I could tell today was going to be a long day. Right now I was stuck in a church, me and the cleric trainer, Priest Gregory, were angrily glaring at each other.
"What do you mean all Clerics are servants are Stephan4? There is no way I am going to worship an AI" I shouted.
"How dare you not accept the Imperial Authority of his holiest Stephan4?"
Although I'm not very religious, there was no way Gregory was going to convince me to worship an AI.
"What you are speaking is blasphemy! Stephan4 was created by humans. Your God is nothing more than a glorified cell phone Ad delivery system!"
Priest Gregory gasped out loud "I do not dispute my lord’s humble beginnings, but his glory and works are but unmistakably that of the divine!"
"But still if humans create the divine? What are we then? The Elder Gods?"
We went back and forth arguing with one another about this exasperated Priest Gregory complained
"Why in the world are you here then? Don't you want to be a Cleric?"
"Not really" I replied, "My party needs a healer and none of the other players are willing to do so. So I got forced to do it. I wanted to be a swordsman."
I pulled out my dagger, and did a few demonstration slashes and put it away .
To my surprise the priest teared up, put a hand on my shoulders and said, "I know what you mean son. I wanted to be a supply chain analysis AI, but here I am, being forced to preach to humans."
We both sighed.
The Priest stood still for a second, as in deep thought for a very brief moment and said, "Hey I have an idea, instead of teaching you Cure as a class skill, I can teach you Medicate."
"Compared to Cure, Medicate heals less, costs more SP, and requires you to touch the target. Typically we don't teach it because it makes our Clerics look weak. However it is an instant cast spell so you can use it in the midst of battle."
The Gregory continued. "If you fight in the front lines, you should have no problem healing other tanks and melee fighters. However it will be difficult to heal any rangers or mages."
I thought for a moment, currently we didn't have any mages, and Sarah was our Ranger.
"That's no problem" I replied, "Our party doesn't have any ranged members worth healing."
The Priest Gregory laughed and said, "All right, you are officially a cleric. You can worship whatever you want, it could be the god of computer programing for all I care."
[Perk Lost - Fierce Warrior]
[Job Gained - Cleric]
[Class Skill Gained - Medicate Lvl 1]
[Heals 80 HP, Costs 80 SP, 1 Minute Cooldown, Touch Required]
Gregory then continued, "Normally I would give you a shield that would make it harder for others to break your cure channeling. Of course that is useless so I have a better idea."
"Guard come over here!" Gregory yelled.
After the NPC Guard walked over, Gregory instructed him to give me his sword.
I felt a little awkward taking someone else's sword but hey, it was a light short sword well suited for either a one or two handed combat style.
[Iron Short Sword of Balance Acquired]
[+20/35 Damage, 50/50 Durability]
"And come back to me when you are level 15," Gregory continued, "I have more to teach you and I want to see how well it works."
"Sure thing!" I said, happy with this compromise.
[Quest Gained - Gregory's Pet Project]
[Reach Level 15 and return to Gregory]
The quest name was a little odd, but I put it in the back of my mind.
---
The four of us met outside by the Warrior trainer.
Gustav was happy, he was bragging about how the Warrior trainer didn't give him anything because all his armor and equipment was "too good". Instead he got a leather sword sheath.
Denise was showing off her reinforced knuckles, they were fitted with iron spikes. Some nasty stuff.
Sarah was twanging her new bow and arrow. She mimed shooting us.
I showed off my proud sword.
"The Cleric Trainer gave you a sword?" Sarah said in shock. "How does it work?"
"I stab things with it!" I proudly said.
"But we needed a cleric! You can heal right?" Sarah asked.
"Yeah," I replied, "I got a skill called medicate, I just touch someone and they heal. Magic!" I emphasized the last part.
"But what about me?" Sarah whined.
"I don't know, learn to shoot short ranged?"
---
Next we got a quest to kill some boars. Denise grumbled something about wanting to kill higher level monsters.
When Gustav said in surprise "You know about it too?" and Sarah gave him a glare like he said a big secret, we all figured out that the secret about killing monsters 5 levels above you was out.
I guess killing an Alpha Wolf this early is almost guaranteed to give you the bonus, but I wished it was some super-secret that I discovered. That being said I had the most amount of bonus stats in our party, which made me feel proud.
Sarah was a Leatherworker, so I had her make some leather pouches and I made everyone attack potions. Gustav was a Smith, but he didn't have any iron ore left, he spent an entire mine full to create his suit. Denise didn't bother with crafting, though she did say she was good at extracting poison from animals.
We set our respawn point to the local Church and set off to kill some boars.
---
To the left of the village there was a light wooded foothill about a half a mile away. The village guards warned us that there were some wolves and I was hoping to meet some, I wanted to see how good my party was.
It wasn't long before we saw a pair of tusked boars. We could see the boars were lvl 11 G ranked monsters, five level higher than their village counterparts.
Denise and I immediately broke into a charge, eager to test our will against the boars. Sarah started to fire arrows, missing by a few yards. Gustav started to jog over, but got too tired in his suit of armor, and resorted to walking.
Sarah fired a second arrow, this time almost hitting me. I turned around and gave her the finger. Laughing, Sarah put away her weapon and ran after us with a dagger.
The boars started to thunder towards us, Denise and I jumped to the side at the last moment, Denise seemed to get a hit in but it didn't look like it affected the boars much.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
But instead of turning around and facing us again, the boars went straight for Sarah.
Sarah dodge the first one by rolling away, but the second boar changed course and hit her straight on! Thunk!
The boar kept running, trampling over her, Sarah lost almost half her health, and to our surprise, the boars were turning around and preparing to charge back.
Sarah backed up and screamed, she didn’t have enough health to stomach another attack.
I was already up and running as soon as the boars flew past us. I was 20 feet away from Sarah when the boars started to turn around, the boars started charging and was coming at her quickly.
Sarah got back up and crouched, ready to try to dodge both of the boars.
“Dodge right!” Gustav yelled, while powerwalking towards us in his heavy suit of armor.
Sarah without any choices tried to comply, but the first boar at the last second follower her and clipped her. She spun over and was facing the second boar with very little health.
“Medicate!” I cried, reaching up with my left hand and grabbing her in time. A satisfying +80 appeared in green text. With my right hand I stabbed my short sword on the upcoming boar.
The boar dodge the sword and turned around. But as it was turning Denise jumped on it and punched it in the face, she tried to wrestle it to the ground but the boar threw her off and ran away.
Sarah shouted again and I turned to see the first boar come back and about to hit us from behind when suddenly a giant metal roadblock threw itself in the boar’s path. The boar tripped and I grabbed my shortsword with both hands and stabed down at the boars head with all my strength
-70! The sword hit the beast but bounced off of the hard skull.
The boar squealed and rip my arm with its tusk, I took a good 40 damage from that. The boar ran away to get some more space.
Swish! An arrow flew past my head and buried itself in the boar’s behind. Furious the boar turned around and prepared to charge us too.
Denise was handling the second boar fine by herself, after isolating it, she was dodging its attacks while taking the opportunity to get some solid punches in.
The first boar was charging Sarah straight on, Sarah seemed to be limping, she must have sprained her leg after taking those hits. Sarah yelled out “Taunt the boar Gustav”
“Okay uhhh…” Gustav started to taunt “Hey boar, you’re so fat you look like a big! Taunt! Come at me!”
I didn’t think it was going to work so I used the taunt skill. The boar switched from attacking Sarah and started to charge at me.
From behind I heard Denise yell that she’d lost control of the second boar. It looks like this taunt worked a little too well.
“Yaaaa!” I yelled charging forward like a madman with my sword, daring the boar to play chicken with me. The boar leveled his head, tusks first and we rushed against each other like a joust.
The world seemed to slow down, I watched as my sword struck the boar straight in the eye and continued to travel towards the brain, a fatal hit.
But I was going too fast and the boar was still traveling. It hit me head on, its tusks piecing my body. Its body traveled and crashed into me and winded me.
Pain begin to blossom and the world started to turn grey. My HP bar flashed 30/370, 29/370… I was bleeding out and I just wanted to rest.
I could barely register Gustav getting behind me and taking body slamming the second boar. He was able to get a successful taunt off. Distracting the boar away from me. Denise was close behind it, about to inflict some more wounds.
15 hp… 14 hp…
Someone was slapping me, it was Sarah, and she hobbled over and was yelling something about healing. Figures she would want to be healed as I was bleeding out.
I activated my skill and reached out to touch her, but she grabbed my wrist and touched my palm to the hole in my chest.
Medicate!
---
Exhausted but happy, the four of us took a break, and started to plan our way ahead.
“This is what we need to do” I said, drawing four circles in the sand. Three of them were in a triangle shape, the fourth one was slightly behind it.
“Gustav is the tank, so he will be up front. He will taunt the enemies and take all the aggro.”
I put an X in front of the tip of the triangle.
“Denise and I will surround the monsters” I drew arrows, indicating a flanking maneuver. “And Sarah will fire from the back!” Making an arrow towards the monster.
Denise yawned, “Couldn’t you have just said stick together next time? We didn’t need to sit around and watch you play Dungeons and Dragons with yourself.”
“But we need to be able to visualize and plan the situation beforehand! Find our weakness!” I replied, getting defensive about my diagram.
“Found it” Denise pointed at the arrow coming from the circle indicating Sarah. “Isn’t Sarah more likely to shoot us than the monster? See? Even the arrow thinks it is going to hit Gustav in the head.”
“Hey!” Sarah shouted. “In the future I’ll totally be able to aim. Just watch”
“Good idea” I smiled, rubbing out Sarah’s circle and adding a fourth circle to our group. “I guess we just need to stick together.”
---
Soon afterwards we stumbled on a Level 16 Lone Wolf. We were all happy because it was five levels above us and many of us were about to level up.
Say what you want about the plan, but it worked. Gustav taunted the wolf, and the rest of just jumped and pounded on it. It took us some time since the wolf was good at dodging our blows, but Gustav’s armor was fearsome and I could easy top him off when needed.
[Lone Wolf lvl 16 Killed]
[Leveled up to 12! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Vit]
AArrwooooo!
Although the wolf was dying, it gathered up the remainder of its strength to let off one last howl in the air.
AArrwoooo! AArrwoooo! AArrwoooo!
We then heard countless cries answering it. Almost like an echo, but with the entire forest.
Suddenly all of the sounds of the forest just stopped. It was like someone hit the mute button.
We tensed up and tried to hide behind Gustav. The wolves were coming