Chương 535: Chapter 537: Dangers

"Are you two sure that leaving is the right thing to do?" I asked. To be honest, I hadn't thought much about leaving our island to go adventuring further. I didn't dislike adventuring and exploring - in fact, if circumstances were different, I would have probably enjoyed going along with their idea. However, the stress of our circumstances was catching up to me. We only had the remainder of this life left to train. I had achieved a lot already - but had I achieved everything I could?

If I had reached my limit, it made sense to throw myself into terrifying, risky situations in order to have fun exploring and potentially push myself to greater heights. However, if I still had room to grow, it made more sense to stay at home, train, and wait.

"The two of us, at least, feel that we've reached our limits. Anise and I both benefit a lot more from direct combat, since Anise's spells level up faster when she fights enemies. This long peace isn't very good for the two of us," said Sallia.

"Levelling my skills is a big part of why I'm doing this, at least," said Anise.

"I need more Achievement to keep feeding my abilities, if I want to have enough Achievement to afford some ability upgrades after this too." That made sense to me.

"I assume that Felix is staying at home?" I asked. Anise nodded.

"He didn't want to come with us." I rubbed my forehead and thought. Had I reached my limit? No, more than that - would I derive great benefit from throwing myself out into the greater world around us, especially knowing that we were in a Tier 9 world and had greatly struggled even with a mostly 'tame' island? When I thought about it that way, I wasn't convinced that leaving the island was a good idea for me. I still had a lot of skill training left that I could potentially do.

Continuing to boost my {Void Mastery} would probably give me a rather noticeable step up in power by the time we returned to the Market, and that wasn't something that fighting would boost the training speed for by a significant amount. The only Trait that might benefit from direct combat, at the moment, was {Above Your Weight Class}, the first trait I had selected. It would give me some boosts to my Skills when I killed a monster… but it was based on how similar that monster's abilities were to my own.

In other words, to boost {Void Magic} and {Void Mastery}, we would first need to find and kill monsters with spatial abilities, which seemed unlikely. If I could acquire a new Keyword ability or something, that might change things - but the risk probably wasn't equal to the benefits, at least for me, personally. I also might hinder the attempt of my friends to grow if I joined them.

After all, if they were looking for ability evolutions or influence achievement, splitting the influence they could exert on an even between three people instead of two might cause them to miss the threshold for a new ability or reward.

"I don't think I'll join you either," I said, after several moments of thought.

"I don't derive much benefit from killing monsters, besides levels and Slaughter Achievement. Given how slowly my level has improved, even when killing a high level-reward monster like the porcuspikes, I seriously doubt I'll actually grow much even if I join you. Instead, I think I'll stay back at the island and keep working on my skills, to see what I can take with me back to the Market." Anise seemed a little bit sad at my words. Her eyes drooped a bit. Still, she leaned closer to me, and held her arms out.

I immediately pulled her into a hug.

"Sorry, Anise."

"Don't worry about it. You should do what's best for your growth. Otherwise, all four of us will suffer for it soon." Anise pulled herself out of my arms.

"I guess this is it, then?"

"I guess this is it," I said.

"Stay safe, both of you. If you die early on, it's not worth it at all. Don't forget that we still have long lives ahead of us. We need to maximize the time we spend in this world if we want to be prepared."

"You stay safe as well. Don't get killed while hunting a porcuspike or something absurd. Even if we don't level up much further, we still have at least a century ahead of us. We need to avoid wasting it," said Sallia. She winked at me, as if to let me know that she was mostly kidding.

"You too. Don't forget this is a Tier 9 world. Be very careful, stay safe, and make sure you know what you're getting into before you enter an island." If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Sallia also hugged me. The next day, the two of them left to start their own adventure, while Felix and I waved them off.

Several other villagers joined us to send them off from the beach when they left, although I could see anxiety on the faces of many of the villagers, especially Sallia and Anise's parents. I didn't blame them for being nervous. It was hard to say if they would return alive or not. Still, nobody tried to dissuade them or stop them. I was glad that they respected Sallia and Anise's own hopes for the future. I gave both of my friends farewell hugs, and wished them good luck before they left.

From then on, Felix and I received semi-frequent reports and messages from Sallia and Anise, as they began to wander the nearby islands, look for monsters and unusual materials, and as they explored the region. One of the first things they confirmed was that there were plenty of other cities in our area. There were eighteen other islands within a week's journey of us, according to the map they bought from the first city.

Six of them were inhabited, ten of them were 'danger zones' that nobody wanted to go near, and two islands were considered too unimportant for people to bother with - they were essentially barren, monster-infested rocks. Sallia and Anise decided the barren, monster-infested rocks fit their current needs well, so they sailed to one of those two islands and started exploring.

They also confirmed that no multi-island empires existed in our area, perhaps due to the distance between islands, or the difficulty of uniting everyone. It might also be some historical remnant of the attempt to unite the islands from the same extraplanar individual that had ripped off part of the fog bank's body and turned it into a soldier factory. It also might have been due to geography, or logistical issues, or a dozen other things. I wasn't too sure.

Either way, city-states seemed to mostly keep to themselves in the underground sea. Time continued to pass. By the time I turned seventeen, the monster population on the island had finished settling in. They still weren't abundant enough for everyone in the village to exterminate at will - careful population control and harvesting was needed. However, the villagers were willing to give me a fairly large priority quota.

Thus, Felix and I got some extra levels from killing the new monsters - just a few here and there, to keep our combat skills sharp, make sure we were still levelling up, and give us a chance to improve. You have leveled up! Acolyte of Healing has advanced from level 84 to level 90! +20 Free Attribute Points (X6) +20 Vitality (X6) +25 Mana (X6) Slaughter: Kill a Porcuspike for the twenty-seventh time.

Power: You have leveled up your fifth spark (X6) Achievement +3, 000, Achievement +1, 000 (x6) By the time I turned 20 years old, I hadn't pushed myself to the next grade in my skill yet, but I had at least reached level 90, which also got me a new feat. Level 90 Feat Choice (Pick 1) Blessing of the Undying Your healing has prevented many deaths that were very likely to occur. Those shielded under your umbrella have a very strange form of pseudo-immortality, solely due to your blessings.

Effect: You may spend extra mana to create a 'shield' for someone, which will make it much harder for them to get injured or killed. Shields last for four hours after healing occurs. More mana may be injected to enhance the lifespan of the shield. By now, things were really looking like they were on track for the village. The population had started to recover, the kids were growing up and helping out, new families were popping into existence, and we had started to trade with a few nearby cities.

Our population had swelled back to about 1200 people, and we had finished building the city. We had even started to have leeway for smaller luxuries, such as growing crops that weren't quite so calorie-efficient but tasted better. After four years, Sallia and Anise decided to head back for a while, in order to rest, catch up, and spend some time with Felix and I. They also had a bunch of new materials to give to Felix, in hopes that he could make something good with them and we could bring it to the Market.

When they were most of the way back home, Sallia sent me a very worried sounding message. <Miria. Felix. We don't know what we're looking at, but you should see this, > said Sallia. A moment later, she sent me an image through the communication bracelet. Through Sallia's eyes, I saw a giant, tsunami-esque entity. It reminded me vaguely of the monsters we had seen in our first lives - it was a colossal, eldritch being that seemed to be made entirely of water.

However, the massive, bulging shape of the creature's body peeked so far out of the water, and moved so fluidly that it was obvious the creature was alive. Its body poked two hundred meters above the ocean, and stretched an unknown distance beneath the surface of the waves, as well. The creature was ridiculously massive - and it was heading straight for our island.