Chapter 104

The breeze didn’t bother Luke so much because it was cold; it was just that he was aware of the breeze in the first place. Despite his best efforts to turn the leftover scraps of his clothing into some sort of loincloth, the bulk of his repair work went to the harness for his mace and what was left just didn’t cut it. It was… airy down there.

Zea thought it was hilarious.

They moved at a steady pace, nothing too onerous for their superhuman bodies, but still easily fifty miles a day on average. It depended largely on how dense the forest got, and occasionally on how often they were attacked, but with Luke showing XP levels on par with some of the top predators in the forest, it became more and more rare for any random monster looking for a meal to decide it was a good idea to fuck with them.

That was not to say there weren’t plenty of idiots. There were, but they usually came in two flavors. Small packs of swarm animals numbering in the dozens or even hundreds that didn’t care about the level of their theoretical victims were the most common. Those were great for providing Luke with XP, even if they were only level 2 or 3, but didn’t work quite as well for Zea. She was less indestructible and far less swift, so while she got a fair chunk of the XP, the lion’s share went to Luke.

The other type of monsters were the ones that were used to punching above their weight class. It was just a simple fact that while the system enhanced physical capabilities, an elephant had a much higher starting strength than a human did. Some monsters were inherently more dangerous, and considered the levels of their prey as loose guidelines to be considered rather than absolutes to be rigidly adhered to.

Luke was quite happy to show them how wrong they were. He didn’t necessarily outmuscle every enemy that showed up, but if he wasn’t stronger, he was always faster, and in the extremely rare circumstances that he didn’t have a significant advantage in at least one category, he had a whole mess of combat skills to fall back on. [Life Surge] being rank 2 and having significantly diminished drawbacks had proven to be a game changer.

Best of all, it was easy for Zea to participate in a relatively safe manner. Rarely did the hulking bruiser type monsters attack in groups greater than two, and even more rarely did they fail to oblige Luke when he moved forward to challenge them. These were creatures that were secure in their physical supremacy, eager to meet any problem head-on. It had always worked for them before, and they weren’t smart enough to imagine a scenario where it would fail them now.

[You have assisted in slaying RazorProng Moose (lvl 22). 230 XP awarded.]

“Big fucker, isn’t it?” Luke said.

Luke wasn’t sure exactly how big a moose back home was, but the internet had told him they were huge and dangerous. This moose was so tall, Luke would have had to stand on his toes and stretch his arms over his head to tickle its belly. Its rack had a spread wide enough that he could have put a full-size mattress between the outer-most prongs. He wouldn’t, just because the name was dead-on. The damn thing had absolutely shredded the canopies of at least three trees and casually knocked over a fourth in an attempt to keep up with Luke’s movements when he’d executed a tight turn.

It also had a proportionately powerful smell, which was why after a brief discussion, both of them agreed not to bother harvesting any meat or hide from it. “I bet those antlers are worth good money though,” Zea said, giving them a wistful glance. “That’s got to be some sort of metallic ivory.”

“That expensive stuff?” Luke asked. It was a moot point, really. Even if he broke the rack off the moose’s skull, it was way too big to carry in one piece, and dangerously sharp besides. Besides, every time something big attacked them, Zea made the same noises about its claws, or its eyeballs, or some other part of its anatomy. Luke was starting to think that she’d been mistaken about the idea of monster hunting not paying well.

Sure, they might not have made money off the killing, but it sounded like the harvesting was quite profitable. When he pointed that out to her, she just said, “That’s because the kind of shit that lives out here is hard to come across near civilization. Just getting out here is a challenge for normal people, never mind finding these monsters, killing them, harvesting the important stuff, and transporting it back to civilization.”

Luke quickly conceded that those were all good points, and joined her in lamenting the loss of potential income. It seemed to make her happy to complain about it, and that made him happy too. Plus, it kept her distracted from his current situation of having no pants. She’d been almost giddy to point out that she’d told him to buy spare clothes in Kazos, and that he’d failed to do so.

That just made him upset, because she knew exactly why he hadn’t been able to finish gathering supplies, and he found it rather insensitive of her to keep treating it as a joke. He knew she didn’t mean it that way, so he kept quiet about it, but he wasn’t happy.

Perhaps sensing she’d crossed a line, Zea didn’t bring it up again. Luke silently forgave her, and the good mood swiftly returned. The days grew together, until eventually they found something new.

* * *

“This is, technically, a road,” Zea said.

“I guess.”

“Hey, does a cart fit on it?”

“Maybe a small one,” Luke said.

“It’s still a sign of civilization. It goes somewhere.”

That was true. Though it was more like a wide footpath in Luke’s mind, it was more or less straight, packed earth that was clear of any sort of vegetation. The forest hadn’t grown like that; somebody had made it. It was the first deliberate act of civilization they’d seen outside the squirrel folk bramble walls, and one that had been made by humans, if System’s information about their distance to a nearby human village was to be believed.

“Do you think I should pick up [XP Mask] now?”

Both of them had leveled again during the final days of their march, though neither had spent the AP yet. Luke sat on his because he was trying to wait as long as possible, both to keep himself more aware of approaching threats and because his now-massive XP aura was doing a good job of chasing off a lot of petty annoyances.

Zea, on the other hand, was still a long way off from upgrading [Bloodline Purification Ritual] to rank 2. She needed 168 AP more, or another 7 levels up to 28 assuming she spent no more than 7 AP on anything else. She was figuring she’d have to go up to at least level 30 in order to rank up support skills again.

“Maybe. I don’t know. System, how far is it to Sicanti from here?”

“Three hundred miles in that direction,” System said, appearing between the two of them and pointed at something just slightly north of true east.

“There a lot of towns between here and there?” Luke asked.

“Quite a few, yes. The exact number would depend on which roads you take, if any at all.”

“I’d say it’s about time then,” Luke said. “It’ll suck to lose the ability to sense XP from others, but let’s be fair, that was more useful out in the wilds where most animals didn’t bother to hide it than it’ll be around other people.”

“Yeah, but on the other hand, it’s going to make you stick out to the ones who are looking for it,” Zea said. “No XP at all? Nobody has that. They’re going to know you’re hiding it somehow.”

“I don’t have hundreds of AP to drop into [Disguise]. [Stealth] only pushes down my XP while I’m trying to be sneaky. What were the other skills that reduced my XP aura?”

“[Unobtrusive] is one to consider, but to get the good reductions, the stuff church inquisitors use, I think you’d need to get some skills up to max rank so you could combine them. [Infiltrator]would be ideal.”

“Sure. I’ll just roam the woods for another month killing anything and everything I can find for another 300 AP.”

Even that was just a guess. The system shop didn’t list what the max rank for a skill even was, let alone how much AP it would cost to get it. They’d just discovered a skill that would let him reduce his XP that he displayed by as much as ninety percent, adjustable whenever he wanted, but which required max ranks in [Disguise], [Deception], [Intuition], [Insignificant Presence], [Intimidating Presence], [Stealth], and [Polyglot], which itself was a combined skill of at least four other languages, all maxed out.

It felt like a ridiculous set of requirements at first until they’d seen example of other combined skills. [Arms Master] wanted max ranks with every kind of weapon Luke had ever heard of, everything from swords to axes to spears to crossbows to slings, and about a dozen others besides. In return, it promised to make Luke a war god striding across a battlefield.

Similarly, [Wraith] was a skill that he might some day acquire, since he already had several of the prerequisites like [Twitch Reflexes] and [Peripheral Awareness]. The skill said he’d be untouchable, and combined with [Arms Master], he thought that just about covered things. He’d be able to take on any number of opponents at any time, using whatever was at hand, all without ever taking the slightest scratch.

Sure, maybe if he made it to level 100 he’d have enough AP to max out all the prerequisite skills and meet the ridiculous base stat requirements of 200 in every stat. As cool as they sounded in theory, he suspected a significantly better use for his time and energy would be further purifying his bloodline and taking skills that let him reduce his enemy to level 1 with a mere thought. That was true god-like power anyway.

“Really, what it comes down to is that if I don’t take [XP Mask], everyone will know something is fucky with how much XP I have. If I do take it, then only the people I’m unlucky enough to encounter who are looking will know that I’m hiding something, but even then, they won’t know what. And the people that could do something about it will also have skills hiding their own XP, so I won’t even be giving up much of an advantage in not being able to sense theirs either.”

“That all sounds right,” Zea said.

“System, did I miss anything?”

“Your knowledge of how the skill works appears complete to me, at least insomuch as how it functions at your current bloodline purity. It may change later on.”

“Only good changes though, right?”

“Apologies, I am not able to answer that question.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Sounds about right. Okay, let’s do this then.”

He dumped 20 AP into the system store, bought [XP Mask], and felt it settle onto him. “Whoa, that’s weird.”

“What?”

“It’s just, you know, I’ve been feeling the XP of everything around me for so long. Now I don’t, and it’s like I’ve gone deaf, kind of. Everything is ‘quiet’ now.” He’d just have to get used to it, he supposed. “Okay, that’s done. Let’s see where this road leads and whether they’re interested in trading some copper for some clothes.”

“Maybe a bath, first,” Zea told him.

“What, I haven’t aired out enough already?”

“Let’s just say there’s a reason I’m standing upwind.”