Mike stood in the village hall of Thudfall, marveling slightly at how much had changed about his village in the time he had been gone. The village was on the verge of becoming a town, with them needing to just get another 5000 people to cross over the 100000 threshold and become a town. They also needed a central monument of some kind, but he had been told that Lucas was working on one at the moment and it was expected to be done in less than a months time.
The building he was in had been upgraded to heroic rarity by the architects of Thudfall, and when he had first returned he had seen that an entirely new wall had been constructed around the village, giving them far more room to expand out towards.
He brought his attention back to the people around him. The last time there had been such a gathering of people had been back when they first found out about the problem with Gratsden. In the room around him stood many individuals who were strong or important, including but not limited to Thudfalls council, the grand chiefs of Dune, Raj, Devin, Hobbes, Lila, Lucas, who wore a bright golden fur coat for some reason, John, the captain of the guard, and many other strong or influential individuals. Mike had cast identify on many of them, finding that quite a few people had surpassed him in level, with most combatants in the room matching or surpassing his level.
It was a weird feeling seeing so many people being a higher level than himself. For the past 5 months since the system had taken over the world, Mike had been used to outleveling almost everyone he met. There had been the occasional person who surpassed his level, but they had always been in positions of power, such as being the leader of some settlement or village. Klint was an exception, but he had gone on a murderous rampage to gain all of his level.
Now, he was considered a low level compared to most of the people in the room. He still felt that he was the strongest thanks to him having a great class and profession, as well as having high rarity skills to make the most out of his high stats. The only issue was that most people wouldn’t know this, and somebody might eventually try and make a move against him. Hopefully people could put aside their greed and lust for power for the time being.
“Thanks to the info gathered by some of our spies, we have a rough map of the layout of Gratsden.” Devin said, unrolling a map across the table. It had buildings, streets, alleys, and even guard rotations on the map.
“This is what you call rough?” Lucas asked.
“It doesn’t include everything we need to make sure we have a foolproof plan. It would be nice to have a map of the main tree, but our sources were never able to get to the top.”
“How are we going to get the ritual to the middle without anybody noticing?” Lila asked.
“It’s massive and isn't something we can just move around.”
“Raj and I came up with a plan for that. Just work under the assumption that nobody will know it is there until it is placed down.” Mike said.
They ran through several different scenarios of how they could potentially get the ritual to the center of Gratsden without being noticed, and eventually came to the conclusion that the best way to do it would be for Mike to bring it into the tree. He had an easy in, as Roots had already requested a sword to be made for himself. Mike would just need to make the sword, get the forest core in exchange for his work, and use that to power the ritual. The problem they faced from there was how to fully power the ritual without Roots getting suspicious.
It took hours of planning, and several more hours of debating and tweaking the plan, but eventually everyone in the room was satisfied with what they had. Now the only thing they needed was a week to prepare while everything was made and gathered that would be necessary for the plan to work. Mike decided to spend the week fighting monsters, because if everything went to shit and a fight broke out, he would need every level he could get. But before he did any of that, he had a few more things that he needed to attend to.
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Roots sifted through the papers on his desk, looking through everything that needed to get done before he could upgrade his majestic tree. The tree in question had grown to over 2000 feet tall, and was on the verge of evolving. Evolution of plants didn't work the same as it did for monsters and for people, as the plants didn't have levels. Instead, they needed to absorb massive quantities of magic in order to upgrade to the next stage of their power. His tree in its current form was just one last push away from reaching its next evolution, which would make it larger, sturdier, and more capable of defending itself.
His system menu that he was given access to thanks to being a druid let him know that the tree would have enough mana to evolve in just a few days, but there were still other requirements that needed to be met. Since the tree was focused around keeping the settlement running, the settlement first needed to become a village. After that, he would need some kind of item to help direct the growth on top of his already substantial control over plants, but he already had something in the works for that.
The smith that he had commissioned to make him a heroic rarity sword a while back still hadn't come back with it, but he was sure that eventually he would. If not, Roots would hunt him down and make him create the sword he needed. He wouldn’t actually give up one of his forest cores, as they were too valuable to his tree’s growth to give up. Instead he would kill the smith once he was of no further use.
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He set down the papers, walking over to the window he had made in the trunk of the tree. From all the way up there, he could see for miles and miles on end, and during perfectly clear weather at night time he could spot the lights in the distance of some far off encampments or settlements. He leapt over the edge of the tree, commanding the large plant to shoot out branches and leaves for him to step on and slow his descent. It had become a bit of a habit of his, trying to augment his movement with his powers, and he was getting quite good at it.
As he hit the ground, the practice he had just done with his plants paid off, giving him the tiny push he needed to cross over to his next level.
*Profession level up! Caretaker of the Oak (level 63)*
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Mike finished digging up the stone around the ritual in the ground. It was a delicate process, trying to carve through the ground without breaking the very important ritual, but he got it done. He gingerly lifted the massive stone, setting it on the ground for Lucas to begin working on. The rouge worked away at the stone, carving it until it was just a few inches thick and had perfectly smooth faces and sharp edges.
Mike cast soul bind on the object, pulling the entire ritual into his soul. He heaved a little as he felt the burden of carrying something so powerful within him, and he needed to remove his hammer from his soul to make the feeling go away.
“Are you sure that isn’t going to mess with the ritual?” Lucas asked.
“I’m pretty confident it won’t.” Mike responded. “If it would, then it would have messed with the enchantment on my hammer long ago.”
Mike headed out into the desert after that, wanting to gain as many levels as possible before he needed to fight. He had fallen behind when compared to the stronger end of people in his village, and had fallen very far behind when compared to the strongest, such as Roots. On top of gaining levels, he wanted to upgrade a skill that he used all the time, but never really thought about. That skill was Intermediate weapon handling. It was a skill that could be upgraded by simply getting better at using a weapon, but that was something Mike couldn't just do in a week. Instead, he wanted to upgrade it using the same principles he had used to improve blast step.
He avoided any particularly difficult fights while he was grinding for levels in the desert, as he had most of his attention focused on trying to add kinetic energy to each of his hammer swings. If he mimicked what cleave also did, then he could make his hammer swing faster by using mana to create a jet behind it. It took a while, but he figured it out. After that, he tried converting the mana that was already inside the hammer into kinetic energy, making the hammer lighter but far faster. After a few days of practicing these tricks, he got the skill upgrade he was looking for.
*Skill upgraded! Intermediate weapon handling, becomes intermediate kinetic weapon handling (rare)*
Alongside the skill upgrade, the several days straight of fighting had also gotten him a few levels.
*Class level up x2! Mighty feller of Giants (level 42)*
*Race level up! Human (level 46)*
He put 45 points into both constitution and fortitude, satisfied by his gains. He then began searching the desert for any more monsters to fight. He had four days left before it was time to march on Gratsden, and he wanted to try and reach level 45 in his class before the time came. He glided high in the air, trying to use the high altitude to spot anything he could fight. He spotted a sandstorm in the distance, remembering the elemental he had fought over a month ago. He changed his trajectory to aim for the storm, diving towards it with great speed. The last desert core he had earned had been used to make the legendary ranked ritual, but he wanted one now to make his own powerful item.
“The core description did say they were made on average once a month, so it is about time for another to have spawned.” Mike said to himself, finally reaching the cloud of sand. He dove in headfirst, his higher fortitude allowing him to ignore the sand particles hitting his skin at the high speeds. They left red marks, but not the deep scratches that they had left previously. Clearly, his decision to raise something other than strength had been a good one.
Contrary to what he expected, there was no sand elemental within the dust cloud. Instead, something that felt like a sandpaper covered snake slammed into Mike. He identified the flying object as it disappeared back into the storm.
Sandstorm serpent (level 55)
“Must be a weaker version of what is under Dune.” Mike thought to himself. He figured he could handle one serpent flying through the air at him. As Mike dodged side to side, taking swipes at the monster with his hammer, he began to realize that the creature was ridiculously fast. It seemed to come at him at a different angle every half second, and it was as if it teleported around him.
He realized why this was the case when he turned quickly, and saw two of the serpents coming at him at once. Mike cast freedom, wanting to get rid of the sand around him to see the serpents better. As he dumped the mana into the storm, all the sand within 30 feet of him disintegrated, and Mike cursed at what he saw. At least a dozen of the serpents were flying circles around him, waiting for his back to be turned from one of them to strike.
As the next one flew by, Mike grabbed its tail, spinning around and slamming it into the ground. Before it could fly away he flattened it with his hammer. He repeated a similar process again and again until the last of the monsters had died. It had been an easy fight, and the serpents were obviously weak for their level. Still, it had been enough for Mike to level up.
*Class level up! Mighty Feller of Giants (level 43)*
He threw the points into fortitude before heading back to Thudfall to finish his preparations.