The next morning when Huxley logged into the game, he found himself surrounded by sleeping Troglodytes. They almost looked cute in the darkness but they still reeked. Sniffing under his armpit, Hux realized that he didn’t smell much better. Letting a mischievous grin take over his face, he got to his feet, cupped his hands around his mouth, and started shouting.
“Up! Get up! On your feet! Sleepytime is over. It’s time to meet the day!”
He watched the ensuing chaos with a certain amount of professional pride as the Troglodytes jerked awake and scrambled around the clearing. They were already two steps ahead of half the recruits he had trained in his day. Not one of them groaned and rolled over, begging for more sleep.
“Move move move! Get your asses down to the river on the double!”
The little monsters dutifully obeyed the order without question. None of them protested or hesitated for even a second. This just got better and better. Huxley jogged down the path with them. He sneezed a couple of times from his allergies, but his flu had broken overnight and he was looking forward to a full day of manual labor.
When they got to the water, Huxley counted off thirty two troglodytes, almost enough for a whole platoon. Commanding them all as a single unit would be too limiting so he split them into three squads of about ten each, but held off on subdividing those squads any further. As eager as they were to follow commands, they lacked any sense of coordination and even getting them to form up into ranks was a losing battle.
“Alright you grimy little grubs. I don’t know how your last chief did things but from now on you are all going to bathe every day. No exceptions. If you can keep yourselves and your squadmates clean, I will make sure you always eat as well as you did last night, but if I can smell any of you from ten paces, your entire squad will go back to raw fish for the rest of the day. Understood?”
The troglodytes answered with a smattering of confused chirping. Right, these things might have been part of a tribe, but that tribe was still at the pre-fire stage. Hux would have to dumb things down as much as he could. Pulling his owl mask down over his face, he scanned the nearby water for slimes and saw none.
“Squad alpha, into the water.”
Huxley identified the squad by pointing right at them, but for the first time, the troglodytes hesitated. It looked like it was time to lead from the front. Hux dropped his axe and sword, sprinted past the group, and leapt out over the water.
He whooped as he sailed through the air, curling up into a cannonball and landing with a satisfying splash. He hit bottom in the shallow water, but not hard enough to lose any HP. The stinging chill woke him up faster than any cup of coffee. When he stood up the water only came to his waist but he still had to brace himself against the current.
“Come on, it’s just water.”
The troglodytes still hesitated, and Huxley lost his patience.
“Fine, squads bravo and charlie,” Hux pointed again to call out the other two squads, “drive squad alpha into the river.”
They gleefully closed on squad alpha, swatting them with their pointy sticks until they chased the whole group of squealing monsters into the water. Huxley let any troglodytes who submerged themselves completely back onto the island and when they were all rinsed, if not entirely clean, it was squad bravo’s turn. The troglodytes in squad alpha enjoyed the reversal, but some members of charlie squad caught onto the pattern and looked rather nervous. Before they could all wash themselves a red blob appeared in the water, slowly moving towards the troglodytes.
Lv6 River Slime
(???/??? HP)
Strength: Exceptional camouflage
Weakness: Tires rapidly when not submerged
“Out! Everybody out of the water! Now!”
Huxley herded the monsters out of the river before the slime reached them, but it didn’t continue downstream, opting to lurk just off the shore. It must have some way of sensing that prey was nearby. He could have moved to another patch of the shore, but Huxley was getting tired of running from everything, and now that he had some backup it was time to go on the offensive.
Hux cut a branch from a nearby tree, got his little monsters to line up along its length as if they were preparing for a tug-of-war, and then he lowered the other end of the branch into the river a little bit upstream of the slime. The current carried the branch into the slime which latched onto it immediately.
“Pull! Pull! Pull!”
The troglodytes joined forces to haul the branch up onto dry land. The slime came along with it, looking like nothing more than a massive loogie.
“Go Go Go! Don’t stop! Keep pulling!”
The fishers ran a good distance up the riverbank before the slime disentangled itself from the branches. It started oozing back down towards the shore, but it was slow to start with and it only got slower as it shrank, shedding water that flowed back down the slope faster than it could. Huxley ordered the troglodytes to stop while he fell on the blob with his sword.
You strike Lv6 River Slime for 17 damage!
River slime is amorphous: -50% to physical damage
Total Damage: 8
Hux hacked at the slime, swiping his short sword from left to right as fast as he could, splattering goo all over the shore. Each wound he made closed up almost as fast as he made it, but the notifications confirmed that his attacks were having some effect. It was definitely great for morale. The fishers cheered with every blow that landed.
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Hux ended up having to follow it back into the water, but it was too weakened from its time on land to pose much of a threat. It grew stronger and faster with every passing second as it absorbed water from the river, but Huxley was able to keep track of it thanks to his mask and he killed it before it got too deep for him to follow.
You have slain Lv6 River Slime!
(0/250 HP)
+45 exp
(125/600 exp to level 6)
+5% progress towards Novice Woodcraft Lv7
(59%)
The red glow highlighting the slime quickly faded, but Huxley was able to gather up the goopy remains and drag them back to the shore before they washed away. It felt gross, like raw eggs, but he was curious to see if he could learn anything about the strange monster from its remains.
He was met with a cheer by the troglodytes on the riverbank, and he was able to get the rest of them to dunk themselves in the river before another slime came along. Then he turned to his trophy while the troglodytes got to work catching fish. All the splashing scared away anything in the area so they dispersed all along the shore, spreading out as much as possible.
The slime had mostly dried out, turning into a wrinkled sack wrapped around a small core of semi-solid goop, almost like a giant squishy rasin. When Huxley took out his knife green lines appeared on the slime, hinting that his skinning skill would let him get something useful from it. After following the game’s instructions, he ended up with something interesting.
You have harvested: Permeable Membrane
Durability: 15/15
(-1 every 8 hours)
Special Effect: Water can pass freely through this material
While he couldn’t think of any uses for the special effect, it had much better durability than the rabbit hides he worked with before. Huxley went ahead and turned the membrane into a pouch.
Crude Pouch
Durability: 15/15
Capacity: 2 item slot
(can only store small items)
Special Effect: Crafting this pouch from untanned hide causes it to degrade over time
(-1 durability every 8 hours)
The wrinkly pouch looked ugly as all get-out, but again, the utility was worth it. With his stink more or less washed away, and his minions gathering food, Huxley headed back for his construction site.
He gathered enough logs to build his cabin the night before, and even got a start on the next step, but it was a lot of work for one person. He already packed down some dirt near the cave by rolling a log back and forth over it. He also seated several logs firmly in shallow trenches, outlining the walls, so now it was mostly just a matter of cutting notches into each log so the next one he stacked on them would lock securely into place.
Huxley’s felling skill increased by four whole levels yesterday, bringing his total up to nine when the bonus from his axe was factored in and he was able to cut through the lumber like it was wet clay. Moving the logs into place was more of a struggle though, especially as his walls got higher. When he got tired, he would sit down next to his campfire and make rope. You can never have too much rope. His camping skill had also increased to level three, letting him recover his stamina thirty percent faster than normal when sitting by the fire and he already had enough wood scraps to keep it going for days.
He was just getting into the rhythm of the work when several alarmed troglodytes came running into the clearing. They excitedly led Huxley to the riverbank where he could see what had gotten them so worked up.
A group of players were on the far bank. Several of them were shielding their eyes, looking towards the smoke rising from Huxley’s fire at the center of the island, and the last was hacking at a tree with a long sword. They were too far off for him to hear what they were saying but their intentions were fairly clear. Huxley let out an annoyed grunt and turned to his trembling minions.
“Quietly spread the word that everyone should head back to the cave and wait for further orders.”
The fishers scampered off and Huxley made for his campsite. He opened up his character sheet and considered where to put the free attribute points he earned from reaching level five after his fight with the chieftain. Better strength and endurance would always be nice, but when outnumbered mobility is king. “Hit and run” tactics can only work as well as the “running” part after all. If you can run away, you can try again and again, picking apart a larger enemy force, but if you don’t get away, that’s it. Hux dropped his points into agility and his steps immediately felt lighter, quicker, and easier.
Looking over his adjusted character sheet, Hux felt an odd kind of satisfaction and a much more familiar kind of anticipation.
Hux: Level-5 Woodsman
(80/600 experience to level 6)
Reputation: Footnote: 475
Titles: Undefeated Duelist, Explorer II, Vigilant V, Giant Slayer I, Chieftain
Attributes
Strength: 20
Agility: 15
Constitution: 10
Endurance: 20
Intelligence: 10
Willpower: 10
Stats
HP: 100/100
(+1 per minute)
SP: 182/200
(+12 per minute)
MP: 100/100
(+6 per minute)
Novice Skills
Woodcraft: Lv-6 (54%)
Archery: Lv-2 (27%)
Trapping: Lv-2 (91%)
Hide: Lv-3 (83%)
Camping: Lv-3 (47%)
Skinning: Lv-2 (76%)
Butchery: Lv-2 (12%)
Cooking: Lv-3 (29%)
Felling: Lv-4 (31%)
Leatherworking: Lv-2 (8%)