Meanwhile while Harrison was lamenting the bland taste of his food on a higher plane of existance there was a meeting happening. In this meeting that he was oblivious to his existance was the main and only topic.The meeting was held on the tallest mountain of that world, as if the organizers wanted to tell everyone they were the highest authority around. With clouds rolling beneath them, the tall mountain that lost it"s peak because someone had cut it off so neatly that the now floor of the meeting place was glossy there was a big circular table with twenty four seats of which nineteen were occupied.
Of the nineteen eighteen were seated and one person was standing as he started the meeting.
"Most of you already know what this meeting is about but for the rest let me explain what we know so far.", a man with four arms and scales instead of skin said in a gutural voice.
"Two of the lower planes controlled by our alliance have been experiencing temporal freezing."
"Lord Kuruk. Do we know what is causing it?", said a female with voluptuous figure and horns dressed scantilly.
"We do have some preiliminary findings, Lady Sindel.", replied Kuruk and waved his hand materializing an image of the Milky way galaxy.
"From the testing of communications the temporal freeze originates from here before it spreads through the whole plane in a matter of moments. It has been pinpointed to this planet on this plane that the natives call Earth.", Kuruk explained.
"This plane has been used for us primarily for getting talent into our ranks and as such this does not affect us much. The bigger problem lies here.", waving his hand again a new galaxy was shown in the middle of the table.
"This plane is one of our prime sources of spiritual energy and it has pinpointed that the freezing starts from planet called Atreus by the natives.", Kuruk continued.
The ones who knew about the situation beforehand remained quiet but the ones for whom the situation was new started to whisper among themselves.
"I suggest we destroy planets Earth and Atreus and take out whoever is responsible along with the two planets.", suddenly a h.o.r.n.y man stood up and exclaimed. h.o.r.n.y as in full of horns sprouting all over his head and arms. Not the other more usual kind of h.o.r.n.y.
Kuruk almost did a facepalm at that suggestion.
"I knew one day I will regret letting you into our alliance.", he thought inwardly.
He was just about to reprimand the h.o.r.n.y guy when someone else stood up.
"Bardash, are you an idiot or just ignorant?, a normal looking man stood up.
"Probably both.", Kuruk thought.
"If you have something to say say it Balerion!", Bardash replied.
"How old are you? Did you ever hear about Pangu?", asked Balerion.
"I am 175.000 cycles old but what does that to have with Pangu?", asked Bardash.
"So 75.000 cycles ago you were around when Pangu destroyed the whole Orbash alliance?", Balerion asked.
"Yes I was around but what does this have to do with this?", Bardash asked.
"Do you not remember the reason?", Balerion asked.
"How could I forget? The dumba.s.ses actually wanted to refine his home planet to make a weapon out of it.", Bardash smiled and proudly replied.
After people looking at him like he was the biggest idiot in the galaxy and stayed quiet for about a minute it finally dawned on him.
"You mean to say Earth is Pangu"s home planet?", he exclaimed with fear.
"That is enough", Kuruk said looking around the room and Bardash especially, "Earth is Pangu"s home planet and some other void deities too. Atreus has void deities protecting it also. So even if we wanted to destroy them we would fail and the consequences would be disproportionately greater than the minor annoyance we have now."
Balerion chuckled and sat down. Bardash sat down dejectedly also.
"I called you here today to explain the deaths of 57 of our agents and how to avoid future deaths," Kuruk said while looking at their reactions.
"The planes are only dangerous when travelling to them while they are frozen so here is a list of agents that will be permanently stationed on these two planes before the situation is resolved. Before any travelling there you just have to contact one of them and if he replies it"s safe. If not try later," Kuruk continued.
The other eighteen nodded their heads in confirmation.
"Do we have any idea how the whole plane"s time is being frozen?", lady Sindel asked.
"There are two theories. First one is that some void deity is doing experiments in the lower planes since it would not be the first time it"s the most plausible. They don"t give a d.a.m.n about us so they never bother to explain themselves or justify their actions anyway. The second theory is that somone got himself a void item or managed to find a working void array which he used as power conduit but it"s highly unlikely since with the knowledge required to read and activate it these two planes would no longer be of any concern to him.", Keruk replied.
"Could it not be a HER?", lady Sindel exclaimed.
"Here we go again," Keruk wanted to facepalm again.
"Him, her, it I don"t give a d.a.m.n!!! Something!!!", he yelled back.
"Any more questions?", he forgot to add stupid as he glared at his audience.
Finally, someone managed to raise his hand and waited to be acknowledged.
As Kuruk nodded he said in a low voice: "The list that you mentioned?"
"Ahh. Here you go,", Kuruk swiped his hand and twenty three scrolls fell in front of the seats.
"Anything else?", he looked around and everyone avoided his gaze. After that Kuruk disappeared followed by all the others. The only things left were the table, the twentyfour seats, five scrolls and the clouds.
---------------------------------
Harison let out a semi satisfied burp and tossed the bones into his inventory. It was finally time to check on the children"s books. He read them one by one but other than getting his vocabulary expanded in the language of this region nothing happened. The learn option was not available as if the system did not think anything in the books was worth learning.
He rea.n.a.lyzed the book t.i.tled "Basic swordmanship for beginners" next which could be t.i.tled Swords for dummies on Earth. After what seemed to take forever he clicked on the learn b.u.t.ton and after a few moments there were continuous pop-ups.
Swordmanship skill LVL. 6 acquired.
Swordmanship skill LVL. 7 acquired.
Swordmanship skill LVL. 8 acquired.
Swordmanship skill LVL. 9 acquired.
"Ohh. come on," he lamented the loss of attribute gains which would happen if he managed to reach level 10.
He opened the book manually and noticed more than 90 % of the book was translated. The main parts that were missing seemed to deal with correct breathing while doing the moves as the word like breathe through followed by unknown words was where the translation mostly stopped.
"I guess I need a medical atlas next," he thought.
He got the other two books rea.n.a.lyzed also. The book about flowers actually gave him the option to learn it but the other one remained stuborn.
Clicking the learn b.u.t.ton he experienced wast knowledge flowing into his brain and two dings soon followed.
Herbology skill unlocked.
Herbology skill LVL. 1 acquired.
Bonus Wisdom +1
Herbology skill LVL. 2 acquired.
He opened up the book manually and saw that he could understand around 40 % of the text of which most were the names of shapes and colors describing the various plants. The other descriptions like what they can be used for were a mystery for him. Even a lot of names of the plants were usually something like "White #$"$#".
"Well, at least if I pick one up I will know if it"s usefull for something just not what so it"s not if it is a total waste," he thought as he closed the book.
He checked his skills to decide on further action.
Lumberjack : Level 10Carpentry : Level 1Masturbation : Level 1Archery : Level 7Swordmanship : Level 9Mathemathics : Level 10Fitness : Level 5Bartering : Level 1Herbology : Level 2
He thought about hitting a tree with a sword but dismissed the idea as it would only dull it so he turned to the next best thing archery. He had plenty of arrows. Even those that were in bad shape could still be used for practice.
So he went over to the tree with the painted targets and started shooting arrow from 20 meters distance. He hit a lot more than he missed and soon he heard a familiar pop-up.
Archery skill LVL. 8 acquired.
He used the same 20 arrows over and over again. Picking them up either from the ground or plucking them from the tree after every round.
After level 8 he went a bit furter and shot from aproximately 25 meters and he soon reached level 9.
At the 30 meters mark a tree was in his way but he moved a bit sideways and the target was still well in sight. As he finally reached level 10 his arms and fingers felt like they would fall off at any moment and to hear the familiar ding was like a blessing from heaven.
Archery skill LVL. 10 acquired.Bonus Strength +1Bonus Perception +1
Sticking the bow into his inventory he went one last time to pickup the arrows and left for the cave. In the cave he crawled into his bed and checked his attributes which he had diligently acquired trough the day.
Strength : 8,5
Wisdom : 12,5
Inteligence : 17
Dexterity : 10,5
Perception : 12
Agility : 11
Water element affinity : 10,5
Vitality : 10,5
Fire element affinity : 10,5
Energy : 10,5
With satisfaction he closed his eyes and dozed off.