32 - Chapter 30

Tasha got ready for bed. It was time to use these quest points to maximise her gains. It was 90 stat points per stat now, meaning it would cost her 720 for every stat point she would add. She had just enough quest points to reach the next major milestone. These purchased stats were starting to get very expensive indeed. To gain plus 7 in every stat would cost her 5,040 quest points total.

She navigated through the usual menus and selected to add 7 to each stat. She made sure she was comfortable before confirming her choice. She received the now familiar prompt.

Stat points needed to reach 50 in all attributes 56 - will require 7 hours to assign.

Please ensure you are in a safe space and a comfortable position before proceeding.

Assign now? Yes / No

She selected to continue with the process and felt the now familiar feeling of her body locking in place. Then came the pain. It didn’t matter how many times she went through the process, she never got used to the pain. Thankfully she soon passed out.

She came to, in the middle of the night. Her body was drenched in sweat. She dragged herself out of bed. This upgrade seemed to have provided her with a substantially larger boost to her previous upgrades. She was struggling to control her enhanced stats, a problem that she had not faced for sometime.

She took slow, deliberate steps, trying to relearn control. She made it into the shower and set it to freezing cold temperature before stepping in. She spent time under the shower getting used to her body again. She was happy that the shower in the suite was massive and allowed her to test all her muscles while staying under the downpour. Slowly, as she regained control over herself, she increased the temperature back to a normal range. She still felt that she needed to retrain, something she would not have the opportunity to do in a serious manner.

She was scheduled to meet Malim Bin Daud for the little show and tell session. She needed to speak to Hanna and let her know what was going on. She dragged herself out of the shower and made 2 phone calls. One was to her intelligence team, asking them to set up an encrypted call with Hanna. The second was to room service, she was famished and needed to replenish her reserves. She ordered more food than she thought she could manage, just to get a variety. Then she went back to doing some exercises while she waited for the either to come back to her.

Her team came back to her first, and told her that the call would be ready for her to take in one of the other suits in around 90 minutes. She confirmed that she would come down at the right time and went back to her exercise.

She only took a break when her room service order arrived. She sat at the desk enjoying the wide variety of meals she had ordered and considered her path forward.

The system had delivered her justice and vengeance both. She certainly felt lighter, more free, but also a little unsure of which direction to move forward in. She could go down the route of following the system directives. She could go down the route of vengeance. She could find a third path. She could not decide what she felt would fit her best. A part of her wanted to dismantle the syndicate, and the vampires for what they had done to her family. She also recognised that she was not the only person impacted by the inequality in the world. Families suffered everyday under injustices just as great as she had. They had no one to turn to, and no resources to fall back on to get their justice or vengeance.

Also, if she was being fair, the syndicate and the vampires were not that much worse than a lot of humans in the negative impact they brought upon the masses. Targeting them for personal vengeance would be satisfying, but hypocritical. She had already been given the opportunity to punish the one directly responsible. If someone in her family had done something similar, would she have helped to cover it up? She didn’t know. Was it even the same situation? From the vampire perspective it was more akin to animal cruelty and not murder. In their viewpoint, the fact that the stupid vampire had created an incident that could reveal them was probably the bigger crime.

Still, understanding their rationale, and agreeing with it were two different things. In the end, she would always be a fattened calf to them, no matter how politely Malim behaved in front of her. If he thought she was a genuine threat, then the entire syndicate would come together to end that threat. Yet, she alone could not take on even Malim, let alone the entire organisation. She also did not feel like this was the path the system wanted her to take. That actually worried her more. The system was clearly preparing her for something and whatever the threat, she could not see how it was less potent than syndicate. It was likely that the threat was significantly beyond the syndicate's level. She had spent enough time in extended training scenarios to realise when she was being led through a complex version.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

She brought herself out of her introspection in time for her call with Hanna. She looked around and realised that she had managed to finish all the food. She did not even feel bloated, just how had she managed to eat that much in one sitting. Were her stats also messing with her metabolism? She would have to see how she felt at future meals and pay more attention.

She left the room service tray outside her room and went down to the suite that had been setup for her call. It was not an easy task to set up a secure room in a public hotel, limited as they were by the equipment that could be carried, and the changes that could be done. She entered a room that was covered on all sides in a thick soft fabric. The fabric was designed to absorb as much of the sound as possible to make it near impossible for anyone to overhear outside the space. There were also several other more technically advanced solutions that had been implemented. Overall Tasha was satisfied with the setup.

There was a satellite phone on a table for her use, and one of the intelligence team led her to it. Then made sure she had privacy before leaving her to it.

Tasha picked up the phone and called Hanna. It seemed like Hanna had been waiting, as she answered on the first ring.

“Good to hear from you.” said Hanna. “I was beginning to get concerned. Whoever was looking into you hit every source we had.”

“I know,” replied Tasha. “It was a good job you were as thorough as you were, otherwise we would have had a problem, and I might not have made it.”

“That serious?” questioned Hanna.

“More than you realise.” replied Tasha. “We are totally unprepared. I learned about what happened to my family, but we can’t discuss it until we meet in person.”

“So you know everything?” asked Hanna. “Or do we keep digging?”

“I am being taken to be read in on the situation tomorrow.” replied Tasha. “The group that cleaned up is apparently split into factions. I have managed to get leverage to potentially learn more. You can stop looking into what happened to my family, but you do need to start looking into the group that cleaned up. Be very careful, I am told that they clean up anyone and everyone who even learns that they exist.”

“That serious?” replied Hanna. “Are you sure it’s not just hype?”

“We don’t have anyone who can take them head on,” replied Tasha. “In fact I have a feeling that one of their agents could do more damage than a battalion of tanks.”

“Just what the hell have you stumbled into?” replied a shocked Hanna.

“What else is happening there?” asked Tasha, changing the subject. “How are my other plans progressing?”

“Things are progressing, though not as fast as you wanted.” replied Hanna. “We should be able to set up some meetings for you when you are back. How did it go on the business end?”

“We will need a team to land here to take over and implement our changes.” replied Tasha. “Most of them signed today already. I have reason to believe that the rest will sign soon. Once Mamat gets everything finalised, I will send Anita the order to process all the payments.”

“Ok, I will tell the rest of the team that we now have a massive mining division in need of managing.” replied an exasperated Hanna.

“I have at least one person here on the ground,” replied Tasha. “I will send you the details, get them vetted, and they can lead the joint operations here going forward if they pass.”

“Ok, what do I tell the team about when you will be back.” asked Hanna.

“Soon.” replied Tasha. “Also if something happens to me then, you need to drop a message to the mysterious organisation that the Daud family were about to read us in on all their secrets.”

“That’s a dangerous place to be.” replied Hanna. “A deadman’s switch is called that because people still end up dead.”

“It’s more along the lines of MAD.” replied Tasha, “Mutually assured destruction.”

“That’s beyond paranoid.” replied Hanna. “The threat from an unknown source is enough for them to sanction one of their own factions?”

“I am assured that in that event, the faction would cease to exist.” replied Tasha. “I hope you understand just how dangerous and fanatical this group is.”

“I am beginning to .” replied Hanna. “Stay safe, and come back soon. We still have a lot to do.”

“Last thing, start looking at high ordinance manufacturers,” replied Tasha. “We will need to acquire some soon.”

After that they spent a few minutes catching up on more mundane matters before hanging up.

Tasha returned to her own suite, trying to plan what she could do to prepare for the upcoming meeting. She would only be armed with knives, as that would be all she could take without arousing suspicion. What other precautions could she take?

Not much more was the answer, anything she could get in a standard shop would likely be useless against the types of enemies she would potentially face. That left surprise as her most effective weapon.

She would just have to wait and see what the day brought her.