Week 2 Day 6

“Have you picked your skills?” Alia asked the next day.

Ethan nodded and briefly checked his own Core’s skill frame just to make sure.

[Ethan Blacktree]

[Core: Common-Grade Core of Shadow Swords]

[Core Cultivation : 1st Stage - Second realm]

[Skill Frame : Skills slots available 8/8]

[Common- Shadow Steps - Level 9]

[Common- Body Enhancement - Level 12]

[Rare- Sword Unity - Level 3]

[Common- Shadow Copy - Level 6]

[Rare - Vanished Shadow - Level 1]

[Rare - Natural Camouflage - Level 1]

[Common - Stab of Darkness - Level 1]

[Common - Shadow Daggers - Level 1]

[Storage]

[Common - Illusion Blade - Level 1]

[Common - Shadow Step Illusions - Level 1]

Zaram was there. Kaname would later walk in to meet up with Miss Whitetower, but Ethan would have to miss them, for the ruse to work. It helped that his summons had no distance limits.

“Three of us.” Alia smiled. “This should be fun.”

The level 2 rift sent us to an arena, but this was one smaller, tighter. Alia grinned.

“Oooh my favorite. The Goblin Knights!” Five goblins appeared, armed from head to toe in heavy weapons. They each had a different weapon, a sword, a spear, a mace, a hammer and an axe.

“You’ve seen them?”

“Yeah with the guys.”

Ethan activated his shadow copy, and dodged a goblin’s wild swing. He attacked back, his [sword unity] active, but his attack just damaged the armor on the goblin. Out of curiosity, he activated [stab of darkness], and what happened was, he saw a shadow blade stab the goblin from the back. It smashed into the back plate, and destroyed it instead.

“Each piece of armor can be destroyed.” Alia said as she smashed a few pieces of armor in a chain of slashes. It’s a new skill he hadn’t seen before. “It works really well as an outlet to release frustration. Because.” She smashed every piece of the goblin’s armor before going for the kill. “It’s. So. Much. Fun.”

The goblin staggered backwards from Alia’s powered stab. Ethan shrugged, and realised that [stab of darkness] may not be that useless, and could even be OP if it dealt more damage, and activated it again.

The shadow blade appeared at the same relative location, at the same angle relative to the goblin’s back, and stabbed. It pierced the goblin directly, and made the goblin fall forwards. Towards him.

He slashed and cut it’s head off. Two other goblins charged at him, but their attacks missed. He had activated his vanished shadow to move behind them, and then destroyed their back plates.

“OOoh. Nice use of that skill.” Alia praised, as her second hit killed the goblin. “I’m still a little poor on the damage front.”

Zaram didn’t have problems at all. He just charged ahead, and pretty much wrestled the mace-wielding goblin. It took no more than two cuts of his scimitar to defeat the beast, and moved on. In fact, while Ethan was dodging the two goblins that marked him, Zaram came and killed one from the back, and then the other one.

Ethan only felt a little frustrated at how easy Zaram had it. “Dammit Zaram, you really need to teach me how to fight like that.” Ethan cursed as some of the goblin’s juices splattered on his body.

Zaram just shrugged once all goblins were taken out. The gates rattled, and then, one large hobgoblin popped out, accompanied by two smaller goblin knights. “Zaram, you take the hobgoblin. We’ll take the two goblins.”

“Got it.” They charged at their respective targets. The goblin, which used a sword, managed to land a small cut on Ethan’s arm, but in exchange, he struck it with full force, and then killed it in two strikes.

“Done at my end-” Ethan turned to see Zaram had already beheaded the hobgoblin, and Alia was also done with her goblin opponent. “Dammit, and here I thought I was fast.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then, the same opponent from before.

A giant ogre with a club.

This time, they were confident. Both of them are in the 2nd realm, and with their new strength, they attack in the gaps left after the ogre’s wild swings. They could take a hit, if so needed, but would prefer to avoid the pain.

“I feel kinda bad toying with it.” Ethan said, as he ducked through the ogre’s swing, and activated [stab of darkness]. The shadow dagger should be ranked much higher, since it could strike even when he’s not at the ogre’s back!

It didn’t have much power, but it was really annoying, and it infuriated the ogre. It also seemed to delude the ogre into thinking someone’s at it’s back, and it swung its club in that direction. A wasted attack, and an opening for the three to strike.

With a good appreciation of it’s pattern, it was just a matter of getting through it’s incredible endurance. Zaram, eventually, managed to cut the creature’s arm off, and then slashed the ogre to death.

“20GP!” Ethan smiled, as the 60GP was shared equally. It was barely half a day. “Another?”

Alia nodded. They completed another rift, and earned a total of 120GP that day.

***

“Jon, Julius, Anton, meet the incredible lady that saved my life. This is Lady Kaname Kaga.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lady Kaga. We saw you in the class, but I didn’t realize Violet would invite you to our group.” Jon was first to offer his hand, and Kaname shook the hands of the three men.

“Hi.” Kaname said little. The less she said, the less problems she could have. She wasn’t very good with all this ‘conversation’ stuff.

The rift itself was hardly a challenge, the Level 3 rift monsters, the ogres, goblins and hobgoblins. Kaname didn’t use much of her abilities, all she needed to do was charge in and cut them, and she was so fast that the monsters couldn’t hit her.

Her new party members turned out to be quite competent too, all of them had strong cores, at least titan-grade and were already at the peak of their 1st realm, or the 1st stage of the 2nd realm.

In pure combat ability, everyone here was stronger than her master.

“So, where do you come from? I’ve never heard of House Kaga.” Julius was the first to break the conversation.

Kaname didn’t have an answer. “It is... a secret.”

“Ooh. A secret house!” Jon answered. “I didn’t know there’s such stuff.”

Kaname didn’t know how to answer that, and it was quite clear she wasn’t making conversation. “Leave the lady alone, clearly she’s only here because of Violet.” Anton Goldtown added, and was the two commoners in the group.

Strangely, despite being a commoner, Anton Goldtown had a titan-grade core. Kaname made a note to flag him to her master, he must have some kind of connection.

The second set of monsters were dispatched just as easily.

“Violet, what are your plans for the rift shutdowns?” Jon asked. “Would you like to join us in our practice spars? I’ve got some friends who will be conducting practice during this time.”

Julius nodded along. “If you find that boring, Violet, you can join our wild rift hunt in Fortuna. I’ll be trying to get some wild rifts to score some more GP.”

“That’s a good idea, Julius. Violet, let’s visit Fortuna? Fortuna’s a bigger city and there’s more to see. Food choices are good too.”

Violet blushed as the three boys all offered her some activity to do, and she looked at Kaname for assistance. “What will you be doing, Kaname?”

“It’s a secret.” Kaname shrugged.

“Aww. I... haven’t decided, actually. Can I decide tomorrow? Kaname, are you joining us tomorrow for the rift?”

“I can’t. I’m meeting someone else.”

“Awww. I’m left with these three?”

“Miss Violet, if four or us is too much, why not just take a rift, just the two of us. I’m sure we can handle it.” Jon immediately offered.

The heroine stared at Jon Milfern, and just smiled sheepishly. “Eh, that’s not what I meant. I was hoping to have a bigger group, that’s all.”

“I’ll get my friends.” Jon said.

“Are they girls?” Violet asked.

“...no.”

“Never mind.” Violet pouted, and the three boys just admired how cute she looked with a little pout.

The boss of the level 3 rift was just a giant ogre, with armor and a much better club. The rifts themselves were not exceptionally creative, they are, after all, manufactured rifts, instead of the pure creations of the gods in the wild. They seemed to be derived off some kind of template.

Kaname observed that Violet had grown since they last met a week ago. She's gotten quite used to combat and fighting, unlike that time when she froze before the dark energy dogs.

“Kaname, can you distract the ogre?” Violet asked, and she nodded. She charged ahead and climbed onto the ogre’s arm, dodging it’s attempt to swipe her off.

The boys were impressed, and Julius was almost tempted to follow. “If she can do it, we can too!”

“Don’t be stupid, Jon! That club can take out half your core’s energy if it lands.” Anton scolded. “We got to make use of the openings Miss Kaga made for us.”

Violet’s staff-core launched a ranged energy attack made of lightning and fire, and each zap destroyed one piece of armor from the armored ogre. Kaname’s strikes dealt some damage, but not as much as she hoped.

Yet, the ogre couldn’t hurt her either. She was too nimble, and when she couldn’t avoid a strike, she could activate her log-replacement ability and still get away.

Violet and the three boys manage to land a few more hits. Bit by bit, they wore down the armored ogre, and in the end, Jon’s Blue water-element sword slammed into the ogre and killed it.

The battle was over. “Good job!” Violet said, relieved that the battle was over. She gave the three boys a high five each, and laughed. “Well done everyone, let’s get the core out of the ogre and collect our GP!”

***

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Alia asked, and stared at Ethan’s offer. Zaram was with him. “It’s your GP.”

“I know it’s been just two weeks, but I think of you as my friend.” Ethan said. “And I don’t want those assholes to make your life miserable. 120GP is just what... a few days work. We can do it.”

Alia nodded and rubbed her eyes which were a bit wet. “Okay... We’ll take two more rifts tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Then we’d still have some to spend on resources.”

By Ethan’s own calculation, the upgrade from common-to-rare is easy. 500GP is nothing in the long run, though he did have to set aside some extra GP to use the cultivation chambers, to regain the stages and realms lost. So all in, he needed about 600 to 650GP before he could switch.

If they were gaining 40GP a day, they could get there in three weeks, add another two week break, by the end of the 2nd month they should have a rare-core. Just to start at the same level as those who started with rare-cores.

In other words, they only wasted two months. But it did put things in perspective, how far ahead those titan and dragon cores were.