"Yet upon attaining a deeper understanding of the nature of [consciousness], all becomes clear. At risk of [painting in strokes so broad as to ruin the canvas], it can be said to be optimized for solving a single, general problem."
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By now, the ground was littered with corpses, and Alex had to be careful where he walked in order not to trip. Furthermore, the first stake that he had fashioned had snapped in the course of the fight, and he was using the second one already. They were simply not durable enough to withstand the force of his repeated blows at 40 Physical Power. He didn’t have time to worry about this issue, though, because the next wave was upon him. This time, the kaphdor advanced a bit more cautiously. Unfortunately for them, this just meant that Alex had more time to pick them off one by one, and this round left him with fewer cuts than the previous ones. As he killed the seventh or eighth one, Alex felt a tingling feeling when the surge of energy entered his body. He looked at his status screen:
Level: 0 ➕
Energy: 19.0 / 19.0 Lucens (Tier 0)
As he had suspected, he had reached the threshold for the next level. Annoyingly, it seemed that once his energy store was full, any remaining energy would go to waste unless he created physical lucens. Status screen still open in the bottom half of his vision, Alex dodged a blow from a kaphdor, then mentally activated the button to level up. In a moment, his entire body felt like it lit up. He felt his blood vessels expanding, and his lungs felt like they could take in more air. It was a wonderful sensation of peak health, which passed quickly but left him with a warm afterglow. He quickly finished off the remaining kaphdor in this wave, giving him a respite of a few seconds, then took a look at his status screen.
Level: 1
Energy: 2.9 / 22.6 Lucens (Tier 0)
Physical
Mental
Power
44 (boosted) | 12
8
Resistance
40 (boosted) | 8
8
Speed
16 (boosted) | 8
16 (boosted) | 8
Recovery
8
8
Free points: 4
Alex assigned all four points to Mental Speed. This was essentially a battle of attrition. Alex didn’t have much trouble killing the kaphdor, but he was gradually accumulating minor injuries. He needed to be able to dodge these blows, and the main bottleneck right now was that he wasn’t reacting in time.
The fact that he had taken a break after killing half of the previous wave had interrupted the wave pattern, and for the next few minutes, the kaphdor kept coming in a steady stream. The increased Mental Speed was paying off, as he got cut significantly less frequently. Alex also felt himself falling into a rhythm of fighting. While he had practiced wrestling a bit in middle school, he didn’t have any official martial arts experience. Yet after being pushed to his limit in this new world, he was developing his own style. He constantly tried new techniques, slowly figuring out what worked and what didn’t work. Sure, his style was now becoming quite specialized towards fighting kaphdor, but he didn’t need to think of the future for now, if he could survive that long — this was exactly what he needed in the moment.
After killing about two dozen more, his final makeshift stake broke apart in his hands. He had known that this point would come sooner or later. But now, he was pretty much only left with one choice, and he wasn’t sure whether it would work or not. Alex hefted a kaphdor corpse up from the ground, which by now had entire areas matted with a layer of corpses. It must have weighed at least eighty pounds, but with his increased strength it felt quite light. With all of his might, he swung the corpse at another kaphdor. To his relief, both the corpse and his target were crushed, bits of scales and black ichor littering the ground. He would need to find a new rhythm, but it seemed that this brutal strategy was effective.
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After just a few more kills, Alex had accumulated enough energy for the next level. This time, the level provided him with 5 free points.
Level: 2
Energy: 0.0 / 26.9 Lucens (Tier 0)
Physical
Mental
Power
43 (boosted) | 12
8
Resistance
39 (boosted) | 8
8
Speed
16 (boosted) | 8
20 (boosted) | 12
Recovery
8
8
Free points: 5
He noticed that his Physical Power and Resistance had both ticked down; perhaps the pill was already starting to wear off. At this rate, it would be a while before the effects disappeared, but it was still concerning. After some thought, he split the points between Physical Speed and Resistance.
The next level required almost 27 lucens, which he felt he could reach within less than twenty minutes at this rate. Able to move a little bit faster now, he finished off all of the remaining kaphdor around him, giving him another brief respite to take a breath. It was at this point that he noticed the aura emitted by the great beast was weighing on him. It was an aura of pain, of the greatest injustice, the feeling of being wronged, of the deepest unfairness. A sense of shame arose in him, and he noticed that his motivation to fight was decreasing. He wanted to kneel down and repent.
Resisting the urge to give up, Alex pushed through and slew a few dozen more kaphdor in the same manner over the next ten minutes. By this point, he was overcome by a deep sense of weariness, and he felt that each kill was wrong in some fundamental way. He felt the pain of the kaphdor, the desperate urge to avenge their companions. Alex shook himself to try to snap out of it. While it was hard to distinguish his true emotions and the aura of the great beast, he knew he was being influenced. Nevertheless, he needed to do something about it, because each kill was mentally taxing him to a great degree. So he opened the Shop once again. While he had now developed a reliance on the Enhancement Pills for all of his gains, he didn’t really have much of a choice. He purchased another one, and activated it on Mental Resistance — if this didn’t help him resist the effects of the aura, then he could always activate one for Mental Power as well.
As the pill dissolved into his body, Alex felt the pressure lessen by a considerable degree. The giant beast was within a few hundred feet now, and was still moving ponderously towards the protective bubble that enclosed the clearing. He had no idea what to do when it arrived. Until then, he could only continue his dance of death with the kaphdor. Continually grabbing new kaphdor corpses when the previous ones had lost their structural integrity, Alex smashed another ring of the creatures. By this point, the rhythm had returned, and he started to get a heady sense of adrenaline once the pressure caused by the beast had been lifted. The barbaric routine of smashing the creatures was, in a twisted way, cathartic.
For the next hour or so, Alex continued this routine, gaining two more levels. He would never have been able to fight this way before the integration, but the gamified element was extremely rewarding. He felt a tingling to notify him that his energy storage was full, and he checked his status screen once again.
Level: 4 ➕
Energy: 38.0 / 38.0 Lucens (Tier 0)
Physical
Mental
Power
42 (boosted) | 13
8
Resistance
42 (boosted) | 13
19 (boosted) | 11
Speed
20 (boosted) | 13
20 (boosted) | 13
Recovery
8
8
Free Points: 0
He had gained 10 points from those two levels. He had been forced to allocate three more points to Mental Resistance because the aura was once again getting overpowering, and he had invested the remainder in the attributes in which the boosts were wearing off in order to maintain his rhythm.