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Energy Eater - Chapter 103 - Refusal
🕑 Added 2025-04-12 15:57:26 +0000 UTC#### Author's Note ####
Sorry for the delayed chapter everyone. This was supossed to be posted yesterday but I was too tired for a final review. Expect another chapter by the end of the day!
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With a new party member possessing the System, we had to take some time reorganizing everything. More specifically, reorganizing our skills. I shared with him what Astrid and I were doing with {Memory Bank} and the Improvised Archer was more than happy to chip in. Which meant that now we had three people who could store possibly useful skills for us to use later on.
There was another benefit of his presence. Since he ended up leveling up so quickly, we didn't have a chance to get various skills for his class, meaning he had still a lot of memory slots. Six, to be exact. Two of them were being used by the new skills from his new class, one by his {True Shot} skill, one for {Memory Bank}, one for {Body Regeneration}, leaving a 6th slot open. And we were using that to organize our skills.
First, after a brief conversation similar to what Astrid and I already had previously, we agreed that everyone should have a specialty. For instance, Astrid could store all the endurance related skills that we found. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that we considered being good for specific situations and would still want to use in the future. I was going to keep the more survival-based ones, like {Firestarter} and predatory sense, including Astrid's {Frozen Resolve} which made whoever had that skill more resistant the more injured they became. And once Michael got his own set of skills that could help with general survivability and just day-to-day travel, they would also be stored in my {Memory Bank}.
In addition, I was also keeping {Quick Tier 1 Evolution} to share with anyone who we decided should have. Michael did ask about giving Genevieve that skill, but I said I wasn't comfortable with that idea. Again, I already didn't like the idea of giving any of them the System and having the entire Village have this way to speed up the process of getting stronger really didn't sit well with me. At least he understood my worry and didn't press on the idea of giving Genevieve {Quick Tier 1 Evolution} before she left early in the morning.
He also understood why we had the rule about each of us being responsible for whatever we do with the System. He knew that if it was up to me, or Astrid, we wouldn't have shared the System with Genevieve. But because of that rule, he was able to do that without any problems. While at the same time, he might not agree with our decision at one point and thanks to the rule, we could all simply move on with our lives without having to fight for that kind of thing.
Besides, like I had mentioned to him and Astrid sometime ago, this was just a stopgap measure. Something that would be important now but eventually wouldn't matter. In the future and hopefully, not far off future, everybody would have the System and everybody would be able to defend themselves against Eaters. But that wasn't something that would change in a day. Or two. As a matter of fact, it would likely take years before all the remaining humans had that kind of power and there will be a good number of people who would abuse those capabilities until then. But that was a problem for the future, not for right now.
Right now, there was one more pressing issue in our minds. Where were we going to sleep tonight? The day was long, mostly because we had to spend a lot of time together waiting around for the System to copy skills to one another. Thankfully, it didn't take long for us to find a broken-down house that had a couple of rooms still standing. And that would be enough for us to sleep.
I couldn't help but be in awe of the old world. The remains were pretty much everywhere. It was very hard to go a few hours without noticing some structure or something from the time before the Eaters. Yet, those creatures were still able to kill most of the humans that were alive back then.
Either way, we just found a decent spot and Astrid started using {Emerging Glacier} to create a protective ring around us so we could light a fire and eat something warm. Out here, in the middle of the woods, the temperature dropped considerably even though we were not supposed to be in winter.
Once we were properly set up Astrid, Michael and I divided the night shifts we were going to make. We asked if Pamela was willing to join but she was just confused about what we were actually asking for. And I wasn't willing to have someone who might not even understand why we were keeping watch to have that much responsibility. It felt like a surefire way for us to get attacked in the middle of the night.
Michael took the first shift, and I was getting ready to sleep when Pamela sat by my side and just kept staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I tried to ignore the woman but after 10 minutes, I gave up. Groaning while sitting back from my makeshift bed, still wrapped in the [Pelt of Frost], I turned to her.
"Are you going to keep staring at me for the whole night or are you going to just say what you want to say?"
"Why are you not giving me those powers?" Pamela asked. Any attempt at bothering me up or asking for it going out of the window.
"Why do you want this power?"
Pamela frowned. "What do you mean by that? Isn't it obvious? I want that power to protect myself. To avenge my sister. So I can survive."
"I know that. Yeah. And that's part of the problem. You're not saying you want this because you want to help people or want to help others survive. You want this because of you. You want to avenge your sister, you want to survive. If I were to give you these powers, I doubt you would ever use it to help anyone that wasn't yourself. That's why I'm not going to give this to you. I don't think you having those powers would bring any benefits to anyone, really."
"What about me? Is it not going to be a benefit to me?" Pamela protested.
"Well, I guess. I honestly doubt it. Even if you have these powers, I genuinely believe you will just wait for people to help you. You will probably end up either dying or giving it to someone who's going to cause more problems."
"Do you really think I'm that naive?"
I stared at her blankly before nodding. "Yes, I do. Not just that you're naive. But you're also really spoiled."
Pamela frowned, anger flaring up in her eyes. "If you think I'm that bad of a person, then why did you bring me here? Why didn't you just leave me back in the village?"
"Because I feel bad for you, okay? You were stuck in the place that your sister was killed with a bunch of people who are going to let her killers survive. I figured that if I was in your place, I would hate that, so I offered to bring you along. And don't worry, it didn't take long at all for me to regret that. But still, here we are."
"You did all this because you pity me? Who do you think you are?" Pamela stood up, fists curled up into balls.
Shaking my head, I let out a sigh, "I'm someone who has power and you don't. I'm someone who wasn't stuck in that village. And I'm helping you get out of there. So just stop complaining and let's continue our journey until we find a place for you to stay. Okay? You don't have to stay with us for any longer than you want to and frankly, neither do we have to be stuck with you for any longer that we want to. I already don't care about you anymore, but I do care about my word and I told you I would keep you safe. So yeah."
"What do you mean? You took me from the village. You're responsible for me now."
I let out a loud groan while rubbing my head, "No, I'm not. You are responsible for yourself. You were always responsible for yourself. And if you don't understand that, then I guess your sister really forgot about teaching you one very important lesson."
Pamela stared daggers at me once more and moved away, sitting in the opposite corner of the room. The look she gave me made me feel a bit bad. It really wasn't fair to blame her for that situation, since her sister's death was not her fault in the slightest. But at the same time, I couldn't bring myself to care enough about her to feel bad about this. The fact of the matter was Pamela was really annoying and asking about the powers over and over again was really not a good way to go about getting them.
Before I went back to sleep, or started sleeping actually, Michael gave me a stare clearly disapproving of the way I handled the situation. I just sighed and nodded, making it clear that I understood where he was coming from. But still, talking to her right now wasn't the best idea. I should wait for a while and maybe in the morning both of us would be less snippy at each other.
Yet, that wasn't the case. When morning came, Pamela made sure to be far away from me. She tried asking Astrid for the System, but the Frosted Lumberjack simply said no and refused to continue the conversation. Trying to ask the same of Michael, let to a similar result. It was clear that the man felt bad and if she pushed for long enough, I had no doubt she would eventually get the System, but he was still holding strong, not wanting to give her those powers. His only reason, or more specifically, her reason, that was an issue, was that she wanted to go back and kill Amelia. That was something the Improvised Archer could not accept and now that we were all aware of her plans, she didn't really have a way to go back on them and say that no she wasn't going to hurt anyone.
In the end, she accepted, or at least realized she wouldn't be able to convince any of us and just shut up for the rest of our trip. Which made things much easier, in a sense. The one issue I was having was the lack of monsters. Without them, there would be nothing to help us level up. And I was getting so close to tier two that I could almost taste it. Even if we were still sharing our particles so Michael would catch up, I was pretty positive I would reach level 20 before he was able to reach 16.
We continued traveling for another day after that and on the afternoon of the 2nd day, we reached our next destination. As we followed a large road crossing between two mountains, we finally saw in the distance a large set of ruins with buildings that towered over the very mountains themselves, hundreds if not thousands of ruined houses surrounded by craters of all shapes and sizes clearly revealing the intense battle that once took place in this land.
There were lakes surrounding the city and countless roads everywhere. The edges of the ruins were being taken over by the land. Slowly but surely, nature was reclaiming what belonged to it. But that wasn't true for everything. In the middle of the city, there were various places where the flora seemed to refuse to approach. Craters staying with black acre and buildings covered in a strange spider web like formation of blues and yellows.
And even from this distance, we could see some movement in the surrounding area. Far to the east, close to us, was what I was assuming to be a small village. A group of people could be seen walking around, each doing their own thing. And in the ruined city, there were signs of life. Movement of some sort of creature that I couldn't quite recognize. But it was clear that at least there weren't Eaters. After all, the area was too peaceful for one of those creatures to be around. Nevertheless, we had reached our destination. The great city of Spokane.
