The Systemic Lands (Dark Progressive LITRPG)

"This is the location," Dylan said as I scanned the area. The air boat was near the ground, and I had killed all the nearby monsters easily. He had quickly picked up the point crystals they had dropped. That reminded me of a time long ago. I really was going down memory lane lately.

"You know. If we get your stats up so you can survive a level 7 zone, it is more efficient that you pick up the crystals the monsters drop so I can keep moving and fighting continuously," I said. Dylan froze up at that comment.

"Um, wouldn't that be incredibly dangerous?" he asked.

"A bit. But I rush in first, the level 7 monsters rush at me. I kill them, you come in and pick up the crystals, while I move onto the next zone. If we really push things, we might be able to clear three level 7 zones in a single day," I explained.

It took about 30 seconds to pick up a point crystal and secure it in my pack. About 1 minute to defeat a level 7 monster if I went all out and knew how they fought. With my extra energy I felt more comfortable doing that, compared to before. Travel time added on another 30 seconds to monster kill. While they did come at me, I had to move to make sure I kept the engagements manageable.

If I didn't have to pick up the point crystals and backtrack, then my time would go down to 1.5 minutes instead of 2 minutes. That meant it would take about 300 minutes instead of 400 minutes to clear out a level 7 zone. That meant clearing 3 zones would take about 15 hours of grinding. Right now, it took about 14 hours to clear out 2 zones.

Having someone along saving those extra seconds would really add up over time. That would be an extra 150 million points per day, bringing up my daily grinding total from 300 million to 450 million. Even if Dylan cleared a level 4 zone on his own, that would only be around 7 million points. The difference was massive. That was how much my time was worth.

"I can do it," he said bravely. It was nice to have a subordinate who was willing to take some risks and push themselves.

"We can go slow the first day, only clearing two zones. I clear, you come and pick up," I explained, and he nodded. "Ten million per day."

"What do you mean?" he asked, and I chuckled.

"That is how much will be your share. You would make about seven from clearing a level 4 zone, so this makes it worthwhile for you to risk your life. After a hundred days, you would have a billion points. Nothing to sneeze at," I said. That many points, would double his current stats, or close enough. If he could just survive picking things up in a level 7 zone, then it was worth the expense.

I would be working my ass off to clear three zones a day. That would be some incredibly intense grinding. Level 7 monsters could hurt me. While I could beat them, they weren't simple either. I needed to pay attention. They weren't like the lower-level monsters I could casually crush without any hesitation.

"That is too much," Dylan said with a large degree of shock as I started to look around for anything missing crates. I had occasionally put my head through the floating gravel to look around.

"Well, it is necessary for you to survive and go to higher level zones. Being able to clear an extra zone per day is a huge advantage, one that I don't want to give up that easily," I replied as I kept looking.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

"It is a risky job and you have decided to stick around. I hadn't considered it in the past, but now that we are stuck in this situation, it is the best possible choice moving forward," I said. I checked another larger rock, nothing.

"Maybe they fell through," he said.

"Maybe, but let's look for another hour at the very least," I replied. We continued to look, Dylan being more careful than me so he didn't fall through the drifting gravel and rocks into the inky blackness below the landscape. If you weren't careful, it was too easy to get sucked in and then disappear. Air Burst really was one of the best skills out there.

After forty minutes of looking around, I found a chest. "Over here," I called out and Dylan came over as I brought it up to the surface. Was it treasure hunting, if it was your own treasure? I checked inside of it, and there were stacks of point crystals. "Get this on the air boat and bring it over here carefully. I will keep looking." Dylan set off with the chest back to the air boat while I kept looking through the gravel and rocks nearby.

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We spent three more hours searching and managed to recover two more chests. One had around 10 million, the other two had around 100 million, due to the higher value point crystals. The chests blocked out any sign that there were point crystals. One had to go specifically looking for the chests and we had gotten lucky with the fact they had landed on larger rocks and stayed there.

"Now we rest, and then go to a level 7 zone tomorrow," I said while Dylan got to work on preparing dinner with the emergency cook set, I had grabbed from the bunker. It was nice to have warm food.

"Sorry if it isn't that good. I was one of the cannon operators and on guard duty, I wasn't a chef," Dylan said.

"It is fine. Stew is never a bad choice and fairly easy to make. At least they had bread in New Kochi. How did you pay for it?" I asked.

"Ah, Captain Ying-Sing arranged for some fresh supplies to help us out, like bread, so I didn't object," Dylan explained. I nodded at that. I was still getting to know and trust him, that was why I was checking things out regarding him I didn't understand right away.

While I trusted my personal guard, he was my new teammate, even if he was on crystal pick up duty. The difference between the two positions was massive and not to be taken lightly. The fact that only one soldier survived out of all of them on the Crystal Vortex was proof of that compared to Michelle triumphing against Qi Ji Long. There was a difference in both expectations and the power level that was needed.

After dinner, I went to sleep while Dylan was on clean up duty. Early the next morning I cleared the nearby monsters and he collected the crystals before we set off. We made our way through a level 6 zone and then stopped at the edge of a level 7 zone.

There I got off the airship and began clearing out the nearby level 6 monsters that might wander into the airship and the level 7 monsters. Dylan was struggling from the high heat and searing temperatures of a level 6 zone and was barely able to breathe in a level 7 zone. I left him on the airship, while I picked up crystals instead.

After giving it some thought, I would grind for ten days to get 3 billion points and then let Dylan cash them in. He would then work that debt off by collecting points for 300 days. He would also get 21 million from the chests as his health insurance. The remainder would be used for food and supplies as our cash reserve. That many points would increase his stats to around 35,000 from his current 10,000.

He needed to be able to move and breathe in the higher-level zones. Right now, he was struggling way too much to be useful in any capacity. A short-term investment for a long-term payoff. I had gone over the numbers with Dylan after the first day to see how he would handle higher level zones and he agreed.

That was far short of the 100,000 stat points my team members had, but it should be enough to keep him alive. Raise each stat to 3,000 and then add on an extra 5,000 to Body to bring it up to 8,000. It would take a long time to pay off the debt, but earning an extra 140 million points per day was huge.

In 300 days, that would be an extra 42 billion points. That would be around an extra 50,000 stat points for me, which would translate into 150,000 stat points after my meta-point was taken into account. That much of an increase was massive. I needed to stack up the points as rapidly as possible.

There had been a breakthrough in each stat once I hit a 1,000 and I suspected there might be another breakthrough at 1,000,000 points for each stat. I didn't know if the meta-point would take that into account or not. But that was my goal, a total of ten million points before I went to look for Qi Ji Long.

I would need to earn over a trillion points to purchase that many stats, but it was fine in my mind. That was the kind of mentality Qi Ji Long needed if he wanted to defeat me. Train up for a couple of decades while I wasn't so focused on squeezing out every ounce of speed. Then target me in a surprise attack once you were stronger or matched my strength.

Even the sphere hadn't gotten me fired up this much. It was dangerous, but I had viewed it more as a natural disaster more than anything else. It wasn't a threat directed at me. The circumstances were completely different. But now there was an actual person out there, with actual intelligence, instead of whatever was cooking in the sphere's energy. I refused to die by falling behind.

I could see Qi Ji Long muster up hordes of summons to sweep zones and bring him crystals as quickly as possible in order to outpace me. Well it was a race now and I wasn't going to slow down in the slightest. Three level 7 zones per day once I got Dylan his stats. Each time I returned to civilization, I would be cashing in a massive amount of points. I was going to pack the air boat as full as possible, until it was about to burst every single trip to maximize my grinding.

With more stats, I would have more energy. These three level 7 zones grouped togeather, here at the North end of the rift. The South end only had two level 7 zones, which was sub-optimal. While there were some other areas in the West of the Systemic Lands that hadn't been fully explored, this would do for now.

Once I could get the total combat and travel time per monster to around a minute to a minute and a half, then it would be worthwhile to look for an area with four level 7 zones that were close togeather. I just needed to get much faster.

There was downtime for me to mentally rest. Fighting for more than 12 hours in a day was exhausting. My body could handle it, but I had to pay attention for the entire time to make sure I didn't make a mistake. It was exhausting to the extreme. Ten million total stat points at the very least. That was what I needed to reach. About eleven times more than what I currently had and over a trillion points.