Chapter 24

  The girls ended up berating Wes over the ensuing hours. After the revelation that information had been implanted into his head, they went over all that had been implanted into his head. When they could not decipher what or why, they reluctantly moved on to his new ability.

  With the new information given to him by his unique ability, he explained that it was a way of measuring time. He would have to start it and stop it himself. After some convincing from the girls, he activated it and found that it was useless to him for now. It used one experience per second to keep active. He instinctively cancelled it; he did not want to lose experience like that and silently cursed his status and traits. He wanted to finally cast Eternal Spark, but he suspected that with it having to separate words, it would use a vast amount of his experience.

  Much of the same poking and prodding by the girls went on over the remainder of the subsequent days. He relented eventually, showing them his Cleanse ability. That turned out to be an even bigger mistake. Having activated only for a second, he ended up cleaning all the muck and grime from the last week plus of being on top of a mountain with no shower or toiletries. Phony happened to be partially in his abilities radius, and she found half of herself as clean as if she had just come out of the shower. Phony pestered him to finish the Job.

  That had not been the mistake, though. The real mistake was that he activated it for the second time while Dozel was off on a scouting mission. When she came back, she could tell quite easily that everything in their camp looked clean. All their bedding and clothing looked spotless. Phony’s large grin was still plastered across her face as she left for her own scouting mission.

  Dozel put two and two together. Even though she never verbally asked Wes eventually gave in and used his expensive ability for a third time. Her pleading eyes and pouting face, along with his guilt, made it impossible to do otherwise.

  So that was how Wes found himself at near-zero current experience on the tenth day on the mountain. His savings had only taken a 2 thousand experience hit, which meant that he had somehow modified its usage amount. With it being too early in his leveling to spam the ability, he left the investigating for another time.

  At the end of the tenth day, Phony had come back from her last reconnaissance mission and announced that she thought she had a good track on life. They discussed leaving the following day.

  Their timeline had been based on the girls telling him when twenty-four hours would pass. Which helped a lot, considering the star in the sky barely moved across the sky since they had gotten their. It was only three palms above the horizon now. He didn’t check it for a few days, so he could only estimate that it was about one and a half palms from the horizon when they first got there. Which meant that nights would last forever.

  Their current plan was to find water and fortify a few positions in the vicinity of the water source to hold up during the long nights. Hopefully find some food as well. The girls had dialed back their consumption of the food they had left. Saving as much of the food as they could for the long night that they would surely meet at some point.

  The girls had stuck pretty close to the agreed-upon schedule. With them leaving, they went over it again. Agreeing that one of them would always be within arm's reach of Wes to guard him. Dozel agreed to be the default attacker in any situation that may come up. With Phony being the higher level of the two, she could defend Wesley better than she could. Dozel’s build was not suited to direct confrontation, it seemed. She had never shared her complete status with Wes, but she had shared it with Phony during one of their excursions together. Wes didn’t take offense, but he suspected she knew he wanted to know. Wes was too stubborn to ask for it, and it made him feel slimy, considering that she was technically under the service contract.

  After the cleaning of their camp was complete, they gathered near the base of the mountain while Phony set up a few traps around the base of the mountain. Nothing crazy, she dug a few pitfall traps and positioned a few large boulders a little up the mountain with her immense strength. She would push them down toward anything that was chasing them if they had to retreat back. She explained that this was just a delaying tactic in case she ran low on any of the big three. Telling Wes that she could probably kill any of the Clans one-on-one. But if they were overrun, then she would have trouble.

  Over the last few days, one direction showed more signs of life. The direction leading directly toward the sun.

  The following True days kept Wes on high alert. The forest of trees ended up reminding Wes of his awakening trial more than he thought it would. He found it hard to allow himself to relax. Even when the girls would set up a small camp, he would feel like they would be ambushed at any moment. But the girls assured him that they were fine. Over the subsequent weeks of nothing happening, Wes eventually settled into his surroundings.

  When Phony declared, “Alright, this is about as far as I ever came. Up ahead should be a small clearing with a few old lean-tos.”

  Wes stopped in his tracks. “You made it all the way here?”

  Phony didn’t look back at Wes or Dozel, only offering a nod. “Yeah, but Dozel made it further. She says that if we go further, we can even see signs of human life.”

  Looking over to Dozel and back to Phony before he settled on looking at his own two feet. “I had no idea I was slowing you guys down so much. Sorry.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Phony, finally realizing what Wes had just realized, looked back, “Don’t worry about it, you can’t fight the level disparity. Dozel and I both knew that this would take a while. Which is why we took the time to really scout in this direction to give us the best shot of finding water and eventually what we are after.” Phony walked the last few steps and patted Wes on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, but still.” Wes sighed. “We have been walking for two weeks straight, and I thought I was making good pacing, considering the last time I was in a forest like this.”

  Both girls laughed at him. This time, Phony made fun of him. “Yeah, you are walking so slowly to us that at the beginning it was unbearable, but eventually we got used to it.” Phony looked at Dozel for confirmation.

  Dozel nodded along and added. “You really shouldn’t worry about it. We at least got you two more levels through the journey here.”

  “Yeah, but they would have come eventually.”

  Phony put her other hand on Wes’s shoulder and waited for his eyes to meet hers. “You are forgetting one thing, Wesley.”

  “Oh, what's that?”

  Phony looked him up and down. “Do you not see how hard it is to get a good shower out here? Your Cleanse ability has made all the boredom you put us through worth it.”

  Wes laughed and pushed her arms off his shoulders. “Thanks, glad all you see me as is a good bar of soap.”

  “A great bar of soap,” Dozel added.

  The three shared a good laugh together thanks to the weeks they had spent together. Journeying together had forced them to become comfortable with each other. Phony’s edges had softened, and Dozel’s shell had begun to crack. Wes, on the other hand, allowed more of his uneasiness to come across.

  They still had not been tested, but the past two true weeks had not been wasted.

  Wes brought up his status.

  Name: Wesley of 29744C

  Race: Human

  Age: 27

  Unique abilities: Imperial over Metric, Back in My Day

  Abilities: Deposit, Eternal Spark, Cleanse, Stopwatch,

  Vigilant, Deviant

  Skills: N/A

  Achievement(s): Bloody Soul, Pragmatic Savant

  Trait(s): 3

  Current Status: Blessed

  Level 5

  Savings: 2,566,094

  Next Level: 5184

  Level 5 Exp Per Sec: .012

  Current Exp: 4967.34

  Even with Wes wagering a day with each level and using Cleanse right after leveling on the girls. That had only cost him five thousand experience. All things considered, even with testing on his new abilities, he still gained thirty-five thousand experience just by having a lot of experience banked. His two new abilities, however, were easy to explain but hard to justify. One he refused to share with the women after activating it once. And the other was a bit more dull.

  His fourth ability he had not activated yet, but he felt he knew what it did, considering he got it over the first few days of their trip when he was hyper sensitive to any movement in the woods.

  His fifth-level reward was hard to explain to the girls. After he got his fourth level, he finally relaxed and always found himself with one of the girls. They would take turns leading while the other stood next to them. This led to his mind wandering along with his eyes.

  As Wes had been from a planet where life was a struggle, work took precedent over luxury. And with his sister being who she was, she made sure that Wes knew women were a luxury he could not afford. Even times he would have a special friend he was interested in. His sister would somehow always turn up at inopportune moments. The girls he was interested in would eventually lose interest in him due to his never being allowed private time.

  All that was to say that Wes found himself admiring his company a little too intently. He thought he had wished harmlessly over the preceding days to level up the fifth time. I wish I could see under those clothes. Considering the Ability he was awarded, he could not help but feel ashamed. He must have thought those bad thoughts a whole lot, considering it awarded what he had focused on.

  Needless to say, when he activated his ability, he found himself blushing with joy. The girls instantly knew something had been done wrong. But they had no idea what. That put the girls on guard for a time, which led Wes to believe that they could sense it. He did not activate it again, because it both cost a grand thousand experience a second, and he did not want to have to explain his new ability to them.

  The girls pushed to know what that ability did, but Wes said he refused to waste the Experience on it. He didn’t think they were dumb enough to buy his excuse, but they couldn’t really push him on it. So they let it lie.

  “Shall we continue?” Dozel asked.

  Wes agreed along with Phony. The girls switched places along. With Dozel leading the three now, Wes couldn’t help but have a thought.

  One more time couldn’t hurt, right? I’ll wait until I level up again.

  Over the next half hour, he looked at his status religiously. As soon as the level happened, he put his plan into action

  Looking over to Phony, whose eyes seemed to be reading over her status. He looked forward again and activated his newest ability. Allowing himself to bask in its glory for two whole seconds. Looking over both girls as fast as he could. He tried to commit them to memory. The girls instantly went on high alert, with Dozel crouching and Phony grabbing and pulling Wes closer.

  Wes couldn’t help but smile as he said, “Glorious.”