Chapter 160: Sentry
{Excerpt from the article 'Peripeteia/Awakening' by Charlotte, Patron on Grief (Inevitable Pantheon), published by Avatari, the ****}
{If you're reading this article, then you must be looking for an explanation of events that might have happened to you or someone you saw. The event called Awakening or Peripeteia.
This event can happen when a person is in a life or death situation or by sheer luck in a normal situation. It mostly tends to happen in life and death situations, you'll understand why soon. During this Awakening the person gets insight into something he/she might have been struggling with, subconsciously or consciously. This insight usually leads to a breakthrough in power or some broken skill that seems like a cheat.
This caused many people to wonder why such events happened to them since it honestly is quite unnatural. After the Awakening you might notice that the person's attitude changes greatly compared to before the Awakening, this is what makes the process so unnatural; people change but the change is supposed to be gradual not sudden.
The theory on what causes Peripeteia was agreed on by Jade and Avatari. They concluded that it was a result of the races we evolved to and one of the effects of en-code.
From the race side, it is assumed to be an advanced form of Life Review. But this explanation doesn't fully account for the broken amount of power a person gets from an Awakening, it only explains why most people get it when they're about to die.
From the en-code side, it is assumed that the IP keeps en-code for these moments and spends all the accumulated en-code at a point to accelerate the process and gives a person profound insight that would normally require years of meditation and practice to get.
The full theory is that Awakenings are powered by en-code but can be caused by anything but is mostly caused by Life Reviews.
…
My Awakening involved me fighting a Rank 20 monster and a horde of other monsters when I was Rank 15. The Peripeteia happened partially due to my own influence. I use what most people call Bond Magic and for such types of advanced Magic, simply knowing science isn't enough, meditation is the most essential factor to unlocking more spells with such magic. But I always avoided meditation because it brought up a lot of trauma for me.
According to the theory all the en-code that was supposed to be used to accelerate the process had just been accumulating. When I was facing the monsters I had to meditate again and again to get insight for my spells to survive the assault. This caused me to get lots of insights in Blood Magic but throughout all this, my Awakening hadn't begun yet.
The Awakening only happened when I was on my last leg. Due to the recent enlightenments, I didn't really have to get in too much danger before I got enlightenment on what death was, hence Awakening. This enlightenment greatly changed my attitude toward death and brought my intelligence stat to the Transcendent rank straight from the High (low) rank.
The leap is big; I get it, that's why I call it a cheat. Do be warned though that after one Peripeteia event you don't get another. If the monster you're facing before you get it is still stronger than you after you got it, then you're fucked.
The Awakening will not always give you Transcendent stats; my dad for instance got Pinnacle stats from his own Awakening. This was because he already had enlightenments before so the amount of en-code stored up for his Awakening was way smaller than mine since I had always avoided meditation.
…}
<Author Note:
Peripeteia: A sudden change which results in a reversal of circumstances, also known as Turning Point.
Life Review: A phenomenon, widely reported as occurring during near-death experiences, in which a person rapidly sees much or the totality of their life history>
Jake stood in shock as he remembered the tree that just disappeared while his Aura manifestations dispersed. Most of his energy had gone so he couldn't try to create it again. He thought 'Was that my 5th Aura Manifestation?'
Jake had only been able to use a part of this manifestation to either increase his own perception of time or put his opponents in a temporary stasis. But now he had achieved the complete thing.
His IP said 'You have completed the quest'
[Reach Rank 15 – reward: a job promotion or change opportunity – status: complete]
'You can change to the Sentry (Hunter + Noble) job or promote to the Duke (Noble) job'
Jake ignored the notification and dashed toward the rendezvous point of Night City. After about 12 minutes of full speed dashing he got there and saw many huge monsters standing in front of the buildings in the rendezvous point. He sighed thinking 'I'm late again'.
His energy was too low due to the amount of times he had to regenerate and when he summoned the tree, he didn't want to imagine what could have happened to Charlotte since the monsters had gotten to their rendezvous point, which was outside of the territory of the King. Jake summoned his Bloodlust Dagger ready to stab the closest monster.
He successfully reached the monster and stabbed but no life was drained from the monster. Jake then realized that his IP hadn't informed him of anything about the monsters around him. He thought 'They're dead?'
A swarm of black bats flew from within a building, he kept his guard up as he didn't understand the situation; his IP was telling him that the approaching was a Rank 20 Original Vampire.
The swarm of bats swirled and condensed together to form the body of Charlotte, she had a warm smile as she sighed and said "You're alive" and hugged him. Jake was confused; he had gotten used to Charlotte's indifference so it was weird for him to see her so concerned; even before the apocalypse she never showed much concern for him.
He hugged her back and his puzzled expression morphed into a warm smile as he said "Sorry I was late. It's like I always miss important moments of your life". Charlotte replied "Its fine, you have important things to do. I get that". Jake chuckled and said "Now I feel even worse. You've grown so much in the few minutes I left you". Charlotte broke the hug, smiled and said "True".
Jake said "I don't remember the Ghoul Bats being black, they were red weren't they?" referring to the bats that killed her mother and almost killed them. The wings she used to fly came from the bats and so did the transformation she acquired while fighting the Azard.
Charlotte's expression became deep as she said "They are dead, same with mom, David and all these monsters. There is no point worrying about them anymore. Whether in love or in hate I will always have them in my heart".
Jake said "That's good, I'm glad you're no longer grieving". Charlotte shook her head and said "I'm always grieving but there are other things to live for". Jake was silent as the realization that he didn't really understand Charlotte dawned on him.
He said "We'll talk about that later. Has Kenny arrived? How did you kill the monsters? You're Rank 20 now, crazy!"Charlotte said "Kenny hasn't arrived. I killed the monsters with magic, see?" Charlotte pointed to one of the corpses and it turned toward her and placed its head on the ground in a bow. Charlotte continued even though Jake's jaw had dropped to the floor "You're Rank 20 also. I should be asking you the question since you were Rank 14 last time I saw you".
Jake regained himself again and said "Indeed I am. I don't really understand much about how I did it but I somehow killed a Rank 20 Homo Azard. Would you believe that? There was a Rank 20 Homo Azard and we didn't know it!"
Charlotte nodded and said "Yup. I'm going back to my room, I need to rest. The monsters ran away when I killed the Rank 20 Azard so you should look out for them".
Jake nodded and focused back on the notification of his IP. The IP repeated itself saying 'You have completed the quest'
[Reach Rank 15 – reward: a job promotion or change opportunity – status: complete]
'You can change to the Sentry (Hunter + Noble) job or promote to the Marquise (Noble) job'
Jake considered for a moment 'Being a Noble gave me two privileges. Noble's Territory, which allows me to monitor my territory and know who enters and exits. The second privilege is the Noble's Tax privilege which gives me an amount of en-code every 30 days depending on the amount and Rank of the people in my territory. 10 en-codes for each Rank 1 person, 20 for Rank 2, 30 for Rank 3s and so on. I could only get this from 1,400 people when I was Rank 14; 100 people per Rank.
Both were useful to me before but now they're not useful at all. Also being a Marquise is not it, I need something more versatile. The Sentry job is the one for me but I need more information. IP can you tell me more about the jobs?'
His IP replied 'Only the requirements that you met can be given'. Jake said 'Shoot'. His IP replied 'To get the Sentry job a Noble must abandon his territory and protect his subjects regardless from various sources of threats. The Noble must seek these threats instead of waiting for them to arrive. The Noble must reach Rank 15.
To get the Marquise job a Noble must have all his subjects must be above or at the expected Rank for his race (Human: Rank 6, Vampire: Rank 6). The Noble must reach Rank 15'
Jake thought 'It seems the Marquise job focuses on the quality of my people. But in a sense it seems like something I'm getting for an average performance. If I got everyone to Rank 7 I'm sure I would have gotten a crazy job… but that would be too hard to do. Anyways, I'm already biased towards the Sentry job so I'll take it now that there's nothing special about the Marquise job requirement. IP give me the Sentry job'.