Chapter 28 – History of Humanity (Patreon)

The days passed. If the school in his first life had been annoying, then being taught to read again, and to be forced, at the mental age of over sixty, to pretend to enjoy picture books, was agonising.

The rest of his life had improved. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but Bir and Pa had, with only a little prompting from him, moved away from playing figurines, spying, or bubbles. Basically, they abandoned everything he had hated and were now throwing themselves into more active pursuits. Yes, they were still kids - they ran, laughed, and had heaps of inane conversations - but usually while doing something physical.

Pa was obsessed with the obstacle course, while Bir was happy for an excuse to test fate in a dangerous environment. She loved the safety it provided. It could save her from herself, and she was taking full advantage of that. She was continuously attempting ridiculous feats of agility, like leaping onto a spinning obstacle and holding on until she slipped, so that she landed on top of another rapidly moving tree trunk arm. That, in turn, would have the effect of propelling her up to the destination she was aiming for. It was absolutely ridiculous. It was the type of challenge attempts that Tom, with the extra strategic planning of his adult mind, would have considered impossible – unless, of course, he supplemented himself with fate as well, and he wasn’t going to spend that precious resource on something so mundane.

He was glad, though, that Bir was using fate for a positive purpose rather than on pranks.

The reasons for the shift in their behaviour didn’t matter. The result made his days far more tolerable, because, excluding lessons, they were better now. He winced as he remembered reading practice from earlier. He had been forced to pretend to be unable to read, the cat sat on a mat while there was a picture of exactly that right next to it. Others had struggled through similar pages, so he had to pretend to do the same. 

Dimitri rapped his hand on the desk. Tom jumped slightly and focused on him.

“As I was explaining, we will be starting formal physical activities in cohort from next week. Morning session will go from two hours to three. Now, today we’re going to learn about...” He paused what he was saying to write ‘Key Events’ on the board.

Tom looked blankly at the words along with everyone else and tried to act like he couldn’t read them. Inside, he was secretly jumping up and down in excitement. This was the information he needed, especially as it had the potential to affect his build.

“I’m going to describe all major events of the last fifty years.” Dimitri finished and smiled at the class. “A lot has happened, but these are the important parts.”

He scribbled on the board, even though no one in the class could officially read. There was no hidden information in what he wrote for reincarnators either, so he figured Dimitri must be doing it because of habit. Probably learned it while teaching slightly older kids.

“Event one was the Champion Race Trials. The champion teams of humanity were presented with the opportunity to enter a trial. Four teams adding to thirty-two people in each of the three trials. It was a mixed quest, puzzle, and combat trial with a race through zones to reach the centre. Or, at least, that was official description. Unofficially, they were a trap set by dragons, insects and giants for other four races. Everyone died in one, and less than fifty percent survived in the other two. Overall, two thirds perished. To illustrate that point, if this class went into the trial then all of you to right of here,” he indicated most of the people in the room. “Would have been killed.”

There were gasps from everywhere.

“I suspect, even if given odds of survival before start, all those champions would still have volunteered.”

Dimitri was not wrong. His group had known the likely mortality because of an oracle question and entered anyway. Even if it was certain death, Tom would have gone in, if the reward justified his early removal from the competition. He was pretty sure everyone else would have done the same.

“Yes, death ratio’s was high, but it was worth it. Survivors jumped thirty ranks. That was them getting the benefit equivalent of four-to-eight years of grinding in six months. It was very much worth it. Those with boosted rank saved ten times as many lives as were lost in the trial, a number of humans groups would have been lost completely if those champions hadn’t been there to save them. Despite everything, it was considered a positive for humanity. Am I boring you, Bir?”

Next to him, Bir jumped in her seat and pretended to be alert. Tom tried not to laugh at her as she was shaking her head vigorously like it would make up for basically falling asleep. Dimitri stared her down until she flushed and lowered her head with red cheeks. Tom spotted the small smile on the volunteer’s lips.   

“The benefit to communities was important, but the greatest success were the survivors from the true trial of champions. The primary trial, so to speak.  They chose not to go back to their communities, but undertook a quest. It is said they it got from DEUS.”

Tom wanted to jump up and dispute that. That was his idea, not a quest from DEUS!

“We don’t know what they did. They’ve never provided an account, written or otherwise. We’ve learnt a lot. They revealed how the trial was a trap. They gave details of our competitor species, and said they were on a quest, and from gaps in those earlier letters, they may have tried to communicate more and were stopped.”

“How?”

Dimitri stared at the boy who had asked the question:

“At that point, humans lived in small, isolated villages. We could only send messages through auction house, and it’s since been proven some ideas and concepts can’t be sent through it. We suspect, but can’t confirm, that their plan was one of those forbidden topics. Four years later, every human received a series of notifications that they had earned forty million ranking points along with additions to human racial trait. They are why we’re still in the running for top four. Those racial trait changes have kept us in touch with dragons.”

“What did they do?” the same boy as earlier asked.

Dimitri shrugged. “None of them speak of it. Keikain, a priest of DEUS, is only one who even acknowledges being part of that group and he only says that they were guided by DEUS.” The big man frowned. “That’s what he says, but he’s a priest and they’re all fanatical, so we can’t trust that explanation.”

Tom snorted in laughter and barely turned it into a coughing fit before anyone noticed. Keikain fanatical? Tom wasn’t sure Dimitri could have come up with a worse description. After the choice he made, while he thought he was being guided by DEUS, Keikain was anything but devout. Him becoming a priest was purely a transactional decision. Tom knew that was a fact, because he had been there when their group had made it.

“What did they do to get the trait?” the same boy as earlier repeated.

“Do? Um… At the time we didn’t know, but we now understand what is required to receive a racial trait and it’s…” Dimitri frowned. “Let’s just say it’s not pleasant. They don’t talk about it for a reason, and given what they brought humanity, none of us pry.”

The lecture switched to the next event, and while Tom still listened, he tuned out slightly. Cam, he discovered, had fought a ten-year war against an aggressive tentacled monster that lived in shallow swamps and eventually eradicated them by diverting a river. Without the water flowing into their breeding ground, they had died off.

The lecturer finished, and Tom repeated his routine.

The next day, Dimitri once again took the second educational block.  “Once more, we are going to continue with the theme of history. This time, I’m covering the human timelines.”

He only got through the first five years of humans in Existentia, but successfully, in Tom’s opinion, conveyed the struggle of the period: the lack of a home base, the forced nomadic lifestyle, being driven into becoming raiders to get food for those on the edge of civilised land and scavengers for those who weren’t. The next day he took up the timeline from where he had finished previously. In total it was a full week of lectures to cover the fifty years.

The caretaker basically broke it down into distinct periods: desperate survival and exploration that lasted seven years, internal trade routes for another five, then the start of town and tribe consolidation, the assassins, then the creation of an organised adventuring guild that supported trial farming, and then, in the last fifteen years a switch to include environmental engineering to let them have a larger impact on the fabric of Existentia. Of those, Cam had been the most successful, but he was not the only one.

“Are environmental disasters good?” The usual chatty boy asked.

Dimitri thought about it:

“Creating them deliberately is an uncomfortable concept for lots of people from earth. However, they have been useful, and there are five or six multi-decade efforts that might have a massive impact.” The big man was grinning and responding enthusiastically. This was clearly a topic close to his hand. “I consulted on one. We’ve built a gigantic dam that we’ll unleash on Adoalac Lands. They’re a terror race. The dam is nestled between mountains. We’ve constructed a wall to block a massive river. The construction is six kilometres long and half a kilometre high. Every earth mage we had was brought into help. It’s hard to imagine how big it is but it was damning a massive river and its going to take thirty years to fill up and then we’re going to destroy them.”

He smiled happily:

“It’s these projects that make me think the human position on the ladder is not as bad as the raw numbers imply. That dam, with some coordination with nearby civilisations, should allow us to eradicate the Adoalac.”

Dimitri went back to his planned lecture. In the afternoon, Tom reported to the clean isolation room when it was confirmed it was secured. He grabbed the bottle that he was going to use.

Quitona Venom – Tier 0

Causes intense pain in a localised area. Doubles the area affected every fifty minutes. Non-lethal.

He licked his lips.

This was more powerful than anything he had injected to date, and he hoped the extra challenge it presented would help him merge the two spells together.

Carefully, he used the syringe to extract the recommended dose of ten micro litres and then increased it to twenty – the more the better. Then he injected it into his forearm.

Immediately it felt as if he was holding a red hot poker against his skin, but the intense burning pain did not reduce. It was a magical pain that defied common sense. Even while he was holding the arm still, it waned and intensified in waves that defied any attempt to get used to. Basically, it performed as expected, and time would not dilute its impact.

“Please, work!”

If his barrier attempt failed, then his entire arm was shortly going to feel like it was being continuously dunked in boiling oil. His eyes flicked to the healing crystal. It would help, but he had already determined that while it was good at bones and flesh wounds, its ability to purge nonlethal substances was sub-standard.

“You’ve got this.” He told himself and the radiating pain from the tiny spot on his arm reminded him he didn’t have a choice.

He was committed to the attempt.

Tom wanted Skin Wall to evolve with a sideways evolution. He needed that to happen, and he knew how close the manually constructed spell forms were to reaching perfection and granting him the system-assisted spell. Earlier today, when he was practicing, the spell forms had combined so well that he had been worried that it would be considered to be perfect, trigger the granting of the spell, and in doing so neuter his chances to get a sideways evolution.  

He didn't know the percentages, but his gut told him that when an intent to create a sideways evolution with fate was active, the success would be of a magnitude more likely to achieve that aim as opposed to relying only on the title. The title's wording suggested to him a three to four percent chance with each merge or evolution to a higher tier skill, but with fate he thought he could probably boost that to one in three.

Being successful at a practice cast was wasteful. 

Having formed a strong mental image of his needs, he emptied his entire fate pool and then mentally rehearsed what he planned to do. The healing domain pages were on the ground in front of him, open on the wireframe diagrams of the spell he aimed to generate. He compared his memory to the paper. There were no differences.

Then he looked at the tiny spot on his arm that was generating such powerful waves of pain. The two spell forms that he wanted to join were created next to each other over the spot. Then, with his mind, he forced them into the same space. He was well practiced in the process, and flexed his will to merge lines - or to keep them apart - as the diagrams required. Then, in meticulous detail, he went over the partially-merged spell forms and compared them to the paper in front of him.

The waves of agony from an area no bigger than a needle point helped him focus. The spell formed, and he pushed it to surround the spot. Cells from the skin expanded downwards, linked together to create a seal and trap the venom.

The pain stopped. Simultaneously, he heard a ding.

He smiled, while maintaining his focus on what he was doing. A miniature scab had appeared, and with a sharp knife, he flicked it out of himself. It was a cylinder, twice as deep as it was wide, and it left a small hole in his arm, one around the size of a grain of rice.

It had dinged! Even as it started to bleed, he grinned. It had dinged, and now the only thing left was to confirm whether the sideways evolution had happened as he hoped. He slapped his hand on the healing crystal. Its energies flowed, and the wound disappeared without a trace of pain. The venom he had injected had been trapped and expelled. 

Excitedly, he used the ritual to check what he had received. The screen updated almost immediately.

Spell: Skin Wall

Skin cells can be attuned and used to grow a barrier to trap venoms, poisons, curses, and foreign energy.

Sideways Evolution 1: Skin wall can block foreign substances a full tier higher than proficiency and energy invested in the spell would usually allow.

“Yes!” he exclaimed as he jumped up and down. “Yes! It did it.” 

It had worked, and better than he had expected.

Tom reread the wording of the evolutions. It was a cracker, and far more powerful than the other one he had received. Unlike that one, this was not a niche ability – rather, it applied to the core of the spell.  Every time he used Skin Wall it would be triggered. While the evolution would do nothing to reduce the cost of cell growth, that was only half of the spell’s equation. What this extra ability did was to lower the energy requirement needed to get the converted cells to resist whatever was being trapped. The effect would be material. Instead of needing ten layers of reinforced cells to contain something, he might only require three. When the solution was to reinforce the cells directly in those cases, then, rather than ten mana, only two might be needed.

It was particularly valuable when he was fighting enemies of a higher rank than him. For them, most of the cost of negating their venom was on this reinforcement, not growth. And Tom wasn’t delusional. He would always be fighting things stronger than him. Given how experience worked, it was the only way to grow his strength fast enough.

“The evolution’s so good,” he whispered to himself. Tier-adjusted, it was probably the best he had ever gotten. He wanted to tell someone and celebrate, but he realised there was no one around to share the news with. His time in Existentia had gotten him used to company once more, and, despite being surrounded by people, admittedly mostly young ones, he was lonely. He had no companions to confide in, celebrate and grow stronger with.

Well, there was April, but confiding in a million-year-old trial spirit was not the same.

He needed companions and friends. Unfortunately, he was not sure how to find them, given the restrictions he was under. Some of his excitement faded.

Frowning, he returned to training and, still sad, fell asleep. Progress was frustratingly slow.