Sponsored Apocalypse, ch 29

As I was moving back the way i’d just came I got yet another level up notification.  Geeze, I thought.  Bacon is really going crazy.

I was currently level 34.

And suddenly, there was a new system notification that flashed across my vision:

[New title achieved: Goblin Vanquisher]

You are responsible for the eradication of an absolutely astonishing number of goblins in a very short amount of time. After your world’s integration, you were responsible for the extinction of 99% of goblinoinds in your general area.  Goblins everywhere now will have nightmares about you and your oblivion hound.  You have become a mythical monster to all goblin-kind, and will haunt the collective goblin consciousness. There is no possible way for goblins to hate or fear you any more now than they already do.

I blinked.  What the hell?

Then I drilled down into that particular title to see what, if anything, it conferred.  Sure enough I got something.  I’d received another reward random skill, same as I’d had when this system first came to Earth.

Okay, that's cool. Now I knew if I got various titles I could even be rewarded with a random .

Since all the goblins in the area were gone now and he’d basically completed his mission, I decided to summon Bacon back into my soul.  Distance didn’t matter, so a few moments later I felt my hard-working oblivion hound nestled in the back of my undermind.  But when I summoned him a few heartbeats later he looked different.

“Bacon, you grew!”  My sinster-cute little murder machine was not little anymore.  Now he was like two mastiffs put together.  His sharper and more disturbing features were more pronounced.  He also somehow looked bone tired.

The hound sat and looked at me in the eyes.  Through our bond I felt the same deep weariness that I could actually see.  I suddenly got a notification.

[Your familiar is exhausted and must rest.  He needs to regain energy while being stored.  “Bacon” must return to your soul storage within the next hour or he might suffer harm.]

“Bacon, are you tired, buddy?”  The hound slowly wagged his tail.  “Well, you did a great job!  You killed so many goblins, I think you cleared out the area!  You’re a good boy.  Good boy!”  The tail wagged faster and began thumping the ground.  Now he had so much power, it sounded like someone hitting the ground with a baseball bat with all of their strength, but rapid fire.

The oblivion hound would be able to tear through the quartet of newbie adventurers I’d met earlier like wet toilet paper.  I could feel it now.  In fact, the hound might be one of the most dangerous creatures in this entire area.

Bacon was tired, but I didn’t dismiss him right away.  I’d been thinking about something I needed to test.

[Built Different] has saved my life multiple times, and I really needed to know how it worked better.  What Nate and his crew seemed to understand some things about the system better than I did.

Even as I was contemplating how to test a theory I had, I suddenly got two more system notifications.

[Your access to the Eternal Struggle Reward System has been established!]

Congratulations!

I remembered Aldina talking about the Eternal Struggle Reward system.  So I briefly opened up the new menu to glance at it.  The two things that stood out were how complex it looked, and that I had zero points to spend in it.  I saw a big, fat “0” in the available resources and closed it.  Taking time to understand a system I couldn’t even use yet didn’t make sense to me.

The second system notification made me grin.

[Free Skill Voucher at 20] has been unlocked!

“Better late than never,” I muttered.  I’d noticed how even after hitting 20, my stat sheet had still listed my boon in a “locked.” status.

Now under Boons in my stats page, I saw two entries:

[Free Skill Voucher at 20]

[Free Skill Voucher, Goblin Vanquisher]

Very, very cool, I thought.  Something tickled my memory.  Wasn’t I supposed to get a class at 20, too?  Maybe it got delayed like this skill voucher unlock…  Too bad there wasn’t an apocalypse help line or something.  Wishful thinking.

Then I got back to what I’d been considering before.  Bacon was looking more exhausted by the second.

“Just hold on, Bacon,” I said.  “Sorry to keep you out longer but this is probably important.”  The hound watched in confusing as I took out the multitool knife I’d been carrying around and cut myself deeply on the arm.  However my toughness worked, it didn’t seem to apply to me because my skin offered little resistance to the sharp blade.

[You are Bleeding]

Blood began to drip, drip, drip, on the ground.  Bacon cocked his head and looked concerned.

A sudden new notification startled me.  [Class Delayed. History being reviewed.  Class options being reviewed.]

“Did it just read my mind?” I asked out loud.  “Was that a half assed apology?”  I shook my head and dismissed the notification.  There was nothing I could do about it now, and I was steadily watering the ground with my blood.

I cleared my throat and as loudly as I dared, I announced, “My familiar and I are engaging in serious combat!”  I winked at Bacon but the hound didn’t react at all.  My brain spun as I tried to think of ways I could warn my familiar without contradicting myself from the perspective of the system.  Finally, I came up with, “Bacon, dodge this if you can!”  He still seemed not to understand and I said, “We are fighting!  Dodge this attack if you can!”

Then I sprang forward and tried to whack the hound in the head with my shovel.  Just like when Nate had swung a bat at my head, I didn’t put everything into it but still gave it some power.  Luckily, Bacon jumped back in time, but the hound looked incredibly wounded, like his heart was breaking.

I got the system notification I’d been hoping for.

[<Built Different> has activated. Debuff: Bleeding canceled.]

“Yes,” I hissed.  Then I announced, “My familiar and I are no longer fighting!  Our differences have been settled!”  I projected care and concern and apology through our bond, then enveloped Bacon in a hug.  “Thanks for playing along, buddy.  You can rest now.”

The terrifying hell creature butted his heavy head against my chest, accepting my apology, and

disappeared.I felt him returned to my soul.

Now if I thought about Bacon, I could see a countdown timer, basically a red line divided into countless segments.  As I watched one teeny tiny segment disappeared.  I had no idea how long it would actually take for Bacon to be ready to come out again.  It looked like a solid amount of time.

Figures, I thought.  Using Bacon to farm XP was honestly already kind of a bullshit a loophole.  If I could have used that exploit indefinitely it would be so broken that the gods would have probably stepped in and fixed it.  I had to imagine the system was already old, ancient, and the gods even messed with each others’ systems and.

Everything I’d seen so far about this messed up new world actually suggested there was some type of balance in play.  Pros and cons.  Maybe, somebody like me with a powerful familiar was able to use him to farm XP because if I did, he’d always be tired and might not be able to actually fight with me and help save my life.  There would always be an element of risk using Bacon to just hunt for me.  In fact,  I still felt a little clever for figuring out the loophole, but I kind of wished I knew that known about the downsides ahead of time.

Now that Bacon was settled and resting, I looked at my character sheet to see how many points I had.

Level 34. Holy crap. That was truly a lot of dead goblins. That gave me 9 upgrade points. And I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to use them yet. I was of two minds. There was definitely power in skills and abilities. But there was also power in raw stats. I felt like my stats were lacking but I had way more skills than the guys that I talked to back closer to town.

However, they were probably more representative of average or slightly above average fighters right now. That wasn’t good enough for me, I’d already made that decision.  If I settled for average I wasn't going to accomplish anything I decided I wanted to do…like spit in something’s eyes at the top I probably shouldn’t.

I needed more power.

With that in mind, I skimmed all of my abilities and decided if I should buy anything or not.  My eyes kept being drawn to more skills that would make me tougher.

In most cases, the costs were prohibitive.

I knew that [Built Different] could protect me from all sorts of status effects during combat. However, I knew there were very powerful magic users in the universe, hell I’d already met one.  And Aldina was still low level just like me.

If somebody could pop me like a bubble, all of my durability against regular weapons wouldn't matter. I definitely needed some sort of magical resistance. Luckily, there was a really good skill tree that I could invest in towards that goal.  Actually there were several, but one upgrade chain stood out.

The very first entry into the best magic resistance skill tree I found would require eight endurance to begin with and was called [Basic Magic Resistance.]  It would cost five points.

Damn. It was really expensive.  I kept going back and forth about it.  On top of everything else, after reading more about it, it was scaled off of Endurance but also Willpower. So far most of my abilities relied on my high Endurance.  But if I got this one, I’d have another stat to focus on.  If anything, this was all really driving home how important stats were.

Finally, I made up my mind.  I spent the five points, gritting my teeth while I did so. But once that was done, and once the skill settled into my bones, satisfaction followed.  In fact, I felt

some tingles of greed.

I needed more skill points, more ways to improve myself. Getting stronger was as addictive as it was necessary.  Even after everything I'd been through, I didn't have enough.

Now that Bacon was sleeping it’d be really hard to raise my level.  I needed stronger monsters.  Luckily, I'd spotted just the right buffet of experience on the way to the road where I talked to survivors before.

The fact I could exterminate some more monsters that otherwise would be murdering people was some very sweet icing on the cat.

And with that thought in mind I took off towards where I'd seen the aquatic kobolds before.  I didn’t follow the roads–too dangerous.  There were still plenty of gunshots splitting the night and also signs of recent monsters activity.  I wasn’t super afraid of what I’d run into, but there were still dangers.  The entire world was a warzone now.

It felt like every half hour I was appreciating my improved eyesight all over again.  Being able to see at night like a cat was a game changer.

As I skulked through the trees near a road, I thought about what I learned from the survivors, Nat’s group. The man with the shotgun in particular, Pete, had been able to enchant individual bullets.

I looked down at my HK  on my hip and I wondered to myself if such a thing would be possible with my pistol.  Honestly, I had no reason to think otherwise but at the same time, I didn't exactly want to willy-nilly experiment with it. Resources were low.  I was running short on ammo and some of my abilities had a limited number of activations. Wasting them, especially when I was headed into combat, seemed pretty stupid.

“Shit,” I whispered and facepalmed.  It was also pretty stupid not to use my free skill rolls.  After a quick glance around to get my bearings, I headed towards a dark and deserted park.  Then I found a tennis court to one side.  There was some dirt work being done nearby, right outside the fence of the tennis court.  I did a quick search around to make sure there were no people or monsters nearby. Then I hunkered down near the dirt.

Where I was I could spot anything coming from a decent distance, but I also had the big pile of dirt to scamper over and hide behind if I needed to.  It was perfect.

Settled in, relatively safe for a few minutes, I got into my menus to see what kind of skills I was going to draw.