“And I’m back from the dead!” I said with a little hop as I respawned outside GranGran’s hut. 

I finished the collection and was even able to kill two frost hares in addition to the five snow rats which made me level up to two. One of the rants about Mardukryons that I’ve read was that everything about them was slow. Leveling up anything was slow compared to other races, and I’ve experienced that for myself now. Even finding monsters that I could take on in my low level took time.

“You died again?” a familiar voice said.

I froze for a second then drooped down my shoulders. Turning my head to my left, I saw Nicole walking out of GranGran’s hut. She was alone, probably doing a Healer quest. What was my personality when facing her, again? Right, a hapless noob. I looked around, worried, and said, “Where are your friends?”

She laughed. “I’m alone right now. They have work.” She walked towards me and said, “Why? Are you worried that they would tease you?”

I hung my head shyly, “No, no, just…”

“Don’t worry about that. They’re good people, just show offs,” she said patting my shoulder. “I’ll tell them off if they make fun of you.”

I nearly snorted through my nose. These people are too friendly for their own good. What if I was an online scammer? There were many cases of those scams on social media sites. Fortunately for her, I’m a god and not a scammer. She should be proud that a god was letting her get close. Anyway, I’m happy that my personality switching skills were still top notched. It’s been several years that I’ve stuck with the personality of philanthropist, good-natured, clean as fuck, lawyer that I was worried I couldn’t switch personalities like I used to do when needed by the situation.  

“So, why did you die again? Was it the Mirdabons?” I nodded. She wagged her fingers at me. “Don’t attack Mirdabons, okay?”

Huh, she probably thinks I’m a shy immature teenager in real life who used the name Heraldic Hard-on thinking it was cool. Should I tell her the truth of how I died? At least it would make her think that I’m trying hard to continue as a Mardukryon; maybe she would give me more help. “But I was able to kill one of them.”

“Really now?” [Friend Request from Aletheia] popped up. I accepted it, knowing that she would look at my level. “You’re only level two,” she exclaimed. “Yet you killed one? Did you find a small group of them outside the village and killed one before the others killed you?” She was already level twenty-two. 

“Yes. I was far from the village so I thought that I’d just suicide on the Mirdabons to get here faster. I saw a group of six, the smallest pack of Mirdabons I have seen, so I thought, might as well try to kill one.”

“Yeah, the normal packs are about a dozen. Seeing a pack of Mirdabons below ten in number is really rare. So how did you kill one?”

“When I leveled up, I placed a skill in [Charge] in our Mardukryon Skill Tree. You know, it makes me…charge,” I said awkwardly. “I went for the Mirdabon farthest from the rest and with the knockback effect from the charge, I sent it even further away. I chased it and attacked it. I had some time before the others got to me. Then I munched on Mirdweed to restore my life as the other Mirdabons attacked me. I kept on stabbing the one I attacked.”

“That’s cool,” she said. “Good job. My teammates and I managed to take on smaller groups of Mirdabons when we were like level five. And there are three of us. You really did a good job.”

“Uh, can I ask you help with something?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Could you help me in putting skills? I sort of couldn’t understand how it works.”

“Oh, here. I’ll show you using my own skill tree.” She stretched her arms in front of her, presumably opening her interface. Then with a flipping motion, I was able to see what she saw. I quickly took note of the skills she put points on and what they were.

The Mardukryon Skill Tree wasn’t so simple. From the center of the mandala-like design of the skill tree was Ancestral Constitution. It was surrounded by six option, all of these skill options were connected to the Ancestral Constitution, meaning I could put points on them since they would “open” up once their prerequisite was leveled. That was the obvious part of our skill tree. “Our skills also level like masteries, right?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Some do, but I assume you mean like Spear Mastery, the first mastery we get? Masteries like that level through usage and killing the monster you used it on,” she said. She then clicked on her Ancestral Constitution which was level five, nearing a level up. “This one levels through usage, but up to a certain point, I think Norman said level ten, it will max out. Then you have to use your skill points, which we get once per level, to rank it up.”

“Will it get better if it ranks up?”

“Maybe? Not sure. None of us have ranked up any skill since skill points are hard to come by and we have so many skills to open.” She shrugged. “I think it will have more bonus or something. Why would there be an option to rank if it does nothing?”

True. Except leveling, only rare quests gave out skill points as a reward. Maybe there were some other sources of skill points but people would want to keep those a secret rather than post it online. So that was one question down. “Is it alright if I ask another question?” I asked in an apologetic tone. I wasn’t sure if I could manage a pitiful apologetic face with a Mardukryon’s face which has the skin of cooling magma and snakelike slits for a nose. Her Mardukryon face was sort of pretty actually in a pretty monster kind of way. “Maybe I’m taking much of your time.” She said it was no problem so I asked her my other question. “Why should we use our precious skill points in filling in all the options one circle?”

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As I said earlier, the skill tree looked like a mandala. It was made of several concentric circles. These circles were made of smaller circles. Each of these circle had five to ten options. Some were passives, like Ancestral Constitution. Others were skills that were active, like Charge. However, about half of them were not really skills but were more like bonuses.

Taking as an example the first circle of options, one was Charge, one was a passive for healing, another a passive for attacks, the three others were just bonuses. Like adds five percent to health. What was different was that these bonuses don’t say “Lvl. 1” so I assumed that they don’t level. So why bother with them when skills were obviously better and they level up?

“Oh, that! We had that same question when we started.” Nicole pointed to her first circle. It was different from mine. The six options in the circle were connected by a blue link, besides their own links to the center of the circle which was the first skill, Ancestral Constitution. “At level fifteen this blue circle shows up. This means, at level fifteen, if you put a skill point on all the options of the first circle then a bonus skill will be given to you. I didn’t put all points in mine because the first bonus skill is some of cleaving attack. Not really useful for a Healer.”

“So when does the next circle open up?” The first circle of options was surrounded by four circles; each circle also has options of their own. These four circles were the next tier. None of the next tiers of outer circles had a blue outline on Nicole’s interface.  

“We talked to the highest level Mardukryon player, that guy with the battle ax, and he said that it opens up at level thirty.”

“Thank you so much for your help. I really didn’t know much about our race. I can’t find anything online about it.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She smiled at me. “Just message me if you need help. I still have to cure some villagers as part of my quest.”

I waved her goodbye although I had many questions that I wanted to ask. I’ll talk to her about it some other time. Maybe I could try talking to that battle ax player if I saw him? It would be good if he was the helpful type.

After turning in my quest items to Sumuel, I leveled to three. I didn't use my skill point yet. I would plan out my skills later in the office while I'm in some stupid meeting. Now, I used up all the ores Nicole gave me, which meant that I have to go collect more from the mines. Sumuel’s next quest needed twenty frost ores and ten iceirons, whatever the fuck that was. Off I went to the mines, using [Charge], which was only limited by my stamina, and stabbing myself along the way since my Ancestral Constitution was nearly level two. A weird sight indeed.

While the Miners have a sort of headquarters inside the village, their main place of operations, the mines, were some distance away from the village. When I arrived at the mines, I was surprised that there was also a village of Mardukryons there and not just a small base for miners. After mining for a long time, many people probably moved here.

A few minutes of galloping was the mine itself. I could see the earth stripped away and tunnels along the side of the mountain. Mardukryons were going in and out of the tunnels, some were even working on the outside using pickaxes on the hard rock. There were a few Mardukryon players roaming around. Several monsters also crawled all over the place; they do not attack the Mardukryons though.

I approached one of the tunnels and asked a Miner that just came out where do I find frost ores and ice irons.

“For frost ores, just go right in here,” he said, pointing down the tunnel. “They’re just there on this level. Don’t go down unless you’re prepared to fight little buggers roaming around.”

“You mean like these ones?” I said, referring to a

“Those are harmless ones. There are many more dangerous buggers inside. The Hunter-Warriors go to this place once a day to beat back those buggers inside. If we need to mine something deep, Hunter-Warriors accompany us.”

Learning my lesson from the Mirdabons I asked him, “Are these Crabores dangerous? Do I get something good from them?”

“Nah, they’re not dangerous. Unless if you attack one, then it will fight back. But its bugger friends won’t gang up on you.” He scratched his horn, trying to remember something. “Ah, those buggers also sometimes eat frost ores. Maybe you can get them to spit it out. And the exchange up in the village also buys their carapace. Gets you some rings to buy your pickax if you goin’ to mine some more precious materials.”

“Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Maybe you’ll want to join the Miners?” I politely declined and said that I was still thinking about it.

Activating all the stacks of my healing, I chose the Crabore that was out in the open and had no other Crabores near it; I was taking extra precaution.

I charged at it with my spear, sending it back a couple of meters. It tumbled but instantly got back on its legs. It menacingly snapped its craggy claws at me and walked forward.

“Huh, so you’re not the type of crab that can walk only sideways,” I said. I stabbed it, dealing damage about a tenth of its health. The fucker snipped at my legs and I took some damage. I ran away from it a bit as my Charge skill cooled down. Charging it again, I immediately stabbed at it as it flipped and then ran away again. It was a slow creature but a bit durable.

Or my rusty spear just sucked. Maybe I should join the Hunter-Warriors? They promised me some nice gear if I became one of them when Little Pony introduced me to them.

Eventually, I killed the Crabore. It didn’t drop a frost ore but it did drop a carapace. I weighed my options in going into the mine to pick rocks from the walls or just spearing these fuckers.

Of course, I chose spearing these fuckers.

And thus, many Crabores met their end.