Chapter 12: After Work

Chapter 12: After Work

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Rogue

Species: Human

Level: 1

XP: 799/200

Health Status: Healthy

Mana: 120/120

Stats

Fortitude

12

Perception

12

Strength

10

Agility

12

Magic Power

12

Magic Regeneration

17

Free Points: Stat, 0 Skill

Skills

Hundred Faces III

Stealth III

Power Strike V

Piercing Strike VI

Sundering Strike VI

Knives VIII

Sneak V

Sweeping Strike I

Far Strike I

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Specter

Spectral Shift

[Empty Slot]

If viewed purely through the lens of raw gains, today had been a waste. A mere 118 XP from the killed Slate Golems, one Level in [Knives] and two in [Piercing Strike] for hours upon hours of work.

In other words, basically nothing, at least when the Levels still this low. He could have literally killed two Specters and gained more XP than that.

Isaac grumbled something unintelligibly as he stumbled up the stairs to his apartment, his mind a mess. That work had been the exact wrong combination of boring and repetitive but simultaneously still requiring too much attention to just do on autopilot. Also, dangerous, but that wasn’t really an issue for Isaac. After all, he could literally phase and ignore a Slate Golem’s attacks outright.

Once his front door slammed shut behind him, he kicked the shoes off his feet, took two steps to the couch and collapsed into it.

Today had been a good, productive day, but all he wanted to do was sleep. Granted, he’d also been up since five in the morning, but today had also been incredibly draining, mentally. Just ... ugh.

Isaac ended up blindly groping at his coffee table until he finally got his hands on his phone. Two more taps and the song Gloryhammer by the band of the same name, began to blare out of the Bluetooth loudspeaker.

A slight smile began to creep back onto his face, heart beating faster from excitement. Good music pounding in his ears, adrenaline in his veins, determination in heart. Great circumstances for a nice fight.

He looked over the summoning circle on the floor of his living room, checking it for damage. A few nicks could be seen here and there where a Specter had tried to phase through the ground and driven the knife stuck in its body into the ground. Similar damage could be seen on the walls and even the ceiling, but that was alright, he’d fix that later.

As for the damage to the circle, all it took to repair it was maybe thirty centimeters worth of duct tape and charging it went by quickly.

Isaac made himself a coffee while his mana regenerated, then stepped up to the glowing circle. A pinprick of pain emanated from the tip of his left index finger, the spot he’d drawn blood for the temporary enchantment from. The same enchantment that remained on the kitchen knife he held in his right. The kabar was a slightly better weapon, but it also lacked the enchantment, so he decided to forgo it in favor of being able to do this right now.

The now very familiar sight of a Specter erupting from the ground greeted him, hands tipped with spectral claws reaching out towards his face. Isaac jumped backwards, letting the deadly weapons swiping past his face. Before it could pull them back for another attack, Isaac covered the distance between them and drove the [Piercing Strike] covered and enchanted knife into its center.

It wailed and stumbled back while Isaac drew the kabar. The Specter swiped at him, but he simply activated [Spectral Shift] and turned into an Ephemeral existence, just like it was. Now that he could also touch it directly, he batted away one arm and cut at it with the kabar, likewise Ephemeral.

Another ear piercing shriek tore through the apartment, drowned out by the pounding sound of Power Metal.

Isaac’s next punch sent the Specter reeling, already greatly weakened by the cursed knife in its gut. He followed it up with a stab from the knife, embedding it right next to the one already stuck in there.

It flickered and vanished, both knifes embedding themselves in the ground with a wince inducing thunk. Isaac sighed, hoping they hadn’t gotten damaged too badly.

Specter (Lv. 8) has been slain. 65 XP gained (50 base * 1.30 due to level disparity)

Another minute after that, Isaac had fixed the circle back up, added the ingredients back into it, bandaged his finger and left the apartment to go buy some dinner. He did have plenty of food in the apartment, but it was the same he’d had when he’d arrived a couple of days ago, rice and the like.

Somehow, that felt like it had been a lifetime ago. Since then, he’d dealt with an Italian Mobster, gotten hired by a soon to be incredibly influential group of scientists and turned from an ambitious and driven office worker to a hardened warrior, something that had taken years in the other timeline.

He’d also gotten fired ... sort of. His boss had yelled at him and told him he was fired, yet said boss was a known dumbass. Besides, Isaac hadn’t gotten any paperwork yet, but he’d been told he was fired, so he had a good excuse for not going in to work. When someone finally noticed that mess, he’d probably either get actually fired or offered his old job back, which he’d decline. Either way, there was a chance he’d end up with some money in the form of a severance package and his boss would likely get into trouble, which he considered to be a bonus.

Isaac sighed internally as he looked around for somewhere to get some food. A lot of the smaller and family run businesses were still not working, but in the case of the big chains, there would always be someone willing to come in. Those would suffice, of course, but he’d have loved a proper Italian pizza from a stone oven or something, though it was not to be.

Twenty minutes later, Isaac was back in his apartment, subway sandwich devoured in under five minutes and mana fully recovered.

He shrugged his coat off his shoulders, took off his shoes and charged the circle. While his mana recharged, Isaac flounced on his couch and switched on the Tagesschau, the biggest daily news in Germany.

This was a familiar scene, comforting. Sitting here right after dinner, waiting to see what fresh chaos the world had birthed. He hadn’t done this in ... oh, had it already been three years?

Yeah, that sounded about right. That’s when they’d stopped broadcasting it in the other timeline, and he’d been on a train while it was broadcasted the last two days.

The little melody played as the neutral background gave way to the familiar blue of the studio.

“As it has been in the last couple of days, our main story tonight concerns the initialization of the so called [System] that has affected the entire world. As a result ...”

What else could there have possibly been? The world was absolutely not, in no conceivable way, settled after the mess that had been caused. The most severe consequences, stray monsters, were winding down a little. But the knock on effects from all that were only now truly becoming obvious.

The news only got hung up on this topic for only around five minutes, switching to a more regular story on the economy while announcing a special episode would occur after the actual news segment ended. That was something that happened fairly regularly when big events occurred and apparently, there had been special episodes the last two days too.

When his mana finally topped up, Isaac pushed himself off the sofa, summoned the Specter from the charged circle and stabbed it, dodging it until it dropped dead.

Specter (Lv. 9) has been slain. 67 XP gained (50 base * 1.35 due to level disparity)

And that was that. He reset the circle, charged it once his mana had recovered enough and resumed watching the news.

The TV switched to a more regular entertainment show, some kind of soap opera involving a cloister, unless Isaac missed his guess. He switched it off and proceeded to read a book until he was back at 120 points of mana.

Specter (Lv. 9) has been slain. 67 XP gained (50 base * 1.35 due to level disparity)

... and now he had 998 XP. Urgh. Missing any kind of numerically defined goal by so little ... just ... ugh.

Isaac sighed, trudged over to the pen cup on his desk and retrieved a pen and paper, drawing a simple Tier 1 circle on it. He’d created it as small as was possible and still have it work. One could actually vary the size of a circle by a lot, but it needed to be large enough for the specific creature one wanted to summon.

Summoning List (Structure)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Lair

Tier 3 Circle, Aspect of desired monster, granite slab

150

Dungeon

Tier 5 Circle, baseball sized gem, 1 liter of human blood, 10 different types of rock, 10 different types of gemstones

350

Dungeon (limited)

Tier 5 Circle, baseball sized gem, 1 liter of human blood, 10 different types of rock, 10 different types of gemstones, blood of the dungeon master in a silver chalice

350

Dungeon (bound)

Tier 5 Circle, baseball sized gem, 1 liter of human blood, 10 different types of rock, 10 different types of gemstones, blood of the dungeon master in a silver chalice

350

Elemental Land

Tier 6 Circle, Elemental Source of desired type, volcanic soil, 1 liter sea water, 1 liter freshwater, gemstone appropriate to element type (see list?)

10,000 (max 10 people)

Cauldron

Tier 7 Circle, Aspect of desired monster, 1 ton of Steel, football sized crystal, 10 diamonds bathed in the blood of innocents

15,000 (max 10 people)

...

That was not the case, unfortunately. He could get a Lair after one more Level up, but it would be mostly useless, given how weak he knew them to be. Also, using an entire Aspect for that would be absurdly wasteful.

There were also the various Dungeon kinds, monster and trap filled hellholes that would start spewing death and pestilence onto the land once they got too strong without being regularly culled. In fact, they were some the first sources of free monsters that hadn’t been directly summoned by a human.

One could also summon a bound Dungeon, which was less dangerous, but it would also not give any XP to its Dungeon Master or anyone he ordered the Dungeon to keep safe, making it a rather poor source of progression.

Lastly, there was the limited Dungeon type, which was basically the same thing as a bound Dungeon, except it could both hurt and provide XP to the Dungeon Master without the risk of monsters escaping. The drawback to this was that the Dungeon Master had to feed it literally everything it needed to get stronger, since the ‘limited’ attribute cost it any and all natural progression.

Then there were the Elemental Lands, a ritual that changed an entire area into something befitting the element used and kept spawning in Elementals that befit the type. Those things were astonishingly beautiful, but also dangerous beyond compare. Especially the Death Elemental Lands, aka zombie apocalypse light. Those things would animate any dead flesh on it, creating a massive horde of undead that would kill anything it caught and could casually roam off the zone that had created them.

But it was the ingredient list for the Cauldron that made Isaac’s blood boil. Cauldrons were really useful as they would periodically spawn in monsters of the kind whose Aspect had been used to summon it, no matter how expensive the ingredients would have otherwise been.

Specifically, it was the last one that made him angry. Countless atrocities had been committed to discover just what a ‘diamond bathed in the blood of innocents’ was, when the reality was far simpler, yet no less horrifying.

The [System] wanted conflict diamonds. One final fuck you to high Level people. The only way to get at the best sources of experience was to have, somewhere on the planet, a horrifying war where innocents retrieved the precious stones under horrifying conditions, at which point they would be sold to perpetuate the war.

But no, it was getting late and Isaac was getting tired. Now was not the time to get worked up. He decided to take one quick look at his stat screen before bed.

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Rogue

Species: Human

Level: 1

XP: 1/200

Health Status: Healthy

Mana: 120/120

Stats

Fortitude

17

Perception

12

Strength

10

Agility

12

Magic Power

12

Magic Regeneration

17

Free Points: Stat, 0 Skill

Skills

Hundred Faces III

Stealth III

Power Strike VI

Piercing Strike VII

Sundering Strike VI

Knives IX

Sneak V

Sweeping Strike I

Far Strike I

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Specter

Spectral Shift

Hydra

Hydra’s Regeneration

His Character Sheet was starting to look really nice, now. But even with the 17 points in Fortitude he had now, he was still tired. It would take less time in bed to fix that, but he’d have to first actually go to bed. It would have been too nice if boosting Fortitude immediately adjusted ... ones ... tiredness ...

Isaac yawned, and before he knew it, he was asleep on his couch.