The Idle System Box Set

by Pegaz

  John recanted the first person who died because of him since he reincarnated. His name was Tom and he was a guild master. From what he knew now, it was more than likely that Tom set off a blood oath which killed him, but it was John who pushed him into it. On that planet, the laws were harsh; he had to act like he was trying to save his life to avoid being convicted for the crime.

  “But I digress.” John heaved a sigh. “What I’m trying to say is that you need experience in killing people, but I can make sure they deserve it from one of my system’s skill. But that will be for later. We need to find a black market for now. You ready to go?”

  Sarah looked up at John and nodded. She seemed deep in thought.

  “Don’t think too much about it for now,” he suggested. “Change your appearance, then we’ll go.”

  Sarah changed into the disfigured blonde woman but put on a hood to cover the face. John changed to Jonathan. As they walked through the door to the corridor, John turned around to look at Sarah.

  “When we get back, I want to hear your past life’s story,” he said, his eyes resting on hers.

  “Sure.” Sarah stared back at him “I want to see if some of those rumours are true or false.”

  She laughed and walked away, leaving John wondering about what she meant. John soon caught up, asking what rumours she meant.

  They both left the hotel and John led them towards the tavern after asking around. The system was still scanning all the maps he had purchased and this world wasn’t in his database yet. Walking inside the tavern, John turned around and asked Sarah if she wanted a drink. She declined.

  Shrugging his shoulders, he walked to the bartender behind the counter. Making sure nobody was near them with the Scan, he put a small Life Stone on the table.

  “I need to find something.”

  The bartender looked at the Life Stone and smiled.

  “What is it you’re looking for?”

  “A place to shop.” John put a Grade 2 Life Stone next to the first one. “The ones around here don’t have what we’re looking for.”

  “And what are you looking to purchase?” The bartender put down the glass he was cleaning.

  “Well,” John said and placed a Grade 3 Life Stone on the counter. “A variety of things that could be useful to us.”

  The bartender nodded and grabbed a parchment from under the counter and slid the parchment across towards John. When his arm moved back towards him, he had the three Life Stones in his hand.

  “I’ve got the perfect shop for you,” he said in a low voice. “It’s expensive but discreet.”

  John picked up the parchment and put it in his bag. He smiled and nodded at the bartender, then walked away with Sarah.

  When they got out of the tavern, they walked down an alley. John opened the parchment—it was an address with a password underneath. John gave the parchment to Sarah so she could read it.

  “We have the black market’s location,” he announced. “But this could be a trap so be ready for anything.”

  Sarah read the document and nodded at John. They followed the map to the black market.

  While they walked, John asked about the Toxic System as quietly as possible. Sarah explained that she could control the type of poison, as well as how it travelled, and the speed of the poison. She could even reduce a poison to be used as medicine if she chose, as long as she was able to create the molecule that caused the reaction.

  “And to create that molecule, you need to absorb one from different poisonous plants and venomous animals?” John raised an eyebrow at her.

  Sarah stopped walking when she heard the last question. She regained her composure a second later and kept walking.

  “I never thought of using venomous animals the same way as poisonous plants.”

  “Really?” John smiled. “So I opened a whole new option for you, huh?”

  Sarah smiled and nodded.

  John then noticed how tall Sarah was. He had grown to 6 feet 3 inches tall before he turned twenty-one, and this was the first time since meeting her that they stood next to each other. The top of her head stopped just above his shoulders. She was about 5 feet 8, then.

  They stopped outside a building that looked a little run down, but the door looked almost brand new. John knocked on the door, and from the sound it made, he guessed it was thick and made from dense metal. A little peephole opened in the door. John could see eyes looking at him through the hole.

  “Password?”

  John sighed. Never thought I’d say these words in my lifetime.

  “Ring a Ring o’ Roses.”

  Sarah giggled behind him.

  The door opened. John could see the big burly man who had opened it. The man pointed behind him with his thumb.

  “Entrance over there.”

  John nodded and walked inside with Sarah behind him. They came to some stairs, so John walked down, Sarah in tow. At the bottom of the stairs, John saw an open market that kept going in the distance. The vendors’ shops were made up of a few metal poles for support and a plastic cover at the top for a roof. On the ceiling were hundreds of Life Stones to light the whole place up. It wasn’t natural light, but it was enough to see everything.

  The people who worked in the stalls were sitting in chairs, waiting for someone to come and look at their wares. In front of the stalls were the items they were selling. From what John could see, there were several animals in cages, making loud and sharp noises. There were also items like darts, throwing knives, and other throwing weapons, but John’s not sure if they had poison on them.

  “Let’s hope they have what you’re looking for.” John looked at Sarah. “Let’s go.”

  Standing in front of the first stall they came to, John asked if the shopkeeper had anything poisonous or venomous. While his directness shocked the shopkeeper, he quickly recovered with a broad smile. He brought loads of weapons, plants, and animals from his storage bag. John paid for them all and stored all the items away.

  “Let’s try it out.” John held up the first cage to Sarah. “Touch the creature to see if it works. I have no storage that can keep these animals alive.”

  Sarah nodded and touched the first creature. It was a small lizard, shaped like a gecko but bright orange. As soon as Sarah touched it, the creature wailed in pain, turned black, then died.

  “Oh… Jeez.” John got surprised by the reaction the creature had but looked at Sarah. “Well, did it work?”

  “Yes.” Sarah smiled sadly with a tear in her eyes. “But it’s a cruel way of gaining the venom.”

  John tried to console her.

  “Think of Darwin’s law,” he tried. “You’re doing this to evolve and survive. If you don’t get used to killing creatures for survival, then killing humans even in self-defence will be almost impossible and you will die.”

  Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes and knitted her brows. They carried on to the next creature.

  Chapter 4

  Black Market

  Sarah had taken the lives of over twenty different creatures for their venom by now.

  They decided to take a break. John then took out different food, including the fish meat from the slob of the lake he caught while on holiday. He gave her the water bottle he bought back when he was still mortal. The water inside was still fine after all these years.

  They sat down in a resting area in the market.

  “How’re you feeling?” John asked.

  “Fine,” was Sarah’s curt response. “I’m used to death because of my past job, but it’s still different when I’m purposely killing things, even animals. I think I’ll be okay, though.”

  “Good.” John nodded. “How’re the molecules coming along? Any new ones?”

  “I have enough stored to advance to another level.”

  That had surprised John. From what he remembered, to get to Rank 3 Level 2, you’d need two hundred million Life Power along with shrinking the neurons. John checked the amount he had.

  Life
Pool: 148.7M

  She has 51.3 million more Life Power than me, then. She only advanced to Rank 3 just yesterday!

  “How does it work then?” John scrunched his nose in confusion. “You created over one hundred million Life Power in such a short amount of time!”

  “Relax.” Sarah smiled. “It changes the first drop of venom or poison to a molecule. The system places that molecule in its storage, so from that point on, I can control that type.”

  She continued to explain that it stored the rest of the venom or poison inside her brain as Toxin Power, similar to Life Power. One Toxin Power unit could create five Life Power units. The exchange rate left John gawking.

  “You need to shrink the neurons then, to advance.” John finally commented. “You’ve got more Life Power than me, too, so I need to catch up.”

  Sarah laughed. She finally beat John at something.

  “Other than your poison cloud, what other attacks can you do?”

  “None.”

  “Huh?” John blinked. “Okay, well… Do you know you can create your own attacks without the help of you-know-what?”

  Sarah shook her head again.

  “All right, then.” John ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll show you an attack I created a while back. Try to copy me with just Life Power first.”

  John raised his index finger straight up and made a small cone bullet hover above it. Sarah raised her finger like John and created a small ball made of Life Power. It changed shape but exploded halfway through.

  “You did better than me on my first attempt,” John encouraged. “Try again.”

  The next few attempts had the same results, but it took longer for it to explode and the shape was forming. After the tenth try, she had created an oddly-shaped cone, so she made it explode on purpose. On the twelfth try, she shaped it perfectly.

  “Nice!” John praised her with a smile. “That can kill any mortal creature easily. The next step is increasing the amount of Life Power you use per bullet. When you’ve gotten used to creating bullets with the maximum amount of Life Power, try adding your poisons to it. When you can create bullets under a second, then you’re good to go in battle.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “In the meantime, let’s carry on looking around!” John gestured to the rest of the market. “There might be more things we can both use.”

  In every stall, John bought all the venomous creatures and poisonous plants or herbs they had for Sarah. Any books the vendors had that he hadn’t read before, he purchased. He didn’t need to buy the books because he had already gone through them with his Scan skill in the stores, but he figured he could give them to Sarah afterwards. He also bought all the plants he could get Life Power from and ate them; he even ate a few poisonous ones secretly to catch up to Sarah. All creatures that were edible and had Life Power, he killed and stored in his Storage Space.

  The last few stalls had two vials of extracted venom from creatures, so John bought them, too. Weapons coated with poison or venom were useless to Sarah, which surprised them both. By the time they finished going through all the black market’s stalls, it was dawn.

  John suggested they go back to the hotel to rest. Sarah agreed, and they left the black market. Two people followed them, though. John saw them from the Scan.

  ???

  Rank: 0

  Level: 0

  Sin: 42

  ???

  Rank: 0

  Level:0

  Sin: 183

  John lowered his head and whispered in Sarah’s ear.

  “Two people are following us. Could be just scouts but more than likely, they want to steal from us.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Their sin levels,” John explained. “They’re low enough.”

  “Sin levels?” Sarah knitted her brows in confusion.

  “Oh, I haven’t told you?” John glanced at the people behind them and decided they were far enough to not be an immediate threat. He explained how he found another Sider who had died thousands of years before. From the other Sider, he absorbed the Sinner’s System, which allowed him to see how many sins a person had. John then explained the seven deadly sins and the number of points for each act.

  “Then what about people who try to reform?” Sarah had an expression of horror on her face. “Like after killing somebody, but then they regret it afterwards, so they repent?”

  John was about to shrug his shoulders, but he was surprised instead.

  ‘Ding!’

  Tooltip - If somebody has not committed an act that will give him/her sin points for over one year, the points are reset. For cultivators, it’s one year while not cultivating and points will go back to the original number if they commit an act that will give him/her sin points within 10 years.

  John smiled and told her about the message he received.

  So all this time, the people I killed had gained at least some of their sins under a year ago? That’s actually a relief.

  Near the exit was an empty plot of land with no people around. John assumed this was where those two people would make their move. John stopped walking and turned around. Sarah noticed and stopped, too. The two people continued walking until they were twenty feet in front of John and Sarah. The tallest one smiled cruelly at them.

  “Leave all your valuables and you can leave with your life intact.”

  John turned his head towards Sarah while pointing at the two people.

  “See,” he loudly explained. “Without strength, they would rob us. Then you’ve got to think about what would happen if they saw how irresistible your face is, too.”

  Sarah blushed but grew angry at John’s reasoning. She knew that he was speaking the truth.

  “These guys don’t deserve death, but they aren’t innocent either. Let’s use them as practice, then.”

  John used one hundred twenty threads to wrap around both men’s arms, legs, waists, and necks. He smiled and lifted his index finger up. As he did, both men were lifted off the ground.

  “They can’t run now, so practice your bullet shot on them!” John offered Sarah a smile. “Use a numbing toxin that won’t cause them to scream out in pain. If you can, make it so they stop bleeding too, since we don’t want them to die.”

  “I’ve got the perfect toxin.” Sarah nodded.

  She lifted her index finger and formed a bullet. The colour then changed to purple and a thin mist began to spill out of the bullet. She pointed towards the man John said had the most sins and fired. It went through the man’s shoulder.

  The man was about the scream in pain but stopped. He moved his head enough to see his shoulder.

  There was a hole in his shoulder which had purple smoke coming out of the edges, but he couldn’t feel anything. The blood stopped flowing out. After a few more shots, both men were unconscious. They kept begging for mercy after Sarah fired the first shot.

  John smiled and nodded.

  “That was perfect with the toxins. Let’s go back.”

  Chapter 5

  Sarah’s Past

  After they arrived back at the hotel, they each went into their own rooms. Sarah went to bed while John took out hundreds of books he hadn’t read yet and scanned them. After an hour of this, he decided to go to sleep, too.

  The night was a restless one for him, though. His Scan was still on when he was lying in bed, and he could see Sarah in her room. At one point she went to the bathroom to take a bath. John was very tempted to keep the Scan on and watch, but he turned it off when she undressed. The temptation was on his mind for hours, though, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it when he tried to sleep.

  Somehow, John managed to get some sleep. It was a good thing he technically didn’t need it anymore.

  In the morning, Sarah knocked on the connecting door. John turned his Scan back on, knowing she wanted to come into the room. He opened the door and saw Sarah with dark circles under her eyes.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Not a wink.”
Sarah sighed. “My brain just couldn’t switch off with all the information you gave me yesterday. Then the fact that I inflicted so much harm on another human being made me want to throw up.”

  “Just sleep now then,” John offered. “We’ve got no plans for today, so you can relax.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll sleep later.” Sarah walked into John’s room and sat down next to the table.

  John used the hotel’s communication device to order breakfast. A staff member shouted up for confirmation of the order a few seconds later. Within minutes, they were enjoying a warm meal. They decided to talk about serious things after they ate.

  After giving all the dirty plates to a staff member at the door, John walked over and sat down on the opposite side of the table to Sarah.

  “So,” he started. “What couldn’t wait ‘til after you got some sleep?”

  “I wasn’t truthful for the two days we’ve been here,” Sarah said after she took a deep breath. “I was still thinking of how to capture you without the use of toxins.”

  “Yeah.” John tilted his head. “I already knew that.”

  The shocked face that Sarah made was priceless.

  “I helped you because we’re both Siders,” John said through his laughter. “But do you think we trust each other because of that as well? I know I didn’t. Trust is earned, not given. If that’s the only reason you couldn’t get any sleep, then you should have asked me last night. You might have had a good night’s sleep.”

  Sarah came out of her shock after John explained things.

  “It’s different now,” she protested. “I believe what you’ve said about the cauldron, the sinners, absorbing systems—everything! I want to leave the Anti-Assassins for real now.”

  “And why should I believe you now?”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know... starting with my past life.”

  Sarah Wells was born from a wealthy family living in London. Her childhood was a usual one with school and college. She went to Oxford University Medical School and eventually became a surgeon.