The rest of the day went as expected, answering calls, and then inscribing weapons. I went to bed not too excited about tomorrow, I was starting to get a bit sick of inscribing weapons, but I wanted humanity to get as strong as it could as fast as it could, and I was one of the few, if not the only person who had discovered how to make the inscription ink and inscribe the weapons themselves.

    Deciding to rectify that, I went on the wiki and posted about how to make the inscriptions, with an image of a completed inscription, along with tulips being the aruuki equivalent, and a guide on using mana to sense the potions while making them.

    I knew the military may get a bit angry about this, but it would get out eventually, if other countries hadn’t already picked up on how to do it. I was soon in bed, and was almost asleep when I got another call. I cursed, I had forgotten to put my phone on silent.

    When I answered, it was a voice I wish I didn’t recognize, it was Lily yet again. She wanted to get her and a bunch of her followers enchanted weapons. I sighed, I really didn’t want to do it, but they were one of the few groups that were actually trying to get stronger, and she knew what a monster wave was like, having died in one. I chuckled a bit to myself, keeping it out of my voice as I remembered pushing her off the edge of the wall.

    I eventually agreed to do it tomorrow, and hung up on her a bit abruptly. I knew I only vaguely resembled my in game character, but I still spent the time going to sleep worrying about being recognized, until I started to meditate to drown it out.

    In the morning, I put quite a few tulip leaves in the toaster oven to dry out, and noticed that the bulbs I’d planted had already grown up a good deal. I smiled, I was soon going to be limited my moki claws rather than the aruuki equivalent.

    I then showered, shaved, and brushed my teeth while waiting for them to dry out. I spent the entire time continuing to worry about being recognized, but was interrupted just as I’d finished my morning ritual by a knock on the door.

    I opened the door to see Lily, along with her entourage, who basically ignored me before coming into my apartment like she owned the place. My eye twitched in annoyance as she did so and she was soon announcing the reason she deigned to visit my lowly place.

    “I’m here to get our gear enchanted…” She paused for a second before actually noticing and recognizing me. Her voice was a bit less loud, and a good deal less arrogant after doing so, which made me grin. Our scolding her the day before had clearly had an effect on her.

    “Um, I would like to get our gear enchanted please.” She mentioned in her quieter voice.

    “I can do that for you, what do you want enchanted?”

    “Everything.” She said, having regained a bit of her earlier vigour.

    I nodded, and was soon staring at a pile of gear in the middle of my living room. I sighed, then got to work. While I worked, I noticed lily and a few of her entourage watching me, while the rest chatted among themselves.

    Ignoring the stares, I slowly inscribed the runes along each and every one of the weapons. I’d gotten a lot better with the practice I had been getting, so I was a decent bit faster than I had been at the beginning, but I was still no match for the speed of the inscription master at the inscription shop I had been to.

    The pile of gear slowly started to shrink as the people got their gear back, and I had to warn a few after they started swinging their new gear around indoors, getting a few “Hmph”s, and only one had the decency to look embarrassed.

    At least I got a few thanks as I handed them back, most of them still seemed to place me beneath their notice as they got their gear back, not acknowledging me. I eventually finished, and noticed Lily still watching me as I did so, before I asked for payment.

    Lily then handed over a large amount of money. While it didn’t compare to the pile of money the military had given me, it was still a good deal. Figuring that this had to be part of the reason her group followed her, they were clearly getting benefits, I thanked her as she handed it over.

    The group was soon leaving, but I only got a pair of thanks as they left, a few decent people in her group of arrogant jerks. When they were gone, I sat down and leaned back. I hadn’t been recognized, or I hoped I hadn’t. Lily had clearly seemed to think I was someone she knew, and had looked like she was about to say something a couple of times, but apparently I was just different enough from in game for her not to.

    Once I had gotten over my relief, I stood up and started to exercise. While I did so, I went back to attempting to meditate while doing something, but every time I seemed to get close I would accidentally hit myself or drop my weights or something.

    Once my exercise routine was done, it was back to enchanting for me, at least until it was time for the militia meetup, I needed to collect some more moki claws, and it would be a perfect time to do so, along with helping make the area safer.

    I was soon with my group, still feeling awkward after our disagreement, but we had an easy time hunting, and I was soon in possession of a good deal more moki claws. We said our farewells before I was back at home, unsure of what to do.

    The next few weeks passed in a similar manner, hunting with Lars and the group, enchanting weapons, training, and hunting down the few remaining monsters in town with the militia. I’d made sure to enchant the weapons of both Lars and his group and the weaponry of the militia. I’d also had my armor arrive, only to be disappointed with how much it had lowered the output of my spells, so I had sold it already enchanted to someone for triple the price I had bought it. My Steel spear also lowered my spell output, but not by enough to matter.

    Deciding it was time to check on my stats and spells again, I pulled them up.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Name

Roland

Level

25

str 15.2034

Grimoire

agi 16.3248

Recipes

wis 25.2687 sns 4.0215 end 17.4862 res 6.2596 vit 14.2359 lsp 2.2000

Grimoire

Stores all spell patterns you have learned

Spell Name Mana cost Force Bolt+ 2+0.5*wis Frostbite+ 5+1*wis Ice spear+ 10+1*wis Ice Shatter 20 Sigil of toughness .5/second Sigil of sharpness .5/second Flash Freeze 100

    My stats had experienced a meteoric rise with all the training and hunting I had been doing, and I still had 15 free stat points I had been saving. At this point, my stats were well beyond what they had been in game, and I was starting to feel like maybe I could handle a monster wave, or at the very least survive it.

    I’d also gotten quite a few of my spells upgraded, and I felt that ice shatter was getting close to upgrading as well. I was excited to see what would happen when it did, because I hadn’t gotten it upgraded in game.

    I hopped online though, to find out some very disturbing news. Practically at the same time, multiple towns had been hit by monster waves. Some of them had been completely wiped out, while some ‘only’ had a massive death toll.

    They had all been smaller towns, likely ones that hadn’t culled the monster population at all, but still, for monster waves to happen this early was not promising. In response, the country issued a statement that the military would be used to clear out any large amounts of monsters, attempting to help lower the panicking, and warned people to stay indoors for now, as if that would help.

    There were multiple riots regarding the monster waves, some of which caused almost as much damage as the monster waves had, though at least there were only a couple deaths, both of which had been accidentally trampled in the masses of people.

    I soon found out even worse news, apparently with the military stretched so thin, my town wouldn’t be one of the ones to receive a monster culling. My face blanched, they were basically leaving us out to dry, and I wasn’t sure if my town would be able to handle it.

    I spent the next few days meditating every spare moment when I wasn’t exercising, inscribing weapons, or hunting, attempting to get my wisdom above thirty, in which case I could get off three flash freezes before running out of mana. I really missed the mana bar from in game, but the numbers seemed to be about the same, so I was getting used to estimating how much I had left.

    In less good news, mana potions had started to be not nearly as effective, taking two to fill up my mana pool above halfway. I was going to have to learn how to make better ones soon. Health potions, I wasn’t sure how much they would heal me, as I hadn’t taken grave enough injuries to find out.

    It was the next day, I was out hunting with Lars and the group when we ran into a problem. The three star mobs in downtown had been almost entirely wiped out, to the point the police were sending in groups to hunt down the few remaining mobs, and were even going to open the quarantined zone soon.

    We were talking about what to do, Liz was adamant about wanting to head to the forest that had a few four star mobs, but Rachel and I were both hesitant, not knowing what to expect from four star mobs, and we didn’t have the time to grind up in Sanity online to face them, not with possibly imminent monster waves. Lars was acting as mediator, but was leaning towards going hunting.

    We were arguing about the benefits versus the risk when Lily’s group ran into us again.

    “So you guys are thinking about going to the forest too?” Lily said, not quite as arrogantly as normal. “We were just planning to go, care to join us? Though we would appreciate it if you didn’t get in our way”

    “No,” I instantly answered at the same time that Lars said “Sure.”

    I glared at him a bit, but he calmly explained his reasoning.

    “It’ll be a lot safer in a large group. We may not get as much xp, but it’s better than risking our lives, with enough mages I’d feel safe just bombarding any possible four star mobs to death while the melee fighters just try to stay alive.”

    I wilted a bit under his calm expression and reasoning, before uttering a “Fine.”

    We were soon all in our cars, heading to the forest that supposedly contained three and four star mobs. The entire drive, I spent grumbling, annoyed that I was going to be stuck with Lily and her group, giving her even more chances to possibly recognize me. I was relatively certain that I hadn’t been seen pushing her off the wall, but even just recognizing me from being the guy she had hunted would be annoying.

    We soon found our first mob, and it wasn’t one I had seen in game. It was a phol. It was basically an elephant, if an elephant was constantly leaking a red fluid from what looked like a gaping wound on the top of it’s body, had three trunks, and had very, very, sharp looking tusks.

    We soon all got together, and the mages, along with me, began bombarding it with spells. For being an elephant looking creature,  the thing was pretty fast. The melee fighters who tried to block it straight on got flung back, but the ones on its sides seemed to distract it enough to slow down and turn on them.

    I soon found out that it also had a prehensile tail, as one unlucky fellow who got behind it and was swinging without a care in the world took it to his chest. I winced, that had to have broken a few bones.

    Luckily, light was right nearby to start healing them up, while the healer in Lily’s group, one of the few people who had been polite to me, healed up the two who had been flung by the initial charge, though they looked more annoyed than damaged.

    The fight didn’t last long, and soon it was dead, ice spears jutting out of it, and scorch marks on it from where two other mages’ fireballs had landed. Lily’s lightning magic hadn’t left any discernable wounds, but it had caused the beast to spasm each time it hit.

    I looked over, she had a sword and shield, and would cast spells using her shield hand, letting go of the handle enough to draw out runes. I thought for a second, I could really use some gauntlets or bracers of some kind to block with.

    Eventually ignoring Lily, whose spell patterns had dealt far less damage due to having a steel shield along with sword, I continued to follow the group as we hunted. We killed a good deal of phol, and groups of molts and ents every now and then. A few hours later, we decided to head back, and soon arrived at our cars, agreeing to meet up again to do some more hunting.