Deadworld Isekai

After the laughter died down, Lucy turned to Matt with a serious expression, “Wait, did you gain any levels from that whole dust-up in the dungeon?”

One of the weird parts of Matt's Isekai life was that levels and stats didn't really matter that much. Unlike other protagonists who raised their stats to beat monsters and slay dragons, Matt didn't really use his stats. The only thing he used them for was walking around slightly quicker. If survivor’s combat gained a level, that was fantastic in a dungeon. On Gaia proper, all it meant was that he could stab the dirt a little better.

Eat Anything! had saved his life exactly once, and then he found a semi-reliable source of food. To Lucy’s great delight, he would still occasionally try eating some dirt to see if he could metabolize it in any meaningful way. So far, he had failed. In the wasteland, the skill probably made his food stretch a bit farther, but it did its work in the background.

The only skill that was consistently useful in the outside-the-dungeon world was survivor’s instincts, and even that was limited. Did it make him slightly better at digging holes? Surprisingly, yeah. Did it make him much, much better at setting up tents? Absolutely. But now that he had a reliable source of water and his food needs were covered for the immediate future, it wasn’t entirely vital either.

If he was having a standard Isekai adventure, he imagined there would be lots of places to use all of these things. Eat anything! would help him get by on less food and spend more on equipment, especially if he made friends with the rough-mannered but ultimately good-hearted blacksmith. Survivor’s combat would probably let him outwit guys picking fights at taverns, or something. But without any of that fantasy-world texture, it was easy to forget he had leveled at all.

Both he and Lucy had been motivated to get to the throne room area as fast as possible, and had their eyes peeled the whole time for possible system shenanigans. It was only now, after the token was used and Lucy had spent enough time laughing at the system, that she thought about Matt's leveling.

But he had leveled. Oh boy, had he leveled.

Matt Perison
Level 7 Survivor
Survivor Class XP: 8/80

HP: 85
MP: N/A
STAM: 45

Assignable Stat Points: 8
STR 7
DEX 15
PER 9
VIT 17
WIS 8
INT 6

Class Skills: Survivor’s Instincts (LV4), Survivor's Combat (LV4), Eat Anything (LV2)

During the aftermath of the first disastrous encounter with the moles, Matt had dumped both of his free stat points into VIT without a second thought. It didn’t bring back his foot or eye, but it had probably helped save his life. Now he had 8 more assignable points, all ready to be dumped into some useful stat.

Vitality’s growth had helped solve a little mystery. When Matt had got his 11th point in the stat, it hadn’t come with the boost to his stamina stat that he had come to expect. Now it appeared that his stamina had been on some kind of fast-track growth early on, gaining five points for every point of VIT. After ten points, it was half that, delivering five points every two new points in VIT.

Stamina was a bit of a mystery anyway; it was a resource that never drained, and appeared to only be indirectly related to what he thought of as “traditional” stamina. He could run further without getting winded, but the stat never decreased, even when he was absolutely gassed. It seemed that his improvements were more related to the grueling regime he had been through than anything else.

Matt supposed he’d learn more about it as he got more skills, if he ever did.

Survivor’s instincts and survivor’s combat were much less of a mystery. It appeared that one of the system’s unbreakable rules was that it had to provide information where information was due, and he could almost taste the salt as it did.

Survivor’s Instincts LV4

As you move out of the bare beginner stages of the skill, Survivor’s Instincts begins to shine. In addition to providing you with a sense of the skill and strength of your opponents, it begins to help you identify weak spots and vulnerabilities to exploit.

In addition, all Survivor’s Instincts functions now gain additional efficacy from PER and WIS.

Survivor’s Combat LV4

Survivor’s Combat continues to focus on broadly improving your combat efficiency, sacrificing expertise in any one area to give you broad competency over many different aspects of surviving conflicts.

At level 4, Survivor’s Combat begins to gain additional efficacy from DEX and PER, and is indirectly improved by STR.

Both of these sounded great. But he wouldn’t absolutely trust what the system was telling him until he had carefully tested each.

Overall, Matt had vaguely felt his senses function better from increased PER. Ditto for WIS, it didn't feel like he was making decisions that much better than before. The stats all felt a little finicky.

With DEX and VIT taking off all on their own, Matt decided to push all his secondary stats to 10. The last few points were then dumped into DEX and VIT to get nice, round numbers.

Matt Perison
Level 7 Survivor
Survivor Class XP: 8/80

HP: 90
MP: N/A
STAM: 50

STR 10
DEX 16
PER 10
VIT 18
WIS 10
INT 6

Class Skills: Survivor’s Instincts (LV4), Survivor's Combat (LV4), Eat Anything (LV2)

The sudden stat increase felt good. Not in the same way that the first stat increase had been, where Matt had almost broken his hand thinking he was a god. These were a minor increase. But a minor increase across so many metrics at once had a qualitatively different feel. He felt faster, and better able to use that speed. He felt stronger, but more in control of his strength. Perhaps more importantly, for the first time, he noticed a difference from his improved mental stat. He felt more confident about his traps, even though nothing had changed.

I’m growing.

It had been a long time coming. Matt imagined that in a normal Isekai scenario, he would have done dungeons more often, or maybe trained in some sort of academy, or at least spent time exploring the world. Technically, he was exploring the world right now, just not in an extremely enjoyable fashion.

In the stories he used to read, these first several levels might have been cleared out as an off-hand mention of how he spent his first couple months. Matt envied the overpowered heroes who didn’t have to barely survive every encounter and had instead skipped the basic, beginner level increases.

Matt took out his knife and tossed it hand to hand a few times, getting a feel for how it sat in his palm and how it felt to handle. Lucy watched as he worked his way through some test stabs and footwork, fighting invisible opponents to get a sense of how encounters with real enemies might now go. And they would go well, near as he could tell. Every movement felt better. If survivor’s instincts followed suit, he’d be in a much better situation moving forward.

“So? Is it better?”

“Yes. Definitely. I’m not making promises, but I don’t think the first Clownrats would be much of a problem for me now.”

—

While Matt had tested his new stats, Lucy had been going over her newly acquired guidance materials related to the new territory. The intricacies of system-enforced land-ownership were several novels long. On the positive side, they also offered the opportunity to work around the also-system-enforced restrictions on details behind Matt's authority.

“Okay, so, first. You are now the proud owner of an entire continent. Congratulations, Emperor Matt.”

“Right. I guess thanks?”

“Second, you only sort of own it. It’s yours on paper, but it’s a weak claim, and the part you actually could enforce any power over is much, much smaller.”

“How small? Are we talking a township, or?”

“I don’t actually know, but try thinking something like ‘show me where I could build a house’ or something along those lines.”

Matt did. Almost instantly, a blue haze appeared over the ground, radiating out from where they had activated the token. Over a fraction of a second, it spread out to a good-sized area - nothing huge, but probably about a third of an acre.

“Is that it? I was expecting… more.”

“Rome wasn't built in a day, Matt. This is just what you got from the token. As rare of a drop as it was, and as much as you had to do to get it, if it did much more than this, it would cause problems. But this is just the start, Matt. It’s just the beginning.” Lucy spread her arms out expansively towards the borders of the estate. “We are going to whip this thing into shape. So, now, try to open up something called the buildable menu.”

Matt did, and was immediately inundated with the biggest system window he had ever seen. By default, it seemed to be set to homes he might build, and there were thousands of them to choose from. But even though there was a “build now” button on each, every button had a red X over it, and didn’t respond to mental prodding.

“I can’t build any of these.”

“Well, no, not yet. That’s the hard work portion of this project. But you aren’t getting the whole picture yet, Matt. Bring up ‘Agriculture and Arboreal Projects.’”

Lucy apparently hadn’t been wasting her time reading up on all this. Buried far in the expansive list of tabs was a window that, when it popped up, was chock-full of plants. Beautiful, alien plants. Fruit trees. Vegetables. Wheat. Grasses. Everything he could possibly want was here, so long as he was satisfied with the native plants of Gaia. And he was. They looked delicious.

Holy shit. Holy shit. I can actually have a garden.

“Lucy, this is amazing. If this works, we can solve my long-term food problems. I can eat the fruit the trees grow, right? The alien food won’t poison me?”

“Nope, it should work just fine, especially with your system skill that lets you eat weird stuff. That’s not the big part, though. Look up ‘soil improvement’, then find ‘arable soil’.”

Matt did. It wasn’t a cheap upgrade, compared to individual plants. But it made sense that they’d need it, considering that the Gaian soil looked about as fertile as a stainless-steel table.

Arable Soil

Do you want to grow things? This soil is optimized for agriculture that goes beyond home hobbyist levels of growth. With the perfect generalized mixture of nutrients and an optimized composition, this soil will allow you to farm even the hardest-to-grow plants.

10% of effect applied over entire property when set as the leadership quality

1,000 credits per agricultural unit

“What’s this property leadership quality?”

Lucy almost looked smug as she responded, “So, you know how you're emperor over a vast nothingness? It turns out that comes with some perks. This arable soil description isn’t kidding - it’s some kind of Gaian supersoil. It will grow anything. And we can lend that quality to any place within the borders of your estate.” She leaned in, suddenly serious. “We can expand this property indefinitely, Matt. There’s nobody here to stop us.”

“Lucy, are you saying…”

“I won’t be sure until we actually get enough points to try it. But yeah. Given enough time, we can terraform this entire planet.”