The way back was much easier and way less nerve-wracking.
Sam didn’t know if it was because he still had the smell of the mother wolf, the boss of the area, on him, or that the young wolf that was now his pet wasn’t even making an effort to remain stealthy.
He would jump from tree to tree, trying to step lightly and move that way back to Greenwood, while the little ball of fur, straightforwardly ran ahead, barked at everything, peed on things, or simply ran around him in circles, wagging its tail and yipping in excitement.
Apparently, everything was new to the little one, as seemingly it had never left the clearing where Sam found the wolf family.
So, in the end, with a big sigh and a pat on the excited wolf’s head, Sam simply stopped trying to be stealthy and began to jog towards the town. They were pursued by a few predators a few times, but none of them were too interested in really hunting them down after Sam threw a little giant rabbit meat in their direction.
Thankfully, the developers made sure that the mobs in the tutorial areas weren’t hyper-aggressive.
In this way, the duo managed to reach the edge of the forest, with the walls of the town in the distance, within half an hour.
Sam was breathing heavily from the exertion, but the little wolf was wagging its tail and tongue in happiness.
He just shook his head in exasperation, then stepped into the open field. Sam was about to head to the town to continue his ‘master plan’ when his new companion barked a little, then arched its back and began to growl at the tall grass.
Sam sighed and retrieved his sword.
‘A little more meat wouldn’t hurt, and the day hasn’t ended so the deal with the butcher still stands…’ he thought, then, with his attention on the grass, he called out to the wolf.
“Be careful, little guy!”
The tail wagged with understanding (or at least Sam hoped so) and the growl intensified.
But before Sam could provide any instruction, a giant rabbit, the same type he had hunted previously, burst out of the tall grass, crashed through the poor wolf who was half the size of the rabbit, and jumped straight at him, uncharacteristic rage on the face of the rabbit.
Thanks to his previous practice, he wasn’t late in swinging his sword, but it still wasn’t the pinpoint reaction that was common among the heroes of the novels he had read in his past life, but the sword still hit the charging rabbit.
Granted, only with the flat part of the blade, but it was enough to daze it, which in turn allowed the little wolf to jump to his defense and grab the leg of the rabbit in its mouth, looking funny, and for Sam to raise his sword again and cut the head of the rabbit off.
Then he spent a few minutes praising the little wolf for its efforts, no matter how useless.
Pets at this point (and level), like the little wolf, were practically useless. They had no damage, their defenses were non-existent, and didn’t have any skill that would support their owners.
And if someone really wanted a pet like his, they could approach any of the rangers in the town, and after a small quest chain, they would be rewarded by the pet of their choice.
This was mostly because the little wolf and other pets that could be gained in the tutorial town were simple, common animals or monsters. The developers themselves confirmed that there were no hidden super beasts or mythical monsters around the tutorial towns.
But after some effort, they could be leveled up and would become useful in the early game, and the early middle game.
And once again, Sam knew something that other people didn’t.
He knew how to upgrade the quality of the pet.
But one would ask, why would he upgrade a simple pet if, using his inherited memories, he could gather a menagerie of mythical pets?
The answer was twofold.
The first, and easier, part was because Sam actually wanted a wolf as a pet. He liked them back on his Earth, and always thought if he could get any pet, he would get a wolf.
The second part was that the pets learned. Thanks to how the game was developed, every pet was like a small AI that learned from the players, from how the surrounding people behaved, and from the instructions and orders it would be given.
And the more time a pet had to learn, the more intelligent and capable it would become. So, a properly trained pet was a hundred percent worth being upgraded. And a pet acquired on the first day of the game?
Priceless.
Especially with his supernatural know-how.
He was broken out of his musings by another growl. Sam looked around, trying to spot the approaching rabbit.
‘Maybe a little more hunting wouldn’t hurt…’
----------------------------------------
While the sun continued on its journey, Sam and his little companion also continued to hunt the local wildlife.
Thanks to the nose of the little wolf, and his knowledge about the bait (and, of course, the increase in his sword skill and experience) the hunting was almost twice as fast as previous.
Though the little wolf mainly ran around yipping and barking at rabbits (or temporarily resting birds) or simply enjoying the wide-open world.
The moment he heard the familiar alarm in his head, Sam lowered his sword, swishing it in a way to get the blood off, then sheathed it and called out to the young wolf.
“Hey, little guy! Let’s go and rest!” his answer was a happy yip, and the wolf ran up to his leg, tail wagging with expectations.
They walked out of the tall grass, towards the road heading out from the town, until he found a few rocks that seemed perfect for a little rest and led the excitable guy to them.
The moment Sam sat down, the little wolf jumped into his lap and bared its stomach, expecting scratches.
He couldn’t help but indulge the little beast a little.
Then, after a good minute of active scratching, he looked up from the wolf and inspected the new screens that caused the alarm to go off in his head.
[Congratulations! You’ve leveled up!]
[You’re now level 2!]
[Gained 2 unassigned attribute points!]
[Gained 1 DEX point, thanks to your perseverance!]
[Congratulations! Your pet, the Juvenile Gray Wolf, has leveled up!]
[Juvenile Gray Wolf is now Level 1!]
[Do you want to see the wolf’s status screen?]
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
[Congratulations, thanks to your persistence with the sword, your Basic Sword Mastery skill has reached Level 5!]
[You gained your first sub-skill!]
[Thanks to your effort to be as accurate as possible with your strikes you’ve gained the skill Pinpoint Accuracy!]
[Pinpoint Accuracy: Level 0/5 (0%) (Passive) Your strikes are extremely accurate. Accurate enough that sometimes they slip through the gaps of the armor of your enemies.
+1% chance for an attack to deal True Damage that ignores armor]
Once again, Sam smiled widely as he read the screens that kept popping up. Once more, the game showed its difficulty by not explaining what a sub-skill was. Granted, a player could approach any of the NPCs and after a little conversation, they would learn what they were.
Thankfully, Sam didn’t need that.
Sub-skills, as the name implied, were the sub-skills of the main skills.
In Magic Unbound, a player could learn any number of skills, only a few restricted to certain races or situations. But that would mean they wouldn’t have enough time to level them up properly. And if one took care to level up a skill, just like he did, they would get a sub-skill every five, ten, twenty, twenty-five, or even more, depending on the rarity of the skill and how they used it. So the players had to strike a balance between having enough skills to be able to advance, but not so much that they couldn’t keep up with leveling them properly.
The maximum level of the sub-skill was always below the main skill, and would always support the main skill in some way. While there were thousands of skills, the number of sub-skills was actually infinite, as they were generated every time a player reached the required level with a skill. And the generated sub-skill was always something based on what the player was doing with that skill.
For example, if a player with an ax for a weapon, and an ax skill would only use the ax to chop trees, then his first sub-skill would definitely have something to do with cutting trees or maybe destroying inanimate objects.
By the time the other Sam died, there were precious few skills that had a clear guide to how to get the ‘perfect’ combination of sub-skills. But at least people worked out a lot of sub-skills and the actions to get them.
Pinpoint Accuracy was one of the favorites as a 5% chance for True Damage in the late game was invaluable. And one only had to aim and try to be as accurate as possible with their weapons to gain this skill.
And that is why he wanted the Mana Shield spell instead of the more modern Mana Armor. The Mana Shield skill had no maximum level. So, every few levels, Sam would be able to get a sub-skill for Mana Shield, while Mana Armor had a max level of 50, and to upgrade Mana Armor, one would have to do an excruciatingly hard quest. More effort, but the final result was worth it.
Satisfied with his own gains, Sam opened the wolf’s status screen.
[Name: ---
Race: Juvenile Gray Wolf
HP: 120/120
MP: -/-
Level: 1
STR: 3
DEX: 3
AGI: 6
VIT: 3
END: 2
MAG: -
PER: 6
WIS: 2
LUK: 7]
“Hmm, I really need to give you a name, little guy…” Sam mused out loud as he kept scratching the belly of the young wolf. The wolf just yipped at him in a low voice, basically comatose from joy.
Sam smirked at that but still didn’t stop the pampering. He always wanted to do this, but his allergy and the fact that wolves in the real world actually ate humans, stopped him.
“How about… Lucky? I’m pretty lucky to get you…” he said, watching the wolf for a reaction. The wolf stopped its tongue wagging for a moment, looked directly into his eyes, and barked softly.
“All right! From now on, you are Lucky!”
He was rewarded by the wolf, Lucky, jumping up and starting to slobber all over his face. Sam laughed heartily, for a moment all his worries forgotten, then a small alarm broke him out of his celebration.
[You named your pet, Juvenile Gray Wolf, Lucky!]
[He really likes it!]
[You’ve gained +1 LUK!]
‘Well, that’s something…’
Then he took his two unassigned points and added one to Agility and Vitality, watching as his health points increased to 120, the same as Lucky. Pets, in general, had more health than any player, but they had access to fewer skills than the players in exchange.
“All right, Lucky! Get off me, I need to do something,” he told the little wolf, who answered it with a sad whine, but after one last scratch it slowly clambered down from his lap, and simply sat down in front of him looking back at him with big, soulful eyes. Sam just shook his head and closed his eyes to prevent seeing the wolf and giving up and just going back to play with it. “Don’t give me that look…”
His last task before he had to head back to the town to get the hunted rabbit carcasses cleaned was to acquire one more skill. One that was rather cliché, no matter what novel one read or show one watched.
Meditation.
Which, thanks to his practice in the real world, and his inherited memories, came rather easily to him. Maybe staring at the wall with empty thoughts in his past life as he tried to puzzle out some tasks for his job came in handy?
For a few minutes he just relaxed, enjoying the sensation of meditation, then Sam reached out to his mana, starting to move it in the pattern he grasped earlier. The mana that he was holding in his imaginary fist still slipped out of it like sand on the beach, but he felt he managed to get hold of more mana than previously.
Then, after an unknown amount of time, sweating, he managed to complete the pattern once again.
Sam was rudely broken out of his meditation by an alarm chime going off in his head. Annoyed, he opened his eyes and saw that the wolf was lying on its belly, slowly wagging its tail and looking at him. And in front of him was a simple screen.
[Congratulations! You’ve learned the skill Meditation!]
[Meditation: Level 0/25 (0%) (Passive) You are skilled at meditation enough that when meditating, it allows you to increase your mana regeneration. Usage of the skill causes you to lose all of your senses. Improving the skill will allow you to gain back those senses. +1 Mana Regeneration per Second]
He closed the screen a little upset that the game broke him out of his meditation, but then, Lucky seeing he was once again paying attention, jumped up and into his empty lap.
His annoyance forgotten, Sam spent another minute playing with Lucky, then reluctantly moved the little wolf from his lap to the ground, and slowly stood up, shaking the pins and needles out from his legs.
“Come on, Lucky, let’s get back to town!”
The wolf barked in happiness and began running in the wrong direction excitedly.
Sam shook his head and simply began walking towards Greenwood, knowing that Lucky would soon realize he wasn’t following and catch up to him.
----------------------------------------
By the time they reached the gates the sun was almost finished with its journey, painting the entire world with oranges, reds, and deep purple.
Sam greeted the guard, who was once again napping, waking him up, earning a soft cussing behind his back, but he just smiled and headed for the butcher.
The butcher was annoyed at him, but he kept to the deal and accepted the giant rabbit carcasses Sam and Lucky hunted. Though he told Sam that he would be only able to pick up the meat the next morning.
Then Sam quickly visited the mayor's office before they closed and acquired an ID for himself for the low fee of 20 bronze. They even added Lucky’s information to it.
He placed the ID card, which was a thin plastic card that was made from some magically created material, into his inventory. The current ID was not the highest quality, but after the players would arrive in force, things would change, and the governments all over the world of Magic Unbound would have to upgrade their ID cards to prevent forgery and cheating. Those cards were much more magical…
As he walked around the town, he saw the townspeople prepare for the night. Guards heading to the walls to relieve those there, workers heading home, or gravitating to taverns where he could already hear the snippets of music and laughter.
Sam simply headed for one of the inns.
Currently, he had no ability to go out of the town for the night and had no crafting skill or the ability to craft, so the only thing he could do was log out, get some quest that could be done at night, or what he was actually planning on doing, practice his skills.
Stepping into the inn called Green Stump, he greeted the innkeeper.
“Good evening! Do you have a room for the night?”
The innkeeper, a homely woman, with dimples and crowfeet, dirty blond hair going silver, smiled at him in response.
“Of course, honey! How long do you want it?”
Sam thought for a moment, then answered.
“How about for two nights?”
“Excellent!” replied the older woman, then reached out with her hand. “That would be 2 silvers!”
Sam nodded and handed over the amount. He could have gone to a cheaper inn, but here his privacy was guaranteed. As well as the safety of his coin purse.
The money vanished in a blink, and it was replaced by a set of keys in the innkeeper’s hand.
“Here you go, honey. Room 212 on the second floor is yours,” she said while handing over the keys.
“Thank you.” Sam was about to head for his room when he caught himself. He turned back to the still smiling woman and spoke up. “By the way, my name is Sam…” then he motioned towards Lucky. “And this is Lucky.”
The older woman’s smile grew even bigger.
“Well met, young Sam and Lucky,” the pup responded with a happy bark. “My name is Sarah. I hope you’ll have a good time in the Green Stump!”
Then she smirked at him.
“If you’re lucky, I’ll even tell you how it got its name!”
Sam nodded in thanks and said his goodbye, not telling her he actually knew the story. Though he wished he didn’t…
He quickly occupied his room, set out food and water for Lucky, took a comfortable seat on the bed, watched for a while as Lucky sniffed around, curiously observing the new environment, then settled back into a meditative state and prepared to practice during the night…