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Paul was finally back home after a rather long Monday at the college. He felt tired after what he had done with Chris in the bathroom, and he was also a bit too sweaty, so he quickly went to take a warm bath to relax and set his mind straight for the day.
His mother wasn’t at home yet; she was at work, so he was pretty much on his own. He moved to cook some lunch; he had already eaten quite a few things at college, so he wasn’t too hungry. He made himself a quick cup of ramen, which he ate while watching the videos Chris uploaded to the internet.
They looked amazingly well edited and on point, and even those fights where there was not even that much footage were rather excellent. By the time he finished eating and went to brush his teeth, the videos had already gained almost five hundred thousand more views, and the views kept increasing!
When he looked at the Trending Section, his videos with Chris would appear instantly in the Gaming Section and even in the E-Sports Section, which helped them a lot.
“The amount of ad revenue is going to be insane,” he thought. “But that’ll only show up at the end of the month; the best way to earn quick money is through direct donations… Livestreams where fun things are happening.”
And unfortunately, since the first livestream, they had not done any more of those. Paul was still embarrassed about doing them, but Chris was very talented at bringing the audience.
“We just need to find a good event or something; doing the same speedrun would be boring again,” he thought. “But maybe if there’s a new event happening soon… Or maybe we could livestream us taking down the other branch of criminals at Elderbridge.”
Paul thought about a few interesting things, nodding with a smile after he finished brushing his teeth, stretched, and did some exercise for ten minutes to not have muscle cramps while being in the capsule for too long, and then he was finally ready.
“Okay, let’s go then… There’s a lot to do today. I hope Vlad’s mother agrees with the decision to make Elderbridge his Territory through those unique items from the Raid Shop…”
Paul logged into the game, quickly appearing over the bed of his room and slowly opening his eyes to see that Vlad’s little sister, Camilla, was playing with dolls on the floor.
“No, miss Austucia… You can’t drink the tea; it’s not for you.”
“But Miss Catalina… You offered it to me.”
“No, I didn’t offer a single thing to you, you wench.”
“That’s it! I’ll kill you!”
“Come!”
Paul was wondering what the girl was playing because her two dolls started fighting each other…
“Hmm? Camilla?” he wondered.
“Ah! Big bro…” Camilla blushed as she hid her dolls behind her back. “Y-You woke up? G-Good day!”
“Haha, I saw what you were playing,” Paul laughed. “Don’t worry; don’t be embarrassed. All kids play with toys.”
Vlad stood up from the bed and stretched a bit, using his Arcana and wrapping his body with very thin amounts of air and wind. He managed to walk slightly normally, although in truth he was floating a centimeter or two above the floor.
“I-I wasn’t playing!” Camilla kept insisting. “Um… How do you feel, brother? A lot happened yesterday… You ok?”
"Yeah, I’m fine,” said Vlad. “Don’t worry about your brother.”
As he gave a gentle head pat to the adorable vampire girl, Paul quickly received a message from Chris, who had just arrived, although he woke up in the alchemy room.
He flew there, finding the incubus playing around with his magic as he sat down cross-legged over the bed.
“Hey! Sup.”
“You logged in almost at the same time as I did; are we connected or something?”
“Synchronized, perhaps~!”
“Yeah, yeah…”
Paul quickly started browsing all the items and materials he had, packing things inside of his inventory as he decided what to do today.
“So what do we do today, boss?” Chris wondered.
“I’m not your boss, but…” said Paul. “There are a couple things we can do! First, maybe try to get you a new Contracted Spirit, can you get more than one?”
“I don’t know; we could give it a try, yeah,” nodded Chris as he summoned the big bunch of grape-shaped martial harvest spirits who floated around him.
“Second, ask Teressa if we can make this place our territory or not…” Paul said. “If she ends up still very reluctant, then I was planning on asking for a small territory I deserve as my own as her son; she’ll be obliged to at least give me a fourth or third of the city, which I’ll try to use as the territory then. If even that doesn’t work, maybe an empty area outside could work.”
“Huh, you’ve surely thought about this!” Chris laughed. “Okay, and what’s next?”
“Checking the farm! I think some plants should be showing signs of growth at the very least,” said Paul. “I want to see what they could even be like, honestly.”
“Oh, got it!” nodded Chris.
“And then, also, go eliminate the other half of the criminals,” said Paul. “But depending on what we do today, we might have to delay that for tomorrow… though if it were up to me, we would do it as quickly as possible.”
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“Hmm, oh right! They promised some sort of Gift Pack, right? Where is it?” Chris wondered, checking his inventory. “Ah! There, look!”
Suddenly, the little incubus brought from his inventory a small wooden box covered in colorful paper. This was the gift that the developers gave to everyone.
“Oh, right…”
Paul quickly opened his inventory and found the same thing there, as if it had always been in that place. He smiled, quickly grabbing it.
The item was called [One Week Celebration Gift Pack], and it even came with a little description.
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[One Week Celebration Gift Pack]
Thank you for buying and playing Fantasy Story Online!
This is a Celebratory Gift Pack packed to the brim with special items and restoratives.
Aside from the guaranteed rewards, there are also three extra rewards that are chosen at random from a large pool of items.
Item Expiration: 6 Days, 10 Hours.
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“Huh, it's even going to expire… fine, whatever.”
Paul didn’t put much thought into it, opening the Gift Pack and quickly seeing how it revealed a couple of items inside.
[You have opened the [One Week Celebration Gift Pack]!]
[You have received the following Guaranteed Items: [Healing Potion (D Grade)] x10 [Arcana Potion (D Grade)] x10 [Stamina Potion (D Grade)] x10 [Growth Enhancement Elixir (A Grade)] x3 [Weapon Enhancement Stone (B Grade)] x1 [Armor Enhancement Stone (B Grade)] x1 [Potential Cube (B Grade)] x1]
[You have received the following Random Items: [Temporary Random Race Swap Elixir (A Grade)] x1 [Old Treasure Map Piece 1/3 (? Grade)] x1 [Random Racial Skill Book (B Grade)] x1]
“Oooh! I have a bunch of stuff! They are generous as hell! It feels like I’m playing a mobile game where the developers are ultra generous,” laughed Chris. “What did you get?”
“Hmm, the guaranteed items are good, yeah,” nodded Paul. “But the Random Items are… they’re weird. I got a Temporary Random Race Swap Elixir…? Then an Old Treasure Map Piece, and lastly, the only good thing, a Random Racial Skill Book.”
“Pppfff! What the hell are those items?” Chris laughed. “I got a [Random Stat Lollipop], [Fashion Clothing Selection Ticket] and… This thing.”
He showed Paul what resembled a black jewel in the shape of an eye.
“What is that?”
“[Body Swap Eye Crystal]! It lets me body swap with someone for an hour!”
“What are these items, really? They’re so weird…”
“Hahaha! Yeah!”
The items they had obtained ranged from the most normal and expected things to items with weird and bizarre gimmicks, but Paul couldn’t really say that they wouldn’t become useful one way or another.
“They could certainly be really useful if we make sure to use them well,” said Paul. “For now, I’ll use the Skill Book and save the rest…”
Paul quickly grabbed the book, and as its pages opened, blood-red runes flew into his body, imbuing him with a new power that awakened from within his own Vampire Bloodline. Shortly after, the Book disappeared into black smoke.
Ding!
[You have used the [Random Racial Skill Book (B Grade)] x1!]
[You learned the Racial Skill: [Mist Form (B): Lv1]!]
“Mist Form?”
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[Mist Form (B): Lv1]
[Skill EXP]: [0/5.000]
A Racial Skill for the Vampire Race, by channeling Arcana and Blood Power into your body, you can temporarily transform into Mist and reduce all Damage taken by 75% for as long as you maintain the channeling.
Entering in this form removes and grants immunity to all disabling and immobilization effects, but you cannot be healed, your innate healing ability is disabled, and you cannot deal Physical Damage to foes.
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[You currently have no available Racial Skill Slots to equip this Skill, it has been stored in the Skill Inventory.]
“It’s pretty useful! It could help me get out of sticky situations where I get caught by binding effects, like it happened against Shamir…” thought Paul with a smile. “But I don’t have slots… Ah, I’ll replace it with the claw skill.”
[You have replaced the [Venomous Claws (B): Lv2] Skill for the [Mist Form (B): Lv1] Skill!]
With everything done for now, Paul set out to find Teressa, whom he needed to talk about the Territory System and everything. With Chris playing around with Camilla, he quickly found Teressa, who was in the garden trying to clean up the mess it had become.
“Mother.”
“Oh? You’re awake already, son.”
“Yeah, how have you been? How’s the city’s repair going?”
“It’s going alright; some houses have already been repaired, but it is indeed quite slow, even with the money we gained. Perhaps in a month or so, things will finally go back to how they were before these attacks.”
Teressa sighed as she glanced at the soil in front of her; it was dry and without a single speck of nutrients. She had been trying to plant roses here, but they always wither or never grow.
“I see…”
Noticing this, Paul quickly went to help her.
“Need a hand?”
“Huh?”
FLASH!
A bright golden and green light emerged from his hands as the soil in front of him was quickly imbued with new spiritual energies and rich arcana, rapidly regaining all of its nutrients.
He used his Farming Skills to quickly revive this entire place, and even tiny, lesser martial spirits of harvest emerged.
“T-This is…?!” Teressa gasped in disbelief.
“This is the power I gained from my Subclass,” smiled Vlad. “I got the Farmer Subclass.”
“Farmer?!” Teressa was shocked. “I could swear you would have chosen Alchemist or Crafter based on how talented you are at making things… But this is certainly not normal Farming either, right?”
“No, it’s a Spirit Ki Farmer or something; it imbues anything I select with a special Blessing that imbues Spiritual Ki into the soil and lesser spirits.”
“I-It’s incredible—certainly not a power anybody could easily obtain or develop in this entire Realm! It is something more akin to the Realm of Fantasia!”
“Hah, well, the God that granted me this Subclass is from Murim; do you know about that Realm?”
“Not at all… Murim? Never heard of it…”
“Ah well, anyways, I saw you trying to plant roses, so I helped. You want to rebuild the garden?”
“Yes, I used to belong to a rural family; we owned cattle and farms, and I liked planting flowers. I had my own little garden. Remembering these things had made me feel nostalgic and also bad that I’ve neglected my garden for so long.”
“I see. Let me help then.”
“But aren’t you busy?”
“Not enough to not give my mother some time; let me help you with my new Skills.”
“Ah, okay then…”
Vlad helped his mother plant several roses; the rich soil and the little spirits ensured that they would grow strong and beautiful.
Once they were done, they enjoyed a drink made using some sort of small, red fruit. The drink was slightly citric, with a strong strawberry aftertaste.
“Hahh… And done,” sighed Teressa. “I hope you grow big…”
“I’m sure they will,” said Vlad. “And… mother, I wanted to ask you something.”
“…”
Teressa fell slightly silent, drinking her drink before leaving the empty glass over a nearby table.
“It’s about the Territory Ownership, right?”
“Yeah… I don’t think we should delay this much longer. It is a power that could give us an incredible advantage after all.”
“I know… and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve considered things and also about your future and mine, and that of your sister as well.”
Then Teressa faced Paul.
“I accept your previous terms; you will only own my territory through this system power, but it’ll remain mine.”
“T-Thank you so much!”
“However…”
“Hm?”
“You will also give me the power to administer it; we’ll share the burden.”
“Mother…”
Teressa smiled.
“I also want to do my part, Vlad. Don’t try to carry the burden all on your own; I already know you’ll make an excellent Lord, someone even better than me or your siblings.”
She then patted his shoulders.
“But until then, please let me help you.”
“Thanks… I will.”
As Vlad and his mother had a sweet mother-son moment, suddenly...
“Lady Teressa! Lady Teressa!”
Someone came running into the residence—a single young orc man wearing black armor and holding a sword and a shield.
“Who are you?!”
Vlad panicked, thinking it was a bandit or something, only for Teressa to stop him.
“Stop; he’s a new recruit. I’ve been recruiting a few soldiers,” Teressa walked towards the young man. “What is it?”
“We saw it from afar! T-There’s a huge, advancing group of creatures that crawled out of the ground! They’re marching into the city as we speak! Most soldiers believe it’s a Monster Wave!”
“A Monster Wave?!”
The city of Elderbridge felt cursed; there was no day they could take a break.
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