Quill did about 5 minutes of jogging before his body officially told him to stop and he had to switch to walking. Still felt too close to the crabs and sharks for comfort but everything hurt and since nothing seemed to be coming towards him that he was aware of, he needed to take it slow.

  He would have taken out a health potion to ease some of the pain and soreness he was currently in but he was running low on supplies and had no way of knowing when he'd get access to more.

  “Guess this trip is going to take a while huh?”

  “Or at least as long as I feel comfortable enough with jogging.” was his response while trying to do some light stretches, ignoring the cracked and split skin caused by the energy manifestation use. He really didn't like the pain but hopefully this would help him recover from the soreness. He was pretty sure the body stat helped with physical recovery anyways.

  While moving at this slow pace he decided to finally open his flashing system notification now that he was not In direct Danger.

  Pseudo energy manifestation skill has leveled up to lvl 7

  Dodge has leveled up to lvl 9

  Congratulations you have learned the skill running (Common)

  The most basic of basic skills. Children usually get this skill early on, as do most people. It would be pretty weird if it took an adult a few months to grab it

  Consume less stamina while running and increase speed. Scales with skill level.

  Why did he feel like the system prompt just backhanded him with that bit of text? Also, there was a skill for running? Seemed kind of unnecessary and lame, were there also skills for something like breathing?

  “Maybe for breathing underwater?”

  “Well that might actually be useful if someone's job or class involved being underwater a lot and they didn't have gills. The point is it seems like a weirdly unnecessary skill. But if they do have a skill for this perhaps they have a skill for something I might actually want… like, I don't know, shot in the dark here, AIMING!”

  He said that a little louder than he meant it too and quickly threw a glance behind him to ensure nothing heard and was now coming after him.

  “Are you still going on about that? Face it, you suck at aiming and likely won't ever get a skill for it. Isn't it more fun to fight in close combat anyways?”

  “No!” He took out the large crossbow he had gotten from that one crossbow shooting rat kin. There was no particular reason in doing so, he just wanted to get a better feel for it and maybe try doing some practice shots if he saw a potential target on these fields as he made his way back.

  Time progressed and it was getting close to evening based on the sun when he felt good enough to start jogging again. Only ever really stopping during that period to eat, drink, use the bathroom, and kill a couple of adolescent shark bullets that were just roaming around. Sadly he had to kill them with his energy manifestation as opposed to the crossbow since he missed even the point blank shots. But in his defense their movements were erratic and hard to predict so it had nothing to do with him being a lousy shot.

  By the time it reached night and the moon hung overhead, did he finally reach the pillar of light that was supposed to give him his “territory”. In hindsight it probably was lucky that nothing else came along to claim it while he was gone. Either that or there were still more shark bullets hanging around.

  With that in mind he made sure to take care when approaching said light pillar but thankfully he only got jumped a few times and all of them were quickly handled. Once he reached the pillar he didn't really know what to do exactly so, like any good scientist would do in his stead, he touched it.

  Would you like to claim this territory?

  Well that was surprisingly simple. He answered yes and the light pillar disappeared leaving nothing but darkness in its wake. He had kind of assumed there would be a little more fanfare but perhaps the flashing system notifications would give him something as he opened them.

  Congratulations! You have earned the achievement “Territory Owner”

  You now officially own territory within the system. not many can claim such a thing, take pride and defend it well

  You receive 1 free stat Point into body, mind and soul.

  Error! could not distribute stat point to Soul. redistributing evenly between body and mind

  Would you like to indicate to the people within your faction where your territory is?

  Note: this option is only available while the planet's Veil is still ongoing.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the territory part of your system!

  Would you like to name your new founded territory?

  Global message:

  Congratulations to Quill Grey for being the first person on this planet to claim a territory!

  There was a lot to take in from everything he had just read with there being one more system notification after the last one but he stopped reading after that because he was pissed!

  “Grey!!!” Before she had a chance to answer another system screen flashed in front of his face

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  Territory has been successfully named Grey

  “What!? no that's not what I-!! change the fucking name!”

  Name cannot be changed without the proper requirements

  “Son of a-Grey, will you just answer me!”

  “Yes dear?” she said while desperately holding back snickering

  “Why the hell is my last name your name???”

  “How am I supposed to know? Blame the system, not me. Though I will say you would have found out about this much sooner had you just looked at your system ranking when you signed up for it.”

  He quickly pulled up his system screen menu and found the part that had the rankings and sure enough his name was Quill Grey there too. Right at the number one spot with his level next to it. He did briefly note that the person at number two was some guy named Michael Anderson who was a level 26 but that hardly mattered at the moment and he would look through the list later.

  “So explain why my last name is grey?!”

  “Again, I had nothing to do with that. The system has just decided that Grey is my surname and then decided to give you said surname. Honestly, if the system wanted to butter me up it's doing a pretty damn good job. Just this means we're married, don't worry about throwing an expensive ceremony, it can just be the two of us. Though if you are interested in having one we can easily-”

  “Yeah, I'm going to stop you right there. We are not married, how does that even work if I'm trying to actively get rid of you.”

  “All marriages have their rough patches, it's kind of inevitable when you have all of eternity to spend together.”

  “System you better change my last name back to error at the very least! Better yet, change it back to whatever the hell it was beforehand!” he pulled up his status screen but it still said Grey and he felt a headache slowly coming on.

  “Face it, the system also thinks we're married. Life partners forever! I’d say till death do we part but there is no way I’d let something as mundane as death separate us. If it helps, I will say I wasn’t entirely sure if I liked Grey as a last name since I initially chose it to just be a temporary nickname. But it is starting to grow on me now.”

  He groaned in exasperation. He had originally just resigned himself to letting Error be his last name but if it was now going to be Grey…. He might just have to try and find his dad or mom and ask what his last name is supposed to be… Something he REALLY did not want to do.

  “No use fretting about it now. You're going to be stuck with the name for at least a little while, but it will probably grow on you just like it grew on me.”

  “Don't count on it.” he mumbled and looked back at his system notifications to see what the last one was. Perhaps it was some good news.

  You have received a timed quest!

  Buffalo Stampede!!!

  Time: 6 months and 2 days before the quest begins

  The faint rumblings of the earth make all critters flee! For a mass of raging beasts approach and there is nothing anyone can do. Not even you.

  Objective-Kill 60-70% at a minimum of the stampeding armored buffalo that will approach your territory at the end of the timer.

  Kill the armored buffalo herd leader

  Reward upon completion- Receive a free building for your territory.

  You automatically fail this quest if you die or fail to stop the stampede from reaching the center of your territory.

  Penalty for failure-Lose control over your territory.

  “Oh come on!! Could I please just have a break!!” He shouted out but of course was met with nothing and he groaned in frustration as he glared at the system screen, trying to fight a new sense of exhaustion that was trying to take hold.

  It wasn’t entirely clear but based on the context clues. It sounded like the armored buffalo would be coming back to this area of the plains and they would likely destroy anything he might have. How the hell was he even supposed to fight that many monsters???

  Quill rubbed his face as he pushed and suppressed the feeling of depression and hopelessness down. Just one foot in front of the other. Just one foot in front of the other. Focus on something different. Focus on something different.

  He diverted his attention to a different part of the system messages. It mentioned letting other people within his faction no where this claimed territory was. While he had no intention or meant to claim any faction. He was pretty sure Ssevinac and the rest of the rat kin were part of his unknown faction and they could definitely help with this upcoming quest. As if reading his mind a system prompt quickly appeared.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the faction part of your system menu!

  Name your faction?

  “Oh! Oh! Oh! Name your faction Grey!”

  “ I'm not going to name it Grey!”

  Faction name is now Grey

  “I said I'm not! NOT!!!” He shouted out into nothingness and got another system prompt

  You don't meet the requirements for changing your faction name

  “Kill me.” He fell down to the ground utterly dejected.

  “As I said before, the name will grow on you.” Grey responded not helping the matter at all.

  He chose to ignore her and accepted the system prompt that stated those within his faction will know where his territory was before actually taking a look at his faction.

  Inside was a list of names and that was about it. But as he scrolled through, it became pretty obvious that every name listed there belonged to the Rat Kin. This also confirmed his suspicion that all of them had the first letter of their name repeat a second time. It made him wonder if it was a cultural thing or not. It was the same for their last names too.

  He was about to close out of his faction tab when he spotted a name that wasn't like the rest. Someone named Venill Steelblood. Ignoring how cool the last name this person had, he didn’t know who this person was, much less how they became part of his faction.

  Didn’t you have to swear into the faction and know who the person was to do it? He suppose it was only Ssevinac who had asked to join his faction back in the tutorial and there wasn't even any swearing. Yet all of the rat kin from said tutorial seemed to be included regardless.

  He scratched his head and confusion but ultimately decided that it just wasn't worth fretting over a person he did not know even if they were technically part of his faction. Perhaps they would reveal themselves in time but until then he would just ignore them.

  “Probably for the best, I get bad vibes from this person. Can you kick them out of your faction right now?”

  “No idea, and I'm not going to bother looking right now. And before you say anything. You seem to have a bad vibe about everybody I have come across so your current bad Vibe isn't really much of a warning.”

  “It's not my fault that everybody you come across are horrible people, just because Ssevinac and others haven't betrayed you doesn't mean they won’t eventually.”

  “Uh-huh” He responded skeptically while closing his faction tab and opening up his territory system tab.

  He was instantly greeted by a map that seemed to be an overview of the landscape he was currently in. What he assumed was his territory had a green outline to it with the surrounding land being either blue, black or red.

  The territory itself expanded up to where the strip between the ocean and treeline of the e-grade zone was, and then an equal distance from where he was all around making a perfect circle.

  The surrounding land just outside his territory was blue but he did note that, while zooming out, which was apparently a thing he could do, there were two nearby red zones. One where the beach with all the crabs and sharks were, and the other where the out of place graveyard was. Both of these red zones he assumed meant hostility.

  He tried fiddling around with it for a bit and eventually got some more information. It seemed that in order to expand the territory he needed to increase the development, population and influence of the territory. The blue zones seemed to be neutral and thus territory could easily expand into it. Red zones seem to have hostility and needed to be “conquered” if he wanted to expand in that. The Black outline was only in the e-grade zone and the system told him that neither he nor his territory were strong enough to hold an E grade area.

  All in all it seemed fairly straightforward so now it was time for the ultimate question. Could he finally use his village ticket?