As it turned out, there was no ambush, merely guards. They are a prideful bunch and quite openly looking down on humanity, but they kept their peace. The tour of their human settlement gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, these humans are truly happy to be here—again, the Vampires kept their word. These people are safe, and so are their families. Children are left to grow untouched, but are also brainwashed to embrace their lives of being sentient livestock to a greater species; which is to say they are treated much better than animals, but are still very limited in many ways. Most live to learn the ways of a bartender, or a barista, and many other drink related occupations. Some—be they guy or girl—of the truly happy ones are at the prime of their health, looking pretty and walking hand in hand with their non-human partner.
Contrary to popular belief; these Vampires are perfectly capable of consuming ordinary food and beverages, but have evolved to better sustain themselves through the consumption and digestion of blood. It is simpler and faster so to speak; the blood does contain important essences in most creatures. They are an upgraded race, and being limited to merely drinking blood is a weakness not fit for something considered an upgrade. Of course, blood is a delicacy to them, and like how anyone with access to exquisite foods will never agree to lower themselves to consume mere simple food; boiled eggs or mashed potatoes for example. They too prefer blood. Nothing is kept hidden, our sightseeing even involves visiting their largest buildings, the house of all three Vampire Elders and any number of their brethren we deem fit for an inspection. All findings are consistent.
—
After agreeing to keep peace between us and them, we make our exit. We also decided against building a Tower here, for now, and this will be the end of my journey to unite Pangea. As proven by the former Russian citizens and even Billy. Everyone who has made it this far are strong in their own ways, and are thus, less agreeable to joining our cause. Be it due to their survival instincts causing them to be suspicious of strangers, or due to personal greed, and various other reasons. So right now, our newest course of action is less expanding and more growing what we already own.
---
I still spent the next 30 days traveling to all of Pangea. If nothing else, at the very least it allows us to unfogs our map. We also left behind our contact details with a lot of the surviving humans, offering them the chance to join us should they be an interested party, but no longer actively inviting them to. First, I visited the seven countries that made up The Stans, located east of Russia. They are still waging war against each other. Then Europe, which is south of Russia; who like us, has been successfully united by a local hero. West and going south of Europe; the people of Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and the surrounding countries also gathered into a mighty force; still partly identifying as their individual nationalities, but are now also whole. And besides them is a large area that consists of myriads of countries that are joined together through mutual belief. Lastly, slightly isolated on the southeastern area of Pangea is Antarctica, Australia, parts of China and Indonesia, Papua and a large number of island countries who's locals were forced to migrate deeper inland towards Australia. The small isolated forces of China and Indonesia located here were successfully drawn into our midst, as soon as was possible.
Strength + 201
Constitution + 260
Dexterity + 276
Intelligence + 173
Wisdom + 66
Will + 75
Charisma + 15
Combat summary
Enemies slain:
Flail-tailed Macque lv 4 x 7
Flail-tailed Macque lv 5 x 4
Flail-tailed Macque lv 7 x 3
Flail-tailed Macque lv 9 x 1
Flail-tailed Macque lv 10 x 1
Huge Mosquito lv 3 x 9
Huge Mosquito lv 4 x 4
Huge Mosquito lv 5 x 5
Huge Mosquito lv 6 x 2
Huge Mosquito lv 8 x 1
Huge Mosquito lv 10 x 1
Slime lv 2 x 8
202 syscred and 166 exp awarded
Taman Safari:
55,052 syscred and 212,927 exp awarded
You are now level 27
Taman Safari:
67,920 syscred and 277,530 exp awarded
Skill level up, All-Weapons Proficiency 21 > 24
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Skill level up, All-Armors Proficiency 21 > 24
Skill level up, Deception 7 > 11
Skill level up, DodgeRoll 19 > 22
Level 20 threshold breached
Skill level up, Evasion 27 > 29
Skill level up, Fire Resistance 9 > 12
Skill level up, Harvest Flora and Fauna 4 > 7
Skill level up, Inspect 37 > 41
Skill level up, Intimidate 34 > 38
Skill level up, Mana Manipulation 44 > 51
Level 50 Mana Manipulation Bonus applied
Skill level up, Mana Sense 28 > 36
Skill level up, Mental Resistance 2 > 5
Skill level up, Pain Resistance 15 > 17
Skill level up, Parallel Thoughts 3 > 4
Skill level up, Parry 20 > 29
Skill level up, Poison Resistance 16 > 17
Skill level up, Shield Proficiency 16 > 18
Skill level up, Sneaking 33 > 42
Skill level up, SYMPHONY 26 > 30
Skill level up, Taunt 26 > 32
Skill level up, Teach 6 > 13
Skill level up, Tracking 19 > 29
Skill level up, Unarmed combat proficiency 29 > 38
Skill level up, Visualization 45 > 46
Spell mastery rank up, Micro Flight Basic > Intermediate
Invaseviction - Expert rank, Early mastery expanded
Spell mastery rank up, Invaseviction Early > Basic
Level up, get! Plus 6—5 of the usual plus 1 from Human's Adaptable Trait—to wisdom. Because lowest.
The devour limit of ten levels a day is starting to feel increasingly inconvenient as the days go by and everything on the planet continues to grow. As that means I have to keep my eyes open for lower leveled enemies to hunt and store… Throughout the month, besides hunting for the purpose of my daily devouring due to my depleting stock of monster corpse, most of my time is spent traveling and fabricating Mana Cores which did wonders for my Mana Manipulation Skill by allowing it to break level 50; now, I find that maintaining control of external mana in an effortless endeavor, while previously, I would need to allocate parts of my conscious thoughts. Besides that, any monster cores gained from hunts are given to Rumah for distribution.
Within these 30 days, I had run the Zoo dungeon near Rumah twice, both to grind for Experience and Skill levels; that is to say, my combat and resistance skills. And as a way to refresh my mind from the monotony of travel. But I have to admit, the scenery found in our new world is on a whole new level of beautiful, and meeting a large variety of people at different places across the continent and seeing how they have adapted to the Integration is mighty fun, not to mention that interactions with them has been enough to get my people Skills—literally—to level up. Even the act of finding them leveled my Tracking Skill. Have I mentioned the view is magnificent?
I had barely fabricated Mana Cores during the two days when we were speaking with the peoples of Solntse; to be exact; besides making one with a mana pool of 1,044 on the morning and a 1,050 mana Core the next day. I fabricated 44 Cores with a pool of 125 mana throughout the first day and 28 on the next. Then it was mostly traveling on my lonesome the rest of my time up until present day. So, in 30 days, from just the mana in my personal pool; I made an average of 80 Cores for the smaller variant daily which I fabricate consistently as one with a pool of 125 mana. Then every five days after, day by day pushing through despite the hassle of logisticating through a big number of Cores. I consistently produce one of a higher pool—for the sake of my sanity, it was necessary that I round the numbers up to be as consistent as possible—until the next satisfyingly round number is achieved, which is how I ended up with a Mana Tower drowned in Mana core. But is now the proud owner of five Cores, each with a pool of 4000, 3250, 2750, 2000, and 1500 mana. And a little more than 2500 pieces of the smaller ones that contain 125 mana. These small ones alone are approximately worth a whopping 40 million Creds, assuming they do not break the market when sold.
As far as improving my spells go, there were not many improvements to be had. Besides the two spells I used the most these days, which is Micro Flight and my newest spell Invaseviction. Firstly, with my improved Mana Manipulation; Micro Flight is now more agile than ever, as I now made it take on the shape of a bird, rather than an airplane. This allows me to flap my mana constructed wings to maneuver freely in the air. I love how free it makes me feel! Who's to say every improvement in spell mastery needs to be a major breakthrough. The spell allows me to fly better and that's all it needs to do.
Second, with Invaseviction I started by giving it my usual Latent Core, as it is a great spell if not too dangerous under the wrong hands. Which means it is imperative there are ways to manage its usage. With the Core, a select group of people that, along with myself may reach out with our Mana Manipulation to take over the spell and dismiss it. Does not prevent anyone from recasting, but I'm not sure there is a solution to that, besides being very selective about who I give it to—and no, it will not be sold in the System Store. Speaking of my newest spell, the Basic mastery upgrade ended up being a simple affair. In my eyes, it only has one glaring weakness so far. Bite strength! And I can't just teach it stronger moves like Crunch… So I decided to turn its teeths into drills instead. Which works wonders as it is now capable of piercing metal.
That is about it with my personal Notifications and Updates, I am now back in my room at Quadholm, arguing with myself while working on Novice Repository, is it worth the hassle of emptying it for an increase in its capacity. Not to mention, I had a random thought while looking at one of my Mana Core the other day… Since the Repository's spatial capacity grows larger with more Mana invested into the cast, can I use these to bolster the pool? Maybe it is possible to recast the spell without emptying it out…
Why does it require the pocket space to be empty..? I believe the spell unravels any existing Repository and recreates a new one from scratch… hmm~. I still end up going outdoors to empty a boat, one I had made previously when we crossed the ocean to rescue Kirana's family, and various foodstuff from a long—uh, about three months ago. Only leaving behind some of the packed breads as I can see molds growing on them, inside the Repository. I begin the process of alternating between pulling a Mana core, emptying out their pool of all but one mana, and re-depositing them into my Arcane Vaults, maintaining control of the increasingly large reservoir of mana, all thanks to the new bonus from Mana Sense.
This is exactly the process I go through every time I decide to fabricate one of the larger Mana Cores. First accumulation, then compression, rinse and repeat every day... But, not today! This time, I forgo making a new Mana Core that would have contained 4750 mana and instead, use the whole reservoir of mana to cast Novice Repository. This time, during the casting process, I do not allow the spell to unravel what Repository already exists, instead Manipulating the mana to maintain what is available while allowing the excess mana to fuse and enlarge the space. Which, in the case of my modded Repository that uses Trilattic Swarms as a base, simply meant the conjuring of more swarms to enlarge what is available. I think I broke the spell! The Repository manifests as a perfect cube, no more than 18 meters on each side... An Eighteen. Meters. Cube! I can fit a house within, easy~, and still have plenty of space to spare for other stuff.
Skill level up, Spatial Intuition 2 > 3
Spell mastery rank up, Novice Repository Intermediate > Advanced.
Nice! 'Please show me the previous Event notification again.'