Mark abruptly stood up, straightened his posture and did a salute “Sir! no sir!” which couldn’t help but elicit a chuckle from Noah.
He played along and said “Okay cadet, finish your food and let’s turn in for the night. Tomorrow we’ll officially start boosting you.”
Noah and Mark woke up at the break of dawn and were about to walk into the forest when a notification sprang up out of nowhere, surprising them both.
Threshold reached… One Million Lifeforms (Earth) have reached the first milestone at level 10…
Unlocked Quest System!
Unlocked System Shop!
Please achieve more milestones in order to unlock more System functions!
”Crap, we’ve fallen so far behind everyone else. Over a million people have already reached level ten and we’re only at a measly level five.” Noah couldn’t help but look at Mark who was still presumably staring at the notifications with a thoughtful look on his face “Mark?”
At that, Mark said “Check out your quest window and tell me what you see.”
Noah immediately pulled up his quest window and his eyes went wide.
Quests
Reward
Reach lvl 10 (5/10)
10 low grade mana stones
Explore the surrounding 10km (7/10)
System Map Function
Eradicate orc invaders (0/99)
10 low grade mana stones per kill and rare title Orc's enemy (+10% damage to any orc)
Kill Orc Warchief (0/1)
ten levels, one medium grade mana stone and epic title first invader boss kill (+10% damage to invader bosses)
“What the hell are mana stones?” as if to answer his question another blue screen popped up.
Mana stones
Can be used for crafting weapon, alchemy and cultivation
Noah looked at Mark and asked “Cultivation?”
“Cultivation.”
“Like in those Chinese webnovels?”
“I believe so.” Mark said with a constipated look on his face.
Noah looked on in a daze for a few moments and then abruptly jumped “HOLY SHIT! Okay! change of plans, we’re hunting those orcs one by one, we can’t afford to take this slowly any more with cultivation right in front of us!”
“But we’re still level five Noah how the fuck are we going to kill them all”
“I’ve actually been thinking about this since yesterday, one word”
“What’s that?”
“Traps, but first, we need to scout the surrounding ten kilometers so that we can unlock that map function”
And so, Noah and Mark proceeded to scout out the remaining unexplored three kilometers of land around them which was actually not even half of the valley. They found some interesting places while exploring though, like a pond that was brimming with mana according to Noah’s skill [Mana Sense] and a sinkhole with a diameter of at least 100 meters that was the exact opposite, he couldn’t sense any mana at all and it was so deep that when they threw a massive rock down the hole, it took ten seconds for them to hear it reach the bottom.
Noah whistled in awe and said “Wow, that’s deep. We’re definitely going to have to explore that sometime later”
An hour of exploring and some hunting on the side later, they each gained a level and finally completed the quest.
You have unlocked the Map Function!
They excitedly checked the new function out but were bit disappointed as it only showed the areas that they’d already explored while everything else was covered in a dense fog.
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“I was kind of hoping that it would show everything but I guess that was just wishful thinking on my part” Mark said as he lamented
Noah played around with the map function for a bit, zooming in, zooming out, the images in the map were surprisingly extremely vivid and detailed, it was as if he could go anywhere even if he was just at the apartment building but, he doubted though that it was live footage as that would just be too overpowered. He tried focusing on the general area of the map where the encampment was supposed to be according to Talal’s drawings and surprisingly he didn’t get the expected notification of “place has not been explored yet” instead the notification said
“Please upgrade Map function in order to view area”
Noah’s mind immediately related this to the shop and immediately checked it out. Sure enough, there it was, aptly named “Upgrade Token” however, the cost was at one hundred thousand low grade mana stones or one hundred medium grade mana stone
“Wait a minute” Noah thought of searching the word upgrade token in the search bar and wouldn’t you know it, a whole bunch of different tokens for specific things popped up. There were upgrade tokens for all sorts of stuff, skills, affinities, spells, classes, subclasses, weapons, potions, pills, etc. There was even one for underwear for some reason but those weren’t what he was looking for. He scrolled down the list a couple more times and there it was, a map upgrade token and it only cost one thousand low grade mana stones
“Mark! We can upgrade the map function! There are also a bunch of upgrade tokens in the shop window, we can upgrade pretty much anything!”
Mark snapped out of his lamenting and checked the shop out “We can even buy weapons and armor on here! This shop has everything! It’s just a shame we’re dirt poor, everything costs mana stones.” He said as he went back to lamenting only this time, he was lamenting their lack of funds.
“Yeah but, that’s what the orcs are for! Now let’s hunt those invader bastards!”
With that declaration made, they continued on in the direction of the orc encampment, passing through kilometers of dense forest inhabited by so many species of flora and fauna that they couldn’t keep track of them all but, most of them were low level, some were even still level one. Of course, they didn’t bother hunting those low-level animals. They only hunted the ones close to their level of six.
As they were closing in on the orcs, they noticed that they saw fewer and fewer animals around and numerous chopped down trees. Then they heard something, a bone chilling scream followed by the sobbing of a child.
“Did you hear that too?” asked Noah
“Yeah.” came Mark’s terse reply as his brows furrowed
“We’re going.”
“Hell yeah we are.”
Noah cast [Enhance] on himself and Mark as they hurriedly ran towards the direction of the scream. They ran as fast as they could knowing that if they got there in time, Mark could heal any injury the person or persons might have incurred from a fight with the orcs. But, as they neared the location of what they assumed earlier as a fight, there was nothing left except blood, guts and a woman torn in half. Surprisingly the woman was still trying to crawl towards the direction of the orc encampment leaving a trail of intestines in her wake.
When they saw this, Noah and Mark rushed to the woman’s side and Mark tried to heal her, but it was a futile effort as low-level skills from an uncommon class could never hope to heal someone ripped in half. But it bought her some time.
“Please, they took my daughter.” The woman wheezed as she continued “You have to save her…” after wheezing a few more times, trying her hardest to say more, she breathed her last breath and closed her eyes.
“Sorry, I ran out of mana…” Mark said sullenly
Noah let out a breath and said “Those orcs need to die.” He clenched his fist as he tried to calm himself down “Our plans don’t change, because we are so weak, we still need to kill them one by one or if possible, by group.”
With unbridled anger welling up within them, they got to work on setting up pitfall traps with the bottoms lined with Noah’s new spell [Earth Spike]. “Hopefully we can kill them fast enough before they do anything to that little girl”
----------------------------------------
Noah and Mark were just finishing up the fifth trap with leaves and a thin layer of earth held up by mana when they heard some grunting noises getting close to their position. They jumped up and hid in the canopy of the trees. A few minutes went by as they waited for the orcs to get closer and they finally heard them, they were grunting and speaking in harsh, guttural voices while roughly moving in their general direction but not directly in the way of the pitfall.
“Crap, the trap’s not gonna get them” Mark said
“Let’s just wait and see how many there are, if there are only five normal orcs then we can take them.”
As luck would have it, only five orcs showed up. They were all holding one-handed battle axes and matching gray-colored leather armor, it was as if they were wearing the standard equipment of an army which made a chill run down Mark’s spine.
“I guess it’s our lucky day, I’ll let you have this one Mark. They’re all pretty low level so I’ll only assist with air bullet and earth bullet while you get the last hits, that way, you get most of the experience.”
“Okay, let’s do this.”
They waited until the orcs got closest to them and pounced. Noah cast enhance on both of them again as they dropped down from the canopy. Mark landed first and immediately started running headlong into the midst of the orcs, he raised his fire axe and brought it down on the closest one’s head abruptly ending its life.
While that was happening, Noah cast four air bullets and aimed at the remaining orcs’ heads in a bid to hopefully knock them out. And it worked! On one orc, but that was good enough. With one orc out of commission, and another one dead with an axe in its head, only three were left.
Seeing three orcs knocked back by air bullets from Noah, Mark hurriedly grabbed one of the dead orc’s battle axes and tackled the one closest to him to the ground. He repeated what he did with the last orc and used all his strength to smash the battle axe into its head which surprisingly, cut the orc’s head cleanly in two. Mark just stared in a daze for a moment at what he did “Are their weapons just THAT much better than ours?” he thought as he pulled the axe out and examined it.
“Mark! Not the time” Noah saw what happened and called out to his cousin who appeared to be in a daze, he couldn’t help but wonder if the axe his cousin got was magic or just that much better than a regular old fire axe because it was specifically made for combat.
After Noah called out to him Mark hurriedly got up and charged at the next orc, this time though, the orc managed to fight back and swing at him. He narrowly escaped being decapitated and kicked its knee in anger. The orc screamed and collapsed to the ground making it easy for Mark to decapitate it. Before he could get up and rush at the next orc, he saw Noah spamming his [Air Bullet] spell on the last poor orc that was trying its hardest to stand up.
“What are you doing Noah”
“Trying to knock it out.” Noah said lackadaisically “Anyway, you should finish these guys off now, that last one’s scream might alert some others.”
“Yeah, I’m on it” Mark took action and decapitated the last two orcs, he marveled at the axe’s sharpness and swore to himself that he would make Noah analyze it with his skill.
“Okay now that that’s done, let’s get out of here before we have the whole camp coming down on us.” Noah said as he put all the other axes and corpses, including the woman, into his artifact.
“I get you getting the woman’s corpse and giving her a proper burial later but why get the orcs too?” Mark asked
“There’s a sell option in the shop window, maybe they’re worth something seeing as how they’re invaders, if not, then we’re going to need their armor for ourselves anyway.”
“Good thinking!”