Chapter 18: System Points
I opened the status screen.
[ASH ROWAN]
[Class: Physical Enhancement]
[SP: 50]
[Rank: C]
[Strength: 90] [Agility: 60] [Stamina: 59] [Mana: 60]
[Skills: Afterimage Step (A) | Tempered Channels (D) | Buddha’s Palm (C)]
[Inventory: Core Improving Pill]
I let out a low whistle.
My core promotion had pushed every stat up across the board. Strength ninety, agility and stamina hovering at sixty, and the mana number had finally caught up to the rest after the +10 reward from the hospital quest.
The SP line was new.
I tapped it.
[SYSTEM POINTS (SP)]
[SP are earned by killing creatures. The number varies based on the strength differential between host and victim. Bonus SP awarded for stronger beasts]
[Spend SP on:]
[ → Golden Choice (1,000 SP) — Upgrades the next Choice screen to a Golden tier. Golden Choices contain at least one B-rank or higher reward. Available once a day.]
[ → Reroll Choice (200 SP) — Replaces the current Choice options with a new set of the same tier.]
I read it twice.
A Golden Choice provided B-rank or higher rewards.
A thousand points was a hundred kills. Or fewer, if the bonus conditions stacked.
But there was an issue, if a Golden Choice was the only way to get B-rank or higher rewards, that meant normal Choices were capped at C-rank.
Everything I’d been pulling out of the System so far had been C-rank or below. The pill, the storage ring, the core promotion, Buddha’s Palm. All of it was C-rank tier or under, except for Afterimage Step, sitting at A-Rank.
"So how did I get the Afterimage Step skill?"
I tried asking the system but unfortunately, I received no answer.
A soft exhale escaped my mouth.
The only theory I could come up with is that the system rewarded me with an A-Rank for my first skill. The System had set me up with a starter skill I wasn’t supposed to be able to earn through normal choices.
Closing the status screen, I began to move towards the five beast corpses.
Before moving deeper, I decided to store them all.
Crouching beside the first beast, I opened my storage ring, and the body dissolved into the ring’s pocket dimension with a small flicker of pale light. The second went in the same way. Then the third. The one Buddha’s Palm had pasted against the wall came last.
Five beast corpses in my pocket.
A man in poverty couldn’t let good money walk away. E-rank beast cores went for around fifteen thousand each on the open market, more if the merchant felt generous, and the pelts and fangs added a few thousand on top of that.
Five clean kills was a month of rent for an apartment in the academy district. Not life-changing money. Not nothing either, especially as a young adult growing up.
The path through the cavern bent further left, the bioluminescent flowers thinning along the walls as I moved deeper. The light went from the steady soft-blue patches near the entrance to scattered single blooms in stretches of dim grey.
Three more groups found me before I found the boss.
The first was three beasts in a side passage off the main path. I broke the lead one’s neck with a single shoulder check, kicked the second one into a wall hard enough to crater its ribcage, and the third I caught by the throat mid-leap and slammed into the dirt. The whole exchange took less than thirty seconds.
[+30 SP]
The second group was four, waiting in a narrow chokepoint where the path passed under a low arch of rock.
They’d picked the spot for ambush. They hadn’t counted on a target that closed the distance faster than they could turn around. I dropped the first one before its pack-mates realized I’d entered the chamber. The other three died in roughly the same order, the same way, my fists doing the work my skills hadn’t needed to.
[+40 SP]
Seven more corpses went into the storage ring.
I dealt with the third group shortly after, it was a small pack of three. My SP counter ticked up to one hundred fifty.
"Not bad."
I rolled my shoulder and kept moving.
The path opened.
The cavern ahead widened into a chamber that dwarfed everything I’d walked through so far. The ceiling went up high. The walls curved out in a rough circle, the bioluminescent flowers growing thicker here, ringing the chamber in a soft blue light that pooled toward the center.
In the center of the chamber, something was sleeping.
It lay on its side in a shallow basin of packed dirt, three times the size of the beasts I’d been killing for the past hour or so.
Its fur was the same deep black, but thicker, with a heavier mane around its shoulders that rose and fell with each slow breath. Its head was the size of a small car. The claws on its forepaws were the length of my forearm, curved and yellowed at the tips.
’The gate boss.’
I stopped at the edge of the chamber and watched it breathe.
The beast’s yellow, slut pupils snapped open.
They were bigger than my fist.
Its nose scrunched once, then twice, the nostrils flaring as it pulled the air in deep. Whatever it smelled, it didn’t like. Its head lifted off the dirt.
It didn’t take long for the beast to find me at the edge of the chamber.
Its lips peeled back from the teeth, and the teeth were a problem. Each fang was the length of a kitchen knife. The two upper canines hung below the line of the lower jaw even with the mouth closed, the way a sabertooth’s would, and when the jaw opened the rest of the row came into view in a clean white arc.
The beast pushed up off the dirt.
Its shoulders cleared four meters at the high point. The claws on its forepaws sank into the packed dirt of the basin as it took the weight. The mane along its neck and spine was fully raised now, doubling the apparent size of the front half of its body.
It stared at me in pure rage.
I lifted my hand and waved at it.
"Good morning, sunshine." My smile twitched at the corner. "Hope you had a good sleep."
The beast’s growl started somewhere deep in its chest, a low bass rumble that I felt in my stomach before I heard in my ears.
The beast took one slow step forward.
Then it charged towards me.
