Chapter 38: Alone

Even if he somehow managed to earn twenty Tabs every single day without spending anything, he would need fifty thousand successful trips to afford a million Tabs.

Obviously, that wasn’t how progression actually worked.

Harod had explained that stronger Evolvers earned vastly more because they could enter more dangerous regions, hunt more valuable creatures, gather rarer resources, accept better contracts, and gain access to opportunities that beginners couldn’t even dream about.

The problem was getting there.

To become stronger, you needed Runes.

To obtain good Runes, you needed Rune Tomes.

To obtain good Rune Tomes, you needed money.

To make serious money, you needed to be strong.

Frost stared blankly into the distance.

’What a wonderful fucking system.’

It was almost impressively cruel.

And unlike Jennifer and the others, Frost couldn’t even take the obvious first step.

They could purchase cheap introductory Rune knowledge, join beginner parties, learn whatever Runes matched their affinities, and gradually climb from there.

Frost had no affinity.

According to Harod’s contact, spending money on a Rune Tome would be equivalent to buying an expensive book written in a language his very existence was incapable of understanding.

Which left him with one immediate problem.

Money.

And one much larger problem.

Everything worth spending that money on seemed designed for Evolvers.

Frost looked toward the distant towers of Linden, their impossible structures rising far above the filth and cramped buildings surrounding him.

Somewhere up there were people wealthy enough that a million Tabs probably meant nothing.

Meanwhile, he currently possessed exactly...

Frost reached into his pocket, and his fingers found nothing.

"Zero." He stared at his empty palm. "Wonderful."

In any case, if Frost was right, Jennifer and the others must have joined a guild.

After all, there was no fucking way they could have afforded all that equipment on their own.

None of them had any money when they arrived in this world, and unless Jason had somehow managed to pull Nexus Coins out of his ass over the past two days, there were only so many possibilities.

Either they had joined a guild willing to invest in them, or they had somehow convinced someone to give them a loan.

Frost suspected the former.

With their talents, they had plenty to work with.

Jason and Lois were both Seven-Star talents, Naomi and Adam were Six-Star, while Jennifer...

Eight-Star.

Even after two days, Frost was still struggling to properly understand how significant that apparently was.

He had learned a little more about Syrn during that time as well, mostly through Harod and conversations with people around the settlement. Apparently, Syrn wasn’t merely some ridiculously powerful woman who happened to save them by chance.

She was what people called a Legacy Evolver, and a highly regarded one at that.

More importantly, she possessed Eight-Star talent.

The same rank as Jennifer.

Of course, that didn’t mean Jennifer was anywhere close to Syrn’s level. The comparison was almost laughable at the moment.

Thanks to the family she came from, Syrn had considerably more resources, training, experience, and most importantly, time to actually develop the potential she’d been born with.

Jennifer had awakened three days ago.

Frost could understand why a guild might look at her assessment results and immediately see an investment opportunity.

Someone had probably heard the news and taken notice.

If his assumption was correct, then Jennifer and the others weren’t heading directly into the hunting grounds either. That would be fucking stupid after what they’d already experienced.

They were probably heading toward some training facility.

Harod had mentioned that guilds usually provided new Evolvers with basic combat training, Rune instruction, wilderness survival skills, and whatever else was necessary to prevent their investments from immediately getting themselves killed.

After that, perhaps sometime during the week, they would finally enter the hunting grounds.

The Hunting Grounds were exactly what their name suggested.

Vast stretches of managed wilderness where all sorts of evolved monsters were allowed to roam.

The important word there was managed.

Unlike truly wild territory, hunting grounds were carefully monitored.

The species inhabiting them were known, their populations were regulated, and most importantly, the general strength of the evolved monsters inside each region was controlled.

That didn’t make them safe. People still died. Monsters were monsters, after all.

But an amateur Evolver entering a beginner hunting ground didn’t have to worry about casually walking around a tree and finding some ancient monstrosity powerful enough to erase them from existence.

There were rules, boundaries, and expected levels of danger.

That made hunting grounds one of the best places for inexperienced Evolvers to train and grow.

And growth wasn’t limited to learning Runes.

That had probably been the most interesting thing Frost had learned over the past two days.

When an Evolver killed an evolved creature, they could absorb remnants of its Soul Script and the Rune Essence accumulated within its body.

Doing so could gradually strengthen their own Soul Script and improve their individual physical and mental attributes like strength and agility, potentially even attributes such as Perception and Willpower depending on the creature and circumstances.

Which meant someone didn’t necessarily need to learn a new Rune every time they wanted to become stronger.

Frost could theoretically enter a hunting ground, kill evolved monsters, absorb their Soul Scripts and Rune Essence, and improve his attributes through that alone.

That little discovery had been one of the few things keeping him optimistic.

His lack of affinity might prevent him from learning Runes, but unless something else decided to go horribly wrong, it shouldn’t prevent him from improving his body.

At least, Harod hadn’t said it would.

Rune Essence itself had also turned out to be considerably simpler than Frost initially expected.

According to Harod, Rune Essence was essentially one of the fundamental energies permeating the universe.

It was everywhere.

In the atmosphere, in the land, inside evolved creatures, inside Evolvers themselves. It was the energy that allowed Runes to function in the first place.

Harod had compared it to air for the sake of simplicity.

You normally didn’t think about the air surrounding you, but it was always there, and without it, countless processes necessary for life simply couldn’t function.

Rune Essence worked similarly for Evolution.

Runes gave structure and instruction.

Rune Essence provided the energy necessary to turn that structure into reality.

The reason Earth had never possessed Runes, Evolvers, monsters, or any of the other ridiculous things Frost had witnessed since arriving here was apparently quite simple.

Earth lacked Rune Essence.

Or, more accurately, it had possessed so little of it that Rune-based phenomena couldn’t naturally manifest.

Earth’s Ascension was changing that.

Rune Essence would gradually permeate their world as the Ascension progressed, fundamentally changing its environment and allowing Runes and other supernatural phenomena to exist where they previously couldn’t.

The implications were fucking enormous. It was honestly thrilling to think about.

Or it would have been considerably more thrilling if fate hadn’t decided to hand him the cosmic equivalent of a middle finger.

Frost sighed again.

Then there were Dungeons.

Harod had only briefly mentioned them, but Frost had immediately remembered the term.

Unlike hunting grounds, Dungeons weren’t regulated at all.

They could be found throughout the outskirts and vast unoccupied regions of this world, appearing in places civilisation either couldn’t or hadn’t bothered to tame.

Their ecosystems were unpredictable, and, of course, their monsters weren’t controlled.

There were no convenient boundaries separating weak creatures from strong ones, no patrols regularly clearing dangerous abnormalities, and no organisation making sure some beginner didn’t accidentally wander into the territory of something capable of swallowing them whole.

In other words, they were hunting grounds without the safety rails, and naturally, that made them considerably more valuable.

Stronger monsters meant better materials, better Soul Scripts, greater concentrations of Rune Essence, and rarer resources.

And apparently, Dungeons could contain things worth absurd amounts of money.

That was why truly powerful Evolvers frequently ventured into them despite the risks.

Danger and wealth seemed to have a very intimate relationship in this universe.

The stronger the Dungeon, the greater the potential rewards.

A successful expedition could apparently make an Evolver filthy rich.

An unsuccessful one could make them monster shit.

Frost rubbed his chin.

"High risk, high reward..."

Classic.

Not that he had any business thinking about Dungeons right now.

He had Five-Star talent, no Rune affinity, no equipment, no combat training, no party, and exactly zero Tabs to his name.

If Frost walked into a Dungeon in his current state, the only contribution he’d make to the ecosystem would be nutritional.

However, his eyes drifted toward Linden’s distant towers.

"One day." He said it quietly.

Maybe it was nothing more than wounded pride talking after being abandoned by the others, but Frost meant it.

One day, he would become strong enough to walk into one of those places himself.

Rune affinity or not.