Arthur’s heart beat rapidly in his chest as he made his way down the staircase, his body slowly stitching itself back together, and the pain from earlier now vanishing. Yet, a phantom pain remained, but Arthur knew he couldn’t exactly do much about that.
Once he had descended the staircase, he inspected the nearby area with his eyes and his mouth turned into a frown as he saw Lucas slashing away at a skeleton, the knife he was wielding doing very little damage to the bony frame whilst the knife itself was now bent and almost broken.
Arthur rushed forward, delivering a punch to the skull of the skeleton – killing it instantly, then looked down at a bloodied and injured Lucas. The boy’s body was covered in small gashes and large purple bruises, yet on the boy’s face was nothing less than sheer joy.
He purchased some [F] grade healing pills and tried to feed them to the injured boy, who only then seemed to notice that Arthur had intervened in the fight and was standing next to him. He looked up at Arthur with a mix of confusion and happiness in his eyes, then saw the pills and took one for himself.
Arthur hesitated before asking, “May I ask what has you so happy my boy?”
Lucas looked down at the ground as he watched his bruises vanish and his gashes close. He didn’t want to tell the old man just how he was feeling, fearing that the old man would somehow discover his demonic little secret, but he couldn’t just say nothing. He stuttered out a response, “I don’t know. I guess I like fighting.”
Arthur frowned a little. Father like son, he guessed. However, he didn’t want to re-traumatise the boy with memories of his father, so he didn’t say so aloud. He just accepted the boy’s answer and smiled as he saw the boy was now fully healed.
Arthur told the boy to get rid of the knife as it was clear to him that it would no longer be useful to him in its current state, and his fists were proving to be far more powerful anyway.
As the two started to move off to continue their intended journey once again, Arthur checked the system prompt he had received when he tapped on the giant floating chest at the top of the obelisk.
You have discovered: [A] Trial Completion Reward Chest
Reward:
+50 Stat Points
+50 Skill Points
+50 [Gold] Coins
+50 Progression to [Platinum] rank lifetime membership in the system coin shop. - Current Progress: 50/1000
Arthur was overjoyed at the incredible reward but couldn’t help but sigh at the fact he now had over a hundred stat points to distribute, and he only had a few ideas about what he should spend them all on. However, as he now had so many, he decided he could afford to get all of his main physical perks to the next perk stage.
As each of the perk stage upgrades for his basic perks seemed to be 5 points, he invested 26 points, as he also wanted to see if he could get his Bodily Healing perk to the next stage after getting it to level 10. Once he had invested his points as stated, he looked at his physical perks and smiled.
[II] Enhanced Bone Strength (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 2 Physical Point
[II] Enhanced Organ Function (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 2 Physical Point
[II] Enhanced Muscle Strength (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 2 Physical Points
[II] Enhanced Bodily Healing (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 3 Physical Points
The next stat that Arthur felt like investing in after his body received a monumental upgrade, was his mental stat. He wanted all of his basic perks in the mental stat to also be in stage 2, as that would provide him with a potentially unparalleled mind. Furthermore, he would also need to upgrade his battle state perk some more so he invested 40 of his 109 remaining points into the mental stat.
Once he had finished all his upgrading, he opened the mental stat point shop and smiled at that one as well.
[II] Enhanced Brain Processing Speed (Lvl:2 -> Lvl:3) | Cost: 2 Mental Point
[II] Enhanced Brain Capacity (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 2 Mental Point
[II] Enhanced Brain Subconscious Function Capability (Lvl:1) | Cost: 2 Mental Point
[I] Battle State (Lvl:6->Lvl:7) | Cost: 7 Mental Points
Upon finalising the upgrade, he felt a monumental difference in how fast and how well his mind worked. It was incredible, but his mind being enhanced also meant he acclimatised to the new depth of thinking much faster than he had before, and soon everything felt completely normal to him.
Deciding to get ahead of his upstart Automatic Cultivation perk, he invested 19 stat points into the spiritual stat and let it decide how to invest the points. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice in the matter anyway. He ground his teeth as he remembered how the damn perk had robbed him of dozens of points without even properly asking him. Recommendation his ass.
With everything stat-wise looking good, Arthur decided he would save the remaining 50 stat points for a rainy day and refocused his mind on walking where he was supposed to and keeping Lucas good company. He was growing somewhat concerned for the boy, especially after the overjoyed smile that had been on his face as he fought with the skeleton monster.
Arthur understood enjoying a good tussle, he himself could not help but feel a certain amount of satisfaction upon defeating a tough opponent, but he never felt joy just by simply fighting with a monster. And, he noted, the boy would have probably soon lost the fight, yet that wide grin was plastered onto his face the whole time, just what kind of genes had his father passed to him to make the boy like that?
He shook his head and brought up his map so that he could guide them to where they were supposed to be going, the Imperium’s colony.
The two’s next week was spent walking, finding the occasional – usually very useless – chest, and then doing some more walking. They had been forced to leave the open countryside and walk through a forest to get where they were going, but Arthur hadn’t minded as it allowed him to show the boy the wonders of campfire songs.
Arthur’s improved strength, mentality, and rapidly growing cultivation had made Lucas call him ‘OP’ but the old man didn’t feel particularly overpowered, especially as he was not the only one getting much stronger – the monsters were becoming stronger as well. Regular monsters and creatures with levels that would have previously had them be considered [Boss] or [Wild boss] monsters had started appearing all around them, some looking totally alien to any wildlife or fairytale creature that either Arthur or Lucas had ever seen.
Lucas had also told Arthur that something about the man’s body was changing, becoming younger, and Arthur hadn’t believed him at first until he had taken a look at his reflection in one of the rivers they had walked past. The boy was right, his formerly age-reflective face was less wrinkled than he had remembered it being, and he looked as though he were almost 20 years younger than he actually was. Though, his being over 90 years old meant that looking 20 years younger was not that much of an improvement in terms of looks, but still – it was a lot and he could tell.
Stolen story; please report.
He had genuinely no idea what the cause of this sudden de-ageing was, but the only thing that had been increasing at all over the course of their trip had been his cultivation. Only a day or so after he had completed the obelisk, he had ascended to the next realm of cultivation, the Qi Refinement realm, and had been slowly rising in the steps of the realm as the days progressed. If he were de-aging due to his cultivation, did that mean that after a few months, or maybe years of cultivation he might end up looking like he did when he was only in his 20s? Maybe even younger? The thought both excited and terrified the old butler.
On the night of the seventh day, Lucas had collapsed after a day of intense walking, and Arthur sat alone by a dying campfire. The moon was at its apex in the sky and Arthur was contemplating whether or not he should just skip picking up the treasure chests on the way to the colony and just head straight for the camp.
Then, the faint sound of leaves being trampled off in the distance brought him out of his contemplative state and into full-alert mode. He looked around him and saw no sign of any monsters, but he knew that this didn’t mean there weren’t any lurking out in the forest – hiding in the underbrush.
His instincts told him that danger was close and he moved over to the sleeping body of Lucas and got into a defensive stance, he would protect the boy as his first and utmost priority.
However, once he had adopted the stance, and faced in the direction that the noise had come from, a strange cackling could be heard from off in the distance and suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and started approaching Arthur.
The man was about average height and looked to be in his mid-20s, his hair was a silky black, and it was long, very long. The most alarming feature to Arthur was the fact the man’s entire body was coated in dried blood which Arthur assumed must have come from the man killing monsters. However, that cackle from earlier as well as the fact the man had been hiding from him put him on edge, so he didn’t let down his guard.
Once the man was about 20 feet away, he stopped then began to speak in a slow but dramatic kind of voice, “You must have a pretty high physical stat, eh? To hear the sound of leaves being trampled on from such a distance away.”
Arthur didn’t confirm nor deny what the man said, and asked sincerely, “You are covered in blood. Did you fight one of the monsters from around here and get injured?”
The man seemed to consider this question, before saying calmly, “No… that’s because I’m the only monster in these woods.”
The man then let out a wild, guttural roar before he charged at Arthur with a speed that he had honestly not expected, the man’s jaw hanging widely open, his rotting teeth now on prominent display.
However, unfortunately for the man, Arthur’s Battle State perk roared to life, as did his now quite honed combat instincts, and he simply responded by delivering a punch straight to the man’s torso as soon as he was close enough.
The man was sent hurtling backwards from the force of the punch, and Arthur swore he heard the sound of bones breaking in the man’s body just from the single punch that he had delivered. When the man’s body collided with the ground, he spat out a lot of blood, but as Arthur caught a glimpse of the bloodthirsty look in the man’s eyes, he knew that the man had not been dissuaded from attacking him in the slightest by the heavy damage that he had dished out to him.
The blood-soaked man stumbled slightly to his feet whilst speaking loudly, “Wooh! You pack a serious punch old fart! Just how high levelled are your stats old man? No matter I guess. You’ll still die easily enough, they always do.”
Arthur didn’t let the man’s words distract him and he said nothing in reply as he stood guard over Lucas’ somehow still asleep body.
The crazed murderer in front of him then looked down and saw Lucas and smiled, before saying, “A grandson, I presume.”
Arthur remained silent and stood where he was. He couldn’t allow himself to be goaded into attacking when he didn’t know the full extent of the man’s power, nor what he would do to Lucas if he left him unguarded.
This was his first fight with a human opponent since the system arrived and he didn’t want to take any risks. He couldn’t let his emotions cloud his judgement. Or so he had commanded himself, but all that flew out of the window when the man spoke his next deranged words.
“After I am done killing you, I’ll eat your little boy alive. I wonder how he’ll taste…”
Before the man had finished speaking, Arthur had surged forward at his maximum speed, which was far faster than the man’s reaction time, and he unleashed a full-powered punch to the man’s jaw. Unlike in the movies, when his fist collided with the man’s jaw with incredible power, the fight was over as quickly as it had begun. The man dropped dead, confirmed for Arthur by his receiving of a system prompt.
However, his punch had forced the man to bite his tongue, and the blood from the man’s mouth suddenly spurted all over Arthur’s arms and the remainder of his tattered clothes.
He looked down at his bloodied hands, coated in the blood of another human, and what disturbed him the most was just how at ease he felt. This man may have tried to kill him, and he may have threatened to do the most horrific things to Lucas but was killing a man out of sheer rage supposed to be this easy on his conscious?
It hadn’t even been difficult physically speaking. He’d only delivered 2 punches to the man and the second one had done so much damage to the man’s skull and brain that he just fell dead, just like that. If the man were any weaker Arthur feared just what his strength would have done to his body, what it could do to a regular person’s body.
Images of him, full of rage and slaughtering the innocent flashed in his mind, but he suppressed them as hard as he could. They weren’t his own thoughts, he knew that much. He hated violence. He hated this new reality that he lived in. Yet, if violence was the only way to keep what he cared about alive, he would resort to it because that was his only option. That did not make him a violent person.
However, he wondered whether or not he’d have been able to capture the man rather than kill him. Whether that would have been more ethical, and or possible. He tried his hardest to convince himself that such thoughts only led to self-doubt and a damaged psyche, but his righteous mind could not allow himself to feel so lax about taking of a sapient life.
If his unconscious mind would no longer naturally provide psychological punishment for ethical wrongdoings, he put it upon himself to impose them with his active mind instead. Seeing that Lucas was still asleep somehow, he resorted to hiding the man’s body in his User Inventory and he just about fit in the small space.
After that, he moved away from the camp and to the river they had camped beside and washed off his arms. There was a fervour in his attempt at washing that he had never had before, for he not only had to wash himself of the blood physically, but his hand tried washing himself free of blood in a deeper way.
Once his body was clean, he made his way back to the camp and returned to keeping watch until dawn broke the next morning, and he and Lucas began up on their journey once more.
Lucas noticed that his grandfather was quieter as they walked but put it down to the old man being tired from not having slept in over a week. The boy was amazed the man was even still standing but put it down to the older man having system benefits as well as impressive willpower.
They walked for a further 2 days in nearly complete silence, Arthur still contemplating what had been a whole new level of violence that he had been forced to dish out, and Lucas who was growing less and less stable mentally speaking not feeling able to speak without wanting to yell.
Then, at around midday on the 3rd day of further walking, they could see off in the distance the beginnings of what looked to be a humungous fortress and the two let out a sigh of relief.
However, as if working on the principle of ‘if you can see me, I can see you’ an aircraft quickly intercepted them as they moved towards the fortress. The aircraft descended quickly, and a near-human female jumped out of her aircraft, a spear in her hand, and she started shouting, “Name, Reason for Approach, and Association. Or you will die.”
Arthur was the one to respond, as usual, “My name is Arthur Goodman, I was told by one Lieutenant Patrick Marcus, that I should report here to fulfil my contribution requirements to become a citizen of the Imperium. And I am unaware of what type of association you are talking about, but I used to be a butler if that is of any assistance to you.”
The woman lowered her spear, before seemingly fazing out for a moment, and then lowering her guard ultimately. She shook her head before she apologised, “I am sorry for the precautionary measure. Yes. I see that the Lieutenant reported you would be coming in his final log.”
Arthur’s face grimaced upon hearing the words “final log”, which made it sound like the lieutenant had died which considering his seemingly jovial character was a shame, he spoke up hesitantly, “I apologise if this is a personal or private matter. But you said he made note of us in his final log, am I to assume the Lieutenant is dead?”
The woman nodded, “One of your fellow natives brutally tortured, killed, and probably ate the poor man.”
Arthur’s shock was clear on his face, and then a grim look formed on his face as he wondered whether the corpse of the man he had in his personal inventory might be the killer. Wouldn’t that be oh so inconvenient?