Chapter 9: Manasmithing_Harem Reaper

Status WindowCharacter NameAzraelAlignmentNeutralLevel13ClassAngelTitleThe ForgetfulFame210Infamy0Health5486Mana5416Stamina2700Endurance81Strength267Agility110Art47Creativity57Wisdom209Intellect299Vitality222Fighting Spirit11Charisma57Faith347Luck47Leadership12Attack135Defense21AffinityEarth: 10

Wind: 10

Fire: 10

Water: 10Magic ResistanceBlack Magic: 15%

Fire: 10%

Water: 10%

Earth: 10%

Wind: 10%

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]+At level up, all stats increase by 1.

+6 mana regeneration per second.

+1 health regeneration per second.

+Fighting Spirit Increases 50% faster

+50 Intellect +5% Endurance

+50 Wisdom +5% Vitality

+2050 Health +1% Strength

+500 Stamina

+1600 Mana

+1% Intellect

+1% Wisdom

+8% Health

+18% Mana

+1% Defense

+2% Weapon Damage

+2% Unarmed Damage

+Poison resistance: 20%[/col][/box]

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Heavenly Strings (Lvl. 1 70%): You have the innate ability to play any string instrument using your knowledge and experience from another world.

Angelic Voice(Lvl. 4 50%): Using your innate ability to control your vocal chords and breathing you can produce the optimal frequency to soothe allies and enemies.

Ancient Alchemy (Lvl. 1 0%): You have unlocked the secrets of the ancient alchemists.

Intellect and Wisdom increase by 1% per skill level.

Health and Mana increase by 1% per skill level.

Mana Crafting(Lvl. 1 0%): A skill that most people would never even consider because of how difficult and inefficient it can be. However, by using a combination of creativity and intelligence you have successfully created a powerful new technique! Replaces the Handicraft skill and increases along with all crafting skills.

Increases Weapon and Unarmed damage by 2% per skill level.

Increases Defense by 1% per skill level.

Iron Stomach (Lvl. 7 95%): By subjecting yourself to terrible and excruciating digestive torture you have gained the ability to neutralize weak poisons without much discomfort.

Increases Poison Resistance by 10%.

Creative Cooking (Lvl. 7 10%): Either out of laziness or desperation you have learned to use dangerous and poisonous ingredients in combination with other more conventional ingredients to create edible food that tastes pretty good.

Warning! Most people or monsters will not think it tastes good and may die or suffer from the various poisonous effects!

Increases Health and mana by 1% per skill level.

Mana Weaving (Lvl. 5 15%): With the mana control that should be impossible for a barbarian, you can now fuse cloth and leather together to create clothing and armor without the use of thread!

Mana increases by 2% per skill level

Mana regeneration increases by 1 per second per skill level

Repair (Lvl. 2 85%): You can repair low level weapons and armor.

Heavenly Percussion (Lvl. 2 25%): Using knowledge from another world you are able to create music by striking or scraping even objects that don't seem like instruments.

Intermediate Soul Fishing (Lvl. 1 0%): You can catch living creatures or disembodied spirits using any kind of fishing rod.

With intermediate mana crafting you can fish without using a rod.

Increases Endurance and Vitality by 5% per skill level.

Increases Strength by 1% per skill level.

Intermediate Mana Conversion (Lvl. 1 0%): You have learned how to efficiently channel mana into other stats.

Can currently convert mana into Strength, Endurance, Vitality, Agility, and Fighting Spirit at a ratio of 10 mana to 1 stat point. Only usable on one stat at a time.

Can convert 500 mana into 100 health per second.

Intermediate Voice of Death (Lvl. 1 0%): Yelling can kill enemies with low health instantly and stun strong enemies at medium range.

Costs 150 mana per second.

Whispering can remove curses from living targets and purify spirits, preparing them to receive new bodies.

Costs 100 mana per second.

Screaming causes living targets in medium range to become deaf and applies a bleed based on their level compared to yours. Undead targets take 50 holy damage per second at long range, 150 holy damage per second at medium range and 300 holy damage per second at close range.

Costs 300 mana per second.[/col][/box]

His stat’s and skills seem absurd at first glance, but the truth is that they should be much higher. Unfortunately, skills are closely related to memories and that debuff he kept getting was preventing his stats from accumulating as high as they should. However, Azrael was still satisfied because if he was any stronger then it wouldn't even be a challenge to kill monsters over 50 levels above him with his bare hands. Actually, he had to kill monsters with his bare hands because he didn't even have a weapon to use. It was fine though, at first their prey was only level 20 wolves, though there were hundreds.

Azrael would punch and kick the wolves with enough force to crush their skulls, break their spines or rupture their internal organs without even using his Mana Conversion. It was pretty gross though, but since he had to pick up their loot anyway, it didn't really make a huge difference. The simple minded orcs were amazed by his brute strength and overwhelming fighting spirit, but what was even more impressive was his crafting, they had no idea how he did it. After every battle, he would create terrible hide armors out of the materials that dropped and since the orcs thought terrible actually meant impressive, they were very happy with his shitty gifts.

After a few hundred wolves, the group of 10 male orcs and a barbarian had gained about 10 levels, so it was finally time to move to the new hunting grounds. Unlike in the human starting cities, the areas around the orc village were nearly impossible to solo. Foxes, rabbits, squirrels and deer couldn't survive in such a high leveled zone, so the lowest animal on the leveled food chain were fledgling orcs for the packs of starved wolves. Like orcs, the wolves had incredibly fast spawning rates but they formed huge groups of other packs, just to hunt an easy target. Luckily, Azrael’s group had a few chaperons and the old war veteran Stumpchwii, who were at least level 50. Even if he wasn't there, the orcs would be able to survive the low level hunts by themselves.

Perhaps because of his love for sushi and all kinds of raw seafood, Azrael was actually able to make delicious wolf meat sashimi out of their prey. The orcs didn't really care about cooking and thought what he was doing to be pointless, so they didn't even notice him using his mana as a knife when preparing his meals. He didn't know exactly how stupid the orcs were, so he decided to pretend to be a crazy muscle bound idiot who didn't even use weapons. However, everything changed when they came to their second hunting ground.

“Finally! Chewiiik! I was getting tired of wolf meat!”

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]New quest requirement added!

Return to the Sharp Tooth village with at least 1 orc from your hunting party.[/col][/box]

It was supposed to be a small group of level 30 dire wolves, but what they found was a giant orc, even bigger than Azrael. He was surrounded by wolf bones and was wearing heavy plate armor, adorned by human, orc and dark elf skulls. The other orcs were terrified, they had all heard of this voracious bastard before, Stumpchwii yelled out “Kaichwik! This time you wont get away, Chwiiik!” as he pointed his rusty glaive at the giant. Long ago, when he was younger and had a left arm, right leg and two eyes, he was probably quite powerful, but the Stumpchwii of today wasn't even fat. He was old, wrinkled and even looked like he was starving to death while wearing leather armor that Azrael gave him. There was no way he could win against the giant middle aged orc who was dual wielding what looked like ogre femurs, chipped from overuse.

The giant lumbering monster charged toward the 9 cowering orcs with Stumpchwii standing in the front, wanting to charge as well, but his peg leg wouldn't let him. Normally, you wouldn't be able to know the level of a player, it was just a vague feeling, based entirely on how much stronger or weaker they were from you. There was no way for him to know the true strength of the orc without testing it himself, just like before when drinking poisons and creative cooking, he would have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. While boosting his endurance by 100, he jumped in front of the group and stopped the charging giant with a shoulder charge of his own.

Azrael was knocked back into the group of disgusting, smelly and sweaty orcs, but it managed to snap them out of their fear status. One swing of Kaichwik’s right ogre femur, tore one of the level 30 orcs in half, spraying his intestines and other organs against the trees. The left swing which came immediately afterward was blocked by one of the veterans, using a large kite shield made from some giant insects exoskeleton. However, his arm broke and in less than a second, Kaichwik slammed the right femur down on the veterans head, smashing it into a puff of red mist as skull fragments shot out into some of the other orcs.

Kaichwik momentarily stopped the slaughter so that he could intimidate the remaining orcs, he yelled “Hahahaha! Chwiiik! I love the taste of fresh orc blood!” as the blood dripped down his face, into his gaping mouth which never closed because of his massive under bite.

Even in other games, Michael hated it when friendly NPCs that he could have saved died because he was unprepared or just not paying attention. Normally, in games where he played by himself, he could just reload and keep trying until he got it right. They were citizens that lived in ‘his’ world and even the stupidest, most obnoxious NPC had a purpose in it! Now he was faced with a situation where he couldn't restart the mission to make it perfect, or reload the world to bring his fallen comrades back to life. It wasn't even a feeling of grief or loss over their deaths, it was purely his obsessive compulsive nature that fueled his rage.

There was always a way! If he couldn't bring the dead ones back to life, then he just needed to keep the living ones alive. Azrael stood up, released a huge amount of energy from his core, into the palms of his hands and thrust out both arms towards the small orc standing a few meters in front of him. When both of Kaichwik’s femur clubs were in mid swing, aiming at the frail Stumpchwii, a small barrier of concentrated mana covered his body. Stumpchwii was miraculously able to avoid taking any damage, but a huge chunk of Azrael’s mana was consumed to nullify just one blow.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Mana Shield (Lvl. 2 0%): You have learned the main defensive ability a mage has without even being taught! Using large quantities of mana, you can create weak temporary barriers around yourself or others.

Shield strength has no limit but costs 150% of the damage absorbed in the form of mana.

At higher skill levels, efficiency rises and other similar skills may become available.[/col][/box]

It was impossible to level it up enough to be useful in such an critical situation, so he gave up on being clever and creative. The solution was simple, he had been in this situation thousands of times in CoM, the raid was about to wipe on an easy boss, with simple mechanics. The only difference was that he wasn't powerful enough to heal, tank and dps the boss down alone this time, at least not while worrying about keeping everyone else alive. After dashing behind the giant and snatching a glaive from the still living, somehow, orc who was torn in half’s hand, he slashed at the back of giants exposed Achilles tendons… which didn't even get through his thick skin.

Azrael yelled “Stumpchwii! Take the young ones and leave! Chwiiik! I can’t kill this giant fucker with them holding me back!” in a voice that was so loud, the literally half dead orc’s head exploded, which was probably a good thing since he was slowly dying from being torn in half.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]You have used voice of death! Nameless orc has died, Kaichwik has been stunned! Using your charisma and fighting spirit, Stumpchwii has been forced to follow your orders! -350 mana[/col][/box]

Stumpchwii quickly yelled “You hear Michwii! Chwichwik! We leave him fight alone! Lets go, Chwiik!” and all the other orcs quickly followed his hobbled retreat.’

While Kaichwik was still stunned and unable to react, Azrael was busy attempting to find some weakness somewhere. It seemed like no matter where he stabbed or slashed with the shitty glaive, he could do any damage. Maybe it had to do with his lack of weapon skills, or perhaps the giant green bastard just had too much endurance. Then he stopped being an idiot and checked the first place he should have looked. Using all his strength he thrust the glaive, which was pretty much just a stick with a curved blade at the end, into the right, bloodshot and beady yellow eye of the ugly bastard. Most of the blade was stopped by his helmet, but the eye was definitely pierced and ruptured but in that moment, he was released from the stun and swung both clubs into Azrael’s sides at the same time.

He could feel various vital organs being obliterated by the collision, but after what he had been through, it didn't even feel that painful. Maybe with the limiter off he would have winced a little bit, but he simply ignored it and jammed the glaive into Kaichwik’s other eye socket with all he strength he had left, plus a little bit extra by using mana conversion. The frenzied orc screamed in pain and anguish, the first time he couldn't feel it because of the stun, but even a giant monster will lose its composure when its eyes are being gouged out. Azrael finally understood the bastards weak point after backing up and watching the screaming giant orc swing his clubs around randomly.

This wasn't a game where a level 100 monster was invincible unless you were the same level, it was closer to reality but incorporating numerical values for everything that could be easily understood. At a certain point, monsters and even players can gain abilities that make such simple tactics impossible, but Kaichwik was just a level 70-90 orc who was a little stronger than most. Azrael was a level 26 barbarian with the stats of a level 70 mage and warrior mixed together, but he was nearly dead and out of mana. Killing is always about anatomy, if you understand the anatomy then you can easily kill anything given the right tools for the job. When the orc finally started to tire itself out and stopped swinging the clubs, he sprinted as fast as he could strait towards the bastard from the front. Azrael thrust the glaive into the gaping mouth of Kaichwik, blade facing upward, using his full momentum and strength.

Somehow it was still alive and managed to smack him lightly with one of the clubs, but after a quick uppercut to the bastards jaw using Azrael’s left palm, the tip of the blade tore through Kaichwik’s spine and his whole body went limp.

Finally, after wiggling the glaive around for about 3 minutes after Kaichwik fell on its back, his body turned grey and disappeared, leaving behind nothing but experience and a giant bag of skulls.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Level up!

Level up!

Level up![/col][/box]

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Kaichwik’s Skull Collection!

Inside this bag are the skulls of over 100 orcs, 20 dark elves and even his own.

Weight: 500 lbs

Quest Item: Return this to Stumpchwii for a reward.[/col][/box]

He was exhausted and severely wounded, but still had to carry that ridiculously heavy bag all the way back to the village. He didn't even loot the two other orcs that died because he could carry anymore, but after about 10 minutes his health and mana was completely recovered, so he was able to funnel his mana into strength. When Azrael finally arrived at the village outskirts, Stumpchwii and the rest of the survivors were waiting. He tossed over the bag with both hands and the three orcs who caught it were nearly crushed, then he said “Walking back here carrying that was more work than actually killing the bastard! Chwik!” in a tired voice.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Quest Complete![/col][/box]

Stumpchwii laughed heartily and yelled “Chwiiik! From now on, you are Sharp Tooth Orc! Even if you look like giant, white skin human! Chwichwik!” in a loud, happy voice.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]You have become part of the Sharp Tooth Orc tribe! Although, since you aren't actually an orc, only the other Sharp Tooth orcs will consider you one.[/col][/box]

After fighting so hard and receiving such a small reward, most people would be angry, believing they deserved some sort of amazing reward in gold or items. However, Azrael was happy, reputation in most games is extremely difficult and time consuming to earn, but all he had to do was one quest. It wasn't a particularly good faction, but still, it allowed him to accept a multitude of varying quests in the area.

Azrael smiled and said “Are there any other Dire Wolf hunting spots? Kaichwik was a decent warm-up but I need new prey. Chwik.” while looking into Stumpchwii’s only eye.

He laughed again and said “Chwiiik! You are true orc! On the other side of the village there is big cave! In cave find many strong prey! Return some meat to the village and we have big fun time! Chwiik!” in a happy voice , but Azrael was worried about the phrasing of that last sentence…

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Hunting for Food!

Stumpchwii has told you of a special hunting ground where many powerful monsters can be found. Go to the Cave outside the village and kill enough to bring back for a festival with the whole village.

Reward: Reputation, Friendship.

Quest Requirements: At least 3000 lbs of meat.[/col][/box]

Azrael sighed as he read the description, then said “How the hell am I supposed to carry it back? Chwik.” in an irritated voice.

Stumpchwii said “Your strong orc, it not much. Chwiik!” in a calmer voice.

After sighing again he accepted the quest and walked through the village. He realized something pretty quickly, since orcs didn't actually need sex to reproduce, they also weren't programmed to care about it. Orcs didn't have relationships, marriages or families, any time a male and female orc would eat a meal together, a child would be born. Often, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, it really didn't matter who, if there were two orcs of opposite genders eating a meal together, a child would spawn in their house. Such a strange concept, but very convenient since the orcs died so easily and often. Even the small village had at least 50,000 orcs in it, with more being born every day. There did seem to be a limit though, they could only have as many orcs as they could house, so they would have to expand the village to grow the population any larger.

He sighed at the orc shop keepers who were trying to sell all of their goods for thousands or hundreds of thousands of gold. They were idiots, even the few craftsmen they had could barely make it past beginner level 2 of even the simplest skills over the course of their entire lives. Azrael was suddenly approached by some fat and ugly orc women who wanted to have a meal with him, he quickly ran away. He had no idea what would happen if he did, they might not even be able to have kids, but either way it wasn't something he had time to deal with. After leaving the village it took him about 20 minutes to find the discretely hidden cave, which seemed to have a steep decline.

Reward: Fame has increased by 200.

Experience and drop rates have doubled for a week.

The first monster hunted will drop some of its rarest items.[/col][/box]

A familiar sight, but he couldn't quite remember why it felt that way… well, you try remembering something that happened a thousand years ago. It wasn't quite as suspicious though, it was just some cave in the forest full of level 50-100 animals. No crazy twists or important plot points, it wasn't a cave full of animal girls or a dragons lair full of zombies. At first it was just a couple of dire wolves at a time so using the rusty old glaive was all it really took, but the problem was that after two waves, its durability was almost completely gone. His armor was practically destroyed as well, so it was time to do some repairs. Using some of the dire wolf hide and leather, he made improvements to his tattered armor using Mana Weaving.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Mana Repair (Lvl. 1 0%): Just like normal repair, but with mana! Why use silly tools when you can just pump copious amounts of mana into objects to ‘fix’ them? You’re the type of person who thinks its too much work to learn the proper way to do something so you just create a much more difficult and nearly impossible alternative… good job. Mages used this method centuries ago but ended up abandoning it for the original method.

Costs 100 mana per second and only works on low level materials.[/col][/box]

Azrael sighed and said “I don’t think the person who writes these things likes me very much…” in a dejected voice as he continued to spray mana out of his hands, into the chipped and rusted glaive’s blade. The mana didn't create new materials out of nothingness, or transform other materials into ones he could use, it just smoothed it out. The durability of the weapon actually decreased, but its damage increased by a lot since the blade became thinner, sharper and harder after the mana reshaped it. All of the rust had disappeared and the shape of the blade looked closer to a thick katana. After carefully examining it, he received a new skill, one that he probably should have gotten already.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Identification (Lvl. 1 0%): A more general version of Item Identification. Can also work on animals, monsters, NPCs and just about anything that has statistics or other information to view. Isn't always correct, depending on the level of the object or creature it may fail or even lie!

Costs 50 mana per use.[/col][/box]

“Identify”

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Redesigned Iron Glaive

Durability: 45/45

Damage: 15-39

Using Mana Repair you have altered the shape and form of the old rusty glaive into a new, more efficient shape. Very light and easy to use, for an orc.

Requirements:

Strength 100

Effects:

+10 Agility

Critical Strikes are easier to make.[/col][/box]

It was a weapon that would probably sell for a decent amount since it has no level requirement and relatively high attack damage. The problem would be finding a town where he could sell it, or after selling it at auction online, he would still have to deliver it to the person in-game. Then he remembered the orcs have the mercantile sense of a guppy, so he returned to the village. Dire wolves are huge, some weighed over 600 lbs and they were the size of adult male tigers, so even if only a fraction of their meat dropped after they died, he was almost overburdened. Six haunches, three ribs, and a bunch of random organs ended up weighing nearly a thousand pounds. His first stop was to Stumpchwii’s hut, which was actually rather large, where he dropped off a half ton of raw meat.

‘Apparently this quest is going to be pretty easy…’

Haggling with an orc merchant is strange, you say 10 gold, they get angry and say 100 gold, when you agree they get dejected because they only have 50 gold. Eventually you end up settling on 15-20g for something that’s only worth 2 at the most. However, since there was very little competition you could make much more gold by selling the items yourself. Especially if you had crafting skills, some of the bigger villages to the south would capture humans to make weapons and armors but everything the Sharp Tooth tribe used was made by orc hands. Which meant that even their best weapons and armors had huge defects that increased restrictions, lowered damage or just made it generally bad. If a dagger does 1-2 damage, weighs 50 lbs and looks more like a dumbbell, you’re probably doing something wrong.

In the middle of what was probably the town plaza, there were many merchants trying to sell just about anything but for absurd prices that no one could ever afford. Orcs were actually really poor, it wasn't inflation but extreme idiocy that fueled their high prices. Azrael sat in the very center of the bazaar and put down the glaive in front of him, then started pulling out a hundred pounds of Dire wolf hide. Orc fashion was typically just a loincloth for men and women wore a small fur skirt along with what looked like a wolf pelt, wrapped around their chest and upper back. It reminded him of the last time he went to Ocean City… well, the orcs weren't quite that fat and they did have a decent amount of muscle too. That’s when he realized, that the familiar stench wasn't the orc body odor, he could smell the beach. It was probably a few miles away but the smell of rotting fish was hard to forget.

After a few hours it was nighttime and all the orcs who went out hunting earlier had come back, without his OCD raging out of control, he wasn't afraid of crowds anymore. In fact, aside from the awful smell and appearance, orcs were actually pretty nice people. Sure, they will kill and eat just about anything or anyone, but they don’t use deception or sneaky tricks like humans or elves. They were greedy, but in a way that seemed very childish and innocent, like a kid who doesn't want to share their toys. Instead of using gold to buy and sell, they usually bartered with items they deemed of equal value and collected useless things like bones or teeth to make ugly jewelry. Azrael had been mana crafting orc clothes all day, they were designed more like bathing suits made of fur or leather. It wasn't anything fancy and there was enough leather to make hundreds of low defense, high durability underwear to sell that night. Without an accurate point of reference, there was no way to tell how much they were really worth so he just sold them for one gold a piece. Making 300 hundred gold from killing a few dire wolves and making simple clothing out of them, it seemed like a pretty good day. Finally the time came to sell the glaive he repaired but there was no one who actually had enough gold to buy it for a reasonable price, so he decided to barter.

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There was an iron mine a short distance outside the village to the north, no one actually owned it and few orcs actually had the patients to use it. However, there was one ‘orc’ in particular who had a large group of similar minded ‘orcs’ that very rarely did anything but mining ore all day. He was a short, stocky ‘orc’ with a long beard… he was definitely a dwarf. Apparently Azrael wasn't the first to use the old “I’m an orc too! Chwiiik!” routine to get accepted by the village.

The Dwarf’s name was Osmond or Orchwik and he even dressed like a typical dwarven miner. He wore a dirty brown leather tunic with suspenders that were holding up his leather pants, his belt had many small bags and pouches on it. His backpack was bigger than he was, stuffed to the point of almost bursting with iron ore that he was planning to sell to the blacksmiths like usual, but he caught a glimpse of something peculiar. There was a gigantic barbarian sitting in the middle of the bazaar who was offering to trade a relatively small and light glaive for ore. When Osmond walked up to the giant he cautiously said “Are you a user?” in a worried voice, since he hadn't seen another user since getting shipwrecked at the northern tip of orc land with his small crew of dwarven miners. The captain and the rest of the humans were killed by the orcs, but since the dwarves looked different, they were spared and tricked the orcs into inviting them to their village.

The barbarian grinned and said “Me no know this user, Chwik! I trade good poker, only few rocks! Chwiiik!” in an obnoxiously good orc impression. However, there was no way to disguise that cunning look in his blood red eyes. The barbarian said “You look like good orc! Chwiik! We friends now!” in that same voice.

The dwarf whispered “Accept” as quietly as possible.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Friend request accepted![/col][/box]

Azrael: Lets make a deal.

Osmond: OK…

Azrael: You’re a miner correct?

Osmond: Yes?

Azrael: How much are you making from selling ore to the orcs?

Osmond: About 5 silver a pound… why?

Azrael: Since they’re so terrible at crafting, most of that ore is going to waste and you’re barely even making any gold from such a time consuming job.

Osmond: You want me to sell you the ore instead? What if the blacksmiths find out and have us thrown out of the village… or worse?

Azrael sighed at the little man who looked like he was at least in his forties but he was probably a teenager or younger.

Azrael: Listen kid, I have no idea how you managed to get to this place… hell, I don’t even know where we are, but you need to start thinking like an orc!

Osmond: But… aren't orcs idiots?

Azrael: Exactly! They don’t care if you stop giving them ore, it would just give them an excuse to stop blacksmithing and go hunting! If you want to fit in with orcs, you just have to do things that they don’t like to do.

Osmond: I think I kind of understand… then how much are you willing to pay for the ore?

Azrael: You don’t seem to understand, I’m not buying the ore, I’m making a deal.

Osmond: What kind of deal?

Azrael: I’m going to be living in a dungeon to the west of here called the Cave of Beasts. That place is loaded with so many damn animals that I won’t have the time to run back and forth between the village and cave every time I kill a few dire wolves. I assume you have a whole team of miners right?

Osmond: There are 27 dwarven mining NPCs in my crew…

Azrael: Good, I know a few orcs that can be body guards for you and the rest of your group. It’s really not that complicated, you will be in charge of selling items here, in the center of the bazaar. Some of your miners accompanied by my orcs will be transporting materials between the cave and mine every day. I will give you 90% of the food that I get, 20% of that will be delivered to an old orc named Stumpchwii. The rest is for you to sell or use, I don’t really care either way. You will still give 10% of the ore you mine to the orc blacksmiths, but the rest will go to me. I’ll be many armor and weapons as fast as possible but it may take a few days for me to get started. You will then come to the cave and pick up the items to sell in the bazaar, we split whatever you make selling them 50/50 and that’s pretty much it.

Osmond: … Did you seriously come up with all of that the moment you saw me?

Azrael: No, I just made it up as I went along… why? It seemed like a good plan as I was saying it…

Osmond: Well yea… although you would have to trust me to give you half of the gold when you have no idea how much I might make.

Azrael smiled as he looked at Osmond’s gold pouch and said “Identify. Chwik.” in a quiet voice. A status window popped up between them that both could easily read.

Azrael: Strange, a friend of mine was just telling me he was in Varhales… anyway, you get the point. Besides, I really don’t care that much about gold right now. As my skills increase, I will be capable of making much more gold quickly, even if you skim a little off the top I wouldn't care enough to make a big deal out of it. Leveling my skills is more important than anything at the moment.

Osmond: I wouldn't steal from you… you’re just too scary.

Azrael grinned as he said “Chwiiik! Oh well! You no trade, I keep stick!” in an angry voice as he grabbed the glaive, stood up and walked over to Stumpchwii’s hut. After exchanging a few weird orc noises and a way of speaking that was so broken, neither one of them completely understood what the other was saying, he was able to convince Stumpchwii to send orcs to offer protection and help carrying things to the ‘Tiny Orcs’.

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Michael knew enough about video games to realize that low level economy is almost always a waste of time. Unless you’re a merchant, there was no point in worrying about making a few copper from days of hard labor, when you can make a few gold from killing one high level monster. If you level your crafting high enough, eventually it becomes impossible to sell anything because no one even has enough gold to buy it for the price of the mats alone. Luckily, for those kinds of items there were plenty of rich bastards who are willing to pay ridiculously large amounts of real money. Royal Road was the perfect environment for a dark gamer to thrive, yet most of them wasted their time doing lots of low risk low reward tasks and they barely had enough money to pay their living expenses along with the subscription fee. Michael had already solved the problem of the subscription fee and gave the rest of his money, that he had left over from selling his CoM account, to his parents. It wasn't a fortune, but it did allow them to avoid working themselves to death trying to pay the bills each month.

His ultimate goal was to make a comfortable living for him and his parents while being able to enjoy playing the game as much as physically possible. After he started making some money at it, he knew that his parents would immediately follow. However, he didn't expect them to get curious so quickly…

Michael’s father, who he was named after, Mike had accidentally entered royal road while trying to use the capsule to take a nap.

-The scan on your iris and retinal blood vessels has determined that you are an unregistered user. Would you like to create a new account?

"Huh?"

-Please select the name of your avatar.

"Avatar?"

-Please select your gender from male, female or neutral.

"Male?"

-Royal Road has forty-nine races. You may select your race from the primary twenty-nine that are currently available.

A list of 29 races appeared in front of him and he still had no idea what was going on. He accidentally read one of the names out loud.

"Lizard Man?"

-Would you like to manually customize your appearance or have an avatar based on your actual face and body created to match your chosen race?

"How the hell are you going to make a lizard man based on my face and body?"

-Your account has been activated. Your stats and class shall be determined while you are playing Royal Road. For the first month of in game time you will not be able to leave your starting city. Please select a city and kingdom you wish to start in.

A huge map of the Versailles Continent appeared in front of him and he just blurted out the name of the first City he saw.

"What kind of name is Varhales?"

-Welcome to Royal Road, it is recommended that users watch the tutorial before beginning. Would you like to watch the tutorial?

"No, can out let me out of here now?"

Mike was in the center of a town that looked like a medieval Atlantic City or Las Vegas. Everywhere he looked there were flashing neon signs for bars, strip clubs and casinos. There were even nice restaurants and big super market-like buildings. Street vendors were openly selling various narcotics and there were people of pretty much all races walking around. Tourists from all over the continent came to the town for entertainment of every kind. He noticed there was a stage in front of him, it brought back memories of when he and his wife played music in night clubs and concerts for over 30 years. However, they had to stop when she got pregnant, they didn't want their child to be exposed to all that smoke every night. He still played keyboards every now and then for a few minutes when he had the time, but it had been 26 years since he last played for an audience.

A familiar looking bald man with glasses was setting up a drum set at the back of the stage, Mike yelled “Hey Jim! It’s Mike Sinagra!” in an excited voice.

The man jumped up and rushed over to the edge of the stage to get a closer look, then said “Holy shit! It’s been like 40 years but you look exactly the same as I remember you!” sarcastically with a smile on his face.

Mike said “Yea, I don’t really know what happened… I took a nap in this weird bed looking thing in my living room and when I woke up I was asked a bunch of confusing questions.” in a worried voice, he thought that he was either dreaming, or dead.

Jim laughed and said “Ah, I was wondering why you looked like a lizard monster. My kids got me this game so I could spend more time with them a few weeks ago. Even in Vegas the live music industry had finally died, but in this game world where technology is practically nonexistent I can play shows again!” in a happy voice.

Mike said “Oh… so this is why my kids are so obsessed with this game. It’s amazing, I can’t believe this is just a game.” while looking up at the clear blue sky.

Jim grinned and said “If you still remember how to play, I still haven’t found a pianist yet…” in a cautious voice as he looked at Mike’s light blue lizard hands with long talons.

Mike climbed up onto the stage and sat down at the piano, he said “It’s a shame there are no keyboards in this world though…” as he started playing some random classical music.

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The first batch of iron ore had arrived, it was over 200 lbs, in the time it took them to find him, he had already killed 10 dire wolves. That was a lot of meat and even with three orcs and two dwarves, they could barely carry it all back to the mine. The problem was that Azrael didn't actually know how to use mana to smelt the iron, it would have been a simple matter if he knew fire magic but with a rudimentary understanding of mana manipulation it was difficult to guess the answer.

While sitting on the ground he took out a clump of iron ore, holding it with both hands and quickly dumped all of his mana into it. Nothing happened, so he tried again but much faster, the ore started to burn his hands a little so he set it down a foot in front of him. After his mana returned he aimed his palms and fingertips at the ore like it was a crystal ball and he was an old fortune teller, pumping out all of his mana in an instant. It exploded like a hand grenade, spraying small chunks of rock and metal into his face, armor and everything in the general vicinity.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Manasmithing (Lvl. 1 0%): Blacksmithing using mana to smelt ore and forge the metal into various shapes. Requires Mana Sculpting and Mana Shield to function properly.

Costs 50 mana per second to smelt iron.

Costs 100 mana per second to heat and cool iron during the forging process.[/col][/box]

His sight was fixed and he couldn't hear or feel anything but he knew that a noise that loud would definitely attract at least 10 or 20 dire wolves. When the 30 seconds finally ended, he looked around to see piles of wolf meat, hides and strangely crude looking arrows. He looked to his left and right, but didn't see anyone in either direction. There was a stealthy in the room, but he didn't know where and since they helped him, they probably weren't an enemy. Azrael sighed and ignored his curiosity, figuring out different ways to manipulate mana was his favorite part of Royal Road so far. It reminded him of telekinesis, he could use it as an extension of his body to do anything he could imagine. Obviously its not that easy though, otherwise mages would be so overpowered that no one would play anything else. The creativity stat makes invention, discovery and creating anything much faster, but not easier. Magic was dangerous, mana was naturally volatile and difficult to control, so even though he had the skill this time, the ore exploded again.

You have forced Nyx out of stealth![/col][/box]

This time Azrael was prepared and activated mana shield right before it happened, but he didn't have enough to completely negate the damage. The shield forced the fragments in front of him and to the sides at a much higher velocity, causing several bullet-like slivers of metal to pass strait through the finely toned abdominal muscles of someone standing over 20 meters to his right. He heard a feminine scream as he saw the barely visible figure fall to the ground, they were writing in agony as they clutched the wounded area with both hands. The girls cries were like wolf bait, when the first wave arrived he simply said “I guess the price of wearing sexy armor is getting easily disemboweled…” and began the doggy death match against the hordes of angry dire wolves.

[box border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=3 width=80% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5][col colspan=4 valign=top width=100% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#f5f5f5]Saving Nyx!

A beautiful and mysterious woman has been mortally wounded in a tragic accident…

She protected you before so you should at least return the favor now!

Fight off the dire wolves and then find a way to heal her wounds!

Rewards: Karma, Faith

Rank: D

Quest Requirements: You must survive, Nyx must survive, 30 minutes until she bleeds to death![/col][/box]

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Chapter 9: Manasmithing

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