23 Astra 10,391
Six woke to the sounds of screaming.
He rolled over and felt his body crack in several places. Sleeping in his armor wasn’t the most comfortable but he felt rested enough. He crawled out of his little tent and stood to see Denny and his dog standing protectively next to him.
"Get a weapon and get killing. Those boars have shown up," Denny grunted.
Six didn’t really want to expose himself and the boars while dangerous were being handled by the settlers. “These nice people look like they are taking care of it just fine.”
“Listen, you're paying for me to train you. That means killing nothing is more important in the wilds than being strong. Now stand up and help drive these beasts off.”
He didn’t want to be strong, just competent, trouble always came to the strong. Still, he drew his staff, he wanted to protect himself and would continue to do his best.
Denny materialized a longsword out of nothing, he must have had some sort of spatial device. "Now go and kill the beasts as they come. I’ll keep an eye on you." Then he ran off towards the battle between beast and settler, cutting deep into the first boar he reached.
Six took off after Denny but quickly fell behind the old man, he changed course and went for one of the closer groups of people. If this world was anything like what he thought, conflict would be near ever present. Violence is always very heavy in these worlds. He needed strength to live the hermit life he wanted. He didn’t owe these people anything but if he could help them while getting stronger, so be it.
It was chaos with boars squealing and people screaming but Six ran forward and interposed himself between them. He swung down with all his might on the head of the boar but his staff just bounced off the tough hide of the animal and it snorted contemptuously. Oh my, he thought, quite ineffective.
The boar charged at Six and a quick hop to the side was all he could do to not be gored. The staff wouldn’t work against these creatures so he pulled out the next thing up, really, he should have started with something sharp.
Balancing his focus between dodging and switching his staff for a spear was difficult but not impossible and Six quickly had the sharp implement in his hand. He stabbed down and was rewarded with a squeal of pain. The thing bucked and almost tore the weapon out of his hand but Six moved with the boar and tried to bury the spear deeper. It struggled for a moment and then slumped over motionless.
You have killed level 1 boar. 10 Experience gained.
Six felt a pang of guilt for the dead creature but quickly reminded himself that it attacked them. It was the hostile party. He went forward and engaged a few more boars. Making awkward stabbing motions at them and taking quite a few hits in return. His armor and large health pool kept him relatively safe. He was taking too much damage though. Another two kills netted twenty more EXP, it seemed to seriously penalize you in regards to killing lower leveled creatures for EXP.
He glanced around at the battle. Denny was walking through the animals slashing casually, creating arcing sprays of blood with his longsword while Alison hacked away with fury and enthusiasm.
A bellow from behind caught his attention and he saw Gatbark mounted on his own boar, swinging down with a wicked looking warhammer. The dwarf roared, "that's not a boar! This is a boar!"
He saw other imperials, comrades of Gatbark. Humans, a Gnome, two Aelfs, a Muldstanii, and a frilled lizard person, Six was pretty sure, from his eavesdropping, that the lizard people were called Vrill.
"Six you bastard, help!" It was Alison screaming at him to do something so he moved to help her. Alison had pulled the aggro of eight boars and Six ran up and peppered them with pokes from his spear, he managed to peel half of them away but quickly realized, he fucked up.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
He could barely dodge one and the additional three made it effectively impossible, especially with the armor he wore giving debuffs to his movement. He stabbed one but the others charged and rammed Six knocking him off his feet.
He sprawled and lost his spear, he breathed through gritted teeth as he was juggled between the beasts. Everytime he almost made it to his feet he was hit from an unexpected direction and put back down. His health bar was dropping in chunks and he felt his anxiety begin to rise.
However, the pressure upon him dropped as another blade joined the fray and opened one of Six's attackers from back to belly. It squealed as it died from the bleed along side the one that perished from the spear sticking from its side.
You have killed level 1 boar. 10 Experience gained.
Level 1 boar has died. 4 Partial Experience gained.
It was a young Muldstanii boy holding the quivering blood covered blade. The two remaining boar turned on the boy who began backing up defensively.
Six wasted no time in struggling to his feet. His health was dangerously low and he had no weapon. His body cracked in eight places as he went for the spear that was sticking out of the boar and upon grasping the tool he felt the break in its shaft. No good. He placed it back in his ring and withdrew something similar but more glaive like. Seong Mina style. He was untrained in the thing but the weightier weapon just felt more impactful in his hands.
He glanced at Alison and she was handling herself just fine, she probably didn't even need his "help." Instead he would help the boy.
He lifted the glaive up and bought it down on the back of the dsitracted animal in a reckless swing. Its back legs stopped working and it squealed in confusion. The other spun about only to get slashed in the face by Six and impaled by the shaky Muldstanii.
The boars were reduced and many had scattered. The settlers were cleaning up the stragglers and it seemed only a few had died from the beasts. Alison's furious decapitation of her final boar and the explosion of blood from the stump of its head signaled the end of the battle.
Six nodded at the young Muldstanii before him. "Good work, kid."
Six's voice shook the boy awake. "Are you ok?" asked the Muldstanii.
'Fine," Six grunted. He was not fine. His entire body hurt, joints cracked as he moved and his armor had new dings and lowered durability. His health was imperceptibly climbing though, he would be ok later.
"You suck at lying." Alison said, before walking off towards the few remaining boars.
"That's only because I think you're a good person."
"You're still bad at it."
Six waved it off and trudged off to assist the settlers in finishing the boars. Sneaking up and Stabbing boars in the back with his weapon he picked up a few more boar kills.
When there were no more boars alive Six rested on the glaive and nodded at the nearby settlers. He had never done something like that before and he played the events back in his mind. The images of his struggle to stand were deep in his mind.
Denny approached with Koda at his side and smiled. “Not exactly survival training but living alone in the wilds means you gotta take every chance to become stronger else some beast will kill you. Good job weathering those boars till that kid saved you. I was watching.”
“Uuuugh,” Six moaned. He just wanted to smoke weed and make shitty art. Whether it was grinding money or EXP it seemed a system was trying to work him to death. He sighed.This was the whole reason he hired the man in the first place, to teach him. Six began to check his prompts but Denny stopped him.
“Now, lemme show you how to butcher these here beasts.”
That got Six’s interest. From the stories he’d listen to he knew loot and more specifically crafted items to be incredibly important to progress forward in such worlds. So despite the morning hunger and immediate pain he focused his mind and paid attention.
Denny pulled a sharp dagger from his belt and started to cut into a nearby boar. As he cut he explained the basics of skinning a monster. Concepts for skinning both quadrupedal and bipedal. “Now, most anyone should be able to hit atleast 50% affinity in the harvest skill but the subtleties of harvest can vary wildly depending on what rank and evolutions it has undergone along with the materials and reagents the creature is capable of providing. I'm no crafter but so I don’t really get information about most things but it's still worth good money to bring back all the usual items, skin, bone, eyes, claws, teeth, heart. The higher leveled the better. The crafters fight and bid for what they want so it's usually a fair price.”
“Usually?”
“Usually. Now something that is always valuable is the mana core. There are variations in harvesting techniques that can produce changes in the final product but the simple reliable way is to just cut it out. I'm not a crafter so I just cut them out. Any non sentient will have these from level 1, I’ve heard of high level sentients havin em but I’ve never cut anyone open to find out.”
“Materials? Reagents?”
“Now, I'm no crafter so best I can tell ya is material is what the item is formed of and the reagent is something that can alter the end result of a magical crafting. There is also something called a catalyst but that just fuel for magical crafting.”
“Is there enchanting?”
“Of course, but I don't know anything about it beyond that. “
“Denny finished butchering and walked Six through one leading to Six holding a small multifaceted marble like object. It was slightly warm and glowing. He inspected it, observing every aspect of its form.
- Mana Core -
Rank:Mundane
Rarity:Common
Defense - 100
Weight - 0.025 KG
Durability 799/800
Traits: Crystalized Mana, Material, Reagent, Catalyst.
Nice.
The old man spoke and caught Six’s attention. “If we were to stay here a while I'd teach you how to smoke this stuff, git ya a level in cooking. But, no time, we should go on ahead and start scouting,” he said.
“We are not scouts.” Six felt like he was slowly getting roped into helping these people.
“No we are not but you definitely need the practice so shut up and listen boy. We are going to train perception today. You have ten minutes to handle breakfast, your prompts and git yer raccoon, then we scout.”
Aight. Six nodded and opened up his prompts.