“Ours is not to reason why….”

~Adapted from a line from Lord Alfred Tennyson's 1854 poem

‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

POV - Tad

Who knew skitterings could sound so ominous? In some way the anticipation of imminent violence was worse than my remembrance of the previous battle. There everything sort of just happened too fast to be truly scared. It had been do or die. There had been no time to waste on worrying or questioning.

This time it seemed like time was stretching out interminably. Even the chittering and scratches that seemed to be right overhead were slowing down. Ahhh. My Time Lord Perk. Helpfully drawing out the suspense. I was about to cancel it when the realisation struck me. Take advantage of this moment before discovery you silly duffer. There were rewards to accept.

I had wanted to delay accepting both rewards until I had finished spamming my [Basic Cultivation] and totally blitzing the board. Ahhhh. It was not to be. Survival was much more critical than chasing optimal after all. Quickly pulling up my Survival Reward and, with a nod, I graciously accepted it. And then, with unseemly haste, directed it to apply one stat point to every attribute.

Now the second award.

This one was where it could really glitch the System. Hopefully. Especially when combined with a luck roll from my new Black Swan Award. It was time to flip my figurative coin and double my reward. Heads or Tails? It was fifty fifty.

Heads.

The coin came up Stars. What? That was not fair. It was supposed to be fifty fifty chance not zero zero chance. What a scam. Now there was a 48hour stand down and even then the other side of the coin was a mystery. Oh. Just call it not Stars. Still I was miffed.

And the System was stalling on me. I pulled up my Character Sheet.

NAME:

Tad

Blank

SPECIES:

TIER:

Human

G

XP:

EXP:

88601

8833/8860

LVL:

1**

CAPPED**

MINION:

Nige

[Expand]

CON:

924.46HP

STR: STA: AGI:

[Hide]

16.1* 52.2 19.32*

[Variance]

+8.05 +0 +11.27

WIS:

43.12MP

MEM: IMA: INT:

[Hide]

4.44 5.55 11.1*

[Variance]

+0 +0 +1.11

KAR:

415.14E

CHA: SPI: HON:

[Hide]

12.21* 34.00* 12.21*

[Variance]

+1.11 +4.08 +1.11

LUC:

0.6

+0.05 on Loot/Drop rolls

Unassigned

Total:

0

167.73

-6 +25.06

SKILLS:

(Unlocked) (Hide]

Rage

Mine

Deception

Mana Sight

(Active) [Hide]

Dodge

Advanced Meditation

Observation

Inspect

Basic Cultivation

Run

Dream

[Hide All] [Proficiency]

[Novice]

[Apprentice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

CLASS SKILLS:

Prospect

Delve

[Novice]

[Novice]

ACCOLADES:

RESTRICTED System Title [Exemplar] (Unequipped)

PATHS:

Nasal Prospector Class

PERKS:

Gallifreudian Slip

TITLES:

Pertinacious

Black Swan Survivor

Audacious Pioneer (Pending)

AWARDS:

Atelophobia Award

Precocious Award

Pestiferous Award

My intuition was correct, the System would not allocate any new points to my Base Stats. They had disappeared into the ether. But there was a work around. By grafting on to my Base Stats using [Basic Cultivation] the limits were obsolete. Legend! Once an attribute was at its Level Cap the System would now allocate any future Stats earned as Bonus Stats. My HP and Essence were looking very healthy.

What was happening with this second reward?

Was the System trying to divide Infinity by 10? I was pretty sure that was going to be a pretty hard ask. Infinity is more a Concept than a number. And being outside the normal structured framework of Levels which were so easily quantifiable the System was having to come up with a solution to an impossible equation.

Pulling up the reward again I reviewed what was on offer.

Audacious Explorer:

Award Effects:

Award Effect 1: +1 permanent Stat point allocated to every Stat upon exploration of a new Level/Zone/Instance that is graded 10 or more levels above your current Level. When an individual Stat is already at its Level cap +2 Bonus Stats allocated.

Award Effect 2: When in a Level/Zone/Instance that is graded 10 or more levels above your current Level +5 AGI permanently and +1 AGI per additional 10 Levels (rounded down).

Well. The first one should be in the bag. Infinity was definitely way more than one plus ten. But that second Effect - that second part was problematic. Infinity divided by ten was surely still infinite. I would be laughing all the way to the Bank. Or it would be zero I suppose. A concept or a word divided by ten would equal #value! Oh no, this could be bad if it then corrupted my current Stat. My anticipation of gaming the System evaporated and was replaced with a disquieting dread. Before the System finished its machinations the first Trashbug dropped down from the overhang above.

Fight time!

And it was tiny.

A third of the size of my previous opponent. Maybe the size of a reasonably hefty rat. While it was still falling my newly improved shovel whipped through the air, making contact with a pleasing crunch. Wahhoo! One shotted the critter.

My perk came to an end upon entering combat and time and sound realigned themselves. Two more little horrors were already jumping down. Whack, whomp. Some fine one handed spadework. With a twirl of a figure eight I collected both. This was good. Like swatting slow moving flies with simple trajectories. I could do this all day. My increased Body Stats made a massive difference. Two became three, became eight. It was pretty much continuous now. A rain of earwigs. With malicious intent. I was no longer able to swat them all. And as soon as they reached the ground they oriented on me and mindlessly advanced. Withdrawing Mr Slicey and awkwardly reversing my grip, all the while weaving an intricate whomping pattern with my spade I prepared to deal with the scuttlers.

Soon I was a whirling dervish. Stamping and kicking, stabbing and thwacking. I was full murder hobo on these poor monster babies.

They were relentless.

I was dauntless.

Hmmm… this was getting harder.

The distance the nasty little critters had to jump was getting smaller as mounds of bodies built up. And my footing was getting cramped. And once they landed it was exceedingly hard to distinguish them from their smushed and stabbed siblings until they were nigh on biting me.

Or trying to bite me.

My higher body Stats were making a difference. The memory of Trashbug number one burrowing into Mr Stiff had been weighing on me. Perhaps it was because as a corpse he had no stats? Maybe it was because these were Level 1 and 2 babies. Either way I was majorly relieved. Murder, murder, more murders. Poor babies. Splat, stomp, smash, smoosh. This was quite cathartic really. Getting a groove on here. This was my first good cardio workout since like forever.

And then a Level 3 monster scuttled over the edge. Rather than jumping it had enough strength to cling to the roughly vertical wall and then scuttle at me obliquely.

Aha! The difficulty level stepped up a notch. One shotting these would be a bit more of an ask. I holstered my knife and gripped my spade with two hands. With a flourish [Penetrating Blow] cleanly decapitated the beastie. There, that was pretty humane. And the Skill was on cooldown with three more of the critters coming my way like little homing missiles. If this cooldown was too long I was going to be in serious trouble. Three seconds later it refreshed. Phew. Makes sense that a Skill for mining would be something you could get a good rhythm up with though.

A punt, a slash-flick and [Penetrating Blow]. Rinse and repeat. Thankfully the torrent of babies had dropped off and my stomping and kicking could tone down as well. Three punts or a punt and a slash were enough that I didn’t need to use a [Penetrating Blow] and they kept the beasties at a distance. The trick was not wasting a [Penetrating Blow] on one you had already punted or flicked away and then heading off the fresh little menaces as they got close. Literally. This kind of interception was the bees knees.

But now I was in serious danger of getting smothered. Death by corpsulation. My lexicon was lacking. I didn't know that word for asphyxiation via dead bodies. Buried alive by these little kamikaze bombers. Even just thinking that made me thankful that these weren’t an exploding variety. That would be bad.

I had a thought. Even though my Red Adamant Bucket was not supposed to be used for organic matter I tried flicking a corpse into the bucket. And it vanished. Fabulous. In between the pesky critters regularly arriving in on me my energies were consumed in frantically spooning up the mounds of corpses into my bucket of holding.

There that cleared a bit of space. It was time to grab a moment and take stock in a temporary pause in the deluge. By my count, and not that I had been counting, I had dispatched well over one thousand maybe even fifteen hundred of the little menaces. I checked my STA. It was sitting at 36. Not even halfway depleted. Even while watching it ticked up half a point in the lull. Excellent. I didn’t need to be fully out of combat before my Stamina started to recover. Arrgghhh. Summoning an Energy potion and quaffing it there was a slight uptick in my recovery. Stupid. Should have thought of this earlier. The last thing I needed was to run out of Stamina and lose the use of my [Penetrating Blow], let alone run out of steam and be too tired to move. That would be fatal. I checked my Health. Down 30HP. When had that happened? Ahh well. It’s not like I expected to come out of this unscathed but it was still a blow to realise that I wouldn’t be getting the double XP bonus.

Dude!? What on earth are you moaning about? Even half a day ago this tide of monsters would have washed right over you. Cleaned your clock in less than half a minute. Pull yourself together I chided myself.

Looking at a nearby Level 3 corpse, a sudden thought struck me. Duh, you haven’t even thought of looting the monsters. I mean I didn't really see anything there that I wanted. Chitin? Claws? Guts? Nah. But just for an experiment I nudged it with my foot and thought [Loot]. To my absolute surprise the corpse flickered and condensed into a mote of pure Essence. Without thinking I assented to the System query and enriched my Essence by three.

What? This was broken. I quickly [Looted] all the nearby monster corpses, clearing more space around me. Just as I was about to venture away from the rear wall to scarf some more dead monsters down, a much larger Trashbug manoeuvred through what was a very tight gap for it.

[Inspect]

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Worker

LVL:

8

HP:

640

DESCRIPTION:

A patient scavenger, the Trashbug is frequently found anywhere that rubbish of any type accumulates.

Individually they can be easily dealt with however they can often be found in large numbers with a Trashbug Materiach often laying clutches of several thousand at a time.

Report any sightings of Trashbugs outside designated Dumps to the local Adventurer’s Guild.

[Improve proficiency to view more and unlock deeper insight]

Oh-ho. This would be more of a battle than an extermination. I didn’t let the monster get through the gap. Grabbing my spear, whoops, my Spade I charged and activated [Penetrating Blow], ramming my trusty trencher fully through the vile monster’s torso and into the wall of the trash fort. The Trashbug’s tail and pincer were still outside and no doubt flailing ineffectually. Drawing both my knives, it was time to go full hobo rampage. Stab, stab, stabbity stab, stab. Like a coffee fueled woodpecker my arms were a blur. No time to wait for a bleed effect. I needed to reclaim my spade stake and set myself for the next critter.

And it was even bigger. Level 14. Why were there these big jumps in level after almost being swamped with screeds of babies? I got my answer almost straight away as the bigger Trashbug grabbed the limp tail of my most recent foe and started to chow down on it. Cannibal! It was going to grow bigger wasn’t it? Consuming my XP.

Thief!

I [Looted] my rightful rewards out from its sorry butt. Well, out from its tail pincer at least. Though its puckered mouth mandibles were pretty ugly too. Buttmouth. Get your own XP you loot thieving lootbug.

Ahh. That poked the bear.

Ha, it was too big to fit through the gap. It scrabbled at me before making its way down the slope and around to the vertical opening of my trashy fortifications. Ha! Still too big; sucker! Ha ha.

Ha… And I was trapped.

And then the cunning blighter used its tail pincers to steal out one of my kills. I was so not going to let it feast and grow off my kills. Mangy scavenger! As its tail darted for another corpse I gave it a mighty whack with my favourite spade. It skittered off. The spade that is. Not the beastie. Drat. I didn’t want to use [Penetrating Blow] in case it got stuck and I lost my weapon. Okay. That’s not working. Ideas?

I [looted] the bodies as fast as I was able, converting corpses to a glittering array of Essence and sucked it up.

ERROR!

Your Essence is already at capacity.

You can not cycle Essence into a full vessel.

Bother!

And the Trashbug then sucked up my lovely Essence. Arrgghhh. I had just made it easier for it. Stupid thieving scary monster. I was really annoyed. I scooped up the remaining bug bodies near the entrance and stashed them in my bucket. Hah. Out of reach now.

And the bug was now Level 15.

It came back to the entrance and started attacking the trash walls. Oh. This was not good.

I set my back against the wall and prepared myself for the fight of my life.

[Inspect]

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier

LVL:

15

HP:

2250

While it was going gangbusters on the trash. I pulled up my trusty trench spade and cycled six more Essence in. That cleared out all my Imbued Essence. I needed a stronger weapon. With more reach. And a bigger, stronger blade. I smoothed off the rear of the shovel head, tapering it so it could be withdrawn smoothly with less chance of catching. The pole narrower ever so slightly as it reached towards the shovel head while the far end was now a hefty wedge of a staff. It was still as light as anything but the balance felt better now, a full on quarterstaff with a wicked spade head mounted on one end and able to be used as a cudgel at the other. All the while the Trashbug was making an almighty ruckus and stirring up a cloud of debris.

I almost didn’t notice as the ruckus changed tone.

Another Trashbug had been drawn by the kerfuffle. And rather than join my opponent it had taken full benefit of its distraction and focus and launched a surprise attack to devastating advantage.

The smaller attacker had jumped on the back of my adversary and immobilised its tail while hoeing in with its horror of a mouth. They were a whirl of limbs, thrashing and pummelling each other with abandon. I moved to my new enlarged entrance. Boutique spectator sport.

[Inspect], [Inspect]

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier [Ambushed]

LVL:

15

HP:

1230/2250

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier [Ninja Assassin]

LVL:

13

HP:

1540/1690

Oh. Level 13 versus Level 15. Lower levelled but a special class. It must have got a [Critical Hit] with that initial [Backstab] or [Backbite] rather. And it was smashing its larger sibling rival. The winner would consume the loser and level up and then I would be in real strife. There was only one possible acceptable solution.

It was time for some spectator participation.

Creeping closer I activated my Gallifreudian Perk. The whirlwind of sinuous bodies slowed. Activating [Penetrating Blow] I pushed my Essence into it and struck.

[Penetrating blow]. Can cut through 99% of all materials. Consumes STA to use.

Rather than the fraction of a STA point that was normally consumed I spent my STA with abandon. Without really knowing what I was doing I cycled my Essence into the Skill as well.

And my spade spaded them good. My thoughts were having trouble with the amount of adrenaline that was flooding my being. My spade dug straight through them both, pinning their torsos together like some alien conjoined monster. Which I suppose they were. I abandoned it and retreated as my Perk expired. Both Trashbugs focused in on me and then, as they each got in each other's way, resumed their inimical battle.

[Inspect], [Inspect]

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier [Ambushed]

LVL:

15

HP:

210/2250

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier [Ninja Assassin]

LVL:

13

HP:

340/1690

Ha. That made the odds a lot better. The Ninja Assassin was coming off worse now having lost its stranglehold on the larger bugs tail but it was still giving it a run for its money.

I withdrew my Stabby dagger. It seemed totally inadequate against the size of these monsters. But these are what I had, they would have to do.

Both monsters were now almost fully exhausted and the battle was reduced to them straining against one another, like retired boxers hugging it out. I circled. 13 was down to just 35HP and 15 was sitting on 55HP. I went at 15 with Mr Stabby.

Success, and then a flailing leg scored me good, knocking me over. [-45HP]

Before I could recover my feet a tail pincer slammed down [-90HP] and shook me violently. Once, [-10HP] twice [-10HP]. I was starting to black out. Then it loosened and I was dropped to the ground. Woozy I rolled away.

[Inspect], [Inspect]

OBJECT:

Monster Corpse

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier [Defeated]

LVL:

15

HP:

0/2250

CREATURE:

Insect Type Monster

SPECIES:

Trashbug; Soldier [Ninja Assassin]

LVL:

13

HP:

37/1690

Mr Stabby had done his job. The Ninjabug was still trapped. Held fast to its larger sibling. I could take my time and finish it off at my leisure.

No! It was eating my trophy. It was healing itself. This was not acceptable. I was the only one going to be eating anyone!

I [Looted] Number 15 and consumed its Essence. My spade, while still penetrating Number 13, was no longer restricting it from coming at me. I threw one of my throwing daggers and missed in my sudden panic. Scrabbling back, I desperately rolled towards my redoubt. I was down to just Mr Slicey.

Huddled up against the rear wall I pulled up my Character Sheet.

NAME:

Tad

Blank

SPECIES:

TIER:

Human

G

XP:

EXP:

88601

8833/8860

LVL:

1

CAPPED**

MINION:

Nige

[Expand]

CON:

2416.36/2599.36HP

STR: STA: AGI:

[Hide]

20.32* 53.2 28.54*

[Variance]

+4.22 +1 +9.22

WIS:

64.71MP

MEM: IMA: INT:

[Hide]

5.44 6.55 14.32*

[Variance]

+1 +1 +3.22

KAR:

582.02E (0% Reserved)

CHA: SPI: HON:

[Hide]

15.43* 37.72* 15.43*

[Variance]

+3.22 +3.72 +3.22

LUC:

0.6

+0.05 on Loot/Drop rolls

Unassigned

Total:

0

197.55

0 +29.82

SKILLS:

(Unlocked) (Hide]

Rage

Mine

Deception

Mana Sight

(Active) [Hide]

Dodge

Advanced Meditation

Observation

Inspect

Basic Cultivation

Run

Dream

[Hide All] [Proficiency]

[Novice]

[Apprentice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

CLASS SKILLS:

Prospect

Delve

[Novice]

[Novice]

ACCOLADES:

RESTRICTED System Title [Exemplar] (Unequipped)

PATHS:

Nasal Prospector Class

PERKS:

Gallifreudian Slip

TITLES:

Pertinacious

Black Swan Survivor

Audacious Pioneer

AWARDS:

Atelophobia Award

Precocious Award

Pestiferous Award

What on Earth!

My HP was massive. This was totally absurd. I had truly broken the System. Oh. It was my latest Award. The Pesky one. Funny, I was fighting a pest and I was the Pestiferous one. It doubled my HP for enemies in higher Tiers. And Assassinbug was Bronze and I was Clay. And It looked like the Audacious Award had been applied. Only plus five AGI. So infinity divided by ten equals zero. That was a shame. I had hoped it would be infinity and I would be about to [Flash] about like 'The Flash' so to speak. Ah, well. Still awesome anyway.

And I could just totally tank this overgrown earwig.

Number 13 had limped its way to the opening of my abused fort. I surged forward and sliced its ugly maw. Activating my Perk I got two more blows in and retreated as its pincer tail shakily tried to grab me. The advantage of speed was mine. But it was on its guard now, having not expected my sudden reversal. [Dodge], Feint, Slice, Rinse, Repeat. It was just a matter of time. Like a pesky fly that wouldn’t leave alone.

I ground out my victory.

It had been messy. A totally overpowered Level 1, I had still been remarkably lucky. Indeed.

Whatever.

I would take the win.