[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 112: Zuu is the Word

There were few things in the world that Matt enjoyed more than eating. He had been a skinny, malnourished thing growing up on off-brand cup noodles—ramen was far too pricey—with whatever was on sale that week added in for flavor.

Occasionally, Komachi roused and instantly took another bite of the Zuu meat waiting for her, as if she entirely forgot the previous encounter and was consumed by the great fervor for food that all pets seemed to have.

For a while, just a single bite would take Sam’s cat out, and then it was a couple, then a few.

Komachi, clearly, was growing stronger.

Or just more stubborn.

After a while, Raiko returned as well.

Sweating, Kai and Lenal took off, clutching their stomachs.

Matt didn’t stop to ask how they would find the latrine. He needed to keep eating to keep ahead of Sam’s insatiable appetite. Even if it didn’t seem possible, Matt was determined to keep trying.

His morale wavered just a smidge when Raiko joined in eating the roasted Zuu meat. She had the presence of mind to inspect the meat for anything outwardly dangerous, gave the two men a curious look, and then began to eat at a measured pace.

Not this quasi battle to the death Sam and Matt had going on.

No matter how long passed, the food never grew cold.

Eventually, Raiko said, “It’s rather overcooked, isn’t it? And a tad unrefined? I think, we might need a proper Chef among us. The impurities are….”

She keeled over, rendered into a sleeping state similar to Komachi, rather than violently ill like Kai and Lenal.

Matt wasn’t sure what exactly resulted in the difference. It didn’t seem to be Islegardian constitution, because Lenal was from Islegard too.

Though Lenal was an elf, whereas Raiko was human. Or at least, humanish?

That wasn’t the sort of thing you asked a lady, especially one armed at all times.

There were few things in the world that Matt enjoyed more than eating. He had been a skinny, malnourished thing growing up on off-brand cup noodles—ramen was far too pricy—with whatever was on sale that week added in for flavor.

As soon as he got a real job, he treated himself weekly to whatever food he hadn’t tried yet.

There was quite a lot.

But he was a busy, active, and animated person. He never stayed still long, so he never got fat.

As a result, the lean manager could put away enough food that often had his much more rotund bosses and colleagues wondering if he was smuggling it somewhere.

Perhaps in a black hole.

Samuel Hunter had always been on the large size, and Matt had seen him in the break room inhaling his food as if it had personally offended him. Now he was a big man, full of muscle and determination.

The man had the frame of a bodybuilder back on Earth, and likely could have been had things turned out differently for him. Here, on Il’dran, he had the Shard looking out for him.

Diet, while still undoubtedly important, seemed to play less of a role in health and strength than it did on Earth.

For Sam to sustain the bulk he had gained would have had him eating non-stop protein every hour or more. If it was even possible to sustain the muscle he had, that is.

This buffet of monster meat had nothing to do with fitness or real hunger, though.

Matt could recognize the signs of similar childhood poverty, and it persisted in Sam to this day. There was little other reason that the man could attack the freshly roasted Zuu meat with the ferocity of a lion.

Even the stats occasionally awarded were not reason enough to gorge oneself.

There was a deeper reason, Matt was sure.

It was, in effect, free food.

And you never turned your nose up at free food. It was practically ingrained in your DNA as a kid with little enough to eat.

Sam had made it seem like a competition. But the way he was stolidly wiping out their stockpile of food at a pace that even Matt was envious of, the erstwhile store manager could see hints of the man’s past.

It was in the way he practically swallowed the slightly tangy meat while hardly bothering to chew.

The [Roast Zuu] didn’t taste the best. It had an odd, zesty zing to it that had nothing to do with spices. It was, quite unfortunately, all natural.

Matt, stuffed to the gills, leaned back and groaned. The world aside from himself and Sam had faded away.

He had a host of stats gained from the monster meat, which he didn’t experience any ill-effects from because it was technically poisonous.

Humans weren’t meant to eat monster meat. It often tasted bad to discourage this, and for those foolish enough to try anyway… well, just ask Kai or Lenal.

How it wasn’t affecting Sam was concerning.

He certainly had no immunity to poisons that Matt knew, but judging by how he took blows that would have killed Matt, he guessed Sam had a metric ton of HP.

And so, the only logical conclusion was that Vigor had some role to play in resisting the effects of poison. Or at the very least, monster meat.

Matt put his hands up in admitted defeat. They had more [Zuu Meat] than they knew what to do with, and it would still be there tomorrow. He didn’t need to stuff himself to the point of throwing up.

Though he did wonder if he would retain the stat bonuses awarded even if he did. Not that he was brave enough to find out.

Sam looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He wiped the grease from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Giving up so soon?”

“You win, boss,” Matt told him. “Besides, the stat bonuses have all but dried up for me.”

Sam took a long, painful swallow. “Same. At first they were just about every hunk of meat—”

“Then every other, then every third, yeah,” Matt finished the thought.

“I guess that’s one way to stop people from committing genocide on a monster for its meat. Too bad it primarily gave Agility.”

“Probably has something to do with the monster,” Mat guessed. “You know, bird, speed, that sort of thing. All that Wind mana too.”

“I got a couple points of Strength, but it seemed rare.”

“Maybe there’s a cooldown,” Matt thought aloud. “Like, we aren’t meant to gorge ourselves to get levels of stats. Besides, they only came one at a time.”

Sam shrugged. “I’m not going to complain about more stats.”

“And you’re… not experiencing any gastrointestinal distress?”

“Should I be?”

Matt looked over his shoulder at the hill that rose and hid this area from the rest of the Skyshard. He could faintly hear the pained groans of the others. “I think so, yes.”

Komachi woke up, nudged an unconscious Raiko with a paw, then stole the Zuu meat straight out of her limp hands.

Once again, Komachi conked out, paws twitching in the air.

The mimic waited nearby. It hadn’t moved for a while, so maybe it was sleeping. If that was even something mimics did.

“Really wish it gave Experience, though,” Sam said. “Still, not going to complain about 13 Agility and 2 Strength. That’s almost as much as a Swordsman level.”

Matt grinned triumphantly. “Ah, it seems I came out ahead. I got 20 stats total before it started to peter out. Mostly Agility too, but a couple points of Dexterity, Strength, and Vigor even.”

“Only physical stats,” Sam pointed out. He seemed to think about something for a moment, then ate the last piece of [Roasted Zuu] just for the look of it. “Still nothing.”

“You had to try.”

Sam gave him a sly grin. “No use in not. Agility’s something I don’t have nearly enough of either. But it makes me wonder if we killed and harvested something that had… well, magic, if we could eat it and gain magical stats.”

“It is worth trying out,” Matt said. “But I don’t know if a magical… whatever it is we fight, will be edible. I think we found ourselves a happy little accident here in that they are technically birds and therefore mildly edible.”

Sam leaned back and examined his cat. He reached out with great effort and petted her gently. “It’s kind of wild when you think about it.”

“Getting stats from eating? I agree.”

“Not just that,” Sam said. “But that we can get stronger from different things. Some mundane, others not. Just using my new ability got me a Swordsman level. Did you know that could happen?”

This was news to Matt.

“And eating some dangerous food gets us stats as well? Do you know what this means?”

Matt folded his hands over his bulging middle. “That we should be the apex predators here?”

Sam shook his head. “No. That levels aren’t everything. And that they aren’t an accurate gauge of somebody’s power. Think about it. If you can eat some monsters and gain 20 stat points, what would happen if you kept doing that with other monsters?”

“We would have to find them first.”

“Well, sure, but think about it. If you are roughly level 10, you can probably assume that a person has a certain stat threshold, right?”

“With you so far,” Matt said.

“But if they’re eating a whole bunch of monster meat and have 30 or more stats than they should….”

Through the haze of overeating, Matt understood. There were other issues with going purely by levels for another person, such as which level did you judge by?

If somebody had a level 20 Job, but nothing else, then their Legend would be what, level 6? Meanwhile, if a person had a Job, Profession, and Path all at level 20, their Legend would also be level 20.

And yet it seemed whenever he gained Experience, it always based it off his combat Job instead of his Legend. Otherwise, everything he fought would be giving heaps of Experience due to the high disparity between his Legend and the monster’s level.

All this despite the fact that Paths didn’t seem to add quite as many stats—from what he gathered so far—and he hadn’t yet talked to Lenal about what her Profession gave.

Still, Sam had a point. They would need to be careful not to rely on another’s levels as their strength. Then something hit him. “What about your Rank?”

“Come again?”

Matt made a gesture toward him. “You said you hit Copper, right? Maybe that’s what people use for relative power?”

“But that happens when you hit level 20,” Sam said.

“It happened for you at level 20,” Matt told him. “What if it happens later or earlier for others? Maybe it’s a totally different thing for each person based on how currently strong they’re considered. Pass that threshold, and bam, you’re whatever metal.”

Sam didn’t seem to agree if Matt was any judge of his expression, but he said, with rather more tact than Matt would have once thought possible, “You might be right. But the wording of the Ascension message suggested that if all my pillars were the same level, then I would have gotten something better out of the Ascension.”

“Pillars?”

Sam explained his concept about what he dubbed the “pillars of progression” which involved the Job, Path, Profession, and to a degree, the Legend as an overall gauge.

Matt liked the sound of it. “All right, but say you had all that squared away. Maybe you would have hit Copper at level 15 instead of 20?”

Sam opened his mouth to say something, then turned to look at the path leading into the hills. A moment later, Matt saw the reason for it.

But he wondered what kind of senses Sam had to know it was coming before either of them heard or saw it.

A dullahan marched into their camp, carrying a dark feathered monstrous bird with a proud duo of militia mandys in tow.

Whatever that monster was, it wasn’t a Zuu. It resembled a vulture, and a big one at that, which wouldn’t be particularly appetizing to most people.

Matt was different, though.

The dullahan seemed to vaguely look at Sam for instruction as to what to do.

That was odd. Matt had thought they only took orders from Raiko. Was this something to do with Sam’s Sourcestone settling down on her Skyshard?

Every day the man seemed to surprise him, and Matt found himself oddly looking forward to what he would do next.

Matt watched Sam instruct it with a few simple gestures. He turned to Matt and held up the vulture. “Got room for more?”