Chapter 1076: Happiness |
Days passed as Jake had his first real holiday in a long while. In the large compound his parents lived in, several empty buildings were present, one of which was specifically constructed for Jake to live in should he visit.
Having his own space was nice as it allowed him to disconnect if he wanted some alone time. Seeing as no one – besides Adam – had to sleep, there weren’t any natural points to stop a visit, and the only reason many had daily routines was because of before the system. Same as traditions, such as eating dinner.
Jake didn’t have to seek out a lot of alone time, though, as it wasn’t like everyone else could just hang out with him all the time. His parents hadn’t reached D-grade simply by chilling at home but actually worked in the civilian sector of the Court of Shadows.
Debra, his mother, had been a bookkeeper all her life. It turned out that even in this new world, having a solid understanding of an organization’s economics remained super important. She also worked with procurement, as the Court of Shadows didn’t produce many things themselves but had to use outside merchants.
Meanwhile, his father, Robert, used his skills as a former architectural and structural engineer to help build and design many areas in the city of Skyggen. He wasn’t like Hank, who was mostly in charge of actually constructing things but was more of a planner who made the blueprints. He’d even been one of the people working on the giant tower in the middle of the city.
The two of them working meant that Jake’s assumption of them just staying at home all day wasn’t quite accurate. While they had mostly stayed at home the prior times he’d visited, this was still considered a hectic time, and neither wanted to let down their coworkers by taking an impromptu holiday to spend time with their visiting son. They did reduce their work hours a bit, but not by too much.
Even Maja usually worked, but she had taken time off during Jake’s visit. Probably because of the timing of her system initiation, Maja had gained a profession focused on helping children develop, one she’d gladly embraced to help Adam.
As her son grew older, Maja began working by helping to care for other children in the city whose parents were busy at work or, more often, away on missions.
No one knew what the future would bring, and everything was rapidly changing. There was no stability, no “everyday life” for people to rely on. Coupled with this and the fact that contraceptives were as easy as either party not really feeling a pregnancy, birth rates had fallen to effectively zero for a good while.
Quite a few years had passed since then, and things had really begun to pick up again. It also wasn’t as if there weren’t some births, meaning Adam at least had some peers. Peers he spent quite a while with, as he was doing something else Jake had entirely neglected to consider:
School.
Even with the advent of the system, children were still forced to go to school. What they learned had naturally shifted quite a bit, but some things were still good to teach. Sure, the system made learning easier; you still had to learn basic things like math and reading, but certain magical concepts were also covered now to help them read some of the most common runes and formations. Also, a huge aspect of going to school was natural socialization and allowing children to interact and form relations with their peers.
Jake did wonder why Maja didn’t work at the school but had instead chosen to work with younger kids than Adam, and in her words:
“What child wants their mom working at the school? Caleb and I both agreed it’s better to give him at least one space where no one from his family is constantly hovering. One place where he can just be a kid. I will admit it’s a bit nerve-wracking, but we can’t go full helicopter parents, now, can we?”
An answer that made a lot of sense if Jake thought about it a little more.
Either way, with Maja being the only one with actual time off, Jake naturally ended up spending a lot of his time with her, as she and the rest of his family gladly introduced Jake to aspects of the system Jake had never genuinely interacted with much before.
Jake knew it intellectually, but it was only when he saw it more closely that he understood just how massive the entertainment industry was after the system. The only entertainment Jake had really interacted with was eating tasty stuff, arena fighting, and drinking, but that barely scratched the surface.
The system had given new life to artists of all forms. Jake was especially surprised by musicians, and he even attended a concert performed by Matteo, one of the top assassins of the Court of Shadows, who apparently was also a well-known pianist.
Just walking down the commercial streets of Skyggen, Jake saw so many things that he would classify as useless if one pursued progress. Clothing stores sold clothes not for stats or defenses but for pure aesthetics. Bookstores selling fiction and other works of entertainment, with not a single useful tome on magic in sight. He even found a lot of reproductions of old books from before the system, making Jake consider the copyright implications of that.
Out of everything Jake saw, his favorite new discovery was the post-system animation industry. Through magic, new forms of animation films were created and projected both in two and three dimensions. Apparently, doing so was pretty damn difficult, making it something several of the more powerful mages in the Court of Shadows chose to pick up to practice magic while also leveling their professions.
To be clear, his favorite form of entertainment remained good food and – more importantly – good drinks. Well, alright, those were his favorite forms of non-progression entertainment, as the best time was still to be had when fighting a powerful foe with his life on the line.
Alchemy could also be pretty damn fun, especially when he was working on a really hard new project. Perhaps it all boiled down to the fact that nothing could beat that feeling of pure bliss after either defeating a powerful foe or finishing a hard project... but Jake realized he was definitely weird in that regard.
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Anyhow, Jake was thoroughly impressed with how damn quickly Earth had adapted to this new world. He had always believed that humans were innately industrious to some extent, and he felt proven right, seeing as most people tended to keep themselves busy one way or another.
Thinking more about it, as the World Leader, learning more about the planet he was supposedly the leader of was probably a good idea. Jake fully realized how disconnected he was from the average person. Everyone still had normal everyday troubles; their lives were now far more normal than they had been for a long time.
Everything and everyone had kind of just slowed down a bit. Even if this time with the system event soon ending was being seen as hectic, it was nothing compared to how everything was shortly after the integration.
What’s more, people were far less worried. The average person didn’t know much about the conflicts between Chosen and whatnot, but no one had been able to escape the constant system notifications warning about new events coming up.
They also couldn’t avoid all the internal conflicts of the planet. There were constant restrictions on trade and travel, people were whispering about new fights breaking out here and there, and with the local leaders in a state of tension, it bled down to the average human just trying to live their own lives.
Now, all of that was effectively over. There were no system events threatening to take all the powerful people away from the planet, with no one knowing how many would return. No one questioned who the leader was anymore, and if they did, there was trust that the World Council would handle it promptly. Even something as simple as monster attacks was a thing of the past for any settlement of even average size.
With everything slowing down, so did the progress of the average Earthling. Peace and calm made people relax and not desperately strive for power anymore. It bred contentment, leaving only those who truly strove for power due to internal motivation to continue in the pursuit.
From Jake’s point of view, this new status quo wasn’t good or bad. He realized those who’d embraced this peace lived in entirely separate worlds from himself and the people he usually interacted with. Jake and everyone else he deemed his peers didn’t seek power because they felt like they had to. They did it because they wanted to.
As Jake reflected on how much Earth had changed, he also began to understand why some factions of the multiverse purposefully remained in conflict with one another nearly constantly. While internal motivation was all well and good, not everyone made it their primary driver to get stronger, and it wasn’t even necessarily the best motivator—at least not until one began to approach the peak of mortality.
That’s why they needed external motivation... and it was hard to find a better than the fear of being annihilated by an enemy faction.
The Endless Empire and Automaton Legion had been at war since the very first Era, and Jake didn’t doubt this had both tremendously hurt and benefited them. The other faction looming over their heads made them never slow down their progress, as they never entered a state of peace. This definitely had to raise the power of their average members, as if they ever fell behind, the other faction could get an advantage.
A similar – albeit far less extreme example – was the Risen versus the Holy Church. They had battlefields with ongoing skirmishes that had gone on for who knows how many years. A conflict like this affected the entire organization as it put pressure on crafters to keep supplying the military effort, as well as the conscription of new fighters who signed up to fight in the war.
On perhaps the smallest scale, most monsters constantly felt outside pressure to get stronger due to the environment they lived in. To be weak meant you were prey, and the only way to avoid being hunted down was to become the predator. Yet Jake also suspected that if these monsters who’d struggled for survival their entire lives reached C-grade, got a humanoid form, and joined a peaceful civilization, many of them would also entirely stall their progress. They would embrace the peace and quiet, likely finding more happiness in that.
And perhaps that was more important than anything else; finding happiness. Jake found happiness in growing stronger, but that didn’t mean others did.
After spending a few weeks with his family, all of this reflection birthed some questions and doubts that Jake finally decided to address. On a late night, when Caleb was busy working atop the large skyscraper in the middle of Skyggen, Jake stopped by for a chat. After only a bit of convincing, he got his little brother outside, and the two of them soon found themselves standing overlooking the large city spanning beneath them, some construction visible at the outskirts as Skyggen was still expanding.
“What did you want to talk about?” Caleb asked, having definitely sensed that this was something he wanted only the two of them to hear.
“Have you ever thought about the future?” Jake asked as he looked at his brother. “ And I’m not just talking about ten or even a hundred years. I’m talking about the future a thousand or maybe even ten thousand years from now.”
Caleb got quiet as he also stared out at the city before sighing. “A lot more than you have, I reckon... and I know where you’re going with this.”
“Have you talked to them about it?” Jake questioned with a frown.
“Yeah, I have,” Caleb nodded. “Mom and Dad... they aren’t cut out for this world the two of us live in. Not really. I tried to bring up the topic several times and in several different ways, but at this point, I’ve just accepted it. They aren’t fighters, and I don’t think we can make them fighters either. Even if we somehow could, would we really want to turn them into something they never wanted to be in the first place?”
Jake was quiet as he considered Caleb’s words for a while, as well as everything he’d seen over these last few weeks. The average person wasn’t a fighter. The average person wasn’t suited to get powerful. But, perhaps more importantly, the average person wouldn’t gain any happiness from being powerful.
To them, power was just a way to avoid being miserable. Jake compared it to people who either worked to live or lived to work. His parents had always been the types of people who clocked in and out on time, did their jobs, and found meaning in their lives when not at work.
Jake had been the same way before the system... and in retrospect, he’d been miserable. He’d entirely lacked any drive or motivation to improve himself or his life. Everything had just been a chore he had to go through to keep living, hoping that, one day, things would get better.
And things did get better for him. A lot better. To go back to the analogy, Jake was now the type of person who lived solely to work. He was that high-energy entrepreneur who loved waking up every day and seeing things improve. The type who sucked at taking time off to do anything else.
But, he also realized that in the same vein that the average worker in a new start-up didn’t have the same constant passion and drive as the founder, not everyone in this new world wanted to constantly pursue power.
Doing so wouldn’t bring them any happiness. It was a chore to them, something they had to do as a means to an end. They only wanted enough power to pursue the things that would truly bring them joy and nothing more. This was the average person... and besides being the parents of Jake and Caleb, their mom and dad were very much average.
“I know it may be hard to relate,” Caleb spoke again after a while. “Trying to get more powerful just feels natural to you. Like it’s just what you’re meant to do. But Mom and Dad aren’t like that, and I don’t want to force them into being like that... and I know that neither do you.”
“Do you know if they made any progress with their classes?” Jake questioned.
“Pretty much none, and as I said, neither desire to either,” Caleb shook his head.
“Even with all the Records they have... if they don’t level their classes...”
“C-grade isn’t feasible,” his little brother sighed. “And... I think we just have to accept that, no matter how reluctant we are. Just like how they let us decide how we lived our lives and pursued our happiness... we should allow them to do the same... even if it does suck in many ways.”
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