Chapter 18: Weapon Mastery
Meanwhile, the encounter between Leis’ group and the ck-haired girl had been interrupted because of the System message and they both had lost sight of each other quite quickly.
They had been swarmed by the eaglesing from above their heads and the fact that the goblins had been alerted of their position wasn’t helping in the slightest.
Leis clicked his tongue as he stabbed an eagleing from behind with a reverse grip. He turned around and shed two goblins’ heads before returning his de to his sheath.
“We should have gone to that mountain earlier,” he muttered whilst standing back-to-back with his sister. “We would not have had to deal with the goblins and the terrain would have been much more advantageous.”
“Indeed,” Dan agreed as he jumped from one tree to another with a dagger in hand. He pushed his sses and looked at Leia who flinched a little bit.
“As long as we stay in the forest, not only are goblins capable of ambushing us at any moment, but the eagles also have more blind spots to exploit and they can retreat farther up in the sky while if it was up there, the air would be thinner and harder to navigate for them.”
“Fine, fine, fine!!” Leia shouted at him. “Stop spouting smart shit, smart asses! I’m sorry I woke upte, okay?! Now focus on the damn birds!”
The whole gangughed at her words and it was that moment that everyone heard and saw the detonation ur at the top of the mountain. Rakna’s dust explosion was observable by every Host and they all saw the giant eagle at the top of the God Statue look at it as well.
The buff guy of the gang whistled as he mmed a shield on an eagle. “That was shy. I wonder who it was. Was that a bomb or something?”
“Maybe…” Dan mumbled while staring at it. He saw the blue mes that preceded the explosion and he only knew of one thing that could produce that kind of hue. But since he couldn’t really say if it was Eion or just a System Item, he stayed silent.
“In any case, let’s hurry and find a shelter,” Leis instructed loudly. “A cave or a ce with a lot of trees and no gaps would be best. If ites to it, we can also just cut down a few trees and pile them up.”
“Understood!”
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When Rakna reached the foot of the mountain, his wolf ears hidden under the illusion twitched and made him look in a certain direction where a pair of glowing eyes was looking. He squinted and waited for via and An tond next to him.
“What’s with that look?” Thetter asked immediately after seeing him.
“Nothing… I’m just wondering if it works even like this,” Rakna replied much to the confusion of hispanions. He then put his index finger and his thumb in his mouth and whistled very loudly. Right after, several howls echoed, but very shortly this time, unlikest night.
This included the wolf that had been hiding in the bushes just next to the trio. via heard it and saw it run off after it stopped howling. “Did you just…?” She was baffled.
“I called for some help. Don’t mind the details,” Rakna said. “Our priority right now is to get you two 50 Crystallized Souls each. How many do you have?”
“Uuh,” An checked his system prompt. “18.”
“23,” via followed. “What about you?”
“53. I already reached the quota thanks to earlier. That’s why I’ll help you hunt,” Rakna stated.
“Damn, you got a lot in one go. You must be level 8, right? I barely got 7 just now,” An uttered.
“Same here,” via added and looked around. “So, how do we do this? Most of the eagles already have targets. It’ll be hard to find isted ones. Do we just go steal others’ hunting grounds?”
“We don’t need to,” Rakna dered and whistled again. But this time, he did it sporadically as if he was trying to ry a message. He was answered with more howls. “It won’t take long. We can try to find some while waiting.”
An scowled. “Waiting for what?” He asked and the expression his friend gave him at his inquiry surprised him. It was the usual aloof face he had gotten used to but his eyes seemed to be almost smiling.
“The delivery.”
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Somewhere in the forest, a white rabbit was chewing a leaf when it heard footsteps approaching. It froze on the spot and turned around shivering. A second after, a literal stream of gray wolves leaped over the little animal andnded loudly before continuing their run.
The leader of the pack rushed toward the sounds of the humans fighting. He could hear the shouts and the cries of the birds. The leader only had one order; bring the preys back to the King.
“Awooo!” He howled and his pack concorded. They all reached the battle zone and the humans started panicking. But the leader ignored them. He was a noble level ten gray wolf. Before they even knew what was happening, he already had caught an eagle in his mouth; still alive.
At the same time, the rest of the pack disarmed the humans without killing them and proceeded to grab an eagle and bolt away.
The same thing happened in several locations. The wolves assembled and formed groups to steal the prey for their King.
From the sky, Gray was observing with an aggravated look. He was invisible to everyone on the ground and only the giant eagle would sometimes nce in his direction.
“Is that supposed to be the capability of an S+?” The cyber clown muttered. “That kid clearly is a werewolf. Some kind of noble blood as well. But why did all of these wolves submit to him so easily? There’s that weird woman too… Why are there two non-human Hosts in a human batch?”
Gray groaned louder the more he thought about it. “In any case, the S+ is breaking the bnce. As expected, that is what I should say but… at this rate, it’s going topletely invalidate the results. But I have no authority over the mission stiptions…”
He mused a bit while whirling his cane then came to a reasonable solution. “All right. We’ll do it this way,” he muttered and swiped his hand on his System window. A holographic keyboard then appeared and he started typing on it extremely fast.
When he pressed enter, the eagles scattered across the Tutorial stage abruptly stopped attacking and headed toward the school building.
Leis, who was about to strike down one of them, frowned when he saw them backtrack and fly toward the school.
“Weird, why’d they do that?” Leia muttered while shouldering a long hammer. “Dan! Any witty exnation?”
“I have no idea,” Dan replied with a shrug. The wolves hadn’t attacked them so they couldn’t even guess the cause of the eagles’ retreat. As a matter of fact, the leaders of the wolf packs were smart enough to recognize that gang’s threat and not target them.
“But, in any case, it’s not a good sign,” he added. “They’re gathering above the school and I’m pretty sure most of the goblins from yesterday settled there.”
“That means if we want to continue hunting those birds, we would need to face an army of green-skinned midgets.” Leis sighed. “Has everyone reached their quota for the mission?”
“No. We still have members short of a few souls,” Dan informed. “If they had continued to assault for a bit longer, we would all have enough. It’s unlucky.”
“What do we do now, bro?” Leia asked.
Leis shook his head with a sigh. “Well, logically, it would be best to get close to the school and carefully pick out some preys but it might not be that simple.”
“Why?” Leia raised an eyebrow.
“Did you already forget?” Dan pushed his sses. “There’s a certain use in this Avian Trial.”
“A use…?”
“The prompt said ‘stealing from fellow Hosts is permitted’, remember?”
“Wait, does that mean we can… kill others for their souls?”
Leis rubbed his temples. “Let’s just do what we can. We’ll get as close as possible and see if we can hunt enough for all of us to leave. The faster we do it, the better. I may not be willing to harm fellow students but it can’t be said the same for everyone.”
The gang nodded and followed him as he backtracked toward the school.
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While the Hosts were panicking or even already plotting against each other, via and An were staring dumbfounded at the many wolves sitting in front of them, happily wagging their tails like tamed dogs, with live eagles in their mouths.
“Kill them,” Rakna told them as he looked at the sky where he could see thest flock of eagles on its way toward the school. He squinted his eyes just a little bit and turned his scarf into a bow for a second time.
He raised it and pulled on the string. Two arrows appeared and were knocked at once. Rakna’s mastery of the bow wasn’t that greatpared to his most proficient skills, but his uncanny instinct as well as his wolf constitution sharpened every single of his observing capabilities.
He aimed for no more than two seconds before releasing the string. The two energy arrows whistled through the air and Rakna casually wrapped Sonata around his neck again. When he was done, two kill notifications appeared in front of him.
Then, unexpectedly, a special prompt followed.
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Your Archery has reached level 5. Host has umted a sufficient amount of level 5 proficiencies to initiate abination.
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Will you fuse your Weapon Proficiencies?
Y/N
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Rakna scowled. ‘Alexa, what is the benefit of this fusion?’
[You will acquire ‘Weapon Mastery’. Your weapon-rted proficiencies willbine to create it and its main advantage is to be able to manipte any possible weapon, even if you have never even touched it before in your life. The level of ‘Weapon Mastery’ will be the same as your highest proficiency. It is a rare, useful ability, Rakna. I rmend to ept the proposal.]
‘I see… can I do the same for my hand-to-handbat proficiencies?’
[Unfortunately, the conditions for thatbination have yet to be met.]
‘Hm… I ept this fusion.’
The instant he epted, he felt something strange intruding his consciousness. It wasn’t painful and it didn’t seem like much had changed either. There wasn’t any new information in his brain however some of theprehensive gaps for his already acquired proficiencies had been filled.
“Interesting…”
“What is?” An asked while approaching him then pointed behind him with his thumb. “We’re done here. Both of us have 50 souls.”
“Good. Let’s go back to the school for now.”
“Huh? Why? We have enough souls now; can’t we just leave?”
Rakna didn’t respond and just pointed at the giant eagle resting on top of the statue.
“I’m not following you…”
“Those souls we’re collecting,” Rakna started. “We’re supposed to give them to that statue. But is it really normal for us to be giving an Eagle God the souls of its hunted brethren?”
“Are you insinuating that there’s more to this mission?” via concluded.
“Yes. That giant bird is probably a boss. Or at the very least, he’s the guardian of the exit. There are high chances we need to defeat it to leave.”
“Well, why not do that then? Also, if we defeat it first, we can have the bonus titles.”
Rakna shook his head. “Alexa, can I share System windows with other Hosts?” He inquired out loud and his twopanions could only watch puzzled until they received a prompt asking them if they agreed to receive external data.
“ept it,” Rakna said and lit up a cigarette. He huffed a cloud of smoke that cut off his vision for a second. When it went away, via and An were wearing fearful expressions. “Now, if you get it, let’s see if we can get somepetent teammates to help us.”