by Charles Dean
Reward: You have been awarded 10 stat points and 10 unassigned affinity points. These affinity points may be placed in any affinity-based Qi of your choosing or exchanged for 10% completion toward any existing skill quest.
As the pleasure faded from the Qi entering him, Lars quickly went to the next rontin chicken and repeated the motion again, channeling the skill Knife Hand and stabbing it through the beast’s eye before pulling out the same green and purple Qi and getting the same kill message—not that he paid attention to it. He was too busy enjoying the feeling of the cool breeze and the joy sweep through him to even bother thinking about what he was going to do with the unassigned affinity points.
After he killed the fifth and final one, a unique message with bold golden text and a golden bar outlining the normal blue box appeared.
Congratulations. You have successfully completed the following Skill Specific Quest: Kill five unaware combatants with Knife Hand. Your proficiency has increased from Level 1 to Level 2.
Knife Hand will now allow the user to perform an unarmed strike with an extended attack range of two feet instead of one in order to hit targets that are just outside of one’s reach. Damage dealt is now increased by threefold instead of twofold if the target is struck at a vulnerable spot and is either unaware of his assailant, stunned, disabled, or already critically injured.
Skill Specific Quest: Kill ten unaware combatants with Knife Hand to increase your proficiency in the skill by 1. Leveling this skill through stat points will double the required number of kills to increase its proficiency.
So, now I can stab someone in the back with 225 Power instead of 150. That’s useful, Lars thought as he looked at the skill.
It is useful. It gives you the ability to seriously hurt a Stage 4 or Stage 5 Qi gatherer.
Stage 4 or Stage 5? So 225 is enough to seriously hurt someone that powerful . . . Wait, how does damage work exactly?
Why don’t you put 11 points into Fortitude, 9 into Speed, and 7 into Resistance, and I’ll explain after.
Lars had been hoarding his points because he didn’t know exactly how any of them worked, so he did what she said and dumped the points accordingly so that all of the stats rounded up to an even 40 except for Power, which was still massively ahead of the others at 75. He already had 16 unassigned skill points before the five kills and the completion of the kill quest, and afterward, he had 136 points unassigned. Now, having spent 27 of those points, he was down to 109 remaining.
When he spent the last point, a new message appeared in front of him.
Congratulations. You have reached Level 2! You have been awarded 5 unassigned affinity points.
I’m Level 2 now . . . Lars stared at the number before realizing what that meant. So if a person is a Stage 2 Qi cultivator . . . they have about 40 of each of those stats . . .
Right. Each 10 points of a stat, be it Power, Speed, Resistance, or Fortitude, represents 1 average person in magnitude. Since a Stage 1 Qi cultivator is usually twice as strong as the average person, they usually have 20 of each of those stats. By the time a cultivator reaches Stage 2, they have already become four times stronger than the average person and twice as strong as a fledgling Stage 1 Qi cultivator with 40 points into each stat. At 80 points in each stat, they have generally achieved Stage 3, and every level above within the Qi-gathering schema requires double the stat points of its predecessor. This means that 40 to 79 points is Stage 2, 80 to 159 is Stage 3, 160 to 319 is Stage 4, 320 to 639 is Stage 5, and so on.
So . . . those Stage 5 Qi-Gathering Cultivators that were defending our village . . . Lars took a moment to process the numbers he was given. He knew that cultivators were far stronger than he was as a human without Qi, but he had never understood exactly how much stronger. A single Stage 5 Qi-Gathering Cultivator was at the very least 64 times stronger than he was. This meant that one of them could have probably killed him with a pinky. It was at this moment that he fully understood Ramon’s terror when he fled and how absolutely worthless he was at the moment. If I had tried to fight my way toward them . . . That sect was capable of easily disposing of our Stage 5 and Stage 6 cultivators . . . I would have died on the spot. Lars swallowed unconsciously as he took in a deep breath and tried to wrap his head around exactly how insane his rescue mission had been.
How foolish was I to believe with a few kills and a little persistence I could just rush in there and save my mother? Even if I fought dozens and dozens of these ronkin chickens, I might still not even match a single one of their fighters. “Desdemona,” Lars said, whipping his head around as he looked for the woman. He found her standing next to the monster that had fallen atop her earlier. “When you guys came to attack our village . . . how strong was your strongest warrior?”
“Oh, there was a . . . umm . . . There was a person in the Qi Condensation Stage. Why?”
“Just . . . wanted to know how strong the toughest fighter was,” Lars said, doing his best to keep his gulp inaudible as he tried not to show his fear. And . . . how strong is that? Lars asked his endless font of helpful information. What is the stat level of someone in the Qi Condensation Stage? Is it . . . Lars took a moment to think about the highest Qi-Gathering Stage he had heard about, Stage 9, and then doubled that again. Is it over 10,000?
That’s not something you should worry about, but 10,000 isn’t exactly close to the minimum threshold. The Qi Condensation Stage is as the name sounds. It is the stage in which a cultivator is able to breathe in Qi. For the most part, Qi is an ethereal, air-like substance, and cultivators refine their body with it, expanding their potential by absorbing as much Qi as possible. The Qi Condensation Stage is attained when the cultivator has completed the Qi-Gathering Stage and begins condensing the airy, ethereal substance into a thick, energy-packed liquid that flows through their veins and the channels where they once stored their Qi.
Which means what in layman’s terms? Lars appreciated the explanation, but he didn’t really care that much to know what was going on. He wanted to know what it meant, what his goal would have to be.
The moment they condense their Qi into a liquid, it increases the Qi’s power by tenfold. If their stats totaled 5,000 before condensing the Qi, they will be 50,000 after. Basically, someone in that stage, at the very least, is 5,000 times stronger than you were before your first kill.
Holy crap. Lars did his best to take in another deep breath. As she mentioned that number, a disturbing thought had already entered his head: How many people will I have to kill to be strong enough to save my mother . . . and would she forgive me for doing it?
There was no way around it though. He had killed several people, a giant snake, and five monster chickens, and he wasn’t even strong enough to scratch one of the top members of the sect that had abducted his mother. The very real bar had just been set, and hopelessness had come with it.
Damage. You wanted to understand damage, right? Well, it’s easy. The damage an individual deals with a non-elemental melee attack is equal to their Power divided by a vulnerability coefficient and then multiplied by the quotient of their Power divided by the Resistance of the person they are attacking. Basically, it’s D=(P/Vc)*(P/R), with D standing for the damage, P for the attacking person’s power, Vc for the attack’s vulnerability coefficient, and R for the Resistance of the person receiving the blow.
Okay, but how do you know what the vulnerability coefficient is? Lars wondered. And what is a vulnerability coefficient?
Don’t be dense. It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s the coefficient for how badass the attack was or how dumb and vulnerable the individual getting smacked was. When someone uses a skill or slashes at a person, where they hit and how hard or devastating the skill they use generates a vulnerability coefficient. While beasts don’t exactly use skills, most of their attacks being just basic bites and slashes, their claws are still sharp, hard, and deadly, so they would normally have a vulnerability coefficient of 5 against you. Since this particular beast hit you in the side
though, where you are naturally a little squishier, the coefficient was probably a 3.
Oh, okay. Lars scratched his head as he tried to do the math. Even though she had taught him algebra and other math a lot when he was younger, he wasn’t exactly the fastest or quickest-witted individual when it came to numbers. After all, he had never actually had a chance to sharpen his skills by using them even a single time in the real world. There were no situations at all that required advanced math back at his village. So . . . the damage was 19, my Resistance was 33, and the coefficient was 3. That means the 19 was equal to the beast’s Power over 3 times the beast’s Power divided by 33.
Ugh. Haven’t I taught you anything?! Don’t look down on your master with such bad basics. Take everything under the bar, multiply it together, and then multiply it with the damage. The square root of that number is the Power of the beast.
Lars nodded as if he could actually do that easily. So the square root of 1,881 is the Power level of the enemies.
Yes. Which is a little over 43, but damage will generally always round up. That’s just how this reality was designed. You can assume the beast had a power of 43. This is what I was talking about! It’s amazing news! These damn things are barely even equivalent to a Stage 2 Qi-Gathering Cultivator! The only thing that would give them an edge is the fact that many monsters have much higher hit point pools than they should for their Power level.
How exactly is that amazing news? Lars wondered, trying to think about how much damage he would take if he just dumped 69 of the remaining 109 points into Resistance and whether it would be enough to let him virtually shrug off a similar enemy.
It’s amazing news because they were so confident that they didn’t even hesitate to attack you. Beasts—at least ones that don’t have incredibly high stats—aren’t intelligent enough to know what level their opponents are. They won’t just be like, “Oh! That’s a Stage 3 Qi-Gathering Cultivator! I shouldn’t attack!” Also, 6 damage. You’d take 6 damage per hit from claw or bite attacks that have a low vulnerability coefficient like 3 if you dumped 69 of those points into Resistance. With the way the rounding system works, even if you dumped all 109 points though, it wouldn’t drop the damage below 5.
Oh, I get it, Lars said, frowning. His idea of just dumping his stat points into Resistance for safety had been immediately shot down by the reality of the fact he would still die to them in less than ten hits. These beasts must have thought that, if an animal was in these woods, the five of them had a guaranteed chance of killing it. They’d gotten that big without dying because most of the time they were probably right . . . which means . . . “These woods aren’t as deadly as we thought. That was probably the toughest challenge we’ll face!” Lars said aloud this time, excitement lighting up his eyes and washing away his frown as he looked over at Desdemona, who was still holding her chest awkwardly.
“That’s good,” she said, “because if we have to fight more, you’re on your own.”
“What? What do you mean? You won’t help if we have to fight again?”
“Won’t, can’t—you choose.” She frowned as she pulled her torn-up brownish-white robe down just enough for Lars to see the upper half of the left side of her chest. There were three large gashes where the rontin chicken’s claws had sunk into her flesh. While she had been pinned to the ground with the monster’s full body weight on her, those claws had done a number on her.
“Crap . . .” Lars’s frown returned. He had been optimistic a moment ago, thinking that, between the two of them and with his power-up, there was likely nothing left that could defeat them. Instead, he had a woman he would have to watch out for since she was too wounded to hold her own. “Well, in that case”—Lars sighed—“just carry as much meat as you can hold in your hands. Don’t grab too much more. We’re moving.”
“Okay . . .” She gave him a sidelong stare for a moment but then quickly went to the fire where she had been cooking meat earlier. “Shouldn’t we, like, try to smoke it or something? Make some jerky?”
“Why?” Lars found another long and straight branch, grabbed a rock, and began working on making another spear so he could re-slot the snake fang on the now-broken one that he still needed to pull out of the rontin chicken’s mouth.
“Because . . . Well, do we know when we’re going to reach a town?” she asked, posing the question that had been worrying Lars too. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have some more meat for the trip?”
“Until you can hold your own in a fight,” Lars answered, “I’d rather not spend a few hours setting up the smoke racks, building the covers, and getting the fire just right. The sooner we hit town, the sooner I don’t have to—” He paused. He wanted to say, “don’t have to worry about getting killed in my sleep by some predator,” but then he remembered that she had already had one breakdown. If she had another, it’d only be tougher on him and worse for both of them.
“The sooner you don’t have to what?” Desdemona asked, as if sensing his reluctance to finish the sentence.
“The sooner I don’t have to keep wearing these dirty, blood-soaked, ripped-up clothes,” he replied, the new end of the sentence sounding reasonable enough to him.
“Right,” she said, tugging her outfit a little. “But . . . do we have any money?”
“That . . . we don’t.” Lars felt like stabbing someone at that mention. “Do you think anything here would sell but won’t require us to break our backs carrying it?”
“The teeth and claws of most beasts,” she replied. “My sect traded with blacksmiths, who somehow used them in the production of weapons.”
“They can’t be using spears like this, can they?” Lars looked at his makeshift tool.
“No, it’s the, umm . . . their Qi-infused properties. They go good with metal or something,” she explained with a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m not a blacksmith. I gather herbs. That’s it. Herbs and their properties are the extent of my knowledge. I’m sorry.”
It’s like she can tell that you sense she’s dead weight but doesn’t know what to do about it. But her knowledge isn’t worthless. Herbs aren’t something most people know how to handle. Sects, mercenary groups, and armies only teach their own members, closely guarding any information they have on the subject. It’s considered a company secret, and they’ll often go out of their way to deny others the chance to learn even a little about herbology.
That makes sense, Lars thought as he looked at her. She had a wealth of knowledge that wasn’t supposed to ever be passed on to anyone else outside of the sect she was raised in. She was a very valuable asset, but also one that the sect would probably want to kill if they knew she was working for someone else.
“Don’t worry about it.” Lars decided not to press the issue. Even if she seemed useless in a fight, which was half the reason he had captured her in the first place, she still had her merits.
It only took a few minutes for her to grab up most of what she had cooked. Desmonda wrapped the cooked snake meat in leaves and then used bark stripped from branches as twine to bind the leaves around the meat. Once she was finished, she had created a bundle that exceeded the size of Lars’s torso.
And here I thought she understood we needed to be moving quickly and traveling light. He shook his head, not feeling like correcting her as he just asked one question: “You ready?”
“Yeah,” she answered, nodding.
“Then let’s get going,” he said. Those were the last words spoken between them for hours as they crept through the woods. For all the fear and terror that the forest held for Lars after the events since the journey began, he couldn’t bring himself to be careful as they made their way. He practically stomped on the dried leaves, not bothering to tread softly in the slightest.
“Ugh. Is this what we’re going to be doing forever . . . or at least until we die,” Desdemona grumbled.
“It’s not that bad.” Lars shrugged. “At least we’ll get to enjoy some fresh air and see a bit of the world before we go.”
“What bit of world? It’s all the same.” Desdemona kicked at the ground. “Tree, dirt, leaves, another tree, more dirt, more leaves. Seeing the world is kind of a letdown.”
Despite the fact that he was annoyed by everything that had happened, the monotony of their walk, and the way the sweat made his clothes stick and pull on him, he tried to sound optimistic. “There’s at least a breeze. Imagine if we had been stuck making this trek in the winter or the middle of summer.”
“Well, sorry if the weather isn’t exactly a big highlight of my week. I’ve been stabbed by what feels like a dozen quills, I’ve been turned into a slave, we almost died in a snake attack, I had to sleep on the ground in clothes that stuck to me courtesy of my own blood, then I got bodied by a raptor, and now I’m forced to walk with ripped, tattered, and gross clothes. But sure, let’s look on the bright side. The weather is nice.”
“Really? We’re playing this game?” Lars rolled his eyes. “How about the part where I remind you everyone I knew, loved, or cared about is either a slave at best or dead, and I had to watch my buddy get eaten by that snake that almost killed you right in front of me. I mean, do you know what it’s like to have to kill the most beautiful girl in your town—who was the only person besides your mother that treated you with any respect—while you hold her gently and call it mercy? ‘Cause that’s where I’m at. Did you do that yesterday?”
Desdemona didn’t answer. She just let her eyes shift from Lars to the ground.
“Yeah, so you have any hobbies?” Lars asked, trying to change the topic.
You could just ignore her and talk to me. She is, as we’ve established, mostly useless. I, on the other hand, am an ageless, eternal being of absolute knowledge and authority. But no, go ahead and talk to the dumb cripple still stuck in her Qi-gathering phase, the wannabe phoenix. The useless one.
I thought we just established earlier she has value in her herb collecting info? Lars didn’t know how to respond. He wasn’t sure, but it felt like, for the first time in a long time, her tone was different. Are you . . . Are you jealous I’m talking to someone besides you? Lars asked, daring to put the words into thought.
