Chapter 71: 70. Empath’s Dilemma

A list of options appeared in front of me.

[Sleaziness]	650000 points
[Intuition]	750000 points
[Empathy]	980000 points

 

Just like in my past life; Sleaziness is still available!

In my past life, there was no way for me to acquire so many points, but I still had fantasies about filling my status screen with some of these stats.

I opened their descriptions one by one; I already bought information about them in my past life because of my curiosity.

Besides, each of their descriptions only cost me fifty points.

[Sleaziness] (SLZ)

Just like a street rat, someone who has this stat will thrive in criminal environments through illegal jobs and black hat schemes. Each point in this stat allows you to spot great opportunities that others missed because of ethical restrictions. When the stat is high enough, you’ll have a mindset that puts the greatest pragmatists to shame. However, it’s still within your hands to choose whether you make use of those opportunities or not. (Max: 50 points)

 

[Intuition] (INU)

Sometimes, things happen, and you realize their cause without even thinking about it. Some people call this a gut feeling, and others call it intuition. Each point in this stat increases your capacity to reach correct deductions even when you’re lacking key information. You’ll know it when the intuition strikes true, trust me. Don’t put all your eggs into this basket; it might lead you astray if you’re lacking too much information. (Max: 30 points)

 

[Empathy] (EMP)

People have feelings. I know. It sounds insane, but it’s the truth. Most people act based on their feelings, even when they don’t know it. Thus, it’s much easier to sway them to your side through motivation rather than logic. Choose this stat at your own risk; Empaths tend to turn out empty on the inside. (Max: 70 points)

 

Based on my current points, I could only buy the first and second options. However, I could always search for more dinosaur bones; the price wasn’t too big of an issue.

Sleaziness seemed like a decent option, and it had an average stat cap which meant that its effect will be somewhat noticeable.

The world will become a dark place filled with despair once the humans are back, so I’d need all the help that I could get to prevent myself from lagging behind my rivals and wanna-be supervillains.

Moreover, it’s the cheapest option, and I’ll be left with some points to save up for future purchases.

Intuition seemed good on paper, and it could help in a pinch. Nonetheless, it had a low cap, which meant that its effect wouldn’t be as obvious as I’d like it to be.

I’ve heard about some people that acquired this stat through a class evolution, but it wasn’t good enough to distinguish them from people who didn’t have it. The main reason was its variable nature.

It remains an option, but I don’t have enough points to justify buying a situational stat.

Empathy was the best option out of the three, but it was much more expensive. Its effect was great, and it could synergize well with my charisma stat.

Its maximum cap was quite good for its relatively cheap price. As a result, its effect will be much more pronounced.

I contemplated the matter for a couple of minutes; the most practical options were Sleaziness and Empathy, but I preferred the latter.

Sigh… It seems like I’d need to look for more dinosaur bones…

It was already nighttime; the sky was clear and the moon was looming over the area. The climate was cold, and no sounds could be heard in such a place.

The silence was crushing, and I felt the solitude for the first time in quite a while. The people that I enjoyed spending time with in my past life were most likely still inside their tutorial iterations; I’d need to wait eight more days to meet them.

I hope I can rebuild my friendship with them…

I sighed and tightened my left hand’s grip on the observational shard. Then, I commanded the system to show me the locations of dinosaur bones within a radius of two hundred kilometers away from me.

There were so many fossils available for me to extract, and three of them were true gems. The map depicted them as larger-than-usual red dots.

It’ll take me many hours to convert most of these fossils into shop points…

I sighed; I didn’t know what Loki meant by using my skills ‘four times at most’ before problems happened, as he didn’t explain much.

Still, taking risks to acquire more strength is better than cowering in fear and hoping no one surpasses me…

I ignited my body and ran toward the closest fossil that the map showed.

Extracting fossils, converting them, then pinpointing the next target. It was a chain of monotonous tasks at this point, but I did them without complaints because the reward was worth it.

After about two hours of labor, I heard a faint ringing sound coming from my storage ring, so I took a look to identify its source.

It was my yellow communication crystal; Ratska was calling.

I inject a meager amount of mana into the device and greeted the caller.

“Hey Ratska,” I said with a cheerful voice, “Are they going to kill you? Did you get ambushed?”

“No!” he shouted, “Your excursion is taking longer than I expected it to! We’ve had a party, and we played for a while, yet you’re nowhere to be seen.”

I took a look at the system’s clock; it was three in the morning, but I still didn’t have enough shop points to buy the stat that I wanted.

“Don’t worry; I have some personal business that I need to take care of,” I said, “I’ll be back in an hour at most.”

“All right then,” he muttered, “Oh, right! Make sure to come directly to Akeniska’s castle; they’re hosting a party and it’s still ongoing. You might catch up with us if you return fast enough, and the chief said that she prepared good rooms for each one of us; better than the ones at Quaya’s guild.”

“Okay, I’ll try to finish my tasks faster,” I said, “See you later.”

Then, I injected some mana into the crystal to hang up on him.

Party? Ratska and Akeniska? It seems like their relationship improved a lot during my absence.

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I didn’t expect such a thing to happen so fast, but it wasn’t too farfetched now that the Lizardfolk chief realized the value of that Gnome, regardless of their past problems with his kin.

Now that I remember; I still haven’t asked Akeniska about the reason behind their hate for Gnomes.

I sighed and shook off the thoughts. I had to focus on my task if I wanted to go back home fast enough.

I increased the temperature of my flames to three thousand Kelvin, which gave me a huge physical power boost.

The sand wasn’t that hard to penetrate when my temperature was high enough, and the tunnels that I left after drilling through the ground were a sight to behold. The molten sand turned into glass, and it reflected the moonlight to make for a dazzling sight.

Still, this is another environmental chaos that my system skills caused; I wonder what people’s reaction to these glass tunnels would be like…

I kept going until I found a large femur bone that belonged to a creature with a level of over three hundred. I converted it into shop points, and it gave me a hundred fifty thousand points on its own.

Jackpot!

I opened the shop window once more.

Shop window:	[Current points: 1078564 points]
-What are you looking to buy? [. . .]

“I’d like to buy the Empathy stat,” I mumbled.

Then, I heard a ringing sound and a system screen appeared in front of me saying that the purchase was successful. I had nearly a hundred thousand shop points left, and saving them up for a future purchase was my best option.

I opened my status screen and found the new stat with zero points invested in it under the luck stat. I was about to invest seventy stat points in it but decided to wait until I was close to living creatures to see the difference that the stat made in real-time as it increased.

“[Zoom],” I whispered as I imagined Akeniska’s castle garden. It was time for me to go back, and I hoped to join the party before everyone went to sleep.

My eyes were closed, and I felt light dizziness as usual. For a moment, my legs left the ground, and I floated amidst the trip. I was curious about the way that teleportation abilities worked; it was a subject that commoners had no right to know in my past life.

I opened my eyes; I was inside Akeniska’s castle.

However, the silence was eerie. Ratska said that a party was going on, so I expected to hear people celebrating loudly at the very least.

I walked at a fast pace toward the castle hallway, but I didn’t find anyone. Well, anyone alive to be precise.

More than twenty Lizardfolk corpses were laying on the ground, and the floor was covered in a thick red liquid.

All of them had full body armor; they were castle guards. I leaned closer to one of the dead creatures; his throat was slit, but he didn’t even have a surprised look on his face. Most of the other guards had the same kind of look on their faces; only the ones furthest away from the hallway entrance had their eyes wide open.

Suddenly, I heard the door that led to the upper floor opening; some guards came out and they shouted.

“Halt!” There were three of them, and they trembled as they spoke. As soon as they recognized me, they sighed and spoke in a normal voice.

“We’re sorry for the ugly sight, Mr. Jason,” they said, “The enemy was overwhelming, and he plowed through our colleagues as if they were wet paper. We decided that our chief’s safety came first, so we hid alongside her in the basement.”

I noticed that they didn’t mention Ratska; it was suspicious.

“Where is Ratska?” I spoke, “I hope he’s hiding with your chief.”

All of a sudden, they lowered their heads and stared at the floor underneath them. Their reaction was very unsettling, and I had to grit my teeth to prevent myself from shouting at them.

I waited for about a minute before one of them spoke.

“There were three attackers,” he said, “They were after the Gnome, and they promised not to hurt us if we backed off and let them do their job.”

These motherfuckers…

I moved slowly toward the guard that spoke and punched him in the neck. His body flew away, and it struck the wall.

“Please…,” the fallen Lizardfolk mumbled, “We had orders, we’re just the lady’s employees. They told her some stuff; she knows where they took him! All I know is that he’s just a hostage, at least that’s what the green Warhoog said.”

Green Warhoog? Who the hell is that?

I suspected that Ratska got taken by the Great Church’s underlings, but it seems like either it wasn’t them or they had assistance from a third party.

Either way, my best option was to find Akeniska and ask her for whatever information she knew.

“Where the fuck is your chief,” I blurted, “I need to have a chat with her.”

However, no one replied, and they kept their heads lowered. I scoffed and opened the door that led to the upper floor.

I ascended hastily and opened the door to the room that she showed me earlier in the morning. The door was unlocked; she didn’t even bother to lock it despite the danger that was looming over the place.

She was sitting on her bed, staring at one of the permanent potions that I gave her earlier this day. I scanned the room; no guards were watching over the chief, as if she felt safe all alone.

Maybe Rauchlim is hiding somewhere close to her…

She turned toward me and smiled. Then, she hid the potion inside her storage ring and stared at me.

“You didn’t kill any one of those three guards,” she whispered, “This saves me the time of explaining how the situation has absolutely nothing to do with us. We tried to protect the Gnome, we really did. Rauchlim beat the two humans, but the green Warhoog was too strong for him.”

The green Warhoog again…

“We’ll talk about your failure of protecting my comrade later. Now, you’ll tell me everything that the ‘Green Warhoog’ told you,” I tried to speak as calmly as I could, but my voice was still very loud, “I am not a very patient man.”

“All right, no need to use violence,” she sighed, “He said that his name was Beliat and that you did something to offend one of his clients. The humans alongside him suggested that he takes the Gnome as a hostage, so he did.”

“What did the humans look like?” I asked.

“One of them was tall with black spiky hair with burn marks covering his body, and he had a large sword. The other looked like a child, but he had the eyes of a maniac, he was short and baldheaded.” She replied as she made eye contact with me.

Those descriptions are very fitting of Igor and Oleg; respectively.

“Did the Warhoog mention anything about the location of the hostage?” I asked once more.

I knew that the Warhoog was baiting me by taking Ratska as a hostage and that they most likely wouldn’t hurt him due to his objective value as a brewer of potions, but I hated being treated like a doormat.

Leaving the Gnome to his fate was the safest option for me, but I was an honorable person. Ratska was one of the few people that treated me with respect, and I considered him my friend despite our professional relationship.

This is it; I’ll destroy the Warhoog and all those fuckers.

“He left you this crystal,” she said as she handed me a small white gem, “He said that Ratska was already on a different planet and that you had ten hours at most before he got brainwashed.”

I took the gem from her hand and injected some mana inside it.

A vivid image appeared inside my head as if I visited the place before. The ground was gray, and large intricate stone structures surrounded the area. The sky was purple, and there were four moons and a large black hexagonal prism floating in the sky.

It seems like they’re inviting me to teleport there; they’ll regret it…

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