Defiance of the Fall

Read? How? - Zac looked at the crystal in his hand confused . It looked similar to a Nexus crystal but the color was green like a watered out emerald . It was also covered in intricate golden fractals .

Just imbue some energy in it . - The demon sighed , obviously still annoyed , and walked toward the edge of the camp . - I’m done answering your inane questions human . Put your energy on survival instead . -

Ogras soon left the camp and afterward disappeared like he did up on the mountain top . There were many questions that were still unanswered , but he had gotten many of the more pressing issues cleared up . He looked at the crystal in his hand and after a long hesitation poured a minuscule amount of cosmic energy into it . The demon was very helpful so far , and it felt unlikely he would give him a bomb after all this . Still , he was ready to hurl the crystal far away if needed .

A screen similar to the ones the System provided suddenly popped up as the crystal lit up . The design of the window was a bit more intricate though , and covering it was an image of a grand pavilion with a Stargazer floating on top of it . It clearly was a man-made item , and the intricacy made Zac marvel . It was something on a whole other level compared to the cruder enchantments on the demon’s gear pieces .

Soon the image changed , and it turned into what could best be described as a web-page . There were menus with various categories and images . Luckily Zac could understand the content just fine , and was amazed at what was written . The crystal contained a thorough guide of what happened when a world was integrated into the multi-verse .

Granted , it seemed to be written for the invading forces , but still most of the information was very helpful to Zac . But the more he read through the more troubled he became . It became very apparent that the natives were largely discounted , and that the web-page considered the other Incursion forces the only challenge for a successful invasion .

It did mention that there was a small chance of encountering extremely strong forces on an integrated planet , but most civilizations couldn’t even be considered F-Graded . From how the text described it Zac knew that Earth’s civilization wasn’t considered anything much , and was not what it meant when it mentioned strong forces .

For normal civilizations like earth’s humans , the missive simply stated that enslavement usually was most convenient . It would increase the resources that could be gained in a new planet as manpower usually was limited .

It also listed out the most common tactics of various forces in the multi-verse and Zac was shocked to find out that the demons truly were some of the more decent forces . They usually created a country and entered trade negotiations with surrounding forces , native or foreign , to amass wealth . They did enslave the native populations on their lands though .

But there were many forces that simply eradicated everything and ceaselessly strove to increase its influence until the whole planet was theirs . There was even a force that entered incursions just in order to annihilate the natives and didn’t care about the resources at all . It was a cult that called itself The Church of Everlasting Dao .

Unfortunately , the missive gave no information about the forces themselves so Zac couldn’t find out more about them . But it was clear that almost none of the forces cared an iota about the natives , and only considered newly integrated worlds treasure-troves of wealth .

All in all the crystal was just what Zac needed , and he swore that he’d pester the demon until he handed out more goodies . The crystal said it was the first crystal of two , so hopefully he could annoy another out of the paws of the demon tomorrow .

Chapter 69 - Rewards

Even if the demon was gone Zac stayed put for some time , going over the conversation he just had . Everything that came out of the mouth of the demon seemed to be the truth , but he didn’t feel it was that easy . He guessed that many of the things he learned today weren’t any hard-to-gain secrets , maybe with the exception of the things in the crystal he received .

How things like quests , races , and classes worked should be the most basic of things and not something that the System would keep hidden . Still , he would work under the creed - Trust but Verify’ . He believed that he would get access to a secondary source of information soon now that various buildings were unlocked in the Town-Shop . It would be easy to compare and contrast the words from the demon with what he learned in other places . From there he might actually be able to learn the demon’s agenda , from finding out what he lied about through omission for example .

Satisfied he turned his attention to the Nexus Node . It was time to do what he initially returned to the camp for . He had some rewards to cash in on .