Rating Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 5), page 13
The student formation gave a clear mutter of discontent. Dors cursed under his breath.
I could relate. The big guy had taken out quite a few dolls, and he expected to get something for each of them. As for me, I thought a point a dummy would be too generous. But one for every three or four, brought down with no help, would be just about fair.
I felt quite upset myself since I kind of hoped for more than just a lousy couple of points. Heck, I even managed to send a few of those souped-up third wave dummies packing, before going down myself, not to mention all of those I put out of commission earlier.
But at least I didn’t lose any points. And two was still better than nothing.
* * *
Akhshot didn’t share my optimism. He was ranting and raving by the time we got back to our room, waking up Tsass and Paxus. The exercise was over so quickly that the night was still relatively young, and our roommates that had opted out of the test were sound asleep.
But it never even occurred to Akhshot that he was plain out rude, launching into that vitriolic diatribe against the school’s every master. He must have been really peeved about receiving no points at all.
Tsass was staring at our swearing roommate in silence, but Paxus just couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“What was that about, Akhshot? They’ve beaten you up and forgot to give you any points? That kind of thing happens here all the time. Just let it slide”
“I’d rather let something heavy slide on your stupid head, funny guy! Why didn’t you go yourself? Or did you know it was going to end this way?”
“I didn’t know for sure, but I had a hunch,” Paxus yawned. “That’s how they do things every year. The actual challenge may change, but everything remains essentially the same. First they have to demonstrate to us that we’re good for nothing. I think they call it the “explanation stage”. It’s only sticks at this point, no carrots. They don’t even let you go out on the town. So there’s no point in even trying. Whatever you do, it’s not going to be any different.”
“And what will happen then?” Tsass asked, still not quite awake.
“We’ll have to accept it, stop making a fuss, argue, or try to prove anything. That’s the acceptance stage. So don’t expect any bonuses before then. But in the meanwhile, demerits will be easy to come by.”
“How do you know all that?” Tsass asked again.
“You mean you didn’t?” Paxus sounded surprised. “You didn’t volunteer to get roughed up, so I thought you knew what to expect.”
“I’ve heard a few things, but I didn’t know about those stages and such. All they told me was not to expect anything good at the beginning, so they said it would be perfectly fine to skip a test unless it was mandatory. And I don’t like fighting anyway. So how did you find out about the stages?”
“I know a lot of useful things,” Paxus told him with a wink. “I find common ground with people easily, and sometimes those people are really useful. Have you seen that sentry in a plumed helmet? He was in charge of the guards on duty there today. His name is Botts, and he’s a bit of a chatterbox. I told him a few things, and he told me a few in return. He’s a sound guy. Gave me a good account of what to expect from the local brothels and which ones are the best.”
“So, what happens after the acceptance stage?” I asked, fearing that Paxus would return to his favorite topic and tell us nothing of any use.
“That’s when they begin handing out the bonuses,” my roommate replied eagerly. “They start with little things, and then it gets bigger and better. Those who haven’t screwed up too badly will be allowed some liberty in the city, and that’s the most important thing we need to know. Once we’re outside the gate, I’ll show you something so special you won’t believe your eyes. We won’t want for anything if we stick together.”
“And after that we’ll have some serious training and real challenges,” Ogron grunted.
“You mean they’ll let us into the Hidden City?” I put out the feeler I had been preparing for nearly two years.
Ogron stopped making his bed, turned around, and gave me a funny look.
“Chuck, I get the impression you’re really interested in the Labyrinth. Do you really want to get in there that badly?”
I returned his gaze without blinking and nodded.
“I do. But I want a lot of things. I need to get everything I can from this school. All the opportunities I won’t get anywhere else. So I need absolutely everything.”
“And especially the Hidden City, right?” Ogron asked.
I didn’t nod this time. I shook my head instead.
“Wrong question to ask. I’m telling you once again: I want everything I can get here.”
Ogron gave a light chuckle as he kept scrutinizing me.
Damn! Somehow my roommate must have guessed that the Hidden City was of more interest to me than anything else. On the other hand, there was nothing surprising about it. Anyone with a brain would figure it out sooner or later. Indeed, the Hidden City was the very place I had been so keen on getting into for almost two years now. Basically, my great plan started to take shape when I realized that the Hidden City might contain the key to most of the problems I had, if not all of them.
Who was I now, a little over two years past what amounted to an “awakening?” What did I become? An underage aristocrat with no living kin left, someone on the run from unidentified but clearly powerful enemies? You could say that, but you’d also have to admit I was no cornered animal. I had enough treasure stashed away to buy a quarter of the entire North, or a substantial part of Rava.
Sure thing, I had a lot of potential, but who would let me run free? By and large, this world was already divvied up by its movers and shakers, so any serious ownership change would require brute force rather than money alone.
And what force did I have by my side other than my personal drive? A few assistants, perhaps, of whom I could trust but a handful, and who were basically good for nothing without me. Even hiring a force of mercenaries would be problematic. Few would risk casting their lot with a completely anonymous player. Who knew what problems such a person might have? And no one, but no one wanted anyone else’s problems. Problems included enemies, and enemies could be really formidable. No one wanted to be a grain of sand caught between the millstones of serious forces. Therefore, a nobody could have all the money in the world and still fail to build a decent team without a respectable name or any connections.
As for my personal abilities, they might be worth something on the outskirts of the world, but not where serious mainstream interests clashed. Not to mention that those stats alone were still quite underwhelming. They were an important part of the total required, but not the entire total by far. Great Master Tao was right when he said no one could handle such a task quickly. I might well have been unique, but not unique enough to surpass everybody else.
And to add insult to injury, not even the numbers added up all that well. Even during my last days in Clonassis, I noticed that the development of my talents began slowing down. Based on my earlier experience, I hoped to keep growing them easily, a dozen a night, and then, when I felt spent and exhausted every time I upped a talent by a lousy single point, I would feed myself the easy tale of how I simply needed to fully recuperate from wounds and extreme strain. After all, didn’t I have to do a lot of work and a lot of fighting at the Primordial Temple, blah, blah, blah? Yeah, right.
And it only went downhill from there. I nearly lost my boat back on one of the islands as I passed out while working on my talents. Soon enough, I realized it all too well that if I tried to accomplish additional progress by blunt force, neglecting pain, the consequences could be direr than just feeling drained. There was a chance that my second life might end there and then too.
Basically, what I had going for me at the moment was a cool set of attributes with powerful embodiments and a collection of random talents, just a few of which were really neat, while many others still had a long way to go. Sure, I would most likely be able to handle anyone my age or slightly older in a one-on-one battle, and possibly, more than just one opponent at a time. But what would I do if I ran into someone really strong? This wasn’t the Earth, after all, and ORDER could give you a whole lot of nifty abilities, including a really long life.
In my own case, I had only been fully alive for a little over two years. During that time, I spared no effort developing everything I could and getting as much practical knowledge as possible, in a hasty and haphazard manner. Some of that knowledge was really useful—in particular, that received from the Great Master.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t studied with him long enough, although what I did manage to accomplish was still very substantial. Most candidates who came to him in search of training were given something else entirely—the boot, delivered in the most humiliating manner imaginable. I, on the other hand, managed to spend quite some time learning from Tao, receiving knowledge I didn’t even know existed. Nor did most of the rest of Rock’s population, for that matter.
That may have sounded impressive, but what did it really mean? What would happen if I had to face an enemy who had been training for a hundred years? The fact that they wouldn’t have been able to get as much loot as a zero wasn’t worth much in a world with such a rigid hierarchy. A serious clan could have hundreds, if not thousands of elite fighters, and many more fiercely loyal shudras. Their numbers could reach half a million in a relatively minor part of the empire.
And not all shudras by far were badly exploited peasants whose only job was to produce as much rice and other produce as they could, leaving next to nothing for themselves. Many shudras had more important responsibilities. Some of them were low to midlevel managers, while others specialized in satisfying specific needs of a very narrow group of the family’s most privileged heavyweights. The fact that none of those essential workers was remotely my equal meant nothing. Their sheer numbers allowed them to bring in a substantial amount of valuable resources.
Therefore, in a worst-case scenario, my opponent would only be my inferior inasmuch as the attributes of the first ten Degrees of Enlightenment or so were concerned (as well as their embodiments, obviously). They’d be able to catch up and get way ahead of me before too long. And if they lived long enough, towards the end, I would look like a complete fledgling next to such a seasoned and experienced falcon.
And it wouldn’t even take the best part of a century or anything. Thirty well-spent years would be more than enough for anyone coming from an influential family. And the most serious characters could, in theory, even endow someone of my age with similar attributes. Suffice it to say that some of the loot I got from the Necros Lair would allow anyone to get any talent they liked. Obviously, you couldn’t just go out and buy items like that, but who said you could only get stuff on the town square on Sundays? Serious clans had access to an entirely different segment of the market that mere mortals did not even know about.
Therefore, at the moment, I was not unlike a thick textbook with lots of tables, except no one could be sure the numbers in them were correct, given the various mysterious factors affecting my talents. And that was far from all. The enemy who was my equal in theory might turn out to be a far cry from equal in reality. Numbers alone failed to tell the story of how well-chosen or well-balanced someone’s set of talents was, and there was definitely a better way to go here than just by blind chance. Me, I couldn’t be picky, so I simply grabbed whatever I could. Others who benefitted from much more favorable circumstances could afford to hunt for specific things they needed, which would then mesh together in a way that made the most sense. High parameters made it much easier for me to train with Master Tao, but I still couldn’t catapult myself to the top at the speed of sound. I didn’t even have an approximate estimate of how long it would take me to learn the energy science thoroughly instead of working with bits and pieces of it every now and then. I might still prove altogether unable to master it on my own and have to return to the round house in the wasteland. Fortunately, I knew the Great Master wouldn’t mind. After all, we had parted on excellent terms, and he considered himself to be in my debt.
So what it boiled down to was that I didn’t have any external forces on my side, and my personal abilities were a conflicting story at best. Oh, and to put that cherry on the top, I had unidentified enemies with an enormous amount of clout and resources. They had been searching for me diligently for the last two and a half years, and not just all over the North, but all across Rava as well. And that was just what I knew. I didn’t have a chance yet to ask around elsewhere in Rock.
For enemies with such powers I was still nothing but a flea and would remain one for years to come—provided, that is, that I somehow managed to survive that long. They might find me any moment and send a squad of assassins after me.
The school offered an excellent opportunity to get rid of unwelcome guests for a whole year. It was under the Emperor’s patronage; therefore, student security was guaranteed at the highest level, which accounted for a lot in itself. That said, when I was contemplating getting into the Steel Palace, a brief spell of relative safety that I could count on here was the furthest thing from my mind. The real reason I was obsessed with the idea was that the school provided the only real opportunity to get access to the Hidden City where I might be able to come by two indispensable things.
One was easy and available to anyone enterprising enough with access to what lay behind the forbidden gate: Element attributes and corresponding talents. That was the very set I had been trying to get hold of in the North for so long—and failed spectacularly. It was a pity I couldn’t acquire those while still a zero, but late was better than never. Even at minimum levels those abilities would make me stronger and endow me with new powers.
Elements were really useful, and the Hidden City gave you access to a wide variety of the best they had to offer. According to reliable sources, some managed to get full sets of Elemental attributes there as well as powerful defensive talents (the Element wielders’ famous shields). And there was a plethora of other useful things you could get there.
At the twenty-first Degree of Enlightenment, even my ultra-high Measure of Order worked rather irregularly, and the gap between my enemies and myself wasn’t the same as earlier, which also affected the drops. I was getting substantially less loot than I did at the seventh degree, not to mention back when I was still a zero. Still, I was pretty certain that what I had was more than enough to gather an impressive elemental collection quickly and securely. I’d stuff my pockets as soon as I was allowed through the gate.
But getting Element attributes was just a useful bonus. My first priority in the Hidden City was different. And what exactly was that, you might ask? Well, it was simple. I needed a force behind me and power inside of me. Forming an efficient team would be very difficult under the current circumstances. As to personal power, I had a very unorthodox option in mind. Although verging on the fantastic, it was still based on a fairly realistic premise—realistic enough to set my Grand Plan in motion. If successful, it would put me on an equal footing with all of this world’s movers and shakers, and most, if not all of them, would look at me with great envy.
To put it in plain language, there was a specific power that could be waiting for me in the Hidden City. It would be quite unique and most likely unavailable to anyone in this world at the moment. But in all fairness, I had no guarantees that would in fact be the case, and I was not merely chasing a phantom. Still, not checking it out would amount to criminal negligence.
Even in the worst-case scenario, I’d still be able to add Element attributes to my already extensive collection. Though remaining the same kind of pawn with the same kind of problems, I’d get a great deal stronger, which would come in handy if I had to deal with less powerful enemies.
On the other hand, if the plan worked as expected, I’d become a queen on this chessboard without even having to cross all of it. It would only take a move or two.
The entire game would be played by my rules then.
Chapter 9
The Elite’s Daily Grind
The explanation stage turned out a lot less formidable than our first test may have suggested. Yes, they were running us hard through all kinds of drills and telling us in no uncertain terms that all the training and knowledge we had acquired earlier from our family teachers and other sources was ridiculous and useless. But this wasn’t done with malice or in any excessive manner. Yes, there were some cracked skulls and similar unpleasant injuries, but no one skimped on medicine here, and the healers would deal even with the most serious of cases, making those unlucky students fit for further training again in no time. The catch here was that the medics had to get to the injured without delay, which was not really much of a catch since they always did. The chances of getting a fatal injury were slim. With things under such tight control, it seemed dying here would take some effort and a lot of bad luck.
