Zac sat in front of the camp fire, and with a blank silent stare he slowly rotated a spit placed above it. The suns were setting over his small outpost, and the surroundings had a subdued silence. On the spit was the leg of a rabbit he had caught earlier today. The rabbit had actually grown to the size of a human, so the meat would last for a while.
Tomorrow would mark the 29th day since the world changed. If Hannah or even his family were to see him now they likely would likely barely recognize him.
The once neat beard of his was now an uneven mess. There even was one patch almost completely missing after a Barghest’s claw had cut his face during a particularly intense melee. His hair was even worse, now a mess of uneven cuts. During one of his fights he had gotten hair in his eyes, and the distraction had caused him to almost get disemboweled. He had fought the Gwyllgi half-blinded while using one hand to hold his innards in place. After the fight he had simply taken his hatchet to his head and cut off as much hair as he could without scalping himself.
He had run out of shirts last week, and now used a mix of torn rags to cover himself. Underneath those rags was some makeshift protection he had made from leather he had cured. He had begun by making some bracers for his legs and arms, and a basic heart protector out of the snake skin he had dried over his car. Over time he had found another snake and even a crocodile on a shore, and had turned those into leather as well.
Now he was decked from feet up to a throat protector in pieces of leather, all tied together with strings or sinew. It was an extremely shoddy work, making his whole body looked like a piecemeal patchwork of different animal body parts. It also took almost 30 minutes to take on and off, as there were quite a few knots he had to tie to get it to stay on during a whole day.
Most days he couldn’t be bothered as he had been out hunting the whole day, and simply fell asleep while still wearing the gear. The combination of high endurance and vitality seemed to protect him from any shaping or bruises from the coarse leather anyway.
All in all he looked like a completely insane hobo and would likely be arrested if he arrived in a real city, based on his appearance alone. Zac couldn’t be bothered about that though, as almost a month of living on the edge of death had given him a far more utilitarian mindset.
Zac cracked his neck, nowadays barely being bothered by the constant 10 times gravity field that enveloped the whole camp. After his first day of grinding he had bought the [F-Grade Small Scale Gravity Array] and placed it at a corner of the camp. It had actually proven effective, and he had incorporated a workout in high gravity into his daily schedule. Soon after he even slept in high gravity, and by now he always had the array cranked to the max over the whole camp.
Its effect had been above his expectations. He had gained a whole 5 strength, 2 dexterity, 6 endurance, and 2 vitality from just training his body. His endurance had increased the quickest, rising up 6 points in just two weeks. He had calculated that he had 4 base endurance before the system earlier, and now it was 10. However after it reached 10 it stopped increasing at all. He saw a similar effect on his strength. He gained 3 points quite quickly, bringing his base strength to 10. After that he still had gotten two points, but those points took an extreme effort.
He had also gained dexterity and vitality, but he guessed that those points actually came from combat rather than the array. Getting hurt over and over had improved his vitality slower, and dodging an endless amount of beasts had improved his dexterity.
Zac guessed that the reason for his quick improvements wasn’t only the array. There now was a large amount of cosmic energy in the air, and it felt like just breathing it in slowly improved his health. He suspected that humans would slowly grow healthier in this atmosphere, provided that they didn’t get killed of course. A quick look at his status showed that his stats had improved quite a bit over the last weeks.
Born For Carnage, Ultimate Reaper, Luck of the Draw, Giantsbane, Disciple of David, Overpowered, Slayer of Leviathans, Adventurer, Demon Slayer I
Unfortunately he had not reached his goal even with his gathering array and frenzied carnage across the island. He had hoped to get to level 25 and get a class before the month was over. The advice of theStargazer still lingered in his head. She had told him to finish the quest of conquering the incursion within a month. He still hadn’t found any clues as to what would happen after the month passed, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.
Gaining levels had proven harder and harder over time, and he had finally reached level 23 today after 4 days of relentless killing. He had even used almost all his points and spent a whopping 75 000 Nexus Coins on upgrading his Mother-Daughter Gathering Array to E-grade. This upgrade had substantially increased the amount of cosmic energy he absorbed daily through his amulet.
It was clear to Zac however that the most effective method of getting stronger was to actually battle and kill enemies. If he would split up the cosmic energy he absorbed daily it would be a 90/10 split, and that was with the E-grade array. If he compared with his old F-grade array it would be 95/5 or even lower. Grinding monster and absorbing their energy was simply far more effective, at least with his resources.
It did however make him think about the elite of the multi-verse. He had made over a hundred thousand Nexus Coins just by grinding low level monsters around the first month. Abby had said that the multi-verse was hundreds of millions year old. There were surely some extremely wealthy individuals and organizations. What if they gave every child an A-grade, or even S-grade array from birth? They would be higher level than him before even learning to talk.
Those things were too far away from him though, he needed to focus on the present. Even though he hadn’t reached his goal of getting a class, he still planned to try finishing the quest the following two days.
Zac carved a chunk of meat from the rabbit leg and stuck it to a fork. He then walked over to the Nexus Node while gnawing the gamey meat. Zac looked at the list of available things on it daily hoping for something new to pop up every day since the day he bought it. He knew he would be disappointed once again. The skills available were too expensive for him, and the inventory hadn’t changed so far.
The only skill that was in his price range was called [Eye of Discernment]. And he had already bought it for the price of 20 000 Nexus Coins. When he had bought it a stream of energy had entered his head, and new information suddenly formed like an ingrained memory. It was the manual for the skill.
The purchase had taught him a bit about how skills worked with the System. Having a skill did not mean you could simply use it as you wanted. For a skill to work he needed to actually move the cosmic energy built up in his body towards his eyes. From there he had to imprint the image of a specific fractal on his eyes. The fractal was the same type of pattern that were on the array flags he had bought earlier.
Zac had tried furiously to move the energy around in his body for days. He had felt that his cells were imbued with this extra power, but he had a hard time actually doing anything with it. Finally after days of trying he had found a solution.
While sitting in the gravity array he had imagined a separate set of veins spread all through his body like his circulatory system. In these veins only cosmic energy flowed. He was surprised that it actually worked, and a stream of his cosmic energy slowly started traveling along the paths he had imagined.
It took a few days more to learn to keep the circulation going even when not actively focusing on it. Finally he tried gathering cosmic energy on his eyes to imprint the fractal of the skill. This part went smoother than expected, as he had an extremely precise design in his memory thanks to the Nexus Node.
As soon as he wanted to use the skill he only needed to focus a small amount of cosmic energy to flow into the fractals on his eyes, and it would activate immediately.
Zac was quite glad that the System did not require people to shout out the skill’s name like a lunatic.
The [Eye of Discernment] was a basic eye skill that essentially worked like an identify- or spy-skill from a video game. It let Zac glean some basic information on certain things.
It was this skill that had let him know that the stocky 6-legged demons he had fought ad nausea the last month was actually called a Barghest, and the zombie-looking greyhound monster was a Gwyllgi.
The imps were actually just called Lower Imps, and they had taught him another valuable lesson when using the [Eye of Discernment] on them. Even though he had used it from the cover of some bushes the imp had felt the skill being used on it. It reacted by immediately throwing a fireball at the bush he was hiding in, leading to another desperate fight.
The memory of that fireball still filled him with some trepidation as he stared into the fire, slowly finishing his meal.