Marlin woke up the next day to some commotion. Through the telepathic bond he could feel the indignation and shame of Jerry, the aggravation and Outrage of Billy, and the combined snickering and pleasure of Barry and Gary for Jerry getting caught.
He got up to investigate. Turned out Jerry had the brilliant idea of slaughtering a domesticated boar. He was of the opinion the pantry was severely lacking in sausages and bacon.
Betty wasn’t too angry since Jerry in his almighty wisdom had picked the fattest of the bunch, slated to be butchered. But he had scared the other boars shitless and they had gone on a stampede through her crops. Which meant marlin as the responsible party had to help her. His gnolls after shown how were pretty decent at it using their nimble paws to dig em out root and all. The more Marlin was around them, the more they seemed like good doggies. Murderous thieving doggies but with him they certainly were good doggies.
Marlin, laughed diabolically at the looks of Horror, Jerry gave him after he told him no bacon or sausage for a week. He was on the floor begging and whimpering about dying.
”pleasssse! Massterss nots eatingss meats! Im goingss to die”! Jerry wailed.
Betty of course, the total softie had managed to reduce the sentence to a day. Jerry kissed Betty’s boots for her mercy.
Marlin was fine with it, he made it perfectly clear to Jerry if it wasn’t for Betty he would starve Jerry for a month if he had to. He made sure Barry and Gary got an extra helping of bacon and made sure Jerry had to watch.
Betty thought It needlessly cruel, Marlin knew better. Respect and discipline had to come first before you could give them an inch.
He had done that before and it had required excessive discipline bordering on torture to get it out. They were cute but Unlike Billy they had no moral compass whatsoever. They would be, what he molded them to be, left unchecked they would become feral, dangerous and a liability.
After everything was done he got to sparring with his dad, he flinched from a blow that his beaten arm couldn’t block properly and Bradford stopped the spar.
”you lost, didn’t you”? He said calmly.
”as a warrior, completely and the gap will increase. With my minions i can compensate the 1/10th xp gain to 1/3rd compared to my T’jut Friends, but I will keep falling further behind”. Marlin sighed.
“Im delighted you see them as friends, quite frankly i was afraid you would be a loner for life”. Bradford responded.
“However I don’t believe you will fall behind. Do you have any idea how insane it is, that you managed to gain 3k experience so far in your life? Especially considering how long it took you to get the lionsshare of that”? Bradford looked at his son, his face unreadable.
Marlin wanted to smile, and say thanks dad but he couldn’t, he felt the weight of the world press him down.
”your friends, when asked, will never admit this but they are scared shitless of your potential. Including Milly”.
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better dad, it’s good to hear that i guess” Marlin smirked.
”You think im joking do you”? Bradford had his professional ‘ready for war’ aura radiating out of him.
”you lack context as a traveler but aquiring experience at your rate should not be possible, if your mother would hear of it she would have a heart attack. you keep your own girl worried every day that you won’t come back”.
Marlin was taken aback. “She said that? I don’t get it, im not taking unnecessary risks”
Bradford pinched the bridge of his nose, and Marlin could hear a slight manic tone to his voice.
”you let full grown boars ram your shield and use the force of their charge to get flung out of the way so your minions can get to knifing and stabbing” Bradford looked at him face stern. “Kotak observed you for a couple of days”.
”ah i thought that was him that day, yea that boar leaned into my shield instead of a straight charge, i think he knew what i was going to do”.
Marlin continued.
“Its a combination that im trying. angle the shield and then use my axe to hook em, to use the momentum of their own charge to send them tumbling sideways by pulling and pushing their head into a sideway direction, it works here and there, but I still haven’t gotten it down just yet”. Marlin finished.
”Did you know that those three, Bron, Milly and Kotak started using your strategies just to keep up”?
Bradford continued.
“Travelers are known for this, I should know I traveled with a few of them myself. None were as vicious as you in their style of fighting, so ruthless and Reckless, and the way Kotak described it, your way of fighting seems to have no regard for self preservation”.
Marlin felt insulted by that last part. His anger mounting.
”All i do is take calculated risks! and use what i have”.
Bradford was about to blow up but Marlin continued.
He raised his shield arm. “3 months ago i would have slaughtered Bron and probably maimed Kotak for life. Now 3 months later, I perfectly, PERFECTLY! dad, block and parry Bron”. Marlin has a melancholy look
“Without the shield i would have lost the arm and he would have sliced into my heart from the sheer penetrating strength he has now, 3 fucking months is all it took him”.
Marlin dropped his axe and shield, and ran his hand through his hair.
“In a life or death situation, i would lose Billy and the three, just to get a remote chance of bringing Bron down. In 1 or 2 months? Not a chance, with my current rate il be a bit over halfway. By the time i reach lvl 2 he will be level 4 about a third his way into 5”.
Marlin breathed in deep. Bradford heard the deep frustration Marlin let out and held himself back to let his son go on.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“im not quitting, im gonna keep going and il drag myself up and stop feeling sorry for myself at some point”.
Marlin smirked. “Im a hopeless romantic when it comes right down to it”.
Bradford sighed. “You could try and let me be a dad for a change yknow? But it’s good to hear you are aware that you sound like a little bitch”.
”Ouch” Marlin smirked, “thanks for letting me vent a bit”.
”No problem, Marlin. You are wrong about one thing, XP gain isn’t linear like you seem to think and by your own admission your own xp gain can actually still improve”
Bradford paused and searched for the right words.
“A level means something, it’s added strength added security, that inevitably increases the risks you need to take in order to keep up the same amount of XP. At higher levels you need to take higher risks then at lower levels. The enemies you fight, will be experienced, powerful, with a whole slew of shit at their disposal. You heal pretty quickly now but i’ve had times where i needed a whole week to heal all the injuries. Not to mention the stamina and long term endurance drain. It takes a mental toll on you”.
“so while you can keep going and gain high amounts of xp your friends will inevitably slow down. Your friends seem to average 200-300 xp a month that will slow down to 150-250 starting at lvl 3. Same for you. except, remember the difference between you and them? You have 2 additional perks, that means you can ‘safely’ keep taking risks that they can’t, im estimating that by the time you hit lvl 2 they will barely got to lvl 4 but they would have to push like absolute maniacs and None of them have the hardy trait, and that is after the fact that Bron will have to retrain his entire way of fighting around mindless fury”.
Marlin Nodded thinking about Bradford’s words. Bradford wouldn’t delude you but his outlook was always positive in an infectious way, he needed that, lately his negative shit had started to get to him.
“So i want to ask you your Opinion on what I should do for my 2nd level”. Marlin asked.
Warrior’s Rush.
Flourish & exert 10.
double your movement speed for 2 seconds.
Intimidation expert
gain second mind with your intimidation efforts and gain access to expert level intimidation perks, Taunting roar, frightening roar, sheer confidence, Mocking laughter, ludicrous audacity.
Impending doom
while your rage is active you infuse your desire to kill within each blow. Each injury you inflict will be infected with this desire heightening someone’s fear of you. Each time you increase someones fear they will suffer a little bit of mental damage
Wild Lander stances
gain the juggernaut stance, you gain more fury as you fight and your attacks become more difficult to block requiring more effort from opponents to defend themselves
gain the Berserker Stance, you allow yourself to be reckless focusing on the offense, even if you defend, it will be as if you willfully take the blow.
after Marlin was done listing them Bradford took a moment to ponder what Marlin was thinking in regards to his strategy.
“Drop Warriors Rush and intimidation expert from your consideration Marlin”
Bradford spoke and continued. “I get you still think about that hunter that nearly had you but you have Billy, Rush is amazing but costly, im assuming you were thinking of Blazing soul next for the fury gain for exerting your stamina”? Bradford asked. Marlin nodded.
Blazing soul another discipline currently rather useless since it requires him to exert or burst his stamina to gain the effect, gave him half the stamina exerted in fury.
”Frenzy and Blazing soul is the only way to make Blazing soul worthwhile at least that’s the consensus of almost every warrior i spoke with” Bradford continued.
“The reason im telling you, to not bother with intimidation expert is because of how proficiency works its hidden but it’s well documented throughout history that it is tied to level. if you wish to make your taunts more effective, for you profound Manifestation will work so much better”.
profound Manifestation
gain +6 to your 7th attribute
”Not to mention what else it will do for you and if you are deadset on going the juggernaut route which im still not sure if you will, you can always take expert when you reach level 3 correct”?
After Bradford was done he looked at Marlin.
”im afraid of that choice” Marlin said.
Bradford chuckled. “You afraid? Since when”?
Marlin responded immediately “when it almost cost me Milly. My 7th attribute has so many unknowns to it. Unknowns that I have no control over. Sure the world throws unknowns at me but i can face that with my own strength, if i don’t know my own strength i won’t know where my limit lies”
Bradford raised an eyebrow.
”You know that in combination with the perks you get, that it will provide you with insane benefits in the short term. For you it could potentially mean 4 more gnolls. Or something else entirely” not to mention your strength increase. Including the benefits your current minions will gain. On that note im impressed, you run a tight ship with those three. They are well behaved, for gnolls”.
“Until they are hungry” Marlin smirked. Sniffing the bacon that was getting smoked atm.
Bradford rumbled a laugh.
”What about the other two disciplines i was thinking? The stances seem odd to me how can a stance do such things? And impending doom seems almost too good to be true i was wondering if there is some sort of caveat”
Braddord spoke with certainty “everything you gain from the system has something supernatural to it, you can mimic these stances but you will probably never understand the mindset required to use them. It’s molding your mind a certain way. And yes for you impending doom is as good as it sounds. Very few things are imune to fear in this world. Fear isn’t really the right word for what a warrior does. A warrior attacks someone’s instinct of Self preservation. Many times where a fear spell fails a warrior with his set of skills will succeed”.
”Really? What about Berserkers?”
“mindless frenzy the discipline they all get, throws all notion of self preservation out the window. Bron will suffer for a year or two to get his reflexes to work while he frenzies, You don’t see many Berserkers, not because they aren’t absolute bonkers but because the survival rate of new Berserkers is really bad. The T’jut are well aware of this and his tribe will have the proper training methods to deal with it”.
”yea he isn’t even a full fledged Berserker and that stupid frenzy throws me for a Loop most of our Spar’s im on the defensive the moment he pops it. One small risk and crack”
Marlin shivers.
”Biggest reason i don’t want to take it is that I really don’t know how it will affect my minions”,
”Whenever i Rage it affects them, not as much as myself but they seem to get some small benefit. Frenzy however seems to really mess with your faculties”
Bradford laughed. He laughed so hard.
”Rage is ten times worse than Frenzy! You have no idea how strong your control of rage is do you? Most Warriors that have rage can’t tell friends from foe, Frenzy is peanuts compared to that”
”Ow man! now im going to have to reconsider Frenzy i wanted to narrow my choices”.
”you still have a few months, don’t worry so much, from where im standing the 3 disciplines you are considering now, Impending doom, wildlander stances and perhaps profound manifestations will have much greater benefits for you when you get to level 2. Frenzy is nice but it needs to be built around”.
”thanks father”.
”i prefer dad if im honest”.
”sure dad”.