Ch 4

"Just letting you guys know this whole thing was not natural. Typically, these chimeras don't interact and stampede this way. It's very likely that it was organized by another group to push them in your party's direction, most likely to eliminate you. or perhaps eliminate another group. Still, I didn't see another from my earlier vantage point in the sky." I told them. "Be on guard. If you were targeted once, it is likely they won't stop with a single attempt."

"That sounds like something the Golden Tigers would try." the wounded tank mumbled to his group, which received a couple of nods around.

'The Golden Tigers, if I remember correctly, is a smaller brutal group from this city that was ruthless in my first life. They ended far too many lives, and if I get the chance before I leave, I should try and pull the organization up from the root and eliminate its top commanders if possible. Nate the Great is what the leader called himself, which showed how pretentious he was. Though they naturally are ended by the bigger organizations in the area when they pull something that turned out to be more than they could handle and were retaliated against harshly.'

After making sure everything was okay with the party, it was decided that I could have the body of the rhilon. I ended up leaving it with the group to avoid dragging it several miles back to the city. I would hire a porter to bring it back, trusting the group would not screw me over the points and materials I would get for its body because all the other chimeras were left to them. On the way back to the city, exiting the area of the fight, I felt eyes watching me from multiple directions. Not wanting them to know I was onto them, I kept my eyes forward and kept to the ground. I hadn't felt anyone watching the actual fight, so I hoped to keep my secrets to myself. Not allowing them to easily know of my sigils by running through the sky. Still, I wasn't planning on not using my sigils regularly; I just didn't want to use them in front of everyone I met.

---

"Who's that Immeth?" A bulky man with broad shoulders and dirty blonde hair asked his companion. He was wearing heavy-duty a set of grey leather rhilon armor on with a typical Grecian-styled helmet tucked under his left arm and a pair of binoculars held up to his eyes in his other hand. He handed the binoculars to his subordinate after taking one last look at the man in question.

The man he was asking about wore a grey and white mask but had the body of an athletic young man with slightly above-average height, broad shoulders, and well-muscled limbs. He was still wearing clothes from Earth, a pocketed light grey short-sleeve t-shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans with a brown belt, brown boots, and thick gloves. He was covered in drying silver-tinged crimson blood that sometimes would allow a better view of the man on the sandy backdrop.

"That's a new guy, Korath." He checked in as a solo hunter yesterday. We have nothing on him besides he appeared yesterday. There are two options: either he is a confident newcomer, or he is from another city. By his demeanor, he seems to be one of the few who have braved the sand-strewn wasteland and come from another city. But that contrasts the fact that he is still in clothes from Earth, ones that looked new yesterday. He may be an a-typical." A tall, skinny man in his late twenties with greasy black hair told his companion while looking at the filthy man. The tall man was wearing a set of light brown lightweight armor that covered him from his shoulders to his feet. Only having taken off his helmet in order to see through the enchanted binoculars easily.

"I need you to find out more about him, his intentions, what grade he is on the power scale, and where he came from," Korath said to the greasy man. "Report back when you can fill me in. If he made it across the wastes, then he must be at least a C grade. With all of your training, you've reached early B grade; I am confident in your strength; test him and see his power firsthand. If he is too powerful, get out, then report back quickly. Even if you have not found out the other answers yet. With your skills and abilities, even if you are overpowered by him, you should easily be able to escape with little risk."

Grades are from G to A for normal people. S rank was for the top 10 powerhouses on the layer. G was for a completely unaltered human body. F is for Those that were baseline humans that spent their 50k entry points on average abilities and had little to no training. E was slightly better; within a year of diligent training, someone starting at F rank could reach E relatively easily. A duo of E grade people could take down a single basic chimera without much issue. A single C grade could easily take out a trio of basic chimera or a single chimera like a rhilon. B grade typically took years for those A-typicals summoned with over 125k points and began at E grade. B grade took a massive power jump, and it would take a single B grade to defeat an aberrant like a magdie, though likely nearly dying in the process. Realistically, A grade was the peak, and it would take half a decade for an elite to hone his fighting skills to reach that level. A grade took dedication and skill to reach, and only a few could attain the status of a high-powered A grade that could beat truly elite aberrant chimeras. S grades typically only mattered in human-to-human combat; the lowest S grade ever could probably beat 10 average A-grade fighters with little struggle.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"As you wish, Sir."

-----

I went back to the city, informing the Porter to bring the body of the rhilon to Gerry's weapon crafting, the same place I was having my bec de corbin made, to sell for points and possibly trade for some lightweight armor. After that stop, I cleaned myself off in my room using a sponge bath and some system-purchased water, changing my clothes to one of the basic sturdy sets I had purchased during my initialization. Then I headed back out. This time, I had to hunt down more chimeras and raise my point total.

On my way out, I felt eyes boring into me occasionally. It was something of a sixth sense being able to detect people watching you. It was nice to know my soul had kept the capability to sense others interacting with it. It was something that I had learned in my first life through interacting with people who had developed a killing intent. A killing intent would be able to hit someone like a physical blow only using the strength and willpower found in one's soul. Once I had been subjected to a killing intent enough times, I found out how to flex that 'muscle' on my own. Then, honing that, I developed my own killing intent and the finer nuances having to do with the soul. One thing I had been capable of was detecting not only others' non-manifested killing intent but, much later, I had been able to tell when I had people staring at me, not only from close range either. It was something that many people had developed at the end of my last life, and by then, people were able to somewhat mask their own intentions when looking at others, leading people like myself to further hone myself and my soul to sense even those. These untrained stalkers may as well be looking at me from 5 feet in front of my face; their intent was so easy to sense.

While in the hustle and bustle of the city, I did get a look at my stalker. It was a tall man with greasy shoulder-length hair and pale skin in dark armor. The man hid around the corner once I got my eyes on him. It wasn't somebody I remember recognizing, but now I knew who to keep my eyes out for the future. Maybe inquire about him later, but right now, I didn't feel the need to go out of my way to do so.

By the end of the day, on my way back, I had more than doubled the points I'd earned during the big fight earlier in the day. I pulled up my status screen to check my totals.

Status Screen:

Name: Adonis Newman

Points: 2,422

Race: Human

Age:24

Title: None

Attributes:

Strength: 87

Agility: 128

Constitution: 68

Wisdom: 17

Intelligence: 56

Endurance: 50

Charisma: 13

Luck: 8

Abilities: 4/9

Inert RESTART (gifted) = x.025% for inert + x.20% for gifted

Sigil: (Stationary Surface)

Cultivation: (Lightning Aspect)

(Basic Mortal Polearm Mastery)

I had gained several attributes during the course of my training day and my fighting of the chimeras; the ease of which they were gained was probably because of the increased efficiency of using my cultivation and the exertion I placed on my body. Last time, it took me a month and a half to gain just that many attribute points, which I gained over the course of a single day. Though last time it was practicing and not fighting face to face with chimeras, no matter how easily the chimeras fell to my blows, you gained attributes faster in live combat than a safe spar or weight training.

Throughout the course of the day, I also decided what I would spend my next set of points on: a storage ring. There were several different kinds of storage items. Ones that were like a backpack where the item had to fit inside the mouth of the bag, then was shrunk down and was not stored in any organized fashion, and you would have to stick your hand inside and rummage around to find your items; those were the cheapest. A more expensive item was a storage bag that would organize your items, and you could call them from the bag to your hand, but you would still have to be able to fit them through the mouth of the bag manually.

The storage item I wanted was the best design and the easiest to use. It was a storage ring that was able to house anything as long as the accumulated total was under a certain amount. The ring would show you the contents in a similar manner as you viewed your status screen itemized into blocks, and you would be able to summon items into the ring. The only downside was the 12k point cost for the ring. The ring of that cost was not the most expensive but would still get the owner 40 cubic yards of organized space. With its utility, it is a good deal. There is no way I would be able to get the ring by the time I left; I would need to average nearly 1600 points a day. That was not going to happen without a higher concentration of chimeras that these regions lacked. Plus, the lack of frequent high-point powerful aberration chimeras would make it difficult even if you could find a lot of basic chimeras. 160 basic chimeras vs. 20 to 40 aberrant chimeras are a big difference.