Chapter 16: Edge Wood
So, you might be wondering at this point, but how does someone go about conquering the world? How do I start, now that I’ve found my resolve to overturn the status quo and climb my way to the top? Well, as it turned out, the beginning of a villain’s journey looks a lot like the hero’s. Namely, I was making my way to the woods at the edge of town, ready to give my knife a test run on some less than intelligent opponents. I’d come bright and early, for the best chance to be alone. That way, I could be free to test if the regular levelling methods I’d read about worked for my class.
My destination, the unfortunately named Edge Wood, was a remnant of a monster incursion from long before my time. An Apex Dryad, apparently, who moved a forest in her wake, growing her army with every step she took. Most of that horde was long gone, burned to a crisp by siegecraft and spellfire, but a small chunk was spared and maintained to this day, at the direction of the war council in those days. At first, this was for research purposes, so that humanity’s best and brightest could learn how the Apex Dryad was formed, and ways to counter such incursions in the future, but even long after the final scholar departed, the forest remained.
It was useful to have a small patch of wilderness where low level monsters spawn naturally. For harvesting beginning reagents, and, as in my case, for a bit of training. All of this, I read in a small pamphlet that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a saturday morning cartoon, complete with cute drawings of slimes and ladybugs. That’s not to say no precautions were taken, however; low level monsters were still monsters, after all.
“Halt!”
Case in point, the bored looking guard leaning on the wooden fence; one that wasn’t just a fence, but the anchor for a wide ranging enchantment that kept monsters inside the boundary at all times.
“State your purpose for visiting.”
[Guardsman Spike - Level 3 Soldier]
His voice was gruff but not accusing, more a perfunctory question he must have asked thousands of times before. His long spear stayed on his back, and he didn’t rise to intercept me, so I counted that as a win.
“Had my Class day recently. Wanted to try my hand at some easy targets, before going crazy.”
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I’d switched my public Class to Soldier for this trip, since that would look far more believable than a Merchant trying to stab a Slime, even if they could probably pull it off at this level.
“Congratulations!”
Spike grinned, after a moment staring above my head, presumably at my own tag, before clasping a fist to his heart in a martial salute, one that I returned in kind.
“Always good to see a fellow Soldier start to come into his own. Alright, the rules here are simple: you head in after sunrise, and leave before sunset. If you have to run, head for a fence and hop over it, nothing will be able to follow you out. The monsters inside get stronger after dark, so don’t expect any help if you bite off more than you can chew. Got it?”
“Got it,” I nodded, having no intention to fall, not to something as simple as overconfidence.
Spike let me pass after that, with one final call to “not die”. That was the first proof that my disguise was holding up: he would’ve been much more suspicious had he seen a blank spot where my Class should have been. A Child, likewise, would not have been allowed inside at all: though they still tried, on occasion. Will had seen a boy from an older cohort do it, just once. He’d returned to the orphanage with an arm bent the wrong way round, requiring the staff on duty to go fetch a healer. His arm had been fixed quickly after that, just in time for the Matron to grab him, and tan his buttocks black and blue with a belt in front of all the other children. That, the healer hadn’t fixed: a lesson for the future, he’d called it. Needless to say, Will never tried to sneak in after that: some risks, he knew even at the time, simply weren’t worth taking.
I kept that in mind as I took my first steps into the foliage: it wasn’t particularly tall, reaching no higher than my ankles, but it could still present a danger, as a tripping hazard if nothing else.
Once inside the woods, it didn’t take long for enemies to start appearing. They only spawned in darkness, and the small matches available at present likewise limited the size of the mobs on offer.
[Skeleton - Level 1]
My first opponent, accordingly, was the skeleton of a rat, a faint red glow visible in empty eye sockets as it leapt out of a patch of overgrown weeds to take a bite at my ankle. Annoyingly, it was fast enough to succeed, even if its tiny teeth caused nothing more than discomfort through my trousers. I didn’t bother summoning my knife for this, given the lack of vital points to stab. Instead, I knelt down to get within striking distance, and used what nature had given me, pounding at the skeletal rodent with my fist. One strike was enough to get it off my ankle, followed by a stomp or two for good measure, shattering the skeleton beyond repair.
Examining what remained of its head, I found the unnatural light in its eyes was gone, the traditional indicator that the magic animating its body had likewise faded. All of that was self-evident. What wasn’t apparent, was any sign of experience gained. As I expected, then; my Class was irregular. That wasn’t a problem, in the sense that there was nothing wrong with the System: it simply meant that in this case, I would have to work just a little bit harder than most.