advantage of the System’s generosity toward Races it was integrating. I simply didn’t have the skills to match anyone who also focused Agility the same way I did.
‘So then, my only option for safely spending points right now is to spread them out? Because Rahesh has as much Strength as I do Agility, but his other stats minus Wisdom aren’t nearly as high as mine. Thus I can conclude from my sole data point that the System will continue to pair me up against people with around 150 points in their highest Attribute rather than others who have over 500 total points, or else I’d probably have been put up against someone near the limit of Chi Condensation and quickly die… Well, that’s enough for me!’
Without any further hesitation I put the +1% into Agility before dropping 1 point in Strength and Wisdom each, and 16 points in the other three Attributes, bringing all five up to 100.8.
[Title earned: Hard-Working Dao Generalist.]
[Title Hard-Working Dao Generalist updated.]
[Title Hard-Working Dao Generalist updated.]
[Title Hard-Working Dao Generalist updated.]
[Titles]
Hard-Working Dao Generalist: Achieve 100 points each in three separate Attributes before reaching Level 50. This Title upgrades for each new Attribute to have 100 points until Level 70. Six Attributes at 100 points = +30% to all Attributes.
I shot to me feet and whooped as the rush of success and numbers ticking up overwhelmed the pleasure center of my brain.
“FUCK YEAH! ALL MY FUTURE HUNTERS CAN EAT SHIT, CUZ I’M GONNA KICK THEIR ASSES!”
I almost couldn’t believe that the Title had raised everything beyond +100%, as I’d been expecting only about +10% if anything. But after thinking about it for a little bit, I figured out the System’s reasoning for the amazing reward.
‘Having 100 points in everything isn’t normally a good thing because at the Level where you’d have that many Attribute Points, everyone who specialized would have hundreds of points in just one or two stats and be able to easily overpower the generalist. Thus this Title exists to reward younger cultivators talented in the Dao who achieved such results by having many advanced Specks. Or in my case, a cultivator who made the most of their integration!’
I danced a little jig while counting up my points.
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‘746.25 total points with 30 left over. Damn, I’m getting awfully close to the Tier 1 limit!’
While learning as much as I could from Sahndo the Goblin scout leader I’d made sure to inquire about my Race’s Tier, and it was exactly what I’d expected. There were as many Race Tiers as there were cultivation realms—also called Tiers—as far as he knew, and in order to progress into the next realm, one needed a body that could withstand the new power. The upgraded Race would include a higher total points cap.
I currently lacked any kind of Race-advancing medicines, but being so powerful at Level 1 I didn’t expect to have many issues acquiring them from other Races. Or maybe I’d be rewarded them by Quests? Or perhaps the Tutorial would take care of it?
“Wait a minute,” I said aloud, looking between my Status Menu and available Attribute points. “With 30 points left…75 base points…and +111%…I can totally bring Agility to 200 and still have a few points!” I gasped.
I almost fell over in shock and immediately allocated the necessary points in my quest to determine whether Hard-Working Specialist had a part two…but barely restrained myself, because my argument from earlier remained valid. Even with 117.6 points in the other Attributes, I didn’t have enough points to back up 200 Agility. Anybody with 200 in Endurance or Intelligence or Agility would probably be unbeatable and force me to flee…or worse, easily kill me.
So I stayed my hand, as tempting as the promise of another Title was.
……
[Title earned: No Longer the Hunted]
[Quest rewards available]
Prompts immediately appeared after my axe split open the blue-skinned Ogre’s skull and splattered blood everywhere, but I hadn’t the energy to read it as I fell to one knee, leaning on my weapon, and gasped for air. I felt like I was drowning, and from the way the Ogre had wielded water techniques, I imagined that it had been her doing.
[https://i.imgur.com/5VdN7ac.png]
‘What a bitch. I mean, I can’t blame her for using an effective fighting style in a world where power is everything, but damn! Slowly drowning your opponent feels evil!’
Thankfully the effects of whatever technique she’d been slowly stealing my oxygen with or whatever ended at the same time as her life did, and my breathing quickly returned to normal.
“You guys okay?” I asked as I exhaustedly rose to my feet, scanning the street-turned-battlefield my friends and I stood on while cycling Chi in a recovery fashion. “No mortal wounds?”
“None… Just broken bones,” Terrence reported squeakily as he lay on the driveway he’d fought on, uncaring of the fact that he was just a foot away from not one, but two bleeding, alien corpses.
I turned to scan Kylie for injuries, seeing as she wasn’t responding despite having only been bruised by a rock-throwing spell or two.
“Kylie, wake up!”
She looked up from staring at her bloodied hands, which had been hurt when a rock projectile broke her acoustic guitar, causing the wooden shrapnel to cut her hands.
“I’m fine,” she insisted softly, despite the shell shock in her eyes.
I winced when she didn’t look up at me.
‘This is bad. I thought she’d be fine considering how enthusiastically she killed all those spirit beasts, but this…’
I gulped at the sight of my friend who was rethinking everything after just helping us kill our attackers, and lumbered toward her before dropping my axe as I wrapped her in a hug.
“They chose to kill us for profit, Kylie,” I whispered as I pressed her head into my bosom and caressed her hair. “This has always been how people functioned, and there will be countless more greedy assholes who hurt others for their own benefit. If we don’t step in to protect the weak, who else will?”
Kylie didn’t say anything as she accepted my embrace, wrapped her arms around my waist, and trembled softly. I rested my chin on her head and gave the girl all the time she needed.
“Umm, can I join?” Terrence asked with a wry smile not thirty seconds later, having stood up and ambled toward us, favoring his right leg. I almost told the boy off for not seeing what I was doing until Kylie raised her tear-streaked face to nod at him, opening her arm to include him.
The three of us stood there in our hug as civilians and a fellow cultivator watched nervously, unsure of what to do now that the fight was over. Just looking at them irritated me until I remembered how much stronger we were than them, and more importantly how glowing Chi circuits had floated in front of them when they’d gotten within a certain range of our fight. Even if they’d wanted to help us defeat our Hunters the System would have prevented them from doing so, I speculated.
After several minutes Kylie finally pulled away and wiped her face clean before giving Terrence and I pained smiles.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” she apologized in almost a whimper. “I just… I’ll get better. I’ll…get used to…killing people.”
I puckered my lips and shut my eyes tight for a moment, calming my heart. This was no time for tears. Our soft friend only needed encouragement.
“Do…arachnophobes have to feel sorry for how their brains shut down at the sight of spiders?” I asked her carefully. “Some people just are how they are, right? All that matters is that you try. We’ll love you all the same no matter the outcome.”
Terrence nodded enthusiastically. “What Mary said!”
Kylie’s smile lost some of its pain as she gave us another quick hug before she bent over to pick up the scattered pieces of what used to be Angelica—her guitar—and Terrence and I returned to the enemy corpses. As I looted the blue-skinned pugilist woman’s body whom the other enemies had called an Ogre and who had a build similar to my own but taller, I looked over my rewards.
[Titles]
No Longer the Hunted: For every Hunter you slay you gain more rewards. +3 Attribute Points.
[Quest complete: Survive being hunted by a fellow cultivator of Yorgefan. You may choose two rewards.]
[ > Power-appropriate weapon. Customizable design < ]
[ > Case of generic training medicines < ]
[ > Rechargeable power-appropriate defensive treasure < ]
[ > Case of healing medicines < ]
Seeing the rewards improved my mood, at least.
“Yo, Terry, what be your options?”
He looked up at me in confusion before his eyes unfocused for a moment.
“Healing medicines, weapon, defense technique, and holy shit an introduction to Chi circuitry!”
“Get those last two. I’ll get medicines and whatever the training medicines are. Our local healer’s kinda shit.”
Terrence nodded, but still added with a shrug, “It’s not his fault he’s super old and weak.”
“True, but doesn’t change the fact that we need those medicines.”
“Then maybe I should also get a crate? Double the resources for when someone inevitably needs them, after all,” he suggested with a sad sigh.
“I’ll get the healing crate too,” Kylie muttered from where she sat amongst Angelica’s remains.
“See? We’ll have plenty of meds. Get the technique and the book. You went into engineering for money, right? Well, I’m sure the multiverse always has need for more Chi circuit technicians or whatever.”
Apparently Terrence didn’t hesitate another second because a book immediately appeared in his hands and he began giggling. I nodded before returning to frisking the corpses. I sure as hell hadn’t missed how the aliens pulled weapons out of their clothing.
……
‘Everything he’s done and said since he came back out of the forest bleeding and smiling that day has been outrageous.’
I sat on the roof of my car watching my ex-employee fell trees with a single swing of the polished yet simple sword he said was gifted to him by a “catboy”. I could now sense Chi but hadn’t yet fully become a cultivator, and even I could feel that something was different about the boy since I last spoke to him less than an hour ago. His aura had grown even denser despite the fact that his Chi was no stronger than his friends’, and the way he wielded that simple sword was nothing like how he wielded the mace. The mace hadn’t felt like it could cut me just by looking at it.
‘Yet he backs everything up with results,’ I finished the thought.
It was just utterly ridiculous that some random kid like him who probably wouldn’t have done anything above average in his life…so quickly became one of Humanity’s strongest members and our tiny community’s best hope for survival. Perhaps we would have fought through this first beast wave no matter what, considering it hadn’t been anywhere near overwhelming, but the Lord of Yorgefan had said that most small pockets of civilization would die out because of the waves eventually, even if it took a few months. Yet we were completely safe so long as Niko didn’t leave us, or worse…get himself killed.
Which was exceedingly more likely than one might first think despite how much power he had at his disposal. The boy could effortlessly clear hundreds, maybe thousands of trees within half an hour, move so quickly that he could kill you from 100 feet away before you even blinked, and was so durable that he jumped off the store roof and landed on his head without a scratch, even laughing afterwards.
Yet he had given a Goblin wizard with a similar level of power the opportunity to capture him and apparently just now went out of his way to keep an enemy alive despite them trying to kill him with everything they had. And tomorrow or the day after he planned to leave for an established Race’s territory after waiving his right to protection from them. Though, to be fair, he insisted that he could only enter their territory because he opted out, but I didn’t believe him and wouldn’t until I confirmed the information myself, somehow. I suspected it was just a flimsy excuse to complete his Quest.
Or maybe the Quest wasn’t real, and he just wanted to explore. I didn’t know. All that mattered was that he wanted to risk his life yet again, despite his life meaning so much more than what it had a few days ago. Why couldn’t he be satisfied with the amount of power he currently possessed? He was basically Superman minus the flight and eye beams, all while still at Level 1 and with just Early Dao Specks, when the Lord had mentioned Specks being able to upgrade from Early to Middle to Late to Peak.
He had so much room to grow and it wasn’t enough? What was even his goal? He seemed to have all the power he needed, yet he continued chasing more at the risk of his life…for what? Potential dangers he might have to fight off? Sure he’d learned that the established Races posed threats to Humanity, but that wasn’t until far in the future—50 years, according to him. And the as-yet-unknown Race placed here at the same time as direct competition to us wasn’t even very likely to be too great a hurdle for us if what he’d learned about Goblins and Ogres was true, so why bother?
As I saw it, if all this craziness were analogized to Earth before the “System apocalypse”, then Niko had won a ten million dollar lottery. But instead of putting several million in his savings and spending the rest to enjoy his youth like a normal person, the boy was throwing cash at every investment opportunity in sight no matter how risky it was! Sure, the possible payout was far beyond what he’d won by luck, but why wasn’t he satisfied and what did he need that much money for? When $10,000,000 could easily support him and his entire family for the rest of their lives and leave a bit to accumulate wealth for his kids, why was he putting it all on the line?
It just didn’t make sense to me, despite overhearing him talking to his friends about how Yorgefan was just the first and smallest stage. I knew he wanted to go farther, to go higher, but why and where? Why was he so sure that whatever was beyond Yorgefan was worth endangering himself now? Just for kicks?
What if Niko was the only Human at his level of power right now, and he went and got killed by the Goblins? We might be fucked all because he was too ambitious! The competing Race would stomp us! We might become slaves! And even if they didn’t…even if we just barely held our own against them, what next? According to the Goblin Niko had met, Goblin society was militaristic not because they’d been that way on their home planet, but instead because that’s what was required in order to survive in this world. From birth to death, everyone’s mission was to compete against other Races and further their own’s growth. To take more resources the next year than they had the year prior, all so that they might eventually cultivate a fighter so powerful that they changed the course of all their battles until they permanently won and could make their enemies subservient.
If that’s what waited for Humanity upon losing Niko, then I didn’t see how the boy justified the risks he was taking.
I sighed in frustration, wishing that it hadn’t been Niko who got so lucky. Hoping that someone more intelligent could reach his level of power. Praying that I might be able to keep him in check with my plans.
Groaning, I massaged the bridge of my nose.
‘I could really go for some homemade Chola with a Bollywood movie playing in the background.’