You have successfully completed the city-tier quest!

Calculating rewards based on performance…

Placement: 1st

Rewards:

20 Mutation Points

100 Attribute Points

Passive Skill Upgrade Token: A-Tier

You have completed a bonus objective!

Complete three city-tier quests (3/3)

You have unlocked a hidden achievement!

Hidden Achievement: Kingmaker (?)

Due to your direct actions, the first asphon country was formed, and with it, its first king was crowned.

Royal status detected, changing reward to be more fitting…

Reward:

Upgrading royal status to the next tier.

A country-tier hidden quest may be generated after evolving to tier eight.

I jolted awake and immediately got a face full of system screen. I didn't even have enough time to process, much less read it, before I got overwhelmed by noise. It quickly became apparent that I had just crossed the threshold to the waiting room, subsequently being healed to perfect health by the system. I absentmindedly thanked the two asphons who were responsible for dragging me over here, before being inundated by cheering. Ignoring the crowd outside that was going wild, the waiting room was in chaos too. I was swarmed by my fellow contestants, exclamations of joy, congratulations, and laughter adding to the constant noise.

I could tell by their hesitation that the only thing keeping them from throwing me into the air in celebration was the fact that I was incredibly poisonous on touch.

It took me a bit, but the overwhelming situation I found myself in directly after waking up got more manageable, and, giving the still-waiting system screen a glance, I decided to put it aside for now and ask the important question on my mind.

"What about Rollo?" I asked, worry evident in my voice. "Did he make it?"

"He did," the familiar voice of Nimma answered to my left. "We saw the system regenerate his whole body in the blink of an eye. That was an odd sight, let me tell you."

"I bet," I let out a relieved sigh, somewhat sad that I didn't get to see such a unique sight.

"Never mind that," Nimma replied, barely containing her happiness. "You won!"

"I… I did, didn't I?"

Reality slowly settled in. I had been too preoccupied with the thrill of the fight and my worry about Rollo, but I had actually done it. I managed to eke out a win! That reminded me of the system screen still waiting for me, no doubt handing out my rewards. I just turned to read it, excited to see what amazing rewards were in store for me for having won the tournament, when I once again got distracted, this time by the door to the waiting room crashing open, almost flying off its hinges due to the force.

"Gary!" An excited Lophan rushed in, the other participants parting to give him some space. "You did it! I can't believe you actually managed to defeat Rollo! Oh, this is absolutely amazing!"

He rushed up to me and was about to hug me before the rational part of his brain seemed to take over and he froze with his arms stretched out.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Right, probably shouldn't do that…" He said awkwardly, opting instead to present his hand for one of my non-mucus-covered tentacles to shake. "I can't thank you enough for what you've done. The system already confirmed the bet, and the whole settlement of Kurra was transferred over to me!"

"In fact, I have an announcement to make," Lophan stood up after shaking my tentacle, giving a meaningful look at the seven other asphons in the waiting room. "But I must ask you to not spread this information for now, it will officially announce this later today. Our settlement has been upgraded and has become the very first, system acknowledged, asphon country in our history."

A round of cheers erupted, some hugging happened, and there was a general air of happiness suffusing the room. I couldn't help but smile and join the celebrations for a bit, even though this wasn't nearly as big a deal for me as it was for them. For the first time in who knows how long, they had made a step forward in their long, arduous journey of being acknowledged by the system. While it was unknown for now, a system-sanctioned country could bring them all kinds of benefits that would help them move forward.

When it became apparent that the celebrations and excited chatter would continue for a while, I redirected my attention to the system screen begging for my attention. I almost couldn't believe what I was reading. At first glance, the rewards were incredibly simple, but they were anything but. Sure, the one hundred attribute points weren't anything to write home about at this point, but they'd still give me a bit of a boost. But the twenty mutation points were a welcome sight. Mutation points were harder to come by, and while I had some stockpiled, I really needed a few more to get the mutations I talked about with the expert.

Then there was the upgrade token.

I don't think I ever got a token like this before, that let me freely choose what I wanted to upgrade, it was usually the system deciding what I'd get upgraded as a reward. But a quick inspection of the token revealed that it would enable me to upgrade an A-tier passive skill to S-tier! Too excited to let such a fantastic reward just sit around, I immediately started looking at my eligible passives to figure out what my best choice would be.

I had a ton of passives at this point, but only a handful of them were A-tier. There were even a few I could rule out immediately, namely Void Synchronisation and Polonic Chance. Void Synchronisation was amazing in that it increased my VMP pool while making void spells cheaper. But at this point, I had a truly massive amount of VMP and I could easily increase it by investing more points into Wisdom, no need to waste a special token like this. Polonic Chance gave me access to the deadly poison debuff as well as a tiny chance to instantly kill anything that got poisoned by me.

While the deadly poison was nice, the instant kill effect usually made me mad due to it cutting short my battles, so on the off chance that it would occur more often I discarded it immediately.

Then there were the two poison passives, Fast Learner: Poison, and Poison Master. Upgrading the fast learner passive could bring some interesting advantages for my future poison spells and would allow me to focus more heavily on a type of magic I've honestly been neglecting a bit while upgrading poison master would let me stack even more instances of the poison debuff. Both were solid choices and I put them in the maybe pile.

Next was my "Increased Void Mana Regeneration" passive which, aside from being a mouthful, wasn't all that useful. And, again, could be improved simply by raising my wisdom attribute. And then, last, but most certainly not least, a passive that had been with me almost from the very start.

Improved Evolution Potential.

There was an argument to be made that I was only as strong as I was today due to this passive. I had no clue how my evolutions would have gone if I didn't have this skill, but I had the vague feeling that I would have never become a voidling at the very least. Sure, becoming a voidling brought with it some annoying issues, but there was no denying that I was vastly more powerful than anything at my tier should be.

I glanced at the other skills again, only to realize that there was only one correct choice to make here. Sure, I could gain some amazing stuff, but it all paled when compared to increasing my future potential. Especially since as of right now, I was completely ready to evolve. Evolutions always represented an incredible spike in strength, and this would improve my choices even further.

Not wasting any time, I locked in my choice.

Upgrade token: A-tier, used on: Improved Evolution Potential (A)

Improved Evolution Potential (A) → Elevated Evolution Potential (S)

Evolution potential will be further increased in all evolutions going forward.

I couldn't help but get excited for my next evolution, surely it would be something special. I then absentmindedly split the attribute points between Intelligence and Wisdom, as always, before redirecting my attention to the achievement. The way it was presented was a bit odd. Apparently, the reward for getting this achievement was supposed to be something else, but due to me being a royal voidling, it got changed? There was no telling what the system meant by "upgrading royal status to the next tier", but it probably wasn't something detrimental.

I couldn't find anything specific in my status, but I eventually spotted one sneaky change that had occurred. My skill, Void Pressure, had been upgraded from S to SS-tier. The skill had been largely useless so far, but supposedly I could now release even more pressure and voidlings would recognize my royal status even when I wasn't actively using it. There might have been more changes associated with the upgrade, but I didn't have a way to uncover them at the moment.

And then there was the cherry on top, the fact that I would be able to generate a country-tier quest. Considering that both the achievement and the quest were considered hidden, an affix I hadn't seen in a long while, the rewards would be amazing. There was no doubt about it, I was going to tackle the quest. But before that, I needed to evolve. I briefly considered spending my mutation points but ultimately decided to do so after the evolution, since evolving usually brought along its own set of mutations that I could potentially upgrade.

I was so absorbed in my own little world, that I'd completely forgotten about the elephant in the room. There was a celebration to be had, and Lophan was done giving me space, it would appear.

"Come on Gary, we need to celebrate!" Lophan was on all fours and his face was inches away from my eyes. I hadn't noticed him coming closer due to the system screen. "I'll get you all the food and drink you want! We'll organize a parade in your honor! And, oh, you WILL have to give a speech! What an amazing day! I need to organize! Linny! Linny where are you? We need to get things ready immediately!"

Lophan was a whirlwind of activity, constantly changing the object of his excitement. He eventually ran out the door in search of his secretary which he most likely abandoned the second I'd won. I watched him leave with some amusement, happy to see him happy. I couldn't help but look forward to getting my grubby little tentacles on some luxury food and was just about to link up with Nimma when Lophans words finally sank in.

"Wait… speech?" My stomach sank in horror. There was no way he actually… I bolted out the door chasing after the excited asphon. "Hey Lophan! Stop! You can't be serious! No speeches! You hear me? NO SPEECHES!!!"

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