A forced choice wasn’t much of a choice at all. Kairen found himself swearing under his breath as he darted forwards with his finger. It made contact. The screen vanished. There was a long moment of silence, as Kairen braced himself for disaster to strike. Slowly, slowly he let himself relax as nothing seemed to change. No one around him seemed to notice anything different as the celebration wound down and the adults began the tedious work of cleaning everything up. It looked like he had gotten lucky this time.
Kairen frowned. Choosing the monster barrier option had been a spur of the moment decision, but he didn’t think it was the wrong choice. He regretted delaying his initial purchase of the barrier and that regret certainly had played a large part in him prioritizing upgrading it, but beyond that it felt like it was the option that would be useful sooner. The fertility increase was a long-term investment, taking months or years to have any benefit depending on the species involved and the specifics of how it worked. The barrier upgrade didn’t change things immediately but would show its value as soon as monsters managed to find their way to the Oasis. Considering the water elementals had managed to do so in only a few days, more monsters likely wouldn’t be all that far behind. Having better defenses was always a good thing and Kairen wanted them even more now that he actually had people present that he wanted to protect.
Of course, he was still limited in purchasing further upgrades by his maximum upgrade point capacity, for lack of a more accurate name to describe it as. With the immediate crisis taken care of and with no obvious repercussions for his choice revealing themselves, Kairen resummoned and turned his attention back towards the screen.
As he expected, purchasing the upgrade had increased his capacity once more, putting him at 100/300 upgrade points available. The larger capacity was nice by itself, but the greater benefit was the fact that 300 upgrade points was enough to unlock the second row of upgrades as well as the third level of the first row. It might take a couple of days to gather the points, but Kairen suddenly had a lot more options to direct his growth heading forwards. Of course, that assumed he was still gaining upgrade points at the rate he had been before today.
Somehow, out of nowhere, over one hundred and twenty extra points had been added to his bar. Unexpectedly gaining points was certainly better than losing points like the water elementals had done to him, but Kairen didn’t like the mystery of where the points had come from. For the next hour Kairen watched his screen as the tribe of nomads finished cleaning up and went to bed leaving only a couple guards awake. He continued watching until the guards changed shifts, at which point he stood up and cracked his nonexistent back.
The numbers didn’t add up. The nomads hadn’t been keeping their guard schedule secret, especially considering that they didn’t know anyone was around to overhear them, so Kairen knew the guards had shifts for a fourth of the night. From there it was easy to figure out how many points he got during a shift, and then convert that to points per day. It had gone up. While before Kairen was getting fifty points a day now he was earning seventy-two or so. It was a large increase, but not enough to account for the drastic change he had earlier. Even if he hadn’t checked it since the morning, getting an extra hundred over the course of the day was triple or better his old rate, a far larger improvement than he was seeing.
Kairen wondered if it made a difference if the people were inside the oasis or not. It wasn’t like he could change anything at the moment, but he’d have to keep an eye out tomorrow to see. Out of curiosity, Kairen found a discarded roll of bread on the ground and tried to eat it. Even though it had picked up the gritty flavor of dirt, it was still tolerable, and Kairen managed to get a few mouthfuls out of it before it stopped having any taste. Curious, he paid closer attention to what he was doing, but even though he was very clearly putting the food in his ghostly mouth he wasn’t able to taste anything. It looked like he was taking something from the food when he ate it. Perhaps he was consuming the ghost of the food? Kairen snorted at the mental image of an afterlife filled with mountains of pastries before shaking his head. It was good to know that he couldn’t just eat one thing over and over again, although it was unlikely to be a real issue. Whatever he did to the food didn’t seem to hurt it as far as regular people were concerned, and a tribe as large as the one that had found him would go through enough food that Kairen didn’t really have to worry about running out.
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A quick check of his status screen did show that despite tasting the food and getting something from it, it didn’t seem to provide him any upgrade points for doing so. That wouldn’t stop Kairen from eating when the opportunity was in front of him, but he also wouldn’t have to force himself to pig out for the benefits. His stomach grumbled uneasily as he thought of the stomachache he had gotten yesterday. Indulging his gluttony once was an experience he had no intention of repeating.
Out of ideas for the moment as to the cause of his windfall, Kairen focused his attention on the upgrades available. Having a large enough pool to purchase the second row of upgrades had caused the screen to replace the static images with moving ones, and Kairen wanted to learn as much as he could about his new choices just in case he ever found himself forced to choose quickly. The greyish cast the screen used to show that an option cost more than he could afford did increase the difficulty of making out details, but despite asking in a dozen ways for it to be removed it remained stubbornly present. He was able to ask for specific images to be made larger, and even without color Kairen felt like he had a good idea as to what was being offered.
The defensive tree had two new upgrades. The left upgrade was represented by a series of monsters shrinking slightly when they passed through the barrier around the oasis. The size change varied between monsters without any pattern that Kairen could distinguish. It obviously interacted with monsters in some way, but what it actually did was something he wasn’t so sure about. Shrinking monsters just didn’t seem to be that great of an effect, considering that it only shrunk them down a little and that quite a few monsters didn’t rely on their size to be dangerous. Poisons, magic, and any elemental creatures would be basically unaffected, and the giant monsters that lurked in the deeper parts of the Shifting Sands wouldn’t care too much either. An eight-foot long Nemean Lion was just as deadly as a nine-foot lion as far as a regular guard or animal was concerned. It only seemed to affect monsters though, so it would be a safe upgrade to pick if he were forced to. The other upgrade in the defense tree was clear as his water by comparison. His barrier would be able to deflect some of the force of a sandstorm. A straightforward choice, and one that would benefit from being chosen multiple times.
The middle tree was also straight forwards. Three options to choose from, one that increased the depth of the oasis, allowing him to increase the amount of water available without dramatically changing the area around it. The second option would increase the grassy area of the oasis, giving Kairen more land that fell under the various protections and benefits he could offer. The third and final option increased the quality of the plant life, and at the first level would add some small bushy plants and flowers to the otherwise plain grass.
The final tree of upgrades was the most complex. With five different options to choose from and a wide variety of blessings possible, Kairen was extremely grateful for the extra information that the moving images provided. The first image was the easiest to figure out, as it featured a person doing hard labor while other people collapsed from exhaustion doing the same work. The next one focused on two individuals training their martial ability, both against each other and against practice dummies and tools. The middle option was a long cycle of different individuals each doing a unique action, and after watching the image cycle a few times Kairen moved on to the fourth option. Much like the second option had featured individuals fighting, this one featured two people learning magic. Sparks and other things shot forth from their hands as they used wands and staves to slowly practice their abilities. The final choice showed a woman teaching a group of children. Using a stylus, she carved various numbers and symbols on the soft clay wall behind her, an action the students copied as they wrote in the sand in front of them.
That left Kairen with blessings to enhance endurance, fighting, magic, learning, and one more blessing that he could just ignore for the moment. With so many upgrades available it wasn’t like he’d be forced to pick a specific one any time soon. The moving image of the woman teaching also reminded him of his goal of learning to read. There were quite a few nomadic children around and Kairen was hopeful that someone would use the downtime while they were at the oasis to work on their education. There wasn’t any guarantee that they’d be learning to read and write, or that they’d be doing so somewhere that he could listen in, but his chances were far higher today than they had been yesterday.
All that could wait for the future though. Kairen was getting tired, and it didn’t look like he had to worry about suddenly getting another large boost while he slept. He knew enough about his available options to be happy with any choices he did make in the coming days, and satisfied for the moment, the young ghost went to sleep.