Chapter 64: Chapter 54- A Short Break

Whoosh! Stab.

Phew! That’s another point for Tomoko the Zombie Calamity!

For any zombies out there, hide yo kids hide yo wife, ‘cause this goddess is comin’ for their heads!

Sigh... I should really take a break, my mind’s drifting into weird places and my yellow stamina bar is about to bottom out.

It’s been about a day since I came here, yet the monotone scenery already has me trying to escape reality.

Frankly, this place has me feeling drained and depressed like never before.

I’m sure anyone who’s ever stayed here for more than an hour would agree.

If anyone started a philosophical conversation about death, the first thing that’d come to mind is probably this place instead of a graveyard. That’s just how haunting it is.

But somehow, the laws of reality allow this place to be right next to the flower tower defense wall without any problems arising.

I mean, flowers are plants, right? At least, that’s what they were last time I checked.

You know what else I discovered last time I checked? Supposedly, plants can’t grow in dead soil., So how come there are millions of them just chilling at that life n’ death juncture?!

Scientifically speaking, this shit’s impossible! I already checked on my way in, there’s nothing isolating the areas from each other… not even a magical barrier!

Even if fantasy never gave a fuck about science, this is most definitely a foul!

One side of the wall has millions upon millions of plant life– I even saw some sea critters hiding under them when I was fleeing from the dragons! So, how come the other side is completely barren?

The undead being oblivious to the living area could be chucked up to some illusion barrier conjured by the plants. The border wall separating the two areas though? That’s a whole 'nother story.

Can anyone explain to me why the murky gray water around here is not mixing with the pure blue water over there??

We’re not talking about water and oil here, but two samples of seawater that exist in the same space at the same time.

Not only do they refuse to mix, but they’re also actively repelling each other.

It’s as if the planet is having trouble deciding if it should let physics do its work? Or maybe it’s a split-personality disorder…?

Sigh… Sorry for the rant, I had to get that off my shoulder.

It’s not like it’s only been bad since I arrived here. I spent most of the time experimenting with stuff in order to figure out how I can obtain the highest value for my wasted time around here.

Since Greed doesn't work on them for some reason, fighting and killing the undead honestly seems like nothing but a waste of time.

Luckily, I quickly discovered this place's specialty. Compared to what I saw in the anime, battles here should be the best in terms of gaining melee skill proficiency. Pure close combat's the only way you can survive around here, after all. 

Well, that’s if you ignore how shitty the food tastes and the negative safety factor. Note, the food’s why I still and will always hate this place with passion.

With all the non-stop killing I’ve been doing for hours now, Spearmanship and Swordsmanship were added to my status tab, and both are already at level 3!

Not gonna lie, I am surprised by the huge difference I feel every time the skill level increases.

My style might not have changed much visually, but I can clearly detect the numerous unnoticeable changes and the drastic effect they have on my overall melee combat power.

I can now proudly announce that I’m creating my own original and unique style! 

Why both original and unique, you ask? You see, while Shishou always complimented my style as unique, I also saw just how much he lamented my inadequacies when I was not looking.

To put it in a nice way, my talent in both armed and unarmed martial arts is just terrible.

My unique style is just a Frankenstein’s monster made through observing, copying, and stitching other people’s techniques together.

That’s why it’s only unique and not original. In fact, even that uniqueness is relative.

However, there was nothing I could do about it back then. I simply lack the talent for close combat arts. 

To compensate for that however, my talent for long-range weapons was phenomenal.

That was all due to Manager-san’s help though. Having a literal supercomputer calculate the required parameters makes it physically impossible for me to suck at bowmanship.

Now, the supercomputer has advanced to Sage and she’s also showing signs of another evolution into something like Great Sage!

At first, she could only analyze and calculate stuff when I actively requested her to do so and had minimal control of simple operations of my body.

Then she advanced to Sage, her intelligence was boosted to the point where she can draw inferences from information and propose answers and solutions.

Her abilities were also expanded to include my non-system abilities and some system skills like Expel.

I believe her upcoming advancement should give her the ability to derive and create new abilities from what I already have. She might even get an ability fusion option!

Personally, I think this ‘extra gift’ I got from Alkreya is the most overpowered out of them all.

Could she have actually expected this…? Like, all of this could just be a part of a big scheme of hers.

Alkreya is a goddess of trickery at the end of day. Gods with this type of authority tend to be very shrewd and scheming.

Personally, I hope she didn’t expect it. I’d love to see her jaw drop from shock, hehehe!

Anyways, I think it’d be best if I put more effort into honing my close combat skills. Not doing so would be a huge waste considering my high strength and speed stats.

Also, it’d suck if I lost because I was forced into melee combat, y’know? This goddess refuses to let her future biography have such a lame stain!

My strongest shortcoming is pretty obvious, my physical and magical defense are very low.

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There are many ways I could remedy it, but they’re all very time-consuming, so I’d rather fix the minor stuff first before coming back to it.

Also, it’s not like shortcomings are purely bad.

Having a sole strong weakness allows me to just let myself loose in battle as long as I pay attention to this one.

A bunch of minor weaknesses means I’ll have to pay attention to more stuff mid-battle which puts me at a great disadvantage if I’m up against an evenly matched opponent.

Besides, bad technique negates the advantage of having high speed and strength. A skilled opponent can easily evade and counter-attack.

This isn’t Earth where modern safe martial arts are mainstream, fights here are done with the goal of killing your opponent! 

What I learned from Shishou was supposed to be an ancestral fighting style created for the sole purpose of killing the enemy, but it has sadly degraded over the years.

I’ll use it as a foundation to build my own style though. Totally not considered stealing, by the way.

Shishou passed it down to me, so it’s mine now! Shame? What’s that? Does it taste good?

I prefer to call it Standing on the shoulders of giants, humph! 

Jokes aside, it’s not actually stealing. 

I wanna fuse Shishou’s ancestral style with the system’s skills and give him the upgraded version as a gift when I go back to Earth.

He was akin to a grandfather to me, but I failed to fulfill the only thing he’s ever requested of me.

Guilt still eats away at me when I remember his excited face that day he asked me to attempt to go for the tenth dan in kendo…

This is the reason why I never gave up on my melee skills even though I can just brute force my way through if I use my spikes like a shotgun.

System skills, including martial arts, were created by gods. Gifting him literal divine techniques should be a good enough apology gift, right?

Also, those gods have lived for thousands of years and will almost always be better than humans in what they do.

It’d be pretty stupid of me to not analyze some of their knowledge for my own use, y’know?

Cracking all of the system’s skills would make my techniques god-like, literally!

I also think it might elevate my life level to a demi-god. Then the only remaining step to becoming a goddess should be increasing my stats over 100,000!

That’s why I jumped on it as soon as Sariel made her request. I mean, I could finally see a clear road leading to my ascension, why would I not agree?

Saving humanity? Hell nah, that’s impossible. Saving the planet once? Pssht, easy peasy, leave it to me!

Humanity is a race that tends to self-destruct and shirk the blame at every turn, so spare little cutie Tomoko from having too many connections with those guys, would ya?

At present, the most I’m willing to do for humans is give some aid to my close ones’ new families, and that’s only because I wouldn’t wanna see them sad.

I know for a fact that Katia’s family gave her a good upbringing and her father cared about her a lot, but I know nothing about Aiko and Segawa’s new families.

From the reincarnation reunion in the anime, I know that they were either sold as slaves and then snatched by elves or they were just straight up kidnapped.

If their situation turns out to be the former, I’ll be very angry, sure. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to retaliate, unless domestic abuse was involved of course.

If it’s the latter though, then let’s just say… I am looking forward to putting an elf on a test bench, hehehe.

That’s about it for now, I guess.

Actually, I’ve already crossed off most of the items on my checklist.

What’s left on there is finding the girls and accumulating enough power and knowledge for my eventual ascension.

Despite now knowing that there are only two continents in the living area, searching for them on my own would be harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

Thankfully, I will soon get access to the W system’s skill database. According to D in anime, the reincarnations got their unique skills as well as the n%I = w skill right after they died in Japan.

Ms Oka’s Student Roster skill should already be recorded in the system. However, I don’t know how it’ll work for me since I’m technically a student, not a teacher.

It’s most likely gonna be useless if I’m the one using it, but I have already thought of a solution.

Taking advantage of the one-way connection the skill creates between me and Ms Oka, I’ll hack into her side and extract all the information she gets as soon as she’s born.

If that doesn’t work, then I can only ask Ouri or… that woman for help. Asking Sariel’s out of the question, I don’t want to interact with that one more than needed.

 

Haaah. That was a nice break.

I should get moving though, my stamina bar’s already full. I don’t wanna stay in this place more than I should, I’m most certainly not welcome here.

Just like the underworld in mythology, only the dead can live here. I’m starting to feel a weak repulsion from the world itself.

Also, I don’t know when it started, but my surroundings have been eerily quiet for a while now.

I have an ominous premonition, and unfortunately, my intuition has always been spot on.

So, yeeaaah. I’m very much in grave danger, tehe~!