What the hell?! Do cowboys exist here?! The intruder closes the door behind him as discreetly as possible, when he turns around and sees me standing in the hallway, his eyes shoot open and he raises his hands in capitulation, “Dang, caught before the fun even started, huh? Who’d have thought that the little missy has some security?”, he slowly lowers one hand to his belt while talking, “My employer is a bit of a hardass though, I’ve got a job to do, so sorry! [Flash Stone]!” Swish! He points a small glowing stone straight at me, I jerk back a bit in surprise.
What’s this stone supposed to do? It’s not dangerous is it, oh wait, I should probably restrain him, right? Mr. Cowboy grins as he starts making his way down the hallway toward me. I finally continue walking too, and Mr. Cowboy looks flabbergasted by this, “Huh, didn’t the-“ I punch him straight in the stomach, Mr. Cowboy winces and falls to the floor on all fours and begins throwing up. Ugh, damn. Now I feel a little sorry for him… “Sorry buddy, I don’t know what that stone was supposed to do, but it didn’t work on me.”
I quickly get a rope and from nearby, tie up Mr. Cowboy and wake up Seline to tell her someone broke in. When Seline shows up and sees the criminal, she casually greets him, “Oh, Jesse. What brought you here?” Huh?! “Oh, nothin’ much. Except maybe a punch in the gut and a royal decree to get you back to the capital.” Seline goes behind Mr. Cowboy, who is apparently called Jesse, and undoes my binding, I hesitate to speak up but curiosity gets the best of me, “Uhh, so I guess you two know each other? But why break into someone’s house then?”
“Jesse is one of the fighters employed by the Sytran Empire to keep the peace,” Seline looks at Jesse, “Why did you show up now though, and why break into my house in the middle of the night?” Jesse massages his now free hands while talking, “Ugh, well the Empress has some stuff that she wants you to deal with,” he takes out an important-looking piece of paper from a pouch and hands it to Seline, “and I thought I’d scare the crap out of you and mess with you a bit while delivering the message.”
“Why’d they even send you and not some normal messenger?” Seline asks annoyed. Jesse answers matter-of-factly, “Oh, I was going to pass through here, so I just took the message with me.” What kind of weirdo is Jesse? And even more so, what kind of weird relationship do those two have with each other that they can talk calmly with each other after one of them tried breaking into the other’s home? My thoughts escape my mind and I ask, “What kind of relationship do you two have anyway? And why are you dressed like that Jesse?”
“Huh, this is just some good old gunner class equipment, something wrong with it?”, a spark lights up in my mind. WHAT?! Guns exist here?! I look at Jesse’s belt and sure enough, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but he has a revolver on his hip! I try and play it cool, “N-No, looks fine by me.” Seline answers my other question, “Jesse and I became good buddies back when I was training in the royal capital as an up-and-coming court mage, he can be a real weirdo, but he is a great guy when you get to know him.” Seline gives Jesse a pat on the back as he scratches his head in bashfulness and grins stupidly, “Hehe, thanks for the compliment, Seline!”
Jesse gets up from his chair and straightens himself out, “Well, I guess it’s time for me to go now that I got that royal decree out of the way. I’ll relax here in Lunach for a few days and then go do my thing.” “Yeah, by- “ Seline is just about to send him off when she gets an idea and she snaps her finger. “Oh, Jesse. I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you accompany Andy and Emma into the Teip Mana Forest while you’re here? That could help you train yourself a bit while you’re here.” Jesse looks back, “Sure, I don’t wanna sit around all day anyway. I know Emma, but who’s Andy?”
I raise my hand, “Uhh, hello, I’m Andy.” Seline elaborates, “He’s a special kind of golem I made recently, I need to level him up a bit, so could you accompany him and Emma?” Jesse comes close to me and inspects me all over, “You sure do look quite impressive and that gut punch from before was something else, so I’d love to have you!” We shake hands and Jesse leaves for the day. The rest of the night goes by uneventfully, in the Morning Emma comes by to pick me up and we make our way to the guild to pick out some quests in the Teip Mana Forest.
“By the way Emma, a guy named Jesse broke into Seline’s house yesterday, he’s going to be joining us today.” Emma looks at me in confusion for a second before something clicks in her head, “Ohh, Jesse! Yes, I’ve met him before, although we didn’t meet in the best circumstances the last time we did, he broke through a ceiling straight onto me.” Well, he certainly knows how to make an entrance… We meet Jesse at the specified place and go to the guild together. When we get there, we take a look at some of the quests, it’s hard choosing with our skill levels being so far apart. Jesse is B-Rank, Emma is F-Rank and I don’t even have one!
There’s some amazing stuff on here, “Kill the Wolf King” sounds like an insane request to make by just sticking a piece of paper on a wall. We pick some simple E-Class Quests, like killing monsters for materials and collecting herbs. I sign myself up for the guild while accepting the quests at the counter, which simply means getting a badge with some sort of identification magic on it. The clerk looked at me a bit suspiciously until I told him I’m an intelligent golem made by Seline. Seems like knowing Seline around here is a cheat code…
We make our way outside of the city and into the forest, we don’t have any specific goal, so I and Jesse kill any monsters and Emma is on harvesting duty. We run into some wolf-dog hybrids again and even a small patrol of goblins. Jesse doesn’t seem to be doing much right now, just watching me defeat all the monsters in our way, after defeating the goblins I get another notification.
You have defeated 3 Goblins: 20 XP received
You have reached Level 4, 1 Point awarded
“You’re messing those goblins up Andy. Chuckle, I feel a bit unnecessary here.” Jesse looks a bit dejected that he can’t show his skills. “Why don’t we go a bit deeper into the forest, I think with your skills we will be all right,” Emma suggested. To this Jesse and I agree. Can’t be much worse than out here, can it?
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
We take out a map and start making our way deeper into the forest and an interesting change in scenery slowly occurs. While much of the forest before was shallow with trees standing apart from each other and their branches hanging low enough to grab onto. Now the trees stand far taller and populate the forest far more densely, with clear paths broken into the forest where you can see the footsteps of gigantic beasts you’d never expect to see in a forest.
I don’t know how much more dangerous this part of the forest is, but Jesse and Emma look far more on edge, with Jesse even having drawn his revolver to quickly dispatch threats. I can hear sounds like branches breaking and leaves rustling all around the forest, clearly indicating how much life this forest inhabits. As I walk past a low branch, a long rope shoots down from it, it’s a giant snake! Its long fangs try and bite deep into my shoulder to inject its poison, but instead, a dull scraping resonates from my shoulder, I snatch the snake from my shoulder and grip it hard just belove its head.
“Get back guys! Poisonous snake!” I grip the snake a bit lower down from its neck and quickly get into form like I’m trying to hit a baseball. I whip the snake like a baseball bat and smash its head straight into a tree, a resounding Whap! is heard from the snake’s head whipping into the tree, I let the snake go and it writhes on the ground for a quick moment before it stops moving. A big splat of blood slowly drips down the now slightly concaved tree.
You have defeated 1 Poison Tree Snake: 75 XP received
You have reached Level 5, 1 Point awarded
You have learned [Crushing Grip]
Oh, I learned my first [Skill], awesome!
Possible Future Evolution Options are now foreseeable
New [Skills] available to purchase in the [Skill Shop]
What?! Isn’t that way too early?! And I can now actually buy useful stuff in the [Skill Shop]. I inspect the [Crushing Grip] Skill more closely.
Crushing Grip
Anything within the grip of your hands is relentlessly crushed. Deals a significant amount of damage to the gripped area.
What?! Isn’t this like really good? This sounds good!
I compose myself a bit and look back to Jesse and Emma, who are both looking at me bewildered, “You guys all right? Sucks that we didn’t notice that snake before.” Jesse is the first to speak, “Wait, wasn’t that a B-Class Monster?! Normally you’d need at least a full C-Rank Party to beat that beast!” I nod and say, “Well obviously, humans aren’t immune to poison, are they?” Jesse looks at me a bit perplexed and does some calculations in his head until finally relenting, “Well, no they aren’t, are they?” Seems like he simply accepted the insanity.
Emma and Jesse take the snake apart for its precious parts while I stand watch and then we continue on our merry way. The walkway we took deeper into the forest beings to open up as we continue walking until we make our way up to a large clearing with nothing on it. With it slowly becoming evening we decide to make camp here for today and then make our way back home tomorrow. And I finally get to take a peek at the [Skill Shop] and Future Evolutions in peace!
Skill Shop
Skills
Description
Cost
Overclock
Accelerate thought processes for a short amount of time
8 Pts.
Overwhelming Strength
Boost strength for a short amount of time, damage will be taken in response and strength will be diminished temporarily thereafter
15 Pts.
Devastating Kick
Kicks performed will be significantly more powerful
5 Pts.
Heightened Senses
Your senses will be heightened permanently
10 Pts.
Regeneration
By using MP, wounds on your body can be healed
15 Pts.
Yeesh, those prices! I can barely afford a thing! Well, you can’t rush perfection… Let’s take a look at my future evolutions.
Possible Future Evolutions
Evolution
Description
Requirements
Mage Robot
(Uncommon)
Your robot body will be enriched with Mana, allowing you to use Magic.
-Level 35
-Simple Magic Knowledge
Pugilist Robot
(Rare)
You gain Hand-Combat [Arts] and your body becomes augmented for hand-to-hand combat.
-Level 40
-Simple Hand-Combat Knowledge
Strategist Robot
(Rare)
You gain the Strategize [Skill] and your thought processes are accelerated permanently, in return your strength is reduced.
-Level 40
-Simple Strategy Knowledge
Robot
(Common)
A nondescript version upgrade to all of your stats.
-Level 20
Killer Robot
(Rare)
Your body will be augmented to be deadlier and becomes generally more powerful. You become able to heal yourself using blood, but blood will also act as your fuel.
-Level 50
-Heartless and Violent Nature
Oh my god! All of these are so cool! How am I supposed to choose one?! Should I wait and take the Killer Robot?! No, I couldn’t handle that!
Since my level is still so far away from any of these, I still have some time to plan which one to take. So, for now, I’ll just continue leveling up. Emma, Jesse, and I sit near a campfire and exchange some fun stories, Jesse still seems to be a bit down for not being able to show off his skills. “You know Jesse, how about I leave the defense duty on the way home up to you?” Jesse smiles at me when I tell him so and says, “Thanks partner, then I’ll try my best tomorrow!”
We sit at the campfire and roast some of the dog-wolf hybrid meat, I can’t taste test it but the others tell me that it tastes all right. As the others sit and eat their food, I listen to the sounds of the forest. Under the rustling of leaves and cracking of branches, the low growl of a wolf-dog hybrid can be heard. This one is different though, it rumbles the earth and I can see the other two freeze up as they eat their food and look in the direction of the growl.
When I turn my head to look at the source of the growl as well, I see a gigantic wolf with a fierce jaw filled with long, sharp fangs make its way into the clearing while giving off a low rumbling growl.