Tendrils of gentle sunlight began to trail through the foliage, signaling the start of the morning. The sweet scent of morning dew was mixing with the damp earth, a combination that was nigh impossible to experience in the city. I took a moment to savor the experience, appreciating that I wasn’t surrounded by swamp water or liquid rock.
The stillness was broken by my combat UI suddenly appearing — an apparent sign that I was being ambushed. I spun around, looking for the aggressor.
A fox about the size of a medium dog rushed out of some nearby heavy foliage and straight towards me, the sharp green outline alerting me to an active skill. My spear was already ready to receive an attack this straightforward. I thrust my weapon forward, crackling blue energy springing to life at the tip.
To my pleasant surprise, the fox instantly reacted to my attack, managing to leap to the side before I could pierce it. I glanced at its paws, barely catching a glimpse of darker blue wisps fading away.
A bit of information flitted through my mind despite the short exchange. My Stab skill had gone off despite my attempt to not use it. The Mana consumption was noticeable, but significantly lower than normal. The monster in front of me had two skills. Probably Haste and another mobility one. Most importantly, I was being somewhat outclassed in speed.
“WOOF!!”
The sudden bark pulled all of my attention back to the animal. It was attempting another straight on charge, so I decided to see if its first dodge was a fluke.
“Stab!”
Using much more Mana this time, I could feel the System correcting my previous form. My spear shot forward, but it was still too late. The fox had already begun its own skill, leaping above the tip of my weapon. I was still barely able to catch its belly with the wide form of the spearhead, but its momentum continued, seemingly bouncing on the air and lunging at my face with an open jaw.
Bolt!
My mouth was also open, and I managed to fire off the projectile before its fangs snapped close. As it was knocked to the side, one of its front paws snapped forward, a long claw barely slicing across my chest. I didn’t bother checking it, having pulled back my spear for the finishing blow.
“Stab!!”
My mana bar dropped down to zero before climbing back up to full. The fox’s body crystallized and shattered from the impact of my attack cleanly piercing through its neck, leaving behind its small item bag.
Forest Fox Pelt: NQ - [Material] The fur pelt of a healthy forest fox. A great starting point for beginner crafters to learn how to refine.
It was a disappointing chunk of loot, especially compared to what the goblins would often drop, but the fight was significantly easier. If all fox encounters were as short as that, it would take no time at all for me to hit the ten kill total to unlock the skill.
Which suddenly reminded me that I never checked the skill that I unlocked for the goblin archers and warriors that I had taken down during my run with Seb’s party. I leaned back onto a tree and pulled up the window.
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Training Forest Goblin Warrior
The warrior variant of a particularly degenerate race of creatures. These goblins were healthy during their early years, growing to be much bulkier than many of their counterparts. They make up the bulk of a goblin tribe’s legitimate fighting force and hit extremely hard.
Skills: Goblin Warrior’s Great Swing -VIII: Using their larger muscles and other enhancements, goblin warriors often gleefully use their clubs to smash anything they want. Guided by mostly instinct, these forceful swings have been known to destroy doors and windows, making raids on small villages especially terrifying for residents.
(Defeat 172 more to learn) Goblin Warrior’s Emboldening Shout -X [RAGE]: At some point in the distant past, a smarter goblin learned a form of self-hypnosis to make themselves stronger. While that specific art seems mostly lost, a shade of its former power has been retained, allowing goblin warriors to let out a guttural roar in order to summon more strength.
Visible Health Bar: ??? (Defeat 22 more to unlock)
Drops: ??? (Defeat 72 more to unlock)
~~~
~~~
Training Forest Goblin Archer
The archer variant of a particularly degenerate race of creatures. These goblins are just as weak as their scout brethren, but they dislike being on the frontlines. Their strength is so poor, that they traded the blessing of Skills in order to pull back the bow string far enough to fire arrows.
Skills: [N/A]
Visible Health Bar: ??? (Defeat 35 more to unlock)
Drops: ??? (Defeat 85 more to unlock)
~~~
I wasn’t convinced that the Swing and Slash skill were different, but I did vaguely remember Kevin XYY using a Slash variation. Maybe it was worth a test when I eventually got longer bladed or heavy weapons. The window whisked itself into nothingness as I looked up and away. The warrior’s Emboldening Shout was the only skill I had an interest in, but the requirement to unlock it was clearly too high. My thoughts briefly turned to the Blank Training Skill Book – if it worked the way I assumed, I could probably unlock the skill with it.
I shook my head as the thought came up. My interest in the Emboldening Shout was entirely curiosity. Outside of Pummel, which was still incredibly useful, there were no skills that I would want to replace with a slow casting skill. Not to mention how embarrassing it would be to have to physically shout every time I wanted to cast it.
There was a pretty healthy variety of animals roaming the forest. Including the fox, I had run into about seven different types of animals. Foxes, bears, deers, moose, huge pheasants (which I learned are apparently not chickens), wolves, and boars. The most terrifying animal was unsurprisingly the bears, followed by the moose and wolves.
Besides the wolves, who came in pairs, the encounters were a simple one on one fight. This made the battles themselves quite short, which forced me to do a lot more wandering into the forest. Thankfully, Seb had sent me his notes on how to properly rotate around the map so that I would never venture too far from the village.
Him and the others had decided to wander as far as they could to see if anything would happen, but the forest seemed to stretch on forever without any changes. They had ended up dying on purpose so that they could just respawn back at town. Seb had checked the forums after going on that adventure, and it seemed that the other starting zones had a similar “feature” going on. It was almost as if every Training X area existed in its own pocket dimension.
It was an interesting revelation to read about as I wandered around for more animal spawns, and I could guess why it was the case. Paul had cheesed a strong piece of armor early on in the previous game we had played together. It was a pretty standard “thief bug” – using the standard steal ability on a specific dungeon boss that was technically unkillable at the time. Fortunately, progression in that game was fast enough that it didn’t matter, but it was pretty funny seeing the top clear groups running a pair of thieves as tanks, instead of the dedicated tank classes.
While there weren’t dedicated classes in Equilibrium, it was likely that someone had already used either a Tabula Rasa or blank skill book to re-create a stealing ability. Based on the fact that Paul hadn’t mentioned it, I guessed that it didn’t work here, but I couldn’t fault people for trying. Especially not after the beating I had received at the goblin camp the night before.