Chương 533: Chapter 535: Stability

The day after I earned my ability evolution, the pillar of fog told me that it was the last day of teaching. Since we had already agreed upon one month in advance, while I felt a bit disappointed that I was about to lose access to the fog pillar's teaching and assistance, I was still quite happy with what I had gained. A month had been enough to finally push my achievements and training to my next ability evolution - I certainly wasn't going to complain.

"So you're leaving?" I asked.

"Tomorrow, I will depart. Then, I will return in a week, to either give you access to the monster population I spoke of in our original deal, or to report their extinction and confirm follow up plans." The fog pillar shifted and jiggled at me, and I got the feeling it was trying to express some kind of emotion. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it meant. The commonalities between our species were simply too miniscule.

"I appreciated having you as a teacher. Thank you for your assistance," I said.

"You as well, human child. I wish you the best of luck in your future training. I do not think you will reach the highest levels of power… but perhaps, within a few centuries, you can push into Tier 6, at least. For your sake, I hope it happens." I didn't bother pointing out that my lifespan was definitely not a few centuries. While levels could extend one's lifespan, I was still probably unlikely to live past 150 unless I started levelling up much faster.

Instead, I simply smiled at the fog bank before it shooed me out of its palace. The next day, while my friends and I were having a celebratory picnic at the edge of town, the fog bank's domain imploded, almost like a black hole sucking everything into it. A few minutes later, the other villagers and I heard uproarious laughter, before a giant, misshapen lump of fog flew through the sky and into the distance. It looked faintly similar to a wolf, except it was the size of a small castle.

A few villagers shivered in fear as the giant fog-wolf bounded across the sky and into the distance.

"At least it didn't turn on us after we helped it," said Sallia. She paused, before she turned towards me.

"Do you think it'll actually fulfill its promise?"

"I think so?" I said.

"It hasn't broken any of its deals so far, and I do think that the fog pillar… err… fog wolf places a great deal of emphasis on upholding promises."

"I hope so," said Sallia.

"I'm just… afraid, I guess. But at the very least, my worst fears didn't come to pass. It didn't just start slaughtering us after we helped it." I smiled, before I leaned closer, and wrapped my friend in a hug.

"How are you feeling right now?"

"A bit embarrassed. I might have been wrong."

"You're just trying your best to look out for potential dangers. Miria is a bit too trusting, so having you around can balance us out," said Anise, before she giggled.

"We appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us." I smiled, and pulled Anise and Felix into the hug as well. It was nice to have my friends around. A week later, the fog pillar returned with empty hands. It admitted that the original monster species it had intended to transplant onto our island had gone extinct during the time it was trapped, and then offered a few other species it remembered the location of as alternate solutions.

Veritum and a council of adults spent a day debating which one fit our needs best, before they made a choice. Two months later, the fog pillar returned for one final visit. In its maw, it carried a cage holding about a hundred members of a new breed of monster. These monsters were called porcuspikes, and were house-sized porcupines that could launch metallic quills through the air at incredible speeds, killing almost anything unlucky enough to be hit by them.

Their offensive power was exceptional, and their defensive abilities were also quite strong - I estimated that someone with around grade eight strength, and a regular steel blade, probably couldn't even penetrate their skin if the creatures just took a nap while the attacker constantly slashed at them. Of course, if the attacker hit a vital point, such as the eyeballs, much less strength would be needed to penetrate their defenses and injure the creature.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Of course, just like other monsters that were ideal for levelling up, they had a massive, exploitable weakness - two, in fact. The first weakness was simple - their eyesight wasn't great. The creatures mostly sensed their prey by detecting temperatures, because they had some kind of thermal magic that helped them sense their surroundings.

However, while the range of this ability was reasonably high - about a hundred meters in every direction - it was also possible to confuse their magic if their environment was hot enough or cold enough. Whatever magic they used to detect their surroundings got totally thrown off the temperature extremes got pushed too far in either direction. Realistically, both of these would be hard for our island to exploit. Luckily, the porcuspikes had another, much easier to exploit weakness.

The creatures become irresistibly drowsy when they were exposed to hot environments. This meant that there was actually quite an easy way to handle them. Stand at least one hundred meters away, warm up their environment, and then just wait for them to fall asleep. After that, the creatures will wake up if someone actually attacks them - but they won't wake up if the temperature keeps slowly increasing.

Therefore, [Fire Mages] who knew what they were doing and didn't make a mistake could pretty easily boil them alive over about fifteen minutes. [Fire Mage] wasn't exactly hard for people to access, and so the members of the village began pushing the next generation to focus on [Fire Mage] as their class of choice. After a few hunts to get familiar with the monsters of the island, the porcuspikes proved to be exactly what we had hoped for, as far as levelling progress went.

After a few months of breeding, the village acquired a proper way to level up the children of the future and keep our settlement's military strength intact through future generations.

Influence: Play a [Moderate] role in developing a stable future for the settlement Achievement +10, 000 The Achievement reward for settling the monster population was actually a bit larger than I had expected - perhaps because I had been part of the process of negotiating with the fog bank and carrying out our side of the deal, I still ended up with a hefty Achievement reward, even though I hadn't really been expecting one.

This final reward for stabilizing our village brought me from 362, 174 Achievement to 372, 174. I suspected it was the last village-related reward I would be getting for a while, unless a new crisis popped up. After all, the village was now stable, had a steady supply of monsters for the future, and had no imminent existential threats to worry about, unless the universal tree attacked us again. If that happened… I seriously doubted there was much I could do about it.

The first time we travelled from one dimension to another, I'd had the hopes and wishes of tens of thousands of people backing up my attempt to save their kids, and it had still been a very difficult teleport. I wasn't even sure if I could pull of the same thing in the same conditions a second time, let alone now that we were down to less than a thousand people. Once the porcuspike population was substantial enough for regular hunting, I took the opportunity to kill a few using extinguish.

They proved much harder for me in particular to deal with, because they didn't have the unusual vulnerability to extinguish that the fog banks had, and my ice magic was rather ineffective at piercing their tough, metallic skin. I didn't have very good access to heating magic either, and their reproduction rate was a bit on the slower side compared to most monsters. Therefore, after hunting four of them, I decided to leave the rest for the kids of the village, even if I also wanted a few more levels.

Still, I got a few rewards from my hunts. You have leveled up! Acolyte of Healing has advanced from level 81 to level 84! +20 Free Attribute Points (X3) +20 Vitality (X3) +25 Mana (X3) As usual, all stat points went into mana. I also got a new skill from killing something with extinguish, which would make any projectile I launched from my body more durable, sharper, and give it a certain amount of tracking abilities.

I lacked the ability to launch parts of my body as projectiles, and I had no interest in developing such a skill either, so I decisively ignored it. Fortunately, the Market's System gave me other rewards. Slaughter: Kill a Porcuspike for the first time. Kill a Porcuspike for the third time. Kill a Porcuspike for the ninth time.

Power: You have leveled up your fifth spark (X3) Achievement +1, 000, Achievement +1, 500, Achievement +2, 000, Achievement +1, 000 (x3) This brought me from 372, 174 Achievement to 379, 674. After that, I settled into my role as a healer, and focused on helping the village develop. We had finally entered a period of peace, and I had time to burn on improving myself.

I decided that what I needed the most right now was to develop some useful skills to take back with me to the Market, since my Skills had been sidelined for a while, and yet they were one of the more promising aspects of this world's local System. Time began to pass.