Advice for Earth's third testing cycle: Focus on California.

Daz frowned as he entered the keep. 'Focus on California? What does that mean? The test is going to be, what, state or country-wide, not local anymore? Will that be true for everyone, or just rulers? The system can't honestly expect every survivor to be able to participate on a statewide scale, let alone a country-wide scale, can it?'

He shook his head and sighed. 'Well, speculation and my thoughts will only get me so far. I'll know more about the value of this advice tomorrow afternoon.'

With that decided on, Daz returned to his bedroom. Madison was in the middle of brushing her teeth, but after she and Daz were done 'entertaining' one another, they both needed a shower, which they had together before they went to sleep.

In the dreamscape graveyard, Daz was instructed by Cecil repeatedly and he was never given a second to forget how shoddy his Grave of the Mammals was when compared to the true version of the skill, Grave of The Gods.

As annoying as the stupidly strong old man with back issues was, Daz still appreciated him since he was taking his task of teaching him very seriously. Daz didn't have a huge use for the skill he was being taught, but he was sure that it would be great eventually. Regardless, the training served as a good way to learn some discipline and self-control, which kept him from getting disgruntled.

If he just imagined the incredible sight of the Grave of The Gods skill which Cecil had only shown him once being under his command, well, that alone made this a worthwhile endeavour to pursue as he slept.

Unexpectedly, before Daz left the dreamscape and woke up, Cecil had claimed that he'd made little-to-no progress in regards to mastering the skill tonight. Again, the reaper didn't mind. His time in the dreamscape proved to be a good place to think and gather his thoughts regardless of his skill training.

Opening his eyes, Daz stretched, carefully moved Mr Barrier off of his head, then he kissed Madison's temple gently.

The girl squirmed about in her sleep as she drooled on her pillow. Of course, Daz found this to be utterly adorable. He let her enjoy her rest as he went and had a shower then got dressed.

He skipped breakfast since eating was just a pastime for a reaper like himself. He instead headed to the barracks' training area and began using Hamson manually.

Daz greatly enjoyed remotely controlling Hamson via his thoughts, but considering how vast the system was, he had a feeling that he'd eventually run into people that could cancel Hamson's ability to fly on command.

Being surprised by Big Bo's ability to seal his instincts was more than enough of a surprise for Daz, so if at all possible, he wanted to be ready for anything like that ever happening again in the future.

Maybe an hour passed before he realised that practising on the dummies wasn't really going anywhere.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and held his chin in contemplation. "For an hour or two should be fine, right? I trust Dorian to be responsible in place of the wild Crusher, and Alpha and Beta hardly need to be working on the airship. Yeah. Fuck it. Let's see how this pans out."

With that decided on, Daz unsummoned all three of his clones then recreated them in front of himself.

Congratulations! The host has learned a new passive skill: Basic Engineering.

'Ah, right. Beta had learned that, huh? I forgot to unsummon him to get it, though it's kinda useless... Hopefully, it'll merge with my crafting skill one day or else I'll need to replace it with something actually useful,' Daz thought as he looked at his clones.

His clones knew Daz's plan for them from their memories of what he was thinking about just before he had brought them here, so they all started getting prepared to fight him. As they did that, Daz checked the details of his newly acquired skill.

Basic Engineering [E-Rank (Higher Tier)] Description

A skill that allows the host to understand all electrical things to a limited degree.

Man, what a waste of a skill slot. Don't you resent your clone? He went and wasted a slot of yours by doing something that you hadn't even asked him to... What kind of failure can't even control his own clones? Maybe a mirror has the answer? Well, regardless, he definitely has your intelligence... and your looks... poor bastard. Well, he's called 'Beta' for a reason.

Level 1 Abilities The host shall need 5% less time than the average person to understand anything powered by electricity.

'Kinda useless, but hey, maybe a better version of it will be critical in the future? I hardly care. If it keeps Beta happy, and if I don't have my skill slots all filled up, it's a non-issue, though I do wish the system description author would stop being such an unnecessary asshole,' Daz responded directly to the person responsible for the snarky or straight-up mean comments for the first time ever.

Shaking his head and clearing his mind, Daz summoned Hamson from its brand once more, he then looked at his clones and ordered, "Use everything on me. Reflective Justice Chains and Laughing Skull too if you want to. I should be immune to the former, and I doubt the latter can kill me, so all three of you, come at me with the intent to murder me."

'This should be the best way to train myself. If these guys can work together, they should easily be stronger than me if I don't account for Hamson. After all, they each have 70% of my stats and all of my skills at 70% efficiency,' Daz thought as he assumed a cautious and defensive stance.

Clearly, the reaper was planning on honing his ability to respond to danger, and not his ability to kill as quickly and as effectively as humanly possible.

Immediately, Alpha used the skill Laughing Skull.

Daz's mind rocked and he felt his soul squirming uncomfortably. 'So it can affect my soul even though I should be immune to soul attacks? That's good to know,' Daz thought as he raised Hamson and used its blade to block a Death Beam that threatened to blast his head off.

While he had blocked Beta's Death Beam, due to the mild disorientation caused by Alpha's Laughing skull, he wasn't fast enough to dodge or block Gamma's attack.

Daz suddenly started struggling to breathe. It felt like a hand had grabbed both his throat and his soul. His eyes opened wide in shock as he mumbled, "Grip of Death isn't nullified by my Soul Immunity either? What?"

Alpha grinned. "It only grabs and squeezes your soul. It doesn't attack it nor does it damage it in any way at all. You'd know that if you used Secret Override on it, Original."

Daz's eyes were filled with realisation. "I've been negligent, I see..."

He flipped on his Archreaper's Aura and spread it evenly amongst his three clones. All of them buckled at the knees and tried their very best to avoid slamming their heads into the hard ground as a show of respect.

While they were also Archreapers, Daz was 30% stronger than them individually, so he was able to catch them off guard and exert his full might upon them with this unexpected move.

Beta seemed to be uncaring in regards to this particular development in the fight, but Alpha was quite clearly panicking. "I didn't... see this... in my... predictions..."

Daz smiled. "Calculations and predictions are no match for my esper ability, it would se- Keh!" His words were cut off as one of his pet gems suddenly flew down his throat and blocked his windpipe.

Gamma immediately got up then waved his hands about, controlling the other small gems and forced them to enter Daz's mouth and wreak havoc within his body.

Daz was barely able to keep Alpha and Beta locked down with such a massive distraction clawing away at his attention, which resulted in Gamma managing to activate his own Archreaper's Aura and use it to shield himself from Daz's.

He wasn't nearly powerful enough to affect Daz with this skill since he was an inferior version of him, meaning that he was less of an Archreaper than Daz was, but just protecting himself from the urge to worship Daz like a god was simple enough with the help of some concentration.

The clone rushed towards Daz with no hesitation in its eyes whatsoever.

In response, Daz swung down Hamson with the intent of killing his clone. If he killed Gamma, he could easily split his focus between locking down his other clones and controlling the gems destroying his internal organs over and over again.

Gamma instantly used Crystallisation on his entire body which turned him into the substance that Rimmy was made out of. Hamson still cut deeply into the cyan jewelled skin of the clone, but his body wasn't cleaved in two like it originally should have been.

Gamma then slammed both of his open palms onto Daz's chest far quicker than he could ever hope to pull Hamson out of the clone and cut him once again - which would probably kill him instantly, Crystallisation or not.

"Death Be-"

Gamma's skill incantation was interrupted by the ground beneath him collapsing in on itself. Daz had used the skill Dig and he'd invoked it mentally. In the brief moment that Gamma was falling, Daz used the skill Astral Crystal Control to force the tiny gems out of his body.

With Alpha's Laughing Skull now expired, and with his windpipe and internal organs clear of foreign bodies, Daz cracked his neck and smiled. "That was ingenious, Gamma."

Daz cancelled his Archreaper's Aura, releasing Alpha and Beta. "So Alpha got my manipulative nature, but did you get my fighting ability or something?"

Climbing out of the hole that was rapidly repairing itself since they were still in the training area of the barracks, Gamma nodded. "That is correct, Original. All of your street smarts have solidified my personality. As soon as I felt your Archreaper's Aura, I knew that I had to distract you just enough to release my own aura and protect myself with it."

Daz held his chin and wore a pleased expression on his face. "And so you flicked your fingers to move the gems into my mouth while I was arrogantly monologuing. You took perfect advantage of my momentary overconfidence."

"That is correct, Original." Gamma dusted off his clothes then said, "However, I did not expect you to remove the ground out from under me. I realise now that I should have used Laughing Skull on you as I was running towards you. I shall do better next time, Original."

"I look forward to that." Daz glanced at Beta and asked, "And you, have you formed a personality yet? Gamma's less than a few days old, but he's already got one, so logic dictates that you should've had one for a while now."

Beta looked unsure. "I... I think so, Original. I have no feelings nor stray thoughts, but Alpha seems to think that I have inherited your ability to learn."

Daz stroked his chin in thought. "That would make sense, yeah. You're the one who learned both Basic Martial Arts and Basic Engineering, so yeah, if that's the basis of your personality, it would certainly explain why you've been acting like a soulless puppet for so long. Well, keep trying to learn skills for me, I suppose. Of course, only try to get useful ones, okay?"

Nodding, Beta replied, "I shall, Original."

"Good." Daz then glanced between his three clones and said, "Well, let's keep training until eleven-thirty. You can all return to what you were doing before after the third-cycle is announced and we deal with today's attack - if there is one. Don't use Laughing Skull though, Beta, Gamma. We may need that later on."

"Yes, Original."

"Of course, Original."

"Order received, Original."

With that agreed on, the four Daz's got busy with their training.

Of course, since Daz and his three clones had been fighting for about 5-hours straight, quite the crowd of both soldiers and citizens had gathered to watch.

In truth, Daz was lucky that he'd upgraded the barracks recently. Crusher smashing the training grounds once during a spar occasionally was fine, but the place was barely able to repair itself as quickly as Daz and his clones were tearing it up, and they were ripping it to shreds every couple of minutes.

After their first round, all three of Daz's clones had started using Dig to make opportune pitfalls which helped them to greatly even the playing field.

Daz was too strong with Hamson, but with Gamma's expert leadership, he, Alpha, and Beta were able to get Daz to the point where he could only beat them all by focusing every scrap of his Archreaper's Aura on only Gamma, crippling their teamwork. They managed to force him to that point several times, and honestly, it was really helping Daz grow.

Finally, as they were cleaning up and leaving the arena, General Retford approached Daz. "Your Majesty, how should I position the soldiers in preparation for the attack?"

Daz held up his hand to ask the man to wait for a moment, he then chugged a full bottle of water in one go before he replied, "As usual, have your men escort all of the people not willing to fight into the dungeon, also include everyone who is weaker than you that actually wishes to participate."

A sad look entered Daz's eyes as he added, "What happened to Sarah and Ger could have happened to anyone, but Jorden died due to how weak and inexperienced he was. I never want something like that to happen ever again."

"Of course, Your Majesty." Will banged his fist on his chest then asked, "And what should I do once the citizens are safely secured?"

"Stay within the walls. I have a good feeling that we won't be fighting today, but if we are and Crusher, Madison, Mu, and myself cannot defeat our opponents with ease, I'd love it if your men could reinforce us once we retreat into the outer-fort," Daz explained his plan.

"No fighting...? All of the tests of my previous master included intense fights one after the other, but okay, if that is your wish, Your Majesty, I shall do my best to fulfil it," General Retford said as he bowed his head respectfully.

Daz smiled. "Thanks. Keep trusting me. We'll be fine, Will."

"Yes, Your Majesty!" the lion-like man replied before he saluted and left to perform his duties.

Daz and his clones then quickly vacated the barracks and made for Fort Skip's northern entrance. They were completely prepared and ready for the system's announcement regarding the start of cycle-three.