Galaxy Fall: All My Skills Are Maxed-Chapter 192: Awakening Stones
[Outskirts of Ragon City - The Decimated Hut.]
The dust from the obliterated hut settled over the pulverized remains of the Cultists. The sheer disparity in power made the ambush look less like a battle and more like pest control.
Mirabella walked towards them, stopping in front of the lady, her boots crunching softly against the shattered wood. The assassin was still suspended in the air, gasping for breath. She bent down and picked up the two red daggers that had fallen to the dirt. A blue system window immediately populated her vision, analyzing the poison-laced metal.
"Hmm... These aren’t bad, both Epic class weapons. But they’re useless to me." She looked up at the lady. In the grand scheme of Galaxy Fall’s vast loot tables, Epic tier was merely decent vendor trash for someone aiming for the absolute top.
"Can I have it?" She asked. Her voice was perfectly calm, a chilling contrast to the violent grip holding the woman aloft.
The grip on her neck loosen slightly, just enough to allow a frantic gasp of air, and she quickly yelled: "Yes!! Yes!! You can take anything you want, please don’t kill me!! I will do anything, please!!!" She pleaded, tears of pure terror streaming down her face.
Mirabella tilted her head to the three men behind the lady. Her invisible guardians—silent, lethal constructs of dense energy bound to her will—were holding each one of them suspended in the void. She didn’t need to lift a finger; with one single thought, she can end their lives in an instant.
"There is nothing I want from you, just your lives and weapons."
The absolute finality in her voice extinguished the last spark of hope in the captives’ eyes. Mirabella stretched forth her hand towards the weapons, and everything vanished.
’Hey... When did you start robbing others?’ Cupcake’s telepathic voice sounded in her head, laced with feline amusement.
Mirabella turned around, and walked away, her face an unreadable mask. "I need Awakening stones..."
Mirabella said, and with a thought, the mental command was issued. The unseen guardians tightened their grips in unison, brutally separating the heads of the four, their bodies falling to the ground in a macabre synchronization. Then, lightning shot down from the sky, a blinding flash of elemental wrath turning the whole bodies into fine, gray ashes.
’Huh? What’s so important about this awakening stones? Are they better than Gold?’
Mirabella snapped her fingers, pulling energy from her soul sea, and Cupcake appeared in front of her, expanding from a small cat into her massive, winged tiger form. She got on her back, the thick fur a familiar comfort after the bloodshed. "Head back to the Duke’s mansion." She ordered.
Cupcake nodded, her powerful muscles coiling before she spread out her massive wings and shot into the air, creating a shockwave that scattered the remaining ashes as she went flying back to the mansion.
"So?" She asked, staring ahead at the sprawling, dimly lit expanse of Ragon City below them.
Mirabella sighed, the wind whipping through her blue hair. "Of course, Awakening stones are more important than Gold, well, to fighters like us." Mirabella lowered her gaze, staring at the city below.
"When a Player reaches Lv29, they will need 100 awakening stones to get to Lv30, becoming Awakened Players. When an awakened player get to Lv70, they will need 1,000 awakening stones to advance to Lv71 above, which made them God level player." Mirabella gave a small, almost bitter smile. The world was designed to bottleneck the weak and heavily tax the strong.
"When a God level player reaches Lv399, They will need 10,000 Awakening stones to reach Lv400... Now you see why it’s important?"
"What if someone don’t have that amount?" Cupcake asked, her wings beating steadily against the night currents.
"Then, no matter how you cultivate, or how many monster cards you absorb, you will remain in that level... all that Experience points will go to waste." Mirabella paused, thinking of her newly acquired subordinates:
"I gave both Carl and Grace the Awakening stones Lord Hayatobi gave me for rescuing them in the dungeon, which helped them advance to Awakened level. But with their low strength, they won’t easily get these stones in the academy, so I have to get as many as I can to help them advance faster." Mirabella explained.
"Ok, how much is this awakening stones then?" Cupcake asked, trying to calculate the economics of it all.
"The stones works like academy points, you can exchange them... But the price." She shook her head lightly, the sheer inflation of the game’s economy being a massive hurdle even for a regressor, as Cupcake dived towards the mansion compound, the wind howling past them.
"You know, 100 gold coins are equal to 10 Academy points. But for Awakening stones, It’s 1,000 gold coins for one awakening stone. That Price is too huge!" Mirabelle grumbled. At the highest tiers, leveling up required the gold of a small kingdom.
"But you have ten billion gold coins, I shouldn’t ask the extra five million, that is enough to get you a lot of awakening stones." Cupcake landed lightly on the stone-paved ground of the courtyard, and Mirabella jumped down smoothly.
"You think ten billion is enough? I am planning on building a force strong enough to take on an empire, ten billion is not even close to what I want." She said, her ambition burning far brighter than mere personal survival, walking towards the heavy oak door, leaving a stunned Cupcake behind. To outfit an entire force of God-level players, ten billion was merely a down payment.
"Ten... Ten billion isn’t enough? When you’re on Earth, you will do anything for this ten billion... And now, you’re saying it’s not enough?" Cupcake shrunk in size, the massive winged beast turning back into a small, harmless-looking cat, and quickly followed behind her Master, her feline mind struggling to grasp the scale of Mirabella’s plans.
"Yep... I don’t know what is waiting for us in the third server, and if one day, Galaxy Fall permanently send us all back to earth... I want to be prepared for everything, which is why, I will patronize those from Earth." She stopped at the closed door, and exhaled, the heavy weight of the future pressing down on her shoulders. Her knowledge only went so far; Galaxy Fall was unpredictable, and the barrier between the servers and her home world was fragile.
"If such a thing happen, Galaxy Fall throwing us all out, sending us back to earth, I will still have my special force made of earthling, I won’t lose even if that happens." She said, her voice laced with absolute, unshakable resolve. She opened the door, stepping back into the bloodstained reality of the political war zone, and walked inside with Cupcake.
