A momentary silence descended upon the room.
"Wait, you are saying that I stole my own identity?" Alex was prepared that maybe, somehow, they figured out he was a black market awakened, but not this.
"Well, it certainly looks like that might be the case." Elio shrugged his shoulders. "We have no clue about you other than that you appeared out of nowhere after that kid disappeared. No family, no friends, no home address, quite convenient, if you ask me."
"Hold your horses, let me explain."
Driven into a corner, Alex began to explain his story in detail, only concealing the matter of the weird stone, his true talents, and the fact that he could use a 2-Star skill. He shifted facts a little, but he had to come clean about the time of his awakening, and the black market matter. After Alex had finally explained everything, a satisfied smirk appeared on Elio's face.
"And that's how I got you." Elio chuckled.
"What do you mean by that?" Alex asked in confusion.
"I knew you are who you are from the beginning. We did a genetic test, and it proved who you are. I just bluffed my way into you confessing."
Alex was frozen in his seat. The only thing he wanted right now was to go back twenty minutes in time and kick some sense into his own idiotic head.
"I actually didn't expect such a catch." Elio grinned. "Your story is not uncommon though, and I can offer you a way out."
Elio continued his speech.
"The punishment for black market involvement is actually pretty simple. Since it is hard to build a prison for people with supernatural abilities, it is either execution or forced military service as what basically is cannon fodder on the most dangerous battlefields. If you survive your term there, you could even join the military and progress through the ranks. If your achievements are substantial enough, you could even make a great career out of it. The problem is that 1-Star awakened face a 92% death rate on average. So, are you interested in what I have to offer?"
Elio smiled, but in Alex's mind, this smile had a sinister vibe to it.
"Say it already." Alex groaned.
"Alright then. You are not a bad person, from what I've gathered, and it is more about your circumstances than you being a nefarious element. Plus, I think your talent isn't bad, and it would be a waste to send you to the meat grinder. You will have to go there eventually, but I think it would be better if you had a chance to develop your abilities first, so you can actually be useful in defending humankind."
Elio made a small pause and looked at Alex, gauging his reaction before continuing.
"Even though you are a bit naive and inexperienced, I think you have a good head on your shoulders, and there is potential to develop. So for now I want you to train. Continue as you were. I will contact you later and you will do what I ask of you. And if you want to run, just know that Bureau can post a bounty on your head and have hunters on your ass within an hour. Before you ask, I am blackmailing you, but in your situation, you can't do anything about it, so, deal with it."
Alex left the office with a bitter taste in his mouth. He got a certification alright, but seemingly landed himself in quite a mess. This Elio character gave him chills, and the ambiguity of the whole thing was beginning to weigh heavily on his mind.
A quick taxi ride brought him back to the hotel. Alex ordered some food to his suite and sat down to think about what happened.
"Just my luck. At least my efforts are not wasted completely."
Even though he was technically caught, he was still off the hook even if temporarily. He really did what he could considering the circumstances, and while the result wasn't perfect, it was still better than to consign himself to the eternal life of a criminal.
"I need to get stronger. As fast as possible."
Alex fished the vitality crystals out of his backpack and began to absorb them right away. Maxing out the vitality stat would at least make him feel safer.
It took nineteen of them to finally bring his vitality to fifty. Which was a bit underwhelming meaning that his absorption rate was rather average, but he couldn't complain as he already was leagues apart from an ordinary awakened thanks to his [Attribute Consolidation] talent.
The good thing was that when he absorbed the first vitality crystal and the system finally recognized him as a 1-Star awakened, he got an intriguing notification that he got a talent point.
Alex never heard of such a thing before. He quickly opened up his status screen to investigate and sure enough, there was a new plus sign next to his talents.
He promptly pressed it and a new screen popped up right away.
Talent points: 1
[Attribute Consolidation]:
Your attributes are consolidated into new attributes. Strength, Endurance, and Agility are merged into a new Vitality attribute. Magic and Spirit are merged into a new Force attribute. Raising an attribute by one point will give the effect of raising its component attributes by one point each.
Next consolidation cost: 100 talent points
[EX-Grade Mana Cost Reduction]:
Active skill mana cost is reduced by 99.99%
Upgrade cost: 10000 talent points
[???]
Next talent cost: 1 talent point
"What the hell is this?!" Alex shouted out loud.
"This is big. Not even big, enormous! I can get more talents?!"
Such an ability trumped even getting an overpowered talent. As long as he found a way to get more talent points, he could just buy a new one! You can get skills, but getting a new talent was completely unheard of.
He pressed on the question mark, and a list of talents appeared. There were a lot of same question mark entries but on top of the list, there was an unlocked one.
[Skill Master]:
Simplifies and quantifies skill proficiency progression. Proficiency grants optimization of skill use, including an increase in power, and lower cost and cast time. Upgradeable.
Since it was the only option, Alex selected it right away and a new talent was added to his stat screen. Also his skill list changed up a bit.
[Alex]
[1-Star awakened]
[Talent: Attribute Consolidation, EX-Grade Mana Cost Reduction, Skill Master, ???](0%)
[Vitality:50]
[Force:7]
[Skills: Ice Razor - 17%(Inferior 2-Star, Variant-); Resistance - 4%(Inferior 1-Star); Spark - 1%(Inferior 1-Star)]
There now was a percentage next to his skills and talents. Numbers next to skills likely meant his proficiency level. As for the number next to the talents, Alex assumed it to be the progress to the next talent point.
He could barely contain his excitement. With this new revelation, thoughts of what he could achieve raced crazily through his mind. He took a deep breath to calm down a little and quickly used two magic crystals he had to push his Force to 13. With his stats as high as possible, it was time for a first dungeon delve.
He did quite a lot of research in his free time before he awakened. That's why he already had his sights on a dungeon he was going to clear first. Fire Valley.
The dungeons themselves were some kind of a separate space. There were a lot of experiments to determine the limits of the dungeons, the most famous one was in a dungeon that transported awakened to what seemed to be an island in an endless ocean. The team tried to traverse the waters, to find out if they were able to find more land and potentially contact a civilization that arose in a world full of magic and monsters since the knowledge of such a nation would undoubtedly far surpass what humankind knew. Such a contact could result in unprecedented growth for humanity, and even if they were hostile, humans would at least know of a potential danger. But no matter how much they tried to swim away from the island, it seemed that they always arrived back to its shore. Whether it was a non-euclidian space or simply an illusion was unknown.
Each dungeon loosely followed the same formula. You descend the floors until you find the boss and beat it. The monsters will progressively get stronger until you get to the boss room. Sometimes it would be waves instead of floors, but the core concepts were always similar. The longer the dungeon was not cleared, the more monsters it would contain, with density increasing as you descend the floors. If ignored for too long, the monsters would be able to exit the dungeons in large numbers, which was obviously a bad thing.
Alex left the hotel and swung by a trade center once again, buying two more magic crystals with his remaining money. Being almost five times more expensive than vitality ones, they could quickly burn a hole through your pocket, but having a couple more was a pretty good idea for what Alex was planning to do.