by Pegaz
“That allowed me to concentrate on the fights instead of worrying about them back home. It could be said that your actions allowed me to survive the war, so consider your debt more than paid.
“I’ll walk with you part of the way to the next village to make sure you don’t get lost. It has been almost half a decade since you walked through the jungle to get here, after all.”
Isabel and the rest of the puppets smiled and nodded at John’s gesture—as John had ordered them to—when he finished speaking. He walked them towards the jungle as the puppets followed him, turning around and waving at Kelly every so often.
Once he was out of Kelly’s line of sight, John sped up a little and the puppets followed. He couldn’t go much faster, though, because the worker puppets couldn’t keep up.
After he got a mile inside the jungle, he stored them inside his Storage Space and headed back.
Chapter 5: Leaving
That night, John watched over Sarah instead of sleeping. She had started the process to fix her cultivation shortcut, and she wanted him around to make sure nothing went wrong since she had used Toxin Power to create clots to kill off her Life System’s Branches.
Prior to doing so, Sarah realised that she needed to make all the poison and antidotes they would need to immunise Kelly before creating the clots. The couple also decided that they would stay at the house until Sarah’s cultivation shortcut was fixed and she mastered the disguise technique that Luke had created. She knew that it could take anywhere from a week to a year for the method to finish, but she had no other choice.
As for the disguise technique, its completion depended on a person’s sensitivity to changes since it used the water inside a person instead of Life Power. The more sensitive the person was, the faster they would be able to get used to the changes and train faster as well.
Due to that fact, Sarah would be able to train the disguise technique until it reached level eight. Unfortunately, she would have to wait until her shortcut was fixed to obtain level nine, solely because she needed to use Life Power to help with the strong vibrations and mirages.
They spent the rest of the night dividing their chores. In addition to martial arts, John would teach Kelly how to hunt, and Sarah would obviously teach her about medicine and poisons.
By the time the beginning process had finished, dawn had broken and the two decided to get an early start on their day. John ventured out to hunt in the jungle for the first time, but this time, he ran far past the training area.
As he came to a halt, he was shocked by what he saw in his Scan. A deer-like creature stood grazing on some leaves, completely ignoring John’s presence.
Deer are supposed to live in the woods, not the jungle! Then again, that’s back on Earth, not here.
He wasted no time killing the deer. John then drained the blood, skinned it, and cut the meat off the bones. After placing the meat inside his Storage Space, he started his journey back home.
He placed the meat on top of the kitchen counter when he got back, then waited for Kelly to wake up so they could start their daily training.
The three of them fell into a routine and before they knew it, a year and three months had passed by.
On this day, John was training Kelly like usual, but he heard his system go off.
Ding!
He realised how much he missed that noise ringing multiple times a day.
“Practice the last two moves ten more times each.”
After making sure Kelly was occupied for a little while, John opened the system for the first time in over a year to check the changes.
Welcome to the Idle System 9.9.
Name: John
Title: Demon
Age: 58
Idlers: 2160/2160
Skill Points: 4
Toxin Pool (Brain): 9.05T
Toxin Pool (Body): 6.45T
Soul Pool: 100B
Sin: 159,101,645
Immortality List:
Vitality - Idlers 0/2160, Neurons - 3/3, Organs - 0/3, Body - 0/3
So the third level of Immortality’s Vitality is finished. I’ll get the epic Vitality’s Neurons up next since that skill will now work at full capacity. But… I don’t know if it will take five, ten, or twenty years.
John took a deep breath and placed all the Idlers into the skill but closed his eyes before he saw the time pop up. He then wished for good luck before looking at the time needed to complete the first skill level.
Misc List:
*EPIC* Vitality - Idlers 2160/2160, Neurons - 0/1, ??? - 0/1 (unlocks at Vitality’s Organs level one), ??? - 0/1 (unlocks at Vitality’s Body level one), Time - 1y
If the skill’s time only doubled like usual, then the other epic skills would take two and four years instead of the twenty plus years I was dreading.
John smiled as his luck was pretty good this time. He almost did a guts pose, but realised that Kelly could still see him. After calming himself down with some deep breaths, he looked at the time in the system and noticed it was time to go home.
John raised his head to look at the sun’s position.
“You finished practicing?” John pretended to read the time due to the position of the sun. “Time to go home,” he declared, looking over at his daughter.
Kelly looked at the sky, then at John, and then back at the sky. With a defeated scowl, she shrugged and walked over to her father to take his hand. Turning away with her hand in his, he laughed a little before walking into the jungle.
As they walked, John looked down at Kelly. He couldn’t believe how fast time went by. She was already over three and a half feet tall. Her head was now near his stomach and she was growing quickly.
He placed his hand on top of her head and rubbed it before she could resist. Laughing at Kelly’s new hair style, he ran home while making sure Kelly was running behind him in his Scan.
When they got home, Sarah already had dinner prepared and the three of them sat down to eat. When they had finished eating and the dishes were put away, they informed their daughter that they would be moving to the nearest village the next day. They allowed her to ask a few questions, which they easily answered, and then told her to pack her things for the journey.
Sarah had finished killing off her Life System’s Branches a little more than three months ago, and it only took her a few days to create the new ones according to the proper cultivation method. In her system, she had a new counter for the Toxin Pool inside her body, too. She told John it appeared not long after creating the new branches.
It then took her more than two months to finish the final level of Luke’s disguise technique after she got used to using Toxin Power for it. The only downside was that Sarah couldn’t gather any Toxin Power during the past year and, instead, had to use up some of the stored Toxin Power to nourish her body which was completed only yesterday.
John took out one of the holding bags he had inside his Storage Space for packing. It was left over from all the bags Luke had brought him inside the battlefield. Luke had organised the bags so the ones that didn’t stretch held all the bags that did stretch. This bag was the type to stretch when filled since he didn’t want Kelly to notice everything they owned disappearing into a small bag that looked and weighed the same as when it was empty.
John and Sarah didn’t have much inside the house since most of their items were inside the Storage Space. The things they kept here were spare clothes, boots, and things essential to surviving in the jungle.
They decided to leave the house intact with all the cooking utensils Sarah had created when they left in case somebody got lost and needed it to survive. The original plan was to burn it down to remove any evidence of them living there, but even John became a little sentimental when he remembered that it was where Kelly was born and it was the first place they had lived in as a whole family.
When all of their things were packed into the bag, John placed the bag over his shoulder and walked a few feet away from the house.
&nb
sp; All three of them turned around and looked at the house they had been living in.
“Will we ever return here?” Kelly asked, looking up at her parents with teary eyes.
With an upbeat tone, Sarah replied, “Eventually, yes.”
John chimed in, too. “Even if we don’t, I’m training you to survive wherever you go. After you get enough experience, and if I’m happy with what you’ve learned, then you can come back here to reminisce anytime you wish.”
Kelly nodded her head. “I’ll train harder then.”
Chapter 6: Journey
John and Sarah were walking at a snail’s pace to match Kelly’s walking speed as they trekked through the jungle.
Everything was fine for the first few miles, but then Kelly began to get tired. It was understandable as she had to take two steps to match their one, and she was only five years old. She was also a mortal without any shared skills to strengthen her body.
There were other factors at play, too. It was the middle of summer and the heat inside the jungle caused Kelly to use her stamina much quicker, the ground was uneven no matter which way they turned, and they couldn’t walk in a straight line either. They had to manoeuvre around trees, cut vines to make a path, and watch out for any tree roots sticking out of the ground.
Both John and Sarah thought Kelly had done enough, so John picked her up and carried her on his shoulders. The bag filled with all of their belongings was wrapped around his neck, so the young girl had to sit on it. His left hand was holding the two ends of the bag in front of his chest away from his neck while his right hand moved any tree branches and bushes that got in the way.
Sarah took the lead to cut down the vines to make a path to make it easier on John. With teamwork, they were able to cover a few more miles within an hour because their pace increased.
In his Scan, John could see Kelly was shocked at their ability to keep a steady pace and not break a sweat. He thought for a moment and was going to explain, but Sarah beat him to it. “I bet you’re amazed by us at this point, right? Don’t forget that we’ve trained our bodies to the extreme and we’ve travelled from a different kingdom before. We’re used to travelling, so walking through a jungle is an easy task.
“When you’re a travelling adult, you’ll be amazed at how far you can travel before you have to rest if you keep up with your training.”
John stopped in his tracks causing Kelly to become confused. She turned to Sarah to ask what was going on, but Sarah had stopped moving, too.
John began to laugh. “Who knew these things are in this area? That takes me back.”
He then lifted Kelly off his shoulders and placed her next to Sarah. Placing the loaded bag next to them, John walked forward a dozen feet while using a sword to cut the vines before he stopped and waited.
Sarah smiled at Kelly. “We heard a monster and it’s travelling towards us. It makes a particular sound that we’re both familiar with, so we could never make a mistake about it.”
John and Sarah had seen this monster in their Scans a while ago but kept on walking towards the village. To them, it was a weak creature that couldn’t hurt them at all.
The only thing they had to worry about was if it got close to Kelly, so John put her down and stood where it would emerge from.
When John first saw the monster inside the Scan, he couldn’t help but be shocked. He had no idea these things were living on different planets, let alone that he would find one here.
Kelly was starting to panic a little after hearing that a monster was coming towards them. She had only trained for a little over a year and was still a child, so if anything unexpected happened then she would be the one in the most danger.
It was while she kept thinking of the worst possible outcome that she heard John’s voice.
“Normally, I would dodge their frontal attacks and tire it out until I deal the finishing blow. That’s the safest way to deal with these creatures. But with you and your mother standing behind me, it’ll have to go over my dead body to even think of getting close to you. Don’t worry, though, I’ve killed thousands of these things. I’ll just give it a warning and let it run off.”
John was a little worried that Kelly wouldn’t be able to handle seeing something being killed in front of her. Even when he went out hunting, he had always killed, bled, and skinned the animal before coming back to the house to prevent her from seeing such horrors.
He had already explained that humans needed to kill animals for food, but to see an animal die in front of one’s eyes could be traumatic if one wasn’t ready to deal with it.
“Cover your ears. It’s about to roar.”
Kelly hurriedly put her hands over her ears and, a second later, she heard a roar loud enough to hurt her ears slightly, and if John didn’t warn her earlier, it would’ve been worse. Putting her hands down, she heard John speaking again.
“This animal is all bark and little bite. Despite its size and loud mouth, it’s one of the weaker monsters in the world.”
Soon after, Kelly saw the creature emerge through a set of vines it had destroyed along its path.
It was a huge bear that stood about six feet while running on all fours. It had a jet-black fur coat, sharp claws, and big teeth.
“A continuous bear! Haven’t seen one of these for years,” John exclaimed through a chuckle.
When John first came to this universe, the first monster he killed was a continuous bear. It was classed as a monster because it could generate a core inside itself.
“Creatures are placed into two different categories. There are beasts and monsters,” Sarah explained to Kelly. “The only difference between the two is a monster might have a core somewhere inside its body.
“The core can do a few things, and different places use them for different things. Where we come from, they use cores for technology or help with survival like a fire core to start a campfire in the wild.”
As Sarah was talking, the bear had stopped its charge like John expected. It stood up on its hind legs to swing its forelegs towards John.
John used a basic defence stance and blocked the swing by elbowing the centre of the bear’s paw. He then jumped forward and elbowed the bear’s stomach before jumping backwards.
John then turned to Kelly and said, “I only used the basic martial arts techniques that you’ve been learning for the past year to show you how effective they can be when used properly. I’ve had a ton of hunting experience and know where and when to strike an enemy for maximum effect.
“I kept my composure and made sure my footing was solid before I attacked. Do you remember me teaching you this on our first day of training?”
Kelly nodded as she watched the bear collapse, but it didn’t lose consciousness as it stared at John with hatred.
John stood there and waited for the bear to realise it was no match for him; however, the bear didn’t get up to run for its life. Instead, it pulled itself up and growled, showing its teeth.
Knowing the bear was going to attack again, John released a little of his killing intent in front of him. He didn’t want Kelly to see the killing intent, so he made sure she was directly behind him while he used it to warn the bear.
The bear shivered and froze in panic. A moment later, John had to shoo it away to make it move. He watched the bear turn around and run as fast as it could.
As he turned around to pick up the bag, he heard Kelly say, “Amazing.”
John winked at her, slung the bag onto his back, and tied the bag’s handle around his neck again, but when he went to pick up Kelly, she dodged him.
Looking at her, he was about to ask what was wrong when she spoke first. “I want to walk the rest of the way on my own. It’ll be good for stamina training at the very least.”
John looked at Sarah to see if she had an opinion, but she only shrugged her shoulders. He agreed to let her walk the rest of the way.
Their pace slowed down considerably since then as Kelly needed to rest every thirty minutes.
They could only walk a few miles a day at most, but nobody complained.
John pretended to go hunting again, but he would only go a few miles away and take out some meat from his Storage Space since he had an abundance of meat from the last few hunts—he had stocked up on food, just in case anything happened.
Over the course of a few days, Kelly got used to walking longer distances, and each day she could walk a little bit further than the day before.
It took a little over two weeks for them to reach the edge of the jungle. When they emerged from the vines, they were greeted by a large wheat field standing in front of a village with a small wooden fence surrounding it. John could tell that it wasn’t new or well maintained since the planks were hanging on to a few fragile posts which were rotting away in the ground.
At the inside corner of the fence, a tall watchtower cast an eerie shadow over the field. It, too, seemed heavily neglected. Its roof was riddled with holes, and it was leaning ten degrees to the left. John ruffled Kelly’s hair and cheerfully said, “This is where we’re going to be living from now on.”
Chapter 7: Meeting the Villagers
As the family of three took a step towards the town, a loud bell sounded from the watchtower.
From the edge of the jungle to where the first line of crops were growing, there were about two hundred metres of tall grass that reached up to the middle of John’s thighs.
John looked at Kelly while pointing at the grass. “This is here to delay any monster or beast getting to the crops and the townspeople. It’ll also allow the people on the watchtowers to spot them sooner, giving the people more time to group together before attacking whatever comes out of the jungle. It also grants vital time to those working in the fields to get to safety. Since they’ve spotted us and rang the alarm bell, let’s see how good their response time is.”