I woke up in the morning feeling refreshed, but I was quite sad I wasn’t able to meditate over the night instead of sleep. I’d continue trying in the future, but it was a bit disappointing I couldn’t reliably do it so far. I then headed out to do some more hunting. I was making gold at a very respectable rate, and I was going to continue to do so until I could afford that spear I wanted. Hunting the moglins and moki was now pretty easy with my current strategies. I then headed out of the city, I was going to make some gold. I hunted throughout the day, using ice shatter on the moglins and ice spear spamming the poor moki. Things were going very well until I spotted something red in the distance

    Remembering the warning Chris had given me about it being much faster, I decided to just observe for the time being. I slowly followed it around, at the point where I could only see a dot of red, and luckily, it didn’t seem to notice me. It didn’t take too long until it ran into a group of players, and I got a bit closer to watch the fight.

    The moki instantly started charging at the players, and I started, it was seriously fast. It reached the group in only a couple seconds, only taking a single fireball from the mage. For a moment I wondered why there seemed to be more fire mages than any other type, but I quickly shook my head, dismissing my musings to watch the fight.

    It started with the moki impacting the sword and shield wielding warrior, completely bowling him over. The other warrior, wielding a single long spear stabbed into the moki, but it only seemed to enrage the beast, turing in and slashing out with its claws. The quick turn of the moki nearly tore the pear out of the hands of the warrior, but a quick fireball into the face of it startled it enough that the spear wielder managed to take his spear back and step out of range while the moki was blinded by the fire in its face.

    The moki quickly shrugged it off however, and started charging at the mage who had enraged it. The shield wielding warrior was back up on his feet and in front of the mage by the time it got there, and braced himself as much as he could against the mass of flesh incoming. This time, he managed to keep his feet, but his shield was quickly torn out of in front of him by a swipe of the moki’s claws. A quick second swipe by the moki disemboweled him, and he collapsed, apparently dead from one attack.

    I was seriously impressed by the attack power of the red moki. Warriors tended to put a decent amount of their points into vitality, and killing one of them in a single hit was just scary. I shuddered, this thing was completely outclassing a group of people similar level to me, I wasn’t going to think of facing it until I was quite a few levels higher.

    Without the protection of the shield wielding warrior, the moki was quickly at the mage, but was distracted by a stab into its arm by the spear wielder. This time the spear wielder retracted it fast enough to not have his spear nearly torn out of his hands, and managed to dodge a quick swipe of the red moki’s claws. He stayed at a decent range, poking it as fast as he could while the mage rained fireballs on it.

    It wasn’t very long however, until the moki jumped at the warrior, and the warrior wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way. It landed on him, and pinned him under its claws, and a quick bite over his head finished him off. I winced, that was not a fun way to die.

    The mage kept raining fireballs, likely hoping to finish it off before it could get to him. Unfortunately for him, the moki simply shrugged them off and ran over, killing him with one hit of its claws. I winced, that very well could be me in the future. I slowly walked back, not wanting to run and get spotted.

    I shadowed the moki for a while longer, watching as he slaughtered a few more parties, though one group of five had given it a decent amount of trouble, the two warriors managing to hold it off for quite a time along with some cc spell from the mage that had turned the area around the moki into a viscous seeming darkness. While it was slowed the mage rained balls of acid upon it, dissolving the skin of the moki where it hit, but not seeming to do anything more than piss it off.

    The warriors hit as hard as they could, but they couldn’t seem to cut in more than a couple inches, only enough to annoy it. It still wasn’t enough to kill it, as it survived long enough for the warriors to run out of stamina. I wasn’t sure if they hadn’t put enough points or trained enough for stamina, but they definitely ran out faster than I would, possibly because I mainly used spells, but I’d fought a decent amount of time without running out so far. I had trained a decent amount of stamina though, so I may have just had more, with them putting most their points into strength and vitality.

    As I followed it around, I would pick up the gold dropped from the parties that wiped. It may not be the most noble of actions, but gold is gold. After a while, I got bored of watching the red moki picking on people used to hunting the slower normal moki, and decided to go back to hunting.

    When I did so, I realized that I hadn’t run into a single mob while I had been shadowing the red moki. I wasn’t sure if the other mobs were scared of it or simply didn’t feel the need to follow around something that would take all of the kills, but I was thankful, if I’d gotten into a fight when I was next to it, I’d likely have gotten noticed and killed.

    While I walked back to the road, I messaged loss about what I had seen

    Dude, I found the red moki, that thing is fucking scary

    You think we could take it?

    No way in hell, that thing wiped a pretty good party of five without breaking a sweat, I don’t even think it took half it’s health in damage from them. At least it didn’t seem to be much damaged, even though there was a lot of small wound on it.

    Well I think we’re going to try anyway, care to join us?

    You guys go wipe on your own for now, I’m saving up money for a new spear, and am not in the mood to lose half of my gold to that thing, and I doubt there’s even a small chance we could kill it.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Well we wiped three times to the treant, and none of us needs anything particularly badly, we’ll be spending a lot of time at the temple I guess :p.

    I smiled, and closed the chat, walking down the road and waiting for some moglins or moki to slaughter, I was going to make me some money. It wasn’t long until I ran into another of the moki riding moglins, and this time I cast ice shatter at it, noticing that the spikes through the front legs of the moki knocked it off balance to fall down, though it did quickly get back up. I took note though, it could come in handy if I was ready to hunt the red moki.

    I quickly finished off the pair of mobs with ice spears, and collected my loot. I then continued down the road, hunting, and meditating whenever I got low on mana, I was not ready to fight a group of three with just my spear, and after the display of the red moki, I was leery of getting within melee range of them. Towards the end of the day, I started trying to face the groups of two moglins with nothing but my spear to practice.

    More often than not, I ended up getting some very nasty bruises, and one time I had taken a long cut on my arm, making me drop my spear and having to go back to spellcasting to finish them off, dodging as well as I could while trying to finish my spell patterns. That fight in particular had been rough, but one of my health potions later, and I continued my spear practice. I would likely get some stat points out of it as well.

    I continued to do the same throughout the day, collecting enough goblin ears for two of the quests, and enough moki claws for one of them. I may not be making money quite as fast, but the spear practice would likely pay off, and learning to dodge an opponent with a weapon would be nice for if I had to pvp. When, I corrected myself, when I had to pvp, I was going to get revenge on lily, and if getting some bruises and cuts was the price I had to pay for it, I would gladly continue.

    After turning in my quests, getting five gold and two silver, I decided to go get a belt for my potions rather than save immediately for my spear. Heading over to Merin’s armor and and clothing shop, I shuddered at what I was going to deal with. Unfortunately, I didn’t know any other tailoring shops, though I’m sure I’d seen them around. Sighing as I headed over, I decided it would be best to just have a belt with slots in it for my potions around my waist, nothing fancy.

    I soon arrived, and Merin, as bubbly and cheerful as ever greeted me. After getting though her attempts to gossip, I finally managed to explain to her what I wanted, and she said she could get it for me for a gold. It was a bit more expensive than I was expecting, but having potions available in battle would be lovely.

    After agreeing to come the next day to pick it up, I headed off, It was starting to get late, and I was going to attempt to meditate into that state of half sleeping half meditation that I was looking for. I soon arrived at the barracks, and found my bed, laid down, and started to meditate.

    It took me a couple of hours, but eventually, my sleepiness started to fade into the meditation, and I entered the fugue that I had been searching for for hours. In this state, there were no dreams, but time seemed to pass incredibly quickly, and it seemed like no time at all had passed by the time the sun shined on my face - again - waking me up. I was happy, as when I got up fully I noticed a notification telling me I had gained one agility, likely from all the dodging I had been doing dealing with the moglins

    I got up, yawned, and headed off to do some more hunting. This day was relatively uneventful, though I seemed to be slowly getting better at dealing with with moglins with my spear, taking fewer hits. Along the way, I leveled up, and put the point into wisdom. I’d finally reached the milestone of ten wisdom, so I opened my character stats to admire it.

Name

Rayth

Level

8

str 3

Grimoire

agi 3

Recipes

wis 10

???

end 5

???

vit 5

???

For the first time, I started to wonder about those ??? marks, were they stats that I hadn’t unlocked or something else? I shrugged, I would figure out eventually, or at least someone else would figure it out and I would find it on the forums.

Thinking about that, I decided to pull up said forums and look around to see if anyone had figured out what they were. The general consensus was that they had to be hidden stats, and there were tons of claims of what they were, people claiming that they had acquired them, but pulling up the wiki to confirm, none of the stats were confirmed, only rumors. There had been a couple of screenshots, but they had quickly been found to be doctored. I’m felt it was relatively likely that some people had already unlocked them, but they were likely keeping it to themselves, wanting every advantage they could get.

    After my short visit to the forums and wiki, I quickly got back to hunting. After collecting enough for three moglin quests and two moki quests, I decided I was done for the day, and headed back to the city to pick up my belt and get me some money.

    It wasn’t too long before I arrived back at the town, turning in my quests for a nice eight gold seven silver. I then headed off to Merin’s shop, picking up my belt for the one gold it would cost. Putting it around my waist, I filled it up with the potions I had left, and smiled about getting the new gear.

    I then headed off to head to bed. Tonight, I was unable to get into my meditative and sleeping state, but I figured it would just take more practice until I could reliably do so. The next day went relatively the same, but I went herb hunting to fill up the rest of the potions on my belt, a total of ten of them.

    By the end of the day, I had enough gold to buy my spear! I practically ran over to Golrag’s shop, excited at the prospect of a new weapon. Once I arrived, I slowed down, trying to seem more calm than I was. Heading on in, I waited for a bit, listening to the sound of hammering coming from the back of the store, until Golrag came out and greeted me.

    “Golrag! Just the man I wanted to see. I’m looking to buy that spear I was looking at.”

    “Ah, so you finally pulled together the money. Let me go grab it for you.”

    He soon came out with the spear, and this time I noticed the rune patterns running up and down the spear. We exchanged the gold and the spear, and I had a big goofy grin on my face as I ran my hands over it. Excited to try it out, I ran out to go pick on some orbs.

    I quickly noticed the increase in spell output, it was fifty percent, and I could see the difference in how large and powerful my force bolts were, killing the orbs in one shot now. I ran around with my new spear, enjoying the wisdom bonus, and stabbing a few just to get used to the slightly different balance of the spear. By the time the sun was going down, I still had a big grin on my face, and only stopped my slaughter of the local orb population when I could barely see them, the three moons in the sky not being quite bright enough in their varying stages of waxing, or waning, I can never remember the difference. I then headed back, and went to the barracks, attempting and failing to reach that state I was searching for until I fell asleep.