Two minutes into grinding, he notices his grandparents walking up the driveway. He goes and gets his mom and tells her they're here and she runs off to go talk with them while Degritone goes back to grinding. After a while, his mom comes over with his grandparents and he explains everything and gives them their own grinding regiment, but they don't really want to, and just came to make sure everyone was ok.

Degritone shrugs and goes back to grinding. Need to get to 1k before I make a village. Every time his mana is above 55, he casts Omen of Famine on the same tree and tells it to attack it until it dies. While he has stamina, he activates Haste and runs while slashing the ground, then waits for his stamina to regen nearly fully before repeating this process.

Around an hour in, the power in the house goes out. His dad notices and checks the breakers, but they're fine. "Probably monster spawns, then," Degritone says.

"Why do you think that?" his dad asks.

"It's unlikely that the people at power plants could defend themselves until," he pauses, "better help arrives. Well, they might be able to defend themselves, just not the plant. Let alone all the power wires. If monsters have started spawning, then power's definitely out because of that. Probably smelled the humans and went in for a snack."

His dad responds, "There's probably a thousand people per plant, surely they'd be able to defend from a few monsters."

"Imagine if even a hundred humans with superpowers attacked GT. Would you and every employee be able to defend every square inch of the pla- of the place? Let alone monsters more powerful than a single human."

"Good point." After that short exchange, they continue grinding. Around 10 PM, they notice a pair of humans watching them from the woods, and his dad goes over to talk to them before they quickly leave.

"They say anything useful, or were they just exploring and saw the crazy people?"

His dad laughs as he responds, "The second one."

He hears a yawn from behind him. "I'm sleepy," his mom says.

"Then go to bed."

"No dip," she playfully responds. "See you tomorrow." She waves to them and heads inside.

"You can go, too. I'd probably be asleep already if it weren't for the system coming, but I need to be awake in case any monsters come tonight," he says to his dad.

"There's no way I'm letting you be the only one defending us."

"You crash after like two hours beyond your normal schedule. I'm no stranger to 24 hours."

His dad rolls his eyes. "I'm staying up."

"Fine, fine. Oh, I want to know how much damage a gun does. Go tell mom you're gonna..." a long pause, "shoot soon. If she asks why, say it's a test. If she asks what, tell the truth. I know for a fact you can regenerate entire bodies, so just shoot me in the hand, it'll come back by the time we need to fight."

"I am not shooting you. But I will get us rifles, just in case," his dad says before turning away.

"We need to know how much," a pause, "damage they do. If they deal less damage than," pause, "my greatsword, then I'm using it over a gun."

"You are not shooting yourself, either."

Degritone rolls his eyes. "Fine, but we need to know. I will purposefully get shots before- shot before we go anywhere near other people. I need to know how many I can tank before going down."

His dad ignores him and goes to get two rifles from inside. He tosses Degritone his bolt action. Degritone takes it. "Should we get on top of the house? More vision. You take back, I take front?"

"Sounds good," his dad responds. They walk to the side of the house, onto a porch, and use the railing to get on top of the house. They go up the sloped roof, going to opposite ends of the house.

"I wonder how monster spawns work. Did they spawn once and then exist, and can be wiped out, or do they continually spawn...? Oh, wait, I have Beltag to ask things." He opens Beltag's chat and asks them how monster spawns work. He responds that they constantly spawn from monster nodes. Nodes have a physical form that can be damaged, but every 1000 damage they take doubles the levels of the monsters that spawn from them until 10000, where it transforms into a portal to a dungeon.

Nodes are created seemingly at random, but have a higher chance of being created near high concentrations of sapient life. Just before closing the chat, he realizes he hasn't asked something important.

Degritone: Hey, how is it that we can understand each other? There's no way we speak the same language. And, more importantly, how does the system keep you from spreading information it doesn't want spread, like it did back in the intro dungeon, and why does it do so?

Beltag: Understanding is simply due to automatic translation. This also affects the visible movements of the mouth. Most languages are able to relay the same amount of information in the same amount of words, but not always, so there might be some pauses after what they say.

As for why and how it keeps information, I believe it's similar to mental magic, just infinitely powerful. I'm unsure why or if anyone has figured out why, but I'll ask around.

Degritone: Great, thanks.

He goes back to watching the yard. After a couple hours, he hears a gunshot from behind him, and he stands up, running toward his dad, who is holding the rifle up, having just shot out into the woods. "What was it?"

"Sh," he says quietly. "Three of them, big deer looking things. Scattered as soon as I shot. Keep a lookout."

Degritone nods before quietly saying, "Did you catch their levels?"

"One."

He nods once more before slowly walking back to his part of the house, keeping an eye out. "I hope a spawner isn't nearby. What'd he call them, nodes? I wonder why that name instead of spawner..." He shrugs. "Possibly something he can't say." As he goes to sit down, he sees movement to his left. Out in the woods behind their dog house, he sees three, seven-foot tall deer-like creatures. He can't make out their names from where he is.

Rather than risk wasting an entire skill on a gun-based skill, he uses Omen of Famine as close as he can to them and mentally commands it to kill the deer things. As soon as it's summoned, they scatter and disappear into the woods. The rest of the night is silent.

In the morning, Degritone gets right back into the grind, while his dad goes to sleep. The day is calm as he grinds toward his goal.

A village has been formed within 50 miles of you.

Monster spawns in the area will increase in difficulty by 20%.

Degritone rolls his eyes. "Of course some idiot with other world contacts would make a village without thinking," he says. He turns to his mom. "We should be making our own village... probably tomorrow. Can you go gather the family?"

"Make a village?" His mom asks.

"Oh, right, I never told you guys. Uhhh... A village is where you get a class. They grant a bunch of stat points and some basic skills you're supposed to use to," he pauses, "use as a base for other skills. Sounds useful, but a little over 24 days after creating one," he pauses, "uuuuhhhhh... right, a monster tries to absorb the village core, killing anyone who got a class from it. You need to be as prepared as you can be for it."

"You sure we should make one, if it's that dangerous?"

"Definitely. But only once every family member has 1000 skill total, the max without a class." With that slight disturbance out of the way, he continues grinding once again.

As the sun begins to set, he reaches his goal, feeling very, very tired from being up nearly 30 hours. He dismises his sword and armor before checking his skills and status.

Stomp lv3

Running lv71

Improvised Weapon Mastery lv13

Search lv5

Scan lv4

Visualization lv16

??? lv0

Punch lv4

Kick lv1

Jump lv9

Mana Bolt lv6

Dig lv4

Mana Manipulation lv8

Mana Sword lv106

Greatsword Mastery lv200

Strength of the Hoarder lvX

Soul Grasp lv50

Mana Armor lv50

Omen of Famine lv125

Great Cleave lv1

Haste lv80

Name Degritone Race Human Resources 765/765 (+2142.715) 11.86.../485 (+2200) 38.92.../1513 (+1900) Class None Experience 0/0 Strength 11 Endurance 8 Vitality 20 Agility 4 Physical 87 Magic 80

He decides to wait to spend his hoarded 442 PP until after he sleeps, when he'll regain normal mental function. The two new paths tempt him greatly, but he decides to wait, as, despite his interest, he's also very tired, unable to think straight.

Pupil 0/200

Greatsword Mastery II 0/250

As he lies in bed, waiting for sleep to take him over, he thinks about how exactly the mana is used when using Omen of Famine. It quickly flows out the closest body part to his target, before condensing rapidly to a single point, the ghoul's body appearing around it. Probably makes a temporary soul made of mana, rather than whatever normal souls are made of, that encodes the ghoul's being.

As he drifts off to sleep, he uses Visualization to attempt to create Omen of Pestilence, one of old Yorick's abilities, a green ghoul, dealing damage in an area upon cast, and slowing all enemies near it as it decays. Just as he receives a notification, sleep takes him, making him unable to read it.