The emptiness at the core of Peter’s very soul never lessened in its size, though it did occasionally slip to the back of his mind when he was particularly focused on something else.
And, in the two months directly following his battle with Fred, his time and focus had been almost exclusively dedicated to improving and studying the implications of the [Freeze (User)] spell. As after the battle, he no longer felt comfortable playing around with basic magic, and only ever upgraded his mana manipulation skill when his time magic skill all but explicitly required an improved control of mana.
What Peter had learned over these two months had been groundbreaking for him. He discovered that at the expense of his mana pool, using his Class skill, he could cause the upgrade timer for his bot upgrades to… slow down tremendously.
That in and of itself was not that great news, but the implications of the fact that his subjective experience of time determined the count down of the upgrade timer, rather than the objective view of time being what mattered, meant that if he ever received a spell that sped up his experience of time – he’d be able to blitz through his upgrades by simply expending mana – a resource he had a theoretically unlimited supply of.
Just the mere thought of such a spell had made him giddy. However, he had encountered a slight problem a few days ago. His currently F+ rank Idle Progression perk had reached the end of its usability.
Cannot assign system bot to increase Class: [Mage]’s level to [6], because your perk: [Idle Progression]’s rank is too low!
Cannot assign system bot to increase Skill: [Detect Objects]’s level to [9], because your perk: [Idle Progression]’s rank is too low!
Cannot assign system bot to upgrade stat: [Strength] to [E], because your perk: [Idle Progression]’s rank is too low!
Peter grew giddy at just the mere thought that he had now gotten all of his stats, levels, and skill levels, to a point where he needed to upgrade his Idle Progression perk for a second time. Thus, 2 days ago, he had done it and had been met with at one and the same time an incredible, and rather foreboding system prompt that now counted down in the top right corner of his vision.
You have assigned 1 system bot to increase Perk: [Idle Progression], to [E] rank!
Time remaining until assignment completion: 25 days, 9 hours, 13 minutes!
The upgrade was going to take an entire month! This was by far and away the longest upgrade he’d yet had to wait through, but he doubted this would be the last as so far, the amount of time needed to upgrade a stat to the next rank was the same as the amount of time needed to increase the bot’s rank to that same rank – which meant his future stat growth would be rather limited and time-consuming.
Peter chastised himself. He’d known from the beginning that the time needed between each upgrade would probably increase in a non-linear fashion and he would just have to deal with that. Plus, as of now, he was extremely young – only being about 10 and a half – and so he had plenty of time to waste.
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The weeks that it took the upgrade to complete were Peter’s most challenging yet. Winter was now well and truly in, and thus every time he would go to walk back from his miserable study session with Katie, he would half-freeze to death due to the snow and ice-cold wind that blew almost 24/7.
Furthermore, though he couldn’t be certain, both Sadi and Katie seemed to be acting far more suspiciously lately which he assumed meant they whatever that had been up to until now would reveal itself in due time.
Peter had continued trying to derive some hint as to Sadi’s potential plot, but the man was good at hiding his intentions, and the boy just couldn’t see through them. More than this, however, without his special perk able to increase his strength, he was pretty much a sitting duck – so Peter had felt incredibly vulnerable as the month progressed.
So, when the ding rang out in his ear, Peter had inwardly squealed with joy – and his eyes immediately focused on the large system prompt that he had just received, scanning it quickly with his eyes to see whether or not his long wait had been worth it or not.
Your assigned bot has completed its task!
Perk: [Idle Progression]’s rank is now [E]! You can now increase system-related stats/phenomena beyond [F+] rank!
Updated Information:
Idle Progression | Type: System | Rank: [E] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/5 | Description: It is only by you assigning your bot(s) and waiting the designated amount of time for each improvement that you can improve the majority of system-related stats/phenomena. – Current Bots Available: 2/2 – Upgrade Time Reduction: 5% - Chance of Successful Bot Stacking Upon Attempt: 8%
(Note: Bot-stacking is what you can do when you assign more than one bot to cut the upgrade time in half. However, at your perk’s current rank, assigning more than one bot is not guaranteed to succeed and you thus risk disabling each bot >1 that you tried to assign for a period equal to the upgrade time requirement as a penalty for your incredible failure.)
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Peter almost couldn’t believe his own eyes. His perk was now absolutely preposterous. He could upgrade two things simultaneously, which was just simply absurd! Further, though it came with a significant risk of backfiring on him if Peter ever got lucky enough to successfully stack his two bots onto the same task – it would be finished in literally half the time it would have taken otherwise.
In other words, there might not be a need to wait a month to see a stat increase from [F+] to [E], instead, he might only have to wait 14 days. However, once again, there was an overwhelming chance that he simply failed a luck check and lost the use of his second bot for the entire upgrade period – a terrible loss to be sure.
However, this petty restriction did not restrain his enthusiasm for assigning his bots once again after so long for long, as after a few moments of thought, he had assigned both bots – to two different tasks and basked in the incredible sight of two system prompts appearing before him.
You have assigned 1 system bot to increase Stat: [Luck], to [E]!
Time remaining until assignment completion: 26 day, 14 hours, 24 minutes!
You have assigned 1 system bot to increase Perk: [Genius]’s rank to [F+]!
Time remaining until assignment completion: 6 days, 15 hours, 36 minutes
Peter couldn’t help but feel giddy as he dismissed the system prompts with a wave of his hand and marched out of his room with a smug-esque grin on his face. He honestly felt at the top of the world right now, so, of course, that meant that everyone else in his home had to be in a sour-looking mood of course.
The group of adventurers he shared this particular ruin with were all gathered around in a small circle – serious expressions on all of their faces. It was probably only thanks to his somewhat poor [Enhanced Senses] perk that he was even able to hear what they were saying, but the more he overheard, the more he realised that it would have been probably better if he hadn’t of even tried listening in.
“It’s fucking bullshit.” Said Frank in a voice that was far more cold and bitter than Peter had ever thought the teen capable of.
“That pre-exam was a fucking scam!” Max concurred, which was odd as he usually went out of his way to disagree with his androgynous teammate.
The other teen, whose name Peter had never bothered learning, chimed in with a haughty voice, “Maybe we should file a complaint or something, there is no way that the exam we did was meant for peak-[Copper] ranks like us.”
The only teen whose voice Peter could not hear was Leonard, though whether that was because the team leader was out of hearing range or just not speaking Peter couldn’t immediately tell until the older boy started speaking.
The deep and rich voice of the party’s leader was low but it positively vibrated with power and anger that sent shivers down Peter’s spine upon hearing it, and he’d only said a few words, “They didn’t want us to succeed.”
Peter couldn’t see it, but he just knew that all had slowly nodded their head in assent to their leader’s words.
“Bastards.” Leonard cursed almost under his breath, before he roared, “What did we not do that they wanted us to?!”
The man’s building rage was obvious in his voice and suddenly Peter felt it wouldn’t be safe for him to continue eavesdropping, so he carefully made his way back to his room.
It was as he sat in his room in silence that he realised that there was no reason he couldn't return to his old squatting spot and live there again - though that would mean working at that damn tavern again to eke out a living. However, that was honestly far superior in his opinion to his current situation - 'at least he'd be free then' He thought bitterly to himself as he recalled his current miserable situation.
The thought of one day breaking free of the terrible bondage his bad luck had shackled him with drove Peter forward and was the sole warmth that comforted him into his deep and restful slumber this cold winter's night.
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The hood of Katie’s cloak flapped in the winter evening breeze as she stood atop the wall that separated the [Bronze] social class’s main housing from the rest of the city.
From her vantage point on the wall, she observed with some amount of both pity and disdain the rather quaint accommodations afforded to those in the [Bronze] social class.
In truth, though it was certainly a step up from being in the [Copper] social class, the predominant sense that one got from observing [Bronze] social life was this overwhelming feeling that these were people well and truly mediocre in both quality and stature.
Being in the [Bronze] class meant that either the people inside the walls had kissed enough ass, or greased enough palms to be promoted, which could only take one so far. Or, as accounted for over 90% of the [Bronze] social class, the people were the direct children of the first generation of survivors – who had reached the [Bronze] rank long before it had ever been necessary to kiss ass or blackmail some shady government official to get promoted.
However, them still being in [Bronze] class meant their parents had been mediocre – probably amongst those who just about survived the first few months of integration and had then been wiped out by the first appearance of [Wild-Bosses] a year into integration.
Such people were widely considered martyrs of a bygone era by the poorer elements of society, but Katie considered them all to be nothing more than glorified failures, and so she found it odd that this class of people got to live off the meagre glories of said failures. They almost all considered themselves superior to those who weren’t so different from them in either level or ability in the [Copper] class, even though they really weren’t destined for a much superior fate.
However, she brushed such thoughts to the side for now.
Tonight was not supposed to be about her passing judgment on the ridiculousness of the system rank based class system, but instead, it was about her delivering a more ultimate form of justice to a certain malicious slave trader by the name of Jeremy Foram – even though she had yet to definitively locate the man’s base of operations.
It seemed the man was good at more things than just being a dick, that was for sure.
Then, she saw him. The man whom Peter slaved away for on a daily basis – a peak [Copper] rank adventurer she had come to know was called Jared. His outward appearance told her that he had almost certainly invested heavily in his Strength stat, and from what he’d heard of his personality, his inner self was perhaps even more repulsively grotesque than were his bulging muscles.
Katie had always found muscles to be gross – hence why she always modified her look using magic to hide the powerful muscles that came along with her high strength stat, though hiding her real abilities also factored into that decision, but even with that being said, the man’s muscles took disgustingly large to a whole new level.
Katie almost gagged as she imagined the man flexing, but she quickly caught herself as she noticed the man suddenly take a right turn and dash into a poorly lit alleyway.
‘Aha!’ She exclaimed inwardly, ‘Gotcha!’