Of course, with his power, he just had to jump or even use his green constructs to make steps out of thin air, but he was in no rush. He hadn’t forgotten the Augmented Ravager either. It's just that…it had been a very disappointing fight.
“That was SO AMAZING! You killed and stopped the Ravager’s jaws with your bare hands and used those strange machines to shoot inside the Ravager! You killed it in one blow! Transcendents are truly so powerful!”
“Thank you, Sofya, but trying to butter me up won’t give you a better chance to come with me.”
“What does buttering you up means?”
“Oh. You don’t know? I suppose it’s just an idiom… must have disappeared. It simply means to flatter someone.”
Akhenamen would have to be careful. He had forgotten that different cultures would have different idioms. He had seen it with the trapped elven child who had said : “If you lie you’re a broken tree.”.
He looked up at the sky, the stars shining down on him and Sofya as they waited for the elevator to come down. He was the first disappointed, the fight he had taken for some epic and impressive challenge a day or two prior was now just a formality.
The rewards however… his mind went back to the event.
***
Akhenamen stood in front of the slowly disintegrating Ravager, they found it easily as his impressive Sight allowed him to easily sense where one of them could be. It was actually sleeping inside one of the pits of lava. Which were nothing but a trick.
An illusion to hide the sleeping Ravagers under. While most of them were true, quite a few were just a Ravager’s sleeping quarters. Some sort of illusion mixed with projection and heat producing machines were all combined to imitate the lava.
He touched the body, he felt no pity as it might have been the one who tried to eat him and in their cases, he wasn’t sure they were more sentient than a common earthworm. The loot window popped before the Quest completion one.
[Congratulations on completing your Quest : [Proof of Worthiness], rewards impending…]
When he saw the loot window, he almost cried. Money! He finally had some money! He took the loot out and gave it to Sofya. Except the money, that was his hard earned money. He also realised he might still have trauma from his two years of frantically looking for more money.
Sofya was drooling at the sight of the loot in his hand, and he didn’t really have any use for them so he gave them to her.
“Will that be useful to you? I thought you couldn’t use breakthrough materials unless you hunted them yourself?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Well I can’t, but I can use them to build machines and robots! And there are ways to get around the System’s restrictions.”
“That’s interesting. Which ones?”
“Forming a team can grant you access to the breakthrough materials obtained by anyone in the team. However EXP is given proportionally to your contribution during a fight.”
“And most low levers can’t even do one damage to a being ten levels higher than them. Much less attack big monsters worth a lot of exp.”
Akhenamen nodded, this gave the rich and powerful some big advantages but was still relatively fair. They took far less risk while hunting for breakthrough materials but still had to work for their exp.
“I see, it's interesting. I’ll keep the coins though, I have no money that would suit the current period.”
“Oh don’t worry, I do have some money from my mother if you need it! You did save my life!”
“Well thanks but I cannot just take your weekly allowance.”
“I still insist you at least keep this much, that no one says the Pipelette are stingy with their saviors or friends.”
Akhenamen was frozen as he received the card Sofya gave him, a black crystalline card with glowing golden lines going through it.
[Obtained a Black Card]
[Black Card] : Worth 1 000 000 in any monetary system all over Zenthia.
Did that sixteen year old girl casually give him as much money as he had even if he combined his previous life and this one? A mature adult or not, Akhenamen could only think of Sofya as a Nepo Baby, now.
Sofya stared at the silvery being in front of her, holding her monthly allowance, his glowing green eyes, that she was used to seeing burning like flames seemed narrowed into two thin lines. Staring at her. She felt judged. Until Sofya realised the problem!
“Oh of course! Sorry, you must not be aware of today’s currency! Every kingdom or nation has their own form of currency so most travellers use the money cards of the CBZ! The Centralized Bank of Zenthia!”
Sofya proudly put her hands on her hips as her explanation kept going.
“It’s a neutral organisation which has successfully, after many trials, managed to make an agreement with all nations of Zenthia to create an accepted alternative currency! The Cards!”
“Each card color corresponds to a certain amount of money that stays the same no matter in which nation you are! Bronze, Silver, Gold, Purple, Black, Platinium!”
Akhenamen silently nodded. If he had to guess, each card had to be worth ten times more than the previous one : 100 for Bronze, 1000 for Silver, 10 000 for Gold, 100 000 for Purple, 1 000 000 for Black and 10 000 000 for Platinum.
He sighed, realising he was being quite ridiculous to be upset at a teen that might actually need the real world experience she was asking for.
“Thank you for your gift Sofya. Just wait a bit, I must check something.”
He finally stared at the last notification, telling him about his finished [Proof of Worthiness] quest.
[Quest Giver] : ???
[Proof of Worthiness] : You have now familiarized yourself with your body and the system, completing this quest will grant you a great reward but it will demand great risks in exchange. Are you up for the challenge?
[Objectives] :
- Defeat an Augmented Ravager 1/1
- Complete the “Strange Signal” dungeon 1/1
[Reward] :
- ???
- A great secret revealed
[You have unlocked the [Roleplay] tab.]
[Direct communication channel with the System’s Main Frame, established.]
[Greetings, Akhenamen. We are the System.]
[We needed to talk to you, but we are fair, we could not grant such a privilege without asking for something in return. We have promised you to reveal a secret, and we shall do so, as your quest reward states.]
“Greetings, so you are sentient. Or close to it. Why would you need to be fair? From what I know, even if you can’t fully restrain the gods, they can’t break their chains either.”
[That information is of no interest or value to you. However we know something that will undoubtedly interest you. Information about the Players.]
“That…is indeed something I would like to know. What is this place? Is this a game or not?”
[What do you believe?]
“It’s not a game, it’s too life-like. If everything that I saw on Ascylla’s map exists then it’s just well beyond Earth’s current technology to create something with this much detail and size.”
[You underestimate your kind, Akhenamen, however you are correct. It is not a game. Zenthia truly exists in this universe. We, the System are a creation of the Protheans like you, maybe their greatest and most advanced one.]
[We were able to connect ourselves to the Prothean caches all around the galaxy and prematurely open them to the different civilisations visited by the Protheans.]
Akhenamen was silent, listening, scared that missing even one piece of information could be vital. He was confirming that most he saw in the Prothean complex wasn’t just lies. The Protheans had truly left caches all over this universe and seemed to confirm that Earth had been visited by aliens once.
[As you know, our primary goal is to reinforce ourselves and Zenthia. Which means we must also make you or any of its inhabitants stronger to strengthen ourselves. You are not privy to the why yet. But do know, in the end, we shall all benefit from the results.]
The System started to send a mental image into Akhenamen’s mind, exposing its plan and making him understand that no matter how much his quest was a personal matter, the System grand plan would naturally involve him and his family into a much greater scheme.
Dear readers, firstly thank you for reading this chapter!
I know this must have been a long and hard read, tons of tells with very little show. But now, with the stakes explained, we can get into the meat of this story! And it’s unlikely you will get anymore huge lore dumps like that.