I’d half expected the Giant Slime to be the final push I needed to reach Level 15, but clearly it would take a little more work. Thankfully the job hall had no shortage of that, and the next morning I was back in the Job Hall perusing the second board.
I considered moving onto the third one after how easily I handled the Giant Slime, but ultimately decided that that was probably just an exceptionally good matchup for me and reigned in my ego a little.
I’m probably nothing special, so it’s best to stick to what’s safe.
Choosing the right job was tricky, should I pick purely based on the pay, or based on how good it would be as practice? If only money was a factor, then this would be simple. Most of the jobs here paid around a few days' wage for an average person, but there were some notable outliers that were much more profitable.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t based on how challenging they were. Anything difficult enough to pay that much would go on one of the more advanced boards. No, these jobs were simply so unpleasant that the price had to be increased several times before someone took them.
One of the better paying ones was actually the one to clean out a cistern that I’d seen yesterday, only now its price had increased to 75 copper.
They must be pretty desperate, huh?
Well, none of that was particularly relevant to me. I was mainly concerned with getting to level 15, so I’d probably have to choose based on that more than anything else. This actually made the process a whole lot simpler, and I was able to narrow it down to one just a few options.
Destroy a rampant Golem- 40 copper
Hunt a Dire Wolf- 35 copper
Hunt a Water Elemental- 40 copper
Remove Iron Turtle from the river- 20 copper
These were the most interesting ones to me, and they could all be the last push toward reaching the next level. I imagined that either the Water Elemental or the Iron Turtle would be the easiest to deal with, whilst the Golem would probably be the hardest. Apparently they were made of stone or clay or something, so Lightning might not be as effective against them.
I spent a few minutes looking between each of the options, weighing the pros and cons in my head, before I reached a startling conclusion.
Why can’t I just do all of them?
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Around half a day later, I’d reached the small village that had collectively put out the request to deal with the Golem. It was small, certainly smaller than Mantlemount, and strangely quiet. Back home there would almost always be someone out and about doing something or another, but here it seemed like most people stayed inside for some reason.
Eventually, after looking around for a few minutes, an elderly man rushed over to me with a strange mix of concern and anger on his face.
“Oi, boy, what do ye think yer doing outside? That darn Golem could get here any minute, and when it does ye won’t be around to try and break the rules again, so ye’d best get hidden!” Huh? What rules?
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding, I’ve not-” He interrupted me with a strange squawking sound, and then continued to berate me as though I hadn’t said anything at all.
“Come on, let's get you inside, then you can mumble yer excuses. Come on, with me!” He made to pull me along, but froze at the sound of ceramic crashing into stone. I paused as well, confused as to what could make such a noise, before I heard it again, and again, until eventually I realised that it almost sounded like footsteps.
“Is that the-”
“Yes, that’s the Gods damned Golem. You run away, I’ll make sure doesn’t follow ya.”
I don’t know who this guy thinks I am, but it’s good that I’ve found it already. I’ll probably be able to make it back before nightfall if I rush.
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“Just stand there, this should be over quickly,” As I spoke, I began to charge a Lightning Bolt, as slowly as I could. It’s not like I was in a rush, after all.
“What are ye-” He cut himself off as he turned around, seeing the ball of Lightning that was steadily growing in my hands, “Oh, yer the adventurer then.”
I nodded and walked towards where I could hear the sounds of ceramic footsteps getting closer and closer. Soon, I turned a corner to see the Golem that had caused this village so much trouble.
The Golem was a small thing, around half my height, if you’re being generous, and it walked with an unusual gait, as though its legs and arms couldn’t bend properly. A closer inspection revealed that to be true, its limbs had joints at the hips and shoulders but nowhere else.
It looked to be made out of ceramic, the same kind that I’d seen used for a lot of plates, although it was coloured a light brown, like dirt, and also seemed to be the reason it moved so strangely. Instead of a face of any kind, it had a single red eye in the centre of its head that seemed to glow and dim as it looked around at the houses around it.
Despite the apparent fear it caused in the eyes of the villagers, I couldn’t quite figure out what about it was so dangerous. Sure, it was probably durable, but it was so slow that even a child would be able to walk faster than it, never mind run.
Honestly, I was disappointed. I was almost looking forward to a difficult fight where I’d have to put my all in to survive, and all I got was this thing. Uncaring of my internal monologue, the Golem continued to walk towards me, looking to the left and right the whole way.
After far too much time spent glaring at a rock, this Golem swivelled its head to look directly at me, apparently only just realising that I was there, before it stopped moving and its eye started to glow.
That was the moment that I realised that I may have underestimated it a little.
Without thinking, I took a breath and fired my Charged Bolt, using Channel Mana to continue Charging it even as it left my hands and flew towards my enemy. Just a moment later, the golem fired a beam of red energy that was intercepted by my Lightning and was stopped in its tracks.
I assumed that if my Lightning Bolt was still technically a Bolt that may have been the end of my attack, but unfortunately for the Golem that was not the case. Instead, the blast was spread out into a cone, like water spraying against a rock, and delivered a much more spread out blast of Lightning.
Because of that, the Golem was not quite destroyed, but I could tell that it was close. One of its legs had shattered, and there were hairline fractures across the rest of its body. Of course, the loss of a leg took its balance with it, and the Golem fell to its side, losing another arm as well.
That probably wouldn’t stop it from shooting any more lasers, but that was something that could be easily solved with a simple use of Unstructured magic. I sent a rope of Lightning at it like a whip, breaking off a few shards of its body whilst I achieved my main goal of getting a good grip on its head. From there, defeating it was a simple task of slamming it several times into a nearby stone.
Combat Cleared 1 Primitive Golem [Level 4] Destroyed
Only Level 4? That’s actually really surprising, that laser was pretty powerful.
After that, the rest of the day was the same boring stuff that I was used to at this point. The man from before thanked me and handed me the payment. I actually asked why it was so small if the Golem was causing so much trouble, and found out that apparently this village barely even used money at all. It was only really used for trading with travelling merchants and, like they’d done for the Golem, paying adventurers to take care of problems they couldn’t handle alone. Because of that, they didn’t tend to, and 40 copper was quite a lot for them.
I walked back to the Inn in Ironhold, unfortunately not getting a level in Walking, and meditated for a while before going to sleep. In the morning, I decided not to bother going to the Job Hall and simply went to the next job, the Dire Wolf.
Dealing with it went much the same as the Golem, and over the next few days I repeated the process for the rest of the jobs. Unfortunately, not a single one of the monsters I fought were even close to level 10, so I didn’t manage to get to level 15.
However, on the walk back to Ironhold from the final Job I received an unexpected yet very welcome notification.
Proficiency Gained You Have Reached Max Level In The Skill [Walking]
Choose A Skill Level To Sacrifice For Evolution Lightning Generator Lightning Cloak
I wasn’t sure what options I expected to get, but these probably make the most sense. But which would be better?
In all honesty, I couldn’t even begin to guess at what these could do to Walking. I could only assume that they’d make it less versatile, but also more powerful, and Lightning would definitely be involved, but who knows what the exact effects would be.
After pondering the issue for a while longer, I came up blank. As far as I was concerned either option could be as good as the other, so it didn’t really matter which one I picked and I may as well pick randomly.
Wait, that’s it!
I put my pack on the ground and rummaged through it until I found the payment for the job I’d just done, and took out a single copper coin. I didn’t actually realise this at first, but they actually had different pictures on either side, how interesting is that? And also potentially useful.
One side held a simple image of the queen’s, or it was supposed to be, it was hard to make out any details, and the other was a blank shield. I’d seen a few people do this before, but without any 50/50 decisions to make I’d never had an opportunity to try it myself.
To put it simply, I’d assign each option to a side, and flip it. Whichever landed up would be the one I chose. This was almost more exciting to me than the monsters I’d been hunting, so I was looking forward to the result.
I flipped the coin into the air and, after spinning a few times, it landed on my waiting palm. After waiting a moment to build up tension, I looked at the coin, only to realise that I hadn’t assigned the choices to a side.
Dang it. Alright, Generator is heads, Cloak is shields. Let’s go.
Flipping it again, this time with far less excitement, I checked the coin to see that shields had won out and landed upright.
Alright, Lightning Cloak it is.
Evolving [Walking] With [Lightning Cloak] You Have Created The General Skill [Lightning Steps]
Now to test it.