[STT] Chapter 75: Stunned (Patreon)

Clarissa POV

Points in this rift came from kills. And it was a brutally simple system without any shortcuts. Lesser beasts paid out almost nothing, offering a pitiful handful for a dirty monkey.

Which was perfectly fair, really. Trash shouldn't be rewarded for killing trash.

But a real kill, something Tier 2, was worth a good deal more.

And there were hardly any of those in a Tier 1 rift. You hunted every single day for every single point.

So your final score was the plainest measure in existence of how hard you worked. You got a few extra points at the end for performance metrics, but killing was the only real method.

Knowing how hard it was to get points, she was immensely proud of herself. Because even with her [Mana Beam] vaporizing things left and right, it was still a grind.

Aiming actually took a toll on her wrists. And she had to constantly endure the awful smell of burning flesh.

Hunting from the very first minute they entered, she and Thomas had bled for this.

Well, Thomas had physically bled. But she suffered immense mental fatigue managing him. Leading a meat shield required exceptional tactical brilliance on her part.

She essentially carried their team's strategic burden entirely on her own shoulders.

And it came easy to her, especially when men like Thomas threw themselves at her, pretending their interest was hidden. But she could see their drooling from miles away, and she made sure to use them as the fools they were.

They made for good meat shields. Laughable if they thought they even had a chance. It wasn't her fault they threw themselves in harm's way for her, she never asked.

She thought back to the giant frog at the pond. That beast should have been the biggest kill of their early rift. It rightfully belonged to her the exact second she decided she wanted it. 

But a filthy commoner stole it right out from under them and took her bag with it. He robbed her.

Everything after that had been a pain. Facing monkeys that teleported right behind you, monkeys that turned completely invisible, and that massive monster tide at the monolith.

She had done everything she could.

Reaching the top of that awful stairway had left Thomas beaten half to death and her entirely unable to breathe.

But every single kill there was theirs and theirs alone. Consolidating their efforts, they reached exactly four thousand six hundred and twenty-two points.

Comparing numbers with the other nobles at the top of the monolith, she saw most of them preening over a measly few hundred to a thousand at most.

As far as she knew, hers was the best hunting score in the whole rift. Well, assuming she didn't count Theodore or Ethan. She was a prodigy. Earning every one of those points herself, she absolutely did not care who knew it.

But having a high score was vital right now. Because she made a wager with this pitiful commoner. She didn't actually care about the spatial bag or the staff.

She just cared about the bet. She cared about putting a peasant back in his rightful place beneath her boots.

She had to win. She had to win! 

That was why she demanded the count in front of everyone.

Staring down her nose at the stalling boy, she waited for him to admit his pathetic failure. And then he finally opened his mouth.

"Seven thousand four hundred and twelve."

...Huh?

Blinking, Clarissa felt her smile freeze completely on her face. She was certain she misheard him.

Glancing to her side, she saw Thomas with his jaw hanging completely open. Scanning Ben's face for a tell, she looked for a smirk or a flicker of a lie. A street rat like him couldn't even break a thousand on his best day. There was no way he outscored someone like her.

But she found nothing but the same dead expression he always had, one she had hated since the pond.

There was also something else she noticed. For the first time ever, she felt an emotion from him.

Pity?

Him, a commoner, pitying her?

He had to be joking.

She exploded.

"You're lying! Show me your status."

"I can't show you my status screen. The system doesn't work like that."

"Then you are a liar! A pathetic, desperate liar!"

Clenching her fists, she felt blood rushing to her cheeks, burning hot under the gazes of the gathered crowd. He was trying to humiliate her. He was trying to make her look like a fool in front of the other Houses!

How dare he!

How dare he set this up! Had his goal been to humiliate her like this from the beginning? Whose help did he get?

There was no way he got all those points all by himself! He had to have leeched off someone stronger to get those numbers! Disgusting parasites like him always relied on the hard work of their betters.

"I'm really not. I just got a lot of completion points, I think."

"Shut up! You cheated! Or you hid in a hole while others did the work!"

Breathing heavily, she stepped closer to him, entirely ready to blast him into ashes. She was a prodigy. She was a noble! No commoner could ever stand above her! Nobody who used underhanded tricks could ever stand above her!

"He's not lying."

She snapped her head sideways.

"This has nothing to do with you, Ethan!"

"It does. I set the terms. And I was with him, I would know how many points he has. He had over four thousand before the guardian was ever a factor."

Shifting her footing, she instantly changed her angle of attack. Fine, then they weren't real points. Everyone at the summit knew exactly what the commoner and his friends did to get them.

"They broke the event! They let the horde through the barrier and cheated the rift instead of hunting it! Cheat points shouldn't count against honest kills!"

Glaring at the crowd, she demanded they see reason. But they didn't even meet her eyes. She felt disgusted at them. Cowards, the lot of them.

"The system counted the sub-objective in my reward. Was the bet for hunting points a specific, or for total points?" the commoner didn't even bother giving her a glance, and asked Ethan directly.

"Total points."

Clarissa clenched her teeth.

"Someone is behind him! Nobody goes from nothing to seven thousand in a Tier 1 rift without someone feeding him kills!"

She dared Ethan to deny it. Because it was the only thing that made sense. He had to be the one helping Ben!

"Nobody fed him anything."

Appearing out of thin air, Theodore manifested right beside them. With a small smile, he answered for Ethan. "I watched him break the rift's rules from the stairway with my own eyes. Don't you try to put this on my friend."

Slinging his arm around Ben, Theodore offered a bright smile, dimples forming on his cheeks.

"Isn't that right, Benjamin?"

Ben was too stiff to answer.

"Was the guardian as strong as you expected?"

Seemingly having recovered, Ben ignored the question. Grabbing Theodore's arm, he pulled it right off his shoulder and pushed it away.

Theodore stared at him momentarily, then shrugged carelessly, letting his dimples deepen and wandered off toward the camp with a wave. "See you later, my friend."

Reaching into her spatial bag as he walked toward her, Ben pulled something out. It was her staff. Two useless pieces of wood, snapped clean through the middle.

He wasn't lying about it breaking?

He put them in her hands, and she was too stunned to protest when he gave her shoulder two light pats. Giving her a look of pity, he turned his back and walked away toward the camp.

Leaving her standing there entirely stunned.

###

Ben POV

Marcus let out a sigh. "I'm not doing this again, Benjamin."

"Doing what? Saving my life?"

Ben groaned, shifting on the bed and instantly regretting it. The bandages felt tight, and an ache radiated right under them.

"Healing is not a hammer," Marcus said, crossing his arms. He looked unimpressed. "You can't just brute force your body back together while foreign objects are still inside. The body closes the wound, yes. But it traps the debris."

He reached out and tapped a finger against a metal tray sitting on the side table. It rattled, the sound of several small, jagged pieces of glass clinking against each other.

"It will take at least two more sessions to extract the remaining fragments in other parts of your body," Marcus continued. "Your body is already trying to adapt around them. Next time you decide to take something to the stomach, ensure the area is clear before letting [Regeneration] take over! You have a fire affinity, don't you? Burn that stuff off! Carelessness with healing causes permanent complications!"

Ben listened to the scolding silently, because it was kind of deserved.

Marcus was kind to him, and had helped him a lot, healed him many times, and even told him a lot of important information.

He would consider them friends, but he could also recognize that Marcus had a soft spot for him in the way an older brother would, and while that was a bit strange for Ben he couldn't really tell Marcus off.

Because he didn't really mind. He actually kind of liked that he cared enough to scold him.

So Ben listened silently, and gave a small nod, staring at the ceiling.

Marcus sighed again, his expression softening just a fraction.

"Just take a rest," he muttered.

Giving Ben's shoulder a light pat, the healer left him to his thoughts.

Ben exhaled slowly.

Now that he's gone...

Ignoring the stiffness in his stomach that came from Marcus ripping him open to extract the remnants, he propped himself up against the pillows.

He had been waiting for this moment for a while. Since Clarissa's little tantrum had interrupted the most important part of clearing a rift.

He pulled up his system. More specifically, the pending notifications. The remaining reward options he never actually got to look at.

Let's see what seven thousand points gets me.

Because he knew from experience that the last options were typically the ones that were any good.

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