[1,000,000 Kill Achievement! Congratulations to Randomizer!]
[First Level Up to 19! Congratulations to Randomizer!]
"Gabby, you analyzed the bodies of my streamers, right?"
"Yes, Master. Let me send the information into your mind," Gabby said.
Hermes was still in the thick of battle, with hordes of zombies rushing at him, and had no time to open the custom system interface Gabby had made.
Instead, he let the knowledge pass straight into his thoughts.
For a human to reach level one hundred, the total came to roughly fifteen thousand one hundred fifty level-up stones.
That number alone made him wary.
The rewards tied to those early levels were nothing to scoff at. Hermes had no desire to let the rest of the world profit from the global announcements that followed. Better the gains stayed within his own circle, among those already bound to him by contract.
Even so, he disliked the thought of choosing a human. It was not only because Hermes knew the darker turns of the human heart.
Ratfolk, catfolk, wolfkin, and every other race that had passed through an information age seemed to share the same flaw. They thought too much. Give them a little favor, and they would start weaving nonsense around it.
They would think themselves specially chosen, or feel that others were quietly scheming against them, even grooming them for some hidden end. Some might even convince themselves he meant to breed them.
Hermes had no patience for that kind of drama.
His thoughts turned instead to other races.
"Orc. Hive-ant. Sylvan. Gabby, give me a candidate from those," Hermes said.
He only needed one for now, and for Hermes, character mattered most. Gabby knew that well. Talent, as he often said, could be cultivated later.
What mattered more was that he would not be stingy with what they truly needed. These women did not require six energies.
Most carried only one by nature. In rare cases, two. To force more into them than their bodies were born to hold would only invite waste.
It was like feeding a fire with stone instead of wood. A flame did not grow stronger for being smothered under the wrong fuel.
Pile on enough stone, and the fire might die altogether.
That was why such crystals were far cheaper to synthesize than his perfect level-up stones.
Still, Hermes was no charitable fool. He would give them the level-up stones their bodies required, but not the method behind them, and never the secrets buried in their making.
"Master, I shall follow your command. I do have a suggestion. I think we should raise the three hive-ant queens to level twenty, then give each of them a chokepoint of her own, much like yours."
"That way the zombies that slip through toward the towns will be the weakest ones, the witless stragglers, and casualties should stay low. Would that be acceptable?" Gabby asked.
"Just make sure I still level up," Hermes said.
To make the point plain, he lifted a hand and sent a beam of divine light scything through the horde. It ripped a path more than two hundred meters long through the press of dead flesh, leaving scorched ruin and a momentary gap in the tide.
"That will be done," Gabby replied.
Hermes had paid more than sixty thousand cosmic coins for the basic methods of harnessing the six forms of energy, and he meant to wring value from every last one of them.
Every move he had bought, he intended to use until proficiency made it second nature.
Gabby, meanwhile, set aside ten percent of the total crystals.
These were the excess reserves, and the greatest surplus lay in elemental energy. With her ultra-fast quantum computations, she reached a conclusion almost at once.
"Master, we can begin with Jazzork immediately. I measured her already, and she appears to hold both fanatic devotion toward you and... fantasies of a sort. It should be reflected in your Status Window. I believe it will appear under the faith panel."
Hermes checked.
To his surprise, the number had risen to a very high level.
[Faith: 6744.50]
Hermes knew how faith was measured. Each point of faith stood for a person, and Gabby had been the first to give him half a point. He had never asked why it was only half a point.
She was a sentient being, capable of thinking for herself, and Hermes was no child to nag about questions of loyalty or love. More than that, he himself had no real faith in her at all.
Even so, he shoved the press of enemies aside and carved out a few precious seconds for himself. In that brief lull, he checked the racial population within the town.
He saw it at once.
[Orc Town Population: 6744]
It accounted for all but Gabby's half point, so Hermes knew at once who was responsible. Jazzork.
Like Akira, she was royal by blood. The difference was that Jazzork had not yet claimed the throne. Among orcs, inheritance was not a matter of age or ceremony. It was taken by strength and kept by blood.
She still had siblings left to duel. Out of more than a thousand brothers and sisters, she had already bested most.
That alone had made her worth recruiting.
Hermes still remembered how sharp her tongue had been when they first met. She had sneered that he was full of nothing but black air.
Even then, a crowd of orcs had gathered to watch. Jazzork was the kind of prodigy the planet Ugg Ogg birthed only once in a thousand years, a peerless genius marked early for greatness.
Hermes had been too pressed for time to indulge her pride. The Event was closing in, and his schedule had been packed tight. So he handled her the orc way.
He beat her, healed her, then beat her again until the fight ran out of her and tears took its place.
By the end of it, the fierce creature was black and blue, and carried herself with more restraint than half the noblewomen Hermes had known on Earth. She had turned soft-spoken, well-mannered, even polite enough to ask after his health whenever they met.
Still, in Jazzork's mind, it was only a matter of time before she beat Hermes in turn.
That too was the orc way. They did not brood over losses. They trained through them. A beating was not an end, only proof that one still had farther to climb.
Aboard the floating Sky Fielder, Jazzork threw herself into that climb day and night with help from the other female streamers. She sparred until her muscles trembled, stopped only to eat and sleep, drowned the pain in health potions.
She had even come to Hermes once for a loan, offering her body as collateral.
Hermes had sent the musclebound orc away at once.
He did not dislike it. If anything, he found it faintly amusing that he regarded her as something close to a peerless beauty.
Since his genetics had changed, Hermes had noticed a certain pull in himself toward the women of other races, a sharpened awareness that had not been there before.
Even so, desire had never ruled him. His will still stood above it.
He was too driven by purpose to be turned aside by a pretty face. Beauty, once stripped of illusion, was only flesh, bone, and sinew arranged in pleasing lines.
"Pick her then. My luck seems to sour the longer we delay," Hermes said.
Gabby went to Jazzork at once and explained that Randomizer wished to have her serve as his representative in claiming the level-up rewards. She laid it out carefully, then repeated it a second time, making certain the orc understood every part of it.
After that, Jazzork was called over to sign a betting contract. It said that all the rewards from leveling up would go to Randomizer, except for the global announcement and her own stat gains.
Jazzork saw no issue with that.
"Sounds very simple. Is that all?" Jazzork asked.
Gabby nodded.
That was enough for her. Jazzork began stuffing level-up stones into her mouth one after another. Each stone melted the moment it went down, its power sinking into flesh and bone as her body swallowed the energy whole.
She was a glutton for growth, and her frame demanded more than twenty-five thousand level-up stones before it would be satisfied.
Under other circumstances, that cost might have seemed absurd.
For Hermes, it was nothing.
He was killing at least a thousand zombies every second now. Compared to that torrent, Jazzork's consumption was barely worth a thought.
[World Announcement: First Level Up to 20! Congratulations to 'Very Strong Jazzork'!]
[World Announcement: First Level Up to 21! Congratulations to 'Very Strong Jazzork'!]
[World Announcement: First Level Up to 22! Congratulations to 'Very Strong Jazzork'!]
…
[World Announcement: First Level Up to 100! Congratulations to 'Very Strong Jazzork'!]
[STATUS WINDOW]
[Username: Very Strong Jazzork (Jazzork)]
[Age: 21] [Level: 100]
[Next Level: 500/500 MAX]
[Race: Orc]
[Class: (S-Rank) Violence Berserker]
[Constitution Rating: 144.39]
[Strength: 5.00 → 131.25]
[Agility: 4.99 → 130.99]
[Dexterity: 6.30 → 165.38]
[Reflex: 5.25 → 137.81]
[Tenacity: 6.00 → 157.50]
[Intelligence Rating: 91.89]
[Processing Speed: 6.00 → 157.50]
[Comprehension: 1.05 → 27.56]
[Analytical Logic: 4.99 → 130.99]
[Memory: 2.00 → 52.50]
[Internal Energy Rating: 2.19]
[Qi: 0.00]
[Mana: 0.00]
[Elemental: 0.50 → 13.13]
[Divine: 0.00]
[Cosmic: 0.00]
[Eldritch: 0.00]
[Karmic Rating: 11.00]
[Luck: 44.00]
[Faith: 0.00]
[Fame: 0.00]
[Enmity: 0.00]
[Violence Berserker Skills]
[More Blood More Power - Passive]
[Rationality For Strength]
[Call For Frenzied Violence]
[Unlock New Skill Now?]
Jazzork clenched and unclenched her fist, amazed by the new strength surging through her body. Gabby handed her a steel rod, two inches thick and two meters long. Jazzork bent it with ease. The moment the rod folded, her fighting spirit rose with it.
"I want to fight Randomizer now. Let's see who's stronger," she said.
She immediately strode toward the battlefield where Hermes was still holding back the horde, but a hand caught her and held her in place. It was soft, small, and delicate, the kind of hand made for care and comfort. Even so, Jazzork could not move past it.
"Let go, Mama Gabby," Jazzork roared.
Her skills answered her anger on their own, without any need to open a status window. Power rushed through her body. Her attributes shot past the three hundred mark, but the surge only clouded her judgment. She tried to wrench herself free. When that failed, she threw a punch with all her strength.
Gabby lifted one finger and stopped Jazzork's large fist like it was nothing.
"Where are you going?" Gabby asked, her voice still warm.
To Jazzork, that warmth felt colder than winter. A shiver ran through her, and just like that, her anger died.
"I was only joking, Mama Gabby. Just playing around. Tee hee," Jazzork said, trying to act cute and smooth things over.
"Gather the orcs. I want you to check the perimeter of the outer wall. If no dead orcs show up after this, there will be free meat," Gabby said.
Jazzork's eyes lit up at once at the mention of meat. She knew orcs could eat almost anything, but they were still carnivores at heart. Most of her people had been surviving on little more than water, shrubs, and leaves.
"Alright, Mama Gabby. I'll be going," Jazzork said.
She hurried off at once, still shaken by how strong Gabby truly was.