Alpha Realm (OP.MC.|Harem|NSFW)

Name: Aizel Kadashi | Age: 19 | Level: 1

SE: 0 | HP: 100 | MP: 840

Race: Were-Dragon

「 It was his second night on Geas. 」

Aizel flew back towards the mound with the shade and cold of night. For him, it truly was easier to hunt at nighttime. He could not only see the mound from a great distance, but also the heat and shallow mana they sweated coming from the goblins were clearer, and made it easier to find them.

He landed on the back side and made his way to the top of the mound. The remaining goblins were all inside the cave and had left none watching the entrance. The one with a broken shin was nowhere to be seen. The bodies of the ones he killed earlier were moved, and by the trail of blood, it looked like they were taken inside the cave.

Using what he called 'combat mode', which consisted of the wings and tail at their minimum materialization with some scales for defense, he walked down and slowly crept into the cave.

It was a large natural formation that the goblins had claimed. As he walked inside, the echoes coming from within told him everything he needed to know. He could hear a few of them sleeping, and another shifting about. The putrid smell from the goblins mixed with the smell of blood, but he ignored it and pushed forward.

The cave was dark, but he could see clearly; the colors were washed down with a monochromatic blue, so probably pitch dark to anyone without insane senses. He wondered if this was how cats saw at night.

Soon, he found the end of the cave, which was not too deep. Four goblins were sleeping on the stone floor, and another was crawling about. He got closer, and the one that was awake stopped moving, looking in his direction.

Aizel locked eyes with it, ready to jump in or out, but the creature could not see him. It looked past him and looked around. It was breathing rapidly, seemingly knowing that something was there. He moved his arms, but they did not react.

'So I guess it is pitch black and there is no shine on my eyes. How the fuck am I seeing, thermal? You don't want a dragon hunting you down at night, that's for sure.'

A gust of wind came from the outside, and it began to sniff the air. It started to crawl towards him, making a lot of growling noises as it angrily moved. The closer it got, the angrier it got, and the more it sniffed the air and touched around to try and find him.

He wound up his strike, and without using (Focus), he smashed down with all his might, right at the creature's head. The other four woke up instantly, looking around and smelling the air, and slashing at random.

One of them started going for the entrance, but it could not see, so with the help of (Focus), Aizel slashed at its neck with a wing, splitting it open from ear to ear. The goblin clung to its neck, but the damage was done, and it began to drown and bleed out.

A third one just stood there, and suddenly it took a chipped dagger about six inches long from its loincloth, and it started to slash at the air in front of it as it made its way out of the cave. Aizel quickly made his way out. Now that there were only three enemies left, he could observe their behavior better.

The goblin came chasing after him, and they both made it back to the forest floor.

They were already at the trees, and Aizel could see colors again, but it was probably not enough light for the ugly creature because it was having a really hard time locating him; the forest canopy did not let much moonlight through. It waited for Aizel to move to slash around in his direction. It also fought like a tweaking crackhead like his friends before him, but without its sight, it was easy to just sidestep the attack.

If he stayed still, the monster started to smell the air and move its head at weird angles.

He struck the monster on its hand, smashing it in and making it drop the dagger. The goblin let out a screech and grabbed its hand. Aizel stabbed its eyes with his wing claws, but its eye socket was too tough to pierce through. It reflexively covered its eyes, and Aizel slashed its gut. It lowered its hand, and he slashed at its neck, finally putting it out of its misery.

'Damn, tough ugly fuckers'

After picking up the dagger, he went back inside the cave. The goblin that he whacked in the head was still moving around, but it was clearly dying.

He dematerialized his wings and tail, and using (Focus), he made quick work of the two that had stayed behind, taking advantage of their blindness and slashing their necks in a single swipe as soon as he got the chance.

'Fucking sharp! I guess they must have taken it from someone; I doubt they have the wrinkles upstairs to achieve a razor's edge'

Aizel lifted the head of the one he bullied; now with a broken shin and head, it was just suffering on the ground. He slashed its neck with the dagger, finally ending its suffering.

〔 Notice:

Level: 1 ► 2 | SE: 0 ► 1 〕

"Ugh. Finally! Fuck! It only took two dears and a goblin nest… Probably just the goblins, but still."

"The fuck am I supposed to do with the Souls Energy, though?"

He looked around the cave for something of value but only found some bones that had been cleaned and the carcasses of the two goblins he had killed earlier in the day, half-eaten.

"Ugly, smelly, and cannibals… Strong AF, fast runners, and tough. I sure am glad I did not pick human as a race. Then again, Deez Nerd would probably have given me weapons if I'd had SE to spare… but the dick…"

"Fuck it, it was worth it"

He flew back south towards his shelter to see what the SE was used for; it only took him 15 minutes while flying directly there.

'Let's see… I do not feel any different; my MP and HP are also the same.'

Taking a look at his skills was also a dead end. Thinking back to how the system was modeled after games, he assumed that the SE would be used to increase something, but there were no buttons or anything that he could use the points for.

'No. I'm thinking about it wrong. I have not used buttons for anything; everything has been done through my will, visualization, and intent'

Focusing on his MP, he pictured increasing it in his mind, using the SE available to him. He did not know by how much it would need to increase, but he also did not know how much mana his skills or racial features used at first.

Suddenly, his mana points changed; they increased by 10 points.

〔 SE: 1 ► 0 〕

〔 MP: 748/840 ► 758/850 〕

'That is… Quite low.' He wanted a refund; he felt cheated. All that work for just ten extra MP? With how easily he acquired new skills, and how much using them cost, he thought that an increase of at least a hundred points was due.

Yes, he was still just level 2, but it took him a lot of work to reach it, even with an overpowered race. A human would need a lot more work and be at an extreme risk of death if they tried to kill just one goblin, not to mention a whole nest. And that was assuming the skill creation or discovery, and the two deer, did not contribute to the leveling up.

Unsatisfied, he tried to remove the extra MP.

〔 SE: 0 ► 1 〕

〔 MP: 759/850 ► 749/840 〕

'At least that is possible…' He then used the SE point to increase his HP, but the results were even worse. It increased only by a single point.

With a sigh, he began accepting that it would be quite the grind to have gains of any significance. Then, an idea popped into his mind. He tried removing more SE from his mana pool.

〔 SE: 0 ► SE: 1 〕

〔 MP: 749/840 ► 749/830 〕

"Huh…" That was interesting. He returned the SE to his MP and tried to do the same with his HP.

〔 HP: 101/101 ► HP: 95/95 〕

〔 SE: 0 ► 6 〕

He did not feel any different; he stood up and walked around, his senses were the same, and his Draconian materialization was the same. He checked himself for injuries and found none. Seeing how the HP decrease had not affected him, he kept removing points just to see what happened.

As he reached the 75 total point mark, he began to feel tired. He started to feel cold, like the beginning of a fever. Not wanting to try out his luck, he quickly returned his HP to one hundred. The effect was instant; the lethargy faded, and he stopped feeling cold.

'Ok, so don't fuck with Health Power. Noted…'

Then he tried to see if the SE did something to the skills, but they did not seem to work with levels at all and only evolved based on expertise. But when he focused on the skill without actually trying to use it, he felt the weird tingle that appeared when he first tried to use his wings or control his mana.

He tried to 'hover' his awareness like one would do with a mouse over a button on a desktop computer. Nothing groundbreaking happened at first, but the feeling increased, so he tried to focus on the tooltip, description, or pop-up that should follow this kind of action.

(Purify) Active/Passive Skill, MP usage scales with intent. It keeps the properties of its previous evolutions.

'Not very helpful, but something new. Let's see what else the system can do.' Then tried to 'hold' the skill as one would a button on a mobile device.

A sudden rush of information popped into his mind. It was a mangled mess of sub-screens that filled up all of his awareness. He tried mentally backing up from it, and the rush of information was more manageable.

It looked like some kind of node-based programming. There were small screens filled with information that connected to others via thin lines. Some nodes had inputs and other outputs; others had both. It was written in the Geas language.

The nodes allowed him to move them around, switch values, and add or remove connections. Each time he made a modification, the Skill name changed from: (Purify) to (Purify)°. With a small symbol on its top.

'Just how much stuff did these people copy from Earth, or is it my mind's way of processing it?'

With a thought, he returned the skill to its 'default' state. Some nodes were simple inputs that he identified as the ones responsible for reading the mana that he intended to use. But others were completely vague and had too many things going on.

He remembered how some node-based logic worked, and tried to do the same hold and expand that he did on the skill on the nodes. And he was welcomed with even more nodes.

Each node was made of nodes, ad nauseam. Going even deeper, he finally arrived at something like an actual programming language that created the simplest form of nodes.

'Yeah, Fuck that…'

Aizel was no programmer; he knew the basics and could understand the logic if he tried hard enough. But he had no formal education in that area except for a few courses and simple side projects; he did not have the brain wrinkles necessary for normal programming, and this stuff looked like programming on steroids.

Looking at the other skills descriptions, nodes, and code yielded nothing new. They had simple descriptions that told almost nothing; they were made of nodes that themselves were made of nodes that were made of code. Some nodes repeated among different skills, but the general Idea was that this code interacted with mana in some way, guiding it in a streamlined process.

'It does line up with what Deez Nerd described; I just wasn't expecting actual code… I guess there are only so many ways you can express logic, and that, and the aid from other earthlings probably led to this situation'

'I guess the programming part ended, and I'm the idiot they hire to try and break it apart?'

Before calling it a night and going to look for other goblin nests, or any kind of monster, he wanted to try one last thing: copying a skill. The little '°' beside the skill when editing it indicated some kind of unsaved state. And if he wanted to create his own skills, he would need to start from something.

'Not that I'm planning to; best-case scenario, I edit (Spark) to try and create a fireball, it drains my HP instead of MP, and I die.'

It just seemed like a more complicated way than just trying to discover them via (Infuse), with the advantage of not consuming mana, and was probably more detailed, with more ways to find bugs. Unfortunately tried to copy a skill but was unsuccessful. Then he tried to edit one skill and then copy it, but that also failed. Trying to create a 'Null' or 'empty' skill slot was also a dud.

He only succeeded when trying to delete a skill. He deleted (Cook) in case there was no way to get it back, and its mana consumption was also atrocious, so he was mad at it.

〔 SE: 0 ► 1 〕

"What?"

That was actually a welcome surprise. After deleting the skill, he was credited with a whole SE point, in his mind, which was more valuable than an MP-hungry skill. The question now was, could he re-acquire it using his SE?

No matter how hard he tried, the skill did not come back; he could try and reacquire it via (Infuse), but was out of meat. 'I really need to make a better shelter, with some kind of storage…'

The easiest way to test out the skill recovery would be to delete another skill that was easier to acquire. The problem was that the skills that he had left were all needed for him to survive. (Infuse) was essential for almost everything. He did not even know how he got the (Focus) one; (Purify) was not only invaluable but a superior skill.

That left him with (Spark). If he could not recover that one, he would be left without the means to easily cook. On the plus side, he could probably acquire other skills that made fire in some way.

'What was the saying? Fortune favors the bold… Why am I even trying this again? Just curiosity, I guess'

He bit the bullet and deleted (Spark), gaining another SE point. 'Same price as cook…' Then, he tried to reacquire the skill just using the system, like when he added points to his HP and MP. But it was the same as (Cook), where nothing he did made it come back.

Once he had exhausted all of his creativity that way, he extended his hand and tried to do the same thing that he did when he first acquired the skill with (Infuse).

〔 System: Basic Active Skill (Spark) acquired. 〕

"Nice!" He glanced at his stats, expecting to see a decrease in his SE points, but they were unchanged.

"W-what!?… Wait, no way. Right?" An idea crept into his mind; if proven true, this would be not only a bug, but a clear exploit in the Geas System.

He deleted (Spark) once again, and he gained another SE point.

"No. Fucking. Way!" Without even thinking, he tried to reacquire the skill using (Infuse).

〔 System: Basic Active Skill (Spark) acquired. 〕

He did it a few times until his SE points were at ten, before stopping and thinking about what he was doing.

'It costs 5 MP to re-acquire (Spark), but once deleted, the SE point is worth 10 Permanent points… How do I even report this?'

It only now dawned on him that Deez Nerd had never told him how to actually contact him in case he found something "weird."

'Maybe if I do it enough, he will notice?'

After doing it a few more times, he reached 20 SE points, but Deez Nerd had not contacted him. 'I would think that seeing a rapid increase in SE points would trigger some kind of alarm. But then again, he did not have a basic sorting option in his "self" creation thing'

Weighing down his options, he chose to try to contact Deez Nerd. This decision did not come from the goodness of his heart. As fun as it would be to keep doing the exploit all night long, and then the next day, and the day after. Until either the Nerd noticed something or he became a demigod. The word "Soul" in Soul Energy was giving him the creeps.

It took him a lot of effort to gain 1 SE the "correct" way, and he was only given 119 after his death. Sure, Deez nerd gave him a few more in exchange for some tips for improving his system. But that was still just like, 10 extra points. As of right now, he had acquired 18 extra SE with the exploit.

Even if nothing happened to his "soul" because of abusing it, there was always the possibility of Deez Nerd finding out by himself. Best-case scenario, Deez Nerd would probably remove the extra points; worst case, he would be "deleted."

He sat down and did the exploit five more times for good measure. Then he started to look around the system for a way to contact Deez Nerd. Pushing around, hovering, swiping, pressing fast with his mind a lot of times, the skills and stats did nothing.

He even opened a skill and wrote something on a node to see if it was noticed, but he accomplished nothing. At one point, he even tried praying, even though the Nerd said that he was no God. Well, Assigner of- said it.

Staring at the system, he got an Idea, using (Infuse) on the system itself.

The "System" was a weird thing; it was like an ever-present thing that was just at the edge of his awareness, like imagining something; you can "look" at it, but just with your mind. So it was not a physical thing; if anything, it was inside his brain or mind. So he did not know how to go about infusing it in the first place.

In the end, he just focused on it while pushing mana through the ethereal concept that represented the "System". Not in his brain, but in the conceptual vacuum that was wherever his mind was.

〔 System:_ 〕

"Okay. That's new…"

He tried writing on it with his mind, like when he wrote his name back in the "self" creation screen.

〔 Aizel Kadashi: ~Hello? 〕

"That's even weirder…"

**〔 System: … 〕**

〔 D33zN3rd: Aizel. That was fast! … I turned around, and you are already contacting me? 〕

'The hell's with his handle?'

〔 Aizel Kadashi: Um… yeah? It's been around twenty-four hours for me? Could've explained how to contact you, dude. 〕

He felt weird calling an otherworldly entity that managed worlds and manipulated reality via game-like logic, 'dude,' but after seeing how he wrote his name, it just came naturally.

〔 D33zN3rd: It was part of the process… I did not expect you to need my help so fast, given the race you picked. Anyway, this feels weird for me, so what can I do for you? Please do not contact me just to 'talk,' or ask too many questions, or to give you free stuff, or to save you… Especially not to save you; I will probably only look at your message after you are dead anyway. 〕

Aizel Kadashi: I mean, you just responded instantly, but whatever. I think I found a 'bug,' or an exploit.

〔 D33zN3rd: Already? Nice, nice. You were an excellent pick for the job. I meant it when I said not to talk too much. Please, to the point. 〕

〔 Aizel Kadashi: When I delete a 'Skill,' I get back one point in Soul Energy. I can then just reacquire the skill—which costs almost nothing, by the way—and delete it again to gain more Soul Energy. 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: What? … Let me check your logs… 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: … 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: I see. Yes and No. You did find an exploit, but it really isn't, not for the rest of Geas, anyway. You are acquiring skills through an unorthodox method. Normally, people use Soul energy to acquire them… Not (Infuse) you weirdo… So deleting the skill would normally cost the same as reacquiring it, and people do not go around deleting skills in the first place. 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: I will patch it up, just in case, but from what I see, the last person to use (Infuse) to acquire skills is already dead. Weirdly, Infuse is one of the most common skills on Geas… You just have a better grasp on what it does because of your Earthly knowledge of how reality works. It would take a scholar years of study just to do what you did with (Spark). And there's probably no one with enough knowledge to have both (Cook) and (Purify), as weird as it might be to you. 〕

'I see his verbal diarrhea is still going strong,' Aizel thought.

〔 DeezN3rd: You can keep the SE you acquired through the exploit. Removing it would do you more harm than good. I will send a little extra as payment. 〕

〔 SE: 25 ► SE:30 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: Good job not abusing the exploit, too much… The rate of Soul Energy acquisition was too great. You are close to your soul starting to ache and then behave… abnormally, given how you were growing two thousand times faster than normal. 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: Now, acquiring a skill via "Infuse" will cost exponentially more mana each time you delete and reacquire it. You should still be able to get some extra SE that way, but it will become harder and harder, eventually using your HP, if that gets to 0… You can imagine. 〕

〔 DeezN3rd: By the way, your logs said that you were messing with your HP. You can do that, just don't go lower than 100; it is already too low for your race. Were-Dragons have around 125 HP when they are your current body's age, give or take; it helps with stamina, and— I already said too much. Don't contact me unless it's job-related, or I will just ignore you. Bye! 〕

Aizel sat there for a few seconds; the mental assault that was speaking to the Nerd was even worse now that he had a body, and there was also a weird time perception present between them. Judging by the change in the night sky and temperature, that little exchange took more time than it felt.

He tried to do the exploit again, but it was already "patched". Deleting and requiring (Spark) required 5 MP the first time, 10 the second, then 20, and 40 the last time he did it.

'I should probably stop. I can probably get two more, but I will leave that for later. He did not explain how much time my soul needs to recover. How does a soul ache anyway? I will probably find out later, heh…'

He used his remaining SE to adjust his stats, leaving enough mana to fully materialize all his Draconian features with some to spare to fly. He added some to his health points to see if they made any difference.

Name: Aizel Kadashi | Age: 19 | Level: 2

SE: 0 | HP: 109 | MP: 1100

Race: Were-Dragon

He materialized his dragon bits into his flight mode and took to the skies. His mission was to locate more goblin nests.

— — —

Aizel did not have to fly much further into the forest to find his prey. Just around five clicks from the first nest, fifteen from his shelter, he found another. Three heat signatures shone like flares in the night.

This group was only using branches and dead trees as a primitive shelter, much uglier and rougher than even his improvised one.

He flew in a spiraling pattern from there, around a click in the air, or the size of two container ships stacked together, give or take a couple of buses. His wings were not silent, but at that height and low speed, the sound did not carry much to the forest floor.

Hidden on another mound, twice the size of the one the first group he killed used for hiding, he found yet another group of four.

Then another, and another. As he flew further north, he kept finding more groups, each time containing more goblins, and they seemed to be increasing in size. He began to wonder what these creatures even ate, seeing how, as their number increased, the wildlife decreased. But he remembered that they were cannibalistic and were probably at war with each other. Each group was about two or three clicks apart from each other. And they did not seem to be friendly among themselves.

Around 25 clicks later, he found a new kind of creature. A much larger goblin, probably a head shorter than him—using the goblins at its sides as a benchmark—was sleeping in another rustic nest on the forest floor, just covering itself with trees and branches. "Hobgoblin?" He uttered the word in Geas language, and it felt right to call it that.

'Fucking scroll really went deep into my mind…'

Around five clicks after that, he saw that the camps started having spears lying around. Seeing how strong a goblin was, he did not want to test a hobgoblin's strength and accuracy, so he turned back and went to hunt the easier groups.

He landed close to a small group of two, not caring about the sound he made, and immediately went into his combat form. He had mana to spare, even after flying around, so he also added more scales and his swept-back horns for defense, just leaving enough MP to use (Focus).

The two goblins woke up and started to run in his direction. There were fewer trees around, so they could see his silhouette in the night, but they were still clumsy at night; gone was the accuracy their counterparts showed during the day.

A few disorienting punches and slashes with his fist and wings later, the first one was bleeding out in less than fifteen seconds since they began fighting.

The second goblin rushed towards the noise and was welcomed with a bat to the face. The Were-Dragon plunged a clawed wing into the goblin's abdomen and slashed. Spilling guts into the dirt.

Aizel was not feeling particularly tired; the extra points in HP seemed to be doing wonders for him. His clothes started to get dirty with sweat, some blood, and dirt. The T-shirt was in one piece, but the jeans were coming undone at the base. He also had to constantly repair his makeshift sandals, so he would probably have to create a better pair sooner rather than later.

'I also feel stronger… I am slightly stronger than I was a few hours ago. It is called "Health Power" after all…'

He was not going to complain either way; he looked around the small "camp," if it could even be called that, but found nothing of value besides some small bones. Taking to the air once again, he looked for his next targets.

The key seemed to be shock and awe: dropping in the middle of the night, and then starting to punch and slash before they knew what hit them.

A couple of small goblin camps later, his kill count kept rising. But now he was starting to really tire out, so he decided to call it a night and go back south.

'At 100 HP, I got tired after just one fight. This time, I managed to clean a few "camps" before starting to tire out. Granted, I was less stressed because of the cover of night, but I still used (Focus) and had to use a lot of stamina to actually deal death blows.'

His mana usage was not bad; he still had enough to fly around for a good while, but he wanted to try and regain his (Cook) skill and extract as much SE as he could with the new Skill deletion 'mechanic.' He did not really want to mess with (Purify) and (Focus); the former was an evolved skill, so he did not want to risk it, and the latter was simply unknown to him. Without being certain of how that skill was acquired, he could not just delete it, since it was probably his most important skill.

Back in his shelter, he tried cooking a few berries that he picked on the way. He was not planning to eat them, but they were small enough for him to use less mana, and since they could be cooked, they should count towards the skill. Not that he was certain if this was an actual requirement; for all he knew, the skill could cook anything, and even a branch or a rock would do.

He ended up extracting some SE from (Cook), using up a stupid amount of MP in the process a tenth of his MP points. He just used the new SE to round up his HP, and the rest he dumped on MP.

A numbness started to assault him, spreading from his head to the rest of his body. And a feeling of dissociation accompanied it, as if his body lagged behind his will. He moved a hand, and it felt as if his body reacted both in real time, and with a small delay.

'I guess that's the limit. Now I need to see how much time I need to recover from the soul strain, or soul ache.' He went to sleep just before sunrise.

— — —

「 It was his second day on Geas. 」

The heat of the day woke him up. Based on the position of the sun, which was a little past noon, and his MP was about three-fourths full, he ended up sleeping way more than he expected. The soul ache was still present in the same intensity as before, so he decided not to go hunting or mess with his skills.

He went down into the forest and started collecting materials to make a new shelter. His Idea was to find a place higher above his current one, where only he or other flying creatures could reach, and he could not only see further into the forest, but also glide down.

After flying around for a while, he eventually found a nice place. It was a small plateau on the side of a vertical mountain. It had a nice sloped roof that would only need a few branches to make a shelter; it was wide enough to have a few trees growing from it, and it was inaccessible without tools or a ladder to climb the cliffside. A mountain goat would probably be able to make the climb, but he had not seen any so far.

The only large animals in the northern valley lived inside the forest; there were giant and normal deer, foxes, small mammals, and rodents. He had not seen any predators besides the goblins. There were also a lot of flying creatures, but nothing as large as an eagle.

After eyeballing some rough measurements for what he had planned, he glided back down into the forest. He started to collect materials to begin the construction of his new shelter. He wanted to create a raised bed, a wooden tent, a smoker, a fireplace with skewers and forked sticks. A smoker, a better bucket, and rope for carrying stuff around.

'And new sandals… probably the most important thing after the actual shelter, fucking Nerd'