Jake stopped at the edge of the dome, looking at the new demon lady standing beside him, then back at the dome protecting the city.
“Are you sure about this? If we get in trouble out there, I may not be able to save you.”
“I have made my decision. Where you go, I will follow. After all, I owe you at least that much.”
“You don't owe me anything. I did what I did because I could, nothing more. So please don't think you owe me anything.”
“And I am doing this for myself, so just accept it.”
Emma said this before walking through the dome.
“Ok, so I guess we're going.”
Jake followed her through. As Jake popped out the other side, he noticed Emma standing there, staring at the sky.
“What are you looking at? Wow.”
The two stood there, just staring at the sky.
Identify Race: Pterosaurs Level: ???
“It's a fucken dinosaur, how is that a thing? Didn't they go extinct?” Emma said.
“I'm more worried about its level.”
“Why, what is it?”
“That's the problem. I don't know. That only happens when the level is well above your own.”
“Um, didn't you say you were level 100? So does that mean it is above that, I mean, like well above?”
“Well, yes, it does.”
“Oh, I think we should go now,” Emma said, before stepping behind Jake and giving him a nudge.
Jake and Emma were now after seeing those pterosaurs moving at a slow and steady pace. Jake was teaching Emma about how he upgraded his stealth skill, and as a result, she had been working on a skill of her own. She had decided to improve her understanding of her unarmed combat skills. She had three skills, one of which used Mana, the other two were just Stamina. She was hoping to combine her most destructive one, Mana Punch, with Flurry of Blows to make a new skill that would use her Mana Punch as the backbone to Flurry of Blows, making it more destructive. Her last skill was a movement skill, Step of the Wind. It worked well in a combo with Flurry of Blows. The only issue Jake had with Step of the Wind was that his normal dash was quicker than it. But seeing that her skill was unranked in rarity right now, Jake had a feeling that when she finds a way to upgrade it, possibly even more than once, it will outstrip him, even if he had a lot more stat points in Agility than she had.
The two continued on as they passed through the old farmland on their way to their final destination. On their way, they ran into a group of weak rats, although the rats were twice the original size. Speaking of things being bigger than they used to be, the Earth was at least four or five times its original size. But what stumped Jake was that the gravity on the planet didn't change. So in Jake's mind, he came up with what seemed like the dumbest conclusion: the Earth was hollow. But this really didn't make any sense.
“Hey, have you felt hungry since before the tutorial? I haven't felt hungry or even eaten at all, have you?” Emma asked.
“Now that you mentioned it, no, I haven't.”
“Do you think the system has something to do with it? Like once we start gaining levels, the system takes away those needs?”
“I'm guessing it does, otherwise, we would be dead by now. Not sure about you, but I haven't eaten for over a year, and before that, I didn't eat for two days prior.”
As Jake finished saying that, he had a strange thought: if the system took away the need for food, does that also mean he won't ever poo again? But then what would happen if he ate something? Would he need to poo? Then would it be converted somehow into his stats or something like that?
“That really needs testing,” Jake said.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking, what would happen to food if we ate it?”
“That's gr— you know what, that's a good question. You should do it and tell me if anything strange happens to you.”
As they were talking, Jake had come across a group of bugs. It really reminded Jake of the tutorial.
“Okay, Emma, do you think you could handle the small fry while I take on that one?”
Jake was looking at a bug identified as a cockroach at level 105.
“If you can't, that's fine. Just stay out of the way.”
“I can try. At the very least, I can hold them off for you.”
“Okay, that should work. If you can hold them off for a bit, I should be able to have a good shot at that one. Then I will know my limits better for when I take on my class quest. I have a feeling it's going to be a lot more difficult than it was during the tutorial.”
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Emma launched herself forward and activated her skills one after the other. She used Step of the Wind to get closer to her opponent, then activating either Flurry of Blows or Mana Punch. Then she would activate Step of the Wind again to escape the bug's counter, only to repeat the sequence. She was slowly making progress, but what worried Jake was the possible overuse of her mana and stamina, leaving her vulnerable to a simple attack from one of the bugs. Jake, with no hesitation, dashed towards the cockroach with his F88 in his hand, firing from his hip as he ran. The projectiles seemed to just bounce off of the level 105 cockroach.
“Oh fuck, they really were nerfed in the tutorial.”
Jake kept dashing forward, raising his rifle up to his shoulder and in quick succession fired off ten rounds at the cockroach's head. After ten well-aimed shots, the last one cracked its exoskeleton a little. It had a group of five hairline cracks spidering out from the center point of its skull. Jake fired five more rounds, but all five bounced off. Only now did Jake realize how nerfed the tutorial was. Jake and Erica were playing through hordes of bugs like these, but now Jake couldn't even take one down by himself. Jake fired a grenade at the bug, having it explode underneath the cockroach, severing one of its legs just before Jake got into close-quarters fighting. Pulling out his knife, Jake plunged it in between the cockroach's armored plates, between its head and torso. The knife penetrated but then snapped the blade just above hand. Dropping the remains of his dagger on the ground, he swung his rifle up and fired at point-blank range, expanding the hole before he attempted to duck the cockroach’s counter. Only Jake wasn't quite fast enough to dodge it completely. One of the bug's legs penetrated Jake's lower leg. He screamed as his lower leg was ripped off, struggling to escape the bug's bombardment, rolling over. Jake noticed the hole he had made earlier, reaching up with his hand, Jake rammed his fist inside it before saying.
“You may have taken my leg, but I give you my arm.”
Jake activated a skill he had actually forgotten he had.
Skill (Rebirth of the Exploding Body, Unique) Will passively heal the user. Stamina is converted into temporary units of integrity to provide healing at a 100 to 1 ratio. Warning: the system recognizes that you have a tendency for self-harm. The system recommends you seek medical advice.
Before he blew up his own body, just like he had with the mother spider or whatever she was called. To Emma's horror and astonishment, Jake was one minute under the cockroach, being trampled to death as he screamed in pain. Then the next second, Jake's scream went silent, and everything went silent as his voice echoed around them.
“You may have taken my leg, but I give you my arm.”
Followed by a loud bang and a flame that shot into the sky. The bugs that she was fighting scattered as they fled into the distance. Emma ran over to Jake's side and began to use her healing skills to mend Jake's leg back together, but his arm was out of her healing ability. As she couldn't regenerate limbs, she could only reattach them and stop bleeding. So she did both. After a day, Jake woke from his injuries. His arm was growing back slowly, but his stamina was now down to what Jake would call the red. He had only 500 points left. “I need to deactivate the passive skill,” Jake thought. Jake had read the information on passive skills once he noticed it said passive. Jake thought it would be on all the time, but no, the information given to him by the system about it was on the lines of: yes, you can activate and deactivate a passive skill. A passive skill that drains your stamina forever would be really stupid, and you wouldn't want to have passives like that on all the time, you idiot. Go find mental help.
Jake was pretty sure the system liked to fuck with him. It sometimes felt like it had a personality, and other times, it was so obvious it was a system with no emotions.
Jake looked over at Emma. She was asleep, leaning up against a rock. Jake pushed himself to his feet, moved over to her, and sat back down before falling asleep.
Emma awoke to a blood-covered man living beside her. Her mind flashed back to being trapped in her own body as she whipped her friend, as he screamed for her to stop. The whipping continued until blood was pooling under him, and then a man entered the room, holding a long sharpened log covered in what looked a lot like Vaseline, and a lot of it. The man said with a smile to the lady in the room.
“I've brought it for you this time. I'm sure it will excite you, my queen.”
The lady replied, “Let's get her to do it this time.”
The man started walking over to her as a scream filled the room.
With a startled jump, Jake woke up, his last remaining dagger firmly grasped in his hand as rain bounced off his cloak.
“What is it?” Jake asked, before looking at Emma's pale and sweat-covered body. She was curled up in a ball, shivering. Jake put away his dagger before heading over to her.
“Get away, get away from me. I didn't have control of my body. Please leave me alone. I didn't want to hurt you,” she yelled before crying into her hands as she covered her face.
Jake, realizing she was remembering what happened to her, changed his form into a demon and wiped the blood off of his face with his sleeve before he spoke in a soft voice.
“Emma, you are okay now. No one is going to hurt you anymore. If anyone comes for you, I, the demon of the past, will send them away.”
Emma looked up from underneath her hands, looking at demon Jake as she would say.
“Thank you for helping me. I'm sorry I'm like this,” Emma said as she started shaking again. “I should have just died.”
Jake reached out his hand and brought Emma into an embrace, shielding her from the rain.
“I'm not good at many things, but there is one thing I know for sure. You, Emma, are a very strong lady, and as such, I expect you to reach heights of power that no one has even thought possible. So it would be a disservice to your friend if you were to think that your life is not worth living,” Jake said with determination in his voice.
“But I did so many horrible things to him, and what's worse is that he loved me, and I didn't even get to tell him that I loved him too. We were always together; we even acted like a couple, but I never told him. I never told him.” Emma went quiet at the end as she pressed her head into Jake's chest.
“This may sound odd, but can you read what my race is?” Jake said. Emma looked up at him and then used identify.
Jake Everval Race: Demon of the Past, Unique This is a unique race in the integrated universe, and as such, the system has no information on its abilities.
“What was the point of making me do that?”
“Read this,” Jake said, bringing up an ability for her to read.
Race skill (Voices of the Past, Unique) Tap into the experience of those who have died.
Emma just looked at Jake, even more confused.
“You don't understand, do you? If I can tap into the dead experiences, then there has to be some kind of afterlife. And since the system doesn't know what my race can do, why can't I just contact the dead? If I could find a way, would you like to talk with your friend one last time?” Jake said.
“I don't know, maybe. It's just, what if he hates me for what I did to him?”
“What if? That's an odd grouping of words. If you go down that path, there will be no coming back. Try doing this instead: when you get the what-ifs creeping into your thoughts, just take one step forward. All of your what-ifs will then be behind you, and the road ahead will be clear for you to travel. Remember, just one step is all it will take.”