Chapter 40

Adrian felt like screaming in excitement.

Sam!

He was sure of it, but the man had customers, so he bit his tongue and shadow stepped twice and entered the line. Two women were in front of him. This close, it was definitely Sam. Just like he remembered. Maybe it was the same species but a different person but Adrian did not think so…

The trader spent ages with the next customer. Adrian could not see what was being exchanged, as his eyes would blur or be forced to look away when he tried to extract the details of what was passing between them.

Instead, Adrian focused on his increased sensing skills. Using active pulses to get more and more minutiae. The fungus just hung there, his attention continually coming back to it. The longer he stayed in line the more information he got and its grade and density bands reduced. It was probably worth getting it. It was a single plant rather than a patch, so when he got his master alchemy skills, it was likely to be a complicated ingredient that would use his advanced skills. Extra detail came through. The physical size of the fungus was tiny, which meant that the concentration of its power was higher than his initial estimate.

Making it more valuable to an alchemist.

“Adrian.” He jerked at the word, having failed to notice Jules’s approach. “Do you want breakfast?”

He shook his head. He was a single person away from Sam and was not going to give up the opportunity. She turned and hurried south. “Wait. Actually, yes, I’ll come. But I’m seeing the trader first.”

“Ok, we’re at the Red Duck Thai takeaway. It’s in the centre of the town. If you get lost, then ask a local.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Adrian.” For a second time in less than a minute, he jumped. Sam was looking intensely at him. “It has been a while.”

“How are you?” Adrian asked transfixed and his brain momentarily shutting down.

Sam laughed in his deep tone. “I’m great personally.”

“And the travels?”

Sam shrugged and then frowned. “I’m sure you have a good idea about what I’ve observed. This is not a kind Alpha event. At least not locally.”

“No, it’s not,” Adrian agreed. “You can see what’s happened to me can’t you?”

Sam nodded.

“Do you hate me?”

“For the RT073345 situation?”

Adrian nodded. Worry wormed itself inside him. He felt nauseous. It was probably just nerves because he wasn’t sure with his poison resistance and vitality that he could even suffer gastro anymore.

“If RT073345 made that decision, that is not on you. It is not possible for a host to force an interface to do that.”

Adrian’s breath blew out in relief. “But the other traders hated me.” Adrian could feel the—woe is me in—tone in his voice, like a whiny kid.

“People will be people,” Sam said carefully. “It doesn’t matter what shape, size or species they are. Some will always be ignorant arseholes. To be honest, their response is not that surprising: RT073345 was never a normal interface. It’s a bit of a legend amongst us with a reputation of being a maverick. It’s the only interface to have a personal, statistically significant impact on the success of an Alpha event.”

“That’s…”

“Extraordinary,” Sam agreed smoothly. “The impact was tiny. 0.03% improved chance of civilised society. The decision to save you means that events from now on become a bit more risky and they blame you for that.”

“I think all the death and destruction was getting to Jaracol.”

Sam nodded. “Jaracol.” Sam tasted the word. “Would not be the first of us to choose oblivion.”

“That’s horrible.”

Sam shook his head. “Not horrible. That’s not the right word, unfortunate might be better. We volunteered to save lives, but after thousands of iterations, it becomes too much for some. Their contribution is celebrated not condemned, because it was noble in the most absolute sense of the word. Interfaces are different, of course. For those with a seed, it usually takes hundreds of events before they become properly sapient, but they all do eventually, at least those that keep going.” Sam’s voice was dark. “I always think that the process is cruel and immoral. Throwing a sapient in a position of mostly helpless watcher.”

Abruptly, Sam laughed, shifting the dynamics of the conversation. “These are regular ethics debates, but the interfaces consistently vote to continue and by a large margin. They like their job.” Sam stopped talking. “I’m getting close to breaking a host of rules, so we should talk about something else. Just know that Jaracol made his choice. Treasure the decision. Also, as an aside, with your new title, it’s difficult for anyone to claim Jaracol stuffed up.”

“Is there a way to save him?”

Sam looked sadly at him. “Did Jaracol not have time to explain?”

“He did.”

“Then you know the answer. There are hard rules in place here and the only out for Jaracol is if a cataclysm event is declared, and even then that might not be enough. The World Saver title you have acquired will help, but that does not matter as there is no way the declaration will come in time.”

“How do we get a cataclysm declared?”

Sam shook his head. “We can’t, I can’t. And it won’t happen.”

“But there was a world-ending event.”

Sam shrugged. “When consumed by emotions one can only look at historical precedent.” Sam made eye contact. “And there is none for an event to be declared this early”

The words jolted through Adrian, but he already knew this. “Why would he? A thousand lifetimes, observing but being helpless to act. It’s too much.”

“I can’t answer that, only you can. It could very well be that he was just tired of the death and destruction. I don’t think this conversation is either helpful or wise,” Sam said.

“I have this for you,” Adrian said and handed the necklace across to him.

Sam shook his head. “That’s already been paid for.”

“What?”

“Did it not surprise you to get offered levels while holding that?”

Now Sam had pointed it out, it should have triggered that something had gone wrong.

“Who?”

A wry smile and a shake of his head.

“Kiyoko?”

“Ahh, I couldn’t possibly comment, but she chatted with me and suggested a few things for you to buy.”

“What a surprise.” Jaracol might be gone, but the system wasn’t finished with him. It was just manipulating or guiding his steps through another source. “What is the lovely lady suggesting I buy?”

“Another set of teleportation plates, four sets of teleportation boosters and a lot of dark, spatial and earth grenades. The last is to give you magic damage outside of your core three attack skills.”

“How much?”

“With your new discounts. Six hundred thousand.” Adrian visibly winced. “Personally, I would take the advice of an oracle.” Sam winked. “If she was nice enough to give it.”

Adrian dug out the energy and handed it over.

Sam handed him a package. “Teleportation.” Then another. “Dark, and this one is earth.” There was no difference between them beyond the label. “And finally spatial.” This one was a chest. “Delicate and needs extra protection, particularly if they are going to be stored in a bag of holding. I suggest you keep the chest once you have used the contents. It costs fifty thousand by itself.”

“Sam?”

“Yes.”

“You know that figurine you gave me?”

“Of course.”

“It has helped me more than words can say.”

Sam nodded, a strange orange glow coming from his uncovered elbow joints. “I am very glad.” The words were very formal and Adrian suspected the glow represented a strong positive emotion.

“I’m still putting it on my mantlepiece at home, and you’re still invited.”

“I’ll come.”

The glow faded, and he seemed to swallow hard. “Next customer, please.”

With that dismissal, Adrian stepped away. Feeling both better and worse at the same time. The next lady in the line did not even look at him. Then again, why would she? The closeness and familiarity of his and Sam’s words would have been hidden from her.

Breakfast.

His monster-detecting sense pulsed out, and he twisted it to find humans. Jules stood out like a beacon. He oriented on her, and started walking with the occasional shadow step to speed things up. When he reached the Thai restaurant, it had been repurposed post-event. Food consisted pretty much of barbecued monster meat and there was not a single Thai influence. It was fifty energy to enter and then eat as much as you can. Servers circulated with plates of food and others were ready to take drink orders. Heavier stuff, of course, cost extra.

“All-you-can-eat buffet seems risky with bags of holding.”

“We got a lecture when we entered,” Omala told him from across the table. “The proprietor has a skill that tracks abuse. A couple of take-home samples are not frowned on, but if you got too far, then there’s consequences.”

“Which are?”

Omala laughed. “The servers will stop bringing us food, so don’t do it.”

A coffee was brought over, and he got stuck into the meat. After breakfast, he retreated to the hotel and hired a room. They were planning on departing in the morning, so he had time.

Joanne stopped him from shutting the door. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I need time to learn some skills.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but he politely shut the door in her face.

Adrian trusted people, but he still enabled his camp stone and placed the spear on his lap. While Jaracol could no longer protect him, the weapon could and would. Thinking about that, he ran his hand over the spear. Sure enough, it too had gone up a level. It was now a level five sapient spear.

“What skill did you get for level five?” he mused to himself, running his hands over the wood that seemed to warm with his touch.

Slowly, its new ability grew in his mind. It was a physical ability, well, sort of at least. The spear had developed for itself the capability to punch through armour or magic shields. There was an active use skill and then a passive piercing effect.

Adrian dwelled on the new skills, trying to understand what the two abilities could do.

There were four charges that each took five hours to replenish. Without any further information, Adrian knew that the skill was going to be powerful and probably broken. How strong was it? It could be projected over distance at full power and it was strong enough to…

Adrian whistled, highly impressed, as the impact levels registered. It would have been sweet to have possessed this yesterday. The active strike was potent enough to pierce through the shells of even the class three zxeatra italraca, and when it did so it would have left a hole the size of his head, which would have been plenty good enough for more standard spells to kill it afterwards.

Level five abilities were terrifying.

The passive ability was also no slouch. It improved the spear when physically wielded against both armour and magical defences. A class three zxeatra italraca was once more an excellent baseline for comparison. A single spear strike would not break the shell, but two in the same spot would probably be sufficient and three would definitely break through. This was all with normal thrusts, and he could do it all day. Those heroes with their specially designed shell cracker weapons had required more blows than that.

He stroked the spear and the D mark on it. What rating did those two skills put the spear at? Master or maybe even grandmaster level. That made sense. Level 5 was spoken about in whispered tones.

A simple weapon, able to passively break through a zxeatra’s shell. It was truly incredible. That was how it functioned against the enemy yesterday, but against most monsters he fought it would be better. The zxeatra’s possessed both physical and magical damage resistance, which was rare. Most would only have one. Expert-level magic shielding would be ignored or occasionally outright shattered with a single blow, and there was no physical material imaginable that could block an attack without magical reinforcement. All those shields handed out for the event would be like paper mache. They would not halt a single thrust.

Those life saving personal shields they had got from the Albury training facility might stop a simple blow, maybe… The active skill would be instant death. They were not infallible.

That was a wake-up call just like the snake. He was nowhere near as protected as all of his various skills made him feel. A powerful enough attack could still go through, and it was unknown whether his teleport abilities could save him.

There was also one other additional development, it had adapted to help fight oversized monsters. It could now project its presence into a magical construct five times its size. There were limited charges, but they recharged quickly and could be used with either a thrust or a slash. A spear five times larger might not do much against a full-strength wyrm, but versus the zxeatra, it would have allowed him to sever their central limb with a single blow.

“Good spear,” he told it, running a hand over its smooth grain, appreciating it. The spear had effectively closed one of his two weaknesses. The other would have been a magical defence, but he suspected that aspect would be harder for the spear to fill. It was, after all, not a shield and it specialised exclusively in air magic.

Adrian studied the spear with his identification.

Level 5 Sapient Spear

This spear is bonded to Adrian Fitzgerald.

Level 1 - Increases potency of wind-based spell forms - 30% improvement in efficiency. Increased potency of fire-based spells - 20% improvement in efficiency.

Level 2 - Improved dodge, evasion, shadow and self-wind buffs.

Level 3 - Friendly wind - Creates wind gusts to aid wielder and allies in fights. Takes the higher of its own air affinity or its wielder’s. (Passive skills)

Level 4 - Spear projection. (10 charges. 30-second recharge time per charge)

Level 4 - Master Magic - Can independently use any ability of wielder and make it 25% more powerful and control increased by 100%.

Level 5 - Active Barrier Piercing - Master level applicable to both physical and magical defences. (4 charges. 5-hour recharge)

Level 5 - Passive Barrier Piercing - Expert-level applicable to both physical and magical defences.

This spear was constructed in the hope that it will help shield humanity against the ravages of the Alpha event.

Smiling, he left it on his lap. He was confident that if an enemy came at him when he was absorbing the alchemy knowledge that the spear would protect him, as Jaracol would have. That second level 4 ability would see to that. The spear could use all of his magic, just better. It was an upgrade to the skill Jaracol had slipped in when Adrian had been dying of the snakebite.

Prepared, he accepted the final major skill upgrade, and knowledge flooded into his conscious brain. The flood of information was the type that he had got used to. A barrage of lectures inserted wholesale into his mind with a brief taste to allow him to consciously identify the knowledge. Then memories of him working different concoctions like practicals at the university. Those sessions built muscle memory, so to speak, though the skills applied were mainly mental rather than physical.

Then a variety of techniques were taught, including purifying, combining and reducing. Adrian was amused to discover the course had been tailored for him, and in them he used both his telekinesis and temperature domain to shortcut processes. There wasn’t a bunsen burner or ice bucket to be seen. Those steps were completed with his existing skills, and he knew that other people who upgraded this far would receive a unique set of memories using those alternative techniques.

The data continued flooding in. The upgrade gifted further improvement to his alchemical multitasking abilities and improved his control of telekinesis to allow him to juggle even more objects simultaneously.

There was something awe-inspiring about managing six or seven different concoctions at one point in time, with telekinesis and temperature regulation combining them with split-second timing to gain the maximum efficiency out of an air mana boosting potion.

The flood stopped, and he searched through the non-intuitive interface screens.

Adrian’s mood dropped. The process had taken too long. It was already 1:32 p.m. and the funeral service was supposed to have started one.

He was late.

The heroes of Wangaratta did not deserve that. Andrew was his friend, and he wanted to see him off.

“Damn it!”

Adrian quickly jogged to the central oval. He was greeted with a humbling sight. Four massive bonfires burned and over five thousand people had gathered to offer their respects to those who had perished. There was a platform between the four fires and mourners would go up and give a simple speech while magic spread their words to everyone nearby but only one voice at a time, even though dozens were speaking.

More system magic. Adrian knew it was a gift to help with closure, and because convenience magic did not threaten the balance.

“He was the best father.”

“Such honour and integrity.”

“He’ll be missed.”

“She was a mother to two kids.”

“I loved him more than life itself.”

Tears ran down his face like they did on almost everyone around him. Most stood proud, letting the tears be visible, others sobbed into the shoulders of strangers. Adrian’s heart twisted.

That could have been him being honoured or Jules or in a different timeline Emily. These were men and women who had sacrificed themselves, but despite it all his mind kept turning to the simple fact it could have been someone more important. It could have been someone he loved.

“I’m pregnant. He was to be a father!”

“You went down on a knee and told me to make sure I grew up to be a good person. I will, Dad.”

For most of these people, it was someone they loved. The pain reverberated in everyone’s voices.

It might have been Emily and their kids crying in front of these bonfires.

He almost turned away but instead sunk down into a squat with his head in his hands. Composing himself before once more standing with hands at his side and smudged tears on his cheeks, even as new rivulets joined them.

Adrian was very glad that he could stand there anonymously. He did not want company, not even that of his friends.

After a while, the words started blending together, and no longer resonated like they had initially. While standing there, and to distract himself from the suffering, he considered where to spend his last half upgrade.

There were the same options as previously. A couple of new ones with his fire and ice domain and lots from alchemy. Eventually, Adrian settled on two options.

Simulintelligere in Alchemy

This skill will improve multitasking in Alchemy.

He did not have a simulintelligere ability that allowed perfect multitasking. What he possessed instead was muscle memory that could approximate it to people watching him craft. With true multitasking, the complexity of potions he could create would double. That could mean he could craft twice as many potions in a given time, but that by itself wasn’t all the value. The true strength was that some recipes required two people and if he took this skill, then he could do them by himself. There would not be any other master alchemists to collaborate with for a long time. Simulintelligere would allow him to work two roles because his craft relied on his magical abilities rather than his hands. It would also bring grandmaster alchemy that much closer than before.

Strengthened telekinesis

This ability will material strengthen your telekinesis ability.

And when it said materially, it was actually understating the impact. In a blink, his ability would strengthen almost twenty times. He would go from being able to manipulate a couple kilograms to twenty times that. It wasn’t enough to let him fly, however his kids would be fair game. He could just imagine how much they would love that. Throwing them around in the pool and their screams of joy. When he could do that with his mind. How fun would that be? Also, those dreams of tugging a foot at an inopportune moment for his opponent would become a reality. It would be a wind gust on steroids and he wondered what the spear could do with it, stronger plus extra control.

Both abilities were so powerful he almost regretted getting the monster identification skill.

What should I select?

Absolutely nothing answered, and he knew that this was the sort of choice that Jaracol would have had a firm opinion about. Adrian weighed his feelings. He wanted both equally and when in doubt his new policy was to take the one that was most immediately applicable.

With a sigh, he grabbed the telekinesis, wondering if he was making a mistake. He felt like he was going to have to earn another level just so that he could get the simulintelligere ability.

Nothing happened.

There was no new knowledge jammed into him. No tingling through his body. Instead, there was a distinct absence of feeling.

Did it work?

Of course, there was no response.

He frowned. Looking around, he spied a broken, discarded chair. Something someone had cleared from the house they were probably squatting in and just abandoned it on the edge of the nearby sports fields.

With a flex of his Mind, it levitated.

The upgrade had definitely worked. this wasn’t something he could have done a minute ago.

The speeches continued, and Ambusher’s Fade let him stand patiently while everyone else around him got more and more fidgety. They might be grieving, but two hours standing and listening to speeches were enough to break anyone.

The pyres died down, and the service ended naturally. As Galan and Praveen went past, he made eye contact but kept paying his respects to the fire in front of him. A tribute to Andrew, a man he did not really know but had fought and drank with. That made him almost a brother.

Fewer and fewer people remained in the field, and Adrian decided there was no point staying. He retreated to the inn, and to distract himself threw himself into his training routine. It was soothing to fall into the familiar movements. Tomorrow, the next part of his journey would start, and he prayed that there would be no more surprises.

Adrian woke the next morning, not happy, but content. The fragility of the previous day had faded. It was time to get moving. It was time to get back to his wife and kids.

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