Q made her way through the forest, not encountering any more wolves (thank god) but instead encountered some other creatures. One of them was was a group of bugs that were called [Capillets]. They closely resembled caterpillars, except their legs were longer and they had some sort of hard shell on their backs. Seeing that their levels were around 2-3, Q decided to use them to level up. At first out of curiosity she stabbed the hard shell with her claws, and just as she suspected, she barely did any damage to them. This got the other Capillets attention though and she was slowly swarmed by bugs…
But the bugs were really slow, so she was able to outrun them without much effort. She did take a closer look at the bugs though, and saw that their underbellies didn't have a shell so she flipped one over with her foot and gave it a quick stab. This time it died immediately with its health quickly going down to zero.. After discovering this weak point, Q began to flip them all over and stab them with a relaxed pace. Of course, things wouldn’t be that easy because suddenly she felt something hit her arm and a message popped up informing Q that she was poisoned. A bit shocked she looked around and found the cause.
[Poison Capillet] - Level 4
Okay, they now have projectiles… Q thought idly. She didn’t think much of it though as she also flipped over that bug and killed it, but as she got sprayed by more poison from elsewhere she suddenly realized something: She didn’t have any antidotes for the poison! Crap. She thought as she quickly ran away from the bugs. After getting a certain distance away from them, the bugs seemed to lose interest and went back to doing whatever they were doing before. So their aggro range is about 25 meters… but how am I going to deal with this poison?
Q was only able to sit there helplessly as she watched her health slowly drain away, and after one minute it finally stopped (not before taking away a third of her health though). “Whew…” She let out a sigh of relief as she thought it might take away all of her health. “But this reminds me that I really do need some items to heal and take care of status conditions… Maybe the ruins have some items like that lying around.” She picked herself off the ground and continued to search for higher ground.
After half an hour of walking, she made her way to a relatively large hill and spotted the ruins not too far from her location. She surveyed the rest of the area to check if there’s anything else interesting, but in the end the ruins was the only place that stood out. She continued to make her way there until she was interrupted by something flying at her from overhead! With quick reflexes she jumped out of the way and saw that the thing that tried to fly down on her was stuck in the ground.
[Borid] - Level 5
It turned out to be a bird with brown feathers, short stubby legs, and a really sharp and pointy beak that it was trying to pull out of the ground. Q briefly thought of pulling it out, but thought otherwise as it tried to attack her first. She stomped on it, further burying its beak in the ground and the Borid let out a squawk (or at least tried to with its beak snapped shut). Q then began to mercilessly stab it, killing it in a few hits.
[Cruel Aura Activated]
“... Really?” Q was a bit exasperated at this skill, but then again it saved her life as she heard a chorus of squawking sounds in the trees around her. She quickly snapped her head up as she saw at least 20 Borids waiting in the branches of the trees. A lot of them had the fear debuff on them, but for the few that didn’t they leaped off the branches and began making a beeline for Q. She watched for a second in fascination as the borid actually began spinning as they headed for her.
With a few quick sidesteps she was able to dodge the borids, and just as quickly she stomped on them all to further bury them into the ground. Unfortunately at this point the other borids shook off their fear and let out cries of anger as they all began to take flight. Some of them had learned from their previous kin it seems, as they flew horizontally and began to spin from there. Q was in a pinch as she had to dodge multiple borids from every direction. It was like trying to dodge bullets (albeit a little easier), but the borids made it more complicated for her by slightly changing their trajectory and curving their flight paths, forcing Q to make some ridiculous dodges she wouldn’t have managed in real life.
Ugh. I can’t hit these borids at all! Not to mention they’re not getting buried in the ground anymore, so I can’t take them out like I did with the first one… “Woah!” A borid grazed by Q, taking away a bit of her health. Fortunately, it got stuck in a tree so she was able to dispatch it quickly before it got out. “Wait a minute… That’s it!” She quickly ran to a relatively large tree and put her back against it, waiting for the borids to make their next round.
Soon enough they came, and at the last second Q jumped out of the way, causing a large amount of the borids to get stuck in the tree. “Yes!” After figuring this little trick out, dealing with the rest of the borids became relatively easy, and they began to retreat once they saw that most of their kin had died. After the last borid had left, Q looked at her messages and saw that she had leveled up and obtained a new skill, as well as some item drops from the borids.
[Stats Gained!]
[Level Up!]
[New Skill] - Dodge (Passive) Increases your chance of dodging an attack.
“Awesome but… which way is the ruins?” Q let out a sigh as she made her way back to the hill and reoriented herself before continuing on. Eventually she made it back to the ruins and finally let out a sigh of relief. On the way there she found a group of capillets and took out a few for some experience before running away at the sight of the poison capillet. She did also find a rabbit, but remembering her previous experience she left it alone with deep regret.
She made her way to the door and saw the inscription at the top which read:
Those who enter shall be tested. Only the worthy may hold audience.
“Well… that’s short and to the point I guess. Anyway… time to explore!” She exclaimed as she pushed the doors open. Q was greeted with the sight of an old and worn down room with small rays of light coming in through the cracked ceiling. From what she could make out the room was quite empty, and the only thing that caught her attention was a skeleton lying in the center of the room.
She approached the skeleton and found a bag on it, as well as a note pinned down to its chest with a dagger. “Eerily realistic…” Q said out loud as she looked at the skeleton. It must have been here for a long time since the bones were old and brittle, and they even broke when she took out the dagger from its chest. A loud snap resounded through the room and after confirming that no enemies were attracted by the sound, Q sat down and read the note.
To you who are reading this. Turn back.
Q stared blankly at it for a moment before laughing and crumpling up the note. “Heh. What kind of adventurer would I be if I let some cryptic note drive me away?” She threw the note away and began taking inventory of what was inside the bag. What she found inside was two small vials filled with red liquid, one vial filled with blue liquid, some coins, a small book and a glove. She took out the book first and a prompt appeared in front of her.
[Obtained Small Health Vial] x 2
[Obtained Small Mana Vial]
[Obtained Spellbook of Spark]
Would you like to learn the spell [Spark]? (YES/NO)
“Hell yeah! I can use magic now baby!” Q exclaimed as she pressed Yes. The book in her hands disappeared, and for some reason she felt that some sort of ‘knowledge’ was put into her head. She went into her spell list and found the description of Spark.
Spark (Unique, consumes 1 MP, 5 second cool-down) - Deals weak lightning damage to target
Note: You have obtained a unique spell. Unique spells can evolve into more powerful versions of themselves. (Unique spells are unaffected by the rankings of normal spells)
“A unique spell? That sounds like it could be really useful in the future. Well let’s give it a shot then shall we?” Q was about to cast the spell, but then realized she had no idea how. “Hmm… How do I do this? Do I just say the skill out loud? Well, let’s give it a shot then.” Q said as she stretched out her hand and said “SPARK!” A small bolt of electricity flew out from her outstretched hand, but stopped and fizzled out after travelling a distance of half a meter. “That was… very underwhelming. But appropriate for my first magic skill I guess.”
Q turned her attention to the glove inside the bag took it out. At first it looked to be a little big for her but when she put it on it shrunk down to her hand’s size. “Wow. Nifty.” She then took a closer look at the glove, checking out its craftsmanship when a window popped up in front of her.
[Magic Amplifying Glove (Arms, Uncommon)] Durability (23/30) - Increases beginner spell damage by 3%
“Nice. That should help out when casting Spark I guess.” As a test she tried firing Spark with the Magic Glove on, and it did seem to be slightly larger and go out a bit farther than before. The message said that Unique spells are unaffected by the rankings of normal spells… but casting it with the glove on definitely increased its distance by a little bit. Is it considered a beginner spell then? Q had many questions that popped in her mind, but she decided to leave them for later as she grabbed the dagger, causing another window to appear.
[Rusted Dagger (Dagger, Common)] Durability (11/20) - A rusty dagger. Will probably break if used excessively.
The dagger was indeed quite rusted and chipped, but at least Q had a weapon now. She didn’t have anywhere to keep it, so she just held it with her hand for now. For a second she wondered if she should bring the bag, but Q decided she didn’t need it with her personal inventory to store the items so she left it behind. A quick check on the two vials of liquid confirmed that they were health and mana potions, so Q left them in her inventory. After looking around and not finding anything else, she headed towards the door on the other side of the room. This door was made of wood and let out a small creak as Q opened it.
She walked through and found herself in a long hallway. The sides were lined with stone pillars (much like the ones outside) and nothing seemed to be too special about this room besides a few piles of rocks. Q took a few steps into the room, on the lookout for any sign of danger, and once she reached the center she noticed movement. The pile of rocks beside her began to shake and Q braced herself for whatever was coming. What she didn’t expect though, was that it wasn’t something in the rocks moving, it was the rocks themselves that were moving!
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Slowly the rocks floated up into the air and formed a vaguely humanoid shape. The rocks were covered with lines of blue that seemed to pulse with life. Once it had finished forming, a name appeared above its head.
[Lesser Ruins Guardian] - Level 5
All around the room similar situations were occurring, with the piles of rocks forming into more Ruins Guardians. Q wasn’t going to just sit there waiting for the enemy to make their preparation though, as she rushed towards the guardian closest to her and slashed with her knife. Hitting the hard stone, the durability of the knife decreased, and she barely did any damage as well. “Physical attacks aren’t very effective huh? Typical. Then how about this? [Spark]!” Q said as she cast her spell point blank at the elemental. The electricity hit the guardian and did significantly more damage than the knife, but it only took out about 1/10th of its health.
Getting hit with the spell, the guardian let out a silent roar as it began moving to try and hit Q. It swung its fist in a right hook and Q ducked underneath. She tried giving it a punch which didn’t seem to faze the guardian, though it did deal a little bit of damage. The problem with that though was that Q’s fist was throbbing with pain afterwards. “Gah! [Pain Resistance], do your thing please!” Q said as she backed away from the guardian.
All around the room the other guardians were making their way towards Q, and she counted 6 in total. She moved backwards quickly, matching the pace of the guardians as she maintained her distance and used [Spark] whenever it was off cooldown. It was her only source of any real damage at the moment, and by doing this she was able to take down one of the guardians, though her mana was already down to half.
The other guardians, not being able to catch up to Q, stretched out their arms and pointed them at her. Getting a bad feeling, Q dived to the right as the rocks which made up their arms shot forward and pulverized the ground she was standing at before. “Whoa… that power is no joke.” Q muttered as she got back up. She suddenly noticed something though, the blue ‘veins’ which made up the inside of the guardians were exposed. Could it be...? She began thinking, but that train of thought was interrupted when the guardians collected the rocks they shot out and reformed their hands.
Well, it's worth a shot. Q thought as she increased the distance between her and the guardians. They shot out their arms once again, and this time Q charged forward after dodging the rocks. She sliced at the closest guardian’s glowing vein, and the health bar above it indicated that it did a substantial amount of damage! Q was momentarily distracted as she looked at its health bar, and the guardian took this opportunity to punch Q.
“AGH!” She was sent flying across the hall and crashed into a pillar. Struggling to get up, she took a quick look at her own health bar and saw that the punch actually dealt about a third of her health in damage. “Ugh… okay, that really hurt!” She exclaimed as she dodged out of the way of more rock fists flying at her. “But that confirms that their veins are a weak point… the problem is, how do I attack them without getting hit back?” She wondered.
For now, I'll just keep using spark I guess. She kept out of arm's reach from the guardians as she continuously cast spark, and like this she was able to take down another guardian. Q began to feel a little woozy once her mana reached low-levels, and temporarily stopped moving. What in the world? Is this a penalty for running out of mana to use? While Q was dealing with the effects of low-mana, the guardians changed their movement. Before they were just blindly following Q, but now they began to surround her. Crap. And I’m almost out of mana as well… what do I do now…
Whenever Q moved to break out of their formation, the guardians would simply move back in place with a speed they didn't show before. Not knowing what to do, Q stood in the middle of the room and the guardians moved into a cross formation with Q in the center. The guardians all raised their arms at the same time and shout out their fists. Q ducked down in the just in time as the rocks collided mid air above her. Seeing this, Q ran towards the closest guardian (which didn’t move out of position for some reason) and began attacking its veins, bringing its health down to half before it tried kicking Q.
Q stepped back and moved to the center of the formation again, hoping that the guardians would all shoot at the same time and hit their own attacks. Unfortunately her hopes were betrayed as the guardians retrieved their ‘arms’ and started firing one at a time. Q could only frantically dodge the attacks as they whizzed by her. Just as Q got up from dodging one attack, another one came towards her and she couldn't avoid it in time. She frantically brought up her dagger to block, and though she wasn't able to fully stop the damage, she was able to mitigate some and redirect the attack elsewhere.
The fist crashed into a pillar, breaking it and causing it to fall down onto one of the guardians. It was crushed by the pillar, and though it didn’t die, it took a lot of damage. “I can redirect the attacks huh? Though I shouldn't do it often since it still damages me. Not to mention the dagger seems to be at its limit…” The dagger was now cracked and it seemed like it could break at any moment. “Alright then, it looks like I can block one more attack… Let’s do this!” Q tensed her body, and concentrated. The world seemed to slow down for a while as everything moved in slow motion.
One of the guardians behind Q shot out its fist and Q spun in place, using the dagger to block the attack and redirect it to another guardian. She timed it perfectly and the fist hit the dagger at a 45° angle, causing it to fly straight into the chest of another guardian. The guardian took a lot of damage, and the force of the blow pulverized the rocks that made up its body and exposed its chest. Q whipped the dagger straight at the now exposed veins, and the guardian died. In the process of hitting the guardian, the dagger broke but Q didn’t mind it much as she turned to deal with the other guardian which still hadn't fired an attack.
With an incredibly fast reaction time that most people wouldn't have, Q sidestepped the fist and then grabbed onto it, getting dragged by the force. She was eventually able to stop it after getting dragged back for a while, and she charged up to the guardian which was crushed by the pillar earlier. As soon as it reformed Q hit it with the rock fist and it died. Two more to go. Q thought.
The remaining two guardians abandoned their earlier formation and stood side by side, alternating their attacks as Q dodged left and right. With a quick look at her mana pool, Q saw that it was half full so she ran up close to the guardians and began casting Spark. While she did this she also threw in a few punches and kicks which probably hurt her more than it hurt them, but any amount of damage was needed to get through this. Eventually, one of the guardians fell, leaving the last one which attacked Q in a frenzy. Q had run out of mana, causing her acute mental pain and dizziness, but she struggled to overcome that as she faced the final guardian.
With no weapons and no mana, Q relied on her claws to get through. She tried stabbing the veins in-between the rocks, and it worked to an extent. She was able to do damage but her fingers got stuck, giving the guardian a free hit which brought Q down to low health. The hit sent Q a few meters back and she landed beside a pile of rocks. Grunting with pain, Q got up and picked up a few rocks which she began throwing at the guardian, who in turn quickly approached her. As the guardian got closer, Q moved away, not willing to get hit by another punch. Whenever Q got mana she cast Spark, and when she didn't she kept throwing rocks. In this manner, the last guardian was slowly taken down and Q finally beat them all.
New messages popped up as Q sat down and caught her breath.
[Level Up!]
[New Skill] - Deflect (Passive) Increases chance to deflect enemy attacks. Deflecting an attack reduces damage dealt.
[New Skill] - Throwing Mastery (Passive) Increases damage dealt with throwing weapons.
Awesome! Though I sure am glad I explored outside first. I probably would have died if I faced these things at level 1. Q thought as she looked over the skills and checked her inventory for item drops. Her inventory was slowly starting to get full, as the item drops from the wolf, capillets, borids and now the ruin guardians filled up the slots. Most of the items were just miscellaneous materials like rocks or crystal cores, but one of them was different. It was a small bracelet which read:
[Guardian Bracelet (Accessory, Uncommon)] Durability (15/15) - Provides a small boost to defense. Defense +3
“Nice!” Q shouted as she equipped it on her left arm. The bracelet looked like a thin metal cylinder, with a few artistic carvings on it and a small jewel in the center. Judging by the character equipment screen, it seemed that she could equip only a certain amount of accessories on herself. A total of four rings, one necklace, two earrings and one bracelet. When Q was done taking inventory of her items she got off the ground and walked over to the other side of the hallway. Going through another set of doors she found herself in an empty room with nothing but a few health potions, a mana potion, and another knife which lay in the middle.
At first, Q approached with caution, thinking that there might be a trap set up, but nothing happened. She approached the items without any incident and looked at the knife.
[Worn Knife (Dagger, Common)] Durability 15/20 - This knife is well-used, but still quite reliable.
Equipping the knife, Q saw nothing else of interest in the room so she shrugged and walked back towards the entrance...
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A/N: And so we're reaching near the end of the tutorial 'event'. Next chapter will be the last one I just randomly release before continuing to write more.
Fun-fact: There was supposed to be a puzzle at the end of the room, but I realized something: I'm terrible with coming up with puzzles.