Savage Awakening 428. Farming Credits (I)

A/N: Changed the incentive structure for the coming waves! Zane will have more chances to earn Credits. The Shard of True Destruction has been adjusted to cost 12 Store Credits

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Zane woke and groaned.

It felt like his skull was a sheet of metal, and a crowd of Steelheart blacksmiths was taking turns hammering it.

Off to one side, there lay a simple glass flask. Inside, suspended in a clear liquid, was a glistening dewdrop.

Glacier Essence (Primordial [D])

Breakthrough gift

—Noughtfire

“…Thanks.” He uncorked it and drank.

He felt a burst of clarity, followed by a tingling as his soul began to mend.

He didn’t feel like he was about to black out anymore, which was quite an improvement.

Still—it'd be a while until he was all the way healed.

That Trial had done a number on him.

The notifications in front of his face came into focus.

System has detected Internal Tampering

Participants have been subjected to unfair challenges

Restoring balance…

Challenge Difficulty: Impossible

Calibrating compensation…

A treasure notification popped up.

Treasure received!

1-Ton Blocks of Pure Dreamsteel x 33 (Primordial [C+])

He blinked at it.

An Interspatial Ring forged of Dreamsteel hovered before him.

Neat.

He was just running low on the stuff—now it looked like he could keep pounding these for a while.

Next up—

Sovereign of the Solar Flare (Mythic [P])

Sovereign is an exclusive class granted to those who wield True Destruction or True Creation. They are heirs to the making and unmaking of the world. This is a Minor God Class.

Level-up stat bonus: Vitality +4000, Regeneration +3000, Strength +4000, Dexterity +1400, Speed +1000

No wonder his body felt like this. It was quite a strange thing—his head felt terrible, but every muscle was pumped full of new energy.

The difference was stark in the Astral Plane.

His Vitality—his Health—had skyrocketed. When he checked his stats, it’d more than tripled. His body was an eruption of vitality.

It wasn’t that his Titanform had gotten any stronger; its fuel had gotten yet another upgrade.

His essence.

Coursing through his veins was the stuff of a God.

Solid light, condensed—no longer the translucent wisps of Ascendant essence.

He just sat there, feeling it pumping through him, intrigued.

He wondered what would happen if he powered his Skills with this…

He let out his aura—and gold blasted out of him; instantly, reality started to shatter. He drew it back quickly.

His domain had changed too. The force of it—the way it torched his body with that golden power…

He got the feeling he wouldn’t be able to get a real sense of the difference until he wielded it in battle.

Still—good haul, all told.

He stood and walked on out.

That battle had wrecked the integrity of the Astral Plane around here. Though the real world was still mostly intact, there were a few scars in reality here and there.

He stood there for a few moments, staring out at the vast emptiness, feeling the bright cold on his face. Glaciers filled the middle distance. The sun slicked the ice pure-white; it made a blinding glistening sheet stretching far into the horizon.

He breathed and shook his head.

A woman was running up the mountain. She was gasping, in a bit of a mess, like she’d had to rush over.

He blinked.

“Zane!” called Reina. The sunlight lent her face a soft glow; she looked relieved. “You broke through.”

As she came up, she noticed the look on his face. “What is it?”

She paused.

“Is it the Trials?” She hesitated. She could tell something was affecting him; she touched his arm. “Zane… are you—"

He kissed her fiercely. She made a little noise of surprise.

If the aim was to break him, it hadn’t worked.

If anything his conviction was stronger than ever.

“How's Evan and Avery?” he asked.

“They’re still breaking through.” Reina was a bit flushed. She looked rather pleased with this development. She tucked a strand of hair behind an ear.

Then the blue boxes started popping up.

Wave Challenge initiated

This challenge will run the length of the Wave

Rewards:

10,000 Minor God Monsters slain = 1 Credit

1,000 half-step True God Monsters slain = 1 Credit

10 True Gods = 1 Credit

“Was that the Wave challenge?” she said.

He nodded.

“The Wave’s only just started,” she told him. “Here—think, ‘Rankings.’”

He did.

Minor God Rankings

#1. Hadrian Drake (S), Cult of Eternal Ice

#2. Li Shi Wei (S), Constellation Order

#3. Gak Sako (S), Deep Earth Hall

#4…

The Galaxy’s greatest Minor God Chosen.

A quick scan, and he found Eze was already on there—though lower down on the list. He recognized Orin Thunderfist at #6—up there with a Score of 112.

“The Conclave was one of the first to get hit by the Wave,” she explained. She was settling into serious business mode; she had that look in her eyes. “It’s ranked by kill count. There’s a Planet Ranking too—these two should make up a good deal of your Credits.”

Planet Rankings

#1. Tarth (U)

#2. Caloxia (U)

…

#13733, Earth (U)

He considered this, curious. “You’re saying they reward you based on ranking.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “That goes for the individual and the planet rankings. For planets, there are cutoffs—at rank #10,000, 5,000, and so on. The higher up you go, the better it gets. Though the top 40 planets will all have at least one top-tier True God. In the past, they’re almost always Empyrean Godbeast families, like the home planets of the True Dragons.”

“Makes sense.”

“Last time, rewards were given out twice,” she said. “Halfway through the First Wave, and then at the end of it.”

She looked up at him. “That’s plenty of time for you to make your mark, Zane.”

He could see why she thought he could get a big-ticket item.

“So—three ways to earn Credits,” he said. “There are the kills, the individual ranking, and the planet rankings.”

“There’s one more,” she said. “I think it’s the most important. The Event challenges. In the past, there have been three of them, and each is a chance to earn big.”

She gave him a playful grin. “You just have to perform under pressure.”

He could do that, and she knew it.

There was a notification about that, now that he looked for it—

Countdown to Event #1: 28 days.

“So the plan’s pretty simple until then,” he said. “Head out to the Frontier and grind some Credits.”

“The closest Monsters only got to the Frontier yesterday,” she said. “They can’t be more than a tenth of the way across. A few teleports, and you’ll be right there to intercept them.”

Then she went over which store items she thought he should go for, and when.

First—for 8 Credits—there was the Philosopher’s Stone, which let you break through a Law bottleneck instantly. For Zane, that meant getting Tier 6 Laws at the snap of a finger. It’d save him years, maybe decades, of meditating—time he didn’t have in war.

Since he was just 3 coins away—since he had four from Elias, and one from that one B-ranked dungeon—she thought it wouldn’t be long until he achieved it.

“It might seem like just saving a few decades,” she said. “But that’s huge, Zane.”

She showed him some calculations—she’d worked it all out. The power boost would pay for itself in terms of sheer added kill count. He could use it to perform better in events too.

Then—right after that—he’d be ready to start farming for the Shards of Destruction.

Each was 12 System coins. But according to her, just one shard should increase his Law potency by at least two sub-rarity grades—similar to a Concept.

From the records she’d read, he could take in a maximum of 3 shards.

“But there’s a catch,” she said, brows furrowing. The same way his Laws and bottlenecks came tougher when he had True Destruction, leveling would take a good deal more essence.

In return, each level he gained would be that much stronger.

It was a tradeoff he’d take in a heartbeat.

It’d always been that way for him. He remembered when he had an Epic-grade class while everyone else had a Normal-grade. Now he was classed Primordial as a Minor God—a grade only True Gods and Empyreans got.

It was just the price of doing what he could do.

Before, when he was an Ascendant, it’d taken hundreds of Minor Gods to gain a handful of levels. Now that he was a Minor God, Reina figured it’d take hunting True Gods to make a dent.

Still—“It shouldn’t matter at all,” she said confidently. “With how many Monsters you’ll fight, especially later…”

He agreed. “Levels won’t be a problem.”

“Then there’s the Bones,” she said.

Now that the System Store was updated, all the Bone prizes were up for all to see. And at Minor God, he could take in one more Titan Rhino Bone.

There was a million-year Titan Rhino Bone up for sale, costing 20 Credits.

But just below—

10 million year Titan Rhino Bone—‘Hoof of the Ancient One’

38 Credits

She could see the way he was looking at it.

“It is a lot,” she said. But she brightened. “But think of it this way. The more powers you get, the more your earnings avalanche. Your firepower just keeps going up, which means your earnings rate keeps going up too. Once you break through to Tier 7 Law, it won’t be long until you go for the shards—and after that…”

He could see what she was getting at.

That Archangel he’d fought had been the most basic kind of True God: a single 100,000-year-old Bone and maxed Tier 6 Law.

With Limit Breaker, he could match her just fine.

After the Philosopher’s Stone, he might be going toe-to-toe with True Gods with early Tier 7 Law.

Though it was hard to say for sure. Tier 7 Law was just a tier away from True Destruction, True Creation—all those apex Laws. It was nothing to be messed with.

“I really think you have a shot at this,” Reina concluded.

She gave him a moon shard. It gave him a skin-tight air bubble, letting him breathe easy in outer space. It also acted as a radio so he could communicate with nearby World Ranker teams. There were 50 or 60 patrols that bordered his own.

“It’ll be about endurance,” she said. “Hordes of lesser Monsters have been known to kill powerhouses a full Tier above… it’s like army ants running over a lion.”

She also gave him a mini-map.

He never really used the thing after he got Great Sage Mind. But this was an upgraded version—it mapped his entire patrol zone. Every Monster there would show up as a red dot. Already there was a smattering making its way across.

There were also white dots fighting red at the map’s borders—World Ranker patrols already there, going to work.

And last—a lure. It’d send out an extremely powerful signal, letting him challenge every Monster in and around his region. It recharged every few days.

After that, Reina had to go—she was just about to have a war council with the Thunderclast’s Warrior-Queen Thalia.

“Stay safe, okay?” she said.

“I will.”

She gave him a kiss. With that, he was off.