“Good Morning Kal” Husky seems like quite a ball of energy, his nap must’ve been really refreshing
“M-morning”
He cocks his head slightly
“Hmm, Kal you seem…different somehow, I just can’t quite put my finger on it”
“Different? How? No no no I’m the same as ever” He must NEVER find out!
“Ah must’ve just been my imagination. So anyways how was your kip?”
“Kip? I didn’t have one?”
“What really? Then wha-oh…you been in game for the past 3 hours?” (he’s talking about IRL hours)
“Yep I’ve had a good 9 hours to do stuff” (I’m talking about in-game hours)
“Ah, so what did you get up to?”
“…Noooothing, just killing animals and such. Nothing special” There is no way the events of last night are ever going to escape these lips
“Ah ok” That’s good enough for Husky it seems
“So when is Jöt going to-”He logs on as if summoned
“Are you sure you aren’t a wizard Kal?” Husky asks me in a half-joking tone
“Well I do dabble in a bit of this and that, I specialize in Jöt summoning you know” I have a feeling this will come back to haunt me as Jöt looks quite unamused.
Anyways, we go sit down at the table to wait for breakfast and Cindy lays the table with fruits.
I pick a Frozardo (An avocado looking fruit; it’s quite bitter)
Husky picks a Grapple branch (Its apples the size of grapes but they taste very strong)
Jöt picks a normal apple (maybe he really does like apples).
After munching and filling up our satiety bar, we head outside into the cold world. The chilly wind blows over us causing us to shiver, but I don’t shiver as violently as I should. Why? Because of this:
SKILL: Cold Resistance [lvl2] Passive Skill [43%] After spending so long in the cold without proper winter clothing, you have gained natural resistance against the cold
2% cold resistance Cost: none, Duration: Permanent
That’s right. After pretty much 24 hours in the cold with a small amount of clothing I gained cold resistance….Thank god this is a game world or I probably would’ve contracted hypothermia by now…
It makes a little difference but since I got it only 3 hours ago and it’s gone up 43% since then (it started level 2) so this might level up ridiculously fast.
The others haven’t got it yet but seeing as though we’re bare-chested they should get it soon.
We head outside the gate, nodding to Gerard who stands motionless on the wall but suddenly nods back at us. He doesn’t talk much but he feels like a good guy, also I don’t feel any stares from him.
We walk for a few minutes till we find an elk and after Jöt annihilates it, I show them the Frost Grass
“Oh that makes a lot of sense, Kal you’re actually quite smart” Husky says with a cheeky grin, he doesn’t mean that. He knows I’m a pure genius of course (I’m being sarcastic if you haven’t noticed).
Although I’ve shown them, I don’t let them pick it because that would just ruin the quality. I free the grass slowly getting 6 high quality grass easily with 3 minutes of work.
A wolf notices us and once again we’re back to the whole running routine. 111th time back to the village because of wolves. We easily switch between me and Husky taking a bit of damage but staying alive before we reach the village and-
DIVE. Ah safe. Synchronous diving into the snow is always fun.
As I get up, I spot Gerard looking at us and I swear I saw a ghost of a smile there.
Well my sprint hit level 8 about an hour before they came and the progress has really been slowing down. On the bright side I’m now 16% faster when I sprint now. However that is still pretty useless in the larger scale of things.
We do another 6 runs for the grass earning another 34 along with 36 copper coins and enough xp to get me 80% of the way to level 4 a mere 20% in front of Husky, while Jöt is now 30% to level 5.
Getting all our grass in a record breaking 2 hours we feel pretty good about ourselves, but the grass was the easy part.
We head back out after diving from a wolf (118th time) and stop at the edge of the forest.
You see I had a good 9 hours of the night to collect things but in the end all I did was collect 300 Frost Grass along with 30 copper coins from rabbits (as well as that sweet 60% xp).
I tried to go into the forest to get my snowberries but that proved impossible. Why? Well I think you already know the answer.
It’s because of the Big.Black.Wolf. who for some reason has a grudge against me.
I had walked into the forest a second time last night and after collecting 1 snowberry I had been eviscerated without warning. I thought that I was just having some bad luck and it was random coincidence that brought us together but I figured that wasn’t the case.
I figured it out when I walked into the forest a third time and got my upper half torn off half a second later.
At that point I was a bit miffed; some supposed legend guy was killing me out of anger that came from pretty much nowhere. I felt that it wasn’t angry at the icebolts that hit him but what else could he be angry about?
Anyways, the three of us decide to not risk being massacred and stay by the edge of the forest. It will take a lot longer but this way is relatively safer.
We move at the edge of the trees peering inside to spot the distinctive berries at the foot of the trees. Soon we find one right on the border so we got that bush as a freebie. Luckily they came in bushes and there were from 8 -12 in each bush.
Of course due to my amazing green thumb I am able to obtain high-quality snowberries.
The next bush of berries is a few metres in to the forest. We decide who goes into the forest to-Ah wait, I’m the one who picks the damn things so of course I have to go.
My party mates drop back the short distance of 100 metres and I sneak into the forest.
Creeping a few steps forward, I’m still alive so I’m doing good so far.
I reach the bush and carefully remove each one, 9 in total. I then with a sigh of relief stand up and turn around.
My head gets ripped off by the ginormous black wolf that was waiting silently behind me
…
..
.
I do not like this wolf. I really do not.
Sighing, I head outside and meet up with the other guys.
I wait, I wait, and there they are. Running for their lives with a ginormous wolf bounding behind them.
300 metres left.
Jöt’s arm was ripped off and then he stumbled, causing the wolf to laugh(?) Before crushing him under a paw.
Husky ran as fast as he could but could not evade Gannor for more than half a second. His body ripped apart and that was the end to the team.
Waiting for them to respawn, I watch as Gannor mutilates their bodies quite angrily. It seems Gerard has seen and has started to call guards over.
Gannor looks back up towards me and a wave of pure hate washes over me as he howls, escaping to the forest for the time being.
Hmm why is it so mad at us?
“Maybe it’s mad because it lost track of Frishha?” Jöt somehow gained the ability of telepathy (I just think he was thinking the same thing) and he answered my question with a murmer.
“Ah that wolf is nasty” Husky whistled as he joined us
Deciding we’re not going to enter the forest ever again we being our favorite thing…Grinding!
Now I say grinding but our efficiency level will make even noobs cry. Why? Because we kill about 2 elks every 10 to 20 minutes. Wolves keep chasing us and we keep having to go back to town and rest and recover. Oh, Jöt seems to have gotten all 50 apples from Linda (he must really like apples).
Anyways let us begin.
Out the gates, find an elk, kill an elk, gather some frost grass
Oh wolf, Run, change guards
DIVE.
Get up say hi to Gerard and go back out.
Repeat this for a full 4 hours.
…
“L-level 5…WOHOO!!!” Husky jumps into the air and we all give him a big high-five
Yes, we have all finally hit level 5. I am about halfway up while Jöt is at 93%. Our hunting has given us 258 copper, 18 antlers and another 233 Frost Grass. Ah it happened after I picked about 40 of them but:
SKILL: Herbalism [lvl 3] Passive Skill [0%] You have gathered multiple herbs and have learnt to pick them with fewer mistakes Cost: none
Sadly it seems like picking Frost Grass doesn’t affect my skill anymore because they’re possibly a bit too low-level. However I picked my first 7 excellent quality and they had 5 health increase potency (so recovered 35 instead of 30).
It was pretty difficult to get an excellent quality, but I believe the system doesn’t allow you to get perfect unless you have a high enough skill level. Which I get and respect, but ALL my grass is perfectly collected so I do feel a bit meh’d about the quality restriction (or it might just be that excellent is the max quality of the grass).
So that was going well for me but because the guys wanted to, I let them pick a couple of herbs so they got the herbalism skill too. A True Nord can never have too many skills at their disposal!
We had hit level 5 at about midday, so we head to town to relax on the snowy street while we munch on an apple.
So time to check our assests: 3 silver 38 copper (me and Husky have an extra silver each) 19 antlers, 6 excellent quality Frost Grass, 468 high-quality grass, 11 mid quality, 93 poor quality grass. Overall we have a lot of grass.
What to do with it? Nothing at the moment and we’ll we’re not going to go to Thalia’s anytime soon (because we can’t get the berries I mean……but yes also because of that)
So after we finish munching on our apple, we go outside but this time we don’t hunt an elk, no, we hunt a wolf!
We crouch down in the snow and make our way to a wolf which is patrolling around the snowy meadows.
NAME: Winter Wolf [lvl8] 320/320
Ay that’s scary, but we’re level 5 now so we should be able to do some damage.
We’re far away enough that the wolf doesn’t immediately go for us so we prepare ourselves.
Husky puts on his plate-mail (newly repaired, cost him his silver) and now he’s fully armored like before.
I pass around a couple of high quality herbs (I’m not skimping here) so that we’ve got a little bit of health regen if needed.
Giving the nod, Jöt shoots 4 icebolts at the wolf (How 4? He spent 2 points on Vitality so he’s got 130 health)
-200 (120/320)
Woooah we can do this no probs.
The wolf immediately aggros onto Jöt and Husky puts himself at the front to intercept it.
-40(70/110)
The wolf crashes into Husky toppling him over but Husky grasps the wolf’s legs locking it in place for me to attack it with ease.
-9 -11 (100/320)
I quickly hack at the wolf twice as it bites off another chunk of health from Husky; he’s blocking the wolf’s mouth with 1 hand while his other holds the two front legs (He’s got some good strength Husky).
-10 -11 (79/320)
The wolf turns its head to me as it finally aggros onto me due to continuous hacking and I immediately jump away from the wolf.
“Awooo”
It howls but not the usual angry howl, a pitiful one, a cry for help.
…
..
.
"Ruuun!"
Since I’m aggroed, the wolf comes after me when Husky lets go but that’s fine since I’m alreadyx sprinting towards the village. The others two start sprinting after me and we soon sandwich the wolf between the 3 of us.
“AwoooooAwooAwoooo”
The overlapping sounds of wolves enter our vicinity and we see another 3 wolves that must have been nearby come for us. 1 in front, one to our left and the other to our right. Ah damn I forgot;
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
wolves are pack animals.
I roll on the ground getting 41 health taken from me and the wolf is still going after me.
-50 (50/320)
An icebolt hits the wolfs back causing it to falter and I turn around to converge on the wolf.
-9 -2 -42 (-3/320)
All of us attack the wolf murdering it with ease.
“Wahahah!!!” Husky and I laugh maniacally as Jöt reclaims the body in haste.
3 seconds later the wolves pounce on us.
…
Opening my eyes to the familiar house and soft fur mattress, I can’t help but feel elated. We did it, we killed our first wolf (all all died in the process but nevermind that).
We all grin eagerly as we look at the loot Jöt was able to collect: 12 copper and 1 wolf tooth. Oooh and when I check my xp bar and it has decreased by only about 5% as the wolves must have given 15% xp, wow.
Husky’s face drops a little when we check the xp, because he dropped a level but a few percent but we’ll get that back easily.
We exit the house and once again make our way down the street towards the exit.
Gerard and a couple of extra people are standing there because after a ginormous black wolf came out earlier they’ve been on guard (they don’t know it’s Gannor).
Waving to them, we head out for an elk.
Killing it within seconds, Husky levels up once more.
Ok so back to level 5, we all hunt for another wolf and quickly find one pawing the ground (oh how cuute, wait what am I thinking?).
Jöt shoots only one icebolt at it while consuming some grass
-50 (270/320)
The wolf howls and comes at us. Husky blocks at the front swinging his axe at the wolf and with 20 strength it has quite an effect.
-42 (228/320)
The wolf smashes into the ground from mid-pounce and I immediately take advantage of that by hacking away at the wolf a bit
-9 -11 (208/320)
Getting up from the ground the wolf dodges away as Husky brings down his axe once again and then barrels into him clawing at his mail.
-40 (70/110)
Husky, on the ground once again, uses his axe as a shield while the wolf tries to bite him.
I kick the wolf and then chop it vigorously
-1 -11- 10 (186/320)
-22 (48/110)
The wolf aggros onto me, leaving Husky on the floor. I sidestep getting a small graze on my side and use the rage to trigger my hack
-15 (171/320)
The wolf turns back at me and I jump over to where Husky is.
He kneels and swings his axe sideways.
-28 (143/320)
His attack was much less effective due to him being kneeling it seems, but that is enough for us.
-50 -50 -50 (-7/320)
3 icebolts pierce the wolf a split-second after and the wolf dies without so much as a howl.
“heheh Hahah HAHAHA!!!” Letting out a devious 3 piece villain laughter I reclaim the wolf’s corpse.
Seems like Jöt’s theory we right.
He had made a theory that the wolf would call allies when it was at 100 or lower so if we just killed it before then, we’d be fine. It’s a challenge only someone who can do an insane amount of damage; a mage, can do!
With that we collected another 12 coins and a bountiful amount of experience, but no tooth this time.
For the first time, we sit down outside the village and have an apple as a reward. Letting those sweet juices of victory fill me up I glance around for some new prey.
Jöt spots one and we head over to it, wanting to kill another one, to get revenge for having to sprint back to the village 143 times in the past two days!!
The wolf enters Jöt’s range and Jöt stabs himself a little…well a lot actually. We watch his health bar deplete by 100 before he actually casts his icebolt
…
..
.
or not??
The ground beneath the wolf suddenly erupts with spikes impaling the wolf and causing it to yowl in pain
-86 (234/320)
Me and Husky stand there a bit dumbfounded until Jöt knocks up over the back of the head
“It’s not going to last forever”
Oh right! We start charging the wolf and with it being immobilized we start to hack it to pieces
-10 -44 -11 -11 -42 -11 (105/320)
We abruptly stop after 3 seconds of mercilessly hacking the wolf to bits so as to not trigger its call for help.
Husky moves to the range of the wolf’s jaws and lets himself be bit while Jöt remains concentrating on the ice, his rage is about 10 left (another 3 seconds it looks like).
Husky which took 83 damage activates his ‘Slash’ skill and slams his axe on the wolf’s head
Crit! -162 (-57/320)
Daamn that’s nasty. The wolf, its head severed in two, dies and we happily reclaim its corpse. No tooth this time either.
We figured out quite a while ago that crits are not random chance; they’re when you hit weak spots, usually the head or neck. Seems Jöt suspected this when he was getting constant crits against the elks.
After we finish our battle, I look straight at Jöt
“When did you get a CC spell?”
He smirks “Just trying out a little something. Read the staff properly and seems like it’s not just limited to icebolts”
No idea what he meant there but it seems like he can use cc now and a pretty good one at that. Almost 10 seconds incapacitation as well as a good amount of damage at the cost of 100 rage (but Jöt has to channel it seems).
With that new addition to our arsenal we begin to have a lot of fun
…
Another 3 hours pass and we hunt another 32 wolves (Not running away once either) with ease due to Jöt’s new CC. With that we got another 18 teeth and 384 copper. But that wasn’t the greatest part.
The greatest part was that we leveled 3 times each, 3 times!
That’s the best leveling we’ve done in days (literally)! However seeing as thought the wolves were higher level than us as well as us being not even in double digits we are still leveling way too slow. I’d imagine the average level for a gamer right now would be close to 20.
However, we are level 8 (Husky is about 20% in im 40% and Jöt is about 50%) and that is soo great. It seems that because Jöt was a bit ahead of us, he got some decreased xp gain. So we’ve evened ourselves out a little bit more.
And now that I’m so high level, time to check my character sheet
[table] [table][table] [table]
NAME: Kal (Iskadi) TITLE: The Conqueror Class Tree: Wanderer Class: None Race: Nymph Gender: Trap (female) Level: 8 Experience: 42% STATUS: Remaining Points (14) Health Points: 110/110 Hp Regen (out of combat): 1sec Rage: 0/100 Rage decrease (out of combat) 1/sec STR: 10 TGH: 10 AGI: 10 VIT: 10 INT: 10 MND: 10 ATTK: Phys 10-11 Extra: none DEF: 2 M.RES: 17 Satiety: 80/100 (well fed) SKILLS:
One-handed Axe Mastery [lvl5]
-Hack(Active)
Leather Mastery [lvl2]
Sprint [lvl9]
Cold Resistance [lvl3]
Herbalism [lvl3]
Racials [Max]
-Radiating Charm (Active)
-Nature's Safe-keeper
-Nature Attuned
-Man's Desire
->Woman's Desire
Ah sprint level 9. We’ve been using sprint every time we move because it honestly feels more natural for us. So we end up having to eat a piece of bread every hour or less. Also cold resistance went up 1 more and the others got theirs starting at level 2.
You may have noticed that I haven’t put any points anywhere. Why? Well simply because I don’t want to waste them. It appears we only get 2 stat points per level which is horrifyingly small. Thus I’ve decided to hold onto my points till I figure out what I’m going to do with them
I’m a random character at the moment which is truly horrible for gamers to see and be but these points are precious. Don’t want to waste them on extra health or a bit more damage.
You’d be thinking I’d put them all into strength, agility and vit. Well I should but its honestly not going to make much of a difference to my character and it won’t really help the party. I’m quite the freeloader here if you haven’t noticed.
The others already know how they want to play and Husky went for full strength putting 10 into STR and 4 into Vit for an increase in health.
Jöt went 2 Vit, 10 Int and has got 2 points floating around in wonder where to put it. That extra 10 Int adds another 10 to his max rage pool as well as increasing his spell damage by 10, not that it needs an increase in damage anymore.
Skills wise we’re doing pretty good too; Husky has level 2 for his two-handed axe with level 5 for his unarmed. Sprint level 7 too.
Jöt has ice-manipulation level 8 and he’s got 3 sub-skills so far; Icebolt, Ice spikes and Rain of Ice.
Now…the rain of Ice he decided to cast in an earlier battle caused quite a ruckus…
Husky and I were fighting the wolves, when a whole bunch of mini-icicles fell from the sky and literally rained on us. I mean the spell only lasted 3 seconds only dealing 20 damage per icicle to us but it strikes once a second over a large area. I got hit by 3 icicles and died along with Husky who got hit by his 3 too and died. Jöt got what was coming to him and got massacred by a very annoyed wolf and then when he revived we had some sweet revenge.
I mean the spell is pretty damn good, don’t get me wrong
But it’s dangerous to use in a party, my god. Although now Jöt has a single-target, a CC and an AOE spell. As a mage he’s fully loaded.
Oh another scary fact. Jöt’s dagger mastery is level 7. He has to stab himself about 24 times each combat so the number he’s stabbed himself is literally ridiculous. I am actually terrified to count that number.
Anyways, since we can fight wolves 3 on 1 without a problem now we haven’t gone back to the village for a while (except for when we died of course). Thus we’ve been moving around the outskirts of the forest calmly looking for snowberries. Why? Well we still have that quest to complete and Jöt still has to pay for earlier.
We quickly find some snowberries in sight and leaving Jöt to it, me and Husky sprint the hell back to town.
Jöt watches us leave and as we go into the village he heads into the forest.
An exact 40 seconds later, we hear a scream and a few seconds after that Jöt says hi as he exits the house.
He did collect 8 snowberries and we are satisfied with that. So our revenge is swept under the rug.
Seeing as though I have another 5 in-game hours before school we decide to finish this snowberry picking.
Since we’re all good friends we decide to die in turns. Sadly first on the list is me. However before I go and commit collecticide, we hunt another 4 wolves to counter the xp penalty from death.
So as Jöt and Husky sprint to the village, I walk into the forest and with the care of an ogre rip the entire berry bush out collecting all 12 berries. I wake up in the house a few seconds later.
Ok we have 37 berries between us now. Only 3 or 4 more trips.
We go kill another 4 wolves letting Jöt immobilize it before we hack it to pieces gaining a bit of proficiency.
This time its Husky’s turn and we watch him enter the forest and about a second later he screams.
Husky walks back up to us from the house and shakes his head. Hmm apparently Gannor’s smartening up.
Racking our brains we head out and kill a couple more wolves.
Jöt’s turn this time. However we find two snowberry bushes so that way at least one of us gets the berries.
And that one of us is definitely not me, as Gannor walks out from behind a tree as I step in and just grins. That bastard. Why do you hate me so much?!?
Thankfully Jöt gets a good 8 berries.
Finding another 2 bushes, Husky and Jöt go. Screams from Jöt confirms the location of Gannor and Husky, running the hell back to town, does a splendid dive at the entrance.
We are doing this smartly by finding 1 berry bush either side of the village so that unless Gannor flies through the village he won’t catch both of us.
Gerard gives us a quizzical look at he notices us constantly dying in the forest (The Npc’s here don’t really mind us dying since we’re ‘wanderer’s’ so it seems they actually know that we revive and are technically immortal, which is nice?).
However we don’t tell them that we’ve somehow pissed off a ginormous black wolf that is surprisingly bastardly. I don’t think that’d go down well with the villagers.
But continuing on, Husky and Jöt go for another run with Jöt being massacred pretty much instantly. I mean we don’t try to run from this guy because we can’t. It seems though, according to Jöt, he does give you a few seconds to regret your decisions before the murders you.
…Ah it’s my turn now
…
..
.
Of course I get massacred and Husky runs scot free. At least we now have 61 berries.
The whole process only took an hour which is pretty good for us but still I’m stuck on 42% while Husky just got above 50%. Jöt is hitting the 60’s so I’m the lowest right now.
That sucks a little bit but I’ll catch up to them eventually.
Now to head back to town
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Author's Corner:
Sorry I haven't posted in like forever, but I will make it up by posting 2 more chapters over this weekend? Possibly?
ALSO
Thank YOUUUU to whoever reviewed me? thought i'm not sure as to what part of my fiction they thought was so awesome it deserved a five.............(Welll more review are in order it seems :D?)
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