The instant that the ceremony to judge Daz's potential was over, Crosius approached the sleeping Reaper and tried to wake him up by touching his shoulder, however, as soon as his hand came close to Daz, the young man's eyes snapped open.
"You sensed my hand, Your Grace?" Crosius asked with a warm smile on his face.
Daz nodded. "I was raised to be cautious."
"So I see, Your Grace. The system should have a notification waiting to be read by you regarding your potential test," Crosius said respectfully.
"Thanks," Daz replied before he checked the five system screens floating about harmlessly in the corner of his eyes.
The host has gained the [King's Rest] temporary buff from sleeping in Fort Skip's keep. All stats will be increased by 5% for 24 hours (to avoid cluttering the host's status screen, the system will hide the added stats from view by default).
Truly a cheat-like ability of the keep. It was essentially a permanent buff for Daz and whomever he let sleep in the keep since it lasted for a full day.
You have gone through the necessary ceremony, and the system has judged your current potential.
Current potential of the host: Very High.
Work hard to continue improving your potential, Daz.
The young Reaper felt odd at how personal this system message felt, but he ignored it and looked at the third notification.
As a reward for being judged to have [Very High] Potential, the host has been granted an [S-rank Item token].
'An Item token? Interesting. Last time I got something like this was the skill token and the base-type changing token back on day one,' Daz thought to himself.
The young Reaper was quite shocked upon seeing the second last system message.
The host has entered a new ranking list. The host is rank #3 on the [Potential] Ranking list.
Immediately moving on to the last notification after getting past his shock, Daz was greatly anticipating the reward he would get for ranking so incredibly high on this new ranking list.
Due to being in the top 3 for overall Potential, the host shall receive a free evolution chance.
"Incredible..." Daz muttered under his breath.
This confirmed Daz's suspicion that both second and third received individual prizes. He still wasn't sure about ranks four through nine, but for now, he had no time for that.
There were maybe five minutes until the attack started, so Daz decided to put the free evolution on hold until today's fight was over. He also had an idea of how to use it as a weapon of sorts, but he was hoping he wouldn't need to do that.
Just before he left the keep, Daz selected the thirty keep employees. Apparently, they didn't actually have to do any work inside the keep to earn the ten-thousand merit point daily 'wage', which Daz thought was amazing.
He hired himself, Madison, Rose, Lyle, Dorian, Edward, Crusher, Ellie, the four ex-cosplayer teens - excluding Xing naturally - Chris the mine Foreman, Sandy, Heather, Bobby, Fiona, Robert, Greg, Mave, and then ten of the regular citizens whom he trusted more so than the rest.
The ten regular people would be the actual employees who would clean and maintain the keep. Daz fulled expected Lyle to do his job as his personal advisor and explain this to these people and make sure that they were more than willing to do it.
Naturally, several of the other people whom he had chosen would be swapped out once he found suitable replacements for them. For example, the father and daughter pair, Fiona and Robert.
The two of them had turned a new leaf as of late. Robert had become an upstanding citizen and a perfect example of a recovering convict. Daz attributed some of this to his racial trait, Reformer, which greatly increased the chance of people judged by Daz to fix their ways, but at the same time, he couldn't deny that Robert had worked hard off of his own accord.
Fiona was no longer the snotty and two-faced teenager she was before. Apparently, after setting up her show and performing with the help of some Sorcerers and Sorceress who had chosen not to fight, her debut had been a resounding success.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Whether as a direct result of this or perhaps because Robert, her father, was there cheering her on the entire time, her alignment had changed. It was now entirely good and she no longer hid her true thoughts.
Daz could only hope for such a revelation to happen to his sister, Rose.
Unfortunately, as Daz was leaving the building, the many keep advisors didn't have any hints for him on this attack and they said that this was because a ritual had to be performed in order to get the necessary information from the system.
Now standing outside of Fort Skip's barrier that was roughly one-hundred meters away from the outer walls, Daz looked at Lyle who was holding two very strange looking syringes. From Daz's memory, neither of the man's weapons looked like this before he began the recovery of his addiction.
Lyle noticed Daz's gaze and smiled. "I spent my points wisely. Please, watch me today, My Lord. I will show you that I haven't fallen behind you in the slightest."
"I look forward to it," Daz calmly replied.
There was now only two minutes until the attack began.
Crusher was idly playing with her gravity hammer as she casually said, "So no info on today's attack?"
"Nope," Daz curtly replied.
Dorian, now equipped with a fully functioning metal arm in the place of his missing one, sighed heavily. "Why am I more worried that there's no abnormal weather?"
"Right, Ahab? It's weird," Crusher said with a short laugh.
Dorian's face fell. "Why am I still Ahab? I replaced my arm..."
Crusher roared in laughter. "A nickname doesn't go away just because you lost the defining trait."
"Captain Ahab never even made any sense," Dorian muttered under his breath.
With her high stats and enhanced Titan senses, Crusher could easily hear the poor man's words. "Exactly! It never made a lick of sense, so why would I change it? You can be really stupid sometimes."
At this point, Dorian had lost the will to respond.
It was then that the long-awaited system message flashed across everyone's eyes. However, this time, the notification was far from ordinary.
Day three's preparation stage for its attack shall now begin The system has detected a higher god's champion approaching the host on the request of said higher god. Due to this, the system has deemed it to be an unfair test to force the host to fight the monsters then encounter this champion. The host and this champion's attacks shall be cancelled and replaced by suitable adaptability tests. The host is tasked with killing or dissuading the approaching champion. The host is tasked with clearing five randomly generated wild events that will spawn near [Waterford] or any other wild events the host happens to encounter. The system is very displeased with the meddling of the gods and will be handing out suitable punishments for rushing the tests. Perform excellently, and expect vast rewards from the system for this deviation of the regular path. The host has 1 hour until the champion's arrival.
"Is this a good thing, or a bad thing, My Lord?" Lyle asked with a bit of a wry smile on his lips.
"I'm not sure. Is a single champion of a higher god really such a big deal? I'm the champion of a lesser god, and Crusher is also the champion of a higher god, aren't you?" Daz asked as he looked at the Titan who was peacefully whistling.
"Huh?" Crusher looked confused for a moment before she realised what Daz was saying. "Yeah, I guess. But the God of Strength barely helps me. All I ever got was my Titan evolution. Mind you, this is pretty sweet, but yeah, nothing besides this. I asked the guide in my dreamscape about it, actually, and he said it was normal for gods to give very little help, but the help they do give is substantial, or some shit like that."
"Dreamscape?" Edward wasn't familiar with this term.
Lyle, who had, of course, been doing his job since his return this morning, had already spoken to Rose in order to get the most up to date information on his Lord, and as a result, had learnt a bit about the gods.
The thin man looked at the burly Edward and said, "Dreamscapes are places that champions of the gods can go to when they sleep and learn fighting techniques or raw information."
"Heh... Must be nice," Edward commented a bit snarkily.
Crusher noticed the pensive look on Daz's face. "You look like you're suspicious of something, Lord."
"I am." Daz's reply was curt and to the point. A telltale sign of how busy his mind currently was.
Shaking his head, Daz turned and looked at the gathered fighters. "Return to Fort Skip. Will, station yourself and all of your men in the dungeon. Tell everyone down there the truth. We're waiting for another survivor to arrive and they may be very powerful."
"Yes, My Lord," General Retford happily agreed before he slammed his chest and walked back into the gates of Fort Skip with his army of one-hundred men.
He didn't even raise an eyebrow at Daz's nickname for him. This went to show how greatly William appreciated Daz restoring the barracks' power slightly.
Madison tugged at Daz's sleeve and peered up into his grey eyes. "Plan?"
"I'm going to try to get this person on my side. I have no idea what kind of personality they have, but I've got several skills specialised in changing people's minds," Daz replied.
Crusher crossed her arms beneath her massive breasts. "And if he or she doesn't listen to you and is immune to your skills?"
Daz's eyes turned cold. "Then we kill them."
----------------------------------------
Shen Mu was peacefully sitting on a pitch-black cloud that was flying through the air at a fairly fast speed. This was a Cloud of Tartarus, a gift given to him by the God of Death.
"I really don't like him," Mu muttered to himself.
A tiny skull that was red in colour came out from one of Mu's jacket pockets and hovered next to him. "You don't like who?" it asked.
"Morte," Mu answered as his handsome face crumpled into a deep frown.
"Why, pray tell, do you dislike the mighty God of Death, Master?" the skull questioned with a heavy sigh.
"He apparently broke the system's rules by making me come here. You might not think this, Skull, but I'm not the biggest fan of rule breakers," Mu said as he held his chin and closed his eyes in thought.
"You're right, oh Master who enjoys slaughtering his own kind, I don't think that," the Skull happily retorted. "Also, for the millionth time, my name is Esmerelda, not 'Skull'."
"Meh. I don't care, Skull. Anyway, I've decided. I'm going to fight this other reaper," Mu said with a big grin strewn across his lips.
Esmerelda shook slightly and sighed once again. "Didn't you just say that you dislike the God of Death? Then why, may I ask, do you plan on following through with his plans?"
"I'm not." Mu pouted. "If he's even half as strong as me, I want to become his friend. You're pretty bad company."
"I am greatly looking forward to your defeat, Master," Esmerelda said in the nicest tone that Mu had ever heard her speak with.
Mu simply ignored the floating skull at that point and continued towards Waterford silently. It only took another forty minutes for the Cloud of Tartarus to reach the city.
A few seconds passed and Shen Mu was now a thousand feet away from the barrier that surrounded Fort Skip. The Cloud of Tartarus had an ability that made it stop moving if the host was trying to enter a place of danger.
Shen Mu smiled and stored the Cloud of Tartarus in a bottle before he slowly began walking towards the tall and grand walls.
He could see several people waiting for him. There was even a massive thirty-foot tall crystal man of some sort. Shen Mu was getting excited and he could feel the blood pumping in his veins.