Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 672: Two Options

Kaiden did not respond, merely smiling as he began getting interrogated in his head.

Renoa appeared from behind a supply tent with a clipboard and a blush that arrived before she did. ”Your armor’s been inspected and repaired. Though some pieces couldn’t be saved... We brought you new ones where replacements were needed.”

”Thank you, Renoa.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, made a note on her clipboard, and retreated at speed.

The gang got dressed in their armor, then Kaiden pulled up the competition standings on his projection artifact.

New Dawn: 101,880.

Iron Halo: 91,900.

Ashbound: 89,410.

Silver Talon: 69,640.

Runewoven: 65,590.

They were closing on Silver Talon. The trajectory was good. Though the gap to first was big.

Luna was reading over his shoulder. She did the math and did not like it.

”That’s bullshit.”

Kaiden glanced at her.

”We killed a level 79 monster. 79! 28 levels above us.” Luna’s hands were on her hips, Storm crackling in her hair.

”And we got 250 points for it. 250! You know what a level 51 Ridgehowler gives? 50.”

She pulled up her own artifact and started swiping through the logs with the furious efficiency of a woman building a court case.

”We could farm ten Ridgehowlers in the time it took us to find and kill that Borer Queen and then recover from the fight. Maybe even twenty! Twenty kills at 50 points each is a 1000 points, all the while facing much smaller risks.” She threw her hands up. ”Instead, we went all out against something that could’ve wiped us, and the Association handed us a whopping 250. A quarter of what safe farming would’ve earned in the same window!”

Aria nodded, her expression thoughtful. ”Those are the rules that have been announced since the competition began... 50 points for monsters between levels 51-75 and 250 points for monsters between levels 76-99. But you’re right... The risk-to-reward ratio for anything above seventy-five doesn’t make sense for us. We’d need to chain multiple kills at that tier to justify the danger, and we barely survived one.”

Nyx spoke up.

”Besties, I’m afraid that it makes perfect sense. The point brackets are designed for combatants who can fight level seventy-five and above without it being a suicide mission. Veterans. S-tiers. People who clear those monsters the way we clear Ridgehowlers.”

She paused for a moment before explaining further, ”For teams like us, who need to treat every engagement above seventy-five as a full-commitment group effort where nobody can make a single mistake, the system isn’t rewarding our choices. It’s discouraging them.”

”Hah?” Luna scoffed. ”What pussies!”

”I must agree.” Calypso shook her head, tail flicking behind her. ”We should’ve gotten five thousand points for that kill, minimum! The difficulty was insane!”

”Musclebrained demoness, that is exactly the point.” Bastet’s voice carried the patient exhaustion of someone explaining arithmetic to a toddler. ”The Awakened Association does not want to encourage what we did. We triumphed. We received enormous experience and growth from that kill. But the competition points are scaled so that teams at our level cannot justify hunting exclusively above seventy-five. If the reward matched the difficulty, it would be the Association putting a bounty on our graves.”

Calypso scoffed. ”Choco Kitty, I’m boisterous, not dumb. Of course, I understand the point. But they’re still wimps.”

Bastet sighed. ”Maybe so.”

Then the tanned felinid looked toward the man ahead of her. ”Master, what are you thinking?”

Kaiden didn’t answer immediately. He was still looking at the standings, but the numbers weren’t what occupied his mind. The numbers were a symptom. The disease was simpler.

They were too weak.

”Broadly speaking, we have two options,” he began after finally dismissing the projection. ”First, we go back south to farm monsters below level sixty. We find comfortable kills, fast clears, fifty points each. We could grind a hundred kills a day and climb the standings at a steady pace. But we’d level up slow.”

Luna opened her mouth.

”Second.” He began walking. ”We accept that the standings are going to get worse before they get better. We stop chasing points entirely. We push deeper, hunt hard monsters, and pour everything into leveling up rapidly. The kills won’t be fast. The competition point gains will be terrible. We’ll fall further behind New Dawn and the rest.”

”But in a few days, we’ll be strong enough that level seventy-five monsters aren’t suicide missions anymore. They’ll be farming. And when that happens, the two hundred and fifty points per kill won’t feel small because we’ll be chaining them the way we chain Ridgehowlers now.”

The grumbling stopped.

Every single one of them understood. This wasn’t a question of math. It was a question of investment. Short-term loss for long-term benefit. Slow down now to sprint later.

Luna’s grin showed teeth.

Calypso flexed, the muscles in her arms coiling with the kind of anticipation that made the demoness look like a predator who’d just been told the leash was coming off.

Bastet closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose, content.

Kaiden was already walking north.

He hadn’t announced the decision. Hadn’t asked for a vote or waited for consensus. His stride was steady, unhurried. It was the pace of a man who’d weighed both paths and chosen the harder one before the conversation even started.

His girls watched him go. The broad shoulders beneath battle-scarred armor. The steady steps. The confidence with which he carried himself.

Not one of them protested. Not one of them hesitated. Not one of them so much as glanced south.

Luna fell in first, Storm already building in her calves. Calypso followed with a grin that promised the mountains were about to have a very bad week. Soon, six sets of footsteps found their rhythm behind the man they’d chosen to follow into the hardest set of fights of their lives.

It was time to grow stronger.

But, alas... Things didn’t always go according to plan.