System Change

When Derek had told them that they were going to be getting enough Void Beasts to advance a lot of people, he wasn’t joking even a little. He needed to prepare for his own advancement—whenever it may come—and, though he had an idea about how he could bring others with him, there was always the chance that it wouldn’t work, and it would only be he and Silvi that left.

There was also a chance—a much larger one—that fewer people than he thought would take him up on an offer to tag along. Who knew how dangerous it would be to go with him? So, he really wanted to make sure that everyone he cared about would be well taken care of. Even with Void Travel, it wasn’t guaranteed that he would be able to get back to them quickly, or even at all. He needed to prepare for everything he could think of, and farming the Void Beasts, even though he didn’t exactly feel good about farming them, was a major way to do so.

In fact, the slaying of Void Beasts went on for three days and nights almost non-stop. The only times that there were any breaks were when Silvi took Edgar and Avery to pick up more storage rings because what they had was not enough. Even then, she only took one at a time and the other stayed to fight more beasts.

Both Avery and Edgar—battle maniacs and competitors that they were—slowed down after the second day. They no longer held their competition. Instead, they settled for falling into a rhythm that neither held anything up nor rushed anything. Silvi, on the other hand, was having a blast. She learned a few things about her Cook What You Kill skill.

First was that it was a very hard skill to level. It was only used once per slain beast, after all. On top of that, it was clearly a high-ranking skill like Greater Meditation and some others. Second… even though it leveled slowly with the Void Beast kills, it didn’t work as well as she had hoped with them, which she was almost certain was because of the fact that they were not part of any system, so there wasn’t a system behind them to enforce the skill.

That wasn’t a bad thing for everybody, though. Because Void Beasts were ‘unknown’ to the Great System, and both Edgar and Avery were still part of the Great system, they were both able to advance their ‘Slayer of the Unknown’ Achievements. This gave them some extra Skill Upgrade Points and Stat Points to work with.

Since Silvi was connected to Derek, she also advanced his Achievement, too… well, she would have, but they were met with denied system assistance from the Origin System for the first time. Though all wasn’t lost, he still got a Title, he just didn’t know what it was for the time being. He was sure he’d find out just as soon as he advanced. It also gave him something else to look forward to since he had a couple other Titles waiting for him, too.

It was sort of expected for him since he knew the Achievement was one that gave Sill Upgrade Points and Stats, and he knew that they were both things that could no longer be infused into him by the Great System—at least based on what Dave had told him about his evolution. So… he wasn’t disappointed. Instead, he was more excited to see what they translated to once he advanced.

As for the Void Beasts that were slain… they did run into more than one beast that was close to the same strength as Asher. Though Derek would say that none of them was as strong or stronger. Which made sense because Asher seemed to be on the cusp of its own ascension.

Silvi also didn’t let the strong one that she fought live. In fact, she used Void Lightning with her aura bursting out, and the beast didn’t do much more than stand still and wait for death. Her aura worked almost as well on the beasts as Derek’s own did.

Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, Derek decided that they had farmed more than enough Void Beasts. One of the reasons for this was because they had already had to change locations once, and their new location had been spotted and was beginning to draw attention like the other one.

Both locations were good and out and away from cities, but with as much attention as they were drawing—mostly with the beams of light that were shot into the sky and pounding of Void Beasts—it was only natural that someone would catch wind of them.

The first time, Osian even sent Derek a communication to ask if he wanted him to keep everyone away. Derek decided that it was just easier to move, so that was what they did. But he appreciated the offer from the king.

“Whew!” Derek said as Avery took out a final Void Beast. “I’m beat,” he said. “What about you three?”

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“Beat?” Edgar asked from the side while lying on his back, staring up at the sky. “I’ve been beat for the last thirty hours!”

Avery slowly walked back from where the corpse of the last Void Beast had been and asked, “No more? Are we finished?”

“Depends,” Derek said. “Do you think we have enough?”

Avery held up a handful of storage rings and counted them before stopping and saying, “Yeah… I don’t think we’re going to run out of Void Beast meals any time soon. At least, not while I’m still alive.”

“Mhm…” Edgar muttered from the ground. “We’ll die of old age before we’re able to use them all.”

“You’ll just have to make some more close friends,” Derek said with a chuckle.

“We done?” Silvi floated down on her pot lid. She’d gotten permission from Derek to look around and hunt anything that seemed like it would make a good meal when she wasn’t fighting Void Beasts. She’d only found a few things that she’d deemed worthy of her cooking skills.

“Do you want more?” Derek asked.

“Always!” Silvi happily replied. Then, she looked down towards where one of her storage rings was on her collar. “Well… maybe some other time. This will do for a little while. Need other ingredients, though.”

“We’ll get them soon enough,” Derek said.

“Kay!”

“So.” Derek turned to Edgar and began speaking. “What’s better? This or spending all that time in the palace?” he asked, expecting Edgar to take a moment to answer.

“This!” Edgar answered with no hesitation and jumped to his feet. “By about 100 times! I’d much rather be bored fighting monsters instead of being bored reading kingdom expense reports.”

“They have you reading expense reports?” Avery asked with wide eyes.

“Well… no,” Edgar said. “But if they did…”

Both Avery and Derek let out a breath. Putting Edgar in charge of expenses would help nobody. Not because he was dumb, but because they knew it was something he wouldn’t put any effort into.

“What… do you do there?” Derek asked.

“Nothing really…” Edgar smiled wryly. “I guess I’m glorified muscle and emotional support.”

“Wait,” Derek said. “They’ve had you there all this time, and they don’t give you anything to do?”

“Well… not anymore,” Edgar replied. “They tried… in the beginning. I did read a kingdom expense report… once… it took forever,” he explained. “But after a while, father and brother gave up. I just promised them that I’d stay until Edward got settled and the kingdom was no longer in any danger. I do get to go train the army some. So that’s fun.”

“I see…” Derek said. They had already talked about Edgar leaving the palace, so he figured that would come sooner rather than later. “Well… now you have a bunch of Void Beasts to bribe them with.”

“I do!” Edgar’s eyes brightened, and Derek could have sworn he had seen a spark of lightning flash through them. “I didn’t even think about that. And here I was just going to give the meals away for free…” he looked at Avery. “You will help me create the meals, right?”

“Yes,” Avery said. “Alanah would want that.”

“Great!” Edgar smiled widely.

“And like that, the prin… duke was rejuvenated,” Derek said with a chuckle.

“Yeah!” Edgar laughed. “And we have so many more Void Beasts than I thought we would. I’ll never have to step foot in that palace again. I’ll do all the dungeons here, then I’ll go to the other continent and do all the dungeons there. Far… far away from the range of communication crystals.”

Derek laughed. He knew that Edgar was joking… somewhat. He was definitely an adventurer through and through, but he was very much loyal to his family. So, no matter how much he would want to travel to the other continent to explore and run dungeons for an unknown amount of time, he wouldn’t do so unless he was certain that everything would be okay while he was gone.

“Well…” Derek said. “I’m sure your family is missing you standing around and doing nothing all day.” He laughed. “Time to get you back.”

“I need to get back to the kids, too,” Avery said. “I’m sure they’ve been slacking off for the past few days. At least, I’ll be surprised if they haven’t been. They are young, after all.”

“True,” Derek replied. “Okay, who wants to go with Silvi, and who wants to go with me?” he asked.

“You can take me,” both Avery and Edgar said at the same time. Neither one of them wanted to repeat the experience of being stuffed inside a pot with a lid by Silvi—at least, neither wanted to experience it again. They both had to go through that process when retrieving more storage rings, and it was even the second time that Edgar had traveled that way.

Derek looked between the two, then settled on taking Edgar. Since he’d been stuffed into the pot twice already, it was only fair. “Come on, Edgar,” he said.

“I’ll just wait here for you to get back,” Avery said immediately after Derek made his decision.

“Fine…” Derek said. It would only be slightly faster with Silvi’s help, anyway. “You know the drill,” he said, and Edgar stood in front after Derek opened the portal. “Silvi,” Derek said, getting his companion’s attention. “You stay here for now.”

“Kay,” she replied.

The next few minutes went by fast. Derek dropped Edgar off in the middle of the palace, then came back and moved Avery to the center of his courtyard, where, surprisingly, the three kids were actually training. Whether they’d been persistent in it the last few days, or slacked off until now, he didn’t know. But he could see that Avery was proud of their dedication before Derek left and moved back to Silvi.

Once back, Silvi came to him and asked, “What are we doing?”

“I told you that we were going to go collect ingredients soon, didn’t I?” Derek asked with a smile.

“Yes!” Silvi replied excitedly.

“Well, I told Malorie that we were going to be away for a while, so we don’t have to get back,” he said. “And I’ve definitely leveled a lot of my skills enough. Besides, I’m not sure that they are leveling that much faster with me already being so close to level 250. Maybe if we were still in the lower 200s or in the 100s, but at 245… it’s possible that the bonus isn’t much.”

“So… we…” Silvi was almost shaking in excitement.

Derek laughed and pulled out a map with different dungeons marked on it. He wished he had a map for the dungeons on the other continent, but he wasn’t exactly sure where to get one. Nick had some maps, but he doubted he had any maps that were more than basic. He may, but going to ask him wasn’t a risk that Derek wanted to take. So, he’d let Silvi pick out a few dungeons on their current continent. Then they would go from there.

“We are going hunting,” Derek said. “And you get to pick where.”