Chapter 5: Chapter 4: Routine

Driving back home with his bike, he pedaled through the heavy rush hour traffic and didn’t even stop one time to buy something or take a break.

His energy was endless, and the adrenaline from having been officially initiated to the world of the supers coursed through him.

In his backpack, he also had a small book detailing all the basic knowledge he had been given during the crash course, so he didn’t worry about forgetting anything.

There were no restrictions in place for this book too, once he finished memorizing it, he could use it as he saw fit, even posting it online if he wanted.

Reaching his building after ten minutes, he stored his bike in his family slot and then used the stairs to climb to the 7th floor as if he was being chased.

Once he reached the floor corridor though, he calmed down and walked to his apartment’s door, knowing before attempting to open it that it would be open at this hour.

And it was.

Taking off his shoes, he didn’t even need to do anything else as he had headed out only in his t-shirt and no additional layer. It was spring after all, and feeling cold had never been one of his things.

Entering his room, he turned on his computer and took out his notepad as well as a pen, setting both on his desk for imminent use.

‘Let’s put on some music and then…’

Following what he wanted to do, he put on his favorite music playlist, wrote down the current time on the freshly uncovered notebook, sat down on his bed, focused, and put to execution what he learned not even an hour ago.

Same as when he had done it during the crash course, Aven felt his energy cycle fill his whole body before it started becoming ever so slightly colder and colder.

As he had no reason to stop and Sigurd hadn’t said anything about the existence of something like energy cycling overuse, he kept his focus until his energy naturally stopped cycling despite him trying to make it continue.

“And that’s one session done,” breathing out, he moved to his desk chair and noted down the current time next to the one he had noted down a few minutes earlier.

‘10 minutes. Good or bad? Don’t know. Progress? Don’t know. Regeneration period? Don’t know. So many things to test. Or maybe all the answers are online?’

Keeping a part of his mind on the hotness and intensity of his energy cycle, he began searching for real stats about grade 0 supers. And he quickly found the result he sought, though it wasn’t exactly the one he wanted.

‘The downtime period lasts twice as long as the cycling time. The best energy cultivation cycling method is going from full energy intensity to downtime in one time. The expected number of cycles before reaching grade 1 is 80…’

Browsing through every somewhat reliable website, Aven quickly confirmed that reaching grade 1… Wasn’t hard at all.

The timeline of a few weeks given by Sigurd was only true for someone not adopting an optimized cultivation routine.

‘I don’t think I can stay awake for 110 hours straight though… Well, not like I would have done it even if I could.’

110 hours was the theoretical best time someone could take to reach grade 1 from an energy cultivation of 2 out of 10 if grade 0 cultivation resources weren’t used. And Aven certainly did not own any grade 0 cultivation resources. Whatever those were.

‘My maximum cultivation time increases with every energy cultivation point I get, eventually peaking at 45 minutes… That’s basically 5 minutes of cultivation to exhaust 1 energy cultivation point. It’s so linear.’

Wondering if energy cultivation could be explained so simply, he switched to grade 1 cultivation and summarily stopped a few minutes later. Grade 1 was another world, and he had other things to worry about.

With the fact that his affinity had been tested to be of the tech energy system, he could now freely push in this direction without any hesitation.

And what could a tech system want more than anything else? After musing over this question for some time, the answer resided in the name of the energy system itself.

‘I need technical knowledge. And to complement that I need to start reading some biographies of successful tech supers. If I do all that while optimizing my cultivation as much as I can, then time will pass very quickly. And when I finally know what my innate ability at grade 1 looks like, I’ll decide what to do with my life.’

Betting on his innate ability being more extraordinary than it looked like now, he was nearly certain his innate ability, “Faction Contribution System”, would start shining very soon.

‘Though, as he said…’

“Innate abilities, even extraordinary ones, only amount to as much as their owners are worth,” imitating Sigurd’s deep voice accompanied by the same sentence he had used, Aven smiled in contentment at his actually successful imitation.

Shaking his head left and right to refocus, he soon realized that 20 minutes had passed while he was searching and thinking, so he wrote down the current time, and without even leaving his chair, he started cycling his energy.

This time, however, he had a thing to test.

The moment he felt his energy cycle start cooling, he tried to move while keeping his cycle active.

As written online though, the moment he moved, his energy cycle stopped flowing as intensely as before and returned to being a passive one.

‘Yeah, figured.’

Sitting back down, he cycled his energy until it naturally stopped 10 minutes later. Just like that, he had finished the second out of the estimated 80 energy cultivation full cycles, meaning energy cycling from full to exhausted, needed before reaching grade 1.

Transitioning to online browsing smoothly, he set a timer for 20 minutes later and pursued his research on the best engineering schools to learn relevant things in. Preferably ones that would open a clear career path after graduating from them.

Invisible to him, his father’s previous career as a war reporter subtly influenced his view on what he wanted to learn, and his opinion on supers being supreme killing and destruction machines even when they didn’t even try to be one subtly influenced the domains he wanted to make sure he got to learn.

From civilian electrical engineering to optical engineering degrees, Aven quickly arrived at much more military-focused engineering degrees such as weapon engineering…

Without him noticing, he had fully transitioned from civil engineering degrees to military engineering degrees.

And when he finally noticed it, he didn’t really think much about it.

‘It’s inevitable that I’ll end up touching and even wielding weapons. My affinity is the tech energy system, and there’s no way I’ll abandon my affinity when I clearly know what effects it has. Not that I can really understand its impact with my miserable amount of talents to compare it to.’

Coming to terms with his situation sooner rather than later, he kept the civil engineering field on one side and whole-heartedly focused on the military engineering one.

The world wasn’t at peace, far from it if Aven had correctly understood what school had kept telling him and what his father’s numerous stories told him. Due to that, military engineering wasn’t a field with few career opportunities once he dived into it, there was even an exceptional demand for it.

And where there was demand, there needed to be supply, so as the alarm went off indicating him it was time for another full energy cultivation cycle, his mind was filled with different military engineering fields he could potentially choose.

Finishing his 3rd energy cycle, he pursued his research and learned of alternative supers’ education opportunities in the form of mercenary groups’ employment contracts.

Quickly after discovering those, however, he dismissed them in favor of the path of directly entering the Eland’s military as an apprentice.

It was not only clearly more efficient and safer, it also had fewer long-term implications.

When he started feeling hungry, he helped himself with the still-hot dinner in the living room prepared by his mom and ate it in his room while catching up on his entertainment. Once he was done, he started his 4th energy cycle.

Establishing this 30-minutes routine, Aven completely forgot about the fact that he should have been going to sleep soon as he would have needed to replenish his mental endurance for the incoming day of university.

What replaced his student’s mindset was a growing and burning curiosity about all those new things that now concerned him more directly than ever.

Lots of doors had opened themselves for the simple reason that he was now a super. And it was his job to make his choice of which door to pass through.

And so his evening began as he completed a full energy cultivation cycle every 30 minutes, and he only went to sleep when he felt utterly exhausted both physically and mentally past midnight, when he had just finished his 9th cycle.

As for setting up alarms to wake him up every half an hour to have a perfectly optimized grade 0 energy cultivation? He entertained this thought for 5 seconds before squashing it and pulverizing it to dust.

Sleep was too important.

…

Waking up for the second time as a super, Aven started his day by cycling his energy for the maximum 10 minutes his 2 out of 10 energy points allowed him. After doing that, he brushed his teeth, drank water, and started rousing from his heavy sleep by watching some entertainment.

When 20 minutes had passed, he started cycling his energy again.

“Huh…?”

Yet, this time, his cycle continued for longer. It remained 15 minutes before naturally entering its downtime period.

“Does that mean…”

To confirm his suspicion, he appraised himself.

 

Aven Amias

Faction: MIC Serenis University

Energy Grade: 0

Energy Cultivation: 3/10

Energy Affinity: Tech

Physical Talents: None

Energy Talents: Basic Tech Energy Affinity

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit

Universal Talents: Unawakened Fairy Ancestry

 

“Hehe~” He laughed foolishly at this clearly displayed progress under his eyes.

His efforts had been rewarded so quickly that if he maintained this rhythm, he would probably reach grade 1 within a week. And he would reach it without straining himself, it would be a naturally occurring conclusion to an easy routine.

‘Yesterday I didn’t have much time, but today! Today I have as much time as I want until I go to sleep again!’

Motivation untouched, he flipped his notepad to a new blank page and started his day by reminding himself of all the different career paths he could go onto he had learned until now.

Even the Vow Church wasn’t excluded from his list, it was just relatively lower in likeliness than the other options.

‘In the end, it’s all about whether my innate ability gains something able to boost my growth or not. If it does, I’ll have to adapt my plans. If it doesn’t, I’ll start an appraisal tour and hope to find something like a secret world domination society.’

After refreshing all his options though, the option that dwarfed everything else no matter how he looked at it was too evident.

“Eland’s Military Engineer Corps. EMATE special admission…” He whispered the most likely option for him to take if there was no upset. “Going to a specialized school to learn all the basics before being sent directly onto a super-high paying job once I reach the necessary competency.”

This option was both amazing and easy to find. He only had to spend a few hours with the right keywords to find it.

‘Anyway, let’s just keep that in a corner of my mind while staying open-minded.’

Throwing this amazing option to the side, Aven thought once again about how starved for supers the world seemed to be.

You are reading story The Faction Contributor [Sci-Fi LitRPG] at novel35.com

From the most optimistic stats he had found online, only 1 out of every 50 000 people awakened naturally. If he transferred this number onto Serenis’s total population of 1.5 million people, it would mean that the super community was made up of… Only 30 people in total.

The only thing that saved the day was the existence of innate ability awakening serums.

The fabrication method of this serum was public, and it simply needed the blood and guts of freshly killed awakened life plus a bio-rigger martial super to transform the energy inside the biological matters into inoffensive ones…

So, in the end, to make one, you only needed enough money to convince some target people that awakening someone was more worth it than making cultivation resources for already existing supers.

And as this was a very lucrative market with never enough supply to meet the demand, super mercenary groups and government militaries deployed in suitable areas milked the private sector as much as they could and wanted.

“Heh! What else could have happened when the manpower, the resource sources, and the know-how are all gathered together in a select few groups?” He asked himself self-mockingly.

Interrupting him from furthering his stroke of half-indignation half-acceptance, his phone started beeping.

It was time for him to start his 11th cycle out of the estimated 80 necessary to reach the next grade.

…

A week quickly passed as Aven spent the great majority of his time secluded in his room, only exiting it to go eat something or to go on a bike tour to release his surplus energy.

As a result of his somewhat optimized energy cycling routine over this week, grade 1 was now imminent for him who had accomplished 79 cycles.

 

Aven Amias

Faction: MIC Serenis University

Energy Grade: 0

Energy Cultivation: 9/10

Energy Affinity: Tech

Physical Talents: None

Energy Talents: Basic Tech Energy Affinity

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit

Universal Talents: Unawakened Fairy Ancestry

 

Feeling the flow of energy cycling inside him reach its limit after a long 40 minutes of standing still, Aven felt something else begin.

This time, however, he wasn’t in control anymore.

Self-appraising himself at that precise moment, he got the confirmation he wanted.

 

Aven Amias

Faction: MIC Serenis University

Energy Grade: 0

Energy Cultivation: 10/10

Energy Affinity: Tech

Physical Talents: None

Energy Talents: Basic Tech Energy Affinity

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit

Universal Talents: Unawakened Fairy Ancestry

 

“So now… I only need to wait and see?” He questioned aloud, expecting nature to answer him.

It didn’t.

Same as when his energy cycle settled down or he awakened, advancing in energy grade was something that happened naturally.

There were no secret manuals or secret techniques, energy cultivation was really that simple seen from that point of view.

As if his energy had found a second breath after a sprint, the cycle that should have slowly come to a stop after being exhausted following a long cycling activity slowly began accelerating.

Without an energy sense to truly feel what was happening though, Aven only got a confusing feedback as the more his energy cycle accelerated, the more diffuse it became, as if it wasn’t a cyclic energy anymore but an omnipresent one filling his whole body at the same time.

‘Energy cloud stage… Does it mean “cloud” in that way?’

Watching the show from a first-class lodge, Aven felt every change of temperature, density, and intensity his energy cycle was undergoing.

It wasn’t even close to the mesmerizing scene back from his awakening, but it had a certain charm to it when he linked it to his efforts over the past 7 days.

When the cycle got so carried away there were no distinctions anymore between anywhere in his body and his energy, knowledge started spawning in his mind.

His energy had advanced to the next grade, and his innate ability had advanced at the same time his energy did.

Immersed in the moment, his brain absorbed everything it received. From what he read online, his innate ability advancement could also be interpreted as him gaining access to something that had always been there to begin with, but whose access he had always been denied.

‘Faction contribution… Quests… Contribution… And rewards… Of course rewards.’

Integrating knowledge on something at the same level as his appraisal took a bit over 5 minutes, but once he properly understood what he had gained…

“Sigh~” Resting his back against his chair, a smile slowly materialized on his face as he closed his eyes to enjoy this somewhat alien feeling for longer.

It was a feeling he never had even when he became a super.

It was a feeling that mixed hope, ambition, and confidence at the same time.

It was a feeling that embodied how he saw his innate ability as not being what it was a few minutes ago, it wasn’t a “tool” anymore. What it could do from now on far surpassed the level of help any “tool” could give him, after all.

“Innate abilities, even extraordinary ones, only amount to as much as their owners are worth… So in the end, everything is on me…” Concluding his introspective monologue, he decided to start his life as a grade 1 super by appraising himself.

 

Aven Amias

Faction: MIC Serenis University

Energy Grade: 1

Energy Cultivation: 10/100

Energy Affinity: Tech

Physical Talents: None

Energy Talents: Basic Tech Energy Affinity

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit

Universal Talents: Unawakened Fairy Ancestry

 

‘My affinity is still basic and my ancestry is still unawakened. I wonder if my affinity level counts as part of my talent in energy cultivation… If it is, then my talent would be the lowest if not for my fairy ancestry.’

Reverting back to his inquisitive self as he observed that nothing major had changed in his status other than the energy cultivation and energy grade parts, he opened one of the two new functions of his innate ability.

 

Faction Contribution Quests: MIC Serenis University

Volunteering: Contribute to the stability of your faction without asking for anything in return. The more time spent and the harder the tasks, the greater the contribution.

Influencing: Get recognition for your faction by showing extraordinary results that can be used for it to grow its influence. The greater the results shown, the greater the contribution.

Donating: Support your faction economically by giving it consequent sums of money. The more money given, the greater the contribution.

Securing: Investigate and resolve problems occurring inside your faction. The more problems resolved and the more difficult their resolutions, the greater the contribution.

Educating: Educate your fellow faction members. The more each fellow faction member learns under your teaching, the greater the contribution.

Participating: Attend your faction’s events to further a good social climate and lead by example. The more harmonious the events end up being, the greater the contribution.

 

Upon seeing no numbers and only 6 quests, he frowned a bit. A shame the knowledge that spontaneously appeared in his mind didn’t come accompanied by… More.

Ultimately, it was on him to explore beyond the most basic comprehension of what his grade 1 innate ability upgrade was and how it worked.

‘Are they customized to each faction? It seems I’ll have to experiment with each quest to find which has the best time-difficulty-reward ratio. I’ll need to find the right faction to start with first though.’

Plans formed in his mind after he saw how he could gain contribution.

As for the reason why he needed to consider how to gain contribution so carefully…

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