The moment he tried to get up, he was instantly reminded of how bad his condition was, and the world began to spin, and his body was drained of energy almost immediately.
The reality was, despite growing much stronger, that strength was being used to keep his damaged soul from falling apart on him.
But he wasn’t without help. Healers from the settlement visited regularly, not that they did a whole lot. It wasn’t because of a lack of effort, though. The E grade healers were geared toward healing physical wounds, not wounds made to the soul itself.
Aaron’s condition was simply out of scope, regardless of how hard they tried.
However, there were more ways in which the people could help. And they were desperate to do so, and not just because Aaron was technically their leader. There was a general feeling of debt toward him for everything he had done so far, and most settlers in their little growing camp wanted to make right on that debt.
And so when the healers failed to achieve much, everyone who was strong enough to wander the surroundings did so. They went looking for spiritual items that might help him.
Unfortunately, such things were not particularly easy to find. Certainly not as easy to come by as they were in the trials. And it took quite some time before even meagre results were achieved.
Still, with dozens of roaming groups blanketing the surrounding areas, they managed to find a few weak spiritual herbs, and an alchemist whipped them up into a soul-healing potion.
Though even with the healing potion, it felt as if he were taping up his shattered soul. Aaron was thankful for the potion and all the effort, but his wounds were clearly a step above what these people were used to dealing with. A couple of potions certainly wouldn’t cure him just like that.
But at least he got to the point of sitting up after a few days. Which was nice because he would actually watch as his little camp was developed around him. A decent upgrade from the boring bed.
Still, though, for someone like Aaron, and everything he had been through since the integration, this change of pace seemed incredibly slow.
That said, it was nice to see how things were coming along. His people were hardworkers, and the scenery around him was changing every day.
There were some things he would rather not happen. For example, the people of New Haven had insisted on building a statue of him. He had tried to talk them out of it for a while, but eventually gave up when they started calling him the messiah.
Their behavior wasn’t the end of the world as long as he could avoid it for the most part. Which meant letting them build their statues and avoiding conversation.
He just hoped they wouldn’t throw the statues up all around the place, as they had with the bear statues back in New Haven.
As he sat on his newly constructed porch, watching the day go by on a custom-built rocking chair someone had made at his request, he heard a voice.
“Hey there, Mr. Top Ranker.”
Aaron turned his head. Talia was walking toward him, waving, and she looked… different. She was still clearly herself, but it looked like she was halfway to going goth. Despite not having her avatar active, her hair was pitch black, her lips were dark, and her skin was almost as pale as his own.
“Finally decided to visit, huh?” he said. “And what’s with the makeover? Finally letting your inner edgelord take over?”
“Oh, right…” she said, looking mildly embarrassed. “I was out hunting the other day and apparently reached the Racial Evolution threshold, so I did it, and this happened.”
“Oh. Wait, then it is your inner edgelord taking over! ‘Cause it changes your appearance based on your desires!”
“Shut up,” she said, shoving him lightly.
“Anyway, what’s this about top ranker?”
“Seriously? You haven’t checked?” She said, placing her hands on her thighs and tilting her head as she reached him. “What do you think I’m talking about?”
Raising a brow, Aaron realized that he hadn’t checked his rank since evolving to D-grade race or forming his core, something that he was positive no other person on their world would have achieved yet. Hell, the only reason he was able to was thanks to a series of fortunate circumstances, circumstances that had allowed him to survive something that almost anybody else would have died doing.
“I ah,” he murmured and opened the ranking list.
Planetary rankings:
- Darius Nessar
- Raksha Tiksus Vakmal
- Ernest Sheridan
- Erdek Foulbreath
- Talia Rhineheart
- Ikran Teshk Ungari
- Edwan Coser
- Vikran Takeshi Udon
- Terry Cadillac
- Aaron Dober
- Kim Soohyun
“Wait, I’m 10th? When the hell did that happen?” He blurted out as if he didn’t know the answer, though of course he did.
Then, Aaron just sat there, wide-eyed and looking at the list for a while. He knew that what he had achieved would have thrown him up in the rankings, but so far? He had started so very far behind, thanks to missing the Tutorial, and these were the greatest talents of their entire world. And that's not just the greatest talents of earth. The greatest talents of three entire worlds.
“Err, sorry Soohyun, I guess.”
“I don’t think she’ll be the last,” Talia smiled. “But I’m going to treasure my rank and the fact that it’s higher than yours as long as it lasts. And let me tell you, I’m not just sitting around waiting for you to pass me. I’ve been out hunting, and grinding my Profession every minute you’ve been here slacking off and sleeping. So don’t think I’ll make passing me easy,” she wagged her finger.
“Hey, I’m not slacking off over here! This bloody core of mine damn near killed me.”
“Right…” Talia went suddenly quiet. “I have to say, your aura… It’s incredible. It feels like the densest energy I’ve ever sensed. At least it is besides gods. How did you–”
“You don’t wanna even try. I’m almost certain any normal person would’ve gotten themselves killed doing what I did. Best to wait. If you’re lucky, maybe you can try for it at High D-grade, before hitting C-grade. If you can pull that off, maybe you can snatch up that Title.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Yeah, I might just have to try for that. You’ll have to give me pointers later.”
“I can try. But my methods aren’t particularly orthodox.”
“Hah, that’s certainly a way of putting it.”
Aaron smiled. “So, anyway, are the rankings the entire reason you dropped by? Or were you just missing me?”
“Of course I missed you, dumbass. Like I said, I was training. I’m not going to sit around by your bedside every time you get yourself hurt. And no, it’s not the only reason I dropped by. It's the settlement. We decided it's time we set a proper name for it. And since you're lying about like a lazy bastard here, we figured what better time than now to do it. After all, once you’re back to your normal self, you’re no doubt going to be off running around again.”
“Name? So, you’re telling me Aaronland isn’t good enough for you?”
“Ha, right,” Talia narrowed her gaze. “I might just take back leadership if you try to push a name like that on us.”
“Alright, alright, sorry. I can be reasonable. Aarontopia it is.”
Talia rolled her eyes. “The decision is being made in the Bellagio. Are you coming or not?”
Aaron looked down at his body. “I’m kind of… crippled. At least until my soul can heal.”
“Piggyback?”
“Err, seriously?”
“Or do you want to miss out? Who knows? Maybe we’ll go with Talialand.”
“Fine! I suppose that works.”
Aaron laboriously pulled his crippled body up and onto Talia’s back, and her avatar’s wings spread out and sent them soaring into the sky toward the casino.
It was a short trip, and within minutes they were inside the presidential suite, sitting across from Julius. Ryan and a couple of his other senior people were also present, some poring over notes and pads.
“Good to see you're healthy enough to join us, Aaron,” Julius said, rising and shaking Aaron’s weak hand with a double clasp of his own.
“Yeah, it takes a little more than just killing me to stop me, mate.”
“I saw you took an interesting ride in here,” Ryan said.
“My legs and well, pretty much all of me isn’t working quite as well right now,” Aaron grimaced. “I’ll be back soon enough, though.”
“Right,” Julius winced at the comment. Aaron’s sickly pallor and his evident weakness were impossible to ignore. And it was a little disconcerting to see a man who could literally pull himself together after death looking in such a way.
“Well, I am, I’m glad you joined us anyway. Now, let’s get comfortable and go over the names. We’ve got a list of possible options that have been compiled by suggestions we have collected from around camp. The names are as follows: We have Salvation, Oasis, Hope, Elysium, New Vegas, The Strip, Bogtown…” Julius trailed off. “Yeah, some of these names aren’t as good as others.”
“I’ll say,” Talia quipped.
“You know what? I kinda like Bogtown,” Aaron said. “We are surrounded by peat bogs, after all.”
“We are not calling the capital of our faction, or whatever we are, Bogtown,” Talia said.
“City of Bogs?” Ryan offered and caught glares from several in the room. “What? It’s not terrible, is it?”
“Ahem,” Julius cleared his throat. “Anyway. Personally, even though we’re set up here in the Bellagio, I would like to remove any references to Vegas on this list. We’re not building a casino here, and I’d rather not lean into that.”
“Yeah, suppose that makes sense,” Aaron agreed. “We don’t want people to think we’re sleazy gamblers.”
“And the flowery optimistic ones are cringe as fuck,” Talia added, drawing surprised gazes from around. “What? I know you’re all thinking it. Who actually wants to live in a city called Hope?” she crossed her arms defiantly.
Damn, her inner edgelord is really taking over, thought Aaron.
“Okay, so nothing overly flowery ones?” Julius said. “And nothing Vegas related, and nothing with bog in the name. That leaves us with… it leaves us with nothing,” he slumped into his chair.
“Oh, come on. Coming up with a name can’t be that hard. What about Swampsville, Marsh City, Fertile Plains–”
“Nothing swamp-related!” Talia interjected.
“Fertile Plains isn’t swamp-related?”
“And somehow it is even worse,” Talia said. “Fertile? It gives me the ick.”
“Okay, so what? You got something better?”
“Better? I can think of a few,” she said. “What about Onyx Tower, or Night City. Maybe Tears of the Abyss–”
“Okay, Talia isn’t picking. I’m not sure exactly what happened to her, but she’s apparently going through a goth phase.”
“Right,” Julius nodded.
Talia looked like she wanted to protest until she saw the others nodding all around. Then, she seemed to be hit by a sudden wave of embarrassment and shrank back for a second.
“It’s just a name,” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair. “Let’s keep it simple. No need to go overthinking things. Names are weird like that, right? They kinda just grow on you, even the bad ones.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just call it Bogeden or something,” Aaron threw up his hands.
“We’re not using Bog–” Talia cut herself off, as if the word tasted strange in her mouth. “Bogeden? Wait, no. I stick with my initial thoughts. That’s terrible.”
“You’re still overthinking things. What about we just use our great leader’s name? Dober. There’s a city on earth called that, isn’t there? Or at least there was. It doesn’t matter. Even if there wasn’t, it sounds like a city, right? Dober,” Ryan repeated.
Eyes glanced around the room every which way, looking for confirmation.
“Hmm, he’s got a point. Dober. It’s a perfectly fine city name,” Julius said. “Still, we can’t go calling our faction Dober. As much as it sounds like a city, it does not sound like a faction.”
“Our faction should probably reflect who is in it, shouldn’t it? We have goblins and humans. And a weird mix at that,” said one of the others. “We don’t want anybody to feel left out, do we? And people are evolving in strange ways all the time,” their eyes glanced across at Aaron.
“What about the United Front?” Another said.
“Sounds very formal, and controlling…” Talia said. “Can’t it be a little more rebellious-sounding? Sounds like the evil empire from a sci-fi flick, or something."
“You’re not entirely wrong,” Ryan said. “But I like it. I think it perfectly captures what we are. And we want to come across strong, don’t we?”
“We don’t want to come across authoritarian, do we?”
“Maybe we do?” Aaron shrugged. “At least until we get things sorted. We live in a dangerous world, after all. I bet there are a lot of people out there begging for authority. Better than being eaten by a monster.”
“It does sound strong. I agree, I think United Front is great,” Julius strummed his fingers, thinking deeply about the name.
Meanwhile…
Scattered along the edges of the jungle before the mighty plains, several ants began to sniff about, their antennae twitching with every movement.
Cautiously, one ant reached out with a leg, stepping out from the jungle, and then another. Before long, the ant had completely crossed into the plains, and barely a second later, an empowered arrow blasted straight into it from somewhere out of sight.
The ant collapsed dead, but with its death, the ants scuttling about near the edge of the jungle grew larger in number. They seemed apprehensive to cross into the plains, but that was slipping.
“They’re getting more adventurous,” a scout said to their partner several kilometers away. “That’s the fifth one today. Up from two yesterday.”
“Yeah,” the other man nodded. “We'd better tell someone about this.”
**Yendal**
Yendal sighed in exasperation as she watched her Chosen joke around like nothing had happened when he had nearly just died. A death from having his soul torn apart, no less. He seemed to think that since he had survived and was recovering, everything was fine. Everything was most definitely not fine.
Aaron Dober had an unusually resilient soul. Most couldn’t survive more than a couple of dozen deaths in the Shadow Trials, but he had gone through literal thousands without issue. He had died so many times that he incorporated it into his abilities, literally willing himself back to life using his soul. And now, he had brought that very same soul to the verge of complete destruction, and somehow didn’t understand the magnitude of what he had done.
Anyone with half a brain would have known they shouldn’t put divine energy directly into their soul at E grade. Yet Aaron had gone a step further and shoved it into his core. If it went wrong, in the absolute best-case scenario, he would have been crippled for life, unable to form a core. At D grade, it wouldn’t have been an issue, and he would even have been able to get by at C grade, but for B grade and beyond, forming a core was a necessity. He would have been hard-capped. In the worst case, his soul would have been so thoroughly shattered that even the System wouldn’t have known what to do with it.
Yet he had somehow succeeded, and she had no doubt that in his ignorance, he would try something similar eventually. He still had the divine shard, after all.
Sounds like he needs another lesson, she thought. And maybe a little discipline. A few deaths should drive the point home…
Pateron!