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The farmers were able to fight off the first wave of monsters on their own, thinking they were little more than a new pest, but after the third day, they couldn’t help but notice their bodies were getting stronger and faster after the fights.
That was the byproduct of undirected essence allocation spreading evenly between their cores, but it was enough to freak the farmers and their families out. A normal sixty-year-old man shouldn’t be feeling like he did in his twenties after all and a twenty-year-old woman shouldn’t be beating her larger brothers in contest of strength after killing one of the new pests.
As the farmers started to flee their farms, Matt got his first pop-ups.
Each country he oversaw had two options in how to react to the news that their farmers were fleeing their fields as new enemies appeared.
The first option he had, which cost no Genesis Energy, was to have them react negatively, and force the farmer back to their fields, calling the monsters a simple nuisance.
He could only think of the bad path that option would lead them down, and really didn’t want to choose it.
The second option, which took about a quarter of a single worker ant’s Genesis Energy, was to have them mobilize their own smaller armies and try to figure out what was going on.
Matt spent the Genesis Energy to have all the vassal states under his control react appropriately, despite it costing a dozen ant kills worth when each country was accounted for.
They weren’t necessarily going to get more Genesis Energy out of this challenge than they put in if they went with the expensive options each time, but Matt felt that he needed to guide them early.
That would set the foundation for their later reactions, where he could hopefully take the cheaper options.
As all of the vassal states sent out an army or two, he watched and then spawned in a new wave of rifts closer to their major cities.
This time, there were casualties that he couldn’t prevent.
Some people refused to believe that the little monsters approaching them were dangerous and learned the hard way that even a Tier 1 monster that was only knee high was able to kill them with ease.
Caravans and outlying villages got hit the worst, and that hurt Matt on a personal level.
He knew that pain and wished it on no one. He felt for these simulated people and the upheaval that they were encountering. Their world was changing around them as forces they didn’t understand started to awaken.
Still, there were bright spots.
The interface showed him people who were advancing and pulling ahead of the pack.
A young woman from an outlying village near his initial rifts had been on a tryst with a lover when they were attacked.
She was the only survivor, and armed with only a rock, bludgeoned the two kobolds to death. She returned to her village and gathered them to find the monster’s lair, then exterminate them.
Except, they found the rift and didn’t know what to do.
Most of them were still Tier 0’s, having not killed any monsters to absorb their essence and advance, so only the woman he named Abby was able to see the distortion in space.
He was able to see her Talent which was a nifty feature of the simulation and was interested in its simplicity. Her Tier 1 was the ability to notice details. Simple but effective, it served her well in spotting the rift distortion.
Seeing the other villagers were debating to leave, he spent a tiny amount of Genesis Energy to set off another rift break…right in front of the villagers. It was something they couldn’t possibly miss.
That earned Abby the villagers trust, and as they killed the monsters, they too started to advance and step onto the path of cultivation. While modern technology allowed a single monster to awaken a dozen children, this simulation had nothing of the sort, and they each needed to personally land the killing blow for the essence contained.
Abby then demanded that they enter the rift to kill any of the monsters inside, but the villagers were squeamish of the unknown, and refused to enter.
Seeing that, Abby went in on her own.
Matt watched as she, now armed with a simple iron wrapped club, beat her way through the kobold rift. She was injured a number of times, and only just barely killed the final boss. Seeing that, Matt felt like he was back in his own first rift days. Looking back, he honestly didn’t know if he would be as good as her without his years of training and preparation.
Seeing her do so well, Matt spent some more Genesis Energy to adjust her rewards.
That was one thing he wished he could do in real life. As one of the controllers of the simulation, Matt could see and adjust the rewards each rift gave.
This rift, he changed the permanent rewards to give a variety of decent steel armor and weapons. It was a Tier 1 rift, so he couldn’t set the permanent rewards to drop skills, but he did spend a little for Abby’s first victory.
He gave her a healing potion, a Tier 5 longsword with a [Mana s***h] enchantment, and finally a [Fireball] skill shard.
The first was because he was afraid she was going to die before she got out of the rift. Guts and determination only could push a body so far before it failed. The sword was based on his own, and he was biased to that type of weapon, so she got a copy of his own sword at Tier 5.
Finally, the skill shard was to show them what they could do with cultivation.
Abby, who had just fought her way through three dozen kobolds, was exhausted and parched by the end of her ordeal, so she just drank the potion without question.
Matt had expected her to question the mysterious bottle of clear liquid, but she didn’t hesitate.
Seeing her wounds close up, she wept.
Now mostly healed and having collected the skill shard and weapon, she exited the rift like a conquering queen.
- Writer
