The Systemic Lands

Chapter 523: Day 4,905 (4) – The Final Store Upgrade

The Molten Millipede collapsed as the last tentacle was destroyed. The soldiers along the walls had taken out the floating eyes, which had helped quite a bit. I made my way back down to the bridge. Michelle had a cold damp towel over her eyes and a soldier was carefully giving her some chilled fruit flavored water to drink.

“She pushed herself. No curse damage, but Doctor Katz will want to check to be sure,” Captain Francis said.

“Did she say what the problem was?” I asked.

“Just a lot of focus required to hold the connection. There was a battle of wills, possibly some energy backlash, just a small bit. But no bleeding, or serious pain. Just a headache reported,” Captain Francis said, and I nodded relieved. If Michelle was seriously hurt, that would be a huge problem. That was good. Unlike Joyo, Michelle was a much more important part of my team.

His use was going to be experimental research subject if he didn’t recover soon. The City Shield went down. “Take us to the airship port,” I commanded. We flew into the city. The airship had to adjust its height since, even a small tilt had massive implications across the entire city. It was disconcerting looking at it from an elevated view.

We moved into the tower that was the Airship Port, but the locking mechanism refused to engage. That meant the building was too damaged. Clarissa had her work cut out for her. “Lower the airship to just above street level under my authority. Constant watch of course. No need to pick up the children, just yet,” I replied and the Captain nodded.

I made my way outside and jumped down to the ground. I slowly walked towards the pillars. Hopefully they weren’t damaged. If they were I would be pissed. Clarissa was approaching as well. She waved her entourage off.

“You check yet?” I asked.

“No. Thought we could do it togeather,” she replied. I nodded at that and hesitated.

“You think they are broken?” I asked her.

“You could check, they are right there,” she replied and waved her hand.

“I know, but I am worried,” I replied.

“They are not broken,” the Avatar suddenly spoke up from her chained position in the middle of the pillars. I walked over to her gaunt figure. She looked up at me as I approached even though she had no eyes and a piece of dark blue cloth with my golden dragon symbol wrapped around her eyes.

“Avatar. Returning to life?” I asked her.

“You don’t visit,” she replied, but her rasping voice, and slouched, gaunt figure showed a broken woman. She could try and stir things up, but I didn’t care what she said. The best forward was to ignore her completely and not give her any leverage. I shouldn’t have engaged with her, but she was making an effort, so I would humor her and then shut her down.

“Because you are a vile person that I can’t kill. Enjoying the paperwork? I think I should write up a new set personally,” I told her with a malicious grin. Her suffering brought a very small amount of joy.

“You will get yours soon enough. Things are stirring. And not in a good way for you,” she spat out each word, savoring in it.

“Oh so you have time to plot and look about then? Time for more paperwork?” I challenged.

“She is goading you Michael,” Clarissa told me. I turned to look at her.

“She might be, but I don’t care. There is a reason I leave her in the city and don’t strap her to my airship as a figurehead. I want her to suffer for her plots and her attempts at my life. The final guarantee this city won’t be destroyed,” I said with a bit of glee as I turned back to the Avatar.

“Well, let me give you some parting words. I will revel in your death when it comes Michael. For it has already been set in motion.” I blinked at the Avatar at her sheer stupidity and decided to see if I could exploit her knowledge some more.

“Pfft, like anything could be a threat,” I replied.

“Yes it is. Someone-ahhhh!” she screamed and collapsed to the ground. She tried to say something she shouldn’t and the Almighty System punished her. Well at least I got a warning, and a person was involved. Someone, not something. Not this person who attacked Joyo then.

“That was entertaining,” Clarissa said with her deadpan voice. “Let’s check the pillars?” I nodded at this. Enough with useless people that had no useful information in the slightest. I checked the pillars. They weren’t broken and I let out a sigh of relief. I didn’t trust the Avatar to tell the truth.

First thing I mentally asked for was a new stat. Nothing came up. Then an upgrade cost. No upgrade. I then asked for a list of new items. One nice thing about the Spirit stat it gave me a greater ability to parse through information that the store provided.

There were only two items listed and two new building structures. “Hahahahaha,” I began to laugh. It was so stupid, that I could only laugh or cry, and I chose to laugh. It was frankly ridiculous.

“What is it?” Clarissa asked as I got myself under control by taking deep breaths.

“There are two items and two buildings. The stupidest things possible,” I replied. Clarissa put her hands on the pillar. Her frown worsened as she looked them over.

“This has to be a joke, and if it is it is poorly thought out,” she finally said. I could tell she was perturbed as I was.

The first item listed was clearly something, someone with a meta-point put into the store. It was Guidebook by Emanual. Thank you Emanual for wasting a meta-point to put a guidebook into the store. What was hilarious about it, was the cost, it was a trillion points to buy the Guidebook.

If you had a billion points, then you didn’t need a guidebook. Even more so the difficulty of the upgrade that was needed to get a level 6 store. It was rage inducing in every possible way. First someone wasted a meta-point for something like this. Then the Almighty System put it in at level 6, where it would be pointless. On top of that the price was a trillion points and we had to buy at least one copy of it just to check it out.

It was a scam. A scam somehow to get points. Even if the person only got 1% of the cost, they just needed a single sale to make 10 billion points. That was if there was a 1% conversion. If it was more they could easily become more powerful than me.

The scam was so obvious as to be painful. But it was like a trainwreck of epic proportions. It was horrible, but one couldn’t look away in all its terrifying glory. It was ingenious too, because even now I was wondering what was in the Guidebook. Would it have answers or just be an epic troll?

The second item available was a portable level 1 store. So basically, it gave fruits and vegetables and points could be cashed in. Again, this would be a great purchase except for the price tag. I suspected the Almighty System was just adding any user requested things at level 6 and putting the price tag of one trillion points on them.

A trillion points for a portable store. It also added in the description that no restorations could be purchased from it either. So its only value was buying food and cashing in points, so I didn’t have to come back to the city.

But to get a trillion points would require centuries of effort. This was clearly an end game type of item that was purely a luxury. I had no idea when a trillion points would be a luxury. But it clearly was meant to be one. Also, I would buy the portable store over the Guidebook any day of the deek.

The two buildings had a joke building and a serious building. The joke building was labeled Oracle and cost one trillion points. I looked over at the Avatar. She chose that moment to look up at me and grin maliciously. It was clearly a scam building of some kind. She probably suckered some idiot to use their meta-point to create a building option to funnel her points.

The fourth building option was more useful. Another city store, replacing a building with a single store pillar for only the low, low, price of a, wait for it, a trillion points. I looked over at Clarissa as her face went through a variety of expressions.

First there was confusion. Then realization, or the ah-ha moment when she realized what all these things were. Then immense rage when she realized they were all scams. Then severe disappointment and acceptance.

“That’s truly it,” she muttered with disappointment.

“Well that upgrade for the Rod of Control is interesting. It went Calling, Observation, and now Voting.” Calling allowed for messages to be sent to linked Rods of Minor Calling. We had one just in case, but you needed someone at both ends to get a message. Using our resonance rock system was cheaper in the short term, but I knew Clarissa had plans to implement a wider message system.

The Observation upgrade allowed a person to get a mental image linked to the City Map. Kind of useful to locate a person, but a visual map was just as good. “Bring the City Rod,” Clarissa said.

It was quickly brought over from wherever it was secured. She purchased the hundred million point upgrade without hesitation. The Rod changed to have more detail and took on a bigger dragon motif. She then passed it to me.

I could claim another vote. There was now a total of 41 votes available. I considered claiming it but decided not to until I had more time to think about it. If I got enough, it might trigger something. “Not claiming it?” Clarissa asked me. Whoever touched the rod last could claim the vote unlike the tower votes which were passed on in death.

“Maybe later, I need to think over the implications a bit. Probably. But the quorum number is the same still. But the vote increased by one. Let’s say the quorum count increases by 1 every 2 votes we collect. If we upgrade all cities, that is 19 votes, which would raise the total number of votes to 59. A quorum would be 29 votes. That means we only need 10 towers to having a controlling majority instead of 21,” I replied.

“We have found ten towers,” Clarissa said quietly as she realized we now had enough information and power to grab onto this voting aspect of the Systemic Lands. Granted, several of those towers were in level 5 zones, which implied level 8 bosses at the top.

But it was doable now. It would take a lot of investment and time of course. But we could unlock this voting in a decade or two of hard work, not in centuries of grinding away at super hard towers. The voting aspect was something that the Avatar had suggested would end the Systemic Lands, but her words were more twisted than a pretzel.

Time to look at all the city upgrades as well and see if there were any other scams out there that made me want to cry. A trillion points. That was never happening for any of those options.