For 10 years past making Valerie my first follower, I had been preparing.
Everything I had been doing - one could summarize it all as preparing.
One of things I had been doing, as part of my preparations, was trying to understand the system, to the best of my abilities. After all, in some ways, the system controlled my life.
Without the system, I would have had no way to advance in Dark Arts, since the Arts had perished. There was obviously a chance that knowledge about them would have been present in some corner of the world but considering how long it could have taken to find it, provided it was present in the first place, it would have been a major inconvenience.
So, I had tried my damned hardest trying to study the system.
I had come to realize that the system never gave me any quests that had a time-limit on it.
And, these were the only four kinds of quests that I had been given by the system by that point:-
[Kill X number of Monsters]
[Kill X number of Inhumans]
[Make/form X undead soldiers]
[Earn X Amount Of Gold]
As boring as it may seem, these were the only type of quests I had been given. I had completed all of them, of course; but the rewards weren't much to be proud of either.
Every single quest had granted me some gold, and something else.
Most of the times, this 'something else' had been a little boost. Sometimes my physical strength had been increased, sometimes my speed had been increased, sometimes it had been my charisma.
When I looked at the system showing me those messages,
[Quest Reward No. 2: Slight Strength Increase]
[Quest Reward No. 2: Slight Speed Increase]
[Quest Reward No. 2: Slight Charisma Increase]
What can I say? It truly felt jarring to look at them. It felt too much like a game.
But, in any case, out of all the quests given to me that far, none had offered more or less than two rewards.
Another REALLY annoying thing about it all was the time-interval between these quests.
For the first 5 quests, the time-interval had been 2 days. They had been there for as long as I didn't complete them, but after completing one, it took 2 days for the next quest to appear.
For the next 5 quests, the time-interval increased to 2 weeks.
Then, for the next 10, it increased to 2 months. And then, for the next 4, it increased to 2 years.
So, all in all, I had completed 24 quests in those 10 years.
But then, a surprise had come, a surprise that went against all these observations.
[The God Path - Quest 25: "Kill a human" has arrived]
As soon as I had completed my 24th quest, that had appeared on the system's screen.
[This quest has one reward]
[This quest needs to be completed in the next 8 hours]
Unlike every quest before it, the 25th quest asked me to kill a human for the first time, appeared as soon as I finished the quest prior to it, offered only one reward and also had a time-limit.
As one would expect, I was intrigued.
And that's what was going on in my mind when I had come back to my house that day.
As soon as I came back, I entered my room, or tried to. The door was locked. I then heard from inside the room, the voice of a particular woman.
"V-Vilome?!"
It was Valerie. I wondered what she could be doing in my room. Knowing that woman, I didn't have very high expectations.
"Who else would it be? Now why are you in my room?"
"Oh, well, just wait a minute!" Instead of answering the question, she said so and soon came and opened the door.
"Shouldn't you be in the church?" I asked, suspicious that she might have snuck out. She had done that a few times in those 10 years she had been living with us.
Although she had always been able to come up with some believable excuses, it was still something that could attract unprecedented attention from the Royal Church.
"W-well, it won't cause any problems, so don't worry!"
That's what she had always told me. And surprisingly, that was true. It had never caused us any trouble.
"S-so, how was the ceremony?!" She asked, looking pretty nervous and trying to change the subject.
Though, if that was the best subject change she could bring up, I was disappointed.
"Are you genuinely asking that or do you just want me to kick you in the face?" I asked with a deadpan look.
"I-I guess it wasn't very fun then, huh?"
'Fun' was the exact word I'd define it with, in an upside-down world that is. I mean, my coming of age ceremony was pretty boring in the first place. But still, Yasmine's ceremony easily topped the rankings of my 'most boring events I have ever witnessed' list.
I then realized that her subject change might not have been that bad considering how it had drowned me in thought for a moment, albeit those thoughts being filled with negativity.
"Hah!" I sighed. But then my eyes fell on ... something peculiar.
"Valerie, why is my bed all messed up?" I asked.
She immediately jumped with a frightened expression and answered, "Well, I was in the middle of cleaning it up, you see?"
"Oh? And what is that 'thing' on the bed?" I asked as I pointed at it - the 'peculiar something' that had caught my eye.
Valerie, with a face full of fear, tried to give a smile and an excuse as she got away, running to the direction of the cupboard.
"You slut!" I yelled with irritation, but then saw Valerie colliding with the cupboard in her rush to get away.
She ended up making the cupboard fall over and fell over the fallen cupboard herself. Though, far more attention-grabbing than that was a boy, who had fallen out of the cupboard.
"Ouch! That is so NOT something I want to experience after fingering myself." She complained, also admitting her deeds.
But I was too focused on that boy to really listen.
I remembered that boy. He was somewhat talented and popular and had his coming of age ceremony on the same day as me.
My face darkened as I saw the opportunity before me.
"N-no, listen, Vilome, I can explan, alright-"
I killed him. It was pretty easy.
All I had to do was bring out one of my sword-weilding minions and tell him to kill him. It didn't even take a second to do that and then make him disappear, thanks to all the training I had been doing in Necromancy those past 10 years.
"Ew!" Valerie remarked, and asked while looking at his ID, "Vilome, this guy was a pretty talented lancer. You sure you made the right call by killing him?"
"All his talent would have been of no use to me because of how much he hates me. But now, since he's dead, I can turn him into my undead minion and make use of his skills."
I knew that he hated me because the darkness in his aura was easy to decipher. It was the darkness formed by the emotion of jealousy and it was pretty intense. Not that he was ever a threat but he was pretty noticable because of his envy towards me.
"So yes, slut, I made the right call!" I said, some of my annoyance at her returning as the sight of my bed entered my eyes when glancing back a little.
"Now, as your punishment," I said as I pointed to the corpse of the dead Jill Jake, "clean all of that up!"
Her shoulders drooped as she said, "As you wish, my god!"
And then, I was finally able to turn my attention to the screen that had popped up a while back.
[The God Path - Quest 25: "Kill a human" has been completed]
[Your quest reward has arrived]
As I read it, as per usual, the next window appeared. But then ... but then, as I looked at the window, I couldn't help but smirk.
[Quest Reward: Ascension - From "Base Realm" To "Advanced Realm"]
I was 15. In that world, that meant that I was an adult. My coming of age ceremony was over so I had also legally been registered as an adult.
Generally, this was the age where students of any Art ascended to the Advanced Realm. So, my progress was nothing to be much proud of.
That is what it would look like on the surface level.
To me, who had been preparing for that very thing for 10 years, that was a moment of pure bliss. It was so, because I knew that the time for all my preparations was gone, and the action was about to begin.
"Ha! Ha! Haha! Hahahahaha!!!" I couldn't help but laugh.
Valerie looked at me curiously and asked, "Something the matter, Vilome?"
"Yes, something IS the matter!" I said, with a big, evil grin throughout my face. "It's time to start my conquest!"
I said. And hearing that, her face lit up as well.
How could it not? We had been planning for this for so long, and it was finally about to happen.
The system showed me my status menu, with one additional thing at the bottom.
[Name: Vilome]
[Race: God]
[Age: Irrelevant]
[Specialization: Dark Arts]
[Realm: Base (Ascension Possible)]
[Progress Towards Next Realm: 100%]
[Quests Completed: 25]
[Authorities Acquired: Authority Of God]
[Weapons Mastered: 2]
[Ascension to next realm is possible. Would you liked to ascend right now?]
I looked at that menu, smirked and even though I didn't need to, I answered the system's question with a confident voice.
"Yes!"