Chapter 8. Maggot Soul

“Ken! Hurry up and check what ability you got!” Emma asked impatiently as we sat at a park bench.

“Stop rushing me Emma. I am praying to the RNG Gods to let this be an op skill.” I replied, while closing my eyes and prayed that I don’t get a shit skill.

After gaining 3 skills, of course we have noticed somewhat of a pattern. Sure, slime is the weakest monster that only has 1 att and will do 0 damage to anyone with 2 defense.

They also have maxed out physical defense and it’s only thanks to the Hero’s Mark which is a skill everyone gets the moment the chip is implanted so that we beginners could even do physical damage to those fuckers.

All Hero’s Mark does is make sure the attack we use does at least 1 damage ignoring any defense or magic defense while obviously those poor monsters don’t have that sort of bonus and slimes will literally do 0 damage to anyone who has an item that adds defense or gained 1 defense from leveling.

Gaining +255 on defense from killing high defense slimes, shitty total stats and dagger mastery from shitty goblins that’s overwhelming average at everything and pikachu with the speed and lightning skill. The pattern is pretty obvious that the “soul” I am gaining represents the monsters I am slaying and the stronger and more unique the monster, the better the skill I would gain. At least that’s the conclusion we have come to. Who the fuck knows if it will hold true.

So now, you might be asking. Ken. If that’s true, why are you out here killing maggots that seem like they do nothing and won’t give you any good stats, why don’t you go kill a dragon or behemoth? Well, If I could fucking kill 100k behemoth, I will already be one of the fucking elite 50s.

The obvious reason I am out here killing fucking maggots and goblins is because of my low damage and no useful skills. But it’s fine, only with 3 months left until the exam for Tokyo Academy. I got Emma to buy me a sword with +49 att, +45 crit and +34 str.

Since all of the stats are under 50, it was a weapon that dropped in a Level C dungeon, making it much more affordable compared to a weapon that would drop from Level B and above dungeons.

But since weapons is the single most important item when it comes down to damage and the ability to kill monsters, it costed her 50,000 gold to buy the fucking thing. 500 US dollars! I don’t even make 65,000 Yen in 2 weeks!

Anyways, enough off topic rumbling from me when my blondie is waiting impatiently for me to open the window to see what I have gained and based on the shitty weakass lards I have been killing, the future looks bleak.

"Passive skill acquired. Maggot Soul. Passive bonus(Always Active), +10 to vit, +10 to poison resistance, additional bonus skill, Passive Skill(Always Active), Poison Laced." I read out, disappointed with the meager stats gained until the bonus passive that piqued my interest.

“What does poison laced mean!” Emma asked while shaking me in excitement.

Please my sweet Emma, if you don’t move further away from me soon, that stalker hidden poorly behind the tree will jump at me again. Like why the fuck is he even hiding? It’s not like I can’t see half of his body from behind the fucking tree and it’s not like he doesn’t just sit in my room whenever Emma is over visiting anyways

“KEN!” Emma shouted, snapping me out of my protagonist's monologue.

“I am getting there, relax! Poison Laced - adds poison(Damage over Time) to all damage types, baseline damage(Poison) 80 over 4 seconds, 2% damage/duration boost per matt, 2.5% damage/duration boost per int. crit does not apply to passive.” I read the skill to Emma while trying to dissect what I just gained.

“That is insane Ken! A passive DOT that permanently adds magic damage to all of your hits?” Emma shouted excitedly while hugging me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Albert charging at us from behind the tree.

“We need to do testing, Emma! I need to figure out if the 80 is the resistance needed to negate the damage or if only 20 is needed. That will make a huge difference on how useful this skill is. With that said, this is definitely the best fucking skill I have gotten so far! No mana cost? Always applied? HOLY FUCK if it takes 80 mdef to negate the damage this skill will be insane once I can get some offensive stats.” I said excitedly while hugging Emma back, pressing my face into her warm body while ignoring the asshole butler that’s trying to pull us apart and ruin this beautiful moment.

After that asshole butler separated us, we went celebrating at a cake shop with desserts and coffee. I wonder why Emma insisted we open the skill at a park instead of just coming to a cake shop straight away. Must be because she knew this stalking Albert would pull some stupid shit again when all we did was have a hug.

After enjoying the sweets, Emma and I went to a local training center to test out my new passive.

Paying for a small training arena with a dummy which we could program the exact stats we wanted, Emma and I played around with the settings on the dummy while trying different attacks to test and verify how my new skill interacted in each situation.

After quite a bit of testing, I was overjoyed with this new skill gained from killing fucking maggots. It’s like whenever I expect things to go well, it turns to shit but whenever I have no expectations, I end up with a nice beautiful surprise.

With the dummy set to have no mdef, it registered 102 poison damage over 5.1 seconds and when we set the dummy at 60 mdef, my hit did 42 poison damage over 5.1 seconds. Obvious, the test proved that while the damage is applied over time, to negate my hit, the enemy would need to have higher mdefense than the total damage dealt over the period and that is fucking huge.

If I could get my matt and int up somehow, this DOT passive will no doubt be extremely powerful. Thinking happily to myself, I spent more time messing around with the dummy, testing out different things with Emma applying boosts on me to see how everything stacked with each other.

One thing the Hero System changed forever, is how entertainment worked. While in the dungeon, due to whatever bullshit the AI did, one’s natural genetic means nothing. I am at least twice as strong as Emma naturally but once we are in a dungeon, because of my weakass stats, Emma is much stronger and faster while I am just a piece of shit that could barely kill slimes for 12 years.

But that does not apply here in the real world. While the stats still matter greatly, instead of just pure numeric where 50 > 49 so the shit does nothing to me as long as I have a higher stat. All the stats here in the real world apply over someone’s basic abilities.

For example, I enjoyed watching basketball videos from hundreds of years ago before the Hero System. It was a fun simple game where a few naturally gifted individuals dominated the game. That Micheal Jordan guy and Leborn James? Man. Those motherfuckers are like magicians with the ball.

Nowadays? Basketball is a fucking joke because of the Hero System. With each stat adding 2% to your baseline power. Someone with 50 stats in speed can now run twice as fast as before and in the leagues that allows items? Oh fuck that shit is stupid. People are just jumping out of the gym going up and down the court dunking over each other from the half court like the Jordan guy did in a kids movie.

With how overpowered the top athletes have become, all sports that used to be fun and exciting 500 years ago are now just stupid jokes except one, the most basic of all entertainment.

One on one, all out, no restriction combat. Sure, dungeon hunting is fun for me and everyone else that wants to level and grind and get stronger. But the majority of the population like my manager Naoko has never entered a dungeon in their life due to the inherent risk of dying. And without a good leveling exponent, after some levels, it takes way too much to level anyways.

For those, the combat tournaments and matches are the only way they could experience what a top hero can do in action and frankly, it’s way more exciting watching two high level go all out in a fight compared to watching people dribbling a basketball around and trying to get it into a hoop.

Well, enough monologue from me for now, not like I will be joining any of the sanctions tournaments soon anyways, only licensed heroes are allowed in those and the illegal underground fighting ring? Yeah… that’s a definite nope for my scared little ass.

After our hour of rental was up, we left the training center excited about my new skill and it was back to the drawing board on the next target for annihilation so I can gain some sweet sweet soul power and be one step closer of attending Tokyo Academy where hopefully I can meet a few backups in case things don’t work out with Emma. A friend or two is fine too. I really should try and interact with more people so I don’t end up like this butler and lack any sort of social awareness.