Chapter 36

Luke appreciated Curt’s build notes so much more by the time that conversation was done. System only advised on a skill to accomplish a particular task once Luke brought it up, and never recommended anything on its own. They wasted close to an hour before Luke decided to walk while he talked.

Some skills were so situational that he couldn’t foresee a realistic need to ever take them, but most were general enough that Luke considered spending the AP. [Deception] made the list on the extremely likely chance that he needed to lie to someone, though its partner skill [Intuition]got shelved. It wasn’t that he didn’t think anyone would ever try to lie to him, it was just that there was only so much AP to spend.

He didn’t need skills like [Intimidating Presence], which magnified the amount of XP awareness people would have of him, but he did consider [Insignificant Presence] briefly. Since he wasn’t planning on having to hunt a meal for much longer, he held off on purchasing it. [Stealth] would already help with that anyway, though it annoyingly only suppressed his XP by ten percent unless he spent the AP to rank it up, so it wasn’t really all that useful.

It did stack with the ten percent reduction from [Disguise], which was a nice bonus. That only kicked in when he was actually trying to disguise himself, so it was kind of situational, but he figured he was always trying to disguise himself as a non-off-worlder. Hopefully the skill would agree with that logic, since he couldn’t imagine too many situations where drawing attention to himself would help.

They went over and discarded dozens of other skills (why had System ever thought [Fencing] would help? Or [Rappelling]? [Sleight of Hand]?) while Luke walked and System floated next to him. The ghost drifted right through trees and bushes, annoying Luke mightily every time he had to force his way through the underbrush. His stats were too high for them to be a real impediment now, but he didn’t care for the idea of walking into the city buck naked after he’d shredded his only set of clothes tromping through the forest.

Despite the terrain, Luke covered ground quickly. Occasionally, he’d have System point out the correct direction and correct course, but with Valtira so far away, he wasn’t too worried about missing it just yet. If he ended up walking an extra five or ten miles because he was too far south or north, it wasn’t the end of the world. Once he finally broke free from the trees, he expected his speed to triple at minimum anyway.

Day turned to night, and Luke was still in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t need much sleep anymore, so he pushed on through and kept walking. Once, he felt something pass nearby, something invisible even to his perception and with so much XP that he could only change course to distance himself further from it.

He never got a good look at it, but it also didn’t seem to care about him, and within a minute, he could no longer feel the creature. It scared the hell out of him though, reminded him that level 21 wasn’t all that impressive in the grand scheme of things. Just because he’d beaten some goblin ass did not make him hot shit.

“System, how high do the levels go?”

“The cap is 100,” System said. “Though, very few creatures actually reach it. Your bloodline allows you to ignore this system limitation.”

“Wait, it does? Why?”

“The cap is artificial, enforced by the system itself. Those who created it did not want anything to rise past level 100, but as a Sysadmin, you are not held to this restriction.”

“Okay, that doesn’t tell me much about why,smell though.”

“I apologize Luke, I-”

“Ugh. Just stop. Stop apologizing all the time. You’ve done it about a thousand times today.”

System must have needed a second to process that. “I understand. I have updated communication protocols to adhere to your instructions.”

“Of course you did. Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How’s our heading looking? Still on track to reach the city?”

“Yes.”

Luke grunted and broke through a set of stubborn branches that didn’t want to bend far enough out of the way. “Great. Any place to sleep nearby?”

“There is a human village about three miles north of here,” System said.

Luke paused, broken branch in his hand, and looked over at System. “There is? Are they going to try to attack me if I go there?”

“I do not know, but the highest level human there is level 15.”

It was weird that System could give him information about whole groups but not individuals, but it was better than getting nothing at all. If the strongest human there was level 15, even if they were combat specialized like him, that was considerably less risky than walking into a whole city.

It would be a good test run to see if he could convincingly act like a native human of Aros. Hopefully nobody would recognize the material of his jeans. He figured it was late and if whoever he ran into didn’t have at least a 20 in perception, they would probably have a hard time seeing fine enough detail to realize the pants weren’t normal.

If he’d been thinking, he’d have stolen those too, but then again, taking a dead man’s trousers was a bit much. Even if they weren’t bloody, some of those bodies had smelled… fragrant. He wasn’t keen on the idea of laundering the shit stains out of them either. No, he’d take his chances with his own jeans until he could find a better replacement.

“Can we switch to [Thalian]?” Luke asked, activating the skill. He was still speaking in English, but something took hold of his mouth. It forced his lips and tongue into the shape needed to speak an unintelligible string of sounds, sounds that he somehow knew were what he was trying to say.

“You are welcome to. I will still be able to understand you,” System said. “I am afraid that only you can hear me, and your mind is automatically processing the communication in the way you would best understand it.”

“Oh, like the bird-man, Kareem?”

“Similar, though on a much more refined level.”

There was some truth in that. Despite Kareem’s efforts, conversation with him had been actively painful. It had been mildly torturous to talk to the bird-man and Luke had wanted nothing more than to end that conversation as quickly as possible. System, by comparison, was so smooth that he hadn’t even realized that it wasn’t speaking out loud. Even now, he couldn’t tell the difference.

Though it was still sometimes mildly torturous to try to talk to System.

“Cool. Glad it doesn’t feel like you’re stabbing pens into my eyeballs every time we talk.” The feeling like something had grabbed hold of his jaw and was twisting it around wasn’t going away. If anything, the opposite was happening. The more he talked, the harder it seemed to twist.

The shit part was that what came out still sounded like English to him, so he didn’t think he could get the hang of the language and speak it on his own just by using the skill either. If he didn’t want it to feel like someone was violating his face every time he talked, he was going to have to put some serious effort into learning to actually speak Thalian.

For now, it would do, but Luke was not alright with the system taking over his mouth like this. He wondered what he’d hear when someone spoke Thalian back to him. He supposed he’d find out soon enough. The village was close now, he was sure.

“Which way is it again?” he asked.

“Over that way. Less than a mile now.”

The forest thinned out the closer he got, until finally he broke free into an open space and found himself near a small field. He circled around it to the road and headed for the center of the village, where he hoped to find someone still awake that could point him towards a motel. Or whatever they called it. At this point, he’d sleep in an alley as long as no one pissed on him to wake him up.

There was one place near the edge of town that still had light coming through the windows. Of course, it was just his luck that it was on the opposite edge of where he’d approached from. It looked like a bar, just judging from what he saw through the open window when he walked by, albeit one lit by candles and lamps and furnished with nothing but hand-carved wooden furniture.

The murmur of conversation died down as he walked by and he saw at least six people’s heads turn to look through the window at him. Luke pulled the cloak tighter around him and made sure it hid the rainbow ring on the breastplate. The door was propped open to let the cool night air in, so he assumed it was fine to walk in.

He smiled. It was a bar. He hadn’t gone into too many of them back on Earth, what with the whole being underage thing, but every now and then Lizzie had dragged him and Curt along. She probably drank more than she should have, but Luke wasn’t going to begrudge her that. After their mom had died, she’d worked harder than anyone to keep the family stable. If she needed to take the edge off every now and then, well, that was just fine.

Her favorite bar was a place off Band Street where she was on a first name basis with the owner. That was enough to get Curt and Luke in with her when necessary, which considering how often Dad worked overtime, was quite a bit. They weren’t supposed to drink, of course, but a few of the bartenders were friendly enough to let him have a bit on the side if the place was empty. Specifically, the bartenders who were trying to get into Lizzie’s pants.

As far as he knew, not a single one had ever succeeded, and if they had, it definitely wasn’t by slipping her little brother the occasional shot of cheap vodka. For all that, he’d spent a lot of hours in bars he was too young to be in, and they were some of his best memories, even if things were a bit fuzzy. He remembered her smile though, and her laughing.

“What can I do for you?” the man behind the bar asked when Luke sat down, not in English. He could hear the words, but it was like someone was translating right over top of them.

“Whatever’s on tap,” he said in Thalian. “Where can I get a bed for the night?”

The bartender gave him a look that told Luke he’d done something weird, or said something weird. “No beds,” the man said slowly. “Town’s too small for that.”

“Ah,” Luke said, trying not to sound too disappointed. “Just a drink then?”

“That I can help you with. No charge.”

“What? No charge? Why not?”

“For a Guardian? I couldn’t. Even a foreign-born one. You’ve given enough for the world, least I can do is give you a drink.”

“Oh.” Luke was confused. It must have shown on his face. The bartender just smiled at him, patted his shoulder, and slid a clay mug in front of him.

He took an experimental sip. It was warmer than he expected, but he supposed he was in a world that didn’t know what refrigeration was. There were some spices in there, not anything he was familiar with, but they gave the drink a kind of lingering heat. “Good,” he said.

“I’m glad you approve, Guardian.”

Whatever that meant. He’d ask System later. Maybe if he was lucky, he’d get an answer. He took another sip, then looked over when a man sat down next to him. He nodded at Luke, then said, “Heard you say you needed a place to stay?”

“Oh, uh, yes.”

“Great. I’m Minou. Let’s talk.”