章 7: The starting Capture Target is My What?!(Edited)
[Sudden Quest 'Who am I?' is completed!]
[Would you like to get your rewards now?]
I was brought out of my thoughts by the pop-up from the 'System'.
'Can I have my memories right now? That would be very convenient.'
I asked the 'System,' feeling relieved that I could finally not tread on a line wire around these strangers who were my supposed family.
I had somehow managed to not be suspicious around them, hopefully. Luckily, there wasn't much talking that had me needing the memories of my current body, yet. But it was a chore nonetheless.
Unfortunately, it seemed I wasn't quite in the clear yet.
[The user can have his memories right now. But it is not advised.]
'Why is that?'
[Since there are more than a decade worth of memories, it'll take some time and a safe environment for the user to completely integrate with those memories. Doing it right now might be painful and will likely create a scene that you may not want to create.]
'Ugh. That's troublesome. I'll have to go back to my room soon after this to do it.'
[Yes. Apologies. But the user can have the additional rewards right now. I urge the user to accept it as it'll be incredibly helpful right now.]
'Oh? Gimme.'
[Additional reward is received!]
[Skill: Observe Lvl EX(Divine) is granted!]
I raised my eyebrows at the message.
'A new skill? And a Divine rarity one at that! Wow. Let's see its Skill description.'
[Skill: Observe Lvl EX
Type: Active
Rarity: Divine
Effects: -Lets the user see a brief description of the targeted individual or object, including some of their personal information.
-The skill can be used without Mana, SP, or any other energy as it can directly access part of the 'Record of the World.' There is no limit to the number of times the user can use the skill either. Furthermore, the user doesn't require to have any pre-requisite knowledge about the said being or object to use the skill on them.
Note: The skill is exclusive to the user and cannot be detected, copied, or stolen by others, by any means, since it transcends the laws of this world.]
'Holy shit. This is kinda OP! What is this cheat tier skill?!'
To say I was flabbergasted reading the description of the skill would be an understatement.
This skill was, in many ways, game-breaking. Even the game didn't have such a powerful function. Sure, you could see a written record of Capture Targets, but you needed to know their names and basic information on your own to fill in the blanks. It was more of a notepad entry. Not taking into account the multitude of wiki pages, of course.
This, on the other hand, was an ability that let me know things about strangers just by looking at people or objects.
Truly, a cheat-tier ability.
'Thank you, System! This ability is awesome!'
[This was my apology for messing up. I'm glad you are satisfied.]
'This is more than I can ask for! I didn't know I could get such OP skills from the System just like that.'
I was wondering what other broken abilities the 'System' was hiding.
[Please note that this is not a Skill user can easily get his hands on. It originally had a pre-requisite of having to complete an SSS-rank or higher Quest or equivalent achievement to gain it, and there were some other technicalities as well, but I bypassed all of it using a bug in the rules, created due to the situation where I couldn't fulfill my required tasks.
The bug is now patched and I can't use the same means to give you such skills willy-nilly. Apologies for that. If it were up to me, I would offer all the "cheat-like" abilities to the user and make his life easier, since the user's happiness and well-being are my primary concerns.]
The 'System' read my thoughts and spoke promptly.
Her message was a bit disheartening since I was made aware of such OP-tier abilities but I couldn't gain them so easily now. But still, what System did for me and her last sentence filled me with joy. It seemed to be really caring and put me above everything else.
'No, no. That's completely fine. And thank you for being so kind to me. I'm so glad to have such a nice System.'
I was being honest. I had read enough novels and fan fics to know that most Systems tend to be indifferent, manipulative, or downright annoying to their users. And let's not even talk about certain types of parasitic ones. Very few of them were so nice and kind to their users. (A/N: The 'Parasitic systems' are a reference to one of the popular novels on this platform. Can you guess which one?)
And I seemed to be one of the lucky few who had a nice System.
After thanking the 'System', I focused my attention on the girl I was still looking at.
I quickly used <Observe> on her.
[Name: Emma K. Maximus
Age: 15
Gender: Female
Race: Human
---
Tier: 1(Foundation grade: Gold)
Talent: Swordsmanship, Piano
---
Affection/Obedience/Reputation: -1[40]/0/-15
Capture Difficulty: S+
---
Remark: Sees you as a wimpy good-for-nothing, Dislikes your attitude, Is very uncomfortable with what happened between you and her elder sister.
---
Status: Annoyed, angry.]
A new pop-up was now in front of me, listing some basic information about her.
It confirmed that she was, in fact, Emma K. Maximus, the starting capture target from the game Criotopia, now sitting in front of me in flesh and bones! She certainly deserved her position as MC's starting Harem member. And it wasn't just because of her looks.
She was tier 1, the first tier of the 10 Foundational Tiers that everyone in the world of Criotopia had to go through to get stronger.
Criotopia didn't have the level system I did. It had a unique Tier-based system, where every person, regardless of gender or race, developed their core at the age of adulthood. For humans, it was 15. For other races, it varied. Some had early adulthood, while others, the long-lived races mostly, had late adulthoods.
Everyone, once they reached adulthood, became Tier 1. Before that, they are all Tier 0 or have no Foundation Tier. Like me, for instance.
Now, there was another thing of importance here, called Foundation Grade.
It roughly meant the talent one possessed in forming the said Tiers and progressing through them. A person could be really talented(a high foundation grade) and increase their tiers rapidly by gaining "experience" or a combination of natural 'Life Force' and 'Mana.'
Or they could be untalented(a low foundation grade), in which case, it would take them much longer to increase their tiers, if they even could realistically.
Foundation grades mostly depended on people's bloodline, and rarely, luck.
Note that everyone was capable of getting stronger but if you didn't have a good enough foundation grade, you could only struggle really hard to do so, and still fail to do it.
The said 'Foundation grades' were as follows: Platinum > Gold > Silver > Copper > Bronze > Tin; Tin being the worst grade and Platinum being the best.
Only a handful of living humans even had a Platinum grade as their foundation. The same was also true for other species, with slight variations.
A person with a Gold grade foundation was considered a genius already. And if a person with a Platinum grade foundation were to be found, the countries and various organizations would do their utmost best to get that person for themselves, lest their rival countries got their hands or paws on them.
Most ordinary people were born with a Tin grade foundation, with the more talented ones among them being in Bronze or Copper. Anything above Copper meant you're born with a great foundation and could hope to be decently powerful if you trained and gained "experience".
Moving on from that, the (Foundation) Tiers were the first 'stage' of growing stronger.
Once you reach Foundation Tier 10, you could set foot into the next stage called Advanced Tiers, or Monarch Tier, as commonly termed by the people.
The difference in power between a Foundation Tier 10 and a Monarch Tier 1 was considerable. An average Monarch Tier 1 could manhandle half a dozen Foundation Tier 10s. And they could fight up to 10 or so Foundation Tier 10s in prime condition if they gave their all.
Moving on, there were again 10 Monarch/Advanced Tiers, but this time, each one was substantially stronger than the previous, and increasing these tiers was much harder than the foundation tiers.
It could take from a few years to a whole life increasing just one Tier in this grade. Needless to say, the higher the Tier you got, the more difficult it became to increase it further. So, an exponential increase in difficulty for further growth, but it was well worth doing so.
Each and every Monarch Tier possed the "Monarch's Aura", an invisible force that they could assert on others with just their will. There was a reason why every Monarch Tier being was well respected. Their Auras alone were enough to demobilize anyone below Monarch Tiers and in the worst case, even kill them if they were substantially weaker.
This was the reason why there were 10s of thousands of people around the world who were in Foundation Tier 5 to 10, the upper strata of the Tiers, but only a few dozen even reached the first Monarch Tiers.
A person with even Monarch Tier 1 could be considered a General Rank in the Imperial Army, in the Empire, I was currently residing in. Getting a noble rank, fame, and money for them was easy as pie.
This was also how Emma and now my, Ancestor, Gerald K. Maximus gained the title of Marquis. He was a behemoth at Monarch Tier 3. He was the great-great-grandfather of Emma, known by the epithet "The Bloody Marquis".
The strongest living Monarchs in the world were around level 5 or 6 at best, as far as I knew from the game's data. At least it was so for the humans and most demi-humans.
Beings like Dragons and other mystical beings could be stronger. The Black Dragon called 'Calamity,' one of the late bosses of the game was Advanced/Monarch Tier 8. And there were a few more.
Dragons in general were troublesome beings, but we'll come to them at another time.
… Now they were all alive and breathing.
'Hmm. I need to really get strong enough before that time comes. Luckily, I still have a few years under my belt before things begin to heat up.'
Oh, how much I was mistaken. I would learn the folly of my statement just now in the not-so-distant future.
…
Anyway, Emma having a Gold foundation grade was enough of an indication that she was capable of at least reaching the Monarch Tiers. Even if she was a mere Tier 1 right now.
Moving away from the whole discussion about Tiers and stuff, the next thing of note in Emma's 'Observe' window was her 'Talent.' As was in the game, she was talented in Swordsmanship and Piano. An odd pair, but what can you do?
Moving on, I noticed something that bugged me greatly.
'She doesn't like me? Her Affection and Reputation points are in freaking negative. What the fuck did the original 'I' do to have my points in the negative?!'
[Note: Alexander's original Affection/Obedience/Reputation scores will be transferred to you who's now Alexander.]
'Yeah, I can see that. Fuck.'
If I remembered correctly, in the game, Emma was one of those girls who had an inherent dislike for men and she especially didn't like weak-natured guys. She was quite Tsun-tsun when you meet her initially, but after you raise her affection high enough, she became an adorable Tsundere. The one who would say a cliché line like: "I-It's not like I like you or anything, b-baka!"
… She was supposed to be that kind of girl, at least in the game.
The Emma in front of me was a living and breathing human, not a 2D animation and a bunch of pre-programmed code. I needed to keep that in mind now.
The System did say that the world was created with all the game data as it is but added additional bits to make it 'complete'. So, I at least had hoped that most of the named characters from the game would act somewhat similar to their game selves, with varying degrees of changes, probably. But that was only applied if I were the protagonist. I wasn't.
'Oh boy…'
Reading the following remark made me understand some of the reasons for such scores, though not fully. It seemed I, or rather, the original Alexander was a wimpy good-for-nothing guy in her eyes. And she disliked me for that. Though…
'What's up with that last remark? What happened between the original me and this supposed elder sister to make her so uncomfortable?'
Now I wanted to get the memories of this body, even more, to hopefully understand the situation better.
As for her Capture Difficulty, it was higher than it was in the game. In the game, she was at highest an A+, or at lowest A-. But this Emma had an S-tier difficulty.
'System, why is her Capture Difficulty higher? Does it have to do with me being a different person than the protagonist?'
I had guessed. And I was right.
[Yes, the Capture Difficulty is in relation to the user. Since you are her blood-related sibling, it adds an extra layer of difficulty, making it S. Her base difficulty for others would be A. The plus(+) is due to your already bad reputation and affection stats with her.]
'… I see.'
Seeing her status as being annoyed and angry was also not good. That probably referred to her current mood, which I was told of soon after that when I jolted hearing a loud bang.
*Bang!*
"Stop staring at me, you moron!"
***
クリエイターの想い 
The_POZ
The_POZ This chapter was a bit of an info dump. Please excuse my lack of creativity to do this in a better way, but I wanted to get done with that now and here and move on with the actual story.
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Creation is hard, cheer me up! You can vote with Power Stones to keep me motivated! :D
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