Hard Mode Awakening Challenge

Selenia held perfectly still as she looked out the family area in front of her. Her father and his wives were spread out around the living area, completely focused on the holo display of the human adventurer named Zero, who was currently fighting three wolfmen. They were so absorbed in what was happening that they hadn't even asked her to perform any tasks for them in the last thirty minutes.

"He just hit level 841," her father said, not taking his eyes from the screen. "If my math is correct, he must be getting twice the normal amount of experience, all while his status is growing even faster than his level. He's purchasing upgrades to uncommon skills at twice the rate he should be. I mean, it looks like he just bumped his endurance skill up another level, even though he increased his agility less than thirty levels ago."

"Indeed," said her father's lead wife, Prisilla. "I can't tell if he is able to gain additional SP, or if all of his skills simply require fewer points than everyone else's."

Selenia tried to absorb all the information that came up in their conversations. Up until a few weeks ago, she hadn't been allowed to know anything about the dungeons. Only true children of the household were allowed to run them, and since most of their higher education systems revolved around teaching dungeon basics, she was removed from classes after receiving a 'standard' education.

With her father constantly watching this human, she had quickly figured out that most of the adventurers called their skill points by the shortened acronym, SP. They used these points to purchase skills to help make them more powerful. Though she was still confused as to why her father was so interested in the man. He had been obsessed with him for the past two weeks.

This human's planet had only been added back into the Great Game, as it is formally referred to in her world, less than a hundred years ago. However, she had heard her father mention that it was the only planet newer than theirs when speaking to his true children. They were all dungeon divers themselves now and were treated with respect that entailed when they visited. Respect she had never been shown but desperately craved.

Her father had been diving dungeons for well over a hundred years with his wives. They used to take a couple of years off at a time to have more children, but none of them had wished for more in over forty years. Instead, they had focused their energy on becoming the premier adventuring team of their generation. Her father was currently the highest-level adventurer on their planet at just over level 56,500. He had never given her an exact number, but she gleaned quite a lot with the way people forgot about her presence.

"There he goes again!" her father screamed, shaking Selenia from her thoughts. "He just went up another level. He's literally fighting monsters hundreds of levels higher than him, as if they were half of his own. He may even move into their mid-tier bracket before I meet with him in a few days."

"Ha, I still can't believe they have their tiers set so low," came the condescending voice of her father's second wife, Lizinna. "We wouldn't even consider him out of his novice stages here on our world. I have a hard time taking anything he does seriously compared to our warriors."

"Well, dear, you aren't wrong when compared to our current standards, but less than five hundred years ago, we were exactly where they are now. My grandfather told me stories of the great change and how he fought his way through the first dungeon levels with nothing more than what we would consider rags and sticks.

"Apparently these humans are currently beating our leveling records, though just by a small margin."

A few of her father's wives gave small signs of agreement before Prisilla made a small sound of displeasure.

"Even if it is only slightly, I don't like that these newcomers are outperforming our ancestors," she said with a sneer. After a moment, she turned to Selenia's father and asked, "Leonian, how are they capable of performing better than our forefathers did?"

"Raw tenacity and perseverance," he said, eyes still glued to the human tearing through even more of the wolfmen. "It is supposed that the mana in their world is so weak that it doesn't do anything to extend their lives. A human's normal lifespan on their planet is only around seventy years for those who never enter a dungeon. Compared with our three-hundred-year baseline, they seem much more frantic about accomplishing something during their short lives.

"As we've seen from Zero here, they run dungeons nearly every day, where we only average them maybe once every ten or so. We enjoy our time between our dungeons, where many of their best and brightest are battle-crazed and seem to live for the next conflict. If they had even half of the equipment we have, they would probably outlevel us within the next ten years."

Selenia had to school her reaction. She wasn't to be seen or heard; her only purpose in life was to be available. There were few moments like this where she could listen in on interesting conversations, and she lived for them.

"At least they only live short lives," Lizinna added with a smug smirk.

Her father only snorted and shook his head, "Humans can live thousands of years if they reach a high enough level. There are records of adventurers from before Earth was originally censured, and many of them were thousands of years old. If Earth had the same mana density in its atmosphere as our planet does, they would probably be living at least as long as we do.

"Biologically, they aren't that different than us. Sure, they are a few inches taller on average, and Zero there probably outweighs me by a good sixty pounds, but we aren't genetically that different."

"Honey, you are a magnificent specimen of a man, and Zero there is just a meat-headed barbarian by comparison," Prisillia added in a sweet voice. "He is almost as large as one of the Orcian's that visited you a few years ago."

She had remembered the Orcian delegation that had come to meet her father when he finally passed level fifty thousand. They were from a planet even more enlightened than their own. While some had been muscular enough to make Zero seem small, their magic users had been sleek and graceful. They had honestly scared her as a little girl.

"Pris, as much as I love your honeyed words, we both know that the Orcians already double my level at their peak. Besides, they gave me a lot to think about when they were here, such as making inroads with those underneath us before the other parties out there see a reason to attempt it."

"Ah, there it is," came a smooth, quiet voice from the chair on the far side of the room. Selene hadn't realized that Vixca, her father's fifth wife, had even come into the room. The woman's sneakiness was one of the reasons Selenia had learned not to move unless she was told.

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"Oh?" Prisilla asked the other woman.

"I was trying to figure out what he was doing when he offered to provide the stones needed to run a tournament for Earth," she replied with that evil look that she usually had when she made Selenia's life a waking hell. "He's creating a connection, and not just with the leadership of Earth, but that boy. I believe you plan to offer him a gift?"

"Indeed," said her father, giving Vixca a feral smile. "Unfortunately, I haven't quite figured out what to give him yet. There are rules on providing the less enlightened with weapons and armor, as they don't want to take away from the fairness in the game. Their lack of knowledge, equipment, and skill is what makes it so enjoyable to watch them.

"But I need to give him something. I am sure he completed a hard mode awakening challenge, something that hasn't been done here in over two hundred years. Unfortunately, that moron was an only child, and quickly died before he could knock up any members of his harem."

"Why is that important?" Vixca asked.

"For the same reason that many of our children received easy mode challenges. It's one of the reasons our parents arranged for most of us to be married. All of you come from families that are known to produce offspring with easy mode challenges. It is surmised that our DNA acts as a marker that the curator uses to determine who gets them."

The women nodded at his explanation, eyes turning back to the screen. They watched with rapt attention as Zero piled bodies of the wolfmen around a den opening before quickly dispatching the lightning-fast monsters with a short sword as they emerged a moment later.

"Which brings me back to the question of what to get the young man," her father sighed as he began to recount what he knew. "Just a few weeks ago, he was apparently living in hiding because his former partner had accused him of physically abusing her and sleeping with other women."

Prisilla sighed. "I can understand the abuse thing, but the hangup on sleeping with other women seems strange to me. How is he supposed to recruit for his harem if he doesn't test some of them out?"

"It's their culture," Vixca shrugged. "While it isn't common to have harems there, it isn't unheard of. Quite a few of their mid-level adventurers work in a similar manner to us, however, it isn't the norm."

"Huh, what a backward people. How can they ensure a party stays together if they are all parts of different groups?" Lizanna asked.

Selenia had to continuously school her features during the conversation. She couldn't understand how the women in the room managed not to kill each other when her father wasn't around. They were all one big happy family when he was present, but Prisilla treated most of them like verbal punching bags when he wasn't—well, all of them but Vixca, who Selenia secretly believed terrified the lead wife. She knew that the sneaky woman definitely scared her more than any of the others.

"Humanity's weird quirks aside," her father cut in, bringing the conversation back to topic. "He had been in hiding for over a year and a half, gaining one level per dungeon run, which also points to at least a standard mode challenge. Once he hit level one hundred, he changed his name from Ian Spelling to the alias Zero. Then he joined their version of the Dungeoneering Guild they call the Adventuring Office, or AO for short.

"From there, he shattered their leveling record, putting him at the top of both the solo and party leaderboards for the novice tier. He continued solo, using mainly a spear as he began to rapidly rise in level, garnering the attention of their top clans, which are similar to our factions here…even if they are smaller in both scope and action."

Selene watched as her father's wives all nodded in unison. It was kind of creepy to see them all in sync. She had long learned that nothing good ever came from any of them being on the same page.

"He seemed to have some issues with a little upstart clan called Peerless, but he eventually got his ex to admit to her lies during a stream and then released a lot of information about himself to the general public."

"That's the same information you have in your office?" Vixca asked with a raised eyebrow.

"The very same," he said with a nod. "Now he has a team that has been assembled, though they haven't started to dive yet. It is made up of his younger sister and two of his ex's former party members. If he doesn't do something, he's going to be over a thousand levels ahead of them when they even begin."

"He's already shown that his 'buffs' can help others level up quickly, if we take into account the time he ran with that Glade Runner creature," Prisilla said, causing the other women to all hiss in disgust.

Selenia actually understood their distaste. Apparently, the humans had skills they could purchase that changed their form into something similar to that of her own people. The humans from Earth called them Elves, but her people were known as the Faeorcen. The woman named Glade Runner looked so similar to Selenia that a couple of her older true sisters had taken to constantly asking when she would take off her disguise and come out as a human.

"So, any ideas?" her father asked his wives.

"What is the ultimate goal?" Lizanna asked, as she watched Zero talking to himself in a language Selenia didn't understand.

"To be perfectly honest, I want him to eventually put a child in at least one of our daughters to combine his bloodline with ours," her father said in the same tone of voice one used when talking about cooking a meal. "Combining his bloodline with ours would allow both our family and our faction to maintain the top spot for the next few generations if we can get better challenges out of the deal."

"But he doesn't seem to trust women or outside organizations," Vexca said. "I've seen how he reacts to the ones that have come on to him. He knows they are interested, but he still keeps them at a safe distance."

"Very true," he replied. "He's also a bit danger-prone. I'm worried he won't live long enough to be useful if we don't make a move to bring him into the fold.

"Maybe I can bring a couple of our daughters there and simply ask him? I can offer him information and promises, as well as offer to bring him here when he reaches the required level of forty thousand."

"He won't do that. He's too attached to his sister," Vixca said before adding, "and I don't want to offer either of my daughters to him. They are worth too much as marriage candidates within the faction."

A general murmur of agreement came up from the women around the room. None of them wanted their daughters to be given to a 'lowly human' as they kept referring to Zero when her father wasn't around.

"Actually," Vixca said before turning to stare directly at Selenia. The woman gave her a vicious grin before turning back to her father. "I think I may have a solution, dearest. We do have a sub-daughter who does carry your bloodline. Maybe this is how we finally give her the chance to move up to full daughter status?"

Selenia quickly dropped her eyes to the floor as she felt everyone's gazes land upon her. Her life as a sub-daughter wasn't glamorous and was quite often painful, but she had no desire to be used as a breeding mare for her family…though if she was able to move up to true daughter status, she could officially become a member of the house and the faction. She could dive into the dungeons and earn her place in the world. She could—

"What are you thinking, darling?" her father asked, cutting off her inner thoughts.

"We give her to him as a blood servant. That way he won't have any fear of her betraying him, as she will be bound to him in the same way her mother was bound to you. She fulfills his needs and eventually gets pregnant. When she has his child, we request to take care of them in our world when they are old enough to start attending the academies. We can argue that we can provide a better opportunity for them in our world's mana-rich environment.

"Then, when he dies from stupidity in the dungeon, she will have earned her place here. We'll make the deal that she has to have three children with him to earn her place among the family. At that point, I will take her as my own daughter, if need be, and ensure her position."

Selenia was paralyzed in fear as she waited for her father's words; all daydreams of becoming an adventurer fled as if they had never been there. She prayed that he would refuse to send her. She was just a sub-daughter. Her mother was a servant, and there was no way that she was a better fit for this task than one of her sisters, who had two bloodlines that promoted these so-called challenges.

"I think that is a great idea!" her father said, making her mind go blank. "This will finally let my last little girl join the family. Sure, it will probably be a few decades, but you will finally get a chance to be a real member of this family, Selly. Isn't that exciting?"

She just stared at her father, unmoving.

"Wonderful!" Prisilla said, putting on a large grin that didn't reach her eyes. "She's so happy that she can't even find the words to express it."