05 – Not so friendly outpost

Cal looked at Julian with a soft condescending smile. “Of course it’s this easy. It’s the first floor, what did you expect?”

“Nothing, in fact it’s been very easy getting here.” He said, dripping with sarcasm. Maybe it was him, but he had already died once on this easy floor, so perhaps it wasn’t as easy as Cal made it to be. Or maybe it was indeed him.

The alien frowned, staring at Julian with his white eyes. The unsettling contrast between the white irises and the black sclera slowly got to him.

“What?” he asked with his arms crossed, matching the stare.

“It was easy this far for me. Did something happen to you before we met?”

“Dude, stop psychoanalyzing me and let’s go. I want to see what’s on floor two.”

He went in, and Cal’Eer soon followed.

***

“Those damn stairs,” Julian cursed, “what were they? Another test to see who was strong enough to make it out? They were endless!”

Cal snorted. “That was because we weren’t supposed to take the stairs.” He said, voice and breathing as steady as they were when he was sitting. He hadn’t even felt the stairs, it seemed.

Julian frowned. “And you tell me now?” he panted.

“Yeah,” the alien said. “I didn’t mind taking the stairs.”

Despite being a boring, long way up through countless flight of stairs that all looked the same, Julian couldn’t say it was useless. He got to choose his next 5 skills from his stored level ups, and he was quite pleased with them.

Incantations lv.1: Gain the ability to perform basic incantations when using a Seal.

Sorceries lv.1: Gain the ability to perform basic sorceries when brandishing a Staff.

Crystal Cores lv.1: Plunge your bare hand deep inside the body of a slain monster to extract its core. Only works on kills you have just made. Guaranteed success with F-rank cores, rate diminishes as rank increases.

For the first new skill, he chose Crystal Cores. It was not an easy choice, but a quick question to the obviously magic oriented Cal told him all he needed to know: if he chose to go the magic route, he would need to find or steal the spells. Usually the system would give out a few via some quests but… well, that road was closed to him. Maybe in the future he was going to find spells just lying around, but that was a big maybe. He needed something useful right now.

Efficient Crystal Absorption lv.1: Gain 5% more attribute points when using unattuned crystals to Cultivate

Deflect lv1: Deflect an incoming attack, nullifying all damage and status buildup. Deflect window is of 0.1 seconds, as soon as you begin moving

Crown of Doom lv.1: You take 3% more damage and deal 3% more damage

Here came the first repeated skill: Crown of Doom. As last time, he ignored it, focusing on the first choice instead. The Parry was going to be too hard to be useful anyways.

“What’s Cultivation?” Julian asked.

Cal perked up. “Where did you hear about it? Was it the tutorial?”

“Uh…” he stammered. “Somewhere?”

“It’s okay, I didn’t mean to pry.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t know much about it. My brother used to Cultivate a lot. He would just shut himself in his room with a bunch of crystals and come out days after. All that for a few attribute points. I could never.”

“I see.”

“Don’t bother with it.” Cal said.

Too late. Julian had already chosen the skill by then, but he was sure he would find a use for it.

Plant based Lifeform lv.2: Gain the ability to recover a small -> moderate amount of energy when exposed to sunlight

Non-Euclidean Space lv.1: all the spatial rings you wear have double the storage volume

Eye of the Beholder lv1: Focus to be able to see farther and in greater detail. Consumes SP

Julian chose the second skill, despite not having any rings. It sounded simply too useful to pass up.

Magic muscles lv.1: Activate to consume MP instead of SP when performing actions. Toggleable.

Valuable Experience lv.2: Decrease level up cost by 5 -> 10%

Efficient Crystal Absorption lv.1: Gain 5% -> 10% more attribute points when using unattuned crystals to Cultivate

His last choice was to increase the level of Valuable Experience. Once again, the choice was easy. Now he needed 2040 runes instead of 2148 in order to level up, which was almost a whole first floor kill less than before.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, Julian ventured into the second floor proper.

>>Atmos Arcadia Tower Complex – FLOOR 2 – Plateau<<

>>F-rank area<<

The second floor was a sort of rocky desert. It was night, same as below, but the temperature was a bit higher and the air was dry. There were a few sandy dunes in the distance, silhouettes of black against a bright starry sky against far off mountains and vertical cliffs. The stars, alien as they were, gave enough light to comfortably see even in the dead of night. There were two moons here, one small and one a bit bigger than Earth’s moon, but they were dull and dark.

“Hey,” Cal’Eer touched Julian on the shoulder. “Do you see the smoke over there?”

Julian squinted. “Yeah, what is it?”

“It’s a camp! We found our first camp!” he said, eyes shining with excitement.

“People reached here already?” Julian asked.

“Ah,” Cal deflated. “Probably not.” Then he shrugged. “At least we’ll have all the amenities for ourselves!”

He began to walk towards the smoke in the distance. Julian followed, but struggled to keep up the pace with the tall alien.

“Hey! Slow down, my legs are shorter than yours.”

“Oh, sorry!”

“Why are we going there?” he asked with a sigh.

“Because it’s fun! That’s where everybody will be!” Cal replied.

“I don’t want to be where everybody is! I need to level up and climb this damn tower!” he said, once again struggling to keep up.

“Come onnn! What’s the hurry?”

Julian groaned. “Fine. Let’s see what’s going on there, but if you want to stay and relax then I’m going to go farm runes on my own and pick you up when I’m ready to climb a floor again.”

“Works for me.” Cal said, smiling.

The camp was more like an outpost than a random camp in the middle of the desert. It was surrounded by a fence reinforced with pieces of scrap metal and sheets of corrugated plastic. Some of them were painted over with neon-colored glowing spray paint. A single plume of smoke rose from somewhere inside the camp: a sign, Cal’Eer said, that someone had gotten here before them and had lit a fire.

“All the facilities need to be activated by whoever gets there first. In fact, if you activate them you even get a small rune reward!” Cal explained.

There were two people leaning against the rusted metal of the gate. One of them was human, the other was Tharlaxian like Cal’Eer. When they spotted the two travelers incoming, one of them banged on the door two times, no doubt to signal the people inside, and then the two waited for Julian and his companion in the middle of the road, brandishing their weapons.

“Hello,” Cal said, waving at one of the two.

He was wearing similar armor to what Julian had stolen from the tutorial guy, but he had painted over it with spray paint. There were two red lines going across his chest piece, meeting right where the heart would be. The Tharlaxian guard was wearing a samurai outfit, complete with an absurdly long katana coated with green paint.

“Stop right there. 100 runes to enter.” The human guard said.

Cal was about to open his mouth but Julian was faster.

“What?” he laughed. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is a public place provided by the system.” he said smugly.

The two guards frowned. Cal turned to stare at him in horror, anticipating what was soon going to happen. He shook his head slowly from left to right, eyeing the armed guards and then pointing at his staff.

“Come on,” Julian said sharply, pointing at the gate with his chin. “Let us through.”

The Tharlaxian moved one step forward, readying the katana. Just the blade alone was easily bigger than Justin.

“You don’t get to make demands, buddy. We do.” She said.

The other guard laughed. “Yeah. 200 runes to each of us and we forget about your… rudeness. How about that?”

“I—” Julian began.

“Alright, alright, I’ll pay.” Cal cut him off. “200 to each of you plus 200 to let us through. Is that okay?”

The human guard nodded. “Finally, someone who uses their head. Make the transfer.”

Cal’Eer began to move his fingers through the air, navigating the System interfaces. Julian looked at him first, and then at the two guards. They weren’t looking at him but at his companion, which allowed him to slowly take out his sword, and ready his shield. These two cocksuckers. They think they can disrespect me like that?

The tharlaxian guard realized that something was off. She turned her head towards Justin, hand moving to the handle of her katana. Justin knew why: she had been holding it with her right hand, so that she could navigate the system interfaces more easily since was left-handed and needed the fingers to touch the holoscreens. That’s a gross mistake, my friend. A mistake that would cost her life.

“Hey, what are you—!” her human companion yelled, a sentence cut short when her body fell backwards onto his, a deep gash on her chest. She was still alive, but Justin immediately switched his focus to the other guard, who was unsheathing his sword. He shoved Cal’Eer to the side, flinching at the unexpected resistance that pushed him off balance, but continued on his assault. He slammed into the painted armor of the other guard and the two fell to the ground rolling in a tangle of metal and limb.

He punched, hitting the man’s undefended face with the hilt of his sword. He felt the impacts, and saw the man’s head hit the ground and bounce back up. He kept hitting, falling into a rhythm so that he would make the head hit the ground harder each time.

+322 runes.

Justin shot up, and in a matter of seconds he was upon the struggling Tharlaxian. She was getting up, recovering from a wound that should have killed her but didn’t, thanks to the system. He plunged his sword into her face.

+252 runes.

“That’s what you get for being assholes.” Justin said.

He turned to face his companion, and flashed him a toothy grin. “See?” he said, “no need to pay.”

Cal shook his head. “I guess violence also works.” He said, defeated. Then his eyes widened. “Julian watch out!”

Julian turned around, blood pumping to his head as soon as he saw his new friend’s terrified face. He saw it, a shadow standing atop the fence, bright eyes staring down at him. It was brandishing something, a silhouette of a crossbow against the backdrop of the night sky. That, and the sound of a metal dart hitting his helmet, was the last thing he remembered before everything went dark.

Cal’Eer watched in horror the body of his new friend vanish in a white glittering mist, leaving behind only a piece of armor, and nothing else.