The notification was simple and without flair, which was the byproduct of him having bought it from the Interweb. Unless one personally created a skill, there were no addendums or pithy philosophical insights from the System. He almost missed those notifications, but they were merely a distraction, nothing more.
Sam closed the skill notification and took a right, heading towards the wall district. The walls had taken quite a lot of damage from the battle and houses and buildings next to them had been severely harmed by the attack Some areas were still plagued with low level amounts of radiation, and only the strong dared to go near those places.
The radiation was being siphoned away by air magicians, but given the proclivity for mages to focus on magic over all else, many fell sick, making it a hard job to find applicants for. As a result, the work was taking some time.
Sam could have forcibly drafted some people for the task, but he had no wish to act like a tyrant. As he entered one of the abandoned districts, which was filled with the shells of previously inhabited buildings, he spotted one of the clouds of radioactive smoke billowing up from beneath one of the ruined houses. It looked like a faint green smog, so concentrated was it, and it was certainly out of the ordinary. Most of the radiation had been seen through, and did not appear within most people’s vision.
However, this one was quite clear, which meant that the taint was strong indeed. Real radiation, at least before the System came, did not have a green tinge, but it seemed that whatever magic the Legion had worked on their nukes had rendered it so. He moved closer to the stain, and inspected it thoroughly, trying to figure out where it had come from. It almost looked like a living being, and it moved in a way that suggested at least a small degree of sentience. However, it seemed to be mostly drifting along with the wind.
Sam edged toward the cloud, apprehensive about what it was. If this was some sort of new monster, and it was inside the bounds of the city, then this could cause issues. As he went within a few feet of the cloud, it suddenly began to swirl, and rose up into a pillar of writhing smoke, before thrusting itself towards Sam.
He formed a shield out of his elemental energy and mana in an instant, blocking the attack as soon as it came. The cloud bounced off the shield, and then whipped around his back, trying to get to one of his weak spots.
The creature thrust itself into a gap between his clothes, and reached his skin. A light tickling feeling drifted up from the area, and Sam snorted. Whatever this monster was, it was too weak to harm him. It might have caused issues to some of the weaker people in the city, but it was a problem that he could deal with instantly.
He channeled his Dao into his aura, and flattened the cloud beneath his willpower, causing it to dissipate. He hadn’t been entirely sure if that would work, but it seemed to have had the desired effect. There was nothing left of the cloud now, save for a faint speckling of green dust on the ground.
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Sam sighed, and left the vicinity, noting something to report to his captains. His role was not of some glorified pest controller. As he walked through the city, he helped out in any way that he could with the rebuilding efforts, however small. His prodigious physical strength, likely the highest in the entire faction, allowed him to lift weights that were far beyond the capabilities of most, which helped in the reconstruction efforts. In any case, it gave him something to do.
He was quickly becoming dependent on battle to feel any sort of wellbeing, and he had been too weak to train properly for the last few days. There had been a lingering crack in his Dao from overusing his Dao Juggernaut skill that made it painful to use beyond a certain amount of its total capacity. The pain he could handle, but he suspected that the Dao itself would fracture if he went any further than he had already tried.
Over the next half hour, he slowly made his way into the sector of the city that had been designated for the aliens. Most of them had made inroads with the humans, but none of them were willing to live in too close of a proximity with them, The feeling was mutual on the human side as well.
They had split off a section of the city, and added more housing to it for the aliens. It seemed to suit them fine. Restaurants with alien cuisine on offer were popping up on every corner, and Sam even saw a few curious humans checking them out. He took a loop of the neighborhood, and upon finding nothing of note, he went back towards the city hall, satisfied.
The time of the expedition was coming up quickly, and he wanted to be ready for what was to come, which would be a blessed relief from the mind numbing jobs that he was forced to complete while in the city. Such were the perils of peace however, and Sam felt slightly guilty for wanting something that would potentially spell the end for some of his soldiers.
As he neared the city hall he was met by a few random diplomats, who were all trying to get his signature on something. Sam had no idea when the city had even gained diplomats, but they were not a welcome part of the faction. They apparently represented different districts of the city, which was now a necessity given how big it was growing and how many people there were in it. Given that only the captains and Sam could build anything, everything that was to be constructed needed the signatures of one of the captains to authorize it. He brushed past them, ignoring them completely. They were not in luck today. They could pester some other captain, as Sam was not in the mood for their tricks. He knew that they all wanted to line their own pockets above all else but because of the fact that System registered classes were so efficient, he couldn't do anything about the diplomats, who could all fulfill the tasks of municipal management far more effectively than he could.
He felt a little bad for treating them like that, but they were all scumbags to a man. He only loosely tolerated them, and only because his captains had assured him that they did valuable work. It seemed that a certain type of person was required to be a great politician, and as the faction grew and grew, there would be more and more of these leeches. Sam was looking forward to that time, as he could be entirely free to do whatever he wanted at that point, as the faction would be basically self-governing by then. If they ever expanded beyond this planet, he would finally be able to explore the Solar System, with his interplanetary ship. There were probably all sorts of hidden wonders left there by the System for people to find, and great opportunities to be gained. It had already been months, and he had barely scratched the surface of Earth, let alone the universe.