The appearance of the Punishment was a great surprise to Ajax. Despite the fact that this punishment will be all but obsolete in the coming weeks, with him spending his free stats any experience he was going to get from fighting things that far below his level would have been shot from the extreme lack of difficulty and danger.

This was not to say that this was something to take lightly. A decrease in experience earned, especially one as large as a fifth was definitely concerning so he quickly guttened and collected the wolf corpses and made for the village to talk about this with Hatchet.

The way back was uneventful, having done multiple such trips before the only thing he regretted was not bringing the cart out with him. It wasn’t so much the weight of all he had to carry as the amount of space they took up. He nevertheless made good time and dropped the corpses off with the tanner before making for the secluded hut. He found Hatchet outside of his house fletching arrows.

“Hey Hatchet,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Something happen?” he asked with a frown on his face. Somehow he had managed to pick up the ability to read Ajax in the last few years.

“You could say that.” Ajax shifted awkwardly. “What do you know about Retributions and Punishments?”

Hatchet froze, his eyes flew open and his eyebrows made a break for his hairline. He stood silent for almost a full minute before coming back to himself and turning to Ajax.

“Tell me everything.” his cold tone made it clear it wasn’t a request.

Ajax proceeded to tell him about the hunt. Despite the lack of patience Hatchet was under right now he listened carefully and didn’t try to speed him along. He knew, not from personal experience but he had seen aftermaths, Retributions and Punishments could be a death sentence.

As Ajax described his Retribution and Punishment, Hatchet made his first contributions to the talk in a while. He wanted to know the exact wording of both the retribution and the punishment. Once he had both of those and thought about them for a short while he finally relaxed.

“Alright, the good news is that there is nothing for us to worry about right now. Your punishment is one of the lightest ones. The bigger problem comes in the form of your retribution. That is something that you will have to be mindful of from now on.” he breathed out a sigh of relief.

“What are these punishments and retributions?” Ajax asked concerned.

“Besides stats skills and traits the System deals with three more types of interference. The first you have already experienced is the Retribution and Punishments. Whenever something goes against the way of the system, Retributions and Punishments are used to try and correct that behavior. In your case, the level difference in your advantage is something the System dislikes.” he explained.

“If Retributions and Punishments are two of them, what is the last one?” Ajax asked.

“No, no. Retributions is one of them, Punishments are just a result of Retributions. On the other side we have Achievements. Much like they sound, Achievements are things that follow the same principle as Retributions but instead are there to mark the approval of the System.”

“The biggest difference between Achievements and Retributions is repetitive gain. For example, there is an achievement for killing an enemy without help that is both twice your level and thirty levels above you. It is somewhat well known and nobles try to get it from their children by scouting out favorable matchups. Very much like your own Retribution this is based purely on the levels of those involved.”

The knowledge of there being achievements and him not having been told anything about them was something Ajax very much didn’t like. He did also file away the requirements for the achievement and marked it as something he should get by the time he reached level thirty.

“Now the difference between the two of them comes when looking to get another in the same vein. For the Achievement you would have to go to the next step up, for this one it is killing something three times your level with the same level thirty requirement, you can also have one other person helping you so long as they also fill the requirements. Anyway you get the point, the increase in difficulty in gaining them.”

“For Retributions that is not the case. You got yours for fighting wolves that were ten to fifteen levels below you. Even if you were to now only fight wolves that were six levels below the Retribution will come into effect and most likely increase in severity.”

“So you are saying I shouldn’t engage with any more creatures lower leveled than me?” Ajax asked, clearly concerned with the restrictions this would place upon him.

“Not as such, you are to refrain from confronting only creatures lower level than you. As long as somewhere in the pack of creatures you are facing there is at least one that fits the requirements, your punishments will not activate.”

“Ok I will be careful from now on.”

“You really don’t need to worry about the one you have. It is mostly a warning one. Despite the fact that you will accrue the II through V versions of the punishment with increasing speed if you don’t stop fighting below your level it’s not like it will hinder you all that much. At level V it will simply stop providing you with experience. The big problems come after that. See once a punishment has reached a full course one of two things happen, and there is no way to know which it will be. Either the Punishment grows further, from a hindrance to a cost. Such as your reduction in experience changing to loss in experience for every combat with enemies below your level. Or, it can be fully random. This is the problematic version of the change, as you can receive the first tier of punishment for any other retribution.”

Ajax calmed down knowing that he would have ample warning from the four more tiers of the punishment before anything dangerous happened.

“Well at least my situation is not dire. Are there any really bad punishments that you know?”

“I have seen one that reveals your status to anyone focusing on you. I have no idea what the person did to get it but it is something best avoided.”

Ajax shivered at the thought of such a punishment.

“Besides Retributions and Achievements there are also Discoveries. There is a good chance that you already have had one or maybe even two of these. Discoveries are things that you discover about the System by yourself. It can’t be something that you are informed of by someone else, directly or through writing. There is one for finding out about Punishments, which you most likely have gained, and one for Achievements you can no longer gain.”

“The System will not actively acknowledge you making a Discovery unless it is a Discovery that hasn’t been made before by your race type. For you that would mean discovering something no other humanoid has before.”

“Discoveries is the main excuse nobles use for hoarding information from the general populace. As you see, some achievements come with a required number of Discoveries in order to claim the rewards.”

After the lengthy explanation Ajax just made small talk trying to digest the information bomb that was just dropped on him. A lot of frustration at the System itself being one of them. Despite missing out on such important information he could understand why people didn’t just give it out randomly.

Not long after Hatchet finished explaining all about the Retributions Achievements and Discoveries Ajax made his way back home. He took one more look at his stats and determined that spending his points would come after Mind finally ticked over to sixty-eight. All of the rest of his stats were too far away to make it to the next whole point before his Trait expired.

After using [Expel Mana] quickly to dumb quite a bit of his mana out in the hopes of reaching that next point faster he finished his meal and went to bed.

He woke up the following morning with a new communication from the System blinking in the bottom left of his vision. He carefully opened while feeling not an insignificant amount of dread after getting his Punishment yesterday.

Achievement : Born Horder.

Spend your first fifteen years without spending a single stat point.

Reward : + 10 to all stats.

! (lesser versions of the achievement can no longer be obtained.)

Hoarder

Spend fifteen consecutive years without spending a single stat point.

Reward : + 5 to all stats.

Forced Hoarder

Spend fifteen consecutive years at zero stat points.

Reward : + 2 to all stats.