The Systemic Lands (Dark Progressive LITRPG)

"Was he with you?" I asked, gesturing to the corpse. I steadied my breathing to recover as quickly as possible.

"He was tricky, but useful for sniffing out things. Now, you are an interesting fellow. Got some muscles under that layer of fat, I see," the man explained. So, he wanted to talk. I wouldn't complain, since it would give me time to come up with a plan.

"Were you trained in some kind of sport?" I asked. Hoping for any kind of information.

"I was on the fencing team in college. Team captain."

"I thought you were going to say Olympic Champion." Still top-tier, but I had the information I needed now. He shouldn't have said anything. But people liked to talk when they thought they had the advantage.

"Ha, now that would be a nice brag. I tried out but didn't make the cut. Still, these clubs are quite brutish." He gave his club a practice swing in my direction.

"You wouldn't be willing to call off the fight? Even if you win, I will injure you. Recovery for you will be impossible," I asked.

"True, very true. But there is the restoration option from the store. Also, I think I can torture how to earn points out of you. I have a pretty good guess, but I would like confirmation." Not good. This was definitely going to happen now.

"Is that all you have to say?" I asked.

"If you tell me everything you know, I will let you go." Double dammit, that was the kind of nonsense deal I would offer. I didn't trust it for one second.

"For some reason, I don't believe you."

"Well, you had enough time to rest. My name is Lucas." He inclined his head slightly and brought up his club. Might as well play along with this nonsense and it confirmed in my heart what I needed to do. No hesitation, just act.

"Michael." I inclined my head as well and brought up my club as well. All my senses were heightened at the impending death match and focused on my opponent. He stepped forward and slowly advanced. He held the club in one hand and turned his body to the side. A fencer's pose, which was stupid with a club.

I had taken a class at summer camp as a kid and watched a few matches on YouTube later on as an adult. It was enough to tell that Lucas knew what he was doing since he was comfortable with his footwork and positioning. If he was acting, he was doing a good enough job that I had no chance of telling the difference.

I took my standard two-handed grip and faced him head-on. While he had a longer reach, I had greater strength.

He lunged and thrust his club at my head. I batted it to the side, but he had already recovered to step back and avoid my counter-swing.

Lucas darted in again, aiming for my legs this time. Act!

I stepped forward as he pulled back. It had been a feint, which was all the better for me. I had been ready to take the blow head-on as long as he didn't aim for my head or chest. I thrust the club and hit him in the chest. He staggered back, but I kept rushing forward, grabbing onto his chest in a tackle, as my club fell backward onto the ground.

He slammed onto the hard stone with his back and my body on top of his. I grabbed his head with both of my hands and slammed it on the ground. I felt him hit me in the side multiple times and struggle to throw me off, but I didn't stop.

He tried to twist me off and pull his head free, but I wouldn't let him go. I slammed his head down onto the grey stone of the building floor over and over.

Lucas finally stopped moving, and my hands were covered in blood and ripped hair. My left side was killing me from all the blows he had landed. I let out a shaky breath.

"Thanks for confirming you never were an MMA fighter. Four years of wrestling in high school beats college fencing. What an idiot," I muttered. I slowly got up and wiped my hands on his shirt and pants.

I knew I had no chance of out-dueling a trained athlete. It was delusional that I could hold my own against someone like this in any kind of fight with weapons. That was why I went for the tackle, and he was clearly unprepared for such a move. This wasn't a sport with rules. This was life and death.

That ruthless mindset I had cultivated allowed me to follow up and take him out. "Going to keep a larger reserve of points from now on," I muttered. I got my pack and club. I then began making my way to the slime gate, thankfully with no more encounters. My side was sore the entire time.

I had checked for tails as well, but no one was following me. Lucas probably bullied others and used up all his points to eat and have energy if he lasted this long. He was probably one of the best remaining fighters.

Those were just guesses though, but I felt they were fairly on point. But I won. Not against a world-level athlete, but someone decent. Still, it was only a matter of time before someone from a military or professional fighter showed up. They would be trained, physically fit, and not afraid to fight.

That was when things would get tricky. I could easily see an officer wrangling people and getting stuff done. A large organized group was my biggest weakness. Still, it was only 250 people per group based on the one I arrived with, and the other gates appeared to be quite dangerous.

That gave me a 25% chance of encountering any group that went for a gate. So even if there had been competent people, they could easily have chosen the wrong gate and died. Also, it appeared this place was still pulling from the US. Otherwise, if it was an even distribution from Earth, there would be a lot more people from China and India.

That made me concerned about other cities, but not that much. Quality was much more important than quantity in this type of world. The store and the upgrades allowed one person to easily dominate others.

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The sheer unfairness of a System was the core of how it functioned, as it only helped the individual, not the group. When the power levels became different, and that power was invested into a single individual and not a group, that was when power mattered.

Discourse in this world would only be communicated with combat prowess. Even if a system was set up and groups formed, against power and violence, words meant nothing. It was the start of an era of warlords, a government ruled by the most powerful with stratified tiers.

The only way to resist such a thing was to be the strongest. That meant hunting slimes for now. Lots and lots of slimes. I was treating time like an unlimited resource. That was probably stupid, but all my other options felt far worse.

Each new monster brought the risk of death. Death was something I was very much afraid of. I would never be the type of person that rushed off into a new zone to test myself, at least for now, since I lacked strength. What I could do was focus on steady accumulation for now. Once I was stronger, I would rethink checking out new areas.

It was like driving a car. Going from 60 mph to 70 mph didn't do much to change when you arrived. The key thing was the number of stops. While stopped, that was time spent not moving forward at all. I had one break day to settle my nerves and an exploration day, which was two non-point days so far.

Every other day had been filled with fighting of some kind. Either against slimes or people. Still, I needed to increase my grinding speed.

I considered the slimes. The main issue was the distance I had to go to each one. They appeared to ignore almost everything except a direct attack. I needed a lure, but there had been nothing in the store.

I either had to change monsters or rush through the slimes more quickly. Both options were unacceptable. I could try to keep up the pace. Well, after today. Today, I needed to get some crystals and get myself restored. That was incredibly annoying. Congrats, Lucas. You were the only thing besides my body that has done the most damage to me since arriving here.

There was some part of me that couldn't believe I won a straight-up fight. It wasn't the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Also, a good dash of luck never hurt. That was twice so far, once with finding the slime forest, and the second with Lucas. You could only go all-in with a Poker hand so many times before you lost and were left with nothing. I didn't want to push my luck any further than I had.

I knew that without the Body upgrades, I would have broken ribs and be in a much more serious condition. Maybe. It was hard to say for sure. I absolutely hated the opaque nature of the store and not being able to quantify what an upgrade meant.

Is going from 1 to 2 Body better than going from 31 to 32? I felt better and my body moved more easily, but I couldn't put a number on it. Well, I could, that number was 31 at the moment, but there was no easy way to describe what 31 meant.

The percentage change seemed the most reasonable assumption, but it felt lacking. The reason was that Body seemed to encapsulate things like strength, endurance, dexterity, and constitution. Body seemed very strong compared to the other stats.

The upgrades were probably doing something, but I had no idea what that was. I didn't notice anything different, and I had been paying attention. I would keep spending one upgrade on the other stats for every ten upgrades purchased, instead of committing everything to Body. My recent victory had given me more confidence.

It felt like the right balance for now. I just needed a lot more points. I shook my head, which was a pointless thing to think about as I needed to think about the future and not just the present.

No, what I needed to think about was when I would begin checking other areas. I had already decided I would not be upgrading the store. I would leave that to other people. Also, I was done chasing people off.

Beating Lucas was the confidence I needed for the next steps I was thinking about taking. I had a huge lead at the moment regarding upgrades. I knew that if there was a group, the store upgrade would be a priority. It honestly surprised me that I had held off my old team from upgrading the store for as long as I had.

This meant that the third group to arrive on day 20 would probably be the ones to do it if I didn't kill them off to hide the slime forest. Hmm, now I was getting ideas. I could wait at one of the other gates and follow a group out to see what happens.

That idea had merit, but I kept thinking about when I would risk another area. I would need to see the store upgrades first. Not counting today, since I needed to hunt slimes and trek back for a restoration, I had four days.

If I really pushed, I could get 800 crystals hopefully. That would allow for another set of ten upgrades and then I would save the rest. I definitely needed to keep a larger buffer for a restoration or two, since I had been foolish previously.

Then I would keep hunting slimes until the next store upgrade was unlocked and then upgrade my gear. My sweater and the shirt under it were already pretty far gone and quite ripe.

I looked at the building callouses on my hand and thanked the almighty store for restoration. Otherwise, I would be bleeding a lot more, and the pain would be aggravating if not crippling.

I reached the gate and headed into the forest. Stupid ribs. I would kill Lucas again if I had the chance. Everything was sore, but no sharp pains. If there was a more serious injury, there was nothing I could do at the moment. I needed to get crystals, to get points, to get a restoration. I killed my way through the slimes to the higher-density areas.

I reached the border of the forest to the dead area. My eyes quickly snapped to the dead area. I was sure that I saw movement. There were no slimes near me, so I spent a couple minutes staring at the dead trees.

There! A shimmer of light of some kind was drifting about.

I decided to back away. Anything that didn't have a body or invisibility was clearly out of my weight class. If I had to guess, it was either a ghost, elemental, or a clear slime of some kind. I hadn't been able to make out its shape.

Well, at least Perception was working, maybe, but it was still concerning. While the slimes were clearly special, in that they didn't have organs, they were solid. Well, they were mostly liquid. Regardless they could be physically hit. Whatever was out there couldn't be hit if it was ethereal.

Also, the slimes were slow and didn't really chase. The real concern was how far the aggro range of the clear wisp monster was. Aggro, meaning the aggravation that a monster felt when its space was invaded or attacked. A monster with a large aggro range might chase me all the way back to the city and even into it.

It might also bring friends. The slimes were easy to deal with since they had no concept of packs or groups. Only in very large numbers would these basic slimes be a threat to a prepared individual. But if there was a wolf monster, then it might summon other monsters to quickly overwhelm me.

That was the big risk of being out here alone. I was one person, and if attacked by a group, I would be at a huge disadvantage. I didn't lie to myself. Twice so far, I had gotten incredibly lucky. The first time, led to me finding the slime forest, and the second was the fight against Lucas. I kept thinking about that; it left a thread of fear and excitement running through me at the same time.

I rubbed my gut and looked down at my belt. I was losing weight at a rapid pace. At least the last belt notch had gone from tight to just right. In a day or two, I would probably need another belt.

Now wasn't the time to lose focus. I had more slimes to kill, and my ribs were still killing me. Where was a nice convenient HP bar that would refill itself over time? This was a freaking budget system, skimping on all those nice extras. I demand an inventory!

Focus, I told myself and looked around carefully. No sign of the monster that had been in the dead tree biome. Focus on the present. I took out another slime and grabbed the dropped crystal. I let out a hiss of pain when I bent over. I really needed to fix my ribs quickly.

I didn't dare go to sleep either with my ribs busted like this. If there was internal bleeding, I could easily die. The real question is how many points did I need to heal myself? I couldn't risk not getting the restoration tonight, so I would go as long as possible and then return to the plaza. I could only hope I would have enough points.