Lunetta woke up comfortably in her bed. She didn't have many obligations besides the class hosted by Gama, and that other teacher. She did make the effort to attend, and she had gotten lucky without succumbing to the wrath of the teacher's flatulence. Her form transformation had also seemed to make him treat her a lot nicer.

Quite sexist yes. Looking into the mirror she can somewhat see why. Staring back at her was a relatively average women in her late teens. She had stayed at the academy going through books and lessons until she finally turned 18. It was a rather boring period, mostly involving getting a few scant sword lessons, and stabilizing her foundation. 'It's so fucking stable now it can match a fucking mountain.'

Her brown hair fell to her shoulders, she usually kept it loose, less of a hassle, but it gets in the face sometimes. Her clothing being quite standard has no cleavage, and a normal pair of brown pants and leather boots accompany her. Today she was going to go do some gnoll hunting. It has been long enough since her disgrace last time. A chill ran through her blood, she would show them what fear means.

Getting up, she moved to the door of her room, grabbing her steel sword along the way. She had eventually paid back that stingy smith at some point using the money the principle basically gave her for failing. After moving back to the location where she had found them at first, she noticed something different. Traps. There were bear traps, tree traps? Eh, traps that would catch your legs and hang you up, not knowing the name for them she made one up.

They were quite spread out, but also clustered in some locations. The gnolls were getting smarter, it's like they know concentrations now so they plan traps for it so sets of people die to them. After rambling about gnolls, she started climbing a tree when she got the notification.

You learned to embrace your childishness, learning [Climbing] in the process.

Climbing[Common] - You can scale surfaces more efficiently.

The anger from the message made her sweat a little, and punch a tree, no biggie right? She quickly moved to another branch since she had left a nice gaping hole in the tree. One of the gnolls stood below her, monitoring their creations. 'Oh you little fuck, I'm coming for you'. She hadn't seen any that lost their snouts, at least for a while, either they died out or regenerated.

Someone was approaching the road section where the gnoll was waiting. Lunetta jumped and used [Strike] against the gnoll, aiming for it's snout. Her momentum had some effect, but not much really. She only got a nick into it's fur. Identifying it, [Gnoll Elite Trapper Level 3] tougher then, and higher leveled. A nice challenge. The gnoll looked angry and confident, even with a chip into it's snout. It pulled out a longbow what the fuck is it thinking?

***

Terry moved into the bush. Terry was told by the big boss thing to watch the road, if Terry wins Terry gets lots of gold, Terry loves gold. Terry couldn't understand what happened to the other elite trappers after they completed their tasks? They must have went on to live a comfy life, using gold coins as bedding. So comfortable.

Standing in front of the bush, his snout concealed he watched the small horses near, with two strangers on the back of the thingy. He got his eyes focusing.

Elite Gnoll Focus[Uncommon] Focus on your pray to predict where they will move. Has normal scaling with intelligence.

'So many coins' His family would be proud. Lakey was quite a babe, and maybe she would join his den tonight? He couldn't wait to get it on after his important job. Here it comes, they were in range now, only a few more seconds before they triggered the swing thing.

*Crack*, Whooosh. A twig snapped. What is going on? Terry found a sharp thing sticking out of his nose, he was angry now. Why had this piece of shit disturbed it's hunt? Jumping back Terry pulled out his trusty Longbow, made from the bones of his ancestors, he readied an arrow in record time, coating it in some of his blood. It spread a nice damaging thingy that would make prey weaker.

He would not let this prey, this bitch escape. Had it not smelled his scent? He was an alpha nobody fucked with one. He aimed carefully and saw her charging at him, running left and right like a moron. Terry isn't stupid. He aimed and shot, aimed and shot. He had no special skill thingy to make his attacks better so he just shot. He felt like was getting close to one though.

***

Lunetta stormed the gnoll, it was quite frustrating. It knew how to aim, but didn't seem to possess a single skill. Arrow after arrow hit her, and she was starting to take damage, and become slower. 'poison?' She thought, not stopping her charge. If this little fucker would only stand still she would be able to do her job a lot better.

Finally after taking four arrows, one in the boob, that one hurt a lot she reached the little fucker. She slammed her sword into him again with [Strike], following up with a normal blow. Her normal attacks weren't even doing anything to it, the level disparity being a hindrance. Her stamina was also at half at this stage. Before it jumped a way, she used [Hilt Strike] on it's head, it jumped straight into it making her arm vibrate.

She was sure that she did at least some damage, she then released [Strike] after [Strike] it was very draining. She then almost slapped herself and used [Reinforced Strike] taking some more damage in the process due to the ability and getting hit. Sitting at half health and quarter stamina, she had made quite a few dents in the rascal. The strikes were well aimed and focused on a single spot.

The Reinforced variant pushed the damage over the edge and caused it's snout to be lobbed off. It was quite a fearsome sight, blood was pooling out of it's cranial cavity, and it's lower jaw was opening and closing. A phantom sensation. The gnoll then looked at her with ruthlessness, broke one of the bones of it's bow and stabbed himself.

This confused her quite greatly until he essentially used a rush skill and stabbed her, trying to angle his flow of blood into her. Not so stupid as the others then. Her health was dropping off quite quickly at this stage, the poison, the arrows, the bleeding everything compounding. She didn't even have enough resources for another strike.

Thinking quickly she punched the Gnoll's eye, blinding it in a spurt of blood, she then went for the other one. Now she was basically being held by an eyeless dog creature, missing it's upper snout that's going for mutual suicide. The eyes did make it loosen it's grip though, she mustered all her remaining stamina and kicked it's stomach. At least she was no longer being impaled.

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Health:30/181

Stamina:10/115

She made a note to put more points into Strength to at least get some more Stamina. She wanted to at least hold a few stat points for one talent. Her lack of sword skills was the main limiter at this stage.

You have slain [Gnoll Elite Trapper Level 3], you gain more experience for killing enemies higher leveled than you.

That leveled her up quite nicely. It helped to alleviate a lot of the strain she was under, but she still had to limp away from the scene. It didn't take long for her scent to reach one of the normal gnoll trappers, it called over a party and they stood in a tree. They were all taking their sweet ass time making those crossbow bolts as potent as possible.

A whistle here, a cough there, a gurgling sound every now and then was heard while the gnolls fucked around with the arrows. One even shoved it up it's ass, discovering that it was a stupid idea it removed it, blood and shit following. Though it did look elated that it got some shit on it. She started feeling pity for herself. her limping sped up.

The first overtly-prepared arrow came and sunk into her flesh. it was her lower left calve. She kept her limping up, hoping to at least avoid the one that had shit on it. Identifying the arrow in her calve netter her this. Bower's Specialty Prepared Arrow[Uncommon] an arrow so over-prepared that it physically hurt the owner, deals minor increased damage with every arrow embedded in the target.

A chill ran up her spine and she gave up trying to stop bleeding and ran. If they shot a few arrows into her, she would basically take exponential damage with each hit. This was an execution. Another arrow landed at a nearby rock, sticking out of it. 'the shit missed at least' She was quite pleased that she wouldn't need to scrub gnoll shit out of her wounds.

Her body was starting to feel colder, not unlike the anger she usually felt. Her health getting low didn't help this notion at all either. The arrows at least plugged their holes and she only had one specialty arrow in her. After managing to get back into sight of the Academy-city she passed out.

When she came to, she saw that all her wounds were dressed and that she was in a kind of prison of sorts. Before she could think further a man appeared in front of her. "Who are you?" He asked curtly. He had a long metallic rod in his hand, and he was standing near a fireplace, leaving the idea of torture as a reality. "My name is Lunetta." She answered his question and nothing more.

The man frowned, almost as if he wanted to cut her off at some point in her explanation. His eyebrows shifted and danced a bit. He walked closer to her cage. "I wasn't the one that got those bandaids on you. Until you can prove you're not a fugitive you're stuck here with me." Using identify on the man netted her, "Human Level 1". The chill returned. At least she could control her anger now, compared to when it consumed her.

She watched the man and the man watched her. He stood up after a pause and spoke again, "Since you're being stuck up, we'll commence with torturing. It's quite a relaxing past time you know?" A smirk highlighted his face. He kind of looked handsome. She couldn't tell the time due to there being no windows, it all gave the place a rather mellow and depressing atmosphere.

The placed the poker into the fireplace and whistled a tune. Lunetta got up and looked at the messages.

Due to your frequent bouts of recovery you have unlocked [Mediation]

Meditation[Common] - Focus your entire being on recovery.

Quite useful, but she was at full Health and everything. Her racial level that she got after killing that Gnoll coming into play with her class levels. She could almost taste that juicy talent point, but first she had to escape being tortured. She had one trick though. She imagined herself in the cage, being helpless against a being that was much weaker than her.

How that being didn't consider her worth claiming. She closed her eyes, feeling her rage build. When she opened them the entire world was monochrome, where white was replaced with light blue. Standing, she went over to the cage bars and calmly broke it open with a punch. She missed her sword. The man seemed to notice something was going on and held the poker as a weapon.

Her state didn't exclude her from feelings of pain, her fist hurt a bit from those bars. Focusing on getting a jump on the man without being injured or be forced to feel that hot thing on her, she jumped forward then readjusted her movement whilst still in motion changing it to a diagonal one. The man tried to slice her, but her prediction meant he missed.

Once she was close, she punched him so that he flew into a wall, throwing away his poker, she simply smashed his skull with her fist. Her way of doing things wasn't torture. After his death she felt quite a lot better, if he wasn't dead, and an asshole, she would've forgiven him. It kind of felt like getting the perfect birthday present.

You have slain [Human Level 1], you gain experience.

Finding a wall, she punched it. That was quite stupid, her icy vision had already cleared and she had somewhat gotten used to the power-up. Now her knuckles were bruised. Shrugging she walked through the corridors until she found an exit. Apparently this prick was the only one on prison duty this day, or night.

She looked around and found her stuff in a neat corner with, "Ugly hag" on a note. The man was obviously trying to keep her for himself, when faced with corruption, if something doesn't look desirable you wouldn't want to screw it up now would you? She was guessing the thoughts of a dead probably rapist, torturer. Not a good state of mind to be in.

Luckily it turned out to be day. Ruining a sleep schedule is quite a bad experience, so she was quite glad that she skipped that. She had a feeling that she was out for quite a while. Her plan at the moment was mostly to gain a few more levelups, she would have to fight some more enemies for that. Quite frankly the Warrior class sucked. Balanced? Balanced to crap.

She walked back the way she was brought back to venture deeper into the gnoll lands. Her next target appeared quite quickly. [Gnoll Elite Trapper Level 4] it was simply staring into the distance, crossbow in hand. It had almost spotted her, but her shitty stealth skill proved to not be too useless. She ended up crawling to the base of the tree, and was in the process of climbing to the branch it stood on. Another level 3 elite trapper was in range, so she was going to have to do some sort of planning.

Cut branch, kill gnoll. Good plan. Executing her plan, she swung her blade cutting off the branch the gnoll stood on, her new strength proving a boon. When it landed, she immediately jumped and used [Reinforced Strike] slashing into it's skull. The gnoll's head was quite hardy though. He gave her the "You fucked up now face my doggy wrath" Look. A very familiar longbow appeared.

She didn't wait for him to do his shit, immediately going into action she used [Reinforced Strike] again, but she aimed end of the trajectory for his eye. Succeeding, she decided to try to keep up the assault. The gnoll didn't look too impressed with it's eye missing. It pulled out a scimitar, quite rusty one, and swung it at her.

She managed to parry the rather inexperienced blow, almost slipping up though. 'parry would've been useful here, but this works, kind of.' Thrusting, she managed to deflect the blade, though it did get a cut on her before she used [Hilt Strike] on his other eye, completely blinding it. While it was stunned she thrust the blade through it's eye socket into it's brain.

That proved enough to seal the deal, she quickly took cap of her resources, nothing that she had barely used any. 'Efficiency is quite nice' she thought.

You have slain [Elite Gnoll Trapper Level 4], you gain more experience for killing enemies higher leveled than you.

She felt herself grow slightly stronger, she immediately executed her stealth skill and hid away, ready for more gnolls to stumble upon her wrath. She wasn't ready for the Ogre though, but she would try him at level 15 or somewhere around there. She spent a few hours meditating in stealth, as well as practicing with her mana and stamina. Apparently she had no hope of becoming a mage. Mana was fucking impossible to use outside yourself

Nobody would convince her differently.