Dealing with the venomclaws has gained me another level and a few for Min-Jae, who I had to carry back, thrown over my shoulder.
Even though all of my stat investment is in the best stat, my body is quite powerful, so I barely feel his weight. I wonder how much I could bench or deadlift right now. Maybe I should test it one day just for fun. A ton? Half a ton? Probably more?
During the tournament, I noticed a number of people from Hard difficulty having trouble getting used to their bodies. They kept hurting the much weaker residents of Easy Difficulty by mistake, for example, by nudging them with an elbow. There were quite a few broken limbs and the like. Some kept constantly destroying things like doors and cars, while some of the people from Easy had to get used to taking a beating.
Most of the things we find on the floors are made from tougher materials, or there happened to be ways to make them stronger. Alloys, trees that tend to be tougher when they grow in a world where ambient mana exists.
It could be said the worlds we visited probably went through hundreds of years of having mana, so it's different.
Meanwhile, Earth's stuff is just weak.
Another difference is control. I barely noticed anyone from Hell Difficulty having trouble. Maybe a bit here or there because of the surprising situation. Otherwise, people from Hell Difficulty tended to have much better control over their strength. They did not bend spoons like some of the other attendees did, and they didn’t usually tend to hurt those weaker than themselves.
It's a difference in talent and maybe in us as well. It’s probably just one more reason we ended where we did, our bodies and minds quickly adapting to our new abilities and increased stats. I can’t help but find the idea fascinating and worthy of study.
That's why it's fun when I lift Min-Jae and proceed to carry him like a little kitten. Some might say an Angry Kitten because of our group name...
He finally regains consciousness when I throw him onto the couch, which is a stone slab with a few furs and pieces of cloth covering it.
“Fuck...” he mutters, his very first word after awakening.
“It was fine,” I deflect with a wave of my hand.
“Did you kill all of them after I passed out? There were thousands.”
“That’s such a dumb question. And no, I left a few alive to track with my anchors. I’ll check on them later, just in case they have some hidey hole with more of them.”
He slowly sits up, taking care with every movement, as if he were getting over a hangover. A common side effect of mana depletion and overuse.
Before he can speak, I ask, “Tell me, has Tess mentioned anything about a difficulty change to you?”
He freezes at that but shakes his head, “She just told me she was going to take a more active role in my training because she thinks she can get more out of me. But I heard about your deal with Dennis and Aaron. Would you really make them change difficulties?”
“Yup.”
“Just like that?”
“Would you prefer them dying here if we were to be separated again?” I ask curiously.
“What? No. Hell no! I like both of them. I just thought there would be a different way. You, Tess, and Lily are all very strong. We could…”
“Probably. Any of the three of us could help a few people survive but then would come the next floor, maybe the system will split us up again, just like it did this time. What do you think would happen to them if they were left here alone?”
“I know. I just don’t like it.”
I’ve noticed the way some people, especially those from the lower difficulties, tend to romanticize the tutorial and the system. It's not necessarily bad to have fun with it and everyone has to find their own way through it, but they still shouldn’t underestimate the system and the sheer level of fuckery that can take place on any of the floors. And they should definitely throw out the rose tinted glasses.
We still have several years left, so they’ll see when the other tournaments come around.
And it’s on that note that I give Min-Jae my response, “Then you need to get stronger so you can do whatever you want. This isn’t Earth, you have the option.”
Silence ensues for a while as I begin my training with the orbs according to my schedule, and he watches me.
After half an hour, he asks the question I’m sure he’s been pondering for a while, “Aren't you worried about your sister?”
It's one of the dumbest things he’s ever said, I’d bet. Me? Worry about Vic? That’s a joke.
“You saw her fighting Lily,” I tell him instead.
“I did, but anything can happen.”
“Yup, but it doesn’t matter.”
In my mind, I realize my trust in that fact has probably been highly influenced by the way I grew up, looking up to her for such a long time. It's probably illogical and childish. Like Min-Jae said, anything can happen, even to the most powerful of people. Lissandra and Whitey come to mind as examples. They were both very powerful, and yet they both failed: Lissandra, by not becoming the Ruler, and Whitey, by dying on the 1st floor, even though he probably reached deeper parts of the Beyond dungeon.
But Vic is different.
“You said you have siblings; what difficulty do you think they’d get?” I ask.
The boy hesitates for a moment, “If you asked me before, I would have said Hard difficulty, but I don’t know now. I would never have expected to end up in Hell.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Your parents would probably be disappointed in them if they failed to get into Hell difficulty and progress to Beyond. Just imagine if they wound up in Easy,” I prod.
The joke doesn’t seem to land though, and he just nods with a weak smile. The room becomes awkwardly quiet.
Tess, help.
----------------------------------------
The other day, I let Tess’s lightning hit me. It's not enough to cause any serious damage, it’s just enough to make the experiment work. I feed the glove on my right hand with mana and let myself be led by the item as before in the fight against Whitey.
Yup, it was definitely a fight.
I fought. I didn’t get steamrolled.
The glove activates, and I return fire with a similar bolt of lightning.
“So what do you think?” I ask.
“It's not Primordial lightning for sure. It's weaker too; we still need to test it a few more times, just to see how much weaker it is. And though I feel like it’s trying to mimic Primordial lightning it can’t quite pull it off. Did it have the same problem with Isabella’s flames?”
“No, it copied them just fine. They were weaker of course, but her flames aren’t Primordial energy either. I just don't think it can replicate Primordial energies and does the next closest thing instead.”
“That leads us back to the twin questions of what these primordial energies even are and how they happen to be different from similar abilities.”
“Please let me know when the system tells you.”
“Will do, Nat. So do you think you can make the counterattack stronger than the attack that you’re trying to copy?”
I check the description once again.
Echo Gauntlet (Arcane, Damaged) - The Echo Gauntlet could once replicate any spell or ability it encountered, up to a certain level. Though its power has waned, it can still mimic nearby magical effects with unpredictable precision.
“I think in its current state it can at most equal the power I’m trying to replicate, maybe not even that given the extent of the damage.”
“Any progress on fixing it?”
“No chance. I never worked with the materials involved. I think I can fix or reforge Flamebearer, and I suspect that given enough blood, Bloodthirst can fix itself. But that might require a lot. As for the ring, I don’t think I can do it. I’m not even interested in such cursed abilities.”
“And the golem heart?”
“That thing is weird. I had Sophie test it, and she does so much better with it. She already asked me if she could buy it on credit; she also liked the ring.”
“Imagine Sophie, with her [Manipulation], moving around invisible and attacking out of nowhere.”
“I fucking know, right?! Scary stuff.”
“Please, find some javelins next time you decide to risk your life, Nat.”
“I’ll make sure to look for some. Any preferences for color?”
“Not really, but it should be conducive for lightning and something durable would be nice. Maybe something made from very pure endurium? If you can, try to find a set. Singles aren’t it.”
“Got it. Pink. Low durability and lightning resistance.”
I let the small lightning bolt she sends my way crash into my forearm and then replicate the ability using my glove.
“So what's the plan for the current items?” she asks.
"I’ll keep Flamebearer and Bloodthirst to either fix or resmelt them into new items. I intend to sell the golem heart to Sophie or exchange it for her assistance in the future. I want to experiment with the glove for a bit before I decide. As for the ring, I’m not sure yet. Either I sell it or pass it on to someone in our group in exchange for something.”
“Sounds like a good plan, but Maya will be sad. She quite likes the claymore.”
I shrug, “I’ve sparred with her. She’s much more dangerous when she uses her mana weapons and alters their shapes converting them into a wide variety of weapons. Maybe there’s some kind of conductive metal that she could use to allow for complex changes in shape. Or maybe she can get a skill to help her with that.”
“I agree with you on that one. Still, you can’t blame the girl for liking nice weapons. If you’re ever out on a treasure hunt again, please add some shape-changing weapons to your list along with a pair of javelins for me. Low arcane would be nice, but I won’t complain about mid arcane.”
“Got it.” I let a bit of silence build up, Tess doesn’t seem to mind, letting it slide for the moment.
Out of everyone here, she still knows me the best.
“Are you worried about what’s coming when we split into two groups?” She asks after a while.
“I wouldn’t say I was worried. I just know that there are any number of things that could go wrong.”
“Mind explaining?”
“Usually, you’re the one dealing with them, and sometimes it’s Izzy acting like a knockoff psychiatrist. Dennis, Aaron, and Lily all clearly look up to me and they probably think of me as the leader of our group.”
“And you don’t like that? You don't like the responsibility. Preferring to act like an eminence in the shadows, right?”
“Totally.”
“I think you have a bad tendency to overthink some things, Nat. You always were a pessimist.”
“For a good reason.”
“Yes, for good reason,” Tess agrees. “The idea of you spending the next few months as the leader of a small group sounds scary, to be honest.”
“But?”
“But I think it’ll work out just fine,” she says, smiling.
“Well, I still have two weeks before I need to worry about it. So what’s the next plan?”
“We’re leaving in three days and taking everything we can use with us, after getting all the information we can. As we move towards the central region, we intend to awaken a few powerful hibernating monsters for the purpose of gaining some experience, while doing most of our movement in the day to take out some of the weaker ones.”
“What about after that?”
“There’s a place called The Last Rest, the last ‘safe’ place before we enter the Mana Desert.”
“Huh, what’s with the name? Does that mean that there’s a desert filled with ambient mana?”
“Quite the opposite. It's a plain that stretches for days, where you can't regenerate your mana due to some strange phenomenon caused by an unknown force. The most common theory is that there was a clash between Absolutes before this place was turned into a Prison, or an experiment went awry, or some powerful group was trying to escape this place when something went very wrong, and that’s without mentioning the powerful monster that’s supposedly keeping people away.”
My imagination starts going wild right away.
“I knew it would catch your interest,” Tess smiles. “So yes, fill your crown. We’ve already started filling all the mana batteries we have so we can explore for a bit. A week from now, a caravan is supposed to pass through there, made up of people trying to reach the central region. So be on the lookout for a bunch of dangerous and treacherous people.”