The Systemic Lands

Chapter 574: Day 5,049 (3) – A Meta-Point

The crystalline monster kept up its dance through the sky. One step after another. It was aggravating how long the fight was taking, but I couldn’t risk speeding things up. If I rushed things, I could create an opening. That was why I needed to keep at range and keep pressuring the monster.

Michelle was rapidly burning through summons, but the attrition damage was adding up. It was just a matter of time until the battle was won. Each attempt to escape was cut off. Each attempt to hide was quickly shut down. Each attempt to counter attack was blocked or countered.

I was getting better and better. I hadn’t had a fight like this in a long time. While there were high leveled monsters that gave me trouble, I had never faced anything like this. I couldn’t lose and the monster couldn’t win.

While it was a team effort, I was more than happy to take a win regardless. After all the setbacks this new area had dealt to me and my team, I was ready to finish it off. The fact it was slowing down and making more and more mistakes, its movements becoming less crisp, showed an extended battle was wearing it down.

I had never worn down any other monster and I could say I hated this kind of fight. Trying to kill something that was running away and also incredibly dangerous was a frustrating combination. Battles of attrition were the absolute worst.

Air Burst. I closed in on the monster some more. It maneuvered out of the way, and I sent an Acid Shot in a direction I anticipated it moving. The monster was hit, and I immediately capitalized on the mistake. Acid Shot x10, completely engulfing it. The battle was over.

I kept checking around me and the monster to make sure it was dead and it was. Acid Shot x5. I double tapped its already melting corpse to be sure. The airship began to slow down as Michelle’s monsters set up a perimeter and killed the local monster.

We would wait here for an hour or so before leaving just to be sure it was dead. I wasn’t willing to take any chances. “That was a headache and a half,” I muttered out loud as I sent another round of attacks at there the corpse had fallen between some boulders.

“Michelle, bombard the area,” I called out and moved away. She summoned up more monsters which began leveling the boulders. Zero chances of this thing ever coming back. It had been a nightmare to deal with even more me. I didn’t want to go through this hassle a second time. While I had seen the head melt, with monsters you couldn’t be sure. As I learned from the Ritualist, if it has its head, it isn’t dead.

In this case, I would say if it had any piece left it wasn’t dead. It might have been overkill, but it had barely made the list of actual enemies that had given me trouble over the years. The Ritualist, The Astrologer, and the Divine Empress were at the top of that list. This monster was at the vary bottom of a very exclusive list.

I suddenly felt an intense pressure weighing me down. A golden cube had formed in the air in front of me. I blinked a couple of times. I couldn’t believe it. After everything, this is what the Almighty System decided to reward. Killing this thing?! I felt a sense of disbelief and frustration, but on the other hand it made a sick kind of sense.

All my previous opponents had been humans. This was my first non-human opponent that I had killed. Well the Ritualist had turned into a monster, so I wasn’t sure. While it felt like an arbitrary decision, for once I was not going to complain about a meta-point. I had waited for this moment for years.

The decision on what to pick had always weighed me down. From unique skills, a stat boost, to knowledge. I hesitantly reached out and touched the floating golden cube. It was a meta-point and not an illusion.

Ask For Three Things, Choose One

I let out a heavy gulp. This choice would decide my future. I didn’t feel ready, but the future waited for no one. I also wasn’t about to leave a meta-point out here in the wilderness while I took days to think over my choice. The problem was that there were too many good choices from what I had understood about meta-points.

The Astrologer had a way to get stat points from others, which was quite powerful. But I was the strongest person. It would make more sense to keep a strong lead rather than trying to bring other people down.

Permanent stat increase. I mentally picked the safe choice as my first option. It was the one I was leaning towards.

1. Stat multiplier by 3x

It was a permanent increase. One I could use to help me out in both the short and long term. The value of this option was in the billions and trillions of points. It would only increase in value. And while it would make me stronger, it wasn’t as much of a boost as it would have been years ago.

The problem was the diminishing returns of stat points. That was the biggest issue. While a multiplier would help fix this issue, stat points could still be purchased from the store no matter how expensive they got. The value of this was high, but it wasn’t unique. It was a safe choice.

It wasn’t a mistake, but it wasn’t optimal I felt. Still, I wanted to ask for this regardless so in case I screwed up my next two requests I had something safe to fall back on. If it had been a 5x or 10x multiplier, then it would have been a no brainer. But a 3x multiplier felt weak to me.

I could also tell that such a bonus would stack. So, getting a second meta-point would let me increase the boost to 9x. Now that was incredibly powerful. But meta-points didn’t grow on trees unfortunately. This could be my only meta-point for a very long time.

While it was a good long term choice. I had something better to ask for long term. I wanted the ability to improve my skills through use and combat. A way to level up my skills without skills points.

2. Passive Skill: Combat Knowledge

This skill would improve based on how much I fought. The more I fought, the more the skill would improve. Which in turn would allow me to improve the use of my other skills. It would be a long term boost for all my skills.

It was incredibly powerful. It was an ability that wouldn’t lose its value over time. I carefully considered how it would work long term. It would take up a skill slot, but I wasn’t concerned about that. It would constantly improve the more I fought monsters.

While I could improve by myself, it would give me a massive boost. Again, like the point multiplier it just made what I was already doing better. It was a second solid option. The biggest issue, was that it wouldn’t let me hit harder. Well it would let me use my skills better, it wasn’t an immediate power jump. I would still have to upgrade the rest of my skills. That would be incredibly frustrating.

That left my third choice. It was incredibly tempting to ask what was the purpose of this place, but it was like asking God the meaning of life. It didn’t matter what he said, the information would have no practical use. If this place was managed by aliens, a gameshow, a lab, or any other thing, I didn’t have the personal power to make a decision on such an outcome.

It would be better to get power. While knowledge was power in a sense, direct power was a much better form of power than anything else. Turning knowledge into power was a hassle I didn’t want to deal with. Someone else could waste their meta-point on a question. I wasn’t about to do that, no matter how much I wanted an answer about this place.

That left my third choice. I carefully thought it over. I had already spent way too much time fantasizing about what I would pick in this moment. Powerful attacks, super companions, and even asking to bring a person back. I hesitated at this.

Could I bring back Naran. It was tempting, but he had been dead for a decade. It was incredibly tempting. He had been my best friend. But he had left and had then died. I closed my eyes. I had buried him in my heart. While it still hurt to think about his death, he was dead. Bringing him back was a waste of a meta-point.

No single life, except mine, was worth a meta-point. Not even Clarissa’s life. This was an uncomfortable truth of this world. Power mattered. Picking power would help me much more in the long run, and preserve lives, over anything else. My position and power brought stability. Picking anything else would be a betrayal of all the people who depended on me. The selfish choice was the not-selfish choice at the same time.

That was the same reason why I didn’t wish the Avatar to be dead. It was incredibly tempting. The temptation was immense, but it would be a waste of a meta-point. I might have considered such a thing years ago, but now, I wouldn’t waste such an opportunity for petty revenge. She was already a shell of her former self. I had already condemned the horrible woman to bureaucratic hell.

I recalled a fight I had a long time ago. A woman who had served the Divine Empress, who had pushed me to my limits with her ability to short range teleport, or Blink. That was an ultimate combat ability to both dodge and counterattack. But the skill had issues.

It would just be a unique skill, it wouldn’t improve over time like my first two picks. This was an absolute requirement I had for each pick I made. I was tempted about asking for a growth item of some kind, but then my mind went to the sword that was the other half of the mess that had been created with the monster.

A growth item, while desirable, could be taken. The same for a portable shop. If I had gotten a meta-point when I had killed Death so long ago, then a portable shop would have been the best option. I could leave all the problems of the cities behind and become a wilderness person. Now that I had tapped into the value of taxes, I was not about to give that up or let anyone else get that tax revenue.

I would go for a bit of a gamble on my lest pick. A passive sensory skill that let me observe all around me at all times.

3. Passive Skill: Aura of Observation

I would have to level this skill up the regular way, but it would give a massive boost for me to spot hidden enemies and skills used against me. I could compact the aura to get a finer degree of detail. This would stop all ambushes and donkey type monsters in their tracks. I wasn’t worried so much about direct fights, but stealth attacks.

Each of these three options was incredibly useful. At least I felt so. Picking a trash option like so many other people had, would have been foolish to the extreme. I had spent quite a bit of time thinking and pondering about the best skill to pick and these were the top three after I took everything I knew into account.

The safe stat option. The long term combat option. Or the prevention option. I honestly wish I could pick all three, but I wasn’t about to ask the meta-point how to get more meta-points. That had a high chance of being a complete waste of a meta-point. While incredibly tempting, it fell into the same boat as asking God the meaning of life. If I got a 42, or whatever answer back, there would be only so much I could do with that.

Now I just had to pick.