Time was passing and Ace was getting frustrated. No one besides his core people seemed to realize the situation they were in. Sure, for the moment, everything was fine. In fact, they had decades of safety from anything too outrageous.
But things weren’t going to get easier. It wasn’t even going to stay on an even keel. The world would only get more dangerous. Yet everyone was looking around like they still ruled the planet and laughing at how worried they had been.
Ruled the world? Most people didn’t even leave their starter settlement! His town was still the only official town, despite having so much time. Worse, Jim hadn’t received any news of other places opening up Adventurer’s Guild locations.
Sure, not everyone needed god-like power. Most people can get away with leveling through their profession. But even the gamers and dreamers who felt blessed having found themselves in what was basically a litrpg were slacking! Yeah, a couple kept grinding, but not nearly enough.
Most others couldn’t feel it, but Ace had noticed. The amount of world energy in the atmosphere was rising. Their planet wasn’t destined to be one of those pastoral worlds where regular food was grown for sale off world. It was destined to be an adventurer’s haven. The gathering point of the strong.
For whatever reason, they had “lucked” out and their world was supernaturally active in a way that promises great natural riches paired with equal or greater danger. Ace had even managed to get some opinions from the system shop workers. The worlds energy was rising too quickly and they could feel too much pressure just outside of their senses.
In the normal swing of things, a regular planet would easily support a general population that caps around level 10 to 25 and a few elites around level 500. And that was after the world energy had slowly increased over the entire safety period. It was already dense enough to support everyone being level 10.
In fact, compared to the effort Ace had to go through to reach level 10, others could now reach it easily. Sure, the difficulty to level increases by what feels like a magnitude after that, but level ten was supposed to be the mark of reaching adulthood. Not a month of light effort.
Yes, some of that was the bonuses thrown their way for being newly inducted into the system. Everyone had some retroactive experience trickling in from what they had done up until magic arrived. That doesn’t change that it was coming too quickly.
Some shopkeepers even bandied around stories about hardship worlds where adults were expected to reach 100. The planet wasn’t anywhere near that dire yet. Most guesses place the current adulthood mark being somewhere between 11 and 12. Except this was just shy of a year after magic had arrived!
And it wasn’t like the increase in world energy was slowing down. If anything, the speed of it has only gone up. It wouldn’t be long before just leaving a settlement would be dangerous. Forests certainly already were a problem, if more of a nuisance.
Ace sighed as he read even more reports of stupid, nonsense injuries. It was an honest to whatever God, goddess, demon, or devil you might be praying to at the moment, dungeon! They kill people. So why in all the heavens and hells was there a report on his desk of someone breaking their leg because they had decided to play around on some boulders?
Not only was it shockingly stupid, but shockingly hard to do! Even the most basic of investment into Strength makes bones tough enough that you generally need to try to break them. And here! A report of someone dying to one of the third floor assassin vine? They’re a known quantity at this point and maybe the human race was better…
Ace stops himself and takes a couple steadying breaths. Because no, he wasn’t going down that dark route. Not everyone is destined to be a fighter or mage. Maybe the guy had a hidden talent for farming and they just lost a valuable resource. No wishing death on others just for their stupidity. More than enough people out there had a death wish without him adding to it.
Though not all reports were bad. Most were just boring. They didn’t require it and in fact requested people mostly not, but any team that delves may make a report of their time in the dungeon. This was in hopes of catching if anything changes as had happened a few times.
It was just that most people had bad memories or couldn’t recognize the difference between a legitimate change and randomized herb placement. So many carbon copy reports where someone was surprised that some mint was growing where rosemary had been or similar nonsense. If it wasn’t for the fact that most reports got filtered out before reaching him, there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to fit reading them and everything else.
Though Ace specifically made sure some made it through without being checked. Sometimes problems can crop up if you let middle management handle everything first. Way too many issues in the past could be traced back to some guy trying to hide something or not believing it to be a big enough issue to bother their boss with.
Then, of course, there were the fun reports. For some reason, people liked to record their mistakes. Though Ace had noticed that more than once, the perspective was decidedly from a friend who had watched it happen, instead of the person making the mistake. Ah yes, nothing like embarrassing your friend by reporting their misadventures in writing. Like this one!
[Anyway, Lou and the rest of our team were on the second floor. Easy enough and all that. We’re just a little stuck in that bossy kobold lady at five, otherwise we’d be dining on Prime steak. So yeah, it’s the ramp room and after we get on the second ramp, one of those sharp-faced birds managed to pass us at an angle and fall off the ramp.
Real silly thing that, but it gets better! Lou’s all like, “I think I can kill it with a drop kick!”. Not too out of the ordinary since the guy had a bunch of martial arts lessons or some such. Anyway, we expected him to catch it after it gets back up to us.
Darn fool then throws himself off the side of the cliff! What the what? So we rush over and take a looksee down and what do you know? He managed to land on the bird, sort of. See, he tried to drop kick the birds neck, but you’ll never guess what happened instead!
Hah! Lou misjudged the damn jump and went a little too far. Instead of kicking the neck, he ended up straddling the damned bird’s neck. From the looks of it, he landed crotch first as well!
Boy howdy! The bird was not happy, but ol’ Lou was even less so. Bird starts squawking up a storm and running around erratically. Lou stays on by pure accident at that point.
Fun eventually ends though. Lou sticks his seat long enough to recover, so maybe his claims of rodeo work as a teen aren’t that big of a lie. Anyway, at that point, the fool spends way too much time choking the bird out when he had a damn knife on his belt.
Anyway, he was walking funny after that so we decided to retire for the day. I wonder if he’ll go see the Doc or not? Don’t think he crushed anything down there, but a bruise is going to be a nightmare.]
Ace couldn’t help but shake his head. The only thing that would have made the story better was a video of it. Though it also represented a problem and blessing all in one. People felt like superheroes and so had started to act like it. They believed they could jump off a cliff as tall as a house and drop kick a monster.
This was a problem because most weren’t at that level. Sure, as long as they had any investment into their body stats, it wouldn’t be quite as deadly as it would have been pre-system. Though you could still land wrong and break your neck.
However, it also represented their willingness to try. Ace was currently strong enough that every wall that wasn’t system fortified was more of a suggestion to him than any sort of impediment. Yet many people still treated a log wall like some sort of impenetrable barrier unless you had tools.
A lot of property damage was happening simply because people couldn’t comprehend how strong they were. So the fact was that despite how foolhardy some where, it was nice to see them adapting. Not that the world would remain like one made of paper and wet clay.
The more world energy there was, the tougher materials would get. Even now, a tree harvested would be tougher than the toughest hardwood. Still not enough to keep up with people’s growing strength, mind you. After all, people were taking Paths and leveling up, while the trees were just growing and slowly absorbing power from the environment.
It was kind of funny, in a way. When they first started setting up the town, a lack of housing plagued them. Now? Ace was having his house rebuilt almost every month for one reason or another. He had even gotten it rebuilt simply because it had been more than a month.
This was benefiting a lot of people. The crafters and gathers leveled their skills. Guards made some money protecting the gathers. Ace? Well, he kept getting a nicer and nicer house. The only downside was the lack of a good supply of fabric and stuffing. His body might be tougher, but a soft bed still felt nice.
And that was actually an important detail. The toughness granted by the system wasn’t at the expense of sensitivity. Despite the rough work Ace had been doing and the constant weapon drills, his hands were smooth and soft. No calluses formed and while a regular knife needed a lot of force behind it to cut him, his hands didn’t feel like pieces of wood when others touched them.
If anything, improving the body stats actually could improve those sorts of things. Some even showed a greater compatibility with certain improvements. Though, of course, there are exceptions.
For instance, there were a couple known worshippers of less than savory evil patrons. For them, their looks almost seem to deteriorate by the moment. Not that such a thing was a rule as another went in the opposite direction. And the one lady who managed a Fae patron? Her beauty had become literally otherworldly. Though many were actually pushed away by those looks.
Ace sighs as he remembers some of the folk now living in his town. Despite the so-called religious freedom, so many spouted, when the chips hit the table, you see the truth of the matter. You had the freedom to worship one of the religions they were alright with, though better yet, worship their religion.
While most nearby towns kept to the heart of that statement, though drawing the line against the more evil sorts. Further away from his influence while settlements ended up theocracies. More than one even managed to get pre-system religious leaders into control of the settlements.
While Ace is fully against that sort of thing, he also feels a little burnt out over his own choice. Those worshippers of evil kept a clean enough nose in town, but they didn’t always stay in town. At least they seemed to understand not to do their business nearby. Ace wasn’t going to protect them if a mob showed up with pitchforks and torches to take revenge.
Though he would make sure it didn’t happen in town where his rules held sway. It wouldn’t look all that good letting them mob the man right outside the gate. However, it was likely the best alternative he had.