I try to meditate after all the attacks were done and we are nearing Pando. But like I’m like a possessed person that is rolling and turning on my bed with no hope of falling asleep.

Too much is crammed in my head.

With the help of the memory techniques that I used, mostly revolving around my memory palace, I recall everything that happened in the 4 or 5 hours that our attack lasted. From the moment that we stepped into the island to our take off. I try to make sense of it in different ways to no avail.

I don’t regret anything I did, but the dead on our side pushes me to be better, to create and enable better strategies for our side. How much of my skills and capabilities I exposed push me to improve and learn to choose my battles and how to extract every drop of intelligence from the hundreds of elves captured.

And even the dead on the enemy’s side pushed me to grow so strong that I could just ignore their attacks like they are unruly children that I needed to teach. The attacks from villages and cities near the other enemy camps around the world didn’t go as well as ours.

Sure each of them managed to push back their incursions, but they seem to be less dangerous on the whole and a lot timider than the elves. I don’t have proof, but they must be able to communicate with each other and after the elve’s spectacular failure they chose to horde their strength in hopes of defending themselves.

As for our side, no matter how much information I gave them, they didn’t have even a fraction of the high level troops that we did and even the dozen we loaned each of them couldn’t do more than blunt the edge of the enemy’s counterattack.

At least they showed up with an even greater numerical superiority than ourselves. With our support and my remote help with healing and nature control their losses were… mild, all things considered.

Slowly my mind settles and I stop fretting over what I don’t have control over while setting plans for what I need to work on and delegating less demanding tasks. The rush that felt nearly overwhelming and stopped me from sitting still goes back to some that I can control, if only temporarily.

What happened at the fight, in the sense that I grew, the new skills and ways that I developed, so much faster than ever before showed me that just sitting back and endlessly planning and growing passively isn’t enough.

Preparation is key, but it needed to be tempered against reality. After a few hours fighting, I was pulling lighting from the sky and improving my control of plants while developing practical applications for the library of toxins that I now had in my repertoire.

Only by applying my knowledge in the most extreme of circumstances, I would be ready for the next time things threatened to go out of control. And just as important is not only the fight that I was physically present at but the three others that I remotely participated in.

Then came the changes in my perception. Sure technically, all my stats had grown by 60 percent with all my titles added together, but this stat sat in a special place.

The first step to any form of growth is feedback and the amount and precision of return that my senses provide has been going up for a long time now. Now, I have an equivalent if not higher perception than most people do before level 300 while still having a respectable number all across the board.

A full 900 points let me perceive time even slower while spotting plenty of mistakes in each of my moves. The physical stats are still limited until I can understand a little more. Intelligence and willpower in their own ways ruled aspects of all my resource use and became a lot freer.

Even if I didn’t manage to increase my actual stats nor did I break into level 100 skills, amid chaos, a hint from another path showed itself to me.

Not everything was so bleak and even if getting to somewhere higher would take longer, there were a few hidden low hanging fruit left that I could harvest.

Then the trips over and in the practiced motions of our drills, my perception field opens up dozens of portals all over our village for less than 10 seconds. In that brief period, everyone steps out and I go back to my home.

Then a very insistent system message knocks at my window.

Not the simple dozens that arrive every time I level a skill, get one more stat point, or something of the type. I recognized those types even without opening the prompt. Even when I didn’t directly feel the effects, I could roughly guess their contents.

I felt the arrival of a few Extra Exp points. It felt like a decent amount considering the lack of the hidden 37x multiplier that all mobs used to have on their base exp while in the instance.

That was probably the single thing that most would miss from the instance: Exp So instead of a level 5 wolf giving me somewhere around 600 exp. Which had meant more than enough for the first level with just 2, now we get roughly 15 points each. Which means 60 to 70 wolves just to get to go from level 0 to 1.

Even with a few battle multiplies, of the ten thousand people who joined the fight only a lucky few with nearly full exp bars had leveled.

The ding grows stronger and more frequent and I feel that it will continue until I open it. It arrived the moment I open my door and was of a different flavor. Something that I had yet to see from the system.

I taste it a little longer, trying to get used to it, for when it came again then I open and read it.

Congratulations, for having successfully assaulted and raised an enemy’s encampment you have acquired 302 upgrade points.

Control of Pando’s village System Points: 100% of 413 Points.

Control of Humanity’s System Points: 0.00% of 712 million points (locked)

I guess that there is something more about it, so I look for it.

The meanings of each word flow through my mind. Instead of being methodical and poking my Aether at it, I let the intent of the system flow back to me. The living system may not be here, but I had encountered it and if I was listening I might be able to get something more.

A song radiates out from the prompt, so silent that even a touch microphone would have missed it and even with my prodigious stats, I can tell that I wouldn’t have found it if I wasn’t specifically looking for something like it.

I look at the few dozen words as a lot more information comes to me.

We got roughly a tenth of a point per defeated enemy and in this second round, even the ones hiding in their cathedral counted towards our total.

Then comes the fact that I don’t even merit a hundredth of a percent in the eyes of the system over humanity's pool of points. That probably had something to do with the fact that I didn’t take any formal authority in the instance or something along these lines. Even if no one would have total control as I have of Pando’s Village points, a few people like Melrin, the commander, Alex and especially Charlie should have control of decent portions of Earth’s point budget.

Then how many points we have in store strikes me with full force.

“Holy cow.”

The normal level of progression would have meant that even the most advanced instance if they managed to send in half of their population in time to the middle of the instance would get 5,000 points for a hundredth of a point for every person stepping inside the palace in the middle fo the HLZ.

If a race made the incredible advancement in a hundred such instances, they would get 500 thousand divided to all of their planet’s forces. We got over a thousand times that. The efforts that I only saw in the beginning, had bore fruit in spades and though I have no way to confirm, I let out a cheer for the others that had been left behind in the instance.

Then it comes to me that this number of points is roughly 10 times what would have been possible without the portals between instances even if every single human managed to reach the center of the HLZ past all the beasts, the goblin villages and everything else. If only by the difference in predilections and what they developed there would be some instances that didn’t expand their efforts in exploring the deepest reaches of the HLZ at all.

The concrete benefits that they can provide are still up in the air, but as I close those tabs, I try to find the interface that would let me spend them. Looking around I go to the only place that makes sense.

In the back of my hut, directly touching the main trunk of Pando’s heart tree, I sense something. Then a system prompt that doesn’t come from me but from a building in a similar way to the prompts from the map and treasury rooms we unlocked back in the instance.

I’m bombarded by thousands of buildings, upgrades and managing options for our village’s buildings.

Instinctive knowledge streams in my mind, like a minor limb. I know where I’m with it and roughly what I can do.

Everything that I want to do through the interface will cost me. Even moving a pen from someone’s home to my work desk will cost me a full System point. Still, framing something like that properly in my mind is much more effective. After all, moving a whole table with all the utensils on it would cost that same system point. Better yet, use system points on something that I can’t just do with my inner world or that I didn’t have the materials or knowledge to construct.

If I desperately needed, I could grow a dozen simple houses without spending a smidge of mana for a handful of points or reinforce our current buildings and walls. Possibly even during an attack, though that is a risky proposition. There were even more expensive options like a full battle array of defenses powered either by us or the very system.

My mind goes back to what the elves were doing back on their island. The system defenses on their walls and buried in their village felt different than this one, but mostly in flavor, they must have a similar system and what I did might even have drained their system points. At the very least they would have to spend some points to rebuild.

I call for Paul, our head enchanter, Jason, our new military commander and a few other people that were rising in prominence so that we can all get on the same page. While they don’t arrive, I keep exploring this prompt before putting my other concern to rest. An hour later they all arrive in tandem taking their seat in chairs I grew from the ground for this meeting.

The commander starts without beating around the bush.

“So… system points. I didn’t learn too much about it on the instance, but they seem to be rare. You say we have 400 of them in your control.”

“Yes, best as I can tell, we got them by defeating the enemy in their village and we retroactively got the 100 from the first confrontation. We get roughly a tenth of a point per elf.”

“Humm” the commander hums in thought before he continues: “If I remember correctly, they were used mostly on that castle in the middle of the HLZ. There was supposed to be something we could do with them on Earth, but we have no more information.”

“Well, I think….” I cut myself off and instead of rambling on, I try to share the screen with them. Not just for them to see in their prompt, but actually splitting my authority. I sense something there as soon as I try. A small potential indicating that this is allowed by the system, but there doesn’t seem to be a specific interface to set people under me for some reason.

It takes me a minute, but then they both startle slightly.

“Ohh. I got it.” Paul says pulling a new screen of his own.

“Now, I’m going to tell you all what I learned since and then you can take care of the rest. It has already taken up more time in my schedule than I wanted. Set the budgets and maybe the strategy for getting more if you learn anything and then use them however you deem appropriate. Getting a few hundred this early might bring some hidden benefits. We need to learn how useful and exactly what we can do with it. Hell for all I know, setting up a few pitiful defenses that cover like one square inch just to learn what runes the system uses might be the best way to extract the most advantage from this. That, however, is for you guys to figure out. I already have too much on my plate to pay attention to one more thing.”

The two look at me, as the others directing our mining, construction and diplomatic efforts get ready for a long meeting, but five minutes later, I’m kicking them all out.

As they stream out of my home and then turn 108 degrees in the other only building that actually touches the heart tree and go on for their own meeting.

Silence returns to my home. The specs of dust as clear as day to my eyes settle on the ground, the heat that their bodies radiate into the chairs and walls slowly fade away, and the sounds of their heartbeats are no longer clear enough to distract me.

Peace returns to my home. With a single glance behind, I lay back on what is supposed to be hardwood, but Pando’s blanketing warmth envelops me. The trunk of the heart tree molds itself to accommodate me and I let sleep take me.