Slightly distracted, Isaac dried his hair with a towel. He was currently alone in one of the smaller male bathrooms in the Twilight Manor. There were quite a few of these, so it hadn’t been hard to find an unoccupied one.
The cause for Isaac’s distraction was that he was thinking about everything that had happened since about one hour earlier, just after he decided to make Ais a secondary host.
Right after that message box had appeared in front of her, Isaac could see a mixture of shock, fear and confusion in her eyes. Yeah, he truly felt a bit bad about that. What had surprised him at the time, though, was that he had been able to see that there was indeed a message box hovering right in front of her. This meant that hosts were able to see the system interfaces of each other, but other people, who weren’t integrated into the system, were unable to.
Of course, as soon as she had noticed Ais’ strange behaviour, Lefiya had gotten very worried and concernedly asked her whether or not she was okay.
This question seemed to calm Ais down quite considerably, so that she was now able to think about everything that had happened with a cool head. Right before this message box had appeared in front of her, she had seen how Isaac had made some kind of decision while looking at her. Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to tell that these two things were indeed connected somehow. Now that she had realized this unknown ‘system’ was most likely related to Isaac, Ais was able to calm down even more.
Naturally, Isaac didn’t know about all of these thoughts, he had just noticed how Ais had seemingly composed herself again, which was quite reassuring. Moments later, to soothe the worried little elf, Ais told her that everything was fine and nothing was amiss. Of course, while Lefiya outwardly indeed seemed relieved, she couldn’t help but still feel a little bit worried.
Once the situation had calmed down again, Lefiya reminded the group that they had to return home as soon as possible, or they would get into trouble with Riveria.
On the way back, Ais had mostly been deep in thought, not really participating in any conversations. To be fair, though, she normally wasn’t very verbose either. All the time, Isaac had been able to see various message boxes and system interfaces appear before her, but he didn’t take a closer look. It was well within her rights to explore the system a bit, especially now that he had integrated her without her express consent. Thinking about the system a bit, he noticed that he really needed to spend some time soon to look into a few of the functions he speculated the system to have.
To be honest, Isaac was a little bit worried about incurring Ais’ ire because of how he had just involved her in his own matters without asking. He was also, like with every other person, a little bit worried whether or not he could fully trust her. But still, if there was anyone in all of the worlds in existence who he felt like he could trust, then it had to be either Ais Wallenstein or Ereshkigal. He would have never come to like them otherwise, after all.
After having reassured himself, he spent the way back making casual conversation with the chipper elf at his side, asking her about whatever kind of trivia he thought of. Just like the last time when they were on their way back to the Twilight Manor, a few people started to stalk their group, and many death glares were shot Isaac’s way. But he mostly ignored them now, while still being on guard in case any of them would actually pose a threat.
Luckily, nothing bad happened yet again, and shortly before sunset, they arrived at the gates of their familia’s home. Before they got inside, they met a handful of other Loki Familia members, none of which Isaac recognized from the novels. They were either on their way out into the city, to get a drink and have fun, or on their way back home just like their group of three. Still, besides exchanging quick greetings, they didn’t talk much and just hurried along.
Just in case they would become important later on, Isaac decided to memorize their appearances in detail. If they ever were in trouble, or if he ever met them outside of the familia home, he would now instantly recognize them - even if he didn’t know their names. Now that he was thinking about that, a foreboding feeling overcame him. Would he have to go through some kind of familia introduction ceremony, to get to know all of the members? Probably.
There was no use crying over spilt milk, though. Now that he was a part of this familia, even though it turned out to have a lot more members than it seemed to have in the novels, he would just have to deal with these things as he encountered them. Knowing Loki’s personality, he was sure she wouldn’t pass up an opportunity for some festivities, even if it was just the joining of a new, unremarkable familia member. The countdown to his inevitable demise, a welcome party, had undoubtedly already begun.
Shortly after the group of three had made their way into the entrance hall, Isaac bid farewell to Lefiya and the still-distracted Ais, to go back to his dorm room, take a shower and clean his equipment. Of course, he didn’t forget to wish the two girls a good night.
In his dorm room, he saw his anti-social bunny boy roommate sitting in front of his messy desk, writing notes while reading multiple books about the dungeon and the monsters therein. While Jakk had quite a few traits that were everything but praiseworthy, he exuded an air of extreme seriousness at that moment. So Isaac felt a little bit bad for snapping him out of his concentrated efforts just to ask him about where he could find a bath- or shower room, as well as a place designated for equipment maintenance.
While disgruntled at having his studies interrupted, Jakk didn’t really want to get into any unnecessary trouble, so he quickly told Isaac where to go, before shooing him away.
With a wry smile on his face at having been treated just like an annoying fly, Isaac inconspicuously made his way towards the male bath- and shower area. After a short search, he found a small bathroom with a shower that was currently unoccupied - and also able to be locked from the inside.
And that was pretty much everything that had led up to this point.
Quite close to the room he was in right now, there were multiple small and big rooms outfitted for the cleaning and maintenance of equipment, so he could go there right after he was finished here.
Right now, all of his equipment was stored in his inventory. But that posed a problem. Besides the set of clothes he wore when he came to this world, he didn’t really have anything else to wear, or even call his own.
Just like that, he remembered something he had wanted to take a look at before, and which could also possibly be the solution for what would otherwise give him a headache - the system store. Now was the time to take a closer look at it.
Product
Cost
Toothbrush
2 Achievement Points
Toothpaste (5-pack)
1 Achievement Point
...
...
Razor (magic stone powered)
5 Achievement Points
...
...
Cup of coffee (select a brand)
1 Achievement Point
...
...
Laptop (magic stone powered) (please notify the system of the exact specifications)
50+ Achievement Points
...
...
Upgrading host’s blood to Ichor
10.000 Achievement Points
...
...
To be honest, Isaac was a bit baffled at the fact that, almost exclusively, the things listed in the system store were items he knew from his previous world, not the overpowered items he had expected. And most of them were household and convenience items to boot. Of course, he wasn’t complaining about that. He had previously been worried about how to comfortably keep up his personal hygiene but he really shouldn’t have been. Naturally, he had thought about this when creating the system. Additionally, Isaac noticed how only items he had had close contact with were listed here. As he had never directly come in close contact with, for example, nuclear weaponry, he wasn’t able to buy some here. If he was truly in need, he could just procure the components somewhere… still, that was unlikely to ever be necessary, these were just hypothetical thoughts.
Stolen novel; please report.
Although he loathed to spend his Achievement Points, which seemed to be quite hard to come by, they were his only wealth right now. And if spending some of them for personal hygiene and convenience could make all of his current problems disappear, he wouldn’t hesitate to spend them. After making a mental note to the system to henceforth refer to Achievement Points as ‘AP’, yet again for convenience’s sake, Isaac carefully selected and bought a few things from the store.
A toothbrush (2 AP), one five-pack of toothpaste (1 AP), a magic stone powered razor (5 AP), some new underwear (1 AP), short blue pyjama pants (1 AP) and another simple white shirt (1 AP) - for a total of 11 AP.
His heart ached a bit at the thought that killing 1000 Level 1 monsters would only net him 100 AP, so he was truly wasteful with his current purchases. But still, the lazy convenience seeker won out over the irrational hoarder in the end.
After brushing his teeth, having changed into his new clothes and using one of the smaller equipment maintenance rooms to get his gear back in shape, Isaac made his way back to his dorm room.
Just as before, Jakk was still leaning over his desk and studying, the light of a magic lamp clearly illuminating the pages.
While the magic lamp would sometimes make it harder for people to fall asleep, Isaac wasn’t really bothered by it. After wishing the inconsiderate student a good night and receiving a simple grunt in response, he laid down in his bed and turned away from the light source.
Before he would fall asleep, however, Isaac had decided to go over a few of the other features that he knew or suspected his system to have.
After closing his eyes, he mentally commanded the system to display the map feature.
Naturally, this feature did indeed exist. Although it wasn’t anything too special, as Isaac himself had always created 3D maps of everywhere he had ever been himself, this map feature, now that it was activated, enabled him to remove this small subconscious strain on his mind. Also, the map wasn’t only a place he could use to zoom through everywhere he had been to in this world at incredible speeds - there were quite a few quality-of-life improvements and additional features.
One of them was the ability to set markers on the map. To test it out, Isaac set a marker in this dorm room and named it ‘home base’. To his slight surprise, this triggered the system to ask him something.
Do you want to share this marker with your secondary host?
Without a moment of hesitation, Isaac ordered the system to not share this marker with Ais. She already had enough on her plate right now, being suddenly exposed to the system and all, so he really didn’t need to pile upon her troubles right now. Yet another sudden message box that she wasn’t personally responsible for would undoubtedly cause her a slight amount of discomfort.
There was one more interesting thing about these map markers though. Isaac was able to teleport himself and others to them - at a cost. To teleport himself to any map marker, he had to pay 10 AP, each person he wanted to bring along had to be within a five meter radius of him and would cost him an additional 1 AP.
This might sound pretty cheap, but considering that the cost for a simple teleportation was the equivalent of killing 100 Level 1 monsters put it back into perspective. Still, it was quite the overpowered functionality, if abused. Or it could just be a simple convenience tool, once he was swimming in AP. Anyway, it was an interesting discovery. Now it made the act of sharing these map markers with secondary hosts seem more significant, because they would be able to use those points as well.
Had he created a completely overpowered monster by sharing some of his system’s functionality with Ais? Most likely. Did he care about that? Not at all.
In preparation for when he would share this part of the system with Ais in the future, Isaac created a map marker in the Twilight Manor’s yard which he simply named ‘Twilight Manor’.
After doing so, he took a cursory glance at his inventory and the Achievements interface again, before deciding to take a look at his Status.
Name:
Isaac Blackshaw
Familia:
Loki Familia
Race:
Human
Level:
1
Stats
Strength:
I-10 (+ 34)
Endurance:
I-10 (+ 15)
Dexterity:
I-10 (+ 30)
Agility:
I-10 (+ 38)
Magic:
I-10 (+ 53)
Magic
None
Skills
None
Development Abilities
None
A bright smile couldn’t help but appear on Isaac’s face, as everything was just as expected. His system had already calculated how the accumulated excelia would influence his stat growth after he got his Status updated by Loki again. With this, he could now observe for how long accumulating excelia at a specific amount of stats was efficient. These insights also enabled him to adapt his combat behaviour so he could grow his stats as evenly as possible.
Strength obviously increased when he used force, Endurance would increase with continued exhaustion and after getting harmed. As for Dexterity, it would increase the more he handled his weapon and body dexterously. His Agility would increase simply from trying to move faster. As for the huge increase in Magic, Isaac could come up with only one explanation for it: The more one used their mind to perform feats, which whatever governed the allocation of excelia judged to be near to or over the limit of a person with a specific amount of stats, the more the stat would grow. Of course, continued use of magic would also allow it to grow, but that was currently not an option for Isaac.
The only thing he needed to do now was to avoid having his status updated before his growth noticeably slowed down. Currently, with the weakest status an adventurer was able to have, he would gain a total of 170 stat points after his next update, just from slaying six monsters, four goblins and two kobolds.
This rapid growth was almost as ridiculous as Bell Cranel’s in the novels. Still, Isaac’s own status was quite a lot weaker than Bell’s, he shouldn’t even have been able to defeat a single goblin. Another reason for being able to even approach the cheat skill using Little Rookie’s growth was that Bell always got his status updated after returning from the dungeon. This made it hard to gain enough stat point growth with his current status, and forced him to fight stronger and stronger monsters to continue growing in the same way. To think that Bell’s ridiculous growth could have been even faster if his goddess was competent and knew about this...
Before he could get even more absorbed in comparing himself to Bell, Isaac noticed something new in his Status interface. There was a second tab besides his own - it was Ais’. It seemed like now that she was the system’s secondary host, he was able to see her status as well.
Name:
Ais Wallenstein
Familia:
Loki Familia
Race:
Human, Unknown
Level:
5
Stats
Strength:
D-553 (+ 1)
Endurance:
D-541 (+ 0)
Dexterity:
B-792 (+ 5)
Agility:
B-791 (+ 4)
Magic:
A-837 (+ 7)
Magic
Ariel
Skills
Avenger
Development Abilities
Hunter
G
Abnormal Resistance
G
Swordsman
H
‘I can even see her Status any time I want now… I really need to have a private talk with Ais. I hope I’ll have a chance to do that soon, there is a lot we have to talk about…’
To thoughts like these, Isaac slowly fell asleep.