Defiance of the Fall

Now he was decked from feet up to a throat protector in pieces of leather , all tied together with strings or sinew . It was an extremely shoddy work , making his whole body looked like a piecemeal patchwork of different animal body parts . It also took almost 30 minutes to take on and off , as there were quite a few knots he had to tie to get it to stay on during a whole day .

Most days he couldn’t be bothered as he had been out hunting the whole day , and simply fell asleep while still wearing the gear . The combination of high endurance and vitality seemed to protect him from any shaping or bruises from the coarse leather anyway .

All in all he looked like a completely insane hobo and would likely be arrested if he arrived in a real city , based on his appearance alone . Zac couldn’t be bothered about that though , as almost a month of living on the edge of death had given him a far more utilitarian mindset .

Zac cracked his neck , nowadays barely being bothered by the constant 10 times gravity field that enveloped the whole camp . After his first day of grinding he had bought the F-Grade Small Scale Gravity Array] and placed it at a corner of the camp . It had actually proven effective , and he had incorporated a workout in high gravity into his daily schedule . Soon after he even slept in high gravity , and by now he always had the array cranked to the max over the whole camp .

Its effect had been above his expectations . He had gained a whole 5 strength , 2 dexterity , 6 endurance , and 2 vitality from just training his body . His endurance had increased the quickest , rising up 6 points in just two weeks . He had calculated that he had 4 base endurance before the system earlier , and now it was 10 . However after it reached 10 it stopped increasing at all . He saw a similar effect on his strength . He gained 3 points quite quickly , bringing his base strength to 10 . After that he still had gotten two points , but those points took an extreme effort .

He had also gained dexterity and vitality , but he guessed that those points actually came from combat rather than the array . Getting hurt over and over had improved his vitality slower , and dodging an endless amount of beasts had improved his dexterity .

Zac guessed that the reason for his quick improvements wasn’t only the array . There now was a large amount of cosmic energy in the air , and it felt like just breathing it in slowly improved his health . He suspected that humans would slowly grow healthier in this atmosphere , provided that they didn’t get killed of course . A quick look at his status showed that his stats had improved quite a bit over the last weeks .

Name

Zachary Atwood

Level

23

Race

Human

Alignment

Human (Earth)

Titles

Born For Carnage , Ultimate Reaper , Luck of the Draw , Giantsbane , Disciple of David , Overpowered , Slayer of Leviathans , Adventurer , Demon Slayer I

Strength

59

Dexterity

39

Endurance

42

Vitality

48

Intelligence

29

Wisdom

29

Luck

44

Free Points

0

Nexus Coins

5 562

Unfortunately he had not reached his goal even with his gathering array and frenzied carnage across the island . He had hoped to get to level 25 and get a class before the month was over . The advice of the Stargazer still lingered in his head . She had told him to finish the quest of conquering the incursion within a month . He still hadn’t found any clues as to what would happen after the month passed , and he hoped he wouldn’t have to find out .

Gaining levels had proven harder and harder over time , and he had finally reached level 23 today after 4 days of relentless killing . He had even used almost all his points and spent a whopping 75 000 Nexus Coins on upgrading his Mother-Daughter Gathering Array to E-grade . This upgrade had substantially increased the amount of cosmic energy he absorbed daily through his amulet .

It was clear to Zac however that the most effective method of getting stronger was to actually battle and kill enemies . If he would split up the cosmic energy he absorbed daily it would be a 90/10 split , and that was with the E-grade array . If he compared with his old F-grade array it would be 95/5 or even lower . Grinding monster and absorbing their energy was simply far more effective , at least with his resources .

It did however make him think about the elite of the multi-verse . He had made over a hundred thousand Nexus Coins just by grinding low level monsters around the first month . Abby had said that the multi-verse was hundreds of millions year old . There were surely some extremely wealthy individuals and organizations . What if they gave every child an A-grade , or even S-grade array from birth? They would be higher level than him before even learning to talk .

Those things were too far away from him though , he needed to focus on the present . Even though he hadn’t reached his goal of getting a class , he still planned to try finishing the quest the following two days .