Chapter 105: Enhancement Potential
Do you think he’s right?
Tulland hadn’t been ignoring his System, exactly. It had been laying back for a few days, not intruding much as Tulland worked on his farm, dealt with the necessary steps of getting established in a new safe zone, and became acquainted with new and potentially dangerous people. On the other end, Tulland had taken the opportunity to not always appear to be having a conversation with an imaginary friend.
Trust was a hard thing when it came to a being who had once tried to get him killed, and who by all accounts would still benefit from him going down. There weren’t a lot of chances to prove that the System wouldn’t do it again, especially since the further and further Tulland got, the more of a threat Tulland posed to the System.
Still, it hadn’t ever been in the habit of lying to Tulland outside of the first big run of dishonesty. Every single time he had come to the System for advice, it had come through. That was true, as long as The Infinite and the various rules governing systems of all kinds didn’t keep it from talking.
Tulland had settled into an uneasy compromise, one where he generally regarded the System’s advice as valid unless it was clearly suicidal.
About what? That you aren’t much of a fighter? Certainly.
Not that I’m not much of a fighter. Tulland decided to keep his dialogue internal for the time being, lest observers figure out he was carrying around unexpected System cargo in his brain. I know that. I’m asking if his plan to make me better is a good one. Today he just kept whaling on me. I didn’t learn a thing.
That’s probably not so. It’s hard to take a beating for an entire afternoon and not pick up any details on how it happened at all. You don’t remember how he was hitting you? It should still hurt in those spots.
Tulland rubbed his jaw. Every part of his body hurt which made it hard to glean any data from any particular place he had been punched. But some of the places hurt more, and as the overall injured state got more and more fixed by his regeneration, it was easier to pick out the hotspots where he had been hit a higher total amount of times.