The next morning, Benjamin woke up and stepped out of the capsule with a mixture of refreshment and back-pain, before making his way to the bathroom in order to wash up for the day. Once that was done, Benjamin walked to the kitchen to, once more, prepare breakfast for his family.
This time around it wasn't as complicated and time-consuming as the day before, since Benjamin simply used the bread he made yesterday to make some simple sunny-side-up on toast. Of course he only started that when his family actually woke up, so he spent some time simply playing around with the new gadgets that he was sent the day before, as well as watching the trailer a few more times to see if he could figure out any hints to where he should look for Xenia.
In the clips where she was seen, it was quite obvious that she was incredibly well-known in the magic city, where she seemed to somewhat 'live', so to speak. Not only did she introduce something as showy as magical fireworks to them, but she also seemed to have played a large role in defeating an enormous monstrosity with many other warriors. As such, it was hard to imagine her to be the kind of person that would just hide away somewhere without making herself known to anyone.
"That probably means I can just ask about her when we get there…" As Benjamin muttered this to himself while staring at the screen of his phone, his son Tony entered the kitchen.
"Mornin' Dad." He said as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat down at the kitchen counter next to his father, looking at the screen that he was currently staring at. "Ah, watching the trailer again?"
"Morning Tony! Yeah, I am. Jyuuk, the Monkey-Man with all the monsters around him in the trailer, and I are trying to find two originals that we haven't met in the game yet, Brody and Xenia. Jyuuk went looking for Brody in the wastelands and I'm on my way to look for Xenia. The trailer basically confirmed that we were looking for them at the right areas, so I'm trying to see where to look for Xenia once I get to the town she's in." Benjamin explained, before placing the phone to the side to turn to Tony, who looked at his father with a frown.
"Actually, I meant to talk to you about that trailer…" Tony said with a concerned expression, thinking back on a few of the later scenes of the trailer, "I know you would never do anything to someone who doesn't deserve it, but even then, I've only seen you that angry once, and I doubt someone could just tick you off like that very easily. What's going on, Dad?"
With a loud sigh, Benjamin nodded slowly. He knew that he shouldn't pretend to be completely fine when he was quite obviously not, but nonetheless… "Don't worry about that kind of thing right now, Tony. You've got your own troubles. I've got everything under control. In a few days, everything will be alright again."
While Tony was unhappy with that answer, he simply had to live with it for now. Benjamin seemed to be alright outwardly at the very least, so it couldn't be that bad, right? At the very least, that's what he himself thought. And it's not like he just lied either. Once he reached the magic city, he would go looking for the last of the three shards of the amulet and bring it back to Ailren's cave so that he could help Kirisho. That alone would probably lift a lot of Benjamin's recent stress.
And after that, if he could just somehow resolve the issues with the two elder CryTec siblings, then everything would be fine. He wouldn't be reminded of those bad times anymore, and he could get his life in order.
He wouldn't need to think about his wife, or those that wronged him and those dear to him. Then, he could finally move on and simply enjoy the second chance at a life that he received through Prime Industries.
"If you say so…" Tony sighed loudly, trying to show his father that he wasn't happy with this, but simply accepted his choice even then. Trying to get his son's mind off of that issue, Benjamin cracked his knuckles and stood up, starting to make breakfast.
"Cheer up, kiddo. Let's just have a relaxing Saturday. It's gonna get pretty busy around here from Monday on." Benjamin said with a bright smile as he began to fry some eggs for his son, who ended up lowly chuckling.
"Yeah, let's do that." Tony replied as he was engulfed in the nostalgic feeling of watching his father make breakfast for him.
---
"Aaah! Sean, no fair! I wanted to go first!" Katy yelled out angrily at her brother as she was shielding her face from the water droplets that were flung in her directions in response to Sean executing a perfect 10-point cannonball into the pond, or rather small lake, in Benjamin's garden. Quickly, the young girl sprinted after her brother along the pier, jumping into the water after him.
While those two were doing that, Benjamin, Tony and Benji were setting up deckchairs where they could relax a bit.
"Benji, could you grab that table over there?" Benjamin asked his grandson, who quickly nodded and ran over to the door, next to which he saw a small fold-up table, which he then grabbed and brought over to the chairs, while Benjamin was grabbing a large jar of ice-cold, refreshing, self-made lemonade and Tony carried over a cooler of filled with other refreshments, which consisted mostly of beer.
Once everything was set up, the three of them sat down and each grabbed a drink, while Rover was sitting underneath a small umbrella to keep the sun away so that it wouldn't completely mess up his electronics.
"Do you want me to keep an eye on the children, Benjamin?" The small robot sphere asked, and Benjamin quickly nodded. It was good to have some kind of secure setup, wasn't it?
"Please do that, Rover. Thanks."
"No problemo!" The small assistant replied happily as it turned back toward the pond, while Benjamin took out the phone-like gadget that arrived together with Rover. He had been messaging back and forth with Jyuuk for a while now, who was coming closer and closer to the wastelands himself, although it would still be a few in-game days away.
Jyuuk himself couldn't constantly be on the move like Benjamin could be, since Jyuuk didn't have anyone driving for him while he was offline, and considering that he had to work on weekdays, he could basically only play in two in-game day tacts. But even then, he made good progress through Tsurishika's incredible speed. It seemed like both Benjamin and Jyuuk would reach their destinations at roughly the same time.
And once both Xenia and Brody were convinced to join the guild that they wanted to found, Benjamin would work toward gaining the last two levels in order to reach the point where he could start the quest that would allow him to level up to level 100.
It seemed like that alone would take quite some time, considering that Jyuuk took a long time to finish his quest. Either way, it was something that Benjamin needed to do sooner or later, and gaining a new occupation-related skill would probably be quite helpful in the end as well!
Nonetheless, Benjamin still couldn't figure out what the hell his Soul Strength showed. And it seemed like Benji, the mathematically talented grandson, saw that his grandfather was having trouble with something.
"Everything alright, Gramps?" He asked as he looked over to Benjamin, who quickly raised his head.
"Mhm, I just can't figure something out right now, and it's really bugging me… maybe one of you two has an idea? Want to take a look?" The old man asked, and both Tony and Benji curiously moved over to take a look at the screen Benjamin was holding.
"You see, I got this new 'Stat', it's displayed as SS here, that stands for 'Soul Strength'. I can't increase that with those points I get after leveling up, apparently, and it's being 'calculated' from something in my status. I just don't know what it is being calculated from, and I'd like to know, so that I can at least estimate when I can properly use this."
After the old man explained this, both Tony and Benji were deep in thought, trying to figure out what it was. "What are those Rank and Levels there?" Benji asked curiously, and Benjamin began to explain.
"Ah, well… These here are my skills. To the very left is the name, in the center is the rank, and then the level. One the level reaches 100, it 'Ranks-up', meaning that the rank increases by one and the level is reset to 1 again. With every rank-up you usually gain a new ability related to that skill."
"Hmm… Could it be an average of that then?" Tony suggested after listening to that explanation, and Benjamin thought about it for a little while. "Maybe, yeah… Rover, can you calculate that here real quick? See every 'Rank' as a value of 100 and then every level as a value of 1, and-"
"Yup, it's that." Benji quickly interrupted, before Benjamin turned around in surprise.
"Oh? You managed to calculate it that quickly?" The old man asked with a grin, simply feeling proud of his grandson's intelligence.
"Mhm. As you said, every rank is a value of 100, every level is a value of 1, so that comes up to a total value of 5469, and divided by 27 as the amount of skills you have, that's 202.5." Benji said while quickly repeating his calculation to make sure he didn't make a mistake somewhere. "Yep, 202.5." He once more repeated, and Benjamin sighed loudly.
"Thanks Benji! Well, if that's the case, then I really need to increase my proficiency with my lower-ranked skills." The old man muttered to himself, making Benji quite curious.
"What do you need that Soul Strength stat for anyway? Is it super important or something?" He asked as he tilted his head every so slightly to the side while Benjamin packed away the phone-like tablet.
"Ah, lately I've come across something called 'Soul Stones', which are literally stones containing the soul of monsters. And using that, I made something that generates mana, you know what that is, right, Benji? Anyway, it generates mana, and with that, I gained the 'Soul Engineering' skill there. When it hit Rank 1, I got the ability to directly make things with souls, meaning that I can change the souls itself and edit them, and not the soul stones. But for that, my soul strength needs to be higher than the soul I want to work with." While Benjamin explained this, not only Benji, who was interested in fictional stories like that anyway, but also Tony were curiously listening to what the old man told them.
Once he was done, Tony sighed loudly, with a little bit of jealousy in his voice. "Can you really do anything in that game..?"
With a laugh, Benjamin softly hit his son's back. "Don't worry Tony, there's something called 'Enchanting' in the game that seems to deal with logical programming, or something of the sort, so I'm sure you'd be great at that if you started to play. Although I don't know to what extent you'd be allowed to do that if you start working there…"
"Huh, really? What's that 'Enchanting' like then?" Tony asked curiously, while Benji also leaned in even closer. After all, the latter of the two was also working toward a career in a programming-based job.
With a smile, Benjamin stood up and quickly made his way back to the house, where he grabbed a simple block of paper as well as a pen, and then sat back down next to his son and grandson in the garden, so that he could explain to them how enchanting worked.
