System Change

Derek slowly opened his eyes and let out an enormous yawn. After all the time spent traveling through the deep part of the void, it had taken him no time to fall asleep. Even with all his stats, it still surprised him how much mental fatigue could drain him. He could go weeks, or even months, without a wink of sleep if he didn’t do anything taxing. While meditation could stave off a lot of the problems, sleep was still the only real way he had found to completely recharge himself.

Without moving much, Derek looked down at his lap to see Silvi still lying there. His hand was resting beside her, and she was snuggled up into his arm. After all the food she ate from Dave and their time traveling in the void, she must have been even more drained than he was, but she handled it like a champ. So, while Derek was just about fully recharged, he couldn’t bring himself to wake her up. Instead, he closed his eyes and slipped into Greater Meditation.

A few hours later, he finally felt Silvi coming out of her slumber. He stopped meditating and glanced back down at her, just in time to see her eyes open slowly before she let out a tiny yawn.

“Did you sleep well?” Derek asked her with a smile on his face.

“Mhm…” Silvi answered. “Good rest.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “I needed that after yesterday. How about we don’t do any super long traveling for a while?” He really didn’t have any other places he needed to Void Travel to that were far away, so really, the next time he felt he’d need to use the skill like he just did would be when he went looking for Alanah, and he didn’t have a clue how long away that would be.

“Good idea,” Silvi replied as she sat up and stretched. “What we do today?” she asked.

“Well…” Derek said. “Now that I’ve taken care of everything I needed to on Earth, and that Edgar, Avery, and Braxton should be handling all the armor and weapon crafting now, we don’t have much else to do other than prepare. My time away didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it was going to. The armor they are crafting for me should be done last, so I won’t be needed for any of that for a while. I’ll just let Braxton or Edgar know that we’re around. That’s really all I need to do for that.”

“Mhm,” Silvi muttered with a nod. “Then I get cleavers.”

“Yes,” Derek replied. “Then you can get an awesome pair of legendary cleavers, hopefully.” He then took a deep breath. “I guess I should also tell everyone about Kelvin. It’s hard to tell with my current stats and all, but I’d say he was maybe as strong as Avery or Edgar—well… a little weaker, actually. Had I had the same stats as I do now back when I fought Tevarin, I seriously doubt that his ice could have done anything at all to me.“Actually, I’d expect Edgar or Avery to win against the man if either of them fought him,” Derek continued. “The problem is that we don’t have a ton of Averys or Edgars running around, and there’s no telling how many people with the same strength as Kelvin there will be from the Universal System. I’m not worried about us having any problems, but if there are dozens or hundreds, the two of us can’t be everywhere all at once. Not to mention, we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen when the systems collide, either.”

What he didn’t mention was the fact that there was a chance that Kelvin did actually know what was coming, and that it was certainly possible for the man, or whoever Darvin was, to piece everything together and know that they may have to fight him. If that was the case, then Kelvin knew that Derek was very strong, and it was possible that they may be able to prepare for him. The way Kelvin acted, it was unlikely, but it was still a possibility.

That’s why Derek knew what his next move should be. “Looks like it’s time to go hit level 251,” he said. “Or whatever the equivalent is that we can get to. Do you want to come with me?”

“Kay,” Silvi replied.

“Okay,” Derek laughed.

Finally, Silvi disappeared, then reappeared on top of Derek’s shoulder. Derek pushed the footrest back into the chair, then stored it inside his bracelet. He looked down at his jeans, then at his shirt, then all of a sudden, he half-shouted, “Dammit!”

“What?” Silvi asked.

“I got caught up in the whole almost destroying Charlotte, then having to fight the fire guy,” Derek said. “I bet I could have had Silvi hit up the system store and get me a few new pairs of clothes while we were there. The exact kind that I used to wear, too—seven-pack of shirts for twenty-five bucks, and a few pairs of thirty-dollar jeans. I bet she could have gotten them for next to nothing with system credits since they don’t provide any bonuses or anything.”

“And we didn’t get ingredients,” Silvi said. “But I remembered. And we still didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “It’s all Kelvin’s fault.”

“Stupid boiled man,” Silvi said.

“It’s okay,” Derek said. “I’m sure we’ll see him again very soon.” He chuckled. “And it’s not like Brandi’s jeans and t-shirts that she makes me wear aren’t one hundred times more comfortable. It just takes some time to get used to such nice-feeling clothes.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Mhm,” Silvi said. “She makes good cloaks.”

“She does indeed,” Derek replied, and then the two left his travel room.

Derek and Silvi did a quick lap through the shop to let everyone know that they were back and should be much easier to reach for the foreseeable future. Malorie was surprised that they were already back, but everyone was happy about it. She also let him know that nobody had been around to collect materials for armor or weapons yet, but seeing as how it had only been around a day since he’d made all the plans, that was to be expected.

He also contacted both Braxton and Edgar to let them know that they were back—but mostly to inform them that both he and Silvi would be ready to help in making their equipment whenever it was time. Derek also decided to set an appointment to meet everyone and discuss the small amount he’d learned from being on Earth—to at least let them prepare to fight people who could be close to their same strength. He decided that a week would be a good time for the meeting.

Finally, he and Silvi left the shop one more time to go to a dungeon. Once again, he let Silvi pick out which dungeon she wanted to do—which always ended up being whichever dungeon had the tastiest-sounding enemies inside at the moment. However, nothing much piqued Silvi’s interest this time, so Derek chose to make up for some of the material losses that Brandi was going to suffer, and they went back to the level 250 golem dungeon.

“I wonder what’s going to happen when we level up and we’re inside the dungeon,” Derek thought out loud. Other dungeons were okay for leveling up one level past the maximum dungeon cap, they just didn’t allow you to go back in once you left. However, leveling past the system cap was something entirely different.

Still, Dave seemed pretty confident that the Origin System would be there to prevent anything bad from happening if they leveled while inside the dungeon, so he decided to trust in that. It was just that what happened on Earth had him a little extra concerned about everything.

“You ready?” he asked Silvi.

“Ready!” Silvi replied.

“Great,” Derek said, then he reached out and placed his hand on the dungeon orb. The next second, they were inside. Since Silvi was technically a part of him, he was able to use the ability he’d received from his Solo Diver Achievement and start the dungeon run without waiting for the countdown.

Then, the duo began what was probably the biggest golem massacre to ever happen.

“Holy crap,” Derek said as he and Silvi appeared back outside the dungeon again. He’d lost count of how many times they’d completed the thing, but they’d been running the same dungeon for days. In fact, they were only a couple of days away from the meeting he’d scheduled, which he thought for sure he’d be level 251 by the time it came around. “I can’t believe we still haven’t gained the level,” he said.

He couldn’t help but recall the amount of experience points he’d needed to go from level 249 to level 250. It had taken nearly twenty trillion experience points to do so. However, as he looked at his current experience points, he couldn’t help but shake his head.

Personal Information

Name:

Age:

Level:

Experience:

Class:

Race:

Derek Hunt

31

250

550,400,660,750,280/???

Void Monarch (Mythical)

Human (Void)

What the hell? he wondered. I think we’re getting pretty close to… a quadrillion experience points? I think that’s right. Never really had any reason to count much past the trillions back on Earth. Still, he thought. That’s such a huge gap between the levels. This is already like twenty-five times the amount of experience points I needed for my last level… maybe it really does need me to hit a quadrillion?

He was happy that they decided to have a good night’s sleep before moving forward because all the destroying without getting the level was really weighing on him. Dave made it sound like it was going to be a piece of cake, he thought. That lying bastard.

“I guess we’re going to have to go collect some more cores,” Derek said with a sigh.

“Okay…” Silvi said with much less enthusiasm than she had when they were first getting started, and the two reentered the dungeon.

A day and a half later, not long before the scheduled meeting, it finally happened.

Level U…

…

…

Error! Davenresh System unable to support user…

Requesting Assis…

“Finally!” Derek yelled out loud. The system seemed to be having a hard time with his new level, but he didn’t care. All he cared about now was finishing up the dungeon and seeing what level 251 brought with it.

The duo had never killed golems any quicker than they did at that moment. Derek and Silvi both dismissed the idea of taking any of the remaining golem cores. Instead, they crushed the golems as fast as they could. Sure, a few of the remaining golems died without exploding, but since they weren’t being gentle anymore, the majority of them exploded—taking their cores with them.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Silvi said from Derek’s shoulder as they raced to the dungeon orb.

Derek placed his hand on the orb, ignored the notification that he’d received rewards due to his Major Repetitive Dungeoneer Achievement, and then left the dungeon.

Outside, as soon as the bright light faded, Derek tried to view his status sheet.

Status (Error)

Personal Information (Error)

Stats (Error)

Skills (Error)

Achievements (Error)

“I… guess I should have expected something like this,” Derek said.

“My stats are gone!” Silvi shouted, panicked from his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Derek said. “But we still have all of them.” He then reached out and activated Spatial Collapse on the ground in front of him, opening a rift in the void for Void Travel. “Looks like the skills work, too.”

The next moment, a couple of Mage Hands sprouted from Silvi, and a pair of butcher’s knives were created from her Void Creation skill.

“Whew,” Silvi said. “Scary.”

“Yeah,” Derek replied. “Definitely scary, especially since I had some leftover stat points to distribute, but I’m not sure how to now. But I’m sure we’re about to figure some stuff out. That’s a lot of notifications waiting to be viewed.”

Derek’s eyes glanced to the corner of his vision, where it showed that he had notifications from both the Davenresh System and the Origin System ready to view. “Well… let’s see what the Davenresh System has to say first.”