Chapter 59: Chapter 58: The Sponsors.

For minutes on end Drake struggled to move. Straining himself to keep the aura in check as he fumbled his way through controlling it.

“T-this is like trying to h-h-hold onto a goddamned wet river stone! It’s like I’m practicing to not drop the soap!” Drake roared as his body was constantly in a tense state, his whole being covered in sweat.

“Is this what Bear had to deal with when he gained his aura…?!” Drake grumbled between his teeth.

 

[Tutorial Wide Urgent Quest! Defeat the Goblin King’s Invasion]

[The Goblin King has roused the goblin tribes, uniting a force few have seen before. The Goblin force of the King grows by the day. Defeat the summoned force before it becomes insurmountable, or suffer capture or death.]

[Reward: Experience based on contribution. TP based on contribution. Titles based on Contribution. Selection of 1 Rare Piece of Equipment.]

[Requirement: Kill the Goblin King and his 10 Generals]

[Bonus Requirement: Kill 5,000, 10,000, or 20,000 Goblins of any kind]

[Bonus Reward: 10 Uncommon Quality Mana Pills, 10 Uncommon Quality Strength Pills]

 

Drake winced at the new loud notification in his ears.

“W-what the hell is it now?!” he shouted reading over the notifications, “Yo-you’re kidding me. A tutorial wide quest? Just how b-big is this army?!”

“This is certainly ill timing…” Natto said, a safe distance away from Drake and his chaotic Aura training, “I believe I know who is the tutorial sponsor now, and why has been so absurdly increasing in difficulty.”

Drake turned his gaze to her, shutting off his ‘Of the Apex’ and ‘Weak Point’ skills as he did. He had become better by the hour with controlling his skills but with his new Aura skill he had to go back to consciously shutting off the skills due to his lack of being able to concentrate on anything outside his Aura at the moment.

“W-what do you mean?” Drake asked, “And who do you think is in the ring for tutorial sponsor then?”

Natto, gave a forlorn look towards the ground, “It is not much better than I had assumed before with the Liches,” she said her jaw tensing, “If my guess is right based on the monsters and the increase in difficulty there are three other races that it could be…” she said trailing off.

Drake managed to give a cock of his brow through his struggle, wondering why she was so reluctant to say.

“Drake, there are only three races that have the resources to pull off a tutorial of this scale and form, and they are all Primordials,” she finally said.

Drake felt his aura slip slightly, as the words surprised him. Reigning in the slip he thought back to Natto’s explanation of Primordials.

She had mentioned that they were the same as any other race, and could be killed just the same despite being seen as gods within the Multiverse. Their biggest differences were that they gained extreme benefits from ranking up. Their races increased their progression in every way, increasing in base stats per level, increase to skill properties and abilities, and even racial specialty skills that could easily be seen as cheats.

Natto proposed this was because they were the purest of races from the Progenitors of the system, and not muddied down by eons of interbreeding between the races keeping their racial strengths as potent as possible. They had also had the best possible training and growth of any of the races, each in S Grade Universes with many more lower grade planets and universes under their reign to bring up the next generations of their race. 

This isn’t even to mention that many of the Primordials children started at C Rank or higher when born, giving them an innate advantage.

Drake shuttered, thinking of the power scale. Somewhat thankful that he would not have to deal with them just yet when the tutorial ended.

Finally he asked the question, “What races?”

“The three I suspect are… The Elementals, Dragons, and.. Asurans,” she slowly eked out.

Drake wanted to be surprised but didn’t have enough information outside his own that he learned from lore books and fantasy novels.

“Is that particularly b-bad?” he asked.

Natto pursed her lips, “Of course it is you imbecile! These are the gods of the Multiverse! Even if it was not these three it would still be an awful situation! Primordials are so far ahead of anyone else they only engage in tutorials for entertainment! Going to the extremes to not only test the participants but to whittle them down so that only few remain so they can keep their eyes on them to kill later as sport!” she screamed back putting her shaky hands on her head.

“C-come on.. It can’t be that bad, right? And we have 10 years after the tutorial to prepare,” Drake said, trying to console her.

She looked up indignantly at Drake, her eyes bulging and red, “You do not even understand the severity of this! Uhhh if only I could explain in more depth!” she screamed, “You need to understand why it is so tremendously unfortunate we are in this tutorial. One, this means that the tutorial will be brought to its limit in terms of monster capacity and strength. That means borderline E Rank Monsters! And that is not even the worst! These monsters can level up the same as you can! Do you understand what that means?!” she continued to explain, beginning to breathe harder with each word.

Drake just looked on, his head turning in lack of understanding.

“Ahhh! It means they can level up and Rank up to E Rank! Do you think you can compete with an E Rank at bottom F Rank?!” she howled.

Drake pondered for a bit, leaving Natto’s mouth open in exacerbation.

“No you fool! You can not! Certainly you understand the difference in stats and skills that would mean!?” she continued screaming.

“Sure I get that, but don’t I have stats that allow me to compete with those types of things even though I’m lower level?” Drake asked.

“Sure, you certainly can within F Rank, and from no rank to low F Rank but each rank up gives a substantial increase in raw strength that is not reflected in your status! It is one of the reasons obtaining an Aura is so important!” Natto continued, “My point being it will make getting to the end of F Rank within the tutorial nearly impossible. And for what lies after I can only balk in fear….”

Drake let out a long breath as he refocused himself, slowly feeling his container of sense solidify with each passing minute. Becoming better accustomed to his new skill slowly.

He glanced at his debuff timer, making sure he had enough time to practice a bit more before he needed to get ready for Theodore.

 

Divine Frailty [F Rank]

• Lasts 2 Hours, 49 Minutes, 40 Seconds.

 

It wasn’t much but he would have to do his best to grow comfortable with the new abstract skill, making sure he could also use some of his other skills at bare minimum while not losing control of the Aura.

Drake asked Natto to keep elaborating her assumptions as he tried his best to multitask and focus, “So what makes you think it’s these three in particular?”

Natto chewed on her thumb, obviously overthinking on the subject, “There are some certain specifics of this tutorial that makes me pick them. One, there are more than one Assistant in this tutorial if we are to believe the oaf.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

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Natto shook her head, “Despite what you might think, everything in the tutorial is not as random as it appears. Remember what I stated with how monsters are recruited for the tutorial?”

Drake nodded.

“What do you think that means for items you receive from the quests you get?” she said.

A light bulb went off in Drake’s head. Making him slightly lose his concentration for a moment, but he quickly pulled it back.

“Good dolt, you see the correlation now. Yes, those quest items are supplied by the sponsor along with the monsters. And as I have said, Assistants while being rare are not extremely rare. And you, have two legendary stones,” she said pointing at his pockets, “That would mean that the sponsor at minimum would have to be able to obtain such a rare stone. This immediately outs any race under a certain rank.”

Natto sighed and her hand moved to her head, as if a headache was growing as she spoke, “Now that alone is not enough to pinpoint it to these three, so now the monsters selected. They are numerous and monsters that are relatively easy to find in the multiverse. That would mean that the sponsor would need to have a large selection of areas that contain them, but the sheer size of the monsters we have seen is beyond what lower Rank races could obtain in bulk. And the subtle point is that they are efficient monsters,”

“Efficient?” Drake asked.

“They are the best bang for your buck type of monsters. Think bargain sale types. Apes are numerous throughout the multiverse, find a planet with jungles or warm dense forest you can probably find them there in some subspecies or another. Kobolds are essentially rodents, dime a dozen. And Goblins… they are a plague, and they multiply fast. And from what we know there are also Tyrant Ants who also are low maintenance and multiply even faster than Goblins as long as they have food. So that basically pins Elementals, they are calculating, and efficient. Well for the most part,” Natto explained at length.

“Ok, then Dragons and Asurans? And I thought Asurans were a myth? Like god level myth,” Drake said confused.

“I suppose that would be how it is seen to races not indoctrinated in the system, many of your myths and grand stories are of most likely Primordials who have somehow either visited the planet before or left offspring here to grow up,” Natto said nonchalantly as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Wait. Hold up, you're saying they had babies stay on Earth?” Drake said, shock clear on his face.

“Certainly. It is very common for Primordial races to actually leave offspring in far off non-system planets.”

“Why? Isn’t that dangerous?” 

“In the grand scheme? Certainly not. Even a baby would be a C rank, so nothing on these planets could even come close to hurting them.” Natto said dismissively.

Drake nodded slowly in understanding but he was still confused on leaving a child on earth.

“I still can’t fit my head around why? Is it like a protection thing? Or are we talking Sayain takeover type stuff?”

“Why must it always go back to anime with you…. Yes it is protection. I am sure you are aware of what royalty is?” Natto asked.

“Of course I’ve seen plenty of Kingdom Building type shows.”

Natto face palmed, “Yes well.. Imagine a power struggle between royalty. But those royals are millennia old, and powerful enough to wipe out entire star systems,“ she paused making sure Drake was following, “Now, imagine big bad long living great, great, great, great, great, great to the Nth degree does not like your daddy or mommy and finds out you get born.”

Drake grimaced.

“Yes. So the safest place to put a child they know is going to be a target or possibly one. Is to leave them where there is no system in place to allow them to be tracked at least until they are forgotten about or are old enough to go off to another planet to get stronger. But we are getting off track,” Natto said, coughing.

She motioned Drake with her hand, and he understood, taking out a small canteen of water, tossing it to her.

Natto took a long draw from it and began again, “So for the other two, we have not encountered any Dragon subspecies or lizards for that matter, which makes me think Dragons are a possibility. As Dragons look down on nearly everything, not wanting to even have cousins of their kin fight such lowly battles. And they love to gather treasure so having the resources to sponsor this would be almost trivial to them.”

“Well why would they give away the treasure then if they love treasure? Isn’t that kind of counter intuitive?” Drake asked.

“Certainly, if you think of it just as a simple give and take. But these are races who live longer than some planets do. And they are willing to wait,” she answered.

“Wait…? Oh… You are saying they are investing…” Drake said, his face turning into an intense frown.

“You are right on the mark. They are willing to wait a few hundred years for you to increase their investment and then they can come in and just scoop up whatever you have.”

“That is fucking dirty…” Drake said.

Natto shrugged, “It is common practice in the multiverse if we are being candid, but to do it with this level of rare equipment and such would make it almost certainly the Dragons.”

She started up again, “Lastly the Asurans. One is very obviously that,” Natto pointed to Drake’s garbs and rings, “Those are pieces of equipment from Asurans. Two, the sheer number of monsters here, and the difficulty is very in line with Asuran ideology.”

“Meaning?”

“They love a good fight, and an disadvantaged fight even more. If you ever run into an Asuran, never, and I mean never, fight them on an even playing field. They live and breathe for overcoming obstacles and adversity. So the state of this tutorial is as I have said, right up their alley,” Natto said, taking another swig of the canteen.

“Well,” Drake started, his face pursed into a pensive expression, “This sucks worse than Kirby after a long weekend.”

“What does that even-? Nevermind I do not even want to understand that reference,” Natto said, holding up her hand.

Drake laughed, “Probably for the best. But there's really nothing we can do about it for now, so we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there.”

Drake continued to focus on himself as he digested the information. The stretching of his consciousness a good exercise for his concentration. 

He continued to sit as he rotated his spells around him, in and out of each element, including the new ones he had just obtained. As well as switching to his endowment, interweaving the process of casting and endowing the spells to be as close to second nature as possible within his short timeframe.

Drake also added more instances of his spells, doing his best to get used to his upgraded abilities, as he began to hear new notifications in a familiar female voice.

 

[You have increased Tempered in Flames to Proficiency 2(0%)]

[You have increased Weapon of Choice to Proficiency 2(0%)]

[You have increase Weak Point to Proficiency 2(0%)]

[You have increased Sound Body and Mind to Proficiency 2(0%)