[NR] Why Us? - Chapter 676
Added 2025-02-12 08:38:32 +0000 UTCWith the others pushed out of the room, Helina and Courtney focus on the numbers once again. Of course, the numbers aren’t completely accurate and this wasn’t some System spawned wave event. While it seems whoever was sending undead at them was focusing on newly raised minions, that didn’t mean the levels would be the same.
Outside of their room, the rest of the group is left with nothing else to do. Rosha glances around and shrugs, “So, that will take a while. How about we go and snag some food? Actually, would this be breakfast, brunch, or lunch?”
Jason shrugs, “I guess that depends on what they’re serving. Though I must admit, living with just my mom? Well, we mostly ignore calling the meals anything in particular when we do eat together. That is, unless we’re eating out, in which case it gets easier as the place will either only be open for a specific meal or have a specific menu for it.”
Rosha sighs, “That sounds nice. Even getting a snack when I was living with my family was a whole affair. You couldn’t ever just have an orange. It was always a small plate of prepared fruit or a cheese board, generally with tea, sometimes juice.”
Jason grimaces, “I don’t think I would fit into that all that well. I’d be too tempted to finish what was in front of me. I love small fruit like one of the smaller oranges because they’re a self contained snack. Even something like a bunch of small fruits can lead to me unconsciously snacking my way through them.”
Rosha, “I don’t really know how I would react. Even though I say there would be trays of snacks, if alone someone would always be by to remove the tray well before I got through even part of it. You might have picked this up, but my father was a bit controlling. And now? The game capsule takes care of most of my meals.”
Jason nods when she says that last part. “The capsule has certainly forced people into healthier consumption. Well, I guess I shouldn’t quite say it like that. It has no control over what they eat outside. But people spend most of their time in a pod and the nutrition feed will adjust based on what you have eaten.”
At this point, they arrive at one of the restaurants commandeered to work as communal kitchens for the duration of the nightly sieges. And it isn’t like there is a choice, you get stew and bread. Though if someone did want to spend their own money on food, you were allowed to go off and try one of the other restaurants that stayed open.
Not even Siegfried bothered with that, though. The provided stew was quite tasty and had more than enough meat. Besides, there was everything in it that someone would need after a long night of fighting.
After stew though, there wasn’t much else to do and so everyone split off to sleep. Even Jason has taken to getting a full night’s sleep, despite not taking it at night. And so he wakes up bright and late to prepare for the nightly waves.
Well, that and he remembers to check his stat growth. Said growth proved to him that without proper equipment, a fight was going to be his way forward. Jason had gained at some point over the last few nights plus seven Strength, three Constitution, and six Agility.
Which to be fair, wasn’t that extreme. 16 stat points was only a little bit more than the average that a level would give people. If anything, this was still low, even if the enemies had mostly been below third break. Besides, he didn’t want to just compare to the average person. Jason wanted to compare himself to the people who pushed things at the cost of slower leveling, received an increased number of stats each level.
So with that in mind, Jason meditated on how the fight had gone so far. Constitution was clearly growing slower than the others because with the undead, he focuses on not taking hits. That would be easiest to help along. While dodging is the best way to handle the undead.
You never know what kind of curse or disease they might be carrying, even beyond those that they naturally develop like ghoul fever. However, a bit of parrying and blocking would go a long way to improving the body. Not much, just enough to put stress on the bones and such. This wouldn’t even negatively affect the training of Agility, because it still involved moving right.
Then there was Strength. It was odd, Jason had gone and melee’d the zombies to train Strength. Yet it ended up only slightly ahead of Agility. This took him a while to puzzle out, but eventually he got what had happened. It wasn’t that his training had failed, but that the rest of his time had been at range.
Sure, Strength was still used to some extent, but even when not focusing on accuracy overly much, Agility still fit the bill more. All to say, Jason simply needed to be even more intense! Oh sure, some might have taken this to mean that things were working fine. Jason instead saw it as meaning his training was working and that it could be improved upon.
That was only a slight change, but with very different results. Though first, he met up with Siegfried and Rosha. They would need to find out what Courtney and Helina had figured out.
Though on the way, Jason had to ask Siegfried, “So why are you keeping us so in the loop? Don’t get me wrong, I understand Courtney is helping with something important and we’re travellers, but that doesn’t mean letting us tag along to council meetings and such.”
Siegfried shrugs, “On the contrary, that is exactly enough for me to drag you along. The three of you are the only travellers openly staying here right now. And that is at least partly because someone or something stronger than anyone in town has decided to trap you here.
“Not all travellers, just your group specifically. Even if Courtney hadn’t ended up being able to help, I’d be keeping you three close. You might have nothing to do with the undead directly, but at the very least, I don’t want to annoy whoever set this up for you. Whether that is some high breaker or the System itself.”