Relief over the herd leader's death flooded through Quill as he dissipated the manifestations and allowed himself to fall into the ocean. That relief was further exemplified by getting a second system notification.

  Congratulations! you have completed the quest “Buffalo stampede!!!” Accept reward?

  “Guess that means you managed to kill the required quota of all the buffalo. That's a good thing, right?” Grey responded as he accepted the reward but then closed his system menu. He didn't need to get his free building yet and just wanted to take a couple of seconds to breathe and enjoy the peace, even if said peace was waves crashing him into the cliff. Still felt better than everything else that had been happening for the past who knows how many hours

  “Okay you might not mind it but I don't particularly like seeing you let the ocean slam you into the cliffs and bruise up this beautiful body of yours. I can't even kill the ocean in retaliation for it. Or at least not in a way that won’t cause you to get REALLY upset with me. So how about you go and grab the herd leader's body at the bottom of the ocean. If you truly feel so bad about killing so many of these guys you're going to feel even worse about letting their bodies go to waste I'd imagine.”

  She had a point when it came to the herd leader and the rest of the buffalo's bodies. He could wallow in his depression later when there weren't so many pressing matters at hand.

  With a great amount of physical and mental effort that was entirely within his own head, he dove down into the ocean floor and put the herd leader's body into his storage ring. It had a gaping hole within its chest showing that his pile driver had actually broken through its hard exterior. He wasn't sure if he should be proud of that but it was probably a better way to go than drowning.

  With that done, instead of using his hook shot to hoist himself up to the strip, he decided to swim along the cliff side. He wasn't entirely sure how many Buffalo were still on the strip and whether or not they were retreating or just wandering aimlessly through the fields. If they were retreating though he did not want to be seen as they would likely just attack him yet again.

  The swim wasn't the most pleasant but it felt outright tranquil after running through the horde. He eventually did come to where the Cliffside curved away from the strip and quickly hook shot himself up to the top. He then trudged his way towards the wall thinking about how he probably needed to find some magical device that could dry him instantly the next time he got wet like this. He hated the squelching sound his shoes made.

  “Man, you are really dissociating right now huh?” Grey commented as he made his way to his makeshift wall along the strip

  As he climbed on top, he got a good view of everything and quickly turned off his enhanced sight so he didn't have to see every grizzled detail of the massacre before him. A large number of the buffalo had piled up around the edge of the wall with many of his automatons now tossing the bodies into the E-grade Zone where the waiting jaws of a bunch of the monsters snapped them up for the free meal. Quill gave the order to only throw half in there and the other half they would keep and find some use for them. Worst case scenario he would just sell it.

  He then hopped off the wall and onto the ground, accidentally landing on his grease trap causing him to slip and fall onto his back which made Grey suppress a Snicker.

  “Sorry I don't mean to laugh at you, but given your current mood state it just kind of came out of nowhere. You kinda slipped like a cartoon character with your legs flying high up in the air. I swear I am not laughing at you!”

  “No, no. I get it.” He let out a sigh and awkwardly stood back up, slipping a little in the process and deciding it was just easier to spring himself forward with a manifestation so he could land away from the grease trap. “I get it…”

  There were no live buffalo near him so he assumed the ones that were at the front had retreated, assuming any had actually survived. He then looked at the automatons that had joined him in the front line. All were banged up and damaged in some way or another with one of the E-grades missing. When questioned this the D-grade automaton spoke.

  “They were overwhelmed by all the buffalo and soon found themselves in the E-grade zone where it was destroyed by several of the monsters trying to return to its post.”

  Damn. He was hoping not to lose any of his automatons. He was actually surprised at how banged up all of the E grades were now that he looked at them. It was a good thing they would slowly self repair over time. Or at least that's what the D-grade said.

  “Hey not to bother you too much while you wallow in self pity, but could you perhaps check your system notifications? I have a feeling you leveled up quite a bit and would like to see how far you actually did.”

  “I will in a bit. I got other things to focus on first. Leveling up feels like it's going to take a backside while I clean up all of this mess.”

  “ Oh stop being a stubborn debbie downer. You'll probably be able to clean this mess up faster with higher stats. now stop cucking me here and just check your damn screen.”

  She had a point there, plus he would probably need the extra stats when he was trying to figure out what to do with all of the buffalo he had caught that were still alive and likely very very pissed at him. With a sigh he opened up his system notifications and scrolled past the very very long flying of kills till he got to the level ups.

  Dirty fighting has leveled up too lvl 6

  Pseudo energy manifestation has leveled up too lvl 9

  Enhanced reflexes has leveled up too lvl 5

  Trap maker has leveled up too lvl 14

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Surprise attack! has leveled up too lvl 3

  ……..

  Surprise attack! has leveled up too lvl 6

  explosive art has leveled up too lvl 8

  congratulations you have reached level 36

  …..

  congratulations you have reached level 57

  Congratulations! You have two free class skill points! Choose skills?

  He stared gobsmacked at how far he had actually leveled from all of that. Somehow it felt both too high and not enough given that he had probably killed thousands of buffalo after everything was said and done. It sort of felt like he didn't deserve that many level ups from the amount of effort he actually put in while simultaneously thinking he needed more level ups based on just how many creatures he had killed.

  “Hey look on the bright side, at least you'll have tons more stats to help with cleaning up this mess. Are you just going to go with an even steven distribution or were you thinking of putting more into body? Also I want to see what new skills you will choose. So do those before you do anything else!”

  He tried not to let her infectious upbeat attitude sully the depressive episode he was having. He had settled on being depressed right now and he wasn’t about to let Grey ruin that for him.

  But also did have to agree with her on the skills. He was curious as to what he might have for options. Plus he now knew that at least one skill could help hide him from being spied on if he were to enter someone else's territory. So he quickly honed on that one and took it.

  Congratulations! You have learned the skill “Infiltrator” (Rare)

  Who needs to know what you are doing? Certainly not the police, security or other annoying big brother types. You are TOTALLY not breaking any rules after all so why do they need to monitor you?

  This skill scales with skill level and soul. Helps hide your location, name, and other information about you from identifying skills and those who can monitor territories.

  With that taken care of, he looked over the long list of available skills that could be taken thanks to his class. He wanted something that could help with fighting preferably. And one that didn’t clash with his Pseudo energy manifestation skill or was redundant. Eventually he found something that sort of fit the bill and decided to select it. Partly because he was tired and didn’t feel like spending the next couple hours reading over everything. But also partly out of laziness.

  Congratulations! You have learned the skill “Rebellion” (Rare)

  A rebellious spirit is one to never take lightly. Even if you think it's for their own good, they will happily hurt themselves so long as it means they get to choose for themselves. Not you!

  This skill scales with skill level and all three stats. This skill can only be triggered when fighting an overwhelming force, someone stronger than you, or to prevent/fight a self perceived oppression. Stats receive a 30% boost. When the skill ends, suffer a weakened state for the same period of time you had the skill activated.

  The trigger requirements kind of annoyed him but then again. Would he ever really activate the skill if he wasn’t dealing with those exact situations? Probably not. Plus a skill like that probably would have been a great help when fighting the Cursed sins or the buffalo herd leader.

  “Alright! I like it!” Grey seemed even more energetic after his selection “So what are you going to do with your stat points??”

  “I'm going completely even, it has been working out well so far so no reason to change it.” He responded and distributed all the points he had earned evenly between the body and mind stat.

  Perhaps he put too many stats into body too quickly because by the time he was done he sort of felt a little unstable on his feet. Like one twitch would send him catapulting forward from all of his enhanced strength. He even noticed how much faster his mind was thinking up these thoughts and likewise how much faster it seemed to be in imagining various scenarios where he accidentally put too much strength in a single step and launched himself into one of his own traps. Why the hell did enhancing the mind stat make him more susceptible to his outlandish, imagined, anxiety induced scenarios?? Shouldn’t it be the opposite??

  Despite being frozen still for a second or two, which felt way longer than it had any right to be. He tentatively took a step and breathed out a sigh of relief that he didn’t accidentally launch himself forward and began to make his way to one of the non-lethal traps. Throwing a bunch of the buffalo corpses he passed into his ring in the process.

  He eventually came across one of his Non-lethal traps and peaked over the edge where it was completely filled with Buffalo from wall to wall. They definitely looked mad as they continued to let out various grunts and guttural roars, all seemingly trying to climb up on top of each other so they could get out.

  “All right genius, you got a bunch of live Buffalo. Now what?”

  That was a good question and one he didn't have an answer to, so he might as well play it all by ear. He manifested a giant hand and reached down into the pit, grabbing one of the smaller armored buffalo and pulled it up while it thrashed around. A small part of him did note that with all of the extra stats and the additional level up of his pseudo energy manifestation, lifting the buffalo felt as easy as breathing.

  As he lifted up the buffalo to ground height he looked at it while it glared at him. “All right I am going to put you down, and you are going to do nothing that would harm me, understood?”

  It blew air out of its nose which he decided to interpret as a yes and so put the buffalo down to the ground where it immediately charged him. He had thankfully expected this and manifested a fist that immediately punched the buffalo in the head, knocking it down to the ground.

  That punch had been much harder than he meant it to be as he stared at the buffalo, worried he had accidentally killed it since it wasn't moving only to let out a small breath of relief when the creature slowly and shakily stood up on its feet. It then turned towards Quill and charged him again.

  Quill let out a sigh and instead of manifesting something to stop it he just let the creature charge him before grabbing its horns as it got close. His feet firmly planted, he didn’t budge an inch as he stopped the Buffalo dead in its tracks.

  The creature tried to shake its head and push even harder but Quill grip remained firm. He was surprised at just how much his strength had gained with the increased body stat. Holding the giant buffalo in place while not particularly easy, was also not that difficult either.

  “Hey, the monster is trying to kill you here and since I know you will just argue with me if I told you to kill it. You could at least make the creature submit below you so that it stops trying to hurt you.”

  With a small grunt he threw the buffalo into the ground a second time. The creature was about to stand up but he placed his foot onto its back and kicked it back down to the ground before kneeling in front of the monster so they made eye contact.

  “All right, I don't know where the remnants of your herd are and yes I am responsible for killing most of them.” The Buffalo tried to ram him at that statement but he kept it down to the ground. At least that was confirmation that it most likely could understand him.

  “However, I wouldn't have done any of that if you guys weren't going to go and trample everything and the system didn't act like such an asshole. I will own my part of your herd's fate though. Now I am here to make peace. Stop trying to kill me so I can free the rest of your brethren from the pit below.”

  It let out an agitated huff but relaxed. When Quill let go of the animal's horns it didn't attack which he took as a good sign. He then went and reached down to pull out a second Buffalo. Lifting it up to the ground as it struggled and thrashed in his manifested hand.

  “Could you please tell your brethren to not attack me as I'd rather not go through this song and dance with every single buffalo I pull out.” he directed his comment towards the smaller one that was still on the ground.

  The smaller Buffalo then let out a weird guttural grunting sound. This caused the bigger one that was currently still lifted in the air to grunt and growl back. They went through a small exchange before finally the larger ones stopped its frantic struggle and Quill put it down to the ground where it seemed to be at peace.

  “All right, two down. who knows how many more to go.”