The Systemic Lands

Chapter 6: Day 4 – Upgrading Costs

We got to the plaza before dawn. Only one or two people were up keeping watch, but they ignored us since we went straight to the pillars and avoided their groups. I put my pack on the pillar while my teammates stood around me like we had done the first time.

A restoration cost 109 points. I winced at that but spent the points. My body immediately felt better. Next, I bought a Body upgrade. I didn’t feel anything, and I noted that the costs of all upgrades had increased to 105 after the first purchase. That was unfortunate and partially unexpected. I had thought the upgrade cost would scale with the individual stat, rather than across all of them.

I quickly spent a total of 550 points on five upgrades, one in each stat. I didn’t feel any different, but I would have to wait and see. I then spent 40 points on a new club, two watermelons, and a lot more fruit.

I put everything away while explaining what I had discovered about the upgrades and how I didn’t feel any different.

Frank went next and bought five body upgrades, food, and a new weapon as well. He said he felt a bit stronger and able to breathe easier, but by a very small amount. I mentally cursed. The scaling was terrible for personal power. This made being in a competent group until I could get 100 upgrades or so even more important.

Jim put five purchases into Mind and Jesus put five purchases into Body. I didn’t say anything about their choices. A good leader will only say something, when they know it will be obeyed. Trying to micromanage their purchases for testing and knowledge wasn’t going to happen.

The restoration costs for the others ranged from 50 to 80 points, when I asked. I winced at that. I was the worst off, but I could already feel the fat leaving my body and being able to breathe more easily. The intense daily exercise, combined with a full body restoration was the perfect weight loss combination. At least the restoration wasn’t taking away my gains, which was something that had worried me. I still had a lot to go unfortunately. With our purchases done we all left the plaza.

We had an advantage for now. While I didn’t kill my teammates, I wasn’t about to blindly trust them either. I was most concerned about Jesus, since he could have friends here in the plaza I didn’t know about. I wasn’t about to let him wander off. Both Frank and Jim, I had picked up on the first day, so I was less concerned.

I noted Jesus looking around and trying to walk more slowly. “Maybe we should recruit some more people,” he suggested. It was an okay idea, but if he brought in people he preferred, that would threaten me and our current group dynamic. Three other people was the limit that I thought I could handle with confidence.

One thing I was sure on, was that I needed to control information about the slimes and who was brought into the group. Jesus on his own was a threat, but not a huge threat. Also, the more people we brought in, the harder it would be to get crystals.

“Maybe next time, we need more upgrades. There is no rush for us. That way we can vote on it as a group and talk it out, this isn’t really the time or place. We don’t want to be caught up in a fight. We should leave now to be safe, right Jim?” By phrasing my response as a question to someone I knew who would agree with me on this issue, it would be an easy verbal victory without an argument. At least that was the hope.

“Uh, yeah, we should get going.” Jim was the most agreeable. I was tempted to ask Frank since he didn’t like Jesus based on the stares he gave the guy, but that would just lead to more hostility between the two. I didn’t want to start a fight. This interpersonal drama gave me a headache.

Jesus didn’t object and we left the plaza without an internal or external fight. I let out a sigh of relief. We had stocked up enough to last 3 or 4 days this time. My idea was to let the violence in the plaza burn itself out. This would be the critical time as people got desperate. It cost 10 points for a weapon, so that left 90 points left for food. Assuming 10 points a day, people would only have about 10 points left on the morning we returned.

“Jim, how many points do you think a healthy person needs to eat a day?” I asked.

“Well, if we assume standard calorie and a 2,000-calorie diet. Probably around 20 points. There is no meat or nuts. Just fruit, so there will be vitamin deficiencies long term.”

“No tomatoes, guess they really are a vegetable,” Frank added.

“Tomatoes are a fruit, what do you think Jesus?” I asked with a smile.

“Don’t know.” There was a bit of silence before I spoke up again.

“The restoration is the key, but it is expensive, and we need the store for that.”

“All the trash, even in the city disappears. Where does it go?” Frank muttered. We had already talked about that, and I guessed it was the same System that ran the store, reclaiming waste for energy. Probably some time limit related to the last time it had been seen or used by a person. It added a sense of unease and eeriness to this entire place.

This trip I had some experiments we could do, to test this theory of trash. Rather than get caught up in my own mental world right now, I checked behind us several times, but no one was following our group. The people in the plaza would not have gotten a good look at what we bought since we were crowding around the pillar.

The only clue were the new clubs, but it would be hard to tell their status in the dark. We had tossed our old clubs after leaving the plaza. No need to carry dead weight.

I thanked whatever god, alien, or system that the restoration feature existed. If that wasn’t around, there would be no way I could keep up this grueling pace. I checked my hands, and my skin was no longer irritated but the calluses were still building up and hadn’t been removed.

Whatever the restoration was, it was removing the exhaustion, fatigue, and damage, but leaving the benefits like slowly forming calluses. Still, there were some benefits probably being lost to undergoing a full natural recovery rather than magic liposuction, but the ability to breathe without pain wracking my body wasn’t something to be underestimated.

If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have pushed myself so hard, but it was do or die. That was one thing I could always do when a lot was on the line, to push my limits and push my brain to the limit. Still, the restoration couldn’t remove the mental fatigue I was experiencing.

Dealing with my teammates and keeping an eye on everything was exhausting. The more capable people were the more troublesome people. It was a frustrating correlation. Anyone who could actually think, would think about why they were listening to me.

I got to thinking about how much we would collect over three days. At 70 crystals per person per day, would put us around 840 crystals. I was very good at quick mental math. To get the points I changed 840 to 8,400 and cut it in half, so 4,200 points. That was quicker and easier than multiplying by five.

The next upgrade cost 125 points. Ten upgrades would cost an average of 150, so about 1,500 points. The next ten would cost an average of 200 points, so a total of around 2,000. So that meant 20 upgrades would be possible if the scaling remained the same.

Based on the limited impact the points had for Body, I put them at 1%. It was a guess that made it easy to think about them and the impact those upgrades had, not having any basis from tests or any form of verification.

“Feel any different Jim?”

“No, maybe, it is hard to tell.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “Very hard to tell. I think it is easier to think, but hard to say.”

That was annoying. It was all but confirmed that the scaling was terrible. It also confirmed that I wasn’t going to become a wizard any time soon.

Without concrete skills or abilities, investing in Mind, Spirit, Perception, and Aura was too risky. Everything would have to go into Body. The question then became, does Body improve the base or is it a static improvement.

Unfortunately, there was not enough information to make a conclusion either way. We had no weights to test each improvement in a discrete manner. This situation made me think of poker, a game with imperfect information.

I had to make decisions with imperfect information. Something I hated. I liked to research, read, and analyze a situation first. Now it all had to be done by the seat of my pants. Maybe that was why I liked to dabble in poker, the thrill of the unknown and the thrill of losing my money.

I had checked for a pack of cards, but it wasn’t in the Store, no dice either. It would have been nice to pass the time after we were done grinding monsters with some light gambling. But it was better to probably not do that, too much chance of people getting upset since the only thing we had to gamble were crystals.

What I really wanted to know was if more people were going to be teleported in or not. If it was going to happen, it would probably be tomorrow or the tenth day. The reason being, the Store also used base ten number system and upgrade costs increased by five each time.

Still, that was not a guarantee of anything. It was all just guess work. I had been wrong about the upgrade costs as well. I didn’t think the costs would go up across all upgrades. That meant each investment into upgrades was increasingly prohibitive and it would be harder to change focus later on.

That depended on the point scaling. If I was by myself, I could probably earn 100 crystals each day, or 500 points, pushing myself. That was nowhere close to what I needed to earn.

Doing some more mental math, the cost of the next 100 upgrades cost around 40,000 points or 80 days without spending on anything else. Call it 100 days. If each upgrade improved things by 1%, then that would be double my base abilities.

Future upgrades would be incredibly hard and even more time consuming unless I found higher point monsters or could kill slimes more quickly.

Looking around I could probably guess what each of my teammates was thinking. Frank was probably thinking about his family and past life, and how to take control of his situation. He was the type of person who wanted to control everything in their life.

Jim was also thinking about his family. Possibly how he could use his medical knowledge in some way. That was the problem with most people. They aren’t focused on what is, but on what they want it to be. That was why I had power right now, they had stopped worrying about their situation and left the thinking to me for the most part.

Jesus was a bit more complicated. He was probably thinking about when he could leave my fat ass behind and use my knowledge to create a group of his own. Probably as some kind of gang lord or something equally annoying and aggravating. With how shifty he was this morning, that all but confirmed my guess in my mind.

I was probably wrong about the details, where the devil hid, but felt confident on my guesses overall. We had talked enough that I had a sense of their personalities. It was hard and annoying to think through each and every interaction, but it was important. I had to force myself to think and not just zone out and go with the flow.

Important enough that my life was in their hands. Still, this group wasn’t stable. We were together out of mutual interest and inertia. There were no fond feelings or personal relationships to smooth things out.

The more I thought about this fact, the more concerned I became about the future. Once the plaza erupted in violence, what use did they have for me? I knew I pointed things out and realized the game mechanics, but it wasn’t critical anymore. Useful yes, critical to survival no.

I had no doubt that Frank and Jesus were thinking how to turn the situation to their advantage in some way. Still, not having teammates would limit my options. It wasn’t like I could kill Frank and Jesus without Jim panicking in some way.

It was an all or nothing move, which made it all the more difficult to decide. Hesitation was also a choice and the worst one in my opinion. Make a decision, you can change your mind, but make a decision. For now, I would keep with my original decision, I would wait. Hopefully we could get four days’ worth of hunting before we returned to the plaza.

It would push our supplies to the limit, but that just meant more crystals for me at the end. A lot of crystals. The trip to and from the plaza to outside the wall wasn’t short, so it was good to maximize the usefulness of each trip. I wasn’t going to do any more mental math, since it was exhausting.

It also wouldn’t add any value. My time thinking was a resource and I had to ration it carefully. It was tempting to aim for Mind upgrades, but Body had to be the priority.

I made a decision. I had to keep putting points into that metric or upgrade until I could move easily and without pain accumulating from my weight. That was the most important thing. It didn’t matter how smart you are in prison, just the size of your biceps.

At least this wasn’t prison, but the same concept applied. Personal strength mattered. While there was the game logic of exponential fighters and quadratic wizards, I couldn’t afford to take the long path. The idea was that while warriors were stronger at the start, wizard type builds would out pace them towards the mid and end game.

That was the D&D logic at least, I wasn’t sure how well it would hold up here. If a person could move fast enough, then aiming and hitting a person with an ability would become increasingly difficult.

Still, that type of situation was very far away. That meant I had to invest into my Body and restoration. The scaling was…glacial. It was so slow that it concerned me how much good items would have to cost once the upgrade to the Store was purchased.

Currently the most expensive non-upgrade option were clothes. My pants were getting worn, with the crotch wearing out. Another fat person problem, fat thighs rubbing against each other wears out the cloth in the crotch area more quickly. Being fat just made everything more expensive and troublesome.