Chapter 196: The First Step of Hegemony |
Zac opened his quest menu to begin with and tried to mentally command the trial to start. When that didn’t work he tried to physically press the quest, but in the end he only swiped his hands through the air.
From there he tried various things, from touching the Nexus Node to doing various things with his teleporter, but he had no luck. Finally, he remembered something that Abby said earlier. After he finished the quest his town became a World City.
One large difference between normal Cities and a World City was that the latter could provide off-world teleportations. And while his arrays were nowhere near strong enough for that at the moment, he did possess something that could do just that. The Nexus Hub.
However, that possibility gave Zac some pause. The Nexus Hub was meant for off-world transportation. If the Hub was truly the method to start the quest, it meant that he would be transported god-knows-where in the multiverse.
What would happen if he failed? Would he be stuck in some other corner of the multi-verse? He also didn't know how long these trials would take, as there was virtually no information on them.
However, Zac soon reignited his resolve. He already had made up his mind about doing it, and honestly being teleported directly by the system or through the Hub didn’t matter much in the end. Besides, he had prepared a Coward’s Escape just in case, and those pills usually threw people right out of these kinds of trials.
But still, he chose to wait before he left, not wanting to go off-world before he’d talked with his sister. She knew about the quest, but not that he would be gone for an unknown amount of time. It was almost midnight when he heard her coming back toward his mansion, and Zac was still up meditating as he only slept a few hours a day. He quickly walked over to the courtyard Kenzie had chosen, and entered after knocking.
His sister looked a bit surprised to see him but still welcomed him to sit down.
“What brings you here so late?” she asked with a smile.
“Off-world?” Kenzie said, actually looking a bit excited. “That’s so cool. You might become the first human to step on an alien planet. Take pictures.”
“What about the tutorial?” Zac asked with a smile.
“I don’t think that counts, that was a temporary space and not a real planet,” Kenzie said with a shrug.
Zac only nodded in response, looking up at the stars.
“I heard a rumor you broke up with Hannah?” she hesitantly said after being silent for a bit.
Zac only nodded and briefly recounted what he’d done the past day.
“I know you weren’t a big fan of her, but please make sure that no one harasses her while I’m gone. I feel bad how it went down, and I don’t want others causing trouble for her,” Zac said.
“I didn’t think Alea would do something like that,” Kenzie muttered, looking a bit disappointed. “You need to talk to Hannah before you leave. Don’t be a jerk.”
“Fine,” Zac said with a sigh. “I’ll leave tomorrow morning instead after I’ve talked with her.”
“Good,” Kenzie said with a smile. “You’ve always been a bit awkward, but you need to talk things out properly. And don’t worry, I’ll find a new girlfriend for you while you’re away. What do you think about Lyla? She’s nice, and she’s asked about you. As for her body, I can promise that-”
“Worry about yourself,” Zac interrupted while rolling his eyes, before taking out a box from his pouch. “I forgot to give you this the other day. It’s a [Fruit of Ascension]. It will not only improve your race to E-grade, but apparently it will even help when upgrading your class in the future.”
Kenzie’s eyes lit up as she looked at the box, but after a brief hesitation shook her head.
“I don’t need it. Jeeves helps me upgrade my Race, and says it will be done in two months. Besides, he’ll upgrade my class anyway, so the effect of this fruit is a bit wasted on me,” she said. “You should give it to someone else who has helped you a lot.”
Zac mutely stared at her for a bit, before he wryly smiled and took back the box. Some people just had it too good. The two kept talking a bit longer until Zac finally left after exhorting Kenzie to not overdo it with her training while he was gone. As for who he'd give fruit to, there was no hurry to decide.
Early the next day he got up and walked over to Hannah’s house once again. This time there were no guards outside, and Zac simply knocked on the door and waited. This time he heard sounds inside, but still no one opened the door.
“Hannah, it’s me. Please open up,” he said, imbuing his voice with some cosmic power to make sure she could hear it.
The sounds inside stopped, and finally the door opened as Hannah stood there with a frown, dressed in training gear.
“What do you want?” she tersely said as she looked at him.
“I… I just wanted to say I’m sorry for that display yesterday. I am not dating Alea, and we haven’t done anything. She acted like that to mess with you, and I told her off for it,” Zac explained.
“Ok, it’s none of my business anyway,” Hannah answered with a shrug.
“I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. All I said yesterday was true, and Alea had no impact on us,” Zac continued.
“I got it. You only broke up with me because you don’t like me. Thank you so much for clarifying it for me,” Hannah sarcastically retorted.
Zac could only sigh at the cold reception and hope that things would get better with time. He wished he knew what to say to set everything right, but perhaps it was impossible, at least this close to the break-up. At least he’d cleared the air from his side, and now it was up to Hannah to accept it or not.
“As I said earlier, if you need something, just ask me or Kenzie, and we’ll do our best to help you in the future,” Zac said and walked away.
He didn’t want to prolong the uncomfortable situation any further and immediately head toward the teleportation area. If he had looked back he would have seen Hannah standing in the doorway looking at his departing figure, her eyes cold as ice.
Not wasting another moment, Zac teleported over to Azh’Rodum and quickly walked south. The huge crystal still stood on the field where the incursion once was. The small guardhouse next to the crystal was unmanned nowadays, as there was nothing anyone could do with the Hub at the moment.
The crystal still looked inert, but Zac went ahead and touched it just in case. A prompt immediately appeared, telling him that his suspicions were correct.
[Start Trial?]
Kenzie already knew what he was about to do, and as for the other people, it was just as well that they didn’t know he was gone. Besides, for all he knew the trial wouldn’t take too long to complete. With determination he accepted the prompt.
The moment he accepted a blinding light flashed, forcing him to blink. When he opened them again the scenery had completely changed, and he found himself standing in a large field. When he used the teleportation arrays it usually took some time as he moved through the darkness, but the Hub seemed to use some superior technique as it only took a blink.
Zac guessed it was lucky for him, as it might take years to travel to some random planet in the same way that the teleporters used. He quickly looked and he could immediately tell that he wasn’t on earth anymore. For one the sky was almost black, and another clear indicator was that the Cosmic Energy in the atmosphere was almost nonexistent, to the point that it almost felt like earth before the integration.
His knowledge was a bit limited on this front, but Zac guessed he was either on a declining E-Grade world or even an F-Graded planet. Even amongst the same grade there could be large differences, and the better F-Graded worlds might have enough energy for people to reach the top of the F-Grade within their lifetime.
However, evolving on such a planet was likely a pipe dream unless some very special circumstances took place, like someone finding a series of lucky encounters.
However, the sky or the sparse energy wasn’t the real reason he didn’t think himself still on earth anymore. There was a medieval army consisting of odd humanoids standing around him, thousands of faces looked at him with various expressions.
The humanoids were pretty short, barely reaching Zac’s chest, with thin frames. They had a large set of eyes that were pitch black, with white sallow skin. The top of their heads had white or grey hair that generally was long and tied in various braids and knots, with colorful bands woven into it. Their hands and feet looked oversized compared to their bodies, almost to comical proportions.
Zac guessed they couldn’t weigh much more than 30 to 40 kilos, but still they wore thick metal armor and carried large grisly weapons, which told of surprising strength in their small frames. He did sense that there was some power in many of the aliens, though no one had the aura of a powerhouse.
The sense of power was most obvious in the few aliens that stood in front of him, looking at him with expectation. Zac didn’t feel any sense of danger from his sixth sense, so he didn’t believe that these things were his enemy, at least not yet. This gave him some time to try to figure out what was going on. His quest only said to complete the trial, but never explained what the trail was.
As he looked around he saw that the crystal that had transported him here didn’t follow him, but he rather found himself standing on what almost looked like a very crude fractal. He almost felt like a demon lord for a second, having been summoned by some hapless acolytes.
“Lord General, what is that being?” one of the weird humanoids said as Zac looked around.
Its voice was slightly high pitched, but overall it sounded like a human’s.
“The tablet only said that a powerful champion would be summoned,” a well-equipped alien hesitantly said as he held a few ancient-looking scrolls in his hands.
[The first step of Hegemony. Step forward with purpose. Let nothing stand in your way.]
While it wasn’t exactly clear what the system wanted him to do, it appeared that the system had created a scenario for him to fulfill, almost like in a video game. What he didn’t understand was whether this was all a simulation, or whether he’d actually been thrown into a real conflict in some corner of the multi-verse.
It felt a bit coincidental that he accepted the quest the moment these things tried to summon some champion, lending some strength to the first theory. However, the multiverse was impossibly large, with a mindboggling amount of populated worlds, where most of them were these low-tiered ones.
Perhaps there was always happening things that would suit the purposes of the system’s quests, and it simply dropped him here to let him figure things out himself. The aliens seemed content in trying to understand what they had summoned, so he took the time to check up on them as well. He turned to the two aliens who spoke earlier, and used his identification skill on them.
[Antaya – Solvim – Level 28– Dexterity]
[Dresdo – Solvim – Level 42 – Endurance]
It appeared their species was called Solvim, and neither of them was too strong. Still, Zac was surprised they could gain levels at all with such sparse energy in the surroundings. It must have taken years, perhaps decades, of effort to get to their current point.
“Hello,” Zac said after a bit. “I think I’m supposed to help you out somehow. Are you looking for a hero-for-hire?”
Zac speaking words they understood seemed to startle the group who stood in front of him, but the man with the scrolls soon regained his bearings.
“Greetings Lord Champion, I am Dresdo, General of the East,” the man said. “We are on the edge of ruin, and in desperation tried the summoning the Ancients mentioned.”
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