Arthur sighed heavily as he realised that there was probably not going to be much to do over the next few hours regarding looking after Lucas, with there being a few hours until dawn and all, so he decided to go out and explore this strange city/military base for himself.
He made sure to try and leave a note with the boy telling him where he was going, just in case the boy woke up, but he doubted that would happen until much later anyway.
As he walked down the corridor of the building, he accidentally caught a glimpse of himself in a tall mirror at the end of the hallway and he paused dramatically.
His face was now that of a far younger version of himself, looking as though he were only in his 60s, a rapid and extreme shift for sure. He was now confident he could pin the de-ageing he had undergone on his improvement in his cultivation, but the implications were still far too expansive for him to comprehend at the moment, so he pushed thoughts of such things to the side.
As he exited the dormitory building, he looked around him, the cool morning breeze pleasurably washing over him as he slowly walked forward. He couldn’t see anyone in the streets of the strange city, which was probably for the best, as this would give him the opportunity to have a real look around without having to worry about bumping into people or potentially causing trouble by doing something the locals found odd or suspicious.
As he made his way down the streets, he decided to take a look at his status screen, having not looked at the overall picture of his strength in quite a while.
ARTHUR GOODMAN ’S STATUS:
Titles: [C] Monster Among Men
Tier: [E]
Class: [Rookie] Guardian Butler | Progress to next Class Rank: 4.4%
Realm: 4th Step of the [Foundation] realm
Level: 44
STATS: (Now Showing Bonuses from Cultivation)
PHYSICAL: 56 | MENTAL: 76 | SOCIAL: 30 | SPIRITUAL: 197 | SYSTEM: 50
HP: 1,232 / 1,232 | HP regen p/s: 19.16.
STM: 2,464/2,464 | STM regen p/s: 5.42.
MP: 1,672/1,672 | MP regen p/s: 3.68.
Qi: 5,170/5,170 | Qi Regen p/s: 5.170
Balance: £61,590
Traits: Lucky (Lvl:10), Qi Pylon (Lvl:5) & Lesser Regenerator (Lvl:1)
Skills:
[Advanced] Cleaning, [Advanced] Dispute Management, [Advanced] Cooking, [Advanced] Unarmed Combat, [Basic] Small-Bladed Weaponry
He looked at his status with a thoughtful gaze. He’d levelled so many times since fighting against the elemental bear, and had invested all the points he had received into increasing his system stat as he was starting to see the steepening slope of difficulty required to be endured to even get a single level up – even at his, in the grand scale of the multiverse, quite a meagre level, and so boosting his gains and lowering his thresholds seemed entirely necessary if he wanted to progress in the future.
He absent-mindedly opened the system point shop and checked over his perks’ progression and couldn’t help but smile.
SYSTEM POINT SHOP:
[I] Personalisation (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 1 System Point
[I] User Coin Pouch (Lvl:2 -> Lvl:3) | Cost: 1 System Points
[II] Enhanced Thresholds (Lvl:5 -> Lvl:6) | Cost: 3 System Point
[II] Enhanced Gains (Lvl:4 -> Lvl:5) | Cost: 2 System Point
[II] User Inventory (Lvl:2 -> Lvl:3) | Cost: 5 System Point
[II] User Manual (Lvl:1 -> Lvl:2) | Cost: 3 System Point
Arthur had learned a lot from Oliver, and he knew that he was progressing at a rather unprecedented speed for an unconnected native of a newly integrated planet.
This wasn’t saying much in the grand scheme of things, as there were entities out in the multiverse who had enough resources to raise and develop a person/child into an overwhelming force without that child/person actually doing anything to earn it. And compared to that he was basically progressing as fast as a turtle.
With that said, however, there were also an unfathomably large number of people out in the multiverse who would give an arm and a limb to see the kind of progression that Arthur had experienced. Though, he knew that should he succeed in finding a job at some manor of a multi-versal lord, he’d quickly discover that what applied to the common folk very much did not apply to the rich and mighty.
He sighed despondently as all of his thoughts recently seemed to revolve around power, and he didn’t like it one bit. So, trying to dispel his mind of the subject, he turned his thoughts to his skills and the rather daunting question of what he should do with the enormous mountain of skill points that he’d been accruing over the course of the last few weeks.
Arthur had managed to pick up the Unarmed Combat skill quite easily over the last few weeks due to his having dropped the knife and realised that the reason his Small-blade mastery skill had been so lacklustre in its growth was probably because of his constant early use of the Battle State perk.
When active, the perk almost took over his body, so much so that the system clearly didn’t count it as him displaying any kind of skill or growing in ability with it. Whereas when he was fighting with the monsters of the forests with his bare fists, whilst also suppressing the perk, he’d already been able to get the skill to the [Advanced] rank.
Arthur assumed that this would be the case also if he ever acquired any cultivation-based skills, a thought that admittedly made him a bit uneasy. He didn’t know whether he could handle the strain of his own newly heightened emotions on his own anymore and thus didn’t know if he would ever actually be able to progress any cultivation skills manually.
The system had taken the burden of actually cultivating away from him and in return, he got an insubordinate perk, but while so far he had thought the arrangement basically good, as he thought about it he realised that the system had taken more than he realised. By taking away the need to cultivate, it had also taken away from him what seemed to be a clear outlet to deal with the malignant thoughts and emotions that accrued within his mind over time.
Cultivating on the loss of his family had not only given him a new source of power, but it had also helped him confront and process his grief, and, more importantly, it had helped him let go of the past and focus on what was important, the future. Or to put it simply, to focus on helping and protecting Lucas.
All such thoughts had him wondering whether this perk of his was really that great in the first place and whether his fast progression may actually be in many ways a disability. Power in return for mental instability, a trade-off that the full ramifications of he hadn't yet experienced too deeply. However, Arthur did not regret his decisions in the slightest, as what was done was done, and the decisions he had made had been those he had been proven right to think would keep him and Lucas alive in a suddenly changed, much harsher, world. Regretting those decisions was futile, and so all he could do now was prepare himself the best he could to deal with the ramifications.
Shifting his mind once again, he thought about the mountain of skill points that he'd yet to spend. He’d saved them mostly due to the fact he had been ignorant as to their function, and most of all, for the longest time he hadn’t had any large number of skills to begin with, nor any real reason to desire a high-ranked skill. However, his situation was now different, being around more people and all, and it would only become more different as he set off on his personal quest to find a worthy employer. So, he’d need better and better skills as time progressed to deal with increasingly complex and difficult situations, which then led to the aforementioned question, What should he do with his mountain of skill points?
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He thought long and hard about the question as he took in the sights of the city, weighing up his various options. His class was an interesting hybrid that would benefit from all of his current skills being boosted through skill points, but, in the end, if he split up his points too much, he’d suffer from the faults of spreading a limited resource too thinly. In other words, he’d get fewer skill rank-ups. However, if he specialised in one-half of his skills too much, he’d be rather limited in the scope of the things he'd be recognised by the system as being good at.
It was only as rosy-fingered dawn stretched over the horizon that Arthur felt confident enough to decide what to do with his points. Which was, splitting all 148 points that he possessed into his 4, currently [Advanced] rank skills, whilst also saving some points for future skill purchases, and so in the end each of the 4 skills received 30 skill points of investment.
And, just like that, 4 system prompts appeared in his vision.
Your skill: Cleaning, has reached [Adept] rank!
Your skill: Dispute Management, has reached [Adept] rank!
Your skill: Cooking, has reached [Adept] rank!
Your skill: Unarmed Combat, has reached [Adept] rank!
Arthur smiled as he felt instincts being seemingly inscribed onto his very muscles, making him subtly aware of some best practices when it comes to combat as well as cooking. It seemed that the other two skills didn’t offer any real instincts or knowledge to him, a reality that if Arthur was going to flatter himself, it was probably due to the fact he far surpassed his current skill rank in terms of his talent and skill with said skills and now the system was just catching up.
It was then, as he was walking back, that he ran into Corporal Leah. Her hair was a bit dishevelled, and her mood looked particularly sour this morning, so Arthur did not engage her – wanting to not aggravate the woman further with any superfluous interactions.
However, to his surprise, once she spotted him she approached him, now doing her best to put a fake smile on her face. And, once she was close enough, she looked at him a bit closer, and her eyes filled with disbelief before she spoke, “Mr Goodman, I’m glad your night proved fruitful. I must say, your speed of cultivation is truly terrifying to one such as me.”
Arthur was initially surprised that the woman could tell he’d progressed, then he remembered that he looked decades younger, and so took the woman’s statement as a final confirmation of his theory. Then he replied politely, “Thank you for saying so, though I must confess that I believe I was helped in my progression by the rich Qi environment that this place is.”
In this, Arthur was not being even the slightest bit deceitful. As though his perk was undoubtedly very good and efficient, and his strange mental combat with the demon fruitful, as he was now able to sense just how dense with Qi the area, he was standing in was, he had to suspect that it was a major contributing factor to his 3 steps increase earlier.
The Corporal let out a small laugh, before replying in a light and rather informal tone, “This area is only rich in Qi in comparison to the Qi wasteland that’s outside of it. To be honest, I’m not even sure the Qi gathering formation we have set up is even fully functional.”
Arthur chuckled in response before he focused his eyes on the woman in front of him and asked, “May I ask you where I need to drop off the monster corpses to finish the first part of the citizenship quest?”
The woman nodded, and said, “I can take you there, so if you wouldn’t mind, please follow me.”
Arthur’s smile widened and he walked alongside the woman as they walked through the incredibly foreign-looking “city”, and towards a large warehouse-looking building near the exterior wall of the military base.
As they approached an octoid guard, who seemed clearly very tired, yawned as he let the both of them through the large black gates that served as the only entrance to the clearly quite important building’s compound.
Once inside the building itself, Arthur couldn’t help but look around and feel a slight sense of discomfort and disgust as the bodies of hundreds of monsters, animals, and even some humans, were stacked in piles within what was now confirmed to be the city's main warehouse. However, now feeling the need to get this whole process over with quickly, he didn’t make a fuss despite his sensibilities very much opposing what it was that he was seeing all around him. That wasn't even mentioning the horrific stench that the corpse piles emitted.
After Leah guided him to the back of the warehouse, they were met by an averagely tall humanoid man with a matted greying beard, dark brown hair, and a slender build. However, what was most notable about the man wasn’t his outward appearance, but his smell/ unbelievably horrible odour.
A whiff of the man’s pungent stench was almost enough to cause Arthur to lose consciousness, with it taking all the willpower and endurance that he had accrued over the last few weeks not to do so. The man’s smell was an unholy mix of sweat, rotting body parts, burning plastic, and way, way too much alcohol, and Arthur was certain that he was the worst-smelling person that he’d ever met.
Leah only chuckled upon noticing Arthur’s reaction to the stench given off by the man, before gesturing to the man and introducing him, “Mr Goodman, this here is our resident warehouse manager, monster disassembler, and coroner, his name is quite difficult to transliterate into English, so he goes by Jeffrey. You can hand over your monster bodies to him and I’ll mark off your quest as being complete.”
Arthur somehow managed to nod, before then summoning his inventory, and pulling out the various monster corpses he’d been collecting in his inventory over the last few weeks.
The odour emitting gentlemen just nodded his head a little bored as Arthur pulled out skeleton, after zombie, after goblin. Then, his eyes seemed to light up as Arthur started taking out more and more elemental monsters that he’d encountered and been forced to kill to survive.
Arthur didn’t notice the man walk up to one of the corpses and begin to pat its body until the man suddenly spoke in a thick Scottish accent making Arthur focus his attention on him.
“Say, Mr Goodman, whatever your name is, judging by these here monster corpses may I assume that you’re a wee bit of an Unarmed Combat specialist?”
“Indeed,” Arthur said curtly, before then taking out the rest of the monster corpses and then closing his inventory.
Jeffrey then turned to Leah and said, “Though the number of monsters the man has here isn’t exactly 50, I’d say mark the monster part of this one’s quest as complete. Not only are these monster corpses not overly damaged by slashes or cuts, making them of higher quality, but some of them are also even pretty decent-level monster remains. For a new integrated planet that is.”
Leah nodded at the man and said, “I’ll take your word for it and mark it off as complete for Mr Goodman.”
Arthur didn’t know how he felt about being spoken about right in front of him as though he wasn’t there, but he ultimately ignored it as the conversation was one that favoured him and so there was no reason to intervene.
Leah moved over to him and grabbed his arm, initially making him panic before then suddenly a warm feeling was coursing through his body, and a system prompt appeared in his vision.
Quest Objective: Fight 50 monsters on your home planet and ‘gift’ the Imperium all of the monster remains.
Status: 100% Complete
Arthur smiled as he read over the system prompt and then dismissed it. And, just as Leah was guiding him out of the warehouse door, Jeffrey called out to him, “I heard you’re also the one who killed that devil-worshipping bastard who murdered Lieutenant Patrick, the lieutenant was a friend of mine, so thanks for that.”
With that, the man then seemed to disappear back into the warehouse, and all Arthur could do was smile back in the man’s general direction. As though he understood the sentiment, he wasn’t quite ready to justify what he'd done that night to himself. This was mainly due to his fear of what he’d become if he did. As a small part of him felt. No. It knew. A small part of him knew that the man in the forest wouldn’t be the last person he’d kill in the future, and the thought that he would be able to so easily shake off the burden of killing another human being shook him to his very core. Making him question just what kind of person he really was, and whether this new world had changed him for the worse.
Leah’s concerned voice brought him out of his thought spiral, “Mr Goodman?!”
Arthur blinked as he turned to the woman and apologised. The Corporeal spoke to him about all of the other requirements to attain citizenship as the two walked back towards the dormitory area. She emphasized the importance of learning the Common language first and she advised that he spend the next few weeks learning it so that once he left Earth, he could interact with most of the population of the multiverse – most of whom would obviously not have the backup of an army-grade English language module.
Arthur had nodded along in agreement throughout her talk as he had nearly forgotten that the aliens weren’t all native English speakers, their modules now being near-perfect in their imitation of most English speakers, a reality that had definitely not been the case when he’d communicated with the drone pilot.
Yet now it was his turn to slowly come to grips with a new, literally alien, language, and he doubted that he’d be anywhere near-native fluency in only a matter of weeks so in that respect the technology of the imperium was far superior to himself.
He said farewell to the Corporal as he made his way back to his room. He very carefully and quietly entered the room and was greeted by an adorable sight, Lucas still dead asleep, snoring away. Arthur smiled, deciding to wait until the boy woke up to start both of their educations in this new language, and thus have them both be one step closer to becoming a true part of the vast multiverse that had only recently opened up to them.
The following week and a half flew by very quickly for both Arthur and Lucas, with Arthur realising that it seemed his rate of learning languages had been incredibly improved by his decision to allocate his social points to the related perk. Whereas, Lucas, though certainly not showing no talent for languages, was still struggling to adapt to everything around him and so his progress was thus far more slow and gradual. Even so, Arthur was unbelievably proud of the boy for how well he was doing, and the rate at which he was adapting to his new environment, as well as to having Arthur be his main guardian and caregiver, especially in the more stable setting of the base.
Speaking of Arthur, he had also seen an additional 2 step increase in his cultivation over the week and a half period, the dense Qi environment and his obstinate perk being the main reasons as to why – having fortunately not had any more encounters with any demons since that night. Furthermore, through more long-form conversations with Oscar, he had not only made his first Alien friend but had also discovered a lot more about the known effects of high cultivation – stuff that was not included in the rather brief manual that he’d given them the first time they’d spoken.
Now, Arthur was sitting on his bed, reading a book on the Imperium Common Tongue’s grammar, when suddenly he heard a startled scream from the bed on the other side of the room. This instantly made him turn his head in worry, and the once fast-asleep Lucas suddenly jolted awake, confusion present in his somewhat dazed eyes. Then, a squeal of pure childish excitement, as the voice of Lucas then happily proclaimed, “Grandpa, the system! I have it now!”