Before anyone reported their gains, the Star System appeared as gold message boxes above their camp.
Heart thumping, Zarian shifted to the edge of his throne. Everyone shifted along with him. Even Foodie slowed down to give the group messages a curious look.
“Eh. I wonder who that certain someone is?” Zarian asked as the others glanced in his direction. Foodie giggled, and Para let out a snort from her throne-shifted body.
“Yes, thank you, Star System. It’s quite nice of you to dangle a mystery in front of me that’ll keep me up at night,” Hannah said dryly from her bean bag chair.
“I keep telling you, Hannah, you need to sleep on your back. You’re going to get a kink if you don’t,” Bianca said in a saucy tone from her own bean bag chair.
“He’s messing with us, isn’t he?” Gilbert pointed out.
“I like it,” Naomi added.
<[1] Current Quest Results, [2] Alignment Growth, [3] Skill Levels, [4] Personal Growth, [5] Pre Level 100 Personal Level Ups, [6] Second Class Advancement(s), [7] Rank Judgment, [8] Post Level 100 Level Ups, [9] Achievements, [10] End Results.>
“Hell yeah, it does! Dale!” Zarian cheered, and so did the others. Spectral spiders flicked into view and danced. A passing unit of skeletons rattled their bones, cheering as well.
<[1] Current Quest Results.>
“Holy shit!” Zarian shouted.
“God Almighty,” Gilbert prayed.
“Well, fuck me,” Naomi said.
“NICE!” Bianca screamed.
“Incredible,” Hannah murmured.
Zarian’s mind burst with activity. He felt the surface thoughts from the others zipping across the spider network. He shared his thoughts with Para.
Merging three traits for every trait combiner would ultimately yield a higher quality and more powerful trait. The trait combiners would also clean up their profiles.
A cleaner profile would lead to gaining more traits. Then later on, they could combine those for even better results. Or they could merge as many traits as they could to get the most cohesive traits with the best qualities.
Once the Star System moved onto the next thing, Zarian forced himself to leave the meta-gaming and theorizing for later. So far, the rewards from the Star System struck like a punch right out the gate, and they still had nine more out of ten specific reward sections!
<[2] Alignment Growth.>
Feeling surprised, Zarian delved into his newly upgraded free evil +5.
He felt the depths of its boosted cunning and intelligence. He remained free from the influence of evil as long as he didn’t tap into it, but once he did, he found a deeper well of evil that he hadn’t fathomed before. Such evil would enact absolute horrors upon those he pointed his free evil +5 toward.
I must’ve grown it by out-smarting and out-doing the devils in the Hell Gate, Zarian thought.
His free evil +5 would’ve grown more if he had done that against the forces of good. Maybe one day he could test himself directly against the Ascended Heavens. Until then, he was happy that it had grown at all after crawling through a Hell Gate.
Everyone else’s growth was more explosive compared to his. Gilbert and Hannah felt more free. Anything or anyone who would attempt to control them or read into them would find that incredibly difficult.
Then there was Naomi. She was the freest of all.
She was a force of unpredictability that would block out anyone’s hostile attempt to scan her or control her. That was already a hard prospect with her high Willpower and psychic abilities before her sub alignment growth.
But now the Rumble Psion lived up to being a juggernaut of freedom.
Then there was Bianca.
She seemed … unchanged. On the outside.
Zarian watched her closely, carefully.
Bianca sat with legs crossed and eyes closed on her bean bag chair. When she came out of meditation, she smiled a simple smile. She nodded in satisfaction and did nothing else.
Zarian and the others looked at her curiously.
Bianca waved at them.
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Slowly, everyone moved on. Zarian could only imagine how much stronger Bianca would be when she delved deep into her free good +7.
Para gave him the impression that even she felt a little scared of Bianca.
Zarian didn’t blame his parasite for having some concern. They would have to be careful the next time they pushed Bianca to power up in a training exercise.
Based on prior experience, Bianca’s free good +7 would be harder to access, but at its peak of power, Zarian imagined it would be stronger than good +8, which nobody had faced before.
Zarian suppressed the shiver that wanted to crawl up his spine. He focused on the next section for rewards and gains.
<[3] Skill Levels.>
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“Thank God,” Gilbert said, slouching into his seat. “All +3’s for me.”
“Sorry about Magi, Hannah,” Bianca said quickly.
“Oh, damn, sorry, Hannah,” Gilbert added.
“I’ll make up for it when we get back to the village,” Hannah said quickly. “Are we all going to look at the changes or wait to do it afterward? Because I’m very curious about Bianca’s skill advancing from Shining Mark +2 to Great Shining Territory. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a total skill evolution and level reset.”
“I’m tempted. Like hella tempted. What do you say, huh, Zarian?” Naomi asked.
Zarian was tempted to look at his advancements most of all. Just like the Pre-Grimrock Review, everything felt greater and more cemented once they acknowledged the notifications. All of his friends had grown tremendously.
The only downside was that Hannah’s Summon Magical Intelligence +2 couldn’t grow while Magi was far away in Ride-or-Die Village. It was a sacrifice Hannah had made for the betterment of their village.
Zarian hoped he could help her make up for the loss in skill levels. But other than that loss, everybody had blown up tremendously. The new Great Shining Territory skill was indeed a big surprise, at least based on the sudden evolution and what the name implied.
During the hell crawl, Bianca had shown a knack for using Shining Mark +2 more appropriately. Each time she’d marked a hell orc, they became easier to hit and somewhat weakened, which helped a lot against those tough bastards.
Would Great Shining Territory do the same, but on a larger scale?
Other than that, Zarian imagined everyone’s skill advancements would make their skills even deadlier, more efficient, or more creative.
His advancement in grimoires was the most curious thing for him, especially the ones that were +2’s. Would he get new spell upgrades? Would they ask him to turn more skills into spells? Or did they have something new for him?
At the very least, he knew Advanced Grimoire of Freaky Morphs would let him learn some new spells. He would also get to upgrade a spell immediately.
He could decide on which spell to upgrade afterward. Everybody was waiting for him, and he felt the patience of the Star System waning thin somehow.
“Let’s keep going. We can do our own personal overviews later.” Zarian smiled. “But I gotta admit, numbers going up feels nice. And sorry, Hannah.”
The engineer sighed. “Again, we will reunite with Magi and fix that skill discrepancy later. Onward and upward, yes?”
Zarian and the others agreed. His goblin daughter kept cooking in the background while watching the mega review proceed.
<[4] Personal Growth.>
“Wow,” Foodie said from her magical kitchen.
“Fuck, fuck, keep going!” Zarian shouted.
He nearly buckled and checked his profile and the description of his new mythical trait, Devil Bane. He could see the growing desperation in everyone’s eyes, especially Naomi’s and Gilbert’s.
The wizard, psion, and healer were the first of their party to get mythical traits! That was on top of Hannah earning three new traits, while Bianca and Naomi were the first to advance a trait of their own naturally.
Zarian locked his eyes with Foodie. He couldn’t say if it was because of her they’d gained these powerful traits. But he could certainly say it was thanks to her they came out with anywhere between 170 to 270 stat points each!
That was fucking insane!
Mythical fucking food! That’s what we get from my new daughter after every hard and high-level adventure!
They had to keep going. Because this review was getting better and better. Zarian didn’t want them to get bogged down until they finished seeing what was all available to them.
“Go, Star System, go!” Zarian shouted.
<[5] Pre Level 100 Personal Level Ups.>
Nobody could utter a word for a while. They all collectively held their breaths as they took in what just happened. Then someone broke the silence.
“Damn, I’m pretty far off still,” Gilbert said. “Five levels in the Level 90s? That’s going to be hell to overcome. Congrats to the rest of y’all, though.”
“We’ll get there in a jiffy. Let’s just be happy we’ve gotten close,” Bianca cheered.
“I can’t believe it. I actually made it.” Hannah turned pale with shock.
Naomi exploded out of her bean bag chair, destroying it with a blast of psychic force. “FUCK YES!” Naomi screamed. “FUCK YES! FUCK YES! FUUUUUCK YESS!”
“Keep going,” Zarian said in a strangled voice.
He could barely hear himself over how loud his heart hammered and his blood rushed. He and Para both felt overloaded with too much dopamine, like they were a pair of junkies.
Granted, they could feel the immense dump of stats becoming solidified with their acknowledgement. It was a lot. It was heady. It felt like they were moving further and further away from the mortal coils of those far below their levels.
Zarian was already the son of ultra gods. But now he was really feeling it.
It was almost scary to think that there were four hundred more levels of this.
He was trying his best to keep a handle on himself. Or he thought he was, as Para helped center his attention on the next major notification and information boxes.
<[6] Second Class Advancement(s).>
“Yeah, sure, why not?” Zarian urged. “The more opinions, the better. We’re going to be stuck with these classes until the Third Class Advancement at Level 200. We better make these choices count.”