“There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
Adam couldn’t contain the thoughts anymore. Everything looked fine. In fact, the settlement was doing great. They were closing in on four weeks in the tutorial, and they had almost a hundred people already. Almost twenty a day showing up. People worked hard, contributing anywhere and everywhere they could. Most people, at least. There were a few extraordinarily lucky layabouts who were as workshy as anybody he had seen. That wasn’t what concerned him though.
“Well, go on,” prodded Kyra. She was sitting on the edge of their bed. It was somewhat awkward, what with Raven and Liz sitting on either side of her. They were shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder, all sitting in rapt attention. It was both weirdly empowering and terrifying. These women were some of the toughest people in the settlement, third to him, and he was second only to Carl.
“Carl is becoming a very serious security concern.”
“I FUCKING TOLD YOU!” Kyra exploded from her seat, fingers pointing at his chest. Raven and Liz restrained her, then pulled her back to her seat. She was significantly stronger than she had been just four weeks earlier, but she had been on the verge of death back then. They had not, and the system had distributed stats accordingly.
“I’m sorry, Kyra. You were right.” He paused, his back to them while he gathered his thoughts. “Before we discuss exactly why he’s a problem, we need to go over a few things.”
“Get on with it, Adam,” Liz said. She had an arm across Kyra’s much smaller shoulders, only somewhat restraining the little woman at that point. Her curiosity was piqued.
Raven nodded and let out a peppy “Mhm!”
Adam sighed and wiped a tired hand down his face. He was staring at the colonist screen, a feature of his job as an Administrator. Carl was the highest level. Rank E, level 11… he was an entire tier above them; he was moving way too quickly. There were not enough monsters attacking to justify the growth he was seeing.
“You remember we talked about jobs a while back, right? Well, mine lets me see a bunch of stuff. I can see any new tutorials our villagers unlock. It’s slowed down… well, the low numbers have slowed down. The stuff I would expect to see. The common sense stuff.”
“Adam,” Kyra’s voice wavered. “Why are you talking in circles?”
He shook his head. “I think the first hundred tutorials are more-or-less the stuff anybody and just about everybody who survives the tutorial are going to see. You guys should have seen, at a minimum, the first thirty or so. Right?”
He turned and looked at them. The haunted look in his eyes, how sunken they were, it scared them. He was losing sleep. Kyra had noticed, of course. How could she not? He woke up screaming most nights.
Liz and Raven nodded in unison. As they had grown closer, they had started adopting similar behaviors. It was odd to see from the outside, but they were so ridiculously happy together, nobody said anything.
“Well, Carl is unlocking tutorials. Almost daily, actually. And most of them are up in the thousands. A few have been over ten-thousand. I tried to turn a blind eye; to ignore what he was doing and unlocking. Obviously, that hasn’t been working. You can just ask Kyra how well I’ve been ignoring them.”
Raven and Liz looked in at her. She shied away, looking down and letting her hair cover her face. She was inordinately proud of her hair. It had been thin, stringy, on the verge of falling out when the system arrived. Now it was lustrous, thick, full, enough to break a hairbrush. But at the moment, it was a shield. Not just from the two women, but from the world, and the pain it brought.
“He’s torturing people. Not just killing them. And I think he’s killing people before they get to Verdant Fort, so he’s never violated the soul oath.” Adam shook his head. “I was so short sighted. I thought the oath was enough.”
“How could you know? How could you guess he would do this?”
“Because I told him he would,” Kyra said. She looked up, red eyes wet with tears. “I warned you.”
Adam shook his head. “I know. I thought we could do better. I thought he could be better. I was wrong.”
Raven finally spoke. “What do we do?”
“We stop him. If we can. He’s level eleven already. What is worrying is how fast he’s leveling. I’m certain he’s the highest leveled person out there, at this point. Which means if he is killing people, he gets no XP for people five levels below him.”
“How do you know that?” Raven looked at the two other women, then back at Adam. “Did I miss something?”
Adam cocked his head to the side, distracted by the sudden surprise. “That’s tutorial four. You never saw that one?”
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She shook her head. “I guess not.” She paused, looking into the distance. Adam figured she was looking at her list of tutorials. It was difficult for him to tell, because he had them unlocked, but it never told him who had unlocked it, when, how, or who had access to the listing. It was purely big-picture.
“Okay. Well, to sum it up, when you kill something, you get one XP for anything up to five levels lower than you. At your level, it’s five, one above is ten, and every level up is another ten. It caps at ten levels and one-hundred XP. Doesn’t matter if you, by some miracle, kill something a hundred levels higher, you get one hundred XP. I think it’s a hard cap to prevent stupid people from hunting something impossible for them to kill.”
Raven nodded slowly. “Okay. So, you can get XP by farming lower level stuff, but you would have to kill… hundreds of creatures… or people.” She looked up, blood draining from her face. “Is he killing hundreds of people?”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t think so. Ability tutorials are not like regular ones. I don’t see them, because, as far as I can gather, they’re unique to each person.”
Liz asked the next question, saying “then, as best as you can tell, he’s doing something to get extra XP from killing people lower level than him?”
Adam chuckled mirthlessly. “Everybody is lower level than him. Whatever it is that he’s doing, it breaks the rules as we know them.”
“That’s because,” Carl’s voice broke in just then. It startled all of them, and they drew to attention. “The rules are for the weak. When you are powerful enough, you not only ignore the existing rules, you make them.”
Carl sauntered in. Adam looked at the women, then backed up to present a united force against him. All three women stood, ready for battle.
“Relax,” Carl said. He patted the air to emphasize his point. “I’m soul-bound. Adam is right, if I break another soul oath, I will die. I can feel it. Guys, I’m on the ragged edge here.”
Adam put a hand out as if to protect his friends. “However it is you’re getting around the oath, you’re not hurting them.”
Carl shook his head. “I just told you, I can’t break my soul oath. The one I gave you was surprisingly thorough. Trust me, I checked.”
Adam watched Carl’s hands. He knew the smaller man could draw daggers from seemingly nowhere. To make things worse, he knew the assassin had skills focusing on shadows, and they were all in deep shadow.
“Really, I’m not here to hurt you. Or harm you. Or do anything untoward.” He held his hands up at shoulder height. “Believe what you want, but I’ve been protecting this settlement. Congrats, by the way,” Carl said as he nodded toward Adam.
“Congrats for what?”
Carl cocked an eyebrow. “For upgrading. Or, I guess, for the upcoming upgrade. You just accepted your one-hundredth settler. You’re about to become a Village Head.”
The window popped up a moment later.
Alert: you have met the requirements to upgrade your settlement obelisk. Return to the obelisk to begin the process.
Adam shook his head and slashed the air with his off-hand. “No, you need to give us answers.”
Carl shrugged, hands still at shoulder height. “What do you want to know?”
“Are you torturing people?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Adam was taken aback. In fact, all four of them were. They had not expected a straight-forward answer.
“It took me a long time to figure it out. My Hippocratic oath was for shit. You guys were right. I did a lot of good, but I was also doing a lot of evil. Well, by pre-system standards. I wasn’t preying on the weak, but I was killing them when they asked for it. These days though?” He shrugged. “These days, I do what I want. And I want to stay alive.”
Adam stood up straight, looking down at Carl. “That doesn’t explain why you are torturing people.”
“It doesn’t,” Carl said with a sagely nod. “I’m doing it to protect you. Did you know people are ganging up out there?”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder as if to include the entire world.
“No,” Adam said. He was less sure of himself. Carl was killing people. He’d even confirmed it.
“It’s true. Roving gangs. They wear the skins of whatever they kill. Mostly animal, but I’ve run across a few groups wearing human skin. They usually run about level five, these days. Not exceptionally powerful, but better than the average.”
“So, that’s it?” Adam didn’t drop his guard, and he wanted to cross his arms over his chest. But he also didn’t want to leave himself or the women defenseless. Never mind the fact each of the women were accomplished combatants. He felt in charge. He was in charge. Masculine pride be damned, he was the first line and the last line. His life would fall before theirs did. That was his job; no, not his job. His goal. His meaning.
Adam stiffened as light started to drip out of his pores like sweat. His entire body began to glow.
“Lucky bastard,” Carl said with a hint of awe. “You’re having an inspiration.”
The pain was immense, but it was nothing before the might of finding his Purpose. And that was with a capitol ‘P’, not some half-assed journey-of-the-soul nonsense. It was a system recognized advancement in self awareness.
Chakra unlocked: Crown.
Adam hovered an inch off the floor; golden light pouring off him and forming a beautiful crown of golden light above his brow and to the back of his head.
“Quite inconvenient. Hope you never get an inspiration in the middle of battle. You’re left wildly unprotected for that window.” Carl shook his head. “You’re going to have your hands full. He’s going to have the hangover from hell, if I’m right. Bit early to be unlocking the Crown. Still, he’s doing well. Oh, and you have to level up the Obelisk. That’s going to hit like a truck, too, if what I’ve been told is right. So, I’m going to leave. But I’ll tell you this for free: I’m protecting Verdant Fort. Remember, to make an omelet, you have to break a lot of eggs.”
He never let his hands fall below shoulder height as he walked backwards. What freaked the women out, though, was how he blended into the shadows outside. It was like blinking to find someone gone, but not one of them had blinked.
“What the hell was that?” Raven looked at her friends, then at the still-glowing Adam. “And what do we do about him?”
Kyra stood, feeling that whatever he was going through was coming to an end. The light started to fade and she caught him as he drifted down, directing him toward the bed.
“We have a lot to figure out. He’s probably going to sleep right through the night, since he hasn’t had much lately.”
Raven and Liz nodded. “And it sounds like we’re in charge until Adam recovers,” Liz said.
“Good thing Adam figured out how to make us both second-in-charge,” Kyra said.
“Yeah,” Raven said. “But you have to agree, or nothing happens.”
Liz offered an arm to each woman. “Shall we, ladies? We have a town to run.”