Just a few short minutes later, Felix knew exactly where he needed to go. A shrill screech echoed through the jungle and Felix ran towards it. Arriving at the source of the screech, Felix observed as the Drakene guards gathered next to the one that had found a large rainbow chicken.
[E - Common] Caregarr Parroukan (Lvl 42)
What stood in front of a small legion of Drakene guards was, what appeared to Felix as, a lean, muscular, horse sized chicken sporting the colors of a parrot. When it screeched, its beak split in four, in both the horizontal and vertical directions.
The Drakene guards didn't assume a well structured defensive wall as Felix would have expected with spears, but instead surrounded the Parroukan from all side, like individuals instead of a team. They quickly proved their experience when the bird charged at one of them beak first. If they had made a wall, they may have landed a few strikes on the bird, but one of them would definitely be dead.
The bird charged at the Drakene with mostly dark green scales from the entrance to the village. He dashed to the right and the bird's charge veered to follow just before the Drakene jumped into the air so the Parroukan charged into a tree. The rest of the guards were already following the Parroukan as it charged allowing them to be right behind it, ready to strike, as soon as it collided with the tree.
They all stabbed at once in different locations quickly disabling the overgrown colorful chicken and causing it to fall over. They quickly finished it off and one of them stored the body in their inventory before running back into their loose formation. After a tense moment of faint footsteps, another two Parroukan dashed out from behind trees and independently charged at different guards. Clearly having practiced the maneuver many times, the guard's dealt with two Parroukan even easier than they had one. Instead of having the Parroukans charge into trees, the Drakene they were focused on, steered the charges into each-other.
The Parroukans collided and fell to the ground. The guards quickly finished those off, stowed them in their inventory and ran back into a loose formation which really just consisted of staying far apart. After a silent minute the guards relaxed and convened in the center of the small clearing before splitting up again to hunt for more. This time it was much further away, well beyond the range of the last one's screeching. When Felix arrived, before anyone else, he watched as the guard danced around the Parroukan, not even attempting to fight it, they just stalled.
This process of hunting Parroukan and those that ran to their aid continued until the guards managed to collect almost fifteen of them. Then they waved Felix over from where he was observing.
"Ok, we've hunted enough of them now to feed the village for a little bit. Now we can mess around. What spells do you have, what can you do? I need to figure out how to integrate you into the formation and how to work around you." The guard with the green scales explained.
"Oh don't worry about it, if you can find one for me then just stall and I can run to you. I should be able to kill the first one myself then can you guys take over when more come to help?"
The guards looked at each other in confusion with singular raised eyebrows. The one with dark green scales, the leader it seemed, turned back to Felix, "We can… we won't be able to save you from dying though. You do realize their levels are in the low to mid forties, right? We can hold it off while you hit it, we don't mind, really. I know we make it look easy, but we have been hunting these things since we were born, it is harder than it looks, I promise."
"No thanks, I should be fine. Hopefully it doesn't kill me, but if it does, oh well I guess. I just can't seem to find them on my own."
"Alright, if you change your mind, try to do so before you engage. It will be hard to take over in the middle of fighting it."
They all split up to find more birds, with some of them shaking their heads when they thought Felix wasn't looking. Almost a half hour later, Felix heard a screech and ran towards it. With his full speed, he got there just a minute or so later. It was the leader, maybe captain, of the guards who spoke to Felix earlier that had found it.
[E - Common] Caregarr Parroukan (Lvl 42)
Felix ran forwards and shot the Parroukan with a simple Mana Bolt to get it to focus on him. The Parroukan turned to him in rage and charged, which is exactly what Felix expected. The overgrown rainbow chicken ran at him and he did his best to steer it into a tree. Unfortunately, he didn't manage to steer it into the center of the tree, so it grazed off the edge before stopping itself. Felix hit it with another Mana Bolt just to make sure it knew who it was fighting and to make it a little angrier. The Parroukan charged again and this time Felix prepared himself and positioned directly between it and a tree. Felix didn't even need to steer it so he ran backwards towards the tree keeping an eye on the Parroukan.
Playing chicken with a giant chicken, was the name of that game a double entendre this whole time?
Felix jumped slightly early and slightly too high. The Parroukan almost managed to stop itself, instead turning itself to the side and taking the brunt of the impact on it's side with the wing. Felix quickly cast an instant Gust he wasn't expecting to have to cast, and shot himself downwards at the Parroukan. As he shot towards the Parroukan's back, he prepared three giant Mana Bolts that were thrice the size they normally were and positioned them with two for the bird's brain and one for the spine.
Ding You have slain a [E - Common] Caregarr Parroukan (Lvl 42)
Ding You have gained a level in [E - Common] Caster
By the time Felix's hand reached the back of the bird, he stowed it into his inventory, keeping his fall from being interrupted and cast a quick feather fall to catch himself.
If that looked half as cool as it did in my head, then that was awesome. I wasn't expecting to kill it so quickly but I guess I did get off two headshots, not sure if the neck one is a critical hit.
It took the other guards just over a minute to reach Felix, followed shortly afterwards by one Parroukan which the guards quickly dispatched.
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The guard with the dark green scales approached Felix after the fight, "Not bad kid. Your timing and aim when baiting is very sloppy. You also used a spell and used it to jump way too high, and you run stupidly fast but you're reactions are slow. However, you might do more damage than anyone I have ever seen. It takes all five of us, who are much higher level than you are, spearing it, with skills, sometimes multiple times, just to take one of them down. Also, did you cast three spells at once? I did not know that was even possible."
"Most of that is fair, what's wrong with using a spell to jump though?"
I used the wrong spell out of habit, now that I have a jump spell I don't need to cast a modified Gust. He wouldn't know that though.
"I am pretty sure you could have cleared the Parroukan on your own, but it's also more efficient to just jump to the side so you don't have to fight gravity."
"I'm pretty sure I can't jump that high myself but yeah jumping to the side would have been more efficient."
"I changed my mind, you definitely can. Do you have any physical skills? I know you are a caster, but in my mind that makes it even more important to avoid getting hit since you have lower Vitality and Endurance. You could learn dodge, jump or something like that and use energy to get out of the way. I know you have mana and you could use a spell, but what happens when you run out of mana? You aren't doing anything with your energy anyways, might as well use it."
"You don't have to convince me, but how do I get a physical skill? I check my Skill Selection screen pretty often and I have never been offered anything like that."
"That's not the only way you know? You can also be taught a skill. I get bonuses and experience for teaching skills from my profession. I'm a trainer. My name is Alrik by the way, I'm the captain of the guard."
"Felix, pleasure. I did not know that. I am very interested though if you are willing, I tried to use my energy to do something but never could quite figure it out. Do you want the body by the way?"
"Nope, that was your kill. We have enough already. If we helped I would have taken it, but not when you killed it entirely yourself."
Felix and the guards headed back to the village where the rest of the guards split off. Felix followed Alrik to a large open circular area of the walkways. There were no buildings, the walkways that roped around the trees and through the village simply expanded to create a large fenced in area, like a sparring arena. On one side of the area stood a handful of target dummies, the only thing in the entire area other than Felix and Alrik.
"Alright, I'm gonna need you to trust the process here and not question it. We're gonna start with a spear skill, then I will teach you whatever movement skills you want."
"Alright, you are the trainer, I trust your judgement."
"First things first, watch exactly what I do and replicate it."
Alrik pulled out his spear and stepped into the center of the sparring area. He proceeded to, glacially slowly, lunge forwards, stabbing his spear into an imaginary target. He did it three times with his body appearing to move identically to Felix's eye. Then he handed a spear from his inventory to Felix and stepped aside.
Felix took the spear and walked forwards to where Alrik was standing. Felix replicated the movements as best he could, stopping himself a few times to restart until he was mostly satisfied. He repeated the series of movements thrice with minimal adjustments, then he looked over at Alrik, who was silently giggling.
"Ironically, you are being held back by your high dexterity and memory. You are almost perfectly replicating what I did, but you are not adjusting the movements to your own body. You seem to be overextending yourself in a lot of the time because you are shorter than I am. Try again but this time, close your eyes and pay attention to your body, listen to it. Adjust the general movements, when you feel overly stretched, shorten the movement a little bit. It's also not just about height, it's also about ratios of limb lengths too. So, if you feel like you are awkwardly holding back, stretch out further. As you adjust, I'll try to push back on the problem areas I see."
Felix spent a few hours having his form adjusted before Alrik was satisfied, "Ok, close enough. Now the hard part, this skill is not just a physical skill and that's why we started with it. Anyone can stab a spear and you can get really great at the technique but you would always be missing something. Everyone has an energy pool, most believe that it's your stamina, which is partially true. Energy is a resource your body has and can be used, it can be used passively, like stamina, or actively. That's what I am going to try to teach you with this skill."
Alrik walked up and placed his claw on Felix's shoulder causing Felix to feel a warm itch crawl it's way into his body as if like Alrik was heating up the area with little tendrils of warmth. His shoulder, the muscles beneath it, and slowly, the rest of the area around it began to twitch and spasm slightly.
"I am pumping my energy into you. I want you to first try and push it away, try and hold your muscles still, stop the twitching."
Felix tried to hold himself perfectly still, to resist the urges, but ultimately kept failing at it. Almost an hour passed as Felix fought his own cells before he finally decided to try and treat energy like it was mana; he started to visualize holding and controlling the energy. As soon as he did, he didn't need to fight his own body anymore, as it simply didn't want to twitch and spasm against his will anymore.
"Perfect, now that your cells aren't eating the energy and wasting it, you are going to try and move your own energy through your body as you strike with the spear. Push it into your legs, core and arms as you strain them."
Felix picked up his spear and walked back to the center of the sparring area before slowly executing the movements for the spear skill. Once he was confident he had the motion memorized, he slowly pushed a trickle of energy into his legs and ankles. He wasn't sure but he suspected his ankles would need some energy if he wanted any stability.
He repeated the strike, incrementally adjusting the energy in his legs until he was confident enough to add energy to his core then his arms, incrementally adjusting everything until it felt right. Finally he started to speed up towards an actual strike, rather than what looked like yoga.
He continuously adjusted the amount of energy he pushed into his cells incrementally as he increased his speed to keep his body stable and balanced. After hundreds of iterations and almost all of Felix's energy pool, he felt like he had the movements down.
Ding You have demonstrated sufficient proficiency to unlock the General Skill: [Piercing Spear Strike (Uncommon) Lunging forwards with precision and ferocity, you strike your opponents with your spear. You have incorporated fine energy control to enhance your muscles increasing the speed and strength of your strike. This skill can be upgraded. This skill can consume a variable amount of Energy to proportionally change the output damage, with a base consumption of 25]
No. That's satisfying to know I was doing something correctly.
Felix turned to look at Alrik who stood up from the edge of the sparring area and approached him, "Not bad, that was a lot faster than most people I've taught. Plus, most of them fall on their faces or sprain their ankles the first time they push energy into their legs. Glad you managed to figure that one out, guess that's what happens when you actually have some intelligence I guess. Now that you have energy in general figured out, you can use it to dodge, jump and run. You can figure out jumping and running on your own, then ask a guard to practice dodging, they'll use a blunt spear and you dodge, good for both of you. You may be fast now, but you should still work on running to be more efficient."
"Makes sense, thanks for all your help."
"Couple of things, your body is not perfectly energy efficient by default. If you get really good at using energy in the right ways, you can be offered a buff or overcharge skill, if you do, you should take it. They are some of the best skills for anyone. The rest you will figure out on your own."
"Good to know, thank you again."
"No problem. If you need anything else, I can usually be found in the guard house."
Felix and Alrik parted ways, heading in different directions. Felix headed towards The Tipsy Tree where he had Borrugra pluck and cook the Parroukan corpse for him. She was happy to do it when he offered her half of the meat. He kept the feathers for a future project. . . . . .