Damon had leveled again, but this time felt different from during the Shuffle.
This time had felt real.
He was still bleeding all over, if only in tiny trickles—
—Yet he hardly noticed, the System scroll commanding his full, rapt attention.
[Class level collected: +5 Str, +3 Per, +3 Mana - Free Points: +2.]
[Class level collected: +5 Str, +3 Per, +3 Mana - Free Points: +2.]
[Dormant Dao Class has reached Level 27 and commenced awakening.]
[Skillquests unlocked: Prowess Progression - Unexpected Stab - Bleeding Edge - Secure the Fort.]
Oh snap, what's all this? As per usual the System elected to infodump, with no further explanation provided. At least this time some additional information was still available, just with conditions that needed fulfilling first, as Damon discovered when he prompted each of the Skillquest names:
Prowess Progression - Repetition is the mother of learning. Preparation the key to prosperity. Details: Locked. Task - Spend 10,000 hours developing a new ability. Progress: (0/10,000)
Unexpected Stab - Flexing a new avenue of attack can turn the tide of any battle. Details: Locked. Task - Hit your enemy where it hurts. Progress: (2/250)
Bleeding Edge - The cornered animal can grow unexpectedly keen on taking you with them, when push comes to shove. Details: Locked. Task - Bleed more than your foe, yet eek out the win. Progress: (0/3)
Hold the Fort - None can learn the secrets of the dwelling so well as its denizen. Should Home be lost to invaders, all which was yours may be taken. Details: Locked. Task - Loan from your potential to secure your holdings. Progress: (0/1)
Holy shit, now we're getting somewhere, these all sound like actual Class Skills.
Hm, let's start with first things first. Develop an ability? Easy peasy. Hell, if Damon wasn't so worn out already he would have started training immediately, on whistling or whatever. But then what if the ability I 'develop' affects how my Class Skill works?
Damon imagined himself turning into a hero-wannabe called 'The whistler' who spent his days whistling the theme tunes for real heroes. Man, that would suck. How long is 10,000 hours anyway?
Damon decided that whatever new thing he practiced for the quest, he needed to make it something good, just in case. That conviction lasted up until he made some calculations and figured out the quest required more than a full year of training, with no time for sleep.
"Uh, yeah. To hell with that. I’ll have to try multitasking, to see if I can practice several skills at once at least. Hm, maybe I could learn something like beatboxing. Would each new sound count as a ‘new ability’? Buh, buh buh, tch, tch tch."
Billy just looked at him weird.
"Hah." And now I'm talking to a goat. "I don't know if that's at least a marginal improvement, or somehow even worse?"
In any case, Damon got started on an exercise he hadn't thought of doing in years, since he'd been a training obsessed teenager. It was one which his childhood coach had demonstrated to the whole class one day, when making the point that there was always, always something you could be doing to improve. He'd first had them calling out exercises you could do casually at school or on the train, and when they ran out he demonstrated standing and balancing on one leg—easy to do, and fantastic for your balance and the calf muscle—but sometimes even that is impossible to make time for, if you're too busy to even stand around. Then he'd asked them what exercise he was doing right now, while standing completely still in front of them, hands on hips. When that only earned him skeptical looks and kids who clearly wanted to answer that he was obviously doing nothing, he gave them their first clue. "It's one I'm sure your mothers are familiar with."
That had started some whispering and tittering at the back of the dojang, where the mums were all gathered and watching on. Eventually his mum's voice had called out: "Kegels!"
"That's right, kegels—a far, far too neglected exercise that holds a number of benefits for both men and women, the not least of which is preventing incontinence and prostate cancer; if you ask my grandma. Now, get to it. And no cheating. I'll have absolutely no way to tell."
Aah, memories.
Despite suddenly having a to-do list longer than at his former job, Damon first went to check up properly on Billy, now that the coast was clear, while he considered what to do next. The wounded beast had needed some help climbing back out, and when Billy emerged in the light it had been with a new set of claw marks across his face—but his unnaturally rolling eyes had been spared, giving Damon a great sense of relief.
“How did you even run into ‘em?”
The strange chimera creature sat down tiredly in response, blood matting his proud, white mane. Obviously no answer was forthcoming, so Damon felt stupid for even asking.
Yet as he reconsidered the beast, and its strange horned appearance, he had to wonder about its origins. Despite the pupils rolling aimlessly, the face was fixed on him, and looking closer he saw there was a second pair of pale pupils hidden behind the first. It was hard to picture the beast seeing very well, but perhaps the disconcerting effect it had on anyone trying to stare it down was worth it. Why wouldn’t it have lion legs in the back too though, or is any of it even a choice in the first place?
How a mixed creature like this came about was a real mystery of this new world. Damon thought back to the before and imagined how excited his zoology-inclined buddies would’ve been in this kind of place. But then he remembered how close they’d just gotten to being eaten and thought again. “Hey, do you get into close calls like that often?”
He still wouldn’t respond, but did appear to be listening. Damon suddenly felt less stupid and decided he wanted to teach the creature some signals. It seemed smart enough, after all. “If we work together, maybe we can survive out here more easily… Have you ever had a rider?”
Billy looked at him dubiously, but Damon was pretty sure he got the gist.
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Damon had almost gone to throw a leg over the guy just to get his point across fully; but they weren’t going anywhere for now, and he figured he might as well leave the idea with some time to grow legs first.
Stolen novel; please report.
It was too early to call it a night however. Damon still needed to decide what to do with the free points from his two levels. When he brought up his Chronicles scroll, there were more than a few updates.
Chronicles
Explorer ID: Damon Bishop
Explorer Class: level 27 - Specular Duelist (Awakening)
Explorer Race: Unique Lifeform
Ratings
Strength: 162
Perception: 52
Mana: 111
Grace: 17
Free Points: +4
Dao Path:
Dogma Key of the Hero
Sacrifice Strength Mastery
Titles:
Groundbreaker, Primus Explorer, Fruit of the Origin Tree
Active Quests:
Prowess Progression - Unexpected Stab - Bleeding Edge - Secure the Fort.
Oh, sweet. Free points too, how do I? Damon learned it was quite easy to distribute them, now that they were actually available, as soon as he focused in on the stat ratings, they now displayed like this:
Strength: 162 (+)
Perception: 52 (+)
Mana: 111 (+)
Grace: 17 (+)
And all Damon had to do was focus in on the plus sign for the number to get raised, spending one of his free points—resulting in a swirling surge of energy beaming outward from his gut. That's the stuff. Hm, I’ll start off by bringing Strength up as high as possible, for now. At least until I start noticing a diminishing return. Choking those hounds was too close a call, and if it increases durability as well, it’s a no-brainer.
Damon felt tempted to try and put some of his free stats into Grace, on account of it being the lowest, but he hadn't noticed any real effect from it so far and based on the System's description it sounded almost like a loot stat? Fortune, that's slightly different from luck, right?
I still want it though, hah. Maybe next time.
In spite of taking such a long time deciding on such a safe choice, it was too early for sleep still. Damon first went back inside to deal with the huge mess from the hound corpses, which didn’t take him long. A big advantage of living in a sandy cavern was how easy to clean it was—despite the copious amounts of blood, he just needed to turn over a new layer of the floor a few times, and brush some fresh layers off the unpacked portion of the walls where he was still expanding, once the worst of the muck was buried.
It was while performing the clean up that Damon suddenly felt his knuckles scrape against something feeling very much like a wooden box, making him suddenly recall the flash of light from back when he first leveled. Wait, really? Did this Class come with items too then? For sure not, right?
He picked it up and ran back outside into the light, where Billy was busy sniffing the corpses of his defeated enemies with a satisfied leer.
Damon dove onto his knees, spraying sand and shoved the lid open to reveal:
[Tanto-tipped Bowies - Hardened Steel (Basic)]
Inside were two painfully familiar blades, set neatly into a box shaped for that singular purpose. And that's when Damon was reminded of how the System was a shameless thief.
What the actual shit is this?
They look like the ones we used for the surgeries. These are Abi's designs. Damn it, is the System actually messing with me?
That soured the mood a little, but it didn't keep Damon from inspecting his new weapons and finding them perfectly adequate, if enigmatic. Basic? Does that mean there's an upgrade?
Despite being shaped just like Abi’s daggers, which were cast in Beralumin, these ones appeared to be forged out of regular, hardened steel.
As his mood was taking a turn for the worse, Damon made an effort to focus on the positives. These are good enough for now; better than using my fingers for sure, anyway.
He looked down at his ruined fingers as he picked them up. They had started throbbing with pain once the adrenaline had worn off, and he was well aware of how close to failing his attacks had come.
He went over to inspect the hounds that had come so close to ending him and Billy. Despite coming so close to death, now that it was over, Damon felt like there was certainly no complaining about the gains. He was finally getting somewhere. Better prepared, better supplied. He felt deadlier than ever, but he still needed to make provisions for the future.
He started cutting out sections of meat from the beasts, wrapping them tightly in skins and burying the left-overs in the colder sand that could always be found a foot deep.
It was at that point that he discovered something strange about the creatures. As their skeletons were exposed, he did not find the regular bones he would have expected—rather they were deeply yellow, almost looking aged, but clearly much tougher than those of regular animals back home. That was not the strange part. The strange part was how every bone looked segmented, with far more individual pieces than he’d expected, all fitting into each other in complex patterns that seemed built for shock absorption. Damon thought back to how the leader had recovered from his original high-speed tackle. This very much went some ways to explaining the matter of their durability.
The next thought he had was of his quest, specifically the one he’d somehow managed to achieve some progress in already.
Unexpected Stab - Flexing a new avenue of attack can turn the tide of any battle. Details: Locked. Task - Hit your enemy where it hurts. Progress: (2/250)
I must’ve been getting rewarded for not using blunt attacks to finish them off? Alright. Okay, I’m starting to get it. I think. Tomorrow we start exploring these plains for real. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what it will take to get back on top, for us humans to rule this place as we used to.
If.
If there are still other people left.
Damon was deliberately avoiding thinking about that part.