Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 16: Choices

Zac was on his knees, panting heavily. His clothes were a completely burned and bloodied mess. All around him were signs of the imp’s rampage, with pockets completely drained and devoid of life. Zac realized that the fire of the imp did not burn like a normal fire, rather it burned life-force or cosmic energy. His burns looked like all moisture had been drained from his skin and it now had a pallid grey color. It was like those parts of his body was like that of a desiccated corpse’s.

The corpse of the imp was lying against a tree roughly 10 meters away from him, the axe still firmly planted in its chest. The constitution of the monster was quite frail, and it had died immediately when the axe hit.

As soon as the monster had died, it seemed as though the source of the fires had been removed. The fires had quickly extinguished, the marks left behind the only proof they had existed at all. Had it not quickly dissipated then the fire would fire would have completely destroyed him. Maybe not his body, but all his life-force.

Zac was nauseated and on the brink of passing out, but he somehow summoned power he did not know he had and got up on his feet. He shuffled over to the imp and yanked out the axe. He had no energy to look through the corpse, and simply continued his way back home.

He was almost delirious by this point and was barely able to keep his bearings. Luckily he was quite close to edge of the island now, and almost on the opposite side of the pillar. The monsters were pretty scarce this far out still, and he didn’t encounter any more demons that night.

With the last strength in his body he managed to stumble back into his camp. As soon as he saw the familiar sight of the metallic camper his legs simply gave out. He fell down onto the ground end let the sweet darkness embrace him.

It was midday the following day when Zac woke up again. Body was stiff and he sported a splitting headache. It was as if he had been drinking until passing out last day. He spit out some gravel he had got in his mouth and slowly got up.

After a quick check-up it seemed that most of the wounds were in decent shape. None of the scratches and tears from the demons were still bleeding. Some of the more shallow wounds were just a white line today. A few of the worse wounds would have to stay in bandage for at least another day though.

The spots where the black fire had burned him yesterday were still a bit grey and shrunken, but had gotten noticeably better. He felt that he headache he had likely came from these wounds. The fire yesterday must have had some magic properties that damaged in other ways than just burning. He shuddered when he remembered the pain from those blasts.

He prepared some breakfast and sat down in a camping chair to go over yesterday’s results. He brought up the status window with a thought to go over the gains.

Name Zachary Atwood Level 18 Race Human Alignment Human (Earth) Titles Born For Carnage, Ultimate Reaper, Luck of the Draw, Giantsbane, Disciple of David, Overpowered, Slayer of Leviathans, Adventurer, Demon Slayer I Strength 46 Dexterity 33 Endurance 34 Vitality 43 Intelligence 29 Wisdom 29 Luck 44 Free Points 0 Nexus Coins 3 370

He had gained almost 3000 Nexus Coins with just one day of fighting, which seemed quite good. If he based the gains on the amount of cosmic energy he got from the different monsters he could somewhat guess how much each kill gave him. He would say that he had gained roughly 100 for each demon dog he had killed, and between half as much and double that from the demon hound. The largest amount was rewarded from killing the imp. He still remembered that burst of energy even though he was almost delirious. If he hadn’t gotten that extra energy boost after the fight he might not have made it home.

Still, the amount gained yesterday was far short of most of the buildings he had seen in the town building interface. It made sense, as building a whole town was usually not done by the efforts of only one person. If he had a few hundred people who came together and gathered Nexus Coins the amount gathered would be massive, even if the other people were far weaker than himself. There simply was power in numbers.

The thought gave him a sense of urgency. It was undeniable that he had likely gotten a quite impressive head start compared to most people, even though he was not too happy with his current situation. But if some great leader emerged in a tutorial village and created a large force he might lose his head start. Abby had mentioned that the system liked those that stood in forefront. If someone was going to get titles and other advantages from building a town first, then it should be him.

It might be better for humanity if some country leader or military general got that head start. But it was the apocalypse, and he had his goals. He needed to be a bit selfish in that regard, and couldn’t just give away opportunities to others and hope they would use them for good.

He also noticed that he had a new title, Demon Slayer I. It was from the quest he had received in the beginning, which had told him to kill 10 demons. The title gave him 1+ all stats when fighting enemies of demonic alignment. However, he didn’t quite understand how the title worked. He should have activated that title somewhere mid-day, but he had felt nothing different when fighting afterward. Zac thought that the 1 stat point perhaps was too low a number for him to notice anything.

He was somewhat surprised that he hadn’t received any sort of follow-up quest, along the lines of “Kill 100 Demons”. The line behind the title indicated that it should be possible to upgrade it, but he hadn’t been given any indication of how. Zac guessed he had to add it to the ever-increasing list of things he did not know.

After looking over the status page he opened the building interface. There were two things that Zac wanted to build, and they cost 3000 Nexus crystals each.

The first was called a [F-Grade Nexus Node] and looked like a large hovering crystal from the description. Its function was to access certain aspects of the System. Nexus Nodes seemed to have more functions depending on how high grade it was, with F being the lowest. The Node was the worst of the bunch in other words. But it gave access to two functions that Zac was extremely interested in. It gave access to the class system, and sold basic skills.

The other was another array, namely the [F-Grade Small Scale Gravity Array]. This was an array meant for strengthening oneself as he saw it. The subject of training was something he had mulled over from the start. Even before allocating the first 30 points he had gotten he had noticed that his stats were skewed.

When he counted backwards from his titles and the points he had allocated he had found out that his base stats differed quite a bit. Before the effect of the system he had 7 strength, 3 dexterity, 4 endurance, 5 vitality, 5 intelligence and 6 wisdom.

He assumed the normal stats were around 1-10 for most humans, as he was somewhat average before the System arrived. He wasn’t particularly smart, and not extremely athletic. He worked out at a gym 3 times a week which would explain the strength. But he was not limber at all, and he rarely did cardio. Therefore he had lower dexterity and endurance. Vitality and intelligence seemed harder to train, as they seemed more of an inborn quality.

Since the stats differed and seemed to be affected by his actions before the System arrived, he assumed that he might be able to improve his base stats from training as well. He probably would not be able to improve infinitely, but every extra stat point counted.

That’s where the gravity array would come in. It would affect the gravity in a zone, and could increase the gravity up to 10 times. At this point he had 46 strength and was likely stronger than any human that had ever lived on earth. Without this kind of array Zac didn’t think he would be able to exhaust himself. He could do push-ups all day without breaking a sweat at the moment.

If he added the array to the camp he could potentially improve multiple stats, at least Strength and Endurance as they seemed most linked with the constitution of his physique.

Unfortunately the descriptions for the buildings were quite short, and both options came with a risk. He had no idea how skills worked and what they would cost. Buying a Nexus Node might be a complete waste of coins at this stage when every advantage was important. On the other hand he didn’t know if the plan for training even worked with the system.

After some hesitation he finally turned his eyes towards the array.