There was no trail, so William was torn, half of him wanted to kiss the floor Sigrun walked on, because the boots she had clad him in were warm and comfy, certainly thanks to her magic, so he could go on and climb the mountain, the other half of him wanted to strangle her, for giving him the worst Job ever. As in his ‘system’ job.
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Name: William ‘Evelyn’ Hagen
Human -Level 11
Class: Einheri -Level 16
Job: Grunt -Level 1
Grade F
HP: 1780/1780
Stamina: 1704/1720
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Strength: 99
Agility: 48
Dexterity: 48
Endurance: 86
Vitality: 46
Intellect: 45
Class XP: 874/1600
Race XP: 1037/1100
Job XP: 0/100
FP: 38
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Legacies: Jack Dempsey's Legacy (Common), Sigurd the Dragonslayer (Legendary).
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“A ‘grunt’?” I said out loud, “What does that even mean?” Is it like a grunt in the army? Or am I forever destined to do ‘grunt work’, ‘fetch quests’ and to ‘kill ten boars’ forever and ever?”
I would never laugh at her again. Maybe she would change it in the future if I get back in her good graces. I honestly hope so because it is useless.
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Grunt, Job, common.
Job bestowed upon William by Sigrun as punishment for laughing at her.
A trash job fit for disposable human trash.
Has no perks and procures the least amount of stat points of all jobs in the universe, even less than a slave job.
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You should know better William! (System Administrator #1)
Do us all a favor and go die an early second death! (System Administrator #2)
Go on mortal man, keep laughing at your savior! (Sigrun, probably)
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Agility: +1
Endurance: +1
Intellect: +1
+1 FP
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The system administrator’s shenanigans and hurtful messages wishing me death, -still-, non-withstanding, it was trash. Trashy garbage. Four attribute points, that was it, it did not give me crafting abilities, nor any particular skill, just four meager stat points, it didn’t even mention that it would evolve with Grades. I was doomed to be Valhalla’s janitor as soon as Raulin arrived. I can already picture them laughing at me.
“And what is intellect even good for?” I asked the howling mountain wind, receiving only my eco in response.
Oh well, I guess I just have to do what I need to do and let future William handle this thing. In the future.
The trail was perilous, but not overly so, my STR, AGI, and DEX stats coming in clutch many times when I had to jump over a chasm or do some bouldering over a rock surface.
I would have never been able to climb this mountain if not for the system, its levels, and the attributes it gave me.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
It was still a very time-consuming affair mind you, since visibility was the greatest problem. Wind-blown shards of ice would hit me unaware, and the ongoing blizzard greatly reduced my field of view.
After what I felt like a little over a day of mountain climbing, I arrived at a plateau.
Which was a welcomed change, as it sloped upward so I could continue my assent. Sigrun had instructed me that if I followed the slope to the right, I would start encircling the mountain and eventually, after about a couple of days of walking, I would reach the top.
This was perfectly fine since Asgard was clad in eternal night, so I did not need to fear its arrival, nor wait for daylight to continue, and the fact that I did not need much sleep nowadays, so I could just cower where I stood, cover myself over with my trusty cape, go invisible and take a little nap every fifty or sixty hours, and I would be just fine.
Those were my thoughts as I unstrapped Balmung, getting ready to fight what looked like a wingless, featherless, reptilian giant chicken.
— Asgardian Mountain Worm, Grade-F, Level 18—
No one said anything about dragons, -dragon adjacent?-, thankfully it was only twice my size, I was going to fight a featherless chicken twice my size.
Well, truth be told I’m only calling it a chicken in an attempt to calm myself. It looks the part of what we would call a wyvern back on Earth, a wingless one.
Its body was full of scales, its head reptilian, with a mouth instead of a beak, powerful jaws full of nasty-looking teeth, and talons the size of Balmung on its oversized feet. One of them protruding above the rest, raptor-like.
Our level difference is manageable, I think, Balmung will cover the difference nicely, that was its function, to give us fangs and talons where we had not. Time is ticking down for Raulin and the gang, so I have to overcome this hurdle, hopefully unscathed.
The worm coughed, or barfed, a fireball the size of a basketball at me, coming in fast, giving me just enough time to dodge to the side and get back in position, just to see another fireball coming at me, the worm had anticipated my move.
I rolled toward the worm, being a boxer gives you a weird sense of space and a mindset in which you always end up thinking about dodging while shortening the distance, to get in your range and control the space of the fight.
If you control the space, the fight is yours, your punches will land more easily than your rival’s and you will put him against the ropes or hopefully even against a corner, just by moving your feet better than your opponent.
The worm did not expect me to roll below the fireball and close in the gap between us, which was still plenty, but it got its shit back together quickly and fired a new ball at me, while also slowly moving forward, it wanted to reduce my reaction times, -hook-.
Having predicted this, I rolled twice in a row, without going upright, a feat I could only perform now, that my AGI and DEX allowed me to.
The worm was surprised and reacted in haste, throwing the next fireball right at me, while I was at ground level, -line-.
Instead of going upright and standing on my feet, I jumped, not using a lot of strength, just enough to get me airborne a couple of feet above the worm, his head now almost at my feet.
Its reaction was to duck its head low and open its jaws, in an attempt to barf another fireball at me -sinker-.
I was now removing Balmung, who stood one-half buried in the ground, the other half buried in the worm’s brains. Cleaning the magical sword of legend, -I will never get tired of reminding myself of that-, using my cloak, mostly because it would always clean itself after a while, I strapped it back, checked the system message about the kill, the bonuses and the XP, and moved along.
I learned a couple of things from Sigrun about leveling and experience. For instance, the amount of experience I got after dispatching a bit over four hundred Dokkalfar, was not nearly ten thousand, as I had received, after bonuses and the party tax, it was way more, than the XP given by what the system considered “higher beings” was way more than what a regular beast would offer, even at lower levels, but I had hit the F-Grade hard cap.
Each Grade had a cap on the amount of XP you could get for a given encounter, it being ten thousand XP for F-Grade.
Sigrun had also told me that killing a “sentient beast” like Freki, -not that I wanted or even thought it was possible-, was the highest possible experience gain within the system.
“If you ever see a Dragon, or a Chimera, or even a Sphinx, do not hesitate, kill first, ask questions later, the rewards are just that good.” She had told me.
She was in a bit of a hurry to gain levels, which were apparently tied to her Einherjar, meaning that she leveled up as much as I did. “Some people have it easy,” I said to no one, as another Worm appeared in my path, this one a bit smaller at level 15.
“Here I am, doing the work of two people,” I said to the winds while unstrapping Balmung again. In retrospect, Grunt was a fitting job for me…
After around a day and a half, I had killed around thirteen lizards, earning a level in Race, Class, and another one on my Job, noticing that XP gain was half as slow as it was for my Race, which was again half as slow than for my Class. Sigrun had mentioned that this was by design since Einherjar Jobs could only be granted by a Valkyrja, or by acquiring a Divine Legacy that contained one.
Which was a juicy morsel of info she let slip. I had noticed that she would rather keep information close to her chest, and deliver it as needed, instead of burdening me with information I did not need at the moment.
Now I was the kind of guy who preferred to have all the ‘i’s dotted and all the ‘t’s crossed, but accommodating the mighty Valkyrja was a greater necessity than actually knowing stuff I would not need for my current task. Having guidance and a broad strokes picture of the current and future situation was more than enough for now.
Currently, I just needed to get to the peak of the mountain, find two very old gods, and convince one to die for me, no biggie.
And I needed to double time it, having spent a considerable chunk of the day navigating a cavern, that was the nest of the damn worms, only to find eggs inside, not a single worm was looking after them. So I left them be.
Killing beasts in my path that wanted to eat me was one thing, exterminating the population of said beasts, was an entirely different proposition, there was no need, and you never know how it would affect the ecosystem. What if the worms were the only thing keeping some kind of yeti-like creature in check? or they preyed on a type of mountain lion or bear. What if that, yet unseen population, grew so much that they would start going down the mountain and into Valhalla? plus, Sigrun had said that so far, beasts were not at their peak levels and grades, making them easier to handle, so I was at least hoping that Raulin could use this spot for leveling in the future.
So I let the eggs be. If they grew to be around the same levels I had found them as they would do nicely for a party of 6 in the future, I would come as reinforcement and make sure nothing happened to the gang. While not participating to ensure I was not included in experience distribution. Power leveling the gang, ha! That was an encouraging idea. Fuel to my fire.
I was only eight points away from my third job level, which meant that I only needed an extra worm to achieve it, but the worm never showed, I might have eradicated the entire grown-up population, or they had decided to better just let me go along my way, finding themselves the prey must not be pretty I wager.
After another quick nap and an extra full day of climbing the mountain, I reached my destination.
The mountain peak was flat. Probably man-made too, or so the floorboards pointed to. There was no blizzard here, just short gushes of gale wind, that would have been an inconvenience had I been my former, pre-system self. But not anymore.
At the other end of this new, plateau, that spanned around two basketball courts across before ending in a sheer cliff, there were two monumental thrones, angled to face each other while still commanding the view to the cliffside. Leaving their backs to me.
With a sense of foreboding not at all related to fear, I stepped forward. Into my interview with the godly Odinson brothers.