When I logged back in, it was still dark outside in game, so for a while I wandered the empty streets, seeing what had to be players running round here and there, but with practically no NPCs. I marveled at the empty streets, and made my way to the temple, finding that it was indeed open, I went in, and headed over to the mages training area. I didn’t have much else to pass the time, so I figured I’d meditate until the sun came up. Time seemed to be far more fluid as I sat there, guiding the mana through my mana channels. It felt like no time had passed by the time I awoke from my reverie, the light of the sun shining on my face. Slowly getting up, I stretched, getting the kinks out of my lower back and legs from how I had been sitting, shaking my legs to remove the tingling feeling you get in them from sitting for too long.

I looked around, the training ground now had a few players in it, trying out their different spells, Ice, lightning, fire, and other more unique spells such as vines that would come out of the ground to bind the targets. Deciding that today I would try to get my frostbite spell to frostbite+, I moved over to a target and started spamming. Whenever I ran out of mana, I would go sit down and meditate for a while while it regenerated.

A few hours and a point of wisdom later, I finally got frostbite upgraded. The new version had a mana multiplier of 1*wisdom in addition to its base cost of five mana, so with my now eight wisdom I could cast it six times without running out of mana. Deciding to try it out, I turned towards the target and drew the spell pattern, releasing it with my expectations attached. When it impacted, instead of just covering the front half or so, it entirely encased the thing in ice which also seemed to be a good deal thicker than what it had been before. Smiling in excitement over my new upgraded spell, I decided that I would have to try it out on some mobs, hopefully those new ones I was now ready to hunt.

I started to head over to the gates, when I realized that I had no clue where to even find them. I then changed directions, heading back to the training hall to ask one of the instructors. Getting back in, I spotted Olaf, and went up to him.

“Um, Olaf sir, I was wondering where I could find moglins and moki, I haven’t seen any when I’ve been out hunting.”

“You’re moving up in the world if you’re ready to hunt moglins and moki. If you’re looking for them, just head straight down the road, they’ll find you. It’s why every caravan has a large escort, nothing makes it through the roads without at least one attack, and the bigger the caravan, the bigger the attack.”

I thanked him, then started heading back to the gates, taking my new book out on how to harvest monster along the way. Moglins were very simple, their body didn’t have anything of value on them, but they would wield very crappy metal weaponry which could be melted down and made into something useful by a smith. To complete the hunting request though, you had to collect their left ear as evidence. For Moki, the only thing of value was their longest claw on their front feet, easily spotted as they tended to be around twice the length of the others, and was one of the ingredients used to make the special ink the mage’s guild used to write spell patterns with. Realizing that I hadn’t bought a knife yet, I diverted my path, something I seemed to be doing quite a lot today, and headed to the blacksmith’s shop I frequent. It didn’t take me long to arrive, and I greeted the not a dwarf Golrag, picking up a small skinning knife for 5 silver. I then, hopefully for the final time today, headed off to the gates.

The gates were as busy as usual, this time a caravan was arriving which had quite a few people who looked an awful lot like Golrag, so they had to be actual dwarves. Looking at them as I headed out, how was I supposed to believe Golrag was a human with how similar they looked. I shook my head and continued on my way, heading down the road to try and find some of the new mobs.

After an hour or so of walking, far more than I was expecting, I got my first look at a live moglin while it charged me with a shrieking yell, a very crude piece of metal in the general shape of a sword in its hand. I quickly made the spell pattern for an ice spear, and released it as it got into melee range. I stepped back and stabbed out with my spear as I released the spell, impaling it from two directions. It seemed to ignore the pain though, trying to get closer, shoving itself onto my spearhead as it did so. In panic, I quickly wrote up another spell pattern for ice spear, and released it again, and as it impaled the moglin, it mostly stopped moving, just a light twitching until it stopped entirely, dead. I let out a sigh, that hadn’t been too hard.

I cursed myself the instant after, as I heard three more of the shrieking wails of moglins closing in on me from the right. I quickly prepared a cast of frostbite, and released it at the furthest target, freezing it for hopefully long enough for me to deal with the other two. While the other two closed, and the third sat encased in ice, I prepped a force bolt, planning to knock back one of them and deal with the other with my spear.

I released it, and the moglin got knocked head over heels, falling back and rolling for a short distance as I closed with the last one. Stabbing inwards, I learned from what the last moglin had done, and pulled back immediately after it had stabbed into its body, stepping back as it continued its charge. It swung its almost a sword at me, but it was a clumsy strike, and I easily managed to sidestep it, stabbing outwards again as I prepared a force bolt in my off hand.

The second moglin had gotten back up and reached me by this point, so I quickly jumped back and released the force bolt at the one I had wounded. This one seemed prepared, unlike the other one, and only got pushed back a small amount before it was charging back in, just at the same time I heard the cracking of ice and the third escaped from his prison of ice. Seeing as how I only had enough mana for three ice spears, I decided to stick with force bolt, I’d get five to six out of that if my mana regenerated fast enough. Drawing another spell pattern in one hand, I stabbed out with my other towards the unwounded moglin, seeing as how the other one was slightly out of my range.

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This time I only managed to hit its arm rather than its small body, but that seemed to be far more effective as it dropped its weapon. My smile was interrupted by the other two moglins joining the fray at the same time, and the first moglin continued to charge at me even without its weapon, it’s short claws on its fingers reaching for me. I released my force bolt at it, only to belatedly realize I should probably have aimed at one of the moglins with a weapon, especially seeing as how one was already wounded and slowly bleeding out.

I swept my spear to the right, catching a moglin in the arm, but it got caught on the bone in it, giving the last one enough time to slam at me with it’s sword like object. I reacted by throwing my arm in front of my body, smiling as it impacted my bracer, not cutting through and only leaving what was sure to be a very nasty bruise. I jerked my spear, finally pulling it free of the bone with a schick sound, and stabbed out at the head of the moglin who was already wounded, hitting it in its eye, and watched as it dropped like a sack of bricks.

My happiness was short lived however, as I felt a slam into my ribs from the moglin I had cast force bolt at. Wincing at the pain, it had somehow gotten its sword back,  and it may not have been sharp enough to cut through my warg skin armor, but it still hurt like a bitch. I pulled my spear back and prepared another force bolt, releasing it point blank into the moglin that hat hit me. It fell back and I instantly stabbed back out at the other one before it could catch me with a surprise attack like the other had. It caught it in its free arm, and it swung at me with its weapon, but I stepped back, barely dodging the sword that managed to go a disproportionate amount of distance with the moglins long many jointed arms. I stepped back in preparing another force bolt for the one I had knocked back already, and stabbed out, catching it in its chest. I pulled my spear free just as I released my force bolt into the moglin I had hit earlier, knocking it back just as it started getting back into the fight. I then continued to focus on the other moglin, and after a couple more stabs it collapsed. I then cast force bolt three more times at the one I had been hitting with it, running out of mana, but killing it in the process.

I sat down for a second, but only after carefully looking around to make sure there weren’t any more moglins, then set to work, dropping all the clubs masquerading as swords into my pack, and cutting off their left ears as evidence for the quest. Grimacing at the nasty task, I put them into my backpack to join the “swords”. I then sat down and meditated for a while. While it wouldn’t increase my mana recovery time, it made the time pass much faster, and it had become a habit from training at the training area. Once my mana had refilled, I got up and continued along the road. As I was walking I saw a few other solitary players, and a good deal of parties, likely looking for the same mobs I was hunting. I found a couple more groups of moglins, or rather they found me, but as they only had two moglins per group, they were easily dispatched, frostbiting one of them and then ice spearing and stabbing the other to death before focusing on the next one.

It wasn’t long after the second group of moglins when I heard a roar, and looked over to see one of the moki. It was about two meters in length, three including its tail, and around four feet tall, but as it ran at me, I gaped. Even running, the thing wasn’t much faster than a light jog, so I threw an ice spear at it, ran back, and repeated the action. It wasn’t long until it collapsed, impaled a few too many times for it to handle.

This was a two star monster? Maybe if you were melee it may be a bit of a challenge, or a caravan where you have to stay and defend it rather than just run and poke at them, but with a bit of range you could kite them as easy as breathing. I shrugged, and went up to collect my spoils. I chopped off the two claws on its front legs which were longer than the other three by around 6 inches, they looked nasty, and I was glad I wouldn’t have to get in close and try to deal with them.

I continued the rest of the day in the same manner, hunting down small groups of moglins and picking on the slow moving moki. Nothing notable happened except for another group of three moglins, where one had managed to catch me on my thigh, and leave a nasty cut, apparently those swords of those were sharp enough to get through my flesh, but not able to handle the hardened warg leather. Eventually I got enough to complete the quest, thirty moglin ears and thirty moki claws, which was only fifteen of the slow moving brutes.

Along the way I’d leveled up, the speed having increased a ridiculous amount now that I was hunting monsters in my current level range. I put the point into vitality, as I still needed to be able to tank some hits, and even late game, having enough health that a cleric can heal you up instead of being one shot would be very useful. Throughout my hunts, I had tried the goddess thing on the moki, but decided that the practice cutting up monsters was more important than the small amount of time it took to properly harvest them, and I was getting a higher quality out of it as well. Interestingly enough, if you tried to do it on the moglins, it would grant you a moglin ear, so I quickly decided to do that instead of chopping off the ear myself, saving myself a bit of a bloody mess.

Seeing as how I had enough for the quests, I decided to head back in a bit early. Along the way I was accosted by a few more groups of moglins and a lone moki, but all were relatively easy to dispatch. I also watched a few parties fighting against moglins, and in far greater numbers that had accosted me, usually double to triple the size of the parties being hunted.

I also noticed something Oskar had mentioned, a lot of the mages were still using the spell guides from the grimoires. I shook my head, if I tried to do that I’d just get beaten up while standing still trying to draw the lines carefully. I was smiling in a sense of superiority when I noticed one group that had very, very competent mages. While it only took me a second or two to draw up the spell pattern, these guys were using both their hands to cast, cutting down the time required to draw the spell patterns to half of mine or so. While they couldn’t be using staves due to it getting in the way of them drawing their spell patterns, I did notice some very conspicuous rings on their fingers, likely another form of spellcasting aide.

When I arrived back at the gates, I quickly went over to the adventurers guild to turn in my quests. While waiting in line, I decided to message Loss to see if they’d moved on to hunting moglins and moki.

Hey, you moved on to bigger fish yet? Moglins are definitely more interesting to hunt than wargs

Yeah, we moved onto them today, we’ve been hunting all day and have enough ears to turn in for three quests for each of us or so. Care to join us later?

I considered it for a moment, but I was enjoying hunting on my own for now, I’d probably need to have a party as backup for hunting bosses and such, but as is I could use the spear practice, and being a proper hybrid would probably be really nice late game.

Not for now, be sure to tell me if you find another boss though, the treant one was fun as hell.

Will do, we could definitely use some help if we run into another monster like that

I smiled, I now had a group I could do the semi-raids that the bosses were, and with how intense the fight against the treant had been, I was excited for what we would be up against next. It wasn’t long until I arrived at the front counter, and turned in all my loot, accounting to a total of three gold and five silver for just the few mobs I had hunted, a massive upgrade from what I had been earning. I had a big smile on my face as I headed off to the training grounds, I was going to get some spear practice in then go to bed, but in the days coming my income would be drastically improving.