Chapter 68 (Patreon)

“WHAT?!” Zac immediately jumped to his feet with his axe at the ready, afraid he had fallen into some trap of the demon’s making. He charged up [Chop] to a meter long edge and advanced on Ogras.

“Calm down, calm down!” Ogras screamed and scrambled out of the chair. “The Cosmic Water you have been drinking!”

“You poisoned the pond as well? Why?” Zac glared angrily at the demon, ready to start a war.

“What poisoned? It was poison from the start. Only lunatics drink that stuff raw, it burns your pathways from inside. Haven’t you noticed?” Ogras spat back, and waved his hands.

The trees rustled in the wind and shadows were flickering all over the ground as Zac glared at the demon, but he eventually stopped his advance.

“Explain.” Zac spat out, extremely pissed off that the demon hadn’t mentioned anything about this for the whole duration of their conversation.

“That kind of water can be born in areas where there is extremely dense cosmic energy. It was probably created when The Ruthless Heavens crammed a Nexus Vein into the mountain range.” Ogras hastily explained. “It is pretty rare and very expensive. Normally it’s used as an ingredient in alchemy, but some forces give their death squads some of it to use just in case. It restores your cosmic energy in seconds, but it damages your body and can even kill you.”

“But I feel fine?” Zac said doubtfully.

“You just used some cosmic energy, try restoring it naturally without using any tools” Ogras said as he sighed and sat down in his chair again while he muttered something under his breath.

Too stressed out to care about any glib remark from the demon he unsummoned his enlarged blade and tried to sense the cosmic energy entering his body. He wasn’t a cultivator, but even mortals could naturally restore their cosmic energy as the ambient energy slowly entered their bodies. It was normally a slow but steady stream that entered his body, but now it could barely be called a trickle.

Zac’s face went white and he stared at the demon. He was still suspicious but subconsciously thought the demon told the truth. It took him hours to restore his cosmic energy with a crystal, but it almost happened instantly with the azure water. He hadn’t reflected on it before, but how could there be such a good thing with no side-effect?

“How do I fix this?” Zac asked.

“I’ve heard that there are pills for it, but I don’t know where to get it. It’s extremely rare, because idio… individuals who drinks it almost always dies, you know?” Ogras said. “I think I heard that spending time in energy-rich areas can help your body slowly heal. I’m not sure how much time it takes though. And that is if you still can absorb some energy. If it’s a full stop it’s over for you I’m afraid.”

“What happens if I keep using it? Can’t I just refill my energy with crystals if I can’t naturally absorb energy anymore?”

“You need to heal up your ruined pathways. If you keep cramming energy into your body in your current state, even if it’s from crystals, you will keep getting worse. First it’s natural energy, then it’s crystals. Soon not even the Cosmic Water can restore your energy, and you truly become a cripple until you die of energy starvation. Then what good are you?”

Zac was horrified at that outcome, and quickly unequipped his amulet. The good news was that least his situation wasn’t completely irreversible. But the predicament was extremely troublesome since there was a monster horde incoming. If he wasn’t healed by the time the monsters arrived he would have to fight without using any cosmic energy. If he kept using [Chop] like with the monkeys he’d soon have to use crystals to restore himself. It would be a vicious circle that would end up with him dead.

He swore to do everything that he could to get healed in time, and he needed to go to the mines anyways to reap as much crystals as possible to get Nexus Coins. Zac asked a few more questions of how to improve his recuperation, but Ogras either didn’t know much more or was holding back on him. Zac could only sigh and move to the next subject he needed to know about.

“What are the attribute limits when you’re E-grade race?” He really wanted to know where the limits lay now that he was E-Graded. He didn’t want to lose any more points than he already had. With his Title boosts he had already lost over 10 strength, which by no means was a small amount.

“Attribute cap? Why do you..” Ogras stopped himself and stared blankly at Zac for a few seconds. “You god damn progenitors just makes my teeth itch. And you even got a Fruit of Ascension to save your ass! Just disgusting.”

“Progenitors? What are you talking about?” Zac wondered. Abby had called him a Defier, not a progenitor.

“You first generation cultivators of a baby planet.” Ogras spat out, looking loath to even think about the subject. Zac didn’t feel the need to correct him that he wasn’t a cultivator at the moment, as the demon was starting to work himself up in a huff.

“Haven’t you realized? You have many advantages that your descendants won’t get. The Ruthless Heavens gives you a running start. There are many unique titles, the System crams the planet full of unique treasures, and you even get the Tutorial. It just makes us normal cultivators want to lay down and die of jealousy.”

Ogras looked about ready to explode greed and jealousy as he talked about it. Zac felt he had found his match in his quest for wealth, and he also vowed to never show the demon his Title page. The demon might just fall into apoplectic rage and start swinging that scary spear of darkness after him.

The demon soon found his bearing again and with a cough continued.

“Cough.. In any case, those who manage to grasp a decent number of the limited advantages a new world provides will have a life-long advantage compared to most people in the multi-verse. These individuals are called their planet’s progenitors, as they usually end up creating influential clans or sects on their home planets, on the off-chance they don’t get killed.”

Zac thought that made a lot of sense. So far he had only compared himself with the cultivators and trying to keep a head start. He hadn’t even thought about following generations and how they would grow up in this environment. But it was true, many of the titles he had snatched would probably never appear again on this planet, closing that door for power.

As time progressed most limited titles would be snatched up, leaving only maybe the most obscure and well-hidden ones for future generations. Otherwise they would have to settle for the mediocre non-limited ones, such as the Adventurer-title.

Ogras was a veritable treasure trove of answers after having fumbled about blindly for so long. For example it was very interesting to know that normal cultivators in the multi-verse didn’t get access to the tutorial, making it an even more rare opportunity. Zac kept coming up with various questions that had hounded him and threw them at the demon randomly as he thought of them. The smiling façade of Ogras quickly cracked, and his answers got shorter and more terse, until he slammed his hand on the arm-rest of his chair.

“God damn it! Do I look like a tutorial fairy to you? I’ll be back tomorrow.” He shouted and threw a crystal at Zac who deftly snapped it out of the air. “Read that instead of pestering me.”

“Read? How?” Zac looked confusingly at the crystal in his hand. It looked similar to a Nexus crystal but the color was green like a watered out emerald. It was also covered in intricate fractals in a golden color.

“Just imbue some energy in it.” The demon spat out, still annoyed, and walked toward the edge of the camp. “I’m done answering your inane questions human. Put your energy on survival instead.”

Ogras soon left the camp and afterward disappeared like he had up on the mountain top. There were many question Zac still had, but he had gotten many of the more pressing ones answered. He looked at the crystal in his hand and after a long hesitation poured a miniscule amount of cosmic energy into it.

A prompt similar to the ones the System provided suddenly popped up as the crystal lit up. The design of the window was a bit more intricate though, and covering it was an image of a grand pavilion with a Stargazer floating on top of it. It clearly was a man-made item, and the intricacy made Zac marvel. It was something on a whole other level compared to the cruder enchantments on the demon’s gear pieces.

Soon the image changed, and it turned into what could best be described as a web-page. There were menus with various categories and images. Luckily Zac could understand the content just fine, and was amazed at what was written. The crystal contained a thorough guide of what happened when a world was integrated into the multi-verse.

Granted, it seemed to be written for the invading forces, but still most of the information was very helpful to Zac. But the more he read through the more troubled he became. It became very apparent that the natives were largely discounted, and that the web-page considered the other Incursion forces the largest challenge.

It did mention that there was a small chance of encountering extremely strong forces on an integrated planet, but most civilization couldn’t even be considered F-Graded. From how the text described it Zac knew that Earth’s civilization wasn’t considered anything much, and was not what it meant when it mentioned strong forces.

For normal civilizations like earth’s humans the missive simply stated that enslavement usually was most convenient. It would increase the resources that could be gained in a new planet as manpower usually was limited.

It also listed out the most common tactics of various forces in the multi-verse and Zac was shocked to find out that the demons truly were some of the more decent forces. They usually created a country and entered trade negotiations with surrounding forces, native or foreign, to amass wealth. They did enslave the native populations on their lands though.

But there were many forces that simply eradicated everything and ceaselessly strove to increase its influence until the whole planet was theirs. There were even a force that entered incursions just in order to annihilate the natives, and didn’t care about the resources at all. It was a cult that called itself The Church of Everlasting Dao.

Unfortunately the missive gave no information about the forces themselves so Zac couldn’t find out more about them. But it was clear that almost none of the forces cared an iota about the natives, and only considered newly integrated worlds treasure-troves of wealth.

All in all the crystal was just what Zac needed, and he swore that he’d pester the demon until he handed out more goodies. The crystal said it was the first crystal of two, so hopefully he could annoy another out of the paws of the demon tomorrow.

---------

Author Note: So these last three chapters were first the real dialogue heavy chapters that I've written so far. I'd be happy for some feedback if there is something that looks or feels off.