“EVERYONE GATHER UP” DillyDally’s voice cuts through the buzzing chatter that surrounds me.
Please don’t begin with a joke about me or I will lose it…
“As you may have noticed, hell has broken loose. And we are the only ones in it right now…so let’s make the best of this time alone” He begins pacing back and forth, arms behind and his stance one of a commanding officer.
“But isn’t it dangerous?” Snorh raises his hand
“Well of course, hence why we will all form a squad together and survive through this.” He waits for more interruptions, but none come. “Look at your quests” Everyone opens them up “If you look at the blacksmithing quest, you will notice that the 10 armoursmithing slots have not been taken as of yet. Thus it is our mission to take those slots”
“But there are 13 of us” SirStripy quickly counts outloud.
“True, therefore Joat and Tikari will take 2 slots while-”
“DillyDally, I don’t want to do any armoursmithing” Tikari gives him a heads up.
What why waste a whole 100% like that!
“So the other 9 will be divided among us based on necessity” he continues without a problem.
“So who needs it more than another?” Yinroh asks rather perplexed.
“Everyone wishing to wear heavy armour, step forward”
The ripped Halfling, Gristle, SirStripy and the short human all stand forward.
“Those 4 will become armoursmiths. Now anyone who doesn’t have a standing party”
The alligator, Kandien and the Rooster-beastmen walk forward, as well as DillyDally himself.
“And the last one we do via a rochambo”
The antlered duo and Jerriah the giraffe-beastman rochambo it out.
“What about me?” A sniveling voice comes from a short distance away.
Turning round, we spot Rakshak…ahh, forgot about him...and about the other lot, who I have no idea where they are...whoever they are...
“What about you?” Wow, blunt much DillyDally?
“Well I save your asses so I should get some compensation”
“You already have” I blurt out, to which everyone looks at me. “You are given what you found in Tarakiel’s, and the next best things will be given to Snorh and Jerriah as compensation”
Rakshak opens his mouth then closes it, wiser than to disagree and have what is his taken away.
“Right, so now that is sorted. Squad Animal, we move out!” DillyDally snaps to the left and marches out along with the rest of us, everyone looking rather perplexed at DillyDally calling us Squad Animal…
A bit of a silly name, but I guess it could work??
We get to the field of blazes and everyone has the same wide-eyed expression as I had before.
“One rule, do not look at anyone else, for only through your own perseverance will you actually gain anything, you got that!”
“Sir yes sir” Some half-mockingly respond.
They all pick a blaze.
“Go on Squirrel” I give her a gentle push away. Go, I want to watch you try tackle these things.
She half-fearfully shuffles towards it, stopping halfway before turning back towards the village.
Dammit, she can’t have already thought of it?
Sure enough she returns a minute later with a bucket of water, and chucks it onto the blaze
*pshhh*
Phew, at least she’s around the same level as me. Would’ve put me to shame if she just grabbed the core then and then…
She picks up the broken shard…studying it.
Going straight for the next blaze, she sticks her hands in the head, then the stomach and finally the tail ball wincing loudly each time.
Though the blaze implodes and she holds a shard, with a shimmer of orange and yellow dancing within.
“Oh my god!” She exclaims at the new window, looking between us and the window in mild shock.
I notice a couple of the others look this way but DillyDally hisses at them to get to work.
I just wiggle my eyebrows in her direction while she bounds up to us.
“Thank you!” she gives a quick curtsy.
We just shrug our shoulders; it’s a normal stat so everyone should be getting it sometime soon anyways.
Oh, talking about that…do I have any, why yes I do.
Clicking on my flashing notifications box, I get piled with information:
Congratulations! Through suffering near death experienced multiple times within a concurrent period of time, you have relearned the exquisite Stat: Endurance
STAT:EndurancePoints in Endurance will lower all kinds of damage, increase stamina and will affect skills related to EnduranceDo you want to put this stat on one of your stat slotsYESNO
xp increases by 20%
Woohoo, I actually gained it back. Yup putting it in without a doubt.
Exquisite Stat: Endurance has been added to your stat slots. It has used up 1 stat slot. Endurance will stat at 10 due to hobgoblin race.
SKILL:Pain Tolerance, Beginner [lvl3] (Passive)Pain tolerance lowers the feeling of pain, without decreasing damage. However this decreases the chance of physical conditions on user which use pain as a limiter
-3% pain.
Endurance bonus: -10% pain
Ahh, 13% less pain, what a beautiful thing...but I THINK it's 13% of the usual 20% which is is less than 3% reduction overall (still awesome!).
I mean it’s a useful skill I believe, especially if it stops me passing out in important moments. I’d say leveling this up would be worth it.
Ok so 1 stat, 1 skill so far. Let’s see what else I got:
Congratulations! Through continuously putting your body into fire for sake of strengthening yourself, you have gained the skill: Fire resistance
[td4[Your body has grown ever so used to the flames. Thus they will not affect you as strongly as they would to anyone else.
-1% fire damage
Endurance bonus: -1% fire damage extra[/td4]
SKILL:Fire Resistance, Beginner [lvl1] (Passive)[/td2]
xp increases by 5%
Miniature benefits, but they’re benefits!!
So my work did pay off, totally worth the screaming!
Right more to go still:
Congratulations! Through continually learning to focus and gather small amounts of mana under your control, you have learnt the Stat: Mana
[tds]YES
STAT:ManaPoints in mana will give you a mana pool as well as the mana to fill it, along with small mana regeneration. Mana allows you to cast spells and will affect all mana related skills.Do you want to put this stat on one of your stat slots?NO
xp increases by 10%
…
..
.
Ehhh what?
Apparently Mana is a stat?!
Well that’s actually horrible! That’s an entire stat gone for mana (though if you’re a wizard being able to manually increase your mana is awesome)!
Ok, so add that to the list of just what is this game…
You failed to learn the spell due to lack of magical understanding
…
..
.
Huh? Wait I need magical understanding to gain spells!? But I also need mana to cast them…
Does that mean I don’t need mana to learn them??? I mean I need to cast them to learn them…unless I was learning from a book? Oh my, this sounds lucrative.
Anywho, so that means I was actually making the spell but it didn’t work because I don’t have magical understanding? What is that anyway…oh my.
Opening up my Intelligence, sure enough, it says increases magical understanding…aha!
So I do actually need intelligence if I want to use magic…hmm, a slight pain, but understandable.
Right so I’ll get to that once I’ve gone through the rest of my notifications.
Through repeated use of multiple senses in conjuction to find your enemy where one sense was not enough, you have gained the skill: Tracking
SKILL:Tracking, Beginner [lvl1] (Active)Upon activation: allows user to track one being through smell, sight and sound.
Bonuses/Penalties depend on senses and creature trying to be tracked.
You will know that you are tracking a creature.
Perception bonus: you know 50% more detail about the creature you are trackingCost: None, Duration: Sustained, Cooldown: 1 minute
xp increases by 5%
…
..
.
Ooooh! So I need to level this up if I want to gain any information from tracking them…but still what a cool skill!
Through retaining a practical speed while crawling, and learning best how to maneouver one's self while in such a position, you have gained the skill: Crawling
td4]Upon crawling: 1% movement speed when crawling (still a 99% penalty overall)
Agility bonus: 10% movement speed increase[/td4]
SKILL:Crawling, Beginner [lvl1] (Passive)
xp increases by 5%
Ok, guess that’s cool? IT'S A SKILL NONETHELESS!
Wow I’ve gained so much in this past while! I’m actually kind of happy.
And that’s all of them apparently. Sweet!
I must’ve been grinning like a fool because Squirrel is looking at me funny, not watching the others play with fire.
“So, what did you get?”
“You’ll see…DillyDally, I’m going to train Squirrel ok?”
“What are you planning?”
“Well I was thinking that we need some way to find the cores without hurting ourselves first”
“Ah…Sure, go ahead, I’ll make sure these lot train up. Any idea how long you’ll be?”
“Maybe a few hours” He nods. “Squirrel, come with me, we have work to do!”
She follows after me, looking rather perplexed.
“Are you going to teach me magic?”
“Ding ding ding” Smart woman. “Well to be honest I don’t know any myself but the system has hinted that I can learn it”
“Uhuh…so what are you teaching me?”
“Mana eyes or something of the like”
She raises an eyebrow, she understand I think, just a bit confused as to how we're going to do it probably.
Sitting down crosslegged, I have her sit opposite me.
“Ok, so first things first, you want to gain the Mana stat”
“Excuse me what?”
“I know, odd isn’t it?”
“Cool more like!” Oh so she IS a mage wannabe then? I suppose so with the sparkling of her eyes.
“Right…so to get Mana, it’s like meditation in a way, feel the power rising kind of thing”
“Great explanation” She smirks sarcastically.
“Hey” I huff and she gets down to work.
While she does that I add the intelligence stat…because I can just die and get rid of that later (with some problem getting it back but I’ll worry about that later).
Stat: Intelligence has been added to your stat slots. It has used up 1 stat slot. Intelligence will stat at 5 due to hobgoblin race.
Increases magic damage by 5, cannot read magical books. Can learn 5 beginner spells.
...
..
.
Whaaat? No wonder I didn’t get a skill as usually comes with the learning of a stat…
I’m a dumb hobgoblin…no wonder it’s so low.
“Um Squirrel” I watch her open her nutty brown eyes looking rather relaxed.
“What happened?” The relaxation on her face slides off into worry.
“What is your Intelligence?”
“Well I am a very intelligent woman if you are asking”
“Your in-game intelligence” I give her please don’t play around look.
“5” She gives a small grin
Ok, so my intelligence is normal.
DillyDally, what is your intelligence?
10 why you ask?
10? Oh no, that means my stat is a hell of a lot worse than his!
Ah, mine is only 5…must be a racial thing
Wow, sucks for you
I swear he’s chuckling on the other side.
“Ok, so continue with your mana learning”
She closes her eyes and goes back to quietly humming.
Hmm, so like with Brutality the stat beginning is quite different to others, but unlike Brutality, I didn’t get a skill.
So there’s some stats that I shouldn’t be taking due to my race…interesting to know.
And with that theory, I should have a low mana stat too…
This sucks!
Well I think I might put some points into Intelligence, simply because it should allow me to read magical books, which all in all will be useful. I mean why wouldn’t you want to learn magic…
You are about to add 1 to the Intelligence Stat. This will cost 5 Stat Points
…
..
.
“WHAAAT?”
“…huuu…Boss I’m trying to concentrate here” Squirrel sighs and looks rather unamused.
“It costs me 5 points to add 1 to intelligence…” I can’t believe it…that’s just insane.
“Wait how didn’t you know about that already?”
“About what?” Wait people knew about this?
“The whole stat point system…wow…you seriously going random right now?”
“I thought everyone was?”
“A decent amount of them. But a few have already begun spending…reckless but then again if that’s how they want it then fine”
“Wait so what is this stat point system?”
“Well this is where races come in to play. I know you understand the whol racial skills as well as racial stats…but races also affect your stat growth”
Continue…
“It seems to go in a 1 to 5 system; the stats that are most racial to you cost 1:1 where those which your race should not have under any orthodox circumstances, will cost 5:1”
Checking that, I try to add a point to Brutality, and sure enough it says it’ll only cost one point
…
..
.
So that’s how the utter chaos of whatever race whatever class will be mostly stopped (apart from the really unorthodox people): Since I’m not good with intelligence, no one would ever expect me to be a mage, mostly since my stat growth would be nothing compared to someone who has a 1:1 intelligence growth…how horrible!
Though I’m sure there’s more to this.
As if on cue… “Now you’ve probably wondered why the races were split in the three categories; Normal, Beastmen and Monsters? Well that’s because they’ll all have similar types of stat growth”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
What does that mean?
“What I mean is Monster races will have the most exaggerated stat growths; so some will grow easily while some will be extremely difficult to grow. Normal races will have smaller benefits but also smaller penalties, and fewer too. An example would be that a few stats would cost 2 while some others cost 4. Now Beastman races are the same as Normal, but they have the penalties and bonuses of both their races, which may cancel eachother out or boost them”
“…So what you’re saying is that the normal stat growth is 3, and as a monster my stat growths should be 1, 3 and 5? Where as yours would be 2,3,4?”
“Almost, as a Beastman race, when I can be half something else than human it’s possible to get the whole 1 to 5 range depending on what’s chosen”
“So shouldn’t that just give Beastman huge advantages?”
“It should in theory, but then again we haven’t unlocked any of the other races so it could be pretty balanced”
Huh, interesting…very interesting.
So due to being a hobgoblin, it means I should be going through a certain route, not magic…Dammit.
“So what is your intelligence stat growth?”
“4 which is poor, but if I pair it with my 2 points in agility, every two levels that’s’ 2 Intelligence and 1 agility…I’d say that’s an average growth”
She’s been thinking about this for quite a while then it seems. According to her then, I could gain any combination of stats each level, maybe 5 brutality or 1 intelligence…which is pretty poor.
I'm suddenly appreciating those free stat increase I got with my title...it's a godsend those things...I need more titles...
Human seems like a pretty good option now…since it probably has no bonuses or penalties making them easier to become whatever.
Ok, well let’s not play around with precious points right now; let’s try to learn some magic.
Squirrel seems to be already getting back into it.
I stand up and take out a blaze that’s coming too close, taking out the still active shard.
Ooh, let’s see how many I can get.
Leaving her to it, I go around taking out 14 blazes before she calls me over.
“I got it!”
“Sweet” Mana isn’t that hard to get really…a good 10% xp.
“Alright, so these mana eyes, how are we going to do it?”
“Well…” Hmm, not sure she’d appreciate this…
Sitting down opposite her once again, I place an active shard in the charred ground between us.
“You may want to close your eyes”
She doesn’t even question it.
Ripping out an eyeball AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
…
..
.
Ok pains dulled down a bit.
I place a hand in front of my eye socket.
“Squirrel, you can open your eyes now”
“…You should’ve told me to block my ears too” Whoops…well I tried to spare you, tried…
“So I’m going to try make an eye, or well a sphere to see this, while you’re going to try putting a layer of mana over your eye. Just to see which works...”
“Uhuh” She looks at me worriedly “How are you not passing out?”
“I’ve been through worse” I give her a grin, while wiping some stray blood off my cheek.
“If I didn’t know better I’d call you insane”
“Gee thanks”
“No problem Boss” She gives me a light smile before staring at the shard blankly.
Right onto my own work…Though this means I might have to add mana.
Ah screw it. Might as well.
Stat: Mana has been added to your stat slots. It has used up 1 stat slot. Mana will stat at 5 due to hobgoblin race.
Mana ppol is 50, mana regen is 0.5/s
Well that sucks. 50 mana with a 0.5 second regen, and that's two new additions to my ever growing character sheet...
At least I can cast spells now (if I ever get any)…
Slowly taking mana towards my eye, I note the new blue bar beneath my red health bar, decrease steadily.
The mana is in my eye and I make a rough sphere.
I see the blue bar stop draining and my mini mana sphere pops out of existence.
You have failed to learn this spell because your magical understanding is too low
…
..
.
Well time to throw that plan out of the window, along with my hopes and dreams…
“Well that sucks” Squirrel says and I look over, seeing her look rather down.
“Not enough magical understanding?”
She nods.
Well now what.
“You guys could learn detect magic” A sniveling voice comes from closeby.
Ah, sneaky blighter looking in…wasn’t he supposed to be with DillyDally.
“I didn’t want to be part of ‘Squad Animal’” He reads my thoughts. “So I thought to come check up on you two. Seems like you need help with magic”
And you want to get some too.
He is seriously reading my mind “I can’t get any myself due to being a goblin…obviously, but the stats are still worth xp. A fair trade no?” He’s just like a goblin! Ironic how that is…
“Sure. So how does this detect magic work?”
“Well you have to shoot out a light concentration of mana from your hand, which should tell you who’s using magic but not damaging them”
Alright? Don’t get it…
“Ok, put out your hand like this” He holds out his hand, palm facing forward. We copy him “Now imagine your mana flowing out of the hand in a cone shape”
Right, imagine mana coming out…
I do feel it going through my arm and out my hand.
“Now direct it towards the shard” He points towards it and I do.
Suddenly it pulsates blue and cracks.
Oh my.
I got so distracted I actually dissipated the spell.
“You see, when magic touches magic, it will create a slightly visible effect. In most game’s cases it makes it glow slightly blue, did it?”
Oh so he didn’t see it? Cool game thing!
“Yep”
“Perfect. Now the spell is essentially that, but as your may notice, you’ve destroyed the shard”
Yep…not good.
“The mana needs to be more spread out, so that you can detect them without it being felt by them”
Not that it matters to me but I guess it’s useful in a sense to not have people know you’re trying to detect them.
Plus if it’s a magical trap…don’t want to set it off I guess...
I tell him quick instructions on how to get mana while both me and Squirrel go a distance apart, trying on our multiple shards.
…
Quite a while passes…maybe 3 hours, and I think I’ve finally starting to get the hang of it (I know, but if i get distracted then I lose everything and have to wait for that horrifying regeneration..):
The spell requires me to send out extremely thin and non-concentrated mana so that it A: doesn’t hurt them or make them notice, and B: allows it to get through physical objects.
Part B I’m off to learn right now.
…
Ok…I’ve spent 6 hours on this and I hope to Aiag this is the last try.
Since we destroyed all the shards, we finally had to practice on the Blazes instead.
Firstly, I learnt to not damage them pretty quickly…since that aggroed them…which wasn’t good.
Secondly, I learnt to not focus on them, because that naturally increased the concentration, which damaged them, which wasn’t good.
Now thirdly, due to them being balls of fire, I actually needed to make my mana concentration so thin that it could diffuse through the fire and touch the shard.
That one took forever for me to realise why I wasn't getting any results...
Only took hell of a lot of tries.
At least on the bright side, it glows through the fire, making it just barely visible to me.
*Ding*
Congratulations! Through repeated practice, thought and experimentation, you ahve learnt your first spell: Detect Magic
SPELL:Detect Magic, Beginner [lvl1] (Divination)Detect Magic is most usually the first spell learnt by all magic casters due to its lack of somatic requirements as well as its simple castingDetect Magic will highlight magical objects in a 10ft coneCost: 5 mana/s, Duration: Sustained, Cooldown: None
This spell has taken up one of your daily slots.
xp increases by 1%
…
..
.
WOHOO I CAN CAST SPELLS!! BUT WHAT’S WITH THE TERRIBLE XP INCREASE…and that daily slots business…I’m so tired…so many times I’ve had to do this now! SIMPLE TO CAST? THAT WAS SERIOUSLY STRESSFUL!
Congratulations! You are one of the first 5 in this server to learn a spell and thus have been granted a title
TITLE:The Magically AbleYou have the ability to learn magic slightly better than your peers due to your perseverance and thought.
This title is purely aesthetic and provides no in-game bonuses.For gaining this title, your Mana, Wisdom and Intelligence stats will increase by 1. If these stats are unused the additional points will be added once the stat is active
xp increases by 25%
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..
.
OM I LEVELLED UP! THAT’S AWESOME!
I’VE GOT 3 TITLES NOW!! TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!
And that’s 3 stat increases…probably worth 15 points!!! Awesome.
Squirrel seems to have got it too because she’s smiling like a fool.
Well since she is wanting to be a mage (I believe) this is a small god send for her.
Giving her a high five, before giving Rakshak one (he deserves it since he helped out). Though I do feel sorry for Rakshak…since his intelligence is 0 as well as his mana…so he can’t learn magic…unless he puts points into it…
Interesting to know that it can go so low as 0…or could it get into minuses? Eugh that sounds horrible.
DillyDally, we are ready. What about you?
Give us a few minutes and we’ll be back by the gates
Happily skipping my way back, using detect magic at will (apparently once the spell is learnt all I have to do is think it, halleluiah).
Reaching the gates a little bit early, I actually remember I have to look up this daily magic slots business.
Daily slots are the number of spells you can remember at one time.
The number of Daily slots depends on Intelligence and other related stats.
You have 1 daily slot, with no empty slots remaining.
Death or meditation will allow you to exchange which spells you can cast
Useful little window popping up for me, why thank you.
So according to this, I can only cast detect magic right now, even if I were to know other spells…
Suicide is looking like quite a nice skill nowadays…but maybe practicing meditation might be a better route…maybe.
“Joat” DillyDally marches out of the forest, a battered looking group of beastmen trudging behind, faces covered in ash, covered in sweat and blood and panting like they're on their last legs.
Looks like they went through hell and back...and through it a few times over...
“Right, so we’re ready, what about you and Squad Animal?” I’m actually enjoying that name now. Though suqad on verge of death sounds more correct right now.
He nods. Holding a fist into the air, causing Squad Animal to stop, rather decently trained and they all collapse to the ground quite happily, just lying there and moaning...
“Everyone, as you know” He begins pacing between us and the Squad. “We have 16 hours left till our hell is over, 16 hours for us to mine all we need, and further explore this hell, so that we may prepare our brethren when they come out. Do you understand”
“SIR YES SIR” They shout, almost synchronously, throats raw. Wow, what the hell did he put them through in these past 6 hours and a bit?
“We will march towards the Elemental and we will destroy it without a single death, Do I make myself clear?”
“SIR YES SIR”
“Good, now march” They all groan in pain as they stand up without complaint, turning on their heels and marching with barely lifted feet.
Wow, I’m excited/fearful to see what he’s done to this Squad Animal…
…
…
-A little after Joat, Tikari and Rakshak went away-
(DillyDally’s POV)
“RIGHT YOU LOT GATHER UP”
Everyone finished their blazes off, all successfully gotten the intelligence skill…even if it took a little longer for some.
“We have been through hell once already, and seemingly we’ve been put together in it again. So I ask you now, do you want to train under me and become Squad Animal, to get through this hell and all that come after?”
“Seems like a rather brilliant idea” SirStripy talks with his usual posh accent.
The rest all nod, good.
“I don’t know how long I have to train you, but however long it is, it’ll be hell from beginning to end. You got that?”
“Yup”
“Yes”
…
..
.
“You say Sir, yes, Sir”
“Sir yes Sir” They all say decently unenthusiastically/sarcastically…hmm, guess they need to be trained.
“You will not complain, you will not whine. You shall not fall to the floor unless you are dead, do you promise?”
“Sir yes sir” At least they got it right this time, slight fear crossing some of their faces at my speech.
“Good, now remember that promise to both yourselves and I... Now because someone didn’t sir yes sir me at first, everyone give me 100 pushups”
“But-”
“200” I interrupt Snorh as he begins to whine.
He wizens up and gets down along with everyone else.
“I will not be kind and I will not give mercy. So you better work your best at all times or you will have to go through a hell worse than the one I have planned out for you”
Everyone but Gristle is already panting with sweat and already shaking like leaves.
I get down and do my 200 with them. If they’re going through hell, I’ve got to lead by example.
Finishing my 200, I watch everyone push through their own boundaries right then and there; even Snorh who looks like he’s about to collapse, still pushes back up when he feels my gaze boring into him.
Damn right, you do not give up till you’re dead.
“ALRIGHT 5 SECOND REST”
“AAAAAUGH”
"NOW 50 BURPEES"
Not a single complaint...good they're learning...
Ahh the grunts and roars of effort brings me right back…
…
…