Chapter 12: 12. Karma and Execution

Alistair stood up from the couch, stretching his tight muscles. It was a miracle that he was completely uninjured just twelve hours after coming a hair’s width from death.

“Did you see who it was who said we should meet up? Was it a petite woman with glasses named Jules and a bearded guy named Robert?” Alistair asked. He had encountered the duo before when he was carting unconscious orcs for Donna and Tamia. Speaking of the mother and daughter he had helped, he saw the pair playing with some dolls near the stairs and couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah, it was. Did you meet them before? I think they got scared when they saw my level,” Alexandra said, smugness oozing from her voice.

“You’ll be really scary when your absurd Strength starts making you look like one of those orcs,” Alistair replied, rolling his eyes. Despite having over 100 Strength, Alexandra still looked toned and fit, and not like some female bodybuilder. His physical changes were most evident in the first points of Strength too; despite having more than doubled his Strength, he still looked more like a swimmer than a guy who hit the weight room.

“Yeah, those guys thought I was stealing the bodies to raise them from the dead. Someone manifested a necromancy Skill in the first hour of the Quest. Knowing what I know now about how Skills work, he must have been quite the weirdo, I mean how do you even try that out?”

“Yeah, but think about an army of the dead, unkillable and completely loyal, sounds nice right?”

Alistair gave her a glare. “They said he killed twenty people.”

“Well, I didn’t know that part. Plus, I was just kidding, I’m a ‘kill them with her hands’ kind of gal,” Alexandra replied, raising her hands in innocence.

“If you say so.” Alistair changed topics. “There’s still 14 hours left for [King Orc Hunt]. That’s more than an ample amount of time to complete it, even if we go to the meeting. Do you think we’re the only ones who reached level 15 in this area?”

“I think it’s likely unless George is still here. I’m pretty sure without killing a gold orc, it takes forever to get to level 15, and because of your map, we know that the only gold ones available were Krazz and Kalgur. So it’s going to be up to us to tell everyone about the upcoming changes. I’m most worried about how people are going to react to aliens immigrating to Earth if I understood the line about ‘existing factions’ correctly. Didn’t go over well the first time. Maybe we shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“They deserve to know what’s happening to their own planet,” Alistair said firmly. “But let’s keep the ending the monster wave prematurely to ourselves. It could get tricky if people find out about that. There’s no way they’d be strong enough to help out and people might get themselves killed.”

“Or, Mr. Good Samaritan, do you want to hoard the rewards of your Quest?” Alexandra smiled.

Alistair flashed his Badges.

“I’m a Deliverer of Justice and a Good Samaritan, so you better watch how you talk to me. Speaking of good deeds, I used my Upgrade Points to add information to my status screen and learn what Charisma is good for,” he said. “Charisma grants Karma generation. I have 3 points of positive Karma now, which I can apparently spend on trying to navigate Fate to make auspicious events happen or to peer into the future web of my destiny. I think the explanation missive needs its own explanation missive, honestly.”

“I have a deal, how about you get all of the information stuff and share it with me, while I use my Upgrade Points for all the cool stuff?” Alexandra joked.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” As Alistair stood up to walk over to Donna and Tamia, he tried to sort through where his relationship with the Strength-based cultivator stood. They were allies of circumstance, forced to work together against a mutual enemy, yet their relationship felt far deeper than it should for people that had met less than a day ago. He supposed that surviving a battle in which both of them nearly died sealed their camaraderie in blood thicker than most friendships.

Shaking aside his confusing mess of thoughts, Alistair walked over to the playing mother and daughter. “You’ll be alright coming with us to the campus, right? Alexandra and I should be able to protect you and Tamia, we’re way stronger than anyone else in this area.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” she replied, hugging her daughter, who squirmed in a weak attempt to get away. “We’d be less safe alone in your house.”

“I’m sure we can buy you pills to get to level 15 as well,” Alistair mentioned. “We’d be willing to pitch in to help.”

“We?” Alexandra pointed at herself. “Uh, yeah, we’d sure love to help.”

Her look of daggers at his magnanimous offer made him grin. “We can discuss it more on the way. We wouldn’t want to hold anyone up.”

---

Along their hike toward Alistair’s old college, he exchanged more information with Alexandra about the new improvements they received. It turned out that Alexandra earned 7 attribute points per level as opposed to his 6 from Magical Pugilist, though he didn’t mention the points he got from his Arbiter of Justice Subclass. With all the warnings and error messages that popped up when he opened its page, he was worried if the Pathfinder turned its attention to him too much, he’d be struck down in an instant. They speculated that the point differential between their Classes was due to hers being a Rare Class and his only being Uncommon.

Nature’s Barbarian was a Strength and Constitution based Class that focused on brute force and raging abilities but with a touch of the healing power of nature and life. She mentioned that she was the one who stabilized his condition with a Skill called [Healing Touch] that manifested out of desperation as she selected her Class. Nature’s Barbarian wasn’t even her first choice for a Class; she wanted Warmonger, a different Rare Class, but she chose Nature’s Barbarian because of the possibility it would manifest a healing Skill. Alistair hadn’t even known the lengths Alexandra went for him, and he silently promised he would make it up to her one day.

But she assured him that after seeing what Nature’s Barbarian offered, it was the right choice. Alexandra’s first Upgrade points (which she received 12 of per level, instead of his 10, after factoring out his Subclass) were put into the Rage Branch of the Nature’s Fury and the Skin Branch of the Body Cultivation. Her Rage Branch synergized with her [Barbarian Rage] Skill, increasing the effectiveness of raging Skills by 3%, while the Skin Branch addition increased her health by 20.

Alistair was most interested in [Barbarian Rage] since it was the first Skill he had encountered that had a cooldown. She had tested it out while he was asleep, and it increased her Strength and Endurance by 25% when active, at the cost of increasing her anger and having a backlash after. The cooldown was an hour, though from what Alexandra said, it seemed like the backlash made her as tired as an old man from after its five-minute duration to the end of the cooldown. If anything, it complemented her [Empower Weapon] Skill perfectly, with both of them having a five-minute duration.

Talking with Alexandra so much reminded him of his sister. Evangeline was wildly different from Alexandra in most appreciable ways, for instance, his sister didn't enjoy smashing things or being sarcastic, but they both had a similar confident aura and strong willpower. He thought they might have been best of friends if they ever met. Tomorrow at 10 PM seemed so far away and the meeting had no guarantee of success. It was a hope he clung onto though, and he prayed his sister kept his parents safe through everything that happened. They didn't speak great English or Turkish and were older and probably much less adaptable to the new world.

Along the way, they saw several groups of people walking in the same direction. Alistair couldn’t help but note the weary and battle-hardened looks on their faces, along with several of them having partially healed cuts and open wounds. From the depths of his heart, he felt truly sorry for everyone. It was a surety that some of them had seen members of their families die in front of them. Others came from halfway across the globe and were worrying about their loved ones back home, not knowing what happened to them. Alistair still wasn’t sure what percentage of people had been displaced by the Pathfinder AI.

The people who had rallied the survivors to meet up on campus had done a decent job since Alistair saw hundreds of people streaming onto campus. It looked like most of the survivors came in groups of over ten, with not so many smaller pairings. He guessed most people stuck together as neighbors or roommates and used numbers to their advantage.

The moment he stepped foot on campus, he felt a tingling feeling from his core that made him desperately want to go to the recreation center in the middle of the campus.

“You feel it too?” Alexandra asked.

He nodded. “I have this sudden urge that I have to be at the recreation center, what about you?”

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“I’ve been here once before and I’ve never even seen what you’re talking about, yet somehow I know I have to go there too. It must be some kind of Skill, right?”

Alistair figured it was the perfect opportunity to try out his new [Eyes of Truth]. While the normal ability to discern basic information was still there, he was most interested in the Active, which cost Karma to use. Focusing his vision toward the direction of the recreation center, he activated [Eyes of Truth].

A small trickle of energy left his body. It was different than Mana; less tough and invigorating, and as it exited it was like leaving his mother's warm embrace or a favorite memory now forgotten. It ached as it left, but after vanishing, he forgot what he was missing.

“Why are your eyes glowing red, mister?” he heard a young voice say.

Donna hushed her daughter, telling her how rude it was to say that, but Alistair was too distracted by a wash of colors in his vision. Nothing felt the same in his sight, and Alistair suspected he might be experiencing something akin to a psychedelic trip due to the ineffable colors and dimensions. But what stuck out most were the wispy tendrils of energy that stuck out from his chest.

It wasn’t just his chest, in fact. It looked like every single person he could see had a beam of golden energy exiting (or entering?) their chest, soaring into the sky and then off in the direction of the recreation center.

Alistair tried grabbing his own to pull it out of his body, but his hand passed through it like it wasn’t even there. Even when tried to summon his Mana to interfere with the energy tendril, nothing happened. Only upon focusing on his Karma pool he had drawn from to use [Eyes of Truth] did he notice a difference. He gathered the warm energy around his hand, creating a burning red aura that contrasted with the blue aura of his [Mana Punch]. With a swipe, he severed the golden light.

Skill Acquired: [Hand of Karma] (Tier 1 Skill): Sever Fate and soul with a hand of Karma. Karma Cost: 2. Upgradeable (0/30).

Immediately after he severed the connection, his desire to go to the recreation center vanished. It looked like he wasn’t the only Charisma cultivator in the area, and with the reach of the threads the unknown individual created, they couldn’t be weak.

With no Karma left to use his new Skill on his companions, they would just have to deal with the mystifying Skill. Luckily, it didn’t seem to actually harm them, just nudge them in a certain direction.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Alexandra said. “[Eyes of Truth], right? What did you see?”

“Nothing good. Let’s hurry up.” His interest in attending the meeting that had been called was at an all-time high. It was time to find out just what had been going on the past few days in his neighborhood.

---

There were at least five hundred people inside the recreation center, though for that number, it was eerily quiet. People were talking to each other, but no one seemed to be socializing out of the group they came in, and all conversation was in hushed tones. If the apocalypse had brought out anything, it was a fundamental collapse of trust in others. Seeing as the Quest had witnessed the killing of friends and acquaintances for survival, he couldn’t blame anyone.

Tamia had gotten tired from the walk to the recreation center, so Alexandra had offered to give her a ride on her shoulders. Donna was hesitant at first, but Alexandra promised it was the safest place she could be. So, five-year-old Tamia had the time of her life on the level 16 woman’s shoulders, giggling and laughing as she tugged at her hair. Donna was mortified, but Alexandra laughed it off, explaining that her hair had grown so tough it was nearly impossible to pull out.

They caused quite the commotion as they entered, Tamia being as loud as a five-year-old dared to be in an inappropriate setting, which was to say, very loud. Alistair spotted other kids in the room, but they were more subdued than Donna’s delightful daughter. Perhaps they had been through more struggles, but Tamia had stabbed an orc to death with a knife. Alistair was almost worried he was going to start the rise of a little monster.

What Alistair was more interested in were the people that didn’t seem to care about their cacophonous entrance, the ones who weren’t scared or out of place. He spotted Jules and Robert in a large group near the center, surrounding a tall man wearing business attire. He instantly could tell there was something fundamentally different about that man compared to all of his companions. Even from a distance of fifty meters, he gave off an aura that was steadier, more solid than the others. With his improved Karmic senses, despite not having [Eyes of Truth] active, he could sense that the Karmic threads were coming from that man.

He turned to Alexandra to ask if she felt the same way when a booming voice interrupted him.

“Thank you all for coming at my request.”

The voice evidently came from the same man Alistair was just about to point out, enhanced to fill every nook and cranny of the large gymnasium.

“As you all know, our world has been devastated by the changes that have occurred. Our government collapsed, our world overrun by monsters out of a nightmare. It’s an objectively terrible situation. I can only express my condolences for all the people who lost those close to them. I myself lost my wife.”

“Who the fuck are you?” A brave heckler called out.

Alistair saw the man smile widely. “Thank you for asking. My name is Jackson Morley, and I was a state senator before all this happened. You might be asking yourselves, why listen to this guy? What do I have to offer? Let me show you.”

In a display of angelic brilliance, a shining golden screen appeared above Jackson’s head. The window read, “Inheritor — Golden Orator” in exquisite calligraphy.

“I have been chosen by the Pathfinder AI to lead this subregion against the incoming monster waves. It might sound hard to believe, but as you can see, I’ve been specially selected to inherit abilities from the aliens of the Final Frontier Empire. I’m sure all of you remember Atavius Meloi, the impetus of our entire situation? Many of his status or even greater are watching me right now. With luck, one day I might even be able to get revenge for Earth.”

Alistair could tell the audience was completely captured by Jackson’s words. Honestly, he didn’t sound like some insanely gifted speaker to Alistair, but he had a feeling it was more than just words. He didn’t want to use up the last of his positive Karma on [Eyes of Truth], but he was sure that Jackson was up to something nefarious.

The most suspicious thing he said was that he was being watched by the Final Frontier Empire. The information video mentioned people moving into the uninhabited sections of Earth, but nothing about inheritors was ever mentioned.

“I understand all of you are scared and afraid. Some of you have no idea where we even are, and got sent here from across the world. But this is not the end. We overcome the challenges before us and come out stronger and better. We survived the past day; we can survive anything. With my assistance, we’ll rebuild our town and government and make sure that everyone is once again protected by rule of law. On that note, I want to introduce you to someone.”

Two of Jackson’s followers dragged a man to the center of the gym next to the state senator. He had a paper bag over his head, and Jackson stooped down to the kneeling man and removed it, revealing a scraggly-looking young man. He had disheveled black hair and was white as snow, his eyes pointed down in fear and defeat.

“This man is accused of killing fifteen innocent people and resurrecting their bodies as part of the evil magic he was given. He planned on using his powers to take over this town and run it like a king, instead of a democracy. He was intent on killing the men and enslaving the women as part of his perverted schemes. He must pay for his crimes with his life.”

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