Ravennittes
patreon
System Architect - Ch 85
🕑 Added 2025-02-03 17:00:06 +0000 UTCYou have finished your second life. Did you enjoy this one more than the last? Before evaluating your performance, let’s take a look at what might have happened if you had decided not to restart for more experience points…
--------
Louise awake to the smell of smoke. Her nose had always been sensitive. She could smell if someone had certain illnesses. It was a superpower of a sort, and one that was important the day she woke up. Smoke was not normal in her area—forest fires were a feature of drier areas, and where she lived was much wetter than that.
She leaped out of bed and over to the nearest window. The street outside her apartment looked calm and sleepy as she might have expected early on Christmas morning. A dusting of snow covered the ground making it a rare white Christmas! Louise peered from either side of the window hoping to see farther away and discover what was causing the smoke she smelled.
There! In the distance to her left, she saw a building on fire. It was a large apartment building like the one she occupied. It was far enough away that she couldn’t resolve the details well. What she could see was rather what she didn’t see. No police. No firemen. She thought she could pick out people standing around the building watching it burn.
Louise looked at her phone to check the time. It was technically not Christmas yet. There were only a few minutes to go before midnight. With the fire raging and the flashing-light brigade soon to arrive, she didn’t think she’d get much more sleep that night—at least not for a while.
She grumbled. She’d have to get ready for work in only six hours. It was going to be a long fucking day. There wasn’t nearly enough coffee in the world to make up for the pounding headache she knew would come by midafternoon.
Seeing as she wasn’t going to sleep for a while, she contented herself by watching the blaze burn brightly. It was mesmerizing to watch the flames dance from the windows, licking the brick exterior. As she watched, the police cars and firetrucks arrived moments later.
When the people inside piled out, she was distracted by a chime that echoed everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In front of her face were words. She brushed a hand through it, but it was intangible! Louise had never seen something like that in her life, and yet she’d read about it in books and in comics. Why was it happening for real?
The Goblins Are Coming!
Survive
Success: Experience depending on performance
Failure: Death
Expires: 23 hours, 59 minutes, 41 seconds
Louise felt her heart begin to race. There were monsters coming! She looked around for something to fight with if it came to that—and if those stories were anything to go by, there would be a lot of fighting. From the kitchen, she took the stoutest knife she had. With twine, glue, and duck tape, she attached it to the end of a broom handle. If she was going to fight, it was going to be as far away from those monsters as she possibly could.
There wasn’t much she could do for armor. A heavy jacket was the best she had available. The jeans—stiff enough to walk away on their own—would have to suffice to protect her legs. The next concern was food and water. She had enough for a week at most—less if the city cut off services.
A scream and gunshots brought her attention back to the window. Her door was well sealed. Unless there was a fire, she was safe in her apartment for the time being. That couldn’t be said of the people on the street trying to fight the fire. Where before, there had just been the police and firefighters working the scene, now the ground looked to be crawling with beasts.
Louise watched with morbid curiosity as one policeman shot at the beasts approaching him, only for another to jump on him from behind. His end was as swift as it was brutal. Even from her window, she could see the beasts tearing apart the policeman. He’d shot and killed four of them, but now his corpse was being eaten. The beasts were fighting over the meal, causing another two of them to die—and become food for the survivors. It was incredibly brutal.
The remaining policemen and firefighters formed a group. Some of the firefighters worked on the fire, but the rest had to fend off the monsters. Inside the ring of police and firemen were the few residents who had survived the initial onslaught. She was thankful for my apartment keeping me relatively safe.
Louise had food, warmth, and light—well, she had light and warmth. The power had just gone out. Then the fire alarm went off. That was when the screaming truly started. She grabbed her spear and donned her jacket. She stuffed a water bottle in one pocket and some snacks in the other. Then she made for the fire escape.
The fire escape was as old as the building itself, and was worryingly rusty. The owner had obviously painted it to keep the rust at bay, but those efforts hadn’t gone particularly well. Louise climbed down carefully while other tenants joined her. When she got to the bottom, the final ladder was chained to the last landing. Without the key, the best she could hope for was a ten foot drop at the end of the ladder.
With no better option, she began to climb down. The others had given her a strange look about the spear she had, but no one said anything. If only they’d seen the monsters tearing people apart, they’d be more inclined to have one of their own!
Louise dropped from the final rung of the ladder and landed in a crouch. The makeshift spear almost nicked her leg as she did. She stood up and kept the spear at the ready. Now that she was outside, she had a call to make about what to do now. Did she stay where she was or move somewhere else?
The policemen and firefighters had been holding their own fairly well, but there was no way she could fight her way through the mass of monsters to get there. Staying put presented its own challenged. With the building presumably on fire, she would need to evacuate somewhere else. Unless, of course, it had been a false alarm. Her apartment was still the safest place—if it remained intact. Staying out in the open, however, was decidedly not.
Louise knew her life hung in the balance. That’s when she decided to make her way to the nearest subway station. That would have some shelter and at least limit the directions those beasts could come from. To do so, she would need to sneak past the fire down the street and all of the monsters drawn to it—because it looked like they were as much attracted by the people as they were by the fire itself. Her own apartment building possibly being on fire was no longer a safe place to be near.
Ever so carefully, Louise crept along in the shadows. She kept to the far side of the street from where the blazing apartment building was, hoping that the distance and darkness would keep her safer. She knew it was just wishful thinking, but wishful thinking was all she had—other than the makeshift spear.
As she moved, she kept an eye out for the monsters. Her spear always at the ready—not that she had any idea how to actually use it. A pointy and sharp stick was better than hands with no claws. She could feel the heat from the fire across the street, a warm reminder of the dangers she faced in making the crossing. Louise let out a small sigh when she passed the fire. From there, it was a straight shot to the subway across the next street. She was home free! Until she wasn’t.
In her path was a long beast. Now that she was closer, she could see its features better in the dim light of the moon—and the flickering light of the fire behind her. It was about the size of a five-year-old human with fur covering its arms and legs. It wore rags and carried a small knife. Its fingers had sharp claws on the ends. That wasn’t the sort of goblin that the term conjured in her mind, but it must be what they quest had been referencing.
She readied her spear and pointed it at the monster in front of her. As silently as she could, she stepped towards it. The silence was as much for surprise as it was to not get ambushed by anything from behind. The moment she was within range, she stabbed forward as hard as she could!
The spear was less effective than she’d hoped—not that her hopes had been terribly high. It was a makeshift spear, after all. Still, that didn’t mean the spear didn’t do anything. It had a kitchen knife at the end, and those things were wicked sharp. The main issue was that the monster moved slightly after it heard her approach, so the blade at the end pushed into its arm, drawing blood. The fur had done some to slow her attack.
The beast was now fully aware of her presence. It snarled and leaped at her. Louise took a step back in surprise—and not an unreasonable amount of fear—only to bring her arms up to defend herself. As she did, the butt of the spear swung around and impacted the monster with a solid thwack.
Not much damage was done, but it was enough to throw the goblin off of its game. That was enough time for Louise to line up another thrust. This time, the knife slipped into its chest. It let out a gurgle before dropping to the ground.
Her heart raced. She looked around to see if anyone or anything was nearby before continuing on to her destination. She was surprised to have found it in herself to kill. Maybe it was the adrenaline—fight or flight was a hell of a drug. Maybe she had a killer within her all these years and never knew it. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. She had survived the fight and gained something in return.
In front of her was a message just like the quest.
Combat Experience: Killed Level 14 Goblin
Exp gained: 29
Because of what she had done, she had gained experience. What that meant, she didn’t know. There wasn’t an instruction manual. She decided to try to figure it out when she got to the subway station.
The subway station was dark without electricity. Still, by going down into it a little ways, she only had to watch and listen for monsters coming from two directions instead of everywhere. That would give her a fighting chance, if it came to that.
She sat down on the steps and leaned back against the concrete wall. Tears fell as the smells of piss and garbage filled her nose. She didn’t know how long she cried, but the first rays of light caught her attention. She stood up and stretched. Sitting for so long on the hard stairs had been hell on her body.
Louise waited for the sun to come up fully before peeking over the edge of the stairs. Here and there, she could see monsters roaming about. More goblins. There were corpses of humans and goblins—mostly humans—strewn here and there where they had fallen. Some were partially eaten, others were still being nibbled on.
She felt bile rise in her throat, but pushed it back down. Now wasn’t the time to be sentimental. She first had to survive if she wanted to mourn the dead. That brought her mind back to figuring out what was going on. She tried the basics from the books she had read before stumbling on the method of bringing up her status sheet. It was then that she discovered that she was level 0 and it would cost 100 experience to get to the next level, whatever that meant. There were skills too, each costing 1,000 experience—and there were so many that she was quickly overwhelmed.
Louise closed the windows and considered what to do next. She figured that if her building somehow hadn’t burned down, that was where she’d have food and a safe place to stay for a few days at least. The canned soup and ramen she’d stocked her pantry with were unlikely to go bad before she ate them.
From her vantage point, there was no way to beyond the still-smoking apartment building between where she was and her home. In the way were at least a dozen goblins. She debated staying put, but a grumbling belly spurred her to action. The snacks and water were long gone. To live, she needed more.
Sighing, Louise rose from the subway station and plodded her way home. She did her best to hide from the monsters as she did so, but she wasn’t wholly successful. The one fight she had went about as well as the first one—she lucked into killing it by reflex more than skill. The amount of experience she’d gained wasn’t consistent, even though the monster description was the same. This time she gained 32 experience.
In the daylight, the destruction where the fire had been the previous night was evident. There were piles of corpses—primarily of the goblin variety. The water from the hoses and the bullets from the guns had done a number on them. The humans didn’t come out unscathed, either. Of the ten of so people on scene—not counting the residents—at least six of them had perished.
Louise sent a small prayer to God when she saw her apartment building intact. She used her key to get in and climbed the stairs. On her floor, it looked like someone had tried to enter her apartment, but had—thankfully—been unsuccessful. Safely inside—with all the locks sealed—she lay down on her bed to sleep. The exhaustion of the day finally catching up to her.
--------
Hours turned to days. Days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Months became years. Louise managed to eek out an existence. She tried to level up using experience, only to find that while the number went up, nothing actually changed. That wasn’t entirely true for skills, but most of them were unusable without some kind of energy. They simply gave errors when anyone tried to use them.
No, the most important thing were the passive skills. Those usually worked. Things like resistance to types of damage or proficiency with a weapon. Those could be leveled, and they turned out to be the key to survival. Monsters were always the main killer, but starvation and disease were always waiting in the wings to pick off the rest.
--------
Humanity survived marginally better than it had after my first life, but it was not as much of a win as I had hoped for. With the vision over, I was finally treated to the calculation I wanted to see—the recap.
Now let’s move on to see how you did. You unlocked the following features permanently:
Social Experience
Combat Experience
Crafting Experience
Exploration Experience
Economic Experience
Misc. Experience
Notifications I
Notifications II
System Help
Search
Quests III
Quests Refresh III
Leveling
Leveling Speed Medium
Skills I
Skills Leveling
Skills Leveling Speed Medium
Stats Screen
And here’s what you selfishly unlocked for yourself:
Crafting Experience
Combat Experience
Exploration Experience
Economic Experience
Misc. Experience
Notifications I
Notifications II
System Help
Search
Quests III
Daily Bonus Experience
Leveling
Skills I
Skills II
Skills III
Additional Experience
Stats Screen
Body
Mind
Spirit
Life
Will
Chi
Leveling Speed Continuous
Skill Leveling
Skill Leveling Speed Medium
Identify
Floating Light
Stealth
Tracking
Fireball
Tracker
Plant Vision
Soil Vision
Grow
Heal
Restart II
In so doing, the monsters are now:
Average Monster Level: 14
Monster Strength Tier: 2
Exp To Next Tier: 587,890
Your actions led to 9,828,354 people surviving integration, giving you an overall score of 79. As a result, you are awarded a bonus of 14,454,397 experience.
Restarting from save point…
Comments
Hayden
I wonder if there's anything he can do to unlock the system early for everyone else
