Day 9 - September 10:49
Faith 1 / 10
Hunger 87 / 100%
One was really happy. His new friend had brought him a rabbit. How awesome was that?
“Hello there, what do you have here? Want to give it to me? Come here.” One bowed to his knee and reached friendly with his hand towards the wolf. It approached and he was able to crawl it behind it’s ears. “Good boy.” The wolf let go of his prey and looked at him. Seemingly it was glad to help him, the tails was weaving heavily and One had read that that was a sign that dogs were happy or excited. In exchange for the rabbit, One looted the two pieces of fresh meat out of it and fed it to his new friend. A pop up appeared.
[You have successfully tamed [Grey Wolf Level 2].]
[Fenrir Affiliation: [Grey Wolf] sensed your Fenrir Affiliation. +20% Attack Speed if domesticated or befriended.]
[Please decide on a name for your new ally.]
A small window appeared with a virtual keyboard hovering right below. One thought for a couple of minutes then decided to name his new friend Lupin.
[Lupin joined your group.]
A small symbol with a wolf banner appeared, hovering next to One. It showed the HP bar, name and level of his new member. After inspecting further he was even able to get Lupins battle stat window open.
[Lupin - Grey Wolf Level 2]
Hunger: 86 / 100 %
Experience: 41.17%
Strength: 7
Vitality: 4
Toughness: 14
Damage per second: 14.98
Movement Speed: 1.62
Attack Speed: 2.14 [+0.36]
HP: 41.6/41.6
It seemed Lupin had no base speed stat, and missed a lot of other stats as well. No armor, no critical hit, no on hit damage. Maybe there were items that increased his power later on? Like a armored pet wolf? Although he had quite a lot of DPS already. He fed him another bonfire meat to max out the hunger stat, which was filled more quickly than One’s. After that they both continued their journey. From time to time Lupin tried to run off but now he listened to order and it was easy to keep him close.
Walking through the woods for hours was not exactly very diversified. Tree after tree, bush after bush and animals running away from Lupin as soon as they came in their near proximity. He was not really very stealthy. Maybe it would be better as he leveled up? When One come towards a small river, Lupin decided not to go through the water. He was quite scared of it in fact. Ignoring him, One continued the last part of his way, his pet would find a way around soon by himself. He was a wolf and not some pet dog after all.
After five minutes he noticed Lupins HP decreasing. Great. What did he find now? Hopefully it was not a group of players, the last thing he needed right now was a group of people wanting his bounty. Or even worse: NPC bandits. Imagining various scenarios One hurried towards Lupins location on the map. The grey wolf was really a cool pet and would really be of help while fighting. So One drew his dagger, ready to intercept any battle. Suddenly he broke out of the woods, standing on a road. His fear of a group of people might become very true.
Then he saw them. Two players were harassing the wolf, that tried to pass the small bridge, which led over the small river. Lupin rather fought outnumbered against two rather than crossing a little water. Brave. And stupid. [Thunder] and [Lightning] was hovering their heads. They were gamers. The larger figure with a bow was male, brown long and smooth hair with a lean figure. The girl was blonde, with shining blue eyes, One was able to see them all the way over. Her figure was busty, a big chest and a nice round ass. She was very attractive, but One figured most female players would give themselves a sexy body in character creation. They both were clothed in the same leather armor. She held a broadsword with both hands, while her male sidekick was armed with a bow. Most likely they always played together.
“Hey! Leave my wolf alone! He is not for hunting!” Immediately both of them stopped and looked towards One. They were confused at first. “Lupin! Come. Leave them alone.” His pet waved his tails and trotted past the two confused players. One walked towards him, and crawled his head. After the short absence the wolf seemed bigger than it actually was. The child body of his really altered his imagination of things from time to time. One always assumed to be a lot bigger than he actually was. “Hi.”, he said to the two.
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The girl spoke first: “Hey there. How did you got a pet? That’s so cool!”
Her sidekick however armed his bow with another arrow and pulled her back on her shoulder. Fuck. What was going on? Should he run? One was confused, he had not done anything to arouse suspicion or distrust.
“Careful. Babe, he has a bounty. Over a thousand silver. He may be strong and a pvp killer.”
Well shit. One stepped back a bit, maybe arguing could save his ass? “Please lower the bow, I don’t know how I even got the bounty. I am not going to attack you or anything, after all you were the ones that attacked my wolf. Sorry I yelled at you before. After all I really don’t want to lose Lupin here.” He stroked his partners fur. As it must have looked really cute, a little kid with his pet apologizing.
The blonde was the first to break the ice. “Aww, it’s alright. We are playing to enjoy, not to kill you for some silver, right hun?” The brown haired guy nodded in agreement as he lowered his bow. Lightning, the young girl, still looked to her boyfriend confused. “How did you know about the bounty?” He shrugged. “In the menu. Options and then add a cross to Show Bounty.”
Helpful to know. One enabled the option as well, afterwards the girl and the guy both had a small green point next to their Gamer-Tag, while under his own a red number appeared. 1027.013. Seemingly it was the amount of copper he was worth. Over a million. Seemed unreal.
“Yeah, can we forget about the bounty thing? Maybe?”
They both answered at the same time. “Sure.” Then looked at each other, kissed and the guy spoke to him again. “Where are you going? Are you questing too?”
One shook his head. “No. I’m going a little further down the road, then up through the valley. There I want to build a house for the winter. Training my building skills and stuff.”
They both seemed really interested. “Can we tag along? Building something sounds cool. And we want to do some quests that are in that valley too so we have the same way.”
One nodded and told them to follow. On the way they pestered him with the question where he got his pet, and even after answering them the same thing over and over they kind of were obsessed with Lupin. They petted him, played around and he was able to walk in peace and silence. The wolf was an awesome sidekick after all. Two hours later they had crossed over from road and were already far into the valley woods and finally they arrived. Now they were exactly where One had envisioned on the map. In reality it looked even better. There were some caves up in the mountainside and the river formed a small lake next to a small grassland plateau right in the middle of the woods, before falling as a waterfall down to form another riven below. Right there, on this plateau he would build his house.
Day 9 - September 19:14
Faith 9 / 10
Hunger 22 / 100%
One realised that he had the house plans, but totally had forgotten about the approval scroll he needed for Builder II. That would be a real setback. Well it was not too late to check out the caves, right? Hopefully he asked his two new friends. “Does anyone of you have a Builder level two scroll? I forgot that I need it to level up. And the house plans are all above level one.”
“Hmm, let me check.” The blonde girl opened her inventory and looked it through. And One was really lucky. She had a scroll. “I got that from this weird repair quest in our last town. You can have it.”
Quickly One traded her and gave her 20 Bonfire Meat in return as a little thanks. “Thanks a lot. With this I can work. By the way, what’s your name? Lightning and Thunder is kind of a weird way to call someone.”
“Oh, just call me Luna, my boyfriend is called John. We are from Italy. Maybe you can hear it on the accent? Where are you from?”
“A little north from London. Harlow to be exact. Do you guys wanna start building a city here? I mean, it’s a long shot but if we find some ores in the mountains or something, we could really build something nice.”
They were not really sold on the idea. “Hmm, we will stick around for a bit. We will think about it.”
One nodded. “Alright. How did you get a bow?”
John answered with a shrug. “After hunting above level 2 you can apply for a class quest in town, I’m a Ranger now. You can’t level hunting above level two without that either. I guess a lot of people will choose it, since hunting is the easiest thing so far to make some experience and money. It levels you fast and money comes pouring in quickly. We financed our leather gear that way. By the way the robe looks really nice, where did you get it from?”
One shrugged this time. “I’m a priest, the robe comes with the job. It has no battle stats. Just a skin. You don’t really get any perks with the class though. Really sucks.”
“Huh. Okay. Thanks for the meat, we usually eat some bread and cheese, you really don’t get good cooking in this game. And no one sold grilled meat like this before. I really hope someone get’s really good at it at some point and sells food. The taste is just soooo damn real.” The girl poked John in the side. “Babe, let’s get going I want to go finish at least one quest before we go sleep. It’s late already.” John rose, waved goodbye and they both left. One added them to his friend list and they both accepted just out of sight. Maybe they would come around later to help him build. It was really weird that they just “left”. Go to their lives and sleep. While he was able to play nonstop. He looked up his messages, but no new ones came in so far.
Right after that the Faith-Stat maxed out to 10/10 again. Only 28 points to go until he could unlock a new skill bar. Maybe a useful one this time around. Then One took some time to repair all of his gear, the journey had taken it’s toll. The durability had decreased more than half already. While repairing he reached 100% on his mastery and was able to use his scroll of approval, he got from Luna.
Like last time the hammer grew similar to the axe in size and the wood looked like it was new, instead of really used. Sadly the ant crawling feeling and the shining from within appeared as well.
[You have reached [Builder: Beginner II].]
[You have reached [Repair II].]
Then he entered the job mastery window and the builder section. He used up all the house plans he had and saw them appear listed right below the repair skill. The button [Plan Building] was available as well. He tapped it and then saw this amazing tool. He was able to choose what he wanted to build, exactly where in the world and he even saw how it looked like right before his eyes. With each part he added the program calculated the total materials it would need and the amount of points you would have to work for. It did not took long and he was finished planning a complete house with second story roof and big enough to fit a small clan inside. One planned big, he wanted to be prepared if someone joined him.