NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 6: The System is Here! A New Skill?!
Theo woke up from his dreamless sleep the next morning to the ringing of the System and its many notifications.
"Ugh! What is that ringing…?" Theo groaned, reaching for his alarm, only to realize too late that he didn't have one, resulting in him falling off the bed. "Ow…".
Fully awakened now, Theo opened his eyes to see the notifications from the night before on a screen of mostly gold and black.
[...]
[Ding! Welcome Host to Superior Trio-Cultivator System!]
[...]
[Issued Daily Quest]: Get Stronger!
[Quest Parameters]: 100 Situps, 100 Pushups & 100 Laps Around Village
[Time Until Completion]: 15 hrs. 16 mins.
[Rewards]: +3 Innate Affinity Awakening, +3 Core Skills, +4 Bloodline Skills, +1 Random Skills, +1 Class, +1 Beast Core, +1 Warrior Core, +1 Mage Core, +2 Attribute Points, +2 Skill Points, +1 Agility, +1 Strength, +1 Stamina, Access to System Status Function!
[Penalty??]: - 50% of All Stats for 24 hours!
"Oh, so the System is here. That was much quicker than I anticipated it arriving. Does this mean I've fully awakened?" Theo thought aloud, then shook his head. "It said something about my body and soul being too weak to synchronize or something, so. If I'm to guess, I haven't fully awakened, probably haven't even semi-awaken just yet. It's more like partial-awakening.
"Either way, I should eat and do this Daily Quest soon. I'm not certain what my base stats are, but I have a feeling they're so bad right now that a 50% drop would greatly and negatively affect my health. I'll do the pushups and situps now, go eat something and then do the 100 laps around the village."
And Theo did just that. Took him over an hour to get the pushups done, as he was so out of shape, just under another to do the sit ups, but, eventually, he did it.
Afterwards, he made his way down for breakfast, meeting the other kids along the way — Six children, each between 4 and 9, made up the orphanage, except 2 of them, who were unawakened at 14 and 15 respectively. They were Paul and Dominique – the real rulers of the orphanage. They were in the Dawson "gang," which means they did not like Theo.
Because they didn't like Theo, no one else in the Orphanage liked Theo either. That was why Theo had his own room — they spread the villagers' superstitions about Theo's blue hair being a curse from the ancestors, and the other kids ate it up. No one wants to room with a cursed, blue-haired freak.
But Theo didn't care. So long as they didn't bother him, he was alright. They seemed not to have understood that assignment today, though.
"Hey, look what the wild dragged in, Paul," Dominique's annoying chuckle sounded across the dining room, cutting off Theo's path to the table with Paul by his side.
Theo only sighed in response, internally criticising himself for not waiting longer to come downstairs, evidently frustrated. He just wanted an apple! Why did he need to do a whole side quest for an apple?! For fuck's sake!
"I think he's all sweaty and grimy. Are we really going to let him in the kitchen area?" Paul sneered.
"You're right, Paul, so nasty and dirty," Dominique grinned, taunting Theo more. "He doesn't look well. Are you ok, Theo? Don't tell me you're afraid of lil' ol' us?"
"Tell me, Theo, do you believe you deserve breakfast this late in the morning?" Dominique spoke with a malicious glint in his eyes.
Breathing heavily through his nose, Theo took a few deep breaths. 'These bastards… You know what? I don't need breakfast. I;ll just find something in the woods, maybe some nuts or berries. Something these bastards can't regulate.'
Decision made, turning around, Theo began walking away without a word… Or, at least, he tried to — The two dumbasses didn't seem to like the gesture.
'How dare he turn his back on me, rude bastard! Did I tell him he could walk away?' Dominique thought to himself, stepping forward. "Don't turn your back to me, brat!"
As he stepped forward, he shoved Theo onto the floor, where, startled, he hit his nose on the hard, solid wood, causing it to drip crimson.
'Fucking Hell!' Theo thought as he held his nose and head back to stop the bleeding, eyeing the laughing bullies even as the other kids joined in on laughing at Theo. Theo felt a bottomless rage towards these people, one he could never have felt in his past life. He wanted vengeance, he wanted retribution. He wanted to rip these bastards apart, piece by piece until they screamed, begging for mercy. 'One of these days, I'm going to kill these bastards — the lot of them, I swear it! Mark my fucking words!'
Realizing Theo couldn't — wouldn't — do anything, the duo left and Theo got up. He rushed out the house, not intending to run into that duo again — He began his laps in a slow jog around the village. The sooner he awakened, the better.
[Right Then, At The Spot Theo Frist Woke Up In Post Reincarnation]:
There were 3 figures standing over the remains of 3 children that looked to have been brutally mauled to death by beasts. They were the Dawson siblings that had been killed by the mix pack of direwolves and greywolves.
One of the people standing over the bodies, with a complicated expression, was the father, the village chief, Jacky Dawson. He was a tall, burly man around 40 years of age, with leather skin attire that was fancy beast material that served as both style and armor — A testament to his power and status. He had brown hair and brown eyes and a dark brown, full beard. He even possessed a greatsword made of hardened, enchanted steel.
"Who could've done this?" was all he said.
Chief Jacky was a warrior cultivator at Knight Rank 2. Even amongst the outer ring of villages of the Aris Kingdom, he was a renown cultivator and fighter. Because the baronies and villages of the countryside were so far from the major city, surrounded by forests and magic beasts, magic beasts would oftentimes attack the villages, baronies and, sometimes, even the towns nearby, oftentimes killing many villagers and townspeople in the process. Chief Jacky has protected his village as well as others in these instances numerous times with his skills as a warrior and fighter. His reputation was very preceding of him, so much so, in fact, that the king of the Aris Kingdom awarded him from peasant to "chief" of his own village at a really young age. In terms of strength, he was one of the strongest warrior cultivators on the countryside, if not, the strongest, most definitely.
"Beasts… most likely, chieftain," said the man in glasses next to him. He was a high scholar and mage cultivator, and a Pyromancer-type practitioner of the mystic arts, specializing as a flame mage. He was at the Mage Cultivation rank of Mage Rank 2 — an achievement for someone half the age of 40, especially coming from the western countryside. He was dressed in grey and bronze robes, and possessed dark hair, honey-brown eyes and a tall, brown magic staff. His name was Joshua. "Only a beast could do such a thing to children, and, to this extent, a group of them, likely at the A Rank."
"Hmm…," the third one stated. He was the elder of the village, Old Yeller. A Semi-Sage Rank 1 Mage Cultivator, who cultivated the path of Sound. He had long, grey hair, in a ponytail, milky and a bony, back-hunched form, wearing robes of grey. "They didn't finish their prey…."
"What did you just say?" asked Chief Jacky, irritated, taking a threatening step to the elder. 'How dare he refer to my children as 'prey'?'
"The beasts that did this," Old Yeller, known for not hearing things properly, heard Jacky perfectly well, but also seemed unimpressed or moved by his posture, giving Jacky the side-eye. "They evidently weren't hungry. They were angry. You can tell in the way they had mauled the poor children. This wasn't a hunt; it was a maul."
"They were murdered," Jacky finally realized, taken aback by the observant old man.
"But beasts in the surrounding forests aren't evolved enough to develop such acrimonious behavior," stated Joshua, pushing up their glasses. "Could it be a Beast Tamer? A Summoner? Or newly evolved beasts?"
"It has to be," Old Manstated. "It can't be a Dungeon outbreak, otherwise the village would have suffered more than just your kids' lives. It has to be one of those three."
"If it is a Beast Tamer or Summoners, when would they have had time to insult either?" asked Joshua. "Beast Tamers are powerful sorcerers — They typically aren't petty enough to engage with children, let alone hunt them. Neither are summoners. Also, most Beast Tamers and Summoners work for the royal families, don't they? They most live in the capital and the other cities, right? Could it be the pack of wolves we found traces of newly migrating to our territory a few days ago?"
"Doesn't change the fact that either beasts willingly hunted and mauled my children to death or someone else sicked them on my children," Chief Jacky's voice lowered dangerously. "Find out what you can about any local beast tamers or summoners who have wound up near our village. Then, prepare the village men. We'll hunt the wolf pack just in case something like this should happen again. Even if the wolves aren't responsible for the death of my children, they're new to the area and need to be put in their place anyway. We'll hunt them in a week's time."
"At once, Chieftain. It will be done," Joshua promised, bowing his head in respect, before rushing off to do as requested.
"You will have to tell your wife what happened to them, you know," Old Yeller spoke to the chief after a moment of silence. "She will need to grieve."
"I'm aware," Chief Jacky said, sighing heavily. "I wasn't supposed to lose a child in my lifetime. They were supposed to outlive me; not the other way around."
"Loss comes with the territory," Old Yeller said, simply, beginning to walk away. "What matters now is how you handle it. Vengeance is a game in which no side truly wins, but loss will make you addicted to the game all the same. Be careful how you play it, or you'll lose more than you bargained for."
With the parting wisdom, Old Yeller began walking away, leaving Chieftain Jacky Dawson in his deep thoughts, thinking over the bodies of his maimed children. Despite Old Yeller's device, one thought kept Jacky from spiralling too far in his funk. A goal, a mission, he intended to see through.
"I am going to find out who did this," He thought aloud. "and when I do, they are going to die."