*peep-peep peep peep*
*peep-peep peep peep*
*peep-peep peep peep*
Altair woke up to the sharp sound of his alarm, and in a reflexive motion, he cut it off before making his way to the bathroom.
.
A few minutes later, he was sitting at his dining silently sipping on a warm cup of tea. Everything was very peaceful in the darkness and silence of the place, with the only sound being from the occasional clink as he rested the tea cup.
Once done he let out a took in a deep breath and let out a long exhale.
"It's a new day." He said calmly, and as if prompted, the lights in the house started turning on.
'(Status)' He called on the system.
STATUS
[NAME: AKROATÍS SOFÓS ALTAIR ROHAN]
[LEVEL : 1 ]
[RACE : HUMAN ]
[TITLE(S) : PLAYER▾▻ ]
[CLASS : NONE ]
[HEALTH : 2500 ]
[MANA : 4000 ]
[STRENGTH : 18 ]
[AGILITY : 18 ]
[VITALITY : 50 ]
[INTELLIGENCE : 50 ]
[SENSE : 20 ]
[POINTS : 0 ]
It had now been over a month since Altair obtained the teleportation ability and the System.
During this time, while many things mostly remained the same, a few things had changed.
For Altair, appearance-wise he had not seen much change in this time, with his body mostly regaining some weight from the earlier very thin appearance caused by body reconstruction.
His muscles had become much more outlined compared to a few weeks ago, but it was always well covered under the long-sleeved clothes he put on, the only indication of his fitness being the definition of his arm below the elbow as he always folded that part. To an outsider, he would look exactly the same.
Despite his unchanged physical appearance, the increase in his stats had not left him completely unaffected. His thoughts drifted to a memory of two days ago.
.
Altair had just added a few points to his Strength and Agility stats, and when he was in the kitchen, as he noticed a utensil falling, he reflexively went to catch it.
The problem is that he was too fast in his movement, and having put more strength than necessary, he clumsily poured the pot of boiling water on the stove over his body.
His first reaction was to run to the bathroom and apply some ointment. But before he even left, he realized that he did not feel any pain.
The water that should be making sizzling sounds as it destroyed his skin felt like warm water right now.
He quickly calmed down, and when he thought about it, he wondered. "Was it a benefit of increasing the Strength or is it related to Vitality?"
'Probably the Strength stat.' He thought.
The following night, he returned to the gym to get a new idea of how much improvement the stats increase brought him, and he was baffled.
His physical capabilities had mostly doubled. He was now able to run close to 70 km/h, and his carrying capacity was far past 200 kg, being around 300 kg base, and a maximum output of 650 kg.
"This is crazy." He said to himself.
"Wouldn't I have been some kind of super human if I had invested in these two instead of Intelligence and Vitality?"
Altair had noticed that with the increase in Vitality, his stamina had greatly improved. And while he was not faster in completing tasks, it took him much less time thanks to needing to rest less often. This made him invest a lot of points into Vitality.
On another note, he had been pouring points in his Intelligence stat as well. Not only to alleviate the mental fatigue from quick successive teleportation, but also because each increase also raised his Mana quantity/value.
He was very enthusiastic at the possibility that he would be able to use magic or magical abilities of some sort, and did not hold back in putting points here, even ending up neglecting Vitality.
But when his Intelligence stat went past 40, he started feeling unwell. It was like all the time, he was hallucinating and disoriented.
He could not even concentrate properly and coordinating his body movements was increasingly difficult as days went by. He first noticed this when the Intelligence stat went past 30 but he did not pay much attention to it.
The fact that it started happening about a week after obtaining the System and his teleportation ability, made him think that it might be a late side effect of the body reconstruction or teleportation.
He persisted for a couple of days, still adding points to Intelligence. Then he noticed that whenever he added points into his Intelligence stat, it got a little worse each time, until it got to 40.
It became so bad that he had to stop the 'super-hero' activities.
He could not stop the Daily Quest however, because he dreaded the Penalty zone even without knowing what was there. Fortunately for him, he already had his exercise location picked and it was a free place at the time he got there each day.
Thanks to this, neither running nor the other exercises of the Daily Quest was affected much by his reduced vision or his disturbed senses.
It got to the point that even his daily life was hindered by it, and eventually, he had to find his glasses to put them back on.
The glasses improved the situation and he got the opportunity to think clearly again. He remembered how his sight improved considerably right after the body reconstruction.
'At that time, all my stats had achieved some kind of balance.'
However, the more he thought, the less likely it seemed related to all stats being the same figure.
'Wouldn't it have gone wrong from the moment I started increasing points if that were the case.'
Since it was his senses that were affected, mostly sight, he decided to put point for the following days into Sense.
His mind became less cloudy, less fuzzy, and he could focus again, his hearing and sight adjusted as well and became almost as good as before.
He concluded that there was a strong relation between the Intelligence and Sense stats, and that too much difference was detrimental to him.
.
After cleaning his utensils, Altair teleported to the Scaniae coast ready for the Daily Quest.
In Svearika, it is the best place for an unobstructed 10 km run.
. . .
_A CERTAIN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION_
In a certain room, in an unknown place, two men sat in the dark on comfortable-looking swivel chairs.
Around them were several screens displaying different locations. Each screen showed a split view of what seemed to be the same location.
On one side of the screen there were images, from three different perspectives, of Altair sometimes with his costume and sometimes in simple clothing, and they showed him appearing and disappearing, teleporting several times doing various things.
On the other side of these screens, the footage showed what was, also from three different perspectives, a live video of these locations, judging from the text that showed the words 'LIVE' on that side of the screen.
What all these screens had in common was that they showed different places to which Altair had gone in the past month, and they all showed images from far above, as if they were captured with drones at different angles.
As the two men sat there, just watching the screens a beeper went off.
*beep-beep beep-beep*
*beep-beep beep-beep*
*beep-beep beep-beep*
One of the men kick-pushed his foot on the ground, moving the swivel chair in doing so, as it rolled towards the source of the sound.
He picked a device from a table he got to and glanced at it before swiping his finger. Then he stood up and started stretching right there.
The other person in the room then asked. "Is it time?"
The first one replied. "Yes. We should get ready."
"Alright, you're up." Said the second person, before adding. "Will you need help to set things up?"
The first frowned a little, not replying immediately. "It should be faster that way."
The tone of his voice clearly showed his reluctance at something.
"He doesn't like you just as much as you don't like him." The second one said.
"Is that supposed to be comforting?" The first one asked as he walked towards the door.
The second one did not reply and just sighed softly.
He took out a phone and prepared to make a call before-
"Is it me that you want to call?"
He heard these words from a corner of the room. As soon as he heard a voice, his hand moved very quickly towards his belt, where a baton-like object was strapped.
However, he recognized the voice and relaxed a little as he turned in the direction of the voice.
Confirming who it was, he retracted his hand completely from his weapon.
"You should really stop doing this, one of these days, I might react badly to it, James."
The new person, James, with a teasing and somewhat smug small smile on his face, said playfully.
"I'm sure you don't mind; your reflexes have improved so much thanks to me."
"I'm getting too old for this. One of these days you might just push my poor old heart too far. Besides, if anything, you're numbing my reflexes at this point. What if one of these days I don't react, thinking it's another of your pranks?"
As they were talking the person who left the room earlier came back asking.
"Who are you talking to, Ronald? Is that guy here already?"
Both Ronald and James turned at the person coming into the room.
James's good mood vanished as soon as he heard this person's voice and he said one short sentence with an annoyed but mostly serious expression.
"I take this seriously."
"Whatever, let's get to work. We need to set up the area. You know where the equipment is." The other person replied in a flippant tone before leaving the room.
This person left the room, taking with him the case he came in with and disappearing from sight.
"David." Ronald called out, a little late.
"I'll be going as well." James said as he too disappeared.
Ronald was left alone in the room and he let out a tired sigh.
'I don't understand how they hate each other's guts and work so well together.'