Chapter 7: Yuri-chan's first level up!
"No."
I looked at Cheshire, who just shook his head. Ah, I might have to explain my situation, so that you are not lost!
A bit after finding myself the cat, I explained my situation IRL to my current companion, and he agreed with me that we needed to move. Well, after yelling at me for a bit, but it isn't my fault we are in the same zone as the boss.
Any respect the brat had for me died recently, and now he yells at me and drags me with him everywhere, calling me a “slob” or “irresponsible neechan”.
Sheesh, if he's going to be a tsundere, he could go to the 'dere' category, they're easier to handle...
We finally arrived at the beginner city, and that's where I discovered my guardian(?)'s class is scout.
A bit weird usually, but in this game, a class' statistic boost per level is invaluable. My statistics are currently frozen. That means they reached the effective maximum at my level. They ARE higher, but I can't feel those effects until I level up and the limit gets higher. Furthermore, since my statistics are above the maximum allowed for level 100, I can't gain anymore agility, strength or endurance.
That is a measure to counter those that intend to stay level 1 constantly and abuse the system.
According to Cheshire, who used to be a member of a guild named ' Wonderland' (haha), my statistics will be frozen until level 50, after that level, the game will consider me an advanced player, and all restrictions and bonuses will be lifted.
People tend to be exceptionally wary about level 50 players because of that. Cheshire used to be one of those, but because he's a scout, nobody cared.
It's a bit cruel, but since scout is a 'non-fighting class' (according to most players), they aren't considered a menace at all. They do have their uses, I think.
Scout is a class focusing on agility. They have exclusive detection skills and a minimap included in their HUD.
They are mid-range fighters according to him, because they're too fragile to fight in short range ( they lack the rogue's evasion and the assassin's stealth) and don't have enough buffs to fight long range ( like the hunters or the snipers). That makes sense, their mini-map, speed and map-making abilities (they're scouts, of course they make maps) makes them an objectively good class already in a game where the players don't have maps.
No maps ? Well, duh, why do you think I had to buy one of the beginner's region ?
The developers said that they didn't want to hold the player's hands in this game, so bye-bye mini-maps and markers.
So, we arrived at the Nordics' beginning city, finally, and the brat forcibly dragged me away from the stalls with a simple “No.” before I got distracted and led me towards the deserted, but lavishly decorated, noble quarters. He's starting to know me too well, annoying.
Uwaaa, having a walking map is so practical, too bad he's got such a bad attitude...
After paying a 10 gold fee ( totally prohibitive, I could afford a small house in the capital for that price!) I am now a Lordling. That means I have no lands to my name , no mounts, no fame, and no money. After accomplishing one of those, I can choose to branch out in class, into Marquis, Knight, Ambassador, or Treasurer.
So far, only Marquis and Treasurer interest me. Knight is a short range, mounded fighting-nobility hybrid class. Since I'm trying to avoid the fights, it's a bit dumb. Ambassador requires fame, the only stat I'm avoiding to up.
Marquis is an oddball of a class, frankly told, it requires real wits and accounting abilities to manage to play with it, and has thus been dubbed one of the three 'hardest but most rewarding' (without the rewarding in it's case) classes in the game, with paladin (freakishly high requirements one of those the fact that you have to befriend ALL of your chosen pantheon's gods, so since most human players choose the Nordics because of the cool names and the whole viking thing... I kinda feel bad for them.) and necromancer ( Everyone declares you Persona non Grata once you choose it, they will try to kill you on sight, and when you reach a certain level, the gods themselves get on your case.)
Treasurer is more laid back, because it mostly consists of getting gold and hoarding it.
So of course, I'll play it suicidal and take marquis. Because lots of players tried that class, and most ruined themselves, so it'll be easy to pass myself as a vagrant with all the training I have, according to Cheshire.
Ah ! Don't drag me again, brat! I have a question!
I easily free myself from his grasp before talking to the lady in front of me.
“Does having a territory flag counts, or do I have to set it up first, towards advancing to marquis ?”
The woman in front of me looked up from her papers with a sharp glance. She spoke carefully.
“Those are pretty rare, you must have had quite a hard time to get it at your level.”
“Umu, passed the last three months in the Icy forest.”
“That.. You mean you've been there since the travelers arrived ?”
Now she was surprised.
“Uh-hun. That's a long story involving a prince and a barrel. That's where I got Kott here”
“Mew” Added the tiger cub on my head helpfully.
“A level one shouldn't be able to survive here.”
“Sadly, common sense doesn't apply to her -urk-”
My fist retreated from the catboy's side and his life bar diminished to 10% . Since we're in a party, I don't get the PK mark because crossfire is one of the risks when you party. My expression turned mischievous and I hid my mouth behind my hand.
“Nyahaha, it doesn't matter how strong an enemy is as long as I can outsmart them.”
The woman understood and nodded.
“I see, you have trap mastery. Very well, wait here a moment, I will get you a set of coordinates to set up your base.”
Indeed, she came back later with several files, and an evaluating gaze.
I hate tests, they have a 25% chance of triggering flags. Well then, I'll have to use my super secret technique.
First, I ignore the ones neighboring the beasts countries, they are only trouble, and wolf guy put a price on my head. Well, he did on Freyja's head, and was promptly murdered into level 1 by her fans, but he didn't take the price down, and there will always be some idiots that'll take me for her, so...
Then, I stay away from the capital and great cities.
I reduce the list to those that are strategically useful terrain and resource wise.
And finally, I keep only those that aren't far from major trading routes.
Which leaves three possible bases.
One, ironically enough, in the Icy forest, which is at the northwest of the continent, not far from the northern sea. It has lots of timber, and since monsters respawn, there is a lot of game. The natural defenses are the forests, the high leveled monsters, and the sea on one flank.
The second one is nearing the border with Midland. The warmer climate and plains makes it easier to grow crops. There is also a mesa, which would be an ideal place to build an easily defensible base. The advantage, and inconvenient, would be high visibility on both sides, and a lack of escapes.
The third one is the obvious trap. It is also nearing the border with Midlands, and is situated along the Jeweled ocean. It has some forests ans midlevelled mobs, which give average lumber, game and animal products, lots of plains and fertile soil, ideal for crops, and the Jeweled ocean, as its name suggests, is home to lots of corals and colored fishes.
It's too good to be true.
I can understand why they'd give up the Icy forest for free. Level 200 monsters when the highest level player is level 120 is a bit much by gaming common sense, so nobody wants it.
The verdant plains lacks defenses and escapes, so it would be easily raided once it gained notoriety, despite the cliffs.
The golden coast though ? No faults whatsoever, it only lacks mineral resources, and that's only because the association doesn't have the means to check for it. There is no way anyone with half a brain that wouldn't choose that.
And there is no one with half a brain that would give it up for free. There is a 100% chances there is more behind that.
“I'll take the Icy forest, thank you, since I already know the terrain.”
The smile the receptionist gave me immediately showed me I made the good decision.
Besides, catboy sulked because of the cold.
“Eeeeh, don't pout, kid, at least there can't be bandits after your precious flower if there is no one around ~. ' Sides, playing around in the snow builds up your cold resistance.”
“You're a horrible person, you now ?”
“And that's why you're sticking around me.”
His silence after that proved my point. I tried to get him to go away, but he insisted that he was safer around me, and I used him to escape players and sometimes bait monsters. He's recently hit level 100, by the way, and the GMs gave me the [Hellish Instructor] perk afterwards. Gee, they could at least give me an illusion of privacy! Go 'way already ! There are at least 20 shounen protagonists around, so go bother them instead!
We come back now to the present, and we are currently publicly and loudly arguing about the mounts we were going to buy. I had found that totally cute alpaca, and its wool would allow it to survive the cold. Cheshire being a beastkin, he can't use nonflying mounts, something about not riding its equals.
The alpaca costs 5 gold, by the way, since it's a rare creature.
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So, back to arguing!
“No, it's useless.”
“B-But !”
“I said no.”
Well, it's pretty onesided really.
“Uuuuu, but it's going to take ages to go there...”
“Then you better hurry and level up along the way, so that that damned furball finally shows some uses.”
As mentioned a while ago, my tiger cub will level and change along with me. So, when I hit level 70, it will get strong enough for me to ride. Knowing that, Cheshire and I agreed not to buy a mount.
Why argue , then ?
Because we're currently stalked by his ex guild mates, who aren't happy about losing their mascot and cartographer. Eagle eye is a terrifying lvl 100 scout ability let me tell you. It shows Everything on their map on a kilometer radius. It has a 1 hour cooldown though. It was only by chance that he detected them when we were entering the town.
So, in the city, the more attention on us, the less occasions they have to try and abduct him.
Once in the northern forest, we have the advantage on them because we know the terrain, and they've only freshly left the beast county. Our two people and a half group is especially visible because this is a human-beastkin group, which is rare. Due to the world's lore, players of a species tend to stick together.Well, in Cheshire's case, he's such a pretty catgirl that he can be forgiven.
“Hey, don't diss my cat, he's at least cuter that you, you uncute bruteowiiiiie !”
I think he's taking too much pleasure in this though. My cheeks hurt.
We're going along the tsundere little brother and unreliable older sister scenario, if you didn't already notice. He's a total natural at it. *Cough*
“Seriously, what kind of idiot tames a tiger for a low level pet?”
He finally let go of my poor cheeks. And don't diss the tiger, that was an accident!
“Muuuuu, so, what do we do now ?”
“I guess we can go to the stalls.. Wa ? Wait you idiot, they're the other way !”
I know that, but the armory's that a-way, and I have to learn [woodworking]. Cause that would be stupid to live in one of the hardest kind of wood's forest and not being able to take advantage of that.
Finally a new spear ! Hand to hand combat sucks. Especially if it's a giant iron-skinned albino squirrell in front of you.
There was nothing of interest in the stalls anyways.
…
Finally outside of the gates, the both of us suddenly sped up. Since agility is what his class is known for, and one of the only statistics I could raise, of course ours is currently stupidly high. Running away is always an excellent tactic.
Cheshire's eyes shone for a bit, sign that he's using his detection skill.
“Tch, those bastards are insistent.”
“Mou, don't they know that stalking is bad ?”
Good thing trapping things that run after me is my specialty ~
Now, here's a little lesson on variant magic.
There are only four elemental magics at the beginning : earth, air, fire and water.Once you level one of them enough, you are able to use their variants.
As an example, since my water magic was usable without equipping that troublesome title, I used it to create hybrid trapping skills. Pitfalls full of water are horrible for monsters, if you manage to escape the pikes, you slowly lose your heat and die of hypothermia or drown.
Using hybrid skills divide the experience received between the two categories used. Hence, my water magic leveled up only by using traps, which was pretty neat.
Before long, it had leveled enough that I got the choice to either learn Steam or Ice magic. Choosing Steam would allow me to, far in the future, learn fire magic, while Ice would do the same with air.
Magic is pretty complicated, because you have to consider the meteorological and geographical differences between a place and another to make the most of your spell. In the desert during a day, fire users are at their strongest, because of the high heat and low humidity, but ice users get heavy penalties for the same reasons. Since it's pretty cold and humid up there, ice was the logical choice. Besides, it's the strongest crowd control magic in this game...
Why go off about that particular fact, you ask ? Pretty simple really.
As we were running among the trees, I called up my newest toy.
“[Ice Magic trap : freezing.]”
Small, practically unnoticeable runes of ice started snaking around from where my feet touched ground for a few seconds, before settling down.
After a few more seconds of running...
System Notice:For killing a player outside of a duel, you receive the player mark x3 ( 23.59.59)
Level up (15) (1 ->16)
As expected from the combination of [Trapping Mastery] and [Ice Mastery], it's pretty much an instant kill on creatures and players under level 75. I have no mana left though, and wouldn't have been able to pull it off without the reduced cost bonuses from a cold and humid environment to begin with.
The tiger is the size of a labrador now, too big to stay on my head, and finally able to run on its own.
We had to run another hour for Cheshire's cooldown to disappear, but as I suspected, I got them all back there.
We're finally there after a few hours. The woods seem even darker here, and everything is frozen. The only plants growing here all have either Cold resistance, or an ice component, like those Ice plum trees, who have transparent, glass-like trunks, leaves, and shiny purple fruits. I'm really tempted to get some agricultural skills, but apparently, just planting things isn't enough, I tried it already. I'm starting to believe I'll need to get some earth magic to pull it off.here.
All in all, that's oddly pretty. My cold resistance is high enough that I could run around naked and not feel it, but I'll refrain from it because that would probably kill my companion. Hmm, now that I think about it, it might begin to be enough to start training my Ice resistance ? The boy's resistance is starting to get there, but I still lent him my coat because he's not native from here, and as such, needs the extra heat to counter the terrain penalties.
According to him, the Cait sith ( the cat people's name) live in forests and have a warm climate all year's round and so, have no resistance to anything, but they're allied to the elves. The bastards.
The elves, not the cats, cats are cute, so they're forgiven. Save for the brat, because he's uncute.
Yep, there are regional penalties, too. Won't explain, that makes sense enough.
We walked around for a while and saw a small cliff that would be great to build a base on, and once there, I opened my inventory and got out the flag-that-should-be-called-a-sphere, and activated it's deployment.
Please choose type of building:CastleMansionTemple
Temple is out, both for obvious reasons and reasons soon to be explained, and so is mansion, because it wouldn't survive my booby-trapping the hell out of it. Turtling has its uses.
Type of stone ? Ice of course. I mean, it's -15 degrees celsius now, and it's considered a hot summer, by Nordic standards. The more ice around, the more powerful my ice magic is. Besides, Ice is much cheaper than stone, since I can make Ice blocks myself.
That is one of the reasons a base of operation is important for mages, because, by stacking more and more advantages in a single point, they become almost invincible in their own bases. Some players learned it the hard way. The best example would be the lvl 50 party of five that tried to raid a lvl 40 NPC mage tower. It was a one sided slaughter.
So, castle here, it's considerably bigger than the other two, but the increased defenses mostly makes up for it. And that means more storing space, because even that has been considerably nerfed.
This land has been [Blessed] by [Freyja]+25% efficiency Holy skills
+25% efficiency Ice skills
+25% efficiency Light skills
-25% efficiency Demonic skills
-25% efficiency Fire skills
-25% efficiency Darkness skills
Here it goes.
Ever since I got that blasted Title, everything I make is blessed, so crafting isn't even an option anymore.
“Screw you Odin.”
Now now, don't say that when your brother loves you so much. Poor Thor would be heartbroken.
Why the heck didn't this guy become Loki huh ?
Time to speak a bit about God's Game, I guess…
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3,1k words, and nothing going on, I'm ashamed of myself. Didn't put the customary paragraph because I wanted an end to that blasted chapter u_u. Besides, Cheshire's origines need not be discussed now <3
I'm making my cliché less obvious starting from now, let's see if you're gonna catch'em all.
I won't show much of the turtling/skill grinding, because I think it's a chore and slows the story even more. And world building is already slowing it a lot x_x
Finally finished that LN ( destruction flag otome), and yeah, I kinda see the similarities and differences now, namely, my protagonist has a working brain ( most of the time. Just don't show her anything cat related). Sorry Bakarina.
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P.S :Cheshire's totally a Teemo : Living warding the map <3