Tess, Sophie, Gareth, his right-hand man Adam, Samuel, and I have gathered in the living room, sitting together in awkward silence, but I'm enjoying it.
Everyone else is outside doing their own thing and having fun, but I'm stuck here helping Tess. Though I am eager to learn what kind of silly things they have to say.
Adam, who I remember wanting to have a conversation regarding some of the things that occurred at the end of the first event before the start of the 2nd, is looking at me. Even now he wears the same suit, the older man sits ramrod straight. He seems to be somewhere around 60 years of age going by his face, but none of that shows in his movements.
He moves with as much energy as any young man. That in itself has some interesting implications. How might the system influence someone, let's say, 100 years old?
Just throwing a few levels and stats into boosting their constitution would probably go a long way toward improving their life. Even Lily alone is more than capable of making some level of improvement. In the end, even an old man could be brought back from the edge of death and fully rejuvenated.
Now that I think about it, could Lily heal things like cancer and HIV? What about genetic diseases and PTSD? Wait, wouldn't Sophie be better for mental problems?
It's an interesting train of thought.
Now back to the present, I meet Adam’s gaze. According to Tess, Adam is one of the richest men in Germany or something like that. Who cares, I bet I have more shards. And it's not like money will be all that useful when we return to Earth.
“Sset, I would like to ask you to reconsider once again. I know you don’t like Samuel, but I do not think he is wrong,” Gareth says.
“No, I’ve said it all before, Group 4 isn't interested in following your stupid rules. I know what Samuel is trying to do and what he’s hoping to accomplish with this petty show of authority, it won’t end with the tournament,” Tess answers in a calm tone.
Gareth smiles patiently, “This isn’t about what comes after the tournament, this is…”
“I know,” she cuts him off. “But you need to stop acting like an idiot. And you, Samuel,” she turns to him, “you’re too weak to be ordering our group around.”
“Yeah, Samuel, don't do that,” I add.
“Noname, this is serious. We need to establish some kind of order here. It’s calmer now, but we still have problems that need to be solved. We need to have rules in place when we return to Earth. Even the slightest touch of our mana has the potential to kill a lot of people.” I don’t like Samuel's tone of voice. As if we should follow his orders because that’s all he’s ever known. He’s the kind of person who always has to do things by the book.
“Why bother? We can leave that for future tournaments and our return to Earth. Some of us, not you Samuel, will be powerful enough to give orders to those from the lower difficulties if you want to keep order.” I say.
Isn't it simple?
“But what about Hell difficulty and Beyond?” Adam asks for the first time, his calm eyes on me.
Tess continues instead, “We’ll deal with that as we go. We might not have a Champion before the tutorial ends but we should have a few candidates to set some ground rules. Plus, we’ll learn more from our experiences in the tutorial; that's what it’s there for, right?”
As the conversation continues, they seem to be taking her more seriously. Tess is only around 20 years old, so even though they’re trying, it's going to be hard for Gareth, Samuel, and Adam to take the young woman seriously right away.
Yet, Tess and, by extension, group 4 cannot be ignored. We have three people in Beyond. We have Sophie and her mind-blending. Now that I think about it, Lily’s a Beyonder too but she’s also the strongest healer in our round of the tutorial, and I don't think that will change. We have Biscuit and Noodle too, and best of all, we have me, hehe.
Group 4 is scary indeed.
“See you later,” I say, already bored of the conversation, and teleport to the anchor I placed on the roof. There I meet Lily, who holds a twisted chunk of flesh, with a finger bone next to it.
“Have you gotten bored already?” she asks.
“Samuel was about to start talking about great responsibility coming with great power. Or call me a teleporting atomic bomb or some other ridiculous thing.”
She smiles, “He’s not so bad, just uptight.”
“Obviously, he would be nice to you, you are very important. But you should watch how he treats people from lower difficulties. The man would be happy to declare martial law if he could. But he’s weaker than us so he has to tread carefully when we’re around.”
“The people from Hard difficulty aren't that weak.”
“They’re very weak, Tacita here has already killed Samuel once or twice when he bothered her,” I gesture.
“Tacita here?” Lily turns to the side to find Tacita sitting beside her. She almost jumps out of her skin, surprised by the girl who’s clearly been sitting there for who knows how long without being noticed.
“H-how long…” Lily whispers.
“She was there when I got here,” I say and wave at Tacita who returns the gesture while looking at the bone and scrap of heart Lily’s been experimenting with.
“You can't do that! You have to at least let me know when you are nearby!” Lily complains.
Tacita quickly carves her response into the roof.
ʕ◉ᴥ◉ʔ
Well, it’s not like I don’t understand her reaction, “Learned anything interesting from the bone? The guy used to be pretty tough.” I ask Lily.
Lily's eyes shine excitedly as she turns back to me, “Yes! That bone is perfect!" She pauses before asking, "Should I talk in front of her?"
"It's too late for that, she knows a lot of things and already knows most of our names from all of her sneaking around. You guys didn't notice her most of the time."
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"Oh..."
Tacita's hand turns into a blur and she carves something else into the roof.
(；☉_☉)
"It's fine, just don't spread it around."
(￣^￣)ゞ
I gesture at Lily to continue.
"I’ve been having some trouble with the heart though, it's a lot more complex, even as damaged as it is. But with the heart, I could maybe help you with your Therm… with your heart. Not now, but sometime in the future, when we don’t have to deal with that annoying healing aura from the tournament grounds.”
That sounds really promising, it should be possible to upgrade my heart with Lily's help, but I don’t really know how much we can influence my mana generation, honestly, it would probably be at least as difficult as using ambient mana. But maybe we could get it to compress my mana a bit more. Even now it's only around 10 to 20%.
“But the bone is much better,” Lily continues. “It’s fairly compatible with my skill so I should be able to make my bones even stronger. And I should be able to do the same for you. It will take some time given your garbage Constitution, I mean I don't want to hurt you, but we can make it work.”
“There is a question if I want to. I saw some interesting traits that influenced skeletal framework and making them stronger could make it more difficult to use them.”
“We can try to do both, but not here. The healing aura is annoying and heals me before I even make proper changes.”
I start thinking, “Maybe we will be able to make some nice stuff for group 4 together. We can try to give one of my eyes to the others. If it’s too strong, we can dampen the effects and let them ‘awaken’ gradually. It will probably never be as strong as the original, but a healer on the 5th floor did the same thing for my disciple.”
“That sounds difficult. Oh, I also tried to create a mark to leave on people so that they could heal as needed. The one you told me about. It's really bad right now, but in a few weeks, I should be able to create stronger ones.”
“Thank you for your hard work.”
“No problem! You can get rid of your pathetic healing passive and I will give you a lot of marks.”
My healing passive is trying its best!
While pinching Lily’s nose to punish her, I turn to Tacita, “Do you need something?”
She shakes her head.
“Just hanging around?”
A nod.
“Well, I will leave you guys so you can have some fun together,” I then place an anchor and teleport to the workshop where Isabella’s already waiting.
The little empath stands in the corner over a table, her blue flames melting the metals I gave her and trying to make things from them.
I head over to my table without disturbing her. It's time for me to make a few more items.
----------------------------------------
In the end, I create five more items over the next few hours, and set the starting price higher at 500 shards each, even though the materials for each item only cost me about 50 shards.
I set the auction’s duration at an hour and close the window.
After a bit of waiting, a notification pops up.
The 3rd event - Avatar Confrontation will start in 12 hours!
Everyone from Hell difficulty will have the opportunity to create an Avatar, for which they may set a [Restriction]. The Avatars will be placed in separate arenas.
Hard, Normal, and Easy difficulties will then be able to challenge these Avatars. Each difficulty will have to pay a different amount of shards to challenge the Avatar.:
Easy difficulty - 5 shards
Normal difficulty - 10 shards
Hard difficulty - 30 shards
The Avatars won't have emotions and won't have any memories beyond those required for combat and managing their abilities. The only goal of the Avatars will be to defeat their challengers.
For defeating the Avatar, the challenger will receive suitable rewards according to their performance and the strength of their opponent.
Note: There will be no cap on the number of participants in a challenge.
Note: A Hell difficulty attendee can create a single Avatar, with any [Restriction]. The Avatar in question can be challenged three times at most.
Note: If an Avatar defeats the challengers, the creator of the avatar will receive rewards as well as all the shards paid for the right to challenge the Avatar. The system claims 10% of these shards.
Note: The creator of the Avatar can add additional rewards for beating the Avatar to entice more challengers. The additional rewards can be shards or items. The additional rewards will be lost in case the Avatar is defeated and split among the challengers according to the challengers' performance.
The Avatars can be placed in 12 hours and it will be possible to challenge them during a 24-hour timeframe.
Okay, that's a lot.
Opening the notification again, I jump up to take a seat on the table I’ve been working at and read it again. I'm glad the Avatar won't possess any of my memories or emotions. If it did I don't think I would be willing to set one, not after the 5th floor.
This is not the kind of event I would have expected but it sounds fun enough. The most important things are, Hell difficulty people will place Avatars so there can be 31 Avatars at once, with or without [Restriction]. Each Avatar can be challenged three times, which means people from other difficulties can join up to 93 fights against someone from Hell difficulty.
The interesting part is the lack of restrictions on group size. This means that over 2 thousand people can challenge a single Avatar at the same time, provided each of them is willing to pay.
That makes deciding the level of [Restriction] a bit more fun. Alone, no one from Easy difficulty would be willing to challenge someone like Tess or Lily, but if they create a big enough group and the girls place the right [Restriction], they might get some challengers. Placing additional rewards could also help.
However, there is a bit of a problem for me. A very big one.
Is there going to be anyone dumb enough to challenge my Avatar? Especially after the last event?
Damn.
But it's too soon to give up already. I already have an idea. It's time to make use of the group 4 psyops unit and the uselessly handsome man. Reaching out, I touch the web covering our house and Sophie responds.
(What?) she asks.
(I need you to get the twins and connect with Channeler. Tell him to come here and to bring as many of his friends as he can. Useful ones only.)
(Will do. But what are you planning? You saw the notification, right? You’re screwed.)
(Worry not. I just need you guys to help me with a disinformation campaign.)
This is gonna be fun.