[NR] Simplify It - Chapter 691

The day passes slowly for Jason. The two hadn’t lied, most of what Helina wanted them to do came down to physical labor. No actual need to think about things. That doesn’t mean it rested his mind. Still, Jason did this to himself and so he doesn’t complain.

And of course, no matter how much time dragged on for him, night eventually arrived. So after scarfing down a quick dinner, Jason flops onto his bed and goes to sleep.

Only to wake up a few hours later.

Mind you, he feels fully rested, but he isn’t sure why. Even if his body in NeoRealm is a void and doesn’t have things like acids in his muscle to cause tiredness or a brain to grow tired. But his irl body is still very much human.

However, it isn’t like he can figure out why and so he dropped it in favor of more work on his title.

Jason had left off at figuring out there wasn’t an easy way to judge by intent. At least, in a normal way. You would have to judge not just intent, but who controls an area, what to do when multiple civilizations control the area, and what if the other person believes they are also defending their civilization?

There had to be something more core. Because despite the whole “civilization” thing, that wasn’t the problem. Oh sure, Jason couldn’t fully define what [Civilization] was. After all, he didn’t even have a single percent of the understanding the System has, let alone of the entire concept. Which didn’t mean Jason couldn’t throw together something that would work for himself in the short term.

No, the problem with the title was the targeting. Or rather, the definition of what the defense should apply to. A definition that the System would also accept.

Jason pauses. He had just realized another pit hole the systems “unarmed” qualifier manages to avoid. What about ranged attacks? Simple enough when talking about an arrow. 

But what about area of effect attacks that happen to hit you? Or a side effect of an attack? Do you get the defense against the chips of stone when a ballista bolt shatters a boulder next to you?

Jason would have to actually answer that question. Which made things a lot harder. Or did it have to?

With concepts and such, things like “the fate of a nation” are actual things. They’re beyond Jason at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hook into those things.

It is like an ocean. You might not be able to see the other side, but that doesn’t stop you from watching the waves crash against the shore. Even better for Jason, those waves is exactly what he needs.

It was a leaky analogy, but could he represent defending civilization like surfing a wave? He didn’t need to know the sea, just be able to ride the current wave. And that was as far as the analogy was going to go, Jason dropping to more direct comparisons. It had done its job.

Jason settled on 3 core concepts to the title, because that felt symmetrical. Anyway, it was civilization, defense, and borders. That last one was simple enough. The title should only work when on the frontier of a civilization.

Civilization was also easy enough once you started thinking along the lines of “fate of the nation”. It wouldn’t cover everything that Jason would consider a civilization, but it fit the titles concept better.

That left defense. Except now that Jason had reduced the other two, it fell into place. You gain extra defense when Defending a Civilization on its Border.

Of course, each of those words has a bunch of meaning behind them, but that was perfect. Well, almost perfect. Border was the Right word, but changing it back to frontier for the title would be better. Now, how to get the System to recognize his changes?

Jason scribbles down the whole “When defending others on the frontier of their civilization, you gain a bonus to defense” thing and goes to bed again. He wasn’t “tired” tired, but felt it might be good to sleep on this final thought before going further. And this time he does manage to sleep through the rest of the night.

 Then when dawn comes, Jason wakes up and doesn’t suddenly hate it! Which is quite the accomplishment when he realizes he was probably still a bit loopy from lack of sleep, no matter how “refreshing” the nap might have been. At least, that is how he is justifying what happened last night to himself.

Anyway, there had to be a way to bring up the change to the System. Though for the moment, Jason had two. He either had to go to some System run place and do the equivalent of when people would spam a button to get through the automated phone system to an actual person. Which honestly had a halfway decent chance of getting some kind of result.

The only problem being that there wasn’t any such place nearby. Which left Jason’s other method. That of going out and using the title, but purposefully taking hold of what was happening to force it to fit his own concept of the title. A bit more of a long stretch, but something he can do right now.

Well, right now as in, when he has free time, but before he returns to their clearing. Helina’s tasks seemed never ending and Siegfried wasn’t exactly shy about asking for help either.

Not that Jason was going to complain. The kingdom’s purse strings had loosened up a good bit to help the settlement recover. Sure, it was just gold coins and he had gotten a lot of gold from the System, but you always need more money. The higher your level, the higher your expenses. 

Nevermind the fact that he would likely also need to spend more gold to spiffy up his irl capsule at some point. Right now, it was costing him a little bit of gold to keep his current physique. A passive thing, except as soon as he cleared his meridians, how body condition would likely change and require more. It isn’t until later steps that cultivators can survive off of absorbed power alone.