“Hey, Haje, hope I haven’t kept you waiting for too long?” Jordan said as he walked up to the stone giant by the portal. One who simply shrugged in turn.
“Not very long, no. But waiting is easy; one must simply do nothing. For my clan, to have time for doing nothing was the reward of a good hunting season. It would take many days before I chose to stop waiting.”
As potentially Speciesist as it might sound, Jordan wasn’t very surprised that someone made from stone was good with patience. Though it was an interesting thing for him to learn about. On the one hand, you had the warrior who clearly sought good fights and the chance to prove himself. And then, on the other hand, was enough patience to be considered the saint of that virtue.
Plus, the way Haje generally spoke felt much wiser than the warrior-like yelling he’d done before they actually met. Yet maybe trying to figure him out was a fundamentally pointless endeavor. After all, it wouldn’t be weird at all for an entirely different Species to be equally different in how their minds and personalities worked in comparison to Human standards. Especially when said Species didn’t even have a brain or other organs filled with chemical hormones, but instead were made of rock and had a core acting as their source of life.
“Fair enough,” Jordan then replied with a nod. “In that case, how did things go on your end? Manage to actually hunt anything down while underwater, like you were hoping?”
“See for yourself,” Haje pridefully said. As the larger being didn’t make any moves for the next couple of seconds, his meaning eventually clicked for Jordan. He wanted him to use Appraise.
Name: Haje
Species: Jabelite (Unnamed Planet)
Guild: Industry
Class: True Master of One
Subclass: N/A
Level: 15 (5)
Grade: D
“Oh! Looks like it. Congrats on a good hunt, then. But just to ask, did you get anything good, like another Skill upgrade at Level 15?” At the very least, it definitely looked like that Haje’s effective Level was basically triple the actual number. So if that trend remained true for when Haje hit Level 10, just as an example, it would then be treated as Level 30 by the System.
“No.”
That was as straightforward of an answer as it got, but the point was taken. With one of his newly collected gems still clutched in his hand, Jordan held it out to Haje. In terms of the highest Grade of a Skill between them, Jordan was still one increment ahead at E4. But now would be the time to change that.
“So, while you were doing that, it turns out the local Mandate was already claimed. While I was looking for it, I came across this group of Crabs…” Jordan then proceeded to give a summary of what he’d been up to. He also made sure to tell Haje about the four people he’d helped out and recruited as a small batch of new members. And most importantly, about the Advancement Crystals the Crabs dropped, like the one currently sitting in the palm of his hand.
“Hmm. If these gems only come from others like us, then I can already see the wars that will be fought over them. Like the beasts that hunted my kind to consume our cores, we will consume each other as well. But if we must hunt or be hunted, then let us remain the hunters,” Haje said as he gently took the gem from Jordan’s hand.
It was this next part that Jordan was honestly kind of curious about. For him, the Advancement Crystal only got absorbed when it touched the inside of his mouth. Yet considering how Haje lacked a mouth or anything else that would be used for “consuming”, he wanted to know how the System would treat the difference in Species.
Looking at the gem for a moment, Haje then pushed it against the front of his central torso. The moment it made contact with his stone body, it disappeared. Haje’s body then shifted as he looked back up. At this point, Jordan simply popped his knuckles as he waited, knowing that it would take his companion a minute to go through the relevant System prompts.
When the stone giant looked back down at him, Jordan went ahead and pulled another Advancement Crystal from his pocket space. Which he then held out as well.
“Here, go ahead take this one too. I don’t know if the number you’ll need for the next evolution will be different with your Class restrictions, but it should say ten. But just to make sure, did it even give you the option to get a new Skill thanks to the crystal? Or did the gem have any impact on the evolution?”
“It did not. The only choice it gave was to evolve my Skill, and that was the same as before.”
Nodding, Jordan had kind of figured as much. He had just wondered if the influence from the crystal would still have any effect, but that appeared not to be the case with his Class restriction. Yet now that he had already invested a penny, Jordan went ahead and chose to put in a full pound. One by one, he pulled out and handed off gems to his companion.
At this point, Jordan mostly wanted to find out if anything special would happen upon getting a Skill’s Grade up to E5. And since that discovery would happen a lot faster for Haje than waiting for himself to either gather more gems or reach Level 11, this was just the chosen approach. Especially since by doing so, even if it were just another regular evolution with nothing unique, it would only make this powerhouse of a friend even more powerful.
Soon enough, Haje then absorbed the tenth and final Advancement Crystal. After handing it off, Jordan took a step back and crossed his arms as he looked up at the stone giant. Like before, Haje was currently looking at the air, clearly staring at a screen from the System that only he could see.
For a few moments, Jordan quietly watched and waited. Though he already knew that the wait shouldn’t be for very long. Due to the way Haje’s Class was designed, the process couldn’t be more streamlined. So it should only be a couple of seconds longer at most before-
Haje’s entire then began to glow. And not in the faint aura of light kind of way, but the sort of glowing that heavily reminded Jordan of how highly radioactive material glowed in the dark. Something which then caused him to subconsciously take a couple of steps back as his eyes narrowed with worry.
“Uhh, Haje, you good? Should I be worried about what’s happening to you, or is this a good thing?” Jordan asked.
The stone giant then looked down at his hand, and inspected it. “I feel… good. Strong, stronger than I’ve ever been. The System did something I wasn’t ready for. After my Skill reached E5, it gave me a new screen that said I could evolve it again, for reaching D Grade. And when I accepted, it gave me another screen saying that having a Skill at D1 now made me a true D Grade,” Haje said, stressing a part that the System must have emphasized in its message.
As he’d spoken, the glowing had steadily begun to die back down. By now it was basically back to normal, though Haje was still looking at his four hands. The stone giant then turned toward the sun as he held up his arms, an action that allowed Jordan to notice something. Aside from the temporary glowing itself, being marked as a “true” D Grade had brought another major and rather physical change.
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“Haje! Your back!” Jordan exclaimed with fully raised eyebrows. “It’s- it’s healed!”
“What!? That is not possible!” Haje replied with a confused tone. He then reached back with his hands, but froze as his stone fingers rubbed against where the massive scar used to be.
With how wide and deep the gap was before, Jordan would have comfortably been able to fit his whole head inside. But now it was pretty comparable to a tiny crack in the sidewalk. It still stood out in contrast to what was otherwise a relatively smooth surface, but now it looked like he would barely be able to fit a fingernail into it. A visual description that Jordan then communicated.
“I cannot believe it, but it must be true. From the time of my ancestors, my people’s wounds have never healed. Every mark of damage against our bodies is the history of our battles. But now… it is like my challenge against the Lord of the Mountain never happened,” Haje slowly and solemnly said.
Jordan sighed as Haje turned back to face him. On the one hand, this was a healing effect and change that must have come straight from the System itself as an intended result. Something that he couldn’t help but be curious about, as he wondered if something similar would also happen to him upon reaching D Grade.
Yet, on the other hand, if it changed something that happened to be culturally important to you, he could understand why that might lead to some conflicted feelings. But rather than just remain silent, he chose to at least offer his own perspective. If Haje didn’t want to hear it, then he could simply say so, and Jordan would respect that wish.
“We can’t say anything for sure until it happens to me. But if the System always does some change to our bodies for being a true D Grade, then that’s a universal experience that we’ll all share. I don’t know if that’ll lead to something I would also consider impossible for Humans like me… yet if that is the case, however, it could be a sign. Maybe even proof that we’re not the people that we used to be, and that this is a different word with different rules. And we should be ready for that as a new chapter in our lives.”
Jordan hadn’t really tried to make his words into an actually good speech, but had simply spoken what came to mind. He at least believed it’d be more genuine that way, than something he carefully crafted like it was something for debate club. Though as far as any sort of argument went, the amount of “ifs” he used just now probably wouldn’t make it the most convincing to begin with.
“Hmm, a new chapter. Yes, you might have a point. Even before this, things have changed. I am no longer the Haje of my clan, but now the Haje of your Kingdom. But enough of that, there is something else you should know. After my Skill’s Grade became D1, the System changed my Level to 18. And with that, I just now went through the message that let it evolve again to D2. And you can see for yourself how that has strengthened me,” Haje explained, prompting Jordan to use Appraise once more.
Name: Haje
Species: Jabelite (Unnamed Planet)
Guild: Industry
Class: True Master of One
Subclass: N/A
Level: 20 (5)
Grade: D
Jordan blinked. Dude. Here I am actually being surprised that there’s a Level 19 monster that sounds like it doesn’t live too far from here. Meanwhile, Haje just dunked on it with an even bigger Level of his own. But if that’s a four times Level boost now, with likely even more Stats per Level, and then the percentile bonus of his Titles… wait. Doesn’t that mean what I think it means?
“Huh, so with that, what would that potentially put your highest Stat at? Like I’m assuming you just got a bunch of Unspent Points, so I’m wondering how high the number would be if you were to invest them all into just maximizing one Stat?” He asked.
“Hmm. I have just now put them all into Endurance,” Haje stated after a moment of silence. “If the System wishes for me to have a body that is healed of its past scars, then it is only right that I make it stronger. To let only the most worthy of foes put a new mark on my stone! But for what the number is…”
Jordan traversed the mountain range, his fleet of drones already spread out to guard a large area around him. Luckily, it was still day, as he had predicted. He just hadn’t been completely confident of that after spending an hour at the beach. This was on a magical planet where the weather and environments could only be described as impossible, after all. So there had been no guarantees that time wouldn’t also be screwed up, especially when portals allowing one to travel across the world in an instant were involved.
Speaking of the weather, the wind had picked up with a fair amount of snow. That and more of a general fogginess in the air led to a severe decrease in visibility. Thankfully, that wasn’t really an issue for Jordan in terms of navigation. He’d just ordered the land drone acting as his ride to head back to the other gateway, and it was now doing so in what felt like the correct direction. But it did mean slowing down a bit to traverse the terrain more safely, which just gave him more time to reflect on his last conversation.
Haje’s Endurance was currently in the low 700s.
That put it at almost ten times the value of Jordan’s own highest Stat, an even 80 in Wisdom. It was a number so far beyond anything he’d grown familiar with in the time spent with the System so far; Jordan simply couldn’t fully wrap his mind around that. Just the number of Levels it’d take for him to catch up by constantly dumping every Unspent Point he could into min-maxing Wisdom would be ridiculous. Enough so that he hadn’t even bothered with actually doing the math for that figure, even if it’d be a simple thing to quickly figure out in just his head.
Perhaps it was because of his rather absurdly high numbers that Jordan hadn’t been surprised with how their conversion had ended. He’d naturally gotten Haje up to speed on things. Something that included telling him about the shared Guild inventory, the Level 19 Elemental, and other details learned during their relatively short time apart.
Haje, of course, had ended up focusing primarily on that middle bit. So the second their talk winded down, the stone giant had straight toward the approximate direction of the monster. The way he moved could have only been described as one degree under someone going for the Black Friday sale of a plasma TV, at least back when that kind of thing was actually a deal worth throwing punches over.
Jordan had just left him to it. He had also wished him good luck, but he didn’t really think that Haje needed it. Compared to someone that the System effectively considered Level 20 in pure Levels, but separately had Stat boosts putting his Stats per Level at a far higher pedestal, a Level 19 monster just didn’t seem very impressive. If Jordan could kill creatures that were above him in Level, then he honestly couldn’t see a world where Haje had trouble with something a whole Level below him.
Though Jordan did look forward to learning how much the Elemental Lord dropped in Experience Points. While sticking around and sending his drone over to assist had obviously come to mind, he had ended up deciding against it. Better to let Haje have the total amount of Experience from the fight and-
Ah, dang it. I should have asked those guys about what their Experience from the Crab looked like. Since I got the full amount, and was the one who did the actual kill shot. But two of them also did some damage. So did they get the full amount too, partial for contributing, or is it even something like only the actual killer takes all? Jordan asked himself, as these rides were always a good time for sudden thoughts to pop into his head.
When Jordan soon arrived by the portal leading back home, it gave him a chance to do something. Before he did the thing of manually lifting and sending his land drones over, he took out a piece of paper and scribbled something down. During their earlier conversation, Jordan had also confirmed that like the Crabs, Haje could indeed read English. Something that the latter had noted to be weird, and Jordan learned that his people didn’t even have a writing system. He decided to just chalk Haje’s ability to read to the actual System, likely facilitating it as a part of the inherent translation feature.
Though in this case, the message he wrote now wasn’t for Haje, but for his fellow Humans. He had been curious about the split in Experience, and so left the note and pencil in the Guild inventory as something for them to read and reply with. Until a more reliable means of communication could be established, Jordan had simply asked all his current members to check the Guild’s shared pocket space on a regular basis. So, time would soon tell when any of them actually did so.
A minute later, Jordan was back riding his drone in the forest. It was pretty late into the night now on the other side, but he still had plenty of time to make some more sets of winter clothes and get back to the beach. Yet it was less than halfway on the drive back that something made Jordan frown all of a sudden, and pulled him out of his usually distant thoughts while riding.
Despite still being around a mile and a half out from the building, it seemed like he’d just crossed the boundary of his Kingdom’s territory. And with that came another feeling. One that was a sensation that hadn’t originally been there before, even when standing inside his base.
On a fundamental level, as arrogant as it might sound, it felt like everything within his original territory actually now belonged to him.