October 23, 2022
Day 4
----------------------------------------
Rahul spent the next one hour wreaking havoc on the frog population in and around the castle walls. He started by joining a squad of mages and launching a non-stop barrage of 50 fireballs , netting 33 kills and setting an entire section of the courtyard ablaze. Then, he spent the next half an hour with his bow and arrow, killing 97 frogs, until he ran out of stamina.
By that point, he had recovered nearly half of his mana, and went around the courtyard, targeting the few remaining areas which still had frogs left. He was more efficient this time, as the frogs were weakened and had already lost many hit points due to the fire raging everywhere. He managed to kill 22 more frogs.
He continued this tactic of switching between his arrows and fireball a few more times, not really waiting for his stamina or mp to recover fully, until he heard the chime.
You have advanced to level 6.
0/5000 experience to the next level.
You have 5 free stat points available.
He had already decided on the first thing to do after getting to level 6. He immediately put 4 points into endurance, taking it up to 25. He held on to the remaining point, and went to Jeanette right away - it was time to learn Stamina Control I.
Unfortunately, Jeanette told him that learning the skill required actual practice with the bow, and asked him to recover at least 100 stamina first. So, having time to spare, Rahul grabbed something to eat, and took a look at the state of the castle. By now, more than half of the courtyard was on fire, and it was only a matter of time before the fire spread to rest of the courtyard and the outer walls.
While they could have left things be, the mages still kept up their barrages of fireballs. The reason was simple, they got experience only when units died after direct contact with their fireballs. Any passive kills from the spreading fire yielded no experience.
His survey of the battlefield done, Rahul was left with nothing to pass his time. He looked around for his friends to have a quick chat, but everyone was busy. Rahul soon got impatient, and the frogs in the courtyard bore the brunt of it. His mana tank was empty, so he couldn't fire a barrage of fireballs. What he could do is blast a single frog every time he recovered 5 MPs. But that was too slow for his taste, and he soon got tired of it. Not able to wait any longer, he decided to risk going back to Jeanette with his stamina at 70 points.
I’ll just have to learn the technique faster.
He thought to himself, silently hoping that his lie wouldn't be caught.
“Think of your stamina points as the total energy pool that your body can use to move its muscles. The more thrifty you are with your energy, the less stamina points your actions will cost you. The first step towards that thriftiness is the realisation that your arrow will kill a frog even if it you pull the bow with just half your strength. The second step is learning how to fire an arrow with half as much strength as your regular one, and still getting the aim right and hitting the target”.
Jeanette said, before starting the actual training.
The training for stamina control skill involved Rahul shooting down frogs, with Jeanette giving him tips on controlling the amount of energy he put into every shot. She taught him how to precisely control the strength with which he pulled the bow, and how to account for the effect the reduced force had in trajectory of the arrow .
With practice, Rahul started firing arrows with just enough force in the bow to penetrate the frog's skin and hit a critical organ. He lacked consistency, as sometimes the arrows missed, and at other times they bounced off the frogs, leaving only a surface wound. Slowly, Rahul’s control got more and more efficient, and the amount of stamina he put into the arrow crawled closer and closer to the bare minimum for killing the frog. At the same time, his accuracy and consistency kept improving.
Rahul continued practicing and was almost out of stamina when he finally honed his control to the point that he was rewarded with the skill.
Stamina Control I - Restrict the stamina flowing into your muscles when executing your attacks. This weakens your attacks but reduces their stamina cost.
Happy to gain another useful new skill, Rahul was beaming as he thanked Jeanette. “Thanks a lot for the guidance, I finally got the skill. But it doesn’t seem to be restricted to archery at all, can we use it to reduce stamina consumption in close combat too?“
Jeanette replied in the affirmative
“Yes, we can. But you’ll need to practice each weapon with reduced stamina usage separately before using it in an actual fight. For example, imagine you are fighting using a sword, and decide to activate the skill in the heat of the battle. Your stamina consumption will drop as expected, but your movements will become sluggish and your swings will miss. It'll do more harm than good without practice.”
Rahul nodded, not really surprised. He had spent a lot of time learning how to maintain his aim while drawing the bow to different extents and applying different amounts of force. It’d only be reasonable to have to practice the same for other weapons too, though Rahul suspected that having the skill will make it easier for every new weapon. Not having to reinvent the wheel and all that.
Jeanette continued.
“This is a very versatile ability. Claudie is already incorporating the insights she gained from her own experiments today into this skill, to get a version where we can enhance the stamina flow rather than restrict it. She wants to get a stronger arrow that can tear through multiple enemies before coming to a stop. She even said she’s close to a breakthrough.“
Rahul smiled, already thinking how much faster he’ll gain experience if he could kill multiple frogs with a single shot. “I’m sure she’ll figure it out in no time. Thank you again for the help. I’ll put my new skill to the test.”
With that, Rahul rushed, not towards the frogs but rather in the direction of the resting area. His mana was low and his stamina was effectively 0. He wanted to be in good shape before the counter-attack started, and if time permitted, get some more practice with using the low stamina empowered arrows.
To get a small bonus to recovery, he grabbed a bite to eat before sitting in meditation. As he tried to clear his head, the memories from his vicarious brush with death in the morning tried to claw their way in. He still hadn’t come to terms with his cowardly display in his morning. But that honestly was the least of his worries. The longer this battle continued, the more he doubted the words of the steward, and the more his concern grew for his parents and sister.
The steward had said that the tutorial is supposed to be a cakewalk because of how overpowered the settlement points were, and Rahul had been hoping for the sake of his family that he was telling the truth. He didn’t know what advantages the settlement points could offer, but whatever they may be, this frog invasion was no cakewalk. He only hoped his parents and sister weren’t facing trials even half as horrible as this.
His thoughts then drifted back to the settlement points. Rahul had no idea at all what they could be used for in case of an attack. Mark had refused to divulge those details to anyone, insisting he would use the points only as a last resort, and it’d be easier to resist the temptation of using the points if no one knew what they did. The points they gained everyday were only to be used for expanding the cavern.
Not everyone agreed with Mark's reasoning, but no one made a fuss about it. He had proven himself a very adept administrator, and apart from a few exceptions, always delegated responsibilities and took everyone’s input seriously. Most people here had been working with him, reporting to him in fact, for years. A little high handedness was par for the course with Mark, but he was well-respected and had a reputation for getting the job done.
Rahul led himself off that line of thought, the administration of the settlement was something he'd leave to his seniors, and as far as his family was concerned, he'd not think of them as helpless. Rahul would trust them to take care of themselves for now, and do everything in his power to get back to India as soon as the tutorial was over. Now was not the time for worry.
And once more his thoughts shifted, this time to his own past. Rahul had always had a drive to become better, to improve, to learn, to grow. That's what drove him his whole life. He was born and raised in a small town but worked hard and cracked various college admission exams, finally joining a prestigious university in Delhi.
After graduation, he joined an up and coming Indian startup. A few years later, he cracked the interview of the most sought after technology company in the world, and took a job in their headquarters in the silicon valley, the heart of the software world. All his life, he climbed and climbed until he had no further to climb. He had his dream job. He was in the land of opportunity. He was living the American dream. And he was finally content.
He would continue to grow and climb the corporate ladder. But that would be gradual, not in leaps and bounds, it was time to relax.
Until suddenly, the world changed. Everything he was before became irrelevant. All he was now was Human(F) - Level 1.
Was he disappointed to lose all he had gained over his life? No, quite the opposite. He had already reached the peak of his capability in his life before integration. He had squeezed out every drop of his potential and turned it into success and growth. He thought he was content, but in reality, the contentment was only a facade hiding resignation. He was simply resigned to the fact that he had accomplished all he was ever going to accomplish in his life. The rest of his life would only be a tale of mediocrity.
So 3 days back, when he saw that number, level 1, he wasn’t disappointed in the least.
He was excited. There was nowhere to go from level 1, but up.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Rahul had now raised his level to 6 but he was far from done. He would once again test his limits and squeeze every drop of his potential and climb and climb until he could climb no more.
Today, that meant taking care of the frog infestation on his island.
A lot had changed since today morning. The tides of the battle had now turned, and the residents of Layson Island were done defending. Now it was time to bring the fight to the enemy. It was time to do some pest control on the island.
With that thought, Rahul opened his eyes, full of energy and excitement. He proceeded to check his mana and stamina bars. Both were full.
Then, he noticed that Daniel, Seki, Jeanette and Claudie were organising everyone into squads. Seeing that Rahul was ready, Seki signaled for him to join his squad.
“You’ll be with me. I know you have unlocked both the fireball and stamina skills, but there are too few melee units, so everyone who was assigned a melee class by the steward come with me. Assign your free stats into strength, vitality and dexterity, they’ll come in handy.”
Rahul did as asked, joining Seki, and putting his single free stat point into strength. He looked at the squads to his left and right. Saki obviously was leading a melee squad, primarily swordsmen, though some were holding spears too. Daniel was leading the mages. Jeanette and Claudie were assigned a squad of archers each. Rahul waited as more people kept trickling in and joining the squads. When everyone had joined, Mark stepped forward to speak. Before he did, Rahul took a moment to get a rough count on the strengths of the now complete squads.
30 melee, 35 mages and almost a 100 archers.
In a loud yet somewhat even tone, Mark half spoke and half shouted to the assembled squads “The fire outside has turned to embers, and the embers will soon be cool to safely walk over. We will rally out as soon as that happens. The frogs have little sense of self preservation and will no doubt start pouring into the courtyard much before us. Jeanette's squad will stay on the roof and pepper the outer walls, stopping as many of them from coming into the courtyard as possible.
All of us will wait in the hall and step out as soon as it’s safe. The melee squad will protect the archers and the mages. No one will fire arrows or fireballs within the courtyard. Once everyone is on the wall, we will spread out our forces to man the entirety of the wall. Just this morning, we struggled to hold even a small section of the outer wall. Now, I have full confidence that we will be able to hold our ground without breaking a sweat. Once we have secured the wall, we will advance and drive these vermin out of our island“
There was a moment of awkward silence, as people were unsure how to react. The crowd here was used to politely clapping after Mark's presentations and speeches in office, but clapping didn't quite feel right at this point.
Then, Daniel, not bothering to keep his tone even, shouted “Let’s teach these damn oversized mother-froggers what happens when they fuck with us”.
Rahul had never seen his boss talk like that, and was honestly quite taken aback by his loud proclamation. Then he realised that the guy was probably just pissed with these frogs for almost killing him this morning, and was letting out the anger he had been holding in all day. His eyes met Ivan's, who was standing beside him and trying very hard to stifle a chuckle.
But apparently, everyone else had taken Daniel rather seriously, and Rahul was taken aback for the second time in as many seconds, when the entire crowd shouted their agreement in a weird, loud and indescribable hurrah. There were many different noises mixed in that hurrah. Everything between a cheering sound akin to one a fan makes as their favourite team scored a goal, to a barbaric shout like one a berserker may make when enraged.
Whatever that noise was, Rahul made a mental note to himself that the settlement needed an expert on war cries too, as this definitely wasn't one. But apparently, it was good enough for Mark as he decided to forego further waiting, and ordered the whole attack to commence.
With that, the entire group charged out of the castle, ready to rend and tear through their enemies, but there wasn’t much battle to be had. Not unless you count the battle their footwear was fighting and decisively losing, against the still too hot embers on the ground. 5 minutes later, the outer wall was reclaimed without any losses beyond the soles of everyone’s shoes.
The whole charge proved rather anticlimactic, and as people realised they would be walking barefoot on the island for the rest of the month, everyone felt quite stupid, particularly Mark.
Jeanette’s squad, which had stayed back on the roof, had enough sense to wait the embers out. Ten minutes later, they marched out, bringing the remaining stock of arrows with them from the roof. The castle replenished the stock of arrows every night, and the council had hoarded arrows from the last 4 days so that they would have enough to defend themselves during a prolonged siege. That decision had served them well, and while the stock of arrows was running out, there were enough arrows left to last them a few more hours.
As for the plan, it had two steps. First, funnel the frogs somehow and force them to climb and attack the wall from just one direction. Second, have a melee line ready on the wall to slaughter them.
To that end, the entire castle wall was divided into eight equal sections. On 7 out of the 8 sections, archers and mages stood, raining fire and arrows upon the attacking frogs. In the 8th section, the frogs were left alone and allowed to climb the wall in peace, almost all the way to the top. Then they were greeted by swords.
----------------------------------------
Rahul kept swinging his sword until his right hand was numb and he could no longer move it. So, he switched his sword to his left hand. The swings were awkward and weaker when using his less dominant hand, but the frogs fell from his blows nonetheless. Only once his left hand went numb did he leave his spot and go to rest. Someone from the resting roster immediately got up and occupied the spot he vacated.
Rahul looked at his stamina and smiled. Over the last half an hour, he had had ample opportunity to practice stamina control with his sword swings, and by now he had gotten a bit too efficient with his energy. His body still had energy to fight, but his hands were numb from the repeated motions. His strength had not kept up with his endurance and his entire build on the whole was unbalanced, Rahul thought, as he looked at his stats.
Character Overview Name Rahul Sharma Race Human (F) Class N/A Level 6 HP 130/130 MP 250/250 Stamina 73/250 Strength 14 Endurance 25 Dexterity 15 Vitality 13 Intelligence 25
He would rectify that with the next few levels up, he decided, as he looked at tens of thousands of frogs from the island all moving towards the only section of the wall not surrounded by burning corpses, fireballs and raining arrows. The funnel they had created was working as intended. Now, it was only a matter of time.
----------------------------------------
October 24, 2022
Day 5
----------------------------------------
The slaughter continued through the evening, into the night, and well into the next morning. When they ran out of arrows, everyone except the mages took up swords. The mages kept the fires burning the entire night, the frogs more than happy to become an endless fuel supply. By the time morning light shone on the island, everyone noticed that a ramp of corpses had formed halfway up to the wall in the section where the frogs were funnelled. They also noticed that the island was now barren, with only a few thousand frogs remaining, jumping to their deaths at the same spot where ten of thousands of their brethren lay.
All this time, Rahul kept swinging his swords till his hands went numb. When he got a level up, he mechanically put 3 points into strength and 2 into vitality. Then, he proceeded to swing his sword once more with renewed vigour. Sometime during the night he got another level up. Not that Rahul noticed, as he had lost all awareness, and knew only his sword and the flesh of his victims. He cut the tendons of the legs of the frogs with surgical precision, using his sword as a scalpel. Only when the last frog offered its life to his sword did he stop, suddenly confused, as he had nothing left to cut.
Looking around, he noticed only Seki, Daniel and Igor still standing there, everyone else had gone back to their rooms and were resting. They all gave him a moment to gather himself, until Daniel spoke.
“You okay? Let’s go inside the castle, we all need to rest. You haven’t taken a break in the last 6 hours.“
6 hours, Rahul wondered, even more confused now. But outwardly he just nodded and followed them inside the castle, checking his notifications as he walked.
You have advanced to level 7.
0/10000 experience to the next level.
You have 5 free stat points available.
You have advanced to level 8.
0/20000 experience to the next level.
You have 5 free stat points available.
He noticed that he still had five free points. He would deal with them later, as there was one more notification from last night. A skill had been expanded.
Stamina Control 1 : Restrict the stamina flowing into your muscles when executing your attacks. This weakens your attacks but reduces their stamina cost.
Changed to
Stamina Control 1 : Restrict the stamina flowing into your muscles when executing your attacks. This weakens your attacks but reduces their stamina cost.
Specialisations (1/unknown)
Trance - Significantly reduced stamina use when attacking mechanically, relying only on muscle memory and abandoning any conscious thought
That explained why he felt like he had blacked out and lost time. That also explained why both his hands felt like lead. He had been running on autopilot. He was interrupted out of his thoughts as he heard Daniel call out to him.
“Come Rahul, let’s go to your room. You should catch some sleep.”
Rahul agreed and followed Daniel to his room. There was unfortunately no longer any furniture there, but Daniel had saved a pillow for him. The ground was comfortable and warm, and he lay down. He fell asleep as soon as his face touched the pillow.
----------------------------------------
Around the same time, Mark sat in his room, quite pleased with himself, as he looked at the quest rewards for the successful bastion defence. They had killed every last one of the frogs from the attacking bastion, which had resulted in a hidden objective being fulfilled and exponentially better rewards.
He wiped the grin off his face and plastered a weary look, as he heard footsteps coming. It was Daniel who walked into the room and updated him about Rahul.
"He came out of the battle rage after killing the last frog and I took him to his room to sleep. He was still a bit out of it, but should be fine after getting some rest. He probably got some skill in the middle of the battle which let him fight so long."
Somewhere in the middle of the night Rahul had gone into a rage and attacked anyone and anything that got close. Mark thanked Daniel for taking care of the situation.
Daniel continued.
"That was a weird attack though. Even when there was just one frog left, it climbed our wall until it was cut down by Rahul. I don't think a single frog retreated. I can't make heads or tails of this whole situation."
"Me neither."
Mark lied through his teeth, and continued.
"But let's convene a council meeting after we've all rested, and maybe we solve this mystery together."