Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! BACK FROM THE DEAD!(not so much…)
ANYWAY, a fairly average sized chapter today, with 4,3K words just for you guys! Hooray! I did a brief (?) Timeskip here, as it felt the right time to do so, as there would be a lot of grinding around which I felt that would drag the story for far too long before I reached the next arc, so yeah.
ALSO, I heard there was a guy around stealing my ideas of offering cookies to people, but instead doing it with candies. He even stole my Author’s corner and named it writer’s spot! HOW DARE HE! So, as I am declaring a war on him at this exact moment, and with that I shall announce a new incentive! NEW COOKIES! I took one third of my cookies, made them sugarless cookies for those who can’t or don’t like sweet cookies, then dumped all that sugar on another third, making extra sugary cookies! And we still have the classic cookie available! TAKE THAT, YOU CANDY COPIER!
ALSO(2), I just received a war announcement from a crazy guy, saying that he will fight me using cookies… Weird… Back on track, I see some people asking me to keep updating (Re)Install more regularly than what I initially planned… So I’ve been thinking. Should I alternate the stories every week like someone recommended? Or set certain days of the week for each story? What do you guys think?
ALSO(3), Do you know about the cookies? Well, free commemorative cookies for everyone! Yay!
ALSO(4), SS should be up in a few minutes/ one hour.
Have a good read!
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“War? Is that you?” I heard a voice coming from somewhere nearby. I stopped to look around, searching for whoever had called me. Since most people who knows me in this game call me Gon, the very fact that someone called me by the old nickname was enough to leave me slightly curious. “It is! Hey there!” The voice said.
I looked around a few more times, not really finding anyone, so I shrugged it off before going back on my way to the Silver Gauntlet. Or I would do that, if it weren’t for the fact that someone kicked me in the back of my legs and made me fall face first into the ground.
“Cygnasdammit! Don’t you know how to take a joke?” I complained while rubbing my injured nose and turning to the red-haired elf looking annoyed at me.
“Maybe this way you will learn to not ignore me.” She said while sticking her tongue out at me. “Wait, ‘Cygnasdammit’?” She asked confused.
I groaned annoyed while putting myself back up and found myself towering a good feet above the short elf. I gave her a good look, seeing as she used some nice grey leather set and a metallic bow that looked pretty high level.
Behind her were four animals following her closely. One was a grey rabbit, another was a large red wolf, a small red lizard with some smoke coming out from his nose and a red with white hawk standing on her shoulder.
“You forgot to pick a red rabbit.” I told her with a smirk and she shrugged.
“I did look for one, but it seems that red rabbits only appear at volcanoes.” She said with a long sigh. “And the easiest volcano is around level fifty, so I was training to go there.” As she said that she took her chance to check on me and my gear, before her eyes drifting to the others who were with me, where her eyes started shining brightly. “And who are these cuties?” She asked with a surprised voice.
I looked back at my pets, seeing as Aura slowly approached me and then laid on the ground, exhausted. Lieutenant had passed out on her back and we could almost hear a snoring coming from him. Crys floated close to them while keeping a slightly awkward smile with her eyes.
“Guys, meet this elf whose name I can’t remember, but is known as Red Hurricane, AKA, Red.” Hmm, why did I suddenly think of robots? And I have this strange urge to beep. Strange… “Red, meet the guys.” I said as I passed my arms around her shoulders and started pointing towards my pets. “The fox with watery jewelry is Aura, the floating pink-crystal maid is Crys, AKA Cyg. Finally, the sleeping officer is called… wait for it.” I took a deep breath before smiling and speaking. “Lieutenant General Whiskers McBallofur Maximilliamus Von Scratchy the Third!” I said with a wide smile.
“That’s… A long name…” She said awkwardly, and I nodded.
“Yeah, after what they did last time, he deserved a promotion and a new surname.” I said cheerfully.
“What they did?” Red asked confused while tilting her head, and I smiled widely.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you. I have a quest to deliver anyway.” I said while starting to drag the elf away with me and telling her my story.
Well, since I finished my sword and started training with it, around three normal life days passed, and with that, it means that nine Insania days have come and gone. During these days a few things happened. Firstly, I made two armor sets, one for Yagver, as I had promised, and for his I used Excel’s metal plating for the core, and covered it with defensive Doggy’s fur, giving it one of those Norse warriors look to the armor, with the wolf’s head for a helmet.
The set fit perfectly with the Jötunn, even more when I managed to make it only give defensive status to him. He was pretty much immortal by now, unless he took on a monster at least five levels above him, then he could have SOME difficulty.
The other set came out as a joke, when Yuu, looking at me making a wolf-themed set for Yagver, said out loudly whether Hanbei would look good as a wolf-girl. As a joke, I decided to make her a head-band that covered her cat ears perfectly, giving them a more wolfish shape. From there on, I ended up going with the flow and made a full set with the offensive doggy’s leather, which I ended up leaving with her.
Using the remaining leather from the set, I used them to give some quick upgrades to my actual gear. What I did was to exchange the inner padding of my armor from blazing-tail’s leather to aggressive doggy’s leather. The upgrade wasn’t all that great, mostly making them comparable to higher-leveled set by boosting armor and aggressive stats. Now the set needed level twenty to be used, which wasn’t a problem.
From there I also made the promised maid clothing to Crys, who was delighted, even when I used the weaker wolf’s leather. I thought about making something for Aura again, but for reasons I will explain later, I didn’t.
Clothing done, I called back my then Lieutenant Colonel, and we started to get some requests at the Silver gauntlet to kill some smaller beasts, this way we could power-level the freezing tail.
The quest we chose had us kill those squirrel-wolf-thingy on the way to my trainer’s house, so I took this chance to pay her a visit, since she called me to come back at level twenty. Now, you might be wondering what happened to Han-chan and Yuu. Well, since I was going to level up Aura, I told them to go do their things while I went on my own way for now, and later I would catch up with them.
Anyway, back at Evelyn’s house, she taught me a skill and a sub-skill when I got there. And they were pretty nifty, if a bit obscure with their usage. One, was the tracking skill, which you guys might already have an idea on what it’s used for. It allows me to search around an area for signals about monsters that I want, and then it marks them on my map for me. It actually works to find monsters that are usually using some stealth skill outside of battles.
But the really good part, was the next one. Tracking’s subskill that wasn’t exactly exclusive to skirmishers, but only few other classes could use.
Sub-Skill: Strategic mapping [lvl1]
(level increases with tracking)Knowing thy enemy may be important in a battle, but so is knowing where you battle. This skill allows you to see details from the terrain that would pass unnoticed to other people, as well as improving your usage of them.
Reveal exploitable vulnerabilities on the terrain.
Mapped terrain related buffs increase by 25%
Reveals possible hiding spots for the enemies.
Cast time: 5 or less minutesCost: 0 energy
Requires good visibility of the terrain. Better views decrease analysis time.
This thing may not seem like much at first, but once you see the amount of things you can exploit in a terrain, you can become surprised. For example, if I use this, I can see where the ground is fluffier and luring an enemy there decrease their speed slightly. Or I can even see where the ground is fragile and break it, making the enemy fall on a cavern or something of the kind, but I only managed to use this one once.
And once you start to pile these vulnerabilities one upon the other, they can make quite a difference.
After that, I took my chance to ask Evelyn whether there was a skill or something that I could learn to reduce the penalty for having too many combat pets. She stopped to think for a moment before telling me that she had an idea, but she would only teach me once I got to level fifty.
I thanked her and left so I could test my skill a bit more. And as a small note. As soon as I got tracking to level five, I taught it to Aura, since her improved senses made her a better tracker than me.
It’s not like I’m being lazy nor anything, ok?
…
Okay, I’m being lazy.
ANYWAY!
Since we are on track with the matters about skills and so on, might as well as speak a bit on how I’m doing with the sword.
I managed to put my two-handed sword skill up to level 9, and am just about to put it on intermediate. And since I’ve been training with it non-stop, I now can use it fairly well, making a few meaningful combos that I couldn’t before. But the most important part, is that I learned four skills for it.
These were slightly different from the other skills I learned with sword and shield or the bow, and this left me quite intrigued.
Basically, I learned a style. Like martial arts style. Maybe it’s because of simply swinging the sword wildly around, I was actually doing the same movements over and over with some kind of meaning behind them.
It appeared as a sub-skill from two-handed swords to be exclusive to swords classified as two-handed swords by the game. As in the weapon class, not the fact that I use it with two hands.
Anyway, the style-subskill mostly served to limit the kind of weapon I could use the skills. I found it a bit bothersome at first, but eventually I came to understand the reason. The style that Yuu taught me was made with this weapon in thought, so if I were to change the weapon size, some properties might not carry over.
I wonder if this means that I can create a style for every single weapon type.
Anyway, then, the style sub-skill, which I could choose the name since I was the first one to actually unlock this one in particular, thus named Hunter’s style, earned four sub-skills. Each one of them referring to one set of movements I have been learning.
Since each one of them had a different property, I named them after a beast’s weapon. For example, the one responsible for heavy single-target damage I called it Fang strike, the one responsible for a sweeping AoE strike, I called it the Claw strike, and the one that had me charging ahead to hit, the Talon strike.
But as I said, there were four offensive sub-skills. The last one was called Talon strike, second form. It was the movement I did after the Talon strike without the skill, so it ended up automatically earning the same name, but the second form.
The problem of these skills, however, was the cost. Fifty energy for any of them. Luckily, by having them, they also increase the damage of the non-skill slashes that imitates them by ten percent. But there is one nifty trick I can use with them that I will explain later.
“Is this story still going to take much longer? You have been going with it for the last… What, one and a half hour?” Red asked as she took a bite from the stuffed squirrel-wolf-thingy, interrupting me.
“Geez, I told you that it would take some time, right?” I said annoyed.
“Actually, no you didn’t.” She said with a deadpan look. “And I still don’t see how these two could be so exhausted if most of what you have been speaking is from nine days ago…”
“I will get there. Wait a bit, okay?” I said with an annoyed tone.
“And why are you even telling me this? Couldn’t you just go straight to the point for once?” She asked confused.
“AND WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT, YOU HERECTIC!” I said shocked at her, before sitting down on my chair again. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell someone this, and you just were unlucky enough to be the closest known person, so deal with it.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“…Sometimes I wonder why the hell do I put up with you…” She said with a deep sigh.
“You love me and you know it!” I replied with a fake shy smile, only to be splashed in the face with water.
“Please, stop that. It was disgusting.” She said with a fake tone of disgust.
I pouted a little and swore to never make some pet clothing for her, so she quickly took a handkerchief and dried my face with a business smile.
Feeling good about the service, I went on with my wonderful story.
Anyway, skill-wise, I wasn’t the only one learning cool things as we hunted around like mad. So let’s start with the newest member of my pets, the crystalline maid that was peacefully drinking some tea besides us.
Actually, this might be interesting, but Cyg messed around a bit with the system so that she could also eat other things besides salt. According to her, she wouldn’t be able to hold it for much longer while seeing us eating our tasty looking plates while she would only eat salt. It’s actually really funny seeing her eat. Even when she didn’t have any mouth, the moment she took something to the place where it should be, suddenly a small bite-shaped mark would appear on whatever she was eating. Kind of like those things you could see on some cartoons.
As I was saying, Crys learned a couple of handy skills, like mining and skinning. For mining, she would use some kind of crystal elemental magic to extract the ores from the veins, while for skinning, she simply used her sharp fragments that formed her hand to slice open the monsters.
This some times got really gruesome, but that’s not the point. With that, I could leave gathering with her while me, Aura and Lieutenant kept hunting.
Well, Aura, on the other hand, really is making me proud as her crafter owner. Do you remember that I said that she wore some kind of watery jewelry? That’s actually a new type of elemental armor that she created.
Besides her warrior armor, made of ice that increased toughness and strength at the price of mind and intellect, she also created these watery-armor, that looked like a jeweled necklace made of water, as well as some wrist (heel?)bands with similar properties, as well as a tail ornament. This armor decreased the cast time for her spells greatly, as she could use the water from the armor to cast the spells.
And she also learned a mist armor, that decreases vitality, but gives a massive boost to agility. When she uses it, a dense fog covers her almost like a mantle, leaving her face unseen. With this she could use a stealth skill while earning a great reduction on agro generation, besides the obvious mobility improvement.
Then, we had Lieutenant.
Well… Let’s just say that he kind of liked using the two daggers as a weapon, back at the dungeon… And now he learned dual wielding skill…
No, I’m not joking. Even worse, he is far better than me…
Well, even after I crafted a pair of easily held knives for him, his damage didn’t change since I don’t have the taming skill, on the other hand, it did allow him to earn dual-wielding as a skill, and even some other dagger-related skill.
So, yeah…
“Stop. Your cat uses dual wielding?” Red asked shocked while looking at Lieutenant, who was stuffing himself with meat and looked at her briefly, before making a salute and turning back to the food.
“What? Do you think I’m joking?” I asked feeling hurt.
“Actually, yes. Half of the things you usually speak end up being a joke. Even by accident.” She told me with a deadpan face. I wanted to deny her, but I was completely unable to.
“Anyway…” I said clearing my throat. “It is true. I could show you his skills if you want.”
She stared at me for some time, before sighing and motioning for me to continue.
Well, during this time, as I had said, we kept receiving some quests from the Silver gauntlet to hunt an assortment of beasts around. Mostly to level Aura than anything. I was a bit worried that the experience debuff would end up burdening me too much, but that was an unneeded worry.
Why? Because Lieutenant and Aura soon learned on how to deal with enemies as strong as themselves, so they could hunt alon e with ease. I was still faster than the two when they were separated, but when both focused on the same enemy, even I had a bit of a hard time keeping up with their hunting speed.
This basically means that the two could somehow makeup for the experience reduction with individual hunting, although I do think that I might still be a bit on the slow side, since they had to use the cautious approach I use when fighting stronger mobs.
Still, this pretty much meant that I could leave Crys following them and skinning for me, while I hunted and skinned my own mobs, which greatly increased the yield per hour of leather.
Oh, another nifty thing I found out during these hunts. Back when I first finished the sword, it’s appearance changed, losing its jaggedy crystalline blade for a black and smoother one. I found out that following its skill to change toughness into attack, the more points I have, the more the blade change back into its original shape, so it keeps changing back and forth between both forms during the fight. Really nifty.
“Still can’t see why they were exhausted.” Red said with a bored tone.
“Well, I could get to it a bit faster if you didn’t stop me every n seconds.” I complained back to her as we walked back to the entrance of the city.
“If only you weren’t threatening me with those cute pet costumes…” She grumbled slightly annoyed.
“Yeah, feels good to be the one in control for a change.” I said with a wide smile, remembering how she always was the one to drag our little group around.
“Actually… I never really expected you to be so good with making things like these…” She said while looking at Crys and Lieutenant.
“Right? I was actually surprised myself.” I said nodding in agreement. “My guess is that the system help is a bit more subtle than what we might think… Anyway, we were getting to the part you wanted, so, back to the story!” I said cheerfully while Red nodded weakly.
So, as I was saying, the last mission we took from the Gauntlet, was to hunt a… Drum rolls, please…
…
Blazing-tail!
Yay! Cookies to whoever got this one right!
So, taking both Aura and Lieutenant back to that place, we quickly cleared through the weak red-tails, which gave me a sight of a really, REALLY scary Aura, and reached the clearing of the blazing tails. Luckily, even with having changed to the hardcore realistic mode, we didn’t have much trouble, since we had the three of us and I was already used to hunting them.
“Wait, you changed into the realistic mode?” Red asked me surprised, and I nodded. “When did that happen? I don’t think you told me…”
“Hmm?” I asked confused while thinking back all what I had told her, but since it’s been a long talk, I couldn’t remember everything, so I gave up. “Well, I think it was roughly around three days ago.” I said with a shrug.
“And why would you do that?” She asked me, before widening her eyes and sighing. “Let me guess… Monster hunter?” I simply smiled widely at her answer, receiving another sigh from her. “So… How is it?”
“Surprisingly fun, actually!” I said cheerfully before grimacing slightly. “And annoying too.”
“Oh? How so?” She asked intrigued.
Well, for starters, say that I get hit by a strong piercing attack. Not only will I get damage based on where it hit me, say the chest deals more damage than the arm, I might also get a bleeding debuff based on the damage dealt.
Otherwise, if I were to hit a mob on a weak point, like the head or the chest, I will deal a lot more damage. On the other hand if I were to hit a strong enough blow to the leg, even if the damage was lower, it can apply a movement debuff to said enemy, and even reduce damage dealt with that limb.
Anyway, back to the boss battle. We quickly dealt with it and it was also a good chance to get used to the new system, since I was fighting an enemy I was already used to with a weapon I was already getting the hang of.
Well, afterwards I planned to simply come back to the city and deliver the quest, but Aura wanted something different, as she stared at the respawning boss. Thanks to Crys, who could understand what she was saying, told me that she wanted to have a bout with the boss herself, without any help from me.
I was shocked, of course, but since I had absolutely no right to tell her anything, I gave her a go once she allowed Lieutenant to join her, as the cat seemed to get pumped up too.
Well, it was easier said than done. Even if she was once stronger than the blazing tails by a wide margin, she was stripped of her boss rank once she became my pet, so even when their levels were failry similar, she was having some difficulty on taking the fox while only supported by Lieutenant.
The two almost died six times, where I would dismiss them at the last second and then use my retreat skill to get the hell away from there and lose the agro before coming back and giving them another chance.
On their seventh run, after spending all of the throwing knives Lieutenant still had, and all the health-pots I gave them as a precaution, they finally managed to defeat the blazing tail. And since they didn’t really have much time to recover before coming back to the city, now that we were here, anytime they had to rest, they were doing it.
“Wait… They killed a boss… Alone?” Red asked while looking surprised at the duo, and I nodded proudly.
“Well, they did spend a lot of consumables for that to work, though…” I said with a wry smile. “Luckily, I’m self sufficient in that area, so I didn’t have much trouble resupplying their efforts.”
“I… see… No wonder they look exhausted…” She said while nodding in deep thought. “So, what are you going to do now that you completed the quest?” She asked after some time, and I smiled widely.
“Just waiting to see some people.” I said cheerfully. “And actually, it’s about time YOU told me what you are doing here!” I said curious and she smiled widely while petting the hawk in her shoulder.
“I started near the elves capital, and made my way here to catch this guy. And when I was exploring the city, I saw you walking around.” She shrugged. “And who are these people you spoke about? Are they the girls you added to the chat?”
Oh yeah, remember that I added Yuu and Hanbei to the guild’s chat? Well, they actually stayed there and from time to time I see them chatting with Red, Phantons and… I guess there was another person… Oh well. They actually seem to be getting along pretty nicely.
“Nah, they are busy preparing some things IRL since yesterday night.” I denied the thought, making she look at me curious.
“Then who exactly are you waiting?” I smiled at her question.
“You will know when you see them.” I said with a wry smirk. She simply looked at me confused before turning back to the gate as we waited.
And luckily, it didn’t take too long. Well, I actually knew this since I had already called them to the group, so I could see them on the mini-map as they approached, and that’s how I knew where to wait them.
From the distance, I saw as two huge horses made their way towards us, stopping only once they reached the gate. The riders quickly leaped down from them, and I could see as the biggest one made a slightly uncomfortable face as he stretched himself. Stealing a glance from Red, I saw her looking at the small group a bit confused, before her eyes widening and looking at me while holding back a laugh.
I smiled back at her and nodded, as I heard the large barbarian talk to what looked like a fairy next to him.
“I think that’s Booh up ahead, deary.”
“Booh? Really?” The fairy asked cheerfully, before turning towards me and darting my way.
“Oh? Is that him?” Their companion asked as he examined me with an intense gaze. “By the eight tail of Inari… If it really is him… I’ll be damned!” Said the old-looking human besides them while laughing mischievously.
I looked at the old-man confused for a moment before turning back to the other two, and I saw the barbarian and the fairy approaching me.
“Booh! Long time no see!” I said while greeting them, and the barbarian simply smiled back, as the fairy spun around me, watching me in curiosity. “So, enjoying the game?” I asked with a mischievous smile as the fairy landed on my right shoulder and hugged my head.
“Hi Booh!” She said to me.
“Yeah. Having a blast so far, sonny.” Said the barbarian as he picked the fairy back and put her in his shoulder.
I don't think I need to explain who this guy is, right?