After having healed his injuries with multiple Light healings, Stanis lay awake in the cave with Sil lying by his side. She seemed to be sleepy and so Stanis decided to allow her a snooze, good time to also spend checking his messages.
Well done to all those who are still alive. You have been recorded as having contributed to the destruction of a teleporter of the Invader species "Sprekra". Below are the top ten people with the most points contributed.
Serb
Stanis
Niss
Sil
Caleb
Orena
Raagar
Lisi
Gragr
Hoo
Stanis didn't need to expand his name or anything as he knew exactly where he got all his points from: solely from fighting the Spectre boss.
You have 43 points for a medium difficulty teleporter. A large number of allies were involved in the destruction and stayed alive during the hunting duration. Your reward has been lowered to:
30 extra attribute points
5 levels equivalent experience.
A skill suited to you (based on your class, Origin)
Stanis remembered back to when he had received these messages for the Zelts. He had close to double his points then, and the Zelt's teleporter was also graded medium difficulty just like this one. And yet, this time he seemed to have gotten a larger reward than last time as he received 30 attribute points! It was obvious to anyone with a brain that the Sprekras were harder to beat than the Zelts, and yet they were still graded as the same difficulty. This most likely meant that the difficulty was graded against his strength instead of being externally graded beforehand.
The System has recorded you as having destroyed 3 Invader Teleporters, all progressively stronger. In response to your accomplishment and contribution, the Hu have rewarded you 15 additional attribute points and a message.
Do you accept their reward?
Stanis had no reason to deny and every reason to accept, after all every edge he had helped to keep him alive.
You have received 15 additional attribute points and a message from the Hu.
"Well done, you have done a great service for us. This reward is by no means the last nor largest one you will receive from us if you keep up the good work."
If Stanis remembered rightly, the Hu was the race that had sponsored the Humans or something along those lines, the race that had put them in the tutorial in the first place. However, Stanis held no ill will against them, instead their goals seemed to align and Stanis wasn't against getting help from them along the way.
It was at this that Stanis remembered the Zelaro. He didn't know if their goals aligned but they had promised grand rewards if he completed any of their missions. Stanis had largely forgotten about them… Even though he had lost that high-quality darkness-veils within the Zelt tunnels, his intelligence and wisdom had grown so much since then that he might be able to kill with normal-quality darkness now. Stanis guessed it wouldn't hurt to try and put it on his mental to-do list.
You have received the skill Lightning seed.
Lightning seed – Use mana to create lightning outside of your body.
This was the simplest skill out of the ones he had so far, its description taking up only a single sentence. However, at the same time, this seemed to have a large amount of potential if he learnt how to control that lightning.
But that was all for another time. Right now he had truckloads of money to spend.
Stanis Volkov
Age: 18 years
Mana capacity: 217(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour)
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Level 47 (Progress to the next level is 2%)
Class: Origin
Unallocated points: 59
Strength: 75 [49 ->51]
Dexterity: 74 [48 ->50]
Constitution: 76[51 ->52]
Intelligence: 71 [35 -> 38]
Wisdom: 70+5[33 -> 37]
Tenacity: 83[49 ->51]
Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire, Lightning seed
Half of him wanted to focus his points into intelligence and wisdom, after all, it was now clear that his Class was some kind of spell-based class. Could he see a pattern to his class yet? Nope, but he could at least tell that it something based around mana and magic.
But the other half of him wanted to focus on his physical strength and body. When he had clashed against the Spectre boss, with Layman's rush activated, his arm had crumpled under the pressure. Of course, the Spectre boss was a very high standard to compare himself against but then again, he doubted his future foes were going to get any weaker.
In the end, Stanis couldn't make a choice and decided to split evenly, after all, none of the attributes were worth ignoring. He allocated 11 points into wisdom, no points into tenacity and 12 points into the rest of them.
Stanis Volkov
Age: 18 years
Mana capacity: 252(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour)
Level 47 (Progress to the next level is 2%)
Class: Origin
Strength: 87 [51]
Dexterity: 86 [50]
Constitution: 88 [52]
Intelligence: 83 [38]
Wisdom: 81+5[37]
Tenacity: 83[51]
Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire, Lightning seed
That seemed to be all his system notifications and so Stanis decided to lie back down instead of leaving the cave, allowing him a rare peaceful moment for thought.
He was happy with how the plan with the Jaguars had gone, almost a perfect success. His plan about training up Orena, Caleb and Sil to become his subordinates seemed to have also done well, if not even better. They had made massive progress under his wing, even if they hadn't been able to display all of that progress against the overpowered Spectre boss, and he doubted they would leave him at the drop of a hat after everything he had done for them, especially Sil.
The only thing he felt was lacking was his own personal strength. He had come in as the powerhouse, the sole king even if the others hadn't fully seen it then. But by focusing on the Jaguars and the others so much, he had neglected himself to the point that he was no longer the strongest, in fact, he was almost certain that Serb was now equal to him from what he had sensed from his appearance in the cave. And if Serb had closed in on him, it meant the others were not far off. This was simply unacceptable to Stanis, something that reminded him of his past, something he'd rather not be reminded off…
He clenched his fist before loosening it as he saw the snoozing Sil next to him, her body naked and scarred and yet so beautiful. Well, he would train himself with hellish intensity later on, but he wanted to enjoy the easy-going moments right now.
He took her into his arms and kissed her awake, enjoying the warmth while doing so. She woke up very quickly and just as quickly sensed how hard he was…
It was an hour later that the two of them left the cave. Stanis had used the mana Serb had given him to kick-start his own, healing up the worst of his injuries. He had considered transforming his sliced off leg into the Zelaro's but decided that would put him in a bad position since one leg would be longer than the other. He could have transformed both legs but he had realised that the more spread out his transformation was, the more spread out its defences and power also was…
Sil had given him her soft trousers that she wore under her armoured one. It was dirty but not that it bothered Stanis, especially when taking into consideration the clothes he had been wearing all this time.
The first thing Stanis wanted to do was check up on Orena and Caleb. He asked Sil where they were and she guided him towards an open shelter a few minutes away. Stanis had thought the Jaguars would have gone back to their territory already but it seemed they were still in the Spectres' previous territory, the trees here all sickly and naked.
There were several Jaguar cubs playing around Orena and Caleb when they arrived. The cubs' attention quickly turned towards Stanis as they saw him walk in, his position in the community just as high as Serb's. It was after many minutes spent playing that Stanis finally got a chance to check up on his two subordinates.
Orena had burn marks all across her back, but they seemed to have healed up well, especially in contrast to Caleb's. Orena was far more nimble on her feet than Caleb was and thus had managed to move further from the body before it had exploded.
As for Caleb, not only did he have burn marks all across his back but they also ranged down his legs and also a few across the backside of his arms. They were far more serious than Orena's as some still looked raw. Stanis could basically see the aftermath in his mind's eye as they told him that the Jaguar healers had healed up their wounds a bit, meaning that these wounds they had right now were actually the ones that had been healed…
Stanis had regained enough of his mana in the time that he had rested that he could easily heal up the two of them to a much better standard. He did, however, leave just a patch of burn marks over each of their bodies, serving as a reminder what carelessness could lead to, especially when in the thick of a battlefield.
The two of them still had the aftertaste of being the strongest on the battlefield in their minds, something he was determined of washing away.
It was then that Caleb asked, "So is the partnership set or are we fucked?"
If the partnership still wasn't set up after everything they had done, the Jaguars truly had fucked them over. It was a worry that all four of them had held throughout the whole period, after all, it was too realistic of an outcome to ignore.
"Don't worry about that", said Stanis, his lips curling at this, "They're one with us now"…