Chapter 381 (1/2)

Randidly was quite pleased with the way things had turned out with his stand. Although business was slow at first, after that rabbit had come through, everyone had wandered over. And once that group of people had tasted his food, word of mouth spread news of it even faster.

Soon, dozens of people were swarming around his stall, and his Cooking Skill could be displayed to the fullest. It was a very satisfying night, and exactly what he needed to get his mind off of the nonsense of Paths and Skills.

He had even gained a few Skill Levels in his Chef’s Palette and Cooking Skills, as well as one in the Yyrwood Flesh of Yggdrasil. Every little bit helped, now that he was much lower on Skills.

Afterwards, most people were pulled away towards the Tactics Assessment, to watch, but after reading Daniel and Mrs. Hamilton’s rules for the competition, Randidly knew that it wouldn’t be a very interesting game to watch. More interesting to just wait, and see who would emerge as the victor. For the person who was the winner of the Tactics, well the highest NCC at the Assessment, would be a person that Randidly had to make a decision over.

At the very least, Randidly would establish an Aether connection with the individual who won, but also… he might very well use that person as an experiment to see how creating a Class would work…

An image of Nathan’s determined face flashed before Randidly, who could only shake his head. That… that was not a possibility. Although the boy had a firm resolve that reminded Randidly of himself, he was...9….? 8….? The fact that Randidly didn’t even know reaffirmed in his mind that it wasn’t possible to use the boy as a test dummy. He would simply need to accept whoever won the Tactics portion, provided Mrs. Hamilton could assure their quality of character.

Randidly wasn’t currently very confident about his Class creation experience, if he was being honest with himself. They had a little over two weeks remaining in their month time frame, and the effects of the Aether being cut off was becoming increasingly apparent. Although crop yields were still high, the produce harvested was empty, compared to the previous crops. The same vital energy wasn’t present.

For the first time since the System arrived, most people were finding that they needed to sleep, at least for a few hours, each night. The Assessment was acting as a good excuse, as everyone could tell themselves that they were just tired from the excitement, but the truth was their Zone was being starved of Aether. It was not how Randidly wanted Donnyton to end.

In his heart, he suddenly felt a lot of guilt over all of the activities that he had spent time doing this past week that were not related to Aether. His eyes hardened. That stopped now. He had enough of a break.

Sighing, Randidly removed his sunglasses and mask, and left his stall. He stopped a Squad Member of Donnyton, and sent a message to Daniel to send for him when the Tactics Assessment concluded. Until then, he would be studying Aether. And more than that, working with Lucretia and Neveah to improve his ability to shape it…

It wasn’t simply knowledge that he lacked currently; it was also a soft touch to weave the Aether together.

As Randidly found a quiet spot by his cabin and sank into his inner world, he found Lucretia creating a strange weave of Aether. “Welcome back. Good, try this, we likely need to be able to do this in real time during the Class creation, so practice hard.”

In another corner of his mind, he could feel Neveah pouring over the list of runes they had gathered, tinkering with them, making them in 3D models of woven Aether threads that made Randidly’s head spin. He shook those doubts clear. Only one struggle at a time.

Then he got to work.

****

Kayle cracked his knuckles sitting down for the finals of the Tactics competition. To his surprise, Kayle had enjoyed the concept of the game immensely. He had faced a dozen opponents to get here, and each one had made relatively unique choices in how they arranged their units and what units they chose.

It was just they behaved rather similarly on first contact, which let them play right into Kayle’s hands. Most people would simply bring their other forces around to attack units they found, happy to have encountered an enemy at all. The fact that you couldn’t see anything, and all information was fed through notes made a lot of people nervous.

Meanwhile, Kayle felt that his own patience and imagination was exactly what was needed to persist in the competition. You could not let the lack of information influence your decisions. On the battlefield, an imperturbable attitude was key. Without it, you would swiftly make a mistake.

His opponent, a man named Stan, didn’t seem particularly intelligent or savvy, but he did seem extremely good natured and calm. This put Kayle on edge for some reason. Also because the man he was up against had won his games either very quickly, or after a very long time. That showed that this man was not one who got into messy scraps and skirmishes. He controlled the battlefield, and attacked at all the right points.

Hum… this was an opponent who valued flexibility, so…

For his starting units, Kayle chose the Raid Boss, Mages, and Rogues. He had been very impressed with the Raid Boss as an unit so far, and the other two were designed to counter the hard counter to the Raid Boss, the Knights.