With his added strength, digging into the soft clay was as easy as if he’d used an excavator rather than brute force. He was covered in dirt before the end, but in short order, he had a decent sized hole. Logan kept the blankets around Eleanor as he laid her to rest. He was just about to fill it in, when he paused.
Eleanor had cared enough about that damn cat to unknowingly risk her life, and it was a small matter of letting them rest together.
The snake’s corpse had gotten worse over night and stank to high heaven, but he was still able to pull the mangled, crusty tail out of its shredded stomach. Poor Buttercup looked intact, other than the mummification. Wrinkling his nose, Logan held Buttercup’s remains by one hand and then returned to the grave, placing it by Eleanor’s body. By the time he’d pushed the dirt back into the hole and compacted it, he was out of breath despite his increased endurance attribute.
It was done, but at the same time, it felt inadequate. Eleanor must have been loved by her friends and family. It shouldn’t have ended like this.
And it wouldn’t have if Logan had made different choices.
Just like that, Logan resolved to do better. Until he knew more about their new reality, no more believing that he was smarter than a System that could literally read people’s minds.
Logan rested his hand against the trunk of the willow tree, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry, Eleanor,” he whispered.
Underneath his fingers, something moved.
Logan hissed and tried to remove his hand, but it was as if a force had latched onto him, keeping his palm glued to the bark. The trunk grew hot—white hot, so hot that he was convinced his fingers were on fire. Holy shit, he wasn’t going to just lose a toe, he was going to lose his hand!
But just as suddenly as it started, the heat faded and the bark underneath his hand cooled. Cooled too quickly, from one extreme to the next. It was blast-chiller cold!
What. The. Fuck.
Ding!
[Hidden conditions met.]
[You have discovered a Karma Lodestone! While contemplating that your actions have consequences, you have committed an act of restitution: giving back to the dirt what was taken. This is an act of karma.]
[Congratulations, human! By following this path of enlightenment, you are truly defying what it means to be an Idiot! 20 bonus points awarded to Intelligence and Wisdom.]
[You have been granted the skill, Life Cycle! This rare skill allows you to control the life cycle of a tree from sprout, sapling, mature to rotting. Each stage increases per skill level. Karma credits will be awarded based on carbon capture calculations.]
Logan swallowed, feeling overwhelmed. Eleanor had died. It had been Logan’s fault. Being rewarded for having regret, for resolving to change? It felt like a cheat. If the System wanted to reward him, why couldn’t it bring Eleanor back instead?
Logan had no further chance for thought. As soon as the message faded, his hand came loose. He shook it, checking his palm for burns, but his skin looked fine. That was all the time he had before a wave of something indescribable rushed through him. Logan could only liken it to being injected with twenty shots of expresso. He was alert.
And the world was different.
It was only now that he truly understood how insignificant he was in the universe, like a speck of bacteria growing on…
Like a speck of bacteria growing on…
On….
Just as quickly, the feeling faded, and with it went his understanding.
What the hell? Was that what an upgrade of wisdom and intelligence did? If so, he wasn’t sure he liked it. Puzzled, Logan looked at the weeping willow. Where he’d laid his hand, the bark had transformed into a stone the size of his palm. It was as if a shiny, metallic stone had been etched into the trunk.
Cautious, he inched closer, holding out his hand. Logan felt a force pulling, some kind of power, and with a pop, the cufflinks in Jack’s shirt ripped out of the cuffs and flew at the stone. They slammed into it like a piece of metal clinging to a magnet.
Weird ass shit.
Logan gave the weeping willow a wary glance, but it didn’t do anything else, and the cufflinks continued to cling to the stone. This just got weirder and weirder. Using his thumb and index finger, he grabbed each cufflink, pulling on them. They resisted at first, but like a magnet, they eventually gave away. Logan pocketed the cufflinks and then stared at the hand-sized stone in puzzlement.
If this was a ‘hidden’ Karma Lodestone, it had to be something good. It sounded good. He still felt guilty for having it in the first place, but in this new world, he needed to take what advantages he could get. Logan just had no idea what to do with it.
He cleared his throat. “System, power the Karma Lodestone.”
Nothing.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t power… maybe it needed to be opened. “System, open the Lodestone.”
The branches of the weeping willow danced in the breeze, tiny wisps of mist falling on his face.
For fuck’s sake. “System, enable the Lodestone!”
More mist. Sighing, Logan rested his hand against the trunk of the tree. Well, at least he’d iconized his handprint. It was an exact replica and it fit it to a…
[Welcome, Idiot! Entering the Karma Lodestone Menu.]
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
[What would you like to buy?]
Holy shit, jackpot! He had been overthinking it the whole time. The stone acted like a touchscreen and all he needed to do was press his palm to activate it.
The whole thing was weird as shit though. Instead of looking at a touchscreen, the message appeared in front of his eyes like all the other System messages. And if he was seeing a direct correlation between it and the System messages, they had to be related.
“Who are you?” he said to the tree.
[What would you like to buy?]
“Are you an alien? Were you made by someone on Earth?”
[What would you like to buy?]
“Why are you trying to kill us?”
[What would you like to buy?]
Sighing, Logan gave up. “What do you have available?”
[….WEAPONS. CLOTHING. FOOD.]
Logan perked up, his excitement returning. If this thing could give them food like some kind of tree-fridge, it would be a game changer. Going across the lake to the convenience store would be a temporary stopgap, but they would soon run out of food again. Weapons may also come in handy. He was fond of his new baseball bat, but it wouldn’t last forever.
“Show me the food options,” Logan demanded.
[Sufficient KarmaCoin required to purchase food options. Conditions not met.]
What? Shit, that was the currency listed on his stat sheet. Unless he missed his guess, he was broke. “Okay, show me the weapons then.” Even if he had no money, it would be useful to review what was available to plan for the future.
[Sufficient KarmaCoin required to purchase weapon options. Conditions not met.]
Piece of shit System! Why grant him access if it made it impossible to purchase things in the first place? Wait a minute. Logan had lost his wallet in the car explosion, but he was sure Jack had money. The man was loaded. “Can I convert currency for KarmaCoin?”
[Query not understood.]
“Canadian dollars?” Or wait, credit cards could convert to other currency. “American dollars? Euros?”
[What would you like to buy?]
“Asshole!” Logan kicked the tree trunk and then promptly regretted it, forgetting that he was barefoot, the skin over his partly healed missing digit tearing open. “Fuck! Fuck!” He jumped up and down as a thousand needles stabbed into him at once. That was ten time worse than stubbing your toe. Friggin’ agony!
Ding!
[Idiot’s Paradox is Level 3!]
Just great. That skill would drive him crazy, as if the System were taunting him each time. It only increased whenever he hurt himself, emphasizing his stupidity with each level increase.
That reminded him. He’d been so overwhelmed with grief that he’d forgotten about the level up message during the fight with the squirrel. He had five attributes that he needed to allocate. After the lodestone bonus, intelligence and wisdom had to be respectable, with over 20 points in each, so they wouldn’t need any help for a long while. With the daily increases to endurance, agility, and strength via his cheat method, that left only two attributes that were falling behind.
Logan made the changes:
[Dexterity: 6+]
[Dexterity: 8]
[Perception: 6+]
[Perception: 7]
He figured that dexterity had to be more important than perception in a fight, so he threw three points there first and then a token two into perception so it didn’t fall too far behind.
Once he confirmed the changes, he immediately regretted not throwing the entire five points into perception. Everything had gained clarity. It wasn’t just his eyesight, although that had improved as well, but more an overall increase to his awareness. Logan could hear the waves cresting against the beach, the splash of water as a fish broke the surface of the lake and jumped back down into the depths, the wind rustling the leaves of the willow. It was a hell of a warning system.
As for dexterity, he flexed his fingers, and then had a sudden manic need to tie string into knots or work a tension ball… until the feeling faded away.
It was time to do a full review of his stat sheet:
Name: Logan Hart [Hidden Name: Idiot]
Rank: 130,321 out of 7,471,138,981
Level: 4
Class: None
Grade: F0
Species: Human
Skills:
* Deepwater Idiot Lv. 1
* Idiot’s Paradox Lv. 3
* Idiot’s Inspect Lv. 1
* Life Cycle Lv. 1
Titles: Eager Beaver
XP Progress: 4300/8000
Karma: 156/156
Intelligence: 26
Constitution: 15
Strength: 13
Agility: 9
Dexterity: 8
Endurance: 7
Perception: 7
Wisdom: 24
Luck: 20
Free Attribute Points: 0
KarmaCoin: 0
Logan looked at his stat sheet, and then looked again, blinking in shock. His rank had gone up massively—from a rank in the billions to the top 100,000s. It had to be a mistake. There was no way an increase of one level and ranking up his intelligence and wisdom attributes could have that much of an impact. There had to be geniuses out there, scientists—hell, spiritual leaders—that started with higher wisdom and intelligence. The only explanation was that the [Life Cycle] skill was swaying the results. Just how powerful was it?
Logan focused on the skill and expanded it like he’d done with the others.
[This rare skill allows you to control the life cycle of a tree from sprout, sapling, mature, to rotting. Each stage increases per skill level. Karma credits will be awarded based on carbon capture calculations.]
Based on that information, he still had no idea how it worked, but he had a nagging suspicion that it was all related to the first message everyone had received upon System Integration. The System considered humanity a plague, and if it had blown up all the cars and referenced carbon, [Life Cycle] had to be some kind of environmental schtick.
Just perfect, now it wanted him to be a tree-hugger.
Logan had never cared about all the environmental crap. Sure, he recycled like any good citizen, but all the other stuff? Hell no. Maybe that made him a bad person, but when you were struggling to pay the bills, larger concerns like the fate of the planet were best left to others who had more time and money on their hands.
But what quirked his interest most was the mention of KarmaCoin. A skill that gave him money? He’d take it. Especially if it gave him access to the tree-fridge.
Logan minimized the skill and… wait a minute.
There was something new on his stat sheet: Karma: 156/156
What the hell did that mean?
He needed to figure this—
His increased perception picked up a tremendous boom in the distance. Logan couldn’t see anything; the skies were still blue, but something far away in the sky had just blown up.
Ding!
[119,191 pollution contributors: aircraft, have been purged from planet Earth. Do not attempt to assemble additional aircraft unless they are retrofitted into non-carbon emitting devices.]
[Good news, human! Due to the elimination of the pollution contributor: aircraft, your ranking has increased.]
[193,880 humans have been eliminated—]
[Recalculating…]
[363,682 humans—]
[Recalculating…]
[462,913 humans have been eliminated.]
[Current rank: 130,020 out of 7,470,674,982]
[You are currently in the top 1%.]
[Advance and grow.]