Jordan woke up with a loud, prolonged yawn. Sleeping on a concrete floor would have normally been a terrible experience. But when the floor had something heating it from beneath, and one was exhausted from a long and hard day, it’d been a rather heavenly experience. And, of course, what better to follow a good night of sleep than a very pleasing list of notifications to immediately see upon waking?
Experience Earned!
+24 EXP
Experience Earned!
+24 EXP
Experience Earned!
+24 EXP
…
Experience Earned!
+39 EXP
Over the night as he’d been sleeping, his drone had gone on something of a murder spree. Which is precisely what he had ordered to do, after all. Before going to sleep, Jordan had summoned and told the drone to just keep driving around in random directions within its max range. From there, it just had to ignore anything he’d consider friendly, which were just other humans, and then shoot anything else on sight. That instruction had now led to the rather pleasing sight currently before him.
EXP: 1964/2025
Exactly ten Level 2 creatures and one that was presumably Level 3 had taken him so close to the next Level. All he needed now was three more of those Bark Snakes to cross the final gap and get him there. Since the drone was still on its patrol for more creature murder, hopefully that would come sooner rather than later.
Jordan stood up and stretched. Despite the physical exhaustion from yesterday and sleeping on concrete, he felt less sore than he would have expected. Not that he would complain about it, but it was a bit surprising when considering everything that happened before he finally got to lie down.
Now, why had Jordan been willing to sleep without his drone’s guard? Since if it was out hunting, that obviously meant that it couldn’t have also patrolled and protected the area around his base. Well, it was a risk, but one that had been at least somewhat mitigated.
When Jordan finished stretching, he glanced around the area he’d chosen to sleep in. It ended up being up on the sixth floor of his base. Multiple stories up from the ground level, with at least one floor between him and direct access to the roof. While the lack of a door still meant anyone could have walked it in, it at least protected him from any animals that couldn’t climb the ladder.
And if people had arrived and started moving around without knowing where he was, they would hopefully have made enough noise to wake him up. That part had been the biggest worry about sleeping without his drone’s immediate protection, but it seemed to have worked out well for him in the end. Anyway, now was the time to relight the fire and get started on breakfast.
As Jordan climbed down the ladder, he was curious about the current time of day. It was hard to say exactly what time it was and how long he’d been resting. So, before anything else, he checked one spot that might provide a bit of assistance before he reached the ground floor and went outside.
Time remaining for this Quest Series: 364 days
“Well, I’ll be damned, it actually updated. But in that case, let’s see if it’s afternoon yet,” Jordan mumbled while climbing. If this became his daily routine, at least he wouldn’t need to worry about a lack of morning exercise to keep his muscles warmed up.
When Jordan walked outside the building, the warmed air from hours of daylight greeted him. Overhead, the sun seemed to have reached just a bit past its midpoint. It was maybe just an hour or so past high noon right now, if he had to make a guess.
Huh, I probably overslept, but that’s a pretty big difference in how far into the day we already are. But, if we really started in the exact middle of the day yesterday, then sundown was only about four hours after that. So, assuming that the night is also the same length, it means that a full day-night cycle on this planet is only 16 hours. Considering that I didn’t end up sleeping until it was already pretty deep into the night, the current time actually makes sense.
Being asleep for that long did mean plenty of time for things to change, however. So as Jordan prepared to light the fire and get some more water boiling, he decided to see how the different leaderboards had updated since he’d last checked on them. First, just because it was the latest one he had unlocked, he started by opening the Kingdom leaderboard.
Mightiest Kingdom:
1: Golden Empire of the Eternal Golden Prince (Rank 1)
2: Golden Empire of the Eternal Golden Prince (Rank 1)
3: Kingdom of Clan Qorath’zyrunch (Rank 1)
4: Vervina’s Heartland (Rank 1)
5: Golden Empire of the Eternal Golden Prince (Rank 1)
…
8: Industry (Rank 1)
So far, so good. The fact that nobody had jumped to Rank 2 seemed like a pretty safe bet that the exploit he thought of actually didn’t exist. Because there was no way that he would have been the only one to think about it, anyone who could have abused it almost definitely would have done so.
Other than that, the total number of Kingdoms had expanded a bit. There were now a total of 20 on the leaderboard, so the Quest was somewhat surprisingly still ongoing with five spots remaining. As for the faction of Golden Empires, there was now a fifth instance of them at number 18 on the list. He assumed that, more likely than not at this point, there would be six of them when all 25 Mandates for the Quest were claimed.
And then we’ll see what happens after that. The Quest only started after someone claimed the first Mandate super quickly, and only acted as a guide toward the nearest one from you. So unless there really are only 25 in total, there might be more around after the Quest wraps up. Guess it’s just a matter of waiting to find out if a 26th Kingdom ever shows up, Jordan thought.
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As the fire started to come back to life, he went ahead and refilled the helmet with a fresh batch of water to be hung from the spit. While doing so, it gave him an idea. Well, two about the same concept, technically.
Hmm. It’s been a day or so. How are the Rabbits holding up in the pocket space? Jordan asked as he pulled one out. The bones from last night’s dinner were still also in there, because why waste anything that can be used for today’s testing?
But when he inspected the Rabbit, it seemed to still be okay. He wasn’t immediately hit by the stink of rotting flesh, so that was a good sign. Pulling out the sword, he repeated what he did last night to deskin it. Then inspecting the meat without the layer of skin and fur hiding it, it also still seemed to be good.
Right, now let’s try bleeding it out again. Maybe I screwed up by cutting off the feet, when it’s supposed to be the head? Jordan asked himself as he brought it to the same tree as before to hang from. Also using the same arrows to this time pin it by the feet, he swung the blade and lobbed off the head. Leaving it bleed out, he returned to the campfire to actually try something.
From the fire, Jordan reached for one of the outer sticks. He grabbed it, and then proceeded to throw the flaming piece of wood into his pocket space. Jordan wanted to see if it would still be on fire after waiting a little while before pulling it back out. If it was still on fire, then that would be pretty good proof that being in the pocket space must hold an item in some sort of stasis.
And as for the Transmuter inside his base, how would it handle a burning stick? Fire was a chemical reaction, not an actual element or “thing” that would be considered a material. But in a world where magic already threw normal physics out the window and into the dumpster, he was curious to see what the machine would do with it.
Anyway, testing could wait until after breakfast. He wasn’t in a rush, so as much as the nerd within wanted to say otherwise, taking care of himself still took priority. As the water started to come to a boil, he took off the helmet from where it hung. At the side of his vision, he had already pulled up the next leaderboard to browse.
Mightiest Individual:
1: Wilfred Wilbur Wyndham III (Level 7)
2: Carl Rowe (Level 6)
3: Zorliay Qorath’zyrunch (Level 6)
4: Yvaro Qorath’zyrunch (Level 5)
5: Sebastion Ironclaw (Level 5)
…
48: Jordan Joyner (Level 4)
Aside from being knocked down by a couple dozen places, there wasn’t much to say about the top spots. As for the total number of people who had at least reached Level 2, the figure had ballooned like crazy.
To see it, he went down to the very bottom of the leaderboard. Something that he thankfully didn’t need to scroll through. Because when Jordan wished that he could just get there without manually scrolling, the System decided to come through and just immediately update it to the last one in the list. So that was definitely something.
15,721,054: Zhang Wei (Level 2)
Yep, in the approximately 16 hours since the Merger began, over 15 million people had reached Level 2 or higher. Which was honestly fair, considering how quickly he had managed to do so. Out of billions of people and how relatively little Experience it took to get there, he was honestly a bit surprised that the number wasn’t higher than it was.
But at the same time, who could even guess how many people were at Level 1 but had at least made at least some progress so far? Perhaps by the time tomorrow came, that listed figure would be at over 50 million or even higher as people got more and more used to their new reality. However, Jordan did use the somewhat annoyingly hidden function of just getting to command the leaderboard to search different spots to try one more thing.
Show me Sophia Joyner, my mom. He had to try it, at least once. Despite what he had told himself last night about their chances of survival, willfully not knowing would kill him if he didn’t try to find his loved ones after seeing just how many had been added to the leaderboard.
However, there was no response from the System. He then tried just a random name he’d seen while looking at the top two dozen or so, and focused on them. In response, the leaderboard immediately jumped back up that spot. This proved that the search wasn’t the problem; she was just not there to begin with.
Naturally, he then tried his other friends and family too. Once again, the result was nothing. His morning now feeling considerably worse than it’d started, he decided to skip checking the Mightiest Slayer leaderboard for now. All it’d say was that a lot more people had decided to keep going on murder sprees and kill one another for the benefits the System provided for it. One didn’t need to keep active track of those numbers to already know that they would have also explosively increased.
He would likely make checking the Kingdom and Level lists a part of his morning routine. But unless there was some drastic change that was actually of note, he probably wouldn’t call that much mental attention to them. It did seem like the Level leaderboard had slowed down in terms of the top five, after all. So now it was just the growing number of total people on it that would likely be of note.
Before the water finished cooling, Jordan went ahead and took a sip. Like the meat last night, it should have been too hot and burnt the inside of his mouth. But once again, he was totally fine and treated it just like a regular drink. Guess it meant that his Stats meant that he truly had become immune to things that would have been hurtful just 24 hours ago. It was hard to say where the current limits of that were, but it was nice to know, nonetheless.
Jordan looked over to the hanged Rabbit. “Huh, been a little bit now, but not seeing a lot bleeding. There was some right after I cut off the head, but I don’t think there’s been that much since. Damn, wish I had taken the time to actually memorize some survival stuff over the last few years. Going off what Dad showed me when I was… what? 12? Can only help that much. I bet that if any decent hunter were here, they’d smack their forehead with how obvious the answer I’m missing is.”
But one couldn’t know what they didn’t know. So unless someone told him, he’d just have to live in ignorance. He did have a couple of guesses, but that was all they were, just probably incorrect assumptions.
“Hmm, you know what? Let’s hold off on the meat-only breakfast for just a minute. I think I just got an idea for my third test,” Jordan said, putting down the helmet after taking another drink. It’d been a few minutes at that point, so he went ahead and pulled out the stick from his pocket space.
And wouldn’t you know it? The thing was still fully aflame, just as he’d put it in. This meant that the pocket space really did put the things inside in some sort of stasis, almost like they’d been frozen in time. So if he had meat and fire, why not throw them both into the Transmuter to see what would happen? He could still picture the fully cooked Rabbit from last night in his head, so that mental image was definitely secured as the basis.
“Right. From here on out, today is about testing and only testing. By nightfall, I’ll have this machine’s rules fully figured out inside from out!” Jordan declared to no one but himself.