{Critcal hit! 0.4 dmg dealt}
{Blue Melee Minion killed}
{0.1 Xp gained}
{0.1 Gold gained}
{level up!}
As the blue minion fell to the floor, I felt the information flood my head. This time, something new was there.
A level up.
It took fourteen matches to make it, but I was level one.
At this rate, I would become a Cannon Minion in around four hundred matches, which felt slow but seemed pretty close in the long run, especially with a match a day.
Now, however, wasn't the time to focus on that.
Currently, I was in combat.
After trying to stay as a Melee Minion for the next two matches, I didn't get a single kill in either. Next, I tried Bow Minion out for a match. The bow worked strangely, with the damage equaling the arrow's speed, and it was hard to aim. Lastly, I went to Mage Minion, which I have had the most success with.
It was easy to use; all you had to do was point your magic wand and, while focused, say 'cast' in your head.
The nice thing was that even if you missed the spell, it can auto-correct into the enemy. In four matches, I have gotten more than two dozen kills.
Currently, we are pushing the enemy backline tower in a solo lane.
This time, our Hero was a giant wolf-man with dark black fur and red eyes called Fenrir. Over his head was the username 'Oddsquad.' He used his powerful claws to mow down the enemy hero, who coincidentally was Beowulf. Who had the username 'FreyaBiggestfan5' this time.
Fenrir had just killed Beowulf again, and our remaining five minions, including me, finished off the opposing minions, which gave us time to siege the tower.
I shot magic at the minions at the top of the tower, but none of them were killed—the biggest problem with my lack of ATK SPD.
At my current rate, I could only fire magic once every two seconds, and with my magic damage only dealing 0.2 without a crit, it takes me a long time to kill a minion from full health, so I try to save it for low health minions and whenever my allies are in danger.
The cannon minion fired back, hitting our two remaining front-line minions and turning them into smithereens.
It was just me, a Mage Minion and a Bow Minion left.
The Cannon minion got prepared to fire another shot, but Fenrir shut it down, slamming his fist into the tower; we took that opportunity to rush the tower.
When we touched the tower, we were instantly teleported to the top. While the minions were attacking Fenrir, we struck from behind and finished them quickly. Soon after, reinforcements arrived, and the captain with reinforcements instructed us to cover the tower while they pushed forward with Fenrir.
Not much happened after, with the match ending while we guarded the tower as the others pushed forward and destroyed the resurrection crystal.
Ignoring the reward screen, which seemed unchanged, I moved to leave the Post-match lobby.
After I was teleported back to the post-game lobby, usually, I would watch the replay to see if I could improve next time or even to look at the scoreboard, but, right now, all I could focus on was the level-up.
I hurried to Paul's house.
When I arrived no one else was home.
I couldn't wait until I could afford a place on my own. As much as I enjoyed the free housing and help they give, I can't help but feel like I'm cutting in on their family time. I had offered to move out and rent a house for two gold as they did, but they insisted on me staying and saving up on money for the time being. It wasn't all that bad as they seemed to enjoy me around, and although I hadn't interacted much with Richie, he seemed like a good kid.
However, there was a better time for thinking as I was much more interested in this level-up.
'Stats'
--------------------------------
{Race: Minion}
{Level: 1}
{Xp: 0.8/20}
{HP: 1.01/1.01}
{STR: 0.31}
{DEX: 0.251}
{ATK SPD: 0.51}
{DEFENSE: 0.01}
{AGILITY: 0.11}
{MAGIC: 0.21}
{Gold: 10.8}
{Reputation: 15}
-----------------------------
That's it?
My stats had barely changed; they were insignificant at best and utterly useless at worst.
I also noticed that the XP needed for the next level had gone up. It had doubled, which unfortunately meant it would take longer than I thought to reach level thirty to become a cannon minion.
Much longer.
I couldn't let that get me down. There had to be some other way to increase my level faster. I just had to figure out how. On the bright side, the reputation requirements seemed easy enough to get.
The door opened while I was checking my stats, and Charlotte walked in.
Other than her minion colour, I was starting to be able to differentiate between minions; I'm not sure how, but Charlotte seemed prettier than the other minions. Paul looked rough, and Richie was still a runt, so he was smaller than the other minions. He was also green.
"Fast match today, was it?" Charlotte asked.
"Yeah, we won pretty hard, yours?" I responded.
"We lost terribly. More importantly, however, you seem happy. Something good happened today?" She asked.
"Oh, I levelled up for the first time," I replied.
"Congratulations! How does it feel?" She asked.
"Not very different, just curious, but what level are you, Paul, and Richie?" I asked.
"Well, I'm level twenty-eight. Richie has never been in a match, so level zero, and Paul is, well... also level zero. Don't tell him I told you he's very private about it." She spoke.
Level zero? Even if Paul never killed another minion, he would still get Xp post-match. It seemed like a touchy subject, so I moved on to something else.
"How come Richie has never been in a match?" I asked.
"Children can't work in a match until they are eighteen, so he goes to Minion School instead." She responded.
Questions popped up in my mind, and I couldn't help but ask, despite my better judgment,
"Sorry if this is a bit inappropriate, but how exactly was Richie born? Can minions really-"
"Not answering that one." She interrupted.
"Sorry." I sheepishly spoke.
"It's alright, you're curious, I get it." She replied.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
An awkward silence fell on the room as we stood there in silence. I prayed for anyone to walk through the door and stop the suffering, but no one did. Eventually, I couldn't take the silence anymore and blurted out the first question I could think of.
"How come you guys have a bathroom?" I asked.
In the fifteen days I had been here, not once had I had the urge to eat, drink, use the washroom, or even breathe, now that I think about it.
"Oh, it's less of a bathroom and more just an alone time room. Sometimes, I use it when i'm trying to read something on Minion Media when Paul and Richie are being loud." She responded.
I had forgotten about Minion Media; Paul told me there was an app called Minion Mania where you can look up forums about topics and other things. I should find something to help me out with levelling up faster on there later.
We talked for a while longer until Paul came home with Richie.
Later that night, once everyone else was asleep, I decided to research better ways to gain experience using Minion Media.
'Minion Media'
----------------------------------
{Welcome NotAMinion!}
{CHOOSE AN OPTION}
{Minion Messenger}
{Minion Mania}
{Minion Market}
{Minion Meeters}
{Other}
---------------------------------
From what Paul had told me, Minion Messenger lets you communicate with any Minion with whom you have exchanged contact information. All you had to do was look at them with Minion Messenger open and say 'link' in your head. So far, I had Paul and Charlotte's information, and that was it.
Minion Market lets you purchase things that appear right before you, which is quite convenient. You could also buy houses, but I had not looked too much at it.
Minion Meeters......... didn't matter right now.
What did was Minion Mania. There was an enormous amount of stuff that this thing could do. Any Minion could upload information or anything else that they wanted to. There was even stuff from the real world that we could access. Recently, Charlotte recommended a web novel called Minion Falls, Minions Die, which she had been reading. That wasn't my current purpose, as I wanted to see what I could find on levelling up faster.
Searching for information was quite intuitive as you could find anything you wanted just by thinking 'search' and then whatever you had wanted to search for. After a few minutes of looking, it looked a little rough. From what I could find, the only way for minions to gain XP was by killing enemy minions or finishing a match. Heros, on the other hand, had a lot more ways. Killing enemy Heros, sieging towers, hunting monsters and boss monsters, and winning a match also gave them additional XP.
I also heard that there was an item they could buy called Rod of Centuries that would give them additional experience.
I checked to see if I could buy a Rod of Centuries, but it was only available for Heros in a match and cost over three thousand gold.
Another idea I had was to kill monsters that spawn in the forest that the hunters killed, as their defence stat is zero, which means I could damage them. Unfortunately, they have thousands of health and deal enough damage to one-shot me a hundred times over while being able to regenerate more damage than I could deal. Minions couldn't gain XP from sieging towers, and killing an enemy champion seemed unlikely, especially as they had a high defence, which I could not penetrate.
As I was looking for other alternatives, I came across an article titled
'Bow minion has the highest damage potential out of every minion, including promoted minions. Let me show you.'
Curious, I clicked on it. The entire thing took around ten or so minutes to read, but the moment I finished, I read it repeatedly.
"This is insane." I couldn't help but mutter to myself.
The article explained that the bow had two significant disadvantages.
One, the bow had to be manually loaded and shot, unlike the sword, which you didn't need to aim with, or the Mage wand, which adjusted your shot for you.
The second was that the bow's damage was based on the arrow's speed.
It also said that those two weaknesses were the bows' greatest strength.
The problem with the bow needing to be manually shot is that as a minion, you can't practice your aim as your marksmanship is directly tied to the DEX stat.
The workaround for this was something called stat training. Increasing your stats by repeating an action a thousand times is possible. For example, getting hit a thousand times increases HP, spinning (strangely) a thousand times increases your agility, Blocking increases your defence, strength by swinging your sword, magic by casting spells, and dexterity by shooting your arrows.
The only non-increasable stat this way was attack speed. This isn't widely used because training this way repetitively for such a minor stat increase would drive a person insane. Especially when you do this naturally in a match; despite this, that wasn't how manually loading a shot was a benefit; this was just how you were going to abuse it.
Unlike with a sword or magic wand with a bow, you can load multiple arrows up.
Hypothetically, if all your arrows hit, you would deal more damage than just shooting one, but it would be near impossible to hit anyone with more than one or two arrows loaded on your bow.
However, if you shoot multiple arrows simultaneously, whether they hit anything or not, it counts toward stat training.
You can level up your dex quickly with access to an infinite number of arrows in a match.
This leads to the second strength, the bow's damage, being based on speed. Your DEX stat is the base damage for an arrow, and your STR is used to determine how fast the arrow will travel. The faster you shoot the arrow, the more damage you deal, but it might not even hit the target if it isn't moving fast enough.
The article had a cheat around this, called Minion Tipping, which I would try out in my next match.
I wanted to know who could have written this article; it was by a username called SniperOfBeauty.
Curious to see if I could find anything else about them, I looked up their username, and to my surprise, SniperOfBeauty wasn't a minion.
It was written by a Hero called Apollo.
Or rather, ex-hero. From what I could read, Apollo was the seventy-seventh Hero in Heros of Eternity; however, around a half-century ago, they completely disappeared from the roster, with no explanation ever since.
I tried to find more information about them, but nothing seemed helpful; it was mostly rumour and speculation.
It didn't matter as I found some interesting information I had to try in tomorrow's match. I switched to Bow Minion, closed Minion Media, and thought-
'sleep'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{Minions have spawned} A familiar voice spoke.
As usual, I was already in a match when I woke up.
Usually, I wasn't that excited about matches. Getting experience and gold was nice, but the many, many deaths that came with it weren't.
Today was different. I couldn't have been happier to be in a match. I followed in the back with the other minions until we left our base and walked onto the path in the forest. At which point, I snuck away from the group and waited until the coast was clear.
Thankfully, they didn't notice. Now was the scary part.
The Fog of War.
I was going to walk into it. I knew that my reputation would drop once every minute or so, but if this Minion Tipping thing worked, It would be worth every bit of reputation lost.
After steeling my resolve, I walked into the forest and the Fog of War.
{Reputation -1}
I ignored the message and continued forth.
The Fog of War was much more of a problem than I thought; I could only see a bit in front of me. If I lost my way, I could quickly become trapped in her, at least until the end of the match. That wasn't my concern at the moment. All I needed to find was a tree.
I had picked one out that I would walk to before entering the fog, and I quickly found it.
I hadn't given much thought to the trees before, but up close, they were gigantic. They were all a dark brown and were easily twice the height and twice the width of any Hero.
Brushing off that thought, I aimed my bow at the ground and fired two arrows lightly, ensuring they just fell onto the ground and were not punctured inside, at least not yet.
Then, I fired an arrow at the tree right in front of me with as much strength as possible.
Thankfully, it pierced right into the tree, with the end sticking out towards me.
Here comes the moment of truth. I pushed hard against the arrow in the tree.
I pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed until eventually...
I fell over.
{Reputation -1}
My previous worst fear of this happening accidentally, but I did it intentionally.
I prayed that this would work and that I wouldn't be trapped on the floor forever. Using the two arrows on the floor as a set of skis, I pushed myself until the bottom of me touched the tree.
I then started walking on the tree.
From what I read in the article, the way that Minions move is by suctioning their lower half to the floor. This is how we Minions always stand upright and circumvent the need for knees. So the article explained that by knocking yourself over and having a way of moving on the floor, you could climb any surface as long as it was flat. Which the trees so happen to be. So I walked and walked up the tree...
{Reputation -1}
Eventually, I was no longer in the Fog of War but instead above it.
From there, I walked until the branches blocked me from going any higher. I then turned around and looked down.
Thankfully, I wasn't afraid of heights. More importantly, I loaded my bow with as many arrows as possible, which was ten.
I then fired them.
From what I could tell, it was a success. The arrows flew fast enough that they would deal damage (Probably). This would help me get more Xp, as I could free-fire multiple arrows at a time from above on top of enemy minions. Although it would cost me a ton of reputation, which is the downside of this.
The only thing now was that I didn't want to lose my reputation anymore, so I was going to stay here for the rest of the match. From what Paul told me, you lose reputation from three things. Not killing a minion for more than five matches, going into the fog of war and attacking allies. So staying up here and avoiding the three reputation I would lose going down seemed worth it.
As I was sitting on the side of the tree. I noticed something in the Fog of War, or rather the lack of fog.
A Hero was walking through the fog. He was most likely a Hunter.
His straight black hair that covered his face. He had light brown skin and wore an entirely black suit with a knife in each hand. I didn't recognize the Hero, but his username was 'RankOneHunter9.'
After watching him momentarily, he came across a brown wolf half his size.
The Wolf lunged at him, and he easily dodged, slashing the Wolf multiple times as it flew past him.
The Wolf Health bar dropped around ten percent.
The fight lasted about a minute longer, with the Hero being hit only once or twice.
The Wolf, on the other hand, had maybe five percent left.
The Hero went on the offensive and slashed the creature right in the eye. The creature's health then dropped to a sliver left before the Hero gave it the final blow.
After the Hero picked up something, the Wolf had dropped before running off.
I thought about the fight before a terrible, no-good idea came over me.
I was going to kill a monster.