BOOK 2
CHAPTER 32 TIME TO ORGANIZE
After Illesea left I finally took the time to observe the notifications I had gotten from our several large scale engagements.
‘Ping’ [Ravager Level 253 / Berserker Level 203] Has been slain - experience divided amongst group. 5 ability points awarded for killing with a team.
‘Ping’ [Claw of Malice Level 102] Has been slain - experience divided amongst group. 5 ability points awarded for killing with a team.
…
‘Ping’ [Holkiths Wrath Level 303 / Praedeth Machination Level 283] Has been slain - experience divided amongst group. 5 ability points awarded for killing with a team.
‘Ping’ [Lightning Sorcerer] Has leveled up 10 > 17
‘Ping’ [Enchanted Bladefighter] Has leveled up 10 > 16
‘Ping’ [Disciple of Nature] Has leveled up 6 > 10
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill [Healing Burst] - Cause an explosion of healing in a 15 ft. radius around you. Range and efficiency increased per level.
That… That was useless? I already had a ranged healing ability in the flower and it healed for an absurd amount. This was what I almost died for? No, I didn’t need a healing skill, what I needed was a wood manipulation skill that allowed me to form an arm out of the wood until I could heal it.
I immediately discarded the skill, I’m sure I could pick it back up if I wanted to. I just didn’t want the skill being slotted in to prevent me from being qualified for picking up more skills.
Interestingly I only got five ability points per kill despite some enemies being two tiers above me. Although it was saying that it only awarded five points since they were killed with a group so maybe any over the five limit had to be solo kills. Which made sense. Kinda.
‘Ping’ [Identify] Has leveled 8 > 10
‘Ping’ [Identify] Has ascended 10 > 11
Nice, I guess there wasn’t much I needed to do to get the skills to go up to their next tier, just had to get them to the right level and let them tick over once they got enough experience.
‘Ping’ [Mana Sense] Has leveled 5 > 10
‘Ping’ [Mana Sense] Has ascended 10 > 11
Oh wow. Wow, that felt kinda good. As soon as it tiered up I could sense the mana better, it wasn’t by much but I could tell that later on this was going to be a good skill. It would probably end up being something wacky like letting me see the mana flow in the air or something.
‘Ping’ [Electric Sense] Has leveled 5 > 10
‘Ping’ [Electric Sense] Has ascended 10 > 11
This one didn’t particularly felly any different. I could already feel my own electric flow pretty well from the beginning, I had to wonder if I had someone else near me if I could see more. Something to test for.
‘Ping’ [Sword Trainee] Has leveled 8 > 10
‘Ping’ [Sword Trainee] Has ascended to [Sword Apprentice] 11
Huh? That one was a little different. Well I could probably make a guess as to what it did, probably just enhanced my sword capabilities by that much more and allowed me to pull off more difficult techniques.
Either way this seemed to be a pretty fruitful endeavor. Despite almost committing suicide by mass-healing. I got some decent levels out of it, and I also acquired a decent amount of ability points for whenever I need them.
Name: Alexander King
Ability Points: 230
Tier 1 Class - [Lightning Sorcerer] - Level 17
Ability - [Strike of Lightning]
Ability - [Paralyzing Blast]
Ability - [As Fast As Lighting - Passive]
Ability - [Wreathed In Lightning]
Ability - [Chain Lightning]
Tier 1 Class - [Enchanted Bladefighter] - Level 16
Ability - [Enchanted Perseverance - Passive]
Ability - [Mana Strike]
Ability - [Enchanted Redirection]
Ability - [Enchanted Accuracy]
Ability - [Mana Flurry]
Tier 1 Class - [Disciple of Nature] - Level 10
Ability - [Natures Protection]
Ability - [Healing Blossom]
Ability - [Elements of Nature - Passive]
Ability - [Natural Selection]
Ability - [Nature’s Touch]
Ability - [Barrier]
Ability -
Enhancements -
[Point Blank] (Level 25)
[Weapon Proficiency] (Level 25)
[Quickness] (Level 25)
General Skills -
Tier 1 [Identify] - Level 1
[Rest] - Level 1
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Tier 1 [Mana Sense] - Level 1
Tier 1 [Electric Sense] - Level 1
Tier 1 [Sword Apprentice] - Level 1
Status -
Vig - [743]
End - [607]
Str - [678]
Dex - [755] (950) (1425)
Agi - [646] (1051)
Int - [723]
Wis - [753]
Health - 8990/8990
Stamina - 7344/7344
Mana - 7530/7530
I did a quick once over of my stat sheet. I got a pretty decent bump in stats from the levels and the passives I had at play. There’s just some primal enjoyment I get out of making numbers get bigger.
It’s just extremely satisfying to see.
I checked to see if I got anything else new but wasn’t particularly surprised to not find anything. No new enhancements to look at it either.
My agility had also broken the 1k mark. My dexterity was the same way, but only if I was using a sword. So it didn’t accurately portray my true agility with other stuff. Like I wasn’t going to be juggling better because of my bonus to using swords. Maybe if I was juggling swords? Thoughts for later perhaps.
I leaned back into the bed I was in with a deep sigh.
It’s been an eventful couple of days. I’d nearly died at least twice within the span of roughly 24 hours. It definitely was not the kind of life I was expecting to be leading. On some fundamental level I knew I’d be getting into danger here on some level. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly and so consecutively.
From the moment I’ve arrived it’s been one ordeal after the other. First the Sentinels showed up and completely decimated the elven sanctuary I was staying at. Then they almost caught me on the road. I nearly died to a giant mole in a burrow before being saved by Garrus. I, and subsequently Penny, almost died to Miltaen. And then the healing fiasco was just the most recent in a long line of situations.
I’d been hoping to quietly level myself and then come into the world out of nowhere and be all ‘hey look how awesome I am.’ All too often the main character can’t sit still long enough to train to be strong enough to protect themselves in the meantime, it’s always ‘I have a meager amount of strength so I should be using it to help people.’
Meanwhile their teacher is trying to explain how stupid that mentality is but they just refuse to listen yada yada yada you know the rest. That kind of thing always bothered me cause it’s not what I’d do. Except I apparently didn’t even get the option to hide away and gather my strength. I just got thrust straight into the middle of everything.
I hadn’t even gone looking for the Sentinels and they found me. Absolutely ridiculous.
All in all it was a pretty terrible situation honestly.
It was at this moment that the door to my room was flung open and Penny marched in at the front of the parade leading Garrus, Karif, and George.
She then immediately tackled me in a death-gripping hug. Which left me a little surprised given I hadn’t really known them for that long and she didn’t seem like the kind of person to give out hugs regularly.
“You scared me…” She whispered almost so quietly that I couldn’t hear her.
And then a little more loudly, no a lot louder, yelled at me “What the hell were you thinking? Did you think you could just suddenly heal a large group of people with several tiers on you without any repercussions?”
My face scrunched up a little in consternation as I replied, “I didn’t know it would affect me like that. In fact I didn’t even know there was such a massive drawback to healing, it’s not like anyone warned me beforehand. If I had known I probably wouldn’t have gone to help them in the first place given that I am so far below that there wouldn’t have been much that I could do.”
She looked like she wanted to say something in reply but instead just sighed.
Garrus picked up where she left off, “Didn’t one of the medics stop you before it got that far? Surely they would’ve noticed you were at a lower level.”
“Garrus, can you see my level?” I asked with a slight smirk on his face.
“Ah, I see what you mean.”
“Yeah, I didn’t even know that I was in control of it before Illesea came through to tell me about it. So they probably just thought I was a higher level than I was. Thankfully one of them probably figured it out and thought that if I was a higher level I would first and foremost be out fighting rather than healing.”
I let out a sigh of mild self-frustration and then focused a little bit.
“There you should be able to see my levels now. Also, why didn’t you all ask about that? I figured that’d be something that would come up in our conversations. Other than the receptionist bringing it up the other day I’m now realizing I kinda forgot about it.”
Penny was the first to respond, “I wanted to, but there didn’t seem a good time to ask about it. For a while I thought you were hiding your level from us and thought you couldn’t be trusted, which is why I was so obnoxious at first before talking with the rest of them and Garrus explaining that this probably wasn’t the case.”
I nodded slowly, “Fair enough, I’d feel the same way.”
We sat for a moment in companionable silence, Penny was still clutching me around the waist.
Not that I was particularly complaining, she was pretty hot. Maybe she didn’t compare to Illesea in terms of beauty but I felt that was a pretty unfair comparison. Especially considering her beauty was more than likely magical in nature.
“Well, Illesea filled me in on some of the broader details while I was out, but what has happened since from your perspectives?” I asked.
Karif was the first to speak this time, “Honestly, not a whole lot. There’s been some sweeps for more demons in the area around Muldren, but otherwise we came back to Vinwood. The Guildmaster has been in and out of meetings in the meantime with the members from the Queens Investigators along with some leading members of the Guard. Half of the meetings are to determine how this happened in the first place, the other half are to find a replacement for Commander Malcolm.”
I interrupted, “Commander Malcolm? What happened? Since I didn’t see him in the field, I expected him to be receiving treatment with the healers but he wasn’t there.”
“According to the adventurer teams already there and squads of guards that saw him initially fighting with the large demon before we showed up, the demon then threw him into the portal.”
“Huh… And I guess there’s just no way to fix that? That’d be way too convenient.” I was mostly thinking out loud with my statement but Karif answered regardless.
“Yeah, unless we had some high tier space mage to deal with it, there’s just not much we can do.”
I nodded my head slowly again.
“So what else? Or is that everything?”
Garrus shrugged, “For the most part that covers the majority of what’s happened. There hasn’t been much excitement over the past two days. Although they might abandon Muldren given that next to none of the original inhabitants are there anymore. They’ll probably help them move to Poulten if they want to, or to Vinwood, but otherwise they’ll be on their own for the most part.”
Yikes, that’s rough. Although not particularly surprising in all honesty. As Garrus had said, not many people of the village had remained after the demons had come through and it didn’t help that there was a battle in the village as well that more than likely resulted in some property damage.
Rather than wasting the money trying to fix it up it’d be easier to just deconsecrate the area. Or whatever the actual term was. Although what was easier didn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do either. Not that I was going to claim what that was. Who knows, maybe the remaining people living in Muldren would be happy to get out of there with all the bad memories they had of the place now.
“So what’s our plans going forward?” I decided to move the conversation along, I didn’t really want to think about that for longer than I had too.
“Well,” Garrus said in reply, “We’re probably going to take a few more days to relax. We did get paid for our efforts involved on such short notice. We also received a slight bonus on top of everything for being the ones to bring attention to the issue in the first place.” He smiled mischievously.
“Here you go,” He tossed me a bag that jingled as I caught it, “This is your share.”
Opening it up there were ten whole gold coins in there.
“Holy shit…” I whispered to myself. Then frowned, “We got ten pieces per person?” That seemed kind of strange, or rather it seemed like a lot.
Karif nodded, “Yeah, the city is the one who chipped in at the end there. Vinwood is a pretty wealthy town and they were pretty appreciative of our efforts. The other adventuring groups and even the guardsmen got a pretty good amount as well, something like a couple of coins apiece. Basically if we hadn’t gone through the effort of curtailing the initial part of the attack it could have grown out of scale and eventually been something that swallowed Vinwood on top of the surrounding areas. Which just wouldn’t have been good.”
“Fair enough. Just seemed like a lot more than I was expecting. Honestly, I wasn’t really expecting to get a bonus at all. Hell where I came from, they would have only given you the agreed amount and then expected you to continue pulling off stunts like that without giving you any benefits to show for the increase in expectations. Just a little surprising to see that humans are different here.”
“Wait, really?” Penny asked incredulously.
“Oh, yeah. That’s not even the worst of it either. I won’t go into details cause it’ll just piss me off thinking about it, but it’s bad. There’s such blatant corruption happening in everything there and people just kinda ignore it even when it’s right in front of their faces. And therefore, nothing happens.” I shrugged.
“Either way it’s a whole fiasco that apparently isn’t a deeply rooted mindset here, or at the very least this country. So there’s no point in dwelling on it.”
They all just kind of shared an indecipherable look, but didn’t say anything for a while.
“Well, we should probably let you get some more rest, Illesea said you should be good to leave in the morning so we’ll drop by and come get you and let you know our plans for the day.” Garrus moved towards the door as he was speaking.
Penny slowly extricated herself from around my waist.
Just before she got out of reach she leaned back in whispering, “Thank you for saving me.”
And then she kissed me lightly on the cheek before dashing off with the rest of the group.
“What…?” I whispered to myself.
I may have been dense when it came to clues, but not even I was this dense. It was also so cliche I just couldn’t help but laugh to myself. All those stories about the main character just so happening to save a girl from a terrible situation and all of a sudden she just falls in love with him, they just didn’t seem realistic at the time. But who was I to argue with the results as they displayed themselves before me.
Quite clearly, Penny liked me.