"Ah, still pissed about it, huh?" Santa sighed.
"Of course, I am! Now, are you gonna tell me how you borrowed those points?" Jimmy asked.
"Hmm, well… I used my administrator position to borrow a loan of 100,000 stat points beforehand. Those stat points are the ones you would have got if you completed a set number of missions. So, now if you tried doing the tasks, the points will directly go into the loan repayment." Santa explained.
"Wait a minute. You didn't just borrow those points, you took a freaking loan?" Jimmy screamed.
"Basically, yea." Santa smiled.
Jimmy sighed. "By loan, you mean the one with a set interest rate?" He asked.
"Yup! The 70% stat points you'll receive from the helper system will suffice for the interest rate." Santa replied.
"Oh, man! How I hope you were present here with me, rather than being on that screen.!" Jimmy spoke.
"What? You wanna hug me or something?" Santa chuckled.
"Nah, I just wanna grab you by your beard and throw you around!" Jimmy spoke with fury in his eyes, however he quickly hid his anger. "You are the creator, aren't you? If you can do something like taking a loan from the system, that means you can retract that making my stats normal like before, right?" Jimmy asked.
Santa sighed. "Jimmy, I told you before. The system is a highly intelligent AI that I made hoping that I won't have to interfere in every twist and turns. Like, the Ai has the ability to eradicate the bugs on itself. The only thing I can do is to randomly give an action. However, I can't retract the same action, because the system won't let me." He replied.
"Why would you do something like that when you knew about it, huh?" Jimmy muttered. "Ha… By the way, why can't I level up then? That's not related to stat points, right?" He asked.
"Well, it kinda is. At least for the level one stage. You see, before you could level up, you should use about 100 stat points to your desired stat. This is so that the system could understand your preferred growth pattern before offering you a job at level 5." Santa explained.
"What about after level 1? Would I have to spend my stat points like that every time I wanna level up?" He asked.
"Nah, it's just for the first time. You can store the stat points and use it however you like after level one." Santa replied.
"Hmm, so what you're saying is that, if I had spent my 100 stat points from the mission before you took the loan, I could have freely leveled up and not suffered this restriction?" Jimmy asked.
"Yea, you're right. Should've done that back then, Jimmy…" Santa shook his head in disappointment.
"For Pete's sake! Who's the one who jumped the gun and did that shite before you even told the basics about the system to me?" Jimmy's nerves were about to pop out in anger. He had been on the edge ever since Santa came into his life for no reason. At one point, he felt like it would have been much less stressful if the guy never arrived to apologize… Or never got to read his letters in the first place.
"That would be me…" Santa replied, not daring to look Jimmy to his eyes.
"Hey, can I ask you something?" Piers, who had been silent for quite a while now, raised his hand.
"What is it, Piers?" Jimmy asked, calming himself for a moment.
"Ah, the question was for Santa." He awkwardly replied.
Jimmy sighed. "Of course it is! Ha, do whatever you want." He replied.
Piers turned his attention towards Santa and asked. "So, what's the point of leveling up if you can't raise your stats from it? Pretty pointless, isn't it?"
"Well, if you think about it like that, yea, it would be considered pointless. However, after every level up, the player… Jimmy, in this case, receives coins as reward. So, with that, he can buy stuff from Santa's exclusive shop! As I said before, there isn't any stuff in there right now, however I'm planning to bring something soon… Although Jimmy can rarely use the feature, I believe you can freely use it, Piers!" Santa gave out a thumbs up.
"Oh, I see… Leveling up is important as well…" Piers spoke.
"Damn it. Can't level up; can't use stat points; stuck with a useless stat which has all my stat points; can't use the shop… This is truly pathetic!" Jimmy cried. "You know what? I don't care about any of your plans. I don't give a damn about your missions. I'll do whatever I want. It's useless if I tried anyway. And Piers… I'm not gonna be of any help. You're gonna surpass me with a few missions anyway… So, just do whatever you want. Listen to the old man, if that's what you want. I'm not gonna listen to the crazy old man anyway!" Jimmy proclaimed as he exited the room.
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The rest of that day went pretty uneventfully. Jimmy distanced himself quite a bit. He wanted to get out of Piers' home, however Piers didn't allow him to unless he was fully healed. Piers tended to his injuries as well, while giving Jimmy a company. They didn't talk much. Although Jimmy occasionally wondered why no one was present in Piers' house other than the two of them, he didn't directly ask him since he felt as if it would be a bit uncomfortable to ask it.
The next day, although Christmas was like one day ago, they still had their classes; no rest for the weary! The only ones exempt from attempting the classes were the ones who already got their awakened license. They were already working members of the society with them helping out the superhuman cops in finding criminals, so they were treated with immense respect in schools. Like, their ability to use their awakened powers should be of great extent to get their license, so the school who had those sorts of kids thought of it as a really big deal, because that would mean that they have a genius in their school.
However, from Jimmy's personal experience, most of these geniuses were dirt bags secretly running the delinquent gangs like the one he was present in. However, no one looked into it deep enough for them to discover the truth. And even if they did, no one cared for some reason. Maybe the people thought that the delinquent gangs were beyond saving and are the scum of this planet…
Jimmy hated this concept though. Sure, he felt like they were the scum, but the so-called people who control them while acting like good guys and using them as the time seems fit are the absolute scum in his opinion. However, no one really cared about his opinion though. Anyway, he was relieved about one thing. He had actually cursed God thinking that he was the one who gave these sleazebags their powers. It seemed like there was still good in this world. So, it kinda made sense why God was against him being the tenth awakening being of fate in his mind. He thought it would be funny to see the so-called great guys' alignment once the holy war begins on this Earth. Although, he didn't really want to see that happen. He felt as if they already have a lot of internal conflicts. So, once the other two Earths fight in there, they are not really gonna have time to breathe.
Anyway, Jimmy had a lot of free time to think out stuff like this because he was suspended from school for a month, unlike Piers, who had no time as he was preparing for the forthcoming classes just a few hours before classes started.
"Jimmy, I'm gonna go! So, you stay here and do… something. Sorry! There aren't many things here that could possibly intrigue you." Piers bowed his head.
"Is that so? Then why not let me walk you to the school or something? I'll be bored if I sit here without doing anything." Jimmy sighed.
"Nah, that wouldn't be right. What would our classmates think if I'm to come to school with the guy who punched my face? Although I know that you've actually been saving me, they don't know that, right? They'd probably think that you threatened me to come with you or something. And the members of your delinquent gang won't like that as well and might end up beating you or something. So… No. We could do that some other day." Piers replied with a smile.
"Ha… That makes sense." Jimmy replied, slightly embarrassed about suggesting a walk to him. "Have fun in school! Now that I'm out for a month, you'd do pretty fine."
"Well, we'll see about that. Time to go then!" Piers replied as he exited the room, before coming back right away. "Hey, you know what? You can go to the X-mall and go do a part time job or something. They're desperate for helpers, after all. And you can maybe ask them to permanently give you the Santa suit as well, since it's your enchanted gear and all." Piers suggested.
"Hmm… I will do that then." Jimmy replied, thankful for the fact that he has something to do now.
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