Hero Regresses with Villain System-Chapter 32: Wrath
Adam watched as a red aura began to glow from the now dead goo, some sort of primordial horror that fed off the rage of others. He didn’t know much more about it, but he decided he didn’t really care.
All he cared about was the red aura his artifact, [The Mantle], was absorbing. At first he was wary of it, but because he couldn’t do anything to stop it and he felt himself become stronger by the second, Adam let his artifact and the aura do their thing.
After a few seconds, the entirety of the aura was absorbed and his arm showed a brand new status screen.
[The Mantle has absorbed its first sin, Wrath]
’Sin?’ Adam thought instinctively, even though he knew the system would tell him. It was quite useful.
[Unlocking new interface — Sins]
[First Penance applied]
–[ Sins ]–
- Assimilated: 1/7
- Base stat boosts: All quantum stats x2
– Corruption: 8%
–[ Wrath ]–
- Quantum Energy: +150
– Imaging: +30
– Efficiency: +30
– Kinetics: +60
– Shielding: +10
– Mech: +20
— Penance: Inheriting Fury — [You become far more nimble, moving 6 times faster and jumping 5 times higher when facing Kaiju. When facing other species, you move 2x faster and jump 1.5 times higher. Use this newfound speed to unleash your fury in a single, unstoppable burst.]
A few questions swirled in Adam’s mind, as the system wasn’t as helpful as he’d like. For starters, before it would always have a note section underneath new things, identifying exactly what they were.
For most of these new things, this lack of a note section was fine. He figured the Penance section related to that thing he had gotten by killing Thomas. Apparently, it was a bit more than that 5x stat boost. It was also this new passive that made him much, much faster.
Likewise, the base stat boost seemed self explanatory, and even if his idea that it doubled his stats was wrong he could just check his main system interface.
Assimilation was easy: apparently, the 7 Deadly Sins had some kind of tangible form. Wrath took the form of the eldritch horror, also known as the Mother of the Gentle Dark.
That left the most cryptic and alarming addition: corruption. It’s name was fairly self explanatory. There was a chance it led to something positive, but for now Adam’s theory was that the Sins would actively fight against him for control of [The Mantle].
The bigger problem that he couldn’t figure out was the percentage. Did he want it to be lower or higher? If the answer was higher, he should be fine. At least for now.
However, if it was lower...
’Hmm...’ Adam hummed, deep in thought.
After a few minutes of careful deliberation, he realized his only real option was to wait this out for a bit. He would closely monitor the corruption, but besides that there wasn’t much he could do.
In the end, he couldn’t be safe or scared to act. If he saw power, he had to embrace it.
Even though much of what he saw was simply an illusion made to anger him, there was plenty of truth in them too. The Kaiju were vicious, and even if one disregarded them there were the survivors to worry about.
It was unfortunate, but he wasn’t in the position to pick and choose power.
Therefore, he brought up his main system screen to see if there was anything else he missed. To his delight, there was.
[For overcoming the First Wilting Lady, the Mother of the Gentle Dark, the wielder of The Mantle now has a choice between 3 rewards]
[Reward 1: double your current Qi stats]
[Reward 2: double your current Quantum Energy stats]
[Reward 3: 10 quantum cores]
’Hmm...’ Adam considered his options carefully, though he almost instantly ruled out Qi.
It was simple math. Right now, Quantum stuff boosted his artifact, football, and wrath. Meanwhile, Qi only boosted himself.
However, he wondered if 10 quantum cores would be enough to offset the boost of doubling his current Quantum Energy stats.
He had 15 right now, and getting 10 more would get him halfway to upgrading his artifact another level. Last time he leveled up, he had gotten the new gadget [Lower Weapons].
Without such a boost, his arm would only be a... arm.
’That’s not the best way to think about this though.’ Adam realized as he thought it over a little more.
He was treating the opportunity cost of level 3 as the same for level 2. Basically, when he went from level 1 to 2 he didn’t have a single way to effectively fight with his arm. However, that wouldn’t be the case now.
Whereas he needed the jump from level 1 to 2 in order to even fight, the jump between level 2 and 3 would simply make him more capable. It was still a very powerful buff no doubt, but it wasn’t as necessary.
It would be like taking someone unarmed, giving them a pistol, and then upgrading the pistol to a machine gun. Sure, the machine gun was powerful. However, there could be other rewards that were even better, such as a bullet vest.
In this example, if he was someone unarmed with a bullet vest, that wouldn’t help much. He would be very likely to get shot down. However, if he had a pistol but was given a choice between a bullet vest and machine gun, it could make more chance to take the bullet vest.
And then, he could kill someone with a machine gun and take it for himself. Or, in terms of his own system, kill Exalted and Kaiju for Quantum Cores.
Nodding, Adam decided this course of action made the most sense. Maybe he was wrong and cores would be better, but he was confident that a huge stat boost would be good. It would even go with that new boost the sin gave.
Taking in a deep breath, Adam looked over the options one final time before shaking his head in affirmation. This was the right choice.
