Asthea’s lip curled. “So you show your true colors after all. Where is the Scourge of Arcopotal’s weapon? The picture isn’t yet complete.”
“I’m doing this with my own hands.”
Her hand tightened on the dagger. “So be it, trickster! This is for Arsen! This is for my guards!” Rushing towards him with her teeth bared, her veins standing out on her neck, Asthea held the dagger up with her good hand, sharp edges glinting. Her long hair draped down to her back, clumped together with dried blood, and her blue warpaint running down her face gave her a truly ferocious look.
With a blink, Logan reformed his talons, extending them until they were lethal weapons ten inches in length. They shone with diamond edges, sparkling off the walls of the room. Using his agility and the Pink Sock, he launched himself into the air, slamming into the wall behind her and jumping off the other way, twisting his body in mid-jump, his talons ready to strike.
Asthea had just enough time to pivot around and face him.
She let out a grunt of effort, her blue eyes on fire, her wolf ears pointing straight up as she stabbed with the dagger. Logan felt a pressure, a prickling against his arm, but a pressure only. The dagger wasn’t strong enough to get through his armour.
Unlike her guards, Asthea was forty levels below Logan; missing her True Grit Ring, and missing an arm.
She didn’t have a chance.
Logan slashed her throat with his talons, blood spraying in a torrent.
He came to a landing in a crouch, panting, his talons held up in front of him.
But the picture that met him was undeniable.
Asthea slumped to the floor like a sack of flour, the dagger dropping from her hand and clanging against the stone tile. With a last gurgle, she had just enough strength left to look Logan in the eyes, her eyes full of betrayal and rage.
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 51 Silverthorn female!]
“Fuck!” Logan kicked the wall so forcefully that the tip of his sandstone boot shattered.
Even though it had been necessary, he felt a pang of heartache, and an unsettled feeling rolled in his gut. He couldn’t help swallowing, his throat closing, his eyes stinging as he turned away from the sight of Asthea’s body.
Running a hand through his hair, Logan pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d never wanted it to come to this. If things had been different, Logan thought they could have been good friends.
It was the System who had forced him to this. By giving him a cursed weapon with a bad history. It was no coincidence that the Cursed Rope had ended up in his Tree Fridge. Regardless of whether it was the glitchy AI minion who did it or the real System, the culpability was the same.
Sighing, he eyed the bodies of the guards. There was no way he was leaving them. Who knew how many rings, spatial storage devices, and weapons they had on them. That would come in handy when he found Lara and the kids. Not to mention that Tasha and Jack could use good weapons.
He didn’t know how the trial dungeon worked after the trial was over, but if he left them, who’s to say that the next group wouldn’t stumble over the corpses? That was a quick way to start the very war he’d been trying to avoid by taking out Asthea.
Concentrating on each corpse, he willed them into his spatial storage one after another, throwing in Thorin’s discarded sword, and all the other weapons. He needed to do an inventory, but only after he’d gotten out of here and on more normal, Earth-like ground.
As he thought about returning home, Logan couldn’t hold back a smile tinged with heartache. He was returning to Ernie, back to humanity. It wouldn’t be easy; he knew it would never be easy with the System, but to make progress and escape out of this torture trial was enough to lighten his spirits.
Plus, he wasn’t forgetting his bonuses.
With a moue of concentration, Logan pulled up the System message he’d disregarded.
[In addition, for placing on the All-Time Leaderboard, you will receive a personalized, crafted item from the System. Based on your needs, this reward has been determined to be the most valuable boon possible.]
[A continuous portal generation crystal. A Grade.]
Logan raised his eyebrows. These messages were almost… boring. He couldn’t believe he was thinking this, but if they continued this way—respectful, staid—he might miss the snarky System messages. But there was no denying that the reward was intriguing.
Logan opened his hand. Inside of it was a marble like Asthea’s communication crystal. It was blue and shone with a faint light as if a firefly were trapped inside. If this did what he thought it did… well, let’s just say that it would be a heck of a lot easier to find Lara. For now, Logan threw it into his spatial storage and then removed the item he was the most excited about.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The Perception True Grit Ring.
With the last piece in the set, instead of doubling his physical stats, he’d triple them. The rings would absorb into his body, becoming permanent. Theft proof.
With a grin of satisfaction, he put on the ring and then—
What the hell; what the hell. What was happening to his fingers?! Logan had dealt with a chopped off finger and a severed hand before, but this was as if someone had inserted a metal band onto every finger on his right hand and then tightened them like cranking a wrench. Blood pooled around each ring, dripping down his arm. Then the metal started to melt, melting and burning. [Regenerate] was doing something odd—it was fighting back—healing the injury just as fast as it tried to bury deeper.
Logan hadn’t had a chance to look at his stat sheet in a while, but he had to be higher leveled, which meant he would have leveled up the skill. Whatever was happening had to be making it worse. Finally, the rings overcame his skill and fully dissolved, disappearing into his flesh, each finger healing as if there hadn’t been a problem in the first place.
Logan had a second to take that in before he held on for a hell of a ride.
He felt the molecules of his body reforming. His muscles were being fine-tuned, becoming more corded, that hidden layer of steel underneath turning into a diamond. Screaming, he felt his eyes bulging, the veins underneath his skin pulsing, agony rushing through him as he was reformed anew. Holy fuck, he could swear he’d just jumped up a half an inch!
His perception exploded like a god had just dropped from the sky and clapped his massive hands together to create a percussion thundercloud. Logan’s senses jumped from item to item as if he’d turned on [Life Cycle Master] but rammed it up to a hundred.
Next, his agility ramped up until he couldn’t control himself, jumping from foot to foot and only just restraining himself from activating his pink sock and hurtling towards the ceiling.
That would go hand-in-hand with an endurance boost that made him feel as if he’d been swept up by a hurricane. His heart raced and he felt like zooming around the room like a rat in a race. He felt so energized and jacked up that it was all he could do to stop himself from running through the portal and keep running until he reached Lara.
Lastly, his dexterity made him crack his knuckles, wanting to take everything from his spatial storage and start a juggling bonanza.
Holy fuck.
That had been a rush.
With anticipation dancing in his belly, Logan pulled up his full stat sheet.
Name: Logan Hart [Hidden Name: Idiot]
Rank: 3 out of 6,008,128,837
Level: 95
Class: None
Grade: F9
Species: Human
Skills:
* Idiot’s Paradox Lv. 28
* Idiot’s Inspect 10
* Deepwater Explorer Lv. 3
* Life Cycle Master
* Regenerate 10
* Mimicry Armour Lv. 2
* Universal Language
* Undead Stamina
* Liche Siphon 5
* Foresight
Titles: Eager Beaver; Mass Murderer; Audacious Corpse; Run Until You Drop; Malicious Meat Sack
XP Progress: 120,000/190,000
Karma: 810/810
Intelligence: 135
Constitution: 46
Strength: 116x3* = 348
Agility: 121x3* = 363
Dexterity: 96x3* = 288
Endurance: 147x3* = 441+50% = 662
Perception: 35x3* = 105
Wisdom: 85
Luck: 85
(*Pure Grit Ring)
Free Attribute Points: 255
KarmaCoin: 302,600
He could only gape, not knowing if what he was seeing was real.
It had to be impossible.
Rank three. Rank three out of six billion people! Fucking hell. But when he saw his stats, he could believe it. He’d skyrocketed to level 95; he was ranked F9, just one level away from E Grade. Due to that upgrade, his Grade dependant skills had leveled up. [Regenerate] was now level ten. Holy hell, no wonder it had been so difficult for the rings to sink into his body!
Not only that, but due to his level increases, he still had 255 free attributes to assign. 255!
After the tripling effect of the skill rings, there was only two options that made sense. Once he got back to the real world, he’d need a heck of a lot of Karma to tackle the Save Humanity Quest. If he threw all 255 points into his intelligence stat, he would increase his Karma pool from 810 to 2,240.
Fuck.
That was a huge Karma pool. But at the same time, he might not always be around enemies, which meant that [Liche Siphon] would be ineffectual in certain circumstances. He needed to get his Karma generation rate up.
However, the one thing he did know was that the portal had cost 1,500 Karma. If that ended up being a requirement to exit, then Logan wasn’t taking any chances.
Calculating the math in his head, he allocated his points.
[Intelligence: 136]
[Intelligence: 137+]
[Intelligence: 260]
[Wisdom: 86]
[Wisdom: 87+]
[Wisdom: 215]
He allocated 125 points into intelligence to give himself a 1,560 Karma pool and then put the rest, 130 points, into his wisdom attribute to increase his Karma regeneration rate to 215 per minute.
As soon as he made the change, he was hit with the mother of all upgrades. Gasping, he tilted his face up to the ceiling, and then reeled after scene after scene rushed through his mind, from carrying Eleanor’s body to the willow tree, to fighting the undead minions at the resort, their flower tentacle tongues wiggling, to his fight with the murderers at the cabin. He suspected that the System was showing him the most impactful events of the last week, the things that had stayed with him, shaping him for what was to come.
To first meeting Ernie, to forming a bond and brotherhood with him, to escaping the queen serpent and going through the portal. His grit and determination as he used everything at his disposal to make his way through the trials.
And lastly, his fight with the guards.
Taking one final gasp, Logan looked towards the portal.
But before he could think about leaving and returning to Earth, the System interrupted him.
Ding!
[Good news, human! The daily pollution eliminator purge events are completed. Humanity has now reached the required threshold for Class eligibility. Congratulations!]
[Class rarities will be generated based on how well you advanced and grew during the purge tutorial.]
[Calculating options…]
[….]