“Yes, you’re somewhat of a special case in this.” The young man replied with the same smile. “You did most of the fighting with the monster in the end, and your contribution to the fight as a whole was significant. I see here that they put in extra resources to check all the drone and onlooker footage revolving around you and your companion.”
Sam was a bit taken aback. It had only been a few hours since this happened, and since the fight had lasted a while, they had checked things almost in real-time. Perhaps they expected this to happen, and certain people were pre-flagged to keep an eye on them. He didn’t know, but in a way, it didn’t matter; it just meant that he didn’t have to wait.
“Well, that’s neat.” Sam smiled, not really sure how to respond to this, defaulting to a kind of awkward but positive response.
The young man smiled briefly before recomposing himself, clicking through something before continuing. “As the MVP you’re to get an inflated reward to incent-... I wasn’t supposed to read that out loud, so...” He looked a bit embarrassed.
It wasn’t hard to guess the logic there, everyone probably got an average corporate reward, probably some room, food or discount for something, as those things cost TAC or the government less if you analyse it for a moment, but at the same time it was a value to the people getting it. Giving Sam, as the apparent most valued player in this context, an inflated reward wasn’t just to incentivize him, but to nudge others to put in that extra effort in future cases.
The man continued after an awkward second. “I can see here that your rewards are...” He used a moment to find everything properly before continuing. “A limited lifetime access to healthcare and housing, as well as an equipment voucher valued up to $500 000 on the TAC market.”
Sam’s eyes widened, that was much more than he expected. He wondered what a limited lifetime meant, but that wasn’t too important to him at the moment, he was more interested in the voucher. $500 000 was a significant sum, and once he thought about it, since the purchase prices were the TAC inflated prices, the price this cost them was closer to around 100 000, which though still significant, didn’t feel too farfetched for the mix of a proper reward and PR campaign this could spur. Giving him a voucher instead of money also meant it was easier to control losses vs values. Though this was incredibly corporate in how it worked, he didn’t complain; he helped for his gain initially and this reward wasn’t the original motivation, so anything was just a bonus.
“That’s... more than I expected.” He wasn’t able to keep his surprise even though analysing it all. He could tell the young man was feeling a bit awkward in a sense, perhaps from accidentally sharing information earlier.
“It says here that it’s added to your Player account, so it’ll automatically fix itself when you get something on the Market. If you get something costing more, you’ll need to pay the difference, naturally. I can also see that $50 000 for the monster’s core was also transferred into the account.” He smiled honestly at the end.
Sam didn’t feel too surprised about the price for the core, but he was glad to at least get it.
“Thank you, but I’ll have to think about that, then. For now, I just want a room.” Sam was getting tired, though he hadn’t had the same kind of exertion as other Players, he had still been running around in the chaos, battling in his way and fatigue had started settling in.
“Certainly.” Changing the subject put the man more at ease, and the process of getting a room was easily handled.
Finding himself in his room with Dia, he decided that it was probably best to take a shower and go to bed, or if nothing else relax. The normal uncertainties of the facilities in the bathroom from Dia were still amusing, but she was getting used to them. As this room had a bathtub he decided that it had been long enough since he had an actual warm bath, and since it was large enough for two people, there was no reason to not make this into an event.
She seemed more comfortable with getting into the pool of water, though warm and fragrant as it was than she was in the shower with the weird falling water coming from nowhere.
Like the other times, it took a while to get her fur relatively dry, she wasn’t sceptical of the hairdryer anymore which made this much easier, having two bushy tails still made this take a while. However, she was still adamant that she needed to groom his hair once they were done, she had learned the word “Important” which she commented when Sam reactively tried to pull away from having his freshly cleaned hair liked even before it was dry.
Migrating to the living room they spent the time relaxing, Sam opted to turn on the TV for the first time in years, landing on news about the event. Seeing himself on recorded news felt strangely awkward, though he felt almost impressed at himself at how he did things. Looking at the recordings he almost looked like he knew what he was doing, which felt far from the case when he was there. He had given his phone to Dia to work on the language training, it was progressing steadily. With what he and Janik had been doing lately, and naturally a lot of aid from the app, she was getting along.
The news didn’t flag him as a hero, which he felt surprisingly good about, but he was very much the focus when they spoke about the six-eyed lizard in the end. Though the end fight didn’t solidify his telekinetic skills due to the amount of other people being part of it, the fighting where he made the lawnmower dome with weapons around him seemingly did. The guesses and talks about what his abilities were didn’t land entirely, they didn’t get that his telekinesis was focused around ‘hands’, but they got that it was telekinesis based and for all intents and purposes, they were close enough.
For some odd reason, the public knowing what he could do felt... weird... Thinking about it a bit more this seemed to be somewhat related to the events on the island. His largest weapon was people not knowing the extent of his abilities, but this also meant that as long as he could avoid PvP, this shouldn’t be an issue. He also only used weapons in that fight due to availability, the few times he used the Force Pulse, it wasn’t properly identified so if there would be any PvP moments in the future, his non-weapon use was still unknown.
As the evening continued, his focus changed from the repeating talk about the event to just looking at Dia sitting on the sofa, speaking to the phone as it was speaking to her. Doing her best to pronounce words and repeat small sentences. The stark contrast between the chaos, death and fear on the TV to the adorable nature of his companion learning English by talking to a computer in her hands was interesting.
The rest of the evening before they turned in, was spent on her English lessons, he helped with examples, letting her use her words and talk a little. She did her best to teach him her own language’s words for things, expanding both of their vocabularies slowly.
The next day, Sam woke up to being alone in bed, Dia had woken up before him for once. Not a problem as he could hear her in the other room responding to the recorded voices in the language app, so she found something to do. As he moved to sit up he could feel the starting onset of muscle soreness, which made a lot of sense given the lack of restraint in yesterday’s movements. He felt extra lucky with how his Psyhands worked now, meaning he could move as little as possible once the soreness kicked in properly later.
Suddenly the door into the bedroom opened and a very happy Dia looked at him with a huge smile. “Good... Morning!” She needed a brief moment between the words but it was pretty good.
Smiling back at her he couldn’t help but get affected by her enthusiasm. “Good morning, Dia.”
Pointing happily at the phone she had stolen from the nightstand, her smile still wide and bright, “I learn!” she darted back to the living room without waiting for him to respond.
He could hear the recordings on his phone starting up again shortly after.
Considering what just happened, he was unsure if he should talk to her about clothing, on one hand, it was somewhat distracting, but on the other; he didn’t mind it.
Chuckling to himself he got out of bed, proceeding with his morning routine before joining her on the couch. The room had a simple tablet as part of the furniture, he decided to use that to check the TAC market as she was using his phone.
Browsing around he looked for things he could get with his voucher, there were some interesting things like weapons, with and without neat traits, but also skills and armour. But oddly enough, the market wasn’t as saturated of things as he expected, perhaps that was a result of yesterday?
He found several stealth-focused skills, he was interested in those but the problem with most of them was that they used mana to activate, or an ongoing cost, but he didn’t have access to mana at all. There were plenty of weapons or items he could get, but he wanted more skills, things that couldn’t be taken away or used up. Another problem was that, though stealth was what he was going for at the moment, there were a lot of cases where those couldn’t be used, unless it actively made him invisible or could avoid the ‘open area’ problem, then places like boss rooms or just in an open fight, it might not be as practical. And though there were several ‘Invisibility for X time’ skills, they were all reliant on Mana.
Looking up mana conversion skills, there were many variants there as well. The more common ones were that you could convert your alternate energy source like Ki, into mana, which would again pool up for a non-regenerating pool for use. This could let you charge it up beforehand and use it as needed as time went on, though as this was a ‘points of energy spent’ kind of thing, he didn’t know how it would work with his non-consumed energy... Either it could work amazingly, just letting him fill that cap right away as his points can’t be spent, or just because the lack of spending could stop the skill from working...
As he pondered the value of this, he checked up the mana cost vs how much he could stockpile, and the conversion skills had a cap, meaning he couldn’t get more than X in total. Since the stealth skills consumed a decent chunk it didn’t feel worth it. He would need to unlock a proper scaling mana pool, and he couldn’t find that kind of skill on the market.
What he did find, which triggered his interest, was a series of skills named Static Charge. The basis of it was that every 5 hits, you would get a burst of damage scaling of your ‘main stat’. Now, imagining this for a ranger or fighter type who would hit a few times a second, like Janik, it made sense that this could be a good bonus for a longer fight. Now, for Sam, who... ignoring missing, could hit up to 36 times in one volley, he could abuse this for up to 7 triggers per volley, or split it up to spread it out more.
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Reading into it, it seemed to consider the ‘main stat’ whichever was highest, so mages could use this but... often didn’t due to the logical dangers. Multi-hitters liked these but it wasn’t as super practical for most as the System valued few but hard hits rather than many. This math meant that someone like Janik, level 20 with equal distribution of stats would be about 20 or something in their main stat, could get a 20 damage burst every 5 hits, if he hits for 200 per sword hit it’s not that high per hit. However, if planned correctly that was a burst, which increased in range based on Rank, so it was not a bad thing for non-AOE Players.
In Sam’s case, this was doubly special, because he only needed to level one stat, and could hit many, many times per attack. This felt like a good idea!
The different ranks increased in price dramatically, but the use also improved the damage math as well as the range, it also considered the damage allies would take... At least the user never took damage from this.
In the marketplace, there were several of them available, he could afford the E or D-rank ones. The $500 000 voucher covered it, but the C-rank had 2x the main stat rather than 1x or 1.5x, as well as a 5m/16ft range, but it cost $825 000. The voucher and Core money made up 550 000, meaning that he needed a little more. But there was one easy way to handle that, the first dungeon of the second Floor in Aetheria. Simple math, considering a solo run, not counting getting something practical in the Random Box, he only needed a few runs for the C-rank one.
“Dia, get dressed, we’re going back to the Dungeon.” Sam commented as he got up and began the process of gearing himself up. She seemed to understand well enough and started getting dressed as well. He helped her with the Psyhands where needed as he did the same to himself, and soon they both were geared up and ready.
They got some breakfast on the way, Sam checked his phone messages as they ate, and he got some images of Elara and Grace, they were having fun, which was nice to see, he replied with the fact that they were going into Aetheria for a few runs, the only reply he got was a thumbs up emoji.
Shortly after completing their breakfast, they found themselves in front of the Tower, and seconds thereafter they were in Aetheria on the second Floor. Having brought their core harvesting gear they set off towards the first dungeon. Dia was carrying most of the tools to get the cores as that was going to be her job, as it had been the many times they had completed it, and this wasn’t going to be much different.
The weather was nice, a cold breeze was the only thing in their way, and as they entered the Dungeon yet again the process started. Now with a few more daggers, it would just make the process easier.
They took the first round a bit slower, simply because Janik wasn’t there. The safety paranoia had rubbed off on Sam, so he took it slow for this round, testing out things as safely as he could, making sure he was doing it as well as possible. He wanted to survive this, after all.
Luckily, there was no reason to fear, the experience of having done this so many times before, and knowledge of the exact defence and health values, made it all much more controlled. The dungeon boss was a bit more annoying due to the rock shotgun attack and no Janik to help draw aggro, but since they knew about it, keeping at a distance and making sure there were always boulders to dodge behind trivialized that fight more than he expected. And before they knew it the first run was completed.
Dia had done her job, gotten all the cores, so her fur wasn’t exactly clean. Sam had to repeatedly tell her to not lick herself clean, no matter how much she wanted to. And rather go for a clean in a nearby stream of water on top of the mountain between runs.
He was also massively lucky, though he didn’t get anything from the clearing rewards, opening the Random boxes proved much more interesting, getting three crystals, but also an accessory and an armour set.
[ Resonant Mantle - Low C-tier
Defence: 50
+5% mana regen
7% damage reduction from magic
-3% mana cost to self and allies ]
[ Wind's grace, Low C-tier bracers, +30% speed ]
He liked the bracers and was considering the Resonant Mantle for Dia solely for the increased Defense, but he was unsure about losing the 10% evasion. But a constant 10 points less damage is more consistent and reliable, so he had her swap over. The mantle was a blue velvet mini-cloak reaching her midsection, and draping over her shoulders. It clashed with the colours of her dress but that wasn’t the main thought for using it.
Leaving the dungeon area back to Earth to go to TAC, Sam halfway expected something to happen but it was surprisingly uneventful. For a moment his mind went back to wondering why people didn’t just do this most of the time, go and grind through the easier dungeons for massive profit. But, thinking back to what Janik said, and how little tired he was compared to everyone else in the fight just yesterday. He was cheating somewhat with how his method worked, he didn’t get more tired than walking or physically moving around, and though there was some dodging and diving behind cover in this dungeon boss fight, that was about it.
Using his Psyhands didn’t tire him at all, no matter how much he flailed them around, he could go into lawnmower mode all day without breaking a sweat, the Telekineticist class like he was using it, gave him the benefit of a ranged person without the resource cost of anything. He just needed to get weapons and he was fine. If he had relied on Mana, he would need to use potions to restore his pool or wait for it to regenerate naturally, arrows could break or get lost, melee attackers could get hit and lose health which is the worst part, and everyone got tired.
His view on things was indeed a bit weird... Considering this as they left the Dungeon, Dia went to the stream to clean off the mix of gore and dust of her arms before they headed back to TAC. With this last run, and especially when considering the extra stuff from the Random Boxes, he was fine on funding for his goal.
The rest of the process was almost a bit anticlimactic, going back to Earth, going to TAC, selling the stuff and the now extra armour, getting the skill and that process was over.
[ Static Charge III - C rank
Every five hits on the same target discharges a 5m/16ft pulse of electricity, damaging all enemies for [Main stat x2].
-Hits any target in range, including allies and the target the pulse triggers on.
-Does not hit the user
-Static charges remain with the target for a short time, the hits do not need to be consecutive.
-The damage from this skill will not trigger static charges in targets. ]
Sam felt good about this, though the way he spread out damage with his Psyhands could be considered an AOE attack, this was his first real AOE attack. And though it still felt almost routine in how he gained it in only a few hours from the moment he set out he couldn’t help but still feel amazing.
Dia looked at him with wide eyes as he crushed the Skill Crystal right after getting it from the TAC representative working behind the counter but having done this before she seemed to know the gist of it.
Due to selling everything and buying the skill crystal, he ended up with $121 000 left, depositing that into his account he didn’t know exactly what he wanted. He could get some weapons, lower skills or something else, but in the end, he decided to save it for now and think about it rather than being impulsive.
Ordering something to eat and having that delivered to the room, they headed back up to relax and perhaps spend some time together learning communication. Sam already had a weird feeling, having gotten used to the Player lifestyle, that though he relished the feeling of relaxing, he also kind of wanted to do something. Playing with Dia was probably the best thing to do for now.
Tomorrow he decided that he’d test out his new skill, and get a feel for how it works in the training halls. So even though he was relaxing he’d get something neat mixed in.
The rest of the evening followed the same format as it had done the others, and the following day came soon enough. Dia had taken to put a lot of time into the app to learn English when she could, so she was awake before Sam was again. Going through a similar routine as the day before they ended up going to one of the training halls, specifically one that could handle the use of magic skills, just in case the skill would damage anything.
“So that room has multiple targets, and I can just put in values and see the results after?” Sam asked the receptionist he had gone over to confirm this with.
“Yes, Sir. You can use magic in there and you can move the targets around if you need to, and they are all connected to a display so you can see things like damage, Defence and so on. All of that can be set via the computer.” She smiled surprisingly honestly looking for a receptionist.
“Oh, that’s great. Then I’d like to book one of those rooms.” He was looking forward to testing this, though it wouldn’t overlap, so the Static Shock couldn’t stack up on others, or with enough targets that would just be a neverending series of explosions, he still hoped for a few functions.
“Certainly, room 6 is available, so you can use that.” She smiled as she pointed towards the hallway leading into the training halls.
In the middle of turning around, a window popped up in Sam’s vision that sent a shiver through his very soul.
[ Conditions met. ]