Took me a bit longer to bring this one out, hope you still enjoy :)
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Taking a break from battle to quench his thirst and restore some Health he looked at his experience bar again, 98%.
He had fought an incredible amount of rabbits but was still level one, levelling up with rabbits even if they where 4 levels higher still took a considerable amount of time. Just how long would it take one to reach 150?
A grim road was ahead of Zero...
His fighting style got better every time he won against a rabbit but it still took about 10 minutes per rabbit and then most of the time he had to rest to let his health regenerate.
Throwing stones to get the attention of those rabbits really made things a lot easier but he could only throw a maximum of two stones at a rabbit before the high agility creature reached him. He needed to solve his two major problems, faster health regeneration and more damage to hunt rabbits quicker.
The first answer would naturally to try eating the meat the rabbit had left behind but raw was not an option if he didn’t want to get food poisoning.
After creating a small fire he put the meat on a stick and just cooked it over the fire.
Another problem was that cooking was a skill in this game too and his food most of the time either overcooked or was still a bit raw, he had to throw away a lot of rabbit meat until one of them turned out fine.
It wasn’t that his skill in cooking IRL was bad, normally it would have been impossible to cook something without the cooking skill to begin with but even then he wasn’t satisfied with the meagre outcome of his hardships, the meat tasted bad but it made his hunger that he had until then disappear and even if no message popped up his health regeneration increased considerably.
He continued hunting a few more rabbits until a light surrounded him and a message window popped up.
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Through your hard efforts to survive you have levelled up!
+ 10 Distributable Attribute points
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What Zero needed right now were strength and Agility. He put 4 points into strength and 6 into Agility.
After the level up hunting rabbits got a slight bit faster but soon he stopped, even ten rabbits later his experience bar stubbornly only reached 5% it would take too long this way if he wanted to get out of this forest fast, Zero needed a fast way to level up and the only way seemed to be through the wolfs further up the mountain.
He was not dumb enough to try to fight the wolfs right now but he couldn’t keep killing rabbits until he was at a decent enough level for a wolf, that might take a month of real time.
After thinking about it for a bit the first thing that came to mind was to build a trap. Unsure how he should put what he visualized into reality he logged out in his cave and searched online for blueprints of simple traps.
He found all kinds of traps and snares, if he wanted to snare and hold something in place rope was often used. If he wanted to kill something, heavy stones where used.
Most of it was useless for the sometimes steep slope on the mountain, he went to traps in wars and found a lot of booby traps using modern tools or shells from rifles, that also didn’t help.
Zero searched for quite some time keeping in mind what he had seen on the mountain and what he would be able to build.
Back in the game he got to work.
He gathered leafs, a few sharp stones and spikes from a weird looking plant. Then he grabbed his backpack and started to cut and rip small leather straps from the stuffed inside with his sword.
That the durability of his backpack shrunk that way he ignored for now. Afterwards he put the spikes and stones through one of the leather strips, put one beneath so they wouldn’t fall out or move while he put another leather strip around it in the gaps between each object keeping the whole thing tightly together.
After tying the ends as best as he could he made another one in the same way and put it around his ankles at the average height where he normally got bitten by the rabbits.
A window suddenly popped up and a bit surprised he started reading it.
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Spiky foot bracelet!
Durability 15/15
Defence + 1
10% Damage taken will be repelled to the attacker if during the attack it touched the bracelet.
After countless battles with small animals this leather foot bracelet was created to fend off at least some of the damage taken and injure the attacking opponent. Although very poorly made this bracelet does serve its purpose.
[/p][/col][/box]
Because he was wearing two of them he got + 2 Defence and + 20% Damage dealt back to the attacker, this for sure would help a lot in fights with smaller animals.
He got the idea after he logged out.
That he saw durability with the bracelets didn’t surprise him, not like the sword from Khanas that he got which still didn’t show it in the description, Zero had found out if the base durability of something was above 50 it would not be shown except to a profession that handles weapons or armour.
It also happened when the durability of an item hit the 50 mark that it would be displayed together with the maximum durability to other classes too. That was also a way to see how durable something was.
For the traps he was going to test them on rabbits to begin with, he wanted at least a few more levels before he challenged actual wolves. It would be suicide and the idea of dying did not appeal to him.
Starting with collecting a few branches he bent them into shape, some snapped but most could handle the stress, after tying them together with smaller branches that bent like rope and only snapped when twisted he had finished his first half of the trap. Zero made another set with the rest of the branches. He then strapped them at the top to two trees standing close together and bent the bottom until the elastic branches supported each other creating an arch. Moving one of them a bit, with a sound like a whip two branches hit the ground.
Perfect.
After attracting a lot of rabbits by literally strolling right through their nest Zero started running to his trap.
He could feel them biting at his ankles so he increased his running speed again, if this plan failed he could very well die... With a horde of rabbits right on his heels he ran through the archway between the trees, ducked under them while running and the only thing he could hear for a moment after setting all of them off was the sound of whips and the squeaking of rabbits. He stopped and looked behing him, about 20 rabbits where lying on the ground being held down by the branches, the rest turned grey and disappeared.
Right away an incredible amount of experience rained down on him and at the same time two messages popped up.
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Through a special action the stat -Tactic- has been created!
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Through a special action the skill -Ploy- has been created!
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
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“Open description on stat Tactic and the Skill Ploy”
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Tactic:
The stat Tactic will passively enhance overall tactical attacks like ambushes or traps. It can also increase your defensive abilities when defending a base or camp and is most useful in a War.
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Ploy: Level 0 (21%)
+ 6% more Damage with traps
+ 1.5% more chance to trick/change someone’s mind
The ability to make traps as well as tricking people more effectively. This skill will give extra information on making traps or how to best trick people and turnaround situations to your favour if needed.
If this skill is used to harm the innocent infamy can rise.
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Excited with this development he could only grin.
Lady luck was with him today that he was sure off, getting a stat and a skill at the same day was something to be proud of.
Zero’s experience bar had a big jump too and there were still the other twenty rabbits trapped under the net of branches. With a wicked smile he finished them off and collected the meat and pelts they dropped.
One of them also dropped a rabbit foot, Zero could probably make that into some sort of charm, maybe sell it in a village.
He continued making traps and luring rabbits with either walking or throwing stones throughout the day.
After hitting a rabbit directly on the forehead with a sharp stone another window suddenly popped up.
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Through a special action the Skill -Projectile Throw- has been created!
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A little dumbfounded about this message he opened the skill window.
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Projectile Throw: Level 0 (34%)
+ 10% more damage with projectiles
+ 50% more chance to pull the targets attention (aggro)
(Damage can vary between thrown objects)
Even Eons ago projectiles where a wonderful way to distract someone or get their attention.
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After a fight against a few more rabbits and this time including a trap with a big boulder he got another message.
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Tactic stat has risen by 2!
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“So the more traps of variety and difficulty I make the stat actually increases alone from that without a level up?”
Zero knew you could passively raise your stats through actions but that he could do it so efficiently was very surprising.
It might not always show that message but if it increased just with time, strengthening his traps, wasn’t that completely broken?
He could only count himself very lucky.
After the sun went down he had cleared the nest of rabbits, his character window now looked like this.
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Name: Zero
Level: 4
Lifepoints: 210/210
Mana: 100/100
[/col][col colspan=2 valign=middle width=50% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#000000]Class: Unknown
Job: Unknown
Title:
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Attributes:
Attack: 9
Defence: 5 + 8
Intelligence: 5
Agility: 15 + 1
Strength: 10 + 5
Tactic: 13
Luck: 5
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Skills:
Swordsmanship: Level 3 (4%)
+ 20% more Damage with swords
+ 4 Agility
Ploy: Level 2 (45%)
+ 18% more Damage with traps
+ 4.5% more chance to trick/change someone’s mind
Projectile Throw: Level 1 (82%)
+ 20% more Damage with projectiles
+ 55% more chance to pull the targets attention (aggro)
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20% of the incoming Damage will be reflected if both foot bracelets are hit in the attack.
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Zero’s level was close to five now, his skills had levelled up pretty well and he couldn’t help but show a grin on his face for the progress he made.
It was good but still he was missing something, a way to properly regenerate his health.
Having no other choice he started to eat some of the vegetation around him, an odd looking herb with blue leafs and green circles on it was poisonous and after vomiting most of it out he barely survived, his health had reached rock bottom after the effect of the poison stopped.
Waiting for a bit for his health to recover he tried again, this time a bit more careful and also looking for something that didn’t actually look dangerous.
He had to vomit 10 more times until he found a plant that wasn’t poisonous.
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Argis Tangea has healed your Lifepoints by 30!
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It was a green leafed plant that grew close to the ground with orange stripes on it that gave him that message.
Right away he started to collect as much as he could fit in his bag, sadly enough the backpack he got was not a pocket dimension inventory where one could store a near infinite number of objects but a very real and normal backpack.
Closing the now bursting leather backpack Zero stood up and went up the mountain to scout some of the terrain.
For his plan to work and to finally be able to get out of this forest the first part was to be able to regain health, the next part of it was to find a useable terrain for his yet biggest trap.
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