“Personal log recording #11,992.”

A button clicked off, and a man sighed, lowering his head for a moment before lifting it and depressing the button once more.

“It has been a long time. Almost five years since I last recorded a log. Things are going well down here, our studies are advancing at a steady pace.”

The man paused for a moment, clearly holding back another sigh, unwilling to record it, he pressed on.

“I have greatly enjoyed my work in the lab, we have made so many advancements! We few who are allowed to trek these deep mountain halls have furthered the cause of humanity in no small amount during my lifetime…”

The old man’s voice rumbled powerfully into the microdrone. His personal name for a drone he had programmed to intelligently follow him with a microphone and record his logs, all those years ago.

“I have, however, encountered a few snags... Its power, you see, and my apparent bottleneck.”

“...All those years ago, when I first started, I made rapid progress in my knowledge and abilities, gaining more power over machines and the world around me as I learned. This continued until I reached the fourth tier at age sixty three. Since then I have been the only engineer to enjoy such power, and my gains have slowed to a crawl, regardless of the work, the research, the experiments that I do!”

The old man’s voice rose to a higher volume as he spoke, the pressure suddenly increasing in the room. A muted bzzz could be heard from the various machines scattered across the personal laboratory.

The old man sighed again.

“I believe….No. We believe that this next experiment will push me past this bottleneck. If I can live for a few more years and see this work through, I will have created a new path for the field of science to explore.”

The man paused, resettling his stained lab coat about his shoulders. A smile briefly flickered across his face.

“On a more positive tangent, the new trainees are doing well, increasing their mechanical skills at a notable speed. Best among them is, of course, our young Emmaline Clarke. Not so young anymore at age fifty seven, I nevertheless have come to the conclusion that she has acquired, in the best possible terms, a crush on me.”

The man gave a light chuckle, sounding almost remorseful.

“Perhaps if I had been a hundred years younger, I might have returned her affections, but alas! She does not know my true age, how could she? There are too few with the power to know who would tell her, and I have been asked to keep it to myself.”

“Why do they hold back such information? Would it not truly improve the world? Perhaps I cannot see, from the depths of this bunker, what effects it would have on the people.”

“How would they react, if they knew that those who attain power also increase their lifespan? I did not truly begin to appear older than fifty until I was more than twice that age! Is this not groundbreaking information for the world?”

This time, the man really did sigh, the audio perfectly captured by the microdrone as it followed him while he paced across the lab.

“Perhaps if I can claw my way past this bottleneck. Perhaps…I will feel young enough, then, to experience something I never had the chance to before…”

The man reached out with his willpower, his mechanical force blanketing the room in a deep pressure. With a single thought, the button on the microdrone which controlled the log’s recording function was pressed.

He looked about him, feeling all the machines as they completed their tasks about the room, his mechanical force alone enough to provide them all with power. He felt them looking at him.

He raised his hands to his face, scrubbing his eyes with his palms.

‘This project has to succeed…’

—--------------------

David sat up in his bed, rubbing tiredness from his eyes. He felt sore, like he had tossed and turned all night. He’d had a nightmare, a vision of an endless tide of beasts and nameless monsters flooding the horizon, each intent on destroying mankind.

‘Or NPC kind, I should say…’

It was wrong to think that way. He knew that.

The NPCs were functionally no different from actual people. At least, not for him.

They lived full lives, ate, slept, fought, cried, reproduced, made mistakes, and died. Never to return.

The players might one day have the luxury of treating the NPCs as just that, NPCs. Not David. To him they would be neighbors, possible coworkers, if he ever managed it, they could even be friends.

To David, they were as real as it got. Period.

He wanted that thought to remain firmly planted within his mind, in a place the fog could never reach.

He stared at his wall for a while in contemplation, not quite retreating within the cloudy depths of his mind while he considered his upcoming day, his plans.

His encounter with Blane Watson had gone surprisingly well, all things considered.

One of the benefits of having Cassandra there to witness their conversation was that she filled in all the blanks.

When David was too nervous to speak, when he did not know how to respond, she would chime in with a small tidbit of information.

When Blane was too enigmatic, too contemplative to add to the conversation, she would cajole him and press for more details.

‘How did he do that?’

‘He just stood there for half of the conversation, looking content with his arms held behind his back, and yet he seemed so powerful!’

Blane had hardly even moved during most of the conversation, simply standing in one spot and not shifting his weight, not slacking his shoulders, his eyes didn’t roam.

‘He just… looked at me.’

Yet the man had radiated strength. Dependability.

David thirsted for that ability.

It had been explained to him that he could come back the next morning, which was today, and begin his one week trial period at the dojo. Afterwards, it would cost him almost three hundred notes each month, an expense he could not afford.

Fortunately, there was a hidden silver lining. David had the system.

In fact, Blane was the owner and master of a martial arts training dojo, one that was specifically situated on the edge of adventurers corner, a place where many players would gather.

There was no chance that the man wasn't a skills trainer.

This meant that, within a day or two, David would gain the Hand-to-Hand Combat skill. This skill would start at level one, which would immediately give him the same amount of knowledge in hand to hand combat as an NPC who had trained at the dojo for months.

Hopefully, before the week ended he would have the skill at level two, which would make him into a sufficiently capable person, able to handle most low level situations.

Level three in the skill was a pipe dream, not unless he gained the money needed to continue studying under Blane, and received the man’s undivided attention for multiple hours a day.

Level three was the cap for skills until he became a superhuman at level 10, at which point the skill cap would be level 6. Nevertheless, level three in Hand-to-Hand Combat would make him as deadly as any of the special forces fighters on Earth when it came to close combat. This would be an incredible boon to both his survivability and his confidence if he could attain it.

The problem with this scenario was that it was too suspicious.

He would go from a mildly obvious, weak and nervous wreck, to a still nervous but now proficient fighter within a day. There was no way Blane would not notice this. Even if he could lie his way through that situation, if he attained level two in the skill within a week he would look like the world's most brilliant prodigy in the eyes of Blane.

While this would not be such a bad thing at first, it would become a real problem down the line, when the players inevitably approached Blane to receive training. The ‘Ancestors’ would gain the skill and its subsequent levels just as fast if not faster than David did, and if Blane even once compared David’s speed to that of the players, David would be at risk.

It was a hard choice, and he spent most of his morning considering it.

He first laid out all benefits, of which there were many.

He argued in favor of each benefit within his mind. He considered only the possible gains he would make from this training, what opportunities it would bring him.

It took him a while.

Next he considered all the negatives that could possibly arise from this scenario.

There was one big one. Namely, that he could be caught.

He argued against himself now, his careful mind delving deeply into the repercussions of his choices.

He expanded on how he could be caught, considering the possible actions that others might take was surprisingly hard when he knew so little about them.

It was a point that David swore then and there to remember, a quote from a famous and ancient book on Earth:

‘Know your enemy.’

Blane might not physically be an enemy, but when it came to preserving David’s life, he could be, so long as David decided to take this risk. In order for him to make an accurate prediction of Blane’s future actions, he would have to carefully observe the man, get to know him.

This new chain of thought disturbed him. He had always been careful and meticulous before, but it was almost like his internal decision making process had become slightly…dark? He had never thought of a person as an enemy before…as a threat.

‘Is my survival instinct truly so strong? Or perhaps this is just a part of my unknown losses during the transmigration…?’

Even more contemplation led him to the realization that this was not, in itself, a bad thing. In fact, it was very likely that this was something he needed. After all, he had already taken a life since he came to Ezuno. He would presumably take many more.

So long as he always maintained his meticulous nature, he would not stray from the path.

He hoped.

In the end he decided to go to the dojo. He needed the skill, and in order to truly hide himself from future recognition by the NPCs he would have to travel far and wide, searching for a hermit-like NPC who could teach him the skill.

He just didn’t have the time for that, so he would take a risk.

He would go.

‘Right after I plan out these conversations…’

—--------

David entered the training courtyard around nine in the morning. Students trained in groups both large and small across the square, all wearing different training outfits and equipment as they practiced different aspects of fighting. In one corner there was an open-gym set up, where students could work out with free weights. Few students trained in this area, as most had likely already completed their workout before the heat of the day had arrived.

In another corner, students trained with metal-meshed armor on, using blunted knives to practice against a live opponent. The students here looked fierce, swift and sure in their movements.

Everywhere he looked, people were working hard, sweating, coming together against their opponents and training themselves.

David had to fight hard not to turn around.

He felt a strong desire to leave.

He had not considered how closely he would be interacting with others here.

It was a foolish mistake. He would have to double, no, triple the amount of time he spent consider-

‘No.’

He took a deep breath.

He needed to be dependable. In order to be dependable, he must also become powerful.

He could do this.

He took another deep breath, and walked further into the square.