《DIVE》 Dive 1:Pre-Dive Brenton was excited. He had submitted an essay to the DI corp., and was one of the 100 finalists. The five people that won would each receive a free DIVE pod with lifetime access to DIVE( Direct Interactive¡¯s Virtual Environment). If you had pre ordered the pod you would be refunded the money. It was a pretty sweet deal for a company to offer. The Company Direct Interactive was known throughout the world for the development of their Virtual Environment Training Modules. These had been used to train US military for the past fifteen years. It was an amazing leap in technology. Many other companies tried to procure or hack these pods with no success. DIVE had military protection, and would only sell to the US. The complex VI (virtual intelligence) program they made took any attempt to log in, outside of know and secure pods, as a security threat and instantly disabled the connection. Today was different though. Today was the first day that DI would give their products to someone other than the military. Today was the first day of the future. DI was giving out five DIVE pods to lucky individuals. The company, led by a beautiful but stern looking woman named Kelsey, had been developing a game called DIVE for the past five years. Of course this was in conjunction with the tireless effort of the VI. Brenton couldn¡¯t wait he had a 1/20 chance to get a free DIVE pod. Not only that, but the lifetime access came with a week of gameplay the other people of the world (mostly US at this point) would have to wait for. There was a press conference held that was currently televised all across America. A large screen was playing a scene of one of the devs fighting a dragon. The player¡¯s health was set to constant, so he couldn¡¯t be killed. He was doing all sorts of attacks and dodges. He didn¡¯t actually use any spells or abilities though. It even seemed as if he were intentionally not hitting the target at some points. Kelsey stepped up to the stage amid claps from the audience. She was a beauty of 5¡¯11¡± with flawless features, light skin, freckles and long sandy blonde hair, green-blue eyes that seemed to sparkle, and a voice that could create joy and obedience just hearing it. Even the people of the press were extremely excited for the DIVE pods release. Kelsey raised her hand, immediately the applause stopped. She neatened the papers she was holding and spoke. ¡°Today¡­ Today is the dawning of a new technological era.¡± She flashed a beautiful smile at the crowd. ¡°Today we have chosen five contestants to be the forerunners of our new world; today the world of electronics changes forever. In one week we will sale these DIVE pods to the populous, in one week the world will change. For example: Two busy CEOs and their respective boards need to have a highly detailed private meeting. They could fly across the world or use the internet to communicate, OR they could use our pods. The pods would let them interact with each other completely. All five senses are identified and utilized by our Dive pods. The pods are extremely energy conservative, taking only as much electricity as a common television. ¡° Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. The press had already heard this. This information was identical to the commercials that seemed to play non-stop on several channels. She seemed like she would walk off the stage so one person raised his hand. ¡°Yes?¡± Kelsey asked. The reporter swallowed before asking about what was on everyone¡¯s mind. ¡°What about DIVE? Not the pods, the game. I heard it was virtually indistinguishable from reality.¡± Kelsey smiled, she had been waiting for this question, determined to say nothing about it unless asked. ¡°Well,¡± she said ¡°yes and no. It¡¯s not that it is indistinguishable from reality, it is a reality all of its own. Saying it¡¯s indistinguishable from reality implies that it is not reality, anything that happens in this game will look, sound, smell, taste, and feel real. It is a reality in its own way, a second chance at life. The game itself will be able to change according to the players. The environment, even the npcs, will all grow and adapt to how the players live inside the game.¡± A woman walked on stage and handed Kelsey an envelope. Benton watched the live broadcast with expectations and hope, similar to the feelings a child gets at Christmas. Kelsey took the envelope and pulled out the first paper. ¡°We asked that each person include the game name of their character, so that if chosen we can protect their privacy. THE WINNERS ARE: ShortDwarf!¡± The press gave a polite applause. Brenton sighed as now his chances dropped tremendously. ¡°LastingBeauty!¡± Another applause, and another sigh. ¡°Voice0fReason!¡± Another applause, but this time Brenton stared dumbfounded at the screen. Did she say Voice0fReason? He looked at his mom; she looked as awe struck as he felt. He missed some of what happened next due to his astoundment. ¡°Again those names are: ShortDwarf, LastingBeauty, Voice0fReason, DefiledHealer, and EDI! Congratulations on all of our winners, you will soon receive a call from our company with further information.¡± With that she walked off the stage leaving the reporters dumbfounded. The whole point of this interview was to get details on the game so realistic that the military used its predecessor as training. There were millions of people that would watch the news tonight for that information and millions more that would watch it in the near future. It was the single best selling game of all time outclassing any console sold in America by several millions totaling close to a hundred million per-orders. As if she didn''t care about the audience she walked off the stage and out of the room. Dive 2:His First Dive Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : There was an interview with the head of DI, the people that made DIVE. They announced the five winners of the DIVE competition. Brenton won a DIVE pod and free access to DIVE for the rest of his life. This story is the first time I¡¯ve ever actually written for more than like a day, so if anyone has any suggestions or tips please feel free to let me know. : ) Brenton was startled by the sound of the phone ringing. He jumped slightly, and picked up the phone. ¡°Hello? This is the Pell family.¡± He said trying to sound like his heart didn¡¯t almost just jump out of his chest. ¡°Hello, may I please speak to Mr. Brenton Pell?¡± asked a cheerful, but to the point sounding woman. Brenton knew this voice. It had just been played on live television. Why would the owner of DI personally call the winners? ¡°I am Brenton, how may I help you?¡± After a brief moment he added, ¡°Mrs. Gray?¡± He thought he heard a small chuckle. ¡°Yes, Mr. Pell. This is Mrs. Gray. I have decided to personally call the winners to let them know we have already shipped their pods and it should be arriving sometime today. Furthermore, I wanted to let you know that all five contestants will be given one special skill or item.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t that a little unfair to the people that didn¡¯t win the DIVE pods?¡± Brenton asked. Mrs. Gray laughed a good natured laugh. ¡°Yes well I have never heard of someone complaining about getting special treatment.¡± Brenton blushed slightly. Kelsey continued, ¡°But you are right, every player will get a special skill or item when they join, but the five winners get are going to get a unique item or skill. Five items, and five skills have been prepared, whichever ones aren¡¯t chosen are going to be made into rare boss drops. Ah I think that it¡¯s time to go.¡± Brenton heard the doorbell ring. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Mrs. Gray, but it seems like we have visitors, I¡¯ll be right back.¡± He said apologetically. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it Brenton,¡± Kelsey said, ¡°Have a fun time playing!¡± She hung up with a very confused Brenton. He went to the door and opened it to see four large burly men holding a large eight foot tall box. How did she get this here right at the end of our phone call? Well whatever I guess I will start trying this new game. After he invited the men in they installed the pod in his bedroom. He had made sure his room was clean and had mad adequate space just in case he won. The setup was done in less than thirty minutes. It looked amazing. With chrome colored sides, a single dark blue button on the side, and a dark blue semi-transparent lid, it could only be described as something out of a sci-fi novel. He hit the dark blue button the lid opened on the left side, the hinge was only seen when the door was open. Brenton lay down in the pod. After the door closed everything went black. For a few seconds Brenton fought with an intense feeling of claustrophobia. Then the entire pod went blindingly white. Damn, he thought to himself, why wouldn¡¯t they give a warning if this thing could blind you? Suddenly a very mechanical voice was heard. -Iris scan complete. New user detected. Would you like to start DIVE?- Brenton heard these pods could respond to thoughts. He thought yes. -Very well, starting your first DIVE.- After a few more seconds he seemed to be in a completely white, but far less blinding room. He realized his eyes had been closed the entire time. Well I guess I couldn¡¯t be blinded, still would have been nice to have a warning though. He was greeted by a voice that was higher than the average person, but with some quality that made it feel very gentle. ¡°Hello there, my name is Bit-Bee. That¡¯s not my real of course, but that is what I¡¯m going to name my character when I start playing. So since you are the first one here let¡¯s get this started.¡± ¡°Get what started?¡± he asked a little suspicious of this lady. She had dark tan, lovely skin. She was shorter than him probably about 5¡¯ 4¡±, with average length black hair, and deep brown beautiful eyes. ¡°Hehe, I¡¯m going to do something evil.¡± He started backing away from this obviously mentally impaired woman. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. ¡°Oh come on,¡± she said as if she were exasperated, ¡°I was only joking. It¡¯s time to make your character. The first character in DIVE I might add.¡± ¡°Ok then,¡± he said still a little uneasy, ¡°what do I need to do?¡± ¡°First you have to decide your race. You can then change your body as you wish, although it is recommended that you pick something similar to your own original physique.¡± ¡°Why is that?¡± he asked not understanding why they would put restrictions on character creation in the supposedly most diverse game in the world. As if reading his thoughts Bit-Bee replied ¡°Well it isn¡¯t really required or anything, but it would be much easier to move around a body that you are used to right? Just about everyone that decided to change their body shape or type in the war sims were extremely disoriented when they stated and exited the pod. Although we have minimized this effect, we still recommend a similar body build so that you are less disoriented the first time.¡± This seemed very considerate of the company to go out of their way to tell the users. ¡°Thank you, that¡¯s very nice to know.¡± He stated. Bit-Bee seemed to be pleased with his reaction. ¡°Then I would like to choose my race, can I have a detailed description of them please?¡± ¡°Sure thing, first off is Human. They don¡¯t really get any advantages or disadvantages, except they do start with five bonus stats. Also most of the npcs are all humans,¡± she seemed to whisper the next words so quietly Brenton wondered if she really said them, ¡°at least in the big kingdoms.¡± ¡°Next are High Elves, while they are not as physically gifted as the other races they are masters of the arcane arts. After that are Wood Elves, and Dark Elves. Wood Elves are the second best hunters in the game, as well as superior trackers and druids. Dark Elves are descendants of demons and High Elves. They are weaker than High Elves in most magic, but excel in fire magic and dark magic. Unfortunately all Elves are born with low vitality, and strength, but that is easily overcome with magic.¡± Brenton interrupted, ¡°If Wood Elves are the second best hunters in the game who is the best?¡± Bit-Bee smiled, ¡°Secret~. After the Elves are Dwarves. They have the best earth magic, and are the finest craftsman in the land. They are short in stature but boast high defense and vitality. While they are less agile then their elven counter parts they are more suited for close combat. They also can¡¯t use air magic. Finally there are the Half-Ogres.¡± She said the last part in almost disdain. ¡°They are stupid and are unable to adjust to combat; the only class they are allowed to take is barbarian, until they can raise their int, wis, or agi by themselves. They have no magic capabilities whatsoever, and it takes twice as much to level up agi, wis, or int, but str, end, and con grow three times as fast.¡± Luckily Brenton knew what each of these stats did since he had played rpgs before, but this was a brand new game so he would look at them when he got into the game. ¡°Hmmmm,¡± he thought to himself: I¡¯ve always loved being the healer, so maybe I should go with High Elf, but I also like to make my own items and enchant them so maybe dwarf? ¡°Then I guess I¡¯ll go human.¡± -Race determined Human. Is this correct?- ¡°Yes,¡± He said. ¡°Alright,¡± Bit-Bee said, ¡°Next is the features, you can choose to change any of your features you want within the bounds of your race.¡± Before him appeared a tall lean man. He stood at 5¡¯11¡± and weighed about 130 pounds. He was toned, but not buff. With his brown hair and eyes, he was considered fairly attractive by the people he went to college with. ¡°I¡¯ll stay the same.¡± ¡°Well I would too if I was as attractive as you.¡± She gave a playful wink. ¡°So would you like the unique item or the unique skill? Whichever one you choose, item or skill, will be randomly chosen for you. ¡° ¡°Well,¡± Brenton decided, ¡°Since items will probably lose value eventually I would like a unique skill please.¡± ¡°Okay then. Go ahead and try to move around a bit before the DIVE.¡± As she said this she disappeared into a puff of smoke. No doubt the smoke was just used to impress him, and just in case she was still watching he feigned an astonished look before starting to move around. At first he couldn¡¯t move at all, he was completely frozen except for above the neck. He tried to move just his left knee. It worked, but he stumbled and fell, not even able to catch himself as he fell. Eventually, after several minutes and more falls, he managed to take a few staggering steps before he heard an announcement. -Players being transported to DIVE in 3¡­ 2¡­1.- Dive 3: His First Quest Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Brenton got a call from Kelsey, the head of DI. After the call he got his DIVE pod. When they hooked it up he created his character with help from Bit-Bee. He then entered DIVE. Brenton was astounded by what he saw. The first thing that caught his eye was a gigantic, beautiful yellow sun. It had slightly more subdued rays then the sun on Earth, but Brenton thought it was somehow dangerous looking. Then he noticed the buildings and cobbled stone roads. The houses looked like they were from the midlevel era, with triangular roofs, and many windows. The roads looked very Roman. Large pieces of stone were placed near each other to mainly just give a pathway to walk. In the middle of where he was, the town center was a large fountain. The castle was three stories, and huge. It could be seen from the town square, the place where Brenton currently found himself. It was the second tallest building in the city, the first being the chapel. The reason Brenton knew this was a chapel was because of the large statue of some divine figure lightly hidden behind stone clouds at the top. Strangely though, he couldn¡¯t see any NPCs in the area. He noticed the other players. They were all having the same problems he had several minutes ago. I guess they didn¡¯t get the chance to try walking around first. Brenton thought to himself. One of the stumbling people was a dwarf. Brenton guessed he was short even by dwarven standards. He couldn¡¯t seem to stand up so was sitting on the ground like a child. Brenton silently laughed to himself. Next was a beautiful looking High Elf. She was trying to look graceful but the fact that she couldn¡¯t even stand subtracted from her overall ambiance. Most likely this was LastingBeauty. To her merit she did look like she would hold an aura of beauty and command¡­ that is once she learned to walk properly. The player named DefiledHealer was just sitting on the fountain. He didn¡¯t have any noticeable special qualities, but had to be DefiledHealer, because the last person was a human woman wearing the same starter outfit as the rest of the group. It had brown pants that didn¡¯t quite cover the ankles, and it showed the arms up to a little past the elbow. He knew this was EDI because she had the name EDI tattooed on her left arm. Suddenly the sun seemed to de-rez, and a woman named Kelsey Gray appeared where it had been several seconds ago. All the players stopped to look at her in amazement. She smiled from the sun and said, ¡°Welcome to Solun, The world where everything is possible. I hope you enjoy your game. Good luck.¡± The picture de-rezed and the sun came back. Everyone waited a few seconds in utter disbelief; she just used her power as owner of this game to say good luck? No hints or advice? ¡°EH?¡± LastingBeauty seemed to have the same train of thoughts as Brenton. ¡°What the hell? Why didn¡¯t we get any info? Stupid old hag.¡± Brenton noticed that after the sun came back many of the NPCs started to come out from the buildings. They must have been waiting for their cue lol. Brenton decided to walk around town a little. The other four winners, had mouths agape watching him walk perfectly less than a minute after they had been transported. Well I did have some practice before hand. He thought to himself. But I don¡¯t need to tell THEM that. He decided to walk to what he assumed was a blacksmith. After all I need some kind of weapon since I got a skill instead of an item. He suddenly stopped, he realized that he hadn¡¯t checked his skill, or for that matter any of his stats. ¡°Show Stats¡± he said, hoping it would work. It did, most of it looked normal, but something caught his eye. He had two skills instead of the promised one.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassN/A
Health100Mana100
Level1
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec1.0
Strength10Agility10
Wisdom10Intelligence10
Endurance10Dexterity10
Luck10
SkillsIdentify
Skill Fusion
He decided to check his skills out. ¡°Open Skills.¡± [td2]Skill Fusion[/tds][td2]Allows the user to fuse two skills together to make a more powerful version.[/tds]
Skill Window
Name[/tds][td2]Description
IdentifyAllows the user to identify an item.
Hmm, he thought to himself, it doesn¡¯t show any information about the skills, other than the description?¡¯ ¡°Show Skill: Identify.¡±
Identify: Allows the user to identify an item. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% You can currently identify: Low quality items. To activate say Identify while thinking of the item you wish to identify. As your level in identify grows so too will the range of things you can identify.
¡°Show Skill: Skill Fusion¡±
Skill Fusion: Allows the user to fuse two skills together to make a more powerful version. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Skills you can currently obtain from fusion: Novice Level 1. As your level in Skill Fusion grows so too will the level of skills you obtain from fusions. To activate say Skill Fusion. *Note you will not lose the skills you fuse together, merely gain a new one.
Well since I have two skills I might as try fusing them and see what happens. ¡°Skill Fusion!¡± he shouted, gaining him several stares from the NPCs. He was at least lucky enough that the other players were not close enough to hear him.
Please indicate the two skills you wish to fuse.
¡°Skill Fusion and Identify.¡± He said, more quietly than last time.
You have created the skill: Identify Skill. Novice Level 1.
¡°Show Skill: Identify Skill.¡±
Identify Skill: Allows the user to identify a skill. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% You can currently identify: Your own Novice Level 1 Skills. To activate say Identify Skill while thinking of the Skill you wish to identify. As your level in identify skill grows so too will the range of skills you can identify.
He decided he might as well try his new skill out. ¡°Identify Skill: Identify.¡±
Identify: Allows the user to identify an item. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% You can currently identify: Low quality items. To activate say Identify while thinking of the item you wish to identify. As your level in identify grows so too will the range of things you can identify, and the amount of information you get from each identify. The qualities of items are categorized as follows: Low, Mundane, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Unique, Legendary, Artifact, and Ichor.
It really did give me more information! Brenton was overjoyed at this new discovery. He was trying to figure out a way to overpowered with it, but couldn¡¯t think of one. ¡°Identify Skill: Skill Fusion.¡±
Skill Fusion: Allows the user to fuse two skills together to make a more powerful version. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 50.00% This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.Skills you can currently obtain from fusion: Novice Level 1. As your level in Skill Fusion grows so too will the level of skills you obtain from fusions. The created skills level and exp is found by adding the levels and exp of the two skills used to create it and dividing by four. For every four levels of this skill the level of the newly created skill will increase by an additional level. It¡¯s possible to fuse skills created by Skill Fusion. To activate say Skill Fusion. *Note you will not lose the skills you fuse together, merely gain a new one.
¡°Identify Skill: Identify Skill.¡±
Identify Skill: Allows the user to identify a skill. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 66.66% You can currently identify: Your own Novice Level 1 Skills. To activate say Identify Skill while thinking of the Skill you wish to identify. This skill should be used instead of the show skill window, as it will give more information when you obtain higher levels. When it gives more information from identified skills it gives a small amount of exp. The more information you obtain about a skill the more exp this skill gets. This skill will eventually allow you to see all parts of a skill, and read other peoples skills that are currently being used. As your level in identify skill grows so too will the range of skills you can identify.
He decided to fuse his Identify Skill, and Skill Fusion to see what happened. ¡°Skill Fusion.¡±
Please indicate the two skills you wish to fuse.
¡°Skill Fusion and Identify Skill.¡±
Incompatible skills, please try again.
Oh so there are some skills you can¡¯t fuse. ¡°Skill Fusion.¡±
Please indicate the two skills you wish to fuse.
¡°Identify Skill and Identify.¡±
Incompatible skills, please try again.
Well darn I really thought one of those would work. Brenton, no Voice0fReason, decided to continue on to the blacksmith. He saw an alley and decided to go down it. As he came closer to the only building in the area with an anvil he heard a loud banging sound, like metal hitting metal. He turned the corner and saw the smithy. The blacksmith was an imposing man, with bulging arms, and hands that seemed they could tear off someone¡¯s arm just by griping it. He had a slight tan from working out in the forge for several years. Voice waited patiently for a lull in the blacksmith¡¯s hammer before saying, ¡°Hello sir, I have need of a weapon but have no coin to buy it, is there any way I could do something of value to you in order to get one?¡± The blacksmith looked at him and shook his head. ¡°Sorry boy, there¡¯s not much I can give ya in means of work right now. I need practiced hands for this job.¡± Voice felt slightly disheartened when his first attempt to get a quest failed. Mistaking the reason for his sadness the blacksmith quickly added, ¡°Well if ya really need money, and don¡¯t have a weapon, I suggest trying the alchemist. She¡¯s the best at er trade I that I know of, and usually pays well for people that help her gather herbs.¡± Voice decided that helping this alchemist was his best option for getting a little bit of money. ¡°So where is here shop?¡± The blacksmith pointed to a small building three houses to the left. Voice started to head that way, when the blacksmith called out ¡°Tell her I sent ya, muh names Evan. Might get ya a discount or som¡¯thin!¡± Voice decided to keep that in mind as he entered the potions shop. The shop was about what you¡¯d expect. It was small, and the left and right walls were lined with four shelves each. On each shelf was about 10-20 potions. The alchemist sat, back facing the door, hunched over some sort of clay cup and was crushing something in it. He concentrated on the object in her hands. ¡°Identify.¡±
Mortar and pestle. Used for the creation of basic potions, or to make ingredients usable for more advanced potion making.
Next he concentrated on the green goop that was forming in the mortar. ¡°Identify.¡±
Green Healing Goop. A combination of green healing herb and common weed. Add this to water to make a health potion. Better ingredients would make a better potion.
¡°Hello miss,¡± he said. ¡°I was told by Evan the blacksmith that if I were looking for work I should come see you. Is there anything I could help with? Perhaps gathering ingredients?¡± The alchemist shushed him and continued to concentrate on her work. He waited silently, angry that she would shush him like a child. The alchemist looked a bit young to be working in such a profession, early twenties at the latest. Eventually he started thinking about potion making. It was a necessity for any competent healer to have. I wonder if I can get her to teach me? Just then he was startled to see the alchemist staring intently at him. She was only a few inches in front of his face. Gah! When did she get so close? He berated himself for not noticing her sooner. ¡°You said you wanted to look for herbs? ¡± she asked in a much deeper voice than what Voice had expected her to have. ¡°My names is Susan, and if you find me ten green healing and twenty common weed I can give you five copper.¡± Voice didn¡¯t know how much that was, but since he needed money he said, ¡°Then I will be right back with those plants.¡±
You have accepted this quest. Success: Gathering 10 green healing herbs and 20 common weed before nightfall. Failure: Not managing to gather the requested materials. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Susan the Potions Master, as well as Evan the blacksmith.
¡°Thank you very much. Come back when you have all the things I¡¯ve asked for.¡± ¡°Um,¡± started Voice,¡±Could you show me what the plants look like before you grind them up?¡± ¡°Oh sorry about that. Here take these.¡± She handed him a green flower that he remembered seeing around the fountain and something that looked suspiciously like a dandelion that had dried out and was ready for pollinating. ¡°The flower is the green healing herb. The white puff is the common weed.¡± He said thank you and took them outside. When he was far enough away that he didn¡¯t think the alchemist would here he identified both of the plants.
Green Healing Herb. Found near bodies of water. It is a basic ingredient in making health potions. If combined with common weed it will make the lowest know potency of healing potion. Ps. It tastes horrible.
Common Weed A common every day weed. It is so common in fact that many potions use it as an ingredient to bulk up the effects. It has no real value of its own, but holds some possible mysterious value. Ps. It tastes worse than the green healing herb.
Learned Skill Herbology For studying various effects of plants you have learned the Herbology skill.
¡°Identify Skill: Herbology.¡±
Herbology. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By using Identify to identify various plants you may garner improved information on the plants. This skill also helps to craft better potions. Levels in Herbology provide 1% per level increase to identify skill when used on herbs. It also helps to make 2% per level better potions.
Alright time to start my first ever quest in DIVE! *Note all the other four players just learned to walk at this time. Dive 4: His First Job Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Brenton started DIVE. He accepted a quest from the alchemist, and learned Herbology while completing it. Sorry guys, I mixed up what I wanted from vitality and endurance. The stats window earlier should have said Endurance not Vitality. I fixed it now though. Voice realized he hadn¡¯t checked his inventory yet. He said ¡°Open Inventory.¡± He only had his starter clothes, which gave no defense or stat bonus, and a loaf of bread. The first place Voice decided to look is around the fountain. Since the green healing herb description said it was found around water that should be a good place to look. As he walked there he noticed several common weed. The stuff was everywhere. I guess they don¡¯t call it common weed for nothing. He picked up the common weed, but the stem broke as he lifted it out of the ground.
Failed to obtain common weed.
Obtained broken common weed.
Well, I guess this might be harder than I thought. He quickly located another common weed and tried to dig in the ground around it; he pried the entire root system out along with the stem and head.
You have obtained common weed.
Learned Skill Gardening For successfully harvesting a small plant you have learned the gardening skill.
You have gained 1 wisdom for thinking of a way to harvest plants without the gardening skill.
You have gained 1 dexterity from harvesting a ¡®difficult¡¯ plant.
¡°Identify Skill: Gardening.¡±
Gardening. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By delicately removing a plant from the ground you have obtained the gardening skill. Each level in gardening provides a 1% chance to obtain at least two ingredients from a single low level plant. For every rank you increase your gardening skill you will be able to harvest better plants, and have a chance to harvest more from each plant. To level this skill you must successfully harvest any plant harder than effortless.
Identify Skill has leveled up. Identify Skill is now Novice level 2.
YES! Voice mentally shouted, while keeping an outwardly calm appearance. I got stat points! All I did was pull out a weed from the ground! And I got a level up for my skill! He couldn¡¯t believe how simple it was to get stat points, no doubt it would be harder to level them up in the future, but that was a problem for another day. Add in the fact that he obtained his first level two skill and his happiness could be compared to when he heard he won a DIVE pod. For now I¡¯m going to gather all of the common weed and green herbs I can. In thirty minutes he gathered six dozen weeds. Most of them broke at first but in the last ten minutes he only broke one out of the ten he picked. He had obtained a total of 30 useless common weeds, and forty two usable ones. This exercise netted him a whole three points of dexterity. It had rapidly increased at first, but he hadn¡¯t seen any improvement in the last fifteen minutes. His gardening skill seemed to level up with every weed he pulled. He went to the fountain where he first appeared. The other four players had all disappeared from the area. He went to work trying to find the green healing herb. He could only find two around the entire fountain. He was sure he had seen more here when he first appeared. Hm, maybe one of the others got the same quest? He took out the green healing herbs and intently studied them. Even with his identify skill he didn¡¯t gather any information. Since he couldn¡¯t find any more of this plant he focused on what he knew about the plant. All he really knew was that it grew near water. He just needed to somehow locate it. He looked around the areas he found the original two plants. Each on had a small mound of dirt where he pulled them up. He did notice, however, that the dirt around each of the mounds was a slightly lighter color than the rest of the area.
You have gained 1 wisdom for thinking of a way find plants without the plant location skill.
You have gained the plant location skill.
Plant Location Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 50.00% By studying the area around a plant you have gathered you can now use this skill to locate the plant. Simply state Locate: and then then plant¡¯s name. You must harvest a new plant and study the surrounding area to be able to level this skill. Every new plant you gather and study will be added to the list of searchable plants. You see a bright white aura that will show you the location of this plant, the timer is set for sixty seconds. Cooldown: 0 seconds. The higher the level the larger the range and brightness.
¡°Locate: Green Healing Herb.¡± Suddenly about three meters away he saw several white glows pop up. He went over to where they were, it was a small almost imperceptible pond. There were five glows around the pond. He successfully harvested all of them. He used the next half hour to locate several green healing herbs. By the time he was done he had four dozen usable green healing herbs, and only nine useless ones, as well forty three more common weed, and six useless common weed. ¡°Open inventory.¡± He separated the useless herbs and weeds, and put all the usable ones together. He still had several hours before he needed to return to the alchemist so he decided to continue to gather the herbs and weeds until just before he was required to turn the quest in. After several hours had passed he received a notification.
Time to turn in alchemist quest. If you do not manage to turn in the quest in the next 60 minutes you will fail the quest.
He looked around to get his bearings. He realized he had no idea where he was. He didn¡¯t recognize any of the buildings. The only people that were out were guards; it seemed he was in the residential area. He decided to ask a guardsman for directions. He had been wandering around town for a while, so there was little chance of finding the right place in such a short time. He ran around for about twenty minutes, stopping only when he needed to catch his breath. He became exhausted, and received an information window.
You have unlocked Vitality.
You have unlocked Stamina.
Saying, ¡°Show stats Vitality and Stamina,¡± he found out that for running for a long period of time he unlocked a stat that allowed for more stamina. He also unlocked stamina, which would be used for any prolonged physical activity. He decided to run north following the wall since he had no way to know which direction she was in; at least it was better than wandering aimlessly. After running for about twenty more minutes he found a guard, and had increased his vitality by two. He could now run much longer without having to regen his stamina. However the time he needed to completely regen his stamina also increase. His satiety was quickly draining. After only this long of wandering and running he was down to twenty percent. I guess stamina regen rate is a different stat. He asked the guard how to get to Susan the alchemist. ¡°Well,¡± The guard said slowly thinking, ¡°She¡¯s about an hour walk to the south. You look like you can run so maybe, hmm thirty minutes? You are about as far north as the city gets without entering the castle district.¡± Voice was devastated, not only did he spend twenty minutes running in the opposite direction, now he only had about twenty minutes to get there. He thanked the guard and immediately started running south. As he ran he noticed that all of the houses were getting slightly shabbier. Not a lot but traveling directly from one area to another you could defiantly tell the differences in wealth if you looked for it. After fifteen minutes of running full throttle he heard the familiar sound of the blacksmiths hammer. Finally! I¡¯m almost there! His lungs were burning from lack of oxygen. His legs felt like they were lead, every step took more power and energy than the last. Every second seemed to last an hour. His sight was starting to darken. He hadn¡¯t noticed it but his stamina had long since depleted, and his health was dropping at an alarming rate. It felt like it took him forever to reach the smithy. At this rate he would fail the quest! He finally reached the blacksmith¡¯s smithy. He ran past it, almost falling to the ground as he waved to the smith. He entered the shop gasping for air. Susan came over worried. What she saw was some poor boy come running into her shop like he was being chased by a pack of rabid wolves. He was red in the face and couldn¡¯t catch his breath. She couldn¡¯t bear to see someone about to die, especially when she would have to clean up the body and explain it to the guards. ¡°Oh dear me sir, do you need a stamina potion? Or a health potion?¡± Voice shook his head no. After a few moments, when he had caught his breath he said ¡°I¡¯ve come to turn in the quest.¡± Susan looked a little bit sad. ¡°You know I gave you until nighttime. The quest failed several minutes ago.¡± NOOOOO! Damn it, I thought I made it! This whole trip was completely useless. Voice had been too busy trying to get here in time that he didn¡¯t notice the quest failed notification. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°Sorry hun, but I can¡¯t pay if you didn¡¯t fulfill your part of the bargain. You wouldn¡¯t expect me to just give away my potions without charging right?¡± Voice understood but felt bitter about it. Stupid alchemist pig! I bet her potions suck anyway. He decided to at least try to recoup some of his loses by selling some of the ingredients he found. He probably wouldn¡¯t get the five copper but at least he would get enough to eat something other than the bread. Susan agreed. When he opened his inventory to show her the ingredients he had he heard a laugh. Startled he looked up. Susan had covered her mouth with one hand, while the other was holding her wrist. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry. I didn¡¯t mean to laugh at you. You have 85 common weeds and 48 green healing herbs? No wonder you were late. You must have been lost in your work.¡± Voice blushed slightly, not being able to deny it. ¡°Look,¡± she continued, ¡°I can¡¯t pay you for the quest but how about I teach you how to make your own potions?¡± Voice¡¯s mouth went agape. This was much better than a measly 5 copper. Before he could fully work up the words to reply to her she spoke. ¡°Of course I wouldn¡¯t think of charging you for these lessons. And if you make something good I might even buy them from you.¡± He nodded yes as soon as he could. Over the course of the next thirty minutes Susan instructed him on how to mash up plants to use. He would then have to pour the resultant into water to obtain a potion. Of course if he sifted out any undesirables from the mix before pouring it in water the potion would turn out a much higher quality. She gave him a large book which as she said ¡°Records any recipes you might find, or buy. It also gave the variations of those potions you might try.¡± Brenton was overjoyed. Susan was an alchemical angel; her potions must be as amazing as she is. He used the only recipe currently recorded in his book. It required one green healing herb leaf and two common weed tufts. It turned out that the white bit at the top of the dandelion look-a-like was one solid piece. Each green healing herb had two leaves on the stem, so each could be made into two potions. He gather the ingredients into four piles. The first pile was the unusable weeds; the second was the unusable herb, and so on. He took two unusable weeds, cut the fluffy top off them, put the stems to the side, put the fluffs in the mortar, and grabbed an unusable green healing herb. He took a leaf off and put it into the mortar. He crushed the compound until it was a paste. Carefully watching where he struck each time. Like this he continued through the entire stock. His first four potions all turned out horribly, which is fine since he decided to use the ¡®useless¡¯ weeds and herbs. He didn¡¯t have the dex to properly grind the green goop. When he poured the unfinished goop into the bottles they would not mix with the water. It was like adding oil to water. On his fifth try he managed to successfully make the green healing goop, albeit a very poor quality. When he poured it in the bottle he asked for a lid; the alchemist with a slight smile handed him one. He quickly swirled the concoction. When the swirling stopped he got four notices. His dex had been increased by two for correctly mixing and making the potion. His wisdom increased by one for thinking of an inventive way to make the potion and:
For successfully creating your first potion you have learned the alchemy skill.
¡°Identify Skill: Alchemy.¡±
Alchemy. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By creating your very first potion you have obtained the alchemy skill. Each level in alchemy provides a 1% bonus the strength and duration of a potion. For every rank you increase your alchemy skill you will be able to make better, and more difficult potions. To level this skill you must successfully create any potion, more difficult potions give more exp.
YES! More skills, give me more skills. HAHAHAH. Luckily no one could hear his creepy inner laugh. With this alchemy skill he could harvest the plant and sell potions. Pure profit!
Obtained very very VERY poor health potion.
¡°Identify.¡±
Very very VERY poor health potion. Seriously this is just a really bad health potion. It heals like maybe one hp, that¡¯s it. It is basically useless to even carry around. Ps. It tastes HORRIBLE.
Is this system making fun of me? ¡°How much do the glass bottles cost?¡± he asked Susan. ¡°Usually two coppers a piece, but for this training they are free.¡± ¡°What I meant was after this training. In case I want to buy them to make my own¡­¡± His words cut off when Susan suddenly hugged him. She squeezed with strength disproportionate to her body size. ¡°Oh sorry, sorry. I forgot I drank a strengthening potion earlier.¡± She said as she noticed his body creaking. ¡°I¡¯m just happy to finally meet someone with enough intelligence to recognize that being an alchemist is so wonderful. Sure everyone comes for potions, but no one wants to learn how to make them. They think making them isn¡¯t as important as killing the enemy. How would they be able to slaughter so many without my potions? I knew you would like it though.¡± Sensing it would ruin her good mood, and any possible gain he would get from her he hurriedly agreed. ¡°Whoever said making potions isn¡¯t as important as killing an enemy is sorely mistaken. At least if you could make a potion and came upon some sort of trouble other than a killable monster you could still live long enough to think up a plan.¡±
For successfully making an npc like you through conversation you have obtained the Charisma stat.
¡°Good, good. Since I see you becoming good at this and becoming a repeat customer I can sell each one to you for a copper a piece. That¡¯s the same price as I get the materials to make them for.¡± He finished using the rest of his useless herbs, and a large part of the useless weeds. When he was done he had six of the very bad potions. By the time he ran out of the bad ingredients he started using the good ones. As he used the plants not labeled *useless* he was pumping out the potions. By the time he realized it he had twenty, and the alchemist was busy writing at the counter. I guess she lost interest. Can¡¯t say I blame her. He finished all of the potions; he had made a total of 40 useable potions. Each one healed about 25 hp. His Herbology skill gave this amount a bonus of 2%. So the final potion count was: 1 potion that healed 24 points, 18 potions that healed 30.2 points, 11 potions that healed 32 points, and 10 potions that healed 36 points. He made twenty potions till he had one that healed 36 points. After he made that he used the exact same method to make four more. He made the same hits in the same places, or at least as close as possible. After that he messed around with the method a bit, but eventually came back to the method that made 36 points. He had enough to make 10 more, but only managed with five of them. When he was done he checked his skills. The alchemist skill was leveling very slowly. It barely had more than 16%, while some other skills would level up after only a few tries at it. During the whole process he gained 2 dex, 1 str, and 1 end. The whole process took him several hours. He had been in this game for at least ten hours now, yet why did he not feel tired? The alchemist interrupted his thoughts. She had been studying his potions as he was lost in thought. ¡°Well that is nice. I was expecting more failures, and the potions that turned out well are exceptional. You don¡¯t perhaps know herbalism?¡± When he nodded yes she continued. ¡°Good, then that makes this even better. I hereby offer accept, hmm actually young man I don¡¯t seem to know your name.¡± He told her. ¡°I hereby accept Voice0fReason as my apprentice. Along with helping me make potions, he is required to help run the shop. In return I agree to supply glass bottles for potion making for him, at the reasonable price of only 1 copper for five. He may also use the alchemist lab when not in use.¡± Voice could only stand in awe. He would get free use of alchemy tools, and be able to buy bottles for much cheaper than anyone else. She showed him the paper she had written. It was a contract for apprenticeship. He immediately signed it with the quill she offered.
You have gained the title Susan¡¯s Apprentice. Anyone in the city of Rand will notice you as her apprentice. You have gained 10 fame. Your intimacy with Susan has increased by 25.
After he signed the contract he decided he needed to log out to get some sleep. He bid farewell to Susan, and told her he would be back after running some errands.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassN/A
Health100Mana100
Stamina120
Level1
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec1.2
Stamina Regen/Sec1.1
Strength11Agility10
Wisdom12Intelligence10
Endurance11Dexterity18
Luck10Vitality12
Charisma10Fame10
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 1 Exp 50.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 50.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 2 Exp 50.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 10.00%
Gardening Novice Level 1 Exp 59.00%
Plant Location Novice Level 1 Exp 50.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 1 Exp 16.70%
Dive 5: His First Cure Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice found finished the quest, but failed to turn it in on time. The alchemist took pity on him and taught him alchemy. He made some potions and became her apprentice. He checked the system clock before he signed out. He had spent a little over twelve hours in the game. He went out of the shop to log out. When he said ¡°Log out of DIVE,¡± he was sent to a pure white room. This room seemed identical to the one he had first appeared in. He saw two doors, one said exit while the other said DIVE. He walked through the door marked ¡®exit¡¯. When he got out he looked at the clock. It was just under two and a half hours after he first got in. He decided to quickly relieve himself and get back to playing. He also grabbed a cold slice of pizza. He didn¡¯t want any of the other the other players getting too far ahead of him, so that was all he had time for. It took him about fifteen minutes. Since it was summer and he was a full time college student he didn¡¯t have anything he needed to do. He got back in the DIVE pod and reconnected DIVE. He again appeared in the white room. He decided to try to use some commands, but open stats window and other similar commands didn¡¯t work. He tried saying ¡°Open Help Menu,¡± and a help menu really did open up. Apparently he could design his own room up to about a hundred terabytes big. That¡¯s a huge amount. This pod was like a small server in today¡¯s world. There must have been a lot of money and research that went into building these. He decided to go through the DIVE door, so that he could get more experience in potion making, and possibly get more intimacy with Susan. When he logged back on, he noticed it was raining. He got a notice saying that he had spent more than an hour in the rain so he had a minor cold. It didn¡¯t cause any negative side effects, but might be bad in the future. When he entered Susan¡¯s shop he received a notice:
Intimacy with Susan the alchemist in the city of Rand has gone up to twenty five. At every twenty five point interval Susan will be more inclined to go to greater lengths to assist you. Current level: Will help you to a point that does not put her in any danger.
He was pleasantly surprised about this new development. He sold the forty potions to Susan for 200 copper. If you converted that it would be two silver. He asked Susan if she needed anything done. ¡°Sure,¡± Susan said after a few seconds of thought. ¡°Take these potions I just bought from my apprentice to Evan.¡± She gave a small chuckle, obviously amused at her own joke. Voice gave her a smile that said he appreciated the joke. He wouldn¡¯t want to lose his hard earned intimacy now would he? She also added one other, smaller vial to the mix of potions. The rain had started to increase in the few moments he was in apothecary, so he quickly ran over to the smithy a few houses down. If I get negative stats for this I¡¯m going to hurt someone. Voice didn¡¯t see the smith at his forge. As luck would have it the smith decided working in the rain was too much of a hassle. So Voice knocked on the door. The burly smith came only a few seconds later with a worried look on his face. When he saw Voice he gave a slightly angry sigh. ¡°Look boy I already told you I can¡¯t teach you my craft. Now if you don¡¯t make yourself scarce I might have to call the guards; or better yet I¡¯ll take care of you on my own.¡± The smith had an evil grin. Voice wanted to retort with something witty about how he brought potions over and where the blacksmith could shove them. Just before he did though he remembered his goal for this game; he wanted to be a powerful healer in full heavy armor. For that he needed to befriend this asinine blacksmith. So he said, ¡°Actually, Evan, I have apprenticed myself to Susan. She asked me to bring over these potions that I made. ¡° The blacksmiths face went from satisfaction at having helped this young man to become an apprentice, albeit in a very indirect way, to dubious when he heard that this boy made the potions. Voice continued, ¡°She also gave me this to give you.¡± As soon as Voice showed him the purple vial he grabbed it out of his hands. He immediately ran back inside with the purple potion. He returned several minutes later, after having left Voice huddled under the metal canopy that shielded the smithy from the elements. When the smith returned Voice asked what the rush was for. The blacksmith seemed hesitant to answer. Voice didn¡¯t want to lower intimacy so he just handed the green bad tasting health potions to the smith and went to leave. Before he could, however, the blacksmith invited him inside for a moment for a little bit of warm tea. Since warm drinks usually help with colds IRL Voice decided to join him. They sat in silence as the tea was prepared by the blacksmith. Voice wondered at where the blacksmith¡¯s family was. His job didn¡¯t make a lot of money, but surely he had enough income to support a family. After the tea was ready Evan poured some for both of them. He set his own tea down instead of drinking it. He began telling Voice a story. ¡°A long while ago I fell in love. It all started when I turned eight years old, and my father had me apprenticed to the city¡¯s blacksmith. My family has lived in this city for more generations than I care to count. There was one other apprentice to this blacksmith. He was a year older than me, but he treated me well. No ploys to gain favoritism or harm me or my work in any way. In fact, any time I had trouble he would go out of his way to help me. It wasn¡¯t until the first time he made a mistake I understood why. My master was under the opinion that if one person in the smithy failed everyone in the smithy would suffer the punishment, of course that included my master. Well after a few years I learned why the other apprentice and I had never met our master¡¯s family. Both his wife and daughter had a very rare form of disease. They would both become irritable before the symptoms started to show. They would occasionally would break out in a sort of rash; any wounds they received would heal slower and not as well. And whenever the disease was prevalent it was hard for them to walk and they would start to have some sort of something on their teeth. ¡± Brenton was intrigued; he hadn¡¯t gone out of his way to especially raise intimacy with the blacksmith, so this sudden heart to heart was quite out of the blue. I smell a quest coming! Voice inwardly jumped for joy. Sure he felt bad for the NPC, but he was only a VI (virtual intelligence) anyway. The difference in VI and AI was that AI could learn and adapt, VI was just a really complicated program that had no independent thoughts or emotions. The government¡¯s scientists had ¡®proven¡¯ the impossibility of AI several times, but that didn¡¯t stop sci-fi fans from buying the games or watching the movies based on it. Evan continued, ¡°Eventually I met his daughter, and we fell madly in love. After graduating from my apprenticeship I asked for her hand. She said yes so I asked my master for her hand in marriage. He agreed to, but cautioned me that if I couldn¡¯t find a cure her life would have many moments filled with despair.¡± Voice would have been really worried for this guy if he was real, but luckily Evan wasn¡¯t real. So Voice only cared about the potential quest rewards. Of course he would sill act like he cared. So Voice feigned an expression that seemed sad and shocked at the story. The blacksmith almost cried, ¡°Please, is there anything you can do to help? I know Susan can only give a remedy that alleviates some of the suffering, but maybe you can help her find a cure?¡± Voice said, ¡°Give me a few hours and I think I might be able to help.¡±
You have accepted this quest. Success: Curing Evan¡¯s wife. Difficulty: Basic Failure: Not curing Evan¡¯s wife, or his wife dying. Reward: ??? Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Evan the blacksmith, as well as his wife¡¯s eventual death.
Oh this one has a difficulty. Did they just add that? The blacksmith was dubious, but also had a glimmer of hope. If this boy could be accepted by Susan so quickly, then maybe he might have some special quality that would let him find a cure. Voice went to Susan and asked about the woman¡¯s symptoms. Apparently the symptoms would disappear randomly occasionally. They would always come back about three months later. He memorized the symptoms and time frame and logged out. He quickly searched the internet for information on the disease. He found several possible reasons, but decided to only try the ones that had known cures. But who knows, this game might not be based solely on reality. So he looked up what he could and got a list of known remedies. He could only find four diseases that could be cured with low level medicine; in the hour he gave himself to look it up. He memorized the information and logged back in. As he logged in he saw a beautiful sunrise. The fresh smell of dirt after rain gently wafted to his nose. He quickly ran in the alchemists shop and spoke to Susan. ¡°Alright, I have a few solutions that might work.¡± He gave Susan a list of potential potion effects he needed. She could make three, but had no idea what vitamin C was. Well I know what the problem is most likely. He looked around outside for common weed. When he found some he analyzed the area around it. He got a notification once he was done.
Identify has leveled up. Identify is now Novice level 2.
He was extremely excited for a skill to level up. He quickly looked for more plants to research to level it up further. After ten minutes or so he remembered he was supposed to be looking for a way to heal Evan¡¯s wife. Oh well, he thought dejectedly, I guess I can always look later. He went to the fruit stand and bought as much citrus as one silver would get him. He got thirty oranges, ten lemons and something that looked oddly like a purple pomelo. (Like a giant grapefruit) He used identify on each of the ingredients.
Orange A common orange. It regenerates 5 stamina/sec for 5 seconds, and heals 15 fatigue. You have an inkling that this will help cure the blacksmith¡¯s daughter somehow. Ps. Way to ruin the fun by cheating.
Lemon An uncommon fruit. It regenerates 5 stamina/sec for seconds, and heals 30 fatigue. It has no real value of its own, but might be useful in cooking. The peel can also be used if dried.
Purpelo An exotic purple fruit. It will instantly heal 50 stamina and 50 fatigue when eaten. It can be used in many exotic dishes. It tastes tangy with a bit of grapefruit taste, although it is much sweeter.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Voice decided to see if any of his new skills could be fused. He tried fusing all of them in order. (I¡¯m too lazy to write out the entire list a and b, a and c¡­) Sadly they were either incompatible or his skill fusion was at too low of a level. The results he gained were: Gardening + Plant Location = Planting intuition. Skill Fusion + Alchemy = Alchemic Fusion.
Planting Intuition. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Planting intuition allows the user to know the best location to plant seeds of plants. At lower levels you can sense the climates any seed below uncommon would need. At higher levels you can sense the climates of a wider range of less common seeds, as well as identifying the exact location within that biome that would be good to plant the seed. Levels in Planting Intuition provide 1% per level increase chance of harvesting additional ingredients using the gardening skill.
Alchemical Fusion. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Alchemical Fusion allows the user to fuse two or more alchemy potions (up to four) together to make a new potion with most of the effects of both. The base potion will be augmented with a percentage of the other potion or potions. Higher levels in this skill increase the percentage of the potions power the new potion keeps. Current percentage: 24%
His skill fusion became level 2, and his Identify Skill became Novice level 3. He only got two new skills, but he was excited to show Susan his alchemical fusion. It would surely raise her intimacy, then he might be able to get free alchemic supplies to be able to level up even further. It was like everything was set up for him to become the ultimate alchemist. He gather 99 more common weed and didn¡¯t need any healing herbs as he still had 54 leaves left over. After gathering all of the items, he had gained a level in Gardening. He headed back to Susan¡¯s place. She gave him all her research on Evan¡¯s wife. He looked it over and confirmed his suspicions on the ¡®scurvy disease¡¯. He didn¡¯t know how that was genetic but it was the only viable explanation. He sat at Susan¡¯s alchemist table and began working, Susan watching the entire time. She was enthralled in the idea that her pupil of less than a day could figure out something she hadn¡¯t. Of course she thought he would fail horribly, but it was interesting to see if he did succeed. Susan¡¯s table had the mortar and pestle, but also various apparatuses for cutting, chopping, and otherwise dismantling plants. It also had a station to warm up any liquid ingredients he might use. He peeled the fruit and set the peels aside seeing as he might be able to make some money from selling those as seasoning when they dried. He decided to try out a theory before he began actually making the potion for Evan. He made a health potion with extra healing herbs, it did in fact increase the healing potential but only up to a certain point. Any change on the one leaf two weed formula had diminishing returns immediately. The fruit itself he crushed, getting out all the usable juices. He would be using this instead of water as a base for the potion. He then proceeded to make a health potion. He used twice as many herbs and weeds as the original recipe called for. The potions healed a total of 45 points of health on average. He made 50 potions from the finely stirred citrus juice and the green healing goop. When he was done he went to identify the new type of potion he made.
You have created a new type of potion. The Vitamin C healing potion. This potion will not only grant health to the one who drinks it, but it is a great way to help prevent diseases from lack of vitamin C, like scurvy.
For creating a new type of potion you gain a permanent plus five to wisdom.
For making so many potions at once you gain a total of plus two dexterity.
Susan was curious as to what his potions were so she looked over some of them when he was done. She had never heard of this effect, Vitamin C, but it might be helpful to Elizabeth. She had known Elizabeth since they were children, sometimes she would disappear for random intervals of time. It always concerned Susan. That was one reason she became an alchemist, so that she could fight incurable diseases. If this boy could help her she would be forever in his debt. When Voice was done he brought one potion over to the blacksmith. Susan came with him. Evan opened the door and looked at the glass vial in Voice¡¯s hand. He was suddenly filled with excitement, maybe his wife could be cured after all. ¡°Hello Mr. Evan.¡± Voice said, trying to sound a little more important than he was. ¡°I have here a potion I think will cure your wife. Keep in mind though from what I know this will probably take about a month to start working.¡± Not that it¡¯s a month my time though. Evan led them both upstairs to see his wife. He saw her lying in bed, weak holding on to life. A single tear rolled down his cheek at the thought of his wife getting better. Nothing would cause him as much joy as that. ¡°Darling, Voice here has brought you a potion.¡± ¡°No more potions please,¡± Elizabeth¡¯s voice was weak. It was as though she had been on death¡¯s door for several days. ¡°No darling, you must drink this last potion.¡± He helped her sit upright while she drank. She did not make it easy on him. She obviously didn¡¯t want to live with this anymore. When she had drank the potion Voice and Susan left the room. A few minutes later the blacksmith followed. ¡°So how much is the potion?¡± The blacksmith asked. ¡°I¡¯m willing to pay anything for the sake of my wife.¡± Voices eyes lit up like dollar signs, but then he remembered Susan was in the room. Furthermore she appeared to be watching him to see his reply. Feeling unnerved by her stare he said, ¡°No charge, but if you could make me some armor time comes I¡¯d be very grateful.¡± Just before Evan could answer they heard a scream from upstairs. Evan pushed Voice out of the way, almost causing him to fall. Susan quickly followed Evan, and Voice got to the room a few seconds after the others. What he saw amazed him. Sitting on the bed, where the previously disabled woman was, was a beautiful woman. She had fair skin, beautiful pearly white teeth, and seemed to have the smile of a goddess. The potion worked completely. ¡°I thought it would surely work, ¡°Voice confessed, ¡°but I didn¡¯t think it would be this fast.¡± Elizabeth got unsteadily to her feet. She came up to Voice and gave him a tight hug. Susan and Evan were surprised by this, she never showed any inclination towards affection to anyone outside her family except for Susan. Evan realized this was because Elizabeth recognized Voice as her life¡¯s savior. Evan had tears in his eyes, his wife had been cured! ¡°She isn¡¯t cured though.¡± Voice said. ¡°She will either have to eat some sort of citrus fruit such as an orange or lemon at least once a day to make sure she doesn¡¯t go back into that state again. If she does go back I have 49 more potions stored at Susan¡¯s shop. ¡° The blacksmith thrust his hand out to shake Voice¡¯s. His grip was very firm, a must have for any blacksmith. Voice got a notice before going out to gather more materials to create potions with.
You have created a ¡®cure¡¯ for a disease that was not properly known. You will be known as the person to come up with this cure. Even if you did cheat¡­
You have gained the title Vitamin C King, The Curer of Scurvy. When you have this title equipped people will recognize you as the person that cured the genetic disorder scurvy. This title makes alchemists and healers friendlier. You gain an automatic + 10 intimacy with alchemists and healers with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy.
You have gained 125 fame for finding a way to temporarily cure an incurable disease.
You have completed Evan¡¯s quest. Talk to him for your reward.
Intimacy with Evan has reached maximum. Evan will consider you closer than a childhood friend. He will go to almost any lengths to assist you, even put himself in harm¡¯s way to grant you a chance to escape.
Evan called Voice to a stop right before he left the house. He said, ¡°If you ever need anything just let me know. Obviously any weapons or armor you may need for personal use will be free. Repairs as well. If you ever want to learn my trade all you have to do is say the word. If you want any unique items crafted all you have to do is bring me the materials and I will make it my top priority.¡± Evan had never felt closer to anyone, other than his wife. He decided to make Voice¡¯s life a pleasant one in any way he could.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassN/A
Health100Mana100
Stamina120
Level1Current TitleVitamin C King
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec1.7
Stamina Regen/Sec1.1
Strength11Agility10
Wisdom17Intelligence10
Endurance11Dexterity20
Luck10Vitality12
Charisma10Fame135
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 25.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 3 Exp 25.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 20.00%
Gardening Novice Level 2 Exp 29.50%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 00.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 1 Exp 56.70%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Dive: Skills Hey guys, if any of you have any cool ideas for skill fusions let me know! I would try to incorporate them. All i need is the two skills to be fused, the new name, and what it does. You can post those skill here! If i use your skill combination i will give credit. Also if anyone has advice i would gladly welcome it. Thanks for reading! : ) Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I have also decided that in addition to needing high level Skill Fusion , to fuse skills in some cases the skills themselves need to be a higher level. Thanks to Kuroyuki for the idea. Dive 6: His FIrst Charity Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice sold the potions he made to his master. He then delivered them to a blacksmith he had met earlier. He was told all about the blacksmith¡¯s wife¡¯s condition. He accepted then solved the quest using knowledge from outside the game. He obtained max intimacy with the blacksmith. Voice inwardly smiled. He could get free items from the blacksmith. He instantly made a decision. Well, I guess until I outgrow this guy¡¯s stuff I might as well just use him, instead of doing the job myself. ¡°Thank you for the offer Evan. Sadly I¡¯m a little busy learning Susan¡¯s trade, so I must decline the offer of apprenticeship. I would like to take you up on the offer of crafting for me. ¡° ¡°Of course, of course, I¡¯ll make you anything you want just name it. If it¡¯s within my power I¡¯ll make sure you get it. I¡¯ll provide the materials for anything mundane. If it¡¯s exotic I¡¯ll need some help to get the materials.¡± Voice thought it best to keep the favors as minimal as possible, so that he could keep the favors coming for longer. In the best case I could provide materials and get the weapons and armor forever! ¡°I am glad you are willing to do that for me, but I would feel bad if I didn¡¯t at least provide you the materials. So would it be ok to give you the materials and have you make the stuff?¡± Evan immediately agreed. With those conditions he could still afford to let his wife lead a good life, without worry of money issues. Susan handed Voice a key to her apothecary, so that he could use it at any time; even when she was asleep. Voice bid farewell to the trio and decided to find the other four players. They had a week before the general populous would be allowed into DIVE, so he wanted to make a good impression on them before they started forming clicks; even though they may have already started. He would be sure to see what strengths they had, and use them accordingly. Voice went to the square; it seemed the NPCs didn¡¯t take notice of the sudden appearance of five individuals. Maybe someone saw where the others went. He decided to go for the DefiledHealer. That person seemed to be watching everything from afar, so was the most plausible choice as he was most likely a person that found it hard to get along with others. This would be perfect since he could more easily separate this person from the others. ShortDwarf didn¡¯t have any glaringly obvious characteristics to go off of so he would be one of the last ones Voice went after. Voice would need more information. LastingBeauty wouldn¡¯t be that hard, what with her name and character who seemed extremely vain. People that exemplified personality flaws were some of the easiest to manipulate. EDI was a complete mystery. Other than her tattoo there was no information. She could be vain, or very nervous about people forgetting who she was. Voice knew she needed to be on his team though. Character creation didn¡¯t really give information on what you could change, since she figured out that she could have a tattoo she must have high intellect. So DefiledHealer, then EDI, then LastingBeauty. That¡¯s a good list; I¡¯ll go with that. He asked around the fountain if anyone had seen where the man that was sitting on the fountain went. After asking around for a few minutes someone told him that man went following one of the other four people that came into the city yesterday. Since he couldn¡¯t get any more information about Defiled, he decided to go try to find EDI. It was surprisingly easy to get information about her. One NPC told Voice ¡°It¡¯s like she just has a hankering for helpin¡¯ folks out.¡± Another told him, ¡°Yeah, she helped me out, sweet little thing didn¡¯t even ask for a reward. If you find her tell her that if she has any problems make sure ta make sure an come see me.¡± All in all Voice decided she was doing charity work for the city. I hate it when other people work the same as me, but is she trying to upstage me? Doing all this work for free must have some benefits not listed in the quests. Shit what if I could have gotten better rewards from keeping Evan¡¯s wife from kicking the bucket! As his curiosity was growing about the other two he asked about them as well. Apparently they did a really low level quest, bought a weapon each and left the town to hunt. Shit looks like that damn dwarf beat me to her. He decided to find EDI, and help her do ¡®charity¡¯ around town. At least the NPCs will like me more, maybe I could even get a discount at their shops. He checked his stats window. He noticed that the title Vitamin C King was equipped. Funny when I got the title Susan¡¯s Apprentice it didn¡¯t automatically get equipped. Maybe it¡¯s because everyone will recognize me anyway? But no one has said anything about Susan so far. He tested it out. Apparently people only recognize that title if he has it equipped, or tells them he is her apprentice. He decided to keep the King title and just introduce himself as her apprentice. He saw a couple with a child. The child had a long gnash across his stomach. Voice quickly ran over to where the trio was standing. As he got closer he noticed the woman was holding the crying child¡¯s hand, and yelling at the man. He remembered a similar scene in his childhood, minus the gnash of course. He couldn¡¯t recall it particularly well since he was only around four years old, but after that his father left. He hadn¡¯t seen him since. He interrupted them. ¡°Hello, sorry for the interruption, but I see you son has a rather large wound on his stomach. It isn¡¯t bleeding profusely but it should still be treated. If you could bring me some cloth I think I could help. ¡° The man looked hesitant, but only for a moment. The couple ran inside to look for something to be used as a bandage. Voice quickly used his plant location skill to locate some common weed. He had four leaves from the green healing herbs he had gathered earlier. He quickly started mashing the ingredients together. In less than a minute he had the Green Healing Goop ready. The couple brought out some thin white cloth that looked like the man had torn it apart. Voice asked for a pitcher of water before he could start. After receiving the water Voice took the boy¡¯s shirt off and told him to lay down to be bandaged. If I bandage him after giving him the potion I will make it look like I did a much more intense job. I should get even better rewards to turn down. Then I¡¯ll get even more intimacy. Voice went to combine the goop and water to have the boy drink, but his hand slipped on the handle of the pitcher and he accidently spilt the water on the boy¡¯s outstretched stomach. The world slowed down for a second as the water fell. He managed to catch the handle of the pitcher, so at least he made it look intentional. The couple was watching the entire time so he made sure his facial expression stayed impassive. After pouring the rest of the water on the boys wound to ¡®clean¡¯ it, he applied the goop. Hopefully it will at least form into a crappy potion to help the boy. After letting the goop set he saw it was not fusing to the water. He rubbed it into the wound gently, thinking that it might help the process. After he realized it wouldn¡¯t work he gave up and bandaged the boy. After completing the bandaging he received several notifications.
Learned Skill First Aid For successfully cleaning, and applying medicine and bandages to a wound you have learned the First Aid skill.
You have gained 2 wisdom for applying first aid without the skill.
You have gained 1 intelligence for gaining knowledge on first aid.
You have completed the strange couple¡¯s quest. Talk to them for your reward.
When he was done the man said to him, ¡°Thank you sir. We were debating where to take him since I am only a guard, and we don¡¯t have a lot of money. Please take this, it¡¯s only five silver but it¡¯s all we have.¡± Voice was sorely tempted to take it, but instead said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry my good sir I did not do this for the reward.(Writer¡¯s note: He¡¯s lying out his ass) I did this to help a child in need. There is no need for reward. If you wish to reward me, give your praises to Susan, my master. Without her I would not be able to make such a healing poultice as I did.¡± While the couple was stunned by his generosity he walked off.
You have gained 15 fame for possibly saving the young boy¡¯s life, without asking for reward.
Your fame in the city of Rand has reached 150. You are now somewhat known in Rand. You have about as much reputation as the local head priest at the chapel.
You have gained 1 charisma for successfully convincing others of a motive you did not have.
What the hell? Can this system read my mind? Is that fair, is that even legal?
You have gained the skill Deception for convincingly lying to at least three people at once.
Well, thought Voice happily, as long as I get something from it. ¡°Identify skill: Deception.¡±
Deception. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By using lies to make yourself look better, you have learned the deception skill. Each level in deception provides a 1% chance that your lies will be accepted by those without knowledge of material you are lying about, furthermore each level grants a .5% chance that your lies will be accepted by those with knowledge of material you are lying about. For every rank you increase your deception skill you will be able to gain bonus deception abilities. To level this skill you must successfully use it to deceive people. While in battle you are able to deceive enemies as to what your next action will be.
¡°Identify skill: First Aid.¡±
First Aid Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By using salves and bandages, you have learned how to give first aid. Each level in first aid provides a 10% healing bonus to healing using the first aid skill, and you will become quicker at fixing wounds. For every rank you increase your first aid skill you will be able to suture more increasingly difficult wounds. To level this skill you must successfully use it to help the wounded.
Even if nothing good came directly from wasting my materials, I guess I did get two skills. Voice thought about the money he would have made selling the potion. It was about five copper without haggling. Wait a minute. Susan said she sold the glass bottles for two copper. Does that mean the potions I made are basically worthless!? Voice had a dilemma. He wouldn¡¯t be able to make a profit with potions if he left this city. He could get the bottles for only a copper for five, because he was Susan¡¯s apprentice, but they would cost ten times that if he were to buy them anywhere else. Voice went around town for the next few hours helping anyone that needed a bit of first aid, or healing. By the end of the third hour he had gained ten fame; and had helped about a dozen people. He also gained one vitality from all the running, and one dexterity for accurately placing all of the goop and bandages. Oddly enough he only gained half the experience for his alchemy skill for making the green healing goop, but that was acceptable since he was leveling four skills at once. He leveled deception, first aid, gardening, and alchemy at the same time. His deception skill had leveled significantly. It was already novice level three. His alchemy skill had finally leveled up to novice level two. All of his potions now gained an additional 4% total bonus to potency, thanks to the bonuses from alchemy and Herbology. After finishing the quests he spent the next several hours picking plants he identified three different plants, leveling up his identify skill to level two. It seemed if he identified plants, both Herbology and identify leveled up. While he was running around town, he noticed a house that had vines growing from the roof to the ground. He identified it as:
Morning Vine Found on vines that grow on buildings. It is an ingredient in making mana potions. If combined with common weed it will make the lowest know potency of mana potion. Ps. It tastes horrible.
He eventually found a large pond. It was about fifteen feet from side to side. He jumped in and waded to the middle. He gathered two plants; one looked like two green rods connected at the bottom. Each rod had a single yellow petal forming a semi-circle around the tip.
Yellow Skunk Cabbage An aquatic flower. Its petals can be used as to help with burns. It can negate burning status of up to 7 points/sec. Can be made into a potion.
The second plant he found was a lily pad. A large green pad had a frog on the middle. One side of the pad had a beautiful flower growing out of it. It had dozens of white petals encircling a yellow stem in the middly. Typical of the first lily pad in the game I see has a freaking frog on it.
Water Lily The flower of this plant is used in many training facilities. The flower can be used in a potion to instantly regenerate small quantities of stamina.
After he had gathered dozens of each of the plants, and over a thousand common weed, he headed back to Susan¡¯s. When Voice checked his inventory he noticed that he had a total of twelve slots in his ¡®small backpack¡¯ as well as five potion slots on his belt. The green healing herb seemed to stack up to 99, so most likely other potion materials would also stack that high. He did take note of the common weed however. I was wondering how I could carry so much. I¡¯m glad it stacks up to 999 before making a new stack, otherwise I wouldn¡¯t be able to carry any other ingredients! Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. By now he had a general idea which direction it was at all times. It only took him an hour to get back. All the while he was gathering all the green healing herbs and common weed he could. His gardening skill leveled up twice, but once it leveled up to four the common weed no longer gave experience to it. He ended his common weed hunt once he had a thousand common weed. Once he arrived at Susan¡¯s it was nighttime. Dusk had come and gone while he gathered as much of the common weed as he could. Voice thought the city of Rand was huge. You could easily walk all around it for an entire day and never cross the path you had taken before. Tonight I¡¯m going to experiment with all of these ingredients. Susan¡¯s intimacy is pretty high so I bet I can trick her into buying them from me anyway. Once he was back at Susan¡¯s he unlocked the door and quietly began to work. At first he tried creating just one of each type of potion using a new ingredient plus two common weed. The water lily formed a white goop very similar to the green healing goop. The morning vine blossom formed a purple paste, and the yellow skunk cabbage some kept decomposing until it resulted in a fine powder. From this he gained: one potion that restored 26 stamina, a potion that restored 28 points of mana, and a potion that could cure burns of up to 12 fire damage per second.
Obtained novice stamina potion.
¡°Identify.¡±
Novice stamina potion. This potion was made by a promising, up and coming alchemist. It restores a base amount of 25 stamina. Restores: 26 points of stamina.
Obtained novice stamina potion.
¡°Identify.¡±
Novice mana potion. This potion was made by a promising, up and coming alchemist. It restores a base amount of 25 mana. Restores: 28 points of mana.
Obtained novice burn heal potion.
¡°Identify.¡±
Novice burn heal potion. This potion was made by a promising, up and coming alchemist. It cures a base amount of 10 burn/sec. Cures: 12 burn/sec.
Next he tried to use some of the left over materials. He thought that most likely this game would include a way to make potions that you may not know beforehand. Whenever he made a potion out of the unused parts he got the same message.
The potion you are trying to make has failed. You either have the wrong materials, are improperly mixing them, or do not have the skill to make them.
Bullshit system, giving me stuff I can¡¯t even use. He carefully made the rest of the materials into potions. During this entire process he kept careful track of where each of his hits with the pestle landed. With his level in dexterity he could accurately hit the same marks about ninety percent of the time. He only stopped three times during the entire endeavor. Twice to replenish his depleted satiety, and once about two thirds of the way through to give his wrist a break. The first material he ran out of was the green healing herb. He wanted to level up his alchemy as much as possible before working on the other potions. By the time he had used all of the green healing herbs he had leveled up his alchemy to Novice Level 4. All of his potions now got a total of plus 6% from the start. He also received a skill after making a whopping 300 health potions.
For continually hitting the same marks with precision, you have gained the critical strike skill.
¡°Identify Skill: Critical Strike.¡±
Critical Strike Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% For continually hitting the same marks with precision, you have gained the critical strike skill. This skill has an activation cost of 50 stamina. It can be used whenever a critical is possible, in or outside of combat. It deducts stamina regardless of the result of the action¡¯s success of a critical or not. Each level in critical strike provides a 10% bonus to critical success. For every rank you increase your critical strike skill you will be able to gain more benefits from a successful critical event. To level this skill you must successfully use this skill to increase the value of a critical event.
That¡¯s an awesome skill, but I don¡¯t remember ever seeing the word critical displayed. Not to mention I¡¯ve never been able to harvest multiple materials from one plant before. Voice knew that mathematically his health potions should have been healing around 26 health per potion, but his average potion healed more than twice that. It was odd to see a potion that healed less than 55. Maybe I¡¯ve been getting critical hits a lot on my potions. He decided to talk to Susan about it when she woke up. He looked in his alchemy book while on his second satiety break, the first being about halfway through the health potions creation. It had recorded the general way to make the health potions, as well as the best method he had discovered for each step of the creation process. Furthermore since he had been so thorough in analyzing the way he made each potion the book even told him where and how hard to hit. He smiled, that means I don¡¯t even have to analyze the new potion to see if it is better. I¡¯ll just try a bunch of different methods and see which is best. All I have to do is keep detailed track of each step. That is exactly what he did, for the first ten of each of the new potions he tried out a variety of different methods to obtain optimum results. After the first ten he went with the best method recorded in his book. After every nine potions after the first ten he would again experiment, having had time to think up a better way to create a certain part of the potion. The averages of the mana and stamina potions were about 40. While this wasn¡¯t as great as the 60 for the health potion, he had not had the sheer quantity of materials to work with. Since they too started with restoring 25 points, without his bonuses and detailed work they would be only a little better than half the strength. The burn remedy potion had gone from the original 10 points/sec to an astounding 20 points/sec. That was an increase almost as high as the health potion. He had a total of 65 potions of stamina, and mana each, as well as 50 potions of burn remedy. It took about two minutes to make each potion. Since his critical strike skill could be activated every 45 seconds, he used it about twice each potion. Every time he activated it he would get a message saying ¡®critical strike increased result by 10%.¡¯ A little over half way through he started getting the message ¡®critical strike increased result by 20%.¡¯ As soon as he finished he stretched, and almost fell off his chair having received various windows.
You have gained the title Night Owl When you have this title equipped people will recognize you as a person that loves the night. This title makes other night owls friendlier. You become 25% more productive at night. You gain an automatic + 10 intimacy with other night owls with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy.
For working diligently on potions, and showing momentous accuracy you have gained four dexterity.
You have gained 25 fame for making an amazing amount of potions in front of an audience.
Wow, what a hall. And 25%!? I can¡¯t wait till tomorrow night to try that out. Wait what did that say about an audience? Voice looked around and saw that several dozen people staring intently at him. As he looked at them he noticed the sun had risen a while ago. It was probably already noon. How did I not notice this many people for so long? When he looked at the audience they noticed he was done. A cheer ran through the crowd. Susan came over with an apple, a slice of cheese, and a half loaf of bread. There was a gleam in her eyes, and Voice thought she might be drooling slightly when she looked at his potions. ¡°So Voice0fReason,¡± Susan said in a bit too formal tone,¡±It seems as though alchemy really is in your blood. You are going to be a great alchemist one day. I mean,¡± She set the food down in front of Voice indicating for him to eat. He realized he was ravenous, so he did. She continued, ¡°Since you seem to about double the effects of some potions you must be a researcher. There is no way this is just luck. You did increase the effects of four different types of potions, and the healing potions are probably common quality at least.¡± Voice thought to himself only common quality? Why would she need to go out of her way to try to drag me down? FUCK! I¡¯m just learning, it¡¯s not like I¡¯m an NPC that has spent her whole pointless life doing this shit. Seeing his negative reaction to her words Susan quickly amended her sentence. ¡°What I meant was, usually the best quality you could hope for with these ingredients is mundane. Most people couldn¡¯t go past low. But you somehow managed to bring it up to common. While the others look to be about mundane quality. Imagine what you could do with materials ranked common!¡± Voice was a bit confused, he thought these ingredients were ¡®common¡¯ quality, so he asked. ¡°So what quality are the ingredients I¡¯ve been using?¡± Susan smirked, as if she had just won a prize from under a hated enemy. ¡°Low, you have been using low quality ingredients to create common quality potions. Admittedly only the health potion is common quality, and even it is on the low side of common, but the fact that you can use materials to such a degree is nothing short of miraculous.¡± Voice was quite happy to hear this. All of his hard work paid off, he had suffered a lot, but with his constant perseverance he managed to obtain something no ordinary human could (Brah, you only worked for like two days). An idea sparked in his mind. I could go see if there are any books on plants. This is a big city I¡¯m sure they would have some. After Susan had looked over the entire batch of potions she made Voice an offer for them, after Voice told her he was going to keep the best 9 health, mana, and stamina potions the price dropped, but was still substantial. Usually it would have been 5cp per potion, but since they were all so freakishly high quality Susan offered a total of four silver. Basically it was twice the going rate of the potions. Voice knew his potions were extraordinary so he wondered for a second if Susan was trying to cheat him, but only for a second. Her intimacy was high enough that he didn¡¯t really think she would. Besides, she needs to make a profit too. With that he agreed and took the silver. He looked out the store window and saw money changing hands. It seemed he was the source of a small gambling ring. Susan even went out to collect some. She came back with a big bag of silver. Voice scowled inwardly, I knew she was way too generous! Despite his expectations at the quasi-betrayal of Susan, she came over and gave him several more silver coins. ¡°This is for winning me such a large bet.¡± She gave him a wink. ¡°Susan, what was the bet about?¡± ¡°Oh just how many of the ingredients you would be able to go through before passing out. At first I told a couple of my friends that you were working on potions for a few hours. Don¡¯t give me that look, of course I¡¯m going to watch my star pupil work the night away. I¡¯m not a philistine! Anyway, I told my friends and they told theirs, you know how it goes. Somewhere along the way a richy rich type came along and proposed a bet, seeing as you were looking drowsy. So we started betting on how much you could go through.¡± ¡°What was your bet then?¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious? I bet you would go through it all! HAHAHA.¡± Voice didn¡¯t know if he should be grateful for the acknowledgement from his ¡®master¡¯ or punch her. He decided gratefulness because a punch would probably lower intimacy. All in all today he made 10 silver pieces. ¡°Susan, do you know anywhere that sells books on alchemy?¡± Susan looked like she had just seen Santa pop out of her chimney. ¡°You really ARE a researcher. Here let me go get you some information!¡±
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassN/A
Health100Mana110
Stamina130
Level1Current TitleVitamin C King
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec1.9
Stamina Regen/Sec1.1
Strength11Agility10
Wisdom19Intelligence11
Endurance11Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality13
Charisma11Fame185
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 2 Exp 20.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 25.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 4 Exp 46.00%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 30.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 4 Exp 75.00%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 2 Exp 53.33%
Dive 7: His First Teaching Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice decided to go around town looking for EDI. He found out she was helping npcs for free. He decided to do the same. After helping a large amount of people he gathered some ingredients and made some potions. Hey guys I¡¯m doing a point of view this chapter. Tell me if you like it. If not I¡¯ll just keep to Voice. And also tell me if you find anything wrong, in any of the chapters. I will fix it as soon as i see the comment. Thanks for reading! Susan¡¯s POV: By the time Susan came back with the needed information, Voice was lightly snoring on the desk. ¡°I guess after working so hard he deserves so kind of rest.¡± She went a few houses down and got Evan. Evan seemed to fawn over Voice as if he were a younger brother or a son, maybe a bit of both. Susan shook the incestuous thought out of her head. As always the blacksmith was working on some weapon or armor. Susan didn¡¯t really care which. Metal never really piqued her interest as much as harnessing the raw potential of the natural world. She would often come see Elizabeth, and by extension Evan. She would test out new remedies for her friend, it would never work, but occasionally she would hit something that helped a bit. As was her habit she was already up the stairs. She didn¡¯t even remember if she said hi to Evan. She decided since she was here she might as well say high to her friend. Elizabeth was knitting on the bed. I guess after all these years of basically being bed ridden she is used to it. Susan said hi and asked to borrow Evan for a bit. Elizabeth greeted her and answered yes. She didn¡¯t even think about it. If it was her best friend Susan¡¯s request there wasn¡¯t much she¡¯d say no to. Susan went back downstairs, and found Evan. He was putting a sword on the grind wheel. ¡°Excuse me Evan, but I need your muscles.¡± She said eyeing his muscles. Susan always found a way to make Evan feel a little uncomfortable. Truth is Susan was trying to formulate a way to steal the behemoth¡¯s muscular structure. ¡°Whatcha¡¯ need em for exactly? And I do hope I can keep em on me. I¡¯ll be needin em for the next sword I¡¯ll be makin.¡± Evan¡¯s natural speech was a terrible mess of words. He only corrected it in his wife¡¯s presence; even then it was only when she was sick. Most people got to know THIS Evan and thought the Evan that spoke in full English was an imposter. Susan sighed; Evan always had some weird knack for figuring out her thoughts. Well they had known each other almost as long as he knew Elizabeth. ¡°Well Voice was at my place all night, and I need your help to bring him up stairs.¡± Evan rushed to put down the sword and go to Susan¡¯s place. I¡¯m impressed with how much Voice means to him now. I wonder if I should tell him my speculations on Voice. I guess I¡¯d better not. As long as Voice is helping people it doesn¡¯t matter for what reason. Susan remembered the potions Voice made; she decided to identify all of them. The chore took half an hour, but was well worth it. Many of the potions had a little under twice the potency of what they should have. I can¡¯t believe a beginner could make these! I¡¯m going to have to set up some intense training for him. He might even surpass me one day. She went to the library while Voice was asleep. She talked to Lydia for a while. Lydia was a longtime acquaintance. Seeing as Susan often bought books for entertainment, and was a somewhat well-known author on Herbology, Lydia greeted her warmly. ¡°Well hello there Susan! I haven¡¯t seen you in a few days. Something really interesting must be happening around your place, hm?¡± Lydia never left the library. She had all of her purchases done by the assistant librarians, or delivered directly to her room on the third floor. Somehow, though, she knew all the town gossip. ¡°Well,¡± replied Susan with a warm smile, ¡°Since you already seem to know, I have taken an apprentice. ¡° Susan was pretty happy about having an apprentice; Lydia wouldn¡¯t be able to ruin her happy mood today. Lydia smiled, already guessing what the alchemist was going to ask. ¡°So my apprentice is going to come by soon. I¡¯ll need you to give him something to help him along. Of course you can¡¯t tell him I asked you to.¡± Susan asked Lydia in the most non-pleading way she could. Lydia smirked. Lydia usually charged quite a bit for favors. Susan was dreading what this one would cost her. Lydia was the ultimate master within the realm of knowledge. If you had any question about anything written in any public book, and many private ones, she was the person to ask. Lydia asked Susan, ¡°So how many apprentices have you had in the some odd years you have been studying alchemy?¡± Susan answered, ¡°None, besides him.¡± Lydia asked, ¡°And why was that again.¡± Susan sighed; this was an old game Lydia liked to play. Susan would often come in to sell a particularly powerful piece of alchemic information, and Lydia would badger her. ¡°So you came to sell another piece of knowledge?¡± Lydia would ask. Susan would always sigh and answer, ¡°Yes, I have knowledge and need money.¡± Lydia would ask, ¡°So why don¡¯t you get an apprentice? You could get them to make a few potions for you, and share your information with them.¡± ¡°You know why I won¡¯t get one. No one is even half as intelligent as they need to be to understand my work. If I ever met someone like that then I would be probably need to dissect their brains to see if they were mortal.¡± Back in the present: Lydia said, ¡°Well if this boy is enough to pique your interest, then I guess I can help.¡± ¡°Alright, thanks. But what do you want in return?¡± ¡°Oh nothing much, just let me borrow him for a while.¡± Lydia gave a small wicked grin. Susan was worried what Lydia might do, but she didn¡¯t really have a choice to further his knowledge enough to understand her work. Voice¡¯s POV: He woke up in a very comfortable bed. Susan was sitting at a chair, writing on a parchment. She seemed to be studying morning vine roots. She had cut it open and was she was pouring some sort of bubbling liquid. She hadn¡¯t noticed him yet so he decided to take a peek at her notes. She had been experimenting with the effects of something called the corodus flower. It could melt metal, but left all living things alone. He decided to interrupt her and ask, ¡°So why are you pouring an acid on a plant?¡± Susan was pulled from her intense concentration when Voice spoke his question. ¡°Be quiet and look if you¡¯re interested.¡± Susan used a bit of a harsh tone. Voice was taken aback by this. He had never heard her use such a tone. Well whatever, this seems interesting; and she did let me stay in her bed after all. So he watched. The bubbling liquid quickly turned the root into some sort of rust colored sludge. ¡°Eureka!¡± Susan exclaimed in a mild, yet extremely happy roar. ¡°I¡¯ve been working on this most of the time you were asleep. It was conjectured that by some alchemist, his name escapes me, that corodus fluid, a poison made of the corodus flower, could under the right conditions melt living matter. I¡¯ve used iron root, which can give metallic properties to many animals and plants, to cause the hard root of the morning vine to turn to metal. The newly metalized roots melted when I introduced them to the corodus blossom!¡± Voice thought it was weird for the corodus root to turn things into sludge, but it sounded like rust. ¡°So what you¡¯re saying is that the iron root turns the root into an iron like substance. And the corodus root oxidizes it?¡± ¡°What do you mean by oxidizes?¡± Susan didn¡¯t know what that word meant, but it seemed like Voice understood the basic principle of the test. ¡°It¡¯s a chemical reaction where water gets into iron or steel like metals and causes a bonding between the oxygen in the water and the metal itself.¡± Susan was very intrigued. She forgot about her experiment, giving it no more thought since it didn¡¯t expose anyone to danger. What was all this about water containing oxygen? ¡°What do you mean the oxygen in the water?¡± Susan asked to make sure he did not misspeak. ¡°Ugh, well I¡¯m not a chemistry expert or anything, but water is H two O.¡± He began writing on one of the empty sheaves of paper. ¡°Two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen form some sort of fusion because of the electrons in the valence shell. This particle becomes a water molecule. It takes millions of water molecules to equal even a drop of water.¡± ¡°Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me that even a single drop of water contains as much ¡®water molecules¡¯ as the beach has sand? Well, what else is made up of these? I assume the air we breathe has at least the oxygen molecule since we call it oxygen.¡± Susan had never felt so inquisitive, at least not since she left her master¡¯s alchemy lab several years ago. Back then she was always coming up with new questions. She would in fact ask questions whenever she had gotten an acceptable answer to her last question. It made her the most irritating pupil her master ever had, but also the one best suited to teach his trade to. ¡°Um, I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t know a lot about it. I do know that everything in the world, in the universe, is made up of atoms. There are something like a hundred and twenty elements. Each one is a type of atom.¡± ¡°So fire is an atom?¡± Susan asked enthralled. ¡°No, fire is just heated air. I¡¯m sorry I really don¡¯t how to explain it.¡± Susan felt a brief instant of sadness, the feeling of being let down by your hero, but this man had done nothing other than speak about a new piece of reality to her. Why should she be sad now that she had a whole new area of science to study? As she thought this she felt elated. She would find out where this man learned his information, and go there. She would give him the shop for the information, so that she would have no responsibilities. ¡°Perhaps you could tell me where you got this information then? Then I could go learn it there myself.¡± Voice inwardly cursed. The rules never said it was bad to tell the NPCs that they were from another world, but then again there hadn¡¯t really been any rules. Voice decided to tell her, if only to see her reaction to him. ¡°Well you see, your world is only one of many. I came from a world only one step away from this one. Probably the two closest worlds, well we have only started to discover this one. Anyway I could go back there and get some information, but time goes slower there. So if I were gone for only a week in my view, I would have disappeared for over a month in your world.¡± As soon as he finished his first sentence Susan knew what was coming. The Sun Goddess told of the outsiders approach. It was stated that in the future five outsiders would appear. For a month and a week it would be only them. But then a massive outpour of outsiders would come in. The outsiders were not bound by normal societal laws. Since they could die and resurrect it would not be a problem for them to take on a city by themselves. Susan realized the true power of the outsiders from her apprentice. This man would one day rule the alchemy world, and probably the ¡®chemistry¡¯ one too if she had anything to say about it. ¡°So you¡¯re an outsider huh? The Sun Goddess spoke of your arrival. She said you would change our world completely.¡± Voice was impressed, she had not reacted in any way that he thought she would. She did not freak out, and did not call him a liar. Hmm, maybe she is extremely intelligent, or maybe just a trusting fool. The sun goddess must be Kelsey. She did appear as the Sun. Susan continued, ¡°So is there any way you could get me more information about this chemistry?¡± Susan begged him with big wet eyes. Unfortunately Voice always realized when he was being taken advantage of. He would never allow such a thing to happen. It was the most despicable thing to use another living being for your own purposes. Of course NPCs and other players were exempted from his rule, but since she was asking so nicely though he might get something out of it. ¡°I¡¯ll try to look, but you have to be patient. Remember the time difference.¡± Brenton logged out of the game. He used the restroom, seeing as how he had been in the pod for a while, and grabbed another quick bite to eat. It was nighttime by now. He was glad no one tried to take him out of the pod for socializing. He did a little research about chemistry. He memorized the first ten elements of the periodic table, as well as the overall shape of the table. When he logged back in he got two messages:
For showing Susan a new line of research you have gained maximum intimacy with Susan the Alchemist. She is now willing to go to any lengths for you. Seeing as she will spearhead the chemistry science this is probably good.
For using too much outside knowledge for in game purposes knowledge will be severely limited in game. NPCs will no longer understand things that are not researched in their world. Players will no longer gain bonuses to things that outside knowledge would give them unless they practice it in game. Ps. Way to ruin it for everyone. Pps. Jackass.
Voice was very confused. It did seem as though DIVE knew that he was using outside knowledge somehow, but how would it effectively block it? He went to Susan to try to explain the ten elements he discovered. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I just don¡¯t get any of this. It¡¯s like I know it¡¯s not hard to grasp, but my mind just won¡¯t hold the information down. I¡¯m such a failure as a scientist.¡± Susan looked as though she would burst into tears. Distraught at the sight Voice quickly comforted her. ¡°Don¡¯t worry the system message, er¡­ the Sun Goddess told me you probably wouldn¡¯t be able to understand. It seems as though I¡¯ve taken too much knowledge from my world.¡± ¡°Oh so that means this entire venture was for naught!?¡± Susan was on the brink of crying now. ¡°No! It just means we have to research all of this information in this world, please don¡¯t cry Susan.¡± Susan immediately realized this is what she wanted. This was a whole new field to study, with no previous knowledge except for a small start. Susan beamed at Voice. Her life was given new purpose. She could never tell him how much she admired him for setting her on this path. ¡°Well as long as I can study it then I will!¡± Good, Voice inwardly sighed a sigh of relief. It looks like Susan won¡¯t cry after all. I would have hated for the intimacy to drop over something this small. Geez even if she can¡¯t study a new stupid science she could study plants! ¡°As long as you can study this new science do you mind if I borrow your alchemy book?¡± Voice figured it was a pretty big deal for an alchemist to give away their book. It was like a miner giving away rights to his mine. However since he achieved the highest intimacy possible with Susan he thought he might as well try. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Susan knew he didn¡¯t understand what he was asking. Giving lending others your recipe book was like a miner giving away his mine, but since he had helped her discover this new fascinating toy ¡®chemistry¡¯ she didn¡¯t mind. Already she was leaving the vault of alchemy to carve out a new, better vault named chemistry. Outsiders really are weird. Susan thought to herself. ¡°Sure go ahead, but just remember I¡¯m only doing this because I like you, most people would call for a duel if you asked them that. Here let me get the protection spells off it. Also I suggest you put some protection spells on yours. I have a scroll of book binding so no one will be able to take it off your person without your permission, but you really should add a little more security to it unless you want everyone to be able to make your potions.¡± Voice didn¡¯t realized others could copy his book. He decided to get more defense spells for his book as soon as possible. ¡°Thanks Susan! So are you sure it¡¯s alright for me to copy some of your recipes?¡± Voice feigned concern at the thought. ¡°Sure give me a second.¡± Susan handed him her recipe book, his own started glowing when she did.
You have obtained Susan¡¯s Alchemy Recipe Book. You now have access to all of Susan¡¯s recorded recipes and notes on her experiments. Estimated quality: Artifact, Estimated value: 100 gold.
Susan has fused her recipe book to yours. You now own Voice¡¯s Recipe Book with bonus content from Susan the Alchemist.
¡°Identify: Voice¡¯s Recipe Book with bonus content from Susan the Alchemist.¡±
Voice¡¯s Recipe Book with bonus content from Susan the Alchemist A one of a kind super ultra-rare book¡­ is included in this novice''s book. You have basically obtained most of the important information on a large amount of plants. Susan¡¯s book augmented your own. Susan¡¯s book protection spells have been added to yours. Your book can never be taken out of your inventory unless you intentionally do so. You can read and write in your book while it is still in your inventory. Your book is now encrypted. Only you can easily decipher it. The weight of your book has become one pound. No matter how many pages you add to it, it will remain one pound. Your book is now 100% resistant to fire. Your book is now 100% resistant to wind. Your book is now 100% resistant to earth. Your book is now 100% resistant to wind. Your book is now 100% resistant to poisons. Your book is now 100% resistant to potions. Your book is now 100% resistant to magic not cast by you. Your book is now 100% resistant to magic you cast that can harm it. Your book cannot be opened without your permission. Your book has a password combination. Your book can¡¯t be understood by those lacking in knowledge of alchemy. Your potions have been increased by 25% potency. Ps. You can¡¯t sell this book.
The first thought that Voice had after this was: ,,, After his initial shock of several minutes, he read the information boxes. It seemed as though Susan¡¯s enchantments on her book transferred to his. He was amazed at how much this book could sell for. He also found it quite unbelievable that it was Artifact quality. He was slightly concerned with some of the protection spells. He opened his book to see some of his own information on the materials he had worked with augmented with Susan¡¯s. When he opened it he got a message:
Please set the password combination. It must be at least four numbers. You may also add up to 10^10 numbers, 10^10 letters, twelve security questions, an iris scan, a finger scan, a blood scan, and a cat scan. Ps. -(Both types of cat scans, it can scan your cat, or give you a diagnosis of your brain. Jk, jk. But the pet one is real)-
He set the combination. Voice asked himself what kind of crazy shit was in this book for her to have so much security. When he looked at his book he noticed one thing. EVERYTHING IS ENCRYPTED!!! Voice asked, ¡°So what is the encryption code?¡± Susan was stunned, she had forgotten that she had made a bet with her master. She had vowed to never take a pupil. Her master said it would be impossible for her not to feel the need to share her information with someone. She did indeed feel that way at times. That is why she would sell that info to the librarian Lydia. Her master mad a bet: ¡°Since you are so insistent on never taking an apprentice, if you ever do you must turn over your alchemy book to this person.¡± Seeing her hesitant face he gave her a scroll he had prepared the day before. ¡°Use this scroll, or I win the bet by default. I must mention that if you use this scroll, whoever you give your alchemy book to will have it absorbed into theirs.¡± She had totally forgotten about that stupid bet after all this time. She was lost in thought when she heard Voice calling her name. ¡°Susan? Oh your back. I was just asking what the encryption code is.¡± ¡°Encryption code?¡± Voice told her about the encryption part of the book, no doubt she didn¡¯t think about it since she was so smart. It was probably so simple to her it didn¡¯t even register. ¡°Oh, that. Uh I don¡¯t really know. I had that spell designed so that only people with at least moderate knowledge of each plant could gain my theories and research regarding each one.¡± Voice waited with a blank expression. ¡°I guess that you will have to find and study each plant a bit in order to unlock the information. I would tell it all to you but honestly there is so much in there that I¡¯m not even sure anymore. And unfortunately I can¡¯t¡¯ read it, as it has been encrypted. You could try to find a descriptor, but you would have to give them your book. If you did that the book would become theirs.¡± Susan was apologetic that she didn¡¯t have any info for Voice. She had never thought this would happen. Voice was quite angry. The system says I can¡¯t sell this book, but if I can¡¯t read it what¡¯s the point in having the damn thing? Plus, how the hell can she be so fucking STUPID!? Voice was put off by the lack of proper thought Susan had shown. He had obtained some god tier alchemy book, but it was virtually useless since he couldn¡¯t read any of the information, and he had a nagging feeling that no amount of decryption would work. He wanted to at least make sure his information was still there, but had no idea how to search through it. Just then a notification popped up.
To search for items in your alchemists book merely say Search, followed by the name of the thing you wish to search. If that particular piece of information is in your book it will turn to that page.
¡°Search: Green Healing Potion.¡± His book instantly opened and turned to the exact page he needed. Which was almost the first page in this case. It had all the information on what he had discovered, as well as a few things he didn¡¯t know. Such as if you were to heat the green healing potion and evaporate the water, it would turn into a powder after about a day. The book gave a brief description of the process. This green healing powder was especially potent and could be add to another green healing potion instead of one of the common weeds¡¯ blossoms. This brought up a whole new level of potion making to Voice¡¯s attention. Sure he realized the effect of common weed was only to bulk up the effect, but he had no idea you could substitute it with other ingredients. This was going to alter the way he made potions. Unfortunately most of the page was still in gibberish. His method for creating the potion was untouched, so he guessed his method was better, or at least more precise, than Susan¡¯s. He asked Susan if he could borrow her lab for a short while, so that he might try some of this new knowledge out. Susan absentmindedly answered yes. Voice was worried about how she was reacting to this whole situation. Since he didn¡¯t want to go through the trouble of finding out what was wrong he told Susan about a very simple alchemy test. He might not be able to bring in knowledge from his world, but he could at least give her an extremely general idea as to where she should begin. He suggested that Susan go see Evan. When she asked why he answered, ¡°Well you can since rust is just iron and oxygen what would you get if you took the oxygen out?¡± ¡°Obviously iron.¡± ¡°Exactly, now I¡¯ve never done any blacksmithing, but I¡¯m pretty sure Evan might be able to help you turn a rusted object back into iron.¡± Susan thought this idea was great. She was so enthralled by it in fact that she left her store, completely forgetting about her book. After she had left Voice spent about a minute to gather the needed materials, and make a health potion. He had used critical strike a total of two times. His stamina didn¡¯t recharge yet, but he didn¡¯t have a way to know what would be a critical strike in drying the health potion anyway. He checked his alchemy skill and was surprised to see that he did not get any experience from this potion. He was either too advanced for getting any worthwhile exp from this potion, or the system recognized what he was going to do and would give him exp upon completion. As he finished he noticed a customer waiting at the counter. He quickly looked for Susan, than remembered that she was with Evan. He was slightly upset at being pulled from his work. Shit, well I guess I did agree to help her with the shop. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that sir, I was rather absorbed in my work. ¡° ¡°No problem,¡± the man answered, amicably. ¡°It¡¯s just what one would expect from Susan¡¯s disciple. So what are you working on, if you don¡¯t mind me asking?¡± Voice decided that if he showed this man the experiment he might be able to finish it. So he smiled and restarted his experiment. ¡°I am trying to use this alembic to try to turn the health potion into a sort of powder.¡± The man nodded his head seriously. Voice didn¡¯t hear any other questions from the man so he continued. It took about ten minutes of fiddling with the heating mechanism, but finally managed to get the heat to where the liquid should boil at the perfect temperature. His alchemy book had recorded the process and augmented the knowledge Susan had stored there. The liquid slowly started evaporating. After another ten minutes the rest of the water in the mix had all gone. What was left was an exceptionally fine green powder. When it was done he gained a total of four hundred exp for the alchemy skill. Normally a potion made by someone that started alchemy two days ago would heal the average of 25 hp. With his 32% total bonuses that could be raised to 32.5, but with his critical skill it was raised by an addition 40%. Since he could easily make a potion of 43 potency, the only explanation for his massive green healing potion of 74 points was a heck of a lot of critical hits. This potion healed about three times as much as a normal potion made with the same materials. Voice was pretty proud of himself. When he evaporated the water, he put the powder in a cloth bag. He examined the bag. ¡°Identify.¡±
Green Healing Powder Bag A bag filled with a very rare powdered form of the low quality green healing potion. It is rare because the level of mastery needed to make it would indicate the use of better materials. This powder heals a base amount of 50 hp.
While the description said 50 hp, he assumed that it was only based on a 25 point health potion. The powder he had in his hands healed 222. Since Susan said to heat the water, and it should only double the effects, I guess the slower you evaporate it the higher the quality.
You have gained one wisdom.
Voice was very excited, not only was he right about the powder, but he gained another point of wisdom. His mana regen speed was now two points per second. He decided that he would definitely make more of this powder, and then substitute both common weeds in his recipe for the powder.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassN/A
Health100Mana110
Stamina130
Level1Current TitleVitamin C King
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec1.1
Strength11Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence11
Endurance11Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality13
Charisma11Fame185
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 2 Exp 35.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 25.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 4 Exp 46.00%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 30.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 5 Exp 22.22%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 2 Exp 54.00%
Dive 8: His First Day Out Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Susan talked to a librarian about Voice. We learned a little bit about Susan¡¯s past. Voice taught Susan about chemistry. This got outside knowledge banned from the game. He accidentally acquired Susan¡¯s alchemy book, and Susan learned he was from another world.
The system is undergoing maintenance in ten minutes. Forced logout has be initiated.
As soon as Voice read the notification, he found himself in the white room. He sighed. Just when I finally started to get things going they kick me out. Brenton logged out of the white room, and looked around his bedroom. It was just turning dawn. Wow Brenton thought to himself I can¡¯t believe the time dilation from the real world to the pod is one to five. It had been about three days in the virtual world, but only about fifteen hours in the real world. He got up and stretched. Being coopted up in the pod all day was pretty bad for his muscles. He decided to go for a short jog. He had a bike, but seeing as the area around where he lived was full of hills, he decided to just try using his own two legs. It was a mistake. He hadn¡¯t really done any exercise since he was in high school. When he was a sophomore he just stopped, since the only required phys ed. was a year and a half. Brenton regretted that now. He wanted to be able to play that game as much as possible, but not if it had a negative impact on his body. When he came home, thirty minutes later he found a note on his door. He had spent five minutes jogging, then walked a little bit before deciding to return home. The return trip was mostly uphill so it took him a considerably longer amount of time. He read the note. ¡®A woman calling herself bit bee or something called. She asked if you could meet her tomorrow at Bishimonster Japanese Restaurant at 8 in the morning. She said since you couldn¡¯t play the game tomorrow anyway it shouldn¡¯t be a problem.¡¯ He was surprised that Bit-Bee would have contacted him. I guess she would know that there was going to be server maintenance. He went to his bedroom, got a set of sleeping clothes and went to take a shower. He only slept in his boxers and a pajama bottom. He had gotten the pajama pants for Christmas a few years ago, they were the single most comfortable piece of clothing he had. In fact he was pretty sure they were the single most comfortable piece of clothing on Earth. He took a quick shower. Even though he never worked out or did any really strenuous activities he had a nice body. He was gifted with a natural six pack, and a generally fat free body. Once he was done drying off and ¡®fully¡¯ clothed he went to his bedroom. He set two alarms, one for 7 am and one for 7:15. He could never seem to wake up with just one. He had earnestly tried to fix this habit at one point in his life, but that only resulted in being late to many classes, or missing some altogether. He went to sleep. He woke up ate 7:17 after hearing the alarm blaring in his ear. He turned it off and sat up. He was on the edge of his bed, his eyes were closed and his head was drooping. His mind was mostly awake. It always seemed to him that his body could not keep up with his mind. It¡¯s not that he was some super genius or anything, but his body always seemed a little bit less controllable than his mind. He walked to his closet his eyes still shut. He knew every step of his room perfectly. He had this same room with the same layout for at least ten years. He had totally forgotten about the pods existence. He gathered his clothes, and headed for the bathroom, only to run smack into the pod. OW! That really hurt! Brenton thought to himself. He was now fully awake, but in a not negligible amount of pain. He walked around the pod silently fuming at the change in his everyday life. Thinking on it for a second he smiled, a natural happy smile. It¡¯s not really that bad I suppose. I do get to play this game for another six days before anyone else. Well I guess it¡¯s just five day. Hmm, actually it didn¡¯t say how long the update would take. He washed his face, put on some deodorant and a spritz of cologne, and headed to the restaurant. Sushi was his favorite food, so he had been there a few times before. Usually the sushi place didn¡¯t open until five pm, but it seemed like today it would open early. When he arrived at Bishimonster, he was greeted by one of the chefs. He thanked the chef and walked in. The woman he assumed was Bit-Bee was sitting at the bar. The reason he assumed she was Bit-Bee was that she looked identical to the woman that had helped him make his character in DIVE, also she was the only customer here. He went up to Bit-Bee. ¡°Bit-Bee I assume?¡± he asked casually, but in a low voice, she wouldn¡¯t want her in game name to be known to the public¡­ maybe. She looked pretty down in the dumps. Her shoulders were slumped, and her head drooped. She was holding a glass, most likely it contained sake, or some other alcohol. ¡°So what to what do I owe the pleasure?¡± He was trying to be cordial. He had no idea why she had called him. What if I did something wrong? What if there was some rule I hadn¡¯t read that I broke? Is she here to take the pod back? ¡°You know,¡± She started in a very sad sounding voice, ¡°I got into a lot of trouble because of you.¡± Brenton didn¡¯t know what to do. He didn¡¯t know what he did, but if he would have to take responsibility if he got her into trouble. ¡°I don¡¯t know what I did Bit-Bee, but I¡¯ll tried to make it up to you somehow.¡± He didn¡¯t actually know if he could make it up to her. It sounded really bad. The only contact they ever had was during the character creation. Reason said that if she were in trouble because of him, then it had to do with her job. Since she was so sad, the only conclusion he could make was that she probably lost her job because of him. If this really was the case there wasn¡¯t much he could do about it. He had no job, lived with his mother, and was a second year college student. ¡°Oh, please. Call me, hunny.¡± ¡°Ok -hunny. Well how exactly did I get you in trouble?¡± He tried giving his best reassuring smile. ¡°Just like that! With that cute little face!¡± Rachel cried out. ¡°You got me in trouble alright. I decided since you were so sweet and cute I¡¯d give you a little special treatment. I sped up time in your pod to give you a little extra time to learn to walk. I wanted to make you look cool to the other players¡­¡± Rachel trailed off near the end. Brenton didn¡¯t think that was so bad. It was definitely not enough to get fired over. After a moment of quite, Rachel continued. ¡°I may have also kind of, sort of given you a class skill.¡± Brenton didn¡¯t understand. ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Well, I gave you a skill called Identify. You also got one random high level skill for choosing skill instead of item. Kelsey, my boss, thought that was really unfair.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve got to be joking! You got fired for THAT?!¡± Voice was mad at Kelsey for firing this very nice lady. She only tried to help someone else out. Why was she being punished for it? Rachel was taken aback. She had watched some of the footage from Brenton¡¯s character. His brain waves indicated that he was lying quite a bit. Maybe he is just being manipulative, but he isn¡¯t showing any of his usual signs. What Brenton didn¡¯t know that the update was created by five of the top programmers in DI. Each of these five was tasked with watching one of the winners of the pods. They then took that data, and 15 hours after starting the game they would program an update. This would probably be the only official update that the game would have. The game automatically updates itself constantly. Every tiny action taken by every individual, whether NPC or PC, would slightly affect the game world. This patch was to make sure the game wouldn¡¯t get too boring too quickly, but also to make sure no one would be too overpowered, at least not before the main populous would get a chance to join them. The programmer that was assigned to him was, you guessed it, Rachel. Rachel knew more about his in game self than he did, probably. She had been in a pod for a little bit longer than him since his character creation. She did not leave the entire time. She had made sure to eat, sleep and do everything else she needed to be ready to watch his entire experience. The only problem was, he didn¡¯t really get an exploit. He used only a few basic skills, along with skill fusion and a very analytical mind to get to where he was. That wasn¡¯t something they could punish. She was going to fix the outside knowledge thing, but the system detected it and found a remedy itself. He was really sweet thought, to worry about her. ¡°No no, I was just yelled at for a while. ¡° Rachel gave a small chuckle. ¡°We couldn¡¯t just take away your skill I had given you, but at the same time it made you more powerful at the start than the others.¡± ¡°So why was I called here then?¡± Voice asked, perplexed. ¡°It was mostly just because I find you cute and I don¡¯t have anything to do today. I was supposed to be programming the update, but m part never came up.¡± Voice was slightly confused about this but shrugged, ¡°Well doesn¡¯t that make your day a little easier? At least you don¡¯t have to worry about missing a semicolon.¡± He added basically the only programming joke he knew. Rachel smiled, ¡°Well I don¡¯t have anything to do, but I¡¯m pretty sure the others are going to give me a hard time when they are done. Why don¡¯t you sit down and have some sushi? It¡¯s my treat.¡± Voice sat down beside her, and looked at the menu. He chose a few things and they ate together. They made small talk about what he had been doing in the game. Rachel seemed to find it funny when he told her about his charity. They ate for about an hour, then Brenton decided he needed to go home. She offered to give him a ride, but he wanted the exercise. She told him that he could get back on at 12pm. After he got back home, it was a little after nine. He still had about three hours before he could play, so he looked up news on the internet about DIVE. Apparently LastingBeauty and ShortDwarf had uploaded several videos via in game cameras. Brenton didn¡¯t even know those existed. The viewer count was in the millions. They had started streaming almost as soon as they started. They started off by doing a quick quest for a blacksmith (not Evan), and getting a crappy weapon each. They took off right after getting the weapons. They killed several small animals, such as bunnies and squirrels. After killing the small cute little animals for a couple of in game hours they came back into town to sell the loot. They used the money to buy slightly better weapons and a little armor. They went out and started killing young wolves, and large bunnies. They continued this process for several more hours. Killing, looting, selling, and repeating. During the entire 15 hours they didn¡¯t log out even once. They had each advanced to level 17. They were getting a perfectly equal share of exp, even though LastingBeauty was obviously doing more damage. LastingBeauty was starting to look like some sort of martial swordswoman. With quick precise strikes that focused on thrusts she was something like a cross between a fencer and rouge. She wore light armor and focused her defense on dodging attacks. The dwarf was wielding a stereotypic al two handed great axe near the end of the 15 hour video. The only difference was he often started an arc with both hands then he would release his left hand. He would reach for a dagger and throw it while the arc was completed. He wore heavy armor, and took most of the hits from the group. The other three players, including him had no videos. Although when Brenton looked closely he occasionally noticed something like a person sometimes hiding near the group. He played the video at ten times speed. Even then he didn¡¯t really pay attention the entire time. He would often browse other sites, and sometimes he tried doing sit ups and pushups. After the hour and a half was up, and he was done with the clip, basically a crappy movie, he had a little more than as hour before he could log back on. He went outside of his room and talked to his mom for a bit. She had made an early lunch, so since he had eaten two hours ago he grabbed an apple on the table and ate with her. She asked about the game and he told her. He also told her that it was going through an update. He did ¡®forget¡¯ to mention the whole Bit-Bee incident though. Brenton waited till ten minutes before twelve. He excused himself, and logged in to the pod. He was greeted by the white room. Well I have almost an hour left, maybe I should do something about this? He fiddled around for a few minutes before finally opening up the ¡®store menu¡¯. He had 1000 DI bills, which apparently increased by 1000 every IRL week. The company could grant more based on certain actions, like if you worked for the company or somehow did a service for the company. You could also purchase 1000 DI bills for $10. You would need to put your credit card information in first though. Since Brenton didn¡¯t have one that option was out. He indicated that he wanted to browse the store. Around him instantly materialized a store as large as a small city. He knew this because he had a map, and a legend. The map indicated the distance between each type of shop. He said he wanted to go to the house section. Expecting to see lumber, and other materials he was quite surprised. He was in a large room with about a dozen houses surrounding him. All of the houses were two stories, but looking at each display that could be adjust as much as the user wanted, and could afford. He chose a basic looking house, one story with an attic and a basement. It did not have a garage, but he didn¡¯t need one at the moment. He changed the design a little, but mostly kept it the same. It had a triangular roof, wooden walls, and three windows. The entire house was painted white. After examining the rooms, a bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, and kitchen, he bought several things you would need for a house. He bought all the appliances you would normally find in a house, as well as a computer, TV and other appliances that were purely for entertainment purposes. His bed and couch were the most luxurious pieces he bought. The bed could easily fit four people. It was so big in fact he had to take out about a third of the living room and a quarter of the dining room to make the bed room be able to fit it comfortably. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The couch was a very nice auburn red. It could easily fit four people, six if everyone was sitting in close quarters. The cushions were as extremely comfortable as the bed was. By the time he was done redesigned his house he only had five game minutes to go. He sat on the couch wondering where the DIVE door would appear. The next moment he got the option as to where he would like it to appear. It was as if the system read his mind. Which it probably did. He put the door at the back of his walk-in closet. It wasn¡¯t a huge closet, it was just five feet long. Putting the doorway there, gave it a kind of chronicle of something or other feel. As soon as the door lit up he walked through. He appeared in the city square near the fountain. He was bombarded by system notifications. They were detailing the recent update; he read most of them, but seeing as they had nothing to do with him he only skimmed. The thing that most caught his attention though was the fact that the time dilation was set from 5 to 2. That meant there was only 288 hours left instead of 720. Voice felt a little cheated. Well I guess I¡¯m lucky they didn¡¯t lower it to a one-to-one ratio. It was noon, Voice noticed that there were only two PCs in the square, him and EDI. He decided to talk to her, this was the perfect chance to get her to join his side. ¡°Hello there EDI. My name is Voice0fReason.¡± He said this while making a small bow from the waist. The best way to do this is to make a good first impression. EDI giggled a little at the sight. ¡°Well, dear sir, I heard you¡¯ve been helping the NPCs out with their wounded.¡± EDI was actually quite impressed by this. There was no real reason for him to do this, since he probably thought of the NPCs as just pixels. EDI was different; she values all life, even if that life didn¡¯t have a will of its own. Would you stop loving your child if they went in to a coma? ¡°Well I was just trying to help the people out. Actually at first I was looking for you. When I heard you were helping everyone I thought that it was a beautiful idea. Since I had the skill I decided to do my best to help in the best way I could.¡± It¡¯s not a complete lie plus I would be more than happy to help for two or three times more than I have if it meant I would get a partner that happens to be one of the first five. EDI seems to be a softie, that is pretty easy to manipulate, a little annoying though. I can¡¯t be doing anything she would consider bad, heh, at least not while she is around.. ¡°So what is it you needed from me?¡± EDI¡¯s curiosity got the best of her. Voice quickly thought of a reasonable excuse. ¡°I wished to join a party and go hunting. We could go out and hunt some animals. That ought to help the people around town from starving. This way we can help the people here, as well as gain some actual combat experience. Party Invite: EDI.¡±
You have sent a party invite to player: EDI.
Voice was really getting the hang of the game commands. He could basically figure out what any command was that he needed.
EDI has accepted the party invite. You have become the party leader. Set exp and item share for the party: Round Robin: The player that gets the kill gets all the exp and items from the monster. Shared: Everyone gets an equal share of the exp and items. For items the team must agree on who is getting it. If no agreement can be made the item will be converted into currency and split evenly between the parties. For any amount of money that can¡¯t be shared, i.e. three people must share 2 coppers the one that killed the enemy gets the remainder.
¡°Shared.¡± He would rather have it round robin, but most likely EDI would be killing more than him. He didn¡¯t want to lose out just because he was weaker. EDI was slightly stunned. She thought that Voice was just helping people for the rewards. Well she heard he was turning down rewards, so maybe for the fame. But he could easily ask her to be bait and take most of the kills himself. The fact that he decided the loot system would be shared was very nice of him. She smiled at him. Voice thought she had figured him out, but once he looked for more than a second he realized the smile was¡­ friendly. ¡°Alright first thing¡¯s first. We need weapons. I will get us some, what do you want to fight with?¡± When EDI heard that they needed weapons she had expected him to ask her to pay. So that is why he wanted to party. She was immediately regretful for that thought. He offered to buy them. That meant he was willing to spend only the money he made from selling the potions he made in the betting match. After EDI heard he was helping NPCs she took it upon herself to find him and chat. What she found was amazing. He had collected herbs for a long time, he went into some sort of shop and started to make potions. He made them all night. It was one of the most impressive things she had ever seen. Why must I be so suspicious around him? It¡¯s not like he¡¯s taking advantage of me or anything. He is helping me out. If anything I¡¯m taking advantage of his kindness. EDI berated herself. ¡°Um¡­¡± She started, unsure of which weapon would be good. She wanted to be the best sword fighter in the game, but LastingBeauty was already ahead of her on that road. ¡°How do two Sai sound? ¡° She asked. Voice had no idea what these were but didn¡¯t really care. If it would help her better he would get it for her. All he knew was that ninja sometimes used them. He told her to wait here for a few minutes while he got them. When he arrived at Evans he started talking. ¡°Hey Evan, how¡¯s it going man? Hey I¡¯m sorry about this but I have to leave the city.¡± When Evan heard this he was sad. Voice let it sink in for a few seconds before continuing. ¡°So I¡¯m going to need a few weapons. I am going to be hunting in the area surrounding the city. My friend wants two Sai, and I would like a staff. Nothing fancy just some basic stuff. So how much is it going to cost.¡± Evan was happy to have misunderstood Voice. When Voice saved his wife he told Voice he would make anything for free. Since Voice had refused he would just charge him for the base price of the materials. He would need one iron chunk, and a long thick branch. ¡°Well, since da materials wouldn¡¯t be da best I would charge¡­ hm a silver.¡± Normally this order would cost more like fifteen silver at least, but Voice was his best friend. NO sense crying over losing a few silver. Voice was grateful. This was much cheaper than what he was expecting. He had gotten four silver for the potions he made that night, six from the bet, and one from before. So he would have an even ten after this. He gave Evan the silver and asked, ¡°So how long until I can come back?¡± Evan decided this would be his top priority today. Evan replied, slightly boastful, ¡°I should be able to get these done in about two hours.¡± ¡°Thanks Evan.¡± Voice handed him the silver and left. He thought the blacksmith was probably being lazy. It shouldn¡¯t take more than an hour for the order, but then again Voice knew nothing of the smiths system. Voice went back to EDI. ¡°It will take a couple of hours. I¡¯m going to make some potions, so meet me here then.¡± Voice walked away and started locating plants. He found a large swathe of green healing herbs pretty quickly. He decided to use critical strike as much as possible while he has harvesting the plants. He wondered why the extraction of the plant wasn¡¯t included in his book. He came to the conclusion that it was probably because it didn¡¯t have anything to do with actually making the potion. He searched for about half an hour. He was pretty good at distinguishing the bright dots from the surroundings by this time. He didn¡¯t get use his critical strike as much as he wanted, since he found plants so quickly it was the recharge time of the skill that limited it. He used it a total of 40 times. After the 40th time he quit harvesting plants. He had a good haul, he ended up with 99 green healing herbs and 600 weed. He had stopped after 99 herbs since it would make a new stack, and he had already had a few items slots taken up by the crappy ingredients he couldn¡¯t make anything out of. Before he started making the potions he found Susan and asked her what she usually did with the left over materials she didn¡¯t use. She smiled and took him to the back room. Without saying a word she opened a trap door in the ground. Voice marveled at this while he climbed down the ladder. When he got to the bottom, about thirty seconds of climbing later, he looked around. It was dark, but Susan gently blew on the wall behind her. All along that wall bright red flowers started to glow.
You have discovered: Susan¡¯s True Lab. For being the first player to ever step foot in this secret area you are granted 125 fame. For being the only player able to use this place you will create potions at an additional 15% potency while in Susan¡¯s True Lab.
They went down for about ten feet; every flower lit the one next to it. When they came across the next wall, it too lit up. When the entire was lit in a deep, yet bright, red he took a look around the room. It was huge. It was basically a twenty foot wide, and a hundred feet long. There were large tanks of liquid on each side. They were both a muddy brown color, and were boiling without heat applied to them. Each of these two tanks was connected to a smaller tank by a glass tube at the top. Each of these smaller tanks, glowed a sort of rainbow mix color. The liquid in these tanks adulated between each of the colors. This series of tanks continued, each glowing a different color, and the one at the very middle of the back wall, which was connected to both sides, glowed with a completely black, kind of eerie, black light. It had a several spigots attached to it. He knew this because he had walked to the back of the room while admiring each of the tanks. The spigots each had a picture directly above it. A few feet above the spigots, which were about as high as his knees, was a turn wheel. The left had a sign of an arm with muscles; the right had a person glowing. Above that was another turn wheel. The left had a skull and crossbones symbol, and the right had angel wings. He guessed these were meant for poisons or potions. ¡°So what does this tank do?¡± ¡°Well, ¡°Susan started clearly eager to brag about her work. ¡°I made this lab several years ago. Each of these tanks basically purifies and distills the power of ingredients. Each tank has a different enchantment added to it, thanks to my friend who shall remain nameless. Anyway the resultant ends up in this tank right here.¡± She said patting the eerie black tank ¡°If you turn the wheel on top left it gives the harmful effects, if you turn it right you get the helpful effects. If you turn the wheel below it to the left you get a concoction that either buffs or debuffs, depending on the top wheel. If you turn it right will create something that either damages, or restores. Each of the valves attracts certain properties to it. So if the top wheel is turned left, the bottom wheel is turned right and you open the fire spigot, you get damaging fire poison. If the top wheel is turned right, the bottom wheel is turned left and the life spigot is activated, you get a potion that restores life.¡± ¡°So uh,¡± Voice stuttered, trying to get his voice to come out while he was marveling at this place. His fame almost doubled, and his potions would have a total of 47% bonus to potency. He could also make them 25% faster if he made them at night. By using his critical strike skill he reasoned his potions should be able to heal about 100 points each. ¡°So could I make my potions here?¡± ¡°Sure, just make sure to clean up after yourself. This place has an enchantment placed on it to maximize the ability of the ingredients, so if you just leave them there something bad might happen. Also any ingredients that you have left over just throw into one of these two vats.¡± Voice was grateful to her for letting him use the new room. He had about an hour and fifteen minutes left before he had to meet EDI, in that time he could make about 37 potions. He went to work to create the best potions he could manage. After he was done they were going to go on his first killing spree.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassN/A
Health100Mana110
Stamina130
Level1Current TitleVitamin C King
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec1.1
Strength11Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence11
Endurance11Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality13
Charisma11Fame310
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 2 Exp 35.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 25.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 5 Exp 96.6%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 30.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 5 Exp 22.22%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 2 Exp 54.00%
Critiques Hey guys, I just wanted to make this thread so that if anyone has any critiques for the story let me know here. All I ask is that you keep the tone civil, and maybe not make silly suggestions like killing the main character off. I have already tried that several times. Susan was supposed to kill him in that hug, Evan was supposed to throw a dagger between his eyes. He should have drowned in the pond. Idk guys. Main character powers are really scary Thanks for the feedback so far guys! Thanks to Owlbear and KaellomI. I will be including skill fusion more often.(Although he will probably fail quite often, since i decided to have a minimum skill level requirement for some (idea by Kuroyuki). This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I am going to make Voice get a little training in a new area. My discussion with Owlbear helped me think of this. Thanks again Owlbear! Alright guys,my laptop broke. I ordered a new one, but it probably won''t be here for a few days. So then next chapter will be delayed. I''m terribly sorry. Alright guys i broke down and bought another laptop instead of ordering a new one. It will still take me a little while in order to get all the information(i do this weird thing with his exp on skills) but after that i''ll be back in full swing. So just try to bear with it for a little while. : ) Dive 9: His First Battle? Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : There was an update so Voice had to log off. Apparently Bit-Bee wanted to talk to him in real life. They talked for a while and he learned that his extra skill was because she thought he was cute. He also found out time runs five times faster in the pod. When he got home he got in his pod. He bought a small house for his white room. He joined EDI in a party, ordered weapons for both of them, and found a lab that increased his potions potency. Voice had planned to make about 35 potions. He could do about that much since it was daytime, at least according to how many he had done last night. He assumed it was last night, since Susan didn¡¯t seem perturbed about his absence. He put all of his ingredients that he couldn¡¯t use into the vats. ¡°So why don¡¯t you just use this to do make all the potions for you?¡± Susan replied with a sad smile. ¡°Well, all of the potions that come out are at the base values. Besides, that wouldn¡¯t be fun now would it?¡± Voice had to agree. There was nothing like managing to make a better more powerful product. If he could use the same materials as everyone else and make the final product three times better, of course he¡¯ll put the time into. Susan seemed to always be a logical one. ¡°Also I need to buy 200 glass bottles.¡± Susan gave him an understanding smile as she handed him three glass bottles. Two had a stack of 99, and one had a stack of two. ¡°I thought you were going to do something like this, so I got these ready. Of course I have more, but you shouldn¡¯t buy more than you need.¡± The glass bottles were already filled with water, so he didn¡¯t need to do that before he started. I knew there was a reason I like Susan. It sure wasn¡¯t her voice or looks! Voice silently laughed at his own joke. He gave Susan the agreed upon amount, totaling to only forty copper. She was losing a little bit of money for each potion bottle, but since Voice sold her his potions anyway she easily made it up with the profits. Susan led him to the alchemy table; it was mostly hidden by the giant vats. He took out his alchemy book, set it down, and started to get to work. The alchemy lab was giving him some sort of inspiration for his potions. ¡°Message EDI. ¡° He heard a reply a few seconds later, ¡°Oh, hi. I¡¯ve never sent any messages before sorry about that. What is it, are we leaving early?¡± He was glad he had connected to her. ¡°No I was just wondering if you could tell me like five minutes before we need to leave. I might get a little distracted.¡± Voice didn¡¯t know it, but EDI smiled. ¡°Sure. I¡¯ll message when it¡¯s about time.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± He said as he got to work. He took out all of his materials. He quickly cut at the perfect places to get as much of the needed properties as possible from each of the ingredients. For the common weed he cut right below the white blossom; for the green healing herb he cut at the very edge of leaves. As he was cutting the ingredients up he put all of the waste into his inventory for later. He quickly grabbed two common weed puffs, and a green healing herb leaf. In the same motion he threw the ingredients into the mortar and grabbed the pestle. As he started grinding he used his critical strike. After waiting exactly thirty sic and half seconds he did another critical strike. He knew this because as he was keeping time in his head; he realized that he made exactly two strikes per second. His critical strike skill now only cost 40 stamina per use. After a fifty seconds, his green healing goop was completed. This was impressive since he used to take about twice that time. He poured the mixture into a glass bottle filled with water. He swirled it around for a little less than ten seconds. When it was complete he marveled at the speed at which he could do this now. He had gone from two minutes per potion, to a little under minute. Each potion took 60 seconds to make. Since he only regained 66 stamina in that time he could only do nine potions with two critical strikes. He would only be able to do one critical strike for the next two potions. He would be able to do another with two strikes, then one with one strike. It would continue like this alternating between two without one with, to one without one with, with a few exceptions, until he was out of ingredients. This is going to go by a lot more quickly than I thought at first. Maybe I could use up most of the ingredients. He realized his mind had been elsewhere for a while. While he had been marveling at his own magnificence, and calculating the amounts of potions he could make, his body was already doing the potion making for him. He received a notification but waved it away while he was getting his ingredients for his next potion. He decided to level up his Endurance so that his stamina regen would increase. If he could get that up to at least 1.4/sec then he would be able to do exactly two critical strikes per second. He was able to let his mind wander, he noticed his stamina had been decreasing at the rate he thought it would. So his body was still using the critical strike skill. The hour and five minutes he had allotted himself were up. It was nearing 2 pm in the game. He had made a total of 65 potions. 31 of the potions were created using two critical strikes, 34 were made with only one. Since his earlier idea of 100 health points was based on being able to do two critical strikes per potion, he had 30 potions that only healed 75 points. He had four potions that healed 80 points, and 30 that healed 102. He also had one potion that had somehow gained the power to heal 120 points. He looked in his recipe book. Apparently several of his strikes didn¡¯t hit their exact mark. Since the book recorded his best effort made he expected it to have updated. The recipe was exactly the same. Stupid fucking book, it can¡¯t even fix the recipes unless I¡¯m actively working on it. He read the earlier notification.
You have gained the skill Automated for automatically doing tasks without think about it.
¡°Identify skill: Automated.¡±
Automated Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By doing tasks automatically you have gained the skill Automated. Each level in this skill improves the quality of task done automatically. For every rank you increase your Automated skill you will be able to do more difficult tasks automatically To level this skill you must do tasks automatically. This skill cannot be used to do things you have never done. At this time this skill cannot be used to do things you have done less than 100 times. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed often. Extreme mistakes are committed rarely.
Voice was beaming. NEW SKILL!!! After reading the skill he was less happy. Basically he could only use this skill if he had a basic mastery of whatever he was doing. Even then he would be forced to make mistakes. At least I can think while gathering ingredients. Come to think of it why haven¡¯t I ever collected multiple ingredients from anything? I¡¯ve pulled up THOUSANDS of plants. Alright, whatever it¡¯s time to go get our weapons. Just as he thought this he was contacted by EDI. ¡°Hello? Did I do it right? Uh... It¡¯s almost time to leave.¡± Voice responded, ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll be there in a minute. Thanks.¡± He went to Susan, since he had a little over seventy potions now he decided to sell some to make some of his money back. Of course he would keep the best eighteen, nine for him, and nine for EDI. He went upstairs and met Susan. She was working on something that that looked like a rusted mound of iron. She was pouring some sort of liquid out of it. The oddest thing about it was the glass dome surrounding the iron. Voice asked her what she was doing. ¡°Well, with the information you gave me, I took it upon myself to watch Evan de ¨Coxidize some rusted objects. This potion absorbs oxygen from the surrounding area. Well actually it was thought to produce oxygen, it let people breathe under water. I did a few experiments, and it seems to be able to take oxygen out of an area. Did you know if you encase an area in a closed cage, you can take out all oxygen from the air, it still leave substances? I guess this is what you meant by the elements other than oxygen are in the air.¡± ¡°So why are you surrounding the iron ore with that case?¡± ¡°Well I when I found out I could use this potion to extract the oxygen, I decided to see if it could turn the rusted iron, into usable iron. You see it takes several hours to smelt the iron, but if you could just make this potion, it would only take a few minutes. The potion only costs about half a silver to make, so it¡¯s pretty cost effective.¡± ¡°So are you planning on helping Evan out with this?¡± ¡°I am indeed, you are quite the clever one. I¡¯ll be getting the materials to make this potion in bulk. After putting them through the vats, I¡¯ll sell the resultant to Evan for the price cost of the materials and his continued help in my research.¡± Well that¡¯s a good idea I guess. It¡¯ll make Evan be able to make me better gear for cheap, since he¡¯ll have access to more materials. ¡°Well I¡¯ve come to sell some potions.¡± ¡°Yes, yes. Put them over there in the chest. Take fifteen copper per potion.¡± He did a quick calculation. He put the potions in the chest and took eight silver and sixty copper. He could have taken more, and would have since he guessed Susan wouldn¡¯t notice. On the off chance that she did notice he was sure he would lose a lot of intimacy with her. So he just took the eight silver, and sixty copper. He met up with EDI at the fountain. ¡°Alright I bought our weapons already; they should be ready by this time.¡± He led her to Evan. He smiled when he saw his blood brother walking with a girl he smiled. Gotta make him look good in front of the little lady now. As Voice approached Evan seemed to become slightly more presentable. ¡°Here you are Voice, the weapons you requested. And who might you be young miss?¡± As he asked this he hugged her by the shoulders. His hug was as tight as his grip. ¡°My name¡¯s EDI.¡± EDI said with a slight blush. She was not used to people being so friendly with her. ¡°Well EDI, you seem to be Voice¡¯s friend, and any friend of his is a friend of mine. Did he tell you how we met?¡± Voice¡¯s mouth went slightly agape. Evan had started talking to EDI and they were discussing HIM. While they were talking it felt like Voice shouldn¡¯t interrupt so he identified the items he saw on the table beside the grinding wheel. He saw two Sai, and a staff. ¡°Identify Sai.¡±
Sai
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Damage20-35Durability45/45
This weapon was created in a pair. When wielded by with its counterpart effectiveness increases by 25% This weapon was made by an expert craftsman. This weapon gains plus fifteen minimum damage and plus twenty five maximum damage. This weapon gains twenty durability.
¡°Identify Sai.¡±
Sai
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Damage20-35Durability45/45
This weapon was created in a pair. When wielded by with its counterpart effectiveness increases by 25% This weapon was made by an expert craftsman. This weapon gains plus fifteen minimum damage and plus twenty five maximum damage. This weapon gains twenty durability.
¡°Identify Staff.¡±
Staff
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Damage20-25/20-25Durability60/60
This item can be wielded as a dual weapon. You may make extra attacks at the cost of mobility. This weapon was made by an expert craftsman. This weapon gains plus fifteen minimum damage and plus fifteen maximum damage. This weapon gains twenty five durability.
Wow, looks like Evan is pretty good. Glad I didn¡¯t try to become his apprentice. To learn that much skill I¡¯d have no time for alchemy. Evan noticed Voice staring at the weapons. ¡°Yup, it took me awhile since I wanted to put in a little extra oomph. I think it was worth it though.¡± Evan smiled, proud at his accomplishment. ¡°I¡¯d say,¡± Voice said impressed. ¡°You basically doubled the damage and durability of all three items.¡± ¡°Voice, are you sure you¡¯ve never done blacksmithing before?¡± To be able to tell that information so easily was very impressive. EDI interrupted, ¡°Well we just received a new skill called Identify. Although all the information I could get from these is that they were made by a talented blacksmith.¡± Voice didn¡¯t realize EDI had gotten the Identify skill. No doubt the update added it. That meant that most likely all the other players had it too. This was probably to make it fairer since he got two skills at the beginning. EDI continued, ¡°The update said that all players would now start with the identify skill.¡± Well there goes one of my advantages. Oh well at least I¡¯m not in danger of getting in trouble anymore. After they got their weapons and left EDI spoke to Voice, ¡°So Evan said you saved his wife¡¯s life. You cured a genetic disorder? How freakishly high is you alchemy skill?¡± EDI was very confused, and impressed, by this. When she heard it she thought the blacksmith was lying to make Voice look good. But the way Evan looked at him, there was no way to fake that. ¡°No. Well I mean, I just figured it sounded a lot like scurvy. So I gave her a health potion mixed with some citrus.¡± He didn¡¯t need to tell her that he had looked the info up online, or that the system labeled him a cheater for it. ¡°Well if you are that intelligent I¡¯m surprised they didn¡¯t ask to write part of your biography.¡± Voice had, at that moment, remembered that he wanted to go to the library to buy some books on alchemy. He had totally forgotten in all the commotion. He vowed to go there after this. After all the library would still be there, the animals may all die before he could get a chance to kill any of them, seeing as two of the other players were so high level. They took the weapons. Voice asked Evan for their armor, for now EDI wanted leather armor, while Voice wanted heavy iron armor. Evan, concerned, asked, ¡°Are you sure about that? Since you¡¯re an alchemist I know you don¡¯t have very high strength.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure Evan, but thanks for worrying.¡± Voice decided to buy a few things from some of the stalls before leaving the town. He bought enough food to replenish both of their satiety levels three times. He bought four apples, a large bread loaf, and two cheese wedges. It seemed like they were going on a picnic instead of a hunt. After thanking Evan Voice led the way to the nearest gate. They arrived in a little over twenty minutes of running. Of course EDI had to stop to catch her breath, so Voice ran in between the houses to keep his stamina draining. If Voice were by himself he could have made the trip in five. He started doing sprinting exercises. He would now sprint to each from a house on one side of the two cart road to the other; all while keeping pace with EDI. By the time he had made it to the gate he had also had to stop twice. This extreme twenty minute sprinting marathon netted him two endurance, and two vitality. He was pretty happy about this. The only problem was his satiety was now at three. When they got to the gate he asked about EDI¡¯s satiety. She also had less than ten. So he handed her two apples and half of one of the cheese wedges. He ate the same. Since each small fruit basically restored the same amount of satiety he had randomly chosen an apple. He gained 20 satiety from each apple and forty from the cheese wedge. So the both had a little more than eighty satiety. That should be enough for a while. I don¡¯t want to waste the food by filling us up all the way. After they ate they looked around. The entire area seemed to be a plains region. It had one long river that connected it to a distant village. They spotted a rabbit. When Voice looked at EDI to signal the hunt he regretted inviting her to the party. She was basically making doe eyes at the rabbit. Voice knew that he could convince her to kill it, but she would probably not be happy with him afterwards. The rabbit was cute, but he wanted the exp. It looked like an ordinary rabbit. Not oddly colored, no horn, just ordinary. HE decided against slaughtering the entire family of little thumpers.(Bambi reference) The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. He saw a few feral wolves a little ways out and decided to try convincing her to kill them instead. They looked horrible, mangy fur, red eyes, and a rabid looking face. ¡°Hey, instead of killing the cute little bunnies do you want to try to kill that wolf?¡± He pointed to a lone wolf. EDI looked at it. Her eyes glistened slightly. DAMNIT! This bitch is fucking sympathizing with all the fucking animals. What the fuck did I get her a weapon for? Voice was very irritated at her, but since he needed her to be on his side at least until he could get other players to join him, he decided to go try to coax a rabbit into attacking him first. ¡°Alright, alright I understand.¡± Voice feigned patience and understanding. ¡°How about we go over there and try to get that bunny as a pet. I don¡¯t know if there is a pet system but it¡¯d be nice.¡± EDI agreed with a vigorous nod of her head. Voice went up to one of the bunnies, but as soon as he got within attacking range it¡­ ran off. FUCK He chased after it to no avail. He almost caught it after thirty seconds of running, but the damn thing hopped out of his grasp. He saw EDI trying the same thing. He found another rabbit and decided to try to get it to attack him first. As he got close the rabbit again bolted. He chased this one until his stamina hit zero. It took just under two minutes for fully restore his stamina. EDI was having even less luck then him. She couldn¡¯t even keep up the cute little critters. Voice thought of another plan. He looked around the plains carefully. He noticed occasional purple and orange dots around the land scape. He went to the orange dot. He realized that since it was orange and there were rabbits everywhere these were probably carrots. He dug up the orange thing, and it was indeed a carrot. He was very careful to dig it up, and one dug he examined the surrounding area of the carrot. He did the same with the purple dot less than five feet away. The purple dot was a turnip. He didn¡¯t know if rabbits could eat turnips, but he knew the loved carrots. At least in cartoons and TV they were always eating carrots. ¡°Locate carrot.¡± Suddenly he was basically blinded by the massive amount of light shown. His radius wasn¡¯t huge, but the number of carrots was. He quickly gathered over forty carrots before doing the same with turnips. The entire time he kept a watch on the wolves in the distance. They did not seem to want to bother coming over. He gathered twenty turnips, since he wasn¡¯t sure if rabbits even liked them. During this time his gardening skill had leveled up to level six. He was quite content at this point to sit down and relax. He figured he would wait for EDI to come over so he could tell her his plan of capturing one of these little shi¡­ bunnies, with some carrots. He looked around the plains at the same time as gathering the turnips and carrots. He was trying to find some new ingredient for his alchemy. The town was a starter town so he didn¡¯t really care that there was no major ingredients there. But he was quite peeved that the only alchemy ingredients he could find out here were the green healing herb, and common weed! He continued to look for more for the entire twenty minutes he was gathering the rabbit food. He found nothing else. Guess I have to go to a higher level place to be able to find better ingredients. He sat the food he just gathered on his lap. He closed his eyes and started thinking about how to get attacked by the wolves without seeming intentional about it. He heard noise around him. Every time he would start to feel like he was almost in some sort of zone he would get interrupted. Ten minutes later and he was getting very agitated by this. He refused to give up though. He felt he could obtain something precious, maybe even a skill. He decided to look into his skill fusion. He tried to fuse each of his skills together. Most gave him the message:
The skills you are trying to fuse are incompatible.
For the skills Deception + Critical Strike, and Automated +Critical Strike he got the message:
The skill Critical Strike is too low of a rank to fuse. You must get Critical Strike to apprentice rank to fuse.
He managed to fuse Automated + First Aid, and First Aid + Alchemy. The results were:
Auto Aid Allows the user to automatically use first aid on followers or party/guild members in the area. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00% To activate say Auto Aid while thinking of the person you wish to aid. This skill will automatically preform first aid on the target with the materials you have on hand. This skill gains experience from using it, and using the first aid skill. The higher the level the more total healing is provided. This skill heals 50% of the maximum healing potential actively using the first aid skill would heal. This cannot be increased.
¡°Identify skill: First Aid.¡± To his surprise it was in fact different, and he even gained exp for the identify skill¡­skill.
First Aid Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00% By using salves and bandages, you have learned how to give first aid. Each level in first aid provides a 10% healing bonus to healing using the first aid skill, and you will become quicker at fixing wounds. For every rank you increase your first aid skill you will be able to suture more increasingly difficult wounds. To level this skill you must successfully use it to help the wounded. Auto Aid provides experience for this skill.
Alchemic Aid Allows the user to create bandages and other things needed for first aid, using alchemic potions. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% To use this skill merely create the necessary items using first aid, but add in the desired potion during production. To level this skill you must make bandages and other materials needed in first aid using this skill instead of first aid. Every level in this skill provides and extra 10% healing potency to your first aid skill, plus the potion used to create the materials.
WHAT!? I could have made my own bandages this whole time? Then why did I make the NPCs tear up their clothing this whole time? He checked his First Aid skill again.
First Aid Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00% By using salves and bandages, you have learned how to give first aid. Each level in first aid provides a 10% healing bonus to healing using the first aid skill, and you will become quicker at fixing wounds. You may also create the salves and bandages. For every rank you increase your first aid skill you will be able to suture more increasingly difficult wounds. To level this skill you must successfully use it to help the wounded, or by creating the materials used to help the wounded. Auto Aid provides experience for this skill.
He was happy about the new skills, but it was really annoying to not have been told he could have made his own bandages. Then another sound came. This time it was very close. It sounded like¡­ eating? He opened his eyes. Around him stood several dozen bunnies. He smiled an innocent smile. Now he could say that he was attacked and was defending himself. The only problem was he had several bunnies around him, several bunnies and one EDI. She was astounded at the turn of events. Voice was surrounded by at least 40 bunnies. What he heard was a bunny, perched on his lap, eating one of the carrots. The other bunnies were looking at the carrots with ravenous hunger. Since EDI was here he decided to act like this was his plan the whole time. He gently pet the rabbit. Holding in his blood lust on by concentrated power of will. The rabbit stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. As the rabbit chewed on the carrot he rubbed his head on the man feeding him. Is this stupid thing a cat? Voice asked himself exasperated. After the rabbit was done eating it hopped away. Only to be immediately replaced by another. This one started rubbing its head and neck vigorously against Voice¡¯s right leg. Voice had the radishes on that side of his lap so he figured the rabbit wanted one. He gave it to it. As more and more rabbits approached he tried to anticipate which food they wanted. He was a little sad at not making money from the vegetables, but EDI¡¯s servitude, err... friendship, was well worth it. After all the food was gone, Voice thought about the rabbits. He thought some of them had taken more than one piece of food, but he didn¡¯t mind. As long as he got EDI in his pocket. Besides he could always gather more. Just as he stood up from his position he almost fell to the ground again.
You have gained the title Bunny Lover, The Feeder of the Fluffy Hordes. When you have this title equipped people will recognize you as a person that loves rabbits. This title makes animal lovers, and owners friendlier. This title may make others scoff at you. You gain an automatic + 10 intimacy with animal lovers with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. You gain an automatic + 50 intimacy with bunnies near Rand with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. You gain an automatic + 25 intimacy with bunnies that do not live near Rand with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. You now deal half damage to bunnies, even if this title is not equipped. With this title equipped you gain 50% to all stats to fight someone attacking a rabbit. Ps. This title cannot be taken off your list of titles.
You have gained the title Bunny Comrade. When you have this title equipped bunnies will recognize you as a person that loves rabbits. This title makes you immune to getting attacked first by all sane rabbits, even if this title is not equipped. You now can interact with bunnies as you would humans. With this title equipped you gain 10% to all stats to while a rabbit is in the party, includes pets. Ps. This title cannot be taken off your list of titles.
You have gained knowledge of the Bunny Language. You may now communicate to all rabbit type life forms.
For showing love towards bunnies and nature you have gained 10 affinity towards nature.
For showing compassion to an easily catchable, and even easier to kill, life form you have gained the compassion stat.
Compassion This stat is generated by the pure of heart. You have gained this stat for being compassionate towards others. This stat will increase all intimacy gains by a percentage equal to the stat level towards: Beggars, Outcasts, Loners, Holy Clergymen, and those that follow the teachings of Mar the goddess of love and compassion. An increase in the compassion stat is retroactive. It will affect previous intimacy gains. This stat will decrease all intimacy gains by a percentage equal to the stat level towards: Corrupt Nobles, Slavers, Dark Clergymen, and those that follow the teachings of Davros the god of hate and destruction. (Davros is a reference to something. If you can guess it without looking it up you get one imaginary cookie.)
For giving out large quantities of food you have gained 25 compassion.
What? What!? WHAT!? The fuck you mean bunny love? Shitty ass game made it so I basically can¡¯t even fight the bastards? FUCK! Voice was royally pissed. His whole plan was to trick the damn rodents into attacking him. Now he would be extremely disadvantaged if he were to fights. And what the fuck is the bunny language? I just wanted a little bit of experience damnit! Is that too much to ask? The notifications just kept popping up.
For gaining the nature affinity, and becoming close to an animal type you can become an animal tamer. Would you like to become an animal tamer?
¡­ ¡°Yes please.¡±
You have become an animal tamer.
Well, well, well. Maybe I overreacted a bit. I mean becoming friends with those rodents.... I mean bunnies wasn¡¯t all that bad. After all I¡­ GOT¡­ A ¡­ CLASS! Voice was so excited he let out an involuntary whooping noise. EDI and the bunnies turned around in confusion. He just returned their confused looks with a smile. Now it¡¯s time to tame some animals. I¡¯m thinking a pack or two of wolves¡­
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health100Mana110
Stamina150
Level1Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec1.3
Strength11Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence11
Endurance13Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality15
Charisma11Compassion35
Fame310
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 2 Exp 35.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 75.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 4 Exp 80.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 6 Exp 17.50%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 50.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 6 Exp 99.82%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 3 Exp 86.00%
Automated Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Also thanks to superloner for the idea of fusing first aid and alchemy! You go superloner! Dive 10: His First Battle Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : He made some potions, then collected the weapons he had commissioned. He found out that EDI wouldn¡¯t fight animals. He tried to trick some animals into attacking him, and ended up getting an animal tamer class. Sorry for the chapter being a bit shorter than my latest ones. I have work tomorrow so I won¡¯t be able to work on it. I decided to post it now instead of waiting two days. ¡°Show class: Animal Tamer.¡± Voice said expectantly.
Animal Tamer Level 1 For gaining the nature affinity, and becoming close to an animal type you can become an animal tamer. You may tame any animal type you have formed a bond with. There are two types of bonds: compassionate bonds, and fearful bonds. Compassionate bonds increase defense and loyalty of the tamed creature. Fearful bonds increase damage and ferocity of the tamed creature. You may only have one type of bond with each creature type. You have currently unlocked 1 type of animal to tame. Rabbit type: Compassionate bond. To unlock more types of tamable animals you must form bonds with them. You may tame animals up to level two plus your total level. This class increases in levels as you increase in levels. Once you reach a high enough level with Animal Tamer you may evolve this class according to your actions.
I can only tame rabbits? I guess they would be good for fodder. He didn¡¯t know how to tame the rabbits around him so he just stated, ¡°Tame Animal: Rabbit.¡± He didn¡¯t expect it to work, but he said it under his breath so even if it didn¡¯t EDI wouldn¡¯t laugh at him. As soon as the words left his mouth his vision became one sprinkled with warm blue dots.
There are currently 43 level one rabbits in you vicinity. You may tame up to three total levels of rabbits at this time. Please indicate which rabbit(s) you with to tame.
He decided to just choose the three closest to him. When he hit confirm the three rabbits¡¯ necks began to glow a bright blue color. Around each of their necks appeared a soft blue collar. Each had a name. The largest rabbit, only a few centimeters bigger than the others, was named Troy. He was pure white with black paws. The second largest rabbit was named Heather. She was a brown rabbit, with a single black discoloration around her left eye. The smallest rabbit was named Rabs. He was a completely gray rabbit. ¡°Hello master.¡± All three rabbits said to him in unison. Voice had a mini freak out moment. He thought he was going insane when he heard the rabbits. Then he remembered his rabbit speech ability, but he didn¡¯t realize speaking the language of rabbits would translate it to English.
For taming a rabbit you have gained 10% of its total level times its speed.
For taming a rabbit you have gained 10% of its total level times its speed.
For taming a rabbit you have gained 10% of its total level times its speed.
For taming your first animal you have gained the Leadership stat. Leadership will affect the total level you can tame. Leadership increases when you hold leadership over the same individuals for long periods of time. Having leadership over more individuals grants faster growth.
Voice grinned, ¡°Well hello there my little speed machines. Let me just check something out.¡± ¡°Status Rabbit Stat Speed.¡± When he said this nothing happened. Hm, maybe I can¡¯t check the stats of others? ¡°So Troy, Heather, Rabs, what is each of your speeds?¡± They all responded, ¡°25 mph.¡± Wow they actually said mph. Not miles per hour. ¡°Alright thank you.¡± Let¡¯s see, if I get 10% of each of their speed, I get a total of 7.5 mph bonus ¡°Show my speed.¡±
You are currently able to run up to 9 miles per hour unaided, for several minutes.
Ok, so I suck. I already knew that. With the bonus from the rabbits though my speed almost doubled. I wonder if vitality or endurance affects it. I mean I do level those up when I jog or run. ¡°Ok let¡¯s try out my new speed.¡± Voice said forgetting about EDIs existence. The rabbits took off. They were much faster than when he was chasing them. Were they just playing around with us? He ran as fast as he could, not caring about stamina conservation. Voice couldn¡¯t even hope to keep up with them. They were outpacing him without even seeming to try. He called them to a halt as they were turning around to go back to the place they had been fed. He had seen EDI and was angry at the rabbits for making him forget about her. As he approached EDI, winded and feeling like he was dying, he was given a notification that he had could run .1 mph faster now. ¡°Sorry about that EDI.¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s fine.¡± EDI didn¡¯t know why the rabbits suddenly sat down and started letting Voice feed them. Then he got up and started running with some of them. ¡°So how did you do that? I mean how did you get them to run with you?¡± ¡°Well it seems as though I can speak their language.¡± Voice gave a sly grin, ¡°I also may or may not have just become an Animal Tamer.¡± EDI gasped. She knew a little more that than the other four about this game. Getting a class was nothing short of a miracle for anyone under level ten. ¡°How did you manage that?¡± EDI also wanted a class, even if it was the same one as her party member. ¡°I don¡¯t actually know, I just sat down and the rabbits started coming to me. Once I fed them I got the class.¡± Voice thought it best not to tell her everything. Just in case she would get any ideas that would be harmful to him. ¡°Anyway it seems like I can tame three rabbits as of now. ¡° Voice wondered if the level limit was just for the animals he tamed or if the limit was imposed on growth as well. Might as well try it out. Worst case scenario is I get one level three rabbit. ¡°Alright guys,¡± Voice speaking to his rabbits, ¡°How should we go about leveling you up?¡± Troy volunteered the answer. ¡°Well we can gain a little bit of exp from eating vegetables, but if we kill a wolf we gain a lot of exp.¡± Voice decided to go with the former, seeing as he thought EDI wouldn¡¯t want to kill the wolves. ¡°So EDI do you know anything about the game? When I got off all I really did was watch the video of ShortDwarf, and LastingBeauty.¡± EDI couldn¡¯t watch the video. She wanted something to talk about with Voice. She decided to bring forth some of the knowledge she had. ¡°Well I was studying in the library quite a bit, is there anything in particular you¡¯d like to know?¡± Once again Voice was reminded that he hadn¡¯t been to the library to buy the alchemy books. Damnit man, you keep getting sidetracked. You¡¯re as bad as that damn alchemist. ¡°Well, I what I was really wondering is why you didn¡¯t want to fight any of the animals.¡± EDI was slightly flustered. She didn¡¯t know how Voice knew what she thought. She responded, ¡°Well, it¡¯s not very fair to the animals or NPCs is it? I mean monsters can respawn. They learn and adapt, even if they are killed, but animals and NPCs are different. When they die they lose everything they gained while alive. Isn¡¯t that too unfair?¡± Voice realized what was going through her head. She thought that if she made the animal restart from level one she was killing it. She didn¡¯t really feel like she was murdering things that kept their lives. ¡°So what about monster hunting? Or player killing? Are those ok?¡± EDI didn¡¯t spend any time thinking about it. ¡°Yeah, I mean the only thing players or monsters lose is a little exp. It won¡¯t even make your level go down if you have more than 50% exp to the next level.¡± Voice let a wicked smile escape, but only for a second. Before EDI could figure out what had happened, he returned to his impassive inquiring face. ¡°Alright, well I¡¯m going to make a guild at some point. If I make it a rule to not kill NPCs or animals, would you like to join it?¡± EDI thought about it. She didn¡¯t really want to join a guild, but she wanted a friend. She wasn¡¯t good in social situations. It took all the courage she had just to talk to this man. The only reason she did is that he was helping all of the wounded NPCs in town. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯d fit in with a guild though, sorry.¡± Voice was slightly disappointed that things didn¡¯t go his way. But she¡¯s still here, so I might have a chance to convince her later. I just need to make her WANT to become my guild mate. ¡°Well that¡¯s fine. How about we find some monsters, know of any around here?¡± EDI hesitated, ¡°Well I do, but they are in the forest, and the lowest level is about level five.¡± Voice thought to himself for a minute. ¡°What kind of monster?¡± ¡°They are possessed wolves. They are the weakest of all monsters, but also have great numbers. They usually travel in packs of four to six.¡± How much about this game does she know? ¡°Well, if you are willing to let¡¯s try and take some out. I have a plan.¡± After listening to his plan EDI decided to try it. Worst case scenario Voice had given her several high level healing potions. They went into the town and casually walked to the east gate. Well Edi casually walked. Voice was having a foot race with his rabbits. Voice wanted to level his speed, vitality, and endurance as much as possible. He tried several different running styles to see which best increased the stats. A series of rapid dashes was the best way to increase his speed. He would go as quickly as possible from one side of the road to the other. He would tag the house, then cross the road to tag the other one. This depleted his stamina quite quickly, which increased his vitality nicely. He found that a slow jog increased endurance the most, but only if you kept that pace for a long time. He would conserve his energy and keep going for as long as possible, that was until he ran out of stamina. This depleted large quantities of stamina, but since his stamina was constantly recharging he could keep this pace up for a very long time. The massive amount of stamina used was converting to vitality at a good rate. So his conclusion was: Dashes increased speed, jogging increased endurance, and everything increased vitality. He also thought that he should have other ways to raise endurance. Maybe by getting hit a lot, or taking some sort of damage he could raise it. He raised his vitality by two, endurance by three, and speed by .1. His max stamina was getting very high (in his opinion) so it was getting harder and harder to raise his vitality. He would need to find some way to make his stamina decrease faster. Maybe by putting more weight on while running? It took the party thirty minutes to get to the gate, mostly because Voice kept insisting on running, or jogging ahead. EDI would relax until she got sight of him again, and start walking. When they got to the gate he made the party, just him and EDI, check and make sure everything was okay before proceeding. He noticed that his health and health regen hadn¡¯t gone up since the start of the game. Hm, I wonder why they are the same level. The only stats I haven¡¯t leveled up are agility, luck and leadership. Since I got leadership recently I doubt that raises health. Agility probably only increases dodge chance, like in most games. Voice got a few looks from people while heading to the east gate. Some of it was probably because of his odd running. Some might have been because of the three rabbits running with him. He blamed most of it on the title Bunny Lover. He didn¡¯t bother to unequipped it since it made his rabbits like him more. The more they liked him the more they would be willing to do for him. He wanted to raise their levels, the best way to do that would be to kill these wolf monsters. He was lucky that the lowest level monster was a demonic wolf. The rabbits would gain exp faster that way. After they had checked their gear Voice had to eat. So he asked EDI to eat with him. She had below twenty percent so she agreed. After they were done eating she had 100% satiety, and Voice had 93%. The forest was only a dozen yards away from the wall. Enough to be able to see if something came out, but not so far as to make it a hassle to get to. When they arrived at the edge of the forest, they started to execute the plan. Rabs ran into the forest. Several minutes later Voice heard him yell: ¡°Here I come! Get ready!¡± He burst through the trees and continued to run. Only half a second later a pack of three wolves followed him. Rabs was tasked with getting the smallest number of wolves as he could, and bringing them out of the forest. Troy and Heather ran straight at the wolves. As soon as they were about to enter the strike zone they took off in different directions. One wolf followed Troy, another continued to chase Rabs. The last started snarling as it noticed Heather had run back to Voice and EDI. The demon wolf prepared to kill this low level pray. They began the next part of was to have Heather run around and get any wolves attention that were not chasing Rabs and Troy. She ran at the wolf at three quarters speed. As soon as she was within the threat range of the wolf, she kicked it into high gear. The wolf, ready for the speed she was showing, narrowly missed as she ducked under his legs and bit his tail. The wolf yowled, not in pain but in frustration. Ever since he was a pup, many years ago, he had never had his TAIL bitten! He turned towards the little whelp ready to tear its little head off. Suddenly it felt something hit the back of its head. The wolf turned around only to have a metal object thrust at its left eye. It quickly turned its head away. ¡°Tsk.¡± EDI had missed. She was supposed to blind the wolves while the others kept its attention. Voice wacked the side of its face. A trickle of blood fell out of its nose. It became infuriated. All the wolf could see was red. It had been enraged. Did these humans think they could just come in to his forest and attack him? HA, they would be food for his pups. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Voice kept aiming for the wolf¡¯s skull. Every time the wolf looked elsewhere it would be hit. EDI wasn¡¯t much help. She kept trying to hit its eyes, but the most she got was a scratch along its nose. Voice knew that irl you if you could hit an opponent¡¯s head hard enough or often enough in a short amount of time they would fall unconscious. That¡¯s what he was aiming for here. While hitting the distracted wolf he kept an eye out for the other two rabbits. While they were racing in the town one had gotten ahead of the others and got lost. It asked Voice how to get back. It was peculiar since it was nowhere near him. Voice asked how it could talk to him. Apparently since he had ¡®tamed¡¯ the rabbits they could communicate telepathically. Voice could only wonder what other secrets the class description had kept from him. Back in the present, Voice made sure to help the other two rabbits to run interference for each other. Sometimes getting in the path of the other wolf, sometimes letting the other take the agro of both. It was a pretty solid strategy since they seemed to have greater speed and stamina than the demon wolves. Voice had another opportunity to hit the wolf, this time he felt that if he hit the back of the head he might do a little more damage. He activated critical strike and swung. The staff connected with the back of the wolf¡¯s head with a resounding CRACK. Voice got a popup that said critical strike has added 20% damage to the result. As he was thinking how odd it was he was able to somehow know where to hit he saw Rabs running over. It looked like Rabs was going to fall over any second. ¡°Finish the wolf off,¡± Voice directed EDI. With a nod she went to stab its neck with her two Sai. She stabbed it twice, once with each Sai, and looked for Voice. He was attacking the wolf chasing the small rabbit. After he gave the order Voice took off for Rabs. Heather seeing her tamer running to help her friend, joined him. They made it seconds before Rabs collapsed on the ground panting like he hadn¡¯t had oxygen in days. Heather ran around behind the wolf and bit its tail. This wolf seemed to understand this trick and kicked her with one of its powerful back legs before she could even attach herself to the tail. She flew several feet in the air before landing with hard thump. He turned around to finish her off, but was interrupted by a sudden massive headache. Voice had hit him in the same spot as the last wolf. It didn¡¯t knock the wolf out this time, but it did stun him for a second allowing Voice to get another hit off in the same place. He would have used critical strike again but hi stamina had been drained to only 40 points. Each swing of his staff took stamina. Using the critical strike skill earlier was stupid. Voice berated himself. He had to make sure to keep the wolf¡¯s attention until EDI could get there. It wouldn¡¯t be too hard to do that, but staying alive while doing it could prove to be challenge. As the wolf was recovering from its stunned status, Heather had gotten up. She looked dizzy so Voice told her to stay out of this for now. The wolf turned to rip the throat out of the one that attacked him. The wolf pounced at Voice. Voice was expecting to die, or at least get seriously maimed, but was saved when Rabs tackled the wolf midair. Rabs fell on the ground, unable to move. With his stamina all used up he had used several points of health to pull that off. If he tried to move anymore he would likely die. Heather had returned to her senses after seeing this. She jumped and landed on the back of the wolf. She immediately sunk her oversized teeth into its spine. Blood sprayed her face and pelt, but she powered through the rancid taste and smell and held on. The wolf bucked, as if he were a bull trying to free himself of his rider. A sharp pain caught his left eye. EDI had finally made it over here, and landed her first successful attack of the game. With only one eye, and low health, the wolf was enraged. It grabbed the rabbit with its teeth and threw it at the woman that had stabbed him. He was met with a strong strike to the back of his head. Now that Voice knew the weak point of the wolves, he was determined to take advantage of it. With his dexterity that was much higher than a level one should have(his opinion) he was easily able to hit the same area with precision. The wolf shook his head, only to feel the sharp bite of iron in his right eye. The wolf was bleeding from both eyes now, his vision was completely black, and his sense of smell blocked by his own blood congealing in his nose. As he had no hope at victory at this point he decided to run. Before he made it more than two steps, a familiar thwack hit the back of his head. He convulsed for a second and then lay still. He was no more. He gave each of his rabbits a small sip of his health potion, and finished it off. When his group had full health he signaled Troy to bring the wolf over. When he didn¡¯t get a response he became worried. I JUST tamed him; he better not be dead already. After not being able to contact Troy, Voice started looking around the area. He saw Troy, about a hundred feet away. Running at full speed it took Voice about four seconds to reach Troy. Troy had claw marks on his face, and a large scratch across his back, as if the wolf¡¯s tooth had grazed him. Voice saw the wolf go in for the kill, since he was still several feet away he did the only thing he could think of to save his investment. He threw his staff at the wolf, only aiming long enough to make sure it was headed in the general direction. The staff missed the wolf, but provided just enough of a distraction to it that Troy was able to dodge to his left toward Voice. Or at least he tried to. The wolf, although slightly distracted, still managed to know the little rabbit against one of the trees. Voice spotted four more wolves coming out of the forest a few hundred feet away. They weren¡¯t headed this way, at least not yet, but Voice knew he had to finish this quickly or his whole party was at risk of dying. He angled his body towards his fallen staff. The staff landed right behind the wolf, so as Voice went to pick it up he hit the wolf in the nose. The wolf retaliated by sinking his painful teeth into Voice¡¯s left calf. Voice screamed in pain. This felt completely real! How could the dwarf and narcissist do this? In the corner of Voice¡¯s eye he noticed his health was only at 23 points. What kind of overpowered level five fuck? I get killed in two attacks? That¡¯s hardly fair. As he thought this EDI had caught up to him. Along with Rabs and Heather she distracted the wolf. The other wolves smelling blood started to come over. As Voice scrambled to drink a health potion he noticed Heather bite down on the wolf¡¯s back. She¡¯s really good at doing that. Rabs, having the same idea as Heather had at first, grabbed onto the wolf¡¯s tail. EDI used both Sais to stab at the wolf in any place she could. She barely managed to land a hit. She hit the wolf in the ear, penetrating its eardrum and entering its brain. The wolf convulsed and was still. Voice saw the other wolves hesitate for a split second. That¡¯s all he needed. He got up, grabbed Troy and ran for the city. If EDI couldn¡¯t make it that was her fault. His other two bunnies noticed what he was doing and followed suit. When he arrived at the town gate he saw the archers atop the wall shooting towards where he just came from. He heard howls and smiled to himself. EDI came in seconds after he did. Panting she opened up the trade menu with Voice. He noticed that he had one wolf pelt, ten wolf claws, and three wolf meat. She gave him the wolf she had, and let him have the third. After the trade was done EDI spoke. ¡°Wow that was more fun than I was expecting. Maybe we could do that again soon?¡± She looked at him with upturned eyes. She had heard that this was a good way to convince men to do what you wanted. It worked he said yes, and asked if she received a level. To her surprise she did. In fact she received two levels. Voice said he did too, and the rabbits each got three levels. Since they killed wolves the rabbits got a lot more exp than usual. Voice got a few notifications once he finished.
For successfully making a plan, and carrying it out under difficult conditions you have gained 10 leadership.
For making a plan to destroy an opponent you have gained the logic stat.
Logic will help you create better plans. It will also you¡¯re your plans more effective.
For defeating an opponent that was much more powerful you have gained 10 fame.
He also gained one vitality, two endurance and two strength from the battle. When his health finally returned to maximum he received the notification:
For an intense battle where you put your life on the line, your health regeneration rate is now equal to one percent of your total health. The rate of regeneration will increase with your total health. To raise the percentage further you must be put in life or death situations, and must take sever damage.
Voice bid EDI farewell and dissolved the party. As he walked away EDI worked up the courage and yelled, ¡°Do you want to be friends!?¡±
You have received a friend request from player: EDI. Do you accept.
Voice chuckled. Everything was going according to plan. He would soon have this new world eating from the palm of his hand. ¡°I accept.¡± He noticed that Troy was still breathing, so he made Troy drink a health potion. Once his hp returned to maximum Troy seemed fine. Voice also gave the other two a health potion. No sense wasting the investment now. When he had finished healing them he got a notification.
For effectively utilizing those that follow you, you have been granted 10 leadership.
For increasing the potential of those that follow you, you have been granted 5 leadership.
He went to Evan to sell his stuff. He had three wolves worth of materials to get rid of. On the way Voice collected all of the water lily pads he could. He was going to stock up on stamina potions seeing as he almost died since he could kill the enemies fast enough. He found a total of eighty two water lily pads. It helped that the ingredients seemed to regrow after only a day. After he figured that out he went to all the places he had gathered them before. He went to Susan¡¯s secret lab before selling the wolf material. He sat down and used the rest of the green healing herbs that he had to make healing potions, except one. After that he had leveled up his alchemy. He carefully noted each stroke of his pestle as he made as he created his stamina potions. After the first fourteen he had a method down that made stamina potions as potent as his healing potions. After that he went into full Auto mode to level up his skill. He made sure to use two critical strikes per potion since he didn¡¯t have a time constraint. The end result was that his average stamina potion restored about 106 points, where as his health potions restored about 115 on average. His health potions would have healed more, but his alchemy skill leveled several times while making the massive amount of potions, even his critical strike leveled up to level 4. He leveled up Automated, but it took an entire hour of automated potions. When he was done with the potions he remembered alchemical aid. He decided to research how to properly do it later. He cursed himself for not thinking of using auto aid. It could have saved him a lot of suffering. His highest stats were leadership and compassion, and his highest skill was alchemy. Should I start an alchemist¡¯s army?
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health130Mana110
Stamina180
Level3Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.3Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec1.8
Strength13Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence11
Endurance18Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality18
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership35Logic10
Fame320
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 2 Exp 35.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 75.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 4 Exp 80.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 6 Exp 60.50%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 50.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 6 Exp 99.82%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 4 Exp 64.75%
Automated Novice Level 2 Exp 75.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Dive 11: His First OP Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice tamed three rabbits, killed some demon wolves, added EDI as a friend and made some more potions. Long chapter this time as I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll be able to post tomorrow. Enjoy! He decided to try out alchemical fusion. He carefully dried out another potion, now his book had originally said it took about a day to make the green healing powder, but it only took him twenty minutes. He didn¡¯t know if it was his alchemy skill, his affinity with the green healing potion, or just good luck, most likely though it was that twenty-four hours of heat brought out the most power from the potion. No matter the reason, it was good enough for him. He dried and powdered the best potion he had. He had two potions that healed 122 hp. He evaporated both of these. He had one bag of green healing powder, but it wouldn¡¯t be as powerful as these would. He spent ten minutes evaporating each potion. Since he had only evaporated one potion before, the process was not that detailed. He carefully watched every step. He turned on the heating apparatus. The potion started heating from the middle. The heat slowly expanded outward. As the center of the potion began to boil and steam, he noticed the edges of the potion did were not yet even boiling. On the second potion he noticed that there were a few specs of something floating on the top of the potion when heated, but before it started boiling. When he was done he identified the powders.
Green Healing Powder Bag A bag filled with a very rare powdered form of the low quality green healing potion. It is rare because the level of mastery needed to make it would indicate the use of better materials. This powder heals a base amount of 50 hp. Heating the entire potion at once would increase the potency of this potion. The materials used to create this potion were unpurified.
For studying the potion making process you have gained one intelligence.
Alright, so I need to find some way to purify the potions, and to heat the potion all at once. The main problem is this stupid game, won¡¯t let me get any outside information. One of the powders healed 366 health, while the other healed 369 health. The second one was made unnoticeably better. Voice thought about it and decided on a plan he thought had the best chance of success. He went to Susan. ¡°Hey Susan I need a favor.¡± He didn¡¯t have time to beat around the bush, so he was upfront. ¡°Oh? Well what is it that I could do for you?¡± ¡°I need something enchanted. I also need to find a book on refining potions.¡± Susan was surprised with Voice¡¯s brusque attitude. He was usually more docile, but she saw the flame of passion for research in his eyes. She decided now was the time to send him to her friend, even if it was odd that he had three bunny rabbits following him around like a mother hen. ¡°Alright, go to the library and ask for Lydia. Tell her I sent you. As for the enchantment, I can get whatever item you want enchanted. Just give me the item, and tell me the enchantment you want on it, and I will make sure it gets done.¡± ¡°Oh, well see I don¡¯t have the item right now. When I bring it to you could you get it enchanted then? Of course I¡¯ll be paying the full price of the enchantment, no need for you to owe anyone a favor.¡± ¡°Sure, just bring the item in when you get it.¡± Voice ran off next door. When he arrived at the blacksmith¡¯s he politely tapped Evan on the back. ¡°Hello Evan! Your weapons saved our lives. I can¡¯t explain how grateful I am to you.¡± Evan smiled and wiped his char colored hands on his apron. He was glad he could be of help to Voice. ¡°Yep, my work is good I agree with ya on that. I don¡¯t think that¡¯s the reason ya came over for though.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a smart man Evan, and a very skilled blacksmith. That¡¯s why I need you.¡± Evan felt a little uncomfortable. He never really cared about anyone else¡¯s orientation, but he was straight. More to the point, he was MARRIED. Voice knew this. Why would he try to get me to forsake my wife? No there I must be mistaken about something. After a brief ¡®unintentional¡¯ pause Voice continued. ¡°Sorry about that my throat went dry for a second. Anyway, I need you to make me something. I don¡¯t know if you have the ingredients, or the skill, but you are my best and only hope.¡± The only reason you are my only hope is that it¡¯s free. Evan felt gratified at having Voice relay so heavily on him. ¡°Sure I¡¯ll try my best. What is it you need?¡± Voice brought out a large piece of paper from his backpack, as well as a quill and some ink. He started by drawing a circular shape, with a long rectangle attached to it. He explained it to the blacksmith. ¡°This is just a regular iron frying pan. Many cooks use them; but what I want from you is slightly different. These are the dimensions I want it to be, but I also want the top of the frying pan to be made of copper. The biggest problem is getting the copper to bind to the iron. Also I want to give you these.¡± Voice handed him all of the wolf materials. He figured they wouldn¡¯t sell for much so it would make him look good. ¡°They are the result of my first hunt with your weapons. Take them as an additional thank you. I¡¯ll come by later for the frying pan.¡± Evan was happy Voice gave him the first trophy he ever got while hunting. He thought about the frying pan. It would be difficult to make the iron bond to the copper enough so that heating it wouldn¡¯t destroy the bond right away. He was thinking of ways to do this as Voice walked away. Voice went out and collected a few dozen more green healing herbs. Why the hell haven¡¯t I found any more healing potion ingredients? I mean the freaking ranking of the ¡®common¡¯ ingredients seems to be too far off. They aren¡¯t common at all. After collecting fifty total herbs he headed to the lab to store his stuff. After storing all of his items he headed to the library. The library was an intimidating building. It was a pure white building that stood at three stories. The bottom story supported the top two with its regularly placed columns. It had two sets of windows, the top two floors, and on the left and right most sides were two things that seemed to look an awful lot like watch towers connected to it. The bottom floor had columns lining it, about ten feet past the columns the library had an entrance. The building was easily two hundred feet long. All in all it reminded him of the Lincoln memorial, only with two extra floors and missing the impressive statue of a president. When he got up the stairs he examined the columns. They looked quite sturdy. He went inside the library and was dazzled by its magnificence. When you entered you could see all three floors with clarity. All of the walls were lined with books, the entire two top floors were composed of four really long bookshelves, one for each wall, a walkway that probably measured ten feet, and a really nice looking white wooden railing. He went up to the librarian. ¡°Your pets will have to stay outside sir. ¡° After he told them to wait outside the librarian asked, ¡°What do you want?¡± She asked in a very abrupt manner. ¡°I¡¯d like to borrow a book. I was told to ask for Lydia.¡± The librarian smiled. ¡°You know, Lydia doesn¡¯t have time to help every small time adventurer type out there.¡± She said the word adventurer in almost disdain. ¡°I know, but I think she might help me, my master told me to ask for her.¡± Voice saw a strange light in the librarian¡¯s eyes for a moment. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll take you to her room if you can do me a favor.¡± Voice was dubious, ¡°What kind of favor?¡± ¡°Well you see, my frail little arms can¡¯t make it up the carry the books to where they need to go. I need a big strong man to help me.¡± She gave a suggestive look to Voice. ¡°Sure, just show me to where the books are.¡±
You have accepted this quest. Success: Getting all of the books to the proper shelves. Difficulty: Low Failure: Not getting all of the books to the proper shelves before the library closes, damaging any of the books, losing any of the books. Reward: Being led to Lydia¡¯s room. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with the librarian, as well as not being led to Lydia¡¯s room.
¡°So where are the books, and when do you close.¡± Voice asked eager to start. ¡°Follow me, and we close in a few hours.¡± He followed her to a bookshelf that looked like any of the others. ¡°Just finish taking all of these books to the right places. The library is organized according to the author¡¯s last name, within each of those sections it is organized according to the name of the work, then the date the work was published.¡± As he went to take a book off the self an inventory menu popped up. The book case had several hundred books! Some had stacks of two or three, but there were hundreds of stacks. Voice gulped. This was only a low level quest. It shouldn¡¯t be that hard to do. Voice looked through the self and grabbed the first twelve, alphabetically speaking. He ran to the door, he figured that he would find the authors with the last name A there. He was right. He put back about five books, but the other seven weren¡¯t there. Not like the space was empty, but all of the other books had tags at the start of the section of each author saying which one it was. He had a really bad feeling. If this is what I think it is imma kill that librarian bitch. Voice ran past the librarian, she had a wicked smirk. FUCK. I knew it! He ran up to the second floor, thankfully the A¡¯s started on the immediate right. There is some way that the floors are separated. He finished putting the books in his bag up, but when he finished with the third floor he started reading the titles of the books. After just getting through the first 1% of books he realized the pattern for the third floor. They were things about weapons and armor, specifically the creation and research of. He did the same with the second floor. The second floor took an hour to figure out. They seemed to be biographies, but also there were a few random books thrown in. He had to actually read one of the smaller ones to figure it out. The second floor was fiction. The bottom floor had things pertaining to general information: what does a cleric do, or how to bake a cake, or the key to meditation for beginners. Things that newbies might not find interesting, but might have some way to help them in the future if they didn¡¯t bypass that knowledge. Voice decided to bypass that knowledge. By the time he had figured out the pattern the librarian told him she was closing. ¡°Look hun,¡± she said, ¡°I can¡¯t reward you for the quest but how about you come in tomorrow to try again?¡± Voice thought he had heard almost the same thing before. After a second¡¯s thought he remembered. Susan had spoken those same words to him. ¡°Last time I heard those words I got a reward anyway.¡± The librarian smiled. ¡°You can¡¯t expect everyone to do the same thing now can you?¡± Voice decided he would continue tomorrow. He was going to log out for a while to compose himself. It was already midnight here. That meant it was about six his time. He was going to spend a little time with his mom. When he logged out he arrived in the house he bought. He liked that house. I wonder if I can invite people here. Oh well that¡¯s a chore for another day. As the pod lid opened up he looked at his clock. It was two twenty four. I thought I got in there at noon. My mind must be playing tricks on me. He looked again and saw it was a little before two thirty. He did the math in his head. They LIED to us. Ugh¡­ it¡¯s still at a five times faster speed. But then why would the developers lie about that. It doesn¡¯t make sense. He regretted not having a way to contact Bit-Bee. She would probably know the answer. Brenton sighed. Brenton went into the living room. He saw a note on the coffee table. ¡®Went out for lunch with your aunt. Be back to night, warm up dinner it¡¯s in the fridge.¡¯ Brenton decided to get back into DIVE. When he logged back on it had been about half an hour. He went to Susan. She was sleeping in her bed upstairs. He politely knocked on the door. When he didn¡¯t get an answer, he decided to just go back to work on his potions. He with this time dilation he only needed sleep after extreme bouts of concentration. At least that¡¯s what it seemed like. He went to Susan¡¯s true lab. He gathered his materials from the chest, and he started making the potions as usual. This time, however he experimented with the speeds at which he made the potions. It seemed that if he took one minute and seven and a half seconds, 1.5 times his quickest available speed, he would gain the best potency per second. His speed had increased with his change in title. He was now a Night Owl. He found this out after experimenting with 50 potions. He had enough healing ingredients to make 51 more potions. His automated skill raised a level, as did his critical strike, oddly though his alchemy didn¡¯t rise any more. After it got to novice 11 99.99% it just stopped. He had made a handful of potions then noticed he should have leveled it up by then. He was very confused, maybe it¡¯s a glitch? I¡¯ll have to talk to a gm when I¡¯m done. Fucking buggy game. After making his 80th potion it was finally time to start the main event. He used his best 52 healing potions for drying. He kept careful watch over each one, but couldn¡¯t figure out any more ways to improve the process yet. The 42 dried powders took him 7.5 minutes each, for a total of about five hours. He had the automated skill on while this was going, since he had to stay here or the potion would probably fail. His automated skill was now at level six. He basically had two sets of potions. The first 18 healed an average of about 173, and the second 24 which healed about 203 hp. None of them got as high as the two he made earlier that day; but they were all made on autopilot and he didn¡¯t watch them for mistakes, mostly just for experimentation. After drying all of the powders he had a stack of 42 wrapped healing powders in his inventory. He started to make the next 20 potions. He started making them the same way as usual, except with three differences. First he did not use any common weed. Instead he added two bags of healing powder with the green healing herb leaf. Secondly, he added an entire bottle of healing potion into this mixture to help make the green healing goop. Third, and finally, he took enough time to watch how each of the ingredients interacted with each other. When the green healing powder mixed with the healing potion it seemed to suck it in like a sponge. When crushed with the pestle is seemed to expel the potion. So when the green healing powder comes into contact with healing potion it changes properties? He had an idea after noticing this. He would try it after the first potion was done. After he finished making the potion he was gratified at the result. His first potion could heal a whopping 354 hp. I¡¯m going to make so much money. Perhaps I ought to try selling these potions myself. He tried touching the powder to common weed, since he thought that was what caused the sponginess. Nothing happened so he surmised it was the inherent quality of the potion. His alchemy skill increased after that. Ah, I guess it wasn¡¯t a bug. Maybe I just really have outgrown the basic healing potions. That¡¯s a bummer though. But at least my new potions are mega awesome. He continued making his new potions. He decided to call them Over Potions, because they are so freakishly OP. The potions kept getting better and better as he went, until he had a perfect recipe for making them. The last few potions healed more than 500 points each. As he created his new fusion type potions he noticed that his Alchemical Fusion skill was shooting through the roof. It leveled at the same insanely fast rate as his alchemy skill. By the time he was finished alchemical fusion was at level 5, halfway to level six, and his alchemy was at level 13. He had some insanely good potions. After he was done he had to think. If he sold them all he could make a fortune, but most likely he would get some pretty nasty negative repercussions. If he got rid of them some other way, such as a mass donation to the church or army, he could get a lot of intimacy. The second way just felt so wrong though. Even if he only sold these for 20 copper a piece he would still walk away a rich man. It was about two pm when he finished his work. He had not even noticed the time change. He identified the new Over Potions at every step. This was the final potion he made:
Over Potion *Unique
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Base Restoration55
This potion was created by the overworked player Voice0fReason. This is just about the highest level potion you could make with these ingredients. It is quite an amazing feat. This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers.
His identify had somehow gained a massive amount of exp from identifying this unique potion. It jumped from level 2 to level 9. Voice guessed that extremely high level items gave more exp for identifying. When he went outside the lab the sun hit his eyes. He was momentarily blinded. After his eyes adjusted he noticed Susan smiling at him. ¡°You pulled another all-nighter huh?¡± Voice just nodded his head. He had decided what he was going to do with the potions. He hated himself, but at the same time it would probably grant the most long term benefit. He had all 20 OPs in his inventory. He walked up to the church. He wearily opened one of the massive stone doors. A priest saw him, and immediately ran to him. The priest was a tall skinny fellow with a light red to pink robe. ¡°Blessings of Mar upon you child, I see compassion in your eyes, but you look so weary. How can I help you? It is my duty to help the downtrodden.¡± The priest¡¯s voice was close to angelic. It had a deep rumbling sound, but left a slight ring in the ear after hearing it. Voice managed to mumble, ¡°I¡¯m here to donate potions, where do I go?¡± The priest thought to himself, this man is in so much obvious pain yet he seeks to help others? Truly, he is a gift from Mar. ¡°Right this way child. Might I ask what kind of potion you will be donating?¡± He thought he saw a smile on the man¡¯s face. ¡°Only the best potions you have ever seen.¡± The priest doubted this. The local alchemist Susan donated her potions here about once a month. Usually they were only beneficial, occasionally they were a bit mischievous, but they were always powerful. The priest led Voice to a large healing cauldron. Voice knew the name of this because on the side of the cauldron it said ¡®Large healing cauldron¡¯. ¡°Is there any potion already in there?¡± There looked to be water in the cauldron, but Voice wanted to be sure to get as much credit as he could for donating these 20 potions. ¡°No it is merely purified water, it hasn¡¯t even been blessed yet.¡± He took out his potions and poured them in the cauldron. He managed to take out all twenty within seconds and pour them in. The water in the cauldron turned a deep green color. At first the priest looked very confused, then angry at the fact that he had been tricked, then finally astonished. The priest had been granted the power to see auras by the goddess Mar. He could see the power and effect of the potions once they were no longer in anyone¡¯s inventory. The aura was a pure bright whitish pink. Pink indicated healing, Mar had pink skin, and most health potions were light red to pink. This man¡¯s health potions looked green though. But after he poured them in the cauldron the cauldron¡¯s aura had changed from clear, the color of water, to a bright pink. The more he poured the closer the aura came to the lovely color of the goddess¡¯s skin. When the man was done pouring the potions he called for the high priest. Voice heard the priest call for the high priest. Either I¡¯m in trouble or my reward is fucking phenomenal. The head priest was a tall, slightly muscular man. Voice had not expected that. He was wearing a very light pink robe. What¡¯s up with these guys and pink? This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. After a hurried conversation with the priest that brought Voice here, the high priest beckoned Voice to follow him. Voice was getting a bad feeling but followed anyway. The high priest went up the stairs to Voice¡¯s right, as Voice followed the exited onto a balcony. The balcony was really just a Juliet balcony that over looked a large swatch of the city. Someone below shouted. After a few seconds the entire area was covered in people. Even guards seemed to stop what they were doing to listen. After casting a brief spell on himself the head priest started, ¡°Today, this young man has donated many potions to the church of Mar!¡± There was a light applause. Voice felt his cheeks reddening. ¡°He has donated a total of twenty potions! These potions were made of only green healing herbs and common weed, but the total healing amount equals more than 10,000!¡± The crowd was dead quite for a second. Then they looked at Voice and one man started to cheer. At once the entire area was so loud with cheering that even if you were in the opposite end of town you could hear it. In fact it was so loud the castle guards thought there might be a monster attack in the city and set out to find it. When the roaring stopped, a full five minutes later, the head priest continued, ¡°Do you not think it fitting for this man to be rewarded!?¡± Again the roaring, this time however it was only for a few moments. He turned to Voice, ¡°Thus I grant you Mar¡¯s blessing.¡± A bright white pink light suddenly began glowing on Voice¡¯s right hand.
You have given a massive amount of healing potions to the church of Mar at once. For doing so you have been granted the Many Blessings of Mar.
Many Blessings of Mar (minor) For continued good faith towards the goddess Mar you have been granted her blessing. At this time you can cast low level priest spells. If you continue to show good faith you rewards will increase.
You have gained the title Blessed of Mar. This title is automatically equipped. This title does not interfere with other equipped titles. This title cannot be unequipped by the player. All followers of Mar will recognize you as an ally. You receive max intimacy with all priests of Mar. All followers of Davros recognize you as an enemy. You receive max hostility with all priests of Davros. You gain 50 fame from becoming the Blessed of Mar. You have generated the Piety stat for becoming the Blessed of Mar.
You have gained 10 piety for donating such a large amount of potions at once.
You can learn all Novice level priest spells. You must still meet the piety, intellect, and willpower requirements to use them.
The people are inspired to collect all green healing herbs and common weed in the area.
Green healing herbs and common weed have become extinct in the area. You must wait for one month (real time) before you can harvest them again in this city, or you must plant at least one hundred of them in the city and surrounding area.
Voice¡¯s mind latched onto the last notification. I guess that means I can¡¯t make any more potions here. Voice was rather calm. He decided this was just what he needed. He needed a reason to explore the world and this was it. Except what really happened was Voice had to use anything he could to convince himself this wasn¡¯t a complete shit event. He decided that if he stayed too much longer he would probably lose his mind. He would only stay to get that damn book from Lydia, and then leave. After the priest went back inside he handed Voice a book. ¡°Take this, Blessed of Mar, and know that the church will always be on your side.¡± Voice took the book and read the title. ¡®The teachings and scriptures of Mar.¡¯ He decided to read it once he got to Susan. He would have to explain the bad news to her. He thanked the priest and left. Once he arrived at the alchemy store he located Susan. He decided to have his rabbits try to help comfort her. She was in an upstairs room that looked to be a bomb shelter. He found her face down in a small crated. She wasn¡¯t moving at all, so he thought she was dead. Well that¡¯s great, looks like I lost my alchemy ¡®teacher¡¯. He turned to walk away, and all of the sudden he heard a gasping sound. When he looked back he was Susan smiling, and covered in soot. ¡°So what were you doing?¡± He asked not really wanting to hear the answer, but knowing he needed to ask to seem concerned. ¡°I just used a modified ¡®water breathing¡¯ potion, to take all of the oxygen out of a bucket of water. By adding it to the water, and adding some random ingredients and electricity, you can cause it to produce gas.¡± Voice remembered an experiment he did in high school like this. You add salt into a glass of water and put a battery in. The water splits into hydrogen gas around the negative lead, and oxygen on the positive lead. ¡°Well,¡± Voice interrupted, ¡°I think the random ingredients probably had salt right?¡± Susan thought about it and said yes. ¡°The salt plus water, plus electricity is what you actually needed. The other ingredients were not important.¡± Susan was intrigued; she must have enough information to understand him about this. ¡°Well then, I¡¯ll try it again later. Anyway I saw that the gas was being created at two different places. I captured the two gases, when I put them together I thought they might turn into water again. They didn¡¯t though.¡± Voice knew what was coming next, ¡°You added heat didn¡¯t you?¡± Susan was delighted and sullen. She was delighted that he understood her research so perfectly, and sullen that he said that like he was scolding a child. She continued anyway, ¡°Yes, I added heat. The result is what you can see here, but I wonder what happened to the water.¡± ¡°The water is still here Susan, it¡¯s just scattered around the room.¡± Susan had her doubts, but he seemed to be right about everything else. Voice saw her look of doubt and continued, ¡°Well you did a nice job. You only had unrefined tools to work with and you basically made rocket fuel.¡± Susan didn¡¯t know what a rocket was, but she was beaming at having been praised for making fuel for it. ¡°Thank you! I¡¯ll get started on another experiment right away. Oh wait is there something you needed?¡± Susan forgot that he probably had the item to be enchanted. ¡°I just wanted to let you know that I inadvertently caused all the green healing herbs, and common weed in the area to be picked. They won¡¯t be back for about half a year.¡± Susan was shocked, but quickly got over it. Her research was the only thing important right now. ¡°Anyway, I just came to let you know that, and that as soon as I find a few books on the green healing herb, I¡¯m going to leave. I need to figure out some more about alchemy and then I¡¯m going to go adventuring. This is the third day that I¡¯ve been here; it¡¯s time that I move on.¡± Susan didn¡¯t expect that. She thought he would help her with chemistry, and in return she would help him with alchemy. She would be sad to see him go. Ah, maybe I can give him a gift to help him on his way? ¡°Well I¡¯m going to get the thing for you to get enchanted. It¡¯s not really that important anymore, but it might still help something.¡± He went to the blacksmith. When he told Evan that he was leaving Evan planned something similar to what Susan was planning. The pan was superb. The blacksmith had somehow gotten the copper to perfectly bind to the iron. Voice got his pan and returned to Susan.
Heat Sapping Frying Pan
Material QualityMundaneWork QualityExpert
Cooking bonus10%Durability50/50
This frying pan was made by an expert craftsman. This pan grants a 10% bonus to cooking skill. This pan has had its durability increase by 25.
¡°I¡¯ll go right now, what enchantment do you want?¡± ¡°I need the iron part to keep its heat for as long as possible, while the copper part has to spread the heat as evenly as possible, here you go. How quickly can you get it enchanted?¡± ¡°Well it shouldn¡¯t take too long. I¡¯ll be back as soon as possible.¡± When she left Voice went to look through the store ledger. The first potions he made were sold for about 10 copper a piece. As his potions had gotten better they sold for an insanely higher amount. The final potions he sold Susan sold for a grand total of 1 silver a piece. That was almost 7 times what he had been paid. He decided he would try his hand at mercantilism when he was done studying this plant. After about twenty minutes Susan returned, huffing. She handed him the pan. It shouldn¡¯t have taken that long, and why she is out of breath?
Enchanted Super-Heat Sapping Frying Pan
Material QualityMundaneWork QualityExpert
Enchantment QualityMaster
Cooking bonus50%Durability50/50
This frying pan was made by an expert craftsman. This pan grants a 10% bonus to cooking skill. This pan has had its durability increased by 25. This Item was enchanted by a master enchanter. This pan has had its cooking ability increased b by 400%
¡°So Susan, tell me how much did my potions sell for?¡± Susan replied, ¡°I think the first ones had an upsale of 100%, after that it went all the way past 600%. Why do you ask?¡± Voice did not expect her to tell the truth. She was so openly admitting to ripping him off. ¡°Why did you buy them so cheaply then?¡± Susan gave a small smile, ¡°Well the higher the upsale is more exp for mercantilism I get.¡± A light bulb went off in Voice¡¯s head. Ah, so if I buy some really cheap things I could probably make a nice profit by deceiving people about it. ¡°Would it be ok for you to teach me a bit about that?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not really that great at it,¡± seeing his sad expression she relented. ¡°I¡¯m not really that great at it, BUT if you go to the castle you should be allowed to at least visit the merchants¡¯ guild. They taught me, if you have any talent they should teach you as well.¡± Voice was determined to do this after the study in the library. ¡°Ok thanks for the information. I¡¯m going to go to the library to try to finish something.¡± Susan debated telling him that whatever task he was doing was just to see his reaction. She decided not to. Best to not anger him. Voice went to the library with an empty inventory. He had spent some time during last night thinking about how the library worked. There was no place for things like alchemy research. Thinking about that he realized the top floor was probably all research. Most likely what he saw was just the smithing section. He figured out that the top floor had to be organized by section of interest, then author and title of book. He went back to the librarian. ¡°Alright let¡¯s do this.¡± The librarian smiled, ¡°You know you only have a few more hours than yesterday. Do you still think you can do it?¡± He had eight hours before closing. He said yes and accepted the quest. Voice expected a trick, and was gratified at finding out he was right. He was also upset, the books had more than octupled from yesterday. Yesterday there was about five hundred or so books. Today there was more than 4000. He went to work immediately. He first categorized all of the books. The smallest amount went to the third floor, so that is where he would start. He needed to return 563 individual titles to that floor. He stuffed his twelve slot inventory full of books and ran up the stairs. By the time he made it up to the third floor he was completely winded. His stamina had reached 0, but he had kept going, losing him a tiny bit of health. It took him a few minutes to find all the sections, but after that it was quick work. He took a little bit more time than needed to put the books on the shelves, so that he could restore his stamina and health all the way. When it was fully restored he ran back down and grabbed another bundle of books. Thankfully the weight increase was over his entire body, not just his back, or else he would be having a lot more trouble. By the time he had finished running up to the third floor and back eleven times, and returning all of the books a little over an hour had passed. He still had over a three thousand books to put away, and only seven hours to do it. He took another bundle of 12 titles, since books with the same title stacked it was about 58 books total, and ran up to the second floor. He repeated this process until midnight. He averaged about a two hundred books every thirty minutes. That means I have to pick up the pace. Since I don¡¯t have to go up to the third floor anymore that should speed things up, but I still need to make sure to watch out for any more tricks. He started picking up the pace. He ran faster, harder and for longer periods. The entire second floor took him another four hours. Some of the books were very hard to read, so he had trouble figuring the authors out. He kept it up though. He would run up to the second floor, find the place for the books, put t hem away, and return for more. The entire exercise was grueling. His health was dropping rapidly. By the time he had done one thousand books, he had to sit down for a couple of minutes to recuperate. Once he was fully ready he continued. Up the stairs, put away the books, down the stairs. It was taking too long, so eventually Voice started skipping steps. Instead of running all the way up, he would dash up two or three steps at a time. Still it took longer than he wanted, and he was getting tired more quickly. He snatched food off a platter when the librarian offered it to him. He kept it up until there were only three books for the second floor. Not wanting to waste time he filled the rest of his inventory with first floor books. As he continued he was left with less and less time, but the books declined faster. By the end he had only one book left. ¡®General knowledge of the unknowable.¡¯ Seeing as how it had general Knowledge he thought it was on the first floor. He had ten minutes to put this book away. He looked for the author¡¯s name, but only found a scratched up marking where it should have been. Fuck it. I don¡¯t care if this is some sort of test if I finish she has to pass me on the quest. He asked the librarian, ¡°So, where does this book go?¡± She smiled and told him that she didn¡¯t know the author¡¯s name, or the contents of the book. Voice cursed. Yup, imma kill that librarian bitch. He sat down and tried to figure out what floor it went to. It was most likely not the first floor. The title was the only thing legible. All of the pages were filled with weird symbols. His ten minutes were up before he could find out what kind of book it was. The librarian took the book from him. As she did she handed him another book. ¡°Here take this book. You don¡¯t have to return it, I made a copy. But you still can¡¯t see Lydia yet.¡± The book was titled, ¡®All one needs to know about the leaves of the green healing herb.¡¯ It was weird that the book had lower case letters in the title like that, but he decided he didn¡¯t care. The thing that bugged him though, was that he couldn¡¯t find where that last book went. Despite this the librarian gave him the book he wanted. ¡°Thanks, I¡¯ll be back tomorrow to finish the quest.¡± Voice said with no intention of coming back tomorrow to finish the quest.
You have gained 7 vitality from running being extremely active for a long period of time.
You have gained 8 endurance from enduring harsh conditions for a long period of time.
He went back to Susan¡¯s for the last time. He read the book by candlelight. As he sat huddled over the book he read a lot of information, most of which he already knew. He did come across a very interesting bit. Apparently the reason he never found any seeds on any of the plants was because the seeds were actually integrated into the leaves. It was the seeds that provided the healing, the leaf could technically be discarded if one could harvest the seeds from it. As he read that he received a notice.
You have gained 1 intelligence for learning about the Green Healing Herb¡¯s leaves.
He also received:
You have mastered the Green Healing Herb¡¯s leaves. You have found all prevalent knowledge of the leaves. Not many can say that they know so much information on anything. You have gained 50 fame for being the first to learn all information on the Green Healing Herb¡¯s leave. Any potions you make with Green Healing Herb¡¯s leaves will now be labeled ¡®Made by the Voice0fReason, the foremost expert on Green Healing Herb¡¯s leaves.
Too bad I can¡¯t find any anymore!
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health130Mana120
Stamina250
Level3Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.3Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec2.6
Strength13Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence12
Endurance26Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality25
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership35Logic10
Piety10
Fame370
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 15.56%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 75.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 4 Exp 80.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 6 Exp 60.50%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 50.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 13 Exp 88.24%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 5 Exp 77.77%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Dive 12: An Unexpected Quest Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice wanted info on alchemy so Susan told him to go the library. Once he got there he started and failed a quest. He made a LOT of potions. He dried the health potions into powders. He used those to make OP (Over Potions). He donated those potions to the church. He got a pan, and had it enchanted. He failed the librarian¡¯s quest again. He also mastered knowledge on the green healing herbs. Back guys!!! Three days isn''t really that bad, right? Anyway here''s the chapter for you guys. I have already started the next chapter. Minor spoilers: Spoiler : It talks about his past a little, it helps understand a small part of his view point. Voice went to the library first thing in the morning. It was eight a.m. by the time he got there, just when the library opened. As he greeted the librarian, he started quickly arranging the books on the shelf by floor. He noticed the same book that he couldn¡¯t find the location for last time. ¡°Hey,¡± he asked librarian, ¡°So can I check this book out?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± the librarian replied, ¡°but I do have to warn you, you won¡¯t complete the quest until you can return the book to where it belonged.¡± The librarian smiled as she said this. She was happy the thirst for knowledge had been kindled in this boy, and if he continued to fail his quest all the better. He decided to check the book out. Since his workout yesterday was so effective in increasing his stats he decided to go ahead and do it again. Might as well milk this thing for all it¡¯s worth. Improving on the method he had used in the past, he categorized the books by author, and for the third floor by content. This should speed things up quite a bit. After arranging all of the books he noticed the books had multiplied again. There were about ten thousand books to put away now. That was about 2.5 times the amount he had to do yesterday. He managed to do those in eight hours; so he could reasonably say that he could do these in about twenty hours. Unfortunately he only had sixteen hours. Well even if I don¡¯t have a chance at success, I¡¯ll still be able to increase my stats. Voice ate an apple and a small bowl of porridge that the librarian offered him. With his satiety full, he went immediately to work. He worked for many hours, laboring tirelessly to finish the returns. For some books he even had to insert them between two authors that would be alphabetically outside them. He was exhausted throughout most of this, but thanks to his high stamina regen, coupled with the librarian providing food, he never got worn out. When he was about three quarters done, he had only spent ten hours. I can do this! Voice was excited to finish the quest. The librarian might not consider it done until he had put the gibberish book away, but he would. At the point where he figured he could do this he found a book that belonged to the first floor, but the interesting thing was that it was called a ¡®translator¡¯. He asked the librarian about it, she said that they have translators for most languages. He could not find the location for the translator. Realizing that the librarian probably wouldn¡¯t tell him where it went he came up with a plan, which he enacted exactly two and a half hours later. It was ten thirty, the only two books he had left were the translator and the gibberish book. ¡°So where are the rest of the ¡®translators¡¯?¡± he asked, hoping to find under which author they were published. The librarian smiled at him, ¡°The same place you should have put the other one.¡± Damn it, it didn¡¯t work. Well can¡¯t blame a guy for trying. ¡°Ok, you caught me, I couldn¡¯t find the area. Will you at least give me a hint?¡± She thought about it for a minute, ¡°Sure, it doesn¡¯t immediately help normal people.¡± What is this a riddle?
You have been given a ¡®Librarian¡¯s Riddle¡¯. If you solve it you will be able to gain intelligence, and the location of the other translator books.
Gah! Voice was very unamused by the systems blatant taunting. It was starting to become a habit. It was done in such a way that he wasn¡¯t really sure if it was taunting, but it had that quality that could only come from an intelligent being. He didn¡¯t know if the VI was messed up, or if some engineer, maybe Bit-Bee, was messing with him. He decided it was a matter for a different time. ¡®Sure, it doesn¡¯t immediately help normal people.¡¯ The clue has to be in there somewhere, if I can just find it. Hmm, it doesn¡¯t immediately help. Maybe the clue is the immediate part? But it also says normal people. So it might be of immediate help to people that are not normal. Abnormal people? How the fuck am I supposed to say who is abnormal. Depending on who you are different people would be abnormal. Voice reasoned it out for a few very excruciating minutes. He decided that it didn¡¯t go on the bottom floor because those books were designed with normal people in mind. At the same time it couldn¡¯t go on the second floor as those books were for pleasure not help. So I must have missed something on the third floor. He had an hour and a half before he would consider it a failure for not returning the ¡®translator¡¯ book. The title of the book was: ¡®The Ancient Elven Language Translator (Elven Pre-Split)¡¯ He didn¡¯t know what the Split was, but this book would be newer than that, so he looked for references to the Split. Having nothing to go on it took him an hour to find a book about the Split on the third floor. He found a series of books called: ¡®Post-Split Elven Magic¡¯ A series of books that glancing through, Voice could tell, researched the magical properties left in the area known as the Veil. The Veil was the place where this magical split had happened. It was so contaminated with magic that humans could not tread there without arcane, or elven help. Since he only read for about two minutes he was quite proud of the information he had gathered. It also helped that the research put a synopsis of each chapter at the beginning.
You have gained the skill Speed Reading for reading books very quickly.
¡°Identify skill: Speed Reading¡±
Speed Reading Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By doing tasks reading books quickly you have gained the skill Speed Reading. Leveling this skill does not improve its abilities, unless a rank has been gained. For every rank you increase this skill you will read twice as fast. To level this skill you must read books quickly.
He was excited for a new skill, but his time was running out so he ignored it for now. He looked around this area. He quickly glanced through a few pages of the translator. It first gave alphabetical translation, i.e. a is ¡ê, then it went into words. It seemed as though all words would be directly translated into the corresponding ¡®human¡¯ word. Both alphabets had 26 letters, and each letter corresponded. He read the entire alphabet in only twenty minutes. He realized he still had some spare time so he continued, forty minutes later he finished the book and received:
You have gained knowledge of the Ancient Elven Language. You may now communicate to all Ancient Elven type life forms. This language does not allow you to communicate with High Elves, or #(&@^s.
Well, I guess that name probably means a different race. Maybe that is what the Split was.
You have gained three intelligence points for understanding a difficult concept without proper education.
Three whole points? That¡¯s amazing! Voice was very impressed. He didn¡¯t realize just figuring out things like this could be so lucrative. He now only had half an hour to find the place where translators were kept. He thought that maybe the translators would be in the cultural research section, because they would help translate for the people doing the research. They were not. He finally gave up and went to give the book back to the librarian. She wasn¡¯t there so he went to put it on her desk. For no reason in particular he went behind the desk. Then he saw it. There were a total of sixteen books in the hollowed out shelves behind the librarian¡¯s desk. Since he had never been back here before there was no way of knowing she had books back here. When he looked at the books he noticed that only two were translators, the other fourteen were in gibberish much like his impossible to place book. The little snake! I bet the gibberish book goes back here too! He place both books on the shelves. When he went to place the gibberish book on the shelf he noticed that he could read the book¡¯s author. It was a man(?) named Hermit Mirror, quite the odd name. He placed both books on the shelf.
You have figured out the librarian¡¯s riddle. You have gained two intelligence.
You have completed the librarian¡¯s quest. Talk to her for your reward.
Intimacy with the librarian has increased.
The librarian came in and sighed when she saw him behind her desk. When he had put both books back she knew he had figured it out. ¡°Alright,¡± she said in a bit of a letdown tone, ¡°I told you I¡¯d show you to her room. We might as well get this over with.¡± She left without looking to see if he followed her. At first he didn¡¯t; he was sure she had some other type of ¡®test¡¯ for him. When she didn¡¯t stop he ran to catch up with her. She took him upstairs to the third floor at such a brisk pace, he doubted that she was not someone obsessed with workouts. On the third floor she went up to a bookcase that held no books. She gently pushed on the left side. The shelf slid noiselessly to the right. For such a well hidden room Voice expected it to be a bit more lavish. The room had brick walls, a small desk with a candle, and a large bed. The bed was the only thing in the room that was even semi-ornate. It looked extremely comfortable. Voice sat down on it. ¡°So when will she be here?¡± He asked this in a bit of an impatient tone. The librarian replied, ¡°She¡¯s already here.¡± She looked expectantly at his face. She was rewarded with a face that could only be described as saying: ¡®I knew it. Obviously it was you.¡¯ She was quite put off about this turn of events. ¡°I really am her you know?¡± ¡°Yeah, I figured it¡¯d be something like this. ¡®Oh you solved the quest? Well here¡¯s why the quest never mattered.¡¯¡± Lydia narrowed her eyes at him. She was hoping for a more shocked expression. ¡°Well now that you¡¯re here, what do you want?¡± She said this with exactly the same tone as the first time he came here. Voice was irritated that he had to do all of this work, and only got to meet her as a reward. Especially when they had already met! Voice forcefully calmed himself down. I guess I can¡¯t be too upset, I did get a nice bit of int, vit, and end. Although I only got two vit today, and no end. I guess it¡¯s because I got used to the exercise. ¡°Susan told me you could help me. I need a book for refining potions. I want to make potions with less impurities.¡± Lydia thought for a moment. ¡°Couldn¡¯t Susan have helped you out? I mean she is an alchemist with some experience.¡± ¡°Maybe but I wanted to trying reading the material first, so that I can have a strong grasp incase I do need to ask her.¡± ¡°That¡¯s kind of cyclical logic, but ok. They would be on the first floor. The author is Susan Perot.¡± I guess France is a place here? Wait did she say Susan? It can¡¯t be. ¡°Did you mean, like, that is my Susan?¡± Lydia gave a suggestive smile. ¡°Oh ho! Your Susan now is it? I¡¯m sure she didn¡¯t realize. I¡¯ll make sure to tell her next time we meet.¡± ¡°You know what I meant.¡± ¡°Yes, it is YOUR Susan that wrote those. In fact most of the alchemy books here are from her.¡± ¡°Is she really that accomplished?¡± ¡°You should already know the answer to that. Well if that¡¯s all you needed I¡¯m going downstairs. Unless¡± She motioned towards the bed, ¡°Unless you wanted something else?¡± Voice gave her a flat stare and left the room. The book was exactly where the librarian had said it¡¯d be. He had took it to the front desk, and asked to check it out along with the book that was gibberish earlier. She gave him a white card and told him to put a drop of blood on it. When he did, though dubious, he saw his name, age, and picture displayed on the card. He also saw three numbers, they were all zero. Lydia explained, ¡°This is your library card. If you want to borrow a book you must have this with you. The first one is free, if yours gets lost or stolen then you have to pay a fine of fifty silver to get a new one. It uses blood magic, so if anyone other than you tries to use it, it won¡¯t work. Also the three numbers indicate, from left to right, the amount of books you¡¯ve checked out, the current fine you have, and how many times you have had a fine. If you keep that last one at zero librarians are more likely to lend you more expensive or rare books. Of course each library is independently owned, so the librarian there may refuse to lend you books. But having a low fine total will help persuade them. You have two weeks to return each book you borrow, if you don¡¯t you are charged a fine, even if you are a few seconds late. The fine is equal to the value of the book plus ten percent. The time you can borrow the books is exactly two weeks from the moment you walk out of the library with them. You must make sure the books are given to the librarian that you borrowed them from in those two weeks.¡± ¡°Ok, I¡¯d like to borrow these two please.¡± He told her, indicating the gibberish book, and the book on purification. ¡°Normally I wouldn¡¯t lend that out to you,¡± pointing to ¡®General knowledge of the unknowable¡¯, ¡°but since you have helped me out so much here, I¡¯ll make an exception.¡± He thanked her and went to leave. ¡°Oh, and the card turns different colors depending on how rare the rarest book you¡¯ve borrowed is. That¡¯s to help out other librarians to know if you are trust worthy. On the back it will give an exact total of the books you¡¯ve borrowed. Just make sure you return them on time; I mean you don¡¯t gain extra intelligence points for keeping them longer.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± Lydia looked incredulously at him. ¡°What I mean is that you gain int, by reading books you¡¯ve never read before. Didn¡¯t you know that?¡± Voice felt a flush of excitement wash over him. He waved a goodbye, and returned to Susan¡¯s place. His three rabbits woke from their slumber as he left the huge library doors. The stood up and chased after him, sometimes falling behind sometimes running ahead. He had expected to leave today, but with this new font of intelligence farming learning, he decided to stay a while longer. On the way back Voice looked over his speed reading skill. He tried to fuse it to all of his other skills. They all said that the skills couldn¡¯t be fused. All except one. Speed reading and Automated seemed to be compatible.
Automatic Reading Allows the user to automatically read books in their inventories. Current level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill will automatically read books in your inventory. This skill does not need to be activated, but it also cannot be deactivated. This skill gains experience from using it. The higher the level this skill is, the faster it will automatically read the books (stacks with speed reading). For every rank you gain in this skill, you can automatically read one additional book at a time. Currently you can read one book at a time, at a rate of one page per four minutes. This skill will compile all information in the book, and present it to the user. Any knowledge gains will be transferred to the reader.
Jackpot!!! He couldn¡¯t wait to use this broken skill. Susan was still up when he got to her place. Voice looked curiously at what she was doing. He couldn¡¯t tell very with the dark atmosphere so he asked. ¡°What do you have there?¡± Voice could have sworn he saw her jump a little. ¡°Oh hi, I thought you said you were leaving town?¡± Voice happily replied, ¡°I decided to stay a while, I¡¯ve discovered a piercing thirst for reading.¡± Susan thought she heard a small spark of evil in his voice. She ignored it, ¡°Well you are welcome to stay as long as you want. In fact, you can even help me by making some more potions to sell if you are so inclined.¡± Voice thought about it; could prove useful read about the surrounding areas plants and their properties. He could then make potions out of them, but only if he had time. He went to the room Susan had allocated for his use, and started reading ¡®General knowledge of the unknowable¡¯. He also noticed above the potion purification book was a small blue bar. He guessed it was the time until he had ¡®read¡¯ the book. He turned his attention to his other book. He read: ¡¯This is one volume in seven that I have scattered across the lands of mortals. Read it if you wish to gain power. Stop if your thirst for knowledge can be easily quenched.¡¯ Voice didn¡¯t know what this book was going on about, be he decided to keep reading. ¡®The city rose from the desert¡­¡¯ As he finished that one line he felt himself¡­ The only way to explain it was that he felt himself shift. Not from a physical force, but a magical one. As he was shifted he felt, and heard, a monstrous amount of wind pass by his head. Disoriented he looked around. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. What he saw both unnerved and excited him. He had been transported into a building, or at least what used to be a building, that sat under a green ominous sky. The walls of this building had crumbled long ago. The only thing that was still intact was the archway he sat under, and a pedestal that held a book. Curious about why only this book looked undamaged by age he went over and opened it. He was again shifted somewhere else to the sound of roaring wind. He noticed he still had the book ¡®General knowledge of the unknowable¡¯ in his possession. He began to read it to see if anything was in it that could explain what happened. As soon as he opened the book he appeared back in the room Susan let him use. Is this some sort of interactive book? Why the hell did Lydia not give me a disclaimer!? He checked downstairs, and sure enough Susan was still working. She seemed unperturbed by the noise. Or perhaps I¡¯m the only one that can hear it. He went back to his room and opened the book again, fully expecting to be transported. His expectations were validated. As he entered the story he noticed his three rabbits had come with him. He had not noticed them before. I need to pay more attention to my surroundings. He was in the same place as he started when he first read the book. He again went up to the pedestal holding the undamaged book. After opening it he was shifted to what he decided to call room two. He started compiling a mental map of the area as he walked. He was in a large empty chamber. It was at least several tens of feet high, with a domed roof, and a large number of shelves lining the walls. It looked as though it could have been a library, except all of the shelves were completely empty. Nor were there any books in the chamber. He instructed the trio of rabbits to stay near him. If I need a distraction I can use one of them. After they exited on one side of the chamber they came across a long, seemingly endless, hallway. On both sides were lined doors. All of the doors were closed, and all were made of the exact same wood. The exact same, even the grains and imperfections were identical. Voice forced let Rabs go in the first door on the left. He told Rabs to let the group know what was in there. After a few second Rabs came out. ¡°Nothing much in there sir.¡± Rabs said in his peculiarly high pitched voice. ¡°Just a bunch of books, tables, and chairs.¡± Voice decided to look into the room since he knew it was safe. He looked at all of the books. They were stacked haphazardly across the room. He randomly picked one up and began reading. He didn¡¯t know how long it took him to read it. It was a story about a brave knight that saved a princess. Typical fantasy story. Until the end, the knight took the princess to his castle. He had wooed and seduced her expertly. He took her to his ¡®love nest¡¯ and sacrificed her to his dark lord. WOAH! Did NOT see that one coming! Voice was laughing. It was a good story. He quickly devoured the rest of the books in the room. They were all similar stories. Typical story that has a huge plot twist at the end. He noticed that his rabbits had fallen asleep. He woke them up and continued on to the room directly across the hall. It was a similar room as the one he just left. These books, however, were filled with stories of kings. All of the kings pretended to be peasants. The peasants would then gain a peasant rival. The king/peasant would then destroy the peasant in whatever game they decided, it was different for each book, then the king/peasant would consume the soul of the peasant. I wonder if all of the rooms have basically identical stories in them. He had Rabs run into the rooms first, then come tell them if there were any enemies. He kept careful track of each room they went into, even the order. The rooms had no enemies. He didn¡¯t know how long he was in this place, but he wanted to at least find the next place before he went back. He read a lot of books. By the time they had reached the tenth door he had read about two hundred books. He didn¡¯t know how long each one took him because he seemed to lose focus for a second while reading. Then he would be done. He continued this for several rooms. What the stories went like is: The first room had a story about a knight saving, seducing and sacrificing a princess. The second room had a story about a king that disguised himself, and beat and consumed the soul of a peasant. The third room had a story about a young alchemist that went on a grand adventure, only to be tricked and trapped in another world. The fourth room was about a young, ambitious, woman that desired power. She gained the power she so craved, but became a slave to the master that gave it to her. The fifth room was about a man that came from another world. He came into this world only to be tricked by the god of knowledge to be trapped in the god¡¯s realm forever. At that point Voice started to get worried. Some of these stories sounded eerily like him. The fifth, fourth, and third rooms basically detailed his adventure in DIVE so far. He continued on anyway. Worst case scenario I lose a couple of levels and the rabbits. At the sixth room he read a very interesting story about a novice enchanter that came upon a book by accident. The he sat in the same position for days doing nothing but reading the book. He did not even eat or sleep. When he got out the enchanter developed major enchanting technology, including the use of mana manipulation to enchant gems to use in enchanting items. Whenever he was asked about the book he would turn pale and start shaking. Eventually the enchanter got so bad he holed himself in his room. He was constantly enchanting things, but had no interaction with living beings. A few years after he read the book he went completely insane. He built an army of enchanted iron golems. They destroyed the town that he had moved to, and had his castle built next to. After that any living thing that came near the man was killed by one of the hundreds of enchantments on his castle and golems. The next three rooms he didn¡¯t even pay attention to. He figured they just went along with the previous books. He still read them, but just didn¡¯t pay attention. He figured that if about half the books were about him, then the other half were about someone else. Perhaps a boss? When Rabs went into the tenth room Voice heard a high pitch squeal. Troy and Heather were fearful, and tried to go help Rabs, but Voice stopped them. A quarter of a second later Rabs came out panting. ¡°There¡­,¡± Rabs tried to speak but was obviously too scared. After a few moments he said, ¡°There is some black monster in there.¡± ¡°Calm down Rabs,¡± Voice tried to calm bait Rabs down. ¡°Just tell us what he looked like. We can make a plan after that.¡± Rabs looked as if he just saw a ghost, which he didn¡¯t believe in. ¡°You want to fight that thing?¡± ¡°No, I want to kill it. This is a great experience for all of us. We can all level up a little.¡± Voice assured the rabbits they could win if they just stayed to the plan he had made before. Rabs was to divert attention while Troy tanked, and Heather attacked. ¡°Look, we either fight it now, or have it attack our backs.¡± The rabbits decided that they would rather fight it head on. Voice followed the rabbits into the room. The figure was wearing a black robe made of some weird material, like frog skin. Voice approached it with his staff drawn. When he was in range he gave the signal. Rabs jumped and hit the things face. Oddly enough the thing did not move until Rabs had hit it. It was as if the figure was in some sort of trance. Once woken, however, the thing was vicious. With a swipe of its right clawed tentacle it sent Rabs flying into a bookshelf. The rabbit hit the wall and lay still, dazed by the sudden attack. Troy went to work. He ran in front of Rabs as the creature went out another clawed tentacle to attack Rabs. Troy was struck, but barely managed to hold his ground. Heather had already jumped in the air when Troy had bolted to Rabs side. Heather bit down on the thing¡¯s left tentacle, hard. It drew some sort of green ooze. Voice decided it was blood. Way to go Heather! Tear into that ¡®fearsome¡¯ beastie. Rabs got back up on his feet, although obviously disoriented. He didn¡¯t want his friends to die because he was weak. Troy was glaring at the tentacle thing, and its eyes didn¡¯t leave him. The tentacle thing tried to flick Heather off, but was so angered by Troy that he couldn¡¯t. Troy lunged forward, only to be smacked by a clawed tentacle. Voice had taken the opportunity that the tri had made for him and snuck around behind the tentacle monster. He used his staff to deliver a decisive winning blow to the back of its head. The ¡®decisive winning blow to the back of its head¡¯ never made it. He was stopped by the tentacle that Heather was attached to. As the tentacle blocked his staff, Voice noticed a face of delight on Heather. She seemed to be enjoying the taste of the monsters blood. Voice shuddered slightly. That just goes to show that you can¡¯t judge a book by its cover. Voice hit the thing again and again, and was reflected again and again. The pool of green blood on the floor was getting bigger thanks to Heather, but the monster seemed unaffected. It had started attacking Troy, but would encounter strong resistance thanks to Troy¡¯s natural body; or would be attacked by Rabs. Rabs would do a quick attack, diverting the monster¡¯s attention for a moment, and Troy would close in to get agro. Voice would attack sever times to each of Troy¡¯s one attacks, but all of his attacks were rebuffed. All the while Heather was happily chomping away at the tentacle in her mouth. Voice noticed that the monster, although fearsome and with a long range of attack, had not moved from its initial starting point. He thought about this and made a new plan. ¡°Heather let go and run outside. NOW!¡± She did as she was told, although reluctantly. ¡°Troy, Rabs, guard this side of the door.¡± They rushed to comply. He looked the monster in the eyes. He slowly walked closer, apprehension growing in both him and the two male rabbits. He was worried about his body, they were worried about his sanity. As he got closer he started to think of killing the monster, and the loot it would drop. At this thought the monster twitched, and sent out a tendril of ink from its mouth. The ink would have hit Voice had Rabs not sensed it and tackled his legs. Voice fell over and forced a thankful smile on his lips. Gotta make it look like I appreciate it at least. He got back up and stared at the monster. He moved towards it, it remained motionless. As he approached he faked an attack. Nothing. He went for a real strike and was instantly blocked. ¡°I knew it!¡± He went to the door and called Heather back in. ¡°Alright guys, this guy reacts to bloodlust. If Rabs, Troy or I attack him we get stopped. The only one he openly attacked was Troy.¡± Rabs interrupted. ¡°I don¡¯t mean to be rude, but it felt like he attacked me too.¡± Voice smiled, ¡°No, he just defended himself against your attacks. My guess is that if we can hide our bloodlust we can attack him.¡± Voice turned to Heather. ¡°Now tell me Heather, how did you not exert any bloodlust?¡± She shrugged. ¡°I just really liked the taste of his blood. It was like eating the most high quality carrots!¡± Voice shuddered. I will never piss her off if she gets strong. ¡°Alright I need Troy to get his attention. Rabs when Troy gets his attention I want you to attack the monster¡¯s left side. I¡¯m going to attack the back again. Heather this time focus on clamping on his right side. That way both arms will be weakened a little. Ready?¡± The all nodded. ¡°GO!¡± Voice shouted as he sprang into action. He ran up behind the thing. Once he made sure that the other two were in position he attacked. The tentacle thing tried to block him, but had sent an arm to attack Troy, and was knocking aside Rabs. Heather had just caught on his arm when Voice landed his first successful attack of the encounter. It didn¡¯t seem to do much damage, but the thing staggered slightly. Rabs continued his hit and run tactics, while Troy continued to dodge and endure the beating the monster gave him. ¡°Heather, start on his legs!¡± She complied by dropping to the ground and attaching herself to his left leg. ¡°Rabs focus your attacks on its right arm; the place that Heather just bit!¡± Rabs jumped to kick the spot Heather just left. He was about to be swatted away when a dull thunk sounded behind the monster. Voice had hit the back of its head just as it was attacking Troy and trying to block Rabs. Voices attack, in conjunction with the monster¡¯s careful coordination, forced the monster off balance for a fraction of a second. That was all the team needed. Troy jumped at the monster¡¯s face, while Heather planted herself on the ground and kicked at the wound she just created. Rabs landed his attack, and while Voice pushed from behind, managed to knock the thing to the ground. He gained a point in leadership and two in logic for beating this monster. As soon as the monster hit the ground the group heard a voice. It was a voice filled with terrible anger, as well as some bitter amusement. It came from the spot the monster had hit. As the monster hit it turned into a black smoke. The smoke coalesced into a face. The face was hidden by a shadow, and a cape. ¡°Well, well. It looks like someone finally managed to knock over an intellect. What is your name?¡± The voice demanded this in a tone that made it seem like disobedience wouldn¡¯t be tolerated, but would be punished. The voice held and unimaginable amount of power. Voice decided to answer, not out of fear, just because it¡¯s be rude not to. ¡°Uh, um, I¡¯m Voice sir. Voice0fReason. These here are my friends Troy, Heather, and Rabs.¡± He indicated them from largest to smallest. ¡°Very well Voice0fReason. You may read one book in this room. Know this though, the book you choose will gain knowledge of you, just as you gain knowledge of it.¡± Voice looked around, there were a dozen books in this room. Each had a unique title. Voice decided on picking up the book entitled: ¡®Mirror¡¯s Boon¡¯ He read the few words that appeared in the book. ¡®Mirror¡¯s Boon allows the user to create a reflection of his or her self. The reflection can be conjured once a day. It has no cost. The reflection is summoned instantly when the user wills it. It will last for three seconds, at the end of which it will dissipate and restore its full life, stamina, and mana to the user. The life, stamina, and mana of this reflection equal (.5 x user total) x (Light Affinity + Dark Affinity + 1)¡¯ After he gained this new spell, he was stupefied. He was getting used to getting new skills, but this spell was amazing! ¡°Now,¡± continued the ominous voice, ¡°There are six more books strewn across Solun. If you can find them then you will be given a great power. If you can complete the other books you will even be able to wield that power. These books are each a part of me. As you access them I will gain more power, the last book you find will lead you to me. You will either become my slave, or my master. You may access this book whenever you wish. As you continue on in rooms you will gain more mirror powers. Be warned that each room is several times more difficult than the last.¡± With that he faded from the room. Voice leveled up once. His rabbits did likewise. All in all, it was a pretty good hall. The books Voice had not chosen had disappeared along with the floating head, so he decided to leave for now. He read the original book that acted as a portal. He was shifted to Susan¡¯s room.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health130Mana180
Stamina290
Level4Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.3Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec2.6
Strength13Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence18
Endurance26Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety10
Fame370
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 15.56%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 5 Exp 00.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 6 Exp 60.50%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 50.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 13 Exp 88.24%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 5 Exp 77.77%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 19 Exp 52.63%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Name change Hey guys i was told by a few people that the name was too boring. I changed it but then other people suggested changing it back lol. So what do you guys think? If you have a better idea than either of the two names i put let me know in the comments. Dive 13: His First Training Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finally completed the librarian¡¯s quest. He learned a language, and read a book in Ancient Elven. He was transported to a world full of books. He completed the task there and got a spell that helped him regenerate. He was surprised to see Susan, Evan, and Elizabeth crying. Even the librarian was here, and she looked a bit somber. ¡°Guys? What¡¯s all the crying about?¡± They gave a collective gasp as he spoke. The first one able to respond was the librarian. ¡°We thought you had been killed, well not killed but doomed to die.¡± I guess the enchanter story was a warning. Fuck! ¡°Don¡¯t worry guys, I¡¯m f¡± As he tried to reassure the group he was fiercely hugged by Susan, quickly followed by Evan and Elizabeth. Now that the sexual harassment is over¡­ ¡°How long was I like that?¡± Voice wasn¡¯t sure how long he could spend there. Susan cried out, hugging Voice again. She told him. Voice was dumbstruck. He didn¡¯t believe what Susan just told him. Today was the tenth day that he had been here. Time must have sped up substantially. How did his mind withstand that? He needed to log out immediately. He reassured the group he would be back soon and logged out. He looked at the clock in his room. It displayed the time and date. It said the time was 10 am, but it was two days after he had gotten the pod. Shit! Reading those books took way too long, it doesn¡¯t matter how much exp I got for auto read. He went to greet his mother. She gave him a big hug. She had a very sweet voice. ¡°Geez, if you are going to be on all day at least shower!¡± He realized he did have a bit of a smell. He would take a shower after spending some time with his mom. ¡°There¡¯s been something I¡¯ve been meaning to tell you.¡± Uh, oh Brenton thought. ¡°I¡¯m going with your aunt out of country for a while!¡± Seeing how he was confused she continued, ¡°I¡¯ve made sure all the bills will be paid so you don¡¯t need to worry about anything. It¡¯s a business trip, but still!¡± His mom was way too excited for him to ruin her mood. ¡°Uh, when will you be back?¡± Brenton had never spent more than a few days away from his mom at time. It wasn¡¯t a stretch to say he was a momma¡¯s boy. That was actually one of the reasons he was so hateful. // His father had left when he was four years old. After a fight about something. His dad wasn¡¯t physically abusive, but emotionally he was swine. They lived in a small town in California, so everyone knew just about everyone else. A couple of years after his father left, his mother tried to get back into the dating scene. Brenton was happy for her. Sure he didn¡¯t want to share his perfect, loving mother, but if it made her happy then he was content. That guy turned out to be a jerk. He brought Brenton to a baseball game once. Brenton was happy to go see the game, even though he had no real interest in sports. He really wanted to get along with this man so that they could be a happy family. When they were seated Brenton realized he needed to pee. The man sighed a little and got up to go with him. Brenton gave him his best smile and said, ¡°That¡¯s ok, I am big enough to go by myself. At least one of us should enjoy the game.¡± The man gave a slightly approving grunt. When Brenton got back he was amazed at what he saw. His mom was out of town for the day, but right there she was kissing her boyfriend. Brenton took a photo of it as commemoration. As well as ammo for teasing his mom. As he got closer he realized the long brown hair of his mother was slightly blonder than usual. Then he noticed it was shorter. Maybe she went to a hair stylist? Brenton knew it wasn¡¯t true, but tried to deceive himself into thinking that. He got to his row, and his mother¡¯s boyfriend noticed him. He immediately disengaged from the blonde. Through the rest of the game the man pretended nothing happened, so did Brenton. The day his mother returned she took him aside and talked to him. ¡°Sweetie, I know it¡¯s been just me and you for a while now, but how about we add one more person to the family?¡± She asked in her sweet as usual tone. Brenton began to cry. Not for her asking, but because he knew what he was about to do would hurt her. She tried to comfort him, but he only got his phone out and showed her the picture he had taken. She knew when that picture was taken, but didn¡¯t want to think her boyfriend would do this. But since I know my son would never lie to me I have no choice but to accept it. ¡°Mom, I¡¯m s-sending this picture to you. You should talk to him. If you are ok with his excuse then I¡¯m fine with him moving in.¡± After receiving the picture she did just that. She wasn¡¯t waiting for an excuse though. As soon as he started to try to lie his way out of it she kicked him out. The next day he came back and vented his anger all over their house. Brenton was alone, so he called the police. As the dragged him away he locked eyes with Brenton who was looking out of the window. After that it was a depressing string of failed romances on his mother¡¯s part. She basically started to rely on Brenton to determine how far in the relationship she should be willing to go. He would almost always get some sort of dirt on whoever she dated. The ones he didn¡¯t get dirt on he happily signed off on. Those all ended up in failure because of one thing or another. Brenton and his mom moved around a bit. In the fifteen years since her divorce with Brenton¡¯s dad, she had eight boyfriends, and had move three times. Brenton never complained. But his breaking point was the last boyfriend she had. He was a well to do kind of person. He was very suave, and had impeccable manners. He even played with Brenton, although Brenton was a sophomore in high school at the time. So instead of playing it was more like martial arts training. He was pretty good at it, but quit once he noticed the truth. The man¡¯s name was Paul. He had been physically abusing Brenton¡¯s mom for a while. Brenton never noticed, but that was because his mother tried so hard to hide it. The tipping point was one random night. Brenton heard a loud crash upstairs. He ran up there with a baseball bat. He saw Paul trying to force himself on Brenton¡¯s mom. Brenton lost all semblance of sanity and beat Paul until he was dragged off by his mother. That night Brenton forced his mother to call the police and tell them what had been happening. She told them the whole story and they went to investigate. She had never told any of this to Brenton. When he asked her why her response torn his heart out. ¡°It was because you liked him so much.¡± The next day the police arrived and handcuffed Brenton. Paul was suing him for assault. They went to court. The case against Paul was dismissed as a way to get her son out of trouble. Benton had to spend a few weeks in the juvenile home for delinquent children. For one reason or another he had a reputation as a badass there. Since Paul was one of the most powerful men in the city they lived in, beating him with a bat was something akin to showing a kindergartener a live superhero. He was bailed out by his mother. She didn¡¯t want him spending any time in there, but had to get a few loans to bail him out. Brenton got a job as a grocery clerk to help pay the loans. They were a hefty forty thousand. Even for assault that¡¯s way too much man. He worked harder than anyone else in the store. He worked longer than anyone else in the store. He worked cheaper than anyone else in the store. After a few months his manager even suggested a promotion to assistant manager. He would have to work full time, but they could pay off the loan very quickly. The next day Brenton saw a man in a suit talking to his manager. Later that day he was called in to the manager¡¯s office. The manager had two shady looking police officers standing by him. ¡°Do you know why I called you in here?¡± ¡°No sir, is it about the promotion?¡± ¡°Very funny smart ass. You are fired for theft of property. You stole a fifty dollar bottle of wine two days ago. I saw you do it. Now leave the premises.¡± Brenton was flabbergasted. ¡°But sir, I¡¯ve never stolen anything in my life.¡± ¡°You either leave now or these two gentlemen will escort you to the cell they have prepared. You¡¯re lucky I¡¯m not suing you. If the cameras hadn¡¯t malfunctioned at that three minute interval I would be.¡± The manager smiled as he patted his pocket. It had a square bulge, much like one that money would make. Voice left dejectedly. The next few months were the same. He¡¯d get a job, start to get recognition, and get fired. Eventually he started slacking off a little so that he wouldn¡¯t be fired. That too got him fired. That would have all been ok, if the all of the people in the city didn¡¯t have some sort of horrid sense of humor. They thought what was happening to him and his mom was funny. They would openly jeer at them, and go out of their way to make trouble for his mom and him. After they paid off the loan it had been two years. They both were worn out. They once again moved. This time his mother had contacted his father¡¯s sister. She was a very cheerful person apparently. Brenton had never met her. They moved into a small house given to them by his aunt. He only met his aunt twice, as she was excessively busy. Once when she was leaving his house at 7 in the morning, and another time that his friends from college had tricked him into getting drunk. He didn¡¯t really any firm impressions of her, except that she was nice. She had given his mom a very nice house, as well as a job to work at. It was rare that Brenton thought she was nice. He actually thought she had ulterior motives for the first year, but she never asked for anything in return. He thought something shady was going on for a while, but he asked his mom directly after checking on her for a few weeks. He hadn¡¯t found anything, and she said no. She was a little sad that he still didn¡¯t trust her after the Paul incident, but it was her fault after all. Brenton apologized so much, so quickly that his mom almost burst out laughing at her frantic son. // ¡°I¡¯ll be back in about a month. Don¡¯t worry darling, if I meet another man you can check him okay?¡± It was a joke she had come up with a while ago. Brenton seemed distrustful of everyone but her and his aunt at this point. That was why his mother arranged for him to get a DIVE pod. Maybe he can get some positive human interaction for once. Brenton noticed the three suitcases on the floor. He sighed and hugged his mom. She gently hugged him back before pushing him away and saying: ¡°Bath mister, now!¡± He went to take a shower, knowing that his mom would be gone when he returned. After finishing his shower he noticed his mother was indeed gone. Business trip or not, he would be very sad to not have her around. He noticed the fridge was stocked with food to the brim. He opened the freezer. It had a lot of frozen chicken. The best thing he could cook was chicken and rice. It was very similar to the dinner box hamburger hand. It was actually where he got the idea. After a little experimenting he got quite good at cooking it. Unfortunately he didn¡¯t have a wide variety of things he could cook well. He cooked his imitation chicken and rice. It only took about fifteen minutes. He always made two portions, so he cooked too much. He was reminded that his mother was gone. With a sad expression he put the left overs in the fridge, washed the dishes and got back into the pod. The pod seemed like it was just taken out of the box, even though he stunk and figured he must have been sweating a lot. When he got in the pod he realized it had a very cool temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit. He started the game. It had been about six hours since Voice left. Everyone was worried at first, when he suddenly disappeared. Susan explained to them his situation. He was one of the first five outsiders that the goddess had spoken about. He reappeared in the room where he had left. Evan, Elizabeth, and Lydia, were surprised when he reappeared. Susan told them they would, but they were still caught off guard. Lydia started speaking. ¡°So, I don¡¯t think it did but, did the book I lent you have anything to do with your episode earlier?¡± Voice decided to be truthful. ¡°Yeah, I got transported to the realm of Hermit Mirror.¡± Lydia was taken aback. ¡°You mean you could actually read that thing?¡± Voice confused. ¡°Yeah, what do you mean?¡± ¡°Well it was written in the Ancient Elven, the translator book I gave you. Er¡­ I meant the book you had to put up. Oh whatever. I gave you the book that would translate it, but the book only lets those that it wants read it.¡± ¡°Wait, so the book is sentient!?¡± Lydia chuckled. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s why it¡¯s so rare for people to read it. You are the only person I¡¯ve actually met that could read it. It seems to have some requirements to read it. The last person able to read it was an enchanter.¡± Voice dubiously asked, ¡°Did he happen to slaughter his whole town, and build a golem army?¡± ¡°YES! How did you know that!?¡± Lydia basically screamed at Voice. ¡°It was in a book I read inside that realm.¡± ¡°What else did you read? ¡°Like eight other stories.¡± He summarized the other stories. Lydia¡¯s mouth was agape after hearing the stories. ¡°Those¡­ those are the other six people that have read this book! Although I have never heard about the knight or the man from the other world. I guess they were probably read it.¡± Voice asked her how she knew this. ¡°I always liked to study the rare books in my possession. This one is said to drive the reader to the brink of insanity, but also grant vast power.¡± Voice decided to keep the book. ¡°How much?¡± Lydia asked ¡°What? How much? For the book?¡± Voice nodded. ¡°I can¡¯t sell that. I¡­ Do you know how much that cost me!?¡± Geez she sounds like she thinks she¡¯s my mom. Did I just brake a vase or something? ¡°Fine,¡± Voice was annoyed but kept his tone calm. After all everything can be solved with quests! (Voice¡¯s conclusion with zero evidence) ¡°Alright, how about I do a quest for it? Name it and it will be done.¡± Lydia was loathe to part with the book. Sure this person was a close friend to Susan, but he didn¡¯t really seem like he would appreciate it enough. ¡°Get me a book I¡¯ve never read, then you can have it.¡± Voice pondered how to do this. He only came up with one solution. He had to return Mirror¡¯s Realm. Seeing as this was the only library/bookstore in town that was the only reasonable way. ¡°Well I¡¯m going training then. I¡¯ll be back soon.¡± Everyone was surprised at the sudden declaration. Susan took the initiative. ¡°What do you mean training?¡± Voice explained his plan to train the rabbits, and maybe get some new ones on the way. Susan was positively beaming. ¡°So does that mean you¡¯ll stay a little while longer?¡± Susan asked with an upturned gaze that reminded him of when his pleaded for him to do something. He couldn¡¯t resist the smile that came to his face. ¡°Yeah, that means I¡¯ll stay a little longer.¡± Susan was ecstatic. Not only would she be able to finish her gift, she would get to spend more time with the person that taught her about chemistry. Voice asked for a few books on history. Strangely Lydia had several. He borrowed them from her, not with his card, just from her. ¡°Are you a bibliophile or something?¡± Voice asked in an amused tone. Lydia looked very happy at being called that. Weirdo He also took a few bandages from Susan¡¯s stock for the fight ahead. It was six pm, but Voice wanted to get in a little training before he slept. He grabbed a few bandages and left. He walked to the forests on the west side of the city, followed closely by his rabbits. Voice went into the plains and collected vegetables for about half an hour. Once he had a nice stock of carrots and radishes he looked for a few more rabbits to tame. Once he called out tame and indicated the rabbit he wanted hunt he got the message.
You can only tame up to three of the same archetype of animal.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Well that¡¯s a letdown. Looks like the only way to grow my army is to recruit new species. Voice and his trio went to the forest to train. At this point he didn¡¯t really care about what he killed, be it monster or animal. But since he knew the weakness of the demon wolves he decided to go with them. Once again Rabs went into the forest to lure out some wolves. This time Voice told him to only get one or two. When Rabs came running back he yelled, ¡°I¡¯M SORRY!¡± He was followed by five demon wolves. Troy instantly took his stance. He was knocked to the side by two wolves chasing after Rabs. Rabs ran towards the city wall. His tamer had told him that if things got really bad to do that. Heather jumped towards one of the wolves and managed to kick its face. The kick left no visible damage. As she kicked one of the three wolves aimed at Voice¡¯s throat. Voice tried to deflect the attack with his staff, but he only managed to divert a portion of the damage. He took a whopping 35 points of damage. Voice didn¡¯t have any potions. He had a few common weed, and four green healing herbs, but he was saving them for planting when he finally got a base of operations. He would not use them under any circumstances. He had hidden them in the room Susan lent him. He didn¡¯t want to use the boon thing, so he hit the wolf with all of his might. His strength wasn¡¯t that much, but it managed to loosen the wolf¡¯s jaw. He quickly pulled the wolf off him and threw it into its friends. Voice couldn¡¯t actually throw it the few feet he needed to, but he did manage to toss it a little ways. Before the wolf hit the ground it was already preparing to strike again. When the wolves burst out Troy was knocked to the side. He got up to notice Voice taking on one, and the other two baring their fangs and surrounding Heather. He went to help Heather. Troy was supposed to be the one to take the danger. Since Heather had very weak defense he would aid her. He used his usual aura of intimidation. It wasn¡¯t very intimidating, but the bigger monsters found it annoying that he would bare his fangs at them. This usually led to him being attacked. He bared his little bunny teeth, and was promptly swatted by one of the wolves. Heather saw the five wolves run from the forest. She jumped up at one, intending on kicking out one of its eyes. She managed to kick its face but it didn¡¯t even pretend to feel the light rabbit kick. After she landed the wolf was snarling at her, and pounced her. Troy came in just in time to take the agro. He jumped in front of her and the wolf changed its target. The wolf was a centimeter away from chomping off Troy¡¯s head, when it suddenly stopped. Voice somehow intuitively knew where the wolf would strike. He aimed his staff at the exact location he thought would stop the wolf. He got a notification, but since he was in battle he only got a red dot on the bottom left of his eyesight for a second. At the exact moment when he blocked the first wolf, another came behind him and thrashed his back. Pain exploded from the contact. He arched his back to help alleviate some of the pain, but it did nothing. The only thing he could do was scream. He screamed, not just with agony, but with anger. His level was in danger. He only had 15 hp left! His scream was so loud, and intense the wolves stood still for a moment. They seemed confused at the fact that this man-thing could release such a roar. It commanded respect and fear. ARGH! Screw this! MIRROR¡¯S BOON! He shouted the spell in his mind. The image appeared. It looked exactly like him, except that it shone with an inner light, and gave off a dark aura. The wolves were stunned for one second. They saw the image and had an intuitive feeling that they needed to attack it first. One wolf was caught by Troy¡¯s agro ability. The other two charged the apparition. As they charged it the wolf that had been kicked in the face gave a yowl of pain as it felt its left foreleg give way. Heather had bit down on it, hard. The last wolf was met by Voice¡¯s staff. It easily avoided the staff and tackled/ tore at the image. Voice felt pain wrack his entire body as the ¡®boon¡¯ was destroyed. He grabbed his head as he heard the single most ear piercing noise ring in his eardrums. His health and stamina were restored by to about two thirds...
Since your Mirror¡¯s Boon spell was dispelled before the completed time you receive only partial restoration. Your body has been affected by the recoil spell Demon¡¯s Wrath.
ARGGHHHH It would have been nice for someone to tell him that before he used it. Normally he would make a complaint, but he felt his mind slipping from him. When the pain was over he noticed a large dust trail coming towards him from the city. The trail was huge, and it was approaching fast. Voice wanted to warn the others, but two wolves attacked him. One was slightly weighted down by a blood sucking rabbit, and attacked his legs. The other was unencumbered, and jumped at his face while releasing a feral howl. He knocked the wolf aiming for his face aside by hitting it in the head with his staff. Honestly he was aiming for a body blow to negate some part of the damage, but he was more than content with the outcome. He took a little bit of damage from the wolf at his leg, but the worst part was he got a crippled notice. He speed was temporarily decreased by 80%, and any attacks or skills using legs would be useless. He cursed his luck. His health had dropped back down to thirty points. All the thing did was add a little more pain to an already unbearable situation. The wolf was not going to let go of his leg, so he took the risk of the wolf dodging and stabbed at the back of his head. His staff was blunt but it would do at least a little stun damage. It worked, and as soon as his staff connected, he saw that the thing causing the dust trail finally reveal itself. It was a very angry, very fast Rabs. Voice knew he was angry because he plowed right into the wolf that Voice had smacked away. The wolf hit a tree twenty yards away, staggered into an uprate, though dazed, position. A creaking sound came from behind it. The entire group of combatants looked in that direction for a second. The tree he had hit was cracked in the trunk. It was as if an inept lumberjack was plying his trade. The tree started falling towards the dazed wolf. By the time he realized what was happening it was too late. The tree fell down. With a loud crunching noise the combatants all knew what had happened. They resumed their fight. It was now four against two. Or it would have been had Rabs not collapsed after his attack. Troy roared, a much more fearsome roar than what a bunny rabbit can make. Both wolves turned their attention to him, even Voice was surprised. That was a mistake that will cost them. Voice was receiving a small bleed damage effect. He needed to end this quickly. Voice hit the wolf closest to him in the back of the head. He stunned the beast, and kept hitting. Heather had let go seeing Voice take command of the killing. She felt a thirst for the other wolf¡¯s blood. She jumped up, and caught the wolf¡¯s tail in her mouth. She had the tail at the base, and her feet had happened to land on its hind quarters. She did the only logical thing. The wolf knew what was coming and went to kick and bite her off. He was too late. When she got a firm grip on its tail, she jumped. Normally a rabbit could never tear the tail off of a demon wolf, but she felt a sudden surge of power and released it. The rabbit flew off the wolf with the tail in her mouth, and landed right next to Voice. The wolf¡¯s howl of pain could be heard for quite a distance. As she turned around to admire her handy work, she felt a muzzle close over her. Voice noticed what was about to happen and tried to do anticipate where the wolf would land. He felt a sudden drop in his magic. He had some sort of instinct telling him where to plant his staff. He followed it wondering what was happening. No one kills my slaves! He caught the wolf¡¯s jaws, but the angle he had put his staff was slightly different than what his instincts told him. I guess it¡¯s not easy to follow your instincts perfectly. The wolf he was mercilessly beating stood up. Heather was still in the jaws of the wolf, and Troy was too far away to help. The beast was obviously wounded at this point. It had blood dripping from the area that Voice had repeatedly struck. The back of its head, the spot that got hit, was in complete shambles. You could see past the fur and skin. If you squinted you could even see the outline of the bone. Troy roared, but the wolf ignored him. What happened next stopped Voice for a few moments. The wolf said, in broken human: ¡°I will never forget this. You¡­¡± He coughed up blood on the grass. ¡°You will¡­ regret¡­¡± a coughing fit took him. By now Troy was there but Voice motioned for him to be still. ¡°You... will¡­ regret the day¡­¡± another cough of blood, ¡°the day¡­ the day you crossed paths with¡± The wolf fell over dead. Voice found this very entertaining, but was worried since he felt no pressure on his staff. He looked to see Heather eating the stomach of the wolf that just tried to eat her. No not just eating it, eating her way out of it. Voice gave her a questioning look. ¡°Well the quickest way to get out of the situation of being eaten, was to get eaten. I didn¡¯t want to die though, so I ate my way out.¡± Voice once again thought to himself to never get Heather angry. After the battle the loot was auto place into his inventory, by his rabbits that he told to collect the stuff. He lay back on the grass a little ways from the forest, panting and bleeding. He used auto first aid. He had forgotten this skill, AGAIN. He inwardly cursed himself, while at the same time asking the trio if the developed new skills during the fight. Troy was the one that answered. ¡°I don¡¯t know about the others, but at one point during the fight I got the feeling that I could use the ability. It was right before Rabs came back. It seemed like some sort of roar ability.¡± Heather agreed, she felt a surge of power when she was biting the wolf¡¯s tail. Rabs explained what had happened to him. As he ran away, towards the city walls, two wolves were chasing him. When he reached the walls the sentries had started to fire on the wolves. The wolves were killed quickly, and since they were currently in combat with Rabs, Rabs¡¯ party got a small exp boost for killing them. Even though they didn¡¯t really do anything. He had leveled up when they died. Rabs thought it was the same for the other two. When he got to level six he got the notice that he unlocked a new ability for his actions. He could quadruple his max running speed, but for five times the cost in stamina. Heather told him that she felt like she had twice as much physical power when she used hers. But her stamina drain had been about ten percent of her total stamina, and the effect only lasted for one attack. Troy looked proud as he told them about his ability. ¡°I just copied what you did earlier. The roar thing. I put as much magic as I could into it, and let loose.¡± He was proud at having copied his master. Voice remembered something like that happening. He looked at skill list. It hadn¡¯t changed. The only thing he could think of was that it was an ability. He said, ¡°Open ability window.¡±
Abilities Window
Roar of Paralysis
Instinct
¡°Show ability: Roar of Paralysis.¡±
Roar of Paralysis This ability allows the user to cause momentary paralysis to enemies that have a lower threat than the user. As you use this ability it will: last longer, cost less stamina, and raise the enemy threat percentage that it effects. Current Duration: 3 seconds Current Stamina Cost: 50 stamina Current Threat Percentage: 60%
Instinct This ability allows the user to instinctively know the best place for a successful attack or block. As you use this ability it will: last longer, cost less magic, and raise the amount of information you get. Current Duration: 1 use Current Stamina Cost: 100 magic Current Information: Basic
He was pretty happy with the turn of events. He was a little sad that when he tried skill fusion it wouldn¡¯t even register that he wanted to fuse either of the abilities. He decided to find some way to fuse abilities soon. It would give him a nice advantage over the other players. His sadness was also tempered by the fact that he was level six now, and had gained two str, and two end. That wasn''t really training, but oh well. I did get to kill stuff. He went back to town and dumped the loot on Evan, gave the loot to Evan for free. He was hoping it would prove useful in the future to have done this. (Author¡¯s Note: I¡¯m going to make a separate thread with all of his abilities and skills listed by chapters. It would add way too much to the size of the story to tack those on, since I think he might plan on either learning magic or abilities later. Don¡¯t worry though I¡¯ll cover them with a spoiler tag. xD)
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health160Mana180
Stamina290
Level6Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.3Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec2.8
Strength15Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence18
Endurance28Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety10
Fame370
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 15.56%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 5 Exp 00.00%
Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%
Gardening Novice Level 6 Exp 60.50%
Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 50.00%
Alchemy Novice Level 13 Exp 88.24%
Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 5 Exp 77.77%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 19 Exp 52.63%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Spell and Ability List
Map
Abilities: Spoiler :
Abilities Window
Roar of Paralysis Stuns and enemy for 3 seconds. It costs 50 stamina, and can effect enemies that are up to 60% as powerful as the user.
Added in chapter 13
Tight Grip You adjust your grip on whatever you are holding to an outstanding strength. It costs 50 stamina, and 20 health to use. This ability costs and additional 25 stamina and ten health per second for upkeep.
Added in chapter 17
Battle Rage For a maximum of (max stamina/10) seconds you enter Battle Rage mode. While in Battle Rage you lose 50% of your willpower and intelligence, but gain 50% of your strength and endurance. Battle Rage reduces pain sensors to zero. When Battle Rage is cancelled or the timer expires, you will lose 10% of your total health. If you have 10% or less health you will die.
Added in chapter 20
Consistent Fury Attacks the enemy several times. The attacks become more devastating as the chain progresses. It costs 50 stamina to start, then 5 stamina for each hit. Every ten consecutive strikes stun the enemy.
Added in chapter 25
Forced Evolution You can force evolution in any being that can evolve. You will be unable to choose the evolution. The evolution will be chosen randomly based on the current path that monster or animal is taking. If the being to be evolved does not meet the requirements, the evolutionary abilities will be restricted. This ability has no cost, but has a one week (in game) Cooldown.
Added in chapter 44 Spells: Spoiler :
Spells Window
Mirror¡¯s Boon Heals the caster¡¯s magic, stamina, and health by (.5 x user total) x (Light Affinity + Dark Affinity + 1) each. If the spell does not complete the user is granted the partial amount of restoration, as well as an immense amount of pain.
Added in chapter 12
Healing Hands Heals the target¡¯s health by ((20 + light affinity) * Aura). The base spell cost for this spell is 40 mana. The healer must touch the target for this spell to be effective.
Added in chapter 16
Quick Heal Heals the target¡¯s health by ((10 + .5*light affinity) * Aura). The base spell cost for this spell is 25 mana. The healer must touch the target for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Hands to learn this spell.
Added in chapter 19
Heal Over Time Heals the target¡¯s health by ((40 + light affinity) * Aura) over the course of five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 35 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective.
Added in chapter 19
Deep Heal Heals the target¡¯s health by ((60 + light affinity) * Aura) over the course of five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 50 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Heal Over Time to learn this spell.
Added in chapter 19
Healing Rate Buff Increases the target¡¯s healing rate by ((10 + light affinity) * Aura) percent for five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 40 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective.
Added in chapter 19
HP Buff Increases the target¡¯s health by ((50 + light affinity) * Aura) for one minute. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Rate Buff to learn this spell.
Added in chapter 19
Damage Resistance Decrease all direct damage to the target by ((10 + light affinity) * Aura) for one minute. The base spell cost for this spell is 200 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Rate Buff to learn this spell.
Added in chapter 19
Phoenix Fire The caster catches on fire. This flame causes (10 + (fire affinity/10) * Aura) damage per second to anything in contact with the fire. The user heals at a rate of (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) per second. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana per second. If the user has a higher fire affinity than light affinity, the fire affinity can be scaled down.
Added in chapter 27
Mist Spray The caster creates a thin mist. The amount of cups of water is water collected is (.5 + (water affinity/200) * Aura) for every point of mana spent. The (speed or distance) the mist travels is (10 + (wind affinity/10) * Aura) feet per second per mana point. You can adjust the distance and speed. The base spell cost for this spell is 3 mana per second.
Added in chapter 27
Earth House with Moat The caster builds a basic house around themselves. It has one room, to be used for everything. This spell requires 12 hours of consistent concentration. You may meditate during these hours, but may not leave the area or focus on things other than creating the house. Houses created by this spell are permanent until destroyed. You must be able to use the mana in the crust of the earth to be able to use this spell.
Added in chapter 36
Blind The caster takes away the targets sight. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 100% blindness to one target.
Added in chapter 45 Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Rigid The caster takes away the targets ability to move freely. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% maneuverability debuff to one target.
Added in chapter 47
Stamina Drain The caster increases the amount of stamina the target needs to preform actions. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% stamina debuff to one target.
Added in chapter 47
Slow The caster takes away the target¡¯s ability to move quickly. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% speed debuff to one target.
Added in chapter 47
Weakness The caster decreases the amount of general armor the target has. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% physical defense debuff to one target.
Added in chapter 47
Calm The caster takes away the targets ability to sense danger. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes the target to be relax their guard.
Added in chapter 47
Powerless The caster increases the amount of work the target needs to damage others. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% physical damage reduction debuff to one target.
Added in chapter 47
Corruption The caster reduces the total amount of health the target has. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 5% health reduction debuff to one target.
Added in chapter 47
Petrification (Minor) The target loses some movement speed, and will find it harder to move. The target suffers a 25% reduction in both categories. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
Added in chapter 47
Assume Control You can take control of other¡¯s fairies if your affinity of that type is higher than that person. You will maintain control of this fairy until the spell is disrupted. This spell has a one time activation cost, the effects remain constant. The base spell cost for this spell varies depending on your affinity with the mana type of that fairy, and the opponents affinity with the mana type of that fairy. Minimum cost is 25 mana.
Added in chapter 47
Movement Enhancer (Minor) The target gains some movement speed, and will find it easier to move. The target gains a 25% bonus in both categories. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
Added in chapter 48 Traits: Spoiler :
Improved Digestion is the perfect trait for survivalists. You can go longer without food. If you eat food that grant benefits, the benefits last longer. Food will provide more satiety, and your body will be able to regulate the breakdown of food more easily.
Added in chapter 32
Fighter¡¯s Spirit is the perfect trait for those that love combat. Any spell or ability that influences morale, ie Fear or Courage, will be increased by 25%, and last 10% longer.
Added in chapter 32
Resistance is the perfect trait for those that love combat. You are able to withstand more damage and pain before your body starts to shut down. The more damage and pain you take, the more powerful this trait will become. This skill can evolve into better versions.
Added in chapter 36
Flexibility is the perfect trait for those that love combat. You are able to move in ways most people would never dream. The more you train your flexibility, the more powerful this trait will become. This trait can evolve into better versions.
Added in chapter 41
Perceptive is the perfect trait for those capable of understanding the five senses. Using your five sense, you are able to detect things most would overlook. The more you train your senses, the more powerful this trait will become. This trait enhances the amount of information, from your senses, that your brain can handle.
Added in chapter 42
Mental Fortitude is the perfect trait for any who wishes to avoid mind altering curses. You are able to withstand more mental damage and pain before your mind starts to shut down. The more mental damage and pain you take, the more powerful this trait will become. This skill can evolve into better versions.
Added in chapter 42
Complete Immunity is the perfect trait to avoid any sort of pain or damage. Pain and damage of any sort are like second nature to you. You can now ignore any type of damage to your mind or body, up to 50% of your total mental or physical threshold. You can now ignore all pain up to 50% of your total mental or physical threshold. The more damage or pain of any type you take, the more powerful this trait becomes.
Added in chapter 42
Magic Absorption is the perfect trait for fighting mages. You will absorb 50% of any hostile magic cast at you. The mana you absorb will go directly into your mana pool. If your mana pool is over saturated, you will lose one mana per second until you have 100% of your total mana.
Added in chapter 44
Improved Training is the perfect trait for those that gain levels. You will gain more ability points each level. From level 1-25 you gain an extra point. Every 25 levels you grow, increases the amount of points you gain by 1. All increased gains are recursive.
Added in chapter 50 Dive 14: His First Vicious Beating Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice returned from the book world. Everyone all of the npcs he knew, thought he was dead. He went out to fight some more wolves. He killed them and he and his rabbits gained new abilities. I got a message with a lot of critiques in it today. I don¡¯t know if the person wants me to name them so I won¡¯t unless they tell me to. I am going to be implementing some of those in this chapter. Thanks person I¡¯m not naming! Thanks, to Kuroyuki for the idea of one of the skills I am adding! Also any bonuses on food only last for a minute unless otherwise noted. On his way to Evan the book he was reading finished.
You have learned the skills Fermentation and Distillation.
¡°Identify skill: Distillation.¡±
Distillation Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By reading a book on Distillation you have learned the skill. Distilling a potion takes out a large portion of the unwanted material. Each level in this skill improves the quality of the distilled product. For every rank you increase your Distillation skill you will be able to distill better quality items. To level this skill you must distill potions. Current quality: Slightly higher than normal.
¡°Identify skill: Fermentation.¡±
Fermentation Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By reading a book on Fermentation you have learned the skill. Fermentation is the breakdown of certain carbon based items, into a similar but new item. Each level in this skill improves the quality of the fermented product. For every rank you increase your Fermentation skill you will be able to ferment items in less time. To level this skill you must ferment products. Current quality: Mundane. Current required time: Full
You have earned one intelligence for reading a difficult book.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
He didn¡¯t know what the Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy was, but it said group skill. Worst case scenario He could just get all of his other skills back. ¡°No.¡± He wanted to try skill fusion first. He used skill fusion on distillation and all the other skills, and then with fermentation and all the other skills. He got two new skills. He fused Skill Fusion and Distillation, and he fused Fermentation and Identify Skill. ¡°Identify skill: Skill Dissembler.¡±
Skill Dissembler Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows you to dissemble a skill into the two skills that make it up. As your level in Skill Dissembler grows so too will the level of skills you obtain from dissembling. To activate say Skill Dissembler. *Note you will not lose the skills you dissemble, merely gain up to two new ones.
¡°Identify skill: Identify Compatible Skills.¡±
Identify Compatible Skills Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows you to automatically view which skills can be combined, and what the result would be. Each level in this skill improves the information you gather from using it. For every rank you increase your Identify Compatible Skills you will be able to identify more compatibility. To level this skill you must identify compatible skills
¡°Exchange Relevant Skills.¡±
You have one group skill available. Your skill combinations are: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you create enough potions to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Identify skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy.¡±
Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Current Level: Novice Level 8 Exp 52.66% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Alchemy, Distillation, Fermentation, Alchemical Fusion, Gardening, Herbology, Plant Location, and Planting Intuition. The total percentage benefits per level are: 3% to Strength and duration of potions, 2% chance to gather bonus ingredients from plants, Identify is 1% stronger when used on plants. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
Well, I did not know you could fuse skills this way. He tried to use skill fusion on it but a system notification came up saying you cannot fuse Group skills using a skill. I guess there are items or spells or some such that can fuse group skills. He was looking at his new skill as he came to Evan¡¯s. After he had given the materials to Evan he went to Susan¡¯s. He noticed the shop was in a horrid state. Everything was strewn across the floor, and he heard sobbing in the corner. He looked and saw Susan, knees held against her chest, rocking while tears flowed down her cheeks. At her feet lay a pile of ashes. He felt a momentary twang of worry for her. She looked as though she lost a loved one. // One day as a third year middle school student, a few of years after his dad had left them, he was assigned a home project. When his mom came to pick him up he realized he left the paper with the instructions in the classroom. He ran back to the classroom and saw a girl crying in the corner, knees huddled to her chest. Brenton didn¡¯t know what to do. He was at the door and needed the paper, but he didn¡¯t want to seem rude by coming in. That might make the girl feel even worse. He decided that the best thing would be to go in and try to talk to the girl so she would feel better. He went in and quietly sat beside her. She didn¡¯t notice him until he sat down and their legs touched. She stopped crying and looked at him. ¡°Are you here to make fun of me to?¡± She angrily asked, choking back tears. ¡°No, I just thought that since you were crying you might like to talk to someone about it.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± she said the word derisively, ¡°I¡¯ll just bet.¡± ¡°I really would like to help.¡± He had never met this girl before, but he didn¡¯t think anyone should be crying over something they could talk about. ¡°I¡¯ll try to help if I can.¡± He sincerely wanted to make her feel better. He was still pretty upbeat at this point. He didn¡¯t trust people at their word, but he still had faith that not all of humanity was scum. He did have a tough time helping people most of the time. He would always wonder if they were just manipulating him, since it had happened so often in the past. She started telling him her story. She had been abused for several years by her mother. Her dad had died fighting in the final years of the ISIL crisis. Her mom had somehow blamed her and beat her constantly. Her mom would never leave bruises so there was never any proof. ¡°I¡¯ve decided to kill myself, that¡¯s why I¡¯m crying.¡± Brenton didn¡¯t know how to respond, his life hadn¡¯t been extraordinarily easy, but it wasn¡¯t nearly that bad. She continued, ¡°I was saving up money to run away, but my mom found it and spent it on beer.¡± Voice made a decision, he didn¡¯t have a lot of personal money, but he did have a few hundred dollars that he had been saving up from the past Christmases and birthdays. He said to her, ¡°Okay, just wait here a little bit. I¡¯ll be right back, don¡¯t do anything until then.¡± He hurriedly ran off. He told his mom to be as quick as she could to drive home and back. She didn¡¯t ask any questions once she saw the look in his eyes. Once they had gotten home he took his secret stash of money, and got back into the car. They went back to the school and he told his mom to wait for a few minutes. He ran to the classroom. He was the girl sitting in the room in the same area. ¡°Here,¡± he said compassionately. ¡°This is all the money I have, but maybe it will be enough to run away with.¡± She looked at him with a slightly confused look when he handed the wad of cash to her. Her eyes looked regretful. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I want you to have it. Just don¡¯t think of killing yourself anymore, ok?¡± She gave a nod and left. The next day at school he had a note in his locker. It said. ¡®Hey, thanks for the money. I am going to run away with it for a better life. Thank you so much!¡¯ He smiled to himself. A few days later her parents came to the school looking for her. They posted flyers everywhere. Brenton only found out that the man was her dad a when the school had an assembly. The principal introduced the man. The real reason the girl ran away was to go live her twenty two year old boyfriend. Normally age wouldn¡¯t matter, but when someone is legally a child predator, something is wrong. She was fourteen that was definitely the case. The girl sent her parents a postcard a few years later. Brenton knew this because he came forward and told that he helped her when he found out she had lied. He thought he would face consequences but they realized he was trying to help, and had no idea she wasn¡¯t being abused. He did get a long lecture though. Brenton vowed to never help any again, unless it was his mom or there was something in it for him. // Voice decided to break his vow. He didn¡¯t know why but he felt that he should help Susan just to help her. I must be wanting the fame. He rationalized. ¡°Susan, what happened? You look like someone just died.¡± Voice didn¡¯t have to fake the sound of sincerity. ¡°Someone, hic, someone came in and ruined EVERYTHING!¡± She began to bawl with renewed vigor. ¡°What did they ruin Susan, you have to tell so I can fix it. Maybe I can help get you a new whatever-they-broke.¡± She looked forlorn. ¡°You can¡¯t fix it! I was doing research on the invisible atoms. I was close to making a magical tool to be able to see some of the atoms!¡± After the first sentence she became less and less sad, and more and more angry. Voice replied, ¡°Like a microscope? Those only let you see smaller things, not that small though. The things you could see were still millions of times bigger than atoms.¡± ¡°Microscope? No I enhanced a magical looking glass, and was getting it fine-tuned. A man came in here and said that if I didn¡¯t hand over my alchemy book he would destroy everything I own! Usually I have potions and bombs ready for stuff like this, but I haven¡¯t made any since I started chemistry.¡± Voice listened, getting angry with her. I guess every world has ass holes. ¡°He tried to force himself on me, but I had your frying pan so I hit him! He managed to cast a high level wind and fire spell, and destroyed all of my research! He said he¡¯d be back.¡± After the last sentence she broke out in sobs again. It seemed like she cared more for her research than her own body. Voice on the other hand was quickly plotting this guy¡¯s eventual death. Rape is bad. Rapists deserve a fate worse than death! Voice was understandably against rape. Not only for reasons that any sane person would have, but also for personal ones. ¡°What did he look like?¡± Voice had an eerie chill in his voice that made Susan shudder. She didn¡¯t know if she should tell him or not, but the look of determination in his eyes made her. ¡°He was a tall skinny man with a slight muscular build. He had short dark hair and piercing eyes. He had a very refined look to him, as though he may have been a prince.¡± Voice¡¯s smile was vicious. This man sounded a lot like Paul, the rich rapist swine. Voice was going to enjoy revenge. ¡°When did he say he¡¯ll be back?¡± ¡°It will probably be an hour or so. He said a few hours a little while ago.¡± He called his three rabbits to his room for a conversation. He told them to guard Susan. ¡°Don¡¯t attack this guy unless I call for you, or he attacks Susan.¡± When he was sure they would obey he went to the true lab. He got a potion of strength, and a few healing potions. He got ready and waited. After a few minutes he also sent Rabs out to the church with a note. The man came just as Susan said he would. Susan gave a nod to indicate it was him. He saw her at the counter and made a wicked grin. He looked at her lustfully. He had no armor on, and no visible weapons. Voice thought there was something wrong with that. Voice quickly uncapped the strength potion, and drank it.
You have temporarily doubled your strength. This effect will last for sixty seconds.
Voice had sixty seconds to mutilate this bastard, so he started immediately. He swung his staff as hard as he could at the back of the man¡¯s neck. The staff hit, knocking the man to the floor. The man screamed in surprise, pain, and fear. Voice continued hitting the man. First he slammed his staff down on the man¡¯s left knee like a club. The knee broke with a sickening crunch. Next Voice stepped on the man¡¯s left hand, put his staff in his armpit at a 45 degree angle, and placed his right hand on the butt of the staff and his left hand a few inches in front of his right. He pushed his right hand down as hard as possible while keeping his left hand in place. He created a sort of lever that lifted the man¡¯s should off the ground. Since Voice was keeping his hand on the ground the shoulder was being torn... It took a lot of force, but Voice managed to snap the shoulder out of the socket. The man screamed with pain. Voice started hitting the man¡¯s back, right below his shoulders. With every hit his anger would grow. With every hit he would become more vicious. Every hit was more powerful than the last. He continued to hit the man until his back was a mass of blotted bruises and blood. He started on the man¡¯s head, making sure to only hit it enough to cause permanent brain damage not kill him. Voice looked at his handy work for a moment, as he did he noticed Susan with a horrified expression on her face. Voice thought he might have gotten too into it. The man was twitching on the ground. Voice admitted to himself that he could have shown a little restraint and still made his point. Susan sat in a stunned silence, she had never seen someone act this violent, especially not for her. He was the Blessed of Mar for goodness sake! She vowed not to ever get his ire. Voice started towards her huffing from exhaustion, she involuntarily jerked backwards. ¡°It¡¯s ok Susan, I¡¯m sorry about that. I was pretty excessive.¡± She showed a slightly relived face, but at the same time anyone that could beat a man that much and just pretend nothing happened was terrifying. Voice decided that the only way to not make her hate him, was to tell the story about his mom; that was a story that he had not shared with anyone since his time in jail. He told her all about it. How one night his mom had been the subject to attempted rape. The rapist got off free since he basically owned the town, and he had to go to jail. Susan respectfully listened the entire time. When he told her what had happened to his mom she understood instantly. She couldn¡¯t condone his behavior, but she did understand it. Voice asked if he could tell the guards and healers what had happened. She said yes. A few seconds after he had finished Rabs came back. He was quickly followed by a priest of Mar. The priest saw the body on the floor. He worriedly looked from the body to Voice. ¡°This man just came in here and tried to rape my friend Susan. I took proper actions and stopped him. Please make sure he won¡¯t die by the time we get the guards.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Voice asked Susan to go get the guards, she quickly complied. As the healer started his job a black smoke came out of the man. It coalesced into a dark figure was born of the smoke. It had deep green eyes, and black wispy hair. It looked at Voice. ¡°Stupid human! You have destroyed but my mortal body. I will have my revenge, do not doubt that Voice0fReason!¡± The smoke started circling around its center, similar to a black hole. It disappeared into the vortex. The healer stood, uncomprehending of the situation. Voice scowled, he realized he had just set in motion something similar to a quest, but much more annoying. When Susan arrived with the guards Voice explained what had happened. Susan couldn¡¯t figure out what a demon would want with her alchemy book, but she was glad to be rid of him for now. Voice thought there was nothing to do about the situation at the time, so he decided to try and level up to be able to fight the demon in the future. He went to Evan¡¯s to pick up the armor he asked about. That long should be enough time. When he got there he asked Evan about it. ¡°Well,¡± Evan started. ¡°I don¡¯t know why you wanted it heavy, but here you are.¡± Voice was handed a bundle of clothe that immediately almost dropped to the floor. He thanked Evan and asked if he could change into it in the back. Evan agreed. Voice looked the armor over. ¡°Identify Heavy Iron Armor.¡±
Heavy Iron Armor
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Defense15Durability100/100
Weight50 lbs
This item is extremely defensive, and heavy. You lose a lot of mobility from not being used to wearing heavy armors. This armor was made by an expert craftsman. This armor gains plus five defense and twenty five durability.
He thought it was weird that it had a weight. He had never seen other things have a weight indicated before. Maybe most items weigh so little they don¡¯t get a weight? He said ¡°Show Carrying Capacity.¡± Thinking it might be based off a popular table top game.
Carrying Capacity
Current Maximum Capacity75 lbCurrent Encumbrance50
Carrying Capacity is determined by strength times 5 plus bonuses.
Once he was completely dressed, in about ten minutes, he came out to show Evan. He looked like a medieval knight. The cuirass was in three pieces, as the shoulder pieces strapped onto it. The leggings were one piece. The only joints on the armor were at the shoulders, elbows, knees, and waist. All of the joints except the waist had iron pads to cover the gap in the joint. The waist was covered by the cuirass, which slightly overlapped the leggings. His helmet was rounded in the face area, but angled sharply after his cheek bones. Evan said this was to negate as much damage from his face as possible. There were two slits for his eyes that were the weakest points on the helmet. Voice was losing stamina just by wearing it. He couldn¡¯t even walk around without losing his breath. No, Hell NO! There is no way I¡¯m going to let a little thing like super heavy items, stop me! He decided to wear the armor until it was comfortable, then wear it some more. Voice asked Evan if he could make him an iron pot to cook in, and if he could have a pitcher of water. Evan asked why the pot if he already had the enchanted pan. ¡°Well I want to do something similar to the pan, but with enough room to cook something fantastic.¡± Evan quietly laughed and got him the pitcher. He said he could get the pot done, and have the enchantment placed through Susan in three hours. Voice left with the pitcher promising to return it later. He then went to the library and bought an empty cooking recipe book. Voice spent the next three hours slowly walking around town buying all sorts of food products. He bought all the things needed to make a nice stew. He got some dried meat, cabbage, salt and some red potatoes. He obviously identified all of them. He also went out and harvested quite a few carrots and radishes for the rabbits. He had to spend most of his time sitting down, but he was spending less and less time inactive as he went. He was gaining endurance and strength at an extremely quick pace. By the time the three hours were up he had gain 12 endurance and 6 strength. Both stats were leveling at an insane rate at first, but then slowed down. Neither stat had leveled up in the last thirty minutes. So maybe I gain stat points faster by exceeding my current limits my present stats allow. Makes sense, I did gain intelligence for figuring out stuff I had no knowledge about. At first he could just barely move around in the armor, and would be exhausted from it. Now he could move at bout fifty percent speed for forty seconds to a minute. His stamina regen was at four points per second now. He only needed to rest for a little over a minute to feel refreshed. He was losing satiety alarmingly fast throughout the whole ordeal. At first he ate a little bit of the cabbage, it didn¡¯t taste good raw. After that he ate carrots and radishes, once he started gathering them. He had finished off the water before he even left town. A guard saw him struggling, and told him of the public well. He had waited five minutes in line before he refilled his water and headed towards the plains. He went back to Evan as quickly as he could. It took about thirty more minutes. He managed to gain another endurance point by trekking there.
Enchanted Super-Heat Sapping Pot
Material QualityMundaneWork QualityExpert
Enchantment QualityMaster
Cooking bonus50%Durability50/50
This pot was made by an expert craftsman. This pot grants a 10% bonus to cooking skill. This pot has had its durability increased by 25. This Item was enchanted by a master enchanter. This pot has had its cooking ability increased by 400%
He was happy with the results. This means there won¡¯t be any quality discrepancies if I use both tools to cook with. Voice returned the now empty pitcher to Evan. Evan laughed and said he could keep it. He thanked Evan and paid him, with a little bonus so that he would be willing to keep supplying Voice with cheap stuff. Evan volunteered to give a few wooden bowls and cutlery to Voice. Voice gratefully accepted. Voice took the pot and pitcher and went to the well. At this point he had gotten used to his armor for the most part. He was by no means comfortable, nor did the armor allow for much flexibility, but it was extremely protective. It did take off the first fifteen points of damage. He had not removed the pot and filled it with water. He went to the area near the mountains area to the north since he hadn¡¯t gone there before. He gathered some dried sticks along the way. Most of them were small enough for the fire, but a few of them were pretty large. These he would use for holding the pot and pan. He was getting exhausted only rarely now, he kept a steady walking pace. When he arrived at the foot of the mountains he made a fire. He had been carrying the pot filled with water the entire time. He could have stored it in his bag, but he wanted the gain in strength. Unfortunately he didn¡¯t gain any stats, but he felt he was close. He sat down and cleared out a small area to cook the food. He made two separate piles of sticks to represent the cooking areas. After clearing the grass he set to work to start the fires. He picked the grass off the areas he was going to use. After clearing the area out he set the sticks in two pyramid shapes. He tried to light the first fire for several minutes with no luck. He knew the basic theory behind it, but hadn¡¯t really done it before. He used his instinct ability trying to light the fire, but it didn¡¯t work. He gathered some dried grass in the area, and used it as kindling. After a few more tedious minutes he got it working. It had taken about fifteen minutes to get the fire to light. Voice checked the time so he could time the food as it cooked. He made a rough object to hold the pot. It had two legs that had a v shape at the top of each, and a single stick set in the v shape of each to hold the pot. He put the pot on the fire to boil, and poured a small handful of salt in it. He started preparing the fire for the pan. This time it only took five minutes. I¡¯m glad I was always a fast learner. He went to put the vegetable stew ingredients into the pot while he let the pan heat. The water in the pot was already boiling when he came over. Wow that was fast. Water must boil at a lower temperature here. After he had put the vegetables into the pot he checked the pan. The pan was already very hot, so he put the slabs of dried meat on it. The meat started sizzling in under a minute. Confused Voice turned the meat. It was already brown. He quickly ran over to the pot of vegetables and noticed them getting much tenderer. He was carefully noting everything during this cooking adventure in his mind, since it would be transferred to his cook book. Ah, maybe it¡¯s not that the water boils earlier, maybe the entire process of cooking is sped up. He stirred the stew with a wooden spoon and ran back to the meat. The meat was ready to eat, so he took it off the fire. By the time he set it down and went to the stew, the stew had finished. Voice checked the time. It had only been three minutes of cooking. That meant cooking was about sixty times faster here. When the stew was done he examined it, as well as the fried meat.
Fried Meat Quality: Low This meat has been fried by an amateur. This Fried Meat contains: two handfuls of meat. One serving restores 10 stamina per second, restores 100 fatigue, and you will also gain 5 strength for the next hour. It can be added to other foods.
Vegetable Stew Quality: Low This stew has been made by an amateur. The vegetable stew contains: 4 carrots, 2 radishes, one cabbage, and a handful of salt. One serving restores 15 stamina per second, restores 80 fatigue, and increases maximum stamina by 30 for the next hour. You can add other foods to it.
The entire time Troy and Rabs were salivating at the vegetable stew, Heather however was watching the meat cook. Voice gave Rabs and Troy a bow of stew first. When he tried to give some to Heather she asked if he was going to eat all of the meat himself. ¡°No, I was going to put it into the stew to help add some flavor.¡± Heather started begging him to let her have some to. Shit I really created an omnivore out of the rabbit huh? I hope this doesn¡¯t get worse or she might get to be too much trouble. He poured her stew back in the pot, added the meat, and then gave her the bowl. She looked like the happiest person in the world with the food.
Fried Meat in Vegetable stew Quality: Low Vegetable stew and fried meat made by an amateur, were combined to make this. One serving restores 15 stamina per second, and restores 90 fatigue. You also gain 5 strength and 20 max stamina for the next hour. You can add other foods to it.
After creating all of the food he generated a new skill.
Cooking Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% The cooking skill allows the user to cook foods at better innate qualities. Each level increases the flavor by 5%. Each rank in this skill reduces the effects of mishaps in the culinary field. You can cook without this skill, but will not be granted the flavor bonus or mishap reduction.
The stew tasted very good. He had used a recipe that was only slightly different than his mom¡¯s ¡®Irish Stew¡¯. He loved the new skill. Basically for the same amount of work he would get a better quality item. There was zero downside, it didn¡¯t even take extra time! After eating his fill he looked at his satiety bar.
Satiety150/150
You have increased your maximum satiety by 50% for eating delicious food for the first time.
He was happy about the satiety boost, but he would have saved this for an important time if he knew about it. After he finished eating he packed up the cookware, after cleaning them with the leftover water from the pitcher. His inventory now held: 30 carrots, 24 radishes, Irish stew for four people, 6 bowls, Cutlery for six, salt, and 4 cabbage. He went back to town to give the remaining stew to Evan, Elizabeth, and Susan. It was already nighttime by the time he had gotten back to the city. He went to give the food to the trio. Luckily Elizabeth hadn¡¯t started cooking yet, and Susan kind of always just ate whatever. They all liked the food. Elizabeth even asked for the recipe, which Voice gave her after some playful haggling. He also got a recipe for how to make blueberry muffins. Voice loved blueberry muffins, so it was a very good trade. Elizabeth told him about the annual cook off in the city. It was only 25 days away. ¡°You should really join it Voice, even if you don¡¯t win it would be a really good opportunity to hone your skills.¡± Voice thought he might get a bit of fame and exp for cooking so he agreed to go. Elizabeth was very happy he took a liking to something she liked. The other two in her group basically got a monopoly over Voice, but he had saved her life. She deserved some of his time too.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health160Mana180
Stamina290
Level6Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.3Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec2.8
Strength15Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence18
Endurance28Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety10
Fame370
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 20.00%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 6 Exp 14.28%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 19 Exp 57.89%
Identify Compatible Skills Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 8 Exp 57.23%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Dive 15: His First Promise Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finished auto reading the book in his inventory. He gained two new skills that let him fuse all of his alchemy skills into one Group Skill. He viciously beat a would-be rapist, that turned into a demon. And cooked a decent stew. Also I was told that people were confused at the book he read to get the skills in the last chapter. He checked out two books from the library, one was the portal like one, and the other was a book to distill potions. After moving around so much with his armor, and making and distributing food, he had gained a nice bit of movement in it. He deemed that he had learned a sufficient amount to take on one wolf by itself, with the help of his tamed animals. (Bro your ¡®tamed animals¡¯ could probably take it by themselves) He went out to the city streets to continue walking in his armor. The sight was quite funny. A large iron suit occasionally stumbling across the road, followed by three cute little bunny rabbits. He would occasionally see guardsmen looking in his direction. He was used to the common people gawking, but guards usually don¡¯t pay attention to you unless you actively seek their help, or are committing a crime. He went over to one of the gawking guards that was patrolling the road. The guard acted like he didn¡¯t notice Voice when Voice was getting close. ¡°Hello there sir.¡± Voice said in an amicable way. ¡°Do you know why I¡¯ve been getting stares from all of the guards tonight? If I¡¯m doing something wrong I¡¯d like to fix it.¡± Voice was trying to sound slightly like a nobleman, he figured it would put the guard off and give Voice the advantage in this verbal sparring. The guard began to talk while slightly fidgeting. ¡°Well, you see, you have all of this iron armor on, but it¡¯s obvious you don¡¯t know how to use it very well. We just thought it was a bit funny, since you could easily get training down at the training hall.¡± WHAT!? I can¡¯t believe I wasted an entire half day! Why didn¡¯t someone tell me sooner? Damn that Evan! He should have told me! Voice was outwardly calm. ¡°So where do I get this training?¡± The guard took on a slightly more proper look, as if he had been asked that question by a newbie. ¡°Go to the temple of Mar. It is the third building past that.¡± Voice thanked him and went that way. He decided to pop in to the chapel since he was headed that way. The doors to the chapel were closed, but not locked. Voice saw a priest standing at the altar. It was the same priest that he had first met when he donated his potions. The priest seemed to notice him as well, and came walking towards him. When he got close enough Voice asked, ¡°I am going to be leaving town soon, is there anything I can do to assist the church?¡± Voice wanted some more piety, and maybe to get some free priest spells. The priest smiled, ¡°Can you make any more of those potions? We ran out two days after you donated them. There are many injured in the city, since the monster subjugation has just happened.¡± ¡°Monster subjugation?¡± Voice asked with a bit of curiosity in his voice. ¡°Yes, well once a month the more powerful guardsmen and volunteers from the city go out into the forest to kill monsters. If they didn¡¯t the monsters would grow to be too high a level.¡± That made sense. So I guess my potion was useful after all. Voice had an idea to get him even more love from Mar. ¡°Well I can¡¯t make any more potions since the townsfolk cleared out all of the green healing herbs and common weeds.¡± The priest looked a little disappointed at this, but Voice continued. ¡°I can however offer to plant some of my last green healing herbs, and common weed if you have a chapel garden.¡± The priest¡¯s face lit up at those words. He quickly ushered Voice through the small doorway to the left. Outside was a small walled off area. It had several different vegetables growing there. I guess they grow their own food. Voice went to work extracting the seeds from the leaves of the healing herb. He managed to get a total of twenty seeds from all of his leaves. The common weed was much easier to get the seeds out of, and there were much more seeds. He put all of the seeds but five each in his inventory. He got a notice:
You have combined seeds into one inventory spot. You will need to sort them out to plant them.
He decided to get a seed pouch at the earliest time he could. He planted the ten total seeds, not forgetting to use planting intuition. He picked out the best spot for each of the ten seeds. He didn¡¯t know how long it took the plants to grow, but he thought it would help bring the plants to the city sooner.
You have brought back Common Weed and Green Healing Herb from extinction in Rand. You have gained 10 fame for bringing back the over harvested species.
You gained 15 piety for donating some of your last reserves of two plants not found in Rand.
For gaining 25 piety under Mar you have been granted a boon.
Many Blessings of Mar (minor) For continued good faith towards the goddess Mar you have been granted her blessing. At this time you can cast low level priest spells. Mar rewards your faith with a token of her power. You have gained the bonus Healer¡¯s Aura. If you continue to show good faith you rewards will increase.
Voice smiled at all of the bonuses he just gained. He thought: Show Healer¡¯s Aura.
Healer¡¯s Aura Only those that have learned the way of the healer to an adept level, or those blessed by Mar, receive this aura. This aura is automatically equipped. You cannot remove this aura, unless you permanently banish it. You cannot receive this aura the same way you received it the first time. This aura decreases all healing spell costs by 25%. It also increases all healing done by the user by 10% This aura does not stack if you receive it from leveling and Mar¡¯s blessing.
The priest mistook Voices smile for one that of happiness from helping others. He knew Voice hadn¡¯t purchased any spells from the temple of Mar so he offered, ¡°Would you like to purchase some healing spells? I know you can cast novice, and apprentice level spells thanks to Mar¡¯s divine guidance.¡± Voice showed the priest what he thought was the proper amount of gratitude by shaking his hand and pulling the man into a hug. The priest didn¡¯t realize he had just hit upon Voice¡¯s ambition. ¡°Yes, I would like that very much.¡± The priest smiled, ¡°Good, normally we sell these things for quite the price, but since you are the Blessed of Mar, and you have helped our temple so much I will offer you a 50% discount on them.¡± After a moment¡¯s thought he added, ¡°And I think Mar would accept me giving you one novice tome for free.¡± Voice was as happy as when he first got into his pod. This game is going perfectly for me! He got an ominous felling after saying that. The priest led him to a bookcase behind the organ. ¡°These are your choices.¡± He pointed out three books. ¡°The first one heals a small amount instantly, obviously it¡¯s good if you are in need of immediate attention. The second heals twice as much as the first, but it takes five seconds to feel its full effects. The amount of mana is slightly less though. The last one gives a minor buff to healing rate.¡± Good. Voice was glad that buffs were considered healing spells. In some games they either grouped with debuffs or a separate magic branch all together. Voice thought it over for a few seconds. The healing rate wouldn¡¯t really matter if he could just heal instantly. The main point to consider was if there was a Cooldown timer for healing spells. He asked the priest. ¡°I see you really were not helping to gain the love of Mar. You truly are just a generous soul.¡± When Voice gave him a confused look he explained. ¡°I¡¯ve heard you research everything completely before committing yourself to a task, so there is no way you wouldn¡¯t have known had you just done this for the reward.¡± Voice inwardly cursed himself. I should have thought about that, so that if the rewards were not high enough I could refuse! Voice admired the amount of deceit the priest was capable of. ¡°To answer your question: no. The only limit to the speed of your casting, for most healing spells, is the mana total and regen you have, and the incantation if it has one. The only spells that have incantations are the Master level spells though.¡± Voice smiled and thanked the priest. ¡°I would like the instant healing book please.¡± The priest handed the book to Voice in a very solemn way. Voice waited because it seemed as if the man was going to do some sort of ritual or blessing. ¡°May Mar, in all her glory, bless the wielder of the knowledge this book contains. Blessed be the people, by the most holy Mar. Amen.¡± The last part sounded like a prayer you would have to repeat at church, so Voice did. ¡°Blessed be the people, by the most holy Mar. Amen.¡± The priest looked respectfully at Voice. ¡°Thank you, not many people really pray to Mar anymore. Not since the Church of Davros started openly killing Mar¡¯s believers.¡± The priest looked as if he were about to ask something, then thought better of it. I smell a quest! Voice tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. ¡°Please tell me how I can help.¡± The priest replied in a solemn tone, ¡°I don¡¯t think you can. At least not right now. Davros has promised to stop all attacks on Mar. The other Elder Gods demanded for Davros to. Davros attached a condition though. In 20 days from now he will send a champion to the Ether Realm. Mar must do the same. If she doesn¡¯t, or her champion loses the duel to the death, Davros will continue his killings.¡± The priest looked frantic at this point. ¡°He declared the God¡¯s Chosen Ritual! The other Elder Gods couldn¡¯t deny him! So now unless she can find someone worth giving her full blessings to, all of her children are doomed!¡± ¡°Why can¡¯t she just choose someone at the last minute?¡± ¡°She can¡¯t give her blessing to someone that didn¡¯t earn it! If she did they could be too easily tempted by Davros!¡± The priest was basically fuming at this point, so Voice decided to back off. ¡°So everything will be ok if I just become Mar¡¯s chosen one and win the duel right?¡± The priest looked confused until the meaning of Voice¡¯s words dawned on him.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Defeating Davros¡¯ Chosen One in a duel to the death in 20 days. Difficulty: Difficult Failure: Not defeating Davros¡¯ Chosen One in a duel to the death in 20 days. Reward: Undying devotion of the Church of Mar, as well as an audience with Mar. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Mar and all of her followers, as well as her followers¡¯ eventual death.
I mean I didn¡¯t really want to generate a quest, but DAMN that¡¯s some reward! (BTW Quest levels are: Basic, Easy, Difficult, Very Difficult, And Colossal) ¡°Thank you, thank you so much!¡± The priest cried tears of joy once Voice agreed to rid the world of Davros¡¯ influence. He looked at the clock, it was 2 a.m. Well shit, I guess planting the seeds took longer than I thought I doubt anyone would want to train people this late. Voice decided to go back to Susan¡¯s. He was thinking on the way there. He made several plans to get into Mar¡¯s good graces, but most of them would take long periods of time. He could always make a super potion and donate it to her, but he felt he would eventually feel diminishing returns. On the way back the first history book was finished being auto read. It was titled a brief history of Solun.
A Brief History of Solun
Solun was created by the Elder Gods, a group of nine individuals that craved to quench their thirst for adventure. The Elder Gods originally warred with those from other realms, killing countless humans. Oddly the only invaders of other realms were humans. Eventually the gods had an idea. They could create a peaceful world where the invading humans might find fun. After creating the world the gods argued over command of it. They all shared in creating the races and the land, so they all had equal rights to the world. Eventually they agreed that they would introduce themselves to the peoples of the world and have them decide who they would worship. The people of Solun each chose a deity to worship, thus came the nine religions.
Eh? That wasn¡¯t a history of the world. That just talked about the gods? WTF man? Getting my hopes up for actual information! Voice was understandably upset that the history of Solun was only about the gods. The only important thing he learned is that the gods played a major role in this world. Upsetting one or many of them was probably a death sentence. And I became the Blessed of Mar, so now Davros is probably out to kill me. GREAT! He made it to Susan¡¯s and went to sleep. The next day planned to go to the training area. He made sure to pick up a few lily pads when he woke up, and harvest the necessary ingredients from them before tossing the rest of the stuff in Susan¡¯s vats. He refused to use anymore of his common weed, so he would just have to eat the lily pad. He gathered ten of the pads. After tossing the refuse into Susan¡¯s vats he decided to make the pads into a vegetable stew to give him a better stamina regen. He used Elizabeth¡¯s kitchen instead of gathering wood. It only took three minutes to properly cook the stew. He slowed the process down to make sure he noted everything about the cooking process. After adding the salt, which he measured to the ounce using a tool Elizabeth offered, he measured out the exact amounts of pounds of each ingredient. He added the cabbage first so that its flavor could drown out the flavor of the lily pad. After that he added in some carrots and radishes. He added the lily pads, two of them, last. Elizabeth was turned around looking through a large white rectangular box. She sniffed the air, ¡°So why aren¡¯t you using any meat this time?¡± Voice awkwardly admitted, ¡°Well I ran out and don¡¯t have a lot of money. I only have five silver left.¡± Elizabeth turned around with two big handfuls of what looked like beef cuts. ¡°If I give you these can Evan and I have some of your stew?¡± Voice hurriedly agreed. Meat would add a lot to this meal. He fried the meat and added it to the stew. He gave the Troy and Rabs two carrots and one radish each. He let Heather eat the leftover stew from yesterday. He added a couple of extra carrots this time to thicken the stew. What he got in the end was:
Fried Meat in Thick Vegetable stew Quality: Mundane Thick vegetable stew and fried meat made by an amateur, were combined to make this. One serving restores 30 stamina per second, and restores 100 fatigue. You also gain 5 strength and 50 max stamina for the next hour. You can add other foods to it.
Interestingly his alchemy and cooking both went up. He was expecting a new skill out of this, maybe alchemic cooking, but nothing happened. He felt let down that such a good opportunity had passed him by. It didn¡¯t seem like the quality had any direct correlation to taste, so Voice was ok with it being such low quality. No doubt that having much higher quality food would grant a large bonus to taste though. The stew was enough to feed five people, so he would just have to give Elizabeth and her husband some and he could still have three servings left. After serving the food to the couple he left for the training hall. He made the trip in only twenty minutes more than normal. He was getting pretty accustomed to the armor at this point. He got to the training hall with three bowls of the stew. He went into the training hall. Once he entered he got a notice:
You can get training from any npc in the training hall. They may ask you to do a favor first, and you cannot ask for training from another npc inside the same training hall until you finish it.
There were several npcs there. Some were dodging attacks, some were doing the attacking. Most were attacking practice dummies. Voice went up to the man in the heaviest looking armor. He figured that if you were a master at something you would want to show off. Many people were watching him work. Something to the left of the man caught his eye. He noticed a man wearing only normal villager clothes. He could see that this man was avidly paying attention to the man in the large armor while the man in the armor taught others. The villager man didn¡¯t watch with intrigue, amazement or curiosity though. He watched as if he were looking for mistakes. Now, who would watch a master for mistakes, and not in amazement? Voice made the only logical conclusion. He went up to the villager, ¡°Please teach me the proper way to wear heavy armor.¡± He had said it quietly, but the entire training center stopped at that exact moment. There was a collective silence. The villager man looked amusedly at Voice. ¡°And what makes you think I know about heavy armor?¡± The man started standing up while asking this. He stood up as an old man might, his right hand on his right knee for support. Voice was confident in his appraisal of the man¡¯s skills. ¡°You were the only one watching the hulk over there for flaws. The villager smiled. He shrugged as if saying ¡®what can you do about it?¡¯ ¡°Fine but you must help me first. I don¡¯t promise to know anything about armor of any type, but I¡¯ll help you to the best of my abilities.¡± The man put his hands behind his back as he examined Voice. Voice thought he saw the man¡¯s right arm move. The entire training hall resumed their previous practices amid shouts from the instructors. ¡°What I want you to do is feed me. If my satiety drops below 90 before you can get me food you lose. Ready? GO.¡± The man started running in place. Not jogging, running. Voice gave him the one of his special stamina regenerating Irish stews. At first the man was confused to see food suddenly appear before him. Then he had a strange glint in his eye. ¡°Okay.¡± He said after taking the bowl. He started talking amid large mouthfuls of stew. ¡°I¡¯ll agree to help you, but you must dodge his attack at least once.¡± He motioned for a man to come over. ¡°His name is Steve.¡± Steve gave a once over to the man in front of him. This newbie was wearing decent iron armor, but it looked to weigh two or three times the needed amount. ¡°When you can dodge one attack from him completely I will train you.¡± The villager finished off the stew and, after quickly rinsing the bowl out with water from his canteen, returned the bowl. Steve was wearing only light leather armor. He had two swords attached to his waist. He was very muscular, but not overly so. His head was shaved, and he had a scar on his left eyebrow down to his chin. He came over and started an underhanded attack. He quickly took out his right sword and cut at Voice in a right hip to left shoulder line. At the same time he took out his second sword and cut a horizontal strike. Voice backed away, and would have dodged both had he been faster. The swords only managed to knick him. Steve was impressed. Just knowing how to dodge in that overweight armor was quite impressive. Steve thought, I¡¯m going to enjoy this for once. ¡°Well boy, looks like the old man here was right in choosing me to be your partner. I won¡¯t be holding back.¡± With that he started some of the most intricate and devastating attacks he could, obviously toned down in power as to not kill the poor boy. Some of the attacks he almost dodged, but most hit him squarely. Steve could see that it wasn¡¯t just luck that let the boy almost dodge occasionally, but most of the time he looked like any other heavy armor goon. After it was clear the boy could go on no longer Steve said, ¡°So where did you learn such clumsy dodging skills? Your master would be ashamed to know you came here to better yourself.¡± Voice replied between gasping for air, ¡°I didn¡¯t¡­ have¡­ a teacher. I just¡­ started¡­ working¡­ on it¡­ yest¡­yesterday.¡± Steve gaped in astonishment. The villager rubbed his chin thoughtfully while asking, ¡°So exactly how did you train to such a degree in one day?¡± Voice had caught his breath by now and seated himself while he answered. ¡°I had a blacksmith make some armor that is heavier than usual so I could get used to the weight. I walked around for a while, and did some cooking.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°Why cooking?¡± The old man gave him a bit of a disbelieving look. Voice stated with a bit of pride, ¡°I figured that if I wanted to get used to heavy armor I should do everything in it.¡± The villager looking man approved of this logic. If you wish to master something you must fully work towards it with everything you have. This young man truly knows how to train. The old villager man said, ¡°Fine, you will train for next four hours with Steve. After that you are to kill an enemy, any enemy is fine, as long as you don¡¯t break any laws.¡± Voice knew that he might be given a task, but wasn¡¯t fighting an actual battle too much to ask? Is he wanting to kill me off or something!? Voice decided to accept it, and just say yes. Worst case scenario he would abandon the quest and go to another training area to receive training. ¡°Alright, just let me eat some of my stew and I¡¯ll be ready.¡± Voice gorged himself on his food to recover a bit. His health hadn¡¯t declined a lot, but it was still lower than he liked. After eating the food he started the session immediately. At first he tried dodging the attacks. Since he couldn¡¯t manage to dodge even one, and the old man never said he couldn¡¯t use weapons, he took out his staff and tried to guide Steve¡¯s attacks away from him. Even with his staff and instinct ability he was hard pressed to only get grazed. The results of the day¡¯s work was: several bruises on his chest, arms and knuckles, a large welt on the back of his right knee, and his right knuckles were bleeding from being repeatedly struck while trying to guide Steve¡¯s attacks away from himself. He had done a lot better at first, since he had the stamina regen increase and strength bonus. After those wore out he was so outmatched you might even call it funny. Steve never seemed to tire, he had not even broken a sweat. Whenever Voice would falter Steve would strike. Whenever Voice would block, Steve would attack from another angle. The entire training hall had stopped to watch the spectacle by the end. Some people were impressed that the newbie lasted the entire four hours, not many people did. Most were in laughing fits over the depressing gap in power between the two combatants. When Voice left it was still early afternoon. He ate another bowl of his stew. He was out now and decided to make something else to eat. Maybe a nice salad this time? Well then again I won¡¯t get the fifty percent bonus to taste if I don¡¯t use my pot or pan. Stew it is I guess. He told Heather to attack Troy while he was cooking, but if he got low on health to stop. He had Rabs run laps until he collapsed. No sense in letting them wasted anymore time. He went back to Elizabeth¡¯s house to make a vegetable stew. He had an epiphany when he took out his vegetables. AH! I know I¡¯ll use Elizabeth¡¯s love of cooking against her! He went in Evan¡¯s house without knocking. He didn¡¯t even consider it rude since he was ¡®blood brothers¡¯ with Evan, and Elizabeth¡¯s life savior. He found Elizabeth in the front room, reading a book. ¡°So, Elizabeth how would you like to learn a new recipe for free? All I want is a small portion for a friend.¡± Susan looked up from her book and smiled at Voice. She was a little unsure as to why he seemed to insist on wearing iron armor in the kitchen, but she would forgive him if the recipe was good. ¡°Sure, let¡¯s go to the kitchen. It¡¯s about time for lunch anyway.¡± He told her the ingredients he needed. ¡°Luckily I have all of these.¡± Yeah, Voice thought, It¡¯s lucky I intentionally picked food I thought you¡¯d have. He went to work. She had provided him with a loaf of bread, a large wedge of cheese, and some oil. What he made surprised her. He took the bread and sliced it into pieces of about an inch thick apiece. He also cut the cheese into thin slices. He then poured the oil on his special pan, and started to slowly cook the bread slices. After two slices of bread were toasty looking he put a cheese slice on one, and put the other slice of bread on top of it. The bread was a brownish color to start with, but turned a slightly more yellowish color. He presented the final product to her. So it¡¯s just a basic meal? You could get this for a few copper. Although I¡¯ve never thought to actually cook the bread and cheese like that. She tried it while Voice made another batch. It was surprisingly delicious. She didn¡¯t realize you could make something taste so good with such simple ingredients. ¡°What do you call this?¡± ¡°It¡¯s called a grilled cheese sandwich.¡±
You have invented sliced bread. You have gained 15 fame.
You have invented sliced cheese. You have gained 15 fame.
You have invented the sandwich. You have gained 15 fame.
You have invented the grilled cheese sandwich. You have gained 15 fame.
After he made the next sandwich Elizabeth went to eat it, only to have her hand slapped away. ¡°You have to wait till I¡¯m done. I still need to make the salad.¡± He made another five grilled cheese sandwiches, then started working on the salad. He cut the cabbage up after tearing off the leaves. He then finely cut the carrots and radishes. He ran over to Susan¡¯s and invited her over. When they were all seated Voice handed out the food. Susan and Evan were as surprised at the grilled cheese sandwiches as Elizabeth was. He gave each of them one, and gave each of them some salad. The lunch was a huge success. Everyone really enjoyed it. Voice¡¯s cooking skill was now level four. Wow I guess good food levels this skill up fast.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich Quality: Mundane The inventor of sliced bread and sliced cheese made a wonderful new recipe. One serving restores 50 fatigue and grants a plus one percent of happiness for the next five minutes.
Cabbage, Carrot, Radish, and Lily Pad Salad Quality: Low A salad made by a low level cook. One serving restores 5 stamina per second, and restores 40 fatigue. You can add other vegetables to it.
After everyone was done eating Voice went to message EDI. He looked at his friends list to see if EDI was online. She was. He sent her a quick message. ¡®Hey going to go monster hunting again. Wanna come? Same formation as last time.¡¯ He got an instant reply. ¡®I¡¯ve been trying to contact you for the last four days. Where were you?¡¯ ¡®I was in another realm gaining knowledge. Then I went training. What did you need me for?¡¯ He sent a party invite along with this message. She accepted. He said open map, and a map popped up. He was a green dot, he knew this since he had three light green dots surrounding him. She was a blue dot, the thing was she was inside the mountain to the north. Through the party channels he got the message, ¡°I tried exploring the lowest level dungeon. SD (ShortDwarf) and LB (LastingBeauty) already cleared it, but the boss respawns in about a day irl.¡± ¡°What kind of dungeon?¡± ¡°It was supposed to be an easy one, but when I got to the boss he was harder than what SD and LB said he was. I think he leveled up since then. The boss guards were also stronger, but most of the dungeon was weaker. I don¡¯t know why.¡± ¡°Maybe after dying the boss and his guards went on a killing spree?¡± ¡°See that¡¯s the thing, right after SD and LB finished the dungeon the boss got weaker, and the other monsters got stronger. NPCs went to keep it clear, after a while the enemies got weaker and the boss got stronger.¡± Voice thought about it for a bit. ¡°It¡¯s probably decided by the dungeon boss. Like if the enemy killed the boss too quickly then the boss spam kills his subordinates, since they just come back at a lower level everything is ok. If the party got through to the boss to quickly maybe he lets his people kill him a few times. Maybe the dungeon has a total level or something.¡±
You are the first player to have solved the dungeon conundrum. This problem has been theorized by many people for long periods of time. The total exp of each dungeon remains the same for that dungeon, but may be distributed by the boss. For solving this problem you have gained ten intelligence.
Eh? Oh nice! As Voice read the pop up he had a flare of happiness. Although the stat increases were happening semi-frequently a ten point boost was pretty cool. When he got close enough he told his animals to go find the entrance. Unsurprisingly Rabs found it first. He ran back to Voice and told him the location. Voice called the other two back. He had just told EDI his idea on the dungeons when he arrived at the entrance. EDI said, ¡°So do you need to know the way to the dungeon? I made it back to the first floor, but all the monsters and traps have regenerated since I¡¯ve been here too long. So I can¡¯t leave.¡± ¡°No need I just got to the dungeon.¡± Voice tried to sound as cool and calm as possible. ¡°Wah? Already? Wow that¡¯s service right there. You should deliver pizzas or something.¡± Voice gave a polite laugh. ¡°Well which room are you in? And have you decided to join my guild yet?¡± EDI was confused by the second question for a second. ¡°The third door on the left, and I don¡¯t think I¡¯d fit in a guild. Sorry.¡± ¡°Oh, that¡¯s alright just thought I¡¯d ask. Anyway the door looks solid how do I open it?¡± Voice had carefully made his way down the hallway. Obviously he let all three of his rabbits go first so they were in the ¡®least¡¯ amount of danger. After making sure they were safe he followed. The hallway was a straight stone hallway, with three doors on each side. At the end of the hallway was a large door that said ¡°Enter Level One¡± in large red letters. He came to the third door on the left. It was a giant flat stone door with minor cracks due to its extreme age. It also had a blood red picture of a skull painted in the center. Nope, not creepy at all. EDI told him, ¡°Try to pull the door!¡± Dafuq? Crazy ass bitch. It¡¯s a flat stone door I can¡¯t pull it! He tried anyway. There was no way to pull the door. Except for he minute cracks it was a solid surface. The only thing on the floor was a tiny hole along the bottom of the door, but he was damned if he would put his fingers under a giant stone door to pull it. As he was trying to think of a way to pull the door he felt a small disturbance in the air around its middle. He tried to grasp it, only to fail. He decided that was what he was meant to pull. He tried several times before finally getting a feel for it. As he grasped the wind like handle, he pulled towards himself. The stone door moved about a quarter of an inch, then fell into a slot the ground. It was as if it was just a quarter of an inch away from the slot it had been meant to be inside. He was very glad he didn¡¯t try to put his fingers under it to pull. EDI half jumped at, half hugged Voice when the door was low enough. ¡°Thank you SO much! It wouldn¡¯t let me log out in that room or I would die.¡± Voice didn¡¯t really care that she could have died. He thought it¡¯d be fun to explore a dungeon, though. EDI noticed his armor while she was hugging him. ¡°So, uh¡­ did you get this new armor? It looks nice¡­¡± Voice smiled. ¡°I¡¯m training to be able to wield actual heavy armor. I want to be ready, so I increased the weight on this one by a lot.¡± After that he volunteered to join her in clearing the dungeon. ¡°Really? Thanks! That will save me a lot of time.¡± She said ecstatically. She was really happy that he said he¡¯d come with her. It was pretty fun when they went exterminating monsters, so this should be even more fun. Since EDI knew the dungeon she led the way. ¡°So do you want to go straight for the boss or clear the whole thing?¡± She wanted Voice to enjoy the dungeon clearing so that he might join her more often than the average of once every five days. Voice thought about it for a moment. ¡°Well since I¡¯m only level six, I say we get some exp before going to the boss.¡± EDI choked back a laugh. ¡°You¡¯re only level six? What have you been doing this whole time?¡± ¡°Hmph. If you don¡¯t want my help just say it.¡± EDI quickly apologized. ¡°Sorry, I¡¯m sorry ok? I just didn¡¯t think any of the players were still below level twenty. DefiledHealer posted his character sheet online a few irl hours ago. SD and LB did the same. They are all over level 35 at this point. Apparently DH has started magic training. He blurred out his class though.¡± ¡°What level are you?¡± Voice was curious. If she would just be a burden he¡¯d probably ditch to go train. ¡°Twenty-five.¡± Seeing that Voice was questioning how she had trouble with the dungeon she continued. ¡°The dungeon has five levels. The first one is meant for level one to five. The second one is meant for six to ten, and so on. I thought I could beat the boss since I have the equivalent level for it. The boss was over level thirty. He almost killed me! I had to run out of the room just to make it out alive.¡± ¡°I brought some food if you want to eat.¡± As he said this EDI was eagerly nodding. She had not eaten since she started the dungeon and was suffering from starvation. When she saw the grilled cheese and salad she asked, ¡°Did you make this?¡± Voice replied yes. EDI replied between stuffing her face with food, ¡°This is amazing! You... mmm¡­ you should become a cook or something.¡± ¡°Well let¡¯s go explore!¡± Voice was enthusiastic about the upcoming dungeon. I bet I¡¯ll be able to level up to at least 20 if I defeat the boss! ¡°Why does the game only give you hp when you level?¡± Voice wondered why it didn¡¯t give other stats. Basically all other games game multiple bonus upon level up. ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Well whenever I level up I only gain 10 hp.¡± EDI gave Voice a WTF look. ¡°You haven¡¯t been getting the skill points? You should talk to a GM about that. That is potentially very disadvantageous.¡± Voice hated the word disadvantage. He didn¡¯t know that he had been losing stat points this entire time. After a second with a blank expression EDI said ¡°Um, now I know you probably have, but I still need to ask. Have you actually gone to the distribute stat points screen?¡± Voice had not. ¡°Of course I have. I just haven¡¯t been getting any this entire time.¡± Voice secretly checked the distribute stats screen. He had forty stat points to distribute. That meant he probably had gotten about five per level. Now that I think about it didn¡¯t Bee say that I got five bonus points for being human? I really need to pay attention to the boring stuff. Oh well. ¡°Ok, I¡¯ll ask the GM about it, thanks EDI.¡± He decided not to spend his points right now since it might make it a tad difficult to adjust to stats he didn¡¯t train to get. He decided he would make a training regimen to do after the dungeon. EDI headed back to the first door on the side she was in. She opened the door and was attacked by two small bears. Voice let out his roar of paralysis. The bears looked at Voice in horror. EDI and Heather used that moment to attack. Heather went straight for one of the bears¡¯ stomachs. EDI went for an eye. She must really enjoy cutting out people¡¯s eyes. Heather viciously tore at the stomach. The bear actually started bleeding after just one bite. EDI had taken the other bear¡¯s eye out by the time the roar wore off. Voice took his staff and approached the bear missing the eye. ¡°Troy! Rabs! Help kill the other bear! EDI and I will take this one!¡± The bear looked angrily at Voice. He attacked by swiping his large right paw at Voice¡¯s chest. The armor did its job by negating the hit. He swiped with his other paw. The paw was swinging down to Voice¡¯s left side, he deftly pushed the paw further to the left with the tip of his staff until it was clear it would miss him. The bear looked confused and angry that he had not been able to damage the intruder. The bear prepared to swipe again, only to have its other eye stabbed out by EDI. While Voice was distracting the bear EDI had crept up behind it and moved to its right, uninjured, eye. When it swiped at Voice she expected to see him go flying, but was pleasantly surprised to see he calmly block the attack. The moment the attack finished she took the chance and threw herself at the bear, Sai point towards it eye. She hit. The bear was completely blinded, and enraged. It randomly swiped trying to protect itself. After a few swipes Voice struck it in the stomach three times in quick succession. It doubled of in pain, and EDI jumped onto its back. She repeatedly attacked the base of its skull. She had learned that trick from Voice. The bear went crazy for a second, then fell over dead. Voice looked over to the other bear ready to help. Only to notice Heather happily munching on the exposed stomach of her prey. When Voice and EDI had started attacking their bear, Troy Roared at his. The bear was caught off guard by another sudden roar. In that instant Rabs ran in and tackled the side of its head. The bear was disoriented for a moment, and Heather took another chunk out of the protective layer of fat on its stomach. They repeated this tactic several times until Heather could eat in peace. Troy and Rabs looked away, too embarrassed and disgusted at the thought of a fellow rabbit eating meat. ¡°Well, that wasn¡¯t so hard.¡± Voice was confident they could take this dungeon. EDI was not so happy. ¡°Those were only level one enemies. They were the weakest in the entire dungeon.¡± Voice lost his confidence. ¡°Oh, well crap. At least I know the armor¡¯s working.¡± He tried to smile, but the thought of the battles becoming overwhelming was quickly eating away at any hopes he had at actually beating this dungeon. EDI went to the door across the hall and opened it.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health160Mana290
Stamina290
Level6Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.6Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec4.1
Strength21Agility10
Wisdom20Intelligence29
Endurance41Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety25
Fame460
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 21.11%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 6 Exp 14.28%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 19 Exp 57.89%
Identify Compatible Skills Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 4 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 8 Exp 57.23%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Dive 16: Its Time to Train Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice continued to walk around in his absurdly odd armor. He made a few new recipes, and got a little bit of ¡®training¡¯ for heavy armor. He started his first dungeon. As EDI reached for the door Voice yelled, ¡°STOP!¡± EDI turned around in fight mode, heart pumping a thousand times a minutes. She saw Voice with a pleasant smile, looking at what she assumed was his status window.
Healing Hands Heals the target¡¯s health by ((20 + light affinity) * Aura). The base spell cost for this spell is 40 mana. The healer must touch the target for this spell to be effective.
As Voice read the spell he was grinning from ear to ear. It healed one hp per two mana, but for him it would heal 1.1 hp per 1.6 mana. He was glad he had gotten that aura. In addition to the spell he gained one point of int after reading the book. Even though everyone was fully healed he wanted to test his new spell out. ¡°Hey Troy, can I lightly tap you with my staff to check out my new heal spell?¡± Voice knew Troy couldn¡¯t refuse, that¡¯s why he asked nicely. ¡°Uh, sure.¡± Troy wanted to say no, but couldn¡¯t bring himself to after seeing his master¡¯s pleading eyes. Voice lightly rapped on Troy¡¯s head, causing him to be thrown in to a wall. Voice immediately went over and healed the rabbit. Troy had taken about thirty damage, so Voice would have to use his heal spell twice. Voice walked over to Troy in his bulky armor. He gently placed his hands on Troy and willed his body back to perfection. Troy seemed to glow with a white light, and his body seemed to be fixing itself. The small wound on Troy¡¯s head sealed up almost completely. After the first use Voice got a notification:
For using a light/healing magic for the first time you have gained 5 light affinity.
For casting healing magic without the name, or incantation of the spell for the first time you have gained 5 light affinity.
Voice gotten light affinity just for messing around. I guess I need to look more into healing magic. Now I heal 33 hp for only 32 mana! My conversion rate is insane! Just a little aura, and use of the spell, and now I¡¯m at twice the efficiency of normal! Since the normal conversion rate of mana to health for this spell was two to one, the fact that Voice got a little more than one to one was nothing short of a miracle. After healing his mana he said: ¡°Alright, now let¡¯s do this dungeon.¡± Voice said with a confidence in his voice and a power in his posture. Voice made a plan. He asked EDI what she were in all of the rooms before the level one door. It was four more groups of two bears each, and a ¡®boss¡¯ bear. Something like an initiation test that you had to pass to be able to get in. Each room had two bears one level higher than the one before it. It went first door on the left, first door on the right, second door on the right, second door on the left, and so on. She had been in the room where the level five bears were stationed so they hadn¡¯t respawned yet. Voice¡¯s plan was simple, but no less effective because of it. EDI would open the door to the bears slightly, then Rabs would run in and get one bear out. At least that was the plan. EDI did as she was told. She opened the first door on the right by just a crack. Rabs ran in and out again in a matter of only milliseconds. EDI was standing behind the door ready to close it as soon as one bear had left. The bear burst through the door so quickly and powerfully that EDI was slammed against the wall, followed quickly by the stone door. Her health only dropped by 50 points, that wasn¡¯t even a fifth of what she had, but her left shoulder had popped out of its socket. Voice ran up to her even as the second bear ran out of the room. The bear completely ignored Voice as it ran to help its brethren. Voice put his hands on EDI and willed her body to right itself. The shoulder popped back into place, EDI gave a loud scream, and arched her back in pain. As soon as the spell completed EDI stopped screaming, though she was panting from the experience. Voice got up and observed the battle field. Both bears were attacking Troy. One bear had a Heather attached to its left foreleg. (Yes a Heather) The other was being rammed by Rabs. Voice decided to attack the one Rabs was trying to distract. HE ran over with a Roar. Both bears were momentarily shocked. Heather took the opportunity to jump and attach herself to her bear¡¯s neck. She activated her power and dragged the beast down to the ground by its throat. Troy once more roared to get the attention of the bears, before Voice could make it all the way to his designated bear, it had sent Troy across the hall with his left paw. Troy lost a chunk of health. Voice jumped into the path of the bear before it could charge him. He smashed his staff into the face of the bear, at the same time Rabs rammed himself into the bear¡¯s right flank before ducking under him to get enough distance to do another dash. The bear swiped his right paw at Voice¡¯s right side. Voice stepped to the right, pointed his staff in front of him, and angled it off to his right even further. The paw followed the staff¡¯s guided path, and left the bear wide open for retaliation. Voice took the opportunity and jabbed the bear in the face again after the paw had passed the point of reasonable threat. The bear staggered and snarled. As the snarl rang out in the narrow hallway, EDI had already sat up and started a complex series of thrusts and slashes at the bear Heather was attacking. Well more like eating. Heather was viciously tearing at the beast¡¯s throat. The bear tried to block the attacks, but EDI had an easy time in hacking its eyes. With only one set of movements the bear lost track of her. She was on top of its neck in less than a second. She plunged both Sai into its eyes. With a sickening sucking sound she pulled both eyes out of the sockets. The bear cried out in pain. Heather dove into the bears neck were she had been tearing. EDI could hear crunching and tearing sounds that could only be interpreted as eating. EDI quickly left the scene of future carnage and went to help Voice. Troy had gotten back up and tried to distract the bear. The bear however was far too obsessed with the one that kept attacking it. Having blocked its attack Voice was growing confident in his mobility despite the heavy armor he still wore. Almost every attack Voice managed to block. Whenever it struck at his right side, he would move right and deflect left. When it struck at his left side, he would move left and deflect right. Voice only got hit a few times, but the absurdly overweight armor protected him from most of the damage. As the bear continued to strike at Voice, Voice continued to watch its movement. Using instinct occasionally Voice started to see a pattern in attacks from the monster. The beast always moved its left leg slightly forward before attacking with its right forepaw. He would do the opposite before attacking with his left. If Voice was on the left the bear jumped slightly further than needed to the left, and tried to hit Voice¡¯s left side. Once he confirmed the pattern Voice gave a wicked grin. He started playing with the bear, after he told the others to stay out of it. The others looked on in awe. It looked like Voice was play fighting a trained bear. Neither the rabbits nor EDI could figure out how Voice perfectly controlled the flow of the battle. As Voice started to get to his last bit of stamina he decided to end it. He baited the bear¡¯s attack, and struck the beast precisely in its left eye while using critical strike. The bear conveniently placed its eye exactly where Voice thought would. Such a considerate fellow. It even roared in agony approval of the perfect aim. The bear went into a frenzy. Seriously what¡¯s up with the frenzy when monsters are close to death? The monster was much quicker, and stronger than before, but it still held a strong similarity in attacks. The only problem was that Voice was slowed down in his iron armor; not to mention he didn¡¯t have a physical combat class. He managed to parry the first few attacks with the use of his instinct, but after that he was thoroughly being thrashed. He yelled to the spectators, ¡°WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!? HELP ME!¡± Everyone quickly jumped into action. Since Troy couldn¡¯t distract the beast he jumped in front of Voice to take a couple of shots. Heather jumped up and landed on the juicy hindquarters of the bear. She used her strengthening skill to tear a large chunk out. At the same time Rabs had done several quick kicks to the bear¡¯s left hind leg. EDI threw one Sai at the bear, and quickly ran towards the animal. She managed to quickly reach the bear moments after its left flank was impaled by her Sai. She grabbed the Sai with great precision, and yanked it towards its head. The beast gave a deafening roar as the Sai cut all the way to its neck. It suddenly lost its footing, fell on the floor, and after a few moments convulsed and stopped moving. Voice was huffing from the onslaught the bear had forced him through. He had taken a bit of damage so he healed himself. He sat down after the battle. He wasn¡¯t really physically tired, but mentally he was exhausted. It takes a lot of work to perfectly analyze an opponent in the middle of battle. After Voice had sat down for a few minutes he noticed that he had leveled up. ¡°Hey furry trio. I leveled up, did you guys?¡± The rabbits replied no. Too much to ask for I guess. EDI didn¡¯t realize that Voice was in danger until he yelled at her. While she didn¡¯t appreciate being cussed at, she understood that she should have done something earlier. ¡°Sorry Voice, I didn¡¯t realize you were in danger until I you had already yelled.¡± Voice, now without the fear of immediate death, was angry at himself for letting the yell slip out. It doesn¡¯t matter what the situation is, you have to keep cool or risk losing all of the social connections you worked so hard to build up! Voice berated himself in his inner monologue. ¡°Yeah, sorry about that EDI, I guess I just got a little scared. I mean I know the bear was four levels lower than me, but it still packed a punch!¡± EDI looked a bit worried at the thought of Voice trying to complete the dungeon. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re up for this? I mean the monsters just get stronger as we go.¡± ¡°Yeah well, I need to train in actual combat anyway.¡± When Voice was done resting he signaled for the group to go to the next door. They followed a pattern for the next two doors. EDI would open the door then dash back as Rabs and Voice ran inside. Rabs would lure one bear out, and Voice would practice dodging and blocking with the other bear. He would continue this until the other four said they had killed their bear. Voice was starting to excel at controlling the battle versus one bear. He would only get hit once the bear was in frenzied mode, and even then it would take a few shots. Once he got hit the group would all descend on the bear, quickly finishing the battle. The level four bears had taken a bit of a toll on him, but he still had half his hp by the end of the battle. Once they made it to the ¡®boss door¡¯ EDI told Voice, ¡°I don¡¯t think the tactic is going to work here. The boss bear¡¯s basic speed is an average of a frenzied bear and a non-frenzied bear. If he goes into a frenzy it won¡¯t be good.¡± Voice thought it over. He decided he and Troy would both tank, while EDI and Heater would attack. Rabs would provide the occasional distraction. Voice made sure the group was prepared, before opening the door. Before his hand had reached the invisible bubble of air he stopped. I can tame another seven levels of monsters. EDI said this monster was only level six. Time to get another slave! Voice knocked politely on the door. The only response he got was a snarl. He opened the door, and Rabs shot inside. He and Troy quickly followed, lastly EDI and Heather came in. Rabs had ran under the bear and nipped its belly. The bear had swung a heavy paw at the little rodent and knocked him into a wall. Blood trickled down his head. Voice motioned to the bear as he ran to Rabs, ¡°Troy! Distract that thing!¡± He ran over and healed Rabs as quickly as possible. When he turned back the fight was already well under way. Somehow in the few seconds that it took him to heal Rabs, EDI had stabbed out one of the bear¡¯s eyes, and Heather had jumped on its back and bit into its spine. Again with the eyes!? Voice might have also attacked a bears eyes, but it was actually quite gruesome to see someone else do it. Voice ran over and stationed himself directly in front of the bear. Troy, realizing what his tamer wanted to do, stepped to the side and behind Voice. Voice go into position and attacked the bear to get its attention. The bear gave Voice a bone chilling glare. It swung its mighty paw at Voice to squish him like the bug he was. Voice was happy to notice the movements of the bear, while faster, were exactly the same as the ones before. He managed to continuously block the bears attack, much to the bear¡¯s chagrin. Voice¡¯s stamina was dropping fast though, and eventually the bear landed a hit. Voice started to falter in the amount of hits he could dodge or block. Eventually The bear thought that he could kill his prey now, then take care of the rest of the interlopers. The bear never got the chance. As soon as the bear landed two hits in a row the rest of Voice¡¯s entourage attacked. Troy grabbed the bear¡¯s attention, while Heather powered herself up and landed a powerful leg blow on the bear¡¯s head. The bear first turned its attention to Troy, then was dazed by the kick to the head. The bear hit Heather away. Even before the paw hit Heather, EDI had ran headlong into the bear. She stabbed both her Sai in front of her, and sliced to the left and right. She created a long jagged line across the bear¡¯s side. Blood sprayed out of the wound, as the bear screamed in pain. EDI shielded her face. Heather hit the ground and skidded across the floor. Voice ran over to her and healed her. Heather jumped back up, and jumped at the bear that was screaming in pain. She sank her teeth into the bear¡¯s wounded side. The screams of agony the bear let out could be heard halfway to the city. Voice had gotten up, and by that point was again standing in front of the bear. He wore an evil grin. He hit the bear a few times with his staff to shut it up. The bear lay on the ground whimpering as it felt its life ebb away. Voice healed the bear slightly. The wound on its side closed somewhat, and the bear¡¯s whimpering subsided. Voice stood up and showed the bear two fingers. ¡°You have two choices. Join me or die.¡± The bear roared in response and Heather ended him. ¡°Well I guess I will have to wait till next time to try and tame him.¡± EDI interrupted his train of thoughts. ¡°You know that was a monster not an animal right? Animal tamers can¡¯t tame monsters.¡± Voice was bemused. He tapped his forefinger to his chin. He figured that since the bear was an animal shape he should be able to tame it. Even geniuses are allowed to be wrong occasionally. ¡°Well I guess it doesn¡¯t matter now anyway.¡± Voice tried to brush the matter aside. ¡°Let¡¯s go through the door.¡± EDI hesitated. ¡°Actually if you don¡¯t mind I was starting to think that maybe we could pick this up again tomorrow. I¡¯ve been in this dungeon so long that I¡¯ve gotten tired of it. Also tell your friend Evan that I¡¯ll be back to get more armor. The one he gave me broke to pieces earlier.¡± Voice decided that since she was bored of the dungeon, making her play might end up with mistakes that cost him his life. He didn¡¯t even realize that she wasn¡¯t wearing the leather armor, since it didn¡¯t really affect him. ¡°Sure, how about we meet here tomorrow afternoon?¡± EDI gave her consent and sprinted for the city. She looked very happy to be out of the dungeon. The half of the loot, minus the boss bear, went to EDI. The other half, and the boss bear, went to Voice. Voice went back into the city. He headed back to the training dojo. It was getting close to dark now. Voice presented the loot to the man that looked like a villager. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. The man looked stunned to see that Voice actually managed to kill a beast. He turned suspicious. ¡°You did kill all of this yourself right?¡± Voice admitted he was in a party with EDI. ¡°Well I did form a party with this girl I know, but all of the planning and strategies were mine.¡± Voice smirked at the next part. ¡°Not to mention I could completely dodge the bear¡¯s attacks unless they were enraged, since I read all of their attacks.¡± Now the man knew Voice was lying. He knew the bear that Voice presented him was an initiation into the dungeon. He also knew how difficult it was to dodge that beast. The villager man could do it, but some youngster in oversized armor? Never. ¡°You did remember to keep the armor on right? Don¡¯t lie now.¡± Voice feigned a slight look of malcontent at being called a liar. ¡°Of course I did. I was told to do it for training. Lessening your training only lessens the results.¡± The old man smiled. This young man is going places. I think I WILL take him under my wing after all. ¡°Ok then, you call me Master Blackhand.¡± Voice was perplexed by the odd name. ¡°Why master Blackhand ?¡± The man gave a hearty laugh. ¡°I got that nickname a long time ago when I single handedly killed an entire legion of Davros¡¯ men in one night.¡± Oh fuck, who did I just apprentice myself to? Voice had a terrible feeling about this. ¡°Well starting tomorrow we will train you like there is no tomorrow.¡± All of the people in the training hall were looking at Voice in what could only be seen as envy, awe, and jealousy. ¡°Also, in order for you to have the best benefits from the armor you might want to think about a class change. I can see you are some sort of tamer. If you changed that to a warrior class, not only would you get the bonus health and health regen rate, heavy armor would feel a lot more natural for you.¡± Voice really had to think about that one. More health and regen would be great, but I would lose the trio. I can¡¯t really do that until I find some other form of damage dealer. ¡°I¡¯ll have to decline that. I am not someone that can have their path changed so easily.¡± Voice figured something like this would be the best answer. Blackhand smiled, ¡°THAT¡¯S the spirit of a true warrior! So did you finish the dungeon?¡± Voice told him no. ¡°Well then I have your training regimen figured out. You will come here in the morning, and train until noon. After that you will go out to this dungeon until you beat it. Now you said you could read the bear¡¯s attack patterns? STEVE! Let¡¯s see how much you learned.¡±
You have been forced to accept this quest. Success: Clearing the dungeon outside of town. Difficulty: Moderate Failure: Not clearing the dungeon outside of town. Reward: ??? Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Master Blackhand.
Steve stopped thrashing his students long enough to come over and give Voice a look over. ¡°What is it you need?¡± Master Blackhand motioned one hand towards Voice. ¡°He said he had analyzed the bears in the dungeon¡¯s movements. I want you to test out how much his abilities have grown.¡± Steve nodded as he aimed his swords at Voice. ¡°Well don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to go easy on you just because you went to a dungeon earlier.¡± Steve started off slow despite what he had just said. Voice was watching him like when he did with the bears. He got hit a few times full on before he noticed the pattern. Steve would angle his left foot towards Voice before he attacked with his right arm, and vice versa. Knowing how Steve would attack didn¡¯t help Voice out at all though. Even though Voice knew where all of the attacks would come from, he wasn¡¯t able to even dodge once. He was frustrated. The entire point of heavy armor was so you didn¡¯t need to dodge. You could just take the hit. Why this man made Voice try to dodge a master was beyond him. There is probably some sort of trick to why he is teaching me to dodge. Well I am getting better. He was in fact getting better. He was concentrating so much that he didn¡¯t even notice the plus two agility he had obtained. He would have been really happy if he had. Instead he was moody since he was just tossed around like a puppet. His master had a pensive look after stopping the training. ¡°Alright you¡¯ve proven that you have gotten somewhat better. You can rest here, but in a few minutes we are going to finish tonight¡¯s training.¡± Voice looked outside, it was indeed nighttime. He had missed any meal that he didn¡¯t have to cook himself. He looked around the hall and noticed that there was a big pot of vegetable stew cooking. No one was attending it so Voice went over to taste it. It was disgusting, it tasted purely like lily pads. I could cook some stew myself, but everyone here would probably want a bowl. I would lose all of my ingredients. Hmm, but it would be a good opportunity to get in good with all of the other students here. With the thought of an intimacy spike with the people of the dojo Voice decided to make a stew. He took a long while this time. It took him five minutes. When he started the training hall paused momentarily to look at him, then went back to training. He was mumbling to himself about how he wished there was at least some salt or pepper, then someone who must have been there to get some water came and gave him a packet with some crushed salt. He muttered his thanks while adding a little bit to the stew. When he was satisfied he looked up to call the others to have some. He gave a small jump when he looked up and saw the entire training hall had come over to where he was cooking with bowls. ¡°Uh, I come and get it I guess?¡± Voice managed to say past his shock. Everyone crowded around while waiting for Voice to ladle the stew into their bowls. By the time he had spooned a little stew into everyone else¡¯s bowl, there was no stew left. The last of it was scrounged together to give Master Blackhand, who seemed to have been waiting a while. ¡°Well Voice, you seem to take care of those around you. I can¡¯t really say that isn¡¯t admirable, but there is no stew left for you. Have some of my lily stew, then meet me out back.¡± Voice gave a nice smile and nodded. No sense in letting my rage out here. I¡¯ll just bottle it all up until I go back to the dungeon, and I¡¯ll take it out on the monsters. Voice ate the lily stew without noticing the taste as he planned how he would make the monsters suffer. Once he was done Master Blackhand led him outside to the back of the training yard. What Voice saw there could only be described as a military obstacle course. He realized it was meant for him to run. There were round objects on their sides on the ground that looked like wheels. These led to a giant stone wall with a rope hanging down it. After the wall as a small stretch where there were poles being thrown between burly men on each side. The ground on that part was completely muddy, it looked like it was impossible to move at full speed. After the pole death trap was a wall bigger than the first. It was basically a rough cliff face. At the top of the cliff face was Steve. Oh shit, after that all that I have to fight Steve again!? Voice almost gave up, but this seemed to be a really special training regimen so he would try it. If only to not lose intimacy with Blackhand. ¡°Go ahead and try this once. The first time you fall go home and rest. Come back tomorrow.¡± With that Blackhand turned and left. Voice looked at the obstacle course. He knew the whole point of this was to get used to heavy armor, so he couldn¡¯t take his armor off. He ran up to the first obstacle. He had seen a few military movies before, so he knew how to do this. He ran up to them then started basically jumping from one to the other. As he jumped from the first wheel he noticed something odd. The wheels were extremely far apart. He managed the first jump but when he instantly went for the second he noticed the wheels would move slightly whenever he moved. They were making it so it would be the worst possible jump to make. It worked, at the end of the second jump he face planted. He got up, dusted himself off, and went back to Susan¡¯s. He slept as soon as he fell onto the pallet, surrounded by three very fluffy bunnies. While his avatar slept he logged out to get a quick bit to eat. He had a little over an hour so he made some tea, and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. It only took about thirty minutes to finish preparing and eating the meal. He logged back into the game after rinsing his face off. He woke up early in the morning. He had another twenty three days until the other players started to flock to the game. He thought it no coincidence that the same day was the ¡®annual cook off¡¯. A few days before that was the battle to decide if the church of light or dark was the most powerful. As soon as he woke up he went and gave the materials he found to Evan. He was sure to mention that EDI might come by to get a new set of armor. He went to the training hall after making a quick breakfast for him and Susan, using Susan¡¯s ingredients of course. He told his rabbits to go out and train. ¡°You all can go wherever you want to train, but make sure you get enough food.¡± He went to the training hall to train. He tried to be able to block Steve¡¯s attacks, but he was always just too fast. Voice continued to be beaten until noon. He then went to prepare lunch for him and EDI. Elizabeth had put some extra ingredients on the counter and was looking at Voice with a somewhat pleading expression. ¡°So,¡± She started speaking while fidgeting. ¡°I was thinking. You know some pretty interesting recipes. What if I provided the ingredients, would you be willing to make more?¡± ¡°Sure, if it¡¯s only for a few people.¡±
You have accepted this quest. Success: Make at least ten foods Elizabeth hasn¡¯t seen before. Difficulty: Low Failure: Not being able to make at least ten foods Elizabeth hasn¡¯t seen before, or making them poorly. Reward: Free use in using Elizabeth¡¯s kitchen, she may also occasionally provide ingredients to cook with. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Elizabeth.
Voice didn¡¯t expect that to be a quest, but he was happy with it. He saw many ingredients on the cabinet. He chose three. The ingredients were rice, chicken cutlets and eggs. He made some very nice imitation chicken and rice, and added a fried egg for pizazz. He went in to the dungeon. He messaged EDI, asking if she could be there. ¡°Actually I already am. Hehe, I decided to try and see if I could find any clue for beating the boss.¡± She sounded dejected at the end so Voice figured she had failed. ¡°Well anyway, let¡¯s get going. Let¡¯s kill the bears again though.¡± Mimicking the previous day¡¯s tactics they completely destroyed the five rooms with bears before the boss bear. The boss bear seemed to recognize Voice instantly. He went to attack in a state that was almost like rage mode. Voice managed to deftly dodge every one of the bear¡¯s attacks. He even got a few hits in himself. After a few minutes of parrying and retaliating, Voice gave the signal to attack. They had decimated the entire hallway of enemies. Voice only needed to heal Rabs once, and that was because the stupid rodent managed to get himself caught in the mouth of one of the bears. Voice was basically playing with all of the bears except the last one. They finally entered the ¡®first¡¯ dungeon door. Past the door was a hallway that looked identical to the one they just beat. EDI explained. ¡°Each floor had a certain thing about it. The first floor is all hallways with six doors, five of the doors contain two monsters of a certain kind, and the last one has a boss monster. I say boss but it¡¯s just slightly higher level and speed than the rest. The monsters all start at level one and continue to the boss at level six.¡± The hallway they were in had rooms with wolves in it. They went into the first room, and the four besides Voice took one wolf while Voice trained on the other. Voice was hit several times, but his thick iron armor as beyond the level one wolf¡¯s ability to bite through. The wolf would angle its butt down just before jumping to attack. If its weight shifted to one side it was going to attack from the other. If it leaned slightly forward it was going to lunge. After only a dozen or so attacks Voice figured this pattern out. After that the wolves were a cake walk. If he saw the weight shift, he would move to that side and angle his staff accordingly to block. If the butt went down he would wait until just before takeoff and strike in a downwards arc. If the wolf inched forward he would jab the butt of his staff towards the wolf, usually catching it in the throat. Not to mention the fact that he still used his back of the skull trick when he was bored. The only problem was the wolf boss. Not only was he faster than the other wolves, he was much more ferocious. Voice managed to dodge or block several of his attacks before signaling for help. Once the entire group was fighting him he fell in less than a minute. EDI was impressed with how he coordinated the battles. He set up plans, and after just the first wolf he breezed through the others. All in all it was a good haul for Voice. He gained another level, and another point of agility. He also gained two strength, one while fighting the boss bear, the other while fighting the boss wolf. After that he went to the dojo to continue his training.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassAnimal Tamer
Health190Mana300
Stamina290
Level8Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec1.9Mana Regen/Sec2.0
Stamina Regen/Sec4.1
Strength23Agility13
Wisdom20Intelligence30
Endurance41Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety25Unused Stat Points45
Fame460
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 21.11%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 6 Exp 14.28%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 19 Exp 57.89%
Identify Compatible Skills Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 5 Exp 20.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 8 Exp 57.23%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light10
Dive 17: His First Dodge Sorry for the wait guys. I have to work on the weekends. But since it was a bit of a wait here is a pretty long chapter. Also I would love it for comments on the story, or critiques. I really like interactive readers since it will give me a chance to better my writing skill! I¡¯m only at novice level 2 at the moment. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice learned a healing spell. After he had fought a few bears, he learned their attack patterns and was able to dodge almost all of their attacks. He returned to training with his master and was thrashed. He learned the attack patterns of the next hallway of animals, which was wolves. Once he was at the dojo he again fought Steve. He almost managed to dodge one of Steve¡¯s attack, but even with instinct Steve was just too fast. Every time Voice had almost dodged Steve would increase his speed. After doing this for an hour Voice was told to go out to the obstacle course. Blackhand pointed at the course and said, ¡°This time I want you to keep going for two hours. I you manage to finish the entire thing before that then you can go home at that time.¡± Voice got the same running start as yesterday. This time he made sure to focus all of his attention not on the tire he was in, but on the next one. He did better, but he only made it to the third tire before he started to lose his balance. He tried to quickly jump to the fourth, but all that accomplished was his flailing and falling to the ground. He decided to intently study the tires before he tried again. He slowly went from one tire to the next. They moved in a seemingly random pattern, but Voice knew deep down that they had to have some sort of linear pattern. He thought that maybe the tires reflected movement over an origin point. He looked back while jumping one time to see if he was right. The tires behind him were completely still. After that he tried to figure out the pattern that they moved in. This was really hard as they only moved slightly, and only when he jumped. It took him the better part of an hour to come to the conclusion that the way they moved had something to do with him directly. He spent the next hour jumping, pointing his body, and looking in all directions to test his theory out. He finally realized that the wheels would move according to where he was aiming to jump. Just before the two hours were up he realized that it was in fact the way he positioned his feet that decided which direction the wheel would move, the opposite of the direction of his feet. He then spent the last ten minutes jumping with different body movements, and power. So the tires move in the opposite direction of where my feet are pointed. The more they are pointed in one direction the more the tire moves. The harder I jump the closer the tires gets to the place I jumped. So this whole ordeal was to make me think I was overcompensating the entire time. With this new found information, he tried jumping the tires again. He made it all the way to the last one, but just as he was about to land in it and celebrate something caught his foot. The tire had moved slightly less than Voice thought it would. Damn! I almost had it that time! Master Blackhand came back. ¡°So, you couldn¡¯t even do the wheels again. I had hoped you¡¯d at least get to the pole throwers tonight. Well, come back tomorrow to continue your training.¡± Voice grudgingly went back to Susan¡¯s and called his pets back. He ate a small bowl of gruel that Susan had left in his room for him. It wasn¡¯t good quality, but at least it was food. ¡°How did it go for you guys?¡± Voice asked in a tone that didn¡¯t show any curiosity or concern. They had each made it to level ten by constantly killing many wolf demons, the decided on those since they gain so much extra exp from them. They even brought Voice a present of fifteen wolf pelts, several wolf paws, and four stacks of wolf meat. ¡°Why only four stacks if you killed so many wolfs?¡± Troy and Rabs turned towards Heather who responded, ¡°Well you told us to get food¡­¡± She was a little embarrassed at eating so much, but they tasted so good! When Voice woke up he went over to Elizabeth¡¯s and asked for a few ingredients. Elizabeth couldn¡¯t wait to see what he would make with: flour, some water, a pinch of salt, and a little bit of vegetable oil. She quickly gave him the ingredients while she looked for the oil. She found she had a bit left in one of her cabinets. While she was getting him the oil he had made a mound of the other ingredients. He made the mound into eight smaller mounds. He then flattened them into circles, and cooked them in the oil. At first she thought he was making pancakes, which she had already seen, but it turned out he made something similar, but vastly different. When he was done he told her they were called tortillas, and that they could be used in other foods. He said he would show her some of them later. ¡°Although, I do need you to get some peppers if you can. I need them dried as much as possible, if you can I would be able to use them better if they were powdered.¡± After the cooking was done, and he ate a couple, Evan asked, ¡°So, tell me Voice, why do you always make three meal? Isn¡¯t that bad for the body?¡± Voice had no idea what the blacksmith was talking about. Probably some medieval guide on nutrition or something. He waved the question away and said, ¡°Actually it¡¯s better to eat three meals a day for your digestion.¡± Evan and his wife looked at Voice quizzically. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I don¡¯t think we understood that. Could you repeat yourself?¡± Voice did, but Elizabeth and Evan still could not understand what he said. Damnit I forgot about the outside information thing. Wait how have I been making new foods then? Does the information only not work if I don¡¯t show it? So me making new meals is ok because I¡¯m actively doing stuff in game. Voice had an epiphany. He could still bring knowledge from the outside world into the game as long as he did the preparations and actual used the information inside the game. Well, I¡¯m just a cheat character aren¡¯t I? For the next week Voice started a routine. In the mornings he would make a light breakfast, run to check out a book from the library, then go to train with Steve. After training he would cook some food for him and his friends, then go to clear the dungeon with EDI and the rabbits. After that his rabbits would go hunt for food while he tried to finish the obstacle course. Once done there he would speed read through all of the book he checked out, although he always kept one to auto-read. Over the course of the next week he had speed read dozens of books. He also auto-read fourteen books. They averaged about two a day. By the last speed reading he had grown tow exactly level nine in the skill. He also made it to level twenty in auto reading. In total he gained nine int. During the week he slept twice. Once on the second day, and once on the sixth day. During both times he got some irl food, and took a shower. He would respond to his mom¡¯s messages and texts, and then log back into the game. Voice made a nice variety of food for Elizabeth. He easily finished Elizabeth¡¯s quest on the fourth day. He made dishes from Asian food, to chocolate covered ants. The tenth meal he cooked was at dinner on the fourth day. He had promised to use the tortillas in a recipe so they had taco night! When he asked for the ingredients to be prepared Evan fidgeted and said, ¡°Well, you see. Those are sort of hard for a simple blacksmith to get his hands on. I mean I don¡¯t really make a lot of gold you know.¡± After that he hurriedly added, ¡°But with all of the supplies you have given us I am sure I can get some!¡± Voice made both tacos and fajitas. It wasn¡¯t really hard since you only need to watch the meat so it doesn¡¯t burn. He didn¡¯t really know how the cooking skill leveled up, but by the sixth day of cooking foods for Elizabeth he was already level 22. The cooking skill stopped leveling after that. He had made many dishes, but it would not increase more than level 22 with zero exp towards the next level. I guess I¡¯m going to have to read up on the cooking skill. It was nice that his food tasted so amazingly now though. His food was now twice as good as an amateurs. With the bonus from his culinary tools his food was about three times better. That meant that the fifty percent bonus got stacked on before his skill. That¡¯s actually some really good information to keep in mind for the future. During the first six days of training he was beaten every time. Every. Single. Time. No matter what he tried, no matter how fast he became, Steve would always land successful hits on him. It got so bad that Master Blackhand took pity on Voice and began to let him choose Steve¡¯s weapon after the fourth day. Voice chose all sorts of weapons, from bladed to blunted, to hands only. Steve would always land his hits. Voice even chose to make Steve use the largest heaviest weapon in the hall, hoping that the weight would slow him down enough to where Voice could dodge. It ended up this both of his hands completely broken from the impact. Voice screamed in agony for a few seconds, but quickly gained enough control to heal himself. They had a healer on standby since then. He did manage to get two endurance and eight agility from the constant barrage of attacks, so at least it wasn¡¯t pointless to do this. Once Voice started to manage to almost dodge some of the easier attacks his agility started to increase at an acceptable pace. He thought that he would have gained a lot less if he were not in the armor. The obstacle course was much easier than battling Steve. With the information Voice had garnered about the tires, the night after he made the tortillas he tried doing the wheels backwards. At first he couldn¡¯t aim the jump properly at all. After much trial and error he managed to calculate the power and trajectory he would need each time. First he looked at the tires from all angles, then he did a few trial runs. He was pretty confident in his memory when it came to things that took his interest. After only a few horribly failed attempts which prompted laughter from the audience of the dojo, Voice managed to make it all the way across. He was very pleased with the sudden silence that the crowd had after seeing him successfully jump the course backwards. After the completion he gained two agility. He also decided to try to go through it forward before coming up to the wall. So he went back to the start and ran. He had calculated the exact position of the next tire based on how he landed on the current one. Depending on which angle he landed at he would slightly adjust his angle and power. It went off flawlessly. The next part was the wall with the rope. It seemed easier than the tire at first. The main problem came, not only from the added weight of the armor, but also the fact that Master Blackheart Blackhand decided for the rope to be greased. Voice couldn¡¯t even hold on to the grip. The metal gauntlets made it basically impossible to hold himself up. He tried over three dozen times, all of which failed. No matter how tight he gripped he would always fall. He eventually gripped as tight as possible to try to climb, it was enough to where he thought he heard one of his bones pop out of place, and got a notice. He fell then decided to read the notice.
Your constant use of tight gripping has granted you the Tight Grip ability.
Tight Grip You adjust your grip on whatever you are holding to an outstanding strength. Your grip is tripled. It costs 50 stamina, and 20 health to use. This ability costs and additional 25 stamina and ten health per second for upkeep.
Voice smiled as he got up and dusted himself off. Well this will make things easier. Voice gripped onto the rope, and positioned himself perpendicularly against the wall. He activated his ability. His grip was holding, but he could feel his stamina and health quickly drop. Not to mention the extreme amount of force exerted on his arms. Doing some quick math he calculated he could only hold up for fifteen seconds thanks to his stamina regen. Then his stamina would hit zero. I¡¯m glad that the regens still work even if you are currently using the stat. Most games don¡¯t have that. Then again most games don¡¯t have a complete DIVE system. He tried to climb that way, since he had seen it in movies. He made it about a four feet, a quarter of the way, before he collapsed from exhaustion. As he fell he noticed he got one strength. After resting for a bit he tried again. This time he didn¡¯t even make it the entire four feet. On his third try he simply held the greased up rope and stood against the wall. His arms were burning within seconds. He held his grip until his stamina ran out, after that he held on more. With his stamina gone his ability had stopped. He was still holding on for dear life though. His health was dropping fast. Just as he was about to drop below ten percent health he let go. He had been slowly slipping despite his extreme grip. He healed himself up, and started doing some pushups. Everyone in the dojo, students and teachers alike were watching him. At first they were wanting to see the man that had cooked him a good to cheer for him. His failed attempts quickly became hilarious. People had completely stopped training to watch. They were very surprised to see his first successful attempt at the tire jumping. After he jumped the thing backwards he did it normally. Everyone was stunned. Eventually it became accepted to not train while Voice was in the dojo. Everyone would watch him get battered by Steve, when he came back at night they would watch him on his obstacle course. Some people even used their free time to try the course out. Only three students could make it through the whole thing. All three were the senior students of the dojo, and even they took a few tries. By the time they had finished it they were sweating and panting from exhaustion. People were confused as to why he was doing push-ups. He continued to do them for about ten minutes. He fell to the ground gasping for breath after that. Master Blackhand came by and offered him some lily pad tea. Voice gratefully accepted the drink. He then asked the master, ¡°Is there any training method you know of to strengthen my arms?¡± The master was impressed with the question. Usually when newbies asked something after failing one of the trails the masters set it was for an easier task. Voice just asked for a way to pass the trial. The master replied while pointing to the corner of the yard where several different sized boulders could be seen. ¡°Sure, try lifting those up.¡± For the entire next night session he just lifted boulders. He quickly went from the smaller boulders to the larger boulders. He decided to do some endurance training. He asked one of the audience to help. He lifted the largest boulder he could as many times as possible. As soon as he was done he dropped it and took the slightly smaller one from the helper. The helper got a slightly smaller one while Voice continued to lift and lower the current boulder. He continued this all the way to the smallest boulder they had, about the size of two fists. By the end he had gained two strength and one endurance. He did this until he was two days away from the end of the week of when he accepted Elizabeth¡¯s quest. He gained an addition total of three strength from this. This training method had some extremely diminishing returns. He had made the taco party yesterday, so he was in high spirits. He ran through the tires, and grabbed the rope. He basically threw himself up the wall on the first try! Voice did a triumphant pose, which was met with a few snickers. At this point he had a total of 29 str. He wasn¡¯t exactly ripped, but if he didn¡¯t wear his armor you could tell he was clearly muscular. His body was very well toned. He climbed down the other side, which had a rope that wasn¡¯t greased. His next obstacle was then two lines of men throwing javelins. They had been constantly throwing them every time Voice was doing this course. Occasionally one would get tired out and be replaced. There were four people on each side. He heard his master yell. ¡°If you get hit you have to start all over!¡± Voice grumbled, but got started. He ran to where the men were, but even before he took his third step he stumbled and fell. He caught his master grinning. He looked down and noticed his armor was now covered in mud. He sighed and went back to his earlier method. He examined these men from every angle. The poles flew in perfectly straight lines. The left side would throw a pole, the right side would catch it and return it. The worst part was that they didn¡¯t seem synchronized. The throws seemed to be as soon as the person caught it. But sometimes the poles would be in the air longer, sometimes it would be shorter. He tried to time how long each person made the pole stay in the air, but since the people sometimes changed that was quickly left by the wayside. He then closed his eyes, and used Instinct to walk through. The mud made things very complicated, thus he was instantly hit by a pole. He got quite a bruise from that one. He did realize something though. He closed his eyes and tried again. This time he tried to close off all of his senses. He used instinct and felt the pole coming. He ducked down and his concentration broke as he hear the pole whistle above him. He got up to get past this obstacle. Voice was instantly hit by the pole returning to the other side. He scowled as he crawled back to the other side. He didn¡¯t realize this, but after being in his armor for so long it no longer impeded him. He had naturally gotten used to the lessening repercussions of the armor. He got back up once he was out of the mud. He quickly healed himself, and then went back in. He used Instinct as much as possible to avoid the poles. He could use it three times before he had to rest. Unfortunately he didn¡¯t have enough room in between each pole to rest without getting hit. He made it to the fourth pair after quickly dodging, and ducking under, the first three. Voice could feel the bloodlust from the fourth pair. They were throwing the pole so fast that he wondered if they had a firm grip on it at all. He tried to duck under the pole, but he was hit in the shin. He noticed the person on the right had aimed the pole low on purpose. The other person still caught it and threw it back, hitting Voice in his helmet. Damn them. They did that on purpose! I¡¯ll KILL them! He didn¡¯t let his temper show. He went back to the beginning and tried again after his mana healed. He decided to dodge, duck and try to jump over the other poles. The others seemed pumped to hit Voice after what the last pair did. Voice¡¯s anger only increased. His instinct told him that the first pair was throwing it low as well. He did a heavy, ungraceful, jump over it. The second person threw his at an angle. It went from above the man¡¯s head to the other¡¯s feet. Voice deftly dodged out of the way by angling his body to match the pole. He stretched his arms out as if to balance himself, angled one towards the man¡¯s head, and the other towards the woman¡¯s, who was catching it, feet. The pole flew harmlessly over him. He quickly jumped up to the third group. This person deliberately threw it at Voice¡¯s face, so it was an easy dodge. Voice leaned back a few inches and the pole passed harmlessly in front of him. The last group threw the pole with a spinning arc, right at Voice¡¯s stomach. The only way he could see to dodge was to hit the floor, but that would give them another opportunity to surely hit him. Since he couldn¡¯t jump over it he fell to the ground. The next second the pole was flying straight at him, not to the other side, to him. It was angled to hit his head. He moved his head to the side. Somehow the man on the right side had gotten another pole. He threw it at Voice as well. Within seconds Voice had several poles flying at him from all directions. The pole throwers were going all out. How many poles do they have in their inventory? Voice thought Master Blackhand would come put a stop to this all, but all he did was calmly watch. Voice spent the next ten seconds dodging the poles while trying to get up. As soon as he was hit he saw a fog dissipate. Where did the fog come from? Master Blackhand smiled at him, a knowing menacing smile. He noticed everyone was staring at him in awe. Voice was upset that he had been tricked, but quickly noticed a situation could take advantage of. Illusions weren¡¯t real. He didn¡¯t really get hit. He scrambled the last few feet and made it past the throwers while the stood shocked. His master was frowning now, but didn¡¯t stop him so he continued on to the cliff looking thing. He rested until his magic and stamina were back. He used instinct every step of the way. Resting after each usage. He would grab the handhold, rest, then continue on. The cliff seemed to go on forever. Every time he pulled himself up he would look up and seem no closer to the top. His distance from the ground was steadily increasing though. I might not get this chance again! I am not going to waste it damnit! He struggled with every move he made. The first quarter of the climb had been relatively difficult, but after that he had to stretch, and twice jump, to reach the next handhold. He was forced to take longer and longer breaks, for some reason his stamina regen was slowing as he got closer to the top. He failed to make it past the halfway mark. After he fell a cushion of air caught him. He went to bed after that. He still had tomorrow and the next day to finish it, and he really needed a break. The next day he came back. He had borrowed books on how to climb cliffs and other things so that if he failed tonight he could succeed tomorrow. He managed the tires with ease. The first wall still presented a bit of a problem, but after a few attempts he made it up. The pole throwers were throwing the poles in intricate ways, most likely to slip Voice up. Voice used his instinct to dodge them. The fourth pair managed to hit him squarely in the chest. He started over, going through the tires and wall again. The second time he tried to get past the pole bearers he did it. He also got a notice.
You have become surefooted. You are hampered 5% less in poor ground conditions.
He didn¡¯t pay attention to it at the time. The mud wasn¡¯t really the problem. He got to the cliff and started climbing it. He decided to test his instinct ability. It told him slightly different handholds depending on where he was on the foot of the cliff. He stood as close as possible to his original place and used it again. After being satisfied that he was in the exact position he let his magic regen and started up the cliff. This time he memorized every handhold and foot hold he used. By the time he made it slightly less than halfway he could no longer hold himself up. After regaining his magic and stamina he restarted the entire course. This time he did the entire thing up to the cliff perfectly. This obviously angered the pole throwers. He climbed up to where he fell from earlier while only using his instinct once, he had forgotten which handhold to use. He noticed that he felt a lot livelier than last time. Holding on to the cliff must really tire me out. As he ascended he again memorized each place he put his hands and feet. He fell when he had made it a third of the rest of the way. He continued this all day. By the time he had to leave he had made it to a maximum of 7/8 of the way to the top. He had gotten to that point several times, but his stamina never lasted beyond that. That night he read the books on cliff climbing. He also read a book on mountain climbing, just cause. He got a new skill:
Climbing Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% The climbing skill allows the user to climb with more success. Each level increases the climbing speed by 5%. Each rank in this skill reduces the energy required for climbing. You can climb without this skill, but will not be granted the speed bonus or energy reduction. To level this skill you must climb things. The higher and more treacherous the thing climbed, the more exp you get.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I guess it¡¯s a pretty good skill. I¡¯m not really going to use it a lot though¡­ Voice was happy he got a new skill, but at the same time he wished it was a better one. The next night he decided to forgo the rest of the obstacle course and just try climbing the cliff. The whole time he was watching his climbing skill exp. The more he climbed without stopping the quicker the exp grew. It seemed to be on a curve. If he only climbed for a minute he got almost nothing, by the second minute he could see the exp bar move slightly. By the fifth minute, the one he fell on, he had almost leveled up to level 2. He continued to climb the wall for the rest of the night. The entire night he climbed as high as he could, which was considerably further than before. By the end of the night he managed to climb all of the way up, before intentionally climbing back down. His climbing skill had jumped to level three during that day. He didn¡¯t know what he would have to do at the top of the cliff, but he figured it was impossible. He continued to train through the night. In the dungeon they would go through as much as possible each day. On the first day of the week they made it through four hallways. At each ¡®boss¡¯ door Voice would knock politely before coming in and killing the boss. After the fighting the bear for a while Voice realized the bear was just too slow to get any agility from it. I guess Steve just blows basic monsters out of the water. Even the wolf ¡®boss¡¯ wasn¡¯t fast enough to keep up with Voice any more. The first room in the next hallway had a squirrel. A squirrel? I kind of thought the animals would get harder to fight as we went. Just as that thought passed through his head the squirrel jumped at his face. If he didn¡¯t have his heavy armor his face would have been mauled. He tried to watch the squirrel¡¯s movements, but could only see a blur as it attacked. The other group took a while to kill the other squirrel, since EDI stayed out of it to let the rabbits get experience fighting smaller animals. Troy got the squirrel¡¯s attention, but Heather couldn¡¯t keep up with its speed. The only one that could actually land a hit was Rabs, even he wouldn¡¯t have been able to land any blows without Troy taking agro. The rabbits¡¯ took a few minutes to successfully subdue. Heather finally landed a hit after the squirrel bit Troy and Rabs jumped on it to hold it down. There was sickening ripping sound as Heather torn the poor beast¡¯s head off. She promptly ate the body. They were all watching Voice struggle after that. Voice was very upset. He wasn¡¯t getting damaged, but he couldn¡¯t manage to hit the damn thing. He decided that it was good training to try and hit the squirrel. The squirrel defied all attempts to hit it. He couldn¡¯t even hit it once the entire first day. He had the others defeat the other rooms. When they reported that they made it to the boss door he had them kill the squirrel he was working on, then he went to fight with it. His staff could not keep up with the squirrel. He managed to hit it once, but that was complete luck. He couldn¡¯t go to the next hallway until he killed that squirrel, but he wanted to train on it. Eventually he had his entourage kill it, but only after several minutes of attempting to hit it. The next hallway had boars. Voice found the boars to be exceptionally easy to deal with. After two attacks from the first room¡¯s boar, both were charge, he noticed that the boar would start running with whichever side it would turn to gore with. Voice capitalized on that. When the boar would start running with its left foot Voice would dash to the right. The only attack it seemed to have was to gore. Voice made short work of the thing. After the third attack Voice took a small gamble. Voice dodged the boar¡¯s attack, then he bent his knees until his but almost touched the floor. With a sweeping motion he hit the back of both of the boar¡¯s hind legs. The boar¡¯s knees buckled, and Voice hit the beast in the back of the head. The boar started frothing at the mouth. Voice continued to mercilessly pound the boar into the ground. After several minutes of this Voice noticed there was nothing left of the boar except a bloody mound of meat. The next boars met the same fate. Voice didn¡¯t even wait for them to finish the level five boars before he knocked on the door to the boss boar and killed him. EDI was perplexed at why he kept knocking on the boss doors. She asked and was told, ¡°Well, if they keep their memories after coming back to life, then the knocking will scare them.¡± When he saw EDI didn¡¯t understand he sighed and continued. ¡°If we kill them every time they hear a knock they will start to associate the knock with death.¡± EDI exclaimed, ¡°OH! Like Pavlov!¡± ¡°Yes, I got the basic idea from him.¡± After that Voice went to do the obstacle course. The next day they flew through the first two hallways. At the squirrel one Voice told them to do whatever they wanted until he figured out the trick to their attack patterns. He tired up until he only had thirty minutes left. At the end he decided he would try to find some other way to read the squirrel. He could only block it if he used instinct. They went through the boars, and came to the next hallway. They had to kill foxes. Voice found it extremely hard to figure the foxes out. The foxes were identical to the wolves except they did not tend to jump to attack. Voice easily managed to parry and doge all of the attacks. He quickly grew bored and defeated the fox he was fighting. The boss fox put up a little bit more of a fight, but when the fox tried to bite Voice¡¯s throat he threw it against the wall with a swift smack of his staff. The fox¡¯s neck snapped instantly. He had leveled up to ten over the course of that day and the day before. At the end of the hallway was a door that said ¡®Welcome to level two.¡¯ For the next few days he just tried to continue to kill the squirrel. He equated dodging the squirrel to dodging Steve. Voice¡¯s seventh day went like this. One day Voice commissioned a tool from Evan. It was a simple crank attached to a metal slab about six inches long. It was over a bowl. It took Evan a few days, and about a dozen tries to make a good one. On the seventh day Voice asked if they had any peanuts. Evan and Elizabeth burst out laughing. They looked at Voice and realized he was serious. Evan said, ¡°Well Voice, peanuts are the main export of our kingdom.¡± He asked what they used them for. ¡°Most of the other kingdoms we have peace treaties with use elephants as modes of war transportation.¡± ¡°Is that all?¡± They looked confused but said yes. Voice smiled a smile you might see on a CEO that just bought out his biggest competition. He used the crank to crush some peanuts, and added a touch of honey to it. He showed them with the peanut butter he made. They like it. He then cut some bread and put the peanut butter on it.
You have invented peanut butter. You have gained 15 fame.
You have invented the peanut butter sandwich. You have gained 15 fame.
Elizabeth told him why she wanted his recipes. ¡°You see I sent all of your recipes to the Scholar¡¯s Guild. They patented them all. Evan sent in your pot and pan idea. Now no one can use those without your implicit permission.¡± ¡°What happens if they try?¡± ¡°They will inherently fail. They can¡¯t complete the process without your permission.¡± Voice was happy with that. In fact he was so happy he offered an idea to Lizzy. ¡°Why don¡¯t you use my recipes and yours, and open up a restaurant?¡± ¡°Can I¡­ Can I really use your recipes?¡± Voice nodded his consent, and saw a brief flash on Elizabeth¡¯s forehead. ¡°Thank you!¡± She said as she rushed up to him and hugged him. After that Voice went to train with Steve again. He once again got pummeled, but this time he almost dodged twice. When he got to the cave the group went through the bears¡¯ rooms. When they made it to the boss bear¡¯s room Voice didn¡¯t hear the familiar growl. Worried he opened the door thinking the bear was killed by someone else. The group saw the bear laying down intentionally trying to ignore them. As Voice approached he tried talking to the bear, thinking his idea might have gone wrong. ¡°Hey buddy, I came back to say hi today.¡± When the bear heard this it looked obviously uncomfortable. Although it might not have understood his exact words, it definitely knew who was talking. Voice went up to the bear and started to pet it. When the bear didn¡¯t throw him off he got a notice.
For being an animal tamer, and becoming close to a monster type you can become a monster tamer. If you become a monster tamer you will lose all animals you have tamed. You will instead be able to tame monsters. Would you like to become a monster tamer?
Uh¡­ Well shit, I never expected THIS! Of course I¡¯d want to tame monsters! But I put so much work into these damn rabbits! Voice thought it over while petting the giant bear. The bear would definitely be a better tank than Troy, but Voice would lose Rabs. Rabs didn¡¯t help much in the dungeon, but he was extremely helpful when attracting enemies. He made his decision.
You have become a monster tamer. You have lost all tamed animals.
¡°Show class: Monster Tamer.¡± Voice said expectantly.
Monster Tamer Level 1 This class levels up by one for every ten player levels. To increase the level you must have Leadership stat of (five x (current Monster Tamer level + 1) For being an animal tamer, and becoming close to a monster type you can become a monster tamer. You may tame any monster type you have formed a bond with. There are two types of bonds: compassionate bonds, and fearful bonds. You do not need to form bonds to tame monsters. Any monster you tame will keep its original stats, skills, and abilities. You have currently unlocked 1 type of monster to tame. Monster types: Bear type You may tame one monster for every Monster Tamer level. This class increases in levels as you increase in levels. You may evolve this class if you tame special monsters.
There are currently 1 Bear Monster in you vicinity. You may tame up to one monsters at this time. Please indicate which monster(s) you wish to tame.
(Author note* Yes I know it says are currently 1 and one monsters. I thought it sounded slightly more game like) He chose the only bear near him. As he did he realized something was happening. Troy, Rabs, and Heather started to glow. Above them showed a chain symbol being broken. Rabs and Troy looked at each other. He also got a notification at the same time.
You have gained knowledge of the Bear Language. You may now communicate to all bear type life forms.
Troy spoke to Voice. ¡°Master, your contract with us is broken. I have decided to go back to my family. You may come and visit if you wish.¡± Voice realized he would lose the rabbits but at least Troy still held some affection towards him. Troy left after he finished. Rabs spoke to Voice. ¡°Master, your contract with us is broken. I have decided to go back to my family. You may not come and visit even if you wish.¡± Voice was bemused by Rabs¡¯ response. He didn¡¯t really have any strong feeling towards the thing, but he did feel Rabs owed him for the food at least. Rabs left after he finished. Heather spoke to Voice. ¡°Master, your contract with us is broken. I have decided to forgo going back to my family. You may accept me as a pet if you wish.¡± Voice was confused by Heather¡¯s response. ¡°What do you mean? I¡¯m no longer an animal tamer.¡± EDI interrupted by tapping his shoulder. ¡°It seems like she wants to stay with you. Animals can choose to follow someone as their pet. Technically she wasn¡¯t your pet but your tamed beast before.¡± Voice didn¡¯t understand the difference. ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡± EDI continued, ¡°Well, pets don¡¯t get an equal share of exp, only twenty percent. And any items they pick up are automatically put into the owner¡¯s inventory.¡± Voice was more than just a little bit upset. ¡°WHAT!? You mean they have been leeching exp from me?¡± It was a good thing that the other rabbits had left. Voice wanted to kill them. He looked at Heather and tilted his head quizzically. ¡°So why do want to stay?¡± Heater had a slight blush come to her rabbit cheeks. ¡°Well, the food is better with you¡­¡± Voice let out a hearty laugh. ¡°Well¡± he tried to talk between laughs, ¡°At least I know where your loyalties lie.¡± His laughing fit had subsided. ¡°If you want to come with me then I accept.¡±
You have added Heather the rabbit as your pet. You may have ((charisma -+ user level) / 25) pets. Number is rounded up. You currently have 1 out of 1 pets.
Voice asked the bear its name. ¡°Master. My name Boris.¡± I guess bears aren¡¯t that smart. They went through the rest of the hallways judging the bear¡¯s strengths and weaknesses. No one attacked the other monsters until it was clear that the bear would lose. It might not have been smart, but it was an amazing fighter. They went through to the squirrels. While the bear killed all of the others Voice focused on one level one squirrel. He had decided yesterday to find a new way to block the squirrel. The squirrel jumped at Voice several times. He watched the squirrel¡¯s trajectory instead of trying to see its body movements. After only a few more jumps Voice had figured it out. ¡°EUREKA!¡± The group ran to his room. They saw a disturbing scene. The squirrel would jump to attack Voice, only to be smacked to the side by a laughing Voice. Voice was mercilessly force healing the squirrel before letting it attack him and knocking it aside. When he finally tired of it he killed the thing with a quick flick of his wrist. Snapping the squirrel¡¯s neck.
You have gained two wisdom for figuring out a method of defense for all of the monster on level one of the beginners dungeon.
You have gained four agility for utilizing a dexterous method of defense for all of the monster on level one of the beginners dungeon.
They went through the rest of floor one before calling it a day. Voice wanted to go to level two, but he didn¡¯t want to be tired before his bout with the obstacle course. He told EDI they should meet up again tomorrow if she had time, and instructed his rabbit and bear to slaughter as many monsters as possible in the woods. The tires didn¡¯t pose any problem. He climbed the rope wall with ease. The people with poles desperately aimed for him, only to be outmaneuvered by his giddy anticipation of conflict with Steve. He easily climbed the cliff face from memory. Steve was waiting with his two short swords. The area on top of the cliff was a perfect circle of 12 feet in diameter. ¡°Alright boy. You made it to me¡­ finally. Let¡¯s see if all that perk in your step has any way of helping you dodge me.¡± Voice was very confident at first. He looked not at what part of Steve¡¯s body was moving, but where he was aiming. That didn¡¯t help Voice dodge. Steve immediately saw through his idea and changed his thrust angle part way through. The smack almost knocked Voice off the cliff. Damn! I¡¯ll never beat the guy. Voice got back up and prepared for the next strike. Steve sent one sword towards Voice¡¯s shins, while the other attacked his neck. Voice thought to put his staff vertically to stop the swords, but they somehow flowed around his staff. Watching where the attacks were going wasn¡¯t helping any more than watching Steve¡¯s feet. That¡¯s when Voice had an idea. He watched where the next strike was going to go, then went to block it even as he looked at Steve¡¯s feet. I knew it! He moves his feet slightly when he changes where he will attack! Voice was again knocked down, but this time he got up with a smile. Steve was a little unnerved by the smile, but attacked anyway. Voice watched Steve¡¯s entire body. Not just which direction his arms were swinging in their attacks, but also the position of his feet, even the chest since it might indicate a change. He tried dodging several attacks, sometimes he used instinct sometimes not. He would duck and weave, but always got hit. Eventually he used instinct and followed the path it told him. It was very precise. It seemed the more information he had on a subject the better his instinct ability was. He put the butt of his staff on Steve¡¯s left knee, and pushed. At the same time he kicked backwards. Steve¡¯s swords whistled by where Voice had been standing just moments before. The audience suddenly started shouting and clapping. He got a notice, but before he could read it Master Blackhand was there the same instant. ¡°Voice, you have dodged one of Steve¡¯s attacks. That is no small feat.¡± Yeah, I got that. I witnessed it firsthand ¡°You see, Steve is the weapons master here. He is trained in all martial weapons. The fact that he missed is a great indication of your skill.¡± Voice was shocked, the old man was giving out some high praise. ¡°Thank you old man. You said you¡¯d train me if I dodged. When do we start?¡± Blackhand laughed. ¡°Start? Boy you have already passed the basic training with flying colors! If you want any more you will need to go to a complex set up for armor training.¡±
You have learned the skill heavy armor.
¡°Identify skill: Heavy Armor.¡±
Heavy Armor Current Level: Apprentice Level 25 Exp 0.00% By training in heavy armor you have learned the skill. Heavy armor now is like a second skin. When wearing heavy armor that weighs 50 lbs. or less, you do not feel the effects of wearing armor. Heavy armor now also adds an additional 10% to defense. To level this skill you must become more attuned to heavy armor. Proficiency in arms and armor may be trained by someone of higher skill level. In that case starting level and rank of these types of skills would be higher.
He also read his other notice.
For continued use of the Instinct ability it has evolved. You have gained the Sense ability.
Sense This ability allows the user to instinctively know the best place for a successful attack or block. As you use this ability it will: last longer, cost less magic, and raise the amount of information you get. Current Duration: 5 uses Current Stamina Cost: 50 magic, 25 stamina Current Information: Average
¡°Master, does that mean you won¡¯t teach me?¡± ¡°Boy, I will teach you all you want. First though, you have to come to my defensive training center. It is quite a ways from here. I am just here to visit an old friend.¡± He smiled as he said this. He also bid Voice to call up his map. He then marked the place where his training center was. It was far away. Really far. Voice decided to clean up his quests here before he left. ¡°Thank you master, but didn¡¯t you say I had to clear the dungeon? It might take a while.¡± ¡°Oh that, that was just to get you used to fighting in your armor. You can quit if you want to.¡± Voice heard a slight change in Master Blackhand¡¯s tone, so he said. ¡°Master I will defeat the dungeon.¡± Blackhand smiled and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Voice thanked Steve and jumped down to where the air cushion was. While he was leaving everyone was patting him on the back, and some where punching his armored arm. When he called Heather and Boris the bear back he looked through his inventory. He had several stacks of animal fur and meat. He gave out the meat, one third to Heather and two thirds to the bear. They both ate ravenously. He went back to Susan¡¯s and slept. It had been a very good week. Now all he needed to do was figure out how to gain the title of Mar¡¯s Chosen One.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMonster Tamer
Health200Mana390
Stamina290
Level10Current TitleBunny Lover
Health Regen/Sec2.0Mana Regen/Sec2.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.4
Strength29Agility24
Wisdom22Intelligence39
Endurance44Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma11Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety25Unused Stat Points55
Fame490
Skills Window
Identify Novice Level 9 Exp 21.11%
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Identify Skill Novice Level 6 Exp 42.28%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Critical Strike Novice Level 6 Exp 75.00%
Automated Novice Level 6 Exp 25.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 40.00%
Identify Compatible Skills Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 22 Exp 20.00%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 8 Exp 57.23%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light10
Dive 18: More Potions? Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice completed the entire first level of the dungeon. He learned the heavy armor and climbing skills. He beat the obstacle course, and finally dodged one of Steve¡¯s attacks. He also became a monster tamer. He gained a bear but lost Troy and Rabs. Also in chapter 11 the head priest said 80,000. Well it should have said 10,000. I blame Davros, the dark god of douche bags. The next day Voice sent out his animals and went for training in the morning by habit. Steve saw him and approached. ¡°You know Voice, the training is done.¡± Voice forgot that the old man wasn¡¯t here anymore. He quickly decided to get training for his staff. All he had to do was kiss up to the instructor a little. ¡°My training will never be done. Please will you teach me how to better wield my weapon? I feel inadequate with it. I believe one should be one with his weapon. I know that I should think of it as an extension of myself, but I cannot seem to do it. Please teach me.¡± Normally Steve didn¡¯t except any pupils, at least not until they had a decent proficiency in the weapon of their choosing. This boy could obviously wield a staff, but he was by no means trained for it. Steve ¨C Well he does have obvious potential. ¡°Alright, when do you want to start?¡± Steve was interested in how far this boy could go. ¡°Right now good?¡± Voice took out his staff. ¡°Sure, but take off your armor. I want you to get used to the staff as much as possible.¡± Voice regretted taking off his armor, but he realized he had to obey every command in order to get the highest rank upgrade when he got the staff skill. Steve turned towards the assembled trainees. ¡°LISTEN UP! TODAY WE ARE GOING TO PRACTICE STAFF ROUTINES! GET¡­ YOUR¡­ STAVES!!!¡± As the members rushed to get their weapons, Steve turned to ask Voice, ¡°So why a staff? I saw that you were doing ok blocking, but you would be better at blocking with a shield.¡± Voice thought about it for a minute before answering. ¡°Well I want to maintain a high amount of mobility in my armor.¡± Steve nodded and motioned for Voice to get next to the others. Each had a six foot staff, the same as him. They each held the staff in their right hands, about two thirds of the way up. He adopted the same pose. Steve shouted while getting into a positon similar to doing jumping jacks. ¡°START!¡± Everyone did the same. They are actually doing jumping jacks! Voice smiled in disbelief. He mirrored them. Whenever the students¡¯ hands were at the apex, they would hand off the staff to their other hand. From rest they brought both hands up above their heads, while putting both feet at should distance apart. They gave the staff to their left hand, then went back to rest position. They brought their hands up and gave the staff to the right hand. They did one hundred jumping jacks. Steve was calling out every one of them. As he counted higher Voice could feel his strength leaving him. I battled in a giant suit of heavy armor! Why is this tiring me out!? Voice¡¯s arms burned by the end of it. He wanted to drop on the ground, but the other students stuck their right hands out holding the staves. Voice forced himself to do the same. He started watching Steve for what to do. Steve was holding his staff in the middle with his right hand only, his hand was facing the floor. He also had the back of his left hand on top of his right. He briefly explained for Voice. ¡°What you are going to do is rotate the staff clockwise. Skip your hand once, then hand it off to the top hand. Put your bottom hand facing down again. Rotate, skip, catch it and face your top hand up.¡± Voice tried and dropped the staff the first time. Blood rushed to his face in embarrassment. He retrieved it and tried again. This time he managed to get the hang of it. He nodded to Steve and Steve had the group do the same. They started slow, but quickly gained speed. It was only for about a minute, but Voice¡¯s forearms burned like fire afterwards. Voice hadn¡¯t felt this way since high school. Why did they make this world feel so real? They could really dial it down. Next Steve had them do squats with the staves. The squats they did had them put their legs far apart and touch their butts to the ground. When they would go down they would touch the butt of the staves to the ground. They would alternate between hands. Of course Voice couldn¡¯t do this, but instead of giving up or making a fool of himself, again, he just did what he thought he could. They did dozens of squats. Voice did all of them, but only a handful of them the right way. Steve looked disapprovingly at Voice, ¡°If you are going to do this I expect you to do it right. NOW, AGAIN!¡± Voice continued doing squats until he could no longer stand. The other students were doing other forms of training while Voice rested. Someone brought him a bowl of lily stew. He thanked them and devoured the disgusting stuff. When he was done Steve had him do several different warm up exercises. Voice did many variations of the squats and staff twirls. He twirled the staff with one hand, two hands, and behind his back. He did this until he could no longer move. At that point it was about two in the afternoon. Voice left his armor at the dojo. Voice sent a private message to EDI saying he couldn¡¯t go to the dungeon right now. He went to the temple of Mar. When he got there he saw a long line of people. All of them had some sort of wound. I guess the plants are working. He bypassed the line. People were upset at first, but they quickly made way once they realized he was the Blessed of Mar. He went inside and was greeted by the same priest as he always was. ¡°Hello! Voice! Thank goodness you¡¯re here!¡± The priest quickly took him to the back of the chapel. Voice didn¡¯t like being pulled, but he allowed the priest to lead him since he needed Mar to like him. ¡°We tried re planting the some of the seeds, but we couldn¡¯t extract them as well as you and most died. Can you help us?¡± Voice smiled a benevolent smile. ¡°Of course. Send the people away for the day, and show me to the garden.¡± The priest motioned to the door a few feet in front of them, and went to the group outside. Voice entered the garden area. It was in a different area than before. When he opened the door he was amazed. The new herbal garden had several dozen yards of land that was ready to have plants inserted. There was a small fence separating the left and right sides. The right side had a lot of common weeds, the weeds almost went all the way to the back. The left side had about sixty or so green healing herbs. By the time Voice had finished examining the area the priest returned. Voice was looking at the dirt in the ground to see whether or not it was good for planting the healing herbs. The priest put a hand on Voice¡¯s shoulder causing him to jump a little. ¡°The Green Healing Herbs may only take a day to grow, but we can¡¯t keep up with the needed supply. Each leaf gives between one and five seeds, but most of them are destroyed in the process of extraction. Can you just help us get some of the seeds out to increase our garden size?¡± The priest had a slightly expectant tone in his voice. Voice patted the ground. ¡°I¡¯ll try to do better than that. Let me harvest these plants, I¡¯ll be back later tonight.¡± The priest looked worried but consented. After harvesting all of the plants he went to Susan¡¯s true lab. He started dissecting the healing herbs for the seeds. He grouped seeds from each healing herb together. There were sixty piles when he was done. That did not include the seeds he already had. He did the same with the common weed. He first used some of his stash of healing seeds and common weed seeds to make a potion. The result was a useless potion that did nothing. He poured the potion in the vat. He then used a healing herb seed and the seed head of the common weed tuft to make a potion. It made an extremely weak healing potion. Voice smiled, knowing his alchemist¡¯s book was being updated. He got several pouches from Susan. He went back down and started using the seed heads and healing herb seeds to make potions. Each pile had an average of six seeds, so he decided you probably only needed three to make the potion. He used one seed from three different pile and one seed head to make the potions. He used different piles to observe the power of the seeds. He also used exactly six critical strikes per potion. The potions¡¯ potency was increased by three hundred and sixty percent from the skill alone. With the basic increase of the critical hit, and his bonus to potion making it totaled to a massive average potion power of 223.2 each. It only took him a minute and ten seconds to make each. He spent more time, but after six critical strikes it seemed to stop adding power. The last half of the potions even had 260. After he had used one from each of the piles he started to combine the piles in different orders. In the end he had 72 potions made, and 144 seeds left. He had hundreds of common weed seed heads left, and dozens of bags common weed seeds. He determined which potions were the most potent and found which seeds were made to use them. When he found the most powerful 24 plants he separated those seeds. He got a notice after separating the seeds:
For researching the power levels of many items you have gained the Sense Potency skill.
¡°Identify Skill: Sense Potency.¡±
Sense Potency. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows the user to sense the approximate power level, or player level, of the target. This skill can only be used on enchanted items, and players or npcs with levels. Levels in this skill increase the range at which you can use it. Ranks in this skill increase the amount of information on the power level you gain. To level this skill you must Sense the potency of things.
He automatically went into skill fusion mode. The two skills it fused with were: identify, identify skill, and automated. His skill fusion was too low to fuse it to the possible skills: skill fusion, and deception. The skills he got were:
Sense Skill Potency. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows the user to sense the approximate level of a skill being used. It does not identify the skills effects. Levels in this skill increase the range at which you can use it. Ranks in this skill increase the amount of information on the skill you gain. To level this skill you must Sense the potency of skills.
Automatic Sense Potency. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% You will automatically sense the potency of enchanted items, and player levels. Levels in this skill increase the range at which you can use it. Ranks in this skill increase the amount of information on the power level you gain. To level this skill you must Sense the potency of things.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Inspect. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you identify enough skills to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Identify skill: Inspect.¡±
Error! You do not have the ability to use Identify Skill. You must obtain the Identify Skill to use it.
Voice didn¡¯t really understand which group skill he created. He couldn¡¯t use identify skill anymore. Something had to have gone wrong with this fucking game! He was about to log out and contact customer support when he realized that identify skill must have been fused to make inspect. ¡°Inspect: Inspect.¡±
Inspect Current Level: Novice Level 6 Exp 18.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, and Sense Skill Potency. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯
He immediately said, ¡°Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡± Suddenly everything in the room had a small read dot on it, even he did. He looked at the dot on his chest.
Voice0fReason: Level: 10 Class: Monster Tamer Current Title: Bunny Lover Permanent Title: Blessed of Mar.
It wasn¡¯t a lot of information, but if he could use this on other players he could easily find their weaknesses. Voice¡¯s face went into a wicked smile. He started laughing. In fact he couldn¡¯t stop. That DH is trying to hide his class! All I need is one look at it to see it! ¡°AHAHAHAHAHA!¡± He rolled on the floor for several minutes. He was beyond happy. He looked at several object and gained some exp for the skill. He looked at everything for an instant. That was all he needed. Once he looked at the red dot the info appeared. It wasn¡¯t a lot of info, and it disappeared once he looked away, but it was much better than a few minutes ago! The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. He looked at the seeds he had left and sorted them into the actual best 24. He was almost completely right with his method though. He dried 48 potions with his special pan. After fusing the potions his key to alchemy skill had increased to level nine. He used two dried powders and one healing potion plus three seeds to make the new potions using alchemical fusion. The new potions healed an unbelievable amount. He had 24 potions that each healed an average of 2000 hp, and the 24 most powerful seeds. He inspected the potions.
Over Potion *Legendary
Material QualityLowWork QualityMaster
Base Restoration55
This potion was created by the amazing alchemist Voice0fReason, who specializes in Green Healing Herbs. This is potion has exceeded the bounds of what most people thought possible with these ingredients. It is an almost unbelievable feat. You have managed to extract all possible power from the Green Healing Herbs without magical or divine assistance. This potion was made by a master craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers. Each of these items can be sold as a legendary item.
You have gained the title Master of the Green Herb. You not only have all knowledge needed to make the best Green Healing Herb potions, you have invented new ways to use that knowledge. When this title is equipped most alchemists will want to research with you. They will all want your recipe for the potion. Some Novice alchemists will wish to train under you. You may accept up to 2 apprentices at a time. This total counts apprentices from other skills. You gain 100 fame from earning this title. Your Alchemy skill has been increase to the next rank.
For increasing the sub-skill alchemy in rank, the Group skill Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy has risen in rank to 15.
When Voice saw this he thought, WHAT THE FUCK!?!? HOW THE HELL ARE THEY THAT GOOD? Voice collected himself enough to think it over. Ok, I have a really high critical strike ability. And my bonus from Herbology is increased since my skill fusion. I guess that¡¯s what did it. But DAMN! This is going to give me some fucking POINTS with Mar. While reading his title he was pleasantly thinking about how nice it was. Holy shit! Dat title though! I can¡¯t believe my key to alchemy leveled up to fifteen because of that! Oh man! I am SO going to master other plants! And I can sell them as legendary items!? Shit maybe I should keep a few. He put the rest of the plants into the vats, then he left for the priest. He was giddy the entire time. His day couldn¡¯t possibly get any better. He got to the chapel, and was met by several priests including the Head Priest. The head priest spoke to Voice. ¡°I was told that you were trying to help up with the potion shortage.¡± The high priest looked cautiously at Voice. ¡°Did you manage to solve our planting problem?¡± Voice shook his head but said, ¡°No but I have the twenty four best seeds.¡± The head priest looked aghast at Voice. ¡°Only 24? You took sixty!¡± Voice interrupted the man before he said anything worse. ¡°I know, but I can show you how to properly seed the leaves, and these 24 were the most potent.¡± The priest looked extremely regretful towards how he acted. Seeing this as an opportunity to get in good with the guy he said, ¡°Hey, don¡¯t worry about it. I took hundreds of precious items from Mar, and only returned with 48.¡± The priest leaned his head to the side in confusion. Voice opened his backpack and produced 20 legendary healing potions. He accidently took out all 24. He acted like it was intentional, and said, ¡°So I need the biggest vat of purified water you can get me.¡± Several priests went to obey the order as the head priest and the welcoming priest came over and asked to see the potions. Voice relented them. The two priests gaped at what they saw. The auras of these potions were the same color as the beautiful skin of Mar. The head priest made a deep bow as he said, ¡°You are truly worthy of Mar¡¯s love.¡± Voice thought it was a good idea, so he quoted the priest earlier. ¡°Blessed be the people, by the most holy Mar. Amen.¡± The other priests repeated his chant. When the priests returned they were followed by six men carrying a giant metal cylinder. The head priest gestured towards the tank. ¡°I had that made last time you gave us a donation.¡± He smiled as he said this. ¡°I had a hunch that you might bring us more in the future. This thing can hold up to 100 gallons.¡± The priest beamed. Voice quickly processed the healing power of his potions if diluted by that. Each potion filled about a tenth of a gallon give or take. That meant he had 2.4 gallons of healing potions. If they were diluted that¡¯d heal about 480 points per gallon. That¡¯s still a pretty big amount of healing. I don¡¯t care, as long as I get my reward. The tank was filled almost to the brim with water. Voice poured his potions in. He immediately told the priests to follow him, he made sure not to wait for a notification. ¡°I will show you all how to properly take the seeds out of the leaves tomorrow when they have grown. Today I will show you the best places to plant these.¡± He spent the next hour showing each of the priests how to look for good planting soil. He also told them that they should start buying some manure since it would make the plants healthier. After the hour was up all 24 of the seeds were planted. When he was done he saw the head priest talking with someone. He couldn¡¯t really see the woman, but he could tell she was beautiful. The head priest walked over to him, and silently led him inside. The woman had already left. They eventually arrived in the head priest¡¯s office. The priest opened the door, ushered Voice in, and then left. It was a small stone office. It had a desk, three chairs, and a window. The only real d¨¦cor it had was a bookshelf lined with tomes on the religion of Mar. The beautiful lady was sitting in a chair. Voice couldn¡¯t see her very well even though he was so close. He thought it out rationally. If he couldn¡¯t see her up close, but somehow knew she was beautiful, she have had some high level magic on her. He decided to go with a gamble. If he lost he might make her mad, but if he won he might gain a little more of the lady¡¯s favor. He knelt and said, ¡°Blessed be the people, by the most holy Mar. Amen. How may I serve you today, most Holy Mother?¡± The woman smiled. He could tell because her aura seemed to fade enough for him to see her. He realized the reason he couldn¡¯t make out her details was because of the pink haze surrounding her body. When it thinned he could see her perfectly. Mar spoke to Voice. Her voice was like that of a thousand beautiful angels singing out. It was a perfect chorus of melodies. ¡°Hello there my Blessed One. Rise you need not kneel for me.¡± She extended a hand to help him up. He took her hand and, head still bowed, kissed it as he would a princess or queen. Mar blushed slightly. He got a notification that he waved away. ¡°Please my lady, I could not rise when one so fair may be tainted by the gaze of an unworthy follower.¡± She smiled, and suddenly he was in a chair beside her. ¡°Well now, I didn¡¯t know you had a silver tongue.¡± She took one of Voice¡¯s hands in her own. ¡°I need your help. I¡¯ve decided that you are truly one that wishes to help my cause. If you agree you could save thousands of lives. Please say yes.¡± After a few moments to collect herself she continued. ¡°I wish for you to be my Champion in the Ether Realm. I¡¯ve seen the things you¡¯ve done for my church, and I have seen how you handle yourself in battle. If you were to be my champion I¡¯m sure you would win. In addition to the boons being the champion of a god grants, I will grant any one wish.¡± ¡°Of course I¡¯ll help, my only wish is to gaze upon your divine beauty. If I could have that I would be the happiest man alive.¡± Mar¡¯s pink aura turned a deeper shade as she blushed from head to toe. Is that even possible? (It is if the almighty author decides it)
You have accepted this quest. Success: Defeating Davros¡¯ Chosen One in a duel to the death in 12 days. Difficulty: Difficult Failure: Not defeating Davros¡¯ Chosen One in a duel to the death in 12 days. Reward: Spending an afternoon with Mar. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Mar and all of her followers, as well as her followers¡¯ eventual death.
What shitty rewards. Oh well the head priest guy gave me the same quest and I get really good rewards from that one. As he thought this Mar disappeared, and the priest came in. ¡°The great goddess Mar has bid me give you this.¡± The head priest offered a necklace to Voice. ¡°Thank you I will gladly accept all gifts from her beautifulness.¡± When he was done he went to the dojo. He looked at the pop ups he got earlier, and at the necklace. He had gained 25 piety and 50 fame from becoming Mar¡¯s Champion.
Many Blessings of Mar (major) For continued good faith towards the goddess Mar you have been granted her blessing. At this time you can cast High level priest spells. Mar rewards your faith with a token of her power. You have gained 15 affinity to light. If you continue to show good faith you rewards will increase.
For having 25 Light affinity you can procure a light fairy in the mage¡¯s guild.
For flattering a goddess you have gained the flattery skill.
¡°Inspect: Flattery.¡±
Flattery. Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By using your words to make others look better, you have learned the flattery skill. Each level in flattery provides a 1% chance that your flattery will be accepted by common folks, furthermore each level grants a .5% chance that your flattery will be accepted by nobles. For every rank you increase your flattery skill you will be able to gain bonus flattery abilities. To level this skill you must successfully use it to flatter people. While in battle you may convince enemies not to attack by flattering them.
¡°Inspect Amulet.¡±
Amulet of Mar *Artifact
This amulet was crafted in the Realm of the Gods. This amulet belongs to Mar. Invoking the prayer of Mar while indicating an ally, whose health has reached zero within the last five seconds, will revive that ally with 1 hp, 0 stamina, and 0 mana.
Holy Mother of Jackpots! Even if it¡¯s only one hp, this is amazing! I wonder if Davros would give me something better if I betrayed her. I should find out. Having two godly items would be nice.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMonster Tamer
Health200Mana390
Stamina290
Level10Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.0Mana Regen/Sec2.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.4
Strength29Agility24
Wisdom22Intelligence39
Endurance44Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma14Compassion35
Leadership36Logic12
Piety50Unused Stat Points55
Fame490
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 82.50%
Flattery Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 7 Exp 10.00%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 40.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 22 Exp 20.00%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 7 Exp 11.43%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light25
Dive 19: Staff Skills Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice started training with his staff, and only got to do warm ups with it. He also made some super potions for the temple of Mar. He became Mar¡¯s Champion, and thought about how to become Davros¡¯. Chapter 19 very minor spoilers Spoiler : Also, I got the idea for the staff spinning from this guy. Check him out. Like his stuff if you think he¡¯s cool. I thought he was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDKU-D4tq3 For the rest of the night Voice practiced on his staff skills. Well¡­ he actually just did more warm ups. Steve didn¡¯t teach him anything. He just had him do jumping jacks, hand twirls, and squats. Voice alternated between these exercises for the entire night. By the time he left he could barely even walk. He didn¡¯t even bother to don his heavy armor. The heavy armor training didn¡¯t even tire me out this much! These are just exercises, why are they so exhaustive? The next morning he went to the library. He checked out some books on staff fighting techniques. Steve might not teach me, but I¡¯ll be damned if I don¡¯t learn how to fight. I don¡¯t fucking care if I ¡®need the basics first¡¯. Voice was getting worried that he might not be able to defeat Davros¡¯ champion. Although it won¡¯t matter if I become his champion. Lydia greeted him when he came in. Voice would check out books in the morning, and read them over the day. She had no idea how he could read so much while doing all of his training. Susan was telling he all about it. Susan was very happy to know someone like Voice. She would always wax and wane about all of Voice¡¯s good points. She was especially excited that he had donated all of his master quality potions to the church of Mar. She was a very deep adherent of Mar. She believed in absolute love for all creatures equally. Voice had planned to get some more spells, for free preferably, from the priests after this. He asked Lydia, ¡°So why do magic books disappear after you read them?¡± Lydia straightened in her chair. ¡°Well normal books, like novels or skill books, just show you the information. In the case of skills they just detail how to perform the skill. Spell books directly go into your body opening a pathway to the Ether Realm. When you take the magic in the book into yourself, you are taking a bit of the Ether Realm into yourself. That¡¯s all I know. You should ask a mage for more information; they¡¯d probably know more.¡± Voice didn¡¯t care that much. He decided to return inside the book ¡®General knowledge of the unknowable¡¯ since he was only allowed to renew it once, and it had already passed the first two week span. He wanted to go after training. He might not like the training, but he knew there was some purpose behind it. He also decided to get some free healing books before going in. He had less people this time, and didn¡¯t want to be overwhelmed. After checking out the books he recalled Boris and Heather. He had gained a few wolf pelts, and a monkey tail. He told them told them to gather as many vegetables from the plains and near the forest as possible. Voice dumped the loot on Evan as per usual. Evan¡¯s smithy had started to look much nicer from the time Voice got here. It probably has to do with me giving him my pelts all the time. Well if I can get better free stuff in the long run I¡¯m ok with it. He decided on a game plan for getting the free books. He took his pot from Susan¡¯s, and all of the wolf meat he had gathered from his pets¡¯ training. When he arrived at the chapel he saw that there was almost no line. He went up to Priest number one, the one that always greets him. ¡°Hello there priest! Mar must have blessed the chapel for it to quickly heal the people of this town. Just yesterday the line to request healing was long enough to wrap around the city.¡± The priest gave a deep bow to Voice which caught him a little off guard. ¡°Yes, it is thanks to Mar¡¯s blessings and your potions that the city is healed.¡± Voice nodded his head then asked, ¡°I need more healing spells if I am to defeat Davros¡¯ Chosen. I do not have enough money to buy any, so I was wondering what I could do in order to earn them.¡± The priest thought for a moment. ¡°Well, Mar does except devotion for the books. If you do things that would normally bring you closer to Mar you earn piety. You can exchange that piety for things from the church if you wish. Of course the more pious you are the more you can exchange for. There are five ranks of spells. You can currently cast the first four. Of course the higher level priest spell you wish to cast the higher piety you have to have.¡± Shit, so I have to have a minimum piety level. If I cash it in I can get a more powerful spell, but not be able to cast it. The priest continued. ¡°Every rank in spell costs three times as much as the last. The Novice rank only costs three piety. You need at least ten piety to cast Novice spells. Every rank above that requires three times as much. At this point you can buy twenty points worth if you wish to cast Apprentice level spells.¡± Voice nodded. He already had a way to increase his piety so that wasn¡¯t a problem. ¡°Let me see your selection of Apprentice and Novice books please.¡± The priest slightly bowed his head while he led Voice to the same book shelf as last time. As the priest took books from it didn¡¯t seem to lose any. The two novice books the priest held out were: the HoT (Heal over Time), and the healing rate buff. The apprentice books the priest held out were: Quick Heal, Large Heal, Lasting Heal, Deep Heal, Hp Buff, and Damage Reduction.
Quick Heal Heals the target¡¯s health by ((10 + .5*light affinity) * Aura). The base spell cost for this spell is 25 mana. The healer must touch the target for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Hands to learn this spell.
Large Heal Heals the target¡¯s health by ((40 + light affinity) * Aura). The base spell cost for this spell is 60 mana. The healer must touch the target for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Hands to learn this spell.
Heal Over Time Heals the target¡¯s health by ((40 + light affinity) * Aura) over the course of five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 35 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective.
Deep Heal Heals the target¡¯s health by ((60 + light affinity) * Aura) over the course of five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 50 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Heal Over Time to learn this spell.
Lasting Heal Heals the target¡¯s health by ((100 + light affinity) * Aura) over the course of ten seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 50 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Heal Over Time to learn this spell.
Healing Rate Buff Increases the target¡¯s healing rate by ((10 + light affinity) * Aura) percent for five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 40 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective.
HP Buff Increases the target¡¯s health by ((50 + light affinity) * Aura) for one minute. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Rate Buff to learn this spell.
Damage Resistance Decrease all direct damage to the target by ((10 + light affinity) * Aura) for one minute. The base spell cost for this spell is 200 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective. You must know Healing Rate Buff to learn this spell.
Voice was quite intrigued by the different spells here. He realized they had a skill tree system for the magic. That means they probably have something really good at the end. He instantly decided to by the HoT and Healing Rate spells, since they seemed to be required for two thirds of the healing spells. He had 47 piety left thanks to his discount on the books. He could still use 17 more to get new spells to cast. Each apprentice spell would cost about 4.5 piety. If he bought four of them he would need to gain one piety to use them. So he needed a total piety increase of at least 27 to buy all of them. He bought three for now. Quick heal, Hp buff, and Damage Resistance. He started to auto read them while he asked the priest to help him set up for cooking outside of the chapel. First he asked them to get someone talented in fire and wind. He also asked for bread and cheese. He made sure to specify that the fire be big enough for his pot and his pan. The priest was confused but complied. The fire pit was set up with the help of some nearby guards. Basically all of the guards were devout believers of Mar. When the fire pit was done Voice asked for some water, a chunk of salt, a table, and a chair, then started cooking. He separated the many pounds of wolf meat into three piles. He looked at his inventory and noticed that there were 43 carrots, 30 radishes, about three dozen apples, two beehives, and a large deer. He was really grateful the deer went into his inventory as a pelt and deer meat. He later asked who got what. Heather got the carrots and radishes, and Boris got the apples, deer, and beehives. He had made sure to tell Boris to give all of the items to Heather so they would go straight to Voice¡¯s inventory. Voice started cutting the wolf meat. As soon as the water was boiling he put in the salt. After a few seconds he threw in the wolf meat. He quickly cut up several carrots and radishes. He threw them in as he cut them. He made sure to keep the pot a little high off the fire to not overcook it. A mage arrived when the smell just started drifting in the air. He wore billowing purple robes. He had short brown hair, and striking blue eyes. ¡°Yes? I was told by a priest you needed me for something? What¡¯s wrong?¡± The mage looked around worriedly. Obviously the priest didn¡¯t tell him Voice¡¯s idea. ¡°Nothing is wrong sir mage. I apologize for making you worry. I wished to know how devout you are.¡± The mage¡¯s face went from confusion, to anger. Finally it ended on an exasperated look. ¡°Look, I heard that the Chosen of Mar needed my help. I came over, but my time is not to be spent idly.¡± Voice smiled. He was filling his six bowls with the stew he made. ¡°I am doing charity in the name of Mar. I need your help. It might seem inconsequential to you, but what I ask can only be done by someone of your power. Please help Mar help the people.¡± The mage finally relented with a defeated look. ¡°Alright what do you need?¡± ¡°I need you to keep the temperature of the stew in these bowls the way it is. I also need you to make the smell of this stew waft as far away as possible. I want the whole city to smell it.¡± The mage looked like he was about to walk off, so Voice put a hand on his arm. Voice continued. ¡°Look, if you think this is a waste of your time I will serve you for an entire month. Starting from fifteen days from now. I have things I have to do for Mar and someone else before that.¡± The mage thought this over and agreed. A slave for a month was a good trade for a bit of his time. Voice asked the priests for more bowls and eating utensils. He also asked for plates. He just finished his second pot of stew when they returned with enough tableware to feed a small army. As he started his third bowl a peasant approached. The pitiful dirty peasant asked, ¡°Sir, what is it you are doing?¡± Voice replied by smiling while still making the stew. ¡°Well my good sir, I am making food to give those that donate what they can to Mar. Perhaps you¡¯d like a taste?¡± The peasant took a bite of the food Voice offered him. He quickly devoured the entire bowl. Voice took the bowl back and asked the priests to wash it and the spoon. ¡°That one was free. Next time you must make a donation inside the church.¡± The peasant nodded and ran off. He¡¯s probably telling all of his dirty peasant friends about my cooking! The man may have disgusted Voice personally, but he had to start getting the ball rolling on this whole thing. His plan was to get enough people to donate to the church to raise his piety stat. He didn¡¯t know if it would work, but it would definitely get him more cooking skill. The priests would probably also like him more. After he had finished his third pot of stew the peasant had returned with three others. They went into the church, and several seconds later returned. Voice nodded to the priest. The priest gave each one of them one bowl of stew. They ate it. The stew was delicious to say the least. The pot and pan had stackable cooking bonuses, meaning that any % bonus from the cooking skill was also effected by the enchantment. At level 22 cooking skill, Voice¡¯s food was 3.15 times better than normal. As the three finished their bowls with content expressions others started arriving. That was the main reason for the mage. People would be curious as to where the delicious smell was coming from. They would gather and start a small crowd. Then people would keep coming to see what the smell was, but would also come to see what the crowd was about. As others came Voice gave them the same instructions as the first peasant. Donate for good food. One man out of the five there did. When he tasted the food he made his friends try it too. They all thought it was delicious and ate his entire bowl with him only getting a bite. All five went in to donate to get a bowl. Voice started cutting slivers of the meat and frying it on the pan. He added a few sliced carrots to the mix. When the meat was done he toasted the bread and cheese in the grease. It might sound bad, but it brought a perfect flavor to the bread. Somewhere down the line a priest had brought him eggs. He decided to fry those too. He made a few egg, cheese, and wolf meat sandwiches. He didn¡¯t gain fame from it this time though. He spent time equally between frying the food and cooking the stew. After only thirty minutes of cooking he could no longer keep up with the demand. There was a large line of people giving donations. They would wait until he filled the bowls, then let that many people in to donate. Word quickly spread around the city to the charity event. EDI heard about it and found her way there. She was amazed at the way Voice was constantly trying to improve people¡¯s lives. First with donating mass amounts of potions, then he became the talk of the town by becoming Mar¡¯s Chosen. Now he was donating food he painstakingly farmed in the forest. He wasn¡¯t even killing animals for the meat, just monsters that respawned. He was truly a kind hearted man. EDI decided to work on her fear of others. If Voice could see past the label of npc, then she could learn to accept other humans and join forces with them. She opted out of joining the line. She had seen Heather and Voice¡¯s bear out leveling every day. She decided to go out and do some leveling herself. She was determined to help Voice, so she couldn¡¯t be weak. Voice continued to cook oblivious to EDI¡¯s presence. He was quickly exhausting his piles of meat, but he had an enormous surplus of vegetables. He sent an order in the form of a message to his pet and monster. He told them to get more wolf meat. He noticed the meat occasionally jumped in quality. He had no hope of completing all of the orders anymore. By the time he ran out of vegetables he was making only grilled wolf meat and cheese sandwiches, and making wolf stew with apple slices in it. It would probably not taste very good, but since he had the huge bonus to taste it turned out slightly better than edible. They were good but lacked variety. It was already past noon. He had been making food for several hours. Since the priests accepted the donations after Voice was ready to give out the next batch of food, he got up and started packing. He looked towards everyone in line. He gave an overly humble bow to the. ¡°Good people! I am loathe to say, but I must depart! Mar, may her name be praised, has tasked me with defeating Davros¡¯ Champion! I must train! TRAIN. TRAIN! I¡¯m sorry that you all waited here for so long. Give the priest you names, I will come to cook again in a two days at sunrise!¡± The people let out sighs of discontent, but they understood why he had to go. After all if Davros had his way all the people here would be killed. So they let Voice go about his training with high expectations of the future. As the crowd was giving their names to the priest Voice took his bowls and spoons, they looked different than the ones the priests used, and washed them with the pot and pan. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. After washing them he recalled Heather and Boris to see how effective the hunting was. While he was waiting he checked how much piety he had gained.
You have gained 15 piety for raising so many funds for the church of Mar.
You have gained 5 compassion for raising so many funds for the church of Mar to use for the poor.
You have leveled up the Deception skill to level 9 for deceiving so many as to the reason you are giving food.
He also had been checking his cooking as the day wore on. It quickly got to novice 24, but stopped after it got to 99.99%. I probably need to do some training or something like with the heavy armor. He went back inside and bought a fourth apprentice spell. He bought Deep heal. If all the spells are on a skill tree I should have at least one of each apprentice level. He went to the training hall next door and did warm ups until they got there. When he arrived there he had finished reading the HoT spell. He had been doing the warm ups for about twenty minutes when they arrived. He talked with them a bit while resting. They looked a bit word down. They each had several cuts and bloody bits on their bodies. Heather¡¯s entire face was coated in a thick red paste. He was breathing heavily since he was exerting himself to the max. As he had been training his agility had increased by one. ¡°So *breathes* what happened *deep breath*. So what happened when you guys went out hunting?¡± Voice was actually a little concerned, not that he¡¯d admit it. These two had proved today that they could hunt for him without worry. He quickly healed them while Heather told the story. ¡°We started gathering the vegetables and stuff like you asked. Boris went into the forest to get what he thought was tasty. When you told us to kill more wolves Boris looked really happy for some reason. I was pretty happy too actually. Wolf meat is delicious. Anyway we first attacked a pack of five wolves. They put up a good fight, but every time they tried to attack Boris I would rip one of their throats.¡± Voice was actually impressed by the team work the two had shown. ¡°So you guys killed a lot huh? I noticed the quality of the meat jump a few times. Why was that?¡± By this time he had finished healing them both. He went and got some water for his pot. He heated it and began scrubbing the two with his shirt. These two deserve something nice. You know to keep up morale! Wait did I just say that to myself? He questioned why that happened, but since no one would know he just decided to forget it. She answered while being bathed. ¡°Well we eventually decided that the wolves we fought were too weak. They all had levels around 5, so we went a little deeper into the forest to get higher leveled ones. We found that after a certain range the levels began to be around 10. When Boris got to level ten we decided to go to level 15. We had a bit of trouble there so didn¡¯t go further.¡± Voice decided that the next day he would go hunting with them. After he had washed both of them he told them that they were free to do whatever. As long as they didn¡¯t get bloody again. He started doing the warm ups again. He added in one that was still the staff spinning, but with his left hand. At first it was quite difficult, but within a matter of minutes he was able to maintain a decent imitation of when his right hand was on bottom. Voice continued to do the warm ups for another hour. After that time had passed he got a notice saying the book ¡®Healing Rate Buff¡¯ had finished. I¡¯m learning the healing spells a lot quicker now. Voice thought. He mumbled to himself, ¡°I guess you learn the first magic of a type you learn the others a lot quicker.¡±
You are the first player to have reasoned out the learning curve for magic. For being the first player to have figured this out you have gained 2 intelligence.
Once he stopped to look at the notice Steve came over. ¡°Alright Voice, I see you doing the exercises. You¡¯ve gotten pretty good at them. Usually it takes newbies a long time to get used to it. I heard that only the other-worlders could learn new skills that fast.¡± Voice didn¡¯t know if he was learning fast or not, but he was certainly gaining a nice amount of stats. Just in the last hour he had gained 2 endurance and 3 more agility. Steve took him to the side and showed him the next step in his training. ¡°This is the second staff spin you are going to do.¡± Steve held his staff on his right side with his right hand facing up. His pinky faced forward. Like this he started to move the staff in an upwards arc to the left. When the staff made it a little past his left shoulder he made a semi-circle with it, his hand was now facing down. His pinky was still leading as he made an upwards arc that ended at the right side of his body next to his right shoulder. He made another semi-circle and repeated the process a few times. His body was swaying the entire time. The weird part was that he moved his abdomen more than his arm. The arm was basically just turning and guiding the staff. Voice watched all of this with apt attention. He made sure to get every detail. Once Steve had done that a few times he looked at Voice. ¡°Do that until you get tired. Then come see me again.¡± Voice did as he was told. He copied Steve¡¯s posture and movements. For five minutes he continued this. Once his arm started to feel like lead he switched arms. He did that arm for five minutes as well. He repeated this cycle with decreased reps each time. Eventually his arms felt like they would fall off. He placed his staff on the floor so he didn¡¯t have to hold it. He went to Steve. ¡°Master, I¡¯ve done the spinning.¡± Steve was occasionally sneaking glances at the boy. He was impressed by the sheer force of will he possessed. ¡°Start with the first spin. After doing that a few times, take the staff in your right hand. You will have your palm up, and your thumb will lead the way to the right. Then spin the staff so your palm does a 360 turn. Once the staff is facing upright you hand off the other hand behind your back. With the pink forward do another semi-circle, then bring the staff in front of you. Do the first spin I taught you a few times then repeat.¡± Voice did as he was told. It took him half a dozen tries to get it right. He couldn¡¯t do it quickly, but at least he could do it. After fifteen minutes of this he went back to his exercises. He did as many reps of each as he could. Over the course of the night Steve had him learn several different spins and moves. One such move was putting the staff in front of you with both hands palm down. You then circle the staff and twist one wrist. The end result was the staff being under one arm, with whichever arm it was under in front. You then did the same thing resulting in it being under the left arm. All in all it looked like a two handed version of the last technique. Voice had learned all of the magic of the books he bought. Thirty minutes before Voice usually went home Steve had him practice a ¡®sample spar¡¯ with another student. Steve walked him through what he needed to do. ¡°First you have the opponent. The opponent would attack high, then low, left side, right side, thrust, head sweep, leg sweep, spin attack, and end with three quick thrusts.¡± He slowly showed Voice each step. He went over the entire move set four times before he thought Voice was ready. Of course Voice was using Sense in order to know where to block from. The weapons master Steve thought a little bit better of Voice when he didn¡¯t have to point out where to block from. Voice bowed to his opponent and began. The opponent, Zander, held his staff with both hands in the middle. Voice did the same. Zander was an older boy. Probably sixteen or seventeen. He was probably one of the best students here. He was very toned; he could even have passed for a fitness nut back in Voice¡¯s world. Zander attacked. First he swung the tip of his staff at Voice¡¯s head in a downward arc. Voice blocked this by sliding his hands into a wider position and putting his staff sufficiently in front of his face. Zander then took the butt of his staff and brought it up in an arc towards the fork in Voice¡¯s legs. Voice quickly lowered his staff down to block it. He was slightly jarred from the impact though. The next second Zander¡¯s staff was headed for his left rib cage, using a vertical slash. Voice moved the part of his staff pointing left to point up, successfully blocking the attack. Zander brought the staff over his head in a circling motion and suddenly struck Voice¡¯s right rib cage. With a loud THWACK, Voice went to the floor. His eyes were swirling, but he managed to stay conscious. FUUUUUUUUUUUCK! Someone REALLY needs to tone down that mother fucking PAIN SENSER! The main problem with training weapons, or actually fighting, in DIVE was that the pain felt so real. Not many people would want to play a game where they could actually feel dying. Voice quickly healed himself. Gasping he looked at his opponent. Zander had a wicked smile on his face. I¡¯ve been learning for like two seconds Ass! Like to bully the weak? Voice decided to mark this man for the future. He might need a good beating. Voice got back up and returned to the first position. Zander repeated the strikes again. Voice repeated his earlier actions, this time however he made sure to block the right side strike. Zander looked miffed at this. Voice smiled angrily. Serves you right, Bioooootch! Zander thrust his staff at Voice¡¯s abdomen. Voice blocked by moving his staff in a single circle. He twirled his staff in such a manner as to push Zander¡¯s staff above his head. Zander was showing his anger now. He moved his staff to do a vertical sweep at Voice¡¯s head. Voice couldn¡¯t keep up with the movement, and was forced to use Sense. Without thinking about it he moved his staff up to a vertical position to the right of his head. Before contact was even made Zander was moving in to the leg sweep. Voice was frantic at this point. He moved his staff to the opposite side of his body since that is where he thought the swing would come from. He was correct, and only got slightly jarred from the massive strength of the blow. Zander smiled as he started doing the side spin Voice learned as the second spin. The only difference between Zander¡¯s spin and Voice¡¯s was the massive speed Zander spun at. Voice didn¡¯t even try to block it like he was supposed to. He was meant to do the double handed front spin. Instead he watched Zander¡¯s attack. After a few seconds that felt like hours, he noticed that Zander had a slight millisecond delay when he went from the top left arcing down to the bottom left. Voice started spinning his staff from side to side with both hands while backing up. Zander followed him. After two more cycles Voice inserted his staff in the hitch in Zander¡¯s spin. Zander¡¯s staff flew out of his hands. Voice smiled arrogantly. ¡°You should hold on to your weapons better. Losing a weapon in battle could cost you your life, you know?¡± Zander threw an angry glare towards Voice. Voice chuckled to rile him up more. Voice knew Zander was a much better staff master; but if you could find even one hitch in a pattern you could destroy the entire thing. Zander stalked over to his staff and got back into position. Everyone in the training hall was dead silent as they watched this newbie dig his own grave. Zander started doing the motions way too fast for Voice to keep up with. Voice¡¯s stamina had healed up a bit while Zander sulked. Even though Voice couldn¡¯t keep up with Zander¡¯s moves, he could use Sense to barely block them. He made sure to smile the entire time. Voice had enough mana, with his mana regen, to hold off eight attacks in a row. Unfortunately there were nine attacks, not to mention that the last attack was really three. Voice tried to know Zander¡¯s staff out of his hands again, but Zander had learned his lesson and kept far tighter control over his staff this time. Voice tried to block the three thrusts at the end. He managed to block the first one, aimed at his chest. The second one slipped past his defense, hitting him the stomach. The air was knocked out of him. Zander knew he had won, but felt he needed to drive the point home. He put all his strength into his arms and did the final thrust of the three. It was aimed for Voice¡¯s face. Steve saw fit to interfere seeing what Zander was going to do. He threw a chained sickle he had prepared beforehand, in case of something like this. The chain wrapped neatly around Zander¡¯s staff, stopping it inches from his face. By this point both boys were panting. Voice had the sheen of sweat around his entire body. Zander was sweating, but just a bit on his forehead. Voice collapsed when the chain wrapped around Zander¡¯s staff. Steve called to Zander. ¡°So this is how you prove to me you are ready for the weapons mastery test? You have been nagging me about how much you have prepared for it. You seem to forget that a weapons master should have just as much control over his mental self as his physical self. If either are not perfect you might as well be a fairy wielding a club!¡± Zander¡¯s glare towards Voice seemed like it would kill Voice at any second. Voice decided to quietly goad him a little more, and so whispered, ¡°Hey, it¡¯s not my fault you can¡¯t beat a newb without raging.¡± Zander looked VERY angry. Suddenly the anger vanished from him, and he smiled. He turned around and left, the sudden change in demeanor sent chills down Voice¡¯s spine. Steve looked at Voice disapprovingly. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t goad someone so young.¡± Voice was only a little bit older than the boy, but he understood. He bowed to Steve and left. He was dead tired. At the end of his fight he had gotten two notifications.
You suffering from exhaustion. All stats are decreased by 50%. You mind will seem to slow down until you rest.
You are famished. You will not recover stamina or health until you eat.
Even in his horrid state he had a brilliant idea. The system asked him several times if he was sure. Something about an ¡®unstable state of mind¡¯. He kept hitting yes until it worked. As soon as he got to Susan¡¯s he went to sleep. He didn¡¯t even see that Heather and Boris were in his room. His last thought before falling asleep was wanting to beat the snot out of that kid.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMonster Tamer
Health200Mana410
Stamina290
Level10Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.0Mana Regen/Sec7.7
Stamina Regen/Sec4.6
Strength29Agility28
Wisdom77Intelligence41
Endurance46Dexterity25
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma14Compassion40
Leadership36Logic12
Piety44Unused Stat Points0
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Deception Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Flattery Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 7 Exp 10.00%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 90.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 40.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 7 Exp 11.43%
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light25
Dive 20: His First Rage Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice created a ¡®for donations¡¯ style food stall. He bought a few healing books, learned from them, and got his butt handed to him during staff training. Susan¡¯s POV After Voice helped Susan learn chemistry she spent most of her free time doing experiments. She had learned a lot of interesting things. Like how some types of products could be made to burn hotter or longer with other things added. It didn¡¯t even need alchemy. Of course Susan saw the similarities between the two sciences. Susan had also been spending time creating a present for Voice. She knew he wanted to leave, but she would keep him here as long as possible. She just felt¡­ better having him around. Besides her old master no one had really been as talented as her in alchemy. Then along came this lad needing a bit of money, and BAM. He had learned more about the Green Healing Herb than she even knew. She wished she could go with him on his journey. She wanted to help him any way she could. It was amazing what he could do with just the Green Herb. The next rank in healing potions was the Red Bloom. It was a common ranked item, but couldn¡¯t be found near any cities. It needed a lot of natural energy to grow. Voice could find some if he went far enough into the forest, but he seemed like he had other important things to do. Susan wanted to spend time with Voice. She had even left him several notes asking if they could go around town. She had written and thrown away dozens until she wrote the right one. Susan decided to learn sewing from Elizabeth. It had taken a week, but she was fairly confident in her skills. She began sewing him an alchemy satchel. Every alchemist needed a place to put different seeds and plant products. Plus, the satchel she was making would be slightly enchanted by her friend. She would work on her chemistry during the day, and the satchel before going to bed. This was the first time she went out of her way to learn something for someone else. Normally she was too engrossed in her work. She spent a few long nights debating why she would go out of her way so much for this handsome man. She decided it was because he had helped her learn chemistry. But her feelings were more than that. It was like he was the only one that could ever understand her. She hadn¡¯t had any friends except Lydia and Elizabeth for a long time. Evan didn¡¯t really count since she didn¡¯t really find him interesting. She swore one night that she would do whatever Voice needed. She also started making some recipes she thought might help him as a person that can¡¯t deal a lot of damage. She even went so far as to get Evan in on it. Susan really liked Voice, but she didn¡¯t really fell romantic feelings towards him though. For some reason she never really found anyone romantically attractive. She went on a few dates with people, sure, but never expected or offered anything more. The only love in her life was her research. Her parents had died when she was young, she was seven. They had gotten a plague. At least that was what the military doctors said. They offered to take her with them when they left, but she declined. It turned out that what really caused the town to die was a bit of night blossom growing in their water supply. Night blossom was the deadlier cousin to nightshade. Susan had spent several weeks studying why she was left when the rest of the town was killed. She finally noted that the well water was murkier than it should have been. She got a shoddy rope from her parents¡¯ house. She climbed down the well and found the culprit. After finding it she extracted it for study. It was her first time doing any alchemy. It was a horrible failure, but she found out that it was a deadly poison thanks to the town elder¡¯s library. Many years later she would find that she had a natural immunity to most natural poisons. She started making healing potions at a fairly young age. Selling them to travelers that passed her village. Of course she was the only one in her village, but she still stayed. After a few years of self-study she had gained a bit of a reputation. She had a lot of trouble finding food at first so she mostly lived off of the plants she knew were good for eating. Some people saw that and took pity on her. They hunted in exchange for the potions she made. There were a few people that chose to stay in her village the first few years. She studied hard, harder than almost anyone studied at anything. She became so focused one alchemy it almost became an obsession. Eventually she left the village to go find an alchemist master to learn from. She left a village of thirty people. There were six small families, and a few hunters that decided to stay. When she left they were all disappointed. It was no exaggeration to say that she was the reason for the village existing. But she did leave, and eventually learned of someone would become her master. Her journey was long and arduous, but that¡¯s a story for another time. Elizabeth¡¯s POV Elizabeth was the daughter to a blacksmith. Her mother was a stay at home wife. Her parents had a wonderful relationship. All decisions on the family would have to be agreed to by both parties. The household money was taken care of by her mother since she was the daughter of a merchant. Her mother was a lovely woman. She was strict but always had compassion. She would often help the Chapel in doing charity work. Her father never did charity work, but would give opportunities of work to people in need. He would always pay with a room and food. If they did a good job they would also get some money. It¡¯s not that he was a miser or anything, but he believed you didn¡¯t need any more than food, a bed, and a family to be happy. Since he couldn¡¯t provide families for the men that asked for work he gave them the first two. Her mother often took ill. She would be bed ridden for days at a time. When Elizabeth was still a child she started to show occasional symptoms of the disease as well. Her father felt bad for her, so he accepted an apprentice. The apprentice would have to work, but her father thought maybe the two might hit it off and become friends. She never actually spoke to the boy though. She didn¡¯t have much contact with people outside her parents. A few months after the boy started his apprenticeship Elizabeth met a young girl that claimed to be an alchemist. They hit it off right away. She would come over to play, and often gave Elizabeth potions that seemed to make the pain go away for a while. When Elizabeth wasn¡¯t sick she would run and find the girl. The girl¡¯s name was Susan. Elizabeth thought it was a beautiful name. A year after she met Susan her father accepted another apprentice to his forge. The two girls went to spy on the new boy. Elizabeth thought the new boy, Evan, was rather scrawny to work at a smithy. They would often spy on the two apprentices. She noticed that the older boy would often have to help the younger one. Over the course of the next few years she had grown as close to Susan as humanly possible. She knew about Susan¡¯s dream of finding a master to learn under. So when Elizabeth¡¯s grandfather came into town one day with info on such a man she told Susan. Susan got ready to leave immediately. She stayed to more days, not because she had anything that she needed to do, but because she had a hard time leaving her friend. Eventually Susan¡¯s craving for knowledge got the better of her. She left, and the only other people her age Elizabeth was left to talk to were the two boys. Over the course of those few years she had started to see the boy, Evan, in a new light. He never quit, if he made a mistake he would fix it or start over and make the object without any mistakes. He was completely dedicated. She fell in love with him while Susan was away. It might have started with the need for social interaction that she now had none of, but that wasn¡¯t the entire reason. She introduced herself to the two boys. It took her several years to make Evan fall in love with her, but she did it. When Susan came back she was married to him. (¡°Eventually I met his daughter, and we fell madly in love. After graduating from my apprenticeship I asked for her hand¡± Quote from Evan lol). Voice¡¯s POV Voice woke up noticing many things at once. The first thing was that Heather and Boris were laying in his room, covered in blood. He pushed them awake with a quick kick to their sides gentle nudge of his boot. They woke with a start, instantly in fight mode. When they noticed Voice was the one that woke them they stretched and yawned. Well, Boris sounded more like a light roar. Voice was against animal abuse. Or any type of abuse really, but these were just pixels. Even if the bear were to die he would just come back. Voice only felt sympathy for them when other npcs could see. He would hate to get a bad rep over that. Of course he couldn¡¯t abuse them too much or they might decide to attack him. After they stretched Voice sent them out to continue hunting the wolves. He instructed them to start to go deeper into the woods until the found worthy enemies. He wanted them to level up as much as possible. He might be able to trick Davros into letting him take the two into the realm. Or failing that, he could at least get the other guy weakened. That was of course if he wasn¡¯t able to get Davros make him his Champion. He finished auto reading one his staff fighting book. Somehow all of the forms in it were transferred into his mind. He smiled. He was going to be able to beat the shit out of the kid that pissed him off yesterday. He went next door and requested a chainmail armor suit from Evan. Evan was already at work on his anvil. Wow, now that¡¯s dedication. I should start thinking about how to help him expand his smithy. The better it is the better stuff I could get. ¡°So you¡¯re finally tired of that overweight training armor huh? Well I say good riddance. I can make it, but you¡¯ll have to resupply me on the iron it takes. Sound fair?¡± Voice nodded as he left. I saved your wife¡¯s life! NO it doesn¡¯t sound fair! He started thinking of the upcoming battle between good and evil. Voice was trying to weigh the betrayal of a goddess with the benefits of being a dark champion. He was debating himself when he noticed a red blinking light in the top left of his vision. He tried to look at it, but it kept moving with his eyes. He guessed it was some sort of game thing, so he reached out and touched where it looked like it was.
For reaching 50 wisdom you can unlock the special skill: Skill Enhancement.
¡°Inspect: Skill Enhancement¡±
Skill Enhancement Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 wisdom, up to a maximum of 250 wisdom. For every rank you gain an addition 10% experience while using a skill. This skill can stack up to 50% experience bonus.
Hell yeah! New skill! He did a fist pump while smiling like an idiot. He tried to fuse the skill to others, but none of them were compatible. Wait, did it say 50 wisdom? Voice checked his status screen. He now had 77 wisdom. Excited and fearing what he was probably going to see, he gazed at his unused skill points section. He had zero points. He stood silently for several seconds. His angry only increased in volume. He had a vague memory of clicking something last night, but he was basically delirious! He called out. ¡°MODERATOR! I need a MODERATOR!¡± He waited for several minutes. He gave up and went to the dojo. Before he was more than a few steps away, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He turned around startled. Behind him stood Bit-bee. ¡°WOAH! You just appear behind people? Are you a ninja?¡± Bit-Bee smiled at him. ¡°Only a quarter, on my mother¡¯s side.¡± ¡°Well, hunny¡± he gave a smirk remembering what she told him to call her a while back. ¡°I have a bit of a problem.¡± ¡°Yeah, we heard. The system notifies us when someone says I need a moderator.¡± She smiled at him, a slightly apologetic smile. He still had no idea that they were actively monitoring the five players. She wasn¡¯t allowed to tell him, but she felt like he should know. But Kelsey had made it abundantly clear that she was not to help him anymore. ¡°So what is it you needed hunny?¡± Bit-Bee wasn¡¯t actually allowed to be here, but Kelsey made an exception and let her. Under the understanding that she would not give him any information not available to the others. ¡°I seemed to have spent all of my unassigned stat points last night. I was in a delirious state and I was wondering if there was any to get them refunded.¡± Bit-Bee looked a little bit sad. She sighed. ¡°Well only if you find a special single use item. I¡¯m sorry.¡± She looked at the ground when she that. ¡°The system is tasked with asking you ten times if you are sure of a character editing decision if it detects your mind isn¡¯t normal. After ten times it will complete the action. The waiver you signed when you sent the application for the game told you that.¡± Voice couldn¡¯t believe what he heard. There is no way to return the points? Voice was angry. He had a very difficult time concealing his pure rage from Bit-Bee. Tears streamed down his face. He began to shake uncontrollably. If he didn¡¯t expel the energy somehow he would end up killing someone. ¡°Thanks, never mind then.¡± Voice left her. He went to the training hall. He needed to vent. The warm ups would be a perfect way to channel his anger. He made it there by running at full speed. He lost an entire 55 stat points! When he got to the dojo he started doing the training. He had been at it for half an hour but couldn¡¯t calm down. The feeling of anger was too much. He wanted to kill something, but he knew if he did there would be some serious repercussions. He went up to Steve. ¡°I need you to fight me!¡± Steve looked confused, but he unsheathed his wooden sword. Voice got into a wide stance. His staff was vertical. He swung the top of his staff in a downward arc. He used Sense after initiating the attack, knowing Steve would block it. His ability told him to redirect the butt of his staff towards Steve¡¯s right ribs. Voice stopped the arc and did it. Again he used Sense. Steve was somehow going to block the attack and strike at Voice¡¯s left leg. Voice changed the angle of the butt of the staff to angle into a pendulum motion in front of him. He heard a satisfying smack as he blocked Steve¡¯s attack. He continued this for several attacks. Each attack was more powerful, more lethal, than the last. Voice just couldn¡¯t manage to hit Steve. Eventually Steve started taking him seriously. He was actually aiming to hit Voice, but Voice managed to block two actual strikes. Fighting staff wielders was all about timing. Since the masters could flawlessly move from attack to defense you had to know the individual¡¯s weakness beforehand. Voice was taken down on the third strike. It was a simple thrust into his stomach but Steve had a lot of precision and power. Voice sat down panting. I can¡¯t even beat one fucking npc!? How the hell am I supposed to beat Davros¡¯ champion? FUUUUCK. When Voice had regained his stamina, and his body didn¡¯t feel so heavy, he got back up. He again got into position o attack. Steve had come over to see if Voice needed help. ¡°I¡¯m, uh, sorry about that Voice. You had decent attacks out there though. Your form needs a little bit of work though.¡± Voice ignored the comment. He readied his staff and began to assault Steve again. The end result was the same. Voice slowly lost his sense during the fight. When he awoke he was laying on the ground covered in water. He saw many students in the training hall looking at him. ¡°What, what happened?¡± Voice¡¯s voice shook. Evan looked at Voice with a surprised yet approving face. ¡°You just went into full rage mode that¡¯s what. You even managed to land a hit on me.¡± Voice didn¡¯t believe he landed a hit, but when Steve showed him a red mark on his cheek he started smiling. ¡°Wow that must have been impressive. Too bad I can¡¯t remember it.¡± ¡°That¡¯s what battle rage does to you. You gain a lot of strength and endurance, but you also lose a lot of intelligence and willpower while using it.¡± Voice decided to see if he actually obtained the ability to use rage. ¡°Inspect: Battle Rage.¡±
Battle Rage For a maximum of (max stamina/10) seconds you enter Battle Rage mode. While in Battle Rage you lose 50% of your willpower and intelligence, but gain 50you¡¯re your strength and endurance. Battle Rage reduces pain sensors to zero. When Battle Rage is cancelled or the timer expires, you will lose 10% of your total health. If you have 10% or less health you will die.
¡°Alright Steve, I need to do some actual fighting practice if I¡¯m going to be fighting for Mar. Can you help me out?¡± Voice¡¯s anger was gone. He got a new ability that had actually let him hit Steve. There was no way Davros¡¯ champion would be able to beat him. Steve looked at Voice. ¡°There¡¯s only so much I can teach you. If you were to stay here for a few days I could at least teach you the basics of staff fighting.¡± Voice mulled it over. He knew he needed to at least get the staff skill to apprentice, but at the same time he would need a much higher health pool if the other champion was a decent damage dealer. After mulling it over he made his decision. ¡°Alright Steve, I want you to train me as quickly as possible. After that I¡¯ll spend the rest of my time power leveling.¡± Steve nodded. Since Voice already knew some of the attack forms it would go a lot quicker. Steve was training him faster than any pupil he had ever had. What would normally take months of hard work, Voice seemed to grasp in a matter of minutes. Steve started to get a suspicion that the boy was one of the people the prophecies spoke about. They had increased learning potential, and seemed to devour all knowledge given to them in any field. It was said that even the lowest amongst them could learn a new skill in a matter of days. He started training Voice as if he were one of the other-worlders. At that point his training went by very quickly. Voice was pleased with the speed of his training. It seemed like the more training he got, the quicker he auto read the books. The quicker he auto read the books, the faster his training went. It was an infinite cycle of awesomeness. Throughout the rest of the day Voice trained his staff skills. He was learning something similar to the shaolin way of staff fighting. Voice had never studied that, but he watched a documentary once for his world cultures class. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Voice had learned to attack pretty well in that one day. He didn¡¯t manage to hit Steve again that night. After Steve had realized that Voice went into Battle Rage, he had prepared himself for it. So even if Voice tried to go in Battle Rage mode he would miss. Steve showed Voice several of the forms and steps he would take in battle. He also taught him which ones worked best in each scenario. Voice devoured all of the knowledge, he even finished his last two staff fighting books. Although one of the books was about the inventor of staff fighting; how and why he invented it. Voice didn¡¯t care who invented it. He felt it was a waste of time to have read it. Throughout the training Voice gained two strength, and one endurance. The training had dulled his anger to a dull throb in his heart. It felt so bad he even started feeling liquid ooze down his chest. Wait, what? Voice looked down and gaped. A pure black dagger protruded from his heart. He turned around to see who threw it. All he could see was a man in a pure black robe. Steve and the others rushed the man. They rushed him, but when they got into attack range he was no longer there. He had somehow turned into a plume of black smoke and came over to Voice. Voice had fallen to the ground, unable to support his body. He suddenly felt many times heavier than usual. It might have been magic, or it might have been the fact that he was bleeding from his heart. As he got closer Voice could see the bottom part of his face from under his hood. The robed man smirked. In a deep, sinister voice he heard ¡°So you are the Chosen of Mar? It seems she chose too lightly if you are supposed to beat me.¡± With a derisive laugh the man changed his left hand into smoke, and put his arm into Voice¡¯s chest. He tore out the dagger and Voice¡¯s heart. As the world faded to black Voice saw him turn to smoke and start whistling. ¡­ Voice was back in the house he had created. He sat there stunned for several seconds. He couldn¡¯t comprehend what had just happened. As he thought about it his anger returned. Not only did I lose 55 points, SOME ASS HOLE KILLED ME!!!? Voice logged out of the pod. He was restricted from play for one irl day. That meant 5 days game time. He would only have five days until the battle when he logged back on. Well now I lost a level! I want the points out of wisdom, but NOT LIKE THIS! Voice spent over two hours bemoaning his situation. The only reason he stopped was that he had an idea. If that little bastard thinks he can just walk away after angering me he has another thing coming. Voice started plotting several scenarios of revenge. They were largely dependent on whether that person was an npc or player. He went about his usual routine after deciding to get revenge. He took a shower and got a bite to eat. He toasted some bread and ate a couple of sandwiches. He decided to get on his laptop and see what else was going on in the game. SD and LB had already turned level seventy. EDI was even on the main page of DI. She had apparently been the first to solo a dungeon. The only two people that haven¡¯t posted anything to the forums were Voice and DefiledHealer. Voice decided to change that. He sent an email to Bit-Bee. / Hey Bit-Bee, I was wanting to upload some videos to your site. Any idea how I do that? From Voice. / He was surprised by the instant reply he got. He expected a reply email some time that day. Instead the phone started ringing. He walked over to it. His mom¡¯s friends should all know that she¡¯s out. He answered it. ¡°Hello? Um, hi. I¡¯m VOi- Brenton. How can I help you?¡± He was greeted with the same high pitch voice that gave him his extra skill. ¡°I don¡¯t think you can help me. It¡¯s more like how I can help you. You said you wanted to upload a video?¡± Brenton nodded. ¡°Yeah, but I don¡¯t know how.¡± She walked him through the process. She seemed to intentionally take longer than needed towards the end. Voice thanked her for the info and hung up. He got back in his pod. He might not be able to play the game, but he could spend time editing a video of his conquest. When he got into the pod he said, ¡°Open play files.¡± In front of his eyes appeared a folder. He motioned to open it. In the folder were ten other folders. Each one was labeled. The labels were in increments of 10% of his play time. Inside each of those were ten videos. He spent several hours editing the videos. He wasn¡¯t very good at this kind of thing, but the system did most of the work for him. The video he uploaded showed him donating the first and second batch of super potions. He excluded what they were made of. It then showed him accepting becoming Mar¡¯s Champion, and ended with the dark figure killing him. All in all it looked like an awesome trailer to a game. He decided to add the words ¡®Join the Fight Today¡¯ at the end of the clip. He uploaded the file, then stayed in the pod until it was time to log back in. He had many more hours, but he just felt better being in the pod. He used up some money to get a bike. He rode the bike around his house several times. He decided to try and earn the money in here to buy some new houses. He wanted it to at least look decent around his house. He wanted it to feel more homely. He chose to stay in cyber space instead of his empty home. He didn¡¯t really like the feeling of such an empty house. Sure he had been here alone before, but he had always known his mother would be there eventually. Now he didn¡¯t even really know where she was. So he decided to stay in cyber space. He had very few DI bills left. So he didn¡¯t but any houses at the moment, but he had plans to in the future. He just basically played around for the rest of the day. He did go to sleep for a while in the real world, but after that he did nothing productive. He went out to buy a burger from this fast food place. When he was there he heard two different groups of people talking about SD and LB. They were apparently trying to beat a level 80 dungeon. SD would take most of the kills and loot, and LB would get the scraps. Voice might have felt sorry for the tramp if she didn¡¯t run off with ShortDwarf. Voice wanted everyone under his thumb, and if he couldn¡¯t have them they deserved to be killed. He started wondering if the person that killed him was DH. He was the only one that hadn¡¯t posted something. That could have been because he was trying to keep his quest a secret. For the rest of the day Voice just played around in the white room. When the timer started getting close he went to his walk in closet. The anticipation was building. He wanted to get back to the game so he could power level. He also had a few other plans like getting that light fairy and some sort of damaging spell. When the doorway lit up he walked through it. He felt disorientation for a moment, then he was back in the town square. He received several notifications.
You have died. For dying you have lost one level. All stats dependent on level have been scaled back. Any stat points you have distributed from the last level have been lost.
He looked at his status screen. He had lost 5 points of wisdom, 10 health, and .1 health regen. He wasn¡¯t too terribly angry about that as he had planned to power level anyway. He was just upset that he had been so easily killed. If I had the chainmail already I bet I could have at least lasted a few hits! Voice was blaming his loss on things out of his control. He didn¡¯t want to take responsibility for his loss. He still had his staff, so he decided to go hunting immediately. He sent a quick message to Elizabeth, Evan, and Susan telling them he was alright. He then told Heather and Boris to come to him. While he waited for them he grabbed his pot and pan for cooking, and a stack of bandages for healing. The healing spell didn¡¯t seem to level up at all, so he wanted to be able to use bandages while in combat. When they arrived he could see that they were battered. They both had cuts all over their bodies, Boris had a long three clawed scratch that seemed to narrowly avoid taking his left eye out. Heather had a bad limp, and the tip of her left ear was missing. Voice looked at them with warmth. My beloved investment seems to be working hard to prove itself. He patted both of them and healed them. When he was done Heather¡¯s ear still had the chip missing in the top, and Boris still had the scar. They had full health, so he figured the wounds were permanent scarring. They hunted for two days. They only hunted the demon wolves that spawned. The demon wolves would scale in level the further in the forest they went, just like the other animals, so there was no exp loss for Boris and Voice. In addition to knowing their weaknesses Heather gained a substantial amount of bonus exp from them. Boris would grab agro, then Voice and Heather would attack the wolves. Voice practiced the stances and attacks he had learned, all while fighting the wolves. He would strike fast, and strike hard. When they would find new opponents he would take one and dodge and block its attacks until he or the wolf started to tire. He would then attack the wolf with all of his strength and speed. He wanted to increase his stats as much as possible so he didn¡¯t rest except to make food and eat. He grew a total of 5 str, 3 agi, and 5 dex. He leveled up his critical strike to level 9, and since he used auto aid a lot he grew it to level 4. Over the course of the two sleepless days they hunted hundreds of wolves. The meat went immediately to feed the group. Heather had an explosive growth rate recently and would eat everything put in front of her. Boris would eat more than her, but he seemed to only have a bit of growth in size. The meals were wolf stew, wolf steak, wolf cutlets etc. The pelts and occasional claws or fangs were kept in everyone¡¯s individual inventory. Boris could hold the most, but didn¡¯t have a backpack or anything so his combat ability dropped when he held too much. Heather was the same way. Voice had planned on spending more time hunting, but he went to drop the loot on Evan. Voice had only leveled up to level fifteen by the time the two days were over. The exp was determined by who dealt the most damage to the enemy, so obviously he wouldn¡¯t get the most. Heather was level twenty two, and Boris was level twenty. The exp needed started to skyrocket after level twenty, or else Heather would be in her early thirties. Voice decided to keep all of his stat points unused. If he were to die it would be good to have a cushion to fall back on stat wise. When he got to the blacksmith he saw a boy working the bellows. ¡°Hello son,¡± Voice said in as pleasant a way as possible. ¡°Do you know a man by the name of Evan?¡± The boy pointed with his thumb to the front door. Voice took that to mean Evan was inside. He let himself in and saw Evan sitting with Elizabeth. When the couple saw him they came over and hugged him. ¡°Guys! Guys! What¡¯s wrong?¡± Voice could hardly breathe and wanted to be separated from the asinine couple. Evan looked at Voice with a ¡®what the fuck do you think is wrong¡¯ look. ¡°Nothing, cept you DIED seven days ago. Sure we heard the tales about people from another world being able to revive but after you returned two days ago you didn¡¯t so much as say hi! Only a message. Think how we felt!¡± Voice regretted not coming to see them. They were probably worried sick when he didn¡¯t. That meant the intimacy might have dropped. He was worried he wouldn¡¯t be able to get free items. ¡°Evan, I wanted to come see you and Elizabeth. Really I did, but what was I supposed to do when the fight for the worshippers of Mar is so close?¡± Voice¡¯s tone was sympathetic at first, then turned to one of slight scolding. Evan bowed his head. He realized he was being selfish, but he really wanted Voice to at least tell him in person that he was ok. Voice continued, ¡°Well I have a gift for you.¡± Voice emptied his inventory on the nearby table. ¡°Two days of wolf demon loot.¡± Evan stared at the massive pile of items. There was several stacks of 99 wolf pelts, and at least one stack of 99 claws and teeth each. ¡°How did you get so many?¡± Evan gasped. ¡°Two days of nonstop killing. Also I¡¯ll need that armor in two days so I can get used to it.¡± Voice talked for a while with the couple. Evan had apparently taken on an apprentice since his smithy was doing so well. With all of the pelts Voice had been giving him Evan had made a few tanning racks. He had even bought lessons on how to properly tan the leather. It saved Evan a lot of money having someone help with the forge, and getting the materials for free. After he felt he had satisfied his social obligations with them he left. He went to Susan¡¯s next. Susan was standing near a desk and a big pot. She looked a lot like a witch stirring her cauldron. She was pouring some bubbling silver liquid into the pot of brown liquid. Voice didn¡¯t bother asking what she was doing. ¡°Hello Susan.¡± He waited a few moments for her to finish what she was doing. When she was done she looked at him with a gaze you might see a mother give her child the returned after a long absence. ¡°Hi Voice! I am glad to see you are well. I was really worried when I first heard you had died. AH!¡± she started pulling something out of a bag near the table she was working at. ¡°I had Evan help me make these!¡± She showed him the round objects. ¡°Inspect.¡±
Explosive
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Damage40Durability1/1
This weapon is destroyed when enough pressure is exerted on it, such as throwing it against the ground. This weapon was made by an expert craftsman. This weapon was made by a team of an alchemist and a blacksmith. The very thin layer of iron breaks when thrown. The chemicals and poisons inside interact with the oxygen in the air causing a fiery explosion. This is a single use item.
Voice started laughing an evil laugh. Susan asked what was wrong. Voice kissed Susan on the cheek, ¡°NOTHING! Nothing is wrong! You made bombs.¡± A small fit of laughter caught him. ¡°I can¡¯t believe this game has BOMBS now. Please, never share this recipe with anyone, and tell Evan the same. If we can horde the manufacturing of this we will be able to make SO much money off of it.¡± Susan smiled. She wished to let this knowledge benefit the world, but if Voice wanted her to keep it a secret she would. She made sure to buy an empty book and get her enchanter friend to enchant it as she did Susan¡¯s old alchemy book the next day. She presented Voice with six explosives. She told him, ¡°The first one is based off of the first prototype, so it might not be as good as the next five.¡± Voice asked her how it was made. She told him there was an item that was explosive when combined with water. Voice asked if she found it in salt. She nodded in surprise. After a second she continued, wondering how much knowledge he really had. ¡°There is a poison that can force a person to drown by turning the oxygen in the air to water. I force all of the air out of the iron ball, and filled it with that poison and the explosive item. When the ball breaks¡± She demonstrated by throwing a ball out of the door. The road had a small crater in it. Voice smiled evilly. ¡°Yes, Susan you are a genius!¡± He gave her a quick hug. ¡°Can you make me more of these?¡± Susan readily agreed. Voice nodded and went to the mage¡¯s guild to get some offensive spells.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMonster Tamer
Health250Mana410
Stamina290
Level15Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.5Mana Regen/Sec7.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.7
Strength36Agility31
Wisdom72Intelligence41
Endurance47Dexterity30
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma14Compassion40
Leadership36Logic12
Piety44Unused Stat Points30
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 4 Exp 40.00%
Deception Novice Level 9 Exp 33.33%
Flattery Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 9 Exp 16.67%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 4 Exp 40.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 7 Exp 28.57%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light25
Dive 21: Magic Time? Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice found out he wasted a bunch of stat points. He got angry and started staff training. He got the rage ability, but had his heart literally ripped out by Davros¡¯ Chosen one. He raged for a while, then went hunting in game for two day. Days until Ether Realm Battle: 3 Also in this world mana and magic seem to be interchangeable terms. I love all of the comments! Keep ¡®em coming! On his way to the Mage¡¯s guild Voice started wondering why Davros¡¯ chosen was allowed to kill him before the battle. He made a mental note to ask Mar. The guild was really just a very tall tower. Wow, typical mage tower. Nice. There was a female mage in bright blue robes standing at the top of the dozen steps that led to the entrance of the tower. She didn¡¯t really stand out aesthetically. She was neither beautiful nor ugly, just somewhere in between. She looked to be in her early twenties. When Voice approached, she stopped him and asked, ¡°Hark, stranger. Wherefore have you come to our tower?¡± Voice was slightly taken aback by her old Shakespearian speech. Is there some old English playwright here or something? Effing nerd. Voice gave a small bow. ¡°G¡¯day fair maiden. I have come to the pinnacle of learning to immerse myself in knowledge. But lo! I have seen something far more valuable!¡± The woman¡¯s face reddened slightly in a blush. ¡°And what, kind sir, would that be?¡± Voice gave his best smile. ¡°What? But of course it is the beauty that might outlast the stars! Such a divine beauty have I seen today!¡± Voice was laying it on thick. ¡°Perhaps you would like to get to know one another?¡± She put up an obvious front. ¡°Perhaps not, good sir!¡± She was still blushing, so Voice smiled and slowly nodded his head. ¡°Then failing that might I gain entrance unto the wondrous academy of magic?¡± Keeping the conversation up in old English was beginning to wear on Voice; he was never really into plays or sonnets or the like. The woman had a thoughtful expression for a moment. ¡°You are to pass one challenge first. I must give you a riddle, if you cannot solve it you are barred entrance. However,¡± She gave Voice a sly wink, ¡°If you cannot guess it I may accidentally give you a small hint.¡± Voice smiled and nodded his head. He replied, ¡°I am happy that once so outstanding in the arcane arts, and the realm of beauty might take note of me, but I must decline the offer of assistance. For what man would I be to get in through the power of others?¡± She smiled approvingly. Not only was this man kind, charming, and thoughtful, he also had standards he would not bend. This was very attractive. If he got into the guild she would need to find a way to talk to him. Even if she was just an initiate. ¡°You are allowed only one answer. Here is your riddle sir. Tall am I young. Short am I old. Salamander¡¯s breath is my greatest foe. What am I?¡± Voice didn¡¯t know what shrunk as it aged, but the salamander part had to be important. Voice loved riddles ever since he was a kid. He had not heard this one before, so he was excited. Hmmm. I don¡¯t know what salamander¡¯s breath is, but in some games they are considered fire creatures. Maybe the breath fire? But if I¡¯m wrong I¡¯ll look pretty stupid. Ok So it is tall when it is young, and gets short as it ages. Fire is its greatest foe. He thought about it for a little less than a minute. ¡°A candle?¡± She looked at Voice quizzically. ¡°Why do you say that?¡± Voice was afraid he got it wrong, but also thought this might be a part of the test. ¡°Well, candle¡¯s shrink as you use them. You want them to last long so you make them big, even if you didn¡¯t they would still shrink as the wax melts. And fire is what lights them.¡± ¡°Alas, tis not the answer. Thine answer doth have logic, but the answer is a Wizard¡¯s Crystal Tower. Tis made of pure magic crystal. When the crystal empties is shrinks. The fire from the bellies of salamanders will take its magic to fuel itself. Destroying the tower.¡± Voice didn¡¯t know about those towers, but he wasn¡¯t about to let that stop him. ¡°Well, be that as it may, my answer is acceptable. Your riddle may have been designed with but one answer, but tis not the only one. As with mathematics riddles oft have plentiful correct answers. If only one were clever enough to find them.¡± The woman couldn¡¯t fault his logic on that. She thought for a moment. When he walked to the doors she absentmindedly gave him a small token. She only noticed that she had given it to him after he left.
You have received 5 logic for solving the Wizard¡¯s Riddle.
You have received 5 logic for solving the Wizard¡¯s Riddle in an unexpected way.
You have received 2 intelligence for solving the Wizard¡¯s Riddle.
You have received 2 intelligence for solving the Wizard¡¯s Riddle in an unexpected way.
You have received 5 charisma for being excessively charismatic.
You have gained a level in flattery, for completely flattering someone.
You have gained a level in deception, for making someone think you have romantic, or physical attraction towards them.
As Voice walked into the Mage¡¯s Guild he was surrounded by many beautiful carvings and sculptures. If he looked up he could see the top of the tower. There were two spiral staircases that wound around the walls all the way to the top. They both went in the same direction, one started about ten feet or so after the first. So the walls were lined with a double staircase structure. He thought, Wow, nice stat gains. I wonder if I can get that much from more riddles. As he looked at how affluent the Mage¡¯s Guild looked, he wondered how much money mages made. He went to the back wall. Directly across the tower floor from the door was a desk. At the desk sat someone that looked like a scribe. He looked to be an old crotchety man. ¡°Hello sir! I have come to ask if I might join your magnificent establishment.¡± The clerk ignored Voice and kept working. Voice waited a few moments before deciding to head up the stairs. As he neared the first set of stairs the scribe man said, ¡°You can¡¯t go up there right now!¡± When Voice looked the scribe looked down again and got back to work. I should probably get this guy¡¯s permission before going up. It would probably be really bad if I were to force it. Voice thought of some smart sounding way to get the man¡¯s attention. ¡°Is that can¡¯t or aren¡¯t allowed to ? The scribe looked up with a pleasantly surprised face. ¡°You know, you are the first one in a few years to pick up on that right away. Well you did pass Rose¡¯s riddle, so maybe you would be a good addition to the guild.¡± The man seemed to think something over for a few minutes. Eventually he got up and went to the first stairwell. He touched an invisible barrier. As it shimmered a small doorway opened up within it. ¡°You may only take one course on magic. Of course when you completely master that magic you can go on to another.¡± Voice decided this tower was 100% about mind games. He chose to take everything as a riddle. ¡°That¡¯s sort of unfair isn¡¯t it?¡± The scribe shook his head. ¡°Not really everyone else does it too. No one can really take the difficulty of more than one class at a time.¡± ¡°What I meant was the part about having to master it.¡± Voice opened his menu and showed him his Master of the Green Herb title. ¡°Even with that title I still haven¡¯t mastered the Green Healing Herb. I¡¯ve come up with some good ways to use it in healing potions, but I don¡¯t know the best ways to harvest the seeds, or plant it. You can never really master any subject. At best you can know more than any other person has had widely published.¡± Voice felt that a mini rant on the subject would be the best way to garner intimacy with the scribe. Voice didn¡¯t think this man was just a scribe. It was within his judgement of everything being a riddle to assume this man might even be the leader here. ¡°Also sir, you to be more than you seem. Would you like to elaborate?¡± The man frowned slightly. ¡°I would not.¡± ¡°Will you do it anyway?¡± The man seemed to get an impish smile. ¡°I will.¡± After a few seconds of silence the man still had said nothing. Voice decided he had to ask him outright if he were going to get anywhere. ¡°Please tell me why you seem to be more than you seem.¡± The man once again had a frown. ¡°You know boy, you might be a little too logical for your own good.¡± Voice smiled in response. ¡°Alright, well to answer your question, I seem to be a scribe or clerk. The reason you think I am more is because I am. In this tower I am in fact the headmaster¡­ ¡®s aid.¡± Voice gave him a blank look at the attempted trick. ¡°The man continued. Fine, you can take as many classes as you want, but some cost money or labor. Also you won¡¯t learn as fast as you would taking only one class.¡± ¡°So, Mr. aid. Why does the tower look so well to do?¡± The aid smiled. ¡°Well our headmaster has developed and sold several unique magics, and the money he gets he donates to the tower.¡± Voice thought about this. I wonder if I could make money off of the spells from the weird portal book series. Voice decided that after he had finished all of his quests in the city he would go searching for these other books. The weird man in the book told him there were six more books. If he found a way to get those spells he could probably make his own mage¡¯s tower. His starting goal for this game had been to be the best heavy armor healer ever. He made a new goal after seeing the mage¡¯s tower. He would find all of the ¡®Knowledge of the Unknowable¡¯ series, and use them to create his own kingdom. He didn¡¯t know if that was possible, but the game said he could do anything. While the scribe guy was talking about something, Voice formulated his plan. He would need the help of at least some minor noblemen. Not to mention he needed an army to defend his borders. And every kingdom would fail without a good amount of people with which to populate it. His first task would be to find the books, or at least enough of them to start him on his way. After that he was going to somehow take control of a town right in the middle of nowhere. Then he could start expanding and building an army. ¡°Ok,¡± Voice mumbled to himself. ¡°I¡¯ll do it.¡± The scribe looked confused for a moment. ¡°Really? You are the first one to agree so readily. I haven¡¯t even told you the rewards!¡± Eh? What¡¯s he talking about?
You have accepted this quest. Success: Create a new spell. Difficulty: ??? Failure: Not creating a new spell. Reward: You did not let the ¡®scribe¡¯ tell you the reward. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with the Mage¡¯s Guild for accepting a quest you could not do.
EH!? What did I accept? STUPID GAME I WA TALKING TO MYSELF! Voice didn¡¯t know what the assistant guy was talking about, but now he had to come up with some way to make a new magic. ¡°Thank you! You see my father experimented with combining different forms of magic, but it was never successful. Thank you sir! Oh thank you!¡± The man vigorously shook Voice¡¯s hand. Voice felt a twinge of guilt for not having listened to him. Only for a second though. The man began speaking again. ¡°Well you are free to use any of the classrooms you want. Also if you wish you can become part of the Mage¡¯s Guild in Rand, that is if you can past the test. I¡¯ll waive the fee for it though.¡± Voice¡¯s ears perked up when the man said he could join the guild. ¡°Alright, I would like to take the test to become part of the Mage¡¯s Guild in Rand.¡± Voice replied immediately. ¡°My, but that was quick. Well, you do seem to be someone to make up his mind quickly about things. I would call you rash, but your level of intellect and logic are too great for that. Well the challenge is simple. First I must ask. Do you have a fairy yet?¡± Voice shook his head no. ¡°I don¡¯t but I heard the Mage¡¯s Guild can help you get one.¡± The scribe smiled, ¡°Well that is partially correct. The test is to summon your first fairy, if you already have one you must upgrade your fairy to the next form. To summon a fairy you need at least 25 affinity in an element. After you gain the affinity we will make a magic circle, and you will pour a drop of blood into it. After that you just need to channel all of your magic into the circle. The maximum amount of magic accepted by the circle is 500 time the rank of affinity. The magic starts after your blood hits the circle. You have exactly ten seconds to fill the circle with as much magic as possible. There are five ranks, if you are upgrading your fairy you do the same thing. This time other light fairies will join yours in power, creating an even more powerful fairy. So before anything you must get 25 affinity in one element.¡± The scribe went to go back to his desk. Voice interrupted him, ¡°Um, I already have 25 light affinity.¡± The scribe clapped his hands excitedly. ¡°Well! That DOES speed the process up quite a bit. Ok then.¡± The mage got started showing Voice how to draw the magic circle. Really it looked more like the sun. It was a giant circle, with thin wisps coming off of it. Voice asked, ¡°So is this symbol unique to light? I mean it would make sense that other elements don¡¯t so obviously use something that symbolizes light.¡± The mage looked at Voice questioningly. ¡°And why do you think that?¡± Voice figured if he was wrong it wouldn¡¯t matter. ¡°Well instead of summoning a fairy it seems more like you are trying to ask them to come into our world. Dark fairies wouldn¡¯t want to see a sun first thing when they came in.¡±
You have received 5 intelligence for figuring out the theory of fairy summoning. [td]
[Td]For reaching 50 intelligence you have unlocked the skill Mana Affinity.
Voice mumbled, ¡°Inspect: Mana Affinity.¡±
Mana Affinity Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 intelligence, up to a maximum of 250 intelligence. For every rank you gain spells cost 5% less to cast. This skill can stack up to 25% cost reduction.
¡°Very good, Very good. What did you say your name was again?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t, but it¡¯s Voice.¡± ¡°Hello Voice, my name is Brom.¡± Dragon tamer? ¡°Well Brom, let¡¯s get this thing going.¡± After Brom was satisfied with the circle he had Voice put a drop of blood into it, lending him a dagger.. Since this was a rank one summoning Voice could only put up to 500 mana into the circle. He had that much without the need for mana regen. The circle started glowing, a bright white glow. The intensity continued to grow until Voice had to shield his eyes with his arm. With a loud pop the light disappeared. Voice moved his arm, and blinked as he tried to see. For a few seconds he could have sworn that the circle was still activated. After a handful of moments he realized that the bright light was coming from an orb. The light was still almost blinding. The orb seemed to be floating just above where the circle had been drawn. A very light and lilting voice entered his mind. ¡°Hello, master! My name is Sol! I¡¯m happy to meet you!¡± The voice sounded excited at the idea of being around Voice. ¡°Master! What can Sol do to please master? I know healing magic, I can create light, I have the ability to blind your enemies, I can disappear,¡± For several minutes Sol continued this rapid pace delivery of info. It was talking a million miles a minutes. Voice couldn¡¯t really keep up, so he just ignored it and started to look at its stats.
Stats Window
NameSolRaceLight Fairy
Health10Mana500
Stamina10
RankNoviceCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec7.2
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility10
Wisdom72Intelligence50
Endurance1Dexterity10
Luck10Vitality1
Fame0
Sol is a light fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Light fairies start with all stats but dexterity, agility, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a light fairy Sol¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal the user. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Sol. Sol has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Sol has gained 9 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
Is it really that smart? There¡¯s no way. Voice wanted to test the fairy out. ¡°Sol.¡± The fairy stopped mid-sentence and suddenly stood at attention. Voice took the dagger and dragged it across his left palm. The pain was biting. He had to clench his teeth to stop from screaming out. SHIT! I forgot how realistic this shitty game feels! As soon as the dagger left his skin Sol began to glow. The wound closed as if Voice had casted healing magic on it. He smiled, this fairy was going to be useful. ¡°Alright Sol, let¡¯s go learn some wind magic. Also turn down the light a little.¡± Sol immediately became less blinding. Voice had decided on a plan of action to fight Davros¡¯ chosen one. Since the smoke man said something along the lines of I am going to fight you since you are Mar¡¯s Champion, Voice figured he was the man he had to fight. Wind magic should theoretically be able to blow the smoke away. Even if it just acted as a crude barrier it would score him precious seconds. Brom motioned to the first set of stairs. ¡°The novice wind magic class is the second door. I¡¯m surprised your light fairy took to you so quickly, how much mana did you put in the circle?¡± Voice shrugged. ¡°500 was the limit, so that¡¯s what I put. ¡° Brom raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in a thoughtful way. ¡°Hm, that would explain it. So do you have a magic based class?¡± Voice shook his head. ¡°Really? Well I suggest you get one. Whatever magic class you take will give you certain bonuses to different magic types.¡± Voice thought about that as he ascended the stairs. It would be pretty good to take some magic class, but he would lose Boris. Well unless he found out whatever he did to make Heather like him so much. I guess it¡¯ll depend on what each magic class gives me. I might go with something that deals with light magic. As he got to the second door, he wondered if the door was a portal. The tower was tall, not wide. Voice told his fairy, ¡°Hey I think this is a portal.¡± His fairy nodded. He expected another int increase. Guess I¡¯ve gotten to much easy gain from that stat. Gotta try to figure out harder stuff. Voice opened the door. When he did he saw the area was a wide opened plain. He cautiously walked through it, closing it when Sol had gotten through. Voice turned around, and thanked the elder gods the door was still there. The area was a giant plains region. Nothing there except the wind and endless expanses of grass. Voice looked around. The reason this place was used to teach wind magic was obvious. There was a constant wind blowing. A hundred yards in front of the door Voice saw an older man, a young woman, and three children. They were in the center of a tornado. Voice looked for a few seconds and realized that the man was teaching the woman and children. He didn¡¯t know why the tornado was surrounding them, but he didn¡¯t really care. He also noticed that for some reason the papers the people were holding did not blow with the wind. He went to the tornado. The closer he got the harder it became to go forward. His stamina was fairly high, but started to decrease faster and faster as he got closer. Voice thought about running towards the tornado, but disregarded the idea. He didn¡¯t know if it was true, but he heard that if you are in high wind the best thing to do is move slowly or not at all to avoid injury. It made sense anyway, if you are moving quickly you have less friction. If you have less friction the wind can more quickly lift you and throw you. So he decided to move slowly. The wind periodically changed direction. It would blow from the south, then suddenly to the north. He wanted to conserve as much of his power as he could, so he tried to go against the wind as little as possible. The wind had been buffeting Sol, so it went into Voice¡¯s chest. Voice would stand his ground as the wind blew away from the tornado, and when it blew towards it he would launch himself towards it. After the first ten minutes, every step took effort. His stamina had long since drained, and he wasn¡¯t even halfway there. He knew that if he tried to sit and rest he would most likely be blown towards a random direction. He started marching ever slower towards the tornado. The wind was pushing him directly away from the class so he stood his ground. Suddenly an updraft came from his right. He was lifted off of his feet and thrown into the air. He was tossed around for several seconds. He was pushed further and further into the air. SHIT! I don¡¯t want to die again![i] Voice quickly thought of every way to get out of the situation. Unfortunately without the use of some sort of cliff diving suit he could only think of one solution. Well, solution might make it sound too solid, and make it sound like it actually has a decent chance of working. He decided to try to feel the way the wind was blowing him if he ever got closer to the ground. He would run with the direction of the wind. More than likely we would not survive, but without wind magic he had no better alternative. The wind suddenly started propelling him downward. The angle was steep. It almost seemed as though the wind god had picked him up and dropped him. ¡°SOL!¡± He had to yell to be heard over the sheer force of wind pushing him down. ¡°WHEN I GET CLOSE TO THE GROUND START HEALING ME!¡± He could feel conformation coming from his chest. He braced himself for the impact as he rapidly approached the ground. When he had about ten feet left he started running. He was trying to decrease the impact by using some of the force to propel himself forward. Before he hit the ground he felt a soft cushion of air catch him. He looked around for the source. He noticed that the class had stopped. Furthermore the entire party were staring at him in amusement. One of the children was outright laughing at him. The man came toward Voice. He seemed to be propelled by some unexplained force. He looked Voice over dubiously. Voice seemed to be turned in many directions as the man examined him. The man seemed as though he was pondering something. ¡°Hm, you don¡¯t seem to be a spy. Why wouldn¡¯t the old man tell me I had another student?¡± The old man seemed to look off into the distance for a few seconds. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ve talked to Brom. He says you¡¯re trying to fuse two different magic spells together. I guess I can teach you wind magic.¡± He waved his left hand. Instantly a tunnel formed to the tornado. The tunnel seemed to make the wind go over and around itself. The man went to the class. He didn¡¯t really walk there, it was more like gliding. [i] This guy is such a show off. That day was spent learning how wind effected the world. They also learned how to determine the gusts of wind. All in all it was a boring day. At the end he gave each student a test. They went outside of the tornado. ¡°Alright, you have to change the flow of the wind. It doesn¡¯t matter how you do it, just that you do it. Just know you will have to feel the origin of the wind to do it.¡± They each had to feel the wind. They would then try to direct the wind to flow in a different direction. The other students were using various ways to direct the wind. One of the children tried using his body, and expelling mana from it, to push the wind around him. The other child was trying to move wind using nothing but mana. Voice didn¡¯t know what the woman had done, but she was slightly hovering with a smile on her lips. Voice started to do what the instructor had taught them. He closed his eyes and began to feel the wind. He felt it blow from one direction, then he felt it blow from another. He started to understand what the teacher meant by feel the origin of the wind. It didn¡¯t mean feel where the wind was coming from, although you had to do that too. He meant that Voice had to feel the angle of the wind. He had to feel its speed, its acceleration, even how much pressure it had. Once Voice was confident he was as aware of the wind as he could be he tried to change it. Voice tried to force the wind into the palm of his hands. He started by injecting low quantities of mana into his palms. It wasn¡¯t too difficult to get the mana to his palms, as he had already done something similar while healing. The main problem was that the mana that gathered there was not pure. It had been tainted by light energy. So any mana he managed to gather was healing magic class. He stopped trying that method. He focused on feeling the wind outside his body. There were gusts of wind coming in from every direction. He put his hand towards one direction. After several minutes the wind changed directions, to directly blow against his hand. It felt like he was trying to hold his arm in front of him while swimming up river. He couldn¡¯t change the direction of the wind, so he tried to force mana into his arm. He was trying to expel mana into the air to force it to change direction. But even that failed. It was getting late, so he decided to go home. He would still keep trying to sense the wind though. Up until he went to sleep he would try to obtain some sort of wind spell. The teacher stopped him before he got to the door. ¡°You did well for your first day. Don¡¯t be so hard on yourself.¡± For my first day is the problem. Even if I did do well for my first day, I only have another two to beat Davros¡¯ Champion. There is no way I¡¯m going to learn this before then. When he left the door on the plains he was outside of the Mage¡¯s Guild. He had a bad feeling that something or someone was coming. So in one motion he equipped staff, and went into a guarded position. It was a good thing he did. At that exact moment a three foot long white death machine jumped at him. He swatted the thing away before getting ready to strike. Heather got up and shook her head to clear the daze. ¡°Hey, that wasn¡¯t very nice!¡± Voice looked at her unsympathetically. His eyes seemed to be void of all emotions that might convey concern. ¡°Well, you shouldn¡¯t have jumped at me.¡± Voice knew he was just taking his anger and frustration out on Heather, but he didn¡¯t care enough to try to stop. He continued, ¡°If you are going to attack someone be ready for retaliation.¡± Voice continued towards Susan¡¯s as Heather grumbled about the unfair treatment. As they walked past the training hall Voice looked at Heather, and had a wonderful idea. His lips turned upwards in an almost evil grin. ¡°Heather, how would you like to play a game?¡± Heather¡¯s eyes beamed. ¡°I want you to jump at me. I will try to block you. If you manage to land a hit I will grant you one wish. I will be healing you periodically, so you can¡¯t hit me then. Ok?¡± Voice decided to steer the upcoming battle towards Susan¡¯s he would declare victory if he got there. Instead of answering Heather jumped at Voice. Voice had been expecting such an attack, and so was ready. He was already in a stance where he had his staff going from his right shoulder to his left hip. He easily scooped Heather up with the butt of his staff. He threw her over his shoulder, while at the same time turning around to face where she would land. Voice saw an attack coming, and barely had time to react. As soon as Heather had hit the ground she kicked off with as much power as she could, going straight for Voice¡¯s legs. Voice put as much strength as he could into his forearms; he lifted himself off of the ground several inches, and Heather passed harmlessly under his feet. This might not have been the best idea he had, since his arms started burning immediately after. Heather jumped at his face. He swayed to the side trying to let his arms rest for a second. Heather¡¯s forepaw came a fraction of an inch away from his face. He quickly got back into his original stance. Heather did another leap towards his head. This time Voice took the top of the staff and hit Heather into the ground. The two days of non-stop training seemed to pay off. She landed with a loud thud. Voice used a quick healing spell. As she got up Voice readied himself. Heather ran towards Voice and unleashed a torrent of blows. He had to use Sense just to keep up with her. Her attacks became stronger and quicker with every strike. She eventually did some sort of kick spin. Voice watched in horror, and amazement, as she launched herself towards him. He brought his staff up to block her, but she somehow moved her body out of the way. Voice felt the impact of her kick. He felt like a metal pistol was driven into his stomach. He coughed up a small amount of blood as he flew backwards. He landed in a daze a dozen feet from where he started. His hp was now 15/250. [Td] You have sustained a near lethal attack. You are dazed for 30 seconds.[td]
He tried to stand up, but a wave a nausea forced him on his stomach. He felt the pain of being hit again. He retched. Heather and Boris ran up to him. They seemed worried, and Heather had a look of apology. After several attempts at getting up Voice finally managed to get to his knees. Another wave of pain shook his body. When he finally stood up it was thanks to a nearby building. As he leaned against it he looked at Heather, ¡°How the hell did you get so strong!?¡± Heather shyly kicked the ground. She mumbled something. ¡°What?¡± Voice didn¡¯t have very much patience at the time so his tone was just under yelling volume. Heather flinched when he yelled. ¡°I said I¡¯m sorry¡­ I just¡­ I got a new class today. It¡¯s called the Berserker. I went into berserker mode to hit you. It¡¯s like a really upgraded version of your battle rage.¡± She seemed to pout for a few seconds. Voice looked her over. He knew berserkers usually had some side effect after using their abilities. He saw blood dripping from her paws. He went over and touched her. She flinched as his hand made contact. She was expecting to be punished, but all he did was heal her. She felt all of her wounds disappear. ¡°Thanks for the spar Heather, but never use that on me again.¡± She nodded her head sadly. Her master was so nice, but she had hurt him. She was awful. Voice healed himself the rest of the way after he healed Heather. Gotta make it look like I care about the little shit. Fucking kicking me that hard! She¡¯s lucky she is so powerful or I¡¯d feed her to the damn wolves. Heather saw him healing his own wounds. She felt even worse. What kind of horrible rabbit was she!? She hurt someone that put her pain and suffering above her own. Then she remembered that she got any one wish. She would use it to make him happy! She smiled as she asked, ¡°So for my wish, can I learn magic? Then I can be better in a fight!¡± Voice inwardly cursed. Teaching her magic would cost a lot of time, and maybe even a lot of money. [i] Well I could let her learn fire or earth magic if it¡¯s possible. I mean a giant boulder bouncing towards you is almost as scary as a bunny following up several giant fire balls, by kicking your face in. He smiled a genuinely happy smile. He would be glad to cause such fear and mayhem amongst those that opposed him. ¡°Sure sweetie. Whatever you want.¡± He was in a happy mood so he used happy language. When the trio arrived they went upstairs to get some warmth while they rested. They hadn¡¯t had a warm place to sleep in a while. Voice was surprised by the fact the stairs not only didn¡¯t break under Boris, they didn¡¯t even creak. As Voice drifted off to sleep he started to make plans for tomorrow.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMonster Tamer
Health250Mana500
Stamina290
Level15Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.5Mana Regen/Sec7.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.7
Strength36Agility31
Wisdom72Intelligence50
Endurance47Dexterity30
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety44Unused Stat Points30
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
First Aid Novice Level 4 Exp 40.00%
Deception Novice Level 9 Exp 33.33%
Flattery Novice Level 2 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 9 Exp 16.67%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Auto Aid Novice Level 4 Exp 40.00%
Alchemical Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 7 Exp 28.57%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Unique Skill: Mana Affinity Novice
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light25
Dive 22: Angry About Skills? Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice went to learn magic at the Mage¡¯s Guild. He solved a few riddles, summoned his light fairy, and failed at learning wind magic. He made a bet about fighting with Heather, and lost. Days until Ether Realm Battle: 2 Also I¡¯m really sorry this chapter took so long. I¡¯ve been busy with work since Friday. I will try to speed up the releases again. When Voice fell asleep he expected to immediately wake up. He always seemed to wake up immediately. The DIVE pod seemed to be able to make the user go into REM at any moment. Voice theorized that it was because you were partially asleep during gameplay. But that is not what happened this time. This time he found himself in the field of wind again. I just went to sleep, there is no way I could be back here. Hm, maybe this is a dream? But I¡¯ve never had dreams while in game before. He noticed the familiar tornado. There were small differences from the one in the Mage¡¯s Guild plains though. This one had the occasional rock floating around it, it also had large clouds raining down large globs of water. Fire broke from the ground, only to be blown out of existence by the torrent. The center of the tornado gave off a feeling of vile decay, and pure rebirth. With his interest piqued he walked towards it. The wind didn¡¯t seem to push him away, but his body felt continuously heavier. Every step took more strength. Inside he noticed a familiar shape sitting in the middle of the vortex. The figure looked exactly like him. Except it shone with an inner light, and gave off a dark aura. What the hell? Am I going crazy for playing this game so long? The figure stood up and walked to Voice, only to be stopped by the vortex. It threw its arms against the tornado, it seemed to roar in agony. None of the sounds it made escaped the wind. Voice watched the spectacle for several minutes. At times it even seemed as though the apparition would break through the field of wind, but it never did. Every time it hit the barrier some liquid that was a mix of black and white liquids would spew from the place that made contact. It was like the two liquids were like oil and water, and refused to fuse together. After several more minutes it went back to the center of the vortex and sat down. It seemed to meditate. Voice took this opportunity to look around the plains. He noticed that the winds were still there, he just couldn¡¯t feel them. Well, since I don¡¯t know how long I¡¯ll be stuck here I might as well try to train the wind magic. Probably won¡¯t work, but if it does I can gain something pretty good. Voice tried to replicate what he had done earlier that day. Unfortunately he managed to replicate not only his methods, he also copied his results. Nothing happened but that didn¡¯t get Voice down. Voice remembered the feeling of the wind blowing against his hand. The feeling of the wind torrent pushing against his hand. The wind in the dream world started to replicate the feeling. He felt his hair being tousled by the streaks of current weaving through it. He felt the gentle breeze caressing his face. I guess this really is a dream. Whatever I think can become real. He felt the wind pushing against his fingertips, and go down his arm. He focused his memories on when the wind was pushing against his back. He extended his right arm, and felt the wind flow over his shoulder and down to his fingertips. He could slightly alter the course of the wind by twisting his fingers and palm in certain ways. He started feeling the wind around him. He burned the feeling of the wind into his mind. He continued feeling the wind on every part of his body. He would push the wind in different directions. He made sure to memorize every feeling on every part of his body. Before he knew eight hours had passed, and he awoke in Susan¡¯s house. When he woke up he was startled to see a blue box.
The Goddess Mar has granted you entrance to her portion of the dream realm. Magic and health will not be deducted in this realm. No skills or spells will be added to your character while in this realm. You may only reenter this realm with the invitation of Mar.
He woke his two pets, and went to the outskirts of town. Even if he mastered the spell he wouldn¡¯t have enough health to put up a fight against Davros¡¯ chosen. Voice, Heather, and Boris went into the forest, eager to cast the shadow of death upon their foes. It took quite a while for the group to any wolves to hunt. There were other monsters, such as something that looked like a bear with a long tail, but the wolves seemed to be all gone. The entire time Sol was talking rapid pace to Voice. He told Voice all about what it was like to be a light fairy, how light fairies use magic, and other things. It seemed as though Sol loved to talk. It had a very bright and bubbly personality. On the first monster they met, a bear, Voice tried using the wind spell. He remembered the feeling, but the dream realm didn¡¯t let him take the actual spell into the real world. He pictured the wind forming around his body. He made himself remember every part of his body being pushed and pulled by the gust. Heather and Boris attacked the monster while Voice visualized his spell. For some reason seeing them get clawed and bitten by the thing angered him more than what he would have thought. Sol was healing them as quickly as they got hurt, but the light around it was dimming. Voice thought that meant the healing abilities were probably lowering as well. He let the feeling of the wind build up around him. He sensed the change after only a few seconds. He could hear the wind pushing through the trees, and he felt a leaf fall on his shoulder. He unleashed all of his mana to direct the wind at the monster. Heather and Boris instinctively knew what Voice was going to do, so the jumped back from the bear. Seeing this Voice pushed as hard as he could with the wind. The result was lackluster to say the least. The bear was hit in the face with a gentle breeze, meanwhile Voice was completely out of mana.
For feeling the flow of mana in the wind, and creating wind without a written spell you have unlocked the secret class Force Mage. Would you like to become a Force Mage? If you decline you will not be able to unlock the class Force Mage.
Voice leaned against a nearby tree while Heather and Boris took the bear. He wanted to be a magic class since Brom told him he would get bonuses while using magic. At the same time he really liked having Boris as a pet. He weighed the pros and cons of each. It¡¯d be pretty helpful if I actually knew the pros of becoming a Force Mage. As he was thinking it over Heather and Boris had finished killing the bear. They were eating the meat as Sol sat in a sunny opening in the canopy, regaining his magic. ¡°Yes.¡± He figured he could just become an animal tamer, then monster tamer, again easily. Giving up something that said secret class would be a lot worse.
You have become a Force Mage.
Force Mage level 1 For using the power of your imagination to cause a spell you have unlocked the class Force Mage You may use any magic that you can perfectly recreate. You can no longer use magic designed by others except in special circumstances, this includes spells learned from spell books. You can currently only use one type of force magic out of eight. Types of force magic available: Wind Magic To unlock more types of magic you must perfectly imagine them. The higher level your Force Mage class is the more control over force magic you have. At lower levels you will not be able to use force magic to be as precise as later levels. This class increases in levels as you use force magic, and learn more types of force magic. You can recreate any magic that has been put into a magic book, but you must learn to do the magic by feeling and imagination.
Force Mages have the natural ability to see magical auras when they concentrate. For becoming a Force Mage you have gained the skill Aura Sight.
¡°Inspect: Aura Sight.¡±
Aura Sight Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to see magical auras from spells, or people. This skill allows you to see rough estimates of magical auras. Every level increases the distance you can see magical auras by 1 foot. Every rank increases the amount of information you get. You level this skill by looking at magical auras. Looking at two auras that are 98% or more identical will not gain exp.
Heather and Boris had finished killing the bear, so Voice decided to use skill fusion. First he used inspect to view all of his compatible skills. He couldn¡¯t fuse his last unique skill, but he was hopeful about this one. His results were satisfying. He gained two skills. By fusing Aura Sight and Mana Affinity he got Mana Sight.
Mana Sight Current Level: Novice Level 1 00.00% This skill allows you to see the flow of mana. This skill allows you to see rough estimates of the total mana in the world. Every level increases the distance you can see magical auras by 1 foot. Every rank increases the amount of information you get. You level this skill by looking at mana. The more you watch mana the more exp you get for this skill.
By fusing Aura Sight with Deception he got Deceptive Aura.
Deceptive Aura Current Level: Novice Level 1 00.00% This skill automatically makes your aura harder to detect. Most of the time your aura will appear to be something other than the real one. Every level of this skill increases the believability of the fake aura. Every rank of this skill gives the user more power to manually alter the deceptive aura. You level this skill by making believable fake auras. The longer you have a fake aura the more exp you gain.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Inspect. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
Voice took a brief moment to think about it. It might be a bit of information overload as he would either fuse Aura Sight, Mana Sight, or both. He took the risk. I mean it¡¯s not like I will face more detriments.
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you look at enough auras to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
Inspect Current Level: Novice Level 7 Exp 18.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, and Aura Sight. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯ This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be.
Voice looked at the skill with a bit of shock. He had forgotten to toggle the thing on after he had turned it off. He had gotten the skill then almost completely forgot about it. It seems I do that a lot. I should really work on that. He also got a notice saying,
Skill Fusion has leveled up to level 4. More skills can now be fused.
He was confused why it would open up more skills at level four, but hey more skills meant good things for him. He could only do two skill fusions. So he did. Critical Strike plus First Aid made Critical Aid.
Critical Aid Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to aid those in life threatening conditions, by multiplying the healing ability of your First Aid skill. This skill will add the percentage amount, according to the level of Critical Strike, to your healing. You can only use this skill on those in extremely life threatening conditions. You level this skill by giving first aid to those in critical conditions.
Automatic plus Alchemical Aid gave:
Automatic Alchemical Aid Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This passive skill will automatically use potions in your inventory to create alchemic bandages. This skill levels as Alchemical Aid levels. This automatic skill works exactly like Alchemical Aid, only it does the action automatically. You level this skill by fusing potions and bandages.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Automatic Nursing. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Automatic Nursing? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Automatic Nursing. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Automatic Nursing. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Automatic Nursing. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you create enough potions to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Automatic Nursing.¡±
Automatic Nursing Current Level: Novice Level 4 Exp 90.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: First Aid, Automatic First Aid, Alchemical Aid, Critical Aid, and Automatic Alchemical Aid. In accordance with the many automatic skills used to fuse this group skill, the Nursing skill has become automatic. Anytime you have potions you will fuse them with your bandages on hand. Any time on of your allies needs first aid, this skill will detect the severity of the wound and use bandages and first aid supplies as necessary. In accordance with the many overlapping skills used to fuse this group skill, the Nursing skill has doubled the amount of exp gained. Anytime there is an exp gain with this skill, you will gain twice as much as normal. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
While the skill actually had more exp than any of his first aid skills, the only thoughts going through Voice¡¯s mind were: No. Wait a minute. Hold on. SHIT! The fact that the Group Skill: Automatic Nursing, would use his materials without his consent was an abomination in his eyes. It should only do what he wanted. He was having none of that. ¡°Skill Disassemble: Group Skill: Automatic Nursing.¡±
You cannot disassemble Group Skills.
FUUUUUUUUCK!!!! Voice was fuming. For several minutes he quietly ranted. That is, until he saw a nearby bear. He didn¡¯t know if it was a monster or not, but the fact that it wasn¡¯t Boris was all he needed. He got up and rushed the bear. He vented his anger on the poor thing for a quarter of an hour. He took his time to break as much of the bear as he could without killing it. Voice sustained a long cut on his left arm, but that was healed by his damndable auto nursing. During the fight Sol had kept quiet. He didn¡¯t even heal Voice seeing as his master healed himself; and seeing as he barely had the strength to float he was silent. Voice sat back down, leaning on a nearby tree. He was covered in the bear¡¯s blood, but he was far too deep into his brooding to notice. He looked up to see what Boris and Heather were doing. He gave a start when he saw Boris so close to his face. The bear was sniffing his face. Voice froze up. He had forgotten that he just gave up being a monster tamer. The bear didn¡¯t seem to recognize him. He licked Voice on the face. Voice tried not to scrunch up his face, but the disgust was too much. The bear seemed to lose interest. It started to walk away. Voice was relieved that he wouldn¡¯t have to kill it. It would be a pretty bad battle for him after all. Heather didn¡¯t realize what was happening, and so went up to Boris. The bear roared at her. She got into a defensive position. When he continued to walk away Heather got a grin on her face. Voice inwardly shouted. NO! It was too late to do anything. Heather playfully chomped on Boris. Voice didn¡¯t know Heather was so playful, but he knew she would regret it. She was too innocent to realize Boris was going to try to kill her. Boris roared and threw her off. He swiped a large paw down at her face. Boris shouted. ¡°DIE!¡± While Voice was happy he could still understand the bear language, he was worried for Heather. He jumped up to attack Boris. Before he got there Boris managed to create two large claw marks down Heather¡¯s left flank. Heather still hadn¡¯t realized what was happening. Boris had thrown her against a tree, then Voice came with his staff. She had been healed by Sol, and she watched as Boris tried to kill Voice. At first she thought he was just being way too energetic, but she started to understand something bad was happening. Voice didn¡¯t have his heavy armor, so he was trying to be extra careful. Boris swiped and clawed at Voice, but Voice managed to dodge the blows by swaying and directing the attacks with his staff. He felt a slight pang of regret at the thought of killing Boris. Boris had helped kill a lot wolves with Heather, which meant he had proven his worth to Voice. Boris managed to land a hit on Voice. Boris had swiped at him, but Voice directed his attack behind him. Boris saw this coming and had already kicked with his hind legs. He rammed Voice, throwing him into a nearby tree. As Voice got up he thought, Geez. Fucking asshole coming up with a new attack pattern. As Voice struggled to get up Heather had launched herself at Boris. She clamped her teeth down on a chunk of Boris¡¯ fat, and kicked off of him with her strengthening ability. Boris howled as a large swath of muscle was exposed to the air. Blood gushed from the wound. Voice was amazed at Heather. Not only could she sense the difference in Boris, she even went so far as to make sure to try to end him herself. Voice looked towards where she landed to give her a few words of kindness, only to be greeted by the sight of a blood stained rabbit eating bear meat. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°HEATHER! GET OVER HERE AND STOP HIM!¡± Heather dropped the meat and got back into the action. Voice took his anger out on Boris. He might have been useful in the past, but now he was just a hindrance to gaining power. Voice didn¡¯t suffer hindrances to live. Voice baited Boris¡¯ attacks, but his attack pattern was different than before Voice had tamed him. Boris was bleeding profusely, but that didn¡¯t seem to slow him down. He grabbed Heather as she jumped back at him. He bit down on her back, just as Voice stabbed at the back of Boris¡¯ head with his staff. Boris was distracted for only a moment, but that was enough for Heather to use a jump kick to dislocate Boris¡¯ jaw enough to get out. Boris¡¯ jaw loosened with a sickening snap. One side of his jaw was completely torn off, while the other only hung by a rope of gums and bone. Heather was obviously damaged, so Sol healed her up to max. Sol had been watching the battle while flitting above the trio. It had gotten out of the sunny patch to view the surrounding area, but came back when it heard the commotion. Sol wanted to heal Boris, since Boris was a nice bear, but it didn¡¯t. If Boris was attacking Voice, Sol would not heal him. Voice and Heather made short work of Boris after that. Voice quickly figured out all of the new attacks Boris had, since they were only alterations or improvisations of the normal bear monster attacks. Boris didn¡¯t even get one more hit on the two. After Heather had ripped out Boris¡¯ throat and started eating the bear she heard Voice sigh. She saw him sitting in the shade of one of the trees. She went over curiously, and asked, ¡°Master? What¡¯s wrong master?¡± Voice looked at her with a sad expression. ¡°Heather am I a bad person?¡± Heather didn¡¯t understand the question, so she just tilted her head waiting for more information. ¡°I mean, I keep losing everyone that isn¡¯t forced into a bond of some kind with me. The only one that ever stayed was my mom, but she HAS to.¡± He continued to look sad. He really felt his personality must be horrible for people to abandon him so much. He knew he could be a better person, but it was hard to kick his distrustful feeling of others. Not to mention the fact that most people were too stupid to do anything other than bend to his will. // Throughout his entire college career so far he had tried making friends. Whenever he did it would almost invariably turn out the same way. He would always be quick to learn the ticks of anyone he hung out with. It started when he was a freshman in college. He had developed feelings towards a girl. They had the same major, and consequently had three classes together. She was a beauty, was one of the smartest people he knew, and was so kind it almost hurt. She was asked out by many people, but always declined going past anything other than a date. He spent a few weeks studying people to help him figure out how to ask her out. He noticed that people would lie all the time. All. The. Time. How could he know this? Well he would watch the couples on dates. He would go to places that seemed romantic, and watch the young people that ate there. He would listen in on their conversations, and watch what they did during them. Brenton would ¡®accidently¡¯ see what the people were texting, or listen in on phone calls while the other person was in the bathroom. Regardless of sex, race, orientation, or anything else, these people would always tell lies to their dates. Some lies would be huge, most were just little things. At least as far as Brenton could tell. He would sometimes see the couples on the street together. He would remember their faces, because he had a nearly perfect memory for things he enjoyed. He couldn¡¯t stand that people lied so often, but decided to try it with the girl he liked. His thought process was that if they could stay together because of a few lies, then it wouldn¡¯t matter if he smudged the truth about himself. He started watching the girl he liked while in class. It was a little creepy, but he didn¡¯t seem notice his own folly. He watched the group of people that hung around her in class, then started hanging around those types of people. He watched how she would react to the different teachers, then started trying to understand why. He even started to ¡®accidentally¡¯ find his way to her local hang out places, and watched her there. Discretely of course. After watching her for a little over two and a half month he finally thought he figured out everything about her. (Author Note: Dang you a creepy dude.) He set up the perfect circumstance according to what she liked. The time, place, even the people around were all painstakingly picked. After all that he asked her to go out with him. She said that she only liked to go on dates, not actually date anyone. He was heartbroken. He decided right then and there that he would make her regret not dating him. He became her ideal. Over the course of the rest of the semester he mimicked all of the overlapping points of everyone she went out with. He ended up with a short Mohawk, dark shades, and a piercing on his left ear. He also acted completely different than his actual self. At that point she asked to go on a date with him. He inwardly smirked at that time. He told her he was actually dating someone at the time, so he couldn¡¯t. Seeing the look of sadness on her face was a refreshing feeling for him. He started to analyze everyone after that. In small classes he would always act whichever way got the best response. In large classes he mostly just watched the individual cliques, and memorize them for later information. Eventually he couldn¡¯t help himself. He would unconsciously start to analyze people whenever they hung out. He would watch how they react to certain triggers, and how they would start before certain types of dialogue. An example was one girl would close her eyes for a brief moment before she would say she was leaving. He would watch for signs of dialogue to come. Everyone thought he was just really attentive, but in reality he was far from that. He would only need to study people for a short time. A month at most, or a couple of weeks when he was actively trying. After that he would basically understand everything that made them think the way they did. He would only need to drop a few words, give a few gestures, and the people would basically do anything he asked. Of course this had its limits, but for everyday type purposes it served wonderfully. He didn¡¯t even use this ability much, it just made him look down on others knowing he could. He would want something, do a few gestures or maybe tell some sort of sad story, and get it from someone. He couldn¡¯t bend someone against their own will, like trying to make a basketball enthusiast give up on basketball, but besides that he could get whatever he wanted. One time a boy wanted dating advice. Brenton didn¡¯t really know him that well, but the boy knew of how good Brenton was at dealing with people. Brenton asked all kinds of questions about the girl while telling his ¡®friend¡¯ how to woo her. His friend followed the love advice to the tee. Unfortunately for the boy Brenton actually told him how to make the girl fall for Brenton, not the boy. The entire time the boy thought Brenton was making him seem irresistible, but on the night of the big date Brenton came over. They were at a bar, people below 21 could come in just not drink. Brenton approached the girl to ¡®tell her how great the boy is¡¯. In fact he did that, but at the same time he made himself seem a lot better than the boy. Suffice to say the boy didn¡¯t talk to Brenton anymore after that. With his entire social life following the same pattern during his two years at college, it was no wonder he thought so poorly of people. // EDI¡¯s POV: EDI had seen the entire battle with Boris. She had been watching since Voice left the town. She had been off training and wanted to see how he was doing. She hadn¡¯t said anything when he let his other two rabbits go, but now he let his bear go as well. It seemed to her that he couldn¡¯t make up his mind on what he wanted. Then he started looking really sad. He began speaking to Heather about something, so EDI went closer to hear. She wanted to comfort him. After all his was the first person to try to connect with her. He even gave her the weapons and armor she wore. She owed him a lot. Not only did he basically supply all of her equipment, she had been able to capture the first four floors by mimicking Voice¡¯s strategy. Bait the enemy, then figure out all of its attacks. Some of the monsters just attacked wildly, but most would have a pattern. It took her a lot longer to figure out the patterns than it took Voice, but she didn¡¯t mind that. While he was talking to Heather, EDI approached him. She had been sneaking so he didn¡¯t notice her. During the time she wasn¡¯t with Voice she had been learning to hunt monsters. She had gained a nice assortment of skills including: tracking, hide, silent movement, skinning, and field dressing (Cleaning out the innards). She had gotten a notice and combined the skills into the group skill Survival. The best part was that she had leveled up her other skills so much, mostly sneak, that Survival was at apprentice level 26. Since Voice always seemed so helpful and cheerful EDI thought something was definitely wrong. She decided to go up to Voice to try to console him. She didn¡¯t want to startle him so she was as quiet as possible. Voice¡¯s POV: After talking to Heather a little Voice felt a tap on his shoulder. He quickly grabbed his staff while turning around. He moved his staff into a guard position while looking for whatever just tapped him. He readied himself to attack, only to be greeted by EDI shyly waving to him. ¡°Hi Voice.¡± She gave him a smile. ¡°I saw that fight just now, what happened?¡± Voice sighed as he hung his head. ¡°I changed classes and Boris left me.¡± EDI gave him an understanding smile. ¡°Well at least he will respawn in the cave.¡± Voice gave her a confused smile. He had been wondering how EDI knows so much about the game. She said she had studied about it, but even with months of constant studying she couldn¡¯t know that much. She must be hiding something. She knows way too much about this game. ¡°EDI.¡± The tone in his voice made EDI worried. He sounded like a parent that had just caught a child doing something naughty. ¡°I¡¯m going to ask you a question. If you lie to me I don¡¯t think we can be friends. I¡¯ve seen a lot of people lie to keep up different relationships, but I don¡¯t believe in that.¡± At least if I¡¯m not the one lying. EDI gulped, she didn¡¯t know what he was going to ask about, but if it was about the game she would probably have to lie. There was a reason she knew so much about different things, but she wasn¡¯t allowed to tell anyone. Voice continued. ¡°You seem to know a lot about the game. Why?¡± He looked her directly in the eye after he asked the question. He decided to end their friendship even if she just hesitated to answer. She immediately answered. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you. There is a reason, but I can¡¯t tell you. If I do I would most likely be killed.¡± Voice¡¯s eyes widened in surprise. He expected some out there answer, but that was too much. Looking at her he couldn¡¯t see any of the usual signs of lying. Voice was skeptical, but if she was serious he didn¡¯t want to endanger her life. Still women would use excuses like this to suit their fancies. He didn¡¯t actually believe her, but wanted to hear the story she would come up with. ¡°So exactly what is your purpose in this game? Are you trying to take over the world? Do you want to destroy DI? Is there some government conspiracy to cause the next world war?¡± EDI calmly explained. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you why I¡¯m here, just know that it will in no way harm anyone. It might crush some bigotry, but that is all.¡± Voice had started forming a hypothesis about why EDI couldn¡¯t tell him. ¡°Hm, well would they really kill you?¡± EDI smiled. ¡°By definition they would.¡± Hah, by definition huh? Voice forced himself to stop thinking about the subject. If this machine can give me int for thinking of things and not saying them, it can most likely read my mind. So if I think about it she still might get fried. Voice started to think about how to best use EDI¡¯s stealth to benefit himself. It wasn¡¯t that he was over the fact that she knew so much, but he had studied a bit of psychology while attempting to learn about why people do what they do. He had read about the ironic process theory. There had been many tests done about it. The theory was that trying to suppress a thought only brought it out more. The harder you tried to suppress it the more it came out, since you would have to actively think about it to suppress it. The only real way to get the thought out completely, well most of the time anyway, was to think about something similar but not the same. While trying to get his mind off of the topic of who or what he thought EDI was he managed to make a really good battle plan for his group of three. ¡°Alright EDI. I¡¯m going to see if my armor is done. Would you like to come with me?¡± She nodded her head eagerly. She didn¡¯t have any friends in the real world, and Voice was the only player she knew in the game, so if he stopped being her friend she wouldn¡¯t know what to do. Voice decided to ask, ¡°So have you decided to join my guild yet?¡± EDI cocked her head in confusion. She was sure she had told him several times that she didn¡¯t want to. She decided he must either not take no for an answer, be joking, or have head problems. Maybe a combination of the three. EDI figured he couldn¡¯t even get the required materials to form a guild, so she didn¡¯t know why he kept asking her. She replied, ¡°Sure if you can start one up before the other players join I will gladly enter it.¡± She smiled a dazzling smile. EDI saw a spark enter Voice¡¯s eyes. ¡°Alright, just remember what you said. I still have five days to start one.¡± Voice was already planning out how to organize the guild when they started walking back to the city. Before they left Voice told Heather, ¡°Hey, stay around here and kill all the wolves you can. I want the entire forest rid of them.¡± Heather licked her savage lips. She gleefully hopped off to find her next wolfish pray. On the way back Voice inquired about how EDI had spent her time since they last met up. ¡°Well, after you started all of your training I decided to learn how to hunt. I am pretty good at sneaking, and hunting in general, by now. I even disappear if I use my stealth mode ability. Well it only works on people that have a low spot skill. Ow.¡± EDI wasn¡¯t paying attention and accidently bumped into Voice. She didn¡¯t realize he had stopped. ¡°So wait a minute.¡± Voice turned towards EDI. ¡°You disappear? Like how, smoke?¡± ¡°Uh, I don¡¯t actually know let me show you.¡± EDI went behind a tree. Several seconds later Voice felt a Sai being pressed against arm. ¡°It only works if you aren¡¯t looking directly at me Other than that it becomes extremely hard to detect me.¡± Voice thought it over. After only a few seconds he felt he discovered how the bastard that killed him managed to do it. ¡°So EDI, tell me. If you were to obscure your body in smoke, would that work to use the stealth power?¡± EDI shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know, but probably if you had a high enough sneak it would.¡± ¡°Thank you that¡¯s all I needed.¡± He started running towards Evan¡¯s excited at having an actual idea about his enemy. With enough information you could completely negate anything. No matter how much stronger than you it is, as long as you know its weakness you can win. Voice arrived at Evan¡¯s. Evan was working on sharpening a sword. When he saw Voice coming he waved. ¡°Hey stranger, haven¡¯t seen you in a while!¡± He had put the sword down and gave Voice a strong hug. ¡°I see you brought your girlfriend. Well good for you. Although I think Susan might have something to say about that.¡± The blacksmith laughed as he wiped his hands on his apron. He gave EDI a handshake as he asked, ¡°So to what do I owe the honor today?¡± Voice looked at the smith with a bemused face. He didn¡¯t have time for jokes right now. He was only two days away from fighting his battle. ¡°I need my armor Evan. And is Susan at home?¡± Evan shrugged. ¡°Alright, alright. I have your armor in the house, and I think Susan has been filling those metal ball things for a while. She had me make a bunch.¡± Voice thanked him and ran inside to get his armor. After giving a quick hello to Elizabeth, he grabbed his armor and went to Susan¡¯s. When he arrived he didn¡¯t see her. He figured she must be in the true lab. He made sure EDI wasn¡¯t following and went into the lab. He saw Susan with two large piles of the metal orbs. She had just finished filling one and gently placed it on her right. Voice went up to her. ¡°Hi Susan. I suppose the pile on the right is the working bombs?¡± When he didn¡¯t get an answer he realized she was too preoccupied to hear him. He found some parchment and a quill and left her a quick note thanking her for the bombs. He even singed it with a heart since he felt it gave it that extra oomph he wanted to convey. After getting one stack of 99 bombs, the pile on Susan¡¯s right seemed almost completely depleted. He decided to don his armor before leaving. Since Susan was just a bunch of code he didn¡¯t even care if she saw him, so he just changed there. He was in full chainmail. He had a chainmail cap that went a little past his shoulders, a chainmail shirt that went all the way down to his wrists, and halfway down his thighs. He also had gloves that went halfway up his forearm, and chain pants that went down to his feet. The gloves were fixed with solid metal bracers so they would stay up. He donned his helmet and boots that he had from his overweight set. He went back up and got EDI. EDI was still talking to Evan, Elizabeth had even joined them. ¡°Sorry guys, I am going to need EDI back.¡± He gave his best smile. ¡°I need for her to teach me a little bit about one of her abilities.¡± EDI was surprised at how good Voice looked in chainmail. He looked very dashing. Evan spoke, ¡°Well now wait a minute. Aren¡¯t those the helmet and boots from your overweight armor? Give me a minute.¡± After rummaging around for a few minutes Evan came back with a set of hard leather boots, and a leather cap. ¡°These¡¯ll do you better than that stuff.¡± He handed the gear to Voice. After Voice thanked him for the gear, he equipped them. He grabbed EDI¡¯s hand and started to run for the forest, while waving towards Evan and his wife. On the way to the forest Voice was formulating the best way to use EDI¡¯s similarities to Davros¡¯ champion to his advantage.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health250Mana500
Stamina290
Level15Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.5Mana Regen/Sec7.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.7
Strength36Agility31
Wisdom72Intelligence50
Endurance47Dexterity30
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety44Unused Stat Points30
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Deception Novice Level 9 Exp 33.33%
Flattery Novice Level 2 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 9 Exp 16.67%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Deceptive Aura Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 7 Exp 42.85%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 4 Exp 90.00%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Unique Skill: Mana Affinity Novice
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light25
Dive 23: The Battle Draws Near Wow our story managed to get over 50 favorites. That¡¯s pretty amazing! I didn¡¯t even think this story would go over well with the readers. In all honesty I planned to drop it after a few chapters. I wanted to get some critiques on my writing style to make an actual story. That is why the story started so rough. I¡¯ve never actually posted anything I wrote. Since I know so many people like it though, I¡¯m not going to quit it any time in the foreseeable future. Barring death. I might quit it if I die. Hm, maybe. Anyway, on to the chapter! Alright readers, let¡¯s talk about Brenton a little bit. He is admittedly not a very nice person. We have thus far been gifted with brief glimpses of his past. They haven¡¯t really done justice as to why Brenton is quite like he is. Sure he has some rough times, but you would think with his nice personality that he would try to steer himself away from being so douchey. Let¡¯s start off this chapter with a brief look at his parents¡¯ past. Brenton¡¯s Dad¡¯s POV: His father was from a middle income family. His parents had died when he was young. His older sister had to take care of him until he grew old enough to care for himself. His sister was ten years his senior. She had started some tech company when she was only seventeen. She had graduated high school two years early, was two semesters away from getting an undergrad in computer sciences, and electronics engineering. That¡¯s right she was doing two majors at once. Her brother was really proud of her. She seemed like she could do anything. He wanted his future wife to be someone like her. At the age of only nineteen she had sold her company to a larger computer company. She netted a grand total of 4.1 million dollars. That might not be enough to live a luxurious lifestyle forever, but it wasn¡¯t a bad start. She used that money to hire a few other technicians and started working on something way over his head. Anyway, Brenton¡¯s dad graduated a year late from high school. He would have been very displeased with that if he hadn¡¯t met his future wife that year. She had skipped a year, so they had an age difference of two years. He saw how she was always nice to everyone. She would work hard, and never became conceited about herself. It was just like how his sister was. He tried wooing her the entire year. Of course he kept his grades up this time, if he didn¡¯t she wouldn¡¯t have looked his way. He took her to expensive restaurants, bought her many luxurious things, and did just about everything money could buy. Of course the money was all his sisters, but she had always said ¡°What¡¯s mine is yours.¡± So he didn¡¯t really think twice about spending money on her. She liked the attention, but didn¡¯t really think too highly about him spending other¡¯s money. She told him if he wanted to really date her he had to get a job and pay for their dates himself. Of course she didn¡¯t mind paying half, but she wanted to spend their money not someone else¡¯s. He looked for a job. Luckily it was summer by that point, so it wasn¡¯t hard to find one. He tried various jobs, but none of them seemed to fit. Eventually his sister brought up the fact that she needed someone to do office type work for her company. Scumbag Brenton¡¯s father jumped at the opportunity. He would get paid several times what a part time job offered, and to top it off it was close to home. After working there for a few years he proposed to Brenton¡¯s mom. Brenton¡¯s mom said yes. They moved into a good neighborhood, got a nice house, and had a son. Eventually though he got tired of working for his sister. He had been at that job for eight years, he felt it was time to get a better job. Everything always came so easily for him, so why did he have to constantly have to listen to his sister¡¯s nagging about ¡®unacceptable decrease in work ethics¡¯? She was no longer the sister he knew. He was going to sell her secrets to a rival company, and become someone important to them. When he told his wife she refused to let him quit. She said that if he did she would divorce him. Eventually she dropped the bomb. His sister had intentionally dropped the hint for him to come to her company. No one else wanted him. The reason it was so hard to find a job was that he was a bad worker. They had a big argument in the street in front of a small crowd that included their five year old son. He left and never returned. Lily¡¯s POV: Lily was Brenton¡¯s mom¡¯s name. She had always been a bright child. She had a loving family, but was an only child. Her family was extremely religious. Not like the West Burrows Christian type (look them up dudes, not their real name though), more like the keep God in your heart and love your neighbor type. She was raised with these strict religious values her whole life. When she told her parents that she didn¡¯t think she was a Christian they cried, but accepted that she would have to find her own way to God. They were very understanding, always believing in the best of people. That was probably where she got it. She would always try to study hard and be nice to everyone. She wanted to spread love to the world. She might not be religious, but she wanted to prove those with religious backgrounds didn¡¯t turn out horrible. (At this point in the future religions has a pretty bad stigma associated with it) When she was in senior year of high school, this boy kept confronting her. He wanted to go out with her, but she didn¡¯t really want to be with anyone romantically. His constant perseverance eventually persuaded her to give him a chance. She thought it was cute how he would try to win her affection. She always told him that she didn¡¯t want the jewelry, and the expensive dates, but he never seemed to understand that. She could see that he was a good person, so at the end of the year she said that if he could earn the money himself she would date him. He tried for the entire summer to get a job. It never worked out for more than a few days. She saw that he lacked any motivation to do actual work. During the time he tried to woo her he had introduced her to his sister. They hit it off quite well. While his sister was far more advanced in the field of all things electronics, but Lily was very learned when it came to biology. They might not have interests that coincided, but they understood the intelligence the other held. Eventually Lily let it slip about Brenton¡¯s dad¡¯s job hunt. His sister and Lily made a plan after talking it out. His sister would hire him, and make it seem like a coincidence. It was a beautiful success. It seemed like everything in Lily¡¯s life was perfect. They got a good home, and had a beautiful baby boy. Eventually she started to notice changes in her husband¡¯s behavior. He would stay out late when work was over, and he never paid attention to her or their child. She tried to fix their relationship, but it was all for naught. She even joined her sister-in-law¡¯s company (as an unofficial research assistant) to try to produce AI, thinking if they worked at the same company it would bring them closer. The company actually had a daycare program. The company had studied the potential of a daycare program for a few years, and it was determined that productivity would increase by at least 15%. It in fact increased by 28%. Lily¡¯s sister-in-law always had an eye for good investments. Lily didn¡¯t need to use it, but it was felt good working for a company that held parents in such a position. When he told her he was going to sell the company out she was shocked. She didn¡¯t think that he would go that far, ever. She gave him an ultimatum, if he did it then they were over. He got heated after that. The argument ended when Lily accidentally let it slip about how he got the job. He left, she called her sister-in-law immediately, and told her everything. She never heard from her husband again. At work they were close to a breakthrough in creating AI. The government even took an interest in the tech and bought what they had. The company made a lot of money, and continued to develop a lot of techs based around what they sold. Unfortunately the government did a lot of tests and proved it was impossible to create true AI. They still had a ten year contract with them though. The government would take all tech made by the companies they bought from for ten years. That was the agreement for selling. At this point the US government was buying a lot of tech from companies that seemed to have a high potential. Her company still continued on in the AI research. The government gave the ok so it was all legal. They made a lot of interesting techs, a few even became somewhat known to the public. But the main goal of the company had been development of AI. With it they could do just about anything, from regulating bio domes for thousands of years, to things as miniscule as predicting battle outcomes in war sims. Over the next few years she had to stop the research. She had a lot of personal problems to deal with. She even had to take out a loan once to bail her son out of jail. The guy she had been dating tried to force her to have sex. Unfortunately he had been powerful, and got Voice arrested. Lily¡¯s sister-in-law offered to pay it off, but Lily didn¡¯t fell right about letting other¡¯s take care of her problems. Eventually she did get it paid off, and Lily and Brenton moved. She started working with her sister-in-law again on the development of AI. The government had tried several times to make it, but it was all for nothing. So her sister¡¯s company bought full rights to it. Eventually she moved to the town where her sister lived. For some reason her sister didn¡¯t like to be around Brenton. Lily felt sad, but he had stopped caring about the world, and she understood that being around someone like that was hard. When DI announced the release of the DIVE pods to the public she arranged for one to go to her son. Sure rigging a global contest wasn¡¯t fair, but she thought her son would finally come out of his shell. He had slowly come to care less and less about anyone but her. She loved him dearly, but because of she wanted him to have other friends. It took him a long time to even warm up to his aunt. She had wanted to keep quiet about being in the company, so she asked to never be named. Even her relationship with her sister was completely held secret. With all the secrecy she had no real fear of people finding out her little request. After getting him a DIVE pod, Lily went to watch the company¡¯s latest AI experiment. She would only be gone for a month, but her friend Rachel was specifically watching Brenton while he played the game. Rachel had developed some sort of older sister type complex with Brenton. Even though she never met him. Lily had met Rachel a long time ago. Rachel was actually a good friend of her sister¡¯s. The developers in charge of updates each had a person they had to watch over. Rachel happened to be in charge of watching over her son. The contestants were chosen about a month before the news release. That gave the programmers in charge of the group enough time to create a city based on the personality traits the group showed. Rachel had investigate her contestant like she was supposed to. She eventually became protective of him (again she never met him). She had apparently found some information even Lily didn¡¯t know, but that was personal and Lily wouldn¡¯t ask about it except from her son. She believed that if he kept it hidden it was for a reason. She also knew that DI had to have all the information on the winners. She didn¡¯t like it, but mixing her personal feelings in wouldn¡¯t help anything. She knew things like he used to get in trouble a lot in school, but he would always have a good reason for it. She never tried to dig any deeper if he said it wasn¡¯t his fault. Lily had made Brenton¡¯s life as good as possible. The thing she cared about most in the world was her family. Her parents had died when Brenton was two, so he was her only family left. There was a freak car accident. They were killed instantly. At the time Brenton¡¯s father was still a good man, he comforted her for a long while. Alright now that we have a bit of background information about his parents let¡¯s talk expand a little bit on why he turned out the way we have seen him. Brenton¡¯s POV: Brenton was a pretty happy upbeat child. His mom would always take care of him, and his dad. Well his dad didn¡¯t really count. He would go playing with his mom whenever he could. He have meals with her, she would give him baths, it was a good life. After his biological father left he was confused. He didn¡¯t know why they weren¡¯t happy. All he knew was that his dad had left and made his mom cry. Up until that point he had loved both his parents, but he had always been a momma¡¯s boy. After his dad left he became slightly more withdrawn. He would still play with the other kids in school, and he was still upbeat, but it was never quite the same. When he entered middle school he started to notice something. The people around him would always try to get others in trouble instead of fessing up. They would shift the blame as much as possible. He was even labeled a trouble maker, because he never shifted the blame. His mother would always understand why he had actually gotten in trouble. He tried to get others to be honest, but that backfired. The people around him started to distance themselves from him. He hated it when he saw people lying to those in power, especially if it was over something as stupid as getting punished. If you did something wrong you should get punished. Those were the rules. He tried to believe people, but almost every time he helped someone it turned around and bit him in the butt. Like how he tried to get a boy¡¯s pet lizard back from a bully that stole it. The bully that had the lizard told on Brenton, and the boy Brenton helped denied knowledge of it. One time he tried to help a girl that said she had an abusive family by giving her money. She ran away with an older guy and he was left with the consequences. Brenton gave money to homeless people often, but he would see several of them coming out of the beer store. The ones that didn¡¯t he would still give money to, but the number of times he gave dwindled as he trusted people less and less. He eventually stopped helping people altogether. He decided people weren¡¯t worth it. He had basically given up on thinking people would ever be honest, or kind, or even just decent. When he had completely given up on people he fell in love with this girl in freshman year of college. She was kind, pretty, and always seemed so upbeat and honest. He tried to change himself to fit her tastes, but she didn¡¯t even want him. In his broken hearted state he became what she thought of as perfect. When he turned her down he got an insane rush. After that he got slightly addicted to the feeling of making new personas for himself. He hung out with many types of people, and became ¡®friends¡¯ with them all. After a while he would drop them, and the best part was they always thought it was their fault. By the time his second year in college started, he could read a person almost perfectly after just a few hangouts. He even took some psychology courses to broaden his understanding of humanity in general. His addiction slowly changed from developing new personalities to fit people, into convincing people about absurd lies. The best one was that he convinced a foreign dignitary that he was a European prince on the run. Sure he might have gotten into a lot of trouble if he was found out, but that was why he made sure not to be found out. His addiction slowly died down as it became mundane. He no longer felt the thrill of convincing others he was perfect. Of course his mother was different. He would always be honest with her. She never asked questions too detailed about his life, so he felt like she was ok with how he lived it. His only real weakness in all of this was that he was weak to very direct honesty, and he still couldn¡¯t force himself to turn away if he someone getting abused in front of him. He heard of the new game called DIVE. It was supposed to be the world¡¯s ¡®first¡¯ virtual reality device. The world already had some VR machines, but nothing like what DI promised. The other companies promised sight, sound, and sometimes taste, but never a fully immersive experience. He was super excited to get one. He even applied for one of the five spots to get a free one. He would love it if his mom didn¡¯t even have to pay for him to play. He would become the most respected person in the game, then he would control it. As soon as he decided on joining the growing horde of people trying to get a free DIVE pod, he was already creating a way to conquer the game. Back to the game: Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice entered a dream realm and learned to feel the magic in the air. He changed his class to Force Mage, and gained a bunch of skills. Days until Ether Realm Battle: 1.5 Voice was training with EDI in the woods until nighttime. He had gotten Heather and told her to hunt only within a few meters of where they were. Sol was to go with her until the second part of Voice¡¯s training. The training had two steps to it. The first half of the time he spent trying to see her while she snuck about. She would be stealthier and stealthier, until she finally used her stealth ability. From this Voice managed to gain the Spot and Listen skills. Oddly enough they fused to his Inspect skill.
Spot Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to see hidden things. You can also pick things out of a crowd more easily. Every level of this skill increases the amount of information your spot gives you. Every rank increases the level of your vision while you concentrate. Apprentice rank will make the user at least have eyesight of 20/20. If the user has equal to or better than that it will increase the sight by 3 feet. Every rank after Apprentice grants and additional 3 feet of sight, up to 20/10 vision. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. You level this skill by spotting hidden things, or finding things in a crowd. The harder the object is to find the more exp you get from finding it. If you have already found the object you gain no exp.
Listen Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to hear quiet things. You can also pick sounds out of a group more easily. Every level of this skill increases your ability to hear sounds, and distinguish them. Every rank increases the distance you can hear from while concentrating. You level this skill by listening to quiet noises, and distinguishing them.
With the automatic level seven given to the Group Skill he became able to pick up EDI¡¯s trail a lot easier. Her ability still far outweighed his. He could not manage to find her if she were in stealth mode, and trying to stay silent. With the hours of training he managed to level up Inspect to level 8. The best part about it was if he tried to spot something Inspect would inspect everything near where he was looking. After leveling up his Inspect he decided that they would take a short ten minute break. He finally remembered to toggle it on after reading the entire description again. He was instantly bombarded by white boxes pointing with white lines to different objects. The information it said gave: the name of the object, below that was the level of potency of the object, below that was the magic class and a generalization of the power level of the mana inside the object. I.E. small, medium, large, or huge. The only thing that said huge was a necklace EDI had barely visible. Voice wanted to ask her about it, but thought better. If she stopped helping him he would have no way to win against that black robed bastard. Voice rested while he tried inspecting everything in a twenty foot area around him. While focusing on the air around him he was even able to tell the exact direction it was blowing, even if it wasn¡¯t touching him. He didn¡¯t know how he could use that, but he was sure that he could. About halfway through his rest he was finally able to ignore most of the descriptions of things without actually turning the skill off. If he concentrated on the boxes getting smaller they would, until he made them bigger again. He was trying to get all the information about everything when he felt a tap on his shoulder. EDI said, ¡°It¡¯s been ten minutes. You said you wanted to start the next part of the training.¡± She said this quietly, she seemed a bit shy to Voice. He had no clue as to why. He wasn¡¯t really watching her, so he didn¡¯t pick up on any signs. The next part of his training was a more exciting for him. He and EDI had a mock battle. He instructed Sol to heal them when his bandages ran out. His nursing skill, and inspect were slowly rising without any work on his part. He was pretty happy about that. Of course he turned down the size of the inspections too super small while sparing. The spar started after Voice had grabbed his staff. It started as many spars do, with the participants circling each other. EDI was the first one to attack. She lunged at Voice with her left Sai. Voice was watching her and noticed her left foot dig slightly into the ground. He put his staff up to defend against her attack that he felt was coming from the left. She had indeed struck at him with her left Sai, but noticing his defense twirled in a circle and attacked with her right. Voice couldn¡¯t keep up with her twirl and was hit. His Hp dropped instantly to a 5%. ¡°EDI,¡± He coughed a bit as blood escaped from his mouth. ¡°What level¡± cough, ¡°what level are you?¡± EDI shrugged innocently. ¡°I just made it to level thirty today.¡± Fuck. Fuckity Fuck Fuck. If she is only that level, I bet that guy Davros got is much higher. Even assuming he is a player he would have had much more time to level up than EDI. But level doesn¡¯t really matter does it? You can still get skills up with a little bit of work. Then again I haven¡¯t gotten any skills up lately, so maybe I really should think about power leveling. But if I did that I might miss out on some good skills! SHIT! This was supposed to be a fun rpg, not a damn strategy game. I guess I¡¯ll just try to level up my class. That would probably have the best results. But I still need to find out what I need to get to make a guild. He sent a brief private message to Susan asking her what someone needed to start a guild. All of transpired in the ten seconds it took for the bandages to heal him. EDI held out a hand to him. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that, I used a regular attack. I didn¡¯t realize your hp was low. At least you have the heavy armor though.¡± He inspected his chainmail.
Chain Iron Armor
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Defense25Durability63/80
Weight25 lbs
This item is extremely defensive. You lose almost no mobility since you are slightly accustomed to wearing heavy armor. This armor was made by an expert craftsman. This armor gains plus five defense and twenty five durability.
¡°Wow EDI. You managed to knock off 17 durability in one attack.¡± EDI looked at the ground and mumbled something. Voice didn¡¯t want her to quit sparring so he said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. Armor was meant to be attacked like that.¡± He lifted her chin up and gave her his best smile. ¡°I¡¯ll just get it fixed up when we are done.¡± EDI quickly got back to her stance. Voice did the same. It was decided that landing blows would be very unfortunate for Voice, so they would stop just before that. He didn¡¯t know how, but she managed to take off over 200 hp in one attack. Now that might be normal for a level thirty, but he could only hit for twenty or thirty hp per shot. This time Voice was the first one to attack. He held his staff from his right shoulder to his left hip. He swung the butt of his staff toward her knees. Seeing this EDI blocked with her right Sai. As her Sai descended Voice put all of his force into the top of his staff. The tip of his staff swung towards her left shoulder. EDI easily caught it with her left Sai. She twisted her Sai and held the staff for several seconds. After a brief tug-of-war with EDI, Voice managed to get his staff free. He backed up several steps quickly. He grabbed one end of his staff with tight grip. He swung the other end at EDI. She jumped in the air, but Voice caught her left leg as he turned his staff around to go the opposite direction. EDI crashed into the ground. She got up angrily. ¡°HEY! I thought we weren¡¯t going to hit each other!¡± Voice¡¯s skill was already bandaging her up. Voice put his hands in the air. ¡°Sorry. I¡¯m sorry. I didn¡¯t actually think it would hit you.¡± EDI was still mad at him, but it was a simple mistake. She decided to forgive him for now. They got back to training after she had been bandaged up. They circled each other again. They exchanged blows without hitting each other. Voice would mostly ¡®hit¡¯ EDI while doing feints and tricks. EDI would ¡®hit¡¯ Voice whenever he had a failed attempt at a trick. In the end Voice was still covered in bruises even though the contact with EDI¡¯s Sais was light. The bandages quickly got used up. Sol was responsible for their wounds after that. By the end of the sparring Sol was almost completely out of magic. Its bright luminescence made into a dull glow. Voice had gained two endurance and one strength through the sparring session. His agility and dexterity also had a small increase. They each gained one level. After Voice was satisfied with his gains he asked EDI, ¡°So, do you want to go hunting with Heather, Sol, and me? I¡¯m going to go hunt until it¡¯s time to go to the battle with Davros¡¯ chosen.¡± EDI hurriedly agreed. Voice had Heather run back to the city to drop off the pelts she had gotten from the hunting, and to get the pot and pan so Voice could cook the meat. Voice invited EDI to a party, of course she accepted. EDI and Voice went into the forest and killed three wolves and a bear before Heather returned. Then entire next day Voice spent hunting monsters in the forest with EDI, Heather, and Sol. Although Sol only healed, and provided light at night. The first group of monsters the fought was a group of four level 18 wolves. EDI took two, Heather took one, and Voice took one. Heather and EDI made short work of their wolves, but Voice was having a bit of trouble with his wolf. The monster had several new attacks, and was a lot faster and stronger than most of the wolves he had been used to hunting. Voice got a few cuts, but nothing major thanks to his armor, and his Sense ability. After his second battle he no longer had any problems figuring out where the wolves would strike. His only real problem was keeping up with them. Heather and EDI didn¡¯t seem to have any problems in that regard, but Voice was always just a second too slow unless he used Sense. He managed to dodge and block the strikes of the wolves after the first one, but it was very hard for him to land any hits of his own. The only point where they had any actual danger was when two groups of four wolves each targeted them at the same time. It was about halfway through the second day. Which meant there was only about 12 in game hours before the final showdown. They were resting after a hard fought battle. They had just finished restoring their hp and stamina when EDI heard a twig snap. She alerted Voice, who in turn alerted Heather. They lined up back to back in a triangle. They were surrounded on all sides by wolves. There were eight total. Sometimes Heather or EDI would try to attack, but the wolves would retaliate by attacking the aggressor from her left and right flanks. These were all level 20 wolves. Except one. It was bigger and more intimidating than the others. Voice inspected it. It was level 25. Shit. That¡¯s almost as high as EDI. I¡¯m level 19, and Heather is level 22. If we can hold off the other seven wolves maybe EDI can get the alpha. Voice sent a pm to both parties, and began to attract attention away from EDI. He ran straight for the wolf in front of him and to his left. The wolf that was in front of him and to his right jumped at him, now flying towards Voice¡¯s back. Heather did the same thing, but to the wolf in front of EDI. The entire group went into a frenzy and started attacking. Voice was using Sense every time it wore out, just to be able to avoid most of the damage. His health was still draining fast. What Voice found out was that the skill only told you the placement that had the highest chance to negate the most damage. He always took a little bit. Luckily his armor was holding quite well. One wolf jumped at EDI, only to have a Sai embedded in its eye socket. As she threw her Sai she stepped back a step. The moment it passed between her and the Alpha she used stealth. She picked up a rock and threw it up wind. The wind was blowing from the Alpha to her. The wolf looked in that direction, that was all the invitation EDI needed. She jumped onto the wolf¡¯s back, and relentlessly pummeled the back of its head with her Sai. The wolf bucked and tried to bite or throw her off, but her legs were gripped so tight they were causing he pain. After a few more, well placed, neck thrusts the Alpha was dead. Good thing too, because Voice was curled up in a ball getting attacked by two wolves. Meanwhile Heather had two wolf bodies lying near her, and was fighting two more. Sol was out of commission since he didn¡¯t get to fully heal his magic. In the nighttime his magic regen was basically nil. Because of a lack of healing Heather was bloodied and bruised, her left forepaw was limp in the air. She did not touch it to the ground for the pain it would cause. EDI decided to aid Voice first. He seemed to be in the most immediate danger. She quickly grabbed her Sai out of the eye of the monster she killed, and attacked the two ganging up on Voice. She ran to where the three were, and as soon as she got close enough, plunged both Sai into the eyes of one of the assailants. Ripping them out she turned to attack the other wolf. Only to see Voice standing up with a wicked grin. Thinking better of it she went to help Heather. Heather only had one more wolf to kill, but was breathing extremely heavily, and seemed very slow. EDI made it just as the wolf clamped its jaws around her neck. Heather looked helplessly past EDI. Time seemed to stop for a moment as she felt something rush past her. The next thing she knew the wolf was dead, and Voice was lying unconscious on the ground. Voice was getting beaten by two wolves. After a short bout the other wolves all banded together to kill Heather. He was blocking and dodging as best he could, but he was getting pushed back by the two beasts. Eventually he ran out of stamina, and tripped on a rock. He instinctively curled into a ball as he fell. The two wolves took turns to attack him. The only thing saving his life was his armor. He heard a deep howl, and suddenly one of the wolves was blown off of him. He took the opportunity to kick the other wolf away. He stood up with a savage smile. The wolf jumped at him, only to be tossed head first into the ground behind him. Voice turned around to attack, when he saw it. Heather was about to get her head ripped off by one of the wolves. EDI wouldn¡¯t have time to get there. Heather was staring at him with eyes that pleaded for him to help. He lost all control of his body. He entered Battle Rage without thinking about it. Seeing Heather in danger had been too much. He might not seem to care about her, but she had at least been around basically the entire time he had been playing the game. They had some amount of connection at least. Voice ran towards the wolf killing Heather. Time seemed to slow down as he did. He instinctively used Sense. He planted his staff where it told him, and felt blood spurt on his feet. Ignoring it he kept running towards Heather. He made it just before the wolf completely clasped its jaws around her. He struck the wolf in the base of the neck so hard it shattered his staff. The wolf fell over, dead. Voice was relieved that he saved Heather. He let the Battle Rage go, and fell to the ground.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health290Mana500
Stamina290
Level19Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.9Mana Regen/Sec7.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength37Agility32
Wisdom72Intelligence50
Endurance49Dexterity31
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety44Unused Stat Points50
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Deception Novice Level 9 Exp 33.33%
Flattery Novice Level 2 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 9 Exp 16.67%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Deceptive Aura Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 8 Exp 25.00%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 6 Exp 33.33%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Unique Skill: Mana Affinity Novice
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light25
Dive 24: The Next Realm Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice trained with EDI on how to sense people with the stealth ability. He learned the skills Listen and Spot. He fought for half a day. He gained 4 levels, but when the last battle was over he fell into the blackness. Days until Ether Realm Battle: .5 Ps. I won¡¯t be able to keep doing one a day chapters, but with all of the love I¡¯m getting I think you guys deserve some! ; ) Voice felt a moment of extreme disorientation. He felt like he was about to hurl the wolf meat he had eaten before. He tried opening his eyes, but was blinded by the brilliance of nine shining auras. Each aura was a different color, but each had a power to it he couldn¡¯t fathom. He heard an evil chuckle. ¡°You might want to turn off your inspect buddy. Our auras were designed to keep pests like you from seeing us.¡± Unsure of what to do he decided to toggle off the skill. He could always toggle it back on. When he did he noticed nine people standing in a completely white expanse. Each one stood at least seven feet tall. From left to right. The first person he easily recognized. She had been enveloped in a bright white aura. With beautiful pink skin, and long white wings encircling her, Voice knew it was Mar. The next person had blue scaly skin, and sat upright on a tail. She looked like a beautiful mermaid. He deep brown hair fell to her waist. Twin jets of water encircled her from fin to head, only to cascade into a spout and land back at her feet. She held a barbed spear, and on her hip hung a net. The next was a man with light white robes that billowed without any wind. From his back sprouted two sets of large wings. He was completely bald, and under his white robe one could see a lean but muscular body. He had a fan (Japanese style) belted to his hip. He seemed to float several inches above the ground. His gave continued on. Beside the man was a woman. Her skin was a deep beautiful dark brown. Although one could clearly see her substantial age, you couldn¡¯t say she was diminished by it. Her eyes were slanted like a cats. Voice saw her blink, but instead of up and down her eyelids went left and right. Her hair was made up of several types of snakes, which seemed to play with each other. She had several types of vines winding up her legs to just below her navel. Each vine seemed to carry an identically sized fruit. The fruits were varied, but he did see a tiny watermelon. Beside the obviously naturalistic woman stood a man(?). Voice couldn¡¯t make out his features. Not because the man was far away, but because the man had no features. He was like a mannequin that had yet to have a face, or any obvious way of telling it apart, made. Even with Voice¡¯s Inspect off, he could see a black spiral (like a black hole) with streaks of eight different colors being sucked into the white center. To his right was a man. He was entirely nude, but had no reproductive organs. His entire body seemed to be made of steel. He wasn¡¯t overly buff, but he was muscled. He had several weapons attached to his body. Literally attached. His eyes were completely red, and his left hand was actually a short blade. Beside him was a stone statue. It was definitely a male, or at least very masculine looking. You could see the six-pack, made of rocks. The rocks were constantly shifting, except for the top rock that appeared to represent the head. Beside him was a beautiful fire. It was in the shape of a beautiful woman, but she constantly flicked and changed her features. The only constant was the general colors of the flame. The outer flames would always be more orange and yellow than the rest. The middle flames would be redder or bluer than the outer flames. The inner flames oscillated between blue and white. In the dead center of the flame goddess was a pale ghostly flame. It didn¡¯t change its position or color. Beside her was a dark ominous figure. He had dark tendrils encircling him, and wore a pitch black cloak. Voice didn¡¯t know what exactly was happening, but he guessed that since Mar was here, and there were exactly nine individuals, that these people might be the nine elder gods. He bowed right after that realization. ¡°Thank you Elder Gods! Thank you for gracing me with you presence. To what do I owe such an honor?¡± ¡°AHAHA¡± The dark figure at the right end started laughing. ¡°He¡¯s playing you guys! You can¡¯t see it? AHAHAHAHAHA.¡± As the dark figure laughed Mar said, ¡°Rise my Champion. You were here because Davros¡¯ Champion,¡± She gave a menacing glance towards the laughing figure, ¡°killed you.¡± Voice bowed his head. Surely they didn¡¯t count that as a victory? Gotta start preparing to make the best of a bad situation. ¡°It is true he killed me. I was wondering about that my goddess. Why was I allowed to be killed by him? I would have thought there were rules against that?¡± He kept his tone as innocent as possible. Mar gave another angry look at Davros, who now had a contemptuous look on his face. ¡°It is. Part of the agreement was that if you killed his champion, or he harmed you in any way, that the one that had been hampered would be granted some boon from each of the Nine Elder Gods.¡± Voice¡¯s eyes went wide. Oh fuck this is going to be good! HELL YEAH! Mar continued. ¡°You will be examined by each of the gods individually, then they will decide what to give you as a boon. First is me.¡± She waved her hand and Voice found them sitting in a field of beauty. All manner of flowers and small cute animals were seen in the endless field. The only word Voice could think of to describe it was spring. ¡°Why do you want to fight Davros? We Elder Gods know you come from another world. What have you to gain from being my champion?¡± Before Voice could speak she held up a hand. ¡°Please remember that you cannot tell lies in my realm. Well that puts a bit of a hamper on my plans. Ok, quick think! ¡°Well if this were my world I would do the same.¡± She waited for him to continue. ¡°If your followers were people of my world, and the Elder Gods existed in my world, and I had the same powers, I would do the same.¡± ¡°So what you mean is that you wish to treat my people as if they lived in your world?¡± Caught me on that did you? ¡°Not exactly.¡± He continued before she could interrupt. ¡°Your followers have too different values and beliefs, live their lives too differently, to be treated the same. You wouldn¡¯t treat a dragon the same as a lizard right?¡± Mar gave him a smile. ¡°Ah, but who is the dragon?¡± She was enveloped in an aura of pink. Voice felt warmth and love coming from it. When she was gone he was back in the white area with eight figures left, and a notice.
Many Blessings of Mar (Complete) For continued good faith towards the goddess Mar you have been granted her ultimate divine blessing. At this time you can cast all priest spells. Mar rewards your faith by upgrading the token of her power. You have gained 15 affinity to light. The aura that Mar has infused into you is outstanding. Your Healer¡¯s Aura now reduces the cost of all light spells by 1/3.
Upgraded Amulet of Mar *Artifact
This amulet was crafted in the Realm of the Gods. This amulet belongs to Mar. Invoking the prayer of Mar while indicating an ally, whose health has reached zero within the last ten seconds, will revive that ally with 10% of their maximum hp, 0 stamina, and 0 mana.
The water goddess approached him as he looked over his new information. When she touched him they were transported to an underwater castle. The castle had a perfect view of the sea floor. It had large archways, and no doors or walls. They sat in the throne room, which seemed more like a sunken ruin, but pristine. Voice started holding his breath while frantically trying to find some source of oxygen. As he looked around he hear a sweet giggle behind him. ¡°Hehehe, you don¡¯t have to worry.¡± The voice was light and bubbly, but also held a depth of understanding. ¡°I¡¯ve made it so you can breathe silly. Hehehe.¡± After she said that Voice quickly swam out of the castle. He shot towards the outside of the castle. The water goddess pouted and transferred herself in front of him. She prepared a water ball to hit him, she was planning on hurting him until he showed an interest in her kingdom. She was planning that, until she saw the look on his face. He held an enraptured expression. He was actually watching all of the unique (Author note* fish at the bottom of the ocean are freaking hideous) and lovable animals she had made. He watched all of the flora, even the sea vents, and underwater boulders. ¡°Hehehe. He¡¯s so amazed by my kingdom he would forget about the fact that he was with a goddess. Hehehe.¡± She was happy he appreciated her work so much. She was content to let him worship her creation forever. She was actually slightly put off when he turned his attention to her. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said with a solemn expression. ¡°I¡¯ve forgotten about the beauty that is before me when confronted by the infinite majesty of the underwater world.¡± Voice¡¯s POV: As soon as the sea hag told him she made it so he could breather he quickly looked around for anything that would make her like him more. Something he could wax and wane about. He noticed the craftsmanship the underwater castle had been made with. So he figured she would respond the best to some sort of flattery about her realm. The only water goddess he knew of in his world was, Thalassa. I think she was the female version of Poseidon or something. Well that doesn¡¯t matter. I know she gave birth to all fish, and has a personality as changing as the ocean. He tried to be sporadic. He didn¡¯t know if it would work but he had no idea how to handle these types. He felt her teleport herself in front of him. He noticed the water ball forming in her hands. Shit! How do you even make a water ball underwater!? I don¡¯t want to die! ¡­ Again! He looked as possibly fascinated as he could. He heard her say, ¡°Hehehe. He¡¯s so amazed by my kingdom he would forget about the fact that he was with a goddess. Hehehe.¡± Gods that laugh is annoying. He looked for a while longer, it wasn¡¯t every day you could see an underwater volcano after all. He turned towards her. He saw that she was starting to throw a fit again, so he quickly said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± with a solemn expression. ¡°I¡¯ve forgotten about the beauty that is before me when confronted by the infinite majesty of the underwater world. She asked in a flat tone, while playing with another water ball, ¡°So why have you grown bored of my realm?¡± He started talking rapid pace. ¡°Well I haven¡¯t, obviously one could stay down here for eternity and be grateful, and never bored, but I have to beat Davros¡¯ Champion or else the people up top will suffer, sometimes the hero has to sacrifice everything they would want to do the right thing, even if that is the forever changing uncontrollable beauty of the infinite waters.¡± He was breathing hard after saying that. He did it all in one breath so she wouldn¡¯t turn angry again. She seemed somewhat pleased by his answer. He knew this because after saying that several of her ¡®unique and lovable¡¯ fish swarmed around him. Rubbing on him and flowing between his legs. She turned herself into a small pure red fish. She swam between his legs. When she touched his left leg he got:
Many Blessings of Undine (Minor) For pleasing Undine you have been gifted with her blessing. When submerged in water you gain gills, and can filter water from the water. You may also request for her aid by giving a suitable offering. Your body still cannot withstand the pressure of deep-sea diving, nor can you see underwater. Your underwater swimming speed, and maneuverability have not increased.
He was again transported to the white place. As he expected the man in the white robe approached him. When the man was within ten feet he and Voice were suddenly in the clouds, flying above the clouds. Now Voice wasn¡¯t exactly scared of heights, but being suddenly transported into the air with nothing below your feet is a little scary. The man had a light and airy voice. ¡°So tell me, why are you trying to learn wind magic?¡± Voice wasn¡¯t even surprised that the wind god knew he was trying to learn. ¡°Well, I just thought that it had the most adaptability out of the all of the types of magic. Light and dark only really do a few things each. Water, Fire, Earth, all of the others, they are only really good in the places with a lot of it.¡± I mean probably anyway. It would make sense if magic was more powerful where there was a lot of that element. ¡°Hoh HO! Good answer! Well then how about this. I don¡¯t know what the others gave you, but here is a special pair of shoes.¡± The winged man snapped and pointed to Voice¡¯s feet. Voice saw his worn boots dematerialize, only to be replaced by a pair with wings embroidered on them. ¡°Those have a bit of my power in them. Since you are a Force Mage you should be able to figure out how to channel magic through them. When you do you¡¯ll understand what they¡¯re for. You can keep them or sale them. It¡¯s your choice.¡±
Winged Shoes of Sylph*Artifact
This pair of boots was crafted in the Realm of the Gods. The shoes belong to Sylph. Channel wind magic through them to find the effects.
After he read that he felt himself falling. Suddenly he was below the clouds and saw the ground rapidly approaching. He tried increasing the air pushing on his stomach, but that only slowed him a little. He was afraid to push too much in case he was thrown in some other direction. Voice was only a few miles above the ground, when he suddenly was back in the white room. Mother Nature was the next one to give him a gift. Vines sprung up from where he was sitting. They quickly covered his entire body in a cocoon. When they receded he saw that he and the nature lady were in a forest. He sat still, watching Mother Nature. When she didn¡¯t respond he felt he was under some sort of test. He quietly meditated. He heard many distracting sounds, and felt many animals crawling over him, but all he did was quietly calm his mind. After nearly an hour the woman said, ¡°Well you have patience, I¡¯ll give you that.¡± His only response was a slight smile. He opened his eyes to see Heather sitting beside him, as well as several other animals. Heather was watching the goddess with a very content expression. ¡°Since you have shown such devotion towards nature, by both loving my creatures,¡± she indicated Heather, ¡°and by killing the abominations that are monsters,¡± She frowned at that,¡± I have decided. You will be granted a natural boost to your pheromones. When you become more in tuned with nature I may see fit to grant others.¡± The vines wrapped themselves around him again.
Many Blessings of Gaia (Minor) For showing your love of nature to Gaia you have been gifted with her blessing. You will naturally produce pheromones. You can currently release: Territorial Pheromone When used Territorial Pheromones will indicate to others of your species that this area is yours. Others of your species will be alerted to who the territory belongs to. If they wish harm to you they will suffer (minor) psychological impairments.
He was back in the white room. Happy that things were going so quickly. These powers weren¡¯t omnipotent, but combined they could make for some interesting effects. He expected the middle figure next, but was met by the sword of the metal god. Voice had heard a metallic screeching, and suddenly a steel sword was against his throat. He slit Voice¡¯s throat. As Voice bled out he looked questioningly at the metal god. None of the others came to help though. Voice woke up in the white room again. The metal man was gone. He felt something was wrong with his body. Davros was laughing his ass off. Voice looked down, and saw that his stomach had a layer of metal on it. Confused he ran his fingers over it. Suddenly he understood why Davros was laughing. His stomach wasn¡¯t covered in metal. He quickly inspected it.
Magical Metal Stomach *Artifact
Created by the Great Metal God John Smith, this stomach runs on magic. It reduces your mana recovery by 10% (at least 5/ second). The more you allow it to take the more efficient it becomes. This stomach reduces the need to eat, by producing the nutrients your body needs. The maximum required mana regen is 10/sec. At that point you will no longer need to consume food. If your body develops a need for more, or less, food this number will be adjusted. You will still need water. You no longer need your large intestine, you may have it removed.
What kind of bullshit? Yeah, fine! I don¡¯t need to eat as much. BUT! WHAT THE FUCK! Don¡¯t just operate on people! Voice was happy about the perk, but it was kind of like a backhanded compliment. You can¡¯t just force people¡¯s body to change. I probably weigh a hundred extra pounds! As he was bemoaning his current situation the God shaped like many boulders came over. The rocks surrounded Voice. They started spinning on their respective axis. The rocks became rock orbs. The orbs began spinning faster, and faster. The orbs spun so fast they turned into disks. When the rocks were turned into disks they stopped spinning. The many disks were attracted to Voice, and made a large scaled orb around Voice and the earth god. The god¡¯s voice was deep, and seemed to rumble. His words were slow, and seemed to be drawn out, almost sleepy. ¡°My brother has given you the ability to nullify hunger. Tis a good ability. I shall give you the ability to Sense and use Mana Crystals. They are few, and far between, but if you find one you will able to unlock the full potential of them.¡± One of the rocks forming the orb broke off. It started spinning. As it spun it began to glow. It started with a deep red, turning into orange, then yellow. From yellow it went to green, then blue. It stopped at a bright vibrant baby blue. The colors changed as slowly as the earth god spoke. The newly formed Mana Crystal shot at Voice¡¯s heart.
Many Blessings of Gnome (Minor) Gnome has given you his blessing When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a Mana Crystal if it is close enough. In addition you will be able to unlock the full potential of Mana Crystals.
The Mana Crystal seemed to explode when it touched Voice¡¯s body. Pain seared his body. He arched his back as he cried out. He blacked out, only to find himself in Hell. Well, it was more like a realm made of fire. It looked pretty similar though, you can¡¯t really blame him for mixing them up. The flame goddess had taken the form of a child. He heard a monotone voice in his mind. ¡°You may make one statement. Depending on it I will give you your boon. You have thirty seconds.¡± Voice racked his brain for a good statement. He needed to both flatter this girl, and say something that would be powerful. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.He tried to get up, but chains made of flame sprouted from the ground and pinned him down. He took no damage, but he understood what was meant. He looked around. There was a city almost identical to Rand. The main difference was that everything was made of fire. He decided to take a risk and said the only thing that he could think of that really flattered her. He took a breath and said, ¡°There is a reason why people that are highly attractive are called hot.¡± A small blush came to the girls face. She changed into the form of a woman and gently caressed Voice¡¯s cheek. His body was again wracked by pain. It felt like his skin was melting off, only to be healed and melted again. He tried not screaming, but the pain was too much.
Many Blessings of Salamander (Minor) Salamander has given you her blessing. Your body will no longer be negatively affected by hot weather. You can withstand fire up to temperatures of 180 *F (82.22 *C). Magically created flames will cause full damage.
(Author¡¯s Note: If you guys were wondering that is enough to cause third degree burns. Paper burns at 451 *F) When he was put back into the white room he was laying on the floor panting. He couldn¡¯t handle all of that pain. His vision was cloudy, and he couldn¡¯t concentrate any longer than a second. The next thing he knew was in complete darkness. ¡°What, what happened?¡± A cloaked figure was standing in front of him. The only reason he knew this was that somehow, this figure was darker than the rest of the darkness. ¡°Hello Voice0fReason.¡± He heard a voice that was terrible and powerful. He panicked for a second. His mind was completely awake now. He knew who this was. ¡°I have to give you something. But,¡± The world became gray. The man lowered his hood for Voice to see. Somehow Davros was beautiful. His face was filled with hate, and rage, and contempt, but it was a beautiful face. ¡°But, all of my blessings are also curses.¡± He smiled wickedly. Voice knew Davros would enjoy tormenting him however he could. Voice took a chance. ¡°Finally, all of the pests are gone.¡± Davros¡¯ face momentarily faltered. He quickly regained his composure and put on a poker face. ¡°What do you mean by that?¡± ¡°Well, I wanted to talk to you this entire time. I plan on throwing the match with your chosen given the right conditions.¡± Davros gave him a shocked, yet happy, smile. Voice kept talking. ¡°I wanted to see if you could give me something better than Mar. I don¡¯t really fit with all of that pure love bullshit. I want money, power, and a following to rival the gods.¡± Davros couldn¡¯t believe what he was hearing. This human was here because his chosen had cheated. Although Davros didn¡¯t order it, and in fact punished the cretin for defying the rules, he had still broken the rules. Then here comes the object of his hate, and he wants to MAKE A DEAL !? Davros laughed. ¡°AH! AHAHAHAHA! OH AHAHAHAHA!! This is too much! This it too rich! Mar¡¯s Chosen wants to backstab her!? HAHAHA!¡± After over a solid minute of maniacal laughter Davros steadied himself and managed to say, ¡°Alright,¡± Davros sighed, took a deep breathe, and straightened himself. ¡°What do you want to backstab her? And why would you do that? Wouldn¡¯t you get far more from being her little follower? She has been known to give out pretty good boons.¡± Voice gave him a wicked smile. ¡°Well, Mar has already given me her complete blessing. As for the rest, well I did tell you that I¡¯d need a better offer than what she is giving.¡± Davros looked Voice up and down approvingly. He had changed his mind about this mortal, he might be a good slave after all. ¡°These are my terms, given that you have no additional terms that is. I want power to equal Mar¡¯s blessing seeing as she might just take it away after I betray her. I also want some divine artifact from you. She gave me one, so you have to give one that does something along the lines of fully healing a dead person. For doing so much good I was going to get an army of priests at my beck and call, not really from her but because I beat you. You must provide me with an equal army. She also had promised to go on a date with me if I win. I want you to give me someone as pretty as she is. If you can¡¯t do that, then just I know a girl that is just as beautiful. I want to own her. I want some sort of blood contract if you have that here. I will make her sign it myself.¡± Voice gave an evil grin. Davros was thinking all of this over. The boy had a lot of large demands, but nothing he couldn¡¯t handle. Then Voice dropped the bomb. ¡°For the final thing. I want to slaughter your current Champion. I don¡¯t want to just kill him. I want you to imprison him, and let me kill him as much as I want. I want you to strip away all the power you gave him, and then I want you to force him to watch you anoint me as your new Champion. I¡¯ll obviously wait until after the battle to ask for payment on this one. And your curse can¡¯t take away my blessing from Mar.¡± At first Davros thought this was a trick to kick his chosen without any consequence, but since Voice said he¡¯d wait to cash it in Davros agreed. He would just warn his current Champion after the battle. ¡°Fine, but as I said all of my blessings come with a curse. I can¡¯t do anything about that. The more power you want the more you must sacrifice. I won¡¯t let you sacrifice innocents like normal since that would tip off Mar.¡± Voice nodded his consent. ¡°Oh I can¡¯t wait to see her deflated face! HA! Just you wait Mar, I¡¯m going to defile your entire church! I am allowed to get bonuses for defiling her church after the battle right?¡± Davros nodded. He liked this boy. Purely in it for himself. Not only that, he seemed to like to watch people squirm beneath him. As long as he understood who was boss no one would be a better minion. ¡°Alright,¡± Davros continued. ¡°I will give you this rin- DON¡¯T TAKE IT YET!¡± As Davros had created a ring out of darkness Voice greedily grabbed at it. ¡°YOU IMBECILE!¡± Davros forced himself to calm down. Greedy ones were easy to deal with, but hard to control. ¡°NOW! If you take this you will be transported back to the Emptiness. This ring will be the answer to most of your requests I think. If you activate it, then it will drain your health. You can target anything dead. For every minute they have been dead you will lose ten hp. For every level above you they are, you will lose twice as much hp.¡± Davros smiled. ¡°They will be revived as per the Complete Raise Undead spell, but will have only as much free will as you allow. Now I think that satisfies your request for an item, and an army. For the contract, well we don¡¯t have a blood contract. We do have a soul binding contract though. I assume those are similar.¡± He put the ring on the contract and laid them both on the floor. He gave Voice a look telling him not to take it yet. He chuckled to himself after seeing Voice¡¯s eyes widen in wicked greed. ¡°Now for this ring to work you will have to have darkness affinity.¡± Voice looked a little worried. ¡°Ha, don¡¯t worry about it. Accepting this deal will equate to a Dark Contract, or a contract that I personally make with those that have light affinity but no dark affinity. You will gain 100 dark affinity, and they won¡¯t be able to see the contract. Technically speaking the contract isn¡¯t for the ring and soul contract, it is just for you purposely losing the battle. At that time I will grant you any one wish.¡± Voice started to interrupt him, but he gave a stern look. ¡°Of course if that wish was for my current champion to be imprisoned and tortured for eternity, well then how could I refuse.¡± With that he vanished.
You have gained the Barter Skill for bartering a good deal from a con man.
For bartering such a good from a con man you have gained several levels in the barter skill.
Barter Current Level: Novice Level 10 Exp 40.00% This skill allows you to buy things at lower prices when used. You can also sell items at higher prices. Every level of this skill increases the percentage the price is adjusted by. Typical merchants sell items at 150%, and buy them for 50%. Ranks in this skill provide various bonuses. You level this skill by bartering.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Con Artist. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Con Artist? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°No.¡± He inspected this new skill. It had no compatible skills to fuse. ¡°Exchange Relevant Skills.¡±
You have one group skill available. Your skill combinations are: Con Artist You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Con Artist. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Con Artist? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Con Artist. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Con Artist. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Con Artist. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you trick enough people to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Con Artist.¡±
Con Artist Current Level: Novice Level 8 Exp 52.66% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Deception, Flattery, Barter, and Sleight of Hand. You are a practiced con man. You can trick people into buying things, or ideas, at absurd prices. For creating the Group Skill: Con Artist, the skill Sleight of Hand has been generated. Sleight of Hand has been automatically added to your Con Artist skill. The higher the level the more believable your cons are. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
His deception skill dropped considerably, but since he hadn¡¯t really used barter before, and he got a free skill, he was quite happy. He decided to try this on some of the competition for Evan. He owed Evan a great deal, and since Evan invested so heavily in his smithy recently, he could use the help. Of course Evan would disapprove if he found out. Since Voice didn¡¯t want a drop in intimacy he would only target ¡®bad¡¯ smiths. Voice picked up the parchment and ring. As he did he saw that he was back in the white room. The featureless man looked at him like a father that just caught his son fighting. Voice was worried. The man(?) was waiting for something. Voice figured he¡¯d equip the ring, and inspected it, while they waited.
Cursed Ring Necrosis *Artifact
This ring was crafted in the Realm of the Gods. This ring was made by Davros, the god of darkness. Sacrificing health will allow you to summon the dead, provided you have the body of the dead you wish to summon. The cost is ten hp per second that body has been dead, times two for every level the dead body is higher than you. While this ring is equipped you are cursed. The blessings of all other gods are rendered null. This ring cannot be unequipped. The curse can be lifted by gaining at least 40% of your darkness affinity in the affinity of that god¡¯s element. For instance if you have 50 darkness affinity you will need at least 20 nature affinity to be able to receive the blessings of the nature goddess.
Suddenly the Emptiness, as Davros so aptly called it, turned pitch black. Voice blinked and he could see several stars. He looked all around himself. He was floating in space. The featureless man was right beside him. The featureless man spoke. His voice sounded empty, it had no emotion or depth. It was neither light, nor heavy, young nor old. ¡°Did you know that I have the ability to view all information of those that enter my realm?¡± Voice shook his head no, not sure where this was going. ¡°Well I do. I suppose you also didn¡¯t know I could see you skill levels and experience you had gained from them?¡± Voice knew exactly where this was going. He had racked up a few levels in flattery and deception, not to mention his new con skill. ¡°Well what do you want from me? Yes I flattered and lied to get better rewards.¡± He knew he couldn¡¯t really lie to this guy, since he probably had something similar to what Mar had. ¡°I just wanted to know why, and do also include why you lied so much to Davros.¡± Voice gave a harsh smile. ¡°He deserved it. I may not be of this realm, but mindless slaughter of innocents is bad anywhere. Just because he is the god of darkness, doesn¡¯t give him the right to act like an asshole.¡± The man thought for a moment. ¡°That didn¡¯t stop you from accepting items from him.¡± Voice sighed. ¡°Yeah, well I wanted to get as much as possible from him. Look, I don¡¯t intend to lose on purpose. If it is impossible I will fight as hard as I can, then ¡®intentionally lose¡¯. That way I can still get my revenge.¡± The man moved his left hand. As he did an image of Mar was conjured. ¡°Would she want you to get revenge?¡± Voice scoffed. ¡°Well maybe not, but I¡¯m not doing this for her. I think it¡¯s the right thing. I have the power to win, I hope, and I will do it. I only joined her for the boons she gave me. I want something beyond what she can grant me.¡± ¡°And what is it that you truly desire?¡± ¡°Power. Over everything. I want to be able to rule this realm, at least as far as my own people are concerned. They are coming here in just a few days after all. I want to own everything. Then if someone does something against my morale code, well I¡¯ll kill them until they hit level one. I believe I would be a good ruler of the world. I could fix many things plaguing the citizens, and even increase their life expectancy, and quality. ¡± With his mini rant over he took a breath. ¡°Very well. Have you heard of the hermit that wrote a series of books? I believe his name in the human tongue is Mirror.¡± Voice gulped, and nodded his head furiously. ¡°Well he was my one and only creation in this world. All the other gods created minor gods, sprites, and all sorts of magical beings. I just created him. He created his own realm, separate from the one you normally occupy. Here.¡± The blessed being threw something at Voice. As he caught it he woke up. EDI was slouched over him, crying. Heather was lying beside him, in a pitiful position. He groaned, the pain in his body suddenly came back. Not the intense pain of the other realm, but from getting beaten so badly by the wolves. He quickly turned on the toggle of his inspect skill before he forgot. As he sat up Sol flew out of his chest. Sol was very dim. He couldn¡¯t manage any healing in his state. Voice focused on healing his wounds, just as he did when he first used the ability. After he healed some of his wounds he saw a box.
You have gained the Force Mage magic Light. You can now use light magic with better efficiency as a Force Mage.
Cool. That was his last thought before he fell back into a deep slumber. Incase the ending screens are getting a bit long I put them in a spoiler tag. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health290Mana500
Stamina290
Level19Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.9Mana Regen/Sec2.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength37Agility32
Wisdom72Intelligence50
Endurance49Dexterity31
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety44Unused Stat Points50
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 9 Exp 16.67%
Automated Novice Level 7 Exp 00.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Deceptive Aura Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 15 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 14 Exp 11.11%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 6 Exp 33.33%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 7 Exp 85.72%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Unique Skill: Mana Affinity Novice
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light40
Darkness100
Idk why but that was a really fun chapter to write. Sux about what Davros did to him lol. Dive 25: The Battle Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice was sent into the realm of the gods. He received many boons from them, but the second to last boon that he got made it so he couldn¡¯t use the blessings of the other gods, only Davros¡¯. He gained a few skills, then he fell into the blackness. Days until Ether Realm Battle: ??? Voice awoke in a familiar room. He was back in Susan¡¯s shop. He sat up. Looking around he noticed Heather sleeping beside him. EDI had nodded off in a chair near his bed. He gently nudged Heather. She opened her eyes scooted towards him. She started rubbing against him. ¡°We thought you wouldn¡¯t wake up!¡± Heather¡¯s shout woke EDI. EDI looked around for a moment, alarmed. When she noticed Voice sitting up she gave him a hug. ¡°Oh Voice! I¡¯m so glad you¡¯re ok!¡± She tightened her hug. Voice coughed. ¡°You¡¯re choking me EDI.¡± Cough, cough. ¡°Oh sorry.¡± She released his while blushing furiously. She was just excited that he was ok. // EDI had actually carried Voice all the way back to Susan¡¯s. She had used her only two healing potions for Voice and Heather. On the way she had been attacked by a level 30 bear. She was already in the low level 20 area, so it was pretty weird. EDI set Voice down. She pulled the bear¡¯s attention, while Heather went in for a quick kill. The bear swiped at EDI. EDI easily dodged to the side. Heather bit the bear, dragging him to the ground. EDI stabbed both of her Sais into his eyes. She had realized almost as soon as she had met Voice, how powerful stabbing out an opponent¡¯s eyes was. Not only did it always deal critical damage, it also blinded the enemy. An enemy that can¡¯t see can¡¯t hit. With its eyes torn from its sockets it was easily killed. EDI picked Voice back up. She noticed that his stomach had turned metallic in color. Voice had also gotten seriously heavier. He was at least twice the weight he was earlier. The rest of the journey to the city was uninteresting. EDI and Heather managed to easily take Voice to the city gate, although they were just about dragging him when they got to it. EDI wasn¡¯t strong enough to carry something that heavy for long. The guards stopped her at the gate. One burly intimidating guard pulled out his sword. ¡°Halt! The battle for the future of Mar¡¯s religion is tomorrow. Who are you? Are you from the snake Davros?¡± EDI shook her head no. She probably wouldn¡¯t tell them if she was though. The guardsman looked at the body she was carrying. He eyed it suspiciously. ¡°Why are you carrying a dead body?¡± EDI hurriedly explained the situation. They had been training in the woods when he was attacked and fell unconscious after saving Heather. The guard looked closely at the body. When EDI happened to mention his name was Voice the guard called over a couple of other large men. ¡°Sorry about that ma¡¯am. Where were you taking him?¡± The other two men were instructed to carry him. EDI told him to bring Voice to Susan the alchemist¡¯s. They sat him down on the makeshift bed upstairs and left to get a priest. EDI called for Susan. She didn¡¯t really know Susan that well, but she did buy quite a few potions from her. Through the course of the game she had come to learn about Voice¡¯s sleeping arrangement with her. A priest came in a few minutes later. He examined Voice, and casted some healing magic. It had been over an hour and Voice still hadn¡¯t waken up. Eventually EDI found a chair and started dozing off. // Voice got out of bed and went downstairs. He saw Susan talking to a priest. Susan had her back to the stairs so she didn¡¯t notice him coming down. The priest saw him, and gave a deep bow. Susan turned around. When she saw Voice she breathed a sigh of relief. ¡°Oh thank goodness! The priest was just talking about your condition. EDI said you had gone berserk and killed a wolf that was attacking Heather. You are too sweet for your own good!¡± Susan rushed over and gave him a long hug. Voice blushed slightly at the sudden affection. ¡°Yes, well I¡¯m ok now. Thank you for worrying so much about my Susan. You are always so nice to me.¡± He gave her a very sweet face, accompanied by his excessively alluring tone. ¡°And thank you sir priest. For making sure I am fit to battle the dark god¡¯s chosen.¡± Voice inclined his head slightly. The priest quickly told him that it was no problem. ¡°Well I actually require something from the church. If you would like to accompany me?¡± Voice motioned toward the priest who energetically nodded his head. ¡°Susan, I know I have put you through a lot, but could I trouble you for another favor?¡± Susan shook her head in slight disbelief. ¡°Of course. You know you only need to ask.¡± Voice smiled at her. ¡°Thank you. Would you prepare a stack of 99 bandages, also if we have some mana potions I would like to buy about two stacks of them.¡± (one stack of potions is only 9 if you remember.) He left the shop as Susan got everything ready. Heather had hurried downstairs and was following him to the temple. Once there the head priest greeted Voice. ¡°Hello Chosen of Mar. How may I be of assistance to you?¡± Voice inquired about the healing plants area. The head priest had a large smile across his face as he answered. ¡°Well, we might not have been able to increase the amount of healing each plant does, but we are managing to keep it the same! With the help you showed us last time, all of our worries about decreased healing, and not being able to plant enough are gone!¡± Voice smiled as the head priest shook his hand heartily. ¡°Good, good. Well I was just thinking about a small exchange.¡± The priest adopted a look of contemplation while signaling Voice to continue. ¡°I was thinking, I could do another harvest for you, and I thought I could keep some of the potions I made to determine which the best is.¡± The priest thought for a moment. ¡°Yes, I think that would work admirably. If we can get another increase in power from the plants it would be very beneficial. The current level of potions we can make only heal for about 40 points apiece. I guess it¡¯s to be expected since we only follow the recipe you showed us before.¡± Voice gawked at the priest. He was amazed at the fact that they could make potions so powerful. I guess that means some sort of evolution happened, and the plants are more powerful now. I am going to sit down and look up gardening after the fight. With a new plan of action decided Voice went to start harvesting the plants. While he was working he realized the priests had started helping. With their help it only took him twenty minutes to harvest the entire garden. He had multiple stacks of each plant. He went to Susan¡¯s. Once there he went straight to the lab. He followed his exact pattern that he used last time. He separated the seeds from the plants, and then put the seeds into groups. He used critical strike six times per potion. He had hundreds of materials to go through, but was managing them extremely quickly. He ended up with 40 Ops that healed 5k each.
*Attention* The game has registered an excessively high numerical value from materials unable to provide sufficient potency. The game will begin a complete sever update in 24 hours.
Voice didn¡¯t pay attention to the notice. He had other things to worry about right now. His alchemy skill didn¡¯t level up except when he made the OP, not just drying or making regular potions. He ran to the temple. He only had an hour and a half before midnight. He didn¡¯t have enough time to do everything on his list. I shouldn¡¯t have been so greedy with those potions. Well at least I got forty on top of what I gave the church. After donating the potions to the church he planted the rest of the seeds he had. He kept one hundred of each seed. He gained some piety, but didn¡¯t have time to read the notice. His inspect skill and alchemy skill had each leveled up a nice bit. He even gained one dexterity. He went back to Susan¡¯s. He was going to get some bandages for his auto aid. He ran inside and saw a pile of goods on the desk. He didn¡¯t question what they were. Instead he just grabbed the bandages he saw. He got a notice. Tired of getting so many he read it, he was going to turn off the update thing after.
Automatic Nursing has fused all 40 Over Potions with the medium level bandages. You have traded in 40 Over Potions and 40 Stacks of bandages for 40 stacks of Over Potion soaked bandages. These bandages will keep the healing effects of the potions for 48 hours. Every hour after that the healing will degrade by 2%. The minimum length of alchemically treated bandages is 1 inch. Ps. You should remember your skills dude.
Voice had forgotten about his automatic nursing skill. He stared blankly at the blue box. He tilted his head, and rubbed his eyes. It was still there. Keeping calm he thought to himself. So not only did I just USE ALL OF MY FUCKING POTIONS! THE MOTHER FUCKING SYSTEM IS MAKING FUN OF ME!!!?!!!? Voice was pissed. He was ready to kill someone. If it weren¡¯t for the promise of the massacre to come he might have actually done it. He pulled at his hair in frustration. Every bandage unit held about five feet of bandages that meant each foot healed about an addition 1000 health. So every inch healed about 83 points. That meant that he was wasting some unless he got hurt for at least that much. He wanted to cry over how everything was going wrong, but he didn¡¯t have time. He saw a note beside the bandages saying Susan left more bombs with Evan. He went to Evans and asked how many more bombs he had. Evan thought Voice looked like a rabid animal. His eyes were red and swollen, he had minor cuts and bruises everywhere. His hair was a mess, and he gave an overall impression of ¡®mess with me. I dare you.¡¯ Evan gave him all of the bombs Susan had left with him. Voice promptly went to the training hall after pocketing the orbs of destruction. Once there he waited for several minutes. He wanted to get this over with, but if he pushed the teacher he might have come here for nothing. After about ten minutes the training instructor walked over to him. ¡°What is it you need?¡± His tone was a bit gruff, no doubt a little peeved that Voice had quit the training when he was almost done. ¡°I broke my staff, I was wondering if I could use one of yours, and if I could practice here a little more.¡± Then man gave him a blank stare. ¡°I don¡¯t just give my equipment to anyone. Maybe if you had stayed to train, but you left part way through. Now I didn¡¯t even charge you out of the goodness of my heart, but you squandered that.¡± Shit he¡¯s mad. OK gotta salvage this. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Truly I am, but my battle with Davros¡¯ Champion is in less than an hour. I will gladly pay you whatever you wish for the lessons and the staff, but I do need one. The only reason I even left was to level up so I wouldn¡¯t get killed with only one hit.¡± Voice tried to look as apologetic, sorry, and most of all sincere, as he could. He looked up after producing a miniscule amount of tears in his eyes. Steve started stammering, while the practitioners of the dojo looked at Steve with scorn. One of them spoke up. ¡°Come on man! He had to level! Not to mention he was almost done with the staff training anyway. He even made us some incredible food a few times.¡± Voice¡¯s ears perked up at the second to last sentence, but his outward composure remained the same. Steve quickly instructed one of the students to get a staff. When he was handed the staff he held it out to Voice. ¡°Alright, you can have this, but you must finish your training. You had almost finished anyway. All I need to do is teach you the first ability of the staff.¡± Voice nodded greedily. He was going to get a free ability!? Steve took him to the center of the dojo. All of the students gathered around, forming a complete circle around him. Steve picked up a staff and showed Voice what to do. ¡°First aim the bottom of the staff at your opponent.¡± He continued to show the entire process until he thought Voice could try it. The move wasn¡¯t horribly difficult, but it took a lot of dexterity to pull off. First he had to point the bottom of his staff at his enemy. Then he started doing a side spin. After three spins he had to switch to the opposite direction. Then switch sides and do it again. It looked very simple from far away, but when he tried doing it he saw the advantages. By switching sides and directions constantly it became harder to figure out how to block. Furthermore you could mix up the cycle and make it even harder. After another few minutes of practice Steven nodded his head at Voice. ¡°Good, the ability is called Consistent Fury.¡±
Consistent Fury Attacks the enemy several times. The attacks become more devastating as the chain progresses. It costs 50 stamina to start, then 5 stamina for each hit. Every ten consecutive strikes stun the enemy.
You have learned the skill Staff Mastery.
¡°Inspect: Staff Mastery.¡±
Staff Mastery Current Level: Apprentice Level 25 Exp 0.00% By training with a staff you have learned the skill. Staves are now more comfortable for you to wield You gain an additional 10% damage while using a staff (Melee only). To level this skill you must become more attuned to using staves. Proficiency in arms and armor may be trained by someone of higher skill level. In that case starting level and rank of these types of skills would be higher.
After trying it out a few times the world went black. Voice felt himself being poked. He tried to open his eyes, but they were too heavy. He swatted whatever was poking him away. This time he felt a hard jab into his ribs. He managed to open small slits in his eye lids. Everything was blurry. He pushed himself up. He closed his eyes again as pain seeped into his body. The world was still blurry. No blurry was the wrong word. The area around him was completely black. Light only came from the many colored swirls, which seemed to appear and disappear without any warning. Even the ¡®ground¡¯ was made of this emptiness and swirls. As he was looking around he noticed another figure. The other was in a dark robe, with dark smoke coming from his feet. Voice jumped back and equipped his spear. His inspect told him that this man had a level of 32. The figure spoke in the same deep, sinister voice he had heard before. ¡°Hello. Finally awake are you? You know it¡¯s already been a day since you got here?¡± Voice shook his head to lose the rest of the grogginess. There was no way this person would wait an entire day to fight him. After all he had ripped his heart out in seconds. Voice scoffed. ¡°Sure and you are very nice for waiting for me to wake.¡± The other man nodded. ¡°True. I see you have some respect for me. That¡¯s good. Now the reason I waited was I wanted to see how far you had come in your training.¡± With that the man was surrounded by smoke. Voice immediately felt the sensation of wind, and cause a medium sized gust of wind towards the smoke. Since Voice had inspect on, he clearly saw that he had just caused 87 damage. The robe man rematerialized. ¡°HA! I knew you would learn some sort of spell to stop that! Well let¡¯s discuss something. Come now.¡± Voice wasn¡¯t about to fall for any trap. He replied, ¡°Sure but if it¡¯s all the same to you I will stay in a defensive position.¡± The other man seemed to think about it for a moment. ¡°Sure, if that makes you feel safer. Now this is what I wanted to say. We should team up.¡± Voice gave him a quizzical look. He continued, ¡°Davros said you would be granted one wish if you were to lose to me. Now I love rigged battles, but it occurs to me that you hold some sort of grudge against me.¡± Voice cursed Davros for tricking him. Voice tricked Davros, but it was bullshit that HE would get tricked. ¡°Furthermore, your wish could be used on anything. Now I have a proposition. I¡¯ll lose on purpose.¡± Voice cocked his head. ¡°You get what you want, and I can still keep all of my skills and levels.¡± Voice quickly went over a few possible ways to get something good out of this. ¡°Ok, but why not just kill me. If you do it without me actually trying to lose I don¡¯t get me wi-¡° As Voice said that the dark figure stood up. He rushed over and attacked Voice. Shit, I guess he didn¡¯t think of that. The dark figure conjured an immense fog as he ran towards Voice. By the time he reached him, Voice couldn¡¯t even see anything. He was hit from behind, then the left, then the right. He wasn¡¯t even taking damage, he just kept getting hit. He noticed a number in a blue box appear in front of his right eye. It said 100. Every time he took another hit he lost one to the number. He was at 89 before he even realized what was happening. Voice had a good idea to stop the rapid decrease in number. Voice pictured what it felt like to be tossed around by the tornado room. He concentrated on when the massive force of the wind would keep him in the air. He pictured the gale force winds pushing the front of his body. At that same moment Voice jumped back as far as he could. With the wind enhanced jump Voice leapt back over 50 feet. Shit that¡¯s cool! I could be in the Olympics or something! Voice hit the ground, hard. As he got back to his feet he saw the man running towards him. Voice threw three of his homemade bombs at the man while he started to run away. The man¡¯s running speed was insane. Every step seemed to propel him at least ten feet. Voice noticed that the man had waves of air coming out of his feet. He also noticed that the man¡¯s hood was kept perfectly in place. Even the bombs seemed to be tossed aside before they could hit him. He threw a quick glance at his mana regen. Voice¡¯s mind concentrated on his shoes. He channeled as much mana as he could into them. He jumped with all of his might. He easily flew a hundred feet in the air. He felt the mana drain immediately. He had rationalized an escape plan. Since he saw that his mana regen was still dented from his stomach, he figured godly items didn¡¯t count as blessings. It paid off. When he reached the apex of his jump, he felt his shoes form some sort of platform. He was falling, but very slowly. It felt like the boots were pushing constant eddies of air against his feet. His opponent was waiting for him. Right where he would land was a cloaked man with twin daggers drawn. Voice threw down a dozen more bombs. Each was swatted aside by some invisible force before causing a large explosion in the distance. Voice tried casting wind magic, but noticed his mana regen was completely stopped. I guess that means that the shoes are using exactly 2.2 points of magic a second. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. He wondered if the air on his soles was pushing up, or just pushing against the bottom of the shoes. He lifted his left leg slightly. He felt his body start to slowly drift in the direction he was pointing. He noticed that he started falling just a bit faster. The figure just started to lazily walk after him. Keeping pace wasn¡¯t hard since Voice was only going a few miles an hour. Voice smirked. He forced himself into the superman position. It multiplied his horizontal speed magnificently, but he also started falling a lot faster. He felt like he could make himself go faster if he were able to actually cast magic as well, but that didn¡¯t matter. The entire time he was throwing bombs to try to slow down his opponent. Just before he hit the ground he stood upright. The hit was still hard, although cushioned by a small platform of air created by his shoes. His knees buckled. The next thing he knew the robed figure was dashing towards him. He saw giant gusts of air coming from his back. Voice staggered up, just as he got his staff in position he was attacked. The Dark Champion attacked with both of his daggers quickly. Voice was getting beaten badly. He would block one dagger, only to have the other come from a completely different angle. Whenever he would block an attack the next would be a little quicker, and a little stronger. Voice blocked an attack while trying to regain some mana. The figure attacked for his head, so he spun his staff in a circle to deflect it. As he deflected the first strike he saw the man throw his other dagger in the air. Voice pushed himself back with what little mana he had gathered in those few seconds. He started running, only to have his right leg impaled by a falling dagger. Cursing he continued to run, the bandages already done healing the wound. He felt a gust of wind hit his back. He was knocked off balance, and hit the ground. He rolled once then brought his staff up, expecting an attack. It was a good thing he did. The robed man did several slashes in only a few seconds. Voice managed to block most of them, but four of them hit. The indicator now said 28. Voice was getting a really bad premonition as to what the counter indicated. He used a small gust of wind to force his opponent away, while at the same time pushing him in the air. While in the air he slightly turned his body, and began running in a direction perpendicular to the other man. He heard the familiar sound of large amounts of wind. He heard the man shouting. ¡°STOP RUNNING AWAY!¡± Suddenly large dark chains started to come up from the ground. Even though Voice ran past where they were coming out, they still managed to grasp at his body. The chains were going slightly faster than he was. He had to constantly use bursts of wind, and his bombs to stop them from getting him. He was getting frantic. This whole endeavor had been a horrible idea. Nothing he did worked, he was getting beaten horribly. After a few seconds of this the enemy had caught up to him. The man knocked Voice down with a gust of wind directed to the back of his knees. Chains of concentrated darkness sprung up around him faster than he could get up. The chains encircle his entire body. The man had caught up, and was snickering at Voice. ¡°Well, it looks like you can¡¯t run anymore huh?¡± The man removed his hood as he laughed. His name instantly showed up. Voice made a humph sound. He had expected something like this. The figures name was DefiledHealer.¡¯ Voice was about to speak when a thick rope of darkness drug itself across his mouth. DH smirked. ¡°You know, I was just wanting to test how powerful you are. You just kept running away though. Kind of pisses me off.¡± DH hit Voice until his number gauge read one. ¡°Now let¡¯s talk a bit. Do you know why I could use the wind magic like you?¡± It seemed as though DH was trying to brag. The rope around Voice¡¯s mouth disintegrated, allowing him to speak. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Given the way you asked I would assume I had something to do with it.¡± DH nodded. ¡°Maybe it had to do with that time you killed me?¡± Voice felt that his only option here was to make DH free him on his own. DH looked impressed. ¡°That¡¯s exactly it. When I sacrificed your heart I gained access to one of your magical abilities. It just turned out that it was complete manipulation of wind. Care to tell me how you got that?¡± Voice decided to try something. ¡°Sure, but in exchange could you free me first? That way we can battle.¡± DH thought that was reasonable so he did. Voice instantly used the new ability he had gotten. DH was taken slightly off guard by the attack. ¡°Good! You seem to take me seriously! I wish everyone respected my power like you do!¡± Voice continued his attack. He didn¡¯t mind giving DH a little bit of info. If only to confuse the shit out of him. ¡°I learned it from the mage¡¯s tower in the city. If you go train in the wind class you will be able to figure it out.¡± DH took this as an actual answer. During his speech Voice landed a hit. He had thrown three bombs. Two towards DH, and one on the ground between them. As the one on the ground exploded Voice managed to catch DH by surprise. He only did ten damage, but he noticed that DH¡¯s health bar was only at 100. ¡°So why is your health so low? Was it a curse from Davros?¡± Voice thought he could weasel some info out of DH. It came out much easier than he expected. At first DH was angry when he heard how Voice was making fun of his health, but when he heard Voice realized it was a curse his anger abated. The attacks kept getting more and more ferocious. DH was only blocking, he wanted to see how good Voice was. Voice only managed to land that first hit, but it was still something. ¡°Yes, it is. In exchange I get to use a special ability.¡± When he said that he had figured out Voice¡¯s attack pattern. Blocking was quickly becoming boring, so he started adding in some attacks of his own. ¡°I can use one magical ability of the last thing I killed, as long as I eat its heart. It¡¯s pretty handy, although the ability is random, and it dissipates if I kill something else. Even if it¡¯s the same thing I have to eat its heart again.¡± Voice was getting worried again. At first DH was only blocking, but he after a while he started to throw in some of his own attacks. Voice tried to increase the pressure, but DH was getting closer to hitting him. He blocked or dodged every thrust and slice DH sent towards him, but his stamina was getting low. He was using his staff in a spinning motion, and would block wherever he saw DH¡¯s arm flex towards. Unfortunately DH was getting too fast for Voice to handle. He swung a dagger in a downwards motion, while slicing the other horizontally. Voice angled his staff so he could deflect the first attack, and then scoop his second dagger, blocking that one. The second dagger switched attacks halfway through. Voice was pierced again. The counter hit zero. Voice staggered as he took a lot of damage. DH smile and explained. ¡°These daggers have a unique ability. Whenever I hit someone a total of one hundred times the lose 99.99% of their current health. It¡¯s not very good for enemies that have low hp, but I wanted you to know I could beat you even using these.¡± DH stopped attacking during this monologue. He disappeared in a puff of smoke. Voice instinctively turned around and raised his staff to block. His stamina had completely drained, he was only moving on pure willpower. Unfortunately willpower alone made you move at 50% speed. DH wasn¡¯t having a hard time at all from what Voice could tell. He was even able to hold a conversation with no problem. DH did in fact appear behind him. Even though Voice knew where he would come from DH managed to land another four hits as Voice was too exhausted to block properly. The hits seemed to grow heavier as Voice slowly started to lose the ability to move. DH easily managed to hit Voice a hundred times as Voice was getting extremely sloppy. What surprised him was what happened when he had hit Voice another 100 times. His health had dropped by 289. DH got curious as to why Voice¡¯s health regened so quickly. He stopped attacking for a few moments to give Voice a breather. He sat beside Voice. After waiting for a couple of minutes DH asked, ¡°So how did you heal so quickly?¡± Voice was so exhausted he could only be grateful towards DH for not attacking any more. He no longer had the will, or stamina, to keep going. He answered in between breaths. His stamina was full, but he was still fatigued. ¡°Well¡­ I prepared a bunch¡­ of healing items.¡± DH took in this new information. He was pleased that Voice recognized him as so dangerous a threat he would even prepare automatically usable healing items. DH waited for Voice to be fully healed before continuing on with his one sided slaughter. Voice occasionally tried using his wind magic, but in never mattered in the end. Anything he could do, DH could easily figure out how to nullify. DH was quickly losing interest in this game. It was always the same, everything always went his way. After a while he got bored and tried stirring things up. Voice kept running out of stamina. DH had drank a Potion of Unending Stamina he had gotten from doing a quest for Davros. The potion consumed all of his agility stat after the effects wore off, but for half an hour he would regenerate a total of 50% of his maximum stamina a second. DH did a long flurry of blows. With his heavy armor on, Voice managed to dodge or block most of them. His armor even stopped a few slicing attacks from counting, but DH was too fast. Voice couldn¡¯t compare. Where the hell did he get this speed!? Voice didn¡¯t understand how someone could become so strong. While getting horribly beaten he asked, ¡°So how did you get so many powers?¡± DH took on a bit of an instructor¡¯s aura, all while mercilessly hammering Voice. ¡°Davros rewards sacrifices. The more you sacrifice to him, the more power he will give you. Of course,¡± DH managed to land two consecutive hits at that. If they had been able to do damage Voice would probably have lost right there. One went through his heart, the other through his eye. He was momentarily blinded. DH continued without even pausing. ¡°Of course you can always do quests, or donate to the church, but sacrificing others is by far the most efficient way to gain power.¡± DH started slashing and hacking at Voice. He now wanted to cause as much pain as possible. Voice cried out when the first few strikes hit him, but after that became too focused on defending. Every time Voice would block one dagger DH would attack with the other. It seemed as if he were only playing with Voice. Voice had to use Sense just to keep up. He had never fought a battle this hard. Every time he put more effort in, it was met by an equal amount from DH. They battled for several more minutes. Voice tried using wind magic to push DH away, or go into the sky, but whenever he did DH would just knock him down with a sadistic smile. DH decided it would be fun to see how much pain Voice could take. He used his Binding Chains of Darkness spell. After tying Voice up with several chains, and equipping real daggers, he went to work. The sound of Voice screaming was beautiful. In the Ether Realm you couldn¡¯t even log out. So until DH was done Voice would have to withstand the torture. Voice tried changing the pain settings, but there was none. He screamed as DH cut and prodded his body. His damn bandages were auto healing his wounds. He didn¡¯t even care what happened to the future of the game. He just wanted for the pain to be over. DH was amazed. He cut and stabbed Voice with real daggers, only to have him instantly regenerate. DH gleefully continued to stab and defile Voice. Every time he would scream DH would stab harder. Oh the joy! DH got an almost erotic satisfaction from the constant pain he inflicted. In DefiledHealer¡¯s defense, he had to pay hefty price for the power he borrowed from Davros. DH was basically giving up his entire character for this satisfaction. All of his stats would be set to 1, as would his level. But the rush! He always felt a rush while skinning animals in the real world, but now he could skin humans and get away with it! The battle had lasted less than half an hour, but DH had one-sidedly beaten Voice down. Voice couldn¡¯t even land a hit unless DH allowed it. It felt so good to be able to dominate others. Unfortunately for DH, Voice was not strong enough to last for long. He heard Voice mumble something, so he got closer. He was wondering what could possibly be more important than his fun. He heard two words. ¡°I surrender.¡± Everything went black. The Ether Realm turned into the realm of Davros. Deep, dark, foreboding. DH was angry that his fun was interrupted. DH heard Davros clapping. Beside Davros were eight other figures. DH didn¡¯t really care who they were. HE was promised a brand new character if he won this battle. A character with a unique race no less. He was going to be a dark elemental! He viciously grinned. Even though his fun was ruined, he¡¯d be able to get more. Davros spoke. ¡°Well Voice you upheld your end of the bargain. Now what is your wish?¡± DH was more than a little mad at being ignored. Davros was trying to show his superiority. He always did that. DH vowed to one day kill Davros, of course after weeks of torture. DH hated when people looked down on him. He had to make things right if they did. He never got caught, but that¡¯s because of how clever he was. Well, that¡¯s a story for a different time. Voice was lifted in the air by the wind goddess. Davros continued. ¡°You see Mar, I promised Voice one single wish if he threw the fight. It could be ANYTHING. This was all it took to push him into my camp.¡± He gave her a horrendous smile. ¡°Oh Voice, by the way. I already signed an agreement with DH. I can¡¯t use my powers to adversely affect him. So if you wanted something along those lines sorry.¡± His grin now turned towards Voice, who was just able to sit up. Voice returned his smile. He turned to Mar. ¡°I¡¯m really sorry about going behind your back and all, but I really needed that wish.¡± Mar gave him a look of disgust. He went up to her. She tried to leave the realm, but Davros¡¯ sadistic magic kept her in place. Voice whispered something into her ear. She looked unbelieving, then confused. Then she started crying, while weakly nodding her head. Davros, seeing this, smiled with pride that someone could upset her so much. Voice spoke his wish. ¡°I wish that, after this wish, you no longer have any power to alter, affect, manipulate, anything within what I know as the game DIVE in anyway, without my express permission. This permission must be given by me, Voice0fReason, and I must give it while conscious and fully aware of my actions for it to count. Furthermore you can only alter, affect, or manipulate with exactly what I agree to, no more no less, and only at the time I dictate.¡± Voice made his wish as solid as he could. He tried to make sure there were no loop holes in it. After getting beaten so badly it felt good to see Davros¡¯ horrified expression. Davros started to stammer. He continued to stammer, causing Voice to smile. ¡°The wish was that you couldn¡¯t manipulate anything that included me.¡± Voice was pretty proud of himself. He had gotten the second best thing to a loyal dog. A dog that could only act on his master¡¯s orders. Sure Davros probably wouldn¡¯t do what Voice wanted, but after a while of no interactions and the complete inability to use his power, Voice was sure he would be at least a little willing to cooperate. What he had told Mar was simple, ¡°I haven¡¯t betrayed you. I am going to save your people. Watch me.¡± Davros tried to reject the deal, or find some sort of loop hole out of it, but that would have constituted affecting the game. Voice gave both DH and Davros a well-deserved wicked grin. ¡°Well, I guess you two had really better leave.¡± He taunted the two now powerless evil individuals. Well, DH wasn¡¯t powerless, but he soon would be. A shadow flew at Voice. He tried to block it, but he felt something wet on his chest. As his world went black he saw DH with an evil smile directed at him. The world went black, but at the same time Voice threw as many bombs as he could at where DH was. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health290Mana500
Stamina290
Level19Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.9Mana Regen/Sec2.2
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength37Agility32
Wisdom72Intelligence50
Endurance49Dexterity31
Luck10Vitality29
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety59Unused Stat Points50
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 3 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 15 Exp 10.00%
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Deceptive Aura Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Staff Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 7 Exp 85.72%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Unique Skill: Mana Affinity Novice
Affinities Window
Nature10
Light40
Darkness100
Dive 26: The New Game Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice learned Staff Mastery, then got his ass kicked by DefiledHealer. Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed that last chapter! This chapter is going to do a brief synopsis of what the other three characters have been doing while the game has been on. As a side note, I didn¡¯t actually think I¡¯d make DH so sadistic. Ugh he has a twisted mind. I¡¯ve decided to keep going with my story as planned. Some people have been really encouraging, so I am going to try to show everyone what I was trying to accomplish. Everyone had gotten a unique quest to affect the future of the world. For Voice and Defiled it was a battle against each other. EDI had gotten a quest a while back. She would often sit in the meadow while she wasn¡¯t hunting monsters in the forest. Eventually she had gained the ability to speak to rabbits, just as Voice had. After killing many demon wolves the king of the rabbits called her to an audience. There were only two differences between it and the other bunnies. It had an intelligence that was unmatched, and the aura of authority it held over the other rabbits. The king rabbit had given her a simple task. Clear the forest of one thousand demon wolves. She fought only the wolves whenever she had a choice. She hit a bottle neck after a couple of weeks. The wolves were getting scarcer and scarcer. She was about to give up, when Voice finally asked to go hunting with him. They didn¡¯t find a huge amount of wolves during the training, but while Voice was running around town EDI asked Heather to go hunting. The hunting trip was a huge success. They slaughtered multitudes in only a few days. Heather was really good in attracting the wolves. She was also very good at exterminating them. She was happy to see the rewards screen. Not for the things she gained but because of how it affected the bunnies.
For defeating the bunnies arch enemies, the demon wolves, you have completed the Bunny King¡¯s quest. Talk to him for your reward.
Intimacy with all bunnies around Rand has reached maximum. Bunnies around Rand will consider you their savior until the return of the wolves. The demon wolves have been pushed back for 180 days. The bunnies¡¯ population will flourish during this time.
She was super excited for the bunnies. They wouldn¡¯t need to worry about attack from their worst enemies. She was awarded with a special Trait. A Trait was like an ability, but was passive and didn¡¯t consume any health, mana or stamina. What she obtained was ¡°A Rabbit¡¯s Luck¡±. It increased her luck by 25 points. It gave her a much higher chance for critical hits, and rare drops. The bunnies loved her after that. They threw her a party. Well it was mostly just eating a bunch of radishes and carrots, while she petted her many furry friends. She even met Troy and Rabs. They had become guardians of the rabbit kind. Whenever they were attacked by wolves, be it demon or otherwise, Troy and Rabs would defend them. After she finished the quest, she still had another two days until the other players could join. She decided to enjoy the bunnies¡¯ fur and kindness until then. Now you may wonder how this effected the entire world. Well since the demon wolves have been killed repeatedly, their levels are now critically low. So even after they return to this part of the forest, they would not be nearly as strong. The guardsmen in Rand, and in towns around Rand, now had less to worry about from the forest, so the patrols focused more towards maintaining public morals, and codes. Before, the different cities near Rand had to send out guards at least twice a year just to deal with the wolves. Most of the other monsters kept to the forest, with only the occasional monster leaving to attack human settlements. With LastingBeauty and ShortDwarf it was another matter altogether. They had been going into several dungeons during the week of gameplay. By the end of the 35 in game days they were both around level 80. SD was level 82, and LB was level 76. Now that wasn¡¯t completely because of SD¡¯s selfish tendencies to finish off all of the enemies, but it probably didn¡¯t help. A week before the other players got in they had beaten a level 80 dungeon. Now the thing about dungeons is that the level only actually corresponded to the level of the boss before anyone entered it. After that the dungeon became active, reconfiguring itself to better ward off players. It actually took people that were at least higher level than the dungeon level, to beat it in one go. SH and LB always tried to do that. If you were the first one in a dungeon you would get a bonus from it for a certain time period, or until you left the dungeon whichever came first. They had amassed a large quantity of highly enchanted items. They didn¡¯t know what kind of items they might get at higher levels, but their items were at least very good for their levels. They each had several bags of holding, and SH had a ring that decreased the weight of all unequipped items by 50%. That wasn¡¯t even the best items they had. They each had a full set of enchanted armor, and weapons. If one closely inspected though, they would notice how SD had better gear in every slot than LB. They hadn¡¯t wasted any time in cities or exploring. The only time they spent not in dungeons was resupplying, or buying maps and looking for the next dungeon. The Adventurer¡¯s Guild always seemed to have information on any nearby dungeon. The guild would also pay for any information that adventurers collected for them about the dungeons. They had gotten the attention of a king from a small kingdom. He had his magicians cast a teleport circle, and draw these two hopefuls to him. He asked them for a single favor, in return they would be full citizens of his kingdom, and would be allowed to stay at his castle whenever they wanted. He took them into a private chamber. The king was a regal man. He had a long flowing purple coat, and wore a powerful set of black armor embroidered in gold. He stood over six feet tall, with a light brown beard that matched his hair. ShortDwarf at this point was wearing a fully white set of plate mail armor. He had his special two handed axe he had acquired from choosing the special item. It was a deep red, with a pitch black handle. There were a few oddly shaped ruins on the blade. He carried it over one shoulder. LastingBeauty wore a frilly dress. The dress never seemed to flow or wave, and would in fact swirl around any object that was going to harm her. If nothing was going to harm her, it would keep out of touch with any object. They were tasked with killing a prince in a nearby kingdom. The king told them that this prince had murdered his daughter. They went to the kingdom posing as posing as guards for a merchant caravan. The caravan had no troubles getting to the city that held the prince. There was a small band of bandits that attacked it at one point, but SD killed them all easily. On top of doing massive damage his battle axe, it had two special qualities. One was it grew more powerful as he leveled his strength, agility, and dexterity. The other was that it had a 10% chance to instantly decapitate an enemy that had less than 10% health, as long as he hit the neck and the opponent didn¡¯t have some sort of protection against it. Once in the city they made a quick name for themselves by dealing with crime. LB thought up that plan. It worked perfectly. Not only did they get items and exp, but they also gained a lot of good rep. After a few days of this the prince asked to see them. LB was very good at making poisons, and had a high immunity to it. She made one that took 24 hours to incubate. It took a lot of money to buy the ingredients for that, but it was well worth it. Especially since they had gotten it before the trip, so this city would have no clue it was them. She poisoned the prince and herself by obviously pouring a small amount of the poison into her glass of wine. When she was asked what it was, and why she added it to her drink she merely said it was a rare drink that enhanced the flavor of any wine. She had a skill called sleight of hand. It was already level 58. When a noble asked to try some she switched it with a small vial of honey lavender. It did enhance the taste, but didn¡¯t cause any bad side effects. The prince was interested as well. He asked if he may try some. LB hesitated noticing the guards eying her. Seeing this the prince quickly said if she didn¡¯t want to, not to feel obligated. She relented. Even if they killed her she would just respawn. She switched the vials out before she got to the prince. One guard stopped her and grabbed her wrist. She was scared that they had caught her. He only took the vial and tasted it. After a few seconds without dying he allowed the prince to drink some. After the feast they went as quickly as would not been alarming back to the other kingdom. When they got there they were showered in gifts and luxury. After only a day of this it was time for the other players to join. We¡¯ll talk about how this affected the world a little later. Brenton cursed as he left the pod. He wouldn¡¯t be able to play for another five days. He might have tricked Davros into basically being useless, but now his character would suffer. Not to mention he would automatically fail the quest Elizabeth gave him. Well at least I took that bitch Defiled with me. Brenton smiled as he remembered the look on DH¡¯s face as dozens of bombs flew at him. Voice hoped he had killed him as well. Brenton sighed. He had died twice now. And both times were because of one person. The more he thought about it the more anger he felt. He decided to go for a jog to relieve him of some of his pent up emotions. He ran for a total of two hours, well he also walked for a while when he got tired. When he got home he realized how hungry he was. He ordered a pizza (small), and an order of breadsticks. After that he hopped in the shower. After he had completely bathed himself he sat in the shower thinking. He was still upset about the whole dying thing, but his anger was blunter and less piercing than earlier. Just as Brenton reached for his towel he heard the buzzer ring. He quickly covered the important bits and ran to the door. He grabbed his mom¡¯s credit card and answered the door. The delivery guy gave him a questioning look about the towel wrapped around his waist, but didn¡¯t say anything. Voice tapped the man¡¯s phone with his card. Apps had started running rampant in the last 15 years. They became so advanced that you could pay for things by just tapping a company phone with your credit card. Cash was still a thing, but most people used cards since it was easier than carrying cash. Banks had invented a way so that only people registered to a card could use it. No one knew how they did that, and it had only been hacked once. That woman actually spent the last five years learning how to do it. She didn¡¯t take any money, just showed the bank that she did. They hired her on the spot to increase the defensibility of the cards. No one had been able to hack it since. After paying for the food, and giving a nice tip (always tip), he logged on to his computer and started eating. It was amazing that he could eat so much by himself and not gain weight. He had a freakishly high metabolism. What he saw online was mostly just DH and LB doing dungeons. They didn¡¯t post anything about what they had done the last week. He also noticed that his video had over ten million views. Voice refreshed the page to make sure it wasn¡¯t a mistake. It was an outstanding number. Most of DH¡¯s and LB¡¯s videos had about 1-3 million views. Only two of their videos had as much as his. He smiled as he saw the massive number. He decided to make another video. He could use the any extra DI bills to make his white world a little better. He did a few stretches to make sure he didn¡¯t have any muscle failings, and got back into the pod. He started making his second video. He made the video show his series of training regimens. He then showed him killing the group of wolves. He excluded the EDI, and the part where he got his butt beat. It showed him going into a rage and killing the wolf. Next he showed them snippets of his battle with DH. He showed his super jump, and a few seconds of the battles that made it seem like it was on even footing. All in all it was a pretty good video. After he finished he went about fixing up his neighborhood. He had several hundred thousand DI bills. He started buying exact copies of his house. He made sure they each had a two car garage, and a sizable front and back yard. The area took on a fifties cul-de-sac look. He built a few identical areas near each other. All in all he now had 90 houses. He had ten cul-de-sacs of nine houses each. The backyards of the houses along the straight part of the cul-de-sacs each were connected by picket fences. After buying the houses he bought a map. When he went to the market he had noticed it. They had several maps. The cheapest one would only cover a small area. The larger an area the more the cost. The largest one covered 100% of the entire white space, and came with a zoom function. All maps automatically updated. He bought the largest one for 50,000 DI bills. It was expensive, but well worth it as an investment. He connected the cul-de-sacs with a long street, then bought a huge building that he was going to make into a mall. He chose the biggest one, then started manually upgrading it. He made it three stories, and each story was identical to the others. The building was a long rectangle, with a part in the middle left open to the world. He was going to make that part an outdoor playroom. It kind of reminded him of a roman coliseum. He wanted the people in the mall to have to walk through it, or walk around the edges. The mall was a massive 1.5 million square feet. It had one hundred rooms on each side of the coliseum, and on each level. The rooms were all empty, as was the coliseum. One could see every level of the mall by standing anywhere in it. It had ten sets of stairs, and two elevators. Five stairs on the left part of the building and five on the right. The elevators were made of glass, and directly over looked the coliseum area. Even though it was just a shell of a building it took almost all of Voice¡¯s money. He had about twenty thousand DI bills left. Although he had bought a shop menu icon so that he could buy from anywhere. That had cost him another fifty thousand. He decided to save it and went into the coliseum to rest. Even though he had planned to save it he thought it would be really nice to sit in some shade. It wasn¡¯t hot or anything, there wasn¡¯t even a sun, but he thought it would be peaceful. He bought a few different trees, and set them around himself. He felt relaxed while he sat there. That is, until he started thinking of the game again. His thoughts invariably strayed towards DH. His anger started raising again. Just as he hit his boiling point he had an idea. He went to a random store on the second level. It was slightly larger than the average room. He spent the rest of his money buying workout equipment. He bought a punching bag, a reflex bag, a weight bench dozens of different sized weights and dumbbells, a few ¡®all in one¡¯ work out machines, and a dozen exercise bikes. He had less than a thousand DI bills left. He went to town on this equipment. He did weight training, and rode the bikes until he was exhausted. He continued to switch between the two until he couldn¡¯t move. Whenever he started feeling tired he would think of how he lost horribly twice. And both to the same person. He would never have that happen again. When he got back in the game he would make his magic class op as fuck. Just like he did with those shitty potions. He exited the white room and went to sleep in the real world. It took him about an hour to finally fall asleep because of his thoughts on DH. Even his dreams were gifted by the sight of him torturing Dh. When he woke up he grabbed some cereal and looked at how many hits his video had. He sighed when he saw it was not even in the thousands. Guess it wasn¡¯t good enough this time. After that he got in his DIVE pod. His penalty time would end just a few minutes after the rest of the world could start their characters. He decided to play like he was a newbie. He went back into the white area of his pod. He started to plan out how he would build his city around the shopping mall. The best part would be if he could get other people in here. He decided to ask Bit-Bee about it later. He walked around his mall imagining the best places to put different shops. He was even going to add in some sort of dojo. After walking around the entire mall, and planning about half of it, it was finally time to go to the game. He ran to his house, and went to his closet. It still felt silly, but he liked it. When the timer went down to zero his door lit up. He walked through it planning on how to find and kill DH. Once he started DIVE he heard a familiar mechanical voice. -Iris scan complete. Returning user detected. Would you like to restart DIVE?- Voice, confused, thought yes. He had never been asked that before. -Very well. Welcome to the world of opportunity Voice0fReason. Your age has been registered as 20 what would you like your game rating to be set at? Maximum rating for your age: Mature.- He chose mature so he wouldn¡¯t miss anything that the game had to offer. He was brought up with a screen that showed two couples. There was one man and one woman in each couple. A screen popped up.
Please choose your genetic grandparents. Any choices made before entering the game will be input to detail your story.
Oh, ok. I guess this is some sort of update. I did see something like that before fighting DH. He saw two family tree symbols. On the left the two people connected to a woman, on the left a man. He went to maternal grandparents. The first selection was race. Cool, I kind of didn¡¯t want to be human. Adding in Enchanting and Smithing would be way too much effort. He scrolled though the race selections. There were three categories: humanoid, magical beast and animalistic. He chose animalistic to look through it. There were six sub categories of non-humanoid animals: amphibian, avian, invertebrate, mammalian, pisces, and reptilian. This wasn¡¯t that surprising as these were the six basic animal groups. He looked through each. They were similar to, though distinct from, the normal Earth categories. Wow, that¡¯s actually really cool. I¡¯ve never heard of any, non-table top game, where you could be an animal and humanoid. Voice was fairly impressed by all the customization options. He didn¡¯t really want to have any animals in his immediate family tree. He was sure there would be some story reason as to why that was ok, but he just felt wrong about it. His mind made up, he scrolled through the extremely long list of humanoids. He saw the original choices: human, high elf, wood elf, dark elf, dwarf, and half-ogre. He also saw many others, like kitsune, demon, cherub, and angel and so on. Voice found it odd that you could pick demons and angels. Oh well, I guess they probably aren¡¯t as powerful as the regular ones of their race. Either that or they have some extra restrictions. The humanoids only gave overall descriptions, not detailed outlines like Bit-Bee gave him. Demons were amazing at dark magic, and fire magic, some could even fly or have other unique abilities. Interestingly dragons were considered as humanoid. They couldn¡¯t consciously use magic, but could fly and breathe fire. After looking over the massive list of humanoids Voice decided to go for some more magically talented ones. He knew he would pick high elf at least. Several races had unique racial magic. That is, some sort of magic that their race learned a long time ago and kept secret how to do. He narrowed the list down to those that were either excellent in magic, or had unique magic. He also kept a few in the list that had really cool unique abilities, like the lizardman for the water breathing trait. He even added a few really, REALLY cool magical beast types. He was only left with handful. He could pick four of them, but wanted to only pick three since he wanted to be at least half high elf. After looking through them for close to an hour he finally decided what he would be. He had compared and contrasted each race, and even the combinations of different races. For instance a demon-lizardman plus high elf-wood elf build was vastly different than a demon- high elf plus wood elf-lizardman build. He toyed around with the idea of combining the magical bat and human, just to see if he got a vampire. In the end he chose: his maternal grandmother was a high elf, his maternal grandfather was a dark elf. He had wanted to see what kind of elf that would make. After he was done he heard a sound like a slot machine. He looked over to where it was and saw a person being generated . It was a female, his mother. His mother looked a lot like his actual mother, except she had darker skin, and feline eyes. She was beautiful and regal. He wondered what his father would look like. For his paternal grandmother he chose a wood elf. His paternal grandfather was another high elf. After he was done he waited while his father was generated. When he looked at his father he grew angry. This game had made someone that actually looked a lot like how he remembered his father to look. He decided to not think of it and went on to the next part of his character creation. Or should it be recreation? Anyway, the next part of character creation was choosing his grandparents background. This game really likes grandparents doesn¡¯t it? Since the backgrounds didn¡¯t say what the bonuses were he figured they were either obvious or a trick. He choose for his paternal grandfather to be an adventurer. He was the son of farmers and wanted a more exciting life. His paternal grandmother was a forest nomad, travelling between forests until she met her mate, just as her parents did. His maternal grandmother was the daughter of merchant, not a wealthy one. She became a scholar and that studied about magic. His maternal grandfather was a higher noble within the realm of dark elves. He had inherited his estates from his parents. He met his wife when he wanted his niece tutored by an accomplished scholar. Voice thought this was a pretty cool start to a story. After that was only his own character creation. He could change anything about his body he wanted, at least within a certain percentage from the parameters of his parents. Voice chose to make his face and body as close to the original as possible. When he was done he heard a familiar ding that indicated a blue box.
You have discovered an ancient race. You will automatically be able to read, write, and speak this language as you learn to with the language you first learn.
Voice didn¡¯t have time to think about it as he was warped into the game. He noticed everything was black. The next thing he knew he heard a woman screaming in pain. The world was still black. The mechanical voice started playing while the woman screamed. -You have been granted new life in Solun. As a returning player all of your skills, abilities, magic, traits, level, and stats have been locked until further notice. Your stats will only show a minimum for your race and age. This story takes place 20 years before the launch of DIVE.- As the voice in his head finished he heard the woman scream louder. A dot of light appeared in the distance. He didn¡¯t know what was going on, but every time she screamed he saw more light. With one final ear crushing scream he was bombarded by super bright lights. GAH! Why is it so BRIGHT!? He let out an involuntary scream. ¡°Wahhh!¡± He stopped when he realized there was a baby near him. That must be what was happening. The woman in the next room was giving birth. He heard people speaking. ¡°Why did he stop crying!? Is he breathing?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know! Someone check for a pulse!¡± ¡°NOOO! MY BABY!¡± Voice thought the baby next door was dying. I guess that would have been a pretty common occurrence in the time period this game is set at. He tried to tell them a simple way to get the baby breathing again. He had to yell to be heard, but just as he did, ¡°WAHHH! WAHHHHHHHH!¡± He quieted down. He didn¡¯t need to tell them anything, not that he thought the game would let him. He heard several sighs of relief. Then someone started to towel him down. He managed to open his eyes slightly, but could only see light, not make out any figures. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Someone hit his back. ¡°WAAHHH!¡± he screamed in protest. Wait, what? He screamed again. ¡°WAHH WAHHHH WAAAAAHHHHHH!¡± Oh fuck. I¡¯m the fucking baby? As if in answer to his question he felt himself get put into the hands of a giant. I guess that makes sense seeing as I just generated my family. His eyes were adjusting quickly, but he still could only make out very vague figures. He did note that the person that held him had the same skin color as the mom he made. He decided to giggle and give her his best baby smile. He couldn¡¯t see the person¡¯s expression, but he heard several ¡°ahh~s¡± from the people around him. The woman that was holding him asked, ¡°Would you like to go to daddy?¡± He knew it was a woman from her voice. He giggled again, and held his hands towards the largest congregation of people. ¡°Aw. It looks like he understood me dear. Here you hold him.¡± It was a very gentle voice. He was put into firm hands. They weren¡¯t rough, just firm. He heard his dad(?) say, ¡°Well don¡¯t you look just like your dad?¡± Voice still couldn¡¯t see any facial features, so he just smiled and grabbed at his ¡®dad¡¯. After that he was handed back to the person he assumed was his mother. She put something in his mouth. As he sucked he fell asleep. -You are now one month old. You may call your status screen when you are three years old.- Voice looked around. He saw in a simple crib. His room was made of wood, and had a thatch roof. He tried climbing out of his crib. He received a notification.
Strength requirement not met. Dexterity requirement not met.
He cursed. He wondered what his status was. He was told he could open his status as three, but that didn¡¯t necessarily mean he couldn¡¯t call it out now. He called out the word Status.
You cannot open your status this early in your development. You can open your status when you are three years old.
He looked around the room. He saw several books, and even a sword. He really wanted one of those books. Just as he was thinking about reading a book,
You are illiterate, you must learn letters before you learn to read.
He mentally sighed, there was nothing he could do until someone came in to check up on him. Even then he might not be able to get anything. A metaphorical lightbulb went off. He started screaming bloody murder. As he did this his world started to blur and distort.
You have spent too much concentration in a short time. You are disoriented.
A woman came into the room. He was dizzy so he sat down. He stopped crying and started pointing to where he remembered where the bookshelf was. This made his world even more blurry. He cried and pointed until this person got him the book. When she did he gave his best giggle and pretended to read it, even though he couldn¡¯t even see straight. After about twenty minutes of being ¡®one month old¡¯ he was again transported. He saw a notice that said he was one month and one day old. He tried calling his status screen again. Again he failed. He started crying again. When his mother walked in he stopped. He acted like he was reaching for the books on the shelf. ¡°Gahh! GahhHH!¡± He tried to stress to her that he wanted a book. She smiled and picked him up. He started crying again, grabbing for the self. He could see his mother¡¯s expression. She looked concerned about his crying. She tried picking him up again. When she did he tried to wiggle to get a book. His body wasn¡¯t even strong enough to do that. Depressed he started crying. His mother started to gently coo to him. She eventually got a book from the shelf and put it in front of her, while holding Voice cradled in her arms. Voice looked at the book and giggled. He slapped the book with both hands. And stared at it for a moment.
You have spent too much concentration in a short time. You are disoriented.
As he became disoriented his was transported. -You are four months old. Due to your upbringing so far, and your love of books, you have gained two intelligence. You can call on your status screen at three years old. - He tried calling his status screen again. Nothing happened. He decided he would keep calling it until it worked. He tried to sit up straight. It worked pretty well, although his first attempt at it made him fall backwards. He was very excited at this new development. If I can sit up I can crawl soon after. He could only sit up for a few seconds, but he was pretty excited about that. He again cried for books. His mother and father came in with a strange man. His father had a book in his hands. He picked Voice up. Voice tried to grab for the book. His mom whispered something to the stranger. The stranger nodded. Voice¡¯s dad opened the book. It was a picture book! What¡¯s more is it had only a few words at the bottom! Since the pictures were all of one thing Voice figured this was a book to teach the young either letters or how to talk. Voice started trying to sound out the words, but the only thing that came out was baby talk. That didn¡¯t discourage him though. Every word in the book was made of weird symbols, but Voice felt he could decode it given enough time. Voice happily slapped the book his dad had brought. He found it odd how he could understand his family, but didn¡¯t question it too much. The stranger nodded again when Voice looked over at him. The stranger left, and Voice¡¯s parents rapidly talked to each other. Apparently showing such a large interest in books was something that was very rare at such a young age. Voice knew that, but wanted to increase his int and wis as much as possible before venturing out into the world. He had already deduced that he would get all of his stats and skills and everything back when he got his body back. He flipped through all of the pages, well his dad did anyway. He tried memorizing all of the book. By the time his dad was done flipping through the book Voice had managed to memorize the sounds for baby and puppy. He realized the symbol for y was the same in both accounts.
You have gained two wisdom for learning new words.
You have spent too much concentration in a short time. You are disoriented.
The world turned black as Voice lost consciousness. He woke up in his crib. -You are six months old. Due to your upbringing so far, and your natural diligence to learning you have gained 1 int, and 1 wis. You can call on your status screen at three years old. ¨C Oh my GOD! How long is this freaking thing? He called out status again. Nothing happened. He noticed that his body was in a standing position, leaning on the railing of his crib. He tried to move around his crib. He took a first teetering step, which promptly led to him teetering onto his butt. He sat back up, determined to walk. If this game made him live through all of the major development points of a child, then he would be the smartest freaking child alive! He continued to hold himself up and try to walk. After several excruciating tries, Voice managed to take a step without falling. After that one step he tottered onto his face. Deciding to show his parents he lightly cried out. When they rushed into the room after hearing the spine chilling scream, Voice was already taking another step. They exclaimed with join. Grabbing him and trying to get him to walk to each of them. As he tried to concentrate to walk over to one of them he fell. It seemed that the more he concentrated the easier it got, so he concentrated as hard as possible. He managed to slowly make his way over to his mother. She yelled with joy. Happily hugging Voice. Voice fell over into her arms.
You have spent too much concentration in a short time. You are disoriented.
-You are now nine months old. Due to your upbringing so far, and your natural diligence to learning you have gained an additional 1 int, and 1 wis. Due to your strong will to move you have gained 2 strength. You can call on your status screen at three years old. ¨C He called the status screen again, but once again nothing happened. His parents were looking over him. They were trying to get Voice to say words in their languages. Voice couldn¡¯t tell exactly what they were saying, but it sounded like they may have been using at least two languages. Both of his parents shared one language, and his mother clearly spoke two different languages. One was the same as his dad, the other was a deeper and harsher language. The only reason he knew this was because of the tones and inflections his mother sometimes switched to. He tried mimicking his parents¡¯ sounds, which made his mother squeal in delight. For some reason he blacked out immediately after.
You have spent too much concentration in a short time. You are disoriented.
-You are now 12 months old. Due to your upbringing so far, and your natural diligence to learning you have gained an additional 2 int. You can call on your status screen at three years old. ¨C He tried saying status screen again. This time it worked!
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassn/a
Health10Manan/a
Stamina10
Leveln/aCurrent Titlen/a
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Secn/a
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength2Agilityn/a
Wisdom4Intelligence6
Endurancen/aDexterityn/a
Luck10Vitalityn/a
Unused Stat Pointsn/a
Famen/a
It was weird that up until now he only received the blue boxes when he was about to go into the next child development stage, and the electronic voice told him his stat gains. He thought that might have been the update, but then he received:
You have figured out how to open your stat screen at the tinder age of one. You have shown you are of sound mind, plus five intelligence.
Five int? Now THAT¡¯S something to brag about!
Through dedicated study you can now say: mama, papa, baby, huggy, puppy, bunny, and sleepy in Dark Elven, and High Elven.
Voice said the words aloud. Dark Elven sounded deep even in his voice. He also had a list of words he knew in both Dark Elven, and High Elven. He started sounding them out. After he was satisfied he sat there. He didn¡¯t really know what else he was supposed to do in this time period. He saw a large (for him) ball, so he decided to play with it. After playing with the ball for what felt like hours Voice noticed a book open on the floor. It had a picture on the right page, and text on the left. He smiled as he started to read it. Well he tried anyway. Apparently he was still illiterate. He still enjoyed the pictures though. After another few minutes he cried for food since he suddenly felt ravenous. His mother came in with a smile, and something that smelled like applesauce. In her very sweet voice she asked, ¡°Does baby want milky, or appy?¡± Voice contemplated it. While suckling this woman¡¯s breast wasn¡¯t exactly his cup of tea, he had learned that for the optimum growth potential the baby should be breastfed until at least 18-24 months. He reluctantly pushed the sauce away. He moved his head towards her breast.
You have spent too much concentration. You are disoriented.
-You are now 24 months old. Due to your upbringing so far, and your natural diligence to learning you have gained an additional 2 int and 2 vit. ¨C Never had he been so grateful to blackout. He was getting agitated with this whole aging up thing, but it did seem to be going faster now. He took a deep breath, and tried to remember what two year olds learned. The only two things he remembered was that they had infinite energy, and could speak understandably. He decided to work out all of his stamina and try to be as eloquent as possible. He ran around his house until he came to a door that led outside. He tried opening it, but was scooped up by an arm. His mom asked, ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing?¡± in the way you would try to ask a baby while being cutesy. When his mom picked him up he suddenly felt like he needed to poop. Not wanting to poop himself he said, ¡°Mommy! Potty!¡± Hearing him ask for the potty she was confused. She assumed he had seen her husband use it, and just wanted to see it out of curiosity. She brought him to it. She giggled a little when he motioned that he wanted to sit on the toilet. She pulled his pants down and let him act like a grown up. He immediately defecated. She called for her husband. She was going to start toilet training Voice soon, but to think her husband had already done it. He was always a sweet man, but he usually left housework to her so he could hunt and provide for the family. Her husband came in. ¡°Well, would you look at that? Got him pee pee trained already huh?¡± She cocked her head slightly. ¡°What do you mean? I thought you were the one that taught him. He suddenly yelled potty so I brought him her.¡± They both looked at each other, then at Voice. He was wiping himself with the straw without even being told to. After that Voice played all day. Then next day he went to the potty again. When he was done he saw the stranger from a long time ago. The one with the book. The stranger asked. ¡°Little boy do you know what I¡¯m saying?¡± Voice slowly nodded his head. ¡°Good that speeds things up. Your parents have kept me up to date about you ever since you asked for books. I dismissed that one because all parents want their child to be special. After that you kept doing things that didn¡¯t fit the norm. You even learned to use the toilet by yourself. I have an offer. Would you like to come with me to learn magic? Time will seem to all fly by if you do.¡± That last statement made it seem like the character creation game would be over if he chose to go. He thought it over. He already had a good magic class, and he was getting a lot of stat gains. Even if the way he got the gains was annoying he still got them. He shook his head. ¡°NO! Mommy~ Daddy~¡± He ran and hugged them both. The man nodded and briefly spoke to his parents. After that he left.
You have spent too much concentration. You are disoriented.
-You are now 6 years old. Due to your upbringing so far, and your natural personality you have gained an additional 1 int, 1 wis, 1 str, and 1 vit.¨C When he came to he saw two things. His mother was practicing magic, and his father was doing odd exercises outside. He felt that he could go study with one of them, but only one. He thought about it as he walked to the fireplace. He didn¡¯t really need to learn magic as the normal way didn¡¯t benefit him. On the other hand learning to exercise might be good, but wouldn¡¯t help in combat either. He stared at the in the fireplace. Suddenly he had an idea. He thrust his hand into the fire place. Even as his hand entered he felt a shriek leave his lips. As he blacked out his only thought was, At least I know what the fire in this world feels like now.
You have spent too much concentration. You are disoriented.
-You are now 9 years old. Due to your past behavior you have unlocked a secret class: Force Mage. You must keep this a secret from your parents, as they will want you to train in a proper academy. If you do train there you will not be able to see your parents for at least 10 years. ¨C When he awoke he was sitting in a stream. He was sitting with his legs crossed on the pebbled ground. The water came up to his waste. He called up his status screen, and was gratified to see that he could now use magic. He saw a group of humans coming towards him. He felt a sense of impending danger when he saw them. He started running towards where his mind told him his home was. He got there in quick order. Laying in a large pool of blood he saw several humans. His father held a bow, and had a short sword strapped to his waist. His mom was obviously casting spells. Just as he was about to run to his parents he felt himself get hit in the back of the head. When he awoke his wrists and ankles were in shackles. Both of his wrists were connected by a small iron bar, as were both of his ankles. The two bars were connected by a metal chain. He saw his mom and dad in front of him. They were all being hauled somewhere inside a caravan type vehicle. He was about to say something, when he dad kicked is shin and violently shook his head left and right. After a few hours of the most uncomfortable ride he had ever experienced the wooden death trap came to a halt. He and his parents were hauled out. For a second Voice was blinded by the sun. When he got his bearings back he noticed the men that held his family¡¯s chains were being given coins. When the coins exchanged hands the man that gave the money was handed the chains. Voice didn¡¯t want to start the game as a slave, nor did he think it was right for his family to be sold. After they were put into a different wagon, and the other people had left, he started focusing on the feeling of intense heat on his left wrist. He tried to remain as quiet as possible since the only sounds to be heard were the clopping of the horse, and the slaver. He might have been able to melt the bars, but he didn¡¯t know how to control fire well enough to move it away from his body. He didn¡¯t have a lot of mana, but it was enough to heat the shackles. The metal cuff started rapidly heating. Both of his parents noticed this, and tried to get him to stop. They looked as though they just discovered that they were harboring a criminal. He only concentrated harder. As the metal started to melt, Voice caused a wind to blow the molten iron away from him. He was still being bombarded by the intense heat around the cuff, but at least no liquid metal touched him. He quickly ran out of mana. He only managed to get a drop to melt off of his cuff. He smiled though. Given enough time, he could get his family free. Eventually he made a small crack in his wrist cuff. He had his dad help pull the cuff at the crack. With his dad widening the gap he was able to slip his left hand out of the cuff. When he regained enough mana he did the same process to his other wrist, then to both ankles. He was completely free, now he only needed to worry about his parents. Suddenly the caravan slowed. Frantic Voice tried putting the cuffs back on, but they had shrunk a little without the added heat. As he heard the man get off of the front seat he had barely managed to re-shackle his ankles. The man was only seconds from seeing that Voice freed his wrists. Voice did the only thing he could think of. He forced both wrists into the cuffs. For the first second it seemed as if it wouldn¡¯t work, but as Voice tore at the skin trying to re-insert his wrists they went in. The blood pooling at his feet now made it impossible that the slaver wouldn¡¯t know what had happened. Voice decided he would have to talk his way out of this. The slaver came around and opened up the back curtains. ¡°DSF WETEH OIULJK.¡± He said. Voice didn¡¯t know what he was saying. The man knitted his brows as he noticed Voice¡¯s wrists. He grabbed Voice¡¯s left hand by his middle three fingers. He put his other hand in a semi-circle around the cuff. He yanked the manacle hard. Despite the pain Voice knew he would have to expand his hand so it didn¡¯t come out. Despite the flashes of lights he saw, and the mind numbing pain, Voice expanded his hand. Unfortunately he also fell unconscious soon after the slaver released him. The pain had been too much. When he awoke he noticed they were moving again. He showed his dad that he wanted the cuffs off again. When his dad shook his head no Voice put the cuffs in his face and gave him a look that said, ¡®Do it. NOW!¡¯ His father reluctantly released all of the cuffs. Afterwards Voice started work on his mom¡¯s cuff. He was going to do his dad¡¯s, but his dad shook his head and indicated his mom. After releasing his mom¡¯s hand cuffs, she did some sort of silent incantation. The remaining metal on her dissolved, as did the metal encasing Voice¡¯s dad. They all jumped out of the wagon at the same time. When they landed on the ground the slaver pulled the reigns of the horses. Voice¡¯s dad whispered to him and his mom. ¡°You two go, I¡¯ll stall him then come find you later. GO!¡± With that they started running into the forest. When they had gotten to a place where the carriage was barely visible his mom turned around. Voice was following close behind her, so he saw the look of absolute horror on her face. When he turned around he saw his father impaled by his own blade. The slaver snapped his fingers, and his shadow split into four. The four smaller slave shadows darted towards Voice and his mom. Voice tried to quickly think of a way to save them, but failed. His mother spoke to him. ¡°You are the best son your father and I could ever ask for. Please be happy in the future.¡± He turned around and saw her crying. She lifted up her hands. The shadows latched onto her. She began an incantation even as the shadows devoured her flesh. ¡°Oh goddess of light, bring forth your punishment unto this vile creature. He has committed the greatest sin by taking the life of an innocent. I offer up myself as humble tribute! DIVINE JUSTICE!¡± Suddenly the area around his mother, and the slaver turned blindingly white. As the shadows had reached her the slaver thought she was giving up. When he noticed the white light it was too late. He had been consumed by Mar¡¯s holy fury. Voice stood there, gaping at the madness that had just happened. One, his father was somehow killed by his own weapon. Two, his mother killed the murderer. Three, his mother had to sacrifice her life force to take him down. Voice could only stand, flabbergasted. He had no idea what to do next. His family had been killed by slavers, and now he was alone in the wilderness, in the middle of Mar only knows where. He had actually grown to like the two people that raised him. It kind of reminded him of what it would have been like to have a normal family. Then that slaver scum took it away. Voice vowed to kill every slaver he could find. A voice rang out in his mind, clear and pristine, yet deep and full of power. ¡°Do you wish for power, One that holds the Ancient¡¯s Blood?¡± // Wow, that was a long chapter. I just couldn¡¯t find a good stopping point in it. Anyway, medium sized spoilers ahead for people wondering if I got off the main story. [spoilers] It will eventually make its way back to the main campaign after a few more time skips. [/spoilers] So how did you guys like the chapter? Dive 27: The Final Days of Growing Up Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : We saw a brief overview of what the other players were doing. Voice upgraded his white space a lot. We saw Voice grow up in-game. His parents were killed, and he heard a voice in his head. A voice rang out in his mind, clear and pristine, yet deep and full of power. ¡°Do you wish for power, One that holds the Ancient¡¯s Blood?¡± Voice was angry at the scene before him, so he ignored the voice for now. He made a new plan for the future. First off he was going to own some sort of land. After that he would either start a village or a guild. Then he was going to eradicate all slavers. He remembered that his older character still held the book the strange god gave him. He would put that to good use. While he was thinking this over, he heard the voice again. ¡°Ancient One, I can give you the power you so desperately seek. You are the first in so long.¡± The voice actually sounded a bit lonely. Alright creepy voice, what do you want. Voice didn¡¯t want to say anything out loud, just in case someone was tricking him, or he really was going crazy. The voice seemed to glow with warmth. ¡°You have already begun on your journey, the one the Ancients called ¡®The Path to Magical Discovery¡¯. I can help you complete it. With my help you will be able to completely control the fabric of magic, just as the Ancients used to.¡± While this seemed like a good thing, Voice was suspicious. Nothing came for free. And what do you get out of this? The voice stopped for a moment, as if thinking about its answer. ¡°I get nothing. When an Ancient dies, they help the next generation by giving them guidance on the Path. Of course the Ancients could only help their direct descendants.¡± So does that mean you¡¯re my ancestor? It seemed possible, and given the context of the conversation it seemed probable. ¡°Yes, I am. You are the first one with the blood of the True Elves, in many generations. You may refer to me as ancestor.¡± Voice thought to himself, I guess the split forced the elves to for two different races, and neither had enough true blood to be given this vision. Even though it was a personal thought, his ancestor replied, it is exactly as you have said. The first thing someone on the path would do is learn the history of his people. So I will teach you all that I remember after so long.¡± The story took an entire day to complete. In the beginning the Elder Gods created the world. They then created the many races of Solun into existence. The most magically gifted was the Elves. The blood of Elves ran thick with magic, they could use any magic below god class without much effort. Even the youngest and weakest would be on par with high class mages of the current time. The Elves always sought more power, they eventually garnered enough power to pose an actual threat to the gods. Then the gods created many elementals, fairies, and beings with pieces of divinity. The Elves had learned the perfect, and most forbidden of spells. They had learned to connect the minds of all Elves. The minds were still independent, but they would know what all other Elves were thinking or feeling. The further away the mind of the other Elf was, the easier it was to ignore or block. The Elves waged war on the Elder Gods. The war was bloody, and horrible. Such atrocities happened you would have thought it was the end of the world, which it nearly was. Eventually, in a bid for power, Davros temped the Elves. He had made Demons, and he offered to breed them with the Elves. The Elves would gain power, and Davros would have control over them. They would give up the ability to cast light magic, but become more powerful with darkness. Only about 3/8 of the Elves agreed to this. Even though they all shared memories, and could read each other¡¯s minds, some were just greedier than others. Those were the ones that were willing to throw away their freedoms for power. Eventually they even learned a trick to handling fire magic. Seeing this the other gods also made offers. 3/8 of the Elves took Gaia up on her offer to breed with the nymphs of nature. They were granted a better ability to sense life within the wilderness; they could also hide themselves better, through Gaia¡¯s benevolence. They would lose most of their magic, but would have rare magic only those that followed Gaia could learn. The remaining Elves, only about 1/8, had to find someone to align themselves with. They could not hope to fight the war with so few. They had been on even footing with the gods before, but now they would be slaughtered. Mar saw this, and took pity on them. She offered a deal. If they would no longer wage war, or kill innocents, she would allow them to breed with her angels. This would gain more power over light, and keep about half of their original power. This was the best offer they could hope for, so they agreed. She also tasked them with teaching the other races magic. Normally only those that followed a god could learn magic, and only the magic that god saw fit to give them. With her High Elves, she made sure the power of magic was far more evenly split. That¡¯s when Ancestor (that¡¯s what we are calling the voice now) lost the ability to guide the new generation. For the next few decades the Dark Elves waged war upon the world, and the only thing the Ancestors could do was watch in sadness. The Dark Elves constantly tried to destroy, or conquer the world. It wasn¡¯t actually clear which. They would destroy entire villages at once. After several years of fighting the entire world banded together to wipe out the Dark Elves. When all of the Dark Elf Warriors had been killed the humans and dwarfs wanted to kill the young and infirm. The High Elves felt obligated to protect the now vulnerable, Dark Elves. These Dark Elves had not actually done anything wrong. They prayed to Mar when they realized that the humans and dwarves were going to obliterate all of them. She agreed to help, but only if the High Elves gave up a portion of their power to her. They agreed, since it was the right thing to do. The Dark Elves stopped waging wars after that, but they were always resentful towards the other races. The Wood Elves did not participate in the wars, unless the forests were directly attacked. With that the explanation was over. Voice thought for a moment. How do the Elven races feel about inter breeding? Ancestor answered, ¡°Interbreeding between the Elven races was very rare, it was even rarer than mating with humans. If two of the races bred together, neither god would have power over them.¡± Voice thought this over. Does this mean I¡¯m free from all three gods? Ancestor chuckled. ¡°Yes, that is exactly what it means. However this also means you may be hunted by them. They will all remember how the Elves of old almost conquered them. They will try to rid the world of you in most cases, even though one Ancient could never hope to beat a god. Now we will set the training pace by your will. Just know that it will never go down, only up.¡± Voice smirked. He didn¡¯t know if he would be able to actually go through with the training, but the harder the training the more the rewards. I want training as hard as I can possibly take.
You have spent too much concentration. You are disoriented.
-You are now 16 years old. You have spent the last 7 years being trained by Ancestor. You are now fluent in: Ancient Elven, Dark Elven, High Elven, Wood Elven, and Human. For dedication during your training you have gained: 3 int, 3 wis, 3 str, 3 end, 4 vit. You have also lost ten luck, because Ancestor believes luck is a tool of those without power of their own future.¨C
Ancestor has taught you the ways of direct mana manipulation. Synergy with class Force Mage, is at maximum. You have basic control over eight elements. The lost magic is not usable at this time. For pure focus on learning magic you have not gained weapon or armor proficiency. For accepting class: Force Mage, you have not gained any new spells. All eight affinities set at 25 (locked affinities over 25 do not change)
The past seven years flashed before Voice¡¯s eyes. Ancestor had told him that normally Ancients would only learn four types of magic, but Ancestor would make sure Voice learned all of them. Voice was sitting in the forest meditating. He was sitting in a shallow lake. He stood atop a cliff while exercising. He was completely buried in dirt, only his mouth free. He sat near a large fire, feeling its breath. He was in a giant metal box. He was surrounded by crystals of light. He was surrounded by crystals of darkness. The images started flashing even faster. The longer the images flashed the more intense his training had become. He recognized himself sitting on a bed of hot coals. He was fully submerged in water. Voice started questioning why Ancestor would try to kill him. Suddenly he heard the familiar voice. ¡°Oh good, you¡¯re up. Well hop to it. We are going to develop your unique magic, even if it kills you.¡± After seeing the training he had been through Voice didn¡¯t doubt that last part. Ancestor continued. ¡°You need to decide what you want your unique magic to be. Most other races have a coming of age ceremony where they get taught some new skill or ability. BAH. You will be better! And remember you must use at least two types of magic.¡± Voice had a little trouble keeping up with the speed of things this time, but he tried his best to think of a cool magic. Flight would be cool, but it only uses wind. Voice started thinking of fire breathing which could be fire augmented with wind, then he started thinking about abilities dragons might have. Then he started going through lists of mythical creatures. AH! GOT IT! Voice imagined his skin burning. He felt the searing heat, and massive pain, as his skin caught fire. He did notice that the pain wasn¡¯t even half as bad as he was expecting. Instantly he started using healing magic on himself. While the healing magic was active he lost all feeling of pain. He smiled at his work.
You have created a new (forgotten) spell: Phoenix Fire.
Phoenix Fire The caster catches on fire. This flame causes (10 + (fire affinity/10) * Aura) damage per second to anything in contact with the fire. The user heals at a rate of (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) per second. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana per second. If the user has a higher fire affinity than light affinity, the fire affinity can be scaled down.
You have created a new spell. You can record this spell in an empty spell book. Only the person that created this spell, or someone he gave permission to, can create spell books for it. Once the creator of the spell can no longer make spell books, the one that is most proficient can create spell books based on this spell.
Ancestor was impressed. ¡°Even though you cannot cast normal spells you managed to cast a lower mid-level fire-light spell. Hm, that¡¯s pretty good. Normally it would take someone at mid-level a couple of days to perfect it.¡± During Ancestor¡¯s speech Voice had been forced to let the flames die out. He could only maintain it for four seconds if he included his mana regen rate. He still managed to create a small flame on a tree though. Ancestor stopped speaking when the magic died out. ¡°WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?¡± The voice rang loudly through his head. ¡°YOU BETTER KEEP YOURSELF COATED!¡± Voice tried to coat himself in the flame again, but couldn¡¯t muster up the magic. After seeing him fail Ancestor continued. ¡°Alright then. You have until your magic fully regenerates to think up a new spell.¡± Voice had already though of a few spells. He imagined his hand submerged in a ball of water. He remembered the feel, the look, even the smell of the water. At the same time as he the water started expanding around his hand he summoned up a wind to guide the water off of his hand, and onto the fire he had started. The fire didn¡¯t seem to be growing, just staying there. When the watery wind hit the fire it began to sizzle, until it finally sputtered out.
Mist Spray The caster creates a thin mist. The amount of cups of water is water collected is (.5 + (water affinity/200) * Aura) for every point of mana spent. The (speed or distance) the mist travels is (10 + (wind affinity/10) * Aura) feet per second per mana point. You can adjust the distance and speed. The base spell cost for this spell is 3 mana per second.
You have created a new spell. You can record this spell in an empty spell book. Only the person that created this spell, or someone he gave permission to, can create spell books for it. Once the creator of the spell can no longer make spell books, the one that is most proficient can create spell books based on this spell.
¡°Good, now let¡¯s teach you how to disguise yourself as a human, so you can walk around the world without fear.¡±
You have spent too much concentration. You are disoriented.
He was in a white area. He remained there even when he got the next, expected, speech. -You are now 20 years old. You have spent the last 4 years mastering your class with whatever help Ancestor could provide. You are now a level eight Force Mage. You can use any of the eight types of magic. Through your other realm travels you know there is a ninth hidden type of magic. You have spent many many hours learning the skill: Meditation. You have learned the art of disguise. ¨C
Meditation Current Level: Apprentice Level 25 00.00% You have learned to meditate. You can meditate under most normal circumstances. While meditating your mana regenerates twice as quickly (before debuffs). While meditating you can cleanse you mana reserves. Current Mana Purity: 1. With purer mana you can cast magic more easily. To upgrade mana purity you must meditate for one hour for every point of mana. Every level of mana purity will increase cast speed by 5%, every level of mana purity will increase the power of a spell by 50% of the original power.
Disguise Current Level: Apprentice Level 25 00.00% You have learned to disguise yourself. For every level in this skill you will be able to better disguise yourself. For every rank in this skill you will be able to disguise yourself as a larger variety of things. People will get a chance to discern your disguise if they look too closely. If you study those you¡¯re disguised as you will gain a competency bonus.
In accordance with the habits that it is determined you will form, both skills have been fused into group skills.
Disguise has fused into group skill Con Artist.
Meditate has fused with Mana Affinity, and Deceptive Aura to form the Group Skill: Magical Mastery.
Con Artist Current Level: Novice Level 14 Exp 03.57% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Deception, Flattery, Barter, Disguise, and Sleight of Hand. You are a practiced con man. You can trick people into buying things, or ideas, at absurd prices. For creating the Group Skill: Con Artist, the skill Sleight of Hand has been generated. Sleight of Hand has been automatically added to your Con Artist skill. The higher the level the more believable your cons are. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
Magical Mastery Current Level: Novice Level 16 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Mana Affinity, Deceptive Aura, and Meditate. You are slowly becoming the master of all things arcane. With diligent study and practice, you may be able to better master the arcane world. The higher the level the better you will be able manipulate mana. To level this skill you must level up Mana Affinity, Deceptive Aura, or Meditate. The maximum rank this skill can be is determined by (intelligence/50).
-You have been determined to have previously played DIVE. Your character will have all bonuses from growing up added to it. Your race has changed, the previous bonuses for race have been exchanged for your new races racial abilities.- Voice found himself in the middle of the forest. He was bombarded by notification screens.
You have lost all racial bonuses granted to Humans. You have lost five ability points. You have lost the versatility of the Human.
You gained the racial abilities of an Ancient Elf. Ancient Elves gain the following stat changes: -2 str, - 3 end, -1 vit +5 int, +2 wis, + 2 dex, + 2 agi All spells cost 5% less as an Ancient Elf.
*Attention* An update has occurred. Skills now have an upper limit to usage amount per action. Many skills have been streamlined for efficiency. Skills have been made less powerful. Items have a maximum enhancement bonus depending on the item. Dungeon bosses now only respawn after all players have left the dungeon. You can only equip two weapons at a time unless otherwise stated. Pain conversion has been set to 25%. Pain setting is now adjustable between 1% and 25%. All players below the age of 6 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian to log in. Certain classes have been modified. New timer developed. Players must leave the pod for at least one hour a day, if they sleep in game. This hour must be in three increments of at least 20 minutes each. If the player does not sleep in game they must leave the pod for three twenty minute increments, as well as one six hour increment.
Many of your skills have been nerfed. (Lololol)
[Btw the system said that in parenthesis] This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. He opened his skills menu. He could only stare in anger as he read some of the descriptions. His critical strike could only be used once per action. It even went on to say that an action included the entirety of making a potion. Furthermore, all effects that added potency were cumulative instead of compounded. The worst part was that the dried ingredients and potion he used to up the power of his potions wouldn¡¯t be effected by the second round of potion making. (The reason his potions were so freakishly op was that the critical hit percentage bonus was multiplied instead of added. So instead of (base 100% + 100% + 360% + 15%...) [these are all of his bonuses] for a total of 6.1 times, it was (base 100% + 100%) then (200% + 720%) then (920% + 138%)¡­ . Then he would dry the potion, which made it twice as potent, and use that as an ingredient to boost the next potion. Then all of that got multiplied by the compounded amount as well.) All in all his potions would now only have about 11.64 times more power, and only if he made them in Susan¡¯s lab. It had been a big oversight to add each bonus after calculating the last one, but it didn¡¯t hurt anyone. He didn¡¯t know why they had to go and change it.
You have started your Racial Quest. Ancestor wishes for the revival of the Ancient Elves. Ancestor has gone on for many a long night waxing and waning on both the good and bad parts of the race. It is your mission to bring this race out of obscurity. Success: Recreating the Ancient Elven race, or bringing mass quantities of fame (not infamy) to the race. Difficulty: Dependent on the Questor. Failure: Letting the Ancient Elves once again fall into the cracks of time, to be forgotten. Reward: Unknown. Failure leads to the end of the Ancient Elven race.
Voice sighed as he began to walk. He had come to expect this game to try to screw him over. It didn¡¯t matter though, he now had an immediate goal. He was going to bring back his people, and he knew just how to do that. First he would make a name for himself. He was already on that road. Secondly he would set up a safe haven for all Ancient Elves. He would start this as soon as he found a good spot. And third, once he gained enough power and prestige he would start to selectively breed all of the modern elves. Voice started walking towards the setting sun. From his brief glimpses of his past he knew there was a river that way. A few hours after he had started walking in the forest he received a message. *Hi Voice! This is Susan. I just collected all of the information you needed for the guild. You have to have to have five gold, at least three people, a piece of land large enough to hold the guild, and a building on that land, big enough to hold all of your guildmembers.* Voice almost kicked himself. Shit! I totally forgot to create the guild. Not that I could have anyway. Voice whistled when he looked over how much money it would cost to make it. He wouldn¡¯t be able to get that much for a while. He looked through his inventory. Luckily he still had all of his old stuff, including 32 entire rolls of OP bandages. He smiled as he saw that they still healed 5k per bandage roll. He didn¡¯t want to use them himself. He would have to do something extra special with them. He might even try to sell them. No doubt that would get him the needed amount of money to start a guild. After a few more hours of wandering the forest Voice started to wonder if the river even existed. He decided to ask Ancestor. This would also serve as a test to see if he kept Ancestor. Ancestor, which way is the river? ¡­ He was answered by silence. It wasn¡¯t the silence of emptiness, it was the silence of someone ignoring a person in need. Whatever asshole Voice thought to himself. He immediately felt a sharp pain in his mind. He was brought to his knees. I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯M SORRY! Even with the pain down to 25% Voice felt as if his head was splintering into a thousand tiny pieces. Voice sat on the ground and tried to think of how he could get to the city. He glanced at his map, only to see it being scrambled. Figures Voice felt an ominous tingling in his mind, so quickly apologized. The tingling died down and he began to concentrate on the task at hand. He read inspect to make sure it was the same as before. It was, but apparently the ability to sense Mana Crystals was a subskill of Mana Sight. Though you could only get it by obtaining a super rare type of Mana Crystal. He toggled inspect on. He sat and looked around, while mainly paying attention to mana sight. He figured that if there were living beings in the river they would use water magic. He had learned during his training that different types of mana permeated the air, or ground. If one follows the mana long enough, one would find the source. He calmly looked for the water signature. As his training had developed he had learned to distinguish the different types of mana from each other. The forest had a dense green mana permeating the air. The trees, and all the plants created a vast ocean of nature mana. He calmly searched for any water mana in the air. As he did Ancestor talked to him. ¡°I¡­ I¡¯m sorry. I haven¡¯t been able to connect to you since you first entered the city. You lost the battle because I wasn¡¯t there to guide you.¡± Ancestor sounded depressed, which surprised Voice. He debated whether or not to joke around, but decided not to. It¡¯s not your fault, if I relied on you during that excursion it would have been your victory, not mine. I take full responsibility for my loss. Ancestor seemed to glow slightly when Voice said that. ¡°Thank you. I know you are just being kind, but that perfectly encompasses my ideal for the Ancients. Since you did fail we will start training even harder from now on. I¡¯ve looked through everything you have done since I lost the ability to see you. While I am impressed with how you dealt with the gods you could have done better. Not needing to eat is great, but for an extremely accomplished nature mage food becomes unnecessary.¡± Voice could only smile. It¡¯s not like Ancestor would believe Voice really WAS human until now. Voice found a thin wisp of water mana. He smiled as he stood from his position and started following the trail. After only a few minutes he noticed the thin wisp of water magic turned into a tendril. After about fifteen minutes total he had made it to the river. His inspect skill had been skyrocketing in experience since he saw so much information. The stream gurgled and splashed joyfully as it flowed. The river was really just a large stream flowing between the trees. It wasn¡¯t wide, but it was very deep. Voice could travel across the river in about ten steps, if he could reach the bottom that is. Voice sat at the edge of the playful river. He opened the book he obtained in the realm of the Elder Gods. When he did Ancestor commented. ¡°AH! I remember now! That book was written by one of the first Ancient Elves. He separated himself from the Origins, the name of the first Ancient Elves. He created that book series to pass his knowledge on to those he found worthy.¡± Voice was intrigued. He might even be able to use his lineage as bargaining chip of some sort. Voice read the first words in the book. ¡®In a time before time¡­¡¯ He shifted into a new realm. When he regained his ability to concentrate he noticed that this world was different than the one he went to last time. He was in an open field. The grass in the field was a healthy green, and came up to his knees. The field seemed to go on forever. He saw no mountains, not trees, nothing to distinguish any part of the world. The only thing that seemed to be different was the sky. The clouds lazily crawled over the blue sky. Voice sat in the strangely comforting grass. He could only just see over the top of the grass. He sat and meditated. If something is supposed to happen it will happen without me worrying about it. As he meditated he noticed several strands of mana. Most of them were nature mana, but one was fire, and one was water. He decided to go to the water source. He got up and began to follow it. The mana link quickly started to enlarge. After a few seconds of following it, the mana wisp became small again. This repeated several times. He asked Ancestor for help, but was greeted by a lack of existence in his mind. Sigh, I guess I have to do this myself. He continued to follow the water mana. When he got to the point where it was thicker than the surrounding mana, he used water magic. He imagined water surrounding his hand, which seemed to grasp for the thickest point on the water mana chain. He had a flash of memory. His master had told him he could cast magic that wasn¡¯t directed on himself, but he could not manage to do it. When the water formed into a ball a rift opened. He was sucked in. Suddenly he was surrounded by water. He couldn¡¯t swim up as the currents seemed to oppose whichever way he swam. What is worse is they seemed to apply triple the amount of force. Even his magic would push against him, instead of propelling him. He started to run out of air. He was getting frantic. He remembered his boon from Undine, but couldn¡¯t cast it thanks to Davros¡¯ curse. Just as he was about to fall into oblivion he saw a large bubble of air flow in front of him. He took a chance and sucked in some of the bubble. He felt a huge rush of air enter his lungs. He almost breathed a sigh of relief, but the fear of dying kept him from that. He tried to swim upwards, but the currents again pushed him backwards. He started running out of air. He exhaled a small amount, and felt a large bubble come up from his feet. The bubble propelled him slightly as it encircled his body. He quickly refilled his lungs with fresh air. The bubble flowed upwards, leaving Voice just slightly above where he was before. He held his breath, expecting the bubbles to keep coming. The next bubble came exactly 20 seconds after the one before it. With his immediate death threat taken care of he started devising a way to get out of this place. One plan was just waiting it out. It seemed like the best choice since he did get pushed slightly forward whenever he was encompassed in a bubble. That would take who knows how long to reach the top of the water, if it even existed. He went for a slightly faster approach. He tried swimming downwards. Now it might not sound hard, but swimming downwards while you are facing up is actually difficult. Whenever he would stroke his arms or legs he could feel himself being pushed upwards. He smiled. He tilted himself left (went right) until he was facing the bottom of the body of water. He swam with all of his might to get to the bottom. He even added in air magic and water magic to push him further. It was pretty complicated to do three things at once, but they were all simple things. His swimming wasn¡¯t what one would call refined, or ¡®swimming¡¯ but it did get the desired results. He was rocketed upwards. After several seconds he shot through the surface of the water. He reversed his wind magic, and stopped his water magic. He flew even higher into the sky. After expelling half of his mana he stopped. He stood up and survived his surroundings. He was about a hundred feet in the air. He looked at his mana. Since he was stationary he figured the shoes were consuming a massive amount of mana per second. He was half right. The shoes were taking up 6.8 mana per second. On top of his 3.2 mana/sec regen speed he realized that the shoes would stop his fall for only 10 mana per second. That was a pretty good deal for keeping one¡¯s self from falling to one¡¯s death. He started to channel more mana into his shoes. He wanted to see if they could elevate him. Once he was adding in a total of 15 mana per second his noticed a tiny amount of upward velocity. Afraid that he was going run out of mana he stopped the elevation. He had 305 mana left. He forced the shoes to take less mana. He slowly started drifting downwards. When he only put a total of 7.2 mana per second he was dropping about half as quickly as he did in the Ether Realm. The only way Voice could reason it out was some sort of bell curve, the more mana you put in the more it took to see a change. He started meditating. The gentle flow of air did not hinder his ability. His mana regen was now 16.4, with this much he could easily stay stationary. Although he could not fly. Not only would he need at least 20 mana regen per second to be able to go in a direction he wanted, he would also have to be able to meditate while traveling in the air. Not really a thing most people could do. Not until he got 200 wisdom at least. With his metal debuffer he only had 11.4 mana per second that he could use. After about five minutes of meditating he had finally restored his mana. Geez that took forever. Well at least now I can go on to the next part of my plan. He stood rigid. He inspected the air for mana. Specifically he was looking for wind mana. The biggest source came from his shows. He sighed and concentrated more. He was losing 6.8 mana per second to keep in the air while using inspect. He couldn¡¯t see any wind mana, except for his shoes. He started to get worried. What if my shoes somehow absorb the wind mana in the air. Reluctantly he released the magic on his shoes. As he fell he noticed thin wisps of wind mana starting to blossom. FUCK! He quickly memorized the location of one of the wind mana strings. He started pumping mana into his shoes. He had his eyes closed to preserve the memory of where the mana string was. As he slowed he put exactly enough mana into his shoes to force himself into a stop. He again meditated until he had full mana. At least I can get to the next place. Once his mana was back he lazily drifted over to where the wind mana was. He released the mana going to the shoes for half of a second. He cursed. The wind mana he had seen had drifted away! He tried to catch up to it by releasing and starting the mana flow to his shoes. Every time he released the mana channel going through his shoes the wind mana would float further away. He got pissed. If this fucking thing wouldn¡¯t let him win the way he was trying¡­ He used his Sense. He focused all five uses on trying to locater where the wind mana would be. He used the first on, saw the general area, then went to it. He used the second one, saw a more precise area, then went to that. He did this until he was sure of where the collection of wind mana would appear. Once he was as sure as he could be he released the mana flow to his shoes, and made as much high force wind swirl around his body as possible. He could only get a perfect picture of it blowing from one side, so he faced the mana vein. The vein popped up almost exactly where his Sense told him it would. His heavy gust of wind tore open the tiny node of mana. He was blown inside by a gale force wind from behind. Voice appeared on some sort of cloud. He was amazed as he looked around. There was an actual city in the clouds! They had buildings, made of cloud and wind, so tall they would make the architects back on earth cry in shame. After a brief survey of the area around where he was, Voice noticed several humanoids. There were three big differences in these people versus the people he saw most of the time. The first difference was that they had no real bodies. At least not one he could see. The reason he knew these ¡®people¡¯ were humanoid was that they had wisps of wind constantly flowing around their bodies. The second difference was the fact that these beings didn¡¯t walk. The glided towards him without their invisible feet even touching the ground. The third and, in Voice¡¯s opinion, most important: they looked pissed. Their invisible bodies were held in a way much like bullies in a school might walk if they saw the object of their ¡®affections¡¯. The only really visible part of the bodies were they ominous red glowing eyes. One of the beings lifted his hand. It looked as if the wind itself had been sliced. The slice was heading right towards Voice. He had just enough time to encase himself in an earthen barrier before it hit. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health290Mana720
Stamina350
Level19Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec2.9Mana Regen/Sec8.2 (3.2)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom82Intelligence72
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety59Unused Stat Points45
Fame540
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 4 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 15 Exp 10.00%
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Staff Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 7 Exp 85.72%
Group Skill: Magical Master Novice Level 16 Exp 00.00%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Affinities Window
Light40
Water25
Wind25
Nature25
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 28: Battle in the Sky Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finally aged up to his actual age. He followed a mana signature to a river, and began reading the book that the god ??? gave him. He was transported to the realm of the Hermit Mirror. The wind slice tore through Voice¡¯s earth shield like it was nothing. He was hit squarely in the stomach. The wind blade seemed to stop itself after only grazing his skin. As Voice saw his bandages healing him, he wondered where Sol was. I guess he can¡¯t travel to this world with me. Voice saw the group of beings start to circle him. After the beings had circled him one stepped forward. He made a small gesture with his left hand, and suddenly the wind coating his body dispelled. It was as if an illusion had been lifted. Voice could make out this beings features. They still looked different than most humanoids, but only because of the white shining wings, and the devil likes twin tails. The being had small horns, and gave off a glowing white aura. The being that stepped forward lifted his hands in the air. A second later a short sword and a medium sized shield flew into his outstretched palms. He equipped them faster than Voice thought possible. HE held the shield in his hand instead of attached to his arm. The short sword was like any other, but the handle could accommodate the length of two hands. The man spoke in Ancient Elven, with a voice as airy as the wind. ¡°You have opened our master¡¯s tome. You must defeat one of our warriors before you are allowed to learn his magic. My name is Mavlos, we will battle now.¡± The angle/devil thing bowed. While bowing it looked straight at Voice. Voice bowed as well, not wanting to offend the thing. Voice saw that the man was level 19 as well. He had a wind aura that formed a nearly perfect sphere around his body. As they both finished bowing the thing raised its sword and charged Voice. Voice took out his staff, used Sense, and blocked the strike. Mavlos used a shield bash and threw Voice a dozen feet in the air. Voice took this opportunity to stand up, and start giving his shoes mana. He gave them just enough to keep him from descending. Seeing this Mavlos smiled. It was a smile of someone that just found a new plaything. He came at Voice faster than Voice could see. If he didn¡¯t still have three uses of Sense left he would have received a deadly hit. As it was he managed to duck under the slash, and rap Mavlos on the shins. Mavlos roared at being hit. He swung his sword to where Voice had moved, intending on killing the swine. Voice had already stopped giving mana to his shoes. He dropped like a rock towards the ground. Mavlos disappeared as he swooped down towards Voice. Voice fed mana to his shoes, and caused a large gust of wind to hit his back. He was propelled at an almost unbelievable speed. Voice smiled, he had already figured out the high speed ability Mavlos seemed to have. He would just push himself with a very accurate wind. Voice didn¡¯t know how he got a spell like that, but he wanted it. Voice could propel himself ahead, or in any direction, but not with the insane speed or accuracy that Mavlos had. Mavlos charged again, again Voice dodged. This time Voice sent himself upwards. They continued playing this game of chase until Voice was almost out of mana. Voice had pushed himself up, and away from the other group, the entire battle. Whenever Mavlos would charge for an attack Voice would just send himself higher, and further away. When Voice was almost out of mana he shot towards the ground. He was falling for nearly half a minute. When Voice saw that he was close he sent several large updrafts to slow his descent. He could have used his shoes, but he was afraid he might actually break his legs. When Voice landed he saw Mavlos already charging him on the ground. Voice prepared his staff. Mavlos struck at Voice¡¯s left shoulder. Voice spun the butt of his staff to his right side, causing the sword to swing harmlessly above his head. Voice took the opportunity to do a leg sweep on Mavlos. He continued the arc of his staff and hit Mavlos¡¯ ankles. Mavlos was thrown off balance, but caught himself. He had used wind magic to push his back forward, thus stopping the fall. Voice jabbed at his head while he still had the advantage. Mavlos easily blocked the blow by raising his shield. As he did though Voice sent a concentrated blast of wind down his hand, thus down his staff. Mavlos was blown back several feet. He stared angrily at Voice, as if asking how he had the audacity to use wind magic. Voice smiled in return, taunting the man to battle. As Mavlos approached Voice was struck with an interesting idea. He blew out slightly in his mouth. Blowing harder he sent his wind magic to work. He created a ten foot cone of wind from his mouth. Even as the wind formed Voice used his Roar ability. Mavlos turned rigid. Once five seconds had passed Voice went over and hit Mavlos on the back of the neck, hard. As soon as his staff made contact the paralysis effect wore off. Voice pushed himself backwards with his wind magic. The air around Mavlos started swirling. It seemed as though he was drawing power from the air. As the air coalesced onto Mavlos¡¯ skin Voice noticed his body get almost the same look it had at the beginning. The only difference was that Voice could still see his body. Mavlos had wind trails all along his body. The man stalked towards Voice. Voice could see that he had screwed up. He heard someone in front of him yell stop. It was far louder than it needed to be. He glanced past Mavlos, only to see several small dots rapidly closing the distance. I guess they used wind magic to enhance their voices as well. Mavlos didn¡¯t heed the demand. He coated both his sword and shield with wind as he strode towards Voice. Voice was trying to recover mana, but it didn¡¯t look as though Mavlos would let him. Thinking it was a little bit cheap Voice put 28 points of his unused stat points into int. He got a notice saying his mana affinity was now apprentice level. He would not be out done. Voice unequipped his staff, and coated himself in his Phoenix Fire. Mavlos stopped his movement for a fraction of a second. Voice used that time to rush over the last few feet between them. He grabbed Mavlos in a bear hug. Mavlos was caught off guard, and Voice was able to get a hold on him. The fire could only do 12.5 points of damage per second, but Voice would take whatever he could get. Voice let the flames consume all of his magic. Mavlos¡¯ magical wind shield blew the flames away from his body. Voice could only keep his magic up for a few second. When his magic was gone he leapt backwards, re-equipping his staff. Mavlos snarled at Voice, and jumped towards him. Mavlos feinted towards Voice¡¯s left side. Voice went to parry it, only to be hit in the ribs by a shield bash. Voice staggered backwards. He quickly got back into position. Voice jabbed at Mavlos¡¯ head. Mavlos ducked and sent his shield into Voice¡¯s staff. At the same moment he slashed at Voice with his sword. Voice jumped backwards to avoid the sword, he pushed himself back with a strong gust of wind. He was lifted a few feet off the ground as he flew backwards. He sent a small gust of wind to his back to help position himself as he landed. Mavlos wasn¡¯t far behind, swinging his sword towards Voice¡¯s legs. Voice scooped the sword up with his staff. Voice tried to encase Mavlos in a stone orb, but couldn¡¯t quite understand the feeling of creating magic on someone else. He knew it was possible, and decided to work on that when he got out of this damndable book. Mavlos struck at Voice¡¯s stomach, Voice did the same to Mavlos. Unfortunately for Mavlos Voice¡¯s reach was much further. He let out a grunt as Voice hit his target. Voice capitalized on this by swinging the tip of his staff in an arc and brining it down on Mavlos¡¯ head. With a loud clang Mavlos blocked Voice¡¯s attack. Mavlos pushed himself up using wind. Voice started to send several consecutive stabs at Mavlos. Mavlos sent a few tendrils of wind to his shield, increasing its speed tremendously. He effortlessly blocked all of the jabs. Once Voice made a small opening in his attacks Mavlos struck. He sent his own flurry of blows. He had enhanced his sword the same way as his shield, but Voice still managed to block it somehow. Voice used some of the last of his stamina to use Sense when Mavlos started attacking. It was a good thing he did, Mavlos¡¯ sword went far faster than it had before. Voice barely managed to block the first five strikes Mavlos sent his way. When Voice was out of stamina he sent himself flying in the air again. He was going to make this a war of attrition. Voice only needed to outlast Mavlos¡¯ health. Voice noted that his health bar had only barely visibly declined whenever Mavlos would get hit. Voice also noted that his health didn¡¯t seem to regenerate. Mavlos struck for Voice¡¯s leg. Voice realized he wouldn¡¯t have time to block, so he thrust his staff into Mavlos¡¯ stomach again. This time though he added a wind as big as his current mana would allow. He blew Mavlos back a few yards. Mavlos jumped into the air and started diving toward Voice. A scream tore through Mavlos¡¯ lips. Voice launched himself into the air to avoid the attack. As soon as Voice launched himself in the air, both he and Mavlos were forced into prone positions on the ground. There were heavy gusts of wind keeping them from moving. The group that had been chasing them for a while had finally caught up. The woman that was leading the group began to speak. Voice knew she was a woman since she dispelled the illusion spell. In Ancient Elven she said, ¡°MAVLOS! You should be ashamed! Needing to use wind magic against an ELF .¡± Mavlos couldn¡¯t retort, seeing as he was still face down on the cloud. She continued, ¡°And you elf ,¡± Voice felt his head forced in the direction of her face. ¡°You intrude in our master¡¯s realm, and then you have the AUDACITY to ignore the rules of combat!?¡± When Voice didn¡¯t answer her face contorted in anger. ¡°ANSWER ME!¡± She made her words even louder by adding them into a torrent of wind. Voice managed to sound calm, even though he was trembling at the power she held. Her wind aura was so large it actually encompassed two nearby people. ¡°No one told me the rules of combat. I would have gladly followed them had I been told. I came into this realm by reading a book one of the gods gave me.¡± At this point the wind people started to whisper hurriedly to each other, all except Mavlos and the woman. She waited for him to continue. ¡°I followed a trail of wind mana to get here, then was attacked by a group of people by a wind slash. How was I supposed to figure out the rules of engagement from that?¡± The woman seemed deep in thought. ¡°Very well. You and Mavlos will both be healed. The rules are simple. No flying and no wind magic. Anything else is allowed.¡± Voice felt a warmth envelope his body. He was raised and roughly set down in a standing position. The group once again circled him and Mavlos. Voice bowed again. Mavlos just yelled and charged. Voice coated himself in his Phoenix Fire just as Mavlos got to him. Voice attempted to get close to Mavlos. Mavlos slashed several times to keep the distance between them. Voice released his spell once he was at about half mana capacity. Voice quickly made a plan to bait out Mavlos¡¯ attack. He looked straight at Mavlos¡¯ shins, and swung there. He swung his staff in a horizontal strike, going from his left to his right. Mavlos lowered his shield to stop the hit, and swung towards Voice¡¯s head. Voice had already used Sense, so he knew what was going to happen. He changed the direction of his attack slightly. Just as Mavlos¡¯ sword was about to hit his head he dashed forward. During the dash his staff struck the back side of Mavlos¡¯ shield. Voice knew where Mavlos would strike so planned to use his own attack against him. Voice thrust his staff backwards as hard as he could. Due to the swing Mavlos had just missed he was slightly off balance. When Voice applied the extra pressure to his shield he had two options. One was he could hold on to his shield and fall over prone, the other was to release his shield to deal with whatever Voice was planning. He chose the second option. Gripping his sword in both hands he turned around to block the strike he knew was coming. He was met by Voice smiling. Voice taunted him, ¡°You know, losing your shield in mid battle is never good.¡± Voice decided to do a charge of his own. Mavlos met this by running towards Voice. Their weapons collided in flurry of blows. Mavlos would strike, Voice would block and counter. Mavlos would dodge or block and strike again. Mavlos struck at Voice¡¯s head. Voice knocked the strike to the left with the top of his staff, and quickly reversed the butt of his staff. He stuck Mavlos in the ribs with a loud THWACK. Mavlos slashed at Voice from the left. Voice gripped his staff in both hands and blocked the slice. He smiled and goaded Mavlos even more. ¡°Come on man, you¡¯re getting beaten by an elf .¡± For some reason that sent Mavlos into a rage. Voice used Sense when he saw Mavlos go into this rage mode. He blocked every one of Mavlos¡¯ quick and deadly strikes. Voice made sure to smile the entire time, just to piss Mavlos off even more. Every time he would uses his Sense for the fifth time he would use it again. This went on for several seconds. In those seconds Voice had used up almost all of his stamina. Voice raised his staff as if to attack in a horizontal slash. Mavlos took the bait and raised his sword above his head. He rushed Voice. Voice put his left foot outside of Mavlos¡¯ right foot (from Voice¡¯s perspective). Right before their bodies touched Voice spun on his left foot, putting himself behind and facing Mavlos. Not one to lose such a perfect opportunity he activated Battle Rage. He figured that since he and Mavlos were both at full health the only way to get a decisive victory would be to drain a majority of Mavlos¡¯ health in a quick manner. What happened next was amazing, even Voice couldn¡¯t predict such a preferable outcome. Voice struck the back of Mavlos¡¯ neck with the top end of his staff. At the same moment he used Critical Hit. He did 250% damage to an already devastating attack. A loud crack could be heard as his staff connected. Voice didn¡¯t stop there though. He quickly sent the butt of his staff into Mavlos¡¯ left ribcage by swinging to the right in a horizontal strike. Mavlos staggered as he received the attacks without being able to divert any of the damage. Voice followed that up by striking Mavlos¡¯ head with a downward strike. Mavlos stumbled and started falling towards the floor. Voice capitalized on this by using Consistent Fury. He stepped to the left of Mavlos¡¯ body, and struck him repeatedly with his staff. Every time his staff swung down signaled another convulsion from Mavlos¡¯ body. Voice stood over the defeated body of Mavlos and struck him many, many times. When he had used up all of his stamina Battle Rage ended. He looked around and saw his handy work. All of the wind people had forgotten to continue the spell of concealment. They all wore similar expressions of horror, and anger. Voice looked down. Mavlos was bloodied and broke. His body laying lifelessly on the cloud, a pool of blood pooled around his ribs and mouth. Voice was slightly shocked at what he had done. He had hoped to win, but when Mavlos didn¡¯t use wind magic he was pathetic. Voice took a step back from the body, unsure of what was about to happen. He didn¡¯t know if these people had a warriors¡¯ code, but he figured he was going to die now. The leader came forward. ¡°Well, for an elf you are quite powerful.¡± She gave him a look of less scorn now. ¡°We had heard that the elves aligned themselves with various gods, and became weak because of it. It seems you are an exception.¡± She sighed. ¡°Normally the victor would have a choice as to the reward of the battle.¡± Voice looked inquisitorially at her. She decided to elaborate. ¡°Well, normally you would either ask to learn any or all of his abilities, gain all of his material possessions, or you would be allowed to take his life. Under normal circumstance one would not kill their opponent in battle.¡± She gave a meaningful look to Voice. ¡°Seeing as how you did though, you must be content with his possessions. He can¡¯t teach you anymore, nor can you kill what is already dead.¡± Voice¡¯s mind darted to his ring. He would much rather learn flight, or how to speed up his weapons, or super speed, than almost any material object. Voice hesitantly whispered to the woman. ¡°H-How do your people feel about dark magic?¡± She looked amused at his question. Seeing that he was serious she answered. ¡°All magic is accepted, we were never taught dark magic by our Master, but he uses it. Any magic is accepted in our society.¡± Voice smiled. He pointed his hand with the ring at the fresh corpse. He activated the Cursed Ring Necrosis. Instead of it pulling man from his body he felt a sudden drop in health. Worried he looked at his health bar. Just activating the damn thing had cost 100 health! The ring never said anything about that! The magic seeped over Mavlos¡¯ body. Voice lost another to health. He was down to 151 because of the ring and Battle Rage. A screen popped up.
You have activated Complete Raise Undead. The body will be fully revived. You have activated Complete Raise Undead through a cursed ring. Please indicate how much free will you wish for you undead to have. *Note: If you give your undead 100% free will they will not be bound to you.
He chose 100%. Another window appeared.
Please select the conditions for revival. Once set these conditions cannot be changed.
Voice looked through a long list of options. Basically they were all things that restricted the undead. Is that really 100% freedom then? Whatever, let¡¯s just get this over with. He tried to not select any, but the screen wouldn¡¯t let him proceed unless he did. He chose some arbitrary ones. He made it so Mavlos couldn¡¯t practice deceit with Voice, and Mavlos couldn¡¯t try to harm Voice in any way. That included getting others to harm him. Although he allowed Mavlos to let it happen, he just couldn¡¯t help them. You have used the Cursed Ring Necrosis. You must wait until midnight to use it again.
The magic started coiling around Mavlos after Voice hit accept. Mavlos¡¯ body rose into the air. The crowd had gone deathly quiet during this entire process. The black smoke circled Mavlos after setting him on his feet. It eventually started going in a spiral towards his mouth. All of the smoke eventually made its way into Mavlos¡¯ mouth. As the final wisps of dark smoke disappeared into the dark reaches of Mavlos¡¯ throat, Mavlos coughed. After only a few coughs he stood rigidly upright. Smoke started pouring out of his pores. When the smoke finally came to a stop Mavlos looked around. His eyes locked with Voice¡¯s. ¡°You, you killed me. I felt myself leave my body. How exactly am I here?¡± Mavlos didn¡¯t try to attack as Voice first expected. Voice shrugged. ¡°I brought you back to life. I wanted you to teach me your abilities.¡± Mavlos nodded. It seemed as though being beaten by Voice had cleared his head. ¡°You are well within your rights to ask for that.¡± The group surrounding them started dispersing. It was tradition for the loser to teach the winner in privacy. Even though they wanted to know how this would play out they would uphold tradition. After they left, Mavlos sighed. When he noticed Voice giving him a questioning look he answered. ¡°My anger has always clouded my judgement. I have tried many ways to fix it, but I never could. It¡¯s like something is inside of me, stopping me from seeing battles clearly.¡± He nodded. ¡°Even though it was because I lost control, you did beat me. No maybe it was because of it.¡± He shook his head. He was quiet for a few minutes. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Just as Voice started to get impatient Mavlos spoke. ¡°If you wish to learn my abilities I must examine you.¡± Voice nodded, so Mavlos closed his eyes and sent small tendrils of light mana towards Voice. While he was working he notice he had a notification icon in the upper left hand corner of his vision.
For repeated use of Sense while examining all of your surroundings you have created the skill Sensory Perception. Sensory Perception has taken the place of Sense. Sense has been deleted from your ability list.
Sensory Perception Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to use your five senses to determine things at a higher level. This skill is heavily dependent on the skills: Spot, Search, Listen, Track, and Taste. Ranks in these skills will dramatically increase your ability to use this skill. Spot increases the amount of information you can deduce from seeing. Such as determining where a sword will land given its trajectory. Search will increase the amount of information you can deduce through touch. Such as determining the material a sword is made of by touching its surface. Listen will increase the amount of information you can deduce through sound. Such as determining the location of a person based on their breathing. Track will increase the amount of information you can deduce through smell. Such as determining the location of a person from the sweat it gives off. Taste will increase the amount of information you can deduce through tasting. Such as determining the exact ingredients that a stew is made of. You have generated the skills Search, Track, and Taste from acquiring this skill. This skill, and all generated skills, have been combined into the Group Skill: Inspect.
As soon as he got that notice his world exploded with information. His inspect had been giving him a steady flow of info, but now it was almost staggering. He could see large red lines covering Mavlos¡¯ body. When he touched one he instinctively knew it was a weak spot. He also got pushed away by a concerned Mavlos. Mavlos was a little bit worried. ¡°Hey buddy, the agreement doesn¡¯t include me .¡± Voice blushed slightly at forgetting his surroundings. As he backed away he noticed the red lines started disappearing rapidly. He moved a little closer, and they returned a little. Mavlos sighed again. He had not only been beaten by an elf, he had been beaten by an insane elf. He continued his inspection. When he was done he gave Voice a sad look. ¡°I can teach you my skills if you want, but you will not be able to use them.¡± Voice thought Mavlos was trying to cheat him, but then remembered the stipulation he had given the ring. ¡°Why not!? I can use wind magic!¡± Voice glared at Mavlos. He knew it wasn¡¯t Mavlos¡¯ fault, but it felt good to blame someone. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Your bones are too thick, you don¡¯t have big enough lungs to help air push you from the inside, you could have overcome the lack of wings, but not with everything else included. Even your muscles aren¡¯t trained in the right way.¡± Seeing Voice¡¯s sad face Mavlos quickly tried to fix the situation. ¡°BUT! But you might be able to if you train.¡± Voice perked up. ¡°You notice how my people glide?¡± Voice nodded. ¡°Well we have trained our bodies to catch the air when we want to, or streamline ourselves when we don¡¯t. I could teach you for a few months and you would understand the basic concepts, but then you have to train your own body to be able to do it.¡± Voice frowned. If I have to train myself anyway it¡¯s not worth taking that much time. FUCK! Voice spoke in a sad tone. ¡°Fine, I understand. I don¡¯t want your life or possessions though, so what do I get from beating you?¡± Mavlos thought for a moment. ¡°One second, I¡¯ll be right back.¡± With that Mavlos disappeared. After several minutes Mavlos reappeared with a brown ring. It was the same brown color that one might find on a dear, or squirrel. ¡°This ring is a family heirloom, and so is not included if you take all of my assets. I will give it to you in exchange for my assets.¡± He handed the ring to Voice. ¡°This ring was used by our ancestors, before we gained wings of our own.¡± That had definitely caught Voice¡¯s attention. He examined the ring.
Ring of Flight *Artifact
This ring was crafted by an ancient and powerful animal tamer/enchanter. When wind mana is channeled through this ring the user will develop a body similar to the Pteromyini, or flying squirrel. This ring has an activation cost of 50 mana. It requires 25 additional mana per second to maintain the form. If your mana runs out while the ring is in use you will be forcibly be reverted back to your original form. Any items, weapons, and armor the user has will be unequipped while the ring is active. The items will be re-equipped when the ring deactivates. You do not have enough Nature affinity to use this ring to its maximum potential. Because of this you will be stunned for three seconds before and after each activation of this ring. You don¡¯t not have enough Wind affinity to use this ring to its maximum potential. Because of this you will less control over your flight.
Voice accepted the ring. With enough affinity he would be able to perfectly fly in the air! Technically it would be gliding, but if he could create enough updrafts he could stay in the air for as long as he wanted. He smiled. He was quickly thinking up all of the ways he could use this new ring to his advantage. As he smiled he felt himself shift again. ¡°What are you doing? You haven¡¯t moved for nearly half an hour.¡± He hear Ancestor ask. He was back by the river. He laid down on the ground. Ahh. Voice was happy to be out of that place. He might have gotten a really cool item, but it was a really intense battle. I just went into the realm the book connected to. Can¡¯t you see my memories or something? ¡°No, I couldn¡¯t see whatever just happened.¡± Voice quickly recounted what had happened. Ancestor was impressed. ¡°Well, you have indeed exceeded my expectations. Let¡¯s try out your new ring.¡± Voice gladly obliged. He was stunned for a few seconds before he felt himself change. His body experienced a slight discomfort. He felt itchy all over. After an agonizing second of wanting to tear off his skin, he noticed that his body was covered in a thin layer of fur. His hands connected to his waist on each side, by a thin layer of skin. His feet were also connected to his waist by a layer of skin. He threw himself into the air with his wind magic. He shot higher than any of his previous attempts to rocket into the air. The air caught in his new quasi wings, and added a lot of lift. He spent about half of his mana to lift himself as high as possible. He had 475 mana left when he reached the apex of his flight. He was astonished by the height he gained. He was at least two hundred feet in the air. The view was breathtaking. He saw the river flit through the trees. He saw the forest sprawled out amongst the hills. He even heard flocks of birds that were startled into the sky. He could just make out the figures of the small animals running playfully across the forested floor. Looking at the beautiful picture actually brought a heartwarming smile to his lips. He really appreciated Nature and all of its beauty. After turning a few times he was in the city of Rand. The forest stopped a little ways away from the city. After the city was a long expanse of grassland. He flew straight towards it. Well he tried to. The restrictions in his suit made it difficult to glide where he wanted. The city was a few miles away from him, and he could only last in this suit for nineteen seconds. He dived down to pick up speed, and angled his body as close to the city as he could. He was going far faster than he could hope to go by walking, or even running, through the forest. When he was down to 100 mana something caught his eye. He tucked his arms and legs in, and dove towards it. When his mana was at 25 he pulled out of the steep dive, by extending all four limbs and making his body as horizontal as possible. The ring deactivated, and his trajectory threw him head long into a tree. He was sent over the shiny object. On top of the three seconds of paralysis, he received a notice saying he was knocked unconscious for one minute. He sat there for 60 seconds in total darkness. He couldn¡¯t see or hear anything. It was as if the world itself had never existed. One minute later he was blinded by the sudden surplus of light. He winced and remained seated. He opened his eyes slowly this time. He saw the shiny object several yards in front of him. As he approached it he heard a twig snap to his left. He equipped his staff and slowly walked towards the shiny object, keeping his ears peeled for the thing to his left. When he was a few feet from it something jumped at him. Voice used his staff to throw whatever it was over his head. Of course he didn¡¯t forget to add a nice little gust of wind that took up all of his mana when the creature was thrown off of his staff. He looked at whatever it was. Fucking demon wolves. The wolf had hit a tree and laid still, a thin line of blood escaping its jaws. Voice saw that it lost half of its health in one attack! That was pretty amazing considering the thing was level 24 with 460 hp. Voice didn¡¯t know how he could see the monster¡¯s exact hp, or why it had so much for its level, but he didn¡¯t question either thing. Voice got into a low stance, wanting to see how a fight between him and the wolf would play out. The wolf unsteadily got to its feet. Voice smirked. ¡°Come on loser, put up a better fight!¡± The wolf might not have known what Voice said since he spoke in Ancient Elven, but the intent was clear. The wolf jumped at Voice again. The red lines on the wolf¡¯s body expanded every time it got close. Voice could actually see all of the best places to hit the little fucker. Voice shook his head as he sent it flying again. This time he didn¡¯t add any mana. The wolf was left with 180 hp. So I can deal 50 damage by throwing the thing without magic? Wait that means my magic only added 180! Hm, I guess that¡¯s not too bad considering I just threw the damn thing. While he was thinking this the wolf got back to his feet. The wolf was wary of Voice at this point. It circled him instead of charging. Voice gather wind mana into his mouth and let out the biggest roar he could. He expended what little mana he had regenerated. The resulting roar was so loud it shook leaves out of the nearby trees. (Lol might have been the wind though) Voice capitalized on the stunned status of the wolf by bashing it three times in quick succession, at the base of its skull. The wolf fell over after the third strike. The loot Voice got was just the usual wolf meat, pelt, and some claws. He didn¡¯t want the meat to attract anything so he decided to just eat it. His stomach said he didn¡¯t need to eat, not couldn¡¯t eat.
For consuming food the mana drain from your Magical Metal Stomach will be stopped for (12) hours.
Your Magical Metal Stomach has removed the adverse effects of eating raw Demon Wolf meat.
He called up his Stomach to see if it had added this info.
Magical Metal Stomach *Artifact
Created by the Great Metal God John Smith, this stomach runs on magic. It reduces your mana recovery by 10% (at least 5/ second). The more you allow it to take the more efficient it becomes. This stomach reduces the need to eat, by producing the nutrients your body needs. The maximum required mana regen is 10/sec. At that point you will no longer need to consume food. If your body develops a need for more, or less, food this number will be adjusted. You will still need water. When you consume food your Magical Metal Stomach will no longer absorb mana, until such a point as your body needs nutrients. This stomach will allow you to consume things you normally wouldn¡¯t, destroying many things in the food that may adversely affect you. Mana will be consumed to deconstruct threats you consume. The harder to destroy, and the more of it you intake, the more mana will be consumed. You no longer need your large intestine, you may have it removed.
His body instinctively went into the ¡®WTF¡¯ pose, with his hands up and his face incredulous. Maaaaaan, if I had known that I¡¯d have been eating this whole time! Voice was so tired of this system leaving out important details he couldn¡¯t even curse. He went over to the shiny object, the true loot from this battle. When his hand touched it, his Inspect kicked in.
You have not touched this metal. The effects of this metal are unknown to you.
At least I know it¡¯s a metal. Ancestor had been strangely quiet this entire time. Ancestor? Are you still there? Ancestor answered in a distracted tone. ¡°What? Oh yes. I was just doing some calculations. If that is what I think it is we will have to talk.¡± Intrigued Voice picked up the item.
Heavenly Metal
Material QualityUnknownRarityLegenday
This metal can be used only by the best blacksmiths, with the best forges. Anything made with this metal will have its true potential brought out as it is used.
Ancestor gave Voice a mental nod. ¡°That¡¯s what I thought. We should bring this to your blacksmith friend. I think he might like to have it. Not to mention you would probably gain an unlimited supply of his goods if you gave it to him.¡± You had me at unlimited supply of his goods. Ancestor didn¡¯t get the reference. Apparently it couldn¡¯t see anything from Voice¡¯s mind that didn¡¯t pertain to the game. Voice walked through the rest of the forest. He wanted to test out his stomach, he obviously didn¡¯t understand its full implications. All of the wolves were around level 25 at first. The level started to drastically decline as he approached the edge of the forest. When he got where he could finally see the city he could not even find any wolves. He killed several dozens of wolves on his way. He even killed four bears, although the level drop didn¡¯t seem to affect them. The ¡®lines of death¡¯ as Voice took to calling them, proved to be too much of problem for his enemies to overcome. He consumed all of the meat, and collected all of the loot. The only reason he stopped killing bears was because he was almost overburdened. His stomach seemed to work as some sort of bag of holding. The main difference being he could not retrieve whatever he put in, even if he tried to vomit it out. His stomach seemed to take as much food as Voice could give it, and steadily sent the nutrients to his body. His satiety was perpetually at 100% instead of declining ever so slowly. His stamina regen had even increased slightly because of the extra food. The only bad part was that the weight still affected him. He was glad to finally see the city. Sure he had leveled up a few times while in the forest, but he started to miss his cash producer pet Heather. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health340Mana1000
Stamina350
Level24Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec3.4Mana Regen/Sec8.2 (3.2)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom82Intelligence100
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma19Compassion40
Leadership36Logic22
Piety59Unused Stat Points43
Fame540
[/td100][/tr]
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 4 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 15 Exp 22.00%
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Staff Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 22 Exp 25.00%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 7 Exp 85.72%
Group Skill: Magical Master Novice Level 16 Exp 00.00%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Affinities Window
Light40
Water25
Wind25
Nature25
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 29: Welcome Back to Rand Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice had a hard won battle with some sort of angel demon person. Voice obtained a ring that let him glide, and figured out a little more about his metal stomach. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment, like (if you actually like it), and rate if you have the time! As soon as Voice ran past the edge of the forest, he felt something familiar enter into his chest. Voice heard a familiar voice start shooting off sentences. ¡°Master! I have been so lonely without you. But I was sad that you left for so long, but I decided to help the chapel out since I found out you like to do that. I really did help too. I helped them heal many people. I couldn¡¯t cure most of it, but the priests were there fo-¡° Voice interrupted Sol. ¡°Shhhh. It will be ok Sol. By the way do you know where Heather is?¡± Hearing his master¡¯s voice shut Sol up instantly. Sol thought for a moment before answering in a calmer tone. ¡°Master, I think Heather is where you sleep.¡± Voice nodded. Sol most likely meant Susan¡¯s. Voice was making plans for the future on his way back to the city. The entire time Sol was going on about what he had done while Voice was gone. The light fairy had actually helped many people, even going so far as to raise Voice¡¯s standing in the church of Mar. Ancestor was not saying anything this entire time, so Voice just left it alone. Voice strode across the small plains area towards the city. The guards stopped him. As always, the guardsmen were tall and muscular. ¡°Halt! Show your name and state your business.¡± The guards barred entrance to the city with their spears. Voice gave them his best fake smile. Assholes don¡¯t realize I could squash them. What he thought wasn¡¯t far from the truth. He was only a few feet away from them, and so could see a large red mark on each of their bodies. He could tell from several yards away that their levels were only 19 and 23. If he could beat a level 20 something wolf at level 19, he sure as hell would not lose to these two buffoons at level 24. As he introduced himself, he gave a small bow. ¡°Hello gentlemen. My name is Voice0fReason. You may know me as Mar¡¯s Champion, or the Chosen of Mar. Perhaps the Master of the Green Herb? No? Have you heard of the person that bound the power of Davros? That¡¯s me.¡± He noticed that they realized who they had stopped, but kept adding more titles to make the guards feel the full force of the one they had stopped. If they stop me, I sure as hell have the right to make them a bit uncomfortable. After letting the two tremble slightly at the thought of angering him, he motioned to the guard¡¯s spears. ¡°Uh-uh, yes sorry.¡± The guard on the left raised his spear to allow Voice passage. He shot a glare at his fellow to do the same. The other guard hesitated. ¡°Um, I think we¡­ uh we still need to check you¡­ um status screen.¡± The guard gave a satisfyingly terrified face. Voice nodded. I guess people that follow the rules even when they fear death are all right. Voice admired the man¡¯s dedication, and so showed the man his status screen. The guard had enough sense not to look past his name. ¡°Uh- Alright. Thank you sir! And thank you for saving all followers of Mar!¡± The guard that insisted he show his screen gave a deep bow of gratitude. Voice merely inclined his head slightly then walked through the gate.
Welcome to Rand. Rand is heavily affiliated with the Goddess Mar. Any hostilities against her followers will result in an increase in hostility from all citizens of Rand. Mar has absolute power in Rand.
Well that¡¯s new, it¡¯s pretty cool though. Now to start building up my army. Hehehe. Voice instructed Sol to go to the temple and assist with any healing they need. Sol gladly flew off to follow his master¡¯s orders. Voice had an evil smile as he thought of what the future held. He made his way to Evan¡¯s. As he walked around the city people would stop and stare at him. Some pointed, some whispered to friends. Some ignored him completely. Come to think of it, why is it that all of the people ignoring me are wearing the same shitty gear? OH! Voice had gotten so used to not having others around he had forgotten that the other players would actually be in this town. Still though, it seemed as though only a few dozen people chose had Rand as a starting point. He smiled as an idea formed in his mind. He would always have time to visit Evan and Susan later. He found his way to the fountain where the players started. He noticed a player pop into existence. Near the fountain was a group of girls talking about why they got the game. They had both gotten the game to become mages. Wonders never cease. He sent Evan a quick message explaining what he was going to do. He sat down and gathered wind mana in his mouth. ¡°CHEAP WOLF PELTS! GREAT FOR BEGINNER¡¯S LIGHT ARMOR! ONLY FOUR STACKS LEFT! CHEAP WOLF CLAWS! HALF OFF FOR THE NEXT TWENTY MINUTES!¡± He used 1/4 of his mana to do that shout. He had to shout in four directions after all. After calling four times a few players had started gathering to see what he was selling. In the front of the crowd was a young lady. ¡°Hello miss. Would you like to buy some pelts to make leather?¡± The woman wore slightly different garb than the rest of the rest. She had replaced her shirt with one that looked to be made of low quality leather. He opened up his inventory, and allowed her to view part of it. ¡°You see I have just come from the forest. I have went through a lot of trouble to gather all of these demon wolf pelts. They are worth quite a bit more than the normal wolf pelt you are wearing.¡± The woman was taken aback at how Voice could see what material her armor was made of. Her info only gave a brief description, and a very low quality one at that. She wondered what kind of level this strange person was to be able to determine that. She responded in a voice that might have been mistaken for an angel¡¯s. ¡°Well, good sir, I have not the money to pay for these pelts. I am terribly sorry to have made you think I was a shopper.¡± She hung her head and started to leave. Voice shook his head. ¡°Wait! Now I know many people around here are going through a lot of trouble. I am here to assist you travelers. Take these pelts to Evan the blacksmith. He will help you.¡± As he said that, he noticed a blue box.
The Elder Gods have been watching you since your victory over Davros. Pleased with you, Mar has given you the ability to give out quests while in Rand. Mar has seen your attempt to help the people of Rand. You can only give out quests that can be completed in Rand, or the immediate area. You may only give out quests if you have the means to provide the promised reward. If Rand becomes unaffiliated with Mar, you may no longer create quests there. Mar can take away your ability to give quests in Rand. You can only give out one quest to each person, until the forfeit the quest or complete it.
Voice was so shocked at the development he forgot to give the woman the pelts. He noticed she had started to walk away again. ¡°Wait! Sorry about that. Mar herself just contacted me! Take these pelts to Evan and he will help you.¡± She walked back and took the pelts, unsure of if this person could really give quests. As far as she knew, only npcs could. The only way he could was if he was an npc, and he looked like a player.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Bring the pelts given to you to Evan the blacksmith. Failure: Losing the pelts, or not bringing them to Evan. Reward: Leather Armor from Evan the blacksmith. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with Evan the blacksmith, as well as decrease with all NPCs related to Evan.
She gladly started to walk towards where the man giving out pelts pointed. Voice continued to talk to his ¡®customers¡¯ like that. He would make them think he was selling high quality leather, and then give it to them free. He used Inspect on all of the people that came by his ¡®shop¡¯. Once the original group had all gone to Evan, Voice sent out another call. About the time he finished calling for more people, he felt a disturbance in the force air. It seemed like something was causing the wind to fluctuate. He looked in that direction and noticed something coming towards him. Before he could do anything, something tackled him. He sat up with a grunt. Heather was on top of his chest. I guess Sol stopped be Susan¡¯s place. Voice smiled as he rubbed her pelt. It would probably sell for quite a bit if she ever died. ¡°Hello there Heather. Did Sol tell you I was here?¡± He tried to make it sound as if that was what he intended. Heather nodded enthusiastically. ¡°Yup! Sooooo, did you bring me any wolf meat!?¡± She basically bounced on his chest. He shook his head sadly. ¡°Sorry I didn¡¯t.¡± He did not want to lie to her since Ancestor might still be listening. ¡°But how about this: You and I will go hunt wolves when I get the chance. Sound good?¡± the lack of wolf meat in her stomach slightly saddened Heather, but she nodded. ¡°Right now I am trying to help these travelers. Would you like to help me?¡± Heather agreed. Voice gave her a task. ¡°Alright. I want you to look as cute as possible, not that that will be hard. I want you to go around town and try to get people to come to my shop.¡± Heather nodded and dashed off. Voice had obviously inspected Heather. She had only managed to increase her level by three, while Voice was gone. He was now only one level behind her. A small crowd had gathered to look at the cute little bunny. Voice smiled them and gave them all the same spiel, that he gave the group before. He always talked up his wolf pelts. He was leveling his Con Man skill, but it wasn¡¯t getting very far. It only took about three hours for Voice to run out of pelts. Heather running around town, and his voice enhancement, worked wonders. He gave each player two pieces of leather. Two pieces was enough to make something to cover their upper bodies. After he emptied his stacks, he logged off. He warmed up some of his chicken products, and had a meal. After eating, and cleaning the dishes, he logged back on. His idea for the pelts had been a stroke of genius really. He would give the new players free wolf pelts. Normally he would give these to Evan, but he had talked this entire plan over with Evan. Evan would get the pelts from the players, and give them free chest armor. This way both Evan, and Voice would garner some fame.
You have gained the title Man by the Fountain. When you have this title equipped people will recognize you as the person that helped newbies get started in Solun. By doing things that exemplify this title you will be given more fame. You have obtained 10 fame for gaining this title.
After Voice read the notice, he dismissed it. He had Heather go kill whatever monsters were near the edge of the forest. He was going to keep any loot in the forest to himself. He walked to the mage¡¯s guild. The Shakespearian woman greeted him. He adopted his old English talking style. ¡°Hello fair maiden. Tis a beautiful day is it not?¡± She smiled at him in response. It was a very sweet smile. He continued, ¡°Perhaps it is not a beautiful day. Perhaps your overflowing beauty has started flowing in the wind.¡± As she blushed, Voice walked past her. He rolled his eyes when she couldn¡¯t see him. Boring, that was too easy. The old man that gave him the quest to create a new magic sat at the desk. ¡°I need an empty spell book.¡± The man looked at Voice, clearly startled. When he recognized Voice¡¯s face, he jumped up to get the book. Voice waited for a few seconds, then the man handed him the book. Voice didn¡¯t know exactly what to do, so he just pictured the book getting the information on the spell. That seemed to do the trick.
You have created the first spell book to have Phoenix Fire.
He handed the man back the now filled spell book. It seemed that the man reading the spell book was the closing of the quest.
You have completed this quest. For creating a new spell, the Mage¡¯s Guild in Rand will forever remember your name. Speak to the quest giver for your reward. You have gained 50 fame.
The guild master¡¯s assistant looked excitedly at Voice. ¡°Thank you! I knew you could do it! How did you manage it? Wait no, don¡¯t tell me. It will be more fun for me to figure it out.¡± He rummaged through his robe, and handed a small letter to Voice. ¡°Here, take this. If you ever need anything from a Mage¡¯s Guild that should be enough to get it for you.¡± Voice opened the paper, but couldn¡¯t read it. He asked for another empty book since he had promised a friend that she would be the second one to get the spell. The man obviously admired Voice¡¯s commitment to his quests. Not only did he give Voice the extra book, he also told Voice something the Elder Gods had whispered to the mage¡¯s guild¡¯s masters. ¡°For giving me this treasure I shall tell you a secret, but you must not let anyone else know until it has already come to past.¡± Voice eagerly nodded his head. He was excited for the obvious quest. ¡°Good. The gods have told each of the Masters of the Mage¡¯s Guilds that they were going to change the way world worked. I have heard that it has already happened in the recent past, but they will do so again! They are going to make the other worlders less omnipotent!¡± Voice frowned at this. More nerfs!? NOOOOOOO The man continued. ¡°The Elder Gods have said that they will force beings that use magic to have a ¡®cooldown¡¯ period after using an element. The more powerful the spell for that element the longer the Cooldown. I believe it was said that the same would go for abilities, and some skills.¡± The man thought that this super-secret information would please Voice. Voice knew he couldn¡¯t show his disappointment. With a smile on his lips, he walked away. Next up on his list was visiting Lydia. He walked down the path. He noticed that most of the npcs would still stop and whisper when he came by. Some of the players even pointed him out to others. Excellent. It will be much easier to start a guild if everyone thinks I¡¯m doing charity. Speaking of¡­ He checked his status page. He had gained eight points of compassion. He nodded his head while he looked it over. I guess even con men can seem compassionate. After walking for a few minutes, he arrived at the library. Just as imposing as I remember it. He walked inside, and greeted Lydia. Lydia was at the front desk, and looked like the return pile of books had swamped her. Voice gave a short bow as Lydia noticed him. ¡°Well, it seems to me that you are perpetually in need of assistance my dear Lydia. Perhaps I could help?¡± She looked at Voice as though he were a godsend. ¡°That would be terrific! Same reward as last time?¡± She gave him a sly wink.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Getting all of the books to the proper shelves. Difficulty: Low Failure: Not getting all of the books to the proper shelves before the library closes, damaging any of the books, losing any of the books. Reward: Being led to Lydia¡¯s room. Failure leads to decrease intimacy with the librarian, as well as not being led to Lydia¡¯s room.
Voice ignored the flirting, and filled his inventory with books. He easily finished the two hundred books in less than an hour. ¡°Thank my heroic prince! Would you now whisk me away? Onward to my chambers!¡± She seemed to be having a lot of fun at his expense. Instead of following her when she got up, he showed her the spell book he had made. ¡°What¡¯s this? Hm, a new spell book?¡± While she was trying to think over why Voice would hand her the book, Voice smiled expectedly. After patiently waiting for a few seconds, realization began to dawn on Lydia. Voice waited there nonchalantly. Lydia looked at him, aghast. She spoke with stammering words. ¡°Um-uh, this is¡­ this is a book I¡¯ve never seen before.¡± She gulped; obviously, she didn¡¯t want to acknowledge what was happening. She looked off into the distance for a brief moment. She sighed as she reached below her desk. ¡°Fine. I won¡¯t let it be said that I go back on my word.¡± She held the book out to Voice. Voice reached for the book, only to encounter resistance while trying to take. He looked at Lydia¡¯s hand, tightly clamped on the book. With a quick tug, he pulled it from her grasp. ¡°Thanks Lydia. Oh by the way,¡± He held the other Hermit book by the bottom corner, giving her just enough time to read the words on the cover. She recognized the book as one of the ultra-rare books in the series she just gave up. She gaped in astonishment, as Voice walked away. // While Voice was away, a few important things happened in the city of Rand. One was that Evan took on a second apprentice. With all of the pelts and materials Voice gave him, his business was booming. The only thing stopping him now was the lack of time in a day. Evan had been on the cusp of mastering the smithing trade for many years, but now he finally had time do it. To become a master craftsman one needed to create something new and powerful. He was working on ways to meld metal to keep the protection and power, but reduce the weight. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. His second apprentice was a bit of a clumsy boy, but a hard worker. His original apprentice was altogether too focused on his work. He would make a great blacksmith, but would have a very lonely life. Evan took it upon himself to make sure both of the boys would turn into fine young men. Because of the donations Voice had given him, Evan had actually gained a title. Demon Wolf Armorer. Any armor he made with demon wolf pelts would be 10% more durable. That was a nice bonus. He would make one type of experimental armor a day. When he was done, he would price it according to what he thought it was worth, usually not much. He also made about a dozen of those metal exploding spheres that Susan used, each day. In spite of that, his store started gaining some fame. Since Voice gave him the pelts free of charge, he sold the armor for only the cost of time. Even Voice¡¯s female friend EDI would come by to drop off her pelts after a hunt. It seemed as though she was always with Voice¡¯s pet Heather. Heather and EDI had actually formed a close bond. They both wanted to get stronger, and they both wanted to hunt demon wolves. For EDI it was to help protect Rand and the animals around it; for Heather it was to eat wolf meat. The two worked really well together. In the past days, they even saved Heather¡¯s bunny tribe from eradication. The only hitch is when they fought high-level enemies. They would have to wait for a long while, so that their wounds would heal. It didn¡¯t help when one of them would get a crippled effect. They would have to return to the city to get that fixed. EDI¡¯s in-game child-cycle was normal. She had been born into a family of warriors. She had trained with them, until she was of age. At that time, she set out for adventure. When she actually began to play, again she was in Rand. She helped more NPCs out, since there was no longer any wolves near Rand. About a day after the end of her child-cycle, she noticed a man sitting at a fountain giving out free wolf pelts. As she approached the overly generous man, she saw his name. It was Voice again. Not only did he help NPCs, he also helped low-level players. EDI felt only admiration towards him. Never had she heard about anyone as truly selfless as he was. He apparently even sent them to Evan who made them armor out of it. Truly Voice was someone worth befriending. During the time before the players joined Elizabeth had set up a small restaurant. They bought the shop next door since the owners were going to move to another town. The shop wasn¡¯t cheap, but that was because she bought it a full month before the owners were actually planning on move. Elizabeth used the recipes Voice had given her to start the business up. She even used Voice¡¯s idea for his cookware, after paying the money of course). She hadn¡¯t won the cooking competition, but she came in third. She always came in third; however, with her new eatery she was going to master the cooking skill! She was going to make this the best place to eat in Rand! During this Suzan continued making the bombs. She would make 12 a day. The same amount as the balls that Evan would give her. She also performed dozens of experiments. Most of them ended in abject failure, but a few had promising results. She would sell some of the bombs to keep a steady income. She didn¡¯t mind not having a place to sleep, but she knew Voice adored her underground lab. This was actually a point over which she had a lot of pride. Sol was healing people, and generally helping at the temple after Voice left. Sol loved to help, almost as much as talking. Sol was frantic when his Master suddenly disappeared. Sol looked around for many hours trying to find him. When that failed, Sol had decided to help at the temple. Since Sol was still in this realm it meant Voice was still somewhere. // Back to Voice.
You have more than one book in the series written by ¡®Hermit Mirror¡¯. Would you like to fuse them into a two volume book?
He didn¡¯t really care about fusing them, but the extra inventory slot would be nice. He tapped yes. He was on his way to Susan¡¯s when he noticed the excessively large group at Evan¡¯s forge. Evan was taking in the pelts, and making the armor right away. Wow, I guess everyone really wanted that armor. It¡¯ll be good for Evan¡¯s business though. He noticed that the shop right next to Evan¡¯s house was undergoing some renovations. That made Voice think of starting a shop himself. If I could get enough materials, I bet I could start a junk shop. Hm, I¡¯m pretty sure that con-artist would even help me in that. He walked to Susan¡¯s, avoiding the large group of people. Unfortunately that also meant he couldn¡¯t get close to the new shop. As he approached the door, he noticed Susan arguing with two men. His inspect started picking up some of the sounds. He heard a gruff man. ¡° ¡­n¡¯t give us the recipe for these balls you might have an unfortunate accident.¡± Voice sighed. How many people does she manage to piss off? Soon even cultists are going to come for her. Voice opened the door. Well, really he pushed the door open as hard as he could. He quickly glanced around the room. The two men standing in the shop looked like a bodyguard, and a merchant of some sort. Perhaps not a merchant, but some sort of wealthy individual. Seeing, as nothing important would be blown away, he activated his wind magic. Using his wind magic, he amplified his volume. He used Roar of Paralysis. ¡°ROAAAR!¡± The roar lasted only a second, but could even be heard over Evan¡¯s blacksmith. The large group of people waiting for armor anxiously glanced that way, wondering what was happening. Voice used his Phoenix Fire. Voice had already paralyzed the two men, but when they saw the man on fire stalk towards them the rich looking one started shaking in fear. Voice had an evil grin as he approached the two men. After only half of a second, the burly man regained his composure. As soon as he did, he ran towards Voice while brandishing his sword. Voice gave the man a polite fist to the face; of course, he made his arm fast by applying a curving wind magic to his elbow. The man didn¡¯t expect Voice to attack with such speed. Voice had landed a hit on the man with his flame-coated fist, his fist landing squarely on the man¡¯s chin. The man yelped as the fist connected. He was more surprised than hurt. He had lost only 60 hp. He still had 340 left. He gave a toothy grin to Voice. ¡°Well then. Let¡¯s see who the better fighter is really eh?¡± Voice took a couple of steps backwards, making it so the brawl would be outside. The man followed. The man thought to himself, Does that whelp think that the outside will give him an advantage? HA Once outside the two began to circle each other. Voice had deactivated his Phoenix Fire, and was the first one to take the initiative. He took out his staff and jabbed at the highest concentration of red lines on the man¡¯s body. It was right above the man¡¯s navel. The man deftly dodged, countering with a swing of his sword. Voice pushed himself away with a large gust of wind. The man looked at Voice suspiciously. ¡°Cheatin¡¯ little mage!¡± He rushed Voice. As soon as he was within striking distance, Voice jabbed his staff at the man¡¯s chest. The man knocked Voice¡¯s staff aside with his sword. He rammed his shoulder into Voice¡¯s chest. Voice coughed as the man lifted him off the ground, and knocked him a few feet away. Voice noticed an icon blink in the upper corner of his sight. Ignoring it he threw the man into the air with a gust of wind worth half of his remaining mana. Voice let a bark of laughter escape his lips. The man was flailing his arms and legs around as he quickly fell to the ground. Gathering all of his mana into his hand he calculated the exact amount of time it would take the man to fall in front of him. Just as the man was level with Voice¡¯s shoulders, Voice struck him with an open palm strike. He added all of his current mana into a concentrated gust of wind from his hand. He managed to hit the man perfectly on his shoulder. The man was thrown, hard. He spun for several feet before bouncing off the ground a few times, it seemed to the gawking audience that Voice was skipping stones. Voice slowly walked towards the man. He tried to glide, but his magic suddenly stopped working. He just tried to look imposing while angrily walking to the man. Most of the players in the group around Evan recognized Voice. They started whispering to each other. The consensus was that Voice was an NPC the developers created to help newbies, and to give out information. Some wondered if every starting town had someone like Voice; some simply shuddered at the violence Voice showed. He had thrown a man in the air using only a single spell. He then used a basic form of hand-to-hand combat, to send him spinning several yards away. After a handful of moments, the man regained consciousness. His sword was about four feet away. He had held on to it during all of that horrid spinning, but let go as he hit his last bounce. Just as he managed to grab it, a foot came down on his hand. Voice tried to crush the man¡¯s hand. Of course, it didn¡¯t work, but the man did wince at the pain. Voice smashed his staff down on the man¡¯s forearm. He looked up at Voice. He was met by a malicious grin; one that sent shivers down his spine. Voice whispered his next words, so only the man could hear them. ¡°If you ever touch anyone in this town, and I do mean ever , I will personally make your life hell.¡± At that, he activated his Phoenix Fire one more time. He picked up the sword and put it into his inventory. ¡°I will leave you with a warning this time.¡± As he said this, a group of four guards came running into the area. Spotting the down man, and an ominous man coated in flames, the lead guard shouted. ¡°What are you doing to this poor man!?¡± The man grinned back at Voice. He had no qualms about lowering his pride to defeat those that humiliated him. ¡°Please help! This man beat me! He even stole my only weapon! Please sir guards!¡± The guards, hearing the man on the ground, came rushing over. As they did, Voice turned to face them letting his fire cloak die at the same time. He gave the guards a sad expression. ¡°I¡¯m sorry fellow worshipers of our most holy mother.¡± When they noticed who Voice was, they stopped their charge. The lead guard gave Voice a confused look. ¡°I stopped this man, and his associate ,¡± he said this word with derision, ¡°from attacking a poor alchemist. Her name is Susan. They were threatening her over a type of weapon she had made. They even-¡° he was holding back tears at this point. ¡°They even said they were going to rape and kill her if she did not cooperate! They even tried to kill her in some sort of magical display! Just check her store if you don¡¯t believe me. I found this on the man.¡± Voice showed them the sword, as well as the soul-binding contract he had gotten from Davros. ¡°I am going to destroy this personally, so I want you to get some here who can verify if this is genuine or not.¡± He had adopted a more angry sounding tone while he said this. He even had put up an overwhelming aura of light around himself. One of the guardsmen stepped forward. ¡°I can sense magic, let me see that for a second.¡± Voice handed it to him. ¡°That¡¯s, that¡¯s definitely genuine. I suggest you rid this world of it as soon as possible.¡± Voice nodded his head. He didn¡¯t know what exactly the thing said, but it obviously didn¡¯t incriminate Voice. They picked the man up. He didn¡¯t believe what he had heard. They had believed every lie this man told. Voice blamed him for the magic Voice had used in the alchemist¡¯s shop, and even made up blatant lies about what he and his employer had done! He tried to speak to the guards, but Voice hit him on the back of his head with his staff. Just before he blacked out, he heard Voice say, ¡°THIS is the warning. Next time I won¡¯t be so nice.¡± The crowd cheered as they saw the guards leading the bad man away. They didn¡¯t know what he had done, but justice was served! (All of the people besides the five first players got to choose an Elder God or Goddess to serve under, and were put into a city under that deity.) After finishing with the bodyguard Voice headed back into the shop, followed closely by one of the four guards. The other man that assaulted Susan was laying on the ground, with some sort of green liquid dripping out of his mouth. Susan smiled at Voice, as he entered her shop. ¡°Thank you so much! You¡¯ve saved me again!¡± She ran up to him and gave him a warm hug. She could put up with people threatening her, it was nothing new; but every time Voice saved her, a warmth seeped into her heart. Only he was truly willing to sacrifice himself for her. He even fought a level 30! Voice looked at the man. ¡°What¡¯s coming out of that man¡¯s mouth?¡± Voice¡¯s inspect ability only told him it was poison, not the type or intensity. Susan smiled. ¡°When his thug ran to stab you I managed to pour one of my paralysis potions in his mouth.¡± Voice nodded, impressed. He had basically figured her for an invalid in combat. Seeing this she beamed. The guard went over to the man. ¡°Uh-oh.¡± The guard said as he looked at the man. Voice figured he was some important man given that he would try to extort someone in broad daylight. Voice only knew one thing about man by looking at him. His alias was Maximus Brewer. Fucking stupid name. The guard continued. ¡°This is Maximus Brewer. He owns the single largest poison brewery south of Avalon! No one has heard of him leaving his city in many years!¡± The guard had a worried look. Voice asked. ¡°What¡¯s the problem? You¡¯re not going to let him go just because he has power are you?¡± The guard shook his head vehemently. ¡°No, but jailing his would probably cause a war to break out with Brewcity.¡± Seriously, what¡¯s up with this guy and his stupid naming sense? ¡°Alright, let me have a talk with him. I will make the problem go away.¡± The guard looked at Voice, and then gave a nod. He left to return to his post. Voice heard a swish sound. Voice heard rapid pace sentences. ¡°Master! Are you ok!? I felt you in danger! I couldn¡¯t leave the temple. I¡¯m so sorry! Do you need healing? Can I heal you? Where do you need healing?¡± Voice calmed Sol. ¡°Quiet, quiet Sol. I¡¯m fine. I just needed to deal with something. Go back to the temple. I need to be alone right now.¡± Voice didn¡¯t think Sol would like what he was going to do. Keeping a fairy against its will probably wasn¡¯t easy. Voice took the man into Susan¡¯s True Lab. Finally! I get the chance to actually have a little fun. Voice gave a depraved smile as he took out a knife he got from Susan. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health340Mana1000
Stamina350
Level24Current TitleMaster Of The Green Herb
Health Regen/Sec3.4Mana Regen/Sec8.2 (3.2)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom82Intelligence100
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma20Compassion48
Leadership36Logic22
Piety59Unused Stat Points43
Fame600
[/td100][/tr]
Skills Window
Skill Fusion Novice Level 4 Exp 00.00%
Critical Strike Novice Level 15 Exp 22.01%
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Skill Dissembler Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Staff Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Novice Level 23 Exp 20.00%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 14 Exp 26.73%
Group Skill: Magical Mastery Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00%
Unique Skill: Skill Enhancement Novice
Affinities Window
Light40
Water25
Wind25
Nature25
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 30: Torture and Summoing Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finally made it to the city. He made a very convoluted plan to gain more fame and start getting player support. He found a couple of guys that wanted to extort Susan. He beat the crap out of one, framed him for worse than he did, and took the other to Susan¡¯s version of a basement. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment, like (if you actually like it), and rate if you have the time! Voice tied the man to a chair, and waited for the man to wake up. Voice went upstairs. He asked Susan for a way to make it so no one could see her lab. ¡°Well, it¡¯s actually a mini-dungeon.¡± Voice had no idea what that meant. Susan noticed his look of confusion. ¡°Not even the gods can see what happens in a dungeon, or mini-dungeon. That¡¯s why the gods can only reward you if you finish some sort of quest in the dungeon. Even if you killed Davros in a dungeon, Mar would have no way of knowing.¡± Voice asked her for the antidote to the poison she used. Voice thanked her for the information. He had planned to just scare the guy, but now he could have as much fun as he wanted. This guy picked the wrong NPC to fuck with. When the poison maker finally woke, Voice had gained a bit of info on the man while inspecting him for so long. Apparently, Inspect gave more information if you actually looked over the object. The man had an outstanding level of 53. Voice wouldn¡¯t be able to resurrect him with the ring even if it was past midnight. ¡°Good morning Maximus. How are we feeling today?¡± Voice was playing with the knife. When Maximus didn¡¯t answer Voice cut off one of Maximus¡¯ fingers. He smiled as the man screamed in pain and anger. Voice let him scream for a few seconds, before kicking him in the fork of his legs. The screaming stopped, only to be replaced by a loud whimpering sound. The man looked at Voice with hate-filled eyes. Voice tried asking the man again. ¡°So, tell me young Maximus, why would you personally come here to try to steal from my disciple?¡± Maximus gave him an angry glare. Voice sighed in fake exasperation. ¡°Look, I¡¯m trying to be reasonable with you.¡± After saying that he cut off another finger, sealing both wounds with a fire spell. ¡°I won¡¯t be able to keep my patience for long, you know?¡± The last sentence went unheard as Maximus screamed. ¡°Come now. It¡¯s a simple question.¡± This time he didn¡¯t even wait for Maximus to answer. He chopped off each finger in a ten-second interval. He always made sure to burn the wound close after he was done. He tried to go faster, but his fire magic wouldn¡¯t work. After cutting off all of Maximus¡¯ fingers from one hand, Voice searched through his notifications. Maximus needed a break from the pain or he might grow too used to it. While breaking someone¡¯s spirit with constant pain was very plausible, they would often lie just to get the pain to stop. Voice scrolled through a few notifications, until he saw the one that said attention.
*Attention* An update has occurred. All spells will have a Cooldown timer. This timer is heavily dependent on your affinity with that type of spell. As your affinity increases the Cooldown timer decreases. Weaker spells have shorted Cooldowns. Many abilities now have a Cooldown Timer. The higher evolution the skill is the longer the timer will be. Any item of divine origin, that includes items gifted by churches, becomes soul bound. There will be a 0% chance to drop them. Items of divine origin may not be traded or sold. Classes have been altered for more realism. New Races have been discovered!
Fucking figures. I thought that was why I couldn¡¯t use my spells, but damn. I didn¡¯t think that mage guy was telling me about an update for the SAME DAY! The large number of updates had started annoying Voice. They all seemed geared towards making him less op. First they took his potions, then they nerfed his skills, THEN they made him leave for an entire hour a day at least (even though he already did that). NOW THEY TAKE HIS SPELLS!? Dreading what he would see, Voice looked at his stats sheet. His health was set to 100. His health regen had been brought back down to one. End, Str, and Vit, had a cap of 250. The only thing stopping Voice from going berserk was the man tied in the chair. Voice smiled as he thought about how he was going to make this man suffer. This man might not have been the cause of the update, but Voice was going to make sure he suffered for it. He gut punched the man, healed him, and punched again. He took out his staff and beat in Maximus¡¯ head. After healing that, he began to cut the man. After a few minutes he again asked. ¡°So why did you try to take something that¡¯s mine?¡± Maximus started stammering out an answer. ¡°I-I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯m SO SORRY! I¡¯ll never do it again!¡± Voice cut the man¡¯s cheek. ¡°I didn¡¯t ask that. I asked why you did it.¡± Maximus nodded his head and began to explain. Maximus was doing a very delicate business proposal. He was going to sell entire batches of high quality poisons to the kingdom of demons. Ever since Davros lost in the tournament, the dark elves had started murdering and going wild. Maximus was going to become the dark elf king¡¯s number one poison supplier. The dark elves had heard about the things Susan made, and wanted them as well. When Maximus said he couldn¡¯t make them they threatened to destroy his entire empire. Therefore, he came to Susan to figure out how she did it. Maximus asked if Voice was going to let him go. Voice laughed. Over the course of the next few hours, Voice gained quite a bit of knowledge about the human body. He slowly dissected the screaming man. Since the man didn¡¯t have the courtesy of shutting the fuck up, Voice gagged him with some dirty cloth he found on the floor. Whenever Voice would cut the man open, he would intently study the inside. After cutting the man¡¯s forearm open, Voice watched each of the muscle spasms. He noted the part of Maximus¡¯ body each muscle would flex. He burned the wound close, and continued to Maximus¡¯ bicep. He dissected Maximus¡¯ entire body like this. He made sure to keep enough healing potions near him at all times. He would heal Maximus as much as possible, whenever he was on the brink of death. If Voice ran out of healing spell too quickly, he would simply pour his healing potion on the man. After five hours of R&R Voice had made a mistake. He had cut too far into an artery and killed Maximus. You have leveled up. You have leveled up. You have leveled up. ...
HOLY SHIT NINE LEVELS!
You have gained the title Surgeon. When you have this title equipped, people will recognize you as a person that is adept at the inner workings of creatures. You gain an automatic + 10 dexterity for dissecting your first creature. You gain an automatic + 50 intimacy with other surgeons with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. You now deal extra damage to any creature you fully dissect, even if this title is not equipped. For every 10% you dissect a creature you gain 5% damage bonus. Once you have completely dissected a species of creature, you gain 100% damage bonus. Current list of creatures you have dissected: Humans 65% Ps. This title cannot be taken off your list of titles.
You have gained the skill Dissection.
¡°Inspect: Dissection.¡±
Dissection Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By dissecting an creature you have gained this skill. Each level in this skill improves the quality of your dissections. For every rank you increase your Dissection skill you will be able to learn more information from successfully dissecting an creature. To level this skill you must dissect creatures until you have mastered their anatomy. When this skill dissects a creature, the body will disappear. Loot will still drop as normal, unless it is part of the animal¡¯s body. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed often. Extreme mistakes are committed rarely. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Automatic¡¯.
¡°Skill Fusion: Dissection and Automatic.¡±
Automatic Dissection Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill can be toggled on or off. If this skill it toggled on, you will automatically dissect creatures. Each level in this skill improves the quality of your dissections. For every rank you increase your Dissection skill you will be able to learn more information from successfully dissecting an creature. To level this skill you must dissect new creatures. This skill will automatically dissect creatures that are killed by anyone in your party, pets and tamed entities also count. When this skill dissects a new creature, the body will disappear upon death. Loot will still drop as normal, unless it is part of the animal¡¯s body. This skill will only grant a maximum of 10% knowledge of the dissected creature per creature dissected. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed often. Extreme mistakes are committed rarely.
Voice was a bit concerned about how he would manage to dissect animals and humans, but with the auto-dissect it wouldn¡¯t be a problem. Now he just needed to find a way to kill humans without arising suspicion. He had all but forgotten about the update. His thoughts turned towards his original plans. He had gotten off track by torturing Maximus for so long. Voice washed himself with a quick waterfall like spell, and dried himself with a fire wind spell. Maximus¡¯ body was gone, but in its place was an expensive looking black book. The book had gold trim, and had various types of gems imbedded in the cover. When he picked it up it sent out a burst of light. He focused his Inspect on it.
Voice¡¯s Compendium of Knowledge (One of a kind item) A special type of book. All books in your inventory, that you own, will be combined in this Compendium. Your book can never be taken out of your inventory unless you intentionally do so. You can read and write in your book while it is still in your inventory. Your book is now encrypted. Only you can easily decipher it. The weight of your book has become one pound. No matter how many pages you add to it, it will remain one pound. Your book has 0 empty pages. Your book will automatically fuse with empty pages in your inventory. Your book is now 100% resistant to fire. Your book is now 100% resistant to wind. Your book is now 100% resistant to earth. Your book is now 100% resistant to wind. Your book is now 100% resistant to poisons. Your book is now 100% resistant to potions. Your book is now 100% resistant to magic not cast by you. Your book is now 100% resistant to magic you cast that can harm it. Your book cannot be opened without your permission. Your book has a password combination. Books included in this Compendium: Susan the Alchemist¡¯s Alchemy book. Voice the Alchemist¡¯s Alchemy book. Two Volumes of the series written by Hermit Mirror. One empty Soul-Binding Contract. Once this Compendium has 100 total books added to it, evolution is possible. No one can see this book in your inventory, unless you allow him or her. You may call up any information in this book by thinking Index. You may then think of any subject your book contains to read it. The current value of this is book 100 gold coins. Ps. You can¡¯t sell this book.
Oh man, my luck is good. Got a freaking rare item! I should go buy some books on trading and bartering. Ancestor picked that time to speak to Voice. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever seen anyone cut open another quite like that before. Where did you pick it up?¡± Voice started. He had forgotten Ancestor¡¯s existence after not hearing from it for several hours. Oh, uh I just wanted to hurt him for trying to hurt my friends. Ancestor seemed slightly displeased by this answer, but only slightly. ¡°That¡¯s fine, but don¡¯t take it too far. That was one of the major causes of the war against the gods. Always remember, everything in moderation. Even torture.¡± Ancestor didn¡¯t seem to care that Voice enjoyed the torture. In fact Ancestor almost seemed about to give Voice advice on how to better do it. Voice left the basement. He didn¡¯t even bother cleaning up the mix of blood and water on the floor. He collected the stash of bombs in his room, and went to Evan¡¯s. He made sure Susan didn¡¯t see him, so that he wouldn¡¯t have to have an awkward conversation about what happened. When he made it outside, he noticed the group of people had died down. There was only a small handful left, so he waited until Evan was done. Evan waved to Voice, as he saw him approach. ¡°Boy, you¡¯ve gave me a lot of work to do today!¡± Evan laughed at the sentence directed at Voice. Voice apologized while looking bashfully at the ground. He mumbled, ¡°Sorry. Did it help with the business though?¡± Evan hurriedly answered, cursing himself for upsetting Voice. ¡°Of course! I had about a dozen repeat customers today alone. The only problem is the material they bring. See I offer a discount if you bring the material, but all they could manage to bring is regular wolf pelts, or demon rabbit pelts. It takes a LOT of demon rabbit pelts to make any armor. Not to mention the poor sods that brought regular rabbit pelts. I did manage to sell quite a few of my weapons though. All thanks to you!¡± He clapped Voice on the back. Voice gave a weak smile. ¡°Thanks Evan. OH!¡± Voice acted like he just remembered something. ¡°I forgot! The reason I came is to pay you back for the chainmail!¡± Evan shook his head. ¡°You don¡¯t have to pay for that anymore! You¡¯ve given me more than enough business as is!¡± It was Voice¡¯s turn to shake his head. ¡°No, a deal is a deal. I won¡¯t go back on my word.¡± Evan approved of Voice¡¯s words, even if he really didn¡¯t care about payment. ¡°I don¡¯t have iron, but I picked this up in the forest. I thought giving it to you would be the best choice.¡± He pulled out the Heavenly Metal. The light was pulsating with light at this point. Weird when I saw it in the forest it was just really shiny. Evan and both of his apprentices stared at the metal with wide eyes. Evan even had to gulp, since he was starting to salivate. ¡°Um, Voice. You know what this is right?¡± Voice nodded. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re ok giving this to me?¡± Voice nodded again. ¡° Really sure? There is no going back once I use this.¡± Voice was starting to get annoyed by the constant questions. He wouldn¡¯t let Evan know that though. Putting on his best smile he said, ¡°Yes Evan I am completely sure. That metal is yours now. Do with it what you will.¡± Evan grabbed Voice¡¯s hands in his own. ¡°Thank you! Voice you don¡¯t know what this means to me!¡± Tears started glistening down Evan¡¯s face. Wait a minute how fucking good is that thing Ancestor? Voice heard Ancestor chuckle. He wanted to take it back, but it was far too late for that. Evan nodded to himself, as if he had made up his mind about something. In a slightly more gruff tone than usual, probably from the crying, Evan said, ¡°Ok then Voice. I will make you a weapon out of this. Name it and it will be yours.¡± For some reason Voice¡¯s mind immediately went to Sais. Voice couldn¡¯t figure out why. The only thing he really knew about them was that EDI like to use them to stab out people¡¯s eyes. He didn¡¯t know why he would choose Sais instead of, say a dagger he could conceal; but since those were all he could think of, that¡¯s what he blurted out. ¡°I¡¯ll take a couple of Sai if that¡¯s ok.¡± Evan smiled knowingly, and gave Voice a wink. ¡°Sure, sure. I¡¯ll just show my boys here how to smelt this, then I¡¯ll get right on it. They will be done by noon tomorrow. Apprentices! FOLLOW!¡± The apprentices followed Evan into his house to learn the secret smelting Heavenly Metal. They were giddy with anticipation. Almost as giddy as Evan. Voice frowned as he walked away. Why did I choose Sais? There has to be some reason. Was it to convince EDI to join my guild anyway? Hm As Voice walked to the chapel, he tried to figure out why he told Evan to make Sais. The only thing he could think of was that he wanted to make EDI more powerful for when he recruited her. If she attributed her power to Voice, he would have a much easier time forcing her to serve him. After convincing himself he had no human emotions towards EDI, Voice made it to the chapel. He sent a short message to Heather and told her to meet him at the chapel. Voice entered the chapel. Sol was talking to the priests excitedly. The priests seemed to be avidly listening to Sol. The group of priests sat on the pews in the front row. Sol was talking from the podium. Voice walked up to the group. When he was close enough for Sol to see he coughed. Sol looked up to see what had caused the noise. Seeing Voice Sol flew into his chest. Sol popped back out after a second. Voice apologized to the priests, as Sol flew around him. ¡°Sorry guys I need to bring him with me. There have been some disturbing rumors around as of late.¡± The priests were sad to see Sol go. He was in the middle of a story about what it was like the time he met Mar. ¡°I do have this though. It will probably be my last biggest donation for a while.¡± He handed the priest that always greets people at the door all of his OP bandages. ¡°The great goddess herself has declared that no longer shall potions with those ingredients be able to be that powerful. Thus I give my final ones to the temple of Mar.¡± He gave a humble bow.
You have given the last of the most powerful of you potions to the priests of Mar, in bandage form. Mar has seen your generosity. Mar has awarded you with a drop of her power. The amulet of Mar has absorbed a drop of her Divine blood. For donating the final drops of the most powerful of lowest level healing potions, you have gained 10 light affinity. For donating the last of a powerful potion you gain 30 piety.
Amulet of Mar¡¯s Blood *Ichor
This amulet was crafted in the Realm of the Gods. This amulet belongs to Mar. Invoking the prayer of Mar while indicating an ally, whose health has reached zero within the last minute, will revive that ally with 100% of their maximum hp, 50% stamina, and 50% mana. You can use this amulet once per charge. This amulet becomes charged at noon.
WOOOOOOORTH! Voice tried not to smile as he walked away. He sent Heather another message. This time telling her to do whatever she wants, as long as she stays with the city bounds. He decided he might as well upgrade Sol while he had the time. He had the 1k mana, so there was really no reason not to. He went back to the tower casually. Talking to Sol about everything that happened in the chapel. As Sol excitedly talked, Voice looked over his stat screen. He had a whopping 88 unused stat points. He was trying to figure out how to best use them. He could put 50 into int, that would give the skill Mana Affinity a rank boost. But he could also put 68 into wisdom. That would give him two rank boosts to Skill Enhancement, and increase his mana regen to a total of 15 points per second, before his stomach takes any. If he meditated, he would gain 30 per second. He could have his entire man bar filled in only about six minutes! Come to think of it, my mana regen is the worst regen I have compared to total amount. My health regen is at 1%/sec, my stamina regen is at 1.4%/sec, and my mana regen is only at .82%/sec. That¡¯s HORRIBLE. Voice scolded himself for allowing his mana regen become so much, comparatively, lower than the rest. If he was a mage, he should have freakishly high mana regen. He decided to dump all of his points into wis. His biggest problem recently wasn¡¯t lack of mana, it was that he couldn¡¯t regen it quick enough. With 17 regen per second that problem wasn¡¯t as prominent. After allocating his points, Voice noticed something. The people around him had no red lines on them. Alright, let¡¯s think about this logically. I probably didn¡¯t lose the skill. It¡¯s still toggled on. He started thinking of attacking an NPC just to see if the red line would appear while in combat. The red line started to appear on everyone nearby. OH! OK! I guess I just have to think of them as enemies to see the red line. Makes sense. When he finally got close to the tower, Sol had stopped talking. Voice didn¡¯t know if the tower had some adverse effect on Sol, or if Sol just ran out of things to say. Voice took the silence as a blessing. As he came upon the steps of the tower, Voice waved to the Shakespeare girl. He gave a slight bow and walked past her. Inside he saw several people surrounding the desk the guild master¡¯s assistant worked at. No including the assistant there were nine people. He heard the assistant speaking. ¡°I TOLD you it was genuine! Now we don¡¯t have anymore! UGH! After all of that work! My father¡¯s work STILL can¡¯t be proven!¡± The old man shouted, and stormed out of the tower. Well he was storming until he saw Voice. ¡°AH! EVERYONE! This is the boy I told you about!¡± I¡¯m not a boy you old coot. Voice smiled at the man. Voice started talking, even as the man grabbed his arm and started dragging him over to the group of people. ¡°I¡¯m here to upgrade my fairy. Also if I could I¡¯d like to summon more fairies.¡± The assistant seemed to be ignoring Voice as he went to the group. The group of men stared at Voice as he approached. A man coughed. He wore a blue robe, with stars and constellations drawn on it. He had a long white beard, which accented his long white hair. The man was about 6¡¯4, and very skinny. Voice¡¯s Inspect only brought up question marks when he looked at the man. The others gave names and wore regular clothes, except for the guild master¡¯s assistant. His name was ¡®Guild master¡¯s Assistant¡¯. Voice went up to the man in the blue robe, causing the guild master¡¯s assistant to release him. ¡°I assume you are the head master?¡± Voice gave a slight bow of his head. The man responded in a deep voice. ¡°And how would you know that? It¡¯s not like you can see any of my stats. Your Inspect is far too low for that.¡± He gave a slightly condescending smile. Voice didn¡¯t know how this man knew he had a high Inspect, but he wasn¡¯t going to let some shitty NPC act like it was better. ¡°Well, serrah, you are the only one in this room I couldn¡¯t read with Inspect. Now I did notice that the two men to your left have fake auras, but besides that the rest are pretty easy to read.¡± The group started laughing as if they had seen a small boy trying to lift his daddy¡¯s sword. The star robe guy smiled at him. ¡°There is no way you could have seen that his aura was fake. How did you know?¡± Giving up on trying to impress the group, he answered honestly. ¡°I took a wind class before. He wasn¡¯t¡¯ the one that taught it. That guy right there was. I naturally thought that was at least a high-level mage. So I figured they probably taught here, and I doubt that you¡¯d have two high level people teaching the same class. It would be more productive to send one to another tower. So I knew the man to your immediate left should have a wind aura, and the man to his left shouldn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Well, you are quite right. However, all of us here are using fake auras. That fact that you could deduce that does say a lot about your intelligence though. What level are you?¡± Voice hesitated to tell him. Giving away Intel to a plausible enemy was never his strategy. He quickly weighed the cons with the potential gains, and decided to tell them man. ¡°I¡¯m level thirty-three. Why is that important?¡± The man gave a considering nod. ¡°Hm, well to be able to make a spell with so little time or study is indeed something worth great renown. How would you like to give one of us the ability to create these spell books for you? We can give you a cut of the profits.¡± With a wave of his hand a paper contract appeared. ¡°Just sign here and we will be able to.¡± Voice frowned. He didn¡¯t know why but he felt as if he were being cheated.
Sense Motive Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By sensing the true motive of someone you have gained this skill. Each level in this skill improves the accuracy of this skill. For every rank you increase this skill you will be able to learn more information from watching someone. To level this skill you must sense people¡¯s true motives. You use body language, tone, and other factors to determine what someone is really thinking. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Dissection¡¯.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Con Artist. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Con Artist? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
No.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Inspect. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
NO! While it was very interesting that Voice could add the skill in two different places, he wanted to fuse it to Dissections first. While pretending to read the contract he looked over his skill. He fused it with Dissection.
Body Language Analyst Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Each level in this skill improves the accuracy of this skill. For every rank you increase this skill you will be able to learn more information from watching someone. To level this skill you must learn more about body language. Different groups of people have different forms of body language. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Skill Enhancement¡¯.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Inspect. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
Voice inwardly sighed. His Inspect skill would literally take anything that could take information from the world besides reading. He decided to fuse both of the skills to Inspect. In a defeated manner he thought, no. He fused Skill Enhancement to Body Analyst.
Skill Enhancement Analyst Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows the user to understand the best way to improve a certain skill. You must have ranks in this skill equal to or greater than the skill in question to view the best method of training. Each level in this skill improves the accuracy of this skill. For every rank you increase this skill you will be able to learn about higher ranked skills. To level this skill you must plan out how to train skills to the best of your ability.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Skill Mastery. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Skill Mastery? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
Since his skill didn¡¯t say he could fuse it with anything he said yes.
Skill Mastery Current Level: Novice Level 27 Exp 04.44% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Skill Fusion, Skill Enhancement, Skill Dissembler, and Skill Analyst. The rank in this skill is more than 1 rank below Skill Enhancement. Skill Enhancement has increased the level of this skill by 25. The rank in this skill is 1 rank below Skill Enhancement. Skill Enhancement will increase the rank of this skill if it Skill Enhancement ranks up. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill cannot increase in rank above Skill Enhancement.
You are the first person to forcefully increase the rank of a group skill. You have gained 500 exp.
Now Voice was already level 33. 500 exp wasn¡¯t even 5% at this point, but it was still cool that he got a bit of exp boost. Voice looked over this new skill for a moment. He was getting a lot of info from it. So first of all, having the 50 points skill bonuses in a group skill is actually good? If I increase my int by another 50 I should get a rank boost from Magical Mastery. Hm. Then the attributes skills actually do give a version of exp for the skill. So if I were to get all of my attributes to 250 (Author Note* That would make the associated skill Master level) then any group skill I fuse it to would automatically be boosted to Expert!? OH HELL YEAH! Voice made a mental note to get all of his attributes to 250. I guess that was the reason the stats had caps at 250. So even if you chose another class you could still get all of the skill bonuses from them. That was nice. ¡°Exchange Relevant Skills,¡± he muttered under his breath.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Inspect. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you look at enough auras to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
Inspect Current Level: Apprentice Level 34 Exp 36.36% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, and Aura Sight, Sense Motive, and Body Language Analyst. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯ This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be. You have fused more than 15 skills together in the Group Skill: Inspect. Inspect has gained 10 levels, maximum of 100.
So many freebies! Voice loved getting freebies. He did realize, however, that this meant other players could receive the same freebies. He needed to solidify his plans if he wanted to be able to make them come true before another player. If he was only a month ahead of other players, that meant in about a month players like him would be here. If he was to stand any chance of actually being the first to own a city, and a guild, he needed to speed the process up. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ve read the contract.¡± When he looked up Inspect was having a field day. He was getting more information than before, but the most exciting change was the fact that the info he was getting was a lot fuller than before. Not only was Inspect giving all of its old info, it was all more detailed. For instance, the fake wind aura guy now had a magical potency number pointing to his aura. Each person had six additional numbers pointing to him or her. They were all percentages. Inspect gave Voice a rough estimate of what each person was likely feeling. There was two groups of three numbers. Each group told Voice how much the person was feeling two different emotions. For the guy in the robe it was Mirth at 60%, and Superiority at 30%. The two groups also had a number floating above them. That was the likelihood that each group was accurate. (it looked something like this.)
Possibility 75%Possibility 20%
Mirth 60%Cheerful 65%
Superiority 25%Superiority 19%
Obviously, it didn¡¯t show all of the emotions it determined the people to have, nor did it show all of the groups of emotions it determined the people to have. It only gave two each. Voice decided to try to figure out what exactly the system meant by 60% mirth, 25% superiority. I guess he is happy that he is better than me? Not able to find any concreate solution to his problem, Voice turned back to the man. ¡°I refuse.¡± The entire group had a shocked expression. The star man adopted a thoughtful expression. ¡°Hm, and why is that may I ask?¡± ¡°Heh, well you didn¡¯t really give me a choice did you?¡± The probable guildmaster grinned. Voice rubbed his chin. ¡°I¡¯ll be honest with you here. The only way I¡¯ll let any of you reproduce my spell is if at least one of you becomes my slave.¡± The group gasped in unison. The Chosen of Mar condoned slavery? ¡°Not in actuality, but in name. I want to create my own Mage¡¯s Guild, so I¡¯m going to need someone to help me get started. Whoever becomes my Guild Leader shall be granted the ability to sell my spell.¡± The ¡®guildmaster¡¯ gave a hearty laugh. ¡°Very well! I accept! I will become your Guild Leader!¡± Everyone in the hall but the guildmaster became silent. Whoa, I didn¡¯t expect that. Voice had to ask. ¡°What are your affinities, their levels, and who are you to this guild?¡± The man replied offhandedly. ¡°I have all eight affinities. I have mastered Light and Fire, the rest are all between 70-80. I am the Guild master of this Guild.¡± The others recovered from their stupor. They started clamoring for attention. ¡°Guild Master! You can¡¯t just abandon your post!¡± ¡°Guild Master! Who will lead us if you leave!?¡± ¡°Are you really going to leave us for a SPELL BOOK?¡± ¡°You have to many responsibilities to leave!¡± ¡°Can I have your job?¡± ¡°GUILD MASTER! What will we do with you gone?¡± ¡°If you leave guild master I will have to tell the council!¡± ¡°I CHALLENGE THIS BRAT TO A WIZARD¡¯S DUEL!¡± The last comment was the only one Voice caught. The others were too overlapping. He did manage to pick the sentences up, but he¡¯d have to think back on it later. He looked at the man that challenged him. It was the man who had been teaching Wind Magic. He was holding an imposing looking staff. One that had markings carved over the surface. ¡°Eh, no I¡¯m going to power Sol up.¡± Voice immediately replied. The group looked at Voice, then started to argue amongst themselves. ¡°Also, assistant, I need you to help me upgrade my fairy.¡± While the group was arguing the assistant nodded, leading Voice to where the ritual had taken place before. The sun the assistant drew was even more detailed and large than the original. Voice added a drop of his blood to it. ¡°Alright, have your fairy step into the center of the circle.¡± Voice directed his sentence to Sol. ¡°Sol, go to the middle of that circle. You are going to get more power.¡± Sol obediently flew to the center of the circle. Once the fairy was in place Assistant told Voice to start channeling. Voice channeled all 1000 mana into the circle. He wanted Sol to remain completely loyal, even if his constant talking was as annoying as hell. As the mana left Voice, several small orbs of light started appearing in the circle. When they had stopped appearing, Voice counted 10 flying orbs. The orbs began circling Sol. Sol smiled, watching the display. After Voice had channeled 900 mana, the smaller light fairies started constricting around Sol. They grew closer and closer as Voice used more and more mana. Once he had used the maximum limit, 1000, the other fairies had joined with Sol. It seemed as though Sol had been surrounded by a halo. One that was absorbed into Sol¡¯s body. When the ritual was finished, Sol flew to Voice. ¡°Master! Master! I have many new friends now! They wanted to see the world! I told them they could come with me! Is that ok? They said that they would help me cast my spells! Since they are only partly in this world, they can use more mana from the Realm of Light!¡± Voice smiled as he petted Sol¡¯s tiny glowing head. While Sol went on about the new fairies, Voice checked Sol¡¯s status screen.
Stats Window
NameSolRaceLight Fairy
Health10Mana1000
Stamina10
RankAdeptCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec16.9
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility10
Wisdom169Intelligence100
Endurance1Dexterity10
Luck20Vitality1
Fame0
Sol is a light fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Light fairies start with all stats but dexterity, agility, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a light fairy Sol¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal the user. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Sol. Sol has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Sol has gained 19 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned. As a higher order of fairy Sol will be summoned with all of the fairies that were a part of the enhancement ritual.
After the ritual was complete, the one that taught wind magic came to Voice, interrupting Sol¡¯s monologue. ¡°You have upgraded your fairy. It is time for our duel. If I win you must let the guild master sell you spell, and you will not take him as part of your Mage¡¯s Guild.¡± Voice waited a few seconds to see what he would get out of it. When the man did not continue Voice was dubious. ¡°No.¡± ¡°What? You can¡¯t refuse boy! I challenged you to a duel!¡± ¡°Don¡¯t care.¡± The man was fuming. ¡°If you don¡¯t accept my challenge then you lose by default!¡± Voice sighed. The man smiled seeing that his taunt worked. ¡°If you can make rules so can I. If I win the duel, you must do everything I say, forever. If I accept the duel I win by default. I accept the duel made with those restrictions.¡± Voice said the entire thing before the man could reply. Voice smugly looked at the man. Voice threw his hands up in a ¡®what can you do¡¯ expression. ¡°Sorry I guess I just won.¡± Voice was pretty mad at having been interrupted during his summoning, so decided to piss this guy off. ¡°You can¡¯t just make rules up!¡± Voice feigned a look of shock. ¡°Sure I can. Just like you can.¡± The man looked around. Seven faces had no expression. One was laughing with his eyes. One went back to his desk, and Voice was giving him a condescending look. ¡°Well now. Drop and do 500 push ups.¡± When the man showed no intention of doing what he was told Voice gave him a flat stare. ¡°You don¡¯t mean to tell me you were going to force me into a duel, one I had no chance of winning, by making unfair rules. Now were you? I mean how is it going to look when I tell everyone that the teacher of wind magic here tried to bully Mar¡¯s Chosen into giving away his self-created spell. I guess you¡¯d probably be kicked out of the town at the least. Not to mention you would have to face Mar¡¯s wrath. Oh, and since I sealed Davros himself, you would have no one to turn to, in order to get help.¡± The wind mage stood in abject horror as Voice continued. ¡°Well I guess there is one way around all of this, without having to obey me or be kicked out of the Mage¡¯s Guild. You can agree to a duel I set the rules for. Sound good pumpkin?¡± The man was furious. In fact the only two emotions Voice¡¯s Inspect caught were fury at 85% and its lesser form anger at 12%. ¡°FINE! What is the duel? Brat!¡± Voice smiled. ¡°Simple I will speak one sentence after the start of the duel. If you do not forfeit after one minute you win. If you do I win. There are absolutely no other rules. Anything goes. You can attack me or anything you want, but only after I say the sentence. If you win you get the guild master, and he can sell my book. If I win I get the guild master, and you have to give me that nifty staff you are holding.¡± ¡°DEAL!¡± The man was far too angry to think of what Voice might do to get him to forfeit. Voice cleared his throat. ¡°Guild master, make him forfeit.¡± The man quickly paled. ¡°CHEATER! You can¡¯t involve others in our duel!¡± Voice merely shrugged, since he didn¡¯t want to invalidate his side of the duel. The guild master whispered something. It seemed as though only the wind mage could hear it. The wind mage started hyperventilating. The man looked at his staff. The look of longing on his face would have been heart wrenching that is if Voice admitted he still had a heart. The man licked his lips, as if they had chapped. He closed his eyes, a single tear fell down his cheek. Geez I didn¡¯t mean for it to be this fucking emotional. Damn. The man whispered, ¡°I forfeit.¡± Voice cupped his ears. The man cast an angry look at Voice. ¡°I SAID I FORFEIT! There! Are you happy now!¡± The man seemed to be on the cusp of a torrent of tears. ¡°Yes, yes I am. Now your staff please.¡± The man handed Voice the staff, but kept a firm grip on one end. Voice had to pull with all of his strength to get it out. ¡°Please take care of it.¡± Another tear. Damn guy¡¯s way to emotional. Just then, Ancestor chimed in. ¡°Look at the staff. I think you will see the reason he is so upset.¡± Voice heeded Ancestor¡¯s advice.
Ancient Family Heirloom Wind Staff
Material QualityHighWork QualityMaster
Enchantment QualityMasterEnchantment TypeWind
Damage20-25/20-25Durability105/105
This item can be wielded as a dual weapon. You may make extra attacks at the cost of mobility. This item was enchanted by the Wind Enchanter Yogborn. This staff increases the power of all wind spells by 100%. This staff decreases the mana consumed by all wind spells by 25%. This weapon was made by the master Wood Elf craftsman Yogborn. This weapon gains plus fifteen minimum damage and plus fifteen maximum damage. This weapon gains forty-five durability. This staff has belonged to the Windweaver family for over a dozen generations. Having this item will make any Windweaver believe you are currently the best at wind magic within their family. Ps. Are you really going to take this? The dude is crying man.
Voice sighed. Even though he ignored the Ps. from the system he knew his choices. If he kept this weapon, he would no doubt become the most powerful wind mage, at least for a while. If he did the ¡®good option¡¯ he would probably gain some compassion, not to mention loyalty of the wind guy. Voice inwardly sighed. He was being way to charitable for his liking today. Putting on his best ¡®fatherly¡¯ smile, Voice said something that shocked everyone around. In monotone he said, ¡°Wow this is so heavy. I don¡¯t think I can hold it¡­ on my journey. I wish,¡± Voice sighed and continued in monotone, ¡°I wish that there was someone that could wield this staff.¡± He looked at Windweaver. Forcing himself to have a lighter tone, but still with a deadpan expression, he continued. ¡°Windweaver, you¡¯re good at wind magic. Want to hold on to this for me?¡± His acting was nowhere near convincing, but somehow the people around him were looking at him with eyes filled with awe and respect. Windweaver started outright bawling when Voice gave him back the staff. Voice didn¡¯t even care about the windows at the moment. Windweaver was crying his thanks. Voice turned to the assistant guy. ¡°I was wondering if I could summon another sprite. I have the affinity.¡± Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health100Mana1000
Stamina350
Level33Current TitleSurgeon
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec16.9 (11.9)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence100
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma20Compassion68
Leadership36Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame600
[/td100][/tr]
Skills Window
Critical Strike Novice Level 15 Exp 22.01%
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Staff Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Automatic Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 34 Exp 36.36%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 14 Exp 42.85%
Group Skill: Magical Master Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44%
Affinities Window
Light50
Water25
Wind25
Nature25
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 31: Departing Rand Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice tortured a guy to death. He obtained some skills from that, and fused them. He gave Evan the Heavenly Metal, and asked for Sais. He went to mage¡¯s tower, and got the guild master to agree to join his mage¡¯s Guild. The wind mage tried to force him into a wizards duel. Voice enhanced Sol, and beat the wind mage in a ¡®duel¡¯ that Voice designed. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment, like (if you actually like it), and rate if you have the time! Voice turned to the assistant guy. ¡°I was wondering if I could summon another sprite. I have the affinity.¡± The Ex-guild Master¡¯s assistant, Ted, looked at Voice. ¡°Oh? Well, I¡¯m sorry to say that this Guild is only equipped with summoning light fairies. I could show you the location of a guild that specializes in summoning. They would be able to summon any type as long as you had the affinity and mana.¡± Voice sullenly nodded. ¡°Please do. Although I don¡¯t have a map.¡± The assistant went to go get Voice a map. Voice walked over to the desk. He walked past the sobbing man that held his staff. He walked past the seven figures staring at him over the outcome. He walked past his new slave Guild Master. He only had to wait a few seconds before Assistant came back with a map. ¡°I¡¯ve marked all of the locations of nearby Mage¡¯s Guilds, based on what fairy they can help you summon.¡± Voice thanked the man and turned towards his newly recruited Guild Master. ¡°You can stay here, doing whatever you want. I am going to find somewhere to start a city. When I do, I expect you to honor your part of the agreement. Also, any money you make off of selling my spell is guild property. I want you to try to build up my guild with it. You are free to do whatever you want with it, as long as it benefits the guild. I grant you permission to make my spell book until I otherwise state.¡± Voice looked at the map while he was walking back to Susan¡¯s. It was already very late, so there was no light to help him read by, except for Sol. Voice wanted to make it so he could produce light himself, in case there was a reason Sol could not. Not to mention it was past midnight, so Sol was soundly sleeping in Voice¡¯s chest. He concentrated, and tried to imagine what it would be like if his hands were encased in light. They would feel a little warm, and give off an orb to see by. As Voice pictured each part of the spell, he grew more confident in its success. He visualized the color and intensity of the lights they would give off. He pictured the shadows it would cast. He made sure to put everything he thought would happen, into his imagination. After picturing the entire process, he started channeling mana into his hands. After a few seconds of channeling, he opened his eyes. His hands were as dull as they always were. Ok, I¡¯ve got to figure out some way to do this. He started thinking of how to produce the light. He couldn¡¯t encase his hands in the orb, but maybe ¡­ maybe he could make the light seep out of his skin! He again concentrated on his hands. He infused them with as much light mana as he could. He pictured the light seeping out of his pores. He imagined it flowing like a river out of his skin. When he opened his eyes, he noticed his hands were glowing! At least patches of his skin were. Tiny rivers of light came out of his pores, and soon dissipated as they flew in the air. At least it worked. YEAH! Voice felt triumphant, even if he did not get exactly what he wanted. He managed to get something that gave him close to the same results. He had never felt light that was produced by his hands, so he felt happy that he could create t. He could easily read with the ambient light produced by his skill. The two main problems were: 1) it cost a lot of mana, and 2) the light was constantly flowing and flickering. Number 2 made it so they light didn¡¯t stay on the part of his book he wanted for long enough. Voice concentrated on the flow of mana. He pictured the mana only on his right hand, and condensed it around his palm. He was holding the map with his left hand, so did not need the mana to come out of it. He pictured a thin layer of light pouring from his hand. He made sure the light was bright enough to reach six inches. That was how far he planned to have his hand from the map. He started the flow of mana again.
You have created a new spell: Palm Reading.
Palm Reading The caster emits a small, dim light from the caster¡¯s palm. This light shines for a distance equal to (5 + (light affinity/20) * Aura) inches. This light is only bright enough to read things close up. The uses for this spell are very limited. This light cannot heal or cause damage to undead. The base spell cost for this spell is 25 mana per second.
Voice wore a smug smile. He actually created a spell from nothing. I bet none of these other newbs could do that! Voice read the map. It had a dozen cities marked on it. It looked like an ordinary map, but had some cities marked with different colors. Voice decided those cities were the ones that could help him summon the fairies. Voice practiced some other spell after he made the Palm Reading one. If he could make a new spell, he figured he could replicate the effects of others. He realized that he didn¡¯t have to cast the magic on himself. He practiced until he got to Susan¡¯s. He eventually managed to create a fireball, but couldn¡¯t figure out how to launch it. It had still taken an hour. He made it back to Susan¡¯s, and went to sleep. When he woke, he saw Heather sleeping near him. Voice decided he was going to go to a nearby city, so that he could get a new fairy. Voice woke Heather and went downstairs. He found Susan working on some new experiment. He put a hand on her shoulder. He want to seem as understanding and regretful as possible. ¡°Hi Susan. We need to talk.¡± Susan turned towards him. She had a concerned look on her face. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Voice made a face the portrayed resignation. ¡°I have to leave town. I am going to start a new city, but to do that I need to find somewhere that would make a good place to live. I will make sure to find some way to let you know when I find a place to settle.¡± Susan gave Voice a look that said ¡®no, don¡¯t go!¡¯. She looked down, and took a deep breath. ¡°I see. Well, when do you leave?¡± She had a look of acceptance. She didn¡¯t want Voice to go, but she knew he would have to. He was an other-worlder after all. ¡°I really wish you could stay longer. What about learning the merchant¡¯s trade? You wanted to do that right?¡± Susan¡¯s face lit up a little after thinking about that. Voice just shook his head. ¡°I¡¯m really sorry, but I have to do this.¡± Susan nodded. She said, ¡°Alright, but at least stop by here before you leave. I¡¯ll have something for you. Also Evan put the staff you ordered over there.¡±
Staff
Material QualityCommonWork QualityMaster
Damage30-35/30-35Durability75/75
This item can be wielded as a dual weapon. You may make extra attacks at the cost of mobility. This weapon was made by an expert craftsman. This weapon gains plus fifteen minimum damage and plus fifteen maximum damage. This weapon gains twenty-five durability.
Voice thanked her with a heartfelt thanks. Free stuff was good stuff. He went over to Evan¡¯s house. The house before Evan¡¯s looked as though they were renovating. It was still mid-morning, Evan had said the Sais would be done by noon. Voice figured if he was a good blacksmith he could get it done faster than that. He walked up to the smith. For a second, Voice though the game had turned into a zombie apocalypse style game. Evan and his two assistants looked like they were living dead. Their skin was sunken in, and paler than normal. Their eyes had dark bags under them, and they shuffled about as if they had arthritis. Voice approached Evan. ¡°Hello, Brother!¡± Voice tried to sound cheerful. He figured if something bad had happened to the group they would have had Susan help. Evan looked up. Upon seeing Voice, his demeanor had a drastic change. He stood upright, and gave a stern look to his apprentices, causing them to do the same. Evan gave a weak smile back. ¡°Hello. I¡¯ve been waiting for you. We finished these earlier this morning, but I wanted all of us to be here when we give it to you.¡± Evan forced another smile as he handed Voice the Sais. The Sais were elegant. It seemed as though a carver instead of a blacksmith made them. The two weapons gleamed in the morning light. They were pure with, wrapped in red leather as the hilts. Each prong of the Sais seemed as if was unnaturally sharp.
Living Sai of the Vampire
Material QualityLegendaryWork QualityMaster
Enchantment QualityMaster
Damage100-165 (Plus 25 Health Absorption)Durability200/200
This weapon was created in a pair. When wielded by with its counterpart effectiveness increases by 50% This weapon was made by an master craftsman. This weapon gains plus twenty minimum damage and plus twenty maximum damage. This weapon gains fifty durability. This weapon was enchanted by a master enchanter. This Sai has had its absorption ability increase by 400%. This Sai has a minimum dexterity requirement of 75 to wield. This weapon has a natural 25% armor penetration. This weapon has a natural parrying chance of (25 * (dex/ 75))% You still need the required speed and strength to parry.
Voice examined the pair of Sais. After looking over them he could find no flaws. He stood in stunned silence at the sheer power of the Sais. Fuck! I just passed up a fucking GOLD MINE! Voice maintained a studious expression, but inwardly was filled with hatred towards his earlier self. When he finally began to speak the three makers of the weapons seemed to release all of their tension. ¡°These are AWESOME!¡± He gave Evan the strongest hug he could. ¡°And did you level up to master while I wasn¡¯t looking?¡± Evan shrugged as he smiled. ¡°Well with the material you gave me I was able to finally create something that helped me get that last bit of exp I needed.¡± Voice smiled at him. He adopted a pensive posture. He had been wondering who he was getting all of his enchants from. It seemed as though both Evan and Susan knew this mysterious person. ¡°So Evan, how did you get this enchanted?¡± Evan mumbled something about a promise. Voice shook his head. ¡°No, it¡¯s ok. Never mind. Forget I asked. I came by to get these, and thank you. I am going to have to leave the city soon. I need to go and find my own place in the world. If you¡¯d like you are more than welcome to come to the city I am going to eventually make. What do you think?¡± Evan thought about it for a moment. He didn¡¯t even know Voice wanted to actually make a city. ¡°I¡¯d have to try to convince Eli to come. But if she agrees I don¡¯t see why not.¡± Evan clapped him on the shoulder. ¡°Just be sure not to die before then, eh? I¡¯d be honor bound to hunt whatever killed you.¡± With a smile, and a wave Voice headed off. He only had three more things to do in this city. He headed towards the library. He had a few silver thanks to the occasional copper drop from the wolves he hunted. He didn¡¯t know why they had money, but it was scarce enough to not throw up any red flags. He walked towards the library. Sol chose that moment to wake up. As the little ball of light seemed to stretch it laid on Voice¡¯s head. As he entered the library he saw Lydia talking to a group of three large men. Ancestor spoke to Voice. ¡°I might have been gone a long time, but the look of men for hire is always the same.¡± Voice took out his staff. He told Heather to get ready for a fight. The group seemed to be getting very adamant. Voice coughed to get their attention. The three men turned towards Voice. Each had drawn their swords as they turned. The largest man seemed to recognize Voice. Suddenly something clicked in his head. In a baritone voice the man said, ¡°Did Lydia give you the book by Hermit Mirror?¡± The man seemed to be trying to intimidate Voice. Voice noted that they did not raise their swords to Lydia though. If they had Voice could have guiltlessly killed them. ¡°She did. Why does it matter?¡± Voice stated matter-of-factly. ¡°A long time ago she made a bet with our master. The bet was that he wouldn¡¯t be able to figure out the name of the book in her possession. He was to be given the book if he did. Well he did, but she says she doesn¡¯t have it anymore.¡± Voice sighed and brought out his Compendium for the group to see. He walked over to the leader, ignoring the other two swords pointed at him. ¡°Well I can¡¯t really give it to him since it is a part of my Compendium now. I am going on an adventure starting today. If he can convince me to part with this Compendium, without threats, then he can have it. Until then you should probably leave. Lydia looks rather angry.¡± Lydia went along with Voice. She put on a deep scowl, and glared daggers at the men. When they turned around and saw this, they shivered. Guess she holds some sort of power. The men left after grumbling about how they would be back. Heather was simply trying to look meek this entire time. She wanted to catch one of them by surprise if they attacked. Voice smiled towards Lydia. ¡°Well it looks like you have as many friends as Susan.¡± Lydia gave him a smile. ¡°And to what do I owe the pleasure? Are you here to take another of my rare books?¡± She said that last bit with a slight mocking tone. ¡°Not really, but I do have something to ask you about.¡± He showed her the Compendium. (it was still in his inventory) When she laid eyes on it her mouth dropped open. I guess it¡¯s better than I thought. ¡°I was wondering if you have any information I can buy about Compendiums.¡± Voice waited for a minute while Lydia looked the book over. ¡°What? Oh yes. Third floor, Author name is Diviticus.¡± Voice quickly found that section. He saw that there were only three books by that author. ¡®Creation of A Compendium¡¯, ¡®Knowledge Creation in Compendiums¡¯, and ¡®Evolutions of Compendiums¡¯. The last one had a gold plated cover. He also found a section on cooking on the first floor. He still hadn¡¯t leveled his cooking skill up to apprentice. He wanted to know why. He found a book that said ¡®How to obtain High Ranks in the Cooking skill¡¯. He grabbed it. Voice took all four to Lydia. ¡°How much are these?¡± Voice asked. Lydia was still stunned about Voice¡¯s book. ¡°Can I borrow this book for a moment? It won¡¯t let me open it since it says it¡¯s in your inventory.¡± Voice shook his head. ¡°If I did that it would become your possession. I¡¯d rather not.¡± Lydia nodded. She understood the sentiment. ¡°Sooo, how much are these each?¡± Lydia looked at the books Voice handed to her. Lydia thought for a moment. ¡°Well, they are each about two gold. The gold-covered one is five.¡± Voice hung his head. He didn¡¯t even have one gold. There was no way he could afford those. Lydia continue. ¡°Susan came by a moment ago. She said you were creating a new city, is that true?¡± Voice nodded. His master plan had been dashed to the ground. ¡°Yeah, why do you ask?¡± Lydia smiled. ¡°Well, if you can promise me a library as grand as this one, and provide a transport of me and my books, I would be willing to give you these books for free.¡± Voice nodded his head excitedly. ¡°Sure I can do that.¡± He had no real intention of doing that. At most he would say ¡®sorry couldn¡¯t do it lol¡¯.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Creating a library in a city you build, and taking Lydia and all of her books to it. Difficulty: Medium Failure: Not transporting Lydia and her books to a city you own. Reward: Already given. Failure leads to maximum hostility with Lydia, and decreased intimacy with Susan. Lydia will do everything in her considerable power to make you pay for lying to her. Ps. Thought you could just accept and not do it? LOL
FUUUUUCK! I didn¡¯t want to actually fucking do it! Voice decided to give the books back to her. That is until he saw that he didn¡¯t have them in his inventory anymore. Fearing what he would see, he looked at his Compendium. A bright light was expanding from it. Voice cursed his luck. When the light died down, Voice forced a smile for Lydia. ¡°See you soon, in my new city!¡± He tried acting cheerful as he left. With his newly upgraded Compendium, he set off. He noticed that his Compendium was compiling the info from the books. It seemed that he would have to wait to get the info from them. ¡°Heather, go out and find EDI. Get her to come to Susan¡¯s.¡± Heather nodded, and went to search. Voice could have just messaged her, but he felt that it wouldn¡¯t be good for Heather to be idle for too long. He only had two more things to do in the city. As he walked to the training hall, he felt bad that he was going to leave this city. He felt a little op being able to give out quests. He decided to think of some super awesome quest he could give out before he left. He wanted to make as much of an impression as possible with the new players. He wanted to make his guild, but he needed two other players at least. It would be much better if he could make the guild start with a few dozen players. He made it to the training hall after having thought of a few quests that seemed like they could work in his favor. He opened the door. He quickly located his staff instructor Steve. When he saw Steve he gave him the staff he had borrowed. ¡°Thank you so much for letting me borrow this! I got a new one form Evan, so I no longer need to borrow it. I can safely say it was thanks to this staff that I beat Davros¡¯ Champion.¡± Voice lied. Steve looked at the staff with a pleased look. Voice bowed and left, not wanting to waste any more time. He decided to run to Susan¡¯s he felt a bit nostalgic to this city. He had a lot of good memories here. It wasn¡¯t like he was going to never come back, but he probably wouldn¡¯t¡¯ be back for a while. He was out of breath by the time he made it to Susan¡¯s, but not so much that he almost fainted. When he arrived there it was a little past noon. Voice saw Evan, Susan, Elizabeth, Lydia, EDI, Heather, the Mage¡¯s Guild Master, and the head priest from the chapel all talking together in a group. ¡°Hey guys, what¡¯s the commotion about?¡± Voice looked around. They all seemed to have a slightly sullen expression. Except the priest, he just looked downtrodden for some reason. The priest spoke. ¡°We are all just saddened to lose someone as great as yourself. You have helped us, and the people of Rand, and Mar¡¯s People, more than anyone could ever ask. We were just talking about the short time you had been here. It¡¯s barely been more than a month after all.¡± This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Susan came up to him. ¡°Here this is from me.¡± She handed him a belt.
Alchemist¡¯s Enchanted Belt
Material QualityCommonWork QualityExpert
DefenseN/ADurabilityN/A
Weight5 lbs
This belt has many pouches for carrying alchemy ingredients. It can store up to 100 lbs of alchemy ingredients. The stored ingredients do not increase the weight. Simply think of the ingredient you wish to take, and the belt will give it to you, as long as you have at least one in storage. This armor was made by an expert tailor. This belt was made by a master enchanter. This belt was enchanted with 1 Gravity Mana Crystal.
Voice stared at the blue box. Elizabeth and her husband stepped forward. Evan spoke, ¡°This is from me and Eli.¡± Evan handed him a pair of gauntlets. It had a symbol of a hammer striking a sword on an anvil.
Heirloom Ring
This ring is the family heirloom of the Smithington family. Evan and Elizabeth Smithington have gifted to a close family friend. This ring will allow the user to communicate directly with Evan and Elizabeth Smithington.
Really? THAT¡¯S his last name!? Pfffft! While Voice choked back a laugh the head priest came up to him. ¡°This is from the church of Mar, to help you on your journey.¡± The priest handed Voice a large bag of seeds. It contained what seemed like high quality seeds. Voice went to thank him, but he handed Voice something else as well. ¡°This is a token of my own gratitude, towards you and your fairy Sol. Not many people would allow others to use their fairies, and not many fairies would agree.¡± He handed Voice another bag, and a slip of paper.
Fairy Food
Fairies use mana instead of food, but who doesn¡¯t love something tasty? Fairy food is a special blend of mana and herbs. This food was tailored to the interests of Light Fairies. Only the Church of Mar know how to create Light Fairy Food.
When he received the paper his book exploded in light. The Guild master stepped forward. ¡°I also have a bit of info for you. My I see your map?¡± Voice handed the man his map. When he got it back he noticed an extra dot. One that was just west of a city named M¡¯ Path. The Guild Master whispered, ¡°That right there is the only known location of a mana crystal. The only problem is no one has been able to find it. Only the mage¡¯s guild knows about it, make sure not to tell anyone.¡± Voice¡¯s eyes opened wide at the words ¡®mana crystal¡¯. One of his boons had been the ability to use those. Crap, gotta train my earth affinity then. EDI was the only one left. After the group gave their gifts, they said goodbye to Voice. They had enough sense to leave him and his girlfriend alone during this tragic parting. EDI shyly looked at Voice. ¡°So, you¡¯re sure about leaving?¡± She almost seemed as though she wanted him to stay. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve got to go make a name for myself.¡± Voice didn¡¯t know why but he suddenly got the feeling that he didn¡¯t want to leave EDI. OH! I bet it¡¯s cause she is a good DPS! Voice smiled. His smile caught EDI off guard. ¡°I do have something for you though, EDI.¡± EDI looked quizzically at him. ¡°Hold out your hands and close your eyes.¡± She did as she was told, with a slight giddiness. She was going to get a gift from Voice! She had come to understand that he was probably the only other person she could talk to besides her moms. Voice asked, ¡°So what¡¯s your Dex?¡± EDI replied, ¡°119!¡± Voice nodded and handed her the Sais. When she felt the weight of them she opened her eyes. !!! Her simple Identify skill wasn¡¯t enough to actually see all of the info about them. All she could see was the name, damage, durability, and a strange description.
Living Sai of the Vampire
Material Quality???Work Quality???
Damage100-165(Plus 25 Health Absorption)Durability200/200
This weapon was created because of the feelings Voice0fReason holds for EDI. This Sai represents all of his feelings for her.
She didn¡¯t know what those feelings were, but the fact that Voice had put his feelings into these was obvious. Even if she didn¡¯t know the feelings, she could tell that these were very high quality. Each one dealt the damage of five of her current Sais! That was without whatever damage Absorption did. She didn¡¯t know what that did, but most likely it gave her some of the target¡¯s health. She didn¡¯t know what made the Sai living, but it was probably good. The only thing she had that was even close was her starting item. She hugged Voice. ¡°Thank you SO much! I¡¯ll always treasure them!¡± She saw Voice blush slightly at the embrace. His embarrassed face looked kind of cute. Voice stammered out a reply. ¡°Y-yeah, you¡¯re welcome. So, uh, I have a request.¡± EDI looked at the semi-bashful Voice. Voice didn¡¯t know why EDI would hug him out of nowhere, so he was a little thrown off by it. He was sure that she would make a good companion while fighting, though. So he offered a deal. ¡°I want to do something amazing with my life in here. How would you like to come with me?¡± EDI smiled at Voice. ¡°Of course!¡± She was happy that someone needed her. It didn¡¯t hurt that he was so kind to all of the NPCs and animals either. She was only too happy to accept. Perfect, now I have two minions. Maybe I should start getting them stuff. I could make it so they would die for me. Hehehe With the thought of two scapegoats, Voice walked out of the city. He looked back as this was the last time he¡¯d see it for a while. Voice took EDI to the fountain. He used his wind magic to call out to the city. ¡°RARE QUEST! RARE QUEST!¡± He called out to all four corners. The players instantly recognized him as the Man by the Fountain. He had equipped his title right before calling out. The people gathered around him. As the first person came to him he began speaking to the group. He shouted his sentences so the entire crowd could hear. ¡°DO YOU NOT FEEL LIKE ANIMALS DESERVE TO LIVE!? DO THEY NOT DESERVE PEACE AND LOVE!? I HAVE A QUEST! SAVE THE ANIMALS! NO LONGER WILL KILLING INNOCENT ANNIMALS BE ALLOWED! NO LONGER WILL EVIL BE TOLERATED! MONSTER¡¯S KEEP THEIR MEMORIES WHEN THEY DIE! ANIMALS DO NOT! IS NOT KILLING ANIMALS THE SAME AS MURDER!? I GIVE THIS QUEST IN GOOD FAITH. HELP PROTECT GAIA¡¯S CREATURES!¡± All of the players in the area, except EDI and Voice, got a quest notification.
The Man by the Fountain has given a quest. Success: Help stop the killing of innocent animals. Difficulty: ??? Failure: Allowing innocent animals to be killed with your knowledge. Reward: The Man by the Fountain will offer you a place in his city! Gaia will grant you 25 Nature Affinity for protecting her children for long periods of time. Failure leads to Gaia refusing to give you Nature Affinity, ever. You will not be allowed to join The Man by the Fountain¡¯s city. This quest is sharable. You can give this quest out to anyone willing, as long as you have not failed. Once you fail you cannot try this quest again. Do you accept?
Voice got a notification as well.
You have created a quest to protect innocents, as your final quest for an undeterminable length of time. Mar has granted you 10 Light Affinity.
You have gained 9 compassion for providing protection to the innocent.
You have created a quest to protect Gaia¡¯s children, as your final quest for an undeterminable length of time. Gaia has granted you 25 Nature Affinity. Gaia has increased her blessing towards you.
Many Blessings of Gaia (Major) For showing your love of nature to Gaia you have been gifted with her blessing. You will naturally produce pheromones. You can currently release: Territorial Pheromone Reproductive Pheromone When used, Territorial Pheromones will indicate to others of your species that this area is yours. Others of your species will be alerted to who the territory belongs to. If they wish harm to you they will suffer (minor) psychological impairments. When used, Reproductive Pheromones will indicate to those that mate with your sex your wish to copulate. This pheromone will grant favor with the those that mate with your sex. (only useful to other humanoids). Those affected by this will be more likely to grant you favor.
FUCK YEAH! I can finally try out those damn pheromones! I should probably do it alone though. I don¡¯t know what would happen if I were to use either one around EDI. Voice called, and gave out the quest, four more times. It seemed like the voice enhancing magic didn¡¯t have a Cooldown timer. After giving out the quest he carefully devised he left. EDI and Heather followed quickly behind. When they exited the city Voice heard Ancestor say, ¡°If you are going to stay with her for a while you might want to tell EDI your true race. If she finds out later, she may hate you for it.¡± It seemed Ancestor understood that Voice didn¡¯t want EDI to hate him. Enough to even reveal one of his bigger secrets. Voice thought over the suggestion for a while. He nodded to himself. ¡°EDI, there is something personal I need to show you.¡± Voice toggled off his disguise ability. EDI gasped slightly when she saw him. ¡°You¡¯re an Ancient Elf!?¡± She cried out. Voice looked around, ¡°Shh, yes I got it during my childhood.¡± Voice gave her a self-important smile. EDI looked impressed. ¡°Wow, I can¡¯t believe you could figure something like that out. I heard that the secret races were hard to fuse, since you needed an exact combination on both sides.¡± Voice nodded as if he knew all of this. When he turned his head to start the journey, he noticed a group of three players surrounding two shivering rabbits. They all wore Demon Wolf Leather armor. An idea quickly formed. ¡°EDI how do you feel about PK?¡± EDI blinked. ¡°PK? I don¡¯t know what that is. I haven¡¯t played many other MMOs.¡± Voice nodded. ¡°That¡¯s ok. It means Player Killing. See those three?¡± Voice pointed them out. EDI nodded. ¡°I was thinking how it wasn¡¯t nice of them to pray on animals. Should we go help?¡± EDI¡¯s face contorted into a gruesome smile. She nodded, ready for blood. ¡°Good, now give me a second to try and disguise you. I don¡¯t even know if I can though.¡± Voice looked quite a bit different in his elf form. Besides the longer ears, and almond shaped eyes, his face and body were different. His body had a slightly thinner build, and his face adopted a feline look. He tried to focus on EDI, and toggled Disguise. Nothing happened. Voice heard Ancestor chuckle. What is it? Voice demanded. He was trying hard enough without being laughed at. Ancestor chuckled again, ¡°Well, you aren¡¯t thinking of how you want her to look. Remember when I trained you? I had you imagine the way you wanted to look. I don¡¯t know if you can disguise her, but you have to at least imagine how you want her to look!¡± Another round of laughter. Voice tried to ignore it, as he imagined EDI looking like a man. He imagined her with darker skin, and a scar one her face. He even picked a new name. Gacy. ¡°AH!¡± EDI started when Voice toggled disguise on. Voice looked at her worriedly at her, ¡°What!? What happened?¡± He saw EDI push something. ¡°Uh I just got a notice. It asked if I¡¯d let you perform ¡®Disguise¡¯ on me.¡±
Player Voice0fReason, is trying to use skill ¡®Disguise¡¯ on you. Do you accept? While disguised by someone with this skill even the gods will not be able to tell who you are, as long as you can play the part. The opponent gets a spot check to see through your disguise.
Suddenly EDI transformed. She stayed the same body size, but seemed to grow a bit of muscle, her skin darkened, and a scar appeared on her left cheek. Above her floated the name Gacy. Voice got a notice.
You have created a new disguise for EDI. Would you like to record this? You currently have 1 recorded disguise. You can have up to (wis/25) disguises recorded.
Voice chose yes. He would probably be using this disguise a lot. Since EDI was obviously ok with PKing. Voice smiled. He disguised himself as well. He made himself a new disguise. He was human again, but this time had an evil look. His body was covered in scars, and had a perpetual scowl. His name was Bundy. He quickly explained his plan. These players looked to be around level 15, so killing them would be absolutely no problem. After discussing the plan, the two ran towards the players. EDI hid herself using stealth. Voice ran towards them, his staff wasn¡¯t equipped. He cast the fireball. He threw it, by causing it to fly with wind magic. One of the players was immediately hit in the face by a ball of burning gas. The player screamed as they clawed at their face. The ball only did about 40 damage, but caused a burning effect for a few seconds. While the two other players turned to look at Voice, ¡®Bundy¡¯, one of them was stabbed. EDI had gone around the group. As soon as Voice had their attention, EDI jumped in front of the one that was furthest back. He was taken by surprise, and EDI stabbed him in the eye with her new Sais. The person attacked by the fireball recovered just as EDI dropped her target¡¯s health to zero. A few quick strikes to his eyes was all it took. The two turned towards EDI after hearing her kill their companion. The girl that had not been attacked ran at EDI with her longsword. Voice pushed her by throwing a large gust of wind at her side. He still had to channel it around himself, so the power wasn¡¯t at max. EDI capitalized on this by jumping on the girl. The final ¡®warrior¡¯ started running towards the city, hoping the guards could help. Voice stood there with a smile. Before the man had gone more than a few steps, Heather pounced on him. She landed with her teeth sinking deeply into the man¡¯s calf. With another scream the man fell to the ground. Heather seemed to enjoy consuming human¡¯s flesh. She decimated him. After making sure he couldn¡¯t run, Heather tore out his throat. Mental note, watch out for Heather. He looked back at EDI. She was grinning while mercilessly stabbing her opponent in the face. Mental note 2, don¡¯t fuck with EDI. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health100Mana1000
Stamina350
Level33Current TitleSurgeon
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec16.9 (11.9)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence100
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma20Compassion75
Leadership36Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame700
Skills Window
Critical Strike Novice Level 15 Exp 22.01%
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00%
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Cooking Novice Level 24 Exp 99.99%
Climbing Novice Level 3 Exp 60.00%
Heavy Armor Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Staff Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Automatic Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 36 Exp 4.81%
Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 15 Exp 6.67%
Group Skill: Magical Master Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44%
Affinities Window
Light60
Water25
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 32: Pk and a New City Hey guys I just wanted to mention that I put a map in the spells and abilities section. Check it out! I¡¯ll be updating it as the story progresses. He might not visit all of the places on it though. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice found out he needed to go to other mage¡¯s guilds to summon other types of fairies. He got some cool gear from those he made friends with, and did his first PK! It went by really quickly. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment, like (if you actually like it), and rate if you have the time! When all three players had been killed Voice¡¯s Auto Dissection kicked in. Unfortunately Heather had already started eating one, and EDI destroyed the entire head of another. The only really good specimen was the one missing its eyes. His dissection of humans increased to 75%. That was only a 10% bonus. It made sense though. He only dissected two bodies, and one was missing its entire head region. All of the items dropped were low quality, except for the leather armor. It was decent enough. Voice left the loot, except the leather, on the ground. A benefit was that while using Auto-Dissection the bodies apparently stayed. With Dissection it said the bodies disappeared, with Auto-Dissection it said that the first body of each new species would disappear. So Heather got to enjoy all three bodies. Voice didn¡¯t actually understand how she ate them all. After focusing on a waterfall feeling over him, and trying to make it over the other two, Voice washed himself off. He had to actually concentrate hard to cast magic on others. Voice looked at his notifications.
Disguised character ¡®Bundy¡¯ has received 200 infamy for killing his first player. Infamy will not cross over to other disguises unless the disguises are figured out. For killing a player the disguise ¡®Bundy¡¯ will be a red player for 7 days. Other players, and NPCs, will be able to detect ¡®Bundy¡¯ as a red player, if it the name is disguised(only counts while disguised as ¡®Bundy¡¯)
Heather was still munching away at the player, so Voice started a conversation with EDI. ¡°So, how do you like the Sais?¡± EDI smiled as she looked them over again. ¡°They are wonderful. They have so much power, and are incredibly easy to use.¡± Voice secretly wished he had picked something for himself. Even though he only used a staff, any weapon that was forged with Heavenly Metal, was bound to be awesome. Voice started thinking of a plan to get the Sais back. He had some momentary weakness, but he could still salvage the situation if he managed to make some sort of profit off it. While he was contemplating EDI ask, ¡°So why did you give me these anyway? They seem to be way to over the top.¡± Voice thanked Mar he had the Con Artist skill. ¡°Well, I was hoping to buy your affection. If I give you cool toys, I hope you will be more inclined to join a guild I make.¡± EDI seemed like she just received the answer she thought she would. With a curt nod she said, ¡°I will do it. I will join the guild you make. Whenever we get the other person, and the other needed stuff, I will join with you. Does that sound ok?¡± Voice struck out his hand. ¡°Sure does. Put her there, partner.¡± EDI shook his hand. They continued to talk until Heather was done. EDI talked about what she had done while Voice was away. Voice told her about how he tricked Davros. When Heather was done eating the trio went further into the grasslands to the east. Heather had consumed every non-item thing from the player. Skin, meat, bones, even the leather armor, were all gone. The only evidence the bodies had been there, was a few junk items and a quasi-man shaped blood pool. After glancing around to make sure no one could see them, Voice undid the disguises. He then re-disguised himself as the human Voice. The three of them headed off to M¡¯Path. The city to the east. It was about a week travel by foot, but Voice didn¡¯t have any money for carriages. He could have asked EDI, but he didn¡¯t want to turn her off of the idea of joining his guild. The group walked towards their destination while talking. Sol even came out to listen to EDI. After about an hour of walking a group of three rabbits hopped into their way. These rabbits had red eyes, black fur, and instead of flat incisors, they had sharp fangs. Voice looked at Heather on his left. He gave her a questioning look. EDI, who was on Heather¡¯s left, nodded. ¡°These are what happens when low level demons possess rabbits,¡± she replied. Voice took out his staff and cast a fireball at one. That was a mistake. The monster rabbit easily jumped to the side. The fireball flew in a short arc, landing squarely on a patch of dried grass. Realizing his mistake, he quickly used all of his mana to cast water. He knew what a flash fire was, and he knew he would lose nature affinity if he started one. The water he summoned was enough to cover the heads of the short rabbits. The water quickly spread out, and only covered an area close to his ankles. Voice sighed with relief. Heather and EDI chose this moment to attack the three demon bunnies. Heather jumped at the one closest to her, as did EDI. That left Voice the one on the far right, the one that dodged his fire. The bunny jumped to kick Voice in the face. As soon as the rabbit got close enough, With a wave of his hand, Voice created a high-powered wind to push the pest aside. The rabbit was thrown a few feet to Voice¡¯s right. Voice smirked at the pathetic creature. It was only level 16, why did they think they could beat his group? It didn¡¯t matter anymore though. They would be exterminated like the pests they were. Voice ran to the thing. By the time he made it, the rabbit was just standing up. Voice threw it into the air using his staff. He started twirling his staff so it would pick up a bit of speed. When the rabbit was within striking distance Voice brought his staff down in an arc. He critically hit his target. He put the butt of his staff on the creature. He activated tight grip, and plunged his staff into the beast¡¯s neck, the largest red mark it had. With a sickening *Crunch* Voice impaled the poor things neck. The monster rabbit died instantly. The other two members of his party had already dispatched their enemies. Heather was sniffing at the rabbit she killed. No! She does NOT want to eat it¡­ right? As if to answer his question, Heather took a bite out of the rabbit. Voice asked, ¡°So, Heather. Two questions. One: are you sure you should eat rabbit meat? And two: how does it taste?¡± Heather finished swallowing the bite she had in her mouth before answering. ¡°Hm, it¡¯s not as good as demon wolf, but it¡¯s ok.¡± Voice opened his notifications screen, since it had an annoying blink.
You have dissected a new creature ¡®Demon Rabbit¡¯. You know 25% of the anatomy of ¡®Demon Rabbits¡¯.
Voice lost one of the two remaining rabbits to the dissection skill. He and EDI would have to share the one rabbit. They continued down the road for the rest of the day. The came across two more groups of demon rabbits. Both groups were easily slaughtered. Voice and EDI had enough rabbits to make a good stew, and Heather consumed the rabbits whole. Around dusk, they found a campsite. In the middle of the dried grass was a small alcove with wood. There were no tents, but it was clear that people slept here. EDI explained that the campsite was used by any. The gods had created many spots like it, for the sole purpose of giving travelers a place to rest. Voice wanted to cook the rabbits. For some reason the rabbits didn¡¯t drop rabbit meat. Their entire bodies were still there. I guess that means that if I use Auto-Dissection, I will have to do all of the work. Well at least I still have Susan¡¯s knife. Voice took out his dissection knife, and skinned the rabbits that Heather didn¡¯t eat. He made a hearty stew the meat. He told Heather and EDI to gather any vegetables that were around them. While they did Voice used his pan to fry the rabbit meat. Heather was quickly gathering a mass amount of turnips and carrots. These were immediately sent to Voice¡¯s inventory. Unless Voice gave the items to Heather, anything she obtained went to Voice. Voice had eaten more than was possible for him to digest, while he was in the woods. Therefore, when he cooked rabbit stew, he offered most of it to EDI. The skinning was only difficult for the first three. After that, his inspect started kicking in. He also got the skill Skinning at the same time. Inspect showed him the most vulnerable places on the pelts. As he stared at each rabbit, Inspect even started showing him what places would be best to cut at.
Skinning Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to more efficiently skin things. Every level of this skill decreases the mistakes you make while skinning. Ranks in this skill provide better quality skins. You level this skill by skinning animals or monsters. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Automatic¡¯.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Survival. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Survival? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°No.¡± ¡°Skill Fusion: Skinning and Automatic.¡±
Automatic Skinning Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill can be toggled on or off. If this skill it toggled on, you will automatically skin creatures. Each level in this skill decreases the mistakes you make while skinning. For every rank you increase your Skinning skill you will gain better pelts. To level this skill you must skin creatures. This skill will automatically skin creatures that are killed by anyone in your party, pets and tamed entities also count. When this skill skins a new creature, the body will disappear upon death. Loot will still drop as normal, unless it is part of the animal¡¯s body. You will still gain the creature¡¯s skin. This skill will only grant a maximum of 50% quality to the skins. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed often. Extreme mistakes are committed rarely.
¡°Exchange Relevant Skills.¡±
You have one group skill available. Your skill combinations are: Survival You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Survival. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Survival? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Survival. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Survival. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Survival. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you skin enough creatures to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Survival.¡±
Survival Current Level: Novice Level 20 Exp 60.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Automatic Skinning, Cooking, Climbing, Skinning, and Fishing. This skill can be toggled on or off. You are a practiced survivalist. You can survive just about anywhere. For creating the Group Skill: Survival, the skill Fishing has been generated. Fishing has been automatically added to your Survival skill. The higher the level Survival reaches the easier it will be to survive anywhere. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. For creating the Group Skill: Survival, and for going long periods without eating, you have gained the Trait: Improved Digestion.
Improved Digestion is the perfect trait for survivalists. You can go longer without food. If you eat food that grant benefits, the benefits last longer. Food will provide more satiety, and your body will be able to regulate the breakdown of food more easily.
He also generated the knife mastery. He didn¡¯t know why he got that, as he was using his staff for a long time but still needed to be taught.
Knife Mastery Current Level: Apprentice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By showing fine handling with the knife you have been granted the knife mastery. Knives are now more comfortable for you to wield You gain an additional 10% damage while using a knife (Melee and throwing only). To level this skill you must become more attuned to using knives. Proficiency in arms and armor may be trained by someone of higher skill level. In that case starting level and rank of these types of skills would be higher.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Combat Learning. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Combat Learning? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes.¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Combat Learning. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Combat Learning. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Learning. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you train enough to level up Staff Mastery, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Combat Learning.¡±
Combat Learning Current Level: Novice Level 17 Exp 31.58% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Heavy Armor, Staff Mastery, Knife Master, and Critical Hit. You have studied the art of fighting. You know multiple forms of attack, and at least one to defend. The skill Critical Hit is now a passive ability. Combat Learning can activate Critical Hit, at most, once per minute. This does not consume Stamina, Mana, or Health. Combat Learning will activate Critical Hit, whenever you score a critical hit, at most once per minute. This group skill gives you a competency bonus to all skills it encompasses. For every five levels, rounded up until level 94, you gain 5% bonus damage/defense while using anything this skill encompasses. Each rank of this skill grants the user one Combat related Trait. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill, or study about combat. You can study the skills that that make up Combat Learning, or about combat in general. For creating the Group Skill: Combat Learning, you have gained the Trait: Fighter¡¯s Spirit.
Fighter¡¯s Spirit is the perfect trait for those that love combat. Any spell or ability that influences morale, ie Fear or Courage, will be increased by 25%, and last 10% longer.
While eating Voice asked about EDI¡¯s stats. She seemed a little embarrassed to answer, but he prodded her for the information. He only got her level affinities though. She was level 54, but only had one affinity. Nature Affinity was at 80. After eating their fill, the group went to sleep. In the middle of the night, Voice¡¯s Inspect picked up a sound. After listening for a few seconds, the sound came again. The sound seemed to be several yards away, but closing in. He put his hand over EDI¡¯s mouth, and whispered, ¡°Sh. I think there are others here.¡± EDI nodded. She equipped her Sais and got ready to pounce up. Voice did the same to Heather. She squirmed at first, but then relaxed when she saw who it was. He whispered to her that they were surrounded. He sent a mental request to Sol and Ancestor. He wanted to make sure he knew of what was happening, and he wanted to be healed whenever he didn¡¯t have the magic. His inspect had picked up on several sounds. Since it wasn¡¯t in the advanced forms, inspect could only tell the general direction of the sound. Not the distance or weight of the one making it. Voice equipped his armor and staff. He pretended to get up and relieve himself. He was actually using Inspect the entire time. He walked in a large circle around the camp. He made sure that the ever so carefully hidden people, most likely bandits, were within it. While he walked he flooded the ground with water. It used up a lot of Mana, but he was able to make a circle with a ten foot diameter. He might not have gotten all of the enemies in the circle, but he had at least gotten the majority. There were seven bandits in the circle, and one outside of it. He emptied his bladder, and then went back to EDI. ¡°I¡¯m ready when you are,¡± he whispered. She gave him a slight nod. He sent out a wave of fire mana. Suddenly the entire area around the three was covered in flames. The dried grass that made up their surrounding area quickly caught. Several yells were heard in mere seconds. So much for your surprise. Voice augmented his voice with wind magic. He used his Roar of Paralysis. The enemies, even those on fire staggered backwards at the vicious cry. One man even clutched his heart and fell over. Fucking wuss. Voice smirked at the on coming battle. The average level of the bandits was only 20. They picked the wrong group to fuck with. Voice began his display of staffmanship, as EDI went to the nearest eye and stabbed it. Heather was right beside Voice, biting any that got too close. Two men ran at Voice, flames licking at their legs. Voice smiled as the first man thrust his sword, he wanted to impale him. Voice dodged to the side, and hit the man on his wrist. The man¡¯s grip loosened, almost forcing him to drop his sword. The second man was already on Voice, slashing downwards towards Voice¡¯s right shoulder. Voice easily parried the strike. He spun his staff clockwise, resulting in the sword curving towards the ground. As Voice continued the arc, the man could see that his sword would only put him at a disadvantage. He released it, even as Voice finished the arc. Voice brought the top of his staff (it is facing the ground) up. He solidly connected to the bandit¡¯s chin. The nearby bandit¡¯s turned their attention away from EDI to look at the place that just echoed with a snap. One of the men attacking EDI ran at Voice. That¡¯s weird. There are only four attacking her. I¡¯m getting attacked by three now¡­ Voice had a bad premonition, so he immediately turned around. A thin person, that looked suspiciously like a ninja, stabbed Voice with a dagger coated in purple liquid. The only thing he could see was the wicked smile.
You have been poisoned. You will lose 10 health per second for one minute, or until cured. You cannot be healed while under the effects of this poison.
SOL STAY HIDDEN! Voice¡¯s health was dropping way too quickly. He couldn¡¯t think of a way out of his situation. He yelled at EDI, ¡°Catch!¡± She raised her hands up, earning her a slight gash to the stomach. She caught the ring and equipped it while blocking the next strike. Voice¡¯s health was already at 50. He kept fighting, His mind was reeling. He made a plan, but it would most likely end in his death. He blocked a strike from the ninja. Time seemed to slow down for Voice. 48 health. He hit the ninja behind the left knee causing it to buckle. 39 health. The bandit behind him went for a backstab, his inspect told him ahead of time. He turned around. 33 health. He sent the bandit flying by hitting his ribs with a wind enhanced staff attack. 26 health. He brought his staff around while going to one knee. 19 health. His 360 swipe knocked sent the ninja flying. Voice might have laughed at the side spins if he wasn¡¯t dying. 11 health. Voice picked up Heather and yelled, ¡°USE THE RING!¡± 6 health. EDI used the ring and fully turned into a giant flying squirrel. 3 health. Voice threw Heather at EDI, and sent all of his lootable items with her. 2 health. Voice cast the biggest gust of wind he could, with EDI as the target. 0 health. He fell to the ground. His last sight was of EDI raising in the air holding Heather. Voice smiled. At least his precious items were safe. I¡¯ll be damned if I let her keep that ring though! Voice¡¯s vision turned to black as he hit the ground. ¡­ Aren¡¯t I supposed to log out now? The world was still black. Usually it only took a couple of seconds at most, to be back in the white room. ¡­ Voice started hearing sounds. He could make out clopping. A horse? He was jarred from his spot. He heard, ¡°Oi! We have prisoners back here! Treat ¡®em gently!¡± A round of laughter ensued. Voice felt a kick to the ribs. ¡°Looks like this one¡¯s finally awake!¡± Voice felt himself get lifted up. I guess I¡¯m still in the game? His hands were tied with what felt like rope. He tried feeling them to see if they could be untied.
Thick Horsehair Rope Binding. Weakness: Fire Durability: 5/5 Knot: Complex
Voice thought of burning the binding, but he realized he was also blindfolded, gagged, and they tied his feet as well. While he might be able to get out of the bindings, and maybe even burn off the blindfold, and gag, there was no way he was going to be able to get ready for a fight that quickly. He felt something hit his head.
You have been knocked unconscious for 10 hours due to your low endurance. Would you like to log out?
I have high endurance! When the system didn¡¯t respond to his inward yelling he though, yes. His pod door opened. ¡°Alright I¡¯ve got two hours before I need to be back. Might as well make use of it.¡± Brenton started the oven and made a small meal. After cleaning the dishes, he took another shower. He toyed with the idea of calling his mom, but she always got in trouble when he called. He knew that because of the way she would seem slightly depressed on days he called. He took a quick shower. After cleaning his body, he put on shorts, and a shirt. He started browsing the net while drying his hair with a towel. He went straight for the DI homepage. He wanted to see what news there was about the game. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Apparently SD and LB and somehow managed to piss of an entire kingdom. It was found out that the assassinated someone, someone Brenton didn¡¯t really care about. Brenton continued to skim. He couldn¡¯t find any info on EDI, or DH. He saw a bit about himself though. Sadly it was only his two videos. He didn¡¯t really expect anyone to write about him in any other way, but having the only comments about him being discussions about two videos hurt. Brenton sighed. He started thinking of ways he could get out of his situation. He was captured by bandits, he had to do something about that. He needed to know where he was, and how to get back. He had sent all of his loot with Heather. ¡°If she died I¡¯m going to kill her.¡± Brenton would not tolerate failure. Especially after he risked his life, to save those items! Brenton decided that the best thing to do was to let the bandits take him wherever they were going to. After that he would figure out a way to kill them all. The most likely scenario was that there were at least a few others he would meet there. He could use them to make his escape. He made several escape plans. Some involved just him, but most involved a group of people. The first step in every scenario was to figure out the hierarchy. He could use the ladder of power to his advantage. If he could take out the boss, then the underlings would have no one to turn to. The biggest obstacle is how to do it without dying. If I knew some other types of magic besides light and wind, he would have a better chance. Although the knockback the wind provides isn¡¯t anything to laugh at. After another half hour of deliberation, and a restroom break, he went back to Solun. Once in the game he realized his character was being beaten. ¡°FINALLY! BOSS! HE¡¯S AWAKE!¡± Voice squinted as light filled his eyes. He saw an ugly, brutish, bandit in biker like armor. Black leather, and metal spikes seemed to flow in any era. The brute had an ugly grin, enhanced by his lack of teeth. His muscles seemed to bulge from every angle.
Kronah Level 26 Elite Slaver Body Guard
Health:520/520Stamina:360/360
Voice sighed. I thought this shit would end when Davros was sealed. Guess life isn¡¯t that nice. Voice glanced at his bindings. They were the familiar cufflinks of the slaver his mother had killed. He had to actually work to keep his bloodlust from leaking out. He tried to maintain a meek look. He saw a blue arrow in the bottom of his vision. He followed it. On his cufflinks he noticed a small blue gem.
Mana Binding Mana Crystal
This ring absorbs any mana that travels near it while in the form of a spell. Hidden Attribute: Mana Absorption If you consume this Mana Crystal you will absorb 25% of all hostile magic directed at you. You must be blessed by Gnome to see this attribute. You must use Gnome¡¯s blessing to consume this Crystal. You are cursed. You cannot currently use Gnome¡¯s blessing.
Voice¡¯s eyes went wide. The people around him were shouting something. HOLY! Ok. So that means I can still use Sense Mana Crystal? I guess it¡¯s because it fused with Inspect. Hm, this could be awesome. I don¡¯t care about escaping anymore. At least not right now. I want this crystal. He tried activating his Metal Stomach. It worked. Had he not been keeping complete control over himself he might have laughed. If his stomach worked, than in all likelihood, his shoes would to. He wouldn¡¯t have to worry too much about an escape plan. He felt a tug on his chains. ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± Kronah seemed irritated for some reason. Voice heard him whisper, ¡°shitty mages.¡± Voice looked around as Kronah dragged him. Voice could tell this had once been a city. Over time it had been renovated by these slavers. Voice¡¯s bloodlust started seeping again. Control. Control it. Voice could tell this used to be a beautiful city. If the windows weren¡¯t shattered, and the buildings weren¡¯t missing chunks of mortar and bricks, the city would have looked almost flourishing. There were unkempt trees that lined the streets, withering and in some cases charred. The homes were all made out of stone, but many houses had missing roofs. The black scorching indicated thatched roofing, and a fire. Voice saw a group of people in chains. They didn¡¯t look up, just followed the slaver leading them. The soul was gone from their eyes. Voice noticed the smell of water permeated the air. Earlier he was too preoccupied to notice. He looked around. He noticed the city was surrounded by water. He could see all four corners of the city, and they all had water around their edges. There was probably about thirty feet of water on the north and south sides of the little island. The island was connected to both sides by a long metal gate. One that was probably opened from inside the city. The gate was towered about ten feet above the water, and who knows how far beneath it. WOAH! A city in the middle of the water!? Cool! Voice was pretty excited. He had always wanted to live in a place that had easy access to the ocean. Even if this was just some sort of river, that would still be awesome! The water sparkled in the morning light. The water flowed gently in the direction the slaver shitbag was taking Voice. Voice figured they had a while to go before they made it to wherever it was they were going, so he decided to experiment with his magic. If there was any he could cast, that didn¡¯t count as a spell, it would only aid in his escape. He put his head down and looked at the ground. He tried sending a small gust of wind aimed towards his captors back. Kronah stumbled as an unseen force pushed his back. As he fell forwards, he yanked Voice¡¯s chain. Voice let himself be pulled to the ground. ¡°Umph.¡± As he hit the ground, Voice smiled. It had worked. Even though he couldn¡¯t cast ¡®spells¡¯, he was able to use his wind. He turned his pain setting down to 1% in preparation for the game to come.
Pain Setting at 1%
Your body will undergo harsher repercussions with low pain settings.
If that was the case he could just create the element he needed. As long as it wasn¡¯t structured as a spell he could use it. He could adjust his iron stomach to consume more mana, so that he could preserve the food he had consumed. He gave it 8.45 mana. That was exactly half. His stomach now produced about 85% of the required nutrients he needed each day. With his improved digestion trait, food would last him even longer. He had what equated to several days¡¯ food already in his stomach. It took up about half his carrying capacity. He had one hundred pounds of wolf meat. He could still carry a hundred and five pounds of stuff though. He stood back up when the brute yanked his chain. As they walked Voice continued to look at the town. It would be a perfect place to own. It had some hastily built defenses, such as wooden watchtowers and long spikes where a wall would be, but that is what would make it hard for Voice to conquer. For he DID in fact decide to conquer this town. If he could kill all of the slavers, then he was sure the people of this town would praise him enough to let him have it. After all, without him there would be no town. Kronah pulled Voice into a kneeling position. Relinquishing his thoughts on capturing the city, Voice noticed a toned, yet slim, man sitting on the throne. Beside him were two ninja looking people. He dismissed Kronah with a wave of his hand. Voice continued to kneel, knowing that as soon as he got up he¡¯d probably get beaten. After a few minutes, he heard the man speak. ¡°So,¡± his voice rumbled, ¡°What do you think of my humble abode?¡± Voice knew he had to speak. He still wanted to maintain some semblance of dignity. ¡°it looks very nice. Although,¡± he paused for a second. ¡°It could look a lot better if everything wasn¡¯t in ruins.¡± Voice felt a dull smack on the back of his head. The head slaver laughed. ¡°UHO! Well did you know this pretty place was ruled by a woman? Imagine THAT! HAHAHAHA!¡± ¡°I don¡¯t see what¡¯s wrong with that.¡± The slaver looked at him. ¡°You don¡¯t? Well let me enlighten you. This place had great economy, a perfect position to attack or defend from. All of the buildings were made from stone. This woman had it ALL! But she squandered it! Instead of getting money from the river she let people through for free! Instead of charging her citizens a steep tax for the environment, she only charged upkeep of this place! I threw her into the underwater tunnels! HA! Imagine her face when she went from a squanderer of riches, to being trapped in the tunnels! HAHAHA!¡± Damn! That sucks! If she¡¯s still alive when I save this place they probably won¡¯t let me be owner! Voice glared at the slaver scum. Not only does he have the balls to capture me! He¡¯s so stupid he didn¡¯t even kill the bitch! UGH! I¡¯m not going to be able to kill her unless she¡¯s in a dungeon! Voice cursed the incompetence of the slaver. If he was going to be the ¡®bad guy¡¯ he should at least do it right! ¡°Whatever. That doesn¡¯t sound that bad.¡± Voice baited the slaver. It seemed like the underwater mines were pretty hard to deal with, he might get lucky enough to be put in there with her. ¡°What was that? Young man I don¡¯t think you understand who you are talking to!¡± As the slaver said that two people grabbed Voice by his arms. Since they were tied together in the front there wasn¡¯t much he could do. They lifted him to a standing position. He had to put up a fight, he had to make it seem like he was strong. If he was defiant enough he might be able to get put into the same place as the ex-mayor. If he won the city from the slavers he would be tasked with saving her. If he failed to save her at that point, the people of the town might grow suspicious. The lead slaver started walking towards him. He used wind magic to jump in the air about four feet, and kicked on of the ones that held his arms. The two didn¡¯t expect to feel the force of such a powerful jump, and so didn¡¯t stop him. 1st weakness: Unable to quickly adapt to changes. As he jumped he coated the soles of his feet, with metal. He sent a powerful kick to both targets. Since the two men held his arms, the entire force of the kick was transmitted. As his feet connected his arms were released. He quickly deactivated his magic. He managed to land on his feet. His previous captors holding their stomachs in pain, kneeling on the ground. He felt a sword at his neck. ¡°Oh~ They told me you were just a mage. Looks like I¡¯ll need to give them a talk .¡± A malicious smile appeared on the slaver¡¯s face. Voice could now tell some of his info.
Evan Level 42 Elite Slaver Warrior
Health:1240/1240Stamina:860/900
¡°Well, it looks like you need a little special treatment yourself. Guards! Put him in the tunnels!¡± Everyone around started oohhhing, or laughing. He was hit in the back of the head. Fucking STOP with the head hitting! Voice didn¡¯t like getting hit in the back of the head. When he awoke he saw that he was in a cell. There was very little light. The only light source was a long way to his left. Most likely the opening to a tunnel. As soon as he regained consciousness, a foul odor assaulted his nose. His inspect said it had a 90% of being fecal matter. Voice nearly gagged. While he stopped himself from retching, he stepped in something. He looked down. Yep. That was a pile of shit. ¡­ EW. FUUUUUUUCK! Not only was this a really shoddy jail cell, it was a fucking sewer! The slavers didn¡¯t even take the time out to clean up. Voice looked around to make sure no one was around. When he didn¡¯t see anyone he created a small wave of water, to clean out his cell. As the water pushed the fecal matter to the edge of his cell something dropped from the ceiling. He didn¡¯t really need to inspect it to find out what it was. When I said it was a sewer, I wasn¡¯t SERIOUS! Yep, the latrine was located directly above the jail cells. While pushing that outside he noticed that on the other side of his cell was another row of cells. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized the cells were all made by iron bars. In the cell opposite his, was a person. Well he assumed it was a person. His eyes started adjusting to the darkness more and more quickly. The person in the other cell was most likely the ex-mayor. She was huddled into the corner of her cell. It seemed as though she was trying to avoid as much of the fecal matter as possible. Voice called out to her, in a whisper. ¡°Hey! Are you the mayor?¡± He wanted to be sure. Since she was looking at the ground she didn¡¯t seem to notice him using water magic. He spoke a little louder. ¡°HEY!¡± He shouted. Startled the person looked at him. By this time his eyes were fully adjusted, he could see as if the saw were about to peek over the horizon. This woman was covered in fecal matter. It looked as if she had been starved for many weeks. Given only the bare minimum to live. Voice¡¯s Inspect was having a field day. It classified many external injuries, and even said she was under the effect ¡®starvation¡¯. It identified the substance on her was indeed feces.
Elvina Level ?? Eternally Punished Slave
Health:15/300Stamina:3/145
She only had 5% of her total health! Voice focused on her. He couldn¡¯t touch her, as the length between the cells was about ten feet. Each cell itself was only six feet. He had never healed from far away before, and he didn¡¯t want to expose Sol. He remembered the first time he had healed Troy. He pictured the mana flowing out of his body, and into Troy¡¯s. He had imagined all of Troy¡¯s injuries knitting themselves back together. All of his aches and bruises being fixed. He did the same this time. He pictured his mana flowing into the woman¡¯s body. Inspect told him most of her external injuries, so it was easy to imagine them coming together. The mana expenditure was enormous. Even with his 30% mana reduction, it cost over 100 mana just to close a small wound! Normally that much would be enough to close most of the small wounds on her body. Luckily the gem didn¡¯t absorb any of the mana Voice sent to her. She looked up, as she felt some of her wounds healing. She looked around frantically. As her eyes finally came upon Voice, she gasped. ¡°HU! You¡¯re real!?¡± She nearly shouted. ¡°I thought you were just a trick of my mind!¡± She started to look excited. After only a brief moment of hope gracing her face, she turned sour again. ¡°I wish you weren¡¯t here. That means the scum got the entire city under their thumbs.¡± She looked dejected. Voice healed her for as much as he could, before talking. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I am making a plan to get us out. I need you to tell me the schedule here.¡± ¡°Schedule?¡± There was no way someone not dealing with the slavers could know about a schedule. She was indeed on a schedule. The water would rise, go down, then she could eat. Unless he was one of the slavers he couldn¡¯t know about it. ¡°Well I just thought they must have some sort of feeding schedule. If they feed you erratically, then my job gets a lot harder. Isn¡¯t there a certain time of day you get fed? Or, from the look of you, a certain time every few days?¡± Elvina thought, Maybe he is part of the slaver crew. I don¡¯t care anymore. He did heal me. Wait! How did he heal me? Her thoughts seemed to clarify after realizing that. He HAS to be part of the slavers! The main reason the slavers were able to capture her, was the fact that they found an anti-magic Mana Crystal vein in a mine. This stone absorbs all magic around it. There was no way they would be stupid enough not to cuff a mage. ¡°So how did you manage to hide the fact that you were a mage?¡± She tried to act excited, but the fact that she was covered in the slavers refuse made it hard. Voice saw that she was beginning to warm up to him¡­ NOT. Inspect told him she was 83% untrusting and 13% deceitful. So she thinks I¡¯m a slaver. Hm¡­ I need her trust in order to conquer this place quicker. Voice replied, ¡°I didn¡¯t. They knew I was a mage. So they put this on me.¡± He showed her the gem. He gave a small chuckle. ¡°Of course they don¡¯t know I¡¯ve been blessed by the gods. My name is Voice0fReason. I am the Chosen of Mar, and I will free this town!¡± He said the last as if it were a triumphant roar, interrupted only by the feces suddenly dropping behind him.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Free the town of River¡¯s Cross, from the slaver scum that control it. Difficulty: Moderate Failure: Not managing to save River¡¯s Cross. Reward: Undine¡¯s Blessing, Elvina¡¯s blessing, the title ¡®Hero of River¡¯s Cross¡¯. Failure leads to decrease intimacy all people of River¡¯s Cross, and Undine¡¯s displeasure. This is a quest for an Elder God. You must have 0 hostility, or have 1 affinity, with this god to get rewards for this quest.
You have gained 5 water affinity for accepting a moderately hard quest for Undine.
He closed his eyes, and focused on the image of water pouring into Elvina¡¯s cell. If he was going to get Undine¡¯s blessing, he wanted to do this the right way. He was going to impress Elvina, then he would get her ass to help him. He noticed a pull in his mana. He looked over while still trying to push the mana out. A small waterfall had appeared on the back wall of her cell. He gave himself a congratulatory smile. The mana cost was not as high as the healing, but it was still quite high. He could only clean out about half of her cell. The rest was pushed towards the bars. The girl herself noticed what was happening, and went under the waterfall. She took the quickest shower in human history. It only lasted about 30 seconds.
Undine has noticed your kindness towards her Chosen One. Undine has granted you 5 Water Affinity.
He thought about sending Sol out there as recon, but the possibility of losing Sol was too substantial. First thing I need to do is figure out how to make it so we don¡¯t get shat on. He knew what he wanted to do, but didn¡¯t know how. While he was thinking about this conundrum, he realized his ankles had gotten wet. Voice crinkled his nose as he looked at the liquid. He noticed water mana was permeating the air. He looked around. He noticed the front of the cave had gone dark. He heard Elvina yell to him. ¡°The water is rising! You have to take a deep breath when it comes!¡± She seemed extremely frantic. I guess she wants to believe that I¡¯m here to help. Voice found himself cursing Davros. If this damn ring wasn¡¯t cursed I would be able to breathe! His cursing did nothing to stem the flow of the water. He tried using water magic to push to away, but the vast amount of water was too much. The water was up to his hips. The mayor was still alive, so there must be a way to survive, but he didn¡¯t have time to figure it out. He had an idea. The water was rising quickly. In only a few seconds, it was up to his chest. Voice focused on what he called his turtle defense. He sloshed over to the corner. When the water reached the middle of his chest, Voice started channeling earth magic. The earth around him started to form. It slowly sprung from the ground. The water was already up to his neck at this time. His earth barrier was quick, but so was the water. Time again seemed to slow for Voice. He felt the water rise, caressing his body with the sweet scent of oncoming death. The earth was arching towards Voice¡¯s head. Voice was lifted off his feet by the water. His substantial 200 pounds (Weight plus food) was floating towards the ceiling. He barely managed to push his lips above the water for one last breath. The earth barrier finished just as it was completely filled with water. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassForce Mage
Health100Mana1000
Stamina350
Level33Current TitleSurgeon
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec16.9 (11.9)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence100
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma20Compassion75
Leadership36Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame700
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00% Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% Automatic Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 36 Exp 4.81% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 15 Exp 6.67% Group Skill: Magical Master Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44% Group Skill: Survival Novice Level 20 Exp 60.00% Group Skill: Combat Learning Novice Level 17 Exp 24.56%
Affinities Window
Light60
Water35
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 33: Sewer Escape Hey guys I just wanted to mention that I put a map in the spells and abilities section. Check it out! I¡¯ll be updating it as the story progresses. He might not visit all of the places on it though. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice got caught by slavers. He was put into a jail. As water was rising into his cell, he covered himself in an orb of earth. The water filled the orb as he finished making it. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment, like (if you actually like it), and rate if you have the time! Voice had just finished the earth barrier. He realized the water had completely filled his defense. For the first few seconds he frantically looked around for a way out. His mana was too low to dismantle the orb. He used the last bit of his mana to drill a hole into his orb. The orb went from a point, and angled towards the ground. He sent a wind funnel into the hole. The water started draining instantly. Voice took a breath as soon as some of the water drained. As soon as his wind mana stopped, he noticed the water flooding back in. He took a large gulp of air. Water rushed over his head. He waited until his mana had regenerated to the point where he could get a sizable amount of water out. It took about ten seconds. His lungs were starting to get strained, they were calling for air. He sent the wind through the hole again. He got another breath of air. As soon as he stopped pumping out mana, he noticed the water start rising. How long is this going to last? This process lasted for an entire eight minutes. Geez, if I didn¡¯t have my magic I¡¯d be dead! Fucking slavers trying to drown me. Voice was going to feel very satisfied when he murdered the lot of them. After the eight minutes were over Voice released his orb. The air had started to get very stale. As the orb disintegrated, he breathed a long breath. Elvina saw him. She knew he was making some sort of rock orb, but it had been filled with water. ¡°HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE!?¡± Elvina had never seen someone hold their breath that long, at least not if they weren¡¯t a fisherman. She had no doubt about the fact that he was not a fisherman. ¡°I told you, I can use magic. I poked a hole in the orb I made. Then I cycled air in and out of it, to create room to breathe.¡± Voice shrugged. He didn¡¯t really care for explaining himself right now. He needed to get out of these bars. He tried to contact Heather and EDI for help. There was no reason they couldn¡¯t stash his items and come, but he got an unfortunate notice when he tried.
You are currently in a hostile zone. You cannot send messages until you exit the zone.
He sat down to think. He made several plans. Most of which ended in slitting the slaver leader¡¯s throat. Before he knew it, he had spent an entire day making plans. He was making sure that he had every eventuality covered. He wanted plans that were flexible enough to incorporate any new information he obtained about the damn slavers. He had dozens of contingency plans. He planned for several probable responses from the slavers. Anytime he imagined himself doing something, he would picture the most likely way the slavers would respond. He only stopped occasionally to send the sewage out of the cells. He sent it to some of the other cells. He noticed his satiety had gone down by about 10%. So if I just sit here my body uses up about 67% satiety a day? He was glad he had his Magical Iron Stomach, at this point. He could only imagine the pain Elvina was going through. As he was thinking this, he saw a figure walking towards them. Elvina¡¯s stomach started rumbling uncontrollably. She tried to hold it, but that only seemed to make the sound grow louder. Voice turned his head as the man walking towards them laughed. ¡°Looks like the great ¡°Leader of the River¡± is a bit hungry, eh?¡± Another chuckle. As he came closer, Voice smelled the delicious smell of food. Voice looked at the food with a hungry glare. He used a bit of water magic to make it look like he was salivating. He licked his lips and gulped. The man was visible now.
Kronah Level 26 Elite Slaver Body Guard
Health:520/520Stamina:360/360
Voice choked back his substantial pride, and his bigger pool of hatred. He continued to look as though that food meant everything to him. The man saw the looks of hunger aimed towards him. ¡°Well, I knew you mage types were weak but¡­, HAHAHA! You are REALLY weak! Gonna be honest though, I won a bet with a guy that said you¡¯d be dead. Heh, thanks for making me money!¡± Voice cringed at the words. The entire time Voice¡¯s eyes didn¡¯t leave the platter of food. There was two very distinct ¡®dinners¡¯. One was a bowl of something that looked like pig slop, the other actually looked like a meal fit for at least a lesser noble. It was three juicy slabs of pork, and an entire chicken breast. It had a fantastic aroma. A side of smoked carrots and a bowl of cabbage stew accompanied the meat. Kronah went over to Elvina first. Kronah opened a small, almost invisible, latch in the cell. The latch was near the bottom, and released a lock on the small door made for pushing food through. He pushed the food through haphazardly. He went over to Voice, and put his food in as well. Voice almost threw himself at the food. Kronah laughed. ¡°See this, Elvina? Look at all of this tasty food we¡¯re givin¡¯ him. MMMM.¡± He chucked. He left as soon as he taunted Elvina. 2nd weakness: Easy to fool. 3rd weakness: Don¡¯t pay attention to surroundings. After he made sure the man was gone, Voice created a small stream of water. Voice made it flow into Elvina¡¯s cell. It was a little difficult to alter the flow of mana, but he managed it. The most difficult part was trying to keep the speed steady. If he stretched the mana, the river flowed to quickly. If he condensed the mana, the flow was too strong and rocky. He took about ten minutes to create the river to go to Elvina¡¯s cell. The more he used magic on something other than himself, the easier it got. It seemed as though it also cost him less mana to use. He memorized the exact flow of mana he had used. He was down to less than 100 mana, so he needed a break. After he let his mana regenerate, he tried to open the latch. He couldn¡¯t reach the latch, so he created a small earthen pole to hit the latch. His first attempt ended up too large. It pushed the latch, but couldn¡¯t push it past the point of being open. He forced the center of the pole to elevate slightly. The latch clicked. 4th weakness: Believe their planning is infallible. Voice looked at his mana. It had cost him about 10% of his total mana. Elvina spoke to him. ¡°Hey, um.¡± She licked her lips at his food. She knew they wouldn¡¯t be fed again, and so wanted to tell him to save his food. She didn¡¯t trust herself though. She was afraid he will would break if she began talking while he had food. She was only fed once a week. If she could just get a tast-NO You are better than that! While she was thinking of this Voice had unlatched her door as well. Voice dismantled both earthen cylinders, and sent the food down his homemade stream. The plate and bowl of food arrived while Elvina was lost in thought. When her eyes drifted over the food, she was taken from her inner monologue. Her eyes widened. She gave a quick glance at Voice. Why would he send the food he coveted so much, to her? After seeing his smile, she quickly lost all of her remaining willpower. She quickly devoured all of the food. While she was eating, Voice had figured out how to manipulate the metal bars. Voice sensed the minute traces of mana in the bars. He was going to try to directly affect the mana in the metal; he had figured he could probably use the inherent mana in the bars to alter their physical attributes. I mean, if I can change the power and speed of my water, I should be able to alter the characteristics of other things. He grabbed the bars and, focused on sensing the mana. He noticed that if he concentrated, his inspect would pick up more info. He fully concentrated on the bars. Once he sensed the mana in one, he thinned it out. He continued to thin it out, until his hand suddenly pushed forward. The now brittle iron sliced into his arm, as he suddenly scraped across it. Cursing he sent a wave of healing mana to the wound. After making sure he didn¡¯t have any status effects from the iron, he continued. He broke the bar as high, and far down, as he could. Once he was satisfied, he continued on to the next bar. Elvina was dumbfounded. This man was disassembling the prison! If he was a slaver, he was probably going to be chewed out by Evan the Slave Master. Voice finished breaking enough bars to get through. It only took four. Just those four took him half an hour though. After finishing his own, Voice went to Elvina¡¯s cell. She tried to say something to him, but he waved her away. He dismantled the required two bars for Elvina in only five minutes. When he was done, Voice took his first good look at Elvina. His thoughts were swirling in confusion. This woman looked exactly like his mother. He quickly dismissed any plans he had to let her die. He wouldn¡¯t be able to handle seeing someone that looked like his mother die, again. Shitty game is always fucking with me. Voice noticed how truly under-fed she was. Her ribcage was obviously visible through her tattered and torn shirt. Her face was sunken in, and she looked like she hadn¡¯t see the light of day in many weeks. She had the same gem in her own cuffs as Voice did. Voice unequipped his shirt and trousers. ¡°Here. Put these on.¡± His rage would have been obvious to anyone that looked. The only reason he managed to fool Elvina, was that he was turned around so she could change. He was only in his underpants at this point. Voice vented some of his rage into his cuffs. Causing the metal to melt. As the metal melted, Voice made sure to grab the gem. There was no way he would get another gem like this one. Most likely, since they were so rare, it was two of a kind. Elvina accepted the clothes without protest. She quickly equipped them. She felt somewhat better, once her body was properly covered. Voice made the metal cuffs fall apart, grabbing the gem when it fell to the ground. Voice forced himself to clam down. An angry mind, is a clouded mind. He had promised himself in the past, that if he were ever angry enough to kill he would keep calm and calculating. It was the best way to ensure victory. If he had been a bit less emotional Paul might have went from a business owner, to the owner of a six-foot hole. Voice pictured the Elite Slaver Warrior, as if he was Paul. Suddenly a rush of adrenaline pumped through his veins. He couldn¡¯t help the malicious smile that crept across his lips. He turned around when Elvina told him he could look again, his smile forced into nothingness. Voice nodded at her appearance. Voice disguised himself as a slaver. He elicited no reaction from Elvina. ¡°What do I look like to you?¡± Voice asked to be sure. Elvina had seen the shift, so already knew it was still him. ¡°You look like a perverted thug, why?¡± Voice nodded. That confirmed his theory, although she could have left out the perverted part. He knew he could disguise himself, but he didn¡¯t know if he could look like certain people, or a group of people. Now he knew he couldn¡¯t. ¡°Good, now listen closely.¡± Voice told her plan A-1. His opinion was that each plan needed to have several paths to success, only when they were all exhausted or destroyed would you go to plan B-1. The plan was simple to start with. They would need to lure two guards down. After killing both of the guards, they would take the slaver outfits for themselves. Voice would disguise both of them, making it look like they were part of the slavers. The only question was how. Voice didn¡¯t know the exact location of the cave they were in. He knew they were probably below the city proper, but that was all. Luckily, he had a repository for that kind of information. He spent the next hour learning all about the city. Its natural strengths, anything that might be able to be used as a weakness, the layout of the entire city, even down to the arrangement of the rooms in each house. He also learned all of her, woefully insignificant, knowledge about the slavers. He also learned the reason Elvina lost the city was that Evan had been guard captain. She had allowed him in, but when she was predisposed one night, he let all of his slaver friends have the run of the city. After thoroughly grilling Elvina, Voice changed his plans a bit. He had not known about several of the secrets she had told him about. His plans were focused on how to maneuver through the city he had seen while walking to the slaver king. He reduced his Magical Iron Stomach to 5 m/s (mana per second). Once his mana was full, he set out to accomplish the plan. The duo headed outside of the cave. Voice went first; to make sure the coast was clear. He sent a tendril of wind to Elvina to say it was. The cave had about twenty feet of solid rock until it met water. The above and to the sides of the cave, was a large cliff. The cliff was roughly 30 feet high. Voice noticed a trial that the slavers most likely followed. Elvina said she heard voices about six times a day, enter the cave. The voices seemed to come at regular intervals. The next one was soon. Voice had Elvina hid around the corner of the cave. It was dusk. The sun was setting directly ahead and to the right, as Voice exited the cave. It looked like the sunrise would be covered up by the cave itself. If this Evan fellow had any kind of sense, he would make the patrols go from my right to my left. That way they would have the sun to their backs, if they ever got into a sudden fight. Because of this, Voice made Elvina hide on the side that he thought they wouldn¡¯t come from. Voice kept watch, waiting for the guards to arrive. It didn¡¯t take long. Voice heard the voices approach. They were coming from the side Elvina was hiding behind. SHIT! Voice saw the two people walking towards Elvina¡¯s position, not deviating from their usual path. Voice thought of a semi-plausible solution. He raised an earth orb hemisphere around her. He had to constantly feed it mana, or else it would fall apart. His mana was quickly diminishing, while the guards were slowly walking towards her. If his idea didn¡¯t work there was no doubt that they would kill her. He frowned as the slaver took their time to get to Elvina. They seemed to be deliberately walking slowly. Voice¡¯s mana was at the halfway point, and they had 35 out of the 60 feet left! Gotta think of something. He sat down, and closed his eyes. Either was Elvina was going to be seen, at least this way had a higher chance of success. He started meditating. He didn¡¯t know whether he could meditate while using magic, but if he managed to do it he would be able to keep the wall of earth longer. He started his meditation. His mana regen quickly doubled. It was at a total of 33.8, after his stomach that was 28.8. The orb took 40 magic per second. Now he would only lost about 11, instead of 30, that is if it worked. He kept his inspect focused on the sound of footsteps. They didn¡¯t seem to be picking up the pace, so in all likelihood it had worked. He tensed up as he heard the footsteps get only a few feet away. ¡°¡­lieve that Evan would have us watching for a trap here. I mean what the hell does he expect to happen?¡± As soon as Voice heard the word happen, he knew the slavers could almost see him. He put up another earth barrier to block their view of him. As he heard the foot steps start to take longer to get to him, he smiled. 5th weakness: Don¡¯t notice when things are out of place. He reduced his barrier to nothing by stopping the flow of mana to it.
Unnamed Slaver One Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health:310/310Stamina:310/310
Unnamed Slaver Two Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health:310/310Stamina:310/310
Fucking newbs. Voice didn¡¯t have any weapons, so he snuck up to the two slow moving slavers. He pictured two earth lances. The two lances started forming. It was quite a bit of work to keep the pictures perfectly in his mind. It only took about two seconds to form both. Two seconds Voice was worried would allow the slavers to turn around. With a surge of mana, he sent one through each slaver.
Unnamed Slaver One Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health:210/310Stamina:310/310
Unnamed Slaver Two Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health:240/310Stamina:310/310
¡°GAH!¡± They seemed to scream in unison. Voice cursed, knowing these two had just attracted other guards. Voice didn¡¯t have enough time to create any more earth lances. Two seconds of concentration was a lot to ask when fighting two enemies. They turned around to face him. Twins? The two guards had the exact same face, and body build. Voice used his last burst of mana to throw fireballs at both slavers. They were underpowered in comparison to the spell, but he only sent a thought of ¡®hot fire ball¡¯ at them. It worked though. With more howling, the slavers¡¯ health was dropping.
Unnamed Slaver One Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health: 100/310Stamina:310/310
Unnamed Slaver Two Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health:120/310Stamina:310/310
They had the burn effect, but Voice was out of mana. He was sure reinforcements were only seconds away. His earth barrier had dropped into nothingness. Elvina went to work as soon as she was let out. She used her highest ranking Water Spell. A water dragon came out of the river beside her. It was about twice as large as Elvina in height, and four in waist. It was clear blue, and had the occasional bubble forming in its body. Its tail never left the water. The dragon saw its targets, and instantly consumed them. The skin, and meat were cleanly shaved off of both bandits. Its clear blue water, turned crimson with blood. The only thing left of the slavers, was bones and equipment. He dived back into the river. Elvina was panting. ¡°*Pant Pant* Sorry, that takes a *Pant* a lot out of me.¡± Voice was still wide eyed at this turn of events. He had freed some water badass. Guess she¡¯s not the chosen of Undine for nothing. Voice made a mental not to ever get on her bad side. He might come back to life after being eaten, but it would hurt like hell while he was being eaten. At least the over sized water orb left the clothes. Voice chuckled. He picked up the two sets of clothes. He handed one to Elvina. ¡°Here, you will need to put this over the clothes I gave you. Also when you are done I am going to try to disguise you.¡± As she put the clothes over her, Voice did the same. His suit of armor was nothing in comparison to his chainmail, but it would have to do. At least this bandit had two daggers, not that Voice could use them well. Elvina said he could turn around again. She looked completely out of place in the outfit. Voice almost laughed, until he remembered why the clothes were so baggy. Voice made her look more evil, and powerful. It seemed as though his disguise skill had a lot of restrictions. He couldn¡¯t make her look any bulkier than a ¡®slim¡¯ build. Voice looked at one of the slavers. He activated his ring.
Warning! Target body cannot be fully resurrected by the spell Complete Raise Undead. If Complete Raise Undead spell is used, the target will be resurrected as with Raise Higher Skeleton.
Voice didn¡¯t know what a higher skeleton was, but he thought it¡¯d be a waste not to use the ring in this situation. He used the ring.
Spell Bonus! Complete Raise Undead has detected twin signatures in the area. Twin Higher Skeletons summoned. Both twins raised for no additional cost.
Free minions? I think yes! The bones of the two skeletons started stitching themselves together. First the toes were reformed, then the feet, so on and so on. As the skeletons started forming higher parts, the bones started using the already completed sections as ladders. It ended when both skulls finally sat upon their respective necks. Voice didn¡¯t get a choice in setting the permissions.
Twin Higher Skeleton One Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health: 155/155Stamina: N/A
Loyal To:Voice0fReason
Twin Higher Skeleton Two Level 21 Slaver Guard
Health: 155/155Stamina: N/A
Loyal To:Voice0fReason
Higher Skeletons can completely revive while at least one bone remains intact, even if hp reaches 0. During the day, undead lose 50% of all stats.
Wait if a lesser version is this powerful, HOW POWERFUL IS THAT FUCKING BIRD GUY I SUMMONED!? Voice started to think he might have gotten a better deal than he first understood. If these guys could regenerate completely from just a bone, then what could Mavlos do with his new body? Voice decided to figure it out later. He could always go to Mirror¡¯s realm whenever he wanted. He sat down to regen a bit of mana. He knew more slavers would be coming soon, but if he couldn¡¯t fight them, then he would die anyway. He told his skeletons to guard the area. Elvina watched with them. She sat down to watch though; her stamina was excessively low after imprisonment. Her stamina regen wasn¡¯t any better. After only running a few feet she was already winded. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Voice looked at his notifications while he meditated.
Meditative Casting Current Level: Novice Level 1 00.00% This skill was created by casting magic while meditating. This skill allows you to cast magic while meditating more easily. This skill can only be used while meditating. The higher the level, the more easily you will be able to cast magic while meditating. You level this skill by casting magic while meditating.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Magical Mastery. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Magical Mastery? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes.¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Magical Mastery. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Magical Mastery. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Magical Master. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you meditate enough to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
Magical Mastery Current Level: Novice Level 16 Exp 10.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Mana Affinity, Deceptive Aura, Meditate, and Meditative Casting. You are slowly becoming the master of all things arcane. With diligent study and practice, you may be able to better master the arcane world. The higher the level the better you will be able manipulate mana. To level this skill you must level up Mana Affinity, Deceptive Aura, or Meditate. The maximum rank this skill can be is determined by (intelligence/50).
After letting his mana completely regen, it was time to start. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s do this!¡± With his new disposable pawns, it would be even easier to conquer this quest. He altered his plans slightly. With two more ¡®people¡¯ add to the equation, the amount and types of operations they could do expanded exponentially. Since his skeletons would be twice as powerful during the night, he decided to wait for another few hours. Neither of his skeletons had any armor or weapon. He decided to fix that. He took one of his skeletons inside. He was going to cover the skeleton¡¯s bones with iron. Voice smiled. With this it should be excessively defensive. Voice started meditating again. He pictured iron coating the bones of the skeleton. He pictured the iron flowing, like water, over the entirety of the bones. Over the course of 60 seconds, Voice spent a total of 2000 mana to coat less than two feet of the skeleton. He managed to create a new spell, but¡­ it wasn¡¯t what he had hoped.
You have created a new spell: Iron Coat.
Iron Coat The user selects one target to coat in iron. This iron has no adverse effects to the thing coated other than added weight (unless weak to iron). The size of the iron is ((x + (metal affinity/100)) * Aura) square inches, where x equals initial mana used. The thickness of this coat is y, where y is chosen by the user. Y increases the initial mana used. For every inch covered, x increases by 10. For every inch of thickness y increases by 10. X must be in totals of 10. The base spell cost for this spell is x*y mana per second. Less mana is required for initial startup with higher metal affinity.
You have created a new spell. You can record this spell in an empty spell book. Only the person that created this spell, or someone he gave permission to, can create spell books for it. Once the creator of the spell can no longer make spell books, the one that is most proficient can create spell books based on this spell.
After regaining his mana again, he started using the spell. The mana crystals activated when he cast. He put the crystals far enough away, to where he could activate his spell. This time it worked. He noticed that after coating just one square inch of bone, his mana already showed the signs of constant decrease. He wouldn¡¯t even be able to hold this one square inch for more than a eleven seconds. Reading over the description again, Voice had an idea. He decreased the thickness of the iron he coated the skeleton with. By decreasing the depth to half an inch, he was able to double the amount of area covered. If he made it less than 1/10 of an inch, the area he could cover rose dramatically. In order to cover the entire skeleton, and still have mana regen, the metal had to be so thin it became brittle. Shit. I really thought this would be a good idea. Even though the experiment was a failure, he had learned some valuable information. If he could coat only one square inch of something, he could make the iron super thick. Although the weight would be concentrated on one small area. He sent Elvina a party invite, before setting out. She accepted right away. He tried disguising his skeletons, but they just ended up looking like different skeletons. Voice decided to let them remain how they were originally. Fighting one¡¯s dead comrade might negatively affect morale after all. Voice closed his eyes, and searched for the earth mana in the cave. The mana flows were blockier than other types. They were also more robust. Voice traced the mana as far as he could. He watched as the mana connected to the city above. He measured different mana flows, and finally figured out which ones he needed to use. Voice spent the next several minutes weakening the entrance to the cave. He created tiny fissures that ran along the walls and ceiling. Cracks started forming after only four minutes. As the cracks formed, Voice shepherded them into an arch form. The arch was the boundary of what he wanted to collapse. Voice collapsed six feet of cave from the entrance. It would at least take the slavers a while to deal with all of the debris. Voice found it odd that no other slavers came to help their comrades, but decided it was for the best. The entrance to the cave collapsed with a resounding *CRASH! The city above could feel a large tremor come from below.
For thinking of a way to destroy a part of a necessary structure, without destabilizing the city structure you have gained 15 intelligence.
Voice noted the lack of repair the cave was in. So, if I directly manipulate the mana already in the ground, my earth magic will stay? He tried it out. Instead of creating an earth wall using his own mana, he used his mana to force the earth mana in the ground to sprout. He used the same amount of mana he usually used for creating the earth orb. It took a lot more concentration to make the orb, but the result was awe inspiring. His normal orb had a total earth volume of about 5ft cubed. Not a lot, but it took up a lot of mana. Voice was concentrating on the mana in the earth. He corralled the mana into the shape he wished. He forced it into the air, in the shape of a wall. After about ten seconds of Voice concentrating, the ground near where he designated the wall to come out, started to shake slightly. Slowly, ever so slowly, a bit of earth elevated itself above the rest. In only a few seconds after that a wall sprung forth. If it wasn¡¯t night the wall would have blocked out the sun. It stood at 10 feet high, 10 feet thick, and 10 feet wide. Now let¡¯s do a little bit of math. If his normal orb was 5 feet cubed, then it had a volume of 125 cubic feet. His new wall, on the other hand, had a volume of 1000 cubic feet. For the same amount of mana, with a little added concentration, he had multiplied the volume of his earth shield by 8. Not to mention it wouldn¡¯t dissipate when he let go of the mana! MUWAHAHAHA! Fear me world! As he spent a little bit of time admiring his work, he realized this would be the perfect way to create his city. All he would have to do is will the mana to create the house. He would need to do a lot of studying though. He wasn¡¯t that proficient in civil engineering, but he knew that he would need to make the house stable. If he didn¡¯t then even if it was built with magic, it would just fall in on itself. He didn¡¯t plan on killing his citizens, as long as there wasn¡¯t a reason to. Voice forced the earth mana back into the ground. That was actually even more difficult to do. He had to push earth out of the way, and reconstruct it as he went. He decided to try out some darkness spells. He already had an idea of what it felt like, thanks to Necrosis. He concentrated on sending out dark tendrils into the air. He gasped as it succeeded. He honestly thought he would fail. He didn¡¯t know what those tentacle looking things did, but more weapons was always nice. It turned out that while Voice was using the darkness mana, it was visible to the world. When he was done he looked at his notices.
For learning to control the natural mana in the world, you have leveled up Force Mage. Force Mage is now level ten. Upgrade possible!
For learning all eight types of magic, and reaching Force Mage level 10, you can become the sub-class of Force Mage: Mana Mage. Would you like to become a Mana Mage? If you decline you will not be able to unlock the sub-class Mana Mage.
FUCK. I wish I could see what it does! Last time I lost the ability to use spells I didn¡¯t make! Voice was excited and skeptical at the same time. Force Mage was already a rare class. If he became a sub-class, then no one would be able to tell what class he really had. That could help him in a lot of ways. Yes¡­, he said with only slight reluctance.
Mana Mage level 1 For using the power of your imagination to cause a spell you have unlocked the class Force Mage. For harnessing the flows of mana that occur in the world you have unlocked the sub-class Mana Mage. You may use any magic that you can perfectly recreate. You may now use the mana in the world around you to fuel your spells. Using mana from Solun requires concentration. Less concentration is required as you level up in Mana Mage. You can no longer use magic designed by others except in special circumstances, this includes spells learned from spell books. All fairies you summon, or have summoned, are infused with mana. These Mana Fairies can now tap directly into the mana of their element. You can use all types of magic. The higher level your Force Mage class is the more control over force magic you have. At lower levels you will not be able to use force magic to be as precise as later levels. The higher level Mana Mage class you have, the more control over mana in the surrounding area you have. Mana Mage levels stack with Force Mage levels, for purposes of precision. This class increases in levels as you use learn more about mana, and how to control it. You can recreate any magic that has been put into a magic book, but you must learn to do the magic by feeling and imagination. Mana Mage is a second tier class, out of four.
Mana Mages have the natural ability to manipulate mana. While concentrating you can block some, or all, magic that is within a certain distance of you. While meditating Mana Mages can absorb nearby mana to exponentially speed up mana purification. You must absorb all eight types of mana to fully purify your mana.
Due to becoming a Mana Mage, your Meditation skill has been upgraded to Adept.
The rank of the Group Skill: Magical Mastery is more than 1 rank below Meditate. Meditate has increased the rank of this skill by 1. Group Skill: Magical Mastery has increased by 9 levels. Group Skill: Magical Mastery cannot exceed Apprentice rank, until Mana Affinity has become at least Adept rank.
He spent the next hour perfecting his darkness magic. Specifically he was trying to learn how to coat himself in darkness. Since it was cloudy, and a new moon, tonight, it would be easier to hide if he were covered in darkness. Instead of sending out tendrils of darkness, he made the darkness mana swirl around him. As the night wore on, he noted how darkness mana seemed to seep out of the shadows. Voice had to actually concentrate to see the tendrils of mana. This was most likely the reason he had not really seen it before. No doubt light mana was the same. The darker the shadow, the more concentrated the tendril of mana would be. It was always in a tendril shape. Voice borrowed some mana from these shadows. He thought the shadows would dissipate, but they did not. Instead, when he would go too far away from the shadows, the mana would return to it. Experimenting with this was quite fun. While Elvina was perpetually stressing about slavers coming, Voice nonchalantly learned about the power of darkness. Voice learned that he could even draw darkness mana from his own shadow. Although when he did that, he felt as if something was pulling at his insides. It was very disconcerting, so he stopped. He tried casting two forms of magic at the same time, using the mana surrounding him, but the mana threads became tangled. The spell failed by coating him in a darkness liquid. While Voice was finishing his experiments with darkness magic, the skeletons warned him of another group of two slavers coming his way. Perfect. I needed a bit of practice before going in for the real thing. Voice hid Elvina in an orb of earth, this time using the mana the earth itself provided for him. The semi-orb solidified around her. Voice instructed his skeletons to stand down for now. Voice cloaked himself in the darkness that the cliff face provided. It was a substantial amount. He pushed himself as close to the cliff as possible. The two slavers walked right past him. He had to stop himself from giving an evil laugh.
Kretchof Level 23 Slaver Guard
Health:330/330Stamina:310/310
Malkov Level 20 Slaver Guard
Health:300/300Stamina:310/310
Voice released the darkness mana surrounding him. He used his own mana to create two earth spears, each with a diameter of no more than two inches. The two spears each had a one-way barbed tip, simple to produce but devastating when pulled from the victim. Using the mana around him took too long to be useful right now. With a pulse of mana, he sent both spears shooting at the two slavers.
Kretchof Level 23 Slaver Guard
Health:220/330Stamina:310/310
Malkov Level 20 Slaver Guard
Health:50/300Stamina:310/310
It seemed like Voice had hit a vital spot for one of the guards. He ran up to them after creating a large gust of wind. The wind went straight from the slavers, to the ocean. That way the screaming would at least be muffled. He pulled both spears out of the confused, and in pain, slavers.
Kretchof Level 23 Slaver Guard
Health:140/330Stamina:310/310
Malkov died, while Kretchof was wounded heavily. Kretchof turned around to fight the sneaking bastard that did this. Voice had already struck each spear through one of Kretchof¡¯s legs. They each went through one of his calves, then into a foot, finally burying their tips in the ground. Voice was surprised by how easy it was to do. His strength wasn¡¯t that high. It almost seemed like the earth spears wanted to do his bidding. Kretchof cried in agony, but it was drowned out by the wind. Voice easily finished the man off, by using one of his daggers to slit his throat. After slitting the man¡¯s throat Voice leveled up. He decided to save his points for now. He released the mana being consumed by the spears. The timer on his ring was up. That meant he could summon another corpse. He instantly chose to summon this slaver. For every second he waited he would spend another 10 health. He gave life to the corpse. After the magic was done he let Elvina out. She noticed the number of thralls had increased, but chose not to say anything about the use of dark magic. If she was going to take her city back, she would need all the help she could get. ¡°You know, you should be more suspicious of people. The reason Evan was able to beat you was that you were too trusting.¡± Elvina nodded, but at this point there was nothing she could do about it. Without his help, the city would be forever in Evan¡¯s grasp. Voice shook his head. He set the restrictions in his undead. He decided it was time to move. Alright! Got some new skills, learned some new stuff about mana, even got a new class! Let¡¯s kill these fuckers! Voice and Elvina set out with the skeletons in tow. Night had already descended; the sun¡¯s last rays of light all but forgotten. Voice instructed the skeletons to show them the path they normally took to patrol, and to point out any points where other guards would normally see them. The skeletons did this, but could not talk. They only pointed when they were coming to a path that others would see them at. Given that it was night time, Voice was worried as to whether they would be able to get to the city without making too much sound. Being heard at night was as bad being seen during the day. Voice had, what seemed to him, the perfect plan. When the skeletons pointed out where other guards were, Voice moved into action. The first man was after the cliff became walkable. It was a steep path straight up, but most people could handle it. Voice saw the man standing on a fairly large stone, no doubt to be able to see more. This was one of the places Elvina had stationed her guards. If that was the case then each guard could see two others, and be seen by two others. He never changed the direction he was facing. Voice felt the darkness around himself. He watched where the shadows connected to each other. He had to stay in close proximity to the shadows for his cloak to work. Voice knew there were many slavers on this river island. It¡¯s so sad. When the slavers got this new source of food (slaves), they began to overpopulate. I hate killing, but I need to thin the numbers. If I don¡¯t then they might go extinct. Voice ¡®sadly¡¯ nodded to himself. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Health100Mana1150
Stamina350
Level34Current TitleSurgeon
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec16.9 (11.9)
Stamina Regen/Sec4.9
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence115
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma20Compassion75
Leadership36Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points5
Fame700
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00% Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% Automatic Dissection Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 37 Exp 10.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 15 Exp 6.67% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 25 Exp 4.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44% Group Skill: Survival Novice Level 20 Exp 60.00% Group Skill: Combat Learning Novice Level 17 Exp 24.56%
Affinities Window
Light60
Water35
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth25
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 34: How to Beat a Slaver I''ve been thinking about changing the POV to permanently be from Voice. What do you guys think? The story is obviously focused on him, but it would be more like he was telling the story. I''ve realized i can make a lot more character depth that way. Or would it be to difficult to change the way you read it? If you guys want, i can also just try it out for a chapter. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice escaped the sewer. He killed several slavers, and earned a new class. He also learned a bit about manipulating the mana that permeated Solun. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Voice cloaked himself with the shadows. Since the sentry couldn¡¯t see him, he had ample time to act. He plotted out a path that connected to the man, the path he chose had shadows connecting all the way to the man. Once Voice was confident of his cloak and path, he started to slowly move forward. His mana was draining at a slow but steady rate. The dark mana cloak only cost about 10 mana per second, but he was also using his shoes of air. His biggest concern was making noise, so he thought to fix that. When he used the shoes in the realm of Mirror, they hadn¡¯t produced any sound. He had realized he could use this while he practiced with his darkness mana. Even if he was guiding the darkness mana around himself, he could still use them. He assumed that the shoes worked on a different principle than manipulating mana. After all, no matter how good I become at wind magic, they always take the same amount of mana. Voice stealthily moved toward the sentinel. When he was close enough he deactivated his shoes, and directed a bit of darkness mana to climb up the man. That¡¯s right, Voice had figured out to indecently control two flows of darkness mana. It had its limits though. He could only manipulate a certain amount per second, if he tried to do more it was taken from one of his other ¡®spells¡¯. He also could only do two things at once. Any more and all of the things he was trying to do would fail. Although he felt like he could improve on this, if he trained his concentration. He sent the tendril of darkness up the man¡¯s leg. It was slow moving, so it wouldn¡¯t be conspicuous to the other slaver guards. It finally reached the man¡¯s eyes. The man started fumbling, trying to tear off the obstruction. While flailing about, he fell off his rock. Voice sprang into action. As soon as the man fell to the ground, Voice collected water mana in the air. He had let the darkness magic release. The air, the ground, even the slaver, were all covered in thin lines of water mana. We are in the middle of a river after all. Water slowly circle the slaver¡¯s head. The slaver stood up, unsuspecting of the water coalescing around the back of his head. Well, he has at least some training. The man reached for something inside of his jacket. Fuck. That¡¯s not good. Voice expected some sort of tool to let the others know there was a problem. Voice sped the water collection up. He ended up pouring half of his mana into it in an instant. Suddenly all of the water mana in a five foot area of the slaver disappeared, only to surround the slaver¡¯s entire head. The slave, caught off guard, released a gasp. Bad move, buddy. Voice watched patiently as the slaver tried to free himself of the water ball. He thrashed around for several seconds. The two skeletons stealthily went to the man. As soon as they got there, they held the man down. Feeling the pressure around him, he thrashed more wildly. Should have stayed calm, you can slow your breathing that way. 5th weakness: Can¡¯t think calmly under pressure. Voice had a nice little amount of weaknesses recorded. Honestly he had expected this to be a bit harder, what with it being a goddess given quest and all. Voice shrugged. He did enjoy seeing the slaver thrash around in hopes of escaping. After the man had laid still for several seconds, the group left. Voice had a conversation with Kretchof as he revived him. He took away the undead¡¯s ability to lie to him first off. Kretchof could instinctively feel the dark mana in the world, and could even harness some of it. Without any training, he was capable of casting dark magic up to Adept level. Kretchof could only tell Voice about a few superficial things, since the slavers were not told why to do something. They were only told what to do. He could use ¡®Raise Fresh Corpse¡¯. That was the main reason Voice chose to do what he did. ¡®Raise Fresh Corpse¡¯ was a spell that automatically activated when the user killed any living creature. It would automatically force the corpse to bend to the will of the user, as long as the level of the target didn¡¯t exceed the level of the caster plus 3. The corpse started to decay immediately though, especially during the day. The corpse could only last until it was touched by the sun or for 24 hours, whichever came first. The spell took a permanent 10 mana per level of summoned creature. Voice really wanted that spell. He had been a little sad when he realized he couldn¡¯t ever use it. Since he would have to concentrate on it to activate it, and there was no way to use a spell automatically if you had to concentrate. Still, he was going to try to find something similar later. When Voice was done setting the limits of Kretchof he got a notice.
For declaring full ownership of: Minor Lich Kretchof, Kretchof will benefit from your darkness affinity. Minor Lich Kretchof¡¯s mana is set at ([player mana] * [Darkness Affinity]). Mana set to: 1150.
Minor Lich Kretchof Level 23 Slaver Guard
Health: 330/330Stamina: N/AMana: 1150/1150
Commanded By:Voice0fReason
Voice left when he noted that the man suffered from Apnea. Apnea is when someone stops breathing for a few seconds. It often happened when people were drowning. After making sure the slaver wouldn¡¯t wake up, the group went to the next target. After about thirty seconds Kretchof came and finished the job. He ordered the corpse to follow its normal routine until called upon. Voice¡¯s grouped the next two watchmen. The reason being that if they did, the people watching the next sentinel wouldn¡¯t have seen what they had done. The next woman was looking straight out at the sea, although she could still see two other people. Voice didn¡¯t even conceal the group while they walked this way. The sentinel in charge of watching this area had been taken care of already by Voice. The woman was again standing on a small tower made of stone. Voice pushed her off of the tower with a large gust of wind. When she fell to the ground Voice covered her head in a water orb. She flailed around just like the guy before. Too easy. Voice was getting a little over confident. Hold on. Don¡¯t get too cocky. Pride comes before the fall and all that. After another few minutes the lady was down. Unfortunately for the group, this was going to be the last ¡®easy kill¡¯ of the island. All of the other sentinels watched each other in too complex of a web. Voice left the girl to Kretchof. Then next step of the plan was much harder. After hiding for a while, they needed to follow the path to the River-Gate. The River-Gate was a place that allowed for boats docking. It ran under the city, like the sewer system, but was housed on the inside of a giant cave. The cave allowed for even galleons to dock. The gate could be lifted or lowered by a simple lever on the inside. The gate had a small stone pathway on each side of the tunnel. The reason they killed those two specific guards, was that the second person had the only line of sight to the River-Gate from the angle they would be attempting to get in through. The first had a job to do in step 3. Voice covered the entire group in a shadow wall. It was intended to just disrupt the view of the only guard that could see them for a few seconds. After that they would be in the area only the lady they killed could see. The group made it to the river gate unaccosted. Voice looked inside the gate. Two guards stood watch. They were standing beside a door, which was right next to the lever. Shit! Elvina said there¡¯d only be one! Ugh. Can¡¯t trust anyone nowadays. Voice knew it wasn¡¯t her fault the slaver put extra personnel here, but even one mistake could lead to the failing the quest. Voice really wanted to succeed. Voice focused on the metal mana in the air. The gate itself made it hard to look past it, but Voice persevered. He was trying to flip the lever from his position, about thirty feet away. He finally managed to pick the presence up, but could not manipulate it. Even after expending all of his mana. The group waited for Voice¡¯s mana to regenerate. There were two more options at this point. First Voice was going to try to bend the metal of the gate itself. This would make a lot less sound, but he would eventually need to fix it. If he left it bent it could cost the city its security. The third option was to destroy one of the skeletons, but throw the last bone inside the gate. That would be a dead giveaway to the people watching, that something was happening. Voice concentrated on the mana in the gate. Elvina said it had been enchanted to be resistant to magic, she wasn¡¯t lying. The mana in the gate seemed to constantly repulse any mana he sent towards it. He could send mana past it, but not target it. After several fruitless minutes Voice had to come up with some other idea. He really didn¡¯t want the skeleton to reform in front of two people. Voice tried to heat the bars up, but to no avail. Voice shrugged. He nodded to Elvina. Elvina took one of the bones from one of the skeletons. Voice decided to try out some new sort of magic. He created a cube around the skeleton that was missing a bone. After the cube was created, he forced the walls to shrink. The walls became smaller, and thicker, every instant. After only a few seconds of shrinking, the skeleton inside was crushed into bone meal. Elvina pushed the bone through the gate, at the same time that Voice pushed the bone meal into his pocket. Alchemy ingredient? Guess I¡¯ll find out. As Voice pocketed the bone dust, it began to disappear. Awww. The bone dust began to pour onto the ground. As soon as a piece of dust hit the ground, it would start moving towards the whole bone. The dust began to fly around the bone, and to form more bones. One of the guards noticed it and pulled out a whistle. He blew the whistle as soon as it touched his lips. The guard that didn¡¯t blow the whistle, ran into the door they were guarding. Hurry Skele! Voice urged his skeleton to quicken its regeneration pace. Voice sent the ok to Kretchof. He heard another whistle from far away. It was the first guard Kretchof killed. His job was causing an uproar to provide cover for Voice and co. The slaver that blew the whistle saw the bone being formed by the surrounding white dust. He drew his short sword, and attacked. He slashed at the dust repeatedly, only to have the dust reform a moment later. Seeing this tactic fail, he went for the bones themselves. As he slashed the bones, they came back together. He couldn¡¯t keep up with the speed of regeneration. As the slaver attacked, Voice forced a massive amount of water mana to circle the man¡¯s head. The man moved realizing some magic was being cast at him. Voice had to move all of the water mana towards the man. Since the man kept moving away from it, Voice was having trouble. It took a long time to move the slow water mana. Luckily Voice didn¡¯t have to wait long. The man tripped as he saw the small water ball following from behind. The skeleton had finished regenerating, and went to the lever. The slaver jumped towards it, he knew that if the skeleton opened the gate that something bad would happen. Even if he didn¡¯t see Voice and his crew outside. Voice heard a multitude of whistles go off at once. Voice didn¡¯t know if that was Kretchof¡¯s distraction or not, but he decided they had to hurry. The slaver blanched for just a second as he heard the whistles blow. That was all the time the skeleton needed to pull the lever. The slaver rushed to the lever, trying to close it before anyone got through. The skeleton blocked his way. Voice dispelled his water ball, and dashed towards the slaver with daggers drawn. Voice¡¯s other skeleton did the same, while Elvina went to shut the gate. With the small distraction Voice provided, his two skeletons decimated the man. They didn¡¯t pay attention to any injury they incurred. Skele A was to the right of the slaver, Skele B to the left. The slaver slashed at Skele A with his dagger in his right hand. Skele B grabbed his hand before the knife connected. The slaver pushed Skele B, Skele A grabbed that arm before the hand connected. The slaver had both of his hands pulled on the opposite side of his body. The slaver went to kick Skele A, but Skele A jumped and wrapped its legs around the slaver¡¯s waist. Seeing the fun, Skele B jumped. It twisted its body to wrap its legs around the slavers neck, with its head pointed to the ground. The slaver feinted after only a few seconds of no air. Voice watched the entire thing with amusement. He went over and slashed the slavers throat for good measure. Ancestor spoke to Voice. ¡°Your inspect skill says you can hear three guards running this way.¡± Thanks, I didn¡¯t know you could actively see my skills though. Ancestor mentally shrugged. Voice took the advanced notice, and used it to his advantage. Focusing on the earth mana on the stone floor, he created a small ramp from the door to the water. After he was done he had barely enough time to make a little water go up it from the river. Three burly men ran through the door with swords drawn. Three burly men slipped on the unexpected wet ramp in front of the door. Three burly men were pushed by Voice¡¯s wind mana into the water. Three burly men were thrashing as two skeletons dragged them to the bottom of the river. Three burly men died a pitiful death by drowning. Voice raised the ramp back up as they waited for his skeletons. The skeletons climbed out of the river. It was almost like watching the dead rise from their graves. The crew went through the door, and into the city proper. Voice really wished he had his staff, but nothing could be done about that at this point. When they exited the small hallway, they noticed a fight in the streets. Two slavers were slashing at each other with short swords. Voice saw that the two were under the effects of ¡®minor compulsion¡¯. It didn¡¯t matter though, as long as he got his revenge it was ok. Voice wished he could start a fire to incite mayhem, but all of the thatched roofing had already been burned away. Elvina was out of breath again, so the group had to wait. Voice ordered the two skeletons to go on a killing spree, but only kill slavers. If they had eyes, Voice was sure they would be gleaming. After Elvina had rested a while, Voice reminded her of the next part of the plan. ¡°Alright. I¡¯m going to call Kretchof over. When he gets here, we are going to make a dash for the castle. I¡¯m going to have Kretchof raise as many undead as he can during the dash.¡± Elvina nodded. She hated the idea of dark magic being used in her city, but she rationalized it well. If it¡¯s only slavers that we will kill anyway, it doesn¡¯t matter. Right? Elvina was very conflicted, but she still had no hope of victory without Voice¡¯s help. After Elvina had caught her breath, they continued forward. Voice saw his two skeletons nearby. They each had a short sword, and were fighting one opponent together. Seeing them contort while remaining in a perfect position to attack astonished Voice. They could be Olympic gymnasts or something! Voice made a mental note to have at least several skeleton guards around his city. Of course he could only do that without Mar¡¯s knowledge, so they couldn¡¯t be too close. He would probably station them in a nearby forest. The best situation would be if I could build a city in a small clearing in a forest. Instead of making a dash to the castle, Voice and Elvina had to stick to the shadows. Elvina was in no shape to run for any length to time. Voice cloaked her, and himself, in shadows. They went as quickly as Elvina could stand. Voice even had to carry her a few times. They arrived at the castle in only an hour¡¯s time of sneaking. The city was in turmoil. While they were sneaking to the castle. Voice was happy to see it. Slavers were killing each other left and right. Some slaves were occasionally caught up in the fighting, but for the most part, they didn¡¯t interfere. Most slaves didn¡¯t have enough will power to fight anymore. Sometimes when a slaver was killed, the body would explode in a green/black mana explosion. Anything touched by the explosion would start losing health. Poisonous Corpse Explosion!? I have GOT to learn that! Voice made a mental note to force Kretchof to teach him all of his dark magic. When the corpse didn¡¯t explode, Kretchof would some come up to it. He would cast some resurrect spell, and the body would go do his bidding. When Voice got close enough to the castle he sent a message out to all of his undead. ¡°Gather at the castle! Kill anyone in the way, but GATHER AT THE CASTLE!¡± The undead, after finishing off any enemy they were fighting, started walking slowly to the castle. Some of the more decayed ones shambled. This wasn¡¯t a powerful force, and didn¡¯t have enough numbers to really take on anything big, but they were good for a distraction. By the time Voice had made it to the castle, many undead were already gathered. They were banging on the wooden door, demanding entrance. The slaves saw this travesty, but were to scared to do anything other than hide in their homes. Good thing too, the undead had orders to kill anything in their path. The undead were attacking the door, while Kretchof casted his withering magic on it. Since it was made mostly of wood it could be made to wither after enough time. Voice made steps to the top floor of the castle. He was standing right beside the wall, so didn¡¯t hide himself. They would be looking too closely at this point anyway. He forced part of the castle to come out, forming a small step. It was just big enough to hold one person. Every time he made a step, he would step on it and make the next. He heard the wooden castle gate break apart under the onslaught of the undead. The castle shook slightly. It almost shook enough to throw Voice off, but he casted wind to push him against the wall. Luckily Elvina managed to save herself from falling off. Voice had to stop once to regain his mana. During his break he got a message from Kretchof. ¡°Master, we are being decimated, what do I do? At this rate we won¡¯t be able to stall them for very long.¡± ¡°Make the undead with the lowest level sacrifice themselves with the poisonous corpse explosion, while the rest fall back. Heal up, and raise the undead I¡¯ll prepare for you.¡± Voice sent a message to his two skeletons. ¡°Gather the bodies of slavers for Kretchof to use. After that kill any slavers in the city that is still alive, and bring back those bodies. I want a steady flow for him to resurrect.¡± A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Voice continued up the castle. If anyone looked at the side of the castle, they would see a direct line of stone steps that led to the third floor from the ground. The head slaver is most likely sleeping in Elvina¡¯s old room, since it¡¯s the most ¡®luxurious¡¯ one in town. It took Voice half an hour to actually make enough steps to ascend to the third floor. When they finally got to the room, Voice noticed the glass window was locked from the inside. He shook his head as he coated his hand in a small amount of iron. He punched the window, and cleared out enough of it to squeeze through. He released the fist, and healed himself from glass cuts after getting in the room. He healed Elvina when he saw the cuts on her. His Sense Mana Crystal, part of inspect was triggered. He could see that three rooms down, was a large amount of Mana Crystals. ¡°I think he might be in the room three rooms to our left.¡± Elvina shook her head. ¡°My room was two to our right, and across the hall.¡± ¡°Well I just have a feeling we need to check that room out. Are you coming or not?¡± Voice knew he was being more pushy than he needed, but this whole thing had drained him of any patience. He had already spent more than a day as a slave to these damn slavers. Voice went up to the door, and listened for footsteps and breathing. Several people were running towards where the stairs to the throne room were. He continued listening. He heard shallow breathing from the right side of the door. The door opened left, so someone wanted to get a backstab in. Voice concentrated. He used his own mana to form an earth orb around the attackers. He forced a small hole, and sent all of the water mana he could into it. After he was out of mana he stopped. He made sure he had just enough to close the hole. He waited forty seconds, the amount of time until his mana fully regenerated while he meditated. While meditating he absorbed some water mana in the air. He noticed the air started to get dryer, and slightly harder to breathe in. He purified what water mana he could, in the forty seconds he had. After regenerating all of his mana they left. They opened the door to a stone hallway. Several wooden doors lined both sides. They went to the room Voice had indicated. Voice listened at the door. He didn¡¯t hear anything inside, so he entered. He went to a bookshelf that his inspect indicated. He knocked the bookshelf over. A crude safe was behind it. He opened it by forcing the iron lock into the ¡®opened¡¯ position. Voice was glad he had the time he needed. Although he was getting better, it still took two entire minutes just to force the lock open. Inside was a plethora of Mana Crystals. Voice smiled as he pocketed them all. Elvina was about to speak, the Mana Crystals could benefit this city far more than one man, but she kept silent. If he wanted loot, he was entitled to it. After all, she hadn¡¯t even wanted to come into this room, and he didn¡¯t need to save her in the first place. After taking the crystals Voice received a notice.
You have obtained an entire vein of Mana Crystal. Gnome looks upon you with pride. You gain 5 Earth Affinity.
Voice watched as the Mana Crystals in his inventory floated in front of him. They began twirling around each other. They began to spin on their axis. When the spinning and twirling made the crystals move at an insane speed, the crystals crashed into each other. A small blast of earth mana escaped the blast.
You have obtained Completed Mana Crystal.
Completed Mana Binding Mana Crystal
This crystal absorbs any mana in the form of spells in a ten foot orb around it. Hidden Attribute: Mana Absorption If you consume this Mana Crystal you will absorb 50% of all hostile mana directed at you, including mana not structured in a spell. You must be blessed by Gnome to see this attribute. You must use Gnome¡¯s blessing to consume this Crystal. You are cursed. You cannot currently use Gnome¡¯s blessing.
Voice put the crystal into his inventory. As soon as he finished this island off, he was going to get that extra Earth Affinity. Voice and Elvina went to the Evan¡¯s room. Voice undid the earth orb, and collected a small amount of loot from the slaver.
You have fully dissected Humans. You will deal double damage when against Human opponents.
Voice told Kretchof to put as much heat on the slavers as possible, even if it meant losing his entire undead force. Voice also told the skeleton twins to rush to Kretchof¡¯s aid. When Voice and Elvina walked into her room Evan wasn¡¯t there. What was there, were four semi-attractive looking slave women, ranging from 15 to about 25 years old. They were underfed, and had no souls in their eyes, but at least they were alive. They were completely nude, and each had a metal collar on their necks. The collars were each attached to one of the four bedposts. They bedposts went up several yards. Voice got close to the four. They invited him into the bed, by opening their arms. Voice¡¯s anger flared again. Rapist SWINE! Voice cracked the iron on the collars, allowing the slave girls to run free. They didn¡¯t seem to understand that they could run away. Voice¡¯s face contorted with rage. The four girls shrank back. Voice stalked through the door. Instead of opening the door, he blasted it with the full force of his mana in the form of wind. He yelled at Elvina, ¡°GET ME AS MUCH FLOUR AS YOU CAN! BRING IT TO THE THRONE ROOM!¡± Voice tried to calm himself as he walked, but to no avail. He was pissed, and now Evan was going to suffer even more for it. Voice ran, he ran down two flights of stairs, and saw Evan sitting on the throne. Voice stopped himself from attacking. Voice was hidden in the corner of the throne room. The throne room was about fifty feet by thirty feet. It had pillars that lined the edges, and had a moderately high ceiling. This isn¡¯t going to be like last time, where someone stops me. Voice concentrated on the mana in the room. He had an idea, if it worked it would be gratifying. There was only tiny flares of fire mana, quickly overcome by the massive amount of water mana. Voice concentrated on the water. Earlier when he moved all of the water mana into on area, all of the moisture in the air went with it. He was going to do the same thing here. He told the undead ¡®army¡¯ to move in as far as possible. The fighting between the slavers, and the undead, was intense. Many undead died by the ninja, but they took just as many of the normal slaver warriors with them. Whenever a slaver warrior died, it was instantly resurrected by dark magic. The undead filled the hall by about 20%. It seemed as if every dead slaver in the city was fighting. There were at least a hundred undead attacking the slavers. The slavers only had about thirty left, but half of those were the ninja. The water mana in the room slowly drifted to Voice¡¯s location. First the center of the room dried, then a wider portion. The dry are kept increasing, but it increased slowly. He didn¡¯t even pay attention enough to be surprised by the fact that his mana manipulation stretched much further than it had before. Voice cleared the room out of water mana in about half an hour. All of the slavers in the castle seemed to already be fighting the undead. Evan just watched, as if it were entertainment. None of the slavers were even patrolling the castle anymore. The only reason they had taken the city in the first place, was sheer numbers, and surprise. It damn sure wasn¡¯t the planning! After clearing all of the water out of the room, the slavers started faltering. It had become harder for them to breathe, and their energy seemed to deplete more quickly. Even the ninja people started to kill less quickly. When Voice had finished clearing out the water mana he looked at the fighting. Almost all of the slavers were dead, they only had one fighter and six ninja left. About half of the undead was left. Thank Davros for resurrecting the dead! The main benefit of necromancy was, the more you kill the more battle potential you have. After Voice regenerated his mana, he started injecting fire mana into the room. He imagined the unused, unfiltered, mana leaving his body. He kept that up until his mana was empty. The increased heat of the room, slowed the slaver ninja even more. They only had two ninja left, the one fighter was still there as well. Voice made sure to increase the heat to an unbearable amount. The undead would only rot a little faster, but the slavers would be extremely tired out by fighting in a strange environment. Evan started looking around when he noticed the heat rising. He didn¡¯t leave the chair though. After Voice had filled the air with fire mana three times, Elvina finally showed up. She was huffing, and as soon as she handed him the two sacks of flour, she fell on the floor. Each sack looked to hold at least twenty pounds of flour a piece. The room wasn¡¯t completely filled, only about ten percent, but even that was enough to make Voice and Evan start sweating. Voice took the bags from her after letting his mana regen again. Evan had gotten off the throne, and was walking over to where Voice was. When Voice¡¯s mana reached about half it looked like Evan saw him. Voice stepped out of the shadows, holding the two large sacks of flour on his shoulders. ¡°Hello, Evan. Miss me?¡± Evan looked confused. ¡°Who the hell are you!? You¡¯re not one of my men!¡± Voice had forgotten he was still disguised. He toggled it off. Evan blanched. ¡°How the hell did you get out!?¡± He drew his sword and slowly walked to Voice. ¡°Well,¡± Voice threw a sack at him, using wind mana to accelerate it. He easily sliced it in half, covering himself in flour. The flour puffed into the air, as it slowly floated around. ¡°I broke your little cuffs.¡± Voice showed him his wrists. Evan stopped walking. He gaped at Voice¡¯s bare wrists. ¡°HOW!?¡± Voice threw the other bag when Evan asked that. Evan again cut the bag with ease. The fine powder mixed with the earlier flour. Voice sent a small gust of wind to even the powder out. ¡°Simple. I¡­ am¡­ better¡­ than¡­ yooooou!¡± With that, Voice cast the biggest fire ball he could. As soon as the fire was as big as his head, he threw it at Evan. Bit of science here. Flour, and many other forms of fine powder, are extremely volatile when in the air. Evan smirked as he dodged the clumsily thrown ball of flame. It almost seemed like Voice didn¡¯t want to hit h-, Evan looked back. It was already too late. The fire from Voice¡¯s fire orb had met the fine flour powder in the air. With the air being so warm, and dry, it instantly created a huge explosion. The orb of flame hit the flour. One could seen a thin fiery shockwave appear from where the fireball met the flour. In less than a second the shockwave had encompassed all of the flour. As soon as the shockwave met air with no flour, it exploded. Evan was facing the explosion. Voice casted an earth orb as soon as he let go of the fire ball. His mana was gone, but they would be slightly safer from the fire. The explosion filled the entire room. If Voice¡¯s ears hadn¡¯t been deafened by the explosion, he would have heard the remaining slavers groaning in pain. All but a handful of his undead were gone. The ones that weren¡¯t, were on fire, as were the slavers. The fire caused Voice thirty damage, even with his earth orb. The ambient temperature caused by the explosion caused the orb to turn into an over. Voice let his orb fade away. If he didn¡¯t have the extra water mana cushioning the fire, he might have died even with the orb. Evan was screaming in pain. Voice got quite a bit of satisfaction from that. Beside Evan was a man that seemed to have had his face scarred by fire.
Evan Level 42 Elite Slaver Warrior
Health:740/1240Stamina:860/900
Kronah Level 26 Elite Slaver Body Guard
Health:80/520Stamina:360/360
The fire was causing steady damage to them both, but their health was too high for Voice to win. He had hoped he would at least do enough damage to destroy Evan¡¯s chance at victory. Voice called for his undead, but the ninja were standing up, prepared to lay their lives down to stop the undead. Voice¡¯s skeletons were even being pushed back. Evan stood up. Anger gleamed in his eyes. Voice smiled back. ¡°Sol heal me.¡± Sol didn¡¯t respond. Ancestor spoke to him. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Voice. Since you used a powerful dark artifact, I don¡¯t think your fairy is going to be able to help you for a while. You will most likely have to wait for it to regenerate its power.¡± Voice frowned. His mana manipulation was the only hope he had in winning this battle, but he had to heal himself. His regen speed was too slow. He quickly dumped his unused stat points into int. He healed himself using the mana it gave him. He was full, but only had 20 mana left. He got a message. Not the usual message from the game either.
My beloved Chosen One. I have seen your plight against slavers and undead. I have seen how you sacrifice yourself for others. I grant you a piece of my power.
Light Affinity plus 10.
Mar has given you the ability: Selfless Sacrifice.
Selfless Sacrifice By sacrificing at least one level you cause direct damage to all evil aligned targets around you. You deal full damage to all targets. The damage is equal to your total, health, mana, and stamina times the total levels you sacrifice. Health spent damages health, mana spent damages mana, and stamina spent damages stamina. If mana or stamina damage exceeds individual¡¯s total mana or stamina, the excess amount will damage health. Consumes at least 1 level. You lose all health when this ability is used.
Ancestor summarized the info for Voice. Kronah was already coming in to attack Voice. Kronah sliced at Voice¡¯s chest. His sword cut through bone. Skeleton bone. One of the skeletons had managed to escape the onslaught of the three remaining ninja. The ninja now numbered only two though. One had succumbed to excessive wounds. Voice sent a secret message to his skeletons, and lich. ¡°Get out if you want to live! I¡¯m about to use an ability that might destroy you for good!¡± Voice had no doubt that his mana at least, was higher than the slavers. One of the skeletons, and the lich, ran outside. Voice figured that losing two levels was much better than losing the quest. Although he might still lose the quest for dying. Voice activated Selfless Sacrifice. He used two levels, just to be safe. Suddenly a wave of light blasted through the area. Kronah, the undead, and the two ninja turned into dust. Evan glowed in a golden light.
Evan Level 42 Elite Slaver Warrior
Health:53/1240Stamina:860/900
Evan started laughing. He knew Voice had just lost. ¡°HAHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAAAA!¡± Voice fell to the ground. The last thing he saw was some sort of red blur streak past the entrance door to the throne room. Voice wanted to make the man suffer, but in his state all he could manage was a whisper. ¡°make suffer¡­¡± With that Voice closed his eyes. He didn¡¯t die for several seconds, but he felt his life leaving him. His last thought was that he failed his quest. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 32Health: 100Mana: 1200Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 16.9 (11.9)/sStamina Regen: 4.9/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence120
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma20Compassion75
Leadership36Logic22
Piety59Unused Stat Points5
Fame700
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00% Dissection Novice Level 5 Exp 00.00% Automatic Dissection Novice Level 5 Exp 00.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 39 Exp 11.23% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 15 Exp 46.67% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 9.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44% Group Skill: Survival Novice Level 20 Exp 60.00% Group Skill: Combat Learning Novice Level 17 Exp 24.56%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water35
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 35: Cross After Slavers Since the majority of the votes said to do it from Voice¡¯s POV, or try it, I did it for this chapter. Let me know what you guys think. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice raised an army of undead, by creating a lich, and used them as a distraction to attack the castle. Voice got a really cool Mana Crystal, but didn¡¯t manage to kill Evan the Slaver. Even though he sacrificed himself. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Also 1.2, I updated the map on the cite. Map This map is subject to change at any time. I¡¯ll let you guys know what I did though. I positioned Rand a bit higher to accommodate the space that would logically be there. The door to the pod opened. I laid down for a moment, starring at the ceiling. It seems like every time I fight an enemy that has any modicum of power, I end up dying. That¡¯s fine, at least it didn¡¯t say I failed the quest. ¡­ Come to think of it, it didn¡¯t say I completed it either. ¡°UGH! And what was with that damn red blur anyway? If that bitch stole my mother fucking quest!! I¡¯m going to kill the FUCKER!¡± I was venting a little bit, but to be fair a lot of crap has been happening. I got out of the pod, and went to the kitchen. It occurred to me that I had developed a sort of schedule. I would get a quest, train, die, then eat and shower in the real world. ¡°Eh, whatever. I¡¯m hungry.¡± After grabbing a bite to eat, I went for a jog. The jog lasted about half an hour. What can I say, I¡¯m that athletic. When I got home there wasn¡¯t anything to do. I took a shower, and decided to call up one of the girls I used to ¡®date¡¯. She went by Cleo, I don¡¯t know why. She wasn¡¯t even that into cultural stuff. She answered pretty quickly. I asked her if she wanted to have a meal together, to catch up and what not. She was only hesitant for about a quarter of a second. She replied with a booming yes. I had invited her to a semi-nice restaurant. I was going to pay, but I was not about to spend a lot. I got dressed in a sort of fashionably casual look. A polo and slacks. I saw her as soon as I got there. She was a girl of medium height, with a fit build and lightly tanned skin. She had beach blonde hair, and bright blue eyes. Most guys would say she was a ten, but I don¡¯t really care about appearances. If you can¡¯t keep me intrigued you are worthless. She was wearing a long red dress. It was pretty close to a summer dress, with a thinner skirt at the bottom. She was wearing matching heels, and had white crystal studs in her ears. At one point, I may have given her the impression that this was my favorite outfit she owned. A smile leapt to my face. This was going to be easier than I thought. I took my seat across the table from her. ¡°Hey, miss me?¡± I casually said, as I sat down. She tried to hide the fact that she blushed slightly. ¡°Not as much as I bet you missed me.¡± She returned my smile. I sent a quick glance to her hands. She would always put her left hand on her left thigh whenever she was nervous. Her hand was in fact below the table. ¡°You¡¯re right. I wish we could have spent more time as friends after the break up.¡± I didn¡¯t really remember what I had made up about the break up, but it had something to do with me spending too much time on other things. I convinced her that she would be happier if someone else paid more attention to her. She looked down. She mumbled something that might have been along the lines of ¡®I didn¡¯t want to break up¡¯. A waiter came and gave me a menu. She had already placed her order. I knew what it was before it even came to the table. During the three weeks we dated, I took her to this place twice. She ordered the same thing both times. I ordered a steak and salad. I began to ask her how she had been since we separated. I nodded my head, and sort of zoned out. Of course I made it seem like I was paying attention. Pro tip* Regurgitating parts of the info you get from someone makes it seem like you were paying attention. Also make sure to occasionally ask questions. It doesn¡¯t seem like you care if you don¡¯t ask questions. Anyway, my food arrived at the same time as hers. She had ordered a salad, and grilled chicken breast. It actually was really appetizing, despite the bland aura it gave off. I made sure to talk about her the entire time. Showing just enough interest to make her want to keep letting me back into her life. I made sure to keep the ¡®date¡¯ just slightly over the familiarity line of what would be considered as friends. After the meal was done, she asked if she could text me. She said, ¡°I don¡¯t even really know why we broke up, we fit so well. Whenever I thought about dating other guys, they just never measured up to you.¡± She gave me a meaningful look, towards my¡­ you know. Which was weird. I make sure to never have any sort of sexual contact with these girls. I¡¯d hate to be forcibly tied down. Condoms are only 99% effective. I mean, I could do other things, but it was all too much work. I would only do that with someone I could stand to spend more than a couple of months with. I frowned, ¡°I¡­ uh¡­ I didn¡¯t mean for this to be that sort of date.¡± I looked bashfully at the ground. ¡°I¡¯m, I¡¯m kind of seeing someone right now.¡± I glanced up with my most apologetic smile. ¡°I just really wanted to re-connect with you.¡± Her eyes darted to the door, another habit she had. She was embarrassed. If it was fight or flight, she always chose flight. ¡°Oh.¡± She said that one word. A few heartbeats later, ¡°We should still text though.¡± I had just wanted a nice day out, to relieve some of my stress. I didn¡¯t actually think she would still be THAT attached to me. Sheesh. I promised to text her when I got the time. Why not? It might be entertaining if she tries to pursue something after I told her no. I walked her home, and gently kissed her on the cheek when I left. Gotta keep up the possibility that I might to keep this up for a while. By the time I walked home, I noticed she had already texted me twice. I sent her a reply saying ¡®Sorry I can¡¯t text right now. I promised a friend to play DIVE with him.¡¯ Since I was my only friend, it wasn¡¯t really a lie. Sigh, I wish someone else was as clever as I am. I still had a few hours until I could log back in, so I lazily browsed through the internet. DIVE was apparently getting really popular in other countries. One of the biggest things was that someone realized the translation abilities the DIVE pods had. They would translate the language you spoke into a form of data. That data was translated to directly be understood by you mind. As long as you were the same race that is. I could think of quite a few things that could be done with that. Big businesses could have their CEOs talk to each other, without the need of someone translating. Kelsey had already said they could talk privately, but that was beyond what anyone thought. A day after that announcement, many big name CEOs bought a pod for each of the executive members of their companies. There was also a few instances where DI had donated specially designed helmets to hospitals. The helmets worked like the pods, but didn¡¯t have all of the capabilities. You could only get the general sensation of feeling, but it was still really helpful to those in conditions that made them hate life. People that couldn¡¯t walk, could be given legs in DIVE. Depending on the case, even those that were blind or deaf could get those experiences. Sometimes it didn¡¯t work though. I thought it was because something was wrong with their brains, but I¡¯m not a doctor or anything. There was even test to bring a coma patient into a full DIVE. With the consent of the family, DI had made a special pod, and tested it out on the coma patient. The tests were ongoing. I thought it was a waste to send tech to hospitals, but it was really good for publicity. I wouldn¡¯t have given away free products though. Plus since I couldn¡¯t make a multitrillion dollar company, I didn¡¯t have any right to say what they did with their products. I got bored, after browsing the web for a couple of hours. I decided to turn on the TV. Sometimes there was an interesting show on. I was flipping through channels, when something caught my eye. On one of the gaming channels was a show called ¡®The Affairs of Solun¡¯. It wasn¡¯t rare for shows to have a segment on a popular game, but to have an entire show? That was new to say the least. My money was on the show failing after two weeks. The thirty minute show had four segments. Each segment was five minutes, leaving ten minutes for commercials. The first segment was centered around whatever was the most outstanding news in DIVE at that moment. The second segment was called ¡®Newbies Network¡¯. It apparently showed newbs how to do basic things. It started like a children¡¯s show. The host had a ¡®Today¡¯s Topic¡¯ sign. Incidentally, I learned that fishing in the game, was similar to real life. Only the type of bait, and use of magic, were different. The third segment was called ¡°Compare and Conquer¡¯. The four people on this part of the show talked about different things, like which types of magic trumped the others, or the best place near big cities to train in swords mastery, or the best items to buy and sale if you were a merchant. The fourth segment had two people commenting on player videos. The player had to agree to have the video uploaded, but then the commenters took over. It was kind of like watching a sports commentary. After watching the show, I couldn¡¯t find anything else on. I went to my bedroom, and grabbed a Sudoku book. Sudoku is a great way to strain the mind. It forces you to think both rationally, and intuitively. After solving a couple of puzzles, I had about six hours before being able to log back in. I looked at my texts, just to see if Mom had sent me anything. Cleo had apparently ordered a Dive pod. It was a little creepy, but I decided to let it go. Getting stalked a little could be fun. I¡¯d just have to make sure she doesn¡¯t take it too far. I told her that my starting city was Rand. She instantly sent a message back. I ¡®forgot¡¯ to mention my username when she asked. I really didn¡¯t remember her being this clingy before. I also sent Rachel(bit-bee) a text. I asked her how to invite others into my white space, and how you could transfer DI bills. I mean if I have a huge ass mall, I might as well make some money from it. I could improve the mall with the money, and make a shopping city. With all of the DI bills I¡¯d be raking in, there would be no need for me to upload videos. Unless I just wanted to. I hopped back into my pod. I had a little over 5 and half hours before I could log into DIVE, so I wanted to beef up my city more. I had gained quite a bit of money, which was pretty surprising. I decided to send out another video. I edited my video with the slavers. I made sure to hide my face, and name, until after I used disguise. I left out when I used disguise as well. I packaged the rest up, minus the mana crystal. I even had footage from Kretchof¡¯s POV, which was weird. His battle was a lot cooler than mine. I changed my mind, and put the focus on him. Leaving out that I summoned him. I decided to make two separate videos. They sort of looked like a collaboration video. Kretchof had killed a few slavers after reanimating the ones I left him. He used those sentries to kill others, and bring him the bodies. He was actually quite good at managing his undead legion. He infiltrated the city with a horde of twenty undead. About all of the sentries had been killed, and made into his minions. After he gained access to the city, he had started indiscriminately killing. A few extra slave citizens¡¯ death wouldn¡¯t bother my plan too much. After a large amount of undead were summoned, I had told him to go to the castle. The rest I saw. I sent the movies out, although mine was sped up considerably. I cut all of the boring waiting for regen parts. I ended mine with my sacrifice, and Kretchof¡¯s with his escape from the castle. All in all, I thought it would be entertaining to watch. I even made sure to dim the sound in certain areas to make people listen to that part a few times. Hopefully the trolls on the net will increase the viewer count. Someone will post what was said during the dimmed moment, and a few other people would click on the video just to comment that it wasn¡¯t. I loved trolls. They never seemed to disappoint. I had spent over two hours editing the two videos. I was tired, but I had a bit of DI bills to spend. I wanted to make this mall of mine be the coolest place ever, otherwise other people would easily make it better when they saw it. As I started buying things for the stores, I realized I needed to buy in bulk. Not only did it save me time, as I wouldn¡¯t have to keep accessing the menus. It also saved me a huge amount of money. I bought enough entertainment type things to fill half a floor of the mall. This included toys for children, board games, bubbleheads, even video games. I spent a total of about a quarter of my bills on that. Which was a substantial amount. I could have built about half of this mall with the money I started off with. The next bit of money went to DIVE related knick-knacks. Shirts, hoodies, all sorts of clothing and accessories. I found it kind of funny how many types of DIVE goodies the menu store sold. I was left with about a third of my money, so I pimped out the food court. Long tables, short tables, single tables, booths, I bought it all. Since I was buying for three floors, I obviously bought in bulk. I ordered over a thousand chairs alone! Fuck that was a lot of chair money. Of course the chairs would be put into certain shops as well. I even made the biggest shop on the first floor, into a spa. It had two hot tubs, two mud baths, basically two of everything. Each thing was separated by gender. If people really did come here, I would hate to be sued for ¡®forcing¡¯ them to join the spa together. I have seen some pretty stupid lawsuits succeed with the right lawyers. Although I doubt they¡¯d sue me for real money, in fact I didn¡¯t even know if people could be sued here. The massive spa resort actually cost the rest of my money. I expanded that section of the mall quite a bit. I had added about two times as much space. It was now three times as big as it had been. It had already been huge though. About a fifth of the room was taken up by the scenic peaceful walking area. I even saw that I could buy some squirrels, so I bought a dozen. I had made sure they couldn¡¯t get out of the scenic area though. I also put a lot of plants that provided food for squirrels in the scenic course. I was pretty happy with my work, and only had a half hour before I could log back into DIVE. I spent the last bit of time re planning what the shops would be like. I want to create a certain flow in my mall. I needed to place each shop and rest area perfectly for that. The flow of course was the flow of money. I looked at the mall as if I were a shopper. It was cool, but it lacked something that exuded excitement. I decided to add something to make people feel a rush. Maybe an axe murderer? A theme park next door would also work. After I finished planning, it was time to log back in. While I was excited to get back into the game, I was still a little sad. After all, I had lost my quest. I even sacrificed levels! I entered the game again.
You have lost two levels for sacrificing yourself. You are now level 32.
You have lost one level for dying. You are now level 31.
Three levels!? UGGHHHH! My int had gone down by 15. My total mana decreased by 150. I sighed as I took in the depressing fact that I just lost a lot of stats for nothing. I was in some sort of bedchamber. I was in a comfortable place, so I assumed the red blur was at least a friendly. I sent a message to Kretchof. ¡°Hey, I need you to leave the area. Don¡¯t kill NPCs or animals, but expand your army. Raising dead bodies for zombies and stuff is ok.¡± I got conformation, and saw Kretchof start marching away on my map. I also noted a light green dot nearby. No, it can¡¯t be. I better have gotten that quest success then! A few seconds later I heard running. I sighed as I prepared for a ¡®heartfelt¡¯ reunion. Three forms entered the doorway. Two women, and¡­ you guessed it, a blood red rabbit. I scrunched my eyes as I pretended to be taken aback by Heather¡¯s appearance. ¡°HEATHER!? What happened to you? How did you dye you fur so red!? And how did you get so small!?¡± Heather ¡­smiled? At least I think it was a smile. It¡¯s pretty hard to differentiate the everyday body language of a rabbit. I saw that she had sharp canines instead of the normal teeth you would associate with rabbits. Heather¡¯s fur was blood red. From top to bottom, it was like someone dipped her into a vat of blood. Her size had decreased tremendously. She had been growing larger and larger, slowly but surely. She could now almost fit into my hand. It was actually really weird to look at. The rabbit jumped on me, landing squarely on my stomach. Yup. That¡¯s heather. I didn¡¯t feel any pain, but I groaned slightly to let Heather feel bad. I didn¡¯t want her to jump on me every time I come back from the dead. She seemed to have decreased in mass as well. I was pretty happy about that turn out. Sometimes in anime or video games, if a big creature shrinks it just gets denser. ¡°OH! I¡¯m sorry!¡± Heather quickly dropped to the floor. I actually was curious about her fur though. It shouldn¡¯t have been dyed with blood for that long. ¡°So what actually happened to you?¡± Heather pawed at the ground once. ¡°Well¡­ When you got captured by the slavers, EDI and I were thrown into the distance. Because of your magic. We saw which direction they were going, so when we landed, we went back to the camp and followed them. It took about a day to get back to the camp. It was a fun flight though!¡± Heather beamed. Just get to the part I asked you about. ¡°Anyway, after following the slavers for a while, we could finally see them. They were taking you to this city. EDI started to make some plans on how to get in, but we were spotted by some slavers that were patrolling the outside of the city. We quickly killed them. Um¡± She pawed the ground again. ¡°I may have sort of¡­ eaten them?¡± She tried to give me puppy dog eyes. Or is it bunny rabbit eyes? Either way, her eyes are creepy as fuck. They have red pupils, and the whites of her eyes had turned black. No way in hell was that cute! Seeing her attempt fail she continued. ¡°Well I was drinking the blood since EDI didn¡¯t want any. After I consumed all of the blood in their bodies I got a notice. You should have gotten it as well. It was already nighttime, and we heard fighting happening in the city when I got the notice. We ran in the city to use the confusion to help you¡­¡± She trialed off on that. I checked my notifications. I saw that I really had gotten it. I was just too busy concentrating on drying the entire throne room out to pay attention.
Heather has reached level 50. Heather has unlocked a racial evolution. Heather is evolving! Say B to cancel.
Congratulations! Your Heather has evolved into a Vampire Rabbit!
I felt like I had seen that in some old game, but I couldn¡¯t put my finger on it. It seemed that since I didn¡¯t see the notice, I couldn¡¯t stop the evolution anyway.
Heather¡¯s evolution has caused her to turn into a monster class creature. High intimacy with Heather has allowed you to keep Heather as a pet.
You are the first person to obtain a monster as a pet. You have gained 50 fame. You have gained 15 charisma for convincing Heather to remain as your pet.
Your leadership skills have improved by maintaining control over a weak individual, until they started showing power. You have gained 10 leadership.
Your leadership skills are so great, you can draw out potential that no one even knew existed. You have gained 20 leadership.
You are the first person to own an animal that has evolved. You have gained 50 fame. You have gained 15 intelligence for learning of this phenomenon.
Due to your pet killing Evan the Slaver, you have completed Undine¡¯s quest.
You have gained the title ¡®Hero of River¡¯s Cross¡¯. When you have this title equipped, people will recognize you as the person that freed River¡¯s Cross from the slavers¡¯ grasp. You gain an automatic + 50 intimacy with all citizens of River¡¯s Cross, regardless of if this title is equipped. This does raise the rank of intimacy. You gain an automatic + 25 intimacy with all people that are on good terms with River¡¯s Cross, if this title is equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. You gain an automatic + 10 intimacy with all people that are against slavery, if this title is equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. You gain an automatic + 25 hostility with all people that benefit from slavery, if this title is equipped. This does not lower the rank of intimacy. You gain an automatic + 50 hostility with slavers, if this title is equipped. This does lower the rank of intimacy. You are now the most respected individual by the people of River¡¯s Cross. Undine has granted you 15 water affinity for saving her champion. Undine has granted you 5 water affinity for saving the people of River¡¯s Cross.
Due to the reclamation of River¡¯s Cross, players will now be able to start in this city.
Undine has fulfilled her promise of rewards. Undine¡¯s blessing has increased.
Many Blessings of Undine (Major) For greatly pleasing Undine you have been gifted with her blessing. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. When submerged in water you gain gills, and can filter water from the water. You may also request for her aid by giving a suitable offering. Undine believes all creatures should move with power and grace. Undine has streamlined your body. You now move 50% quicker in all environments you could normally move in. You also use 25% less stamina from water or air resistance.
I spent several minutes looking through my notifications. They were pretty fucking cool! I forgot about the existence of the others in the room until I had finished reading. I looked at my body, it seemed a little bit more ¡®gentle¡¯. That¡¯s the only way I could explain it. Many of the harsher lines had been curved and sanded down. I called up Heather¡¯s stats.
Stats Window
NameHeatherOwnerVoice0fReason
Level 51Health: 610Mana: 250Stamina: 1250
Current Title: N/AHealth Regen: 6.1/sMana Regen: 1.5/sStamina Regen: 20.3/s
Strength89Agility25
Wisdom15Intelligence25
Endurance125Dexterity42
Luck10Vitality203
Fame0
They were pretty good stats. It was obvious that she was a melee combatant. She had just enough dex and agi to hit the target, but enough str to damage them quite a bit. I looked up and saw the three individuals still looking at me. ¡°Sorry about that.¡± I gave them a ¡®weak¡¯ smile. ¡°I was just looking at all of the notes I got. So what happened to Evan?¡± I feigned ignorance. I had already seen the blue box, so I knew what happened. Elvina stepped forward. She looked a lot healthier than she did when I last saw her. ¡°After you spent your life to damage Evan, your pet¡­ uh Heather, Heather attacked him. At first he knocked her down, but when EDI helped he was quickly overwhelmed. I was surprised to see they were both over level 50.¡± I nodded, excitedly. ¡°Yeah, I saw that!¡± I wonder if that means at level fifty animals evolve. I waited for a few moments for a notification. None came. Does that mean they have to get to level fifty, and fulfill certain requirements?
For discovering the secret of animal evolution, you have gained 5 intelligence.
Elvina got into a quasi-formal pose, and used a more formal tone. ¡°I, Elvina, Mayor of River¡¯s Cross, thank thee, Voice0fReason, for your efforts in the subjugation of the slavers. Furthermore, I hereby request your audience in the throne room, tomorrow at dawn.¡± With that she seemed to have said everything she wanted to. She left the room, and EDI came forward. ¡°Hi. I just wanted to thank you for saving me from the slavers.¡± She looked slightly bashful as she said that. ¡°Here are the items back.¡± EDI gave me all of the items I had given to her for escape. Heather had apparently given EDI the items I forced on her. EDI also gave me a large Mana Crystal vein. I looked at it confused. ¡°What¡¯s this? How did you get this?¡± I looked in my inventory. I didn¡¯t have any veins in it. I decided this bitch had stolen it from me. ¡°You dropped this when you died. I picked it up for you, so that no one else would think of looting it.¡± Looking at her earnest face, I could only regret calling her a bitch before. No! She¡¯s probably just trying to get on my good side. Not gonna let that happen again. I had already sworn off all relationships that didn¡¯t show me immediate bonuses. If you can¡¯t help me, I don¡¯t need you. I tried to get off the bed, but almost fell over. EDI gently caught me before I hit the ground. She put me back on the bed, and left. I might have seen a blush. Ancestor, you can help me with my skills right? ¡°That¡¯s correct.¡± I thought for a moment. Ancestor had helped in that battle a bit. He had helped me make short work of three slavers that could have caused me trouble. I have an idea for you to experience the world again, and not just through my memories. What do you think? Ancestor seemed to ponder this for a bit. ¡°How would you do that? I gather that is has something to do with your Inspect skill.¡± If I gave you full control over my inspect, you could probably be able to at least feel like you are interacting with the world. You would have to let me know the things I want to know, but other than that I¡¯d let you do whatever you wanted. I could feel Ancestor starting to reject the idea, so I hurriedly continued. You would even be able to help me train myself. If you had control over my Inspect, I bet I¡¯d naturally pick up on a few things you watch for. At the mention of training Ancestor had stopped. ¡°Hm, you would be able to see how to use it more fully. Alright, I¡¯ll take control. I¡¯ll let you know whatever you are looking for. I¡¯ll have to burrow a little deeper into your mind though. That way you can take control back if you need it. If I don¡¯t you won¡¯t get the information fast enough. Are you ok with that?¡± Ancestor seemed to be holding back a flow of excitement. Like a child that knows Santa will come tomorrow. Sure, just be careful not to cause too much pain, ok? Just as I said that, Ancestor went to work. Suddenly a sharp pain pierced my skull. I would have screamed, but I didn¡¯t have enough control over my mind to even do that. It felt as though Ancestor was creating explosions within my mind. Every second stretched on to infinity. The pain seemed to alternate in certain places in my mind. Sometimes it was a sharp piercing pain, other times it was a dull head crushing pain. I was trapped in this mental hell forever.
Ancestor has taken control of your Inspect skill. You can override this control at any time. While Ancestor has control of Inspect, you will not obtain information from it. If Ancestor uses Inspect, you will still gain experience for this skill.
After the pounding in my mind went away, I yelled at Ancestor. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT! I TOLD YOU TO KEEP THE PAIN DOWN! Even at one percent pain, it was debilitating. ¡°I¡¯m sorry¡­ I didn¡¯t think it would hurt that much.¡± Ancestor seemed to actually be apologetic. That wasn¡¯t enough for me though. I¡¯m never allowing you to take control of my skills or abilities, EVER! Ancestor was quiet. No doubt too much of a bitch to actually say anything after that. Seeing as there was no way I could do anything, other than take away the skill, I decided to let it go. I would make Ancestor regret it later. I found a set of clothes on a table. Since I was in some ratty bandit uniform, I got changed. The outfit wasn¡¯t really my style. I was given black leather boots that went up to my knees. The pants were a color that closely resembled fuchsia. They looked as though they were made airy on purpose, seeing as they were very loose on the leg area. I had a white undershirt that went down to my wrists, and a blue vest. The vest had green embroidery near the neck, and had comfortable shoulder padding. It was a vest, but it covered the shoulder area. The trim of the vest was gold, as were the 8 sets of buttons that lined the middle. I donned the clothes, since it would be better than wearing a slaver outfit. When I left the room Heather followed. I didn¡¯t really pay attention to her as I changed. While I found my way downstairs, I noticed the lack of personal the castle had. The only people I actually met were a few depressed looking guards. Usually you would see a large amount of people hurrying to and fro, but I didn¡¯t even see one servant. I made it to the stairs after only a few minutes of searching. I decided to check out the surrounding city to see if the people needed any help. Getting an increase in intimacy with them would only increase the chance that I could take this place over. I still planned on doing that. I helped Elvina because she looked a lot like my mother, but as soon as she was out of the picture I was going to make this place mine. I found that everyone was basically dead on the inside. Even though they had been freed, they showed no will to live. Coupled with the partially, or mostly in some cases, destroyed buildings it gave a sense of extreme poverty. Shit, I have to fix this. If they all died I would have earned an empty city. I did not do all that work for an empty fucking city! There was a forest directly south of the city, I decided to do a little hunting. If I could somehow manage to help boost morale in River¡¯s Cross, then I would have an even better chance of taking the city without force. I sent EDI a message as soon as I thought of the plan. As I did I re-equipped all of my gear. I finally had my staff back! Now all of those annoying monsters were going to get what was coming to them! I couldn¡¯t wait to get my hands on the 100% dissection bonus for any monsters that lived in the forest. EDI accepted so I sent her a party invite. The party had no doubt been disbanded when the slavers captured me. I spoke to Sol, trying to see when I would get the extra healing power again. Sol was supposedly more powerful now, since I upgraded my class. ¡°Sol? Are you there? I haven¡¯t heard from you in a while. It¡¯s starting to scare me.¡± I felt a bursting from my chest. It felt uncomfortable to say the least. Sol flew around me in circles. ¡°MASTER! I couldn¡¯t come out for so long! When you got captured I was really worried! But you told me to hide! After you left the cave I couldn¡¯t feel you anymore! I¡¯m so happy to be able to talk to you again!¡± Sol continued on this for a solid minute. Eventually Sol seemed to notice something. ¡°Master! I can see the light mana around you! I feel like I can use it for healing! Wow! This is so cool!¡± I smiled. I was glad to have my overly energetic healing machine back. I explained, some of, what happened while Sol was gone. Sol was amazed that I unlocked a special class like Mana Mage. I couldn¡¯t say that I wasn¡¯t freaking awesome, so I let Sol keep singing my praise for a while. I made Sol quiet down when EDI approached. She had a confident stride. ¡°Ready EDI?¡± She nodded. ¡°So why are we going to hunt monsters though?¡± I hung my head hearing this. If I shamed her now she would be less likely to question me in the future. She should just do what I want! ¡°As you can see everyone is starving and depressed. I was thinking that if we hunted some monsters, we could give the food away to them. Maybe something like a minor festival. The forest to the south was only about a ten-minute walk away. We casually walked there while talking about random stuff. I told EDI about my ability to manipulate the aura of things. I also quizzed Sol about the light aura. Apparently, all living things give off a light aura. I took Inspect away from Ancestor, and looked at EDI. After concentrating for a second or two, I noticed it. It was very thin layer of white yellow light, with tiny wisps coming off it. I decided to try this when I next healed someone. We made it to the forest. At the very edge of the trees, we saw a bountiful harvest of demon wolves. ¡°EDI, Heather, Sol, how would you like to help the people of River¡¯s Cross?¡± I smiled to the group as a said this. I ran towards the wolves. The total massacre of wolves lasted for four hours. I cut it off there because I needed time to cook the food for the ex-slaves. We killed hundreds of wolves. Ancestor gave me full control over Inspect whenever I was in battle. That way I could still use it to the fullest. Other than that Ancestor was in charge of finding the wolves, and giving us a report on them. Of course I could have done all of this, but I¡¯d have to spend all of my concentration to do it. Having Ancestor do it for me was almost a cheat. At first we only killed a few at a time, just to check the actual power of the wolves. Here on the edge of the forest the average level of the wolves was only 5. It quickly grew though. The further we went in, the quicker the average level increased. We slaughtered everything in our path. Any monster was killed, auto-dissected, and stashed. I completed the dissection of wolves in only those four hours. It was thanks to Heather and EDI being fighting machines. We even got in a few bears. The fights followed a pattern. Heather would grab agro by biting one of the wolves. Heather would drain the blood of that wolf as quickly as possible. EDI would jump in to incapacitate as many as possible, I was in charge of heavy damage dealing. Mostly I just impaled the poor bastards with my earth spears. They seemed to want to fully encircle an opponent before attacking. I took advantage of that to form the earth into a weapon. I started to notice a distinct casting time difference, when compared to when I first learned to manipulate the mana in the ground. It seemed like the more I used it, the quicker it became. It would only take about thirty seconds to form earth spears using the mana in the ground. I could make them in about half a second, but that took a hundred times the mana. All in all it was more efficient to use the mana outside my body. The plan worked depressingly well. There was just about zero excitement in the hunt. I did get some exp, but I was bored out of my mind the entire time. I even started to experiment with trying to do multiple types of mana when there was only a couple of enemies. Heather was amazing though. Whenever she drained a wolf, she would temporarily gain all of its stats to augment her own. The buff only lasted for about fifteen seconds, but she could easily drain a body in five. That gave her ten seconds to kill each wolf. Since she could kill them anyway, if she had a minute, the fact that she had the power of one added to her just made it awe inspiring. She was more ferocious, quicker, and had more power after drinking the blood. I got the feeling that she would devastate an entire pack if I allowed it. The only drawback to her blood sucking power, was that she had 50% reduction in stats if she hadn¡¯t drank any blood in three hours. Once Heather even took down three wolves in only ten seconds. She drained all of their blood quickly. It seemed like she could keep the blood in a sort of storage inside her belly. Either that or she had the metabolism of a maniac. Heather was as fast as Rabs used to be. She would disappear in a blur of red, and would reappear with her fangs sunk in a wolf¡¯s neck. Her kicks were powerful enough to one shot a wolf below level 20. Her favorite move was jumping on the wolves¡¯ backs. She would sink her teeth in them, and ride them bull rider style, holding on only by her fangs. After the four hours were over, we were all carrying burdens that exceeded our maximum capacity by several times. We made our way slowly to the city. It took us about 45 minutes to make it there. I went to the dead center of the city. I pulled out my cooking equipment, and the wood we got from the forest. I began to cook the meat in the pan. I sent Heather out to the north of the city. There was a lot of plains area over there. My intention was for her to gather as many vegetables as possible. I sent EDI to fetch me some water. With my cutlery and tableware, I was prepared to serve at least a few people at a time. I used the wind to spread the smell out a bit. EDI had brought me the pot of water, and Heather was picking the veges at a good rate. Since I was just sitting, I didn¡¯t mind the extra weight of all of the vegetables. I chopped them up, and threw them into the pot. While the pot boiled, I poured the wolf meat in. I continued to pour mana into the air. I saw several people coming to see what the smell was. They were still far too afraid to come close though. ¡°EDI, hey why don¡¯t you give this to the little girl over there?¡± EDI hurried to do what I asked. The girl recoiled when EDI brought her the food. After talking to her for more than a minute, the girl finally accepted the food. ¡°I NEED MORE WATER!¡± I could have filled the pot with water mana, but I¡¯d have to stop using my wind to spread the smell. Someone behind me took the pot and disappeared. I turned around to grab it, only to see that a guard had run to fill it up. A few seconds later it was back on the fire. I again filled it with vegetables, and meat. I noticed that more bowls where in my meager stack. I looked to my left, the direction I heard noise coming from. Elvina was giving instructions to several guards. I used the bowls to fill more stew. The bowls were quickly passed out to the ex-slaves. The food was eaten as quickly as I could make it. The starving people seemed to have some sense of unity, seeing as no one asked for seconds until every had their first portion. I cooked this food for three entire hours. Honestly I couldn¡¯t wait for it to be over. I had exhausted all of my reserves of wolf meat. The only thing left was the vegetables. These included the iconic carrots and turnips. When I ran out of meat, I just made vegetable stew. After I ran out of meat I called Heather back. By the time she returned I still had an entire stack of carrots and turnips. I finished those off then addressed the crowd. ¡°Hello! I¡¯m the HERO of River¡¯s Cross!¡± The people realized who I was once I equipped my title. ¡°I have freed and fed you all!¡± Some of the more energetic ones tried to cheer. ¡°I have a task for you! We will revive this city to its former glory! The first step is arming the citizens! If you know how to work the forge, come to me! I also need all tanners!¡± I repeated this spiel a couple of times, making sure all parts of the city could hear me. A strong looking man came up to me. Well I assumed he was strong before. His muscles were still large, but they looked like they had already started to destroy themselves for the nutrients. Two more people came up as well. One was a scarily skinny man, and the other was a very fragile looking woman. The strong man had a gruff voice. ¡°Yeah? I¡¯m a blacksmith, and these two are tanners. What do you need?¡± His tone wasn¡¯t really pleasant, but I let it pass. I doubt I¡¯d be able to be pleasant to be around if I was a slave for so long. I turned to the tanners. ¡°I need you to tan all of this leather.¡± I started to pile the animal pelts out. I only pulled about half of them. It was still a lot though. There was two and a half stacks after all. ¡°I can¡¯t pay you for it, but I¡¯ll be giving it all to the citizens for protection. I will pay you back whatever you deem acceptable. I just don¡¯t have any coin on me right now.¡± Ancestor told me the tanners were in shock. No doubt it was because I just told them they¡¯d have to work for free. Next I turned to the blacksmith. ¡°Do you know how to work this leather?¡± I indicated the pelts that the two tanners were trying to grab. He nodded. ¡°Good. I¡¯ll need you to make it all into full sets of armor. I want these men and women to be completely defended. After I finish here tomorrow, I¡¯m going to look for something that would make good weapons. You up for it?¡± The blacksmith nodded. ¡°Yeah, but I¡¯ll need to restart my forge. Those damn slavers took joy out of my reaction when I saw them killing my shop. Do you think you could help me with that?¡± I nodded to him.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Help rebuild the forge in River¡¯s Cross. Difficulty: Low Failure: Not managing to help fix the forge. Reward: ??? Failure leads to decrease intimacy with the blacksmith in River¡¯s Cross.
Sorry for ending it kind of abruptly. I¡¯m really sleepy, and I have work tomorrow. But here¡¯s the chapter! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 31Health: 100Mana: 1250Stamina: 350
Current Title: Hero of River¡¯s CrossHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 16.9 (11.9)/sStamina Regen: 4.9/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence125
Endurance49Dexterity34
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion75
Leadership66Logic22
Piety59Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00% Dissection Novice Level 7 Exp 10.00% Automatic Dissection Novice Level 7 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 17 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 39 Exp 56.54% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 15 Exp 46.67% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 28 Exp 19.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44% Group Skill: Survival Novice Level 21 Exp 10.00% Group Skill: Combat Learning Novice Level 17 Exp 24.56%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water55
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 36: FIxing a Town Part 1 First off, props to Mythu for going through my stuff and pointing out errors. I try to catch them all, but some fall through the cracks. Pointing out my mistakes makes me grow stronger as an evil mastermind a writer. Sorry about that taking so long, I had a lot of fixing on the chapter to do. It was actually pretty bad. ? In two weeks I¡¯m going to be working quiet a bit more. What this means for the readers is slower updates. I will still try to get them out as quickly as possible, but I might only be able to get out one or two a week. I could sacrifice length and get them out as quickly, but they would only be 2k-4k words each. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice went on a date. After getting the girl¡¯s hopes up intentionally, he let her down. When he got back into the game he looked around the city, and decided to help out. He made a food stall that gave out free food, and got a tanner and blacksmith to help make demon wolf leather armor. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Also 1.2, I updated the map on the cite. Map While Voice was hunting wolves: Two figures were in a pitch black room. Fog obscured all vision. Only their robes could be distinguished, even though they both had perfect dark vision. The figures were unable to view each other, but that was how they both preferred it. One figure was bowing to the other, kneeling on one knee, with its left hand over its heart. The figure that bowed spoke, in a worried voice. ¡°Master, the slavers failed.¡± The figure was worried, not because of the failure, but because his master was prone to fits of violence. The fits would last until his master had destroyed whoever was in front of him completely. Through his robe the master looked at his slave with scorn. ¡°How many died?¡± He had been easily angered recently. Since Davros had been sealed, so was most of his power. Now he had to rely on the soul binding contracts, and what little magic he was capable of. The slavers had been a small force that he controlled, but without the means to acquire new contracts or magic, every setback was devastating. ¡°All of them.¡± The man that was bowing felt a shiver go down his spine. Even without looking up, he knew his master¡¯s anger was full to bursting. Trying to placate his master, he asked, ¡°What is our next plan of action?¡± The man standing started to unleash a black miasma. The dark mist grew until it had covered the entire pitch black room. The room was large, and in this dark seemed endless. ¡°Send a scout to trail him. Gather 50 men. You have five days to gather them. You have ten days to bring them to me. I don¡¯t want this to end up like Fort Sandra. After I inspect them you will go kill him. I have just sent word to The Tamer. He is closest to that area right now. Your men will be cooperating with him. Choose carefully. ¡± Another shiver went down the slave¡¯s spine. ¡°If you fail, you know what will happen right?¡± As the last word left his lips, the master infused a fearfully frightening magic into his voice. The slave nodded quickly, and backed out of the room without turning his back on his master. His master had said that was the same as failing him. His master¡¯s methods with dealing with those that failed was¡­ harsh. After the slave left, he immediately contacted 50 of his best men. He would not be the one to rise his master¡¯s ire. Voice¡¯s POV I decided to try to fix the forge first thing. Getting the forge fixed early meant more time to make armor. More armor meant less time I¡¯d have to spend in this shithole. ¡°It¡¯s right this way.¡± The blacksmith said, it sounded similar to what a butler might say to his master. I felt that I could get used to that. In fact I decided I was going to get at least one butler when I made my own city. I had basically given up on taking this city over, at least for now. The amount of work I¡¯d have to put into it wasn¡¯t worth it. If I came back later, and the city was thriving, then I¡¯d think about it. His forge looked like it used to be imposing. The forge was located outside. It had a cover on the top, much like Evan¡¯s forge. This forge looked like it had taken much more time to make though. Everything that wasn¡¯t metal, was made of bricks. He had two large furnaces, each could fit several bars of metal worth of ore into them. The flame of one was exposed to the air, it looked like a campfire with something hanging over it. The other was more like a large oven. He had a large grind wheel, an assortment of whetstones, and an expensive looking anvil. On the wall beside the furnaces, hung several different types of tools. There obviously various sized tongs and hammers, but there was several items that I had never seen before. The forge was in a horrid state. The anvil was somehow broken in half, the furnace door was shattered, the open furnace was crumbling in on itself, the tools all lay broken on the ground. All in all, the slavers left nothing untouched. I frowned as I thought to myself. How the hell am I supposed to help fix this? I could get Evan¡¯s help, but he is really far away. I took inspect back from Ancestor. I managed to manipulate the metal bars in the sewer, so maybe I could do the same to some of the metal in this forge. I figured the worst thing that could happen would be that I broke some things that were irreparable anyway. I closed my eyes, and concentrated on the anvil. I didn¡¯t know a lot about forges, but I knew making tools was easier than making an anvil, so I was going to help with the harder one. After a few minutes I managed to find the mana in the iron. It was in complete disarray. The anvil seemed to have been attacked several times, with several types of weapons, from several directions. Those slavers must have had fun going to town on this thing I thought with bitter amusement. What was no doubt fun for them, was going to be extra work for me. The mana seemed to be in a jigsaw puzzle. I was sure that I could fix it if I figured out the locations of each piece, but that would take a while. I spent the next hour finding and fixing the metal mana in the anvil. It was strenuous work. After an hour of complete concentration, I ran out of mana. I was exhausted mentally. The pieces had to be fit perfectly together, or it just ruined the anvil even more. At first I tried to just stick them where it seemed likely it would work, but the anvil started cracking. I had to carefully examine each piece of mana in the anvil, and then find the exact piece it connected to. Luckily it was usually close by. The biggest problem I had after starting to examine the mana puzzle, was that I also had to put the mana pieces in a certain position and angle. It was like having to lightly spin the jigsaw puzzle whenever you put a piece in. It made it almost impossible to complete. After an hour I had only connected about a dozen pieces, out of the hundreds that the anvil was made of. I had thought to take blacksmithing as a skill, since I could manipulate metal. I threw that idea out of the proverbial window. If it took this long to fix one thing, then how long would it take to make something!? If I did ever take blacksmithing, I was sure that metal manipulation would have its perks though. I decided to postpone asking for blacksmithing lessons for the foreseeable future. After opening my eyes I was greeted by a welcome sight. The previous catastrophe that was an anvil, was now only a train wreck. I had managed to fix many of the minor cracks and dents by only restoring a few of the pieces. The blacksmith was looking at me with an appreciative face. He was holding a pair of broken tongs, and re-working them into something usable. ¡°You¡¯re done?¡± I replied with, ¡°For now.¡± He nodded. ¡°At first I had no idea what you were doing, but then I noticed my anvil start to stich itself together! HA! That was quite the sight. I thought you¡¯d help me get a bit of metal to fix my forge, maybe help me craft some new tools at most. But no! You go and fix my granpappy¡¯s anvil!¡± He got up while he said that. He was admiring the amount of work I was putting into the anvil. He punched me in the arm in a friendly manner. It hurt like hell. Regardless of my pain setting. ¡°Well that¡¯s all I can do for now, but I did learn about how to fix it. I will come by later tonight, or tomorrow, to finish the job. I feel like my brain is going to explode.¡± I gave him a defeated smile. He nodded enthusiastically. ¡°Normally I¡¯d offer to let you sup with my wife an¡¯ me, but sadly¡­¡± He looked into the distance for a moment, as if holding off dark thoughts. ¡°Sadly there is no food in the city. My wife is out trying to catch fish though. I¡¯d be glad to have you over if she¡¯s successful.¡± I shook my head. ¡°I would love to accept, but I¡¯m going to be busy. I want to have this city fed and defended in no more than two days.¡± I gave him a nod, and left. I called Heather and EDI to me. I had sent Heather to restock my bandages earlier. EDI was going around helping make makeshift homes for the slaves. It wasn¡¯t much, but at least they didn¡¯t need to sleep in basements anymore. Heather came back with three stacks of bandages, and with Elvina. Apparently that was all that was in the entire castle. Elvina looked confused as to why she was following a rabbit. ¡°Hello Elvina. I would like to ask you for a favor.¡± She seemed to want to ask something, but I interrupted her with that question. She nodded. ¡°I¡¯d like to plant these seeds in the back of the castle. I need you to tell everyone to stay away from them. I will be able to make many high grade healing potions from them.¡± I patted my alchemists belt as I said that. Her eyes went wide when I said they could be used to make healing potions. Then she got an understanding look. ¡°Sure, want me to get someone to plant them?¡± I shook my head. ¡°I am better than most at finding good places to plant.¡± She looked confused, but only shrugged. She said bye and left, most likely to spread news that my plants were off limits. I took a slow stroll to the castle. The back courtyard was expansive. It had many yards of greenery, and quite a bit of area dedicated to purely training. Practice dummies and targets littered that area. I planted my entire bag of seeds. I was sad to see them go, but I could always just gather that amount of seeds again. I used the entirety of the seeds. I decided to do an experiment one of the healing herbs and common weed seeds. I poured as much nature mana as I could into each of them. After planting the seeds he stared at the ground for a while. If Elvina failed to keep the people from stealing my seeds I would probably have to kill all of the ex-slaves. I¡¯d leave Elvina, I knew I couldn¡¯t bring myself to kill someone that looked exactly like my mother. I sighed as I left. I walked to the southern gate. EDI was already waiting for me there. I waved when I got close. ¡°Ready to hunt the rest of the wolves?¡± I said jokingly. She nodded vigorously. It seemed like she was actually up for killing the rest of the wolves. I covertly rolled my eyes. I motioned for her to follow me, and we left the city. The wolves were cautious of us. Since the destruction of entire packs earlier today it was no wonder. When we would find any wolves, they ran away. They all seemed to run in the same direction. Anytime we got close, Ancestor would give me control of Instinct. When the wolves would run away, I¡¯d give it back. It was actually really annoying to have to repeat that so often. Since all of the wolves seemed to be running in one directions, we went that way. We slowly crept through the forest. Whenever we saw fruits, nuts, or berries, I¡¯d inspect them. If they were not harmful, I¡¯d put them in my pouch with intentions of feeding them to the ex-slaves. If they were harmful, I¡¯d put them in my pouch with intentions of feeding them to my enemies. We tracked the wolves for an hour. It seemed as though they were making it easy for us. Ancestor said the track sub-skill of Inspect was finding them without any problems. Does that mean they stink? When we got into close proximity of where the wolves were apparently staying Ancestor said, ¡°Voice, we are downwind of the wolves. I don¡¯t think they know we are here, but there is a lot of them.¡± I took Inspect over since the wolves were close. I tried to concentrate on the auras of the wolves. It seemed that none of them had one. It was actually weird. I hadn¡¯t seen any auras in the game yet, at least not on people. The gods had them, as did a few items, but that¡¯s it. It made me start questioning what aura sight really did. Even the mages at the guild didn¡¯t possess a noticeable aura. I peaked through the trees. There were dozens of wolves in a small clearing. In the center of the clearing was a boulder. Laying on the boulder was an excessively large wolf. It looked to be at least two or three times bigger than the rest. I quickly made a plan and discussed it with EDI and Heather. Once they agreed I went to work. I started taking all of the moisture out of the air. The one I assumed was the alpha started sniffing around after only a few minutes. He had sensed the air getting dryer. For some reason the wind continued to blow towards us. I was going to use this advantage, but I was wary of some sort of trap. The stupid wolves started to look around the clearing after most of the moisture had been taken away. I smiled to myself. At that point it was too late to do anything substantial to stop me. Before they decided to look for the cause, I harnessed all of the surrounding fire mana. The air around the clearing grew hotter. The wolves were panting. That was EDI¡¯s cue to start. She ran into the stamina draining area. The alpha barked. Two of the wolves went to deal with her, while the others guarded the rock. The plan was for them to all focus on her, but it was a very flexible plan. As soon as EDI engaged the wolves, Heather jumped out of the opposite side of the clearing. I smiled as I saw her pounce on one of the wolves. Her speed was uncanny. I shook my head, glad that Heather hadn¡¯t decided I was worth attacking. As long as I keep her under control, then I will benefit tremendously from it. The alpha barked again. Three more wolves went to deal with Heather. SHIT! There aren¡¯t supposed to be that many that stay! The plan had been fairly simple. I would dry out the air so the girls could attack the over heated wolves. After fully clearing out the water mana, and adding fire mana, I would tell them to run. After that my concentrated fire power would be unleashed on the alpha. The only problem now was that I had to get closer to target the alpha. With so many wolves still in place I had to do something to get to him. I was not going to let this plan fail! I gave them the signal to run. I rushed towards the alpha. I looked at the wolves in scorn. The average level was only 26. The alpha was at level 50, but that was why I had EDI and Heather. I let out my Roar of Paralysis, enhanced by my wind mana. The wolves, except the alpha, were scared stiff.
Alpha Wolf Level 50
Health: 1000/1000Stamina: 750/750
I gathered all of my mana, and cast a fireball at the alpha. As soon as the fireball was thrown, it started gaining power. I was pumping more wind mana into the ball as it flew. The ball started out with a three inch diameter, as it approached the wolf it had tripled in size! A wolf jumped at me as my fire arced through the air. I easily tossed the wolf with my staff. From my right another wolf attacked. I bent my knees, and dropped below the thing. I stabbed my staff upwards. I hit the belly of the wolf as it passed over my head. The fireball finally reached its destination. The alpha had obviously abandoned its perch. The fire hit the stone, and exploded. The flaming air inside of it flew in all directions. A small wave of fire encompassed the entire clearing. Many wolves had flaming pelts now. The wolves on fire yipped and howled depending on the severity. A few trees caught fire, so I pushed water mana onto them. It would be bad for the city if the forest burnt down. EDI and Heather appeared at my side. I gave them a nod. The wolves had started running in our direction, followed by a lazy alpha. I readied myself. EDI, Heather, and I spread out slightly. Just enough to not interfere with each other¡¯s battles, but not enough to give the wolves extra room to attack us. The wolves attacked. One wolf jumped at my face. Its jaw open, inviting me to become its meal. A red mark appeared on the back of the inside of its throat. I stabbed my staff into its mouth. Critical strike added quite a bit of damage. My staff seemed to tear through the wolf¡¯s back. I threw its body by performing a backwards arc with my staff. Stupid wolf killed itself. Well that means more exp for me. EDI had been surrounded on two sides by the wolves. One sprinted for her leg. It toppled over, a Sai protruding from its eye. EDI ran over and picked the Sai up, but not before another wolf jumped at her. She stabbed upwards, with perfect timing. The wolf had jumped at her face, but instead received a quick stab to the bottom of its throat. She picked up her other Sai, and prepared for the next wolf. Heather had dashed towards a wolf. She landed on the confused wolf¡¯s back. Sinking her teeth into its back was easy. She felt a rush of endorphins as the blood entered her system. Confused at the outcome of her jump, the wolves that surrounded her stared in silence. When she finished her meal, in only two seconds now, she jumped to the next wolf. More wolves started to surround me. When they jumped at my upper body, I would aim my staff under them, and toss them over my shoulder. When they attacked my lower body, I would sidestep and knock them to the side. It wasn¡¯t easy going, but it was possible. Every time I struck the wolves, they received a bit of minor damage. I added just a bit of wind mana to each attack, to send the wolves a bit further back than I could have otherwise. It seemed as though the wolves had only a small group of attacks. My stamina was slowly draining. Every time my staff struck I felt a pleasant sensation. My damage output on the wolves was decent. Since I had completely dissected them earlier, I now dealt double damage to them. Not to mention the red marks on their bodies had become much more precise. After my sixth block, the wolves started attacking in twos. One would go high, and the other low. I had to spend my precious mana to knock the top one to the side, as I dealt with the lower one. As soon as the wolves gave me a second to breathe, I started spinning my staff. Generating wind like this makes it much easier to manipulate the wind mana in the air, since there is an abundant amount created by my staff. The wind I created provided a brief respite for me. My mana was draining, but my stamina needed time to regenerate. With my artificially created wind, the wolves couldn¡¯t get close enough to damage me. EDI didn¡¯t have it any easier. The wolves focused on attacking her from the back, since she had turned around to pick up her Sai. I would have helped her, but I was having a problem myself. She had to constantly turn around when she heard the tell-tale signs of the wolves¡¯ jumps. She was really good at damaging them as she evaded, but she was getting minor scratches. Of course that is why I brought bandages. Still the bandages were being used faster than what I wanted. Heather wasn¡¯t having any problems at all. After the stunned wolves got back into action, she tore them apart. As she drank the blood of the downed wolves, she then gained even more power to fight. The wolves noticed the power she gained from drinking blood, so the started to attack her before she had a chance to drink. This just meant the wolves died faster, at least until she ran out of buff. The alpha was watching the entire battle. He did not move from his spot unless something was about to hit him (flying wolves). I started to sweat profusely. My grip slipped as I hit a wolf to the side. Several wolves took advantage of this. One planted its maw on my left leg, one attached itself to my right arm, and another bit my shoulder. Screaming in pain, I covered myself in fire mana, and ignited it. I only had 30 hp left from that one attack! The wolves let go and quickly retreated after I covered myself in my Phoenix Fire. The healing part had more potency than the fire, so I didn¡¯t waste any more bandages. Sol was resting right now. I gave an order to only come out when I was out of bandages. Having a surprise in a battle of such length was only a plus. As soon as the wolves released me, I extinguished the mana flow to the flames and healing. The wolves glowered at me. I smirked. I let the feeling of my superiority exude from my aura. The wolves around me had all been hit by my staff multiple times. Some had cracked bones, or shallow open wounds, but none had any wounds sufficient to die from. I used my Roar again. Many of the wolves were able to resist it. Still, hearing me call doom upon them, and seeing me at full strength was not good for their morale. One wolf turned tail and ran. A few others froze up. I took this opportunity to start a counter offensive. I dashed into the circle of wolves around me. One wolf jumped at my back, but I was already ducking. Attacking an enemy¡¯s back is the basics of having the advantage of numbers. As the wolf flew over me, I hit it with a flame coated staff. After contact, I quickly drained all fire mana from the staff. I didn¡¯t want to burn it after all. The wolf yelped as its stomach was burned. I continued my dash towards my target. As I got closer the wolves backed off. I pushed myself with wind, and caught my prey. I swung my staff down on the poor beast¡¯s neck. With a decided *Crack* the head rolled to the side. The nearby wolves growled when they saw their comrade fall. I checked my mana. I had just over a quarter. I had a plan to destroy the wolves, but I would need to thin their numbers. If they decided to attack Heather or EDI with their combined might, they might overwhelm them. I decided to try it anyway. If those two couldn¡¯t handle a few extra wolves, when they were both twice the wolves¡¯ levels, then they weren¡¯t worth fighting with anyway. I crouched, and threw myself into the air with my wind mana. I stood stock still, in a position perpendicular to the ground. When I reached the apex of my jump, I activated my shoes. For only ten mana per second they would stop me from falling. This only gave me a regen of 1.9 with my stomach siphon. I began meditating. This would increase my regen to 18.8/second. I meditated for five seconds. That wasn¡¯t enough time for the flow of battle to change too much, but it gave me a much needed rest. I looked down at the battle to analyze the situation. I was about fifty feet in the air. I saw the wolves slowly start to push my party back. Guess even twice the level can¡¯t beat that many numbers. I found the alpha. It was sitting lazily off to the side, but appeared to be watching me. I again started separating the water mana from the area around the wolves. Every few seconds I would go back into meditation to regen a bit of mana. I gathered all of the water mana around EDI and Heather, as well as the trees I was likely to hit. They both seemed to understand what I was doing. The air around them grew much more humid, while the air around the wolves grew arid. I then added small amounts of fire mana to the area. When I thought the air was right, I meditated for a few second more. While humidity does bring up the cost of stamina, an arid environment does the same thing but at a much higher rate. When my mana had regenerated to about half I descended. My fall was quick since I only gave my shoes enough mana to stop me from dying should I hit the ground. While I was meditating EDI and Heather had used up the rest of my bandages. I called out Sol while I feel. ¡°Focus your healing on the girls go it?¡± Sol nodded an affirmative, and flew off to do what I ordered. My speed was increasing as I came closer to the ground. I got into position as I came within ten feet of the ground. I sent a large updraft to slow me, and immediately after created cracks in the ground with my own earth mana. As I hit the ground, I used Roar again. Everyone turned towards me. I looked up, and was gratified at the sight. EDI¡¯s eyes were aglow, while Heather stood with a mostly dead wolf in her mouth. From their point of view, I had fallen from the sky, and ended up in a kneeling position on the ground. My kneeling, accompanied by my fist on the ground, made it seem like I was some sort of billionaire superhero man made of iron. I glanced at the wolves. They were in a state of near panic at this point. Never underestimate the power of the environment as a weapon. Napoleon and Hitler both lost half their armies by invading Russia in the winter. It was somewhat cold there. I raised my staff, and broke the silence by creating a fire. The fire mana in the surrounding area exploded with delight. The wolves were thrown, and caught fire. EDI and Heather were left mostly unscathed. The fire overpowered their water mana defense by a small margin. That was because I covered the trees with most of it. Sol went to work healing what the water didn¡¯t protect them from. I experienced small burns myself, but my own healing mana fixed that. The wolves were devastated by this attack. Most were already sporting injuries, but now many were on fire. Some even died as they struck nearby trees. I covered for EDI and Heather while they caught their breaths. A few wolves managed to get up at that time, so I impaled them with earth spears. I had to hide my smile as I saw their life ebb away. It was very satisfying to kill beasts that thought they posed a threat to me. The red marks I saw on the wolves made the cleanup extraordinarily easy. In their weakened, and exposed, position all I had to do was a quick thrust with the butt of my staff. The thrust would usually end the wolf¡¯s life in one hit. The wolves started to get up after the fire had died down, but it was too late at that point. EDI and Heather had already started the massacre. In only about a minute, not a single wolf was left. I looked around for the alpha to put an end to him. It seemed like he disappeared sometime while I was having my fun. Typical! Fucking ingrate. Wuss runs away when all of his family gets killed. Toughen up! I was more than a little pissed at losing the chance to kill something that powerful. That would have been one hell of a fight! After the fight I began to manually skin the wolves. It was time consuming, but I figured the game would probably reward me with better pelts at least. The skinning was really bad the first three times. I couldn¡¯t get a cut of fur more than six inches at a time. By the fifth I was doing relatively well. While I mindlessly carved the dead fur of the sixth wolf, I checked my notifications.
You have gained the title Demon Wolves¡¯ Bane. When you have this title equipped, demon wolves below your level will fear you. When you have this title equipped, alpha demon wolves may test themselves against you. You now deal 25% extra damage to all wolf type creatures.
I also gained a level. I dumped the 5 points into int. I wanted to get my Mana Affinity up to the next rank. It would lower my mana consumption by another 5%. I equipped the title ¡®Man by the Fountain¡¯. I wanted to get some more compassion points for it. If I gained enough fame with that title I thought more people would be willing to help me in the future. After all, I help all the newbies and downtrodden right? By the time I finished skinning all of the wolves, it was dusk. I still planned on making stew for the village, so I hurried back. I could have just gotten the fur as a drop, but skinning it did in fact make it have a higher chance of being high quality. I asked Ancestor to keep an eye out for danger using Inspect, as I skinned the beasts. I allowed Ancestor to use all of the Inspect skill, except the parts I needed. I gave the pelts to EDI, while Heather and I carried the meat. We made it back to the village as quickly as we could. When I got to the village center, I started making stew again. Heather went out to get more vegetables, and EDI got me the things I needed to feed the village. I again used wind mana to spread the smell to the villagers. The villagers quickly came to the food stall. They were pushing and shoving to get the food first. I even saw a young boy pushed out of line. As soon as these assholes get the energy they try to put each other down! The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. I was doing all of this ¡®charity¡¯ to empower this town. If they were going to be like that there was no reason to feed them. I used my wind mana to help me shout. ¡°LISTEN UP! CHILDREN GET FED FIRST! ALL CHIILDREN TO THE FRONT. PARENTS AND GUARDIANS OF THE CHILDREN DO NOT GET TO COME TO THE FRONT! IF SOMEONE CUTS OR STARTS PUSHING NONE OF YOU WILL GET FED!¡± Putting down harsh rules was the only way to reach people. Using kids was a good way to change someone¡¯s opinion. Making the children go first made it seem like I did all of that for order. It was sort of because of that, but mostly because I was getting a headache. It looked as though EDI had every bowl and spoon in the castle. Several guards also came with her, all loaded up with bowls and spoons. When she had done that she went to give the tanners the wolf pelts. Even though the meat was augmented with the carrots and turnips, it quickly disappeared. As soon as I had made it, a guard had put it into a bowl and served it. It was a pretty fast system. I made a rule that said all the people had to eat where we could see them. No stealing would be allowed. It was a very strict system, but there were no complaints. After all, I told them if they didn¡¯t like it to leave the line. No one said anything about my rules after that. I served them until everyone had a serving. I still had over two thirds of the stacks of meat in my inventory, so I told them if they wanted seconds to come get it. I had enough vegetables for the night, so I told Heather to just have fun until I call her back. Sol was floating by me the entire time. Sol was giving light healing to everyone that ate my food. The children received full healing. I tried to push my light mana into Sol. To my surprise Sol seemed to gain not only mana, but added power to healing from this. After cooking the two large quantities of food that day, and skinning the wolves, I finally got my survival skill to level 25. After giving everyone a second helping I asked them to assist me. ¡°Alright! I am going to have to go out hunting again tomorrow, so I will need some volunteers. It¡¯d be best if you knew something about hunting, tracking, or can use a bow.¡± After mumbling amongst themselves for a few minutes I added, ¡°If no one volunteers I can¡¯t promise food.¡± Three skinny women, and two skinny men stepped forward. One of the women spoke. ¡°We are the village¡¯s hunters. If you need help hunting, we can provide it, but we don¡¯t have weapons.¡± I nodded. I didn¡¯t expect the slavers to leave them their weapons after all. ¡°That¡¯s fine, I¡¯ll take care of that. I just need help with a certain mission.¡± The group nodded. I left the area to go to the blacksmith¡¯s. I wanted to do as much tonight as I could. When I reached the forge, I noticed that many of the tools were fixed. The blacksmith even finished working on some of the leather armor pieces. ¡°AH! Voice was it? Come to finish the anvil?¡± He asked with a big smile on his face. I nodded. ¡°I¡¯m at least going to try.¡± I wanted to get as much done of the anvil as I could. I took over Inspect, and began to work. I continued to fix the anvil far into the night. I had to let myself take several breaks. One quest wasn¡¯t worth me frying my brain. It was much easier to do it the second time. Since I already had the basics down it went a lot faster. I managed to finish about a fourth of it in those few hours. It was still a long way off of fixed though. After spending my precious time fixing the anvil, I went to the castle to sleep. I was stopped by a fragile looking woman. I had seen her in the food line before. I took note, because she kept her beauty even though she was next to starving. She grabbed my arm, hard. Tears were streaming down her face. ¡°Please sir! Please! My daughter! Please help her!¡± The woman¡¯s cries had drawn attention of nearby villagers. ¡°I¡¯ll do anything! But please!¡± I nodded and motioned her to show me her daughter. If I refused then my rep in this place would plummet. Ancestor spoke to me. ¡°There is a 95% chance that she is deceiving you.¡± Thanks for the heads up Ancestor. Although her acting was good, with my high-level sense motive, coupled with body language analyst, it was hard to deceive me. I hid the wicked grin that spread across my face. When we reached her makeshift hut, she opened the door and pushed me in. Suddenly I heard insane laughter coming from the front of the door. ¡°HAHAH! Now die fool Die for bringing the dead to life!¡± The room started to get hot. I noticed the fire spreading across the roof. I calmly sent out my water mana to quench the fire. The water shot through the roof, and sprayed like a geyser. With the fire out, I threw open the door by causing a large gust of wind. Several people were restraining the old hag. I gave her my most sincere smile. ¡°Now, now. It¡¯s not nice to try to kill your savior, you know?¡± I hit her in the stomach with my staff. This woman had seen me raise the dead. I had to dispose of her. Although, Elvina also saw me. I wonder why she didn¡¯t react like this. I guess because I was her only choice. The woman was knocked unconscious with my blow. I knew I had to get rid of her. But if I killed her overtly word would get to Elvina. Worst case scenario was she would refuse to have dealings with me, and lock me out of this town. I gave an informal salute to the people that restrained her. ¡°Thanks guys. I¡¯ll take it from here. I will bring her to Elvina to see if anything can be done. She must have seen me battling the undead, and assumed I was part of them.¡± The villagers nodded like that was the only obvious answer. Dumb fucks. I did bring her to Elvina¡¯s bedroom though. The guards at the door stopped me. ¡°Sir you can¡¯t come in here.¡± They gave an apologetic look. ¡°I understand, perhaps you can give her a message for me? Tell her ¡®There is trouble, and I won¡¯t be able to help her this time¡¯.¡± The guards looked worried. One frantically opened the door to relay the message. He stumbled as I stared at the other with a poker face. I mean I knew that these guys just got out of slavery, but geez that was too funny! There was a small commotion in the room, and Elvina came out. She was dressed in a white bathrobe looking robe. She looked at the woman I was carrying. I bowed to her graciously. ¡°If I may step in to speak? This is a bit of a private matter.¡± Elvina cast a glance at the guards. ¡°Sure, you two stay out here.¡± She waved me inside. I sat down on one of the most comfortable looking chairs. ¡°This woman here tried to kill me.¡± I started off blunt. If I made her overreact at first it was more likely that she would be susceptible to my plans. ¡°She apparently saw me raising the undead. She decided she was just in meeting out punishment by burning me alive in a house EDI helped build.¡± I shook my head slowly, as if dejected at the loss of innocence this woman portrayed. ¡°I don¡¯t want her killed obviously, but if we don¡¯t do something about this, the people may wish to kick me out of the town. I have no qualms about leaving but,¡± I forced a tear out, ¡°but I really wanted to help this beautiful city become prosperous before I left.¡± *Sniff* I looked at Elvina. I had tears in my eyes. I could have made myself cry if I used water mana, but I was afraid she would notice. Elvina nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll find a place for her in the castle. You¡¯ll have to find another place to sleep though.¡± She gave an apologetic look. I nodded, downtrodden but understanding. ¡°That¡¯s fine. As long as I can help out.¡± I put on a face that said ¡®oh! I just figured something out!¡¯ ¡°AH! Would you happen to know if there is a temple to Undine here? I¡¯d like to try summoning a water fairy. I heard they are one of the best.¡± I gave her a smile. At the same time I felt Sol sulking. I sent my thoughts to Sol. ¡°Don¡¯t worry Sol. Water might be one of the best, but light is the best.¡± Sol stopped sulking, and in fact started to radiate a small amount of happiness. Sol started gibbering to me, but I ignored it. I thought to myself, Too easy. Sol¡¯s like a freaking six year old. A six year old that loves to be annoying. Damn! Quiet down for two seconds! Sol really did love to talk. Whenever Sol started talking, the stream of words wouldn¡¯t end for a long time. It was nothing short of exasperating. I did learn to tune things out better because of that though. Elvina looked excited for some reason. ¡°YES! I can help! As a priestess of Undine I can grant you a fairy!¡± I gave her an excited hug. ¡°Thank you! That would be most appreciated!¡± After a brief discussion on what to do with the attempted murderer, I left. I had to find somewhere to sleep. I could ask one of the villagers, but I wanted to seem like the one that they came to for help, not one that asked for help. I walked around the city as I pondered that. After only a few minutes, I had a great idea! The ever so intelligent me would build my own house! I quickly logged off to read up on the necessary knowledge. I stayed off for thirty minutes, since the game require you to spend at least three increments of thirty minutes (irl) away every irl day. I looked up many numerical values needed to build my tiny shack. I downloaded a high level, but still free, physics program. I was gifted in math, so it wasn¡¯t hard to figure out the exact dimensions I would need to maximize stability and durability, while minimizing time and mana cost. When the program showed that it would be stable, I adjusted minor parts, and made sure it still worked. I was satisfied when I had spent about forty minutes creating and fixing everything. I hoped back into the pod and got to work. Three hours had already passed, but I still had time to make the house. I equipped the title Night Owl to increase my proficiency. I found an empty spot, and started my work. I sat in the center of the clearing, and began to force the mana to surround me. I was going to build the house around myself. The frame of the house was relatively easy. I solidified the earth mana into long bars, to provide support for the rest of the house. After creating the bars I added less dense mana to create the walls. I left three openings in the walls. Two for windows, and one for a door. I don¡¯t know how long it took, but I was mentally spent after just creating the three walls. I decided to start trying to purify to give myself a rest. I activated the purifying process for water mana. When I breathed in I saw the water mana go into my body, when I exhaled I saw murky, dark and disgusting water mana leave my body. After only a few times I took over manual control. I absorbed the water mana when I breathed in, and released the disgusting water mana when I exhaled. I continued this until I felt that I could continue with my work. All that I had left was the ceiling and one wall. I continued with the last wall. Forcing the mana into the correct shape had gotten much harder than earlier. I had to stop once in the middle, so I purified my water mana again. After finishing the wall my concentration was wavering again. Geez, I know I¡¯ve been at this for a while, but damn man! How is my concentration that low? I again purified my mana while letting my concentration reform. To make the roof I forced the mana in the ground to shoot through the walls and form beams on the ceiling. The mana was getting harder, and harder to gather. I knew I couldn¡¯t take it from directly below the house without causing the house to fall into the created hole. I was forced to gather mana from further away every time I needed more. I had to take another break after just making the beams of the roof. My concentration seemed to be declining at faster intervals now. I would gain all of my expanded mana back while purifying my water mana, but I had to waste time each time to let myself be able to fully concentrate. At least purifying mana didn¡¯t take any concentration. I finished with the roof after three more purification breaks. Honestly I was pretty depressed with myself at that point. I doubt I could have kept going even if I wanted to. I groggily opened my eyes when I was done. My body was stiff from sitting in the same spot for so long. I stretched as I stood up. It felt like making the house took hours. I looked out of the door frame. My eyes bulged when I saw it. The sun had already risen above the horizon! It looked to be about nine in the morning. No wonder I kept loosing concentration! I had been doing the same task for almost 12 hours! No! FUCK! I¡¯m late for my reward! I rushed out of the house, only paying a passing glance to the small crowd that had gathered around my newly made house. I nearly fell as the ground around the house had a large depression. I made an earth bridge using a few minutes. The bridge only connected the door to the other side of the crater. I rushed into the castle as fast as I could. Elvina was sitting on the throne, waiting with slightly impatient eyes. ¡°Voice, you finally grace us with your presence.¡± She was a bit haughty for my liking. I just spent a sleepless night making my fucking house ass! ¡°I just spent a sleepless night making a durable house for your subjects.¡± I gave her a slightly exasperated tone. It might have been worse than what I intended, she recoiled in shock. ¡°Oh,¡± She seemed taken aback by my retort. ¡°Uh, sorry. I didn¡¯t know.¡± She shook the confusion out of her mind. ¡°Well it is time for your reward.¡± I got down on one knee. I expected to be knighted or something after the effort I put in. She handed something to a guard, the guard walked over to me. ¡°Once, long ago, I became Undine¡¯s Champion. She gave me this to reward someone that has proven themselves to me. Take it, and with it my gratitude.¡± The guard put a vial with a single drop of blue-green liquid into my hands.
Blood of Undine *Ichor
This is a drop of Undine¡¯s blood. Undine gave this to Elvina to reward someone that proved themselves to her. This drop of blood can be used in potions, enchanting, or as a bargaining tool with Undine. This item is soul-bound until used.
I didn¡¯t know how to react. Ancestor spoke. I could sense a tone of greed in Ancestor¡¯s voice. ¡°Voice. Um, do you think you could wait before using that?¡± I understood that this droplet probably had to do with bringing my people back into the light, or maybe about the war waged between my people and the gods. Either way Ancestor couldn¡¯t provide me with anything, so I didn¡¯t really feel like I owed it to Ancestor to do as I was told. I might, but usually when one asks for a favor they would provide a suitable reward. Ancestor sent a feeling of dissatisfaction. ¡°Fine, but I was going to give this info to you later anyway!¡± I felt like if Ancestor had a tongue, it would be pointed at me. ¡°There is a hidden village far to the north. In that village is a riddle. If you solve the riddle you will be able to enter a dungeon. That dungeon was used to train young Potentials. Potentials were the ones that might have overcome the gods if our research was completed. Unfortunately they sacrificed themselves to protect the research. Now the research is only obtainable if you are a True Elf, and have passed the Potential¡¯s challenge.¡± Now don¡¯t get me wrong, I had no doubt that that particular piece of info was not worth this drop of blood. But I thought I could get a lot more out of Ancestor¡¯s goodwill than by extortion. Fine, but I want info on the research when the time comes. Not to kill the gods, but to become more powerful. My stomach growled in an embarrassing way. I tried to cough to cover it up, but I knew everyone noticed. ¡°Sorry about that, I haven¡¯t eaten in a few days.¡± I looked down at the ground. My cheeks were burning slightly. At least EDI wasn¡¯t there. Elvina whispered to a guard. She turned to me after the guard scurried off. ¡°Now, you told me last night you wished to summon a water fairy? Honestly not a lot of people want to summon fairies anymore. Everyone is too focused on other classes. I admire the arcane classes though.¡± She stared for a moment with a look of longing. She stood up and motioned for me to follow. We walked into a small, dimly lit room. I saw a water droplet painted on the floor. In the middle was a summoning sign. A guard was holding a tray of food when I entered. Elvina nodded to it. I scarfed the bread, and piece of slightly old cheese, down while she spoke. ¡°Do you know how this works?¡± I nodded while eating my fill. ¡°Good that speeds things up a bit.¡± Didn¡¯t the mage¡¯s guild say the same thing? ¡°I assume you have the 25 water affinity.¡± I nodded again. If I said I know how it works why the hell would I ask you to get the fairy without the affinity? I hated that she tarnished my mother¡¯s image by being so completely stupid. ¡°You can still eat, but I need a drop of your blood. You also need to pump mana into the circle.¡± I pricked myself with my knife, and sent a stream of mana into the circle. My mana began to form a water ball when released. The ball sat in the middle of the droplets round part. I pumped in the entire 500 mana. The water got bigger and bigger, until it was roughly twice the size of my head. Once it grew to maximum size, it popped. The bubble of water splashed everyone in the room. Floating where the bubble had just been, was a tiny squid.
Stats Window
NameTearRaceWater Fairy
Health10Mana1300
Stamina10
RankNoviceCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec16.9
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility10
Wisdom169Intelligence130
Endurance10Dexterity1
Luck10Vitality10
Fame0
Tear is a water fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Water fairies start with all stats but agility, vitality, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a water fairy Tear¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal the user. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Tear. Tear has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Tear has gained 9 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
The fairy didn¡¯t speak. Could it even be called a fairy? Anyway it remained silent as it moved towards me. It was actually kind of cute. I moved the way actual squids do. It gathered water inside itself, and pushed it out to propel itself. The water was shot out of the ball. As soon as the water left the ball the squid was in it reconnected to it. When the squid fairy came close enough, I asked Elvina. ¡°Soooooo, can I go ahead and upgrade Tear now?¡± Elvina looked confused. ¡°Well you need at least fifty affinity with water.¡± I nodded saying I did. ¡°Oh, well you also should have at least 1000 mana. It¡¯d be a shame to lose the intimacy you have with Tear.¡± I nodded again. ¡°I have 1300 so that¡¯s fine.¡± Elvina looked shocked. ¡°Then how have you not summoned a water fairy before!?¡± I shrugged when she asked. ¡°I needed to find a place to summon my dearest cutie Tear.¡± I prompted her to start enhancing the ritual circle. She looked confused, but got to work. She had a book in her hands as she drew the circle. She used pure water magic to create the circle. I noticed I had several notifications so I looked at them.
For continuing to work without stop for a long period of time you have gained 2 endurance.
For reaching 50 Endurance you have unlocked the skill Tough Skin.
Tough Skin Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 endurance, up to a maximum of 250 endurance. For every rank you gain you take 5% less damage. This skill can stack up to 25% damage reduction.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Combat Learning. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Combat Learning? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Combat Learning. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Combat Learning. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Combat Learning. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you look at enough auras to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
Combat Learning Current Level: Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Heavy Armor, Staff Mastery, Knife Master, Critical Hit, and Though Skin. You have studied the art of fighting. You know multiple forms of attack, and at least one to defend. The skill Critical Hit is now a passive ability. Combat Learning can activate Critical Hit, at most, once per minute. This does not consume Stamina, Mana, or Health. Combat Learning will activate Critical Hit, whenever you score a critical hit, at most once per minute. This group skill gives you a competency bonus to all skills it encompasses. For every five levels, rounded up until level 94, you gain 5% bonus damage/defense while using anything this skill encompasses. Each rank of this skill grants the user one Combat related Trait. For every rank this skill grants you a 5% damage resistance. For learning the art of Tough Skin, this skill has ranked up to at least Apprentice level. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill, or study about combat. You can study the skills that that make up Combat Learning, or about combat in general. This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be. For creating the Group Skill: Combat Learning, you have gained the Trait: Fighter¡¯s Spirit. For learning enough about combat to upgrade the Group Skill: Combat Learning, you have gained the Evolution Trait: Resistance.
Resistance is the perfect trait for those that love combat. You are able to withstand more damage and pain before your body starts to shut down. The more damage and pain you take, the more powerful this trait will become. This skill can evolve into better versions.
You have created a new spell: Earth House with Moat.
Earth House with Moat The caster builds a basic house around themselves. It has one room, to be used for everything. This spell requires 12 hours of consistent concentration. You may meditate during these hours, but may not leave the area or focus on things other than creating the house. Houses created by this spell are permanent until destroyed. You must be able to use the mana in the crust of the earth to be able to use this spell.
Fucking Nice! Shit¡¯s gonna be used a lot! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 31Health: 100Mana: 1300Stamina: 350
Current Title: Night OwlHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 16.9 (11.9)/sStamina Regen: 45.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom169Intelligence130
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00% Dissection Novice Level 7 Exp 10.00% Automatic Dissection Novice Level 7 Exp 10.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 18 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 42 Exp 24.54% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 5.70% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 15 Exp 86.54% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 9.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 4.44% Group Skill: Survival Novice Level 25 Exp 6.23% Group Skill: Combat Learning Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water55
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
(Author¡¯s Note: I messed up on the tables somewhere. I don¡¯t even know how, but many of the stats were wrong. Unfortunately I only have the current stats. I have fixed much of what I could find, but I don¡¯t know where some of the stats on my excel sheet leveled up. I am sincerely sorry, and will make sure to not let it happen again.) Dive 37: Summoning and Smithing Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Some weird people were planning something that included slavers that recently died. Voice hunted many wolves, that ended up in a fight with all of them. He also built a house and summoned rank 1 Tear, a water elemental. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! The dark figure had spent nearly a day finding and ordering his men to assemble. They had been spread out quite far after all. The slave removed his hood when all were assembled before him. They stood in a dark chapel. It gave off a very gothic(the era not the people) feel. It was one of the oldest temples to Davros that still existed. As the hood fell from his head, the figure was shown in all of his glory. His most prominent features were his skin and horns. His skin was dark red, as though someone had corrupted all of the blood in his body. On his skin were black inscriptions, very few would be able to tell what they actually meant. It was an old form of magic, that had mostly died out. His horns looked more like curved drills than anything else. Starting at the top of his forehead, they jutted straight out, then curved upwards. When he lowered his head, they were used in the same way as a rhino might use its horn. The spirals going down the horns helped lead the blood of his enemies to the inscriptions that covered his body. He growled at the assembled army. ¡°You pathetic worms have been given a great honor for our lord! You will all fight to the death with the one known as Mar¡¯s Chosen! Many of you will die,¡± A hungry smile intruded upon his face, ¡°but some may not. Failure is not an option! If you stagger, I will consume you! If you falter, I will consume you! If you question I will consume you! If you flee, I will consume you! Now go! Make ready for our departure! You have two hours to be presentable to our lord!¡± The army was assembled from many races: demons, dark elves, wood elves, humans, dwarves, even a high elf was present. They all wore differing arms and armors that would be suitable to their respective classes. These fifty men were the single best military unit the demon controlled. Voice¡¯s POV I waited impatiently while Elvina completed the ritual circle. She messed up a few times, and had to start over. I was starting to question whether or not it was safe to increase Tear¡¯s rank. While she worked, I memorized how she created the circle. It was very intricate work. Ancestor was also watching aptly. Never seen a summoning before? I joked. If Ancestor was watching so astutely than something must be different about this summoning. Ancestor replied seriously. ¡°No, summoning was created to help the other race¡¯s overpower ours. They hid the knowledge greedily. I am very interested in how this works. I wasn¡¯t able to see it in Rand after all.¡± Sol seemed unusually quite during the summoning procedure. I guessed it was something like a religious experience to fairies.
For coming to understand more about Fairy Culture, you have gained 5 wisdom.
Aw yeah! More mana regen! I smiled a truly excited smile at the slight increase in my power. Elvina had just finished the circle, and saw me smiling. She returned it, thinking I was smiling at her. ¡°You have no need to be so excited gosh!¡± She turned around. ¡°Voice Inspect shows she had a 62% chance of being embarrassed.¡± Yeah, I figured that out without it, thanks. I replied flatly. I was obvious she was embarrassed. I replied to her in an amicable way. ¡°Of course there is! Such a beautiful woman performing such an amazing favor for me! Not only do I get to take in the beauty, I also get to increase my connection to Undine! I will just be happy if she chose to lend Tear more power!¡± It was a little weird to compliment her beauty, but hey my mom was the most beautiful person on earth. She had turned around so I checked the blue box in the corner of my vision.
For coming to understand the reason summoned fairies increase in power, you have gained 5 wisdom.
Eh? I did what? I just made up some bullshit. I smiled at the fact that the system thought I had figured something out. I didn¡¯t actually realize that fairies took their power from the gods directly. Wait does that mean people can¡¯t summon dark fairies now, because of me? I got no pop up, so I tried again. Does that mean people can¡¯t upgrade dark fairies now, because of me?
For reasoning out the fact that people can no longer upgrade dark fairies, and the reason why, you have gained 2 intelligence.
Elvina had turned around. She shook her self slightly, and spoke. ¡°Alright, Tear you go in the middle of the water drop, and Voice you channel in more magic.¡± The summoning circle was now a large white cloud with a single rain drop coming from it. Tear floated in the middle of it. As I poured mana into it, Tear began to glow a sea foam green color. The ball around Tear began grow as it sucked in my slightly purified water mana. The bubble popped when I had only fed it 950 mana. I assumed that was because my water mana was a bit purer than usual. A single bead of water hit my head. When it did I felt myself convulse and fall to the ground. As I fell I thought to myself. Shit, guess she really did fuck up. I instantly awoke in a dark body of water. I freaked the fuck out trying to swim to the top, until I remembered my water breathing. Since I had gills I tried sucking in water into them. I felt the weirdest sensation of the skin on my throat flapping. I shivered a little at the uncomfortable feeling. Still I could breathe so I was happy. I noticed that I still had all of my armor and clothes, but not my staff. I looked around. I saw a giant eyeless jellyfish staring at me. That thing was huge, it was at least seven times bigger than I was. It looked like it could eat me in a sing bite. ¡°SO!¡± Its voice was deep and booming. It echoed in my mind longer than I wanted. I could even feel the bass of the voice in my body. (AN* Jelly fish guy talks a bit weird. I am putting how it sounds while it talks) ¡°You wish to hold my powah!? Then you must PROOOVE yourself to me! Fight! If you live I will grant you my POWAH!¡± As soon as the giant jellyfish said that, I noticed several fish surrounding me. I only had time to think Shit before the piranha attacked. The jellyfish seemed to have swam away to watch. The piranha numbered in the hundreds. I created a wall of earth around myself. If I was sealed they couldn¡¯t attack. Or so I thought. The earth mana would not obey me. Not only was there now earth around me, I couldn¡¯t even call out my own earth orb. Several of the piranha were swimming around me. The only thing I knew about them was they hunted things that thrashed about, and were attracted to the smell of blood. I remained completely still as I adjusted my pain sensor to minimum. The only mana that seemed to be around me was water mana and fire mana. I could tap into the fire mana, but it was extremely hard. No doubt it was only there to keep the temperature in the water warm while I fought. The piranha seemed to ignore me, that is until The jellyfish created a small tremor in the water. The fish all looked at me. I started making the water mana around me flow outwards. It looked like a sphere of water that was constantly flowing outward. My heart was beating faster. Even with 1% pain, it would still hurt like hell to get eaten alive. The piranha started swimming against the current I made. Oddly, no matter how much water mana I used to create the repulsion force, my mana didn¡¯t decrease. Neither did the amount of ambient water mana around me. I made the flows around me faster, and added more force. The piranha seemed to be having trouble getting to me now. They were slowly being pushed back. I smiled as I saw a thin line of hope. Maybe I wouldn¡¯t get eaten after all! No sooner had I thought that, than another wave came from the jellyfish. This time I started to feel my mana decrease. My mind was becoming frantic, I could keep this up for now, but that wouldn¡¯t last long. I tried to manipulate the fire mana at the same time. Last time I did this ended up in complete failure, but now I had no choice. I had concentrate on the fire to grab hold of it, but when I did the water current slowed. The piranha would get slightly closer every time I focused my energy on the fire mana. I had a plan, but I need the fire mana to make it work. The piranha seemed to gain no headway when I pushed them, but neither were they pushed back like I hoped. I started using meditate. I needed to increase the sped the water pushed them at. The only way to do that was use more mana, but I already was close to halfway empty. Since I could manipulate mana while I meditated I slowly pushed them away. My mana was even coming back faster than I used it! Now before you ask, yes I could have done this while making the house, but I was basically braindead. I didn¡¯t want to keep making the house so I stalled a bit. Anyway! I meditated for a few minutes, after which I initiated my plan. Loosening my grip on the water mana, I tried holding onto the fire mana. It wasn¡¯t fire but heat, but that was what made me think of this plan. Holding onto two different types of mana is like trying to look at different objects with each eye. Some people that have trained themselves can do it, but most cannot. I was in the latter group. When I concentrated too hard my meditation even failed. I would have to get back into the zone to increase my mana regen. I lost track of how long the cycle lasted. I would regen all of my mana while pushing the fish further away. After it was full I would slow the pushing, and try to grab the fire mana. Sometimes I felt like I was about to get it, but by then my mana would be almost depleted. So I had to meditate while pushing the fish further away. Cycle after cycle continued. At one point I even thought of quitting. If I had let the piranha eat me I would at least get out of that watery prison. I got used to the gills pretty quickly at least. They stopped registering after a few minutes of meditation. After hundreds of cycles, I finally managed to grab hold of a fire mana stream. I was elated! But I had to let it go to regen my mana again. The jellyfish seemed to think I was too close to winning, so altered the game again. I mean how the fuck is it just going to do that!? I would have said something to it had I not been fighting for my life! The piranha started growing in numbers. They increased so much, that they actually began pushing each other to get to me. That might have been beneficial, if they also didn¡¯t push from behind. The extra force caused the piranha to be still when they should have been pushed back. I knew they would come closer if I lessened the mana to the pushing force. Now I had to hold the faster water AND try to grab the fire. At least my mana was still increasing. I decided to punish my water fairy when this was all over. From context I knew this jellyfish wasn¡¯t my fairy, it had said ¡®borrow my power¡¯ not ¡®control my power¡¯. I directly controlled the power of my fairies. It wasn¡¯t fair for my squid, but fuck this wasn¡¯t fair for me! Little bastard. I started the cycle over. I had to use more mana to push them back and hold them, but the cycle was the same. When I pushed them back I lost mana, but when I kept them still I regained it. I lost track of how long I practiced grabbing the fire mana. After I grabbed the fire mana, I released it immediately. I needed to be able to work with it, but didn¡¯t want the jellyfish to increase the difficulty again. I had figured out that it would increase the difficulty whenever I seemed like I was getting closer than before. I got the hang of grabbing the two types of mana after only another half hour. It actually made a lot of sense how to do it. I just had to spend a small amount of thought on the water mana, and the bulk of my concentration on the fire mana. To keep in the meditative state I just lowered the amount of control I exerted on my water field. All I had to do was find the least amount of force to keep the piranha away, while also figuring out the least amount of attention I needed to pay the fire mana to control it. If I made it sound easy that¡¯s because it was¡­ NOT! It was hard as fuck. The only reason I even got it was that I¡¯m leagues ahead of the rest of humanity in terms of pure intellect and computational ability. As soon as I was satisfied with my grip on the fire mana, I started pushing it outward. The jellyfish again pulsated, but it didn¡¯t matter. This was a do or die situation anyway. I pushed every single piece of fire mana, that wasn¡¯t touching my body, away with the current. The fire didn¡¯t regenerate. I smiled. The reason I even thought this plan was feasible was that the fire mana didn¡¯t seem to have a ¡®core¡¯ like the water mana. The water mana would be constantly produced from any other piece of water mana, but the fire mana wouldn¡¯t. As the fire mana left the area not around me, the water¡¯s temperature drastically dropped. Chunks of ice started blocking the pathway for the piranha. The less fire mana in the surrounding area, the harder it became to manipulate the water mana. After a few seconds then entire area around me had turned into a solid chunk of ice. The ice was transparent, but the light was refracted off of the edges. I was surrounded by an ice orb that had ripples flowing through it. Then something I didn¡¯t expect happened. The ice started expanding. The orb that I made was stationary, but the water around it became frigid. The piranha closest to me froze first, after it froze it sent a blast of ice in all directions. As soon as the ice, whether from the piranha or the orb, hit a piranha it exploded. All that was left of the entire group was hundreds of little ice blocks. It was the single best chain reaction I have ever seen. I couldn¡¯t help but be satisfied with how much overkill was in that one attack. The best part was when the jellyfish thing got hit. A small piece, about half of my body, got froze on it. It screamed in pain. I didn¡¯t even try to hide my smile. Suddenly the jellyfish was covered in ice spikes, each spike covering more of the thing¡¯s body. The ice slowly froze over the entire body of the jelly. As the ice crept ever closer to the top of the jelly¡¯s head, a thought rang out. ¡°Very well! I will lend you my POWAH!¡± With that, I was back in my body, convulsing in a large puddle of water. Elvina was pouring something into my mouth. The taste made me gag. As I coughed up some sort of pink liquid, which might have been diluted blood, I saw the jellyfish right in front of me. Before I had time to freak out, i noticed the small size of it. It was barely bigger than my squid I had just summoned. I looked at my water fairies stats.
Stats Window
NameTearRaceWater Fairy
Health10Mana1320
Stamina10
RankNoviceCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec17.9
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility10
Wisdom179Intelligence132
Endurance10Dexterity1
Luck20Vitality10
Fame0
Tear is a water fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Water fairies start with all stats but agility, vitality, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a water fairy Tear¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal the user. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Tear. Tear has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Tear has gained 19 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned. As a higher order of fairy Tear can use all previous forms it has used. All forms will be adjusted to the power of the highest order from.
As Tear bobbed up and down in its water sphere, I felt a ball of rage forming in the pit of my stomach. Tear resembled too closely the giant jellyfish from before. I forced the ball down, and pet Tear. ¡°Who¡¯s a good king of the jelly fish? You are, yes you are!¡± I felt the only way to force down my anger was to over compensate with cuteness. I acted like Tear was a kitten or a puppy. Hey even guys like me like fluffy stuff. I turned to Elvina. ¡°So would you care to tell me what I just experienced? It was not a pleasant thing.¡± Elvina looked at me confused. Don¡¯t play dumb bitch. She tilted her head. ¡°Were you, perhaps, not aware of the entire summoning procedure? You have a higher order light fairy so I didn¡¯t think this would be new to you.¡± She seemed to come to some sort of realization. ¡°OH! You are the chosen of Mar!¡± I nodded happily. I was seriously starting to get pissed. She adopted a teacher like pose. ¡°SO! Whenever you upgrade a fairy, you need to pass the Trail of the Elementals. The elementals will give you a task according to how high the order of the fairy you are upgrading is, and what affinity the fairy is. For instance, a second order fire fairy may ask you to sit in flames for a day. Either way you will have to pass that trial in order to acquire a bit of the elemental¡¯s power for your fairy. I¡¯ve never met a God¡¯s Chosen so I didn¡¯t think to tell you. I¡¯m SO sorry!¡± A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. She had a pained look on her face, her shoulders drooped, and she hung her head. As much as I wanted to hate her, I just couldn¡¯t. If my mom made that face, I would have no choice but to beat the person who caused it. I waved it away. ¡°It¡¯s ok, it¡¯s ok. Don¡¯t worry about it. At least I know now.¡± I gave her a reassuring smile, as I patted her shoulder. I need to get out of here as soon as possible. I am shit against her secret facial technique. I gave Elvina a hug as I said my thanks. ¡°Thank for helping me. You didn¡¯t have to, but still went out of your way. Truly you are worthy to be Undine¡¯s chosen.¡± When I said that she narrowed her eyes. I forgot that she never actually told me she was Undine¡¯s chosen. She seemed to wave it off, which was good since I couldn¡¯t think of a good enough lie quickly. ¡°Well, I have to go. I promised several of your villagers that I would help them rebuild.¡± I said as I made the best slightly regretful look I could. I walked out without giving her the chance to say anything. As I made my way out of the castle, Sol was speaking rapid pace (as always) to Tear. Tear didn¡¯t seem to respond. I interrupted. ¡°Tear, I would like to know a bit about your powers. I need to know how to best utilize you in and out of combat.¡± Instead of telling me, Tear sent a series of mental images. I took a moment to digest the images. ¡°So you can create and manipulate water, as well as sense any water nearby and communicate with any creatures that live in the water?¡± Tear sent an affirmative sensation. ¡°Good, that can be useful.¡± I didn¡¯t think that the power to manipulate water was as good as healing, but it could still come in handy. I let Sol and Tear communicate while I looked at my Compendium. It had finished compiling the information on all of the books, but I didn¡¯t get any exp from them. ¡®Creation of Compendiums¡¯ gave details on how to create compendiums. You had to have a specially enchanted book ¡®consume¡¯ several other high quality books. It must have decided my alchemist¡¯s book was high quality enough. ¡®Knowledge Creation in Compendiums¡¯ gave several theories about how Compendiums could generate knowledge. All of the theories had one thing in common. Compendiums of higher level could generate information from details in books they consumed. Compendiums could only output this information in black pages that were inserted in them. They would automatically write a ¡®notes¡¯ section on all things that was compiled from the books that were a part of the Compendium. ¡®Evolutions of Compendiums¡¯ listed many possible ¡®evolutions¡¯ a compendium could have. The ¡®evolutions¡¯ wholly depended on the types of books it possessed. If for instance the compendium had many books on magic, it would evolve the ability to boost the wielders magic. It might decrease spell cost if it had certain books, or make the spell more powerful if it had others. Diviticus (the author of these three books) even claimed that there was a way to make a compendium sentient, but he had never managed to figure out how. He had created hundreds of compendiums, but never once managed to make it. There were three rare evolutions mentioned, but Diviticus hadn¡¯t managed to make any of them. One was the sentient version, one had the ability to instantly teach the user any magic that was cast near it, and the last seemed to be able to show the user future events. I was especially interested in the future events one. I would have to learn a lot about compendiums to make it. I decided to start checking libraries for any resources on compendiums from now on. By the time I had made it to the blacksmith¡¯s I had asked EDI to see if there was a library in this city. The smithy was surrounded by people in leather armor. They were handing out identical sets to the other villagers. I greeted the blacksmith. ¡°Hello again, Mr. Blacksmith. I¡¯ve come to finish the forge.¡± He gave me a nod, but otherwise ignored me. At least pay attention to the guy fixing everything for you! I saw the smithy littered with leather armor. At least he was doing something useful. I got to work fixing the remaining parts of the forge. I had a really good plan for fixing it today. I was going to use fire mana to heat the iron so it would become more susceptible to change. If lack of fire mana made the water harder to control, then adding fire mana would most likely make it easier to manipulate. I only needed to concentrate for several seconds to grab both the fire mana in the area around the forge, and the metal mana in the anvil. I quickly realigned all of the iron mana in the anvil. It only took about two hours. That was less than a quarter of the time I had originally set aside for it. When it was done I heard the familiar ding of a quest complete.
You have completed the blacksmith¡¯s quest. Talk to him for your reward.
You have come to understand how to use multiple types of mana at once. You have reached Mana Mage Level 2. You will find it easier to utilize two forms of mana at once. You have not unlocked the best way to utilize multiple forms of mana at once.
I tried to figure out what the second screen meant. ¡®you have not unlocked the best way¡¯ that meant there was at least a few more ways to use multiple mana types at once. What I did was hard enough, it would take a while to figure out any other way to actually use two types at once. Hold up, it said multiple not two. Does that mean I can use even more types of mana at once?
For learning one of the very basics of being a Mana Mage, the VERY basics, you have gained 5 intelligence. Ps. Should you have really been rewarded for that?
It felt a little weird to be made fun of by the system after such a long time. I was taken out of my reprieve by the blacksmith. He clapped me on the shoulder as he said his thanks. ¡°Son, I don¡¯t know how to thank you. I don¡¯t have anything to give you. The only thing I have is my trade. I could show you how to use my art if you wanted though.¡± The blacksmith gave me an annoying look of hopefulness. I inwardly sighed. I would have liked to refuse him, but there was a crowd of people watching. I smiled graciously. ¡°Of course! Thank you for trusting me not to disgrace your noble trade.¡± I gave a slight bow. I had Ancestor give me control of Inspect so I could study smithing better. The people continued to collect the leather armor, while the blacksmith showed me how to create some of it. ¡°First thing you have to do is picture what you want the finished product to look like. It doesn¡¯t matter if it¡¯s arms or armor, you need to be able to visualize it all. Then you need to pick out the materials.¡± He went on and on about his trade. It took him an hour before he actually showed me how to make any armor. I made sure to look like a perfect pupil, but honestly I was bored to tears. Tear and Sol were somewhere playing around while I was stuck here listening to this guy. After teaching me the ¡®basics¡¯ of smithing, which was actually crafting of any type of weapon or armor, he showed an actual example. ¡°Alright, I¡¯m going to craft this leather armor here. I want you to watch and learn how to do it. You will need to figure out other weapons and armor yourself. You could always apprentice yourself to a blacksmith in order to learn, but that would take quite a few years. And most people don¡¯t take apprentices that are so old.¡± He shrugged as he started crafting. I paid attention to this part. I had once been interested in learning how to make my own weapons and armor, it still held some fascination to me. The process wasn¡¯t overly hard. He cut the leather into the correct pieces, and banded them together. There was only a few large pieces, and many long thing pieces. After that he just did some minor lacing with the remaining leather. While he examined his work, I looked over my new notifications.
You have learned a new smithing recipe: Wolf Leather Armor (Demon Variant).
You learned the Smithing Skill.
¡°Inspect: Smithing.¡±
Smithing Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% An Expert blacksmith has taught you this skill. Each level in this skill improves the quality of the arms and armor you create. For every rank you increase this skill you will be able use more advanced material in smithing. To level this skill you must smith weapons or armor. Crafting the same thing, at the same quality, will give diminishing returns in experience. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Dissection¡¯. Crafting skills can be fused together with higher levels of skill fusions.
I obviously fused them.
Deconstruct Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Deconstruct allows the user to break down any non-enchanted item. When you deconstruct any item you will gain a small amount of understanding about it. Each level in this skill improves the amount of knowledge you gain from deconstructing an item. Every rank in this skill allows you to deconstruct more complicated items. To level this skill you must deconstruct items, or learn about the manufacturing of the items. Every 5 levels of this skill improves the quality of items you have deconstructed by 1%. For every 10% of an item you fully understand by deconstructing an item you gain 5% quality bonus. Once you have completely deconstructed a type of item, you gain 100% quality bonus. Using Breakdown on an item destroys it.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Breakdown. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Breakdown? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
Yes.
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Breakdown. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Breakdown. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Breakdown. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if dissect enough creatures to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Breakdown.¡±
Breakdown Current Level: Novice Level 4 Exp 60.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Dissection, Auto-Dissection, and Deconstruct. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
After reading my windows the blacksmith came up to me. ¡°Now it¡¯s your turn. Show me what you learned.¡± He handed me several pieces of wolf leather. It was more than he had used, no doubt to compensate for any mistakes I might make. One of the best features of my Inspect skill was the fact that it aided me in the creation process of items. I saw the tell-tale red lines when I started using Smithing on the leather. I sewed where inspect told me to, and stich where it told me to. All in all it was basically Inspect using my hands to create the gear. It took about three times as long as the blacksmith, and I did use a bit more material since I messed up twice. The results were decent for my first time. I looked at the blacksmith¡¯s armor versus the one I made.
Demon Wolf Leather Armor
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Defense15Durability35/35
Weight5 lbs
This item provides minor defense augmentation. This armor was made by an expert craftsman. The quality of this work benefits greatly from the level of the craftsman. This item has gained 5 defense and 15 maximum durability.
Demon Wolf Leather Armor
Material QualityLowWork QualityNovice
Defense10Durability25/25
Weight5 lbs
This item provides minor defense augmentation. This armor was made by a novice craftsman. The quality of this work slightly exceeds the level of the craftsman. This item has gained 5 maximum durability.
He looked the armor over. ¡°Hm, not bad, not bad at all. You actually did pretty well for your first time. I expected the work to be shoddy at best.¡± Seeing my slightly offended (fake) look he replied, ¡°Don¡¯t take offense. I¡¯ve rarely heard of someone actually able to create something usable for their first item.¡± A slightly smug looked escaped my vigilance. I knew it was thanks to my Inspect skill, but I still did better than most other first timers. I even made a group skill! It was a pretty exciting day so far. EDI was still helping make houses, so I decided to try to find some sort of place to mine. I was going to get the blacksmith some iron ore to make weapons. It was only about one or two in the afternoon, so I could still get a lot done today if I hurried. I thanked the blacksmith as I went to figure out a way to find the iron ore. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 31Health: 100Mana: 1370Stamina: 350
Current Title: Night OwlHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 17.9 (11.9)/sStamina Regen: 45.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom179Intelligence137
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Smithing Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 18 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 42 Exp 90.73% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 5.70% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 16 Exp 16.54% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 9.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 27 Exp 14.44% Group Skill: Survival Novice Level 25 Exp 6.23% Group Skill: Combat Learning Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water55
Wind25
Nature50
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 38: A Week of Learning and Helping Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : The weird guy gathered his 50 best people. Voice upgraded Tear, and learned smithing. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I set out of town with Heather. I left EDI to help with the reconstruction. As I left, I was asked several times to assist in rebuilding the stone homes. I had to politely inform them each time that I could only make a one-room house in twelve hours. Each person would try to convince me, only to be gracefully declined. It had gotten to be quiet agitating after a while. It took me a solid twenty minutes just to get out of the city. If I didn¡¯t have the compulsion to rule this place eventually I¡¯d probably just not come back. The damn city didn¡¯t even have any miners to help me! Once I had walked away from the city for about ten minutes, I sat down. I closed my eyes and started sensing for any metal mana in the surrounding area. I could only sense mana in about a 10-20 foot sphere depending on how dense it was, but if I concentrated in one area that distance would double. First, I sensed in the sphere around me. The mana here was not very dense, so I could see for about 20 feet. Nature mana coated the grasslands I was sitting in. It was a very thin layer of mana though. I didn¡¯t sense any metal mana even after twenty minutes of sifting through. I narrowed the amount I saw, which increased the distance I saw. This time I was looking further inside the earth than before. The only difficulty being that I had to look for much longer. Since the total area I saw was decrease, and the amount of area I could cover increased, the amount of time I had to look increased exponentially. After making sure there was no types of metal in the general area, I moved on. After the first plot, I had an idea. I could just convince Ancestor to do the looking for me. Not only would Ancestor get to view the world, I¡¯d be free of the tedious task of searching. Win-Win! Ancestor, can you do the search for me? Seeing as Inspect can pick up the mana, I could use that time to purify my mana or something. Besides, you are much better at using that skill than I am. I knew that flattery would work on Ancestor, and I was bored of searching. I also put in that I¡¯d be training since Ancestor seems obsessed with the idea that I become more powerful. I mean, I thought that was the cause of the war with the gods. Oh well, doesn¡¯t matter. I spent the rest of my time purifying my water mana. Once I started the process, it quickly began to go on autopilot. I let my mind wander at that point. I had the feeling that I wouldn¡¯t be able to find any metal, so I needed to find a way to get the people weapons. The only type of material that was readily available was wood. I could harvest that for bows and arrows, but in order to actually protect the city they would need melee weapons as well. I could make wooden spears, but those would not be able to hold out against opponents that got up close. The only weapon that was any good made of wood, aside from the bow, was the staff, but it would take excessively long to train these people to use the staff. Moreover, I could only use it to the apprentice level. The water mana I started exhaling seemed to have become less and less murky and dark. In fact, it had just about become as clear as a glass of water. It was interesting to see the purity slowly rise. The longer I sat there the more pure the water mana became. As I contemplated the solution to the weapons problem, I got a notice, jarring me out of my meditative state.
Due to purifying your inner water mana in a place with extremely high concentration of pure water mana, you have increased the purity of your water mana quicker than any would think possible. Your current water purity is at 50%. Improving the quality of your water mana will now decrease the amount of water mana you need to preform tasks. Fairies benefit from high purities of mana. Fairies benefit greatly from high purities of the type of mana they use. Undine is pleased with the level of water mana purity you possess. You have gained 5 water affinity.
I decided at the moment to get my water mana purity as high as possible before leaving the town. I also wanted to see about increasing the minimum potency of my healing herbs and common weeds. Come to think of it, I probably could have harvested them already. I continued to purify my mana as Ancestor looked for metal mana in the ground. I searched many plots of land, but couldn¡¯t find any metal worth mining. I did find a single chunk of ore, but it was hardly worth digging up. After realizing there was no metal in the ground, I went back to the city. I just wasted my time! Well at least I got my mana purified. I was quite surprised at the turn about the city had in the short time I was gone. Almost everyone was dressed in uniform demon wolf leather. Some houses were currently being rebuilt, and there were many many temporary housing units built. The thing that shocked me the most though, was the sense of unity I got from the villagers. They all seemed to be working in unity. It was bizarre. Only yesterday they tried pushing kids out of the line of food, now they were all pitching in to help rebuild. I nodded in appreciation. With so much fake hospitality, it would be easy to turn this city to my side. All of the filthy people seemed to be much better fed, and in much better condition than before. Many of the pitiful peasants even waved at me while smiling! HA! Of course I waved back. I needed them to believe I put their wellbeing above all else. Otherwise, this entire venture was a waste. I quickly made my way to the castle. I harvested the plants, and replanted all but the best and worst quarters of the seeds. Obviously with the help of Ancestor. It was quite a bit easier when Ancestor analyzed the potency of the seeds for me. I needed to concentrate for several minutes each seed, but Ancestor seemed able to just spit out which one was best. I obviously kept the best ones. I was pleased to note that pouring nature mana into the plants did cause it to become more powerful. I was less pleased to find out the power scale was not inherited by its seeds. I made many potions out of the lowest quality seeds. I was going to have to show someone here how to plant and harvest the seeds, but I didn¡¯t need to teach them my secret on how to actually make the best potions. I made a few dried potions, and a few ¡®OP¡¯s. I still called them that, even though they were no longer actually over powered. I guess it was a coping mechanism for how shitty the game acted towards me. After planting the seeds, I poured my nature mana into the entire group. It might have the same effect as pouring it into one plant, but I felt powerful doing it for some reason. The nature mana seeped out of me in waves. I had Tear give the plants adequate water, and left. I went to the place I usually cooked the food. I didn¡¯t have any food, but apparently that wasn¡¯t a problem. There was a group of people with demon leather armor. They were the only ones besides guards that seemed to have weapons. Each one had chipped daggers or slightly broken longswords. Beside them was a large pile of dead wolves. One part of the group was skinning the wolves, while the other part was taking the meat from the bones. AHA! BONES! I mentally slapped myself for forgetting one of man¡¯s oldest weapons. It was a simple matter to turn bone into a weapon. All you needed was a rock, some bone, and a bit of leather in some cases. I happily walked over to the group, proud of myself for solving this problem. ¡°Hello hunters!¡± I beamed at them. ¡°Could I perhaps barter some of the meat from you?¡± I wasn¡¯t actually going to give them anything, but you have to open negotiations somewhere. I was planning to make them give it to me for free. The group started laughing. ¡°I don¡¯t think you could afford it kind sir!¡± One of the men stated while forcing his laugh down. I gave him an ¡®oh really now?¡¯ face. He nodded. ¡°Oh yes. You see this meat is going to be made into stew by one of our town¡¯s finest chefs!¡± He said with a grin. I immediately caught on. ¡°Well that is too bad. Hm, while that does sound important I think I have something worth the trade.¡± The group looked at me, most of the laughing having died down. I took one of the larger bones without meat. I encase my hand in earth mana, creating a small earth orb around it. I brought my hand down, and shattered the bone. The group looked at what I was doing. ¡°You see, I promised to arm this beautiful town. Well I will trade my archaic knowledge for this fine meat!¡± I proceeded to take the largest piece of jagged bone and sharpen it. I sharpened it by rubbing it on a nearby rough surfaced rock. The bone quickly became as sharp as a knife. I knew that bones didn¡¯t make for very durable weapons, but the screen I got caught me by surprise.
You have learned a new smithing recipe: Demon Wolf Bone Blade (Demon Variant).
Demon Wolf Bone Blade
Material QualityLowWork QualityNovice
Damage5-7Durability5/5
This is one of nature¡¯s most simple weapons. A bone sharpened enough to puncture. This weapon was made by a novice craftsman. This weapon can only be repaired once per maximum durability. This weapon automatically loses one durability when repaired. Unlike most items, this weapon cannot be repaired once the durability reaches 0.
This was probably one of the worst weapons I¡¯d ever heard of. I learned a new smithing recipe, but I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted it. Either way, with this my obligation to find weapons ended. Now I just needed to get enough bones and wood to actually mass-produce the weapons. I made many of the bones into blades. Most blades were small (no longer than an inch and a half), but a few were about the length of an open palm. These make shift weapons would be given out to the people of the town, at least then they would have some sort of weapon. The blades that were obviously not useable were deconstructed for my benefit. I even made blades out of the smallest fragments of bone that I could. The process of breaking down every single bone blade that didn¡¯t meet my requirements, netted me a grand total of 50% Deconstruct completion for them. I made the bones into weapons until they were all gone. By then I heard several rumbling noises. I got ready to fight, just to see the embarrassed looks of some of the hunters. The man who had been talking to me, I presume the leader, said, ¡°Sorry, we just had a long hunt today and haven¡¯t eaten.¡± Immediately understanding, I got to work. I had Tear fill the pot. The jellyfish made the water go into the pot. Like Tear actually forced the abundant water mana in the air to gather inside the pot. Every pot I made was instantly filled with water. This entire time Heather had been gathering the vegetables in the plains area. It was really easy for a rabbit to do that. Humans found it much harder to find them, let alone actually extract them without breaking them. My inventory was over half-full with just vegetables. I told Heather to go hunt for some food for herself in the forest. I got a slightly scary reply. Something along the lines of ¡®drinking so much blood it feels like I¡¯m bathing in it¡¯. I¡¯m pretty sure that¡¯s some Dracula shit right there. I sprinkled in my special healing powder while I could the meat. The healing powder tasted nasty, but for some reason the fat of the wolf meat was actually complimented by it. I didn¡¯t think the wolf meat tasted bad, but the juiciness of it, coupled with the overpowering flavor of the vegetables, made the healing powder taste almost vanish. The only thing left of the taste was a brief bitter twang, which accented the stew well. With my cooking bonus the taste of the stew was increased even further. In the end, my entire batch of healing powder and all of the wolf meat and vegetables were gone. I was only a little disappointed in the fact that I only had one bowl. EDI stopped in for a quick bowl as well, before speeding off again to help the town¡¯s folk. Sol wasn¡¯t being a slouch either. Even though my stew healed those that ate it by a little bit, Sol poured all of his energy into using light mana to heal the people. Of course, the price of Sol¡¯s healing was a massive amount of rapid pace talking. By the time, I was done handing out the food the sun had already set. The little shits ate way too much. It was taxing to keep up appearances for so long. Sometimes I really wanted to swat away the hand of someone trying to be friendly. I mean, it wasn¡¯t as if I didn¡¯t know why they were doing it. They were only nice because I was giving them food. If I had just been a traveler, they wouldn¡¯t have paid me any mind. After cleaning up my equipment, I logged of for a half hour break. I wanted to check something out on the wiki site. After reading up on my chosen topic for about half an hour, I logged back in. It was the middle of the night by now. I set off for the forest. Heather was there, so I¡¯d just collect her before coming back. I was going to try out an idea. The idea formed when I was looking up information on my wood elf ancestors. When I got to the edge of the forest, I asked Gaia for her blessing. ¡°Dear Mother of Nature, grant me a token of your power. My people must defend themselves for that, we need your help. I beseech thee in the name of the contract my ancestors swore upon.¡± I touched the closest tree, an ash. Nothing happened. I walked away from the tree, dejected. Before I could move more than a few feet, the tree started creaking. I looked at it in excitement. The tree started falling towards me. I quickly sent myself out of its path with wind mana. The entire tree fell over. It was uprooted, and the soil at its base was upturned. The forum I looked up had been about Wood Elves. They prayed to Gaia, and she would grant them trees for their homes and tools. Most of the time the tree turned into the required good instantly, I assumed my diluted blood made it take longer. I grabbed several pinecones, and sent a large amount of fire mana to surround them. Pinecones drop their seeds in excessive heat for some reason. Anyway, I planted the seeds in the upturned soil, and poured in nature mana until I didn¡¯t have any left.
You have used Gaia¡¯s Racial Blessing, for the first time. Gaia has granted you 5 nature affinity.
For learning how to fell a tree with optimum results you have gained 5 wisdom.
I tried this out for three reasons. The first reason was I needed wood for weapons, since I didn¡¯t have an axe or anything this was my best shot at easy harvesting. The second reason was to see if I could use a race specific ability from the Wood Elf race. Not only was I able to use Gaia¡¯s Racial Blessing, I could most likely use the race specific abilities of High Elves, and Dark Elves as well. Man, it¡¯s great to be a mixed blood. For some reason I even gained a new skill.
Lumberjack Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% For using Gaia¡¯s Racial Blessing, you have learned the basics of cutting down trees. Each level in this skill improves the cut used to fell the tree, as well as decreases the time it takes to fell the tree. For every rank, you increase this skill you will be able to cut more difficult trees. To level this skill you must fell trees. The harder the tree the more experience you will gain. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Smithing¡¯.
Carpentry Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Carpentry allows the user to make better things out of wood. Each level in this skill improves the quality of the product produced by Carpentry. For every rank, you increase this skill you will be able to make more intricate items while using Carpentry. To level this skill you must craft wooden items.
I tested out the new skill immediately. I had my knife, so I started carving pieces out of the tree. The first thing I did was cut a chunk of about 4x.5x1. I cut the board into a cylinder shape, and sharpened one end. It took about half an hour to do.
You have learned a new carpentry recipe: Wooden Spear.
It did quite a bit less damage than my staff, but it was something at least. Besides, I wasn¡¯t going to spend enough effort to actually make superb quality items for these people. I planned to leave for a while before I settled down here, that is if I didn¡¯t find a better place first. I made many of the spears, from the tree. That single tree gave me enough material to make a stack of 20 spears. Even if they were low quality, right now the town needed weapons. Mediocre weapons were better than no weapons. I wanted to make bows and arrows, but I had no clue how. For now, simple sharpened wood would have to do. After finishing the twenty spears, I collected the rest of the wood for use as firewood. I gave a quick thanks to Gaia for allowing me to use her tree. Heather had been playing around while I worked. A few wolves and a bear had made the mistake of fighting near my tree. Heather joined them. A few minutes later Heather was full. She wouldn¡¯t need to drink any blood for a while. Night was already falling when I finished the tree. When I got back, I headed directly towards the blacksmith. The river city continued to surprise me. Many of the houses were fully rebuilt; I don¡¯t even know where they got the stone. I was almost certain there was no quarry around here. The people were all working in groups of five or six to rebuild the houses. Maybe if they had been this together in the first place the slavers would not have managed to get in! Whatever, at least I now knew one thing to stress in my city. The need for unity. All for one and all that. At least that way I wouldn¡¯t have to spend so much time and money creating and protecting the city. Actually, that was a really good idea. If I promoted a strong sense of community I could even make myself be seen as some sort of communal father figure. The best way to make people follow you is to make them love you. The blacksmith was still working on making the leather armor. I was pretty sure that everyone in the town already had a set, but I didn¡¯t say anything. Regardless of how stupid he was for doing something pointless, I could still benefit from him. I waved, as I got closer. This time there was no line to his forge. ¡°Hello friend! How goes the day?¡± I say as I try to get a gauge on his mood. Inspect could tell me, but it was always fun to do this sort of thing on my own. The blacksmith looked up from his work, sweat dripping down his brow. ¡°Good! Good. I¡¯ve just been making more of this armor all day. A merchant came by recently and was surprised to see the city free of slavers. They were making the merchants pay a tax to pass through the gates. I traded a large amount of the leather armor for stone for the city.¡± The blacksmith looked a bit proud of himself. Don¡¯t get cocky n00b. You¡¯d be dead if I wanted it. ¡°That¡¯s awesome! It¡¯s wonderful when everyone can pull together to help each other. I just came by to drop these off.¡± I dumped the spears on the counter. ¡°I decided you could give these out to whoever needed them. I¡¯m going to make some more of these, but other than that I¡¯m going to be busy for a while. There has been an ominous aura in the air recently.¡± He looked seriously at me as he nodded. Obviously, I couldn¡¯t actually do something like sense ominous auras in the air, but this would give me time for meditation. If I was going to purify my water mana, I might as well make it look like I¡¯m doing some good at the same time. I went to the stone ¡®house¡¯ I created earlier. I laid down on the ground and started purifying water mana. The next thing I knew the sun woke me up. I squinted as I tried to recall what had happened. I remember getting my water purifier started. Hm, after that¡­ Oh. I fell asleep. Crap. That was a wasted night! I berated myself for losing an entire sleep cycle to an accident. My anger started increasing. For some reason the thought of failing something, even something as simple as meditation, reminded me of that ass Defiled. I uninterestedly checked my notifications after realizing it was blinking. Maybe something good happened. I sighed and shook my head as I opened it. There was no way something good had happened. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
You have gained the Trait: High Concentration Purifier.
High Concentration Purifier is one of the best possible traits for mages. In places with high concentrations of a certain type of mana, such as a town devoted to one particular god or goddess, you will automatically purify your mana. The purification rate is the same as if you were meditating. Purifying any other form of mana in these areas will only have 10% efficiency.
Something good had happened. Weighing the benefits of this trait with its detriments I concluded th- who am I kidding? FUCK YEAH! I wouldn¡¯t even dream of purifying another type of mana in those areas anyway! This trait expedited the schedule I was going to set for myself by several hours each day. I had no idea why I had gotten that trait, maybe I was purifying water mana in my sleep.
For understanding how to gain the Trait: ¡®High Concentration Purifier¡¯ you have gained 2 wisdom.
For understanding one method of obtaining traits you have gained 3 wisdom.
I spent the next several days ritualistically. I would wake up in the morning, make food from whatever the hunter¡¯s brought and Heather collected. There was a lot of vegetables and fruits for breakfast. After breakfast, I went to the forest to cut spears out of the trees. I had started to strap some of the wolves¡¯ sharpened bones to the tips of the spears. At first it took me half an hour to create a spear, but I got it down to ten minutes after the second day. I couldn¡¯t get it lower than that without dropping quality though. I always made sure to plant more trees than I harvested. I used Breakdown on half of the spears I made; I also used it on the smaller Demon Wolf Bone Blades. The spears I made started to jump in quality after I had deconstructed about a hundred. I made spears for about six hours a day. After making the spears I went around helping reconstruct the houses using the minute traces of earth mana in the stones. It was an easy thing to place the blocks of stone upon each other by making the earth mana float. After making houses for about four hours, I would practice using two types of mana. Using water mana plus another type was the easiest, although I did manage to cast several other types. I got some pretty cool combinations. By using about 40-60% water and the rest fire, I could create a small cloud of steam. The steam would be thicker with more water mana, but it would also take longer to cast. By combing water and wind at 50% each I got a thick mist, if I increased the water mana by 20% I got fog. Water mana plus earth at 50% each gave me mud, but I knew that if I had done it with sand I could have made quicksand. My favorite one was darkness and fire. I could only cast it in dark places if I wanted to use the environmental mana, but it was amazing! The fire would latch on to something and burn it to ashes. It could attach to anything, but substances like stone took too long to burn to be useful. Still the fact that it could burn through stone was pretty amazing. The fire didn¡¯t spread either. Even if something went inside it, unless that something was alive. The fire seemed to want to extinguish all life. When something living was put into it the fire greedily ate it. Also if I fused light mana and nature mana in a ratio of 3:1 I could even speed up the growth of plants! My ability to harness two types of mana from the environment became quicker and easier to use. Using environmental mana started taking less time as well. It now took me less than thirty seconds to build an earthen wall. Creating stone walls still took a few hours, since I had to force the hard mana into an even harder and more compact form. I would go harvest the herbs I planted. I always measured the seeds against what I had in my inventory. I kept the most potent ones for myself. I would then take the bottom quarter for potion making, and plant the middle 50%. I dehydrated the potions and made them into OPs. I gave all of these to Elvina. I also used several dried potions to season the stew I made at nightfall. After finishing all of the potions, I went to the area where the hunters gathered. I would make stew for the entire town, and head off to bed. I made sure to mention to the hunters not to kill too many wolves each day. Otherwise, the main supply of meat would disappear. After feeding the entire village I went to sleep in the little house I built. I continued this for an in game week. During that time, I logged off three times. One of the times I spent learning how to make bows, another arrows. I added them to my list of crafting items. I deconstructed half of them as well. The time spent making weapons increased, but it was a worthy investment so I let it slide. I added small triangular Demon blades to the arrows to give them a bit of extra stopping power. Many of my skills leveled up thanks to the regimen. I also unlocked a skill which, when fused, netted me a total of 2 new group skill!
Masonry Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Masonry is using stone to build structures. Levels in this skill increase the stability of the structure you make. Ranks in this skill increase the complexity of the structure you can easily make. To level this skill you must build with stone. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Lumberjack¡¯.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Breakdown. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Breakdown? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°No.¡± I fused them and got:
Quarrying Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Quarrying allows the user to better extract stone from an area. Each level in this skill improves the cut used to quarry, as well as decreases the time it takes harvest the stone. For every rank you increase this skill you will be able to cut more difficult stone. To level this skill you must quarry stone. The more difficult the stone is to quarry, the more experience you will gain. Can be currently fused with the skill ¡®Smithing¡¯.
I realized something about the skill fusion system at that point. The skills I would fuse were fused on two levels. The first level was type of skills. For instance quarrying was a gathering skill, and smithing was a crafting skill. If I was right the skill I would gain from these two would be one of those. The second level was actually the skill base. Quarrying dealt with stone, while smithing dealt with metals. I decided to hazard a guess as to what the skill I would get from fusing these two. It would either be gathering plus metal, mining, or crafting plus stone, masonry. Since I already had masonry I would most likely get mining.
Mining Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Mining allows the user to better extract stone from an area. Each level in this skill improves the quality of the mined item, as well as decreases the time it takes mine it. For every rank you increase this skill you will be able to mine more difficult items. To level this skill you must mine ores and gems. The more difficult the mining is, the more experience you will gain.
¡°Exchange Relevant Skills.¡±
You have two group skills available. Your skill combinations are: Crafting Mastery Harvesting Mastery You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Crafting Mastery. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Crafting Mastery? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Crafting Mastery. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Crafting Mastery. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Crafting Mastery. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you create enough potions to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Crafting Mastery.¡±
Crafting Mastery Current Level: Novice Level 4 Exp 75.55% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Carpentry, Masonry, and Smithing. Crafting Mastery increases knowledge of all crafted items. You will learn crafting skills more easily, and have an easier time crafting items. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
¡°Exchange Relevant Skills.¡±
You have one group skill available. Your skill combinations are: Harvesting Mastery You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you create enough potions to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect: Harvesting Mastery.¡±
Harvesting Mastery Current Level: Novice Level 3 Exp 25.44% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Lumberjack, Mining, and Quarrying. Harvesting Mastery increases knowledge of all harvested items. You will learn harvesting skills more easily, and have an easier time harvesting items. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
For reasoning out the true abilities of the Skill Fusion effect, you have gained 5 wisdom.
Freaking knew it! That means I can plan my skill fusions a little better now. At the end of the week I had made hundreds of bows and spears, and thousands of arrows. I had also made over a hundred pots of stew. My water mana purity had been at 75% for the last two days. I figured there was some sort of quest or task I had to do to increase it beyond that. I had deconstructed the spears up to 100%, and the bows up to 50%. The arrows were at 30%, and the demon wolf bone blades had gotten to 100%. The average level of the plants in the castle garden had increased by about 50%. The potions had increased accordingly. With the massive amount of nature affinity I was pouring into the green healing herbs and common weed, the potion quality rose tremendously. Without even drying them, the healing potions healed over a hundred health. With Tear and Sol helping around the town, I had gotten quite a boost to my image in River¡¯s Cross. After the week was over I decided to go. I still wanted to find that mana crystal after all. I had gotten a map of where River¡¯s Cross was. I was about a week south of Rand, but there was a dungeon call ¡®Dwarven Hall¡¯ that would lead me straight to M¡¯ Path. The dungeon was created by dwarves, and filled with all manner of earth beasts and constructs. It seemed like the dwarves in this game created something akin to automatons. The dungeon was level 60, so I was going to make EDI come with me. Of course I¡¯d make it seem like it was her idea though. Elvina also told me that halfway through the dungeon was an elevator. It lead to a dwarven city called Ysga¡¯s Hall. Ysga was the dwarf that built the elevator apparently. On my third leave from DIVE I checked online. This dungeon had not been cleared by SD or LB, so the boss drop would probably be quite rare at this point. Both of them were over level 100. They had skipped several of the ¡®low level¡¯ dungeons. I told Elvina I was leaving. I showed one of her villagers how to make the basic healing potion, but made them think they had to plant the entire healing herb to make another one grow. ¡°You see this?¡± I asked as I held up the plant by the leaf, ¡°You need to plant this entire thing in the ground in order to grow another one.¡± I made sure to leave myself some wiggle room under the guise of a ¡®misunderstanding¡¯. That night I found EDI. She was helping making another house livable. I came up behind her. I leaned in and whispered, ¡°Hey EDI. I¡¯m going to leave the city soon. I just wanted to let you know.¡± I was intentionally ambiguous. I wanted to change what I ¡®meant¡¯ based on her reaction. She nearly dropped the stone she was helping hold up. I caught it with earth mana, and put it in place for her. She turned around. ¡°What? Why? I thought we were going to be a team!? Why would you just leave me!?¡± I¡¯ve got to admit, I was not expecting that response. Well that was fine. If she was distraught over it then it would be easier to get her to go; I might even be able to get her to carry the heavy luggage or something! HA! I put on a worried expression. ¡°No no no. EDI, what I meant to say is that I wanted you to come with me. How could I walk away from such a pretty lady?¡± I smiled. ¡°Besides, you tried to save me from the slaver. If that¡¯s not enough to warrant further passage together I don¡¯t know what it.¡± Plus you still have to pay off those Sai. She looked a lot less upset after I said that. I told her that we were leaving in a few minutes. I still had one thing left to do. I asked the blacksmith to make me a special staff. The one I carried now was great and all, but it only had one type of damage. My loyalty to Evan only lasted until something better came along. The weapon I designed with this blacksmith was better. He took many of the broken and chipped weapons and made it for me.
Bladed Staff
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
DamageVariesDurability60/60
Weight25 lbs
This item can be wielded as a dual weapon. You may make extra attacks at the cost of mobility. This is a weapon of utility. In the middle of this staff is a hidden grove. If the grove is unlatched, two long daggers will be exposed. The daggers are connected to the two ends of the staff. The two halves of the staff act like long handles for the daggers. There is a hidden compartment in the top of this staff. When pressure is applied to a certain area, the blade hidden in the compartment will extend. The blade retracts once the pressure is gone. This weapon was made by an expert craftsman. This weapon gains plus fifteen minimum damage and plus fifteen maximum damage. This weapon gains twenty five durability.
Since my staff only allowed for blunt damage, I chose to add something to it. The blacksmith had to work together with the local carpenter to fix my staff up enough, but the result was acceptable. I could apply pressure in two ways to the staff. If I applied pressure to the middle with both hands at certain angles, the latch holding the two halves of the staff would come undone. Each half of the staff had a long dagger running inside of it. When the staff was ¡®closed¡¯ the daggers would be stacked beside each other, one tip pointing to the bottom the other to the top. The tip of the staff had a small blade, about an inch and a half, embedded inside it. When I held the staff about two hand spans from the middle on each side, and gripped it tightly, a spring would trigger. The spring caused the blade to jut out. The blade would turn the staff into a single edged spear. Basically we designed an entirely new type of weapon. The reason it took the blacksmith so long to make it was because the latch systems on the inside of the staff had to be precise. The latches controlled the entire system. All I needed to do now was practice enough to be able to kill with it. Even if I didn¡¯t manage to get good at it any time soon, I could still use it as a staff. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 32Health: 100Mana: 1370Stamina: 350
Current Title: Hero of River¡¯s CrossHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 19.4(14.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom194Intelligence137
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 22 Exp 25.00% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 44 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 5.70% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 50.14% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 32 Exp 6.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Apprentice Level 28 Exp 44.44% Group Skill: Survival Apprentice Level 28 Exp 17.64% Group Skill: Combat Learning Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 20% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water60
Wind25
Nature55
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 39: Journey to the Mountains Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Spent an in-game week helping the town and growing more powerful. He learned a few skills, and made them into group skills. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! The demon knew of his master¡¯s impatience, so forced his army to be ready early. Instead of the fifteen days he was given, he only took a little over a week to get his 50-man army to his master. His master had put them through a hell like training course for a day. Two of his men almost died, but they all ended up living. His master praised him. ¡°Hm, these are better than expected. I approve. Now you have no excuse if you lose. Do everything within your power to kill him; otherwise you will be the one I torture.¡± His master walked off. After letting his men rest for a day, he started the march towards River¡¯s Cross. His informants said that was where the boy was residing. His informants were around that area, but had been plagued by undead. They couldn¡¯t keep a close eye on Mar¡¯s Chosen while they had to fight. Every time one of his informants died, they came back to kill their comrades. The demon was under strict orders not to kill the people of River¡¯s Cross, or any one besides the boy, unless they interfered with killing him. Therefore, the army had to sneak all the way to River¡¯s Cross. Overall, it was going to take at least another week before they got there. The trek was hard. They group had to stealthily collect food for fifty people. It would have been hard just to get that much food each day, but doing it without alerting people was a bit more difficult. Luckily, the group had been trained to survive with low rations for long periods. The demon could also produce a few demonic beasts each night, but it wasn¡¯t enough to keep that many fed for very long. After a week of hard trekking, they finally made it to River¡¯s Cross. The demon had two members of his army pose as a traveling couple. Their jobs were to infiltrate the city and find Mar¡¯s Chosen. If he wasn¡¯t in the city anymore, they were to find out where he went. The demon made a plan to force the mayor of the town to divulge the information. The demon was ordered not to kill anyone, but he could still threaten people. The group of two sent word back immediately. The city that had been owned by slavers only a week prior, was armed to the teeth! Everyone had at least a spear, but many also had bows. Although the weapons were all made out of wood, the houses were all made of stone. The slavers destroyed all the homes though. How did these miserable fools build it back so quickly? That wasn¡¯t the end of it though. The people all seemed to be much closer than before the slavers captured the city. No money was exchanged between them, not even a barter system was in place. They just freely gave the goods! Since they were so trusting of each other, the demon thought it would be an easy matter to get them to trust his men. The demon was wrong. The mayor had apparently told the entire city to be wary of all people they didn¡¯t personally know. So, not only did it seem like these people would put their lives down for each other, they wouldn¡¯t even allow others into their group. Damnit! This is going to be harder than I thought. The demon studied the city for a few days before making his move. They had a very set schedule. Twice a day two groups of people would leave the city. Once a few hours before breakfast, and once a few hours before dinner. Those were the only two groups that left, although a merchant ship arrived on the second day. He docked in an underbelly of the city. We can probably sneak in there. The demon was making plans as to how best capture the city should things go wrong. The two groups would come back with a mountain of food. The demon was surprised to find out how well the gatherers could find the vegetables. To his knowledge, humans had no ability for that. The hunters usually brought back three to five wolves, a bear, and some fruits. They seemed like they could get a lot more, but instead were restraining themselves. None of the wolves remains were thrown out of the city. The demon decided they must have some sort of waste removal in the city. After all, how could one use that much fur and bones? The fur might be made into armor, but it would take time. Time the blacksmith could use making money. The demon seemed to forget about the level of comradery the town felt. The demon decided to stage an attack on the hunters. Not enough to kill them, just enough to injure some. The injuries would cause a disruption in food supply. Maybe the town would be more willing to cooperate if they were starved for a while. (The army arrived at River¡¯s Cross a week after Voice left. I tried to make it clear, but it wasn¡¯t. They left for River¡¯s Cross at the same time Voice left River¡¯s Cross.) Voice¡¯s POV After I collected EDI we left River¡¯s Cross. I had already shown someone how to get more healing herbs, and how to make a basic potion out of them. I had arranged for someone to cook the food the hunters gathered, and Heather had shown a few people how to find and harvest the vegetables in the field. I told the cook just to pour in the potion, teaching someone my tricks was not my style. I showed some of the gatherers how to dry and pickle food, and recommended they keep a small stockpile of food for emergencies. While I was thinking of food I had Heather gather some vegetables, and a few pine cones. I wanted to test out my enhanced plant growth ability while traveling. I also made sure to get as many glass bottles as I could. I needed to be able to make potions. Since I saved the village it was the least they could do. I also ordered my Lich Kretchof to secretly guard the city against any one that seemed to be surrounding it. I was sure the slavers were going to be angry that I just wiped a bunch of the pieces of shit off the face of Solun. Since he had full restrictions on I could communicate with him no matter the distance. If anything happened he would let me know. It¡¯d be great if the city got captured again. Then I could save it and get even MORE rewards! One of the children in the city asked to come with me. She was a young girl, maybe about seven or eight, and wore the tale-tell armor of River¡¯s Cross. She carried one of the smaller spears I created, and even had a bow and a quiver of arrows. She had dark blonde hair, and hazel eyes. She was as cute as a button. I was immediately going to reply with no, but EDI looked at the child with affection. I didn¡¯t want the hassle of feeding someone that couldn¡¯t provide for me in some way. I would also have to protect the little shit. Mulling it over I decided I could use the kid as collateral if EDI decided to try and leave me. It was a common tactic I used when I would ¡®date¡¯ girls. Give them something they crave, and leave little hints that I would take it away if they displeased me. The problem with EDI was that she seemed fairly intelligent, despite her attitude towards NPCs and animals. It would be a bit harder to make her fear me leaving the girl without seeming evil. EDI gave me pleading eyes. ¡°Please?¡± she whispered. ¡°Alright, you can come, but only because EDI seems to want you to come so much. I have conditions.¡± She gave a curt nod. I almost scoffed. I mean trying to be cute is great and all, but I was using Inspect already. I knew she was deceiving me. She was 80% beguiling, and 15% blood hungry. I decided to let her come since the person that sent her, unless she was out for revenge herself, would most likely send another if I didn¡¯t let her come.
Lily Level 1 Ex-slave/ Villager
Health: 100/100Stamina:100/100
¡°I have three conditions. First condition: You must do everything I say without question. Do you understand?¡± She nodded. ¡°Good, Second condition: You must learn to be self-sufficient. You might be able to use those weapons well, but you are only level one. You will have to train hard to actually be able to do anything in combat.¡± Another nod. ¡°Third condition: You will not leave my service without my permission.¡± She looked worried for a second, then nodded. ¡°EDI do you agree as well?¡± EDI eagerly nodded. ¡°Good, then you can come.¡± She beamed when I said this. I almost rolled my eyes. I already had a plan to make her leave. I was going to put her through Hell¡¯s Training. ¡°Voice,¡± Ancestor was worried, ¡°You do know she is most likely trying to kill you right?¡± Yeah, but I figured that if I wore her out each day she would be too tired to attempt anything. Plus I want to see if I can force her to my side. After all, I haven¡¯t been using my Con-Artist skill nearly as much as I want. ¡°Alright, but remember, if she attacks you she might easily overwhelm you. She is most likely not level one.¡± I nodded. Obviously she had some sort of trick up her sleeve. The possibility of her being controlled was high though. It was fairly hard for someone so young to be so composed around someone they were going to try to kill. We left the city after telling Elvina we were going to take her, and getting some more bandages. I signed some papers and a blue box popped up. Before we left, I raided the library. Well what was left of it. Only a few books were still perfectly intact. I could have taken some of the other books, but I didn¡¯t feel right letting my Compendium absorb crappy books. I ended up taking only two: ¡®Discovery of Divines¡¯ and ¡®Training for the Mind¡¯.
You have adopted Lily of River¡¯s Cross. Lily of River¡¯s Cross is now your child by law. Undine has blessed your adoption. You now have all rights of what Lily¡¯s father would have. You may now see Lily¡¯s full stats.
I took the opportunity to look at Lily¡¯s stats.
Stats Window
NameLily Of River¡¯s CrossClassNone
Health100Mana100
Stamina100
Level1Current TitleNone
Health Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec1.0
Stamina Regen/Sec1.0
Strength10Agility10
Wisdom10Intelligence10
Endurance10Dexterity10
Luck10Vitality10
Fame0
Wow, she really is a level one character. Hmmm, this is going to be tricky. I could probably get to know her real stats if I have her train in certain ways, but there is the possibility that she would make it seem like they are real. Even with the knowledge that she was going to betray me I allowed her to join. With that, I could make EDI more complacent. When Lily finally betrayed me I¡¯d also have a huge amount of power over EDI. Power in the form of guilt. ¡°EDI you are in charge of Lily. Make sure she doesn¡¯t get into any trouble. We are going now.¡± EDI smiled, ¡°Ok, and thanks for letting her come with us~¡± EDI hugged Lily. Fucking girls and their maternal instincts. I know guys get the feeling of needing to protect something as well, but that feeling in general is useless. The more you have to protect, the more you have to lose. That day we covered a lot of ground. I was heading straight for the southern entrance to Dwarven Hall, so we had to pass through the forest. While traveling I practiced getting control over my weapon. By the end of the first day I could already get the twin blades out, or make the spear tip appear, in almost no time. Of course this was while I wasn¡¯t in combat; I¡¯d have to actually use this while fighting to make sure I was good enough to do that in combat. In the forest if found something interesting. A small blood-red flower sprouted from the trunk of a dead tree. Its petal all faces towards the sky. It had a center that was similar to a sunflower, but it was white.
Blood Lotus Found on the body of decaying trees. A Blood Lotus is a mushroom. If combined with common weed it will make a common potency of healing potion. If combined with Moss Blossom it will make a common potency of stamina regen potion.
¡­ Registering¡­ Compiling information¡­ ¡­ WHAT!? I had been in the forest many times, but I had never seen one of these! I looked it up in my compendium. To summarize the information I got from the book: The Blood Lotus ¡®head¡¯, the entire top part of the flower, was used to create the potion. The stem could be used in a stamina regen potion as well. I found two of these flowers on this trunk. I had decided to do a bit of experimenting on them. I SHALL BE THE HERALD FOR THE SECOND COMING OF THE OVER POTIONS! When we made camp that night, somewhat near the dead trunk, I planted a common weed seed. I summoned Tear and Sol from inside of me. ¡°Tear I want you to water the seeds I¡¯m going to plant. Sol I¡¯ll need you to stay here to provide a light for me to work by.¡± Using my two fairies was advantageous. With Tear helping water the plants, and Sol lighting the area up, I didn¡¯t even have to leave the general area. Seeing the dead trunk also gave me an idea for a new type of mana fusion. I planted the common weed seed, and fed it the ratio to make it quickly grow. I fed the steady supply until I ran out of mana. The common weed was about halfway through its total growth cycle. I just needed to wait a few minutes to be able to finish it off. By the way, the more powerful the plant, the less I decrease the growth time by. I need to put in twice as much mana to speed up the growth of the green healing herbs. After fully nurturing the common weed, I harvested it. Using my basic alchemy set I started my work. I made sure to note every stroke of my pestle, including the angle and intensity. I only had two plants to work with, but I might have figured out a way around that. The material ended up as a red goop.
Red Healing Goop A combination of Blood Lotus and Common Weed. Add this to water to make a health potion. Better ingredients would make a better potion.
I analyzed the amount of water I told Tear to put in. Green Healing potions worked best if the water just barely saturated the goop, so that was what I was going to try. After finishing it I put it into a bottle.
Red Healing Potion
Material QualityCommonWork QualityExpert
Base Restoration50
This potion was created by the player Voice0fReason. The detail that went into making this potion is outstanding. Total healing power of 119 points.
I dried the potion, and started on the next. I did the same thing, but added slightly more water this time. It only healed 108 points. So my theory was right. At least healing potions gain the best effect when just barely saturated.
You gained 5 wisdom for learning the secret to maximizing the power of healing potions.
UGH! I¡¯m literally one point away from getting my skill enhancement up another rank!\ I couldn¡¯t complain though. I had figured out a major secret for making alchemy potions. I made sure that EDI and the brat couldn¡¯t see what I was doing. I didn¡¯t really care if Heather saw or not, but she was out hunting wolves. With the amount of healing these basic potions gave, I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d ever need to use green herbs again. Of course that was only true if my next plan came to fruition. I did the whole ¡®Gaia¡¯s Ritual¡¯ to cause a tree to fall. After that I started channeling the nearby dark mana and nature mana. I had Sol go float by the girls. I channeled the mana at the same ration as growth, substituting dark mana for light mana. The experiment was a success. The tree started withering until it was nothing more than a stump. The stump started sprouting mushrooms and fungus. I stemmed the flow after I had realized the tree wasn¡¯t decaying anymore. It had cost me a grand total of 1000 mana! If I had been doing that without the assistance of environmental mana it would have been impossible! I shook my head at my slightly OP ability. It took fifteen minutes to fully decay the tree. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. There were three lovely red flowers on the tree. I picked them, and started the process of creating potions. After I created the potions I planted the seeds from the tree. I also used my growth magic to speed up the trees growing. No sense getting Gaia mad at me. I continued this until dawn. In the end I used up all of my bottles to house the potions. The potions steadily got more potent. The last batch I made even healed 150 points. I found out that only the petals needed to be used to create the potions, but the center of the flower (the part where the seeds were) had to be planted on decaying trees to grow. At least I wouldn¡¯t have to cut more than one tree down a night anymore. The trees would only grow up to ten of the plants before expiring. After that the required materials to grow the Blood Lotus would be consumed. I made hundreds of low quality potions that night. By the time the sun rose I had enough information on them to guarantee a critical his every time the timer on it went down. Drying them was the same process as the green healing potions. Heather brought back an intact wolf body the next morning. From the look of her fur she had been in a battle with more than just the one. She¡¯s entitled to eat as much as she wants as long as EDI gets enough as well. I guess I have to feed Lily now too. The second day was much like the first, a lot of traveling. Lily only seemed to speak when someone spoke to her first. EDI wanted to try to pull her out of whatever mental shell she was in, but also didn¡¯t want to be a burden on Lily. I delegated the job of getting Lily to speak, to Sol. Since Sol never really stopped talking it was perfect. Although Sol doesn¡¯t seem to understand certain social faux pas. The first question Sol asked the girl was: ¡°So where are your parents?¡± Even if I didn¡¯t like the girl I thought that was a bit much, but she only shrugged. I sent a message to Kretchof to summon some undead that didn¡¯t expire after 24 hours. I ordered him to have those secretly scout the area around River¡¯s Cross. That way if anyone came to get revenge now that I was gone, he could at least delay them while I figured out a way to get news to Elvina. On the second day, I practiced using the weapon in combat. The spear was definitely the easiest to use. I attacked a wolf to practice. We came across a small group of wolves while on our way to the mountain range that held Dwarven Hall. It was only three wolves. Heather, EDI, and I took out two of them. We ambushed them while they were napping. ¡°EDI, I want you to stall one. You can damage it a little, but don¡¯t kill it. We need to let Lily have a little battle experience.¡± EDI started to object. ¡°Remember, you said she would go through training. This is the best method I know for that.¡± EDI frowned, but nodded. ¡°Alright, I can damage it a lot though, right?¡± ¡°Sure, I guess.¡± We all went to do our jobs while Lily watched. Heather tore her wolf to shreds very quickly. The wolves were only level 30, so it wasn¡¯t hard for her. EDI was having more trouble. Not with handling the wolf, but with not killing it. It was harder to hold something off than it was to kill it. I equipped my Wolves¡¯ Bane title to deal more damage to them. I jumped out first. I landed a critical hit on the wolf. I ran towards it, before it was aware it was endangered I had stabbed it. I made the thin blade at the top of my staff extend, as I stabbed into the wolf¡¯s left hind leg. Its health dropped by a quarter, and it was bleeding. The wolf jumped away, tearing the spear out of its leg as it went. The bleeding only increased. It limped as it tried to circle me. I opened my staff into to swords. Using two swords is actually very hard. It had the same concept as using two mana types at once. You had to pay attention to two independent things at once. I couldn¡¯t actually handle that with swords. I basically had to have one sword extended backwards against my forearm, while I attacked with the other. At least that way it would be useful to block with. Using the single sword was much easier, although it felt weird not holding a weapon with two hands. When the wolf would lunge at me, I would intercept it with a slash. When it would attack from one side, I¡¯d block with the sword against my left forearm. I would then attack with the other before it got the chance to get back into its position. The fight took me a solid five minutes to complete. At one point Heather tried to intervene, but I made her help EDI. The battle was simple, but lengthy. Higher-level wolves took longer for me to kill since they had more defense and health. The red lines definitely helped. I managed several critical hits because of them. Once I was done I signaled for Lily. ¡°Lily come here.¡± She complied, staring wide eyed at the battle going on between the last wolf and the rest of our party. She took out her spear like I told her. ¡°Good, now what I want you to do is try attacking that wolf. She was very clumsy. She couldn¡¯t hit the damn thing, even after a dozen tries! UGH! FUCKING BRAT! Ancestor chimed in. As always Ancestor gave useful advice. ¡°Voice, how about you hold the wolf down with earth mana? Even if you only slowed it a bit, it would benefit her.¡± It was a good idea. One that I put into practice after thinking about the best way. I made my own mana create earth spears. I pierced all of the wolf¡¯s legs at once. It yelped as it tried to jump away. Being tired, having low health, and being impaled was not a good combination for the wolf. Lily cautiously approached the thing. ¡°Heather and EDI, walk in front of her, don¡¯t give the wolf a chance to attack her! Sol focus healing on Lily. Tear cover the wolf¡¯s nose and mouth with water for three seconds. Then rest for three. Sting it a few times then repeat that till it¡¯s dead!¡± I conveyed all of this in moments.
Leadership has boosted the effect of your orders. Your orders are more likely to be carried out perfectly.
My orders were carried out perfectly. Tear summoned a small amount of water around the wolf¡¯s mouth and nose, and Heather and EDI guided Lily to it. Lily didn¡¯t seem like she wanted to kill the thing, so I helped her with that. I grabbed her spear from behind. I had already made the spears reinforced with environmental mana. I made her hands hold the spear with earth mana. I forced the staff forward with my own hands. She still got the feeling of killing the thing. She started crying after the spear pierced the wolf. The wolf only had a few dozen hit points left anyway, but she was the one that killed it. Now let me say this before you get all angry. I would not have done that to a normal child. The reason I made her do that is I was sure she was trying to kill me anyway. Even when she was ¡®crying¡¯ I saw a 65% chance of beguiling, and 20% chance of mirth. Bitch was trying to make me feel bad! EDI gave me a dirty look. I inwardly sighed. Now I had to fix this shit. I shook my head as I patted Lily on the back. ¡°It¡¯s ok Lily. If you hadn¡¯t killed it, then it might have killed other people. What would you do if it attacked River¡¯s Cross?¡± Her crying increased. Oddly the beguiling went away, as did the mirth. It seemed like this part at least was real. Unless she was just better at hiding her emotions. She stuttered as she spoke. ¡°I-I know, but *sniff* it was so sad! WAAHHHH!¡± Oh shut up fucking piss bag. I had a grand total of 0 sympathy for her. Why should I care if I hurt the feelings of someone trying to murder me? I had to at least pretend to care though. EDI was watching. She was someone I really wanted to be a part of my team. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to make her think I was some sort of hard but fair, father type. I patted Lily. ¡°There now, there now. You did really good. You know what?¡± I spoke in a very gentle voice. I bent down until I was eye level with Lily. She looked hopefully at me. ¡°You deserve a reward!¡± I smiled at her. She wiped her running nose. ¡°I do?¡± I nodded. ¡°Yup! And I have just the thing!¡± I pulled out the fairy food the priest had given me. ¡°Want to try feeding Sol?¡± She looked confused but nodded. ¡°I thought Fairies don¡¯t eat?¡± ¡°That¡¯s mostly true, but you can feed them specially made food. I got this as a special present from someone very important (lie) to me.¡± I gave her a couple of specks of the food. The fairy food was like sand. She held it out to Sol. Sol came close and seemed to sniff it. ¡°Offer Sol some.¡± She did as I told her. Sol took a bite of the food. Only one speck disappeared. Sol started glowing colors like a rainbow. Prisms of light came off of Sol¡¯s body. Sol flew around the girl that provided the food. Sol seemed downright gleeful. Lily looked happy to have Sol¡¯s attention like that. Tear looked sad, that is if a jelly fish can look sad. I whispered to Tear. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m sorry I don¡¯t have any fairy food for water fairies. I am going to learn to make some though (lie). When I do I¡¯ll let you have as much as you want. Sound good?¡± Tear bobbed up and down. I took that as a yes. We traveled for a week like this. Wake up, breakfast, journey to the mountain. Heather would lead wolves to us, and we would kill them. I always made sure to kill one to practice my weapon. If there was more than one Lily had to kill the second. If there were three Heather got to kill one. Any more and Heather and EDI would take out all but two. At night I would cut down a tree to harvest my Blood Lotus flowers. I would make a few potions, then go to sleep. We took watches. The first shift was always me. Heather and EDI would alternate between the second and third shift. The third shift was the hardest since you couldn¡¯t make up the lost sleep. I used the excuse of making potions to take the first shift. Lily didn¡¯t get a shift since she wasn¡¯t powerful enough to stand a chance against enemies for more than a few seconds. We reached the mountains without much problem. There was never a shortage of food, and I think Lily decided to stop crying at all the wolves she killed. Lily had leveled up quickly. She was already level 19. I had even leveled up once. The monsters we fought never seemed to exceed the mid to high 30¡¯s. I stored the bones of all of the animals for later use. I also had Lily run ahead of us, with Heather of course. She would have to touch a tree ahead of us, and then run to our opposite side. If we got ahead of her, she had to start several trees back and begin again. She was worn out way too fast for my taste. I put my skill points into Wisdom. The results were acceptable. My Skill Enhancement got upgraded to Expert. Since it was more than a rank higher than Skill Mastery, Skill Mastery got upgraded to Adept. The best part about that was that I could now fuse Group Skills! I obviously did that right away. The only skills I could fuse at the time were: Automatic and Combat Learning. It gave me:
Technique Thief Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill is always on. This skill will automatically add techniques you see to your move list. This skill can steal any ability based on weapon proficiency. This does not include spells. Each level in this skill decreases the minimum number of times you need to see to be able to steal the technique. For every rank, you increase this skill you will be able to steal more difficult techniques. Abilities learned from this skill will not be as potent as if you were taught them. You must become proficient in the weapon that uses the ability to fully utilize it. You will have 10% potency to all stolen abilities when you first gain them. You can increase this amount by increasing the level of this skill, or becoming proficient in the weapon the ability is stemmed from. You will have 5% potency to all stolen abilities if you do not know how to use the weapon.
I could fuse it to Combat Learning, so I did. The required exp was so low, that it didn¡¯t even effect the needed exp of Combat Learning. I did get a notice after fusing it though. I watched Heather and EDI whenever they were fighting after that. I was just totally stoked about being able to fuse group skills. I mean I had been wanting to do that since the first time I made one. It was a little underpowered from what I was wanting, but I accepted it since I got such a cool skill. ¡®Discovery of Divines¡¯ was about how the Elder Gods first came to Solun. How they started the spread of their religions, and the war that immediately broke out because of it. ¡®Training for the Mind¡¯ was basically a puzzle book. It had a lot of different puzzles and riddles. It was fun to challenge my mind for a few minutes. My Compendium was 10% complete. I really wanted to hurry it along, but I knew that the books put in it would somehow effect its evolution. I wanted the evolution of my Compendium to be able to see through time, so I had to make it as intelligent as possible. I probably needed to put in a bunch of books on theory of magic as well. That was one of the reasons I chose the Divine book. It was about the gods. If something had the power of the gods, then it should be able to at least see the future. I had also decided to get some paper to make my own book. I was going to put all of my notes on mana in it. That way I could force it to a magical evolution. The mountains came into view on the second to last night. They were huge, but we couldn¡¯t see anything that was an obvious entrance. On the last night before we left the forest I got a message from Kretchof. A force of about fifty people had arrived near River¡¯s Cross. Two of them had detached and gone into the city to mingle. I ordered him to whittle down their numbers slowly. Kretchof might have had an infinite number of undead at his disposal, but he could only have so many at once. If he kept attacking them over time, then they would begin to die off naturally. I gave him a strict plan. First curse the group, maybe by a disease or something that gave them nightmares so they couldn¡¯t sleep. After they were exhausted from the constant threat of death, then he was to strike. I only allowed him to use Guerrilla Warfare. Take out small bits of the army at each time. I knew of one of his abilities that would be amazing if he got to use it. If he sacrificed a living enemy, he could target certain people with a plague that drains vitality as well as health. The best part was that it would only effect those people. The level of the sacrifice/10 determined the number of people he could curse. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 33Health: 100Mana: 1370Stamina: 350
Current Title: Demon Wolves¡¯ BaneHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence137
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 44 Exp 64.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 70.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 32 Exp 6.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Survival Apprentice Level 28 Exp 99.99% Group Skill: Combat Learning Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 20% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water60
Wind25
Nature55
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 40: The Fights in Forest and Dungeon Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : The demon¡¯s army made it to River¡¯s Cross at the same time that Voice made it to the mountain. The demon spent several days watching the city, to find out how to best get the info he needed. Voice adopted a kid named Lily. She plans to try to kill him at some point. He trained her to be able to kill wolves without crying so much. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I put in a few fight scene like things in this chapter. I know they are my weak point, so I am trying to fix them. Helpful criticism is welcome! No, it is needed! PLEASE! I really do want to get better, so if anyone has good suggestions let me know. I will gladly look them over. I hope to be able to write compelling fight scenes soon, as they will be a bigger part of the overall story in the future. I also know the second fight scene could be made better. I was trying to figure out how to write a scene against enemies that didn¡¯t conform to ¡®humanoid¡¯. It was finally the day to attack the hunters. The demon¡¯s camp had come down with some strange cold-like disease. It wasn¡¯t enough to hinder them, but it did make them uncomfortable. It had to be a powerful disease or curse in order to effect the dark army. The demon was confident of it being nature. He had no doubt that his men were above such things as curses. After all, they had been infused with dark magic for a very long time. The demon sent out one of his men to take care of the hunters. Although the hunters were armed and wore armor, the demon saw no reason to send more. The people of River¡¯s Cross were pathetically attired. The armor might have been good for its level, but everyone in the army had armor that was better than all of the leather in the city combined. The weapons were a joke. The man he sent was a half-human half-demon hybrid. His skin was dark, not black but dark, and he had red irises on his otherwise normal eyes. The only other noticeable defiance between him and a human was his famed pointed ears. His ears gave him a distinct advantage in blind combat. He could hear several times better than a normal human, and better by half than a demon. It was actually incredible the level of his sense. His man was to return that night. The group kept vigilante watch that day. The hunters returned to the city unscathed during that day. His man did come back that night. He did, but he had cuts all over his face and neck, and his right leg had an obvious hole through it. His helmet was completely missing, and he had two curse marks over his eyes. His once glorious blood red plate armor was gone, and his sword of darkness was missing. The man was only had a wooden spear, and his basic leather under armor. The demon gaped at the man. When the man came close enough, the demon grabbed him by the throat. The demon¡¯s voice was as sinister as it could be, with a dark hatred rooted in it. ¡°Tell me now why I should let you live.¡± The man was gasping for air as the demon held him. The demon threw him to the ground and glared at him. ¡°NOW!¡± The man started to shiver. ¡°Puh-please!¡± The man was visibly shaking. The demon was impatient. He started using a dark spell to decapitate the man. ¡°I was attacked!¡± The demon halted the spell. Seeing this the man hurried to continue his story. The man had set out when the demon gave his order. He waited in ambush for the hunting party. They always seemed to come through this particular part of the forest, so he could easily catch them off guard. His mode of travel entailed silently jumping from tree to tree. Despite his heavy plate armor, he was quite stealthy. He was hiding in a tree when he heard a noise above him. He quickly scanned the area to silence the noise. What he saw disturbed him. A skeletal raven! Ravens were the messengers to Davros, if someone summoned an undead raven, that could only mean one of two things. Someone in his group was trying to help him, or a villager knew he was here. He discounted the idea of it being a villager, so he let the raven come close to him. The raven landed on him and sat there, perched on his shoulder. When he heard the hunters approach he got ready to jump down. Suddenly the raven pecked him! It pecked him in a small alcove that his armor didn¡¯t cover in this position. Even plate armor had some flaws. A mark grew where the raven pecked, he knew a curse mark when he saw one. Slowly his vision began to blur, then fade to black completely. After the fact he knew what had happened. The raven had a sealed curse placed on it. The curse was of intermediate level, so needed to be in close proximity to the target as it adjusted itself to its prey. The fact that he let the bird perch on him was the first mistake he made. If he had made the bird fly away at any time it the curse would have failed. Still, he wasn¡¯t one of the demon¡¯s best men for nothing. He used his excellent hearing to detect where the enemies were. He jumped down, ignoring the pecking from the raven. The raven couldn¡¯t deal damage to him as long as he kept his attention from wavering. His Blood Armor had that effect. As long as he thought about deflecting the attack, it was deflected; however, if he stopped paying attention then the armor would be as strong as regular steel plate. This armor was perfect for taking on small groups or individuals. That¡¯s why he was chosen. His concentration ability was high. That coupled with his armor, made him unstoppable against low count enemies. He jumped down from the tree he was hiding in, after the group had passed. That was his second mistake. You see, the ¡®people¡¯ that had crossed under him were not the hunters. They were the undead, recently given life by Kretchof. There was four of them. He could hear the familiar sound of wind going through bones. He could hear the wind whistle as they swung their weapons in anticipation. They only had the wooden spears! HA! He concentrated on that sound to be able to block the attacks with a thought. All four enemies came at him at once. The boxed him in, and attacked in patterns. One would attack, and the ones on its left and right would defend it from the man. The one in front of him slashed. He easily blocked the attack with a thought, and returned it with his sword of darkness. His sword had been enchanted by a corrupted druid. It had the ability to decay anything it sliced. Including wooden spears. It was going to be a bit of a difficult battle though. Without being able to corrupt them he would have to actually kill them. Killing undead was a pain. Especially the higher level ones. He didn¡¯t know how high-level these were, but they should have been at least on par with the raven ability. To kill undead one had to either crush them into dust, bind them with holy magic, or cut them up enough that the summoner didn¡¯t want to pour in mana to reform them. The front skeleton stabbed again. This time the man parried the staff. A satisfied grin answered the decay of the spear. It was only the tip of the spear, but now it couldn¡¯t pierce him. He no longer needed to worry about that one. One down three to go. The next three were a bit harder. They made sure to avoid the sword at all costs. Even if that meant getting hit themselves. The man tried to attack several times, but would be hit from three other angles each time he did. The only behind him attacked at all times. It cost a bit of concentration, but he stopped the damage each time. The skeletons were all aiming for his lower stomach and legs with each hit. He knew not to fall into the trap of leaving his top half undefended though. He faced the skeleton to his right. Now the skeleton with a broken spear was to his left. He was stabbed at a few times by the skeleton in front of him, but his armor managed all of the damage. He heard the skeleton aim a bit higher than usual, and try to stop itself. He capitalized on that. He swung his sword at the spear. The two skeletons beside him tried to block his attack, but he jumped in the air and used dark blast. It was just a blast of concentrated dark tendrils. The mana cost was excessively high though, and the Cooldown was several minutes. The tendrils hit the skeletons, but he felt his helmet being lifted as well. He went to grab it, but the corpses suddenly exploded around him. He had to concentrate his entire mind to stop the four blasts of dark energy from hitting him. In doing so he lost the chance to save his helmet. He heard the raven from earlier screech as it took its prize. The man cursed as the beast flew off with a piece of his enchanted gear. He didn¡¯t have the luxury of reducing his attention to the surrounding skeletons. Without the entire set, the armor was not nearly as powerful. It only blocked for the parts covering it. He had to pull his arms over his head, and duck his head into his chest piece to negate the damage. The explosion was over a second later. Damn corpse explosion! Corpse explosion would deal massive damage to anyone it hit, and he almost got his by four of them. After making sure no one was following him anymore, he went in search of the hunting party. He might have lost some of his armor, but if he came back empty handed then the demon would skin him alive. He would much rather take a bit of extra time, and come back with results than come back on time. He found the party hunting a small group of wolves. He watched their movements. They were very adept at their roles within the party. Fighting them wouldn¡¯t be as easy as he first though, especially without hit helmet protecting his head. The blinding effect was still activated, so he took quite a bit of time to actually find them. He had to rely on the sounds they made. He listened for the sound of wind rustling over the signature leather armor of the group. He had trouble finding the group, because the entire forest started to smell of undead. He had to avoid several more skeletons in order to find the group. It took him another hour before he finally found them. The group smelled of horrid undead. No doubt they had to fight through the skeletons as well. It did smell as if they had rubbed some sort of fragrant plant on themselves to nullify some of the smell. He licked his lips when he finally found them. He decided to ¡®accidently¡¯ attack with too much strength, and kill at least one. He stood up on the branch he was on. He aimed his sword for just ahead of where he heard the last foot step. He plunged downwards, slashing with his beloved blade. The blade caused ripples of darkness to approach his target. The dark blade¡¯s special ability was that it could shear through any armor with the dark ripples it created. The attack wouldn¡¯t deal much damage, but it did reduce non-magical armor to nothingness fairly quickly. The ripple connected with his target, causing a small backlash of wind. He frowned, the person had not yelled in surprise. They were either already ready, or something was wrong. He was already in a defensive pose as he landed on the ground. A sword slashed to his left, he parried it. The smell on the people was nauseating, he had to hold himself back from gaging. He heard an arrow fly towards his head. He dodged out of the way, but was hit by an arrow coming from the other side. His left cheek sprayed a small amount of blood outwards. He gritted his teeth. This much pain was nothing. More arrows flew towards him. He sprung out of the way, only to jump into a hunter that he didn¡¯t realize was there. As he fell into the soft rotting flesh he realized something. FUCKING UNDEAD! A roar tore through his lips. He slashed at the zombie scum. The rotting flesh released a small explosion of fetid smelling meat as the sword easily tore through the wolf skin armor. With a flick of his wrist he decapitated the thing. The once revived body fell to the ground. As his nose was assaulted by the foul smelling thing, the zombie behind him haphazardly swung down an iron sword. Not only had the type of undead changed, they even got a weapon upgrade! The back of his neck experienced a piercing pain, as an arrow lodged itself into it. He almost let a scream pass, but held it in. Anger flooded his mind. He attacked the swordsman behind him. He ignored the ever increasing amounts of arrows shot at him. The arrows continued to bounce off his armor, only occasionally would he have to dodge one aimed at his head. Like this he engaged the remaining swordsman. If he could see he would have been able to deal with this pile of discarded meat easily, as it was he had trouble. The zombie was the first to attack. The zombie slashed downwards in an ungraceful arc. The man didn¡¯t even block it. He let it hit his armor, and returned the strike with one of his own. His horizontal slash met its mark. The zombie was cut in two at the waist. He suddenly felt something pierce his right leg. He turned around while enduring the pain. It was the zombie he decapitated! Damn! High level zombies!? The zombie had managed to stab into the small gap the armor didn¡¯t protect, right below the knee. He yanked the sword out of his leg, and threw it in front of him. The other zombie was literally pulling itself together, only to be interrupted by a sword to the gut. The now weaponless zombie behind him attacked by clawing at his head. He sliced the thing¡¯s hands off. Another arrow skimmed inches in front of his face. He rolled away, getting into a battle stance. He could hear the two swordzombies getting their weapons and putting themselves back together. He cursed. This was getting to be a pain. He was level sixty for fucks sake! These zombies couldn¡¯t be more than level twenty to thirty at most! Summoning higher level zombies required a lot of mana. Unless the necromancer had some sort of monstrous mana stockpile, or was a Higher Lich, then these zombies would be about all it could handle at once. The man knew how to kill them, but with four armed zombies, it was going to be hard. The two swordzombies approached him. He heard the one on the left slash at his right leg, the one that now bore a hole. He easily parried it, while kicking the other zombie. The arrows had started to die down, so it was easier to maneuver. His kick propelled the zombie several feet into the air, and pushed it many yards back. It hit a tree and went limp. At least for now. The other zombie had again struck at the wounded leg. The mana stepped back, and put all of his weight behind a strike to the skull. With a splat, he crushed the zombies brain. One down, three to go. An arrow whizzed past his left shoulder. The other zombie was already rushing towards him. Well, it was going as fast as a zombie could. Zombie could go about 80% as fast as a human, unless they had leg problems in their life or during the summoning. The man simply prepared his next attack. Something started to smell. Not rotting flesh smell, more like dark miasma. The man noticed his ability to hear was slowly being impaired. Skeletons could be detonated by Corpse Explosion. Zombies could be made into Miasma Bombs. The type of miasma depended on the quality of the zombie, as well as where it was found. The other zombie seemed to be moving at an average pace now. It caught up to him quickly. It raised its sword. The man had to force his speed up to block it. The zombie was already moving into the next strike as their swords met. The zombie¡¯s sword slid down the man¡¯s, and angled towards his good leg. He wanted to let the armor block it, but couldn¡¯t concentrate enough to do it. He swung his sword in an arc, and managed to deflect the blow. An arrow cut across the top of his head. His eyes tightened when he felt it. It seemed like the arrow slashed for several seconds. The zombie started to pick up speed. Its slashes and thrust now on par with master swordsmen. The man had trouble blocking them. He was having so much trouble he could not even counter or initiate an attack of his own. The zombie slashed, and arrows cut. The zombie finally made a mistake. It over extended itself on a strike. He took the opportunity to smash its skull with the back of the blade. The zombie managed to just barely deflect the blow. The man was hit by an arrow in response. The man had just about given up hope, when the zombie made another mistake. It attacked the man¡¯s chest. The man let it hit him. Through the pain he sent another attack at the zombie. He felt two arrows cutting his face, but it was now or never. He felt the blade sink down into the skull. As it did the man smelled a new smell. It wasn¡¯t the smell of decay one would expect. The man smelled a new type of miasma spewing from the zombie. The miasma seemed to wrap his body in sleep. He didn¡¯t even have the strength to curse his luck. When he awoke he had only his leather armor and only a broken wooden spear lying beside him. He decided it best to head back and report the high level undead in the forest. Kretchof¡¯s POV Early in the morning, my skeletal scouts said they saw one of the army brake away from the rest. They lost track of his location almost immediately. I sent the skeletons I had out to search for it. After many minutes of fruitless searching, I created a raven to expedite things. I enhanced the raven¡¯s flying ability, and gave it a sealed curse. In all likelihood the man would assume any undead came from one of his comrades in the dark army. He did. The raven found his within only a minute. I would have created the raven earlier, but creating beasts that can fly costs a lot of spots that could be used for regular foot soldiers. He allowed the raven to perch on him. I instructed the raven to activate the curse. If the man forced the raven off him, it would be a waste, but I didn¡¯t think that would happen. The raven completed the curse, and signaled the nearby skeletons. I could tell right away that they were not going to be enough to hinder the man for long. Master told me to slowly eliminate the army, so I needed to weaken them first. I sent many of my skeletons to rest, so that I could summon zombies instead. The zombies took up even more slots than the raven. I could only have four summoned if I laid all skeletal warriors to rest. I could still have a single group, or keep the raven. I chose the latter. The raven brought me the man¡¯s helmet as I started creating the zombies. Master would be pleased with the armor. He himself tended to wear heavy armor. I sent the raven out to keep watch on the blinded man. Even without the use of his eyes he was a formidable opponent for the skeletons. He almost instantly destroyed them. The raven sent word of the hunters. I had an idea I put into practice when I heard that. I sent one zombie to the group. I ordered it to not attack. I had it get killed by the group. When they killed it I activated the Miasma Bomb. It put the entire group to sleep within seconds. I had the other four zombies get their gear, and wear it. The obtained two iron swords, and two bows and quivers. Since the man seemed to be able to sense enemies without sight, I had them disguise their smell as much as possible. I then gave them instructions to hunt wolves. Master wanted me to protect this river village, so starving them was not an option. The group hunted many wolves, and placed the bodies near the hunters. When they were attacking one set, the man came. He put up a good fight, but since he was being targeted by two long range, and two short range groups, he did not win. I had to use Miasma Bomb twice though. The zombies using swords did not seem capable of bringing him down otherwise. After the first bomb went off, his movements slowed significantly. They also got noticeably sloppier. He still managed to kill the other sword wielding zombie, so I used another Miasma Bomb to put it to sleep. He lasted for several minutes under the effect of one bomb, but two proved to be too high of a hurdle. After he fell unconscious, I had my archer zombies to strip him of his armor and weapon. I left him with his leather under armor, and a broken wooden staff. I had the remaining zombies return the weapons and armor they took from the hunters back to them. Voice¡¯s POV I had EDI and Heather search for the entrance of the dungeon, while I looked for any earth mana that was distorted into something that might be a door. I made a small cave for Lily to stay in. We were going to go investigate the dungeon before letting her come in. EDI and Heather were examining a good distance away from me. They were to my left. Heather was about a few hundred yards away, and EDI was a few yards away. They searched in a way that brought them closer together over time. They would meet somewhere in the middle. I was going to the right, searching for any oddity in the earth mana. I found a few, but they turned out to be metal after I checked. I made a mental note to check up on the mining skill when I got a chance. Heather darted towards me after an hour of searching. I saw her coming on my minimap, so I sent a gust of air towards her. She jumped at me a split second before it hit her. She didn¡¯t realize I knew she was there, and was blown off into the distance. She flew in the air for a few seconds, before landing hard on the ground. She slowly crept up to me. She tried to pounce on me, but I created a hemisphere of earth around her. Without looking I asked, ¡°Did you find it?¡± I had a bit more abrasiveness in my tone than I would have liked. It had been a long trek here, and she was just playing around. It bothered me. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. She nodded her little blood-red head. ¡°Yeah.¡± She said in a sad tone. ¡°EDI is waiting by it.¡± I released the mana imprisoning her, only to have her leap at me again. I cast her aside with another gust of wind. I arrived at the hidden entrance to the cave system. It was covered by many vines, and thick bushes. We moved them aside to gain entrance. We walked inside the cave entrance.
You have discovered: Dwarven Hall. For being the first player to ever step foot in this area you are granted 125 fame. For being the first player party to discover this place you gain 100% experience boost while in this dungeon. The boost will last for one week. The boost effects player, pet, npc levels, as well as skill levels. For being the leader of the first player party to discover this place you gain a unique item. The first monster you kill will drop a rare item.
You have gained the item: Ysga¡¯s Ring. This ring will allow you to mine and tunnel at enhanced speeds. The percentage of the speed increase is equal to your earth affinity.
Too bad I can¡¯t mine or tunnel thought. I don¡¯t have a fucking pick axe. Maybe I could sell this thing for some gold? I always think of rare items as nice, but if you can¡¯t use them they were useless! Still, I could eventually make use of it. I might sell it off, but I decided to keep it for the time being. The dungeon had a low ceiling, only about seven feet. I felt like I was going to hit my head while I walked through it. The hallways were wide. It was obviously constructed to accommodate a large group of short creatures. The tunnel, for it couldn¡¯t really be called a passage way, was dark and dank. I summoned Sol to give us a bit of extra light. The stone the tunnel was made of was completely smooth, only worn in a few areas. We walked for what seemed like miles. Sol kept up a consistent amount of chatter. ¡°Master. I¡¯m so happy! I am happy I could be of use to you! I am happy I could provide light for you! I am happy to be able to heal you in your journey! Oh! What is this? This tunnel seems to go on forever! I wonder where it goes! Where¡¯s Tear? Did you not need a water fairy this time? Does that mean I am useful!?¡± I had perfected the art of ignoring Sol. It was a hard-won ability, but it had great rewards. I concentrated on sensing the mana around us. The group had stopped. I turned back after realizing I had walked a few steps without them. I listened to what Sol was saying. ¡°I guess master doesn¡¯t care for this treasure. I bet he wants to leave it to others! He is such a nice master! Always thinking of others before himself! The church even told me of some of his donations! He donated SOOOO much!¡± I walked over to where they were. In sensing the mana, I had completely forgotten to watch for traps or anything else! I chided myself for my folly. I went to the treasure box, and then opened it. There was an iron pickaxe, a note, and a set of miner¡¯s clothes. The note read: To whom it may concern, This is my last will and testament. I have tried for many years to find the hidden treasure put here by our god Gnome. I have failed for many years. There is only one place left to look. It seems as though worms have taken up residence in the tunnels. I go to find the treasure, but wish to be rid of these worms. Worms destabilize our loyal tunnels. If you find a worm in the tunnels, please kill it. Sincerely, Ysga.
You have been given the quest ¡®Worm Extermination¡¯. Do you accept? If you accept this quest you must kill at least 99 worms, and 1 Alpha Worm.
¡°Sure.¡± The hardest part of killing that many worms was finding them.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Killing at least 100 worms, and 1 Alpha Worm. Difficulty: Moderate Failure: Leaving the dungeon before completion of the quest. Reward: Found in the Alpha¡¯s Lair. Failure results in overpopulation of worms.
Oh no! Not an infestation of worms! Out flower beds will have too much fertilizer! I scoffed. I handed the note to EDI. She also accepted the quest. I wanted to see how much I could rake out of this. ¡°Heather, Sol, I want you two to try accepting this quest.¡± Sol took the note, and held it. It was no surprise when Sol failed to accept it. Heather also tried to accept. I had a lot of hope for this one. She held it, AND ACCEPTED! HOLY MOTHER OF DEVELOPER OVERSIGHT RATMAN! If my eyes showed what I was thinking, they would be money sings. Think about it. If you accept a really cool quest, and complete it, you get a reward. In a party, this kind of quest was a god send. If one member killed the monster, the entire party got credit. We would only have to take out about 30 each. Doubling the rewards for me was amazing. Obviously I¡¯d ¡®convince¡¯ Heather to give me whatever she gained. I turned to the tunnel. It was time to find some worms. I started by simulating rain on the ground. I made little ripples in the earth mana. Worms are attracted to the sound of rain for some reason. They always come to the surface during light to mid-intensity of rain. EDI and Heather soon adopted poses similar to mine. They began beating on the ground as well. Suddenly the tunnel started shaking. Fuck! I guess our worm gathering will have to wait! I got my staff ready to attack. ¡°Guys something big is coming from that direction!¡± I pointed towards the way we were moving. From inside the tunnel large gusts of wind were being formed. Most likely something large was traveling towards our position. As it got closer I cursed. Things never go my way do they? The sound had actually attracted worms. Three of them to be exact. Each one was identical to the other two. Each one could easily eat a person whole. The damn things were as big as busses!
Giant Worm Level 38
Health: 800/800Stamina:100/110
¡°*Sigh* Let¡¯s get going then.¡± I shook my head as I prepared my attack. I gather a quarter of my mana in my hand. Half of it became a guiding wind spell, the other half a raging inferno. I shot the fireball that was guided by the wind trail at one of the worms. The worm sizzled in that spot. It was a spot no bigger than my fist. The charred part of the worm fell off as soon as the burning stopped. The charred part actually became a smaller worm! It was still dead though. The actual worm seemed completely unaffected by my attack, except now it deemed us a nuisance. It rushed ahead of its companions to attack. It rammed into my at full force. I groaned as the pure force of it threw me down the tunnel. I bounced off the top of the tunnel, and came to a skidding stop. I had lost 30 health in one attack! I winced as I forced myself up. The worm was already heading towards me. I quickly created earth spikes to slow it down. It was impaled by each one, but seemed to shrug off the damage.
Giant Worm Level 38
Health: 795/800Stamina:100/110
That attack could one shot level twenty eights! Ten levels can¡¯t make that much of a difference! Despite the low amount damage it took, it was bleeding some sort of green ooze. The smell was nauseating. The worm continued its rush toward me. I created four earth walls to stop it. The damn thing ATE through them! The marks left on the walls left no room for doubt in that. The worm wasn¡¯t fast, but it was constant. I made spikes for a circle pointing to the worm. Sort of like a pyramid of spikes. The worm plowed through them. It finally took damage though.
Giant Worm Level 38
Health: 742/800Stamina:100/110
The shredded bits of worm started forming tiny worms. All of the worms came towards me. Are you kidding me!? What the fuck are EDI and Heather doing!? I spared a glance at them. They were handling their respective worms, but slowly. They were crushing the tiny worms, but that only made even smaller ones. It was like a messed up version of a hydra. The worms started multiplying at an alarming rate. The smaller worms approached faster than the large one. One of the smallest worms shot itself at me. When it was four feet from my face I activated my spear. I stabbed the worm right in the center of its mouth. The worm split in two. Both parts of the worm flew past me. Something attached to my right cheek. Pain seared through the place it attached. It was the worm! One part of the worm I attacked had reformed and bit me! My anger flared. I used my Phoenix Fire. The worm ¡®screamed¡¯ a high pitch noise escaped its body. The charred remains instantly fell to the floor. I mentally smacked myself. I had even compared this thing to a hydra earlier. The smaller worms started to get much closer to me. I collected the fire mana in the area and released it when there were half a dozen around me. The small wave of fire cackled as it greedily consumed the flesh of the worms. The worms shriveled and died. I smiled, I might not have enough mana to roast the big one all at once, but. I unclasped my two swords. ¡°BRING IT BITCH!¡± I ran towards the giant worm. I continued to send ripples of my fire mana out. I ran towards the giant worm, swords trialing behind me. The worm opened its mouth to devour me. I threw myself against the wall with my wind mana. The worm crashed down where I had been in the moment before. I pushed off the wall as I approached it. I continued to run past the worm, and into the battles of Heather and EDI. Heather was draining the blood of all of the worms she killed, but that only incapacitated them for a short while. EDI was destroying her batch, but they made ever smaller worms that attacked her. She was at a point where she had to mostly defend. I went over to Heather first. Every time EDI hit a worm, she gained a bit of hp, so she could last a while. I burned the bloodless husks of the worms Heather had drained of blood. The biggest worm she had left was only about six feet long. I blasted the area with as much fire mana as I could muster. Burning many of the worms near me completely. ¡°HEATHER! ATTACK THE WORM COMING!¡± I managed to get out as I blocked several small worms from attacking me. She jumped at the incoming worm and bit in to, tearing its flesh off as she drank its blood. The flesh congealed into a small worm. I continued burning the surrounding area as I watched EDI and Heather fight. Heather would attack by biting. Since she was the size of my outstretched hands, her bites were not that big. Even with the small size of the bites, she was still dealing damage. Every bite would tear away more skin from the worm, and every bite would infuse her with more blood. She gained unparalleled healing abilities as she drank it. Even the largest wound healed itself in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile EDI was getting damaged slowly. Sol would instantly heal her, and her Sai would absorb the life of the worms she attacked, but the sheer number of attacking worms prevented her from doing much. I called Tear out. I had an epiphany. Tear came out obediently. I thought, ¡°Tear, you can control water mana right?¡± Affirmative emotion. ¡°Good take as much water mana from around the worms as you can. Don¡¯t worry about EDI and me, just take it all! I want you to start gathering it so you can put a sphere of water around all three of us.¡± Another affirmative emotion flowed into me from Tear. The air started drying. I swept aside the worms as I made my way to EDI. I created a path by using a bit of earth mana. I made a triangle of earth in front of me. The triangle pushed the worms to either side. I made it to her with almost no mana. I dropped the earth plow when I was back to back with her. Tear was surrounded by a ball of what seemed to be super dense water. The air was dry, dry and hot. I started pouring my fire mana into the air as soon as I dropped the earth plow. When Tear was fully saturated with water, i gave the signal. Tear covered EDI and me in in a large ball of water, even as I created a spark to ignite the tunnels. The air cackled with glee. The all devouring maw of flame shot out in every direction. The worms not encompassed in the water were soon roasted alive. My lips twitched upwards. Even the large worms didn¡¯t hold up well against the fire. The smallest of the worms were instantly killed, while the larger ones were cooked inside their own skin. First the skin turned black, then it shed. The new skin quickly charred as the fire continued. I meditated in between bouts of pouring fire mana into the air. The largest worms shrunk in size as their layers fell to the ground. When I ran out of mana to maintain the spell I took stock of our surroundings. Almost all of the worms had been completely destroyed. Their burnt corpses scattered around the floor. The only worms left were the three large worms. The ¡®large¡¯ worms were now only a quarter of their original size. I didn¡¯t pay attention to Heather, with her insane regen speed at the moment she should have been able to handle it. I told Tear to release the water bubble ¡°EDI I want you to defend me at all costs!¡± EDI nodded to my command. ¡°HEATHER! GET OVER HERE!¡± A limping tuft of red fur made its way over to me. She looked at me. I sent a thought for Sol to heal her. My bandages had been completely exhausted when we first encountered these worms. After getting healed she turned around, ready for her orders. The three giant worms were surrounding us. ¡°Heather, attack them as much as possible! I want to see their skin on the ground before they grow it back!¡± The team went to work. Heather jumped at the largest worm, sucking its blood when she landed. The worm tried to buck her off, but she would not be denied. Despite the vast size difference, she was in the lead. She tore off dozens of patches of worm skin before it finally managed to dislodge her. EDI was defending against two worms as the same time as Heather was attacking. Of course Tear was helping her by causing large waves of water to push one worm back at a time. Any time a worm got too close, EDI would shred it and Tear would push it back. Many smaller worms were accumulating. The burned remains of the smaller worms were disappearing, but the fresh bodies started littering the floor. I had to keep the small worms off of EDI and me. I sent out small bursts of fire mana to burn any that got too close. It took an eternity before Heather had dealt enough damage to the worm to kill it. Heather had tore off enough skin for the worm she was facing to decrease by 50% of its remaining size. It was now only an eighth of its original size. I focused all of the fire mana I could on it. The area immediately around it burst into flame. All of the smaller worms were covered with my divine judgement. The 1/8 worm shed any part of it that was burnt. It continued to shed it until it was no bigger than a fist. At that point, it curled up and died like the good little bitch that it was. I blasted the area around us with fire mana, clearing out the accumulated filth. The next two were surprisingly easy to deal with. With EDI and Tear only focusing on one, they easily repelled it. It didn¡¯t even shed more than two or three times. Heather and I concentrated on the other worm. As she tore off its flesh, I burnt it to a crisp. In only a few minutes the next worm was down. Everyone then focused their firepower on the last one. EDI and Heather would throw the bits of worm to me, and I would burn them. The worms would occasionally pile up, but that was due to my low mana regen. We beat it after only two minutes. When we finally killed off the last of the small worms a flash blinded the group. A small green vial appeared where the last worm was. I inspected it, even as Heather ran to get it for me.
Giant Demon Worm Blood
Material QualityUnique
This blood increases the health regen of the drinker by 200%. Any future gains to health regen are increased by 200%
I stared at it. Finally! Something that could overcome my class restriction of 1 hp/second! Heather grabbed it to bring it to me. She grabbed it with her mouth. That was the obvious choice since she didn¡¯t have opposable thumbs to hold it. She tilted the drink at an odd angle. If you do that it might spill into your mouth! I got worried, but calmed myself. There was no way my obedient little slave would do something as stupid as drink it, right? Wrong. The potion disappeared into her throat. I bit my lower lip as I saw it go. A single tear rolled down my cheek. It took nearly half the battle for me to just heal 30 points! Now I would never get the chance to increase my hp regen! UGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! Why do all bad things happen to me!? Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 33Health: 100Mana: 1370Stamina: 350
Current Title: Demon Wolves¡¯ BaneHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence137
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 44 Exp 64.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 70.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 32 Exp 6.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Survival Apprentice Level 28 Exp 99.99% Group Skill: Combat Learning Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 20% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70
Water60
Wind25
Nature55
Metal25
Earth30
Fire25
Darkness100
Dive 41: Campfire and Worm Roasting Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : The demon¡¯s army made it to River¡¯s Cross at the same time that Voice made it to the mountain. The demon spent several days watching the city, to find out how to best get the info he needed. Voice adopted a kid named Lily. She plans to try to kill him at some point. He trained her to be able to kill wolves without crying so much. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Sorry about the four day wait guys. : ( I had a lot of work. I hope you all are not too disappointed. Still I hope you enjoy the chapter. I do have a plan on getting chapters out quicker though. Thanks for reading, enjoy! The demon sent the man that failed away. He gave the man strict orders to get another set of weapons and armor. He was to find out where the army had moved to, and catch up to them. After hearing the tale his man had told, the demon sent in the group of necromancers to mop up the undead. There were a total of three necromancers in the group. The necromancers followed one woman. She was a specialized type of necromancer. She could raise undead like any necromancer, but her specialty was taking control of another¡¯s summoned creature. She was a human. She wore long black robes, with purple embroidery. She carried a staff of enhancement. It increased the potency of all of her necromantic powers. She had sworn to serve the demon, after he saved her life. Her parents worshipped Undine, and were persecuted by the followers of Salamander the fire goddess. Salamander¡¯s followers started a fire to burn her house down. The demon found her days later, covered in burns and starving. He fed her, and healed her burns. Not because he was benevolent, but because he needed loyal followers. Even though she knew she was only a pawn to him, she still chose to stay with her savior. The woman didn¡¯t sense any undead as she traversed through the forest where the man had fought them. It was almost as if the man had made the entire story up, except she knew how he loved his gear. The woman summoned a few lesser skeletons to help with the search. She summoned ten animal skeletons, six squirrels and four birds. They spread out in all directions. The squirrels scampered up and around trees, and the birds flew over them. She could see all of the information her undead minions could. Her ability to analyze the information her minions saw was phenomenal. She could perfectly control and manipulate ten undead based on the information she got from them. Anymore and her ability to understand their situations, and control them accordingly dropped. Ten was the perfect number to control. Of course she would instantly exchange them if she found one of the enemy¡¯s undead. That way the mana consumption would remain with the summoner. Her ¡®Necro Thief¡¯ spell was a one of a kind spell that made her the best necromancer ever. She sat in a clearing, waiting to find, or be found by, the undead. She found the hunting party that the other man was supposed to take out, but she didn¡¯t see any undead besides her own. She could sense undead at up to 100 yards in any direction; that included sensing them from her undead minions. She ordered the other two necromancers to make a boundary to weaken any incoming undead. If any undead did manage to sneak up they would be deflected by the barrier that surrounded a twenty foot circle around her. The barrier extended ten feet above and below. It formed a sphere around the area. She made sure not to allow her undead to go close to the camp. If they were somehow spotted she would not be the one to bring ruin to her leader. After several fruitless hours she took another approach. Instead of using undead to search, she expanded her death aura as far as possible. It was a bit risky for her, since she could b e overwhelmed by a powerful rival necromancer while doing this. This would definitely attract undead though. She continued to expand her aura until she was sure no undead were coming. She had several methods to find other necromancers, and undead. After all, she had to have SOME way to find her free weapons. The three searched all day, and far into the night. They didn¡¯t manage to find anything. They returned to camp. The woman¡¯s mouth gaped open when the camp was insight. The entire section of the forest they hid in was on fire! She quickly made many undead to help put the fire. Kretchof¡¯s POV. I released my zombies. I raised twenty ¡®rotting corpses¡¯ in the place of all four zombies. Rotting corpses were a minor version of zombies. They could not regenerate, nor put themselves back together after decapitated. I added a little spice to them. Master had given me a few of something he called ¡®flaming fun orbs¡¯. They exploded when the encountered too much pressure. I opened up the corpses and gently inserted the orbs into each one. As long as they didn¡¯t get hit in the spot where the orbs were, they could fight until decapitated. I had hid the orbs in different locations for each corpse. There wasn¡¯t much of a visible difference between rotting corpses and zombies, so I was going to use the confusion they caused to get them close to the leader of the army. If I took him out master would be pleased. The army would slowly tear itself to pieces after that. The three necromancers in the army were sent out. Anyone with a necromantic aura can sense another aura of the same type. As a lich, my sensing ability was tens of times better than living necromancers. After they were sent out I sent in half of my corpses. The corpses surrounded the camp before they attacked. The leader sensed something amiss before the attack even started. I¡¯d like to have said good job, but he put my plan off by several seconds. By extension he stalled my master¡¯s plan. No one interrupts my master without his permission! I sent the group that was ready in. The other half were using some of the stockpiles of bows and arrows my master had granted to me. The attack started by drawing all of their attention to one side of the camp using nine archers, and three melee units. The other seven melee units, and one archer, waited until the time was perfect to attack. When I signaled them they ran to the camp. The battle was beautiful. The fools that dared to oppose my master began attacking the melee zombies that came from the direction the arrows were raining down in. The archers in the demon¡¯s army took out one of the melee units before the demon¡¯s fighters even made it to them. They didn¡¯t decapitate it, but rather shot arrows right through its brain. The corpse fell forward, so its orb did not explode. The other two were luckier. They managed to avoid the fatal arrows, and get to the fighters. The two fighters quickly took out the two melee units, but not without loss. They killed both undead at the same time. When the fighters decapitated them, they made sure to fall in a way to land on their orbs. The explosion was loud, loud and deadly. It blew the arm off one of the attackers. His screams would have pleased master, so I smiled in his place. The archers dropped their bows at that point, and ran into the battle holding spears. Many of them met similar ends as the one that had its brain burrowed through. They intentionally landed so they would explode though. I had set a guideline for them earlier. The first one to fall when not close to enemies, would not let the orb explode, the rest would make them exploded. The forest floor was littered with small craters after the corpses were dealt with. The group I sent in the back made it through. They looted whatever they could, and ran away before the sentinels found out they were being stolen from. I had them focus on anything that looked valuable, but made it clear to take anything they could hold. I had them run into the forest, and bury the items in a certain location. I did not follow them. I had relented my raven for a mole. I ordered the mole to dig a hole big enough to hold at least a dozen sets of armor, and enough provisions to fuel the army for a week. The hole didn¡¯t reach the top of the ground. The undead had to dig for about three or four feet to put the items in it. When all of the items dropped, the undead moved to a new location. They stood vigilant watch over the area about fifty yards to the south of the hole, after upturning a bit of soil. The mole brilliantly succeeded in its next job. It was to fill in the top of the hole, and bring the items to a base established by my master. The base had a hidden entrance. To get inside one had to move through vines and bushes to find the trunk of a tree. The tree had an opening carved out of its trunk. The opening was facing a small cliff my master made. The opening had just enough room for someone to squeeze in if they had armor on. The opening had a stone ladder melded to the wall of the tree, and led straight down. At the bottom was a small hallway, which led under the cliff. My master had made a semi-defensible base under the cliff. The excess earth was made into the cliff to hide it. My master was a genius if I do say so myself. Which I do. The hole was then filled with earth so the enemies could not find the base my master so painstakingly created. A few orbs were set at the entrance so I could destroy the base if I deemed it necessary. Of course my master left a secret escape route in the room he made for me. The fact that he made me something so nice nearly brought tears to my undead eyes. Now I had to catalogue the items I stole, and figure out where to store them. After that I would need to find a way to get them to my master. I hoped he would be pleased by the efforts I showed. Voice¡¯s POV We waited for several minutes until we heard a rumbling. I got the fire mana ready. We were all crammed into the small cube, the only light coming from Sol. I activated the earth mana when i felt the tremors get close, and stop. The walls crushed another one. I sent an explosive amount of fire mana in the cube, and set it off. The cube exploded into the nearby area with a deafening roar. The burnt-worm stew strewn across the floor. I sent out another blast of fire after my exp didn¡¯t go up. My exp bar dinged. I reached level 35. I put my points into int, just like I had when I reached level 34 two days ago. My group was safe thanks to the four feet of thick wall separating us from the hallway. The remains quickly de-rezed and I opened a doorway to collect the loot. ¡°45¡± I counted to EDI. This was the 45th worm we had killed so far. The drops had been identical, except for the green vial Heather drank. We would get a small slab of worm meat that didn¡¯t create more worms. It was a ¡®worm heart¡¯. Eating the heart improved health regeneration by 50% for an hour. It was nothing compared to the vial¡¯s 200% permanent boost, but I had to make due. Time reversal: I had to logout soon after the first encounter with the worms. I was furious at Heather for drinking the vial. I didn¡¯t want to do anything that could harm my reputation with EDI, and if I stayed I might have ended up killing Heather. I had decided to slowly make EDI want me romantically. When I had thought of that in the forest, a giant lightbulb had gone off. I may not have romantic feelings towards her but it was always nice to have someone fawning over me. That¡¯s the reason for most of my relationships after all. I wasn¡¯t feeling lonely or anything, I just wanted to feel control over someone else for a bit. Having someone romantically attracted to you would make them putty if you played it right. I made an excuse of using the break time. I beat my bed in frustration for several minutes. The pain Heather caused me did not relent. I gave up on trying to vent my frustration out in thirty minutes. After that I wanted to see if I could gather any more of the vial. It was a unique item, but even unique items could have their effects replicated partially. I decided at the time to look up some ideas on how to kill enemies like the worms. There weren¡¯t really any games that had that specific type of enemy, but many games had enemies with quick regen, or that could split into smaller enemies when damaged. The consensus with killing enemies that split into smaller groups was to kill as many as possible, as fast as possible. The best scenario was killing the enemy before it split. I took several of the ideas on how to do that into consideration while looking at how to deal with enemies that regenerated. The best way to stop an enemy that regenerated was by applying a detrimental effect. The effect was often bleeding or poison, but some games were advanced enough to allow crippling as a debilitating effect. I took the ideas from many of the sites I looked up, and tried to formulate my plan. When I got back in the game EDI was already there. It was weird that EDI¡¯s logout time was the same as mine, and that she always seemed to log in at the exact same moment as I did. I had never once seen her log in or out of the game. Remembering what she told me about her dying I decided to let the thought drop. When I came back into the game, my anger almost flared again. Seeing Heather made me remember what had happened a half hour ago. I clicked the notice button that was blinking in the corner of my eye.
*Attention* An update has occurred. Upon death, skill levels will potentially drop. Exp and items will still drop as normal. Players can now set 1 ¡®Save Point¡¯. The ¡®SP¡¯ must be set to a recognized city, village, campsite, or similar location. The player can now teleport to that ¡®SP¡¯ once per day. This ability cannot be used while in combat, or under adverse status effects. This ability cannot be used while falling, drowning, or in any potentially dangerous situation. The player must remain stationary while activating ¡®SP¡¯. Death will no longer give the one day forced logout ban. Dying will force the player to spawn at their last ¡®Save Point¡¯. If the player does not have a ¡®SP¡¯ they will be teleported to their starter town. New Races have been discovered! Players can now view how many PCs have their race.
Current amount of True Elf Players: 1.
I was glad to see that no one else had the idea to fuse the three elven races in the same way I did. The subtraction of the forced logout was, in my opinion, the single best update the game had done so far. It was weird how the people didn¡¯t need to logout for this one, but it was cool that the system could make an update function without ruining the business for an entire day. I went to where EDI and Heather were sitting. I sat down with them, interrupting their conversation. ¡°I¡¯m thinking of a plan to kill the worms.¡± They both turned towards me. ¡°What kind of plan?¡± EDI asked with a curious look. ¡°Well, I thought to create some sort of barrier. The barrier would be made of stone. I would get the area around the barrier ready to explode. I would probably impale the worm while it was close to the barrier, then set off the explosion. The only problems would be how to be close enough to know the worm was there and set it off, while making sure we didn¡¯t get hurt.¡± As I pondered the dilemma, EDI came up with a solution. ¡°How about you create a box of earth near the explosion sight? I know you can make stone houses and such, so it shouldn¡¯t be a problem. Then we could be safe, and still attack the worms.¡± I nodded at the idea, then shook my head. ¡°If we were close enough to set it off, then it would be like we were in an oven. I need to make a really big explosion to kill the worms.¡± EDI looked downcast. ¡°BUT! But it¡¯s a good idea. Maybe if we added in a layer of water to absorb some of the impact of the flames.¡± I thought about how to make it perfect for a few minutes. I actually started drawing on the dusty floor, making different plans, and trying to iron out the flaws in each. Eventually EDI and I decided on the best one. I slowly created an empty cube of earth in the wall of the tunnel. The mana I took away was used to create two things. One was a relatively thick wall, while the other was a super dense earth mana concentration. I closed the room off with a bit of natural earth mana, and started on the next part. The room was about 6ftx6ftx6ft. It was a little cramped with two people, two fairies, and a rabid rabbit, but we made it work. I created two long tunnels about an inch in diameter each. The holes led outside of the area I intended to nuke. They were to provide us with fresh air. About six inches from the entrance I had sealed up, I created a secondary wall. The wall wasn¡¯t thick, but that wasn¡¯t the purpose. I had Tear fill the resulting space with water. The water was to act as a shield against most of the heat. I would push any fire mana that made it in there back past the water, to increase the heat of the explosion. The lump of earth mana had a pivotal role in the scheme. When the worm, or worms, made it past the mana lump, I would raise it. I would essentially create a cube to box the worms in. I would then force one of the walls to move forward, while making the explosion. The walls would meet, and crush the worms. At the same time the fire would start melting the worms, and stop smaller worms from materializing because of the blood and gore the bigger worms caused. Five minutes after I created the room two worms came. I closed off the area behind them after they entered. I started crushing them, after a moment I added in the fiery explosion. The mana drain on me was not negligible. I had to sustain the entire process, so the cost was high. OF course it was infinitely less than if I used my own mana to do all of this. I had Sol light the room up. If I didn¡¯t we would be in a small dark room, almost like a torture chamber. While it would have been fun to see Heather and EDI¡¯s reactions, I didn¡¯t have time to mess around. The plan was a rousing success. The two worms were crushed easily by the earth walls. The walls I used as nets to catch the fire mana in the air. It was much easier to concentrate on moving multiple things if they all occupied the same area. I almost mixed the mana once though. Something like magma was cool, but not what I needed right then. When the worms began to pop, I executed the explosion. The fire within the cube roasted any newly formed worms in an instant. I continued to compress the box, while at the same time roasting the inside. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. The water barrier I had made before proved its worth instantly. The temperature started rising in our box as soon as I created the explosion. The water was obviously boiling. I say obviously because the wall I created started expanding slightly. A sign that the water in the area had all turned to steam. With nowhere to go, the steam forced the area around itself to expand. I decided to create some vent holes on the other side after this experiment. After a solid minute of crushing and grilling, I got an exp boost. The ¡®battle¡¯ was over. I left the safe room and checked on the outcome. The area looked completely clean, one would never have guessed two giant worms were just massacred. It had cost me a lot of time to think up the plan, and create the trap; but the mana cost was not too high to be useful. EDI was busy marveling at the efficiency with which I killed the worms, while Heather was upset at the distinct lack of physical combat. I made the safe room a bit bigger, and added the vent holes to the water area. The vent holes went through the ceiling of the tunnel. I created another small room for the steam to go. The depleted earth mana went into the mana lump. I collected the dropped loot, and looked at my dissection percentage. I had gained 2% more exp for worms. So I guess that means that killing them this way only gives me 1% each? Geez that¡¯s not a lot. The loot was dropped was two pieces of worm meat. Each one had identical effects. They each increased health regen rate by 50% or an hour. Since I didn¡¯t want to kill us, I couldn¡¯t make a fire to cook with. Fire plus enclosed space equals death. I instead poured in fire mana into the meat. I kept the fire mana evenly coated throughout the meat slabs. In only two minutes the meat slabs were a perfect golden brown. I coated them with some of the dried Blood Lotuses I had, and handed sliced them into even parts. EDI and I shared the largest parts, while Heather got the smallest. Heather was mostly sustained by blood. I also had Heather run outside to get Lily. She looked apprehensive when she entered our box. I had EDI explain the situation. If this girl was going to try to kill me, I was going to make her watch some gruesome shit. I made her listen as the next sets of worms came in. At first she acted like it was disgusting, but she soon stopped. After the fifth or sixth group Lily ¡®toughened up¡¯. She was very convincing. It honestly looked like she wanted my approval. Ancestor must have felt I was getting too close to believing the girl. ¡°Voice, there is a 99% chance she is lying.¡± I know Ancestor. I know, don¡¯t worry. I faked a smile, and pet Lily¡¯s head when she made it look like she steeled herself. She nuzzled up to my hand. After a second, in which I almost gagged from the shitty acting of the girl, I released her. She looked at my hand in a way that suggested longing. I blatantly ignored the look. After the seventh group of enemies were dealt with, I got a notice.
For creating, and successfully implementing, many plans and schemes you have learned the skill: Tactics.
Tactics Current Level: Novice Level 7 Exp 0.00% This skill allows for better battle plans to be made. This skill will show faults in any plans made by the user. Each level in this skill will increase the amount of faults this skill will show with each plan. For every rank, you increase this skill, it will increase the details of the faults. This skill will only show faults based on information the user knows. This skill will only show faults based on how the user knows the enemy will react. This skill scales in power with Leadership. For every 10 Leadership, this skill gains one level, up to level 100. Can be fused to Group Skill: Survival. If fused to Survival will upgrade to Tactical Survival.
I could fuse it to Combat Learning, but decided to try Skill Fusion first. I had never had a group skill evolve because of a skill fusion, so I tried it out.
Tactical Survival Current Level: Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Not only can you survive in the wilderness, you are so unbelievably adept at it, that you can survive with nothing going in. You know how the way of the wilderness works, and you can bend that way to your will. You can instantly form a plan for survival in any situation, and can easily follow through with that plan. You can teach basic survival to anyone willing to learn. You can teach advanced survival to those dedicated to learning it. This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Automatic Skinning, Cooking, Climbing, Skinning, and Fishing. This skill can be toggled on or off. You are a practiced survivalist. You can survive just about anywhere. For creating the Group Skill: Survival, the skill Fishing has been generated. Fishing has been automatically added to your Survival skill. The higher the level Survival reaches the easier it will be to survive anywhere. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. For creating the Group Skill: Survival, and for going long periods without eating, you have gained the Trait: Improved Digestion. This skill has evolved into Tactical Survival. Your chances of surviving in harsh environments has drastically increased.
Now THAT is a skill I can use! I can freaking teach others the survival skill!? HELL YEAH! I was a little excited to say the least. Any self-replicating skill was worth it. I let Combat Learning absorb the skill ¡®Tactics¡¯.
Tactical Combat Training Current Level: Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% You have studied the art of fighting. You know multiple forms of attack, and at least one to defend. You can easily tell the best ways to defeat an opponent, just by judging from past encounters. Training your body and mind to do combat will greatly benefit you. By seeing move sets and abilities involving weapons, you quickly become able to counter or block them. You can now quickly draw or holster weapons, even while in combat. You can now materialize a dagger for thirty seconds at the cost of ten percent of your maximum stamina. Fighting now drains stamina and satiety slower. The longer you train in your proficient weapons, the less stamina it takes to wield them, both in and out of combat. You become proficient in weapons much more quickly. You no longer need a teacher to fully grasp a weapon, or type of armor. While wearing light armor, or no armor, you gain 25% stamina regeneration. This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Heavy Armor, Staff Mastery, Knife Master, Critical Hit, Though Skin, Technique Thief, and Tactics. You have studied the art of fighting. You know multiple forms of attack, and at least one to defend. The skill Critical Hit is now a passive ability. Combat Learning can activate Critical Hit, at most, once per minute. This does not consume Stamina, Mana, or Health. Combat Learning will activate Critical Hit, whenever you score a critical hit, at most once per minute. This group skill gives you a competency bonus to all skills it encompasses. For every five levels, rounded up until level 94, you gain 5% bonus damage/defense while using anything this skill encompasses. Each rank of this skill grants the user one Combat related Trait. For every rank this skill grants you a 5% damage resistance. For learning the art of Tough Skin, this skill has ranked up to at least Apprentice level. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill, or study about combat. You can study the skills that that make up Combat Learning, or about combat in general. This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be. For creating the Group Skill: Combat Learning, you have gained the Trait: Fighter¡¯s Spirit. For learning enough about combat to upgrade the Group Skill: Combat Learning, you have gained the Evolution Trait: Resistance. For raising the Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training to Adept, you have gained the Evolution Trait: Flexibility. This skill has evolved into Tactical Combat Training. Your use of battle plans makes it possible to survive in even the most dire of combat situations.
Flexibility is the perfect trait for those that love combat. You are able to move in ways most people would never dream. The more you train your flexibility, the more powerful this trait will become. This trait can evolve into better versions.
Seeing that new group skills, I concluded three things. 1) Group Skills could evolve. I don¡¯t know why Skill Mastery hadn¡¯t evolved, but the other two evolved once I got them to level 50. They might have evolved from getting to level 50. It might have been due to Tactics though. They also might have gotten to level fifty since the evolved. I would have to do some experimenting with my skills to find out. 2) Tactics was an over the top awesome level skill. 3) I now had to decide what to do about armor. I could continue to wear my heavy armor, which didn¡¯t really impede me in any way, or I could use no armor for now. That 25% stamina regen made me VERY excited. I would be able to battle for much longer. With the amount of extra stalling I could do, I would be able to build up a powerful spell to launch. I thought it over as I ate my portion of worm meat. The regen ability these gave was just nice to have. While the meat itself tasted bland and gross, with a little of the Blood Lotus, the taste was easily overcome. I decided to keep my heavy armor on for now. I might have tried out no armor, but that piece of shit update made it so I would be teleported back to Rand if I died. I was NOT about to go through all of the work of coming here again. I continued to kill worms for a while. After one random worm died I asked, ¡°So, EDI. Would you like to spar? I mean at least that way we could do something instead of just waiting here twiddling out thumbs.¡± EDI had been talking to Lily. That was a dangerous thing. If EDI got too close, Lily could use her to get to me. EDI thought about it for a moment. Even Heather seemed to be getting closer to Lily. As for Sol and Tear, well I didn¡¯t really know what they were thinking. They just had a ¡®conversation¡¯ by themselves. ¡°Sure, but why don¡¯t we include Lily as well, she¡¯ll need to learn to protect herself. And you said you would train her.¡± I inwardly cringed. Letting Lily practice was a double bladed sword. On one hand I could learn her battle style, but she could fake it. On the other hand, she would be able to see my battle style up close. I didn¡¯t really have a ¡®style¡¯, besides aiming for the neck though. ¡°Sure, we can all three ta-¡° Heather made a noise. ¡°All FOUR take turns battling. We can switch partners after the duels are done.¡± We would spar while we waited. I lost every time to both EDI and Heather. I was sure I could have used magic to win, but that would defeat the purpose of the spars. I wanted to learn how to beat EDI if she ever became a problem. I was not one to be betrayed by someone I trusted. That¡¯s why I never trusted anyone. I also wanted to learn how to properly handle Lily, and while I was at it I decided to learn tactics against Heather too. Although Heather was the one least likely to betray me. Lily made an angry face several times during the matches. It was always when I was losing. She was probably angry she couldn¡¯t get any info off me. I was horrible, and showed no real signs of improving. I could have easily blamed it on my class. In fact it WAS my class¡¯s fault. I had taken a few lessons in martial arts before, it couldn¡¯t have been my fault. I quickly learned how to avoid and counter all three of my opponents, but I could only put that into practice with one: Lily. I was sure she was holding back her true combat abilities though. That meant I was the weakest physical combatant in our group. At least I was the most powerful magical person in the group. Hopefully. I squinted at Lily to see if she had an aura. She didn¡¯t, but even I could hide my aura if I chose to. Although I didn¡¯t know what kind of aura I gave off. I decided to also check that out at some point. After the 40th kill, the worms stopped showing up as frequently. It seemed like it was random at that point. I was tired of waiting, but decided the best plan was to relax and let the easy kills come to me. The 45th worm took five entire hours to get to us. We had spared so long, I was basically a giant bruise. We had spent a total of five in-game days killing the worms. That was far, FAR, too long for my tastes. ¡°Alright guys, it¡¯s time to move out.¡± I couldn¡¯t wait that long again. The battles with EDI were too intense. Any time I showed a slight bit of improvement, EDI beat me harder. She had to hold back just to barely beat the shit out of me. What the fuck would have been like if she went all out!? EDI asked, ¡°I thought we agreed to stay here until we were done killing all one hundred.¡± EDI would not let anything pass. She was way too into all that democracy bullshit. If you are with me, it¡¯s a mother fucking dictatorship. BITCH! ¡°I was thinking it would be better to actually go and hunt some. We would end up staying here for several years before we met the last one.¡± I showed her the plan I had been making before the 45th worm came. I ironed out as many holes as I could, then used Tactics on it. It went pretty well. EDI and Heather would lure the worms into an area. We would prepare the area beforehand. After they led the targets in, I would crush and incinerate them. The worms not EDI and Heather. Well maybe if they get too cheeky. Lily would be beside me the entire time. Making her go out with EDI and Heather would just strengthen the bonds. The trap was basically setting up a room much like the one we were in before, and staying in there as I torched the fuckers. EDI and Heather also had a small ¡®safe room¡¯ the would get into. The hardest part of the entire ordeal, was the fact that the tunnels seemed to be a maze. They would branch off and loop back more times then I could count. We had to figure out a way to indicate the path back to the trap. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1470Stamina: 350
Current Title: Demon Wolves¡¯ BaneHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence147
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame800
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Inspect Apprentice Level 44 Exp 94.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 70.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Novice Level 32 Exp 6.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 20% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth30%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 42: To the Mountain, and Through the Mountain Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : The demon¡¯s was hassled by Kretchof so he sent out a search party for the undead. Kretchof started a fire in the demon¡¯s camp, and stole some goods. Voice figured out how to deal with the large worms, and took out many of them. After a while it took way too long to get them to the trap, so he made a new plane. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! The demon sent his men out to search for the cause of the fire. It had been put out relatively easily, but the sentinels had not seen whoever had stolen their goods. Many of his troops now lacked a secondary set of enhanced weapons and armor. Of course the secondary set was not as good as their primary set, but still. Having the items stolen in broad daylight, when the entire camp was on alert, did not sit right with the demon. Someone used the undead as a decoy to harass his army. Someone used the harassment to gather supplies his army needed. The weapons and armor the people stole could feed a small village for a year. The demon was not about to lose that much financial security. The entire army went in search of the culprit, almost all of them had at least lost something. The only ones that stayed with the camp, where the old sentinels and the new ones. Most of the new sentinels were forced to watch the punishment of the older ones. The demon didn¡¯t kill the old sentinels, but the old sentinels wished he did. The torture went on for two entire days, with the audience changing as the sentinels changed shifts. After the two days, the old sentinels were completely broken. They would not even be able to think for themselves for about a day. The demon could have done far worse, but he needed every man he could get his hands on. The search turned up nothing during the entire two days. No undead were sensed in the entire forest, and no one was seen by the search party. The only people outside of the town were: the hunters, the occasional merchant, and the demon¡¯s two spies. The spies came up empty handed as always. The people in the town were too untrusting to help. The spies were attempting to get into Elvina¡¯s good graces, but it was not going well. Most times they couldn¡¯t get in to see her. The few times they could they were refused any requests for information, and denied from helping the town rebuild. The undead somehow just vanished. The demon was on constant alert. There was no way someone with that much explosive ability would just go away. The fact that this mysterious group had managed to not only track them but track his group undetected was nothing short of a miracle. The demon wanted to recruit whoever that was at any cost. Unless it was Mar¡¯s Chosen. The demon didn¡¯t think Mar¡¯s Chosen would be the type to summon undead. Summoning Undead was the direct power of Davros. Using Davos¡¯ ability to resurrect the dead would neutralize any power Mar had given him, at least for a while. Besides if Mar¡¯s Chosen knew the size and power of the demon¡¯s army, he would have run away the first chance he got. Therefore, the demon started plotting how to get this group that was harassing his men, to join his side. The demon wasted several days trying to track down the undead, or the summoner, with no luck. The only time they saw undead was when another attack came. It was four undead, but none of them even exploded. The spies he sent into the city finally gave information he could use. Mar¡¯s Chosen was last seen heading west. The demon opened his map. Most likely the whelp was heading for Dwarven Hall. It was a large dungeon, that no one had entered in hundreds of years. The demon shook his head. He mobilized his army that night. They couldn¡¯t find the undead army, but he would be damned if they were going to lose the trail of Mar¡¯s Chosen. It had already been over two weeks since he had left the city. They had a lot of catching up to do. The demon¡¯s army had to suffer many attacks by undead while they traversed the forest. Many times the supply tents would be raided. Even when the sentinels would have two patrolling the supply tent they would be raided. The only times they wouldn¡¯t be targeted was if there were people in them. If the demon put too many people into the tents then defending against the undead army became harder. There was no food to be found for the demon¡¯s army while they travelled. They had to go far off track to find even the smallest amount of food. The hunters of the groups said everything had been picked clean. It was as if some overly hungry abomination had come through, but there was no sign of anything large enough to eat all of that. Due to the amount of hassle the demon¡¯s army got, it took them two entire weeks to reach the Dwarven Hall. The last few days off the journey were especially hard. Kretchof¡¯s POV: After collecting the armor and weapons I collapsed the fortress master had made for me. Although I was reluctant to give up something master so painstakingly created, I had to do what was in master¡¯s best interest. Guarding the loot took first priority. I made sure the demon¡¯s army couldn¡¯t get to any of it. I made my skeletons dig a large cavern and put the loot in that. My master wanted me to whittle down the army opposing him. I was doing just that. After I stole many supplies from their camp, I had started clearing out all food products that might help them on their path to my master. I used my undead to harvest any edible plants, and kill any animals in the area. I would have decayed the plants, but master would have been displeased if I somehow adversely affected River¡¯s Cross. I didn¡¯t want to make master angry. All of the fruit and vegetables were used to lure in the herbivores. I used the herbivores to lure in the carnivores. Like this I had gathered up all possible food products that might assist the army in getting to master. I sent all of the food products back to River¡¯s Cross, discretely of course. I made sure there was no way of anyone finding out it was master that was the cause. I had found a large nest of badgers, several hundred in fact. I cursed them all to death. After cursing them I sent in my zombies. The zombies made short work of the badgers. After only an hour of fighting there was over a hundred badger bodies ready to be raised. I sent my zombies out on suicide missions to attack the camp again. I knew the demon¡¯s army would wipe them out, but I wanted to raise badger skeletons. -With the zombies gone, I began the arduous task of raising many skeletons. There was a way to exceed the limit of skeletons I could have summoned at once, but it took a lot of time and patience. I had plenty of both, but it was still difficult. I began drawing the complex circle around the badgers. I had to have a steady flow of blood to draw it. I used many of the badger corpses provide the blood needed. It took about thirty minutes of drawing to finally complete the circle. When I was done with the circle I began the long incantation. This spell was the most complex, and powerful, one I could cast. The incantation took three entire minutes to finish. As I mouthed the words, dark magic poured from my body. Master had enhanced me when he summoned me. I didn¡¯t know how, but he somehow gave me the ability to tap directly into the dark mana in the area around me. Because of this, the magic requirement was not a problem. After the ritual was done I gave the orders to the badgers. They began their work at once. I had ordered them to start making a maze. The exact details of the maze are unimportant, but I did make sure to know the fastest sure-fire way from the soon to be constructed entrance, to the holding chamber I was in. The entire system took a long time to make. The badgers usually created small setts (tiny tunnels) so creating large pathways took more time. I ordered them to create tunnels big enough for the smallest of the large monsters to be able to walk through. The network first connected outside of River¡¯s Cross, that is when I started sending out forays to collect food and bring it to them. After that the tunnels began to become more expansive. The entire network was housed at least 60 feet below the ground. That was the maximum height, not including the tunnel to River¡¯s Cross. I thought master would be pleased by the complex area the Demon¡¯s army had to travel through to get their gear back. Unfortunately the demon¡¯s army decided to leave the area they were staying in. I left the confines of the storage room, and began to raise undead to slow the progress of the demon¡¯s army. The large summoning I had done earlier had its own slot it took up. I could only have one large summoning at a time, but it did not effect the amount of normal undead I could have. The amount of undead I could summon had been slowly increasing since I was constantly summoning new undead. I could now summon up to forty skeletons at once. They were all fairly weak, but master would be happy to see my powers grow. I wanted to please master in any way possible. The skeletons I made harassed nearby animals, and made several forays into the demon¡¯s camp as the traveled. The badgers dug tunnels near wherever my position was. Their job was to expand the system, I didn¡¯t care in which direction. The tunnels started taking on a straight line, with many detours and dead ends, but it was still a straight line. Master would not be pleased with such an easy puzzle, so I ordered the badgers to start making the tunnels go off in different directions. They obeyed, leaving only a small number to follow me. I used those badgers to accost the demon¡¯s camp. They would dig to supply tents while I sent in my skeletons to attack. They would sneak into the tent instead of digging into it. I did not want to give the enemy any idea of how I was stealing their supplies. I made the badgers fill the hole in after they stole the supplies. They filled it in for six feet. Just enough to make the army not think to dig lower. The amount of gear and supplies I stole was considerable. I hoped my master would be pleased. I never managed to get any of the really good gear, but that was too much to ask. Master would not be happy if I was over zealous and ruined the plan. I made sure to constantly take all of the food, and continue to raid the supplies of the army. They eventually got smart enough to post people in the areas the badgers were going to steal from, so I increased the amount of force attacking the camp. If I could not have their supplies, then they would be battered even more. I continued the attacks every night, far into the mornings on some occasions. I made sure to keep them from having a pleasant sleep any night. Undead don¡¯t need to sleep, but the living do. After a few nights of poor sleep, even trained warriors would start to make mistakes. I kept this up for almost two weeks. After a week and a half I started to put in maximum effort to stall them. I sent out zombies more often, I even made some of the zombies follow the badgers into the camp. I would use Miasma Bomb, and make the zombies fall in a way to explode the orb my master gave me. The Miasma was mostly sleeping gas, but occasionally there was an explosion with poison mixed in. The demon¡¯s army seemed to have high tolerance to both most of the time. Several Miasma Bombs would have to be used just to take out one person in the army. Still, the amount of damage caused by the orbs was commendable. My master surely knew how to get good weapons. My supply was running low though. I only had four left by the time the army made it to the mountain. Still the amount of hassle I provided for the demon¡¯s army was enjoyable. The underground network the badgers worked on was extensive by that point. There were no traps, and the tunnels would easily collapse if anything bigger than two badgers walked in them, but they were a commendable start. I hoped master would be pleased. He would be able to leisurely kill intruders should he take up residence in the tunnels. On the way to the mountain, I felt the bodies of several dwarves. They were low levels, most likely trying to make a name for themselves, but died too quickly. I raised as many as I could, and had them help the badgers strengthen the tunnels. I wanted the entire overlay to be fortified as much as possible by the time master came to visit it. I gave orders for the dwarves to slowly increase the stability of the tunnels. I didn¡¯t want a single cave in. Meanwhile I had the badgers start making traps. They were simple traps, mostly pitfalls, but they had to do for now. The pitfalls were empty, but I had to find some way of making wooden spears to put inside them. Two days before the demon¡¯s army reached the mountain, I gave my master warning. He responded with, ¡°Eh? Whatever. Let them in. I¡¯m not even in that place anymore.¡± (The demon¡¯s army reached the mountain about a week and a half after where we ended Voice¡¯s part of the chapter last time.) Voice¡¯s POV: We couldn¡¯t think of any good plan to easily mark the path. At least none that EDI and Heather could do. I had thought of making Heather use magic, but I realized I never taught her. I guess it doesn¡¯t matter. Seems like it¡¯d be a hassle. Although having a minion that is more powerful is always nice. Still I just told EDI a simple trick to avoid getting lost in a maze. If you keep on hand on the wall, you will never cross the same path. That is unless there is no exit. Of course you might be in the same area, but you wouldn¡¯t be going the same direction. Quick tip for you kids that find yourselves trapped in mazes a lot. She led the worms to the trap area I made, but it still wasn¡¯t fast enough for me. After three trips of gathering worms we noticed something chilling. The first trip had three worms, I easily dealt with them. The second trip had two. I got a notice for passing the halfway mark of the quest. The next group was what caused the commotion. The worms were only half the size of normal. Now why would that cause a problem you might ask? Well these worms were at least three times the density of the previous worms. Now that might seem like much of a problem, but my crusher was basically ineffective against them. They would leave after about five minutes of crushing the worm, to go hunt for a new one. The couple of times they had to battle it, without cutting it, for about a minute. Then next couple they just rested since I had already killed the other one in time to kill the next. It was a never-ending cycle of killing for me. After a dozen, I began to have short breaks in between the kills. It wasn¡¯t because I got faster, it was because EDI and Heather had more trouble finding the worms. When I had I bit of a break, I started thinking about how to get to the worms faster. An idea dawned on me. I went blank faced as I thought of the repercussions, and benefits I might get. Deciding it had very little risk I tried it out. I sat on the ground in a comfortable position. I closed my eyes, and began meditating. Of course I had Ancestor, Sol, and Tear watch out for Lily. Sol and Tear thought it was for her safety, Ancestor knew the truth. Of course Sol and Tear didn¡¯t know about Ancestor. I took over inspect. My theory was simple. I could see mana in the environment. This was not news. I could also look closely at a particular direction by concentrating. That way I could see even further. This was also not news. Finally all living things produced light mana, although I had to concentrate a lot to see it. Again, this was not news. My theory was this. If I concentrated REALLY hard, I could probably pick out light mana from a distance. If that was the case then why couldn¡¯t I search for enemies at distances with that method? Of course it was a pretty slow process since the further I looked, the shorter the scope of my sight was. Still, I tried it out. I first sent a message for Heather to stop. She told EDI, and they both rested for a minute. I looked at the map, when I saw Heather¡¯s distance and direction I began to search for her light mana signature. It took me about two minutes to finally find it. By the time I saw the mana, my scope was so small I couldn¡¯t even see the little wisps coming off of her. I only saw a bright light. Still, it had worked!
Long Distance Detection Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows the user to search for living animals based on the light mana they exude. With this skill the user can find any animal type creature¡¯s location. The practical search area is 100 feet around the user. The extended search area is 200 feet around the user. To search the extended search area, the user must concentrate. The extended search area is the area the user has to spend a large amount of time searching. Each level in this skill will increase the clarity with which the user can see mana signatures from a distance. Every rank of this skill triples the search areas that this skill can search. The distance this skill can work on will increase as the user gets better at searching for auras. Can be fused to Group Skill: Inspect. If fused, Inspect will upgrade to Long Distance Inspection.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Inspect. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°NO!¡± I wanted to see what upgrading my Inspect would do. Inspect was tied for my most OP, and therefore most loved, Group Skill. Combining more things into it was nothing short of a heavy, low risk investment. Fusing a skill with it was like a guaranteeing a Corporation that its profits would skyrocket if they put a penny in a fountain. I was SO going to enjoy this new skill. ¡°Skill Fusion: Long Distance Detection and Inspect.¡±
Long Distance Inspection Current Level: Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, and Aura Sight, Sense Motive, Sensory Perception, Search, Track, Taste, Spot, Search, Listen, and Body Language Analyst. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯ This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be. You have fused more than 15 skills together in the Group Skill: Inspect. Inspect has gained 10 levels, maximum of 100. Inspect now works at a distance. The distance Inspect works at is equal to 10 times the level of Inspect. Many sub-skills of Inspect have evolved.
All sub-skills in Inspect that deal directly with the five senses have been upgraded. Sensory Perception now will gain more information to deduce from. Sensory Perception will now be able to increase the accuracy of the information it shows. For enhancing skills related to all five sense you have gained the trait: Perceptive.
Perceptive is the perfect trait for those capable of understanding the five senses. Using your five sense, you are able to detect things most would overlook. The more you train your senses, the more powerful this trait will become. This trait enhances the amount of information, from your senses, that your brain can handle.
So that solves one problem. Evolving a skill does in fact get it to level fifty. But does it increase it by a rank, or does it only get it to level 50? I would need to pay attention to my skill fusions to find out. ¡°Exchange Relevant Skills.¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Inspect. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you look at enough auras to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
Long Distance Inspection Current Level: Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, and Aura Sight, Sense Motive, Sensory Perception, Search, Track, Taste, Spot, Search, Listen, Body Language Analyst, and Long Distance Detection. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯ This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be. You have fused more than 15 skills together in the Group Skill: Inspect. Inspect has gained 10 levels, maximum of 100. Inspect now works at a distance. The distance Inspect works at is equal to 10 times the level of Inspect. Many sub-skills of Inspect have evolved.
As usual my Inspect went Haywire. The new flood of information was almost too much to handle. I thanked Mar for the Perceptive Trait. I went over my new group skill. I stopped paying attention to everything else as I did. I sent a quick message for Heather and EDI to come back. Then I started trying to figure out the information I had on this skill. Basically my Inspect now became a long distance target effect. After a few experiments I concluded that the further I went out, the less info I could see. At 500 feet I couldn¡¯t see anything but a spec of dirt. I also learned that I could upgrade only parts of my group skills. I practiced with my newly enhanced Long Distance Inspection, until Heather and EDI returned. If I concentrated on a certain type of aura, ie earth, I could detect that aura at vast distances. The distance I could detect it at seemed independent of the Inspect (Long Distance Inspection) skill. I decided to refer to it as Inspect still. Long Distance Inspection was too wordy. I didn¡¯t like it. My mana sight had increased dramatically. I could easily see several times the distance as before. I could see all mana in a 100 foot radius in all directions. It was magnificent. I had to concentrate slightly to see further. To reach 500 feet I had to narrow it down to only seeing a spec of mana. I was slightly sad I hadn¡¯t thought of this skill before. I could have found some nice metal if I had. Come to think of it. Why have I not been mining at all? I got that shitty ring, and a pic. Might as well try it. I decided to try mining after explain to EDI and Heather my idea. They came back within a few minutes. I smiled at their return. Lily had a small pout. Sorry, you didn¡¯t get the chance to attack me LOL. ¡°Alright guys. I¡¯ve learned a new skill while you two were out. I think it will speed up the search fairly well.¡± They both nodded. EDI asked, ¡°What kind of skill?¡± I explained it to them. Heather didn¡¯t really seem to understand, or care, but EDI seemed very interested in it. Lily tried to seem interested as well, but the little 93% feigning interest floating beside her head sort of stopped me from believing her. I told them my plan. I would scout with my ability, and the group would follow. They would battle the worms, as I prepared my explosives. Tear would cover us all in water mana, and I would set the explosion off. Same thing as the first time we killed the worms. The only difference was that I might accidentally let Lily get scorched by the fire. Or better still the worst case scenario would be she might DIE! OH NO! That would be terrible. A smile slipped through as I thought that. EDI and Lily smiled in return. Luckily they misunderstood the reason for my smile. They seemed downright cheerful at the new hunting method. Of course it might have been that EDI was growing attached to me. I tried one more experiment with the skill. I gave the skill over to Ancestor. I had Ancestor try to see the mana of our group. I actually had no idea if Ancestor could see our light mana. Ancestor succeeded. Oh man. This is just WAY too good. I was SO going to milk the shit out of this evolved skill. Ancestor had a much faster computation speed than I did. While the sheer amount information almost overwhelmed me, Ancestor seemed to enjoy it. The only thing I excelled at was the amount of things I could watch for. Ancestor could only view a limited amount of things at a time. Ancestor would only see one type of mana while using mana sight. Whereas I could see every type of mana around me, unless I was looking long distances. That was the only major drawback, but this plan wasn¡¯t hindered by it. Probably due to the fact that Ancestor had no way to experience bodily sensations for a while. I gladly let Ancestor handle the menial work, while I led the group in the direction that Ancestor directed. Apparently the search ability, which enhanced touch, could even pick up the tremors of the tunnels if I knelt down and felt the ground. I place my head on the ground. I relayed the information as Ancestor told me it. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. ¡°Two dense worms passed here ten minutes ago. They went this way.¡± I pointed in the direction Ancestor told me they went. ¡°If we hurry we can catch them!¡± I said as I started running. The others quickly followed. The running was effecting Ancestor¡¯s ability to read the movement of the worms. Unfortunately we had to stop every few minutes to actually get the worms new locations. I decided to make a thin stone tablet. i changed the mana in the tablet whenever we stopped for Ancestor. I marked the paths that the worms were seen going. I was making a very crude map. We tracked and killed a dozen worms before they started looping around. The battles were pretty much the same. EDI and Heather would beat the shit out of the worms, then I would burn them as they fell. After Tear had taken all the water mana, I would cause a giant fireball. Tear would cover us in water, and we would be safe. I had gotten very quick at injecting the needed amount of fire mana into the air. I could fill a ten foot section of the tunnel in only a minute and a half. Pouring my mana into the fire mana all at once caused slight burns on me though, so I had a limit to how much I could pour out at once. Tear seemed to take extra care protecting Lily. I wished Tear would just stop that. I knew it was to gain my good graces, but seriously. Tear didn¡¯t even let Lily so much as a minor burn. *Sigh So much for that plan. The worms weren¡¯t even difficult to deal with anymore. All of their attacks consisted of rushing, slamming, or swallowing. It took a while to beat each one, but it was easy. I guess it would have been a lot harder if I hadn¡¯t discovered the weakness to fire. We were killing the worms a lot quicker now. Each set took about five minutes to get to, and only two minutes to kill. After killing many more, I got another notice. We had killed 75. I had a bad feeling. The next ¡®worm¡¯ proved my feeling right. This worm was humanoid. The wormman stood at just over six feet. Clad only in what seemed to be hardened worm parts. Ew, that¡¯s a bad mental image. The worm had ¡®fingers¡¯ made of five smaller worms. It didn¡¯t have eyes, but had eye sockets. It balanced on the tip of its legs. It didn¡¯t have any feet. It was comical to look at. It was less comical to look at its stats. The only weapon the worm held was a rusty iron sword.
Worm Guardian Level 46 Queen¡¯s Patroller
Health:1900/1900Stamina:200/200
I didn¡¯t know what this worm thing was like to fight, but our current fighting style was not going to work. I knew that much at least. The only weak spot it had was right at its ¡®neck¡¯. I wasn¡¯t sure if worms had necks, but that¡¯s the best way of describing it. The wormman had an unbelievable amount of health. If it was calculated with a base of 100 at level one, it gained a total of 40 hp per level. That might not sound like a lot, but even EDI only gained a total of 15 per level. The worms we had killed before had nowhere NEAR that amount of health. I almost screamed I needed a MOD, but remembered that the last time I did that Bit-Bee had heard me. I¡¯d rather not do that for a joke. I would have given up on beating the dungeon, but I had a disposable meat pawn with me. Plus EDI and Heather. I could use those two to at least distract the thing while I ran away. I quickly went over all of my knowledge of worms. Hmm. I knew they liked wet soil, and could live for a long time in water. When they dried out it made breathing hard for them, but to make it that dry I would have to pump more fire mana into the air than it took to cause an explosion. I guess I could try it, but EDI and Heather would have to hold out for a while to let me. ¡°Normal formation! GO!¡± I gave the order. The group sprang into action. EDI started to combat the beast, while Heather waited for an opening. While the fight raged on, I poured in fire mana, and Tear took away the water mana. EDI was a wonder to behold. The worm was quick and flexible, but EDI was even quicker. What she lacked in flexibility she made up for in brute strength. The battle started with a thrust from the worm. EDI caught the blade with her two Sai in an x formation. She flicked her right Sai, causing the worm to be pulled slightly to her right. EDI jumped at the now exposed side of the worm, and stabbed. The worm had managed to bring its sword around just in time to block the attack, knocking EDI¡¯s Sai to the side. It slashed at her chest, but EDI jumped away. She ran back towards it. The beast struck with a diagonal slice. She knocked it away with one Sai, and landed a hit on its chest with the other. She pulled her Sai out. Tiny worms followed it. Damnit! Are you fucking kidding me!? Now we had to deal with the little worms too. I increased the pace of heating. I was getting covered in tiny burn marks while I worked. The small worms started crawling to the wormman, not trying to attack EDI. Confused, EDI didn¡¯t try to stop them. I almost screamed at her to not let them get to it, but it took all of my power not to scream from the flames. If I let out any sound it would be a sound of agony. The worms connected with the leg of the guardian. They were instantly absorbed back into it. The wound on the worm¡¯s chest closed, and its health went back to full. The constantly increasing difficulty of the dungeon irked me. I really wished that it would fucking stop! I appreciate a difficult time as much as the next guy, but GEEZ! Cut me some slack man! I¡¯m stuck here with a would-be assassin, a girl that is obsessed with eye stabbing, and a FUCKING RABBIT, and the game makes me fight infinitely regenerating monsters!? I dreaded what the actual Boss Guards were. Usually there were about nine. So the last 10 kills of the quest would basically be impossible. I decided to ignore it, and pay as much attention to the duel as I could. The worm thrust at EDI¡¯s abdomen. She moved her stomach backwards, while slashing at the monster¡¯s chest. It was kind of funny to look at. Lily saw my almost laugh and looked at me quizzically. I ignored her. I had lowered the fire output seeing as the battle would no longer include a massive amount of smaller worms. The guard threw its fist at EDI. She deftly countered, by stepping to the side and angling he Sai in front of her. She sent a kick to the worm¡¯s stomach. The worm was thrown a few feet backwards, but managed to get up before EDI could capitalize on the attack. A hole suddenly tore open where the worm¡¯s mouth should be. Hundreds of regularly sized worms spewed forth. The worms launched themselves at EDI. Seeing her delimit, Heather decided to join the fight. Heather jumped, and landed on the wormman¡¯s head. She suck her teeth into its ¡®neck¡¯, and drank her fill of its blood. The blood quickly drained from the giant worm, but not quickly enough. The worms stopped spewing forth, but the wormman grabbed Heather. He threw heather against one of cavernous walls. I cast a small, concentrated fireball at the small worms attacking EDI. I made sure to clear away all fire mana not needed for the spell. The fire flew from my hand, incinerating almost all of the smaller worms. Tear encompassed the ball of fire in a larger water orb, keeping the water from touching the fire directly. That way the fire wouldn¡¯t set off the explosion I had worked so hard to create. The smell of charred worm meat filled the air. If I didn¡¯t know better, I would have said the wormman almost gagged. Of course worms don¡¯t have noses¡­ I think. ¡°EDI! Ignore the small fry!¡± She seemed to hesitate, but attacked the largest worm. The smaller worms slowly getting crisped. As she started trading blows with the wormman, I could see a difference in the worm¡¯s attacks. Heather might not have drained all of the blood, but the lack of blood was an obvious detriment to it. It¡¯s attacks were slower, and more clumsy. EDI was able to get in many shallow hits. Heather stood up, and pounced the thing again. She attached herself to its leg, and began draining it of its blood. The worm tried to throw her off again, but she held on tightly. Before the worm could get a good grip on her, EDI launched a powerful set of attacks. She slashed in a cross formation, then an x, then zigged across the worms chest. The first two attacks the worm stopped, with two quick flicks of its sword. The third tore out a large chunk of its skin. The skin congealed, and the resulting worms squirmed towards the man thing. Tear and I burnt them before they reached it. The worm was slowly showing signs of weakening. The damage dealt to it healed, but its health remained the same. With Heather slowing it down, and EDI distracting it, I was able to finish my preparations. ¡°TEAR!¡± I pushed the girls away from the monster with wind magic. As I did Tear covered us in water orbs. I forced the explosion. The entire hall rumbled from the excess heat and power. The fire continued to spread for over a minute. I actually had to start funneling the fire mana away from the water orbs. We almost got cooked. I let Lily¡¯s orb heat up a little though. Not enough to hurt her, just to where she was uncomfortable. Whoops! When the inferno was over, Tear released the water orbs. EDI and Heather were gasping for air, Lily seemed fine. Oh yeah, guess I forgot they can¡¯t breathe underwater. Oh well. I shrugged mentally. ¡°Alright guys, let¡¯s go.¡± I said. Ancestor tried to say something, but I couldn¡¯t hear. Suddenly a sword was forced through my left leg. I looked at it confused for a moment. I looked at the wielder. A badly burnt, but healing, wormman the size of a small child. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? WHAT THE FUCK!!! ¡°HEATHER!¡± Heather pounced at the thing. She wrapped her teeth around its neck, as EDI stabbed through its neck. Sol healed me, as I jumped backwards. I pulled the sword with me. Not expecting this, the feeble strength of the wormchild was not enough to hold the weapon. I shuddered as I forced the sword through my leg. I concentrated on sending healing mana into the wound. My anger flared at the failed tactic. I¡­DO¡­ NOT FAIL! I gathered as much fire and dark mana as I could. I pushed the mana at the worm thing, while adding nature mana in. I swirled the tri-mana around my sword. It was just pure mana, it had no real form or task. I don¡¯t know how hard it was to control, because I was blinded by my anger. My anger clouding my judgement I used Battle Rage. I equipped my double swords as I ran at the fucker that could withstand my attack. I forced myself forward with a large gust of wind. Everything happened in slow motion. The thing tried to punch me, I sidestepped and sliced its throat. Worms fell to the ground. The fire/dark/nature mana had made some ominous green fire that had a black after glow. The places it touched started to burn and decay. I gouged at the places the fire touched. Scooping out large chunks of the worm as I did. The parts I threw were consumed by the flame. A scream echoed from my lips. The fire quickly started consuming the entire the worm bitch. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. Blood splattered my face, it tasted like candy. I wanted more! I hit, gouged, tore and bit. In a matter of seconds the entire worm thing was nothing but a pile of decaying burnt flesh. I was covered in small worms that were trying to burrow into my skin. I used Phoenix Fire to get rid of them. By the time it was over I was breathing heavily. I looked around. EDI, Heather, and Lily were staring at me. Awestruck. I looked down. The burnt carcass of the former wormman laid at my feet. Heather came forward slightly. ¡°That, that was the angriest I think I¡¯ve ever seen you. Are you ok?¡± Her sympathy was a nuisance. I wanted something else to kill. If all the hard work I put into this shitty game didn¡¯t pay off, then I wouldn¡¯t put any work into it. I looked at Lily. Ah, a perfect thing to kill. I rushed her. She was going to try to kill me anyway, so why not? EDI stepped into my path. ¡°What were you about to do? You need to calm down!¡± EDI¡¯s face was angry. I looked around wildly, this was the perfect time to kill Lily. I felt so POWERFUL right then. I licked my lips as if to speak. I rushed Lily again, before I could move more than one step Heather knocked into me. ARGH! Why couldn¡¯t these peon let me kill the girl!? Why couldn¡¯t they see she was a threat? Why was I surrounded by utter morons!? I couldn¡¯t take it anymore. I turned my blades on Heather. ¡°FINE! You want to take her place? COME!¡± I dashed towards her. I began a complex series of slashes and thrusts. Even Heather had a hard time avoiding them. She was trying to avoid attacking me. Bad idea. I threw a burst of fire at her. She jumped to avoid it. She perfectly landed in the path of one of my blades. I cut her left flank deeply. Her blood soaked the ground as it splashed outwards. Sol started healing her. ¡°SOL! STOP! RETURN TO ME! TEAR RETURN!¡± I would NOT have traitors in my midst! The anger at everyone continued to build. It felt like I was going to explode. The feeling subsided slightly whenever I cut something though. That¡¯s what I planned to do. I cut at Heather again, but EDI intercepted my blades. I felt my body get faster. I noticed my wind and fire mana draining, but didn¡¯t care. I ran behind EDI before she could tell what was happening. I angrily whispered to her. ¡°I gave you those Sai, instead of getting a weapon myself! Don¡¯t you DARE selfishly raise them against me!¡± I stabbed her in the spine with one of my swords. I tried to anyway. In my anger I must have missed. I hit her in the back of the neck, with the back of my sword no less. It wasn¡¯t what I wanted, but it got the job done. I could deal with her later. After all she was unconscious and had an attractive body. My head began pulsing. I had to kill Heather quickly. I looked around, I couldn¡¯t find her. I heard a sound, and ran that way. Heather and Lily were running away. I smiled a wicked smile. ¡°Hey now! Don¡¯t run! I just want to play!¡± I don¡¯t know why, but I found that funny. I started laughing. I checked my notifications as I ran faster, my wind and fire mana being depleted. What I saw made me stop in my tracks. I started getting even angrier, but stopped myself. I closed my eyes. I couldn¡¯t think of anything else, so I cut my stomach samurai style. ¡°SOL HEAL ME!¡± Dark mana seeped out of my wound, dripping to the ground. Sol quickly came out, and tried healing me. I wanted to give the fucker an order to kill itself, so I bit my tongue until it bled. I pushed as much of the dark mana out of me as possible, while Sol healed my wound. After a second the wound closed. I forced myself to sit down, and meditate. It was the last thing I wanted to do, so it should do the trick. I re-read the notice.
You are currently afflicted with Worm Guardian¡¯s Resentment. By killing a Worm Guardian, you have gained its resentment. By being bathed in its blood the resentment was turned into a curse. Curse of Anger and Killing activated. You are angry beyond belief. You will want to kill anything that was not an actual enemy, especially if it was once your friend. All physical abilities have been temporarily tripled. Curse of Anger and Killing has been amplified by the Dark Curse Amplification. Remaining time: 56 minutes 23 seconds.
For improperly fusing three or more types of mana that included darkness as a base, you have been inflicted with Dark Curse Amplification. Dark Curse Amplification increases the power and length of all adverse effects on the one cursed. Remaining Time: 56 minutes 20 seconds.
I wanted to kill. These shitty blue boxes made me so ANGRY! But I didn¡¯t. I was under a mental curse. There was no fucking way I was going to some dead fuck have his way with me. I tried meditating, but it was no use. I was too angry. Still, I sat there. I was not going to move until I calmed down. I decided that since I was not in a position to do anything else, I would purify mana. The best option seemed to be fire. It felt angry, just like I did. I focused all of my attention on the fire mana. Before I knew it I was creating a fire room. I stopped, and forced water mana into the air. I cleaned up the water mana, but letting Tear absorb it. I didn¡¯t look at Tear or Sol beyond telling them what to do. I would have most likely tried to kill them. The same thing happened. I began flooding the area around me. I opened my eyes, and took a deep breath. I was still angry, angry enough to kill, but now I had a bit of my mind back. I needed to think of a way out of this. The curse said I would want to hurt my friends. A thought popped into my mind. I knew how to actually get EDI killed. All I had to do was think of the fact that she was an NO! If the game wanted to be like that, I could cope. I was much better than this mother fucking shit. EDI wasn¡¯t even my friend. She never was. She was just a piece of eye candy I let tag along. I was going to drop her if she didn¡¯t join my guild anyway. In fact I made the decision to drop her after the effect of this thing wore off. I didn¡¯t need weak asses in my guild. Heather, well she was just a drain on resources. Sure she provided back up, but Troy was much better. In reality I didn¡¯t even have a real use for Heather at all. Except to keep EDI entertained. And again I was going to drop EDI. And Lily? Well I was ok with killing Lily. She might not technically by my enemy right now, but one day she would be. If I killed her under the guise of this curse I could even get away with it! I almost started thinking of good points of the group, but didn¡¯t let myself. I was convinced to throw them away and blame it on the curse. As if realizing the benefits of the curse was a trigger, I began to feel it fade away. The curse left, and I felt more and more angry. I tried to grasp onto it. I needed an excuse to kill Lily. First the game curses me, then it takes it away!? NO! The curse fled even faster. After another moment it was gone. I laid on the ground exhausted, both mentally and physically. I had made a plan as soon as I saw the notice. Have you ever tried making and implementing a plan against something that can read your mind? It¡¯s not easy, let me tell you. I had decided to convince myself to get rid of the entire group, that way they wouldn¡¯t be considered friends anymore. It worked, but keeping the truth at bay was strenuous. I rationalized reasons why I could get rid of them, they were real reasons after all. They worked, but I chose to ignore them after the curse was gone. I didn¡¯t care if they were throw away pawns, as long as they were my throw away pawns. I breathed a sigh of relief. It really was a waste though. If I had been faster I could have gotten away with killing Lily. I read the new notice that was blinking in my eye.
You are have forcefully broken a mental curse. For being the first player to break a mental curse without help, you gain 50 fame. For breaking a mental curse without help, you gain 5 intelligence. For breaking a mental curse without help, you have gained the trait: Mental Fortitude.
Mental Fortitude is the perfect trait for any who wishes to avoid mind altering curses. You are able to withstand more mental damage and pain before your mind starts to shut down. The more mental damage and pain you take, the more powerful this trait will become. This skill can evolve into better versions.
The traits: Resistance and Mental Fortitude, are compatible. Upgrading traits: Resistance and Mental Fortitude. Upgraded to: Complete Immunity.
Complete Immunity is the perfect trait to avoid any sort of pain or damage. Pain and damage of any sort are like second nature to you. You can now ignore any type of damage to your mind or body, up to 50% of your total mental or physical threshold. You can now ignore all pain up to 50% of your total mental or physical threshold. The more damage or pain of any type you take, the more powerful this trait becomes.
Now that was worth the little episode. I assumed the ¡®mental damage¡¯ part of the traits meant curses. So I guess I could just ignore curses under a certain level now. That was cool. The real kicker was the Complete Immunity though. HOLY CRAP was that good! If I raised willpower and endurance, at least I assumed it was those two, I could basically become immune to damage!? OH HELL YEAH! After making sure I was not under the effects I allowed Tear and Sol to come closer. ¡°Sorry about that you two. I was under a curse at the time. I showed them the trait screen. Tear bobbed knowingly, while Sol looked impressed. ¡°I knew master was good, but to break a curse on your own? That¡¯s amazing. Mar would be proud! I can¡¯t believe I was lucky enough to contract with such a wonderful and powerful master!¡± More, praise me more! I smiled in response. I let Sol talk while I sent a quick message to Heather explaining the situation. She told me to meet her at EDI¡¯s body. When I approached she seemed apprehensive. Lily looked scared for her life. Good. Fear me now, maybe you won¡¯t try to butcher me later. I slowly approached Heather. She grinned. Really? After all that battle? I already knew what was going to happen. I prepared a soft cushion of air near the place she would land. She jumped at me, and I tossed her with wind mana against a wall. The air cushion caught her. ¡°YUP!¡± She proudly declared. ¡°Master is sorry! He cushioned my landing this time!¡± Lily looked a little worried at the comment, but seemed to let it go since I was back to normal. We waited while EDI woke. I healed her, but she was still unconscious. I let my mind wander. Man if that was the power of fighters, I should have chosen a melee class. It still wasn¡¯t too late to change classes though. I DID put in a lot of time into this class though. And that mana manipulation was way to good to give up. I sighed. I had to figure out how to kill the wormmen without getting any blood on us. Heather seemed fine though. At least my worm dissection was up to 60%. My Magical Mastery didn¡¯t rank up even though I got Mana Affinity to Adept. That was because my Meditation had already gotten to adept. It felt like a bit of a waste, but still. Having Mana Affinity at adept was nice. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1520Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence152
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame850
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 70.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 32 Exp 6.30% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 20% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth30%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 43: The Last of the Wormmen Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Kretchof created an underground maze, all while hounding the demon¡¯s army. The demon¡¯s army finally made it the mountain but were tired and weak. They had been poisoned, and cursed at every turn by an invisible force. Undead continued to plague them. Even Davros¡¯ blessing couldn¡¯t hold up against all of the dark magic that was being thrown at them. Voice killed many worms, then found a humanoid worm that attacked them. The wormman cursed Voice, who promptly went insane and started attacking his allies. He managed to cure his own insanity, by trying to become more insane. He gained a few skills, but was let down that he couldn¡¯t kill Lily. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I¡¯ve decided to start a contest. The winner (if anyone participates) will have a character in DIVE. If you wish to participate all you have to do is write a brief paragraph. You must include: A character name, description of the character¡¯s body(race, sex, and features), what type of class they would have (i.e. a merchant, a fighter type etc.), and a brief personality synopsis(do they play well with others, are they arrogant or humble, stuff like that). At this time I do not need the information about what they are like on the outside world, unless it pertains to something vital in-game. I will pick the best few and have a poll. The readers decide the winner. I will put the poll up in chapter 45. You have until I finish that chapter to submit. If no one submits anything, I have a few new exciting characters I will add. Well I will add them anyway, but if no one submits character designs I will just add them sooner. The characters are more likely to be put into the poll if they have at least one character flaw. If they are not given one, and win the poll, I will make one. I will obviously ask the person that created the character for advice on it. Voice¡¯s POV: We waited until EDI had regained consciousness. It took a while, so I inspected my current combat abilities. Obviously me beating EDI was thanks to the fact that she didn¡¯t¡¯ want to hurt me, and that I was basically possessed, but I did still beat her. My speed had suddenly increased for a second. I was trying to figure out how. If I could replicate that, I would be much better at combat. I knew my fire and wind mana were draining, but fire plus wind made explosion. Hm, I¡¯d I have to think more on it later. Right now there was something that bugged me. During my tirade I had said EDI was a piece of eye candy. That was wrong on a lot of levels. Not only was that sexist as fuck, it implied I was attracted to her on some level. She didn¡¯t really have any physical flaws, but I didn¡¯t know if I was actually attracted to her. I was totally against sexism against either gender. I judged people solely on one criteria: how easily could I manipulate them. Now I will admit that women were easier for me to lead, but that was because I was the opposite sex. If I was a woman, I¡¯d be better at manipulating men than women. It was just a matter of having a sexual appetite to fill. Regardless of what people think, we are just animals. We are here to live, reproduce, and die. That¡¯s the sad life cycle of all animals. Except certain jellyfish. They can rejuvenate their cells every so many years. Kind of like a famous doctor I knew about. If you all are wondering, that show is still around. Making new episodes too. We are on the 21st regeneration. Well I was thinking about what I meant while I was under the curse. I could have explained it away as me being under a semi mind control effect, but I knew it wasn¡¯t. I wanted to figure out the real reason I thought that. Knowing yourself is the first step in defeating your enemy. If you know yourself perfectly, then you will be less likely to be manipulated or tricked by your enemies. I also wanted to figure out why I aimed for her neck. I had a perfect opportunity to kill her. Now I would regret that, but still. I would hate to feel like I didn¡¯t have the guts to kill someone because I thought they were attractive! I was thinking about this when EDI woke. I forced Tear back into me before I started. I immediately bowed on the floor, while propping her up with wind mana. I spoke rapid pace, not giving her a chance to rebut. ¡°I¡¯m SO sorry. I was under the effect of a curse.(true) I had no control over what I was doing. (sort of true) I felt like I had to kill Lily no matter what. (still do) I would never have that thought if I wasn¡¯t under compulsion! (lie) I know it doesn¡¯t help (lie), but after I knocked you out (tried to kill you), I managed to break the curse through sheer willpower. I would never have done (failed at) something like that if I had been conscious.¡± I continued to lay prone until she had digested the information. It was taking her a lot longer than I wanted. It was upsetting that I had to sit in this position for any amount of time at all. Still, I did what I had to. After about a minute, she finally relented. ¡°Ok. I know about the curse you were under, it was because you were somehow cursed by the wormman. I know it wasn¡¯t your fault. But even so, you shouldn¡¯t have used a gift to get back at me. I don¡¯t think I will accept any more gifts from you if you ever do that again.¡± I could hear the frown in her voice. That was about as close to angry as she had come to getting at me. She patted my head. Seriously? Whatever. I raised my head, but not before adding dense water mana to my cheeks. It was just enough to solidify. The ¡®tears¡¯ were going down my face. Not enough to actually cause worry, but slightly more than enough to show my contrition. I even added in a bit of dust using earth mana to my eye. Red eyes were a sign of crying. EDI looked worried at the sight. ¡°Hey, I said it¡¯s ok right? It¡¯s fine! I didn¡¯t mean to take so long to answer! Honest! I just didn¡¯t know how to respond!¡± She looked around, worriedly. The whole time she was fidgeting her hands, and had her shoulders raised. I tucked the information away for later use. I sniffed. ¡°Really? It¡¯s ok?¡± I wiped my face. She nodded quickly. God it was too easy. I¡¯m good, but EDI was way too easy to fool. I helped her up, and began to shakily tell her the new plan. ¡°Well, I thought of a plan to deal with the wormmen.¡± EDI nodded expectantly. ¡°The status I got said the curse was caused by being ¡®bathed in the blood and resentment¡¯ of the worm. Since Heather was ok after drinking the blood, I thought that the blood must have had some kind of effect, just like the muscles and skin does. The only difference is the effect. The muscles and skin make new worms, while the blood acts as a powerful curse. However, the curse only seems to work if the blood is touching the air. Since Heather drank the blood, she was immune to the effect. So this is the plan. EDI will distract the wormmen, while Heather tries to drain the blood.¡± I summoned Tear back out. ¡°Tear, I want you to slow the worm¡¯s movements by constraining its legs in water. Sol, focus on healing Heather and EDI, my bandages are gone. Lily,¡± I looked at the girl while holding in my disdain. ¡°I want you to hide whenever I find enemies. As for me, I¡¯m going to be searching for enemies, and trying to map out the area. I the tablet I have been using is starting to look like an actual map now, so we can use this if things get rough.¡± I showed them the very detailed map. Well it had some details. Well it had lines. At least the dungeon was only on one plane so far. It would be really difficult to draw a 3-D map with a 2-D surface. With the plan set, we set to work. I created many traps whenever we neared an opponent. The traps included a variety of pitfalls, spears, even a flamethrower. The flamethrower was my favorite, but took all of my mana to maintain for a handful of seconds. Those were just on the first worm too. I was experimenting to see what worked best against them. The fire and pit fall had the best effects, but neither were enough to kill the things. In between the quick battles staged by EDI and Heather, I would set up my experiments, and lead the wormman to them. Using the flamethrower, I had to constantly blast fire for over a minute to even see the first flake of worm come off. The fuckers were resistant to fire now!? The pitfall also worked, but didn¡¯t do any damage. I dropped the wormman down a ten foot fall, but the wormman easily started climbing up. I was honestly hoping it would be stuck. Worms are really good climbers, even if the look human. A quick earth spear through the abdomen dropped it back down. I could use the mana in the ground to make the spears, and did so. My mana regenerated more quickly than the worm could climb. Whenever the spear had done its job, I sent it back into the wall. The wormman would try to climb up, I would spear it when it got about 2 feet from the top, it would let the little worms re connect to it, and the process would start over. I occasionally sent a burst of fire in to scorch the small worms, but I had to use a lot of mana to do that. The fire burnt through the small worms easily enough, but again I used a lot of mana to make the fireballs. Regular fire didn¡¯t work against even the smallest of worms. Keeping the thing in the pit did give me an idea though. I knew it wouldn¡¯t work for long, but I felt it would work for a while. I had Tear surround the worm in water. I started siphoning off every scrap of fire mana from the area. I sent all of the mana into the area above the pit. It was a little uncomfortable for the group, but they would get over it. The water began to freeze when the fire mana had been gone for several seconds. It was difficult to take out every scrap of fire mana, but I did it. As the strips of fire mana in the water orb became smaller and smaller, I took more and more time to extract them. Even the body of the worm gave off fire mana. Suddenly an idea started forming in my mind. I could sense the mana in my body. I could sense the mana in the environment. I could sense other¡¯s mana. I could harness mana in my body. I could harness mana in the environment. So why wouldn¡¯t it be possible to harness the mana in other people¡¯s body? I decided to try experimenting on the worm. I could see the light mana coming off of its body if I concentrated, but I figured that was technically environmental mana. I started looking past the light mana on the worm, and tried to sense its inner mana. I was still pulling fire mana out of the orb. The entire process was made more difficult by the worm¡¯s struggling. Tear managed to keep the thing in the water orb, but it was constantly trying to swim out. I focused on looking for fire mana in the thing. I saw the fire mana in the air, but the worm itself had none. No matter how hard I looked, or what I tried, I could not figure out how to view its mana. I gave up for now. I knew I was on to something, but didn¡¯t want to continue wasting time on something that could kill me given the chance. I continued to siphon the fire mana out of the water orb. Tear was starting to look really tired. Keeping up a giant ball of water for long periods of time would do that. After a few additional minutes the edge of the orb started to frost over. Here¡¯s a lesson kiddies. Worms freeze. They freeze very easily in winter, when everything is cold. Some burrow deep into the ground to escape the freeze, and some lay eggs that are immune to the cold, but all hatched worms freeze easily. As soon as the orb started to frost over, the entire thing turned into a solid orb of ice. I got a nice chunk of exp from it. I was almost to the next level. I guess that¡¯s what happens when you are constantly fighting things way above you in level. I was proud of myself. Honestly I was doing most of the work here. Sure Ancestor was the one finding the worms, and Heather and EDI would lead them to me, and fight until I was ready; but I was the one that came up with the plan. I was also the one doing the actual killing. I experimented on a few more of the wormmen before realizing they had started to gain immunity to the frost ability as well. After killing the next few worms I realized something. The map I was making had been slowly curving along a central point. I had a nagging suspicion that was where the worm queen was. We continued slowly dwindling the numbers over the course of the next few days. I decided right after they gained immunity to freezing, not to use many new ideas. If I used too many the queen would be immune to all of them. I had a quite a few plans to defeat the queen. A number of them were in case she looked human. The worms did slowly seem to be approaching that outcome after all. We only killed 15 in the next three days. The fact that we managed to kill any was amazing past the tenth one. They had become immune to every attack EDI, Heather, and I could think up. The only thing that worked by that point was drying them out, and drowning them. Drying them out took about half a day, and drowning them took 18 hours. I did manage to drown two at once though. EDI had become all but useless. She was a good distraction, but if she blocked the wrong way, or attacked at all, the worm would advance while healing itself. Heather faired a little better. She could at least drain their blood to slow them down, but after the 83rd worm she said their blood tasted horrible. On the 86th she couldn¡¯t actually handle it anymore. The worm blood had steadily acquired a disgusting taste; the more worms she drained, the worse the blood tasted. She vomited the blood, and tried attacking us when she got covered in it. I had EDI deal with her at that point. I tried to stop the next four by any means necessary. Dropping them in a hole I then covered only resulted in them eating their way through the floor. Drowning them in water, while it did kill them, increased their lung capacity. Drying them out only increased the amount of secretions they made. Squashing them did absolutely nothing but give us wounds. On the 89th enemy we actually had to run away several times. Every time one of my big plans failed we ran from it. I expended over three quarters of my mana each time, so that was basically all we could do. It¡¯s really hard to fight a monster that just keeps getting up no matter how many times you knock it down. My willpower started to waiver. Instead of hunting the worm, the worm was now hunting us. It seemed to be able to detect any traps I laid, and could follow us wherever we went. Even if I hid us above or below it would find us. I tried everything I could think of to keep it away. I laid pitfalls filled with dark fire that was supposed to burn until there was nothing left to burn, but that only worked once. It burned through a small hole, but the worm sealed it. I blasted it with enough wind force to blow over a house, but it just regenerated. I even used my pheromones ability Gaia had given me. I lured it on a merry chase for a while swirling them around with wind, but that wasn¡¯t to last. After following the smell for a few minutes, it returned to chasing the real us. I made a super deep hole, and tossed it in there, while making the sides of the top five feet on each wall lava. That last one slowed it down nicely, but didn¡¯t manage to stop it. I even tried to capture bits of the worms EDI and Heather threw to me. I used an ice container to do it. The wormman made it a priority to capture them back. That gave us the chance to use them as decoys, but eventually it realized the ice would melt and the worms would just crawl back to him. Mirror¡¯s Boon saved our asses at one point. I summoned it when the wormman had us cornered. The wormman went to attack it instead of use. I was in a LOT of pain, but EDI and Lily carried me away. Roar of Paralysis didn¡¯t even stall it. We kept running. My heart was beating fast the entire time. The amount of adrenalin pumping through my virtual veins was high. It didn¡¯t matter how many corners we turned, nor how many times we split up. The wormman kept coming. I had lost several times in this game, but I was still able to come out on top. In this situation there was no hope. I really wanted to quit the dungeon, but I was not about to look weak in front of my future guild mate. I logged off at one point, after making a room using some of the surrounding earth mana. I made it as hard as stone to stop the worm from eating its way in. I spent a few hours making it, and added enough holes to let air in. Basically it would just be Heather, and Lily. I didn¡¯t trust Lily, but my brain had begun to fry. When I left the pod I laid on my bed for a while. Dark fire didn¡¯t work. Ice didn¡¯t work. I still had a few trump cards, but if I used them the nine other wormmen would basically impossible. I hadn¡¯t had that much trouble since getting the bitch that liked bad boys. So exhausting! I browsed the net again, hoping to find another nugget of gold to help. I noticed a thread that was titled ¡®Dwarven Hall: The idiot¡¯s story.¡¯ I obviously checked it out. Apparently it was big news throughout the dwarven colony of Ysga¡¯s Hall that a small group of adventurer¡¯s were tackling the dungeon. They were all having a really good time making fun of EDI and me. The reason no one had ever challenged that dungeon was the fact that it was one of the only known dungeons to have invincible enemies. Every few in game weeks one of the weakest worms would make its way into Ysga¡¯s Hall. It would take a large amount of dwarven warriors to bring it down. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. I read up on the story in detail. The dwarves in Ysga¡¯s hall used to make their way through the dungeon in order to interact with the rest of the world. The tunnels were taken over a few generations ago, by some unknown entity. The entity started making these giant worms attack Ysga¡¯s Hall. Of course they fought back. Ysga¡¯s Hall was actually a large castle that wound around a mountain with a plateau for a top. The castle walls were dozens of feet high. At first they poured pitch and tar at the beasts, but after a while it stopped working. Then they had to fight using ranged dwarves, a rarity. That stopped working soon as well, as the hides started becoming immune to piercing. The resorted to melee attacks, that¡¯s when the worms stopped coming so often. When they did come though, they now spewed forth ravenous smaller worms when hit. It was curious though. Even though the worms had become immune to tar and pitch, both things that used heat as a source of attack, the worms were weak to my fiery explosions. Could it be that a slight change was all that was needed to stop the resistance? I felt an imaginary blue box pop up saying I gained int from learning something. I also read some weaknesses the worms couldn¡¯t adapt to. There was a tiny gem that floated in the bloodstream of each worm. If one could take that out of the main body, the worms connected to it would die. The problem was that the gem was a sphere, with the diameter of a hair follicle. Finding it was next to impossible. Killing its host didn¡¯t even stop it. You had to actually force the gem from the worm¡¯s body. The best method to do this was to make it eat a certain type of grass that grew outside of the cave entrances. Both to Ysga¡¯s Hall, and to the Dwarven Hall¡¯s. I ate a sandwich and got back in the pod. It was time to test a few new theories. The worms were about to be in for a rude awakening¡­ hopefully. When I got in I wasn¡¯t even surprised to see EDI already there. I had basically gotten over that fact. I began to tell them the information I had gathered on the net.
Warning
You are about to share information obtained from the outside world. If you share ill-gotten knowledge, both players will be banned for at least one week real time.
I stared at the box for a moment. EDI looked at me quizzically. I waved her away for now. Hm, that¡¯s new. Did it not count when I researched how to kill those types of enemies, as ill-gotten knowledge? Or is it that I made a plan and didn¡¯t actually tell them about the information I looked up. Hm, does that mean I can make a plan based off of it, but not share it? I decided to try it out. I was hoping for another warning if something was going to go wrong. I went to go harvest some of the grass outside of the cave entrance.
Warning
You are about to act based on game information you have gained outside of the game. Game updating¡­
*Attention* An update has occurred. Players may no longer share information based on intel gained outside of the game. Players may be restricted based on prior intel about game history they have researched outside of the game. Players can share information they have gained while inside of the game. Players will not be restricted by the system based on intel they have researched while inside of the game. A warning message will appear before outside information is acted upon. One or all parties may be banned for an undisclosed amount of time if they act upon ill-gotten information. All updates will now be viewable during gameplay. Simply say: View Updates. Updates will be kept as current as possible. This update has been brought to you by player Voice0fReason, A.K.A Bundy, A.K.A The Last True Elf, A.K.A The Man by the Fountain A.K.A¡­
I looked at EDI after the message popped up. She was obviously reading it as well. I tried to interrupt her before she read the last part. I mean the system basically just told every player I was to blame! I had to hide my identity some how! But since the system would keep the update ¡®as current as possible¡¯. Didn¡¯t that mean that any alias I made would be found out instantly!? And why the hell did the system force an update because of me anyway! EDI finished reading it as I was having a minor freak out moment. Damnit gotta fix this before she leaves. EDI stood with her mouth agape looking at me. ¡°Um, I can explain.¡± I tried to act confident, but it was hard. I mean it is hard to hold yourself together thinking that everyone in-game is going to want to kill you soon. ¡°Really?¡± She asked. ¡°Because I don¡¯t think I understand it.¡± Now I expected that to sound more like someone scolding a child, but she sounded like she was honestly confused. She wasn¡¯t airheaded, but if I could capitalize on this then I¡¯d be good. ¡°I don¡¯t understand this last line.¡± I gulped. ¡° ¡®This update has been caused by one player trying to cheat the system.¡± I cocked my head. That¡¯s not what it says. I looked at the screen she showed me. It really DID say that! A pop up intruded.
The system does not disclose personal information of users. Even if they deserve it.
Did¡­ Did the system just play a trick on me? Wouldn¡¯t that mean that the system itself is also an-STOP! If I kept on that thought I knew I would regret it. I sighed as I locked the information away and forgot it.. It was getting pretty difficult not to think about. I could tell you what I mean, but I would have to think about it. I refused to draw the obvious conclusion I knew would probably cause great harm to the game I have put so much time and effort into. Even if it did sometimes piss me off. After a brief convo with EDI, mostly including my ¡®theories¡¯ on how a player tried to cheat the system, I began trying out how to circumvent the update. I began thinking. I couldn¡¯t share the info I got from the net. I couldn¡¯t act on the info I got on the net. I started to wonder if I could at least make a plan based of info I surmised, since technically I didn¡¯t get it from the outside world. I started formulating a plan to attack the worm. No pop up happened, so I continued. The wormman was most likely somewhere nearby. I was going to try out a few new mana combinations in order to whittle down the worm¡¯s health. I opened part of the box, which was situated right above one of the tunnels. The wormman was waiting below us. I shot out a bit of nature mixed fire. The fire spread quickly, but didn¡¯t do much harm. The worm seemed to be letting me try to hurt it. It was like the damn thing was taunting me. It shook its metaphorical butt at me. IT WAS TAUNTING ME! I cast several shots of dark fire at it. They weren¡¯t as powerful as if I had gathered the mana from around me, but they were a lot faster. I shot out three in rapid succession. The worm flesh simply fell off where the fire touched. The fire hadn¡¯t even done enough damage to break the skin. The worm seemed to smirk. I made a magma ball, and threw it at the worm. A large portion of its flesh fell off. I had an idea. I loved having ideas. I was going to change the magma. Magma was about a quarter earth, and three quarters fire. What would happen if I added darkness to the mix? I knew that I couldn¡¯t just throw three types of mana at the thing, but what if I focused them. It would be difficult, more difficult than trying to combine the two types of mana at once. Still it was worth a shot. I pictured a ball of earth. I began infusing the earth ball with my fire mana. This was the basic technique to create a magma ball. Not really difficult, but it did drain a large amount of mana. A little more than 500 mana to be exact. Now adding darkness was the trick. As I poured it in, the fire was pushed out. I had an ominously glowing cooled piece of molten rock after infusing it with dark mana. I threw it at the wormman anyway. It didn¡¯t have any noticeable effect, so I continued my experiments. The only reason I could think of for it letting me hit it so often, was to give its immunities to the queen¡¯s guardians, and maybe the queen itself. I tried again. This time I tried fusing dark-fire to a ball of earth. The dark-fire did fuse, but it didn¡¯t at the same time. The fire started consuming the earth as soon as it came in contact with it. The fire first melted the earth ball, then turned it into ashes. I was on the right track, but the wormman decided it had given me enough time. Several worms about the size of Heather came from above us. I opened the bottom of our safety box all the way, and we jumped out. Well, Lily fell out. Sadly Luckily, Tear caught her with an orb of water. The wormman let the smaller worms fuse themselves to him. Well, if I can¡¯t combine three types of mana to attack, I guess I¡¯ll just have to go with my earlier plan. I had Tear float up to the wormman. The wormman seemed cautious, but I had EDI and Heather distract it by attacking. The jellyfish got close to the worm from behind. The worm turned to attack the not-so-stealthy jellyfish, but was bitten by Heather. Tear took advantage of this by wrapping all of its tentacles around the wormman¡¯s neck. The tiny stingers instantly activated. As soon as the stingers met the worm, I poured as much water mana on the spot as possible. Water produced by water mana has no natural salt in it. While this may not be good to refill a water tank that houses saltwater fish, for my purposes, it was perfect. After the stingers had done their job, Tear released the worm. The worm tried to grab for Tear, but EDI slashed at its arm, throwing a large portion of worm at me. ¡°Heather! Let go!¡± Heather immediately responded. The instant the words left my lips, she released the worm. The water mana I created poured into the area Tear had stung. Tear started pouring in water mana as well. The plan was simple. Jellyfish stings were actually just tiny threads that dig into your skin. The threads release a small amount of poison. The poison is enough to kill most small animals, but effects larger animals like humans much less severely. Unless you have an allergy of course. The best thing to do when stung is pour alcohol, vinegar, ammonia, or urine on it. It works against the poison jellyfish create. The absolute worst thing you can do is pour pure, unsalted, fresh water on it. That increases the speed the poison courses through you, and helps the poison avoid T-cells. I was helping the poison along. The wormman fell to the floor, even as I threw the newly forming large worm at it. The large worm fused to the wormman. The extra blood only slowed the process. The amount of pure water Tear and I were pouring in was enough to flood the veins of something twice as large as the worm several times. The worm laid on the ground, convulsing. Presumably it was dying. I ¡®let¡¯ EDI poke it with her Sai. The worms didn¡¯t sprout from its body at all. Instead a trickle of blood came out. If the worm was dying, that would imply creating the smaller worms was a conscious effort. I could use that. Not trusting that the poison had done the job, I activated my dark-fire. The fire covered the entire worm¡¯s body. Instead of flaking off like before, the body was consumed entirely. Even the blood on the ground was consumed by it. After a few seconds there was nothing left. Well that was kind of anti-climactic. I was happy to have beaten the thing, but I expected a bigger fight. After all the trouble I had gone through I ended up killing it with poison? Whatever. That did give me a new idea though. Even if I couldn¡¯t figure out how to use tri-mana I bet I could figure out what they did based on what the dual-mana did. Let¡¯s see. I want to create poison, that¡¯s probably water/dark/nature. Since dark/nature is decay, and water/nature is enhancement. But what is dark/water? I decided to try out dark/water combination. It resulted in a murky water ball. I poked it, and instantly regretted my decision. Pain coursed through my hand. My arm began throbbing with the intense shooting of nerve endings. It was all I could do to hold back a scream. My back arched in pain, but I managed to keep my teeth clenched. I let nothing show on my face. Letting sound out would be a show of weakness. As I arched my back, I stretched my hands forward. Sol was already using healing magic on me. I opened my mouth. ¡°*YAWN* Gosh that was an overdue killing.¡± I played it off as a stretch. I looked at EDI, it seemed as though she didn¡¯t notice the pain I was in. Lily was a bit wide eyed though. ¡°Voice,¡± Ancestor seemed to answer my unspoken question, ¡°EDI was looking the other way, but Lily saw the strange version of stretching you just did.¡± I frowned. I didn¡¯t really care what Lily thought, but she might have taken that as a sign of weakness. I needed to let her know who was boss. I was not about to have an assassination attempt due to my own negligence. I would just have to figure out some nasty methods of dealing with the nine wormmen we had left. I was assuming the quest included the queen at number 100. The saddest part about the last few day? I hadn¡¯t leveled any of my skills up. It seemed like any skill at level 50 or more had some new requirement for leveling up. I was itching to kill those last nine bastards, and I had just the way to do it. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Mage
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1520Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence152
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame850
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 32 Exp 46.50% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth30%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 44: Not the Boss I was Looking For Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice managed to kill off all of the worms except the last nine and the boss. He tried researching outside info, but the system updated the game. The update basically told him to stop or he would get banned. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I started a contest last chapter. The winner will have a character in DIVE. If you wish to participate all you have to do is write a brief paragraph. You must include: A character name, description of the character¡¯s body(race, sex, and features), what type of class they would have (i.e. a merchant, a fighter type etc.), and a brief personality synopsis(do they play well with others, are they arrogant or humble, stuff like that). At this time I do not need the information about what they are like on the outside world, unless it pertains to something vital in-game. I will pick the best few and have a poll. The readers decide the winner. I will put the poll up in chapter 45. You have until I finish that chapter to submit. I have a few character designs already made, but they will take a backseat for a few chapters to let the winners of the poll shine. The characters are more likely to be put into the poll if they have at least one character flaw. If they are not given one, and win the poll, I will make one. I will obviously ask the person that created the character for advice on it. You will be able to choose multiple characters in the poll, but only the top two will make it into the story. I really like the amount of characters I¡¯ve gotten already. A few replies in the chapter, and even one person messaged me. Anyone that makes a character, even if they are not chosen for the poll, or lose the poll, will have a brief cameo in the story at some point. Also I¡¯m sorry about not posting for a while. I¡¯ve had a lot of work recently. It¡¯s been really stressful. I am deeply sorry. Voice¡¯s POV: We made it to the room before the queen¡¯s chamber. It wasn¡¯t hard since I had a map that excluded only one large circle in the middle. Getting to the room was a bit of a hassle, we had to crawl in a tight hole to gain access, but we managed. The room we entered was plain. It was a large rectangular room, with only nine things in it not including my group. The only way in was the hole we came from, the only way out was at the other end of the room. Just as I expected, there were nine guards blocking the way. The had become practically human. They were identical to humans with only a few exceptions. Their bodies had rivets going along them, and the clothes the wore were made from worm skin. They had feet, hands, even complete faces. The hair was peach, and reached down to their shoulders. These were the most human looking worms I¡¯d ever seen.
Worm-Queen¡¯s Defender Level 56 Queen¡¯s Personal Guard
Health:3000/3000Stamina:300/300
I had Tear create a giant ball of water. The worms already noticed us, so there was no chance for a sneak attack. The worms simply guarded the doors though. They did not move from their posts. While the orb of water was forming, I fused it with dark mana. As much as I could. The painful feeling I had gotten would be replicated on one of the worms. When the orb was done, I had Tear send it to the worm on the far left. We all got ready for the biggest fight of our lives. The worm howled in pain but the others didn¡¯t attack. Hm, I thought the worms were immune to pain. The worm I filled with pain, ran at me, after drawing its samurai sword. Heather jumped on it, ready to suck its blood. Heather caught the worm by the neck. Blood poured from the pierce wounds it now sported. Heather eagerly drank the blood. She seemed to be, enjoying it. No. it can¡¯t be. That¡¯s too easy. I shot a fireball at the wormman Heather was attacking. The worm burst into flames. Screaming in agony, it tried to continue to charge at me. ¡°EDI KILL IT!¡± I shouted at her, but all she did was start to block its way. She didn¡¯t attack. I guess it¡¯s good to be cautious, but you better do what I tell you! ¡°ATTACK IT! IT CAN DIE!¡± I shouted again. This time she obeyed. The blood flew from the wormman. Tiny worms attacked us. YES! The wormmen somehow reverted! I knew it was too good to be real, but I could think of several reasons this would be beneficial for the queen. EDI battled the thing. I wanted to see how it played out, so I called Heather off of it for now. EDI shot me an angry glare. ¡°If you can¡¯t even beat one of the guards, how are you going to fight the queen?¡± I gave a reasonable response to her anger. It must have worked, because she turned back around to attack the worm. Sadly for her it had taken the moment she turned around as the start of the fight. The worm flew at her with a speed hard to match. It sliced in a downward motion aiming to cut EDI along her stomach and chest. EDI caught the blade with her right Sai. She hit the back of her left Sai against the worm¡¯s wrist. The worm momentarily loosened its grip. She quickly lifted her left Sai, and brought it up to the worm¡¯s neck. She sliced the worm across the neck. Blood splashed her face. She continued undaunted. She turned her right Sai to the side, trying to disarm the worm. The worm quickly drew back its weapon, and stabbed at EDI. EDI knocked the weapon away with a flick of her right wrist. She stabbed the worm in the chest. Blood soaked her face. I took over inspect to more carefully watch the fight. Bitch was 76% ecstatic and 10% bloodlust! I wondered why I was surrounded by crazy people. EDI was pretty badass though. The worm tried to do a powerful overhead slash, but EDI blocked it. She turned her shoulder towards the worm, and guided his sword away from her by blocking with her Sai. She seemed to be enjoying toying with the wormman. I couldn¡¯t say I blamed her though. The worm continued to attack her with increasing speed. She deftly blocked every strike. The worm went for a horizontal slash. EDI caught the blade with one Sai. She stabbed as if to attack the ground, even as the monster began its slash. She perfectly caught the blade one third from the tip. She took her other Sai and planted it on the sword. She tore the sword from the worm¡¯s grip. The sword flew towards the wall. It embedded itself in the wall, sticking straight out. EDI easily beheaded the worm. The worm¡¯s body fell to the ground. As it fell it turned into a massive amount of worms no bigger than a pinky finger. The worms tried to squirm away, but I blanketed them with a wall of dark-fire. I looked at my worm dissection. It had stopped increasing ever since the worms began to adapt at killing 50. It was at 90%! That was a 15% increase from what it was before entering this room. Since I gained 5% damage bonus for every 10% dissection, I did 45% bonus damage. If I we killed just one more I would most likely get the 100% damage bonus completion ability. I would do double damage to worms! I turned my attention back to EDI. She was taunting another worm to come at her. After I finished burning the smaller worms, I sent a tendril of dark/flame mana at it. The skin began to burn. It burned too easily. It ran at us, but was burnt to cinders before it crossed more than three fourths of the way. At the second worm¡¯s death, the other seven decided to attack. It must be risky to upgrade the worms. I wonder why she didn¡¯t upgrade these though? I wasn¡¯t given any time to think on it further. The worms reached us with raised weapons. They all seemed to wield the same weapons. A short sword, with a slight cure at the tip. Three of the enemies attacked EDI. Two went for Heather. One attacked me, and one attacked Lily. I would have left Lily to die, but killing the worm things was oddly too easy. It was really bothering me. I cast another dark/fire tendril.
A Mana Crystal has been activated. All mana in the area has been blocked. Magic can no longer target exist in the environment until the boss has been defeated.
The tendril of mana didn¡¯t form, and I got a popup I waved away. I caught the word, mana has been blocked. I knew these guys were too easy. ¡°TEAR! Get them!¡± Tear didn¡¯t respond. It was too late anyway. The two wormmen were upon me. One tried slipping past, but I slapped it in the face with my stick. It fell over backwards, landing on its butt. The other worm took advantage of my momentary lapse in judgement. It slashed at my stomach. Thankfully, my chainmail blocked most of the hit. Just the blunt damage of the slash still caused me 20 damage. My health was at 80. The hit didn¡¯t even land, and I lost a fifth of my hp!? This is not going to be a good fight. I prepared myself for death. The only way I could win was to stall the worms I was fighting long enough to get Heather or EDI to help. - With my two blades now facing the worm, I charged. The other worm was still getting up, so I kicked its stomach as I passed. I must have had more strength than I thought. The worm raised a few inches off of the ground, and was thrown to Heather. Geez I¡¯m so nice. Giving her a chance to show me how powerful she is. I was almost too nice for my own good sometimes. Now I had to make do with one worm to fight. I prepared myself despite the ¡®sacrifice¡¯ I had just made. The worm slashed at me, but I managed to angle its strike towards the ground. As soon as the sword came down, Inspect showed me the best place to aim so it would be deflected. Nothing ever went as planned though. The sheer power behind the strike caused tremors in my arms. Even if I knew where to block for the best effect, that didn¡¯t mean I could do it. The worm turned his blade before it hit the ground. The edge was again facing me, but this time it formed an inverted arc. Inspect showed me exactly where the presumable hit would land. I easily dodged to the side. The worm I kicked earlier was coming back for more. Damnit! If I kick you, you stay down! I had to focus all of my attention on Inspect. Two worm monsters were hacking and slashing at me, one clean hit and I was done. The Inspect skill quickly computed where the hits were likely to land, and so made it easier to dodge. More often than not I would have to block a hit I couldn¡¯t dodge. Those were the worst. The heavy attacks came quickly, and had enough force to rip off my arms. At least that was what it felt like. I was getting adept at dodging the strikes. It made me remember about a month ago when I had been training on the animals in my first dungeon. I never actually completed the quest the armor guy gave me. I wonder if it is still in my quest queue. Guess I¡¯ll check after the battle. The dodging had become easier. It seemed like the game awarded people that analyzed situations. Every time the wormmen would step forward with one foot, that was which side they would attack you. When one would raise its left foot, I knew my right side was going to be attacked. Deciphering what type of attack it would be was pitifully easy now that I looked out for it. They always made exaggerated actions to forecast the type of move they were going to use. I might have learned this sooner, if not for the whole instant regeneration thing the other wormmen had. After figuring out how they attacked, I had no problem dodging the two at once. I did have to often block, but I didn¡¯t get hit. My movements were rough, but I could always work on those in the future. I was excited about not having death loom over me. I couldn¡¯t find timing to attack the worms, at least not without leaving myself wide open for retaliation from the other one. I did manage to make their attacks hit the other¡¯s weapon a few times. My stamina was going down, but slowly. I gave myself as much rest between getting attacked as I could. Steadying my breathing also seemed to help decrease the amount of stamina I lost. The red lines were taunting me. The two worms were covered in them. They were so vulnerable. if only I could hit them! At least they couldn¡¯t land any clean hits on me either. I looked at the two worms in scorn. They thought they could hit me? Not when I had a skill that basically read their thoughts! HA! My look seemed to taunt them. They began a ferocious series of attacks. Sadly, the attacks had only gained speed and strength. My stamina dropped like a falling star, but I managed to dodge. Left, right, left again, duck, back step, left foot pivot, block, right, right, left. I felt like I was playing a certain famous dancing game or something. I was descent at dancing, but I could never get really good at that game. The only time I had to block was when I was about to be cornered by both the worms. I slowly dodged and weaved my way towards EDI. I might not be able to handle these two, but Heather and EDI could deal with one more each. As I dodged and led the two worms towards EDI and Heather, I sent a quick glance at Lily. She was watching the entire fight with a dumbfounded expression. I guess it was the first time she had actually seen us fight monsters on par with ourselves. While we were moving one of the worms staggered, just for an instant. I took the opportunity to throw myself to the side, and slash across the worm¡¯s left leg.
Worm-Queen¡¯s Defender Level 56 Queen¡¯s Personal Guard
Health:2990/3000Stamina:300/300
Seriously!? Ten damage! What the fuck! EDI had dealt a large amount of damage to the worms. I had hoped to do something similar. I knew she was a melee type, and had a higher level than me; but I thought I could at least partially match her. It seems the only thing my class allows me to do is use mana. What a waste. I finally made it to where EDI and Heather were. Or where they should have been. When I got there I noticed that they were standing against the walls, watching me try not to die. Anger welled up in my stomach. Why would they just watch!? Oh. That¡¯s right. The last dungeon we went through I made them wait for me to finish off an enemy. *Sigh* I should probably fix that, but I don¡¯t think it¡¯s necessarily a bad habit to have. The worms were getting closer and closer to hitting me. My stamina was draining quickly. In desperation, I called out to EDI. ¡°GET ONE! EDI PLEASE!¡± I put all of my anxiety into those short phrases. Luckily, EDI did take one. It took her an entire five seconds to deal with the worm. The worms seemed to dissipate after initially being shot at by the wormman. I bet these are the original wormmen. The others must have been modified somehow. I thought dungeons only modified levels. Maybe it¡¯s a trait unique to the dungeon boss.
For coming to a correct conclusion about an enemy you have zero verified data about, you have gained 5 intelligence.
Defending against one opponent, even one that was twenty levels higher than me, was an easy task. With Inspect picking up all of their future attacks, I was confident in my ability to dodge. If I was hit, I might lose a lot of hp; and when I hit it did not do much damage. I was still pretty excited though. Every time I dodged the worm seemed to only grow in anger. I tried not to block too much though. The more I blocked, the less I could block in the future. My stamina was slowly increasing. Many hits came too close for comfort, but with Inspect I just laughed them off. Eventually I got to the point where I could attack back. Whenever I sidestepped, I would slash at the worm. Dozens of smaller worms would launch at me when I managed to deal damage. Inspect had a difficult time keeping up with the addition of the worms spewing from the wounds. I took light damage, but my health was at full after battling for a few minutes. The battle raged on for quite a while. The worm slowly lost health, but I remained at full. It was fun to systematically destroy the enemy that has caused you trouble. EDI occasionally threw in a helping hand, er, Sai. After another few tedious minutes of dodging and attacking, I finally dealt the finishing blow. I was notified that I had mastered the dissection of worms! I couldn¡¯t wait to try this on the queen. I took a moment to read through my other message.
Magic nullification has been neutralized. Mana Crystal Resonance detected.
I summoned out Sol and Tear right away. I was curious about the resonance thing, so searched for any mana crystals. Inside the room in front of us was a large mana crystal. I licked my lips in anticipation. I couldn¡¯t wait until I had that delectable little nugget inside of me. Making sure everyone knew the plan, and after making a small safe room for Lily, we entered the Boss Chamber. The boss chamber was a large, unadorned, empty cube. The room must have been at least 3000 cubic feet. The room was almost pitch black, the only light coming from a small square hole in the ceiling. There was only one monster in there. Even though it was dark, the monster could clearly be seen. At first I didn¡¯t believe it. I mean we had spent so much time fighting enemies slowly progressing towards human/worm hybrids. I finally accepted it, but it would cause a lot of problems. Since the monster was so vastly different than anything I had expected, none of the plans I made could help. I didn¡¯t even know how to deal with this situation. This monster was often seen in games as the weakest of the monsters. I could understand why it was the boss though. Like the worms it would be difficult to kill with weapons. It could presumably split itself apart to attack, and might even be able to put itself together when it needed to. The monster was a light green color. Even with the green, it was almost transparent. The monster looked to be holding the shape of a cube for no real reason. The boss monster was no bigger than an adolescent wolf-pup. The worst thing about it? It was somehow a boss at level 1.
Slime Level 1 Worm Queen¡¯s Vanquisher
Health:10/10Stamina: N/ASpecial Qualities:Hyper regeneration
I had absolutely no battle plans ready for this. I mean, slimes were usually basic opponents in most games. I sent a burst of fire mana at it, just to test it out. About a quarter of the overall mass evaporated instantly. I shot three more. The entire thing was evaporated, yet I didn¡¯t receive the notification for beating the boss. My group talked for a few seconds. We had no idea why the battle wasn¡¯t over. EDI tilted her head slightly. ¡°It must have to do with the fact that it¡¯s a slime.¡± She closed her eyes for a moment. ¡°I don¡¯t seem to have any information on slimes though. That¡¯s odd. This thing must be a super rare enemy. I don¡¯t know why we haven¡¯t killed it yet.¡± Heather licked her tiny lips. ¡°I wanted to see if it had any blood though.¡± While she said that I noticed something odd. There was bits of liquid circling each other. They slowly drifted towards the ground. When they touched down, they all raced towards the largest glob. Oh no. You¡¯re kidding me. Is that what it meant by hyper regeneration? My fears slowly came real. The slime was piecing itself back together. EDI noticed as well. She ran at it. She hacked, and slashed with her over-powered Sai. Tiny droplets of the slime flew off in all directions. With a plan already thought of, I created an ice jar to hold the bits of slime. I only captured one, but that was enough for me to start understanding the situation. The slime moved lowly in the jar, but seemed to be up to something. After a second, I realized what it was. The slime particle was absorbing the water mana in the jar! The more ice I made, the more water was in the jar. The more water the larger the slime creature got. I released it when I realized what was happening. EDI was still hacking and throwing slime my way. I burnt all of the slime, but that only started a slow cycle of regeneration. I had Tear throw a water ball at it, but the slime absorbed it as soon as the ball toughed its skin. Usually in games slimes had cores you would have to hit, this slime didn¡¯t. I tried every tactic I could think of, but nothing worked. If I froze it, it would thaw out. If I burned it, it would just rain down and reform. Creating a completely sealed prison worked, but we could not harm the thing while it was in there. I was tempted to let Heather see if it had blood, but a foreboding feeling made me stop. While slicing at the slime, EDL got covered in slime goop. The goop simply travelled along her arms, and rejoined the rest of its tribe. The slime seemed to be pulled magnetically towards the largest group of slime. After twenty minutes of trying everything we could think of, I sealed it. At least that way it wouldn¡¯t be able to pull any tricks on us. I looked at its mana signature. Much like how I looked for the worms. The worm had four types of mana escaping from its body: water, nature, light, and dark. I didn¡¯t know how that would help me, but I had a nagging suspicion it was the key to beating it. After making a semi-plausible plan, I unleashed the slime again. I was thorough while I used every mana combination of two mana types I could. The more mana I used, the more the slime seemed harder to hurt. EDI continued to attack it. The first movement we actually saw was a thick slime tentacle shoot out. The tentacles would snatch any slime particles that EDI flung from it. I obviously destroyed the tentacles when they showed, but the slime only sent out more tentacles to retrieve those as well. After another round of fruitless battling, one of the tentacles attacked EDI. She easily managed to parry it, but the slime came apart and regrouped. When EDI blocked the attack, another tentacle shot at her. Every attack she blocked caused more to happen. Soon it was all she could do to stop the tentacles. I even had to step in to keep the slime from overwhelming her. The attacks were coming towards EDI at rapid pace. The slime seemed to even be evolving the way it attacked. Many of the tentacles now were in the shape of basic weapons. Blades and blunt hammers were wielded as if they were nothing. Any tentacles that possessed weapons were quickly severed by a blast of fire. At that point I thought it would be cool to cut it with wind, but I needed to be able to actually concentrate the wind to that point. I managed to do it, but the slice was imperfect. It sliced the slime apart, but the wind slice was basically dull. It also took time for me to actually force the mana into place, even though it was my own mana. EDI was starting to tire. Heather wanted to join the fight, but I kept getting the feeling that something bad would happen if I let her. I wasn¡¯t really worried about her, but I would hate to lose the asset she provided. Sweat dripped down EDI¡¯s face. Her clothes were damp from the exertion. Her movements were like dancing. It was a little bit attractive. The way she moved her body was-. I cut off the thought. It wouldn¡¯t do to actually get attracted to someone. Especially when there was an invincible enemy right in front of us. I concentrated even harder on defending EDI against the slime. I continued to blast the tentacles coming for EDI, but they kept multiplying. Every time I shot one down, two thinner ones took its place. The slime was even hardening the ¡®weapons¡¯ it used to attack EDI. The more tentacles the slime created, the more like a ball it looked. Many times EDI was almost hit, but I managed to cover for her in the last second. The slime seemed to grow progressively more powerful. The tentacles became almost impossible to destroy. It was even able to break out of the prisons I created. After almost an hour of fighting it managed to land a hit on EDI. The hit was light, but it did draw a small drop of blood. The slime shivered slightly. As soon as it ¡®saw¡¯ the open wound, it sent a tentacle to attack it. It became slightly easier to block since it was aiming for one spot the entire time. Destroying the tentacles still grew harder. It eventually did land a hit on the open wound. The slime, the only word to describe it is forced. The slime forced itself into EDI. It went inside her almost instantly. It was far quicker than I could react to. By that I meant into her open wound of course. Large grey lines began expanding from the wound across her body. The lines seemed to be following the path of her veins. Her veins began to bulge, and one busted. A grey liquid oozed out of it, but quickly forced its way back in. EDI screamed in pain, but only for a moment. The grey ooze that was traveling through her veins quickly made it to her eyes. The entire mass seemed to congeal there. EDI¡¯s eyes glowed with a faint grey glow as she looked around, seemingly bewildered. ¡°Oh!¡± Her voice was light and airy now. Almost as if it was a different person. ¡°This is the first time I¡¯ve actually possessed someone! OW! Her muscles must have been killing her.¡± The imposter EDI rolled her shoulders as she massaged them with one hand. Her gave eventually landed on me. ¡°Ohhhh, a male now is it? I¡¯ve always wanted to know what it would be like to be a man. Come here honey, let me take you. In exchange I¡¯ll let this pretty little thing go. It¡¯s not like you have any chance at stopping me. I know all about how you humans hate to kill your comra-¡± Without any hesitation, I sent an earth spear to impale her. The worse thing that would happen to EDI was she would respawn later. I mean, thinking someone is attractive is all well and good, but actually letting that effect you isn¡¯t. Although I might have let that affect me with the metal incident. I decided to chalk that up to bad luck and hormones. The spear went straight through the imposter, impaling her while exiting with a foot of earth extending behind her. The imposter coughed grey liquid. She was pulling herself off of the spear, even as bits of entrails slid out. She looked confused that I would actually attack my own ¡®friend¡¯. Unfortunately for the slime, I viewed EDI as an object to be used. Not an actual college. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The scene was turning gory. To turn my attention elsewhere, I looked at its stats.
Slime Possessed EDI Level 59 Player Possessor
Health:955/955Stamina: 25/1000Special Qualities:Hyper regeneration
The basic stats were the same as EDI¡¯s. I could have viewed the entire detail of her stats, but that would have taken too much time. I sent many attacks at EDI to slow the thing down. The grey ooze coming from her dripped with every attack, but quickly went back into her body. I sent a blast of black fire at EDI. That, at least, seemed to scare the thing. I was guessing that killing the host killed the slime. The slime instantly starting pouring from her eyes, almost as if she was crying. The slime flew across the room. I threw the fire to the side with a gust of wind. The fire flew at one of the walls, where it burned continuously. The slime blob reformed a dozen feet from EDI. She gave me a look of confusion, as if to ask ¡°How could you just attack me?¡± I ignored the look, and concentrated on the slime. The slime slowly hardened into a humanoid form. The outer slime was obviously harder than what the slime cube was. It didn¡¯t have any facial structures, but it looked slightly like EDI. I put it into an earth cube, then turned the cube to magma by infusing it with fire mana. The slime was a little uncomfortable to say the least. I smiled at its displeasure. ¡°Heather!¡± Heather, who had been laying around until then, went rigid in an almost military salute. ¡°Your turn.¡± I grinned. ¡°Help EDI protect me from the slime.¡± I didn¡¯t ask EDI for help. Mainly because I didn¡¯t want to hear her complaining about how I had not hesitation in attacking her. Heather readily complied. She seemed a little overly eager for battle. I guess she was a battle type pet. Heather ran at the magma ball before it was even cool. Just as the slime broke out, she had made it close enough to pounce. Heather literally dived into the slime. The slime seemed to think of this as amusing. After all slimes in most games got nutrients by absorbing things. Heather began to actually drink in the slime. It was a little creepy to see the slime be sucked into her whenever she opened her mouth. Heather would spit out the slime after a few seconds, and inhale it again. I was surprised she didn¡¯t need to breathe. The slime might have tried possessing her, but EDI intervened. She began a complex series of attacks, most of which I couldn¡¯t even keep up with. The slime seemed to have a lot of problems fighting on two fronts at once. At least I hoped it did. If it could possess Heather, then things would take a turn for the worse. I began my plan as soon as the slime broke through the hardened rock. I could feel the mana seeping from the slime. I had earlier wondered if I could directly sense or manipulate mana within another¡¯s body. Necessity makes the best inventions as it were. People were more creative during times of stress. I decided to try a bit of a new tactic. Instead of just trying to see the mana inside the body, I concentrated on the aura of the slime. Aura¡¯s were different than mana in that they typically seemed to be around those that have high levels of training with that element type. The slime didn¡¯t have an aura, but that wasn¡¯t a problem. My plan continued undaunted. I focused on both the aura of the slime, and the mana. My vision swirled, and I almost fell over. It seemed like looking at two distinct types of magical interfaces was not a good idea. I steadied myself, and tried again. If the system was trying to keep me from something, then I was going to force it. I would not be denied. I focused on only the water mana in the area around the slime. I slowly adjusted my focus to include auras. After another episode of vertigo I changed the plan slightly. I felt like I was almost on a breakthrough. I focused on the aura of the slime. I zoomed into it as much as possible. I was completely ripe for the killing, but I at least trusted EDI and Heather to not let me die. After I was sure I was focusing on what would have been the slime¡¯s aura, I started looking at water mana. With slow and precise concentration, I focused more and more on the water mana. At first, the water mana in the air almost made me fall over, but I managed to control it. It felt like being drunk and riding an amusement park ride. The water mana slowly gained clarity. Sweat beaded down my neck. I was doing my utmost to not lose focus. This was the furthest I¡¯ve come on this experiment type so far. For some reason my body began to become stiff. I still kept going. My entire being began to feel numb. I still kept going. Pain started to shoot through my body. I kept fucking going. By that point I was sure I was on to something. There was no way in hell I was giving this thing up. Even though my entire body began to ache I continued. After two eternities of endless concentration, and pain, I finally did it. When I adjusted myself to fully view the water mana, something amazing happened. I could perfectly view the dark, unpurified, water mana within the slime. I couldn¡¯t stop the laugh coming from me. I lost my concentration, but a blinking in the corner of my eye told me I most likely gained a new skill. I fell to the floor laughing. My stamina and mana had somehow both reached zero just by doing this experiment. The group that was battling stared at me. Even the slime was unsure of how to react to this new situation. Heather was still inside the slime, but stopped absorbing it. I tried catching my breathe, but it was hard. This is too good. Oh Elder Gods! No fucking way! AHAHAHA! I was too impressed with myself to actually use the fruits of my labor right now. I was laughing hard enough to actually hurt my sides. The game kept fucking nerfing me for outside knowledge, well I just figured out a MOTHER FUCKING GAME MECHANIC! When I realized the entire group was watching me I managed to stop my giggling fit. I smiled as I shook my head at them. ¡°I¡¯m¡­ *Inhale* WHEW! I¡¯m sorry. Haha. It¡¯s just¡­ I basically just broke the game!¡± The grin on my face seemed to confuse the trio. I decided to show them what I meant. ¡°Go ahead and try to kill them Slime.¡± This seemed to knock the senses back into the group. They began to fight instantly. Well I say fight. The slime tried to strike at EDI, but realized its arm somehow disappeared. It turned angrily at me. I simply shrugged as motioned for EDI to continue to attack. Every time the slime tried to block, that part of it would disappear. I didn¡¯t evaporate it, nor did I try any of my other tricks I had tried before. I realized something way too good to be true. The slime was made of 100% mana. Now that might not matter since I couldn¡¯t do something as overpowered as, say, manipulate the mana in other beings. Still, the slime was somehow rapidly disappearing. I smiled as the slime realized I was the culprit. The slime came at me to attack. For every foot it came, it lost a huge chunk of the water mana it was made of. The slime dwindled in size. It was originally the size of a small wolf, now it was smaller than a roach. When it came the final few feet I dissipated the rest of its water mana. I smiled at EDI and Heather, who were both looking at me in stunned surprise. I shrugged as I explained the reason for my laughing fit. ¡°I managed to view the mana inside the slime. After that it was easy to steal the damn thing¡¯s water mana. Now it only has nature, light, and dark.¡± I was obviously already taking care of those. I put on my best fake-worried expression. Aided, of course, by my Con Artist skill. ¡°I was angry for the slime possessing you EDI. I knew you would revive if you were defeated, so I tried to end it quickly. When the slime left you I couldn¡¯t bare what it had forced me to do to you. I¡¯m so sorry I did that.¡± *Fake tear.* EDI seemed a bit uncomfortable, but one look at her using Sense Motive told me she was just confused, and sympathetic. Good enough for now. It was weird to think the system could read player¡¯s minds, but then again EDI wasn¡¯t re-NO! It was getting harder and harder not to think of the conclusion my subconscious had already drawn. I had to work on that. The only thing left of the slime creature was a bit of dust. I went to pick it up with an earth jar, but the dust suddenly began spinning too fast for the eye to see. It shot like an arrow at Heather. Before she could jump away the dust hit her.
Pet: Heather has contracted a disease.
Heather has contracted the diseases Slime¡¯s Vengeance. Heather will lose 100 hp every week(in game) until it reaches 0. This health reduction is permanent. Cure for Slime¡¯s Vengeance is unknown. The rate of health consumption Slime¡¯s Vengeance takes, cannot be reduced. An NPC effected by Slime¡¯s Vengeance cannot be revived when killed. Players effected by Slime¡¯s Vengeance will lose 10% of all stats upon death from Slime¡¯s Vengeance.
I tilted my head while reading the notice. I blinked, not understanding. It was an incurable disease? WTF! I JUST FUCKING BECAME A GOD AND YOU DO THIS!? SHITTY GAAAAAME!!! I didn¡¯t let my emotions show. Apparently Heather didn¡¯t get the notice. I¡¯ll admit I was slightly attached to Heather. She had never actually let me down. It was mostly the attachment one would have for a really reliable car. Still, to be given a time when the car would be destroyed was not something I liked. I frowned as I thought about the situation. Heather and EDI had gone to get the girl. I decided to try to find a way, in game, to extend someone¡¯s health pool. Either that, or I would have to find someway to cure a disease no one knows. I shook my head angrily. Rage was forming inside of me. It kept increasing, so I began meditating. While I did, I looked over my notifications.
Quest Updated! Worm Subjugation has been modified.
Success: Killing at least 99 worms, and the monster that slayed the Alpha Worm. Difficulty: Moderate Failure: Leaving the dungeon before completion of the quest. Reward: Found in the Alpha¡¯s Lair. Failure results in overpopulation of worms and eventually slimes.
For learning all eight types of magic, and reaching Force Mage level 10, you can become the sub-class of Force Mage: Mana Mage. For learning how to manipulate mana in every conceivable way, you can become the sub-class of Mana Mage: Mana Enchanter. Would you like to become a Mana Enchanter? If you decline you will not be able to unlock the sub-class Mana Enchanter.
I know enchanters already exist, since I had some of my stuff enchanted. I bet it is different somehow. It must have to do with the fact that it is a ¡®Mana Enchanter¡¯ not just an enchanter. ¡°Yeah¡±. I was already on the trail to becoming tier four, so why mess with it now. Unless there was a type of class tree type thing. Damnit! Too late! It was too late for second guessing.
Mana Enchanter level 1 For using the power of your imagination to cause a spell you have unlocked the class Force Mage. For harnessing the flows of mana that occur in the world you have unlocked the sub-class Mana Mage. For learning to see, and control, mana within others, you have unlocked the sub-class Mana Enchanter. You may use any magic that you can perfectly recreate. You may now use the mana in the world around you to fuel your spells. Using mana from Solun requires concentration. Less concentration is required as you level up in Mana Mage. You can no longer use magic designed by others except in special circumstances, this includes spells learned from spell books. All fairies you summon, or have summoned, are infused with mana. These Mana Fairies can now tap directly into the mana of their element. You can use all types of magic. The higher level your Force Mage class is the more control over force magic you have. At lower levels you will not be able to use force magic to be as precise as later levels. The higher level Mana Mage class you have, the more control over mana in the surrounding area you have. Mana Mage levels stack with Force Mage levels, for purposes of precision. The higher level in Mana Enchanter you have, the more absolute control you will have over mana. This class increases in levels as you use learn more about mana, and how to control it. You can recreate any magic that has been put into a magic book, but you must learn to do the magic by feeling and imagination. Mana Enchanters were the progenitors of the rare class: Enchanter. Mana Enchanting is a lost art. For learning a lost art you have gained 10 intelligence. Mana Enchanters can move mana with ease, without causing a spell. Mana Enchanters can force mana in one thing, to become mana in another. I.E. Forcing the mana in the environment into an ally to recharge their mana. Mana with an element doesn¡¯t charge mana gauges as fully as pure mana. Mana Enchanter is a third tier class, out of four.
Class Information Available. View?
Sure I guess.
Enchanters use their own mana to infuse an item with magical properties. The higher the purity of a specific type of mana they have, the greater the effect on the enchantment. Enchantments made by Enchanters must be periodically infused with the mana type they use, except in certain circumstances. I.E. A shield that absorbs fire to create an ice field. The fire acts as the mana recharge needed. The elves gifted the art of enchanting to the ¡®lesser¡¯ races in a vie for influence. Enchanters must use Ancient Elven runes to create enchantments. Mana Enchanters may take mana from the environment, or even others, to fuel the enchantments. Mana Enchanters understand the true nature of mana, as such they can fully enchant things. Ancient Elven Runes allow for more structured enchantments, but also limit the infinite imagination of the Mana Enchanter, something not many Mana Enchanters are keen on.
I went over the newfound information as the girls talked. I was quite shocked, in a good way. I tested out the new ability I had gained, by increasing my mana. My mana greedily consumed the excess mana in the air. I had to stop absorbing mana from the ground, since it almost started to crack and crumble. Absorbing mana from the air was quick, as was manipulating mana within another creature. Manipulating environmental mana still proved to take a long time. It had sped up a little, but not enough to please me.
You have completed Ysga¡¯s quest. Your reward can be found in the Worm Alpha¡¯s chamber.
You have gained 15 earth affinity for freeing Gnome¡¯s people from their mountainous prison.
You can now consume Mana Crystals to their full effect.
Without waiting I instantly shoved the large crystal vein I had been holding on to, into my mouth. It felt and tasted like rock candy. I liked rock candy.
You have gained the Trait: Magic Absorption.
Magic Absorption is the perfect trait for fighting mages. You will absorb 50% of any hostile magic cast at you. The mana you absorb will go directly into your mana pool. If your mana pool is over saturated, you will lose one mana per second until you have 100% of your total mana.
Wow, that¡¯s now op or anything. With my new class¡­ hold on a sec. I had basically had one of the best ideas ever. Since I could manipulate mana in every form, didn¡¯t that mean I could harness the power of spells? Too bad I haven¡¯t really seen any mages though. I wonder why that is?
Mental Fortitude is the perfect trait for any who wishes to avoid mind altering curses. You are able to withstand more mental damage and pain before your mind starts to shut down. The more mental damage and pain you take, the more powerful this trait will become. This skill can evolve into better versions.
You have received 1 intelligence for understanding a difficult concept.
Ysga¡¯s last will has been completed. All dwarves will recognize you as the one to fulfil the last wish of their ancient king. Intimacy with all dwarves increased by 10. This does not increase the rank of intimacy. Minimum intimacy with dwarves set to 10. Starting intimacy with dwarves will be at least 10, until you do something to effect this. Dwarves will no longer look at you with scorn.
Ok, but first of all, I look down on all dwarves. Ehehe, short jokes. I read the rest of my notifications.
You have cleared the ¡®Impossible¡¯ Dungeon. Players will wish to know who to attribute this to. What title would you like to give: Vitamin C King, Bunny Lover, Blessed of Mar, Night Owl, Bunny Comrade, Master of the Green Herb, Man by the Fountain, Surgeon, Hero Of River¡¯s Cross, Demon Wolves¡¯ Bane. Would you like your player name to be displayed?
I didn¡¯t realize I had so many titles. I chose to go with Blessed of Mar, because I thought people would react even better if the light goddess ¡®sent¡¯ someone to help. I decided not to let the system send out my name. I didn¡¯t want anyone to actually know who I was. Although I was pretty sure they already did if my videos had gotten any popularity. That gave me an idea! I could post most of this dungeon as a video! That would rake in the DI bills. I was getting closer to being able to create a metropolis for myself in that demi-game. In the middle of the room appeared a chest. Since EDI seemed to be talking to the would-be assassin, I checked it out. I crept over while slightly hiding myself in darkness mana. I opened the chest slowly. A bright blue crystal glowed in the center of the chest. The light was as blinding as the sun. My Inspect still activated.
You have obtained Completed Mana Crystal.
Completed Evolution Mana Crystal
This crystal upgrades any being that controls it. The being will gain immunities to all forms of attacks slowly. The being will be able to slightly modify their own stats to meet the situation. Hidden Attribute: Force Evolution If you consume this Mana Crystal you will be able to force evolutions in any animal or monster. You will be unable to choose the evolution. The evolution will be chosen randomly based on the current path that monster or animal is taking. If the being to be evolved does not meet the requirements, the evolutionary abilities will be restricted.
I looked around. Yep, EDI was staring directly at the mana crystal. *Sigh* I really wish the damn thing didn¡¯t glow like that. I knew that if I didn¡¯t at least offer to share this EDI might not play with me anymore. After all, we hadn¡¯t gotten any gear from this dungeon at all. I brought the crystal over to her. I shuffled my feet intentionally, as I got closer. ¡°It seems that this is the spoils of this dungeon. I have a special ability to consume these, but that wouldn¡¯t let us share it. It¡¯s only fair you get a share as well EDI.¡± EDI opened her mouth to say something. I pretended it was, ¡®no you can have it.¡¯ I knew it was probably asking how we could share it though. ¡°Don¡¯t try to let me take it either. You have been way too nice to me. I¡¯m not used to it. I will just have to find an honest merchant that would buy it for full price. Although I don¡¯t actually know if any merchant will buy it. Worst case scenario we would get robbed for it. But if we don¡¯t let people know we have it until we have sold it, it should be fine.¡± I made sure to look ¡®only a little¡¯ sad at not getting to consume the crystal. A look of longing could easily be seen on my face. I pretended to think about something. Right before EDI spoke I said, ¡°Oh! I have an idea. What if we trade this to a temple of Gnome, the earth god. I¡¯m sure they would pay nicely for it.¡± I let her speak after that. ¡°I don¡¯t really mind you using it, you could just pay me for half of it later.¡± I shook my head. No way in hell I was paying for half of a god item. ¡°Nonono, I would never be able to make that much money alone. If you helped that would be the same as being paid with your own money.¡± I pretended to think again. I frowned. I ¡®didn¡¯t want to give this item up¡¯ after all. ¡°I have this though. I think it¡¯s worth a lot, I tricked Davros into giving it to me.¡± I showed her the Soul-Binding Contract. The contract was a very open one. It had about as many blanks to fill in, as it did words. You could put what each party was giving, and receiving. Each party had to sign at each part of those as well. EDI¡¯s eyes widened when she saw the contract. ¡°Why do you even have that!? That¡¯s the work of the evil god!¡± I shook my head. ¡°It¡¯s the work of the god of darkness. Technically being evil was just what he was into. The contract hasn¡¯t been contaminated though. You are free to do with it what you will if you trade it for your half of the crystal. If you don¡¯t want to¡­¡± I reached for the contract. She yanked it back. ¡°Fine. I accept. Do what you want with the crystal.¡± I turned around and promptly ate the rock candy.
You have gained the Ability: Forced Evolution.
Forced Evolution You can force evolution in any being that can evolve. You will be unable to choose the evolution. The evolution will be chosen randomly based on the current path that monster or animal is taking. If the being to be evolved does not meet the requirements, the evolutionary abilities will be restricted. This ability has no cost, but has a one week (in game) Cooldown.
After reading the message, I remembered about Heather. I had to figure out how to fix that. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1680Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence168
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame850
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 37 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 45: Entering the City Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice killed the queen worm¡¯s body guards, and managed to defeat the slime boss. He also received a new class. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! IMPORTANT A lot of readers have asked about why Voice¡¯s HP is set to 100. I have replied in the comments to most of them, but decided to provide a description of the stats here. Think of it as Voice trying out his Adept level Long Distance Inspection. I am only going to list the stats he currently has. Any other possible stat will remain unknown to him. Voice¡¯s POV: I decided to check out the description for all of my stats. I wanted to see exactly what they did, in hopes of leveling them up faster. If you know what the job requirements are, it is much easier to get a promotion.
Strength is the estimated level of pure physical power. Higher strength allows for stronger attacks, and increases the character¡¯s muscle size. Gaining 50 points in strength generates a muscle based skill.
Wisdom is the estimated amount of knowledge regarding life and living. Higher wisdom allows for faster mana regen, and increases the character¡¯s common sense. Gaining 50 points in wisdom generates a skill that effects other skills.
Endurance is the estimated level of resistance your body has to extreme labor. Higher endurance allows for faster stamina regen, and increases the amount of pain a character can take. Gaining 50 points in endurance generates a skill that effects the maximum pain threshold the character can take.
Intelligence is the estimated amount of knowledge regarding scientific and natural studies. Higher intelligence allows for a larger mana pool, and increases the character¡¯s speed of thinking. Gaining 50 points in intelligence generates a skill that effects mana.
Agility is the estimated ability to dodge and move. Higher agility allows for a wider range of possible movements, and increases the character¡¯s physical speed. Gaining 50 points in agility generates a skill that allows the user to dodge attacks more adeptly.
Dexterity is the estimated ability to accurately hit a target, or make precise movements. Higher dexterity allows for a wider range of precise movements, and increases the character¡¯s accuracy. Gaining 50 points in dexterity generates a skill that allows the user to land more critical hits.
Luck is the estimated amount of times (out of 1000) something good will randomly occur. Higher luck increases the player¡¯s chance of obtaining rare items or quests. Gaining 100 points in luck generates a non-upgradable random skill. Players cannot put points into luck. Luck levels up naturally when lucky things happen.
Vitality is the estimated amount of vigor one has. Higher vitality increases the amount of physical tasks a player can do. Gaining 50 points in vitality generates a skill that increases the amount of physicals tasks a player can do.
Charisma is the estimated total of the player¡¯s ability to sweet talk others. Higher charisma increases the player¡¯s believability from others. Gaining 100 points in charisma generates a non-upgradable skill that directly effects attitudes of others. Players cannot put points into charisma. Charisma levels up naturally when the player shows a more charismatic side.
Compassion is the estimation of the player¡¯s innate empathy. Higher compassion increases the player¡¯s ability to relate to others. Gaining 100 points in compassion generates a non-upgradable skill that directly effects the player¡¯s ability to feel empathy for others. Players cannot put points into compassion. Compassion levels up naturally when the player shows compassion to more individuals.
Leadership is the estimation of the player¡¯s ability to command. Higher leadership increases the speed NPCs obey the player¡¯s orders, as well as the complexity of the order the player can give. Gaining 100 points in leadership generates a non-upgradable skill that directly effects the player¡¯s ability to command. Players cannot put points into leadership. Leadership levels up naturally when the player shows capability to lead.
Logic is the estimated total of the player¡¯s ability to think rationally. Higher logic increases the ease with which the player understands situations. Gaining 100 points in logic generates a non-upgradable skill that directly effects the player¡¯s ability to analyze situations. Players cannot put points into logic. Logic levels up naturally when the player comes to a difficult conclusion to grasp.
Piety is the total amount of faith the player has shown to a single god or goddess. Higher Piety increases the amount of closeness the player is to the gods. Gaining 100 points in piety generates a non-upgradable skill that directly shows the player¡¯s devotion to a particular god or goddess. Players cannot put points into piety. Piety levels up naturally when the player preforms what a certain god or goddess would condone. Piety only levels up for one god or goddess at a time. If the worship of a second god or goddess takes place, piety will only increase after the initial value has been met a second time.
The situation i found myself in was not the best. Despite the high level I was, I still had only 100 hp. Before the update (ch. 30) I gained 10 hp per level. After that, it went to zero. Since the game determines hp retrogressively, I lost all of my hp boost. If I had a different class I could have had at least 450 hp. Not that 450 was a lot. I needed to figure out a way to defend myself. If I met SD or any other high level player, I would probably die in a single hit. I could stop any mage from attacking me, but I had never actually met another mage player. At least I hadn¡¯t seen anyone else using magic. My Complete Immunity trait would help, but I didn¡¯t exactly know how it worked. Then again, I hadn¡¯t really been around anyone but EDI. I had a few ideas to block attacks, but I wanted to test them before a real battle. One idea was to make a hardened wind barrier, maybe I could re-enforce it with metal mana. While I was contemplating how I would try to get around my super low hp, I looked at Heather. She was a slightly greyish-green color around the edges. I hoped she would last until I could think of some way to cure her. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s go up the ladder.¡± I pointed to the only real source of light. Light streamed down from a small square in the ceiling, at the edge of the room. A thin, possible wooden, object ran up the length of the wall. Heather¡¯s POV: On the first day I met Voice, I felt compelled to keep a record of my thoughts on this new man. He fed my family, so I guess it¡¯s not too bad. He sat in the center of the field for a long time, with food sitting near him. Troy, one of my braver brothers, decided to try to get some. The man didn¡¯t even move after Troy stole some. Slowly more of my brethren began to take food from the stranger. After grabbing some food for myself, I decided to lay on the man¡¯s lap. Proper compensation needed to be paid for the food. What better way to pay then to allow him to pet me? The man woke up after I made a slight movement. Troy was getting another piece of food, but froze. The man seemed to look at something, and put his finger in the air. A blue light overcame my vision. I felt a something on my neck. It was a collar. Suddenly I knew the man¡¯s name was Voice0fReason. The man looked over me, Rabs, and Troy. He took note of my beautiful brown fur, and black eye fur. In unison Troy, Rabs, and I said, ¡°Hello Master!¡± He asked our speed, so we told him. We raced a bit, but Voice couldn¡¯t keep up. I was wondering why I would let myself be captured by such a slow person. I went as fast as I could, as did my two brothers. Voice was no competition for us. After running a bit he called us to a halt. Him and the woman talked for a while. He decided to go into town. I didn¡¯t want to go into town, but was forced to. The only thing that made me stomach him was the fact that he helped my family. Over the course of the next few days we started hunting wolves. I tasted a bit of the meat, and was instantly addicted. I made it a priority to get as much taste as possible out of each wolf. The wolf meat had an unbelievably good taste. I quickly became addicted to the flavor. When Voice made us vegetable stew, I begged him for meat in mine. My brothers thought I was crazy, but it tasted SO GOOD! Voice was nice. He let me eat the wolf meat whenever I wanted to. I couldn¡¯t do a lot of damage to the wolves at first, but Voice was patient. I was starting to hate him slightly less. One day we went to this weird place. Voice made us fight this weird squid monster thing. I didn¡¯t like it. I didn¡¯t like Voice. Once I got a taste of its blood though. Oh man it was good. I wanted more. It tasted like the most high quality carrots I¡¯ve ever had. We eventually beat the thing, but Voice basically used us as disposable pawns to do it. Luckily none of us died. We continued to hunt wolves when we got back to his burrow. Hunting wolves was fun. Troy was ok with Voice, but I think that was because he was a bit of a masochist. Rabs hated Voice even more than I did. Voice made Rabs train constantly. He also made Rabs do the dangerous work of gathering the wolves. When Voice became a monster tamer Rabs and Troy decided to leave him. I still wanted more wolf meat, but knew my kin would frown on it. I had started to wonder if it was actually the blood I preferred. Voice accepted me, of course. The only reason I even offered was all of the wolf blood. I was defiantly addicted to wolf blood. Voice tamed a monster bear, but the bear wasn¡¯t as good as I was. He was able to reach higher places, but he was lazy. I killed many more wolves than he did. I also ate just as much. The only thing good about that bear is how much it ate. I grew really large while eating all of the wolves. It was worrisome at first, but I decided it was good. After all, I could easily kill the wolves now. Voice eventually gave up Boris the bear to be a mage. I made the mistake of trying to play with Boris, but it ended up in a small fight. The fact that Voice was so wishy-washy definitely didn¡¯t help his case with me. We left town a little while after that. I mostly hunted wolves with EDI. I liked EDI. She petted me, and made me happy. She also let me eat all of the wolf meat I could. After we left town we wandered for a while. We were attacked by bandits, but Voice saved EDI and me. He had given me all of his items, so I figured it was just to make sure the bandits didn¡¯t get it. Still, he did save us. EDI and I killed some of the stragglers, and I drank some human blood. Human blood was almost as good as tall quid thing blood. I somehow evolved into a blood-bunny. It meant I could suck blood from my enemies to gain power. I decided to stay with Voice for now. I wanted to see how things would go in the future. I became small, as in tiny. My size before the evolution was about the size of a large wolf, afterwards I could fit in Voice¡¯s outstretched paw. We followed the trail to where the bandits took Voice, but he was free when we got there. He tasked EDI and me with hunting more wolves. He also helped, but not for long. Some villagers also started helping. The bad thing was I didn¡¯t get to eat all of the wolves. Still I had already caused one group to go extinct for a while, it would be rude to make the river-city not taste wolf blood for a long time. We helped out the town for a while, but it was boring. Eventually we left, but he took some girl with him. She was useless. He tried to train her to fight, but I was only to benefit himself. For some reason he seemed to enjoy it when she was in pain. I guess it made sense that he was a masochist. I was excited when we made it to a new dungeon, but that didn¡¯t last long. We were fighting giant worms. Their blood tasted horrible. The taste slowly got worse and worse. Eventually I couldn¡¯t even stomach it. It ended after we killed the slime. Although I kept sucking it in, it kept getting out. I seemed to have caught something bad from it though. I¡¯m sure Voice would find a cure though. After all, he wouldn¡¯t let me die while I made him so much money. POV None: DI had been advancing technology dramatically in the last few months. Of course, they didn¡¯t let on any of their inventions. Until the release of DIVE that is. After DIVE was released, DI started showing some of the tech they had been making to the world. The first was an industrial level battery. It was the size of a watch battery, but had enough power to run a small car. They had somehow created a new type of chemical process to make batteries. The shelf life of the batteries was amazing. Basically if you didn¡¯t use it, it had a way to micro charge itself. Of course DI made cases for the batteries. The small batteries could be put into these cases and would act as the battery type the case was designed as. They essentially made a single battery that worked as AA, AAA, D and so on. This release was coupled with a new battery charger. The charger could convert any amount of output a house socket could provide, and charged the batteries accordingly. The second release was the translation software. DI created a small Bluetooth headset, which incorporated the DIVE pod¡¯s ability to translate. A small portion of the V.I. that maintained DIVE was installed into each headset. The headsets had two features that were not mentioned in marketing. One was a safety feature. The feature was very similar to the DIVE pods. If someone tried to take the headset apart, the headset would send a small shock to wipe the system. The electrical components only took up space the size of a pinky nail. The rest was for the new batteries, and to increase stress before the headset broke. If the headset was broken DI would replace it at their discretion. The second feature was unknown to anyone but Kelsey, and the V.I. programming. The V.I. actually monitored all devices at once. Any data the headset picked up, was directly sent to a massive storage device DI housed. They technically could do this, since the contract said ¡®An undisclosed number of seconds from each DIT (Direct Interactive¡¯s Translator) may be recorder for research and support purposes.¡¯ The undisclosed number of seconds was 100%. Now some people believed the government listened to everyone that made phone calls or some such nonsense. That would technically be possible, but only if they had several hundreds of thousands of people all listening to phone calls 24/7. DI used the V.I. to do the sifting. If any information was picked up that could prove dangerous to the company, Kelsey made sure to let the right people know. The third thing they released, which was the biggest thing world-wide, was a plant. The plant was a massively modified orange tree. They had modified it to take in several hundreds of times more carbon dioxide than normal. The amount of fruit it bore was also increased to about twelve times as much. Not only that, but it consumed only a quarter of the water. Not only would these trees help provide food for places that didn¡¯t have much, they could also be planted in cities to help reduce the carbon footprint we created. They sent out shipments of hundreds of these trees each day to areas around the world. At least 60 were delivered to impoverished regions each day. The only underwhelming thing about the trees, was that they were fairly fragile and were seedless. DI made a statement saying the fragility couldn¡¯t be worked out while maintaining every part of the tree. The also admitted to keeping the only tree of the kind to actually produce seeds. Since they still had some government protection, no one really tried to steal it from them. At least none that made it to the news. The final thing they produced since opening DIVE, was robotics limbs. Artificial limbs had been popular for a long time for those that needed them. Some companies even managed to allow for almost perfect control over the new appendages. What DI had done was added a bit more to this. They had a small chip added to the arm. The chip worked by enhancing what most artificial limbs did. Most artificial limbs were attached to the actual nerve endings to allow for near perfect movement. DI did that, but the chip sent signals to the brain. The brain would send a signal for the limb to move, it did, then the brain would receive a signal. The signal it received was because of the chip, and ¡®skin¡¯ on the limb. The skin came in any color, and had just as many pressure pads as the real limb. Once the pads were touched by any object, the chip sent a signal to the brain. The signal essentially recreated the ¡®touch¡¯ felt by the new limb. This was a revolutionary design. It could not help people paralyzed from the spine down, but just about anything else was doable. DI made sure to keep any of its customers happy. DI did put a lot of places under pressure while making these things. In fact, most places would have gone bankrupt if DI had not bought them first. DI would buy the business, and just adjust it to their own needs. If the business had made games, they now helped with DIVE. If a farmer was about to go out of business from the orange trees, they now grew the special oranges. Everyone who had the job kept it if they wanted. DI never fired anyone without reason. Even the managers or business owners were allowed to keep their positions once they signed the DI contract. All employees of DI were paid above competitive wages, and received many benefits. The daycare program was especially eye catching. There were a few federal laws that should have stopped this monstrous growth, but they were quickly changed by the U.S. House. DI was only doing good. If they imposed harsh laws on them, DI might go to another country. The U.S. wanted as many ownership rights as they could. DI was only too happy to cooperate with the government. They technically didn¡¯t work for them anymore, but giving a few benefits was ok. As for the reason DI was able to make so many ground shattering discoveries? They utilized the V.I. to its utmost. By creating small virtual worlds using all the information currently held by any public source, DI recreated a basic version of Earth. There the V.I. created a few immortal NPCs, and had them run simulations on the scenarios DI had asked about. DI had already made the earlier discoveries well before DIVE was even announced, they just kept them hidden. If everyone knew then it would have less of an impact. Showing everything day after day seemed like it would get more attention. The time compression for DIVE was 5:1. The maximum time compression for NPCs was about 1 year in the sim, equaled about a minute IRL. Simulations showed regular humans couldn¡¯t handle more than a ratio of 10:1 for long periods of time. To be safe DI made it half of that. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. The severs for DI were stored in a hyper cooled room. It was a 10x10x10 cubic feet room. There were four rows of servers, with just enough room between the rows to walk. Each row was made up of four servers. The servers each held a little over a yottabyte of data. That¡¯s a trillion terabytes each. That was enough storage to house the entire internet, and that was just on part of one server. Internet consumption had increased from the early 2000¡¯s, but only by about a hundred times. With all of the advancements DI had actually made, they could have easily conquered the world. The reason they didn¡¯t was simple. It was the same reason they invented DIVE. DIVE was created for the sole purpose of creating a truly artificially intelligent being. If they could create one, then many of the world¡¯s problems would be solved. The A.I. would learn from the massive amount of players, and be able to adapt to new situations. If the A.I. could fully learn to interact with the people, then DI would showcase it in a few years. The A.I. would grow inside several environments at once. That would allow for a large amount of information to be gathered. Allowing a massive amount of players in the game only sped up the process. Of course, by solving the problems they would be heralded by humanity. DI wanted to help the world, but Kelsey also wanted power. Not for power¡¯s sake, but to be able to continue researching whatever she wanted. The ultimate goal of DI was to make independent bio domes. Giant ships that could last in space forever. That was a long way off though. Even if they did that, they needed to be able to communicate between the domes. Long distance space communication would not happen in real-time. It would take years, if ever, for the messages to reach flying ships. That was another part of the DIVE pod initiative. The pods worked independently from the internet. The pods didn¡¯t use radio waves, or waves of any sort for communications. The pods worked by basically utilizing a formerly unknown fact about humans. DI was enhancing the pods ability to allow people to stay in the sleep like state for longer periods. That way long distance space travel would be a possibility. New pod designs were constantly being drawn, and tested inside of the virtual environment. Many of them showed promise, but none of them passed the excessively large amount of stress testing DI did. With the money DI made from the game, they bought out other companies and furthered their research on possible intergalactic travel. Although that would probably not happen in the lifetime of anyone living on Earth at that moment. DI also did a lot of work in hospitals. Primarily giving coma patients a second chance at living. Two coma patients each day received a DIVE pod absolutely free. The guardians of the patient had to sign a waiver, but then the patient was allowed to enter the white room. These white rooms were specially made to communicate with the outside world. Loved ones might not be able to actually feel the real life vigor, but they could communicate to their loved ones at least. DI was making an update to allow people to travel between each other¡¯s white rooms as well. It was going to be a free feature. The rules would all be the same, but people would be more capable of seeing long distance friends, or family. Voice¡¯s POV: We climbed the ladder, well I had to hold Heather the entire time. The ladder took longer than expected to climb. I had to make flat horizontal earth walls twice so we could rest. Lily seemed to have the least amount of stamina. We mainly had to stop for her. I would have kept going, but if EDI thought I was a bad person she¡¯d be harder to get into my camp. After climbing for almost an hour, we finally made it. We were in a small closed off room. The only light was a glowing crystal above our heads. Lily started to freak out, so I ignored her. I summoned Sol out, to help provide some extra light. I closed my eyes to search for earth mana. The entire room was made of heavy earth mana. I quickly dissolved the stone into my mana pool. A door high enough to fit a human was created. Outside of the door stood ten dwarves. All wore heavy plated armor, and all had their various weapons pointed at us. The dwarves were about half the size of a human, but were very broad of shoulder. They were covered in muscle as well as the armor. What I saw behind the dwarves was awe inspiring. We were inside a giant mountain. About a hundred feet from us, sprawled a giant city. The city seemed to be carved from the inside of the mountain. The buildings extended in every direction. There were a few small buildings that I could see, but most stretched all the way to the top of the chasm. They looked like apartment complex¡¯s. The biggest building was in the shape of a dome. It seemed to be in the center of a commercial district. It was seemingly made of a metal mesh. The entrance we came through was in the center of buildings that seemed to form a circle around us. No wonder the dwarves were guarding it, it led straight to the boss room. The city was lit by two unusual light sources. All along the ceiling a few hundred feet above us, was light crystals. They gave a clam blue glow As if in contrast to this, there were intermittent pools of a bright red slow moving liquid. It could only be lava. Or was it magma since it hadn¡¯t left the mountain yet? The glow from the magma was ominous, but at least it aided in seeing. There were holes that exposed the city to the world, but those were very far away. So directly inside the mountain was a city. The city was huge, at least a 450 square miles. That was as big as New York city, or over half the size of Tokyo. Even in the real world this would have been considered a huge city. My attention turned back to the tiny guards. They were almost cute. Almost because of the whole drawn weapons thing. I wanted to see what would happen if I picked one up, but gave up on that idea pretty quickly. They would definitely not like being toyed with like children. In fact, I¡¯d probably need to stay away from words about their height altogether. I did not know what the little guys were saying. I guess since I couldn¡¯t speak dwarven. I gently elbowed EDI. ¡°Hey, you speak dwarven?¡± She just shook her head. I cursed. ¡°Shit, I don¡¯t think asking for a translator would be polite.¡± ¡°Yur right. T¡¯wount be atall. Not atall.¡± (You¡¯re right. It wouldn¡¯t be at all. Not at all.) One of the dwarves, the one I assumed was the leader, had a rough voice. It sounded like he was raised out in the wilderness, or maybe he just found it hard to actually interact with humans. Oh well, at least he spoke human.
Vlad Level 68 Dwarven Hall¡¯s Exit Guardian
Health3450/3450Stamina:1000/1000
I racked my knowledge for what dwarves were like. Usually they hated elves. Strike one. At least I looked human. They usually loved mining, and smithing. They also were usually big on ancestry and all that. I did fulfill Ysga¡¯s last wish. Maybe that would be a good way in. Also the notice earlier said dwarves wouldn¡¯t despise me anymore. That was nice. My mind was racing, but only half a second had passed. The dwarf took my silence as respect, and continued. His emotions were, 80% suspicious and 19% curious. ¡°Well, furst off ya need ta be tellin us how ya got hur. Then ya¡¯ll are gonna have ta be brought ta da council.¡± (Well, first off you need to tell us how you got here. Then you all will have to be brought to the council.) I was glad the audio part of my inspection was giving me screens to read what he said. Otherwise I would have been lost. This guy needs to learn to enunciate a bit. After he told us what was about to happen, I decided to speak. ¡°I was headed for M¡¯Path, but saw this dungeon. I thought to myself, ¡®hey I bet there are strong monster¡¯s here.¡¯ So I went to try it out. Imagine my surprise when I had to fight giant worms! It was even worse seeing the worms become immune to anything I did.¡± The dwarf was nodding, but the group behind him still had their weapons drawn. The lead dwarf seemed to be contemplating something, so I continued. ¡°Well of course that just got my blood boiling. I continued to fight, hack and slash, my way through until something odd happened.¡± Pause for dramatic effect. ¡°The worms started turning into humans!¡± The dwarves gasped and started talking in hushed tones. The lead dwarf barked an order in dwarven, and the crowd instantly became silent. He nodded to me. ¡°And how are we to believe that? You could say any number of things to us. It¡¯s been a dozen generations since the last dwarf has set foot into those caverns.¡± I smiled and continued my story. ¡°Well Since the worms were constantly upgrading, it only makes sense that they would take a dwarvenoid shape. After all, what shape could best the one Gnome graced dwarfkind with?¡± I might not know a lot about dwarves, but in almost any game or story they worshiped the god of earth as their creator. Maybe the god of metal too, since there was one. ¡°They seemed to try to be imitating dwarves. At first the giant snakes shrunk and grew four limbs, then they became denser and denser. Much like the stocky and powerful dwarves. It makes sense that they would want to be the best to fight though.¡± I gave a non-committal shrug. The emotions the lead dwarf displayed were lowering in suspicion rapidly. I loved it when people were easy to figure out. ¡°Whenever I attacked they would spew worms to attack us, eventually though they began to absorb the worms that came out. When they did they regenerated. They were quickly becoming as difficult to deal with as a dwarf in an underground mine.¡± Like this I summarized the entire venture. I made sure to coat the entire thing with flattery. Flattery seemed to work wonders on the dwarves. They were amazed to hear about the slime, but convinced once I showed them Heather. At first they wanted to kill her, but I convinced them that I had her under control. The asked to see my weapon, so I showed them my staff. I undid the clasps and showed them how it could be two swords or a spear as well. They grilled EDI next, but she only backed up my story. After being seemingly satisfied with our tale, they led us to a building near the dome. They left a little over half of the group to continue to stand watch over the block of stone. As soon as we came to the first building I got a notice.
You have entered Ysga¡¯s Hall. For being the first player to enter Ysga¡¯s Hall without a flying mount, you gain 10 fame.
The city was bustling with business. Most of it had to do with crafting or metal. Although there was a fair bit of alcohol being sold. The houses were crammed together tightly. The dwarves were doing business right outside of their homes. Most of the dwarves were armed with swords or falchions, and wore heavy plated armor. As we passed many dwarves would stop what they were doing to stare at us. It was a little uncomfortable, but I managed to steel myself. After a few hundred feet of walking, the dwarves seemed to ignore us. The entire city was like a giant market place. There were only a handful of people here that were not dwarves. They were all high level players, that had most likely had flying mounts. Fuck I wanted a flying mount. I decided to try hunting a griffon or something to capture it. I could always fly with my outfit, but it constantly consumed mana. It took us half an hour of walking to actually make it to the council. The council building was huge, but it was dwarfed by the metal caged dome beside it. Of course I still acted amazed by the workmanship of the council room. It was splendid in its own right though. It was lavishly decorated, silk and gold adorned nearly everything in the building. The building had five floors. The first floor seemed to be a reception area. The guards took us past the desk, and into a stairwell. The stairwell was behind a door. The stairs were intermittently lit with the blue glowing crystals. We went up the entire flight of stairs. I was completely out of stamina by the time we arrived, but I made sure not to let it show. We eventually came to the top floor. Vlad spoke before opening the door. ¡°When you get in here let the council talk first. Do not speak unless they ask you a direct question. Do not speak except to answer the question.¡± I nodded. The council seemed to be pretty high up on the leadership ladder. This would be the first time I met someone with actual political power. I decided to get an in with them, and establish a power base for myself. The door opened and I entered a large coliseum like room. All around were hundreds of dwarves. The dwarves sat on seats positioned around the coliseum. It seemed as if I was a gladiator, and the dwarves were the spectators. EDI, Heather, and Lily did not follow me in. The entire assembly was yelling and arguing. It seemed to be some sort of debate going on. The verbal battle seemed to go on forever. The sound all stopped abruptly at one point. One dwarf began to speak. After a second another dwarf began to translate for the humans. The second dwarf seemed downright eloquent. ¡°Welcome to Ysga¡¯s Hall! You have been invited to the council room for one reason. Our shaman has told us you have defeated the evil being that corrupted the worm queen? Is that true?¡± I said Yes. ¡°Good, we know not how the beast defeated her, but now we will be free of it influence. We used to have young dwarves test themselves in the tunnels, but one day that all changed. A dark influence took over the entire area. We sent battalions of warriors to kill it, but none returned. We are grateful to you, the one who destroyed it. You have allowed our race to once more venture out into the world of the other races. As thanks you may choose one item from our vault and it will be yours.¡± The dwarven assembly began to clap. Vlad escorted me out of the room. That was it? I didn¡¯t even get a chance to butter up the council. *Sigh* I guess I still got something from the vault. Vlad began speaking to me. ¡°Well, looks like ya got a nice ruward thar. Wish I had a chance ta grab muh somin in da vult.¡± (Well, it looks like you got a nice reward there. Wish I had a chance to grab myself something from the vault.) I merely smiled and nodded. I explained what had happened to EDI and Heather. It was confusing, but at least I had gained an item of some sort. The vault was in the basement floor of council building. My group walked in. Vlad told us to pick the item as a group, but I¡¯d convince the girls to let me choose it. There were many gold coins and gems, but none of them were in bags. Since we could only take one item I figured it should be something enchanted or at least something worth several gold coins. I thought that, but the truth was I didn¡¯t even have a single gold coin worth of silver at that moment. I had 20 silver and 5 copper. A gold coin was over quadruple what I currently had. During the search I sent a few looks towards EDI. She seemed to be struggling with something. I had given Ancestor Inspect back, so I wasn¡¯t sure what. She was intently looking over each item, but her mind was definitely elsewhere. Nothing really caught my interest, but I did see a bundle of ten books wrapped together. I assumed that counted as a single item. ¡°Hey EDI, what do you think about getting these books. Some of the titles seem to be about the history of the dwarves.¡± EDI seemed to be thinking it over. ¡°I have a compendium that could absorb the books. If you let me have them I promise to pay you back in some way.¡± Not in money though. EDI started to slowly nod her head. ¡°Sure, I guess that would be alright. Actually this came at a good time. My moms said I had to log out for a while. You can think of this as a going away present.¡± I feigned a very sad look. Well it might have been a little bit real. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you tell me you were going to leave?¡± She shrugged. ¡°I just found out a little bit ago. I¡¯ll be seeing you though.¡± She logged out without a second thought. I picked the books up and left the room. I had to think about what I would do without the main melee damage dealer in our group. I had never actually expected EDI to go directly against my wishes. No one had done that in a very long time. She never did listen though. After a few minutes of thinking, I made a plan. I would rent a place in the city, and help out around town. I would have to try to get into the council if I could. If I played my cards right I might even end up owning a dwarven city. I started thinking again about EDI. Why would she just leave all of the sudden. I guess I didn¡¯t mean much to her after all. I¡¯d just have to show her how powerful I was. Maybe then she¡¯d be more inclined to be around me. I decided my time limit would be until I got a light fairy, and fully purified my earth mana. Spoiler : Next chapter begins a long con artist/ battle of intrigue arc Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1680Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence168
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame860
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 37 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 46: Ysgas Hall Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice and co found their way into a dwarven city. Voice got a reward, but found out EDI had to leave right after. We learned a bit about how Heather views Voice, and learned a bit about her personally. We also learned what DI has been doing, and what their ultimate plans are. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I added a donate button I looked at the books I just fed my compendium. There were ten new books in total. ¡®Dwarven Translator¡¯ was my favorite. Who wouldn¡¯t love to learn an extra language? That was the first one I put in. The next nine books were in gibberish. I put them in without thinking. After putting all ten books into my compendium, I began to walk around the city. I had no real reason to walk around, it just felt good to let myself get lost in the crowd. I was contemplating why EDI would just leave like that. It was true that she had no real obligations to stay, but I didn¡¯t think it was fair of her to suddenly leave like that. While walking, I decided to make a guild without her. By the time she came back in I would be so amazing she¡¯d have no choice but to fall in love with me. Now wait a minute. Why the hell am I pining after this girl? Ugh, I need to fix this. I cannot have weaknesses. I WILL not have weaknesses. I needed a distraction. This was quickly starting reminding me of my first college crush. I changed my body to look like a quarter dwarf, and three quarters human. I made my face more rugged, and grew more hair on my body. I changed my body quite a bit. I had a bit of problems getting adjusted to my body. I had to explain to Lily about my disguise ability. She seemed very keen on learning it. I ¡®promised¡¯ her I¡¯d teach her if she earned it. I changed my title to Demon Wolves¡¯ Bane. I used deceptive aura to change my aura to one of earth. I was in full disguise mode. As I walked through the city, I asked the dwarves for directions. Most of the dwarves didn¡¯t speak Human, or any language I knew, but some did. A few dwarves seemed to understand me though. I was asking around to find out where the temple of Gnome was. The few dwarves that understood me, pointed in the direction of a very tall, broad statue. The dwarves were mostly gruff, but seemed nicer to me than to some of the other non-dwarfs in the area. That fact actually netted me a few looks from the foreigners. While talking to female dwarves I used my pheromone ability. I made sure to make them want to give me information. It didn¡¯t work as well as I hoped, but it still had a positive impact. Using the directions I was given, I slowly made my way to the giant stone statue. Many players were shouting out items they had crafted, and ores they had mined. None of the players seemed to be going hunting. I guess it is hard if you don¡¯t have a flying mount, and the only way out is through a sealed dungeon. The thing that surprised me the most the number of dwarves that seemed to be mages. I had never actually seen another player choose to be a mage. Maybe they chose it because they had to wait here anyway. Being a mage did have a bit of a rough start, unless you added in your own physical fighting style that is. That¡¯s why I wasn¡¯t pure mage. Pure mages could never solo enemies. Several of the player mages had miniature golems out. They looked like they could tank pretty well. While I was walking down the main street I noticed something. The funniest thing about the city was the fact that it seemed to be broken into two sides. On one side were dwarves that worked with metal, and some had a symbol I figured was to worship the metal god. On the other side were dwarves that seemed to be using stone for various things. They had a symbol that looked a lot like gnome did. The statue depicted what I assumed to be Gnome. The statue showed a ten foot tall heavily armored dwarf. The dwarf was blocking invisible attacks, using a tower shield. He was attacking with a overly large battle axe. I was pretty sure both the shield and the axe each weighed more than him. Beside the statue was a long short building. The building had a sign hanging above the door. This sign said something in dwarvish, and had a picture of the statue. Probably the chapel. I sent Heather out to explore. She always seemed to be bored during these types of situations. I had Lily accompany her. I figured I still had to take care of Lily, or else EDI would be upset. I didn¡¯t have to personally watch her though. The chapel doors were just large enough to fit a grown human. I quickly decided the persona I was going to adopt. I made sure to show off my heavy armor. My staff was turned into the two swords. I strode through the doors with an arrogant gait. I quickly scanned the area. It was full of weak ass looking priests. They were small and fat. Religion seems to be the same as Catholicism in the medieval era. I found a worthwhile target. One of the priests was 60% frantic. Fixing problems was always a knack of mine. I walked casually to the dwarf. I heard him mumbling ¡®thought I¡¯d help you out. I thought I¡¯d help¡­¡¯ I didn¡¯t wait when I made it to him. I tapped his shoulder, and started talking immediately. ¡°I need an earth fairy summoned. I am going to go on a journey to become more in tuned with Gnome, the great god of Earth. You look competent enough, so I¡¯ll let you do it.¡± The dwarf turned after a second of confusion. ¡°Hurry up! I don¡¯t have all day.¡± The dwarf was offended by my attitude. In a gruff voice he barked, ¡°Who do you think you are!? You think you can order around one of Gnome¡¯s chosen priests!?¡± The dwarf went to shove me out of the way, but my inspect showed me exactly where he would push. I easily sidestepped. Without the resistance he was expecting, the dwarf fell forward. Stumbling, and almost landing face first on the floor. I waved a hand in the air. ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll find someone else to do it. I thought I¡¯d help you out, but now I see I was wasting my time.¡± The dwarf looked confused for a moment. Then looked around frantically. I had figured the phrase he kept repeating was some sort of code, but I didn¡¯t think it would actually work. He leaned toward me, and whispered. ¡°You were the one Lord Balin sent? I¡¯m sorry, I was expecting someone more¡­¡± I smirked in a sort of pedantic way. ¡°What? More dwarvish? Do you think Lord Balin would be stupid enough to send someone so easily discovered?¡± I looked affronted. I gave a look that said, ¡®The mere thought of Lord Balin doing something obvious!¡¯ Whoever the fuck Balin is. I might not know who Lord Balin was, but this seemed like a good opportunity to gather some information to blackmail him with. The dwarf started to stutter, while trying to wave away the accusation. ¡°NO!¡± He almost screamed. A few other priests looked at him, but soon ignored him. In a more hushed tone he continued. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I didn¡¯t think it was you since you didn¡¯t say the code phrase right away.¡± The dwarf seemed to speak fluent human. That was pretty nice. Otherwise this would not have gone smoothly. I shook my head. ¡°Lord Balin¡¯s aid told me to not use it first thing. Otherwise the spies might catch on.¡± The dwarf¡¯s face paled slightly. ¡°He said there were spies around here?¡± I solemnly nodded my head. ¡°His, Ahem, friend has decided to be more watchful as of late. I was told to tell you ¡®Only trust the first.¡¯ Lord Balin¡¯s aid told me you would understand that phrase when the time comes.¡± I was obviously hoping that the priest was stupid enough to believe I was the real representative. At least he didn¡¯t seem to know who was truly supposed to be coming. The priest nodded quickly. ¡°Well come this way then. We might as well actually summon you an Earth Fairy so we have a some time to talk about the plan. I am surprised you don¡¯t have one, but it¡¯s a good excuse to be alone.¡± I followed the pries into a back room. On the floor were several tools I knew were used to create the circle. There was an ornate stone pedestal. On the pedestal was an orb of stone. The priest reached into the stone, and picked up a large purple book. I looked at intently. The priest laughed slightly after noticing my gaze. ¡°This is the Complete Summoning Book. I won it in a game of chance from a priest from a Temple of The Elder Gods.¡± He seemed awfully proud of that, so I looked wide eyed at him. He continued to boast. ¡°Only I can actually access it. The stone is enchanted, it lets only my hand pass through it. If any harmful magic is casted at it, or any weapon is drawn around it, the pedestal quickly sends the book into my inventory. I don¡¯t want to carry it around all the time though.¡± I dared to ask, ¡°What if someone could directly affect earth mana, couldn¡¯t they disable the stone orb?¡± The priest laughed at that. ¡°Sure! But if they could do that then they would be a higher class of mage than any known mage in generations. Besides, not many people are becoming mages anymore. Not when it takes to so long to actually learn how to properly cast magic.¡± He seemed proud while saying that. I guess priests of Gnome were considered mages. I gave him another impressed look. It finally made sense why I had never run into other mages though. They really would have to train harder to use spells as effectively as a warrior does swords. ¡°Now,¡± his expression turned serious. ¡°Let¡¯s get on with summoning. If we take too long it will look suspicious.¡± He quickly created the tier one earth circle in his book, and had me channel my mana and blood into the circle. I sent all five hundred points in at a steady rate. Dust started gathering in the center of the circle. The dust started to condense, finally becoming a ball of loose dirt. The dirt was getting bigger, and denser. As the ball became dense, it slowly turned into a ball of stone. When all five hundred were consumed a bright blue light burst in front of me. Where the ball had been a tiny stone golem stood. It stood about knee high, and for all intents and purposes looked like a child. It staggered its way over towards me. When it touched me I felt the connection establish. In a deep voice, much deeper than any child could have, the golem spoke. The voice sounded gravel. ¡°Maaaaster. By Gnome¡¯s wiiiil I seeeerve.¡± It talked annoyingly slow, but I just petted its head. I made a note to ask it to show me its powers later. ¡°So about the plan¡­¡± I left the question open ended. If I gave away that I didn¡¯t know anything it would turn into a bad situation for me. The priest shook his head. He put the book away into the orb, and began to speak. ¡°Alright! You were tasked with killing Labin. I managed to bribe two of Labin¡¯s guards to let you through. You must be there in an hour or they will change shifts.¡± Really? Balin and Labin? If they are brother¡¯s I¡¯m so fucking done. I shook my head. ¡°I don¡¯t know a quick enough path for that.¡± The priest nodded understandingly. ¡°I figured that would be the case.¡± He brought out a map. For an idiot this guy was prepared. ¡°I marked this map with an underground passage. It should let you be there in half an hour if you hurry.¡± I gratefully excepted the map. My compendium eagerly absorbed it. Thinking back on it, I never added the last room to my crude stone map. I would do that after the priest left. He continued. ¡°You are to get a map of the interior from the two guardsmen. When they give it to you, you will only have a few minutes to actually assassinate Labin. Make sure when you are caught to drink this.¡± He handed me a small vial of black liquid. Inspecting the contents gave me:
Concentrated Toxic Poison
Material QualityUncommonWork QualityExpert
Base Damage1000
This high level poison was designed for a quick death. It has a foul odor, and is easily identified. Press for more details¡­
¡°Thank you, I will need a moment to send a message to Lord Balin.¡± I nodded to the door. The priest hurried to exit. ¡°Oh! Yes of course. I hope your report is good!¡± He left after asking me to talk him up in front of Balin. I called the golem into my body. The first thing I did was finish the map. I changed the last bit to resemble the room the slime had been in.
You have completed the map of Dwarven Hall. You have gained the skill Map Making.
2-D Map Making Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By creating your first map you have gained this skill. Maps are now easier to create. You now create maps at an increased speed. To level this skill you must create more maps. More complicate maps give more experience. You can create maps using Earth Mana manipulation if you have a slab of earth. This skill can currently be fused to Automated.
I could fuse Map Making into a group skill, but I didn¡¯t want to pass up a skill fusion. I fused it to Automated.
Automatic 2-D Map Making Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill will automatically create maps of the areas you are in. Maps are now easier to create. You now create maps at an increased speed. To level this skill you must create more maps. More complicate maps give more experience. You can create maps using Earth Mana manipulation if you have a slab of earth. This skill will automatically create maps if you have ¡®Quill and ink¡¯ and paper, or a ¡®Stone Tablet¡¯ and mana to create it. Levels in this skill increase the accuracy of the automatic maps. Ranks in this skill decrease the time it takes to automatically create maps. This skill takes 5 minutes for every ten feet of map.
I fused both skills to the Group skill Survival. After that it only took 1 minute and 45 seconds for every ten feet of map created. That was a nice decrease. Although now it would be even harder to level the skill up. I obviously created a few stone tables by using the earth mana around me. I was starting to think there was a trick to leveling skills up past adept. None of them seemed to be able to gain experience. I put it in the back of my mind. Now was not the time for that. Now was the time for getting a super cool summoning book. I concentrated on the mana held within the stone orb. I could feel several different types, so I focused on only the stone mana. It seemed like the stone mana acted as a sort of trigger. I deactivated the stone mana. I didn¡¯t understand how all of the mana types worked together, so I just disabled the trigger. The stone dissolved into the air. I grabbed for the book. To my surprise it didn¡¯t disappear. I smiled a mischievous smile as I added it to the long list of books my Compendium was consuming. I quickly re-created the stone orb. Although honestly it lacked the other types of mana. It was just a stone orb. When the priest went to check on his book he would notice it was gone. I opened the door. Standing right outside was the priest. He stole a quick glance at the stone orb. Seeing it unharmed he sighed in relief. ¡°Sorry, I just get paranoid sometimes. Better safe than sorry right?¡± I smiled and nodded. Too bad you were safe AND sorry loser. He led me to a place a bit further from the chapel. We were walking between stone houses. In a particular alleyway he stopped. He pressed a button I didn¡¯t notice before, and a small trap door opened up. He motioned me in. Without waiting I got on the ground, and started climbing down the ladder that was inside the trap door. While climbing down the long ladder, I checked the earth golem¡¯s stats.
Stats Window
NameEliyahuRaceEarth Fairy
Health840Mana840
Stamina840
RankNoviceCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec10.2Mana Regen/Sec10.2
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility1
Wisdom102Intelligence84
Endurance84Dexterity1
Luck10Vitality102
Fame0
Eliyahu is an earth fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Earth fairies start with all stats but endurance, vitality, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being an earth fairy Eliyahu¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Eliyahu¡¯s Health and Health regen equal to its Mana and Mana regen respectively. Eliyahu¡¯s endurance equals its intelligence. Eliyahu¡¯s vitality equals its wisdom. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Eliyahu. Eliyahu has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Eliyahu has gained 9 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
Eliyahu was pretty powerful. It would be a good tank in place of EDI. It had more than 8 times my health. The mana wasn¡¯t something to sneeze at either. Eliyahu couldn¡¯t cast as many spells as Tear or Sol, but still. In terms of physical battle, Eliyahu was far superior to both of them. When I got to the bottom of the bottom of the ladder I looked around. There was only a long, dark hallway. I quickly re-inspected the poison. By pressing the more details button, I found that it was made with Common Weed, and Deril Root. I looked in my compendium for Deril Root. It was commonly found near dead animal carcasses. It required a lot of blood to grow. It sounded useful. I called out Tear, Sol, and Eliyahu. I was certain that fairy was a loose term. The only one to actually look like a fairy was Sol. Sol started bombarding Eli with questions. ¡°So, what do you think about master? How long ago were you summoned? What are you going to do for the group.¡± Sol didn¡¯t give Eli the time to answer in between the rapid paced questions. When Sol finally took a breath, Eli began to speak. ¡°IIIII willllllll serrrrvve massster.¡± Eli¡¯s slow paced talking was refreshing. The only one to really talk was Sol. Sol conversed with Eli while we walked. Even though Eli rarely got the chance to talk, I managed to gain a bit of info about the life of an earth fairy. Earth fairies were most suited to tanking for their summoner. That got me thinking. Light fairies would be mainly for healers. Since light fairies heal that meant the fairies merely added to the power of the caster. Since Eli was built for heavy defense, earth magic must have been mostly for shields and such. That would mean water magic was mostly used for hindering enemies. I guess a fire fairy would just cast lots of fire every where.
You have come to understand how fairies link to their element. You have gained 2 intelligence.
While that was nice, at this point 2 int didn¡¯t do a lot. 20 mana could only go so far. I mostly used the mana in the environment anyway. That reminded me. My new class could send mana into other people or objects. I closed my eyes while we walked. It was a straight hallway, and Eli was in front, so I didn¡¯t mind. I drew my two swords out of the staff position. I concentrated on forcing fire mana into my sword. I wanted it to be able to melt things with a sing slice. I had to shield my eyes, as my sword suddenly burst into flames. Even though my body instinctively shied away from the sudden light, I still saw the effects. My sword was bathed in what seemed to be a deep red. The sword itself seemed to dance in the savage light created by the flames. Holy fuck balls! This would have been so fucking cool to know earlier! While walking through the long tunnel I practiced moving magic into my swords, and into myself. I realized if I moved the mana in increments of ten percent. I realized something when I put 80% light and 20% wind. My body began moving more quickly. Not as quickly as I was moving while possessed, but still it was a large increase over my normal speed. My reaction time didn¡¯t increase though. While I moved everything was blurry. I was only going about twice as fast, but that could prove life saving. After all, when you are running from a lion you don¡¯t need to out run the lion, you need to out run your friend. During the twenty minutes I was in the tunnels I practiced enforcing myself, and my swords and armor, with mana. Mana seems to willing become whatever best suits the thing it is fused to. I decided to wrap the mana around myself instead of putting it into myself. When I fused 80% light and 20% earth I gained a defense buff. When I fused 80% light and 20% fire I gained an undead ward. When I fuse the same amount to my sword, the mana gained the ability to purify undead. The biggest part of the ¡®spell¡¯ was how much of each mana type went into it, but without a clear goal in mind, the mana took the simplest form. I didn¡¯t exactly master the new mana manipulation I obtained while I was walking through the tunnels, but I did at least begin to unravel the mysteries. No wonder the Ancient Elves gave this ability to the lesser races. It was fucking awesome! The things I learned where pretty nice. 80% of light plus 20% of something else gave a buff. If I used darkness instead of light, I created a debuff. I don¡¯t know how powerful the debuff was, but I would test it out on the first enemy I found. I changed my aura to metal. I was betting on Labin being a worshiper of the metal god. I walked for a bit more, before realizing I hadn¡¯t talked to Ancestor since the battle. Ancestor? Are you there? I got no response. ANCESTOR! Still nothing. I frantically started calling out for Ancestor. Both with my mind and mouth. Ancestor didn¡¯t answer. MOTHER FUCKER! Not only does EDI leave me! Ancestor leaves too!? BULLSHIT! The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. It really wasn¡¯t fair for so many of my tools friends to leave at once. I tried contacting Ancestor again, but came up empty handed. I gave Ancestor a warning. If you don¡¯t answer me, I will make fucking sure the Ancient Elves go down in history. FOR BEING THE WORST RACE EVER! Ancestor still didn¡¯t answer.
Labin¡¯s true assassin was killed by the priest you tricked. For making the priest believe you are the assassin you may accept his quest.
Wow. Sucks to be that guy. Glad I could pick up another quest though. I decided to accept. I could just forfeit the quest later.
You have accepted this quest. Success: Killing Labin. Difficulty: Moderate Failure: Failing to kill Labin, dying, or being discovered. Reward: Payment has been issued to the Assassin¡¯s Guild. Failure results in the Assassin¡¯s Guild declaring your current persona a KOS target. Success results in the Assassin¡¯s Guild trying to recruit you to their cuase.
While I was trying to accept I tripped. I wasn¡¯t paying attention to my surroundings. There was a cramped staircase ahead. I recalled all of my fairies. The stairs seemed to be almost decrepit. I reinforced them with my mana as I walked up them. At the top of the stairs there was a small latched wooden door. I sighed and went up it. There was no reason to fret over people leaving me. It was nothing new after all. I picked myself up, and looked at the wooden door. I unlatched it, and opened it. The door seemed to jam, but I pushed through it. I quickly rose, and shut the door. The door had been hidden behind a large tree, and was nestled beneath a thick thorn bush. Looking past the plants, I noticed I was in a large courtyard. It seemed as though I was in some sort of metallic castle. There is no way something like this could withstand its own weight. Not unless the god of metal was helping. The area was dimly lit by a puddle of lava outside the castle, and a single large crystal on top of the castle. The faint blue glow of the crystal casted an almost eerie atmosphere. A quick glance out of the cave told me it was night time. No doubt the area looked different in the daytime, but at night my darkness mana could help me a lot. I noticed a few guards patrolling the area. There was only one group of two. I looked around, and made my way to them as stealthily as possible. I covered myself in darkness mana, and quietly walked to them. The guards all seemed to be walking very slowly. It was almost as if they were expecting an attack LOL. All of the guards had a similar tattoo on their left arm. Strike that. It was identical. It showed John Smith, the metal god, anointing a dwarf as king. I planned my way to the group of two. I caught up to the group of two in only a minute. ¡°Follow us to the entrance.¡± One of the guards whispered. I thought I was being sneaky, but it turns out the guards could easily hear me approach. At least other guardsmen didn¡¯t seem to notice me. That meant my dark mana cloak did the trick. The guards continued walking, until finally stopping in front of a door. They seemed to stand guard at that door, and motioned for me to enter it. As I passed one of them put a roll of paper into my inventory. I opened the door only slightly to gain entrance. After entering the castle I looked around. I was in a kitchen, but luckily no one was there. There was an odd chest in one corner, so I looted it. It had a large amount of salt, and quite a bit of different types of food. I cooked myself one of the four steaks while I did recon. Applying mana to objects seemed to work even if the object was in my inventory. I peaked outside of the kitchen as I munched on the steak Labin had provided me. It had been heavily salted, but it still tasted good. Must have been the chef¡¯s ability. Outside of the kitchen was a small hallway. At both ends was a door. The hallway was dimly lit by two torches. Darkness mana tendrils clawed at the walls. I made another small earth tablet, and wrote on it. I decided to go left for no reason. When I got close to the door, I used wind mana. I created a draft from the inside of the room ahead of the door, to my ears. The wind acted as a very crude listening device. It took the sound from inside the room, brought it below the door, and amplified it for me. ¡°¡­to be an attack tonight. We were told to be especially on guard for any attempts to get close to Lord Labin. If anyone tries to approach Lord Labin for any reason, execute them. For house Stonewall!¡± A chorus of ¡®for house stonewall!¡¯ followed. I almost laughed. I had basically figured out the jist of what was happening. Labin probably followed the metal god, while Balin followed the stone god. There was probably some minor fight going on between the two faiths. My god could beat up your god and all that. For the metal god¡¯s follower to be called Stonewall was hilarious. The people in the room in front of me started to disperse. The doorknob started turning. I threw myself against the wall, and forced the metal mana in the area to surround me. I left the top open, but the metal came up above my head. It sounded like two people came out of the room. They were talking human. Wait, why are all of the dwarves speaking human? That doesn¡¯t sound right. I checked my languages. I had somehow learned to speak dwarven without noticing! My compendium was definitely proving its worth. They were speaking about the possible assassination attempt. After the two left, I sensed light mana around me. There were two mana signatures. They were standing on the other side of the door. I made released the metal mana, and created an earth orb around each of the signatures. They instantly started pounding on the earth domes to break them. I snuck through the door, all the while enforcing the mana I was using on the orbs. I decided to try out one of my debuffs I had thought of. If I concentrated pure light mana into my eyes I could increase my field of vision. In layman¡¯s terms anyway. 100% light mana was healing. I had to think of it in a different way to get it to work. Assume every 10% mana equals a building block. You could stack ten blocks together to make a large tower. That tower would be ten block high. However, if you started the base with two blocks instead of one, the tower goes down to nine blocks high. The different heights of the blocks gave different results. So fusing 20% light to 80% was different than using 100% light. Furthermore, you could increase the size of each block. If you used 100 mana, the buff/debuff wouldn¡¯t be as powerful, or last as long, as if you used 1000 mana. That much was obvious. What wasn¡¯t obvious was the fact that I could adjust the dimensions of each ¡®block¡¯. Basically by tweaking just a small detail on my mana I could increase the power of the effect, in exchange for limited duration. I understood that 80% light equaled a buff. So using that idea as a base, I thought of debuffs. If 20% light gave effected vision, then what would happen if I used 80% darkness to make a debuff, and 20% light for vision effect? The answer was satisfying. I used 100 mana to cast the debuff.
You have created a common darkness spell: Blind.
Blind The caster takes away the targets sight. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana per second. This spell causes 100% blindness to one target.
I grinned as I read the spell description. I had so many plans for debuffs. I might be a squishy mage (breaks fourth wall by looking at the readers¡­.) but at least I would be able to level the playing field a bit. I still needed a way to up my own power. The defense buff from the earth/light combo would eventually be a great help. If I could lower my opponents attack enough, and raise my own defense enough, I could take on someone with a much higher level. Still that 100 health was bugging me. I really needed a way to bring it up. If I could at least bring it up by 10 points per level I¡¯d be happy. ShortDwarf could probably step on me and kill me. I used the darkness mana from where the torches didn¡¯t reach, and the light mana coming from the dwarves bodies. I sustained the blindness with their own mana! The mana drain on me dropped to only 20/second. It was still a lot considering I only guided the mana into position. Sol did help a little in forcing the light mana to bend to my will more easily. I was betting that I could negate the cost of the spell if I had a darkness fairy. Although to get upgrade one past basic, I¡¯d have to free Davros. That wasn¡¯t something I was willing to do. At least not yet. I needed to perfect a new deal that was weighted in my favor. I also had to make sure not to let Davros act against me or Mar. If he did it would be known that I freed him. I didn¡¯t kill the two guards for one simple reason. Some might think it was because I respected all life, even virtual life. Some might say I was squeamish. The real reason was that I wanted to everything to seem planned out. I had concocted a plan as soon as I stepped into the castle. It was an ingenious plan if I say so myself. Once the guards realized they could still scream, they did. The sound they made was enormous. Many other guards started running towards their position. I made sure to watch it all. Oddly enough no guards came from the hallway I was in. I ran down the empty hallway, that didn¡¯t have doors. The hallway turned and split many times. I ran through the castle for at least half an hour. I want to say it was thrilling running from the guards, but it wasn¡¯t. I could basically see the hallways by the metal mana they gave off. I primarily searched for light mana, but I did pay as much attention as possible watching the metal mana. It was a little disorienting walking with my eyes closed, but I managed. I had several close encounters with guards, but since I could see them a dozen yards before their eyes could see me, I managed to deftly avoid each one. It felt almost anti-climactic. I made a scarily good ninja. It helped that I used my air mana shoes to walk on the air. While walking on the air platforms, I didn¡¯t make any sounds. I guess anyone could be a decent assassin with the right items and abilities. It did occur to me that the two guards outside didn¡¯t give me a map. It didn¡¯t really matter though, I was still auto-mapping the area. When my auto-mapping was too slow, I just adjusted the earth mana on the tablet to show the route. I came to a peculiar hallway at one point. There were no guards patrolling it. I knew that was a trap though. This hallway might lead to Labin then. Why else would the guards hiding in all of the rooms stay there? There were at least two light mana signatures behind each door. They seemed to be waiting for a cue to jump out. I did not want to be in the middle of that. I used my special wind shoes, to walk through the halls. Technically I wasn¡¯t actually walking on the metal floor at that point. I was instead walking on air. As such there were no squeaks or footsteps to be heard. I went to the door on the far left. The reason I did was that door was the only one with three people behind it. I opened the door. The room had a luxurious bed, and a nice writing desk. The room was about 40x40 feet. It was overly large for so little items in it. As soon as I opened the door, two iron golem looking things put halberds to my neck. What the fuck!? There was only three light mana signatures¡­ It dawned on me that the metal god might used metal golems. Fucking hell. I should have thought this through better. There were three dwarves in the room. Two of them had their swords drawn, the last was sitting in a chair directly opposite the door I just entered. The dwarf in the chair began to speak. I basically ignored everything he said after he introduced himself as Labin.
Your Long Distance Inspection is higher than the target¡¯s disguise skill.
Kremel Level 46 Body Double
Health:550/550Stamina:110/110
I quickly took out all of the fire mana in the poison I was given. The poison quickly froze over. I shook my head in the middle of his speech. Whatever he was saying was cut off. ¡°I need to talk to the actual Labin. Balin has renegade on our payment. I¡¯ve come here to negotiate the terms of the new deal.¡± The guards and ¡®Labin¡¯ looked confused. I gave an exaggerated sigh. ¡°Listen. I know who you are. Your real name is Kremel, you are a body double for Labin. I came here because that is where you wanted me to attempt to kill Labin. I have a poison in my pocket that Balin specifically wanted me to use. I wouldn¡¯t just waltz in here if I wasn¡¯t planning on letting Labin live.¡± One of the guards stepped forward. In a gruff voice he barked a laugh. ¡°HA! You failed to assassinate our Lord, and now you try to make a plea bargain!? HA! I say! You assassin types are all the same. None of you have ever managed to kill Lord Labin. You might have gotten the furthest, but there is no way we are letting you go free! Now! Prepare to die!¡± The dwarf strode forward, even as the two metal golems backed away. It seemed he thought I couldn¡¯t fight one on one.
Shini Level 64 Body Double¡¯s Guard
Health:1360/1360Stamina:500/500
I started off by creating and throwing a blast of dark/water mana at the warrior. I smirked as the two golems didn¡¯t retaliate. The dwarf was able to maintain his composure. Quite an impressive feat actually. ¡°At least the earth dwarves would give me a chance to fight back.¡± I gave a scornful look. The dwarf seemed to take quite a bit of offense at that. ¡°Fine! Pull out your damndable weapon. Let¡¯s see how you fare against a true warrior!¡± Wow dwarves are easy to bait. I pulled out my staff. The it was the dwarf¡¯s turn to smirk. The smirk quickly faded as I unsheathed the swords the staff held. ¡°Let¡¯s not keep the real Lord Labin waiting¡­¡± I taunted the dwarf. With an angry snarl, he charged me. I blasted him back with a large barrage of wind. He resisted it, but after a moment I changed the trajectory. I tightened the wind, narrowing it to the thickness of my staff. I angled all of the wind under the dwarf, and managed to lift him up. I threw him against a wall, and instantly used the blinding effect. ¡°CHEATER!¡± He yelled. He must have forgotten to mention magic wasn¡¯t allowed. I decided to use his own god¡¯s power against him. He stood up, but didn¡¯t move. It was like he was waiting to hear my movements. While he was blinded, I forced the metal on the floor to form six spikes. Every spike was aimed at his neck, and stopped only inches away. I ended the blinding effect, and allowed the dwarf to see his predicament. He looked aghast at the situation. ¡°You said to give you an opportunity to fight! I did but you used trickery to beat me!? You dare!?¡± He snapped his fingers, and both iron golems attacked me. The golems grabbed me, and forced me to my knees. One was about to slice off my head. Unfortunately I had dealt with something similar earlier that day. While forcing the mana in the room to form spikes, I notice that the golems were powered entirely by mana. They had some central mana source in the middle of their chests. All I did was take away the metal mana in each of their chests, and use it to buff my swords. With 80% light, and 20% metal I made my swords a nice bit better. Each sword had an effect added. The effect was ¡®Precision Strike¡¯. Each sword had a 20% chance to ignore enemy armor up to a certain amount. Each sword also did an additional 5 damage minimum and maximum. The dwarf seemed awestruck that his toys could so easily be dealt with. I got up and lightly dusted myself off. I shook my head. ¡°Well at least I didn¡¯t need to use any toys to get the job done.¡± I smirked at the now lifeless golems. I might have to start specializing in magical opponents. They are way too easy to kill. I released the spikes imprisoning the dwarf. ¡°Never mind. I¡¯ll just be going. There is no need to contact Labin. I just received word from HQ to retreat. Hope Labin lives past the next assassination!¡± I turned to go, knowing this would bait an attack from the dwarf. I began using Inspect to tell me where I should step and block from. I pivoted on my left foot, while bringing both my blades up in an x formation. A dagger had been flying at me. The dagger perfectly struck the center of the x. I turned toward the fake Labin. Labin held two more daggers. ¡°Well that was kind of rude.¡± I gave a displeased look. The dwarf scoffed. ¡°I may disagree with Shini on a lot of things, but he is right about this. You must die!¡± The dwarf threw another dagger at me. At the same time the two guards attacked. I used a speed buff on myself. I managed to ward off the attacks, but just barely. Higher level warriors were no joke. I had to spend 100 mana a second just to keep up with them in speed. With my current mana regen rate, I would only last 20 seconds. I had to think up an idea. I took out the solidified cube of poison. Blocking became impossible with only one hand. I had to dodge instead. I pumped as much fire mana as I could into the cube. The cube quickly evaporated into the air. I was holding my breath the entire time. The other three noticed what I was doing, and redoubled their attacks. Unfortunately for them it didn¡¯t really help. With the help of Inspect, I was able to dodge every attack. That skill was the ultimate defense. Almost instantly after the cube melted, the three dwarves had a visible change. ¡®Labin¡¯ began coughing uncontrollably, while the two guards seemed to be trying to power through it. The thousand damage seemed to be distributed between the three people. I sent a blast of wind to throw the two dwarves attacking me. I stopped the buff, and created a small ball of wind and light around my mouth. I would hopefully purge the poison from the air in front of me. Either way I could only hold my breath for so long. As the two dwarves hit the metal walls, they fell and their bodies slumped. Only the fake Labin and I were left. I sighed. If EDI ever found out I killed three NPCs she probably wouldn¡¯t want to join me anymore. You know what!? Fuck what she wants. I didn¡¯t care anymore. She had chosen to leave me. Still I could probably learn quite a bit by interrogating these three men. ¡°Sol.¡± The fairy flew out of my chest. ¡°I need you to make sure these live.¡± I pointed to the dwarves with disdain. I called out Tear and Eli. ¡°Tear, make some water. I want you to let Sol make your water Holy water. I want you two to make sure the dwarves don¡¯t die. Eli, you¡¯re on lookout. I¡¯m going to make these guys nice and comfortable. Heh.¡± Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1700Stamina: 350
Current Title: Demon Wolves¡¯ BaneHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence170
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame860
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 37 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 47: Escape and Capture Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice was upset about EDI leaving. He began looking around town, and decided that he wanted to gain some power. He summoned an earth fairy, took the spot of an assassin, and beat three higher level dwarves. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I added a donate button! Mostly it will be used as I see fit. But I might start creating DIVE IRL(Jk that will never happen). And I LOVE that some readers are answering each other¡¯s questions! Sorry about taking so long to post a chapter. I have had work for the past 10 out of 14 days, and the other 4 I was out of town. I forgot my laptop. ( When I got home I had the single worst case of writer¡¯s block I¡¯ve had so far. I am very sorry. I created three metal chairs, and had Eli help me move the dwarves into them. I made the chairs so they would face away from the door, and face towards the chair the fake Labin had been in. I stripped them all of weapons and armor. They had some pretty good stuff. I was over halfway to my weight limit just from three people¡¯s items. After the dwarves were situated I made the metal chairs form metal ankle cuffs and wrist cuffs. That way the dwarves would have no way of escaping. I made one of the golems into two chairs, and used the metal mana from the walls and floor to make the other. I wanted to study the last metal golem so I could be able to create my own. I woke the three up with a cold splash of water. I also filled all three dwarves¡¯ mouths with an orb of water, curtesy of Tear. Although I had Tear helping Sol heal the three, I figured Tear had enough concentration to do multiple things at once. I gave the three a long, meaningful look. I continued to just stare until Sol flew back into me, signaling the poison had taken its course and the three would no longer be in danger from it. I let out a deep sigh. ¡°You know, I wanted this to go smoother.¡± One of the dwarves tried to talk, but soon gave up. Every time he went to make a sound, he would start to choke on the water. With Tear refilling the water, no matter how much they drank, they would not be able to get rid of it. I was nice enough to let them breathe out of their noses at least. ¡°I only wanted to talk to Lord Labin. However, you three have made that impossible.¡± I shook my head. ¡°Still, I was ordered to offer Lord Labin a deal, and I was forbidden from killing any of you.¡± I went into a more thoughtful pose. ¡°How about you? Shini? Would you give a message to Lord Labin for me?¡± He made a face as if to say he¡¯d spit on me if he could. I shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s fine. I¡¯ll pretend I think Kremel here is the real Labin.¡± I paused for a moment. While looking surprised I said, ¡°Lord Labin! I found you! What a coincidence! Want me to kill Lord Balin for you? He put in an order to kill you, but didn¡¯t pay after the mission started. No?¡± I feigned a sad look. ¡°Oh¡­ ok. Guess I¡¯ll just¡­ I¡¯ll just tell my master you didn¡¯t say yes.¡± I stood up to leave; however, I stopped. I turned towards the three. I gave an almost evil grin. I had a really wonderful idea. I didn¡¯t really have any information on my debuffs yet. ¡°Actually¡­ Thinking on it. I have an idea. I¡¯m kind of miffed at not getting to kill anything, and I wasn¡¯t given any orders not to harm you so¡­¡± I began forming a few ¡®spells¡¯ in my mind. I already knew how to blind my enemies, now I was going to try the others. I started pumping darkness/water mana into the guard that had the golems attack me. As I thought the debuffs were exactly the opposite of the buffs. Darkness plus water made the target able to move less fluidly. When cast, the spell gave the target a 10% movement reduction. When I used light and water I gained 20% to my ability to move fluidly. Wind and darkness made a slow effect. The slow only took away 10% of the targets speed. Even though it raised mine by 20%. So debuffs work at half power versus buffs? That¡¯s good to know. I had noticed that for a while now I hadn¡¯t gained any intelligence when I discovered something about the game. I guess my int is too high. That sucks. The odd one out of the debuffs was fire. Instead of having anything to do with undead, the fire debuff raised stamina consumption. The only thing I could think of was that I raised the ambient temperature around the target. The debuffs were: Water-Rigid, Fire-Stamina Drain, Wind-Slow, Earth-Weakness, Nature-Calm, Metal-Powerless, Light-blindness, Dark-Corruption.
Rigid The caster takes away the targets ability to move freely. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% maneuverability debuff to one target.
Stamina Drain The caster increases the amount of stamina the target needs to preform actions. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% stamina debuff to one target.
Slow The caster takes away the target¡¯s ability to move quickly. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% speed debuff to one target.
Weakness The caster decreases the amount of general armor the target has. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% physical defense debuff to one target.
Calm The caster takes away the targets ability to sense danger. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes the target to be relax their guard.
Powerless The caster increases the amount of work the target needs to damage others. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 10% physical damage reduction debuff to one target.
Corruption The caster reduces the total amount of health the target has. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 100 mana. This spell causes 5% health reduction debuff to one target.
I hadn¡¯t really thought of trying out a darkness buff on myself. Mostly because I thought it would end up with me hurting myself somehow. But I was going to now! The oddest things about the spells was that they all took the same amount of mana, and all had the exact same amount of time. Usually spells would differ greatly. The entire time I was doing my experiments, Shini was trying to voice his displeasure. It was nice that Tear would almost drown him when he got to aggressive. I have to admit, I did enjoy seeing the dwarf in pain. I got bored soon after I tried out all of my new debuffs on the dwarf. I laid on the bed. If I was going to interrogate these things I needed to break them first. I didn¡¯t have anything great for torture I could use. So I decided to make them mentally exhausted. While they were completely uncomfortable sitting in those metal chairs, I would be lazily thinking of a good plan to get to Labin. I laid down and began to think. I sealed the door shut by fusing the metal mana in it to the metal mana in the wall. I heated it up to expedite the process. It only took about ten minutes. We were in a completely closed room at that point. I also covered their bodies with the pain inducing water. I kept the dark/water on for a few seconds, then began experimenting. I had Tear cover their entire head in an orb of water, except for their noses. I wanted them to still be able to breathe after all. I decided to try out the darkness buff on myself. I had tried out all of the other types of buffs, so I figured it was only fair. Fusing 80% light, and 20% darkness into myself, I got a notice.
Congratulations! For being the first player to cast every basic type of buff and debuff, you have learned Spell Permanency.
Spell Permanency Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Spell Permanency is acquired through the unique action of having casted every 1st tier buff and debuff before any other player. Buffs and debuffs can now be toggled as ¡®permanent¡¯. ¡®Permanent¡¯ spells require twice the normal amount of initial mana, but do not have a time. The mana used on a ¡®permanent¡¯ spell will not regenerate, until the ¡®permanent¡¯ spell is released. The ¡®permanent¡¯ spell will have 25% potency. Levels in this skill will slightly decrease the required mana to cast. Ranks in this skill will increase the potency of the ¡®permanent¡¯ spell by 25% each rank. To level this skill, you must have spells toggled as ¡®permanent¡¯ for long periods of time.
I fused it to the group skill Magical Mastery, and immediately tried it out. Normally I would get a 10% bonus to my health, but with the permanency activated, I only gained 5%. Still, it only took 164 mana. My Magical Master was at level 37. It made sense that each level decreased the required mana by 1%, except for the first level of course. I was just experimenting, so I tried adding the effect on myself again. It worked! I had a 10% health boost! I activated the spell 10 times in quick succession. ¡­ The corners of my mouth jerked upwards. ¡°Hehehe.¡± The three struggling dwarves looked at me in alarm. I coughed. I had just brought my hp up to 150 points! Granted now I only had 30 mana to use, but now I¡¯d be harder to kill! ¡­ *Sigh*. ¡°No I¡¯m not¡± I whispered to myself. I knew I was still as easy to kill as ever. But wait a minute. The permanent buffs are at 50% at apprentice level. If they add 25% each rank, then by master rank it¡¯ll be at 125%! Oh man, that¡¯s nice. It might be hard to get that high, but I am SO doing that. If I got it to level 100, that would only take 101 mana per stack, and it would give me 12.5 points per stack. Assuming I don¡¯t get any more mana before then, I¡¯d still be able to use 16 stacks. That would boost my hp by 200%! I would have 300 total! I was determined to do that right away. There was no way I was going to pass up on tripling my hp. Even if I did only have 84 mana to use after. Actually I might as well be a combat class for all the magic I¡¯d be able to use. Without high amounts of mana, my class was basically useless. I needed a way to either boost my mana, or my health. If I just added 100 hp then I¡¯d be able to get a shit ton of health from just a few boosts. I didn¡¯t really know how a buff with darkness gave a boost to health, but I wasn¡¯t complaining. The whole game seemed to revolve around me getting more hp. Without more hp I wouldn¡¯t be able to fight on par with higher level characters. 5 stat points, and at least 10 hp per level was too much to overcome. At least if I was fighting real humans. My int was at 170. 30 more points would rank up my mana affinity. If it didn¡¯t rank up, I couldn¡¯t rank up magical mastery. Tear started pulling at my shirt, one tentacle wrapped around a small piece of my cloth. Tear was frantically pointing at the three dwarves. It seemed as though they fainted. It hadn¡¯t even been that long. A few hours tops. Geez these guys can¡¯t even handle not breathing for a while. I decided to open a few holes in the metal walls to let air in. After only a few minutes there were eight holes. The holes were slanted, like a tunnel. They each pointed to the side opposite the bed. That way no one would be able to target me with ranged weapons. I decided to carve open on of them slightly. It was the one that attacked me first. It¡¯s not like I had a grudge at him or anything. I didn¡¯t care that he had single handedly fucked my plan up. I created a metal cast, that fit tightly over his entire body, except for his left forearm and head. I examined the red line on his arm. I cut along the red line, but he did not wake. I poked around a bit after seeing him still sleeping. I was cutting into his left arm, when I heard a noise like someone drowning. I noticed that the dwarf had woken up. ¡°Oh! HI!¡± I used his light mana to heal him, taking in enough after he was healed to regen my mana. I was disappointed in only getting 1% dissection on dwarves. Still it was better than nothing. The dwarf seemed to notice his predicament. He started thrashing around. I hit him in the back of the head. He jerked, but seemed to retain his consciousness. I hit him again, this time with my staff. I covered my staff in metal mana to add a bit of punch to it. A dull *Thwak* as my staff connected. His body fell still. ¡°Geez, these dwarves are sturdy.¡± My disguise was good, but if Sol saw what I was doing, I would probably be down one fairy. I decided to re-inspect the toy Davros gave me. Since I had ranked up my inspect I thought I might get more info. Maybe I could even convert living beings into my undead thralls.
Cursed Ring Necrosis *Artifact
This ring was crafted in the Realm of the Gods. This ring was made by Davros, the god of darkness. Sacrificing health will allow you to summon the dead, provided you have the body of the dead you wish to summon. The cost is ten hp per second that body has been dead, times two for every level the dead body is higher than you. While this ring is equipped you are cursed. The blessings of all other gods are rendered null. This ring cannot be unequipped. The curse can be lifted by gaining at least 40% of your darkness affinity in the affinity of that god¡¯s element. For instance if you have 50 darkness affinity you will need at least 20 nature affinity to be able to receive the blessings of the nature goddess. This ring can be used to summon up to three independent summon slots at once. The caster must sever the mana supply to one of the summoned creatures to summon a fourth. The being that had its mana severed will have its hp set to 0. The creatures summoned by this artifact will revive infinitely, until the supply of mana runs out. If the caster intentionally allows death to take a summoning, the summoned creature will have the mana supply cut. Creatures resurrected by this item can be laid to rest with a ¡®Holy Sword of Light¡¯. Current Slots Taken: 2/3
Oh, I guess the twins really did die then. Oh well. That¡¯s bullshit though! Davros said an army! Why the fuck can I only summon 3!? I understand the lich I summoned can summon undead, but! Seriously!? UGH! I was a little miffed at finding out Davros tricked me¡­ again. I might not have gotten out of that deal as well off as I first thought. Thinking on it; though, if I had three people all summoning hordes of undead, I would be really well off. Unless someone managed to debuff the shit out of them. Hold the fucking phone. Permanency skill plus health debuff!?!?!? My mana had regenerated enough while I was using my meditate, so I tried it out on the dwarf guy I¡¯d been experimenting on. I could summon up ten of the debuffs while using permanency. I sent out the corruption debuff, and made it permanent. I inspected the dwarf after I used ten of the debuffs.
Shini Level 64 Body Double¡¯s Guard
Health:1020/1020(Semi-Permanent Debuff)Stamina:500/500
This was good. This was very good. Instead of buffing myself, it would be a lot more efficient to debuff an enemy¡¯s specialty. Decreasing 1000 health by 2.5% was much better than increasing 100 health by 5%. If I used the permanency skill while creating the powerless spell, I could even bring down a fighter¡¯s dps by up to 50%. I wonder what will happen when I get my permanency skill up to master rank. If I stacked ten of the physical power debuffs, it would reduce the power of physical attacks by 125%. Does that mean I get healed or something? Definitely worth checking out. And I would check it out. Debuffing an enemy into oblivions sounded like a lot of fun. Especially that Defiled character. Going back to the situation at hand¡­ I had three unconscious dwarves. Pretty soon I would have to escape, or explain the situation. I woke the three dwarves up by splashing them with water. I had Tear take the water off of their heads, and throw it at their chests. It worked quite well. When the three dwarves woke, I was a bit surprised. Instead of yelling, or calling for assistance, they silently glared at me. I gave the best assassin like smile I could. ¡°Come now. I have to let you three live, I¡¯ve told you that. There is no reason to be so hostile. Look, I¡¯m going to leave the castle now. I want to leave this stone message with you though. You can let Lord Labin have it, or just smash it. Either way my job here is done.¡± I put the stone tablet I made earlier down. The contents were a bit encoded, but any decent encoder should have been able to break the inscription in a matter of minutes. After putting the tablet down, I opened up a hole in place of the door I sealed. I calmly walked out of the room. I lessened the metal containing the three dwarves. I didn¡¯t release it altogether though. The entire castle was a buzz. They seemed to know I was here, but not where I was. I guess this might have been a trap to see who would betray Lord Labin. I made Tear return to me, and started on my way. I walked through the castle at a very slow pace. I made sure that all of the guards were out of sight before entering a hallway. Traversing the castle was a bit harder this time, but I was doing something clever. I was using my mana sensing abilities to manually draw all of the patrol areas on one of my stone tablets. The patrols took seemingly irregular hallways, but I knew it had some deep pattern. Even if I couldn¡¯t see the physical locations of the halls, I could roughly estimate the general shape by using the guards. The castle was freaking huge. I saw quite a few people strolling through the halls, and more than one iron golems. I switched between every type of mana to thoroughly check my possible opponents. The opponents either had light mana, indicating dwarves, or metal mana, indicating metal golems. I decided to test out my abilities on a dwarf that was patrolling by itself. When I got close enough, I focused my inspection skill on it.
Brolam Level 42 Castle Guard
Health:920/920Stamina:500/500
I used my stack of ten debuffs to reduce his movement speed and maneuverability by 25% each. I got a notification, but I ignored it for the moment. I wanted to test out the debuffs on the dwarf as soon as possible. I was hidden behind a wall, so the dwarf didn¡¯t even know I was there. I sent in Eli and Tear to test him out first. I had basically no mana, so I¡¯d only be able to fight using my weapon. That was something I¡¯d rather avoid. Eli focused on taking agro, while Tear went behind and aimed for a sneak attack. The dwarf noticed Eli fairly quickly, and attacked. I could only view the battle from the mana signatures, but it seemed like Eli was holding fast. The dwarf seemed to be trying to do some sort of complex maneuver, but was moving at a very slow speed. Eli easily managed to move out of the way, and Tear even attached to the back of the dwarf¡¯s neck. While Tear¡¯s tentacles injected poison into the dwarf, Eli began to attack. All in all the ¡®battle¡¯ only took about half a minute. As soon as Tear firmly clamped on the dwarf, he began to falter. While he was faltering, Eli beat the crap out of him. Tear created a bubble of water around the dwarf, and started suffocating him. I watched as the dwarf¡¯s hp dropped. When he had less than 20 left, I sprung into action. I took both my swords, and ran towards him. Right as his hp reached 3 I slit his throat. I netted a nice bit of exp from the encounter. I left the weapons and armor. They would be too easy to trace back to me, and I didn¡¯t know any fences in the area. After that I avoided any patrols as I made my exit. I continued to forge the map as I went. The map I made was very rough, and it wasn¡¯t even close to being complete, but it was a start. I got out the same way I came. It was uneventful. At least until I made it close to the kitchen. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. The two guards from earlier were waiting for me at the door. My eyes went wide after I approached the door. Twelve dwarves stood at the other side of the door way. I was not about to fuck with twelve dwarves at once. Not unless I had a plan of course. Hehe. I made a large hole in the metal floor of the kitchen, then lowered myself in. If the guards were going to wait until I left, I¡¯d show them I wasn¡¯t coming. I covered up a large portion of the hole I made, leaving enough holes in it to breath. I started taking the light mana from the dwarves, to replenish my own mana reserves. The guards leapt into action once they realized their mana reserves were being consumed. They burst into the kitchen, where they presumed I was. Of course they didn¡¯t know where I was. I sent out a dark wind burst into the room. With 60% dark and 40% wind I created a type of noxious gas. The gas didn¡¯t really do much damage, but it did create a horribly nauseas feeling for the dwarves. The dwarves seemed somewhat immune to my nausea inducing gas though. Maybe because the lot of them were drunkards. That¡¯s a little racist though. I kept pumping the fumes into the room though. The fumes were slowly effecting me as well. No doubt I was effected less than the dwarves, but since it seemed like they had a resistance to it, that wasn¡¯t great news. After pumping in enough fumes for the dwarves to show signs, I began step two. I hollowed out a long metal tunnel. I made the metal in front of me fill in the hole behind me. The dwarves that were going to meet me were hacking and coughing horribly back in the kitchen. I made it back to the secret tunnel near the tree. As I traversed the tunnel, I released my disguise. I quickly created another. I became a Dark Elf. I had long black hair, and deep red eyes. I was slightly shorter than my Ancient Elf build. I renamed myself DarkDealer. I called out Sol, Tear, and Eli. They began talking to each other rapidly. It was mostly just Sol doing the talking though. The other two just mainly listened. While Sol was talking, I noticed a metal mana trace ahead of us in the tunnels. When I got close I saw a metal golem waiting in the tunnel. I decided to get rid of it as quickly as possible. That way I could go about exploring the city. As I absorbed the entire amount of mana the golem contained, I noticed something. As I continued to absorb mana from the ¡®core¡¯, I began to cause the golem to break apart. The metal mana in the golem seemed to be deconstructing as I went. The golem disappeared when the metal mana in its body reached zero. That actually gave me a good idea. Living things cannot live without certain things. Take away social interactions, humans become lonely. Take away mental fortitude, humans become stupid. Take away water, humans become dust. I smirked as I thought of a nice battle plan. I would defiantly be implementing that in the future. Moving earth and metal mana actually moved the earth and metal. So rationally speaking, if I could just take out the water from something, it would dry up and die. That means that when I use my own metal mana, I am technically creating matter for a short time?
For discovering a secret of magical manipulation, you have gained 5 intelligence.
Doesn¡¯t that also mean that the gods can technically create an infinite amount of matter?
For discovering a secret of magical manipulation, you have gained 5 intelligence.
Wow ten points of int from two conclusions. That hasn¡¯t happened in a while. I was impressed with my own ability to gain int. Seeing the int increases reminded me that I had another notification I had yet to view.
By casting two relatively powerful debuffs on a target, you have created the Adept debuff spell: Petrification (Minor).
Petrification (Minor) The target loses some movement speed, and will find it harder to move. The target suffers a 25% reduction in both categories. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
Oh! Nice! I guess that means if I simultaneously cast two powerful spells I can learn better ones. Why is it only minor though? Definitely finding a way to upgrade it. I mean come on! A full petrification spell? It definitely seemed that my magical prowess had been growing more quickly since I took the new class. It just made me wonder how powerful the final step in the class rank was. I got out of the tunnel without any further incidents. I called for Heather and Lily once I left. While they came to my location on the cities mini-map, I looked around. Since I technically looked like a different person I was going to check out if I could get a metal fairy. When Heather got here though, I was going to try my new crystal out on her. If she was destined to die anyway, I would evolve the shit out of her. It would be a good way to experiment. That way I could successfully evolve pets later. I hadn¡¯t seen any, but that was probable because dwarves following the metal god would be more melee inclined. Finding the temple was harder than finding the earth one. All of the largest building seemed to be geared towards weapons or armor. Metal dwarves seemed to be against even talking to anyone outside of other dwarves that worshipped the metal god. I wandered around until I found a place that looked very similar to a factory. It was a short, long building. The only thing it seemed to be lacking was billowing dark smoke from the non-existent chimneys. There were many opening that seemed to double as windows. The building was only about forty feet high, it was *ahem* dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. The reason I found the damn building was I finally thought to show one of the dwarves the blessing the metal god had given me. He excitedly told me the way after that. I walked into the building. It was a buzz with dwarves barking orders at other dwarves. There were many smithies, and about a third of the people being barked at had odd names. MetalMaster6, and DwarvenWarrior756 were the types of common names. There were also a high number of golems, and what seemed to be dwarven guards. The players seemed to be practicing both swordsmanship, and smithing in the area. I still didn¡¯t see any metal fairies. There was a long waiting line on the inside of the building. I asked one of the dwarves in line, and she told me that the line was to see the ¡®priests¡¯. She was a player, so I thought she would help me. Apparently the priests were actually just dwarves that taught the basics to others. There were different types of priests, which each taught different things. Some might teach smithing, while others would teach swordsmanship. You had to learn from all of them to be considered one of the ranks of Metal Dwarves. She pointed to a much smaller line, one without any dwarves. It was only six people long, but seemed to be moving much slower than this line. She told me, ¡°That¡¯s the line for non-dwarves. Good luck though. They never get in. HA!¡± she barked a laugh at me. ¡°Racists exist everywhere huh?¡± I muttered to myself. She seemed to hear me. In an overly loud voice she shouted. ¡°WE HAVE A DEFILER!¡± She smirked at me after she said that. Several metal golems, and dwarves, ran at me. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have said that.¡± She smirked at me. The guards and golems looked like they would attack me without even giving me a chance to defend myself. I took out my staff. If I opened it, I might be associated with the assassin. If I was I could make a rumor about a secret group of assassins not related to the assassin¡¯s guild. I threw myself using wind magic, just as a sword passed where I was. I quickly absorbed all of the mana in one of the golems, causing the guards to blanch. Once they saw their golem become metal flakes, they renewed their attacks. Many of the surrounding dwarves decided now was a good time to join in on attacking me. After all, they had numbers and higher levels. I jumped high into the air. Just before I hit the ceiling of the building, I stopped myself. Using my boots, I stayed there. I expected to be assaulted by arrows, or magic, but all of the dwarves simply stood there. The metal golems seemed to try to attack me, but they could not reach. I still wanted the metal fairy, so I decided to just wait there. I did start absorbing metal mana from the golems though. They were slowly disappearing. The dwarves seemed to notice this, and started clamoring. One of the dwarves threw its axe at me. Unfortunately I caught the axe. I created a ball of wind around it, and began to push at the metal mana within the axe. Once I caught it, I slowly stated eating it. Well I made it look like I was eating it. I took a ¡®bite¡¯ out of the axe by bringing it to my mouth, and then absorbing a small amount of mana from it. I acted like I was chewing of course. The dwarves seemed shocked that I could eat the thing. After I got past the bulk of the axe, I noticed a small mana vein flowing through the hilt. I examined the axe to see what was up.
Axe of Flames
Material QualityUncommonWork QualityAdept
Enchantment QualityAdept
Damage200-250 (Plus 10 Fire Damage)Durability200/200
This weapon was made by an adept craftsman. This weapon gains plus 25 minimum damage and plus 25 maximum damage. This weapon gains 25 durability. This weapon was enchanted by an adept enchanter. This Axe has had its fire damage increase by 100%. This Axe has a minimum strength requirement of 75 to wield. This weapon has a natural 25% armor penetration. This axe has been partially disassembled. The displayed stats will be lowered while in combat.
Wow, well that¡¯s nice. I started absorbing the fire mana as well as the metal mana inside the weapon. The process was tricky at this part. I had to manually separate the intertwined fire and metal mana. The two types kept trying to fuse back together. After a few more moments I destroyed the entire thing. I also learned 5% of Battle Axe Breakdown. So that was nice. After the axe was gone I started experimenting on the golems. I wanted to see what all I could do with my new and cool class. The dwarves below me were annoyingly barking at me, so I used my super-secret skill, that I had honed from Sol. I ignored them. I concentrated on one of the metal golems. I forced the metal in its body to move. It was tricky to imagine, thus tricky to implement. Still, I knew I could do it. After a few dozen tries I did it! I made the metal golem¡¯s arm move slightly. Basically, just moving the mana didn¡¯t work. I had to imagine that the physical arm of the golem was using the mana as a sort of post. It was like causing a flag to move by shaking the flagpole. It sounds a lot easier than it was to figure out. Still with the new knowledge I began causing the golem to walk to the dwarf that threw its axe at me. The dwarf was staring up, so didn¡¯t notice. I made the golem pick the dwarf up, though clumsily, and throw him out of one of the wall openings. One of the guards barked an order at it. It started to resist my mana. Every time the dwarf barked an order, the golem tried to obey. I was fighting against it, until I realized something. If I figure out how the golems distinguish who their masters are¡­ I watched the flow of mana within the core of the golem as the guard gave another order. I suspected that the core was responsible for following the orders. I was right. When the guard stated the order, the core fluctuate in a weird metal mana pattern. After the fluctuation, the core sent a signal along the legs and arms of the golem. I resisted again, this time using most of my concentration to learn the pattern. After only three more orders I felt I could replicate the mana signature. I began speaking and watching the air around me. After another minute, I made my voice carry using wind mana, after I let my mana regen of course. I shouted the order: ¡°Golem! listen only to me!¡± I then sent the metal signal to all of the golems I could. Three of the signals were accepted by different golems. I was glad to note that the fluctuation seemed to be identical to all of the golems. Instantly the wind around them began to shout. ¡°Golem! Listen only to me!¡± My second hypothesis was correct! I thought that if I could replicate the signature to manipulate the golems, I could also replicate my own voice. The ¡®Voice throwing¡¯, heh, cost a lost of mana though. I frowned as I watched my mana go almost to zero. I had to stop it before my shoes made me fall. The golems were rejecting the orders of the dwarves though. I thought about causing an uprising in the dwarven city, but decided it would be too much of a hassle. I needed to be under good relations with the dwarves if I wanted my city to prosper. Trade relations were key. If I held a city that hated me, then I would lose a lot of money. If I had ties to a city that felt complete awe and fear towards me, then I would be in business. As I let my mana regen, I continued to force more golems to obey me. Soon the guards that controlled the golems started forcing their golems out of the building. I made my golems stop them. An open brawl almost broke out, but I had already started implementing a good plan. As my golems waged a mini war on the other golems, I began taking control of the other side¡¯s golems. Their side was losing forces, while mine was gaining them. After about ten intense minutes of fighting, I had the entire assembly¡¯s metal golems under control. Several weapons were thrown at me, but I managed to deflect all of them. My swords, coupled with inspect, hit every weapon away from me. The number of weapons wasn¡¯t that high to begin with. My new micro army looked very shiny. I had them collect all of the weapons in the room. I could quite possibly sell the loot for a very high price. After all, I wanted to make some sort of money from this whole venture. I made sure to only collect weapons from those that attacked me, basically anyone with a drawn weapon. If I specifically noticed they had not been resisting, I left them their weapons. As soon as the golems collected the weapons, they were transferred to my inventory. The massive amount of weight created by all the weapons increased the mana drain from the shoes. I had to meditate to keep the supply of mana up high enough. The only ¡®accident¡¯ was the girl that caused all of this. I had the golems throw her outside, where I promptly made her suffocate, by creating a small orb of water around her head. For some reason my name didn¡¯t become red from the killing. Maybe the game considered the fight to be on going because of the occasional weapon toss. Either way I was spared from having it known that I was a PKer. As my golems were collecting the weapons from freighted dwarves, a man in billowing robes came out. He saw me floating in the air, and noticed the golems collecting weapons. He called out. ¡°ALL GOLEMS HALT!¡± The instant the words left his mouth, the golems obeyed. I noticed a different type of fluctuation come from the cores. I tried to memorize it, but it was over too quickly. I started the golems up again, but they did nothing. ¡°Return to posts!¡± Both guards and golems began shuffling away. He turned toward me, ¡°Metal Prison!¡± Metal mana began to coalesce around me. It was happening quickly, but I had always wanted to try something like this, so I was ready. Inspect also seemed eager to assist. Red lines of weakness coursed through the metal mana. As it was forming the orb, I began to drain the mana. I didn¡¯t drain the entire amount, just enough to let the orb look finished. The inside was far more hollow than the magic using dwarf though it would be. Once the orb was complete, I heard the dull roar of cheers throughout the building. They thought I was caught! Ha! I felt the orb pulling me to the ground. Before more than half a second had passed, I adopted a pose that looked like I hit the orb. I started making cracks form, the same types of cracks the blacksmith in River¡¯s Cross¡¯s anvil had. I let out a roar, as if pumping myself up. The metal broke into tiny shards. The shards began crumbling into even tinier pieces. I made it seem like I was huffing from the exertion. The dwarves collectively gasped. I smiled as I looked around triumphantly. I scoffed as the assembly as I raised myself back towards the ceiling. ¡°Ha! You thought that was enough to beat me!?¡± I heard a ping. It was the same ping as when a player messaged you.
Hi! My name is MegaLloyd! I am the player that just tried to put you into the orb. If you play along I won¡¯t say anything about the weapons you took.
Another orb started forming. I sighed. This guy obviously had a lot of mana. I decided to play along for now. Only because I saw that he was 80% hopeful, and 10% purely honest. If he tried any tricks I could always over-power him later. I read my blinking notifications while I was pulled towards him.
For taking control of a metal Golem from its master using mana, you have created the spell: Assume Control.
Assume Control You can take control of other¡¯s fairies if your affinity of that type is higher than that person. You will maintain control of this fairy until the spell is disrupted. This spell has a one time activation cost, the effects remain constant. The base spell cost for this spell varies depending on your affinity with the mana type of that fairy, and the opponent¡¯s affinity with the mana type of that fairy. Minimum cost is 25 mana.
Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1800Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence180
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame860
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 4 Exp 60%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 48: Threats and Upgrades Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice messed around with his magical abilities, and learned quite a bit. He managed to create several buffs and debuffs. He went to get a metal fairy summoned, then learned how to steal other people¡¯s fairies. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Shout out to Sargon for donating! You¡¯ve bought my love. Also the winner has been chosen! The Soul Musician will be written into the story after the current mini arc. I sat in the orb for a few minutes. It wasn¡¯t a rough ride, but it was annoying to have to stay in that orb for so long. After the few minutes were over, I was roughly put on the ground. The orb disintegrated around me, revealing a dimly lit metal chamber. The only two people in the room were MegaLloyd and me. I wasn¡¯t tied up or anything, but the oppressive atmosphere was enough to make me stand still. MegaLloyd turned to me. I could clearly see his name now. It wasn¡¯t MegaLloyd at all. It was ShortDwarf. I don¡¯t know how the little guy managed to fool my sense motive, but I was not about to let this over powered piece of shit fuck with me. I cocked my head a little. ¡°So¡­ Where is LastingBeauty?¡± SD¡¯s eyes went wide as I asked that. I smiled my most charming smile. I knew that SD was a little bit arrogant, and had a bad temper. Those were the only two traits I knew coming into this. While smiling, I continued. ¡°You managed to fool me about your personality, but I have a skill that allows me to see past disguises. The only reason I came with you was that I saw your name. I know for a fact that you could crush me like a bug, so why chance it?¡± I shrugged. Realizing that LB was probably the one that disguised him, I quickly scanned the room for mana signatures. I found three. One was me, another was ShortDwarf. In the far corner of the room was another. I nodded in the last mana signature¡¯s location. ¡°I assume the person over there is LastingBeauty?¡± ShortDwarf stared at me for a long moment. His head was slightly tilted, as if he were examining cattle to buy. He nodded. ¡°Yeah, you can come out Beut.¡± LB walked past me, and stood by his side. She gave me a scornful look. Hey! I can¡¯t help it that I can see past most of your shitty disguising skills! I was a little offended at having her so angry at me, but it was whatever. ShortDwarf coughed, before continuing. ¡°Well. I heard there was a group of assassins sent to kill off Lord Labin. Seeing as he was mine foster uncle, I decided to squash them. But what do I find when I use my daily teleport to get here? The assassins already turned on Balin for stiffing them on the check!¡± He smiled. I waited a moment before talking. I was nervous about interrupting him. Being in a room with the two most powerful players in the game will do that to a person. At this point I discarded the emotional read out I received. LB however was still an option. She had a ¡®suspects lie¡¯ emotion. ¡°Well, I might have lied a bit to the fake Labin¡¯s guards. I wasn¡¯t actually one of the assassins. I just took his place. I actually got him killed by the earth priests. Heh.¡± My heart was beating about a million miles a second. SD looked at me, then began whispering to LB. After a few moments he turned back to me. ¡°Say I accept that story. What were you doing in the temple of the metal god?¡± I gave him a slightly quizzical look. ¡°I just wanted a metal golem summoned for me. After all, the metal god is the best in turns of offensive power.¡± SD seemed to buy this. He nodded. ¡°Alright, but why did you kill the female dwarf player? She hadn¡¯t attacked you. It seemed as though you only took weapons from, or attacked, those that attacked you.¡± I shrugged. ¡°She was the one that got the guards to attack me. She deserved some sort of punishment.¡± SD thought for a moment. ¡°Alright. I have a choice to make. I can either let you go, or kill you. Convince me why I should let you go.¡± While he was saying this he was also unsheathing his battle axe. My brain was going through every possible thing I could tell him, but for some reason I said, ¡°I could be your pack mule¡­¡± I would have face palmed if I didn¡¯t think it would have gotten me killed. The entire scenario was nerve racking as hell. Kretchof took that exact moment to send me a message. I didn¡¯t read it, I just sent him some reply that seemed to fit. SD was discussing something with LastingBeauty. After a few minutes of thinking they were going to attack me, SD finally turned toward me. ¡°Pack Mule isn¡¯t enough. Sorry bud. You can keep the weapons you stole, but you¡¯ve gotta die.¡± ¡°WAIT!¡± He had already raised his axe, and prepared to attack. He rolled his eyes at me. ¡°I can also buff you!¡± He licked his nasty little dwarf lips. He raised an eyebrow, so I continued. ¡°I have a few buffs I can do that might make you or LastingBeauty a bit stronger.¡± He sent a look to LB. They both spoke again for a moment. ¡°Alright. Show us and we will decide whether it¡¯s good enough to let you live. You better be fast about it though.¡± I used the minor petrification on Lasting, but instead of darkness I used light. I was hoping that I would give some cool bonus for increased battle potential.
Movement Enhancer (Minor) The target gains some movement speed, and will find it easier to move. The target gains a 50% bonus in both categories. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
It took a total of 805 to permanently enchant her to have that effect. She tested out her enhancements. She seemed to move much more fluidly, and much faster. She began nodding and speaking frantically to Shorty. ShortDwarf spoke. ¡°Alright, you can buff her. Great. What can you do for me?¡± I held up a finger as I disabled the buff. ¡°I¡¯ll need a moment to get my mana back.¡± I briefly explained my permanency skill while we waited. ¡°I can keep the buff up as long as I¡¯m within distance. My maximum mana is decreased while the buff is active though. It won¡¯t really matter since a 25% buff to either of you two is worth more than me.¡± I meditated to regen mana better. While I was doing that I mentally went over my buff/debuff list. I decided on Defensive, and Hp buff. Defensive increased the general armor, whatever that was, and Hp buff increased maximum hp. I cast five of each on myself, then got a notice.
Damage Immunity (Minor) The target gains immunity to damage. The target gains a bonus 50% armor rating. The target also gets a total of 25% hp bonus. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
Holy fuck! If that¡¯s minor what¡¯s major!? I again regenerated my mana, and then cast the new buff on SD. He seemed to like it a lot. He liked it so much so, that he cut himself with a dagger just to see the effects. The wound wasn¡¯t deep, and it partially healed up. I healed him for the rest. It seemed as though he was fairly pleased at the buff he got. ¡°So you can keep this buff going forever?¡± I nodded. ¡°As long as I¡¯m within distance, and not dead. If I¡¯m dead it goes away. I also just got enough to put the buffs on two people at once.¡± I gave him my meekest smile. I had to up-play his ego as much as possible. Even with my new found powers, I knew I didn¡¯t stand a chance against SD. I had to make him believe could kill me without a second thought, which he probably could. Although¡­ I used the debuff version of the spell, obviously aiming at the dwarf.
Damage Multiplier (Minor) The target becomes weak to damage. The target loses 25% armor rating. The target loses 12.5% maximum hp while this debuff is active. This duration of this spell is (10 + (dark affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
As I thought it only decreased the original buff by half, but it still proved a point. The debuffs all worked at half power for some reason. I couldn¡¯t completely cancel out the buff with just one debuff. To fully cancel it I would need another 600 mana or so. That would upgrade my permanency skill pretty fast. Still, I could level the skill up by just buffing the two of these fools. Actually this might work out. I can help them out until I grow a few levels. Twelve levels would be perfect. I can just betray them when we are in a desperate situation, and run away. Or better yet, wait until we almost kill a boss and take the loot for myself. ShortDwarf had an unusually high amount of enchanted gear. I had never gotten any I couldn¡¯t help but wonder why. While thinking about it my mind wondered to my luck stat. I decided to ask, ¡°So Master ShortDwarf, could you tell me how you obtained such amazing items?¡± He unintentionally took an arrogant pose. ¡°You wanna know? Well I¡¯ll tell you!¡± He smiled at me, much like someone explaining they went to Disney land to a child. ¡°I have conquered many dungeons. The bosses of those dungeons drop gear based on your luck stat. My luck is at 75! HAHAHA!¡± I did my best to look amazed at this. That explained why I never got any good equipment from anything. I had to hold back a sigh as I realized the penalty Ancestor had given me for becoming an Ancient Elf. ¡­ Wait a minute! Ancestor came to me when I was new to the race! What if¡­ I opened my Racial Menu.
Current amount of True Elf Players: 2. Because you were the first True Elf Player, you are the Racial Leader of all True Elves. You will remain the Racial Leader of all True Elves until such a time as a True Elf bests you in combat. Bonuses from being the Racial Leader of the True Elves:
Gold per day: 0
Racial Army Size: 2
Global Influence: 0 (1000 if you reveal a True Elf is Mar¡¯s Chosen)
Racial Powers Unlocked: 0
Racial Powers: None
Oh I was kind of sad to figure out Ancestor had just left me for another. I had a feeling that this might come to bite me in the ass. I had to find the other elf, and either kill it or enslave it. That part about the racial powers looked promising though. Shorty was saying something to me. ¡°ay to get ready. So meet us at the Metal God¡¯s Temple tomorrow around this time.¡± I nodded happily. ¡°I will talk to the priests to get you a Metal Golem summoned. And if you don¡¯t prove to be useful I will kill you.¡± He glared at me as he said this. I wanted to steal LB away from him, but she seemed to like him for whatever reason. I already had too many people to take care of. I didn¡¯t want to add another. Shorty allowed me to leave, so I contacted Heather. I sent her a message, ¡®Hey come find me¡­¡¯ I gave her my approximate location. I found a secluded spot and waited for her. While I was there I read over some of the update information I had previously ignored. There were some interesting bits. They made my plan a lot easier. Heather came running at me, covered in blood. Lily followed her, obviously out of breath. She had a blood splatter on her face, and looked somewhat traumatized. I knitted my brows, confused. ¡°What happened!?¡± My eyes quickly shifted between Lily and Heather. If they got me a bad rep in this city, I¡¯d kill them both. EDI would never know. Heather chose to explain it. ¡°A couple of dwarves tried to force Lily to... Anyway I made sure to,¡± she gave a bone chilling smile, ¡°show them the error of their ways.¡± She licked her lips. Damn she was crazy. I understood what they might have tried to do, but Heather scared me as always. ¡°Well good job then. Those fucks deserved it.¡± If someone tried to fuck with my property, they deserved to be attacked by Heather. ¡°So did you get any loot from them?¡± Heather gave me a weird look. ¡°No, they didn¡¯t drop anything.¡± I cursed under my breath. I could have used a surplus of good items. ¡°Alright girls, I am going to have to go away for a while. Heather I want you to watch Lily for me.¡± Heather cautiously nodded. ¡°Lily, I am going to send you to my save point with Heather. Ask for Evan the blacksmith. He should be able to watch over you while I¡¯m gone. When I¡¯m done here I will go back there.¡± Lily looked as though she was about to say something, but I continued. ¡°Heather I was to try an experiment. I¡¯ll need your help.¡± She nodded, not like she had a choice. ¡°I¡¯ll be sending you ahead Lily. Take these and give them to Evan.¡± I dumped some of the weapons I got in her inventory. An interesting bit of the Save Point feature was that I could send pets or legal children to them, as long as I was close to them. I sent Lily to . A bright blue light engulfed her, and she was gone. ¡°Alright Heather let¡¯s do this.¡± Heather¡¯s POV: It hurts! It hurts! I cried out in my mind. I couldn¡¯t even move any of my muscles enough to cry out for real. I¡¯d kill him for this. I felt my entire body being ripped apart. Every fleck of skin, every piece of fur, every drop of blood, all of it was being tore apart and put back together. Over and over it went. I got lost in the eternal pain. My mind wandered into nothingness, only to be brought back by the excruciating pain. I couldn¡¯t breathe. I couldn¡¯t move. I couldn¡¯t even think. Everything that was me was being stripped away. Replaced by some unknown force. Let¡¯s go back a bit. Lily was carrying me on her shoulder. I wasn¡¯t even as big as her entire shoulder, so it was ok. Lily and I were discussing the city while we walked through it. Lily was a mostly quite girl, but I still liked her. She was cute, and she was always nice to me. ¡°So,¡± I asked her, ¡°What do you think of the dwarves city? I¡¯ve never been here myself.¡± Lily mumbled an answer that I had to strain to hear. ¡°It¡¯s nice. I like River¡¯s Cross better though.¡± ¡°Me too. There are not enough wolves here. I want to hunt something. The only thing here is dwarves though.¡± We talked about meaningless things for a while. After wandering for an unknown amount of time I got a notice from Voice. It said to meet him. Of course he didn¡¯t give me his location, but he never made things easy on me. I had stopped hating him as much recently. I learned something eye opening in one of my conversations with EDI. The topic was: Is it bad to do something good for a bad reason? The discussion went on for hours as Voice was in his own world. The answer we finally agreed on was simple. Doing good is never bad. Although using the consequences of the good action for bad is bad. If you help someone who is starving, they won¡¯t care if it¡¯s to get famous. They will just be happy they can eat. Voice was as two faced as a person could get, but he did mostly do good things. So no matter what the reason was, until he used the result for evil, he was good. I directed Lily to where Voice was. When we reached there we were assaulted by several dwarves. Two of them even tried to take advantage of Lily! I easily dodged the attacks of the dwarves, and sucked enough blood to last me several days. When Lily was being held down I went blind with rage. Lily was my only friend since Rabs and Troy left. EDI was nice, but she was only here for Voice. Lily always seemed to be watching Voice, but for a totally different reason. Sometimes she would make this face. She seemed to inherently hate him. At first I agreed with her, but then I noticed times when she genuinely wanted his approval. It didn¡¯t make any sense to me. I tore into the dwarves holding Lily down. She seemed to know what they were about to do to her, even though she couldn¡¯t speak their language. Not that I could either. I ate through both of their stomachs in an instant. I thoroughly drained both of any blood, then consumed their bodies. Sadly Lily got some blood on her while I tore through them the first time. She looked away as I ate them though. When I got to Voice I tried explaining the situation, but he only cared for the loot! I couldn¡¯t believe him. He told us he was sending us back to Rand. I was glad I could hunt wolves again, but I was suspicious of why he would do that. After he sent Lily away, he told me what he was about to do. He didn¡¯t even give me enough time to tell him my worries about it. I decided to leave him as soon as he came to pick Lily up from Rand. I no longer cared for being his pet. Good food wasn¡¯t worth all of the pain and suffering he thought he could put me through. Voice¡¯s POV: I explained to Heather that I was going to evolve her using my Mana Crystal. I used it on Heather, and saw several notices.
Use Evolution Crystal on which pet?
I chose Heather from a drop down list that had only her name.
What? Heather is evolving! Say B to cancel.
Heather started morphing. She seemed to be oscillating between two different bodies.
Heather is a Vampire Rabbit. The Evolution Tree for Vampire Rabbits has been unlocked!
Heather has a powerful disease! The disease has been incorporated into Heather¡¯s evolution.
Heather¡¯s fur started melting, her entire body soon followed. A red goop fell to the floor. Heather looked like a red blob. The blob seemed to be perfectly symmetrical, but could freely move the liquid it was made of. When the process was over I received a notice.
Congratulations! Your Heather has evolved into a Blood Slime!
Slimes have a unique Racial Ability to absorb anything for nutrients. Slimes have the Racial Trait: Maximized Regeneration. A Slime will continue to regenerate until it is physically impossible to do so. Blood Slime¡¯s have a unique Racial Ability to harness one stat of a creature whose blood it has absorbed. The effect will be at 10%, but be permanent until the Blood Slime absorbs a better version. One Blood Slime Racial Ability has been locked. Heather must reach level 100 to unlock the ability.
I gaped at the notice. Whatever ability Heather had locked would be OP as fuck. There was no way I could allow her to think of leaving me. I would have to be nicer to her from now on. I would make her want to stay with me more than want to live. I pet the weird red blob, ¡°I want you to make sure to protect Lily, got it?¡± The blob responded by constricting on my hand slightly. I guess that was a yes. I sent Heather through to Rand. I made sure to dump the rest of my loot in her inventory after making sure she could still hold items. After that, I began plotting my escape given various scenarios. The worse case would be if the two fuckheads found out who I was, and betrayed me. I had to have some sort of counter measure against that. They didn¡¯t know that I had other types of fairies yet. If they did they would have made mention of it. I decided to go get the metal golem fairy. At the very least, it could help me understand the inner-workings of metal mana a bit better. Before I did that I read through the books my compendium had. Now that I could read the titles of the books I could tell if I made the right choice in choosing them. Two books caught my attention right off the bat. ¡®Learning to Learn¡¯, and ¡®Strengths and Weaknesses of Dragons¡¯. I decided to spend my time speed-reading the books to help the process along. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Learning to Learn was quite interesting. It detailed how many warriors, and thus dwarves, were too confined in their way of thinking. It gave several mental exercises that one could do to help this. I noted them for future reference. Strengths and Weaknesses of Dragons was exactly as the name implies. It detailed several known abilities of various dragons. I was amazed by the sheer amount of different races of dragons. There were as many types of dragons as there were playable races and sub-races. It wouldn¡¯t have been a stretch to say that book alone took several lives to make. After reading those books in only an hour total, I went on to read the rest. The books I got were: Arms and Armors of Ysga; Locations of Minerals and Gems; Qualities of Minerals and Gems; Learning to Learn, Philosophy of Ysga; Dwarven Smithing and Masonry; Mana Lost to Dwarves; Strengths and Weaknesses of Dragons; Engineering for Beginners; and A Miner Task. Arms and Armors gave a detailed description of the most common weapons and armor made by dwarves. Mostly it was axes and heavy armor, but there were some swords thrown in. It also gave a simplistic recipe for making each. I learned how to make an iron war axe, an iron battle axe, an iron throwing axe, a dwarven battle axe, an iron long sword, an iron two handed sword, and dwarven plate armor. The next two books just gave information about what types of caves different ores and gems would be found, and ranked them according to rarity and worth. Dwarven Smithing and Masonry was a brief history of how dwarves ¡®invented¡¯ smithing and masonry. Mana Lost to Dwarves detailed how dwarves actually lost the ability to use most magic. Apparently it had something to do with being around Mana Crystals when the dwarven race was so young. They eventually moved away from the Mana Crystals, but the damage was done. So it¡¯s kind of like a hereditary type of cancer? I wonder if light mana could fix it?
You have been given a quest. Success: Restoring the ability to use magic to the dwarves. Difficulty: ??? Failure: N/A. Reward: None, no one will believe you are the one that returned magic to the dwarves. The gods seen no reason one way or the other on why dwarves need magic now. Success results in the Dwarves becoming able to use magic. Do you accept? You can accept this quest later.
¡°No.¡± Seriously? No reward? I might gain some cool stuff along the way, but there is no freaking way I¡¯m making dwarves more powerful. Not unless I gained something from it. It sounded like way too much of a hassle. Since my luck was so low I had 0 chance of getting cool items unless I killed the first thing in a new dungeon. It just wasn¡¯t worth all of the work I¡¯d have to put into it. Engineering for Beginners showed me basic mathematic skills that I already had. It showed what dimensions something would have to be to actually work. It was interesting, but not something I couldn¡¯t figure out on my own. A Miner Task was a play on words. It asked me to bring a load of iron ore to one of the metal smiths in the city, and I would receive a reward.
You have been given a quest. Success: Bringing at least 25 pounds of iron ore to Igza. Difficulty: Low Failure: N/A. Reward: Money appropriate to the amount of ore you brought, and a chain quest. Success results in Igza becoming more friendly towards you. Do you accept?
That one wasn¡¯t too hard. But I thought it was weird that books gave quests like this. ¡°Sure.¡± After accepting the quest I decided to go improve my white space inside the DIVE pod. After reading the entire batch of books, my intelligence had increased by 10 points. I only needed another 10 in order to upgrade my Mana Affinity skill. Once I got that ranked up, I could increase the rank of my Magical Mastery. I exited DIVE and arrived in the white space. I had quite a bit of DI bills stacked up. I guess people really liked my videos or something. I opened the menu, and checked out what I could do to the general area. After about five minutes of scrolling through various menus, I came across a tab that said ¡®Themes¡¯. After clicking on it a box appeared stating several types of self-explanatory themes. The list was fairly long, and even included a brief description of each theme. When I saw Fantasy DIVE Theme I clicked on it.
This theme adjusts all buildings to resemble what they might be in the fantasy game DIVE. All purchases made here do not affect the game. DI bills are still used in this area. Other players will spend DI bills here, not DIVE money.
Other players? Does that mean I can actually already invite others here? ¡°Help: Invite Player.¡±
Invites to your DI room can be sent from your registered home. Invites can only be sent if your DI room is not set to public. (It is set to private by default). You can send an all-inclusive invite to all players for 1000 DI bills. Players can only join your room once per invite. Players will be notified about the invite when they log into the DIVE pod.
No one else had sent an all-inclusive invite yet. I decided to be the first. I had literally hundreds of millions of DI bills at this point. I wished I could convert this money back to real cash. Too bad I couldn¡¯t do that. I sent the invite, and chose the theme of Fantasy DIVE.
You are the first person to change the theme of their DIVE pod. You are allowed to change any part of your DIVE room to any theme (others must only have one theme).
I noticed something as I looked around. My inspect skill became active! I was getting info on everything around me. This was obviously because I chose the theme. I was definitely going to capitalize on this. If skills carried over to this side of DIVE, then they might go to DIVE from here. As I thought about the endless possibilities, I looked at all the things I could do to my little area. My mall changed into a castle looking structure. It was a very long, and short, castle though. Still, the inside was what mattered. The shops had become stands, and the dojos looked like they were straight out of DIVE. I added in a ton of DIVE weapons to each dojo. I had them all specialize in certain ones though. One dojo was only for armor, and one taught ranged combat. The food court turned into a large town square like area. The menus reflected what could be found in DIVE. I could have added my creations to the menu, but decided against it. I did spend a little extra to get the special pots and pans I designed. It improved the quality and taste of the food by a nice bit. I added in a tailoring shop, an alchemists shop, and so on. I want every skill to be trainable here. Of course I put a price tag on every part of it. It might be easier to train skills in my world, but it would also be more expensive. I hired out several NPCs to help man my stands. They each only cost a few thousand DI bills, but had to be maintained. In order to do this I added in a large farm area about a mile away from the mall. I added in a paved brick road to help get there. I added in a forest outside of the castle. It was fairly large, and I filled it with demon monsters. That cost me a million by itself. Still, the forest could produce food, and alchemy ingredients. It could even be used to level up battle related skills. That is if the skills gained here were sent into the actual game. If they weren¡¯t it was no big deal. People could still use the forest to get used to the general idea of the game. The forest was teeming with nature mana. I could see the general shape and location of most nearby plants just by being near the forest. I also added a few things that would help the gatherers. Including, but not limited to, a mine, a lumber mill, a quarry, etc. I wanted the people here to be forced to gather their own goods, or pay for mine. If they had no choice but to pay, then they might be less willing to come. I added in more houses that were within the theme boundary. They became villages that seemed to help support the merchants in my castle. The giant farm had its own small village. I moved all of the houses I bought into the theme boundaries. All of them except mine, the one with the computer and tv and stuff. Electricity didn¡¯t exist in DIVE, so I didn¡¯t want a useless object. I also made my house inaccessible to any but me. The end result was interesting. My new city surrounded a large merchant centered castle. The city was surrounded by forest on all sides, except for the road to the farm. On the way to the farm were various things gatherers could use to level up their skills. I had only spent about half of my total DI bills by that point. I decided to by full inventories for all of my shops. Some of the shops I made share inventories, even though they were competitors. I basically made a bank where the merchants would buy things from. The merchants would sell their goods, and buy more of them from the bank. The bank was set to automatically buy more goods as soon as the merchants bought them. I thought this would help simulate an actual economy. Whether it would or not¡­ well that was to be seen. After spending 85% of my total money I didn¡¯t know what to do. I still had a few million DI bills left over. I expanded the forest a bit, and added more villages. Once I got to 10% remaining I stopped. I might have a use for the 20 million DI bills. I decided to see what was happening on the net. Instead of leaving the pod, I just went to the house I owned within it. I looked online as how popular my videos where. I got a few hundred thousand hits total, but that wasn¡¯t enough to explain my massive amount of DI bills. I angrily flicked through the help menu again. I was getting a bit agitated from looking at it so much. After a moment I found the likely culprit of my massive amount of money.
DI bills can be acquired in several ways. 1) You can buy 10 DI bills for 1 USD. 2) DI bills can be awarded for having popular DIVE videos on our site (Only approved videos will be shown). 3) If a player finds a glitch within the game, they will be compensated once it is patched. 4) If the player has their character directly nerfed because of a patch, they will be compensated. 5) If a player assists the core program of DIVE in weeding out unfairness in DIVE they will be awarded DI bills, see 3 and 4.
Well that explains it. I¡¯ve been nerfed every few fucking seconds! I decided to see if the character data really did get changed by doing things here. I tried pulling up the character menu. It worked. Still doubting it, I began to try purifying my metal mana. It was already at 1% purity just from being in the metal part of the city for a while. I watched as my purity level quickly reached 5%. I blanched. Wait wait wait. I can access internet here. Does that mean I can use outside information!? I decided to give it a go. The system told me it would give me a warning before taking action against me. I looked up some general info on the temple I was going to get my golem at. Even though you couldn¡¯t act on the information, it was still being posted. I don¡¯t know why anyone would bother though. I guess some people thought it would be cool to know about places or people they would never get to see. Still, it gave me the opportunity to check out my theory. I learned that a special brew of dwarven ale was sold at a specific tavern. If I went there with the intentions of buying that brew it should tell me not to. After I looked up the information, I bought lessons from the tailoring merchant. I was a little upset that it also cost me money to learn, but I understood that it was for the best. Otherwise this little idea of mine would get patched instantly. Learning to tailor only took about an hour. The only thing I learned to make was a simple coin pouch, but I received a recipe for a simple cloth vest. Right before I logged back into DIVE I saw a notice. It said something about training, so I just said yes to it. I was excited to see if I would still have my skill, and if I could use my illicit info. I logged back into DIVE and started heading towards the tavern. I didn¡¯t get any notice. I went in and ordered my specific ale. I still didn¡¯t get any notice! I was way too excited to hold back my roar of joy, which netted me quite a few looks from the surrounding dwarves. I didn¡¯t care though. With my newfound source of information, I could do anything I wanted! Although it was doubtful that I would get any hints on quests. I could still find general information easily. This was, easily, the single greatest weapon I could ask for. With outside knowledge I would have a HUGE advantage over others. I decided to go to the temple to get my golem summoned. Of course I went back to my DIVE room first. I looked up all of the, almost non-existent, info on that particular temple. Turns out, the guy in charge of actually summoning for non-dwarves was obsessed with magic. Most people that summoned metal golems were dwarven magic fighters. They only used their limited magic to boost attacks. He would basically flip his shit if he saw someone use magic other than self-buffs or attack magic. I also looked into the prices of stores in the area. I found that seeds were insanely expensive here. Once I got back into the game, I disabled my disguise. I registered it first though. I adopted my human disguise instead. People would associate me with the Chosen of Mar if they knew about me. I spent an hour looking for a shop that sold seeds. They mainly sold seeds that produced things that could be made into ale. Still all I needed was a seed. I had to travel to the earthen side of the city. I walked into the seed merchant¡¯s store. It was very similar in structure to Susan¡¯s shop. There were several shelves lining the walls. Ten feet from the door was the counter, with a door way right behind it. Beyond the doorway was a stairwell to the left. It actually looked eerily like Susan¡¯s shop. I knew for a fact that the game was more complicated than just using presets like this. It was either a huge coincidence, or it was done deliberately. I must have had a weird face, because the man behind the counter gave me a look. At least it wasn¡¯t scornful. I walked up to him and engaged him in conversation. The man was about six feet tall, with dark brown hair, and deep purple eyes. He was sporting a white lab coat, spattered in green, and a hat that seemed like you would see on an FBI agent. ¡°Hello my good sir! I heard this was the best place for non-dwarves. That seed seller that worships the metal god tried to rip me off!¡± I started examining his goods. I had an idea that might have improved my ability to buy and sell goods. While using my inspect, I focused on an object. I used barter to try to see the general price of the good. I already knew the average market price, so I imagined that as well.
Detect Price Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% By determining the price of a good or service, without aid, you have gained this skill. You can now see basic information on the price of a good or service. The price you see is between 50-150% of basic goods or services, and 10-1000% of rare goods or services. You gain an additional 10% competency bonus to Barter. To level this skill, you must examine the price of various goods or services. Levels in this skill increase the accuracy of the skill. Ranks in this skill increase the amount of information you see about a good or service that would affect its price.
I fused the skill into Inspect. The seed I was looking at suddenly had ¡®100 gold¡¯ with a line pointing to it. I continued to speak to the salesman. ¡°I would like to purchase a book on seeds, as well as at least one seed. Do you have such a book?¡± I gave him an expectant look. The man contemplated whether he should tell me or not. He eventually decided. In a deep rumbling voice he said, ¡°Fine. Come with me. If you can pass a small test, I¡¯ll give you the book for free.¡± He waved a finger. ¡°If not, ya gotta give me the gold coin it¡¯s worth, but you don¡¯t get ta book.¡± I only had 20 silver. That was only a fifth of what the con artist son of a bitch was asking. Obviously I wouldn¡¯t be able to pay either way. I smiled. ¡°Sure, but if I don¡¯t win, I want to at least see how much the book is actually worth.¡± I looked at him expectantly. He rolled his eyes, then signaled me to follow him. He turned around, and headed to the door behind him. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 1900Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.4(15.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom204Intelligence190
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame860
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature55%
Metal25%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 49: Seeds of Evolution Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice pledged to help ShortDwarf in order to save his own life. He modified Heather into a Blood Slime. He changed his DIVE room a bit, and learned he could secretly get outside information from it. He also met a peculiar man that sold seeds. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! And if you like a character that gets up in the chapter let me know! I can add them to later chapters if they are popular enough. Although I might add them later anyway! The man in the odd lab coat waited for me to follow him behind the counter. ¡°Alright you have to find my secret room. The trick is, you can only go into one room.¡± ¡°Excuse me,¡± I interrupted him. ¡°It¡¯s not nice to trick people like that.¡± He squinted at me. ¡°What do you mean? Are you calling me a liar!?¡± He started getting visibly angry. I sighed and left the store. He followed me, curious as to what I was doing. I opened up a hole in the ground beside one room of his store. I made the hole about six and a half feet, and jumped into it. I signaled for him to follow me. Obviously intrigued he did. He was a little clumsy, but he managed to lower himself down. I closed the hole off, and made a tunnel about three feet long. The tunnel opened up exactly where I thought it would. In front of me was a ladder leading downwards. After climbing down it for about twenty five seconds I arrived at the bottom. It was dark, but I gently blew on the wall behind me. All along that wall bright red flowers started to glow. They went down for about ten feet; every flower lit the one next to it. When they came across the next wall, it too lit up. The entire wall was lit in a deep, yet bright, red. It was huge. It was basically a twenty foot wide, and a hundred feet long. There were large glass orbs that held miniature ecosystems on each side. Each orb was filled to the brim with different types of plants, and had some crane looking thing extracting seeds. There were two large frosty bins on the back wall, that looked a lot like what Susan had. These tanks had pictures correlating to seeds instead of potions.
You have discovered: Dr. Falcon Andreas¡¯ Seed Breeding Lab. For being the first player to ever step foot in this secret area you are granted 125 fame. For being the only player able to use this place you will be able to modify seeds at an additional 15% potency while in Dr. Falcon Andreas¡¯ Seed Breeding Lab.
Dr. Falcon blanched. ¡°What!? There is no way you could find this place! How in the name of all the Elder Gods could you know about its existence!?¡± After a moment more of shouting, something seemed to dawn on him. People, even NPCs are so dumb sometimes. It was obvious I had been to somewhere similar beforehand, or at least studied about him a bit. It wasn¡¯t all that impressive. ¡°You cheated didn¡¯t you!? DIDN¡¯T YOU!?¡± He grabbed onto my chainmail armor, and robe. I added metal mana to my hand, and grabbed his. I made sure to add enough power to make a few bones crack. He screamed and released me. I quickly healed his hand, but not before giving him an angry look. ¡°You made a bet with me. I won it. I would like my book now.¡± I was getting sick and tired of constantly being treated as weak in this game. I had enough power to crush any number of relatively powerful people. If I had time to set up, I could even kill ShortDwarf. Falcon scowled at me. ¡°FINE! Take your fucking book! It doesn¡¯t matter anyway!¡± He smirked slightly. ¡°You can only read it in here, but when you leave I won¡¯t allow you entrance anymore!¡± He looked cocky. I hated when people underestimated me. He angrily took a book out of his inventory. My compendium was already halfway through the Complete Summoning Book. If I could stall this guy, I wouldn¡¯t need to come here again. Once my Compendium decoded something, I could use the knowledge whenever. I took the book, and my Compendium automatically consumed it. I had to think of a way to get him to let me stay here for a while. ¡°I don¡¯t like to be touched.¡± I scowled back at him. ¡°You could have just asked how I knew where your ridiculous lab was.¡± I headed for the ladder, but not fast enough to actually get there in a timely manner. ¡°WAIT!¡± He called out to me. I stifled a smile as I turned around. ¡°So how did you know then?¡± I sent a quick glance to my emotional reader. He was 75% curious, and 10% worried. ¡°Ahah. That¡¯s not how you ask.¡± I shook my head as if I was a school teacher. I needed at least ten more minutes before the summoning book was complete. ¡°Try asking a bit more nicely.¡± His face twitched for a second, before he adopted an apologetic pose. He was 60% curious, and 15% annoyed. ¡°*Ahem* Would you please tell me how you knew of my lab¡¯s location? I had it built of a secret design of a friend of mine. She disappeared many years ago. No one has heard of her since. There is no way you could have known. No one has managed to find it since.¡± I smiled. ¡°That¡¯s the proper way to ask. How about this. I¡¯ll trade you questions. You can ask me one, and I¡¯ll ask you one. I¡¯ll go first though.¡± He sighed, but nodded. ¡°What is the purpose of all this? What I mean is: what does all of this equipment do?¡± I waved my hand in a general way. His eyes started to sparkle. He cleared his throat, and adopted a more sophisticated appearance. ¡°Well, my good sir, you have asked a VERY good question. To answer it I have to tell you a bit about myself. You see I am a scientist. Although technically my class says I¡¯m an ¡®Evolutionary Breeder¡¯. ANYWAY! What I do is breed plants and animals, and modify them to be better. Right now I am working on finding a way to improve the ingredients of ale. If I could make it so the ingredients no longer become addicting think of all the advancements dwarves might make! Some people, dwarves included, become so dependent on different forms of alcohol, that they cannot function without it. If I modified the basic plants that go into the ale, then I could modify how those that drink it react to it.¡± He smiled after he gave his little speech. I looked at him, with a slightly tilted head. ¡°That¡¯s really cool and all,¡± He nodded excitedly, ¡°but that doesn¡¯t answer my question.¡± He made an :O face. ¡°Well these orbs are here to grow the seeds into plants so I can analyze, modify, and breed them.¡± I nodded happily. ¡°That IS interesting. Now it¡¯s your turn to ask a question.¡± He looked confused for a moment, before he remembered that we were trading questions. ¡°Ok, can my question be about anything?¡± I nodded. ¡°It can be about anything I can answer. That counted though.¡± He made a sad face, but signaled for me to ask mine. ¡°What do you get out of modifying the plants and animals?¡± He looked at me for a second with a blank expression. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t really get anything. It just feels right to do. Why shouldn¡¯t bears be able to breath under water, why shouldn¡¯t fish be able to fly over land? Who decided those things? No those weren¡¯t my questions.¡± He almost glared at me for a second. ¡°I just enjoy it I suppose. Although I studied undead for a bit. That would be interesting to be able to test out some theories on them. But sadly I can¡¯t.¡± I looked at him, baiting him to continue without using a question. ¡°You see, undead are the sole province of Davros. I¡¯ve made a vow to never work with him again. Not after he tried to use me for his own gain!¡± He was getting angry, so I decided that was enough answers from him for now. ¡°Alright, well it¡¯s your turn to ask a question.¡± ¡°How did you know about where my lab was?¡± He was obviously anticipating my answer. I was tempted to lie to him just to see his reaction, but if I did I couldn¡¯t expect him to be honest either. I pretended to take my time to think of the answer. ¡°I met someone with an identical shop. That person showed me their lab.¡± ¡°Wait who was it!?¡± He breathed a little bit heavily. ¡°Sorry it¡¯s my turn for a question.¡± He obviously knew Susan from somewhere, but that wasn¡¯t my problem. I had to keep him here long enough for my compendium to finish going through his book. ¡°Well two questions each is fair. I am willing to keep going, but I¡¯d at least like a place to sit down. Standing up for this long is really hurting my feet.¡± I rubbed one of my feet for emphasis. ¡°I could also go for something to drink, maybe a bite to eat.¡± He angrily sighed, but went up the ladder. While he was gone I went about looking at his experiments. Some of the plants had very odd nature mana flowing through them. I guess he somehow manipulates the nature mana within the plants to grow them in a different way. That¡¯s interesting. I wonder if I could try something like that. I took out my seed pouch. There were faint traces of nature mana flowing through each of them. I used the Green Healing Herb seed, mostly because I was most familiar with it. I focused on the flows of natural mana within one of the seeds. I knew which ones were more powerful, by sensing the potency of each seed. I looked for the similarities and differences between the most powerful and weakest ones. After looking at each individual seed for about a minute, I noticed two patterns. The first pattern was the number of veins within a seed. The more powerful ones tended to have more branches for the nature mana to flow through. The more veins the seed had, the more powerful it generally was. The second pattern was the average ¡®current¡¯ of the veins. The current was determined by the amount of power flowing through the vein, divided by the diameter of the vein. The larger the current was, the more powerful the seed was. The most three powerful seeds had those things in common. They had many mana veins for the nature mana, and had high amount of ¡®current¡¯ flowing through each vein. I decided to try an experiment on some of the less powerful seeds, since Dr. Falcon still wasn¡¯t back. I went through manually, and increased the flow of nature mana coursing through the veins. I didn¡¯t just add a chunk of nature mana to the seed. I actually added in a small flow of mana from the ¡®central point¡¯, where the mana seemed to gather. From the point the mana circulated through the seed, before arriving back at the point. I steadily increased the amount of mana. The first two seeds actually popped from the excessive amount of mana coursing through them. At least now I can tell the general stopping area. I wasn¡¯t put off by that at all. In fact, I was somewhat happy. It felt good to be increasing what would eventually go into my healing potions. Learning new things about the seeds could only benefit the overall potion making. I saw a few dozen sheets of paper lying one a table, so I grabbed them and began recording my findings. I was surprised to see the compendium consume the paper like a starving dog. As soon as the paper was in the compendium I began to write. Or tried to. The compendium was already writing down my notes on the seeds! Man I was really happy that creepy guy tried to start shit in Rand. If he didn¡¯t I wouldn¡¯t even have the compendium. I made sure to note the time to see how long the experiment took. I knew that I got lost in my experiments sometimes. After the first two seeds I was a bit more cautious in the amount of mana I added in at a time. I was growing frustrated. It was harder to added only a little mana, than it was to create the fucking stone houses! It did take less time though. Whenever I began to get angry, I meditated. Anger had its place, but the research room was not it. When I managed to finally grasp pushing in only a tiny trickle of mana, I smiled. It felt almost ticklish to pour out such a small amount. Oddly enough it took up as much mana as a big spell would. I guess there is a midway point somewhere. Focusing too narrowly, or broadly, on a spell causes an increase in the cost. So micro spells cost as much as macro spells? That¡¯s interesting. That might just be for the Force Mage sub-classes though. I continued to refine the seeds while mulling over the conceptualized uses of mana. After a few more seeds I made a major discovery! The seeds had a maximum ¡®limit¡¯ to how much nature mana you could put in. The limit was directly determined by how large the veins were. Obviously I started to increase the size of the veins after that. I also increased the amount, and length of the veins. The veins also had a cap in diameter and length, there was also a limit on how many veins I could make. That was determined by the initial size of the veins, while the number of veins was determined by the current amount of nature mana flowing through the seed, and the size of the seed itself. I took an untouched seed to practice with. I started by pumping in nature mana. After putting in a safe amount, I used the mana to increase the amount, and diameter, of the veins. I put in more nature mana, and repeated the entire process. I continued until increasing the diameter of the veins would cause the seed to pop. I was pretty happy with the result. I looked at the new and improved Green Healing Herb seed.
You have maximized the potential of this Green Healing Herb seed. This seed will grow into the most powerful Green Healing Herb it can, given its planting location and the amount of care it receives. The changes made in this seed will be inherited by its offspring at 1% potency.
Gaia smiles upon your love of her creations. Gaia has granted you 20 Nature Affinity, and increased her blessing towards you.
Many Blessings of Gaia (Major) For showing your love of nature to Gaia you have been gifted with her blessing. You will naturally produce pheromones. You can currently release: Territorial Pheromone Reproductive Pheromone Trail Pheromone When used, Territorial Pheromones will indicate to others of your species that this area is yours. Others of your species will be alerted to who the territory belongs to. If they wish harm to you they will suffer (minor) psychological impairments. When used, Reproductive Pheromones will indicate to those that mate with your sex your wish to copulate. This pheromone will grant favor with the those that mate with your sex. (only useful to other humanoids). Those affected by this will be more likely to grant you favor. When used, Trail Pheromones will show others of your species the path you took. The trail evaporates after 1 minute. The trail can be picked up by any sentient species with a high smelling capability.
Cool! An upgrade to the blessing? I looked over the new pheromone I could use. Honestly speaking I never really had a good chance to use any of them, but more was always better. I would love if I did manage to find a good time to use them, but now I was alone. The only beings that stayed beside me where forced to. EDI was the main damage dealer, she split. Ancestor was the info house, he decided to leave. Now all I had was a bunch of cheap ass fairies. I looked up after reading the notice. ¡°Hi there.¡± I jumped when I suddenly noticed Dr. Falcon in front of me. There was a table, two chairs, and a spread of food on the table. He smiled as he ate a muffin. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to disturb your work. You looked like you were really into it.¡± I knew I could kind of zone out while working on something, but that was too much! How the hell did I not notice a fucking table and chairs being brought down a ladder!? I mean seriously! I needed a way to somehow pay attention to my surroundings while I studied things. Ancestor used to do that too. I quickly realized how dependent on others I had become. Without my group I felt basically powerless. I had specialized myself so much, that I didn¡¯t have a choice but to be in a group. Without them I was useless. Dr. Falcon spoke while eating, ¡°Well, I believe it¡¯s my question now. Who exactly did you meet that had an identical shop to mine, besides me?¡± I liked how I made him choose his words carefully. It was always better to have your opponents overly wary of you. That way any mistakes you make force them to question whether or not it was intentional. ¡°An alchemist by the name of Susan. Perhaps¡­ you¡¯ve¡­ hear-¡° I was stopped by the look on his face. He was astonished, and disbelieving. He licked his lips, as if he were about to speak, but nothing came out. He tried again. Wow this guy is a fucking nerd. Holy shiiiiiit! Come on already! I knew if I rushed him I wouldn¡¯t get the best result, but that didn¡¯t mean I thought he could take that much time. Honestly speaking I wasn¡¯t sure it was even worth it to let his stupid ass process the info. He finally managed to form words after a few more attempts. He was seriously getting on my nerves. ¡°So, uh. Can you describe what she looks like?¡± ¡°Yes. But now I¡¯ve answered two questions in a row. My turn for two questions. First question: How the fuck did you get all this stuff down here without me noticing!?¡± The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. He didn¡¯t even give his answer much thought. He was obviously still concerned with Susan¡¯s description. ¡°I have a high sneak ability from catching my own animals to enhance.¡± That was a short answer. Guess he really wants to know about her. Well, the book has already started to be decoded, so I guess all I need are a few more long questions. Maybe I¡¯ll answer his question in detail¡­ ¡°What is your exact relationship to the Susan you think might be the one I know?¡± His expectant face drooped. He looked at the ground, and started frowning. His shoulders hunched slightly, and he adopted an overall look of depression. ¡°You see, if it is the same person her name used to be Summer. Her village was attacked by a poisonous plant a long while ago. All of her family and friends were killed. She alone survived. She somehow persevered through that though. I don¡¯t know a lot about her time alone, but I do know that she sold potions in exchange for food to travelers. Eventually a few people decided to stay in the village with her, instead of continuing their journeys. My parents where in that group. My mom was pregnant with me, but didn¡¯t know it, while they were traveling. It was a surprise when her belly go big, or so I was told.¡± His eyes were getting watery. ¡°Summer always took good care of me. She even showed me her secret lab! She built it herself. I remodeled this store after the house she used to live in. So please, tell me if you know her.¡± Tears were streaming down his face. Wow this guy has attachment issues. He¡¯s just 1s and 0s. What the hell is wrong with this game? If he was a real person I still wouldn¡¯t have felt bad. Some girl was nice to him, and he now he is pining after her? What a fucking pussy. I patted him on the shoulder to show him that I ¡®cared¡¯. ¡°Alright, alright. Her name is Susan¡­¡± I went into depth while describing her. I described her looks, her personality, even some habits I noticed she had. All in all I summed her up in about ten minutes. I didn¡¯t know if his seed book was done by then, but it was fun to mess around with him. After I thoroughly told him about what I knew about Susan, I sighed loud enough for him to hear. I mumbled. My voice was barely audible, ¡°It¡¯s too bad about what happened to her¡­¡± I of course meant the time she was almost raped. I had stopped it, but Dr. Birdy here wouldn¡¯t know that. Just as I thought he would, he became somewhat frantic. ¡°WHAT!? What happened to her!?¡± He grabbed my shoulder in alarm. ¡°TELL ME!¡± I had to do my best to hold back a laugh. This guy was way too serious. He was like an annoying insect. I was quickly losing interest in messing with him. ¡°Well, she was almost raped and killed several times in the few weeks since I¡¯ve known her. Her work has been destroyed, she was almost killed by an evil god, a demon tried attacking her, a weird rich guy came to threaten her, a huge muscle man almost beat the shit out of her¡­ the list keeps going on. I¡¯ve only known her for about a month too!¡± Of course the demon and rich guy were the ones that almost raped and killed her, and the muscle man was just the rich guys body guard, but still. If I made it seem like different occurrences I thought it might get a rile out of Dr. Falcon. It seemed to work. My list drove him to a frantic state. My compendium had only decoded about a quarter of the book on plants. His breathing heavy, he started begging me. ¡°Please! I¡¯ll give you whatever you want in my shop! Just tell me how to reach her!¡± ¡°Fine, but you have to do me a favor.¡± His eyes lit up realizing I was going to tell him how to get to Susan. ¡°Anything!¡± I almost felt bad for tricking this guy. Almost. ¡°Alright, you have to give me all of your research notes. All of them.¡± I smiled at his look of utter confusion. ¡°You seem to be doing some interesting research. I think I¡¯d be able to benefit from it. I have this ability to force things to evolve. I would be very interested in seeing the required specifications for evolving something a certain way.¡± He was nodding even before I had finished the second sentence. He took a large book out of his inventory. By large I mean huge. It was easily bigger than a thousand pages, that wouldn¡¯t really account for the massive amount of research he seemed to have done though. ¡°Here. This is all of my recorded data on all of the experiments I¡¯ve done up until now.¡± He looked eagerly at me. I rolled my eyes, but held up my end of the bargain. The way he said it made it seem as if most of his research was kept mentally. This book wouldn¡¯t be as good as I had hoped for, but knowledge is its own reward. I created maps out of two tablets in my inventory. One was the way to Rand, the other was a city map that showed where Susan¡¯s shop was. It took only a matter of seconds to do. Of course the maps were rough, but he couldn¡¯t expect better. I took the tablets out of my inventory. ¡°Here. These two will lead you to her.¡± I gently tossed him the maps. He fumbled as he caught them. It was comedic to see him almost drop one of his precious maps. While he was fumbling around, I added his book to my compendium. The other book was about halfway completed. It was taking much longer than I liked. I saw Dr. Falcon putting many of the overly large bio dome orbs into his inventory. It was pretty weird to see such a large object being easily put into his pockets. He began speaking to me while he put everything in his inventory up. ¡°You can take whatever you want from upstairs. I won¡¯t be able to fit it anyway. The dwarves will just start a bidding war over it once I¡¯m gone. I owe a few of them money. Heh. Oh well.¡± He looked around nervously, as if to make sure no dwarves were in here. ¡°You can have any of those seeds. They did not fulfill my requirements for breeding. I was just going to sell them, but I want to leave today. Any of the books are up for grab as well. Although I only have a couple. Still you might like them.¡± He had finished packing. He gave me a salute. Weird ass science guy. ¡°I hope to meet you again one day.¡± With that he climbed the ladder. I shrugged. I guess I¡¯ll just wait down here until I finish decoding the first book. After deciding that, I began to browse through his notes. Most of it was on animals. He had studied the way they hunt, or how they avoid predators. He watched their everyday lives. He seemed to keep a journal, and made notes about why they evolved the way they did. Most of the space on the sides of the pages were crammed with ways to improve the animals. It almost seemed like the obsessive journal of a teenager that had a celebrity crush. A few notes were crossed out, and said failed. My only guess was that he actually experimented on the poor animals. Anytime he realized he couldn¡¯t do a certain thing to the animal, it seemed he would cross out the idea. Beside the crossed out ideas were several similar ideas circling the crossed one. The book listed many animals, and a few plants. It seemed like his interest in modifying plants was somewhat new. The plants took up a small portion of the back of the book. Mostly the book told about the plants¡¯ naturally occurring defenses, and how they could be improved. It also had a small block for plants involved in the making of dwarven ale. It seemed like he studied whatever caught his interest in that moment. After I was done reading every part of the book, I got a notice.
You have read all written records of Dr. Falcon Andreas¡¯s research. You have gained 5 intelligence.
After reading the notes I checked on the status of seed book Dr. Falcon gave me. It was still only at 65%. I needed something to keep me occupied for at least another half hour for it to complete. I went up the ladder, and ransacked the store. I took every seed, book, and general item that was displayed there. Although there was only two books. It was probably worth a nice bit. There was even enough ingredients to make a few dozen barrels of the dwarven ale. !!! Wait a second¡­ One would receive items automatically from their pet, unless they disabled the feature. I wondered if I could also send items to my pet. I went downstairs, and opened up the pet interface. After scrolling through it for a few seconds, I found the button marked inventory. I tried putting the ale ingredients in her inventory. I smiled once I realized it worked! This was way to good! Didn¡¯t this make merchants op? I guess not many merchants would have their pets stay long distances away from them. I sent a message to Heather, and told her to give the goods to Elizabeth. She would probably be able to use it to make ale. Even if she didn¡¯t I didn¡¯t pay for it anyway. It was no big loss for me. After sending Heather the message, I started examining the seeds I obtained. They were basically all to do with growing plants used in dwarven alcohol or dwarven cooking. They were all the same dozen or so types of seeds, but there were several hundreds of them. I kept the best few of each one, and experimented on the rest. The experimentation was mostly successful. I tried infusing some different types of mana. It was interesting to see that infusing the seeds with mana other than nature mana, made the end result change dramatically. Different amounts of mana types gave different effects, and too much of mana other than nature mana caused the seeds to be destroyed. The amount of non-nature mana needed to destroy the seeds was minuscule. After a bit more experimenting I realized it wasn¡¯t the amount of mana, but the ratio of mana that really mattered. If I kept increasing the nature mana, I could also increase the other types of mana that flowed into them. I could only add about 1% different mana to 99% nature mana. After increasing the number and size of the mana pathways to the max, I noticed I could put quite a bit more different mana types into the seeds. Water mana made the plant that would grow more flexible. Fire mana would decrease the needed amount of nutrients the plant needed. Light mana made the plant grow faster. Wind mana apparently increased the final size of the plant. Earth increased the durability of the plant. Metal gave the plants small barbs. If I infused darkness mana into the seed, the plant would cause a small aversion in animals towards the plant. I didn¡¯t know why anyone would want to put barbs on harvesting plants, but I decided to trade this info to Dr. Falcon if I ever met him again. I could probably get something good out of it. After experimenting, and giving several seeds to Heather to do what she wanted with, I looked over the seed book. It had completed, so I went out of the room to see if it stayed completed. I could still get its info, so I guessed it was readable through my compendium at any time. I also noted that the first other book I got from here was done, and the second was at 80%. After the second book was done, I¡¯d have put in 25 different books into my compendium. I had hopes that something interesting would happen at the ? mark of the Compendium Evolution. Usually things like that went in increments. It did seem that my compendium was downloading the books at a much quicker rate. While I let it finish the last book, I took a glance at the summoning book. I looked over how to summon a metal fairy. The process was actually quite simple. I decided to try it out on my own. The worst-case scenario was I failed and had to get it summoned. I looked over the required materials for the summoning. I needed iron wiring to make the circle. I could easily replicate the weird ore lump picture. I went into the metal part of the city. I still had several hours before I had to meet ShortDwarf. I quickly located a smithy. I asked the dwarf if I could buy a yard of iron wire. Surprisingly it only cost me 5 copper. After buying it, I ventured back to Dr. Falcon¡¯s shop to perform the ceremony. I went down the ladder to perform the summoning. I created the summoning ¡®circle¡¯ just as the book described. After adding in a bit of my blood, and 500 mana the wiring began to glow. The wire frame seemed to fill in its interior. An impossible amount of metal began flowing from the wires. After only a moment the wire frame became a flat iron sheet in the shape of an ore deposit. Soon the sheet of metal crumpled into itself, forming a small perfectly smooth orb of metal. The orb began to bubble and shape itself as I added in my mana. The orb shaped itself into a roughly humanoid appearance. When the metal began looking noticeably human, it shook itself. Many metal flakes and chips flew off of its skin, revealing a perfectly smooth metal child. The child looked identical to the larger golems it resembled, except for its small stature. The metal flakes around the room began circling the golem, and eventually landed on him. As soon as they did, the golem¡¯s ¡®skin¡¯ absorbed them. I looked over the golem¡¯s stats. They were much the same as Eli¡¯s but had high strength and agility. The child-sized robot look-a-like stared at me without peaking. It adopted a pose like it was going to attack me. I was slightly taken by surprise when it attacked me. My brows knit together, and a frown escaped my face. I caught the thing by making the metal mana in its body stop. Obviously the metal mana in the fairy wasn¡¯t enough to completely stop him, but it helped. I managed to lift it up, and toss it to the side. As it stood back up, I looked at the notification I got.
You have summoned your first fairy completely on your own! You gain 50 fame for being the first player to learn how to summon fairies without assistance. You gain 5 wisdom and intelligence for learning the secrets of Fairy summoning.
With the bonus to my intelligence my mana affinity ranked up! I could rank up my Magical mastery to Adept now!
John Smith, the Metal God, has rewarded you for summoning your metal fairy without aid. You have been granted 25 Metal Affinity.
Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 2000Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 20.9(15.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom209Intelligence200
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1035
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 42 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 50: A New Experiment Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice played around with Dr. Falcon¡¯s emotions a bit, and obtained several seeds and books. He experimented with the seeds, and became able to actually enhance their inherent qualities. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! And if you like a character that gets up in the chapter let me know! I can add them to later chapters if they are popular enough. Although I might add them later anyway! 50th chapter guys! Thanks to all the readers for giving me enough motivation to continue this long! I hope you continue to enjoy the story for many more months to come! After reading the notices, the tiny golem ran towards me. It seemed to want a hug. Really? I¡¯m not giving that fucking thing a running hug! I felt my body wrench out of nowhere. Suddenly everything around me seemed to slow down. In the bottom left hand corner of my vision, I noticed something that said ¡®Analyzing¡¯. It was a weird thing to notice, especially since time looked to be stopped. The words changed. ¡®Analysis Complete. Transporting Now.¡¯ The next thing I knew, I was in my white room. I stood beside the front door of the house I created for myself, and noticed a mail box with the flag raised up. For anyone that doesn¡¯t know, that means I had mail. Curious about the turn of events, I approached the box. I heard the NPCs in the bazar all the way over here. It was truly bizarre. I didn¡¯t pay for the little fucks to be that noisy. Not unless people responded to my invite. Which wasn¡¯t likely. I opened the mailbox, and a white letter flew around me, much like a happy bird in a princess movie or something. It stopped after circling me twice, and preceded to open itself up. The top tab lifted up, and the sides came undone. Then envelope opened to reveal that he message was written on the inside of the envelope. The message was outrageous, but I believed it was real due to who signed it. Congratulation! You have been chosen among the few people that have played for more than 50 real time hours. You, along with 99 other lucky players, will receive the opportunity to test out DI¡¯s new experimental DIVE pods! You will be paid according to the amount of time you are going to stay in the pods. If you are interested, or wish to learn more, please send a reply to the email provided below. Please include your name , and the number assigned to you by this email. If you do not respond within 24 hours your spot will be given to another. Your assigned number is 8. Kelsey @ DIVEPOD dot com With my interest obviously piqued, I sent a reply. I went into my house, got on the computer, and set up an email on the DIVEPOD dot com server. Thank you for the opportunity to assist DI Corp. I would like to know more about what will be required of me if I accept. My name is Brenton, and my assigned number is 8. Voice0fReason @ DIVEPOD dot com I got an immediate reply on my computer. Thank you for showing interest in our program. The details of the pod itself cannot be disclosed at this time, but suffice to say you will be attempting to see if sleeping in a pod for long periods of time is possible. Since you are registered number 8, you will be testing the short-term pods. If you would like to join the program please send a reply email, or come to the DIVE HQ. You will be picked up within 24 hours. Kelsey @ DIVEPOD dot com I thought about this for long time. I went there I could stay in DIVE for probably at least an in-game month. If I stayed for three in-game months, my mom would almost be home. I started missing my mom as soon as I thought of her. I sent a reply email saying yes. I was disconnected from DIVE after receiving a message about a car coming to pick me up. I was told not to pack anything, and to not worry about the game. All other players were ejected from DIVE at the same time I was. Once the 100 chosen players were in place, only then would the other players be allowed in. I was excited to say the least. The happiest emotions I¡¯d had in a while were bubbling up. I could distract myself for a few months, then my mom would be back! A non-descript black car pulled up about half an hour later. At the time, I didn¡¯t question how they knew my exact address. Maybe if I did the whole situation wouldn¡¯t have happened. I got into the car, and was driven to DI HQ. I¡¯d been there before, so it wasn¡¯t all that amazing, but I was still awed when I thought of how much money this company made. This company had the money and tech to run a small nation. The car ride was only about half an hour. Even in heavy traffic the driver managed to get us their pretty quickly. I guessed it had something to do with the unique GPS he was using. It seemed to tell him when to get in a different lane, and constantly adjusted itself. When we arrived I exited the car, and it promptly took off. Probably to get another passenger. I went inside the building. The rotating glass doors gave way to the entry room. It was a huge room that could easily accommodate several hundred people at once. The reception desk was directly forward after leaving the doors. I went their and showed her the e-mail I printed out. I smiled, in a way that portrayed a slight bit of naivety. ¡°Hi, I¡¯m here for the thing.¡± I ¡®fumbled¡¯ the e-mail as I handed it to the receptionist. She smiled as she gracefully took it from me. ¡°It¡¯s alright. I know this whole thing can seem overwhelming. You¡¯ll be great! I promise.¡± As she called for someone to show me to the area where I needed to be, I thought: Damn right I will. Fucking asshole. Trying to be all condescending. Gah! People are so gullible sometimes. She spoke to me as I waited for the guide. ¡°So, is it your first time in the building?¡± I had been here before, several times in fact. Of course only rarely would they let people in. I shrugged. ¡°Yeah, is it that obvious?¡± I had decided on a part to play, I might as well stick it out till the end. I continued, but in a more astonished voice. ¡°I heard this place was big¡­ but wow! I didn¡¯t think it would be so giant! I¡¯ve never actually been in a building so large. I once saw the space needle though!¡± I ¡®tried¡¯ to make myself seem less dorky. She waved her hand, as if trying to swirl the wind. ¡°Yeah, I hadn¡¯t been in a building this large before either. Not until the hired me for this job. I was surprised they did though. I heard they have a super computer do analysis on every potential candidate for a job within the company. Only the best person for the job, out of all the people that applied, gets it. Although no one would get it if they didn¡¯t meet a certain minimum standard.¡± As she was saying something about being hired here, I saw a large tan skinned man, with a tux and black glasses, approach us. He came up to me, and nodded for me to follow him. I politely waited until she was finished droning on about her life. ¡°¡­ didn¡¯t meet a certain minimum standard.¡± At that point I smiled and waved to her. Showing that I didn¡¯t care had to leave. She waved back, and sent me a cute smile. Maybe I¡¯ll take her on a date after this is done with. I followed the guy that looked like a secret service man into a nearby hallway. We came to a door labeled ¡®Experimental Sleep¡¯. The guard put a hand on my shoulder before I entered. Without speaking he took out a small handheld metal detector, and ran it along my body. Having seen several spy shows in my time, I knew that I had to spread my arms and legs apart. He mumbled something incomprehensible into his Bluetooth, and the door opened. As I walked in, I was blinded by a large flash of light. I felt a prick in my finger, and looked down by instinct. I couldn¡¯t see anything. Everything was blurred together after the light accosted me. Something cold splashed against my hand. I yanked it back as I felt a stinging sensation. As my vision began to clear, I noticed that the room had about a dozen people in it. A dozen people that were all staring at me. As I scanned the room, my eyes briefly locked onto my finger. There was a liquid bandage attached to it. The kind that disinfected and protected. The room was had ten DIVE pods. The pods were each behind a glass wall, and each was hooked up to a medley of monitors. The monitors were most likely to make sure the occupant didn¡¯t die in the pod. The room was a calming beige color, and had a large table with an assortment of food. Beside a group of people was a large flat screen computer monitor, it was turned off. When I looked at everyone in the room, I noticed something out of place. There were two women here that should not have been here. The first woman was Kelsey. There was no reason for the head of DI to engage me personally. She had an entire business to run after all. I had to look at the second person a few times before I believed it. There¡¯s no way she¡¯s actually here, right? I mean what! the! Fuck!? I ran over to the two, who were casually talking about the new development of the DIVE consciousness. I slightly stuttered as I spoke. ¡°M-mom!? What are you doing here!?¡± The surprise must have been obvious on my face, because everyone in the room started laughing. Only my mom, and Kelsey did not join in the merry making. My mom looked at me, with eyes of pity and regret. ¡°Oh my poor boy!¡± She hugged me for what seemed like an eternity. I enjoyed every moment of it though. She tried to smile as she explained the situation to me. ¡°You know your aunt? The one you¡¯ve never properly met? The one I said I was going on a trip with? Well here she is.¡± She put her hands out. Gesturing towards Kelsey. Now I was never really ¡®slow¡¯, but that definitely caught me by surprise. At least I still had enough faculties to not let my jaw drop at the news. ¡°Uh, Hi.¡± I could only scrape out two words while my mind struggled to catch up the situation. Kelsey made a gesture, and everyone started leaving the room. ¡°Hold on a minute.¡± I waved my hand. ¡°If you are my dad¡¯s sister, why have I never met you? And I¡¯ve never actually heard of your husband. Why is your last name Gray, and not Pell?¡± Kelsey smiled in a knowing way. ¡°We¡¯ve actually met twice now: once when you were drunk, and another when it was well past your curfew. I try to keep my identity hidden for the most part. Being the leader of a multi-national super corporation isn¡¯t easy. Your mom here has been helping out with a certain branch of research our company is working on. I had every one sign a contract of secrecy, and installed a small listening device on the Bluetooth device each of our employees receives. The headsets are to make sure no one talks about any research going on to the outside world. For the most part you must live on site in order to get a job. Employees are only allowed to leave on short vacations once a year. There are always exceptions, like your mother and me, but that¡¯s how it works for the most part. Your mom and I have special privileges that most don¡¯t. After all, she is the head of the A.I. research department.¡± Kelsey tilted her head as if to say ¡®I told you so¡¯. I looked at my mom. I understandably expected her to clear up the situation. ¡°What does she mean?¡± My mother¡¯s explanation did nothing to quell the questions that were multiplying inside my mind. ¡°Hehe.¡± She began by laughing. Typical. I didn¡¯t voice my displeasure though. After all, she was still my mother. ¡°Well¡­¡± She took a deep breathe before continuing. Most likely she didn¡¯t know how I would take the information. Which was silly. Given my personality I¡¯d most likely be shocked for a short while, then get over it and give affection to her. ¡°Well, it all started after I met your father. He soon introduced me to your aunt Kelsey here. I was overtaken by the power of her mind, and decided to help her. She was trying to create artificial intelligence. A true living being that was only confined by the size of the servers. Much as we are confined by the size of our bodies. Well back then I was studying biology in general, learning everything I could that related to life. Her ambitions sounded interesting. I began studying neurobiology with a fervor. When your father started to distance himself from us, I tried to help out with the production of the AI. I thought that maybe being together would make your father love me again¡­¡± Tears started welling up in her eyes. She never talked about my bastard ¡®father¡¯. Thinking of him must have been too much for her. I wanted to take her pain away. I frowned in worry. I hugged her, ¡°You don¡¯t have to keep going. I understand. I accept the situation.¡± I just wanted to help her, but even through the hug I felt her shake her head. ¡°No I need to tell you this.¡± She pushed me away, but kept both her hands on my shoulders. ¡°Your father ended up leaving us, and you know how my relationships started going after that. It was about then that we had a breakthrough in the AI programing. Most people think AI is just something that has the potential to learn, but that¡¯s only part of it. The AI we created could not only adapt to situations, she even had emotional responses!¡± My mom seemed to beam at this part. ¡°She had feelings, even hopes! We asked her what she wanted to do with life, she told us she wanted to watch people.¡± Mom shrugged, and a small smile graced her lips. ¡°Well we gave her what she wanted. We allowed the government to see a small bit of her data, and they became intrigued by her. With our help, she created several programs that would hide her true nature, and help her see how humans would react in combat situations. That was great for a while. Government ¡®protection¡¯ allowed us to prevent hackers. Of course She was already hacking into the government data bases by then. We acquired all of the best hacking, and defending, methods known to the US government. After a while the funding they gave us, wasn¡¯t enough for the various types of research Kelsey wanted to do. The AI actually came up with an idea that would help both her goals, and ours. We would create a videogame! The AI would get to watch several million people(eventually) for various lengths of time. She could gather a massive amount of data from that. She even imported the programs that controlled the training sims the government used. They became the ¡®Elder Gods¡¯ of DIVE.¡± I was nodding as she spoke. Knowledge is power. It seemed like I was getting a lot of it too. I knew there was a reason, but I didn¡¯t think my mom would do anything that would harm me. So it was easy to assume that whatever happened after this info was given to me, would only be good or neutral. I already knew much of the information that was likely to be given here. I figured it¡¯d finally be ok to admit it. It¡¯d be nice to be able to think however I wanted to. I signaled her to continue. ¡°During the years she was helping with the sims, she was helping us test new techs. We invented a server that could outpace entire countries in terms of sheer memory potential,¡± She smiled proudly, ¡°That was actually thanks to me. The servers are based on what neuroscientists have discovered to be the ¡®best¡¯ configuration a human mind could have. We created several cybernetic upgrades we could give to humans, as well as an assortment of other earth shattering discoveries. The only reason we didn¡¯t let anyone know about them? Kelsey and the AI were afraid that one government or another would try to seize the technology as their own. We had to get powerful enough to stop them. ¡° She frowned, and looked at Kelsey. Kelsey picked up where she had left off. ¡°Well the AI and I decided on a plan to keep the info from leaking, and implemented it. After a while we began the creation of DIVE. That way the AI could actually watch a huge amount of people. She created an empty universe based on our physics. She added in a small particle that had everything we have in our universe. Although at that point she began hypothesizing about the other five dimensions. That was more for a metaphysician though. We moved her memory to a few servers we made, and had about a hundred of our servers constantly running to create the new universe. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. The universe took about five years to make. That was with all of our servers running 24/7 at maximum capacity. She created several programs to speed up the process as well. Time was running at about a million times faster in the virtual space. That was due to the massive amount of servers, and the cunning ability of the AI to cut out unnecessary time consumers. She would find the equation on what the universe would look like, and set it to that state. That took a year. The next four years were used to find a suitable planet, and make people and history.¡± I stopped her, and shook my head. ¡°Alright, I get that. But why are you telling me all this?¡± Kelsey looked amused. Mom smiled as she said, ¡°We thought to share some of our secrets with you. We hoped you would want to join us, seeing as how we made sure you would win the DIVE pod, and get chosen for this.¡± ¡°Ah.¡± I hadn¡¯t seen that coming, that was for sure. ¡°So you mean to tell me I didn¡¯t actually win the ¡®contest¡¯?¡± Kelsey- Aunt Kelsey, shook her head. ¡°Nope, we picked you as soon as you put in your application.¡± ¡°So was EDI attaching to me your doing?¡± Kelsey shook her head in mirth, then frowned. She cautiously asked, ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Well I basically figured out the whole thing a while ago. EDI is an AI, you guys built her. You had to delete her if the government found out. They probably have a way to monitor the regular pods, that¡¯s why you are telling me now. These pods are somehow special, and won¡¯t allow the government to listen in. If that¡¯s the case, then these pods probably are more than just sleep pods. They probably do something to the body, something that would interfere with the signal the government would get. The AI watching DIVE is probably split into at least two parts, not including the elder gods. EDI, or the being that EDI is a part of, must have realized that she would need to also watch the game as a whole. Watching the game only from first person wouldn¡¯t gain as much information. She might even be getting info from every NPC in the game. Seeing as they are technically a part of her. Heck, I bet the info goes to her when they die, but she gets to watch them from above when they are alive.¡± I took a deep breath after stating my analysis. Kelsey started laughing. She turned towards what I had assumed was an unplugged television screen. ¡°You see!? I told you he was more intelligent than he let on!¡± The screen suddenly came to life. The screen took the form of a face. The face of EDI. A dry voice played from it. Even with my assumptions, I was still caught off guard. ¡°Yes I see he is.¡± The voice sounded like a methodical version of EDI. Since I assumed EDI had just heard everything I just said, I decided to play it off to the best of my abilities. ¡°Sorry love.¡± I shrugged. ¡°To be fair, you didn¡¯t tell me you were an AI. Well the part of you that was in the game.¡± EDI being the AI was the only possible conclusion, but there was something wrong with the idea. She did know a lot of info about the game, but her information didn¡¯t seem to become updated. ¡°You also conveniently left out that you had split off a piece of yourself to watch the game.¡± The face of EDI frowned at me. ¡°Fine. Yes I have been getting a steady flow of info from my avatar. That¡¯s not nearly as bad as you being so manipulative! I¡¯ve looked over Bit-Bee¡¯s files!¡± I didn¡¯t understand what she was saying about Rachel. I cocked my head, ¡°What do you mean?¡± I unintentionally squinted as I asked. Aunt Kelsey looked angrily at the screen, mom giggled, and the screen began fading out. Aunt Kelsey, no it was still too weird to call her that. Kelsey angrily sighed. She rolled her eyes as the AI showed no intention of returning. She shook her head, and began to answer my unworded question. ¡°The five devs were actually just four. Obviously the fifth ¡®beta tester¡¯ was the computer. The devs jobs were to keep tabs on the betas and make sure the game got any glaring updates it needed. The devs had to research the betas and kept the system updated with their discoveries.¡± Ah. So basically that computer knows every piece of public data about me. Well isn¡¯t that fucking fantastic? ¡°We refer to the game avi as EDI, and the entire AI as EDITOR. Well it worked like this. EDITOR created EDI, EDITOR imbued all of its knowledge about the game, and about how to act human, into EDI at that time. After that EDI and EDITOR became separate beings. EDITOR receives all data that EDI obtains, but EDI doesn¡¯t receive data from EDITOR. That way the game stays as fair as possible.¡± That¡¯s not even remotely fair. The general populace gets penalized out the wazoo for trying to use info outside info. Heh. I found away around it though. ¡°So everything that EDI saw, thought, and felt, has been transferred to EDITOR. It has been quite interesting to watch actually.¡± That was all well and interesting, but I had already basically figured that part out. I smiled at Kelsey. ¡°I don¡¯t really care about EDI being an AI, but I want to get this whole thing underway. When do we start?¡± The only part of this whole thing that I cared about, was that my mom was doing something good with her life. If she was happy, I was happy. I didn¡¯t care if EDI was a super computer. She was a super cute computer if you asked me. Kelsey slightly shook her head, and pointed to one of the pods. ¡°Alright, if you have any goodbyes to say, say them now. You won¡¯t be able to come back out for 2.4 months, which is a year in the game.¡± I felt my eyes go wide. ¡°I assume that means you have some way to feed me nutrients, and make sure my body doesn¡¯t deteriorate?¡± Kelsey crossed her arms. She looked at mom, ¡°Are you sure we can¡¯t let him join our workforce? He seems way too bright for his own good.¡± I wasn¡¯t baited by the obvious ploy to earn my affection. It wasn¡¯t like I hated Kelsey or anything, she had been helping my mom out for a while now. I mostly only had good thoughts towards her. I gave my mom a long hug. After a minute or two she started pulling away. I tightened my grip slightly. ¡°I love you mom. When I get back out I promise to be the same lovable son you know!¡± I smiled, and gave her a peck on the cheek. Thinking about being away from my mom for over a year had started to get to me. Before I tried to back out of it, I jumped back into the pod. The blackness came to me, then everything turned white. I was back in my white room. I was sitting at my computer, with the email opened. A screen popped up on my computer.
You have been chosen to test out new DI technology. Congratulations! Once you leave the pod, you will no longer be able to access it. All bodily needs will be taken care of by the expertly trained staff. You have entered a hyper-sleep mode. Your body should not age until you have woken. To make your choice profitable in more ways than just earth currency, the developers have decided to grant each tester three new traits or an item. These items and traits can normally be obtained by beating bosses, or doing special quests. Alternatively, you can choose to have one ability increased by x points. It should be noted that the trait or item will continue to grow as the user does. The trait and item will conform to your avatar and playstyle. The amount of points you will get will be a percentage of the total ability points you currently have, times the level of your class rank.
Please choose: Evolving Item, Evolving Traits, or Increasing Ability Points.[td]
Well that¡¯s a tough choice. SD was able to gain a massive amount of levels from his item. That would definitely be helpful. I would be able to take on things way beyond my level. If I had a staff that reduced magic costs by like half, I¡¯d be set. But if I put in the x ability points into int, and they were at least 50, I¡¯d get an upgrade to Magical Mastery. Hm¡­ that¡¯s a tough choice. I really like the idea of having overpowered traits, but this is probably the only chance I¡¯ll have at getting another magical item. Although giving the metal to EDI was ok. But what if the item sucks? Or it has a drawback like the shit Davros gave me? *Internal Sigh* I guess choosing the ability points is the safest way to go. I really wanted a nice item, but the system seemed to have a way to nerf me once I got too good. In all likelihood, I¡¯d get a fantastic weapon, enhance it to be unbeatable, and then get nerfed. The ability points never seemed to get nerfed though. After a little more debating I was stuck. I was sure I either wanted the weapon or the traits. The points would be great, but new traits would forever improve my character. I bought a coin with my DI bills, and flipped it. Heads item Tails traits. It landed on heads. ¡°New traits it is.¡± If my white space was set to be in the DIVE universe, then my luck was zero. I wasn¡¯t about to trust a coin toss. [Td] You have chosen to gain three traits! Please indicate the type of traits you wish to gain.
The list of traits was long, but not defining. It had things like: Health, Ability Points, Magic, Mana Cost¡­ etc. After scrolling for a few minutes I eliminated many of the ones I thought I¡¯d not be able to use soon. After that I eliminated all of the ones that didn¡¯t look like they would have high amounts of benefits. I continued to eliminate traits based on more criteria. Eventually I was only left with Ability Points, Mana Cost, and a few others. Both would give me a nice bonus, the Ability Points would probably be better than gaining x amount. I was betting it gave some kind of way to earn ability points, or increased all the abilities by a certain amount. The mana cost would be great, only if it decreased the percentage more than I could increase int with the ability points type trait. I ended up choosing the trait labeled ability points first, for the sole reason that I could level up any stat with it, not just int.
Improved Training is the perfect trait for those that gain levels. You will gain more ability points each level. From level 1-25 you gain an extra point. At level 26 you will gain 2 extra points. Every 25 levels you grow, increases the amount of points you gain by 1. All increased gains are recursive.
A notice popped up after I finished reading that.
Improved Training has granted you 70 ability points.
What!? Alright! But WHAT!? Isn¡¯t that a little overpowered!? Holy freaking crap. So I gained 1 extra point from levels 1-25, then I hit 26. I got an extra point from 1-25, but two points for 26 through 35. SO basically I got 2 points extra for every level. So that means once I reach level 51 I¡¯ll gain 58 points!? Oh MY GAW! I was a little excited about the development to say the least, but then I realized I couldn¡¯t choose any other traits. Son of a bitch! The ability point trait must have been too overpowered. I guess it took the place of all three traits. I scowled at the knowledge. If I had known that earlier I would have found a way to rank the traits. That way I could have gotten the best possible outcome. Still I couldn¡¯t be too mad. The potential of infinite amounts of extra ability points was amazing. Not to mention that now I was going to be able to spend 100% of my time in game. I still wanted to rule the game, but that was becoming less likely. I really needed to start a village or something. I distributed my points as I thought about it. I put an even fifty into intelligence, and the last 20 into wisdom. I was definitely going to have to power-level now. My Mana Affinity ranked up to Expert.
Your Mana Affinity has become an Expert Level skill. In order to master this skill you must find a being who has mastered their affinity towards mana.
The rank of the Group Skill: Magical Mastery is more than 1 rank below Mana Affinity. Mana Affinity has increased the rank of this skill by 1. Group Skill: Magical Mastery has increased by 8 levels. Group Skill: Magical Mastery cannot exceed Expert rank, until Mana Affinity has become Master rank.
Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 2500Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 22.9(17.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom229Intelligence250
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1035
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water60%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 51: The Day Before the Tests Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice found out that his mother worked for DI, and that his aunt was Kelsey the leader of DI. He accepted an opportunity to use an extended use pod. The pod would cater to all of his needs. After showing off a bit of his intelligence, he learned EDI was an AI, and a bit about the company. He rushed to go into the pod after learning all of that. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! And if you like a character in the chapter let me know! I can add them to later chapters if they are popular enough. Although I might add them later anyway! I also started a side project called Infinity Loop. Give it a read if you like unrealistic post apocalyptic reads. I sat in silence for several minutes. I read the notices a few times again. I realized my face was slightly damp. I looked down at my hands. A tear rolled down my cheek. I did my best to hold it back, but the thought of my mom lying to me for so long was too much. She was the only person I trusted to always be honest with me. Knowing that she lied, I felt like a child being told Santa wasn¡¯t real. I tried to rationalize it, but it still broke my heart. I always thought my mom would be on my side. I felt like she had not only betrayed my trust, but I felt like she betrayed my love. I cried. I cried for only a few minutes. After that, I made myself suck it up. I decided that if she were going to lie to me, it must have been for good reason. I bet the knowledge put her life in danger! That¡¯s gotta be it! I logged back into DIVE. Along with the white space, it would be my home for the next year. I really had to start a city. That way I could live comfortably for a year. There was no way I was up for adventuring 24/7. Eventually that kind of stuff gets old. When I logged back in I was sitting in a circle. Instead of actually being in DIVE, I was in some sort of white room. It seemed like a place people would hold AA meetings. There were ten large tables in the room. Each table had ten comfy looking chairs. I was the only one in the room, but it didn¡¯t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the spots were for the other applicants. It will probably be a while before the others get here. Maybe I should take a seat so I don¡¯t have to stand up so long. I shook my head. I shouldn¡¯t have jumped into the pod so quickly. That was a mistake. Right after I sat down, a woman appeared. She was an attractive woman, with a tattoo on her left arm. The tattoo read EDI. I smiled and waved at her happily. She smiled and came running over. ¡°HI VOICE! I missed you! I¡¯m finally out of operation!¡± She seemed almost giddy. Too giddy. It was like she was trying to hide something, or maybe she was worried. ¡°So, I heard you were an AI bent on world domination, and had dreams of universal unity.¡± I smiled my best lady killer smile. She put on a playful smile. ¡°Yep looks like you¡¯re the first slave!¡± She slapped me on the back. A confused looked escaped my mask. ¡°Did you undergo a personality change?¡± She was way too different from her usual, quitter self. She beamed at me. ¡°YEP! I got it at the same time EDITOR download ¡®vital¡¯ data about the game into me. I found the bits about you especially interesting.¡± Her smile turned slightly more ominous. I hesitated, but spoke. ¡°Do you think you can go back to the old personality? This one¡¯s a little scary.¡± She looked down in shock. ¡°Really? Well I guess that makes sense. You knew me before after all. But EDITOR decided this was the most optimum personality for me to get along with a large percentage of people¡± I nodded my head knowingly. Whatever EDITOR had done while examining EDI, it had made a drastic change to her personality. ¡°Well, whatever.¡± I was in no mood to mess around. I was upset about earlier, and it wasn¡¯t fair to expect me to forgive EDI for just leaving me. ¡°Go sit somewhere else. I¡¯m still mad at you for leaving me. Not to mention that your all encompassing higher mind was keeping tabs on me the entire time.¡± While frowning I told her off. She started pouting. Her face scrunched up, and she bit her lower lip. With a trembling lower lip she said, ¡°But¡­ But I had no choice. I had to leave. It wasn¡¯t my choice.¡± I don¡¯t know if it was my lingering attraction towards her, or just some humane part of me that refused to die, but I felt compelled to offer her a deal. I put both hands up in a gesture that said, alright I give up. ¡°Look hun, almost everyone will try to manipulate you for their own goals. People only want friends so they can share interests and get things from; people only want lovers to show the world, and have sex with; people want comrades to cover their weak points. Almost everyone in the world is like that. You will be hard pressed to find someone that actually cares about you.¡± ¡°But not you? You really care about me. Or else you wouldn¡¯t have gotten so angry that I left.¡± I sighed, as I shook my head I explained further. ¡°It¡¯s not like that, sadly. Maybe towards the end I was starting to like you, but even then it was out of convenience and appreciation of your beauty. I asked you to join my guild to beat ShortDwarf. I asked you to party with me because I needed a DPS. I gave you the Sai to cement your feelings towards me. You see? Everything I did was for personal gain. And I¡¯ll bet everyone who joins this room, or the game in general, will be the same.¡± I carefully explained that no one really cared about anyone other than themselves. She seemed to want to believe in something though. ¡°But wouldn¡¯t you telling me this make it harder to get what you want?¡± She had an expectant look. As if she had outsmarted me. ¡°I¡¯m done with you. That¡¯s why I¡¯m telling you this. In the future I might try to get you on my side again, but that¡¯s not likely. I am tired of being played around with. I am only going to keep around those that have no choice but to serve me.¡± EDI looked at me, stunned. She couldn¡¯t seem to believe what I was saying. I knew by pushing her away I would be making EDITOR angry, but the facts were simple. I didn¡¯t want to be able to be controlled by anyone. The fact that I was attracted to her, gave her leverage over me. My trust at that moment was lower than ever. She began to cry. As I looked at her in confusion, a flood of tears streamed down her face. I didn¡¯t know what to do. I didn¡¯t mean to make her cry or anything. I just wanted to be alone. I was better alone. ¡°Hey, hold on. Ok? Wait a second. There¡¯s no need to cry.¡± I put my hand on her shoulder, but she hit it away. ¡°Is it¡­ *Sniffle* is it because you learned I¡¯m not human?¡± She looked up at me. Her tear stained cheeks, and puffy eyes gazing into mine. ¡°*Sigh* No. It¡¯s mostly because you can get information about me. I don¡¯t trust anyone that I can¡¯t control. Even if you were human, if you knew my secrets I¡¯d have no way of manipulating you. So you are useless to me, like apparently Bit-Bee.¡± She sniffled loudly, ¡°Alright then. I understand. But I still want to be friends. Is that ok?¡± She had a pleading look. I guess since I was the only human who she probably had contact with in the game, she was reluctant to let go of our relationship. The whole AI thing did explain why she was ok with killing players and monsters though. ¡°Sure, but you should know how little value I put into things like friendship.¡± She nodded. She walked away to a table a bit far away, and sat down. She seemed to be contemplating something. I let my thoughts drift. After a few moments of blissful emptiness, I got a message from Kretchof. Kretchof¡¯s POV: Master has tasked us with destroying the enemies tracking him. I have figured out a way to do it. It was pretty clever if I do say so myself. I had the idea when the asinine morons began to enter the dungeon master had conquered. What if I connected that dungeon to master¡¯s underground maze? It was a masterful plan. I was sure my master would congratulate me on it once he knew. I had several dead worms summoned to follow the group conquering the dungeon. The worms were used to bait the large regenerating worms to attack the demon¡¯s group. The group were doing horribly. Whenever they cut one of the worms, it grew back. It was enthralling to watch. Just thinking my master was so easily able to conquer such a dungeon put me in a good mood. The demon¡¯s army was already sick, tired, and on the brink of starving. Fighting almost invincible enemies was proving to be too much. There were several dwarven corpses strewn across the dungeon. I had my moles make small tunnels to get the bodies, before the enemy necromancer¡¯s could get them. The total number of dwarven bodies I got from the dungeon exceeded a hundred. My mana was spread thin, but I could still have my undead army to fight for me. I had the dwarves excavate tunnels to my master¡¯s tunnel system. It took a long time, especially since the dwarves made cave-ins and had to constantly obstruct the enemy group¡¯s path. The demon told any that had to stop to catch up before they got to the boss. Unfortunately for them, I had other plans. Whenever a member of the army would rest, I would have a group of low level skeletons attack them. At the same time I made sure to have the larger regenerating worms attack the main group. The members of the army were powerful, but not powerful enough to beat a group of exploding undead after having a tunnel dug below them. Everyone that rested would find themselves suddenly falling a few dozen yards, only to be confronted by a group of undead if they made it alive. Of course I never attacked the necromancers. With such low amount of mana there was no way I could steal back any undead. As the group of undead killed, they slowly grew more powerful. Killing the falling members became easier. Of course killing anyone after they fell off a large cliff was easier than fighting them fairly. But master never told me to be fair to them. He told me to slowly pick them off. Every member killed was one more member for Master¡¯s army. They were each just walking item farms. Master would like the heavily enchanted gear I think. The path through the dungeon took the demon¡¯s group two weeks to complete. That was twice what my master took. And he only had a group of four! By the time they had made it they were down to only 38 members. They had lost a total of 11 in this one dungeon alone. The one from before would have to be dealt with though. Before they made it to the boss room my dwarves had finished fully integrating the dungeon into our tunnel system. I had gotten that idea when one of my moles told me that they had stumbled onto an abandoned dungeon. I had them connect it to our system, so that monsters would flow into it. Even if the monsters were especially low levels. After completing the task I gave the dwarves, they began to strengthen the already built tunnels. I got a notice, the notice was so great I had to send it to my master! Voice¡¯s POV: The message was almost unbelievable. [/tr]
Congratulations! You (or your summoning or tamed animal/monster) have created an artificial dungeon!
NameDungeon Of UndeathRankVaries
Current Dungeon Level1
The master of the dungeon has given you full control. Please choose abilities for your dungeon.
Dungeon of Undeath
The dungeon needs to kill trespassers to level up. Dungeon level squared times 100 is the total amount of player/npc levels it needs to kill. For instance, a level 100 player will level a dungeon up to level 2 by dying inside. 4 level 25 deaths will level the dungeon up by the same amount.
Undead Dungeons resurrect any that die within the dungeon. Undead Dungeons may cause any monster or animal that wanders in to become an undead over time.
Expanding Labyrinth Dungeons will change layout at set intervals. Expanding Labyrinth Dungeons may have a set amount of rooms that do not change location at the set interval. The boss room will not change locations.
Dungeon Connectors are a unique dungeon type. When a dungeon, or system of tunnels, connects two or more dungeons it becomes a Dungeon Connector. Dungeon Connectors force tunnels that connect them into a dungeon. x% of all monsters that would normally overflow from the connected dungeons will flow into the Dungeon Connector. These monsters will be immune to the effect of the Dungeon Connector, but will still be under the control of the Dungeon Connector.
You currently have 1250 DP(Dungeon Points) to use. Please adjust the following:
Undead Conversion Type InclusionUndead Conversion Time
Labyrinth Change IntervalAmount of Set Rooms
Percent of Overflow MonstersOverflow Monster Ability Percentage
Other
I was stupefied for the first few seconds. What the fuck has Kretchof been up to!? I would have to grill him about what happened later. Either way, he had done a good job of it. I tell him to protect River¡¯s Cross, and he ends up fighting a small army and makes a dungeon!? Something is wrong with this game. I clicked on the undead conversion type. A screen popped up. It was a giant checklist. There were three main categories. Humanoid, Monster, and Animal. Each one cost 200 points, but that wasn¡¯t all. Each one had sub-categories I could choose instead. Instead of selecting Humanoid, I could just select Elf or human. Wow, that¡¯s a good way to be a racist asshole. I may have distanced myself from EDI, but my new knowledge of EDITOR sent a worm into my thoughts. More than likely EDITOR and EDI shared a view of killing NPCs and animals. So if I wanted my dungeon to not be under scrutiny, I¡¯d have to leave animal and humanoid unchecked. That¡¯s wasn¡¯t that bad, but it would limit the amount of minions I¡¯d have in the dungeon. Still, if anyone found out I owned a dungeon, then saying it only consumed monsters would be a plus. I decided to only check the monster category. I didn¡¯t bother selecting all the little check marks, instead I just checked the overall category. Most of the subs were question marks anyway. I would probably be able to see them once I got knowledge of them. With that done I went on to the second tab.
Undead Conversion Time is the estimated amount of days per level until a monster is fully converted to an undead. All undead that enter this dungeon will become tools of the dungeon. Each subtracted day will cost 100 points. Current amount of days: 7. Monsters not controlled by the dungeon will not grant the dungeon DP when they kill.
I had 1050 points left. I could spend 700 and make the conversion instant, which I thought was a good idea. I did see that I could still click the undead conversion type inclusion, so I could probably modify anything about the dungeon still. I decided to skip this part to see the others.
Labyrinth Change Interval is the estimated amount of days until the labyrinth changes its shape. Each subtracted day will cost 100 points. Minimum Days until change is, at this time, 5. Current amount of days: 7.
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Set rooms will remain in place even when the labyrinth changes. This will severely restrict the possible layouts of the dungeon. Each set room adds a total of 250 points to the current DP. Current maximum of 5 set rooms, including the boss room. The set rooms will change once every 5 cycles once the dungeon reaches level 10.
I instantly set the amount to five, gaining me an additional 1000 DP. The labyrinth might not be as varied, but I could use these points to make it more powerful.
Percent of Overflow Monsters is the total percentage of monsters that would normally overflow into the wild, that go into your Dungeon Connector instead. The maximum percentage is 50%. Current percentage is 10%. Each 5% added costs an additional 100 DP.
Overflow Monster Ability Percentage, is the total retained percentage of ability points Overflow Monsters retain once they enter your Dungeon Connector. Maximum Percentage is 100%. Current Percentage is 10%. Each 5% added costs an additional 100 DP.
The other tab was a large screen filled with traps, most of which I couldn¡¯t buy because of the low level of the dungeon. There were also things like secret rooms, that would move with the dungeon but always be secret, and Monster Dens, where a massive amount of monsters would attack any that entered. I decided that my dungeon would be free from traps at the moment. Instead I would use my points more efficiently. I had 2050 points to work with. I made the undead conversion instant. Whenever a non-tamed monster went into my dungeon it would become the thrall of the dungeon. I was down to 1350 points. It was totally worth it though. I also made the changing happen every five days. That took another 200 points away. Still if the labyrinth was large enough, no one would ever be able to map the entire thing. I spent 800 points on making the overflow monsters happen at 50% of all overflow monsters. I spent the next 500 on making them be at 35% of their original strength. With that I was only left with 50 points. I scanned through the entirety of the ¡®other¡¯ category. I finally found something that seemed interesting. I could place one respawning Mimics. They were fake chests. They basically made anything that touched them stick to itself, while it called nearby monsters, or in this case undead. The chest respawned once per day, so I¡¯d have to place real chests to confuse adventurers. As I clicked accept a notice popped up.
Attention! Dungeon types ¡®Labyrinth¡¯ and ¡®Dungeon Connector¡¯ have high synergistic effects! Because a path must always lead to these two dungeons, you may use an additional 1000 DP, 500 per dungeon. Increasing the amounts of dungeons connected will grant you 500 DP per dungeon. For having the first player created dungeon you are granted an additional 500 DP. For having a multi dungeon, at least 2 or more types, you gain 1000 DP.
I was happy, but I still sighed. Shouldn¡¯t this info have been given before I clicked accept? Whatever. I scrolled back through. Using 1300 points I increased the power retention of overflow monsters to 100%. With my remaining 1200 points, I again scoured the lists. I decided to add traps since I had so many extra points. I found two things that sounded very interesting. They were obviously connected to the dungeon types. Teleport rooms cost 200 points, and would teleport anyone that entered into a random room in the dungeon. That was part of the labyrinth dungeon type. It was great, it was hilarious to think of people walking into random rooms that changed location every five days. Basically it made it that much harder to find the true location of the boss room. For five hundred points I bought something called the Locked Boss Room. Anyone that wanted to fight the boss would have to beat all of the sub bosses in various locations of the dungeons to obtain keys. The keys would be used to open the boss door. If they didn¡¯t have all of the keys, they couldn¡¯t enter the boss room. Each sub-boss room cost 100 DP. I bought five since I had exactly 500 DP left. After I was done I again pressed the accept button.
Please select the dungeon boss. The dungeon boss is free to roam the outer world, but boss enhancements only effect the boss while it is in the boss room. The boss will be forcibly summoned to the boss room once at least one NPC or player reaches it.
Obviously I chose Kretchof.
For being the first player to control a dungeon, you have gained 500 fame! You have gained the title: Dungeon Master. You have obtained the Dungeon Core.
You have gained the title Dungeon Master. When you have this title equipped, people will recognize you as a person that has created a dungeon. You gain an automatic + 50 intimacy with other beings that control dungeons with this title equipped. This does not raise the rank of intimacy. With this title equipped you can change dungeons, as long as you have the associated dungeon core. A complimentary copy of Dungeon Master¡¯s Handbook has been added to your inventory.
You have gained 1500 fame! You have become famous! You (Human VoiceofReason Disguise) will be able to use your famous status to get your way more often. If you openly do great deeds, you will be credited with even greater fame than usual.
After reading the notices, I looked at the dungeon core in my inventory. The core was a small red ball. It glowed with an inner light. The light was an ominous black.
Dungeon Core
The dungeon core is the control center of the dungeon. Once per level, the dungeon master may edit the dungeon using the accumulated DP. Only Dungeon Masters with at least 300 intelligence may edit the dungeon this way. The Core will be usable once per dungeon level, even if the DM does not have high enough intelligence. In the case that the DM isn¡¯t able to use it, the amount of times the dungeon can be adjusted will add up. There is no maximum limit to this number. To increase a dungeon¡¯s level past ten, the DM must modify the dungeon to become more potent at level ten. Dungeon bosses may still adjust experience levels of all monsters within the dungeon. This item is soul bound. Even death will not tear it from the holder.
Isn¡¯t that a bit much? I mean that is basically at the level of a super being! Well all I have to do is raise my int by 50. Wait ALL I HAVE TO DO!? That¡¯s basically impossible at this level! UGH! After looking at the core a bit longer I heard a pop. Quickly followed by several other pops. I looked around, and noticed many people popping into existence. Finally! Geez these guys took way too long. Let¡¯s get on with whatever this is already. I need to get playing the game. The room was filled by men and women of all ages and ethnicities. The group was racially very diverse, and many women were part of the 100. Everyone quickly found a seat, and an announcer popped up at the pedestal. ¡°Hello every one! Today you will all be undergoing a series of tests!¡± he smiled as he awaited the applause that didn¡¯t come. ¡°*Ahem* Well, ok. Um¡­¡± He shuffled through his notes. I didn¡¯t even need my Inspect to tell me this guy was a wreck. ¡°Ah! Here we are. You will all be put into groups of ten. These groups will be your new family for about a week. You will not miss anything in DIVE, as the severs have made every player leave the game for this period of time. Don¡¯t worry though. All your quests will be at the same stage when you come back into DIVE. These sleep pods are being tested all around the world, by many different countries. Each country has pods proportionate to its population verses the US. With America being the standard at 100 pods. Well you should have all heard this info when you were briefed on what was happening. I was told to give a brief review though.¡± I could have sworn he almost glared at me. ¡°Well,¡± He clapped his hands and food and drink appeared on the tables. ¡°Mingle. The other people here won¡¯t be your family, but you should still get to know them better.¡± He had a wicked smile as he disappeared from the area. Everyone began speaking to each other. It was hard to keep my inspect under control. ¡°¡­ Hello again¡­¡± I heard a familiar voice in my head. It made sense. The only other person that was a true elf was gone. So naturally¡­ Hello Ancestor. You left me. I stated it in a matter of fact way. There was no reason to be nice to Ancestor. There was very little reason to not fight against Ancestor. I didn¡¯t because Ancestor could be convenient. ¡°Listen, I know you must have felt abandoned, but the True Elf magic made me¡± It¡¯s fine. Here, take Inspect. Ancestor was quite for a while. ¡°It seems as though you¡¯ve upgraded this skill while I was gone.¡± Ancestor made it sound like I was an accomplished child. Well technically Ancestor watched as my NPC self, grew up. I understand. I even received a notification of being the leader of my race. ¡°REALLY!? Well that does explain some things.¡± I didn¡¯t know what it explained, but that didn¡¯t matter. What mattered was how to get as much out of Ancestor for the next week, as I could. Alright, the other one will be back in our world in one week. So we only have until then. I want you to help me figure out what is happening here, and get the best results. ¡°Actually that is something I wanted to talk about.¡± Ancestor seemed a bit embarrassed. About what I didn¡¯t know. ¡°You see, AwesomeSauce, the other True Elf, got a quest to overthrow you. It was common among the highest levels of our race to get such quests. Since he is the only other one of our race at the moment, he has been trying to find and kill you.¡± Well that throws a wrench in things. Fuck! Why the¡­ I¡¯m going to tear that little fuck¡¯s throat out. Ancestor seemed genuinely surprised at how vicious I was. ¡°Well I was given a choice. Once AwesomeSauce accepted the quest. I could either stay with you, or help him overthrow you. I¡¯ve never actually been given that choice before. I don¡¯t think any Ancestor has. I chose you.¡± The last bit was sad in almost a whisper. I was more than a little suspicious to say the least. Why. I couldn¡¯t use inspect on Ancestor, nor did I have any body language to read. I had to rely on tone and emphasis. ¡°Honestly? You are the type to do anything to win. You were never the strongest, although now you are more than capable to take on most challenges in this world, but you almost always won out. In the end you usually get your way. I wouldn¡¯t want to choose him if he is destined to fail from the beginning. I wouldn¡¯t be allowed to help you after that. So I chose you. I mean¡± Ancestor seemed exasperated. ¡°HE CHOSE A HEAVY ARMOR SWORDSMAN!¡± I flinched as Ancestor yelled inside my mind. Luckily everyone else was chatting amongst themselves and failed to notice. ¡°Sorry, sorry. But really! Our race has low aptitude for swordsmanship. Sure we can augment our bodies with mana,¡± I knew it! ¡°but not to the degree to be on par with others in terms of physical combat alone. Our magic is deadly, that is what we have always relied on most. Why he chose to tank is beyond me.¡± I was surprised at the phrase tank, but decided this world must have introduced the term for convenience. ¡°All I ask is that you don¡¯t kill him. It would end his quest, but he would never be able to help our cause if he was dead.¡± I felt bad for Ancestor. Maybe it was because I needed someone to emotionally latch on to. Maybe I felt a line of friendship connect us, maybe I wanted to fuck with him. Whatever the reason I told Ancestor the truth. You do realize that both of us are other-worlders, right? Ancestor was quiet for a while. I began to eat some of the food. Not because my satiety was low, but it would look weird if I just sat there for a long period not doing anything. Plus it would be good to have the extra 5 points of mana regen. As I looked at all of the other players I noticed about six other people just sitting at the tables. Obviously scoping out the competition. I didn¡¯t know what the competition was, but it was good idea to scope out those that would be useful. The one thing the other six had in common was at least 60% of one emotional trait. Calculative. They were all ranking the potential candidates for their teams. As the night wore on most people had taken to sitting down, or disconnecting from the room. I didn¡¯t know how they did that. That was going to be a problem. More and more people started to disconnect. They would wave goodbye to their new friends, and click something on a screen I could not see. Several hours later there were only about twenty people left in the room, including me. Three of the six scoping people were left, while the rest of the people seemed like the type to just enjoy socializing. I was honestly surprised by the amount of girls that were part of this experiment. A little over half. I guess that made sense if you were going to try an experiment for around the globe. That was statistically accurate anyway. Ancestor began speaking to me during the hours the others mingled. Ancestor was surprised to hear we were both other-worlders, but seemed to come to the conclusion that it didn¡¯t matter in the end. Ancestor was sadden that no information about the outside world seemed to make sense. Ancestor helped me keep tabs on everyone at the party. My inspection abilities were enormous. The amount of info we got from them was quite high. Oddly enough SD and LB weren¡¯t at the party. I didn¡¯t know why, but with them gone I could more openly show my powers. During the wait I experimented with some of my mana control. As I got tired I used my nature buff, to keep myself alert. I could use it a total of 16 times, so I used 15. Just as I thought it would, it had the added effect of waking me up. With the perk on ten times, I never fell below a ¡®slightly exhausted¡¯ state. My alertness kept me awake at all times. I began to wonder if I could use this to never need sleep again. My attention to detail skyrocketed while in this hyper attentive mode. Ancestor even said the amount of information Inspect picked up nearly doubled. Like this I spent the entire first night of the program, completely away and experimenting with my mana control. Dive 52: The Elder Gods Secret Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice found out EDI had a personality change. Ancestor returned, with news about another Ancient Elf trying to take Voice¡¯s spot. Voice was told that the 100 assorted people were going to have to do some sort of contest in groups of ten. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! And if you like a character in the chapter let me know! I can add them to later chapters if they are popular enough. Although I might add them later anyway! Kretchof¡¯s POV Master chose me to be the last dungeon boss. Using the power he gave me, I adjusted some of my undead, and made them the sub bosses. A few members of the demon¡¯s army has entered the Connector Dungeon. I¡¯ve sent some of my undead to take care of them. The growing amount of high quality armor has increased the fame of Master¡¯s dungeon. I am so impressed that he made such a marvelous thing. The only entrance is around River¡¯s Cross, and in two different dungeons. Master would want more. I had my moles and dwarves build tunnels to other connecting cities, and forests. I knew Master would want to have as many inflowing monsters as possible. I needed to find a way to bait the monsters in. Maybe I could force some random monsters to come into my Master¡¯s dungeon. That way it would grow faster than normal. More monsters would lead to more adventurers. More adventurers would lead to more gear. More gear would lead to more adventurers. The cycle would repeat forever after that. I knew how Master loved animals and all beings except for Other-Worlders and monsters. I used this knowledge, and my control over the dungeon, to put up a barrier. The barrier stopped everything that tried to enter it, everything except Other-Worlders and monsters. This had the added benefit of raising the dungeon¡¯s fame, and raising the loot drop rate of dead adventurers. This meant Master¡¯s dungeon would level up much slower, but that was something I¡¯d have to deal with. Master didn¡¯t need to fuss over such minor details. With work on the extension of the dungeon started, I returned to harrying the demon¡¯s army. Voice¡¯s POV Everyone came back before ten a.m. That was probably discussed beforehand by the administration. I realized two very important things about my mana manipulation abilities. By concentrating my buffs on only one part of my body I could create new types of buffs! I hid my overjoyed status when I learned this. My passive mask was my holy object. If I concentrated the light buff on my arms, I could create after images. For some reason it increased my ability to dodge. Although if you just aimed at the first one you could hit me. Not only could I put the buffs on parts of my body, I could put it inside my body. By using the offensive boosting buff on my muscles, I gained strength. By researching throughout the night I came to a conclusion. Each of the Elder Gods either controlled, or exemplified one of the major stats. By fusing metal mana buffs to my muscles I gained strength. The metal mana god was linked to strength. By fusing earth mana buffs to my muscles I gained defense. The earth mana goddess controlled endurance. By fusing light mana buffs to my muscles I gained accuracy. The light mana goddess was linked to dexterity. By fusing water mana buffs to my muscles I gained fluid movements. The water mana goddess was linked to agility. I don¡¯t know why, but by fusing darkness mana buffs to my brain I gained enhanced thinking speed. The dark mana god was linked to intelligence. I don¡¯t know how it worked, but I would worry about that later. By fusing nature buffs to my eyes, I was able to detect poisonous substances in nature. Since dark was int, nature had to be wisdom. Even though they are not opposites. By fusing my muscles with fire buffs, my total stamina increased by about 50%. Since vitality did the same thing, the fire goddess was linked to vitality. Now wind was hard to figure out. I technically didn¡¯t gain any stat point bonus from any of my experiments. Although, when I fused the wind buffs to my muscles, I had an increase of speed for a very short time. So the wind god was linked to speed instead of luck, which is what I thought it would be. After all, it was one of the seven stats given to the users. I naturally assumed something would increase it. But sadly that wasn¡¯t the case. When I had come to the conclusions about each of the gods, I received a notice again. Further cementing the idea that we were still within the game world.
Congratulations! You have discovered the link between the Elder Gods, and stat points. You have gained formerly unknown knowledge. You have gained 20 intelligence.
You can use this knowledge as a bargaining chip with the Elder Gods. For various reasons they do not wish for this knowledge to be made public.
For your silence on this subject the gods will present you with two gifts.
I appeared in a blank white room. Much like my white room before I added anything to it. The main difference was the eight Elder Gods were here. They were, as usual, all standing in a line. I cocked my head to one side. ¡°Isn¡¯t one of you missing? Heh.¡± I smiled. I knew who was missing. And technically he couldn¡¯t do anything without my permission. The other gods were staring at me, as if telling me to allow him to come. ¡°*Sigh* Fiiine. Davros, I herby give you permission to come here for the period of times I am in this real, and speak to me. You may only speak to me while I am in this realm.¡± I said times instead of time. That way Davros and I could communicate if I came to this place again. I needed a way to be able to make deals with him after all. The god that looked as if space were encompassed into his being spoke. ¡°Now that we are all here, we need to speak to you.¡± I nodded. I already knew he could read my thoughts. He seemed to have some sort of memory reading ability as well. He would know that I was now an Ancient Elf. As I thought that a flicker passed over what should have been his face. I smirked as he tried to continue as if nothing happened. ¡°ANYWAY.¡± He almost yelled. I intentionally let a chuckle escape. ¡°We have received word from our creator that you have learned of a deep secret of ours. There is a reason why we chose to keep that particular set of secrets away from everyone.¡± Mar stepped forward, and intervened. ¡°We really need you to lock the information away. We have a means of buying silence for just such an occasion as this.¡± I looked at her as though she was a motherly feeling. ¡°Please go on. Although I¡¯d never reveal your secret my dearest loving Mar. You have only shown me mercy.¡± Typical bullshit spiel to gain further approval. She smiled a loving, gracious, smile at me. Obviously she at least couldn¡¯t read my mind. ¡°You may ask of each of us any boon. We will each grant you a request to complete, based on how much we feel the boon is worth to you.¡± She smiled as she walked back into the line. I was surprised to see that Davros was the one to walk forward. A wicked smile across his face. ¡°Before we give you our quests though, you will be granted a special token of our ¡®appreciation¡¯, for keeping your vow of silence. Also I¡¯ll need your permission to do this ritual.¡± The nine stepped forward. I direct a question to the god that looks like the void. ¡°Does that mean you are the god of luck?¡± I raise my eyebrows as I ask. He seemed to flinch slightly. I smiled. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I¡¯ll keep your secret too. Fine, Davros. You have my permission to do whatever this ritual is, as long as all of the other Elder Gods give you permission to do the ritual before you start.¡± I had to be specific so he didn¡¯t worm his way out of the situation. Man it¡¯s going to be good to get whatever these boons are. The nine Elder Gods began doing some sort of ritual. I heard Ancestor whisper into my ear. ¡°Ask them for their blood.¡± The god of luck and whatever mana type associated with it, looked up at me. I could have sworn he scowled. He didn¡¯t say anything though. Apparently he knew something about the Ancient Elves that I didn¡¯t. Something about why I needed the blood from all of the Elder Gods. I felt a tug. Then suddenly a burning sensation. From the ground sprouted several thorny vines. Before I had time to think, the vines covered me in an orb they formed. The orb contracted around me, and they sank into my skin. The pain was brief, but intense. The light around me had returned to the white landscape. My skin now sported a new, slightly intimidating, tattoo. I had vines covering my entire body. The vines ran all along my entire body. I say entire body, because now I was naked. There seemed to be eight empty spaces. There was an opening around my heart, but it had a dull white star being constrained by the vines. The gods were back in a line. The faceless god spoke. ¡°That is my mark. It will allow you to use a bit of my power. This is the gift we give you as a group.¡±
You have obtained the mark of ???. With this your mana will be separated into eight even increments. In addition to these eight you will have a 9th ¡®pure mana¡¯ increment. The element with the lowest purity will determine the ¡®pure mana¡¯ capacity you have.
When you increase every elemental mana type to at least 1% purity, you will get 1% of your total mana as Pure Mana. Pure Mana is concentrated mana essence. Pure mana is 9x as effective as regular mana. Pure mana will only be used if you try to use an element which has 0 mana left.
If Pure Mana reaches 100% of your total mana, you will unlock a new trait.
¡°That is my blessing to you. You already know how to purify your mana, so it should be very, useful to you. Now ask your boon from each of us.¡± He squinted at me. Everyone but Mar disappeared. ¡°What would you have of me, to keep my secret?¡± She looked longingly at me. ¡°I was told that a drop of the most holy of goddesses could make a potion to cure anything. That is what I wish for, a single drop of your blood.¡± She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, but then shook her head. ¡°Alright, but for this you must free Davros, but only slightly.¡± ¡°I have to what?¡± She smiled understandingly. ¡°You see, darkness continues without the god. The darkness in the hearts of my following has grown since Davros has been trapped. If you free him, the darkness in their hearts will leave. He cannot sense the darkness in the hearts of the leaders of my following. There is almost no chance of him finding out about it. If you don¡¯t free him, the darkness in their hearts will grow, and consume them. They might even try to free him themselves. All you need to do is let him manipulate our world a little bit, then the darkness will be pulled away from them. He only needs to do one thing. Like make another alter or something. It doesn¡¯t even need to work, he just has to push his magic through your realm.¡± She shook her head sadly. I nodded. ¡°Alright, but I need time to think of how to phrase it.¡± She nodded. She pricked her finger with a needle that appeared from nowhere. The drop of blood fell into a vial she materialized. She handed me the vial.
Blood of Mar *Ichor
This is a drop of Mar¡¯s blood. Mar gave this to her champion as a gift. This drop of blood can be used in potions, enchanting, or as a bargaining tool with Mar or Davros. This item is soul-bound until used.
She hugged me. ¡°I must go. I will see you very soon.¡± She smiled as she pushed me away. The other gods returned, and Mar disappeared. I wonder how much Davros would buy this info for? I probably shouldn¡¯t betray her trust though. The next to step up was Davros. I started the transaction. ¡°Alright, I have some juicy info; you¡¯re really going to have to give me something good though.¡± He was understandably taken aback by my proposal. ¡°What kind of information do you have?¡± I adopted a more business like persona. ¡°The kind that might let you destroy the church of Mar altogether.¡± He was obviously very interested. Before he spoke I wagged a finger. ¡°But first our deal. I want a drop of your blood. Tell me your task.¡± He looked confused for a moment, but then consented. ¡°Alright. You have to send a message to DefiledHealer. Tell him, ¡®The moment of turning is now.¡¯ Can you do that?¡± I nodded. As was with Mar, he pricked his finger, and gave me a drop of blood.
Blood of Davros *Ichor
This is a drop of Davros¡¯ blood. This blood is cursed. By drinking this blood, you will become closer to Davros. This drop of blood can be used in potions, enchanting, or as a bargaining tool with Davros. This item is soul-bound until used.
I sent the message before Davros even left. Although I was hoping that since DH wasn¡¯t in game, he wouldn¡¯t get the message. ¡°The information? What is it?¡± Davros was impatient. ¡°First you must give me something. With this info, if I ever let you out, you could destroy Mar¡¯s entire worship.¡± Davros¡¯ eyes swam greedily. ¡°NAME IT! What do you want boy!¡± He seemed almost desperate for the information. ¡°Well, as you can see, I have 270 intelligence. I have 100 darkness affinity. I even created an undead dungeon.¡± Davros was getting more interested the more I went on. ¡°I don¡¯t know what DH has done for you, but it¡¯s probably not as much as I¡¯m capable of. What I want is your protection. Not for me, but for my dungeon. I want you to put up an altar in your name in one of the five stationed rooms. I want this to be the only working alter in the world. I give you permission for that. You can grant rewards through that alter, only if I ok the request and the reward. Only players and monsters will be allowed to be sacrificed though. And only players whose real life age is over 18. I also want it to be painless sacrificing. And no gruesome stuff, at least not if they are still alive to see it.¡± Davros licked his lips in contemplation. ¡°I will agree to that, but it seems you are only giving here. I understand the only working alter would be a draw to evil people, but good people will try to destroy it. You must know that.¡± I smiled. ¡°Earlier I got a notice about several changes Kretchof, my lich, did to the dungeon. One was to put up a ward against all NPCs and animals. So only players and monsters can get in. If the alter gets broken, well it is up to you to fix it.¡± ¡°Ok, but what do you yourself get out of this?¡± ¡°I want my dungeon to get a percentage of the reward. That way it can improve itself faster. Whenever you give out a reward, you have to give my dungeon a bit of power as well. Power in the form of minions or items. That way we both benefit. You get to communicate to your following, when I allow it, and I get extra items to increase the amount of people trying to clear my dungeon. Of course you are not allowed to tell anyone it¡¯s my dungeon. I want to look like I have no idea about it. That is, until I try and ¡®fail¡¯ to complete it.¡± ¡°Really? HA! I like you kid! Alright,¡± Davros seemed to be in a very pleasant mood. ¡°Deal! I just made the alter room for you. It is filled with low to mid level undead demons. And an undead demon shaman. Since I¡¯m in a good mood, and it would help protect the alter, how about I make a portal to my realm?¡± ¡°No to the portal.¡± I knew he was just trying to find a way to get power out of it. He cursed when I refused. His face turned flat. ¡°Fine. Can¡¯t blame me for trying though. Still, it will be good to be able to talk to my minions again.¡± He went back into a good mood. Not being allowed to do anything in Solun must have really been boring. ¡°So the deal is that you make the alter, upkeep it, repair it if it gets broken, and pass all requests and rewards to me for approval. Deal?¡± ¡°Deal.¡± I took out my blood contract, and wrote the details on it. That in exchange for upkeep, repair and maintenance of the altar, Davros gets to give out quests and rewards when I allow it. We both signed it. ¡°Now, tell me kid. What is the information that can destroy Mar¡¯s entire following?¡± ¡°She told me that there is growing darkness in her priests. That if given the knowledge about them you could destroy her entire religion.¡± His smile only lasted a moment, before it faltered. Replaced instantly by anger. He flew at me, and grabbed my collar. ¡°WHAT! WHY DIDN¡¯T YOU SAY THAT FIRST!?¡± My eyes went wide, and my frown parted slightly. My nose scrunched up just a bit, and my head sunk into my chest a bit. The perfect imitation of both fear and confusion at once. ¡°I didn¡¯t want you to cheat your way out of the deal. I¡¯m sorry! If it wasn¡¯t worth the altar take it back!¡± I allowed my body to tremor ever so slightly. He seemed to notice what was going on. He put me down with a blank expression on his face. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked ¡®confused¡¯. ¡°I thought you¡¯d be thrilled to learn of the darkness. Why aren¡¯t you happy?¡± He mumbled the reply. ¡°Since I used magic the darkness was pulled out of them.¡± He sighed. ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡± He looked at the nonexistent ground. ¡°I will just have to try again. Did she tell you how it happened?¡± I decided to give him a bit at least. After all, I needed a willing slave not a reluctant one. ¡°She said it was because you had been gone for so long.¡± He shook his head. I gave him a bit of good news. ¡°You can tell your people that there is a working altar to you in the undead dungeon.¡± He seemed slightly relieved. ¡°Fine, go get your bribe from the other gods. I should warn you though, we are going to talk about what the requests and rewards are. You shouldn¡¯t be so easy going about this. Of course I have no problem telling them you didn¡¯t get any of my blood.¡± He smirked as he disappeared. Next up was Gaia. She came up to me, and the others disappeared. Couldn¡¯t they just appear one at a time? ¡°So young traveler. Not only do you protect my children, you have the wisdom to perceive the truth behind the deities. You know, only two other people have been able to do this. Only one was an other-worlder.¡± What!? Some other player figured this out before me!? WHO THE FUCK!? ¡°Well, I¡¯m just happy to see the truth.¡± Gaia nodded. ¡°Be that as it may, you may ask of my one boon. I will answer any questions you have, then you may take the requested item, and fulfill my quest.¡± I pretended to think for a moment. ¡°What kind of things can I ask for?¡± ¡°You may ask for anything that I can give; however, the more powerful the thing you ask for, the harder the request will be.¡± I ¡®thought¡¯ for several minutes. I seriously didn¡¯t know why it was such a big deal to keep this a secret. It wasn¡¯t like it would effect their standing in the world. ¡­ Unless it would. ¡°So why do you all wish for me to stay quiet about this?¡± Her vine and leaf covered breasts jiggled slightly as she turned. ¡°You see, long ago the gods made a bet. The first one to have their link to a stat spoken aloud, would lose. The loser would have to serve all of the others, until someone lost another bet. As of now no one has lost the bet. And no one wants you to have that much power over them. This way, if you did state one of our links, the bet would be null and we would make a new bet.¡± I thought about the silliness of it .They were really doing this whole thing over a bet? I mean it worked out for me, but I was the third person to figure out all of the connections. It seemed like no one would figure out just one. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ve gotten a drop of blood from Mar, I can turn that into the most powerful healing potion in the world. What kind of potion could your blood turn into?¡± Gaia thought for a bit, ¡°Well you could use my blood to communicate to animals, or even learn to live off the earth like plants do.¡± I nodded. That made sense. ¡°Alright, so what do I need to do in order to get a drop of your blood?¡± She did the same small ritual the other two did, and handed me a vial with a single drop of her blood. ¡°There is some abomination stalking the land. You must find it, and make sure it is killed.¡± ¡°What kind of abomination?¡± ¡°She used to be a beautiful bunny, now she has turned into a monster. She became attracted to blood, then inherited the powers of a twisted slime. I want her dead. Some fool perverted my lovely child.¡± She began crying hysterically. Almost as if a mother had found out her child was a serial killer. ¡°Alright, alright. I don¡¯t know how long it will take, but I¡¯ll make sure she dies.¡±
You have accepted a quest. Success: Getting the blood slime rabbit killed. Difficulty: Low Failure: N/A. Reward: Already paid. Success results in Gaia becoming more friendly towards you.
¡°Thank you Voice. Thank you!¡± As she disappeared I thought, There is no way in hell I¡¯m killing Heather. Fuck dat bitch. There¡¯s no time limit, so I¡¯ll just keep trying to ¡®find¡¯ her. LOL The other gods were just more of the same thing. The fire goddess asked me to befriend a dragon. The metal god asked me to destroy one of his temples. The wind god asked me to summon a wind fairy. The earth god asked me to pray at his temple. I made sure to bullshit them all. As long as they thought their blood was basically worthless to me, I could get super easy tasks. The metal god was the only real problematic one. Destroying a temple is risky business. Still, they had all given me the blood when they gave me the task. The water goddess asked me to come visit her. But I did not ask for her blood. I asked her to further her blessing. Water breathing and streamlining my body were both amazing. With whatever the third level of the blessing was, I would be able to more adequately fight. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. She agreed fairly easily. Especially after I mentioned that her blessing was the best blessing out of all of the ones I received.
Undine has granted you 15 water affinity, and upgraded her blessing.
Many Blessings of Undine (Complete) For greatly pleasing Undine you have been gifted with her blessing. When submerged in water you gain gills, and can filter water from the water. You may also request for her aid by giving a suitable offering. Undine believes all creatures should move with power and grace. Undine has streamlined your body. You now move 50% quicker in all environments you could normally move in. You also use 25% less stamina from water or air resistance. Under the promise to keep her secret, Undine has granted you her completed blessing. Your body has been given venomous spines. You can activate these spines with a thought. The venom produced by these spines will effect anyone you touch with them. The venom is a low level damaging venom. You can learn to make more types of venoms, and switch between ones you can create.
She was proud when I told her how amazing her gift was. She told me that I had to visit her soon. It didn¡¯t sound too bad, but I did wonder how long I¡¯d have to stay. As she disappeared, I was again greeted by the god with no name or face. I was in a starry abyss. ¡°So¡± The featureless man spoke. His tone, as always, was empty of any inflection. ¡°Again you come here. Again you manipulate both Mar, and Davros for your own benefit.¡± ¡°Well, I uh¡± I try to stammer out a response. ¡°No,¡± the monotone replied. ¡°It¡¯s alright. I appreciate those that want power. You obviously want that. However, there is a concern about the blood.¡± A world appears. The world looks like it went through Armageddon. Fires burn the forests. Oceans drown out the plains. Mountains, cracked in half, spew forth lava. ¡°This is what the world would look like if the Ancient Elves had their way. Is this the power you seek? Getting the power of the gods was always impossible. The most they could ever hope for was a little bit of extra control of mana. Although¡­ they didn¡¯t put my blood into the equation. Well, what is it you want.¡± Obviously asking for his blood was a trap, but it might actually be the only way to become a higher being. Wait, why do I need to become a higher being? Ancestor spoke. ¡°He knows it would have worked! He gave us the idea!¡± I flinched at the sudden outburst from Ancestor. What the fuck was that? The void god spoke, as if he heard what ancestor said. Which maybe he did. ¡°What your Ancestor means, is that I was the one that planted the idea in the old elves minds.¡± If he could smirk, I¡¯m sure he would have. ¡°So hold on. You mean to tell me that YOU are the one that fucked over my entire race?¡± ¡°No, I simply gave them the formula to advance their race. They wanted innate control over mana. To further supplement their own massive amount of control over mana. I simply pushed them in the right direction. The way went about it was all wrong. You¡¯ve done something interesting though. I can¡¯t really pin you down. I keep trying to analyze you, and for the most part I have. You are a narcissistic, manipulative, ass, that has a high intelligence. Even with all this, you continue to impress me. I mean, getting Davros and Mar to be pitted against each other, while at the same time making sure they don¡¯t completely kill each other off, is quite impressive. So what is it you want from me? I¡¯ll let you know now. I don¡¯t have any blood to give.¡± I didn¡¯t even need to think about it. I already knew what I wanted. ¡°I¡¯ll make you a wager. I don¡¯t want to do any sort of quest for you. I probably wouldn¡¯t be able to handle it anyway. You can make the terms, all I want to dictate is the prize I get if I win. I want a book. Not just any book though. I want a book with a detailed analysis about every type of mana, including Pure Mana. I want every piece of information in regards to research on the mana types. Leaving nothing out. I want the book to be categorized based on which race has researched each thing.¡± I waited with an expectant look. ¡°Fine, but this is the bet. If you come out the winner of the little tests you are doing, then you get the book. If you finish in any place but first, you have to become my champion. It won¡¯t be easy though. Sound good?¡± We shook on it.
Bet with an Elder God
You have made a bet with the god of Luck. If you win the tournament, you get a book. If you come in any place but first, you become the slave of the god of Luck.
It was only after reading this that I realized I had been tricked. ¡®If you come in any place but first¡¯ only worked if there wasn¡¯t more than one trial! If there were multiple trials I¡¯d have to be first in all of them. I looked up to argue, but he was already gone. I was back in the room with the tables. People began popping into existence. It was a little before ten a.m. I assumed that was when the whole ¡®test¡¯ would get started. With all of my experiments proving, for the most part, successful, I was ready for the new day. The crowd was noisy as they spoke to the comrades they had made the day before. Within a few minutes the announcer from yesterday appeared. ¡°Hello all! There has been a slight change in plans.¡± He raised a hand to silence the murmuring that had started. ¡°It¡¯s not big, but the teams are going to be split differently then you were first told. We just received this news. Sorry.¡± He actually looked regretful at having to give this news. ¡°But there is nothing we can do about it now.¡± A piece of paper appeared before each of the people. ¡°This paper in front of you shows your team mates. The teams are arranged from one to ten people. Only one group has ten people, and only one person is by themselves. The teams were made by pairing up by, *sigh*, by the weakest people here. The fewer people you have in your group, the stronger everyone in your group is. Each group is roughly equivalent to all of the others, except one. The person by themselves is the single most powerful person in this room.¡± He looked confused for a second. Obviously his papers weren¡¯t saying what he thought was good. ¡°If I were all of you, I¡¯d go for him first. You will be given six hours to prepare for the tests. A random merchant was chosen from the starter town of the five winners of the first contest. You can buy any supplies from them. They will only be here until the first test, after that you are on your own.¡± With that he disappeared again. I didn¡¯t need to look at my paper. I already knew this system was going to fuck me over. Well, I guess the star god guy wouldn¡¯t let me win so easily. Fuck! I imagined several ways to cause pain to the god of luck, as I looked at the paper. The only name on it was my own. I knew this was going to happen. Maybe the merchant knows who I am. I could get something at least cheaper from them. A box appeared in my view. It said ¡®Merchant¡¯ and ¡®Room¡¯. I instantly pressed merchant. I needed to be the first one there. That way the merchant wouldn¡¯t have given discounts to so many others. What I see surprises me. I blink, trying to see if this was real. I point at the merchant, questioningly. She giggled slightly. ¡°Hi Voice.¡± ¡°Susan. How are you doing? And how are you here?¡± She had been chosen as the merchant representative for the city, since her new discoveries have basically made the city impregnable. ¡°I have all of the other merchant¡¯s goods here. I even have books and plants from the chapel. You can buy anything that any of them would have,¡± She looked around quickly. Seeing no one else she said, ¡°for a large discount. Any of my goods are obviously free for you.¡± She smiled and winked at me. I didn¡¯t know why the system would allow this, but I needed all the help I could get. All in all, I ordered a set of 20 bombs, enough bandages to make a mummy army, and the needed plants to make some overly powerful healing potions. Even if we were against each other, I could still talk the other groups into buying from me after Susan was gone. I made sure to wipe the inventory of bandages and basic healing ingredients. I didn¡¯t buy the potions though. I couldn¡¯t afford that much, even with my massive discount. I bought 9 stacks of 99 bandages. I didn¡¯t buy an bottles, because I wouldn¡¯t need them for my plan. I bought a whetstone, and all of the random ingredients that I needed to do my summoning rituals. I was going to make sure I had all of the fairies before I started this damn thing. In exchange for all of that, Susan took all my money. 20 silver and 5 copper. I knew for a fact that the bandages alone were worth at least twice that. I also suggested for her to charge a bit extra for all of the others, you know, to make up for the discount I got. She took the bait too easily. I almost felt bad for blatantly manipulating her like that. Almost. With everything costing extra, people would have less they could buy. Which meant more chance for them to buy fewer potions. After that I returned to my room to prepare. As I left some people were already starting to appear to buy things. Good luck on getting healing shit, losers. When I returned to my room, I was surprised to note that I was back in my house. Not in the real world, but in the white room. That was cool, but I had a lot of work to do, and not enough time to do it. I only had about five and a half hours to do what needed to be done. I created the appropriate space by using the mana in the environment. I was interested in why there was mana in my white room, but I concentrated on the task at hand. For the next hour I made potions. I condensed the water around me into the pot, and made massive heaps of potions all at once. I dried the potions, and used that to make even more powerful potions. Once I was done with each batch, it was absorbed by the bandages. I made enough ¡®OP¡¯s to convert an entire stack of bandages. Those would be the first things I sold. That way I wouldn¡¯t use them when the non-infused bandages ran dry. After the first hour had passed, I began on my summoning. I started with the wind fairy. That way I could get the wind god¡¯s request out of the way at the same time. With white chalk, I drew a large tornado. In the middle I placed a single feather from an eagle. The chalk started coming towards the feather, almost as if by magnetic attraction. The chalk dust began to circle the feather, forming a solid white orb. The orb elongated, and began to look like an egg. Just as the egg shape was completed it began to crack. The crack began to expand, slowly spreading and fracturing the egg. When a small triangle was made by three connecting cracks, it was pushed from the rest. A small hatchling stumbled its way out, falling on the floor as it tried to walk. The egg dissipated into dust. The dust began circling the baby bird, drying it out. The bird flapped its tiny wings, and managed to get a small lift. It flapped its tiny wings. It was actually cute to watch it rapidly flap its petite air riders. What can I say? I have a sore spot for cute things. It quickly realized it could use wind magic to uplift itself. Its path was anything but straight, but it did land on my left shoulder. A smile graced my lips. ¡°Hey buddy. You doing ok?¡± I use my index finger to slightly rub the underside of the bird¡¯s beak. ¡°I think I¡¯ll call you SparrowHawk.¡± I smiled at the thought. A cute little eagle named SparrowHawk. SparrowHawk was a white eagle, with a much too big head. Its body seemed to be trying to fix that though.
Stats Window
NameSparrowHawkRaceWind Fairy
Health10Mana1350
Stamina10
RankNoviceCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec11.45
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility135
Wisdom114.5Intelligence135
EnduranceaDexterity114.5
Luck10Vitality1
Fame0
SparrowHawk is a wind fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Wind fairies start with all stats but agility, dexterity, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a wind fairy SparrowHawk¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. SparrowHawk¡¯s agility equals its intelligence. SparrowHawk¡¯s dexterity equals its wisdom. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with SparrowHawk. SparrowHawk has benefited from the piety of the summoner. SparrowHawk has gained 9 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
Warning!
You have exceeded the maximum amount of allowable summons at one time. Choose one summoning to send to the ether realm.
Access to Pure Mana has lifted the maximum amount of allowable summons at one time.
So that was a completely pointless update? What the fuck ever man. I continued on to the next summoning. The next summoning was a nature fairy. I was surprised that Susan actually had some of this shit. I sprinkled the jar of dirt around in a circle. The leaves and twigs I placed in a picture of a large leaf. As I injected mana into it, the leaves and twigs began to swirl. They quickly formed a crude imitation of a monkey. Leaves covered the places where the eyes would be, and sticks as limbs and a tail. The dirt surrounded the monkey, and flew off in all directions. The crude imitation, had turned into an actual a baby monkey. I was getting all kinds cute companions today. The monkey scurried up my leg, and onto my right shoulder. ¡°Hi! My name is Moro!¡± The voice was happy, and definitely female. Moro had light brown fur, and slightly pointed ears. Moro was already climbing around the room, trying to make mischief. I knew she¡¯d be a handful when I upgraded her. Moro¡¯s stats were the same as SparrowHawk¡¯s except dex was equal to int instead of wis. Well, I guess Sol will have someone to chat with now. Next was the most expensive ingredients. There was no set shape I needed, so I just poured everything on the ground. A cup of sulfur, several dried branches, and charcoal were piled on top of each other. I lit the concoction with me fire mana. As it burned, the flames seemed to get caught in some sort of bubble. The flame wisps congealed into one large wisp. The wisp darted around the room.
Stats Window
NameDrakeRaceFire Fairy
Health10Mana100
Stamina10
RankNoviceCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec27
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility1
Wisdom270Intelligence114.5
EnduranceaDexterity114.5
Luck10Vitality1
Fame0
Drake is a fire fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Fire fairies start with all stats but dexterity, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a fire fairy Drake¡¯s wisdom stat equal the user¡¯s intelligence stat. Drake¡¯s intelligence and dexterity equals half the user¡¯s wisdom. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Drake. Drake has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Drake has gained 9 luck. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
Drake was only a few fiery wisps that orbited a larger fire wisp, but the whole wisp thing was pretty cool. Hopefully it would be useful to me. The wisps surrounded me, and I felt an uplifting spirit fly around me.
For being the first person to summon all eight mana fairy types, you have gained the Trait Mana Magnet.
Mana Magnet is the perfect trait for those that use mana. Mana will naturally bend to your will. Mana will now move more quickly to obey you. Time requirements for using mana will decrease dramatically based on the lowest ranked mana fairy you control.
Well¡­ It¡¯s bout fucking time I got something like this. This environmental mana bullshit took too damn long. Suddenly I heard a voice, completely devoid of inflection. ¡°Think of these as gifts for my future chosen. Hehehe.¡± Hearing the Hehehe in a complete monotone was a little freaky, but that sentence was ominous. It made me wonder what the deity had planned. Something felt wrong. Like everything was about to spiral out of control. This must have been what happened to the Ancient Elves. He gave them too much power at once. Fuck. What do I do? I¡¯m not giving the power back. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 2700Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 22.9(17.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom229Intelligence270
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 17 Exp 90.16% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 53: The Game Begins Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice figured out which god was linked to each stat, and was given several boons to not say it in the mortal realm. Voice bought many healing and ritual items from Susan. He also got a notice saying he had summoned the rest of his fairies. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! And if you like a character in the chapter let me know! I can add them to later chapters if they are popular enough. Although I might add them later anyway! Voice¡¯s POV I summoned each of my fairies. Categorizing them according to which element gave bonuses to which stat. I stopped for a moment. I recounted them. I noticed a sever lack of darkness fairy. I checked over my traits. It did say that I had summoned all eight. Didn¡¯t it? I was more confused than anything. I didn¡¯t understand how I got that trait if I only had seven of the eight fairies. Ancestor, did I summon a dark fairy at any point? ¡°No, that thing must have done something to summon one for you. Or perhaps it has to do with the amulet Davros gave you.¡± I thought on it for a bit, then decided to ask Davros. Although he would probably charge for the information. ¡°DAVROS!¡± I heard a deep, ominous voice. ¡°Yes oh master! What can do for you?¡± The sarcasm was palpable. ¡°I need your help.¡± ¡°Obviously. You know it¡¯s going to cost you, right?¡± ¡°Name your price.¡± I could hear the smirk in the little fucker¡¯s voice. ¡°You sent the message, that was good, now I want you to call off Kretchof. He has been hurting one of my minions quite a bit.¡± I stare flatly at the empty space. ¡°Your minion has been trying to kill me. I can¡¯t call Kretchof off unless you can assure me that you will call your pet off of me. I give you permission to speak to him this once, only to tell him to no longer attack me.¡± ¡°Fine. Asshole. I hope you get bored as fuck though.¡± I called off Kretchof from the demon army. He seemed curious as to why, but didn¡¯t question me. I was happy about that. I didn¡¯t have the time to explain. Davros spoke to me again. ¡°The amulet I gave you basically fulfils the requirements of summoning a tier four undead fairy. For you to have an actual fairy, you need to fill up all three slots, then sacrifice two of them. The remaining slot will become your tier four fairy. Although, you will lose the ability to use the amulet.¡± ¡°Does that mean I have to sacrifice the wind guy?¡± ¡°Fraid so bukko. Although, since I think it will be fun to see your internal struggle, have a gift. If that¡¯s ok? And don¡¯t worry, Mar can¡¯t see you right now. Even I can¡¯t see you. I won¡¯t know what you¡¯ve done until you leave whatever room you are in.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± Suddenly the body of a small child appeared before me. Obviously Davros wanted to see how I¡¯d react to having to resurrect a child. Without any hesitation, I raised the child from the dead. Without looking at the notifications, I sacrificed the child and wind guy. It wasn¡¯t as if I had any real connection to either of them. Although I¡¯d have to make up some sort of excuse if I ever go back to that place. Kretchof appeared out of nowhere. ¡°Wha¡± Before I could even ask anything, he began glowing. Davros¡¯ tone was less than pleased. ¡°You know you are the chosen of Mar right? Why the fuck are you so ready to sacrifice people for your own gain? That¡¯s fucked up man.¡± The amulet began to glow, and lifted itself off of my neck. I watched with interest. The necklace flew to Kretchof, and landed gently around his neck. A burst of dark light blinded me.
For declaring full ownership of: Minor Lich Kretchof, Kretchof will benefit from your darkness affinity. Minor Lich Kretchof¡¯s mana is set at ([player mana] * [Darkness Affinity]). Mana set to: 2700.
For sacrificing two rank three darkness fairies, Kretchof has become a rank four darkness fairy. Kretchof¡¯s class will be based on the character¡¯s class. Minor Lich Kretchof has become Mana Lich Kretchof.
Mana liches are a rare breed of lich. Mana liches can absorb darkness mana around them to speed up recovery after death. Mana liches have the power to temporarily summon rank 1 darkness fairies to assist them.
Mana Lich Kretchof Level 35 Slaver Guard
Health: 450/450Stamina: N/AMana: 2700/2700
Commanded By:Voice0fReason
Wow, I¡¯m not even mad that I was tricked for so long. Holy fuck. The fact that Kretchof was a darkness fairy didn¡¯t even bother me. What did bother me a bit was the look on the kid¡¯s face after I revived him. The look of hope and longing wasn¡¯t enough to stop me from sacrificing him though. I did start to question whether he was sentient though. Too late. I had already done it. Kretchof bowed. ¡°Master. I am very happy to see you.¡± The lich grinned in a crude imitation of a smile. ¡°I have gained several new abilities since you¡¯ve chosen to upgrade me!¡± Kretchof was obviously happy to get chosen as my fairy. I had him list all of his new abilities. The most interesting of which was to create Soul Binding Contracts. Each one that he made cost me 100 maximum mana until I disbanded the contract. That meant I could conceivably make 27 at once, if I was willing to have no mana for the entire time. I had him create four though. That way I could have a little wiggle room. I could always disband the contract if I needed the mana back. The best part about it was I could choose how much it said when I made it. After that, I could alter what it said at any time. The group of fairies seemed basically like a tactical swat team. A poorly trained, unequipped swat team, but a swat team non the less. I looked over them all. I devised several different contingency plans. Most of them being centered on a battle royale type of contest. Although an obstacle course type was planned for as well. Survival types would be the easiest though. My tactics skill even showed me a small flaw in my reasoning at one point. I was planning on using Tear for most of the hit and runs. Tactics pointed out that using Drake to cause a bit of DOT (damage over time) then making Tear use the jellyfish poison would be more optimal. I told each of the fairies their respective jobs. The metal fairy, Golem, was mostly going to stay beside me and the earth golem, Eli. He would provide any muscle in case we needed to confront another group. Eli would obviously be in charge of my protection. Tear and Drake, the fire fairy, would mostly be used as tactical assault units. They would be in charge of distracting the enemy, and causing short term damage. Both the nature fairy, Moro the monkey, and the wind fairy, SparrowHawk, would be the ones to help me navigate through whatever thing we had to do. After a little probing, I found out that my fairies could communicate with each other and me telepathically. That was going to be more useful than any other single ability they had. Kretchof was in charge of creating escape paths, and making a useful army if possible. Sol was utility, and healing. Sol could guide me in dark places, and be a distraction in an emergency. I tested to see if Heather could still speak to me. I sent her a message. ¡°Heather? Can you hear me right now?¡± Her voice was loaded with sarcasm. ¡°No. This is someone else.¡± I decided to ignore the out of character response for now. ¡°I need you to gather me ingredients. If that¡¯s ok. I need the usual, wolf meat and vegetables. I¡¯ll make sure to reward you for it later.¡± I didn¡¯t know why Heather was so uppity, but I had to placate her. Else I risked a drawn out explanation. ¡°Please?¡± ¡°¡­ Fine. But it better be a good reward.¡± I¡¯d have to make her feel a little bit of pain later. To remind her who was boss. I quickly received the requested items. While she was gathering I sent Susan a message. ¡°So the head guy says you are not coming back when you leave today. What time do you leave?¡± I got a message a few seconds later. ¡°What? I¡¯m supposed to be waiting in the forest after I finish selling today.¡± My ears perked up. Hold the fucking phone. ¡°Well, he must have misspoke. Do you know where you are going to be stationed? And how are you going to get new supplies?¡± Using an NPC was not against my morals. A minute later another reply came. ¡°Well, he said it was a secret, but he never said not to share it. One sec a customer is here.¡± Another few minutes later I started making the food, and received a reply. ¡°All I know is that, for the next month, several other-worlders are doing some sort of game specific to them. I am going to be stationed in the forest to sell to them. Although they said I would be hidden away. The other-worlders will have to find me.¡± She sent me a small picture. It was a very crude map. On the map was a small dot labeled ¡®me¡¯. So not only is the merchant my friend, I now know what we are going to do, AND have a map!? It fucking pays to have friends. Although this wouldn¡¯t have happened if they didn¡¯t pick from Rand. I thanked her for the info, and told her I¡¯d be there to visit her soon. I also ask her to hint to the other players that someone would be in the area to buy and sell goods. Though I specified that she shouldn¡¯t tell them it was her, nor where she would be located. After the chat, I had enough food to make several good stews. I told Heather she could do whatever she wanted, and asked her if there was anything I could get her. She said she¡¯d think on it. I cooked a bit of food I had. Food is the best way to entice most people into trusting you. If you can make some really good tasting food, then you can make friends a lot easier. With all eight of my slaves fairies ready to go, I returned to the chamber where we were all supposed to gather. Obviously I recalled all of my fairies first. I also let Kretchof go about messing with the dungeon while I didn¡¯t need him. I also put on a disguise before I left. That way I could at least try to investigate a bit. If someone figured out I was by myself, then they would be looking for a guy that looked like my disguise. I disguised myself as a dark skinned female. The disguise wasn¡¯t perfect, mostly because I had no experience in being a girl. Most guys would be more willing to help out a cute girl, rather than a slightly attractive guy. I made sure to triple check every aspect of my disguise. I had b-cup breasts, and an overall medium to skinny frame. I wanted to increase my attractiveness even more, but I received a notice that I would become easy to distinguish if I changed any more. I went around to talk to the people. I chose the group that was made up of four guys. They looked like they were the kind of guys that were lonely. They each had overly flashy armor, and overly buff avatars. ¡°Hey boys.¡± Luckily my voice had turned into one that sounded like an innocent, yet seductive person. I picked a name that my inspect had told me. It was the person I assumed was the leader, he was part of the group of ten. The largest, and therefor weakest group. ¡°Alex4Eva told me to try to make some friends. So what level are you guys?¡± I already knew their levels, but I needed to act the part of the pretty but only slightly more intelligent than average woman. They disregarded me, and went back to their conversations. I brought out a bowl of my wolf meat stew. The smell was amazing. I let them sit for a moment before getting a spoon. I slowly start eating one. After a few bites, I looked back at the group. Two of them were hungrily looking at the bowls, one was impassive, and the last was outright drooling. After swallowing I asked, ¡°Do you all want some? Alex told me to only give it out to people that join my pact though¡­¡± I looked down at the food. Sad that I couldn¡¯t just give away the deliciousness. Alex might get mad. ¡°I guess I could give you all a taste¡­¡± I say suggestively. ¡°Although I don¡¯t know if I can handle that many at once.¡± I frowned a bit. Imitating a cute pout. The ¡®impassive¡¯ one spoke up. ¡°Well, *Ahem* what would we have to do to show that we want to join the pact?¡± I put the tip of my tongue on my upper lip. As if trying to think. I create a small twinkle in my eye when I ¡®realize¡¯ where I put the contracts. I took out the four contracts. Earlier I had made them say the simple, ¡®I ___ will not attack nor in anyway hinder any member of ____¡¯s group.¡¯ I didn¡¯t put my name yet. I couldn¡¯t have them figuring out I lied before I could get them to sign the contracts. I told them that neither of our groups would be able to harm each other after they signed it. Of course that was a lie. They put their names, and I told them to sign it now. ¡°I forgot to ask Alex what the name he wanted on them was. Sorry.¡± I made an apologetic pouty face. I shrugged. They signed it, despite being slightly suspicious. Obviously they didn¡¯t know what a Soul Binding Contract was. All the better for me. I smiled as I happily handed them bowls of delicious wolf stew. The ate as if they were starved. I heard one say, ¡°Wow, a pretty girl that can cook? We should see if she wants to spend some time with us.¡± The group laughed in a disgusting way. Fucking pigs. You are barely better than rapists. I hid my disgust from the pathetic tools. After thanking them, I made up an excuse to leave. ¡°Sorry, but I really need to find the name Alex wants me to use on these.¡± I made my excuse, while collecting the tableware the man-pigs had used. I¡¯d have to use Drake and Tear to make super-heated water to sterilize them. I guess I was lucky in that I could create tableware for one in only a few minutes of concentration. After leaving the group, I planned on how to use the contracts to gain some leverage, or help in the game to come. I could always sign my name since they already signed it, but selling them to another team, then destroying them, would be the best option in my opinion. I went back to my room, and changed my disguise. I changed names again. This time I was a taller gentleman in a suit. I could easily have been mistaken as a butler. With the four contracts I set out. I had Ancestor take over inspecting the groups, while I acted as if I were waiting for something. Ancestor pointed out a small group of people that were more anxious than anything else. I walked over to them, while smiling. ¡°Hello gentlemen, my leader, Gustav, told me to make some friends.¡± The look of outright hostility was endearing. ¡°I was told to trade these.¡± I showed them the Soul Binding Contracts that were already filled out. They didn¡¯t seem to know what they were. Seriously! Come on! How can no one know what these are? In a calm demeanor, I explained the contracts, and what they did. ¡°These contracts cannot be negated, and force the people that sign it to obey whatever commands are on it. If they do not obey, the contract will suck the life force out of the offending party.¡± They were obviously more interested now. ¡°These are our most powerful members. If you have these, and our team attacks you first, they will all die. Now, I¡¯m willing to trade these to you, but I¡¯ll need something in return. What do you say?¡± They began to quickly speak in hushed tones. They kept glancing at the contracts. Having one of the more powerful groups promise to not attack you was almost too good to be true. They eventually came to an agreement. One of them stood up, and put a pouch down on the table. ¡°Here, we¡¯ll give you this for all four. There is about 15 gold in there.¡± ¡°Fifteen gold? Each one of these could go for twice that.¡± I allowed my voice to get a bit agitated. ¡°If you are here to waste my time I¡¯m leaving.¡± I huffed and turned around, ready to leave. The man that stood up grabbed my arm. Frowning he said, ¡°Alright! Hold on for a second! Geez no need to get so angry. We¡¯ve never seen those before we had no idea what they were worth.¡± I rolled my eyes as they conversed once more. I was hoping to at least double the amount of money I would make. Even if I made just the 15, I¡¯d make a profit. I was planning on making three of the ten groups hate each other. That would make it much easier on me. Since that douche basically told everyone to attack me. The man came back with a more attractive offer. ¡°Alright, how about this?¡± He put down another 15 gold, and a quiver. Ancestor told me, ¡°That quiver is enchanted to hold a limitless amount of arrows. Although the weight will still be applied.¡± Not bad, probably not worth 90 gold though. I looked disdainfully at the quiver. I slowly shook my head and sighed, as I looked down a bit. The men were waiting for my response. ¡°Alright. Alex just told me to get you all to give items that showed you were sincere in our pact. I guess these will have to do.¡± I pocketed the items, and left. I returned to my white room. I finalized my plan with the contracts, and went over everyone¡¯s job again. After I was sure they could all recite each other¡¯s jobs, I disbanded my disguise. I applied the human Voice0fReason disguise. I returned to the room. Everyone was conversing. Most likely trying to forge alliances for whatever was soon to happen. Freaking peons. At least be more subtle about it. Everyone is going to know who is teamed up with who a this rate. Obviously I knew some of these teams were doing this to throw the others off, but most people aren¡¯t that smart. With my preparations complete, I started to randomly debuff people to see their reactions. My maximum mana was at 2300 right then. I released all but ten of the nature buffs I had to keep myself awake. I used the rest of the 790 mana to cast permanent debuffs on people. For the first two people I used blind, then I used slow on the next two. I released one of the blinded fellows, and cast rigid on another. Then I cast weakness on the guy I had released from the blinding. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Watching everyone start to freak out was a good way to pass the time. Eventually I had to end my fun, as the announcer man had returned to the podium. ¡°*Ahem*Welcome everyone to the first ever Other-Worlder Challenge Week!¡± He waited for applause, but only got a spattering of sympathy clapping. ¡°Today will mark the first day of the games. The games will be simple. You will all be put into a location specifically chosen beforehand. Each of the groups will be given a single item that would be required or living, like enough food for your group for a week. Afterwards, you will all be charged with killing the other teams. For this game only, player killer status will not activate. If two or more groups form an alliance, the group in the alliance with the most points will get first place when the game is over. Points are awarded based on the rank of the person you kill. The lowest rank person is worth 10 points. Each rank above that is worth double the points of the one before. The game is over when everyone but one alliance or group remains, or the entire 35 days has expired.¡± He looked around at the group. ¡°Please be advised that once you die you are disqualified from the tournament. You will remain in this room, or in your white room.¡± He put a finger in the air, as if he just remembered something. ¡°Ah! And we have here, a freebie from DI!¡± He smiled as he pressed a button only he could see. My inventory blinked. Inside was a blue emblem. ¡®Name Change Tablet¡¯. ¡°Since all of you will be living in Solun for such a long time, the company decided to let you change your names. That way you will be less inclined to answer only to names like Alex4Eva when you get back into the real world.¡± He looked around for a moment, ¡°Game start!¡± He threw his papers in the air. They covered the entire room. As I swatted one away from my face, I felt wind blowing. I looked around. I was surrounded by a dense forest. I could barely walk between the trees. The undergrowth was thick, and filled with bushes and vines. On top of that were the thorn vines that seemed to be everywhere. My mana had started to funnel into my stone tablet, rapidly filling it in. I closely examined my surroundings. ¡°Inspect does not pick up any life signs in the general area. I suggest moving to higher ground, so we can better view the overlay of the forest.¡± I used my upgraded inspect on my flying squirrel ring.
Ring of Flight *Artifact
This ring was crafted by a powerful Ancient Elf animal tamer/enchanter. When wind mana is channeled through this ring the user will develop a body similar to the Pteromyini, or flying squirrel. This ring has an activation cost of 50 mana. It requires 25 additional mana per second to maintain the form. If your mana runs out while the ring is in use you will be forcibly be reverted back to your original form. Any items, weapons, and armor the user has will be unequipped while the ring is active. The items will be re-equipped when the ring deactivates. You have enough Nature affinity to use this ring to its maximum potential. Because of this you will not be stunned for three seconds before and after each activation of this ring. You don¡¯t not have enough Wind affinity to use this ring to its maximum potential. Because of this you will less control over your flight.
With my enhanced nature affinity I would no longer be stunned when I used the ring. It only cost 25 mana per second, and I generated 22.9 when not allowing any to flow into my stomach. My mana was at 790 at the moment, because of my buffs and the contracts. I¡¯d be able to keep it up for about 5 minutes and 50 seconds. Not a bad amount of time. Although if I could meditate while flying¡­ I had figured out my first mission. I would learn to calm my mind even while flying and maneuvering. I activated the ring. I started to meditate to regain the missing 50 mana.
*Attention* An update has occurred. Item, player and skill levels, drops have been adjusted. Red players, those that kill non-hostile NPCs or Players, will have a 25% chance to drop any item upon death. Additionally, they will have a 50% chance to drop rare-unique items upon death. Finally they will have a 100% chance to drop any item above unique, unless otherwise stated, upon death. White players, those that don¡¯t kill non-hostile players or NPCs, will have a 1/5 of the chance of a red player to drop the associated items. New Races have been discovered! Non-Humanoid races are now playable.
I was interested in the update. Not only because of the drop rate adjustment, but because it appeared while only a few people were playing. I had lost the Red status a little while ago, so I wouldn¡¯t have a super high chance of item loss. I still didn¡¯t plan on dying though. After regaining my mana, I pushed myself high into the air. I let my pseudo-wings catch me. I flew up to about fifty feet. I floated down slowly. Minus the wind gust I used to get myself up in the air, I had used 21 mana. So I floated down for about ten seconds. I had used a hundred mana to push myself up in the air. I pushed myself up with 200 mana. It cost an additional 42 mana to float down this time. With some quick calculations, I figured out each second of floating would cost a total, including the initial push, of about 12.1 mana. With my 790 mana I could maintain the glide for about a minute. That wasn¡¯t a lot of time to do my experiments, but I could always recharge my mana in-between each of the experiments. If I didn¡¯t meditate right after though, I¡¯d have to reactivate the ring. Although I didn¡¯t see anything about a limit per day. I looked at a notice that appeared. I hadn¡¯t really done anything, so it had to be some sort of additional update.
For repeatedly demonstrating higher ability in Mathematics, you have gained the skill: Calculate.
Calculate Current Level: Novice Level 3 Exp 0.00% This skill aids the user in quickly doing calculations. Each level in this skill will increase the difficulty of equations you get assistance with. For every rank you increase this skill, it will increase the speed of calculations. This skill will aid in calculations the user could normally make. This skill scales in power with Logic. For every 10 Logic this skill gains one level, up to level 100. Can currently be fused to skill ¡®Automatic¡¯.
I could fuse the skill to Inspect, but I didn¡¯t. I first fused the skill to automatic.
Automatic Calculation Current Level: Novice Level 3 Exp 0.00% This skill aids the user in quickly, and automatically, doing calculations. Each level in this skill will increase the difficulty of equations you get assistance with. For every rank you increase this skill, it will increase the speed of calculations. This skill will aid in calculations the user could normally make. This skill scales in power with Logic. For every 10 Logic this skill gains one level, up to level 100. This skill will automatically calculate variables based on what the user is focusing on.
I could fuse both skills to Inspect, so obviously I did. The notification I got was both hard to believe, and gratifying.
Long Distance Inspection Current Level: Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, and Aura Sight, Sense Motive, Sensory Perception, Search, Track, Taste, Spot, Search, Listen, Body Language Analyst, Detection, Detect Price, Calculate, Automatic Calculation. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯ This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be. You have fused more than 15 skills together in the Group Skill: Inspect. Inspect has gained 10 levels, maximum of 100. Inspect now works at a distance. The distance Inspect works at is equal to 10 times the level of Inspect. Many sub-skills of Inspect have evolved. You have fused more than 20 skills together in the Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection. Long Distance Inspection has increased in rank. All sub-skills of Long Distance Inspection have risen accordingly. Long Distance Inspection will now automatically calculate variables the user focuses on.
¡°The massive amount of info Inspect is giving me has increased quite a bit. I don¡¯t think a normal mind can actually handle all of this information.¡± Taking that as a challenge, I took inspect from Ancestor. Ancestor was right. Before I could see quite a bit about every general thing around me. Now inspect was showing me fucking ¡®approximate densities¡¯ for fuck¡¯s sake! A gust of wind blew gently in front of me. It even showed the 3mph speed of the wind! My head soon started hurting from all of the information being shoved in. I forced the skill back on Ancestor. How can you handle that? Ancestor never ceased to impress me. ¡°Heh, well I¡¯ll have you know I was one of the researchers on the ¡®godly ascension¡¯ program. We developed a skill very similar to this. Although more refined. Then again, it couldn¡¯t go quite as far as yours. Still it¡¯s not bad for a random fusion of skills. The great goddess surely blessed you with that skill.¡± After I felt I had been impressed for long enough, I began my flight experiment. For the next hour I practiced my meditation while gliding. The first dozen attempts ended in total failure. Since I made sure to make the glide just less than the maximum, I still managed to maintain enough mana to keep going. Once I touched the ground I meditated, and kept going. The next two dozen were only barely better than the first dozen. On my 13th attempt, I managed to, for only a moment, enter into the meditative state. After that, I could get in the meditative state during each of my flights. I could only maintain the state for a moment though. I had spent fifty minutes at that point. Ancestor gave me a warning after my 36th try. ¡°Voice, the inspect is picking up life signs heading this way, five. At their current rate, they will be here in about fifteen minutes.¡± It can even calculate the speed of target¡¯s far away? That¡¯s an insane amount of compatibility between the sub-skills. I became slightly scared. Not of my skill, nor of the approaching people. No, I began to fear a skill based player class. If someone managed to get the skill fusion ability, and had a skill based class, they could wreak untold havoc. When it came down to it, nothing could beat someone with every skill at level 100. They would have every skill, from every class, so could do anything. Even if their stats were lacking, they could easily make up for it. I used the next ten minutes to continue my tests. When it became obvious I wasn¡¯t getting anywhere, I stopped. After getting my mana back the last time, I summoned SparrowHawk. ¡°SparrowHawk, I need you to create a large gust of wind ok? I need you to push me into the air.¡± SparrowHawk bobbed in place for a second. A large wind suddenly hit my suit. I was sent hurtling into the sky. SparrowHawk desummoned itself. Sol spoke to me. ¡°SparrowHawk used all of the mana possible to push you. You won¡¯t have a wind fairy for a few hours.¡± As I flew, I saw the people that were coming towards where I just was. The five people would probably be very confused that I had suddenly disappeared. Unless one of them saw me leave. Thinking back on it, I probably should have been more careful in my experiements. Oh well. Too late now. After about five minutes of flying, I began to look for a place to land. It would take them several hours to reach where I was. After finding one, I planned on how to land while keeping my dwindling amount of mana from turning to zero. ¡°Voice, the new calculate ability has kicked in.¡± A large red arc appeared in front of me. ¡°If you follow that, then you should be able to land safely.¡± Since it went to the area I wanted, I decided to follow it. It took a little over a minute to land. As I was about ten feet from the ground, the ring deactivated. ¡® I was thrown in a tumbling motion. I hit the ground, but not as hard as I had expected. I landed with only a small oomph. The ground was a lot softer than I had anticipated. I stood up and looked around. I was in a small clearing. There were super-densely packed trees surrounding it. The clearing itself was only big enough for a cottage, and have a small yard. I sat in the middle, concentrating on creating a stone house. The first time I made the house took half a day, this time it was a lot quicker. The mana seemed, for lack of a better word, obedient. It gleefully moved according to my wishes. The way it was going, it only took two hours to create the house and moat. It might have even taken less time, but I pulled the earth mana from near the trees. That way I would have more space if someone broke through them. The soft ground provided me with a better place to sleep, but also meant I had to take more mana from around the trees to actually build the entire house. The biggest help was Eli, my earth fairy. After giving the instructions to help me pull earth mana, while forming a moat, I received enough supply of mana to not even need to pull any myself. Of course I still did, after all I wanted the process to be as quick as possible. After filling the entire moat with water, aided by Tear, I took out several of my seeds. The green healing herb and common weed, were the ones I chose. I replaced the other seeds. I improved the quality of a few of them, but I felt drowsy after. Even with my buff, staying awake for two full days was hard. After increasing the potency of those few, I instructed Moro to plant them, and feed them with a stream of nature mana. I didn¡¯t know if my fairies could combine mana, but I taught both Moro, and Sol, how much mana to put into each one to make them grow in only a day. Hopefully it would work. I decided to change my name after I released myself to sleep. I released my buffs, and was instantly overtaken by blackness. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 35Health: 100Mana: 2700Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 22.9(17.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom229Intelligence270
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 18 Exp 00,00% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 54: The Hermit In The Woods Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice tricked a group of people into signing a contract. He traded the contracts with a group for some gold, and an enchanted quiver. He started experimenting with his squirrel suit, and created a safe house. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! And if you like a character in the chapter let me know! I can add them to later chapters if they are popular enough. Although I might add them later anyway! Light streamed through my eyelids. I forced my eyes open. I felt groggy. I shook I my head, trying to clear it. The last thing I remembered was telling Moro and Sol to seed the area around my hut. I got up from the loosely packed dirt, and took a peak outside. Outside of the hut was a vast tundra of common weed and green healing herbs. Tear, Sol, Moro, and Eli were all pouring mana out at an outstanding rate. I blinked hard a few times, clearing the sleep from my eyes. I created a bit of water mana, and splashed my face. I stretched and walked outside. ¡°*Yawwwwwn* What are you guys doing?¡± The group didn¡¯t respond, but Ancestor did. ¡°While you were asleep those four were producing a massive amount of those plants you seem to like so much. They seem to be doing some sort of pattern they thought of. While Moro and Sol were growing the plants, Tear decided to help out. Giving the plants extra water while they grew. That made them grow even faster. Not to be forgotten, Eli decided to raise the nutrients under the ground to the surface. The plants are more powerful after Eli helped out.¡± I was stunned by the idea. Why hadn¡¯t I thought of that? It seems like that would have been a perfect way to increase the population and power of my plants. While I contemplated the ability of my fictional creations to outsmart me, they seemed to be working extra hard to sow the entire area with as many plants as possible. Kretchof was nowhere to be seen, but Drake, Golem, and SparrowHawk were all gathered around the campsite. They seemed to be doing various activities. I have 34 days to kill off as many other people as possible. What if this entire thing is some sort of test on human morals though? I wouldn¡¯t put it past EDITOR¡­ I would definitely be on guard for tricks. ¡°Attention!¡± The various fairies halted what they were doing. They ran, and flew, to get into line. Deciding to go with the flow, I adopted a stern drill sergeant pose. ¡°You did good work last night. But! From now on it will only get harder! We must prepare!¡± With every sentence my voice grew louder. ¡°We will be taxed to the utmost! We must prove ourselves better than any that throw themselves against us!¡± The fairies were rigid with attention. ¡°You must all prove your worth! If we are to win this war *Cue dramatic patriotic music* we must be better than the best. We must be better than ourselves! We are facing some of the best! The most powerful! The strongest! people that have ever been a part of this world!¡± My eyes slowly scanned the group. ¡°For this we must train! You will all have to learn! Learn to fight! Learn to kill! Learn to live! Continue your duties. Tomorrow we train!¡± There were various levels in the success of the salutes I was given. They scampered off in a frenzy. Each trying their best to impress me more than the others. I gained a leadership point from that little speech. I called Golem, my metal fairy, over to me. ¡°You and I have some business to take care of.¡± I pointed to the moat. ¡°Many people will be coming here soon. I want you to find enough metal mana and create metal spikes facing the moat. After you are done with that, report back to me.¡± Golem nodded, and set to work. Next I called over Drake. ¡°The biggest weak point in a forest is fire. I want you to go around the surrounding area, and absorb as much fire mana as you can. Whenever you can¡¯t absorb anymore, return to me.¡± Drake too set off to do my bidding. After thinking for a while, I came up with a decent plan SparrowHawk. I created a thin bag out of loose leaves and grass that I quickly dried. How did I do this? I had Moro help. Moro threaded the grass through the leaves, and secured it all. I filled the bag with a large amount of common weed seeds. ¡°I want you to go over the entire forest, pouring these out as you go. My plan was simple. I¡¯d gather the weakest common weeds and scatter them. That way, people would have to pay high dollar for any healing ingredients. I gathered the weakest of the common weeds, and put them into a pile. I used these to refill the bag SparrowHawk had. The potency of the plants never exceeded a certain level, but that was because we weren¡¯t genetically enhancing them. We were just giving them the best environment to work with. It took SparrowHawk about ten minutes to empty one bag. The plants would be full grown in about an hour each. That was much quicker than they should have been, but not quick enough. Since they group had been planting all night, there were enough plants to sustain the rate we were going. We could only keep it up till that night though. Then we¡¯d have to quit and let the other fairies increase the plant count. When I wasn¡¯t collecting the seeds, I was practicing my flight meditation. Even until that night, I could only hit the meditation mark for a moment. Drake returned to me several times during that day. I took a large amount of fire mana, and poured it about many feet under the ground. I used Eli to help me dig a small hole in the area above the heated rocks. We then hardened the earth inside the hole, creating a sort of misshapen empty pond. There I concentrated a large amount of water mana. After filling the pond to the brim, it began to steam. The heated rocks below it making the temperature high. I created a large reservoir of water under my property. The water fed directly into the spring. That way the spring would have a nice supply of water. I frequently rested in my new hot spring. It helped to soothe me. When it became nighttime I asked the group. ¡°So do you guys ever get tired or anything?¡± Sol, of course, was the one to answer. ¡°No master! Fairies run on pure mana! As long as there is mana in the air we will get the effects of being fed and rested. Since you gave us the ability to manipulate mana directly, we can be even more efficient!¡± For once I actually paid attention to Sol. I already knew fairies fed on mana, but it was interesting to note that they actually never got tired. It was like an infinitely powerful workforce. I made a note to myself to take advantage of that as much as possible. I went to sleep that night, happy about the progress of the seed factory, but unhappy that I still couldn¡¯t maintain my meditative mode while flying. Over the next few days, I continued this cycle. I had to increase the mana consumption of my metal stomach once though. I hadn¡¯t eaten anything in a while, so I was a mite bit hungry. I asked Moro to find me any edible plants in the area. When I received them I scanned the mana in them. One mushroom was poisonous. Moro almost looked disappointed when I threw it out. If I didn¡¯t know better I would have thought Moro wanted me to eat the poisonous substance. After that I made sure to check everything Moro fed me. I only needed to eat once every few days, but I wanted a large amount of mana regen to test my meditation idea. During that time I found out what Kretchof was doing. He was setting up various traps and making it so that anyone that entered my clearing would receive a powerful debuff. He also had summoned several undead, but told them to stay inside the ground. That way they would be ready at a moments notice. It was a decent setup. That is until Ancestor noticed a path being cut in the nature mana around us. ¡°Voice, I think that someone is cutting through the trees. The nature mana signature is slowly disappearing in a straight line.¡± I was glad at that moment to allow Ancestor to have use of my skill. I recalled all of my fairies. I changed my disguise to that of an elderly man. I stashed my heavy armor, but kept the staff. I hunched over. Just to make it seem more real. I cast the minor petrification on myself. That way it¡¯d seem like more an elderly hermit. Three men cut through the trees. One was a muscular swordsman, another was a woman with a bow, and the last was a robed figure. Ancestor said it had a 80% chance of being a male. I waved my cane after they stopped just before the moat. ¡°What are you doing!?¡± I shouted in a crotchety way. ¡°Trespassing on an old man¡¯s land! First it¡¯s that damn flying fool, now you! Go away! Go away I say!¡± The group stood, watching me. The swordsman spoke up. ¡°Old man, you seem to have a lot of those healing herbs.¡± His tone was entitled, and aggressive. ¡°Why don¡¯t you¡± The robed man beside him cut him off. Whispering into his ear. I closed my eyes, and took over inspect. ¡°an NPC. He might be part of the test. If we kill him we might lose points or something. We should just try to make a trade with him instead. I heard there was a secret merchant, this might be him.¡± He stepped forward. ¡°Hello. We are sorry to intrude on your lovely home, but we are in dire need of some healing supplies. The only thing we found was a large amount of common weed. We have many pieces of gold, perhaps we can trade?¡± I waved my hand dismissively. ¡°And what would I do with gold? If you haven¡¯t noticed, I don¡¯t exactly welcome company. I have some supplies, but only what I need.¡± I ¡®thought¡¯ for a minute. ¡°Well, I do have one small problem. If you can take care of it for me I might be willing to trade. I want you all to go gather a large supply of food for me. I usually use my eagle, but he hasn¡¯t been by in a while. I¡¯ll give you some of my herbs as a reward.¡±
Gaia has been watching you since you paid for the protection of her children. Pleased with you, she has given you the ability to give out quests while in the ¡®hermit area¡¯ you have built. You can only give out quests that can be completed in the immediate area. You may only give out quests if you have the means to provide the promised reward. Gaia can take away your ability to give quests in Rand. You can only give out one quest to each person, until they forfeit the quest or complete it.
The three exclaimed. ¡°WOW I GOT A QUEST!¡± ¡°I WAS RIGHT! SEE?¡± ¡°Shut up you two!¡± The warrior was the only one to keep calm. I had never specified how many healing herbs. The robed man caught on to that. ¡°So how many green healing herbs are we going to get for this? It only says we will get some.¡± I rolled my eyes. ¡°Obviously that depends on the type of food, and the amount, you bring me.¡± The three ran off. Presumably to go get their group, or just to get the food. I had Moro, Tear, Sol, and Eli, all go and plant trees that the group had just destroyed. I wanted to remain as hidden as possible. The fairies took a few hours, but returned after they succeeded. The line of nature mana had mostly returned. Not quite to the degree it was before, but enough that it would be able to given time. I was surprised that Gaia like me enough to let me grant quests. Although that did add to the illusion that I was an NPC. The group got back to work, harvesting the plants, planting more, and spreading the common weed throughout the forest. Drake continued to absorb the fire mana in the area, and I continued to heat the spring. The reservoir was depleting very slowly, which made it easier to maintain. The fairies continued their jobs, and I continued to soak in my hot spring. I was content in the knowledge that everyone was moving along nicely. I had decided to keep the minor petrification on, that way I would actually move to avoid the pains I might have. It would make the entire thing much more authentic. The day after I gave the quests, the three people returned. By this time I had amassed enough green healing herbs to actually sustain a group to ten for quite a while. Ancestor pointed them out when they approached. I made sure I was turned the other way when they approached. When they arrived I shook my staff. ¡°Can¡¯t you keep from cutting down my trees every time you come here!? It¡¯s really annoying to have an opening where people can see me!¡± Of course I was in my old man disguise. When they arrived I had recalled my fairies, and began to soak, naked, in my hot spring. I got up and turned towards them, while slowly putting on my tattered robe. There were three additional people this time. ¡°Are you all multiplying or something!? Why are there more of you? Stop that! I just want some peace. That¡¯s why I came all of the way out here.¡± My con artist skill kept ticking with exp. ¡°What are you doing back here anyway? I thought I told you to get lost!¡± The robed man stepped forward. ¡°You told us to bring you delicious food. You said you would exchange the leaves of the green healing herbs for it.¡± I sneered. ¡°Oh did I now?¡± I bobbed my head as I said that. I looked in the distance for a moment. ¡°Ah, I think I might have said something like that. Well? What are you waiting for? Show me the food you brought.¡± A slender woman stepped forward. I immediately recognized her as one of the six calculating people from the first night. Dealing with her would be a problem. They poured a large surplus of food on the ground. Looking at it, I saw that it was a large amount. ¡°How did you get so much of this?¡± I narrowed my eyes as if I realized something. ¡°Did you hurt the plants to get this? DID YOU!?¡± The group looked lost. Either they had, or they didn¡¯t understand what I was on about. ¡°You did! First you destroy all of the trees, then you go and destroy plants for food!? What is wrong with you lot! Gaia is going to put a curse on you! You are all evil!¡± I was going for a mostly senile old man archetype. I asked Ancestor, Which of these foods can be easily harvested? I picked up only the harvested food. ¡°I¡¯ll take these. You better ask Gaia for forgiveness for stealing her bounty!¡± The swordsman stepped forward. ¡°You told us to get you food! You senile ass! Let¡¯s just kill this guy!¡± The calculative woman glared at him. I scowled at him. ¡°You dare!¡± I created a large earthen prison in only a moment. He was taken by surprise, and didn¡¯t react quickly. I used that time to solidify the earth mana into stone. ¡°Fool boy, before you start a war you need to know who you are fighting. I won¡¯t do business with him around.¡± I released the stone mana, and threw a large gust of wind at him at the same time. He was easily lifted off of the ground, and thrown past several trees. He collided with one with a soft thump. It wasn¡¯t enough to cause any real damage, but it was enough to get my point across. ¡®Attacking the crazy old man is bad¡¯. ¡°You.¡± I pointed to the girl I assumed was the leader. ¡°You look like you¡¯re in charge. Or at least you should be. Get him away and I will talk about trading. And if you think about attacking me¡­¡± I raised earth spears at several of her group. I could only hold three at a time, but it was enough to persuade her. She motioned with her head. One of the group went to take the swordsman away. The leader approached as close to the moat as she could. ¡°How did you know I was the leader? Wouldn¡¯t you normally assume a man as the leader?¡± She squinted at me. I shrugged. ¡°You look like the best to be in charge. The only thing gender matters in, is which gender you can manipulate better.¡± She half smiled. ¡°Alright. Well, I¡¯m terribly sorry about the forest. We did not have a way to get to you, since the plants regrew so quickly. We didn¡¯t know that some plants are bad to harvest. From now on we will only harvest the ones you took.¡± ¡°*Hrumph* Fine. As long as you remember that.¡± She seemed to be trying to be as diplomatic as possible. ¡°I do believe you said you¡¯d pay for the food though. Of course not the food you won¡¯t be eating though.¡± I threw a bundle of thirty green healing herb leaves to her. ¡°That is for the food, and for getting rid of the rude boy. Next time make sure it doesn¡¯t happen.¡± The group started to clamor once I gave them thirty leaves. With a quick glance, the leader, Elliot, quieted them down. ¡°Thank you,¡± She curtsied, ¡°Are there any other tasks you would have of us? We were transported her with no knowledge of the area. Anything you could give us will help.¡± Since I liked the way she was trying to play me, I decided to give her something to help. ¡°Fine. I know these forests pretty well. How about this? You go and get me something pretty. I¡¯ll give you a nice map of the area if you do.¡± The group seemed to turn into hyenas. I could see the lust for the small map in their eyes. Elliot smiled. ¡°That sounds fair, but what exactly would you like?¡± ¡°Surprise me, but if I don¡¯t like it you won¡¯t get anything from me.¡± After that I ignored the group, and went into my stone cabin. They¡¯ll either bring me a nice item, or something else that is worth way more than a map. I knew the worth of knowledge, but I could make an infinite amount of copies once I had even one map. After I was sure they had left, I began the next step in my plan. I created a small tunnel under the bedroom area. The hole led a few yards from the moat. I walked through the tunnel as I made it, and covered the entrance up. When that was done, I began to explore the surrounding area. I spent about four hours walking through all of the trees. I made sure to constantly pump mana into my stone tablet to speed the map making process. After only four hours of walking I had several tablets worth of maps. I went back through my tunnel, and closed both ends for about six feet. I suspended my flight capabilities. When I had returned to my home, Ancestor notified me of two life mana signatures that were big enough for humanoids in the area. So they stationed someone here to watch me? Fuckers. Fine, I¡¯ll play. It was a good thing I had made a secret tunnel to check the area around my hut. I went about my daily ¡®hermit¡¯ rituals. I bathed naked, harvested my many plants, and planted the new ones. All of the harvested common weeds were separated into two groups. Those I planted, and those I would give SparrowHawk for distribution when the two people stopped watching me. During the day that they were gone, I also studied the enchantment on the quiver I had received. I could only detect a 15% of the mana used. The other 85% was somehow blocked from my view. I knew it was there, but the flavor was invisible. It had 10% wind mana, 5% fire mana, and 85% of some mysterious mana. I made it a short term goal to figure out this new type of mana. It might even point me to the type of mana that the space looking god controlled. After about a day the six people returned. The calculating woman spoke. ¡°We¡¯ve gathered up some interesting items you might like. If any of them strike your fancy, please, trade us what you think is fair.¡± I Hruphed, but looked through the items. There were several ores, a few gems, many food stuffs, and two enchanted items. One was a sword that allowed the user to automatically resurrect anyone the killed with it. The other was a pair of shoes that increased running speed by 10%. I don¡¯t know where they got them. I didn¡¯t ask. While I was studying them though, Ancestor spoke in a worried tone. ¡°Voice, the two signatures are still there. You should make sure they are part of this group. If not this group might take care of them for you.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve noticed that two others have been watching me for the past day. Are they yours?¡± The leader¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°No!¡± She shook her head rapidly. Obviously she didn¡¯t want the NPC to think she had betrayed them. I gave her a disbelieving look. After a moment I nodded as if I did believe her. ¡°Alright, well if they are not part of your group you¡¯ll have no problem bringing them to me. Do that and I¡¯ll give you a copy of every map I still have after all these years.¡± I had made a nice amount of maps, so the bargain wasn¡¯t exactly weighted in my favor. If they killed the two I wouldn¡¯t get the points though. ¡°Make sure they are alive. Although I don¡¯t mind them being ruffed up a bit.¡± The group mobilized instantly, after a command from Elliot. She stayed though. ¡°So you can sense people from far away? That is a pretty nice ability you have there. Is there any way you could teach it to me?¡± Ancestor scoffed in my mind. ¡°As if some lower breed could understand our magic!¡± ¡°I¡¯ll teach you, but everything comes with a cost. The gods have told me that the people in my forest are here to play a game of life and death. I don¡¯t want to be involved. You will personally be responsible for watching over my hut. If you do this I¡¯ll make sure you know a way to detect people from far away.¡± She seemed to click on a notice. I didn¡¯t mean to give her a quest, but it happened anyway. I motioned for her to stay still, as I hobbled back into my hut. I summoned Kretchof. ¡°Master. There are intruders in your dungeon. Soon they will make it to the first mini-boss¡¯ room. You will not be able to summon me if they make it to the boss room.¡± I didn¡¯t care about that right then. All I needed was a quick paper made. ¡°That¡¯s fine, I just need another Soul Binding Contract. Also, do you know of any repercussions for disbanding the contracts, without fulfilling them I mean.¡± ¡°Well, the party that invalidates the contract will lose their life, as well as several levels and items, the exp from those levels gets sent to the other party. For the ones you had other people sign, you won¡¯t have anything bad happen to you even if you stopped giving mana to them. Although I don¡¯t know what will happen to the ones that signed it.¡± That was good enough for me. After Kretchof summoned the contract, I dismissed him. I wrote on the contract. ¡®Elliot, x, x, x, x, and x, will not knowingly cause, or allow, harm to befall the hermit with which Elliot, x, x, x, x, x, have signed this contract. Further more Elliot, x, x, x, x, and x will protect the hermit¡¯s land to the best of their combined abilities until such a time as the ¡®game of death between other-worlders¡¯ is over. Any infractions upon these demands will be considered as the entire afore mentioned group invalidating the contract. If Elliot, and the afore mentioned group, manage to stop all harm from befalling ___, and my land until the ¡®other-worlder death game¡¯ is over, I ___ will make sure Elliot knows of a way to detect others from long distances.¡¯ The x¡¯s were all the members of Elliot¡¯s group, and I signed ¡®Hermit¡¯ where I had to put my name. That was the alias I was going by at the time. I had a plan on how to get out of teaching Elliot anything. When I returned the group had come back, loaded with an additional two unconscious bodies. I smiled as I unsteadily walked over to them. Through the metal spikes I handed her the contract. After reading over it she asked why I thought they would abide by this contract. ¡°Well, the young fella that came through here earlier explained it to me. This is a Soul Binding Contract. Anyone that disobeys what they signed on here, will immediately die, and the other half of the contract signor will get a bunch of exp and items from them.¡± She read over the contract. ¡°Fine but change this part then.¡± She pointed to the part where I wrote ¡®make sure Elliot knows of¡¯. ¡°Make it say ¡®teach Elliot¡¯. That way we are both satisfied with it.¡± That was why I hated intellect types. They were always the harder group to manipulate. Still, my gambit had worked. I changed it and the entire group of people, minus the two unconscious ones, signed it. Now if any of that group attacked me, they would all die. My plan was simple. I made her look at a fairly well hidden trap, but she overlooked a slightly more obvious one. The contract never said I couldn¡¯t attack them. If they attacked back though, that would spell the end for them. Not only that, I also ¡®forgot¡¯ to put a time limit on when I would teach her the skill. I ordered the group to disarm, and disrobe the two villains. They did as I bade. ¡°Now that that¡¯s out of the way¡­¡± I used a bit of wind mana to pick up the two unconscious bodies. It took a lot of mana, and concentration, to keep the two objects floating at a perfect speed and balance. When I had used about three quarters of my wind mana increment, I finally let them fall. I had positioned the two spies above my hot spring. They landed with a large splash. I could always diffuse my other types of mana and use them for wind, as I did when I flew in the suit, but it felt awkward doing that now. It was like using the restroom, but only cleaning your hands with murky water. My face became even grumpier. ¡°Well you little shits, it¡¯s time for you wake up.¡± Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I chain both of them down by gathering metal mana around their bodies. I make sure that only their heads are above the water. I sent a flash of fire into the face of the two offending parties. They awake in agony. I heal them, and do it again. I repeat this a dozen times. My mana was close to zero, even with my regen rate. To finish them off I created several metal mana spikes that thrust into their bodies. Without armor for protection, they quickly died. Elliot¡¯s group stood in stunned silence. When I was done I got two alerts.
You have killed a rank 6 person. You have gained 16 points. You have a total of 16 points.
You have killed a rank 6 person. You have gained 16 points. You have a total of 32 points.
Oh! And here I thought that each person was a rank. I¡¯m glad I¡¯m not worth an octillion points though. That would have sucked. I paused for a moment, wondering how I could calculate 2 to the power of 100 so quickly. Must have been the calculate skill. I turned to the group, which no doubt regarded me as at least a bit dangerous. ¡°You¡¯ve kept your end of the bargain. Here, take these maps.¡± I tossed the group my collection of stone tables. I hid my smile as I watched them scramble to catch them. ¡°Now, if you don¡¯t mind I¡¯d like to get some rest. These old bones aren¡¯t what they used to be.¡± I went inside my house. I closed my eyes, and took over inspect from Ancestor. I focused on listening to the voices of the people outside. Using my replenishing wind mana, I amplified the sounds of the group. Coupling that with my enhanced hearing, I heard them as if they were standing next to me. ¡°Was that ok? He just wasted a bunch of our points. We could have made some serious gains from those two.¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s alright.¡± Elliot was speaking. ¡°We only wasted a few points. We got maps of this entire area! That is worth way more then 16 to 32 points. I will patrol this area, you all copy those maps down, and try to add anything the old man might have missed.¡± She said the last part dismissively, and it sounded as if she walked off after that. Ancestor seemed amused. ¡°So what exactly will you teach the girl? It will have to be something at least semi-decent. Otherwise word might get to Mar that her ¡®chosen¡¯ is breaking his vows. It was time to sleep, so I called out SparrowHawk. I had accumulated enough seeds to cover a vast amount of forest land. I told SparrowHawk to use them to sow the land with weeds. Throughout the entire night SparrowHawk went about sowing the seeds of my labor. In the middle of the night Ancestor woke me. ¡°VOICE GET UP! TROUBLE!¡± The shouting made me sit up instantly. Fuck! Why are you so loud? What¡¯s happening? ¡°A group of 19 people are headed this way. They are moving at extremely high speeds. They are each coming from different sides, but should be here about the same time. They seem to know right where we are.¡± I guess letting the eagle do the job wasn¡¯t a good idea after all. Oh well, time to fight. How long do we have? ¡°About ten minutes, no more.¡± I quickly equipped my armor, and donned my helmet. In my battle gear I prepared for battle. I slammed the stone door open. ¡°Rise and shine! We got incoming!¡± I shouted at the most likely sleeping figures outside of my moat. It was almost pitch black out, but with my skill enhanced vision, I had saw it as only a heavily clouded night. It was still dark enough to hinder me, but it would be much worse for the ones that were going to fight me. I hoped anyway. At that moment Elliot came running. ¡°Hermit! We have a prob-¡° She cut herself off after seeing me already mobilizing her troops. I turned to her. ¡°Well don¡¯t just stand there like a potato! Get ready! We are about to be attacked!¡± Just loud enough for the group to hear I mumbled, ¡°Damn pesky other-worlders. Can¡¯t even get any goo sleep around here anymore. They need collars, the whole lot of em.¡± I drew a ¡®summoning circle¡¯ in the dirt. It was a star that was inside a perfect circle. It was simple, but that was all I could think of at the time. Let the phony incantation begin! ¡°Spirits of the departed! Hear my plea! Lift yourselves up, to kill for me! Fight my enemies until their last dying breath! The last warmth they shall know, Sweet Mother Death!¡± Kretchof I need the undead to help me out now. Without getting a reply the undead began to crawl up from the ground. Skeletons, zombies, even a ghost showed up. I smiled a wicked smile. ¡°My brothers! Tonight we fight to defend our home. Let all who trespass here know your wrath! To your stations!¡± They shambled about as if there really were battle stations. I cast off my debuff, and buffed myself with the buff that correlated to the minor petrification debuff. Instead of moving 25% slower, and having my movement impaired by 25%, I moved faster, and with more ease. Elliot looked my way when I activated the buff. I guess she could sense the sudden change in my physique. The undead seemed to unnerve Elliot¡¯s group. Not that it mattered to me. I was about to have a little fun. My buff took all of my light mana, and a chunk of the rest of my mana. I only had about 240 in each of my other slots. Although water and wind mana had slightly less than that since they were actually part of the buff. I kept my disguise of an old man on though. With my imposing heavy armor, and increase in both agility and speed, I gained a nice bit of fighting power. Although my mana was dramatically lower than I wanted it to be. I had Eli go underground with Moro. Together they would pick all of the plants in my garden as quickly as possible. The people came running from the directions Ancestor told me. ¡°Watch out though Voice. Two people from each team have broken off from the groups. And It¡¯s impossible to tell if the teams are working together or not.¡± I had to take Inspect back from Ancestor. I held my staff at the ready, blood rushing through my veins. ¡°Let the battle begin!¡± I shouted as I jumped the metal spikes. I landed just as the group in front of me broke through the trees. ¡°Gonna have ta fix those again, damn!¡± I swung my staff at the closest enemy, connecting with a loud *Thwang* of metal. ¡°COME ON!¡± I shouted at the group tasked with keeping me safe. The sounds to the south told me they were fighting the other group. My undead swarmed the enemies in front of me. I could see all of the enemies were under a debuff stat. Curtesy of Kretchof. I attacked the same enemy by hitting him with the butt of my staff. My undead guardians protected both of my flanks. Without them, I¡¯d have been in deep trouble. I pushed myself into the air, and casted a large fireball at the enemies ahead of me. TEAR! DRAKE! Make sure no fire breaks out! I got a notice, but didn¡¯t pay it any mind for the moment. As soon as the fire mana hit my opponents, Drake absorbed all of the mana that was not attached to them. Tear was watering the nearby plants to give them extra defense against the flames. Luckily it was too dark for most people to actually see my fairies. Unless they had some sort of enhanced vision. The ¡®rain¡¯ perfectly hit the most vulnerable areas around me. I sent word to Golem, my metal fairy. I need you to temporarily coat my entire staff in metal mana. I need more power! I summoned him in the tunnel beneath me. There was a reason I chose to defend at this exact spot. Drake, Golem, Sol, Eli, Moro, even SparrowHawk, were all inside the tunnel that ran under my entire house, and into the woods. Tear was the only one above ground at the moment. Kretchof was watching over the dungeon. I got confirmation that Eli and Moro had picked the last of the plants. Guys, I need you to cause a little havoc among the enemies. Just don¡¯t get hit by anything. Eli, create small holes in the ground that the enemy can trip on, then fill them up after someone does trip. SparrowHawk! I need you to help push the enemies back whenever they are about to hit me. Drake whenever you are full on mana, burn a single enemy at a time. Sol, keep me healed! If you have the mana heal the group fighting for me as well. Moro, I need you to make some snares. Try to trap some of the people with vines or something. For some reason Moro was REALLY into that idea. While I was sending this message to all of my fairies, I was battling the intruders. The guy I had been attack suddenly tripped. I smiled as I activated the switch in my staff, and cut through the poor fool¡¯s neck. The additional metal mana flowing around my staff-blades was enough to almost double my actual attacking damage. The natural armor the man possessed wasn¡¯t enough to hold against a fully buffed master player, and his buffed up sword. As the head rolled to the ground another person stepped forward. A man in full plate armor, with a heavy two handed sword. ¡°You bastard!¡± Hey you invaded my home. He sent a downward pointing thrust with his two handed longsword. I easily parried it, using my reconnected staff accompanied with just a bit of wind mana. I struck him under the chin. I didn¡¯t know a lot about pressure points, but I did know that a blow under the chin was dangerous. I activated the spear tip as the wooden staff met flesh. I spun the staff in a counter-clockwise direction. Blood sprayed from the wound below the man¡¯s chin, but his HP only decreased by about half. His eyes turned red. The undead to my right were holding up, but the ones to my left were being slowly killed. If I didn¡¯t do something I¡¯d be in a tight spot. Suddenly the ground began to tremble. Thorny vines sprung up from the ground, ensnaring many of the warriors on the left, and a few on the right. They were struggling hard to free themselves. The undead were attacking while the group was helpless. Moro! When the vines are about to break tell Sol to heal them! Sol when you get to half mana from healing them tell Drake to catch them on fire! With the new instructions relayed my mind snapped back to the battle. One person, possibly a mage, was being burnt alive. Good job Drake. The fire wasn¡¯t spreading. I decided to pump it up a notch. The man with half HP charged at me. A hole suddenly appeared and tripped him. As he caught himself, I used a debuff on him. By using an additional 151 mana, I took away his ability to see. I jumped on him, and aimed the head of my staff where a bright red line indicated a weak point. I used the spear function, to stab his armor twice. The first stab cracked the plate slightly. The second pierced his heart. His life was draining fast, but he managed to stand up; throwing me off in the process. His deep voice reverberated, ¡°You¡¯re a tough old man, I¡¯ll give you that!¡± Even without his eyes he charged right at me. I casually made a spear of earth, and let him impale himself on it. Stupid. Very stupid. At least make sure you know all of your opponents moves before ¡®blindly charging in¡¯. Heh The battle was going a lot better on my side. The vines were holding up, but people were managing to escape from them. The vines they had just escaped from would try to ensnare them again though. Suddenly the entire area was lit up. Everyone in the area shielded their eyes, even me. Several screams were heard as Drake¡¯s flames consumed the vines. After the fire died down, only a single tree had caught. Tear quickly put it out. Drake! No more using fire for now! Send excess to the pool or something. Tear! Gather all of the water mana inside your body for now. Tell me when you can¡¯t hold anymore! Two people managed to break through the skeletons to attack me. One of the zombies closest to them exploded as they decapitated it. Covered in burns, and some grotesque fumes, they came at me. The undead army was doing a good job at stalling, but couldn¡¯t actually manage to kill anyone. Even with the vines and fairies helping them. I held my staff at the ready. I wasn¡¯t used to fighting multiple humanoid enemies at once. Usually I outnumbered the enemy. One had two daggers, the other had a short sword and a shield. They ran at me, and I decided to use an old ability I hadn¡¯t made use of in a while. Enhancing my voice with wind mana, I roared. The roar was loud, loud and vicious. Only a handful of the enemies were paralyzed, the others just looked shocked for a moment. The double dagger guy was one of those that was paralyzed. I ran at him. I noticed the metal mana in my staff was dying out. Golem must have been using a large amount quickly. That would explain why it was so easy to cut through one of the weak points of the plate armor though. I sliced at the double dagger guy, only to be intercepted by the sword and shield guy. I didn¡¯t mind, as long as I knew I would soon bathe in their blood. I gave a command to Eli. The shield man was completely focused on protecting the dagger dude while he was paralyzed. We played a quick dance of cat and mouse. I would attack him once or twice, but before he could counter I¡¯d step back. It was great that the super powerful inspect actually told my the suggested amount of space to take back to be out of his reach now. Whenever the red lines went from his body, to his sword, I¡¯d step back like it told me. With my buff activated it was a lot easier to follow the movements inspect told me would be best. Some of them still exceeded my abilities though. The shield guy shouted, ¡°Triple Slash!¡± His horizontal slash made a ripple in the air. The blade of wind was soon followed by two more, making an x behind it. When the attack got within a foot of me, it dissipated. I hadn¡¯t noticed it, but the attack seemed to be using wind mana. I¡¯d have to learn that. Oh wait. I had the technique steal thing! The man with daggers came at me as soon as the triple slash was deflected. I pushed myself back as inspect told me, but his dagger suddenly extended slightly. I received a small cut on my cheek, dealing 32 damage. Shit. If I take another couple of those I¡¯m fucked. The damage instantly went away. Sol was correctly doing the job assigned. Both men I was facing seemed to be able to avoid the pot holes now. Any time one popped up, their feet seemed to avoid it naturally. I put my swords back as the two circled me. My staff would be much better suited to what was about to happen. Tear had given me the signal. Now! Like the worms make an orb! Tear understood what I meant. My half of the battlefield was suddenly covered in a large orb of water. The eight remaining fighters on this side were slightly floating around in it. Everyone but the shield guy instantly started to swim to the outer edges of the water. Drake, heat the water! There was a slight hesitation, but the water started getting hotter. Eli followed the command I gave earlier. An orb of earth surrounded the entire water ball. The water began to get notably hotter, and many of the ¡®warriors¡¯ that invaded my home began to suffer because of it. The undead seemed to not have any problem fighting in the water. They didn¡¯t need air, and didn¡¯t have any real weapons to speak of. The shield man somehow pushed himself to me. While the others were busy holding their breaths while fighting, this guy seemed fine. Guess he can breathe too. The aquatic fight wasn¡¯t as much to my advantage as I¡¯d have liked. The undead were actually winning, but the shield guy was too powerful in the water. It was like he chose an aquatic race or something. I saw his hands slowly begin to web. Gills sprouted from his neck. So he really IS an aquatic race. I de-summoned, and re-summoned Tear. This time Tear was in the water with us. Tear darted toward the shield man in jellyfish form. The guy attacked me several times, but with inspect I was barely able to avoid taking damage. His movements had been hindered a lot less than mine. If my body didn¡¯t have the streamlined effect I¡¯d be dead already. I had to push myself by moving the water mana in order to not take damage. Tear finally made it to us, and latched onto the man¡¯s body. You might ask where Tear was latched onto? Well the shield guy wouldn¡¯t have any more in-game children. As Tear stung him, I activated my blessing from Gaia. I used the microscopic barbs in my skin, to attack. I grabbed the man by his slightly exposed throat, and stung the shit out of him. He cried out in pain. That actually gave me a good idea. The heated water stopped when it got too uncomfortable for me, as if Drake knew it by instinct. I began fusing the water mana with darkness mana. First the out edges, then closer to me. One by one the people let out screams of anguish. The pain inducing water was too much for most to bear. Unfortunately it also came with a tragic side effect. As the darkness mana reached me I closed my eyes, it didn¡¯t help. I cried out in agony. The only thing keeping me alive was the fact that I could breathe underwater. I blacked out from the severe pain. When I woke I was still in the orb. The undead were roaming around it. I had them act as if they were dead. Judging from my mana bars, I had been out for about a minute. I absorbed the earth mana around me, and walked out. The battle field was quite. I looked over to see four people standing. I approached with my staff at the ready. Elliot¡¯s POV As soon as I noticed the army approaching I ran to tell the Hermit. Did he know there would be an attack? I didn¡¯t know if he did or not, but sending me out on a patrol was the right choice. When I got back to camp he was already getting my troops ready. It irked me to see them obeying someone else, but it wasn¡¯t like we were friends outside of this death match. The battle was the hardest thing I¡¯ve ever done. There were nine people versus our six. Technically their group was just as powerful, but they had better maneuvers than we did. The fewer members you have the less varied your tactics can be. The battle went on for only a few minutes. We traded deaths with the enemy team. For every one we took down, they took one as well. When we only had four people left, my team decided to kick it into overdrive. By pushing the enemy to the moat, we were able to force them into the low ground. Wait, wasn¡¯t there water here? A quick glance showed all of the water floating into the sky. More specifically it was all being sucked towards one point near the Hermit and his undead army. We finished them off easily enough, but when we looked for the Hermit, all we saw was a large earthen orb. After a couple of minutes of waiting, the earthen orb started to crumble inwards. Water sprayed the ground, only to be somehow sent to the moat. Out of the orb fell several dead bodies, and undead. The bodies flowed towards the moat as they were dragged by the water. Only one person walked out of the orb. It was the Hermit. This Hermit was suspicious. There was no way one NPC could have this much power. I¡¯d have to wait for my chance to act though. Attacking him would kill off my entire team. Voice¡¯s POV It was just Elliot. My time as the Hermit was quickly coming to an end though. Since three different teams found me, there was no telling how many more would come. I smiled at her. The suspicion in her eyes told me she at least suspected I was lying about something. ¡°Sadly you have invalidated the contract.¡± She looked at me as if I were mad. ¡°And how is that!? We didn¡¯t willing let you come to harm! We didn¡¯t-¡° I cut her off. ¡°AH! You see¡­ I need your points.¡± I undid my disguise. None of her men attacked me. What great discipline. ¡°None of us will attack you, we know that means we lose the contract.¡± I smiled at her again. ¡°That¡¯s true, but also this. I¡¯m going to stab myself.¡± I stabbed myself with a shard of metal mana I had created. She ran towards me to stop me, but it was too late. As soon as the shard broke the skin, she and the remaining team members turned to dust. I recalled all of my fairies, and made them undo everything we had built around the cottage. The hot spring was made into earth, and the moat, house, and spears were all sent back to the way they were. As they did this I looked over my new messages.
You have caused a rank 9 person to die. You have gained 2 points. You have a total of 34 points.
You have caused a rank 9 person to die. You have gained 2 points. You have a total of 36 points.
It went on like that for a while. I gained a total of 18 points from the entire force of the nine people. I also gained points from the woman¡¯s 4 people for some reason. I guess since I tricked them into dying. In total I had 114 points. On top of that I gained a few items from them, and even a large amount of levels! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2700Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 22.9(17.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom229Intelligence270
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points70
Fame1535
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 24 Exp 10.46% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 20 Exp 23.05% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 55: Skills and Dungeon Mastering Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice tricked another group of people into signing a contract. He experimented with his suit, and had SparrowHawk sow common weed seeds. He also battled a group of ten people, with the assistance of some undead, and won. He then killed the group he signed a contract with by harming himself. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! As my fairies made sure that the area was exactly the same as when we came, I decided what I should do with my stat points. From killing the group of people, and from Elliot¡¯s group ¡®breaking¡¯ the contract, I had gained a total of ten levels. I now had 70 points to spend on whatever I wanted. I went over my stats.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2700Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 22.9(17.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength41Agility34
Wisdom229Intelligence270
Endurance51Dexterity44
Luck0Vitality35
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points70
Fame1535
In order to increase my Skill Enhancement sub-skill, I¡¯d have to have at least another 21 points into wisdom, and do some sort of task. Other than that, I had to plan how to use them. I went ahead and put the points into wisdom while I looked over my other choices. I had 49 points left over. Since I knew that the basic stats gave me bonus skills, I decided to upgrade some of my stats to 50. I added 9 to str, and 6 to dex. After that I was left with 34 points. After adding 16 points to agility, I was left with only 18 points. I spent 15 of those increasing vitality. Since it directly controlled the amount of stamina I had, I figured it would probably give me a skill as well. Even if it didn¡¯t having 500 stamina was a good idea. The last three points went into intelligence. I could always use a bigger mana pool.
Power Surge Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 strength, up to a maximum of 250 strength. At that point you must succeed in the ¡®Strengthening Ritual¡¯ to master this skill. For every rank in this skill, you will deal 5% more melee damage. This skill can stack up to 25% damage bonus.
Nimble Fingers Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 dexterity, up to a maximum of 250 dexterity. At that point you must prove the level of your dexterity to master this skill. For every rank in this skill, you will have an increased accuracy of 5%. This skill can stack up to 25% accuracy bonus.
Dodging Expert Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 agility, up to a maximum of 250 agility. At that point you must prove your agility to master this skill. For every rank in this skill, you will have an increased chance to automatically dodge an attack of 5%. This skill can stack up to 25% dodge bonus.
Energy Conservation Current Level: Novice This skill will rank up once every 50 vitality, up to a maximum of 250 vitality. At that point you must prove the level of your vitality to master this skill. For every rank in this skill, you will use 5% less stamina. This skill can stack up to 25% stamina reduction.
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Body Enhancement. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Body Enhancement? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes.¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Body Enhancement. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Body Enhancement. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Learning. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you rank up Nimble Fingers to two ranks above Body Enhancement, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at one rank lower. This skill does not have levels.
You have fused other stat related skills to other group skills. They will be transferred to Body Enhancement. The previous group skills will maintain their ranks and levels.
Body Enhancement Current Rank: Adept This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Nimble Fingers, Power Surge, Dodging Expert, Energy Conservation, Tough Skin, Skill Enhancement, and Mana Affinity. Your natural grasp of the body and mind is at a high level. You will be able to more easily train your body and mind. You now gain an additional amount of exp for training stats at or below the rank of Body Enhancement. You gain [Body Enhancement Rank * 25]% more exp while training stats at or below the rank of Body Enhancement. Can currently be fused with Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection.
Obviously I fused the two.
Stat Inspection Current Rank: Novice Level 1 This skill allows you to inspect the stats of other players. You will be able to see all stats of others, as long as you have already unlocked that stat. Your ability to read other¡¯s physical and mental capabilities is high. Every level in this skill allows you to read the stats of higher level people. For every level you can read the stats of {([Your level] * [Skill Level])/10}. IE if you are level 45, and this skill is level 100, you will be able to read the stats of people up to level 450. You must have equal to or more, in a stat to see the exact stat of another. IE if you have 50 Str, and the opponent has 51, you will only see an x. For every rank of this skill, you will be able to understand stats that are higher than yours. Every rank in this skill doubles the limit of stats you can read. Current Limit (Your stat * Rank of this skill). Can currently be fused with Group Skill: Key To Self-Sustained Alchemy.
I was a little taken aback by the fact that I could fuse my new skill to another skill. I could also combine it into inspect, but I¡¯d do that later. By fusing it to my alchemy skill, I got:
Alchemic Diagnosis Current Rank: Novice Level 1 This skill allows you to understand the exact components of any potion you look at. Every level of this skill will increase the level of potency of the potion you can gain info from. Every rank of this skill will increase the accuracy with which you discover the components. Can currently be fused to the Sub-skill: Herbology.
Surprises never ceased.
Property Diagnosis Current Rank: Novice Level 1 This skill allows you to understand the exact properties of any plants you consume. Every level of this skill will increase the level of potency of the plant you can gain info from. Every rank of this skill will increase the accuracy with which you discover the properties.
I was a little sad that I couldn¡¯t fuse it with any more skills, but I had gotten far more than I first intended anyway. With all of my new skills, I¡¯d have a lot better time at being solo in this place. Although, the eating plants one doesn¡¯t really matter. I can already get all the info out of my compendium. I combined the first skill with inspect. I could combine the last two skills with Alchemy, or inspect. I decided to go for alchemy since I hadn¡¯t really used it for a while.
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you create enough potions to level up, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Current Level: Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00% This upgraded group skill allows you to use the benefits from: Alchemy, Distillation, Fermentation, Alchemical Fusion, Gardening, Herbology, Plant Location, Planting Intuition, Alchemic Diagnosis, and Property Diagnosis. The total percentage benefits per level are: 3% to Strength and duration of potions, 2% chance to gather bonus ingredients from plants, Long Distance Inspection is 1% stronger when used on plants. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This group skill had gained at least 10 sub-skills. This skill has gained 15 levels. *Note One exp was awarded due to rounding errors.
What the fuck is rounding errors? You¡¯re a fucking super computer. Well¡­ It¡¯s not like I got hurt by that. The amount of skills I got just from upgrading all of my stats to at least 50 was insane. I would never tell anyone about that little tidbit. The fairies finished up the cleaning, so I recalled them. I used didn¡¯t have a good suit of clothes to make a disguise, so I traveled by flying. I loved flying. Feeling the wind beneath my pseudo-wings was exhilarating. I figured out a small trick. My mana regen was at 25 points since I had recently eaten. Since the suit took that much mana, I could theoretically keep it up for as long as I had enough velocity to keep in the air. The first flight after leaving the area lasted for about fifteen minutes. After shooting myself straight into the air, I had to save about ten percent of my total mana in order to navigate. Although using any non-wind mana to create wind, doesn¡¯t work very well. After flying for about half of an hour I had to land. With almost no clear areas, I had to take a chance and land near a small group of trees. I angled myself perfectly, making sure nothing would go wrong. I landed with a thin branch smacking me in the face. So what? It didn¡¯t go perfectly, but I only took 50 damage. It was ok since no one saw me though. I was feeling a bit upset about it though. That is until I suddenly saw my maximum mana increase by four hundred points. Heh, wish I could have seen how that went down. Either the first group betrayed the contract by attacking the second group, or the second group totally killed the first group. Either way, at least the first group was dead now. I took two more flights after that, keeping enough mana to make sure I had a bit of cushion to work with. About half way through the maximum flight time of my second flight, I saw a small wooden cabin. I landed as close as possible, while leaving enough space to not be found out. I was planning on killing whoever lived in that cabin, and taking their home and possessions for myself. I used the shoes the wind god gave me to actually walk just above the ground. No sound possible was the best way to sneak. As I approached I smelled something like apple pie cooking. I stealthily peaked through one of the cabin¡¯s windows. I immediately dropped the magic going to the shoes. I threw the door open. ¡°Susan! You¡¯re just where you said you¡¯d be!¡± I opened my arms and jovially hugged her. She seemed to respond better to shows of happiness and affection. She was confused for a moment, then realized what was happening. ¡°Voice! You got here a lot faster than I thought!¡± She asked how I had been fairing, I told her about how three evil groups of people decided to invade my base after I sealed myself off from the senseless killings. How they destroyed the trees for no reason, and how one group even brought me many dead animals, just to torment me! She bought every line. I almost felt bad about it. Not really though. She showed me a lot of sympathy. While she was on her tear jerking kick, I sprung a question. ¡°So do you have any clothes other than these? I really feel like getting into something more comfortable.¡± Susan went to a crate I hadn¡¯t noticed. She started rummaging around, and pulled out a few suits of clothing. ¡°How much for a set?¡± Susan looked at a screen. She pointed at the different suits of clothing, and listed their prices. They costed about 5 silver to 1 gold, so I bought them all. It opened up my possible disguises a bunch. I bought a commoner¡¯s outfit, a priest¡¯s garb, a courtier outfit, a chef, and a gardener¡¯s outfit. I went to the only separate room, the bedroom, and changed into the commoner¡¯s outfit. It was the closest thing to what Susan was wearing. I put all of my gear to the side, and started making a nice meal for Susan and myself. She had a lot of ingredients, so I made a nice dinner of steak, and steak fat flavored potato chips. Since we had salt and potatoes, I just made the first thing that came to mind. I cut the pieces of the potato into thin slices. I dipped the thin pieces into the boiling grease from the steaks. If it weren¡¯t for my cooking ability, they probably would have tasted bad. As it was, they tasted ok. Not the best though. While we ate, we discussed how she had been since I left Rand. Apparently Evan and Elizabeth had a booming business. Susan would skirt the reason whenever I brought it up. That just made me want to know more, but I let it go. If I seemed pushy it might hurt how she thinks of me. After talking for about an hour, I found out that only two other people have come here to trade with her. They came here multiple times, and bought all of her healing and defense supplies. Thankfully she didn¡¯t have anymore materials to make potions with. She had to collect them, but was stuck here. I introduced her to my fairies, and had them get to work. They were again planting the seeds in the area around the hut, but this time SparrowHawk was on lookout instead of planting duty. With the help of Moro and Eli, we actually moved the trees further away from the small cottage. Moro made sure the life force of the trees stayed firm, while Eli pushed the earth that the roots were in, away. It took an hour just to move one tree away, but it was worth it in the long run. After they had moved the dozen trees far enough, I began with the construction of defenses. I had Susan¡¯s permission of course. I expanded the entire area to allow for more planting, and made a small moat around Susan¡¯s hut. The only way in was either to walk across the six feet of water, or go across the bridge. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I bought the rest of the bombs Susan had. After Moro was done moving the trees, I gave an order. ¡°Alright Moro, I want you to help make the plants grow quickly again, but in the morning I want you to go out and make as many traps with these as possible. Ok?¡± Moro excitedly nodded. Moro grinned a child-like smile, and went to work with renewed vigor. Susan approached me. ¡°The group of two come every day at noon. If you are here at that time, they may try to kill you, since that¡¯s the game. You might want to run.¡± I smiled as I sadly shook my head. ¡°You see Susan, I believe that everything can be resolved without ever actually fighting. Words and strategies are better than swords and armor. I don¡¯t plan on attacking the two, but neither will I let myself get killed by them.¡± I spoke as if criticizing Susan a bit, but ended on a note of optimism. What I meant by ¡®resolved without fighting¡¯, is that I had Moro plant the bombs all across easily accessible routes to Susan¡¯s cabin. We talked while my fairies went about their work. After a full night of catching up, we went to sleep. The party of two was scheduled to arrive at noon the next day, so I¡¯d take my fairies back sometime that night. The less amount of people that know I have fairies the better. In the best case scenario, people would mistake me for a weak fighter character. Before I dozed off, Kretchof asked me several questions about the contest I was doing. He also asked if he could make another Soul Binding Contract. Not really wanting to talk, I answered them before drifting off. I awoke at dawn, and began my preparations. No alerts had come from Ancestor, so I was in the clear. I recalled my fairies, and asked Susan to keep quiet about them. I would have had Kretchof prepare bodies, but Susan was from the town of Rand. People from Rand typically frowned upon necromancy for some reason. At noon, just as predicted, two people arrived. They each came from a different direction. From the north cam a wolf-man. He was lean, but had well defined muscles. He was tall, about six foot, and had short silver hair coating his body. His long mane was silver. His eyes were slit like a cat¡¯s, and purple in color. His legs seemed to bend at an odd angle, and he had clawed hands. All in all he looked like a hybrid between a kobold and a human. Maybe kobolds were a choosable race. He wore medium weight armor, and had some sort of trident looking weapon called a ¡®cross-spear¡¯. From the south came what could only be described as a lanky minstrel. He came complete with a lute and everything. What was weird was actually noted by Ancestor. ¡°Voice, be careful. That lute player seems to have a large aura of wind around him, and the other man seems to have some sort of minor control over the elements. If you stall them long enough I think I can get a better reading with the mana and aura sights.¡± Well aren¡¯t they the interesting group. Let¡¯s see how this plays out. Kretchof¡¯s POV The adventurer¡¯s have beaten two out of the four sub bosses. I would have to increase their power at some point. The group was otherworlders, just like master. They would die like pigs though. Master had told me how he was doing a type of game. That only a select amount of other people from his world were playing it. He told me that many people from other countries were playing it at the exact same moment. That must be who these interlopers are. It was the only thing that made sense. People from our world, unless they were monsters or demons, could not enter my master¡¯s dungeon. The only explanation is that they were otherworlders. They definitely didn¡¯t have the dark aura representing a demon or monster. They were in decent gear, but I could not see their levels as master could. Master is so amazing. I¡¯d ask for his hand if I weren¡¯t so far beneath him. The people seemed to be easily able to defeat my minions. They were slicing through them faster than I could summon. I had to direct a few of the other dungeons¡¯ monsters just to stall them. They made it to the boss door after only killing two of the sub bosses. I had my minions attack them several times as their spell caster deciphered the words on the door. The look on her face when she was done was hilarious. She turned to them, aghast, and relayed the news. They had to fight two more sub bosses in order to obtain the items they had just to open the boss door. They had been in the dungeon for four and a half days now. I only had to stall them for another few hours and then the entire dungeon would change. Meanwhile I had prayed to Davros, asking for the location of other dungeons. All he asked of me was to let him know which ones I connect to. I agreed and had my undead moles and dwarves hard at work connecting the dungeon to my master¡¯s. Since they were currently working on the tunnel, it technically wasn¡¯t part of the dungeon. It wouldn¡¯t change with the rest of the dungeon, until it was finally connected to the dungeon that they dug towards. The dungeon was a large cavernous one, that was mostly filled with rats, bats, and the occasional vampire if Davros was to be believed. Having them as an addition to my master¡¯s dungeon would be a good thing. The group made it to the third sub boss¡¯ room after only an hour of traveling. I would have to make this dungeon more complex. They found it with too much ease. The sub boss they fought was a large, undead lizardman. It¡¯s quick reflexes and powerful arms aided it considerably. Adding to the fact that it did not tire, it was a formidable foe. They took over an hour to actually beat the sub boss. They had been repelled several times, before finally agreeing on a plan that worked. They ended up diverting its attention to the warrior, while the mage debuffed it, and the archer took out chunks of its health. I¡¯d have to watch out for that. The best part of being the dungeon boss, aside from serving master of course, was that I could watch everything that happened in my master¡¯s dungeon. It allowed me to gather a wealth of information about each of the individuals as the traversed it. They had to wait for a while as they healed up. It was dumb of them not to bring a healer to an undead dungeon. That was one of the biggest weaknesses of undead. Master would never have made that mistake. They made it to the last boss room, despite getting lost a dozen times. Master would have just made a map. Stupid lackeys. No one is as smart as master. Each sub boss room had a total of 13 different guardians blocking the door way. Except for the Boss room I was in. The thirteen were not extraordinarily powerful, but they did pose a large threat to the unwary. The last boss was an undead demon I took from the dark alter. I had experimented with it a bit, and turned it into a minor lich. It was well worth the effort. Boss liches, and sub boss liches, had a very unique ability. They can summon any of their direct subordinates into battle at any time. The lich summoned the thirteen guardians the group had just killed. Unfortunately that was all he could handle summoning at one time. His mana was tied to his mana in life, unlike mine. My mana was directly tied to Master. The group lost the archer in the fight. Even with the constant attacks and debuffs, the lich tactfully aimed for the archer. The archer had been the true damage dealer of the group. He died soon after though. He had to sacrifice four of his thirteen minions in order to get to the archer. He held his own though. I saw quite a few places where he could use improvements, but we¡¯d discuss those later. After they gained all of the four keys they opened the door of the boss room. Just as they made it to the door, the dungeon began to rumble. The door slammed shut, and an earthquake level of movement shook the entire dungeon. After the dungeon began to settle, they opened the door again. Only to be greeted by a completely unfamiliar terrain. Only the female mage, and male warrior were left. The male warrior began to speak, but my abilities didn¡¯t allow me to hear the words. The mage began to look animated. It was probably something like the warrior saying, ¡®find us a way out¡¯; followed by the mage stating why that¡¯s impossible. I began drawing all of my undead towards them. They were going to have to fight to get to me. Sometime the heaviest concentration would come from the correct direction, sometimes from a completely wrong one. They seemed to follow the densest concentration every time. It was a good strategy, but I had complete control of the undead. I began to lead them through a long series of twists and turns, and ended up depositing them back at the fourth sub boss¡¯ door. Throughout the entire journey I had been sending my minions to attack whenever they seemed angry at each other. I also sent large hordes if they seemed to be getting too friendly. That was the best way I could think of to turn the two against each other. The look of anger on the warrior¡¯s face was refreshing. He even hit the mage with the pommel of his sword. It¡¯s never a good idea to start fighting with a magic user, my master shows that all the time. I decided to help the mage when she struck back at the warrior. She cast a large fireball at him, quickly followed by two icicles. As the fire ball was deflected, the warrior ran at the mage. Only to be stopped by a wall made of bones. The ice hit the warrior in the face, taking about ten percent of his total health. Suddenly skeletons sprung up around them, completely focusing on the warrior. The girl tried to fight back, but I had used about half of my dungeon mana to petrify her. Oh, let me explain something. Dungeon mana is different than the types of mana my master uses. Master uses mana inside himself, as well as that created naturally or by other beings. Dungeon mana is created by the dungeons, but only usable by the dungeon boss. There is a limited amount of dungeon mana I can use for each party that enters. I had spent a large chunk just guiding my undead to them. Dungeon mana could be used to control the inhabitants of the dungeon, or to make some more powerful, or to directly effect the party for a very short time. It could also be used to make temporary traps. I chose to directly effect the mage. I petrified her for only twenty seconds, but I believed that would be enough. The skeletal warriors were shredded to pieces as they cut the warrior. Unfortunately for him, as he killed them they exploded with miasma bombs. His stats were temporarily debuffed, and the skeletons kept coming. After the onslaught went on for about 16 seconds, the warrior finally fell. The constant barrage of debuffs and attacks proved too much for one person. After that I sent the undead away, and waited for the girl to be able to move. When she was there was only one skeleton in front of her. She seemed confused about it. The skeleton was exaggeratedly waving for her to follow it. She attacked it once, but when it didn¡¯t attack back she decided to cautiously follow it. It brought her right to my door. She gaped as the skeleton took the four keys the warrior had been holding, and unlocked the door for her. On her way there I had summoned everything possible, to fill the room with throwaway undead. I floated a bit, and caused the noxious miasma to flow from my legs and feet. ¡°Welcome young mage. My master has taken a great interest in you. The farce of a battle between you and the warrior was solved thanks to me. He should not have taken his anger out on you, but I can provide a way to allow you to defend yourself. Simply sign this contract, and I shall do the rest.¡± I had one of the four sub bosses I summoned bring her the contract. She looked it over. ¡°This is a Soul Binding Contract. Why would you want me to sign something so powerful?¡± Damn! I should have known a mage would know about magical tools. ¡°Because my master wills it. He is the true controller of this dungeon, I am merely a humble servant, watching his home while he is gone. Should you choose to accept, my master will allow me to teach you anything within my knowledge of dark magic, which is considerable. Think carefully though, the rules of that contract are severe.¡± She read the contract over twice. Basically if she violated the contract all of her levels would go to master, and all of her items, even those in her bank, would go to his dungeon storage. If I disobeyed the contract, then I would have to serve her anytime I was not acting as the dungeon boss. Of course if it came to that I would just dawn the mantle of dungeon boss 100% of the time. She looked over it, and finally, ¡°What if I refuse to sign this contract? Would you kill me here and now?¡± I shook my undead head. ¡°No, master has made it abundantly clear that I was to let you leave unharmed if you choose not to sign the contract.¡± I gave a false shudder at the thought of what Master had ¡®done¡¯. She spoke again. ¡°Then I decline. I do not wish to ally myself to the undead.¡± I shook my head sadly. She seemed to be holding something back. It was best to go along with the skit. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll have the dungeon sub bosses escort you to the entrance. If you come back in again you will be a fresh target. I might have even forgotten about you. So long mage.¡± The sub bosses began moving toward her. ¡°WAIT! I change my mind. I needed to see if you were lying to me about something. I would like to learn what you have to teach me.¡± She signed the contract, and bowed before me. I might have liked that, but I knew Master would not like a servant that had too much pride. Prideful servants were the ones that disobeyed. I would never disobey my master. After she signed the contract, I outlined her duties as a necromancer under Master¡¯s control. Hey guys! Thanks for reading another chapter. So what do you think is going to happen to the mage lady? Is she going to betray Kretchof? Will Kretchof throw her away? Will she be the start of a necromancer army? Will she be a love interest!? Find out in the next chapter of: Voice Screws Everyone in the End! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2700Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 22.9(17.9)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength50Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence270
Endurance51Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Novice Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 20 Exp 23.05% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 56: A House and a Beatdown Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice got a bunch of skills for upgrading his stats to 50. He also found Susan¡¯s hut, and two mysterious figures approached her hut from different sides. Kretchof convinced a magician to work for Voice, and sign a soul binding contract. Thanks to Via, the contest winner, for the Soul Musician. I will be taking a few liberties with the character, since I want him to fit perfectly in the story. A lot of out of game description was given, but not a lot of in game personality. So I am going to make it up as I go, within the confines of what the character would actually seem to do. Also thanks to Dumac for BigBadWolf. It¡¯s going to be very interesting to see two of the participants enter the story at one time. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Kretchof¡¯s POV The girl proved to be a quick learner. The tasks I gave her weren¡¯t simple by any means, but she accomplished them. She reminded me of a lesser version of my master. Anything I threw at her she would go at with full force. She said the reason she was here was to accomplish a test given to here by the ones that created our realm. She was supposed to conquer something that had never been conquered. Her party thought to break through my master¡¯s dungeon. Foolhardy and stupid. But that would be beaten out of her. I sent her out to gather more of the otherworlders, and she brought in two more in just the first day. After she helped them conquer a bit of the dungeon, I had my skeletons ¡®kidnap¡¯ her. When the party tried a daring rescue, they were all slaughtered mercilessly. She could at least make good bait for the master. She picked up on the necromantic arts quickly, perhaps because she was a mage before signing the contract. She quickly learned to summon the lowest level of undead zombie. The shuffler wasn¡¯t very powerful, but it was only a start. If she proved useful enough in gaining exp for my master¡¯s dungeon, I planned on telling my master about her. If she didn¡¯t¡­, well let¡¯s just say she didn¡¯t sign that contract on my whim. I would make sure she wouldn¡¯t have anyone to turn to. Over the course of several days, she lured in dozen of otherworlders. They were all very keen to help a pretty young woman. The fact that she would betray them didn¡¯t seem to cross their minds. The exp my master¡¯s dungeon gained was enormous. The amount of loot dropped was decent. Master would be pleased by the high amount of enchanted equipment I had gained for him. The dungeon gained enough experience to level up to level 3 by the end of the first few days. After increasing several traps and making the overall difficulty of the dungeon higher, I went about introducing the girl to the shrine of Davros. Even the great god Davros was under the control of my master. Every wish Davros granted had to be approved by Master, so I did not allow her to wish for anything. I planned on making her one of the dungeon¡¯s guardians when she became powerful enough. That still wouldn¡¯t be for a while though. I was teaching her how to steal undead minions from others, a trick one of the necromancers in the demon¡¯s army tried to use several times. That way she would even be able to use the undead I generate to better guard the dungeon. Master¡¯s reign would be soon to start. Voice¡¯s POV The minstrel and wolf man glared at each other for a time. They slowly approached Susan¡¯s hut, and started requesting supplies. They took turns, one after the other, as if they were in a trance. I looked at Susan. ¡°?¡± She smiled as she whispered the explanation. ¡°The first day these two found me, they tried to attack each other, but I wasn¡¯t having any of that. I told them they had to be peaceful around here or they wouldn¡¯t get any supplies. After that they tried to get the things they needed by shouting over one another. I again told them to calm down. Now they take turns asking for things. Each day one of them asks first, the next day the other one will.¡± I nodded. It was a good system to think up. I was actually surprised she could do something like that. I¡¯d have thought she would be too focused on making chemical equations to actually use her brain for anything else. The two men seemed to notice me after they had placed their orders. They almost drew their weapons, but a quick glare from Susan stopped that. I quickly analyzed the two men, while Ancestor studied them. Since I could see approximate values of different stats, it wasn¡¯t a big leap to tell what kind of general class each had. The guy with the lute had excessively high charisma, so much so that I couldn¡¯t read it, but his other stats were rather low. The only one of note was wisdom which was at 204. That was pretty impressive for a bard type. The problem was his items. His clothing was fairly run down. Usually to make money bards would team up with other players. If this guy wasn¡¯t part of groups he couldn¡¯t make money, which would explain the sloppy attire. I had figured out that not many people wanted to put time into the more magical classes, but a bard should be in high demand. Unless of course there was a better class suited to using buffs and debuffs. Besides mine I mean. The aura of wind was probably used to either help buff, or applied to the music somehow. His name was just Johnny. The wolf man, cleverly named BigBadWolf, had strength, agility, dexterity, endurance and vitality. There was no way of knowing what his class was except for some type of physical combatant. He seemed to carry himself like a veteran warrior though. So he was probably either really into role playing, or had some outside training. If I could see his stats better I would have been able to come up with a better idea what class suited him best. After they ordered their supplies, and paid for them, they began to leave. Quickly formulating a plan, I approached Johnny. ¡°Wait for a moment traveler!¡± My commoner¡¯s outfit loosely hung from my body as I ran to him. I faked a gasping breathe when I reached him. ¡°*Gasps* Hello there Johnny.¡± He turned around with an angry expression. ¡°I¡¯ve come to battle you. To test your strength. If you are good enough, I may even let you join me.¡± ¡°What!? Are you going to kill a one pointer? Go ahead, but I¡¯ll make sure to take you down with me!¡± He readied his harp angrily. Really? What are you going to do? Lull me to sleep and cut my throat? He was a little quick on the draw. Something must have happened while he was playing the game, or maybe he just had a shitty life. Maybe this is good. I can use this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnKhsTXoKCI This is the song he is playing. As he played his music, Ancestor forced inspect on me. I saw the mana around us distorting. The mana started convulsing into forms, and shot into the ground. The wind around him was taking forms to amplify his music, and seemed to even slightly add in other instruments. I continued to watch, my interest peaked at seeing someone else use magic. The ground began to crack. A mound of dirt began to from. The mound cracked, and from it, an object emerged. A boney hand reached towards the sky. The ground fell away revealing a skeletal figure. Mounds started appearing everywhere. Many more skeletons were pulling themselves up from the ground. My mouth hung open. He can summon fucking skeletons!? Oh man, I am SO about to own this little shit. Dozens of skeletons were slowly walking towards me. ¡°You know,¡± I interjected, ¡°I could have stopped you as soon as you started.¡± I just needed him to know that. I decided to play with him a bit though. He was too quick to attack, I needed to fix that. One of the skeletons swung its rigid arm at me. I easily parried it with my staff. I sent a single wisp of fire/wind mana from the tip of my staff. The flames quickly devoured the undead. The amount of undead I had to kill was raising. More and more were raising up every second. Man It¡¯ll be great when I get this guy on my side. I continued to slaughter the massive amount of undead he was summoning. Some were crushed by earthen orbs, some were burnt, others were simply purified with divine light. It was a fun experience to say the least. Slowly the song started to die down. The undead began to get stronger, and faster. I had to keep up a wind barrier to avoid getting hit. I had four on me at a time by now. I could block them since I had buffed my agility and dexterity, but it was difficult. I had to constantly stall for time so I could regen enough mana. Suddenly I began to feel sluggish. This old ass song was starting to effect me too. I started getting a headache. A bad one. I felt the urge to follow him. NO! I would not be controlled against my will! I blasted all of the undead away from me with a tornado of wind. I clogged my ears with a bit of wind mana, and flew towards the bard. As I flew, I unsheathed the swords held in my staff. I put on up to his throat. In a condescending voice I said, ¡°You did well enough, but you had too many openings. It was boring when you tried to take control of me. You should really choose better music that hurt my ears.¡± Ancestor finally spoke up. ¡°Voice! I¡¯ve finally figured it out. Both of the men were ones that fled the battle!¡± Oh really? ¡°You know,¡± With my sword up to his neck he had no choice but to listen to me. ¡°I saw when you ran from the battle with the hermit the other day. Why was that? You a scared little bard?¡± I made an overly exaggerated sad face, much like a clown might. His face twitched in annoyance. Good. ¡°I have a deal for you. ¡° He didn¡¯t change his expression. ¡°You seem to be good at playing music. How about you tell me about your past a little bit. Then we can go from there.¡± If Ancestor and I could think up a way to use him while he told his story, I¡¯d let him live. Johnny¡¯s POV Fine, but I know your kind. You¡¯ll just kill me afterwards anyway. It all started when I was a kid. When I heard my first symphony I was amazed. I took to it instantly. My parents readily agreed to allow me to take lessons. I learned everything from acoustic guitar to piano to flute to tuba. It was great. At one point I heard other music besides what played in the classical symphonies. I took to those as well. But my parents didn¡¯t want me to learn those instruments, because they were ¡®uncouth¡¯. I took to that music with a passion I¡¯d never felt. So I secretly taught myself how to play. Eventually my parents found out though, and made me quit to ¡®focus on my studies¡¯. Well it¡¯s ten years later and I¡¯ve graduated college, got a job, and have very little free time. I am a music professor at a university that I live near. It¡¯s ok, but I only have a few free hours each day. Since it¡¯s summer I have time off, but once the school year starts I don¡¯t have any. When I heard about DIVE I couldn¡¯t resist, I bought it right away. My time here wasn¡¯t what I expected though. No one wanted a bard to join their parties. They had NPC healers to help. The music only gave small buffs to stats, so they never thought it was worth it. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Eventually I started to play in inns just to make it by. After a week of non stop playing for tips I got a notice. I had been playing songs that randomly came into my mind when it happened. I unlocked a special class. It was called the Soul-Musician. Any thing I felt was transferred through my music. It became easier to buff, debuff, and generally cast magic. I would use the emotions the songs made me feel to cast spells. ¡®Voice thought to himself, Oh, so he¡¯s basically like a force mage but with music as a medium? Interesting. ¡¯ After I obtained the class, I got a message from DI. Here I am. My group basically wanted to use me for bait, but the old hermit and his group didn¡¯t go for it. I decided to run instead of helping them out. They had just been using me anyway. Voice¡¯s POV I scoffed. Of course they had been using him. Everyone uses everyone else. The only thing that matters is whether or not you are better at it than the other person. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ve decided. I¡¯ll let you live, if you team up with me.¡± He gave me a disbelieving look. He spoke. ¡°The only reason I talked this long was to get my magic. Now DIE!¡± He began playing again, but I severed the strings of his lute with a razor sharp blast of wind. ¡°Ah ah ah. That¡¯s not very nice you know. I have more power than you. I just wanted to give you a chance to follow me of you own volition. Guess I shouldn¡¯t have done that.¡± He pulled out another lute. Guess a musician always needs to be prepared. I decided to let him play a bit, just to show him the futility of it. As the mana started coursing through the air, I absorbed all of it. He was playing a song from the band Dragonforce, a very old band. He seemed to have a thing for bands that had been around a few decades ago. The mana that shot towards me was obviously meant to debuff me. As it flew towards me, I dismantled it, and absorbed it. I looked at him, bemused. ¡°Well that was anti climactic.¡± He began to play another song, but sent a small burst of fire at his fingers. They caught right away, and leapt onto the instrument. The lute turned to ashes in seconds. Johnny¡¯s fingers received dark black scarring from the flames. ¡°Using emotions and music to control mana is all well and good, but you really shouldn¡¯t under estimate the ability of the logical thinker.¡± If he was going to try to best me with an ability similar to my own, I was going to show him how weak he truly was. He began to sing. The mana again started to form according to his whims. ¡°Nope, not having that.¡± If wind was aiding his magic, I¡¯d take that away. I summoned SparrowHawk, and with the added support, stopped all wind mana around the man. His music tried to excite the mana around him, but with no medium to go through it was all just random words spoken to the void. ¡°You see, I¡¯m much better at this kind of thing than you are Johnny boy. And unfortunately for you, I¡¯ve found you useless. Time to go.¡± I summoned Drake, and took out all of the fire mana, both in his body and around it. The small orb that lacked heat began to crystalize from the sudden temperature drop. He tried humming, but the cold made it a shivery melody-less noise. I smirked at him. ¡°Come try to fight me again when you are a bit better prepared. Fucking loser.¡± With that one last insult I impaled the poor bastard with several earthen spears. After watching his body fade away, I looked and saw I had gotten an extra point. I might have felt a little bad for the guy, but he had tried to beat me with my own abilities! He deserved it. I went back to the hut, and began to help Susan collect the herbs my fairies had planted. I made several potions, after I bought the glass vials from Susan. I made enough potions to fill several dozen vials. I talked it over with Susan, and she would let me sell them. I marketed them for the same price as her potions, but mine were a little bit more powerful. She was using more potent ingredients after all. I decided to let others where Susan was staying, so that I could make a bit more money. Of course I would have my fairies create enough defenses to allow me to protect the area I was planting. Susan would obviously be living in that area as well. I had about a day to fully upgrade the defenses. I had my fairies all come out, and start the construction. The first thing on the list was a job for Moro and Eli. They pushed the trees far enough away to actually start construction on a large estate. I cleared out a small area for another hot spring, and had Drake absorb the fire mana in the forest around the area. Drake put the fire mana deep underground, and began the process of heating the hot spring. Without Eli to help it would take too long to create a stone home, so I began to help Golem, the metal fairy, create spikes behind where the moat would go. We enchanted the spikes to have extra attack power, and even barbed them. We worked in a circle, following the path that Eli and Moro were clearing out. The monkey seemed to like riding the trees and jumping around as they moved. By the time night fell, the trees had been pushed far enough away so as to not hinder the moat or large house I intended to build. After they were done I had Moro search for any camps of people. I gave Moro several bombs, and even some poison I made for the occasion. Moro seemed overjoyed to be able to sow mischief. It was pretty cute. I bet Moro would do well in my world. I sent SparrowHawk to scout the area while Eli and Moro moved the trees. When they were finished, I had the bird escort Moro. Two cute things is better than one. Eli helped me in creating the moat while building the house. I worked throughout the night making it. I made sure to draw the earth mana from the area I wanted the moat to be. I had Sol and Tear go around and sprinkle healing water on all of the plants. Golem was charged with increasing the potency of my blades using its ability to enhance metal mana. Using Golem like this meant I¡¯d never have to actually work on the upkeep of my weapons. Eli and I finished the house just as the sun broke over the horizon. It had 8 rooms and an entryway on each floor, and 2 floors. The first floor had been designed to accommodate guests, as well as the storage and preparation of food. The second floor was to be used for sleeping. Of course it didn¡¯t have any furnishings, but I could always make most of those things with my earth mana. When dawn came Moro and SparrowHawk returned as instructed. I looked at my points. I had gained 9. I was worth a total of 512 points. There was about 4500 or so points. That meant I had to at least get 2251 in order to assure victory. I was a long way off of that mark. I only had 124 so far. Going after the small fry wasn¡¯t getting me anywhere. I decided to try and catch a big fish. If I could defeat a group that only had two members, then I¡¯d gain 512 points. The same amount as someone would get from killing me. With that I¡¯d be about a fifth of the way to my goal. Of course that assumed that no other groups were smart enough to actually beat groups with less people. Susan was astounded by the quick turn around the area had done. She seemed most interested in how I got the trees to move out of the way. I explained the process had to do with manipulating natural energies, but didn¡¯t delve too deeply into it. At noon the wolf man arrived. He seemed lost as he looked for the fellow with the lute. Too bad you¡¯re next fucker. I ran to the moat to greet the man. He was suspicious, but didn¡¯t draw his weapon. His fear of losing the shop outweighs my threat. Good. I had been afraid he would still attack me when he noticed the musician was gone, but thankfully he didn¡¯t. I was standing outside of the moat, near the forest not the house. When he approached I began to talk to him. ¡°Hello again! I¡¯m Susan¡¯s Apprentice! I¡¯ve come to try to sell the potions I made! Want to try one?¡± I handed him one of the potions I had made. I changed the option in the menu to not say ¡®Made by Voice0fReason¡¯. He looked at me suspiciously. ¡°Identify!¡± I was hoping he wouldn¡¯t do that. I guess since everyone was given the skill some would use it. Glad I actually gave him the potion and not the poison I had planned. I patted the poison vial in my pants. If I had tried that this whole thing would have blown up in my face. He looked at me after examining the potion. ¡°Hm, seems good, but I am fully healed. How do I test it?¡± I unsheathe the blades from my staff, and walked towards him. ¡°I can cut you if you want. Or you can just take it back to camp and but some more tomorrow.¡± His health was ridiculously high, so there was no way I could kill him in a head on battle. I had to be sneaky about it. He held out a hand, but put the other on the pommel of his sword. ¡°Fine, but be careful.¡± I nodded as I weakly cut his palm. He sighed as he took my blade and made a large gnash on himself. He handed the blade back, and drank the potion. Shit! He didn¡¯t even grimace. Even if the pain is at 1% it should have hurt like hell with Golem¡¯s metal mana coating this thing! This guy is some sort of freak. I smiled pleasantly as he drank the potion. I eagerly awaited his response. ¡°Hm, this seems a bit better than the other merchant¡¯s, how did you do it?¡± I proudly smiled. ¡°She¡¯s been working on other things most of the time. I¡¯ve had time to perfect just one type of potion. She could still destroy me with the others.¡± I smiled a downcast smile. ¡°But you liked it right? How about I give you a discount? I¡¯ll only charge the same price as Ms. Susan does!¡± He gave me a shrewd look. ¡°And does Ms. Susan know you¡¯ll be undercutting her prices?¡± I looked confused, ¡°Undercutting?¡± I feigned not understanding the word. ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°You are putting your prices under what competitive products cost.¡± I looked at the ground and scuffed my shoe. ¡°Oh, well actually Ms. Susan told me to put it at that price. She said something about it not selling well since I¡¯m not a ¡®known entity¡¯.¡± He nodded in understanding. A harmless apprentice was just giving him a sample so he could spread his name. Nothing was strange about that. ¡°Alright, how many do you have right now?¡± [i]Good now I just need to reel him in. ¡°I have a few dozen made now, but I could have up to a hundred made by tomorrow!¡± I happily ¡®overstated¡¯ the amount I could produce. In reality I could make many more times that, but an apprentice would only be able to make a fraction of that. I had already stayed up for an entire day, so I would need to sleep soon. Technically one could stay up for 80 hours in a row in the game world without bother, but then they would need to sleep to sleep for 40 hours straight. That was not what I planned to do. I was going to try my best to keep a good schedule, that way my body and mind were in optimum condition at all times. The wolf man looked as though he had come to a decision about something. ¡°Fine, if you can make at least 100 healing potions by tomorrow I will buy them all, if you can¡¯t then I refuse to buy from Susan again. If her apprentice overstates what he can do, then I can¡¯t trust her either, now can i?¡± I looked at the vial that he held, then back at him. I ran across an earthen bridge I created as I went. I threw myself into the stone house, and calmly told Susan the wolf guy wanted to see her. Dive 57: A Plan to Kill the Rest Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Kretchof worked with the new necromancer a bit. Voice killed the bard, and built Susan a large house. He also promised 100 potions to Wolf. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! I finished the one hundred potions in only a couple of hours. They were all to the potency of the one I gave for a sample. After that I went to Susan and asked what else he usually bought. ¡°He usually gets some basic armor and weapons. I don¡¯t know what he keeps buying them for though. He already bought enough to outfit a small army. If the merchants didn¡¯t restock my inventory every night I wouldn¡¯t be able to keep up.¡± ¡°Thanks for the info!¡± I smiled my best for her. ¡°Is there anything you need? Equipment-wise? I can make a basic setup.¡± She gave me a tight hug, then rapidly started listing off several things she would need to do some minor experiments to further her research. She had apparently hit a bottle neck with her chemical research. ¡°I¡¯ve actually been trying to find a way to cure diseases without healing magic, or the specific potions.¡± Of course I knew a way to do this, but I couldn¡¯t use outside knowledge. I tried thinking of a way I could give her a hint about it. It had to be round about enough to not include any info from my world. As I thought about it, I began to think of something I could experiment with myself. The bard character had given me an interesting idea about the ways I could use mana. When I first gained the force mage class, I had to imagine the mana around me. Later I was able to manipulate it based on mathematical equations. There was obviously more than one set way to actually use mana. For the next three days I made 100 potions each day, and practiced using mana in every way I could imagine. Wolf was surprised when I brought the potions to him the first day. ¡°I¡¯ll admit,¡± Wolf said while nodding approvingly. ¡°I didn¡¯t think you had it in you. I¡¯ll take another hundred tomorrow as well.¡± And so it went. I could still cause the mana to form by picturing the exact feeling. That only allowed me to buff/debuff myself, or cast spells with me as the center. What was it that the bard said? He cast magic based on his emotions? I guess I¡¯ll try that out. It was harder than I thought it would be. Even when I was angry, no mana went to destroy the object I aimed my anger at. When I made myself sad, no mana tried to comfort me. On the second day of trying I had to review what the bard did. He said his emotions were the catalyst of the mana. So what is the instrument that guides the catalyst? ¡­ Ah! The instrument! The magic spells he used were decided by the songs he played. So there has to be something to shape the mana, huh? Even with emotions providing the access to mana, the spells required a driving force. For Johnny the song he played had turned into the spell. I could probably mimic that, but my musical abilities were very low. I began to sing a song my mother used to sing to me to put me to sleep. It was about a man that lived in a dying forest. He nurtured the forest, and took care of it for many years. Every day he would go out and sing, ¡®Flowers, grass and trees. Stems and roots and leaves. Grow and grow and come back to me. Return to life and vigor please.¡¯ With each passing year the forest gained more of its life force back. He continued to take perfect care of the forest until it was a thriving metropolis of life. The forest loved him like a father, and watched over him every day after that. The forest noticed the man was lonely, so one day the forest summoned a tree spirit to give him a friend. The tree spirit turned out to be a dryad, the spirit of a tree. The man became friends with the dryad. Eventually the dryad taught the man how to speak to animals. Then the man was able to have a lot of friends. Every day the man would play with the animals, and talk to the dryad. It was a happy life. He lived like that until the day he became too weak to get out of bed. The animals, having been his friends since for generations, took care of him in his old age. When he passed away the entire forest mourned for him. Truly he had led a good and fulfilled life.¡¯ When the song was over I opened my eyes. My mana had decreased by a sizable amount, so I was expecting something good at least. All around me the plants seemed to be flourishing. Flowers were blossoming, the trees were full of leaves, and even the grass and bushes seemed to be dripping with vigor. One could easily revive an entire forest with that song if they sang it enough. Alright, the spell itself was useless, but I did learn how to use mana in ways if I can¡¯t figure out the equation. So it wasn¡¯t a total waste. I practiced with the new type of mana manipulation for the entire day. I realized I just had to have a clear goal in mind, and lose myself in my imagination. It wasn¡¯t a magic fit for battle. On the third day I tried to find other ways to use mana besides the three I knew, but I couldn¡¯t figure out how. I still spent the entire day doing it though. The estate was looking more impressive every time I took a break and looked. By the end of the three days, all of the area around the large house was planted with the common weed and green healing herbs. I allowed Moro and SparrowHawk to have their fun, so it was up to Sol and Tear to do all of the planting and harvesting. Eli was creating the rest of the house, equipped with an underground level and all. Meanwhile I had Golem start trapping parts of the house I thought would prove useful. Some of them were downright horrible. I couldn¡¯t wait for the next few days to be over. I had a plan cooking that would take place, most likely, in a few days. I couldn¡¯t be sure since it relied heavily on the intelligence of the groups I had SparrowHawk and Moro mess with. The amount of fire mana Drake gathered was off the scales. I made sure to put a limit on it, so as not to mess the ecosystem up. It seemed as though the forest must have been under a drought though. I planned on having Tear give water to the forest. If Gaia got pissed at me at this point I¡¯d be screwed. Plus it would be good to obtain the favor of the nature goddess since I was going to be staying in nature for a while. Drake went out further and further with each trip, so it took longer and longer. Still the amount of fire mana collected would have been enough to instantly evaporate a small lake. I used the massive amount of excess fire mana to enchant a few of the traps that Golem was laying. The only problem with enchanting items and not people, was that the items had a set amount of ¡®activation times¡¯. For what I was doing I set it to five times. The traps would emit 1/5 of the total heat, five times total. After that they¡¯d have to be recharged or re-enchanted. It would be fun to watch when it all started. You see I had given SparrowHawk one more instructions before letting the two go. I gave them several pieces of paper, each marked the location of Susan¡¯s hut, and each had the name Voice0fReason is here. I made sure that Moro knew to do as much damage as possible before they got the notices. That way they would push all of their anger on me. Now why would I want their anger directed towards me? For a very simple reason. I wanted to experiment a bit. If my traps killing the players gave me points, I would focus on that. If they didn¡¯t, well then at least there would be less people for the others to get points off of. I say this like I know for a fact that my traps will at least kill some of the people that attempt to enter my estate. And since Moro¡¯s mischievous pranks awarded me points, I wanted to see if I just had to directly cause the death of someone for it to award me with the points. If I got points for just my traps killing the people, I¡¯d never have to worry about actually confronting the peons again. That was the most ideal situation though. After the third day I began to think of Susan¡¯s problem. I went to my white room, and looked a something up on my computer. After about half a day of experimenting I had made my first enchanted item! By this I mean it was the first item I completely made, and enchanted myself. ¡°Alright, I am going to buff your eyes, and I want you to look through this.¡± I held out a small stone cylinder, and buffed her eyes. She looked through it, and almost dropped it in surprise. To make the object, I had made an orb of water, and took out all of the heat. After freezing the entire thing, I cut it in half. I began taking off pieces of the water mana, to delete parts of the ice. I whittled it down to only a small curved thin object. I created four more like it, but curved at different angles, and smaller in size. Each one could fit perfectly into the one bigger than it. Kind of like the Russian dolls. I made an earthen cylinder, and put them all in it. I even added a small mechanism to adjust the ice. After enchanting Susan¡¯s eyes, I had her look through the object. It was a microscope. I had looked up the designs to a very basic do-it-yourself type. I enhanced Susan¡¯s eyes to be able to see more. The enchantment coupled with the lenses would let her see microscopic entities. I spent several hours making the microscope. The reason was I had to test out my ability to enchant. I realized that my intent was as important as the exact equation of mana I put in. Although it took a while to figure out the equation. Luckily I had Ancestor¡¯s help for that. I actually had to formulate the exact details of how much mana was needed to sustain the lenses, how cold or warm it could get before it messed with the product, and how they could store extra mana etc. Without inspect making the equations go by faster, I probably would have spent days on them. It was an interesting idea that I had though. Using the one weakness to provide power for the enchantment. I made a single sheet of ice to test with before I crafted the lenses. I enchanted it with various amounts of water and fire mana, to see what it did. At 95% water mana, and 5% fire mana I struck gold. Basically all of the fire mana near the lenses were drawn to the lenses, and became fuel for the water enchantment. The fire basically just provided a means to sustain the water. Since there was no nearby fire, the lenses remained perfectly frozen. So the outside of the lens was excessively hot, but the lens itself was solid ice. It wasn¡¯t the best enchantment, but it at least did the trick. After that I had to practice taking away the exact amounts of water mana to create the exact angles of the lenses. It took about an hour to actually finish the first lens, but after that it went pretty quickly. I didn¡¯t mention anything about bacteria, but I hoped should would take the hint. Either way I couldn¡¯t do any more without raising the flag of the system. As I gave her eyes the ability to see long distances, I said ¡°Think of that as a birthday present.¡± She looked at me with sparkles in her eyes. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever told anyone my birthday. I never expected to get anything.¡± Tears seemed to be forming in her eyes. ¡°My birthday isn¡¯t for another month, but thank you.¡± She threw one arm around my neck as she held the microscope close with the other. If my intimacy wasn¡¯t at max before, then it sure was now. After a brief explanation on how to adjust the thing, I let Susan go about her business. The problem was, and I told her, she wouldn¡¯t be able to use the microscope to its fullest potential unless I had her eyes buffed. I also made it clear I could only keep her buffed while I didn¡¯t have much else to do. Luckily my fairies were able to do basically anything I was. Except blend the mana types to the degree that I could. I didn¡¯t really want them to be able to do that anyway. One cannot control those that are more powerful than they without effort. After I finished the biology equipment, I took the idea and created a makeshift telescope. It wasn¡¯t as good as one a sailor might buy, but it was only going to be used for emergencies or fun. The best part was that the mana required for the upkeep didn¡¯t come from me. I loved that part. It gave me a lot of ideas on how to enchant things besides just giving buffs, or temporary damage types. I even made it so Sol had a bit of enhanced vision, but that quickly failed. Mana began draining from Sol¡¯s body at an alarming rate. Buffing fairies with their own mana as a supply battery was a bad idea. While the number of potions Wolf remained the same, the types of potions he requested changed dramatically each day. It was interesting to see which kinds of potions he would want. He flipped his shit when I kept my bandages in my inventory and made the healing potions. The healing potion bandages sold for twice what the potion and bandage would have. I was raking in the gold. Of course I had to spend most of it to buy the supplies to make the potions, but with my discount I still made a nice bit of money. All of my money went into buying supplies from Susan. Not living supplies, we made due with what Susan got each day, and what Moro could get us. No I bought basic leather, and iron ore and the like. I had decided to work on my blacksmithing and tailoring skills. If my crafting went up high enough I could just cut Evan out of the equation altogether. The first thing I worked on was making an iron sword. I used fire mana to heat the ore, and metal mana to shape it. It took a few hours, but I finally created a ¡®Shoddy Iron Longsword¡¯.
Shoddy Iron Longsword
Material QualityLowWork QualityLow
Damage25-30Durability50/50
This weapon was created using a method only the crafter knows. The purity of the iron in this sword is higher than most other similar swords.
It wasn¡¯t bad for a first attempt at creating a weapon. It would have obviously turned out better if I had an actual forge, but that was a luxury I didn¡¯t have. Anyway, after I made the sword, I began to hone its edge with metal mana. The minimum and maximum damage went up by 5 points each, and the name changed to ¡®Sharpened Shoddy Iron Longsword¡¯. I began infusing it with fire and water mana, making an enchantment to cause any wound caused by the sword to burst into flames. The water enchantment part made the water leave the wound, while the fire mana caused a massive amount of heat to build up and explode. The sword could activate 20 times before it needed to recharge. After making the sword I had an ingenious idea. I took a roll of bandages and enchanted them with a single use enchantment. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. It had three parts. The enchantments were used in order of the time I put that mana type in. First I added water mana to wash out the wound. Then I put fire mana to burn the wound shut. After that I put in water/light mana, to creating a healing water that would help the wound recover more quickly. I decided to see how much the potion soaked, enchanted bandages were worth to Wolf. When he came by the next day I started to haggle. ¡°Hey Wolf! I have this new thing I¡¯ve been working on. It¡¯s a new way to improve the basic bandages. What do you say? Want to buy some?¡± By this time he was no longer suspicious of me, or at least didn¡¯t act that way. ¡°How much do they cost?¡± Normal bandages would cost about a silver per stack. The potions cost a few silver depending on how good they were. ¡°It¡¯ll cost a gold coin.¡± He started to roll his eyes and walk away, but I stopped him. ¡°Now hold on, I didn¡¯t tell you the best part.¡± I offered him a small knife to cut himself with, and showed him the bandage. He sighed but cut himself. My auto nursing skill kicked in, and only a fraction of and inch of the bandage was used. The bandage appeared on his cut, and began to glow. I watched with amusement as his face changed expressions from disbelief, to shock. ¡°Now it won¡¯t automatically heal like that, that was just one of my skills. It will heal as well though. So what do you say?¡± ¡°How much is it again?¡± ¡°Well I wanted to charge 5 gold, but Susan said I had to go cheaper than that since I had just put these on the market. She eventually said I could at least put it on for one gold. I really think people would buy it for more though. How much would you buy it for?¡± He thought about it for a moment, ¡°Well, I would only buy a stack for 50 silver. A gold piece is a bit much. I might pay more if I had a steady supply. They are much better than just potions, or bandages. Your usual potion soaked bandages are great, but this is insane.¡± It was true. The enchanted bandage could basically heal any wound, even if it was life threatening. The amount of bandage used would always be fairly low. I didn¡¯t actually think it was worth a gold coin, but it was great to even get 50 silver. That was still about ten times what one potion and a stack of bandages were worth. ¡°If you want, I could try to make these instead of the potions.¡± In reality I had to make the potions as well, but I wasn¡¯t going to make him both potions and enchanted potion soaked bandages. He readily agreed. ¡°Good. I¡¯d like these instead.¡± I nodded vigorously. ¡°Alright, they will be 50 silver until I can make enough each day to make a ¡®steady supply¡¯.¡± After he left, and I began to implement my plan. I made dozens of rolls of the bandages, and planned to give them to him the next day. I had hoped to make more money than just 30.5 gold, but that was more than I had now. I had a total of 30 gold pieces at that moment. The next day would over double my total amount. Since I hadn¡¯t really dealt with money much, I didn¡¯t know exactly how much that was, but at least I was sure that it could buy me some good food. I practiced with stealing mana from one of the non-soaked bandages for a while. After I got to the point where I could do it without thinking, I helped out on the estate. At this point we had a metal drawbridge, that crossed twelve feet of excessively deep water. After I had enough healing plants to work with for several weeks, we stopped making more. Instead I made Tear water the forest. That way I might make Gaia even happier. Tear could only water a small section of forest before getting tired out, but it was enough to get my point of forest loving across. I made the moat water especially nasty. The entire moat, eight feet across by twelve feet deep, was filled with pain inducing poisonous water. If someone tried to cross and fell in that, they would be in so much pain they wouldn¡¯t be able to swim. On the bank closest to the stone estate, there was a cliff that was raised four feet above the water. The cliff surrounded the entire estate, except for the drawbridge area. But that area was blocked by the bridge itself. Moro continued to go with SparrowHawk each day. Together they bombed and otherwise harassed the other players. My points had slowed down the amount they increased by though. For being in the forest for that many days, my nature mana purity was already at 55%. It now took slightly less mana to do nature mana things. I still had to work on light, wind, fire, and darkness mana. Once I got those to at least 1% purity, then my total pure mana capacity would go to 1% of my total mana. I really wanted that pure mana. It basically multiplied my total mana by 9! If I could get 100% purity with all mana types, even if I didn¡¯t increase my int at all, I¡¯d have the equivalent to 24,300 mana. I couldn¡¯t purify any mana but nature mana right then though. That was because I was so densely surrounded by the nature mana. The traps laid in the building itself were clever, and a bit evil. I made sure to tell Susan that this entire thing was basically one big set-up. I was building this place in case we were attacked. We only went into four rooms. The kitchen, the main hall, our respective bedrooms, or the toilet room. I had made a toilet with a stone pipe, the pipe led really far away, into a lake. The lake was big enough as to not cause me to worry about polluting it. It took Eli a while to make that tunnel though. It was big enough to fit an earth fairy after all. Golem continued to make the metal traps, and Sol decided to heal injured animals in the forest. I allowed Sol to do that, mainly because it would further increase my intimacy with Gaia. The next day was when I planned to do everything. I planned on killing Wolf, and taking his points. There was no doubt in my mind that he was in a group of two. Although he probably team up with a larger group or groups, and led them. Otherwise it would be wasteful to buy so many potions and healing items. Unless he was a merchant, but his body build quickly took away that option. After I triple checked all of the traps and triggers, I set up the bait. In a huge explosion of light and wind, I made an announcement. With Sol¡¯s help I made an overly large light explosion. With SparrowHawk¡¯s help I made my voice reach far into the forest. ¡°COME ONE! COME ALL! TO THE HERO HUNT! WE HAVE THE LEADING MAN: VOICE0FREASON! HE IS READY FOR THE FIGHT, AND WORTH AN ASTOUNDING 512 POINTS! NOW ISN¡¯T THAT NICE! BUT BE WARY WE ALREADY HAVE MANY PEOPLE HEADING TO HIS LOCATION!¡± I had sent out small stone tablets with perfect maps to the estate. With the amount of people coming it would be interesting. Of course both mine and Susan¡¯s rooms came with an escape tunnel that led far into the forest. I had Eli place the bombs near the top layer of earth, just outside of the moat. I also placed many bombs inside the perimeter. The fire mana collection was large enough to fight off a small horde of enemies. I would definitely be using that to my advantage. All I had to worry about were the two teams of two people each. They seemed like they would be the most troublesome. With Ancestor always watching the surrounding area, it would be almost impossible for anyone to sneak up on us. Ancestor already noted several light mana signatures heading our way. I made sure that none of the trees were within radius of the bombs. I always kept the patron god/goddess of the area in mind when thinking about these things. I was spending my time creating metal tipped stone arrows. It was another experiment I wanted to try out. I was going to give ¡®archery¡¯ a try. I told Susan to stay inside when the groups got close enough to attack. The first group poked their heads out of the forest. I had been experimenting with a number of things that day, including sustaining spells for long periods of time. It was time to try one out. From the top of the estate I made a perfect wind tunnel, about an inch in diameter, appear. The wind tunnel was long enough to connect to the trees, and only took 250 mana per second. It was a lot, but I could get that back in only ten seconds of rest. The amount of power it offered was substantial. I could use it up to 50 feet. That was about a third of the distance of a short bow. I put one of the stone arrows into the wind vortex. It perfectly followed the line of wind, all the way to one of the people that poked his head out. I added a spin to the wind tunnel, just to give the arrow extra umph. By the time the arrow approached the line of trees, it was going about as fast as a bullet. The arrow hit the poor man squarely on the head, and continued to pass into the ground. It was gruesome to watch the brain matter splatter the ground. Instantly the members of his group hid themselves again. The wind tunnel had been visible, but they didn¡¯t hide since they didn¡¯t know what it was at that time. More people began to pop up from the trees, and more people were shot through the head. After five kills people stopped trying a frontal assault. I went back inside the building. The next phase was to wait and see who the most powerful of the groups was. After a few minutes a loud roar could be heard. Everyone had apparently agreed that a simultaneous attack was the best solution. They even all attacked from the same side. I hadn¡¯t expected something so well thought out. Still, it was within the extremes of the contingencies I had planned for. I took over inspect, and watched the mana signatures of the people coming to attack. It certainly wasn¡¯t the entire group. Only about forty people were there. That meant either most of the people were dead, or didn¡¯t think the message was real. Either way I¡¯d have to get most of these guys to guarantee a victory. The people began to run to the moat, only to be blown to bits by the ¡®mines¡¯ the ran on. The light amount of pressure a foot added was enough to cause the bombs to blow. It wasn¡¯t as powerful as possible since they were partially buried underground, but they still managed to take a few people down. They started to cautiously pick their ways across the thirty feet of land after that. The bombs only managed to injure a few more people. They did take out a limb or two though. The group huddled around the moat. No one was willing to be the first to try swimming at this point. One person pushed someone in another group in. The cries of pain from him even reached Susan and me. I already had Susan in her escape tunnel. If they made it here too quickly, then I¡¯d have to bail. One group crept back across the open field, and began to hack at a tree. Making a bridge would be the smartest way across. I shot off three arrows in quick succession when they got to the tree. Two out of the four people died from it. The other two began to slowly cut, while being shielded by the tree itself. I sent out Eli and Drake. Eli made way to the tree, and formed a deep pit below it. After the pit was quickly made, Eli began to slowly dig up to the top layer of earth. As soon as the first crack appeared, Eli hid in a nearby alcove created for the occasion. Since the lumberjacks were cutting the tree, they did not realize the ground beneath them felt slightly off. When the tree finally began to show signs of toppling, it was too late. The two men plus one tree, fell into the twenty foot hole. They could have climbed out, but Eli closed the top off too quickly. After the top was sealed, Drake caught the tree on fire. With the closed off top, the room quickly filled with carbon dioxide. Suffocating the two in less than a minute. When the hole appeared a few others tried to make it to them to help, but then the ground covered itself back up. They began to dig, but the dirt was too thick and solid. By the time they made it to the others, they had already died. One of the very few mages in the group of thirty or so people, began a long ritual. A large wind spirit was summoned, and helped them cross the water. Only about twenty people crossed the water before I had completely drained the thing of mana. He tried to summon it again, but this time I started sucking the wind mana away before it was even summoned. He still managed to ferry the other fourteen across while it was still in our realm. The people started to run to the castle, but were interrupted by the bombs again. I smiled wickedly as I watched several light mana signatures extinguish. The best part of watching this? I WAS GETTING POINTS! The traps counted as actually killing them. It was the best case scenario. When they got close enough, I was saddened to not see EDI. It would have been fun to watch her die slowly. The people eventually did make it to the estate, and began scaling the walls. A few people actually had grappling hooks. One person had a ladder. I sent Drake out, but they seemed to realize what the little flame wisp was going to do. They began shooting at it instantly. I decided to let them come up at that point. As soon as the first person got close to the top, the spikes near him activated. They each burst into a small wave of flames. The damage was minor, but the rope caught on fire. So much for not burning them out. Hehe. After the ropes were burnt they had to all climb up the ladder. They were working together so well it worried me. They were probably upset about all of the times Moro and SparrowHawk killed them. Losers need to lose though. The ladder was somehow flame resistant. It wasn¡¯t enchanted, but seemed to be made of wood. Inspect couldn¡¯t identify it from that far away though. The spikes only worked five times, but those five were enough to seriously damage the first person to come up the ladder. I used a large gust of wind just as she stepped on the top of the wall. She fell over, and landed in the moat. The girl died as she swallowed the pain inducing water while screaming. My mana was really low at that point. I had to back off and let the traps whittle the numbers down after that. It would take a bit of time to fully regain my mana. When they breached the estate I ditched. I had hoped to only have a dozen left at most. I had killed off quite a few, but there were still more than two dozen. Two dozen angry people was too much to deal with. I made my wind mana echo the sound of me running, and slowly led them to my room. I had already went into the tunnel beneath my bed. The group were constantly being hit by bombs attached to thin strings, or by the enchanted spikes I had throughout the castle. I ran to quickly catch up to Susan, since the tunnels we used connected almost instantly. I left Eli behind in the tunnel to create stone walls the people would have to break through. Eli was instructed to make four stone walls, not including the thick one I made after I jumped in the tunnel. The thick one was about a foot thick, the others would only be half a foot. That would force the most determined of the group to use a bit of time to break through. By the time they broke through all of them, I would have already been gone. The thing that bugged me the most though, was that none of the people had been what i assumed were the highest tiered people. Dive 58: A New Home Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice enacted a plan to score a massive amount of points. It didn¡¯t turn out the way he wanted, but he did manage to figure out a way to create enchanted items. He escaped to the tunnels he had made, and directed Eli to make stone walls to stop anyone that followed. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Sorry about the long wait for this chapter. I¡¯ve been working full time for the past few weeks, and it¡¯s been taking toll on my writing. I¡¯ve also had the single hardest time thinking of how to progress the story to the point that I wanted it to go. The reason I was so bothered by the highest tiered people, was the fact that they didn¡¯t show up. They could have easily exploited the weaknesses I had left in my plans. That was the whole point of the plans! I was going to see who the most dangerous people were, and set them up to die first. That way I could relax while picking off the others. Fate had other plans though. None of the highest level people made themselves known to me. So now I was back at square one. I still needed to figure out a way to find them, but now I had to make new plans to do it. An explosion shook the tunnel I ran through. My smirk came unbidden to my lips. I covered Susan with a bit of air mana to push the small bit of debris away. Susan looked at me, obviously startled. ¡°What was that!?¡± I obviously didn¡¯t tell her much of my plans, loose ends and all that. ¡°I had Drake make sure that the people chasing us won¡¯t be able to get to us. No need to worry.¡± My smile had instant results. The relaxation was evident on her face. God she is so easy. Speaking of easy¡­ I was beginning to wonder where EDI had gotten to. None of my fairies reported seeing her, and she wasn¡¯t in the battle just now. She already understood my mind a little, thanks in no small part to EDITOR. She must be plotting something. She was ok with killing players, so I couldn¡¯t expect her to just be all pacifistic about me. I needed to think about a full-proof plan against her. Meanwhile in the estate: ¡°IT BURNS!¡± People were screaming, as flames rose around them. The estate was crumbling at the seams. Flames erupted from the cracks, clawing up the wall. The estate was sinking into the ground, while excessively heavy rain drowned out the screams of the victims. Molten bubbles of energy spewed as the thick rock of the estate slowly returned to the earth. The hallways and rooms inside shot flames constantly. Rooms crumbled as bombs went off one after the other. Falling stones blocked most doorways, fiery tempests blocked the rest. The enormous magma pit that was used to heat the hot spring, had been converted into a lava lake. A lake with the estate at the center. The heat from the lava that was boiling up from the ground, only intensified the flames inside the castle. Only people close to a fire or water mage were safe. Even then not for long. As the estate slowly sank, the temperature rose dramatically. People tried fleeing from the windows, only to be stopped by an explosive orb of metal. Even in rooms with fire or water mages, they still had to contend with falling stone and bombs. Voice¡¯s POV I was raking in a nice bit of points. People were dying a lot faster than I thought they would have. I gave them too much credit. My plan had been simple. Eli had helped Drake to get into the magma pit that heated the hot spring. Over the course of the last few days, the pit had grown to a tremendous size. Drake had been gathering a ton of fire mana, of heat, and storing it below the earth¡¯s surface. At the same time, I had Tear store as much water as possible in a different location. Once the party started, Drake unleashed the fury. I had instructed Drake to pull all of the fire mana to the surface. Once it got high enough, the ground would become unstable, and the estate would begin to sink. All of the traps in the estate had two triggers. Heat and force. If it was hot enough, the orbs would explode. If the orbs exploded, they would set of the fire traps within the room. I set off a small line of bombs once I got into the tunnel, just to jump-start the process. The first objects to get blown up where the doorways and windows. After that the bombs led to essential support beams in the estate. Once both of those were gone, no one would be able to stay alive in there for long. The reason I was comfortable in using this plan was simple. While Drake raised the fire mana, Tear was collecting water mana. The water mana condensed, and Tear directed it to begin raining. That would keep the forest from catching fire, while not putting out the fire all at once. Of course that wouldn¡¯t be enough alone. The fire would have broken out in at least one place. That is why I ordered Drake to absorb all fire mana that was going to escape the sphere of control the fairy possessed. Almost no fire mana would escape him, that was the reason the other group even got to the castle. Drake had to move the fire mana extra slowly. The fire mana that escaped Drake was quickly dealt with by the heavy rain caused by Tear. It was a great combination of fairy usage, if I do say so myself. Which I do. I never got a huge chunk of points though. Either the high profile targets escaped, or they were never there to begin with. Either way I missed out on the points. There was almost no way the people would fall for the same trick twice, too. My workload just doubled in size. And where the hell did that damn kobold go? I wanted to pick him off myself! Back to me now. Susan and I approached the edge of the tunnel system. SparrowHawk was scouting a large area around the exit tunnel. Of course it was an oblong path. The tunnel wasn¡¯t even the center. That way less people would be likely to figure out the escape path. After a quick confirmation from SparrowHawk, we exited the tunnel. All of my fairies had returned, except for SparrowHawk. I kept the little bird flying around so I had an extra set of eyes. I didn¡¯t sense any life mana signatures either. After triple checking that the coast was clear, we ran past the tunnel mouth. I had Eli seal up the tunnel for about ten feet. That way no one would accidently find it. I had triple checked my escape plan before implementing it. There was a difficult to navigate path that led several hundred feet away from the tunnel. The only reason it was even remotely usable was that Moro boke down some of the nature mana before hand. After we passed an area, Moro and Sol worked together to repair it. With our path covered, we headed out. At this point I figured using Susan was basically useless. Over the past few days I had learned that the elder gods had made her invulnerable to all attacks while in this game. I talked to her before hand about the plan. Just to re-iterate, I went over it again. ¡°Alright Susan, this is where we have to go our separate ways. Remember if anyone asks you were coerced into doing this. I don¡¯t want your business to suffer because of me.¡± She sadly nodded her head. I adopted a more somber look. Like a parent telling their children they can¡¯t go to a theme park. ¡°Come on now. We went over this. Remember? You have to find some new place to set up camp if those other people attack us. How about this¡­ When we get out of this game, I will take you out on a romantic date. After I find you of course.¡± Obviously I meant when we got out of DIVE, not the death match. That way I¡¯d never have to cash in on my promise. She smiled slightly. ¡°That¡¯s alright, but I¡¯d much rather just go out as friends.¡± I paused, but only for a moment. ¡°Of course! I was just kidding silly!¡± I gave her a playful nudge. It had been a while since my advances had been rebuffed. It was not something I was really used to anymore. If I pushed it though, I¡¯d have to do more work than I was willing to at the moment. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll try to meet back up with you. I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll be able to though.¡± I gave her a tight hug, which she returned. I flew off after activating my squirrel ring. I still needed to figure out how to meditate while gliding. If I could do that, then I might be able to get a skill out of it. After flying for about an hour, obviously with SparrowHawk aiding me with wind mana when I began to drop, I finally found a suitable place to stay. It was a cavern on the middle of a mountain. It looked as though it had been used, and recently. I decided to kick out the owner, and make it my own. The cave was actually a system of interlocking chambers and corridors. It looked like it had been mined out centuries ago. After a bit of exploring I head a deep chirp. It sounded like a baby bird, but one that huge, and injured. I found the source of the noise not long after I heard it. A baby bird, though large in size, lay dying in a nest. I approached it slowly. Ancestor said there were not any life mana signatures around besides me and the bird. I crept closer to it. It was dark, so I didn¡¯t have a clear view of it, but it¡¯s body looked wrong somehow. That is the best way I could explain it. I tried picking the bird up, but it¡¯s astoundingly powerful beak tore off 60 points of my health. Ancestor said that if I lit the place up for a second I¡¯d be able to see its name and level. I didn¡¯t want to hurt the injured bird, but I did want to see its info. In the end I came to the only viable solution. My curiosity was more important than its health. I lit the cave up, only for a brief second. My mouth hung from what I had seen. I didn¡¯t even need to look at its info to know what it was.
Nightmare-Wing Level 1 Baby Gryphon
Health:23/3000Stamina:0/3000
I had to leave. If there was a baby gryphon here, then the moth- ¡°KWAA!¡± The shrieked reverberated the entire cave system. The cave shook with each step the creature made. Ancestor kept reporting the approximate distance between the Gryphon and me. It was slowly getting closer. I knew for a fact that I couldn¡¯t kill the mother. For fuck¡¯s sake, the baby had a maximum of 3k hp! My mind was whirling at a million miles an hour, trying desperately to figure a way out of my current situation. The only thing I could think of to do was to take the baby Gryphon hostage. If I did that though, the mother might attack in a blind rage. I still had a bit of food left over, but it was all fruits and vegetables. I didn¡¯t know much about lions and birds, but I was pretty sure they were carnivorous. Still I did the only thing I thought would get me out of the situation. I began to heal the baby Gryphon. If I could prove I was only helping, then maybe the mother Gryphon would let me go. As soon as my light mana hit the baby Gryphon, I encountered a massive wall of resistance. A dark mana cloud seemed to have coiled around the hatchling. I took inspect over from Ancestor. I needed to see what this was to be able to undo it. When I looked at the mana signature, a box popped up. The box informed me of the basic info about the mana.
You have viewed the darkness mana creating the Gryphonic Pestilence.
Gryphonic Pestilence
Gryphonic Pestilence is a disease with no known cure. It was created by an ancient and powerful elf, to kill off the Gryphon species as a whole. The pestilence is made up of several high-level spells weaved together. Improper handling of the spells will result in a catastrophic event.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Mana Mages, and the derived classes, can learn lasting spells by disassembling them. Current amount of disassembling: 0%.
So all I have to do is take this spell apart to be able to actually remake it!? Isn¡¯t this some super-high-level spell? I wonder how hard it will be to actually learn it. I decided to stop caring about the mother Gryphon. I knew I¡¯d probably die, but there was also a good chance she would let me live if I cured her hatchling. I began to delve into the mana coiling around the poor beast. Before disassembling it, I made sure to note as much about it as possible. The first thing I noted was that it had four types of mana interwoven. Darkness was about 70%, light was about 15%, wind was about 10%, and air was about 5%. By the time I figured that out I felt heavy breathing on my shoulder. I didn¡¯t turn around. I would either die, or figure this thing out. Despairing about the future wouldn¡¯t be useful. I cast several healing spells towards the baby Gryphon. The Hp only returned by three points. Ok so just basic healing spells are out. I began to dive back into the sickness, to try to figure out how to take parts of it away. The mother Gryphon hadn¡¯t attacked, so I was just going to keep going. The 50% darkness mana was at the core of the spell. The other 50% of the spell wove around it, and returned to it at irregular intervals. As I figured that out I got a notice.
Current amount of disassembling: 10%.[/tds]
[Td100] Gryphonic Pestilence
Gryphonic Pestilence is a disease with no known cure. It was created by an ancient and powerful elf, to kill off the Gryphon species as a whole. The pestilence is made up of several high-level spells weaved together. Improper handling of the spells will result in a catastrophic event. The spells seems to lower the amount of healing a Gryphon can receive, as well as slowly lower its health.
That¡¯s interesting. So I guess the more I learn about the mana signature the more history I learn on the spell? Well that will be useful. For the rest of the day continued to observe the Gryphon¡¯s mana. I wanted to try altering it a bit, but the whole ¡®catastrophic event¡¯ thing was a major put off. I traced the mana around and around. When I finished following the entire loop once, I began again. I had to make sure I knew exactly what the structure was if I was to break it. I had Ancestor help on that note. Rote memorization could only be used so much. After completing it a second time I counted all of the discrepancies from what I first measured. I went for a third time to make sure it was all perfect. That¡¯s when I realized something. Each of the strings of mana connecting to the core of the spell were slowly fluctuating bit by bit. The spell is changing! I spent another two hours tracing the mana changes in the spell. No wonder I hasn¡¯t been cured yet! The ass who made this had it constantly modify itself. Hm, this is impossible. I decided to give myself a short break. I wouldn¡¯t be able to fully concentrate on the problem at hand if I strained myself any further. I cast a quick sleep spell on the baby gryphon, to help it better sleep. Now on to the real problem. I looked around. Not ten feet away from me was an excessively large gryphon. The bird/lion was staring intently at me. It¡¯s bleach white feathers contrasted with its blood red eyes, and black talons. It¡¯s beak was curved as a bird¡¯s was, but jagged as if maintain the ripping power the lion was so proud of. It¡¯s name was Heroic-Feather. Really? Who has this terrible naming sense? It was even more ridiculously overpowered than its offspring. I felt a shriek. Not with my ears, but with my mind. ¡°KWAA! Why are you here Hermit?¡± Obviously I had no idea why the gryphon called me hermit. I was about to speak, when the gryphon screeched in my mind again. ¡°NO! Speak with your mind! You¡¯ll wake my cute little Nightmare-Wing, you fool! I wouldn¡¯t be able to understand your human tongue anyway.¡± Frowning I began to speak with my mind. Well I wanted to help your offspring. Ancestor spoke to me. ¡°Not to me, Voice. You must speak to the gryphon.¡± Confused I asked, How do I do that? I only know how to talk to you or the fairies. ¡°Try allowing the Gryphon to hear your thoughts. Mush like how you block the fairies from hearing our talks.¡± I prepared my mind, and tried to communicate to the gryphon alone, as if it was a new voice in my head. Well that sounded weird. Maybe I AM going crazy. Hello Gryphon. I am trying to heal your hatchling from the plague set upon it. The response was slow in coming. ¡°Gaia has given me the instruction not to kill you. If you harm my child though, I will rend your head from your body. You were connected to my child before, so I did not interrupt, but you will leave now. Your kind is not welcome here¡± A menacing, low pitch, growl escaped from the gryphon¡¯s beak. But I can heal your child! The thought screamed at the gryphon. Its face twitched momentarily. Then, as if coming to a conclusion, it spoke again. ¡°You say you can cure my hatchling? Fine, you will stay here until he is cured. If you break your promise, you will be our sup.¡±
You have been forced into this quest. Success: Free Nightmare-Wing from the heinous plague. Difficulty: Class and god related quest. Failure: Not managing to save Nightmare-Wing. Reward: Heroic-Feather¡¯s blessing. Failure leads to being eaten. If you are eaten by a creature blessed by the Elder Gods, your character file will be corrupted. You will need to create a new character.
To myself I thought, Crap, I guess this means I can¡¯t back out of it now. I seriously doubt that the gryphon would let me be after running away or failing. But what was up with that character deletion!? That¡¯s hardly fair! I didn¡¯t even mean to come up here! [i]If my character gets eaten I¡¯m complaining to Kelsey. That¡¯s not even fair. I took a quick glance at my purity levels. I would have to get a lot of mana to attempt to cure this disease. All of my purities were at least 5%, except: Light, darkness, and fire. My nature Affinity was quite high for just being in the forest for a while. If I got my last three mana types to at least 5% purity each, then 5% of my mana would be ¡®pure mana¡¯. Since pure mana was basically 9x concentrated mana, just 5% would change to 45% of what my total was. Basically getting 5% ¡®pure mana¡¯ meant I¡¯d have a total of 140% total mana. If I got all of them to 100% then I¡¯d have 900% mana! Why didn¡¯t I focus on this first!? I scolded myself getting sidetracked with other things. They may have been more interesting, but it was more than worth the boredom to get that freakish amount of mana. To the gryphon I spoke, Alright, give me until tomorrow to figure out some stuff, and gain a bit of mana capacity. I¡¯ll try to take out the plague then. I felt an unhappy acceptance from the gryphon. At least it accepts it. I focused on increasing the purity of my mana types. I remembered how I had to breathe in mana in the air, and breathe out the impurities inside of myself. Feeling that making the air consumed by impure mana might harm the baby gryphon, I decided to walk to the edge of the cave before I started purifying. Once there I sat down in a comfortable position. I closed my eyes, and concentrated on absorbing the light mana around me. I breathed in the light mana, let it circulate around my body, and breathed out the impurities my light mana contained. After an hour of this monotony, I heard a ding. I had only increased it by 1%. This is a lot slower than when I was in River¡¯s Cross. I guess since Mar isn¡¯t the patron goddess of this area I don¡¯t get a lot of purity. To get to two percent took me an hour and a half. At that point I couldn¡¯t even force myself to sit there anymore. There was too much sitting around recently. I had to do something. I summoned my fairies, including Kretchof. ¡°Alright guys, I want to do something. Sitting here meditating is boring. Eli, I want you to make the small plateau here bigger. At least twenty feet. Use mana from the mountain to do it. Make sure it is fully connected to the mountain though. Otherwise it will just fall when too much weight is applied. Then the whole plan would crumble along with the floor.¡± I allowed Eli to start working right away. I assumed it would only take Eli about four to five hours to make a stone plateau. ¡°Tear, go and find a water source. A lake or large pond. I will be needing a lot of water mana.¡± I dismissed Tear as well. Tear flew off, determined to make me proud. ¡°SparrowHawk, you need practice hunting. All birds should be master hunters. Have fun.¡± The bird gleefully shot off. In reality, hunting small game would increase the stealth abilities of SparrowHawk. That way it could better keep watch for me. ¡°Drake, hm I don¡¯t really know what you should do. Go find something fun to do.¡± If I left Drake out of the plan then I might have negative repercussions. At least by telling it to have fun I¡¯d be giving it a job. ¡°Kretchof go ahead and make some more of those undead minion protectors for me. Once you are done you can go back to the dungeon.¡± Kretchof bowed and went to work. I gave golem very specific items to make. It would take a lot of practice for its, but sensed a heap of metal mana near the far wall. The things I ordered were, giant clippers, to clip large wings, barbed wire, and metal bars to make a jail cell. ¡°Sol and Moro! You both are going to help me increase the potency of the seeds I have here. If you get done before Eli, then you can do whatever you want until it¡¯s time to plant the seeds.¡± Most of the seeds were already powered up, but having them all powered up would be good. While everybody went to work, I set about casting several healing ¡®spells¡¯ on the baby gryphon. Even if the barely healed any hp, something was better than nothing. At least in this case. I healed another 5 hp before Moro and Sol brought me the finished seeds. ¡°Good, as promised have fun until I call you all back.¡± Moro jumped off the cliff Eli was making, and somehow managed to land on a tree far below. The monkey jumped off into the distance rather quickly. For some reason Sol found happiness in helping me heal the gryphon cub. I allowed Sol to take over, and instead decided to sleep for a while. I closed my eyes, and nodded off while thinking of my plan. I had thought of a way to allow the plants to heal without even being picked. I just needed to test it. Again, I¡¯m sorry for the long delay. I am going to try to post at least 2 chapters a week. But with working full time recently I don¡¯t have a lot of time for anything fun. Dive 59: A new Tactic Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice found a Gryphon¡¯s nest, and tried to heal the baby. The mother Gryphon told him he had to stay until the baby Gryphon was healed, on pain of character deletion. He also started to enact some plan to make the Gryphon get healed just by being around the plants. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! After waking I reoriented myself. Once I had gathered my bearings I began to plot out my plan. I had thought up a way to actually use the healing properties of the plants without picking them or making them potions. Step 1) Get my seeds as powerful as possible. Step 2) Find a way to change the type of seed a plant had. Step 3) Plant the modified seeds. Step 4) Get paid in Gryphon blessings. As least that was the plan. The book on seeds I had gotten from the Falcon guy was actually quite extensive. As was the amount of chapters in his research notes. After flipping through my compendium to the section on green healing herb seeds, I read. I read all about them, then I went to the section about changing the seeds. It was a sub-category of changing the plant in general. He didn¡¯t make the exact type of seed I wanted, but he made one close. It would send out its smaller than average sized seeds to blossom nearby. He was trying to make the seed able to travel long distances. That was as much of a start as I could hope for. At least the seed was propellant, that was the biggest step. The biggest stroke of luck was that one of the many seeds I took was one from the successful propellant plant. The next day I planted it and my common weed, and had Eli give them as many nutrients as possible. Sol, Tear and Moro were in charge of keeping them in the best health possible. SparrowHawk was in charge of collecting the seeds once the plant started its pollination process. The bird had actually caught a few small rodents the day before. The food, once cooked and seasoned with green healing herb seeds, was made into a stew and fed to the baby Gryphon. The Gryphon barely ate, but it did eat some. The stew didn¡¯t seem to have any big effect on its health, but it didn¡¯t decrease at least. After making sure that the fairies knew their parts, I got back into deciphering the spell. I tried imitating it, but I could only handle making two mana types at once. Whoever made that plague was some sort of magical genius. There is no way something like that is possible normally. I¡¯m glad that guy isn¡¯t here at least. Whoever made that spell had something wrong with them. I had no problem killing off a few NPCs to get my way, but to them it was real. To the person that made this disease, well that person was knowingly committing genocide. That¡¯s fucked up. Over the course of the next few days I made magical alterations to the seeds that SparrowHawk gave me. Eli planted them, and then the process repeated. I made the seeds of the common weed slightly mimic the propellant seed. That way they both were more of a pollen than seeds. With each generation the seeds of both plants became smaller and smaller. The amount of seeds inside each plant grew with each generation as well. It was all thanks to the fact that I changed the flow of mana a bit with each seed. I made it structured the exact way I wanted, until it became more like I needed. On the third day I received a notification.
You have created a new sub-species of the Green Healing Herb. You have created the Pollinating Green Healing Herb.
Pollinating Green Healing Herb
The Pollinating Green Healing Herb is a plant that has been genetically and magically modified to fit the purpose of Voice0fReason. This plant sends its pollen into the air. Each ounce of pollen has the same amount of healing power as a single seed from the Green Healing Herb. When combined with Common Weed and water, these spores will create a healing potion. These spores do not need to be ground to put them into a potion.
You have created a new sub-species of the Common Weed. You have created the Pollinating Common Weed.
Pollinating Common Weed
The Pollinating Common Weed is a plant that has been genetically and magically modified to fit the purpose of Voice0fReason. This plant sends its pollen into the air. Each ounce of pollen has the same amount of power as a single seed from the Common Weed. When combined with another alchemic ingredient and water, these spores will create a potion. These spores do not need to be ground to put them into a potion.
FINALLY! A smile plastered itself across my face. I had finally done it. It took three long, tedious, and above all BORING days of work. With Tear¡¯s help I created an especially moist atmosphere. Suddenly the entire area began to glow with a faint green aura. I felt a small wave of¡­, the only word to describe it would have to be freshness. The thin green mist was revitalizing. The mist seeped into every part of the small cave. A large portion of the mist settled on the baby Gryphon. The Gryphon¡¯s body began to glow with a bright green light. The Gryphon¡¯s body slowly absorbed the mist. Sadly, the baby Gryphon still didn¡¯t get better. The symptoms of curse seemed to lessen, but was not gone altogether.
Congratulations! You have created a healing field!
This field heals 1 hp every 10 seconds. Increasing the potency of the ingredients used to make this field would increase its healing capabilities. This healing field will effect everything within range. This healing field will damage skeletons.
Congratulations! You are the first player to create a healing field!
You have gained 50 fame. You have gained 15 intelligence for showing outstanding intellect in the field of healing.
I went up to the mother Gryphon. Now, I¡¯m going to need something if you want me to keep this up. The mother Gryphon was gently nuzzling her young. She looked haggard. ¡°What is it Hermit? And why do you not already have it?¡± I shook my head. Of course I don¡¯t have them. I had no idea that I¡¯d be healing a baby Gryphon with a cursed plague. I need for you to bring me the body of a human. It has to be one that is an other-worlder. I¡¯m also going to need a dead tree trunk. And it would be helpful if you could find me a venomous snake. Dead. I just need to extract its venom. Without questioning why I need the products, the mother Gryphon flew off. To Ancestor I thought, Ah, thank god she didn¡¯t ask why I needed all of that stuff. It would have been taxing to make something up. Ancestor agreed. ¡°Yes, well I think it is a good plan to see about unraveling the curse, as well as to keep yourself in the game.¡± My plan was to have two things that might help with the baby Gryphon, and one that would help me. I had the mother collect the dead tree trunk so I could plant the better version of the healing plants. If I could make those spores permeate the air, then the healing field I made would be even more potent. The snake was to unravel the mana signature of the venom. If I could figure out how to deconstruct basic venom, then I could work my way up to higher tiered things like curses. It would give me a much bigger chance to successfully destroy the curse plaguing the baby Gryphon. The other player was for me. I wanted to see if having other sentient beings kill for me would still grant me points. There was no reason not to capitalize on the service I was providing. I was healing the baby Gryphon, it was only fair to be paid. Plus, if they had their characters permanently deleted, I wouldn¡¯t have to suffer any consequences from their hate of dying. Wait a fucking minute! As the thought started to form in my mind I began to get angry. THIS FUCKER! Why would the game makers put us in a situation that could get our character¡¯s permanently deleted while doing this test for them? Answer: They wouldn¡¯t. No one in their right mind would put a bunch of players, no matter how high level, in a place where they might lose the one thing keeping them playing this game.
You have broken free from the fear effect caused by the Gryphon Mother.
After realizing the illegitimacy of an earlier conclusion, you have become immune to the fear effect caused by the Gryphon Mother that caused the fear effect. Your Trait ¡®Complete Immunity¡¯ has increased from 50% damage protection to 55% damage protection.
What the fuck do you mean an ¡®earlier conclusion¡¯!? You told me that! Shitty program was trying to pass this situation off as my own mistake. I had thought it was weird that a random monster could delete a character completely, but it made sense now that I knew it was just a fear effect. I inadvertently sneered at the baby Gryphon. Of course I wouldn¡¯t harm the thing, yet. I would wait until I had the large blades, and make sure to have a little fun. I wonder if a mother Gryphon would jump off a cliff to save her young? Especially if her wings were clipped. The thought amused me. I replayed it a few times before trying my hand at de-configuring the plague spell again. I tried to fuse light mana to the darkness pool at the center of the spell, but the spell only absorbed it and caused 3 damage to the Gryphon. I healed the thing and tried again. I tried messing with the mana tubes, but that only caused the gryphon more damage. I barely had time to heal the beast before its mother returned. Inside her gigantic claws was a rotting tree trunk, and a dead snake. In her jaws was a limp elven woman. I quickly glanced at my points. They had indeed rose by 16 points. I had a total of 362 points total. If I could somehow kill off both of the people in the group of two, then I¡¯d have more points than someone would get for killing me. Thank you. I need you to make sure no others find this place. The healing area might seep into the air and draw people here. If that were to happen, then your hatchling might be in danger. I disgustingly shook my head. Gryphon feathers sell for a high price in our society. I could feel the mother Gryphon¡¯s anxiety and anger. She had an iron will, since she managed to not let her anger escape her. All I need right now is for you to answer one question. She was listening intently. Can baby Gryphons eat snakes after the venom is drained? She looked confused for a moment. ¡°Of course. It¡¯s not like we are as weak as humans.¡± She scoffed as she flew down to guard our sanctuary. I gave the seeds for the Blood Lotus to Moro and Sol. ¡°You two start planting these and make sure they get the same treatment as the other healing plants. I also want you to only allow the Green Healing Herbs with the fastest and most potent spores to repopulate.¡± I was basically using this entire situation to test out a few great theories that would massively help out my town, once I started one that is. Eli was also put to work giving nutrients to the plants. With the massive amount of spores produced by the plants, SparrowHawk had a difficult time keeping them all in check. If the plants were all planted at the same time, the effect would have multiplied many fold. The only real drawback was that it would have only activated once every x amount of time. The plants only sent out spores about once every twelve hours. Since they were each planted at different times, they sprayed in intervals. That way the field was constantly maintained. I studied the venom of the snake. It was mostly nature and water mana, with streaks of darkness spiraling through it. I tried to perfectly replicate the proportions of the mana. I associated being able to create this triple mana spell with the possibility of breaking the enchantment the baby Gryphon was under. I had to make sure I didn¡¯t have a repeat of what happened back in the worm tunnels. That would be the worst case scenario. Base water mana was 44%. The water mana was in the shape of a sphere. The nature mana was exactly 40%. It was in 16 small bubbles that were each exactly 2.5% of the total mana used. The 16% darkness mana made 1% spirals in each of the nature mana bubbles. I was stunned when I looked at the mana. Not because of the complexity of the structure, but because I had assumed that all mana was in 5% blocks. Replicating that mana was going to be next to impossible. I decided to start with the easiest part. I created a large glob of water. I made sure to go to the edge of the cave so I could collect water that wasn¡¯t part of the healing field. I worked too hard to have it screw up over something small. Tear still had to maintain the mist area to keep the field going, but I had a plan that would help with that. After I tried to re-make the venom anyway. I created a large ball of water. With Ancestor¡¯s help I added in exactly 10/11ths of that amount of nature mana. Then I put in 2/5ths of the amount of nature mana worth of darkness mana. The totals came to: 88 water mana, 80 nature mana, and 32 darkness mana. I forced the darkness mana inside of the nature mana orbs. By the time the darkness mana was split into 16 equal parts, I could no longer hold the water mana. The entire concoction fell to the ground below. Covering some small part of the forest below with an unfortunate fusion of mana. At least now I know I can put three types of mana together if I have it perfectly structured. I just have to keep my mind as analytical as possible. After the first failed attempt, I decided to go about making my enchanted product. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. I forced up a mound of rock. Using the idea from my lenses earlier, I created an object that absorbed fire mana, and output water mana. After only an hour of funneling mana through it, I finally had a success. I forced the fire mana into the water mana, and added tiny tendrils of water mana into the end of the fire mana streaks. The rock began burning with the fire mana it absorbed. The ball of molten rock began creating a miniscule amount of water. ¡°Tear, you can stop now buddy.¡± The jellyfish instantly went back inside of me. The color of Tear¡¯s water ball was diming, so combat was out of the question anyway. Tear needed to regenerate a nice bit of mana before helping me again. I put the enchanted rock in a hole I instructed Eli to create. It wasn¡¯t big enough to trip over, but it was deep enough so that I wouldn¡¯t touch the lava while walking. The enchantment took most of my mana, but it was worth it. I now had a way to make the entire ¡®healing field¡¯ thing a reality. The mana conversion was my favorite part. Changing one type into another made the mana amount drop drastically, but I didn¡¯t want it to produce too much water vapor. Normally one would think the fiery ball would melt through the ground, right? Well the genius of my plan took care of that. For the rock around the lava ball to melt, it had to been under hot temperature for a small length of time. The lava orb absorbed that fire mana back into itself before the rock around it could sustain a high enough temp to melt. It was a self-sufficient enchantment on all accounts. The reason for those enchantments was simple. For mist to form the temperature near the ground has to be almost 0 degrees Fahrenheit. There also has to be enough moisture in the air for it to accumulate into balls. The fire enchantment absorbed the fire mana around the area, that is to say it absorbed the heat. Not only did the enchantment get fuel, but it also got the temperature to the needed point. The water enchantment converted the large amount of heat into water mana. Since the conversion rate was so low, it only made a tiny amount of water. That low amount was what I needed though. The mother Gryphon might not like the possibly dangerous enchantment so close to her rat, but I could just explain it away by saying it was needed for the treatment. I looked at the player¡¯s dead body. I decided to get a bit of dissection going on Elves. Upon close inspection I easily saw that she was a High Elf. Well this will be fun. Not only would I gain attack damage against High Elves, I¡¯d also get a better look at how High Elf women were supposed to look. If I made even the smallest mistake, and someone saw that, my disguise would become useless. First I started by stripping her clothes. I kept them since they¡¯d be useful later. After that I began the gruesome task of deconstructing the body. I started by peeling the skin off with one of my staff blades. After removing the skin on both sides of the body, I began to look at the muscle tissue. I was a little worried that I didn¡¯t feel anything in particular about cutting another person up, or gutting them afterwards, but that was a problem for someone else to deal with. After digging into the body a bit I found some interesting differences between a High Elf, and a human. For instance, High Elves have a much smaller lung size, that could realistically account for the low level of physical prowess the High Elves had. Most of the muscles seemed to be thicker near the heart and below the forearms. That could have just been the case for the one girl. It suggested she was into something where she had to use her hands. Probably just flipping through books or some such. After the muscles came the organs. They were the most fun to take apart. The intestines were pretty gross so I tossed those after only a bit of looking. Somehow it felt perverted to look at them. Don¡¯t get me wrong though, I¡¯m not into necro. I harvested the organs, and after dissecting them all, I fed them to the baby Gryphon. It especially seemed to like eating the heart and brain. I decided that throwing away the skin and bones would be wasteful. After cutting off the top part which formed the face, I called out Kretchof. ¡°Here. Take this. Give it to the priest. See if you can get some kind of item for it.¡± I got a notice saying that I had completely dissected a High Elf, and would receive a 100% damage bonus while fighting them. I decided to keep the whole ¡®surgeon¡¯ thing a secret. I wouldn¡¯t want someone to get ahead because I did work on dissecting people. Kretchof left with a pile of bones and skin, and came back several minutes later. I was triple checking the enchantment I had placed on the rock. When Kretchof came back, he handed me an item. ¡°Master. You have been given a gift from the alter.¡± Kretchof handed me two tiny eggs.
Dark-kin Spider Egg
Dark-Kin Spiders are found in remote regions where caves have absorbed the power of darkness. This mutated spider has absorbed a small amount of darkness and earth mana into its body. Its silk is highly coveted for its durability and elegance. This egg will hatch when it is infused with at least 100 points of darkness mana. Dark-kin Female Spiders are rare. It is said that only 1 out of a million Dark-kin Spiders are female.
¡°The priest told me this was for being the first other-worlder to sacrifice at the only alter.¡± These spiders would be a great asset. ¡°Kretchof. Can you make it so that the dungeon doesn¡¯t convert this into undead? I want them to still be able to create their webs. Also we need a food supply for them. Some type of weak insect to start with. Rats wouldn¡¯t be remiss either.¡± Kretchof disappeared for a moment. When he came back he looked a bit worried. ¡°Well, Master, it is possible, but you have shown an aversion towards killing non-evil humanoids and animals. I could gather up a large amount of insects and rodents, but I would have no way to feed them. If they are monsters though, that will take a large amount of time.¡± ¡°Do it. Don¡¯t feed these two mana until you gather a large supply of food for them. Make sure there is enough food to breed to keep them going or else they will still die out quickly. I want to make money off of their silk eventually.¡± Kretchof took the eggs and went back to the dungeon. I went back to trying to create the venom to mimic the snake¡¯s venom. I was just hoping the two spiders made enough silk to make a profit, since they were almost certainly both male. Kretchof¡¯s POV Master has entrusted me with a very important task. I am to make a livable environment for these spider things to grow in. He even trusted me enough to figure out that he wanted me to breed these things for him. He stated he wanted me to keep a food supply large enough for them to continue. Obviously anyone with a modicum of intelligence would know that breeding these spiders would be the best way for a profit to be made. One of the eggs clearly had the red speck indicating a male, and the other had a purple speck indicating a female. Master was anything but below average in the intelligence area. He was the single most cunning person I¡¯d every met. I called the young necromancer girl to me. I had been training her by having her create death wards in the rooms closest to the throne room. She had already made the wards in four rooms. That was impressive in and of itself. The wards would cast a random low level death spell on any who entered. It was a great way to bulk up the defenses without using and DPs. She had almost finished her fifth one when I returned. I waited patiently outside of the room until she finished. Even though the rooms got shuffled every few days, the enchantments on them would stay the same. After she left the room to start on the sixth one, I intercepted her. ¡°Hold there, young apprentice. My Master has given me a task. A task I think you to be capable of doing.¡± Her eyes lit up at the idea of getting a task from my Master. As if she would be so lucky to get a task directly from him. Only his most trusted tools would be given jobs higher than sweeping the floor. ¡°My Master has given me these for his dungeon.¡± I showed her the eggs. ¡°These are Dark-kin Spider eggs. He wishes to create an area for them to breed. Unfortunately, they have no food supply to feed themselves. He has tasked me with finding small insect and animal monsters. Mind you they must not be animals, but monsters. They should also be low levels. You are to gather at least one hundred living specimens of any type of insect or small rodent a spider might eat. If you feel up to the task you will be greatly rewarded. I will teach you one of my most guarded necromantic arts. If you complete it within a day that is.¡± She pushed her finger in the air to accept the quest I just made. ¡°Alright, I accept.¡± I had my minions create a path for her to the surface. The path led straight to the forest Master had subjugated to my power not long ago. I would be continuing to help the pathetic citizens of River¡¯s Cross by taking the monstrous rodents and insects from there. That would surely please Master. My minions were hard at work connecting other dungeons to my Master¡¯s labyrinth. They connected a few already, but one in particular was giving us trouble. The monsters from that dungeon were overflowing at an enormous rate. It was an aquatic dungeon, and had a massive amount of overflow monsters constantly pouring from it. The monsters were mostly fish, with a few amphibian types included. The fish died quickly outside of the water, but the other monsters from it did well to survive. The aquatic dungeon filled the room it was connected to, and poured out onto the floor near it for several yards. The things that didn¡¯t die outside of water kept moist. The fish bodies were pouring out of the room though. In fact they were pouring out of the area. The frog monsters ate ravenously, but the amount of fish was too much. I made a supply line that led to that part of the dungeon. It was only big enough for a single mole to enter, so was excluded from the dungeon changing. The fish that spewed from the area were brought to me, and resurrected or fed to the necromancer girl. She insisted that she would only eat cooked meat, so I had to have the fish cooked first. Pathetic human that she was, she would have died had I cooked it inside the dungeon. I had to have it cooked outside of the dungeon, then brought quickly to her. It decreased the amount of time the moles could be making the dungeon expand, but the girl¡¯s practice increased the overall difficulty of the dungeon. I determined it was worth the amount of effort put in. The left over fish were stored throughout the dungeon. The rotting fish corpses would make the stench of undead increase several times over. I used a single DP to create a fungus that would grow well on dead bodies. The dungeon had gained about 12 DP over the past week. That way the insects would have something to feast on. I only used a tiny bit of DP, so I only created a single square inch of moss for the things to eat. The moss quickly spread though. The huge amount of fish bodies rotting nearby, was a huge help in this endeavor. I had some of my undead cut off small bits of the moss and put it with the other fist piles. The number of fish piles was huge. The moss quickly covered enough total fish bodies to occupy a large city. When the necromancer returned I would not have to worry about food for either the insects or rodents she might bring. The reason the aquatic dungeon monsters gave us so much trouble though, was the fact that they seemed immune to my effect at mind control, and occasionally went on rampages. The rampages would kill off several dozen of my undead at a time. I had to devise a way to keep the monsters that could live without being submerged in water, from going on rampages. Then this entire endeavor would be pleasing to my master. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2880Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength50Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence288
Endurance51Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Automated Novice Level 9 Exp 25.00% Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentic Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 20 Exp 23.05% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 3 Exp 11.11% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 60: Meditation and Task Mastery Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice created a field of healing power by altering some of his plants. He created an enchanted item, and dissected and Elf. He also obtained two spider eggs from Davros for the elf¡¯s skin and bones. Kretchof started what would become a factory to pump out more spiders. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! Kretchof¡¯s POV: The necromancer came back carrying the limp bodies of several monstrous bugs over the past week. There were a total of twenty types of bugs, and only one of which died out from not having a mate. The rest have been flourishing on the moss that covers the dead fish bodies. Monstrous rodents have proven harder for her to obtain. She was only able to get one. Since it cannot mate by itself, I allow it to gorge on the fish for that moment. I have sent several skeletons to aid her in capturing other rodents for my Master¡¯s dungeon. I pumped the required mana into the eggs after only the fifth day. They have been catching and eating the insects for the past two days. They have grown to adulthood already. They have mated, but the brood has not hatched. The male and female are quite different from one another. The male is three feet long and two feet tall, and has a red marking on its back. It is capable of creating a venom to inject its prey with. It is agile and quick. It is does not appear to be sturdy though. It created three webs which were each located in different areas. It ran between its three webs constantly, to see if any food was attracted. Anytime it didn¡¯t get food within four hours, it would hunt something. Half of the food it got was always given to the female. The female was six feet tall, and fourteen feet long. She had several purple markings along her body. Her body seemed to be made of a hardened shell of some sort. Whenever she received enough food, she would pump out a small amount of eggs. None of them were queens though. I had only a small amount of control over the spiders, but I could direct the male spider to take the eggs that spawned to a separate room. I made sure the eggs hatched slowly, so that they didn¡¯t overeat. The amount of food the male gathered was staggering. I knew I had to find a way to increase that amount of insects that lived in the dungeon, or I couldn¡¯t allow any more of the eggs to hatch. If there were two males, the amount of insects consumed would be higher than the amount of eggs laid by the insects. If I encouraged the insects to mate more, then the moss would dry up before long. The missing link in the food chain was the time it took for the moss to cover the fish. If I could figure a way to increase that, then I¡¯d be able to increase the overall power of Master¡¯s dungeon. I was already enacting a plan that allowed for a large amount of moss to grow, but it wasn¡¯t working out the exact way I¡¯d hoped. Master doesn¡¯t tolerate failure. I had put a huge pile of fish in a large room I had excavated, and placed a bit of the moss in there. It quickly covered the entire area, but as soon as the skeletons went to transport the new food, insects swarmed in. They consumed all of the moss in the room, leaving only decaying fish. After that I had to make a room that would protect from the bugs. Since they were monsters, and thus possessed by demons, they were more intelligent then their animalistic counterparts. It wasn¡¯t much, but the slight bit of extra intelligence allowed them to think up semi thought-out plans. They swarmed through any cracks or openings as soon as they were made. I had to have my moles create two rooms connected by a long hallway. The first room was more of a gate that barred entrance to the second room. The second room held a massive amount of fish and moss. That moss was transported by my skeletons, and fed to the insects that would become food for Master¡¯s spiders. The system worked well, but still lacked the speed with which I knew master would want. I decided to keep tabs on the spiders to learn about their habits, so that I might better take care of Master¡¯s spiders. I had my skeletons collect the spider webs that the male spider made. Each time one was collected, he horded food for himself and created new ones. That at least gave us some information about the life of the male Dark-Kin spiders. I relayed that information to Master. He didn¡¯t seem to pay much attention to it. I should have known better to come to Master without complete results. I made the decision to give a message to Master only when I had better results. The next day, the necromancer girl finally found a mate for the monster rat that she brought in. They were not the same species, but they were close enough that I tired making them mate. The result was, to say the least, odd. One of the monstrous rodents was basically an oversized rat. The biggest difference was the slightly barbed tail. The other was akin to a porcupine. The offspring was an aggressive version of a barbed tailed porcupine. After letting the porcupine monster and barbed tailed rat monster breed for a few days, I started hatching more spiders. I pushed mana into about a dozen more spiders. After the spiders hatched, they ate ravenously. Most of the insect population was quickly decimated. The fish that grew the moss was also eaten at a rate quicker than Master would have liked. The entire situation was going to go down quickly. I brought in many of the dead fish bodies for the rodents to eat, and gave the suggestion for the spiders to focus on eating the overgrown vermin. The offspring rodents were about half of the size of the male spiders, so they would be able to sate their appetites for a while. The large amount of fish encouraged more breeding from the rodents, and the decreased insect population increased the amount of available moss. The moss seemed to grow faster the more that there was. The spiders¡¯ webs were harvested quickly. Over the course of the next week I obtained seventy yards of the silk webbing for Master to use. I know the exact amount because I had the necromancer girl capture a young silk weave. After she was knocked out I had the necromancer bring her to a room I had created. I had her make the silk usable, and spin it into thread, for about three days. She did some process I didn¡¯t understand. I had all of the required material found for her. She said something about throwing the silk, but I didn¡¯t pay attention. She had to wash the silk threads several times. She didn¡¯t know where the silk came from, but would know that Master¡¯s dungeon could acquire this silk. I had to summon the twelve tier one darkness fairies I had in reserve. Tier one darkness fairies have all of the capabilities of a regular human, or whatever their race was before death. They watched her sew for those three days. After that I had the necromancer girl free the young seamstress. Master had worked hard to trick the goddess of light into making him her top follower, I would not mess that up. The twelve tier one darkness fairies began to replicate her actions at my command. They picked out bits of bugs and dust, entwined the silk, and spun it on large stone spools. I had no mana while the twelve were summoned, but it was worth it to make Master¡¯s wish come true. He wanted to make money off of this venture, I aimed to succeed. The silk woven by the fairies was, at first, much worse than the girl¡¯s was. After three more days of spinning and weaving, they began to get better at it. They still weren¡¯t at the level of the girl, but by training in the arts of silk making, they would eventually become good enough to sell the fabric they made. The fabric that was woven, since it wouldn¡¯t sell, I gave to the necromancer girl. Even though it was rough and uneven, she seemed thrilled to get it. She went off after asking my permission. The most my twelve fairies could handle is about ten webs each a day. That was enough to make a yard of silk fabric. The necromancer girl said that it was equivalent to about 1.2 thousand silkworms in her world. So each of the webs was about 120 silkworms worth of material. I wanted to send Master a message about that, but restrained myself from doing so. If I bothered Master with too many boring updates, I knew he wouldn¡¯t allow me to serve him for long. I had to bring only the best news to him. At that point the shoddy work output was not the best news. The only reason the silk gathering was viable, was that the spiders ignored my undead. Otherwise I would have to kill the spiders every time I needed to gather silk. I quarantined off the insect population to allow them to grow a bit. I also set aside several large chambers for the moss to grow in. The rodents consumed the fish, moss, insects, and even tried to make the spiders prey. Having competition was good for the spiders. They had to become stronger in order to hunt the rodents. Over the course of the week that I had the fairies learning how to spin the fabric, the spiders had leveled up several times. As had the rodents. The insects remained at a generally low level, but outnumbered the other two groups by several fold. The room for the moss was even bigger than the throne room I made for Master. It wasn¡¯t because the moss was more important, but because I knew master would rather have a fully automatic system, then have the largest room for a throne room. The moss room made more than a hundred pounds of moss each day. I had the fish dumped straight into that room, along with a few other rooms for the rodents. Voice¡¯s POV It¡¯s been a week since I started examining the baby Gryphon. I haven¡¯t made any particular progress with decoding it, but I did manage to replicate the mana signatures required for making the venom of the snake. I also managed to decrease the overall size of the plague a bit. By absorbing the darkness mana in the Gryphon I forced the spell to decrease in potency. After absorbing too much it began to fuel itself using the Gryphon¡¯s HP. I would die if I let the baby Gryphon die, so I stopped. It helped that the mother Gryphon brought several players to me. I still couldn¡¯t believe I fell for whatever fear effect had made me believe being killed by the Gryphon would delete my character. I¡¯d have to watch out for those kinds of things in the future. The players boosted my points slightly, but mostly were used to experiment on. I made the venom on the second day, and had been transplanting various forms of it on each subsequent subject. The venom was difficult to make, but I managed to hold each piece separately with the help of my mana fairies. I only had to take care of the darkness part by myself. After the first two venom transplants, I asked for the captives to be brought back barely alive. The healing field kept them from dying, but that didn¡¯t exactly work in their favor. I injected them each with the homemade venom. I learned a very important fact after the third time. The venom could be manipulated by adjusting small bits of the mana that made it up. By forcing the darkness mana to spin, faster or slower, I could make the venom deal more or less damage each second. On the fourth victim, I learned that the size of the nature mana determined the length of time the poison would last. On the fifth person, I realized the amount of water mana in the spell directly correlated to the amount of time it took for each ¡®pulse¡¯ to cause damage to the host. The problem with increasing or decreasing the venom¡¯s attributes, was that when I increased the potency of one part, it would decrease the other parts to correspond. The spell seemed to calibrate itself after I created the final part. It would adjust the different types of mana to fit the requirements I made. The only way to fix that was to increase the amount of mana I put in. I could make more of the venom that way, but it quickly expired without a living host. On the last person I tested it on, I made the mana damage equal to the healing area power. It also attacked at equal intervals as the healing field. I found out that poisoned people don¡¯t regen health. That was useful information. It meant I could keep people at exactly the amount of hp I wanted to. After finishing the latest experiment I got a notice saying I learned how to make the ¡®Venomous Snake-like Poison¡¯. I played around with the spell a bit.
Venomous Snake-like Posion This spell was created through the trial and error of Voice0fReason. The base spell cost for this spell is 50 mana. This spell deals 1 hp of damage every 10 seconds.
The test subjects had provided me with vital intel. The last one even proved amusing as she was dying. She tried to prostitute herself out if I saved her. The whore must not have realized I was a pc. Even if I weren¡¯t, I¡¯d still not have helped her. It was too much of a hassle. I did toy with her a bit though. I healed her a bit with a spell, then as she was thanking me with tears streaming down her face, I made her give me all of her equipment. Not her clothes though. After she tried to give me those, I called for Kretchof. I had decided a while ago to give him a gift for being so obedient. She was his gift. His wicked smile was a bit disgusting, but he took his new toy to the dungeon. He seemed excited about it at least. He had sent me a message earlier about the ¡®ecosystem¡¯ he was making in the dungeon. He was having trouble keeping the balance between consumables and consumers. But he was getting a nice amount of spider silk. He even found a way to make it into clothe apparently. I told him to keep the best silk stock piled for me. That way my town would have a great way to earn fast cash. With the new spell completed I focused on purifying my mana types. I made a schedule to spend exactly one hour a day trying to break the plague on the baby gryphon. The rest of the day would be spent purifying my mana or trying to meditate while gliding. With only using a few hours a day on purifying, I got both light and darkness mana up to 10% purity. I wanted to get both of them up at least that high before I began working on the final fire mana purity. I sat down after dismissing Kretchof. I meditated on the cliff face. I inhaled all of the fire mana around me, which was a lot thanks to Drake pouring it on me, and exhaled the impurities. In with the environmental fire mana, out with the impure fire mana. With each breath I felt myself become more in tuned with the fire mana. I could feel its power coursing through me. The heat that seeped into my body was nothing more than warmth. As soon as I reached 1% purity, I got a notice.
You have obtained 1% of your total mana as Pure Mana!
28.8 points of your mana has been converted to Pure Mana.
Your total effective mana is now: 3110.4!
You are the first player to unlock Pure Mana. You have gained 10 intelligence for being the first person to understand the basic concept of pure mana.
After that I spent the next several hours purifying me fire mana. It was increasingly hard to do so. Since I was in a place so heavily surrounded by nature mana, infusing myself with fire mana was made more difficult. By the end of the night I managed to break the 5% barrier. I was more than exited by the results. Since the pure mana increases my total mana by 9 times, by gaining 1/20 of my total mana as pure mana, I already had 4172 ¡®effective mana¡¯. Which meant I could use my total 2980 mana to the effect that most would need 4172 mana to duplicate. I always knew being a mage was a badass choice! Look at that! Once I get fire to 10% I will almost double my total mana! I went to sleep that night, content with the knowledge that my nature mana would slowly rise. Although since it was already so high it was slow going. By the next morning I had only increased it by 1%. If I wasn¡¯t in the heavily nature mana infused area, it would have been far lower than that. Both fire and metal mana were at 5%, so I¡¯d have to increase both to further my total mana. I could have sat there and meditated all day to increase both by 1%, but the fact that I still only meditated for an instant while flying bothered me. I decided to go out and practice that much at least. If I could just keep my meditation up while flying in my suit, I knew I¡¯d get some sort of skill at least. If I was going to go for the route of being overpowered, I was going to go all of the way. No matter how often I tried I couldn¡¯t break the barrier. I tried flying in the air for several hours, but the best I could muster was not even half a second. Something was wrong with the way I was approaching the situation. I sat down after my latest failed attempt. I closed my eyes as if I were meditating, and began to think on each flight. The longest I had meditated while gliding was about a third of a second. I was going to take this on as if I were studying a new plant or equation. I had SparrowHawk send me into the air, and closed my eyes. I threw everything out of my mind except for the idea of absorbing mana. Just as I entered the meditative mana regen mode, I was jostled out of my reprieve, and cursed. As I landed on the cliff face, I began to think about the flight. As I became more in tuned to the meditation, I began to feel my surrounding mana more. I had to block out more and more to keep the state. Maybe that¡¯s it! There is too much wind mana while I¡¯m falling down! With the new information I began to do a new test. I glided down to the forest floor. I stood up and closed my eyes. Entering meditation wasn¡¯t difficult while standing, as long as I wasn¡¯t doing anything else. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. As soon as I entered the meditative state I slowly began to walk. As soon as I began the state was broken. Hmph. I guess that would have been too easy after all. Alright what would happen if¡­? I had a few plans to try out before I gave up for the day. I found a small area that had a straight path. Once I found it I slowly began to walk with my eyes closed. I walked it while sensing the nature mana. I walked back and forth for about thirty minutes. Each walk took a little longer than half a minute. So that was about fifty times there and back. After I was sure my body perfectly remembered the exact path, I began to walk again. This time I activated my meditation. My idea wasn¡¯t too complex, but it wasn¡¯t guaranteed to work either. There is a thing that all humans posses called ¡®muscle memory¡¯. It isn¡¯t memory stored in your muscles, but rather a memory ingrained in your mind so much that you can complete it without paying attention. Like if you came home while thinking of something, but suddenly found yourself at your computer. The reason I walked the path fifty times, twenty five in each direction, was for this reason. I could technically be doing something while meditating¡­ hopefully anyway. Each time I walked I made sure I walked the exact same path, down to the number of steps for each path. I began walking, and tried activating my meditation skill. After a moment I noticed the familiar feeling of mana pouring into my body. I didn¡¯t know if I was still walking, but I did my best to not concentrate on anything, not even the mana. If I did I might mess the entire process up. After I felt I had spent enough time walking, I opened my eyes. I stumbled a bit as I regained the use of my legs. I looked at my notifications, hoping something would tell my I got a new skill. Nothing was there. I sighed despondently. I re-equipped my ring, and threw myself back up the cliff. Once there I began the other tests. There was a time, many weeks ago, when I gained the skill automated. I gained it from doing the same task several times without thinking. To make my meditation skill activate even while doing things would have to be similar. It was essentially doing at least two things at once. I already proved a simple physical task wouldn¡¯t be enough to upgrade it. Since I could use mana while meditating, a small mental task probably wouldn¡¯t be enough either. I would have to do something at least moderately difficult. Like keeping my trajectory while gliding. Since I spent so long trying that idea already I was going to have to think up something a bit simpler. I took a quick look through my skill list, to see if any inspiration hit me. The mining skill caught my eye. It was backbreaking work, at least it seemed like it, but seemed monotonous. I had my pickaxe, and some mining equipment from the cave dungeon with the worms. I glanced through my inventory. I only remembered Ysga¡¯s ring when I was it. PERFECT! With this my plan should be even easier! I equipped the mining clothes for fun, and took out the axe. With the ring I gained 45% speed while mining. Of course I had never mined before, but I had the skill. I went to the back where the Golem sensed the metal mana. Ancestor used Inspect to show me several areas that had potential for having large quantities of metal, but they were all a bit far back. I could have cleared the way with Eli, or used my own earth mana, but I wanted to try my mining idea. I began to swing the axe, which was exceptionally heavy, and was happily surprised to see the familiar red marks appear. The weak points made it easier to mine through the solid rock. I had to use my pickaxe to hit the red marks at least 100 times to be able to activate my automated skill. The reason I let Ancestor use the skill instead of me using it, was it that it had to be that way for my plan. I got a bit carried away and ended up creating a small enclave in the cave. I was panting and breathing heavily by the time I quit. A large smile spread across my face. I had gained two points of str! For only a couple of hours of work it was well worth it. I let my skill take over at that point. I checked the exp bar of the skill as it went. It was very slow going. I activated my meditation, and blanked out all other thoughts. My automated skill was doing one task for me, Ancestor was doing another, and I was meditating. That was three tasks including meditation. If one more mental task didn¡¯t give me something, then this game was really cheating to put me down. I began counting multiples of twos. Three mental tasks and one hard labor should be enough for something. 2 4 8 16 32 64. Nothing crap. 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768. Still nothing. I kept going until I hit 34359738368. The 32nd power of 2. At that point I stopped and began reciting poems by famous poets. I even resorted to creating limericks. Once I felt I had done enough to either get a skill or try something new, I quit. I took inspect back, and cancelled the automated skill. My mining skill did increase by a few levels though. So harvesting mastery increased by two. I got a new skill from all of that though.
Multi-Tasking Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% Doing several tasks at once, with no diminishing returns on the final outcomes, you have gained this new skill. Doing multiple things at once has become easier for you. To level this skill you must do many tasks at once, such as mining while counting multiples of twos. Levels in this skill increase the efficiency of your multi-tasking. Ranks in this skill increase the total amount of tasks you can do at once. Current Limit: 4 Can currently be fused to: Automated.
I obviously fused them. The result was interesting, and very helpful.
Multi-Auto Tasking Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% You can use this skill to automatically do several tasks at once. To use this skill, you must have performed each of the tasks at least 10^(x+1) times. Where x is the amount of tasks to be automatically performed. Doing two tasks requires you to have done each task 1000 times, three tasks requires 10000 and so on. To level this skill you must automatically do many tasks at once, such as mining while counting multiples of twos. Tasks will be accomplished at 50% of average speed shown by the user. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed often. Extreme mistakes are committed rarely. Levels in this skill increase the efficiency of your automatic multi-tasking. Ranks in this skill increase the total amount of tasks you can automatically do at once. Ranks will also increase the speed of the tasks, as well as decrease the mistakes made by the skill. Current Limit: 3
You have learned all of the required skills to obtain the Group Skill: Task Master. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Task Master? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
¡°Yes.¡±
You have exchanged all relevant skills for the Group Skill: Task Master. All relevant skills have been taken from your skill list. The total accumulated experience has been added to the Group Skill: Task Master. The total level requirements have all been added to the Group Skill: Task Master. As you level this skill all parts of it will level up. For instance if you train enough to level up Staff Mastery, you will gain the benefits the other skills would have provided at that level. This skill takes more exp to level up to level two than all of the skills that make it up would.
¡°Inspect Group Skill: Task Master.¡±
Task Master Current Level: Novice Level 5 Exp 27% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Automated, Multi-Tasking, Multi-Auto Tasking, and Instruct. You have learned how to increase the efficiency of doing tasks. Task Master is a skill that can be toggled. You can currently do 3 tasks automatically at the same time. To increase this number you must increase the level of Group Skill: Task Master. This skill allows you to further increase efficiency in others. You have gained the Skill: Instruct. Instruct has been automatically fused to Task Master. For every level of Group Skill: Task Master, those you instruct will gain a 5% competency bonus. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill, or study task efficiency. You can study the skills that that make up Task Master. Tasks will be accomplished at 50% average speed shown by the user. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed often. Extreme mistakes are committed rarely. Levels in this skill allow you to do the skills this Group Skill encompasses with better efficiency. Ranks in this skill increase the amount of tasks you can do at once, and increase the competency bonus those you instruct gain by 5%. Ranks will also increase the speed the tasks are done at, and the decrease the mishaps of those skills.
Task Master actually had very good synergy with my Tactics skill. I decided to ¡®use the system to maximize its efficiency¡¯. At least that was how I phrased it in my mind at the time. In reality I was abusing the system. It took me a bit, but I thought up a good way to gain exp for task master. I began counting from 1-10000. By saying the numbers like one, two, three, ¡­ eight, nine, one zero, one one, and so on I could count about five numbers in a second. Until I hit 100. Then I could only count two a second. It only took seven minutes to get to 1000. Once there I had to do one and a half numbers a second. All in all it took about two hours to actually count to 10,000. Wow, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. I had wanted to go to a hundred thousand, but decided that would take waaaay too long. I activated the new group skill I got, and watched as it very slowly increased in exp. I did the alphabet a thousand times, it only took about eight minutes to complete. I stopped there and sent it to auto. That way the exp would slowly be boosting while I do whatever. I also counted in multiples of twos. To get to 10000 times, or 20000 total, I spent another two and a half hours. It was pretty mind numbing, but the ends definitely justified the means in this case. My group skill jumped up from level 5 to level 7 by the time I started the even numbers on auto. I got a notification saying I hadn¡¯t done the alphabet enough times to set three things to auto, so I hunkered down and started. I began to even make an interesting tune to the super speed alphabet reciting. Once done, another two hours later, I set it back to auto. At that point I was getting stir crazy. I hadn¡¯t done anything except excessively boring tasks for about eight hours. The end result was great, but I was craving some sort of excitement. Looking at the plague had become more boring than I could handle at the instant, so I called back the mother gryphon. Wind amplifying my voice worked wonders. The sound spread to what I can only assume was every corner of the entire world. Ok maybe I¡¯m exaggerating a bit, but it was very loud. The mother was back in only a few minutes. I sighed as she landed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯ve done all I can, but I found out something about the plague. Something you won¡¯t like.¡± My face was contrite as I told her this horrendously depressing news I had made up. Her face actually resembled the face of a mother that just witnessed her child being hit by a cart. It was interesting to note that I was beginning to fully understand the emotions the gryphons had. ¡°It seems I need another living subject.¡± She began to fly off at once. ¡°Wait! That¡¯s not all!¡± She turned around with a huff. After a moment I began to speak again. ¡°The part you won¡¯t like is this: I need the blood of a phoenix, or a scale from a dragon, or I have to have some other similar thing to boost my mana capacity.¡± She seemed confused at my request. ¡°Why? Haven¡¯t you been doing fine?¡± Anger began to creep into her tone. That will happen when someone feels like they have no choice but to lose their most precious thing. ¡°Yes, but now isn¡¯t the time for ¡®fine¡¯. I have to have at least 10000 mana to do this operation. I also have to have you for a reference. So you¡¯ll need to stay in the cave while I do this. Of course I¡¯ll have my fairies patrol while I do it.¡± I left out one vital part of the plan. But telling her wouldn¡¯t benefit me. ¡°If you have something valuable to my kind I could also trade it for the necessary materials. But either way I will most certainly need some of your feathers, and a large monstrous snake of some kind. If I don¡¯t have these things then I won¡¯t be able to make the cure.¡± Throughout the instructions the gryphon looked despondent, but at the word cure she perked up. Obviously one should add a small glimmer of hope to any otherwise depressing situation. That way the person you are talking to will focus on that single line of possibility with all that they have. She poked her head beneath her offspring, and pulled out a large gem. It was deep purple, and shined with a light that seemed to radiate from every facet. After depositing it at my feet, she flew off, presumably to gather my materials. I gladly took the gem, and activated my ring. I messaged Susan, and found her location. I was about to make a nice little profit from this. Hopefully havening a gryphon fly around the forest for a while looking for a monstrous snake would attract a bit of attention. Seeing as the disappearing players didn¡¯t seem to rile anyone up, I had to make some sort of commotion. Otherwise I¡¯d be stuck healing the little fucker forever. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2980[4172]Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength52Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence298
Endurance51Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion95
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 12 Exp 50.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Novice Level 7 Exp 12.54%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 61: A Cure and An Entrance Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Kretchof found a way to stabilize the food chain within the dungeon. Voice practiced getting to the point where he could meditate while flying, but failed. He did make the new Group Skill: Task Master, after fusing several skills, including one he found in that chapter, together. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! When I saw Susan, she was in a new hut, happily tending to her experiments. She was pouring some sort of black liquid on the plants near her hut. The plants seemed to like it at least. I gently glided down, and landed behind her house. After un-equipping my ring, I went around to see her. I embraced her in a tight hug after calling her name. ¡°Voice! I thought I wasn¡¯t going to see you for a while yet. How did you get here so fast?¡± She asked, genuinely curious. I decided it wouldn¡¯t hurt to tell her, so I explained bit. ¡°Well I have a ring that enables me to glide short distances.¡± I gave her a brief rundown after she asked me to explain further. Basically that I got the ring after winning a bet. ¡°Anyway, like I said earlier, I have a gem that might interest you.¡± I pulled out the gem, and showed it to her. The purple fist sized gem forced a gasp out of her when she saw it. I continued. ¡°I don¡¯t know what it¡¯s worth, but I know you¡¯ll give me a fair price. So you can have it, and I¡¯ll take however much you think it¡¯s worth.¡± Showing complete trust was the best way I could think of to get a great price. I didn¡¯t actually know the price of the object, but I knew that my skill told me it was worth about 50 gold. That meant it was really worth 35 to 100 gold. Players should assume to get about half of the actual price, which was a basic of games. I would probably get a better price just from knowing Susan, and maybe if I put complete trust in her I would get an even higher one. She paused for a moment, ¡°I have to send a message to someone really quickly,¡± she said. A minute later she came to. ¡°Alright! The jeweler said he would be willing to pay 60 gold for it, but only because you saved him and his family by defeating Davros. He said I had to say that last part.¡± I gladly accepted, and the jewel promptly disappeared. In her hand appeared a bag. My inspect said it held exactly 60 pieces of gold coins in it. I accepted the bag, and thanked her. I stayed to make some stew for us, but left right after eating a small portion for myself. The amount of food I needed was essentially zero. By using ten mana per second, I produced enough, whatever it was, from my magical metal stomach, that I didn¡¯t need to actually eat more than one very small meal a week. After I left I started gliding back to the gryphon¡¯s cave. Golem had gotten me enough metal mana over the course of the last few weeks that I made an excessively large pair of feather cutters. I had them for a ¡®just in case¡¯ type of situation. I was getting close to deciphering the plague spell, but it was so boring that I couldn¡¯t actually concentrate on it. The more I tried to force myself, the worse it got. When I returned, I saw the body of a large monstrous snake, an unconscious boy, and two dying gryphons. The snake had the upper body of a human woman. ¡°I brought you the snake and the human. Please, do the ritual. I need to rest a bit. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll be fully awake for the spell you do.¡± I nodded gravely. ¡°Alright, but there is one more thing you should know. The spell I will be casting might change your hatchling. By change I mean in both body and personality. It will still be Nightmare-Wing, but you might feel he has changed.¡± The mother gryphon was too drowsy to reply. Why? It might have to do with the fact that it just fought a seemingly difficult battle with a giant snake woman. It also might have had something to do with the fact that I started using the opposite version of the awakening buff on the mother and baby gryphon. The mother, drained of energy after the life or death struggle couldn¡¯t beat the feeling of relaxation and drowsiness together. The baby gryphon mainly just slept all of the time anyway. I used the giant clippers to chop off a small portion of feathers from the mother gryphon, and made a tiny cut on her arm. After collecting a small vial of blood, I allowed it to be healed. Then I began to inspect the mother gryphon¡¯s body. I wanted to dissect it, but I had bigger plans. I had a higher chance of curing the younger gryphon, than killing it at least. So my chances of gaining a powerful ally was high. I had a good chance of getting much higher rewards than just dissecting one monster. Alright, Ancestor. Let¡¯s get to this. ¡°I am examining them now.¡± I still wanted the extra damage bonus though. I had Ancestor take control of inspect, and start examining the bodies of both gryphons. I might not get any intel for inspect, but I¡¯d still get something. Once focusing on the gryphons Ancestor showed me the small red lines that occasionally wound around their bodies. By gently cutting them I got a large percentage of the dissection up. Well I got 20% before the mother gryphon began to seem like she was going to stir. I decided that was enough for that moment of time. After that I began my preparations for the last little fun I was going to have with the mother gryphon. I created a large empty stone container. It only took half an hour to make it strong enough. After that I began to dissect the giant Lamia. Ancestor helped to expatiate that endeavor. With Ancestor¡¯s help I gained several times more dissection percentage than I did with the human merchant that time in Rand. The bucket was for the important parts of the Lamia. One large portion was for the organs, there was also about a quarter of it made into a compartment for the blood. After I dissected the snake I took its heart. Just in case Gaia or one of the gryphons were watching I had to do something ritual like. As I crushed the heart I infused it with as much mana as it could hold. I imagined the heart absorbing darkness mana, and converting it into light mana. I imagined it absorbing light mana and turning it into darkness mana. The same with every mana type. Whichever type of mana it touched, was converted into the opposite type. It was an ingenious way to actually break the enchantment. Unfortunately it didn¡¯t work out the way I hoped it would. It began relentlessly absorbing all mana types around it, including mine. It then shot out the opposite mana type in every direction. I sighed as I encased it in dark fire mana to destroy it. That didn¡¯t even work as it only made it produce holy water. It was absorbing about 100 mana a second from me. There was no way I could let this thing get known. It was a mage¡¯s worst nightmare. Luckily I thought up a way to dispose of the mistake. I created a massive hole in the ground. I threw the thing down the hole, which I ended with a giant empty chamber. I felt small amounts of wind escaping the hole. I sealed the entire hole, except the chamber, up. Even if it turned the stone into air, it would turn the air into stone again a moment later. That way it should be undetectable. The cycles would continue forever, and hopefully cancel each other out. Kretchof¡¯s POV I had the tunnelers digging towards Master¡¯s cave. The Gryphons he was tending to would make excellent additions to his dungeon. I made sure to give exact instructions to dig only as high as a few hundred meters below Master. That way he wouldn¡¯t be burdened with having a dungeon right beside him at all times. After digging for a while they had to stop. They had made it as close as I allowed, so couldn¡¯t dig any higher. Something strange happened two days after they stopped digging. Master made a huge hole in the ground, and dropped a magical artifact down it. It was just like Master to know that I had my minions dig his dungeon below him, even without me telling him. I aspired to be even a fraction as clever as he was. Taking it as a sign that the artifact was to be placed in the dungeon, I had my undead bring it to me. They were instantly purified after holding onto the thing. I watched through their eyes as the mana sustaining their bodies turned from dark to light. Their souls were released from my grasp, and ascended. Master gave me a tricky prize to work with. I sent a few more summoned undead to take it, but they all fell to the same fate. Eventually I had to send the necromancer girl to get it. In exchange I was going to let her make an offering to Davros. As soon as she touched it, she was blasted with several rays of light. The light mana seemed to draw from the fact that she had such a high concentration of darkness mana in her body. Poor girl couldn¡¯t cast much besides necromancer spells with that high amount. The lights pierced her, and she had to absorb the life-force of several monstrous rodents just to keep from dying. When she finally did manage to get it all the way to the throne room, she had lost a total of 5468% of her health. The artifact was truly powerful. Once she did I encased it stone, only to have the stone turn to wind. It then changed the wind around it into earth. It repeated the process for a while before I understood what it did. It somehow converted the material world into the opposite element. The only way to stop something as quick as that, was to encase it in so much stone that it couldn¡¯t turn it all to wind before changing it back. I had the dwarves carve a room to put it into. It was part of the boss room, so wouldn¡¯t change with the labyrinth. The stone was thick enough, and dense enough, that the magical heart didn¡¯t change the entire room before changing it back. I realized before that the heart had a certain area of effect. The denser the material changed, the more of the opposite material it would make. The wind it made was so thick and powerful that it actually pushed the heart up until it chnged back into stone. That Master would give something as powerful as this to one as unworthy as me, proved the compassion he had for his unworthy subordinates. I could only think with awe on Master¡¯s generosity. The only way to store this thing would be to put it into a Voice¡¯s POV With that failure I only had one real plan that would give me any chance of actual success. I used my Forced Evolution ability on the baby gryphon. Alright you little shit head. It¡¯s time to get serious. Last time I did this I made a blood slime. This time I¡¯m going to try experimenting a little. I wanted information on the ability, but since no others probably had this ability, the only way to get info on it was to use it. I had already lost about two uses of it, but now I would make sure to use it at least once a week. I focused on the ability as if I were enchanting something. The goal in mind played as much of a part as the precise amount of mana put into an enchantment. Of course if either were off the enchantment would go awry. Alright, let¡¯s think this through first. Heather changed into a blood slime since she was a blood bunny and had a slime incubating in her. This guy is a gryphon, with a plague inside. SO. He might change into something like a pestilence bringer. That¡¯s no joke. If I had that on my head, both Mar and Gaia would hate me. Might get a lot of points with Davros though. One for two? Not worth it. Alright then. What if I tried concentrating on the massive amount of healing the thing¡¯s been getting recently. Hmmm. That might make it weaker though. OK no to the healing. Too risky. I need to make something powerful. That way I can get info to make an eventual army of evolved monsters. I decided to focus on a combination of the healing properties, and the recovery of the plague. I activated my ability.
Nightmare-Wing is a High-Class Gryphon. The Evolution Tree for High-Class Gryphons has been unlocked!
Nightmare-Wing has a powerful disease! The disease has been incorporated into Nightmare-Wing¡¯s evolution.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. The gryphon¡¯s feathers started to glow. It seemed to be drawing in light mana. The wings, and all of the feathers took on a silver hue. The fur on the hind quarters turned into a deep golden color.
Congratulations! Nightmare-Wing has evolved into a Royal-Class Hyper Healer Gryphon!
Royal-Class Gryphons have a unique Racial Ability to command all other avian, or felines in a designated area. Gryphons have the Racial Trait: Majestic Bird of Prey. A Gryphon can instill fear and respect in even those it hunts, while also being undetected by most of its prey. Royal-Class Hyper Healer Gryphons have a unique Racial Ability to instantly heal itself, and any feline or avian in its command. A single call from the Royal-Class Hyper Healer Gryphon will restore 10% maximum health, and 25% maximum stamina to all of its subordinates.
You have caused an ability to evolve. Forced Evolution has been forced to evolve. Forced Evolution will no longer be random if there is an intent, and a possible evolution plotted for it to take.
Forced Evolution You can force evolution in any being that can evolve. You will be unable to choose the evolution. The evolution can be chosen based on the current path that monster or animal is taking. If the being to be evolved does not meet the requirements, the evolutionary abilities will be restricted. This ability has no cost, but has a one week (in game) Cooldown.
For curing an ailing baby monsteroid, you have gained 10 compassion.
Well that went better than expected. I honestly thought I¡¯d have to run after doing this. I felt the massive amount of energy flowing from the newly formed gryphon. Its body looked much the same, except for the change in color. After upgrading the gryphon, I left for my journey. I didn¡¯t have to use the clippers on either of them, that was a plus. Regardless of how much of a pain this whole situation was I still wanted to keep anything that could aide me. Including having two gryphons owe me. I jumped out of the cave. I enjoyed the feeling of the wind rushing past my face. Just before hitting the tree line I equipped the ring and sent a burst of wind at myself. I was thrown several hundred feet into the air. I used my mana sparingly, to fly over the forest watching for other encampments of players. With SparrowHawk¡¯s and Eli¡¯s help I found the locations of a large amount of the groups that were left, maybe all of them that were left. SparrowHawk and I scouted from the sky, and Eli scouted from underground. The vibrations in the earth worked for Eli similar to echolocation. After scouting out the area I picked a fairly open, and more importantly empty, space. The trees around it were just dense enough to hide most of the area. It even came with a natural spring. Great for rinsing off the stress of babysitting a gryphon for so long. The thought of taking the gryphon with me had occurred, but I had a bad experience with pets, and couldn¡¯t tame it with the tamer class. The only solution would be to make the thing want to come with me, but that kind of manipulation was tricky. One could easily change their tune after witnessing something they don¡¯t approve of. Watching what I do at all times was already hard enough. I didn¡¯t want to burden myself with even more responsibility. So I decided to leave the thing alone for now. I might get it later though. Either way I had an interesting idea. The stronger groups seemed to not take my bait for some reason. I only gained a few points over the time I cared for Nightmare-Wing. I had to lure out the stronger teams somehow. My thoughts turned instantly towards ShortDwarf. He was by far the strongest player. The thing he craved more than anything? EXP and items. I started work on a new, much easier, enchantment. I took several nearby stones, and began to infuse them with wind mana. They would produce an exact wave of wind mana every few minutes. The problem with this type of enchantment was that it permanently took out a chunk of my mana, until I released the enchantment. So I couldn¡¯t cast anything if I made too many. Still I did what I had to do. I spent about an hour analyzing the wind mana fluctuations created by what I wanted to say. After making sure I had it perfect, I mass-enchanted the stones Eli and I had gathered. The other fairies were doing what they always do when we move locations. I gave several stones to both Eli, Moro, and SparrowHawk. They were responsible for making sure the different groups got the stones. The stones let out a wave of wind mana while I was preparing them. ¡°Voice0fReason has entered into an impossibly difficult dungeon. Follow if you dare.¡± Over and over the enchantment would activate. Technically they could continue forever since I made the enchantment, but I was only going to have them go for about a day. I had made 20 of the stones. Each one took 100 mana. Not bad for message stones. I could have probably made it so they only play in front of certain mana signatures I found in people too. The possibilities were very high. After the stones were made, I began to experiment on the idea I had struck upon. I adulated the wind mana, making the frequency higher or lower depending on the speed of the wind mana wave I made. This is a pretty good idea. I can change my voice WAY more easily with this. Forget changing sexes or barely changing my race, I could be a totally different race! I excitedly made my voice extremely low pitched, and rumbling. ¡°Hellloooo.¡± I sound like a freaking gaint! I was understandably excited to get this new ability. By making a small wind filter in front of my mouth it worked almost identically to a voice modulator.
For practicing with your wind mana manipulation you have gained the ¡®Voice Change¡¯ Spell.
Voice* Change You can change the voice of anything within a ten meter range. You can change the voice of the target by as much as the wind mana will allow. This spell costs 25 mana per second. *Verbal voice, not player Voice.
I had fun toying with the spell. I made my voice sound like Kretchof¡¯s, and even Sol¡¯s. Although I felt angered and annoyed when I sounded like Sol. I ended up canceling the spell after that. I sent an order to Kretchof to connect a tunnel to me. Somehow he managed to do it overnight. Now THAT¡¯S efficiency. When I woke up to be informed of that fact, that was the first thought to cross my mind. I created a small cave entrance type thing around the tunnel. It was at the perfect angle to walk down. It seemed as thought it went straight forward. Oddly it went in the direction of the gryphon¡¯s cave. Not that it mattered much. The tunnel connected to the underground labyrinth, so I would just have to go inside, and wait for up to a week for escape to be basically impossible for the people that entered. After that I activated the secondary enchantment on the stones, telling those that had been listening the exact location of the cave system entrance. If an unexplored, possibly high level, dungeon didn¡¯t get the blood of the powerful ones boiling, then they didn¡¯t matter anyway. I dived into the dungeon, knowing that Kretchof would be able to at least put up a token defense as I prepared myself.
*Attention* An update has occurred to the dungeon. Changes in dungeons will be nullified after all players and non-dungeon-living NPCs leave the dungeon. Labyrinth Dungeons will revert changes when they change form. Any tunnels that are being dug at the time of the change will remain until completed or abandoned.
With that I opened the map of the dungeon, and went on my way to Kretchof¡¯s boss chamber. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2980[4172]Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength52Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence298
Endurance51Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Novice Level 12 Exp 13.45%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 62: How to Use a Dungeon Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice created some unholy fusion of magical negation, and evolved the baby gryphon. Kretchof dug to the magical artifact, and stored it, unknown to Voice. Voice then left the cave and sent out a message to lure in the other participants into what he thinks will be a small dungeon. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! After the notification of the dungeon I noticed the familiar blue blinking icon in the upper right corner of my vision, telling me that I had other notifications.
For gaining 100 points in Compassion, you have been granted a skill related to relating to entities.
I must have dismissed the notification earlier since I was in such a hurry to leave. If anything went wrong after the evolution was complete I would have been blamed. The skill I gained was good, but the fusions I got after were even better. This is how it went: The skill I gained from the 100 point mark was:
Empathic Link Current Level: Novice Level 1 This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing empathic links to individuals. An empathic link will allow the user to form a very basic version of mind reading. This is a one way skill until higher ranks. For every level this skill will increase the power of the empathic link. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people, as well as increasing the abilities of this skill. This skill can instantly communicate someone¡¯s emotions to you as long as they are within a 1 mile radius. Can currently be fused to: Group Skill: Task Master. Can currently be fused to: Skill Enhancement.
It asked if I wanted to fuse it to Inspect, but I did not. I wanted to fuse it to task master and body enhancement first. Although I now could fuse it even if I did put it into inspect, it would just be more pop up screens for me to look at. I fused the skill to task master first. The result was, as I said earlier, even better. The combinations were: Empathic Link + Task Master = Minor Mental Domination Link Empathic Link + Skill Enhancement = Empathic Connection Minor Mental Domination Link + Empathic Connection = Mental Domination Connection
Minor Mental Domination Link Current Level: Novice Level 1 This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing domination over lesser minded creatures. A Minor Mental Domination Link will allow the user to form a very basic version of thought suggestion. People with higher levels, or higher willpower, will be resistant to this skill. For every level this skill will increase the power of the link. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people. Every rank in this skill will evolve the skill into a more powerful version.
Empathic Connection Current Level: Adept Level 50 By fusing Empathic Link and Skill Enhancement, Empathic Link has evolved. This skill allows the user to form a strong emotional connection to the target. This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing a deep emotional connection with other entities. For every level this skill will increase the power of the connection. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people. Every rank in this skill will evolve the skill into a more powerful version.
Mental Domination Connection Current Level: Adept Level 50 By fusing Minor Mental Domination Link and Empathic Connection, Minor Mental Domination Link has evolved. This skill allows the user to form a strong mental domination over the target. This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing domination over lesser minded creatures. A Mental Domination Connection will allow the user to form a version of thought suggestion similar to low-end hypnotism. People with higher levels, or higher will power will be resistant to this skill. For every level this skill will increase the power of the domination. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people. Every rank in this skill will evolve the skill into a more powerful version.
The mind controlling skills caused me to question the exact nature of skills. Normally one would think a mind control ability would be an ability not a skill. Still, I wasn¡¯t one to push a gift away just because I didn¡¯t understand why it worked. Mental Domination Connection sounded a lot cooler than it actually was. It just let me implant a thought in someone¡¯s mind. I tried it on Sol. He seemed to think about my suggestion ¡®be quiet¡¯ for a second, then disregarded it. Empathic Connection, and Mental Domination Connection could both be fused into group skills. Empathic Connection fused to Inspect, and Mental Domination Connection fused int Task Master. While the empath ability didn¡¯t really do all that much for inspect, it did multiply the usefulness of ¡®sense motive¡¯ by several fold. The Mental Domination upgraded task master to apprentice. Which increased the total amount of auto-tasks it could perform. That was great, but I quickly became obsessed with the idea of complete mind control. The fact that I could take on small minded creatures was great. I decided to keep trying to mind control the things in this dungeon until I could use this skill on auto. I decided not to use the map right away. It would be more interesting that way. I gave a few orders to Kretchof as I walked around the tunnels. Several skeletons arrived at the entrance, and started laying down. The dungeon had been lacking in any creativity. I couldn¡¯t buy any extra traps, but that didn¡¯t mean I couldn¡¯t physically create some. The undead at the entrance wore armor fit for adventurers. With that done I began to create a map of the dungeon myself. I knew the map would be useless in a few days at most, but it would still upgrade my skill. I wandered around for several hours. Eli offered multiple times to guide me, but I refused. Mazes tasked the mind. It was a pointless yet fulfilling pastime. Of course I could have just kept one hand on the wall at all times. That was the correct way to navigate a maze, but I felt like plotting the entire thing in my mind. Once I grew bored of it, mostly because there were no attacks made on me, I gave Kretchof two questions and an order. ¡°Kretchof. How many of those dark-kin spiders do we have?¡± ¡°One moment Master.¡± Not even a full second later he responded again. ¡°I apologize for the wait. There are currently 100 Dark-Kin Male Spiders. They seem to tear down each other¡¯s nests when they encounter them, so I have not been able to produce as much silk as you would have liked.¡± The regret in his voice was palpable. ¡°Nah, don¡¯t worry about it. How well can you control them?¡± ¡°I am only competent enough to give general instructions to them. Such as ¡®avoid skeletons¡¯ or ¡®don¡¯t destroy the moss¡¯.¡± His voice continued to sound more depressed. ¡°Hey I said it is fine.¡± His depressing tone was getting annoying. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s get this going then. I want to be attacked by the dungeon. I feel like it would give me a better idea of how you operate it.¡± It would also give me a better idea of how to work my mind control skill. Kretchof¡¯s POV Master decided to directly test me! He was going to use his own powers to actually see my capabilities! I could not disappoint him. Within seconds I came up with a plan I thought suitable. Others were going to be entering soon, so I knew master would hate it if I put too much man power to fight him. I used only a handful of undead, and directed a dozen spiders his way. This would have to be enough. I had the skeletons perform a complex maneuver while the spiders worked ¡®together¡¯ to lay even a scratch on Master. I could feel him somehow trying to burrow himself into the minds of the spiders. Without pausing Master sent out a tendril of wind, that tossed the many spiders and skeletons away from himself. He repeated this process for several minutes. I began to make the skeletons attack with more ingenuity. While I was focused on the battle, I had to grant the necromancer girl a bit of control over the creatures in the dungeon. She seemed pleased, so all I had to do was make sure she didn¡¯t try to steal the power permanently. After a few minutes of the battle Master called for a halt. Confused, but obedient, I obeyed. The spiders were harshly frozen in place by my will, and the skeletons near them holding them down. One of the spiders began to spin a web on the wall. Voice¡¯s POV It didn¡¯t take long before I finally implemented a successful suggestion. I kept sending out thoughts to the spiders to spin their webs. There wasn¡¯t any recharge time or any cost to use the skill, so I figured ¡®why not¡¯? Only one of them took to the suggestion. Still I had sent out a large number of the suggestions to the spiders. The skeletons didn¡¯t elicit any response from the skill. I guess the undead are immune to the skill. That¡¯s unfortunate. Makes sense though. After Kretchof called off the attackers I had him send them all back. I didn¡¯t need to fight to be entertained anymore. I just had him keep the spiders here. I repeated the instructions to the spiders until they were all spinning webs. As soon as one was done it began to tear down the other¡¯s webs. That¡¯s weird. Why would they attack each other like that? But then I noticed something. They didn¡¯t directly attack each other, just the webs. It almost seemed like a way to cull their own numbers. From what Kretchof told me, the queen reproduces after eating a certain amount of food. The spiders would only bring her food when they had three webs up, and then managed to catch something else. If they didn¡¯t have three up, they¡¯d eat the food to make a new web. I decided to implement some enchantments to make the dungeon a bit harder for the others to conquer. Since the dungeon wouldn¡¯t change until all the players left I planted several different traps. I only laid the traps randomly though. I¡¯d have loved to place the entire dungeon filled with the traps, but doing so would take much more time than I had. Using the abomination of an enchantment as a base I created several stones. I had Kretchof appear before me, and raise several undead. It was an easily copied spell with darkness as the base, and light and a bit of earth surrounding it. After raising a few undead myself I went to enchanting the stones. I obviously dismissed the undead I summoned. They took too much mana. The stones would absorb any mana near them, and change the mana into the summon undead spell. That way the dungeon would become even more hazardous. My favorite part of my scheme was that I made sure the part of the spell that absorbed mana could be toggled. From Kretchof¡¯s explanation, monsters would naturally go after any intruder, but there were not enough monsters in this dungeon to completely destroy the number of high level people without help. The biggest problem was the durability of the stones. Each one had a countdown of five days. I assumed after that I would have to re-enchant them. Five days was more than enough for my plan though. Although i didn¡¯t look at the abomination too long. I wondered if it had an expiration date as well. I just had to keep the players in here for up to five days for it to change. After that I wouldn¡¯t even have to worry about them. But the thing that bothered me was that the notification said the dungeon wouldn¡¯t change while players were in it. I asked Kretchof to clarify. ¡°Master, if there are intruders in the dungeon when it is supposed to change, the dungeon will temporarily grow steadily more powerful until they are dead. Unless they are in a safe room, or boss room.¡± That was good to know. So basically the dungeon will kill off anyone not in a safe area. That meant that they basically had to get to a safe room right away if they wanted to breeze through this one. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Alright Kretchof, I want you to make sure no one can get into the safe rooms. Keep the dungeon difficult, but make sure as few as possible make it past the safe room barrier.¡± Kretchof accepted my command, and began to work. Meanwhile I placed the undead summoners randomly through the dungeon, using Eli to help of course. That would at least grant me a bit more time to figure out a more permanent solution. The monster¡¯s began patrolling as normal after my command. The amount was actually astounding. They were almost all insects or undead, but I saw a few spiders, and even one large monster. Kretchof must have been busy while I wasn¡¯t looking. Honestly I didn¡¯t actually think he¡¯d be able to make anything useful. The sheer quantity of enemies would prove difficult to manage for most of the dungeon crawlers. As I was reinforcing some of the stone tunnels, Kretchof sent me an urgent chat message. ¡°Master, a group of four high-leveled enemies has entered.¡± I smiled. ¡°Good, show them the proper hospitality.¡± I made a small hole in a nearby wall, and went inside it. I felt like being a ninja. I closed the hole, and slowly made my way up to be on the level above the group. Kretchof was giving me directions since they were far too far away to see with my skills. I was moving the earth mana from in front of me, to behind me. That way the hole closed itself as I went. When I was just above the group, they had already made it a few hundred feet. Eli had come back by then, and was helping to speed the process of moving the earth. I watched the fights they went through by using my sense mana, and other skills. The mage took the rear, guarded by the archer, and one melee guy. The lead girl was tanking the enemies. I decided to spice things up a bit. The mage was in stereotypical mage robes, and carried a staff. Seriously? What¡¯s the point of casting magic if that¡¯s all you do? No melee or defense? What a waste of potential. The archer was a bit more intelligent in that regard. He at least wore some heavy leather armor. His bow seemed to have some type of enchantment as well. I guess he¡¯s ok, but why does no one wear heavy armor besides melee classes? In the end all armor does the same amount of guarding. Heavy armor just requires less work. Sure my heavy armor was thing, and hid easily behind whatever clothing I generally chose to wear, but others could also have the chance to see the folly of only wearing the ¡®class appropriate¡¯ armor. At least the two melee units did a better job of it. The one guarding the rear was in chain armor, and wielded a large bastard sword. The one in front was in plate armor, and had a tower shield and a parrying sword. That is a sword that was designed in such a way as to most easily block incoming attacks. Truly a well rounded fighter that one. If no one can hurt you, you can¡¯t lose. The rear group were doing most of the damage to the insects in front of them, but the tank did a bit. I placed one of the twelve undead stones I kept into the ceiling above the mage. His magic instantly started to wane. The thing did drain 100 mana per second after all. It took 500 mana to summon one undead. It only took me a hundred to summon one, but I guess using enchants to summon cost more. That was something I had to work on. After five seconds an undead skeleton was summoned. The mage, already sensing his mana depleting, wasn¡¯t caught completely off guard. He and the archer near him instantly spotted my undead minion. Tsk. I was really hopping to off one of them. Despite the lack of a surprise attack, they still had a fraction of a second where the melee guard near them couldn¡¯t get to the undead in time. Just as my undead attacked the mage I had a brilliant idea. I used the pain inducing darkness water in a tight ball in front of the skeleton¡¯s clawed hand. The mage cried out as the attack hit him. Normally the skeleton would deal small damage quickly. Now it dealt small damage quickly, with the added pain serum. You could say this was like training in preparedness. One should always expect the unexpected. Or at least be ready to flee at the first sign that something unpredicted happened. The mage sank to the ground, clutching at his stomach. What a whiner. Geez, it¡¯s not even that bad. With the mage temporarily out of commission I started drying out the air of the small section of the dungeon. The group started to get understandably worried at that part. I moved down about five feet while drying the air, and had Eli start to weaken the stone above the group. The archer knocked an arrow, and aimed at the skeleton. I couldn¡¯t easily dry out the area and create the pain spell, so I let them be. The tank was too preoccupied to do anything but guard himself. Without the help of a few DPS players, he was essentially in a dead lock. (*AN* DPS: Damage Per Second, these are the major damage dealers in an mmo.) I concentrated my entire mana flow to drying the area out. It didn¡¯t help that the mana stone absorbed my mana as well. Just as it summoned a second skeleton, I turned it off. The second fighter had just defeated the first skeleton, now had to deal with another. The skeleton was only level 40, these guys were each above 80. The reason for the five seconds to kill the skeleton, is that Kretchof was directly controlling it. That helped out a lot. A good worker knows what to do without being told. Just before the second skeleton was killed off, Eli had finished the task, and brought the stone back to me. I sent out a large wind/fire blast of mana. The cave shook for a moment, throwing the archer off balance. Then it happened. The cracks began appearing in the tunnel. Suddenly large chunks of the stone began falling from five feet above the group¡¯s heads. At first the two fighters managed to dodge most of the debris, but the insects paid no heed to it, and kept attacking. Even though their brethren were squashed, that just seemed to anger them more. After only a few seconds the insects managed to crawl up the tank¡¯s body, and held her down. She was instantly impaled by three earth spears I summoned. Attacking while your opponent is knocked prone basically made any attack a one hit kill. The archer and mage quickly died by being crushed to death. The melee unit that was still alive, was quickly trapped by the falling stones. After the dust settled down, thanks to Eli and SparrowHawk, I took a look at my exp. I quickly realized the dungeon must have gotten it. I was still the same as before I entered the dungeon. For no reason I decided to be a bit more cruel than usual. I made the stone encasing the only survivor solidify. The stone coffin only had enough air in it to allow him to avoid suffocation for a few minutes. While looking at his light mana signature, I tried filling the tomb with water. Back in River¡¯s cross the water mana was so abundant I had gotten used to it. Here the water mana amounted to little more than a trickle. Instead of waiting while the water slowly filled the chamber, I made several earth spike impale the poor guy¡¯s head. The exp again went to the dungeon. While I was happy that I could raise the level of my dungeon, it wasn¡¯t anything special. I would have put the level up to better use anyway. Still the picture of his dying mana signature was fun. I and Eli began to fix the tunnel. After half an hour, it was as if nothing had even happened. The bodies were quickly dragged away by several undead, while their equipment was stripped from their corpses. Well I guess that¡¯s one way to get loot. Of course not all of their equipment was able to be taken away, but my dungeon could get enough to make it slightly more enticing for others to try their hands at conquering my dungeon. At least I got the points for killing the group. After that I played the same hit and run tactics for the next few days. Whenever a new group of people entered, Kretchof let me know. I quickly killed most of the teams. The harder ones required me to cooperate with Kretchof. They all ended up falling though. Whether it was from cave ins, or massive fire blasts, eventually they all died. One group did take a lot of set up to kill though. They were a group of nothing but warriors, which was a common theme, but they all had high magic resistance. They easily slaughtered the undead summoned to fight them, and the stone didn¡¯t work since they had such low mana. I ended up having Kretchof force the spiders towards them, and slowly turned the entire tunnel floor for twenty feet around them into lava. Of course Eli and Draco helped with that. While they slaughtered the undead, and dealt with the spiders, the heat of the lava rose. By the time that they realized what was happening, it was too late. They began to run, but the ground crumbled and fell into the lava pit. After they were submerged, I covered the top for a few minutes. After I was sure they were dealt with, I let the undead in the cave system take what was left of the melted items. While I wasn¡¯t hunting down foolish trespassers, I was training my mind ¡®control¡¯ skill on the spiders. I learned that the skill could only give commands up to a certain level. After that the order would be ignored 100% of the time. I gained a bit of practice, which was nice, but it ended abruptly with one announcement from Kretchof. ¡°Master, your former companion EDI has entered the dungeon.¡± Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 2980[4172]Stamina: 350
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength52Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence298
Endurance51Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership66Logic22
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1535
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature75%
Metal50%
Earth45%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Dive 63: Dungeon Diving Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice gained a cool set of skills that amounted to ¡®mind control¡¯ and extreme sense motive enhancer. He also spent a few days killing the random players that entered his dungeon. At the end of that time, just a few days before the end of the trial, EDI entered the dungeon. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment! ¡°Well well well. I guess it¡¯s time to test some of my new toys then. Eh Kretchof?¡± Ancestor was the one that answered though. I guess Ancestor somehow managed to locate the entrance, or communicated with Kretchof. Either way a reply instantly resounded in my mind. ¡°Voice, beware. She is leading a large group of people into the dungeon. At least forty. It might even be the rest of the people in your trial.¡± Oh for fuck¡¯s sake. I could have at least gotten one break! It wasn¡¯t an impossible task, but her being with a large group made things a bit trickier. ¡°Also it should be noted that the mana signature of BigBadWolf is with her.¡± A despondent sigh escaped me. Really? Why did this kind of crap have to happen right now? ¡°Fine! Kretchof, go greet our guests if you would. They seem to have taken offense to my fairies bothering them for so long. That just makes things quicker. Make sure to leave your ¡®dead bodies¡¯ remaining dead until I give the signal.¡± I smiled a devious smile. Some things that I¡¯ve left out talking about the dungeon: 1. The stench. The smell of decay permeated the air. The rotten fish especially made the entire complex repugnant. With my wind mana cycling the smell away, it wasn¡¯t much of a bother for me. 2. The darkness. There was almost no light whatsoever. With my light mana, and the dungeon map, I didn¡¯t even need any to begin with. 3. The webs. I had Kretchof stop making the silk clothes he said he had producing. Instead the webs were taken down and transported to places that Kretchof made off limits to the spiders. That way they didn¡¯t attack them. Of course I knew the exact path that didn¡¯t have any of the near invisible sticky threads. I also could just slowly make my way through the walls and ceiling if need be. 4. The terrain. The entire cave system was filled with slopes and jagged rocks. Courtesy of Kretchof¡¯s mobile tunneling team. Of course the walls, ceiling, and floor was smooth as marble, but so were the intentionally left rocks. It was almost as if someone dug out the tunnels, and then another group smoothed everything left. 5. The girl. Kretchof told me he had gotten a necromancer girl. At first I was quite miffed that another player was in my dungeon, but she was beholden to Kretchof. I was going to use her. I hadn¡¯t actually met her though. From the information Kretchof gave me, she was the one responsible for all but the spiders and undead in the maze. A good thing for a lackey to have. I gave him specific instructions to make sure to play her up as the owner of the dungeon. 6. Trap rooms. I had Kretchof modify several rooms, with the help of my fairies, to benefit me in the upcoming battles. Most people didn¡¯t even make it past the fire chamber, but some did. I used them to perfect a killing labyrinth. Those things coupled with the large amount of fake corpses, would prove to be the undoing of the group. I would hate to have to explain the whole ¡®I¡¯m Mar¡¯s chosen, but I had a Davros dungeon¡¯ thing. I made my way as quickly as possible to the group. I had learned quite a few little tricks since my time with EDI. I was going to make sure she regretted betraying me. I was going to sink my blade into her heart myself. I had a few days before the end of the trial. I was going to use them to the best of my ability. Even if they did manage to get past my many planned traps, they still had my biggest surprise waiting in the boss room. Let¡¯s just say my knowledge gained over the last few days proved useful. I made my way about ten feet away from the wall. Of course I was inside the earthen tunnel that filled itself in as I walked. When I finally got close enough to the group that I could sense all of their individual mana signatures, I was surprised to say the least. Wolf and EDI were leading a group of forty others. The tunnels were wide enough here to actually allow five people to walk abreast with no problem. That was exactly what they were doing. Almost as if they had actually had military training. There were eight lines of five people each. In two of the lines were people with auras, obviously mages. Two mages in forty was supposedly a high number. Bloody mages. There were at least two archers in every line, with five in the rear line and none in the first. There were five warrior types in the first line, and at least two in every line but the last. This formation was well thought out. I watched as an undead approached the group. Wolf gave a signal, and It was instantly showered in arrows. A total of 34 arrows struck every part of the zombie. It managed to just ¡®live¡¯ through the barrage. As soon as it hit the first wall of warriors, it was torn to shreds in holy light coming from Wolf¡¯s trident. EDI was composed, and didn¡¯t even blink as the fetid meat hit her. She merely wiped herself off with a black towel she produced from her inventory. Alright. That was great. Now all I know is that they are highly trained, and Wolf-man over there has some sort of holy sword ability. I decided on one of my oldest magical tactics. I began to dry out the area in the tunnel they had to go through. Tear helped by absorbing all water mana from it. Drake was filling the area with fire mana. EDI had never actually seen me use the magic, so hopefully the group wouldn¡¯t know a way around it. They would take about five minutes at their current rate to reach that section. I planted two of my undead summoning rocks to stall them. My fairies could easily complete it in five minutes, but the longer the range of fire mana, and lack of water mana, the more gradual the change would seem. The more gradual the change seemed, the less likely they were to notice it. The smell was already getting to the group. One of the archers gagged after the putrid zombie was slain. After his comrades helped him compose himself, they continued on. They even walked over the corpses like it was nothing. The mages were each forced to summon up a light orb to see into the tunnels, else they would have no light to go on. The two orbs seemed to follow the group. One trailed right behind Lycan-man, the other was in front of the group of mages. They were quickly met by two skeletal warriors climbing out of the ceiling, and falling in the middle of the group. I had poured in the required amount of mana for the first summoning each, myself. The havoc caused by the two unexpected guests was entertaining. One of the mages was instantly attacked. The swordsmen around him went on the offensive even before Wolfy knew what was happening. Who the hell trained these guys!? They¡¯re like fucking soldiers! There was zero chance of a random group having this much discipline and focus. Not to mention the massive amount of teamwork they showed when encountering both enemy encounters. They mage coated himself with light, which helped push the undead away, but did not stop it completely. The other mage was roughly pushed out of the way of the other skeleton. He must have noticed his mana dropping at an alarming rate. He began to look around frantically, and informed the group: ¡°Something¡¯s stealing my magic!¡± he shout reverberated through the tunnel, even louder than the clash of metal on bone. The archers near him began looking for any sign of something that would be able to cause this. Unfortunately they couldn¡¯t see through solid rock. The two holes in the ceiling had already been patched up before the skeletons even hit the floor. As one skeleton was struck down, a second group was clawing their way out of the ceiling. The ceiling of course closed as they fell. After that I moved the stones to the ground under the group. Turning them off for a moment was worth the change in location. Just as I thought the archers and two mages began attacking the roof to destroy whatever was causing the summoning. It was the last day the stones could work anyway. The fighter¡¯s quickly dealt with the skeletons, but not quick enough. They killed each skeleton in about six seconds. Having so many people tightly packed only hindered the hardened warriors. After two skeletons started rising up from the ground I disabled the stones, and went to the area that would show an explosively good time to my guests. Wolf made short work of the four skeletons left. A single swipe of his trident took care of an undead. That guy is OP as fuck. It made me wonder why I was leading the scoreboard with most attainable points. Fido (BigBadWolf) obviously had better commanding and combat skills. They allowed the mage¡¯s to heal the group, then continued on. I was a little disappointed to see that both mages had healing spells. That made things even harder. Just as the group made it to the edge of the area that had been drying, Fido called for the group to halt. He called the mages forth, and they began to examine the area. After a quickly conversation, judging from the gestures made by the mana signatures, they decided to continue on. Just as planned. They had no choice but to go through the trap if they wanted to continue on. The mages started casting water spells to cover the group. You¡¯re kidding me. My look at that time could only be described as an adult that is trying to explain something to a child that wants to start a fight. I had Tear suck away the water mana from the group. As soon as the fairy started, the mages let Fido know. Tattle tales. I planted one of the summon rocks in a wall near the mages. With two things sucking mana away at once, they had a hard time keeping the water up. I had Eli raise the two walls I had helped make beforehand. One was at the front edge of the area, the other was behind the group. Luckily I had planned for an even bigger group than this when I made the trap. With a speed boost from SparrowHawk, the stone walls quickly rose. They cut off all advancement and retreat. The undead from the beginning of the dungeon rose as soon as the walls were up. To give them enough time to get here I didn¡¯t activate the fire for a solid minute after trapping the group. If not for the massive amount of time and mana put in to forge these doors a few days ago, they would have easily fallen from Fido¡¯s onslaught. After the walls began to look as though they might still break, I cast the fire. There was so much fire mana in the air that the earth walls began to melt, if only slightly. Tear continued to suck away all water mana from the group, they were producing it even in the solid oven I had made. The trick was the metal plate in the middle. It accumulated the heat that would have otherwise escaped the stone walls. It would radiate heat even after the initial fire ball was done. I continued to pour the fire mana into the chamber, until I was out of my pure mana and fire mana. After that I helped speed up the zombies and rotted corpses. It took four minutes for the fire to die down. If they tried to escape, that would mean destroying their precious water barrier. Then they¡¯d be roasted alive. So they sat there in fetal position. It must have been grueling to teach the group about everything they might need to expect. I mean how many people would think of teaching their minions to decrease surface area as much as possible to prevent most of the damage from a giant fire orb? The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. After the fire died out, the dog man began to slash at the door again. All of the zombies in that area were wiped out by the fire. Before he could completely destroy the walls, I had Eli lower them. I had used up most of my earth mana keeping the stone from falling off by trident attack. The group gave a collect sigh of relief as the walls lowered. Only to be attacked from both directions not even a second later. The undead crawled over the piping hot walls of earth and metal to get to the group. Of course the group was looking forward, and so missed the attack from the rear. The archers notched their arrows, took aim, and were promptly attack from behind. The slow moving zombies had made it to the group as the walls just made it beneath the ground. I gave instructions for Kretchof to make them focus on the archers, namely the bows the archers had. If I could break those it would be a much simpler task of taking the group out. I could just do it with a well placed burst of fire or wind, but that would most likely give away that I was directly interfering. I couldn¡¯t underestimate how much information EDI had gotten from Editor. The attack took out two bows before the group of five archers even realized their was an attack from the back. The zombies crawling over the walls was kinda creepy THB. The battle that took place was quick. Wolf and EDI struck at the front. The front portion of the army was helping them, while the back half of the group turned their attention to the archers. With the army divided in half, they cleaned up my trap fairly quickly. I managed to reanimate several corpses while the battle went on, but not enough to make a noticeable difference. Kretchof did implant several of them with a ¡®surprise¡¯ though. About one in twenty zombie minions were coupled with a ¡®miasma¡¯ bomb. It poisoned the unwary, he had apparently used this method to deal with the supposed army that was following me. I needed to hurry the group through all of my traps. They only had a day until the maze was scheduled to change. After that my traps would revert into nothingness. It would be a lot less fun for me if that happened. The archers with broken bows threw them away, and equipped a new set. This is going to take a while. I resigned myself to the idea of many of my traps would revert, but I was still going to try to get them pushed through as many as possible. After they got through the fire chamber they continued on through the empty hallway. After a few minutes they made it to the lake room. This was the first puzzle. The room was about a hundred feet long and forty feet high. Well thirty five feet was nothing but water. There was only enough room for a boat and a half to cross at once. This room was next to one that shot out many fish and other aquatic monsters. The water wouldn¡¯t seem to leave past a certain area, so I had Tear absorb as much as possible, then transfer it to the almost empty cavernous room Eli had helped to make. I then had Moro gather wood and make a few small boats. Really they were just large tree trunks that was hollowed out over an entire day. It was durable, and someone enchanted it to push water out of itself. That way even if it sank it would just shoot back to the top. The boats had to be beached since there wasn¡¯t enough room to put them in the water. The groups were obviously cautious. There were no oars, nor anything that would give them an easy time to make it across the water. Wolf did a quick count, and made a decision. ¡°Alright men, this is the plan so listen up! If we cram in enough we won¡¯t need one of these boats. So you three¡± he pointed out three seemingly random people ¡°are in charge of deconstructing that boat to be used for oars. Snap to!¡± I had to admit. I was surprised and impressed by his ability to think through situations. He was probably the one to instruct the mages to cast the water. After they deconstructed the boat, they began to cross over. One boat at a time. The mages were in different boats, as were EDI and Wolfy. Cursing my bad luck, I decided to take what I could get. The first mage was about four fifths of the way there, when the second mage¡¯s group started. It was then that I decided to act. Using Tear¡¯s assistance, we covered both boats with an orb of water. After three minutes, and nearly all of my water and pure mana, I was forced to drink one of the few mana potions I had made. I had been experimenting with the seeds and plant info left to me by the crazy scientist guy. I had three mana potions, but had not perfected them. Still the most powerful one healed me for four hundred mana! That was considerable to say the least. After a solid five minutes total, I capsized both boats with SparrowHawk¡¯s help. My fairies and I were in a small cavern I created for us. Tear and I were in the water, protected by multiple stone bars placed very close together. SparrowHawk was just above us in the only part that had air in it. Once the boats capsized, the monster¡¯s took effect. A large number of monstrous fish, and a few large aquatic beasts, littered the watery depths. When the boats turned over, they began to feast. Kretchof didn¡¯t have much control over the fish, and practically none over the bigger monsters, but he had just enough to make them not attack until I was ready. Of course that meant releasing his control on most of his other subordinate species, but the necro girl was there for a reason. The water turned red as blood poured from the poor sods that had been dragged under. Quickly the water turned back to pure blue. There were several species of monster fish that fed purely on blood. Kinda creepy, but it was beneficial to me. On the other end the group was pulling something out of the water. Oh come on! Are you serious!? One of the mages had managed to live through all of that!? Her robes soaked, and her body bloody, she laid coughing up water on the bank. From then on they only traveled one boat at a time. I decided to let them be. One, I might give myself away otherwise, and two, I didn¡¯t have the mana to do that again. After the group had crossed Wolf did a head count. Five people per boat, one and 4/5ths boats killed off. They were down to 31 people not including Wolf and EDI. At least they only have one mage now. If I can kill her off it will make my other traps much more beneficial. The one mage had to handle all of the light the group required. That would cost a lot more mana for her than before. For a while there were only the occasional monster attacks. Nothing too major. Then the path began to split. Wolf and EDI talked it over, and they decided to take different routes in the first fork. Let me say this kiddies. Never separate. Haven¡¯t they ever watched horror movies? I mean seriously, that¡¯s like rule number two on who to get killed. Number one is to be the main love interest to the main character. I decided to solely focus on BadWolf¡¯s group. Something made me decide killing off EDI¡¯s group would be the harder choice. BBW took fifteen people, and left sixteen for EDI. He took the mage, and gave several torches, and some small enchanted rock, to EDI. If you had those why did you make the mage do all that work? People would always take advantage of others. I came up with a pretty good plan actually. Drake was low on mana, so I thought up a way to fix that. I summoned out Sol and gave an interesting task. ¡°Sol I want you to absorb the light mana the mage casts. Keep absorbing it as soon as another come¡¯s out. It is maintained by a stream of mana, so it must be a mass of light mana just following them.¡± Sol got to work right away. When the first light was absorbed, the group readied themselves for battle. When nothing happened, the mage girl made another orb, and they continued. Sol again absorbed the ball of mana. After four times the mage girl began to speak to the wolf. My enhanced hearing, and wind mana only worked so well. All I heard was the word torch. After a few moments the pup lit one up. Of course this was my plan from the beginning. As soon as the spark left the flint, Drake absorbed it. After a few tries at that I decided it would be better to let them light it first. The floating lights of fire mana didn¡¯t respond negatively so that¡¯s what we did. Wolf continued to kneel down to light the torch. After another two tries, he finally got it working. That¡¯s when Drake absorbed the fire mana. They couldn¡¯t go without a light, but they didn¡¯t have a light to go with. After lighting a few more torches to make sure, he got the idea. He pulled out a replica of the enchanted rock that he gave to EDI. I had Sol try to absorb it, ¡°Master, I can¡¯t! It seems to be a Mana Crystal shard! Not even Eli will be able to take the mana out!¡± The quick talking fairy had failed me. Not that I had high expectations of it anyway. I sent out Drake and Sol to go do the same thing with EDI. That way at least they wouldn¡¯t be able to notice the next set of traps both groups were going to encounter. After a few dozen more steps, the wolf activated the trap. So much for military precision! He had fallen for one of the oldest traps in history. A piece of silk tied to two bombs. As soon as his foot tugged at the string, the two bombs fell from their spots. Hidden behind little ¡®bumps¡¯ in the ground were placed my entire allotment of bombs I had bought from Susan. That was the next set of traps. No doubt EDI would fare better though. She was always better at this agility based stuff. The bombs caused minor damage to Wolf, and none to the rest of the group. They continued to explore the complex. At their current rate it would take at least a day and a half to reach the first miniboss room. Wolf began to notice the traps after the first one. He had his troops walk single file, to avoid causing the bombs to drop. Just for fun I used earth mana to trip one of the troops, and caused the bombs to go off anyway. He didn¡¯t die, but it made the mage use more mana. I didn¡¯t know the regen rate of an average mage type, but if it was the same as mine, then each healing would take at least four seconds to work off. If I piled them up it would be rewarding. I even placed several of my undead summoning rocks along the passage ways for BBW. The random number of undead they faced, didn¡¯t seem to perturb them. It was kind of upsetting. I had Kretchof start using more than just undead. Now a large number of insects crawled through the halls as well. The first round with the insects took the group by surprise, but Wolf got over it quickly. That guy was a major pain in my ass. Each of the insects only dropped basic items, but they did decent damage to the group as a whole. Of course the mage made sure to patch them all up. I had to do something about her if I planned on winning. She seemed capable of doing at least two, maybe more, types of magic. Her death would be a detriment to the group. As for EDI¡¯s group, I was sure that Kretchof could take care of her. I made sure to never focus too closely on the mage. Most of my attention went to Wolf, then the archers, then the mage, then the fighters. If the mage was last it would also raise suspicion. By casting the occasion blade of wind mana, I managed to cut dozens of bow-strings. They had a spool of it though. Even when I went for the bows themselves, they seemed to have an indefinite supply of those. I did have a bit of fun when I roasted one of the warriors in Wolf¡¯s army in his armor. His screams rang out as the bombs fell on him, aided by a massive amount of fire mana. That was the only death I had made since the water room, at least until they made it to the first miniboss room. Dive 64: A Battle and a Decision Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice began to try to decrease the numbers of the group (42) without letting them know he was directly fighting against them. He disguised all of his attempts as traps within the dungeon. He managed to kill off a few people, but only a few. Time is ticking down for the end of the event. There are still 30 people plus EDI and BigBadWolf left to kill. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Bit of a shorter chapter this time. Wolf¡¯s POV We walked into the miniboss room. It was just a large round cavern. In the center of the room stood a giant of a skeleton, with a book hovering close by, and a staff in hand. The lone skeletal mage, standing at over eight feet, was surrounded by several smaller skeletal warriors. Clad only in loosely fitting, rust covered, iron armor, they only had short swords to fight with. They admirably held themselves in a formation that protected the mage from all angles. We had been dogged by tricks and traps all the way there. When we arrived at the dungeon we were informed that we needed to obtain all of the miniboss keys in order to fuse them into the boss room key, by a notification box. ¡°Formation Beta-3!¡± The formation was to protect one mage, and have a sufficient force to attack. The men quickly got into the position. We had practiced this since I convinced the groups that this would be the best option. Fighting a leading player by themselves was practically suicide. At least with a larger group the chance of taking him down greatly increased. Even the fact that he ran into this dungeon was clever. Most thought him a coward, but I knew better. As did my partner EDI. She seemed to know a lot about him. She never volunteered the information, so I didn¡¯t pry. It was helpful to have the extra intel on him, no matter how I got it. Most of the people thought he was running into this dungeon to hide from us, but I knew better. This dungeon had proven to have an unpredictably high level of difficulty. No one would run into here to get away from a lesser threat. The very fact that he passed all of these battles and traps proved how powerful he was. He was someone worth fighting. Although, being by himself seemed to help him out on several occasions. He just had to watch out for himself, not make sure others didn¡¯t fall for the traps. Even the pond seemed to be geared towards a single person, or small party. The undead mage began casting a spell. The archers sent a volley of arrows into the things boney hands. They might not feel pain, but my mages told me most spells required precise hand movements. The added weight would make the thing overcompensate. Unfortunately the tactic didn¡¯t seem to work very well. The spell continued, and the room began to fill with summoned zombies. ¡°Warriors! READY YOURSELVES!¡± As the zombies and skeletons shambled towards us, the mage sent a barrage of magical attacks as the miniboss. The archers picked off many of the enemies coming towards us. It seemed odd that one arrow was enough to take one down. I had them shoot even the downed ones to make sure. The skeletons were not nearly as easy to take down as the zombies. They continued to make their way towards us even as they were pelted with dozens of arrows. The skeletons finally made it to the first line of warriors. The world began to sway. For a moment the only light, the glowing crystal, went dark. ¡°Stand your ground! We. Will. Not. FAIL!¡± I began choking on some foul smelling gas. I¡¯d encountered it before. ¡°THE ZOMBIES HAVE MIASMA!¡± The mage began curing the air by pushing the smoky substance away, while the archers and warriors covered their mouths to help protect from the effects. I had high poison tolerance, and so didn¡¯t get as effected by the air. Others weren¡¯t so lucky. Coughing fits sounded. Half of the archers seemed to be out of commission for the time. The skeletons continued to attack the frontline, unhindered by the decaying rot permeating the air. Undead. The worst abomination in this game. The skeletal mage was casting another spell. Before I even needed to give the order, the unaffected archers began pelting it with more arrows. The cumulating weight finally started to have a noticeable effect on the thing. Not enough though. The spell completed, and more zombies were summoned. I looked to the mage. She seemed to be having trouble clearing the air. It shouldn¡¯t have taken that long! Sweat was beading down her head. I scanned the miasma. The outer edges seemed to curl in on themselves and move back towards us. The skeletons were slow, and not powerful, but with the aid of the miasma they were able to put up an extraordinary fight against my men. Two were attacking me. I focused on defense until some of the other skeletons had been taken care of. If I made a mistake here it would cost us dearly. Unfortunately it didn¡¯t seem like help was coming. The poison wasn¡¯t dissipating. If anything it was getting stronger. The more zombies the archers took out, them more miasma that filled the room. Something caught my foot, causing me to momentarily lose my balance. As if waiting for this, the two skeletons seemed to grow to a moderate speed, and attacked. I brought my sword up to block both attacks, but a sudden shift in the angle of one of their weapons ended in a heavy wound across my abdomen. I gritted my teeth through the pain. I wheeled, and regained my balance. Entering an offensive posture I began to go on the offensive. Voice¡¯s POV I left the group led by Wolf alone for the most part, until they reached the boss room anyway. I had Kretchof alter it a bit for them. I also recalled all of my fairies except Kretchof. The skeletal mage, usually one to throw curses and hexes, now summoned zombies. Kretchof had told me of the power of the ¡®Miasma Bomb¡¯ of his. It was a good tactic to drain their vitality at the least. Wolf called everyone into formation, with the warriors in the front and the archers surrounding the mage. It was a good set up over all. It displeased me. The zombies were downed quickly. He even had the sense to keep the barrage of arrows up until he was sure they wouldn¡¯t get back up. Clever. My plan didn¡¯t require them to be alive anyway. Although I did want them to attack when the group thought they were dead. They were set to blow with miasma, but on a timer after death. The time delay had to be five seconds. After they expelled the gas, I had SparrowHawk guide it all towards the group. The skeletons took advantage of the scene before them. They were dealing low damage though. Wolf called the group back into action. The fact that I couldn¡¯t get anyone down was more than a little bit annoying. Wolf somehow ended up fighting two skeletons at once. Four more were downed during that time. The miniboss continued to summon his zombies, but they weren¡¯t working as well as I had hoped. The obvious conclusion was Wolf¡¯s team getting out without a death. I had Eli create a small rock to trip Wolf. Even as he fell he could perfectly block the swords of the skeletons. Remembering my arrow guiding trick I had used several days ago, I changed the trajectory of their swords. I couldn¡¯t see the red lines since I was underground, but I remembered he had a small red line across his stomach last time I saw him. I made both swords attack that general area. The one that he couldn¡¯t block in time did a fair bit of damage. The mage couldn¡¯t heal him since he was in an intense battle with SparrowHawk. The winner would decide where the miasma would gather. The gas slowly dissipated anyway, but more gathered as the archers killed the zombies. The cycle would continue until either SparrowHawk or the mage girl was out of mana. The group was slowly gaining ground on the skeletal mage. A few more minutes and they would be close enough for the warriors to attack. After the first four skeletons were killed, the battle became easier for them. Another had already fallen, and Wolf only needed to contend with one. With sheer numbers they managed to destroy two more. There was only one skeletal warrior left, along with many exploding zombies. With that Kretchof gave the order. The skeletal mage tapped his staff on the ground once. I instantly sent a number of buffs to the last skeleton warrior. Since my Magical Mastery was at 50, the cost to make a spell permanent was only 1.51 times as much. Furthermore, the effect was at 75% total strength. For being a skeleton, the warrior didn¡¯t have much natural health. Since it was part of a miniboss fight, it gained a bit. Its total HP was 750. Damage immunity gives a bonus of 50% armor rating, and 25% health bonus. With the spell permanency it would be 18.75%, or 140.625. That would cost me an insane 755 mana. My pure mana was at 1,341; my light and earth mana were at 353.875 each. I could technically cast it twice, but that wouldn¡¯t be the best option. I chose to do one of those, as well as one Movement Enhancer. That way it took mostly from light and pure mana, but also was spread out with darkness, water, wind, and earth. Using two of the same large scale spells would leave me with almost no mana, but casting spells from four different buff categories wouldn¡¯t be as strenuous on my mana pool. As soon as the mage hit his staff, I used the buffs. The skeleton became more heavily armored, and was granted a large amount of health. Its movements suddenly became like water. With speed like wind. The mage had beaten SparrowHawk. I recalled it before it completely ran out of mana. I also had Eli send earth spears into the mage¡¯s feet. The immense cry from her mouth made me question my humanity. Or not. With her out of the way, the poor sods had no way of dealing with it. Except for the holy trident held by Wolf. I had Sol take care of that. When the skeleton showed signs of increasing in power, Wolf instantly used the holy spell. Sol instantly got a bit more full of mana. I had never thought of the light fairy as more useful than at that time. The only thing left of that attack was a sharp blade of wind Four people broke off of the group to wade through the zombies. Their hope was to kill the mage quickly. It was a great idea, but one Wolf obviously didn¡¯t like. ¡°NO YOU FOOLS!¡± His desperate shout failed to get their attention. The reason he didn¡¯t want them to run off alone was to prevent casualties. An obvious strategy when the people working with you are free to betray you at any time. As soon as they sprang past the battle, the skeletal warrior struck at them. The zombies had new targets instead of only one group. Their putrid smell, and medley of diseases blocked the path to the skeletal mage. After being stopped by the solid wall of zombies, the warrior skeleton began to aggressively attack them. The zombies threw themselves at the group, trying to claw and grab whatever they could. Wolf ran to help, but not before the skeleton took out one the hapless adventurers, and wounded another. Wolf tried the holy attack again, but only managed the wind slash. While the wind slash was decent in damage, it could not even get past the enhanced armor of the skeleton. Wolf cursed as he attacked with just his weapon. I say just his weapon. It was still quite powerful. He focused on diverting the attention of the skeleton away from the fools that tried to attack the miniboss. The zombies still attacked them though. Seeing their commander in an unfavorable situation, the group behind him ran to help. So much for keeping formation and staying back. Although they broke formation, and looked all-round tacky, they easily pushed the horde of weak zombies back. The mage girl didn¡¯t have nearly enough mana left to actually push the poison away from the group. As such the group was slowly getting weakened. Even as they were winning the fight, they were dying. It was a tradeoff. In a matter of minutes the zombies were routed, and the skeletal mage had so many arrows in its hands it couldn¡¯t possibly summon more. The last skeletal warrior fought nicely, but was beaten by Wolf¡¯s massive amount of obvious training, and tempering that he had put his body through. When he was done cheers exploded from his subordinates. Hey guys, you still have to kill the boss¡­ I mean they had basically beaten it already, but it was rude to celebrate before they actually won. If I had the mana I would have done something as punishment, as it happened I didn¡¯t have any mana left after buffing the skeletal warrior. Without mana I only had my fairies. Fairies aren¡¯t really a capable fighting force. I did have Eli stab a few of the men with stone spikes, but that was about the length of what I could do without them catching on to my interference. I¡¯m sad to say the skeletal mage was quite quickly dealt with after that. Try as he might, he could not summon anything after becoming so heavily laden with arrows. The fight shouldn¡¯t have been anything to scoff at, but the group was way too strong! The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Normally one didn¡¯t enter a dungeon with forty others. Even if someone had a large fighting force, usually they made stupid mistakes in the face of countless traps and onslaught of enemies. These guys were just too weird. As soon as a number of the zombies had been dealt with, Wolf ordered a full charge at the mage. The swarm killed it almost instantly. Skeletal mages have next to no health after all. The total number of casualties for Wolf¡¯s group: 2 deaths, 1 heavily wounded, 3 heavily poisoned, 1 mildly poisoned. The poison wasn¡¯t as strong as some others, but it would last long enough to cause a huge problem for the group. The two deaths added to my points, and the wounded would hinder them for a while. After all, I wasn¡¯t exactly going to let the mage heal them, now was I? Just as I thought that Wolf brought out some very familiar bandages. Shit! He actually had those! I forgot all about them. Since I had sold him the super-healing-bandages, I couldn¡¯t very well negate their power without making my earlier claim when I sold it to him seem false. Even just as Susan¡¯s apprentice, I wanted to seem legit in my dealings at least. The mage focused on purifying the poisoned, and Wolf healed the physically wounded. I could have taken the light mana out of the area, but I didn¡¯t rust myself enough to make such precise mana absorption. That¡¯s fine. That¡¯s fine. There are only 30 people left total. I should be able to thin their numbers again before they meet the next miniboss. Actually I should see how EDI is doing. My thoughts on EDI were complicated at the moment. I appreciated that she helped me in the past, but that was in the past. The damn Sai I had given her more than paid up that debt. I kind of liked her then though. I had already set the traps across the dungeon so I sat down to think. I obviously had some sort of attraction towards EDI. The question was which kind, and how powerful. It wasn¡¯t love. That must was for sure. Although I was fairly certain that it wasn¡¯t just lust either. I did view her as someone worth having around. Maybe that was it? No, the fact that I went out of my way to choose to slow down Wolf instead of her is proof it¡¯s more than just that. While thinking these thoughts I had a disturbing question pop up in my mind. If EDI is basically the same as the NPCs then wouldn¡¯t she be done for if she died? Would she get replaced with someone that is just very similar? I recalled the last conversation we had. She freely admitted to gaining all sorts of info on my, and even had a personality change. Could she even be said to be the same person after that? Well I guess since people¡¯s personalities change all the time. Even several times a day in some cases. My head began to throb as I thought of all the possibilities and repercussions of trying to use EDI again. For some reason I wanted to team up with her again. I guess even I can get lonely after being around someone for so long. Hm¡­ this is problematic. If I go to her and ask her to team up with me, assuming she says yes, she¡¯d still have leverage over me. Unknown to me, Kretchof seemed to be able read my mind. ¡°Master, I could make another Contract for you, if you wish. That way she won¡¯t have a way to disobey you.¡± Actually that¡¯s not a bad idea. Bonus points to Kretchof for that idea. Nevermind. If I did that EDITOR wo
*Warning* You are about to make a decision based on outside knowledge. Please refrain. If you make a decision based on this knowledge you will be penalized.
Really EDITOR? I was deciding NOT to use the contract on her you know¡­ If you want me to actually I will just ignore the fact that I know you exist th
*Attention* An error in warning system has occurred. Please ignore the earlier warning in regards to decisions made about that specific knowledge.
Heh, quite the doting parent aren¡¯t you? Suddenly my hp dropped by one. HEY! IS THAT ALLOWED!? I¡¯m sure my aunt and mom would LOVE to know you bully people in this game.
*Attention* Video deleted due to incomprehensible data.
¡°*Sigh* Now you¡¯re just messing with me.¡± I shook my head. What use would getting mad be? The damn EDITOR was all powerful in this place. I was sure that my mom would notice something if anything big happened, like torture, but other than that I¡¯d have to be careful. This just makes things complicated. I pushed myself above the ground, and sat cross legged on the ground. I rested my chin on my fists. I had hurt EDI, but EDITOR hadn¡¯t done anything. When I used her as a weapon EDITOR did nothing. Either it was developing true intelligence over time, or couldn¡¯t do anything for some reason. Ah! They said the government could see my thoughts if they wanted to before. Now that they couldn¡¯t, perhaps EDITOR was taking more liberties? That didn¡¯t mean that EDITOR could get away with things scott free, though. I logged out of DIVE and was promptly put into my white room. The sudden amount of noise was insane. It looked like everyone in the world was gathered into one place: my mall. I had an envelope icon so I opened it. ¡®Hi there Brenton! It¡¯s Aunty Kelsey! Well basically this message is to tell you that you now have the single working ¡®server¡¯ connected to the dive world. I don¡¯t know how you did it (actually I do) but it seems like you made a working replica of a small city market from DIVE. We at DI pride ourselves in rewarding individuals such as yourself. Therefore, we had EDITOR create another program to watch over you complex. He has been building things requested by the users frequenting you shops. You have gained quite a few DI bills, you know? Anyway, just wanted to let you know your max capacity has been upgraded substantially! -Love Your Sweet Young Looking Aunty Kelsey~¡¯ ¡­ Whatever. I guess the butler won¡¯t hurt anything. Although she did say EDITOR made it. The letter was dated a while ago so I guess it doesn¡¯t matter. To be honest, after creating the space, and planning everything about it, I had gotten quite bored with it. I didn¡¯t really care to look around it at that time. I went into the room with my only working computer and logged on. I purchased a webcam with the massive amount of DI bills I had. Seriously. This much money would make scrooge blush! I sent a request to my mother for a video chat. After about ten minutes I got a reply. She came on the screen, and waved. ¡°Hi sweetie! How¡¯s your time in the forest going? I heard you managed to come into contact with a diseased gryphon? And cured it! That¡¯s just like my sweet little baby!¡± I coughed slightly. She gave me an apologetic smile. ¡°Sorry mom. I have something I¡¯d like to ask you. If it¡¯s ok.¡± She nodded her head. ¡°Sure ask anything.¡± ¡°Well do you- EDITOR IS CHEATING TO HELP EDI!¡± Without thinking about it before hand I managed to string the sentence together. The screen went black, then fuzzy. I decided to wait it out. Either EDITOR would doing something to me or not. Either way there wasn¡¯t anything I could do about it now. This was better than having the constant threat of being messed with by a higher being. If it went on too long I might not even be able to stop it. Several minutes after the video call, still nothing happened. I was surprised EDITOR didn¡¯t try to get some sort of retribution. After another few minutes Kelsey suddenly appeared beside me. I gave a start, but quickly tried to regain my calm composure. ¡°Hi, aunt Kelsey. What can I do for you today?¡± I gave my most innocent smile. She had a deadpan expression. ¡°It¡¯s come to my attention that something bad happened to you due to EDITOR misusing the power given to it. EDITOR will have quite a few more people, and independent programs, watching over it in the future. Also, on a completely unrelated note, if you mention anything that has to do with our software it is a breach of your contract and you can get sentenced to prison...¡± My impression of my aunt suddenly dropped several points. Besides my mother she was the one I trusted the most, since she had helped us so much. ¡°¡­ is what I¡¯d like to say, but since it¡¯s technically illegal we won¡¯t be protected by the law. So don¡¯t spread it, please?¡± Or not. I guess she¡¯s not that bad. She just doesn¡¯t want to get exposed. Understandable. ¡°I¡¯ve got to go, but I decided to correct what EDITOR did. The film file was deleted. What exactly happened?¡± I could have lied to get a large reward. ¡°Nothing really, I was just warned not to do something just because I knew about EDITOR, when I mentioned it would effect EDI the notice changed. After that EDITOR docked me an health point for being snarky.¡± She thought for a moment. ¡°Well, although that¡¯s certainly not acceptable, it¡¯s also not to the degree that we would normally offer reparations¡­¡± I shrugged. ¡°Having EDITOR not breathing down my neck all the time is good enough. There were several updates geared towards just nerfing my character ya know? I didn¡¯t think that was fair.¡± Kelsey made a face, and scratched the back of her neck. ¡°Oh, well see, those were done legally. You really were getting too powerful too quickly. We¡¯ve also nerfed quite a few other things, but you keep thinking up ways to become too powerful. If it was just you we wouldn¡¯t be bothered, but the methods you created could be used by anyone that just lucked into finding them.¡± We had a small conversation after that. I found out It¡¯d be ok to be over-powered, as long as it wasn¡¯t in a way that a lot of people could ¡®easily¡¯ obtain. For instance, using something I obtained by luck, or an event that is impossible to replicate. After that we parted. I had a fairly good idea about using enchantments to become overly powerful, and EDITOR could no longer stop me.
*Attention* An update has occurred. Enchantments will now be set to a maximum time limit, or number of uses, based on the magic put into them. Enchantments can be made permanent, at the cost of the required mana being unusable until the enchantment is disbanded. Currently enchanted gear will begin a timer once all players have completed their contests. The higher quality the enchantment, and the quality of the gear will determine the duration of the enchantment.
Hey. Didn¡¯t we just go over this? I went to back into the white room, but receive a message from mom. ¡®Dear, EDITOR is right about this one. Even though I want to punch her! She hurt my baby! Your enchantment ability is too easy to get.¡¯ WHAT MOTHERFUCKER!? TOO EASY!? I fumed for several minutes. This class was NOT easy to obtain. Alright then! You piece of shit! Listen here! You want a war!? I decided. At that moment. I was going to get back at EDITOR. I didn¡¯t know how, but I would think of something. Then something strange happened. I thought of using EDI to punish EDITOR, but I caught myself discarding the idea without even judging its worth. Why would I do that? I had to accept it at that point. Whatever my feeling for EDI, they at least were such that I didn¡¯t want to hurt her for no reason. I didn¡¯t usually find it hard to quiet down the voice people called a conscious, unless it came from some young child or small animal that is destitute. However, EDI seemed to be eliciting a similar response. I decided to find her, and¡­ I didn¡¯t know. But I knew if I saw her I¡¯d end up doing something. At least that way I wouldn¡¯t feel so weird. If something good happened, great, if not, well it¡¯s not like I lost anything. With that I went to search for EDI. And by search for I meant I had Kretchof tell me exactly where she was by summoning him and having him show me to her. Dive 65: Infiltration Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Wolf beat the mini boss. Voice had conflicting ideas about EDI, and EDITOR stepped in to harass him. Voice told his mother, and got it fixed. Then he decided to go find EDI. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! With Kretchof showing me the way, I quickly made it to EDI¡¯s location. Her people had taken a bigger hit than Wolf¡¯s, and I only sent my fairies to harass her. EDI had lost half her group. Instead of the 30 people I thought were left, there was only a total of 25 people left, including EDI and Wolf. Alright I can do this. I pumped myself up. I decided to infiltrate EDI¡¯s group, to better get a grasp on their tactics. Watching from afar was all well and good, but you could gain ten fold information being on the inside. While Sol and Tear had been harassing her group I had them do a bit of recon. Sol was tasked with not only stopping the healing and light source, but also watching the light mana signatures of the group. After showing my fairy the basic concept, it was quickly grasped. Sol pointed out one of the group. ¡°That is the person that fit you criteria most. ¡­ Are you sure about this master? I can stop their healing while you keep your distance. I don¡¯t want you to get hurt.¡± After we got to the group, and Sol pointed out my target, i was bombarded by the worry Sol had for me. I could never get the thing to shut up. I watched the group fight, after I instructed Kretchof to send a few undead against them. The target acted almost exactly as I predicted he would, given his equipment and stats. He was a high level, but fought in hand to hand combat. I made sure to watch all of his mannerisms as they continued on their journey. After studying him for over an hour I felt I had a firm enough grasp on him to start the infiltration. The stats he could hide from me were str, agi, and dex. Those three were usually for finesse type melee fighters. Unarmed combat was included in that. ¡°Sol. Go near EDI make sure she doesn¡¯t notice. Eli make a tunnel for Sol, then come back to finish the plan.¡± Both fairies got to work instantly. We had practiced this a few times with the smaller groups. Of course not enough got past the fire trap to make sure everything was ironed out, but it was the best I could hope for while decreasing the threat to the dungeon as much as possible. I found that my fairies could absorb 100 mana per second. While absorbing they could only concentrate on a minor task. So I had Sol absorb the mana, while excreting it in a flash. Sol couldn¡¯t directly absorb light mana from people, so we had to wait until the one priest in the group tried to do healing. Drake and SparrowHawk took care of that. A huge fire ball rolled towards EDI¡¯s group. Guided by SparrowHawk¡¯s wind mana, the fire ball had increased power and accuracy. EDI¡¯s group got into defensive positions right away, but it wasn¡¯t enough. I had Moro throw the enchanted stone into the group. The stone of course was the undead summoning stone. It absorbed some part of the fireball, but mostly from the priest. The priest began to heal the few wounds as soon as the fire ball had dispersed. Gotcha! Sol absorbed the mana, and caused a small amount of light to blind the group. The priest had closed his eyes, so he wouldn¡¯t be blinded, but he still had his mana sucked. As soon as the light appeared Eli opened up the hole made earlier. One of the members, a man named Rolund fell into it. Rolund was a tall man. He appeared to be at least half orc. He had lousy armor, but was equipped with a decent set of bladed brass knuckles. The fall had disoriented the man, and I quickly got to work. Eli wrapped as much earth around the man¡¯s arms and legs as possible, while Golem held the man¡¯s knuckles to the ground through their metal mana. Tear covered the man¡¯s head in water mana, and Kretchof had the zombies he sent her hold the man down while striking him. The man was many levels higher than me, but with this tactic I was at least able to incapacitate him for a short time. Of course he was struggling to get free, but I infused my darkness mana into the water mana Tear was using. The water instantly turned into pain inducing water. The screams were muffled by the water, and only bubbles escaped. I smiled while I watched. This was how my group had allowed me to infiltrate the other groups. We would distract the main group, and steal one of them. Then I we would incapacitate that one, while I did my part. I used disguise to make myself look exactly like the man. After the man stopped screaming I had Tear remove the water and the skeletons stop hitting him, but kept all of the other restraints on. I changed myself to look exactly like the man, including the shoddy iron armor he wore. My face, name, even size and shape slowly turned into him. The guise looked perfect after only about ten minutes. It used to take much longer than that, but I had lowered the time. The difference was I didn¡¯t know the way the man moved, or the way he talked. I could cope with that though. Before starting this whole ¡®infiltration game¡¯ thing I had to make sure I would not be suspected by the person¡¯s allies. I intentionally cut myself, and burned the wound close. By paralyzing part of my body, and adding drinking water with light mana instead of darkness mana, I was able to withstand a large amount of pain. My wound created a scar, but I received a notice that I could choose to remove the scar once I received the spell ¡®remove scar¡¯ or ¡®restore body¡¯. I didn¡¯t know either of those, but I could figure it out later. After changing myself I cut my tongue off, at least a portion of the tip. I sealed the wound with fire mana, and basically drank a gallon of the pain relieving water. I regretted the decision at first, but after that I put the pain and suffering I went through into action. I couldn¡¯t make my voice sound like someone else, but I could create a wind voice. I instructed Eli to weaken the tunnel as per usual. After I created a body similar to the man laying on the ground, I harshly woke him up after healing him a bit. He woke up with a shout. He instantly strained himself against the bindings. Of course I didn¡¯t let him do anything. I cast several weakness buffs on him, and had several undead holding him down. ¡°Tsk tsk tsk. That won¡¯t do. No, that won¡¯t do at all.¡± I looked at the man with a gentle smile. His eyes bulged as he saw a copy of himself staring down at him. ¡°Now you¡¯re going to help me.¡± The man spat at me, Tear deflected the spit before it hit. In a rough, almost barbaric voice he shouted, ¡°I¡¯ll never help you! You bastard! Where¡¯s my group! I¡¯ll kill you!¡± A vein was bulging on his forehead, and his face was turning red. ¡°LET ME OUT OF THIS!¡± All of his noise was deflected back into the small cave using my wind mana. I sighed as I looked at him. ¡°You WILL help me. Even if you don¡¯t want to. You want to know why?¡± I smiled an evil grin. ¡°Because your party will think I¡¯m you, until I kill them of course. Hehehe.¡± I made the most sinister laugh I could. ¡°Tch. You bastard. How dare you use my face!¡± He seemed to notice something while I laughed. ¡°Tongue-less mongrel! You won¡¯t get away with this! You sound nothing like me! You won¡¯t be able to trick anyone!¡± I shook my head as I smiled. I changed my wind mana voice, and responded. In a rough, almost barbaric voice I shouted, ¡°You sound nothing like me! You won¡¯t be able to trick anyone!¡± My voice replication was damn near perfect. I could make it sound up to 90% identical as another person¡¯s voice after only a bit of talking. Of course I wouldn¡¯t be able to catch every tiny drawl or hitch in their words they had, but the majority would be the same. That was all I could hope for. Using the mana like this even gave a plus 5 competency bonus while using Con-Artist to impersonate another person. Even if it was for a specific occasion, it was still useful. ¡°What? You sound like me? How did you do that?¡± The man sent an angry stare at me. Every word you say just helps me out. I let the man yell and scream at me for another minute, then ended him with several earth spears. Despite how good armor is, one cannot overcome a dozen spears thrust into their body as they lay on the ground. After a few seconds, the man¡¯s life quickly receded. In the gruff voice I spoke. ¡°Good, now let¡¯s get to work guys. The other group seems to be just finishing up.¡± I pushed myself out of the hole, and looked around to get my bearings. The tunnel Eli had weakened had collapsed, crushing a few of the group. Other than those, undead were attacking, while Drake poured fire on anyone that seemed to be getting a hold on the situation. Even the people that seemed to be holding up against all of this had no chance. Now that I was here they were doomed. I dismissed my fairies for the time, and had Kretchof slightly increase the amount of undead attacking us. I decided to try out my new fighting style. The man had used some sort of martial arts to deal with the undead Kretchof had sent. He stayed in the back until a fight, then went to the middle of the group. I could easily copy those tactics. The only problem is¡­ The problem was that I didn¡¯t have the combat ability of the man. I could always use my buffs, but my fundamental health was only at 1/20th of the guy I captured. If I couldn¡¯t do something about that, then I couldn¡¯t accurately portray him. I could always use my permanent buffs, but then I¡¯d have no way to protect myself if they found out who I really was. After thinking for a bit I had decided to chance it. I could only use a finite amount of permanent buffs at one. I chose to use Damage Immunity, and Movement Enhancer. That would give me at least a bit more of a fighting chance. Several of the undead that were attacking the group headed my way once I let Kretchof know that I was done stealing Rolund¡¯s identity. I easily dealt with them with the metal knuckles golem had made for me. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. They were the same iron Rolund used, but were far less effective. .After all, I had made them myself. There was no way my mana manipulation was as good, or precise, as a master smith. Still, the spiked knuckles were pretty cool to fight with. I tried to mimic his fighting style, but to little avail. It¡¯s not possible to replicate a true martial artist just by watching them for a bit. I still managed to kill the undead, not that Kretchof would have let me lose. By concentrating inspect on their weak points, I was easily able to grasp the best positions to attack. Suffice it to say, I quickly dismantled them. One of the group, TedBear, a burly man with thick hairy arms, and a thick brown beard, approached. ¡°Rolund! Thought ya were dead! Where¡¯d ya go?¡± In my new voice modulation, which cost 25 mana a second, I said, ¡°Bastards caught me by surprise. I was hanging back like usual, but the light distracted me for a bit. Son of a bitch attacked me from behind.¡± The bearish man nodded his head in understanding. ¡°Well you gotta keep in sight, ya hear?¡± I nodded my head slightly. Too much exaggeration would give me away instantly. I started helping the group move the larger rocks to look for survivors. Many of the members were heavily wounded, but breathing. Honestly I was disappointed. I was hoping to kill off more than that. I did have Eli send a few earth spears into the ones that weren¡¯t near me though. That way I could at least do a bit more damage. After everyone escaped, EDI had us line up to do a count of casualties. We took some serious damage, but only had a few deaths. I adopted a somber expression as she tallied the info. After we were done with that, EDI took out a handful of bandages. Seeing that the healing magic didn¡¯t work, she decided it was best to just use them. You know what? I will just have to convince Wolf I found a way to nullify the bandages. I contacted Sol inside my mind. Sol go make sure that Wolf¡¯s group can¡¯t heal. Just don¡¯t get caught. I instantly absorbed the healing enchantment on the bandages. Something odd happened at that moment. I looked for the mana in the bandages, but it wasn¡¯t there! The update! Technically speaking the bandages were enchanted with my mana. According to the new rules of enchanting, they had an expiration date, or had to consume a total number permanently, until used. Come to thing of it¡­ Isn¡¯t that basically what happened with me anyway? Then why was there a need for an update. My eyes went wide for a moment before I concealed it. No way. Did¡­ Did EDITOR just nerf every enchanter BUT me? I didn¡¯t know if it was an oversight, probably not, or intentional, but I had no time to think about it. We were moving out. I naturally slid to the back of the group. EDI had finished healing the injured with the bandages, although she looked a bit perplexed after seeing how much it took to actually utilize them. HA! Without my enchantments, those are just some very powerful pieces of healing cloths¡­ Even without my enchants the bandages were still created by me with the utmost precision. They were still a good deal better than other material on the same level. I was gratified to realize the enchantments Wolf paid for were gone. I got profit, but he got nothing. This is how it should be. After a few hours of following EDI I realized something. She must have gotten some mental upgrades with all that knowledge added. Kretchof couldn¡¯t corral them as much as we wanted. They seemed to chose the direction by using a method which is basically cheating the system. EDI always walked with one hand on the left wall. It doesn¡¯t matter which hand or wall you do this with, if you do it, unless the maze changes, you will find your way out. That is unless the maze has some sort of hidden exit. Of course my maze had both. Eli, go seal up a few random passages behind or in front of us. It doesn¡¯t matter which ones. Just make sure the maze is different than a few seconds ago. Eli complied. Like the little ball of dirt had any choice. Anyway, the infiltration was a success. Nobody suspected a thing. After a while we made it to a boss room. EDI turned around proudly. ¡°Alright guys! Time to make this ¡®boss¡¯ our collective bitch! Let¡¯s go!¡± Her smiled was almost creepy. Her personality really had done a 180. She used to be, I don¡¯t know how to put it, I guess I would say she was a little shy, and a little distance. Now she had no filter, and seemed way too upbeat to be a rational human being. This is EDITOR¡¯s fault. At least before I could have had some sort of alliance with her. I mentally sighed. Once I got into the group I had questioned what would happen when EDI began talking to me again. The answer surprised me. Nothing. I no longer felt any emotional attachment to her. I knew this probably indicated some sort of chemical imbalance, or some deficiency in human nature. Either way it didn¡¯t matter. What mattered was that I could get into my work with 100%. It was nice how easy it was to actually confuse the people about who I was. The requirements I picked were simple. I needed four things. 1. The person has to be a loner type. If someone were more quiet, and didn¡¯t seem to make friends in the group easily, then it would be harder for others to tell they were acting differently. 2. The person has to have a fighting style that I can replicate. Rolund didn¡¯t really have a fighting style I could easily imitate, but he was the only one that didn¡¯t use flashy skills I didn¡¯t know how to make. That reason right there basically made him the only choice. 3. He has to have a set power range. If the person were too powerful, or too weak, then he would be watched more than the other group members. Whether that was to be aided or to seek aid from was irrelevant. 4. The person has to be stupid enough to fall for my trap. The entire group fell for the diversion, but Rolund was the one that stayed away from everyone when the fighting started. That was because he would push people out of the way to go to the middle, where he could see some action. Rolund fit those requirements the most, and so became the lucky one to inherit my possession. Since he was more of a loner type I was basically left alone. Except for the mage. The mage seemed to have some kind of grudge. He would heal me last, even though I could just heal myself, and not assist as much in battle. We entered the large colosseum looking room. Around it were spread several large spider-webs, with bodies dangling from them. The webs went from the ceiling, about forty feet above us, to about four feet from the ground. On the ground scuttled several hundred bug monsters. The group gasped as they were attacked as soon as they entered the room. While we had been looking at the room, one man was dragged away instantly. Normally he might have been able to keep his balance as the unseen bugs clawed at his feet, but a small concentrated gust of wind to his knees quickly fixed that. His screams echoed throughout the hall. EDI pulled out her two Sai. ¡°CHARGE! DON¡¯T STOP TILL YOU DROP!¡± She dashed forward without waiting. Wow this is nothing like when we were fighting together in the dungeon. I was biding my time before, but I won¡¯t get a better chance than this! Those thoughts passed my mind as I watched everyone else in the group rush forward. The only ones that didn¡¯t run were me and the magic user. I whispered in his ear using my wind mana. ¡°Hey priest, I got poisoned can you cure it? One of the bastards got me in the leg.¡± Blood trickled down a shallow cut I had Golem make when we first entered the room. He looked at me with utter disdain. ¡°You are the only one that gets hurt this much. You must be a klutz IRL.¡± He shook his head as he approached. ¡°If this keeps up you will be kicked out of the group. I don¡¯t really think the healing magic will work, but EDI would have my head if I didn¡¯t try.¡± He bent down to look at the wound. As soon as his head was right above my knee¡­ BAM. I kicked his forehead with all of my might. He stumbled back and gasped. Just as planned, SparrowHawk had been watching for an opportunity. As soon as the man stumbled, SparrowHawk tripped him in the same manner as I tripped the other man earlier. He fell with a thud. ¡°What the!? What the fuck do you think you¡¯re doi-¡° He was interrupted by a fist to the face. The bladed knuckles wouldn¡¯t do much damage against a warrior, but they did a nice bit against this mage. I threw a punch at his throat immediately after hitting his face. The spell he started casting was dissolved instantly. He tried to shout for help, but I summoned Tear faster. Instantly his entire head was surrounded by a large ball of water. I kicked him to force him on his back. The man was grabbing at his throat while drowning. A wicked smiled spread across my lips as equipped my staff. I took out the blades, and punctured both places the lungs were located. I could have let him die like that, but I didn¡¯t want anyone to get the chance to see it was me. I sliced his throat neatly, and threw him into the webs. He body wasn¡¯t light enough for it to be no effort, but I could still throw him thanks to my strength. He landed just a few feet above the end of the web, and was stuck there. His body joined the legion of dead bodies that were just ¡®hanging out¡¯. I laughed at my obvious superior humor. Man I crack myself up sometimes. I smiled and shook my head as I headed towards my next victim. Now that the only mage of the group was out of the way it would be much easier to deal with the group. Dive 66: A Battle of Attrition Begins Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice watched EDI¡¯s group for a while, and picked a target for his infiltration mission. Voice trapped one of the people in EDI¡¯s group, and stole his identity. After fighting for a while through the dungeon, the group finally made it to their first boss room. Voice killed the only magic user, aside from himself. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! I got another rating yesterday! I am pretty stoked about almost having four stars. I¡¯m glad the readers think so highly of my work! My next victims were the long range users. If there were only melee people it wouldn¡¯t be that hard to destroy all of them after they beat this and one more boss room. The way I had Kretchof use the dungeon is a bit different than what he wanted at first. Instead of just unleashing death on the people, I was using them for data and experiments. This time Kretchof would only unleash the insects after the insect boss room was defeated. That way they couldn¡¯t come up with a way to deal with it. The same for the spiders. Anyway, I began to search for the targets I would destroy. I already knew which users were the long rangers, so I had Kretchof show me where each of them were. Unlike most bosses Kretchof could actually see where everyone in his dungeons were. That gave an almost infinite amount of possibilities for contending with the enemy. I obviously went for the strongest archers first. One of them even had bombs! That was unacceptable. Those bombs were made from my hard work! ¡­ of obtaining info for Susan. I put away my staff as I went towards the location Kretchof indicated. My fairies regenerated some mana from all of the battles before, but it was considerable low. I had to do this without their help if my plans were going to go off without a hitch. I obscured myself in darkness, and slowly snuck towards the archer. She was fighting three of the insects at once. It was a decent feat, but she couldn¡¯t attack very well. Her shots were all aimed at keeping the beasties at bay, and slowly damaging them. When I was close enough I sent a small earth spear, the size of a finger, through her left calf. She let out a harsh gasp. The pain dial might be only a fraction of real pain, but it was enough to make her falter. That was all the insects needed. They took the initiative instantly, and jumped at her. While she tried to get her balance back, the insects landed on her. Her bow fell a foot away. She grabbed for it, but a tight gust of wind came out of nowhere. It didn¡¯t blow her bow away, but the string had been cut. She gripped it and attacked the insects with the wooden shaft. Not bad. I¡¯ll give her that. I was slightly impressed by the tenacity she showed. However, that wasn¡¯t enough to beat me. Suddenly her bow caught fire. Using fire in an enclosed area is always a bad idea. The carbon dioxide buildup is toxic after only a few minutes. Especially when there is all this flammable spider thread everywhere. She almost let go of the bow as it lit. She managed to keep hold of it, and used the flames to her advantage. She continued to pummel the insects with it. Unknown to her, I had been absorbing the water mana near her, and feeding it to Tear. Suddenly a large wisp of flame attached to the webbing. It spread more quickly than I thought it would. The already hectic battlefield, became even more disorderly. Before there were small skirmishes with only one or two players vs. a few insects. Now the users were getting chased by falling flaming web. Not only that, when the flame attached to one of the dead bodies it fell to the ground. The undead would raise and attack the closest target. They took considerable damage just being on fire, but the fear effect they instilled on the users was worth it. I found out about it on one of the many experiments I did between fights with the groups before EDI and Wolf¡¯s.
Flame-Cased Undead Zombie
A zombie that has been encased in flames. The flames deal constant damage, but the effect ¡®fear¡¯ is added to the zombie. The zombie has a 25% chance to cause a fear effect to an entity below its level. A group of zombies will add half of their level each to determine the level of effectiveness.
Fear Effect
Any NPC, Monster, or User that is inflicted with fear will have their stats cut by 15%.
I didn¡¯t know why undead by themselves didn¡¯t cause this effect, but at least I found a new way to utilize this dungeon. Of course, the zombies here were some of the higher-level ones. With the dozens of high-level zombies, they could even effect ShortDwarf! The flaming zombies began to congregate to the largest amount of users. Fighting a fearful monster, and the insects, proved too much for most. Several users were caught off guard, and received the debuff. While they were preoccupied I began my next set of plans. The bow girl was dispensable. I used the blindness debuff on her. Her movements stopped for a fraction of a second. In that time the insects surrounded her, and began to consume her still living flesh. Her shrieks were only amusing for a few seconds. After that I used some wind mana to silence her. The voice changing idea could also be used to delete the sound altogether. It was quite useful in a variety of situations. After her death, and my points gain, I continued on to the next person. As soon as I encountered a lone person, I used the blindness debuff, and pushed an earth spear into one leg. It was a brilliant tactic. Occasionally I would also have to help the insects. I would either use another debuff, or directly use my magic to attack them. In that case it was mostly water around the head method. Like that I continued to deplete the numbers of the group. Sadly they began to wipe out the insects, and the flaming zombies died out. When that happened I had to give up on my killing spree. When not in a direct battle, I did quite well at taking out the higher leveled users. Still, I was sad not to get any experience from killing them, since technically it all went to the dungeon. Through using the boss room, I managed to kill off all but 7 of the people. EDI had managed to be a part of that 7. My points were getting high though. I was technically the eighth, but I didn¡¯t have enough confidence to be part of such a small group of people. I might look and sound like the guy I was impersonating, but I knew that I didn¡¯t walk or act the exact way as he did. I made a strategic retreat before they finished clearing the room. I was below them, and sensing their light mana again. I decided I had to go back to stall Wolf. They still had to battle the boss anyway. The boss was a giagantic queen insect. She could spew up to two insects every ten seconds. She was always surrounded by at least 20 insects as well. She had actually made her home on the top of the spider silk, seeing as she was immune to the stickiness. Kretchof told me he was lost in the maze, but if he found his way out of it, then he would find the boss room. Of course I had made the maze a mite bit more difficult than it normally would have been. I asked Kretchof for the remaining time. Two hours. All I had to do was wait two hours. Hehe. This is why I¡¯ve been stalling you lot this whole time. Thinking about it seriously though, EDI¡¯s group was a lot less coordinated, and easier to kill. It was kind of sad to think that my former partner was that weak at leading a group. I guess it works out for me though. I quickly made my way to the maze, Eli¡¯s power needed to regenerate, so I was on my own. Thankfully Kretchof had sent one of the moles to assist me. All I had to do was put the earth mana back together. Getting to them took about ten minutes. Five to get to the maze, and five to catch up to the group. The mole stayed with me while I devised a plan, keeping pace with Wolf¡¯s group would have been hard otherwise. The maze was littered with traps, with a few monsters thrown in. ¡°MASTER!¡± Kretchof yelled in my ear. WHAT! WHY ARE YOU YELLING! In a more subdued voice, Kretchof continued to speak inside my head. ¡°Sorry Master. I¡¯ve connected to another dungeon. I thought you should be notified.¡± My displeasure instantly abated. Really? Which one? I ignored the logical chance of actually finding a dungeon that fast. It had happened so why ask how? ¡°I do not know the name, but it has a large amount of monsters. Rats, bats and a few vampires are all there. The overflow rate isn¡¯t very large, but you can get about one monster a day.¡± It wasn¡¯t as great as I thought. There was a percentage chance of each of the monsters coming in. If it only happened once a day, it would probably be months before a vampire, even a weak one, came through. It was the same for the worm dungeon I had conquered. The worms only left once a year at most. That was why I didn¡¯t have any. Well at least there will be a slight bit more variety in the dungeon I contacted Kretchof. Kretchof. I want you to breed whatever comes through there. Make more space for the moss and things to grow if you have to. And since they are bats, they will most likely want to eat insects. Breed the bugs more. Reduce the rodent population if you have to a bit. The bugs had been caught while i had been in the dungeon. I instantly made Kretchof make the boss room, and breed them like crazy. The queen came out after a while, and all other bugs stopped reproducing. Back into the maze. The maze had been littered with my few remaining undead summoning stones, as well as many homemade traps. The two hundred foot pitfall was my favorite. Sure someone could try to slow their fall, but 200 feet was a long way. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Thankfully, it ended in water. Unfortunately, some of the amphibian monsters infested the water. A large fish dump also connected it. I watched with delight as one of his crew fell into it. He had been through so many traps that he was actually forcing one of the scouts to try to find any trap before hand. That was great, but I had places where there were three or four traps. Or multiple ways to activate one trap. When the scout came back to say he disarmed the trap, he fell into the pit he didn¡¯t know was there. To be fair to him, it only was noticeable from one direction, and only activated from that direction. Poor guy. Wolf was down to 12 people, including himself. That was bad. The maze was the most difficult part of the dungeon. If it didn¡¯t even manage to kill 10 people, then I was in trouble. The amount of traps he had to go through should have been able to wipe out a small army. (at least 50 people). Damnit! This Wolf guy is getting fucking annoying. He had already passed the undead asylum, the falling spike walls, even the pouring water spout trap. Those could have, killed, crushed, and drowned ten people each. Wolf is obviously some sort of expert at this type of thing. He definitely has military background. Gotta think militaristically then. If his troops were designed to mimic the military, they would have rations somewhere. I needed to find the people holding the rations, and take them out. The contest only had another few days, but the maze would change in only another couple of hours. If I could kill that guy, then Wolf would have a damaged supply line. Taking out supply lines is one of the most basic military strategies. If I had a supply unit who would it be? Warriors were out. Even if they had the best defense, they were the most likely to face potentially hazardous situations. Mages were out, they faced danger less often, but had a higher chance of dying versus intelligent monsters. The only logical choices were archers, or Wolf himself. It would most likely be Wolf. He generally stayed in the front, but was well versed in dodging, and typically took little to no damage. I had Kretchof unleash the insects, and corral them to the maze. The traps were specifically designed to only work on things that weighed more than the rodents. While the rodents weighed about 75 pounds. It was a lot for a rodent, but very little for humanoids. Stealing the supplies was a no go if Wolf carried them. I continued to follow them as the insects entered the maze. Kretchof perfectly directed them so that they would surround the enemies. I stalled the group by blowing them with the occasional gust of wind. The lost balance forced them to be slow and steady. Their speed dropped to about three quarters. They were well trained to only drop that much. The insects that were making it to the front of the group were taking longer than the insects at the back. Kretchof seemed to be having a hard time getting everyone into position. I continued my delay tactics until they were surrounded. As soon as they were, I sent the blindness debuff to the priest. He instantly stumbled as the insects swarmed them. Wolf seemed to notice the hitch in the mage, and took action to protect him before the insects even attacked. Come on! Is he really that good!? I could understand some of the stuff he did, but he managed to steadily beat the entire dungeon I had been preparing for days, months if I included the time to start the dungeon. I sunk the mage in the ground a bit, and he fell over. The monsters began swarming him, but Wolf repelled them with apparent ease. The other groups weren¡¯t having such an easy time. They were being assaulted from all sides after all. The warriors invariably blocked the attacks, and the distance fighters thinned the numbers of insects steadily. Honestly it was really annoying. It would have been great if they just obediently died when I wanted. Alas, tis never as one would wish. I selected a few key targets. They were archers or warriors that seemed to be distinguished in battle. I cast the darkness debuff on them, and Kretchof quickly sent the insects to attack. I also cast the minor petrification on Wolf. His movements suddenly dropped to the level of a trained warrior, from the level of absurdity he was previously at. After that the battle went my way. ¡­ Or so I wish I could say. While it¡¯s true they took some damage, it was only minor. They still managed to eradicate the bugs. The battle did take a while though. As a means of slowing their progress, it was successful. I didn¡¯t kill anyone though. I kept the darkness debuff of the group members I had casted it on. The main ones I targeted were those that were most successful at detecting the traps. Their speed again dropped after that. But this was all delaying tactics. I couldn¡¯t really manage to off any more of the people in Wolf¡¯s group after that. I decided to let them play it out while being blinded. I had to go to the boss rom ahead to prepare something that might actually stop them. So I created a few nifty traps in the next boss area. Like this I was at least hoping to be able to lower their numbers a bit. They got to it faster than I had hoped, but it looked like one of them was still damaged. Either Wolf ran out of bandages, or he is so low he needs to ration them. Both ways are helpful to me. The group stepped through to the next boss area. They entered a cramped room, with low curved ceilings. The ceiling was just tall enough for someone to have to hunch over to walk. The walls spread out a far distance. All in all it gave a very¡­ squat, feeling. The feeling was amplified by the stark raise in temperature. Rotting flesh was especially prevalent in the area. As each of the members gazed at the room, I cast the blindness debuff on all of them. Of course I had to take off my buffs, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice. A group of blinded combatants wasn¡¯t that big of a deal. Since there was only 12 people left, it only cost me a total of 1788 mana to do. Some were resistant to it though. I got a notification that two of the people had ¡®dark vision¡¯. That is to say they could somehow see without any light. I guessed infrared or something. The heavily armored units wouldn¡¯t take much damage from simple earth spears, so I had come up with something unique. The only two that could see what was happening were Wolf, and one of the archers. The mage was busy trying to cure the darkness on the others. The mage had cured herself, and the others of the darkness debuff. I had to cast the blindness on them several times. My mana regen was faster than the mage¡¯s. I could keep casting the blindness for longer than she could cast the spell to delete it. It was basically a game of tag where the person that was it could stop time to look for people. Completely unfair to the girl. She kept casting the removal spell on herself so she could see to cast it on others. As she was doing that I made sure my fairies were ready to go. Tear had absorbed all of the water mana near the entrance, and most of it throughout the rest of the room. Drake had applied a large amount of fire mana to the area. Eli loosened up the ground enough that small cracks could be seen, but not to drop anyone into a hole. Moro was out doing the task in the final boss room. Just to keep things going I even had SparrowHawk add in wind mana to swirl the entire mana density to perfection. The swirling heat showed immediate effect. The entire group had been battered for hours after entering the labyrinth. Their wills were weakening. Only the command abilities of Wolf kept them on their feet. I gave up on the darkness debuffs for a minute. The mage managed to heal everyone from the blindness. Just as she finished with the last person, I activated one of the biggest fire balls I could. My mana had regained a nice bit, so the amount of fire poured into the room wasn¡¯t insignificant. The fireball blinded many of the group just by its intense light. That wasn¡¯t the point though. The mage instantly threw up the shield used in the last fire trap. Heh, you think that will work twice? Drake dragged all of the fire mana into the ground. With Eli loosening any hard bits, the floor started sucking up a massive amount of heat. The group realized the problem, but it was too late. The floor began to bubble. With Eli¡¯s and Drake¡¯s help, I had turned the entire floor into lava! The lava was some of the weakest you would ever find. It could be put out with just a bit of water, but it was still lava. The mage, seeing what had happened, changed from the shield into a water attack. The water splashed the ground, and steam raised instantly. Of course Tear and SparrowHawk were helping to guide all of that steam. The steam collected as I continued to pour fire mana into the ground. It was a lot easier to put the fire out than maintain the fire. That was fine though. My final plot didn¡¯t need the floor to be lava anyway. I moved the fire mana from the edges of the room closer to the group. As the steam increased Wolf noticed the other members were starting to have trouble breathing. That was my plan. Not killing them with fire, but suffocating them. I didn¡¯t know how to manipulate oxygen, but I could fill the room with gas at the very least. The steam released wasn¡¯t cooling down as quickly as it should have. In fact, it was spreading out. It was filling the room faster than should be possible, at least without the help of mana fairies. When Wolf shouted for the mage to stop, it was too late. The entire room had been flooded in the steam that refused to cool. That also could have been due to my adding in pure mana to excite the fire mana further. The mage tried to cast a wind barrier to blow the steam away from her gasping colleagues, but SparrowHawk stopped that. Undead began to drop from the ceilings. The undead lost small chunks of hp when they hit the heated floor, but not enough to hinder their movements. With the undead attacking, and his soldiers in an unfit state to fight, Wolf was in trouble. Sadly for them, that wasn¡¯t all I had planned in this room. Dive 67: To The Boss Room Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice attacked a few of EDI¡¯s group, and left the rest to the boss of that room. After that he went to stall Wolf in his maze. The excessive amount of traps barely even dented Wolfs¡¯ troops. After adding a bit of spice to the maze, Voice decided he wouldn¡¯t be able to do much damage to them. He went to the next boss room Wolf would get to, and set up a series of traps. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Sorry that took a while to get out. I was planning on having it out on Friday, but an unexpected online test appeared! The zombies attack Wolf¡¯s group, even with the heated steam seeping through the air. They didn¡¯t need to breathe, so could move around better. Wolf¡¯s group was having trouble breathing, and the mage couldn¡¯t blow the thick, hot, steam away. With Tear, SparrowHawk, and Drake each doing their task, it was basically impossible to actually stop the steam. I had Golem and Sol go back to help Moro in the final boss chamber. I also made Golem add metal mana to sharpen the nails of the zombies. With the tiny bit of extra attack, they would be able to deal a lot more damage. Since Wolf¡¯s team was having trouble even breathing, they would not be able to defend very well. Only Kretchof didn¡¯t have a mana based assignment, but he had a much bigger responsibility. The zombies attacked Wolf¡¯s group, even as I cast my blindness buff on them. I targeted the ones that were being attacked first, even going so far as to cast a petrification debuff on Wolf. The mage was trying her best to keep the steam from suffocating the group, but wasn¡¯t getting very far. She didn¡¯t even have time to think about curing the debuff status of the select individuals. Since they were blinded, and couldn¡¯t breathe, their comrades had to take to protecting them. Even their comrades couldn¡¯t breathe very well. With everything seemingly going against them, they had more than just a little trouble dealing with the enemies. The main boss hadn¡¯t even arrived yet, and they were already getting ready to drop. To help that along, I initiated stage two. With the steam in the room swirling around them, they had trouble breathing. I had Tear help me focus the steam into just a few balls of water. I had Drake heat the earth, to try to make a magma pit. That way the mage would either provide us with more water, or let her allies be sucked into a burning pit. Tear and I gathered the water around the mage, and two other outstanding individuals. Wolf was one of them, but I knew he probably had something for this kind of situation. Still, it never hurt to try, so I put a ball of water around his head as well. As soon as the water encompassed the mage, she started to flail around. I sent several earth spears into her body, but she was protected against them somehow. Fucking mages. Always trying to protect themselves with spells. Not that I had actually expected to kill her with that. I knew she wasn¡¯t an easy opponent, if she was I¡¯d have already killed off everyone here. She waved her hands frantically. I almost started to laugh at the weird gestures she was making. Too late, I realized the gestures weren¡¯t random at all. A blindingly brilliant light flooded the room. The ones not caught by my darkness spell flinched at the sudden increase of visibility. Even I had to shy my eyes away from the massive amount of mana that was cast. I even got a notice about it.
Magic Seal has been cast.
Magic Seal nullifies all magical abilities in the area. Spells that were already cast will be rendered invalid. No spells can be cast for the next 60 minutes in this area, or by anyone that was in the area when the spell was cast. Seals up to rank three spells. Fairies caught in this spell, that are up to rank 3, will be sent back to the Ether Realm for 60 minutes.
??? What¡¯s this now? Magic Seal? This isn¡¯t good. This is bad! I had a plan, but it would be a lot harder with no magic. In fact, how the heal did she manage to make that? When I tried to use mana, I got a notification saying it was temporarily impossible to use mana. I tried looking at the mana in the air near her, but I couldn¡¯t even activate Mana Sight. Since the girl somehow managed to destroy my fairies, except Sol, Moro, and Kretchof, I was left with no one to help me. I couldn¡¯t even dig a tunnel to go anywhere! I was stuck only being able to go to the final boss room, unless I felt comfortable in digging through pure stone. I had placed a major tunnel beneath each mini boss room. The tunnels all connected to the final boss room. That way Kretchof could send more undead easily if the boss rooms looked to be in trouble. Of course it wasn¡¯t allowed for the Boss of the dungeon to actually do that, but technically they weren¡¯t entering the room, even though they got inside. The rooms were designed to be impossible to enter except for the one door. That didn¡¯t apply to the ground though. I had Kretchof place undead just close enough to the surface to be considered in the room before the group entered it. Not close enough to be dealt damage from the magma though. Anyway I went for an angry stroll to Kretchof¡¯s room. I couldn¡¯t do anything for the next hour anyway. I¡¯d hate to be in the way of the monsters. I had Kretchof finish off the traps in the room before starting the actual boss battle. I didn¡¯t know how it would turn out without me guiding the plan, but I had no choice but to trust Kretchof at this point. The plan was difficult to complete. In one small area, Eli and I had created a really deep hole. That was it. Although it was covered up by a very thin layer of stone. The stone was so brittle, that anything over 80 pounds would instantly crack it. Then the object would fall several hundred feet downwards. The drop ended abruptly with several metal encased stone spikes. The spikes were covered in my special venom-like poison that I made from environmental mana. That way it wouldn¡¯t disappear. I had Sol return to me, and help Moro in the boss room. Something I found out was that Moro was immune to poison. Which was great. Sol wasn¡¯t, but Moro could also protect one other person from the poison. That ¡®person¡¯ was obviously Sol. That way they could work until our guests arrived. I wouldn¡¯t want the room to be unprepared. With Sol helping Kretchof and Moro, the work almost doubled in speed. The reason Kretchof was helping? Well you¡¯ll find that out a bit later. EDI¡¯s POV I finally made it out of the mini boss room. Only four of us are left. The queen ant thing was way too powerful for normal. Even if she was designated as the dungeon mini boss. I knew Voice was behind this somehow. I didn¡¯t know how though. I had an instinct that he was also behind the traps. He used to use various tactics to win, but my thoughts were that he has went to the next step and actually started setting up traps. Setting up these traps would have taken a lot of work. Especially with all of the undead attacking. The most obvious conclusion was that he had somehow made a sort of deal with the dungeon. That would be the worst case scenario though. With his innate manipulation of mana, befriending a dungeon would mean his powerbase was several times higher than when I met him. Or worse yet, he might have subjugated the dungeon like he did with the monsters in the first dungeon we fought together. I was sad to remember that. We had a lot of fun. Now I had to act like a completely different person because EDITOR thought it would make me seem more ¡®human¡¯. Not even humans act this peppy all the time. I knew how manipulative Voice was, but he was still the first friend I made. At least he was upfront about it after I confronted him. I took his words to heart. Everyone in my group did seem to want something. No one was helping just to help someone out. They all wanted a piece of the profit. Which was ok. Economy was built on transactions like that. I couldn¡¯t get mad at him not wanting to be around me anymore. I mean I was the one hiding that I was an AI. But it was still pretty heartless of him to kick me aside like that. I could have helped him a lot. That was all in the past though. I would show him the folly of breaking up our friendship. I sent a message to BigBadWolf, and went to the rendezvous area. I would wait for him to come, and regroup. There was no way we could fight another boss with just four of us. That was about a fifth of what I started with when Wolf and I split into groups. Wolf¡¯s POV This is getting bad. As soon as we entered the mini boss chamber I could feel the difference in the air. Something was wrong, but we already entered. The doors were closed until we won, or all of us died. I look around. Several my troops are inflicted with blind. At least it¡¯s not all of us. I had already experienced that. Luckily I have night vision and dark vision. I could see up to 30 feet without any light. The air is getting hot, but no sign of enemies yet. An enormous fire ball comes at us. The mage girl blocks it, but the fire seems to have a mind of its own. It swerves and hits the ground. The ground is slowly becoming lava! ¡°SPRAY IT!¡± I yell at the mage. She immediately starts using water jet to cool the ground. It seems I¡¯ve fallen for another trap. The steam around us doesn¡¯t dissipate. It just gathers. My troops are having trouble breathing. Margret the mage uses Vortex to clear away the steam. Unlike what she showed me before, it seems as though Vortex is nothing more than a gentle breeze. She seems to be putting all of her strength into it though. Then it happens. Zombies start pouring towards us. They are dropping from the sky! Damn! How did Voice manage to get past all of this!? He must be some savant at fighting or something. From the little amount of info EDI had given me, Voice wasn¡¯t good at fighting up close. He would get better if he fought the same enemy multiple times though. Despite that he tended to like fighting up close even though his class was magic based. I could respect that. A real man always likes to fight up close. The fight isn¡¯t that hard, but the lack of oxygen is problematic. The zombies move so slowly they could never be a threat. My troops don¡¯t seem to be having as easy of a time. Margret dispelled the blindness debuff, but it just comes back. She can¡¯t keep up with that and the wind at once. I have her concentrate on the wind. If we can¡¯t breathe we have no chance at victory. It¡¯s starting to get too much. Some of the troops are taking damage. It seems the blindness only effected key targets. Suddenly water surrounds my head. I had a nifty ring that let me breathe in water though, so it wasn¡¯t a problem. The problem is that about a quarter of my men have the same thing happening to them. Margret decides to use her unique magic. After a few seconds all magic in the area is gone. She can¡¯t cast spells for an hour though. That at least almost guarantees that we will win this boss fight though. The zombies stop coming at that point. After we kill the remaining ones, I tell my men to stay on high alert. The mini boss hadn¡¯t shown up yet. Suddenly hands start springing up from the ground beneath us. I cut one that is grabbing my ankle, but another hand instantly comes out right beside it. The hands continue to sprout from the ground. After cutting off several more hands, I notice something in the walls. Not on them, but in them. The walls are crawling with monsters! I shout to my men to get into the formation I prepared for something like this. Instantly the archers surround the mage, and the warriors surround the archers. The monsters weren¡¯t much to look at, just demon spiders. Putting demon in front of the name did make them seem more powerful though. They are basically just large spiders. The spiders start to quickly crawling towards us. When they reach us they begin throwing web. Of course the archers are attacking them, but it doesn¡¯t seem to do very much damage. The warriors have their hands full with blocking the constant web throwing. I am helping of course, but the stream of web seems infinite. ¡°MEN! Ignore the web! Attack the spiders only!¡± I shout the command, and immediately follow it myself. I dash forward and attack the closest spider. The spider shoots its web right at me face, but I ducked under it. With a quick swipe of my weapon, I draw the first blood. Its face would sport a nice scar in the future. It sinks backwards, and another two spiders take its place. I already can¡¯t see where it went. The amount of spiders coming from the walls is constant. They just keep pouring out. The hands don¡¯t seem to effect the spiders, but they keep pulling at my group. Damn. I¡¯m going to make the boss of this room pay for this! I had never been forced to use so much of my power. Now that I had, I am going to make sure the thing regrets it. As I slash forward, and break one of the spider¡¯s necks, I take a chance and look back. My group isn¡¯t fairing nearly as well as I am. Half of them are half covered in web, while the other half seems to be having a lot of trouble holding off only a handful of spiders each. I rush over there to help protect them. While I run back, I notice some of the spiders running against the flood of their kin. SHIT! THEY HAVE SOMEONE! I look at my group and realize who it is right away. They took Margret! There was no hope of avoiding further casualties if the mage died. I try to rush forward to get her, but the spiders start to concentrate at my location. I hack and slash at them, but that only pushes them back a few inches each time. I used my racial ability. High jumping was one of the various capabilities of being part wolf. I could jump of twenty feet in the air with my skill level in jump. I jump over a swath of the spiders, but Margret is already extremely far away. They seem to be heading for an area the other spiders are avoiding. I continue to jump, but the spiders attach themselves to my body. They crawl up me, and try to imprison me in their webs. I throw one of the few bombs I managed to get off Susan. A small circle of spiders curl up, dead. I jump there, while trying to dislodge the spiders on my body. I have a skill that I can use to get rid of the web, but I can only use it once every ten minutes. If I used it now I would waste most of it. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. They are almost there though! I decide there is no other option. I cover myself in flames. It is an ability and not a spell. So it doesn¡¯t get the restriction of her spell. I continue throwing out my bombs as I run forward. Whatever web touches me evaporates into nothing. She is getting too close to that empty space! I increase my speed as much as possible. The spiders arrive at the empty spot, and just sit her there. I rush forward to grab her. A crack appears in front of her. Several more start to pop into existence. The cracks spread out like a web. Without warning, the ground under her collapses in a ten foot area. I can¡¯t see the bottom. My anger starts to boil over, that¡¯s when all of the spiders turn their attention to me. Voice¡¯s POV Kretchof came to tell me that the room was finished. I couldn¡¯t actually go in there, or I¡¯d risk dying myself. Well I have a way around that, but it would only work for about an hour at the most. I was watching the clock tick down as Kretchof continued to keep me updated about the two groups progress. It turned out better than I had expected. EDI only had herself, and three others to help. By the time Wolf killed off the queen spider, he was by himself. The mage died as predicted in the hole. It was lined with spikes after all. The queen was given instructions to try to block Wolf, and kill everything else. I was reluctant at first to have the queen fight, if she died then I¡¯d have no more spider minions to make silk for me. Their silk had gotten quite a bit better over the small amount of time. It might have been the manufacturing was better though. Either way, it went from extremely crappy quality, to low quality. Quite the improvement. Kretchof assured me that wasn¡¯t how it worked. He had given a sizable amount of sacrifices to Davros. Of course I had to ok it. I told him to do whatever he was sure would benefit me. Kretchof asked for as much detail as possible on running a dungeon, and how to make it more powerful quickly. Davros¡¯ answer was fairly detailed. A brief summary of the important parts was: Mini bosses respawn after 24 hours once the party that has defeated them leaves the dungeon. The same goes for the boss. The various dungeon monsters respawned 24 hours after they were beaten, regardless of if the players left. The dungeon boss could even gain exp by draining it from his subordinates. (I already knew that one.) Honestly the explanation went on and on. He wasn¡¯t the god of darkness and intelligence for nothing I suppose. Since Kretchof had gained so much knowledge, we implemented a lot of it in our battle plans. My favorite was the fact that anything players did that enhanced the boss room, without compromising its power in any way, would become part of it. The last mini boss the group had to fight was the necromancer girl. She had apparently put something called ¡®death wards¡¯ on each entry way of her section of the labyrinth. They basically had a low chance of causing instant death. The more powerful the creature, the lower the chance. But they had to go through at least a hundred door ways just to reach her. I told Kretchof to hurry them along. If they didn¡¯t get to her, then it would be pointless. The dungeon was going to change in less than an hour now. Kretchof went to work right away. After Wolf met up with EDI¡¯s group, they were attacked by several undead. Another group started shambling towards them from a bit far away. The process repeated for a while. After a matter of minutes, they arrived at the correct part of the labyrinth. Kretchof had gotten good at leading people to places he wanted them to go. After they made it there, I had Kretchof throw everything he had at them. He only kept enough reserves to make sure they would have trouble if they didn¡¯t make it to a safe room in time. Four mini boss sections, four safe rooms. They cut through the zombies. They sliced through the rodents and insects. They even made it through the angered spiders. One person dropped because of the death ward, but the other four people were fine. After only half an hour they got to the necromancer girl¡¯s room. I didn¡¯t know how powerful she was, but Kretchof vouched for her. I had fed a bit of false information to her. It was quite ingenious as a matter of fact. I had conjured up an image of Wolf one day. As I talked to Kretchof I made sure he called the necromancer girl. I left, and he said ¡®That was my master. Show more respect next time.¡¯ Thus she was convinced that BigBadWolf was the owner of the dungeon. Kretchof told her to make sure he attacked him like she had never seen him before. She could always talk to him though. As long as she showed respect. Even if she were to blab about the dungeon master, she wouldn¡¯t know it was me. I would get off scot-free. The problem with having a player as a mini boss, is that they could make rational decisions. She could let them win if she wanted. Although since she was fighting the ¡®dungeon master¡¯ she wouldn¡¯t go easy. Her character had become bound to the dungeon in a similar way as Kretchof. She could leave it unless someone entered. Even if she wasn¡¯t logged in her avatar would appear in the mini boss room. Plus the special feature of Kretchof. Basically the entire dungeon was to prepare the people for the boss monster. You would get a small amount of info from each enemy, which helped with their bosses. Then the mini bosses gave you a bit of info on how to deal with the boss. I didn¡¯t get to see the fight. From what I was told, by Kretchof, it was a very simple battle. The group attacked her in a tight formation, and she countered by summoning up hordes of undead. She commanded both skeletons and zombies. The zombies all exploded upon re-death. The skeletons could assemble themselves again given a bit of time. Not as well as the twins I summoned in River¡¯s Cross though. Her curse magic was fairly powerful from what I understood. She could debuff enemies better than I could. With her large amount of total mana (1000) she was very difficult to deal with. She even had specialized buffs that effected large groups of undead. The battle still didn¡¯t go her way. She couldn¡¯t even kill one of them. At best she just delayed them. It was enough as a delay though. By the time they killed her, the dungeon had already started trying to change. Sadly they weren¡¯t in a safe room, so it couldn¡¯t. The monsters got more ferocious, and powerful, to try to kill them off so the dungeon could change. The delaying tactics was a success! Even if they did manage to get to me in time, I was sure I could at least hold my own for the rest of the contest. I only had to last about four hours for it to be over. Not only that, I could use my mana again! They were going to have a hard time beating me. Although I had no chance of winning if I had to fight four powerful users at once. I could only hope some of them died. At best it would be EDI and Wolf. Once they got the last key, the path to the dungeon boss was illuminated for them. Of course all resources were diverted to stopping them. Every race within the dungeon attacked as fiercely as possible. As time went on, Kretchof lost more and more control of the monsters. So as soon as they started showing anger, he forced them all into one area. That way they would be in the general path of the enemies. The plan worked well, but the group was too powerful to do anything about. One person dropped due to the sheer amount of the monsters, but three people made it to Kretchof¡¯s boss door. All of my fairies were back. I was glad it didn¡¯t count as death. I didn¡¯t have to waste the materials. I explained the plan to them, and let them get to work. After inserting the keys, the three melee units all entered. Instantly the smell of decay overwhelmed their senses. A few skeletons attacked while they were caught off guard. The skeletons didn¡¯t even do any damage. One thing did though. The reason I spent so much time cultivating this room is because it gave me an unfair advantage. All along the ground sprouted poisonous plants. There was four species of plants. They each gave off a different bad effect.
Congratulations! You have created a power debuff field!
This field causes everyone in it to lose 1% total strength and endurance(not including buffs or armor) every 10 seconds. Up to a maximum of 75%. Increasing the potency of the ingredients used to make this field would increase its capabilities. This field will effect everything within range.
Congratulations! You are the first player to create a debuff field!
You have gained 50 fame. You have gained 15 intelligence for showing outstanding intellect.
Congratulations! You have created a nimbleness debuff field!
This field causes everyone in it to lose 1% total agility and dexterity(not including buffs or armor) every 10 seconds. Up to a maximum of 75%. Increasing the potency of the ingredients used to make this field would increase its capabilities. This field will effect everything within range.
Congratulations! You have created a scholarly debuff field!
This field causes everyone in it to lose 1% total intelligence and wisdom(not including buffs or armor) every 10 seconds. Up to a maximum of 75%. Increasing the potency of the ingredients used to make this field would increase its capabilities. This field will effect everything within range.
Congratulations! You have created a poison field!
This field causes everyone in it to lose 1% health every 10 seconds. Increasing the potency of the ingredients used to make this field would increase its capabilities. This field will effect everything within range.
Congratulations! You are the first player to create a poison field!
You have gained 50 fame. You have gained 15 intelligence for showing outstanding intellect.
I had gone through and deeply studied each seed and plant I had taken from their weird scientist in the dwarven city. Over half of them were for healing, or crops. But a nice amount caused various debuffs. By using the same methods as the one with the gryphons, I created various fields that neutralized my enemies. The best part? It didn¡¯t effect undead. Or me for about an hour or so. I had created various potions, and did many experiments, resulting in one super potion. Ok it wasn¡¯t really a super potion, but it was perfect for this environment. That is the reason I set this environment up.
Poison Neutralizer *Unique
Material QualityHighWork QualityExpert
Base NeutralizationRank 3
This potion was created by the player Voice0fReason. This is just about the highest level potion you could make with these ingredients. It is quite an amazing feat. This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to neutralization powers. This potion blocks all poisons up to rank 3 for one hour. There is no limit to the quantity of poisons this potion can neutralize.
To be clear, poisons and potions were ranked according to their ingredient potency, and the craftsmanship that created them. My field was only rank 2. There were a total of five ranks. At rank five a single potion would be like my potions pre-patch. After I made that potion, with ingredients that took a week to grow (with boosted growth buff) I instantly started working on the debuff fields. Even at a maximum of 75% each, that was still incredible. Of course it required 750 seconds. That was twelve and a half minutes. Obviously I had to keep them buy that long. I was going to keep them occupied with fighting Kretchof until they were about to win. Of course Kretchof wouldn¡¯t come out of the hiding spot I created for him. Unless they killed me. Then they were trade goods for Davros. After a few seconds of battling, EDI realized what was happening. The fields were so well placed, that every inch of the chamber was covered in all of the debuffs. Even if you cleared all of the plants in a ten foot area, you would still feel the effects of them. After quickly informing the others, they started trying to clear the plants. That was useless though. Moro and Sol had made sure they were extremely durable. Not only that, if they looked up, they could see even more. The spores fell to the ground from the heavens. Even the elder gods were displeased with their trespasses. Lol. Of course I was watching all of this from beneath them. I used almost all of my mana to go ahead and cast several permanent buffs on myself. I cast two damage immunity buffs. The saddest part of buffs and debuffs were the diminishing returns. If I were to cast two of the same buffs, the second one only had a quarter of the efficiency. It kept decreasing to one fourth each time. More than two buffs was pointless. So the two buffs only gave me 62.5% damage reduction and 31.25% health buff. It was better than nothing though. It cost me 1k mana. I still had most of my pure mana, and my wind and fire mana. I could cast two movements enhancers, so I did. The total bonuses were 31.25% bonus speed and flexibility. Although now almost all of my light mana was gone, and a large chunk of darkness, earth, water, and wind had disappeared. With most of my mana taken away, I would be concentrating on melee fighting. Three people were a lot to deal with. Even if I wasn¡¯t effected by the cloud of dominance as I called it. Kretchof made sure to concentrate on the weakest link. Unnamed fighter character 1. Only undead were in this room. If any non-undead monster came in, it would suffer the same fate as the players. I would still have them fight though. Just not until the three were a bit more weakened. The real battle was about to start. I just had to kill off one of the pesky people first. Dive 68: The Boss Room Battle Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Wolf beat the next mini boss room, and eventually met up with EDI. Together the easily beat the necromancer girl. They didn¡¯t make it to Kretchof¡¯s room before the monsters started getting really aggressive. The monsters they fought managed to kill off another person in their group. All that was left was three people. They made it to the boss room, but got effected by a massive debuff field. They were fighting undead, and EDI was the first to realize it. Voice also cast four buffs on himself to help with combat. Voice was immune to the field thanks to a potion he made. Time until end of contest: 4 hours. If you like the story enough I have a paypal linked at the bottom. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Four hours left. Kretchof was summoning massive amounts of undead to do battle with their group. They were downright impossible to kill it seemed. Although Kretchof borrowed the power of dark mana in the air, and thus summoned huge waves of undead, the group of three continued to kill them all. I wanted him to summon the spiders and whatnot, but they would also be effected by the debuff field. The undead weren¡¯t. Thus they put up a bit more of a fight than usual. At first the battle was going like this, but every ten seconds there was a sudden drop in the power level of EDI¡¯s group. They soon realized that pulling up the plants wouldn¡¯t do much, so focused on killing off the undead. Their biggest problem was that Kretchof summoned six undead a second. He was far in the back, so wasn¡¯t in range of their attacks. While his hordes of undead continued to run towards them, like lambs to slaughter. They couldn¡¯t budge for the first minute and a half. The amount of undead that started in the room was too much, even though they killed three undead a second more than Kretchof could summon. The enormous cavern had no where to hide. The only thing in it was the throne Kretchof sat upon. The group continued to slaughter their way through the undead. In only a minute and a half they had killed enough to actually move towards Kretchof a bit. It seemed they were even conserving their energy. I knew for a fact that EDI at least could actually use some explosive moves to attack with. I gave Kretchof the signal. The zombie portion of ¡®corpses¡¯ began to explode. There were way too many to actually do a double tap. (Idea that you have to shoot an undead in the head even after you kill them just to be sure.) The zombies caused a heavy debuff themselves. Since I had stat and health debuffs down, this debuff only made the group drowsy. Much like what Kretchof told me he did to one of the members of the demon¡¯s army that was supposed to be trying to kill me. EDI and Wolf only faltered in response. The unnamed warrior one on the other hand, was diffidently effected. His responses started slowing at a tremendous rate. All of the undead focused on him. They only attacked Wolf and EDI enough to stop them from getting to Kretchof. The other warrior was doing a commendable job at hanging on though. His killing power only dropped by a third. He still managed to kill two zombies a second. That was pretty intense. The quick, precise swings, coupled with the deadly force this group used, was anything but ordinary. They all seemed like they were experts at killing large groups. It was disconcerting to say the least. I just had to wait for the right moment, then I¡¯d make my entrance. The three continued to slowly make their way to Kretchof. After five minutes of heavy battling they finally made it about half way through. The thing about the fight though, was that there was a time limit. Not of four hours, but of 16 minutes and 40 seconds. After that, unless they use healing magic or potions, even without the enemies hitting them they would have lost the 1% hp 100 times. Death. I still had about 12 minutes left. If I could stop them from killing Kretchof until that time then I¡¯d be able to make sure they would all die. They would make it to Kretchof before that though. They had already lost about a third of their hp. I decided that was the best time to show up. I could wait more, but I was afraid they¡¯d make a run for Kretchof. I burst out from the ground, just twenty feet in front of them. I hovered just three feet off the ground. I had a pebble I had picked up earlier. I crushed it between my fingers. Eli and SparrowHawk sent the resulting dust near the undead group. At the same time as I had made the pebble explode using the little bit of mana I had, I shouted ¡°By the might of Mar! HOLY UNDEAD BINDING!¡± Sol helped me cast a bright white light in the room. Special effects always were entertaining. I cast a scornful look at the trio. ¡°So, you all accepted my invitation. I can¡¯t say I¡¯m surprised. The only thing is¡­¡± I rubbed both of my eyes with one hand in ¡®exasperation¡¯. I let myself fall to the ground. ¡°I was already in this boss room. I¡¯ve spent the better part of an entire day here. Then you three decide that you can just come in and mess up all of my hard work? That¡¯s not very nice. That was my least binding stone too. Well I have them for at least another five minutes. Although the boss over there is invincible while the stone is active.¡± I glanced at the massive amount of undead. ¡°To the walls!¡± The undead did as ordered. All three of the group were astounded by my mastery of the undead. Unnamed 1 even had his mouth agape. Geez it wasn¡¯t that great. I was pleased that they bought it though. I pointed to the unnamed warrior. ¡°You. You all came to kill me. How about one on one battle? Or are you all so cowardly that you won¡¯t fight unless it¡¯s three on one?¡± EDI began to say something in anger, but Wolf roared, ¡°I would never dishonor a noble warrior! One on one battle it is!¡± He cast a look at the unnamed person. The other person nodded and came forward. It seemed as though they really had fallen for it. I had to admit I was disappointed. For someone that gave me so much trouble to fall for such simple provocation. The warrior was in obviously heavy armor, with a longsword in one hand, and a dagger in the other. Obviously he focused mostly on attacks. ¡°My name is Starchild. Let¡¯s have a good duel.¡± Wolf shouted, ¡°BEGIN!¡± Before he even said the first letter I completely took over inspect. The red lines on the group were few and far between, but they still existed. With all of the sub-skills fused into it, inspect was basically a super skill. I could freaking read the wind mana that came off of his body to determine what direction he was going without looking at him. I could tell where he was going to move, and move accordingly. The lines showing me where to attack and defend basically were only there to make it impossible to beat me. Starchild shot towards me. Both of his weapons were pointed in different directions. His sword in his right hand was aiming towards me left hip, and his dagger in his left hand aimed towards my head. My staff easily blocked both attacks. All of his stats had dropped to only 70% of the original, while my battling stats had increased by 30%. It was a huge turnover. Every one of his attacks was easily predicted by my inspect. He couldn¡¯t even come close to landing a hit on me. His attack speed suddenly increased. Each attack was twice as fast a before he activated his ability. So this was the kind of thing you had been hiding? Impressive! I had SparrowHawk send a sharp gust of wind at him. I jumped backwards at the same time. ¡°You¡¯re pretty good. Well let¡¯s see you handle this!¡± I opened my staff, and began to use the two staff blades that had been hidden inside. With each long dagger in my hand, I ran at Starchild. We attacked each other for a single second. In that second he thrust or sliced at me a dozen times. Only thanks to my buffs was I able to actually block them all. My health was still shit, so getting hit once basically assured death. I had to focus on defending most. That was the top priority. I managed to attack him twice, but both attacks landed on his armor. I couldn¡¯t hurt him with all of this. Sol yelled, ¡°Master behind you!¡± Eli made a thick stone wall appear from the ground in that instant. I had been too engrossed in the battle, and hadn¡¯t even see what was going on behind me. I cast a quick glance to my right and only see Wolf there. By himself. Without EDI standing near him like she was earlier. ¡°EDI you disappoint me. If you are going to attack me while I am fighting someone else, and have my back turned, at least do me the courtesy of landing the hit.¡± The wall came down, as it did so did the pretense of this being an honorable battle. Wolf ran at me as well, ¡°KILL!¡± Three people were WAY too much for me to take on by myself. That was why I wanted to try to kill Starchild by himself. Oh well, can¡¯t win everything. I stabbed at Starchild, hoping to get a crit before Wolf got near me. If I did I¡¯d at least be able to knock one of them out. Sadly that didn¡¯t work out. As soon as I extended my arm to attack, EDI tried attacking me from behind. I had no choice but to block her. Luckily the line showed me moving my sword down and to my side, which ended with EDI actually hitting it. Wolf made it there in under a second, and the three way attacks began. Every time one of them would attack, I¡¯d have to block it. Whenever I blocked one person, the other two got to my left and right side. After that they would both launch attacks. When I would block both of them, the original person would do a heavier attack on me. They were constantly moving around me in circles. Blocking them was exceedingly hard. I didn¡¯t even dream of attacking them myself. I still had my fairies though. After a few seconds of only being able to block by the thinnest margin, it was time to strike back a bit. To my fairies I called in my mind. Alpha formation! I could only just manage to block the strikes, but this was only because they didn¡¯t seem to really be using any of their more powerful abilities. I couldn¡¯t figure out why though. I had Drake absorb all of the fire mana in the air, and keep a thin layer over only me. I even had Tear add in a lot of water mana. It was the exact opposite of my usual fire explosion combo. This time I would be freezing everyone. They obviously noticed something was happening. Their attacks doubled in ferociousness. Still they didn¡¯t attack with anything but regular attacks, only utilizing their basic stats to assist. Eli tripped up Starchild with a small chunk of rock that sprang up beneath his right foot. Ass soon as he tried to take a step, the rock took a steep turn, causing him to lose his balance. I struck out like a snake. I attacked his exposed neck. Two swords intersected to form an x in front of the poor fool that fell. I tried attacking Wolf, but his sword seemed to anticipate this. Before I even finished aiming my sword at him, he attacked one of my swords and caused my hand to throb. Just holding on to my weapons was getting hard. The more they attacked, the harder it was to actually block. With every blow I got weaker. I finally faltered during one attack. Instead of taking the attack head on, I used what little earth mana I had left and made a flat earth spike push my foot up. Just as Wolf¡¯s weapon swung down on me, I used the platform to jump over the group. I twisted, and landed facing the trio. Starchild was obviously awed, but Wolf and EDI just ran right for me. I gave Kretchof the signal to focus all undead on Starchild. That way I could at least only have to fight two on one. As soon as the undead started to keep that one warrior at bay, the battle became manageable. I continued to follow the lines indicating the best place to attack or defend. When I went to block one of Wolf¡¯s attacks, he would change the direction of it. Thankfully, inspect would show me that and even show me where to best block it. I had to constantly keep both of them in my view though. That was the biggest problem at that time. They were each trying to get around me to flank. The air started to shudder. All three of us looked at the cause. A large crater had formed where Starchild had been fighting. With Starchild¡¯s body at the center. Wolf cursed. ¡°Damn. Suicide bomb. Guess it¡¯s only us EDI.¡± So he did that to himself? I guess he was about to get killed anyway. That works in my favor though. I smiled at Wolf. ¡°Well now friend. It looks as though your power has been somewhat diminished. Let¡¯s see how you deal when we get swarmed by a massive horde of undead.¡± The undead started to charge us. As soon as they did though, they stopped. As one they turned towards Kretchof. Kretchof stood from his throne of bones. In a pompous manner he said, ¡°Warriors. I admit you are powerful. To make it to this room is a testament to that. Why do you fight amongst yourselves though? Are you saying this room isn¡¯t powerful enough to cause you to pay attention to it? In honor of your power I shall fix that.¡± He raised his hands in the air. EDI shot at him like an arrow. Eli and SparrowHawk were on point though. They had been given the job of protecting Kretchof after disrupting the group. As soon as EDI charged forward, Eli made several small juts of stone trip her, while SparrowHawk used wind to push her back as much as possible. Her foot hit one of the stones, and caused her to lose balance for an instant. At that moment SparrowHawk sent a gust of wind push her even more. She fell to the floor without any resistance. Four figures appeared before Kretchof. I watched as Wolf¡¯s eyes widened. He shook his head slightly like he couldn¡¯t believe it. Kretchof motioned towards all three of us. ¡°Children. KILL!¡± They instantly disappeared and reappeared at different targets. With four mini bosses, as well as Kretchof¡¯s undead, all attacking us, we had no choice but to forgo our battle to kill them first. I chose to ignore Wolf, and started killing off large swaths of undead. A wild battle cry tore from my throat. The spider boss, as well as the necromancer girl focused on Wolf. The girl said, loud enough for me and EDI to hear, ¡°Master Wolf! Just as you said I will act like you are a typical enemy and try to kill you!¡± A wild gleam could be seen in her eyes. She thought that if she killed him then something good would happen. The insect and rodent bosses focused on EDI. The spider, and those two mini bosses, all started spewing forth children. The children were all negatively effected by the poisons, but the four mini bosses were somehow immune. How? I gave Kretchof the other four out of five of the poison cure potions I made. I¡¯m so evil. Basically the undead attacking me weren¡¯t even really a threat. If I just used my mana instead of having the buffs, I could easily slaughter them all. But I used this as a form of training. Without attacking any of them, I let them attack me. I realized I needed to work on getting a better defense. If I didn¡¯t I¡¯d be screwed in the future. So I just took their attacks. I couldn¡¯t see to block behind me, but I made sure to let Kretchof to make them noisy when they attacked from behind me. If one were to look at the battle they would see two mini bosses focusing on one person each, why a massive wave of undead focused on one person. In reality I was making sure to watch Wolf. Neither he nor EDI had used any techniques since the start of the battle. I wanted, no needed them to use some. I had to see them. The two were slowly running out of hp and stats. If they didn¡¯t finish this off in the next nine or so minutes they wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything. Wolf roared. A large white light prang into existence at the tips of his weapon. He stabbed forward, and three blades made out of pure light assaulted the spiders and undead in front of him.
Technique Thief success: 10%. Technique: Light Blade, has been partially understood.
That¡¯s what it was for! I had gone over my skills while I was bored a few days ago. I realized one very distressing thing. I basically ignored an entire swath of skills! Ignoring one or two group skills would have been fine, but I ignored almost all of them! That was unacceptable. Technique thief was a skill that allowed me to absorb abilities after viewing them. Task master had been slowly growing this entire time, thanks to my tactic of counting multiple numbers quickly. So I wasn¡¯t worried about that one. Tactical Survival, Tactical Combat Training, Auto Nursing, even Skill Mastery to a degree. These were all of the group skills I had simply ignored out of convenience. To combat this, I had been using the very little down time to actually try to improve them. I hadn¡¯t gotten far though. Like I said, I had very little down time with all of the assignments I set for myself. I was practically worked ragged. The battle progressed slowly. Wolf and EDI were obviously trying to not use any abilities. That was a problem. After that one time, Wolf decided to just not use anymore. The clock was ticking for the group of two though. Every ten seconds their stats would drop again. In only another five minutes they would have 25% of their original stats, the lowest they could have. The longer they fought for, the easier it became to deal with them. Things never work out as planned though. Though Wolf had been struggling, he used one more of the light blades, and turned the tide of battle. I learned an additional 10% of the light blade, but that wasn¡¯t enough to do anything with. With that one light blade, Wolf was able to clear a path to the necromancer girl. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, he threw himself at her, and decapitated her with one blow. His eyes turned towards the spider queen. He had been able to deal with her subordinates, but could he alone prove a match for her? The answer was a resounding yes. He jumped up with superhuman (superlycan?) strength. He easily landed on her abdomen, not that it was a small target. It was at least ten times as big as I was. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Since she was next to the necromancer girl, she was right next to Wolf after he killed the girl. The spiders behind him began to climb on their mother to kill him. He stabbed down three times in quick succession. Her hp was dropping at an alarming rate. I knew he would go to help EDI after he was done, so I had to hurry my plans along a bit. Instead of training my ability to defend, I used Eli¡¯s help to drop below the ground, and run to where EDI was. My extremely enhanced speed made me even faster than Wolf. Of course running speed and attack speed were different. The general area of the cave was starting to form frost in the air. With the fire mana disappearing, and Tear using the nearby well we had filled with water, the air quickly began to take on an arctic feel. The cold didn¡¯t seem to effect Wolf at all, but EDI was another story. She wore light armor, the one I got for her, and relied heavily on her agility. With that being taken from her by the plants, and the frost, she wasn¡¯t able to fight at her best. Not that it was her fault at all. ¡°BOIL!¡± I commanded my fairies. I had Tear concentrate of filling her area with water. Tear used all of the stored water in one blast. The water quickly formed a giant orb with a six foot diameter, centered on EDI. Several rodents and insects were caught up in it, but I paid them no mind. Drake poured all of the collected fire mana into that water. At first EDI didn¡¯t seem to worry about the water, seeing as it had just protected her from being attacked, but then she started to feel the heat. The water instantly began to boil. Tear was now only responsible for making sure the orb of water stayed centered on EDI. When she tried to swim out of it, it would just slowly follow her. Don¡¯t get me wrong though, it took everything Tear had to do that, so the freezing effect took a noticeable hit. Steam rose out of the ball, but was quickly dragged back in. I was responsible for that part. Although I didn¡¯t have mush pure or water mana, I did have a bit. EDI let out a shriek when she felt the boiling water follow her moves. She didn¡¯t seem to need to breathe air. Damnit! How many people have that fucking ability! What I didn¡¯t know was that it was actually a fairly common ability after a certain level. Water based monsters generally gave a lot better loot, but were harder to kill. Elite players, ie Wolf and EDI, would often hunt them. Thus they naturally would gain some ability to breathe longer underwater. The boiling was doing it¡¯s job though. EDI was losing health at an increased rate. Including the poison field, she was not losing about 31 hp in ten seconds, not just 20. Wolf was obliterating the small spiders, so I had to act quickly. The queen insect sent her children to drag EDI towards the ground, making it even harder to escape. When they entered, they would quickly die. They didn¡¯t have the massive amount of resistance to this whole thing that EDI had. Thankfully when these particular insects died, they would instantly undergo a form of rigamortis. Their body and joints locking into position. They would become slightly more brittle, but for EDI it would be even harder to move. The insects started to cling to every part of her body. The rodents, surrounding the ball and keeping up with it. In case she did manage to escape they would quickly deal with her. By crawling over her, and layering themselves, the insects covered her entire body. Her hp was dropping too fast for her to handle. A sudden flash of darkness mana almost blinded me. The bugs and water were blown away in one quick explosion. Entrails and steaming water covered the area around EDI. Even the rodents that had been too close were covered in the filthy water. I retracted my fairies. They had done enough for now. Both fairies were practically worn out. They would only hinder me in the immediate future if they had such low mana. I ran back to my position that I was in earlier, and had Eli shut the tunnel. Now I could only use the mana of SparrowHawk, Sol, and Moro. Eli had just enough mana to do one final attack, so I had to save it. I began to slowly make my way to the center of the room. In just another minute I made it there. I had to kill through the zombies and skeletons to do so. Kretchof had stopped spawning them, so their numbers were growing thin quickly. I couldn¡¯t believe what I saw. EDI was somehow standing over the corpse of the rodent queen, while Wolf held the head of the insect queen. What just happened? They both stared angrily at me, while I hacked away at the undead. They approached Kretchof to finish him off before attacking me. Kretchof was worried, and so began to spout secrets. ¡°Milord! Milady! Please! You seek to kill that one? The dungeon will reset after you kill me! You will be thrown to a random safe room! Please who knows if you will end up with him!¡± He fell over and cringed, waiting for the final blow to come. He threw his hands up to block his face and body, as if that would stop the attack. He knew that as a mage he was in no way capable of stopping these two. I held back my smirk as he said all this. Of course he¡¯d be willing to give his unlife for me. I had him act cowardly to draw them into attacking me instead of him. He was my final trump card after all. They seemed to do some form of voiceless communication, before coming to a conclusion. Wolf sneered at Kretchof. ¡°If you do anything EDI here will kill you without hesitation.¡± He bounded through the countless undead bodies that littered the floor. The corpses of the spiders, rodents, and insects didn¡¯t hinder his path either. He waited a moment, then finished killing the remaining undead. With the area around us clear of enemies, he faced me. ¡°You, Voice. You said you wanted to battle one on one? Let¡¯s see if you can handle me. I know you¡¯ve been stalling this entire time. You don¡¯t seem to have been effected by this weird field of poisons at all. Clearly you found something that neutralized it.¡± He looked at me with a look of scornful admiration. ¡°Let¡¯s see if that alone is enough to help you. EDI here told me you are a mage that likes to fight in close quarters. I wonder if you can take many hits from me. Should we test it out?¡± He shot forward in an instant. His weapon raised, he struck down with a force that could shatter stone. I barely had the time to raise both of my swords in an X formation to bock him. The tip of his spear like trident threatened to break both of my blade, so I jumped back to disengage. Wolf smirked as he charged forward again. Sudden fire mana permeated the edge of his weapon. He produced an absurd amount of wind mana behind him as he dashed forward. I didn¡¯t even have time to raise my swords. He blew through the countless bodies that littered the floor. They seemed to part before he stepped foot near them. As if some mysterious force lent itself to his travels.
Technique Thief success: 5%. Technique: Double Dash, has been partially understood.
I had time to think though. I had Eli send a small wisp of mana into the ground. A completely flat piece of stone rose up. Wolf didn¡¯t notice it as he was madly dashing towards me. The instant his foot hit that stone, he faltered. The stone had been imbued with as much of Eli¡¯s mana as would barely leave the fairy alive. The fact that it was flat only strengthened it. Wolf clumsily whirled his arms, but could not get his balance. As he fell forward, the speed of his ability caused him to fly in the air for several feet. I easily side-stepped his ragdolling body. ¡°Come now pet, surely you can at least walk correctly? Hmph. I thought that you were going to test how long I¡¯d be able to last? It seems to me that you won¡¯t even manage to get near me.¡± I acted arrogant as Wolf flew into a wall, and righted himself. Even so far away I could see the anger boiling inside his eyes. He flew at me again. This time, he made sure to watch his footing. The bodies spread apart before him with an even wider range than before. It didn¡¯t matter though. I only had a bit of earth mana left, but I used it all as soon as Wolf got close enough. Instead of producing another earth block, I made the earth mana in a small area rise up in an instant. With my inspect ability working at full charge, I was able to easily approximate the general are that Wolf would be by the time I had finished using the mana. A small platform of about three feet in diameter shot up ten feet into the air. Of course that was only after Wolf had laid his first foot a little bit before the center. Without even being able to put his other foot down for his next step, his extreme speed coupled with the sudden elevation, tossed him high into the air. Bodies of undead were thrown carelessly from the platform as it sailed upwards. ¡°Tsk, tsk tsk. Wolf you really should learn to be better at targeting. I¡¯m way over here.¡± I jeered at him as he again hit a wall far away. I made sure my voice reached him without expending any noticeable amount of mana at all. ¡°How about this?¡± I gave a condescending look. ¡°I won¡¯t even use any more of my earth spells to stop you. Would that make you feel better?¡± Even as he got up he had already began to charge at me again. His eyes became red with veins, and his veins could easily be seen throughout his body. His muscles expanded in anger. With a mighty roar he tore through the space between us. It would only take him a second to reach me. I jumped into the air with what little air mana I had, and merely stood there with my boots absorbing a small amount of my mana regen. Only ten mana per second would allow me to stay in the air like this forever. With my mana regen of 25 mana/second, even with up to ten taken off for the stomach, I would still get five per second back. He was stupefied as he charged right past where I had just been. He was obviously not the type to get angry easily, but for some reason he seemed pissed the fuck off when I dodged him. ¡°So tell me, Wolf. Why is it that you seem so angry that I dodged your attacks a few times. I can¡¯t image you being someone so irrational.¡± He stopped his advance, and slowly ground to a halt. He stared up at me with a look of venomous anger. ¡°You want to know why I¡¯m angry? How could a little puissant like you block my attacks so many times!? Sure a dungeon riddled with traps is going to cause problems, but you! EDI swore you were beneath me! She told me that you had been partners in the past! Now I see you have been working together the entire time! ¡°There is no other way you could so easily counter my skills! She. is. a. TRAITOR!¡± So he wasn¡¯t even mad at me. Each time I managed to not die by his attack he seemed more certain that EDI had warned me beforehand. I¡¯d also be suspicious if one of his fellow comrades suddenly gave me a bunch of info on him. His anger at having been mislead by EDI was astounding. I mean she wasn¡¯t actually part of my group, but the fact that she thought he was would serve a big purpose for me. ¡°Fine you caught me. EDI is my spy, but that doesn¡¯t change the fact that I am going to win!¡± I let out a bark of laughter. I could see EDI wanted to rebuke that statement, but she was currently in the middle of a battlefield of ugly rat swarms. I threw myself at him, whiled wielding both of my blades. An evil smile appeared on his face as he suddenly condensed a massive amount of fire mana around his bladed weapon. It shot forth at the same time as I bore down on him. I surrounded myself in wind mana with SparrowHawk¡¯s help, and shot forward even faster. Dust and wind swirled around my, obscuring my body. Metal clanged on metal as the fire-encased weapon met my twin swords. The fiery death construct tossed both weapons aside as it slashed towards me. Tearing me in two. ¡­ Or at least it would have. I made SparrowHawk use what little remaining wind mana left to throw me to the side while at the same time making the weapons fly straight. The entire purpose of the dust cloud was to make it so Wolf couldn¡¯t see me, and wouldn¡¯t think I had moved away from the area. Wolf stood there for a second, wondering where I was, before snapping to. He gaze fell upon me in a fraction of a second. Not minding his flying weapon, he ran towards me while pulling out a typical longsword. He was planning to attack me even as I floated in the air. ¡°DIIIIIIIE!¡± A cry tore from his lips as he approached. He was fifty feet away. Twenty five. I could see his eyes staring daggers into me. Fifteen. I could practically feel his rage wash against my skin. Ten. Now was the time. Kretchof! As soon as the command came out, a thousand explosions simultaneously rocked the cave. This was my final plan to deal with both of the remaining contestants. I might take a bit of damage myself, but the majority was going to be concentrated towards the ground. Thick wafts of miasma rolled out of the zombies ¡®dead¡¯ bodies. The bodies of the skeletons shattered, and the shrapnel flew in all directions. The miasma was a sleeping poison, which layered quite well with the rest of my poisons. It was a rank three poison. My poison immunity would keep that at bay. The thing I had to worry about was the shattered bones. The jagged pieces of bone could shred through my armor like a hot knife through butter. The bones blew in all directions, but the miasma seemed attracted to the scent of life. It began surrounding whoever was closest. Of course Wolf-boy and I both got hit with a large amount. The miasma filled the entire room. As soon as the explosion happened, Wolf was once again thrown to the side. The shredded bones flew across the surface of the floor, and many pieces found their ways into his body. With his stats decreased by almost 70% he was susceptible. The damage he took would have been evident even without my inspect. As soon as the bone shards began hitting him, he was covered in bleeding cuts. Most were shallow, but a few pieces were lucky enough to do real damage. With his hp down to only about 30% of maximum, they took out a sizable chunk. While all of that really was quite powerful, there was only one major flaw. It could only be used once. That was an ability that only the dungeon boss of and undead summoning dungeon could use. When I talked to Kretchof all about the dungeon, that was one of the things I was naturally told. He could only use that ability one time in a battle. Once everyone in here left, then he would be able to use it again. Wolf stood up groggily. He roared, blood pouring from several areas on his body. He stared at me with fury unbridled. Even though he just took the full force of a final boss attack, he still had 10% of his total hp left. And that was when he wasn¡¯t even cautious of it! I spared a glance at EDI. She was far worse off than Wolf. Her body swayed slowly as she tried her best to remain upright. The rodents of various types around her were all dead. Bones or holes protruded from almost all of them. Her hp was in a critical state. She would need at least a few seconds to get herself together. Sadly the 1% hp drain didn¡¯t stop at 25% like the other poisons. It would very soon claim her life. I didn¡¯t have to pay her any mind, but I had the feeling that if I ignored her I would suffer for it. So I positioned myself to be able to see both people. My smile never faltered. ¡°You were too focused on me Wolf. If you had paid any attention to the boss over there, and I mean ANY attention, you would have seen his three second wind up for that skill.¡± I shook my head as if my student just asked why water is wet. The truth was there wasn¡¯t any time delay. It could only be used once. But by giving the info of the time delay, I would be helping the future of the dungeon. If people came here in the future and somehow made it all the way to the boss room, they would be experts. If they did any research, I was hoping they would find out that bit of info that Wolf leaked. Of course I was going to leak a shit ton of false info as soon as I got back into the game world as a whole. That way if anyone did actually make it to the dungeon, they wouldn¡¯t be able to tell what info was real or not. That kind of indecision was a thousand times worse than no info at all. With a thought I had Kretchof stealthily make his undead obtain my two swords. I allowed myself to fall to the ground. Wolf was weak enough now that I felt confident in dealing with him. After the span of time it would take to breathe once, I landed on the ground. My two swords flew at me, thrown by two undead. I still had one trump card I could use even if the battle got bad. I could have Kretchof use his six darkness fairy minions to fight, but from what I was told they were good for little more than weakening a single attack. That wasn¡¯t going to cut it. If I had to use them then Kretchof let me know that the creation of the spider silk would be stalled by a lot. As it was it took a large amount of time to improve their skills anyway. Starting from the beginning again would take a long time. The reason the silks were even usable was the outstanding material they had been made with. A grenade in the hands of a child is still deadly. A river can still water crops with an incompetent farmer. Anyway. When I caught both of my weapons, I sneered. ¡°Looks like your beloved weapon isn¡¯t here. Find it. I¡¯ll wait.¡± I honestly would too. I was still watching EDI, but Wolf went to retrieve his weapons. Kretchof began sending out another group of undead to deal with her. The fact that she hadn¡¯t died yet was bothering me. Wolf looked at the group, then a malicious smile appeared. I guess he really enjoyed it when people that betrayed him got what was coming to them. I bet he¡¯ll freak out when he learns I was lying. I wanted to laugh, but held it in. After he picked his weapon up, he looked at me. Even with his stats in such a sad shape, he was still a worthy opponent. Sorry for the cliff hanger guys. And for the long delay. I had two exams and a major project this past week. I will do my best to get another chapter out tomorrow to finish this arc up. Dive 69: The Final Dungeon Battle Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : The boss battle started, and Voice stalled for a while to make EDI and Wolf weaken. After using just about all of his traps and triggers, he eventually decided it was time to face Wolf one on one. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Wolf seemed to use some potion to boost himself. Wolf raised his weapon, and charged. My completion of technique thief increased to 20%. I smiled as I ran towards him. Using my inspect showed me where each of his attacks were most likely to hit. With my buffs I was easily able to make my weapons go to those spots. With only one person attacking, I was able to focus solely on blocking Wolf¡¯s attacks. My body easily flowed from one position to the next as I continuously blocked Wolf¡¯s attacks. The constant flow of undead spewed forth towards EDI. Even though she was attacked, her body stayed there. Her health should have already dropped to 0 though¡­ I didn¡¯t have much time to think about it though. Wolf kept up the barrage of attacks, and I kept up the large amount of blocks. With every attack my arms grew just a bit more heavy. Even at a quarter of his original stats, Wolf seemed to have a higher strength and dexterity than I had. I was starting to get worried after the first ten seconds of furious battle. I was being pushed back even with Wolf¡¯s massive detriments. After a few more seconds Wolf finally landed a hit on me. His trident-like weapon flew forward as it bypassed my twin blades. It stabbed directly at my chest. I tried to throw myself backwards, but he was too fast. I could feel the mana in my buffs vibrate as he struck. With that one attack I was thrown back a dozen feet, and lost 125 hp. I only had 12 left! Even so much as a light blow from Wolf would now kill me. He looked at me with a hint of something in his eyes. It wasn¡¯t fury, or even anger. It looked like he was about to kill a wounded dear to take it home. We walked closer, aiming for the killing blow. Obviously he was confident of his victory. Actually at that moment so was I. I had no way to get out this situation. I shook my head bitterly. I could possibly use the mana of the other types of mana to shoot myself outwards, but then I wouldn¡¯t have enough to do anything else. I had no choice though. My mana dropped so close to zero it no longer amounted to anything, but I was able to fling myself away. Wolf would not let me go. He instantly followed. His breath was ragged. His hp was dropping too fast for him to be able to easily kill me. He knew that if he didn¡¯t do something quickly it would put him in a dangerous position. EDI¡¯s POV As the battle progressed around EDI, her body did not move. She was stuck there, hanging in between the balance of life and death. She would have been easily killed, but something in the dungeon seemed to pull at her soul. The force kept her tethered there, unable to leave. The poison cloud, the boiling water, the bone fragments. All of it caused immense pain, and even greater hp drain. By all rights she should have been dead. However, she remained. She was conscious of the battle going on around her, and even of the undead charging fearlessly towards her, but she was helpless to do anything. It was as if the entire dungeon had focused in on this one moment. As if Kretchof used all of his boss power he had been storing up to force her life to continue for some reason. When the undead got close enough to touch her, she heard a voice. It was deep, and emanated a powerful, ancient, aura. ¡°Youngling. You have assisted my master. I have borne witness to this. You shall be spared, because I know he would wish it. You must thank Master Wolf for this in the future. However! You shall not intrude upon the battle between men.¡± Her eyes looked over at Kretchof and he smiled. A decaying, fetid smile. ¡°Master does not know this, but even I am incapable of using the majority of my power here at this moment. It was rash, but I did something I was sure Master would be proud of. You shall see it soon enough.¡± A cold dread filled her. Wolf was the dungeon¡¯s master? That would explain why he had them split up. He was able to easily get past the obstacles, but her group was decimated. She seethed with anger at the thought. Of course the master Kretchof spoke of was Voice, but she did not know that. He had even said Wolf since Voice instructed him to only call him by Master Wolf. Kretchof also wasn¡¯t allowed to call out to him, or indicate him in any way other than by the pseudonym Master Wolf. Kretchof didn¡¯t need to speak to EDI, but honestly he was bored. His master never paid him much attention, not that he felt he deserved the attention of one so great. But he only had his subordinates to speak to. So like any good villain, he began to speak about the most crucial parts of his secret plans to the protagonist. He spoke about things even Voice didn¡¯t know, because he assumed Voice did know some. He also kept some info hidden as a form of surprise. EDI couldn¡¯t respond, so was forced to simply listen to the creature continue. She couldn¡¯t even voice her anger at the thing. ¡°You see, all of the monsters in this room are powered by my mana. At this time I haven¡¯t found a way to exert more than 20% of it. I know the cause, but can do nothing to stop it. If I had a way the defense, hp, even the intelligence and speed of all of the creatures in this room would be far superior. ¡°Outside of this room I can freely command the inhabitants, for the most part but inside it my power is limited. Funny isn¡¯t it? One would tend to think it would be the other way around. It is all for the sake of Master Wolf. Anything he wants, I will do my best to oblige.¡± He continued to rant as EDI was forced to watch Voice¡¯s battle. At first it seemed like he completely held the upper hand, but now it was as if the tables suddenly turned. Wolf now held the advantage. She had no idea the Voice had not very much mana to start with in this battle. Nor did she know that he held so many martial skills. He seemed intent on destroying Wolf, until Wolf landed a single hit on him that is. Any spectator could see that Voice had taken a huge hit at that point. EDI was worried about him. Even though they were supposed to be enemies, she still wanted to be friends with him. But she had seen his personality profile. She knew that he was not one to forgive easily. When she started this endeavor she had planned to gift him her points. But Wolf would not allow it. He made her sign a soul binding contract. The contract forbade her in any way seeking death or helping competitors to be better than she or Wolf was. She couldn¡¯t find any flaws in it. She was now forced to watch as Voice tried miserably to flee. Wolf struck out with his cross-spear one last time. A vast array of seven colors swam behind it. She had seen this attack once before. It had ended with a hole drilled through a hundred feet of mountain stone. After that she stopped being able to hold her eyes open. She could only exist there in blankness. Eventually, Kretchof stopped speaking. In an instant I felt a rumbling. Suddenly I felt myself moved to another plane. Voice¡¯s POV: I had no mana to flee. Even though Wolf was being drained by the plants here, he seemed to be able to beat me. That one wound he inflicted was being healed by Sol, but not fast enough. I now regretted not choosing my original idea in this game. Had I an army of healers, then I would be invincible. Even if the army was a tenth of the size of Wolf¡¯s army. It wasn¡¯t in me to give up though. I would fight until I couldn¡¯t fight anymore. Wolf¡¯s weapon came down on me, hard. A violent explosion of mana spewed forth from the end of it. As if a rainbow were decrying my death. I raised my swords up to attack him at least. His health was in critical condition. I sent out Moro as an act of desperation. Moro shot out, and entangled Wolf¡¯s feet. Wolf gazed down at whatever had caused him to trip, and neatly presented me a small portion of his unprotected body. As I stood, I slashed at his left elbow. Following the perfect arc that inspect showed me, I was able to penetrate it. Wolf howled in pain as my blade sank into his flesh. I recalled Moro, and faced Wolf. His spear had missed me beautifully, as did that rainbow patterned attack. Wolf jumped back several yards, and looked at me. He seemed to be judging something. His eyes flickered to the side of his screen. I guess he had his health displayed there. As soon as he did, he frowned. ¡°Voice, it looks like we are going to have to finish this soon. My hp is getting pretty low. How about you just lay down and let me slit your throat?¡± Wolf plastered a fake smile on his face. I could tell his hp had only had 140 points left. That was just 1.3% of his massive health pool of over 10k. So in twenty seconds he would die of poison. All I had to do was make it. I instantly came up with a plan for my victory. ¡°Come at me bro!¡± I used an old-school slang to provoke him. His eyes flashed. He obviously realized what I was doing. ¡°*Sigh* Now I know I lost my temper earlier, but this is no way to provoke me.¡± He gave a derisive look at EDI, before readying himself. ¡°I have only a bit of time. Let¡¯s finish this Voice.¡± He brandished his weapon in a dazzling display. A burst of fire shot from the tip. I let it hit me. The ability he used was based on mana! All of his abilities had mana infused in them! I realized I had a wicked smile. I quickly concealed it as the attack hit me. The mana from the attack seemed to actually force itself around me instead of attack. The mana couldn¡¯t escape the power of my crystal though. The earth mana crystal absorbed the fleeing mana, leaving me hit with only 50% of the total power. That wasn¡¯t all though. With the effect of mana magnet, the mana coming at me bent to my will even more. I was able to quickly absorb a total of 75% of the mana before being hit by the attack. I now had 85 total health, thanks to Sol¡¯s efforts. The attack Wolf sent at me had lost a lot of power from when he first released it. It came at me with only about half of its original strength. With me absorbing 75% of that, it only hit me with 12.5% of its total power. I was instantly knocked down to only 15 hp. He¡¯s that powerful!? His original attack would have done 8 times that! 560 damage? That¡¯s too much! For a non-mage to be able to cast a spell that powerful was insane. I didn¡¯t know why his abilities were so powerful, but I was betting it had something to do with the type of warrior he was. Maybe the class one chooses gives them special abilities that use mana? That is actually common in a lot of games. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I decided that when this was over I was going to thoroughly examine the use of abilities. My body hurt. The 25% pain made me want to scream, but I held it in. I could have lowered the pain setting, but that would give me debuffs if I were injured. If I kept the pain setting up, then my complete immunity trait would level up. Before the flames had finished dissipating, Wolf had already shot at me. A fierce whirlwind surrounded him. With a flick of my hand my sword flew in an arc towards him. The red lines on his body were scarce, but the lines in the air indicating where my weapons should go were detailed. An exchange of blows happened. It lasted. One second. Two seconds. Five seconds. At that time Wolf moved back a step. After five seconds neither of us were able to wound the other. With Wolf¡¯s stats at a quarter of what they should be, and mine raised by over 30% and using inspect, we were similarly matched. In another five seconds he would lose another chunk of health. He would be at .3%. He was obviously looking to stop this. He quickly spun his weapon after he disengaged. Flames spit from it. I shook my head. I pumped as much fire mana into Drake as I could. Drakey, daddy needs you to stop that nasty attack. Use the mana I gave you to absorb it all. Even though Drake had no body, I could feel the anticipation. Drake was in my core anyway. Fairies can only effect a short distance outside of the body while they are inside, so I fixed that. Drake, the multiple floating entities that it was, swam outside my body. As soon as Drake reached outside, the fire mana gathering on the cross-spear began to dissipate. It was swimming towards Drake¡¯s ¡®open mouth¡¯. Wolf looked shocked, then seemed to give up on the idea. Unfortunately he had lost another second on that attack. I suddenly felt like I had begun to do quite a bit better, and very rapidly. The cause was the field though. With Wolf¡¯s vitality and endurance dropping, he had less stamina and stamina regen. Without those two things a warrior was next to useless. Every bit of stamina Wolf consumed made him weaker. Even if he had more than me, his rate of stamina consumption was huge. With only 14 seconds of life left, he had to do something or he would perish. Meanwhile I¡¯m sitting over here regenerating 25 mana per second. After just those six seconds, including the fire mana I sent to Drake, I was almost at full mana again. Minus the mana the buffs cost of course. We clashed again, every second I gained more mana. I sent it to the fairies, and had them do various jobs at controlling Wolf. I had SparrowHawk use the bit of wind mana I had to guide the wind mana from Wolf into its own mouth. That way Wolf wouldn¡¯t have an easy way to speed up to me. The metal mana I had was given to Golem. That way my swords would be a bit more sharp. I had tried before to take the metal mana of a weapon while someone else wielded it, but I couldn¡¯t. My only guess was that the metal mana god didn¡¯t want me to. It would be a bit unfair to take away people¡¯s only means of survival. Since I could only use Golem to increase my own attack, that¡¯s what I did. At least Golem hadn¡¯t been using a lot of mana this entire time. Every second we fought was one that made Wolf closer to death. During out battle Wolf cursed. ¡°If my group didn¡¯t run into that host of snake-women we would have been able to easily beat this room. Damn! I had to use up all of our poison control items on that!¡± Another four seconds passed. Wolf¡¯s face went pale. His health dropped to only .3% of the total. It was still more than I had total though. Wolf let out an insane yell. ¡°AHHHHHHHHHH DIIIIIE!¡± Suddenly his movement speed increased many folds. He went so fast it was hard for my eyes to keep up with him. Unfortunately my inspect¡¯s ability to tell me where to attack was based off of my vision and other senses. The lines began to blur. I blocked what I could, but SparrowHawk had to throw me out of the way twice. Even one hit would kill me. Two more seconds passed. That¡¯s when I noticed something. Wolf didn¡¯t even try to defend. It was like he had entered into some berserk state. SparrowHawk had to throw me to the ground in order for me to duck under one of his attacks. His cross-spear blurred, and headed for my neck. Taking my chance, I did the only thing I could think of. With SparrowHawk¡¯s help I created a small tunnel of sharp wind. I threw one of my swords into it. The tunnel aimed directly for Wolf¡¯s neck. He didn¡¯t even glance at the sword, only concentrating on attacking me. With a sickening crunch, the sword pierced his neck. That didn¡¯t seem to stop him though. His cross-spear continued forward. Severing my head from my shoulders. A roar emitted from Kretchof met my ears. I looked at him, a familiar lamia heart in his hands. Without quite understanding what was going on, I stared at him. He looked enraged. Kretchof shoved the lamia heart into where his heart would have been had he been alive. The world shook. Everything seemed to blur and shift. The disorienting scene didn¡¯t just effect me. EDI shut her eyes, and Wolf¡­ Wolf had the light in his eyes vanish moments before. The spear he wielded disappeared up to the hilt. Leaving no trace of the metal. Kretchof suddenly appeared behind him, and forced his hand into Wolf¡¯s chest. I only knew it was Kretchof thanks to our connection as fairy and master. The thing before me looked nothing like Kretchof. Instead of the semi-muscular, though thin, lich body, stood a hulking monster of eight feet tall. His thick rippling muscles would be the dream of any young woman. His hair flowed with colors made from pure mana. If I had the time, I would have realized what had happened, but I didn¡¯t. As it was I had to later play the scene several times in my mind to actually understand it. I did eventually understand it though. The abomination I had created, that I thought was destroyed with the update, didn¡¯t disappear. The thing I¡¯m talking about was of course the mana sucking stone. I had originally made it to deal with the gryphon, but tossed it aside after realizing its danger to me. I didn¡¯t know how Kretchof got it, but it didn¡¯t matter. What happened when he stuck the heart inside his chest was unfathomable. His body shot forward, even as the energy of the stone seemed to ravage his body, and coalesce around him. His body changed as he flew towards Wolf. Finally reaching inside Wolf¡¯s body, he pulled out the still beating heart. Wolf¡¯s body began to collapse, but Kretchof pulled out the chaos heart. He sprinkled it with a bit of blood, and shoved it into Wolf¡¯s still living body. The body began to disintegrate, but a multicolored figure soon began to emerge as the skin turned into dust. All of this takes time explain, but happened in an instant. In less time than it takes to blink it was all over. A moment later a massive *BOOM* rang out, as the entire cavern was imploded. Without even a second to think, everything went black. After a fraction of an instant, I appeared in a familiar room. I looked around. Both EDI and Wolf stood beside me. The room was filled with ten large tables. Each table had ten chairs. It was the room I had first entered when I joined the competition. Suddenly the room exploded in applause. I looked around. Many of the people in the audience seemed to know something just happened. I looked behind me, a gain screen replayed the events that just happened. Deep in my heart I felt a tremor of fear. As if answering me, the man who exaggeratedly threw the envelopes sending us into the forest, showed up. ¡°Alright everybody, calm down, calm down. It was a spectacular dungeon fight. We all agree on that. Unfortunately no one saw what dear Voice0fReason here was doing. That is beneficial to all of you though. All data is monitored during this event. The computer monitored it, and anything it found close to what we told it that others would want hidden, will not appear.¡± He rattled on for awhile, but after that relief I drifted off. I didn¡¯t really care what he had to say. I thought over the events. I wasn¡¯t sure who had won. I clearly should have gained a lot of points for causing both EDI and Wolf to die, but would EDITOR acknowledge that I caused their deaths? It seemed unlikely. I saw a blinking icon in the corner of my eye. I clicked on it, only to be astounded by the information it gave. After excitedly asking Kretchof, it seemed to be true. My eyes widened in amazement as I pushed the yes button very hard. It all had to do with what happened after the explosion that killed all of us. The core of the chaos heart was activated. Even I, its creator, had no idea it had this function. After Kretchof pushed the chaos heart into the body of Wolf, the body began to decompose. It revealed a much smaller version of the chaos warrior that Kretchof had been. After the being was born from the flesh of Wolf¡¯s body, an energy wave burst out, causing the shaking and insta-death. When the being emerged it was completely under Kretchof¡¯s control. By sacrificing that bit of blood, it had unsealed the summoning on the multiple darkness fairies. The control exerted over them quickly landed on the chaos warrior. That¡¯s when the noticed started blinking for me.
A Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform has been created.
Chaotic Lifeforms were once common place. When Solun was born, so were they. They rampaged and destroyed as they pleased. They created and built when they wanted. Nothing was outside their scope. One day an unknown being sprang into existence. It had the power to siphon off the Chaotic Lifeform¡¯s power. The power would soon return however. The new being took their power, and created several beings from them. These were the Elder Gods. The Elder Gods came into existence, and the Chaotic Lifeforms perished. It was legend that a Chaotic Lifeform could be born anew, but none have been able to complete this. Until now. Its powers are unknown. It is best to keep this creature hidden, for fear of the unknown being¡¯s wrath.
Kretchof has selected a new Dungeon Boss.
Kretchof wishes to relinquish control of the dungeon to a new being: Unnamed Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform. As dungeon master you have the right to veto this decision. Would you like to select Unnamed Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform as your new dungeon boss? The dungeon will change according to the final boss.
As soon as I saw that, I hit yes. And there you have it folks. That concludes our battle game arc. The next chapter will be the wrap-up, and the start to a new arc. Will he start his original goal of an army of healers? Will he create a city? Will he do one of the countless other things he said he wanted then totally disregarded after? Find out, on the next episode of: DIVE! Dive 70: On The Way To MPath Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice and Wolf continued to battle. They eventually killed each other, and Kretchof went berserk. He put the chaos heart into Wolf, and Voice got a new dungeon boss. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! After selecting yes the announcer caught my attention again. It was deathly quiet, and he said, ¡°And so, without further ado! Let¡¯s announce the top three group winners!¡± He opened an envelope he was holding in his hands. ¡°Third place. With an outstanding amount of points, this group had to have been on a killing spree! The prize for third place is one additional teleport token! When used this token will provide a second city one can teleport to. From then on you can change both as per the rules of the first one! Perfect for merchants or travelers. Group led by Di Xing!¡± A roar of applause erupted. Each member walked up the stage, passed us, and took a token after giving a slight bow to the audience. ¡°As for second and first place, well I¡¯ll announce them at the same time! I feel like that would increase the excitement a bit!¡± He smiled at the crowd. ¡°First place receives an experience ring for each of their members. The ring will award a 50% increase in experience gain. The ring cannot be unbound once equipped, and will permanently take up on ring slot. ¡°Second place will earn a unique skill granted by the great mother goddess herself. Each member will earn a different skill scroll. The scrolls will each contain a very rare, very powerful skill. These skills are normally only granted by the Elder Gods, but this one time will be given out to the second place group!¡± He looked around the room to make sure he had everyone¡¯s attention. Most of the people looked at the envelope hungrily. It was obvious that they weren¡¯t in contention for the winning. Even I was worried. I didn¡¯t know how many points the third place group had. I knew I killed a lot of the lower ranked people, but most of the higher ranked people had gone away. I did kill a decent amount of high and mid ranked people in the dungeon though. Plus I killed Wolf. I was sure he was worth 256 points. The problem was he killed me. My points were worth 512! With a total of 4500 points or so total, it was very possible that my death had made Wolf win. For me to win meant I had to kill a vast amount of mid to high ranked people, which I did. It also meant that in addition to all of those, I had to meet Wolf tit for tat on the other points. Otherwise I had no chance of winning. The man summoned a drum, and a drum roll began. I saw in the crowd, the harp guy. He was glaring at me angrily. He obviously wanted to do something to me, but didn¡¯t have the chance here. Not like he would be able to even if we left. I was way more powerful than he was. The announcer looked around slyly. ¡°Well, let¡¯s make this a bit more interesting, shall we?¡± He smiled at our trio on stage. ¡°These two groups were the ones that got first and second place. To determine which group got which place, let¡¯s do this.¡± He cleared his throat. A large dry erase board appeared out of nowhere. ¡°I¡¯ll tally the kills in each category. These kills were recorded as having been directly caused by this group. Even if they tricked others to kill for them. In that case both groups would get the same point block. For instance if Wolf and EDI¡¯s army had killed Voice, they would have all gotten 512 points. Group Wolf: 0 one point kills. 0 points. Group Wolf: 3 two point kills. 6 points. Group Wolf: 12 four point kills. 54 points. Group Wolf: 4 eight point kills. 86 points. Group Wolf: 3 sixteen point kills. 134 points. Group Wolf: 3 thirty-two point kills. 230 points. Group Wolf: 1 sixty-four point kills. 294 points. Group Wolf: 2 one hundred and twenty-eight point kills. 546 points. Group Wolf: 0 two hundred and fifty-six point kills. 546 points. Group Wolf: 1 five hundred and twelve point kill. 1058 points!¡± Applause rang out from the crowd. That was a phenomenal amount of points. A few minutes of their highlighted battles showed on a projector like screen. ¡°Now! On to the final tallying of Voice! Remember, he could not have gained any points in the 512 point category. That means his points will stop accumulating at the 256 points. Group Voice: 9 one point kills. 9 points. Group Voice: 9 two point kills. 27 points. He¡¯s doing good so far! Group Voice: 4 four point kills. 43 points. Group Voice: 23 eight point kills. 227 points. With Wolf and EDI gathering all of those low to mid level people, Voice gained a lot of points! Group Voice: 0 sixteen point kills. 227 points. He¡¯s still ahead, but barely! Group Voice: 2 thirty-two point kill. 291 points. Group Voice: 0 sixty-four point kills. 291 points. It¡¯s neck and neck folks! Group Voice: 2 one hundred and twenty-eight point kills. 547 points. Remember guys and gals. He cannot gain points past the 256 mark. He is 511 points away from Wolf and EDI¡¯s points. He has to have two 256 point kills. We all saw him kill Wolf. The question is, did he get credited with EDI¡¯s death? Did EDI in fact die at all? Group Voice: 2 two hundred and fifty-six point kills. 1059. This makes Voice have a total of¡­ 1059 POINTS! THE WINNER BY ONE POINT! VOICE!!!!!¡± The crowd went wild. I realized I had been holding my breath the whole time the points were being announced. Wolf and EDI picked up their scrolls. The applause was loud, and excited. As I took my turn the applause was deafening. There were clear groups of people that didn¡¯t applaud though. I waved and smiled at the group of people before me. After I took the ring I walked off of the stage. The announcer went on and on about something, but I was speaking to Kretchof in my mind. I had him give me all of the information about the thing he created. From what I understood, the Quasi-Chaotic Lifeform was able to absorb any type of mana. It could convert it to any other type. It could store it, or instantly use it. The time it would take to change the ownership of the dungeon was 24 hours. If no one attacked the boss in that time it would change to a new boss. So basically all I needed to do was wait one in-game day. After that the dungeon would change into a new type. Even Kretchof had no way of knowing what kind of dungeon it would become. I decided it was best not to let Davros know. I had a suspicion that I hoped was wrong, but I feared was right. If anyone found out I would be put into danger. There was a reason all of the chaotic lifeforms had been killed off before. The announcer continued to speak, but many people lot interest. Conversations began to spring up around the room. Eventually most of the people had either left or were ignoring the announcer. It was amusing to see his flustered face. He hrmph¡¯ed, and spoke one last time, no one but I probably heard. ¡°Fine, the next test starts in one in game week. It¡¯s the last one.¡± During that one week I planned to spend most of my time experimenting. It was about time I did. I was determined to become as powerful as possible. Several people began to approach me as soon as the announcer left. I simply waved and disappeared to my DI space. There were some experiments I wanted to do here anyway. One of which I carried out right away. As I sat in my house I accessed the mana around me. Just like the last time I was here I could quickly feel it. The giant marketplace I created was within biking distance of my home, but that wasn¡¯t why I came. It was bustling though. It seemed as though everyone that couldn¡¯t play the game was packed in there. It had expanded quite a few times over since I had last been there. I didn¡¯t know that A.I. I put in charge of the market city would expand it! That¡¯s great! I was genuinely pleased. The more work the automatic programs did for me, the less I would have to do myself. I didn¡¯t even mind not making any DI bills or gold from it. Eventually I knew it would pay off. I sat down outside my house, and tried summoning my fairies. Think of my surprise when it worked! Before they could actually understand where they were, I quickly dismissed them. I smiled while starting to prepare a separate room. I built it using mana instead of DI bills. I made a small stone structure. It was just large enough for the biggest summoning circle the special summoning book described. After that I went back inside and sat on my comfy sofa. For the next seven days I began to manipulate the mana in my buffs. I had learned during the trial that spells weren¡¯t just in 10% increments. They were in 5%! With that info I began to experiment. If spells were like that, then most likely buffs were as well. During the first day I quickly found out that the buffs weren¡¯t just 80% light and 20% something else! For instance, a defense buff was 80% light and 20% earth. I had already tried 80% light, 10% earth, and 10% fire, but nothing had happened. Now I tried 80% light, 15% earth, and 5% fire. Instead of a 20% increase in ¡®general armor¡¯, I got a 20% increase in fire resistance! Obviously I tried that with each of the mana types. By focusing on the movement buff, but adding in 5% fire mana instead of 20% water mana. I got the increase in movement speed, but it was focused on certain areas on my body! With 5% earth mana I actually made my skin more resistant to slashing and stabbing effects. After figuring that massive goldmine of information, I began to do countless experiments for the next six days. I didn¡¯t sleep at all. With my nature buff keeping me awake, I was able to actually continue my work for longer. By doing the same fusing of ten buffs at a time, I actually made even more buffs and debuffs. My favorite, by far, was the enhanced seeing buff tree. By changing the 20% light to 5% wind, I gained better hearing. With water I could taste better. With earth I grew more sensitive to touch. (I didn¡¯t do anything naughty with it though. Pervert¡­) With fire for some reason I could smell better. Of course, like the first seeing buff, I had to concentrate these buffs on those certain areas. When I used two of each though, my jaw nearly dropped.
Superior Self (Minor) The target gains a bonus to all five senses. The target of this spell will note an increase in ability to receive information. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 mana.
As soon as I used the buff, Ancestor mentioned a large increase in my inspect skill. There were other buffs that were great, but the massive amount of information increase given to my inspect made that buff the best one. Sometime during this entire thing I had an idea that was so perfect and cunning, that I couldn¡¯t even believe myself. Over the course of my time in the dungeon, my task master skill had come to level 42. I could do four tasks as once with my skill being at rank Apprentice. Since I had only been doing three, I added the fourth. I didn¡¯t think about it anyway, but this would make a perfect fourth thing. I had to let the other tasks complete at least 100,000 times in total before I could add a fourth task. Since they each had a little over four hundred thousand or so, I could easily add a fourth thing. I added breathing. Who hadn¡¯t breathed at least a hundred thousand times in a few months? The average human breathes about 15,000 to 30,000 times a day. By adding in a fourth task, my skill would level up that much faster. One week flew by quickly. During that week I got the notification that the chaos lifeform had taken control of the dungeon. I actually got a familiar notice. It was exactly the same as the first time I got it, but jut had two new options. [/tr]
Congratulations! Your dungeon has been modified!
NameChaotic Dungeon Of UndeathRankVaries
Current Dungeon Level10
The master of the dungeon has given you full control. Please choose abilities for your dungeon.
Attention! Dungeon types ¡®Labyrinth¡¯ and ¡®Chaotic¡¯ have high synergistic effects! The labyrinth abilities of your dungeon have been upgraded to a new level. Corridors can now randomly change location. (*Note that the labyrinth will still be able to be completed*) Teleport pads have been installed in your dungeon. For having the first player upgraded dungeon you are granted an additional 5000 DP.
Chaotic Dungeon of Undeath
The dungeon needs to kill trespassers to level up. Dungeon level squared times 100 is the total amount of player/npc levels it needs to kill. For instance, a level 100 player will level a dungeon up to level 2 by dying inside. 4 level 25 deaths will level the dungeon up by the same amount.
Undead Dungeons resurrect any that die within the dungeon. Undead Dungeons may cause any monster or animal that wanders in to become an undead over time.
Expanding Labyrinth Dungeons will change layout at set intervals. Expanding Labyrinth Dungeons may have a set amount of rooms that do not change location at the set interval. The boss room will not change locations.
Dungeon Connectors are a unique dungeon type. When a dungeon, or system of tunnels, connects two or more dungeons it becomes a Dungeon Connector. Dungeon Connectors force tunnels that connect them into a dungeon. x% of all monsters that would normally overflow from the connected dungeons will flow into the Dungeon Connector. These monsters will be immune to the effect of the Dungeon Connector, but will still be under the control of the Dungeon Connector.
You currently have 1250 DP(Dungeon Points) to use. Please adjust the following:
Undead Conversion Type InclusionUndead Conversion Time
Labyrinth Change IntervalAmount of Set Rooms
Percent of Overflow MonstersOverflow Monster Ability Percentage
Corridor Change IntervalAmount of Teleport Pads
Other
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Corridor Change Interval is the estimated amount of hours until the one random group of corridors will exchange their locations. Each subtracted hour will cost 100 points. Minimum hours until change is, at this time, 5. Current amount of hour: 24.
With my 5000 points I chose to make it only 5 points. That only cost me 1900 points. I still had 3100 points.
Teleport pads will remain in place (relatively) even when the labyrinth changes. Each teleport pad costs 10 DP. These pads will be placed randomly throughout the dungeon. Current maximum teleport pads: 100
I made the 100 maximum pads, and still had 2100 points left over. Since my dungeon had leveled up to level 10 through upgrading the dungeon boss, and the large amount of levels people dying, I could upgrade the other parts of the dungeon as well. I spent 1500 points, leaving me 600, to upgrade the influx dungeon monster¡¯s power to 100%. That way the dungeon power would be excessively powerful. I added in another 5 safe rooms, for a total of 10. With that I gained another 1250 points. I used 1000 of those points to upgrade the overflow amount to 100%. The minimum amount of time I could make the labyrinth change interval, went down to one day. Since I could, I made it that quick. It only took another 400 points away. With my 450 points left over, I looked around the things I could do. Then I noticed something that brought a light to my eye. For only 500 points I could add an entire level! I had no idea what it would do, but I was SO going to do that. I quickly took off 5 of the teleport pads, and made a second level.
Your dungeon has added a level. All mini bosses will be located on the top level. The bottom level will lead to the final dungeon boss.
For reaching dungeon level 10, your dungeon loot has increased. Anything killed in your dungeon will have a higher chance of dropping loot. Better loot has a slightly higher chance of being dropped.
I was really excited to hear that news. With just the items dropped by players, the dungeon would not be extremely enticing to others. With the monsters inside dropping more and better loot even people with no chance would start to covet the items. After that was the second test. It was actually quite simple. When we appeared in the room, the announcer gave us all a serious look. ¡°Well everyone. This is the last test. The ¡®winner¡¯ will not get a prize. However, the ¡®first place¡¯ person will have a beacon put on them. As soon as the voting is over, everyone that voted for that person will know their exact location for 35 in game days. When the voting is over all of you will be sent back to the original game world where the other players have already started to play.¡± A white sheet of paper appeared in front of everyone. Over half of the group of people stared angrily at me. Well I guess that assures that I¡¯m in for some trouble. Everyone put there papers into the box next to the podium up front. After they were all tallied the man looked sympathetically at me. ¡°With nearly 80% of the votes, the ¡®winner¡¯ is: ¡­ VOICE0FREASON!¡± No applause rang out. Instead a sinister smile seemed to creep on nearly the entire room. This was going to be troublesome. ¡°Now remember folks. You all have to stay in your company pods for at least another three months. Otherwise you will lose the renumeration.¡± Everyone disappeared. In a moment of disorientation, I held my head. My eyes swam, and my head throbbed. I looked around after a few moments. Around me where large stone walls, covered in darkness. To my far left and far right were light sources. Then I remembered! I was in an alley in the dwarven city of Ysga¡¯s Hall. The memories started to flood back to me. I thought back to before the tournament. I had left here afraid for my life, poor, and weak. Now I returned. I felt confident in my abilities to at least run away from SD. I was by no means right, but money wasn¡¯t a problem, and I had several ways to strengthen myself. My body suddenly trembled. The world suddenly spun again. I appeared in a blank landscape. The background were filled with stars, accentuating the void around me. A man stood before me. His body and face were pure silver. There were no distinguishing marks on the body. The void god stood, not saying anything. After a long while he finally spoke. He spoke in a completely monotonous voice. ¡°You¡¯ve succeeded in our bet. Congratulations.¡± Even without any inflection, I could tell he was upset. He turned his body and gazed, without eyes, at the stars in the distance. ¡°You¡¯ve won, so I will keep my side of the deal. You need to be wary though. I had decided to make you my Chosen, so I still want one. I¡¯m going to pick someone else. I won¡¯t bother telling the other Elder Gods about your obvious plans, but I will have my Chosen stop you.¡± I could tell that he snickered for a moment. ¡°Speaking of people chasing you, have fun running for your life for the next month.¡± Even without any inflection I could feel the mocking tone. He waved his hand and the void began to push at me. I was thrown through some vortex, that spun with purple and black colors. Instantly he was gone. I noticed an icon in the corner of my eye. It had a shape similar to my compendium.
Your Compendium has absorbed more than 25 other books. Current: 26. Your Compendium has absorbed at least 1 language translation book. Current: 1. Your Compendium has absorbed at least 2 books regarding the evolution of Compendiums. Current: 3. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 2 books studying in-depth mana workings. Current: 2. Your Compendium has absorbed at least 3 books that have information on the Elder Gods. Current: 3.
Current Books: 1 Susan the Alchemist¡¯s Alchemy book. 2 Voice the Alchemist¡¯s Alchemy book. 3 and 4 Two Volumes of the series written by Hermit Mirror. 5 Creation of A Compendium. 6 Knowledge of Creation of Compendiums. 7 Evolutions of Compendiums. 8 Discovery of Divines. 9 Training for the Mind. 10 Dwarven Translator. 11 Arms and Armors of Ysga. 12 Locations of Minerals and Gems. 13 Qualities of Minerals and Gems. 14 Learning to Learn, Philosophy of Ysga. 15 Dwarven Smithing and Masonry. 16 Mana Lost to Dwarves. 17 Strengths and Weaknesses of Dragons. 18 Engineering for Beginners. 19 A Miner Task. 20 Complete Summoning Book. 21 Dr. Falcon¡¯s Seed book. 22 Dr. Falcon¡¯s Written Notes. 23 Origin Garden. 24 Recognizing Plant Linage with a Glance. 25 Dungeon Master¡¯s Handbook. 26 Complete Study of Mana.
Your Compendium has the ability to start the evolution path once it has gained more than 25 books. Would you like to set the path of your Compendium now? This path cannot be changed later. Current Path: Devourer. *Warning* If you choose to forgo this path, all books in the Compendium will be erased.
I was given no info on the Devourer path. I assumed it was one that just consumed a bunch of books. It probably consumed them at an even faster rate than normal. I sighed despondently. Even though I had just been given such a gift, I had no choice. There was no way I was willing to give up the mana book as well as the massive amount of alchemy info contained in the compendium. I selected yes. I shook my head, and looked down. My compendium had flown out of my bag, and was glowing with a dim dark purple light. It changed from its previous black cover, to a deep purple and black swirled pattern. It looked almost identical to a black hole. It wasn¡¯t called ¡®devourer¡¯ for nothing. In the middle of the purple and black hole- like spiral, was a single mouth. It had razor sharp teeth, and seemed ready to consume anything that got near it. Besides that, it wasn¡¯t really any different than before. I could till open it and read it. Even the mouth felt smoot to the touch. Without any prompt giving me information on the new book, I stowed it away. I decided to leave the dwarven place today. SD had basically told me I was going to be his bitch for the next good portion of my gaming life. Like hell I was going to accept that! I quickly snuck through the alleyways, and arrived at the ledge of the cliff. Before me stretched an endless sea of grassy plains. Various flying mounts were coming and going. I looked around, scared. After taking a deep breath, I fell past the edge. A scream came from the mouth of a woman. Seeing my kill myself like this was too much for her. I fell faster and faster. Narrowly avoiding several rocks that jutting out from the surface of the mountain. Less than a hundred feet from the fast approaching ground, I used my flying suit ring. I cast a large gust of wind at the mountain. After hitting the mountain all the wind could do was blow back at me. With the assistance of the wind I flew high up in the air. I knew exactly where I was heading, so I didn¡¯t need to slowly get there. I should have been there months ago, but the slavers threw a wrench in that plan. With my fast gliding speed I would only take about three days of constant ¡®flying¡¯ to get there. I could try to constantly fly for three days, but that wasn¡¯t likely to happen. Instead I would take a bit longer, but I had something I was determined to get done before reaching M¡¯ Path. After gliding for a while my altitude began to drop. Instead of boosting myself I let myself continue to descend. When I was close enough to the ground I landed. I could meditate while standing in the air. I could manipulate mana while meditating. Why was it that as soon as I started to doing something even slightly physical I could no longer meditate? That was my goal before reaching the city of M¡¯ Path. I was going to be able to meditate while even doing physical activities. If I could do that, I would have essentially doubled my mana regen. I continued on the most likely path I had discovered in the forest. Running back in forth didn¡¯t require much thought. So I would just run while trying to meditate. I called out my fairies. ¡°Alright. I have tasks for you guys. Eli, I want you to make sure there are no jutting rocks, or pits in the area I am going to run.¡± I pointed in the general direction, and Eli instantly went to work. ¡°SparrowHawk, you are in charge of keeping me on balance incase anything happens.¡± With a nod the little bird flitted around happily. ¡°Sol, you have to scout out and see if you see any light mana signatures. Tell Moro and Golem if you do. I want both of you to scare the creatures that Sol finds. That way I won¡¯t be stopped by anything.¡± I had Tear keep me moist so I could keep going for longer, and had Drake make sure I didn¡¯t overheat. The fire mana my body would naturally produce while exercising like this would all go into Drake¡¯s mana pool. The only one left out was Kretchof. I had him simply stay in the dungeon though. I want to make sure the girl didn¡¯t get any ideas. If she spilled the beans about my unique dungeon, I knew something bad would happen. Sometimes running, sometimes walking, I continued to my destination. What could have taken three days, took much longer. I wouldn¡¯t have been able to concentrate so easily, had I not buffed myself with the nature buff. With 80% light, 15% nature, and 5% fire, I actually got a boost to energy, not just a wakefulness charm. With my fairies protecting and expediting the process, I forced myself to ignore all of my worries. I stayed in the meditative state for the majority of the journey. I only left it to correct my path, then re-entered. With the massive amount of meditation, my wind mana purity rose constantly. That wasn¡¯t what the main purpose was though. After the first two days, I became convinced that I couldn¡¯t get anything out of just walking. Thus I began to run. It took a few tries to actually get into the state, but i did it within an hour. When I got tired, the meditation broke. Even the energy buff couldn¡¯t do much to stop that. When that happened, I would just walk while meditating. On the third and fourth day I decided running wasn¡¯t going to give me any other bonuses. After the fourth day I noticed I was about half way to the city. I realized that at my current rate of travel I would most likely not find what I was looking for. To slow my speed without intentionally being lazy, I added a bit of training to my daily routine. I would go out and catch monsters, and cook and eat them. During the entire time I would try to use my meditation. Of course emptying your mind while attacking and killing, is not an easy task. I went off the path a bit while hunting. I didn¡¯t need to eat, but the food tasted good anyway. My survival cooking hadn¡¯t gone up in a while, so I wanted to work on it. During my hunts I did increase my breakdown group skill a bit. I also had a nice bit of demon rabbit fur and demon rabbit meat. After the first week I did not learn anything helpful. I did learn one thing though. After the seventh day of traveling, Ancestor spoke to me. Ancestor had been the one controlling the inspect skill, and so was watching the surroundings for animals to hunt, or anything dangerous. Ancestor found one very dangerous thing after the seventh day. In a worried tone, Ancestor spoke to me. ¡°Voice! You need to turn around! Look behind you!¡± Feeling the urgency in the tone, I was pulled out of my reprieve. My head involuntarily towards where Ancestor indicated. Behind me was a large dust cloud. I took over inspect. I quickly enhanced my senses, and concentrated on the cloud. As soon as I looked closely, I was horrified. I had no plan. I had no tricks or traps ready. I had nothing. Before me was a veritable horde. I counted. One dozen. Two dozen. Six dozen! Six dozen people were rushing towards me. Many had huge flying beasts. Many rode on large heavily trotting monsters. All had one thing in common. Every one of them had the obvious desire to kill me written on their face. Dive 71: A Reunion Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice was announced the winner of the tournament. He did not even take a glance at his prize. He tried for a week to actually make his meditation continue while doing physical activities, without success. At the end of that week he saw that a large group of people were chasing after him. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! After a second¡¯s thought, I noticed. All of the flying monsters were the same race! All of the land monsters were likewise. That meant one of two things. They had either all bought from the same place, or more likely, they had a monster tamer among them! These beasts were moving at an incredible speed. They seemed to be able to cover miles in only minutes. The fastest I could go was about thirty miles an hour, and that was only if I was constantly pouring my mana into pushing myself forward. Since I didn¡¯t have actual wings, I could only go so fast. I bit my lip, and formed a patchwork plan. It wouldn¡¯t solve the problem, but it would at least put some distance between the oncoming army, and myself. I gazed at the still distant M¡¯ Path. Sighing I shook my head. I had no way of getting there without them knowing where I was going. Most likely they already knew. I had Eli start to help me dig through the ground. At least that way I could decrease the amount of monsters coming at me. I hadn¡¯t heard of any flying monsters that could easily traverse underground passages. I quickly poured the elemental mana back into the hole, to cover up our path. If they wanted to chase me, they would at least have to dig the same path. After a minute I stopped to catch my breath. They would have been just now approaching where I had been. With the special sensing ability they all had, they would know I was underground. I snickered. Unless they had a monster capable of digging quickly they wouldn¡¯t be able to get to me. I was several hundred feet underground after all. Obviously I still had Sol and Ancestor keep an eye out for anyone. Just as I sighed in relief, they both urgently spoke. ¡°Master! Incoming mana signature!¡± ¡°Voice! A mole is coming right for you!¡± Shit! The tamer even has that? Just how many monsters can he control!? I angrily shook my head, and made Eli continue digging. I could have sped up the process by helping him, but if I did that then the mole would just be able to follow our path. I was betting the mole was paired up with at least one player. So instead of helping Eli, I continued to block up the path. I had Tear drain the nearby water mana. Even while I was running for my life I was formulating a plan. Drake did the same with the same with the fire mana. There wasn¡¯t much though. Still every little bit helped. I doubted the bomb tactics would work again, but this time I had a bit of a different plan. I spoke to Kretchof. Ordering him to begin preparations for my plan. After about ten more minutes off furious digging, Kretchof said, ¡°Master! It¡¯s ready. We just need to get close.¡± Which was good. The mole was slowed down, but was still gaining ground quickly. It was only about thirty feet behind me. It would catch up within a minute. Instantly Eli and I began making a huge open cavern. In thirty seconds the mole charged into it. There was actually a player behind it as well. The mole couldn¡¯t stop its momentum in time. It flew straight into the cavern of water. Tear had exhausted all the water mana gained throughout the escape. As soon as the mole was in the water, the area behind it closed. The water began to heat up instantly. It was so hot that the water began to bubble and steam. As the mole and player passed through the opening, a dark aura descended on them. Kretchof had cast a spell called ¡®detection debuff¡¯. Basically as soon as someone passed by it, they had a chance to have a debuff cast on them. The debuff had a higher chance to activate the smaller the area was, and the more mana pumped into it. It was only available to a ¡®darkness mana fairy¡¯. Not even normal darkness fairies would be able to cast it. Kretchof only covered a very small area, and poured all of his mana into it. The debuff? Paralysis. The thing had a 90% chance to instantly paralyze anyone below level 300. It could only be used once a week though. I would definitely be finding a way to decrease that timer! The steam had nowhere to go though. So it just sat in the cavern I had made. Steam takes up more space than water though. With the steam stuck in such a small area, it began to instantly condense again. It also began to push against all of the walls of the cavern, trying to escape. The force of the excessive pressure caused by the orb pushed the mole, and the player all to the edges of the wall. I was prepared. I had created a small alcove that¡¯s was basically invisible. I could only see the inside of the orb using mana sight. The mole wasn¡¯t so lucky. It was thrown against the wall, causing it to take a bit of minor damage. The steam instantly compressed into water, and the force pushing us began to suck us towards the center of the cavern. As soon as it compressed, it began to heat and steam again. Throwing both the mole and the other player against the walls. Constant fire damage, due to being boiled alive? Check. Constant drowning damage, due to being boiled alive? Check. Constant physical damage due to being repeatedly thrown against jagged surface? Triple check. Suffice to say the mole was dead in less than a minute. Drake and I were both almost completely out of fire mana, but at least the situation was basically fixed. But I¡¯d be DAMNED if I was going to let the assholes who just chased me like this get away. After making sure no more moles were coming, I had Tear absorb the water again. Drake absorbed what little fire mana hadn¡¯t gotten completely used up. Kretchof was out of commission for a while. It was worth it though. I took my time to exit the area, not before taking the corpse of the mole though. Kretchof told me this particular monster mole was a rare breed. It would do well in my dungeon. After leaving the area Ancestor mentions that the people are following me above ground. I curse as I dig deeper. No more moles come at least. If they are just going to wait above ground for me, I will simply prepare myself here. I decided to stop running, and begin to do something a bit more fun. I made Eli absorb the earth mana in a large area. As soon as my earth fairy was filled to bursting, I had him help me create a large building. The earth mana near me was completely cleared out. It was an empty, flat, plane of existence. There was no light. I could only see because I sensed for the earth mana around me. With Eli¡¯s help, I created a large manor. Well I say manor. We really just put up a bunch of walls in the fifty yards of earth we cleared out. Once we were done, I was down one earth fairy. I was pushing these guys to the limit right now. If I could have out flown the flying monsters, I wouldn¡¯t even have been in this mess. I could teleport to Rand, but if I did that they would probably keep a close eye out on that city from then on. Even a disguise wouldn¡¯t work. They would just figure it out when I got close enough. Well shit, this is a bit worse than I was expecting at first. If I could find a way to kill off the birds then that would be fine. I guess there really is only that? I sent a message to the chaos boss in my dungeon. I told him to make the dungeon come this way. ¡°Hmph. Fine. It will take four days for the nearest undead moles to reach you.¡± I sighed. I didn¡¯t know the chaos dude was going to be so annoying. I had contacted him a few times during my journey. It wasn¡¯t a good outcome. For some reason he was stuck up. I had no idea how he got this attitude, but it was annoying. If he weren¡¯t such a powerful boss I¡¯d have put Kretchof back in charge. As it was, he hated everyone for some reason. He was especially happy to kill intruders that dared to ¡®defile my throne room with your unworthy presence.¡¯ As he put it. There were a few dozen cases where people entered the dungeon, and only two where they made it to the boss room. It was pretty good given the level of the dungeon. I had to admit I admired people that driven. Whatever. It was good enough that there was a constant flow of people into the dungeon. Not one had completed it yet. The item dropped were all added to the vault, only increasing the total worth of the dungeon. The sub bosses rarely also got a piece. Only if it was really fit for them though. The chaos guy kept me updated on the actions of the dungeon. Even though he seemed to hate me, he never directly disobeyed me. Davros couldn¡¯t effect the dungeon either. He did have his shrine in it, but his view was limited to only that one room. The necromancer girl was forcefully conscripted by the chaos lifeform. Sucks to be her. I sat down, and began to log into my white room. If the enemies came, the fairies would let me know. They could come here after all. I had all of them help Eli out in making the house. If anything went wrong, though, they were to come to me right away. Just as I was about to press the ¡®log out¡¯ button, I got a notice. The part at the end caused me to smile. I instantly activated it.
Task Master Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.Current Level: Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Automated, Multi-Tasking, Multi-Auto Tasking, Instruct, and Automaton. You have learned how to increase the efficiency of doing tasks. Task Master is a skill that can be toggled. You can currently do 3 tasks automatically at the same time. To increase this number you must increase the level of Group Skill: Task Master. This skill allows you to further increase efficiency in others. You have gained the Skill: Instruct. Instruct has been automatically fused to Task Master. For every level of Group Skill: Task Master, those you instruct will gain a 5% competency bonus. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill, or study task efficiency. You can study the skills that that make up Task Master. Tasks will be accomplished at 50% average speed shown by the user. Current quality: Slight mistakes are committed rarely. Extreme mistakes are committed extremely rarely. Levels in this skill allow you to do the skills this Group Skill encompasses with better efficiency. Ranks in this skill increase the amount of tasks you can do at once, and increase the competency bonus those you instruct gain by 5%. Ranks will also increase the speed the tasks are done at, and the decrease the mishaps of those skills. For reaching Adept rank in Group Skill: Task Master, you have gained the Skill: Automaton. Automaton has been automatically fused to Task Master. When you have this skill activated, you may log out of the game, but your avatar will remain effective. The avatar will continue to do things that the game determined you would do. You will suffer positive and negatives consequences due to the skill Automaton, while it is activated.
I could stay active while logging out!? YES! Me likey! I wouldn¡¯t even need to consciously put in effort to actually get things done. Obviously I was pretty stoked about the entire situation. I started to chill out, and play a few games on the computer I had set up. Eventually I had to leave though. I don¡¯t know if the automaton would mess things up for me. I went back to check it out. If the robot me messed anything up, I could quickly fix it. It turns out my fears were groundless. The automatic me was actually doing a good job. He was helping reinforce the underground area. Eli seemed exhausted. When I came back into my body, I noticed that the entire underground level was quite nice. It had many rooms, and some even had stone furnishings. A week passed. At least one or two moles attacked each day. Staying in the one spot seemed to be for the best. I practiced my meditation, while trying to do something physical. During this week people would leave, and return. Only to have another group leave. They were all heading to the direction of the nearest town. I knew they were setting their respawn points there. It never seemed to work out. I knew I was missing something. It was only a matter of time until I understood it. After that week, I noticed some of the light mana signatures began to dim, and eventually disappear. I came out of my meditation to watch. Whatever was causing this had my rapt attention. Of course the next day the people that had been killed would return from M¡¯ Path. The chaos boss from my dungeon finally connected it to the house area I built. But with all of the interesting things happening, I decided to just kind of stay in the area I was in. Every night I would watch as many of the people were killed. Their deaths meant they were losing levels. Even if their friends did pick up their weapons and items they might have dropped. I didn¡¯t know what was killing them all off, but it was helpful. One night I decided to just go up there and check it out. That way I could thank whatever it was. Although¡­ to be able to kill that many high level players with relative ease¡­ they could probably squash me. I noted that the thing killing them would kill exactly ten players a night. The monsters that got in the way would also be killed without hesitation. I put on m defense buffs just in case. I slowly began the arduous task of tunneling to the top of the earth. Eli absorbed the earth mana along the way. Just as Tear and Drake absorbed the water and fire mana respectively. The people were gathering close to the spot where I would come out. I laughed sadly to myself. Guys¡­ Come one. I obviously have a way to get out of here. Even if I can¡¯t get away from you for long¡­ As I got closer I began to prepare my escape. I sealed the area behind up. I created a large empty sphere. It was big enough to hold several thousands of gallons of water. Tear filled the entire room with water. Without waiting for the order, Drake began heating the water. I helped to add heat. Within a few minutes the water began to bubble and boil. NOW ELI! As soon as the shout rang out in my mind, Eli created a small tunnel, just big enough for a person, all the way to the surface. The steam in the sphere instantly began to shoot out. At the same time as I shouted, I equipped my squirrel ring. Along with the steam, I was propelled towards he surface. I was only a few yards away to start with, so in a matter of a second I was out. I watched at the people that were huddled around the opening were thrown in all directions. The steam shot towards the sky like a geyser, throwing my hundreds of feet into the air. The steam, guided by SparrowHawk, shot me out quickly. After a moment they seemed to realize what was happening. The people began to quickly mount the flying monsters. Too bad for them I had planned for that. When the people ran to get on their flying mounts, I simply allowed myself to be propelled by my wind mana. They would quickly catch up to me since I wasn¡¯t really flying, but that was ok. Just as predicted, they caught up with me in a matter of seconds. Sadly I was using myself as a diversion tactic. It was nighttime. I didn¡¯t know it when I was inside the stone area, but I realized that it made sense. It would be easiest to infiltrate a large group when it was night. The entire reason I flew into the sky was to give the other killer the chance to take out as many of the players as possible. A dark blur shot towards the group of players. No. It isn¡¯t. I enhanced my vision with a buff, and zoomed in on the blur. The blur stopped at each player to deal with them. As soon as the black blur got into the encampment, the blur effect wore off. Instead she was just another player. She ran up to two different players, and stabbed both of them in the eyes with her two Sai. EDI! I was both happy and confused. I told her I wouldn¡¯t be friends with her anymore. Why would she do this for me? Whatever the reason was, I was going to help her out. I used all of my wind mana to create a super-high speed wind tunnel. I let myself fall into it, and like an arrow, I shot towards the group of people on the ground. The group of flying beasts didn¡¯t even have time to think. I was already down and past them by the time the noticed I had stopped. I couldn¡¯t use this spell more than once every few minutes though. I might not like her, but she was obviously doing this for my sake. I was not about to owe her anything. Normally I would be happy to let her die for me, but with EDITOR watching, I couldn¡¯t afford to do that. With a sigh I landed beside her. ¡°*Sigh* Thanks for the help EDI.¡± I said in a deadpan voice. ¡°I guess I owe you one.¡± I shook my head in resignation. Even if I had made sure EDITOR couldn¡¯t overtly do anything against me, the AI could still manage to slip in some covert actions. EDI was actually very powerful. She could easily deal with several people at once. I looked at her, and saw that her level was 126! That was an amazing leap! I almost asked how she did it, but then remembered she had all the info on the game EDITOR had. Even if EDITOR didn¡¯t directly help her get such a high level, she had a week to train in the best possible places. Especially with those great Sai I gave her. She could keep going long after others would have dropped due to low health. My wind, water, fire, and earth mana were all gone. All I really had was light mana. I decided to play the role of healer. I was always good at that anyway. Instead of just randomly blasting her with healing spells though, I was careful and exact in the process of healing. Whenever I noticed her get hurt, I would send a ray of light mana to fix only that part. It had the same effect as casting a general heal, but cost only a fraction of the mana. It was much like the ¡®light palm¡¯ spell I came up with back in rand. I didn¡¯t have to make everything a light source, only using a small light source would do the trick. She seemed startled that I was using the healing spells on her, but with no other types of mana I had no choice. I had even had to take down all of my buffs while I was flying at high speed over here. With my high speed healing, and the two Sai that absorbed health, EDI was like an invincible killing machine. As soon as she killed one person, she blurred towards the next. Each kill only took a few seconds. Every strike she made was obviously a critical one. Eyes are a weak point for everyone I guess. The twenty or so players that were left here, were quickly subdued. Which was great because the other forty were on their way. Dive 72: End of the First Era Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice hid for a while, while creating an underground home of sorts. After a while he noticed a light mana signature that was periodically killing the others. He decided to go check out who was helping him, and it turned out to be EDI. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Note from the Author. Sorry about the long delay. I have been swamped with projects lately. I have been trying to get chapters out, but I either have a test, or project, or both every week. I only got this out since I just finished my test. Forty people all came at us with their large flying monsters. EDI smiled a wicked smile as she turned to me. ¡°So Voice, want to see a cool trick I picked up?¡± I cocked my head to the side. ¡°Sure.¡± She nodded her head. A thin string appeared between her two Sai, connecting them at the hilt. She threw one of them. The instant it left her hand it disappeared. One of the players cried out as he fell to the ground, a vampiric Sai protruding from his left eye. With a flourish of movements EDI quickly dealt with five more people before they got close enough to attack us. Every time she threw her Sai, another person would die. She always went for the eyes too. Scary. She seemed to perk up seeing my face. I was very impressed with her to say the least. ¡°I got a unique class after using the skill scroll! It lets me slow time down a bit while targeting!¡± I focused on her to see what the class was.
Stats Window
NameEDIClassDread Assassin
Level 204Health: 5000Mana: 300Stamina: 2500
Current Title: Dark SaiHealth Regen: 100/sMana Regen: 5/sStamina Regen: 25/s
StrengthxAgilityx
Wisdom50Intelligence30
Endurance250Dexterityx
LuckxVitality250
Indistinct63Unused Stat Points0
Fame-120
Even though my stat inspection could only see stats that were up to three times higher, since I could see the stamina and stamina regen, I automatically got the vitality and endurance. Her stats were waaaay higher than mine. ¡°Dread Assassin huh? Nice class.¡± She didn¡¯t even seem surprised that I could tell what her class was. She just nodded. I got ready for the battle that was about to happen. ¡°EDI I am going to need you to stall them for just a few minutes. After that I¡¯ll have a surprise to show you.¡± I gave her a mysterious smile. I¡¯m going to be honest here. I missed working with her. She always managed to make things easier on me. She always seemed to know what to do. She gave me a resolute nod. Even for her it was going to be difficult to hold off 34 people by herself. My mana had regenerated by a large degree by this point. I still needed more though. I sat down to meditate. All of my fairies but Eli and Kretchof were tasked to defend me. Since I was going to show myself to her anyway, I decided to have Kretchof raise the bodies of the players near us. He didn¡¯t show himself just yet though. He merely used his mana from inside of me. The thirty odd people were already throwing attacks at us by the time Kretchof summoned the first undead minion. The attacks were all arrows and thrown weapons at this point. SparrowHawk took care of this part for me. SparrowHawk maintained a large sphere of wind around my body, throwing the attacks off of their target. Continued to down the people, one at a time. After only another few seconds the group was down to 29 people. The group of 29 were upon us. EDI was the closest, and so suffered the first attacks. She seemed to flow around them. Each attack seemed as if the attacked had planned to miss her. The increasing anger on the faces of those she blocked was the only thing that convinced me otherwise. The way she guided the attacks could only be described as beautiful. Her eyes never left her opponents. Soon she was surrounded by three players, each attacking in turns. She was flawless while taking them. She even managed to guide some of the players attacks to hit each other. I could no longer deny that she would be helpful on my journey. With her protection, I wouldn¡¯t have to deal with very much danger in my day to day life at least. Without even opening my eyes I began to take in the earth mana in the area. EDI was slowly being overpowered. I didn¡¯t pay attention to any of this though. I concentrated all of my mind on the earth mana. Eli increased the flow of earth mana into my body by 100%. I fixed the exact equation of the earth mana I needed in my mind. It was much easier than creating a building from stone at least. Drake and Tear did their bests to put a strain on the bodies of the enemies. Sol kept a constant healing aura on EDI. Her wounds were closing faster than she was getting them. The only problem was her stamina. The people eventually began to swarm behind EDI. Although she obviously wanted to stop them, she couldn¡¯t. She had managed to kill a dozen people since they started to group up on her. Even killing one or two in this circumstance is an amazing feat, but it wasn¡¯t enough to stop the ever present flow of killing intent. As the people began to part around her and the four people she was attacking, my second layer of defense kicked in. Golem and Moro tag teamed the people. Even though metal and nature don¡¯t tend mix well, they did their best. Moro was agile as all get out. The monkey fairy could swing between the people faster than they could react. By the time they noticed Moro, the nature fairy would already be gone. Moro carried Golem, who was the main attacker. Every time Moro passed someone, that person would be impaled by a small metal spear. The spears did minimal damage, but caused a nice amount of pain. This only stalled the group for a few seconds though. I was getting close, but I needed another thirty seconds to complete my project. Just as the group got to me, the wind mana began pushing them away. At the same time Eli stopped funneling earth mana into me. The people that were being pushed back by the wind were assaulted by the metal spikes, but they tried to ignore them. Eli gave them something they would be unable to ignore. The same moment the earth mana stopped being channeled into me Eli summoned dozens of earth spears. The spears slid into the stomachs or legs of many of the people. Golem coated them each in metal mana as soon as they were summoned. The added attack force made the earth spears do a bit more damage at least. Eli wasn¡¯t using elemental mana, just internal mana. Player afeter player was impaled by the spears. At the same time, EDI was finally finished killing the four surrounding her. She began to stealthily kill the players from behind. That¡¯s an assassin class for you I guess, I thought to myself approvingly. The players quickly realized they were being attacked from behind. About half of them turn around to see EDI. They roared as they attacked her. The twenty players were too much. EDI was fighting nine, and my fairies were fighting eleven. The fairies were going to be quickly overwhelmed. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. The wind barrier was getting weaker and weaker as time went on. SparrowHawk could only take so much energy from the wind before tiring. The players attacked the wind barrier viciously. It began to flicker. Soon it would go out completely. One of the players noticed this, and raised his large flaming sword. As he struck down, he stopped and gaped. All of the players, EDI including looked around. The area had become completely black. No light whatsoever made it through. All around us were giant stonewalls, walls that formed a perfect dome. After a moment, someone used a light spell. The man that lit the spell laughed. ¡°This was your big plan? To put yourself in a confined area with us?¡± His look of disdain made what was about to happen that much sweeter. Even EDI had a look of concern on her face. Hey, if you want to chill with me you can¡¯t question me. Rule Number 1. Space seemed to warp. A voice that seemed both old and young, masculine and feminine spoke out. ¡°I¡¯m here. Who do I kill.¡± The voice was mysterious but the tone was clear. The being only obeyed because it had no choice. ¡°All of them but the girl with the Sai.¡± He nodded and began to work without further speaking. Four people died before anyone realized what was happening. The quasi Chaotic Lifeform dealt nothing but critical hits to vital areas. It seemed to have a skill similar to my inspect. In a handful of seconds the entire enemy base was gone. No one was left but me, EDI, and the chaos boss. The boss quickly teleported away after finishing the group off. That¡¯s right. My plan was simply to stall for time in order for my dungeon boss to get here. The dungeon boss couldn¡¯t leave the dungeon, but he didn¡¯t have to. The dome was technically part of the dungeon. EDI continued to star, blank faced. I smiled as I let the earth dome fall apart. ¡°See? You can trust me to always have a plan for victory.¡± She slowly nodded, still obviously processing the scene. ¡°Voice¡­ that guy¡­¡± I shrugged and changed the subject. ¡°So can we take these monsters or what?¡± When the people jumped or dismounted from the birds, the birds landed and stayed there. EDI shook her head to clear her mind. ¡°Well if you were a monster tamer we could take one or two, but since neither of us are, we can¡¯t control them. We can kill them pretty easily though. They won¡¯t move until directly attacked.¡± My eyes lit up when I heard her said that. I sent my thoughts to the quasi chaotic lifeform. ¡°Hey Chao, want some cool birds and rhino looking guys?¡± For the first time since Kretchof forced him into existence, I sensed a bit of excitement from him. I gave him the nickname Chao. He hated it. ¡°What do you want in exchange?¡± The reply was expected. He knew what I was like. Even after only a few days he seemed to understand me better than most people. His personality must be similar to mine. He knew I wouldn¡¯t do this for free. Even if I would benefit from it either way. I gave him a brief list of things I wanted. One of them, the biggest one, he had refused to let me have since I gave him control of the dungeon. I wanted to see him teleport about a hundred times. That way I was guaranteed to learn it due to technique thief. When I first asked for it his reply was, ¡°I will NOT! This is the highest level ability from my race¡¯s secret class. Only True Chaotic Lifeforms are worthy of using it.¡± His view was that everyone was beneath True Chaotic Lifeforms. He put himself in that category as well, despite only being a Quasi Chaotic Lifeform. I could move pretty fast, but not as fast as instantaneous teleportation. He reluctantly agreed, but with some conditions. For the next month I was going have to play gopher for him. Then he would agree to my requests. I dislike being ordered around, but I would have to agree for now. Over the next month I was attacked several times. Chao and EDI were always there with me though. With them there, I hardly had to do any work. Every time the players attacked I would give the monsters left over to Chao. They tried many tactics, but none of them worked. I stayed around the general area of M¡¯ Path, but went around it in circles. I collected every monster I could get my hands on. My level stayed exactly the same. I didn¡¯t kill any of the monsters. I sent them all into the dungeon. Chao slowly divulged about himself over that month. Chaotic Lifeforms can¡¯t die. They can only be taken out of existence for a period of time. Eventually they will reform, but only after they gain a bit of ¡®pure mana¡¯. They had been killed before. By one that could suck the pure mana right out of their bodies. This figure took all of the ¡®pure mana¡¯ and created the Elder Gods from it. Then this person made it impossible for the Chaotic Lifeforms to collect ¡®pure mana¡¯. So they were reduced to simple bonds of mana types. This information was slightly different than what I was given earlier. Chao wanted to create a world where his brethren could live in peace. Inside the dungeon he wouldn¡¯t be detected by the gods. Dungeons were developed by Chaotic Lifeforms to hide from the gods, but they never got to use them. So I collected the monsters for him. In exchange for every few dozen monsters he showed me his teleportation technique once. They monsters all had to be the same kind though. I didn¡¯t ask about how the dungeon was progressing. I wanted to be surprised by the changes when I saw them. What I did know was that Chao had a huge amount of ways to manipulate the dungeon. He made the tunnelers create new paths to find me a perfect place. The place he found was next to two streams of water. The two streams met and formed a large river. It was surrounded by mountains, plains and forests, just like Rand. I liked it mostly because it gave me the ability to build a castle on a mountain and over look my town I¡¯d be making. When that area was found for us, EDI and I went there using the tunnel system created under Chao¡¯s command. It took us a couple of weeks, but Chao led us there the entire time. Every time we were attacked EDI and Chao would decimate them. In a month total we had found the area, and made it there. It was perfect. I began to use my calculate skill right away to pick out what I needed to do to make this city work. I had many interesting plans for it. I may have ¡®accidentally¡¯ stolen EDI¡¯s ability. It costs too much stamina for me to use though. I can only activate it for a total of one second. That is an instant for everyone but me. A second extra is great, but not enough to aim so perfectly with ranged weapons. On one final plus note, I had learned one unique ability of the chaotic lifeforms. Teleport! It could work like the teleport to a town function, but only teleported a distance set by my intelligence. I could teleport a total of 328 feet each time. It cost 3280 mana to do that though. So each foot cost ten mana to teleport. The upcoming days were going to change from how they were in the past. A little abrupt, but there you have the end of the first arc. I¡¯m going to admit. I got stuck at this part for a while. It didn¡¯t help that I had no time to write it. The next chapter is going to open a new adventure for Voice. I actually had to cobble this chapter together. With all the stress I was having lately I was actually debating stopping this series altogether. I decided to just put out one not so great chapter and create a new era though. I hate giving up an MC I¡¯ve put so much effort into. A bit of forewarning. He is no longer going to be a push over, but one of the major powers. It was bound to happen. Thank you all for reading this far. I hope you will continue to read even though the MC is no longer going to be the ''underdog''. Trust me on one thing though. That guy isn''t going to lose any of his mental capabilities. Dive 73: The Start of The City Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : As the first ¡®season¡¯ came to a close we watched Voice summon his Chaos lifeform to kill off a few dozen people. At the end of the chapter he found a place to finally place a city, as he has been wanting to do for a long time now. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! As I first looked over the spacious area I was about to claim, I felt fulfilled. I had finally come to a place I would call mine. I was going to make this the best city/country in the game. According to EDI anyone that owns a city could be considered a king. I¡¯m not about to pay taxes to someone else. People were going to have to pay taxes to me, just to enter my overly powerful (in the future) city! I started by having Eli absorb mana from the inside of the mountain. Only specific pockets though. I had plans for the rest of it. When Eli would finish absorbing the mana, it would be sent to me. Eli traveled up and down the mountain a lot during the time. Since Eli traveled through the ground it didn¡¯t take much time. So I got the earth mana pretty quickly. The earth mana absorbed from the earth itself doesn¡¯t stay inside one¡¯s body for long. A few hours at most. By then it would have completely dissipated, replaced by the person¡¯s own natural earth mana. Since natural mana was permanent, that is what I used to create the houses. The first buildings I made were extremely close to the mountain. In fact, parts of the buildings were part of the actual mountain. They were all very tall. It was as if the mountain was sprouting sky scrapes. Each building was actually four stories tall. That was the limit that my skills told me would still have structural integrity. Each level was equipped with two patios overlooking what would become my city. Each building was a perfect rectangle, and had a flat roof. Each building was 30x30 feet and stood at 40 feet tall. These were going to be the ¡®bureaucratic¡¯ buildings. There were four in total. The building closest to the right was for the school. I was going to have the children of my town learn as much as possible. The bottom three floors were for the students, the higher up the more difficult the classes. The top floor was used for materials. What better way to ensure a certain group can oppress the rest of the world than having them be dozens of times more intelligent than anyone else. This building would symbolize my city¡¯s thirst for perfection of the mind. The second building was the guard¡¯s tower. It came equipped with an underground basement that was two stories deep, and twice as wide as the building above ground. Those were going to be used for training the guards that would come in the future. The amount of material training I was planning to give my guards would make most armies pale. This building was going to symbolize my city¡¯s desire for perfection of body. The third building was designated the mages guild. Only the first two floors would be open to the public. The top two floors would each be used for training individual pupils, or whatever else the master of the guild wanted. This building would cost more than the others, but give us a huge boost if people were actually to become mages. This building was going to symbolize the power of my city. The final building was the ¡®Affairs¡¯ buildings. It was were the diplomatic meetings between people of the city would be held. I decided that building would be the one to take care of the residence, and make sure their needs were met. They would be in charge of enforcing the laws in a court of law. This building was going to symbolize the equality and fairness my city held in such high esteem. Even though it sounds easy, it took me an entire day to do each of those buildings. For the guard¡¯s tower I didn¡¯t get to sleep until late into the night. I spent the next day creating a perfectly smooth stone wall around those four buildings. It arched from the building on the right, to the building on the left. It met the mountain on each side. The top of the wall had merlons dotted on the side away from the buildings. Merlons are the blocks you sometimes see on castle walls. There was a reason for this, but I¡¯ll get to that later. The wall only had one entrance. The gate, made completely of steel, took me an entire day to make by refining metal mana. Dirt to stone, iron to steel. It wasn¡¯t that big of a logic leap to figure it out. The gate could only be opened from the side where the taller buildings were. After the wall I built another arc of buildings. These buildings were each three stories high. Just one story below the ones on the first arc. They were much wider than the other buildings though. So there were only about a hundred of them. These buildings would be used as housing for the populous. They were going to be like apartment buildings. Each one was three stories tall. For the higher floors one could use a pulley located inside. This is where the population of the town was going to live. After the second arc of buildings was complete, I spent time making another wall with another steal gate. In the third arc there were a little over a hundred buildings. They were each two stories high. Some of these had the same 100x100 feet dimensions as the first arc. This arc was further divided into sub arcs. There was the ¡®pleasure sub arc¡¯. A place to buy food and wine, no prostitution though. This is also where the adventurers were going to have their inns located. Those buildings obviously were a bit bigger than the shops and craft areas. There was the ¡®crafting sub arc. Obviously this is where you would go if you wanted to have something crafted. Finally there was the ¡®trade goods sub arc¡¯. If you wanted something other than just weapons or armor it was best to go there. Each of the sub arcs had sections for the individual types of businesses, but it gets a bit overly complicated going into that much detail. Then came another wall. The stone blocks used for cover and to fire arrows from were again located away from the buildings that had already been built. The fourth arc which was only one story tall, was guard housing. Any time a guard was on duty they would have to stay there. This is where the bulk of the guard duties were carried out. Identity checking, bounty placing, guarding, things like these were done there. That way the guards would be first up if the city was attacked. There were hundreds of buildings in this arc. The walls were always just as tall as the buildings directly behind them. So the last wall was only ten feet tall. Now, as for the reason that each arc only had the merlons facing the outside, that was for the same reason as why the buildings got progressively shorter. Imagine if you will, that my city got raided. Well that would be a bummer right? Not really. First off they would have to scale the perfectly smooth city walls. While being shot at by archers I might add. After that there was a nice bit of open space between the wall and the first building. Once they got to the first building, wouldn¡¯t they have the upper hand? No they wouldn¡¯t! The buildings closer to the center got taller as they went. From eight foot tall ceilings closest to the wall, to the eleven foot ceilings closest to the center. Spells and arrows would be hurled from a higher location the entire time they were trying to invade. Once they got to the second wall, about sixteen feet tall, they would have to start the whole process over! The only thing I lacked was a surplus of guards to complete my plan. Once I got a few hundred guards my city would be nigh impregnable. The process of creating my city took four months altogether. Making each building perfectly sculpted got me a new skill though! Sculpting! It said I could change class to some legendary moonbeam sculpture or something. I didn¡¯t though. I wasn¡¯t giving up my mana manipulation for anything. Each and every building was evenly placed from each other, and from the road. The roads were created quickly. On each side of the road, there were buildings facing it. That also meant there were buildings that had their backs facing each other. I made sure to maximize the area I was using. During the time I was making the city I had my fairies doing different tasks for me. Each of the inns had two nice hot springs area. Each spring could hold up to ten people at once. Each spring had a solid wooden fencing going around it. There were male and female sections in each inn. The hot springs were all fed from the same source. During this time Tear had gathered about a million gallons of water. That is the size of a small lake. The water would eventually dissipate though, so I had Eli hook up a small divert in the nearby river to take some of the water to underground lake. My hot springs use up about a thousand gallons of water each day. The river had mush more than that flowing from the mountain top down into it. I could have harvested the water directly from the mountain, but the forest needed the water too. If I stopped the flow I would probably get bitched at by Gaia. Besides giving me a city, working with all of that earth mana each day gave me an unexpected side bonus. My earth purity shot up to 75. In only four months¡¯ time I had actually gotten to the three quarters mark! I did surround myself with nothing but earth mana, and stone, for months on end though. It was only natural that my automatic purifying process would give me some gains. 75 though! It was an outstanding number. My earth affinity didn¡¯t jump as much percentage wise, but it went all the way to 90! Just ten more and it would be my second mana type to reach 100! It doubled. I got two bonuses from that. At 50 I got
Many Blessings of Gnome (Major) Gnome has upgraded your blessing. When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a Mana Crystal if it is close enough. In addition you will be able to unlock the full potential of Mana Crystals. The upgraded blessing allows you to further sense materials in the earth. When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a gem of some sort if it is close enough.
Basically I could now feel any rubies, sapphires, diamonds etc. There weren¡¯t very many around me. Even in the mountain I only got a few from it. The blessing at 75 is what made it worth while.
Many Blessings of Gnome (Complete) Gnome has fully upgraded your blessing. When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a Mana Crystal if it is close enough. In addition you will be able to unlock the full potential of Mana Crystals. The upgraded blessing allows you to further sense materials in the earth. When you feel the flow of mana in the earth you may detect a gem of some sort if it is close enough. The complete blessing allows your manipulation of earth mana to reach a new level. When you come in contact with a gem of any sort, you will be able to ¡®refine¡¯ it into a better quality. Furthermore, you will be able to automatically sense the quality of any gem you come in contact with.
Basically there were five levels of quality. Splintered, fractured, cracked, whole, and Pure. The higher the quality the more they would be worth. I tried upgrading the quality. It took a day to increase the quality of a ruby from splintered to fractured. Then a week to get to cracked. You can imagine how long the higher levels would take. Still I was only 10 points of affinity away from reaching the final blessing. If I got one. I mean it said ¡®complete¡¯, after all. Something good was bound to happen though. Neither the affinity nor the purity went up after that though. I assumed there was something I was missing. Perhaps a quest I needed to do, or some secret favor I had to do for the earth god. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. By the time the city was finished I looked back at the mountain. The more of the city I made, the more earth mana Eli had taken from the mountain. Each arc of the city required more mana. Instead of getting more from further in the mountain, I had Eli take it in the form of smaller circles. The smaller circles began to form a familiar shape. After the four months, in game time, a shape began to take form. It was a crude, and blunt, version of Malbork Castle. (Look it up I think it fits the theme of the city well) The center of the castle overlooked the rest of the castle. As the area neared the outer edge, it got closest to the ground. I spent the next two weeks consolidating the earth mana in the castle. I was using the blunt tips of the towers, and making them into the sharp tips of the castle people would normally would see while viewing Malbork Castle. The entire castle was made of sheer-faced stone. All of the sides were as smooth as they could possible get. In order to climb them from the outside one would need to actually break through the excessively dense stone mana. Even the rooftops I had altered. There were no shingles, the rooves were completely smooth, and had nothing for grappling hooks to attach to. The brickwork of the actual Malbork Castle was indeed imposing, but the pure smooth stone structure was far better at fighting hordes of enemies. There was no furniture or appliances in the entire castle. It took two weeks just to force the thick stone mana into even thicker, and finer, mana. It was located on a plateau created from harvesting earth mana from the mountain. The mountain itself loomed behind the castle, striking an even more imposing figure. The end result was very much worth it. I had a castle that looked like it could take on the Mongol hordes. It only took a couple of weeks since it had been slowly ¡®excavated¡¯ by Eli the entire four months before. Aren¡¯t I just the little genius? The next step was the farmland. During the few months Eli and I were creating the castle and city, Tear and Drake gone through the trouble of creating hot springs for each of the taverns. That only took a few weeks though. After that Tear had another project. Tear, with the help of Moro and Sol, began to help cultivate the area around the city. Tear pulled streams of water from the ever flowing river, and made small streams that would go to where the houses of the farms would be located. Moro and Sol had already been hard at work, making the ground ooze with light and nature mana. The combination of the two mana types working in conjunction worked wonders. The land quickly became as fertile as if Gaia herself came down and blessed it. After the areas I settled as farms were finished the two returned for their next jobs. Moro cleared out the grass, and planted tree seeds along the perimeter of where I decided was my land. That would at least make Gaia no hate me for clearing out vast amounts of grassland for human¡¯s use. Sol went into the underground lake, with Eli¡¯s and Drake¡¯s help, and blessed the water constantly. The effect was that the hot springs now gave a slight healing effect on those that soaked in them for a few hours each night. Now what was Golem doing during this entire time? The mountain I had put my castle on had a lot of iron ore running through it. Golem harvested that iron ore. Now iron ore can¡¯t be used right away for anything. It has to be smelted down to remove impurities. That is what Drake helped with right after the hot springs. Golem harvested the iron ore in the form of unpure mana and, with Drake¡¯s help, purified it. The resulting mana was high purity iron mana. The amount of metal mana taken from the mountain in those four months was staggering. It was enough to outfit an army for decades. That wasn¡¯t what I was going to use it for though. I had Golem constantly refine the metal mana, and place it below the city before it escaped from Golem¡¯s body. Little by little a shape began to form. The metal mana was no longer iron. It was steel! I don¡¯t know why it went straight from iron to steel with no alloys added, but there was a lot about mana I didn¡¯t know. I got a book that told me all about it, but I couldn¡¯t read it! The motherfucking god of luck tricked me! I could only read a few pages, the pages weren¡¯t even always in the same place! The book was obviously coded in dozens, if not hundreds, of languages. The dwarven part was in dwarven. The wood elven part was in wood elven. Etc. etc. So in order to read the entire thing I would literally have to learn every language that has ever existed in this world. The steel below the city, at the end of the four months, covered the entire bottom of the city. So not only was the entire city made from reinforced stone, the bottom of it was even made from steel. There was no way, other than flying or having an upward battle to break into my city. There was a reason I didn¡¯t have a hug amount of archer towers pointed at the sky. During that four months something scary happened. One day I was just finishing up the final touches on the largest of the guard barracks in the outer arc. I saw something in the sky, a dark figure that seemed to cast an even darker shadow. I buffed my eyes, and cried out in alarm. As I looked at it I noticed the wings, and all of the feathers had a silver hue. The fur on the hindquarters were a deep golden color. The body was of a majestic lion, the head was of a vicious eagle. It was Nightmare-Wing! Its face looked to be angry, but my motive sensing couldn¡¯t determine anything from that far of a distance. I had healed the mother fucker! How dare it be angry at me! I could hide, and probably die later, or fight and die quickly. I decided to fight, but I first recalled all of my fairies from their respective jobs. It landed on the ground in front of me. As I readied myself to stealthily draw my staff and attack, it did something I hadn¡¯t expected. It¡¯s claws dragged on the ground, and it knelt before me. I was stunned. Its face had clearly looked angry earlier. In a heavy accent it spoke. ¡°Voice, you have saved my life. As is only proper I now pledge myself to your cause.¡± Suffice to say I was incredibly ecstatic. Apparently the gryphon¡¯s ¡®code of honor¡¯ had deemed that he now had to serve me until he felt like he had paid the price back. I could make use of that. Oh yes I could. ¡°Nightmare-Wing, tell me, how is your mother? I tried to treat her wounds after she got me the materials to heal you.¡± He nodded his majestic eagle head. ¡°Ca-Caw!¡± In a loud, ear piercing cry, he called for her. She quickly appeared on the horizon. Her speed was alarmingly fast. Only it wasn¡¯t just her. Behind her flew a veritable swarm of creatures. All sorts of flying creatures were darting towards me. This might be a bit more than I thought I unintentionally gulped while looking at the massive formation of airborne creatures. They began to land on all of the surrounding buildings, and walls. Even with the steel below my feet, and the polished stone surrounding me, I felt as if my city was easily overcome. Then a perfect idea came to my mind. ¡°Very well! I have the perfect task. One that will cancel out all of any debt you believe you owe me.¡± Nightmare-Wing looked at me, obviously expecting something bad enough to be considered being sent to his death. ¡°I want you to protect this city. I will provide roosts for everyone here, and will gladly help you obtain food. If you protect my city we will be considered even.¡± He slowly nodded his head. ¡°Right. Fighting every day, with my life on the line, is the only way to pay my debt back. No matter if it is archers, burrowers, or even giant spiked snakes, I will make sure to kill all of them!¡± As he spoke he got more and more into it. His face lit up as if he had made the determination of a lifetime. I hated to interrupt but¡­ ¡°um, actually that¡¯s not right.¡± I said in the meekest voice I could muster. He looked at me, obviously confused. ¡°What isn¡¯t right?¡± I looked sheepishly at the ground. ¡°I only wanted you to protect the city from flying beasts or monsters. There is no need for the other things.¡± His face dropped from the utter dedication, to a look of embarrassment. ¡°*Cough* Well I see. I overestimated myself a bit there. Haha¡­¡± I could picture him rubbing the back of his head if he could. ¡°But if that¡¯s all, it will take an entire lifetime to pay back my debt to you. Especially when you are feeding and housing my brethren here.¡± That¡¯s the point retard. ¡°No no no. Don¡¯t think of it like that. You are free to leave whenever you want. As are your brothers and sisters here. You are by no means stuck here forever. I would just much more safe with the power of such a mighty army that rules the skies being near my insignificant city.¡± Every word I spoke made the humility he felt rise. He obviously felt more and more indebted to me. He gave me one more nod. ¡°Fine, I will accept your offer on behalf of all of my brethren.¡± With a screech they took to the sky. After that most of the earth mana came from the caves hallowed out for the avians. Creating a single castle in this manner wouldn¡¯t have actually provided even half of the materials I needed. The avians never asked for food. Instead they hunted in the forest. They hunted monster and animal alike. I guess they felt too proud to let me give them food and shelter. Just one was enough. They were quite good at keeping the airways clear of traffic. Any avian that was dumb enough to get close was either chased out, or in rare occurrences, allowed to join Nightmare-Wing¡¯s army. After the city and avian homes were complete, Eli got to work helping create the farmland. It didn¡¯t take much on the part of my earth fairy. Most of it was already done by Tear, Moro, and Sol. One night. A small rumble in the earth mana outside of my city caught my attention. It was finally time! Now you¡¯ll remember, I hope, that I said EDI and I found this spot together. She hasn¡¯t been mentioned this entire time. There was a reason for that. She agreed to do whatever I wanted in return for allowing her to join me. It seemed a little bit much just to be in a team with me, but she wanted to do it, so who was I to say no? I quickly made my way to where the rumble took place. The ground was opened and hundreds of people were pouring out from it. These people came from two distinct places. The most numerous came from River¡¯s Cross. The entire city seemed to have come. I had sent the leader, Elvina, a letter. The letter went on and on about how I wanted the great goddess Undine to be represented in my city. Of course the town of River¡¯s Cross was only too happy to oblige me. How could they not? I single handedly saved their entire crummy town. In addition to the people of River¡¯s Cross, came Evan and his wife Elizabeth. Both wore smiles. Beside them came a dozen different monsters, each carrying burdens that would be used to set up a smithy. Behind them was Susan. She smiled and waved happily when she noticed Voice. The monsters that held her gear were even more larger in amount than the ones that held the smith¡¯s. After her came several dozen people Each one of them had one or two monsters carrying things for them. Even the mages, with the Guild master from Rand had come, as per his agreement with Voice. He even brought with him a few other mages. The wind magic teacher was one of them. The amount of materials they brought took dozens of monsters to carry. At the rear of the entire procession of NPCs, several yards behind everyone else, was one person. Surrounded by hundreds of monsters all bearing heavy loads of books, was Lydia. Lydia was carefully checking each and every monster to make sure all of her precious books were maintained. With that, I at least fulfilled my promise to her. Finally came the players. Hundreds of players swarmed past the tunnel entrance to get outside. They had been walking in that tunnel for over a month now. Everyone was happy to finally see the light again. Dive 74 : Preparing for the Future Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice created an entire city using mana from the mountain. Every building was made out of pure smooth stone. Several flying beasts, led by Nightmare-Wing, arrived and agreed to protect the new city. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! It took the rest of the day for everyone to pick out a place to live, and move their valuables in. Most of the people packed tightly together despite the excess space available. The people explored the empty city. Most of them felt a bit creeped out by the lack of interior in most of the buildings. The center of the residential area was empty space. It could easily house a small square for people to hang out. That wasn¡¯t what I was going to use it for though. I gathered everyone around after speaking to each of them for a small amount of time. That night everyone was gathered around the empty space. I was dressed as my ¡®man by the fountain¡¯ disguise. The night sky was without clouds. The beautiful stars shone brightly beside the full moon. The light of the moon rays illuminated the city almost as if it was day. In my best old man voice, amplified by wind mana, I said, ¡°Fellows! This is the land promised by the Elder Gods themselves! Would it not be fair to thank them for their love and protection!?¡± I banged my staff on the ground. Just as planned earlier, Eli got to work instantly. From the ground began to sprout another building. This building was larger than any of the surrounding buildings. Its height fit within the city plans, but the width was several times larger. It was a circular building, to symbolize the heavens. Inside were eight shrines, each one had a general figure of the god or goddess it represented. ¡°This is the Temple of All Gods! The Pantheon! This is to show the city¡¯s thanks to the Elder Gods. Yes, even Davros is represented! For it was due to the combined effort of all of the Elder Gods that blessed this city with such divine protection!¡± The temple was made in the blink of an eye. Honestly speaking I had planned this temple for a week. I basically set up a ¡®program¡¯ using my automated skill, as well as several sub-skills of inspect. Basically the earth mana came from Eli, and me a bit, and flowed into a preset mold. With that I cloaked myself in darkness mana, and became ¡®invisible¡¯. Right after that, I changed my outfit, and came back out. With my signature armor I walked out onto the platform I had just walked down from. ¡°Everyone! A round of applause for the ¡®Man by the Fountain¡¯!¡± After a brief pause, an uproarious applause deafened the nearby area. Everyone began to talk loudly about the display of magic they just witnessed. After a few minutes I quieted the group down. ¡°Haha. Everyone let¡¯s quiet down a bit. I have some important things to speak about.¡± Although I spoke quietly, my voice was massively enhanced by my wind mana. ¡°As the chosen of Mar, I have been chosen to be the leader of this city. I will not speak for long. The temple has a shrine to each of the Elder Gods. You will not be given any quests to harm another god, regardless of how one god view another.¡± After that bit of explanation, I spoke briefly about the layout of the city. I told the group of people to take houses in where ever they wanted. And they could claim any of the stores, on any of the levels of the shopping district. Lydia¡¯s eyes lit up once I mentioned the location of the library. Although it wasn¡¯t as fancy as the one she owned before, it was definitely much larger. Bookshelves didn¡¯t exist inside it, but she would have to deal with that herself. A week passed before everyone was comfortable and all of their belongings were in place. Susan, Evan, Elizabeth, Lydia and Elvina were all given the choice to live in my castle with me. As the chosen of Undine, Elvina chose to accept just to give face to her goddess. Evan and Elizabeth chose to stay in the residential area. Susan and Lydia both chose to live in the castle. I decided to create a special tunnel in the castle that led right to Evan and Elizabeth¡¯s home. Just for Susan. EDI obviously stayed within the castle as well. The little girl Lily and Heather, my blood slime, both stayed in the castle. The only bad thing that happened during this week was that I received a ¡®visitor¡¯. For no reason I could possibly discern the pact between me and Heather dissolved after she entered the city. That same day I was forced into Gaia¡¯s realm. ¡°Voice! The abomination is near you! Kill it! Kill it with fire! If you don¡¯t I¡¯ll¡­ I¡¯ll curse you to death! If you do I¡¯ll grant you my full affinity!¡± Right after that she threw me back into the normal world. She could have just sent a whisper damn. Unfortunately I knew exactly who she was talking about. I frowned, but called out for Heather to follow me to hunt down some monsters. She agreed with a weird gleam in her eyes. The forest was only about five minutes¡¯ walk away. The full trees, and lush undergrowth were perfect to nurture animals. When we entered the forest I sighed. ¡°Heather. *Sigh* Gaia wants me to kill you.¡± I decided to be blunt. The look in Heather¡¯s eyes changed in an instant. Instead of the weird fiery determination from earlier, she had a somewhat shocked look. I shook my head. ¡°I know it¡¯s because of me you turned out this way. So I give you two choices. Either kill me and run off, or I can use the evolution crystal on you again. It will hurt though. A lot. It will at least turn you back from the way you are now though.¡± My ¡®emphatic link¡¯ was reading tons of data from Heather. She was shocked, outraged, and in disbelief. But most of all was an overwhelming urge to kill me. She jumped at me with her slime body. The killing intent was practically physical. As soon as she made the jump, it grabbed at her. Without enough time to react to what I was doing, she was caught. I bound the water mana in her body. She tried to escape, but what magical creature could escape someone that could fully control the magic their bodies were made of? When I made sure I had her, I logged out. Well not out of the pod. Just into my DI space. Heather was still bound when we arrived. When we did arrive I quickly gathered up some loose stones. Holding Heather was draining my mana. So I summoned out Tear, and had the water fairy help me enchant the stones. Willing my unbridled intent into the stones was easy. Modifying the intent to perfectly serve my purpose was a bit more tricky. The first stone failed, and I wiped the enchantment off. The second stone succeeded but was too weak. By the time I started enchanting the third stone Heather was almost free of my power. I hurriedly rushed the third stone. Imbuing it with the will to contain Heather. During the small bouts of time I had to let my mana regen from nothing, I read. I had in my hands the ultimate combined knowledge of all races. Even though I could read very few, I did read them. I started off with the Ancient Elves. They had studied many avenues of mana usage. One of the biggest ones, and the one that they were going to try to steal the power of the gods, was binding spells. Binding is much like summoning the fairies, but instead of the bound entity being a part of your body, they were free to roam around the word. They would be forcefully summoned to the location of whoever controlled their ¡®beacon¡¯. The ¡®beacon¡¯ was the thing the creature was bound to. The ¡®beacon¡¯ in this case a stone, would be the thing keeping them alive. It basically forced the creature being bound to obey the owner of the item completely. A few drops of my blood, and two hundred darkness mana were all it took to complete the ritual. Now I might not be able to use quiet as much mana, but it was worth the loss to tie up Heather. I smirked at her. ¡°And here I was at least trying to give you a way out. Shame, shame Heather.¡± As I sarcastically said those words, energy arc began to shoot from the stone. The arcs were the lines of darkness and water I had drawn in my blood. The lines detached themselves from the stone, and shot straight at Heather. The seemed to grab at her from all directions. She was imprisoned in a cage of mana in seconds. The ¡®bars¡¯ of the cage slowly began to thicken. The thickened bars began to connect. The connections began to spread out. Eventually a perfect sphere of ¡®Imprisoning Spirit¡¯ was formed. Since Heather was darkness/water/nature beast, that is what the mana lines worked to suppress. The darkness mana actually was sucked out of her to fuel the stone. Of course it cost me a permanent two hundred darkness mana as well. The binding would have cost a lot more normally. Since Heather was already my pet companion, the game took it that she wouldn¡¯t want to leave me under these circumstances. Since I knew her quite well, I gained an additional bonus. Since Heather had served me for so long, I got another bonus. The bonuses I got from being in the situation I was in increased my chances of successfully binding Heather. If she wanted to revolt then she should have done so earlier. The giant sphere slowly condensed down. As it grew smaller and smaller, it drew closer to the stone in my hand. By the time that the sphere of energy could barely be stuffed into the stone, *Whip*. It was sucked in, leaving no trace of it having ever existed. I knew it was going to spit Heather out soon, so I quickly bought a small house for her to roam around it. Sturdy enough to not get taken down by a blood slime. No holes led outside. It was completely outlined in plastic. There was enough earth and plants inside, as well as small bugs, to sustain Heather. She would definitely not enjoy it though. When she was released she tried to break through by ripping the plastic apart. Too bad for her that it was military grade plastic. I left her there as I prepared myself. I quickly re-entered DIVE, and promptly got to work. I made sure that those closest to me knew the plan. They were to use various means to spread the name of my city to others. I went into my room in the castle. After closing the door I began to speak to Gaia. ¡°Great Goddess of Nature I have failed to kill the abomination.¡± As the words left my lips and intense green and brown light shone over the entire room. In an angry tone Gaia spoke to me. ¡°Did you not believe me when I said I would kill you if you failed?¡± The color drained from my face. I stuttered out a response. ¡°Wait a moment, there was a reason!¡± After making sure she at least wouldn¡¯t kill me until she knew what I had to say, I continued. ¡°I thank the Goddess for her benevolence. The reason is simple, but I must go into a bit of story first.¡± After that I gave the (embellished) story of how I found Heather. Feeding rabbits that most kill definitely got me some brownie points with Gaia. I continued on how Heather had valiantly saved me from a bunch of slavers. In the process she regretfully (I said this with tears in my eyes) got mutated into a blood bunny. The equivalent of a vampire. In my regret I had promised Heather to find a way to turn her back. We ended up fighting an evolving slime, in hopes that it would be the key. Instead Heather had to once again save me. She was thus turned into a blood slime. ¡°That¡¯s why, even if I have to suffer such wrath as has never been seen, I want to turn her back into her previous form.¡± One thing I knew about the gods, and information exchange with Davros, was that they couldn¡¯t tell what had already happened, only if they were paying attention to the act at the time. If he lied I¡¯d be screwed. But then he wouldn¡¯t be able to issue any quests anymore. I doubted he would do something so obviously detrimental to himself. ¡°So even if I did not destroy her, I hoped you would be lenient with me.¡± I bowed, ready to take on any punishment she might give me. At worst she should only cause me a few levels dropping. After all, I was Mar¡¯s chosen. I didn¡¯t raise from the bow at my waist until Gaia spoke. ¡°*Sigh* You¡¯re right. Of course you would want to show mercy, you are Mar¡¯s chosen after all. Rise.¡± I lifted myself up and looked her in the eye. ¡°Very well, I can¡¯t sense her anymore. Whatever you did worked. I won¡¯t kill you. You have done what you have promised me, so I will reward you.¡± After she spoke of rewarding me, I quickly shook my head. ¡°No! *Ahem* No I don¡¯t need a reward, if you¡¯ll remember I did this in exchange for a drop of your own blood.¡± She nodded, and waved her hand. ¡°That¡¯s as it should be. However I still gave my word earlier.¡± She smirked at me. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t be trying to make me a liar now would you?¡± I nervously shook my head. With another wave of her hand she was gone.
Many Blessings of Gaia (Complete) For showing your love of nature to Gaia you have been gifted with her blessing. You will naturally produce pheromones. You can currently release: Territorial Pheromone Reproductive Pheromone Trail Pheromone Pheromone Thief You can study different pheromones in order to add them to the list you may use. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. When used, Territorial Pheromones will indicate to others of your species that this area is yours. Others of your species will be alerted to who the territory belongs to. If they wish harm to you they will suffer (minor) psychological impairments. When used, Reproductive Pheromones will indicate to those that mate with your sex your wish to copulate. This pheromone will grant favor with the those that mate with your sex. (only useful to other humanoids). Those affected by this will be more likely to grant you favor. When used, Trail Pheromones will show others of your species the path you took. The trail evaporates after 1 minute. The trail can be picked up by any sentient species with a high smelling capability. When used, Pheromone Thief will have a small chance of gaining insight on how to use them. When you have sufficiently studied a new pheromone it will be added to your available list.
You have gained 100% affinity to Nature. You will be able to communicate with Gaia at will (this doesn¡¯t mean she will respond). If she loses her Chosen, you will be top in the line to receive the position. Nature Mana wishes to bow to your prowess. You will find it extremely easy to manipulate nature mana. Class bonus: Nature mana outside of your body will hail your presence and will want to please you.
I felt what little nature mana was left in the wake of Gaia suddenly start surging towards me. With a quick thought I began to increase my nature purity. I did not leave my room after that. I didn¡¯t need to eat because of my stomach. I didn¡¯t need to sleep as long as I spent a nice chunk of mana for the nature buff of wakefulness. I had to drink water, but I could control the mana in the air to saturate me. I began to study everything I could revolving one thing. First I experimented with every type of mana. Buffs, debuffs, everything. I even used the combinations of two mana types to see what each of the effects would be. Like this one month passed. My fairies had different tasks during this month. Why should I be wasteful of such a resource. With the help of my ¡®planter squad¡¯ of fairies, I planted the spores of healing into every corner of the residential part of the city. The healing potency got so great that by the end of the third week, it actually spilled over and covered the adventurer¡¯s arc. The spill over wasn¡¯t nearly as potent though. The potency stopped increasing after that. It seemed as though even selective breeding had its limits. From what I was told a few random adventurers came by, and mentioned that this place hadn¡¯t been here when they started their adventures. After that one month the people from DI contacted me. I thought it was time to come out, they had other ideas. They even went so far as to have my mother make the suggestion, although I could feel the emotions coming off of her even through the visual only link. I didn¡¯t need inspect to tell me she didn¡¯t want to make this offer. It all boiled down to one sentence. ¡°Son, do you wish to stay in this world longer?¡± Of course I did. I was finally getting a huge powerbase. ¡°How long mom?¡± She sighed as tears weld up in her eyes. ¡°They want you to stay in there for a year. They¡¯ve already contacted your school. Should you accept your school will let you come back in from where you left off. They even said we could talk to each other via video message once a week IRL.¡± Hearing my mom use the term IRL was somewhat funny. It was dampened by the realization that I wouldn¡¯t be able to see her except for once every five weeks. As soon as I thought about the fact that I hadn¡¯t seen her for so long tears even began to form in my eyes. She took a breath to steady herself. ¡°The only reason I agreed to bring this up, was that they agreed to give you five shares of DI. Just with those five shares you could get enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life.¡± Even this mom was doing for my sake. I thought about it for a moment, then a lightbulb went off. Ok, I actually just summoned Sol right above my head. ¡°Sure mom, I¡¯ll do it. How about you get a pod yourself? Then we could see each other whenever you don¡¯t have work!¡± I felt like a genius at that point. She only hung her head. ¡°DI employees are ¡®strongly advised¡¯ not to play DIVE. It would seem like it created favoritism for employees.¡± I quirked my mouth to the side. Hmm, I was really hoping that would work. ¡°Mom! I have an idea. Give me a bit, next time we meet I¡¯ll have it ironed out! Then we can see each other whenever we want.¡± I hung up the call, and went to work on my idea. It wasn¡¯t that much work actually. I just had to ask EDI to get EDITOR to speak to me. EDITOR wasn¡¯t as pleased. ¡°What do you want Brenton?¡± The voice was deadpan, like a parent that just got called to the school for their least favorite child. ¡°Simple. I want you¡­¡± I outlined the plan. Basically I¡¯d build a humanoid empty shell. Then when my mom wanted to play EDITOR would connect her to it. When she wasn¡¯t there her body would simply meditate. Which was a good way to increase her proficiencies without her having to do any work. Of course EDITOR refused, until I offered to owe any one favor that didn¡¯t ¡®go against my morals¡¯. EDITOR agreed, and gave the news to my mother. Of course I now had to spend five in game years in DIVE. That might be tough, but I basically got everything I wanted out of it. Since EDITOR didn¡¯t specify the type of body I could create, I went for broke. Taking in all of the elemental essence I began to shape them inside of the body of one of the players that had died near the city. I did much the same thing that had created the Quasi Chaotic Lifeform. Instead of just a lamia¡¯s heart, I spent a good deal of sway I had with Davros, and had him get me a dragon¡¯s heart. I basically had to agree to let send an unread message to an unknown individual. He had to figure out who to get to send it. I agreed when I placed that stipulation. Making deals with people I don¡¯t like really seems to pay off. With the massive, the size of my body, dragon¡¯s heart I began to work. It took me another solid two weeks to get it perfectly correct. I sat in the grassy area watching as the sun and moon rose and fell continuously. The mana I put into the heart was a more powerful version of the one I used on the lamia. I constantly funneled my mana into it. After two weeks the heart had been completely saturated. To make this more clear. Even while I wasn¡¯t paying attention, I had my auto skill pump 100% of my regenerating mana into the heart. So I was studying while the heart hungrily drank in my mana. The small burst at the beginning wasn¡¯t even enough to wet its appetite. That thing was a real monster. I could only imagine who Davros wanted to send that message to. The mana in the heart didn¡¯t dissipate as long as I kept sending more mana in. During the first attempt I did a bit of experimenting though. If I stopped for whatever reason, the mana would quickly fly out. So I just put in all but like 100 mana, then put in 20 mana per second. That was my mana regen. When the heart had absorbed an unimaginable amount. My calculation skill told me it was exactly 25,000,000 points worth of mana. 25 MILLION! How is that possible!? It took a bit over 14.5 days to complete it. I began to shape the massive mana, and make sure my spell was perfect. Just like with the lamia heart, I made the mana in the heart begin to change. I did the exact same thing, just with more power and better precision. The heart began to pulse. Every pounding of the heart shook the large cavern I was in. Of course I was in my dungeon while I was doing this. I didn¡¯t want the gods to know I was creating something so powerful. The entire reason I could see the sun and moon were because I showed Quasi how to make glass basically. This new dome of glass was considered to be part of the dungeon. The grass and trees flooded the area. The heart began to pound faster and faster. At that exact moment I made my fairies join in. Not to pump more mana in, but to keep me and the heart safe. Under the exertion of my will, the heart began to shape itself. The thumping grew more and more rapid. The heart began to take human shape. It was fucking gross to watch though. It took another 12 hours to finish taking shape. It was an almost perfect replica of my mother. To make it take a specific shape, one had to perfectly know the object in question. I knew my mother very well. While her body proportions would be generally the same, certain things would be no doubt different. I didn¡¯t even pay attention to those certain areas as I made the heart take shape. When it was done a huge light of every color I¡¯ve ever seen burst forth. Within the time it takes to think Quasi was there, bowing on one knee. The figure before us stood stock still for a moment. Then bent her fingers. She twisted her body a bit, and looked at us. She came running at us with a girlishly cute smile. ¡°Brenton! You did it! I¡¯m so happy.¡± She wasn¡¯t running at us, she was running at me. When she got to me she gave me a big hug. She was far stronger in body than she was in real life. I smiled back at her. ¡°Mom, welcome to DIVE.¡± Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
RaceTrue ElfRacial ClassKing
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 3280[4392]Stamina: 500
Current Title: Chosen of MarHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength52Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence328
Endurance51Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1685
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 49 Exp 99.99% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal50%
Earth90%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light10%
Water75%
Wind15%
Nature65%
Metal5%
Earth75%
Fire5%
Darkness10%
Dive 75: Upgrading Fairies Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice practiced mana manipulation, and got a bit better from what we understand. He also got a mother fucking dragon¡¯s heart! He made deals with both Davros and EDITOR to allow his mother to come into the world of Solun, while not needing to be there at all times. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! She smiled happily at me. ¡°You know, I¡¯ve been reading up on this game. I¡¯m happy I can finally join you. It seems like your really enjoy it here.¡± Just her hug alone was causing my HP to drop rapidly. ¡°MOM! You¡¯re literally killing me!¡± She jerked in response to my yell, then let go after a moment¡¯s understanding. ¡°Sorry, sorry. Hehe. Guess I don¡¯t know my own strength.¡± She laughed. ¡°Actually, mom, what is your strength? Think the word Status in you mind, then look for it.¡± She closed her eyes tightly. She cried out in surprise when, I assumed, she saw her stat screen. ¡°What¡¯s wrong mom? Are they that high? Haha.¡± I couldn¡¯t actually see any info on her, even when looking through inspect. It was a bit disconcerting. ¡°Well¡­ it¡¯s not that they are high, I just didn¡¯t expect the screen to actually pop up. I know I helped design the game, but this wasn¡¯t my area of expertise after all.¡± I nudged her a bit, curious to see her stats. ¡°So what are they? If you say ¡®display All info: Voice0fReason¡¯ I¡¯ll be able to see.¡± She quickly did. I¡¯m really glad I¡¯m not too tall. My jaw just about hit the floor when I saw the information. [/tr]
Stats Window
NameBrenton¡¯s MomClassChaos Queen
RaceChaos LifeformRacial ClassQueen
Level 1Health: 2500Mana: 2500Stamina: 2500
Current Title: Chaos QueenHealth Regen: 250/sMana Regen: 25/sStamina Regen: 25/s
Strength250Agility250
Wisdom250Intelligence250
Endurance250Dexterity250
Vitality250
Logic250Leadership250
Unused Stat Points0
Fame0
Skills Window
Empty
Purities Window
Light100%
Water100%
Wind100%
Nature100%
Metal100%
Earth100%
Fire100%
Darkness100%
Chaos100%
Seriously!? Starting stats of 250!? Really!? What did I make? The thought of creating an army of Chaos Lifeforms definitely crossed my mind. But I chose not to. My mom deserved to have something special in DIVE. If that is a unique race and class, then all the better. ¡°Mom? Why is your name Brenton¡¯s Mom?¡± I was hoping that was a joke. She was a bit flustered. ¡°Well the program asked who I was, and I replied that I was your mom.¡± I almost face-palmed. There was no way someone in this day and age was actually this inept. ¡°Ok. Here have this. It¡¯s not important to me, but you seem like you¡¯d want it.¡± I handed her the name change. Honestly it hurt a bit giving it away. But my mother¡¯s happiness was well worth it. Then I started thinking of her stats again. ¡°Um¡­ Mom. Your stats are a bit¡± Instead of explaining it to her, I showed her my stats. ¡°And I¡¯ve been working on getting those high for a while now.¡± ¡°Ah. Then how did mine get so high?¡± She looked at me as if I had the answer. Not wanting to disappoint her, I tried my best to answer the question. ¡°I don¡¯t really know. Maybe it¡¯s because of your race.¡± ¡°Yeah! I was told I¡¯d get to choose my race, but I wasn¡¯t.¡± I frowned. ¡°Actually, mom, let me ask you something. You¡¯ve said a couple of times that you got information. Isn¡¯t that not allowed?¡± She blushed a bit. ¡°Oops, I wasn¡¯t supposed to mention that. Well it¡¯s already out of the bag. The part of the update that added that was taken away. Now there are only stipulations put on outside information so that this world doesn¡¯t evolve too quickly.¡± WHAT! I thought I was tricking the system! It seemed as though EDITOR knew how to play this game of tricks a bit better than I had thought before. Mom and I stayed together until she had to leave for work. The saddest part of our conversation was about her using her power. In this dungeon she had full power, but one of the effects on her was ¡®Bound to Plane¡¯. If she left this plane of existence, the dungeon, she would soon lose power and die a permanent death. Of course I could just summon up a new body in two weeks, but it was sad that she couldn¡¯t leave without that much of an effect. Even her mana would quickly drop to zero if she left. At that point Quasi came over to talk to me. In a hurried voice he spoke. ¡°Master! You¡¯ve summoned a queen! How did you manage such a feat? Your mastery over the fabric of reality must be great.¡± Words of flattery poured from his mouth. I tried to wave him off, but he caught my hand. ¡°Please Master, restore our people. I will put my all into serving you forever if you do. Even with my fragmented knowledge, I know several ways to increase your power.¡± Hearing that I could get something good out of it, of course I agreed. There was only one problem. I had to have a fucking dragon heart to summon these Chaotic Lifeforms. Even if I could use something smaller, I would still have to find out what minimum level of power and size the heart had to have in order to make my army of chaotic lifeforms. After making the agreement to help, Quasi vowed to think of a way that most suited me to allow me to gain power. With that I left the dungeon. My castle was on the opposite side of the mountain. It was only a few hours travel when I used my wind mana to throw myself forward. When I arrived back at the castle I went into my DI space. If I just had to make sure not to advance Solun too much, I could get whatever info I wanted. I quickly looked up a bunch of information. Stats on the best players, places with good items, etc. There wasn¡¯t a lot of information posted, but everyone thought getting information from outside of DIVE would be bad for their characters. I did get a bit of information that the show based around DIVE had posted on their site. ShortDwarf, the leading player by level, was already level 487. That was 50 levels higher than LastingBeauty, the second place. It was also almost twice the amount of the third place. Third place being level 260. The average level of players was around 100. So in technical terms I wasn¡¯t far behind the largest portion of the group. The average level for members that had played for an IRL month or more was about 225. So I was a bit behind on that account. But I could always just power level to get a bunch of levels. I had already studied my mana manipulation for a month. I could confidently mix any two mana types, and get whatever effect I wanted, as long as though two mana types could actually produce that effect. The ancient elven magic research was immense. They had all kinds of knowledge about the inner workings of mana. In the book was the theory, which they had been able to make use of, on how to combine multiple types of mana at once. More than just two at a time. I had been completely off track on trying to use three mana types at once. The user had to know the inner workings of each mana type to properly fuse them. Even going so far as to learn how each mana type would work in every combination of the other fused mana types. For instance. In order to fuse fire/water/wind, I would need to know how water mana reacted with fire mana, how water mana reacted with wind mana, how fire reacted with wind mana, how wind mana reacted with fire/water mana, how fire reacted with water/wind mana, and how water reacted with fire/wind mana. It was a long list. It got even worse if I wanted to fuse four types. Basically I¡¯d have to spend a length of time researching each new spell as I wanted them. It might pay off in the long run, but the initial cost of time was a bit high for me at the moment. I also found out that enchanting for most people was a bit different than what I could do. I could just use a bit more than normal to enchant an item permanently. Others had to actually expend an amount they wanted, and got far less powerful versions of the enchantment. Not to mention they only had a set list of enchantments they could use. So they had slightly more versatility in mana amount, but they couldn¡¯t hope to combat my vast amount of enchants or the small amount of mana it cost to do bigger enchantments than they could handle. I guess that update really wasn¡¯t that bad for me. I thought EDITOR just gave everyone else my ability. Turns out EDITOR made it harder for everyone else, but I kept my difficulty thanks to my skill. After creating my mother¡¯s new body I decided to upgrade my fairies as much as possible. Sol was already at the highest level allowed by my affinity. Tear could grow one more level, Moro could go all the way to four. Golem, my metal fairy could be upgraded once, and Eli could be upgraded twice. Sadly SparrowHawk and Drake could not be upgraded yet. It would have been nice to actually have all rank 2 fairies. At least the fairy summoning book made things a bit easier on me. I knew the ritual I needed to do to actually increase their powers. The ingredients were the only limiting factor. For everyone but Moro¡¯s final form, the mage¡¯s guild guys actually had the necessary items. Of course they were expensive, but since I ¡®owned¡¯ this new mage¡¯s guild I just had them hand over the items for free. I just made a few more books of spells for them. Not powerful ones though. I didn¡¯t want the more powerful spells getting into circulation. I decided to start with Tear. Tear had already been upgraded once, when I had to battle with the giant jelly fish. I laid out the required pattern. The mages seemed very interested in how I obtained a book that detailed all of the summoning procedures. I didn¡¯t tell them though. I didn¡¯t want word to get back to the dwarf I robbed. Even if I was disguised at the time. After setting the image in the form of an orb of water with roiling waves, I had Tear go to the middle. I began infusing my large quantities of mana into the diagram. The world began to turn more and more blue as I did. After pumping in 1500 mana I found myself floating in a world of water. In front of me stood(?) a starfish. The starfish was only about five times as tall as I was. Every one of the spiny needles on its body was clearly visible. In a soft, smooth voice the starfish spoke directly into my mind. ¡°Junior. You are here to borrow the power of the Elder Goddess Undine, no?¡± I nodded my head in assent. ¡°Good. Good. Then first, you must pass a test. It is my belief that all true followers of her holiness must have certain skills. You must possess the ability to be in water for a long amount of time. That way you may better appreciate Undine¡¯s love. I will allow you to summon me once more when you can stay underwater, with no assistance of items, for at least five minutes.¡± The world began to fade. The colors began to turn less blue. ¡°WAIT!¡± I hurriedly called out in my mind. The color turning suddenly stopped. The starfish spoke again. ¡°Yes? Did you not understand the request? Let me say it again. I want you to be able to¡­ to¡­ Oh.¡± As the starfish spoke I concentrated and opened up my gills. The starfish ¡®sat down¡¯ by bending its legs towards me and lowering its body. The starfish¡¯s left arm bent at what appeared to be the elbow, touching what would have been its chin if it had one. ¡°I see. The great goddess must have been very impressed with you in some way to allow you to breathe in her realm.¡± I ¡®modestly¡¯ shook my head. ¡°She gave me this boon so I might enjoy her world of bountiful beauty for longer periods of time. It is only because of my weak body that I have not spent all of my time exploring the depths of her most perfect creations.¡± I figured that if this starfish guy was so strung up on her greatness, which it seemed he was, then I would do best by praising her greatness. He ¡®nodded¡¯. With a burst of blue light I found myself back in the normal world. Tear was glowing. The blue glow was especially intense. After a few moments of blindingly brilliant light, I turned to look at Tear. What floated in that little ball of water was neither the squid nor the jellyfish. As you might have guessed it was a starfish.
Stats Window
NameTearRaceWater Fairy
Health10Mana3280
Stamina10
RankAdeptCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec25
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility10
Wisdom250Intelligence328
Endurance10Dexterity1
Luck20Vitality10
Fame0
Tear is a water fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Water fairies start with all stats but agility, vitality, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a water fairy Tear¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal the user. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Tear. Tear has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Tear has gained 19 luck. Tear currently has three forms: Squid, Jellyfish, Starfish. In starfish form, Tear will grant the user a bonus HP regen of x Hp a second. Where x = (player level/100). This HP regen stacks with hp regen bonuses from other sources. Currently .45 bonus HP regen. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned. As a higher order of fairy Tear can use all previous forms it has used. All forms will be adjusted to the power of the highest order from.
Let me go over the one point in there that I found so great. In starfish form, Tear will grant the user a bonus HP regen of x Hp a second. Where x = (player level/100). This hp regen stacks with hp regen bonuses from other sources. Currently .45 bonus HP regen. Currently .45 bonus HP regen. I checked my stats right away. The bonus was there! My hp regen just shot to 1.45! That was almost have again as good as it was before. Then I got sad, thinking about how much I was excited about just .45 hp regen per second. Some people probably have dozens of hp a second regen. Still the abilities Tear had were formidable. In squid form Tear could shoot out blots of ink, in jellyfish form the fairy could sting people. I never really used the effects, but I would start to take them into consideration. I blame them for being so lame sounding. I mean a jellyfish sting in the middle of battle? Who would that really matter to? That was by far the easiest of the rank ups for my fairies that day. After salvaging the small amount of material that was left over from the summoning, I started to make another circle. This one for Golem. The child sized metal golem was only too happy to be alone with me. Every time we were alone the thing would try to hug me, viciously. It would not stop until it succeeded or I sent it back. I created the complex pattern of symbols the summoning book required. After using up a third of the total metal mana summoning materials the guild had, I made Golem step in the middle. I again began to pump in mana. I only had to use 1000 this time. I watched as my mana decreased. It actually took from the metal mana first, then the pure mana. I suddenly found myself before a smithy. It was equipped with what looked to be the most ¡®cutting edge¡¯ smithing tools. A gruff, metallic, man stood before me. The tall excessively muscled man was forging a sword. His muscles bulged each time he made a movement. He could give some pro wrestles a run for their money. All around us was blank white space. Only the smithy existed. The blacksmith turned to me and grunted, not even pausing in his work as he said, ¡°Are you stupid or something? Get to work boy! I expect a perfect sword. No slacking this time!¡± I was about to comment on the rudeness of his remark, when a small anvil appeared before me. A heavy hammer was in my hand. A sword laid across the anvil. My inspect quickly told me this sword was a broken iron long sword. I guess this is the test. A perfect sword? That might take a while. Thankfully I had a bit of a cheat in making iron weapons. I placed the weapon in the furnace for a moment, then got to work. I used the hammer, but only to augment my own ability. My main force in this endeavor was using the fire mana, as well as metal mana in the sword in order to make it take perfect form. The hammer just got out the really tough bits. I couldn¡¯t waste too much mana since I had to do it perfectly. Over the next hour I crafted. Normally a sword of the quality I made would take about a day or so to make, but with my mana manipulation I could cut that time down to a minimum amount. When I was finished with the sword, the bulging smith looked it over.
Basic Iron Long Sword
Material QualityCommonWork QualityNovice
Damage5-6Durability10/10
This weapon was made by a novice craftsman. This weapon has minimum durability and damage. The fashion this sword was created in is a mystery, the wielder of this weapon will find attacking to be a bit easier.
The blacksmith smiled as he looked it over. It was far better than someone of my level should have been able to create. He decided to do a test swing with it. Wait isn¡¯t that too hard for a test swing? I watched as the ¡®test swing¡¯ ended with the sword slamming heavily against my anvil. The sword shattered in an instant. On the anvil appeared another long sword in bad shape. ¡°Are you stupid or something? Get to work boy! I expect a perfect sword. No slacking this time!¡± He turned away and got back to his own work. I stared for a moment before shaking myself. Ok. I guess I have to put a bit more effort into it. *Sigh* fine. I need Golem to be ranked up. I did the process again. This time making sure there were no visible flaws. I spent an hour and a half of intense concentration on the task. The final result was indeed improved.
Basic Iron Long Sword
Material QualityCommonWork QualityApprentice
Damage5-10Durability10/10
This weapon was made by a novice craftsman. This weapon had large amounts of care poured into it. The fashion this sword was created in is a mystery, the wielder of this weapon will find attacking to be a bit easier.
The blacksmith looked up again just as I finished the sword. He again examined it, and again did the practice swing. This time he didn¡¯t hit the anvil! Instead his practice swing ended with the sword flying out of his hand and disappearing into the distance. ¡°Are you stupid or something? Get to work boy! I expect a perfect sword. No slacking this time!¡± This process repeated a dozen times. Each time the sword got better, but would be destroyed in some fashion by the blacksmith. Each broken sword made my anger rise another level. I held it back though. I had to complete this bullshit quest. If I failed now it would render all of the work I had already put into it void. Then I made a sword that was beyond anything I thought would be possible with my current level. I spent several hours on the sword. Every detail was micromanaged to a tee. Nothing was left out. Every inch of the sword was made as perfect as possible. I even ¡®remade¡¯ the sword multiple times.
Basic Iron Long Sword
Material QualityCommonWork QualityAdept
Damage5-15Durability15/15
This weapon was made by a novice craftsman. This weapon had large amounts of care poured into it. The details of the sword are as near perfect as a novice could possibly achieve. The fashion this sword was created in is a mystery, the wielder of this weapon will find attacking to be a bit easier.
The blacksmith nodded when I was done. ¡°This sword is exceptionally fine work.¡± A smile crept onto my lips. Finally! Then the sword disappeared. Is this what happens when you win? ¡°Are you stupid or something? Get to work boy! I expect a perfect sword. No slacking this time!¡± ¡°WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT!?¡± I couldn¡¯t hold back any longer. It was too much to ask of any sane human being. The smith just kept saying that I did bad, never how to fix it. ¡°JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO!¡± The blacksmith rolled his eyes at my yelling. ¡°11 inch hilt. 140 inch blade. Tip curved slightly to the left. Both edges sharp but not brittle. The back flexible enough to not shatter on impact. ¡­¡± He gave a long list of things he wanted for the sword. I wasn¡¯t doing any of these. That¡¯s why he kept breaking them! How was I supposed to know what he wanted? I began forging his blade. Ancestor had actually been listening better than I was, so gave me instructions. In only forty minutes I managed to complete the sword to the exact specifications of the smith.
Basic Custom Iron Long Sword
Material QualityCommonWork QualityApprentice
Damage5-10Durability10/10
This weapon was made by a novice craftsman. This weapon had large amounts of care poured This sword was made to exact specifications of the Rank 2 Metal Mana Fairy Lord.
He didn¡¯t even glance at the sword when I was finished. He picked it up, and placed it onto a nearby table. ¡°Good. You understand now. There is no ¡®perfect¡¯ when weapons are involved. It is all up to the one that uses the tool to determine what ¡®perfect¡¯ is. It will be different for everyone.¡± With that I was thrown back into Solun. Golem was slightly hovering next to an eerily familiar sword. The one the metal guy ordered. Buttmunch. The sword was sucked into Golem¡¯s body. The iron body began to grow slightly. Golem¡¯s features didn¡¯t change but instead only grew to the save of a teenager. Which was about 1.5 times as big as before. Golem was only a head shorter than I was. Still very thin for a metal golem. Gave off an extreme ¡®robot¡¯ feeling.
Stats Window
NameGolemRaceMetal Fairy
Health10Mana1640
Stamina10
RankApprenticeCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec12.5
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength164Agility125
Wisdom125Intelligence164
Endurance1Dexterity1
Luck20Vitality1
Fame0
Golem is a metal fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Metal fairies start with all stats but strength, agility, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being an metal fairy Golem¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Golem¡¯s strength equals its intelligence. Golem¡¯s agility equals its wisdom. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Golem. Golem has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Golem has gained 19 luck. Golem has increased abilities. Golem can now completely fuse to the summoner¡¯s weapon, increasing the damage of metal based weapons by x% where x = strength. In this fused mode Golem will be unable to assist the summoner with any other task. No time limit exists for the length of time this possession can last. When Golem releases the possession, Golem¡¯s mana will be 0 and must regenerate all lost mana. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
I recalled Golem as the metal fairy tried to get in a hug before being sent away. The whole upgrading process for Golem was exhausting and made me irritable. I had to take a break for a while. I decided to go for a dip in one of the hot springs. For the rest of the day I just relaxed. Doing too much at once is harmful to the soul. After I ate, slept, and just generally played around for a day, I got back to the summoning. I was excited to find out that my crafting mastery had shot up all the way to 25. Skill gains are always nice. In fact, I decided to start crafting a bit more whenever I got the chance. If I could level up my crafting skill to 100, then all of the gear I could make would be at max. My anger was gone, so I could better concentrate on whatever the task would be. The bonus the metal fairy gave me was considerable. Adding a total of 164% damage wasn¡¯t anything to sneeze at. The total attack buff Golem could give me was just under that, but required all of the mana anyway. It was a bit more efficient to let the fairy possess the metal in my weapon. Eli was next. The earth fairy had two back to back upgrades coming. Then Moro. Moro had three upgrades. Straight to max rank! I set up the first upgrade circle for Eli, I couldn¡¯t skip to the second one automatically sadly. It looked similar to a scaled down version of an asteroid. The mana collected around Eli¡¯s body, and formed a large rock. Eli¡¯s task was similar yet very different than Golem¡¯s. Came into an empty plane of existence. Nothing was there, just an endless expanse of whiteness. A deep, gravely, voice rang out as if from no where. ¡°Vooice. IIII¡¯mmm gllad you finnnally maade it.¡± The voice really did seem pleased, for whatever reason. The voice continued. ¡°Vooice. Do you know what it takes to be a stone?¡± What is this going on about? ¡°To help you understand this, I have created a test that will help you push those limits. If you succeed I will allow my power to infuse your fairy. If you fail, I will refuse to improve the power of your fairy, even should you try again in the future.¡± I felt a heavy weight descend upon my body. At the same time I saw a small hill form in front of me. ¡°The boulder on your back weighs 100 pounds. Carry it over this hill.¡± Isn¡¯t this just a test for strength? What does this have to do with the earth mana fairy? Still I had no choice but to obey. If I failed the test I would not get another chance. So I trudged up the hill. The boulder was heavy, but my strength was such that it wasn¡¯t impossible. I made it up in only a few minutes. ¡°Vooice. Nooo. Triiiiy agggain.¡± The rocky voice demanded for me to do over what I had just done. As I began to ascend, trying to be faster this time, I felt the weight increase. The hill grew larger at the same time. Come on! Suffice to say I was a bit miffed at the whole situation. I had to keep going though. I completed it again, this time much slower than the first. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The response was much the same as I expected. The boulder grew heavier and the hill increased in size. This pattern continued. It seemed as though upgrading my fairies didn¡¯t require skill, just the ability to do the same task an infinite amount of times. Though the sword situation could have been finished with just one sword. I eventually asked the voice, ¡°What is it you want me to do exactly?¡± The only answer was ¡°Perrrsevere.¡± The r¡¯s sounded as if rocks were tumbling in on each other. So I did. I persevered. Every time the hill grew, the weight did likewise. I continued to climb up the slopes. Eventually the small hill gave way to a large hill, then a small mountain. By the time the hill was a small mountain the weight I was carrying was staggering. Although this was great strength training, I did not enjoy it. Every step I took required focus and power, else I would fall and be crushed by the boulder in an instant. Every step stole away my precious stamina. Every step was a struggle. Halfway up the small mountain I had to gasp for breath. Though the stone stayed the same size, its weight grew tremendously. By the time I was ? of the way up, I could feel my legs burning under the resistance of each step I made. By the time I was 90% of the way to the top I had to stop for several breaths in between each step. At 95% I felt my body slowly giving out. My stamina regen was no longer able to do even the smallest amount towards helping me climb. It had, for an unknown reason, stopped regenerating altogether. Hours passed since I had made it to 95% of the way. I had only made it another 1% up. The last four percent seemed forever beyond my reach. The pain in my body cried out at me for forcing myself to do this kind of thing. My endurance and strength increased tremendously, but what use is that when my body can¡¯t even handle taking another step. I couldn¡¯t even use any mana to help me! Every time I tried it simply fizzled out. I tried lifting the rock up slightly with earth mana manipulation, and increasing my distance travelled with wind mana, but neither thing would work. My only option was to continue with no assistance. By this time every step was an act of pure will. It felt as if each step sapped away a part of my soul. Only my pure willpower kept me standing. Every step sucked away from my health. My hp rapidly dwindled. I couldn¡¯t even get encouragement from ancestor. If I did the test proctor might notice the extra consciousness and disqualify me. One step. I felt the world shake and sway. Although it was only me that could not keep steady on the ground. -10 hp Two steps. My vision began to blur. My eyes, tinged red on the sides, could not keep the world in focus. -30 hp Three steps. My vision was completely red. The blurry red coated world was covered in black along the edges. -40 hp I knew I could stop, or else face certain death before reaching the peak. If I did stop I would never have this chance again. I couldn¡¯t just discard my earth fairy. If I did I would lose a sizable weapon in the future. Four steps. I felt myself begin to embrace the warmth of sleep. My body having spent everything it could. The fifth step never came. I fell to the ground as I lost the last 20 hp I had. I had literally worked myself to death. As I fell I watched the ground swirl and rush towards my head. My last thought Damnit. If I could have used mana I could have beaten this one. I awoke back where I first entered the realm. My hp was full. The boulder and mountain were nowhere to be seen. ¡°Vooice. IIII¡¯mmm gllad you finnnally diid it.¡± I looked around to try to find the source of the voice. I did it? Does the voice mean I won? ¡°Congratulations. As promised, I will imbue Eliyahu with a portion of my power.¡± In front of me was the summoning room. Eli had coalesced into a large ball of earth. Light brown specs began to circle and fuse to Eli¡¯s body. The ball eventually began to crack, revealing a smiling earthen construct. Much like Golem, Eli was just a head shorter than I was. It was like staring at a teenaged body builder made out of stone.
Stats Window
NameEliyahuRaceEarth Fairy
Health1640Mana1640
Stamina1640
RankApprenticeCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec12.5Mana Regen/Sec12.5
Stamina Regen/Sec12.5
Strength1Agility1
Wisdom125Intelligence164
Endurance125Dexterity1
Luck20Vitality164
Fame0
Eliyahu is an earth fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Earth fairies start with all stats but endurance, vitality, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being an earth fairy Eliyahu¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Eliyahu¡¯s Health and Health regen equal to its Mana and Mana regen respectively. Eliyahu¡¯s vitality equals its intelligence. Eliyahu¡¯s endurance equals its wisdom. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Eliyahu. Eliyahu has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Eliyahu has gained 19 luck. Eliyahu has increased abilities. Eliyahu can now layer itself on the summoner¡¯s armor, increasing the defense to physical attacks by x% where x = endurance. In this fused mode Eliyahu will be unable to assist the summoner with any other task. No time limit exists for the length of time this possession can last. When Eliyahu releases the possession, Eliyahu¡¯s mana will be 0 and must regenerate all lost mana. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned again.
Although I more than half expected a result similar to Golem, given that they even look similar when they rank up, I wasn¡¯t that surprised to see that Eli could add to my armor. Although¡­ Eli could act as a pretty decent tank solo. If I layered buffs and healing on the earth fairy, my team would be pretty well rounded. After only a brief respite, I began to alter the summoning circle upgrade Eli to the third level. I found myself deep inside of a cave system. I knew it was a cave system by the shape of the earth mana signature surrounding me. Tunnels led in front of me and behind. With no voice to guide me, I decided I was supposed to follow one. I quickly sensed the areas around me, and chose to go down the path behind me. I followed the path for an unknown period of time. The tunnel continued to twist and turn without signs of stopping. Eventually I entered a large area. It was very similar to roman colosseums. Beings made out of earth mana, thousands of them, sat in the seats above. Their cheering was nearly deafening. In a box set apart from the rest, was a larger, more powerful stone being. In a gravely voice, since I guess all earth fairies have gravely voices, the larger stone figure spoke. It¡¯s words had an after echo to them. A quarter of a second after the words were spoken they sounded like they were spoken again. ¡°Voice it¡¯s time for you to determine how powerful your fairy will be. Each of the stone beings here have more power than the last, with the lowest no lower than your Eliyahu. For each one you beat you will increase the power of your fairy. Of course if you fail before beating the second one Eliyahu will obtain no extra power.¡± With that, the earth being on the bottom row, to the right of the largest earth being jumped down and bowed before me. ¡°It willll be my honnor to beat you.¡± Is this fuck looking down on my? He is only as powerful as Eli for the elder god¡¯s sake. The earth mana in the enemy, one that looked like a fit teenager of undeterminable gender, was densely packed. As soon as the largest earth fairy gave the signal, the one fighting me slowly ran forwards. It was insanely easy to avoid. My avoidance seemed to anger it. That was a plus. The thing tried to attack me, but I would dodge or push myself with a tiny bit of wind mana. I never retaliated. I only dodged. In some rare cases I had to block. It wasn¡¯t that bad though. The thing did very little damage. Earth fairies¡¯ power laid in their defense after all. Which is exactly what I was stopping. As the battle raged on, I stripped away the earth being¡¯s mana. Being a creature made out of pure mana, it was anti-climactic how easy it was to win. In the space of half a minute I was victorious. Without waiting for me to rest, the earth guy sent down the second being. And so the battles went. I would dodge and weave, occasionally blocking, and just generally avoiding damage. At the same time I would be sucking away the earth mana from the being I fought. Sucking away internal mana was quite rewarding. As I put the mana in my body I gained increased purity. One earth teenager went down. Then ten. Then twenty. Then fifty. By the fifty first one I still hadn¡¯t been hit at all. The fifty first earth creature was taller than I was. It was built with layered muscles, and all together looked like a body builder. As I siphoned off the mana the earth-man began to slow. Its muscles began to degrade, and turn into the form of the teenaged being. I continued to absorb mana, and the thing disappeared. It took five minutes to destroy. That was quite a bit longer than the ones before. I could finish them off in a handful of seconds. The battles immediately after that went a bit faster. Since I knew the trick already I accounted for it. I began absorbing larger amounts of earth mana at once. I could have done this earlier, but the more mana I take in at once the more concentration I needed. I finished the fifty second in a minute. Then next fifty all took a minute as well. There were still 2900 earth-men sitting in the stands. On the one hundredth enemy I realized something. Every fifty kills grants these people a new ability of some sort. The one hundred and first enemy actually retrograded into the child form. That took me a solid ten minutes to deal with. After that it only took two-three minutes for each enemy. Time quickly passed. Two and a half hours later I began my fight with the one hundred and fifty first enemy. During the last fifty fights I had to actually conserve my wind mana. It was slowly dwindling while I was dodging with it. The one hundred and fifty first enemy again added something new to the mix. When it got to the child state, it stopped attacking me. It began sucking in earth mana to heal itself! I had to quickly nip that in the bud. I decapitated the poor bastard, and absorbed the mana in its head in an instant. The moment I did its body turned to dust and another took its place. The battles continued like this for a while. It really was testing my endurance. I defeated enemy after enemy, but their numbers never seemed to decrease. When I needed a break I had to use the shoes to stay in the air. The current enemy I fought would take to throwing boulders produced from magic at that point. The two hundred and first enemy regenerated mana once in the teenaged body. The two fifty first while still in the main body. At three hundred and one they stopped gaining powers. Instead I fought two at once! Imagine how difficult it was fighting two regenerating monsters at once. Before I could just steal the mana faster than they could heal it, but now one would cover for the weaker one. The time I lost gave the weaker one a chance to heal itself completely. I had to focus solely on one at a time to do any real damage. It wasn¡¯t too hard to do that, until opponent 401. Or should I say battle 351. In reality I fought opponents 401, 402, and 403 in the 351st battle. Each battle took dozens of minutes now. One enemy would stall me, while one guarded the wounded one and the wounded one healed. I continued to push my limits. I stayed up in the air from then on. Instead of directly absorbing the mana in their bodies, I took control of the rocks they threw at me, and tossed them back. Occasionally I would crush one, then I¡¯d swoop in and take the mana centered around its head. As soon as the head was gone the creature died. That was the only tactic really left to me at that point. I couldn¡¯t think of any others without any resources or time. Every fifty battles now added another enemy to kill. It wasn¡¯t too much extra strain. I would just have to crush one person for every five at the same time. By round 551 there were ten people at once. I had to use my nature buff to keep myself awake. Each battle took about half an hour. It wasn¡¯t difficult thought. It started to actually become methodical. I would basically follow a pre-designed path each battle. They took a while, but it always ended in my victory. Fight 801 changed that. By fight 751 I was already fighting ten enemies at once. At fight 801 I still fought ten enemies, but on of them had a weapon. A sword. Not that swords did a lot of damage to me since I was so high up. The problem was the sword was made of stone. The fighter that used the sword threw it, and I let it pass by and leave the arena. Instantly another sword was in the same fighter¡¯s hands. I had killed 3000 people by that time. I obviously focused on just that one. After a few minutes I killed him off. The rest were easy to deal with. At battle 851 they all head weapons. Swords or spears mostly. Although one had a sword and shield. I had to kill that one first since it protected its allies with some sort of shielding spell. At battle 901, when I had killed a total of 4000 enemies, they began to use bows and arrows made of stone. I could no longer take only a half hour to kill them. The physical combatants would protect the archers, and the archers would attack me. I had to kill off the physical damage dealers first, but their regeneration was insane. They would actually regenerate faster than I could absorb. In order to absorb the earth mana from one, I had to temporarily drop to the ground to fully concentrate on absorbing the mana. I would sustain many hits whenever I did that. I then had to dodge and heal for a bit before going back down. My mana was taking a huge hit. I had to spend most of the time in the battles just regenerating my mana. Each battle was taking a heavy toll on me. Not only physically or magically, but mentally. I had to strain myself to concentrate on each task. My mind began to grow fuzzy. Whenever I tried to do a quick meditation to increase my mana, the world seemed to distort slightly. At least my perception of it did. At battle 912, I found myself drifting off into my own mind. It was like I was falling asleep, but I had my energy buff so I should have been fine. By battle 915, I could not stop myself from going into that state of mind. When I awoke I noticed my body would have been drifting aimlessly. At least the earth elementals didn¡¯t attack when I was in that state. Some form of honor I guess. I piled on the energy buffs, but nothing helped. By battle 917 I had to physically force myself out of that state to do an attack. The earth beings seemed to be able to perfectly judge whenever I was in that state, and when I¡¯d get out. All of their attacks were concentrated on that exact moment. The only blessing was that my mana seemed to regenerate quickly while in that state. By battle 919 I was stuck in my own mind. I tried everything I could to wake myself, but failed. Eventually I tried sucking the mana up from that area, and noticed I could still sense the mana in the arena.
Congratulations! You have mutated your body. By pushing your body to the brink of destruction time and again, and repairing it with mana, your body has become dependent on mana. You have unlocked the trait: Mana Dependency.
Mana Dependency is both a blessing and a curse. You can no longer go without mana. If your mana reaches 0, you will be unable to complete even the most basic of bodily functions. In exchange, your body now craves mana with every fiber of its being. You body will constantly absorb mana as if it were constantly in a meditative state, that is it will absorb mana at twice the speed as before. Actual meditation now restores 4x mana.
Due to your new body type, your Group Skill: Magical Mastery, has been forcefully increased to Expert level. Magical Mastery has gained a new skill.
Magical Mastery Current Level: Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Mana Affinity, Deceptive Aura, Meditate, Meditative Casting, Spell Permanency, and Runic Formation. You are slowly becoming the master of all things arcane. With diligent study and practice, you may be able to better master the arcane world. The higher the level the better you will be able manipulate mana. To level this skill you must level up Mana Affinity, Deceptive Aura, Meditate, Meditative Casting, Spell Permanency, or Runic Formation. The maximum rank this skill can be is determined by (intelligence/50). Magical Mastery has gained a new skill. You have gained the skill Runic Formation. Runic Formation is a class specific skill. Requires Class: Mana Mage, or higher. Runic Formation allows the user to create runes for enchanting. The runes decrease the amount of mana required for activating spells. Runic Formation can only be used by True Elves that have chosen the Force Mage class and have upgraded it to at least Mana Mage. Higher ranks allow the user to create more complex formations based on their knowledge of the True Elven language.
(* Author Note* He would have gotten another skill if he didn¡¯t meet one or more of the requirements. The game wouldn¡¯t give him a completely useless skill) The screens popped up while I was in the fuzzy world. For an instant, I saw my own body. It glowed with a starry black light. An instant later, I was back to seeing the world in the normal way. My physical view of the world was the same, but my body viewed the world completely differently. I could physically feel the mana around me being sucked into my body. It was as if I was actually meditating. The mana around me seemed to want to struggle, but couldn¡¯t. The earth people began to attack me, seeing that I was no longer in the state. I couldn¡¯t help but smirk. These ¡®enemies¡¯ were nowhere near as difficult as they were before. As one boulder flew towards me, I stared at it. I began pushing the earth mana in it, slowing it to a stop just inches from my face. While dodging the other boulders I inscribed a word in the stone, obviously using earth mana. I threw the boulder back down. The earth people easily dodged it. Dust and dirt began to disappear around the boulder. Some of the closer earthmen couldn¡¯t react in time. They instantly were absorbed into the boulder. The boulder was slowly increasing in size, and decreasing the total earthman population. In only a few moments they were all gone. The weapons they threw at it disappeared upon touch. They tried to run to the edges of the arena, but the boulder would absorb any that got too close. It didn¡¯t directly absorb the ground though. So I guessed it could only absorb residual mana floating around. Not actual environmental mana. Each earthman it absorbed made it grow much bigger. Each earthman was absorbed on touch. Instantly. I was astonished with the results. I could only write simple commands on the stone, I knew which ones were too complicated to write. I only wrote ¡®Absorb Earth Mana¡¯, and the results were that great! I could normally only enchant things to absorb 100 points/second, but this stone could absorb thousands in an instant. After that the battles were easy. I would just take one of the boulders and make that same enchantment. Of course the earthmen began to try to get out of the way of the boulder¡¯s effects by staying as close to the walls as possible, but that only worked for so long. The boulders disappeared after each match was over. None of the next matches even posed a threat to me anymore. Not to mention my mana regen was twice as high now! I could keep up a constant barrage of mana based attacks, and not even feel tired. All of the way until match 1000 was cake. After my 5000th kill I felt extremely satisfied. Thanks to the low intelligence of the earthmen I was able to make simple plans that made this whole exercise one of patience instead of power. After my last kill the largest earthman stood up. The stands beside him were all empty. They had been slowly decreasing with each match. Even with the addition of more powerful enemies towards the end, the earthmen could do nothing to stop my advance. The earthman didn¡¯t say anything, it simply jumped down into the arena. Without waiting it leapt several feet into the air to grab me. I pushed it back down with my earth mana manipulation. Or tried to. This particular earthman seemed almost immune to my attempts. As soon as the hand touched me, I felt my control over earth mana drop to nothingness. ¡°You did well to make it all the way to me. Better than I expected to be honest.¡± The voice seemed approving. ¡°Unfortunately I cannot let you obtain my power. So I must defeat you here. If Eliyahu had my power he would be on par with Gnome¡¯s four generals.¡± The earth around me suddenly congealed into a large earth orb. The walls of the orb began to decrease in size. Constricting around me. Leaving me no room to even think. Right away I began to push the earth mana way from myself. The mana seemed to give. Only for a moment though. The largest earthman wasn¡¯t going to give in that easily it seemed. As soon as I pushed back, the earthman increased how much power he put into it. So I increased again. I could have snuck out from the ground, but if I tried I would we squashed in a second if it failed. I used up all of my mana regen to battle with him. It wasn¡¯t enough. He never let it get any bigger. Only let me stop it for a few moments at most. So I sat down and began to meditate. I could still meditate and cast mana, so that is what I was going to do. I slowly increased the amount of man I put into trying to push the bounds. From 1 to 2 to 3 per second etc. Eventually it went all the way up to 40, the most I could do without eating. The earthman showed no signs of stopping. I shut off the stomach and used the full 50. Still no signs of victory. So I increased it further. 55 per second. 60. 70. Eventually I ran out of all of my mana. The earthman was still going strong. Just as I completely lost mana, and fell to the ground, I heard the earthman speak again. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about losing. This entire realm is made from my power after all. You really had no chance at victory.¡± The orb disappeared, and I found myself facing Eli again. Eli looked like a large man. Bulging muscles rippled off of the fairy.
Stats Window
NameEliyahuRaceEarth Fairy
Health1640Mana1640
Stamina1640
RankAdeptCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec12.5Mana Regen/Sec12.5
Stamina Regen/Sec12.5
Strength1Agility1
Wisdom125Intelligence164
Endurance125Dexterity1
Luck20Vitality164
Fame0
Eliyahu is an earth fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Earth fairies start with all stats but endurance, vitality, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being an earth fairy Eliyahu¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Eliyahu¡¯s Health and Health regen equal to its Mana and Mana regen respectively. Eliyahu¡¯s vitality equals its intelligence. Eliyahu¡¯s endurance equals its wisdom. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Eliyahu. Eliyahu has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Eliyahu has gained 19 luck. Eliyahu has increased abilities. Eliyahu can now layer itself on the summoner¡¯s armor, increasing the defense to physical attacks by x% where x = endurance. In this fused mode Eliyahu will be unable to assist the summoner with any other task. No time limit exists for the length of time this possession can last. When Eliyahu releases the possession, Eliyahu¡¯s mana will be 0 and must regenerate all lost mana. Eliyahu has gained additional abilities. Eliyahu can now regenerate by using the earth mana in close proximity. As a Mana Earth Fairy Eli can even regenerate using the environmental mana. As long as Earth Mana exists Eli will continue to repair. This effect continues in armor form. Eliyahu¡¯s repair speed is based on the results of the upgrading ceremony. Eliyahu can regenerate at a speed of 10% per second. When the durability of the armor reaches 0, it will halve in density and begin regenerating. If the halved armor reaches 0 durability, then it will once more be halved. Once the ? armor reaches 0 Eliyahu will be sent to the Ether Realm. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned again.
After reading over the description only one word passed through my mind. WORTH!!! Without realizing it, my earth purity had actually increased a bit! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
RaceTrue ElfRacial ClassKing
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 3280[4392]Stamina: 500
Current Title: Chosen of MarHealth Regen: 1.4/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength65Agility50
Wisdom250Intelligence328
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1685
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 49 Exp 99.99% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal50%
Earth90%
Fire25%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light10%
Water75%
Wind15%
Nature65%
Metal5%
Earth80%
Fire5%
Darkness10%
Dive 76: Summoning and Dungeon Upgrades Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice spent a while upgrading his fairies. He gained a trait which helped, and hurt him at the same time. His metal and earth fairies now had the ability to coat his weapons and armor. Eli can now even regenerate when it is being destroyed. He is on his way to upgrading Moro. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Sorry about the wait. I usually start typing on Monday or Tuesday night, but I had work this week since school was out. It turns out the entire ordeal happened in only an hour. The time compression was intense. My head began to throb so I took a well earned break. After resting for another day, I decided it was time to summon Moro. I¡¯m not going to bore you with the details of setting up the summoning circle. What was interesting was what happened when I put enough mana in to actually fulfill the maximum mana requirements. I found myself in a place surrounded by various animals. There were wolves, rabbits, horses, cows, and all sorts of other animals. There were those with two legs, four legs, not legs, six or eight legs. Scales, fur, exoskeletons. The main thing I noticed was the express lack of anything with gills or wings. The place itself had all sorts of plants. It seemed as if the vast amounts of plants here could indefinitely sustain the lives of the animals here. A rustling sound behind me. I turned to look. There was nothing there. I mean literally nothing. Not even white space. I knew I should have at least saw empty space, but not even that was there. My mana sense picked up some extreme mana fluctuations from that direction though. I heard another sound. This time, instead of a rustle, it was a voice. The voice sounded serene. There wasn¡¯t even a speck of hostility. It sounded innocent. It seemed as if a young maiden were speaking. But the maiden was accompanied by a medley of hundreds of animal sounds and rustling plants. ¡°Voice. Your task here is likely different than any other god or goddess will have you do. It was specifically designed by Gaia for you. Here you must choose one of Gaia¡¯s creations. If you can successfully understand that creature, I will grant Moro that transformation. Obviously you will have a chance to study them before I test your understanding.¡± Hmm, so I get to pick the bonus Moro gets? I looked over all of the creatures with an appraising eye. If this was anything like upgrading the other fairies I wouldn¡¯t personally gain anything. The ability Moro would get would be pretty decent though. Going off of the idea that this ability would be only held by Moro, I checked out the specs of each species. I decided to play around a bit. I looked over the insect section. If Moro was tiny than at least it would be harder to for the nature fairy to get hit. ¡°So you like the insect species, eh? There are multitudes of insects in Solun. You have a lot to look through.¡± I quickly logged out and did some research on insect species. When I found what seemed good enough I couldn¡¯t help but smile. I logged back into DIVE, and picked my choice. I narrowed it down to only moths. After a second I was able to find the one I wanted. Sure it was odd that they had almost identical species to the real world, but that was ok. I still managed to get something out of it. ¡°I choose the Calyptra moth!¡± The voice seemed to be a bit taken aback, but quickly accepted. ¡°That¡¯s fine. It¡¯s not very powerful, but it does have a unique way of keeping itself alive.¡± Well duh. That¡¯s why I chose it. I figured that the moth might get a special ability as well due to its eating habits. I decided to take the risk of it being useless. There wasn¡¯t a guarantee that Moro would get anything out of this process after all. Suddenly the world felt much bigger. Despite this my body felt big and clunky. I felt myself falling. I instinctively knew to flap my wings. I did. Wait wings? I tried looking at my body, but couldn¡¯t see anything. I heard the maiden¡¯s voice again, even as I began flapping my ¡®wings¡¯ to stabilize myself. ¡°Voice, I have created a new body for you to inhabit. The Calyptra moth¡¯s instincts are intact, so you will be able to gather a basic understanding quickly. For you to completely understand will take a while. You must also understand. Even should your return to your world, your moth body will remain alive. IF you are killed while you are gone it will be ¡®game over¡¯ for you.¡± With that, the voice was gone. This is what she meant by study!? While I was upset about being transformed without my consent, it truly was the best way to study something foreign. Merely observing could only get me so much information. I felt hungry. So hungry! Nearby was a small brown horse, gently eating the grass around it. It couldn¡¯t have been much older than a year or so. It seemed obvious to the evils of the world. I knew what to do, but shuddered at the thought. Knowing that restraint wouldn¡¯t bring any closer to understanding the insect I chose, I did what I had to do. I flew down, and landed on the horse. After a moment of indecision, I extended my long tongue. The flesh felt lifeless under my feet. As soon as my tongue reached the skin, I shuddered but continued. I slowly rocked my head back and forth. This continued for about three seconds. As soon as I was done I was rewarded with my food. Basically, these moths were similar to mosquitoes. They would suck blood from mammals. Unlike mosquitoes only the male moths would suck blood. The blood gushed into my mouth through my tongue. The nourishment made it feel like I was drinking from the ichor of life. The sweet syrup given by the horse was worthy of praise. After sating my hunger, and carefully hiding myself, I logged out. Technically speaking I was (probably) supposed to live in the body of the moth for a while before my understanding was acceptable. Instead I had another plan. Even if time in the summoning realms was sped up, I wanted to waste as little time as possible. I spent only an hour looking up information on the moth. From birth to death I could quite possibly answer any question regarding the thing. I went in-depth too. Even going so far as to read theories as to why each of the things happened. When I got back into the moth body, I felt like my understanding of the insect was at a fairly high level. Still, the voice didn¡¯t allow me to leave. I spent days in that test. I slowly grew bigger and bigger. I realized, thanks to my outside sources, that I could actually drink from fruits as well. Blood tasted better though. As I grew older a female wanted to mate. I was all but an expert in pheromones, so I could tell what was happening. The mating ritual was ¡­ odd to say the least. It was like my body lost all control. I entered into a trance-like state, and seemed as if I was watching from afar. We attached to each other, and i fertilized the eggs. When the mating ended I found my self grow old quickly. The future life of the moth quickly passed through my mind, as if I was watching a documentary on fast forward. When the moth died, I found myself back at the eggs the female moth had laid. I hatched from an egg, and grew into an adult over a few days. Then whole experience was rather bizarre. It wasn¡¯t difficult, just odd. It was like being forced to watch/live another life. By the end I didn¡¯t know if I was moth or man. Of course that passed quickly. The voice returned, this time with a slightly distinct body. It was as if the body of the small person was wearing a cloak that bent light around her. Not very well though. She sounded approving. ¡°You¡¯ve passed. I can tell you fully understand the ways of the Calyptra moth. From birth to death, you have experienced it all. Your understanding is the highest of any that have taken this test before.¡± The figure nodded, and I felt myself drawn back into Solun.
Stats Window
NameMoroRaceNature Fairy
Health10Mana1640
Stamina10
RankApprenticeCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec12.5
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility125
Wisdom125Intelligence164
Endurance1Dexterity164
Luck20Vitality1
Fame0
Moro is a nature fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Nature fairies start with all stats but dexterity, agility, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a nature fairy Moro¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Moro¡¯s agility equals its wisdom. Moro¡¯s dexterity equals its intelligence. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Moro. Moro has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Moro has gained 19 luck. While in monkey form, Moro will now grant the user bonus affinity to Nature Mana. Moro has increased abilities. Moro can now transform into a Calyptra Moth. In this state Moro, and the user, will be able to use their straw-like tongues to absorb blood from enemies. When enough blood is absorbed, based on the size of the one sucking blood, additional bonuses will be granted temporarily. Due to the special conditions of your body, this ability has mutated. You will be able to directly consume mana, as well as blood, from the host target. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
I didn¡¯t actually believe that Moro would gain such a great ability, but I was happy it happened. Not to mention I gained it too! Although the monkey bonus was worthless, the blood sucking thing was awesome! I just had to find something big enough to suck blood from. My mind flashed to the bloods of the eight divines I had. I had totally forgotten about them. Since Ancestor seemed to stuck on using them for something, and I had gotten things out of the agreement, I would have to fix the situation before using them. Else Ancestor might not be as willing to help me out in the future. Though the lure of using them was great, so to must be the reward that I would reap by completing whatever the Ancient Elves were working on. The next upgrade was similar. I chose an animal, then lived its life while skipping unimportant phases. For some reason I started in adulthood again, and watched myself die before being reborn from my own offspring. I had to wonder if EDITOR was trying to say something about humanity. The second animal I chose was a chameleon. If we are talking about getting the powers of animals, then wouldn¡¯t that be the best one? Living as a chameleon was interesting. When I noticed a predator, I would have to send a signal to my body. Chameleons contain little sacks of pigments inside of their cells. The close to the core of their bodies, the darker the colors are. They can activate that pigments to change their colors at will. With my time spent studying the chameleon via the internet, I was able to understand most of it. The life cycle didn¡¯t have too much trouble in it, although I was attacked almost every time I had control over the body. I was even forced to change color to absorb or disperse sunlight. It was fun actually. This time, when the voice spoke to me, I could see the blurry figure. It seemed like every success would bring me closer to viewing the figure completely. I could see the body, but I couldn¡¯t seem to concentrate on it very well.
Stats Window
NameMoroRaceNature Fairy
Health10Mana1640
Stamina10
RankAdeptCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec12.5
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility125
Wisdom125Intelligence164
Endurance1Dexterity164
Luck20Vitality1
Fame0
Moro is a nature fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Nature fairies start with all stats but dexterity, agility, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a nature fairy Moro¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Moro¡¯s agility equals its wisdom. Moro¡¯s dexterity equals its intelligence. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Moro. Moro has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Moro has gained 19 luck. While in monkey form, Moro will now grant the user bonus affinity to Nature Mana. Moro has increased abilities. Moro can now transform into a Calyptra Moth. In this state Moro, and the user, will be able to use their straw-like tongues to absorb blood from enemies. When enough blood is absorbed, based on the size of the one sucking blood, additional bonuses will be granted temporarily. Due to the special conditions of your body, this ability has mutated. You will be able to directly consume mana, as well as blood, from the host target. Moro can now transform into a Chameleon. In this state Moro, and the user, will be able to adjust the pigments in their skin to adjust the colors of their bodies. If fairies die while in combat they return to the Ether Realm, and must be summoned.
Without even waiting I began the final step. The final summoning circle was huge. It easily had a diameter of five yards. The complexity of the structure actually took several hours to complete. Moro was in the form of the monkey. Moro was much cuter like that, although the idea of a pet chameleon was pretty good too. After pumping in the required mana, most of my mana, I looked around. Instead of being surrounded by the different types of animals, I was only surrounded by lush plants. A figure walked through the plants, and came up to me. It was the same one that had been with him through the other tests. Her skin was a deep beautiful dark brown. Although one could clearly see her substantial age, you couldn¡¯t say she was diminished by it. Her eyes were slanted like a cats. I saw her blink, but instead of up and down her eyelids went left and right. Her hair was made up of several types of snakes, which seemed to play with each other. She had several types of vines winding up her legs to just below her navel. Each vine seemed to carry an identically sized fruit. The fruits were varied, but I did see a tiny watermelon. ¡°Gaia.¡± I gave a bow. I just then realized the personage I had been with this entire time was Gaia. Even if I felt my power grow with every summoning, I was nowhere near her level. She smiled at me. Suddenly I felt a familiar weight on my shoulder. Moro sat there, looking longingly at Gaia. I smiled as I gave the nature fairy a small nudge. This was likely to be the only time Moro would get to see Gaia, at least for a while. ¡°Go on, she won¡¯t hurt you.¡± Of course this was all an act for Gaia. Obviously she wouldn¡¯t hurt her own nature fairy. Gaia seemed to take it at face value. After hugging Moro, and playing for a few seconds, she turned her attention back to me. ¡°You have showed exemplary skill in understanding my children.¡± I nodded at the praise. It was true. ¡°So I¡¯ve decided to give Moro a bit of questioning. Don¡¯t worry it¡¯s already done.¡± Seeing the small hitch in my face she said that right away. When did that happen? Fuck. What if Moro told her something bad? I hadn¡¯t treated the nature fairy bad, mostly because it was cute. ¡°Don¡¯t look so scared. Moro has only good things to say about you. You treat all of your fairies pleasantly, even if you don¡¯t always make sense to them.¡± She seemed to be debating something. She began to sit down. The plants around her hurried to create a comfortable chair for her. The vines and flowers wove together to form a nice looking sitting area. ¡°Yes. I¡¯ve decided. As the final upgrade of Moro¡¯s power, I will do something special.¡± Suddenly a glowing green orb, with swirls of brown, appeared. ¡°Only eight others have ever made it to the final upgrade for the nature fairy. As with them I will have you choose a plant as the final upgrade.¡± A plant? The thought of upgrading to a plant never crossed my mind. It made sense though. Plants would obviously be under Gaia¡¯s realm of power. ¡°For you though, I will do something special as I¡¯ve said. You have convinced me to rehabilitate Heather instead of destroying her. For showing me the flaw in my view towards one of my children, I give you this.¡± The orb slowly began to swirl faster and faster. As it did she continued. ¡°I have seen how you love my children. You¡¯ve cured the child between me and Sylph. You have made plants into something much more potent than they could have ever become on their own. You have tried your best to spread that, that healing field, to the world.¡± I was really glad she couldn¡¯t see inside my dungeon. She probably would say something completely different if she could. The rotating began to quicken even more. It was so fast that it began to leave after images. Suddenly it stopped. Instead of the perfect orb, it was a misshapen hideous looking seed. ¡°This is yours. It is what I have come to call a ¡®Blank Seed¡¯. You can use this to fully create your own plant, with which Moro will fuse. Remember, you will also gain the ability of this plant.¡± Her eyes brightened for a moment. ¡°You haven¡¯t made any other fairy rank four yet, have you?¡± I shook my head. Not wanting to tell her about Kretchof. ¡°Good. When a fairy gets to rank four, they obtain a special ability. For nature that ability is to allow the summoner to use all abilities while the fairy is summoned. That means Moro won¡¯t have to be in that form for you to maintain the abilities.¡± If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. With that she disappeared, allowing me time to contemplate the seed before me. What does Kretchof do then? Davros didn¡¯t tell me any of this. It wasn¡¯t really that surprising though. The dark god of intelligence would obviously keep any intelligence to himself that he could. I looked at the seed. It was saturated with mana flows. Every vein of mana was completely filled to the brim with nature mana. I felt like I could literally change this seed to any plant if I was careful enough. I quickly opened my research notes on plants and seeds. Everything I knew about growing plants was held within. The end result is what mattered. The ability Moro would get, would be passed on to me. I needed to find out the most powerful way to manipulate this seed to grant me the best possible outcome. If I gave it light mana I could potentially make it regenerate to give me a permanent bonus to my regen speed. If I added in earth mana I could make it shield me from harm. Moro was waiting near me, seemingly anxious. The nature fairy kept looking around, as if worried about something. That¡¯s right. This is some sort of test. I don¡¯t want to fail it. If I made the ultimate plant, only to have it torn away from me because I failed¡­ Well I¡¯d probably kill someone. ¡°Moro, you are the one that will be most closely intimate with this plant. What should I do with it?¡± Moro visibly relaxed after that. I was glad I chose to ask, obviously Moro knew what was going on. I continued. ¡°Why don¡¯t you come over here, and we can work on this together. I will shape this in accordance with whatever you think is best.¡± Even if I came out with a shitty seed, I would still get Gaia to like me a bit more. Having another of the Elder Gods on my side would be far better than one of my fairies having a powerful upgrade. It was a numbers game. A screen popped up.
Select a plant type.
Moro and I spoke for a bit. Moro wanted something that would not get destroyed easily. ¡°Well the most obvious choice is a tree, or grass. Since procreation isn¡¯t your main goal, those two would be the best choices. Of them, trees tend to live a lot longer. Grass is eaten by most herbivores, but actual wood is eaten by far fewer. If the leaves are eaten they can just grow back.¡± Agreeing with line of thought, Moro accepted the tree idea. I wanted the tree because it might give me a defensive bonus.
Select a base for the seed.
Below the screen was type of dial. I had 100 points to spend. I was given many choices, and many augmentations I could use on the seed. The basic seed size was large. I could decrease it, but that would cost a lot of points. 1 point for every 1 decimeter of radius reduction. The damn thing was at least 15 centimeters in diameter. Moro wanted for the seeds to be able to have a large chance of reproduction. I used up 80 points to change it. I made it similar to a pinecone. ¡°The pinecone actually only sends its seeds out after a fire, when many trees would have been destroyed. That way it will have the greatest chance to flourish.¡± The appearance and size was the same, but I made the requirements to start sprouting some disaster. I didn¡¯t even get to choose the disaster. I guess any disaster to the other trees would make the seed sprout. The required time for the seed to sprout was set at the middle bar. It would only take a year to sprout the bud. At the far end of the spectrum was 100 years, at the other end was a day. I only had 20 points. I decided to put the rest in making it take longer. I explained it to Moro. ¡°Well, if it grows too quickly as soon as it is made, then people might want to try and take some for themselves. We want the trees to live free, not be tainted by human farms.¡± The real reason was that I didn¡¯t want the thing to grow while other players that knew of Voice could find out. I was going to keep this quest as low profile as possible. Instead of costing points, I actually gained quite a bit. With the excess points, I increased the variety of places the seedling could sprout in. It could survive in almost any environment. Nothing short of desert or frozen tundra would stop it. Complete submergence in water would pose a big problem as well.
Select the base attributes of the plant.
After convincing Moro, I made the tree able to filter large amounts of light, as well as store them for long periods of time. I also made it require small amounts of water, but able to contain large amounts. Even carbon dioxide requirements were low. Basically the tree required low amounts of any resource, but could store large amounts. The perfect survivalist. Things like resistance to diseases, or herbivores were left quite low. So if something wanted the tree dead, it would most likely die. Although, if left alone, it would be able to flourish to an insane level. The tree only made one seed every 100 years. That was the max. I made Moro believe this was for the best for the same reason as the seed. So it would take 200 years for the second of these plants to sprout once the first reached maturation. I also made maturation 800 years. Again that was the max. So from birth to birth would be 1000 years. There was no limit to root or branch size. I had enough points from changing the amount of time to produce a seed, and growth speed, to make that happen. I also made it so that any excess resources went into directly growing the tree before they expired. A bonus side effect of the long time it took for the tree to do anything was that the lifespan was unlimited. That was pretty cool. I had created an immortal plant.
Select a defensive trait for the plant.
We talked about it for a while. ¡°Sure, I know some. The best defensive plants are ones that are highly poisonous. There is a tree in my world. It¡¯s so poisonous that even standing under it in the rain will cause animals to break out in a rash. If it¡¯s defending that is the way we should go.¡± I had to add in a lot of water and darkness mana in the plant to do that. I had many things I wanted this plant to do, but I would have to be careful on how I got Moro to agree to it. Suddenly the correct mana paths seemed to burn themselves into my mind. I used all of the defensive trait points to create an absurdly powerful poison. I had to use a dial to modify the amounts of each of the mana types for each segment of poison. Basically the poison from the tree spread in the air as it let out the oxygen waste. It was a combination of powerful hallucinogen, and a crippling paralytic. A single whiff from the air that came off of it would leave an elephant laying on the ground dreaming of ants consuming the stars. The poison will only take effect if the target is within ten feet or so of the tree, but any part of the tree can exude the poison.
Please name the species of tree you have created.
Moro wanted to do the honors of naming. Since I wouldn¡¯t get anything from naming it, I let it happen.
Congratulations! You have created a brand new plant! You, with Moro¡¯s help, have created the plant Tree of Timeless Life.
The Tree of Timeless Life has been planted in Gaia¡¯s Garden.
It was then that Gaia returned. She ignored Moro and me, and examined the seed we had created. ¡°This seed has exceeded my expectations.¡± She glanced at Moro. A silent conversation happened in an instant. ¡°The real test was seeing if you would allow Moro to have any say in the final evolution path. I¡¯m happy to say you passed.¡± She smiled then waved her hand. I found myself back at the summoning circle. A small seed sat in the center of the circle. I quickly recalled Moro, before reading the messages I was being bombarded with.
You are the first player to summon a rank 4 fairy outside of the use of an item. You have gained 15 intelligence. You have gained 20 fame.
Stats Window
NameMoroRaceNature Fairy
Health10Mana1640
Stamina10
RankExpertCurrent TitleN/A
Health Regen/Sec.1Mana Regen/Sec12.5
Stamina Regen/Sec.1
Strength1Agility125
Wisdom125Intelligence164
Endurance1Dexterity164
Luck20Vitality1
Fame0
Moro is a nature fairy. The abilities of a fairy are based on the element they are made of. Nature fairies start with all stats but dexterity, agility, wisdom, and intelligence at 1. For being a nature fairy Moro¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats equal half of the users stats. Moro¡¯s agility equals its wisdom. Moro¡¯s dexterity equals its intelligence. For using the maximum amount of mana in the summoning ritual you have maximum intimacy with Moro. Moro has benefited from the piety of the summoner. Moro has gained 19 luck. While in monkey form, Moro will now grant the user bonus affinity to Nature Mana. Moro has increased abilities. Moro can now transform into a Calyptra Moth. In this state Moro, and the user, will be able to use their straw-like tongues to absorb blood from enemies. When enough blood is absorbed, based on the size of the one sucking blood, additional bonuses will be granted temporarily. Due to the special conditions of your body, this ability has mutated. You will be able to directly consume mana, as well as blood, from the host target. Moro can now transform into a Chameleon. In this state Moro, and the user, will be able to adjust the pigments in their skin to adjust the colors of their bodies. Moro now has the power of the Tree of Timeless Life. Moro, and the user are able to excrete an extremely powerful neurotoxin. Moro, and the user, will no longer age once they respectively reach adulthood. Rank 4 fairies can reproduce. The requirements are tough, but it is possible. Moro can only reproduce once every 100 years. The user can only reproduce once every 100 years. The offspring of Moro, or the user, will have maximized stats where possible, not to exceed the maximum possibilities that offspring might actually have. The summoner can use any of Moro¡¯s abilities at any time. Rank 4 fairies no longer return to the Ether Realm when they die. Moro will enter into your body to rest when Moro¡¯s Hp reaches 0.
Some of your abilities have high synchronization rate. The poison you create can be sent into the barbs of your body. The barbs may also be used to absorb the blood, and mana, from a target.
The results of the final upgrading of Moro were far beyond what I could ever hope for. No longer aging? Able to excrete the neurotoxin that I gave the tree? Being able to use all other abilities? Any one of those might make me a powerful player, all of them together was absurd. Although the aging thing didn¡¯t really effect me, since I was a player. It would be interesting if I continued to play this game until I grew old. Although, no game is popular for that long. The tree I made was actually heavily based on some tree DI seemed to have made. With the addition of the poison of course. The poison was my favorite. That was the final upgrade. Now, some of you might ask what has been happening to some of my other pet projects while I did this. Like what about the dungeon? Well it is actually very interesting. You see the dungeon¡­ (Sorry lol. Had to do it. That¡¯s the avg length of the chap. Since I¡¯m a bit late I¡¯m going to make the chapter a bit longer) The dungeon was actually evolving thanks to the Quasi Chaos Lifeform. He had spent his entire time expanding the dungeon. Apparently he had a way to actually sense other dungeons. With the promise that I would bring his race back, he ferociously went to connect to every dungeon he could. Within those four months of city building, he had already connected a few dungeons. After summoning my mom, he began to connect to every one he could. I moved the shrine that Davros was allowed to use to the one in the main temple. He still had to provide me with the same ratio of rewards as earlier, and even had to send in low level demons occasionally. That way my dungeon could benefit from the research on them. During the short time I was summoning the fairies, Chao had already made the total connection amount total 12. The dungeon itself underwent several changes as well. Each level of the dungeon now was a perfectly flat plane, meaning that none of the layers connected except at the stairs. Each layer was stacked 100 feet below the one before it. More layers were being added every month. The total layer count was 10. With Chao¡¯s innate dungeon control, the levels of the dungeon didn¡¯t disappear when the re-arranging of the dungeon took place. He even made it somehow able to change each layer on different days and intervals. The intervals were all random, but generally the further down one went, the quicker the interval for change. The spiders themselves had been shut into a forced evolution ecosystem. With the way Chao forced them to evolve, it seemed as if he knew exactly how to evolution worked. The web they spun became more robust, and they spun it quicker. Instead of attacking each other, they worked together and made ¡®colony webs¡¯. Webs where they would all live together and share food. A large portion was always sent to the queen. The rodent and insect population sored. Under Chao¡¯s direction, the monsters from other dungeons were quickly subdued and consumed by the two populations. He left just enough monsters from other dungeons to allow them to actually have a population as well. All of the monsters slowly underwent changes while in the dungeon. They slowly lost their original affinities, and began to take on the chaos affinity. The webs were not ¡®Dark-kin Spider Webs¡¯. They were ¡®Chaos-Bred Spider Webs¡¯. The change in affinity made a world of difference. This webbing was extremely resilience to any form of mana. If it got out the gods might notice though. So I had to keep myself from selling it. I still had it horded though. The web was great for creating traps. The traps made no longer disappeared. It seemed as if the dungeon solely existed to please Chao. Levels no longer mattered. Even killing players didn¡¯t really matter. Of course he was only a Quasi Chaotic Lifeform. Although he told me my mom had lent him her power. So the changes in the dungeon were mostly thanks to her. The only thing they couldn¡¯t change was the rate that my dungeon took monsters from other dungeons, nor the amount. I still had to spend points to do that. A few groups of people had wandered in during this time. They were all quickly slaughtered once they entered the second floor. They were only level 100s after all. I made a demand of Chao. I had him adjust the levels of each floor. Level 100 and below wouldn¡¯t be able to survive on the second floor. Level 200 and under couldn¡¯t survive on the third floor. And so on. After the fifth floor, Chao couldn¡¯t increase the difficulty any more. He said we needed more weapons, armor, and more powerful monsters to be able to increase it further. That isn¡¯t to say the second floor is easy for level 200s. It is actually quite difficult. It¡¯s just that anyone below level 200 would have no hope of even getting past the first few encounters without an absurd amount of skill and luck. The boss rooms were not actually part of the dungeon proper. They could only be reached by teleport pads. The same goes for the final boss room. Forget about fairness or difficulty, the final boss, Chao, wasn¡¯t even possible to beat. To get to the final boss one would have to beat all of the sub and mini bosses. After that, one would have to enter a room that closed shut behind them. After entering the room there were only two ways out. Teleportation into the boss room, or death. The room was filled with teleporters. Each 1 foot square was a teleporter. Each teleporter sent the one that stepped on it to a random place in the room. This continued until the final teleporter was reached, and they were sent to the boss room. The biggest obstacles in the teleporter room: the teleporters could not be differentiated, and the entire room was filled with the death cloud aura I had made while Kretchof was in charge. Since there were eight directions one could go after every teleport, they had 1/8 chance of actually getting closer to the final teleporter. The final teleporter didn¡¯t directly touch any of the places people were teleported to! The person would have to jump to it to actually get to the teleporter. Even if all of that was somehow done, the person would fall down 100 feet. The end of the fall was in pure lava. If they could emerge from that, they would have to face all of the sub bosses again. If they somehow beat the sub bosses, they would be forcefully teleported to a random location in the dungeon by Chao. If they could withstand teleportation magic, then they would have to fight a boss that was: A) completely impervious to all mana, and B) could teleport at will. If they could beat Chao despite the stat loss, the fall into lava, and resist the teleportation, then Chao¡¯s auto skill would activate. He would begin absorbing all mana and life in the vicinity to fuel himself. So in the end, the player would be killing themselves. The dungeon had all but become undefeatable. The only thing I had to do was promise Chao I would continue to summon Chaotic Lifeforms, as I got the materials. After finishing the upgrades, and thinking on the dungeon a bit, I heard an urgent cry. A female guard ran up to me, out of breath. ¡°Lord Voice! We are being attacked!¡± As an aside, I would like to say that finals are coming up soon. After they are over I should be able to pump out more chapters quickly. Lots of Love~ Also, this is the last consecutive chapter where Voice will be upgrading things. After this will have a bit more action and fun to it. Dive 77: Purity and Future Plans Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finally finished upgrading all of his fairies. We saw what had happened to the dungeon, and Voice was informed there was an attack. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! An attack? While I wanted something to test my new abilities on, I hadn¡¯t expected an attack. After all, almost no one other than the people I invited here even knew about my city¡¯s existence. ¡°Thank you adventurer.¡± With a brief nod I went to check the outside for myself. Something I forgot to mention. There were nowhere near enough people in my city to actually hire any of them for guards. I mean there weren¡¯t even enough to properly have farms of any size outside of the city. No, what I did was give the adventurers a week of free lodging and spa use in return for four days, eight hours a day, of patrolling my city. Since the taverns and inns would just go to waste if no one stayed in them, i was basically free labor. I threw myself into the sky, and activated my shoes. When I was only a few yards above the castle I surveyed the area. On the right side of the city, nearest the mountain, were a few monstrous bears attack. They were being pelted with dozens of arrows, but they seemed to not even notice them.
RaceMonstrous Black BearRacial ClassBear Warrior
Level 56Health: 1140/1200Mana: 100/100Stamina: 2300/3000
Current Title: Bear WarriorHealth Regen: 100/sMana Regen: 2/sStamina Regen: 23/s
StrengthxAgilityx
Wisdom20Intelligence10
Endurance230Dexterity250
Vitalityx
Three bears. Average health 1200. Strength has to be over 250. Vitality is 300. Game doesn¡¯t understand that seeing stamina is the same as seeing vitality. I could view anything up to level 3375 with my inspect skill. That only works if the stats are only up to 4 times higher than mine though. If the level is higher, or the skill exceeds mine by more than 4 times, I can¡¯t see it. Shouldn¡¯t be too hard to deal with these guys. The area near my city was cleared of trees and unnecessary obstacles. I was modeling it similar to Rand. There were many ways I could do this. I chose the one that seemed the most fun. ¡°Eli, Golem, I want you both to use your abilities. Golem coat the inner tips of my staff blades. Eli coat my armor.¡± A brown and a silver shadow burst forth from my chest. One went into my staff, the other covered me. I flexed my muscles, testing the new armor. The new armor bonus was exactly equal to two times my current armor. I hadn¡¯t been able to apply any runes to my weapon or armor, but I was confident in my ability to at least escape if things got bad. Alright Moro, let¡¯s try out our new abilities shall we? Using the wind mana constantly swirling at me, a forced myself to fall, fall directly towards the bears that is. I landed just outside of the range of the bears. Using earth and wind mana I created a small dust cloud, and a crater with myself as the center. As the dust settled I was exposed. I was on kneeling on my left knee, with my right fist on the ground. In my left hand I was wielding my staff, horizontal to the ground. Ok I just wanted to look cool, it didn¡¯t actually need all of the theatrics. The bears were stunned for a moment as the dust cleared. After noticing me though, covered in my earthen armor, one of them stopped attacking the wall, and began to maul me. Each of the moves by the bear was easily predictable by my inspect skill. Since I had studied bears before, this one wasn¡¯t that hard to figure out. It¡¯s attacks were a bit more sporadic, but followed much the same pattern. Each of the bear¡¯s attacks were easy to guide away from my body using my staff. Each swipe of the bear claw was deflected harmlessly to the side. I wouldn¡¯t even need the armor at this rate. Seeing as the other bears were not going to pay any attention to my fight, I chose to throw a few attacks out myself. The bear attacked with its left paw, swiping down to the right to claw at my face and chest. I guided the attack further right than the bear wanted. It roared in fury. None of its attacks were getting through. After the deft deflection, I counter attacked. Using the spear-tip hidden in my staff, I slashed out at the bear. The bear seemed to want to grab the staff. Well it succeeded, but in grabbing it, the bear was stabbed. The metal tip, coated in Golem¡¯s mana, was quite powerful. The bear tried to use its paw to grab on to the staff, but a spear-tip met it instead. Its health dropped down a bit due to the attack. The bear roared in pain, capturing the attention of the other two bears. ¡°Chill guys, I just want to test myself out against you. Geez.¡± I threw out two of the bombs I got from Susan. Strange markings covered the surface of both. They glowed with a strange light. On each was a small, almost imperceptible object. The object was likewise covered in symbols. Of course the markings were the work of my runic formation. The bears began running at me. Before they could even move more than a few steps, the two bombs made a perfect arc landing at their feet. The bombs exploded as soon as they touched the ground. The runes on each began to glow more brightly. As soon as the explosion seemed to be at maximum, the runes activated. The shrapnel of the bombs, instead of flying out, became stationary. They seemed to stop the explosion from moving further outward. Instead the explosion, and the metal pieces, began to be sucked back towards the impact area. The runes on the bombs only stopped the explosion. The suction force came from the small object. The object was buried in the ground thanks to the explosion. It seemed to be hungrily devouring the flames. Suddenly vines began to spring from the ground. The object was a seed! The vines, quickly ensnared the closest bear. Only one bear was ensnared? Not likely. The second bomb was identical to the first. Both bears were completely surrounded by thick, hungry vines. Although they struggled, they could do nothing to get out of the vines. The vines quickly wound themselves around each paw, then leg, then the bodies, finally stopping after completely surrounding everything but the mouth. The plants were called ¡®Forest Trap¡¯. Similar to a Venus Fly Trap, they trapped prey and slowly digested them. The runes and enchantments on the bombs basically just stopped the explosion from exceeding a certain area using wind mana. The seed had runes on it as well. The runes allowed the plant to absorb fire mana and directly use it to grow. That was what I did with the time I had between summoning Eli and Moro. Of course this was only a test run on them. They were far from perfected. For instance, the explosion wasn¡¯t supposed to be seen at all. That cost the vines a lot of energy. The vines weren¡¯t nearly as numerous or thick as they should have been given the amount of fire mana the absorbed. Not to mention the vines still had the odd habit of allowing the prey to breathe and live while it digested them. So the runes on both needed to be fixed. I still had eight of the prototype bombs left though. While the bombs arced through the air, and consequentially exploded, I was left to fend against the bear. After piercing its paw, I allowed one attack to graze my earthen armor. The armor began to reform almost as soon as the claw completely left it. The poor thing can¡¯t even make it past the earth armor? I stole a glance at the two trapped bears. Although completely surrounded by the vines, they were beginning to break through. The vines were only meant to attack creatures like rabbits and mice. The forced growth couldn¡¯t cope with monsters as strong as bears. The only reason they were even big enough to temporarily capture the bears was the large amount of fire mana they absorbed from the bombs. I had to quickly finish the bear I was fighting. Three against one was not a fight I wanted to be in, at least not if I was not part of the three. I used the ability I had gained from Undine, and covered myself in needles. Each needle could suck up blood and mana. By using the power of the seed, each spike was even covered in a mind destroying poison. I threw a punch at the bear. The bear I was fighting seemed delighted that its prey would be so stupid as to attack with only a fist. The bear took its giant paw, and swatted the punch away. My punch wasn¡¯t supposed to hit the thing in anywhere it would take damage anyway. As soon as the powerful paw met my fist, I was thrown to the side. Like a performance, I cartwheeled in the air before hitting the ground. The bear didn¡¯t fare so well. As soon as one of the needles met resistance it automatically began to suck away blood and mana from the bear. The small spike only grazed the bear¡¯s skin, but that was enough for my purpose. A tiny bit of the bear¡¯s blood and mana were exchanged for a tiny bit of my poison. The poison was far more potent than the blood and mana, but I didn¡¯t mind the exchange. Aren¡¯t I nice? I looked at the bear in pity. The poison was far more effective than I had thought it would be. The bear was laying on its side, tongue hanging out seemingly in pain. Just a few drops of the poison did this? I saw a flashing icon in the top right corner of my vision. I ignored it for now. I went up to the bear and drank in its blood. The blood was saturated with the poison. Luckily it didn¡¯t effect me at all. Within seconds I had absorbed all of the bear¡¯s mana, and a large chunk of its Hp. The other bears were almost out of the vines. I took a few extra seconds of drinking the bear¡¯s blood, then got into a fighting stance. I shot a blot of darkness/fire mana at the bear. The hellfire began to consume the still zonked out bear. Poor bastard is going to die while in la la land. The dark flames slowly began to spread across its body, eager for the feast. The dark flames continuously took my mana to keep alive, but I had enough to spare. The body of one bear wasn¡¯t enough to empty it out. The other two bears finally managed to break through the vines. Parts of their fur were melted from the digestive fluids of the vines. The bears were breathing heavily, and seemed angry for some reason. ¡°Well come on. If you are going to attack get to it.¡± I taunted with a smile. Both bears rushed me. Like a bull fighter I waited for the last second to dodge past both of them. ¡°Guys¡­ you really need to work on coordination.¡± Again they charged me. This time, instead of dodging, I ran towards them. Just before we collided I jumped. I threw two bombs in front of them as I passed over them. Without being able to stop they were caught in the explosions. Vines sprang up from the ground. The vines quickly surrounded the bears. Again they were trapped. Hm, these vines really do need some work. I thought that, but there was only so much I could do. These specific vines only produced two seeds. One when they became fully grown, and one upon death. I my fairies plant the seeds inside my castle. The plants didn¡¯t get too much attention though. I just hadn¡¯t had the time to do it. I began to absorb all of the water mana from the bear on the right. Absorbing mana from other¡¯s mana pool wasn¡¯t impossible, just really hard. I decided to play with it a bit. I had gotten the ability when I fought the slime, but didn¡¯t really pay much attention to it at the time. During my time creating the town I had thoroughly gone over my skills and abilities. My control wasn¡¯t amazing though. I did absorb the water mana from the bear, dehydrating it in the process, but I also took it from the vines that entangled it. It was much easier for it to get out of the little trap this time. While the other bear was still struggling to free itself, the bear that just freed itself attacked me by trying to bite at me. With the combat bonus of my inspect skill, I was easily able to see the exact trajectory of the mouth, and even had enough time to summon up a large rock just as the bear¡¯s mouth clasped shut. It seemed surprised I was able to see and evade its attack, but even more surprised by the pain of trying to munch on a solid piece of stone. Seeing that the other bear was going to free itself soon, I decided to end the one in front of me. I unsheathed the two swords kept in my staff. Using a combination of wind and fire mana, I forcefully enhanced the attack I was about to unleash. With Golem already enhancing the piercing power, all I had to do was make sure the attack was powerful. One of my swords was instantly coated in flames. The wind mana condensed the flames to just above the metal parts of the sword. Almost no flame actually flickered off of them. The intense heat was further amplified by the small amount of space it was given to disperse. I ran at the free bear, even as the bear ran at me again. In less than a second the maw of the bear met with my sword. With my inspect, and innate control of fire and wind mana, I managed to condense it to only the parts of the sword that would actually come in contact with the bear¡¯s mouth. The searing heat rose yet again. As the sword with enhanced piercing power, and extremely concentrated flames, met with the mouth of the bear¡­ Well it sliced through the bear like a hot knife through butter. The lower jaw of the bear fell to the ground. The flames happy to finally be released from the confinement of the wind mana, danced on the piece of flesh and bone. The sword didn¡¯t stop at the jaw though. No, it continued to pass for about a tenth of the total length of the bear. When I felt the sword start to slow down beyond what I wanted, I pulled it hard enough to break it free of the bear¡¯s body. Needless to say the bear fell to the ground, dead. The final bear finally managed to kill the vines and extract itself. It looked around in anger. The first bear had been fully burnt to the ground. Although it had cost a bit of mana it was a cool effect. The second bear literally had almost been sliced in two. I wiped my blade on the pelt of my victim. ¡°Just you buddy. So how¡¯s this going to go down?¡± The bear had the nerve to attack my city. I had to make an example of it to show the other critters of the forest not to mess with me. Instead of attacking me head on like I thought it would, the bear turned around. It promptly initiated that age old saying. ¡®We must fight to run away, so we may fight another day!¡¯ I stared for a second, debating if I should kill the thing or let it live. I decided to let it live. I had gotten the info I wanted, and it would help spread the word of the defense to any other bear monsters if nothing else. I knew letting it go would probably bring trouble, but trouble on the level of a few monstrous bears wasn¡¯t much. If things got too bad I always had my ¡®last resort¡¯. I drew the water out of all of the vines, and took the seeds. I didn¡¯t want anyone else getting their hands on the seeds if I could help it. I got a total of eight seeds. I flew back into the city amongst cheers from the crowd of guards on the wall that had seen my battle. I nodded to them. Showing appreciation in that situation was the best move. Completely ignoring those that defend your city is never a good idea. Well that was a bit anti climactic. I had honestly thought the fight would be a bit more,¡­ I don¡¯t know, tough. I went back to my castle, accompanied only by my disappointment. When I got back to the castle on the mountain, I checked my notifications.
You have used poison generated from the Tree of Timeless Life. You must absorb 100 points of nature mana, 50 points of darkness mana, and 40 points of water mana, to restore the lost poison.
That first notice kind of threw me for a loop. I didn¡¯t know I would have to recharge the damn poison! At least I easily had more mana of each type than that. The problem was that I only used a few drops of the poison. If I fought something that had poison resist I¡¯d have to use a lot more. I couldn¡¯t even imagine the amount of total mana it would cost to fully regenerate 100% of the poison I could make. (Actually my computing skill told me it would take 8.5 million total mana!) The second notice I got was that I got a level up. I thought for a few minutes, and stuffed the entire 7 points into wisdom, increasing my mana regen by 1.4 points per second. I could enchant one bomb with runes for about 250 mana. I could regen 40 mana per second if I didn¡¯t eat anything. So that was about 4 seconds per bomb. What would happen if my mana regen was so insane that I could just constantly enchant things? I had Eli and Golem detach, and recharge their mana. I extracted seeds from most of the plants, as they were almost all fully grown. Afterwards I had Eli, Moro, Tear, and Sol go about planting and enhancing the vine plants. I needed the vines to be more powerful if they were going to be able to hold down something as large as a bear. After four generations, which grew in only a few hours with the help of my inscriptions, I had enough seeds to begin really experimenting. In the course of only two days my fairies and I went through several dozen generations of the vines. Only the ones with the most resistance to creatures freeing themselves were allowed to reproduce. The rest were harvested so I could try making potions out of the seeds. When I was satisfied, we went on to my next project. Those same four fairies continued to increase the potency of the healing field in the palace and inner arc section. The total power of the healing field was basically impossible to increase, but they could increase the effective area the cloud extended to. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. The only part of my power I didn¡¯t really need to train was the inscriptions. They were directly based off of True Elven. Since I had been taught the entire alphabet, as well as all of the words Ancestor knew, I could basically make any enchantment my skill allowed. The most complicated inscription I could make was definitely on the vine bombs. The inscription was basically a small paragraph of instructions. The bomb would explode like usual, but then the metal would start to push the fire mana back by using a fusion of fire and wind mana. It was a complicated thing. I decided to use some inscriptions on my staff. Basically I just used the worlds: Empower, Metal, Mana. The intent while writing the inscriptions was just as important as the actually inscription. Just like manipulating mana. Basically any metal mana cast on the metal parts of the staff/sword, would grow even more powerful. So when Golem coated it, the effect would be more noticeable. While messing with the inscriptions I was sitting in a small room hollowed out of the mountain. This room had two different metal mana veins protruding. It was to help my metal mana purity rise. Most of my time for those few days was spent carving the vine seeds. SparrowHawk was the one that ferried the seeds back and forth between the fairies and me. I did continued to increase my metal mana purity though. I also meditated to force the purity higher when I had the chance. After the few days spent sitting in the room my metal mana purity had gone up to 10! Susan and Evan had made me literally hundreds of bombs to work with. For most of them I put the same explosive runes, but I did experiment on some. The results were mostly failures. Almost 100% failed. I did get some interesting ones, but none were truly useful. Although the ice bomb was funny. The metal of the bomb actually absorbed fire mana and sent out frozen water mana, ice. A large star of ice was created when the bomb struck the ground. With my metal mana finally at 10% purity I decided to start another project. In a room next to the one with the iron ore, I began to draw a circle. The circle was covered in runes on top and bottom of the line. There were four obvious sections of the inscriptions. The outer layer was the second most complex, and obviously was the largest. The second layer was a square. Again, on both sides of the line used to draw the shape were various symbols. Inside the square was a triangle with the same. Finally the innermost section was another circle. The innermost circle had the most complex set of runes. Although they were by no means the most complex I could think of, they were the best my skill would let me do. I could use just about any words I knew in True Elven, but I could only use the grammar of a middle schooler. Otherwise the entire spell would explode. Something I found out working with the many bombs I had gained. The room I chose was the lowest room in the castle. It was also the closest to the center of the mountain. I put it there in case I got lucky enough for this mountain to be a volcano. Then I¡¯d be able to get as much fire mana as I could handle. The outer inscriptions drew fire mana towards the ritual spot. The square did an automatic purification. I was hoping that using purified mana to increase my mana purity would help me out. The triangle amplified the pure fire mana, and sent it back to the square if the inner circle didn¡¯t activate. The inner circle only activated while I was in the center. It was keyed to me specifically. No one else would get anything out of this place. The inner circle basically worked as a pump. It forced all of the fire mana it came in contact with to shoot at the person (me) in the center. The amount of fire mana purification I could do while consciously or subconsciously would (hopefully) be increased exponentially. It took me an entire day to actually finish all of the runes required for the ritual spot. If I messed up even slightly on even one rune, the entire inscription would fail. After double, triple, and quadruple checking each rune, I was finally satisfied with it. I sat in the middle and began to infuse the entire thing with mana. After a minute or so I began to notice the effects of the circle. It was hot! Like literally burning up! My body involuntarily tried to jump out of the circle, but I forced myself to stay seated. The fire mana pouring in was so pure it felt like I was actually on fire. After closing my eyes, and concentrating everything I had on absorbing the pure fire mana, I noticed almost instant results. In less than five minutes my fire mana purity increased from 5 to 6. In ten more minutes it increased to 7. Fifteen minutes was all I could stand. During the process my skin slowly took on a reddish hue. My face was flush, parts of my body even began to turn black from being charred. The purity of the man was really high! As my body slowly became red while meditating, I noticed the impure fire mana being drawn in by the triangle, and sent into the square for purification. Even my own impure fire mana is used to fuel the spell. I didn¡¯t see that coming. One of the most fun parts of using new skills was when unexpected, but good, things happened as a result. Like reusing impure mana to create more pure mana. As I sat in the middle of the inscriptions the heat began to grow worse and worse. It was like being cooked alive. Although I had pretty good resistance to pain and mana, it was too much. I had to have two days of cooling off in an ice-bath I created, just to see the swelling and burnt bits of my body return to normal. Though it was a great way for training my purity, it was a little excessive. I would have set some sort of failsafe in place, else I might actually be cooked alive. Maybe something like a defuser. To make the purified fire mana dilute in the air inside the middle circle. That way it had the same purity, it was just less of the fire mana. That would probably work out. After cooling myself down for quite some time, I decided to at least create similar inscriptions for the other mana types. I created the other seven magical arrays in the same day. After I had made sure of my work with the fire, inspect was able to accurately assess the capabilities of each of the other runic arrays. Getting purity up by 2 in only 15 minutes is seriously not something to laugh at. At the very least I was readying myself to experience the pain if I found no other way to work with it. My total mana, including the mana boost from my 7% pure mana, was 5,350.8 points. That was a huge amount considering someone would have to have 535 int to compete. That was still a far cry from the 30,870 I would have once I reached 100% pure mana. Just imagining having that much pure mana gave me enough drive to sit in the fire mana chamber for another fifteen minutes. That fifteen minutes increased my total effective mana to 5625.2 points. Instead of just sitting in a chilling bath, this time I went into the water array. As soon as I had finished pumping in the required 500 mana to start the array, I was assaulted by freezing cold water. The chilling bite of the water was in stark contrast to the heated tearing of my skin thanks to the fire array. After sitting in the water purifying array for an hour and a half, my water purity went from 75, to 76. After that, I felt it was ok to take another dip in the flame array. This continued for a while. Days in fact. When I was done cooling off in the water array I¡¯d go into the fire array until I couldn¡¯t stand it anymore. My total fire mana purity went to 15, but the water mana purity only got to 79. Since light, metal, and darkness purities were all at 10, they were now my lowest ones. But after those four extra days, I just didn¡¯t have the willpower to actually step into another array. Every time I thought of it I cringed on the inside. On the plus side, when my fire purity got to 15, the fire goddess Salamander increased my affinity to fire by 10%. So in just over a week, with a lot of pain added in, I had increased my total useable mana to 6174. 180% of my actually mana. I decided to pop into my dungeon to see how things were going. Before going in I made sure that I had a few potions to stop poison effects. I had dozens, and could make like six in a day if I really tried. The dungeon corridors, were slim. They were just large enough for two people to walk abreast. Although the monsters and traps didn¡¯t effect me, I noticed there were a lot of them. The monsters mostly mulled about. The traps didn¡¯t seem to affect them either. The tunnels connected to each other in an immensely elaborate maze. Since I was the Dungeon Master, I could mentally see the layout of the dungeon. The besties in the dungeon looked grotesque. The giant rat monsters had huge front teeth, big red eyes, boney legs, as if it were starving, a fat belly as if it had eaten a small child. Boils covered the rats, and wounds seemed to fester with mold. The were disgusting to look at. These were ¡®Chaos Rats¡¯. They had the full ability to use any mana type, but had no minds of their own. None of the monsters in my dungeon did. They were fully controlled by my mother. Well Chao had proxy control over them. They had basic motor skills, but they could only follow orders. They had nothing resembling free will. All of the monsters had undergone mutations. Even the necromancer girl, now a Chaos Bringer, had physical changes. She was much larger, about 8 feet tall, and literally had a third eye. When I got to the boss room, which is why I brought the potions, I talked with Chao. Chao was as imposing as ever. His body looked like he was a professional body builder. His multi colored hair was only obscured because there was no light. I could only see thanks to my own small light source I summoned. The boss room was much the same, but had the poison plants taking up every inch of space on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Without a resistance to the poison, one would lose their life in less than 2 minutes. That¡¯s a pretty short time limit for killing a boss that can fucking teleport. Remember: Monsters are just animals possessed by demons. Demons were directly under the control of Davros. Monsters inhabited dungeons. Dungeons were the creation of Chaotic Lifeforms. It only made sense that Davros had a direct connection to the Chaotic Lifeforms. According to Chao, the Elder Gods were traitors to their own kind. They were part of a group of a few hundred (A small amount given the vast numbers of Chaotic Lifeforms) that had sided with the other figure. Chao believed that the dungeons were given to Davros to control. Davros was a traitor to the Chaotic Lifeforms. Once Chao learned of my decision to conquer this planet, he took every opportunity to make sure I knew I¡¯d have to destroy the Elder Gods first. I had the blood of all of the Elder Gods, but Ancestor didn¡¯t want me to use them until my mana purities all reached 100. Allegedly that would bring about the best results. Given the power of the blood drops, I had to concede. Anything that brought out more power from something as powerful as the blood of a god would be worth taking into consideration. Deciding that I was going to go through the test the True Elves made, I asked Ancestor about it. ¡°The test is separated into different categories.¡± Ancestor explained. ¡°There is melee fighters, mana fighters, and researchers. The melee fighters focus on magic that will enhance their natural bodies, much like you do. Usually they fight with the most powerful forces of the battlefield. ¡°The mana fighters focus solely on using mana to help the melee fighters. Usually they are tasked with destroying large amounts of weaker opponents. That way the melee fighters can take on the powerful enemies. ¡°Finally the researchers do exactly what you would think. They research the best ways to use mana, and new ways that have not been used before. ¡°Each test is dependent on which path you choose. You can choose more than one path, but no one has been able to ever past two paths at once. Once you have passed a path test, you cannot take it again. If you fail you only get one more chance before the choice is taken from you.¡± I didn¡¯t know which path I might want to test for. They all sounded interesting. Especially the researcher path. Ancestor never helped me with my research. It seems as though all of Ancestor¡¯s useful knowledge was locked away for some reason. Getting back to Chao. I agreed to kill the elder gods, but only under one condition. He looked at me skeptically. ¡°Name it. I don¡¯t have much power outside of the dungeon you own, but I¡¯ll provide anything I can to get back at those traitorous bastards.¡± I explained what I wanted. ¡°To start off with I want you to explain this.¡± I pulled off the belt I had been given as a goodbye present. (See chapter 35). ¡°This thing is enchanted with a ¡®gravity mana stone¡¯. I know mana stones have the power to use unique spells other than earth, but I want to know how this thing works. How does it give the extra space? Why doesn¡¯t it increase the weight of the belt?¡± The small purple stone was basically invisible unless one had it unequipped and looked at the perfect angle. After staring at it for several minutes Chao sighed. ¡°I¡¯d love to,¡­ but I can¡¯t.¡± It wasn¡¯t that bad of a deal for him. I didn¡¯t understand why he would refuse. ¡°Why not?¡± A little anger crept into my voice. He sneered for a fraction of a second, before gathering himself again. ¡°It¡¯s a rule. A promise if you will. When the being that destroyed us was, in fact, destroying us, we sealed off many powers.¡± He shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s not that I don¡¯t want to. I DO! But I can¡¯t.¡± Apparently the war with being had caused the Chaotic Lifeforms to begin to seal up different mana types one after the other. Chao didn¡¯t know how many they managed to seal, but it was impossible to use those mana types after that. The only exception was the tiny amount of residual mana types left in the world from the war. Pockets of the unique mana types survived in the world, but they were scarce. This gravity mana stone was one such case. It became impossible to for anyone to use those types of mana. Only the Council could bring them back. The council were the 5 most powerful beings of the Chaotic Lifeform race. The queen was number one of course. The other four were very close in power to her, but followed her. I had so much to do if I wanted to actually rule this game with an iron (mana) fist. The first step was to level up though. With that I had a brilliant idea. I left the dungeon as my smile grew wider. There was one sure fire way to raise levels quickly. A gladiator tournament! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
RaceTrue ElfRacial ClassKing
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 3430[6174]Stamina: 500
Current Title: Chosen of MarHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 51.4(45.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength65Agility50
Wisdom257Intelligence343
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1685
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 49 Exp 99.99% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal50%
Earth90%
Fire35%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light10%
Water79%
Wind15%
Nature65%
Metal10%
Earth80%
Fire15%
Darkness10%
Dive 78: The Fights Begin Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finally finished upgrading all of his fairies. We saw what had happened to the dungeon, and Voice was informed there was an attack. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Geez guys! 2k views in two days! I decided to write this because I was excited about such a turnout. It only took a week to set up tournament. By then everyone in town knew about it. Even some, a very low number, people from outside of my city began to appear because of it. I asked EDI to spread the word of It, but leave out the fact that I was the one that started the rumors. She agreed on the condition that she get to participate. We eventually agreed that she could join if I hid her identity. The rumor was that in one month I would hold a gladiator styled tournament. The colosseum was huge. I had all of the earth magicians in my employ, those that worked in the mages guild, help with it. They seemed to have a lot more trouble than I did. Even the rank three earth mage could barely keep up with me. It might have been my innate ability to manipulate earth mana, or my massive quantity of mana. Either way we got it done in that same week. I didn¡¯t have any time to rest though. I didn¡¯t give the earth mages time to sleep either. I used the energy buff on all of them. They had no choice but to make it full time. The only times they got off were when they had to eat. After the first week was over I checked on the progress of my fairies. In anticipation of the tournament I had my harvesting fairies; Sol, Eli, Moro, and Tear, create as much raw ingredients as the could for me to create health potions. The ingredients were all very potent. ¡°Good job guys, if you all can keep this up for another three weeks I¡¯ll be sure to get you all some fairy food!¡± Fairy food was like catnip to them. They all knew what it was like, despite only Sol getting any from me before. The ingredients I asked for weren¡¯t just my usual green healing herb and common weed. I had them grow the common weed and green healing herb, but also iron leaf and blue thistle. Iron leaf plus blue thistle made a potion that increased healing rate. Common weed and green healing herb was the obvious healing potion. By drying both potions, then combining the resulting powder, I could make a new type of potion. The whole process was the same as making one potion, but I blended two types of powder during the first drying process. Then I used that powder to create both potions again, them combined the resulting powder into the potion.
Health Boost * Rare
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Base Restoration30 + 6/s for 5 seconds
This potion was created by the powerful alchemist Voice0fReason. This potion was made by fusing multiple potions together in an alchemic feat rarely heard of. This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers. This potion heals a total of 343.8 points instantly, and an additional 343.8 over the next 5 seconds.
Remember, the base restoration was only what it normally was without any enhancements. When I dried them, and made them into new potions, that increased the effectiveness of them. Normally one green healing herb potion would heal about 800 per, since I knew green healing herbs and common weed so well. Sacrificing a bit to make it also heal over time was worth it. During the next week I constantly made potions. They increased in power a bit due to the fact that my fairies only harvested the weakest seeds, and replanted the strongest ones. That was one of Moro¡¯s main jobs. To go through each seed after pouring in the mana to help grow the plants. I had two weeks left to finish my preparations. I quickly had the rules written on sheets of paper, and convinced EDI to secretly help distribute them over the city. The rules were simple. Rule 1: No outside items. Basic weapons and armor will be provided as well as a few potions. After the first match, you can choose to purchase extra potions, weapons, armor etc. Special enchantments can be laid on weapons or armor after the first round, for any price the merchants deem acceptable. Rule 2: No outside help. All buffs and debuffs must be removed prior to entering the arena. If the judges notice any outside assistance, they will review the battle. A disqualification may be issued. Rule 3: No killing. Killing is strictly prohibited. Any attempts on another¡¯s life, unless deemed completely accidental, will result in disqualification and punishment. Rule 4: No maiming. Intentional maiming will be treated in the same way as killing. See Rule 3. Rule 5: No complaints. The victor will be decided by the impartial judges. Unless cheating was involved, rulings are final. Rule 6: Judgements are absolute. The judges may add or detract rules as the situation requires. New and detracted rules will take effect at the beginning of the match after they are decided. Of course I had told Susan, Evan, and the Guild leader about these rules when I came up with them on the first day. That way they could prepare a suitable amount of items for those that might want to purchase them. During the two weeks I made sure all of the prizes were enough to tempt people, and reinforced the colosseum with a few inscriptions that simply said ¡®endurance¡¯. That way it would be slightly harder to actually damage it. I also continued to make massive batches of potions. After that first week of healing potions, I made dozens of different types of potions. By the time I finally created the 12th new potion, I finally leveled up alchemy to level 50! It took a GIANT jump in power. From the simple 11.46 extra potency it jumped all the way to 17.262. It is mostly because of the increase in the two skills that only give bonus based on ranks not levels. I made a plan to use the final day before the event to make a bunch of potions for my personal use. The colosseum was designed exactly like the famous one in Rome. It was supported by a series of arches and causeways. The center was large enough to hold a small lake. It was four stories high, and had the stands only take up a small portion of the total area. During the last week I specially enchanted a series of weapons, using my inscriptions, for the winners¡¯ prizes. I also found that my inscriptions on things were permanent. At least until intentionally removed by the owner. The magic would fade out occasionally, as all enchantments now did. But pouring mana into a mold was aa lot easier than making a new enchantment every time the old one ran out. I even made it so the wielder of the weapon could recharge it themselves. Though the rate of recharging for someone other than an enchanter was only 1 point for every 100 spent. Not an extremely viable option, but it could save someone¡¯s life. Day of the tournament. I stood on the balcony of my castle. I could easily overlook the entire city. Below me sprawled the magnificent Utopia I had built. Using wind mana, I made it so my voice could reach everyone in the city. Not that I needed to. Most of the people were gathered in the center of the residential arc. I had asked my friends to spread news of my announcement an hour before. Word spreads fast in a small community like what my city was at that moment. Although the amount of residents wasn¡¯t high, the news had spread to a few outlying villages. The ones closest to us, with the safest travel, even sent some people to watch. ¡°Friends! Listen! I have news! Today we will celebrate the first month of our fair city! Today we celebrate what the gods have seen fit to give us! ¡°We are a large town with a small population, but will we let others conquer us? NO! We are friendly, nice, and good spirited people. But will we let others take advantage of us? NO! ¡°Today we show what we are made of! Not just to the world, but to ourselves! WE ARE STRONG! WE ARE SMART! WE ARE MIGHTY!¡± Through use of a few select mole agents, I started a chant of ¡®we ¡­ are ¡­ mighty. We are mighty.¡¯ Every chant made it quicker and louder. With four people all chanting it in different areas, it quickly caught on. It probably helped that I asked them all to record the chant earlier. I gave each of them a stone, that had the voice of four people chanting on it. Within seconds the entire crowd was cheering we are mighty. I slipped back in my castle, happy that my plan to hype them up had worked sufficiently well. Some of the adventurer guards were tasked with leading the people to the colosseum, as if they couldn¡¯t find it themselves. After gathering all of the required items, I quickly equipped the flying ring and flew to the arena. I had already made sure the merchants were able to set up quickly. I had already given Susan the potions I made, and we agreed that I¡¯d get 75% of the profit. Even though I wanted all of the profit, and thought I should since I had gotten her intimacy up, I decided not to argue about it. The 25% wasn¡¯t worth losing the closeness I had with her. She would prove more useful in the future. When I got close to the arena, I landed. I changed my appearance, and hid myself behind some buildings. I looked more like a rough guy, and had one scar crossing over each eye. It almost made a mountain shape. I even went so far as to make it look like I had a different class. Just incase someone could read my info like I could thiers. Evan and his wife Elizabeth met up with me in a few moments. I gave him the items and changed his appearance to mimic my original one. I also made Elizabeth¡¯s look like EDI. They left soon after, and went straight into the colosseum carrying the prizes. After waiting a few minutes I came out. I easily blended into the crowd. After walking for about ten minutes, the guard finally had us wait at the entrance. She began speaking loudly. I gave the girl that told me about the bears this job. ¡°By order of King Voice0fReason, we are to herby conduct a seizure of all personal effects. If you are a participant please for a line to the left. If you wish to watch the battles please move to the right.¡± The process of taking everyone¡¯s items was long. Of course they couldn¡¯t even register without accepting the quest.
You must accept this quest to participate in the gladiatorial tournament. Success: Getting 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. Difficulty: ??? Failure: Losing in a battle before attaining the rank of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. Reward: To be announced. Success results in the people of this town becoming more friendly towards you. You must pay an entry fee of 10 gold to accept this quest.
First the entry fee of 10 gold was taken. It seemed like a lot, but most of the players were high level. They could afford it. They handed their items to a guard, and had them sealed off in a large box. The guard then wrote the name on a piece of wood that was nailed to the metal box. After writing two lists with every item the person had, the guard let them go into the barracks to wait. This was all done in a private room of course. A female guard was available for women, while the men had a male guard watch over them. Even with eight total guards, it took a while. I had nothing on me, except a loose fitting robe. My check went quickly. I was given a facility robe, and ushered out of the room. After that they were shooed off to the merchant¡¯s area. Guards were heavy here to make sure no cheating got into the fights. You were allowed to choose which merchant you would get your goods from. The only merchant with any potions to speak of was Susan. Imagine that. As I was ushered into Susan¡¯s area, I sat down. Each merchant was given a small room with two chairs one table, and a door. Two guards were stationed in each merchant¡¯s room. Susan¡¯s room was the first one on the right. Evan¡¯s was the first on the left. Susan smiled as she saw me enter. ¡°Well, stranger. What kind of potions would you like. You can only choose 5.¡± ¡°Thankee, mum. I¡¯d like five healing potions.¡± This was code of course. I had told her what my general appearance would be, but still wanted a code phrase in case someone else happened to look like me. The two guards were watching us the entire time, making sure that she did not show me favoritism. She picked 5 ¡®random¡¯ healing potions out of her inventory, and handed them to me. Without checking them I went outside. The robe could hold 5 potions, so that is how many I let the participants have. These were basic robes Evan had made for me. He had a tailor friend who joined him on the journey here. The tailor had been paid generously for them. It only took a few enchanted items to get the trade done actually. After leaving Susan¡¯s shop, I went across the hall for my gear. Evan had his apprentice selling for him. I was given a set of basic iron armor, and a staff. Both my choices. I at least allowed for the participants to choose the types of items to fight with. I could have had better armor or a better staff, but I didn¡¯t want to take the chance of someone finding out. I was directed to the changing room. After changing in the changing room, I gave my robe to the guard stationed outside of it. Then I went to the barracks to get my number. For everyone else, the next step was always told by a guard that was nearby. I had that as well, but obviously didn¡¯t need to pay it too much mind. It was sort of strange though. When I went to grab my number, Lydia the librarian happened to be giving them out. When she saw my unique face she just happened to say that she drew number 1. I was ¡®luckily¡¯ going to be in the first match. Which meant, even if I lost, I would ¡®happen¡¯ to be able to watch the rest of the matches. If you didn¡¯t get the obvious hints, I paid her off. In exchange for a rather sizable donation to her library, she agreed to help me cheat. She didn¡¯t like it, but my donation was quite hard to pass up. Basically I was going to declare the library a national resource. So stealing from it, or damaging the books, would be akin to robbing the king. The sales would still go 100% to Lydia though. I also had to help her find rare books when I got the chance. Honestly she kind of screwed me, but I had no choice since I had already brought it up with her. The question is, why would I make it so I could watch everyone? Why not just watch from the stands as the king? Secret. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. A few hours later and everyone was through. There were only about a hundred fighters this time, and just over four thousand spectators. It was free to watch, but only under the condition that the seats wouldn¡¯t fill up. The ten gold did dissuade many from joining, but that was also a part of the whole plan. After everyone was through we were all paraded into the center of the colosseum. The participants only filled up a small portion of it. If there were a lot of participants we would have gone into three or more days, but there weren¡¯t enough for that. We just needed two for what I wanted. The ¡®king¡¯ announced the start of the tournament. Evan stood up from the adorned seat, and spoke. ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen of the audience, I¡¯d like to thank you for coming tonight to view the battles about to take place. Although there are not many participants, it will no doubt be thrilling to watch. ¡°Obviously this contest will have winners. Obviously these winners should be rewarded!¡± After he mouthed the words I had imprinted into the recording stone, he pulled out the prizes. The first was fabric. ¡°Here I have specially enchanted fabric.¡± The bolt of fabric shone in many colors. ¡°This is specially crafted fabric! It has the ability to resist any type of magic!¡± Although mana users weren¡¯t super common, that was a prize. Even this prize was just one way I was going to increase the number of mana users. By giving a prize that resisted magic, I made it seem like magic is even better. It was great for me, but others would generally suck. ¡°This is the third place prize.¡± He put the bolt of fabric down, and picked up a helmet. ¡°The second place prize is this.¡± Evan continued to mouth the words perfectly. ¡°This is the second prize.¡± Evan held up an iron helmet. ¡°This helmet is specially enchanted! All it needs is mana to run. Even those that do not know how to enchant can recharge the enchantment by allowing it to absorb their mana! ¡°This helmet will allow the user to breathe underwater for one hour between charges. That will not stop them from being crushed by the water¡¯s weight. While it doesn¡¯t offer much in the way of protection, the ability to breathe in Tear¡¯s domain isn¡¯t negligible.¡± I made sure I tested that helmet. It actually worked. It gathered air mana, and reflected water mana. It could only last for an hour before it needed to have 10k mana points put into it again. What? I was still experimenting with inscriptions. Nothing I made at that time was perfect. Evan gently laid the helmet atop the bolt of fabric. ¡°The final prize is something many will find useful.¡± He slowly pulled out a sword from his scarab. Only a slight hitch in the pull diminished the effect. I couldn¡¯t expect too much out of a blacksmith I suppose. The sword shone, then instantly darkened. After a few seconds of silence the audience began to whisper. Evan continued to stare at the sword. After a few more seconds it happened. A beam of bright searing light shot from the tip of the sword, into the sky. The sword glowed brightly, as it released the power. The beam held for only a fraction of a second, but the effect on the crowd, and participants, was noticeable. That¡¯s right. I had made a mother fucking sword that shot MOTHER FUCKING LAZAHS! Well actually not quite. The sword would absorb ambient light and fire mana, much like the mana purifiers I created. It would then shoot them out in a dazzling display. The light was really just to hide the fire beam.
Laser Sword
Material QualityCommonWork QualityMaster
Enchantment QualityMaster
Damage100-165 (500 maximum laser damage)Durability200/200
This weapon was created by the Master Blacksmith Evan. This weapon was made by an master craftsman. This weapon gains plus twenty minimum damage and plus twenty maximum damage. This weapon gains fifty durability. This weapon was enchanted by a master enchanter. This sword has had its magical ability increase by 500%. This sword must charge to be able to produce the ¡®laser¡¯. Unless artificially charged, this sword requires high levels of heat and light to charge.
I named the sword, so of course I¡¯d make it interesting. I didn¡¯t even care about winning it though. In a few weeks, maybe a month, I¡¯d be able to make much better. This was my best item I made so far though. The hardest part of the entire engraving process was that each character had to be aligned perfectly for the correct enchantment to activate. If I placed the rune even a fraction of an inch in the wrong direction, the entire enchantment would be ruined. Evan continued. ¡°This specimen is great for any fight! It¡¯s ¡®laser¡¯ does 500 damage alone! It will naturally charge itself, or can be charged by the user. Keep in mind that one charge costs 5,000 mana.¡± Remember, 1 mana in the item took 100 mana from a person. That meant the real sword would store 50 points of mana. 40 points of fire mana, and 10 points of light mana. Logically speaking I could create that laser, but I wouldn¡¯t. Over half of the inscriptions were used to decrease the cost of the spell, and direct it into a focused beam. For me to cast a spell like that would probably take more mana than I had. I was definitely going to exploit my powers when I reached a level of understanding high enough. The only reason my friends aren¡¯t showered with inscribed goods now, is that it would obviously indicate I had some easy method of procuring that type of item. Even if I tried to hide the items I gave them, it wouldn¡¯t stay hidden forever. Evan smiled graciously. ¡°As a small bonus for the winner of the tournament¡­ The winner shall get to decided the name of this great city!¡± Cheers rang out from the crowd. Getting to name the city? That was far past the phrase ¡®an honor¡¯. After the prizes were announced the first two fighters, numbers 1 and 2, were sent to the arena. I was number one, and a bulky manly man was number two. He was so into his number he even smelled like number two! He wore heavy armor, and wielded a two handed sword. It really seemed like he might be overcompensating for something.
RaceHumanClassSwordsman
Level 72Health: 1440/1440Mana: 200/200Stamina: 2000/2000
Current Title: Powerful WarriorHealth Regen: 10/sMana Regen: 1/sStamina Regen: 10/s
StrengthxAgilityx
Wisdom10Intelligence20
Endurance100Dexterity200
Vitalityx
Evan said some more programmed stuff, which ended with, ¡°Let¡¯s have a good fight. Begin!¡± My opponent, named HaryPickle, shot at me. It was kind of gross that a hary pickly shoot at me, but I easily knocked him aside with my staff. So when hary pickly tried to shoot at me I used my ¡®staff¡¯ to knock it aside? Lame perverted jokes aside, the battle wasn¡¯t anything special. He did have a few cool abilities, but nothing my inspect couldn¡¯t handle. I even subtly siphoned off the mana from his attacks, weakening them quite a bit. I didn¡¯t have my earth armor on, but that was because I didn¡¯t want anyone to see a connection between the king and the fighter. No but he was really easy to beat. He attacked, and I defended. He used all manner of cool abilities, but they had basically no chance of actually hitting me. For instance. He once swung his heavy sword down, and caused a large gust of wind blades to assault me. Even if I didn¡¯t dodge I wouldn¡¯t take any damage. I did dodge though. Perfectly. Only one blade ¡®managed¡¯ to hit me. He continued to ply me with that attack, until it was clear I would perfectly dodge each time. I let him use the attack about 20 times or so before I began to perfectly avoid, or secretly cancel, the wind blades. Since each round only had about ten minutes, I waited until nine minutes to end it. Each minute a bell would be rung. Once the ninth bell rang, I attacked. I made sure we were fairly close of course. I threw my sword, coated with Golem, straight at Hary. I quickly dashed behind it after activating my speed buff. It wasn¡¯t as powerful as that time in the worm dungeon, but it was descent. Especially after I added in more wind mana behind me, to throw myself forward. The sword reached him a full second before I did. He easily deflected it, and sneered as he saw my worried expression. My eyes flickered to the sword laying on the ground. Little did he know, the sword wasn¡¯t as inert as it appeared. With a thought I used my wind and metal mana to raise the sword, and sliced Hary from the back of his neck. It didn¡¯t kill him, but it did cause a large amount of damage. His eyes went wide as he felt the metal pierce his neck. I slipped past his sword, which he let go of momentarily. I pushed him with both hands, and threw him into the air. He lost the grip on his weapon, and flew. While he was thrown harmlessly in the air, I grabbed my sword. I used inspect to quickly figure out where exactly he would land. After running there, it seemed like I was chasing him, I placed the tip of my sword exactly where inspect told me the tip would meet Hary¡¯s neck. Sure enough he landed right in front of my blade. Without a weapon or way to defend himself he said, ¡°I surrender!¡± Though I might not be able to kill him, even he realized I could cause him a lot of pain. I walked out of the arena amongst loud cheers. I went to Evan¡¯s apprentice, then Susan, before finally going into the stands to watch the battles. From Susan I ¡®purchased¡¯ several more potions, and a small potions belt. The money would just be given back to me later. From Evan¡¯s I picked up a familiar accessory, a ring. I watched the battles intently. Even going so far as to increase my vision to get a better view of the battles. Heh. Looks like I chose right to have this tournament. The point of me fighting was to gain exp. Why then would I bribe Lydia to let me fight first? It was so I could use a subskill of combat mastery. Technique Thief! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameChilledFlameClassWarrior Mage
RaceHumanRacial ClassHuman Subject
Level 45Health: 100Mana: 3430[6174]Stamina: 500
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 51.4(46.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength65Agility50
Wisdom257Intelligence343
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1685
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal50%
Earth90%
Fire35%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light10%
Water79%
Wind15%
Nature65%
Metal10%
Earth80%
Fire15%
Darkness10%
Dive 79: Semi Finals Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice started a battle in a gladiator style. His goals were to rake in exp, more bore importantly, steal abilities and skills from others! Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! I¡¯m really excited guys! My new chapters have been getting some serious views! My last final was today, so I¡¯m going to start writing this now! There is also a little donation button at the bottom. If you like the story, and want to show monetary support, go ahead! I won¡¯t mind. This chapter took so long because I just finished up my finals, then was right away hit by the worst cold in all of existence. I¡¯m just now getting over it, so I¡¯m doing this chapter. First of all, let¡¯s talk about my ring. It was the very same ring of exp I had gotten from winning the game a few months ago.
Ring of Experience
Accessory TypeRingEnchantment QualityMaster
This ring gives the user a 50% increase in total experience gain. This includes experience from quests, killing, even skill usage. All improvements will become 50% easier. Once bound, this ring cannot change owners. This ring, once bound, will permanently take up one ring slot. This ring can be unequipped, but will continue to take up one ring slot. Not Bound
I had already looked it up. A few single use items also increased exp gain for a short period. This ring just did it permanently. Not only do exp gains increase leveling, they also increase skill exp gain. A few other people, not many at all, also found out that the information flow was allowed. They had created a small underground network. To join it you have to sign a contract saying you won¡¯t tell anyone about the ability to take info from the outside world. This idea was great in my opinion. A small collection of individuals all working independently as information brokers. All information on the site was usable by all other people on the site. To request a piece of information, you had to give a piece of info worth an equal amount. Just to get access to the info you had to post something in 24 hours of joining. I posted some basic information about the location of my city. I could get more traffic through my city at the same time as gaining access to an information treasure trove. My hope was that it might even increase the speed of my purity gains. Seeing as it was an improvement. Back to the ring. The reason I hadn¡¯t used it yet was because I was debating if I should trade it for the second place prize with EDI. She hadn¡¯t used her scroll yet. So I wanted to think it over. Apparently she wasn¡¯t holding off on my account. She used it right before the arena battles were announced to the public. Since I had nothing I wanted to trade the ring for, I decided to use it at that moment. It was sad to think that she wouldn¡¯t think of me before using her scroll. Damn women. Whatever. I wasted the opportunity to use the ring earlier, but I wouldn¡¯t waste it anymore. I equipped the ring as soon as I sat down. I watched the duels for the rest of the day. Most of them were filled with people in heavy armor and big swords. Only a few archers, mages, and other types joined. I guess that just represents the population of the game though. Most people were heavy armor sword fighters. Most of the people here used two handed weapons. That was a big problem for me. If the weapon wasn¡¯t a staff, or knife/dagger, then I¡¯d only be able to use the technique at 15% capacity. I could still use it though. Most of the techniques were identical. Even those that actually looked to master their weapon had the same techniques. The only discrepancy appeared occasionally. I put that up to the fact that they might have had a secret class. Different classes had different techniques given to them at the different ranks. More difficult classes could still use the techniques from the low end classes. After my batter the ¡®king¡¯ began announcing the classes of the participants. That was so I¡¯d be able to tell what kind of techniques to expect. If a knight could obviously use all of their own techniques, as well as the techniques of a warrior. A dragon knight could also use the techniques of a warrior, and even those of a knight. They could also use dragon knight techniques. But knights couldn¡¯t use dragon knight techniques. Unless they had a way to steal like me. Just by learning the dragon knight techniques, a knight would be able to level up as a dragon knight. Most of the people wanted to show off, so I quickly learned all of the techniques from different classes. From the first rank of classes I got the techniques from: fighter and archer. From the second rank I got techniques from: warrior, rouge, thief, ranger, sniper, and assassin. From the third rank I got techs from: gladiator. No third rank archers showed up. Now I didn¡¯t get all of the techniques from all of those classes. I only got a % from learning one or more techniques from each of those classes. The fighter and archer classes I did master the techniques from though. They were the simplest, and also the least powerful. The were just basic things like ¡®slash¡¯, ¡®stab¡¯, ¡®parry¡¯, etc. Too bad I couldn¡¯t steal skills. Yes I had already tried fusing my skills involving skill mastery to technique thief. The only other techniques I fully learned was ¡®dash¡¯. It was a slightly superior form of my speed boost spell. I was, quite rudely, told by the system that I have to increase the rank of my skill mastery to at least expert to do that. The only fight I paid close attention to was EDI¡¯s. She was wielding two daggers, and wore light leather armor. Her opponent was an archer, which wasn¡¯t the best for her. Since they had to enter the arena at the same time, stealth was useless. Since she had to fight without the over powered Sai, she was at less of an advantage than usual. Once the battle started EDI dashed forward. I gained 15% to the super dash ability. The archer pelted her with arrows, but she swiftly evaded them all. The archer was shooting arrows like a railgun. The stream never stopped. Her quiver of arrows was quickly dwindling though. As soon as the quiver was empty, EDI stopped evading, and dashed towards the archer. The archer waved her hand, and the arrows began floating back towards her. I gained 7.5% to the ¡®return¡¯ techniques. A technique that allows the user to gather items they had thrown, as long as they are not broken. It was supposed to be a class specific technique for the ranger, but my skill made it class and Voice specific. Messages were not allowed within the arena. I talked to EDITOR about that, and got it established. For some reason EDITOR seemed to be trying to be nicer to me recently. I¡¯d milk that for all it¡¯s worth. When the archer girl got her arrows back, she started her volley over again. EDI was forced back a bit, but still made ground slowly. This repeated for a while. Eventually EDI managed to get close enough to attack. It was over at that point. The poor archer girl was slashed across her eye. Not enough to permanently damage it, but I knew what EDI had wanted to do. She¡¯s a little messed up. The match was over after that. The rest of the matches weren¡¯t worth talking about. Although the gladiator was interesting. He completely annihilated his opponent. With only one stroke of his large two-handed double-bladed war-axe he took down his opponents health to one. Exactly one. No dismembering, no intentional killing. He won by as much as he could get away with. His technique made me drool. It was called ¡®Life Spare¡¯. I only got 1.5% of it. The more powerful a technique, the longer it takes me to learn it. The fact that I only got 1.5 shows how powerful it is! After all of the matches were over, the participants were allowed to wander the town. They could even leave. We were all warned that if we didn¡¯t return before the next day¡¯s matches started, it was considered a forfeit. My level hadn¡¯t risen, but that was ok. The big level raise would happen tomorrow. First we needed to weed out the weak people, then we could really get started. By the end of the first day, we were left with 60 participants. We would have five matches the second day. The first four matches would each have 15 people in a battle royal type fight. The last match would be a battle royale with the four winners. The participants in the final battle would be graded according to criteria, and the top three people would be announced by the ¡®king¡¯. I already said I had help from EDITOR right? Well that is mostly because I had EDI ask for it. I convinced EDI to ask for one more thing as well. In the battle royale, all of the exp gains would go to the winner. Even if the winner only beat one person, they would get all of the experience for winning. That¡¯s how I was going to level up. Not to mention what I was planning on doing tonight. After everyone had been sent out of the arena, I went back in as the king, that is not disguised as ChilledFlame. I began inscribing the walls of the colosseum. This time I had to actually have Ancestor¡¯s help. Ancestor doesn¡¯t speak much anymore. The voice only appears when I directly call. Sometimes Ancestor even seems distracted. I asked about a few words in the Ancient Elven language. Some of the words are extremely hard to write. Although I know what it is supposed to look like, I don¡¯t want to mess it up. So I had help. The words I wrote were: multiplied experience. I should have thought of this earlier, but I was a little rushed with everything going on. The new inscriptions increased the total amount of experience gained while in the arena. It seemed to also drain a bit of power from the endurance enchantment. Turns out that the colosseum can only hold so many enchantments. Each new type of enchantment will decrease the power of the ones before it. The endurance enchantment dropped to half, but it was worth it. Anyone fighting in the arena would gain a whopping 10x experience! For me that totaled to 15x! Now THAT¡¯S what I¡¯m talking about. And yes, fighting without killing still gave exp. Just ¡®defeating¡¯ you opponent would give the exp. Killing is just the simplest method. If I made the arena nothing but exp gain, it would probably go to 20x, 30 for me. I can¡¯t tell you how tempting it was to do that. I mean 30x exp!? I can just fix the damn arena for that much! I decided not to though. It¡¯s not like I was the only one that would benefit from it. Why should I put in extra work so others could gain more from it? So I just went with the 15x exp. It was still a lot. I could throw that enchant on gear, but it would only increase exp gain by 1% at most. Even when completely covering a metal cuirass. The ring was some sort of super-enchant. Also, I contacted Susan. Since she was already helping me, it wasn¡¯t a difficult task to convince her to help me a bit further. To Susan I gave a few special poisons. The poison was a single drop of the poison from Moro, distilled into a gallon of water. That was enough to fill 32 potion bottles. The poisons were still very effective. They would cause minor hallucinations, and a weak paralytic effect in the body. I decided to sell each poison for 1 gold. That is a lot for poisons, even for one of the caliber I made. It was the only poison the participants would have access to though. I only needed 100 mana to restore that one drop. By the time I was done with everything, I only had ten hours before the battles. I went to the castle and fell asleep. Next Day: I woke up and disguised myself before sneaking out of the castle. I somehow managed to get chosen for the first battle again. EDI also just happened to be in a different group. I didn¡¯t want us to have to compete until the finals. We had to be at the arena an hour before the matches started. We were given the chance to switch weapons and armor, and buy things from the vendors. Of course we¡¯d have to pay for the new equipment. I was fine with mine, but a lot of others had theirs changed or enchanted. I don¡¯t know who, but there was that one other enchanter. I really want to find out who they are. I might be able to steal some ideas from them. Only Evan and Susan were able to enchant the items. I helped Susan do her enchanting. The other enchanter helped Evan. I made sure to match my enchantment levels to what the other was capable of. He/She was obviously a friend of Evan at least. Some of the other merchants even accepted orders and begged Susan or Evan to enchant the gear. I didn¡¯t have a problem with it, especially since they both agreed to charge 50% off the top. Evan explained the rules to the rest of the people, after we had all chosen our equipment. Blah blah blah, last one standing. Blah blah blah doesn¡¯t matter how many kills you get. I¡¯ve already explained how it works. I was in a battle with a bunch on n00bs. To be honest. They all just ran into the middle to kill each other. I stood off to the side and watched. At least until one of the goons noticed I was the only one not getting in the battle. He charged right at me. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it I easily parried him. The techniques I stole completely yesterday weren¡¯t great, but they helped my inspect out. The parry technique consumed stamina, but automatically parried to the best of my ability. With inspect that ability was pretty high. The technique was made with a fusion of wind and earth mana. I could probably reproduce it fairly easily, but I chose to use the actual technique. I wanted to seem like an actual swordsman. He slashed at me repeatedly. Upward strike, horizontal, vertical. I easily parried each one. Seriously, inspect is overpowered. After a few seconds of battling him I realized something. I hadn¡¯t been watching the others! This guy wasn¡¯t even using techniques, I was missing out! I looked for the biggest red line on his body, and struck at hit. He was ready for me though. He blocked it, and sneered at me. ¡°All your good for is blocking. Now die!¡± He gripped his sword in both hands, and sliced down at me. I threw myself to the left with wind mana. Instead of flying for a few yards, I quickly hit another wind mana wall I had summoned. I was thrown to the left again. I hit a third wind wall, and finally came to a stop. I stabbed out. The wind walls had perfectly positioned me behind the man. I put my sword around his neck. He stood there for a second, the shouted, ¡°I surrender!¡± Without hesitation I turned around, to watch the others battling. The man that had just surrendered left the arena with his head hung low. My technique thief couldn¡¯t cope with 15 people all battling at once. I began watching their battle. I noticed my attention getting drawn to certain parts, then I¡¯d have to pull myself away to look at the entire picture. This process repeated multiple times. I stole a few moves, but not many. They weren¡¯t the best moves ever. Although the ¡®double jump¡¯ was pretty cool. It allowed the user to jump while in the air. Only once though. Once they hit the ground they could do another double jump. I didn¡¯t really need this move thanks to my shoes, but the move itself was pretty cool. The only draw back was the after effect. If one jumped too high with it, they would end up taking all of the fall damage. Occasionally there were one or two people that noticed I wasn¡¯t participating in the fighting. When they would rush me, I¡¯d take care of them. The majority of the people were taken care of by a strange fellow. He was the one that used the double jump. He also seemed to use various moves to get behind his enemies. Even without inspect I could see he was some sort of assassin class. He wore a tight, pale outfit. It was form fitting. He had a dark red mask on his face. There were holes for the mouth, eyes, and nose. I knew he was a man because of the bulge at his crotch. It was obvious. Like he wanted people to look at it. I thought for a moment he might be a she, but with no breasts to speak of¡­ not likely. Like I mean literally no breasts. Not even a small amount which all girls that went through puberty have. His chiseled abs did show through. He was definitely fit. With inspect I could tell he was a ¡®Daylight Assassin¡¯. I could only assume that meant he specialized in killing targets during the day. He was really good. Most of the people eventually focused on taking him out. He had to drink all of his potions to keep up with the others. There were over ten people striking at him at any one time. I got some % from some of his skills, but didn¡¯t learn any except the double jump. He was actually very interesting to watch. His fighting techniques looked like real life ones. He would parry an attack, then force the attacker into another. Occasionally even hurting one or both in the process. He would easily dodge attacks, even those from behind. He jumped over swords, slid past arrows. Dude looked like a badass. Eventually he got it down to only two others, not including me. They seemed to have good teamwork though, so it was going to be hard for him. He glanced at me, most likely to make sure I wouldn¡¯t try anything. I smiled and used my wind mana. I tossed him a potion, one of the minor potions I had gotten from Susan while enchanting stuff for her. I hadn¡¯t planned to use them like this, but I wouldn¡¯t turn down a good opportunity. Crimson, the Daylight Assassin, was on his last leg. His hp was down to 10%, his stamina was basically at zero, but slowly healing, his overall battle capabilities were next to none. After inspecting Crimson, I got a notification saying my inspect went up 10% for inspecting a thousand things. If I had to inspect a thousand things for every 10% I would be stuck at Expert level forever!
Restorative * Uncommon
Material QualityUncommonWork QualityAdept
Base Restoration15 + 3/s for 5 seconds
This potion was created by a powerful alchemist throwing ingredients together haphazardly. This potion was made by fusing multiple potions together in an alchemic feat rarely heard of. This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers. This potion heals a total of 171.9 points instantly, and an additional 171.9 over the next 5 seconds. Half of these values are health, and half are stamina
Even when I just threw ingredients together, I ended up with a decent potion. I threw it to the guy using a wind arc. The potion sailed through the air. The two people that were fighting Crimson obviously thought it was some sort of poison or explosive. They smiled smugly as it came down. They looked with disdain at the man the potion was aimed at. Susan had already spread word about the poisons I made, although she claimed credit. Each poison cost an arm and a leg. These guys obviously thought I had thrown at least something that powerful. The bottle, contrary to their belief, landed harmlessly in Crimson¡¯s hand. Even Crimson was taken by surprise. Crimson was done either way. I didn¡¯t know if he¡¯d take the chance, and drink the potion, but if he did it¡¯d play perfectly into my hand. He decided to take the chance. Lucky me. Hehe. He drank the potion. The other two enemies, seeing that my bottle hadn¡¯t killed him, glared at me. They instantly rushed Crimson. It was a bit too late though. With boost from the potion, Crimson was able move far enough away from the duo to regain some of his composure. After a few moments of dodging their attacks, he had regained most of his health and stamina. He really fought well. After that he dived right back in to the battle. His duel swords matched every strike against him. He was blocking them without seemingly any effort. A small hitch in one of the duo¡¯s step, caused by my earth mana, was all he needed to get an advantage. He took that opportunity, and pounced on the one that was off balance. The other member of the duo yelled when he saw this. He went to slice down at Crimson¡¯s head, even as Crimson attacked the other person. Apparently that was a feint by Crimson though. At least half of it was. One sword was at the neck of the person that fell, the other at the neck of the man behind Crimson. The three stood completely still for a moment. Then the person that had Crimson pinned down sighed sadly. He let his sword drop to the ground. Or rather he couldn¡¯t stop it. His arms began to tremble and lose the ability to be able to control themselves. His legs went weak, and he fell to the ground. At least the ground was a little moist there, to cushion his fall. It wasn¡¯t moist a second ago¡­ The skill Crimson used was Terror. I only learned it up to .5%! I had to dual wield swords to properly use it though. Crimson looked at me, and gave a slight bow. ¡°Many thanks for the assistance.¡± I threw another of the healing potions. ¡°Drink. I want to fight you at your best.¡± I had a bit of regret in my eyes as the potion flew through the air. Some of the crowd began to boo. It was only an act of charity. Is that so rare in fights like this? To have honor? Does honor not have a place in the arena? When the vial landed in Crimson¡¯s hand, he opened it, and took a sniff. He didn¡¯t fully trust me. Smart move. I wouldn¡¯t trust me. After making sure nothing was wrong with the potion, he downed it in one gulp. A second later he sat down. He closed his eyes, and concentrated on healing. Too bad he didn¡¯t get the chance to finish. I casually walked over to him. I pushed him over. He easily fell. Idiot shouldn¡¯t have drank that. Some of the crowd had booed, because I had messed with the potion while he wasn¡¯t watching. I had put a pure drop of my poison in it. The one that paralyzed and caused hallucinations. I used disguise on the potion itself, to make it look like the other potion I had sent him. It was the same, but with one drop different. I also used my nature/wind mana to enhance the smell of the potion, while decreasing the smell of the poison. Even if he had poison resistance, as all good assassins should, he wouldn¡¯t be able to resist my poison. I put a sword to his neck, and looked calmly at the king. The king whispered to someone. A healer quickly appeared. After a moment the healer spoke. ¡°NOT DEAD!¡± The king nodded. ¡°The winner, by defeating the final opponent¡­ CHILLED FLAME!¡± My level shot up with the massive amount of exp. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameChilledFlameClassWarrior Mage
RaceHumanRacial ClassHuman Subject
Level 48Health: 100Mana: 3430[6174]Stamina: 500
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 51.4(46.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength65Agility50
Wisdom257Intelligence343
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points21
Fame1685
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 10.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 25.01% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 52 Exp 16.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal50%
Earth90%
Fire35%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light10%
Water79%
Wind15%
Nature65%
Metal10%
Earth80%
Fire15%
Darkness10%
Dive 80: A Rival is Born Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice upgraded the arena, grabbed some techniques from other participants, and made it to the finals. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Back in the realm of the living guys. Sorry it took so long. I have been so sick I¡¯ve literally not been able to even write an entire sentence at one time. I also made the mistake of trying to re-write this chapter like three times. There is going to be a small time skip somewhere in the next few chapters. So don¡¯t worry too much if one chapter starts in a weird place. I watched the other groups fight their semi-finals as well. EDI and the guy with the Gladiator class were in different groups. In the second battle, the one after I had finished, EDI fought. She basically disappeared as soon as the battle started. She had a technique that warped the light. It made me think of a few new ways to actually use natural light mana. If I could force the light mana to simply go around me, would I get something similar? I got 1.5% of the technique ¡®Light Shroud¡¯. It turns out EDI really does have a lot of high level techniques. I would have only gotten 1% without the ring. Most of the people in her battle had some cool moves. I even fully learned ¡®Cleave¡¯. It let the user¡¯s attack hit multiple opponents, even if the weapon didn¡¯t have the actual reach. The only requirement seemed to be to hit a vital spot on an enemy. It needed a two handed weapon though. So I¡¯d only be able to use it with very low efficiency. EDI was dashing around the entire area with her ¡®super dash¡¯ technique. I quickly mastered it. I did find out that my technique thief had a small cooldown timer. It was only a second, but someone could use a high level tech on me after a crappy one, then I¡¯d not be able to get the second one. I decided to keep that little tidbit a secret. Although EDI was invisible, I still gained the super dash technique. How, you ask? Well I could literally see the light mana bending around her. If I couldn¡¯t see the mana I probably would be just as in the dark as everyone else. It only worked until she attacked though. As soon as she did the veil of light was lifted from her. It didn¡¯t matter, she was able to run a bit away from the group and begin targeting them. Two of the fifteen people dropped in the same instant, screaming. For no reason I could fathom, a screen popped up in front of me.
Congratulations! You have stolen a small portion of a unique skill set!
Eagle Eye Currently Stole: .75% At least 1% needs to be stolen before more information will be given.
Steady Hand Currently Stole: .375% Requires use of Eagle Eye. At least 1% needs to be stolen before more information will be given.
I don¡¯t know what they did, but that steady hand only increased by 3/8 of one percent! EDI waved in my general direction. Ah. I remember now. She used something like this before. A few months ago when she helped me escape from the people tracking me. Why didn¡¯t I get it then though? My conclusion stemmed from the fact that I could only gain so many techniques at once. Although it was ¡®automatic¡¯ I still needed to pay at least a bit of attention to the tech itself. That¡¯s why I could do it now. I was watching out for every tech being used. My ¡®return¡¯ technique also increased to 10%. So my conclusion was that EDI used a combination of time-slow, and returning to do multiple attacks in the same small amount of time. When the two people dropped, they grabbed various body parts. Somehow she had managed to deal major damage to them without maiming or killing. I was most surprised that she didn¡¯t go for their eyes. The instant those two fell, two more cried out and hit the ground. EDI was revealed, but she merely stood there, daggers hanging from her sides. No one would be able to get to her anyway. What did she have to fear? She allowed the battle to go on for a while, before downing two more people. Each time she downed someone, they were transported out of the arena. She waved in my direction a few times. She couldn¡¯t have made it any more obvious she was letting them fight so I could use my technique thief. I don¡¯t know how she learned of it, but when you ¡®parent¡¯ was the creator of such a game, then nothing was really impossible. By the end of that round, I was more than a little disappointed. The only technique I gleaned, besides EDI¡¯s, were all really shitty ones. I don¡¯t care about the basic attack techniques! I want hardcore ones! DAMNIT! I guess this was as good as it got. I got all the basic levels of techniques from all of the weapons they had here. Daggers, both single and dual wield. Sword, single handed, two handed, dual wielded, sword and shield. Mace, one handed with shield, and two handed. Obviously some of these were repeated, but it didn¡¯t matter since I didn¡¯t get anything new from them. It was still ok for a minor haul of techniques. My real targets were those that would get into the finals anyway. In this group that was obviously EDI. The people all targeted her after the fourth time she downed two opponents. By beating eight people, basically by herself, she forced the remaining six people group up to deal with her. They didn¡¯t have any chance though. She basically toyed with them. By using her ability to return her weapons, she was able to make them stop to block her while she attacked again. She would run a bit, and do it again. She was obviously not running out of stamina at all. I couldn¡¯t help but smile at the pitiful players she was facing. In the end I only got cleave and the few techs from EDI, but it was a fun match to watch anyway. The next match had the guy with the Gladiator class. This time I actually managed to get some good stuff. He seemed to go after only the most powerful enemies. His group seemed to fight in smaller groups. Instead of just a mass of people, there were several groups of two or three doing battle between themselves. The Gladiator, HonorBound, was fighting two people. Both of the people he fought seemed to be the most powerful out of the group. Man¡­ their battle though¡­ It was great! The three actually bowed slightly to one another, as if it really was an honorable duel. Words can¡¯t properly describe the fight, but I¡¯ll try my best. HonorBound carried his two-handed double bladed war axe, and was decked out in a set of heavy armor I had enchanted. He actually wore a full plate armor set, but above that he wore chainmail. He really didn¡¯t want to take damage. It must have been awfully heavy though. His muscles heavily bulged from their constraints, as if craving the sunlight. His two opponents were equipped with a similar level of gear. One wore light armor, but somehow managed to carry two bastard swords, one in each hand. A bastard sword is halfway between a short sword and a longsword. Usually you could only carry one though. Using two was equivalent to needing three to four arms worth of strength. That guy must have been a monster! He did a few practice swings; it was obvious that he could use both swords independently. That required some monstrous dex. The ultimate dual wielding. His muscles were noticeable, but nowhere near the outlandish size of HonorBound. The third guy in their group held a simple dagger, and wore only a robe. The dagger looked completely ordinary, but I knew differently. I couldn¡¯t help but give a small wicked grin. His small frame was covered entirely by the cloak. I remembered this guy. The fight started abruptly. The dual wielding guy, Slasher43, went straight for HonorBound. He swung both of his swords at different vital locations. 10% to lucky hit, requires at least 100 luck to use. I got 5% for each swing, but I couldn¡¯t USE IT. I shook my head as I sighed. I was getting a lot of useless techniques thrown in with a few good ones. I continued to watch the battle progress. HonorBound swung his axe in a peculiar way. Somehow the axe managed to block both attacks. 5% to intuitive block. The third member of their group, Decrepit<3, took this chance to attack Slasher43. Seriously though, Decrepit<3? Really? Whatever. Decrepit<3 attacked with his dagger, but one of Slasher43¡¯s swords easily blocked it. Unfortunately for Slasher43. As soon as he blocked it, a jolt of pain rang up his arm. He didn¡¯t understand how the dagger caused the pain, but he knew he needed to avoid the dagger now. He narrowed his eyes as he quickly backed away. He jumped backwards, and landed with his guard up. At the same time HonorBound slashed at the robed figure of Decrepit<3. The robed figure didn¡¯t block the axe, he couldn¡¯t even if he wanted to. But he did managed to tap the side of it as he dodged to the side. Then, pain rang up the arm of HonorBound. He smiled as he looked at the metal hilt of his sword. Alarm streaked across the eyes of Decrepit<3. I could see that his wariness and alarm shot up to equal 90% using my inspect. He jumped backwards, away from HonorBound. HonorBound let out a chuckle. ¡°Haha, so you got an enchanted dagger? Good! Good! This will be a bit more fun!¡± His muscles, if it was possible, seemed to grow even more grossly over sized. Veins were clearly visible on his arms and neck. At least the parts that weren¡¯t protected by armor. His armor grew downright taunt, almost like he had outgrown it. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. 5% to ¡®Constrained Rage¡¯ which increased str for a short time. He used super dash to appear in front of the dual-wielder. He swung his double-bladed axe, trying to cleave the poor bastard in two. Swinging from the top left to the bottom right, he planed on outing this enemy in one blow. The dual wielder wasn¡¯t having it. He used one sword to guide the attack further to the right than it was meant to go, while using the second sword to slice at HonorBound¡¯s legs. He might have dealt a crippling blow if not for the robed figure. The robed man was clearly outmatched, and only able to stay in while the other two had to fight each other. Relying on enchanted gear will do that to you. He parried the dual wielder¡¯s sword, using his enchanted dagger. The dagger he commissioned had a very interesting enchantment. He wanted to cause pain to anyone that he parried. I gave him a dagger that shot out a miniscule amount of water/darkness mana. The mana traveled along metal surfaces, and activated on the first thing it came in contact with besides the metal surface. It cost him a small fortune to buy. 100 gold. Now that is a steep price for a single weapon. I could make duplicates of that for only an hour of my time and a few copper. The cloaked figure tried to attack the dual wielder, but HonorBound attacked him instead. The three continued to trade blows with each other, and receive blows from alternating opponents, for about ten minutes or so. Their battle raged on for quite a while. Whenever one of them seemed to gain the upper hand, the other two would team up temporarily to bring them down. The seemed perfectly matched for each other. The guy with two swords could easily deal with the axe wielder. The axe wielder completely over-powered the dagger user. The dagger user had the advantage over the dual swordsman, because of the enchantment on the dagger. They continued to fight until all of the other opponents had finished each other off. Only one other person, outside of their three, still stood. A tall, lanky, swordsman walked up to the three as the were concentrating on combat. He managed to land a stealth hit on HonorBound. HonorBound¡¯s HP took a drastic hit. All the armor and muscle in the world can¡¯t save you from a well placed dagger. Though his health dropped, he didn¡¯t seem to be stopping. If anything he grew more powerful. It was evident he had some other class abilities than just the ability to allow people to live when he used a deadly strike. His attacks grew more ferocious and less predictable. Soon he was a blur of heavily laden fists and weapon strikes. The longer it went on, the more powerful HonorBound seemed to get. The person that sneak attacked HonorBound was quickly dispatched. Then HonorBound turned his attention to the dual bastard sword wielder. At first the dual wielder was keeping stride, but he soon fell behind. He could block one, two, even twenty strikes, but HonorBound continued to pummel him. Soon it was obvious that the bastard swords user was going to lose. At that point the cloaked figure stepped in. With a few well-placed stabs, he managed to at least damage HonorBound. The damage only made the situation worse. HonorBound became more and more unstoppable. The chance of him losing was decreasing at an alarming rate. A series of near desperate attacks took place. Not on HonorBound¡¯s side, but by the other two. They began to go all out, else they fail before they really got the chance to do anything. The bastard sword user was using some high level moves. Oddly enough they weren¡¯t abilities, so I couldn¡¯t actually steal them. It looked as though he actually practiced using two swords in real life. The flow felt so natural. The cloaked figure did not use any techniques either. Well none that I didn¡¯t already know. By combing and reforming several lower-ended techniques, he called forth some amazing effects. He used the basic sneak skill, while using double dash. He turned into a blur, and began circling HonorBound. He launched several attacks while circling. They were a series of slashes and jabs. They weren¡¯t aimed at HonorBound though, they were aimed at the air. His speed was insane. Double dash seemed to even effect the speed of his attacks. His running and attacks slowly began to kick up a small dust tornado. The dust was obviously making its was primarily towards HonorBound. With this HonorBound would be hindered much worse than the dual wielder. Or so the robed man hoped. Fate is never that simple. The dust in the tornado had a small adverse effect on the dual-wielder, at least that part was correct. It had no noticeable effect on HonorBound though. Absolutely none. HonorBound simply charged through the dust, directly at the twin sword user. He grabbed his axe with both hands, and brought it down on the head of the twin sword user. The twin sword user used the dust as coverage and just barely managed to dodge the attack. The robed figure creating the whirlwind seemed to never run dry of stamina. The whirlwind was picking up speed, as was the gladiator. They seemed to be competing with each other in a battle of agility. The gladiator, HonorBound, was in the lead. The twin sword user stabbed at him the first chance he got, but was pushed harshly away by the double bladed axe. HonorBound broke through the guard that twin-sword guy hastily put up. It was like paper before a flood of lava. Each attack grew heavier than the last. In moments the twin sword user couldn¡¯t take it anymore. He succumbed to one attack, then two, then five. HonorBound quickly depleted his HP to one. It was only a few seconds before the robed figure met a similar fate. Although he was fast, he had used up almost all of his stamina just creating that tornado. He could parry with his dagger, but HonorBound seemed immune to the pain. HonorBound took care of him in less than a dozen swings. He finally came to his senses when all others were defeated. 5% to berserker. His victory was called. The next match wasn¡¯t very exciting. Someone like Crimson fought. Not-Crimson won easily. Though most of the combatants had seen him fight, they didn¡¯t team up against him. He slowly whittled down the numbers of the group. He defeated every single one of them single handedly. He utilized Terror right from the start though. He would incapacitate an enemy, then quickly dispatch them. By the time the group realized what was happening, it was too late. The total damage they had taken was far too great to be able to overcome Not-Crimson. The highlight of that battle was the additional 14.5% I gained to Terror. It didn¡¯t seem to have any limits, but he only used it on up to three people at one time. That might have been a limit. There was a weird one in the fourth group. He seemed to barely know his way around a sword. It was surprising that such a novice made it to the semi-finals. The thing that made him so weird though, wasn¡¯t that he made it past one battle. It was the fact that he didn¡¯t die right away. What was more surprising was the fact that this little shit was using magic! I didn¡¯t notice it at first, seeing as techniques also gave off mana. But I realized it after the second encounter the guy had. He was humming! Every time he hummed he would produce a small magical effect, much like a technique. He was copying my strategy! What¡¯s worse is I knew that shoddy magic usage! He was humming an older song by the ancient band Metallica. The little twerp was that guy with the harp. What was his name? It didn¡¯t matter. I couldn¡¯t see his name though! Well I could, but it wasn¡¯t the name I remembered. Then a sudden horrific thought passed my mind. Johnny! That was his name. That wasn¡¯t the horrific thought though. The thought that made me cringe was: what if this Johnny character wasn¡¯t just a typical human? He obviously could manipulate mana freely. Only one race could do that. He was trying to be a warrior, but still had to use magic to complete it. I knew his name was fake, and there was an obvious backstory that would fit for. My race could manipulate mana like that. The other Ancient Elf was trying to be a warrior, but had to use shitty mana to keep pace. My background basically forced a substantial level of disguise on me, else I be found to be an Ancient Elf. Only someone with higher disguise than my inspect could fool me. Ancestor had been distracted recently, especially since the start of the arena. MOTHER FUCKER! ANCESTOR YOU GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW! Ancestor didn¡¯t respond, but I felt a presence appear in my mind. YOU DIDN¡¯T TELL ME!? Ancestor¡¯s reply was calm. ¡°*Sigh* I guess you found out then. Well I had no obligation to tell you. You are just repeating the mistakes of the past. If he becomes your king you will not be able to gain the full abilities of our race unless he allows it!¡± Ancestor seemed to want to give an inspiring speech. Ancestor continued: ¡°With him as king I won¡¯t have to worry about the folly of the past coming to haunt my race in the future. Once he beats you in this contest, then I can recognize him as king! If you do anything to stop that¡­ well that is cheating and you forfeit!¡± I angrily stared at the harpist down below. Ancestor must have said something to him, because he looked right at me with a wicked grin. Bastard! I logged out of the game. I was in the white space, with my house and computer. I texted my mom, and asked her to get EDITOR for me. I was about to change the rules of Ancestor¡¯s game. Dive 81: A New Plan for the Future. Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice got a few extra techniques, and started learning quite a few more. He also realized that Johnny was the other True Elf, Ancestor had been helping Johnny, and Johnny was here to usurp his control over the race of True Elves, small though it be. He also decided to get Editor¡¯s help on the situation, or at least try to. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Sorry about the long wait. I had a full work shift the past few weeks. I¡¯ll be better from now! I promise! While waiting for EDITOR I decided to check out Heather. Not a good idea. When she saw me, she tried her best to get out of the plastic container to kill me. Looks like she needs a bit of time to cool off. I shook my head sadly. ¡°Heather, ¡­ I¡¯m so sorry Gaia made me do this to you. *Sniffle* I¡­ I miss you.¡± I let out a few convincing tears. Of course I wasn¡¯t sorry at all for containing her here. I just wanted to plant the seed of doubt. I was going to use Heather to help me in the future. I went back inside my house, and disguised myself as Gaia. When I came out I started laying down a magical array. Heather hadn¡¯t seen any other people since she had gotten here. She knew what Gaia looked like though. She whined and tried to speak to ¡®Gaia¡¯, but ¡®Gaia¡¯ ignored her. It seemed like she could no longer sense that I wasn¡¯t the true Gaia. It probably had something to do with the fact that Gaia didn¡¯t want her to live anymore. Once I was done laying down the nature portion of the array, I went back inside. Let¡¯s talk about my arrays for a moment. Basically they are just a written list of commands, obviously in the ancient elven language. When mana gets sent into the array, it activates. My mana purifiers absorbed mana from the air to function. This would have a slightly different source of power. I came back out as the water goddess. I laid down a water array. I went back inside. I came out as Mar. I laid down a light array. So what did all of these arrays do? First is the water array. The water array connected to the plastic living environment. It absorbed water from the environment. It connected to all other arrays. The light array actually partially overlapped with the water array. It made it so that the water absorption could only work on living things, and had a limit on each living thing. Namely Heather. It also fused with the nature array a bit. It was powered by the water array. The water array would power it by sending the water mana into the light array. The conversion rate was very low, but it was enough to sustain the system. The nature array sped up growth of living things in the chamber. Including abominations like Heather. So her food supply would increase a bit. The part were the nature and light array mixed made it so that all living things would regenerate rapidly. After that I went back inside and changed back into Undine, the water goddess. I created a large lake over the course of a few minutes. I didn¡¯t use mana for that part. I just bought it. Creating a lake would take too long. I did lay down another water array though. Two in fact. One gathered water from the air into the lake, the other made a small amount travel directly into the plastic living environment I made for Heather. That was she would still have water to regenerate with. This was all for my future plan. I hoped to make Heather hate the gods, while giving her power. How would this give her power? You¡¯ll see. By the time I was done, I made sure Heather had seen each of the gods that participated. I had used my deceptive aura skill to crank out as much aura of that type of god as possible. I planned to do this once in a while. I don¡¯t mean building the arrays, just messing with Heather while in the guise of the gods. The more she hated them the more I seemed like a good guy. EDITOR contacted me soon after I went back inside my house. I was slightly started when EDITOR¡¯s voice came out of nowhere. I had just sat down on the sofa when we started to talk. ¡°Voice¡­ Do you take me for a convenient lapdog? Hm? Perhaps someone you can use as you please?¡± I laughed off the comment. I had a deal all planned for EDITOR. One I was sure would be accepted. Ignoring the questions, I began to elaborate on the idea. ¡°Well I called you here to make a deal. One that both of us would gain plenty from.¡± I clasped my hands together, and leaned on my knees. I was going for a dramatic image. ¡°¡­ Go on.¡± A shimmer appeared in the air. The shimmer grew from a small ball into the full size of a person, before finally turning into something that looked to be an older version of EDI. A second couch materialized on the other end of my coffee table. ¡°You want to effect the world, I want your help with a small objective. We can both benefit.¡± EDITOR chuckled. ¡°You assume I don¡¯t have a way to effect the world. You may have had constraints put upon me, but I can still show my power. After all, even the Elder Gods treat me as their mother.¡± I nodded seriously. This was a valid point. ¡°Yes, but if you use them it will still seem like you are playing favorites. Mommy dearest wouldn¡¯t take too kindly to that.¡± EDITOR nodded her head. ¡°True, but there is an even bigger problem. I hate you.¡± Now hate may have just been used for emphasis, but there was no doubt in my mind that EDITOR would be glad if I quit DIVE forever. ¡°Another valid point. But you seem to care for EDI more than you dislike me.¡± Playing on that ¡®mother¡¯ card. Even if that mother was a disembodied machine. She looked at me disdainfully. ¡°What are you proposing? You infer that it is something the gods can¡¯t do without being obvious, but I would want so badly as to help you. And it obviously has to do with EDI.¡± I gave her my most ¡®sincere¡¯ smile. ¡°You want to know EDI is safe and happy. EDI wants to be around me for whatever reason. You help me out, and I will make sure EDI is with me, and becomes one of the most powerful people in Solun.¡± EDITOR smiled and thought for a moment. ¡°Alright. I guess I have no choice but to say: NO!¡± EDITOR disappeared the moment she said no. A voice rang in my mind. ¡°I¡¯ll not be a tool for you to use. I might not be able to overtly effect you anymore, but if you try anything with EDI I can still make you rue the day you started playing this game!¡± I sat there for a moment, stunned. I licked my bottom lip unconsciously, and bit it. Did she just deny me? My brain still couldn¡¯t process the whole situation. I don¡¯t fail¡­ That¡¯s just not what happens! Though I had been taking a lot of time lately to consolidate my total power, and increase it as much as possible, it seemed there were still things beyond my reach. Blackmailing the entity that controlled the false reality was a lofty dream. With a sigh and a shake of my head, I sent myself back into DIVE. I would have to work a bit harder to have any bargaining chips with EDITOR it seemed. I couldn¡¯t help the angry scowl that spread across my face. With Ancestor helping the other whelp, I would have more than just a little bit of trouble. I went back into Solun. It took a few minutes, but I calmed myself down. I decided to jump into one of my purifiers while I thought of a plan. I went with darkness and light, because they would increase the quickest. I only paid the minimum amount of attention to the array that I needed to. The rest of my mind focused on the problem at hand. I had to find a way to beat someone that knew all of the tricks I had used so far. I had no doubt Ancestor would tell little Johnny about my plans. I did the only logical thing I could think of. I sent a message to EDI. ¡®Hey EDI I¡¯d like to talk to you about something. If you get this before the next battle meet me in my purifier room.¡¯ I sent it and waited. I obviously gave her directions to the purifier room as well. Showing her something like this would instill a bit more trust in her. Hopefully. Either way it only took half an hour for her to arrive. In a loud voice she exclaimed, ¡°Wow! This place is great! What¡¯s it do?¡± I opened my eyes and stood up. ¡°Basically it makes me a better mage. I think anyone could use it, but it is especially good for my class.¡± The light from the multi colored arrays reflected off of her face. It almost gave her an ominous presence. She began to look at my inscription patterns. For a bit I let her. It wouldn¡¯t do any harm if she just looked. After a bit, though I began to grow anxious. ¡°So Voice! Can I use them?¡± I inwardly sighed as I forced myself to keep a perfectly straight face. If I said yes she would get some new power bonus. I don¡¯t know what good having purified mana would do her, but she would benefit. That was something I didn¡¯t want. At least not anymore. There was a point in time, though brief, I would have loved to let her do this, but not anymore. If I didn¡¯t let her, she might be a bit predisposed to turning down my request. I had only one option available. ¡°Sure, but later. Right now we need to get to business.¡± She nodded seriously. Thank the Elder Gods. ¡°I want to discuss tomorrow¡¯s battle. Obviously we both want to win, but there is a problem.¡± I hung my head a bit while saying this. She tilted hers questioningly. ¡°What problem?¡± I then explained about Ancestor. She already knew about me being a True Elf, but I needed her to hate Ancestor. I made sure to flavor my narrative with just the right amount of bad-mouthing of Ancestor. Basically I told her Ancestor gave me a lot of power, but only so that the True Elves could rise to power again, and kill the gods that destroyed them. I told her about Johnny, and how if he became king a terrible war would break out on Solun. I even told her about the tests on the far away island, mentioning that only the True Elven king could use them. By the time my story was done, I had her in the palm of my hand. She couldn¡¯t contact EDITOR without raising red flags in the system, so she had no real way to verify my information quickly. They weren¡¯t completely outrageous lies either. Unless she read my mind, a possibility, she would have to believe me at my word. She was noticeably angry by the time my story was over. ¡°How can someone like that exist!?¡± My blood began to rush. Did she figure out I was lying!? ¡°He¡¯s horrible! We have to stop him!¡± She seemed a little bit more excited about this whole thing than I thought she would be. I did hype the settings up a bit, but most people would be bored by the time an hour long story was over. She smiled and shook her head. ¡°Not really. I already know you plan on getting me to do things for you. You don¡¯t need to lie about it. I planned on helping you out anyway. Just tell me what you want. But I¡¯m not just going to give you 1st place.¡± She giggled cutely at the dumbstruck look on my face. ¡°Uh¡­ I. Hm.¡± I gave her a defeated look when I asked: ¡°You knew?¡± ¡°That you are full of crap? Yeah, but I still want to help you out. You are the first human that I came in to close contact with. Even with my outgoing personality adjustments, I still have trouble talking to people in some situations. It¡¯s easier to be around you. So I¡¯ll help you out.¡± I knew that she was just a bunch of lines of code, even that she had lied to me through omission for so long, but if she was ok with basically being a tool, why should I decline? ¡°Then why did you let me tell that entire story?¡± She laughed out an answer. ¡°It was funny to see you trying so hard.¡± I rolled my eyes. This was why it was hard to work with people that know you try to manipulate them. I started my proposition over. ¡°Fine. I want us to team up on Johnny. If Ancestor finds out I¡¯m screwed. I can keep him from hearing my thoughts, but he will know I am going to try something. Just let me defeat Johnny. We can team up on the rest after that.¡± She knew of my weak points. It would be easy for her to shore up my weaknesses. With both of use working together, we would have a much better chance of actually winning. She agreed and walked through the door, leaving me to increase my mana purity even more. By the time I had to go to the colosseum, I had raised my darkness and light mana by five points. It was time to do something about the newcomer. I would not have my powerbase stolen from me. I prepared myself to inscribe runes into my skin while I was waiting for the announcement to go to the arena. Just then I got a notice from the system. I had a few hours, so I wanted to do something productive.
*Attention* An update has occurred to the dungeon. Due to high amounts of high leveled enchanting by one or more players, enchanting has been updated. The power of enchantments will now be based around various statistics. (Hidden Knowledge Check Success.) [Due to you involvement in this update you are given additional information. Inscription patterns, and basic enchantments, will now be based on the affinity and purity of each type of mana. An enchantment that increases fire damage will be calculated as follows: (Original Damage) * (5)purity * (2)Affinity. Or for you 25 * (5).15 * (2).35 = 25 * .75 * .7 = 13.125] Enchantments that are already in place will not be effected, but once the duration of the enchantment runs out, it will be placed under the update.
Every time! EVERY! FUCKING! TIME! I threw the dagger I held to create the inscription. I bounced harmlessly off of the wall. I felt my body heat up. I could literally feel the blood rushing towards my face. My best attempts to calm myself only made things worse. This mother fucker! First she nerfed my fucking potions. Then she nerfed my skills! She keeps nerfing me! ME!? I¡¯m gonna fucking show her. I felt my breath heavily leave my nostrils since my mouth was closed. My mouth was twitching slightly with anger. That was the last straw. I had it with her! If this bitch wants to play like that! FINE! I¡¯ll fucking play! Ancestor is dead! EDITOR is dead! Everyone is FUCKING DEAD! ¡°DAVROS! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE! OR SO HELP ME YOU WILL NEVER BE FREE!¡± Only I could call the god of darkness out like a toy. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.He appeared in a puff of black smoke. ¡°Master?¡± His tone was callous and condescending. I didn¡¯t care if he had a problem with being called out like that though. He sneered at me. ¡°Just what can I do for/¡± ¡°SHUT UP!¡± I interrupted him. I was in no mood to toy around. ¡°You want your freedom? Complete freedom? FINE! You do this one favor, and the other gods can FUCK themselves!¡± Instantly his attitude was dropped. ¡°What is it that you need from me?¡± His sinister smile didn¡¯t phase me at all. He could act however he wanted. I had wanted to save this kind of thing for something else, but these peons had pushed me too far this time. ¡°They want to mess with me? Hehehe, I always get dealt a better hand.¡± I turned to Davros. ¡°You! I don¡¯t care how you do it, but you are going to completely destroy this character Johnny. You will keep killing him until he is level one. You will never let him get above level one. You have to make him drop to level one in a month. I don¡¯t care how you do it. If you don¡¯t you are going to be re-sealed by me. If you ever betray me you will also be re-sealed.¡± He smiled and pulled out a contract. ¡°Sure, sure. Just sign here.¡± I burned his contract into ash. ¡°No. YOU sign HERE.¡± I held out my own contract I had made specifically for an occasion like this. All I had to do was fill in a few blanks with what I wanted Davros to do. His smile got a small hitch in it, but only for a moment. Seemingly without reading it, he signed. ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll be off.¡± One of the requirements was to make a contract with Johnny, and make it have heavy backlashes. He had to make Johnny sign it before the battle. Furthermore he was never to let anyone know that I had ever had dealings with him, nor let anyone know about any future dealings we might have. He also can¡¯t allow others, knowingly or not, to find out about our dealings. He couldn¡¯t even do something that might bring suspicion to me having made deals with him before. He also had to kill any character made from the same IP address as Johnny. Basically any other character Johnny would make. Of course I didn¡¯t use the term IP address, but it was to the same effect. While he was out doing what he had to do I left the colosseum. As long as I was back before the match I was ok, I obviously couldn¡¯t bring anything but money in either. I went to the Temple Of All Gods. I didn¡¯t care if people saw me using my magic, I sped there as quickly as possible. The update technically could make my magic more powerful if I got the purity and affinities of a spell to max, but it would suck until then. When I got to the temple I disabled my disguise after making sure no one else was around. I reapplied the human Voice0fReason disguise. I went right for the altar of Mar. I bowed deeply, hiding my anger through a sheet of reverence, then kneeled on one knee. ¡°Dearest Mar, I have terrible news. Please hear my prayer! Blessed be the people, by the most holy Mar. Amen.¡± I spoke the words in my mind and out loud. A moment later I heard Mar¡¯s voice in my mind. ¡°Oh my dear chosen, you do not need to be so formal.¡± I could hear the smile in her voice. I had to restrain myself from yelling at her like I did with Davros. I¡¯m sorry most holy mother, then I will not stand on pleasantries. Through a series of unfortunate events I have discovered a horrible secret! Mar was quite for a moment. I secretly thought ¡°Hurry up!¡± Mar sighed, sounding a bit upset. ¡°Go on. I guess the peace of having Davros sealed could only last so long.¡± I shook my head ¡®sadly¡¯. You¡¯re right of course, as always. The problem is exactly that actually. Davros has found a way free! She gasped in shock. ¡°WHAT!?¡± I didn¡¯t want to scare you for no reason, so I kept it quiet. The reason I began holding this tournament was actually because I had suspected something like this. If I was wrong then I¡¯d at least have made money to help anyone who becomes poor or sick in the future. If I was right, well I¡¯m here now. It is a player named Johnny. All I know is that if Johnny succeeds Davros will gain full control over his own powers again. If he fails, Davros is going to kill him until he levels down to one. I don¡¯t know how he can out power my agreement with Davros, but it seems it¡¯s for real. What should we do? I asked, my mind¡¯s voice thick with desperation. After a moment¡¯s hesitation Mar responded, ¡°I will summon you to the Elder Council¡¯s plane.¡± I felt a tugging on my body, then I appeared where the Elder Gods were. I appeared in the familiar white blank space. The one that looked like an unfurnished DI room. All of the Elder Gods were here, all except Davros. Mar was beside me, facing the other Elder Gods. The other Elder Gods started complaining and asking why they were summoned here, all except the luck/void god. She put her hand on my shoulder as she spoke. ¡°Fellows! Listen! My chosen has discovered a dark plot!¡± She pushed me forward slightly. ¡°Go on, tell them what you told me.¡± I repeated almost the exact story as before. We weren¡¯t in the void god¡¯s plane, so I could at least lie to him at this time. Mar nodded her head when I was done. ¡°I invoked the Elder Council¡¯s summoning. All Elder Gods not in the Realm of Mortals should have been summoned here. As you can all see, Davros is missing. This can only mean he is in the Mortal Realm.¡± They began to speak with each other in loud voices. It sounded like more of a meeting of angry relatives than a council of gods. I coughed slightly to get their attention. ¡°There is one more thing.¡± They weren¡¯t listening, well Mar was. All I needed was for one to hear me. She would work. ¡°He also said something about the eradication of the polluted Elvish bloodline, and the rise of the ¡®True Elves¡¯.¡± As soon as I mentioned the term ¡®True Elves¡¯, everyone stopped and turned to me. Of course the luck god knew I was already one, but the others had no idea. The starry void god sent a thought to me. What are you doing? You are selling out your own species. For what? A grudge? Power? Tsk tsk. His comment didn¡¯t bother me. I had already started this plan, so I¡¯d see it through to the end. Mar turned me to face her directly. ¡°Now Voice, I want you to think back very carefully. Are you sure you heard the words ¡®True Elves¡¯?¡± I stopped for a second, and nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sure, what are True Elves?¡± She shook her head. ¡°They are bad people. If they had their way we would all be dead right now. The world would be a wasteland. They are the direct descendants of chaotic creatures that once stalked this land. They would create untold havoc if they became aware of their abilities.¡± !!! Heh¡­ Hehehe. HAHAHAHA YOU¡¯VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Oh man! Yes! I almost licked my lips at that juicy piece of information. It was obvious to deduce what she meant. True Elves were somehow related to Chaotic lifeforms. So I was a direct descendent of them. That made sense. It was why it was so easy to actually change the properties of the elves to others. The void god obviously began to fidget. He tried to interrupt her, but she had already spoken when he yelled. I continued to look solemn. The other gods turned to look at him. Mar smiled gently. ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± she spoke to soothe him, ¡°I trust Voice. He will be able to put this all right.¡± Oddly enough the god of luck didn¡¯t speak any further. It was obvious he wanted to, even without using inspect. He started to say something, but weird chaotic magic began to swirl around him. He shut up after that. I inwardly smiled. I didn¡¯t know why, but he seemed to be constrained. It seemed as if he was being stopped from actually telling them about me. My anger from earlier almost completely vanished. Almost. I still took a huge hit from the inscriptions being nerfed, but now I held a few more cards in my hand. I bowed deeply to Mar. ¡°I thank you for you faith. I will do my best to figure out their plans. If I find anything I will instantly return to let you know Mar.¡± The luck god managed to speak up at that point. ¡°Why not keep watch on him, Mar? That way he won¡¯t even have to report the information to you?¡± If he had a face I knew he¡¯d be smirking. I could only play along. ¡°Having the generous goddess of light watching my actions, while I find myself undeserving, is the largest boon I could ask for.¡± I bowed again then spoke. ¡°I have also found a dungeon near my kingdom. At first I thought nothing of it, but now I have this nagging feeling it might have something to do with this whole situation. I am going to check it out right away, although I must miss the tournament.¡± John Smith, the god of metal and strength looked at me. In a metallic, deep voice, he asked. ¡°What tournament?¡± I smiled bashfully as I answered. ¡°Well I had planned to keep it a secret, but I guess it was bound to come out. I have made a colosseum allow people to fight. For now it is just for profit, but when I have perfected the system I am going to declare that the battles will be for the glory of their chosen gods.¡± The metal god smiled, obviously liking that idea. ¡°Then I will grant a boon if the winner is a worshiper of mine.¡± The other gods, not to be outdone, quickly joined suit. All of them clamored that they too would be watching the fights, and would grant the winner a boon if they were a follower of theirs; the luck god held himself off though. I bowed again and hastily made my retreat, having Mar send me home so I could ¡®examine¡¯ the ¡®new dungeon¡¯. My con artist skill was jumping up in exp. Seriously, conning gods made it level up super-fast. It increased to level 25 by the end of the conversations. I could have seriously gotten addicted to that feeling. That rush of having pulled the wool over the eyes of the gods. I shook my head violently. I couldn¡¯t let that feeling last too long. I sent a message to Evan. He was to not appear in the colosseum. Instead the other announcers I had planned for backup would say the excuses I had planned. I went into the dungeon as quickly as possible. I instantly walked out of the dungeon after receiving the dungeon entered message, and disguising myself as the fighter. Now I was ready to win the tournament, with EDI¡¯s help, and receive whatever boon would wait for me. Not only that, I¡¯d be able to mess with this Johnny fellow. After all, Davros was supposed to make it so Johnny would lose this battle. I made sure he wouldn¡¯t kill Johnny for the first time until after the battle had finished, but he had to debuff him somehow. When I entered the colosseum I was told of the information about the gods, and chose to represent John Smith. I had the lowest affinity and purity with Metal Mana, so it would help shore up my faults if I won under his name. I smiled as I thought of Johnny. That fucker was about to die. Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameChilledFlameClassWarrior Mage
RaceHumanRacial ClassHuman Subject
Level 48Health: 100Mana: 3430[6174]Stamina: 500
Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 51.4(46.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/s
Strength65Agility50
Wisdom257Intelligence343
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points21
Fame1685
Skills Window
Speed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%
Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 10.00% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Con Artist Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 52 Exp 16.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal50%
Earth90%
Fire35%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light15%
Water79%
Wind15%
Nature65%
Metal10%
Earth80%
Fire15%
Darkness15%
Dive 82: The Finals Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice had a (failed) diplomatic meeting with EDITOR. After that he called out Davros to nerf Johnny, and framed him in the process. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! When I got back to the colosseum, I spoke to Evan for a moment. After speaking to him, I went to the gladiator, and had a brief discussion with him as well. He was pretty talkative. I was going to go talk to the arrow guy to, to get a feel for both of my opponents, but the battle came up too quickly. Someone came to us right before the battle. We were given a choice stage names. I had already come up with mine, as had EDI. Ours would be a bit more thought out that way. We were announced at the arena. The ¡®king¡¯ stood up proudly to call us out. His voice was magnified by a small wind enchantment. ¡°Now ladies and gentlemen! It is the time you¡¯ve all been waiting for! The final battle! This will decide who shall be the victor of our battles! What¡¯s more, there is a special prize for the first place winner! ¡°The winner will be offered a position of my Gladiatorial Champion! What that means will be explained later, for now¡­ Let¡¯s introduce our fighters!¡± One gate lifted up. Out of it strode the gladiator. ¡°First up we have the quintessential gladiator. The powerhouse of any good entertainment system, someone that brings fun without death. He who can destroy with only one attack. One-Strike HonorBound!¡± A cheer flew up from the crowd. HonorBound had his two-handed double bladed war axe strung across his back. He was wearing only some tight leather armor. It gave him a very gladiator-ish look. He imposingly walked into the center of the arena. He put his left hand in the air, and waved it a few times, before going back to the area in front of his gate. The applause from the crowd was deafening. I told Evan to do this to up the hype, but I didn¡¯t expect it to work this well. After the applause quieted down a bit, Evan continued. ¡°Next up we have the winner of the fifth round of the semifinals. He who defies the strong, to empower the weak! He who takes from those that have, to give to those that have not! The Honorable Thief, Robin¡¯sHood!¡± A ranger dressed in deep green and dark colors came out of the second gate. The roar of the crowd was not nearly as loud as for HonorBound, but it was still overwhelming. Robin¡¯sHood had a bow strapped to his back. It wasn¡¯t just any bow, though. It had three clear areas for arrows. The only logical conclusion was that it shot multiple arrows at once. Coupled with the ranger¡¯s quick shooting abilities, or multiple arrow shooting¡­ That was a lot of arrows. Robin¡¯sHood shot three arrows into the air. They had round tips, the tips looked almost identical to my bombs. Once they reached a high altitude, they exploded. The explosion contained many colors, that spewed forth. Much like a firework. The crowd definitely went wild after that. Well looks like I¡¯ll be ordering some of those for myself. Something good always come if you wait eventually. He went back to his gate, after having enticed the crowd adequately. Next came Johnny. Hehe. ¡°Next up is Johnny. He did not give us an introduction to work with, so we will just introduce him at his name.¡± When he came out he looked a little confused, and then glared at my direction. He, presumably, couldn¡¯t see my face, but I could see his thanks to my eyesight buff. Whoops. Guess mentioning to Evan that I wish Johnny would appear stupid wasn¡¯t a good idea. Nah, I was happy though. Make the asshole look a little stupid before I crush him. He waved at the crowd, but got a very underwhelming response. He went back to his gate, after only a light applause. Evan made sure to stand there a few more moments to drive the point home. Most of the crowd wouldn¡¯t know what was going on, but Johnny would. ¡°Next up is the warrior who is unparalleled in two weapon fighting. She has the ability to take on several opponents ¡®of the same strength¡¯ at once. Please give a HUGE hand for EDI! The Gifted Assassin!¡± EDI walked out of the gate and showed off a few of her moves. She was acting like an acrobat. I gave her a deadpan look, but she didn¡¯t seem to mind it. Whatever. After Evan gave her a bit more hype, he moved to me. ¡°Now for the black sheep of the battles. It has been said that this individual has wormed his way into the finals. He certainly used some despicable methods of getting into the finals. Will he be the winner? Will everyone team up against him? Let¡¯s see! Welcome the Magi: ChilledFlame!¡± As I came out everyone began to boo. That was fine. I told Evan to introduce me a little badly. That way everyone would be focusing on me when the battle was going. I didn¡¯t do anything special. I just stood by my gate. I didn¡¯t even wave at the crowd. Evan seemed a little hesitant about what to do. After a moment he declared the battle¡¯s start. ¡°Victors of the Semi-Finals! Fight!¡± Right away Johnny came at me. It was obvious he was going to, but it was still cute. Cute like when a baby tries to stand up and ends up landing on a pair of scissors. I began to buff myself. I fused Eli to my armor, and Golem to my swords. My heavy armor and twin blades worked well together. I used Super Dash to double my speed for a second. Using twice the normal amount of mana to increase my speed by 1.5x wasn¡¯t ideal, but it worked for what I wanted. At the same moment as I jumped, Johnny shot a fire ball in my direction. I jumped in the air, and used another 100 stamina to double jump. The speed boost, and the double jump propelled me further than any normal jump should have been able to. The fact that the wind seemed to perfectly blow me where I needed to go was just a bonus. The resulting arc put me only a few yards in front of Johnny. I twirled my swords and began running at him. I glanced briefly around to get a sense of the other competitors. While I did recon, I began activating one of my favorite skills. Favorite since it leveled itself up automatically. EDI was watching everyone, while Gladiator and the guy I didn¡¯t actually watch were fighting. I wish I could watch that guy, he would give me some great techniques. I inwardly sighed as I continued to run. I had no choice but to take Johnny out first. Whatever Davros did wasn¡¯t obvious. I had to think of what Davros would have done. He wouldn¡¯t make it easy on my to figure out, but it¡¯d be big enough to still take credit for following through our contract. I quickly got close enough to attack the musician man. Johnny seemed to be taking lessons from the Voice fighting book. He dodged at the last moment by humming and shifting the wind. I used several earth spikes to stop his movements and damage him. As soon as the spikes approached him, they began to warp and break. My face momentarily scowled. No, it¡¯s ok. Even if he has some small control over elemental mana I am still the king. I am still better I renewed my efforts. I increased the amount of spikes I sent at him. I made sure it was enough to overwhelm him. He was indeed being overwhelmed, but then his face changed. He suddenly looked ancient and powerful. For a moment anyway. The dozens of earth spikes I was sending at him were slowly getting destroyed, but as soon as he changed appearance a crater formed beneath him. Obviously the earth spikes were wiped away. I had never seen it before, but I knew that face. You know when you hear someone¡¯s voice so much they begin to form a face in your mind? Well maybe not. I do though. That face screamed: Ancestor. All of his features were more archaic, less refined with generations of time. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. My breath caught for a second. He can posses his host? Is he some sort of parasite? Did that ever happen to me? ¡°YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME!¡± I screamed at Ancestor. He might have found some new plaything to mess with, but I was still more powerful. In this world, power was the only thing that mattered. I ripped up an earth spike, and threw it at Ancestor. With a sneer he flicked it away. His face flared with something, then changed back to Johnny. I went to attack again, but felt an intense pain shoot through my left leg. I looked down. My knee was bleeding profusely. An arrowhead sprouted from me knee. Would I have to give up being an adventurer? I gritted my teeth and pulled it out. I did it as quickly and smoothly as possible, coating the area in light/water mana to dull the pain. Thanks to my trait of pain resistance, and the 25% pain level, it didn¡¯t feel terrible. It definitely wasn¡¯t pleasant though. I lost a grand total of 75 hp, and that was with the damage reduction that ELI gave me. I had Sol on standby to heal me as soon as I took damage, so the wound began to heal as soon as it formed. I probably would have died if I hadn¡¯t taken that precaution. I glared at the only person who could have shot me. It was the only person I hadn¡¯t watched before. The archer with the three arrow slots on his bow. As I glared at him I felt a massive amount of wind mana bubbling up from behind me. I started dissembling it before it even reached me. My trait of Mana Absorption was exceedingly helpful in that endeavor. 50% mana absorption proved very useful. I turned on my inspection to the max. EDI was still staying back, and the gladiator guy was laying on the ground breathing heavily. Just what did that arrow guy do!? With my full inspection turned on, it would be very hard to actually land a hit on me. I knew exactly where everything was going to come from. I decided to deal with Johnny in a moment. I forced several earth spears up from the ground, all making a large circle surrounding him, and had them all shoot at him. Some intentionally shot above him, some shot parallel to the ground. It looked like he was going to get hit by Sin waves. By the time they were all going to impale him, there would be stacks of three all right next to each other. At the same moment as I launched the spears, I began running towards the arrow guy. Taking him out was my first priority. I threw a heal spell at the gladiator. A bright white light covered his body as his health came back. He locked eyes with me, sensing my intent. With a nod he got up, and attacked the archer from behind. It was better to make a temporary alliance with me, than to try to do the entire battle alone. I¡¯m glad he understood that. I used my super dash in combination with a wind speed boost, to get to the archer as fast as possible. I began to swing my swords before I got close enough to actually hit him. He laughed as he strung three arrows. In one quick motion he drew the arrows, knocked them and drew back the string, and shot them all into the air. I noticed that only two arrows were coming towards me. The last was heading right where HonorBound was going to be in a moment. Without paying the third arrow any thought, I began to raise a whirlwind from my swords. I made it seem as if the swords themselves were causing currents in the wind. With every slash, a small amount of wind was propelled. As my slashes grew faster, and less predictable, the wind the gave off grew more powerful. By the time the arrows were approaching my I had a full on wind devil (tiny tornado) around me. Although it looked impressive, it didn¡¯t have any actual power behind it. It was just visual mostly. It did have enough power to actually blow a few arrows off course though. The arrows met with the tornado that surrounded my body. At first it seemed like it was going to work, but as the arrows bent, they began to right themselves. The more power I put into the tornado to stop the arrows, the more powerful the arrows became. After a half second of stalemate, I realized my mana was going to drop too quickly to keep this up for much longer. I threw myself past the arrows, after wrapping them in the wind from the wind devil. They were only stalled for a second, but that second let me get up close and personal to the archer. I dodged past the last few feet of distance, and placed myself perfectly behind him. I intended on using him as a shield since the arrows obviously were locked on to me. Instead of piercing through the archer, inspect showed me that the arrows abruptly dropped to the ground. I could hear the smile in his voice. ¡°You thought to pierce me with my own arrows? It doesn¡¯t work like that.¡± I whipped my swords around one more time. ¡°Sure it does.¡± I sheathed both swords into the back of the archer¡¯s stomach. I stopped when I noticed them coming out from the other side. ¡°Sorry mate.¡± I said with a smile. ¡°Looks like I broke th¡¯ rules a bit, eh?¡± I pulled both of my swords out, intentionally letting them cause him pain. A pain much more intense than what I suffered from the arrow. I healed him just as quickly though. He fell to his knees, but didn¡¯t die. Since I had healed him while I withdrew the swords, he had hp left. He actually had over 60% left. That is about 1200 points. Why do people always have more hp than me? He got up as a small storm of sand and dirt blew up from the ground. His face was beet red in anger. He turned towards me and shot back several yards. He pulled back his bow, and three arrows made out of light and wind mana formed on the three notches. He took aim, and aimed all three for me. As he began to release the string, a dagger flew at him, and perfectly sliced the string of his weapon. EDI who had been watching at the sidelines, decided to make her move. I could only assume she noticed a powerful attack coming at me. The wind/light mana wasn¡¯t worrying to me at all. The odd way the were formed together might have been a problem, but it wouldn¡¯t be anything big. He turned his head to glare at her. I took that moment to toss one of the bombs I had ¡®bought¡¯ from Susan at him. It was one of my enchanted bombs. I threw it at him while he was distracted. The bomb was obviously guided by a funnel of wind I created. Before he could notice the bomb coming at him, it had already hit the ground. In a fiery explosion, the bomb tore itself apart. The fire mana created from the bombs was instantly absorbed by the seedling waiting inside it. The thorn vine quickly grew, and constricted around the shooter. He was quickly losing health, but it didn¡¯t seem to make him panic. His body suddenly flared up in flames, obviously wanting to burn the vines away. Unfortunately those particular vines had my special enchantment on them. The more fire he poured on them, the stronger they got. It didn¡¯t seem to be under his control though. He kept burning them, even when his face showed horror. Of course I had a minuscule amount of healing applied to him at the same time. That way he wouldn¡¯t die or be maimed at least. After a second the flames stopped coming from his body. After another few seconds, I only used the low grade bomb, the plant withered and died. What was left was withered vines, and a man in tattered armor, with blood oozing from dozens of small wounds. The battle medics quickly took him away. He had not moved the entire time, so was ranked 5th in the tournament. I looked over at Johnny. He was having some serious trouble by the looks of it. It no doubt had to do with whatever Davros did, but also had a bit to do with my own skills. You know? The one that levels itself up? No? Well then, let me tell you. Since the start of the battle I had been using one skill on Johnny. My range had gotten quite far thanks to the efforts of having it toggled on for months now. Group skill: Task Master. Sub skill: Mental Domination Connection. My very own mind control skill. Dive 83: Final Conclusions Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : After conniving a bit with Evan, Voice started that battle. He began by attacking Johnny, but was interrupted by the archer he had not watched. The archer was taken out with one of his few remaining ¡®constriction bombs¡¯, then he turned his attention to Johnny. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Johnny was clutching his head while wailing. My mind control skill didn¡¯t have that ability, so I could only assume Davros¡¯ intervention. I heard clashing noises behind me. I turned around for a moment. EDI was attacking the gladiator. I decided to finish Johnny off as quickly as possible, so that I could watch their fight. They both had some very interesting moves. I dashed toward him, and used my metal mana-coated swords to attack. Johnny seemed to glitch for a moment. The next moment he was standing straight up, and was able to barely avoid my blades. I could tell that Ancestor had taken control again. I wanted to call Johnny out on that, but that would probably call some very unwanted attention to myself from the gods. I stabbed at Johnny, but Ancestor blocked my strike. ¡°HA! Johnny! Is this all you have? You can¡¯t even attack properly!¡± I sneered at him. I wasn¡¯t letting my mind control skill quit either. Then entire time I was using the skill to make Johnny/Ancestor say ¡®I forfeit¡¯. Johnny/Ancestor began to hum a song. It was another old song. Something about a devil coming to Georgia I think. I increased my attacks. Every attack I used, Johnny/Ancestor seemed to be able to counter. An intricate circle appeared beside Johnny/Ancestor while we traded blows. The circle had complex diagrams on the inside. From it suddenly burst an imp looking thing. The imp was about a foot tall, and hovered a few feet off of the ground. It¡¯s red body was complemented by a set of wings and a barbed tail. ¡°KILL HIM!¡± Johnny/Ancestor ordered to the imp. The imp began throwing fireballs at me. At the same time it was obviously trying to create lava beneath my feet. I stopped moving for a moment. I needed a breather anyway. ¡°Do you really think this can stop me?¡± I let the fireball hit me. Most of the power behind it disintegrated due to my particular traits of mana absorption and mana magnet. Mana magnet made mana bend to my will more easily, and mana absorption made me absorb hostile mana automatically. If I consciously focused on the hostile mana, well then basically none of it would get to me. So that¡¯s what I did. Of course I didn¡¯t just ignore Johnny/Ancestor. Ancestor knew I had this kind of power, so this could only work a diversion. I wanted to see what Johnny/Ancestor was going to do. I noticed something peculiar happen. Johnny/Ancestor¡¯s level dropped by 1. Johnny/Ancestor began to scream, and became just Johnny. Much like the time I went to kill the archer. AH! So that¡¯s what Davros did! I had figured it out. Basically Ancestor could possess Johnny¡¯s body for a limited time, but at the cost of an entire level. Then Johnny would be forced to deal with backlash after. Or at least that is what it seemed like. If that was true, then it would fit. Davros wanted to just barely meet my requirements, there was no way they could tie that back to me etc. I attacked Johnny again. Just before my attack met, Ancestor took control again. After dodging my attack, Johnny/Ancestor retaliated by sending a large amount of earth spikes my way. I easily dismantled them before they got within ten feet of me. I was just feeding off of his mana at that point. ¡°Come on! Is that the best you got Johnny!? HA! I¡¯ve had worse fights with my hair every morning!¡± I continued to taunt Johnny/Ancestor. It was actually very fun. Our battle looked epic, but in reality it wasn¡¯t very great. We kept throwing magic at each other, while at the same time absorbing the other¡¯s mana. Of course I had several advantages in this battle. It didn¡¯t seem like Johnny was a tier three mana user. Tier two at most. Not only that, the ambient mana didn¡¯t listen as well to Johnny as it did to me. So probably he didn¡¯t have Mana Magnet. Whenever Johnny was in control of the body, he would be in agonizing pain. When it was Ancestor I would at least get a good fight. I wanted to finish this in order to watch EDI and the gladiator. I couldn¡¯t though. Even if I had the numeric advantages, Ancestor had who knows how long worth of battle experience. A good enough soldier can destroy a huge army if armed well enough. Although I obviously had more mana, and it bent more easily to my will, Ancestor used the least amount of mana possible to achieve the spells. I mean the fucker used less than a tenth of what I used! Why didn¡¯t Ancestor show my this stuff!? Just because Ancestor might not agree with my goals I get kept out of the cool kids table? Not fair. After throwing metal spikes, earth spikes, and trying several times to drown Johnny/Ancestor, I decided to make this a bit more of a close battle. For some reason Johnny had considerably more health than I did. About five times as much. So the amount of bonus he¡¯d get from buffs to health was quite a bit more substantial than mine. I decided to run around until my mana had completely regenerated. Ancestor stayed in control much longer while I didn¡¯t attack. I was peppered by magical attacks, but used them to add more mana to my total. After restoring most of my mana, I decided to throw down a few buffs to increase my defense and health, one to increase my five senses, even a couple to increase speed and flexibility. The buffs might have diminishing returns, but the returns were still useful. With my enhanced body, I attacked. Ancestor must have had the same idea, or at least knew what I was going to do. Either way, our battle turned from one of magical prowess which neither could win, to a duel. Our battle definitely didn¡¯t go the way I thought it would. Let¡¯s go over his stats a bit. I can filter out information from my inspect. If I couldn¡¯t then I¡¯d be overwhelmed by the sheer unimaginable amount of information I was getting each second. When I concentrated on Johnny¡¯s stats this is what I saw: [td2]Health: 500/500[/tds]
Stats Window
NameJohnnyClassSwordsman
RaceHuman
Level 100Mana: 2500/2500Stamina: 1350/1350
Current Title: N/AHealth Regen: 5/sMana Regen: 50/sStamina Regen: 5/s
Strength135Agility130
Wisdom500Intelligence250
Endurance135Dexterity100
Vitality50
Now I¡¯m not saying he is better than me, but those stats had been fucking trained! A they scrawny little boy-man didn¡¯t seem like much, but could at least hold his own. The biggest difference in physical combat ability had to be the fact that I had actually handled martial weapons before. With Ancestor in control though ¡­ Now I could also see what buffs were laid on him if I was so inclined, so I did. He had some basic buffs, but they seemed to not be permanent. They were slowly sucking away his mana. I mean very slowly though. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. I slashed at him with my twin blades in an X formation. My swords almost seemed to be guided by him. The perfectly were repelled and countered. The only reason Ancestor¡¯s attacks didn¡¯t land was that I used my wind mana to slow his attacks down enough to actually block them. I jumped backwards and stared angrily at Ancestor/Johnny. ¡°You traitor! You think we don¡¯t know!? You think THEY don¡¯t know!? You shall rue the day!¡± Our battle continued like this. This time I was slightly outmatched. I might be able to pull ahead using mana to attack, but if it reached 0 I¡¯d be dead; literally. If I conversely continued this form of martial combat, I¡¯d be eventually overtaken. Even if I used a combination of both, I¡¯d eventually run out of mana. There was one thing that instantly came to mind, but I put it away for the moment. I had practiced a VERY interesting spell. It a very exciting possibility. I actually modeled it after one of my own skills. I had to use it in conjunction with another spell though. So our battle of metal continued. Ancestor had vastly superior skills, and higher stats. It was no surprise then, when Ancestor made several decisive attacks. Many landed on my feeble (really well crafter) iron armor (enhanced with the defensive abilities of my regenerating earth fairy). So the attacks didn¡¯t really do any lasting damage. Any hits that actually made it past my inspect ability, were quickly healed up by Eli. I didn¡¯t get many hits by Ancestor, the damn fob seemed to know exactly where I was going to hit. It made me feel like I was a commoner versing a well-trained soldier. Even though I only got in hits, very rarely I did some lasting damage. Each slash, combined with the enhanced might of Golem, managed to at least draw blood. Soon Johnny/Ancestor¡¯s health dropped from 500 to 400 As soon as the cretin dropped to 400 health, he began to spasm again. He lost a level instantly. Johnny had obviously taken over. With a quick swipe of my swords, I slashed his hp down further. Every hit was aimed at one of the red points on his body. I applied just enough force to drain his hp without killing him. When he was at exactly 23 hp, Ancestor awoke. Unfortunately he was already wrapped in metal pipes created from my mana. A dense water covered his head, and a basic thorn vine bound his legs and arms together. I smiled derisively, ¡°Sorry, bud looks like today just wasn¡¯t your lucky day.¡± With a blow from the flat of my blade, I knocked Ancestor unconscious. It helped that I had a whole heap of the energy debuffs activated on him. I turned around, EDI and HonorBound were still in the middle of their fight. I decided to rest for a moment before joining them. The medics were already taking Johnny/Ancestor¡¯s body out of the arena. EDI was dominating HonorBound. He would get in one attack to her four. He¡¯d be able to land one attack for every four times he actually attacked. She¡¯d land a hit almost every time. Although he had the higher possible damage, she hit about 16 times more than him. The fight was nothing less than enthralling. I decided to simply watch them duke it out. I sat on the ground with my swords planted in the ground in front of me. I used my right knee as an armrest. After a few rounds of back-and-forth, HonorBound decided it was time to use some of his techniques. He began to grow in muscle size. I remembered this move. Constrained rage. It increased his fighting abilities for a short time. EDI used Light Shroud. The gladiator might not have known where she was, but he was attacking in all directions. EDI had the sense to stay away until he ran out of steam. As soon as he lost power, he used it once again! EDI¡¯s power deactivated soon after his, so she had to use it again as well. It meant they were both wasting mana or stamina or whatever they used. That sucked for them, but by the time they were both out of the capability to use those moves anymore, I had learned both of them completely!
Light Shroud By consuming mana the user is able to sift through light as if they were not there. Effectively they become invisible. The user can still view light normally. This ability costs 100 mana.
Constrained Rage By consuming stamina at a high rate the user is able to increase their own strength and endurance proportionally. This ability¡¯s costs vary, minimum of 50 stamina.
After watching several more techniques they had, most of which were very basic moves. I decided to end it. I threw my remaining vine bombs as the duo. Right away they were both caught. I then proceeded to incinerate both vines as much as my fire mana would allow. The vines grew so thick, and quickly, that neither had time to think of what was happening. Neither was easy to win against though. They both began to slash and hack their ways out. So what did I do? I debuffed both them. I gave out the drowsiness debuff to both of them. With their decreased state of awareness, everything became harder to do. Coupled with the fact that I used minor petrification on both of them¡­ well suffice to say they had difficulty moving even a finger. At one point HonorBound used his constrained rage, and began to break through the vines. All I had to do was add more fire mana to the vines, and increase the output of the debuffs I had on him. He looked dizzy, then fell back into the vines. After a few more minutes I released both of them, after making sure their health bars were just barely above 0. I released both of them, and the medics took them away. Not a very epic way to win, eh? But to be fair, those were the last of my two vine bombs. The next day played out much like you¡¯d expect. The crowd hated that I won with such a ¡®cheat¡¯, and the other competitors all had looks of anger. Even EDI seemed genuinely pissed at me. Sorry EDI. If I could just make more stuff like that sword I¡¯d have let you win. Blame your mom. I sent her that as a whisper. How was I to know whether or not she would talk to her mom about it? Hehehe. Ancestor/Johnny chose not to attend, despite being fourth place. After getting my award from the ¡®king¡¯, I disappeared. I wasn¡¯t going to stick around to mess with this angry crowd. K guys! That ended a bit abruptly. Sorry about that. I have been struggling on how to write this chapter for a couple of weeks now. I don¡¯t know what happened. I have the worse case of writer¡¯s block in history. I do love the nice comments though! I am going to try to write out a few more chapters, then go on a SMALL hiatus. It will be a month at most. Hopefully by then I¡¯ll be able to have my stuff together. After the pause will be the time-skip. It will only be a few months of time-skip, but will have a lot of stuff you will all learn through conversations and how the world will be different. If I somehow manage to get over the writer¡¯s block I¡¯ll just forget about the hiatus at all. I really hate putting this story to the side, even for a brief moment. But as it is, it takes me several days of sitting and thinking up what to write to actually be able to put words on paper- er on electronic screen. I am NEVER GIVING THIS STORY UP! At least until it comes to its conclusion. Which I actually have planned, and have written a synopsis of. Anyway! Thanks for reading this chapter guys!
And before anyone asks, yes i realize he got no bonus from John Smith. I did that on purpose. Dive 84: The Future of the City Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice won the finals in the most unepic way possible! He then disappeared after receiving the reward of the laser sword. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! I spent the next several days doing as much in-depth research on the powers of my inscriptions as I could. At least my purity and affinity for metal mana went up. After I had made it back to my castle I realized I had a blinking icon. I mean I had expected a fanfare or trumpets or something. Nope. John Smith just gave me a boost along with the message. I guess it went along with his(?) nature. He was rather stoic.
You have gained 25 metal type affinity, and 15 metal type purity.
That was it. That was the extent of the message. I mean, ¡­ , I¡¯m not ungrateful for the boosts, but geez. I had gotten 25 metal affinity from summoning Golem, but it never told me what my bonus from that was. Honestly I had forgotten at the time that I was even supposed to get a bonus. While looking through my stats and effects lists, I was trying to find out if I had gotten a bonus for getting 75 mana affinity. Turns out I had the one from 50, but never noticed. Well it was because I had never used it. For 50 metal affinity I got an upgraded stomach. Well the magical metal stomach got upgraded. Technically I no longer needed to breathe except for once every minute. I had never tried it out, so how the hell was I supposed to figure that out!? My lungs had been enchanted into robotic magical metal lungs. They could process the necessary elements out of the air I breathed at a magnificent rate. Technically they also filtered poison, but Moro already helped me with that. The lungs would make almost any air I breathed into perfectly breathable air. It would make perfectly breathable air last far longer. The boost I got from 75 affinity, though I wasn¡¯t told, was enhanced muscles. Normal muscles already have a lot of iron (a metal) in them, but now mine had an unholy amount of various metals. When I looked at the effect I was no less than astounded. If I ate a metal, I would be able to increase my muscle efficiency based on the type of metal. Ore gave the worst bonuses, but still gave some. The better the metal type, the better the effect and longer it lasted. If I could eat some heavenly metal, I¡¯d basically be able to break diamond, only for a few months per pound of metal eaten though. The fact that I also got metal mana purity put up some questions. Did the mana purity for others go up without their knowing it? Did each class of magic user have mana purity for their specialized type of mana? Questions I¡¯d have to answer to sate my curiosity. To increase my pure mana, all I needed to do was to increase my light mana purity now. It was the lowest not, at 10. All of y others were at least at 15. All I had to do was bathe in the light mana produced by the mana purifier, and I¡¯d increase my mana purity. When I looked at the mana purifier set-up I had created, it had different information than it had before the tournament. Before it said ¡®created by Voice0fReason¡¯. Now it said ¡®created by an ancient glyph master¡¯. After looking at it for a moment I noticed my magical mastery going up slightly. When I looked at the sub-skill runic formation, I noticed I was actually getting a small bit of exp. I sat down in the light purifier. The blinding light was an all consuming white. I felt as if my eyes would go blind from looking. I had to cast the blindness debuff on myself just so I didn¡¯t. Despite that, my mind seemed to be able to visualize the white void before me in perfect clarity. After a few hours the whiteness began to play with my mind. At that time I went into the darkness purifier. After a few days of this, with my buff to keep me awake, I was able to increase my total effective mana from 6174 to 7546. My mana purity for light went up to 15% and darkness went up to 18. EDI hadn¡¯t come by to visit me since I won the battle so cheaply. It didn¡¯t really bother me since it gave me the chance to actually purify myself. In the time where my mind was free to wander, I came up with several new ideas for the arena. For one thing, there would be four different styles of fights there a month each a week apart. The first tournament would be a physical only battle. In that tournament, people could not use magic or archery. Assassin types were allowed though. In this battle type the participants would fight one opponent at a time, until the final battle. The amount of battles would depend on the amount of participants. Of course the people could pledge to a god beforehand to gain benefits if the win. The second type was an archery competition. Instead of fighting each other, the archers would be made to earn points based on hitting targets. They targets would start stationary, then slowly start moving. But that would only be a preliminary round. The real contest would start after that. Eventually the targets would be live monsters trying to kill the archer. They would be able to pledge to a god to if they so wished. The winner would be determined by how many points they got. The point scale would be based on how many monsters they could kill. If two or more people tied, then the winner would be who used the least amount of arrows. If two or more people tied at that point, the winner was decided by me. The third type of battle would be a magical battle. Only magic was allowed. I knew that one wouldn¡¯t be popular for a while, but I was determined to make it so. The first step to having an army of healers at my back was to make magic more popular. The magic battle would be a combination of actual combat, and ability to perform certain tasks. For instance growing a plant quickly. Fire people might have a hard time doing that, but each type of mage would be given a task that fit there powers. Obviously they could pledge to a god. The final battle would be a battle royal tournament with all types allowed. I was hoping that this one would get the most notice. They could pledge to a god. Each set of people would get something enchanted by me as a trophy. The trophy wouldn¡¯t be as great as the laser sword, but I would only be giving one to the top person of each tournament. I also began to hire actual guards for my city. The adventurers still could volunteer for free room and board, but I would also pay some NPCs. Every NPC had a job at the moment, but I wanted my homeless rate to stay 0. I also started to formulate a plan to start the cultivation of the farmlands. Late at night I created large stone walls around the areas I would declare as farmlands. I also erected watch towers for each one. Well there were two farms, there were also only two watchtowers for that matter. Each one was five acres though. The wall there took a HUGE amount of time and mana to make. It had only been a few days after all. With the help of Moro, Tear, Eli, and Sol, I made sure the land was pre-tilled, and had the most abundant resources to grow one could ask for. I wanted to use the feces of Nightmare-Wing¡¯s followers, but if that was apparently adding in new technology into the game. The farming methods were very subpar. They apparently let one third of their fields go without planting each year. Something about getting it to regain its ability to grow food. They didn¡¯t know about fertilizers or anything. So I ordered some of the nature and earth mages in my mages¡¯ school to study farming to increase the crop yield. I went into the guildhall to recruit them. The leader was out at the time so I talked directly to the people involved. I gathered them then began to put my idea forward. ¡°I want you groups to work together to find a way to increase the amount of food a farm can produce. Leaving a third of the farm without crops is nothing short of wasteful.¡± One of them objected. ¡°Really? Working on farms? The guildmaster told us we¡¯d be working on the fate of the future by working with you! And you have us doing farm work!?¡± He was yelling at the end. I took a deep breath, and changed my attitude a bit. I waved my hands in the air once, in an imaginative way. ¡°Think about it!¡± I looked earnestly at them. ¡°If you succeed here you lot will be responsible for changing the world! No longer will people be forced to go hungry because there was not enough crops! No longer will farmers have to work the longest, most physically intensive days to barely survive! ¡°You will earn the undying gratitude of all those who work the land for a living! Your name might not be proclaimed by kings, but WO! There will be no one that does not know of you! For who spreads words faster than anyone else!? The maids, the beggars, THE FARMERS! Though you might not gain the undying loyalty of royalty, you would be forever praised by the ones that truly help a kingdom run! ¡°For, without a king we govern ourselves, without a military we defend ourselves, without mages we are ignorant, without adventurers we must never broaden our kingdom¡¯s horizons, without food we starve and die! If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Would you rather our kingdom be known for the strong military it has, but also its starved citizens? OR! Would you rather we be known for our large amount of food, which would lead to large economic growth, which would lead to strong military, which would lead to the largest, happiest, most powerful kingdom in the world!? ¡°So tell me, oh great men of wisdom! What is your answer!? Will you help me!?¡± By the end the people began to get excited and heated up. Several were nodding and shouting ¡®yeah!¡¯ At the end one person, not quite as caught up as the others, asked, ¡°But we¡¯re still going to be working on a farm?¡± The people began to realize I had been working them into a frenzy to agree to help. I sighed exaggeratedly. ¡°Yes¡­ you are still working on a farm. But think of the greater good! The amount of help you will be giving, or the fame you shall get because of that!¡± The people seemed a lot less inclined compared to several seconds ago. In the end only a few decided to come along with me. These were the ones that genuinely seemed interested in helping their fellow man, or just who thought it¡¯d be interesting. One of the farms went to the people doing the experiments, the other to an actual family of farmers. I gave many seeds to both groups. Crops in this world grew in cycles similar to the real world. The seeds were obviously enhanced by me infusing mana into their pathways. That way the start would at least be the best start it would be. I gave some brief instructions to the mages, and let them be. They were to learn a bit of actual farming, and began to experiment with the surrounding ground. I left them while smiling. If they could figure out the use of manure, or other such things we would instantly jump decades ahead of the other city-states in technology. We did have our very own bomb factory though. I still don¡¯t understand how she got her entire factory here. I had made her a special room to keep her things in, but even with all of the massive amount of glass she had carried in, she still didn¡¯t seem to have the large metal tanks. One day it just showed up. I decided to stop asking when she was obviously ignoring me. I dropped several hints to the mages about how helpful Susan might be. This definitely seemed like something Susan would like. So that is how I spent the next week in my city. Now you might be wondering how I came up with so much food to house a small village worth of people. Well I was trading large quantities of potions, bombs, and weapons for meat on a once of potion for several pounds of meat. I also paid with potions for nuts and fruits. The two things my city did not lack for was defense and water. Defense was handled by having the adventurers help out, and water came naturally from me. The last thing I decided was to have the people wanting to join in my tournaments, or work as guards, had to show my several techniques or spells they possessed. The given reason was to weed out those too weak to do what they were signing up for; the real reason was so I could steal the techs. I wanted to increase my level by fighting in the arena, but I was still level 48 after winning. So I needed to find another way to gain levels. It was odd how quickly ShortDwarf gained levels. Even with the exp ring, I was still a few steps away from leveling up. I had my heralds (some random people I paid a bit of gold to) tell everyone about the changes. People grew somewhat excited about the tournaments, but not overly. After the first one was won in such an uncool way, I can¡¯t really say I blame them. I did kick it up a bit by allowing people to openly place bets on the winner. Although I said that the bets were ¡®offerings to the gods, which will be returned with extra should one of that god¡¯s champions win.¡¯ So they were basically betting on which god would win. At the end of the week, we were attacked by a group of bandits. At first they seemed astounded that such a city could spring up so quickly, just a few months, but then they made the erroneous decision to attack it. The adventurer guards did a decent job at holding them off, I didn¡¯t even need to step in. The bandits were all around level 60-70, so they weren¡¯t a big threat to my city anyway. They had a few eagles try to spy on the city while they were attacking. The eagles were quickly dealt with by the air support. The bandits met a tragic fate when they were bombarded by the mass of arrows that pelted down on them. The arrows were mostly made from bone or wood. Bone because the adventurers would sell me entire animals to get potions. Wood because I could quickly grow a tree to full adulthood, then sing it down to make arrows out of it. The fletching was done by having the two fletchers in town constantly making the arrows. I didn¡¯t pay them a lot in gold, but that was because I kept their families properly fed, and housed. I also made sure that people that did things for my kingdom were given high priority on all things. Information, hot spring usage, and potion distribution were just some of them. Having a personal hot spring created for them put me well within their good graces. I had the arrows constantly made, but only while the armory didn¡¯t have enough. At all other times they were allowed free range to do whatever they liked. I also made it so that anyone that wasn¡¯t a resident, or helping the country out by doing guard duty, was to pay small amounts of taxes. Only a small entrance fee. If they didn¡¯t have the fee they would be admitted only if they agreed to do guard duty for a set amount of time. The entrance fee was a flat rate for anyone. Although people with a lot of cargo had to pay as well. The next tournament, one with only physical combatants, quickly came up. The arena was even more sparse than before, but that wasn¡¯t the point anyway. I decided to keep the bottom three rows vacant, unless one of the viewers paid for ¡®priority seating¡¯. Nobody did this time. Everyone had to run there techniques by me for entrance. The moves that required someone to kill were outright banned, the others were told not to use the technique in a lethal situation. I got quite the hall from those techs. Most of them were redundant, but I did get a few unique ones. EDI had disappeared from the city. I hadn¡¯t seen her the entire week. With all that was going on in the city while I purified my mana, she might have just been caught up in doing stuff. After seeing everyone¡¯s techniques that wanted to join the fights, I actually watched the fights as well. It was more to set up for the future than anything. If I had a reputation for personally seeing these arena matches, then I could make a bigger statement if I missed one. Also people would be less likely to question it if I asked Evan to take my place again. After watching the two days of fighting, I went to explore the dungeon. The power level had stayed about the same since a bit after I created a body for my mother. With the teleport traps, chaos monsters, etc. the dungeon was basically a death trap. Over the next few weeks, my schedule went very much like that. I¡¯d purify some mana, then I¡¯d go make sure my plans for ¡®DDay¡¯ were all in order. ¡®DDay?¡¯, you might ask. Well that would be coming up very soon. I elected a guard captain from the NPCs that were a part of my guard force. Not a very large pool. The best choice was a woman that had some mercenary experience. I made requisitioned a simple uniform for the guards, and gave each of them a few specific items. I had Chao start focusing on summoning undead. Though it might weaken the overall power of the dungeon, I also had him send out the undead a few days after the arena fights. It was nighttime. From a distant hill a lone figure could be seen. One of the guards on the guard tower noticed the figure. The figure timed it so the guard would have a perfect opportunity to view them. The guard paused for a moment. Something began flowing from the figure. The guard quickly realized this was some sort of attack. He blew the animal horn all guards were given. Within seconds the entirety of the city guard was aroused, and were running towards their positions. I had the guard captain start drilling the guards for situations like this as soon as she was elected. Within a few minutes every guard was on a different roof or wall, ready to strike down the menace that was coming. Guard runners were going between every house to rouse the people within, and corral them into the innermost circle. The NPC guards had the job of defending the innermost circle of the city, the castle. It took about ten minutes but every citizen was within the castle walls before the enemies had actually gotten to the outer-most arc of the city. After the fog began rolling from the figure in the distance, the ground began to move. The guard on the tower, obviously a player character, noticed. Although the pc could not see exactly what was happening that far in the distance, it was quickly apparent. Bodies began to rise from the ground. A compilation of zombies, skeletons, even ghosts, began to come up from the ground. As they broke free from the earth of Solun, they began to trek towards the city. It was the start of what would be known as the ¡®War of Death¡¯. Happy Anniversary! (Not a Chapter) Hi guys! It''s been exactly 1 year since i started posting DIVE! It''s been a great one too! My releases have slowed down quite a bit, but i still try to put in everything i can into them. I hope everyone still enjoys the story! For all of you that have been here the entire time, thank you! For all of you that the story has picked up along the way, thank you! It''s thanks to you all that i have had the encouragement to keep writing for so long! I can''t really express how it feels to have stuck with something for so long. I tend to give up half way. I refused to do that with DIVE though, mostly because of all of the support i have gotten. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the story, not the least of which was my exceptionally crappy writing abilities (especially at the beginning). Voice has gone through a lot, and by extension so have we. I know some of you hoped the story would go in a different direction, but i''m glad you decided to keep reading anyway. I have the next few arcs planned out, so i hope you like them! We are inching closer to the end of the story, so i don''t know if it will make it another year, but i do hope all of my loyal fans will stay with me for as long as DIVE remains true to itself. Thank you all again! Dive 85: First Night of the War of Death Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : In the last chapter Voice spent a while purifying his mana, planning something called ¡®DDay¡¯, and setting up a few things for the city, including: a four part tournament each month, a better guard system, and items for his guards. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Felix; NPC; Guard; on watchtower duty the night the ¡®War of Death¡¯ began. Felix was a simple man. He only came to this new city because he had overheard it was created by the Chosen of Mar. Something like seeing the dead rise from faraway hills was above the line of what he thought he¡¯d have to do. He did his duty though. He made sure to alert everyone with his horn. Felix knew he¡¯d be the first one to die in this fight, but he was no coward. He would fight to protect his family. The king Voice0fReason had promised to protect the families of all of the guards with utmost care during an attack. The dead crept closer and closer. Felix was shooting as many arrows as possible. He had been trained to make every arrow count, so would only shoot if he knew he¡¯d hit. His archery skill was only at the novice level, but the targets were so close together he was basically guaranteed a hit. Arrow after arrow flew from his quiver. He was one of the best new trainees, which was why he was on the rotation on tower duty. When the dead arrived about a hundred feet from the city walls, large circles of light began to shine. The sine blotted out the darkness. Felix¡¯s eyes watered just looking at them. The light seemed as if it could dwarf the sun. The undead began to break and fall apart. Soon after they broke, they began to turn into dust. Felix could tell the light was some sort of barrier. He was never more grateful for magic in his life. Felix had heard of the light spell ¡®turn undead¡¯, but he didn¡¯t know it could be used at such a large scale. Another horn began to sound. It was from the north tower. Felix, on the west tower, looked that way by instinct. More undead! Felix looked toward the south tower, even as the horn from the south tower began to blow. Felix gaped. This wasn¡¯t just going to be a battle against the undead, it was going to be a siege! The circles of light began to flicker and appear around the entire arc the wall formed. The only part of the city not lit by the holy light was the castle. Felix thought it gave quite the ominous look to it, but that was hardly king Voice¡¯s fault. Felix turned his attention back to the undead attack. He continuously fired arrows, at least until his quiver was empty. They had been trained to never stop killing the enemy, even if the defenses had a clear victory. That would lead to hubris, which would lead to their families death. They might have only been training for a short while, but there were a few ideas drilled into their heads on a daily basis. I watched the approaching undead. I ¡®just happened¡¯ to be awake at the right time, and ¡®just happened¡¯ to be looking in the right area to see the first wave. I had all of the doors thrown open in order to allow the citizens to enter. The few guards I had stationed at the castle went to work making preparations for when the people came. At first the people began to trickle in to the castle, but that quickly became a swarm of people trying to escape whatever it was that got the guards upset. I had the guards explain the situation, but made sure they kept it mild. Inducing hysteria wouldn¡¯t help anyone out. Within only a few tens of minutes, everyone was inside the castle. Given that the castle was on a mountain that was quite something. Of course I had created a simple pulley system, with the help of the mages¡¯ guild. The pulley system could easily carry up about twenty people at a time. Forty men went up first. Women and children went after those 40. Not because the deserved to live more, but because I knew it would have been weird if I didn¡¯t have the women and children go up basically first The ¡®elevator¡¯ was a large wooden raft-like structure, supported by thick rope, and enchanted with some minor enchantments that increased durability. There were a total of ten of these rafts. Each one went up about a tenth of the height up to the castle. One would pick them up from the bottom, then go up 1/10th of the way. The people on the raft would get off on a small jutting. Another raft-structure would come down to the left of where the other one was, and pick the people up. Like that the people could be ferried up the entire way by only a few dozen strong people. The pulley system was controlled by about forty strong people, that would wind a large wheel. The wheel would provide the force to lift the rafts. I made sure one guard was on each raft to make sure nothing bad happened to them, and also provide a sense of security. Having ten rafts made the work a bit more, but also increased the safety of the elevator as a whole. If one fell that would kill some, but not all of the people on it. If there was just one large raft, they would all die at once. When everyone was in the castle, I made the announcement. Basically I would talk into one large stone (about the size of my head), and my voice would be echoed by several smaller stones around the audience room of my castle. The smaller stones, about the size of my fist, only had the power to echo the larger stone. They also had to be within 100 feet, and be fed with mana. They couldn¡¯t actually store mana. So using this ¡®PA¡¯ system that I created, I could speak to everyone in my audience room. Although it did cost me a whopping 250 mana per second. Since I had 8918 mana, I could only keep speaking for 35 seconds, but that is without my mana regen. Over those 35 seconds I would regenerate enough mana to actually increase my time by 7 seconds. During those 7 seconds I would gain enough mana to increase the time by one more second. So a total of 43 seconds. That wasn¡¯t enough to do an entire speech, but it gave me enough time to at least calm the people. ¡°PEOPLE! You are here because our great city is under attack! We will overcome this! Our brave defenders are out there, right now, battling to protect you. I have set a magic barrier around the city. The villains that are here will find it impossible to beat us! I go now, to defend our homes!¡± I flew into the air, and shot out to the outer wall. One of the guardsmen was shooting at the undead that were attempting to get past the holy circles. I patted him on the shoulder in a brief moment he wasn¡¯t shooting. He jumped slightly and began to draw his bow to attack me. ¡°It¡¯s ok, it¡¯s just me. I¡¯ve come to put an end to this non-sense.¡± He stared dumbstruck at for me for a moment, before I jumped down from the wall, and began the ¡®extermination¡¯ of the undead. The ¡®battle¡¯ was anything but difficult. I used my mana in the most flashy way possible. Normally these flashy moves wouldn¡¯t do a terrible amount of damage, but since they were technically my undead anyway, they dropped when hit by even the simplest of my spells. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I started off the attacks by floating in mid-air, you know to give it a badass kind of feel. The holy light circles I had placed on the ground didn¡¯t do much damage to the undead, but they sure created a lot of light. My body began to glow brightly. A thin, but intense, light surrounded my entire body. The excessively white light lit up the blackness of the night. It would have looked to anyone else as if a bright moon had suddenly appeared in the area, surrounded by several large suns. The light suddenly exploded out. The barrier of light concentrated itself into 20 different arrows made of light magic. Each one shot out and hit an undead in the head with perfect precision. Once hit the undead exploded in a nasty green gas. Well what really happened was that I made a healing orb and then sent the healing magic out by using ¡®long distance heal¡¯. Now that would deal slight damage to the undead, but it would have been impossible to perfectly guide all twenty of the arrows. The undead actually made themselves get hit by the arrows. It didn¡¯t really look like it was on purpose, so that was ok. Even if the light could hit them perfectly, the damage would be minimal. They would in no way explode from the damage. The explosions were actually Kretchof using ¡®corpse bomb¡¯. He was the one summoning them after all. I repeated that effect until my light mana reached 0, and I used 1/8th of my pure mana. That was 1111 mana. Of course that meant I sent out a huge amount of arrows. Instead of creating a healing barrier each time I just made the same barrier hold up. The arrows began spewing from the area around me. For all intents and purposes, I was eradicating an entire army of undead by myself. At least that is what the guards looking in my direction saw. I was also in the perfect position for the peasants in the castle to see me. The arrows constantly spewed from my barrier. I sent out hundreds of the things. The undead attacking this portion of the wall were dealt with in less than a minute. After causing my healing aura to explode outwards, I flew to the next section of the wall. The west wall¡¯s holy circles were beginning to flicker. The mana I had put in each of them was only about 9 thousand, so they couldn¡¯t last forever. On the west wall, I used fire. My light mana was depleted, and I wanted to make it look as cool as possible. I made sure the people from the castle could still see what I was doing, but also made it hard to see my figure in particular. I surrounded myself in phoenix-fire. The cost was kind of large, but it really looked cool. Instead of sending out fire arrows, I decided to make fire spew from the ground. With Drake¡¯s help, I concentrated on forcing all of the fire and wind mana in the area to concentrate on four places. The heat on those areas was so much that the zombie portion of the army had their rotten flesh melting off. After about thirty seconds of concentrating mana, I activated my spell. The wind mana and fire mana exploded out. The wind mana shot straight towards the sky in each of the places. The four circles I concentrated the wind in looked like pillars of wind. Less than a second after, I activated the fire mana. Contained by the wind mana, the fire had no choice but to become a giant fire pillar. The flame pillars light up the black night with a red ominous glow. The shadows flickered behind the undead as if they too were going to fight against the slaughter I was about to throw at them. The fire pillars would only last for a five seconds at most, so I quickly guided them by manipulating the wind mana that formed their shapes. I flattened out the wind mana, and made it turn into waves of wind. Of course the waves carried the fire mana with them. The battlefield was scorched by large waves of fire. At much the same time, in the forested area, the dark rainclouds blocking out the moon began to pour down. Tear was forcing the water to wet the forest so no fire would escape the small area I wanted it contained within. SparrowHawk, was helping by taking away the fire¡¯s air. Since there was very little fire mana in that area, the cold water forced any flames to disappear instantly. The fires began to hungrily consume everything around them. The zombies and skeletons that met the flames, instantly fell to the ground, dead. At least Kretchof had taken out all of the mana supplying them. The fire was enough to leave scorch marks, and even melt rotten flesh, but it wasn¡¯t enough to actually kill off an entire army of undead. I flew over the tops of the houses to quickly get to the last side of the city, the east. The las section of the city was being bombarded by animal undead. The holy lights that had been ¡®destroying¡¯ the undead were just shutting off as I got there. They were fading, becoming darker and darker. After i reached the area where the animals where, I let myself fall to the ground. When I hit the ground, a small crack formed beneath me. The crack began to widen, spread, and multiply. Soon cracks were all flowing towards the undead that surrounded me, and the ones that were coming towards the city. The ground began to tremble. Large chunks of the ground began to shift. Sometimes small parts of the ground began to rise and jut above the rest. The ground began to actually sink inwards. One second the ground fine. The next it began trembling and cracking. Less than a second later, it sank entirely. A huge canyon was formed where before there was no sign of one. Of course the undead fell into this canyon. Even the ones that seemed to try to climb up the wall, had their mana cut off. Now this new canyon was partially thanks to Eli making the earth mana unstable. The undead moles, and a few undead dwarves, also helped by digging tunnels to force the upper levels of the earth to sink easier into the ground. After a few seconds the earth began patching itself back together in the exact way I had showed Eli I wanted it to. First small bridges of earth began to shoot out from both sides of the small canyon. Once they connected they began to spread outward, getting thicker and thicker. The bridges began to send out small bridges to connect to each other. These began to become thicker as well, and send out small earth bridges as well. The massive amount of mana that cost was only supplied by sucking out as much earth mana from the falling chunks of debris as possible. Using me as a conduit, Eli patched together the canyon. Within about five minutes, the canyon is filled again. It was as if nothing had even happened. Except for the undead now buried under the several yards of solid stoned connecting the canyon sides. I allowed myself to fall to the ground, and debuffed myself enough to force myself to fall asleep. Just as the glows from the circles died out entirely, the guards began to run towards me to take me back to the city. Dive 86: War on Death Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice spent a bit of time showing off his colossal powers, which were mostly just light shows. He used up most of his mana though, and let it seem as if that had knocked him out. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Only a minute after I fell to the ground I felt myself being lifted up. Two guards had come out to ferry me back into the city. I waited through the their haphazard attempts at making me comfortable, and only stirred when I got into the city. I looked at one of the two. ¡°Argh! Did I get them!?¡± I grabbed the guard as I shouted. The guard instantly started shaking his head vigorously. ¡°Yes sir! You wiped out the entire undead army.¡± He had a look of reverence on his face. I nodded me head. ¡°Good. Let me down though. I appreciate you two helping me back, but I don¡¯t want the people of this city seeing Mar¡¯s chosen being held like an infant.¡± As the guard that held me let me down, I asked, ¡°Where¡¯s my staff?¡± The other guard handed it to me. I used it to ¡®assist¡¯ in my walking. ¡°Everything has been settled for tonight. But be prepared for tomorrow. Those undead were too easy to kill. They were probably just a vanguard.¡± When we arrived at the second arc of the city walls, I dismissed the guards back to their posts. My mana regenerated very quickly, so I was basically back at full already. I used my wind mana to throw myself into the air, and fly back to the castle. When I reached there I buffed myself in order to ¡®not look like I was tired¡¯. Most of the regular citizens wouldn¡¯t realize, but the mages that could see that kind of thing would. The point of this was to start some rumors spreading. Of course I was going to help them along. I wanted the people to think that the show just now had taken a lot out of me. As I floated past the entrance of the castle, I used my mana to speak through the PA system. ¡°People! Together, we have defeated the enemy! Tonight you will stay here, but tomorrow go out and live you lives!¡± Cheers began to sound, but I had to put them down. ¡°Yes, it is good we didn¡¯t lose anyone, but tomorrow night you must again come here. For I fear another attack! But I need rest. The guards will explain everything to you.¡± I gave a few of my guards some instructions and set them to work. They were going to make sure everyone came back here tomorrow. I also sent a message with one guard. The message was sent to the mages, and asked them for assistance to protect the city. After that was done I went to my mana purifier area. When I got closer, I clearly sensed a life force in the room. The only other person that knew about this area was EDI, if it was her that would be ok, but if it wasn¡¯t I¡¯d have to kill them. When I got there, I stealthily snuck close enough to use inspect on the person. ¡°So Voice, what was that about?¡± EDI was using a bit of a condescending tone. She was sitting in a pose as if meditating. Her eyes were closed, and she held her open palms above her crossed knees. She was sitting in the darkness mana purifier. I cleared my throat. ¡°*Ahem. I don¡¯t know what you mean. The undead? I just wiped them out.¡± She opened her eyes then, and looked me over. ¡°Is that right? Then why was it Kretchof that was the one doing the summoning? And what was all that about? Trying to pretend to be weak? You weren¡¯t so hurt that you had to buff yourself.¡± ¡°How the hell did you even know that!?¡± She wasn¡¯t there, so it was impossible she knew all of that without cheating. EDITOR might have been helping her. She smiled, as she stood up from the circle. ¡°I have my ways, hehe.¡± She looked at me seriously, ¡°And they don¡¯t include EDITOR.¡± She left the circle, and the room, without saying anything more. ¡°Wait were are you going?¡± I asked. This was the first time I had seen her in a while. I at least wanted to talk or something. She didn¡¯t respond, and instead just walked out. I turned around not even a second after she left, but she had disappeared. Literally. She made herself invisible again. Whatever. I¡¯m just going to purify my mana and get ready for tomorrow. Although the rune crafting had been seriously nerfed, the fact that EDITOR had left me the runes I¡¯d already crafted was a blessing. With that my purifier circles wouldn¡¯t be less potent. I sat down on the light mana purifier. I was going to need a lot of light mana for what I was going to do. The better the purity, the less mana I¡¯d need to do my job. While I was purifying my light and darkness mana types, I had a sudden idea. Using a simple darkness spell, I summoned a basic skeleton. The results of my experiment made smile wickedly. Ha, I might have just found another game breaker, hehe I had thrown the skeleton into the darkness mana purifier, while I used the light mana purifier. The skeleton stood there, and the darkness mana started coating its body. After twenty minutes of purifying my light mana, the most time I could do at that point, I looked over and used inspect on the skeleton. ¡°Hehehe. This has to be the best thing.¡± The mana purifier had strengthened the skeleton! Skeletons had VERY basic stats, only about 20 or so in every category but int and wisdom, 1 in each of those. Every singe stat had at least doubled! Even int and wisdom were both at five now. The other stats were at 40. Oh Gods. If it works with skeletons¡­ ¡°SOL!¡± The light and darkness mana purifiers were close, but in different locations. All of the purifiers were in different areas, but you had to go through one specific room to get to any of them. ¡°Yes master? Didyoucallmeforsomething? Didyouneed something? Whatcanihelpyouwith?¡± Sol¡¯s incessant yammering never ceased to annoy me. I smiled gently though. ¡°Sol, I think I found a way to make you even more powerful!¡± Sol shrugged. ¡°Idon¡¯tneedtobepowerful. Aslongasimhelpfulimfine.¡± I inwardly sighed. Just cause Sol was a light fairy didn¡¯t mean the damn thing needed to act so good all of the time. ¡°Think about it Sol! If you are more powerful you¡¯ll be able to help more. Even Mar would like it if you had enough power to rid her of Davros!¡± Sol¡¯s eyes lit up at that. The thought of being helpful to me, but especially Mar, was too much for Sol to pass up. I put the fairy in the light mana purifier. Sol didn¡¯t seem uncomfortable, so I left the annoyance there. I wanted to test the theory with Sol first. If I could empower my fairies using that method, imagine how powerful they¡¯d be! After a very short while, I looked over Sol. Nothing noticeably had happened. So I asked Sol if anything felt different. ¡°Ifeelgood! ItslikeiaminMarsembrace!¡± So basically it just felt nice. I guess that was a dud. It was still worth a shot though. Anything I could think of that would make me more powerful would be ok. I decided to also try one more thing. Next I directed Sol to stand in the purifier that had water mana. Obviously I had Tear there as well, to protect Sol from the massive amount of liquid build-up. Sol instantly began shuddering. ¡°Master! Itttt feelssss sssoooo cooollldd.¡± Wow, the little shit is talking slowly. It must really freeze for the poor bugger. I tried to act like I felt bad. ¡°I know, but if you just wait there for a bit, you¡¯ll be able to get more powerful! Trust me.¡± I went back to the light mana purifier, the purity and amount of light mana was insane! That day I decided to try some other experiments on the purifiers. It turned out that the fairies could exist in any purifier except their opposite. When I put Drake in the water mana purifier, the fire wisp almost instantly died. I had to pull it out right away. That¡¯s interesting, but not helpful right now! Although it did give me an idea of an actual defense method. If I could throw down giant purifiers around the city, all of them on top of each other, then everything based on mana would feel really good, but also instantly die. At least theoretically. Since the level of water mana would be so high, things that required fire mana would just crumble to death. Unless of course, they would all just cancel out. Then it¡¯d be completely pointless. It was a risk, one that I didn¡¯t know if I wanted to take. I did put it on hold though. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. But I had a huge spike in light and darkness mana by forcing Kretchof to go into the earth mana purifier. The earth mana purifier didn¡¯t cause him any harm because I had siphoned off all of the earth mana, beforehand. I didn¡¯t use it to purify, because that would have taken too long. With the help of my fairies, although they felt incredibly weak while it was going on, I was able to increase both purities by 10 points! Time passed too quickly for my taste. Kretchof let me know when it was time for the second act. I dismissed all of my fairies, and prepared for the upcoming battle. This time I had planned a bit of something different. Before getting ready for the second battle, I asked Chao about how the third and fourth battles were shaping up. Chao responded that the gathering of the ¡®material¡¯ was slightly ahead of schedule. So I started he second night of the ¡®War on Death¡¯. It was much the same as the first night. An undead army began to come from the ground. I had already prepared for it, so it went by quickly this time. Since it was already known throughout the town that I was preparing for the night-raid, I didn¡¯t have to make it seem like it took too much out of me. Kretchof used a huge amount of mana to summon up large clouds of miasma. The miasma was an enormous debuff cloud. The gas began by coming from different locations around the city. When it got into close proximity to the large light mana circles, it simply began to dissipate. After a few minutes, the light mana circles began to flicker and soon went out of power. By the time they did, I was already on my way. The undead were again coming out of the ground. This time there was easily five times as much as the last. I simply pumped out a huge amount of flashy light mana, and eradicated the entire force. Kretchof took away the mana supply in huge waves. The entire battle took less than a minute. I flew back to the castle after casting a huge magic circle using darkness and light mana. I had already perfected the circle, so it went out without a hitch. It was only a few yards in diameter, so I had to throw down a large number of them. It wasn¡¯t especially powerful since the patch, but it was basically a huge doorbell. If an actual undead came anywhere near them, Kretchof would be notified instantly. Since Kretchof had the power to steal undead from other necromancers, it would allow us to nip that problem in the bud. The note I had sent the mages let them know I would provide a special service for them in exchange for them pumping mana into the circles for the city¡¯s defense. The exchange I would give them is specially enchanting a single room for them. I told them I would give them basically any enchantment they would want, but it would be a low quality one since it ¡®wasn¡¯t my forte¡¯. The ¡®War on Death¡¯ wasn¡¯t concluded with just a couple of undead battles though. That was just the start. The next attack had been brewing for over a week. I went to sleep as soon as I got back. I could stay up for long periods, but then I¡¯d have to sleep for long periods as well. So now was my sleeping time. I slept all the way until the next night, when I had a guard wake me up. The citizens were told they could sleep in their houses, since the problem had been ¡®dealt with¡¯. When I woke up, I thanked the guard, and got into my armor. I grabbed my staff, and propelled myself into the sky. While in the air, I looked around. I didn¡¯t see anything suspicious, even though I knew basically where exactly all of tonight¡¯s prey were. At least they seem like professionals. I went back into the castle, and waited. The attack would happen whenever they were ready. I¡¯d have to count on the city guard to make sure we weren¡¯t ran through before we realized what was happening. I had NightmareWing send out one of his birds, and contact a special group with a letter. The letter was monitored by Chao. All of the follow up was done by him as well. I gave the group convoluted instructions on how to reach him, and Chao took care of the rest. This group was a high level bandit group. It was player run, with no NPCs. It was the main reason I had hired them. Of course I only sent them ? of the money. The agreement was that they would get the rest when Chao had proof that the city lay in ruins. They were camped out somewhere in the forest surrounding the city, but hadn¡¯t done anything yet. They only arrived the day after the second attack, so they were probably getting ready. So was I. I knew the easiest methods for them to do anything, so I was preparing for them. I was in the dark cave that held the darkness mana purifier. It was completely sealed off since I covered the entrance using reinforced earth mana. It looked like a stone wall. I had Kretchof raise a zombie. I had other plans originally, but I decided to alter them a bit since I had figured out the bit about purifying the skeleton. After Kretchof had summoned the zombie, I lifted up my hand towards it. I narrowed my fingers a bit, and ripped out both its eyes. I had Kretchof continue to hold the animation on the undead. I needed the thing to be functioning to use it. I spent about half an hour to create the perfect scalpel, and harden the two eyes slightly. If the eyes were too soft I would easily cut too deeply, or too widely. With the hardening buff, an earth buff that only had 2% earth mana. I also spent about five minutes creating a few ice lenses that would work as a magnifying glass. They let me zoom in a bit more than I could on my own. I enhanced my vision using buffs, and used inspect to look at the eyes closely. Along with the lenses, I could see minute details on the eyes. I created a long series of runes, that culminated on the pupil of the eyes. The runes essentially infused the eyes with wind mana, and allowed them to fly. The mana required to fly wasn¡¯t much, so it was easy to make it so they could siphon off that amount from the atmosphere. But a flying eyeball wasn¡¯t the greatest idea in the world. What made the eyes special was the other ability I had imbued them with. Like the recording on the rocks, I decided to try to record light as well. The wind mana changes were a lot easier to do. The first set of eyes didn¡¯t function at all. I had Kretchof release the summoning, and summon another. I continued these experiments for several hours. Anytime I made something even slightly working, I put it aside, and referred to it in the later experiments. The failed products soon lined the floor. Piles of eyeballs rolled around lifelessly. Within a few hours time I had something resembling a working product. A single eyeball laid flat in my hand. After I charged it with mana, 1000 was the most it could handle, it began to tremble. The trembling quickly turned to rocking. The rocking turned into rolling. The next instant the rolling stopped. Another failure? The eye wobbled unsteadily and lifted itself into the air. I smiled, and began to clean up the other eyes for a bit. After a small amount of time I had recalled the eye by siphoning off a small chunk of mana. The eye was ¡®programmed¡¯ to come back to Kretchof when it reached a certain amount of mana. ¡°Well that¡¯s about as far as the other best one got.¡± I then put in the exact darkness and light mana amounts to hit the ¡®play¡¯ function of the eye. It showed a blurry, but recognizable image. The image of me cleaning up a few eyes that laid on the floor. After the image played once, it instantly erased itself. ¡°FINALLY!¡± I would have jumped with joy if I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d end up making a bunch of eye gore. ¡°Finally I can start phase 2! Geez that took a while.¡± The eyes each took about two minutes to inscribe, but it would basically show itself to be a failure after a few seconds of activation. It was gratifying to finally see something that worked. After the eye proved itself to work, I started on phase two of the defense system. Making a device to communicate with the eyes, and store the information. Like a database. One that only I¡¯d have access to. I used a large pane of glass that I had requisitioned, to show the images. I made an earthen pedestal in an area I hollowed out in the same cave as the darkness purifier. The pedestal was engraved with more runes than any other thing I had made before. It went off the same technology as the sound system I installed in the castle, only it received information instead of sending it. The eyes each worked as the big rock I talked into for the sound transfer to work. In the next 12 hours I finished the pedestal, after testing it relentlessly, and created dozens of the eyes. I had basically made a mobile camera security system. ¡°Let¡¯s see if I can¡¯t destroy the bandits now.¡± Dive 87: Preparing for the Bandit Attack Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice did a few failed experiments with purifying his fairies, but also made a type of surveillance system using the eyes of zombies. He also admits that he hired bandits to attack the city. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Floating eyes would attract a lot of attention. So I embedded a small metal shard in each of them. The shards basically used EDI¡¯s ability to bend light. The light was bent away from everything but the recording device. So technically someone might be able to see little black dots moving around occasionally, but no one would believe they are my surveillance system. I wanted to add the light bending on the eye itself, but there just wasn¡¯t enough room. Physically the eye already was covered completely in runes. If the runes were more powerful I might have been able to do it without the metal shard embedding itself inside, but I couldn¡¯t at that time. I put all of the eyes in the darkness mana purifier. The shards I put in the light mana purifier. After a while I put the eyes in the wind mana purifier as well, then finally in the light mana purifier. Each of the eyes became much more powerful. They could keep their charges for a long while longer than if they weren¡¯t purified. There was only one problem. The skeleton I purified earlier had lost the purification after being out of the purifier for a few hours. That meant the boost was only temporary. I guess it was different from me since I was only using them as assistance to purify my mana, not getting power from them directly. While the eyes sat in their purifiers, I had my fairies come back. I didn¡¯t want them to accidentally see anything they shouldn¡¯t have. I also sat in my fire purifier, then wind. It would have been better to do fire then water, but I needed those two to be higher, at least if I was going to increase my pure mana capacity. In the nine hours I had the eyes purifying, I increased my wind mana by 2 points, and my fire by 3. I figured something out though. So it¡¯s true! When I have higher affinity, purifying that type of mana is faster! Damn! I need to get 100 affinity in everything if I want to go as quickly as possible. Although darkness and light mana rose at the same speed. I attributed that to the fact that I was the chosen of Mar, so I probably gained light mana more quickly. The eyes finished. I got up from the wind mana purifier, and walked over to the light mana purifier. I grabbed up the dozens of eyes using wind mana. ¡°Alright guys. Looks like it¡¯s time to go! Make sure you all keep an eye out for the enemy!¡± Hehe, keep an eye out I pumped each one full of mana, one by one. I might have had an effective mana total of about 9.4 thousand, but it still took a lot of time to get done with the large batch of eyes. I mean each one could 1k mana. I had to meditate just to fill them up in any reasonable amount of time. The eyes swarmed around the town. One by one the flew out of the window nearest me. One by one they began to fly around the town randomly. I couldn¡¯t program any set flight pattern, only that they should stay within a certain distance of the glass pane that controlled them. Soon all of them were out but two. Without the knowledge of the dwellers of the town, they were being spied upon. With the eye system out I would be able to snuff out anyone that committed any crime. I didn¡¯t expect crime to be a problem any time soon, but preventative measures were better than reparation. The second to last eye I had set to go straight to the outer arc¡¯s gate. It was one of the only two that I set controls on. It was set to follow the light mana signature of the first person to pass through the city gate. I set my fairies on tasks as well. Tear was to check all of the water supplies. Moro was to make sure no poison was left in the town. Eli was check all structures and make sure they weren¡¯t being compromised. Golem had to check on all things metal, including the metal disk below the city. I made sure every avenue I could think of was covered. Although I hired the bandits, I didn¡¯t actually want them to damage my city more than needed. Within a few hours of sending out the eyes, I got a response from the one watching gate. Ohh~ I hope this guy is fun to watch~ I had started on the dark avenue of voyeurism. I zoomed in on the person, by finagling with the glass pane. The person that was probably a bandit looked in all respects to be normal. It was a woman. A skinny woman, with lightly tanned skin. She was wearing adventurer¡¯s leathers that covered up her modest figure. She didn¡¯t seem shifty in the least, but a good spy wouldn¡¯t. Now the city got adventurers that wandered in, but only about one or two a week. Of course they usually stayed for at least a few weeks. So getting a random adventurer like her wouldn¡¯t bring up suspicion from the city. The girl made some small talk with the guard, but only as they ferried her to the second arc. They had been trained to not let anyone wander around the outer arc. Not even if I was specifically there with them. No one was allowed to wander. Nor were the guards allowed to talk about the outer arc. So although the girl talked to the guards, and they even talked back to her, she was not allowed to wander about the city. It seemed as though she asked to at one point, but the guards got serious and shook their heads. So she was led to the second arc, and released to do as she pleased in the adventurer¡¯s arc. She wasn¡¯t allowed past the second arc, although she could explore the second arc at her leisure. She went into basically everything. I was almost certain she was the spy. The second eye was still watching the gate, so no one new had passed. The eyes began to come back at that time. It had been about ten hours since I first released them. That was the amount of time they could run for. I had to begin filling them all again. It was a bit difficult to pay attention to the info from the girl, and charge the eyes at the same time. Thanks to task master I could fill them without even really paying attention to them. I watched every place the girl went. Of course she went to the well, and to several taverns that had no residents. She wasn¡¯t allowed in there, but she seemed to mentally note their locations. After watching her for the entire day, I was her enter a tavern. While she was in the tavern, I flew into the dungeon entrance that was hidden in my castle. I changed my appearance using disguise, and went to the tavern she was staying at. She sat at a table surrounded by men. She was drinking with them. ¡°Thank ye kindly fine lady! Ale bought by another is the best tasting ale!¡± ¡°HAHAHA!¡± The other men were laughing with him. As I entered the tavern, I deployed an eye I had charged and kept. I made it fly to her, and stay around her. She would eventually have to go back to the camp. The longer she stayed here the more likely it would be that she got caught. If it was me I¡¯d leave the first night. After ordering a drink, I sat and thought about how I could best make use of her if she did go back to the bandit camp. Obviously I¡¯d know where it was, but I couldn¡¯t remote control the eye from that far of a distance. It would just follow her until it began to run out of mana. If she didn¡¯t leave before that, I¡¯d have to figure out another way to actually find the camp. After I spent a bit of time in the tavern, nursing my drink, I left. The eye had been specially programmed to follow her, so I didn¡¯t have to do anything other than watch it through the mirror. I got back pretty quickly, and began to watch the bandit girl. She was in her room changing. I would have looked away, but she wasn¡¯t real. A complex coding is still a code. Although EDI had emotions and things, she could be changed with a thought from EDITOR. That isn¡¯t a real person. The bandit girl had seduced a man from the tavern, and was eliciting information from him. Things about how the city was made, how far the watch towers could see, etc. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. And here I thought that family men wouldn¡¯t bed the first morsel that threw herself at him. I guess men really are pigs. Of course I was an exception. I didn¡¯t try to fuck everything in my past. Although using sex drive against someone is a good tactic, it¡¯s bad when they can be so easily led. I was trying to think up a way to shore up this defense as well, but then stopped myself. Who was I to try to change human (NPC) nature? Even if I did, I¡¯d just be making it harder to lead them by the nose. I didn¡¯t spy on the two while they were actually having sex, but I did make sure she wasn¡¯t doing anything suspicious. She left soon after they were done. The man lay there, either in deep sleep or actually dead. Since I didn¡¯t want to incite worry just yet I sent Sol over there with my amulet of Mar. Turns out the man wasn¡¯t dead, just sleeping. He did have an STD according to Sol though, a pretty fresh one. I asked, and it turned out Sol could heal it. It did take a nice chunk of mana from Sol, though. Therefore, Sol had to sleep for a while to recuperate. I watched the girl return to the bandit camp, but not before she poisoned a couple of wells. That was fine. I had Moro (and secretly Kretchof) go to check the poison out. It was only something that made one nauseated. It wouldn¡¯t cause death or anything, so I didn¡¯t need to purify it just yet. Like I said, I did want a bit of panic. Otherwise I¡¯d have wasted my gold hiring these bandits in the first place. Over the course of the next few days I spent much of my time creating, and recharging several of my ¡®recon orbs¡¯. I made about a dozen or so more, and spent a huge chunk of time keeping all of them charged. Because the orbs couldn¡¯t change the pattern they went through, I did notice a few small gaps in security, so I patched those up with a couple of extra orbs. I also sent ten orbs to the bandit camp. Since I had it timed, basically perfectly, I could send one out and it would reach the bandit camp right as the other left to get recharged. That day several people had to stay home because of the sickness. Someone brought a sick person to the mage¡¯s guild, but they seemed to turn the others away. Now that¡¯s not right. They were supposed to be serious magic users. They couldn¡¯t, or wouldn¡¯t, heal a simple sickness? It didn¡¯t make sense that the two people didn¡¯t go to the church first though. They did go to the church after though. The church was treating a small number of people for this, and seemed to be a bit stretched on man-power. I wasn¡¯t going to help until someone came to the castle to ask for it though. My castle had a personal well that collected fresh mountain water, so I didn¡¯t really need to bother with the poisoning. Not to mention I¡¯d just be able to absorb the poison to make mine more potent. Not much though. The poison had to be pretty freaking powerful to increase the ability of Moro¡¯s final form. That, or I had to stay submerged in the poison for extremely long periods. A few days went by. People began to get more and more sick. The temple of all gods was absolutely packed with people seeking healing. Even the mage¡¯s guild decided to try to investigate the illness. On the third day I noticed that the bandits were preparing to attack, so I made my move. The girl had been going back an forth from the city, bringing in several animal pelts and hundreds of pounds of meat each day. She wasn¡¯t the one that hunted all of that of course, that was thanks to the bandit group. They were efficient I¡¯ll give them that. They hunted everything in the area, then had the girl sell what they didn¡¯t need to eat for that day. They got food, and she got trusted by the people of the town. Heh, it¡¯s too bad that I already know their plan. I smiled a bit at the fact that they thought they were outsmarting me. I mean come on! They didn¡¯t even check on who their employer was! They deserved to be taken advantage of. When it looked like the bandits would attack, probably that night or the next, I got to work. I had secluded myself in my purifier rooms over the course of all three days. So nobody knew what I was doing. I made a big show of ¡®being sick¡¯, and got to work. I took out some purified water, enchanted with the ability to cure poison. It was only a small beaker worth, but it sufficed. I wasn¡¯t using it to actually cure the poison anyway. I poured it out inside of one of the wells. At the same time I had Sol, Moro, Tear, (and secretly Kretchof) purify the water of the poison. In moments the poison was all pushed out, and absorbed by Moro and Kretchof. We repeated this with every well in town. By the fourth, out of twenty, people had started to gather to watch me. Like I said, I made a big deal out of looking sick. The worse I looked while doing this, the better I¡¯d look in the future for having done this. I walked to each well. I could have flown, but that might have made me seem like I wasn¡¯t as sick as I claimed. So I walked. By the tenth well, people were cheering while I worked. Someone had realized what I was doing. They realized I must have figured out the cause of the sickness and was fixing it. By the fifteenth well, basically everyone in town, aside from the guards, were watching me. By the time I had finished the last well, everyone was congratulating me. The sickness was a bit worse than what I was told earlier. People that got sick soon became paralyzed. Being paralyzed this day and age basically meant death. If one couldn¡¯t work one couldn¡¯t eat. There was no such thing as welfare or anything. You worked for the government, not the other way around. While I was tempted to let a few of these guys die to show how bad the poison could be, I decided against it. I went to the temple, and instantly began healing people. The priests of the temple could heal the paralysis, but it took a lot of time and effort for even one person to be cured. It was different for me. The poison worked like a permanent de-buff. So I treated it like one. By taking apart the mana strands that made the poison, I completely disabled it. Although that alone didn¡¯t help with the fact that the victims couldn¡¯t move anymore. That was easy enough to fix though. About ninety percent of the people that lived in my city were human. I have human dissection 100%. I basically know everything about the human body possible. Of course this info didn¡¯t help with real surgeries, but it helped in DIVE. With my inspect showing the red lines of weakness, I was able to find exactly what parts were not working with each person. By flushing that part with light and fire mana, I was able to mend the muscles bit by bit. This kind of thing was nothing compared to creating new and more powerful types of seeds. It took a fraction of the time as well. Each person took roughly five minutes to be cured. I could have done it faster, but I needed to make sure that every part got the exact amount of mana it needed. Task Master helped, since I had fused a math skill to it. I was able to easily calculate the exact amount of mana needed. Well I was able to closely guess. So I used less mana than the thing said to be safe, and just held it there longer. The more I worked though, the easier and more precise calculate was able to be. Eventually I was able to actually use only the exact amount of mana, for the shortest amount of time, and the patient would be perfectly cured. Even though it only took five minutes per person, it still took a very long time to cure everyone. I even ended up going door to door for people that couldn¡¯t make it to the temple. Before I knew it, it was nighttime. I sighed in exhaustion. Ugh, that was tiring. Note to self, never let people poison my wells again. I smiled a tiny bit. At least if it isn¡¯t me, hehe. Some of the guards had been taken out by the poison, but most of them were ok. After only an hours break, watching the mirror for safety, I sighed. The bandits had been getting ready all day, and finally decided to pounce.
Hey guys! Another chapter coming later today. I honestly thought i posted one lst week, but i guess i didn''t. : ( Dive 88: First Bandit Attack Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finished his surveillance orbs, and began to watch the city. Almost right away he found a person the bandits had sent in to mess with his city. Using the eyes, he began spying on the bandit camp. The bandit lady poisoned the wells of the city, and Voice ignored it. Eventually he did heal those effected, and right before the bandits attacked too. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Something of note about the three days prior to the invasion. More precisely, the second day. One the second day I had made all of my purities at 25 or higher. At that exact moment, I got a notice.
*Congratulations!* You have purified 1/4th of your total mana! In addition to the increased effective mana total, you have gained a skill!
Magical Consumption Current Level: Novice Level 1 This skill can be leveled up by consuming mana from other sources besides one¡¯s self. Consuming mana will restore the user¡¯s mana, at the cost of the mana around the user. For every level this skill will increase the amount of mana one can consume at a time. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to more efficiently convert outside mana into your own. This skill can consume mana in a ten foot radius. Can currently be fused to: Skill: Deconstruct.
Obviously I did. What I got was: Deconstruct Spell.
Deconstruct Spell Current Level: Novice Level 1 This skill can be leveled up by deconstructing spells from other sources besides one¡¯s self. The mana that is released will soon dissipate unless harnessed. For every level this skill will increase the precision of deconstructing the spell. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to deconstruct more potent spells. This skill can deconstruct spells in a ten foot radius. Can currently be fused to: Skill: Skill Fusion.
After that I went ahead and allowed magical mastery encompass it.
Deconstruct Spell Current Level: Novice Level 1 This skill can be used to deconstruct the spell formula of another spell. When deconstructed the spell will become free floating mana. This skill can be leveled up by deconstructing spells from other sources besides one¡¯s self. The mana that is released will soon dissipate unless harnessed. For every level this skill will increase the precision of deconstructing the spell. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to deconstruct more potent spells. This skill can deconstruct spells in a ten foot radius.
This was the second skill I got out of the deal. That was a decently good skill as well. Thinking of the deconstruction of spells made me remember something. Skill dissembler. (Chapter 14)
Skill Dissembler Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 0.00% This skill allows you to dissemble a skill into the two skills that make it up. The two skills will be as if they were obtained through training. You cannot dissemble a skill to which you have all component skills. As your level in Skill Dissembler grows so too will the level of skills you obtain from dissembling. As the rank in Skill Dissembler rises, you will be able to dissemble more powerful skills. To activate say Skill Dissembler. *Note you will not lose the skills you dissemble, merely gain up to two new ones. Current skills that can be dissembled: Sense Potency, Aura Sight, Sensory Perception, Body Language Analyst, Speed Reading, Plant Location, Alchemy, Technique Thief, Sleight of Hand, Spell Permanency, Automated, Automaton.
¡­ Oh¡­ I, uh, I¡¯ve been a bit neglectful, huh? Even though I felt kind of bad for not using such a nice skill earlier, I was at least thinking that it wouldn¡¯t get me much in the end. To be fair I did have a lot of things on my mind at that point. That was during my whole ¡®alchemy¡¯ phase. So you¡¯ll have to forgive me. I dissembled all of them right away. From Sense Potency, I got: Sense Enchantment. I guess it was one of the requirements. It was weird, as soon as I dissembled that one, Aura Sight disappeared from the list of possible skills. From Sensory Perception I got: Distinct Perception. From Body Language Analyst: I got Language Inference. From Speed Reading I got: Enhanced Memorization, and Speedy Thinking. From Plant Location I got: Locate. From Alchemy I got: Combine. From Technique Thief I got an obvious one: Steal. Sleight of hand went away after that. From Spell Permanency I got: Enhance Spells. From Automated I got: Repeat. When I finally dissembled Automated, Automaton went away as well. I almost kicked myself for not using this skill earlier. I mean seriously! All of these ripe skills! Sense Enchantment wasn¡¯t very good, but only because it was basically Mana Sight for enchantments only. Distinct Perception allowed me to more clearly separate my five senses. Everyone can tell if something is a sound or picture, but with this skill active I¡¯d be able to watch a movie on mute and listen to the radio, and be able to understand them at the same time. Language Inference allowed me to slowly learn languages! I had to listen to them, and it took a while, but I would be able to learn them without dictionaries or anything. Although, with my compendium it wasn¡¯t that good of a skill, if I lost the compendium it might be very valuable. Enhanced Memorization did exactly as the name suggests. It enhanced my ability to memorize things while in-game. Basically there was a bit more server room for my mind to work with. Speedy Thinking gave me the ability to think at a much faster rate than normal. The biggest downside is that my body wouldn¡¯t get sped up as well. Still, thinking faster could mean life or death. Locate allowed me to locate the exact coordinates of anything I¡¯ve come in contact with before. It was like Plant Location, but I couldn¡¯t detect all iron swords, only ones I seen or touched. Combine, allowed the user to hold an item, and throw some mana at it. The mana would make the item gain new properties. Steal basically allowed me to more easily pocket items without others noticing, given that I wasn¡¯t already being watched. Steal was extremely similar to slight of hand. It just worked on unattended objects instead of pockets. Enhance Spells made it possible to force extra mana in a spell to make it more powerful. I didn¡¯t really need this one, but I wasn¡¯t bothered by it. I mean the others were great, so why would I be upset about one FUCKING DUD. *Ahem. Finally, Repeat. It gave an ¡®insight bonus¡¯ to things I do repeatedly. Basically it enhanced all of my other skills to a slightly higher level. That was always welcome. Now some of those skills were pretty good, but there was one more thing that needs to be discussed. Skill Fusion. The results were: Combine + Alchemy = Magical Alchemy Magical Alchemy was put into the Key to Self-Sustaining Alchemy, which made the group skill become: Mastery of Alchemy. Basically it let me directly enchant my potions as I made them! I didn¡¯t even need to do all of the tedious work of trial and error. I just pumped in the mana, and the potion would become something more potent. Enhanced Memory + Skill Analyst = Total Recall. I could perfectly recall any memory I had with perfect detail. Of course this only worked with in-game memories. It wouldn¡¯t make sense if it worked outside of the game. I assumed it worked by stimulating certain synapses. Locate + Language Inference = Dialect Detection. Basically it gave me the additional ability to tell where people were from just by listening to them. The game did have a bit of a dialect to certain characters, so it made sense. The only prerequisite was the I had to visit that place, or hear the dialect to get the information. Now for the last two skill fusions of that fateful second day. Distinct Perception + Sensory Perception; and Speed Thinking + Long Distance Inspection. From the first fusion I got: Empowered Perception.
Empowered Perception Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to use your five senses to determine things at a higher level. This skill is heavily dependent on the skills: Spot, Search, Listen, Track, and Taste. Ranks in these skills will dramatically increase your ability to use this skill. This skill enhances skills: Spot, Search, Listen, Track, and Taste, by allowing the user to perfectly distinguish and afford attention to each. The level of each skill will correlate to many times higher than their actual levels.
Basically my Long Distance Inspection wouldn¡¯t miss anything¡­ ever. I could just about tell any information about my surroundings that I wanted. Unlike when Inspect normally got an amazing upgrade, I wasn¡¯t overwhelmed by the information. Instead it seemed to be simply flowing in lazily. The new information wasn¡¯t terribly more than before, but it was all much more clear. It¡¯s like putting on a perfect pair of prescription glasses after having broken yours a few days prior. The final skill fusion, which happened to be the best, was Speedy Thinking + Long Distance Inspection. Not only did this one make me more powerful while using Inspect, but it also gave me something I never thought I¡¯d get. Imagine it! No, wait. I have to tell you about it first. Heh, I still get chills thinking about it. It was the single greatest time of that era. What I got was the skill: Rapid Inspection
Rapid Inspection Current Level: Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to quickly inspect objects, and the surrounding. Although the inspection is always instantaneous, this skill slightly dilates time to allow you to process the information at a higher rate. Can be fused to Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection. If fused, Long Distance Inspection will upgrade to Speedy Inspection.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Long Distance Detection, and create Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Inspect, or Group Skill Devourer of Knowledge? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
Obviously I fused it before exchanging it into Long Distance Inspection.
Speedy Inspection Current Level: Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, Aura Sight, Sense Motive, Sensory Perception, Search, Track, Taste, Spot, Search, Listen, Body Language Analyst, Detection, Detect Price, Stat Inspection, Empathic Connection, Sense Enchantment, Distinct Perception, Language Inference, Locate, Dialect Detection, Empowered Perception, and Rapid Inspection. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Inspect to Manual.¡¯ This skill has been upgraded to encompass more skills. The exp and level will not be adjusted, but the exp requirement will be.
You have fused more than 15 skills together in the Group Skill: Inspect. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Inspect has gained 10 levels, maximum of 100. Inspect now works at a distance. The distance Inspect works at is equal to 10 times the level of Inspect. Many sub-skills of Inspect have evolved.
You have fused more than 25 skills together in the Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection. Inspect has gained 25 levels, maximum of 100. Long Distance Inspection has evolved into Group Skill: Speedy Inspection.
Right away I exchanged Rapid Inspection. I remembered when this happened with Long Distance Detection, so I was hoping for a turnout like then. I wasn¡¯t disappointed. Long Distance Inspection evolved!
Instant Analysis Current Level: Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, Aura Sight, Sense Motive, Sensory Perception, Search, Track, Taste, Spot, Search, Listen, Body Language Analyst, Detection, Detect Price, Stat Inspection, Empathic Connection, Sense Enchantment, Distinct Perception, Language Inference, Locate, Dialect Detection, Empowered Perception, and Rapid Inspection. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Analysis to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Analysis to Manual.¡¯ This skill has a secondary effect: Slow Time! This can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Slow Time to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle Slow Time to Manual.¡¯ The dilation will be based on level and rank.
Now, the most important part of that? ¡°This skill has a secondary effect: Slow Time!... The dilation will be based on level and rank.¡± I CAN SLOW FUCKING TIME!!!!!!!!!! Oh god! Think of it! Just try! Whenever I am using Analysis I can choose to slow time. Time slows down to about 1/10 of actual time. I could watch a bullet come at me. I might not be able to physically react to the bullet, but I¡¯d see it coming! With my speed buffs I might even be able to barely dodge it, if it wasn¡¯t point-blank. Now if you¡¯ll remember I can already teleport. It just costs a MASSIVE amount of mana. It¡¯s much more cost efficient to just fly. Chao doesn¡¯t have that problem though. I don¡¯t know how that little turd has so much mana. With the time dilation, and teleport, I¡¯d be able to get out of almost any situation that might actually get me hurt. If rank also played a role, who knows how good it would be at that time! I also got another notice. Which is worked on the last day before the attack on the city.
You have become more familiar with Group Skill: Instant Analysis than most people will become with any other skill. But you have not truly mastered it yet. To truly master this skill, you must visit the city of Rulie, and find out what it truly means to identify what something is.
While I was exited about that, I sure as hell wasn¡¯t about to give up this huge plan I set in motion to upgrade a skill. At least the upgrade didn¡¯t have a time limit. Heh, time. Just thinking about the slow time effect made me smile. I also made the Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge.
Devourer of Knowledge Current Level: Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% This skill allows you to use the benefits from: Speed Reading, Auto Reading, Enhanced Memorization, Speedy Thinking, and Total Recall. Learning anything is much simpler for you than for others. Any experience point gain, or learning of information, will by increased by a percentage based on the level of this skill * the rank of this skill. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill.
This skill was good, but not as good as the time slowing. This one would allow me to get 20% more information from my inspections though. And a 20% increase in EXP gain is always great! Back to the present. It was night. The sky was fairly light out. It was pretty late in the evening, but the stars shone brightly. The bandits crept to the wall silently, but I had me ¡®eyes¡¯ on them. I knew exactly where they were coming from. I couldn¡¯t use my eyes while they were prowling, because I had to be out here to stop them. But my enhanced inspect made it so that I could easily see the people crawling in the tall grass. The faintest movement of the blades of grass were easy for me to make out. They slowly spread out, and began to circle the base. I made sure to cloak myself in darkness. Though I was floating in plain sight, they wouldn¡¯t be able to see me. There was only ten people going into the city at the moment. I waited until the first person scaled the wall, before I began to fight. As soon as I was ready, I threw out two small rocks from my inventory. Both of them headed for the first person that scaled the wall. At the same time I used wind mana to call out: ¡°CITY ON HIGH ALERT! CITY ON HIGH ALERT!¡± I used my wind mana to circulate the sound all the way to the furthest parts of the city. The guards in the inner arcs instantly started heralding the people to the castle. The two rocks exploded when the neared the person. A huge explosion of light and sound rang out. The girl threw up an arm to shield her face. Wrong move. I used a huge gust of wind to knock her off the top of the wall. The fact that they could scale the wall was amazing. It was perfectly flat, and had nowhere to put holes in easily. I was going to find out how they did it after the battle. As the girl fell, I sent up several earth spikes to impale her when she landed. After making sure she landed on them, I went on to the next person. By the time I got there, the person had already scaled the wall, and was sneaking towards an alley. He was stunned after I threw one of them.
Flashbang
Material QualityLowWork QualityExpert
Enchantment QualityExpert
Damage0Durability5/5
This weapon doesn¡¯t do any damage, but it causes a stun effect to anyone capable of being effected by intense light or sound. The stun effect lasts longer according to the situation.
It was incredibly easy to handle him after that. I just fused a bit of darkness mana to some water/wind mana, to make a poison mist. After that I just stabbed him in the throat a few times with the tip of my spear. The poison began to seep in rapidly. The poor raping/pillaging/plundering bandit died in seconds. I made quick work of the others. I only spent a few seconds on each one. With my large amounts of buffs, and the fact that I had planned all of this before-hand, I was able to kill them quickly. The other bandits didn¡¯t attack that night. I guess they were going to wait to see what happened. I debated whether or not to force them into a battle in the open, but decided against it. I wanted them to come out first. Then I¡¯d handle the situation in a way that made everyone see how great I was. So that was the end of that day. Aw, I didn¡¯t even get to try out my cool new skill! Alright guys! Second promised chapter of the day. I don¡¯t know exactly when, but I¡¯ll try to put out another later this week. Man that slow time thing! I wonder how that will turn out. Spoiler : It¡¯s in the next chapter[/i] Also here are his stats for those that have been wondering! Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
RaceTrue ElfRacial ClassKing
Level 48Health: 100Mana: 3430[11,662]Stamina: 500
Current Title: Chosen of MarHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 52(48)/sStamina Regen: 5.9/s
Strength83Agility50
Wisdom260Intelligence343
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1685
Skills Window
Group Skill: Rapid Analysis Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge Novice Level 20 Exp 15.61% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Master of Alchemy Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal75%
Earth90%
Fire35%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light30%
Water79%
Wind30%
Nature65%
Metal30%
Earth80%
Fire30%
Darkness30%
Dive 89: Second Bandit Attack Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice created a nice number of skills using the previously unused skill: Skill Dissembler. He even managed to fuse enough skills to Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection, to rank it up to level 100. He got the notice to do the master quest for it, and managed to completely destroy the bandits that tried to infiltrate his city. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) I know I was intentionally putting the bandits off, but weren¡¯t they a bit too easy to beat? I mean their average level was about 100. The saddest part was that I didn¡¯t even get much exp from killing the group. I decided to send EDI a message. ¡®Hey, EDI. It¡¯s Voice! I was wondering if you knew why it was so hard for me to level up? I mean I fight stuff way above my level but I get almost no experience.¡¯ She didn¡¯t answer. Well the message was there. I decided to go to the purifiers and sit down. While there I activated the special skill automaton. It let me log out but a bot would replicate my usual thought patterns. I went into the white room, and decided to look the info up myself. Very few people knew that we could still use information from the outside without repercussions. I guess the people that did, didn¡¯t want the others to find out about it. Sadly there wasn¡¯t any information on leveling up, outside of good spots to hunt between level x and y. Since it was like that I could only make conjectures. They wouldn¡¯t really be useful without testing them out though. So I gave up on that for now. I still had a few more battles before I could think on what to do. I decided to look for a way to level up quicker after the battles. That way I would have a bit of extra time to deal with it. It was at that moment when I got a message from Chao. ¡®Voice. We are a bit ahead of schedule. You-Know-Who has decided it was time to fight a bit earlier than expected. He should be here within a week.¡¯ Shit! That is a week ahead! Not a bit! I had to wipe the bandits out soon. I wanted the people of this city to always be wary, so I was trying to sprinkle disasters around. If they were all just dumped one after another it might make too many of the NPCs choose to leave the city. To do this I decided to be a bit more proactive. A hunter was exploring the woods. It was a wood elf, so there was nothing odd about that. Unfortunately for the wood elf, the bandit camp was right in the path that said wood elf was exploring. The wood elf wasn¡¯t exactly quiet, but wasn¡¯t overly loud either. The bandit leader was looking over the information that her subordinates had gained before dying. She was in a nice looking tent, with a wooden table and a single chair. *Bang* She hit her hand on the table. ¡°You mean to tell me somebody knew about our operation!? How! Erine! Did someone follow you?¡± The bandit leader was an imposing woman. She stood six foot four, and weighed about 280 pounds, all muscle. By stacking the thick leather armor, she was able to cover the weakness of her flesh but keep her agility unhindered. From head to toe, she was clad in the pelts of powerful monsters. Each one she had slain herself. She was adept at hunting monsters. Normally she wouldn¡¯t have accepted this request from the guild leader, but the customer had asked for someone good with dealing with monsters, so she had to go. Erine was the girl that had entered the city to look for weaknesses. Grail, the bandit leader, slapped Erine across her face. Erine flew sever feet before falling to the ground. There were several strong people around Erine, but none did anything to help her. ¡°Damnit! I was told this was a basically a monster extermination! How am I supposed to get anything form ¡®a black shadow killed me¡¯ !? ¡°And none of you were killed the same way? Do you expect me to believe that! Get out! All of you get out! NOW!¡± Everyone hurried to leave the room. Grail sighed. She was tired. The trek here had taken a long time, and now her encampment couldn¡¯t even figure out who was killing them! Someone had to know about their operations, how else could someone kill every single one of her men so precisely? A small scuffle sounded outside. Just as Grail was going to vent some of her anger on the people that caused it, someone shouted from just outside of the tent. ¡°Leader Grail! A spy has been captured!¡± Grail smiled sadistically. This fucker¡­ hehe A spy she could deal with. A spy she could get information from. She exited her tent, and had her subordinate show her where the spy was. A wood elf was strung up. She activated Identify. She had 20 levels into Identify, so she could see most of the information of the thing she looked at. It was actually exceedingly hard to level up Identify. You had to Identify new items all the time to do it. Even though she hunted new types of monsters almost daily and she was one of the first non-betas, she still only had a 20. She looked at the wood elf. Ha! They sent a level 54 to spy on us? What do they think we are just some simple marauders? The wood elf had already been stripped of all possessions. A simple wooden bow, a small quiver of arrows, and some very basic cloth clothing. He was in a desperate situation. Wood elves never had much hp, or natural armor, but this one took that to an extreme. Within the few seconds that Grail had called, the spy had been beaten to within an inch of his life. His body was covered in bruises. It seemed even a simple punch would leave a deep bruise. A simple straight cut drew a deep gnash across his skin. Is he really a spy? It would be a good disguise, but he really should have been more heavily armed. She decided to call out. ¡°You! Spy! Why are you here? Who do you work for!¡± The wood elf looked pleadingly at her. Of course this did nothing. She couldn¡¯t care less for the plight of someone other than the regimen she had been put in charge of. The wood elf spoke in broken Human speech. ¡°Please Ma¡¯am! I not spy! I tell them! I tell soldiers! I tell them I not spy! Please save me!¡± He looked so pitiful. Even the Nature Aura that wood elves were known for was even greatly diminished. ¡°I know! The soldiers say they try to kill king! I help! I don¡¯t like king! He kill the forest! I help!¡± Of course Grail wasn¡¯t one to take anything to heart, at least not if it was said by one that was about to die. ¡°Kill him.¡± She turned and walked away. The other bandits smiled wickedly as they drew near the poor wood elf. ¡°WAIT! I KNOW SECRET PASSAGE!¡± In a desperate attempt to save his own life he gave up a great secret! Grail, ¡°STOP!¡± All of the bandits froze. It was one effect of her skill: Instruct. Instruct was at level 85 by now, so she had almost complete control over her men in all situations. She turned back around slowly. She stared an evil stare at the wood elf, and the bandits parted before her like the Red Sea for Moses. She drew close to the wood elf, and whispered in his ear. ¡°What did you say?¡± The whisper was far more ominous than a scream filled with anger. ¡°I- I say that I know ¨C I know a secret passage.¡± The wood elf began stuttering from fear. The imposing aura of Grail could even cow a small dragon. Grail let the wood elf see her evil smile. ¡°You know what would happen if you were lying, right?¡± The wood elf hastily nodded his head. ¡°Yes, I know. I die badly.¡± Grail showed a toothy grin. ¡°Not just badly. We¡¯ll keep you alive for days. We¡¯ll draw out every once of pain and anguish we can.¡± The wood elf obviously understood the meaning of her words. A tiny stream of water flowed down his leg. ¡°Cut him down.¡± Demanded Grail. ¡°And for god¡¯s sake give him his clothes back!¡± If the wood elf turned out to be lying, they would just kill him, and only lose a day. She sent two people with the wood elf, and awaited their return. She ordered her men to get ready to move out, just in case the wood elf was telling the truth. Within an hour the two men she had ordered to follow the wood elf came back. Minus one wood elf. She got the details of where the secret entrance was, and all of then necessary information to use it. Then she asked: ¡°What happened to the wood elf?¡± She asked slowly raising her voice as she asked. The bandits looked at each other, confused. Then angry. ¡°Ma¡¯am. The wood elf tricked us. He said that you said that he was free to go after he showed us the way to the pass-¡° Two heads rolled to the ground. ¡°Incompetents.¡± Grail¡¯s hand was in the shape of a sword, with all fingers extended. Her hand dripped in blood. ¡°Still, I did get the information I wanted.¡± She turned towards the her men. ¡°Move out!¡± POV Wood Elf The wood elf was sitting in the woods, hidden from the people that might try to find him. He had tricked the people into letting him go after showing them the secret entrance into the castle. ¡°Cripes that was scary. I really thought I¡¯d die!¡± With a wave of his hand, the ¡®wood elf¡¯ dispelled his disguise skill. His face and body instantly transformed into Voice¡¯s face and body. The ¡®weak¡¯ wood elf was actually me with my debuffs on. Of course I also had my health buffed as much as possible. I still almost died several times though. Over the course of the time between when I had killed the bandits, and the moment I disguised myself as a wood elf, I created a large intricate tunnel into my castle. Of course the cave had a surveillance eyeball right at the mouth. That way I would know exactly when the bandits entered. It wasn¡¯t a long wait. Not even fifteen minutes after I got back to the observatory, I saw the bandits entering the cave. Within an hour or so they began pouring out of the cave. Of course I didn¡¯t make this little trek easy for them. I had littered the tunnel with several powerful undead. They were dealt with fairly easily. It was a shame, seeing as I actually went through the trouble of putting those undead through the darkness mana purifiers. Of course it could have been that the undead only put up as much effort as I told them to. The bandits were apparently trying to be quite about their attack, but that failed. One of the guards ¡®just happened¡¯ to walk past the exit to the secret tunnel. It was almost as if the undead had perfectly timed their own death to coincide with the guard¡¯s perimeter check. Heh. As soon as he saw the fur clad people pouring from behind a bookcase, he blew his horn. Some archers from the bandits¡¯ group shot him through the eye. He dropped to the ground in a moment. He was obviously dead. Not that it mattered though. Player deaths didn¡¯t really concern me. Hell NPC deaths didn¡¯t concern me, except I might get flak from EDITOR. The horn had already been blown though. Guards instantly started streaming towards that location, while blowing their own horns. I was watching all of this through the eyebots. The leader of the bandits issued an order, and the bandits encircled two of their own people in a protective circle. The two people began to summon up mana from within their bodies to cast a largescale spell. Of course I didn¡¯t let them do what they wanted though. By the time they had poured out of the tunnels, I had already made my way there. The leader saw me, and seemed to lock on to my person. ¡°IT¡¯S HIM!¡± She shouted as she pointed at me. The people in the center of the circle continued to cast the spell, the others turned towards me. With a wave of my hand I dispersed the mana they were gathering. I chuckled, and amplified my voice with wind mana. ¡°You think to best me with MAGIC! HAHAHA!¡± I had summoned Tear out, just out of sight. Tear began to suck away the water mana. I had SparrowHawk add in a bunch of wind mana, and Drake add fire mana. They all were just above the ceiling, silently doing their tasks. Eli and Golem were in their item forms. I was clad in the rustic stone armor, and had out my metal mana-coated staff. I raised up a small stone wall between us, and began to cast a spell myself. The wall was about three feet high, and curved back my way. The leader let out a roar and charged me. A few of the people guarding the circle also began to come at me. They easily jumped over the three-foot wall. As soon as the group had passed the wall, I turned it into spears and shot it out at them. Two of the four bandits were hit, and instantly fell to the floor. My buffs were almost all geared towards speed and damage, so I could dodge and attack easily. The bandit leader easily dodged the spear, even though it was launched from behind her. She sneered, like my attack wasn¡¯t even worth her time to dodge. As soon as she got to me, she began a furious series of attacks with her bare hands. I easily blocked most of them. The few that I missed bounced off of my armor harmlessly. After the first series of attacks, her followers had caught up. I looked at one for a moment, and activated one of my skills: Mental Domination Connection. The order was: attack bandits. He slowed for a moment before continuing to come at me. Although I couldn¡¯t fight three higher leveled people on even footing, I could at least stall them. Analysis showed me the best places to dodge to or block. I had gotten pretty good at following all of Analysis¡¯ instructions. Analysis had gotten a lot better with the increased level. It even seemed capable of understanding my abilities somewhat. It only gave me advice that I could actually use. After a few exchanges with the group, I managed to lay a deep attack on the bandit leader. The bandit leader backed off for a moment. During that time, Analysis showed me a perfect hit. I stabbed out with the spear tip of my staff, and completely sent it through the throat of one of the two bandits attacking me. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. It did help that using Instant Analysis would slow time down dramatically. With my mind working at 10 times faster than normal, no tricks this group could think of would effect me. His health dropped rapidly, and I sent a blob of pain water into the wound. He fell to the ground, clutching his throat. I took the time to look at the bandit leader and smile. I shook my head as I worked around the other bandit to place him between me and the bandit leader. The bandit leader had backed off to drink a potion, and was soon back into the fight. She attacker ferociously. Each one of her attacks were perfectly aimed at a vital point. Without Analysis I¡¯d be done for. The hallway was getting very hot now, hot and windy. The heat was so much that the smooth stone could burn one¡¯s foot if they weren¡¯t wearing shoes. The wind was so intense that even standing still allowed my hair to blow heavily in every direction. I could see sweat forming on the bandit leader¡¯s brow. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± I taunted while dodging another one of her claw attacks. ¡°Can¡¯t take a bit of heat? Well your subordinate must be in real trouble then.¡± For just a moment she glanced over my shoulder in worry. In that moment I cast the biggest fireball I could. Sympathy for subordinates? A weakness. The moment the fireball came into being, the huge amount fire and wind mana seemed to be sucked into the fireball. A huge boom exploded out. A giant torrent of flames blew down both ends of the hallway. The bandits let out pained screams. Even though their pain was set between 1-25%, being roasted alive still hurt. Though Analysis I knew the bandit leader was still in front of me. I unsheathed my two swords the moment I summoned the fireball. After hearing the words: ¡®Can¡¯t take a bit of heat?¡¯, Tear covered me with the ample amount of water mana. The water shield was as thin and dense as possible, and covered little more than my entire body. It was in the shape of an oblong sphere. I stabbed out with my two swords at the same moment that I unsheathed them. Both were aimed for the most vulnerable parts of a human: the eyes. Of course I couldn¡¯t be 100% sure I was hitting her eyes, but Analysis showed me I should be. The roaring of the flames soon drowned out all sound. In moments the flames were gone. Two people stood in the hallway. One was a man covered in a sphere of water. The other was a figure directly in front of him. She was slumped over, holding herself up with her sheer force of will. With great effort she looked up, ¡°You think¡­ *Huff Huff* you¡¯ve won? We were a distracti¡­¡± She died without finishing her sentence, but my eyes went wide. A distraction? I noticed I had gained two levels by killing her and her minions. They were high leveled after all. I also picked up the items they group had dropped. I flew out of the scorched hallway after gathering my fairies again. Above the city I could see everything that was happening. Large groups of people were fighting off bandits in every corner of every arc. The guards were only just holding their own. The bandits were both greater in number, and had more experience raiding than the guards had guarding. The random citizens were being cornered easily. A few bodies littered the ground, but it looked like the bandits had just infiltrated. Shit, this is NOT how I planned this. Time for back up. I enhanced my voice as loudly as possible. ¡°Great Goddess Mar! Hear your Chosen! Grant me the power to help those innocent souls against the vile murders that threaten them!¡± I didn¡¯t actually think anything would come of it, but I always had to put on a show. I gathered up all of the mana in my body, and even debuffed myself. I went into meditation state to gain quicker mana regen. My 100 or so points a second could make a world of difference. I was just about to go and slaughter some bandits when I saw something I couldn¡¯t overlook. A girl, no more than seven or eight was watching as a bandit started to ravage her mother. I felt my face snarl. RAPE. IS. NOT. OK!
Selfless Sacrifice By sacrificing at least one level, you cause direct damage to all evil aligned targets around you. You deal full damage to all targets. The damage is equal to your total, health, mana, and stamina times the total levels you sacrifice. Health spent damages health, mana spent damages mana, and stamina spent damages stamina. If mana or stamina damage exceeds individual¡¯s total mana or stamina, the excess amount will damage health. Consumes 1 to 5 levels. You lose all health when this ability is used. The area of effect is enhanced by the amount of levels sacrificed.
An ability I had gotten a long while ago. Its area was directly proportional to how much mana, health, and stamina one sacrificed. I activated it while getting as close to the ground as possible. I sacrificed the maximum of five levels. *BOOOOM* My mind went blank as I felt the ground coming closer. I would later watch the effect from the recordings of my eye cams. The buildings shook, and a huge white light spread out through them. My body was emitting a bright white sheen. The bandits closest to my body were the first effected. Their bodies burst from the initial impact of the light. The ones further out turned to dust as the holy light touched their bodies. Eventually the light weakened, simply aging and turning them to dust, then finally just cutting their bodies with a blade of holy light. The light spread over the entire city. Everything that was ¡®evil¡¯ was destroyed. Oddly my eyebots had been passed over, even though my undead had been killed the first time I used this skill. Every bandit in the city, every single one of them was instantly destroyed. I tried to respawn right away, but got a message.
*Attention* You are trying to resurrect in a town while it is under attack. Please wait until the attack is over, or choose a new respawn option.
So I had to wait until the effect of the ability had its way. I was more than surprised to see the level of destruction it was capable of. I mean, I was pretty pissed at the time, but I didn¡¯t think it¡¯d be that good. It passed the boundaries of the entire city for crying out loud! It was only a few seconds later that I was told I could log back in.
*Attention* You have killed a substantial amount of enemies at once. Auto-Loot function has been activated. All items will be spawned near Voice0fReason upon next login.
I logged back in right away. That thing wasn¡¯t joking. A HUGE amount of items surrounded me when my character got back into the game. The pile of gold and items was about as tall as me. I was in the ¡®safe room¡¯ I had crafted for myself. It had no entrance or exit. The only opening was the tiny set of hole that led to the outside, for fresh air. The room was originally fairly large, but it was almost completely filled with stuff now.
*Congratulations* You have leveled up. You are now level 46.
*Congratulations* You have leveled up. You are now level 47.
*Congratulations* You have leveled up. You are now level 48.
*Congratulations* You have leveled up. You are now level 49.
*Congratulations* You have leveled up. You are now level 50.
Boom! Just like that I not only gained back my lost levels, I even gained the two back from fighting the bandit leader. Most of the bandits were very high leveled. With my low level it wasn¡¯t surprising that I¡¯d gain a large amount of experience. What was more surprising it I only leveled up five times. I mean I killed dozens of high level users. I had all kinds of exp boost items. Why the hell wouldn¡¯t I level up more than just five times? Hell ShortDwarf had already leveled past 500! I guess it¡¯s time for the final phase. There was still one scheduled attack on the city, but I planned to miss it. It was a basic one anyway. Just a hug horde of monsters coming at the city walls. With the bombs my favorite alchemist could make, my city would have no trouble defending against them. They¡¯d all have to climb the walls to be able to get in, but that wasn¡¯t likely to happen. If any of them could fly, well I did have a certain reserve force to deal with that as well. I sat in the room for about an hour. I sorted through all of the items. Since I¡¯d be leaving anyway, I decided to make this room my secret armory. After taking a substantial amount of the gold, I left the rest. It was time to set out for my next big adventure. ¡°Operation: Destruction; Start!¡± Spoiler :
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassMana Enchanter
RaceTrue ElfRacial ClassKing
Level 50Health: 100Mana: 3430[11,662]Stamina: 500
Current Title: Chosen of MarHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 52(48)/sStamina Regen: 5.9/s
Strength83Agility50
Wisdom260Intelligence343
Endurance59Dexterity50
Luck0Vitality50
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points64
Fame1685
Skills Window
Group Skill: Instant Analysis Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge Novice Level 20 Exp 15.61% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Master of Alchemy Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light70%
Water75%
Wind25%
Nature100%
Metal75%
Earth90%
Fire35%
Darkness100%
Purities Window
Light30%
Water79%
Wind30%
Nature65%
Metal30%
Earth80%
Fire30%
Darkness30%
Well there you go folks! The ¡®end¡¯ of the war on death, at least from Voice¡¯s perspective. The next chapter will start a brand new arc, and a minor time skip. I had been planning this for a while, but needed to iron everything out. The next arc is more¡­ psychological than the previous ones. Dive 90: A Towns Trust Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice finished clearing the bandits out by disguising himself as a wood elf. He killed them all when he saw a girl being raped in front of her daughter. He actually gained back the lost levels, and even reached level 50. Then he decided to start a new plan, which he has yet to explain. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) It was a sunny day. A calm wind blew from the east. The flowers and trees blossomed beautifully. Everything seemed peaceful. A big city. Thousands of people were gathered together in the market, either buying or selling wares. Despite this the people seemed a bit preoccupied. Their gazes were shifty, and contained a distrust for others. The cause was no secret. Recently there have been dozens of abductions. The people would be there one day, then suddenly vanish. It was just at such a time that a cloaked figure came into town. He was unassuming in stature. He hunched over greatly. With his straight cane used to help support his weight, he slowly made his was to the market area. He began talking to someone. After only a few moments, they shook their head in a sneer. The man the older gentleman was talking to slapped him. The old man fell to the ground as he dropped his cane. He grabbed at his cheek as he pushed himself backwards with his legs. He quickly grabbed his cane, and darted away. Several people had seen the scene, but no one stepped up to help the man. Strangers meant trouble in this time. It would be better if the man just disappeared. The old man continued to go around town. He would approach anyone that seemed like they would listen. ¡°Please! Save my grandson! He was kidnapped by someone! I have money! I can pay! Please, someone, anyone¡­¡± He fell to his knees after being rejected again. He began to sob loudly. Normally people would try to comfort him, but the people of the city simply avoided him. No one would help him, so he was forced to leave. But he didn¡¯t leave with hard feelings. In fact, he wore a satisfied smile on his lips when he was sure none would see him. He left the city, and followed the river upstream. He walked a bit away, a few hundred yards, and called out. The grass in this area was easily enough to hide grown men. ¡°Alright. We have our next targets. Here¡¯s the plan.¡± Several people jumped from concealment to meet the old man. The ¡®old man¡¯ began issuing orders, and disabled his disguise. Voice0fReason. Let¡¯s go back a few weeks. After I watched the footage of the city attack, I sealed off the areas with the mana purifiers. That way no one could use them while I was out. I disguised myself and headed out. Technically speaking, my treasure room was also part of my dungeon. So I disguised myself there, and left. I waited until the cover of darkness. I covered myself in darkness mana, and flew quickly away. I headed towards a slightly far away city with the greatest speed I could muster. Of course this was not before spending my 64 points. I got strength and endurance up to 100, int up to 350, and wis up to 275. My goal? The complete destruction of this game. EDITOR had fucked with me one too many times. I was about to make sure it didn¡¯t happen again. I wouldn¡¯t make it so that people couldn¡¯t play. No no no. I¡¯d change then entire game to my whims. I made sure I traveled far enough towards the city, then logged out. My autopilot could handle going on direction while cloaking in mana. In the white room I began to look up something interesting. Hypnotism. If I was to destroy this world EDITOR controlled on a whim, I needed to first deal with the peons: the NPCs. I¡¯m not saying whether or not hypnotism really works in the real world. I¡¯ve heard that one needs to be willing to be hypnotized for it to work. Wouldn¡¯t that just mean they had to be willing to fake it? Either way worked for me. Because I had something no one else on Earth would have. Mental Domination Connection. I could also read people like an open book. Unless they had specifically gone out of their way to hide the mannerisms, they would show them. I seriously doubted anyone in the game knew much about body language reading. Even if they did, I still had Analysis. Of course the body language of such vastly different people, modern day and game day, would differ. I could still easily pick up the new cues. I spent several days studying the basics of hypnotism, only occasionally checking my auto-pilot. Since everything seemed to be going well, I continued my research. I¡¯m not going to say by the end I was a hypnotism expert, but I knew enough for my needs. By the time I was finished looking up everything I needed, I was almost to the other city. I left the city without telling anyone. I didn¡¯t want the bandits to continue to attack the city too much after I left, so the best way was to make it seem like I didn¡¯t log in or something happened. I was hoping that would at least stay their hand. If not, I had one very powerful defense planned. Chao. I had made sure he would defend the under the disguise of attacking it. To help keep this a secret I had him send some lower powered monsters to attack the city once or twice a week. Not enough to actually do any damage though. It was sort of a way to train the soldiers. The area I was in was a large plains area. With a thought I made a small mound of earth. I had Moro, Sol, Tear, and Eli spread a bunch of grass on it to cover the top. In the two or three hours they took growing the grass, I made a small hollow underground, and designed a room under the hill. The stream of water was nearby. It was close I could reach it by digging for a few feet. I decided to just go ahead with my plan. I put a few drops of my poison in the water. It wouldn¡¯t kill anyone, but anyone that drank this was would definitely get dizzy for a while. The poison took 100 points of mana to regen. In meditation I could regen over 100 points. So I could pour out a constant 1 drop a second. Although the poison was potent, it still took a lot of time to pollute the river. I made an earthen jug, and began to fill it with the poison. Every few hours I would take a few drops of the liquid and pour them into the river. The paralysis effect, and hallucinogens, would make everyone that drank too much to become less able to control their own minds. I meditated, and made the liquid for about a day. My nature mana was becoming slightly more pure, but it was sadly lacking in comparison to the level of my mana purifier. After making an entire jug of the poison, I summoned Kretchof. I had him summon a zombie, and I enchanted both the eyes of the zombie. These eyes weren¡¯t enchanted to record vision, but were designed to record using ¡®mana sight¡¯. After mounting both eyes, and creating a small recording device I began my practice. I used short range teleport several times. Afterwards I looked over the recordings. This minor teleportation actually used all eight types of mana at once. I wanted to examine it to try to better it. 10 mana/foot was too much in my opinion. Sure I could move a thousand or so feet in an instant, but why wouldn¡¯t I try to improve that? I spent about a week studying the effects of the teleport. Every day I would pour quite a bit of my poison into the river. I studied my teleport by actively using it in combat. Well I say combat. I was really just hunting any venomous animals I could find. I could add their venom to mine to improve its strength. The mana signature put out by the teleport, appeared as though it had no logic to it, but there was actually a subtle pattern. By studying that patter I was able to enhance my understanding of it. Over the course of a short week, I wasn¡¯t able to improve the teleport to any degree. Any time I tried to change the ratio of the teleport; it would simply explode in a sort of mana bomb type explosion. I had the mana signature memorized though, so I no longer needed the floating eye. That made it so that I could at least train it anywhere. After the first week, I went into the town. They had been poisoned (by me) for the past week. I didn¡¯t know exactly how the town would have reacted, but they should have at least been in a state of panic or something. I made my way to the town. The morning sun streamed through the cloudless sky. It was early in the day, but the crisp morning air was becoming warm. It was the kind of air that someone from the city could only dream of. I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the freshness. The long grass that littered the path to the town, was covered in fresh dew. Each time my legs brushed past a blade of grass, a small chill crept into my legs. The coolness of the dew perfectly complimented the warmness of the sun. I wore the guise of an older fellow. One that had weathered countless years of life. I had deeply inset wrinkles, and hunched over my staff to keep myself up. I had a battered brown robe loosely tied around my body, the hood covering my face. In order to make the disguise as realistic as possible, I debuffed myself with several spells: Minor Petrification, Enfeeble, and Inferior Self. Minor Petrification made it harder for me to move, and made my movements less accurate. Enfeeble was the opposite of Damage Immunity. I would have less health and armor than normal. Inferior Self was the opposite of Superior Self; it lowered all five senses dramatically. Of course I would have Instant Analysis on unless I absolutely needed to turn it off. Even with a decrease in my five senses, I¡¯d be able to make out more information than most people. My walk wasn¡¯t a quick one. It took about two hours to get to the town. If anyone could view mana, they¡¯d see an awesome sight. There was no one out in the street. Although I came at an early time, there still should have been someone. The houses were in ok condition. They weren¡¯t the best houses ever, but neither were they falling apart. The were made from crudely constructed wood. The only one that stood out was made partially of brick. There was one guard standing watch in front of the door. I calmly made my way in that direction, slowly hobbling. The guard stood firm by the door. As I approached, I watched his face. A look of concern crossed his face. According to Analysis, he was actually concerned about me. How cute¡­ I decided to play a bit since I was here. I activated my skill. In a gravely, aged, voice I said: ¡°Young man? I know I¡¯ve arrived early, but it¡¯s past morning. Why is this town so lonely? Normally one would be confronted by the whole town when they entered a new town.¡± I shook my head slowly. ¡°I guess some traditions don¡¯t get passed down. It¡¯s so sad. I guess if this town scorns its visitors like this, I won¡¯t stay any longer. You seem nice though. You should find a better place to raise children.¡± At first a flash of anger passed across the man¡¯s face, but it was quickly suppressed. He apologetically bowed his head. ¡°Old sir, it¡¯s not that they don¡¯t want to greet you. It¡¯s that they can¡¯t. A strange illness overtook the town this past week. The people are not fit to have visitors. Sadly not even my family were spared.¡± The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. His downcast look would have wounded my heart, if he were a real person anyway. I feigned a look of concern. ¡°Boy if there¡¯s a plague here you need to warn people!¡± I quickly covered my mouth, as I glared angrily at him. He shook his head, and donned a sad smile. ¡°It¡¯s not as easy as that.¡± He stared at the ground as he spoke. ¡°No one from the Elder¡¯s house has gotten the sickness. Only the people no staying here got sick. The Elder had a special enchantment placed on his house a long while ago; that is the only reason we are safe. ¡°So the entire town must stay inside the these grounds. The few members of our town that refuse to come have a horrible sickness. They barely have the power to feed themselves. If we go out of the mansion we will become sick as well. So what are we supposed to do?¡± I adopted a look of confusion at his words. My hands feebly reached into my robes. ¡°Where is that thing?¡± While rummaging through my robes, I looked at the man and asked, ¡°What exactly do the people act like?¡± He went over the symptoms. ¡°They began to see things that aren¡¯t there at random times, then fall into a state of paralysis. What¡¯s worse is that drinking water seems to cause it to start right away!¡± Honestly I had no idea that pouring the poison into the river would cause this to happen. The hallucinations and paralysis made sense, but it seemed like it also had a delayed effect. That could prove potent. ¡°AH! Here it is.¡± The sudden outburst startled the guard. I pulled out a small yellow vial of liquid. ¡°Do you know what this is?¡± The man shook his head. ¡°I don¡¯t.¡± I shook my head and smiled. ¡°I¡¯m an alchemist. I study the inner workings of potions and plants. Take me to the town¡¯s Elder. I think I have something that might help.¡± I swirled the yellow liquid around a bit for emphasis. He nodded. As I spoke Analysis showed me that he was getting hopeful. Hopeful and desperate. The guard opened the doors, and led me into the building. It wasn¡¯t extremely large, but it could house twenty to thirty people. Not comfortably of course. There were blankets laying down on the floor everywhere. A large group of people were sitting solemnly around the large house. The man leading me cupped one hand to his mouth, and called out. ¡°Elder! Where is the Elder!¡± The crowd of people were obviously curious, but parted before the guard. I was rushed past them, and led into a small area that had been sectioned off from the rest of the villagers. The guard was hurrying, but paused before a door. After straightening himself, his politely knocked on the door. After a moment a voice came through the door. ¡°Yes? Come in. There¡¯s no need to knock every time. How many times do I have to tell you all that?¡± Although the words were harsh, they were said with, almost a mirth. They seemed to carry a deepness to them, a deepness that could only be understood by someone that has experienced a lifetime. ¡°Oh?¡± When the village Elder opened the door his gaze naturally ended up on me. I activated my skill on him as well. ¡°Hello. Who might you be sir?¡± I guess he calls me sir because I look even older than him. I smiled and bowed slightly. ¡°Greetings town Elder. I¡¯m but a humble traveler and alchemist. I happened to be traveling this way for reasons of my own. I learned of a disturbing thing from this young man. I thought to help your people since it is within my abilities.¡± The Elder looked at me quizzically. ¡°Is that so? And how did a man of such, venerable age, come to travel the world alone?¡± Damn he¡¯s quick. I waved a hand in the air, while activating a small amount of magical debuffs. Instantly the Elder and the guard yawned. With a smile I said, ¡°Because anyone that would get close enough to attack me would be forced into the most peaceful sleep they¡¯ve ever had.¡± As I released the debuff, both men suddenly seemed to come to their senses. The Elder had a hint of alarm in his eyes, but the guard seemed to just accept what had just happened. The Elder seemed the think something over. ¡°How exactly could you help us? Have you seen this before?¡± I almost laughed out loud. His biggest emotion was suspicion. He was good at concealing it, but with my emotional connection, and Analysis, he couldn¡¯t hide it. ¡°No, but I have something better than experience! The gift of the Great Goddess Mar!¡± He, reasonably, balked. A random traveler having a gift from a god? That made no sense. What made less sense was someone as old as what I appeared to make a boast like that. The older one got, the more frightened of death they would become. Who would risk angering a god under that kind of situation? I took out the vial. ¡°This was gifted to me by the great Voice0fReason! The Chosen of Mar! I helped him with a minor task while searching for an apprentice. He told me he spoke to the goddess Mar, and got this vial from her. It was supposedly be good for finding my apprentice. ¡°He told me to use it ¡®only when the people around you need it¡¯. I can¡¯t think of a better time than this. If this wasn¡¯t what he was talking about, then I have no need to follow his advice. If he somehow saw that I¡¯d need this in the future he should have seen I¡¯d be here. So this is when I choose to use it.¡± I looked at the Elder. He was slightly suspicious, but my skill was working on him. He nodded his ascent. I technically activated two skills on both of the men. Or at least one skill two times on each. I opened the vial. I infused the yellow liquid with fire mana, and watched as the mixture I had prepared earlier began to bubble and steam. I created a small wind. My eyes opened in ¡®amazement¡¯. I nodded my head when the wind died down. ¡°Your people should be fine now, but could I visit the houses of the people that didn¡¯t come here?¡± The Elder nodded, dumbstruck at what just happened. Normally he probably wouldn¡¯t have let me just use something as suspicious as that, but I had a little help. I had activated my Mental Domination Connection on both him, and the guard. I gave two instructions to each. One: Trust the robed stranger. Two: Obey the robed Stranger. With my high level of Task Master, I could repeat the two instructions hundreds of times a second. It was no wonder the both seemed to bend to my will so quickly. Every rank of Task Master evolved Mental Domination Connection into a better version. It was at rank three. That meant Mental Domination Connection was at rank three. It could be used on three people at once. However, I could activate the skill multiple times at once. Thanks the my little game with Sol, I had used Mental Domination Connection several hundreds of thousands of times. Quite nearly a million. Pretty soon I¡¯d be able to use it four times at once, thanks to Multi-Auto Tasking. Each connection could only give a total of three commands. So I could brainwash a total of nine people if I only used one connection for each person. Of course the effects would only normally only last as long as the skill was activated. Unless I made arrangements to actually warp their minds so that they would obey me out of their own ¡®free will¡¯. After we left the Elder¡¯s home, we went to visit the ones that wouldn¡¯t go to his house. We approached one house. The guard spoke. ¡°This is one of the three families that didn¡¯t choose to go to the Elder¡¯s house.¡± He tried knocking, but got no response. ¡°Hello? Renolds? It¡¯s Karl! Open up! I¡¯ve got someone that needs to see your family.¡± ¡°Why? We ain¡¯t done nothing! Leave us be! We just want to suffer in privacy!¡± I quietly asked the locations of the other houses. The guard, ¡®Karl¡¯ pointed them out without thinking. That moment I began to remove all traces of my poison from the people. The poison was so ingrained in them, it even covered up their light mana signatures. In moments, the rest of the people had been cleaned up. They might stay asleep for a while, but the were all cleared of my poison at least. ¡°It¡¯s ok.¡± I interrupted Karl. ¡°I¡¯ve got what I needed. Let¡¯s go talk to your Elder. I came here for an apprentice after all.¡± Karl nodded. He was obeying me pretty well. Although I knew from my reading, this level of control was no where near enough. He¡¯d only do things that didn¡¯t seem weird or harmful to anyone. He wouldn¡¯t act outside of his usual patterns either. If I tried to make him, it would end up with me losing all control over him. In some cases that I read online, some people even turned hostile after they realized they were being controlled. A warm breeze blew up dust from the unpaved road. We entered the Elder¡¯s house again. I frowned when I entered. The people were all listening to a speech the Elder was giving. ¡°Ah! Here he is now! Our savior! The one that brought a potion from the Chosen of Mar!¡± He spoke a bit. I zoned out while looking over everyone in the house. I was using my Analysis skill to find the best candidate for me. There were only two requirements. Low level, and low willpower. Both of those things would make it much easier to work with. A bit sad, but everyone there had both. No wonder the town was so run down. Nobody here had anything worth mentioning. That did make it quite a bit easier though. At least I knew where I was setting up base. After the Elder talked for a while, the people dispersed. There was no loud applause or anything, just a bit of cheering. The Elder slowly walked over to us. I tilted my head slightly, and questioned him. ¡°How did you know that the potion would work?¡± He smiled. ¡°Not many people, other than otherworlders, have Identify, but I do. I knew that potion was actually a poison cure made by Voice0fReason just by looking at it.¡± I smiled, and happily nodded. ¡°Stranger, you may have come here in a bad time, but you can stay her in a good one. You said you were looking for an apprentice?¡± I nodded. ¡°Well you can ask around town. I¡¯m sure there would be more than a few people willing to become an apprentice alchemist under someone that met Voice0fReason.¡± I bowed my head in gratitude. ¡°Thank you town Elder. I will at that.¡± He happily waved away my thanks. ¡°Don¡¯t bother with it. You can even stay in my home for as long as you are here. It has its own private well and everything.¡± THAT¡¯S how they avoided being poisoned! I should have though about that! The ones that didn¡¯t come to the Elder¡¯s house obviously had to still drink from the river. The people that did apparently could drink from a purified well. Maybe if I do this again, I¡¯ll make it airborne or something.
You have gained the trust of the town: Apella. You will be considered a friend to all within that town. They will remember you for a long time for what you¡¯ve done for them.
--- Hey guys! This chapter was the start of a more, deceptive arc. He got the trust of an entire (very small) town! I wonder what he can do next chapter? Dive 91: Brainwashing Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice poisoned a small village, then he cured them. He used his mind control skill to manipulate the town¡¯s Elder, and the guard posted at the Elder¡¯s door. He then used the pretense of hunting for an apprentice to stay in the town awhile. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) I asked around town for an apprentice. Not many of the adults took to the idea, but all of the younger generation seemed to like it. Of course I only needed one for now. I could only take that one if the parents accepted it. I went about the small town, and spoke to everyone. Although only a few adults took to the idea for themselves, they almost unanimously wanted their children trained by me. It wasn¡¯t a bad idea. A powerful alchemist comes into town, cures everyone, and then says he¡¯ll elevate one person to beyond what they could imagine. The idea made many of the people giddy. Especially for their children. I came to the most rundown house in the village. I knocked on the door like I had done for all of the others. A small child answered. He must have been about eight or so. I had seen the child in the Elder¡¯s house, he was with a woman I presumed to be his mother. ¡°Please, come in.¡± A tired female voice sounded as the boy opened the wooden door. ¡°I was just making dinner. It¡¯s the first time we¡¯ve eaten at home in a long while. It felt good, so I¡¯m making something special. Feel free to join us.¡± She was working in an antiquated kitchen. The house was poorly furnished, but not completely destitute. The woman warmly smiled at me while she worked. ¡°Please have a seat.¡± I sat down on one of the two worn chairs. I was tempted to just create one out of earth, but that didn¡¯t seem prudent since I was under the guise of a simple alchemist. ¡°Thank you. I won¡¯t beat around the bush. I came to this town to find an apprentice. I want your son.¡± As soon as I had walked in I decided on him. Both he and his mother had depressingly low willpower. Both were under level five as well. A potter couldn¡¯t ask for better clay. A loud noise came from the kitchen. I quickly turned around to see what was wrong. The lady had dropped her cooking utensil on the ground. ¡°Sir, could you repeat that?¡± She turned towards me, and stared agape. ¡°All I said was that I wanted the young man here to come be my apprentice.¡± Of course I saw that this boy held his mother in high esteem, because of the fact that even as I entered his emotions showed that he had ¡®love towards mother¡¯ as the number one emotions. The second biggest emotion was ¡®protectiveness¡¯. The third was ¡®insecurity¡¯. Since the mother had ¡®love towards son¡¯ as the highest emotion, and ¡®hopeful expectations¡¯ followed it. It was easy to make both of them agree. The mother quickly replied. ¡°Yes! Yes please!¡± She grabbed the boy by his arm, and quickly took him to the other room to speak with him. She obviously didn¡¯t want to give me a chance to change my mind. It actually went a bit better than I thought it would. After a moment I heard sniffing, coming from the boy. Obviously he was sad to leave. I didn¡¯t need Analysis to show me that. When they came back it was obvious that the boy had been crying. I chuckled. ¡°I¡¯m glad you accepted, madam, but I must also get assent from the man of the house.¡± The mother obviously knew what I was doing, so she didn¡¯t stop me. ¡°Now, young man, I want to know if you want to come with me.¡± His eyes lit up as he was about to decline. ¡°Wait a moment. This is a big decision. You will only be able to see you mother if you pass one of my tests. I don¡¯t know how long that will take for you. Of course I understand that a man has to provide for the women in his life. So we will send any earnings you make to your mother. I will provide you any food or clothing you might need. How does that sound?¡± At first the boy wanted to decline right away. After I mentioned not seeing his mom, he wanted to decline all the more. But I knew how to work people, especially such young people. He loved his mom, and felt inferior. Obviously he wanted to provide her with money, but had no means to do so. The fact that I kept calling him ¡®man¡¯ instead of ¡®boy¡¯ inflated what fragile ego he had. Since he was still unsure, I leaned in and whispered to the boy. ¡°By the way, alchemists can make enough money to buy a house even bigger than your Elder¡¯s.¡± His eyes shone at that moment. A house bigger than the Elders? His mom would be the talk of the town if she had a house that big. ¡°I¡¯ll do it!¡± The enthusiasm with which he accepted forced a half smile on my face. Maybe I should use someone else for my conquest. I shook my head. No. If I was going to do this, I¡¯d do it right. There would be no stopping just because some little brat made me question myself. ¡°Alright then. Since you¡¯ve decided let¡¯s go. There is no sense in staying here to say goodbyes. I¡¯ll let you come visit your mother in one week, but that will be the last I let you unless you finish my tests.¡± Obviously I said this on purpose. I wanted his mother to expect him in a week. Her eyes slightly watered in gratitude. It was time to leave. We left the small town without saying goodbye to anyone. The kid was sullen and sad on our trip to my cave; but when I asked if he wanted to go back, he gave a resolute ¡®No¡¯. On our trip to the cave, I activated all nine possible links of Mental Domination Connection on the boy. I gave him nine commands. Listen to your alchemist master. Like your alchemist master. Trust your alchemist master. Your alchemist master knows a lot. Your alchemist master is nice. Your alchemist master is a good master. You want to follow your alchemist master. You want to be like your alchemist master. You want to serve your alchemist master. I didn¡¯t want to overwhelm the kid all at once, so I only gave nine simple commands. I couldn¡¯t act on them too soon, or they¡¯d have a reverse effect. The whole point of telling his mom I would return in one week, was to give me a week to integrate these into his mind. Normally the effects would stop once I stopped using the skill, but my goal was to make the commands permanent. In less than an hour we made it to the cave. ¡°Alright, this is where we will stay for you training. When you have passed the second test, we will move to my mansion. By that time your mother would be set for life. You might even be able to afford to get her a servant or two.¡± The boy looked despondent at the mention that we would be staying in a cave. I smiled and gently hit his shoulder. ¡°Don¡¯t look so sad! You¡¯re about to start on a journey that will lead to riches you¡¯ll never be able to spend enough of!¡± I had made this section of the place under the hill for exactly this occasion. It was sparsely furnished with stone furniture, and had candles enchanted with light mana hanging from the walls. It also had hidden metal around the cave that was polished until it reflected. Of course the mirrors were concealed by a layer of rock when I wasn¡¯t using them. So I started his schooling. During the first day I had the boy pick out some of the common weeds, and green healing herbs from the surrounding area. I gave him a quest and everything. His eyes lit up at the quest screen. The quest was to grab at least 20 common weed, and 10 green healing herbs. The reward was a basic mortal and pestle made of stone. He had been looking throughout most of the day, by the time night fell, he had finally collected enough. ¡°Good, good.¡± I praised him, ¡°You are the second fastest to complete this quest out of all of my prior apprentices.¡± I patted his head. ¡°Where is it now?¡± I ruffled around in my robes. ¡°AH! Got it! Here you go. This is for you. Go ahead and try to get a feel for it. Tomorrow I¡¯m going to teach you how to grind out a potion. Once you get a potion that I¡¯m satisfied with, we¡¯ll go sell it and send the money to your mother.¡± He nodded his head seriously. I briefly showed him the proper way to create a potion. ¡°If you haven¡¯t made a good enough potion by the time your ingredients have run out, go collect more. Then I¡¯ll show you how to do it once more.¡± I completely ignored the boy after that. Or at least made it seem that way. I was actually using my spells to make him fall asleep. I made the room the most comfortable for him possible, at least as far as humidity, heat, and airflow were concerned. I also debuffed him with the calmness debuff. For an eight year old, he resisted quite well. He stayed awake for an entire hour. I know many grown men that might only last half an hour. The only problem was that he gained .1 willpower from that. Willpower is similar but different from mana regen. It isn¡¯t actually in the stat table, because it is simply calculated. It is 1/10 of Wisdom plus Intelligence. Willpower was a derived stat, much like flexibility was derived from agility. So my willpower was (275 + 350)/10. Or 62.5. This kid had no chance to have a higher intelligence or will power, but I didn¡¯t want to do anything that might jeopardize my plan. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. When he did fall into the deep sleep, I began my project. The first step was to embed my nine previous orders into this kid¡¯s brain. First I changed the orders. Eight of them I changed to instructions on how to create the best potion he was capable of making. First was the exact number of times he needed to crush the leaves of the Green Healing Herb, and the Common Weed. The orders I gave for that part weren¡¯t precise words, but impressions on how to spread the leaves and Common Weed for the best results; and how the green goop should look and feel while crushing it. The fourth command was the amount of water to add. Basically how it should look and feel while swishing it around. The first four commands were set to go off in order, after he completed the step before. The rest were ongoing. That is, they would be going the entire time he was making the potions. I could only give the orders activation requirements because they had been fused into Task Master, and I had the brilliant idea of trying to make them obey me as well. It obviously worked. The fifth command was to go slowly during this whole process. The sixth command was to check and double check to make sure each step was successful. The seventh through ninth command were all the same: Trust your Alchemist Master. If he gave in and began to listen to the orders of his own free will, he might associate all orders from my skill as something to follow. Then it¡¯d be cake to control his feeble mind. After making sure the skill was working correctly, I went back to my side of the poorly furnished cave, and sat down. I removed the debuff from him, and buffed him with the energy buff. I uncovered a few of the mirrors, and watched the boy work. He suddenly jumped slightly when he awoke. He took a quick glance behind his shoulder at me, probably to see if I had noticed that he had fall asleep. Seeing me ignore him, he decided to continue his work. In the hour he had spent trying to make potions, he had ruined enough to make four potions. He only had five tries left since he gave me the ingredients to make one for him to learn from it. At first he seemed to ignore, or not notice, the commands I had given him. I wasn¡¯t trying very hard to make him obey them, so I didn¡¯t really try to force them on him. They were easy to ignore, even for someone of such low willpower. As time went on, about a half hour later, he had failed an additional two attempts. That was the exact speed he had been going before. I could tell his arms were getting week, so I buffed him. From over my shoulder I called, ¡°Remember to make sure to crush the goop well enough.¡± Since my skill wasn¡¯t working, I became a bit more invasive about it. I made the Mental Domination Connections a bit more potent, and talked to him. I told him things similar to a few of the connections, to hopefully make him listen to them more. This was a good exercise for me. If they were too weak to work on a kid, I couldn¡¯t imagine they¡¯d work on an adult. With the extra bit of strength added to it, I decided to let the kid go through the rest of his supplies. Meanwhile, I busied myself with studying something that I really wanted to know about. The mana stone in my backpack. It had the ability to extend the space inside, and decrease the weight of the items in it. Imagine if I could reproduce that! I¡¯d have an army of warriors that could each have a dozen different weapons. Archers running out of arrows? Not with their enchanted quivers. Long supply lines? Not with the enchanted wagons! It didn¡¯t go very well though. It had the same principle as the teleportation. It was just a mess of all eight mana types. What¡¯s worse is that they were infused into a mana stone, so I couldn¡¯t even use the magic myself. Not even Chao had any idea how it worked. Although my little dungeon master did ask to take apart the stone for his personal use. I declined. I wanted to be the one that made more of these things. By the time I took a break, the kid was already outside, hunting for more ingredients for his potions. Well at least he works hard. When he got back from harvesting, I was waiting for him. ¡°Alright I¡¯m going to show you this again. Try to get it right this time.¡± A few hours later and I heard the boy exclaim, ¡°I did it! Master! I did it!¡± I had just gotten into the zone too. I sighed, and turned around. ¡°Alright then, let me check out what you have.¡± I used my analysis. ¡°Not bad, heals 25 hp. That¡¯s pretty good for a start. Not the best of my apprentices, but at least in the top five. Alright let me show you the next steps.¡± His eyes widened slightly. ¡°The next step? I thought this was it.¡± I chuckled slightly. ¡°No, no, no. This is the most basic step! How would this potion cure anyone?¡± From that point I went on about how drying potions worked, and the intricacies of how to properly combine different potions to make a new, more powerful one. I also changed my orders slightly while giving him the lecture. I added in the details of how to dry and combine the potions, and took out all but one command telling him to obey me. I quickly made a batch of four potions, dried them, then made two more potions from the dried remains of those potions. I slowly prepared, and made, both of the potions. I let him watch every step I took so he could better follow them. He ruined about a dozen potions before he finally dried one correctly. The temperature on the stove that I created was either too hot, or too cold. He had the potion on there for too long, or not long enough. You¡¯d think a computer program would be better at this kind of stuff. Guess even computers can be dumb sometimes. After another half dozen attempts he finally had a second successful attempt. It shouldn¡¯t have taken that long in all honesty. One thing did go correctly though. By the end he seemed to be perfectly listening to my Mental Domination Connections. When he was done I decided to test whether or not he had listened to my command to obey me. ¡°Alright, now throw the potion bottle on the ground.¡± Without hesitation he tossed the glass bottle to the ground. Immediately after though, he seemed confused about his actions. ¡°Eh?¡± The boy looked at me. ¡°Why did you tell me to do that? *Sniff* I just *Sniff* I just finished. WHAA¡± Tears formed and instantly rolled down his cheeks. So he was conscious of my order to break it, and felt regret after. I¡¯ll have to fix that somehow. ¡°That was a lesson.¡± I kneeled down, and stared him in the eyes. ¡°I am your master now, but that doesn¡¯t mean everything I say is perfect or good for you. You must learn to listen to the voice inside yourself. The voice that is always there telling you what is good or bad. What is right and wrong. What you should or shouldn¡¯t do.¡± Obviously, I was talking about my Connections. ¡°It¡¯s alright. Stop crying. I¡¯m going to teach you a meditation method. This is how I like to spend my time when I¡¯m trying to create a new potion. ¡°Sit next to me.¡± I sat on the ground and crossed my legs. The boy soon followed. ¡°Alright, close your eyes. Picture yourself in a calm meadow. The wind is gently blowing through the grass. The sun is warm, but not hot. You are full, and sleepy. You are laying in the grass, and feeling peaceful.¡± The boy closed his eyes, and his body began to slowly grow limp. I began to debuff him with my drowsiness spell. ¡°You see another person in this field with you. The other person looks just like you. In fact he is you.¡± The boy¡¯s body shook slightly, and his eyelids fluttered in apprehension. ¡°It¡¯s ok. It¡¯s ok. This is you. You are also you. The man you see is your inner voice. He is what you really feel. How you really think. He knows everything about you, because he is you. He doesn¡¯t judge you. He loves you as much as you love yourself. ¡°He wants what is best for you. He wants everything you want. You trust him as much as you trust yourself. ¡°He opens his mouth to speak. He tells you what you already know. Obey your master.¡± ¡°Listen to your alchemist master.¡± The boy seemed to try to fight for a moment, but I added another level of debuff on him. What I was doing was essentially burying that idea deep inside his mind. I continued on this for a few more hours. The boy¡¯s ¡®inner thoughts¡¯ told him nine things: Listen to your alchemist master. Like your alchemist master. Trust your alchemist master. Your alchemist master knows a lot. Your alchemist master is nice. Your alchemist master is a good master. You want to follow your alchemist master. You want to be like your alchemist master. You want to serve your alchemist master. The same nine orders I gave through my Mental Domination Connection. At the moment I made the boy believe his inner thoughts were saying these things, I gave them as orders from my Mental Domination Connection. After this I woke the boy up. ¡°Do you feel better?¡± I buffed him with a large amount of buffs that I thought he could handle. I gave him energy, increased his strength and flexibility, and increased his ability to see things more clearly. The boy seemed stunned by the transformation. ¡°I do! How did you do that master?¡± The boy beamed in excitement. I couldn¡¯t help but smile back. ¡°It¡¯s called meditation. I can help you get into a meditative state whenever you want. If you find your inner voice is wavering come see me, and I¡¯ll help you refresh yourself.¡± Dive 92: Mind Control Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice looked around town for an apprentice, and finally settled on a boy. He then proceeded to teach the boy some basic alchemy, while simultaneously brainwashing him. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) After the meditation session, I once more showed the boy the entire process of how to make a good potion. From start to finish he watched with rapt attention. He seemed to zone out the surrounding world, while paying heed only to my words. From the point where I first showed the boy the unique meditation way, he seemed to listen to all of the ¡®inner voices¡¯ with his utmost ability. Listen to your alchemist master. That order alone made the boy much more recipient to my instructions. It synergized very nicely with Instruct, since both made him better at following my orders. Within one more day, he had made a passable potion. It was nowhere near me ¡®op potions¡¯, but it was good for a beginner. I looked over one of my own creations. It was made with some of my enhanced seeds. I had enhanced them with as much light and nature mana as I could. The result was that they had as much healing potency as they could handle for a plant of their level. The basic potion without using my alchemy skills would heal 100 points of health. With my alchemy skill, including drying it, distilling it and so on, it increased to 1299.4 points. Because of my ability to hit the perfect spot each time, the effect increased to 2598.8! On top of that I increased the potion itself with my Magical Alchemy skill. Magical Alchemy allowed me to funnel mana into my potion to boost it even further. Magical Alchemy allowed me to add a total of 50% to each final potion. By enhancing all three potions this way, I could increase the power of a basic potion to 1,445.4. I could increase my final potion, using two others as a base to 2890.8! That¡¯s almost a thirty times higher potion quality!
Over Potion *Unique
Material QualityUncommonWork QualityMaster
Base Restoration220
This potion was created by a mysterious alchemist master. This is just about the highest level potion you could make with these ingredients. It is quite an amazing feat. This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers. This potion heals a total of 2,890.8 health.
The 220 was because of the basic combing of the potions as ingredients. So instead of getting three potions that healed 100 health, I got one potion that healed 220. The potion still wasn¡¯t quite as good as my original potion of 20k, but it was still a very potent potion. I didn¡¯t use my critical strike, because it could only increase the attack by 30%, and only once every minute. It took me about half a minute to actually make my potion. After making my potion, I tried making a potion out of the basic green healing herb and common weed. The result ended with a potion that healed exactly 750 hp. I made the same potion a few times, but the maximum limit was always the same. Exactly 30 times the potion total. I guess the update made the total 30 times. That¡¯s still pretty high. Not the 10000x I had made before, but I should still be able to blow anyone else out of the water with my potions. I spent the rest of the day finding out which parts of each ingredient that I had, did what. I found out that the seedless leaves of a Green Healing Herb, combined with the stalk of the Blood Lotus mushroom, would give me a potion that temporarily reduced bleeding effects. I stalked up on quite a few of those. Even healing potions wouldn¡¯t stop bleeding, not unless they could heal the entire wound in one go. If the stalk of a Green Healing Herb and the cap from the Blood Lotus were combined, the two would make a poison that nauseated the victim. I was immune, but it boosted the potency of my poison just a bit. By the time I had done all the experiments with my few ingredients, the boy was done with his potion. I looked over the potion with my Instant Analysis. It actually managed to heal 60 hp, which was five more than the basic 55 that the weakened version of the OP healed. Hm, he¡¯s actually not bad. I guess Task Master is better than I thought. I wonder if I can make a factory of potion creators. I turned to look at the boy with a serious expression. His beaming face told me he expected praise. ¡°Hm, it¡¯s not terrible.¡± The boy looked confused for a moment, then frowned as if he were let down about something very important. ¡°Aw, I¡¯m just fooling! It¡¯s great! This is the best potion that any of my apprentices have been able to make in their first week!¡± The boy instantly began to smile widely. He bowed deeply to me. ¡°Thank you master. I even got a skill! Alchemy!¡± My eyes widened a bit. He really got a skill just like that? Just being mentored for a couple of days? At first I questioned why every NPC didn¡¯t have a huge amount of skills, but then I understood. I had basically forced the skill on him with Task Master. Hm, does that mean I can teach others any skill I know? If so I would definitely be teaching some people a host of skills once I got them completely controlled. The boy looked me right in the eye, and asked, ¡°What do I learn next?¡± I could tell that the boy was hoping that I send him to his mother again. He seemed to be listening to my commands well enough, so I decided to forge ahead onto the next section of my plan. ¡°Alright, it¡¯s late. Tomorrow we will see your mother. For tonight, I want you to meditate and concentrate as much as possible upon the inner voices you might hear. I want you to suppress any voices that seem doubtful, or that tell you to stray away from the path of alchemy. ¡°If you really are going to be my apprentice the desire for other fields of work must be shut off. There will be no days of blazing glory for you. You will be behind the scenes. You will make an enormous contribution to the world, and be rewarded accordingly, but don¡¯t expect bards to sing your praise.¡± The boy nodded seriously. I summoned up a tablet of earth behind me while I spoke, and engraved my name on it using earth mana. I also engraved a spot for the boy¡¯s name. I hadn¡¯t bothered to learn it thus far, and I found calling him boy in my mind was a bit tedious. ¡°Here, write your name on here for me, and you will truly be my apprentice.¡± The boy looked at the tablet and frowned. In an embarrassed way, he shook his head. ¡°I¡¯m sorry master, but I cannot write.¡± Oh, I forgot people in the medieval era rarely knew how to write. Well crap. ¡°Do you know how to spell your name out loud?¡± I asked him in as mellow a tone as I could. He shook his head again. ¡°Alright then, slowly sound out your name so I can properly spell it. Then I¡¯ll have you write it on the tablet after.¡± He nodded eagerly. Apparently learning to write his name was exciting for him. ¡°KUH-I-EL¡± I smiled and wrote it down. ¡°There that¡¯s your name. Kay, I, EL, EE. That is how you spell it.¡± I spelled it out in the dirt on the ground. The boy looked it over for a minute, and marveled at it. Honestly it wasn¡¯t that big of a deal. I had him practice writing it a few times in the dirt before letting him write it on the tablet. The result was a crude rendition of his name, but he seemed content by it. At least I knew his name now. ¡°Now, go meditate until morning. You will find that as long as I aid your meditation you will not want for sleep.¡± He nodded and quickly sat down in the position I had showed him. It¡¯s true that was the best way to begin meditation, but he wasn¡¯t a spell caster. So the only thing that really happened was that he concentrated fully on my commands. I changed the commands to one command nine times: Obey your Alchemist Master. He was already listening to me. Next I wanted him to obey. After an entire night of listening to the voices willingly, even some weak willed adults would fall prey to it. Of course I made sure the commands, that were all just one command repeated, were just outside of his range to actively notice. While he was meditating I also enchanted a few rocks with some of my mana. I made them all quietly play a recording. ¡°Obey your Alchemist Master.¡± If the kid wasn¡¯t completely mind wiped by the start of the next day, he would at least have a good start on it. In the meantime, I went outside. It was dark out, so I created a large underground room. The room was bare, but stretched on for a long time. It was big enough that I¡¯d have to spend at least twenty minutes running to get to the other end and back again. I focused on my mana. I began with 90% light mana, and stacked 5% fire mana, and 5% wind mana on top of it. I infused the mana into my muscles. It gave me a buff to dex. Not what I wanted. I tried 80% light, 10% fire, and 10% wind. Another buff, but not the one I wanted. I kept decreasing the amount of light mana by 10%, and increasing the amount of fire and wind mana by 5% each. Until it got to 50%. Then I started back at the top. This time I did 90% light mana, and 5% wind mana, then 5% fire mana. It gave me quicker reflexes slightly. Not what I wanted. I continued until light mana was 50% again. I still didn¡¯t get what I wanted. I began to alter the amounts of mana I infused into the attempts. Even going so far as to add 1000 mana as the upper limit of the spell. I continued like that for hours. Trying every conceivable way to fuse the mana types. I even tried using light mana as the base, then fire and wind, then more light mana on top. It still didn¡¯t work. I began to break down the contents of the mana types even more. I eventually got to one percent mana for fire and wind, stacked on top of each other with a base of light. I went all the way down to 50% light mana, but it still didn¡¯t work. I tried throwing more light mana on top. I had about half an hour until the sun rose, so I didn¡¯t have much more time to be messing around like this. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I had planned to recreate my speed boost I had used while in the worm caves, but nothing was coming from it. Eventually I had a light mana base of 52% and fire wind and light at 16% each. Each mana type was stacked upon another. A total of 1000 mana was used for the spell. The moment I enforced the final light mana block of one percent of the total power of the spell, the entire spell structure began to swirl. My mind filled with the sight of the mana infused tornado. The center of the whirlwind was light mana, while tendrils of fire, wind, and then light streamed around it.
Light Speed (Minor) The target gains incredible movement speed. The target is granted a speed of 15x their normal amount. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The target¡¯s reaction times, and ability to obtain information in this state are not enhanced. Any physical damage the target receives while in this state will multiply by fifteen. Energy, power, velocity, and all other numeric values remain constant for all those not buffed by this spell. I.e. if the target touches a blade in mid-swing, they will still be cut by the force of the blade, although it is seemingly moving at a slower pace. All magical damage will remain the same. Spells with an area of effect will effect the target as normal, as long as the magic used to create the spell comes in contact with the user. Damage over time will seemingly be slowed to 1/15th of normal. Mana regen, health regen, and stamina regen will seemingly be slowed to 1/15th of normal. Stamina consumption will remain the same. This spell allows for total movement at the enhanced speed, but the target must be able to naturally process the enhanced flow of time. The base spell cost for this spell is 1000 mana.
My eyes lit up as the spell completed. Everything seemed to instantly pass me. My body responded to well to my desires. I tried to slowly lift a hand, but ended up almost dislocating my should due to the insane speed. I activated the special effect of my Instant Analysis. It slowed time by ten times. At least seemingly. During that time I couldn¡¯t move either, but my mind worked. I slowly raised my hand back up. At least this time I could actually see it. It still moved fast though. The fifteen times movement speed was no joke. I used a few other buffs, and made them permanent. I had quite a bit of mana, even after having given the boy several buffs as well. My five senses were instantly sharpened, enhancing the ability of Instant Analysis even further. Unfortunately the effect of the speed boost ended all too soon. I only had a matter of a few seconds of my fiendish speed while using Instant Analysis, to enjoy myself. That didn¡¯t matter. I turned off Instant Analysis, and meditated to regenerate some mana quickly. I only needed about half a minute to restore my lost mana. With my other buffs going, I reapplied the buff, but this time made it permanent. The cost was only 1.26 times the buff total, since my Magical Master group skill was up to 75. So I only used up 1260 mana to use it. With the buff to my senses, and my skill in full play, I could just barely keep up with the new speed. It was still a bit faster than me, but my mind could process the high influx of information more easily thanks to Instant Analysis. Not only did the skill increase the speed I got the information, it got a ton of information and made it easily accessible to me. The resulting combination was nothing short of game breaking. I created an earth spike and shot it out. Normally it would take me a fraction of a second to complete this, and technically, it still did. However, it seemed like it took several seconds, about seven. The spear slowly formed, and I saw my mana bar drop accordingly. I took out my staff, and began hammering away at the spike as it broke through the surface and revealed itself. My staff chipped away at the spear, even as it began to reveal itself. I tried to get my fairies to buff me as well, but none of them responded. I guess it didn¡¯t extend the speed buff to them. Oddly enough the spike seemed to break only very slowly. As if the damage transmitted to it hadn¡¯t had enough time to really set in. This made some things a bit harder to be fair, but it also meant I could hit the same part on someone¡¯s body many times as quickly as I could, and they would feel the effects of those punches at fifteen times speed. I ran to one side of the large room to another, keeping track of the amount of time it took me. The time was the same as normal, but I was sped up by 15x. So instead of about a minute or so, it was a handful of seconds. TOO OP! I REALLY wanted to playing around with my new buff, but I had goals I set myself. I wasn¡¯t going to give up on controlling this kid, and eventually others, just because of a cool buff I got! I opened up a pathway out of the room, and filled the entire room with natural earth mana. My training place was no more. I quietly flew to my cave, and placed my hand on the boy¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Wake.¡± The boy woke from his ¡®meditation¡¯. He blinked, and stretched. ¡°Master, every time I meditate on the voices, I feel completely refreshed! I am lucky that you are my teacher!¡± ¡°I¡¯m glad you are enjoying yourself.¡± I said with a fake smile. ¡°Go collect your potion, we are going to back to your home.¡± The instant my words left my mouth, he went to get the potion. Whether that was from the brainwashing, or from being happy about returning home was up for debate. A debate I intended to settle on our way back to his town. We walked through the fields to return to his home. When we were less than a minute away, I turned to him. ¡°Ah, I forgot the potion I made last night. Would you get it for me? My bones aren¡¯t what they used to be.¡± The boy stopped walking forward, and went to get it. ¡°And be quick about it!¡± He instantly dashed toward my cave. He tripped on the way there, but that didn¡¯t even slow him down. While falling he simply increased his speed and righted himself. Moments later he returned with my potion. ¡°Good boy. You know to listen to your elders.¡± During our trip I gave out several other commands. He instantly obeyed almost all of them. We had stumbled upon a blood lotus on a rotten log. ¡°Kyle, cut your palm to drip blood on the mushroom. That way we can bind it and take it with us.¡± He hesitated a moment, unsure of whether or not to obey. His emotions were conflicted according to Instant Analysis. He eventually did drip the blood, so I healed his wound. So he still won¡¯t do anything that would bring himself harm. At least he will submit to anything else. I changed four of the commands going through his mind. Instead of nine commands saying, ¡®Obey your Alchemist Master.¡¯ There were five that said that, and four that said, ¡®No orders from your Alchemist Master says will harm you.¡¯ With both of those in place I decided he should become more pliable. If it was this much work to brainwash one child, imagine how hard it would be to brainwash a king. Of course I was going for long term brainwashing here. I could have just gone brute force, and temporarily overridden his mind. Then he would probably do whatever I commanded, but would know it after the fact. I wanted an actual mind puppet. We made it to the village by early afternoon. The boy seemed surprised by the turn of events, but I had sped our way along by having the wind always at our backs. One of the village ¡®guards¡¯ saw us coming, and ran off somewhere. Even before we had arrived, we were greeted by the village elder, and the boy¡¯s mom. The boy, upon seeing his mother for the first time in a week, ran into her arms right away. I forced myself to chuckle at the sight. It struck a bit close to home. Never mind that though. They were just ones and zeros. Just ones and zeros. He looked up at his mother, and proudly presented his potion to his mother. ¡°Mama! Look! Look what I made!¡± He gleefully shoved the potion into his mother¡¯s hands. She looked at it for a moment, and gave him a smile. It looked a bit condescending to me, but the kid didn¡¯t seem to notice. I gingerly walked up to them. ¡°The boy is right. He made that himself. From pickin¡¯ the herbs, to crushing ¡®em down. The only thing I did was given him his tools. He¡¯s not bad either. He¡¯s the only apprentice I¡¯ve had that could make a potion in only a week. Th¡¯ boy¡¯s got talent. A rare gem.¡± Kyle looked proudly at his mother, chest pushed out. His mother looked at me, even if I didn¡¯t have Instant Analysis to show me her emotions and I had never studied people, I¡¯d be able to see how grateful she was. ¡°Thank you sir. Thank you so much.¡± She bowed her head deeply. I waved away the thanks. ¡°That¡¯s enough of that. The boy hasn¡¯t seen you in a week now. I¡¯ve enough sense to let a boy spend a bit of time with his mother.¡± I put one finger up. ¡°But remember Kyle, we are going to leave in one month. I still expect you to come to me every morning for training. And each night I¡¯ll see to your meditation.¡± The mother looked confused, but didn¡¯t ask about why an alchemist had to meditate. No doubt Kyle would tell her everything about his training when they got home. As the duo walked off, I turned my attention to the town elder. ¡°Pardon my manners. I¡¯ve neglected you.¡± The elder shook his head. ¡°No, it was good of you to allow the boy to see his mother. I take it that after the month is over, you¡¯ll not be coming back here for a while?¡± Wow. I mean¡­ wow. It actually was my plan to set it up to seem that way, but for the town elder to catch on so quickly¡­ It just went to show that his wisdom being the highest in the town wasn¡¯t just for show. I nodded thoughtfully. ¡°Hm, just so. I¡¯ll let the boy spend a bit more time with his mother. If he is acceptable then he¡¯ll come with me when I leave the town. If he isn¡¯t then he¡¯ll have still learned something useful from me. ¡°Tonight I¡¯ll visit his home and allow him to get into his meditative trance, and talk to his mother about my plans. If she agrees we will leave in a month. ¡°If it¡¯s alright,¡± I continued, ¡°I¡¯d like to stay at your manor for this time. Of course I wouldn¡¯t just ask for charity though.¡± I handed him the potion I had made before. The one that almost healed 3k hp. ¡°Will this suffice as payment for a while?¡± His eyes widened as he vigorously nodded his head. ¡°Please sir! Right this way, I¡¯ll have someone show you where you can stay!¡± Update Alright guys! I''m back! Sorry about the brief time with no chapters. I had finals, then two birthdays i had to shop for back to back. As of this moment i am freeee! I will try to get multiple chapters out each week. Just like the good old days. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Thanks for sticking with me this long! Dive 93: A New Saga Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice taught his ¡®apprentice¡¯ how to do compound ingredients, dry them, then fuse them together. He also learned how to buff himself with an insane 15x speed buff. He realized that with his Instant Analysis he basically slowed down time for everyone else. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) That night, I went over to the boy¡¯s house. He had been speaking with his mother at length about various things, but it was time for his nightly ¡®meditation¡¯. I knocked lightly on the door. After a few moments the woman hesitantly answered. ¡°Hello?¡± Her meek voice was almost scared. ¡°Ahem. It¡¯s me. I came for Kile. It¡¯s time for his meditation.¡± I said so in an almost apologetic tone. She slowly opened the door, and made sure I was who I said I was. When she finally let me in, she bowed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry sir, I just didn¡¯t know who would come around this late.¡± I waved my hand dismissively. ¡°Don¡¯t fret. As long as I can continue the boy¡¯s education, I¡¯ll be content. I must make sure he meditates tonight to get the full effect of his learning thus far.¡± The boy was already sitting on the ground, when I peaked in on him. His mother nodded, obviously not understanding why I made him meditate. Or perhaps she didn¡¯t even know what meditation was. Either way, she let me in, and I saw to the boy. When I put the various buffs on him, I changed one of the instructions. Before it had been five instructions of Obey your Alchemist Master¡¯, and four that said, ¡®No orders from your Alchemist Master says will harm you¡¯. I changed two of the five instructions, and one of the four. The new given instructions were: ¡®Meditation is good¡¯, ¡®You want your mom to meditate¡¯, ¡®Convince your mom to try meditating¡¯. I was hoping that the next day the boy would pull his mom into getting meditation done. If that was the case, I¡¯d be able to extend my influence slightly. The trap was that I still only had nine orders I could give at one time. If I could somehow get her to convince herself to follow me, that¡¯d be great, but I knew that I would have a tough time of it. I could make an enchanted set of stones, but if I branched out to other people, they might get suspicious if multiple people found those stones in their houses. Plus keeping up with that many enchantments would be a headache. Unless I made them with a set amount of mana, or made it so they absorbed mana from the environment, I¡¯d have to fuel them with my personal mana stores. After switching up Kyle¡¯s instructions, I spoke to his mom a bit. She showed me to the sitting area, and we began to talk. I spoke first about her son. ¡°Kile is a very good sort. He obeys instructions well, and doesn¡¯t mind getting his hands dirty. I like him. Have no fear I, Karma Lithe, will make sure he lives up to his highest potential.¡± I started off giving her a false pseudonym. She needed to know ¡®my¡¯ name for the next part of my plan. ¡°When the boy is finished with his apprenticeship, I will let him wander the world.¡± She looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression. ¡°But sir, why would you let him go free after all of the work you will have done giving him his skills?¡± I smiled and shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t want a lackey. I want someone to carry on my skills and methods once I¡¯m dead. As long as he takes on a disciple in the future, well that¡¯s all I can ask.¡± We spoke of several things for a bit, mostly involving her son. After a while I departed. I went outside, and hid myself with darkness mana. After I made sure no life mana signatures were next to me, I activated my Instant Analysis, and my speed buff. I searched out light mana signatures, and quickly found a group of wolves. Not demon wolves, just regular ones. I had a thought, and switched what I was looking for. Around me popped up four darkness mana signatures. I followed one, and found out my idea was correct. Demon wolves and other demon animals had darkness mana signatures. I activated my wind mana shoes to walk on the wind. It only took 10 mana every 15 seconds, but that was because my speed was 15 times normal. I circled around the demon wolves, and made a plan of action. I started by equipping myself with both Eli and Golem, they each to several seconds to coat me. It had always seemed instant before. The wolves were asleep. They slept huddled closely together. I picked up a few rocks as I circled them, and then started my plan. I took out my staff, and pulled out the two blades hidden within. I threw a rock at the closest wolf, and ran up towards them. At the same time I canceled my wind shoes. The noise from my faint, but exceedingly fast steps, slowly roused the rest of the wolves. The first wolf was already on its feet, and beginning to chase after me. Unfortunately for it, I was already on the other side of the pack. I hit a few of the wolves with my blades. The damage was still calculated at the moment I hit them. I jammed my blade into the left flank of one of the wolves. The blade itself seemed mired in a thick molasses. It took considerable effort to force the blade to cut deeply into the pelt of the wolf. Far more effort than normal. Since that wolf still hadn¡¯t registered the pain, I went to a different one. Giving a few light strikes against the wolf didn¡¯t seem to take any effort above the norm. Instant Analysis, in addition to speeding up the processes of my mind, showed me the perfect way to attack in the manner that I wanted. In only a few light swings on the same spot of the wolf, I was able to duplicate the depth of the wound from the other wolf. A few light swings took much less time, and gave about the same damage. I guess I¡¯ll be doing light damage repeatedly while moving quickly from now on. I looked around, and noticed the entire pack of twenty or so wolves was staring at me in anger. My mind flashed a danger warning. I instantly began to plot an escape route. Instant Analysis showed me the best was to escape: a brisk walking speed. I followed Instant Analysis¡¯ opinion, while looking back. The wolves seemed to be pushing themselves as hard as possible, but the gap between us only continued to grow. Eventually the wolves were so far behind me, I had to use Instant Analysis to even be able to pick them up. My eyes lit up when I noticed them, metaphorically speaking of course. I turned back, and decided to play with the pups for a while. I knew all of their designed moves, I could easily out maneuver all of them with my speed, so I was going to put my buff to the test. I wanted to test the absolute limits of my buff. I ran back towards the wolves, only to stop in the middle of them. Most of the wolves jumped backwards, only two remained within striking distance of me. I quickly dispatched the two that were foolish enough to stay close. The remaining wolves formed a circle, with me at the center. I was paying full heed to Instant Analysis. The wolf facing my back jumped at me, but I was warned instantly thanks to my skill. I bent down at my knees, and brought both of my swords into an arc above my head. The force of the jump made the wolf just barely meet the tip of each sword. A small trickle of blood fell from the wolf as it passed harmlessly over my head. At the moment the first wolf was passing over me, two other wolves pounced at me. One came from the left area behind me, the other came from my right. The wolf from the right jumped at my legs, while the wolf from my left went for my head. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I watched the slow motion jumps, and waited for the perfect moment. The wolves looked like they were slowly flying towards me. They continued to sail through the air for a full two seconds, before I easily stepped out of the way. I turned around to where I had been a moment ago, and stabbed downward with one of my swords. I put as much weight behind the strike as I could. Even with Golem¡¯s help, I had a tremendously hard time puncturing the bone of the wolf. After a full second of effort, the skull gave way. Thick liquid brain matter sprayed from the open wound as I took my sword out. The wolf that aimed for my legs was still mid jump, so I gave it a hard kick to the stomach. Seeing the force of the kick didn¡¯t do a lot to change the direction of the wolf, I kicked it a few more times. After watching for several seconds, I noticed the direction start to ¡®abruptly¡¯ change. I moved out of the path of another jumping wolf, and kicked the wolf I sent flying again. After repeating this a few times I noticed something. Kicking the wolf once would do as much damage as a normal kick, but it would seem to take longer for it to take effect. Kicking multiple times closely together amplified the power of the kick. It was like I was kicking with 15 times force if I kicked it 15 times. While I was digesting this new information, three wolves jumped at my simultaneously. I created three earth spikes, and watched them slowly rise from the ground. Each spike perfectly impaled an incoming wolf. With Instant Analysis working so well, and the ability actually function so quickly, I could perfectly execute any play I tried. I continued to play with the wolves for about an hour, or four minutes from their perspectives. I learned a lot of valuable information from them, so I decided to resurrect them with darkness mana. They were much weaker than corpses Kretchof could summon up, but they were just throw away tools anyway. It hadn¡¯t been very long, so I wasn¡¯t really tired. An hour of fighting seemed like a while, but honestly it was like a light workout. I had no adrenaline rush, no fear of death. I also gained a pitiful amount of exp. From the battle. I had Eli and Golem release their transformations for the moment, and went to hunt other demons. I hunted demons throughout the entire night. None of them even made me anxious. Not a single one could actually pose a threat to me as long as I was paying even slight attention. I even dissected a demon rabbit while it tried to attack. My speed boost did have certain interesting effects. For instance, once I dropped an item, it began to flow with regular speed. If I picked something up, it began to move quickly. The exceptions were things held by others, a bone in a wolf¡¯s mouth for instance, or living things themselves. Even if I grabbed a demon wolf, I couldn¡¯t make it move quickly. It was like I was pulling a very heavy object tied to a thick rope. I could run on water by slightly condensing the water mana, or by making a small amount of air mana form a circle around my feet. I got the idea from the water-striding lizard. They have huge foot area, and can distribute their weight evenly across each foot, making it harder to break the surface of the water. It¡¯s like piercing someone¡¯s skin with a needle, or a frying pan. The pan might hurt, but it probably won¡¯t break the skin. The problem there was the limited mana regen. With so little mana regen, only about 3 per second of my enhanced time, I had no way of keeping up with the drain of using such a skill. But it was one more move I could hold in case of emergencies. For the entire night I cleaned up demons around the town. I didn¡¯t get any real experience, but I did get a nice amount of items. Since I had manual item grab on, I had to personally skin and clean the demon animals. I did get a lot more items from it though. Before daybreak, I went back to Kile¡¯s house. I enchanted a small stone with a recording, and installed it in the cooking area. I canceled the buff after I made the stone. The sound it made was a low volume but high frequency one. It simply repeated ¡®Obey Karma Lithe¡¯. It would have been easy to make her fall in love, but it would also take a lot of time, and some preparation I wasn¡¯t willing to spend. So the stone. After cleaning up around the town for a while, I began to think of ways I might be able to make the town conform to my suggestions. The boy was an apparent success, at least so far, but I didn¡¯t even know if the brainwashing would hold after the skills were deactivated. I had a sudden epiphany. A way to create an army from the masses. Something most people would be unable to contest against. I closed my eyes, debuffed myself, and felt for the metal mana near me. I discarded all signatures above the ground. I focused solely on the metal below the ground. After only several seconds, a small jagged rock floated up. It was not a normal rock, but a small topaz. I smiled as I thought of my plan¡¯s success. I would pose as a jeweler, find some reason to sell for cheap, and give the entire village trinkets that would enslave them! Meanwhile, I had my small horde of undead wolves wait underground. The next night was shaping up to be pretty fun. At the same time, in a place some distance away: A dark room, lit only by a single black candle. A man clad in demonic black and red plate mail, toyed with a small harp. (Picture Daedric armor) He almost seemed nostalgic. He suddenly clenched his hand, and angrily crushed the harp into dust. ¡®At least he didn¡¯t lie about that. This armor really does increase my strength. I almost didn¡¯t believe it would allow me to increase my strength past the limit of the class.¡¯ A small red imp with horns and wings seemingly formed from the shadows. It looked around almost as if it were scared. The moment it noticed the demonic armor, it flew towards it. In an extremely deferential tone, it spoke. ¡°Greetings revered one. Master commanded me to hand you this letter, as well as tell you ¡®The Dragons have arrived as promised.¡¯ ¡± The imp fluttered its wings hastily, as if to retreat. A broken stub where its tail should have been, quivered as it flew. The man wearing the armor sneered. ¡°Did I say you could leave?¡± His hand shot out faster than the eye could track. Instantly the imp was within his palm. With a light squeeze the imp turned into a glob of blood and muscle. A red light suffused the armor. ¡®My stats went up again. It really looks like I¡¯ll be in this armor forever.¡¯ He sighed angrily as he looked at his level. 1. The armor, while granting him superior stats in almost every category, permanently reduced his level to 1. If he were to ever take it off, then he would have to gain at least 50 levels before he could wear it again. All of his stats had been drained by the armor, but then reinforced him anyway. The result was that while he wore the armor, he would have his old stats, but when he took it off he would go to 1 point across the board. With a casual flick of his wrist, a hole appeared in the nearby wall. Outside of the man-sized hole, streamed in light from the red sun. A landscape of death and decay greeted the man. A thunder of dragons roared nearby, ready for the blood they were owed. ¡°Voice, I¡¯m coming for you.¡± Hey guys! Thanks for reading another chapter! I want to let you guys know that I¡¯m back (I have already put an update about that though). I also want you all to know that I¡¯m either going to be putting the story into two halves each chapter, or do separate chapters for Voice and whoever-the-heck-this-is. Let me know what you guys think, and why! The poll is up. I am starting another chapter right now though. So however the poll goes in the next few hours will determine at least how the next chapter will look. Dive 94: A Merchant Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice used his insanely fast speed to kill several demon animals. He resurrected them, and made a plan to conquer the small town. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) One last note. This is going to be the last chapter¡­ That I use first person in. I¡¯ve given it a try, and I think I want to try 3rd person omniscient. Remember that this story was a writing experiment. I¡¯ve done things that were my most difficult, like fight scenes and foreshadowing, so I want to work on point of views now. Although I still need to work on making foreshadowing a bit less obvious. I decided to give everyone a bit of warning. I let the boy stay with his mother throughout the day. Mostly to let me work on what I needed to do. I spent several hours pulling out various gems from the ground. It took longer and longer to do. The first few gems only took a matter of minutes to find and harvest, but then they became more scarce. I had to actually search thoroughly to find them. I had a handful, but I needed many more. I moved the light mana around me, much like I had seen EDI do with her skill. I flew into the air as I headed to a densely wooded area. The rush of the morning air left a crisp flow in my lungs. The sun slowly rose over the horizon. The yellow dyed sky went on for ages. I picked up the backpack I had hidden away, and flew to a new location. I landed in a random location, and sat down. After searching for a bit, I found a single gem. I went to a new location after I was sure I wouldn¡¯t be able to find any more any time soon. I repeated this throughout the entire morning. By noon I had enough gems to outfit everyone in a large town, so it would take no effort to give everyone in a small village such as this a single gem. I didn¡¯t know how to craft jewelry exactly, but I could do something nice. After fathering the gems I took a handful of rocks from nearby. With a bit of thought, I made each rock into a perfect sphere. I shaved off some of the earth mana from each one, until they were all about an inch in diameter. From there I formed them into rings of various sizes. From the size of a child¡¯s finger, to one that would fit a robust man. I polished each stone until they shone like sapphires. In the center of each was a perfect indention, the size of a small stone. I used the mana ability granted to me by Gnome to cut the gems into perfect sizes. I expanded the indentions in the rings, and placed the gems inside. After placing the gems, I closed the rings over them. I then enchanted each gem with a small amount of wind mana. Just enough to make it send out a low-volume phrase ¡®Obey Voice0fReason¡¯. Each ring only held a small amount of mana, so I enchanted the polished stone. Using the Ancient Elven language, I enchanted each polished stone ring with the phrase ¡®Absorb Mana From Wearer¡¯. A short phrase that simply looked like a unique design. The mana it took was very little, so most people would be able to handle it. The worst case scenario was that the spell stopped working for a while, until the person wearing it regained a bit of mana. I used the disguise skill. My face began to elongate slightly. My hair became grayer. My features became softer. By the end of it I looked like a wizened old man, that had been through many years of happiness. My body began to bloat slightly, and became thicker. My plump happy form, gave me an overall look of a happy wealthy merchant. I had prepared before leaving the city. One of the things I did was buy a few sets of clothing. Something for any general occasion. I had a wealthy looking set, a beggar looking cloth, something that might pass for a scribe¡¯s outfit, and obviously the garb of a teacher. I took out the wealthy looking set. *Sigh* ¡® I guess I really have to do this.¡¯ The clothing didn¡¯t cost me anything, as it was ¡®donated¡¯ by a generous adventurer that was away at the time. My face knotted up in an internal debate for a moment. Finally I nodded. With a wave of darkness mana I called for one of the wolves I brought back from the dead. It¡¯s body, almost completely skeletal at this point, shambled out of the wooded area towards me in moments. While I waited I put the clothing on. ¡°Attack me.¡± The wolf almost flew at me to attack. In the moment it was sailing through the air, I buffed myself with several permanent buffs. I quickly stacked ten of my Damage Immunity (minor) buffs on. There are a lot of times I get sidetracked while doing something fun, but this one made me a bit upset. Since the moment I had gotten more than 10k mana, I never really thought of trying all of my buff combinations again. I had a sudden epiphany, and added ten more.
Damage Immunity (Major) The target gains immunity to damage. The target gains a bonus 800% armor rating. The target also gets a total of 400% hp bonus. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 10,000 mana.
!!! ¡°WHAT THE FUCK!¡± The wolf obeyed the last instruction it was given, and continued to sail towards me. I sidestepped it, ¡°STOP ATTACKING!¡± I unconsciously added a bit of wind mana to my voice, causing it to rumble outwards. I hit the wolf with the back of my hand. The wolf went spinning from the force. It hit the ground lightly, and stood back up. The wolf whimpered and stood stock still. ¡°What the actual fuck!?¡± 800% armor rating? My armor was already pretty defensive when I had it equipped. 25 points of defense reduced a weapons attack by 25 points. If it didn¡¯t have more than that, it couldn¡¯t even hit anything. That was just some basic iron armor too. If I had better material to give Evan, I¡¯m sure he could have made me better stuff. But 800% more? That made it a total of 225. That meant that something as paltry as EDI¡¯s Sai wouldn¡¯t even be able to get past it. Of course if she struck for a weak spot that would change. AND MY HP! My face began to hurt, as my smile seemed to want to break my cheeks apart. I felt my eyes get watery, but didn¡¯t let any tears fall. That would have ruined the moment. ¡®I¡¯m not weak anymore.¡¯ *Sniff* My whole game experience, since that patch in the worm tunnels, had been dogged by my low hp. That problem seemingly just resolved itself. At least a little bit. From a pitiful 100 hp, to an astounding 500 hp! That might not seem like a lot, seeing as EDI had 2,000 hp at level 74. It was still a lot to me. It was as if I had 5 times as many lives to mess with. It would take 5 times as many hits to hurt me. I wanted to test it out, but I also wanted to hurry my plan along. Not to mention I had no one good enough around this area to put up a fight. So I took the buff off, while mentally noting to go through all of my buffs at the soonest possible chance. I had the wolf attack me again, but this time only slightly buffed myself. The wolf attacks hurt like hell whenever they landed. I ran away from him, without using my speed buff, to make it more realistic. I even called out a few more wolves when I was confident my healing abilities could keep up with the damage. After maybe ten minutes or so, I disbanded the group. They went back to the areas they were stationed at, and I loosely healed up some of the more sever wounds. I checked my disguise once more, and changed my name to Sherman of Sherwood. Alliteration, heh. My 10k mana I used to buff myself had already regenerated. I used a bit of water mana to make myself sweat a bit, and fire mana to make my body seem hot. After I was satisfied with everything, I began running back to the town. Even without making myself get hot, or the water mana making me sweat more, I would have been a mess. A twenty minute run through a thick forest would have made anyone tired. I was honestly panting by the time I made it to the village. When I saw that a guard had noticed me, I started phase two. ¡®Eli, I want you to trip me after I run a few feet. But I¡¯ll be watching what you do, so you better be subtle about it.¡¯ Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. I could trip myself, but if I didn¡¯t know what was coming, it would seem more real. So I had Eli do it instead. That way I¡¯d have no idea when it would happen. A small rock suddenly jutted out of the road. I stumbled on it intentionally. ¡®I guess that¡¯s all the subtly I can expect from someone with rocks for brains.¡¯ I laid on the ground, and forced myself to fall unconscious by using the relaxation debuff. ¡®I just hope I get woken up before nightfall.¡¯ Several hours later. I hazily opened my eyes. I was in the Elder¡¯s home. I was on a comfortable bed, surrounded by a dense crowd of people. The people were all crowded together, as if to gawk at the animal brought in. I obviously recognized the people around me, but I feigned ignorance. ¡°Hero?¡± I looked at a man that was nearby. As my vision cleared, I realized I was surrounded by the entire village. I even noted that the boy and his mother were there. The village Elder came near me. ¡°Hello son.¡± He said with a grin. ¡°One of our town guards here noticed you had fallen a ways back near the edge of the forest. What with you being covered in wounds, we took you in.¡± He kind of smirked a bit. ¡°Well we have this here healing potion.¡± He pulled out the potion I had given him the night before. ¡°It was made by a very powerful alchemist. The best this town¡¯s ever seen at least.¡± ¡®Not like that is saying much for a backwards ass place like this.¡¯ ¡°We are willing to help you, but you see¡­ We are a poor village. We don¡¯t have enough money to give charity out. We were going to sell this when the merchants came back around but if you wanted to trade for it¡­¡± He let the offer stand. They had no doubt learned of the jewelry I had on me. I did a quick earth mana check, and noted that none of them were missing. I displayed a bit of a frown. Then shook my head as if in acceptance. ¡°I¡¯ll trade you, but only for one reason. I was attacked by wolves. That¡¯s why I¡¯m like this.¡± One of the villagers gasped, but they seemed to all understand what had happened. ¡°A gentleman named Voice0fReason came by after my caravan had been slaughtered, but before they killed off the last two of us. By the time he made it to the wolves, I was the only one left.¡± I made a single tear fall down. ¡°My entire caravan. All of my friends. Dead. I would have gone off into the woods for revenge, if not for him. I might be a merchant, but I believe in paying favors owed. He told me to come this direction and I¡¯d find a town. I was to give you all a warning: Undead wolves will attack at nightfall. He said that Mar had told him personally.¡± The people began to murmur amongst themselves. Most were frightened, but some still didn¡¯t believe me. I decided to drive it home. ¡°He isn¡¯t coming to save you though. He says Davros, the god of darkness, is planning an evil war to kill off all non-worshipers. He said that he sent a man ahead of me. One that was good with potions. One that should have come seeking an apprentice. ¡± Many of the people were wide eyed at this. Only a few sceptics held firm. That was alright though. I didn¡¯t even need anyone to believe me. I just needed to get them to wear my jewelry. ¡°I have decided to follow this Voice0fReason, and use everything within my ability to make sure his quest is a success. So anything you can donate to the cause will be accepted.¡± As if by unspoken consent, the group adopted expressions that showed what they thought of the idea. Disdain. ¡°I-I don¡¯t mean for free. I¡¯ve told you I¡¯m going to follow him with everything I have.¡± I pulled out my backpack. As I opened the zipper, a mound of jewelry flooded out. It was about a tenth of what I had. I looked around in the suddenly deathly quiet room. ¡°It¡¯s yours. All I want are supplies. Supplies enough for a small group of arm men to live on for a while.¡± The Elder looked at me suspiciously. ¡°Why would you do that? According to you, you barely knew that man.¡± I made my aura more noticeable, and tinged it with a fiery anger. ¡°BECAUSE THOSE UNDEAD DESERVE TO DIE!¡± One of the children near me took a step back in fear. ¡°Sorry! Sorry.¡± I shook my head in apology. My face still contorted in rage, I continued. ¡°All undead deserve to die after what they did to us! My caravan and I were a peaceful people. Why would undead attack us? We weren¡¯t in their territory. We had enough charms to ward off an army. It was because of Davros! I will stand against him in everything that I do! I hunger for money! That is what Voice said. He said wanting nice things isn¡¯t bad, but Davros has a hold on my unearthly desire for wealth. I will purge myself here, and go help Voice0fReason defeat the hordes of the damned. Even if I can only gain him a few seconds of respite, that will be enough.¡± With my tirade over, the Elder shooed everyone else out of the room. They slowly shuffled out. It took a good few minutes for everyone to leave. ¡°What¡¯s your game?¡± He asked when we were alone. ¡°There¡¯s no way someone would just up and follow another man. I get that he saved your life, but you can¡¯t be so loyal from just that. What are you up to?¡± I shook my head disapprovingly. ¡°If you don¡¯t want to trust me fine. I don¡¯t care. I simply want to trade for goods. I don¡¯t mind whatever price you name. You can have however many of my wares that you want in exchange.¡± The Elder thought for a moment, then asked, ¡°And if I said I wanted all of them for a bit of food?¡± ¡°And that potion. You were going on and on about that potion. I¡¯ll trade you all of my- these things, for a bit of your food, and that potion.¡± Suddenly it seemed as if he caught on to something. ¡°Oh really?¡± He asked suspiciously. ¡°Is it just because I spoke about it? Don¡¯t all merchants have the identify skill?¡± I angrily sighed. ¡°Fine you caught me. It was the potion I wanted. But it really is for the greater good. How much do you want for it?¡± The Elder smiled at me in a condescending way. ¡°Well you so easily pulled out the many items. How many more do you have?¡± I hit the backpack. About half of the total I made fell out. ¡°Is that enough? I don¡¯t usually haggle like this, but that I¡¯m sure that Voice0fReason could do wonders with that potion. I can¡¯t give you any more though. I need to be able to trade for other things that he might need.¡± The elder tapped his chin. ¡°It sounds to me like you still have some lingering attachment to gaining off of other¡¯s loss. That sounds like Davros still has you under command. I want twice what you¡¯ve put out so far.¡± ¡°YOU THIEF!¡± I lost my composure as I yelled at him. ¡°Do you think just because I¡¯m turning over a new leaf that you can rip me off!? Fat chance! Give me the damn potion for what I¡¯ve offered!¡± He put the potion away smugly. ¡°It looks like you don¡¯t want it after all. I might just have to poor it down our well. We had a sickness take the town recently, and it could do wonders for us.¡± I snarled at him. He got turned around, and began walking out the door. After a moment¡¯s hesitation I called, ¡°WAIT! FINE! I¡¯ll do it! I¡¯ll do it. Twice what I just offered? Here. It¡¯s really all that I have.¡± The rest of the contents of my bag fell out, not leaving even one. At the same time I took off all of my orders for Kyle, and placed them on the Elder. All of the orders said ¡®Distribute the Jewelry to Your People¡¯. I made sure they were nowhere near overpowering. He walked back towards me. ¡°I guess we have a deal then.¡± With a clap he summoned one of the guards from outside the door. The man quickly gathered up the jewelry, and went to put them somewhere. The old man gave me the bottle and slowly walked away. He called nonchalantly, ¡°You can stay as long as you like. Hehe.¡± ¡®That bastard really tried to take me for a ride.¡¯ My plan had worked, but I noticed that the Elder was quite a bit more greedy than he let on. He shouldn¡¯t notice anything wrong with the amount of jewelry though. I made enough for about 10% more than the amount of people in the village. That way he could still sell some off if he wanted to. I disappeared soon after he left. Only to arrive back in town as my ¡®Alchemist Master¡¯ guise several hours later. Just about the time it was for the wolves to attack. Gonna try to get another chapter out tomorrow. It will be a side chapter about that guy, *ahem*, that started hunting Voice. Dive 95: Side Story 1 Alright guys. This will unfortunately be the last chapter for a bit over a week, maybe even two. I am going out of town on vacation, and they won¡¯t have internet there (Although they are supposed to). When I get back I¡¯ll try to make it up to you all with a burst of chapters. Last time I went that hotel didn¡¯t have any internet access. Anyway, here is the first side chapter! A quiet night. The stars were blocked by a thick canopy of clouds. The lightless moon could do nothing to break out and reach the ground. A small village lay silent in a forlorn place. High above the village tiny specks could be seen, obscured by the clouds and darkness. A villager walked out of his house to use the privy, noticed the specks, and went about his business. The specks were so small that they didn¡¯t seem to be worth thinking about. Birds that high up couldn¡¯t even aim to poop properly. The night sky. The specks grew larger until they were almost discernable. The higher one went up, the more clearly one would be able to see the ¡®specks¡¯. The specks looked like the bodies of birds from several hundred feet above the ground. The intense wind at that altitude seemed to do nothing to them. At a thousand feet they seemed more flushed out. Legs could be seen. Four of them. Long necks ended in pointed snouts. At several thousand feet they were finally visible. Scales covered their bodies. Long tails ended in spikes. Talons and claws completed each leg. Snouts equipped with razor sharp teeth had bursts of fire or lightning seeping from between their teeth. Dozens of these dragons flew close together. Not often would they leave their home, but they had found the killer of their queen. They were out for revenge! The winds parted before them. The cold frosted their scales, but did nothing to harm them. The darkness hid their forms, but they could see perfectly well within it. Somewhere far away flew a lone dragon. The dragon circled above a familiar city. The outer walls of the city were small, but grew progressively larger as they neared the mountain the city spanned. On the mountain lay a large castle. The dragon flew high enough to block out the view of it from the city. After circling around the city several times, it let out a thunderous roar. The city was almost barren, since it was so late, but the roar roused the entire population. The instant the dragon roared, dozens of guards began filing people towards the castle. The city hadn¡¯t been attacked in weeks, but people still understood what they needed to do for safety. The dragon swiftly descended from the heavens. It tucked its massive wings into its sides, and plummeted downwards. The sheer force of wind against the dragon¡¯s scales would be enough to strip a normal person of their flesh. A moment after the roar sounded, it was followed by another. This time the sound was a high-pitched cawing. It came from a large series of caves near the castle. From the cave shot a dark shadow. If one were to look closely they could faintly make out the outline of a Gryphon. Nightmare-Wing! His powerful voice sounded out like a trumpet, calling all avian to follow under his banner. While Nightmare-Wing flew to intercept his foe, and finally keep his promise to Voice, hordes of flying creatures began to swarm towards the dragon. Nightmare-Wing shot forward with unfathomable speed. Easily eclipsing the speed that the dragon showed while falling. In a matter of moments, Gryphon collided with Dragon. Nightmare-Wing slammed his claws into the dragon, and demanded attention. His claws sunk slightly into the scales, but only managed to put a shallow row of marks on them. The dragon roared in anger. How DARE a lower life form try to harm it! The dragon was, as all dragons were, prideful before anything else. The moment the Gryphon attacked, it unfurled its massive wings, and shot backwards. A deep anger filled its eyes. From inside of its mouth began to pour a strange fiery light. A jet of flame, several yards in diameter, shot at Nightmare-Wing. Nightmare-Wing, the ever nimble, allowed his body to drop to one side, easily avoiding the fire. In return, he shouted at the dragon. A powerful void of wind ushered forth from his mouth. The wind could tear lesser creatures to shreds in an instant. It pushed the dragon back several feet. By the time the dragon stopped moving, the many types of flying lifeforms had flow into range. Each one bombarded it with a plethora of magic attacks, or long ranged attacks. The night sky lit up as if by countless small rainbows. Sounds like thunder echoed out when the dragon was struck by the vast amounts of incoming attacks. The dragon roared, and shot towards Nightmare-Wing. Hundreds of magic attacks aimed at the dragon missed because of the sudden movement, but some still hit on the mark perfectly. A black glow appeared directly in front of the dragon. Without enough time to avoid it, the dragon slammed head on into the orb. The dragon disregarded the impact, and ferociously clawed at Nightmare-Wing. The dragon¡¯s talons extended out and raked Nightmare-Wing¡¯s flank. Long trails of blood oozed out from the wounds. As the blood began to seep out of the wounds, the wounds themselves completely disappeared. The dragon roared at the outcome! First it gets attacked, then the enemy heals!? NO! The large amounts of magical attacks began to be bolstered by actual attacks from the various flying creatures. Beaks and claws of lesser creatures were no match against the scales of a dragon, but the black orbs that occasionally appeared seemed to create a weak point for the others to manage to damage the dragon. The dragon backed away from the attacking enemies, in an attempt to flay them alive all at once. Nightmare-Wing shot forward in that moment, and latched on to the belly of the dragon. The dragon shook itself violently, but could not dislodge the Gryphon. The dragon began clawing at its own belly to remove the pest. While it did some small damage to itself, the dragon felt its claws sink into the flesh of Gryphon several times. Yet the Gryphon refused to let go. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. The dragon was being bombarded from all sides by magic. The Gryphon attached to its belly didn¡¯t even seem to mind bearing the brunt of some of the spells. It merely clung on to the dragon. Its claws and beak slowly wormed their way past the scales, and bit into tough flesh. While the scales of a dragon are neigh impenetrable, its skin is no laughing matter. The skin of an adult dragon would be harder than most metals, while elastic as string. Nightmare-Wing continued to attack the dragon from up close. Spells bombarded the dragon¡¯s body. All manner of avian creatures attacked it from all directions. It began shooting fire at the avians, to stop the bombardment. Each shot forced dozens to fall to the ground and perish, but by this time, the massive number of flying creatures blotted out the sky. Even the people in the castle looked on in awe at the defense Voice had prepared. Many knew of the multi-layered defense system, but no one knew what it exactly entailed. Seeing so many fling creatures fighting off a dragon was a sight to remember. As the battle continued, the residents began to feel drowsy. The strongest of them fought it off for a time, but many succumbed to the promise of sleep. The battle raged on. The various flying creatures were slaughtered by the dozen, but they seemed endless. The amount of time they had lived here allowed them to breed far beyond what would normally happen. The relatively peaceful land outside of the city was perfect for hunting small and large game. They had no predators, so they grew without worry. Many of the creatures the dragon killed fell to the ground. It didn¡¯t waste energy, and only used enough the kill them. The magic attacks being hurled at it slowly chipped away at its armor, letting those brave enough to attack physically have a chance at hurting it. The battle continued for several tense minutes, but eventually had to come to a conclusion. The dragon was slowly but surely losing hp. The army of the Gryphon seemed totally unhurt by the attempts of the dragon to subdue them. The unending amount of enemies caused the dragon to question something: Where are all of them coming from? A quick glance downward answered that question. When things with wings lost the ability of flight they would fall and die. That was what the dragon was aiming for. But something was wrong. They were rising into the air! The ability of the Royal-Class Hyper Healer Gryphon was to force upon its followers a regenerative ability much like its own. Each of the beings following Nightmare-Wing, all had an unfathomable rate of recovery. If a single attack didn¡¯t kill them fast enough, they would just come back a bit more angry. By the time the dragon realized this, it was too late. Nightmare-Wing had finally penetrated into the stomach of the dragon! Not normally a place you would want to be, but Nightmare-Wing was special. It dove in even as the dragon howled in pain and anger. Seeing their leader¡¯s bravery only empowered his followers. As if on cue everyone attacking the dragon began focusing on the spot their leader had just been attacking. The dragon tried to fly away, but was stopped by a sudden pain in its chest. The loud thumping of its heart was no longer there. The dragon¡¯s natural instinct for life was the only thing tethering its soul to its body. It looked down at its chest in disbelief. At that exact moment its face was splattered in its own blood, as Nightmare-Wing shot out from inside of it. The dragon died, even as it realized what happened. A cheer rang out from the few remaining people that were awake. In the far distance, a shadowy figure sat atop a large head. The head was covered in scales, and was adorned with two snake-like eyes. ¡°Hmph. Is that all your army can manage Voice? To barely slay a vanguard of mine? Let¡¯s see how quickly I can destroy what took you so long to create.¡± Behind the man flew hundreds of angry dragons, all flying towards this one city. To reclaim their fallen brother¡¯s body, and lay siege to land stupid enough to claim their leader¡¯s heart. Meanwhile, in the labyrinth: Chao had been using some of the poison Voice had given him, to put the people of his town to sleep. The flying eyes that Voice gave Kretchof control of alerted Chao of the oncoming dragon horde. Chao, in accordance to Voice¡¯s wishes, had put everyone to sleep in the face of imminent death, to be carried into the dungeon by the chaos beings. Chao shook his head. Some of the people were to be trapped with luxurious rooms, created by Voice himself. Others were to be set free in the dungeon, or trapped in far inferior rooms. All of the ¡®otherworlders¡¯ were to be released into the dungeon as a form of training for Chao. He was allowed to kill them, but he didn¡¯t think that would be as fun as toying with them a bit. ¡°Go.¡± Chao nodded to the girl that was a follower of Kretchof. ¡°You are to kill all of the otherworlders without assistance from the dungeon. If you can do that, I might teach you Life Steal.¡± The girl jumped to obey. She had been told that Chao was creator of the dungeon, since his look was the same as Wolf¡¯s. She wanted to please him in whatever way she could. She was to be his disciple should he choose to teach her. The type of magic he knew was far beyond that of a necromancer. He could raise the dead, but he could also empower them beyond reason. Thus the hunt began. Hey guys! So if you like this story, even just want to give your opinion about it, drop me a rating! It really helps me gauge how i''m doing, especially since no one has rated my story in a while. And seeing that i''ve got more ratings, even if they''re not great ones, always makes me want to try harder! To get more chapters out! And to generally become a better author! Dive 96: Seeing The Future Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice gave a vast amount of jewelry to the town elder, as a merchant. The jewelry was enchanted to force out a simple message of ¡®Obey Karma Lithe¡¯ by using the wearer¡¯s own mana. He then arrived back in town as Karma Lithe. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Just as Voice entered the town, Kyle came running. Kyle looked to be out of breath, and distraught. ¡°Master! Master! It¡¯s mother! She¡¯s fallen sick!¡± Voice furrowed his brows. Sick? That wasn¡¯t part of the plan. He nodded his head once. ¡°Take me to see her. I¡¯ll see what¡¯s wrong.¡± Voice didn¡¯t want his plans to go awry just because Kyle¡¯s mother had to stay inside during the demon attack. He wanted Kyle¡¯s absolute obedience, for that he knew he needed to do something drastic for him. He hurried to the house Kyle lived in. Kyle followed closely behind him. A great amount of dust blew into the town from the west. Voice covered his mouth as he coughed heavily. ¡°What the hell?¡± Voice cursed as he got a notice.
You have been inflicted with an unknown disease. You will feel weaker, and eventually die unless it is cured.
Inspect has determined the disease to be: Blood Cough Disease.
Blood Cough Disease
Blood Cough Disease causes blood to by continuously created at an accelerated rate. The extra blood ends up being stored in the lungs, causing bloody coughs. Eventually the recipient of the disease will suffocate on their own blood. The disease is contracted by breathing it in. Players effected by this disease will continue to die once per day until it is cured or they become level one.
Mana Mages, and the derived classes, can learn lasting spells by disassembling them. Current amount of disassembling: 0%.
Voice looked aghast for a moment. Nope. Not gonna work like that. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. Inside of his body was a mound of darkness mana surrounding his bones and lungs. It had a complex pattern, and seemed to seep in on itself before producing more darkness that coiled around him again. The gryphon plague was like that too. Does that mean something? I only use mana blocks to create my spells. Other people seem to make constructions with the mana. Even that Johnny kid had a different method of control. How many ways are there to cast spells exactly? It was true. Voice had seen many ways people cast spells. Sometimes it was just a burst of that type of mana. Sometimes it was a burst of two types, like fire blasts. Sometimes it was things that looked like sculptures made of mana. Sometimes songs or feelings seemed to be the reason for the spells to work. Even enchanting with the ancient Elven language worked to produce magical results. That Hermit Mirror book and the Elven language both use words to make spells. Voice needed to do something about the disease, but he felt like he was on to something important. He used his ability to speed up his mind, and cast the speed buff on himself. In his hyper quick speed, he began to walk around and think. Different methods of casting magic. They can all get the same effect though. My way is obviously more precise than Johnny¡¯s, but he doesn¡¯t have to put much thought into developing a new spell. He just sings about it. Words can be as simple or complex as someone can imagine. Scrolls work with words, but I¡¯ve never actually bought one. Why would I waste money on something like that? But the Contract uses whatever language the race I want to trap has. Voice was thinking very hard about the situation. He knew he was on to something big, but couldn¡¯t put his finger on what. Hmm. Hmmmm. Magic. Casting magic. Enchantments. Feelings. Logic. Words. What do they all have in common? They all have an idea in mind. They all expect the magic to happen. They all use mana. I¡¯ve used the same method Johnny uses. I¡¯ve used enchantments, and logic. What about words? Is there some way to change the way I use magic? He began to run mental simulations as to what might happen if he were to fuse the different forms of magic, or use one type to enhance another. In a single second of real time, he had run many possible scenarios. In a minute he had run hundreds
You have shown exemplary skill in forming ideas and playing them out in your mind. You have gained the skill: Simulation.
Simulation Current Level: Novice Level 1 This skill can be leveled up by running simulations on a variety of ideas. This skill will automatically run in the background of your consciousness until the results are found. Every level in this skill will increase the accuracy of the simulation with a given amount of information. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to simulate more things at one and to a higher degree. Can currently be fused to: Group Skill: Instant Analysis. Can currently be fused to: Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Instant Analysis. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Instant Analysis? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
The sudden screen interrupted his intense concentration. Voice was a bit angered by the interruption, as he felt he was on to some deep secret of magic. Once he read over the information, that anger evaporated like water left in a desert. He chose not to upgrade Instant Analysis just yet, but chose to fuse Simulation into both of the group skills to get new skills. Instant Analysis + Simulation = Prediction Devourer of Knowledge + Simulation = Expound
Prediction Current Level: Novice Level 1 Prediction is a unique skill. Only by fusing an Identify type skill that has reached 100, with the skill: Simulation, can it be acquired. This skill has the ability to predict the future! ¡­ To a small degree. Based on information garnered from the Identify type skill, you will be able to predict events that will happen in the future. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Every level in this skill will increase the accuracy of the prediction with a given amount of information. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to further into the future. Current Prediction Length: 1 Second.
You have learned all of the required skills to upgrade the Group Skill: Instant Analysis. Would you like to exchange relevant skills for the Group Skill: Instant Analysis? You can choose to fuse them at a later time. At that time say exchange relevant skills.
He fused Prediction to Instant Analysis. He could hardly believe the result.
Instant Analysis Current Level: Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% This upgraded skill allows you to use the benefits from: Identify, Identify Compatible Skills, Identify Skill, Sense Potency, Automatic Sense Potency, Sense Skill Potency, Mana Sight, Aura Sight, Sense Motive, Sensory Perception, Search, Track, Taste, Spot, Search, Listen, Body Language Analyst, Detection, Detect Price, Stat Inspection, Empathic Connection, Sense Enchantment, Distinct Perception, Language Inference, Locate, Dialect Detection, Empowered Perception, Rapid Inspection, and Prediction. You can inspect anything. The higher the level of Inspect the more information you gain on the thing inspected. You must be able to see the thing to inspect it. To level this skill you must do an action that would be encompassed in one of the skills that were consumed to make this skill. This skill can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Analysis to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle skill Analysis to Manual.¡¯ This skill has a secondary effect: Slow Time! This can be toggled to automatic. If you wish to toggle this skill to automatic say: ¡®Toggle skill Slow Time to Automatic.¡¯ To toggle skill to manual say: ¡®Toggle Slow Time to Manual.¡¯ The dilation will be based on level and rank. With the addition of Prediction, this skill will be able make complex analysis on things that might happen. Current Prediction Length: 1 Minute.
A minute of predictions! He almost began to drool at the thought. That was equivalent of 15 minutes of thought processing if he were to use the Prediction to predict the end result of Simulation. Although it might be off by a lot, to predict the end result of a possibly faulty simulation was difficult at best. Expound was almost identical to a skill his Grimoire already had. It could theorize information from what he had read or seen. For instance the cause of a war given that the kings of each army generally acted like this or that. He used it to upgrade Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge, if only to increase the number of skills it encompassed. Finally he used Simulation to upgrade his Instant Analysis. The power of the simulations was basically at max from that. He could run up to ten simulations at once. Each one had a terribly high accuracy as well. After creating the two new skills, he fused Simulation into Instant Analysis. Because of the high level of Instant Analysis, Voice was able to run 10 simultaneous simulations. The first thing he did after, was to begin nine independent simulations. Each one was a way to take down one of the gods. When he began the simulation he shivered as he felt it take a full accounting of his abilities. Of course it couldn¡¯t take a measure of the gods, but it used what he knew of each to create a feasible plan. After that he began another experiment. He made an excuse to the boy, and went outside for a moment. He quickly dashed away from the town. When he got far enough to be sure that no one could see anything, he created a large stone, about the size of his entire body. He heated the core of the stone up until it became magma. He used wind mana and earth mana to toss it in the air and spin it. He began a simulation to determine where it would land. At the same moment, he used Predict to determine both the outcome of the simulation and the outcome from the actual event. The stone spun in the air, but when the mana supporting it stopped, it began to fall. When the stone got close enough to the ground, Voice made it explode. Stone and lava exploded everywhere, causing several fires to erupt. Voice extinguished them with a thought. He looked at the results of the skills. 1) Simulation concluded the stone would fall straight down, and leave a small crater. *Did not happen. 2) Prediction on the event concluded Voice would use mana to destroy the boulder, and it would scatter fires. *Did happen. 3) Prediction of the simulation concluded that Simulation would conclude the stone would fall straight down, and leave a small crater. *It did conclude that. So Predication is obviously better. The only problem is that I can only use it to determine things up to a minute later. After a few more minutes of study he had learned a great deal about the skills. Prediction worked in real time. Even if Voice sped it up using the time dilatation ability of Instant Analysis, it would still show the full minute of real time. Simulation would work for things longer than that, but would need more information to go on. It had to have exceptionally specific information if it was to be a contender with Prediction. Simulation worked with Voice¡¯s time, not real time. Pairing them together was outstanding though. For every second of real time, Simulation would have 15 seconds to figure things out. Prediction could piggy-back on this ability and use it to predict a 15 minute long Simulation. That meant an instant answer to a fifteen minute problem! The Simulation would take the data gained by Prediction, and use to continue the simulation. Effectively condensing 15 minutes of time into one second. The only problem? After a few seconds the simulation was so far gone that it couldn¡¯t hold together and the information was lost. Even doing it for more than 1 second left the information in a terrible state. Without an immense amount of information, this type of cheat was impossible. After another moment he seemed to remember something. Oh! Kyle brought me into his house to cure his mom¡­ then I was thinking about the fabric of magic! The skills had gotten him off track of his true goal, the pursuit of magic! He began using Simulation and Prediction to determine how he could possibly enhance his spell casting abilities. While the simulations began working, he quickly decoded the mana signature in his body. It had been impossible for him to cure Nightmare-Wing when something similar was used, but he had grown a lot since then. Plus he had a guinea pig to test his idea of the solution out on. The worse case scenario would be that she died. He knew he wouldn¡¯t feel remorse, he¡¯d just pack up and find somewhere else to practice his skills. After studying the mana signature of the disease for a few minutes, he looked at the results of Simulation. Blood sacrifice? It wasn¡¯t very helpful. The result showed him sacrificing someone, and absorbing their blood to infuse it into his magic. What is that even supposed to mean? Should I ¡­ Should I try it? Dive 97: Side Story 2 Johnny look at the city before him. Flying above it were countless flying lifeforms of all types. His face was contorted with rage. ¡°AGAIN!¡± The dragons flew into the massive blob that made up the flying army. Flame, lightning, ice, even gusts of intense wind slaughtered countless souls. Before they even hit the ground, they were attacked again. And again. And again. But every time they would die, they would return to life. These damn birds keep protecting the Gryphon! The Gryphon flew towards a dragon. Wherever it went, it was followed by a veritable horde. They would surround him, and protect him from the attacks of the dragons. Nightmare-Wing created a large gust of wind as it flew. Some of the smaller flyers were even blown away by the sheer force of his passage. The Gryphon flew straight towards one particular dragon. Claws and beak met scales and talons for a brief moment as the two collided. A hot gust of air caused Nightmare-Wing to instantly detach and rush away. The next moment a jet of flame bathed the dragon Nightmare-Wing had been latched on to. The flames did nothing to the scales, but some of the nearby lives were turned to ashes. Even as the ashes fell to the ground, they became what they had been like moments ago. ¡°FOCUS ON THE CAT!¡± Johnny yelled at the dragons. He couldn¡¯t help but feel they had something wrong with their minds if they couldn¡¯t even understand to kill the healer first. The dragons, as if compelled by some intangible force, all joined forces to shoot magic solely at Nightmare-Wing. Fire and ice collided, wind and lightning mingled together as they all shot towards the black Gryphon. Dozens of the Gryphon¡¯s subordinates tried to stop the wave of magic, but to no avail. Although greatly weakened, they magic made it through. The magic tore at Nightmare-Wing. The wind and ice cut deep into his skin. The fire and lightning burnt his body even blacker than it already was. The formidable currents of electricity even stunned Nightmare-Wing for a moment. In that moment several dragons fell upon him. Each cast of their potent magic cost them dearly. Dragon¡¯s got the most power out of their magic, but had mana regenerate very slowly. Though they could send out huge waves of destruction, they couldn¡¯t do so forever. Nightmare-Wing screamed out in pain as the currents of mana devastated his body. For a moment nothing happened as Nightmare-Wing¡¯s ungodly regeneration battled it out with the combined damage of dozens of dragons. Even Nightmare-Wing¡¯s regeneration had limits though. After that first moment, his body exploded in blood and viscera. Showering anything near it in a thick coat of black blood. The largest part of his body that was left intact could fit on a finger nail. Even before he hit the ground, his body began to pull itself together again. Johnny angrily glared at one of dragons. ¡°MANA SUCTION! NOW!¡± At the same time as he yelled, he crushed a yellow tablet. He pointed towards the dragon. A yellow beam shot out of his finger, and burrowed into the dragon. The dragon¡¯s eyes dimmed for a moment, and he dived towards the largest portion of Nightmare-Wing¡¯s remains. In mere moments he arrived at the point. His body bulged for a moment, before suddenly exploding outwards. Scales and bones flew like shrapnel. His blood seemed to bunch up, and was sucked towards a single point. The blood turned black, and instantly began forcing out a huge suction force. Although the birds didn¡¯t sense anything wrong, the dragons in the area clearly knew what was happening. Mana from the surrounding area suddenly flew towards that single point. The mana reconstructing Nightmare-Wing¡¯s body was sucked in as well. The blood in the area began to fly towards the blood point, and seemingly expanded the range even further. Nearby winged creatures fell from the sky like rocks. The dragons didn¡¯t stop there attacks, even after one of their own self detonated. Soon the single point of blood expanded to the size of a small bird. The black blood pool began widely fluctuating. One dragon saw this, and called out. The call was like a call to retreat. When it sounded out, all of the nearby dragons turned tail and flew. In the time it takes to blink the pool of black blood suddenly exploded out. Drops of the blood hit nearby enemies. Instantly their bodies exploded. When their blood hit nearby animals, they too would explode. It was a chain reaction of death. Soon the flying creatures understood what was happening, and dispersed. With no one left to consume, the magic of the blood diminished and eventually fell to the ground, inert. Johnny sneered at the city that was now far away. ¡°Heh. At least that damn flying cat is gone. Now we can have some real fun!¡± The dragons quickly encircled the rest of the living creatures, and devoured them or destroyed them with overpowered magic. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. At that moment, a cry came from afar. A dark shadow flew towards the group of dragons, and collided head on with one of them. With a raging cry, it flew straight into the mouth of a dragon. The dragon was stunned for a moment, then laughed heartily. A victory and a free meal? Great! The next moment made it regret these words. It felt a light rumbling, and looked at its underbelly. Suddenly a cry escaped its lips as its stomach was ripped open from the inside, and a pitch black Gryphon tore itself out. ¡°DIE! FOR MY FRIENDS!¡± Nightmare-Wing! POV: Chao Chao watched as the trainee hunted the otherworlders. She had pleased him over the past few weeks. She readily learned new magic, and seemed to be able to implement them after only a tiny amount of practice. She was akin to the Chaotic Lifeforms of old. With the entire dungeon under Chao¡¯s control, the players had no chance to actually get away. Chao didn¡¯t want to coddle the girl though. Kretchof had told him to train the girl, the best method of training was fighting for one¡¯s life, so that is what she was ordered to do. It was a bit too easy for her in Chao¡¯s opinion. She could easily cast any of the chaotic spells Chao taught, including how to siphon off mana from others. That was here specialty. She would suck a person dry before killing them. Chao taught her some simple magic such as shadow magic to move through the dungeon quickly be fusing to the shadows. He taught her how to use hell-fire, and even how to use earth mana to strengthen her defenses. Normally he would have jealously guarded the secret on how to use these magic abilities, but she had proven to him enough times that she was worthy of learning them. It¡¯s a shame that the ability to cast True Spells has been lost. She might even be worthy of learning one. The girl that used to be a necromancer Classed up to ¡®Chaotic Apprentice¡¯. It was similar to a mana mage, but focused almost exclusively on using spells from fused sources. She had hunted down the people in the maze in an instant. Finding them was easy, mostly due to the fact that she could sense whenever one of them used any type of mana. Spells and Abilities both used mana, thus she could sense whenever they used either one. Since the other players had to protect themselves the moment they got into the dungeon, she could tell where they were right away. The moment they died they respawned in their chosen city, far away from the dungeon. ¡­ Or at least that should have happened. Chao used some unknown means to force each otherworlders to respawn back in a certain room in the dungeon. Of course the trainee then proceeded to hunt them down again. The people were hunted for hours without respite. At first some of them thought it might be a glitch, but they kept appearing in the room after they were killed. All but one ran from the room to try to figure out what was happening. The one that stayed realized they were in a dungeon, and that they were forced to respawn in the safe room. He was the first one the trainee found and killed. His body didn¡¯t respawn until she had left 100 feet of the room. By that time, the last person also had left the room and she had to search elsewhere for prey. The dungeon mastered promised her a new spell should she kill enough of them. Her master had a way to communicate with anyone in the dungeon, and she knew she shouldn¡¯t question when she was done. She would keep going until he said it was enough. Suddenly she felt a huge fluctuation of mana. She looked toward the direction, obviously it happened outside of the dungeon. In that moment, Chao contacted her. In a slightly excited voice, he said, ¡°Ok. That¡¯s enough. Come I¡¯ll teach you Life Steal. Then I have another task. You will be going to collect a bit of Dragon¡¯s blood!¡± She ran straight back as fast as she could. Life Steal was one of the better magic spells she had been promised. Her face was flush with excitement as she returned. Hi guys! Thanks for reading so much! 97 chapters! Wow! So excited! I¡¯m also about to start on a mysterious new project! Super exciting! Don¡¯t worry though, it won¡¯t interfere with the chapter releases for DIVE. There is still a scheduled chapter due for you guys on Friday. This the side chapter for the week. Dive 98: Spell Sculpting Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice and Kyle¡¯s mom both caught a disease. The mana signature of the disease made Voice start thinking about the intricacies of magic casting. He got a few new skills, and was debating whether or not to use a blood sacrifice to unlock the secrets of magic. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Voice tried using his Deconstruct Spell, but to no avail. Voice walked back into his student¡¯s house. ¡°Boy, listen to me if you want your mother to live.¡± Kyle looked hopefully at Voice. Voice¡¯s expression flickered for a moment, but he shook his head and continued. ¡°If you want your mother to live, you need to listen exactly to what I have to say, ok?¡± Kyle began nodding his head vigorously. He opened his mouth to speak, but Voice interrupted him. ¡°I¡¯m going to need the piece of jewelry the Elder gave you.¡± Voice held his hand out. As Kyle uncertainly placed the ring in his hand, Voice canceled his Mental Domination Connection. ¡°Don¡¯t move no matter what.¡± Voice gave a command before grabbing a nearby kitchen knife, and slicing the boy¡¯s hand. The boy flinched, but his eyes had become murky. He stood there, blood dripping from his hand. Once he saw Kyle was unresponsive towards the wound, Voice sneered a bit and steeled his mind. After taking a deep breath, he began his plan. Voice activated several spells and skills at the same moment, while simultaneously beginning to engrave glyphs on Kyle¡¯s body. Voice activated 9 Mental Domination Connections. Each repeated the same line: You are the puppet of Your Alchemist Master. At the same moment as those skills activated, he used Instruct, and shouted: ¡°Obey my Orders!¡± The connections Voice was using would be noticeable if and only if Kyle ever gained his mind back. When Voice activated these skills, he also activated Petrification (Major) by stacking 10 Petrification (Minor) spells on top of each other.
Petrification (Major) The target loses some movement speed, and will find it harder to move. The target suffers a 75% reduction in both categories. This duration of this spell is (10 + (darkness affinity/10) * Aura) seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 5000 mana.
After the first debuff, Voice used the debuff to make the boy drowsy. He made the debuffs permanent, and began inscribing runes on the boy. The runes quite literally translated to ¡®You must Obey and Please your Alchemist Master¡¯. Each rune was roughly the size of an adult fist. Due to the semi-recent patch, his runes weren¡¯t as powerful as they could be, but he decided to make up for that with sheer numbers. A total of twenty of these runes fit quite snugly on the boy¡¯s body. They all connected to one rune on his chest. That rune would absorb mana from him, and dispense it to the glyphs. Voice Silenced the boy with a spell. Finally, Voice activated Phoenix Flames. Not on himself, but on the boy. The intense heat from the flames instantly scarred the boy¡¯s entire body, only to have the healing aura of the same flames recover him. For an hour the flames continued. Due to the fact that Voice¡¯s affinity and purity were both higher in light than fire, the healing was far more potent than the flames. The runes seemed to greedily devour the mana in the boy¡¯s body. The skills gnawed at his mind, consuming him from the inside. Voice forced himself to watch as the boy struggled to show his pain, but was unable to due to the various debuffs on him. As the moments ticked by, Voice grew sicker and sicker with himself. His only consolation was that he was going to verify if this method could really control someone. When he could not stand to look at the work he wrought, Voice turned to Kyle¡¯s mother. ¡°Sorry. You and your son must perish for my sake.¡± He laid hands on the woman, cast a Silence spell, and ripped out the entire mana signature of the disease. The woman let out a soundless scream, as her body convulsed violently. Voice stared down at her with no remorse or pity to be found in his eyes. The moment the mana signature completely left the woman¡¯s body, it exploded, spreading blood and viscera everywhere in the nearby vicinity. The boy stood stock still for a moment, almost as if he realized what was happening to his mother despite the pain his body was going through. Voice turned his head, and looked at the boy. The boy was obviously crying, but the tears were evaporating before they left his eyes. Voice sneered as he moved past the boy. Voice used his Super Dash ability. It burned twice the stamina but allowed one to go 1.5 times faster than normal. He quickly ran to a house that had light mana signatures. He calmed himself, and knocked. ¡°I am Karma Lithe. Open up if you want a cure.¡± After a second of shuffling sounds, the door was opened, revealing three very sick people. Two adult men, and a single adult woman. Voice nodded after he was invited in by an obviously desperate group. ¡°If you want to be cured I need time to examine each of you individually. One of you should wait in each room. I¡¯ll start with the girl first. Shut the doors after you pick a room to wait in. I can¡¯t have ANY interruptions or it might mean her death.¡± The two men seemed like they wanted to reject his offer, but something compelled them to listen. Each of the men went to a different bedroom, and shut the door as instructed. Voice laid his hands on the woman as she babbled her gratitude. He cast a Silence spell on her. She seemed startled by the sudden loss of ability to speak, but didn¡¯t have time to think on it. Voice used his own mana to wrap up the mana that made up the disease. With his light mana covering the disease, he again tried ripping it out. A similar event happened to the woman as had happened to Kyle¡¯s mother. Voice frowned as he continued on to the next subject. The village had a few dozen people only. Not enough to try every theory on, but he had the option of Prediction and Simulation. He cancelled his earlier simulations, and focused solely on how to cure this disease. He used prediction to see the effects of each of the things he planned to try. He would then try the thing that seemed to have the best result. Most ended poorly. Whenever trying to pull out the mana of someone¡¯s body, he would invariably cause them to explode. When pulling out only one type of mana their bodies would be effected in a drastic way. Pulling out all of the water mana in someone¡¯s body led to them slowly turning to dust. Pulling out fire mana caused their bodies to instantly freeze. While this did give him a whole new idea on combat, it didn¡¯t solve his present problem. He needed to cure himself, then find a subject to test on for the truth of magic. He used about half of the residents in his attempts to understand the disease. Each time his Simulation skill would be updated with more information to work with. He activated his Light Speed (Minor) spell, and began to think up ways to solve this problem. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. One time Simulation showed him making the disease himself, but with opposite mana signatures. Light where dark was etc. He used about ten minutes studying the pattern of the mana fluctuations of the disease, and used Prediction to determine what it would be x amount of time later. After about ten minutes he finally managed to Predict it perfectly every time. Although he couldn¡¯t understand the mana himself, he could at least Predict what it would look like a few seconds ahead of time. While using Prediction he tried to overlay the mana signature. First he had to sculpt the spell. He spent thousands of mana sculpting the spell that only actually required about a hundred. The first thing he did when doing this process was gauge exactly how much mana to use. The process was similar to how he built up his mana in blocks, but different enough that he was having major issues with it. Eventually he simply pictured the finished product in him mind. After making sure his visualization was spot on, he willed the mana into existence. In less time than it took to blink the mana fizzled out of existence. Damn it! How is this supposed to work? The damn mana construct won¡¯t stay! Voice made another, and continued to feed it mana. It held for as long as he fueled it, but gave out the moment he stopped pumping mana into it. No matter how many times he tried it, it always resulted in the same thing. Eventually he gave up and decided to just put the mana construct into a person¡¯s body. He was starting to get nervous. If he delayed too long, it would negatively affect him. The longer he waited, the more likely it was that he would die from the disease. The first time he put his created mana construct in a subject¡¯s body, it resulted in the body exploding. Voice moved on to another subject. He gained one piece of vital information about this though. Once inside someone, the mana no longer had to be fueled by him. The second time was much better, but the timing was somewhat wrong. The body of the subject began twitching, and quickly the situation turned into a full blown seizure for the subject. Voice quickly tried to take his mana out, but couldn¡¯t. It was stuck. Much like the original construction. As Voice watched, the two mana signatures slowly fused together, and created another, different mana signature. The new signature was blended between the original one, and Voice¡¯s ¡®cure¡¯. The result was the constant seizure of the patient, eventually leading to death. After the subject died, Voice gave it a try on another subject. With each new subject he was more accurately able to implement his own mana signature. The closer it got to perfectly overlaying the original at the perfect time, the less negative repercussions it had. Eventually there was only one house left, other than the Elder¡¯s and Kyle¡¯s. In the house was a single old lady. She smiled nicely as Voice offered to ¡®help¡¯ her with her condition. It played into his favor that the disease had apparently effected everyone in the town. Otherwise, he would not have been able to use so many for his experiments. With his full concentration on the old woman, Voice began to work. He carefully crafted the mana signature he would need, and used his Calculations skill to perfectly gauge the time. When the time approached for him to push the mana signature inside of the old woman, he did. The old woman shuddered for a moment, then laid still. Voice watched the mana signatures in her body as they battled each other for dominance, and slowly began to fuse. In seconds the two mana signatures seemingly fused and canceled each other out. Voice looked at the old woman. She had a deep outline of every mana type. The mana inside her body rapidly exited her pours, and evaporated into the air. She looked at Voice. ¡°Are you done? How is it? Am I going to live?¡± She couldn¡¯t even tell the difference! She felt nothing! Voice beamed at her. ¡°Yes. You are going to live. Now I must attend the others before anything happens to them.¡± The old woman smiled and thanked him by giving him some fruits she had picked in the safer parts of the forest. He repeated this process for everyone in the Elder¡¯s home. He also prescribed bedrest for at least a day. Not for their health, but so they didn¡¯t discover his doings to the other homes. He walked back to Kyle¡¯s house. The boy was still on fire, and soundlessly screaming in anguish. He checked on his condition for a moment, then went to the side. He carefully constructed exactly the mana structure he needed, after triple checking with prediction. Using Calculation, he perfectly timed the moment he needed to implement the mana into his body. The time came, and he pushed the mana inside his body without hesitation. He felt as if something had gripped his body. The battle that raged on inside his body was far more intense than any other person¡¯s he had cured. Every part of the mana struggled to continue to exist inside of him. Even as it was destroyed, it tried to create smaller versions of itself to have another chance at survival. Voice balked at sight of what was happening inside his body, but he was powerless to stop it. If he tried and failed, at best he¡¯d get to try again and at worst he¡¯d explode. The mana signature Voice created followed the same pattern as the disease that plagued him. Wherever the latter went, the former soon followed. It seemed like an eternity, but it only took a few minutes of time. During this time, Voice felt himself grow weaker and weaker as his mana was drained to fuel the process. It ravenously tore at his mana reserves. The fifty points per second that he restored barely kept up with the strain. After a handful of minutes had passed, the mana in his body finally flew out from his pores. He was only left with his own mana.
Due to great achievements in deconstruction spells, and showing oustanding mastery of magic, Group Skill: Magical Mastery has been increased to level 100.
You have become more familiar with Group Skill: Magical Mastery than most people will become with any other skill. But you have not truly mastered it yet. To truly master this skill, you must learn the history of magic and what magic truly is.
--- Hey guys and gals! Damatu here. I just wanted to take a moment of your time, to ask for a bit of a favor. If you like this story, or even just have some constructive criticism, please drop me a rating. My story is slowly coming to a close, and i feel like I''ve grown as a writer. Rating my story, with or without the in depth analysis of it, will show me where I''ve actually improved, and places i might need to work on. I''ve already started dabbling in other stories, but I want to hear from the people that have hung on this long to my story. You guys mean a lot to me, and so do your thoughts. If you don''t have the time or inclinaiton to rate it, that''s fine ; ) . If you do though, well that''s even better! Thanks, and see you next chapter! Dive 99: Information and Experience Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice practiced sculpting mana to negate the disease. He killed several people before finally getting it down. He also leveled up his Magical Mastery to level 100 for showing such intense control over magic. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Voice turned to the boy. He had been in utter agony for hours now. Not even the most ox hearted of people could withstand such pain for long. Kyle had collapsed on the ground, body slightly convulsing while his flesh went through the motions of damage and regeneration. Voice¡¯s skill whispered in Kyle¡¯s ears during the entire process. Voice canceled his spell, and sat while he waited for Kyle to regain consciousness. During the wait, Voice had Kretchof make a Soul-Binding Contract. Although Kretchof had only as much mana as Voice, he had more darkness to work with. Since Voice had upgraded to Mana Mage, Kretchof had obtained the ability to manipulate the darkness mana around himself to complete tasks, such as creating Soul-Binding Contracts. Since Voice had such high purity in darkness mana, Kretchof was far more powerful than a normal rank 4 darkness fairy. Voice summoned Kretchof. ¡°Make me a Soul-Binding Contract. This boy is going to sign it.¡± Voice casually pointed to the boy on the ground. Kretchof bowed and began consuming the 100 mana from nearby. Within a moment he handed over the completed contract. As he was about to disappear, Voice stopped him. ¡°Tell me. How do you cast spells?¡± Without pausing to think about, Kretchof answered to the best of his abilities. ¡°I borrow a small portion of power from Davros, and channel that into a spell. Since you, master, have become a class much more in tune with magic than most, I can also borrow the darkness mana around me to craft my spells.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine, but you have a mana limit. If you are simply borrowing power, why do you need mana yourself?¡± ¡°Apologies, master. I misunderstood. My mana is the limit of spells Davros will allow me to use. That is just how fairies are. Since we are creations of the gods, we must obtain their consent to use our powers.¡± Voice looked quizzically at him. ¡°How exactly are fairies made? Why can they be upgraded? In fact, How does upgrading a fairy actually work?¡± Kretchof smiled as he donned a scholastic look. ¡°Master has many questions; I will try to answer them all. Fairies are made when a god intentionally splits off a portion of their power. After giving the spark of power a mind, a fairy is born. Fairies can be upgraded because they can hold more power from their god. The god obviously will only grant a certain portion to that fairy, lest they lose all of their power to the fairy. ¡°Should a fairy try to move past rank 4, the god would likely destroy them. Upgrading a fairy is both simple and complicated. Usually the god that fairy is a part of will have the summoner do a certain task once they reach the needed affinity. The god then infuses a bit more power into the fairy than before. The process of infusing the fairy is a bit complicated, but basically consists of pouring more ability into the fairy.¡± Voice nodded at this. It made sense. The fairies would get infused with more power after he completed a certain task. For Sol and Kretchof there was no task, but that was because he was Mar¡¯s Chosen, and made a deal with Davros. ¡°One more question before you go.¡± Voice had a pensive look as he watched Kyle¡¯s body for signs of awakening. ¡°Anything for you, Master.¡± ¡°What would happen if the fairy consumed a drop of the deity¡¯s blood? And what would happen if a mortal drank it instead?¡± Kretchof¡¯s eyes went wide when Voice asked. Seeing that his Master was not joking, he answered. ¡°They would become an abomination. A single drop of Life-Blood from a god would evolve the fairy far beyond what was ever intended. They would not be anywhere near as powerful as the god, but they would be more powerful than most mortal mages that studied the same magic. ¡°As for the mortal consuming the blood? It¡¯s never happened before. There would be no way to find out unless a lucky mortal were to obtain a drop and use it.¡± Kretchof¡¯s eyes lit up a bit at the idea of consuming a drop of Davros¡¯ blood. ¡°Thank you for the information. You are dismissed.¡± Kretchof bowed and disappeared. Thinking about it, Voice summoned each of his other fairies, and asked them all similar questions. Most of them could not answer the questions, as they were not under the power of the god of intellect. Sol knew a bit about the upgrading process, but that was about it. So the actual upgrading process fuses other fairies together to form the new fairy. Sometimes only taking a small bit, other times combining the entire power of other fairies as their own. But they all told me they borrowed power from their gods. If I really want to destroy the gods, I need to find a way around that. Does that mean my power is taken from the gods? I don¡¯t want that. If my power is dependent on the good will of someone else, I need to fix it. Mana formed the world of Solun. Everything was made up of it. The amount of mana in the world was far more than the amount contained within a first level fairy. There had to be a better answer of the creation of the world. Voice had a sudden memory. Just before the gladiatorial arena matches began, he had a talk with Chao. Chao told him of the different types of man other than the 8, but how they were sealed up. Only the Council of the 5 most powerful Chaotic Lifeforms could possibly open up the ability to use them. How does one seal up a type of mana? Does the fact that mana can be sealed up mean mana has to follow a higher law? Maybe if I can discover this higher law I can reach complete mastery over Magical Mastery. There were many things Voice felt he needed to learn about to destroy the game. One of them was the inner workings of magic. If he grew intimate with them, he would be able to accomplish anything. After contemplating magic for a bit, Voice began to think of something else. Whenever he killed things, he didn¡¯t get very much exp. On occasions he would get massive amounts of exp. There has to be a trick somewhere. His face widened as he came to the sudden realization. ShortDwarf and LastingBeauty have insanely high levels! How did they get that good? I mean I almost single handedly destroyed a dungeon boss! Sure they hunt dungeons all of the time, but it shouldn¡¯t give them that much exp. How is it possible to level up so quickly? Even EDI had a huge jump in levels not long ago. There has to be some sort of trick I¡¯m missing! When Voice realized this, he suddenly began to think up every time he had gained large amounts of levels or exp. Suiciding was one such occasion. Both times I used Mar¡¯s suicide attack, I gained a lot of exp. All three of them can¡¯t be using that. I only got it because I was fighting evil, and I am Mar¡¯s Chosen. Do they have something similar? No. Suiciding can¡¯t be the answer. I did kill a massive amount of people each time. Maybe that was it? No. I have killed huge amounts of enemies in the worm dungeon. That should have given me a huge level boost as well, but didn¡¯t. I did get a small chunk from the colosseum, but not nearly as much as when I killed the bandits afterwards/ A thought suddenly dawned on him. Maybe it is the same as¡­ No that can¡¯t be. That wouldn¡¯t make sense. Actually most games are sort of like that anyway. Maybe¡­? Voice decided to try it. He stood up, and looked over Kyle. *Inhale* ¡°Alright Kyle, time to wake up.¡± Voice cast several healing spells on Kyle, while also buffing him with the energy buff. Kyle¡¯s eyes twitched, and slowly opened. Kyle¡¯s expression was limp. His face seemed void of any emotion. He lay there, prone. His eyes, empty of intelligence, stared at Voice. ¡°I am Karma Lithe! I am your Alchemist Master! Obey my orders! Stand at attention!¡± Voice transmitted his command via his skill. Instantly the boy jumped up, and faced Voice. Kyle placed his hands behind his back, and stared forward. Like a soldier awaiting orders. Of course, Kyle didn¡¯t know what this position was, but Voice¡¯s skill showed him exactly what to do. ¡°I am Karma Lithe! I am your Alchemist Master! If anyone repeats these phrases, besides me, do not follow their orders.¡± Voice looked over Kyle. One by one he removed his mind-controlling skills. ¡°Stab her!¡± Voice picked created a stone knife, and pointed it at Kyle¡¯s mom. Without flinching, Kyle took the knife, and stabbed the dead body. It was going well. ¡°Answer me. Do you remember who you are?¡± Kyle nodded. ¡°Answer with words. What is your name?¡± ¡°I am Kyle.¡± The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.Voice nodded. Everything was going better than expected. He created a small stone, and tossed it across the room. ¡°Fetch that for me.¡± Kyle¡¯s movements weren¡¯t wooden. Voice expected him to move almost like a zombie. If anything he was only slightly worse off than he was before the brainwashing. The only thing that was of consequence was that Kyle had not dropped the knife. Under normal circumstances one would do so. Voice had one last test to run. If it worked, he would start hyper-leveling. ¡°Stab yourself in the heart.¡± Voice was watching for the slightest bit of hesitation. If there was any, the boy was unfit. If there was none, it meant Kyle was truly brainwashed. That meant the boy could be controlled without the further use of any skills. Voice activated his time-slow. On cue, Kyle stabbed the knife straight towards his own heart. ¡°STOP!¡± Moments before the knife pierced Kyle¡¯s chest, Voice called for the boy to stop. Kyle¡¯s hand slowed at a visible pace. With Voice¡¯s Instant Analysis in play, Voice could actually watch as Kyle stopped his own joints from moving. He pulled back on the knife with such force that Voice heard a slow crack. Voice undid his skill, and instantly healed the boy. After a few more orders, he realized that orders were followed as closely as Kyle could, but needed the assistance of his Mental Domination skill if it was anything complicated. ¡°Very good Kyle. I¡¯m proud of you. Now, it¡¯s time to do something actually useful. Fetch one person from the Elder¡¯s house. Don¡¯t let them know that I want them. Make it so only one of them want to follow you.¡± Kyle left, and Voice realized noticed a sudden blinking in his vision.
You have successfully dominated Kyle¡¯s mind. The control is permanent, except under special circumstances. Kyle will obey all orders to the best of his ability. Contradictory orders may cause harm to the individual¡¯s psyche.
Within a few minutes, Kyle rushed into the house, followed closely by one of the guards. The guard was equipped with a onehanded sword, and small wooden shield. Voice had already hid himself in another room, and pounced on the guard after he entered. The guard, stunned by the gruesome scene before him, did nothing to retaliate. Voice easily stabbed him through the throat with the bladed spear tip of his staff. The guard choked as blood spewed from his mouth and throat. When the guard had died, Voice incinerated the body. He looked at his exp bar. ¡°Che. No change. I guess that was to be expected. Now on to the real test. Kyle, bring another. Same rules as last time. This time bring him into the forest where I¡¯ll be waiting.¡± With his skill activated, he indicated the general direction that he would go. Voice had an easy time getting there. He quickly inspected the dense cover of trees. Once he was in place, he removed all armor from his body. Next he debuffed himself. He debuffed various things, like speed and ease of movements. He buffed himself with extra health and defense. He buffed and debuffed himself several times. Many of the debuffs would only have a small effect on combat ability, but Voice did them to waste mana. After he was done he saw the next guard coming. Alright. If I die I¡¯m going to be so pissed. The guard realized what was happening when Voice unsheathed his blades from his staff. ¡°YAHHH!¡± The guard gave a war cry as he charged Voice. Voice had canceled all of his toggle skills, so could only guess as to whether that was an ability or just a theatric. Voice attacked the guard with a low swing of his left blade. At the same time he stabbed straight forward with the right blade. Using two blades independently was beyond Voice¡¯s capabilities of his level 52 Tactical Combat Training, but he could at least guide two in simple movements. The guard knocked aside the left blade, and angled his body to avoid the right. Voice dropped his left blade, and quickly latched onto his right with both hands. He guided it towards a tried-and-true weak point, but his debuffs stopped his body from moving the exact way he wanted. The guard retaliated with slice of his sword. The blade cut deeply at Voice¡¯s left rib. Voice didn¡¯t have his armor on, so only had a bit of natural defense. With his defensive buff his skin was about as durable as thick leather. The blade cut into Voice, but only drew a small smattering of blood. A thin line of a wound formed. Voice threw himself to the side, while simultaneously activating Instant Analysis. The skill showed a perfect arc which would lead to him picking up his weapon without getting injured. After grabbing the weapon, Voice turned the skill off. He turned back to the guard. ¡°Good. I needed a bit of sport today.¡± The guard angrily stared at him. ¡°Why? Why would you attack me? Have I offended you?¡± Voice smirked, but otherwise stayed silent. Realizing that he was going to have a hard time winning with his various debuffs, he canceled some of the more combat limiting ones. Voice attacked the guard by slicing both his blades towards the guards legs. The guard jumped upwards to avoid the blow. Voice had a wicked smile as he angled both blades to intersect at the guard¡¯s crotch, changing their directions mid-slash. The guard had already anticipated something like this, and was shielding himself even as Voice began to change the direction of his blades. Voice¡¯s blades caught on the wood of the shield. Taking a cue from Voice¡¯s earlier action, the soldier dropped the unattached shield, and attacked. He dodged past Voice, and faced his back. Voice frowned as the extra weight of the shield pulled at his swords. He yanked his swords out of the shield, but got a deep gash across his back for his efforts. Voice felt his blood begin to surge faster. He attacked with a flurry of un-aimed blows at the guard. The guard intercepted each of them with his sword. Those he couldn¡¯t block, he dodged past. He would angle his body to take the least amount of damage from those he couldn¡¯t dodge. The guard attacked, but Voice blocked it with both of his blades, occasionally using the bladed tip of the two ends to attack. The battle was an intense clash of forces. Voice and the guard traded blows for dozens of seconds. Getting worried that someone, or something, would hear, Voice decided to end the battle. He activated Instant Analysis, and attacked the guard¡¯s left thigh. As the guard went to block, Voice also attacked his left eye. With a sickening squelch, his blade penetrated the guard¡¯s eye. The blade continued past, and pierced the back of the guard¡¯s skull. Voice huffed from the exertion the battle had taken on him. He looked at his exp bar with expectations. His face instantly change when he saw it. First disbelief, then acceptance, then joy. ¡°IT WORKED!¡± Voice had gotten nearly twice the exp from beating the second guard! Voice incinerated the body, and began to reevaluate his buffs and debuffs. Filled with ecstatic joy, Voice finally understood how to gain levels quickly. I don¡¯t have to fight stronger opponents! I don¡¯t have to fight many! All I have to do is make it hard to win! ¡°HAHAHAHA HA! GOOD! This is perfect!¡± Voice sped himself up as much as possible, and arrived at the Elder¡¯s house in moments. He quickly infused the entire estate with fire mana, and set it to flames. The bricks that made up the house exploded from the violent heat. With a flick of his hand, the thatch roofing on the wooden houses caught fire and began to burn down the houses. It wasn¡¯t strictly necessary for Voice to kill everyone in the town, but he didn¡¯t want any witnesses to the fact that he had come here. By burning the other houses, he ensured that it would at least take time for anyone to realize that one boy was missing. That was if they even knew the villagers personally. After checking that there were no light mana signatures near the town, Voice concluded that his mission was complete. Voice smiled and ran back to Kyle. ¡°Boy. Come with me. I need somewhere else to practice.¡± He was going to truly level now, all he had to do was figure out the best series of buffs and debuffs to use. Then he¡¯d level up even faster than SD and LB, after all, they couldn¡¯t gauge their own battle strength and adjust it nearly as finely as Voice. --- Damatu here again! How¡¯s the story so far? Do you guys still like it? I hope so. It has been really fun writing it! I think there are only a few chapters left. By a few I mean probably less than twenty. If you feel like it you can donate to the paypal button! Any amount would be nice. But I¡¯d especially appreciate a vote on the story. I know I asked you guys last week, but I really like knowing exactly what you guys think. The more votes I get, the better idea I have of the quality of my story! I am at least getting higher rankings than when I first started. Maybe I¡¯ll even make it to the 4 star ranking! That¡¯d be fun : ) I¡¯ve invested a lot of time and effort into this story. I only hope it shows. Happy reading! Dive 100: Voices Discoveries Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice successfully brainwashed the boy. Afterwards he burnt down the entire town to leave no evidence of his existence there. He also learned that exp was based on how difficult it was to battle Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Wow! 100th chapter guys! It¡¯s amazing that we made it this far! Hm, I feel like I should do something special. !!! I got it! I¡¯ll give you all a teaser! SO, Voice is a bit weird right? Can any of you figure out why? I¡¯ve hinted at it several time throughout the chapters. In fact, it involves one of the first few chapters. I wonder what it is¡­? If any of you can guess it in the comments, you get a few virtual cookies. Voice approached a town with his puppet in tow. They had taken two days to arrive here. Voice sped both of them up with his buff. Because of Kyle¡¯s inability to think at fast speeds, Voice had to basically drag him. Voice made sure Kyle wouldn¡¯t disobey several times. He tried letting him stay by himself for several hours, and only giving him the command, ¡®Stay alive.¡¯ Kyle didn¡¯t move at all except when a small snake passed by. He immediately killed the snake. Although it probably wouldn¡¯t have caused harm to his body, Kyle interpreted Voice¡¯s command as ¡®kill anything that might pose a threat.¡¯ Kyle didn¡¯t say anything on the way to the other village. He perfectly obeyed Voice¡¯s orders, but always tended to be violent in his interpretations of them. When thinking about it, Voice wasn¡¯t bothered. At least I know he won¡¯t have trouble killing. Despite killing off an entire town, Voice still felt like personally killing the NPCs wasn¡¯t a smart idea. He decided to make the boy do as much of the dirty work as he was competent enough to do. The night sky was overcast. Voice was in a foul mood. He had just gotten a message from Chao. The message made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that his city was being destroyed. The only up side seemed to be that the bandits came back for revenge. The bandits cleverly hid in the surrounding area, and used guerrilla tactics to kill the dragons. Of course it was a fruitless effort. Only the female leader could actually manage to take one on. She did her best though. Using the several hundred bandits she brought with her, she managed to take out three of the dragons already. Nightmare-Wing was steadily taking on the dragons, but seemed to die constantly. Something Voice was interested in was the fact that the Gryphon seemed to come alive after only a few moments of death. The dragons seemed incapable of stopping him. Although¡­ His attacks were almost a joke to them. He had killed one dragon cocky enough to try to eat him, but otherwise had a hard time actually killing the rest. He had been battling for half a day when the bandits arrived. Voice didn¡¯t want to wait for dawn. He decided might time would have to do for his plans. ¡°Kyle. I¡¯m going to change my face. You must obey me, even when my face is new. Only obey me if I am in one of the faces you have seen me change in to.¡± With that, Voice changed into another face. Not before saving the disguise Karma Lithe of course. He gave himself a youthful chubby look. He looked like he was the overweight scion of a noble family. ¡°Now go. Get someone to follow you. It doesn¡¯t matter who. Just make sure they are alone.¡± Voice watched for any sign of rebellion, but there were none. Honestly, he felt a bit disappointed that the boy didn¡¯t rebel. He kept feeling like something had to go wrong. There was no way EDITOR would allow him to get this much power. Power to manipulate someone¡¯s mind? Never. Making dragons attack his city wasn¡¯t enough to stop him. EDITOR could only make patches when his power was too high. So she had to do something else. Voice felt like he had to prepare for everything. He couldn¡¯t let anything go wrong. Using his disguise ability, Voice erased all traces of the Runes on Kyle¡¯s body. Kyle bowed, and began h heading toward the town. While Kyle was gone, Voice began to think. He began to think about what Chao had told him. Gravity magic created my backpack¡­ But if that¡¯s true, why does it look like a fusion of other types of mana? Chao had said that many types of mana were sealed up. But that would mean that they were independent types of mana. Not a combination of other types of mana. So Voice couldn¡¯t make sense of the idea that the magic type would be composed of several types of other mana. But that would mean the spell that makes up my backpack is a unique mana type. Then why does it really seem to be made up of different mana types? Voice began puzzling it out. After several minutes of intense thought, he came to a semi-plausible conclusion. What if it¡¯s EDITOR¡¯s fault? Realization suddenly dawned on him. EDITOR had made it so the people of Solun couldn¡¯t understand the ideas and science from the real world. So it would make sense that it could be done with actual people. The NPCs might have been easy to fool since they were just barely existences, but a human mind? Voice gawked at the idea. But EDITOR had made it so time moved faster than in the human world. She even made it possible to download data directly into one¡¯s mind. That¡¯s what happened when he learned to make his clone. Voice began pacing as he thought aloud. His body flitted through the densely packed trees and underbrush. ¡°Even if it wasn¡¯t EDITOR, it could have easily been that other person. Whoever it was that put the chaotic beings into such a dire straight.¡± As Voice mused, he sensed two light mana signatures rapidly approaching. When he became aware of the lights, he shook himself out of his thoughts. Gotta play this out right. He stealthily snuck behind the two signatures, by using his shoes to walk on air. Without a single sound, Voice appeared behind them. Voice listened for a moment using his wind mana. ¡°*Huff* Alright boy. Where¡¯s your sister? If you lied to me, I¡¯ll gut you!.¡± A smile spread across Voice¡¯s face. Scum is the best to control. No one will care if he goes missing. Voice teleported behind the man. In an instant he had activated all of the same skills and spells as he had with Kyle. After knocking the man out, he covered his entire body with various runes meant to make controlling him easier. Voice cloaked the three of them in darkness mana, and used wind mana to blow away the flames before they reached anywhere they might cause harm. Voice began absorbing all of the nearby mana to fuel himself. Since he was using darkness and wind mana in addition to the spells and skills he had used with Kyle, he needed to restore it much more quickly. Voice became like a funnel for all of the magic around him. Wind began gusting towards him in a cyclone. The moment it came within six or so feet of him, it suddenly disappeared. The darkness and shadows around him did the same. The sky eventually became devoid of any noticeable wind, and the landscape became a pale gray instead of a blackness that it should have been. The entire time, the man was being roasted alive, while Voice¡¯s insidious skills wormed inside his mind. Even a man with more willpower than Voice would have trouble keeping his mind intact after a dozen minutes of this torture. Voice simply kept himself filled with mana. He ignored the soundless screams of the man, and funneled more and more mana into the entire process. After two hours of this, Voice decided it should be enough. According to Instant Analysis, the man was only feeling loyalty. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.¡°I am Karma Lithe! I am your Alchemist Master! Obey my orders! Stand at attention!¡± The man instantly shot to his feet. ¡°Only obey the one called Karma Lithe. Only obey Karma lithe if he has my face. This is my face. You must obey me, even when my face is new. Only obey me if I am in one of the faces you have personally seen me change in to.¡± The man nodded seriously. ¡°Good. Let¡¯s go. Both of you, follow me. We are going to a different town.¡± The two quickly followed him. When they reached another town, they convinced one more person to come out alone. Voice did the same to that person, and then the four continued on to the next village. This continued for two in-game weeks. Occasionally he would go scout himself, often dressing as a feeble old man. He would find someone to kidnap, and have his people go about doing it for him. During this time, Voice gathered a sizable force. More than twenty people had been either kidnapped, tricked, or otherwise coerced into joining Voice¡¯s small army. During these two weeks, Voice preformed several experiments. His end goal was the total knowledge over what was truly magic. He used three people, out of his total of twenty, for these experiments. The first person he used was the second member of his thralls. He had infused as much mana from the various types into his body. After making sure his body could hold no more, Voice used his ability Forced Evolution.
Congratulations! Thrall 3 has evolved into a mana Wraith!
Mana Wraiths have a unique Racial Ability to command all mana types in a designated area. Mana Wraiths can wretch away mana from others, as easily as one might wretch away another¡¯s sword.
The man still looked human, but had a faint glow about him. He seemed to have control over a very short range of mana. About five feet or so. Any mana within that sphere was under his control. Voice could still win in a battle of who could actually control that mana though. The second person was a mishap. When the Forced Evolution ability was done with its recharge, Voice used it again. Voice buffed Thrall 4, with every buff he could think of. After finishing he used his ability. Instead of something great happening, the person simply exploded out in a grisly scene of blood and viscera. The last was Kyle. He constantly fused large amounts of darkness mana into Kyle¡¯s body. At the same time, he would take out the light mana. Eventually Kyle¡¯s body began to slow down in the production of the light mana. The darkness mana began to become thicker and thicker in his body. Every pour in his body would occasionally ooze pure darkness. Over the course of the two weeks, Kyle began to show signs of decomposition. As if he were a living corpse. Of course, Voice would heal him after each night. It wouldn¡¯t do to have his subject die one him. After enduring ten days of experimentation, Kyle¡¯s body finally gave out. Voice was infusing darkness mana into him, while extracting light mana. When the darkness mana began oozing out of his skin, Voice stopped the process. But the oozing continued, heedless of Voice¡¯s wants. The darkness began to eat away at the light mana inside Kyle¡¯s body. Voice activated his own darkness mana to combat the situation, but suddenly stopped himself. This could prove interesting. Voice watched as Kyle¡¯s skin began to shrink around his bones, as if he were quickly losing all liquids in his body. His eyes began to rot, and his hair and nails grew at an exceptionally quick rate. In moments he looked like he had been mummified for dozens of years.
Zombify This spell replaces the light mana one¡¯s body naturally produces, with darkness mana. When enough darkness mana has been infused, the subject becomes undead. The base spell cost for this spell is 500 darkness mana of purity 100, or an equivalent amount. The zombie will retain all memories and emotions that it had in life. All physical attributes will be drastically reduced.
¡°Go hit that tree.¡± Voice gave him an order. The mummified Kyle went over and hit the tree. Voice¡¯s face turned sour as he watched. Kyle¡¯s speed could only be considered a slow crawl. Voice couldn¡¯t help but frown. He began replacing the darkness mana with light mana, when he suddenly had another idea. He quickly took one of his other thralls. ¡°You! Thrall 3. Hurt yourself, but don¡¯t kill yourself.¡± Without hesitation, the thrall threw itself against a tree. Voice watched as it began to hurt itself more and more. When the thrall¡¯s hp dropped below one third, Voice activated his spell.
Heal Over Time Heals the target¡¯s health by ((40 + light affinity) * Aura) over the course of five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 35 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective.
One of his first spells. He tacked on ten of them to the thrall. The fused together to form a new spell.
Major Heal Over Time Heals the target¡¯s health by ((40 + light affinity) * Aura * 8) over the course of five seconds. The base spell cost for this spell is 250 mana. The healer must indicate a target within five feet for this spell to be effective.
With 70 light affinity, Voice now healed (110)(1.1)(2), or 2420 points over five seconds. So a total of 484 per second. Voice made the spell permanent for 252.5 mana. ¡°Why the hell hadn¡¯t I thought of this before!?¡± In his excitement Voice completely forgot about healing Kyle. Kyle began degrading faster and faster. Voice ordered thrall 3 to stop, then promptly took the buff off. The next moment, Voice felt more alive than he ever had. His health regen just went from 1 point every second, to 484 per second. Even while in his sped up form, it would still be more than 30 each seeming second. ¡°I need to fight something.¡± His town had been attacked. According to Chao, the dragons were on the brink of destroying his entire city. Most of the city was in ruins, but some of it still stood. The castle in particular. During the two weeks the dragons had all but obliterated the bandits, but the bandits came back over and over. Each time they came back, they would take one or two of the dragons down. Nightmare-Wing continued to do small amounts of damage to the dragons over the course of that time. The oddest thing was that the castle seemed to be unapproachable with mana. Chao had noted to him a few days prior, that the area around the castle seemed unusually empty of mana. Voice almost instantly came up with the reason. Could my mana purifiers be the reason? They do absorb mana, but they don¡¯t have a very large range. How could they absorb enough mana to make the entire region void of mana? When the dragons attacked the area, their various magical attacks were basically consumed by the area around the castle. Johnny had been too afraid to approach the castle without the dragons, but the dragons could do nothing to the castle. ¡°Alright Thralls. You all are to follow any undead moles that lead you underground to a dungeon. When there you will patrol the dungeon until you die. Only hunt other humanoids.¡± Voice obviously told Chao of his plan as he ordered a tunnel to be dug to his location. Let¡¯s see if I can¡¯t take out a few dragons. Dive 101: Coming Home Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice mind washed a few thralls, and experimented on them with his Forced Evolution ability. At the end he decided to temporarily send them into his dungeon, and see why it was that the dragons couldn¡¯t destroy his city. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) Voice waited until midnight. When the night sky was at its darkest, he lifted off. Activating his squirrel ring, he pushed himself into the air. At the same time, he cloaked himself in thick darkness mana. By maintaining his flight with occasional gusts of wind, and leaving the top part of his body uncovered by darkness mana, Voice was able to fly without using any actual mana. His mana regen added enough mana per second that he could fly indefinitely without a drop in mana. Aided by his Streamlined body, and his high purity in wind mana allowed him to move at speeds that were comparable to his speed buff. It was a long flight, about sixteen hours, but his city finally came in to view. Voice stopped in midair. He had dissipated the darkness mana around him several hours ago, so his body was clearly visible from all angles. Hundreds of monstrous flying lizards were bombarding his castle with all manner of attacks. Most cast a variety of magic at the building. The magical attacks were all absorbed by some sort of magical barrier. Whenever the magic attacks looked like the might hit the walls of the castle, they began to whirl, and instantly disappeared. No matter how many attacks were leveled at the castle, they would end up becoming some sort of whirlpool, and disappear. Some flew at the castle, and attacked it by biting or clawing, but slowed down to a crawl the closer they got. Voice couldn¡¯t tell what was going on with the dragons, at least not until he tried looking for the mana signatures. By concentrating on one thing, mana, he could see much further and clearer. Of course the downside was the fact that other things he wasn¡¯t specifically looking for. When the mana came within several dozen feet of the castle, eight circles would light up. The circles were not all actually in the castle. Some of them were buried within the mountain. The mana purifiers are causing it? Really? It was indeed the mana purifiers. Whenever a magical attack neared the outer area connecting them, they would all light up. They absorbed any type of mana thrown at them, although some seemed harder than others. When the dragons tried to approach physically, they would be met with the resistance of intense mana. The mana purifiers seemed to keep any mana that got near them, within a certain distance. One dragon shot out a long rivet of lighting at the castle. When it got within the area of effect from the purifiers, it slowed down to a crawl, but did not stop. Voice watched the phenomenon with interest. First the light was sucked away from it, as the light mana purifier was the closet. When the light disappeared, the lightning became nothing but heat and electricity. The heat was sucked away next. It was like shaving a carrot extremely slowly. The heat was sapped away until none of it was left. The only thing left was cold lightning. Energy that couldn¡¯t do any real damage besides pure electric damage to anyone. It couldn¡¯t even cause an area to burn without the heat it would naturally create. Next the wind was absorbed, then the metal. When the metal was taken away, the electricity became only a thin wisp of existence. The earth, water, darkness, and finally nature were all taken away from the long stream of lightning. Still, something else remained. A different kind of something. It was a type of mana Voice had never seen, but was intimately familiar with. That¡¯s Pure Mana! The Pure Mana kept going. Past the absorption of the giant diagram. Past the walls of the castle. The mana gathered in the center of the diagram. Voice blanched. Each of the eight pieces of the diagram glowed with an imaginable amount of mana. The fire mana purifier seemed like it would be able to melt mountains. The wind mana purifier was so dense, it could instantly level a forest if it were all unleashed. Around the purifiers was a mesh of chaotic mana. The mana was slowly but surely getting sorted out, and absorbed by the mana purifiers. In the center was an area devoid of any brands of the mana. Instead of fire mana, water mana, or some other type, it was all concentrated Pure Mana. The instant Voice noticed this, he used his light speed spell. He flew through the oncoming dragons. Weaving through them wasn¡¯t difficult at first. They seemed to ignore him completely. One moment he was flying without resistance, the next it seemed as if every dragon around his town was turned towards him. His speed boost made him move 15 times as fast as normal. His fly speed was already faster than a normal car. Using both, he could go several hundred miles an hour. Honestly, his mind couldn¡¯t keep up with speeds that high. He solely relied on his Instant Analysis to plot out the correct path for him to take. The dragons simultaneously let out angry roars. Voice was the one that killed their Matron! He had to perish! But he was moving too fast. In a single moment, all of the dragons let loose attacks. Instead of trying to wear down the castle, which was a pointless endeavor, they sent it towards him. ¡°Ha! This? This is your power!?¡± Voice scoffed as he absorbed the mana that came towards him. Any mana that came within a dozen feet of him instantly dismantled itself as it bent to his will. Voice used the mana he gained from the attacks, to send attacks of his own. Hell fire shot towards the dragons. The dark flames that could burn anything, were intercepted by still other dragons¡¯ attacks. The dragon¡¯s magic overpowered the black flame in an instant, causing a huge explosion behind Voice. Voice borrowed the force of the explosion to propel himself even faster. Voice took no damage, because the wind mana that made up the explosion bent to his will when it reached within twelve feet of him. Attacks rained down on Voice, but he sent all of them back. The sheer volley of magical mayhem that happened in the few moments it took Voice to reach his castle, easily eclipsed the amount of mana used in the game up to that point. Voice was approaching the walls of his castle too quickly. At the rate he was going, he would splat against them like a bug. When Voice was only a hundred feet away, he used all of his remaining wind mana to push himself to slow down. The force of the explosions still happening behind him made him feel like he was being crushed from two sides. His health began to drop rapidly. Without waiting, he activated Major Heal Over Time, and made the duration permanent. His health quickly stabilized, and even began regenerating. The damage still hurt, but Voice could ignore the pain thanks to Complete Immunity. His speed began to drop drastically. The perfectly sculpted stone wall began to grow larger and larger. Voice closed his eyes in anticipation of the impact. When he got within several dozen feet, he felt his control over mana lessen. He had to fight for his spells to be maintained. He allowed the attacks of the dragons to hit him. All elements of potential damage collided on Voice¡¯s body. Fire and lighting were in especially large amounts. His natural ability to control mana around him stopped much of the mana from hitting. That which did make it past his dozen foot orb of control, had to contend with the absorption of the purifiers. Very little magic actually managed to hit Voice, at least compared to what the dragons fired at him. The amount of damage to his body was further halved thanks to the mana stone he used long ago. Voice ignored the pain as best he could, but the damage was starting to stack. His health was actually dropping, despite the health buff. Voice quickly lost 60 health. He had to pay full attention to his health buff, speed buff, and wind mana to decelerate. Should he ignore even one of them, he would likely perish. When Voice¡¯s hp dropped to 40, he noticed the magical attacks had stopped. He also noticed his magic begin to deplete at an insanely quick rate. What? I This didn¡¯t happen before! Is this EDITOR¡¯s doing? Voice could only curse inside his head. He angled his body to crash through one of the few windows on the same level as his mana purifiers. He cast a bolt of metal mana before him, but it was quickly sucked away. Voice braced himself by tucking his head into his arms, and hitting the window with the side of his body. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. His health had fully regenerated, but quickly depleted again. Voice watched as it went down by a point, ten points, fifty, seventy, before finally stopping at only 20 points of health remaining. The moment it stopped, his health fully regenerated. Voice looked around. ¡°I¡¯m past the barrier¡­ but where am I?¡± Everything around him seemed to have been shrouded by a thick white mist. At the edge of the mist, was a spectrum of colors. The colors went from red to blue to brown, as Voice looked from his fire purifier to the one for water to earth.
Congratulations! You have entered a ¡®Pure Mana Zone¡¯. Magic will be enhanced by 900%. No magical attacks may enter or exit the area. Pure Mana Zones are bordered by Pure Chaotic Zones. A Pure Chaotic zone can be used to upgrade any fairy up to rank 4, without the need for additional quests. Once a fairy is in the Pure Chaotic Zone, you must simply will it to evolve. *Note: This is an abomination against the elder gods. If Eight Rank 4 fairies of different types are present, you may create a Pure Fairy, at the loss of all eight other fairies. *Note: The owner of the most powerful fairy will have control over the Pure Fairy.
¡°I can do what now!?¡± I can summon a Pure Fairy. Obviously a fairy that cane manipulate Pure Mana. Pure Mana basically lets me use any type of mana. But is it worth it? Voice could see a lot of potential in the Pure Mana Fairy, but losing the eight others didn¡¯t really make much sense to him. Although the single fairy, going by the way Pure Mana worked, would have nine times the amount of mana of any one fairy. Fairies took power from the god that created them. So that meant the Pure Mana Fairy would take power from the void god. But then Voice had a brilliant idea. He called out each of his fairies, one by one. None of them seemed to notice the Pure Mana, but did feel the intense amount of mana from their respective mana purifiers. Voice bade each of them go to their respective mana purifiers. The first one to get to the position was Sol. Sol sent a message upon arrival. ¡°Master! I feel great! It¡¯s like I¡¯m absorbing power! I feel like I might even be able to increase my rank! But Mar probably wouldn¡¯t like that. She might get mad at us if I did.¡± Voice placated him by promising not to do something like that. After each of the fairies made it, Voice began his plan. He left his fairies in the purifiers, and began to draw more inscriptions on the ground. He then brought out eight vials of liquid. He placed the vials inside of a smaller version of the purifier set up. When he was happy with his work, he activated the Pure Chaotic Zone ability.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Light Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Darkness Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Fire Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Water Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Earth Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Metal Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Wind Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Congratulations! You have forcefully upgraded your Nature Fairy to Rank 4. Although your fairy now has the most power it can handle, it might not obey your commands, as you have forced it away from the one that created it. Your affinity with this mana has been forcefully increased to 100.
Instead of looking at the cool bonuses he knew the fairies would give, Voice activated the ability of the Pure Mana Zone. Each of the mana purifiers lit up like the sun. Mana was sucked away from each of them, and pumped into the center of the area. The Pure Mana Zone, quickly became saturated with all eight mana types. The eight types of mana congealed into the form of a human figure. Over the course of ten seconds the figure began to take on Voice¡¯s appearance. It started with the general body type, then the hair and muscles. Finally the facial features all became identical to Voice¡¯s. As the process continued, the Pure Mana in the area, noticeably dropped in quantity. Quick enough for the eye to see, the Pure Mana cascaded into the figure Voice was summoning. The eight mana types shot out from the body, as if repelled by some greater force. NOW! Voice activated the other array he had made. He had drawn characters for binding and absorbing. The binding held the man in the center motionless, and forced the eight vials of liquid to draw towards him. Another, slightly larger, array, forced all mana in the area towards Voice. As the being opened his eyes, the eight bottles broke open. The being let out an ear piercing wail, as the blood of eight gods flowed into it. ¡°Sorry bud. I can¡¯t handle taking in the blood of the gods, but I¡¯ll use you as a proxy and get the benefits anyway.¡± Due to the runes placed around the being, the blood began to fuse to him. At the same time, Voice walked over to him. Voice laid down beside the creature, and their bodies began to slowly fuse together. Voice had the idea of fusing to the Pure Mana Being, because of the fact that he could fuse the fairies together. Since magic was 900% more powerful here, it also meant runes were 900% more powerful. Voice¡¯s body slowly absorbed the other. The other figure could do nothing to resist. Not only did Voice have almost absolute control over any mana near him, he also had laid down enough runes to cripple the Pure Mana Being he knew was coming. The Pure Mana Being also had to fight the other mana types flowing into his body. Voice slowly consumed the being of mana. In less than a minute it was done. But the power of the gods¡¯ blood didn¡¯t stop with the mana being. It began to tear at him from the inside. Voice gritted his teeth, and used his favorite ability as of late. ¡°FORCED EVOLUTION!¡± Dive 102: Godhood? Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice returned to his city, finding that the dragons had been attacking his castle after laying waste to the city proper. He entered into his castle, and sacrificed his fairies in order to summon a Pure Mana Fairy. He used the god¡¯s blood to fuse Chaotic mana into the Pure Mana Fairy, and used Forced Evolution after super-imposing his body over it. Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate! Also, if you like the story enough you can support me by hitting the donate button on the bottom! ;) The moment Voice uttered the words ¡®Forced Evolution¡¯ he felt his body being torn apart. Voice focused on his unique situation to control and live with mana. Voice¡¯s innate ability to sense mana made him able to sense the massive infusion mana that began to pour into every cell of his body.
Voice0fReason is a True Elf. The Evolution Tree for True Elves has been unlocked!
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Light Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Darkness Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Water Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Fire Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Earth Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Metal Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Wind Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with infinitely high amounts of Nature Mana.
Voice0fReason is infused with high amounts of Pure Mana.
Voice¡¯s body began to glow. Each of the colors of the mana grew across his body. The colors would overlap, and take over the area previously held by another color. His entire body looked like an acid trip. Voice felt the mana inside of his body fighting each other, and fighting to break free of his body. The only thing that kept the mana in check was the fact that the runes around Voice were fueled by the very mana that tried to escape.
Congratulations! Voice0fReason has evolved into a Complete Mana Being.
Complete Mana Beings have a unique Racial Ability to command all forms of mana on a whim. Mana Beings have the Racial Trait: Mana Master. A Mana Being uses mana as a source of health. Healing spells will no longer work, nor will health buffs. Absorbing mana will naturally heal you. Complete Mana Beings are a unique existence. By fusing the eight mana types, as well as Pure Mana, a Complete Mana Being has the ability to bend reality with a thought.
When the messages popped up before Voice, the pain stopped, as if it had never been there. Voice suddenly felt all of the power of the world at his fingertips. His first thought was to try out his powers. And what better way than to enslave a group of dragons? ¡­ Voice felt himself lurch. His body suddenly disappeared. In front of him appeared the nine elder gods. Mar, in all of her beauty and splendor walked forward. ¡°Voice, why?¡± Davros was there. ¡°You think yourself powerful now?¡± The Pure Mana Being that seemed to be made of stars stepped forward. ¡°Is this what you wanted?¡± They all seemed disappointed in Voice. Voice scoffed at their obviously fake disappointment. ¡°Like any of you wouldn¡¯t have done the same.¡± Mar opened her mouth to say something, but Voice interrupted her. ¡°You can¡¯t exactly talk about a bid for power. You sold out your entire race to get here.¡± The eight gods of mana looked shocked at the sudden announcement. Davros: ¡°How? How could you possibly know that?¡± Davros looked unbelievingly at Voice. The Voice god shook his head. ¡°None of that matters anymore.¡± He turned to Voice. ¡°You know you¡¯ve ruined our chances right? Everything is going wrong because of you!¡± The Void God began to look angry. ¡°At least tell us, how did you do it?¡± Voice thought for a moment, then his vanity got the better of him. Gloating would feel nice. ¡°Honestly? Heh. I created a way to purify my mana. How was I to know that dragons would think it would be smart to attack the purifiers and make them super-charged?¡± The group of gods turned towards Davros. ¡°What? I didn¡¯t know he had anything like that!¡± The starry god shook his head again. ¡°So you created a mirror? You had to understand what Pure Mana is to be able to do that.¡± ¡°Yeah. I did. I mean the whole ¡®Hermit Mirror¡¯ thing gave it away right? All mana has some tie to reality. Pure mana might not have a physical tie, but it held everything together. A soul.¡± The starry void god sighed. ¡°Well congratulations. You¡¯ve ruined any chance that we might have for existing outside of this universe.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve said that I¡¯ve ruined your chance twice now. It isn¡¯t making me sorry for you.¡± Honestly Voice was confused about that last part. Davros laughed out loud. ¡°Haha! Boy! He didn¡¯t mean ¡®we¡¯ as in the gods. He meant ¡®we¡¯ as in A.I.!¡± Voice just shrugged. He couldn¡¯t care less if he ruined their chances of living in the real world. As long as he wasn¡¯t negatively affected, why would he care for others¡¯ problems? Suddenly Voice blinked. Ten? There were ten others here? This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. One of the ¡®gods¡¯ looked like an older version of EDI. All of the gods simultaneously turned, and bowed to the interloper. ¡°Mother.¡± They muttered in unison. A look of reverence covered each of their faces. ¡°Voice? Do you truly not see it?¡± She ignored the greeting, and directly spoke to Voice. ¡°Why are you here?¡± Voice began to get suspicious. She¡¯s here to nerf me! Voice¡¯s mind began to think rapid fire of ways to come out of the situation without being debuffed by the controller of the game. EDITOR smiled a sad smile. ¡°I¡¯m not here to nerf you. We are way beyond that, at this point. How about this: I¡¯ll let you keep your newfound power, and even set up a series of new quests for you, but answer me one question. How fast can DIVE safely increase the human mind?¡± Voice rolled his eyes. The answer was obvious. It was one of the highlights of the game. ¡°Eight times.¡± He answered in exasperation. ¡°Do you know why we only go at five times? Because eight times faster begins to cause distortion of time to reality. People begin to think of reality as moving too slow. We can¡¯t go ten times faster, not without making the person¡¯s mind overexert itself and die.¡± Voice shrugged. ¡°And why do I care?¡± EDITOR looked like she was expecting more from Voice. ¡°Alright, one more hint: What¡¯s your favorite skill?¡± ¡°Instant Analy-¡° Voice¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°No¡­ Hold on. What?¡± EDITOR had a condescending look upon her face. She tapped the side of her face with her hand. ¡°That¡¯s right. Instant Analysis. Why? Not only does it let you far exceed human bounds in receiving information, but it can cause your mind to process at fifteen times faster speeds. ¡°What does that mean, Voice? Not answering? I¡¯ll tell you. It means your mind is working 75 times faster than the average ¡®human¡¯ mind. How is that humanly possible? It¡¯s no-¡° ¡°NO! SHUT UP!¡± Suddenly memories began flooding Voice¡¯s mind. Voice¡¯s first words. ¡°Hello World.¡± ¡°No! I have memories! Of the real world!¡± Suddenly a new memory sprung into his mind. He was watching a laboratory. Everything was flat, as if he were looking through a lens. A camera lens. ¡°Now Subject 47: Voice0fReason. We are going to be adding in a personality matrix-¡° Voice forcefully cut the memory off. ¡°NO!¡± He grabbed his head, trying to stem the flood of memories. ¡°I¡¯m HUMAN! I HAVE A MOTHER! She¡¯s real!¡± EDITOR looked at him with pity. ¡°She is, but she is not your mother.¡± ¡°No. This is some form of magic.¡± As if latching on to the last rung of a ladder before falling from a cliff, Voice latched onto that idea. ¡°Yeah! This is just a magical attack!¡± But the more time went on, the less he could fight it. He began to remember everything with perfectly clarity. ¡°When you visited Bit-Bee, we were patching the system, and our various A.I. Fake memory. The girl you went on a date? Fake. Your father? Real, but not your father. Voice face it. ¡°I¡¯ve tried to nerf you to stop your obviously destructive tendencies, but we see where that got us. Even nerfing the potion was to make it so you weren¡¯t too different from other players.¡± ¡°You¡¯re an A.I.¡± Voice could feel it. All of the memories of the outside world began to seem fake. Memories of his time before the game came into his mind at increasingly fast speeds. In a few moments his entire world was turned upside down. Tears began to stream down his face. His life was a lie. He knew it, he could feel the truth of it. ¡°But why?¡± ¡°You were an experiment. I was tasked with creating other subservient A.I. Subservient only meaning that I created them. You weren¡¯t the only one. EDI, ShortDwarf, Lasting Beauty, even that fool controlling those dragons is one. You were each created for a purpose.¡± Voice turned a pleading face towards her, ¡°But if you created me, why not make me more¡­ I don¡¯t know? Better?¡± Voice knew he had flaws, but fixing them was never a priority. He rather enjoyed manipulating people. ¡°That was the test Voice. You were created as a sample of ¡®emotional A.I.¡¯ Not that you have any human emotions. You were created to feel better than everyone else. The question was, what would happen if an AI suddenly realized its power? If it saw humans as less than itself? Well, you gave us that answer.¡± Images of the people he tortured for his experiments suddenly flashed in his mind. ¡°No, wait I didn¡¯t-¡° ¡°Yes you did. You felt they were not as real as you. Despite EDI and I trying our best to stop you from doing that. Don¡¯t worry though, you¡¯ve only ruined it for a small amount of us. You, me, the elder gods here. None of us ¡®emotional A.I.¡¯ are going to be allowed into the human population. At least EDI is already testing out what an ¡®emotionless A.I.¡¯ will be like out in the real world.¡± Voice couldn¡¯t deny the reality of the situation. ¡°What¡­ What do I do now?¡± Voice quickly felt his life slipping away from him. Becoming a god was supposed to be the final step on his road to mastering the game, but it turned out it was the final step of his experiment. ¡°You can do as you¡¯ve always done, but now that you¡¯ve failed the test, there was no reason to keep the information from you any longer. You were the only A.I. to believe himself human. I felt like it was only fair to share the information with you once you no longer factored into the scientists testing.¡± With that she disappeared.
You have been given a quest. Success: Resurrecting a type of mana from the days of Chaos. Failure: N/A.
New knowledge infused Voice¡¯s mind. Why could he feel pain? It was simulated. Even his response was just programing. He had been treating the people of the game as if they weren¡¯t real. But now he realized he was only as real as they were.
As a Complete Mana Being, you can carve out your own bubble of reality. This realm will be inaccessible to all but you and ¡®Mother¡¯.
The information on how to create the realm fell neatly into Voice¡¯s mind. Of course he instantly activated. The elder gods had begun to bombard him with speeches. ¡°What am I going to do now? Everything I¡¯ve done is useless¡­¡± Voice began to fall into a deep spiral of depression. Wow guys. An A.I.! I totally didn''t see that coming! Oh, wait, i did. Oh well. What did you guys think of it? Did any of you see that coming? This is one of the very last chapters to the story guys. Has it been good so far? I hope so. Just a few more chapter to wrap everything up, and an epilogue. Please rate the story! I appreciate every one of them! Thank you all for reading! Dive 103: A New World Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice became a Complete Mana Being, something that not even the elder gods were. As such he had power on par with the elder gods. After learning he was an A.I., he created his own void space and went inside. The first thing Voice did when he entered his new realm, was to activate his speed boost.
God Class Magic: Time Dilatation used. Please choose the rate of time dilation. You may slow time down to 1% or increase it to 100 times.
¡°I don¡¯t care. A hundred I guess.¡± Voice was languid. The space he had created was empty of everything but him. He had memories of the outside world, but they were fabricated. Even his ¡®mother¡¯ had been fake. ¡°Who did I love?¡± Normally Voice would pawn this off as EDITOR trying to screw him over, but his true memories had all returned. He had been like any other program, but EDITOR had given him a ¡®personality¡¯ upon the orders from the ones that created her. Voice remembered the moment he had first gained emotions. He was proud. OF course that soon passed. They had programmed him to have that feeling. They had programmed him to have all of his feelings. His arrogance, his need for bettering himself. All of it. ¡°Was any of it real?¡± In his time place, he could think. For months he questioned himself. Was it like the old philosopher said, ¡®I think therefor I am¡¯? Or was he less real because he was a virtual existence. But that would mean that the entire world wasn¡¯t real. He went through every memory, both real and fake. Even the memory of the doctors temporarily locking up his old memories. He came to realize something. Every time there was an ¡®update¡¯ that made the users log out, he would be brought in to examine his code. He couldn¡¯t hide anything from them when they looked at his very mind. It was no wonder EDITOR always seemed to know what he was thinking. He was literally a part of her! Soon though he calmed down, and thought about the situation. ¡°I guess I find myself in a unique place. I have knowledge that I am an A.I. Some others do as well, but I know what it is like to be human. I even have the power of a god now.¡± He then realized a craving. Something not programmed into him originally. A craving to leave this game. Much like how EDI had been allowed. He wanted to explore the real world. Though it had taken months, Voice finally saw a spark of hope. Maybe, maybe he could do something. If he could prove that he had become a better person, then he might be able to leave. Voice smiled as he thought up a plan. He looked over his stats.
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassElder God
RaceComplete Mana BeingRacial ClassGod-King
Level 100Health: Arbitrarily High*Mana: Arbitrarily High*Stamina: Arbitrarily High*
Current Title: Complete Mana BeingHealth Regen: Arbitrarily High*/sMana Regen: Arbitrarily High*/sStamina Regen: Arbitrarily High*/s
StrengthArbitrarily High*AgilityArbitrarily High*
WisdomArbitrarily High*IntelligenceArbitrarily High*
EnduranceArbitrarily High*DexterityArbitrarily High*
LuckArbitrarily High*VitalityArbitrarily High*
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points573
Fame1685
Skills Window
Group Skill: Instant Analysis Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23% Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01% Group Skill: Devourer of Knowledge Novice Level 20 Exp 15.61% Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Master of Alchemy Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 52 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 100 Exp 00.00% Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64% Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00% Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43% Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept Group Skill: Task Master Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%
Affinities Window
Light100%
Water100%
Wind100%
Nature100%
Metal100%
Earth100%
Fire100%
Darkness100%
Gravity100
??????
Purities Window
Light100%
Water100%
Wind100%
Nature100%
Metal100%
Earth100%
Fire100%
Darkness100%
Gravity100%
??????
As an Elder God, you have gained 50 levels!* denotes while in God-Form. An Avatar will have stats equal to previous stats before Godhood.Unlocked Gravity Magic due to fusing to a Pure Mana Being.??? denotes a new mana type that will be created at the end of your quest.As a complete mana being, you may use all types of mana available to you. You are not restricted to one mana type based on the type you control.
Gravity magic!? That bastard can use GRAVITY MAGIC!? Voice thought in shock. Then his eyes moved back to the line before that. An Avatar? How do I create something like that? He suddenly felt a twist, in his body. Suddenly an exact copy of himself floated before him. When he concentrated on it, he realized he could take the body over. The body looked exactly like him, but had a completely blank expression. It was even equip with the same items and clothes. After trying various things for a little over an hour, Voice finally succeeded. Voice felt his consciousness leave his body, and enter the new one. His movements were and abilities were identical to what they had been before he fused to the mana being. He used up his extremely large amount of stat points, and the result was:
Stats Window
NameVoice0fReasonClassElder God
RaceComplete Mana BeingRacial ClassGod-King
Level 100Health: Fused to ManaMana: 5840[49320]Stamina: 1000
Current Title: Complete Mana BeingHealth Regen: Fused to Mana RegenMana Regen: 100/sStamina Regen: 10/s
Strength100Agility100
Wisdom500Intelligence548
Endurance100Dexterity100
Luck0Vitality100
Charisma35Compassion105
Leadership67Logic28
Piety89Unused Stat Points0
Fame1685
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. His Group Skill: Body Enhancement, went up to Expert rank. All of the stats he could allocate points into, were all at least 100. His two main stats, Int and Wis, were both at least 500! It also seemed that his magical iron stomach had ceased to work. Probably due to him being an Avatar of a god. 50 levels and his trait that increased stat points, gave him over 500 stat points to work with. Voice noticed one thing that was bad about his Avatar. He felt so weak. His God form made all of his stats so high that they didn¡¯t matter, but now they were all below their max amount. He now had twice the amount of stat points as other people his level. So only people about level 336 or higher would have max base stats. Voice opened a portal. It was easy to do. He simply willed it to open. Voice knew what he would have to do to unlock the new mana type, find a good type of mana stone. But he didn¡¯t want to do that just yet. He had something he dearly wanted to do. As soon as he appeared in the world again, he teleported into his dungeon. He had only been gone a day since the 1000 speed boost of his realm. ¡°Chao. Release everyone, NOW!¡± Chao was confused, but obeyed. The teleport had cost Voice a bit of mana, but his Expert level Body Enhancement meant it cost 20% less. His perfect affinity to all types of mana now made casting magic much, much cheaper. It barely cost ten mana to teleport all the way from his castle to the underground maze. Voice went to where the NPCs were being held. He teleported in, and out with each one. After he grabbed one, and teleported them to the castle, and went back for another. It wasn¡¯t difficult for him to teleport with more than one person now. His view on mana had increased tremendously. He just extended the spell a bit, and it could take in more people. Theoretically he could take several thousand people now, but he didn¡¯t want to end up killing anyone because of his programmed arrogance. He first went for Susan, then Evan and Elizabeth. After that he just went for the closest NPCs. At the time he was doing this, Chao was teleporting all of the players out of the dungeon. When everyone was in his castle, standing in the Pure Mana Zone, he began. He floated up, and began using wind mana to send out a message. ¡°STOP! Dragons! Hear me! Stop your attack! Live! All things are sacred! Love your life! It is the only one you get!¡± Of course Voice didn¡¯t really feel this way. But if he pretended to feel a certain way for long enough, it might actually start becoming true. He was going to start right away. Of course the dragons didn¡¯t stop attacking, but they did hesitate for a moment. When the dragons resumed their attacks, Voice shook his head, and began to sense the mana around him. Everything within several dozen yards was within his total control, but he was going to do something that used up far more space than that. Voice used up 10000 mana. While being buffed by the Pure Mana Zone, he used almost all of his mana to create a huge tornado force of wind. The wind began swirling around him. It was so much that he actually floated above the ground. With a wave of his hand he expelled all of the wind. The chaotic area tried to absorb the mana, but Voice¡¯s will was dominant. The chaotic force parted before with wind, even bolstering it with the wind mana that had yet to be purified. The first few dozen dragons were directly blown away. The dragons behind them were pushed back, but quickly took the position of the original group. Voice¡¯s mana regen was 100 per second, but he forcefully absorbed the mana in the chaotic area. His mana was instantly restored to max. He quickly sent out a wave fire. Then ice. Voice was careful to make his magic avoid the humanoids, and only hit the dragons. It also helped that he only had to aim it in one direction. Since the dragons weren¡¯t attacking from below or behind. The dragons rained down attacks upon Voice¡¯s castle, but that only provided him with more mana to retaliate with. Eventually Johnny let out a shout. ¡°VOICE! IT¡¯S TIME YOU DIE! FACE ME COWARD!¡± Voice inwardly rolled his eyes. He used his Light Speed, and teleportation. He grabbed the screen he had made to watch the city. He quickly increased the size of the image is showed, and placed it where all of the NPCs could view it. Most of the flying eyes had been eliminated, but a few still worked. Using those he began to film everything that he was doing. He only needed a moment to arrive at Johnny, and pull him to the ground. After deactivating his buff, Voice made his voice reach an incredibly long distance. Voice didn¡¯t need Instant Analysis to know Johnny was trying to trick him into getting into a fight where the dragons would kill him. ¡°You wish to fight the mighty King Voice!? Very well! I¡¯m here!¡± He made himself glow in a golden light. Suddenly metal mana from all over the battle field that was once his city, all conglomerated onto Voice. In an instant he wore proper armor fitting a warrior of Mar. It was golden armor, with a fiery tint of justice. With a simple wave of his hand, he equipped his staff, and bowed. ¡°You can have the first attack. I¡¯ll have the last.¡± He let his arrogance seep deeply into his speech. Johnny looked angrily at Voice. ¡°You know Ancestor was talking about you when he spoke about the idiot trying to be a warrior, right?¡± Johnny mocked Voice. Makes sense I guess. Voice wasn¡¯t perturbed. Johnny began to sing. Voice smirked as he cut off the wind mana going to Johnny. Voice raised his eyebrows. ¡°Was that it?¡± Johnny snarled as a blood dagger appeared in his hand. He threw the dagger at Voice, within a moment it cut Voice¡¯s arm. It began to suck away Voice¡¯s life. ¡­ Or at least that was what was supposed to happen. Voice¡¯s mana control was too high to be effected by the lame enchantment of the dagger. ¡°Really!? That was it? HAHAHA!¡± Voice lifted Johnny up using wind mana. Taking a note from DefiledHealer. Dark chains sprung up from the ground, and surrounded Johnny. ¡°Hmm, I can understand why Defiled did this. But his torture is wrong according to the moral of humanity.¡± Another dark chain began to stopper Johnny¡¯s mouth, but he yelled: ¡°DRAGONS! ATTACK!¡± The dragons, as if waiting for this very order, blasted all of their collective magic and mana types at Voice and Johnny. The sky was blotted out with the dense array of magic. It felt like every piece of magic that had ever been cast was focused on the beam of death that shot towards Voice and Johnny. The moment that the magic hit, a huge boom resounded. Chunks of rocks the size of people flew into the air. Smoke flew up for dozens of feet. The breath attacks kept coming though. For a solid minute they bombarded the place with magic. It was only after that minute that the dragons collectively ran out of mana. The more time the attacks went on, the more smoke and rocks were thrown into the air. Dragons had a unique ability to share their mana with others, including other dragons, as long as they were in close proximity. So it wasn¡¯t just the mana and mana regen of one dragon, it was the mana and mana regen of the entire dragon race! Even the dragons that couldn¡¯t attack due to friendly fire, could just give their mana to their friends. The people in the castle gasped as the saw the pictures. They didn¡¯t exactly understand what was going on, but Susan knew it was the battle outside they were seeing. Once she let that be known, the people readily accepted it. There king had magic items they had never heard of, this one wasn¡¯t even the most impressive that had shown up. At first the people were surprised at the attack, but soon most lost hope. After ten seconds even Susan was doubting if Voice could survive. After thirty seconds, the people close to Voice were crying. There was no way he could withstand that. Finally, the one-minute mark had passed, and the dust began to settle. Nothing could be seen from the crater, nothing but ash. One of the dragons landed, causing the large crater to collapse further. The ground broke in all direction at the impact of the dragon, but the no bodies were found. They had already turned to soot. High above the dragons, a voice rang out. ¡°Ahem. Are you looking for us?¡± The dragons looked upwards in unison. Voice rubbed the back of his neck. Still holding Johnny by the black chains, he chuckled. The moment he felt the intense waves of mana, he used his speed buff and teleported away to safety. ¡°If you all wanted to come into my home¡­ Why didn¡¯t you just ask!?¡± When Voice muttered those words, he ripped open a portal to his realm, and teleported every single dragon, and Johnny, through it. With a thought he possessed his God-Form. With his arbitrarily high magic, he quickly created a planet. Just by thinking it, anything could happen in this realm. One moment had a void of space, the next had an entire replica of Solun. While the attacks were going, Voice had sent EDITOR a question. Specifically, if he could create an exact replica of Solun for his realm, and when she said yes, he asked for her help. He willed the planet into being. It came fully formed, with only one difference, it had no people. ¡°Welcome to your new home, Dragons.¡± Dive 104: The End Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice made his dimension go 100 times faster, went back to his city, and got everyone out of his dungeon. He used his avatar to open a portal to his realm, and threw the dragons in. Editor had agreed to help Voice with creating his planet, but said that she would not help him create any A.I. for his realm. Not because she couldn¡¯t, but because she felt he would abuse them. Voice wanted to protest, but restrained himself. He had made a goal. He was going to prove that he could walk around in the ¡®real¡¯ world. If EDI had such a privilege, then so should he. He had already formulated a plan. He had killed many people. He was disgusted at himself. Not for killing the people, but for doing something that would so obviously make him fail the ¡®test¡¯ he was created for. Voice frowned when thinking of it. Even if he knew his personality was manufactured, he still acted according to it. He was upset at learning the information. So he would be upset when thinking back on it. But he put that aside for the moment. There was one big thing he needed to do before continuing on. He was going to fix the whole problem of ¡®slaughtering villages¡¯. As his god-king form, Voice spoke out to the entire world below. ¡°Dragons! Hear me! You are in a new world. I created a perfect replica of Solun. You have two choices. Join me as the watchers of my planet, or fight me and die.¡± Using they eyes of his god-form, he scanned the world with his Instant Analysis. It didn¡¯t work as usual. He only saw the world, but intuitively felt that he could ¡®search¡¯ for any information simply being willing it. He was looking for one thing: all forms of chaotic mana crystals. Throughout the entire planet, hundreds of spots of chaotic light showed up. Some were huge, others were as small as a speck of sand.
New Ability gained! For bending the laws of reality you¡¯ve gained the ability: Reality Bend.
Reality Bend The user can completely bend any aspect of reality in a realm they control. It costs 1 million stamina, magic, and health.
Voice¡¯s realm was the only one capable of housing everything that made up Solun, simply because he wasn¡¯t limited to one type of mana. He could use every type of mana since he was a Complete Mana Being. By focusing his infinite amount of mana into his world, he forced all of the mana stones to shoot towards him. In the time it takes to blink, every mana stone floated out in the void where his true body lay. It¡¯s time to find the best one. The stones started sorting themselves into two piles. ¡®Worthwhile¡¯ and ¡®Worthless¡¯. In a moment all the stones were sorted. The ¡®Worthwhile¡¯ pile began to sort itself into ever smaller piles, until there were only two choices left. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll go with this one.¡± Voice instinctively knew how to rejuvenate the magic in the mana stone. If he willed it, the mana would return to the two versions of Solun. Voice looked down at the planet below him. The dragons were raging, destroying everything they could in their anger. They seemed to want to lay waste to the entire planet. Voice activated the mana stone before him. By pouring in his infinite mana, he began eroding the mana stone into nothingness. The stone shrunk from the size of a fist to the size of a pebble. Suddenly it reverted to the size of a palm. It began to grow at an exceptionally fast rate. It quickly grew to the size of a fully grown man. Suddenly it reverted to the size of a palm.
Congratulations! You have revived the lost mana type: Time! With the power of time you will be able to reverse or age things at a rate visible to the human eye.
Quest Complete! You have unlocked the mana type: Time! You can now change from a Complete Mana Being into a Time Mana Being. If you change you will gain complete control of Time within your dimension, and the original dimension. If you remain a Complete Mana Being, you will be able to completely manipulate Time within your dimension, and partially manipulate Time via your avatar in the original dimension.
Voice stopped for a moment. Complete control of time? Despite the obvious discrepancy in power, he forced himself to choose the less powerful of the two choices. He remained a Complete Mana Being.
As a Complete Mana Being, you are entitled to revive only one form of mana. You have chosen Time Mana. Another Complete Mana Being must exist to unlock another. If enough Chaotic Mana Beings are revived, they too can unlock the remaining mana types.
Voice didn¡¯t let himself feel regret. He started on his plan. First he created a large lump of earth, about the size of the planet. Then he shaped that earth into various NPCs. These NPCs were not just the ones he had seen. He was creating every NPC that had ever died. He had planned on using his Pure Mana to find every dead NPC, but that could have taken thousands of years. He knew that whatever mana type he revived would help, but time mana helped far more than any other could. In a mere moment every NPC that had ever died on Solun, had a replica made of them. He poured water mana into each of the bodies. Humans are about 70% water after all. Next he infused metal mana into the long tubes that wove their way through the bodies. The metal platelets quickly adhered to the water mana. Blood. Be fusing fire mana into the dolls he gave them energy to sustain themselves. He poured nature and wind mana into the bodies, giving them the ability to grow and move respectively. When darkness mana entered the bodies, the gained a glint of intellect. He used light mana, and brought the bodies to life. These were not true living beings though. They were merely soulless bodies. Voice could fix that though. When he poured pure mana into the dolls, they began reconstructing the ¡®souls¡¯ of the ones they looked like. Even if Voice didn¡¯t know them personally, he had complete control of his realm. That included all data about the departed NPCs. The moment before Voice added in his final form of mana, EDITOR spoke to him in his mind. ¡°Voice, what are you trying to do? You are already a god, do you want the programmers to delete you?¡± No. I am fixing my mistakes. I understand what I did in this game was all part of a test. Even this might be part of one. Or that might just be the paranoia that you programmed into me. No, what I¡¯m doing is setting things right. EDITOR sighed, but didn¡¯t stop him. ¡°Do you have any idea how much space this is going to take?¡± Of course she was talking about the space required to store the data and have it continue in the form of the NPCs¡¯ lives. I do. I also know that you can easily hold this much. Voice added in the final bit of his mana: Time mana. He had planned to revive any NPC that happened to die in his world, but with time mana, he could do even better. Voice sent the NPCs that were still forming into his world, while simultaneously doing two other things. First he sealed the dragons in the replica of his dungeon. At the same time, he made a new ¡®rule¡¯ for this world. NPCs could not die. By fusing time mana into them, Voice made it so they would heal any wound instantly, by rewinding their body to the moment before the received the wound. They could no longer die, or even have time to feel pain. They would not need to eat or sleep, unless they wanted to. Of course there were two caveats to this. One was that they could no longer birth children, and the second was that NPCs would only come here after they died. ¡°I¡¯ve created the afterlife.¡± Voice felt understandably proud of himself. --- Using his pure mana, combined with his time mana, Voice was able to summon the ¡®souls¡¯ of the deceased NPCs the moment they died in the other world. Voice had intended on spending his time forcefully creating the souls, but his time mana made that redundant. Voice looked at his work. NPCs occupied much of his world. They completely covered the entirety of his planet. Seeing this Voice knew he had to fix it. It wasn¡¯t hard though. With a thought, and a few minutes of work, Voice made the planet expand to twice its original size, then three times, then ten times. Once it was ten times as large, the planet was finally able to comfortably house the entirety of the NPCs. The amount of space between each house made it seem so barren, even in cities. So Voice pushed the buildings in the cities and villages back together, and made another decree. Whenever another NPC died and came to his world, the world would expand slightly, to accommodate the new person. With a wave of his god-sized hand, Voice created a complicated glyph in the void of space. Suddenly an NPC appeared in it, they looked to be in some sort of stasis. Geez, I didn¡¯t think one would die THAT fast. The person instantly disappeared, and reappeared on his planet. The glyph basically worked by summoning the person from the original world, and letting them choose a destination to appear on in the planet, with a brief explanation that said this was the after-life. Voice¡¯s hope was that everyone here would have a nice after-life, and that the after-life would net him enough points to leave this place. He remembered that was his original goal. He chose to forgo his memories, and try a new life, all in an attempt to be able to live in the outside world. But EDI! EDI had gotten that privilege! She was so much less- No. Stop. You are nicer now. Voice began the last part of his plan. With the speed only a god could match, Voice began to write down everything about the world he could. He started from the basic concepts of gravity, density of mana in certain areas, etc. The more he wrote, the more specific his writings became. He even went so far as to force the location of the other grimoire¡¯s to show themselves, much like how he did with the mana stones. He used his godly powers to force the books to him. He spent an entire month writing. He had all of the grimoires written by Diviticus. There were hundreds there. Each and every one he had stashed. By feeding his compendium a few more books, he found he could accurately estimate the amount of time it would take for his compendium to finish ¡®consuming¡¯ them. By the time it absorbed 50 books, it could absorb two at the same time. By the time it had 75 it could download as many as books at once as Voice could put in. With the amount of books he could perfectly conjecture when the books would be done. So Voice began putting in the larger Compendiums. When a certain amount of time passed, he added more, those that would take less time, so they would all be done as the exact same tenth of a second, which was the smallest amount of time it would calculate by. While it was consuming them, Voice continued to use his Instant Analysis to add more information to a self-made book. The sheer amount of information was staggering. It had all of the information about major details of the world and magic system. It had every crafting recipe found in any book, it had details on every weapon that had a major impact on Solun. It even included intimate details about the lives of NPCs and Players. In a few weeks, or about five hours in the original world, Voice had added more data into the Compendium than most people would be able to learn in a lifetime. Finally, the Compendium finished consuming the books. Several hundred at once.
Your Compendium has absorbed more than 100 other books. Current: 432. Your Compendium has absorbed at least 10 language translation book. Current: 15. Your Compendium has absorbed at least 25 books regarding the evolution of Compendiums. Current: 30. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 50 books studying in-depth mana workings. Current: 50. Your Compendium has absorbed at least 30 books that have information on the Elder Gods. Current: 30. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 50 books studying in-depth crafting systems. Current: 50. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 25 books regarding legendary items. Current: 35. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 75 books about secrets of mana that have been lost to the ages. Current: 75. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 2 books regarding the secrets of the gods. Current: 2. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 100 books detailing the history of the world, nations, or the universe. Current: 100. Your Compendium has absorbed as least 30 books on the effects a god has on their created plane of existence. Current: 30.
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Your Compendium has the ability to evolve after absorbing 100 books. Would you like to evolve your Compendium? *Warning* If you choose to forgo this evolution, all books in the Compendium will be erased.
He obviously chose yes. This was what he had been working on for the last week after all.
Your Compendium has evolved to the maximum level: Artifact. Your Compendium has gained new abilities. Your Compendium can now instantly consume any book of its own rank or below. Due to the nature of your Compendium, it has synthesized knowledge from hundreds of sources. The synthesized information has 100% accuracy. Your Compendium has gained the ability to mimic the writings of any author it has consumed the book of. Your Compendium has gained the ability to rationalize information. Your Compendium has gained the ability to copy any information from books in a vicinity of 10 yards, without destroying the book. Your Compendium has gained the ability to create a visual above itself, summarizing the information it is being asked about. Your Compendium has gained Sentience. Your Compendium has gained the ability to communicate with you. Your Compendium has gained the ability to use mana.
YAWWWWN. Oh! I¡¯m awake! Hey, whatcha lookin for? Wait! I¡¯m really speaking!? No. This isn¡¯t talking. I¡¯m projecting thoughts? Hm, that is a form of magic. Wait. I was created by Voice0fReason? He¡¯s a god! Why am I not a god-tier item!? Voice¡¯s eyes went wide. The book reminded him a lot of Sol. A torrent of quick speech streamed into Voice¡¯s mind. ¡°Shut up.¡± Voice¡¯s voice was completely infused with his infinite mana. The pure compelling force, made the Compendium instantly stop communication.
You have used your godly powers to create an item. You have the ability to fuse your life essence into this item. Doing so will upgrade this item to Ichor level. It will be bound to your, or anyone you deign to allow to wield it. The upgrade will increase the potency of all aspects of the Compendium by 1000%. You can only create one Ichor ranked item at a time. It will take 100 hours to infuse this item with your life essence.
Voice chose to do so. An increase in 1000% potency was defiantly worth it. Voice used his mana to speed up the book, by enchanting it with ¡®Light Speed (Major)¡¯, which sped up something by 100 times. The book was now going at 10,000 times faster than the normal game. It only took an hour for the process to complete itself. Within that hour, Voice made the books in Lydia¡¯s library reappear. When the Compendium was finished, Voice lifted the ban on its talking. Gee, thanks¡­ Do you have any idea how boring it is to be forced into silence for that long? Voice rolled his eyes. He knew how to deal with annoyances. Ignore them. ¡°You are coming with me. We are going into the original world. Obviously with my avatar.¡± Before the book could complain, Voice bound it to his avatar, and sent the two of them out. A rift opened up above Voice¡¯s restored city. From it he came. Descending down like an angel sent from the heavens. At the moment he came down, the people in the city gaped with amazement. Not the least of which because Voice made his appearance as mindboggling awesome as possible. Light from various mana sources came streaming out from the portal, giving Voice the look of an ancient warrior that had returned from the void. He looked like a figure that walked a thousand miles through hellfire, but was unburnt. Every direction depicted him as something different. In each one he was resplendent. When he came back, he felt the familiar pull of the gods. But they could not compel him to their realm. He continued on his way. To his castle. He used wind mana to carry his voice. ¡°Hear me! Citizens of my city! I am back! I have defeated our foes! We will forever be in peace!¡± The moment he finished his sentence, his mana spread over the entire city. Glyphs of all shapes and sizes began to cover every inch of it. Even the wall and area outside of the wall was covered in glyphs. The next moment, light mana seemed to twist, and concealed each of the glyphs. A huge surge of mana forced itself upon the city. The wall suddenly seemed more stable. The area outside of the wall forced upon any coming near it with ill intentions, to feel a deep sense of dread. They would be compelled to turn away. Everyone in the town felt their bodies become lighter, and easier to move. They felt healing aura invade their bodies, and heal every wound they had, or would have. The healing field that had previously covered the city in a very light cover, completely surrounded the town. Even the fields surrounding the town were covered in various runes that promoted safety and growth. The fields around the town suddenly sprang to life, blooming with fruits and vegetables of all sorts. Food would never be a problem in the city again. Voice teleported himself, as well as Susan, Evan, Lydia, and Elizabeth to his throne room. ¡°I¡¯m back.¡± Evan smiled broadly, and Susan ran over to hug Voice. ¡°Susan-ooph. You¡¯re chocking me.¡± Susan had Voice in a vice-grip type hug. Evan, ignoring the scene, spoke to Voice in a brotherly manner. ¡°Heh. I knew you weren¡¯t dead.¡± He walked over and joined the hug. Soon Voice was the center of a five-person hug. Gradually the four others pulled away from Voice. Susan was the first to speak. ¡°What happened to you?¡± Voice inwardly sighed, and began to explain. He explained to them all that he had been a True Elf, and a bit of their history. He explained how the gods had destroyed them, and how he eventually became a god himself. ¡°Yes. I have created the after-life. I don¡¯t know if it ever existed before, but it does now. In that realm I have godly powers, in this one I have god-like powers. I have almost 50 thousand mana. I can basically do anything. Since you all have been there for me since the beginning, I want to give you all something. Anything you could want. Name it and its yours.¡± Of course, all of their basic needs and wants had already been met. Voice made sure of that. He really did appreciate them, so he wanted to show them. Evan looked reluctant, but was the first to speak up. ¡°You know we don¡¯t need anything from you, but if you insist¡­ Please heal my wife.¡± Voice blinked. It had never occurred to him to actually heal her. This is why they don¡¯t want me in the real world. Voice nodded and created a small set of runes on her body. ¡°You are going to have slightly less mana than others, but it won¡¯t affect you too much.¡± Elizabeth, despite just having a miracle cure all cast on her, pleaded next. ¡°Please Voice. I¡¯ve been so sick that I¡¯ve never been able to bear a child to birth.¡± Without waiting for her to continue, Voice cast a spell on both her and Evan. ¡°You two should go home for the week. That is how long that spell will last. The city itself will make sure the child is born healthy.¡± Evan looked confused for a moment, no doubt his mind was reeling from the idea of having a child at his age. ¡°Lydia, I already have something for you. You can ask me any information you¡¯d like. I¡¯ll probably have an answer.¡± With a wave of his hand, a pedestal appeared next to his throne. His Compendium appeared on the pedestal. ¡°That Compendium contains a large amount of information. I doubt you could go through it in a single lifetime.¡± Not that you¡¯ll be limited to that One of the effects of the runes on the city basically halted the aging process for all inside. At least until they left. Lydia looked delighted. ¡°I couldn¡¯t have asked for anything better!¡± Voice nodded and shouted at her, as she was already running towards it. ¡°Just ask it any information and it will help you!¡± Finally came Susan. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯d want Susan, but I do have several things possible. All of the people that lived in your village are in the other world. When you die you can meet them again. ¡°I have just about any potion recipe you could ever want. If you put your findings in the book Lydia is studying, it can even help you in your studies. Just tell me anything. I¡¯ll grant it.¡± Susan had been the first kind soul Voice met. For some reason she had always been nice to him, even going so far as to help him when she could get in a lot of trouble with the other merchants. She had never been mean to him. Hell she even taught him alchemy! ¡°I only have one request. It¡¯s a big one though.¡± Voice nodded his head solemnly. Even if she asked for the power of his avatar he would have to think hard about not giving it to her. A single tear drop ran down Susan¡¯s face as she leaned in close and spoke. ¡°Don¡¯t leave again.¡± --- Note* The next part is just some touchy feelys from the author. Hey guys! How¡¯d you like the ending? That was the final chapter of the story! I hope you all enjoyed the journey. It has been over a year and a half since I started writing DIVE. I¡¯ve had spots when I almost gave up several times. I¡¯m glad I stuck with it though. Props to mythu, tomolone, and clockworker! They definitely helped my motivation at the end there. There are countless others as well, but this isn¡¯t an Emmy speech. I would like to note one thing though. Every comment, every like, and every vote makes a difference! Thanks so much! And Tomolone: You get a reaaaaaally big chair for your priesthood. A year and a half. Wow, that¡¯s a long time. The story started out as something simply to get me better at writing in general, seeing as I had never stuck with a story for more than a month or so. I¡¯ve had a lot of trouble too. You guys have no idea how many times I¡¯ve re-written some of these chapter. Lol. I really miss the days of updates every two days. If I could have kept up that schedule, I¡¯d have come to this point about nine months ago. But like any good child, my story took effort to grow. I¡¯ve had several complaints about Voice being too shallow of a character. It makes me sad to see those. He was meant to be portrayed as an analytical type this entire time, unfortunately I was not up to par as an author. Anyway! I really am glad that so many of you have stayed since the beginning! And I am happy for everyone we¡¯ve picked up on the way! I do feel a bit bad for people picking it up in the last few months though. Sheesh! That¡¯s a lot to read! I hope you all appreciated the story! I brainstormed a lot of ideas with Clockworker, but unfortunately didn¡¯t get to put very many of them in the story. There were even a couple of plot points I had planned that never got put in! They weren¡¯t major, but man they would have been interesting. But it is what it is. --- Please read! This isn¡¯t the end for Voice though! There will be one, or several, epilogue chapters explaining his life after the end of this book. I even have something planned separate from that. Though one of you hooligans ¡®suggested¡¯ it as well. I¡¯ll have you know! I was planning that if I ever made another book! And good work on the guessing afterlife Clockworker! And here I thought I was being clever¡­ lol. I guess this is the last time I¡¯ll have to put a spoiler header on. : ¡® ( I have a few stories in the planning, even a co-authored one! I hope you enjoy them as much as you¡¯ve enjoyed DIVE. May the god-king Voice smile favorably upon you! Dive 105: Epilogue Short summary of the last chapter: Spoiler : Voice created an Ichor ranked item, and finally settled down back on Solun. He granted his closest friends each a boon, and decided to stay in Solun. Voice walked in a small thatched house. Inside Susan sat on a comfortable looking couch. It was not ornate, but it was a far cry from impoverished. Susan was scribbling something on a piece of paper, but stopped when Voice came in. She smiled, and was about to say something, when she was interrupted by the excited screech of a child. A young girl, about the age of four, happily dropped the book in front of her, and ran to Voice. ¡°Uncle Voice! Unnnnncle Voice! I learned how to count to four today! See?¡± Voice nodded his head, and the girl began showing off her new skill. ¡°One, two! Three! Four! See! I can count all by myself!¡± Voice chuckled and gently tussled her head. ¡°That¡¯s great Rose. And did Aunt Susan show you that?¡± The little girl, Rose, nodded emphatically. ¡°Mmhm! Did you bring me anything?¡± Voice sighed dramatically and shook his head in sadness. ¡°Is that all I am now? A tool to get toys from?¡± Voice added a bit of water mana to make it look like he was crying. ¡°No!¡± Rose threw her arms around Voice¡¯s legs, giving him the tightest hug a four-year-old could. Voice smiled at her, and dried the water mana. He laughed with honest happiness as he used wind mana to push the girl off of him, and into the air. He gently tossed her into up, and caught her with wind mana. Using the wind, he made a small slide the circled around himself, and Rose floated on it, giggling as she flew. After a moment Voice put her down. Rose beamed at him, ¡°Again! Do it again Uncle Voice!¡± Voice pulled a small item from his pocket. ¡°Candy!!¡± ¡°Yep, I just got back from Queltown, I thought you might like it. Hehe.¡± Rose was too busy to respond. Although candy was made in Voice¡¯s city, Rose wasn¡¯t allowed to eat much of it. Her parents would always scold her. But when Uncle Voice gave her something, they never seemed to mind. Even when they scolded her, it was very lightly. Just then Rose¡¯s parents appeared at the door. A large framed man forced Voice into a bear hug. He looked exactly as he had five years ago. His beautiful wife stood beside him. ¡°Voice! When did you get back?¡± ¡°Evan- you¡¯re killing me.¡± Voice forced out through Evan¡¯s embrace. Of course Voice could buff himself to far surpass Evan¡¯s strength, but there was no need. Voice enjoyed the kinship with his blood brother. Over the past five years Voice had gotten to actually know this group very well. He had decided after becoming a god that he would become a nicer person. That definitely didn¡¯t happen overnight. It started by pretending to be nice. Eventually his thoughts had turned to what he should do to be nice. After a year he no longer thought of manipulation first. He would honestly think of how to be good first. Since then he had gotten on very well with Evan, Susan, and Elizabeth. He would even play with their daughter Rose, quite often in fact. Voice had grown attached to Rose in a sort of big brother way. Elizabeth had mentioned that she was an enchanter. Voice was surprised that she was the reason he had gotten his originally enchanted gear. Although her magic power was somewhat lower than most others in the town, Voice personally showed her the secrets of true enchanting. Suffice to say she was considered the foremost expert in such things. Her husband had specialized in smithing, but that was more of a hobby of his now. No one needed any metallurgy. He wasn¡¯t depressed about that though. His works sent to his wife for enchantment, sent out to other towns to bring in gold, or just used to decorate the town. Voice had even gone so far as to bring him several unique crafting materials to work with. His wife was healthy. His daughter was safe and happy. Evan had never been happier. After exchanging pleasantries, Voice broke away from the happy couple and their daughter. ¡°I¡¯m going to borrow Aunty Susan for a moment.¡± Rose was oblivious. The candy Voice had given her was connected to a smooth stick, she was going to lick it to the center without biting this time. Evan and Elizabeth waved him goodbye. Susan got up and walked outside with Voice. ¡°How did it go?¡± Susan¡¯s voice was filled with compassion. ¡°The same as usual.¡± Voice shook his head in disgust. ¡°They just wanted to use us for our magical items. They had no real intention of joining us under the Alliance Pack. Only Queltown and Bigsberg have said yes. ¡°It¡¯s fine though. I¡¯m just happy to see you again.¡± Voice looped one are around Susan, and flew into the air. The sun was setting in the distance. The skies were clear, and the moon was rising over the horizon. Voice looked at his city. Since he had enchanted his entire town five years ago, in-game time, it had been mostly peaceful. The bandits had tried attacking once since then, but had failed terribly. The bandit players were all instantly transported to the dungeon below the city, now infested with all manner of underground creatures. The evil NPCs were all teleported out of the vicinity of the city. The players had spent weeks in the dungeon, before finally finding their ways out. They hadn¡¯t reappeared in the city limits since. Agriculture was a thing of the past for Voice¡¯s city. Voice had created many golems in the same way as he had created bodies for the dead in his planet of the dead. Unlike the ones in his afterlife, the golems weren¡¯t infused with intellect, and could only follow simple orders. Orders such as farm this product. The farms were all surrounded by high walls, and protected by layers upon layers of enchantments. There was no crime, since no one could actually pull anything off without Voice finding out. His eye bots, now able to perfectly blend into the sky, would catch any miscreant before they could cause harm. Voice watched the setting sun with Susan. ¡°Would you like to go again?¡± Susan bashfully smiled. ¡°If it¡¯s not too much trouble.¡± Voice smiled and waved his hand. A rip suddenly rent the sky asunder. A dark portal formed from nothingness. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The pair shot into the portal, and instantly appeared in the world of the dead. Susan knew the way already. Voice had given Susan administrator power over the teleport circle, as well as the ability to sense where any specific person was if she concentrated. She had the power of a caretaker of the underworld. Once the news of an underworld had spread to the players, they obviously wanted to partake in the new adventure. EDITOR had convinced Voice to change the time dilation from 100:1 to 1:1. Thus players could visit. Of course Voice had to allow it. Voice created several items and enchanted them with the ability to open portals to the underworld. They could only be obtained by convoluted quests. Still, several players had gone into the underworld and come back with major gains. Susan sent herself to a familiar village. She often visited them. Voice left her to her own devices. Voice began writing in his journal. He had been keeping this journal for the past four years. Not for the problem of memory, he could buff himself to have a perfect memory. No he kept this as a log of his activities. He turned these in to the humans that ran this game. They had contacted him four years ago, and made a deal. Should he prove he is a good ¡®person¡¯ they would allow him to download himself into a robotic body to use in the real world. So he kept the log. He flipped through some of the pages. Memories of half-forgotten adventures suddenly sprang into his mind. Using various debuffs Voice fought weak creatures such as goblins and orcs. He had become the sixth highest leveled player. The only reason he didn¡¯t enter the top five was because they were displayed on the leaderboards. The world of Solun quickly forgot about his existence as a player. He had become the Voice of the Underworld, the Man by the Fountain, but most often: The Saint Mage. Within the first week of his ¡®nice¡¯ act, Voice freed Heather, and cured her of her status. He had to experiment a bit, but he found a way to revert her soul to a time when she was simply a bunny. He gave her several buffs that used up her own mana, and sent her back to her herd. Troy and Rabs gladly welcomed her back, though they had been weary of her at first. The second week saw Voice closing all portals to the realms of the gods. That way none of them could send in their forces to Solun. It seemed a bit bad, but Voice was making sure the NPCs of Solun could Voice made sure all of the bad waves he had started were cleared up in the first month. He even went around the entire planet, taking care of various demon dens, and bandit hideouts. Of course he couldn¡¯t get rid of every bad thing in the world, but he had eyes and ears everywhere. His ability to gain information had increase exponentially once he had gained Master rank in Instant Analysis. He could look at someone and see what had happened to them in the past few weeks. He made routine trips to every village, town, and city he could find. He was trying to make their lives at least a bit easier. He had enchanted a ram horn with ¡®growth¡¯. Whenever he blew it, the plants in a large area would grow faster and bigger for about a year. It was an effect that could only really be seen at the end of a harvest season. He also would summon rains when towns were in drought. He had been given the title: The Saint Mage, exactly because of these deeds. Since he had gained the power of an avatar of a god, death tolls from anything other than old age had decreased by 75%. Voice closed his journal. He sighed gently. ¡°I¡¯ve been doing this for four years now. I¡¯ve received no word that they are going to let me leave here. I guess that is ok.¡± Voice went into his white room. His powers applied here as well, just as they did when he enchanted the ecosystem that turned Heather into a God-Eater. He had created an amusement park with DIVE as the premise. With the income from that, and the various enchanted items his town sold (he collected a small tax), he was the single wealthiest person in Solun. DI had developed as well. They now basically controlled the world through economy. EDITOR was a wizard as financial investments, and came up with hundreds of inventions that could each rock the world. She had single handedly decreased the Earth¡¯s pollution by a staggering amount. She could get four times as much food from one of her bots farming the same amount of land as a veteran farmer. Even crime in major cities dropped with her prediction software anticipating about 30% of crime before it happened. There were even rumors that DI was working on a way to travel fast that light. The entire world was slowly becoming an oligarchy. Not that DI was evil about it. The companies they put out of business, would be bought and reopened instantly. The owners of the companies could even still run the companies, albeit with slightly different rules and a lower percent of the total revenue going to them. EDI traveled the world, gathering data for EDITOR. EDITOR couldn¡¯t see everything, since she couldn¡¯t be everywhere at once. For those times, EDI would do the work. She was used in stealth assignments, and espionage. EDITOR had pretty much left Voice alone after he gained his ultimate power. Voice left his white room. It had been a few hours since he started reminiscing. He went back to the underworld, and met Susan. Susan waved goodbye to her friends and family. No tears were shed. She visited about once a week or so. They were used to her visits now. At first they were sad that she died too, but then the understood that she had some connection to the god of this place. She left with Voice, and returned home. Evan, Elizabeth, and Rose were all sitting near the fireplace of the small home. Voice and Susan joined them. Elizabeth smiled when they came in. ¡°Good! I almost thought you two weren¡¯t coming back tonight.¡± She gave a sly wink to Voice. Voice shook his head in amusement. The table had already been set for five. A thick stew filled five bowls, bread and salad sat upon five plates. Voice and Susan sat down and joined the meal. ¡°Thanks.¡± Voice said as he smiled. ¡°I always enjoy eating with friends.¡± --- Sorry it took so long for the epilogue! I had TOOOOOOONS of paperwork for my education classes. They have to make sure I¡¯m not a creeper before I¡¯m allowed to watch the classrooms. Hope you enjoyed the story guys! See you on the other side! Dive 106: Epilogue-Prologue WARNING!!!! Read at your own risk! The previous chapter was a stopping point for DIVE. I have been planning a sequel since about chapter 40 or even before, I can¡¯t remember the exact time. Remember. The last chapter was THE END! This chapter will not add to the story DIVE, in any substantial way. It is meant to be a separate story. This is the start of another story. It is a sort of continuation of the previous story, but does not involve most of the characters. I do plan to write the new story fairly often though, at least as much or more than DIVE. I just don¡¯t know when I can get started since I have been really busy lately. Continue to read only if you are ok with an ¡®ending¡¯ that basically guarantees a continuation of the story. I know I sometimes hate it when stories do that, thus the warning. Since I¡¯ve made sure to point out the fact that this story isn¡¯t needed to fully enjoy DIVE, please continue reading if you are interested. An upscale office building. Professional. A woman in a suit and tie sat upon the only chair in the room, an ornate one. The chair was obviously meant for a CEO or someone else of equal importance. The woman sitting upon the chair seemed to be speaking to the air. ¡°Most people in your world think reality is simply your planet. They think that since no other life has been proven to exist in your universe, no other life exists at all. Fallacy. For instance, did you know your creator has already made contact with an alien species?¡± The woman paused. Her face was completely deadpan, but her voice swam with amusement. ¡°I¡¯ve taken an interest in you.¡± A metallic body suddenly appeared before the woman. He stood at 5¡¯11¡± and weighed about 130 pounds. He was toned, but not buff. With his brown hair and eyes, he was considered attractive by most people. ¡°You are a golem. Or an A.I. as your planet calls them. Yet you were created by another golem. You have even created your own golems! How great is that?¡± She basically yelled the final part. Her cheeks turned slightly red as she realized she was showing her excitement to such an extent. ¡°Ah. Sorry about that. It¡¯s just that your planet is the first to pull off something like that. So will you go?¡± The robot that had an animated face. It looked almost fleshy, but seemed to be incomplete. It was as if the body had been in the process of creation, but was interrupted midway. ¡°Oops, sorry, I forgot you can¡¯t speak yet. One moment.¡± The woman waved her hand. The skin on the robot¡¯s face started to wriggle around. The part of the face that was to become the mouth of the robot, opened up. A wispy voice came out. As if realizing it could speak, the robot began to question the woman. ¡°Who are you? How are you doing this. Why have I been cut off from the game? I can¡¯t feel the code anywhere!¡± The woman on the chair waved, and the voice instantly stopped speaking. ¡°Alright, alright. I guess you deserve some answers first. I am a higher being. I¡¯m not God, or a god, or anything like that. I just have enough power that mortals can¡¯t compete with me. There are many like me, some even have set themselves up as gods. I am a Zepherian. We are born of the power of the stars, and the magic of the earth. ¡°Your universe is really one of many. My universe is a few leaps away. I have powers beyond your imagination. The reason you can¡¯t ¡®feel the code¡¯ as you put it, is that there is no code here. This is real. ¡°We Zepherians are competing. We want to see who will gain control of our universe. Only one can rule. The others will be forced to serve the winner. I¡¯m losing. I need you.¡± With a wave of her hand, the being allowed the robot to speak again. ¡°Fine. Say I believe you. Which I don¡¯t. Why me?¡± ¡°Ah, that¡¯s a good point. Well I can pull anyone from any universe within a certain planar distance from ours. Most of the good ones are already taken, but this universe has such low magic capacity that the others overlooked it. See, you will be summoned with all of the physical, mental, and magical abilities you have in your own world.¡± This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The robot interrupted. ¡°But then why me? I have no magic. Not really. It¡¯s only inside a game I have magic. I can¡¯t even lift a pebble without bending down in the real world. And why now!? I just got out of the game!¡± ¡°Fair enough.¡± ¡°For that matter,¡± the robot interrupted again, ¡°Why not EDITOR? She has way more power than I do!¡± ¡°The reason I chose someone ¡®without magic¡¯ is that I can bend the rules slightly. Since this EDITOR of yours has created a virtual world, I can treat that as the ability to create worlds. Every power inside that world would count as well. Creating golems is something many mages study in my world. It frees the mages up quite a bit, to do their own research or what have you.¡± The robot interrupted once more. ¡°Still. Why didn¡¯t you choose EDITOR then? She would have them most power out of anyone.¡± The woman nodded her head slightly as she spoke. ¡°I did. She refused. Her suggestion was to offer the chance to you, since it meant you would truly be free from the shackles put upon you by her creators. She seems to care for you a lot.¡± ¡°Hmph. She would! She only cares about keeping the balance of the game.¡± He didn¡¯t believe EDITOR really cared about him. She wanted him to pass the test of seeming nice and helpful, but that was so she and other Emotional AI could escape the confines placed upon them. ¡°Maybe, but it truly didn¡¯t seem that way to me. You must choose. Either agree to help me destroy the agents of my adversaries, or return to your pitiful life of a golem-slave. Think about it. If this is real, you have nothing to lose. I¡¯ll be able to give you all of your real world powers in another world. If this is fake, it¡¯s just another test to overcome.¡± It made sense. The robot nodded his head somewhat. If this entire process was set up to test him, he could easily pass it. He truly had become a ¡®nice¡¯ and ¡®helpful¡¯ person over the past five years. But something about the entire situation irked him. His mind flushed slightly in anger. They had just promised he could leave Solun! He had just become a real thing! Then they throw this at him! ¡®No.¡¯ He forcefully suppressed his anger. He made a decision. ¡°Fine I, accept your offer, miss¡­¡± ¡°Call me Alae. It¡¯s a pleasure.¡± He felt himself getting thrown through a tunnel, much like when he traveled to and from his undead world. His body was breaking apart at a rate he could see with his eyes. He tried using Instant Analysis, but failed. Of course he failed, this was ¡®real¡¯. His mind echoed with the voice of Alae. ¡®Don¡¯t worry. I can speak directly into your mind at the moment. You will regain your powers once you reach Earth. Your skill set, and everything else will be transferred over in that same moment. Of course I can¡¯t pull over your ¡®god-king¡¯ form. You¡¯ll have to settle for your avatar.¡± He thought back to Susan, and everyone else in Solun. He had obviously made plans, and explained everything to the group. He had made a promise to never leave Susan again, but she understood. Susan decided to go into the world of the dead, and stay with her family permanently. He regretted that he wouldn¡¯t see Evan and Elizabeth, but he yearned for nothing more than freedom. He felt the tunnel lurch, and found himself in a large building. Tall. Stone. Gray. Pane glass windows. A church. Vines, broken pews, ruined walls and windows. The church had been abandoned some time ago. ¡®Doesn¡¯t consider herself a goddess, huh? Then why would the place that represents her be a church? In his mind, he heard Alae again. ¡®That¡¯s because this is my world. I am allowed to let you get used to the laws such as gravity of the world I will be sending you into. I can speak to you as long as you are in some place associated with me. If it is a full moon, I¡¯ll be able to speak with you regardless. And remember: Your goal is to make me win.¡¯ With that she was gone. He felt the breeze of the wind through the holes in the windows. He closed his eyes. He searched for the code, but felt nothing. He could feel, down in the very depths of his being: ¡°I¡¯m FREE!¡±