《The Grand General - MmoRpg》 Chapter 0: Prologue It has been 30 years since the advent of VR technology but its uses were still marginal, big changes came with the large diffusion of Ais to the general public. In this capitalistic society when a new product hits the market, it is bound to bring many advancements to its market and like this, with a bit of pushing by almost every government around, super AIs came to be. Uses for such technology were limitless, but what caught the attention of government wasn''t some strange killer robot, it wasn''t related to war at all! In fact, this 22nd century saw a long-lasting peace between major countries but problems were building inside of every single country: society was in continuous disorder, there were few jobs to chose among for the average citizen and almost everyone was created by the government to keep people busy. This was all due to population perennial increase and robot taking places of people at work. Noah was nothing but an ordinary boy of 25 years, born from middle-class parents with not a so bright hope for the future. He attended mandatory school until 23 and it was already 2 years since he started doing nothing at all! For him opening a shop wasn''t feasible, not to talk abouta job in the upper echelon of management , these occupations were passed down to descendants or pupils and like him there were many young people around who either did their 3 hours a day cleaning of public property or directly stayed at home making time fly playing games or watching tv, since meals were provided country wise by ticket issued from the government, no wonder Noah chose to go with the latter.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. With this social background, entertainment industries flourished, there were so many games that it was hard to count them and television programs almost run out of content, yet this was not enough to satiate this boredom. Games were not good enough to keep people enthralled long enough, after some months general users grew tired of the content and searched for some other pastime which turned to be other games, tv series or, in worst cases, drugs and illegal activities. Governments tried everything short of martial law to placate this issue but to no avail until today with Vesper Online. Since the advent of earlier AIs, every government agreed to pour resources in order to develop a big enough one able to host an ever-developing game which was seen as a solution to the social problem. After some beta phase of the test, where an Ai was used to run a few games, they got a very positive response with users absorption but it was not enough, these games weren''t sufficiently immersive and the solution came with VR technology. Chapter 1: Preparations A new day for society was starting, Vesper Online was planned to launch in four months. Such a long time wasn''t intended to build up the hype, that was not necessary because standing behind it were the Three Governments who divided the world amongst themselves. This alone caused an enormous stir between every citizen of the world, on top of that this new MMORPG implemented VR technology to its fullest. In order for Vesper to work correctly, big improvements were made both on the network system and in VR technology as well. This was approved by every party, it was a rare case of cooperation between ruler side and opposition. In Middle Earth, where Noah lived, there were two way of playing this game: the first one was to buy a private VR Installment, it was basically a cabin customized for one person brainwaves only which offered the best immersive experience, fluidity, and comfort. With a cabin it was possible to keep playing for long periods of time without having to worry about health issues, only rich people could afford them because they amounted to 100000 credits which were equal to 10000 hours of government issued public care job. Everyone else could play by renting a basic helmet that offered a slightly worse virtual-reality experience, the downside was regarding rental cost. Only to pay the deposit fee and bring home a helmet a person had to dedicate 200 hours to a government-issued job, plus 500 credits per month as rent or 50 hours of work. It looked like slavery but, actually, it was sufficient to work 3 hours a day for the public good. These jobs required one to work the fields or attend to public decorum by cleaning the streets and parks, also easy public administration jobs were included. This was a well-thought way to make people stir from their induced stupor and stop holding themselves inside their houses, the objective of doing this was to refrain general population from losing attachment to reality. Noah was quite interested in this situation, a new world to visit was a nice way to relieve this everyday boredom, plus he was really fond of video games especially those with a dark setting. He liked to sneak around undetected, visit never seen places and rule over a piece of land with his army, his to command! Unfortunately, the latter was really hard to accomplish, he just wasn''t a good social guy so no guild was a good place for him and his only hope were single player games but their content soon finished or was extremely boring.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Meanwhile Vesper Online offered almost unlimited freedom in how you wanted to play, its commercials said that it was possible to do become what you always dreamed to be inside the game. Noah first thought was to become a general and hoped that he could finally try his hand at building an army in an MMORPG, maybe he could even start anew with human relationships. So he started to collect enough credits to rent a helmet. Usually, there were a lot of public jobs open for hiring but, with an estimated 20% of population hopping in right from the start, open spots near Noah house were scarce since he wasn''t in a hurry, because there were four months left and he only needed to work about two hours-a-day for three months, there was plenty of time to rake enough. After one week Noah had still to earn a single credit, he wouldn''t bother with public management where it was mandatory to interact excessively with other people so he kept looking until the perfect job was right on top of his screen: cemetery attendant! No bothersome people to face, no confusion and no heavy work required. He immediately applied and like this spent four months doing this job for four hours a day, that was the maximum allowed for public issued jobs. Strangely, when in the cemetery Noah felt relaxed, peaceful and could spend time wondering about the lives of people resting there which he really liked. After all this time spent working in the graveyard, he netted 3500 credits and some change. It wasn''t allowed to work for 7 days straight but Noah would have gladly done so. The release date was near, in one week Vesper Online was going live and Noah already got his rented helmet with one month already paid for, costing him exactly 3500 credits. Meanwhile, it was made known that NPCs were actually independent entities with a limited thinking ability and weren''t scripted to follow a predetermined route inside the game. This was a very big news because it denoted freedom without bounds. If it was possible to interact with every NPC and alter his life, then what about the future development of Vesper? It was simply unpredictable. Noah was so eager to log in and try his hands at this new world that, at one week from launch, he started to look at forums to collect more information on Vesper. He caught something that went overseen in the process: the game world was coomposed of three kingdoms, who split the continent amongst themselves, and players start point was a kingdom based on real country of origin. These Kingdoms were, a not so original, Kingdom of the West for OvestLand ( Once known as America), South Reign for Middle Earth ( Noah''s country ) and lastly, there was the RisingSun Kingdom that was EastDragon''s people starting point. Also, there were statements on classes: it was chosen a classical Fantasy class system but there was a line that caught the eye: " Where you start, is not necessarily where you will end! ". Chapter 2: Starting Times flies away quickly, and it was already the day of release. Noah laid down on his bed with the rented helmet on and while waiting 14 pm, when Vesper became accessible, thought about what he talked whit his parents yesterday evening. They were debating with him about people¡¯s frenzy regarding this new game and their point was that this was yet another way of distracting citizens attention from social problems, he hadn¡¯t expressed a contrasting opinion to his parents thesis but what made the talk escalate to a diatribe was his firm standing on the opportunity to feel freedom from this too heavy and without purpose society, his will to try something new , to live a new life. While pondering on the matter it was already time to log in and so he did. After a brief blackout, lasted only milliseconds, Noah came to be in a white and luminous space where floated a massive ¡°Vesper Online¡± over a green door. He couldn¡¯t feel his body like he used to, it was like being frozen except for your head. A slight unrest came to him but it quickly went away after a couple of seconds because he could finally sense a floor under him and slowly began to perceive his body and surroundings. The first thing that Noah noticed after turning his head about was that he materialized inside a small house with white walls, white floor and a red couch behind him. Having inspected everything around him, he couldn¡¯t find any windows or other furniture and started to make his way toward the door when suddenly a voice and a panel both popped up at the same time. Noah could read and hear : ¡° Calibrations complete! Opening the door to Vesper Online in 2 minutes. ¡°This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. After a small shock caused by these pop-ups, Noah felt again in control of his body and started to walk towards the door and then back at the couch. It was like walking back on Earth, nothing different. Even the fabric¡¯s couch texture was alright, like the real deal, if not even better than his bed sheet. Then it popped again: ¡°Countdown is over. Have a nice adventure in your new world!¡± Noah rushed to the door and stepped outside only to start falling in the darkness for a good meter or so before landing on another white floor, strangely he landed on his feet and was greeted by a voice who spoke in a neutral, almost feminine voice: << ¡°I¡¯m sorry about your transition, it wasn¡¯t meant to be like this. It seems that you were a bit too fast in opening the door and stepping outside. Now I will leave you with character creation procedure.¡±>> It was a bit sudden and Noah didn¡¯t really care about what that light feminine voice said. Anyway, he only had a small moment before another voice, this time more robot-like, asked him what would he like to be called at which he started :<< ¡° Dark Lord! ¡°>>. ¡° Name not allowed! ¡° Then, after a second of pondering he came up with ¡®King of the dead¡¯ and got refused another time with something that surprised him. ¡° Name already taken! ¡° Feeling a bit demotivated about someone else stealing such a mighty name, he started to ponder what could be a nice fitting name for a general and thought about what the consequences of starting this career were: ¡®Honor to my army, strength to lead it, willpower to bear the innocent lives I might take, resolution to give unwanted orders and discipline to follow my superiors.¡¯ But he needed a fear-inducing name, one that I heard on the battlefields would remember of the atrocities waiting for who stood against him. He started again: ¡® I will come with the army to the battlefield in order to annihilate our enemies, we will wreak havoc on their city! It will be like a pestilence came to their land, killing their people and ruining their field! ¡® and like this he got a name, like a sudden bolt struck him in the head, he spoke again: <<¡±Pestilence!¡±>>. ¡°Name selected, race set to Human, Now choose your Class!¡±. Chapter 3: Selection Noah had another panel coming in front of him which stated all the class whom he could choose from, what really caught his interest was a text line on top of the panel saying: ¡° Classes are nothing more than a set up of some skills that you will start with. Like a path to follow where everything else is yours to decide¡°. He contemplated what this may means, it sounded a lot like the commercial line of becoming what you wanted. Maybe classes weren¡¯t set in stones, interested in this concept, he began to look through this list: ________________________________________________ ¡° Warrior: Close combat specialist, start with a good fighting potential. Relies mainly on strength and constitution. Lead battlefield from the front. Mage: Ranged damage dealer, delves into the arcane and so it is required a good amount of intelligence and wisdom to go further on the path. Ranger: Really nimble with good adaptability to different styles of combat. Needs speed and flexibility: a good amount of agility will make a good ranger. Cleric: Uses faith energy to alleviate other people fatigue and ailments. It is also a person of nice wisdom, or else it will be hard to go down this path. Tamer: A tamer needs great charisma to make beasts follow him but charisma is not enough, strength is necessary in order to subdue them. Some even will not serve a less intelligent being. ¡°.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. After having read this panel two times, Noah was bound to make a choice. But which one? ¡®This path think is the key to develop long-term, at least I hope so. Maybe warrior because it sounds to be the easiest class at the start, or also a ranger. All the sneaking and adaptability aspect is tempting. I don¡¯t really know, in the end I dreamed of that army building before starting Vesper. I should stick with it, let''s see.¡¯ Pestilence gave the classes a reread and came to stop on the last one, Tamer. It sounded like he could tame everything given the right conditions, maybe this was a similar concept to that of an army. Maybe he could create a swarm only for him to lead, so he decided on it. ¡° Class selection confirmed: Tamer path choosen.¡° After this message he got catapulted in a black tunnel with a bright light in the distance and after traveling flying through it at lightning speed, he came to be in a city plaza. It was a beautiful European city setting, Noah could also feel a slight breeze moving his hairs. ¡® I have hairs on my head, Oh my god! I even have arm hair. This feels so real, it¡¯s like I¡¯m standing here physically. ¡®. Noah was amazed by the realism and details, it really was like he moved to another world with a flesh body. Out of curiosity he looked at his ¡®new¡¯ hands, they weren¡¯t exactly like his real ones and so he walked to a near shop window to look at his reflection. He could see a text saying ¡¯ Pestilence, Lv. 1 ¡® over him, over his face which surprisingly was almost like his real one. This was due probably thanks to the helmet wrapping a good majority of his head and face. It also looked like Vesper got his height and weight about right. ¡® This is really amazing! Now stop daydreaming and let¡¯s try to do something . ¡® Thinking so he started roaming the plaza and found what looked like a city hall guarded by two armored clad soldiers, Pestilence approached them and asked: <<¡± Hello! I want to enlist in the army, where do I have to go?¡± >>. After a scornful gaze by the left guard he got replied by the right one, who stood there proudly holding up a standard with a golden lion on a red flag. <<¡± Hello little one! We are guards from this city southern¡¯s army division. If you want to enlist go to the infantry camp to the west, it will take you about 15 minutes from here.¡°>> said the man in his forty. Noah, after saying his thanks, went on the way indicated by the guard and took this opportunity to admire this new city who would be his new home for a good part of the coming days. Chapter 4 : joining While making his way through the main road to the west district, Noah gazed at the behavior of these NPCs. He felt like being transported to another world entirely, this game was amazing and it could become really a new, adventurous home for Earth¡¯s people. Folks on the streets talked between themselves in a real life like way, they conducted trade at the small stalls and negotiated on ware¡¯s price. After hearing some citizen talking about food, he suddenly remembered that he should get some at the start of the game and, while feeling stupid for forgetting about it, he checked his HUD for an inventory icon. Having discovered some bread and water skins but with nothing else to show for, except some bronze coins, he started to inspect every icon he could find and the most interesting one was his missions log. What he found inside was an easy to do: [¡°Talk with an NPC and get a quest from him¡±.] Since Noah couldn¡¯t find any exclamation marks above the head of people he saw on the streets, he decided to keep going to the military camp and try to speak with the instructor or recruiter over there. After another 10 minutes of walking, he came in front of an imposing looking building with solid walls made of large, brick-shaped rocks that had two guards stationed in front of the doors. He made out a yellow lion emblem on their arms, same as the other guard had on his flag. Above the building was a red sign with yellow lettering stating: ¡°Southern Army¡± flanked by two big red flags with the same motif. Noah entered the building while being surprised by those guards not blocking him, what he saw next cleared his worries. In front of him stood a big hall with open doors guarded by NPCs and a boot with a recruitment sign on top of it.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Apparently this was supposed to be an enlisting office, Noah didn¡¯t wait any longer and made his way to the stall; arriving in front of a young blonde girl, he asked: <<¡±Hello miss, I¡¯m Pestilence and got sent here by a guard in the city hall after asking how to enlist. Can you give me some directions, please ?¡±>>. After being scanned by the receptionist gaze, he got in a calm and sweet voice: <<¡± You are indeed in the right place Pestilence, my name is Odette and I¡¯m here to inform young people about the process of becoming a recruit. It is pretty simple, actually: if you are willing to enroll in the Southern Army infantry division of Divel city, there will be a period of 1 week of basic training regarding soldier¡¯s techniques followed by a period of city duty guard and after that, you will be deployed on fields around the city. So I ask you, are you willing to be proved worthy to defend this Reign?¡± >>. After her introduction ended, Noah got prompted with a message: [¡°Are you sure you want to enroll in Divel¡¯s city infantry division? If you do so, you will be assigned weekly with tasks that will reward both experience, monetary rewards and contribution points. Beware that if you don¡¯t complete said task in a week time, penalties such as being demoted in rank, caged for deserting the Army or even worse, becoming of lawless alignment will occur. Do you accept Y/N? ¡±] Noah thought a bit about what this may implicate, he basically got to discover the existence of contribution points, which were bound to be something major since contributing to a country should always reward something, also he found out about ranks and this excited him a lot. Those penalties didn¡¯t really scare him because he thought there wouldn¡¯t be impossible to do quests assigned, or else who would enlist? Saying so to himself, he pressed yes. [¡° You are now a follower of South Kingdom Divel¡¯s infantry division. Ranks will be open after you complete basic training to become a soldier. ¡±] After successfully enlisting, Odette started to speak again: <<¡± Since you are so determined, go through that open door on the center and talk with the Head Instructor; probably he will be interested in you. Work hard! ¡°>>. Surprisingly Noah got his first quest like this, completing the old one who got him only ? of his next level; this new quest stated simply to go speak with Head Instructor at the training ground which he did right away. Chapter 5: Meetings Walking down the hall to go meet the head instructor took little time but Noah really wanted to see his status screen again because he was wondering about the incoming training and what may change with it.
Name:Pestilence Race: Human Class: Tamer Profession: N/A Title: N/A Alignment: Good ---Attributes--- Max Health: 110 Max Mana: 110 Stamina: 110 Strength: 10 Constitution: 10 Endurance: 10 Agility: 10 Dexterity: 10 Intelligence: 10 Wisdom: 10 Charisma: 10 Faith: 0 Luck: 1 ---Skills---
  • Tame lv1
  • Companion lv1
  • Observation lv1
He already discovered a change, his alignment changed from neutral to good, Noah deduced it was from joining the military. This didn¡¯t really make any sense to him since it was known that there were some bad soldiers around. ¡® Probably it is more of faction standing. Since I¡¯m in the military now, I¡¯m considered an enemy by outlaws¡­¡¯ Thinking this he arrived at the end of the corridor guarded by two brutes clad in armor with the army token and passed through the gate that led outside, where he found a large camp made of soil with training facilities such as obstacle courses and circles drawn on the ground, some as large as a whole room and others with enough space to stand for just two people. After some sightseeing, Noah could immediately tell what those circles were for, in fact, he could see some soldiers standing inside them and sparring; in front of such a circle, with 3 people ganging upon 1, he saw a man with an exclamation point on top of his head. ¡®That must be the instructor¡¯ he thought and made way to reach him while avoiding running or sparring soldiers.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. While walking he got stopped by a voice from behind: <<¡±Hey greenhorn! You must be a new recruit, am I right? Tell me where are you going and I might be able to help you.¡±>> At first, he got scared by this sudden loud voice but seeing that he only wanted to offer some directions, Noah decided that he could try to speak with him and try to learn something from this man who, by seeing his armor, didn¡¯t look like an average joe. <<¡±Hello, my name is Pestilence and I¡¯m indeed a new recruit! I¡¯m new to this world and to Divel city too. I just joined this division and Odette sent me here looking for the head instructor, I guess he is that man standing firm outside that circle with people fighting inside.¡±>> Noah thought it would be rude to just ask one question after another to a man who might be high in ranks, so he spoke calmly and with firmness hoping to get his interlocutor name by giving his. A Name was a perfect starting point to begin and build a conversation, it stated that you wanted the other person to know who you are without hiding anything, at least it went like this in Noah opinion. <<¡±OhOhOhOh! So you are one of the Adventurers that our gods spoke off, indeed Odette did a good job to let you enlist right away. The head instructor was indeed looking for some fresh Adventurers meat to taste it, he may look big and scary but fear not, what interests him is just training people! A bit of a blockhead if you ask me. By the way, I¡¯m Markus Barbian and I¡¯m Divel¡¯s city First Battalion commander. Here, follow me and I will introduce you to Dominick.¡±>> ¡®Wow, this dude turned out to be pretty high in Divel¡¯s command chain. I should try to befriend him, what to do say now¡­¡¯ Thinking so, Noah asked Markus about how it was to be in Divel¡¯s military and what was exactly their duty which got replied: <<¡±Don¡¯t worry greenhorn, I think you will find out pretty soon. Dominick was curious about your bunch after all.¡±>>. After this, they went on for another short distance in silence until Markus introduced Pestilence to the head instructor and then he left. Dominick was a tall and muscular man with light brown skin, probably due to all the training he did while bare-chested, he also sports a dark beard which goes down to touch his chest, maybe to compensate for his missing hairs thought Noah. After a brief, gazing and evaluating moment that made Noah feel like being scanned by a super large MRI, Dominik spoke while stroking his beard. <<¡±I see that you are likely to be killed by a wolf right away If we threw you inside the forest. I guess that we will have to train you from scratch; what is your path, adventurer?¡±>> Noah couldn¡¯t help but be surprised by the uncaring if a bit rude too, attitude of the instructor. He already noticed it by the way in which Dominik spoke to Markus, who should be pretty powerful in this city. Feeling helpless he told about his tamer class to the instructor, which surprised him since tamer was a path of the wilderness, rarely seen in the army; after this small chat, Dominik took Pestilence in front of a small circle and gave him a sword, after which he got inside and told Noah: <<"Get ready, I will personally take care of you!">>. Chapter 6: Instructor Dominik stood at the center of a sparring field while having a small youth in his twenties with a sword in front of him. This caught the attention of some soldiers doing their training, it was a rare occurrence that the Head Instructor would personally teach someone on technique, his fame was even higher than most Divel¡¯s high officers. Dominik was once a famous adventurer, now retired, who choose to settle on the borders of South Kingdom. It was hard to know why he did so, wild speculations made it that this was a way to keep the adventuring feeling alive by training young and promising soldiers who will later begin their own story in the wilderness. Maybe they were right, or maybe Dominik was just a retired man with too much free time on his hands that liked to constantly better himself and keep on shape; what is certain is its strength and stubbornness regarding training. This was the man standing in front of Noah, a mountain of muscles that was awe inspiring and intimidating, his dignity undiscussed. Noah could only marvel at these feelings he was experiencing inside a game; it was amazing, he never felt like this in Heart, not even when he once was faced by an automatic guard-bot that came to arrest some armed thieves on a district near his home. While marveling once again at Vesper, Dominik spoke: <<¡± You are the first of your bunch of gods sent people that I see, prophecies were given stating the limitless potential you people have. That I want to see, so I¡¯m going to teach you as much as you can digest. But I will only do so for the training period set by the army, after that I want to see the results of my teachings. So lift your sword and try to reproduce my movements.¡±>>.
Quest Speak with head instructor completed. Bonus: hidden achievement completed, rewarding compensation. ? Hidden chain quest obtained ? For being the first player to enlist in this city army, Head Instructor Dominik took you as an experimental subject. He was once a famous adventurer of this Kingdom, you can gain a lot from his teachings but that is up to you.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Now Noah was shocked, he could extract a load of information by this popup: Dominik was bigger than what he looked and this game was trickier than it seemed, biggest news is the appearance of freedom again; this hidden quest was more than welcomed but the way he got it was in a simple word: Luck. It was up to him to make something out of it as the mission panel stated. Now that he got a wind of hidden quests determined by individual NPCs and the grade of freedom in completing them, he decided to try and deepen his relationships with both Dominik and Markus. But right now wasn¡¯t the time for planning and thinking, he got to carefully look at Dominik¡¯s sword movements and try to follow them. It was incredible that such a big character could move a sword so swiftly, gentle like spring breeze and delicately in the way you would caress a newborn. Noah got mesmerized by it, he got totally immersed in admiration of this harmonious show. It was impossible for him to have an analytical eye right now, his concentration wasn¡¯t here and like this he got through all the sword forms, enjoying them. After Dominik finished demonstrating, Noah came back to his senses and couldn¡¯t figure why he got showed a sword dance even though he was a tamer, so he voiced his doubts to the instructor. After giving a strange look to pestilence, as if he asked the strangest thing in the world, Dominik said: <<¡± What have you asked is really strange, why do you think that you can¡¯t grab a sword just because you are a tamer? It isn¡¯t strange for even mages to learn some sword styles that help to relax the mind and body or some mana circulating ones.¡±>> Noah couldn¡¯t close his mouth after this reply, he felt so stupid. Almost as if he asked the most obvious thing on the world; Dominik couldn¡¯t know that what he so casually revealed made Noah dumbfounded, it was a new concept and it brought up the freedom aspect of the game. Seeing his student so ignorant, Dominik decided to reveal some other basic information: <<¡±Listen well because this is the basis of everything: nothing is limiting your mind except its comprehension ability, theoretically you could learn every ability in this world but even with an unlimited mind there is still the body to go through; without a prober body even if you know a skill or move, you won¡¯t be able to put it in play. Each level of proficiency requires a stronger body to be exerted, now let¡¯s resume and stay focused this time.¡±>>. Dominik started again his dance with Noah concentrating as much as he could on it. It looked like a gentle, innocent dance but this time Noah could see a dragon might behind some transitions; concentrating on it instead of just admiring allowed him to grasp new aspects of this sword dance, while it was impossible to learn its movements right away, he could at least understand the intent behind those movements. Like this an hour passed in which Dominik alternated between demonstrations and explanations of individual passages. It was now Noah turn to stand up in the training circle and he was nervous, never in his life he did martial arts or more than a simple workout, society now enjoyed sports but as a show and not really to practice, even his basic work out was imposed by a governmental''s law 3 hours a week. It was time to start and focus on the movements he saw until now, he remembered the gentle and flowing sensation he got from this style but he also kept on mind that it could become outright fierce and overpowering. Feeling the pressure of Dominik gaze and also the quest statement that the rewards depended on him, Noah opened his legs by a meter and slightly bent his knees. Chapter 7: To the ground A light breeze was moving his hairs and lifting up dust from the ground, Noah was tense while getting in the starting position of Dominik¡¯s sword dance but as soon as he settled in beginning stance something chanced and he was able to perceive a stronger balance of his body. Under the Head Instructor and some wandering soldiers gazes, Noah started to follow the first figure movements. He lifted his sword arm up high, took a step in front of him and slashed down with the weapon; it was hard to follow from there, memories of what he saw from the instructor were fuzzy, concentrating on following those figures and transitions while actually doing them was incredibly hard for Noah but he was able to get the next one right. The second passage was a spinning transition that led the sword to draw a semi-arc from his lowered position while turning the body in order to bring it on top of his head again and then strike down as before. Dominik did this with a dancer grace, he flowed through the hair and then struck down with a mountain weight behind the slash; Noah didn¡¯t look as graceful nor as intimidating, however the look in Dominik¡¯s eyes was an appreciating one. Noah then stopped because he couldn¡¯t remember what followed after this spinning move. He was feeling both frustrated and worried since he feared not having kept Dominik expectations of him. A voice woke him from his stupor, it was Dominik saying that for today he had to keep repeating those movements and forget about the other figures. Noah then, trusting the head instructor, concentrated again on his stance and repeated this 2 transitions again and again; it had now passed a bit over an hour and he was feeling alienated by this continuous repetition, he couldn¡¯t get a hold of the intent behind his motions anymore. This method of training was akin to imprint this movement in his muscles memory by continuous repetition. Noah felt like he was memorizing a set of movement but didn¡¯t understand yet how and when to utilize them, it was similar to knowing some ballet steps and doing it but without understanding the tempo! A mess would be the result of this unfortunate combination. Since there were doubts, naturally the one to answer them would be the teacher and si Noah voiced his thoughts, what he got was a smirk from Dominik and a command to stop. <<¡±what you figured out is right, you are just repeating this set of movements in order to commit them to memory. I can¡¯t pretend from you to learn to use my swordsmanship style in this short training period though what you can do is memorize its passages. Later you will develop a sense for combats and only then my swordsmanship can be implemented. Since you look expended with muscle memory training, I will teach you something more active for now! ¡°>>.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. After having said this he grabbed a sparring, smooth sword from a rack to the side of the sparring circle and then Dominik walked slowly in front of Noah, he got in a position similar to his swordsmanship starting stance but with the weapon arm placed in front of him. In this moment Noah wasn¡¯t really sure what to expect from his master, probably they were going to spar, or so he thought. <<¡± Let¡¯s start with something simple, execute once again those 2 transitions that you practiced until now but this time aim them at me, fear not about injuring me. Even if you manage to land a hit it will be like a mosquito bite. Let¡¯s start now.¡±>> Facing Dominik was like standing in front of a mountain made of muscles, Noah didn¡¯t doubt his master words for even a second. He even feared about breaking his sword on those iron like body. It was time to start and apart from some hesitation about using a weapon for the first time in his life against another human being, he got in stance and started those his sequences; first was the downward slash, at which Dominick responded by taking a step back, then followed the rotating one. While he was drawing the arc to bring the sword on top of his head there was an addiction of too much momentum, resulting in his second downward slash going all the way to the ground and bouncing back from it. What Dominik did, after having dodged again, was send a light push to the now unbalanced apprentice. Noah got sent right to the ground, he couldn¡¯t resist this seemingly infinite strength pushing him down. In reality what happened was just a little tap in the right place that broke the already damaged balance. <<¡±I can see that you have no experience in fighting at all, at least you chained the moves correctly. Now stand up or you won¡¯t be able to even clean the floors in the army¡±>>. Noah was frustrated by his inability to land a hit or even standing up after having tried. It was like he got played around by a giant cat and he was a little running mouse with no way to escape. A burning feeling started to form inside him, it was a rather new experience; some other times he got incensed after dying at crucial points in pc games he used to play. But right now he felt it with all of his body, the will to do it again and better. <<¡±Again!¡±>> he said to the instructor that gave only a nod as a reply. As result the scene of before was repeating as in a loop; the scant few passing soldiers that spared just a look at the scene where now standing firm and watching the show, some even cheered. It was possible to hear even one loud voice saying: <<¡± Go greenhorn! Let him taste your blade!¡±>> followed by a laughter but it wasn¡¯t done in a mocking tone, it really felt like a cheerful cheering. With each passing repetition of this cycle Noah understood where and when he was messing up, he was still unable to touch Dominik but, at least, he didn¡¯t get pushed to the ground anymore. He even realized that what pushed him wasn¡¯t an absolute strength, it was just a light tap. ¡® I¡¯m so stupid that I forgot the balance from the initial stance, then I got played like a ball in a soccer match. Since I don¡¯t think itwould be possible to land a hit, at least I have to avoid being pushed to the ground again . ¡® Chapter 8: Sweating It was more than 20 minutes that Noah and Dominik began to train together and no hits were landed so far. What changed was that, in the last three repetitions, Noah wasn¡¯t pushed to the ground because he grasped a way to keep more balanced while swinging his sword. <<¡±It¡¯s enough now. If you want we can stop for today and resume tomorrow.¡±>>. Said Dominik. Surely, Noah felt tired and mentally exhausted from more than 1 hour of constant training but he didn¡¯t forget about the time limit on Dominik teachings. He had 1 week left of training with the instructor, then there will be active training on the fields after a period of city guard duty. What caught Noah attention was that he was apparently given the choice to stop or not, coming to this point he decided to endure for some more time. The advantage of this virtual body was that it didn¡¯t felt physical fatigue, the only taxing aspect was the mental strain after an excessive amount of concentration. <<¡±Actually, if Instructor is free, I¡¯m able to keep going for 30 more minutes at least.¡°>> Dominik gazed at Noah resting figure and nodded: <<¡± Good, willpower is the best thing to have. Without it nothing significant can be obtained. Since you want to keep going, after 5 minutes of resting we will resume¡±>>. After this small break, the instructor walked to Noah and explained that they were going to do something different. <<¡±I think that you got a feeling for being dodged and pushed around by taking advantage of a shown weakness, we will now reverse our roles. Fear not because I will stop before hitting you¡±>>. Having said this, Dominik got ready in center of the training ground and waited for, the now insecure, Noah. Like with hitting a person, he hasn¡¯t ever experienced being attacked. It made him feel a bit of fear, mostly because he was going to be faced with a muscle mountain, a few heads taller than him. Dominik was like a giant and when performing his sword dance, he felt unstoppable while gently flowing between transitions. <<¡±Now look at my sword arm, when you feel like it¡¯s going to land on your body then it will be time to take a step back.¡±>> What followed next was a slow motion first passage of the sword dance followed by a youngster jumping back by almost 2 meters. Noah got a bit scared and jumped back too early and fast.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. <<¡±To dodge you have to wait until the last moment and use the least movements possible or there will be openings created. We will repeat this until you get it right, try to lessen the dodge space with each rotation.¡±>> After 15 minutes of a constant replay of the slow motion downward slash, Noah got the dodging time inside acceptable parameters. In fact, Dominik started to follow up with the second transition and the first time this got his disciple on the ground because of a too big jump back. At least he reacted and wasn¡¯t caught totally off guard, such were the instructor thoughts regarding his student. Time passed and Noah was getting a hang on how to dodge, it was getting easier with each try and space between the blade and his body was constantly getting narrower. Shortly after having been successful in both dodges, Dominik started to attack a little bit faster and sometimes there would be some surprise attack that followed the usual sequence. After another successful dodge there was a sudden notification.
Congratulation on obtaining your first skill! -Dodge(passive) Lv-1 gained! A higher level will let you have an easier time dodging: each level up of this skill will give you agility points and reduced stamina consumption for dodging.
This notification surprised Noah a bit, he could actually gain a status point by leveling a skill! He wanted to know more but at the same time, he didn¡¯t want to ask such a precise question to his Instructor, seeing the way he replied to other inquiries it wasn¡¯t clear if Dominik understood about status screens and attribute points. Noah wanted to deepen their relationship since this was directly linked to the hidden quest rewards he could get and, since this was the case, it wasn¡¯t a good idea to appear like a crazy and strange person. ¡®It¡¯s best if I keep going for now, looking at the way I obtained this skill it should gain experience by actively dodging. I will see if Dominik comes up with skills on his own or not.¡¯ Inside a training ground, there was a spectacle of a big, slow statue chasing a jumping and agile monkey. Noah was dodging at the last moment possible and some other times he jumped away at some sudden burst of speed or surprise followups by the instructor, this was fun and enjoyable, he felt a bit refreshed but the exhaustion from before was piling up rapidly; it was more than 2 hours that Noah was training and soon would be time to end it, still it was a nice bounty, in this last period of time he got 2 notifications alerting him that dodging levelled up and what he got was 1 free point of agility, it gave only 0,5 per level, not that much but this made him more agile than an average human who should have 10 as basic parameter if he guessed correctly. There weren''t¡¯ flying soldiers or ones who moved mountains to train, so it was likely that his guesses were correct. Only the instructor felt more amazing than the rest. ¡® Maybe I should look into this. But first I will take a break and go to shower after logging out. Now I just need to hit Dodge Lv 3 and then I can go ¡®. After 10 long minutes, that level up had yet to come. Noah was really exhausted and couldn¡¯t endure any longer, apparently it was harder to gain experience while grinding at the same level. Either Dominik had to go faster or they should do a sparring with free attacks and don¡¯t follow a set of moves; everything could wait for tomorrow though, it was now time to rest. Chapter 9: Going out Noah took off his rented headgear and stood form the bed, he found his body a bit stiff from laying down for hours. Vesper Online had a time acceleration function that doubled its speed, this meant that he laid stiff for more than 2 hours. It was not that much time but there was definitely a need for a revitalizing stretch, he also needed to cool down his head a bit and so went to take his prized shower. While drying up his short hairs with a towel, for the first time since long, Noah paid close attention to his physique. It was nothing praiseworthy but at least there was no excess fat, the government imposed weekly exercises were having an effect. Having experienced real training inside the game made him more conscious of the body condition and for the first time ever, he decides to go and have a stroll just for the sake of fresh air and some walking. Going out without a clear objective was strange at first and with nothing better to do, Noah had a chance for watching his city streets, shops, buildings and parks. Vupe was a nice city, like many in the state; it kept some old buildings that still stood after the last war, this gave an exotic style to the all too modern city skyline and districts. Noah lived with his parents inside a big enough apartment for 3 people inside new and modern construction, the building was located in a slightly outward district and had a small park near it that Noah was currently traversing. Following down this direction, in about 20 more minutes by foot, there was a place that he visited a lot in these past months. Today Noah was too tired to take duty at the cemetery but he still made way to it. Maybe it was out of routine that he chose that road; he didn¡¯t really mind walking to the graveyard because it was situated outside the city so there were fewer people and, following them, confusion. After 10 minutes or so of walking slowly, he found a big and calm park. it had benches placed near the scant few trees in this leveled grass field, it was a nice cover from the hot sun and Noah went to sit on one. Feeling a light breeze brushing his face and moving his hairs, he got reminded of the one felt inside Vesper before training; his mind wandered to the beautiful and mesmerizing dance of Dominik swordsmanship and wished of being able to move so harmoniously.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡®this weather is making me feel rejuvenated, I can stop thinking about today fatigue. Maybe I should do it just once¡­¡¯ After thinking so, Noah stood up from the bench and went in the middle of a nearby tree shadow. What followed was a youthful male adult trying to imitate an ancient martial master. He could exactly reproduce the set of moves he practiced for all of today morning but there was a long way before obtaining the instructor¡¯s graciousness with them. It was actually pleasant to reproduce those set of movements, he even kept going after the first two and tried to reproduce a few other transitions he remembered. Noah felt like a kid again, he was impersonating an ancient master of old times and, while strange ad a bit awkward to do, he found it fun. This lasted only 5 minutes because soon he realized what differed from the game and reality. His body had heated up and was sweating lightly, he decided to stop before feeling tired because he still had to make the way back. ¡®maybe I was gifted in martial arts and never figured it out. Oh well, they are things of the past; it¡¯s really hard to see some martial art master nowadays, it¡¯s too tiring and boring to practice and none can make a single credit for it. Still, I quite like the feelings I get while moving.¡¯ Noah decided that going outside one or two times a week to ¡®pratice¡¯ wasn¡¯t a bad idea after all and then, he went back home. He was now in front of the monitor in his bedroom and thought back at his mother face when she learned that he didn¡¯t go out for a public job and instead he just enjoyed a walk outside. Right now he was looking at some discussions about vesper online. Having a well developed entertainment industry had his advantages, there were already so many offers regarding program centered on Vesper Online but, honestly, seeing the immense scope of the game, it was to be expected. Between programs discussing general introductions on the game or others with a more skeptical view on Vesper, Noah watched a discussion program where they analyzed players updated content on the forums. They were now talking about levels, experience and skills; Noah was really interested and kept following the program for now but decided to visit Vesper forums next time he logged out. It appeared that somebody was already close to level 10, there were always those people that as soon as starting a game went straight to kill things. Or there was a funny dude going with the name of ¡®TwoSwordsInOne¡¯ claiming that he was a real martial master and got a sword mastery skill after practicing some forms inside the game. Apparently, there were strange people playing Vesper and Noah had a lot more to understand about it. Chapter 10: Horned butcher After shutting down his monitor, Noah logged back inside Vesper. The 2x time speed made it so that it was almost dusk inside game while Noah had a few hours before dinner time. Since the sun was up he went to a fellow soldier and asked for the fastest way out of the city. After having seen some combat video posted by a player, he decided to have a go at it. It didn¡¯t look so hard to slay some horned rabbits that inhabited the outer perimeter of the forest. He took only a couple of minutes to reach the city walls; conveniently, the military camp headquarters were situated near them. The forest didn¡¯t encircle all of Divel borders, it stretched from the west to the northern districts. Exiting the majestic gate made of solid rock, enough to fit three cars side by side, he could see to his left the forest starting 500 hundred meters from the city walls. Between them there was a flat grass carpet sprouting small bushes with a dirt road as large as the gate going to the horizon. While not planning to delve inside it because Noah still remembered what Dominik affirmed about him and a wolf, he left the road and made way towards the trees planning to find some demonic aberration. It didn¡¯t take long for his wishes to come true, from a small and flowery bush came out a hybrid between a cute rabbit and a unicorn. Taking a second to admire this strange and exotic creature that didn¡¯t exist on earth cost Noah his first points of damage taken. He lost 3 Hp from that damned stingy horn and 3 others from a mix of his stupor and slight pain that allowed the little aberration to strike again. What followed was a series of sword swings or more exactly, a sword shaped iron rod. What was to be used as a weapon of mass murder was none other than Noah training sword. He didn¡¯t plan to hunt for that length of time and he didn¡¯t have enough resources to get a real one so it had to do. Still, it did his job, a nice -10 appeared above the rabbit head and his hp bar decreased by one tenth. Apparently, they had the same amount of hp but he didn¡¯t plan on getting hit again, he came to practice dodging after all. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The first five exchanges between the horned rabbit and Noah were a mixture of pain filled curses and some successful dodges. ¡®it was hard after all, it looked so easy in that video. This damned hell spawn won¡¯t stay firm in a place, I can¡¯t strike it and dodge right away¡¯. He had a hard time to strike and doge right away, it was his first real combat after all. While swinging his sword to maim that little jumping pest, Noah couldn¡¯t properly concentrate on the right attack to follow a successful one or taking a step back to dodge a spearing rabbit horn. He needed practice and knew it so he decided to come here every day after training to put in practice what he had learned during his sessions from Dominik. After slaying his first horned rabbit, purely thanks to the huge disparity in stats, he picked up the pace and in almost an hour, he had become an expert rabbit butcher. Noah gained his first level up and made almost halfway to level 2, he also increased by one his dodge(passive) netting a total of 2 free attributes points and 0,5 of agility. ¡®where should I spend them? In character creation, it stated that charisma was needed to make beasts follow me but also the strength to subdue them. Right, there was also that intelligence mention. Guess I will wait for now¡¯ He decided to keep his points unassigned and find some information before assigning them. Surely he had no need for intelligence right now and his agility was raising, albeit slowly, thanks to the dodge skill. This left strength and charisma as possible picks, it wasn¡¯t known how charisma worked yet and strength added flat damage to his attacks, or so he thought considering his 1 ¨C 3 damage from the blunt iron sword plus his 10 points in, factoring a hypothetical defence of 1 or 3 from the rabbit, he dealt exactly 10 damage damage per hit. After rehearsing his deductions, Noah felt a sudden urge to assign his first point in strength to prove himself right but, ultimately, decided against it because something else caught his attention. In all this time he dealt exactly 10 damage with almost every hit, rarely he saw a -9 or -8. Factoring in luck was too much, probably it depended on the way he attacked, seeing as he kept repeating only a downward swing on this rabbits, it made sense. Being consumed by its curiosity, with his nerd side surfacing, before logging out he went to find an experimental subject to test this theory. ¡®I didn¡¯t realize this before but the way I attacked resembled those transitions from Dominik sword dance. Am I becoming mad that I did it without realizing?¡¯ After some experimentation on a poor rabbit that got repeatedly smacked in every possible way that came up in Noah mind, he collected solid pieces of evidence. <<¡±Apparently it was as I guessed, swinging this blunt weapon downward deals 13 damage and poking with it deals 11. This is probably because of it¡¯s nature as a blunt training sword.¡±> Feeling satisfied by his findings and gains, he logged out to get ready for dinner. Chapter 11: Real training Noah saw the clock and it was time to go into the kitchen to enjoy a lunch with his mother and dad. He was in a good mood thanks to his small achievements in vesper online. Probably he could be considered a noob by the average player standard because he got his first level up after playing for hours, but Noah didn¡¯t feel sad about it. He was training, he was slowly learning how to swing a sword in a practiced manner and he was enjoying his time, which was more than enough in his opinion. Maybe some people saw in Vesper an opportunity to redeem their social position, or someone else saw in it a place to let loose the pent up anger and malcontent. What Noah saw in it was totally different, Divel was a city with his own life and he felt like a tourist in it. He enjoyed every little piece he saw in Vesper because it was a new, exotic and extremely interesting new world, ruled by concepts foreign to his normal life. It could be said that the Governments did a really great job and perfectly centered their objective with this project, the only downside was that not every single citizen joined vesper yet. Official data showed that only about 20% of Earth population created a character but Noah was sure that it wouldn¡¯t take a long time for that number to skyrocket. It was bound to happen, people were going to talk to their friends and acquaintances about the experience inside Vesper, it¡¯s realism and the absorption it could give. ¡®I feel like a pioneer from centuries ago. Setting foot where no one else did before, this thought is too exciting! Maybe I will lag behind in levels but surely I¡¯m going to be the first general amongst people!!¡¯ Thinking so he exited his room and went to join his parents at the table, where he found them sitting and waiting for him; his mother had an almost worried look on her face and Noah couldn¡¯t help but think back to his activities of the day. <<¡±Hey son, what¡¯s up? How is it going with this mass distraction project that you joined? Mom said that you already acted strangely today.¡±>> Looking at his dad, he replied with firmness: <<¡± Actually, you were right the other day, this turned out to be a gigantic distraction. My mind is full of thoughts about Vesper but I feel fine, extremely so. I had training, felt fresh air, fought small monsters and experienced a new life¡­ you may think that I got estranged from reality but you are wrong! For the first time I desired to go outside to just see the world, and I did it.¡±>> At that point, with an untrusting look, his mom asked :If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. <<¡±So today, when I saw you going outside, was it to just have a walk in the neighborhood and get fresh air, this all thanks to Vesper?¡±>> His parents were doubtful about this government project called Vesper, but seeing their son so convinced, happy and supportive about it, they were a bit taken aback but long from changing opinion. Dinner ended without other exchanging, they talked about random subjects regarding their acquaintances, relatives and community activities that, the mother and father duo, were going to participate. Right after dinner Noah decided to sleep, he planned to attend every single session with Dominik and to do so, it was needed to adjust his sleep to follow the 2x time inside vesper; he decided to sacrifice a bit his sleep to get as much as possible from the Head Instructor training, even if it cost a bit of sleep. It was early morning in Divel city and Pestilence came to be near the city walls, he made a beeline to reach the training fields and was greeted by the soldiers stationed at the entrance. Noah had yet to get used to it, but now he was part of Divel¡¯s infantry division! He couldn¡¯t wait for the moment when he officially became a soldier. Reaching the training fields, from afar, he could see a dancing figure. It flowed so fast that some dirt was spiraling around it. That speed wasn¡¯t something human like, it had the might of a tornado. After his first stupor, Noah had a guess on who it was inside that turbinating fury but didn¡¯t want to disturb and interrupt that intense exercise. So he waited in admiration for ten minutes more, then the dance was finished and Dominik came out of the dust cloud surrounding him. <<¡± Hello Pestilence, I see that you came earlier than the appointed time for training. There is still half an hour before training begin, why don¡¯t we review yesterday teachings?¡±>> Noah nodded in affirmation and got inside the training field to demonstrate his two puny moves, the pressure he felt after having seen Dominik¡¯s real capabilities was immense, but he did as asked and began entering his stance under the Head Instructor watchful gaze. Dominik wore a pleased expression while watching his new trainee swinging the sword around. As he did every time that a new interesting trainee came to him, he couldn¡¯t avoid to saw himself from many years ago. He remembered his motivations and aspirations that were moving him while training at his primes, he also remembered his lack of special abilities or any particular talent, except being enthusiastic about what he was doing; maybe feeling enthusiast about something is a talent in itself, he also remembered about his enormous efforts to achieve every bit of accomplishment he obtained. These were Dominik thoughts born from watching this youngster named Pestilence. After his demonstration, Noah trained with Dominik at dodging again though it was different from yesterday. Today Dominik was going noticeably faster with his strikes and Noah had a hard time evading some, on two occasions the instructor had to stop his swings before striking Noah. Still, this hard and difficult warm up before today training bore his fruits and Noah got a sweet double level up on his dodging passive. <<¡± I see that you are getting better at this; if you want, I don''t mind having a nice warm up with you every day before official training begin. But for now rest, after 10 minutes come to join me and the other soldiers at the training dummies.¡±>> Saying so he walked to another training area leaving Noah resting on the floor. ¡®Apparently, this is going to be a group training, maybe it¡¯s the official training that has begun. By his words he could tutor me before this group training begin, I will monopolize this¡¯. Chapter 12: Battalion training day Reaching the training dummies, Noah got welcomed by a neat line of soldiers facing Dominik, he stood at a good ten meters from them and was demonstrating a sword strike, it wasn¡¯t anything like his swordance, after all his objective was to instruct a large number of soldiers with a concept of quantity over quality. They were all a bunch of greenhorns that just enlisted or were done with city guard duty but still lacking to join the army. When Noah, who was standing by the side, unsure of what to do, came under the Head Instructor gaze, he got told to join the ranks with a cold and firm tone. It was like seeing a different person, more like an iron sergeant from a movie. Noah got slightly intimidated by the atmosphere and the impenetrable, wall like, aura that surrounded Dominik; It was as if faced with a different person, he could feel the wrath of and potential destruction that he sometimes glimpsed while the Instructor practiced his swordsmanship dance. Every training soldier felt the same, they were all in subjection of Dominik. With this atmosphere they looked and observed his every move, every single muscle contraction could be seen on his steel body. His contracted biceps that were holding the sword diagonally above his torso, suddenly relaxed as if to let the weapon fall to the ground attracted by the gravity force, it looked so elegant and gracious. Before nearing the training dummie, they suddenly contracted again and exerted an enormous force. The manikin was cleave in two halves. All the soldiers were dumbstruck by the sudden display of force taking place in front of them, it was a common thought of theirs if it was possible to reach such a level for them, Noah was the same. He thought about the quantity of hard work that was necessary to reach such heights. Thinking of hard labor came naturally to him because from all the repetition of Dominik swords figures, he could see improvements. He even tested it against horned rabbits yesterday. This motivated him further on getting the maximum from the hidden quest. It was now time to focus on today training which apparently consisted of an heavy strike, Dominik didn¡¯t delay on explaining its purpose and utility in a battle. <<¡±This is a heavy strike that focusses all of your strength in order to suddenly release it and granting a burst of power in your attacks. It can¡¯t be done repeteadly or it will harm your body, its utility is still indiscussed because it can save you in a pinch, turning situations in your favor or penetrating a too hard enemy armor. We will practice this all day long, until you reach basic understanding of this technique.¡±>>The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. They got in position in front of a training dummy per man and started swinging trying to reproduce the master movements, many shouted too. It was a funny spectacle at first, but after a couple of demonstrations and some pointer by the head instructor, this squadron of greenhorns numbering no more than 20, looked like a series of machine working at unison. At some point the first in the row was appointed by Dominik as head screamer and got to shout every time he started moving, thanks to this, it was possible to strike at the same time. The other recruits also started shouting at the moment of strike, summing with the noise of the impact, it became really loud and intimidating. They didn¡¯t look like a funny assamblement of simple people but, in truth, they were far from achieving a successful hit. In the middle of this screaming, and now, fierce looking battalion, there was Noah. At the beginning he focused only on his movements and the mental picture of Dominik striking but in time, he got transported by those screams and he too, at full lungs, gave his all to shout at the proper moment when everybody else did; Dominik felt good about this Adventurer sent by gods immersing with Vesper people in training, his impression of this new student of his improved by the day. After one full hour of swinging everybody was tired, Noah needed a break too. His mental fortitude screamed to give it a break. The instructor could tell that his trainees were tired after 40 minutes but decided to let them go on until they could, keeping them motivated by adding his voice to the shouting and performed the move in synchro with his men, he did so to increase their mental and physical endurance. In the long run, if he kept doing this at every training, they will be more tempered and will endure better heavy situations. After one hour of constant slashing at dummies it was time to give them a pause and change their exercise for some time, Dominik thought and called a general stop of 5 minutes before starting a light march around the training field. Noah, drenched in sweet by thehuge stamina consumption of his virtual body, and feeling the mind heavy, laid down on spot as soon as he the stop got called. Keeping up with this speed of repetition was taxing him, at some point, in fact, he noted that Dominik''s voice kept growing faster, leaving less time between a swing and another. After 5 minutes were up, they got ready in tow line and started the march. Noah was amazed by the feeling he got from this fake sun, he could feel hot from its rays on his skin. It noticeably increased the difficulty of the march, after 10 minutes he felt like there was actually sweat pouring down from his forehead. It appeared that the system to simulate physical fatigue was well done, apart from his mental tiredeness that was really there, his virtual body only got a stamina bar that made it harder to move if it got empty. But even if it wasn¡¯t more than halfway full and impaired only a little his movements, it transmitted a feeling of exhaustion to his mind. He decided to look into this once he got offline and on the forums, he was curious about the methods that people used to overcame this. ¡® Right now it is time to run through! I will leave questions for later, let¡¯s focus on gain the maximum from Dominik ¡®. Anticipating another hour of sword swinging after this march and an enormous fatigue, wondering if other people were doing the same things as him right now, he began running without stop, keeping pace with his neighbors in row. Chapter 13: New meetings The training battalion was back at swinging under Dominik''s iron like gaze, they were all sweaty and tired; it was possible to see that someone was already at lunch break with his mind, Noah was amongst them. After one hour of forced march, shouts and scorching heat, lifting a sword again was something that he found hard to do. The few ones who were still concentrating were the envy of the other soldiers, but they also gave motivation to the ones that wanted to give up, it was now a group effort. After marching and having to shout at the unison every few steps, a feeling of membership and familiarity was beginning to form between them. Apparently, suffering together made camaraderie come to life; Noah exchanged a few words with his neighbor in row after the march ended and before it was time to swing the sword again. ¡®So, Lawrence got dumped at the official soldier test after he was done with city duty guard, hope it won¡¯t happen to me as well. Better learn what is the procedure to become an official soldier.¡¯ But he had no time to ask such questions because the call to start swinging the sword again already came, it said that they should start now or, before night came, it wouldn¡¯t be over with this simple strike. Simple or not, he had difficulty at executing it correctly, and like Noah, every other battalion member found it hard to express a big burst of power with a simple swing. They endured none the less, keeping the swords slashing at the dummies. It was more than 30 minutes when someone started to make some loud noise amongst the usual ones; they were noises produced from a really hard hit against the straw of the training dummies; even Noah, after a few more pointers on his stance by the Head Instructor, started to express more power with his blows. It was an almost moving feeling, after almost 3 hours of both physical and mental efforts, some results were showing! His excitement got rapidly substituted by concentration and focus, it was only natural in that situation of loud and timed swings and shouts; like in a deep trance, they all continued to hit dummies concentrating every single strand of power they got, in a single swing. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! After 20 more minutes, Dominik felt that his trainees were close to achieving a basic level of this focused blow. This skill consumed a lot of stamina though and he will have to make them stop and resume later, even the half assed focused blows that he was seeing started to consume these future soldiers fuels. Giving the command, they all stopped to rest before marching for the last 15 minutes before lunch break. It was like an endless circuit training, hitting dummies, catching a breath and then marching. This may look hellish right now but it will greatly help them in the future, these are the most solid basics I can impart them, thought Dominik watching his exhausted marching students. Due to the time dilation, in order for Noah to attend the morning training, he had placed an alarm to wake up in the night. Having slept only a few hours and feeling tired, he decided to log off for the time and log back when the afternoon session would start; it was a break of a couple hours in the real world but a short sleep was still better than none! Taking his helmet off was a pleasant feeling after such a strenuous training. Noah quickly went to relieve himself in the bathroom and thought back to his companions that were enjoying a nice meal at the military refectory and then wondered what they were going to do for the next couple of free hours, especially that Lawrence who recently got engaged, as he learned while talking with him. ¡®probably he will rush at his fianc¨¦e workplace to have some time together, he is really a simple minded guy. Since he told me that he used to sneak away during his patrolling duties, I bet he will do it again! I¡¯m really curious. Definitely Going to ask it when I get back.¡¯ Lawrence was really an amiable and simple guy, apparently without a care in the world except for his lover. Noah didn¡¯t despise him, after all, people in this society were much like Lawrence. They lived day by day, enjoying free meals, being worried only how to waste time and accomplish the few assignments that the government deemed necessary. This was a situation common around the world, in each of the three countries the situation was the same. It could be said that the countries were formed more out of an administrative convenience than a difference in ideals, or whatever else; since they divide up the world in three equal parts, natural resources were almost equal amongst them and with the exponential increase in technology, as time passed, it was less and less necessary to rely on natural resources for energy purposes. Thinking about the world population situation and enjoying once again his future adventure in Vesper, Noah slowly dozed off to get a small, restoring rest. Chapter 14: Gainings An alarm rang and a tenue light lit up the dark room, Noah opened his drowsy eyes and told to the vocal assistant to turn off the ringing tune. It was deep in the night but inside Vesper was just past midday, there wasn¡¯t much time left before the training resumed with its afternoon session. Noah got off the bed to do a really soft work out, more like a stretch. He needed to wake up his mind and be focused, another few hours of sword swinging awaited him. ¡® I have to hurry and log in before the training resume so I can chat a bit with Lawrence.¡¯ He laid down and inserted his head inside the gaming device, then he materialized in front of a door with Vesper written over it. Noah quickly opened and stepped inside it, he was eager to go back in that colorful and alive world. There on the training ground, he found all the soldiers waiting for the Head Instructor, they were chatting amongst themselves divided into small groups. Some nodded at Noah while he passed by, one even encouraged him. It was the one who was appointed as march director and caller for the swings, apparently he got really absorbed by the role he was given, thought Noah. He then went to sit in an empty place on a bench used for resting and waiting for Lawrence to come back. It wasn¡¯t until 5 minutes were left that he showed up in a hurry, all sweaty and wearing a nice smile. Seeing him coming closer, Noah saluted him and indicated a free spot near his. <<¡±So Lawrence, am I right by assuming that you went and met up with your fianc¨¦e ?¡±>> asked Noah while laughing. <<¡±hey pestilence ! do you have the famous rare class of seer? How do you know about what I did !?¡±>> replied Lawrence while joining on Noah¡¯s laugh. ¡®It¡¯s really impressive. Here is Lawrence, laughing with me and all the NPCs are so lifelike! they salute me, talk amongst each other and that march director got transported by his assigned role; I even fear that the guy is beginning to think too much of himself. It¡¯s almost as if being amongst real people, it would even fool me into thinking otherwise but there are only NPCs in the battalion¡¯. Noah could tell such an information because there weren¡¯t blue names and levels over his companions head. The only one with a green nametag above the head and ??? instead of levels, was Dominik. He wondered if it could really be possible to create a new home among this people, these NPCs all had a personality, had aspirations and even felt love or, at least, simulated them quite well; they only lacked that strange feeling that the people from Earth transmitted, a sort of numbness, a sort of tired feeling. Exactly this sensation exhausted Noah and made him despise most human interactions he had, sometimes he felt like that he was speaking with someone tired of life, with no will to enjoy it or experience some new adventure; the majority was just letting time pass away for all their life he thought. But here, inside Vesper, he could see people going out in the sunlight and interacting with each other, talking with a happy expression on; they were so rare out there. Even if he was referring to NPCs, after enduring hardship together and spending time with them, he began to think fondly of them, he just realized how eager of coming back to them he was.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. While exchanging small talks with Lawrence, mostly about his daily life and the guard duty he did, came the time to resume the training. They all gathered in line at the training dummies and Dominik showed up, he demonstrated another time the moves and made his troops quickly resume the swinging they did for all morning. ¡® I think that before night, they should obtain both skills. Someone already looked close to grasp focused strike, while for the other one I can only push them to the limits making them march right after the swings. ¡® It only took 10 or so minutes of constant try to get the first damaged dummies, whit each blow now was possible to see improvements. Noah too was able to damage his target and this made him enthusiast, he felt like having achieved something with his efforts. Now he could see his destination right ahead, but at this moment, after 20 minutes since they began, Dominik gave the command to stop and start marching again, without resting between switching tasks this time around. He was forced to make his trainees stop after only so much time because they started to expend a lot of stamina with each strike, the closer they got to a true and real focused strike, the heavier their energy expenditure was. So they marched for one full hour and then, they were back again at swinging, this time too without resting time before changing tasks. Dominik''s training was famous for being merciless, many couldn¡¯t endure it till the end and gave up. This, with time and experience of losing trainees, made the head instructor personally pick the members of the battalions he had to train. It goes without saying that such cadets were then sought after by every division commander to join their ranks, it wasn¡¯t strange for the survivors of The famous Head instructor to achieve good merits and even joining the elites of the army. After another repetition of this cycle, with a slight rest between it, Noah finally saw a long awaited blue panel coming to be in front of him, right after he struck the dummy causing it to break apart.
Congratulations, New skill learned! -Focused strike lv.1 You learned to concentrate your body strength to use it in a single strike, higher stamina expenditure will result in a higher burst of power. 10% of maximum stamina consumption will result in 20% of increased damage. Can freely decide the amount converted. Each level up will result in better conversion rates and will grant strength points.
After acquiring this skill, he swung the sword with more enthusiasm. Now he could feel how much stamina he expended with each swing but after breaking the dummy he was left almost dry of it, still, he wanted to practice the movements of the sword attack and set to spend the minimum stamina possible on it, better leveling the skill up every time he could do so. It was now past mid afternoon, the sun was visibly lower, approaching dawn time and they got ordered one last fast march before getting off for the day. It was during it that Noah got another blue panel, an unexpected one.
Congratulation, new skill obtained -Enduring Body(passive) lv.1 Due to resisting a heavy training without much rest, expending a huge amount of energy, but enduring it until the end. You have successfully tempered it. Every level in Enduring Body will grand you endurance stat point and raw stamina points.
After this welcomed new, Noah gained half a point in both strength and endurance. With this dealing more damage with attacks and soaking up more damage received by hits. Remembering those little horned aberrations, he summarized that they should have around 11/13 in strength and 3 or so point in endurance, these two interacting in an addictive way. Noah kept on marching and by the end of the training, which was a couple of hours before dinner, he gained 2 levels on Focused Strike and 1 in Enduring Body. Chapter 15: Comparing It was when they finished training that Noah got called by Dominik and was told to stay some more time for personal training. <<¡±After all, I said that I would have taught everything possible to you, limited to the military training period. Since we had a nice group training, I¡¯m going to ask if you have enough fuel to last a few hours with me.¡±>> Noah firmly nodded in reply to the Head Instructor question, he really wanted to get personally taught by him, even if he had to overexert himself. What they did was progressing on Dominik sword dance, practice a bit more of dodging, and they even started to have a slight spar where Noah was required to implement the sword dance while dodging. Obviously, it wasn¡¯t a smooth time beginning to implement what he learned in a ¡®real¡¯ situation, and he found some difficulty to choose between, now 5, figures that were learned so far. Still, he achieved a sufficient result, or so the Instructor said while halting the exercises until tomorrow morning. After setting an appointment to half an hour before the morning training; Noah logged off and went to bed right away. It was an exhausting day in Vesper and he needed as much sleep as possible, breakfast time was now approaching and he could image having to explain at his parents why he had rushed to sleep the night before, right after dinner, and why he will be late for breakfast. He set an alarm a bit later than usual, in order to get a couple hours more of sleep and then drowned off immediately. When he woke up, thanks to the alarm, he found his mother and father on the sofa watching tv and once they noticed him, as predicted, he got asked why he overslept. ¡®usually they aren¡¯t so apprehensive, surely is because I¡¯m playing Vesper. They really dislike it, don¡¯t they?¡¯. <<¡±Mom, dad, as you may have heard, inside Vesper there is a 2x time acceleration and due to this I have to modify my sleeping schedule. But worry not, it¡¯s only for this few days. It¡¯s really important that I do it and attend the game regularly with this frequency. It can¡¯t be helped that I have to sacrifice a bit myself now. I would go to the social job at the cemetery today though and even to the public gym and do the mandatory exercises. I hope you understand¡±>>. Noah felt strange about having this conversation with his parents because, while already a young adult, he never did anything out of the ordinary and just focused on wasting time away, without suffering any sacrifice or enduring any hardships, while now he felt like a fire burning inside him, a desire being born. Likely, his parents felt their son changing and this after only 2 days of playing that useless distraction; it felt like a change for worse though, their son was estranging himself, rebelling even. His resolution was almost affronting, like he already took the decision and nothing could be done about it, while talking with them was just for information sake.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Breakfast ended, Noah ate his energy bar and drank that new vitaminic juice that was getting quite liked by the general population, it was thanks to the rich flavor and nice price, similar as the government one, except it had a whole league of difference in regards as taste. Noah opened the monitor interface in the kitchen and booked for a couple of hours that the cemetery was unattained, it was right before lunchtime and, usually, were the less frequented hours; who wanted to work right before lunch when it was possible to choose? But Noah didn¡¯t mind it because he felt the need for a good rest and the cemetery was perfect for this, a stress free atmosphere, no loud people, traffic, publicity and he could be alone for the most part of his time; the only obligation he had while working there was to clean some tombs. Having Booked his working turn, he went to see Vesper forums before going to the gym for some exercises. The first thing he looked for was about players starting guides. He wanted to know what everyone else was up to and, while not giving any pieces of information on lead characters paths, beginner guides dictated the best route- out of the players direct experience- to follow. While not exhaustive and complete, since it was only a few days that the game was up, they offered a relatively good amount of information; the first and most popular result was a thread with the title of ''Join the Adventurer'' guild. It was seen by almost a quarter of Vesper player base, it told to speak with the first NPC they saw standing near the city hall, he then would give a quest to reach the adventurer guild and the first mission would then lead to the adventurers joining the guild. Noah remembered seeing a few people standing in front of the city hall, near the city guards that he went to speak with, apparently they were sent by the guild. Basically, the post content stated that, after following the first ten quests, it was possible to reach level 5 and then, the guild would give out a mission to complete official training, after which, it was then possible to become an official member and carry out quests at the guild. There was little information of the training content, just that it lasted 2 days and they got taught dodging passive and a basic attack skill suited for their class. Apparently, it was a different training from the one he was getting, having understood the singularity of his path, he decided to exploit it as much as he could. It also appeared by what some posts stated that the average level was around 6 right now, making Noah fall greatly behind. ¡® who cares about levels right now, I must go through the training with everything I have. It¡¯s not good to greatly fall behind though, let¡¯s grind a bit and go tomorrow to the gym.¡¯ After looking for some other post by that strange guy who claimed to be a martial art master- who obtained skills ingame from real abilities- and finding none, he went to log in again, there was some killing to be done. Since it was night and he had little time before having to go to the cemetery, Noah decided to stay near the forest borders and kill horned rabbits again. Thinking so, he went to his room and got everything ready to delve in Vesper. Chapter 16: Out for killing and working Once inside the game, Noah made his way to the forest. The moon was high in the sky and monsters gained strength thanks to it, they also rewarded more experience. Making haste, since he got only 2 hours before his work, Noah arrived out of the walls and made a beeline for the forest trees. Like the last time, he got ambushed by the little critters, two at the same time. Noah rapidly found out that the power boost was not light, the horned aberrations were faster and hit harder, actually the damage he suffered was doubled. Counting that there were two little pests, he realized that his grinding session might turn out to be harder than anticipated. ¡®better focus on dodging and striking back when I¡¯m safe.¡¯ While jumping around he misstepped and got two notifications. -5! -5! Another hit was allowed before he could get up, the rabbits turned out to be faster too. After another few minutes of constantly dodging and some rare counterattack, Noah was able to slay the first one and this allowed for an easier time with the other. The experience gain was not that greater than in the day, only a 20% increase; counting the doubled damage, increased speed and ferocity, it wasn¡¯t really worth to hunt in the nights. Checking his status screen to see the exact exp, Noah noticed an interesting fact, his dodging(passive) experience bar increased and he was pleased with it. Apparently, the growth in difficulty was good for raising his proficiency faster. The other day he could hardly gain any experience after dodging the rabbits for some time, but now it increased by 3%. It only took 4 minutes to slay the two horned rabbits, he could level it before leaving for work. He also noticed that enduring body got a bit of experience too, maybe due to all the jumping around, or was it because of the rabbit hits? He decided to figure it out with the next monster. Having rested until he fully recovered, it was time to look for another test subject. He needed one that was alone or the experiment could become dangerous, basically, Noah thought to get hit a few times while e monitored Enduring Body exp bar. It only took one minute for him to find a lone horned rabbit, it was now time to lure it and get hit; thinking of efficiency, he used focused strike on his victim, spending a total of 30% of his max stamina he achieved a good -16! Bringing the bunny health, with the follow up strike, at 3/4. Making sure to have enough hate, he stood firm and let the bunny bite, skewer and scratch him; a horned rabbit can manage an attack every 2 seconds, sometimes less if it chains up the right attacks. Noah had 110 life points and took around 5 damage per hit, he could last close to 40 seconds of attacks from the horned rabbit. To refill his stamina bar in combat, 30 seconds were necessary; being able to look at some number, made it easier for him to formulate a plan: It was possible to get hit for 20 seconds and then starting with focused blows one after the other while dodging. Executing this grinding strategy bore his fruits and he was able to get a lot of experience on enduring body, validating his theories that it could grow by taking damage, there were increases on focused blow and r dodging proficiencies too. Deciding to stick with this strategy for the rest of time, he kept on slaughtering bunnies. After a couple more rounds he found that dodging was close to leveling up after the private training with Dominik, so he went back to aggro at least two bunnies and focus on evading. After the two hours were up, he got a nice sum of 1 level up in dodging(passive) and 1 for Enduring Body too. The exp for focused blow was soaring up as well, it was a nice grinding session too. He also looted some pocket change from the rabbits, apparently to skin them a special ability was required and he couldn¡¯t stock their meat inside his inventory if firstly they weren¡¯t skinned.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Noah went back inside the walls before logging out, and while traveling he took some time to admire his updated status screen.
Name:Pestilence Race: Human Class: Tamer Profession: N/A Title: N/A Alignment: Good ---Attributes--- Max Health: 110 Max Mana: 110 Stamina: 100 Strength: 11.5 Constitution: 10 Endurance: 11.5 Agility: 13 Dexterity: 10 Intelligence: 10 Wisdom: 10 Charisma: 10 Faith: 0 Luck: 1 Unallocated Point: 2 ---Skills---
  • Tame lv1
  • Companion lv1
  • Dodge(passive) lv6
  • Focused strike lv3
  • Enduring Body(passive) lv3
He still had those unallocated status points and decided, after doing a few researches on the forum, to spend them and try out his two level 1 skills. ¡®I¡¯m also going to ask Dominik where I should focus in order to grow my class¡¯. Logging out, he made haste and changed in a tracksuit, since he had to walk for 20 minutes he should exercise a bit to compensate for having skipped exercises day. With his slow jog, it took only 15 minutes to reach the destination. He passe by the park where he rested and practiced Dominik¡¯s swordsmanship the other day. At the place he got instructed on the matters that needed to be attended, he got to take care of the gardens today. Vupe¡¯s cemetery was an ancient built facility that constantly got expanded every year, it had a large garden and was definitely too big for only one person to take care alone, there were at least 4 people doing public works every day. Today Noah was given responsibility for a recently built part of the graveyard, it was less difficult to clean the gardens there. He just had to sweep the leaves aside and collect them, he was allotted 2 hours of works which left him with another free hour before needing to get back at the training grounds with the battalion and Dominik¡¯s tutelage. While enjoying the small breeze that Noah felt hitting him, he also immersed himself inside the harmony produced by the swinging branches and fallen leaves that got transported by the wind. It was a nice and relaxing time and he couldn¡¯t stop himself from replaying these few days memories and adventures. After all, everything was new to him, experiencing hardships with companions, exerting his body to the limits, feeling like a kid again while dancing with an imaginary sword in hand at the park¡­ all these new feelings that he was experiencing were thanks to Vesper. Noah was happy while working and he enjoyed the atmosphere there, it was so peaceful and kept working happily for two hours. When he ended his tasks, he stayed some time to enjoy that mystical feeling that could be found only in a cemetery. There was a small garden away from the tombs, he used to go there in these past months that he came here to accumulate credits to join Vesper. It was isolated by his surroundings by a hedges circle, in the middle of it there were two big redwood trees with a few benches facing them. Noah sat there and enjoyed a nice breather then, after 10 or so minutes, he wanted to experience again that joyful feeling he got the other day at the park while performing the sowrdance . He looked around for a branch with a length similar to a short sword and then got in stance, he quickly found out that he was more familiar with those movements than last time; what differed was his speed, apparently he overcame his real body abilities with the virtual one. What crossed over was his ability to control the body and perform those strikes. He even tried to use focused blow but got no result, indeed he was extremely relaxed while getting ready and then, with lightning speed, he was able to strike but there was no power boost effect. In the end, it as useless to practice anything other than the sword dance, which he did with all the figures he learned so far. After 20 minutes of dancing and another 10 of recovering from the fatigue, Noah got ready to walk back home and train under Dominik tutelage before the battalion training began. Chapter 17: Decisions This was the third day of training for Noah, thinking back on the other player''s route, he gained a lot more and there were 5 days to go before he completed the hidden quest. He was eager to know what awaited him in these coming days. As agreed with the Head Instructor, he came to the training grounds 30 minutes early and there he found him waiting. This imposing and muscular man was sitting on a bench, with a pair of training swords besides him. When he saw Pestilence a warm smile appeared on his face and, while lifting himself and going inside a sparring circle, he said: ¡° You have come youngster! Good thing to see all this enthusiasm. Today I want to imprint some moves from my sword dance, it won¡¯t take many days before you memorize every part of it. After we are done with a couple of moves, we will dedicate the remaining time to dodging. ¡°. Having exchanged a few greetings with the instructor and learned what was waiting for him in this private session, Noah entered the circle leaving a bit of space so Dominik could freely move. What he got showed was a full execution of Dominik¡¯s sword dance. It was composed of a total of 10 moves with 10 transitions. The last passage was chainable with the starting strike, allowing for a smooth cycling of it. This was what he saw the other day when he came earlier, Dominik was constantly chaining repetitions of his sword dance. Today focus was on two moves, bringing Noah at 7 out of 10, he was nearing the end, and wondered what could be obtained from doing so. Understanding that this opportunity to train with Dominik was something kind of unique and that he could learn and obtain a lot, made Noah really eager to dedicate himself even more. Right before his turn to start the practice, Noah, following this train of thoughts decided to ask the instructor: ¡° Teacher, I was wondering in which aspect of my body I should invest and focus in order to grow efficiently, can you enlighten me?¡±. Dominik started pondering a bit as if in a deep meditation, it wasn¡¯t a simple matter to answer after all. He knew all too well. ¡°You see, we all have a Path already established for us but you don¡¯t have to look at it as an immoveable guide, there are some rare chances were a person path can change or, with time, evolve. This said, remember when I told you about magicians learning swordsmanship, you can specialize how you want. For the time being, try to get a feeling for your path first. Use it and then we will have this discussion again¡±. There was a strong feeling of trust in the eyes of Noah, who was looking at his teacher. After all, he really liked to feel like a swordsman but, at the same time, didn¡¯t forget about his dream of controlling an army. In conclusion, after logging out, it was necessary to see what other tamers were doing, or so he thought. After 20 minutes they were done with learning those two moves, it was a straining matter this time. Going further in the dance was physically hard because Dominik pretended to see it being done from the start every time, Noah was at a point where he could execute it in the dark, with his eyes closed. In the remaining time, he got a level up in dodge(passive), Noah got amazed by his ability to avoid such fast blows fired by the instructor. His reflexes were improving and, with each level up of the skill, he could feel his body becoming faster. His passive was already level 7, now rabbits weren¡¯t enough to raise its level. Only sparring with the instructor could, and this was him starting to display some real speed, comparable to the soldiers that Noah could see sparring not so far away.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. It was when the duo was taking a rest of 15 minutes before the group training began that they received the visit of Markus Barbian, Divel¡¯s city first battalion leader. ¡°Hey greenhorn! I see that you are working hard with the Head Instructor. How is the training going, pretty hard right?... Good, keep going!¡±. He spoke with that loud voice of him while laughing and then, turning serious, asked to talk a minute with Dominik alone, Noah was more than happy to comply so he saluted and went to gather at the battalion training ground where he found Lawrence being there earlier than usual. While approaching he got saluted as usual and then went to sit beside his favorite NPC out of the bunch, Lawrence. His character was really cheerful and solar, he could bring out a good mood with just his presence alone. Even if a bit light headed, Noah really liked to interact with him. Having sited down, saluted his friend and acquaintances, Noah had some small chat waiting for the instructor to be there. It turned out that his friend got dumped at the promotion exams because he came late a lot of times to the city guard duty and even on the exam day. Lawrence admitted that he wasn¡¯t permitted to take the physical tests at all, pretty like him Noah thought. When Dominik arrived in front of his trainees, he carried with him a full bag of spears with a round head meant for training. Wearing a serious expression he announced that today they were going to familiarize with spear attacks and the objective of the day was to utilize focused blow with this weapon too. Noah was surprised that the skill could be used with different weapons, maybe it was possible to utilize it with bare fist too. There was a high chance for that to be the case. It went smoothly for the first half of the day, after a couple of hours of familiarizing with the spear and trying to get the movements of focused blows right with the new weapon, some results were arriving and many people were able to rightly execute the blow. Right before the lunch break, they had a run as routine and Noah logged off to rest a bit. The training day was concluded successfully, albeit that Dominik¡¯s expression always remained placid and serious. Noah gained 3 levels in focused blow and 2 in enduring body, training and running paid off it seemed. He checked his stamina and found it at a whooping 125 points, he wondered if his increased endurance lowered its consumption or only indicated his defense. Having these thoughts he stayed behind to have another training with Dominik. He found the instructor waiting for him with the serious expression that he carried all day. ¡°here you are Pestilence, I have to talk with you. It appears that a problem that requires my presence aroused. While I promised that I would have taught you everything I could during the military training period, I don¡¯t think that is possible anymore. Now I will pass down to you the remaining moves of my sword dance¡±. Noah, feeling agitated about both losing his opportunities and losing the Instructor who he started to respect and admire, spoke right away:¡± Instructor, I¡¯m really thankful that you will pass down all of your sword dance to me. But I also don¡¯t want to part with you yet, there is still more I can learn from you! I hope that there is a way that you can keep up your promise¡±. It was with a bit of remorse that he spoke those words, he even felt a tad bit greedy with his demands but he got to be daring, this was his golden ticket to gain an advantage against the other players; Dominik was the way to tread his route and enjoy a unique adventure. ¡°You are right, I promised to train you but this matter can¡¯t be avoided. I have to depart, maybe the next morning, I don¡¯t exactly know when but I must go¡±. After this reply, Noah felt desperation arousing in him; Dominik was going to depart and he couldn¡¯t avoid it; since it wasn¡¯t possible to overcome the hurdle, he decided to go alone with it. ¡°Teacher, please allow a selfish request of mine! Bring me along and train me, there are some days left after all. You can even leave me behind when the teachings are over¡±. The stubbornness of this young student and his vigorous flame, both impressed him. It really looked like he was seeing his past and young self, burning from desire and willing to sacrifice himself to gain something in return. ¡°Indeed I promised, I guess that I¡¯m allowed to bring along an aide. But if we do so you will have to leave the military or it would figure out that you deserted the training period, I¡¯m sorry but I don¡¯t have enough power to change these bureaucracy matters. Everything I can do is make you join the expedition as my follower and sentencing you not worth to join the military, this would give you an easier time leaving this camp¡±. While speaking he maintained a perplexed and curious look, as if to wonder what Noah would answer. ¡°You have until the end of this session to decide, now focus on learning the remaining figures¡±. Chapter 18: Resolution It was as if a bomb had struck Noah, a crossroad appeared on his route: follow Dominik, apparently an important character that was keeping a low profile, or staying in the military training camp and going through with the training. While joining the military was a sure route to lead an army, getting higher in ranks and ultimately, gaining power, what Noah really craved was an adventure; exploring this fascinating alternative world that was Vesper. Since his first day here, he got fascinated by the degree of realism, by the freedom of choice, by the infinite possibility that this game promised. Noah wanted to explore and enjoy himself, probably this was a stronger desire that his childlike dream of owning and leading an army. Ultimately by following Dominik, he was bound to achieve a lot of gainings and learn a lot more about the game. Noah train of thoughts was interrupted by his teacher loud and powerful voice: ¡° Pestilence, now you have to focus only on the moves that I¡¯m going to show you! Remember the feeling you got by watching my full sword dance the first time? You have to constantly flow like the water in a river, never stop. Keep the momentum going and be ready to crush your opponent at a moment notice, when he shows a gap or when he messes up. Until that moment, you have to constantly strike while avoiding each of his blow, it would be like you are a tornado spiraling around him, never giving any rest. This is a swordsmanship that require a high amount of agility, stamina and strength. Fast, gracious, never ending and powerful! ¡°. After this enlightening speech Dominik got in stance with a solemn posture and started to show the dance at full force and speed, he really looked like a tornado. When the last 3 moves came, he slowed down to let Noah have a good look at them, they were like the other 7 he already knew. A series of circular swings alternating from the bottom or from the top, sometimes hitting after a spin, some other time slashing by the side; spinning without stop, each spin a transition to next strike and a possible way to dodge the opponent. This was Dominik¡¯s sword style. A dance meant to engrave in the body a feeling for movement, a way to learn how to fight. More than an hour passed while Noah focused only on his movements trying to immerse himself in Dominik¡¯s style. After a while he got surprised, subsequently a successful execution, by a blue panel; a panel that was going to determine his choice on the matter of following Dominik or staying here, he could feel the importance of this notification even before reading its content.
Congratulations on learning a Sword Style!
  • Unending Maelstrom(passive) lv.1
After a lot of effort to memorize each move, you understood their purpose. Your combat style will be influenced by these moves that you trained in if you keep practicing them. Each level in unending maelstrom will grant you a point in agility and strength. Constant reproduction will grant some stamina points and increased proficiency in this skill. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Albeit feeling a bit down, since he didn¡¯t receive an active skill nor a powerful finishing blow, this message was a well-received one, Unending Maelstrom was a powerful passive to have. Giving a full point in both strength and agility could enhance him a lot in the long run. Noah vowed to constantly practice in order to increase his stats, this way he could invest those unallocated ones from the level ups in other places, more suitable for a tamer. There was another hour before Dominik pretended to hear a response and Noah fully utilized it to get a level in his new passive. ¡°you improved a lot in this two hours, I wonder if you also found a resolution to choose. While it may sound like an interesting adventure, remember that there will be dangers! A lot of them actually¡±. The instructor continuously reminded Noah about his possibility to stay here and continue the training with the battalion like he was doing. After all, Dominik was thinking about his new and young student safeness, he was going to participate in a delicate matter and there was real danger awaiting them if he chooses to come; between worried thoughts, a sort of anticipation and excitement to see a young adventurer join him in this travel born inside him. It was too much time that he stopped going out in adventures, his age already well past the young years, even if it didn¡¯t show on the outside, his strength wasn¡¯t any more like the days long passed that gave him his fame. Thinking of going out again with fresh blood reinvigorated him. ¡°Teacher, if you are still willing, I¡¯m going to follow you out there in this travel. I¡¯m ready to discard my place here in Divel¡¯s army!¡±. Dominik gave only a nod, he kept a calm appearance in order to respect the solemn resolution that this young boy showed. ¡°See you tomorrow morning in front of the city gates, I think that the departure will be after lunch in order to arrive at the location in the morning after having rested for a full night in the forest. I¡¯m going to let you experience some real fight in the forest, at least I hope you will be able to defend yourself during the travel!¡±. Saying goodbye and deciding on the 6 am as appointment time, Dominik who was going to leave suddenly turned around and added that he will bring some equipment that he had kept from a long time ago for Noah to use. Feeling anxious for the next morning, he runs to the city gates and logged off there. Noah didn¡¯t want to be late for the appointment. Getting up from the bed and turning on the lights, he checked the time and went straight for his telescreen. It wasn¡¯t yet dinner hour and he decided to see what the other tamers were up to. Inside the forum, almost every post related to taming had a common point. A common problem thought Noah: tamed pets needed food! It was a setback on the whole Path. A proper support structure and enough resources were needed in order to run a large army of pets. Some interesting posts noted that a way to deal with this issue was to have a skinner in the party so that it was possible to collect the meat from the slain monster and then a cook to prepare it. Apart from this, Noah looked for news on how to tame and regarding the companion skill too. Taming wasn¡¯t all that hard, an active use of the skill on a monster with low life was enough to tame it, a variable percentage success rate was then applied; the amount of health remaining, total strength and charisma were the factors that determined the number. An important notion was that if a monster was dealt with by a party, taming resulted a lot more difficult. Companion was an entirely different matter, it was way harder to get a companion than taming a beast and it was limited to one. A companion got his potential unlocked to the fullest and evolution was possible for it, while tamed beasts couldn¡¯t gain experience, companions instead shared half of the user gained experience, differently than tamed beasts, they respawned with the user after death. Noah got the feeling that taming was a sort of short time solution to hunting, not an easy way to build an army if dying meant to lose all the tamed beasts that didn¡¯t recognize you as an owner anymore after respawning. Still, there was a lot of potential within this skill if used correctly. He decided to try out his taming skill tomorrow and ask Dominik if he knew a solution to the food problem since Noah was alone right now with no party member. He got ready to eat dinner and rest a bit before tomorrow new adventure. Chapter 19: Tamer It was early morning inside Vesper, at the city gates a small white light shone and Pestilence materialized inside it. There, right outside the city gates stood Dominik chatting with a city guard. Apparently, the dude was a big fan of the Head Instructor and was asking for a few pointers. ¡°Oh, hello Pestilence! You are always on time and since you are here let¡¯s depart for the forest¡±. They both saluted the city guard and left in the direction of the trees, it was necessary to cross the grassland inhabited by the horned rabbits and Noah couldn¡¯t think of a better target to try his taming skill on, sharing his thoughts with Dominik, he got his consent. They started looking for a rabbit that was level 1 or 2 since taming at low levels was only effective if the beast was lower or equal to the user level. After they found a nice prey, Noah opened the Taming skill interface to check for ulterior information:
-TAMING lv. 1 An active use on a low health creature with a level equal to or lower than the user can result on the beast following the tamer will as long as one of them doesn¡¯t perish. The maximum number of tamed beast is given by the total amount of charisma. Each creature reserve an amount of charisma equal to 3 x it¡¯s level. Each level up in taming will result in an increased success rate and lowering the reserved charisma.
With his 10 charisma, he could tame 1 level 2 horned rabbits and decided to invest those 2 free points in charisma, increasing the maximum tamed beasts to 2. He got to work right after, bringing out of his inventory a dull, training sword he began to hit repeatedly the little creature and dodge every strike he received, under the appreciating gaze of Dominik, the horned rabbit health dropped to 1 / 10. After two uses of tame, the little creature submitted to Noah will. Changing his health bar and level to a friendly azure, Noah noted that its health gauge didn¡¯t refill. Looking for a way to fix the pet issues he noted that on his bottom left corner of the hud, an icon with a small, circular puppy face appeared. Willing it to open resulted on a table with the list of his tamed creatures; it displayed his available charisma, which was 6/12 and a section for his companion. He pressed on the horned rabbit icon, opened another panel that explained how to raise his health bar: meat was needed to heal a pet, raw was fine too but it was less effective than cooked one. Turning to Dominik, he found the instructor watching him with a small smirk and a knowing expression: ¡±Teacher, my new pet needs meat in order to heal up but I have no way to obtain it right now. I fear that in the future, when adventuring, it won¡¯t be possible for me to maintain my pets ¡°.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Laughing as if shown to a banal, easy to fix, problem; Dominik replied: ¡° You know, back in the days I had many solo adventures. How do you think that I survived in the wilderness alone for a long period of time? Sure, I had many provisions but I bet that your inventory is empty right now. It happened to me as well, the only solution is to learn the methods to take care of the problems with your ability¡±. Finished speaking, Dominik took out of his backpack an hunting knife that was almost a forearm length and offered it to Noah. ¡° I guess it is the proper time to give you this present, it¡¯s a simple skinny knife that I used back in the days but I guess that you can use it properly as a weapon too. Now I will show you how to skin and cut the meat from a beast, let me catch a few rabbits and then we can start¡±. Noah received the knife, while Dominik chased some soon to be training carcasses, he inspected it.
Large skinning knife Rarity: Uncommon Durability: 60/100 Damage: 8~10 A skinning knife that can be used to fight, it is a bit worn out by the ages but a great care was taken on the maintenance.
The damage was a nice power up compared to the dull training sword and, since it was a utility tool, no level was required to wield it. When Dominik came back he started to skin the first rabbit and then extract its meat and presented it to Noah who fed his tamed rabbit right away that started to chew and restored his life to the full. Apparently it didn¡¯t decline the meat that was from his kin, inspecting it only revealed generic meat as a genre. Probably it was all the same and didn¡¯t differ between common monsters. The next carcass was taken care of and Noah got a feeling for skinning, actually, it was sufficient to stuck the knife behind the neck and then slide it under the pelt, separating it from the meat. It was a gruesome scene, he felt some reluctance at having to do it but it was necessary. The remaining 3 carcasses were wasted by his failed attempts. It looked so simple, easy and fast when looking at Dominik but the reality was different, Noah constantly broke the pelt, damaged the meat by puncturing and lacerating it. ¡° Hahahaha, Don¡¯t worry Pestilence! A lot of carcasses are required for you to learn the basics of skinning. You will keep practicing every time that there is a chance, in the future I will provide to your pets need for meat. ¡° There was no other way seeing that with a single mistake the carcass disappeared. Noah saw a few images of animals feeding on each other in some documentaries and it clearly looked different from what he saw right now. The tissue inside the pelt was an homogenous mass, like a red balloon covered with fur. There wasn¡¯t leaking blood, lacerated strands of meat or tendons inside the dead creature. He like it, it wasn¡¯t pleasant to skin a too realistic animal after all. Even those documentary images were really traumatizing and he remembered the clamor it caused when it was published, after all, many people liked animals and rented them for many days even. It wasn¡¯t considered fine by the society to eat real meat anymore; only a few, wild animals existed in some reserves. Today¡¯s Dogs and cats were raised by government offices as rentable companions in out of city buildings, it was like this since Noah was born. After a reforming law regarding animal tolerance was launched, the view on them changed. They became a prized and precious object and each atrocity against them wasn¡¯t tolerated. He was sure that only a few people would gladly pick up skinning as a side skill, and probably some protest was going to happen but he could see that the skill was thought out to be inside acceptable margins and tolerable by the society. Still, Noah liked this new aspect that was so foreign to the outside world. Deep down he was even satisfied when he could skin more of the carcass in a correct manner. He felt the primordial joy of an hunter. Getting up, it was now time to make way to the forest and tame another rabbit before delving inside the trees. It only took 5 more minutes to reach the outskirts with another follower behind them; Noah decided to call them Horn n.1 and Horn n.2 both level 2 with a full health gauge. ¡° Once inside the forest, use your creatures to scout in front of us. While these wolves aren¡¯t dangerous to me, we are here to train you. Stay alert and keep your new knife in hand, ready to strike ¡°. They proceded in an ordinated manner inside the trees¡¯s shadow, Noah was eager to try his hands at a wolf. Chapter 20: In the forest The forest was large, wet, and rich of plants. Its canopy was dominated by tall trees, probably about 10 meters with sparkling light dancing between the branches. It was a new experience for Noah, who never visited such uncared, wild forest before. Yes, there were natural parks in the countryside but the ones popular as tourist points were full of well cared footpaths, with a lot of people doing community jobs to take care of its environment, almost feeling artificial; inside Divel¡¯s city forest he got a feeling of unattained wilderness, a new experience for him. Branches drooped from many trees, and flowers clung from them, this alleviated the otherwise homogeneous forest atmosphere. Noah enjoyed this adventure in the company of Dominik and his two tamed rabbits but soon they were bound to encounter some wolves and he was getting a bit tense from the possibility of a sudden danger around the next corner. A dozen meters passed before they heard a clamor of animal sounds, akin to howling, resonating through the air. ¡° Get ready because they are near, probably a full pack. We will try to avoid them and look for some lone beast. In the unforeseen chance that we are found out, stay behind me and get your pets to defend yourself. ¡°. They proceded with the usual formation, horned 1 and 2 were jumping between roots sprouting from the ground and bushes, Noah was right behind them with his large knife in hand and Dominik watched the rear. They were still far away from the location of the howlings, it was possible to hear them only by standing still, Dominik said that the pack was moving away from their location. Suddenly noises originating from a nearby bush that horned 1 just passed and attracted Noah, it was then that he saw a mass of grey fur jumping from it out in the open. Its head stood at around one meter with a muscular body, built like a killing machine; this beast grabbed horned 1 with his big maw, its teeth penetrating inside the small rabbit meat, this caused a damage of half the hp bar and a severe bleeding status, a sudden loss of a huge amount of health also caused stiffness and horned 1 was unable to move. The big wolf looked straight to Noah, it had yellow eyes, light in color but deep and vibrating with intensity. He lost track of where he stood, this encounter too realistic for him to handle properly with lucidity, his surroundings palpitated with wild vegetable life and a ferocious beast, with huge claws as big as a human hand, stood in front of him. A shout woke him up, it was Dominik that brought him back to his senses; shaking his head to get some focus back in him, Noah squeezed harder his knife handle. It was time to act, the poor little critter had fulfilled his role of bait and horned 2 was getting ready to attack. Noah approached the wolf that had dropped horned 1 in the meantime, before the big creature could land another strike to the downed pet, Noah was on it with horned 2 and both struck at the same moment. -3 -20! This beast was a level 4 and, after receiving two attacks, his HP bar only lost 1/10, Noah had to dodge right away because it didn¡¯t allow a second strike and jumped at his throat right away. It was a close one, taking a step back and pivoting on his left foot allowed Noah to completely sidestep the wolf lunge; finding himself behind the opponent was a nice chance and he struck down achieving a critical strike.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Probably Noah didn¡¯t realize that he used the first move of Dominik¡¯s sword dance, but finding himself with his sword lowered and seeing the wolf turning around with another lunge, made Noah think of the second transition and move of Unending Maelstrom: he pivoted another time and inscribed a full arc before striking down again, this time at the wolf head. It was short work of the wolf once he grasped the right timing to dodge and strike back, allowing only a single hit that took ? of his health. Horned 2 was used as a distraction during the fight and his continuous strikes, in the end, amounted to a decent damage. When the fight ended he noticed that horned 1 disappeared without leaving behind a body, apparently his severe bleeding status was fatal to it. A voice came from behind his shoulders: ¡° As a first encounter it wasn¡¯t bad, you did a good job fighting the wolf. Now you can practice skinning that carcass ¡°. Dominik wore a pleased expression while speaking, he did so a lot recently and Noah noticed it this time, he also liked his teacher. What he didn¡¯t really like was skinning, it was a bit unpleasant. A wolf body is similar to a dog after all and with a bit of reluctance he began his job, it was necessary to learn the skill. ¡® if I go out in the wilds to chase some adventure it will be impossible without this skill¡­. Still ¡­ I have to do it ¡®. Two minutes later he got another failure and a bit of discomfort, having to go through this unpleasant process and obtaining nothing wasn¡¯t nice at all. ¡° Get ready, we have another few hours to get you used to walk in a forest. Let¡¯s depart ¡°. Dominik always spoke at the right time, urging him to go on was a nice way to change the mood. The instructor was able to see that little discomfort on his young companion, he experienced it too in the early days but knew all too well that indulging on something indispensable could turn out to be detrimental in the long run. A strong resolution was necessary to obtain huge rewards in this world, this was Dominik train of thoughts. After 5 minutes of exploring the forest, they encountered another lone wolf, having found him before he could ambush them allowed an easier fight and Horned 2¡¯s life was preserved. After this fight Noah got a level up and reached lvl3, there was another welcomed notification: Unending Maelstrom leveled up, he expected to see dodging(passive) increase in level too but, in contrast, it gained very little experience. ¡°Teacher, I don¡¯t understand why dodging isn¡¯t increasing in proficiency at all in these two fights, can Instructor enlighten me ? ¡°. Noah, faced with this question, asked the person he relied on as a guide. Dominik laughed loudly as soon as he heard the question, it was as if he forgot where they stood and the wolf pack that could be nearby. ¡°Pestilence, haven¡¯t you noticed that you easily dodge every attack of the wolf? Well, you are way stronger than him. Your physical abilities alone are enough to fight him, you can¡¯t gain any proficiency in any ability this easily at your current level. Harder situations are required ¡°. Noah now thought about his status screen, with the level up in Unending Maelstrom he got other bonus stats, even if he leveled up only 2 times, his stats were comparable to a much higher leveled character, how much higher he didn¡¯t know yet, looking for some information in the forums was needed. Now it was possible to see why Dominik¡¯s trainee could enter the elites of each battalion. His foundation was solid and this gave him an advantage compared to other players, he could capitalize on this and look for ways to gain more passives that increased his stats. He was so eager about the hidden quest that allowed all of this to happen, he checked and there were two other days in the game before its completion, apparently following Dominik outside of the military camp was the way to complete it. Anticipating the next few days with the Head Instructor teachings and the coming adventure he began to skin another carcass, this time without showing discomfort. He was eager to challenge another wolf. Chapter 21: Dominiks show Noises could be heard inside the forest, pain filled screams sounded almost every few seconds. After leveling up, Noah roamed the forest with better efficiency thanks to his increasing experience in direct combat. Dominick was right, he was much stronger than a wolf with his above average stats and sword-wielding ability. He could achieve a wolf kill every 5 or so minutes and reached level 4 rather quickly but it was impossible for him to cause such a ruckus, it sounded like dozens of wolves were being beaten simultaneously. At the current time, Noah was just standing firm and horned 2 was no more, fallen by a severe bleeding like his old companion. A wolf came flying towards him and another was laying to his side ready to join the carcasses count; Dominik was turbinating in the midst of 10 wolves, it was a massacre. Every hit of him caused a beast to get in a critical condition or directly killed it, waving between lunges that came from every direction he struck back without hesitation, he never stopped: form their first contact to the last hit only 20 seconds or so had passed. Noah was a bit alarmed when horned 2 got in range of a resting wolf pack, they didn¡¯t notice the laying beasts until it was too late, a price that was paid by the little follower. In turn, Dominik got it action right away and gave Noah a display of correct application of his teachings. He never stopped and dodged every attack aimed at him while constantly counterattacking, doing both with only one action some time. Sheathing his sword, the instructor spoke: ¡° this was unexpected but nothing really is predictable when traveling in the wild; now let¡¯s skin them, I do 7 and you do 5¡±. Noah felt awestruck and a bit of fear for the man that accompanied him until now began to form inside of his mind, standing among so many wolves body made him more intimidating. His recent display were it looked like he was playing around with those beasts that could do short work of Noah, didn¡¯t help either. While constantly replaying that massacre in his mind, Noah skinned 3 bodies of his share; every attempt turned out to be a failure, a wolf body was bigger and needed more work than a rabbit one. Looking at Dominik and seeing he close to finishing his share, Noah focused back to his work. The fourth one was almost a success but, in the end, he failed at properly separating the fur at the belly region. ¡° you did a good job with this one, take a rest before trying your hand again. Now go and collect the meat and fur that I piled up over there¡±. Turning in the direction he pointed at, Noah could see a pile of 7 furs stacked on top of each other and a small mountain of meat. He wondered if it was possible to store all of this inside his inventory, reaching there he touched the meat while thinking of storing it inside his storage. Suddenly, a prompt appeared asking him how much he wanted to put away; shortly after Noah was back with his inventory weight nearing the limit. He knelt down near the last wolf body and began to work, deciding to go slowly this time, his knife cut a hole and began to separate the fur.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. After 5 minutes of slow and precise work, he got rewarded by the long-awaited prompt.
Congratulation! Skinning lv.1 obtained After many tries, you were able to successfully skin a beast obtaining fur and meat from it. Each level in this skill will grant you some dexterity point and an easier time, with the system help, while skinning.
It sure took long to acquire this skill, almost a dozen carcasses were necessary before obtaining a success. Dozens of unpleasant actions that he had to repeat and will have to repeat in the future. A strong resolution was necessary if he wanted to achieve something and a way to sustain his pet army was indeed a necessary thing to learn. Storing his spoils and turning to Dominik he said out his thoughts about the near future and possible development: ¡° Instructor, I was wondering about all these skills that enhanced my physical ability. Is it possible to learn a lot of them and increase their level indefinitely?¡± Dominik contorted his brows as if going into deep thinking, snapped his tongue and looked straight at Noah, overall his demeanor looked like a combination of serious and annoyed. Holding the instructor and wolves scenes fresh in his mind, Noah started to get afraid of having messed up with that question, albeit he didn¡¯t know how. He began to worry. After a full minute of silent gazing between the two, Dominik opened his mouth and laughed, he began: ¡° little kid, you really have some ambitions! The look in your eyes was something else. It passed a lot of time since I could pull a joke out in the wilds, thanks¡±. His hands were trembling from the hitching, he could feel his face turn hot and red. The simulation was so good, it turned out that these NPCs could even make a fool out of someone! But in the end, he laughed too, he was really done in by the fear. ¡° Enough with that. Your question was legit but my answer won¡¯t satisfy you in the least. No, you can¡¯t increase in proficiency indefinitely; skills have a level cap at which they either stop, usually level 10, or evolve in a better tier. An instructor needs to have max level in the skill they want to teach and this is why it is really hard to come around stats giving skills, they are really hard to master. Take for example enduring body, that skill is maxed at level 10 but then it increases in tier, repeat it 10 times and it gets hard to master. You could learn it only because I was your battalion instructor.¡±. Noah gaped in amazement at Dominik¡¯s enduring body level, every tier increased the difficulty of gaining experience and he could guess how hard it was to get it that high. He also felt ashamed after hearing his explanations on tiers and level cap, he should have looked for such a basic information on the forums. ¡° I see, thank you for clearing my doubts as always. I think that we can go on now, let¡¯s find some wolf so I can try to tame one! ¡°. He was really thankful to Dominik, the big and experienced man was keeping up with him and his stupid questions; always ready to give out explanation with great care and his benevolent aptitude in his regards, only contributed at increasing his admiration for him. Noah felt the joy of having a reliable companion which was also his guide on this foreign world. It was a strange sensation to express and even to digest, he felt attachment to Dominik, he began to consider him as a real teacher and felt the urge to show him his respect. Giving some thoughts about this new, unexpected matter, he stood up to leave the small clearing where the fight took place. New preys awaited them, he wanted to find a wolf to tame and try out some serious hunting. Thinking about his level ups, Noah openedthe status and invested 4 attribute points in charisma. Noah leads the group with Dominik right behind his shoulders, he picked a direction that didn¡¯t lead to the distant howlings and stood at ready with his large knife in hand and entered the wilderness again, moving bushes and walking between tree trunks. Chapter 22: Wolf pet A group of 3 was walking between trees, on the front stood a small man with black, short hairs and no beard, a huge wolf with grey fur and yellow eyes walked by his side and at the end, behind everyone, a tall muscular man guarded the rear. Noah was successful in taming Wolfie after many tries, it actually took him 3 encounters before he was able to do it. After this wolf submitted, he fed him to full and got two level ups in tame which became level 3, now the improved skill reserved 2.80 x level in charisma; apparently, every level decreased the reserve by 0.10. Watching this level 5 new pet of his, Noah felt a bit proud; now it only took a third of the original time to hunt a wolf, indeed thanks to the new help. This beast was really powerful and massive, he couldn¡¯t stop picturing himself leading a small contingent of wolves. His figure staying still, with shoulders wide open, chest enlarged and 2 lines of ferocious beasts growling behind him. It was an image suited for a movie but, in the end, a mere dream. Noah needed to wait at least 4 levels before he could tame another wolf, his charisma counter on the pet administration panel existed after all. His pet reserved 14 charisma out of 16, he couldn¡¯t even tame another rabbit right now. Being level 8 with two pets at level 4 would be a situation in which the utility of having wolves at half his level was pretty dubious. Still, he dreamed and got a good feeling by the image, it was his route. Turning once again to the instructor, who was a well of knowledge, he asked: ¡° I was wondering, isn¡¯t there a way to increase charisma ?¡°. While walking, Dominik bean to shake his head and smirk: ¡° Charisma is something that one is born with, it can only increase through one¡¯s experience ¡°. Noah didn¡¯t have time to get sad that a laughter grabbed his attention, Dominik said: ¡° But there is someone who is able to train it! Every single merchant, good or bad, is bound to exert some charisma while negotiating. Sometimes this can teach something and your charisma will grow ¡°. So there was a way, he thought about the synergy about skinning and then negotiating the obtained loot. There was only the problem about his inability to obtain something out of a carcass most times to justify a margin, in all this time he was able to successfully skin only when he obtained the skill. It still required a good amount of ability and concentration it seemed. If one looted the body, nothing related to crafting could be acquired; an unsuccessful execution made the whole carcass fade away. Noah wondered about looting equipment from the wild beasts but he got none until now, just some small amount of coppers at times. Dominik offered him his old knife and that was his only equipment. Noah felt secure with his wolf near, at the present time he speculated that even fighting two wild beasts at the same time wasn¡¯t a problem and, if more were present, he had an insurance called Dominik following right behind. This contributed to change his perspective, his look was no more that of a curious but inexperienced tourist taking a stroll in the forest, he looked with the eyes of a predator now.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He found another beast not too far away, it was a bear. They went a lot deeper and water could be heard running nearby, clearly, there was a creek and he decided to get near it hoping to find some prey; what stood in front of him was a brown mountain of fur with his muzzle in the water, giving his back to the forest. It was a nice scene, reminiscent of a wildlife documentary. This beast was calmly drinking from a brook, that calm was something rarely seen. This beast didn¡¯t fear anything that could be found nearby, his size was enough to deter anything from approaching it; with a height equal to Noah standing on his foot, this bear was really enormous. It was his first encounter with a beast so big, he knew that when a bear stood on his legs it was even more mighty and fear-inducing but he confidence. Forest bear was a creature that ranged between level 6 and 8, the one who stood in front of the group of 3 wasn¡¯t a big exemplar; probably a young adult, a puppy that just got his promotion to adulthood. His level 6 was comforting for Noah, it was also in a good position to get hit in the back; a plan was forming in his mind, looking at Dominik to see if he agreed on the feasibility and receiving a nod, Noah took action. He runs straight for the exposed back while Wolfie went to attack the side, wolfie role was to gain the bear attention; Noah timed his attack to land an instant later than his pet one. A loud roar resonated in the forest, some little bird flew away and the wind seemed to blow faster. It was imposing, ferocious and powerful. Noah was slightly taken aback by the sudden shock but he struck again. Wolfie was unlucky while lunging for the beast muzzle, a paw came from behind and hit him in the belly sending him flying 2 meters. Noah kept swinging his large knife at the bear¡¯s back, he attacked as fast as possible achieving 3 hit in total; at this moment, when the bear turned to face him, his HP bar stood at 8/10. They achieved a nice damage but was going to be difficult from now, his huge size was hard to dodge making necessary a work of cooperation and speed. Even with the level difference, they were two after all. It was possible to direct a tamed creature by giving command through the mind, thinking his name and a simple command was enough to make the best move. Wolfie got in position while the bear was looking at Noah and, before it could charge at him, he ordered his pet to attack the undefended bear back. Noah charged at the enemy at the same time that the order was given to his wolf. An onslaught of blows was delivered and when the wolf was thrown away, the bear health went down to 4/10; dodging a paw and swinging his knife at the arm that just passed by his head brought Noah in a bad spot, he found himself right in front of a huge, opened maw. A strong pain filled all of Noah body, he could feel the stinging originating from his torso but a hot and pulsating sensation spread to his whole person; being bitten was something new, this pain was dulled but still present. It was enough to paralyze him for a moment and allowing the bear to strike again with his paw. Wolfie jumped at the bear and started to bite its neck, it was enough to cause a pause in the attacks aimed at Noah. That pause was enough for him to get away, rolling on the ground to make space between the creature and him. His health bar was almost empty, he suffered a ton of damage by 3 strikes of the bear. A severe bleeding status warned him about the scarce time he had but fortunately, his enemy wasn¡¯t fearing much better. Wolfie strikes brought the bear at 2/10 but it wasn¡¯t possible for him to fight on equal grounds with the enemy. Their size was too different and Wolfie got hit a few times already, Noah needed to rush back in. Looking at his surroundings he saw Dominik standing by the said, a confident look in his eyes. Right, he could do this; the bear was almost dead and just two hits were enough to finish it; he just needed to dodge whatever attacks might come to him, his health not enough to sustain another strike. A burning desire to do it generated in him, adrenaline was pumping in his body, joy even formed thanks to this situation. This was a fantastic, captivating new experience for him. At this moment he put his weight on his right foot and sprinted forward, the bear was focused on Wolfie and Noah utilized this chance to jump on that large back and kept striking down.
Level up! Congratulation, you are now level 5. 2 free attribute points are given to you.
Chapter 23: Mountain Lord After the level up his health was restored to full but he kept shaking. The feelings he experienced were still living and burning inside him; adrenaline has powerful addicting properties for a reason, Noah had experienced a rush for his first time ever. His worries when looking at the decreasing HP bar and the look of trust in Dominik¡¯s eyes was still vivid in his mind. The sensation of having achieved what he strived hard to do was satisfying; he decided to sit down near the bear carcass for a minute and enjoy this exotic state, ordering Wolfie to come near, he took out some meat from his inventory and began to feed it, the poor pet got almost done in too. ¡° You did it, boy! Good job, I saw your burning desire to succeed when you looked into my eyes. I got really moved ¡°. Dominik said while putting a hand on the resting Noah. He experienced the feelings of a first adventure again thanks to this battle between the bear and Pestilence. Dominik felt that he made a good choice when he told this promising disciple to come and join the expedition; truly an adventurer sent by the gods, he thought. Dominik always looked at Noah with different eyes, he was his first contact with an adventurer from the prophecies. They were people bound to become a famous warrior, explorers or legendary craftsmen in due time, he wanted to see with his own eyes what were their real abilities and potential. There was also his desire to live a new adventure after a long time and he found in this predicament a chance to realize his desires. ¡° Get ready Noah, when you have skinned the bear we will return. After a break for lunch, I think that the expedition will depart¡±. Noah got to work while paying his utmost attention to this carcass, after all, it was special. This bear allowed Noah to experience his first hurdle, to taste defeat but refusing and overcoming it. After 5 slow and delicate minutes, he was done, a blue panel stood in front of him informing that his skinning level increased by one. On the way back they didn¡¯t encounter any difficulty, Dominik was able to guide them back through the forest without a problem. The occasional encounter was avoided or quickly resolved by the instructor; after 20 minutes of walking between bushes, sidestepping low hanging branches and breaking some small wood that laid on the ground, they came out in the open. High walls of stone were visible in the distance, they were so big that a strong and imposing aura was perceived even by far away. They came out in a different point and faced another part of the wall, Noah thought that they would make a beeline for the city and then reach the right gate but Dominik surprised him by saying: ¡° Since we are out in the green, let¡¯s make our way to the gathering point slowly. It¡¯s important to enjoy free moments such as these, there should be enough time after all ¡°. It was a much-welcomed phrase to hear, Noah could enjoy a bit of sightseeing; it wasn¡¯t anything special but it was relaxing. A huge plain of green grass with random bushes separated the forest from the city, small horned rabbit stood on it, they looked cute now to him. Turning to Dominik he expressed his thanks, he really enjoyed his time with him, there were also all the benefits he got and the help that the Instructor always gave out. Truly a profitable relationship, under many aspects. While still speaking he got interrupted by the recurrent laughter of Dominik.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. ¡° Seeing you thanking me, let¡¯s go at the gates while running! Since you are so energic it¡¯s better to constantly and diligently train¡±. the instructor was easy to embarrass it seemed. With a smile on his lips, the big man started to jog right away, he felt happy and in a good mood thanks to the new wave of life that he was experiencing, on the other hand, Noah was feeling puzzled by these sudden strange behaviors of Dominik, still he enjoyed the moment and rushed to chase him. Soon they were at the gates, unexpectedly Noah gained a level in Enduring Body; probably Dominik was right, it was better to train in every moment he could: there were stats to gain! On their way to town, Dominik had time to explain what awaited them in the expedition. An undead plague appeared far away south, after the forest; Divel was the southernmost city of the Reign, after it, only wilderness with some bandit cities could be found before the ocean. These cities gave refuge to numerous outlaws, criminal companies and the occasional person that didn¡¯t like to mingle in the society of the Southern Reign. There weren¡¯t many of those and every single one was independent of the others, until today only one single time in history the bandits united to raid the Reign: civil war almost broke out as a result. Dominik gained a lot of popularity ten years ago when he repelled numerous raiders alone in many villages. Hearing him narrate about that past war made Noah picture the slaughter caused by his instructor, he almost felt pity for those poor bandits. He also was in awe of that person that Dominik described as unmatched in strength and charisma, able to unite every independent rogue city. That figure didn¡¯t ever made an appearance causing the raids and pillages to stop and ultimately, the superior organization and unshakable strength of the Reign pillars repelled the bandits. It was unknown why this leader didn¡¯t interfere until the end and his identity wasn¡¯t discovered either, there was only a title when people referred to him: ¡°Mountain Lord¡±. Noah was fascinated by this personage, being strong enough to unite many rebellious people was admirable by itself and the mystery that permeated his appearance was a strong fuel for his interest. That war, Dominik¡¯s explained, caused the Reign to intensify the military presence at the borders and the control of the surroundings. This was the reason for the expedition, the army higher-ups didn¡¯t want the undead outbreak to afflict the border security in any way; they feared to show any weakness to the bandits, such was the scar left by the Mountain Lord. When Noah and Dominik arrived at the city gates accompanied by Wolfie, the guards almost ganged on him before seeing Dominik and stopping. They still approached in order to follow the rules, their duty supreme. Noah discovered that Wolfie wasn¡¯t allowed to enter the city, tamer had to either register a companion or momentary pet or leave them at the city gates in an apposite stable. There were limits to the creature¡¯s dimension allowed inside the walls for security reasons, registration was a simple process only a collar with a nametag of the owner was required and some papers to be compiled, seeing Dominik presence with him, the guards even offered to take care of every procedure right away but their proposal got dismissed instantly, after all, Noah didn¡¯t need to enter the city. ¡°Pestilence, let¡¯s meet again here in 1 hour. The expedition will start to assemble by that time.¡± Noah nodded in response and activated the logout procedure but, amidst great shock, was interrupted by an unexpected panel.
Alert! You have a tamed creature following you, before logging out chose what you want to do with it.
He got presented with two choices, dismiss his tame or suspends the logout procedure. A suggestion was made before the option to exit log out: he could deposit Wolfie at some stable in order to keep it when he logged back. He really liked his first wolf, thinking that probably there wouldn¡¯t be time for many occasions to tame another in the near future, Noah decided to suspend the log out procedure and asked the guards for directions. This resolved, he logged out. Chapter 24: Ready to depart Noah had only 1 hour of time inside Vesper before the expedition assembled, this meant that only 30 or so minutes were available for him in reality. Being without much choice he left a message for his parents on their home network, it said that he didn¡¯t know when he would be free and to leave a ready to eat meal for him. He concluded with apologies for being distant in these past days and a request to be sympathetic for the coming times. He realized how few moments were spent with his parents in his past years after having grown up, with only an urge to seek distraction and not many interesting and fulfilling relationship, he ended with the result of being isolated and closing in himself. He forgot the last time he had a joyful and light conversation similar to the ones with Lawrence, or when he felt the support of another person in difficult times; thinking on it, he didn¡¯t experience any predicaments in his life, there were only those hard times while playing random games on which he even got really hangry but it felt pointless, fake, useless. With Vesper, it was different, under many aspects. Apart from the urge to satiate his hunger or having to take care of the body needs, it was like experiencing a real life; Vesper was a fake and unreal world, true, but Noah memories were real, he really lived those moments. Still immersed in deep thoughts, he got up from the bed and moved in front of his bedroom screen, it was a good norm to constantly check the forums If he wanted to play seriously. This was a realization that he got after his recent experience with his lack of basic knowledge. Opening the taming related section he looked for information on various creatures suitable as companions, finding a single post that stated to be a complete guideline on creatures allowed him to get some understanding on the general power level. In fact, that thread affirmed that wolves were excellent creatures, fast, hard-hitting and overall dangerous that usually moved in packs. It was advised to confront one with at least 3 people at the same level, hunting a wolf alone was possiblestarting from level 6, this only to contend on equal grounds. Noah thought back on what Dominik said about his ability to fight one evenly with his physical abilities alone, apparently his stats were a lot higher than what he thought; a strong resolution to diligently train more those passives surged in him. Apart from that interesting fact, this guide didn¡¯t give any other useful information; bears were said to be not worth it to hunt, simply put, there were too many risks while facing one and the time it took was too much. In some areas, there was a more varied wildlife where deer or other less aggressive creatures could be found, such as very large forest cats and boars, those were the preferred creatures by tamers. Finding nothing useful in this post, he decided to look at the general discussion wondering if something was said about the coming expedition. Actually, he realized that it was quite a huge issue: there were millions of views on one thread. ¡°Undead discovered!¡± , such was the title of said discussion. Inside he could find only basic information regarding the expedition and its objective, there was also a promise from the author to keep everyone informed on the development. The user responsible for this post was a certain Beldegard, leader of a large guild based in Divel. It was a guild that was kinda famous in the online gaming community, at least this was what Noah learned by reading some replies. Hildegar, he noted this guild name on his mind since they were probably going to quest together soon.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. He spent the rest of free time by taking care of natural needs and showering to refresh his mind. ____________ Many peoples moved at the city gates, guards and soldiers kept shifting piles of foods from large carriages to smaller ones. Dominik said that was necessary to cross many difficult terrains in order to reach the outpost near the outbreak, from it smaller expeditions would be organized. Their main objective was to establish a contingent at the outpost and clear the surroundings from the undead menace, at that point a part of the expedition would stay there to help the garrison with containment and find the problem source. It didn¡¯t take long for Noah to find the Instructor, his head stood like a mountain peak between the other army members. Reaching him, he found another known figure: it was Markus Barbian, Divel¡¯s first division commander. ¡° Hey greenhorn! What are you doing here, shouldn¡¯t you be at the training camp right now? ¡°. A curious look was in his eyes while he asked this question, and then he looked at Dominik after the Instructor signaled Noah to not speak. ¡° Markus, Pestilence was deemed unworthy of the Reign Army. I personally decided so but for this long expedition I needed an aide, you know that I¡¯m not young anymore, and Pestilence looked like a decent follower ¡°. Markus looked at the old instructor with a knowing but respectful expression, this man in front of him had always been an inspiration. He still remembered the training period with him, and only respect could be felt for this person. ¡° Okay, then you aren¡¯t greenhorn anymore. By the way, that big wolf of yours looks interesting; see you around wolf boy!¡±. Said Markus¡¯s powerful voice whit a laughter while taking his leave from the Instructor. Noah learned that Markus was the leader of this expedition since he was the highest ranking military on field in town, Dominik also revealed that the other day, when Noah was training alone with him, Markus personally came to see him out of worry for this outbreak: apparently the reports depicted the situation as difficult, this explained why so many soldiers were deployed. Now two things bothered Noah: this adventure filled with unknown dangers in which he was going to dedicate a lot of his time was the first one. After all, this was his first mission albeit he didn¡¯t obtain a quest since his role was only that of an aide of Dominik, whit whom he already had an open and going quest, even though he still hoped to achieve something more while at the outpost. The other thing was a less important one but not at all, less curious: Dominik¡¯s appearance didn¡¯t look so old but seeing that the big man referred to himself as not young anymore, he wondered about his real age. Maybe everything was due to the man bald and shiny head and that dubious black beard, not having hairs is always a good method to appear a few years younger. Giving a mental laughter at this matter, he decided to put it aside. Maybe it was really the case in which the instructor refused to appear old, this game possibility never stopped to surprise him; turning his head to face directly Dominik he got welcomed by an embarrassed look. ¡° Albeit It¡¯s been a few years since I retired, don¡¯t think that I¡¯m an old geezer. I¡¯m not at an age to be a grandfather yet, so don¡¯t look at me with those eyes and stop staring at my head. ¡° Apparently, Noah was looking hard at Dominik or the man was really conscious of his surroundings. The nearby soldiers watched with curiosity at the boy that was so freely speaking with the Head Instructor, that wolf pet of his only increased their wonder; that boy looked only average and everybody knew that it was much more difficult to tame a creature when one didn¡¯t act alone. Among them there was also one player watching this scene unfolding, he had disbelieving eyes and his mouth hanging open: a wolf was following a player that walked with only beginner clothes on and this person was speaking with a mountain of muscles that also walked bare-chested, he decided that his guild leader should be informed about this and left right away. Chapter 25. Marching! The expedition traveled on foot and there were only small carriages that were trained by a horse each. Markus was leading it from the front while standing on a high brown horse, there were also a few officials rising from the ranks wearing a heavy and beautiful steel armor. Some soldiers kept high up a banner with Southern¡¯s Army and South Reign coat of arms, it was a beautiful sight; every soldier had some decorations of yellow and red on their armor, Dominik explained that it was used to differentiate ranks. They were moving a bit behind from the front leading Markus, Dominik was sitting on a carriage full of packed food and Noah was walking right beside it. There weren¡¯t many soldiers near them, food provisions were kept in the middle of the ranks, only a line of infantry guarded both sides and a platoon with horsemen among them was on the rear. Further back stood a small convoy from the adventurer guild, it consisted of players majorly and some NPCs riding on a carriage. ¡° Pestilence, since there is enough space, try to perform some moves from the sword dance while marching! ¡°. Dominik sure was all about training thought Noah and he didn¡¯t really mind it usually but now they were in the middle of people, everyone was already watching him and he wasn¡¯t used to this kind of attention, madly swinging the sword in the air didn¡¯t help to alleviate his embarrassment but he trusted Dominik and followed his suggestion. At the first try, he got halfway before loudly stumbling on the ground, it wasn¡¯t easy to keep a marching pace while practicing a sword dance that required to jump, turn, leap, rapidly swinging and striking with a swirling force. Dominik said to do it slowly, keeping up with the army, and to take a step forward with each figure, not more than that, and he inevitably stumbled when it was time to jumping forward and swirl. Laughter followed his unfortunate show, these soldiers really did find funny this young man wearing rags and followed by a wolf that was swinging madly his sword at a slow pace but, as soon as Dominik spoke, everyone quieted down. Admiration, respect and a bit of fear could be seen on their faces, only his laughter sounded in the air right now. ¡° That sure was comical! Don¡¯t mind if you fall a few times, concentrating on keeping tempo with the march and practicing my dance while maintaining the strong, whirling tempo is hard but necessary if you want to get stronger¡±. Noah was reminded once again why he was following the guidelines of the Instructor, this man was a treasure of stats, a walking training machine; realizing this and looking at the big instructor that was actually giving him a thumb up, Noah started to laugh too while lifting up. He enjoyed his time here. After 2 hours they left the main road and took a mountain one. From the constant training Noah gained a level up in Enduring Body and one in Unending Maelstrom, his stats were constantly increasing, his trust in Dominik only deepening; seeing his stats increasing he decided to invest the 2 free attributes points from level up in charisma once again, with a value of 18 it was his highest stat.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. The outpost stood on the other side of this valley. From here on, the terrain began to sprout low and gentle peaks that turned higher in the distance. It wasn¡¯t possible to see the sea since tall mountains blocked the view at the horizon, those were the region of bandits and lone hermits. A plain, after these hills, stretched before South Sea Mountains and the undead plague appeared east of them; the outpost was built there to keep in check the bandits and to facilitate a constant communication between it and Divel, by horse it took less than half a day, on the other hand, they weren¡¯t even at half of the road. This road was large enough to fit a small carriage with a line of soldiers or two horses, this slowed down the process because the front row had to wait for the supply chain at the other end; the uphill road didn¡¯t help with speed too. Noah was able to estimate the number of people following the expedition, it was close to 1000 soldiers plus the adventurers that were behind. The adventurer guild detachment consisted of a bunch of NPC and around 100 players, nothing praiseworthy thought Noah: their number was too low compared to the army and those players didn¡¯t stand a single chance in 1vs1 against a soldier from the division. Once that everyone crossed the hill Markus spoke with his loud voice: ¡° Now we are in the wilds! Keep your eyes open and stay ready to fight. The leading team will take care of every beast that approaches our expedition. En marche! ¡°. The ranks were assembled again like before, Noah resumed his training and was excited by the possible actions that were going to take place. He was soon cooled down by Dominik though, he said to keep practicing and that there won¡¯t be a problem with Markus on the lead: if something happened that he wasn¡¯t able to resolve, then Noah would be like a mosquito trying to fight a rhino and himself was required to take action. Noah was feeling tired, marching for 2 hours, climbing the hill for another one and then marching again while practicing started to weight on his mind. He decided to take a break and talk a bit with Dominik to see if he could learn something on the matters that will take place at the outpost. The instructor wasn¡¯t too severe and had a reasonable mind, he was going to stop the young boy soon anyway. Too much constant training can lead to isolation or a twisted personality, he knew all too well since his old days when nothing else mattered to him other than training, by getting older he began to appreciate some other aspects of life but conserved his like for adventures too; with time he found out that both could coexist. It was important to know how to live the moment: sometimes it was better to just sit and enjoy a bit the calm time. Considering this kind of life, when at times there is an expedition that can last even years, it¡¯s important to grab a breath of life when it still possible. He hoped to pass this down to this young disciple of his too. ¡° Teacher, why there is a delegation from the adventure guild following us? Their members look so weak? ¡°. Obviously, Noah was referring to the players and he also could guess the reason for the Guild to come but it was better to see if Dominik knew something more. ¡° Pestilence, I won¡¯t say that their expedition is weak. True, they have some cannon fodder but their leader is the vice-director of Divel¡¯s branch. Second only to Markus and me in strength¡±. Noah just confirmed his guesses about the strength of the instructor, it was a lot, probably Dominik was the strongest in the city or definitely close to it. After a second of pause, Dominik talked again: ¡° They are coming to establish a branch at the outpost, it is going to be a long matter and they will give out missions to adventurers to lend a hand. It was almost forced upon them by the higher-ups of the military. You know, to set up a branch they have to agree at giving out a hand in difficult times ¡°. It was as he guessed and there were a lot of opportunities to achieve a rapid growth at the outpost for the adventurers of the guild, Noah began to worry about his role in all of this. Sure, he was going to train more under Dominik tutelage and it was thanks to his constant pointers that he was able to display a better execution of the sword dance, but he had a role of an aide here. Noah sat there in silence with the Head Instructor while waiting for his stamina to refill and start to train again, the road was still long. Important Announcement I have an exam that is coming up in one week or so. it''s really important to pass it at this round and I need to study a lot. Capther release will slow down in this period. Other thighs came up as well and I wasn''t able to write anything in these 3 days but starting from tomorrow I should get more time to put down some lines. You should expect one chapter before 14 Sept. I''m sorry that this is happening when a new ark just started but I will try to think a bit about the story future so it should be a bit helpfull, thank you for al the support that you guys constantly showed! This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Chapter 26: The expedition goes on! It was well over 5 hours since the expedition departed, Dominik said that they were going to make an encampment for the night right before dinner; small groups of 20 people that were walking near each other would form a nucleus and then they will organize lodgings. This operation was meant to be lead by the highest in grade or years of service found in each group, 5 of these groups would gather closely and position each at an angle of a square with one staying in the middle. Dominik went on and on explaining how it was easier to defend a position like this and anticipating to Noah how it will be like to sleep in the open, doing guard duty rotations and setting up the camp which consisted of nothing actually. Noah learned that they wouldn¡¯t use tents unless it was going to rain, too much wasted time in such a fast travel, only some sort of sleeping utilities that each soldier personally carried were going to be used; the expedition was going to properly rest once arrived at destination, they had to reach there as fast as they could to repel the undead and secure the situation near the outpost. The light began to turn a soft orange at first, then it became increasingly red with the passing of time. Markus gave the order to set up camp a bit before the light began to turn red and, by the time it became dark, each group of 100 people for a total of 10 groups, were having dinner while maintaining that sort of square formation. Noah was eating while feeling a strange sort of sensation that can be felt only when you are at the center of attention; every soldier in their group was in fact staring at them. Once they saw that the famous and almost legendary Instructor was with them, they all assumed a respecting and admiring attitude; they even wanted to let Dominik take lead but he had his way out of responsibility by reminding them that he wasn¡¯t an effective member of the military but just a supportive figure from the headquarters, a sort of public serving civilian and it wasn¡¯t proper to let him take charge in a military-only duty. Right after eating with everyone watching shifts were drafted; every group had people keeping watch of their surroundings, this allowed for a fast response in case of sudden peril. Dominik and his follower were exempted from taking turns, this pleased Noah. It was good to enjoy some benefits from a powerful friend, it makes one feel powerful too! After dinner, with the duty guard decided, it was time for the first turn to begin and Noah could finally log out while the NPCs rested. Opening the logout procedure, he was welcomed by the second unexpected pop up: it was another alert informing him about his special temporary condition.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
ALERT You are following an expedition and there is a set time to depart, log in before the scheduled time or there could be dire consequences in case of delay. While in this status of follower your avatar won¡¯t disappear from the game after you disconnect, what happens to it is up to the game happenings and your NPCs companions. You are warned!
Noah was impressed by the effort that was spent to keep Vesper realistic and he admitted to himself that not a single worry had come to his mind in regards to both avatar and expedition. Basically, all of this meant that he was susceptible to the game progress even while he wasn¡¯t actively playing it, it was extremely disadvantageous. Another line caught his interest: NPCs companions had a role on his happenings too, thanks to this, he doubted that anything worrisome could happen to him with Dominik around; Noah trusted his friend but this situation, the game design, the other issue with the log out and, ultimately, this predicament with large adventures had him busy thinking. A sensation of urgency permeated him: after 6,30 hours in Vesper, barely more than 3 hours in reality, he had to be back. This world was endorsing every part of his mind, even after logging out, only the expedition and the nearby encounter with undead were leading his train of thoughts. It was under the shower when, thanks to the pleasant and relaxing sensation of water, Noah was able to have a clear mind; a mind without worries about the next future allowed him to reflect on this situation, how he got absorbed by this adventure, his craving for more of it to experience, his desire to dive right back in¡­ he even wondered if it was possible to lay down inside the game to get a rapid nap with the soldiers. Vesper was practically absorbing his person, that world was becoming his main world, what to blame he thought? Obviously the apathetic and sterile, boring life of every day. In this they were successful, Noah remembered the conversation with his parents about the real purpose behind the release of this game, Vesper distracted people from their life which was too free in terms of time for most to handle; a purpose, an objective, a passion, a thrill not possible in this world, everything of this was achievable inside Vesper. Noah wasn¡¯t really upset with all of this, he didn¡¯t feel like being blindfolded in front of real problems, instead, it was like he was being offered an opportunity, a way to expand his life, to experience something great. Still, being able to see the other aspect, the dark face of the medal, allowed him to grasp the situation and decide what to do with it. Awaiting his coming adventure and checking for the next free turn at the cemetery, one in the evening in a nice weathered day, he laid down on his bed to get a fast nap and decided to take a stroll, the next time he was free, in a green park out of city; he craved to see more trees after his recent adventure in the forest with Dominik.