NOVEL NEXT Chapter 5: I am, Oscillator.
The current situation that Adam was in was quite humorous in a f*cked-up manner.
The driver had gone out of his way to get out of the truck to remove the roadblock himself, rendering the RMDS completely useless.
It cannot activate when there is no attack on the vehicle.
Now Adam had no way out of a confrontation.
His driver was now a hostage.
Adam thought of ditching the driver and making a run for it since he knew how to drive the truck, but to get into the driver's seat he had to get out of his trailer, making him an easy target for the bandits.
If the driver wasn't mentally inept, he would have just stayed inside the truck; the bandits wouldn't have been able to do anything without getting the imperial guards involved or causing a barrage of magic sent towards them.
But now it was all up to Adam. He already had a plan prepared.
Our genius Adam did what anyone would do.
"I am unarmed and completely harmless. I surrender."
The only smart option for a weakling like Adam was to surrender.
A level 1 Adam couldn't possibly defeat 10 level 10 nameless bandits; even with the [UNDERDOG] trait, it was a fruitless endeavor.
Each level-up gave characters 10 stat points. With Adam's abysmal stats, even with a 2-times bonus to all stats, would barely cover the difference in stats.
A bandit pointed the sword to the driver's neck and said,
"No sudden moves. Name your noble house and designation."
"My name is Adam Alastair Dacre; I am the 2nd son of Count Dacre." Adam said, slowly walking towards the bandits.
"Young master! I'm sorry your life is in danger because of my mistake." Cried the driver.
Adam chose to ignore the words of the mentally deficient, as it would only serve to fuel his rage, which was currently useless to him.
All Adam needed to do in this situation was to stay calm and collected.
Hearing the words said by Adam, the bandits rejoiced.
"He is from that rich count family! We are going to get so much money from the ransom that I will never have to work a day in my next 2 lives!!"
"Haha, we caught a big fish today! Who would have thought the driver would leave the truck on his own? This was way too easy."
"I always knew the goddess of fortune favoured me! A chicken that lays golden eggs has walked right into my arms on its own!! hahahahaha."
As they talked amongst themselves, unable to withhold their excitement, Adam was now completely surrounded by all the bandits.
One of the bandits cautiously said,
"Isn't he the son of a noble household? Aren't these little sh*ts extremely proficient in magic and the sword?"
The bandit's suspicion was reasonable.
However, another bandit replied,
"This kid is famous around the empire for how inept he is! He is none other than the famous loser of the empire, Adam Alastair Dacre!"
"You're right, people say he is so inept that he cannot even use tier-1 magic, let alone hold a sword. We have nothing to worry about!"
"Haha, I almost forgot about this kid. Did you know there is this famous story about him among the commoners that he once tried to kill a baby goblin on his own and instead ended up having his *ss bitten by the baby goblin and ran home crying!!"
"Hahahaha, that's nothing. Did you know that as he ran home crying, he tripped and fell and didn't have the strength to run anymore, so instead he just sat in one place crying until the knights came looking for him?"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
The bandits were having a great time making fun of their hostage.
Most of the things they said about Adam were hearsay.
They couldn't possibly know how his life went, but this didn't take away from the fact that everyone in the empire knew how much of an inept loser Adam was.
Even in the face of such ridicule, Adam was calm and composed.
Without wasting another second, Adam snapped his fingers.
A faintly visible radial shockwave was emitted. All the bandits could feel a weak wind blowing towards them from Adam's direction.
Suddenly all of the bandits, including the driver, fell to the ground and fainted.
After ensuring they were all unconscious, Adam took a sword from one of the bodies of the unconscious bandits and stabbed into the necks of each bandit with the full weight of his body.
As Adam pushed the sword's edge into the neck of the first bandit, he could feel the sensation of slowly cutting through the flesh of another human being, feeling a little bit of resistance against his sword as the edge reached the bone, pushing harder against the bone to make the sword flow through and cut through the entire neck.
The entire process felt oddly satisfying. Adam felt as if he had just watched a 10-minute 'slime ASMR' video on booptube.
He went through this same process nine times more.
And just like that, Adam had killed all 10 bandits.
Adam didn't think much about the lives he had just taken. Even in his last life, he had very little value for human life.
He had witnessed the darkest parts of society from a very young age.
War waged by 2 kingdoms against each other, a war that gave no benefit to its active participants but instead filled the pockets of the leaders of those kingdoms as their soldiers became nothing but sheep for the slaughter in the hands of their enemies.
If he didn't kill them, sooner or later, someone else would have. That's the kind of world he was now in.
Remorse for taking a life in such a world was for the naive and privileged.
After collecting all their loot into his inventory, he dragged the unconscious driver all the way back to the truck and sat back in his trailer as he saw the system notifications pop up.
|| LEVEL 10 NAMELESS BANDIT KILLED. EXP ACQUIRED! ||
|| LEVEL 10 NAMELESS BANDIT KILLED. EXP ACQUIRED! ||
|| LEVEL 10 NAMELESS BANDIT KILLED. EXP ACQUIRED! ||
|| LEVEL 10 NAMELESS BANDIT KILLED. EXP ACQUIRED! ||
|| LEVEL 10 NAMELESS BANDIT KILLED. EXP ACQUIRED! ||
|| LEVEL 10 NAMELESS BANDIT KILLED. EXP ACQUIRED! ||
|| LEVEL UP! ||
|| LEVEL UP! ||
|| LEVEL UP! ||
After killing 10 level 10 bandits, Adam had levelled up to level 5 and had 50 unallocated stat points.
Adam chose to hold onto those points since he would never know what the future might hold and what impossible challenges he might have to face.
There is nothing wrong with having some life insurance.
But how did Adam manage to pull off such an impossible feat? Well, to answer that question, we will have to go back in time.
15 minutes ago...
|| SKILL ACQUIRED!
[OSCILLATOR]{F}: Create an audio
frequency that travels a radial distance of 1
meter. The intensity of this frequency
scales with the MIND stat of the host. No
sound wave of any frequency will have any
effect on the host.
Mana consumption per skill use: 10 ||
|| [OSCILLATOR] RESONATES WITH
[CALCULATOR]: [OSCILLATOR CAN NOW
EMIT FREQUENCIES OF SPECIFIC
MEASUREMENTS BASED ON THE WILL
OF THE HOST! ||
Back in Adam's original world, science had discovered that if you were to emit a sound wave of 432 hertz for 15 to 30 minutes, it would put the human body into deep sleep.
Why did Adam know about this random fact?
Because Adam was a workaholic who suffered from insomnia.
He needed this sound frequency to fall asleep because he didn't like the idea of taking sleep medication every day just to sleep. It's a viscious circle that ultimately ends up harming the consumer.
Knowing this fact, Adam thought to himself.
'How quickly would it put someone to sleep if I played this frequency with 5 times the intensity?'
He had tested this on the bandits, and his experiment was successful.
This skill was now his absolute trump card against all human adversaries.
It doesn't matter how strong a person is; everyone needs to fall asleep sometime as long as they are human.
One of the drawbacks of this skill was its small range of effect.
Anyone that attacked Adam from a range, whether it were an archer or a mage, Adam would have been nothing more than a practice target for them.
Another drawback is that anyone with even a little understanding of Adam's skill could use a very basic sound-blocking magic around their body, and the skill's effect would be completely useless.
No wonder this was an F-grade skill.
Fortunately for Adam, however, mages with sound affinity were extremely rare. While magic that created a soundproof zone that stopped any sound from leaving a certain area was very common, magic that blocked sound waves from external sources didn't exist.
This was something that Adam could exploit in extreme situations.
A familiar holographic window popped up, breaking Adam out of his train of thought.
|| SUDDEN QUEST OBJECTIVE
COMPLETE!
REWARD: 100 CE
HIDDEN OBJECTIVE: KILL ALL THE
BANDITS COMPLETED!
HIDDEN REWARD:
[PAIN RESISTANCE]{A} ACQUIRED ||
|| THE HOST HAS ACCOMPLISHED AN IMPOSSIBLE FEAT!
[UNDERDOG] UPGRADED TO S RANK!
STAT MULTIPLIER HAS INCREASED
FROM 2× TO 5× ! ||
Adam didn't know whether to laugh or cry at what transpired in front of him.
Now, a stab wound from a sword would feel like a pinprick to him.
This didn't mean that the damage his body would take would be of a pinprick as well.
A stab wound is still a stab wound, whether you feel the pain or not.
Adam was depressed seeing the hidden reward he had gained from the quest.
However, the melancholy that haunted him was short-lived since he went ahead and got himself a trait from the trait store.
TRAIT [AMPLIFIER]{F} ACQUIRED.
[AMPLIFIER]{F}: A trait that doubles the distance that can be travelled by the sound waves emitted from the host's actions.
Now all that was left for Adam to do was reach his destination and continue his plan.