After adding ten more mana stones to their tally of rewards yet to be claimed, they continued hunting. Stalking through the forest, Noah repeatedly pulsed his radar as much as his mana permitted. Which was around once every 8 minutes. He made sure that his mana pool was almost always full before every cast so as to be ready for anything that happened.

A few minutes later, several red dots finally appeared on his map. There were seven of them in total and two of the dots were much bigger than the rest.

“Guess you’re reaching level ten today, we’ve got a hunting party of five normal orcs, and two stronger orcs, probably warriors or archers or maybe one of each.”

“Same plan as before?”

“Yup.”

And so, Noah got to work making a mana bomb. Even though it was already a spell, it needed to be channeled for three seconds before it could form completely. Of course, the channel time scales with his [Mana Manipulation] skill, which was already at level six thanks to his previous spellcrafting session. “I really need to make more spells, if not for hunting orcs then just to level up my skills and talents,” He looked at his talent window and saw that they were moving at a snail’s pace. “Water and fire affinity are still at level one while earth and air are at level two, which makes sense since I use those two elements most. Ugh. So much to do, so little time.:

While he was thinking, Mark got into throwing range and prepared to launch the bomb at the hunting party when an arrow suddenly hit him in the shoulder. He immediately cast [Diagnosis] on himself and breathed in relief as it was just a flesh wound. The leather armor he was wearing did its job well along with his high constitution, they worked together to weaken the arrow’s penetrating power. Still, he had an arrow sticking out of his shoulder so he pulled it out and cast his two healing skills which quickly closed the wound.

“Careful, looks like those higher-level archers have sharper senses than the scouts we’ve fought” He shouted back to Noah but oddly didn’t get a reply. “Noah?” He looked at his cousin and found that he had his eyes closed with a mana bomb in his hand twice the size of the normal bombs.

“Yeah, sorry. I saw you get hit with an arrow and was preparing a bigger mana bomb just in case.” He walked over to Mark, handed the bomb over, and said

“Throw this one instead. Be fast about it though, that thing gave me a level in my manipulation skill”

“No problem with that,” He looked at the orcs running over to them with the warrior leading the charge with his obviously much better-than-normal armor. “Our new friends are getting closer anyway, let’s give them a gift.” Mark grinned and threw the bomb a few meters ahead of the hunting party and funnily enough, the warrior picked it up and inspected it. A few seconds later, the rest of the orcs arrived and looked at the warrior in confusion.

“What are they doing?” Noah asked in confusion. “Well, it doesn’t really matter. Hmmm, mana bomb is kind of lackluster in the BOOM department so uhhh Detonate?”

THUD

The normal orcs immediately collapsed on the ground but the warrior remained standing with a red glow covering its body. But it was full of cracks as if it was going to break at any minute. Its face contorted in fury as it turned its face towards them.

“Crap”

“Crap”

Was all they could say as they saw the warrior relatively unscathed. “That was worth fifty mana!”

“No time to complain. We’ll need to work together on this one, we’ll funnel experience next time.” Mark said

“Got it.”

and, they got to work. Noah cast [Enhance] on both of them, looked at the warrior charging at them and summoned an [Earth Spike] directly in its way expecting to see it impale itself. But it just bulldozed its way through the spike, though the red glow surrounding it became dimmer as a result. Noah noticed this and immediately let Mark know.

“That red glow somehow protects against magic!”

“On it!”

Mark met the warrior’s charge with his own. But because of the level disparity between them, he got repelled. He didn’t give up though as he swung his axe at the warrior’s neck which made the orc pull its head back. That’s when an arrow came out of nowhere and grazed Mark’s cheek leaving a long red line across his face. “That was way too close”

“I’ll keep the warrior busy. Get that archer off my back!”

Noah nodded and rushed to find the archer. He switched his radar on for a second and immediately saw the large red dot on the edge of it. He zigzagged toward it so that he wouldn’t get hit by the arrows whizzing past him. As soon as he got close enough, he saw it hiding up in the trees. He cast a few air bullets to push it off the branch it was standing on and it worked! The archer gracefully fell off the branch, pulled out an axe, and summoned a green glow around its body.

He saw it run at him so fast that his eyes could barely keep up. So, he did what anyone would do. He panic-cast two spikes intending to trip it up as he assumed that the green glow was some sort of magic shield. Instead, the result surprised him. The spikes collided with its knees and dislocated them. Making the archer stumble and fall on its face. Noah blinked at that as he couldn’t believe what he just saw. “Guess green doesn’t mean shield.”

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He finished the archer off with an earth spike, this time, aiming for the head. The spike pierced straight through its head as if it wasn’t even there. He then turned to go back to help his cousin but found himself the target of an axe swing that almost chopped his head off. “Guess you guys finally woke up huh?” He said ruefully as he was now surrounded by five orcs. He cast five earth bullets that made quick work of them. “You should’ve stayed down.”

Noah smiled as he was proud of himself for saying that line.

“GAHHH”

He heard a cry of pain that could have only been from Mark and hurriedly ran in his direction, hoping that the worst hadn’t happened.

A few seconds later he saw Mark running toward him, his arm was bent the wrong way and he had cuts all over him. Thankfully, nothing serious. Surely, they had his healing to thank for that. A few meters away from them was the warrior, slowly but surely lumbering its way in their direction. It was limping and the red glow could barely be seen now.

“Okay leave it to me,” Noah reassured his cousin.

And so, Noah waited until the orc was closer before tripping it up with a well-placed spike and launched another one at its head as it fell, ending its life once and for all. He plopped down on the ground and spoke.

“That was too close for comfort.”

“Sssss. Yeah, let’s go home and recover.” Mark hissed in pain as he held his broken arm.

“Let’s. But we’re still coming back and hunting more, maybe just not the parties with warriors in them. At least not yet.”

Noah had a few ideas for countering that weird red glow the warrior used to shield itself but that would have to wait until they got back to the apartment building as he was almost out of mana. Before that though, he put away all the corpses of the orcs then they started heading back.

----------------------------------------

“Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink!”

As they got back, a bunch of cute oinks sounded out from the building, the reinpiglets had all come out to greet them and it warmed their hearts. Although it hadn’t been long since the piglets came to live with them, they grew to like them as their oinks and snorts were just too cute. It also helped that as babies, they were naturally curious and loved to play. And as the piglets were rubbing against their legs and oinking their cute little tails off, Emeri came out and came to get her babies. She snorted as if to chide them for bothering the humans.

“Don’t worry Emeri, they’re not bothering us.” Noah tried to placate the mother boar as if he understood what she was saying. “How do I understand them anyway? System fuckery maybe?”

After playing with the piglets for a bit, Noah and Mark went up the stairs to Noah’s room and sat in front of each other.

“Okay we probably should’ve done this before we started hunting but we need to buy information on those orcs.” Mark said as he continued “Specifically what their weakness is or at least what that red shield’s weakness is.”

“Yeah. That and I need more spells.”

“You really do. Utility spells if you can.”

“On it. Oh, but before that, let’s get an information packet on the orcs.”

With that, Noah claimed their rewards and received a grand total of one hundred and eighty-two mana stones. “That’s a lot of soaps,” He thought as he looked down at the one thing they didn’t sell, the bow and arrows of the archer. Although they couldn’t use it now, they could practice with it and hopefully get to the point where they were good enough to use it.

Orcish Bow – Tier 1

Basic bow made for the lowest rungs of the Orc army

[Sell for 10 mana stones?]

He swiped the notification away as he pulled up the shop and searched for an information packet on the orcs. It was easy enough to do and the information contained within was actually pretty simple. Like any lifeform, fire worked well on orcs and a few different kinds of poison. He looked up the poisons in the shop and found that they were all well out of their price range. “Fire spells it is then.”

So, he sat down, activated his skill [Fire Manipulation] and sank into meditation. The first thing that came to mind when he thought of fire was a flame thrower. He already had a good idea on how to go about it as to make fire spread, it only needed fuel and fuel was all around him.

First, he also activated [Air Manipulation] and tried to sense the different atoms in the air, which was actually pretty hard. But, thanks to his high school chemistry teacher drilling into his brain all the elements on the periodic table, he knew what he was looking for. So, he sensed the air around him and found it, with an atomic weight of one, it stuck out to him like a sore thumb. He gathered the pure hydrogen gas in his left hand and conjured a fireball in his right. Then manipulated the fireball into hovering in front of him and put the hydrogen ball behind it. Then with a simple gust of concentrated wind, a flamethrower was born.

Feeling good of himself, Noah checked out his notifications.

You have leveled up!

You have 9 status points to spend!

You have leveled up!

You have 18 status points to spend!

You have acquired the spell [Hydrogen Ball]

You have acquired the spell [Concentrated Gust]

You have acquired the spell [Flamethrower]

Satisfied with himself, Noah was about to get up and gloat to Mark but then had a thought “With hydrogen as fuel, can’t I make some kind of bomb or explosive bullet at the very least?”

And so, Noah got to work again. This time, with bombs and explosive bullets being his goal. He activated the spell [Hydrogen Ball] and surrounded it with a mana which would act as a stop-gap between the hydrogen and the fire he was going to surround it with. He was about to try it out when Mark shouted.

“NOAH! We’re inside, don’t try that spell in here, look at the wall of your room. It’s all scorched from the flamethrower earlier!”

“Ah.”

“Don’t ah me, you forgot you were inside, didn’t you? You really lose yourself when you’re making spells. Anyway, go outside first before you test any more spells.”

“Ah. Guess I’m going to have to change rooms again. Good thing all this building has are rooms hehe.” He brought up his notifications and sure enough

You have acquired the spell [Fire Bomb]

“hehehe” Noah laughed like a crazy person as he went down the stairs and out to the parking lot.