Chapter 381: Season of Dreams
Students slowly started to leave; it was cool to see how everyone just left to go to Wonderland, where they would live for three whole months... maybe he should have paid more attention to the survival class he always skipped; maybe he would have learned to swim.
Enough jokes; surviving in the wilds for him... wasn’t that big of a thing, after all; he had done it in Demon of Dread.
Though it did make him wonder... what type of book was he going to look for... As a Reader, he had challenged some easy books with his master, Reader Fragments, but after her, He had gone for a Reader godspawn and a Reader Titan, two books no Reader would ever enter alone. Two books that make no sense.
For most books above your rank, going inside alone is a dead wish, and it only gets worse if you continue; you might even need someone with a higher class to stand a chance.
After all... when it comes to enemies, the class doesn’t matter; it’s the same for all.
A Fragment book will never have a Seeker, never, nor will Echo. Any Fragment book is a walk in the park when it comes to enemies; they are mostly puzzles or stuff like that that get harder with the class. Echoes might have some powerful monsters... if you are a Reader that is. And either way, he was confident that he might have been able to take some on. You could see a Reader Beast inside. But a Beast-rank book, it’s where things get hard... For Readers, yet again, you will probably meet a Titan once, a Reader Titan, and maybe, maybe, a Seeker Fragment.
With a monster rank, you should get used to some Seekers, since you will see them- the most you will see- and pretty rare, will probably be the most times a Seeker Beast... So it was a good rank for him; after all, he was also a Beast... but he was special; he doubted anyone had his rank when they awakened as a Seeker. After all, Lilith was close to a Bearer, and he too only recently became a Beast rank.
Demon rank: this is pretty hard for most; if he had to say, Bearers usually go for this rank, since you will see a lot of Seekers, which don’t help them, but they also see some Bearers, not strong ones, but strong enough.
In a Devil book, you will see Bearers; it’s impossible not to, really. And pretty strong ones. The difficulty really rises with this one.
But not as much as it does with Titans. After all... you have to understand, Godspawn and God books are unheard of, so Titan is the highest awakened can challenge. You can find Harbingers, and some extremely strong ones, after all. In Demon of Dread, a Titan-rank book, he himself had fought a Harbinger Titan in the Tides.
They can be found, but you have to search for them; this way, Harbingers aren’t stuck grinding lower ranks.
After all, once you reach Harbinger, you only get two shards from a Harbinger Fragment, and you need a lot of shards, so the multiplier of the rank matters a heck of a lot. After all, to get to Titan, you need six hundred shards. As a Reader, if you farm Breaker Godspawns, you will only need to kill around twenty-three.
But... that’s just not possible...
For a Harbinger to get to the Titan rank, just to ascend from Devil to Titan, if you kill the most powerful enemy over and over again, you will need to do it more than four hundred times.
But that was what he liked about the Codex... it wasn’t a walk in the park to rank up. Sure, he had gotten a good rank already, way too good for his class, but that’s because he had gotten lucky and had help from two Gods. In Frozen Crown, Praise, and Demon of Dread the Abyss.
It was fair; the Codex didn’t want you getting to a Harbinger and just farming weak monsters... even if it made the late game hard. It wanted the user to farm shards all the time, to put in the work; it’s never supposed to be easy. And if you climb too fast, without ranking up, you will regret it.
That’s why most don’t rush to ascend in Class, and instead stay at Enlightenment, when they are strongest and get shards.
It also forces, with time, the awakened to challenge stronger books instead of doing the weakest over and over again.
If you were to just ascend in class, sure for a lot of time you would be stronger than a person who decided to grind his rank, but ascension isn’t infinite, you will get stuck at Harbinger, unless you somehow find your truth and get the authority to become a Breaker through the trial, but lets be honest, that isn’t happening, there a reason why there are so little, and why there hasn’t been a new one in ages. So when the person who grinds reaches your level, he will be much stronger than you are, and it will take you a lot more time to rise in class than it had taken him.
And let’s say you never ranked up, and you’re still a Harbinger Reader... you won’t be able to face the stronger Harbingers, so you might need to farm a lot of Harbinger Fragments. And when I say a lot, I mean it. After all, just to rank up to echo, that’s five hundred enemies...
...
But he was rambling too much; after all, he hadn’t even finished his question. Now knowing all of this, what book should he go for? The season was long; they had three whole months, and it wasn’t like he needed to reach Enlightenment by then, so they could go for some books with easy monsters... but at the same time, he really didn’t go for an easy one. He didn’t need to, but he wanted to get some shards also; sure, he could just reach Enlightenment and farm there, after all, at that point he could probably take on some Seeker Demons by himself... At his current strength, though, he had to be careful; usually after awakening, when your sync is at one, you can take on Seekers you rank, or one above at most. And that is a hard battle. But with sync raising, it becomes easier, a lot easier.
...
No, he can say, when he reached Enlightenment, with him already being a Beast, he could definitely kill some Demons and Devils... maybe, but this would be a hard fight; he could go as far as to say he could maybe kill some Bearer Fragments, but it would definitely be a hard fight, and it’s actually not worth it, since ironically, a Seeker Titan gives more than a Bearer Fragment. Sync matters a lot.
It may be better to kill a lot of Seeker Fragments, since at Enlightment they are quite an easy job.
...
If he had to say, around a monster, demon rank would be good for the book they challenge.
’Alright now let’s-’ Aether suddenly felt a punch to his shoulder. He staggered in surprise, as he gripped his shoulder, turning to Sena, who looked really mad. "What the heck was that for?"
She frowned. "What was it for? You spaced out for like almost ten minutes now; everyone already left, we were the only ones left. I tried calling out to you, but you just stood still, as if you had lost your mind or something."
Aether blinked twice. ’Huh... didn’t expect to get so caught up in my own thoughts.’
Aether laughed, embarrassed. "Sorry... I was just... thinking..."
Sena sighed; they had already wasted enough time. She wasn’t going to let even more pass and at the same time, waste her breath on it. "It’s fine, let’s just go already."
She smiled, almost like a switch had flipped and she was back to normal. "Come on, let’s go. Do we enter through you or me?"
Aether tilted his head, confused... did it matter? I mean, entering Wonderland with someone was probably the same, holding hands and someone and entering like normal. What did it even mean to enter through him or her?
"Um... through me, I guess." He still had no idea what she meant, but he really didn’t want to question her. So he just went with it.
She seemed a bit surprised but nodded. Grabbing his hand.
This was it... they were going to enter the wonderland... and were not going to leave for three whole months.
He wondered... what these months were going to be like.
After all... for some reason... everything felt... happy. He felt like he was living inside a fantasy book; that was the effect the Academy had on him... but he knew that once you enter a story, you will soon realize that’s not true.
It was just...
How much more time until his fantasy broke?
Comments