There was only one conceivable reason for my body to no longer draw in energy from my kills, and that meant I had finally reached my limit, or well, the true limit of the Non-Rank.
With my eyes regaining their clarity, I came out of autopilot, and a wave of fatigue washed over me, causing me to fall to the ground, exhausted, panting for air, and worse yet, covered in a hellacious amount of gore and grime.
’Oops…look’s like I over did it…’ fighting to catch my breath, I turned my head enough to observe the obscene number of unmoving shadowy figures lying around as far as the eye could see, and frankly, I wasn’t surprised.
This was a common occurrence for me, and I had long since realized that my body seemed to move on its own when it came to doing tasks I found menial or boring, and cutting down wave after wave of monsters was precisely that, boring.
If it didn’t require my full attention or grab it long enough to occupy my mind, it wasn’t worth doing in my brain, causing me to enter a lulled-down state where my body would move on instinct, leaving my focus and consciousness to do other tasks.
In the case of what I had been thinking about over the last several days, well, it was my task after I left the Caverns. Waiting around for Brenden wasn’t my style, and with so many returners walking around the world, any day wasted doing nothing was nothing short of suicidal idiocy.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is freēwēbηovel.c૦m.
I was already at a disadvantage when it came to making big moves in the world thanks to my age, and numerous others had already begun walking on the path to getting not only stronger but better situated in the past, something that I severely lacked the ability to do.
New companies owned by Origin Timeline rankers appeared daily, resources were devoured, and new technology and ideologies flooded Earth, a sign of times to come.
Yet I was stuck toddling around the house, playing with fucking blocks, and listening to the bullshit prattling spewing from Amanda’s mouth on a regular basis. It was frustrating, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I had long since come up with thousands of contingency plans in the event I returned back to being a child, and to some extent, I had made good on them, plotting out a proper course of action every step of the way, yet I didn’t feel anything like a sense of fulfillment, if anything I felt that time was moving far too slowly.
Reaching forward, I uttered the command prompt to open my inventory and set about chugging down a few potions to bring myself back to tip-top shape; although not good for your mental health, it wasn’t much of an issue for me to pull all-nighters, or…well, a week and a half killing spree without rest, especially since I was on autopilot for the majority of that time.
In a way, I was resting, maybe not physically, but that was what the potions were meant to take care of; mentally, I was totally fine. Getting to my feet and ignoring the multitude of corpses acting as obstacles in my way, I headed over to the nearest wall, located a torch, and lit it up, causing my pupils to constrict with the sudden influx of light; that was when I finally noticed just how gross of a state I was in.
"Ugh, I stink…sigh, maybe I should try working cleanliness into my instincts; this is too much, damn it, this is going to take forever to get off!" I grumbled while bringing out a plastic kiddy pool, shampoo, conditioner, soap, a loofa, and a five-gallon jug of water.
Forty-five minutes and a makeshift bath later, I was squeaky clean and ready to begin something a long time coming.
Sitting down in the lotus position, I opened my Status profile, and as predicted, I had earned 5 more Stat points, just as Arkadia had told me days prior.
I will admit, it did annoy me that my Racial Trait didn’t kick in to give me the extra three points, but I quickly understood that while I may be earning XP and even earning more points, I wasn’t technically Leveling up, only mimicking the process so I settled for crumbs instead of a full pie.
What I was surprised to see was that my little massacre had netted me quite a hefty boost in EVERY one of my stats, causing my eyebrows to raise slightly before leveling out to my usual stony expression.
{Level:5}
{Level Progress: ***}
{Talent Growth Rate: 01%} *4 x Modifier*
{Alpha Particle Count: 0/20}
{Physical Offense: 10.3} *+0.3*
{Physical Defense: 10.2} *+0.2*
{Intellect: 27} *+0.5*
{Meta Physical Offense: 10.5} *+0.5*
{Meta Physical Defense: 10.7} *+0.7*
{Stat Points: 8.86}
"It seems that even on Autopilot, my body moves to get stronger; not sure how I feel about getting hit enough times to increase both my Defenses, but since I feel fine, I should have been burning through potions like there was no tomorrow, eh, I even had the sense to empty my PC tank ahead of time, good work Robo-Taylor," nodding in content, I glanced one more time at one stat in particular and felt a bit helpless.
The Intellect Stat was a fairly mysterious and not really straightforward stat. Unlike the offense and defensive stats, Intellect was notoriously one of the most difficult to increase, yet in my brainless autopilot state, I was able to bump it up by half a point.
"Not even the initial grind to level 5 brought in such stat increases, hm, must have been subjected to some pretty gnarly shit during those fights, eh? I’ll go back and rewatch the memories of the last few days on my way back to the Gate, for now…" allowing my words to trail off, a grin crept onto my lips as I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"For now, it’s time to cheese the system to earn more Stat points,"