Damon's Ascension-Chapter 75: The Next Steps 2

For now, Damon could only supervise the next steps. Really though, it was only a matter of fulfilling duty; it wasn’t as if he was driven by some obsessive need to raise the standard of living for all of humanity by any means necessary.

He just did not want anyone to point fingers and call him lazy, especially on the galactic scale where his reputation as one of the greatest Prime Representatives was soaring day by day.

More than that was his growth, which was arguably more important than anything else.

More than 32 hours had passed, so it was time to ’Level Up’ once more!

Immediately, 2.560 units of Worldly Essence drained out of his pool of 11.760, and six minutes passed as his body underwent the upgrade before finally filling out, coalescing into a new stat point he could allocate.

And here the moment of truth came.

As Damon hovered over his choices, he could almost feel a presence looking over his shoulder, urging him to select Providence "as agreed." However, this very act of putting pressure made Damon all the more resistant, because with just 1 point in his Providence, he could have the Universe Will deliberately whisper into his ear like this.

To cut out the nonsense, his options here were simple. One was to please the Universe Will and allocate the point into Providence, which would yield benefits along the lines of severe nepotism in the short term but possible erosion of will in the long term.

The other was to offend the Universe Will and allocate as he pleased, which ran the risk of turning that very nepotism into antagonism, making every step he took harder than before. Nevertheless, this choice did have the benefit of him not risking losing control of his free will.

Ah, it seemed like in the end, when faced with any form of choice, a human being would always be forced to choose between something akin to freedom and something akin to safety.

For Damon, there was no need for deliberation. Nothing was more important to him than his ability to retain his own free will, his ability to choose without external influence, and his ability to think independently of any second consciousness.

Even the acquisition of power or even his continued existence fell short of this. Some might be happy to live as a puppet or stooge as long as they kept living, and Damon would not judge anyone, but he really would rather die than become such.

In the end, he invested his next stat point into Mentality once more, feeling his mental faculties soar linearly by a fold compared to before. If 1 point of Mentality could support up to 9 points in stats for the other fields — minus the first initial point of Mentality — then he could now support up to a sum of 18 points in Power, Mobility, and Fortitude.

Damon closed his eyes and savored the feeling of his brain becoming stronger, akin to taking a shot of caffeine after a good night’s sleep. Once done, he remembered an issue he had put on the back burner because of his focus on dealing with other matters.

Damon accessed his VQD — Vors Quantum Device — and contacted Ambrose immediately. The ever-idle Vampire Lord picked up straight away, his chiseled features akin to a European Duke appearing on the screen before Damon, bearing an expression of boredom.

"Mr. Hotshot Earth Prime Representative, is there anything interesting to do? I’ve been in orbit around your planet at your request, but it’s so goddamn boring," Ambrose complained immediately.

"You’re in luck, I’ll give you exclusive clearance to come down planet-side and experience human culture as a Vampire Ambassador later. For now, I have something else to share with you," Damon promised casually before getting down to the point.

Ambrose’s smile widened when he heard Damon’s promise, but it waned rapidly upon hearing about the implanted tumor placed inside the Earthling. The Vampire Lord’s expression became frighteningly cold by the end, and his words reflected that.

"As you have seen, my crew is racially diverse. This is because, according to Galactic Union law, any vessel acting as a discovery ship must have a crew staff chosen by the Galactic Union itself, handled by their internal operations," Ambrose explained slowly.

"Let me guess, to prevent negative racial influence during discovery?" Damon guessed with a raised eyebrow.

Ambrose nodded. "You humans have a saying: ’Those not of our own kind will have different hearts.’ If my crew were exclusively vampires, had you humans not been so exemplary, we might have tricked you into becoming our vassal race."

"But when the crew is mixed with so many races, it’s hard to come together to do such things because everyone has their own concerns. Still, that seems pointless given the fact that one was daring enough to pull such a stunt."

Ambrose snorted. "Send the tumor to me. I will record everything and upload it to the IUAS database for resolution."

Damon nodded and exchanged a few more words with Ambrose about his personal ’tourism’ permit before ending the call, his expression pensive. In the end, he decided to wait for the proper legal proceedings before taking the next steps on this matter.

[Name: Damon Arnan || Race: Homo Sapien (Pure) || Faction: None]

[POW: 2 || MOB: 3 || FOR: 2 || MEN: 3 || PRO: 1]

[Abilities: Probability Manipulation (EX), Avatar (EX), Devour (EX).]

Looking at his current stat spread, Damon really wished he could level up faster and enter the double digits and above for each stat, but the rules were the rules. There were special abilities that allowed their user to skip the waiting time or use less Worldly Essence, but he possessed none of those.

Frankly, with three EX abilities, he deserved to be struck down by the heavens for wanting access to those.

Anyway, it was about time for him to get back to the grind in Essence AR instances, and he was somewhat looking forward to the ’nightmare’ difficulty setting that the Universe Will was about to put him through.

Damon decided to go back to where he started, which was the Fort James instance. The true version was an escape from the fort in the dead of night with the other slaves, eliminating guards on the way out as silently as possible.

Damon’s nepo-baby version had been to negotiate a better deal for the future slaves.

What would the nightmare version be like?

Damon traveled to Jamestown — a district named after the fort — and arrived at the bustling Fort James area, which had seen much development. Real estate especially had soared crazily in this formerly undesirable area, with house prices going up to a million dollars per plot.

Damon arrived and entered the fort with ease due to his special privileges as the Prime Rep, avoiding the long queue. After all, Ghana had a population of 34 million people and only 3 instances within its borders, so everyone had to squeeze and share.

They were lucky that there was no limit to the total number of active instances at a time, allowing one to just walk in whenever they pleased. The reason the queue was this long was because there were simply too many people running and re-running the instances.

Damon entered and was whisked into an area that made him almost gag due to the filthy smell. He immediately saw moonlight seeping in between the cracks of where he was, allowing him to make out that he was likely within a ship at sea, specifically in the cargo bay.

The source of the smell was the numerous other desensitized and despairing Africans who were locked in here and tied up together in chains, waiting to cross the sea and reach unknown lands where they would be made to work like cows and horses till they died.

Damon lowered his eyes to glance at the instance details before him.

[Essence Augmented Reality (Earth) - Fort James Instance 1]

[Duration: 2 hours.]

[Details: You, a maggot who lost his birthright after defying your superiors, have been sold off with the first batch of slaves that are about to cross the Atlantic Ocean and open up centuries of trade in which your people are the commodity being sold.]

[Objective(s):

a. Escape bondage within the ship with the most minimal impact to the overall situation

b. Return to the shores of the Gold Coast intact.

c. Recover any key artifacts sold to the Europeans by locals.]

Damon raised an eyebrow and smiled. Truly, it was poetic, from an Obetse who always had lackeys to help him in reducing the difficulty of fulfilling his objectives to a ’maggot’ who was cast out.

Truly fitting given the situation.

And this difficulty...

Truly nightmarish. He was not only supposed to escape without alerting anyone nor killing anyone— as that was the way to have the most minimal impact—but also to return to the shore?

How was he supposed to achieve this, by swimming all the way there? He was not yet topside to see how far the coast was, but given how he could sense the ships swaying due to the waves, he could safely assume they were at least somewhat away from the continental shelf.

And he was supposed to return to the shore with key artifacts? Where was he supposed to put these key artifacts, up his hole? And then swim with them back to shore while remaining absolutely silent?

Ha.