Chapter 958 - Territory (Patreon)

POV Ruby

"Diligence, sometimes I do not understand the system. How much sense does it make to throw all these tutorials at that mana-obsessed lunatic? It's like throwing ninety-nine gray lizards at a dragon instead of nine. With his specialization in macro-level destruction and his reserves, Nathaniel could ruin the tournament for everyone right now. He is simply that monstrous."

"This time I partially agree with you. Your ward has a mind durable enough to endure deaths without a blink too, which is an advantage even those capable of competing with him don’t have."

"Don't get me wrong, Dili, I would have fun watching it, and even enjoy it, yet still, I do not understand this change." Ruby steps closer toward the screen, which changes the image it is showing, focusing on the territory of a velnar planet. "And I don't like this. Something about this one feels very wrong."

"I’ve already looked into it. There is no evidence of interference coming from them, meaning-"

"Meaning," Ruby interrupts, "that it was done by someone very skilled."

"Indeed. And as you well know, no one is skilled enough to mask that kind of tampering once I take a look."

"Please inform me once you find something. As if the elf messing around wasn't enough," she says, with the screen shifting to the gods' chosen before refocusing back onto Nathaniel. "In the meantime, let's see what you’ve got." She pinches his head on the screen.

POV Nathaniel

For some reason, I feel the hair rise on the back of my neck and look around, but the only thing I notice is Jean making his way through the crowd, waving with a big smile on his bearded mug once he spots me. That sends another wave of shivers through my body.

Still, it is a bit amusing to watch attendees recognize him. A few stop to greet him, while those who have managed to keep their smartphones alive with solar panels take photos.

Jean doesn't seem to mind it at all. Plus, as of late, he has gotten some elastic shirts from Gloria, the sort these gym bros always wear. So he likely wants to show them off. You know the type of shirts, sleeves so short they are almost nonexistent, clinging to the body like a second skin and looking like they are fighting for dear life not to tear every time his muscles bulge.

Though, the gray shirt Jean is wearing has threads of mana woven through it for reinforcement, creating a sort of checkered pattern.

I did that.

He couldn't find anyone else with mana threads durable enough to withstand his trait for long.

With his typical laugh upon meeting me, he slams my shoulder a few times with his palm, each of these hits tempering my defensive layers. While with almost everyone else he holds back, there are a few people he considers equal to or stronger than him where he doesn't do it at all. It is the sort of behavior where you just use some of your force while squeezing someone's hand in a shake. Not to show power, just to give a firm handshake that is a polite thing to do. In your mind.

"Here we are again, and our opponents are numerous. What a beautiful day." He takes a deep breath, almost taking an artistic pose with hands on his waist as he looks toward where the territories of the other planets are.

"You should go and attack them. You know, a surprise attack for points and stuff," I say.

He doesn't even seem to realize the poke as he sighs. "I wanted to, but Tess found me really quickly and asked me to stay still for now. I think she tried to search for Tacita then, but that sneaky girl is already gone."

"Of course she is," I say, making a mental note to find her to take Veto back for a while to use in training.

"If you want, everyone is in the middle. There is a tower that is a safe zone. No attacks will reach in, but nothing can reach out either. Some sort of last bastion in case a territory is getting obliterated. For now, I will go and search for Lucien, I bet he is trying to pick up girls somewhere."

"Yeah, see you around." I wave at him before leaving.

Obviously, there are people who noticed our conversation, and to avoid a crowd, I lift into the air, avoiding one of the drones flying around, once again reminded that this is a nice vacation for people from Easy Difficulty.

As Jean said, there is the tower in the exact center of this territory that is circular in shape. Overall, a nice clearing, and mostly flatlands with pathways, trees, and buildings. There are three houses too, and a few hills with buildings inside or at the top of them.

Amusingly, everything seems to be rundown. The tower is made of stone and wood, having some missing parts, broken windows, and almost no roof. It's similar for the houses. The grass in places is too tall, not cut, and the pathways are under dirt.

I highly suspect all of it becomes nicer the higher level our territory becomes, though even now some attendees got into cleaning around a little.

When I fly even higher, I look around. Though far from having a good sight like Tess with her [Telesthesia], it's enough to gather a bit of information.

The area is mostly the same as far as I can see, though some territories have some snow there, or are closer to a mountain or lake, as such. Each has some slight differences, and I would bet a lot of shards that even the resources you might be able to gather or mine will differ, in order to create conflict and invasions.

Simply put, all of it feels akin to a training camp for a much smaller scale Pairing. Defending territory, espionage, creating defenses, and such.

I notice a few similarly floating figures in the air, and using my eyes, I read the way they have started to build defensive arrays around their territories, as well as adaptive segment shields paired with detection so they activate only upon detecting an attack to avoid wasting too much mana.

I could never.

Just so the planet I'm from doesn't seem full of lazy bums, I deploy [Weave]. One that I have stored in the Cognitive Vector Module. Nothing too fancy, the sort of static array meant to be anchored in place, with basic functions like multi-spectrum signature detection, adaptive segmentive shielding, disruption lines, slight telemetric obfuscation, and a localized ambient mana siphon node to ease the upkeep.

This time I don't use my Mana Tree as a stabilisation node, and leave the fragment sitting embedded on the inner side of my skull. To avoid the leakage of any information on it, it will only be used on tutorial floors from now on.

Then, to give my [Weave] a bigger oomph, I feed it a good half of my mana for the start so the node with a hint of black mana doesn’t cause too much trouble. [Weave] lights up shortly in the sky, creating a sphere around the entirety of our territory, even under the ground, before it slowly disappears out of sight.

I'm confident barely anyone will be able to notice it if it doesn't activate.

To replace the used part of my mana, I start redistributing thermal energy generated by the Ignition Heart and keep it cycling inside of my body. After my Vessel evolution, I have gotten used to it, and I think, except for rare occurrences, the time of mana crowns and halos is gone. It saddens me a little, but in a way, isn't this version cooler? All that mana below my skin, inside of my body. Though here I have to find a limit. It is possible that with truly huge amounts of mana, storing it in crowns or a halo might be better. Even if here it is up to how good my trait is, and I suspect it is pretty good.

As I prepare to move myself toward our tower, I notice a group of thirty humans approaching us. Straight from their territory, they cut in the direction of ours in a straight line. All of them seem to be of Hell Difficulty or higher, especially the two men leading them. These two move faster than anyone else, each of them with a fire crown over their head, and each of them also wearing a mantle made of fire.

Curiously, I observe them, letting some mana seep out so I become easier to notice in case they haven't seen me, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

"They have a scout," Tess says as she floats into the air near me and points in one direction. There in the distance, a human woman takes cover in the forest, barely letting out any signature. "She is pretty good," the tall blonde adds.

And I have to agree, only now noticing a thin communication line connecting her to the two men with crowns and mantles.

"Are... are they attacking us?" I ask, surprised.

"Very likely."

"But... I'm here," I say.

"Oh, the sheer arrogance of that short sentence makes me wonder how you can even float under its immense weight."

"Screw you."

"It is impossible to die here. So either they are testing you, or they truly didn't recognize you, and I hope your pride will survive that possibility. Or they are simply testing their neighbors."

"Busy bees," I sigh, manifesting a few hundred mana projectiles that I temper with audible blasts of kinetic energy just in case. Around the two of the projectiles, golden and white mana crackles as I spark it from my blood.

All of the projectiles launch one after another, each sending out a shockwave that ruffles my and Tess's hair. Though launching one after another, with the fire rate I'm shooting at, it takes only a second for all of them to launch, and a similar amount of time to reach the approaching attackers.

I keep a touch on my mana, ready to prepare more attacks after seeing their reactions, but there is no need for that.

Every projectile breaks through all of their defenses and their armor, moving way too fast for them to dodge, and effortlessly kills every attacker along with the scout much further away.

Nathaniel Gwyn (Beyond, Earth) ⟶ Mielleluk (Beyond, Oteryn)

+1000 pts

Nathaniel Gwyn (Beyond, Earth) ⟶ Mutoqenzyek (Beyond, Oteryn)

+1000 pts

Nathaniel Gwyn (Beyond, Earth) ⟶ Matjewezc (Hell, Oteryn)

+500 pts

Nathaniel Gwyn (Beyond, Earth) ⟶ Menilakale (Hell, Oteryn)

+500 pts

***

Thirty or so notifications blink into existence, causing me to pause as I observe each of the names. All of them seem to start with an M.

In the end, I just shrug it off.

"1,000 points for Beyond, 500 for Hell, and what about the others?" I ask Tess. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I've already read this, but I never bothered committing it to memory.

"100 for Hard, 10 for Normal, and 1 for Easy."

"Awww."

"Did you just think about how cute 1 point for Easy difficulty is?"

"I mean, 1,000 of them equals one Beyonder. If you think of it, taking into consideration how easy they would be to... defeat, the most optimal way of farming points-"

"Please don't call killing Easy Difficulty attendees an optimal point farming strategy."

"-would be to just repeatedly defeat the Easy Difficulty guys."

"You have to think of it slightly differently. If it's truly the most optimal, and mana efficient way as you say, then Beyonders should have some responsibility and defend their lower difficulties. It kind of mirrors what you would be doing during a real clash like that."

"I guess," I say.

"I guess," Tess mirrors me, mimicking my voice and playfully shoving my shoulder. "Enjoy the view from here. I will look around and try to find what territory Tacita is currently terrorizing."

When she leaves, I imagine that speedy maniac with her ferret wreaking havoc and shudder.

Then I open a new substatus that I got for the tournament.

Name: Nathaniel Gwyn

Territory: Earth (no vassals)

Rank: Beyond

Current position in the overall rankings: 7th

Points: 23,000

And then there is another window from which I pull up some random possible upgrades to look at.

Territory Upgrade Lvl 0: 3,600 / 1,000,000 pts

Protective Barrier Lvl 0: 1,500 / 500,000 pts

Smithies Upgrade Lvl 0: 3,500 / 250,000 pts

Endurium Mine Lvl 0: 0 / 150,000 pts

Scouting Observatory Lvl 0: 0 / 150,000 pts

Communal Regenerative Onsen Lvl 0: 6969 / 150,000 pts

Where the fuck did these guys get the points from?

Before my head begins to spin from all the information, I wave this window away and watch the people that look as tiny as ants below me. They are already moving around, exploring buildings, and preparing to gather more points before the first event starts in twenty-four or so hours.

I won't lie, but I'm a bit jealous of the excitement some of the people from lower difficulties show, especially from Easy Difficulty. It is possible that no thought of preparing defenses sparked in their Easy Difficulty heads, either leaving it up to us, knowing that they won't be able to do anything, or just straight up refusing to think about it.

And here is the system, which, according to Tess, is making us get used to the fact that we have to defend them. Here they serve as some sort of point bags to be protected against the enemy. Though, Normal Difficulty would make for some nice points too, with them being worth ten each and a decent number of them participating.

Once again I shake my head, realizing that details like this don't matter, and I lift the seal on my Ignition Heart a bit more to ramp up the gathering of more mana. I think before the first event, I will go out and search for some less friendly territories I could bombard for a few points. It looks like the time to attack other territories is passing, but I don't really feel like bothering with it right now. There will be plenty of time for that later.

Before then, I will need to give Sophie and a few others partial access to my [Weave]. And then there is the first event itself that I'm getting quite excited for. Yup, Chronicle of the Past is back, but with a spin.

***

Patch Notes

Traits:

Panarchic Vessel has been renamed to Panarchic Mana Vessel to better align with lore and the story.

Description of the trait have been updated for clarity and consistency.

Dialogue:

Fixed an issue during Nathaniel’s conversation with Lily where he incorrectly stated his Constitution decreased by 4 points. The dialogue has been corrected, and answer changed to "Three" instead of "Four" to reflect his actual Constitution that is 5.