The C.L.A.S.P. bar had leaped forward, which was what mattered.
A roar of triumph swept the Spriggans, snapping Reidar to attention. They were celebrating because of the amount of C.L.A.S.P. points they earned. They towered over his paltry sum.
The system recognized their contribution was low, very low, but the monsters they had just killed were many levels higher than theirs. In truth, Reidar began to understand that this trick was essentially an exploit.
Survivors at level 80 should have never been able to kill monsters at level 260. It was something impossible to imagine.
The System's logic was designed for a world without shepherds. It awarded massive C.L.A.S.P. gains for defeating threats far above a survivor's weight class; it was a brutal but fair evaluation.
If a Level 80 survivor somehow slew a Level 260 beast, the System registered that as an incredible feat of skill, opening the floodgates to boost their attributes.
But the Allied Worlds had never factored in a scenario like this that Reidar and the others were in, which should have been so rare as to be a myth.
The model was based on survivors struggling alone or in groups of similar strength. It never anticipated an external, high-level force like the Aegis Phalanx, or a summoner like Reidar, holding a monster down while lower-level survivors took part in the kill and got contribution.
The System wasn't naïve, of course. The 'battle contribution' metric was designed to prevent this exact kind of power-leveling by scaling down rewards for those who took part minimally, which would be the main case if something like that happened.
But this countermeasure had a critical flaw. It was designed to evaluate a single overwhelming fight. It had no protocol for someone who could repeatedly generate these high-level encounters, killing monsters in batches. That was also because doing that was just insane. A stupid way to get themselves killed.
While the raid members got a fraction of the C.L.A.S.P. from each kill, Reidar was going to make them gain hundreds of these, breaking the System's intended progression curve wide open.
He saw Matthias lowering his hands, a faint smile touching his lips as he saw that, for the first time, no one got injured and his intervention wasn't needed.
But it wasn't just the lack of injuries that left Matthias speechless; it was the staggering deluge of C.L.A.S.P. points everyone earned. In all their time surviving since the world ended, neither he nor anyone else in the Spriggans had ever seen such an explosive surge of experience. The notification logs scrolled incessantly; the System looked like it was struggling to reward them, as if they had no right to have gotten the kills.
Reidar turned his gaze toward his father, watching the new information solidify above his head.
—[Matthias Miller—Level 113]—
His father had jumped 10 full levels from this single fight alone.
A quick scan of the surrounding fighters confirmed the exploit had worked perfectly. The Spriggans stared at their interfaces with looks of stunned disbelief. The scene repeated for each single group member: some of them had gained 9 levels, others 10, and a few lucky individuals got 11 more levels.
<Good…>
Reidar went to his father. Matthias turned, the smile on his lips widening as he looked at his son.
"I'm happy, Reidar," he said, anticipating the question. He nodded. "This changes things. All this power... it will make it simpler to save your mother. It's not just the levels."
Matthias grinned. The sight dragged Reidar's memory to the delivery room, to Marcus's first cry. A feverish, consuming joy sharpened Matthias's face.
"The survival points... now I can finally afford the specialized skills I need. The ones that might actually wake her up. I will just need to choose some suitable perks… maybe get something new if I get to level 200, but… Oh… Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself."
Before Reidar could say anything, Seraphine joined them. She shook her head, her expression one of utter shock. "I still can't believe what just happened. That... shouldn't be possible."
Her eyes were literally piercing Reidar. "Lena and the boy, Jake. Their levels... it was because of this, wasn't it? This is how they got so strong so fast. It was all because of you!"
Reidar nodded. "It helped. But they played their part."
He paused. "When Lena and I found Jake, he was a lone kid hiding in a ruined apartment. He was strong for his age, sure, but he wouldn't have had this explosive growth without the C.L.A.S.P. from my kills. His trait is a cheat, maybe even more than mine, but he needed the resources to use it, and he needed the experience and the self-confidence that a kid his age couldn't possess."
"And Lena?" Seraphine asked. "I admit she is strong, but her trait just makes her good at finding monsters."
"Lena's trait gives her information and instincts," Reidar said. "It helped us hunt, but it didn't make her explosively lethal as it did for me or Jake." Reidar paused. "She was fairly strong on her own long before I met her, but that's due to her efforts."
However, Reidar cut short the discussion because he had other notifications to check.
"If you'll excuse me…"
Reidar made it clear he had something to do, or better to check, with his eyes alone. Of course, Seraphine and Matthias had their own checks to do, and there was time to talk later, so they nodded, and Reidar got some space from them.
He mentally opened his loot log, bypassing the crafting materials until he found the real prizes from a [Stormscale Skitterlord] kill.
The first was a skill he got thanks to his First Killer title. It didn't often trigger, but when it did, Reidar always got something useful. He inspected it immediately.