Levi spent the next hour doing some more light sparring with Alex and pumping his hosts for their thoughts on the System. Their knowledge was lacking though, at least in Levi’s opinion, and he felt like they knew just as little as he did. One interesting thing was his leading questions on skill crystals weren’t followed up on. He couldn’t be sure, but it was quite possible no one had found any yet. Maybe they only appeared in dungeons.

There were a few things he could confirm though, like how stat points were not additive. While ten Strength was certainly more than five, the difference wasn’t anywhere near double. It made him feel a bit better about distributing his stats more evenly. Some of the other stuff he learned was the results of their experiments comparing people back on Earth to people under the System. The conclusion was everyone got an overall boost. It was hard to quantify each individual change and figure out where it spawned from, but some things were more obvious, like the lack of sickness and disease.

A few people not getting sick might be an anomaly, but not one person in the three hundred or so people outpost had caught so much as a cold. Levi hadn’t thought about it much, but it was apparently a big deal with some nurses back in the main group going on about new diseases and bacteria. Now that he thought about it that was a real worry. If switching continents back on Earth had caused whole nations to be wiped out then the potential harm from a new planet, or wherever they currently were, was astronomical.

Their training session had to be cut short though as Kelly had to go out with the leveling team leaving Alex with instructions to “show him the ropes”, as if they hadn’t been doing that for the past hour. He did have some questions left though, and it might actually be easier to get answers without Kelly butting in with her self-aggrandizing tangents.

“Hey Alex, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“What do you think is a useful build to aim for? You guys kept going on about trying to sculpt my class skill, but I’m not really sure what type of skill is even best. I know I want a combat skill, but within that there is almost infinite variation.”

“Depends on what you are going for. I could tell you what some of the other people have tried to do with their builds, but if I’m being real here there is no guarantee we know any more than you do. I guess the first question would be if you want to specialize or try and go a more jack of all trades route. For me, I wanted to be a tank. If we come across a monster the captain can’t defeat immediately we need people who can slow it down so she can put on the DPS. That’s where I come in. But my build is more for team play, which I feel like you aren’t as interested in.”

Levi flushed. He was hoping it wasn’t that obvious. It caught him off guard to have Alex say it right out, but it did make sense he was like that, right? He had been trapped by himself after all, or he had been after Susan died. Anyone would be more focused on soloing if they didn’t have a full team to rely on. Or that’s what he told himself. There was a small part of him that was a little jealous as he watched Captain Kelly go out with the leveling group. It must be nice to have people to rely on.

“I was more talking about what would be useful for fighting monsters. Right now, I feel like I’m more focused on smaller creatures, like it would be difficult to take down anything bigger. I’m just not sure how useful punching things is.”

Alex shrugged “Eh, most of the monsters we have seen so far have been on the smaller side. We did see a rather large rat, and by large, I mean the size of a large van, but that’s about it. If you want to go for more damage you could try and use a weapon. Or maybe focus on magic more if you think you can. Your enhancement skill uses mana, right?”

“It does.” Although not normal mana, but he wasn’t going to tell anyone that anytime soon.

“Then maybe you could try and shoot that mana or form a blade or something. Or go like I did and make armor. Not many people are skilled at defense, so if you plan on sticking around here, which I highly suggest by the way, defense might be the way to go.”

Alex made it sound so simple. And perhaps it was. But after his time in the dungeon Levi couldn’t just write off such a large choice without a lot of contemplation and planning. Before he had been under pressure to just survive, likely causing him to make suboptimal choices. Now he was in a decently safe environment and had time to plan his build. He would be a fool not to try and make use of that. There was clearly a lot at stake here. Alex and Kelly didn’t know for sure, but if you got another class skill at level fifty and that one was at all based on the one you got at twenty-five than the choice now might have snowballing implications.

He just didn’t know enough. Back when he was in a guild he had spent hours trolling forums to find optimal builds and strategies. He never was the best mechanical player, so optimization was important. But now his information was severely limited, and even the stuff he thought he knew he might not actually know. Now that he actually had time to plan he was feeling the pressure, especially as he knew what the consequences of failure was.

Activating Concentrated Will Levi grabbed hold of his train of thought and ground it to a halt. He wasn’t in immediate danger. There was no need to freak out. If he made the wrong choice now he would just get stronger. If he learned anything from the internet it was that there weren’t many problems that couldn’t be blown away with one punch. His focus right now should be on other things like the people around him. He felt confident about fighting or fleeing from most monsters, but getting stabbed in the back was a very real threat.

Levi furtively looked around, checking for people in the immediate vicinity. Not spotting any, he decided to bite the bullet and just ask Alex what the real deal with the outpost. People were always going on about how you could judge someone after fighting them, and while Levi wasn’t sure quite what that meant, his sparring with Alex only reinforced his positive impression. He had to try and trust someone at some point.

“Hey Alex, what’s the story with this outpost exactly? I mean, like, it seems a bit…”

“Peaceful? Idyllic?”

Levi nodded.

“That’s because it is,” Alex said. “let’s go and take a bath and we can talk more there.”

The outpost wasn’t built next to the river, but someone had carved a channel that brought water into pools used for bathing. The pseudo canal brought water from slightly upstream, directed it through a building containing two bathing areas, and then directed it back into the river downstream. There was also a section for drawing drinking water above the bathhouse.

Levi had used the bathhouse yesterday, and he had to admit he was impressed. The water flowed into a large pool, circulating around before flowing back out downstream. There was no heating or cooling, but the water was warm enough for it not to matter with the current weather. Maybe in winter Kelly could blast it with fire to heat the water.

Alex seemed to have no problem stripping down in front of someone else. Levi wasn’t quite used to it, but when in Rome. There were a lot of social norms that just weren’t sustainable anymore so if he was going to live with other people he had to get used to it. Soon they were both submerged in the water and, after quick wash to get rid of the sweat from their sparring, they both settled in for a soak before Alex started speaking.

“Where to begin. I guess I can start with the main settlement. Its… not like this. Not everyone was willing to work together after suddenly being transported god knows where. David didn’t exactly lie to you, but there was more going on. Very quickly there was a subset of people who knew keeping together wouldn’t work. So we worked it out that we would come out here and form out own group, ostensibly for the good of the whole, but really to get away from the people who didn’t have the best intentions. That was only possible because of two people.”

“Let me guess,” Levi said. “David and Kelly?”

“Exactly. Captain Kelly is the brawn and David is the brains. He hasn’t said as much, but I suspect he has some way to cold read people. More than just telling fact from fiction. I think he didn’t really want to take charge, but in the absence of someone else, well. You haven’t met her, but he has a young daughter. I think he was worried about her.”

“So, what about me? What would have happened if I had ill intentions?”

“I’m not sure,” Alex admitted. “Probably David would have turned you away. He was very careful in selecting people to come here, and, based on how it has worked out, he did something right. He was very clear that we didn’t need a police force, and so far, that’s been true. Everyone seems willing to work to help out the community. If someone had told me that you could take three hundred random people and build all this in a month or, so I would have called them crazy. Yet here we are.”

Levi relaxed into the water mulling over what Alex just told him. It was a little hard to believe but, based on what he had seen, it actually sounded plausible. It certainly felt like David saw right through him. If all that was true he was incredibly lucky to have found the outpost and not the main settlement. After finally finding people it would have sucked to have to leave right afterwards. He still wasn’t completely sold on all this, but if what Alex said was correct maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being with others after all.