Unduh Aplikasi
8.24% The Harvester / Chapter 35: An Offer

Bab 35: An Offer

❮ ◈ ❯

Tutorial Mission Completed

Assessment: You have completed the side objective, Overtaking, with a 48% contribution. You have killed the clone of Aquila with a 78% contribution. You have collected 62 Souls and defeated a total of 235 foes, both indirectly and directly.

Mission Time: 8:35:55.

Rewards: 2240 Talys, Access to the First Plateau.

---

You are now going to be transported to the First Plateau. Brace yourself.

❮ ◈ ❯

"Brace myself?" Rakna muttered to himself as he stood in a place plunged in darkness. There was nothing in sight except the System window.

And soon enough, the warning explained itself as he felt something a lot similar to what he went through when the System first took him away from Earth. A splitting headache attacked him and in the blink of an eye, quite literally, his surroundings changed to something completely different.

At first, his blurry vision made it impossible to make out anything but it faded away in under ten seconds and what was presented to him then was pretty shocking, even for him.

First of all, he seemed to be standing in the middle of a very wide and futuristic-looking circular platform with blue neon lines across its surface. He then looked around and almost dropped his jaw at the sight of a city with a dark blue color-scheme extending as far as the eye could see.

Each building was worthy of being called lighthouses with the countless electronics they sported such as holographic billboards and neon letters. There were a few skyscrapers that reached nearly unimaginable heights and as crazy as it sounded, there even seemed to be one building that had a direct connection to outer space.

Other than that, Rakna couldn't ignore the many flying vehicles as well as the thousands of people he could see flying around with jetpacks or with what seemed to be magic for the most part.

In this landscape, the only places he could see a bit of verdure was on top of certain towers that seemed to have greenhouses on their roof. He could also see smoke on the horizon, or maybe was it mist?

But, what surprised Rakna the most was that it was the same story for every cardinal direction. Everywhere he looked, the city stretched beyond what he could see and, unconsciously, he almost felt lost and a bit intimidated.

Pronos seemed to share his sentiments as he looked around with a silly expression.

"Ah, I see you finally arrived," piercing through the noise of the city composed of sounds of both machinery and airborne vehicles, one voice spoke to Rakna from behind.

His eyes widened a bit and he managed to kill his surprise in an instant before turning around. As one might have been able to predict with a bit of thinking, it was Gray who stood there twirling his cane with a grin flashing on his face.

"You…" Rakna scowled.

"Yes, me," Gray quipped. "Missed me?"

"I don't think I would miss someone whose only interaction with me was a joke about me hiding in fear from a bunch of dogs walking on two legs."

"Uh," Gray blinked in a daze. "That was a good come back, wolf boy."

"I aim to please," Rakna uttered with a dry tone and the clown cackled darkly.

"You're terribly emotionless for a kid," he said and tilted his head. "Well, I guess I should not be surprised to see a bit of uniqueness in an S+ candidate," he commented offhandedly and smirked when he saw the young werewolf's scowl.

"And yes, I know about your potential value. It's a very rare rating by the way; be proud. Also, do not worry, batch overseers like me have rules to follow and we are not allowed to use an analysis skill on newcomers. I only know about your basic information such as your name and potential. I can't even check your race in fact," he said with a shrug.

"I see…" Rakna muttered and Gray rubbed his chin.

"On a side note, I can see that you're using an illusion to hide your appearance. You're not really the first one to do so but, friendly advice, none of the stronger Hosts will fall for such a low-level trick. You can hide from the weak guys but do not expect the higher-ups to not notice it."

"You're awfully chatty for someone who borderline insulted me when he first saw me. Why are you even telling me all of this?" Rakna spoke with an accusatory voice and Gray laughed.

"In my defense, kiddo, you made me, and the whole batch as well, wait for half a day before we could start the tutorial. Well, we got the report from your shopkeeper telling us that you had been gravely injured and needed rest but still," he sighed and looked at Rakna in the eyes.

"As for your little question, let's say that… you're bound to attract a lot of attention if you're not careful," he said with a serious tone. He pointed at Rakna's back with his cane. "Not only do you have S+ potential, but those tails… you have two of them now."

Rakna frowned. "And?"

Gray snickered and put his cane back on the ground. "And you're a werewolf. A werewolf capable of growing more than one tail is a first in the history of the System. If I were you, I'd do my best to not carelessly transform in front of others and maybe you'll be able to pass as a beast-man with noble blood. Many Hosts would be more than happy to dissect you, experiment you, torture you, and even enslave you if they found out about your abnormality."

Rakna's expression twitched as he took in those words. Alexa had already made him very aware of the individuality of his situation, add to that his recent acquisition of a Royal Luquila's genome, a creature of legend, and he basically had a massive target on his back.

However, he didn't know that it would be so bad that Hosts would try to either subjugate him or turn him into their lab rats. Pronos looked at him in worry and Rakna silently patted the little snake before opening his mouth.

"You've dodged my question," he said and Gray exclaimed in curiosity.

"Oh?"

"All in all, the only thing you told me until now is that you possess information with the potential of ruining my life in this shitty 'System Society' of yours. You haven't answered why you're telling it to me though. Is it just to taunt me?"

Gray's eyes narrowed slightly and the screen he had for mouth switched to a more good-natured smile. "Worry not. I'm not about to threaten you for fun. In fact, you could say that I'm willing to give you an offer."

"An offer?"

"Yes, indeed," Gray nodded and turned around with his red tailcoat flailing behind him. He started walking to what seemed to be a staircase to one side of the platform they were on. He waved his hand at Rakna without looking. "Follow me."

Rakna raised an eyebrow and he shared a look with Pronos before he ultimately decided to follow the clown. As they were walking down the stairs that were built above the buildings, he passively began to observe the city in a bit more detail.

"Like the view?" Gray asked.

Rakna just hummed and replied with a question, "Where are you bringing me to?"

The robot clown chuckled and pointed at something in the distance with his cane. "Do you see that over there?"

Rakna followed the line defined by the cane and spotted a structure not far. It was the exact same design as the platform they had just left.

"There are as many platforms like these as there are groups from your batch. I don't know if any of your friends told you already, but on a yearly basis, a batch is summoned from a random planet and separated into several groups. Your school was Group C, by the way. To give you an example, Group A is from the country you call 'Korea'."

"I see. What's the connection between that and my question though?"

"Well, each group has a caretaker like me. And we're currently in the process of assembling the ones who passed the tutorial. So, I'm just bringing you to where the others are right now. Your friends with whom you fought Aquila included."

"Why do I feel like there's more than just 'assembling' people to this?" Rakna said with a voice oozing with sarcasm.

Gray chuckled. "You'll see soon enough."

A few minutes later, they had reached the end of the staircase that was right next to a large road where there were actual land vehicles instead of flying ones. Rakna spared a few seconds to look at the city from up-close before continuing to follow Gray who was heading to a nearby building.

He walked to the entrance and the automatic doors slid open as he got close. Rakna tagged along and after barely taking a step inside the building, something came out of nowhere and blocked his path.

He jumped back in reflex and stared wide-eyed at the metallic arm cutting his path. He traced it back to its source and saw a large robot that was as tall as his werewolf form, standing there.

|| ID. || It spoke with a mechanical voice and Rakna turned to Gray for an explanation.

"Just ask your AI for your ID. Every Host has one and it's used to make records of their movements in the System, their purchases, and especially to access places with, let's say, stricter security such as this place. It is quite literally an ID; an identification document. Some places even need you to be over a certain age to visit. Later on, you'll have to get yourself a physical one."

[S1985266348P,] Alexa spoke without waiting for her Host and Rakna carefully repeated the sequence to the robot which instantly looked through the database and found the recently created entry.

|| ID Verified. Welcome, Rakna Xiorra. || It then backed away and removed its arm before returning to a slightly concealed corner of the entrance hall. That explained why Rakna hadn't seen it coming at all before it was confronted with it. That thing somehow wasn't making any noise while walking and trying to sense something that isn't alive was quite hard.

"Come on, I don't have all day," Gray said and pushed open the doors that were the closest to the entrance. When Rakna saw what was behind them, his mind shut down for a second.

It wasn't because he couldn't process what he saw or anything, rather, it had gone way beyond his expectations. The best he could do to describe what laid in front of him was a party. This building was a large party hall and currently, hundreds of young-looking people were chatting and serving themselves on the absolutely massive buffet available.

"What? You didn't expect this?" Gray said with a grin. "It's always like this after a tutorial. We gather the batch and throw a small welcome party. Especially, since most of you haven't eaten much for at least a good half day. So; the buffet."

Rakna threw an inquisitive look at the clown as they walked in. "I feel like there's more to this."

"Obviously," Gray didn't even try to hide. "It's related to the offer I mentioned. But you'll have to wait for everyone to be gathered. In other words, you'll have to wait for the tutorial mission to hit its time limit. Which is about… three hours and a half from now," he said and pointed at a certain corner of the hall.

"There. Your group's there," he said and Rakna looked at where the clown was pointing and managed to spot a few familiar faces amidst the crowd. "On this note, I have to go and wait for the other Hosts at the platform. Thanks to you, there's probably going to be a lot more of them surviving," Gray said in a fake annoyed tone and turned around. "Have fun," he added as he exited the building again.

Rakna watched him go with a scowl and made his way through the crowd to rejoin with his group.


PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA
AhraManyu AhraManyu

The next chapters might have a lot of talking. Warning given.

.

Still good anyway. Ahem.

Bab 36: Toast to Survival

"Rak! You're here," Allan raised his voice the second he saw Rakna approaching and caught the attention of everyone. "We all got the notification you killed Aquila soon after coming out. What were you doing until now?"

"Stuff," Rakna shrugged and he arrived at the big table they were standing around. He looked at the food displayed and Pronos practically rocketed out from under Sonata before landing on the table with sparkly eyes. "What about you know who? I don't see him here," he said while reaching for a plate.

"Over there," Flavia pointed with her chin as she was eating dumplings with Nyx. Rakna followed her line of sight and spotted Herts' little band huddled to the side of the room with the man in question sporting a dark expression.

Leia snorted as she swallowed a piece of bread. "He must be pissed off about losing half of the guys he had with him. They never appeared on the platform. I guess that bird was saying the truth."

"Indeed," Leis nodded.

Rakna hummed as he placed a full chicken on his plate. Then, much to everyone's shock, he cut it into five pieces, which were still way too big for anyone with common sense, and proceeded to swallow each one of them, bones and everything, after chewing a few times. What they didn't see though was how his fangs had grown temporarily when did it.

When he finished the whole chicken in just a few seconds, Rakna returned their incredulous stares with a lifted eyebrow. "What?"

"No, it's just… did you always eat like that?" Allan uttered. "I don't remember you doing that, ever."

"Werewolf and all that… forgot already?" Rakna replied unperturbed. "I'm not really hungry right now but my ability to eat has probably skyrocketed. I have a hunch that if I was in my other form, I could probably finish another one of these in just one bite."

"That's kinda scary, bro," Allan deadpanned. "If you ever feel the urge to eat one of us, please tell us in advance. Who knows if one day you'll start craving for humans?"

"Well, hearts do taste good," Rakna commented indifferently.

"Wait, what?" Allan froze. "What did you just say? Rak? Rak?!"

Rakna ignored his friend's shouts and turned to look at the other people in the party hall. His eyes, which had sneakily turned golden, swiftly swept over each person. He even got a close look at the appearance of the Host on the opposite side of the hall.

'Their characteristics vary a lot; Asian, South and North American, African, European… Truly we were picked out from across the Earth's surface,' he thought and blinked as his irises returned to their purple color. Then, from the corner of his eyes, he saw a tall man wearing a black trench coat enter the hall while leading a new group of people inside. 'Probably another overseer.'

"What are you thinking?" Leis came up to his left and asked.

"Nothing much. I'm still assessing the situation."

"I see…" Leis whispered. "There's something I can't help but notice personally. How many people do you think there are in this hall right now?"

Rakna glanced at him for a second before answering, "I'd say between two to three hundred."

"And how many do you think there are left to arrive like them?" Leis continued while pointing at the small group of four people who had just entered the hall.

"Honestly, if we take how our side of things was, I don't think there will be a lot more. Maybe a hundred and a half or so, at best. Truthfully, there are a few things that we had over the other groups in the first place. First; me."

Leis let out a chuckle at that. "Can't deny it."

"Thanks to my Nirvana Skill, as well as Nyx's help, we managed to defeat Aquila without too much trouble or losses but I doubt it was the same for the other groups. Then, there's the fact that your gang, Nyx, Flavia, Allan, and I formed a pretty powerful force from the get-go. It was easy for us to collect and monopolize souls. Incidentally, because of our superiority, we haven't had to face a certain situation."

"Stealing," Dan joined the conversation from the side. The others also seemed to be listening ever since Rakna started talking. "No one tried to steal souls from us."

"Yes," Rakna nodded. "However, there's no doubt that anyone who isn't trained like us will easily fall into despair at the situation. Humans are cowards, especially when it comes to the unknown. For them, it's less scary to kill fellow humans than otherworldly monsters."

Allan laughed wryly. "The fact that you're actually not human anymore makes it so ironic. Because I know you would say that even if you weren't a werewolf."

Dan snickered. "True. And I can guess what you're going to say after this, Xiorra," he declared and everyone looked at him. "In this kind of situation, it's very easy for the mundane folks to develop a psychopathic behavior. In conclusion…" He trailed and shot a sharp glare at the crowd. "You can fully expect this place to be roaming with freshly born serial killers."

Everyone fell silent at his words and the many voices in the party hall drowned their area. Only Pronos wasn't paying attention to anything as he stuffed himself with fish and meat.

Nyx sighed in the silence. "It's such a sad thing to know that you're completely right. Humans are just pathetic like that," she remarked while staring at the ripples of the wine in her cup. "They do have a lot of potential as a species. The potential to be anything; from the worst trash imaginable to the most respectable of heroes."

"Ah, right," Dan exclaimed. "It almost slipped my mind that you too are not human. Your status says that you're an Ascended Human… the heck is that?"

Nyx shrugged off the stares of everyone. "Personal."

"Now that I think about it, how much information does your Scan give you?" Rakna asked and Dan mused for a bit.

"Well, depends but generally, it's limited to the name, age, etcetera, and the attributes. I can't see the skills at all and sometimes, even the attributes show as interrogation marks even when I use it on a target of the same level as me. What about you? You were able to see the entire status of Aquila. How did you do that?"

"Appraisal, that's the name of the skill I use. The System tells me that it's a better version of Scan. That's all I know."

"Anyhow," Allan raised his voice a bit. "Let's stop talking about this shitty game for a bit. I want to enjoy my food without being depressed, please."

"I got to agree with that one," Gantt quipped. "It spoils the taste."

"All right," Leis grabbed a cup of alcohol and lifted it a bit. Everyone understood the action and grabbed their own drinks. Rakna quietly poured himself a cup of water much to the amusement of his close friends. They knew that he hated basically every drink other than water.

Pronos looked at everyone in confusion and Flavia smiled before handing him a cup of water too which he grabbed with his tail while tilting his head.

"To our survival," Leis said and raised his cup.

""To our survival,"" all of them said except Nyx, Rakna, and obviously Pronos, before they downed their respective drinks.

At the same time, the other people in the hall apparently happened to see it and, like a chain reaction, they all made a toast with the same words, though in different languages.

* * *

As the new Hosts were enjoying their time, a few hours passed, and a few minutes before the end of the tutorial, a group of cloaked people appeared in the forest surrounding Rakna's school but there was something odd about it. It wasn't the area where the Tutorial had proceeded. In fact, it seemed to be one of the separate dimensions meant for the initiations.

"Do you feel anything?" One of the cloaked beings asked as the night masked their shape.

"Give me a moment," a second voice responded. "Hm, I smell something in that direction," it said and the group of unknown people instantly moved at a speed that would be mind-gobbling for anyone new to the System.

They traveled a few hundreds of meters in a few seconds and they all stopped somewhere with several trees carbonated or half deracinated. The cloaked people then collectively surrounded a certain shape lying on the ground.

"Fuck," one of them said and crouched next to the corpse of the nine-tailed wolf. "It's dead. Stabbed in the head. Its heart seems to have been… gouged out? Though it appears to be post-mortem…"

One of the others clicked his tongue audibly. "How the heck did this happen? We went through all that shit to kidnap it from those damn wolves, and now it's dead? I thought hiding it in an initiation dimension would be safe. There's no way a newbie Host could have killed a nine-tailed wolf, right? Even if it was a cub."

"I'm lost as well. It can't be someone from the seven branches since they have absolutely no reason to kill this cub. Heck, even we only wanted to use it as a hostage."

"What about the Host that took their Initiation here? Maybe we can learn something if we interrogate them."

"Unfeasible. There's no way to pinpoint who it was. And for all we know, they might have died during the Tutorial anyway."

One of them sighed. "No choice; burn the corpse. We can only fool the wolves into thinking that we still have the cub in our possession."

"Understood," the crouched figure nodded and placed his hand on the wolf's body. In the blink of an eye, a white flame appeared and engulfed it before turning it into ashes.

"Let's leave before the System kicks us out to the First Plateau. I heard Gray Whisles is one of the overseers this year. If he finds us, we're dead," he uttered and they disappeared from the forest as fast as they came.


PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA
AhraManyu AhraManyu

I swear my death will be caused by an online-class-induced headache. I can imagine it so well.

Load failed, please RETRY

Status Power Mingguan

Membuka kunci kumpulan bab

Indeks

Opsi Tampilan

Latar Belakang

Font

Ukuran

Komentar pada bab

Tulis ulasan Status Membaca: C35
Gagal mengirim. Silakan coba lagi
  • Kualitas penulisan
  • Stabilitas Pembaruan
  • Pengembangan Cerita
  • Desain Karakter
  • Latar Belakang Dunia

Skor total 0.0

Ulasan berhasil diposting! Baca ulasan lebih lanjut
Pilih Power Stone
Rank 200+ Peringkat Power
Stone 71 Batu Daya
Laporkan konten yang tidak pantas
Tip kesalahan

Laporkan penyalahgunaan

Komentar paragraf

Masuk

tip Komentar Paragraf

Fitur komentar paragraf sekarang ada di Web! Arahkan kursor ke atas paragraf apa pun dan klik ikon untuk menambahkan komentar Anda.

Selain itu, Anda selalu dapat menonaktifkannya atau mengaktifkannya di Pengaturan.

MENGERTI