Chapter 44 - Hard Hat Required

As the Unicorn lay dying at Mason’s feet, he saw a single tear run down its face.

Mason knew it was dead when he received an onslaught of notifications. He pushed them aside for now, looking over at his companion, who was covered in black blood, having finally killed the last Mini Unicorn prick.

Before making his way over, he looted his kill.

Loot Received:

3 vials of pure unicorn blood

1 Silver coin

Item - Unicorn Blood (Very Rare)

Unicorn Blood is a very effective cure-all potion which instantly heals all injuries, afflictions, sicknesses, diseases or ailments. Side effects include headaches, nausea, spontaneous combustion and dizziness.

Apart from the possible spontaneous combustion, that sounded useful. Too bad there were only three.

The Unorn fight had taken a lot longer than he had expected. With his current Intelligence stat, Summon Random Creature only lasted around 25 minutes, so he was expecting Alan to poof out of existence pretty soon. He ran over to the man and held out his hand, “Thanks for your help. I could have managed it on my own, but it was far more fun working with you.”

“Thanks? I guess. I assume It’ll be back to hell for me then?”

“Yeah, sorry, man, nothing I can do.” Mason paused, opening his menu for a moment, “Actually, take these. Maybe they’ll help some?”

Mason held out a bunch of potions and a spare set of Basilisk armour.

Alan looked up at him with a look Mason struggled to read; he assumed the man was probably just overcome with gratitude.

He took the potions, which disappeared into his inventory equivalent. “Oh, um, the potions are great, thank you so much… the armour, though… it’s a bit…. Pink?”

Mason frowned, ‘Yeah, it comes from a Basilisk. It’s pink, but it’s super tough and gives you a major strength boost!”

“Yeah, that sounds cool and everything but… I’m sorry. It just looks ridiculous. You look like a giant naked mole ra-“

Alan popped out of existence, leaving Mason standing there, unable to defend his injured ego.

“Yeah, well, fuck you!” Mason said after a few seconds, failing to come up with anything wittier.

He opened his menu and began to work through the mountain of notifications.

Quest update - Run like fuck?

Notification 1/5

Quest Objective - You have encountered a Unicorn. These guys are no fun at all. You could either run or fight. It’s totally up to you, but honestly, your agility is piss poor, and you’ll never manage to get away from it, so you might as well fight. Objective complete.

Reward - Clop Wand.

Item - Clop Wand (Very Rare)

This Clop wand comes from the body of a Unicorn. It contains 50 charges of the ability Rainbow Acid. Pointing the wand at an enemy and using the activation phrase, ‘Clop clop’, will trigger the spell.

Mason was certain he had heard the word clop used before, but for the life of him, he could not remember where. The wand was really oddly shaped. He had seen the Unicorn’s actual horn, and this ‘wand’ looked nothing like it. The horn had been hard and made from what Mason assumed to be keratin, but this, while still pretty hard, felt more fleshy.

The rainbow acid was a decent addition to his offensive repertoire. It would have been very welcome back when he had fought the Trolls.

Notification 2/5

You have received experience from party members’ kills.

Alan killed 42 Level 1 Mini Unicorns - You receive 420 XP.

You have slain 72 Level 1 Mini Unicorns - You receive 720 XP

You have slain Level 27 Unicorn - You receive 270 XP.

Level up

Level up

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Level up

Wow, he got to experience for every one of the smaller Unicorns? Awesome! He’d levelled three times! It almost made him want to hunt down another Unicorn, almost. Three levels meant he had unlocked a new skill select and had reached the WillPower threshold! No wonder he had so many notifications.

Notification 3/5

You have reached level 22.

Stat points allocated

Notification 4/5

Level 20 skill selection available.

Available skills:

Short-Range Teleportation (Advance) - See there, be there.

Effect: You are able to teleport instantly to anywhere you can see. 60-second cooldown between use. Scales with Agility.

Ballistic touch (Advance) - You become the gun.

Effect: While this Ability is active, you imbue any object you touch with kinetic energy, making it shoot off at bullet-like speed in the direction of your choice. Scales with Strength.

Digestion Mimicry (Advance) - You are what you eat.

Effect: Consuming part of a creature will allow you to take on its form temporarily. Duration depends on the amount of the creature you eat, which part of the creature and your Intelligence Stat. Scales with Intelligence.

For once, Mason wanted to be tactical about his choices. As well as the three new options, he also had the skills he hadn’t picked last time. He was only really considering three of those, Healing, Piercing Gaze and Martial Arts.

Right off, while he knew martial arts would be incredibly useful. He didn’t want to waste a skill on something he could learn himself.

That left him with five options. He remembered promising himself that he would get a movement skill and that teleportation would be really cool, but he passed. Mason was a prick and didn’t get a say. The restrictions on the teleportation skill just seemed like too much. If he could use it in quick succession, then maybe, but the minute cool-down made him put it aside for now.

He expanded the descriptions of piercing gaze and healing.

Piercing Gaze (Advanced) – Gaze upon your enemies and strike fear into their hearts.

Active effect: Moderate chance of damaging an enemy by looking at them, scales with Intelligence and Willpower.

The advanced version didn’t seem much better and still didn’t give any hint about how much damage could do. Mason was still considering it, but the fact it needed WillPower and Intelligence in order to upgrade made him move on.

Healer (Advanced) - Love hurts, and so does healing.

Active Effect: Drain your own HP to heal another. You will temporarily feel the pain of what you are healing. The advanced skill also allows the healing of afflictions, diseases and severe injuries, Scales with vitality.

This was definitely on the maybe pile. His regeneration made healing himself pretty easily, but if someone he was hunting with ever got hurt and he found himself without a potion, he would likely never forgive himself. On the other hand, he was pretty good at stocking up on healing potions whenever he started getting at all low, and now he even had the Unicorn blood…

He found the idea of shapeshifting into all sorts of beasts and Monsters really enticing. In his inventory right now, he had some Drake hide left, some Basilisk, Troll and all sorts of other bits of Monsters he had killed, but even just the thought of eating some of them was enough to make him gag. If he were to take the ability, he would only use it when absolutely necessary. He’d much prefer a skill like Magic Missile that he could rely on in pretty much any situation, so while he would love to scare the shit out of Mayry by sneaking up on her while in the form of a Crack Hen, he was going to have to pass on this occasion.

Finally, Ballistic Touch. Being British, he didn’t have much experience with guns. What he did know came from video games. Being able to touch something and have it shoot off at the speed of a bullet sounded pretty OP, but when it came right down to it, offensively, depending on how the ability worked, it was pretty similar to Magic Missile. If he were restricted to small things, then using Magic Missile would probably be the better option. However, if he could use it on, say, a boulder, then that would be a different story entirely. He could have all sorts of things ready to go in his inventory that he could shoot off at bullet speed, boulders, daggers… he could probably even get the blacksmith to make something bullet-shaped. The options were endless.

Every guy, at some point in their life, has made a decision entirely because they had an idea they couldn’t get out of there head. Mason was no different. Having chosen Ballistic Touch, he started searching the area for what he needed.

After searching for 20 minutes, he came across a clearing in the forest. In this clearing was a pile of particularly big rocks, exactly what he had been looking for. He took the biggest one and, with his supernaturally sharp dagger, sliced the top and bottom off, leaving it roughly disk-shaped.

He was glad Mayry wasn’t here. He was sure that she would not be a big believer in this brilliant idea. Taking a deep breath, he jumped into the air holding the stone disk. When he started to descend, he slid the disk under his feet and activated his power.

“HOLLLYYYYY FUCCCCCCCCCCK”

He shot through the air at an insane speed. Holding on for dear life, he could feel the air resistance pushing back the skin on his face.

The clearing he was in was pretty big, but the longer Mason was airborne, the more he started to think he may have made a small miscalculation. If he maintained his current speed and trajectory, he was going to hit one of the humongous trees that he had just gotten over his hatred of. He was going to splatter against it like a bird flying into a freshly cleaned window.

At the last second, he let go of the disk and flew backwards. He landed hard on the ground but was mostly uninjured, apart from having the breath knocked out of him.

“That… was… awesome!” He wheezed out.

While uninjured, he was in a decent amount of pain. He stayed lying there for a few minutes deciding to check his last notification.

Notification 5/5

Your Willpower stat has reached 25.

Your skill Mental Manipulation (Basic) has been upgraded to Mental Manipulation (Advanced).

Mental Manipulation (Advanced) – Active effect: Three times a day, you can twist a target’s mind filling it with an additional emotion of your choice for 45 seconds X your Willpower. Scales with Willpower.

Which emotion will you choose? Terror or Lust?

That was a bit underwhelming when compared to Ballistic Touch…but oh well. Lust or Terror, fighting Monsters was his thing right now, and he hadn’t yet come across a Monster he had wanted to bang… so Terror. Though Gael was kinda hot, ah, it probably wouldn’t work on her anyway.

He received a notification.

Achievement Unlocked - Hard Hat Required.

You have been hit on the head by a falling tree. Wait for it.

Huh? He felt his ring buzz; he looked up just in time to see one of the massive trees slam into him. He had just enough time before being knocked unconscious to figure out that his stone disk had cut through one of the trees.