《OP-King and Goddess of Procrastination (Permanent Hiatus)》 Prologue: Drawing up the New World - Ailla Prologue ¨C The stage This Fiction is not about VR-gaming, There are lots of reference, but it is not about VR. ***** Part 0 ¨C Stupid talks ***** Greetings everyone, I am a MC of this story, not *the* MC though... just one of those MC Sad to say, I am not the Main Character, just Minor Character compared to the great beings that will be mentioned. Still being a MC is better then being a DN, Disposable Name that will never again appear. Who am I, you may ask... I have a small part in the play in the grand scheme of things. My time will come soon... but for now, I am empowered to tell your my life-story. Hopefully I can bring a smile to your face when you see me in action or hear about me in later chapters. So... why am I here in the prolog? You see... Androg-sama, who is the author, believed that most people don''t take the prolog seriously. If something starts with Chapter 1, people will read it diligently... But when facing a prolog, most usually just scan through quickly, believing the real story only starts later. I think it is just a reflection of Androg-sama''s bad habit while reading fanfics... With many readers'' lackluster attitude on prologs, Androg-sama thinks that placing ''OP-King'' and ''Loser'', our two main protagonist of this Fiction, in the prolog will be a waste, so the job is dumped on me... Not that I am complaining, I really like the extra exposure, otherwise nobody will ever remember me. The author, who had written all this trash till now, wants me tell those who have kept reading till this point that: 1. Since Androg-sama cannot lengthen chapters without spoiling the contents, this Fiction will be using parts within chapters. This way, the great writer can both keep to style while readers can read more per posting. Prepare for monthly release, with 4-7 parts per chapter for high word count, so this reads like a book-novel, not web-novel... as if it makes any difference to most people... 2. This prolog, is written from the first-person''s perspective... My Perspective. That makes me something great doesn''t it... *Hahaha*... *Ahem*... Pardon me... Anyway, the style used in the prolog will be different from the rest of the story, Beware! 3. Androg-Sama also says: ¡°Addition to the above point, the prolog is written with little thoughts and fill with spoilers. If you don''t like the prolog, just abandon this and go to the next chapter.¡± *Boo!*...I resent that... You must read my life story, promise please please *sparkle eyes*. ***** Part 1 ¨C I am Lucky ***** Since I am having such Air-Time, let me introduce myself. I am a Reincarnationist... new word not found in any dictionary. It means that I used to be someone, then I reincarnated into someone else then reincarnated further into another body... Complicated? But worry not, I will put my life story in a very simple and easy to understand way. Just sit back and enjoy... Going in chronological order, I am starting with my first life. Born on the world called Earth. A pretty simple world with no magic, no wild beast, no dungeons, and no adventures. It cannot be called dull because most people are busy struggling with this monster called Money... As I sense the foreshadowing of the ''Delete'' button, I will not elaborate. I am the son of a simple farmer in a rural part of this world. He name me ''Lucky'' in the local tongue... funny name, but that is the name given to me. The reason for such a weird name is the death of my mother during my birth. I know that Earth has advance medicine and technology, but dying during child-birth is still very possible. So... why am I called ''Lucky'' when I cause my mother''s death? The simple reason is: My dad find her committing adultery while carrying me. With her dead, he will not have any problems with regards to divorce, child custody and all the legal mambo jumbo. Doing a DNA test, my dad want to be sure I carry his genes before raising me... such a miserable existence... Anyway, I grow up in a poor rural environment with only one parent. I am just happy playing with stones and leading a simple life but it all changes soon. On my 8th Birthday, my dad ask me for some numbers between 1-60... then Walla!, we suddenly become millionaires. Being named ''Lucky'' may actually be very fitting. Rising from poverty to riches, the path isn''t easy... I will not elaborate much as Androg-sama isn''t rich so it''s not very wise to brag about wanton spending and risk unwanted wrath... Anyway, me and my dad end up migrating to a city, in the country called USA. There, I get to know about the most up-to-date type of games those rich kids play. It is called VRMMORPG, which stands for ''Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game''... Wow... What a mouthful. Even with winning the lottery, dad still remain his miser self, not allowing me to buy everything I want. But that change on my 9th birthday. Similar to what happen a year ago, my family wealth rocket over a hundred million, thanks to the magic numbers I utter. Talk about Lucky being lucky... am I great or what... Dad start working as a landlord: He end up buying several huge building using the money, then lease out the rooms for rental. He says that we will be getting about $250,000 every month just from all the rents he collect... Telling me that I need to learn the value of money, he gives me a monthly allowance of 20,000 dollars, saying he will only increase this amount after when I grow older... What a stingy man he is... With my new allowance, which is a super improvement from a year ago, I join the rich-kids in their VRMMORPG. At first, I did badly because I don''t know anything, but after many trials and errors, I finally understand how big the world is and how powerful money can be. There are so many people much better then me, but using money, I can buy advantages in the game. Many thanks to inventory bags of the game, it enables me to carrying enough health potions to drown a small village, without having to drive a tanker around. With the huge amount of backup health, I can venture without restrain. Buying those potions cost me a quarter of my monthly allowance but since I am always at home and online, I can''t think of other uses of my money. To better myself further, I pay a little cash to the people calling themselves ''Dark Gamers'' for information. That is when I am introduced to this person calling himself ''OP-King''... OP basically means Over-Power, someone calling himself OP-King feels so egoistic... Anyway, meeting this person online changed my perspective of avatar-building. Since I want to bypassing all the tedious training others have to do, I meet up with this OP-King because I decide to buy an already strong avatar. This ''OP-King'' guy sold me his for $32,334. Considering I am only 9 and cannot leave the house alone, I have most of my allowance save up. Without second thoughts, I agree to buy this chief-thief or something, multi-class avatar. Even though I have to suffer a long lecture from my dad, buying that avatar is the best decision I have ever made. Why? you may ask. The reason is very obvious, when I play as a noob, I meet all kinds of trouble, scoring a critical hit is rare enough to want to host a celebration. It is all my own illusion of thinking how difficult crits are. With the bought avatar, basically every weakness of the enemy is outline in detail, I only need to poke them at the correct places and the hit becomes a critical strike... it is that easy. For a highly-talked-about boss monster, the twin headed Orge King, it die very fast in my hands. I just have to poke the 3 glaring red dots on his shoulder and the related arm falls limp. Doing it to his other arm and I have a mobile punching bag. Poking the red patch behind both his knee and the ''Boss'' becomes a just a lump of exp waiting to be harvest. It is until I see a group of players fighting the same Orge King that I realize how OP the toon I bought is. They are a group of 5, all with levels higher then me, yet they are having much trouble against something I can easily solo. It is also at this time that I understand why that guy is called OP-King. Just one of his creation yields such power, what about the rest? Unknown to him, that guy just gain another fan... I highly doubt I am the only one who admires his work. ***** Anyway, I have strayed from the topic, so lets go back. All in all, time pass quickly with me engrossed in games. On my 10th birthday, nothing happen. Even though dad ask for another set of numbers, none of them match the winning combination. I am not affected in the least because how many people can claim winning lotteries... and how many for winning twice? Life goes on as normal, with a small exception: I now have a private tutor. Dad has hired a teacher for me, to make sure I will not become illiterate like him. He thinks that even if we are rich, we need to better ourselves. To improve my language skills, my tutor asks me to start reading. She has not specified what kind of materials to read, so I start my new hobby of browsing web-novels. Within those novels, the ones that catches my attention are the ''Reincarnation'' type. They talk about people living on Earth being transported into fantasy realms after the die. They then live a fantasy life full of action and adventures. From reading these stories, I start to dream about living a lives akin to those of VRMMORPGs. Those are interesting lives. To prepare, in case I become like the protagonists in the novels, I learn more about that super-avatar I own. The correct class it has is ''Chef-Rogue''. Rogue is just a stealth-based class, nothing special except having bonus critical damage... but Chef... how did that help... With further research, I find out that Cooks need to learn about animal anatomy so they can slice the meat without disrupting the nerves and muscle fibers, that is the reason for why my avatar can see all those red lines and spots on my enemies. It is like the Sashimi making class I once saw on television, they teach you to ''cut here'' or ''slice there'' so the meat doesn''t ''leak juice''. Dad is extremely happy when I ask our house-chef to teach me cooking. The brilliant me manage to make Kimpak, Makizushi and California Rolls all in one day... just don''t look them up and simply show your respect to the super clever me! After much practice, I am able to cook more sophisticated things like frying an egg with at 75% success rate. Considering how difficult it is, I am very please with my progress. With the Cooking skill mastered, I seek greater knowledge... Seeing our maid sewing loose buttons, I ask her to teach me tailoring too. After I master tailoring, I will then learn wood-crafting. All these skills are ''just-in-case'' because I may be reincarnated into a monster, like a goblin or lizardman. They do not have craftmen with them, so I learn enough to make armor and weapons. I skip on blacksmith because if there is a forge, I rather just buy top quality weapons then make mediocre ones. As someone important that I can''t remember, once said, know yourself and it is half the battle won. For the next few years, I diligently train my skills proficiencies every day, putting all my free time into action. You see... I am a busy person, so I can only pack those training into the little time slots I have as free time. My daily schedule consist of... 12 hours in VR-games, 2 hours with the tutor, 8 hours sleeping and 10 minutes family time with my Dad. I even sacrifice the 1 hour ''zombie time'' I have everyday after waking up. Seeing how much time I spent to build up my crafting proficiencies, I believe if there are skills and status box in RL, I will see all my crafting skills reaching Grand-master level... Maybe grandmaster is too much bragging... BUT at least Master level... If I get my hand on some rags, I think I can make a Legendary Unique Mithril Armor from it... never tried yet because I can''t find rags in my house. If you are wondering where have I time to read web-novels? I read them when the tutor is around, so I can ask her for any big words I don''t understand. She is more useful then the dictionary, able to quickly reply to my questions. Using a dictionary means I have to stop... It becomes harder to continue reading a good story when I have to stop every few paragraphs. My life then take a drastic change again, this time it is because of a meeting with a God.... Not the One Almighty God... rather she is just one of the many lesser ones. ***** Part 2 ¨C Meeting with a Goddess ***** On my Fifteen birthday, I manage to meet a Goddess... can''t really remember her name, I think it is TsunYan or YanTsun... She was the Goddess of Klutz and DereDere, which doesn''t make any sense to me. Don''t know what either of those titles mean. Anyway, her entrance was beyond grand... Materializing in my bedroom clad in a soft glowing light, while walking toward me who is sitting on my bed, preparing to sleep, she tripped and fall down from... nothing! My room does not have any obstacles due to my early poverty childhood. I don''t want to brag but from young, since I don''t have a mother and I don''t have anything to my name, I always make sure my room is clean. After becoming son of a millionaire, I still keep to the status quo, so I am very sure I have not left anything on he floor for her to trip on. The random clothes I throw around the room, due to my newly acquired bad-habit, is always clean away by the maid while I have dinner. Back to what has happened, this female appears in my room, falls down then pick herself up, while grumbling she morphed... I mean seriously, she was a big bosom adult with purple shoulder-length hair tied into a ponytail, dressed in something like my maid... then with a glow, she become a blond Loli with her waist long hair tied into twin tails in a Gothic Dress. Somehow, the glorious orbs on her chest disappeared with the change... wonder where she hide those... She started by saying something while blushing: ¡°Its not that I need your help, I just happen to be here... Since I am already here, might as well ask you if you want to journey to a fantasy world full of Magic and Adventure.¡± If she asks normally, I will just accept... I mean, I have been preparing for this moment the last few years... But she is acting creepy and have that spiteful attitude. Although my mind tells me I am annoyed, but somehow my body react differently... NO!, Not what you are thinking... Even at 15, an age where I show interest in the opposite gender, I am not a lolicon... Maybe I will be more interested with her ''other'' self, but not with this flat-chested brat... Anyway, while my brain is telling me to punch the entity in her face, sadly my body just went forward and pat her on the head... I know that she look cute, since I am looking at her, but still, I am regretting being unable to punch her for that stupid attitude! Pushing my hand away, she pout while giving me an ultimatum. ¡°Are you coming or not? Or do we have to drag this for the whole all night? Its not like I cannot do without you.¡± Since it was also my wish to journey into a fantasy realm, I decide to give her a ¡°Yes!¡± With my agreement, the Goddess morphed again, this time she has chest-length pink hair plaited into two braids falling down onto more developed melons... Yes yes, I am a 15 year old, hormone filled male human with great interest in the female torso... so I can''t help but use them as reference. More importantly, ignoring her body, the important part is the eyes. She has now scary looking eyes and they are looking at me, like a starving beast look at food. Those two orbs... The eyes!... cause my body to freeze over, too scared to move. With me immobile she slowly approached while materializing a huge battleaxe onto her hand... where she get that weapon is beyond me. ¡°You will not betray me will you?... I will eliminate anything that can harm you... so don''t worry... Just depend on me...¡± She is saying those in a soothing tone while walking towards me. Armed with an ax bigger then my head, her cutesy tone actually make her even more creepy and scary. With me almost wetting myself, I scuttle backwards while keeping eye-contact... not that I want to, but I feel that she will kill me if I turn my head away. Sensing my attempt to run away, she cry out: ¡°You infidel!¡± before charging towards me as her ax rise above her head. I can''t even think anymore because by the time I try to react, I already have an extra metallic extrusion sticking out of my left shoulder... Stun at what looked like a crescent shaped pauldron, reddish fluid start to leak from the connection to my body. The Goddess has then reverted back in her original appearance, the purple hair, the big bosom... ahhh... I think I am just have a bad dream when I am feeling no pain while she is apologizing: ¡°Sowiee, I didn''t hit correctly, so you will have to wait 10 minutes before you die... I am really bad at this... I promise the next time I do it, I will strike the heart directly... I miss slightly, so please forgive me... pretty ple... *owie*... i it aye angue (I bit my tongue) ¡± Huh? You want to do it again?? what is this about missing my heart slightly when you hack my left shoulder??? Most importantly, how can a God bite her own tongue while saying simple sentences???? As the world start turning dimmer, I am pondering if all God or Goddess are as psycho as this one I meet. As I am Lucky, she ought to be some special God to become my patron... The last thing on my mind before fading into darkness is: ¡°I am well prepared, unlike those protags in the novels I read. I am a Super-Crafter ready to pwn the Fantasy lands!! Muhahaha...¡± ***** Part 3 ¨C Meeting with more Gods ***** After spending an undetermined amount of time in void space, I am reborn in the new world... This place is call Ailla. Unlike Earth, Ailla has magic and adventure. Here I am, ready to conquer this land with preparation done in the last life... NOT!. Sadly, things don''t usually work out as well as you plan. First, I am born a cripple, basically the ax is attached to me during reincarnation, so I am born with one less mobile arm and a piece of metal attached to my left shoulder. My father this time look at me with skepticism before drowning me... I am not even a day old. I end up in a white space of nothingness before my adventures start. Being alone, I start to curse at the clumsy Goddess who is the cause of this stupid incident... It goes on for many many hours... or what seem like that because there is no reference of time here, I cannot actually know how long I spend swearing. After venting, I am able to calm down. Putting myself in the place of the Goddess, I believe she will not appear to an angry person... When I do something wrong, I will always hide until my Dad... my previous Dad stop fuming before appearing before him. Thinking logically, the Goddess must have hidden herself somewhere waiting for me to calm down before approaching. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Indeed I am correct, as my tantrums stop, the Goddess appears with 2 other beings... not sure if they are mortals or Deities, but better play it safe before doing the wrong thing. Also, the Goddess is in Psycho Mode with her pink braided hair and her scary stare. Looking at them with suspicious eyes, they catch the hint and introduce themselves. The one standing in front is clad in golden armor, holding a balance on his right hand. He introduced himself as Elohim the Greater God of Balance... that is all, nothing more... The one standing slightly behind Elohim is called Kismet, the Local God of Destiny, he is garb in what looks like an Egyptian Priest-Wear, something that cover the head and and below the waist, with nothing in between. He really has nothing to hide as his lean muscles neatly defined his shape. This Kismet guy... God... is the more talkative one, telling me that problems have arise due to my reincarnation. Long story short, due to the stares from Androg-sama, basically my clumsy Goddess has cast the wrong spell and use the wrong method; Instead of becoming her Champion, I end up a native of this new world. To rectify this problem, the two higher ranking Gods have come, both to explain things to me and sort out my choices. First and most important intelligence I gather: There will be a great battle between the Lesser Gods in 5 years time. Ailla doesn''t have any religion yet and has been set up as a competition ground. Lesser Gods will fight over worshipers, if they manage to accumulate enough prayers from the natives, they will be allowed to stay and reign over. If they don''t, they are ousted from this World. Since Deities are not suppose to affect the mortal world directly, to minimize the risk for an all-out War between Gods. They will need Champions like me, Yes! the great me... to help them build up their religion. Detail will be given to me later by TsunYan, who is standing like a full meter away from the other two, signifying her lesser position. Also, when they say later... they mean 5 years later, there will be no communication with the Goddess until then. With regards to my patron, I finally understand half of her title. Klutz basically means clumsy... so she is actually an Embodiment of Clumsiness... I just hope it doesn''t mean I am also Clumsy... I know I get careless at times, but... never-mind, I will just admit I am clumsy... sometimes... As for DereDere, I still need some researching, maybe I will ask around to see if anyone knows... in the worst case, I will ask other Champions. Kismet further explain to me that there are complications involved because of my premature arrival to the land. Champions are only suppose to reach Ailla years after, that means if they let me run free, I will have an advantage over the rest, that is where the old-dude of balance comes in. He will banish me if I try to do anything related to religion in my 5 years of stay. There are lots of other Mumbo Jumbos constraints that I choose to ignore, I can have TsunYan tell me of those later. Also, I need to be reborn again. To reach full maturity in 5 years, I can no longer take the normal path of a person, instead I will be reborn as part-monster, something that is shun in this world. As Kismet has explained, only Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Orcs are considered people, other being, even if they are sentient, are treated as monsters. Seeing that they are very accustomed to dealing with special cases, I accidentally ask them why. Without hesitation, Elohim simply says that another Lesser God has done something similar, so they are already well prepared for such events. ***** Interlude: Moron, the Lesser God of Imbeciles and Those who cannot Follow Simple Instructions. He has brought his Champion, Smiteodin, to Ailla even earlier. If he has kept quiet, the Champion can actually sneak pass detection, but NO, he has to make the world know about his ignorance and unwillingness to wait. Also, that Champion ignore warning and even go against the Greater Gods in defiance, saying they have bad attitude and even ''give a low score'' whatever that means... Anyway, I am told that Champion called Smiteodin has been stripped naked and hung head-down in the plaza of some city. Hopefully he will gain more wisdom and not sprout rubbish without thinking.. This Smiteodin guy obviously don''t use his brains much, can''t really blame him since he has Moron as his patron, but really... does he not even try to think of the reasons why the Greater Gods put out notices on specific behaviors and their repercussions? You know, he really represent the typical ones that think: ''Oh, I am so great, only what I think matters'' type... ***** Where were we... oh, the reborn stuff. By agreeing to their conditions, I will be reborn again, I am given 5 years to get accustomed to this new world. After that, Champions of other Gods will be entering the fray and we will be duking it out to see which Deities will stay in the lands. Its not like I need all those extra buffs, I can handle everything with my OP self; even giving some bonus to other champions is fine with me. With such thoughts, I simply agree with all the conditions those two set. With everything agreed upon, I am on my way to my adventuring life. With an ''OK'' by me, Elohim strike me on the head with the scales of his balance. I don''t know how he does it, but it is painless just like how TsunYan ax me. However, unlike the slow fade-away, this time I just blankout. ***** 4. I am Lucky again ***** After spending another undetermined amount of time in void space... again... I have am reborn in the new world...again... Same place with the name Ailla, that has magic and adventure. Here I am, twice-ready to conquer this land with preparation done in the last life... no... last last life. Without any more unforeseen troubles, this time, I am born correctly and healthy. I am born again in a rural part of the world... My birth killed my mother... again... My father then make sure I have his genes... again... Sadly all the events are very similar so there is not much new things to talk about... *sob* This is when I remembered Kismet saying my fate cannot be changed much as I following the pre-written book of destiny... He has really done a sloppy job because I am following my old life-events on Earth... For anyone guessing how they check for paternity in a fantasy world, the simple answer is: They can''t. The reason my current father can know I am his, is due to the fur on my skin. You see, my father is not human, he is a were-beast of the bear variant. He has dark eyes, black hair and stand at 2m tall in his human form... I forgot to mention, were-beast have racial traits of transformation, able to switch between human, beast and something in between. Me, I am born furry, with a black coat covering my body like a snug fitting pajamas, leaving the hands, feet and head alone. Even naked, I look like someone wearing a tight black fuzzy jumpsuit. This assignment of body hair not only proof my heritage, it also allow me to stay in the village I am born in without being regarded as some wild animal. Unlike other kids who have no knowledge, I know fully well what will happen if my identity is revealed... and I need to be careful until I fully master the art of transformation; I am currently stuck in half-half stage, and quickly learning how to going either way. Without fail, ''Lucky'' in the native tongue, is my name again... but this time it is for a different reason. I am being named ''Laki'', because of my potential talents, most were-beast can only take two classes, but I can have at least 3. Being aware that I may have a much brighter future, possibly bringing greatness to the race, my bear-father gives me that name to signify my luck. Being half-monster, I am able to grow up into adulthood within 5 years. It is not just accelerated growth, more like skipping the useless parts. Shortly after being born, I can already walk. Few hours later, after they cart away what use-to-be my mother, I am already doing exercise to test my new muscular strength. Somehow, I feel that being a monster is much better then taking 10 years to grow up normally. With regards to my deceased parent, I don''t really feel anything because I don''t have one in my past life either. Can''t really feel bad when you don''t even know what it is like to have. Its just like telling someone on Earth in year 2000 about VRMMORPG... they can imagine it, but will not be depress or miss the actual thing. My other parent, bear-father, is either dense or maybe the were-beast race is special. He doesn''t even flinch when he see me doing aerobics before I am even a day old. When I ask him to teach me skills, he finally release some emotion, more of curiosity then shock... weird race or weird father, I will leave that for later. No luck on learning skills though... On Ailla, there are marble-like items that represent classes. By equipping them, anyone can take any class they want. As a special existence, I have 3 holders, located on the middle of my chest covered in hair, to place those class-marbles. They form an equilateral triangular shape with a gray orb right below. If counting the gray one, I have a diamond icon on my chest connecting those slots... Yeah! Body Art! Since I don''t have any of the marbles and all those that my bear-father own doesn''t suit me, I spend the first day of my life chatting with him and gaining knowledge about this new world. He told me about the geography, the populous, something called Quintessences and how anyone not of the 4 primary races are discriminated upon. Its not that I need all those information, I just want to do something if I cannot train, feeling that 5 years will pass in the blink of an eye. For Geography, basically, Ailla has 12 known Central Cities, 48 Grand Towns of significant sizes and lots of villages. The reason for those Central Cities is teleportation portals. You see, this world is much bigger then Earth and very much unexplored. There are 12 teleport gates, and from there grew the 12 cities we have now. They are named after the 12 zodiacs signs on Earth, namely Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. From each Central City, there were 4 smaller portals located 50m away on the North, East, South and West directions. These smaller portals are use to port to about 500 km outwards in their respective directions, which create the 4 Grand Towns around each city, making a total of 48 Grand Towns. Lastly, villages of various sizes are scatter within the zone between the Towns and the Cities, popping up around resource points like mines, lakes, forests and farmlands. Other villages spring up along the routes of commerce, dotting the land. The portals are the only way that link the cities. Exploration teams have been sent out trying to connect the cities by other routes, but they either return to their starting location or never return at all. This situation create 12 great countries with their own culture. The 4 primary races that dominated these urban cores are Elves, Dwarves, Humans and Orcs... all living happily under one roof while discriminating against any other beings, deeming them monsters... Outside of Towns and Cities, the villages are more ''pure'' as there is a higher concentration of certain races due to landscape. The village I am currently at is located in Leo, somewhere between the Central City and the Northern town. It is a village consisting of mostly humans with some Dwarves, few Elves and no Orcs. From the village, it takes about five days of Northwest walk to reach the Northern Leo Town. That is also the amount of time I have, unable to practice anything. Reason: Those class-marbles can only be traded in Towns or Cities, sometimes in very large size villages, but not in mine. Me and my bear-father set off on the day of my birth to hide my unique presence and also to get me some classes I want. After telling him I want to have both Chef and Rogue classes and explaining how powerful that combination will be, he agree to get me my class as soon as possible. Enough of Geography, lets talk about the populous. There are 4 races that consider themselves people and regard other species as ''monsters''. Why are they so discriminating? I will go into details later, but to simply put it, ''people are weak, monsters are strong''... Yes, this 4 races huddle together because they are weak. They shun the others because of their weakness... One can only understand how pathetic they are after knowing this thing called Quintessences. For skills and classes, the people of Ailla are skilled in everything as long as they have the correct class-marbles. Bear-father tells me these marbles are called Quintessences... or quints for short. They are basically classes, that can be equipped... just like weapon and armor. By gearing up with the correct quint, anyone can gain any skills. For example, if I want to be a chef, I need the chef-quint; Without it, every food item I make, even sandwiches, will taste horrible. So, does that make everyone master in all trades? Obviously not! The reason is due to levels. The skills that come with the various classes can be leveled up. With enough levels on the skills, the quintessences itself will rank up. All quints start out as green which represent Beginner level, as they rank up, their color changes from Green, then Teal, Azure, Blue ending with Purple. Red rank is the considered the highest, but nobody have ever seen one... so it is considered a legend. Telling him I will buy myself some Blue and Purple quints, I only get a laugh from bear-father. He take out an Azure-color quint, with an iconic bee wearing a crown, then toss it lightly towards me. This quint is his primary class, a Bee-Master, an upgrade class from the normal ''Bee-Keepers''. After catching his toss, the quint in my hands turn green, making me sulk... I guess I can''t buy my way up... Taking the quint back, it turn Azure in his hands. Bear-father then explain that Quintessences is just bringing out the latent powers within a person. Seeing my complex expression he tries to cheer me up by saying there are ways to upgrade the ranks without repeated labor. Perking up after hearing that, I clear my mind in preparation of making mental notes of the lecture that follows. The first thing I am told is the creation of Quintessences. To generate one, instead of simply buying, I must do some actions related to a particular class repeatedly while thinking of that class. Using hunting for example, I must hunt in various ways for an extended duration while thinking of becoming a hunter. With perseverance, a new quint of the ''Hunter'' class will appear on an empty place-holder of my body. Every creature on Ailla have place-holders on their body. That means every creature will somehow start creating quints knowing or unknowingly. Rabbits that spend years munching on grass and evading predators will generate quintessences with classes like ''Voracious Eater'' and ''Escapee''. As they eat more and escape from predators, they gain much experiences in their classes ranking those quints up. When the rabbits are caught, the locals will skin the leather and take the meat because those are important food and materials. As for the quints, since they are so common, most are discarded. This is the difference between people and monsters. What the people discard, the monsters use to make themselves stronger... as the saying, a man''s trash is a monsters'' delicacy... or something like that... You see, just chomp on the so-called ''useless'' quintessences, the experience within the quint will flow through the body of the one chewing and imbue whatever quintessences the muncher is equipped with. This method comes with specific requirement: it is only valid if the last holder died with the quint equipped. The quintessences must also be eaten within minutes, or it will adapt itself to the new owner. Bear-father also tells me that my personal quints can be eaten to boost other my other quintessences, but the empowering rate will dependent on how similar the classes are Large boost for similar ones while little to no improvements for opposite ones. Taking out an unused farmer-quint, he gives it to me telling me to just hold it. Being a farmer will be the last thing I want, but at least I have something now instead of 3 empty holders... as the saying goes, something is better then nothing... Oh! before I forget... Remember me saying something about the 4 races being weak? One of the reason is that they have either abandon the practice of eating quints or lack the aptitude to do it. Quintessences are deem by the ''people'' as sacred, so eating them is a no-no. Discarding it though, seems fine... Eat?No!, Throw away? Yes!... I don''t know how they actually land up with such ideas... The other reason is, those 4 races only have one quint-holder slot on their bodies. I mention that every creature have these quint-holder, and sadly those who label themselves ''people'' only have 1. Just think of it, even rabbits have 2 quint-holder, that means if a rabbit trains smart and fights hard, it can plummet an Orc in a 1v1 fight... Does that sound weak enough?... Luckily those bunnies are docile herbivores that rather die with a full stomach then retaliate. Were-beasts like my father have 2 or 3 quint-holders mostly due to being part-animal, and me, being the special and lucky, have 4. The gray orb is also a quint, a special one at that. Bear-father explains that Gray quints are attached before birth and stay inactive until some special event occurs... I just happen to know of the event... and when it will begin... Putting words into practice, we detour slightly to catch some bunnies. While my bear-father is treating the rabbit carcass, I am happily munching on their quints, they taste like boiled quail-eggs coated in sugar, sweetness and crunchy exterior with soft and smooth insides... My farmer-quint rank up after gobbling down 20 of them and become Teal in color, telling me I am now an intermediate instead of beginner. I also manage to collect and equip ''Evader'' and ''Grass Gourmet'' quintessences, two uncommon classes that the bunnies have. ''Evader'' sounds totally like an agility class, which I can use to transfer experience to the Rogue-Class I want. ''Grass Gourmet'' is like a subclass for chef, which only work with salads... it even comes with the skill ''Detect Grains'' which allow me to see weaknesses of the grass, flowers and trees. Somehow I get the feeling the bunnies are already Chef-Rogues, just doing their work on plants instead of enemies. Chapter 1 Chapter 1 –OPK goes to Ailla Chapter 1 ¨C OPK is invited to Ailla ***** Part 0 ¨C VR, the new platform of gaming ***** It was year 20XX where Virtual Reality became the mainstream gaming environment. Using VR as a platform made games more realistic and therefore attracted even more people. From the grand scenery created by CG, considerable amount of people also started playing VR games as a way of tourism. As with everything great, there were problems. Due to Virtual Reality having much attachment to Life, RPG games based in VR started to have problems in terms of game-play and balance. A martial artist who played as a wizard could easily beat a warrior without experience in hand-to-hand combat. Players without RL tailor or smith skills would never produce anything better then those who had. To deal with such problems, Classes and Skills were empowered. For those who know kung-fu or other martial-arts, they would need their respective expertise in game to utilize those skills; Hitting without the correct weapon or unarmed proficiencies would result in 99% damage reduction. With the introduction of time-dilation, Avatars with greater ''Agility stats'' would experience slower time flow, enabling even a toddler with high agility to match an Olympic medalist in terms of reflex. The craft classes were also tweaked: RL Designers or Crafter could still make beautiful clothes and items but stats gain from things produced would depend totally on the proficiencies of the related skills. Furthermore, with design templates, for players with no crafting experience, with enough in-game skill proficiencies, they could produce goods that looked better then those made by professionals. Adding a finishing touch, most VR games allowed players to have multiple classes, to let skilled players diversify their potential. With duo classes, by mixing and matching, a greater variety of characters were made, diminishing cookie-cutter builds and making each gamer more unique. Games that stuck to old traditional formats were soon ousted from the industry and the new norm took the place of the old. ***** Part 1 ¨C OP King ***** Oliver Palmer King, with net-handle ¡°OP-King¡±, was a 38 year old game addict and part-time hikikomori. He was considered a part-time hermit due to his addiction, which made him stay long durations within his own apartment, lasting from weeks to months playing online games. Unlike other shut-ins, who simply leech off their families or social welfare, Oliver earned enough to not only support himself, he had a healthy bank balance that could let him live his reclusive live for many many years. Oliver''s income came from his gaming. He was a RMT-gamer. RMT simply meant ''Real Money Transaction''. Oliver sold virtual avatars, items or money for a living. With his unusual way of thinking, he was always able to pull off stunts which both intrigued other players as well as shocked the developers. Yes, even game designers were often stunned by what he did with their codes. The 3 craziest online persona Oliver awe the world with were the Chef Rogue, Mining Defender and Breeder Commander. Why were they special? Chef Rogue For most games, Chefs were side-jobs to improve monetary income, or simply enable players to fill their satiety when out in the fields. Chef usually had no combat-related proficiencies, but to allow them to better prepare food, they were given visual hints on where to cut on their ingredients. Oliver was able to ''bend'' the rules by treating his enemies as ''food materials'', just like slicing sashimi. The Chef job allowed his stealth class to see all the points of weakness his enemy had; be it severing nerve points or cutting along muscles, Oliver''s Master-Chef profession gave him visual to all these, yielding crits after crits. The Rogue class also enhanced those hit by improving critical damage, making his every hit draining 10-15 times more hp then any normal player. Every strike being a critical hit was a dream many thief-class had... Every DPS wanted more damage output... So, the Chef Rogue was sold for over thirty thousand dollars in a 1 week auction. Mining Defender Defender was an especially defensive class. They clad themselves from head to toe in dense armor, forgoing all sorts of agility. They were the strongest TANK class that took puny amount of damage even from the greatest attacks. Miner was the most under-estimated fighting profession, one that would really make people cry when exposed to their power for the first time. Using the sharp end of a mining pick, a master-miner could punch through Orichalcum like dirt, guess what it could do to the lower tiered materials like Mithril or Steel... With the ''I will crush your armor like paper'' adding to ''You can''t deal any damage to me'' combo. The Mining Defender owned by Oliver was sold for over a hundred thousand of dollars. The price was much higher then the previous because no one else could train another toon that reached its level of power. Oliver''s hidden training method consisted of ''mining'' within the colony of giant ants. He mined not the walls, but the ants themselves. Ignoring all logic, he swung his pickaxe in a mining motion while killing those huge insects in front of him. Digging through chitins instead of dirt improved his mining skills while giving him massive ''Strength'' and ''Piercing'' stats. He also ignored mandibles poking at his sides while he worked, leading to enhanced ''Toughness'', ''Endurance'' and ''Stamina'' stats. The avatar was so ''broken'' that the game company had to do a press conference to quell the masses complaining about ''OP-King'' being too OP. Breeder Commander This was the most special and unique pairing that awed the world. Breeders usually reared livestock, like chicken, pigs, cattle and occasionally dogs. Not Oliver. As a breeder, he raised Avians (chicken), Orcs (Pigs), Minotars (Cattle) and Kobolds (Dogs)... hundreds of thousands of them. With his own personal monster army, Oliver''s Commander class allowed him to move them like his limbs. Using the unstoppable force, he dethroned many kings, claimed half the game map and created a legendary empire. He could have united the whole game under his banner, but decided against it.
Shameless Advertising: For those who are interested in reading a FanFic using ¡°Breeder¡± class, follow the link: - Lady Bunny -
***** Oliver had just put his Avatar, Empire and all 18 Kingdoms he conquered, up for auction. Within minutes, the prices had already soared like crazy because almost everyone was made aware of his intention to sell... each kingship went beyond hundreds of thousands, with the price of the empire reaching nearly a million dollars. The kingdoms would be bought by guilds or rich players that wanted ownership of land. There were less than 40 kingdoms in total. With so many guilds wanting land, it was natural they tried to outbid each other for the limited resource. The empire itself would mostly go into the hands of some media company which would use it as a platform for advertisement. The game had over 800 million players, of which his empire owned half of the game lands. In simple words: placing posters all over the empire would net more viewership then the population of USA. As for his Avatar, it was ''reserved'' by the game creators for 1% of their company shares. From the sheer number of players, one could easily deduce that the game was a worldwide success, being offered 1% shares of a billion-dollar company that was growing even larger, was an offer beyond just numbers of zeros on a check. Grinning at the raising numbers in the auction, Oliver finally emerged from his ''hole'' and activated his ''social mode''. It was time to take a break from his 35 month and 28 days of hermit life and return to the living. He had just created a new personal record of self-imposed social isolation. Its not that he had Autism or liked to be alone, he just focused too much within games that made him lose track of life. Every time he started a project, he would withdraw and disappear. Almost 3 years!!! That was the amount of time Oliver invested for his current project, conquering half the game map That was also the amount of time Oliver hid away from his thoughts of that Event... During the time, his daily hikikomori routine consisted of: - Sleep: 5 hours - Stretching exercise: 15 minutes - Ordering pizza delivery: 5 minutes - Food + Hygiene + Forums: 40 minutes - Between-game breaks: 10 minutes break every 3 hours - Online gaming: The rest (18 hours with breaks) It left no time for random thoughts, and everything was just focused gaming. Oliver had never went on such a long project. All his other projects never went for more then a year. The Event, right before he started this time, disturbed him greatly, so he ended up channeling all his mopping and wailing into energy for gaming. Thinking about the Event, his smile did a flip. Even after avoiding it for 3 years, he still couldn''t forget what happened. Trying to do something more cheerful, Oliver started counting the empty pizza boxes he had accumulated. It easily went into 4 digits number, causing a wry smile to float on his face. To Oliver, Pizza was the best hikikomori food, because they can be kept for a whole day without spoiling. Hot or Cold, they tasted good. To signify his love for the ''flattened bread with toppings'', the door to his apartment was specially modified to allow standard pizza boxes to be slot though, landing on the custom made steam-box that both kept the pizza warm while scalding any itchy fingers that stuck in. Thinking he had too many pizzas already, Oliver gave a shrugged and swore off ''cheese on rounded dough'' for a while... An empty promise it was, because once he started a new project, he would mostly be back to chewing pizza again. He needed to start another project soon to keep his mind busy before images from that Event starts to haunt him. Since his game avatar was locked during auction, Oliver used the down-time to tidy up his living area. While cleaning, Oliver began to sing. He had not used his vocal cords for the past 35 months. Singing was the best way to exercise those neglected muscles, ensuring that they would still work as intended. From experience, if he didn''t sing or talk loudly at the moment, he would end up muttering like a moron when he tried to speak later. After 2 hours of cleaning and singing, the gathered up rubbish became a small hill. Armed with a wheelbarrow, Oliver decided to cart them to the garbage disposal area outside his apartment. Instead of doing 5 trips holding handful of trash bags, using the small hand-propelled vehicle, he intended to just run a single trip. As the saying goes: ''Multiple trips are for the weak'' ***** Part 2 ¨C Lucida Serenity ***** Walking out of his apartment with his trash, Oliver passed his neighbor¡¯s door... ex-neighbor to be precise because she had left the world of the living he wasn''t interested in the current tenant. She was called Lucida Serenity, a NEET, a shut-in, a game addict and a social withdrawn. She had a lackadaisical attitude towards life and was pretty much dedicated only to gaming. Lucida was 9 years his junior, had unique hazel eyes, those that were green at the limbus and slowly turned red near the pupil. She stood at 1.7m tall, with messy brown hair of variable length because she would always buzz them somewhere in May and let them grow out again for 2 or 3 years before she repeated the procedure. Being neighbors for over 5 years, Oliver had seen her hairstyle ranged from a buzz-cut to shoulder length. Always garbed in an oversized woolen shirt that covered till her knees, Lucida hid every feminine aspect she possessed regardless of seasons or time. Oliver once saw her naked, when he rescued her after she fainted from malnutrition, so he knew she had all the necessary curves to show if she ever decided to dress up. In order for her not to ever forget eating, he imparted his long-term gaming style to her: ¡°One is able to clock more gaming hours, if one make constant breaks for food, hygiene and rest.¡± Unlike Oliver, who relied on strategies and unique character-building, Lucida was more the ''hard-worker'' type. She would grind for endless hours and become the best in whatever she do. Ranging from in-game Tailoring and Sculpting to Axe Slashing and Throwing, she practically spent all her time improving her skills and abilities of her avatar. When there was nothing more she could improve on due to mastery levels, she would work on her stats. When stats reached the maximum possible, she would resort of training personal reflex, setting the target of being 0.01 seconds faster before doing it again and again, until she had almost double the dexterity of everyone else. Optimizing her love of being an axe-thrower and her singular profession, Oliver helped her by introducing a second class which made her original one much much more powerful. It became something that could even repel a small army.
Blacksmith Axethrower Axe throwers were basically a semi-ranged class which threw small hatchets at enemies. Now, imagine those thrown weapons being enlarged 5 times. Blacksmith jobs came with bonus strength, carrying space and ability to wield any weapon. So instead of throwing puny sized hatchets, imagine someone throwing dwarven two-handed axes... then imagine them throwing dozens at a time. The sheer size of each weapon. The insane amount thrown. Just thinking of the absolute destructive power would make anyone cringed when facing such user. There was little resistance when she reigned as the Queen of PvP. Lucida was once offered 250 thousand dollars for the toon, but she rejected the deal.
With both of them having extreme gaming addictions, they became gamer-pals, virtual trading partners, in-game buddies and almost soul-mates. Unlike the untidy, motivation-lacking girl that lived next door, the Lucida in-game was an active leader, powerful ally and great person to talk with... as long as it was nothing outside the game. Her only opinion on Life was: ¡°A sh!tty game that has no define roles and no specific goals... everyone is just half-f*cked¡± Being heavily influenced by Oliver, Lucida had turned her addiction into an acceptable source of income. By gathering and selling stuffs she used to throw away, she became a RMT-gamer just like Oliver. These so-called ''unwanted'' items happened to be rare or unique items that others would kill for, so she no longer had to stay in the red. To commemorate her new lifestyle, Lucida abandoned all her previous game identities and started to used the sound of the first syllables of her names to form her new unique but slightly degrading nickname. Oliver didn''t like her new handle, but decided not to voice his thoughts because she seemed extremely please with that. Sadly, Lucida passed away 36 months and 6 days ago at the young age of 26. She died of brain hemorrhage, silently and painlessly. When Oliver found that her avatar staring aimlessly for over an hour, he got worried and visited her place, thinking she had forgotten to sleep or eat again. There, he discovered her corpse, bleeding from every orifice of her head. The sight was gruesome and it burned deeply into his brain. Looking at her in that state, Oliver felt something broke within. He didn''t cry back then because he thought he wasn''t eligible to, but some part of him had died along with her that day. Although they had been neighbors for years, although he knew her financial status better then herself, although he knew her favorite color, what food she liked and what she hated... But when simpler questions popped out... Who is she? Where she come from? Who is her next-of-kin? What is her middle name? Does she have any medical history?... Oliver found he had no answers for these. With questions asked by the police officer that visited, Oliver found that he knew next to nothing about this entity called Lucida Serenity. When revelation struck, he started to fumble, not knowing how to mourn for her death when he didn''t even know her. Collecting his grief, he locked them somewhere inside and threw away the key. Oliver would never admit it, but the younger girl had a strong influence on him. When she first moved in, he unconsciously played less and spent time visiting her. When she fainted from over-gaming, he forced her to go jogging around the district with him, on the excuse of leading ''a healthier hikikomori'' life... as if that sort of lifestyle could be healthy in any way... He also took her under his wing on how to earn proper income by being a RMT-gamer. When others requested his aid, Oliver would usually just sent them over to some website, but for Lucida, he made an effort to show her the ropes. Looking back, he never took any projects, that would put him into self-imposed isolation, after she became his neighbor. The only thing that went close was helping redesign her game-character. Further proof was shown when Oliver dropped all gaming just for her funeral, even going as far as to spending a week to make all the tedious arrangements so she had a good one. Compared to his own grandfather''s funeral, where Oliver was late due to a repeatable daily quest he didn''t want to miss... not the ''I miss a bus'' kind of late, more of the ''he is already 6 feet under and all the guest had left'' type. After her body had be cremated and ashes scattered into the sea as per her will, Oliver went into full ''shut-in'' mode and stopped all human interaction completely. He even resorted to a pure pizza diet, because he didn''t even want to see the delivery person... Having the Pizza-boy slotted the food through the delivery hole on his door was his only interaction to other humans Back from the sad memories, as he looked at the door that led to living quarters now occupied by new inhabitants, his vision became blurry. With his hands occupied with the wheelbarrow, he couldn''t wipe those fluid away, so he just grumbled while blaming the non-existence dusty wind that irritated the windows of his soul. Until now, 3 years after he last saw her, Oliver still couldn''t find a reason to cry for her demise. He didn''t know his place. What was him to her? Was he a teacher, a senior, an admirer or simply an outsider, a stranger. What was her to him? An apprentice, a junior, a love interest, a neighbor or simply just someone he knew... No, he didn''t even know her... Without answers to his questions, Oliver buried his thoughts by not thinking. Shaking away his thoughts from the unknown feelings, Oliver decided to go to some high class place for some high class food. He wasn''t always into ''high-class'' stuffs, but good food usually cheered him up. Oliver also thought that he deserved some reward for the massive 3 year project he completed. Money wasn''t an issue, since he expected at least two million dollars to appear in his bank account within a week. Eyeing a new 5-Star Hotel in view that wasn''t around 3 years ago. Oliver confirmed that building to be the place he will pig himself out. He would compare the exotic cooking from VR games to the expensive cuisines made in RL and judge which was better. Quickening his steps, Oliver first unloaded all the garbage at the junk pile, before hurrying back to his home to dump the vehicle he used. Chucking it right beside his door, he made sure his home was locked before venturing out to find a good meal. ***** Part 3 ¨C Goddess of Procrastination and Last-Minute Ingenuity ***** Looking at the white space while standing on nothing, the area felt similar to new character creation on VR platforms, he waited for the familiar electronic feminine voice that would ask for his new account creation. ¡°Nothing? This is strange¡± Oliver commented after what felt like 10 minutes of waiting. ¡°What is strange? The space here?¡± an unknown female voice sounded out. ¡°Ah... Is this the character creation scene? Is it bugged out?¡± Oliver asked The reply Oliver got was a girlish giggle, which acted as a catalyst that jolted his conscious back into gear. He did not remember climbing into his gaming device... In fact, he had yet to complete the transaction of selling his current avatar, it wasn''t possible to make a new one yet... unless he had memory lost... ***** Searching his memories, Oliver started to recall the recent events. After leaving his apartment, he went to a restaurant located within a 5-star hotel. He booked an individual room and ordered a unit of everything on the menu. Remembering the manager''s untrusting expression, he paid the 5 thousand dollar upfront, before settling in for his private dining. As exotic food starting piling before him, he was delighting his taste-buds with their exquisite taste. The steak of waygu beef was especially juicy meat, the escargot chewed like rubber, Black watermelons were sweeter and crisper then normal ones while Cocoroco smelled like turpentine and tasted like paint thinner. Oliver also found out that shark''s fin was all about the soup as it itself was inert. Simply recalling the food actually made him drool... Then his memories got fuzzy. Bad things happened. He vaguely recalled a large burning rock that flew onto his table entering from where there used to be a wall. The rock was so highly heated that it evaporated his shark''s fin soup and lit his Cocoroco on fire. It also causing his skin to burn and peel. Most likely due to his body being overdosed by Epinephrine or just experiencing the last moments of his life, Oliver calmly looked at the direction in which the killer rock came from, there he saw the sky from aligned holes made pass 4 concrete floors/walls. ***** Ending his flashback, Oliver could only laugh, choking from it, then continue laughing louder. ¡°So you understood your circumstances?¡± The unknown female voice asked ¡°Yeah... I died... Death by meteorite, that is one unique way to go... so you are?¡± Oliver sounded calm. ¡°Ah, where are my manners, my name is Dietrich, the Goddess of Procrastination and Last-Minute Ingenuity.¡± With that, a women clad in a glowing aura slowly materialized in front of Oliver. She was wearing the typical ancient roman wear, a blue loose tunic which extended to her heels covered by a toga which draped off her left shoulder and glided just above her ample bosom. Her black hair flowed straight down her back just like Cleopatra, ending just above her slim waist. She had sharp facial features attached to naturally smiling lips. ¡°I am here to offer you a proposal. A trade of terms and conditions.¡± Dietrich continued ¡°Proposal? Are you the devil trying to buy my soul?¡± ¡°Nonsense, we Deities only need Champions and Worshipers, not souls¡± ¡°Then what are you proposing?¡± ¡°You see...¡± Dietrich started. ¡°Kami, the Greater God of Creation made a new world called Allia. For Minor and Lesser Gods, if we want a foothold on these new lands, we have to spread our faith there. As we cannot directly influence the new world, we choose people from realms with our influences, make them into champions that represent us. The Champions sent into new worlds can set up our churches there.¡± ¡°So you are going to choose me as a representative?¡± Oliver asked incredulously. ¡°I can''t think of any link between me a procrastination. I mean, from young, I have been drilled to prevent such actions, whenever I utter things like ''later'' or ''tomorrow'' I ended up with cane stokes on my butt. Those habits are already fused into my being.¡± ¡°Procrastination may be out, but you have ''last minute ingenuity'' that could aid me.¡± Dietrich muttered ¡°Ingenuity... Yes, I have those due to my strangely wired brain, but not last minute ones¡± Oliver rebutted. ¡°Ok... I understand... we don''t have anything similar¡± Dietrich raised her hands surrendering. ¡°You just need to be my Champion in Ailla and forget about having similar traits to me. That is how Champions worked, Gods can pick anyone as their representatives, even those who are polar opposites can be selected, just like your case. If not for this, Gods like me would be forever living in Limbo.¡± After much thoughts, Oliver decided he got nothing to lose: ¡°Alright then... I guess I will help you, I died anyway... but I have a small condition¡± Oliver requested ¡°What is it? Anything within my power¡± ¡°I want you to delete things in my computer¡± Oliver answered awkwardly ¡°Why is that?¡± ¡°There are things I don''t want anyone finding out, my reputation is at stake¡± Waving her left hand, a blue glowing panel appeared in front of Dietrich and she started fiddling with it. Finding her standing position awkward, she waved her right hand, causing a distortion onto the empty space. Within the blink of an eye, Oliver was now standing in a cozy room with Dietrich sitting comfortable on a sofa. Showing him to a chair nearby, she resumed her viewing of her glowing panel. After reading for a while, a blush appeared on her face and she started giggling while reciting. ¡°Mating rituals of Orcs? Doggy style with Kobolds?? One-night-stand with a female minotaur???Avians only have one hole for XXX ??? You do have the weirdest interest... Don''t mind, your secrets of unique porno fetish are safe in my hands¡± ¡°Not the browser histories... arrggg... those are pages I visited for research, I don''t care if anyone sees them... what I want to delete is...¡± Oliver screamed at the Goddess''s misunderstanding then stopped himself. Taking the offered chair, he started to massage his temples, for the Deity with him was giving him a massive headache. Ignoring his rude behavior, Dietrich simply exclaimed: ¡°Oh, so that means what you want to delete is this... *hahaha*... you do have a cute side... never expected our OP-King to have such a weakness...¡± ¡°Yes... Yes... go ahead and laugh all you want... Just sent a meteor into my room just like how you sent one to my dining table. It will erase everything I want to hide.¡± ¡°Oopsie... you got that figured out?¡± She asked slightly embarrassed ¡°It doesn''t take a genius to know... since normal people don''t get crashed by random meteors then meet some Deity that just happened to appear and offer a proposal. Not to mention, your gift was presented right onto my dinner... This life is getting boring anyway, so if the next one is fun, I will forgive you for killing me¡± Oliver nonchalantly brushed off the his death. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°She meant much to you didn''t she?¡± She asked. ¡°.... We are going out of topic, instead of questioning me, tell me more about this new world, realm whatever that is. I need information.¡± Oliver tried to steer the conversation back on track after slight hesitation. ¡°Spoil spot... anyway, Ailla is a world that has a very similar environment compared to Spring time, it has no seasons so crops grow all year round. They grow this Jaya beans that taste delicious, its extremely sweet with a tint of sour and has a texture like jelly... ¡­ Then there is the archipelago of Cancer, made up of many islands. There is one island in the northen part called Gastpol, with an abalone farm. Did you know abalones are not clams, rather they are a close relative to snails. Abalones are best when stir-fried with mushrooms found in... ¡­ The great volcano in the southern part of Aries hasn''t erupted since creation, it just leaks lava. When those lava cool down, it become something edible, people in the region called it ''magma biscuit'', you need to dip those into coffee then the aroma...¡± ¡°CUT CUT CUT!!! Stop with all those random information, also are you really not the Goddess of Gluttony, all you talk about is food!¡± Oliver stopped Dietrich from continuing her endless prattler. ¡°Ah... Gluttony is actually the Lesser God of Hunger and Gourmet, he will also be participating in Allia, so try to keep his religion around, or else, all the food will start tasting bad¡± *Sigh* ¡°Let''s make this easier for me. I ask, you answer... ok?¡± Oliver decided on a better approach. ¡°Ok, so what will you ask?¡± Dietrich agreed ¡°Before I start, can I have a note pad? I want to jot things down.¡± ***** Part 4 ¨C Botanist ***** Instead of a writing pad, Oliver got a something similar to a personal laptop. It was just a screen, similar to what Dietrich had used earlier, with all its functions thought-driven. Dietrich was kind enough to add simple apps into the ''computer'' which allowed him to not only take notes, but also do 3d modeling, picture editing and image projection. It even came with a function that allowed him to show information boxes to others. Happy with such a useful tool, Oliver started his ''interrogation'' of the Goddess. ¡°Lets start with the goal, you want worshipers on this world called Ailla... correct?¡± Oliver asked ¡°Yes¡± A simple answer from the Goddess ¡°So what is the minimum criteria? Like... how many shrines, churches or worshipers do you need?¡± ¡°There is no limit to shrines or churches, but it is best to have at least one. If you happened to die, you can be resurrected if there is at least a shrine or church of mine. For me, what I need is Prayers. A Trillion units of Prayer, which can be done by any number of people.¡± ¡°Prayer eh? So what constitute one unit of Prayer?¡± Oliver asked out of curiosity ¡°When someone reciting a round of praises to me, I gain as many unit as their ''Faith'' stats. As for the actual words, I can either leave it up to you to decide or we can work it out together. It just need to be something simple like ''Hallelujah'', ''Amitabha'', even ''Thank the lord'' will be sufficient.¡± ¡°Wait... you only need someone to recite some words? Isn''t that totally easy? Just get like... a hundred monks to recite it daily, akin to a chicken farm with the birds clucking.¡± ¡°No! There is a need for emotions when praising, not simply speaking the words. Also, almost none of the people currently living on Ailla have the ''Faith'' stats, so you will need make them believe in the deities first before everything else. That''s the reason why we need champions, to do deeds in our name, rather then just hiring a hoard of chanting monks.¡± ¡°Hmmm.... Things just got more interesting... I remember you saying there were more sentient beings the just humans, can those be your worshipers too¡± Oliver continued his questioning ¡°Anything that give praises are accepted as units of Prayer... So if you could make chickens cluck them, I will gladly accept those, but making animals earn the ''Faith'' stats would be more difficult then just converting a village of another Deity to my religion. Elf, Orc, Dwarf and Humans are the races with the highest sentience, so they are also the easiest to gain the necessary stat.¡± ¡°What about were-beast and beastmen?¡± ¡°Were-beast are humans affected by animal virus, so they are still humans at the core. Beastmen on the other hand are something like wild cards. They and the sub-humans are treated as monsters, hard to tame and become religious, but they are loyal beings that will follow their Deity even in death if they ever converted. During the competition on Earth, there were 7 Deities who made the sub-human species call ''Neardenthal'' to pray to them, ensuring their foothold. Even when those sub-humans died out, they had already gain enough prayers to manifest miracles. Until now, they still have influences on Earth, just little to no worshipers... You should be familiar with them, as they are called the 7 sins.¡± ¡°The 7 sins are Minor Gods? Hahaha... that''s interesting... Anyway, about Prayer, what if someone recite the ''catch-phrase'' before going to battle or war? Will that help? I read in novels and history books that soldiers like to pray to their deities before rushing to die.¡± ¡°Those would be the best type, with large amount of emotions involved, even without faith, those would turn into many units of Prayer. That is one of the reasons why, Kildem, the Goddess of Death never lacked Prayers even when she had no worshipers.¡± Sorting the information he collected, Oliver started reviewing them before he continue onto another area. Doing a quick summary, which resulted in 2 simple points: 1. The Deities needed prayers, so champions like him needed to find ways to make natives pray. 2. Every fantasy race are available in Ailla, but only the Humans, Elves, Orcs and Dwarves are considered beings, others are looked upon as monsters. With that out of the way, Oliver started his information extraction again. This time, on jobs and classes ¡°So... What kind of Classes or Jobs do they have in Ailla?¡± Was his first question. ¡°Any you can think of. Some are common. Some are rare. Some are only open when you mastered the lower tiered one. I don''t feel like explaining and describing each and every one of them, so I will just update the data into that little computer of yours.¡± Dietrich replied with a wave of her left hand, small sparkles of light emitted from her fingertips and floated into the floating panel in-front of Oliver. ¡°That''s good, I want to explore them in details... But before I do, how many Classes or Jobs am I entitled to? Duo or Triple shall be cool, the more the merrier...¡± ¡°Unlike any games you played earlier, you can hold unlimited number of classes on Ailla, but you can only equip 3 at a time.¡± While saying that, Dietrich waved her left hand again, creating a bracer that solidified onto Oliver''s left arm. The bracer was made of leather with an ornate design of metal gilded onto the unknown skin. On the design, there was a cloudy red gem in the center, the spherical jewel had a diameter of about 1cm. On sides of the gem, were obvious place-holders for 3 more stones of equal size to the central gem. The 3 slots formed am equilateral triangular design with the original red gem taking the center. Dietrich then took out materialize more marbles of equal sizes and gave them to Oliver. Unlike the embedded red gem, these were green in color. While examining the jewels, Oliver noticed small runes floating within each of them, every rune looked different from another. Dietrich then explained: ¡°Classes are compressed into marbles like these, the people of Ailla call them Quintessences... or quints for short. The rune within will tell you which class it contained. The knight class has the horse shape icon, while the fire-mage class is signified by a staff with a little flame. The enchanted bracer I have given you allows 4 classes to be equipped at any time, but one of them is already taken and cannot be removed. The strength quintessences are determined by color, ranging from Green, Teal, Azure, Blue and Purple, signifying Beginner, Intermediate, Advance, Master and Grandmaster ranks. After reaching Grandmaster, only the most proficient one will have its quint turn red, meaning there will only be one person who is considered the ''Best'' or simply called Highest-Rank The red quint you have is a representation of my religion, basically its the class called ''Pope''. Since you are my only champion, you will be the undisputed top, therefore it is red in color. I also have all the quintessences for the basic classes with me here at beginner ranks, Do you want any of them?¡± ¡°Ermm... I''ll take all of them. I have already decided on my primary class, so I need to try out the rest to pick 2 others. I don''t know how well those will mix and match, so I will appreciate if you can provide a testing place after I am done reading up the jobs.¡± ¡°Wow, you have decided on your class already? Care to disclose it?¡± The Goddess asked. ¡°Botanist.¡± Oliver proudly announced. ¡°Bota... What!?!¡± ¡°Botanist, basically a plant scientist who specializes in... well... plants¡± ¡°Of all things, you pick something like that? That class is even worst then a farmer, which is a class that I think about a quarter of the population in Ailla have. I don''t know to despair or look forward to this choice of yours.¡± Dietrich complained. ¡°Do you know that in the last game I played, Breeders were considered god-forsaken?¡± ¡°Hahaha... you are really interesting... Let me ask you, for the last time, are you sure you want to be my Champion? This is your last chance to back away. If we journey to Ailla, it will be a road of no return.¡± ¡°Why are you still asking something so stupid again?¡± Oliver grumbled ¡°I have to... I am also going to tell you that the meteorite is just an illusion, you are just drunk. Drinking a whole bottle of Cocoroco, which has over 90% alcohol content, right after hibernating for so long... you are just knocked out. I want you to think carefully before making a decision.¡± Looking at the flabbergasted Oliver, the Goddess snapped her fingers and he his world turned black. ***** Oliver woke up with his face warm and unable to breath. Struggling, he waved around, found air and quickly inhaled... choked, then coughing out the shark''s fin soup, he almost drowned in. As the Goddess had mentioned, there was no meteor and the room was as normal as it is. After coughing out the remains, he breathed deeply to calm himself. Giving a burp, his breath smelled like disinfectant. With his mind cleared, Oliver pondered over his choices. Would he continue this RMT-Gamer lifestyle... or Would he take the plunge and go with Dietrich into the unknown. For Oliver, the choice was easy. Life had lost much of its color since the passing of Lucida Serenity... He did not want to live like a zombie for his remaining days... Also, the new world would be like a new project, the only difference, he would be in the center of action himself instead of his avatar. Giving a wry grin, Oliver fished up the remaining Wagyu Beef, stuffed them between his cheeks and prepared to make his way home. He got another bottle of Cocoroco as take-away in-case he needed that to meet Dietrich again. Even with a clear mind, his body was wobbly due to intoxication... It just made many heads turned towards him on his short journey back. Before anything else, Oliver wanted to first delete his ''weaknesses'' on his computer. ***** Back at home at his computer, Oliver first deleted the folder called ''Sweet Moments with Her'' hidden under many password protected layers. To be safe, he formatted his harddisk 20 times. According to some rumor on the internet, this was the military standard procedure to data-storage disposal... Thinking it was still not enough, Oliver unplugged his computer, brought it into the bathroom and lay it in the bathtub. He the started emptying several different types of flammable fluids he found, like Antifreeze, Liquid Pesticides, Paints, Thinners, Stain-remover, Charcoal lighter... he even added a can of hair-spray, some wool clothing, two rolls of toilet paper and a pile of unread letters. Throwing a lighted match, he set the ceramic tub ablaze. Watching afar, Oliver witnessed the steel frame of the computer slowly turn from red to white then shattered when the hair-spray exploded. Being forced away from the bathroom due to intense heat, he met Dietrich standing in his living room, waiting beside a blue shimming portal, often seen in games. ¡°Let''s go¡± was all Oliver said before he followed the Deity... On that day, OP-King, the online gaming legend, disappeared from Earth, leaving 25 million dollar worth Auction unsettled... ***** Part 5 ¨C Blessings points and Bad news ***** Back in the cozy little room, Oliver sat on the sofa and busied himself with reading up on various classes that could enhance his primary choice of a ''Botanist''. Dietrich informed him with some additional knowledge. ¡°Before you start researching about the classes, I need you to know about Blessing Points (BP). Elohim, the Greater God of Balance, ruled that each Deity can only give a certain amount of help to their Champions so the world will not become too supernatural. We can only use up to 1,000 BP, spending over the limit will result in instant disqualification...¡± ¡°Ah... I assume that is the variable for character creation, If I want something, it will cost Blessings?¡± ¡°Wow! You catches on fast. But BP is not only for you, every reality-altering things we do will cost some BP, so it is best to leave a good amount behind, then can we do some adjustments after you reached Ailla. We shall at least spent the 100 BP so we can telepathically communicate while you are there.¡± ¡°Can I do some testing with the points first? I don''t want to recklessly commit.¡± ¡°You can test all you want here. We are still on Earth, so you can do trials on BP usage. I will only give you 500BP to enhance yourself... No, make that 490 since transporting you there will take up 10BP.¡± ¡°You talk about 500 or 490, so what can I use them for? Stats? Health? Skills?¡± ¡°Ah! I forgot to mention, but Health work differently on Ailla. They don''t have HP like in games, its more like Earth where you can get incapacitated and lose limbs... Don''t worry, nothing you can''t fix with healing magic from my church. Stats and Skills will follow games rules though...¡± ¡°*Sigh* How can you miss out on such important information!!!¡± Oliver grumbled ¡°Carrying on... BP has 3 primary uses. First, Deities need them to perform miracles, that is for me only. Then, BP is also use to sets the job classes and skills of members of the Church. Lastly, it can also elevate your skills to higher rankings, so you can skip on training them¡± Dietrich avoid his stares and just stuck on topic. Since Dietrich was avoiding reprisal from her negligence, Oliver granted her lenience and proceed on ¡°So, how many classes will be under your church?¡± ¡°I''m open to suggestion, anything from you?¡± ¡°If I get to choose, I will go for Priest, Holy-Archer and Holy-Knight. All will have something holy, with the Priest giving buffs, Archer dealing damage and Paladin for the Tank role.¡± ¡°Archer? Why not Clerics with maces for DPS?¡± ¡°Clerics are half here half there, but not anywhere. For single class games, they are great, but when duo or trio classes are available, they become redundant. Combat classes can simply take Priest for support while non-combatants can take Holy-Knight just to wear more armor. Clerics are worthless to take.¡± ¡°Ah! Interesting theory, I will keep that in mind¡± Dietrich nodded at his logic ¡°Back on topic, how much BP will it take to create classes for your church?¡± ¡°You don''t need to worry about them, trust me on making some nice classes for my church. You are the vanguard that starts things rolling, the classes are for the others that will do the follow-ups. Making a full church of classes is tedious because not only combatants, there will also be many administrators.¡± Hearing the word ''administrators'', Oliver retracted his yet-proposed offer to help. He could do well in designing the game-related classes but had no experience in others. He then turn the conversation towards something else. ¡°You deal with the working of the church... So what am I suppose to do with the BPs you give me? Make new skills?¡± Oliver asked. ¡°Like I said before, you can have any amount of classes, but only equip 3 at a time. You cannot learn extra skills, however, you can have multiple sets of classes; Using Crafting classes while in town and changing to offensive classes when hunting, even switching between DPS, Tank or Support wherever and whenever you need to. BP can only be used to improve the gems, so you start out with higher ranks instead of grinding the lower ones. 10 BP is needed to change a Beginner to Intermediate, 20 BP is needed for Advance, 40BP to Master and 80 BP to Grandmaster.¡± ¡°So... If I want to take my Botany Class to Grandmaster, I would need 150 BP?¡± ¡°Yes, simple maths isn''t it? But to get Botanist, you need to have ''Farmer'' at Advance, so you will actually need 180 BP total... Also to add, if you want more beginner quintessences for whatever reasons, you can buy extras from cities and towns. Except for the smaller villages, there will be Class-Shop that trade with those.¡± ¡°Can I try the skills out now?¡± Oliver asked eagerly, wanting test the grandmaster level of some classes. ¡°Alright, come with me.¡± The Goddess replied while materializing a door from thin air. She then led him to another area through the portal. ***** On the other side, was blank white space again. Dietrich waved her right hand again, changing the scenery into open plains. With a small desert to the North, a forest to the South, a lake to the East and Mountainous paths to the West. In the center was about 10 acres of flat land, filled with tall grass. ''As expected of the Goddess of Procrastination, only creating the space when need be... But the last minute ingenuity sure is great'' Oliver commented to himself After making the area, Dietrich then created a small altar and placed a small statue standing on it. The statue was an unrecognizable person holding a small board with ''490'' carved on it. She then explained the workings: ¡°This little statue can assign BP for you, just put the quintessence here then say ''upgrade'' or ''downgrade''. Whatever you placed on the altar will be altered accordingly with related points added or subtracted automatically. You can test out your skills on summoned creatures, just tell the statue ''how many'' of ''what'' and it will summon them for you. I believe you will want to test them during live-combat. Just try not to die, it will be a waste of time. You can also change your race, there are 4 types of Elves, 3 types of Orcs, 2 types of Dwarves and Human. Just tell the statue to change your race if you want. Different races had different BP cost, Humans cost 10BP, so you start off at 490 I already told you I am only giving you 500BP, so try to find your own optimized skill-built. Any questions?¡± Seeing that Oliver had already made himself busy sorting the quints, Dietrich said before leaving: ¡°I needed to be elsewhere for a while, just call me when you are done, then we will journey to Ailla¡± With that, she disappear with a blink. ***** After a few days, weeks... what Oliver felt like a long long time, because there was no reference of time at his testing ground. Dietrich returned with a *pop*, Being disturbed by her appearance, Oliver turned towards her to find a frowning face. ¡°Why the glum look?¡± Oliver asked. ¡°I got 2 bad news, the bad one and the worse one, which do you want to listen to first?¡± ¡°Ermm... can I just not hear them?¡± ¡°NO!¡± A flat deny by the Goddess. ¡°Then lets hear the worse one.¡± Oliver steeled his nerves, something that a Goddess, who could direct meteors, said to be bad would never be just simply bad, it mostly fall into the region of disastrous or even catastrophic. ¡°The competition started yesterday and we have not even arrived. With the time difference, we will be late and reach there at least a month after everyone else started.¡± She complained. ¡°Is that it?¡± Oliver asked incredulously. ¡°We lost a head start, the others are already in action while we are still loitering here. We need to leave as soon as possible!¡± ¡°Wait wait... more haste, less speed... As a god, have you ever notice that persuading an atheist that there are Gods is 100 times harder compared to having people switch from one religion to another? Starting late isn''t bad at all?¡± ¡°Are you sure? During the fight for Earth, the champion of the leading faction waged wars against the unprepared, claimed all others as heresy and destroyed many in the process. They even went as far as to wipe out the remains of by using ''Witch Hunts''. By starting late, we are on the back-foot already¡± ¡°Erm... Witch Hunts only work for the winning faction. If we are wining, then we will be the ones hunting. Not to mention, I am almost done with the preliminary preparation. If an enemy champion comes, I will score a kill... and if a dozen appears, then it will just be M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!.¡± Holding up his bracer, Oliver shared his new skill-build with the Goddess. Seeing the she wasn''t convinced at all since he had only Teal and Azure gems equipped, Oliver tried another method. ¡°Let''s summon 100 goblins raiders for me to play with¡± He requested ¡°Do you have a death wish or just want to waste time?¡± She replied before fulfilling the demand ¡°Don''t worry, it will be done in 10 minutes, Bring me an Orge-Lord too¡± Oliver replied nonchalantly. The full 100 goblins with their 100 wolf-rides appeared 50m away. When they located Oliver, they started charging towards him. What Oliver did puzzled the Goddess. He started to scattering flour-like particles then summoning a gust of wind to bring those towards the charging horde. Upon contact, vines started sprouting out of the ground, entangling all the goblins and their wolves. The vines though thin were steel-like, resisting cut from the goblin''s weapon and wolf-claws. A wolf even lost a tooth trying to bite it. With all the enemies tied up, Oliver was already considered the winner, but he simply waited for something else to happen. Just like a snake strangling its victim, the vine''s hold became even stronger, making the mobs cry in shock and despair. After 4 minutes of being strangled, the goblins and wolves went limp and lifeless... Which brought Oliver''s attention to the defiant Orge-Lord, tearing away at the vines while moving towards him, it was not affected and only slightly slowing down. Oliver grumbled while he took out a small grain: A particular seed he had not finished developing. Putting it between his thumb and forefinger, Oliver flicked the seed forward, landing it about 2m from the Orge. Upon landing, the seed sprout instantly into a Venus-Fly-Trap... Orge-eating flower would be a closer description, because the plant waved one of its maws and snapped the top half of the Orge off. Two other ''flowers'' fought over the remains and finally settled for a leg each. The ''battle''... more like a peaceful slaughter, that took less then 8 minutes, created a small garden that displayed 201 corpse lots of vines and a monstrous plant... There are even flowers growing from the vines beside the contorted deceased. Spending the last 2 minutes of his proclaimed 10, Oliver harvested a bouquet of flowers from the vines, and offered them to Dietrich... ¡°Morning Glories, fresh from the fields¡± Oliver said while pointing to the massacre behind him. With a grin, Oliver once again made the Goddess realized why he was called the ''OP-King''. Seeing that he had recovered the Goddess'' confidence, Oliver asked: ¡°The worse news wasn''t really much, so what is the bad news?¡± ¡°Well... ''Loser'' is selected as a Champion of another God, currently she is in Ailla¡± Dietrich replied Oliver was shocked, too stunned to even breathe. So many things were running through his head, his mind blank out. With the brain malfunctioning, the body collapsed and started to shake uncontrollably. *** A man wearing imposing armor faded into existence behind Dietrich, he looked at Oliver in seizure then asked in a dull tone: ¡°Are you trying to break your champion?¡± ¡°They will meet in Ailla, it is better to let him know about it now then later. Judging from his reaction of just hearing her name, do you think he can function normally if he actually meet her in Ailla without forewarning? As you know, our champions have Traits similar to us, Oliver''s hesitation lies in his heart, the way he keeps pushing his grieving to a later date... If not for this, he can never become my Champion... That is also why he needs to acknowledge this before he can really grow.¡± ¡°I guess you have a point. But Sloth, try to be at the battlegrounds soon. Everyone else but you have started moving. Chicana the God of Deceit and Subterfuge, somehow already have over a thousand units of prayer. You need to hurry.¡± ¡°Don''t call me Sloth, I resent that name. If you ever do that in Ailla, I will personally name you ''Hubris'' instead of ''Pride'', my dear Keha.¡± Dietrich replied in menacing tone. Keha, the God of Honor and Chivalry, also known on Earth as ''Pride'' of the seven sins. Watching him shrugged noncommittally at her threat, Dietrich continued: ¡°Tell the alliance not to worry about me, for I will enter Ailla when my champion is ready. We already agreed not to interfere with each other for the first two years. Results will show for themselves when we meet up later.¡± Keha just nodded, then faded away as if he had never appeared.
To Chapter 2 Chapter 2 – OPK is OP Chapter 2 ¨C OPK is OP ***** Part 0 ¨C Quint Essentials ***** Instead of rushing over to Ailla to join the other Champions, Oliver took a few additional months to do tests, as his new class needed the extra preparation. Just as Guardians needed great armor and Wizards needed powerful wands, a successful farmer would require an array of genetically modified seeds. A swordsman could do great with a shinai, but he would be incomparably stronger when using a proper sword. For Oliver, to make his Botanist Class outshine others, he could not settle with just using normal seeds... especially when he was going for a combat-orientated Botanist, not just a simple food producer. Indeed, he had show Dietrich the power of vines used for defense, his next step would be to gain offensive weapons. Other then Enhanced Seeds, Oliver also did intensive researching of the new world. Geography, Population Type and Numbers, Village Status, History of the various Rulers, Possible War Situations, Skills, Classes... etc... His research being both systematic and exhaustive. Quintessences was one of the topics he buried himself into, learning its tips and tricks, then finally his research bore fruit. He found a ''bug'' he could exploit. Each class came with 10 skills. To promote from Basic to Intermediate, a user must gain 10 levels in each skill. Reaching Advance, Master and Grandmaster levels, would required more then twice the effort previously. This information was taught to people of Ailla, which in turn transmitted to Oliver by Dietrich. Oliver didn''t need to grind skills like that locals. With blessings points, he would rank up the Quintessences and gain equal distribution to each skill... Taking into account that the people would be unlikely to level skills up equally, he tried a few tests on focused leveling. The results was within his expectations. He wrote them as the table below:
Class RankQuint ColorAverage Levels of skills
BasicGreenBelow 10
IntermediateTeal10-29
AdvanceAzure30-69
MasterBlue70-149
GrandmasterPurple150+
TopRedHighest level in the world
Instead of leveling every skill of a class, Oliver focused on only 1, granting it much greater strength then reflected by the rank; Gust and Meditation were the only skills he needed for his Wind Magi class, and they were as powerful as a Grandmaster''s at Lv150. All the rest of the skills within that class stayed at 1. By leveling up only skills he needed, Oliver saved on BP usage on the unused skills, things like Wind Armor, Vacuum Blades, Razor Gale even the ultimate skill Tornado Blast. ***** Part 1 ¨C Eredhel ***** Eredhel sat alone on a large rock just outside her village. Playing with her long silky golden shoulder length hair; she would comb them neatly behind her pointed ears, then shake her head to mess them up, before repeating the procedure... Pausing her game with her hair, she glanced into the night which was illuminated by the full moon. Ailla had a huge moon which lit up the nights without waxing or waning, traveling through the skies just like its daytime counterpart. Due to witnessing the death of her dear grandmother a few days ago, she was not able to sleep, therefore spending her time idling the nights away. From her earliest memories, she had been living with her grandparents without knowledge of who or what her parents were. Having one of the people closest to her depart, it was not easy for her young heart. While staring into the dim surroundings, a shooting star reflected onto her blue eyes. Wishing upon the star, Eredhel prayed for the betterment of her village. She had been raised communally by the villagers and had strong ties to the place... where her life, her dreams and her everything resides. Yet, all was not fine, if things continued as they were, her village would cease to exist within a few months. The village Eredhel called home was Hafford, a small hamlet situated at the fringe of civilization. On the regional map, it could be found on the South-Eastern corner of Leo, both the name of the region as well as the great city located at the center. As to not confuse the two, locals called the region Leo and termed its capital as ''The Great City of Leo''. The Great City of Leo was ruled in a Plutocracy style, where those with money also gain political authority. Standing at the top were the 5 Great Families, also known as the 5Gs for short. Members of the 5Gs ruled their respective areas like Petty Kings or Lords and they fought hard to keep each other down. Since their power were comparative to each other, they ended up with only petty squabbles instead of an all out war. Leo represented the lion, a great feline that ruled over grasslands. As indicated by the name, the region was mostly savanna, prairie and rolling hills, with plenty of bush and small forests dotting the landscape. That was the general view but if one approaches the boundary of the region, they would quickly find the borders very different. Surrounding the plains were mountain, swamps, jungles and other less habitable places. Hafford was located right beside the South-Eastern borders, on barren mountainous land. It used to be thriving due to an iron mine nearby, but due to recent monster activities in the mine, the iron ore collection dwindled leading to overall poverty of the village. Having barren lands that cannot support agriculture and little things to trade for imported food, the population of around 2,000 were forced to rely on hunting wild beast for survival. With the help of Quintessences, people who mined all their lives took little time to learn hunting, but being basic hunters and scavengers, they could not efficiently extract food and materials from the wild. Adding salt to the wound, Leo was mainly grasslands with abundant wildlife, which made hunting in mountainous regions near their village extremely non-profitable. While making her wish, Eredhel noticed the comet switching directions and headed towards her. Grasped by fear, Eredhel did not have time to scream as she deftly hid behind the stone she was sitting on, watching the meteor crashed about 15m in front of her... Not crashed... because there was no crater, no flying debris and no sudden loud noise... it had somehow stopped abruptly before hitting the land devoid of flora. The spherical glowing object, as big as a house, hovered lethargically at the supposed point-of-impact. An opening appeared on the glowing sphere with a pair of humanoid walking out while chatting. From her hiding place, Eredhel saw them as a man and a women who were each around 20 years of age. The woman was wearing a blue loose tunic which extended to her heels covered by a toga which draped off her left shoulder and glided just above her ample bosom. Her black hair flowed straight down her back ending just above her slim waist. As she was facing away from Eredhel, neither the woman''s face, weapons nor quints were in sight. The man who happened to face her direction had features like his outfit, simple and plain... except his hair, which was blue and tainted with yellow highlights... extremely loud yet somewhat appealing. On his left arm worn a bracer with 3 Azure Quintessences, signifying his strength of having 3 classes at Advance-rank. On his right hand, he carried a strange looking pole, which Eredhel thought to be his weapon. ¡°Here we are, landing near Hafford Village without alarming the locals. You should be able to approach the village tomorrow morning to make first contact. I still don''t understand why you choose this place rather then the capital...¡± The woman said with a musical sound with a slight echo, very soothing to the ear. ¡°I don''t find you interested, you have been distracted by air molecules when I explained earlier.¡± ¡°Hmph...¡± went her cutesy voice before it turned serious: ¡°I have checked with a few allies, the way you spent BP is totally out of ordinary... Quint assignment, Bringing the internet and even Altering the church-classes... So many things that almost nobody else worked with... I know you will be successful, so I will just say: Enjoy your stay!¡± ¡°Don''t worry, enjoying myself is the zeroth law... still I will complete my objectives... I''ll go find ''Loser'' after I settled your stuff. I can''t promise you the world, but I will definitely get more then the minimum.¡± the man replied with a thumb''s up. With the exchange, the woman vanished back into the glowing sphere, which took off and sped into the night. The man watched as the sphere flew off before starting his walk nonchalantly towards where Eredhel hid. After reaching 5 paces away from her, he said something and a blue panel appeared in front of him. ¡°Eredhel, meaning ''Seed-Girl'' or ''Seed-Lady'' in the Elven tongue... I guess this is not just coincidence... care to come out and have a chat with me?¡± He asked Eredhel was stunned for a moment, the man somehow knew both her location and her name. Although shocked by his action, she did not have feelings of fear or dread. The aura of the man was clam and collected, unlike the bad people she had met in her short 15 years of life. Standing out from her hiding place, she greeted. ¡°Erm... Hello... You are? ¡± ¡°I am Oliver, sent here to help this village in crisis. Do you happen to know who the village elder or chief is? I need to talk with him or her before I start working.¡± ¡°Grandpa Halon, is the village chief.¡± Eredhel said proudly before shooting questions: ¡°Where did you come from? Who sent you? How did you know our situation? What do you intend to do to our village? What is that glowing sphere? Who is that Lady...¡± ¡°Whoa!!... too many questions at a time...¡± Oliver stopped her by raising both palm towards her in front of his chest, then redirected her to business. ¡°I''ll explain later, so lets walk while we talk, I want to meet the Village Chief Halon as soon as possible.¡± Eredhel glanced at the moon for a moment before replying: ¡°Not the best time to meet him now, its 8 hours from dusk and 4 more hours till dawn.¡± ¡°4 hours... hmmm... Guess I will create a surprise for him... Want to help me?¡± Oliver asked ¡°What do you want? What will you be doing?¡± The girl started her barrage of questions again ¡°I need a plot of land to grow some grains and vegetables¡± Oliver answered while tossing a farmer-quint at the elf-girl, who fumbled slightly, due to surprise, but caught the quint deftly. ¡°Huh?? This region is barren, nothing grows here, not even weeds¡± Eredhel replied but still led the way ¡°What if I tell you I have seeds that grow well in your so-called barren lands?¡± ¡°Hahaha... nice joke¡± Walking for 15 minutes, the pair reached an open space at the Southern corner of the village. It was devoid of vegetation, just as the girl had mentioned, there wasn''t even weeds. Oliver ignored her sarcasms and started plowing on the area estimated to be around the size of a football field. The ''weapon'' he carried was actually a pole with re-attachable parts. By slotting a ''hoe head'' and snapping it in place, it became an agricultural tool used to move soil. Using the pole-turned-hoe, Oliver only tilled a small square of 30m x 30m, then he started sowing seeds while directing Eredhel to work on a similar sized plot next to his. Oliver made the plants grow much faster then possible even without their need for water and sunlight. His Fast Plant Growth from Botanist class at Lv300 could only be described as ''insane'' as it forced plant saplings to break out from the loosen soil within seconds after planting. By dawn, Oliver had made a small plantation with leafy Spinach, juicy Tomatoes and ripen Corn. There were also many heads of Broccoli and Brussels sprout along with bushes of Strawberries and Soybeans. Along with the food, he also had a small Haniwa garden. ((Google ''Haniwa Garden'' for more info)); Villagers who woke up early and saw the thriving garden were awestricken and became statues with eyes and mouth wide opened. The one most affected was actually the Elf-girl who helped made the vegetable parade. Using the basic Farmer-quint she had received, Eredhel with her skills at the lowest level, was able to decently grow the seeds onto the soil she deemed barren. It showed the potency of the seeds Oliver had, which grew regardless of whoever planted them. With the seeds from Oliver, the food issues of the village could be solved. The the problem that plagued the villagers, one that they almost gave up upon, Oliver easily removed such hurdle without breaking a sweat. Taking another look at the man working beside her, his outline suddenly looked enigmatic, far different from the simple plain man her first impression dictated. Then her expressions turned slightly darker. Grandpa Halon had always reminded her that there was no free things in life. She was happy about those seeds, they were considered legendary, but thinking of what Oliver would exchange them for, she could only shudder... What could the villagers offer for such miracle inducing agents? ***** Part 2 ¨C Halon ***** The Elf species was split into 4 races, namely Wood-Elf, High-Elf, Dark-Elf and Dirt-Elf. The split was due to their living environment, which caused slight mutations to their bodies. The Wood-Elf race populated the forest, they were the ''default'' Elven type, with blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin, lithe body, chiseled faces and pointed ears. They had innate ability of planting, woodcraft, hunting and nature magic. Wood-elves, due to their affinity with nature, hated metals and metal-wares which were the tools used for deforestation. The Dirt-Elves race were more commonly known as Elven Smiths. They looked similar to their forest cousins with their blond hair, blue eyes, pointed ears... etc, but they were different inside. Dirt-Elves had inborn skills of ore detection, earth moving and metal sculpting, making them excellent miners and smiths. They used magic for extraction, refinement and production of metal-wares. The High-Elf race lived in the cities, build wizard towers and claimed that they had a higher purpose in life. Their environment caused their ears to be less pointed, faces more rounded and having slightly bulkier bodies. Due to prolong exposure to various forms of magic, they gain the ability to use powerful Elemental spells at the cost of their nature-affinity. The High-Elf race was once mistaken to be half breeds between human and elves, but that was in the past. Different species, even if they copulate, could not bear offsprings. Drows, also known as the Dark-Elf race lived in underground congregation which caused their skin to darken while their hair turned white. They too lost their nature-affinity and instead gain powers unknown to others. They were a close group and secretive about their activities. The general consensuses was: they were born stealthy with dark magic affinity, however neither could be proven as no living Drow would speak of themselves... even under torture. --- Several hundred years ago, Halon was one of the pioneer that founded the village of Hafford. Since then, he had been the village chief till present times. There was a simple reason for him taking the position: He was the only wood-elf in the mining colony. While establishing a new village, there would be conflicts. Hafford''s mine attracted Humans, Dwarves and Dirt-Elves. The 3 races had their little quirks which often caused disagreements. Being different from the rest, Halon would be able to lead without taking sides. Being fair towards everyone, he was well liked by the villagers. There was also the unspoken truth that him being a wood-elf, his productivity in the mines or metallurgy would be lower then everyone else. Halon had moved to this land devoid of flora for a simple reason: Love. He had fallen in love with a Dirt-Elf named Ceves. Putting her above his personal needs, he left his forest home and eloped with her into founding the frontier village. His actions won over her heart and they married soon after settling down in Hafford, knowing they would most likely never have children of their own. Fate usually smiled at randomly at people. After 400 years of living together, Ceves was finally pregnant. Chances of interbreeding between different species was zero, however they were both elves albeit different types, they only had a tiny chance to conceive and somehow the miracle happened. It brought both happiness and misery to the couple. Happiness was a given, which couple wouldn''t be happy about having a child? But there was a problem with their age. The lifespan of an Elf was about 500 years; Elves grew up as fast as humans with their growth stopping at the around the age of 20. From there, they looked youthful until the last years of their lives, where they resumed their growth twice as fast as a human. Ceves had gotten pregnant when both of them started showing signs of aging. With their lives coming to an end soon, they could only spent very few years with their only child. With that thought, they decided the child would be an orphan and they would raise her as their grandchild. With the promise of most of the villagers, they would raise the child communally so the impact of her passing ''grandparents'' would be lessen. --- Few days ago, Ceves was no longer able to fight the passage of time and died peacefully in her sleep. Halon held back better but his days were numbered too. Being long-lived, he got over her death easily, but he ended up spending more time brooding over his daughter''s uncertain future. Like him, she was born a wood-elf, which was judged rather worthless in a mining colony. If he could last a decade longer, he could either pass onto her the job of the village chief or prepare her the journey back to his homeland. Lying in bed brooding, his Presence Sensing skill picked up a stranger entering the village. Being unable to sleep, he decided to spy on the stranger to pass time, as well as take precaution if the said being did anything detrimental to the village. Taking out a scrying orb from his bedside cabinet, Halon stalked the stranger using magical vision. Surprised by seeing Eredhel leading a man into the village, Halon continued his visual stalking, which led him to watch the stranger growing plants at a neglected farm. Looking at the skills used, he reminisced time spent back in his hometown, growing trees and planting shrubs. Botanist class was very common among wood-elves living in the forests. Further inspection told Halon that the man was more then what he had shown. The speed at which his plants grew greatly exceeded the ability his Azure Quint should have. It was even more powerful then some master rank Botanist he knew of. Watching his daughter growing the same plants, he suspected the unreasonable growth was due to the seeds. He had watched over her from birth, knowing that she had never grew any plants before. Armed with only the minimum of skills, she too was able to sprout the seeds quickly. While watching the two having fun growing plants, time quickly flew by and morning came. Along with the brightening of the sky, clusters of villagers gathering around the vegetable garden. Halon couldn''t fault the villagers for circling the area because in their current situation, the food grown by the stranger was indeed very tempting. Few months ago, the villagers were joyous over discovering a new iron vein. The finding could increase iron ore production which in turn improved the condition of their village. The gleeful atmosphere had shortly turned grimed; Along with the new vein was a nest of underground creatures, that claimed the mines to themselves. With hostile forces within the mines, ore production trickled to a halt. Mining into monster dens were occurrences that would happened to any mining colony and Hafford had experienced many such events in its long history. All they had to do was to hire help from the Great City of Leo and Adventurers would come to solve the problem. This time, however, the situation differed from previous: There was civil war going on in the Great City, sparked by the appearance of those who termed themselves Champions of God. The 5 Great families had each backed a different ''Chosen One'' trying to topple their competition. Whichever Gods or Deities that had appeared did not feel like a benevolent one. All 5 were locked in a stalemate, yet none had any intention to help with Hafford''s crisis. Villagers of the rural mining hamlet could only hope that one side wins fast, so they could get their aid soon. Thinking it was time to meet with this stranger, Halon got up from his bed to prepare. While getting dressed, he donned a bracer that had a wire attachment. After securing the bracer onto his left arm, he coiled the extending wire over his upper arm then across his shoulders. Locking them in place with a double shoulder strap which looked like an shoulder holster. Removing the Scryer Quint from the front of his chest, Halon carefully inserted the marble, attached to the end of the wire, into the empty Quint-slot located on his chest. Through researching, trials and sacrifice, the beings of Ailla had made it possible to exceed their natural limit and expanded the amount of Quints each person could use concurrently. Orcs, Elves, Humans and Dwarves, they were no longer at the bottom of the natural world. Using attachments, they could now equip up to 3 different Quints at the same time, surpassing the solo slot they were born with. Just like the USB connection, power flowed from the body to the bracer causing it to glow for a moment. Setting the Scryer-Quint onto a Quint-slot on his bracer, Halon placed two more quintessences into the 2 other empty Quint-slots of his bracer, grimacing as his body adjusted itself to 3 quints, instead of it normal capacity of one. With the quints equipped, Halon picked up his tunic and made himself presentable to a negotiation. ***** Part 3 ¨C Negotiations ***** The sun rose shortly after dawn. Oliver and his vegetable rich garden was now surrounded with spectators. No one spoke up nor did anyone try to pick the ripe fruits and vegetables. They were stunned by the display of something they thought impossible. The only one spoiling the frozen scene was Eredhel, busy tending to saplings on a nearby plot of similar size. Oliver was not omnipotent, nor was he almighty. He had simply done extensive studies while traveling from Earth. The soil around iron mines were always tainted with large amount of iron ions making them barren. Through his Seed Alchemy he not only made the plants he was growing resistant to the alkali land plagued with high metal concentration, he even selected food crops that would absorb the iron ions and enriched the flavors of the fruits and leaves produced. Be it leaves of Spinach or Brussels sprouts, or fruits like Tomato or Strawberries, even staples like Soybeans and Corn, they all share a common trait: All were high in iron content. Since the soil at the village had too much iron ions till it was considered barren, the produce of the plants was, without doubt, top-tiered; The fruits were redder and the greens were darker. If the housewives back on Earth saw these fruits and vegetables, they would be going into a ''Free for all'' in ''Mixed Martial Arts'' style, just to gain the rights to purchase them all. Looking at the crowd surrounding him, Oliver made an estimate on the population distribution using the sample size of his audience. Half of them were humans, with the remaining split between Dwarfs and Elves. Humans were seen everywhere in Ailla because they had shorter lifespans and reproduced very fast compared to the the other Beings, so finding large numbers of them in Hafford was nothing special. Dwarfs would appear at places with iron ores, Hafford as a mining village attracted them easily, so their numbers too, did not stand out. The Elves were a little out of his expectations... then Oliver remembered Dietrich talking about the Dirt-Elves, understanding that these were not the tree hugging ones, Oliver withdrew his surprise. While pondering over the population distribution, the crowd on the North side parted like the red sea. Instead of Mosses, there stood an old man... old elf, same pointy ears, lithe body, blue eyes, with the slight exception of the hair mixed with some whites giving a platinum blond shade instead of the normal yellowish hue. From the wrinkled face hiding any emotions, Oliver thought the elf was the person he wanted to meet. ¡°Target Info¡± Oliver whispered quietly while focusing on the elder, causing a blue panel to appear.
Status Information
Name:Halon PinestalkerRace:Wood Elf
Title:Village Elder
Fame:437Infamy:0
Quint Slots:3 (+2)Quint Arms:Bracer
Slot 1:Scryer ¨C Advance
Slot 2:Village Elder ¨C Master
Slot 3:Negotiator ¨C Advance
¡°Greetings stranger. Welcome to Hafford the frontier village¡± Halon greeted without preamble ¡°Hi! I am Oliver, are you the village chief?¡± Oliver returned ¡°Yes, I am Halon, the one who can negotiate on behalf of the village¡± Halon nodded then continued. ¡°You have created quite a sight for the village, I am wondering what the cost may be?¡± The first impression Oliver had of the elder was good. Instead of someone beating round the bush, the elder had gone directly to the point without wasting time. That scored majorly with Oliver, who disliked idle chatters. Since the other side had started negotiations, Oliver had no qualms to follow. ¡°I am willing to offer this farm that I am cultivating for some questions and 2 request.¡± ¡°Some questions and 2 request?¡± The elder pondered, finding the ''request'' part being where the bargain might be. Well versed with negotiations, he continued without missing a beat: ¡°I can answer any amount of questions to the best of my knowledge, but let''s hear about your requests first so our village can decide if we want to bargain.¡± ¡°Nice! My first request is simple, I want that girl there to be my representative here.¡± ¡°Huh? Representative? For what and why?¡± the old Elf asked as he didn''t understand. Murmurs of confusion was also heard within the crowd that gathered... while the girl in question was still busy farming her plot of land unknowing to the stares focused at her. ¡°You know, the seeds I am giving to this little village, I want someone to make sure they will not be horded by some greedy merchant and resold for a profit.¡± Oliver nonchalantly replied ¡°But...¡± Halon had no way of replying, the conversation was not moving as he had suspected... then he gathered himself. ''It must be the other request'' he thought... but before he could put it to words, Oliver made another move. ¡°My other request is making a structure in the mines, a shrine to be precise.¡± ¡°Huh? But the mines have hostile creatures in them now¡± Halon was once again confused by the man, so he could only weakly counter. ¡°I know of that, I will build the shrine AFTER clearing the threat. How does that sound?¡± ¡°But... But...¡± Halon was now almost wordless. Relying on Calm analysis from his Negotiator class, he forcefully downed his emotions and asked: ¡°You want Eredhel as your representative and build a shrine in the mines after you clear the creatures in there?¡± ¡°Yes. Is there anything else you want for my request?¡± Oliver asked ¡°No... but are you sure you only want those simple things for seeds that can be considered legendary?¡± ¡°Hey now, are you going to use the negotiation skills to make yourself a worse deal?¡± Oliver questioned Halon was totally stumped by the offer. It was as good as solving all the village problems without asking for anything in return. He had spied enough to know Eredhel would only benefit as a representative and a shrine in the mines meant nothing compared to someone clearing the monsters. In addition, the village would gain the rights over food crops that grew on their barren lands, which meant the village would finally be able to produce agricultural products. There was too much advantages on his side that Halon did not know how to further argue. Seeing no answers, Oliver continued, but this time, he addressed the crowd: ¡°I take that the request are acceptable to you all, so I will proceed to ask some questions. First, do you people know anything about champions?¡± ¡°They are warmongers!¡± ¡°Idiots that are made used of by others¡± ¡°Useless people who side with those in power¡± The answers were expected, but Oliver still sigh audibly. It was more for theatrical effects then actual disappointment. Sensing that the deal may go wry if Oliver''s mood was dampened, Halon tried to be more uplifting. ¡°There is once a Champion that came to our village about a month before others, I think his name is Shallow... I can''t really remember... He is packed with justice and knowledge and taught us many things about those Gods but he vanished right before he spoke of his God''s name.... Since then we have not seen another Champion in person. Our knowledge of them is only from his telling and those in the Great City of Leo that refused to help with our crisis.¡± Hearing that, Oliver bowed to the crowd before saying: ¡°I must first apologies... As a Champion myself, I have forgotten there are also idiots mixed within our ranks. There are over 200 Champions of various Gods send to this world promoting Faith... yet, even with stringent selection, there are still buffoons mixed within our ranks. Even if we served different Deities, their actions were incorrigible.¡± Watching Oliver''s apology, many of the skilled professionals nodded their heads in understanding; they too had the experience of clowns within the same industry making them look bad. Dwarven metalworker triple-charging other races, human innkeepers prostituting their daughters, weapon smiths unwilling to shoe horses...etc. The baseless generalization, due to a few black-sheep within their industry, tarnishing their reputations. ¡°I am here on behalf of the Lady Dietrich, Goddess of Progress and Ingenuity. As the village is now regressing, I am to correct the situation. These fruits and vegetables are just a little something from the Goddess. Do take them without worries.¡± Oliver picked out a fresh tomato and tossed the fruit to one of the onlookers, a female human. Harvesting more fruits, Oliver handed them out in a particular order only he knew of. Judging from their facial features, those with purplish lips were given tomatoes, those with dark eye-bags received half a cob of corn while a pair of strawberries were given to those with yellowish Sclera. ¡°Eek... The tomato is spicy!¡± was the respond from the first female human that got her fruit. ¡°Ugh... Bitter strawberries!¡± ¡°Bleh... Sour Corn!¡± Complains were flying by the time Oliver finished his distribution of fruits. Knowing that even if it tasted weird, the fruits were still valuable food, so none of the villagers actually puke the contents in their mouths, although, they did stop eating. Seeing their responds, Oliver addressed the crowd again: ¡°I know a simple incantation that can make the fruits more delicious, so repeat after me: We give thanks to Lady Dietrich''s Ingenuity, while we Progress Just speak of those simple word then take another bite!¡± Coaxing the crowd, Oliver made them recite the small prayer before eating again. To their surprise, the fruits did taste much better. Reciting the incantation again, the taste went up another notch. By their fifth recital, the corn ears were sweet beyond words, tomatoes tickled the taste buds and the strawberries were juicy with a perfect blend of sweet and sour As many had finished what they were initially given, Oliver told them to help themselves to more fruits. With a miniature banquet of Tomatoes, Cobs of Corn and Strawberries, the mood became merry and all the participants were happy. Thinking it was time, Oliver addressed the crowd again. ¡°First of all, I need to tell you that the incantation has nothing to do with the taste!¡± ¡°Impossible!¡± ¡°That cannot be true, the taste does improve¡± ¡°What you just say is contradicting¡± ¡°What is happening?¡± Eyeing the villagers with varied responds, Oliver continued his speech. ¡°This is just a simple trick. For those that have eaten Rockmadillos, the residue meat reacts with juice of the tomatoes to give a spicy taste. Monochrome-Bats'' blood makes strawberries bitter and horned raccoon meat taints the corn with a sour taste. There is neither magic nor power within the incantations, just tricks to that lets your sense of taste normalize.¡± Oliver had done intensive research on the food materials available to this village. By eating particular things, there would be visible signs due to indigestion; These were Traditional Chinese Medical knowledge Oliver gained when playing games based on Ancient Chinese Culture. Those that had eaten Rockmadillos recently would have their lips turned slightly purplish. Bats and Raccoon meat would give their respective signs too. These outward signs were actually very faint, but easily seen when one knows where to look. Giving a pause to let the information sink in, Oliver continued: ¡°If you feel the need, you are free to always recite the incantation before a meal. Trust me, it will make any food you eat taste better, because that is the taste of improvement. The taste of becoming better then yesterday. The taste of Progress, with the Ingenuity of Goddess Dietrich.¡± Instead of angry eyes looking down at him for tricking them, the only stares Oliver got were eyes of appreciation and happiness. Just like a skilled magician, he had awed the audience with a feat, then disclosed the trick afterwards; treating them as children, teaching them about ''taste'' in an interactive way. The people did not felt cheated, rather they fell in love with his interactive display. By using his massive gaming knowledge on dealing with NPCs, Oliver skillfully captured the hearts of the villagers. Forcing them to pray to Goddess Dietrich would be counterproductive as that would grow resentment, so Oliver choose to win them over using his charm, then giving them the option to choose... This was one of the ways to obtain faithful followers. ¡°Hafford Village... Get!¡± Oliver whispered to himself, his voice drowned out by the cheers around. ***** Part 4 ¨C Apprentice ***** While other villagers were watching the performance Oliver set up, Eredhel was focused on her little plot of farmland. Oliver had taken her as a disciple and he would be teaching her various things related to the farmer profession. The apprenticeship happened only a few hours ago so it was still livid in her memory. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. *Flashback* ¡°You are the first native of this world that I meet, furthermore, you are also one of the very few wood-elves in this mining village. Since your race specialized in my farmer-related profession, I don''t think it is simply coincidence that I meet you... So, I intend to take you as my first disciple.¡± Oliver said right after tilling the plot of land ¡°Hahaha... You want me to call you master? Why don''t you first show me what you''ve got, I don''t randomly acknowledge just anyone as master.¡± Eredhel replied in a mocking tone, she knew Oliver had three classes at advance ranks displayed on his quint-gear, but there were plenty of master-rank miners and smiths in the village, so his skill ranks did not faze her. Without a word, Oliver poked a hole into the tilled soil, dropped a seed within, covered it up, then press his palm about an inch away, channeling mana into the soil. After 2 seconds, seedlings sprouted. It grew bigger and bigger becoming a bush, then flowering followed by fruiting. Within half a minute, Oliver had produced a small strawberry shrub which was loaded with freshly grown fruits. ¡°Is this enough?¡± Looking at the wide eyed, opened mouth Eredhel, Oliver grinned and asked. He only managed to obtain a small nod from the dazzled girl. To Eredhel, this action reflected Oliver as a god-tiered master offering apprenticeship; a once-in-a-lifetime offer, which she had no reason to refuse. The deal was sweetened further when Oliver presented her a quint-gear; A necklace type which she wore underneath her tunic dress. Quint-gears were expensive items due to the mystical technology to harness Quintessences. Prices of accessories type quint-gears were a notch higher then normal ones, because they not only function better, they were also worn as decorations, displaying the beauty of quints. Being underage at 15 years old, Eredhel did not have any quint-gear. Happy on receiving her first one, she had immediately equipped the gear and slotted in the two quintessence she owned: One was the newly obtained Farmer-Quint from Oliver, while the other was the Escapee-Quint, Grandpa Halon made sure she was always equipped with. The last quint-slot on the necklace was quickly filled when Oliver passed her yet another one. The last quint was one Eredhel had never seen before; A stick figure with a halo floated within the marble, depicting the Priestess-class. With the absence of Gods, holy-classes were never available to the populous until the coming of the minor gods with their champions. *End of Flashback* The first task her master gave her was to make a shrubbery similar to his. Oliver had done his within 4 hours in total, but about two thirds of the time went to plowing and tilling of the land. With his help on conditioning the soil of her plot, the land was easily set for agriculture. Oliver had told her to focus solely on the skill Plant Growth, so Eredhel had been channeling mana into the plants since then. She was also given a bag full of blue leaves; chewing on them gave a minty taste as well as recovered a huge portion of her mana. These were simple mana herbs that grew as abundantly as weeds, Alchemist would pick them to refine into mana potions. Yet again, theses herbs were many times more potent then what was commonly found, allowing Eredhel to constantly recover her mana without breaks. As Eredhel was working, cheers and claps erupted around her. Distracted by the commotion, she looked up from her work to see almost all the natives of the village gathered nearby, enjoying a party of harvested vegetables and fruits. Looking at the familiar people wearing merry faces, she wanted to laugh with them but ended up with a complicated look. An old hand gently landed on her shoulder. It was Grandpa Halon, looking at her, curious about her reaction towards the festive mood. ¡°Why the glum look? Not happy with your new master?¡± Halon asked with a grin ¡°Since you know his my master, you ought to have seen what he can do. The villagers are celebrating at the result, they know nothing of the process.¡± Eredhel replied wryly. ¡°Indeed... It is like they only know that the hero defeated an army of monsters, yet they don''t know he only used as much power as throwing a booger.¡± ¡°Ewww... Grandpa Halon, still gross as ever... but yes, what he has shown is only the tip of an iceberg.¡± ¡°Enough about him, how is your training coming along?¡± ¡°Oliver told me to make a similar garden, time limit is till sunset.¡± ¡°Oliver? Not master?¡± ¡°He said calling him Master sounds weird, so I am to call his name¡± ¡°Hahaha... he is a funny person¡± the old man could not help chuckling. ¡°It''s not funny, at my rate of progress, I think I will fail the task¡± the young girl complained. ¡°Why don''t you use the racial skill Green Thumb?¡± ¡°How?¡± ¡°Ah... first you must touch the plant itself, then you...¡± Halon started teaching his daughter the finer points of their racial traits. He had always wanted to do it, but there were no plants around the settlement. Openly, he could not reveal their paternal relation, but as a father he still wanted to spent quality time with his daughter. Inside, he was exhilarated by this chance given to him, and gave a silent prayer to the God he had just been introduced to. From far, Oliver looked at the pair, they were the only two wood-elves living a place where their race seldom appears. It was not difficult to guess that they were related. Oliver had purposely set a hurdle that Eredhel could not pass unless she could exhibit her racial trait; She could only succeed her first task by having Halon teach her. {+2 Faith} Watching as the text of gaining faith floated above Halon''s head, something only he could see, Oliver grinned at the wood-elves as they continued their lesson. He was not dense enough to disturb their quality time together. Leaving them to themselves, Oliver made preparation to clear the mines. --- As the villagers dispersed after getting their share of vegetables, Oliver left with them, moving towards the area where he spotted lots of smoking chimneys. He needed to arm his disciple. Hafford as a mining village, produced iron ores as its primary export. Due to the impassable mines, they had kept the last few shipments of ores; The villagers knew that selling metal-wares would net them more income then simple selling ores, so during such times, ore exports were stopped. As expected, Oliver found that a good amount of smiths and metallurgy experts had settled into the area to practice their arts. Swords, Axes, Spears and polearms... Platemails, Chainmails and Cuirass... The variety of gears was large and the quality good. However, Oliver was not looking to arm his disciple with normal weapons.
Stats query: Strength, Luck, Skill Rank
NameStrengthLuckSkill Rank
Peter Panson102225Advance Tool maker
Tons Tarky108349Intermediate Horseshoe maker
Art Hand31277Master Armor Smith
Deft Hand284125Master Sword Smith
Angnith92318Master Cutlery Crafter
Carachon83162Advance Tool maker
Rustor31341Intermediate Metallurgist
Browsing the people using his status panel, Oliver looked for one whom he could custom ordered a hollow pipe with a 1cm internal diameter. Not trusting normal smiths to be able to hammer the smooth inside, he needed a Dirt-Elf. On top of that, he needed on who had at least master rank with high luck, which his final choice landed on a cutlery craft-master. ¡°Hello Master Craftsman¡± Oliver greeted the craft master ¡°Oh Hello there, savior of the village¡± the petite looking Dirt-Elf female replied with a grin ¡°Its nothing, I am just doing my part, call me Oliver¡± ¡°Oliver it is... call me Angnith. I don''t think you are just here to say ''hello''¡± ¡°Ah, can you help me make a custom pipe? Something like this?¡± Oliver took out his ''weapon'', the hoe-head had already been removed, leaving a simple hollow pipe. ¡°... This is... Osmium... only Grandmaster-rank in Metallurgy can work with that...¡± ¡°I just want a similar one made of steel, can you get it done?¡± ¡°Steel? That I can do¡± ¡°I want the inside to be uniform and as smooth as possible, can you make sure of that?¡± ¡°Not a problem, come back in 3 hours and I will have it ready.¡± Oliver did not waste the few hours time, he went around the villages questioning the locals about the monsters within the mines. From the descriptions he collected, the monsters were bipedal, amphibious humanoid, which walked with a hunch, having their front limbs only slightly above ground. They had bulbous bodies, large mouths lined with rows of sharp fangs and slime-coated greenish brown skin. Most had described them as ''meter tall walking frogs with mouthful of razor teeth.'' Matching what he heard with information on his panel computer, Oliver made sure he had the correct enemy. They were called Nasika, mutated frogmen that tended to move in small groups and almost never found alone. They had little intelligences and communicate via grunts. For Oliver, they were classified the same as wolves, just dwelling in caves with water rather then the forest. In short, they were expendables that he could massacre since the species would never yield prayers. Three hours flew by very fast. Oliver visited Angnith again and he was delighted to find an exact replica of his pole. Other then the material and weight, the replica was in exact dimensions, which included not-too-random protrusions on various parts of the pole. Eyeing him, Angnith asked: ¡°I noticed that this pipe is more then just a simple pipe, so I replicated it in exact volume. Since Osmium is much more dense then steel, I can''t do anything about the weight.¡± ¡°Thanks a lot, this surpassed my expectations...¡± ¡°So... will you explain about those protrusions? I don''t think they are there as decorations.¡± The metallurgist was curious on the workings of the item. She had done many strange works in the pass two hundred years, yet she was not able to visualize what she had just created. ¡°Might as well, since I want you to replicate the attachments too.¡± Saying so, Oliver fished out components from his bag. Within here many things, including a Hoe, a Spade, a Bedding Fork, a Spear, an Ax... etc. The similarities of them was each of them lacked a handle, which made them short and easily packed away. Picking out the Spearhead and a Hoehead, Oliver deftly locked the attachments in place, changing his simple pole into a unique weapon with a hoe on one end and a spear on the other. Smiling at the astonished metallurgist, he said: ¡°This is what those protrusion are for, they lock the attachments in place¡± ¡°Such a thing...¡± Angnith could not find words to describe her shock. Removing the Spear and Hoe, Oliver placed them onto the counter with another one. He kept the other attachments before saying: ¡°Can you replicate these 3 for me?¡± ¡°Why not the whole series?¡± Angnith asked as she recovered. ¡°Because steel is not as good, in terms of durability. Even mithril is lacking because using it both as work tools and combat tools shaves off too much durability... If there are Osmium, I will gladly make a set.¡± ¡°Hmm... that''s true, nothing can match the durability of Osmium... and what is this thing?¡± ¡°Oh! That''s a Buttstock of a rifle.¡± ¡°???¡± ***** Part 5 ¨C Combat Farmer ***** It was evening when Oliver finished his tour around the village of Hafford. He had a good grasp of the area layout, a self-drawn map of the town and its surroundings as well as a custom made weapon created for his disciple. Walking back to the vegetable garden, he noted that Eredhel was almost done with her plot of land. Unlike his, her plants were still flowering, unable to bear fruits without pollination. The difference in skill level was obvious. There were other humans working nearby on several other similar plots. They were the first group of people Halon had assigned to become farmers. Youths who had yet to become full-fledged miners or hunters, they would be able to level up farming skills easier then those who had spent all their lives mining. As expected from a Wood-elf Village Chief, using grafting, he was able to populate the new plots of land even without waiting for the current batch of seeds to mature. Walking up to the Elf-girl, Oliver tapped her shoulder to direct her focused from her plants to himself: ¡°How is your Plant Growth skill coming along?¡± ¡°Ermm... It is now at Lv12, still a long way to go...¡± ¡°Let''s stop with the plants for now, I have a new task for you. ¡°Alright, what do you want me to do?¡± ¡°You are going to clear the mine of monsters¡± ¡°M-Meeee?¡± Eredhel stuttered at the new task ¡°Yes, you! I am going to teach you how to be a combat farmer¡± ¡°What?¡± Eredhel could not understanding why she was suddenly a combatant. ¡°My fighting style uses the farmer quint, I am teaching you that¡± ¡°How?¡± Eredhel''s normal chatty speech was shocked into monosyllable questions. ¡°Enough questions, just follow me and you will gain the strength needed to protect yourself and things you value¡± Oliver said, while passing her the steel pipe custom made by Angnith along with 3 attachments ¡°...¡± Speechless, Eredhel quietly followed her master. She thought she had been surprised enough times by the man just this day, yet she was astound again. Being a combatant... a farmer type no-less... it sounded ridiculous and unheard of. ----- At the mine''s main entrance, two humans were waiting for Oliver. They were Lumen and Theo, ex-adventurers who had settled in Hafford. During their younger days, they had went adventuring, but on each of their last expedition, they barely survived and retired from the risky lifestyle. Lumen was a Fire Witch while Theo, a shieldbearer. Both had volunteered to act as escorts to help Oliver clear the mines of monsters. Although both had retired, they were skilled in their previous profession. Both had lived in the Hafford for many years and would take up their weapons to protect their current home. Oliver accepted their help with gratitude. Although, he could easily wipe out all the monsters himself, having locals who knew the layout within the winding tunnels was never a bad option. Also, he felt better having them around to protect Eredhel, she was vulnerable. *Clank* *Clank* *Clank* Theo''s full platemail armor clanked noisily as he moved forward to greet Oliver. ¡°Must we hunt in the mines now? Night is coming¡± ¡°The mines are always dark, so it matters little to the monsters be it day or night. Also, I sense some disturbance in the East, so I want to check that out tomorrow, lets just finish this fast, then have an early night.¡± Oliver nonchalantly replied ¡°You sure looked confident, whats the plan?¡± Lumen asked, grabbing her staff calmly. ¡°You guys will not be fighting, Lumen will be providing lighting so we can see, while Theo will be the lure, those Nasika are sensitive to noise, his armor can easily lure a few over for Eredhel here to kill.¡± ¡°Huh? Why me?¡± Eredhel asked ¡°Because this is training. I have already given you the strongest weapon, but if you go panicking and crying when seeing a monster, you will never be able to make a stand or protect things important to you. With Theo and Lumen, this is a safe environment for you to practice.¡± After the team assignment and formation, the group of 4 moved into the mines, following a light flare created by Lumen leading 5m ahead. Oliver and Eredhel took the front, Lumen in the middle, with Theo being the rearguard. While moving, Oliver would bend down every few meters and touch the ground. At those places, glowing fungi Panellus stipticus sprouted out and and filled the area with their bioluminescent, casting a greenish glow into the surrounding. Moving onwards slowly, the group had their first encounter, a group of 4 Nasika. Lured by Theo''s clanking armor, they came to identify the source of the sound. Seeing the group of explorers, the nasika immediately charged forward. Believing in Oliver, Eredhel gingerly lifted up her pipe, pressed the buttstock against her shoulder, pointed the nozzle at approaching monsters, then channeling her Plant Growth skill into the weapon. *Woosh* Accompanying the sound of gushing water, Eredhel jerked backwards from the recoil of her weapon. The recoil was strong, which almost made Eredhel fall on her bottom. Luckily, she followed the precise instructions given by Oliver, standing with a leg in front, while distributing her body weight equally between her legs. After recovering from her lost of balance, what greeted Eredhel were 4 corpse of peppered with holes. Whatever that shot out from her weapon penetrated the monsters from the front and totally destroyed them, leaving only their hole-ly carcass. ¡°What in the world is that?¡± Theo voiced Eredhel''s thoughts, while the constant clicking of a full-plate behind her described the shuddering of Theo. Lumen on the other hand almost dislocated her jaws from over-surprised. Normally, each of those monsters would take half a dozen fireballs and more then a full dozen for the group... but just a single shot by the little girl eliminated all of them. ¡°Ecballium elaterium or more commonly known as Squirting Cucumber. What you see is the enhanced version of its seed dispersal effect. I call it Shotgun Cucumber¡± Oliver nonchalantly explained. ¡°Oh my, I am not going anywhere near that plant, this type of destruction... its insane¡± Theo claimed ¡°Ahh... don''t worry, normally those seeds only travel around 5-6m, only by using the trick I taught Eredhel, can she increase the pressure of the pods to cause such destructive power... This is only the first encounter, I believe there are a few hundred more monsters to kill.¡± With Eredhel''s overwhelming firepower, Lumen''s Light and Theo''s clanking armor luring enemies, the group proceeded into the depths of the mine. Littering their path with blood patches of monsters that tried to attack them. Oliver was not idling away, with his glowing fungi, he created a lit path that future miners could follow. Theo unlike his knightly outlook, had no qualms scavenging the carcass, cutting up and salvaging the amphibian meat, packing them into several empty bags he brought along. Dragging all the meat further into the mines was counterproductive, so he neatly stacked them at various locations, to be picked up on their way back. This caused his shiny metallic armor to be tainted with blood and gore, even when he did none of the killing. After around two hour, the group reached the inner mines where the tunnels were smaller but more plentiful. Here, they were ambushed by a pincer attack. The 6 Nasika that came from the front were easily dealt with by Eredhel, but there were 4 more Nasika coming from behind. Due the unexpected circumstances, Eredhel panicked and dropped her reloading pod, which gave the monsters enough time to close in and engaged Theo in close quarters combat. Theo and Lumen were previously adventurers who had seen worse, so absorbing the girl''s blunder, they took center stage and engaged the rear group. Both Theo and Lumen were somewhat happy for the occurrences because they were starting to feel redundant. With the destructive power of Shotgun Cucumber, neither had a chance to contribute to the expedition. Releasing their pent up frustration, the two quickly engaged the 5 monsters at the rear. Due to fear of friendly fire, Eredhel was not able to shoot another barrage. Using standard formation tactics, Theo, as a Tank, knocked on his shield luring the Nasika to attack him, beautifully blocking their attacks, at most sustaining only tiny scratches. Lumen behind him flung fireballs repeatably which scorched the skins of the bipedal amphibian. Having worked together before, the two quickly dispatched the monsters without much trouble. ¡°What do you have to say to them?¡± Oliver asked Eredhel sternly ¡°Sorry¡± the girl replied meekly, she knew she had panicked and lost concentration. ¡°It''s fine, don''t be too hard on her, it''s her first expedition anyway¡± Lumen tried to smooth the situation. ¡°Yeah, I think Eredhel has been doing great, a small mistake isn''t that bad.¡± Theo chipped in. ¡°I am really sorry¡± Eredhel apologized again ¡°Just saying sorry can''t remove those wounds you know.¡± Oliver hinted ¡°Ah... oh...*Heal* ¡± Catching on, Eredhel quickly activated skills of her other job - Priestess. Within moments, stardust emitted from Eredhel''s hands and floated towards Theo. As the dust touched his wounds, they closed quickly leaving a soothing feeling. Even the deep cut near his right elbow which Theo tried to hide healed completely without a scar. Most importantly, the stump which was originally his left pinky, started to itch, Theo had lost that finger years ago while adventuring. Looking incredulously at his wounds then at Oliver and his apprentice, Theo could not help but blurt out: ¡°What kind of sorcery is this?¡± ¡°This is the magic Cure from the Priestess Class, it enables instant healing¡± Eredhel explained ¡°What about old wounds, this stump of my missing pinky had never itch ever since I lost the finger¡± Since Eredhel could not answer the question, Oliver took over: ¡°All wounds that are not dealt by curses or death magic can be healed using the spell, but faith is required. The powers of the holy-classes are based on faith towards the Goddess. Faithful ones can harness more while those with shaking beliefs can utilize less. Those who don''t believe in the Goddess can''t even benefit from the spells.¡± ¡°How about internal injuries, my husband has been bedridden ever since he got hit by an ogre on his back when saving me¡± Lumen who had been quiet till now suddenly became agitated. The possibility of her loved one recovering made her lose her usual calm facade. ¡°That is very possible too, but as I have said, it depends on faith.¡± Saying that, Oliver handed a Priestess-quint to Lumen, then continued: ¡°If you want to heal your husband, both of you need to pray sincerely towards the Goddess everyday. Theo, for your missing finger, ample faith is needed for healing that too. Prayer is not about pointlessly chanting sutras, the most important thing is sincerity, a single sincere prayer is worth more then a thousand verse of mindless recitation. I can''t say I know how devout you people can be, but you should both see some results after a week of heartfelt praying.¡± ¡°Erm... Lumen got the Priestess-Quint, can I get one too?¡± Theo asked unabashed. ¡°Sorry, Priestess is a gender specific job, females only... But I do have a Paladin job, it is something like a knight with basic healing skills, but no horsemanship...¡± Saying that, Oliver passed Theo a quint which he happily took and examine under the dim light. The representation of the paladin class was a sword pointing upright with a halo above it. With their small talks done, the group of 4 continued their mission of weeding out the monsters within the mines. With the lighting from the glowing fungi, the mine took an eerie green glow, but that was much better compared to perpetual darkness. It also served as a reference on where they had been. ***** Part 6 ¨C Get! ***** As the group of 4 venture deeper into the mines, they reached the the newly discovered ore vein. This new ''ore vein'' that Hafford villagers found was actually a small natural cave, with walls filled with iron ores. It was also home to the Nasika, whom did not enjoy the interruption caused by the miners. Since both forces could not co-exist peacefully and the Nasika were not sentient enough to negotiate, one side had to be removed. In the current situation, the people were driven out of the mines, it was up to Oliver to tilt the balance, removing the Nasika from the area so the miners could once again work there. At the intersection between the mine and the natural cavern, stood a Greater Nasika. It was termed ''Greater'' because it was almost twice as big as its common counterparts. Standing at 2m tall, the Greater Nasika gave off a dangerous feel. If this was a game, the underground mine would be a dungeon and this particular Nasika would no doubt be the Boss *Woosh* Multiple seeds gushed through of the steel tube that Eredhel was using. Guided by the length, the seeds flew forward and exit the pipe with high velocity, spreading outwards like a blooming flower as they sped through the air, embedding themselves into the flesh of the Greater Nasika, which was standing 20m away. Previously, when the flying seeds hit the normal Nasika, they penetrated the bodies of the bipedal amphibians therefore slaughter groups of them. Unlike common ones, the Greater Nasika had higher physical resistance and skin elasticity, able to withstand the explosive power of Shotgun Cucumber. The shot, this time, did not cause visible wounds, but the Greater Nasika did puke a mouthful of blood. It turned to stared angrily at Eredhel, before charging toward the group. With experience from previously, Eredhel tried her best not panic and reloaded quickly. Using the few seconds the Greater Nasika took to cover the distance to her, Eredhel was able to unleash another shot. The second shot did not stop the charging monster, instead, it accelerated. This Boss monster did not have the intelligences of sentient beings, but it did not lack the cunning of an animal. Knowing that its opponent had distance advantage, it wanted to get into melee range as fast as possible. With the speed it was moving at, Eredhel would not have the chance for a third shot. *Piak* With the sound of snapping twigs, the Greater Nasika tripped and fell over, its body dragged across the floor due to its massive momentum, screeching to a stop only after a few meters of rough abrasion with the ground. The forehead of the Greater Nasika was decidedly missing. Standing behind Eredhel, Oliver had deem the monster too difficult for his disciple, so he took action. In his hand was a 6 chamber revolver. Instead of a normal handgun using gunpowder and emitting a loud *Bang*, the pistol Oliver used only gave a small snapping sound that what breaking twigs would make. ¡°What is that?¡± Theo once again voiced out the question that the two females in the party had. ¡°Hamamelis virginiana also known as witch hazel, it is a stronger version of the what I gave Eredhel. The piercing power is excellent, but it only shoots two seeds per shot instead of dozens like the shotgun cucumber... Eredhel cannot handle this until she can aim better.¡± ¡°Another crazy seed dispersal plant?¡± ¡°In a way... Yes! These are way stronger though, the original plant disperses a pair of seeds up to 10-12m. Although the original is only about twice as powerful as the squirting cucumber, this little baby is at least 20 times stronger since I spend much more time mutating the seeds.¡± ¡°Are all champions as omnipotent as you?¡± Lumen could not help but ask ¡°Hahaha... I am far from that, I''m just a Shepard, leading people in the direction of my Goddess. Champions all have a similar jobs to mine, but just like not all smiths have mastery over metal, not all champions are out to do good.¡± ¡°You are already too powerful in my opinion¡± Theo quipped. ¡°Hahaha... don''t worry about the small things... This is the only monster I have killed so far, so don''t make it sound like I wiped the whole mine full of monsters all by myself.¡± Oliver chuckled as he moved into the natural cave. The 3 remaining group members wanted to lambaste the enigmatic man, but decided against such useless actions. Oliver had proved to be more then a simple farmer, botanist or teacher. The trio felt that there was much more to him then they could dream of. Feeling lucky such a person was actually helping them, they quickly followed him. The natural cave was not extensive, scouting around and killing a few more of those normal Nasika, the group found a cave with an underground river that was devoid of ores. The subterranean river was more like a 6m wide reservoir of slow moving water originating from the Eastern cave wall, following the approximately 10m ground contours and flowing out using an underground exit at the northwestern side. This was the place where the Nasika invaded from. Digging into his pouch, Oliver produced special seeds again. Salacca ramosiana, a type of palm tree with long sharp spines along the margins of the petioles. By growing these palms in clusters, it became a bramble wall used to block the inlets and outlets of the underground lake. The spiky plant forbade anything bigger then a finger to pass through unharmed. As water could still flow by the thorny bush, it acted as a barricade against future monsters invasion without disturbing the environment. Even though the Nasika came from upstream, there was no guarantee that other monsters would not approach from downstream, therefore Oliver grew the spinal palm on both passages while leaving the center accessible. This was done so that the mine was protected yet the miners could still use the water source. Spreading more fungus with bioluminescent to brighten up the place, Oliver made sure the bramble palms had enough light for photosynthesis. Wadding pass the underground lake, Oliver reached the northeastern side of the cave, across the water, where a small platform stood. Impervious stones had contoured the river leaving a approximate 1 square meter of land. On this place, Oliver took out materials from his bag and begun making a small Shrine of Dietrich. Being told that shrines were ''save-points'' where he could resurrect if he ever died, Oliver needed to build at least one, to ensure his continuity on Ailla. The reason for building the shrine in the mines: Safety. If he were to expand the influence of Goddess Dietrich, he would no doubt garner hate of other champions. If the shrine was in the open, when other champions ''attacked'' the village, there was a high chance his ''save-point'' would be destroyed. To make sure his life-line was not at risk, Oliver had the intention to hide the shrine within the sparsely populated mine, where only the natives would know. He was the benefactor of the village, even if other champions forced a church there, the locals would keep his shrine from his enemies'' eyes. With the mine mostly cleaned of monsters and his ''save-point'' ensured, Oliver led the group back to have a good night sleep. ----- Back in Hafford Village, there were watches set to guard the mine entrance. The monsters within the mine was a reality, to prevent those monsters from invading the village directly, the more combat-able villagers had picked up arms, doing rotating shifts watching for possible monster activities. This night, 2 ex-adventurers were loitering outside the mine entrance, looking bored but staying vigilant. They were not expecting any problems because up till now, the Nasika had not left the darkness of the mines. ¡°Such a boring task, doing night watch¡± said one ¡°Still we have to do this, the village is already in bad enough shape, I don''t want things to get worse¡± ¡°Yeah, this is the minimum we can do for Hafford.¡± ¡°I heard that that Farmer Champion entered the mines earlier¡± ¡°Yeah, he went in with Theo and Lumen¡± ¡°Lucky them, they at least get to see some action...¡± ¡°So... you want to switch with them?¡± ¡°I don''t mine switching with Theo, Lumen has such a hot figure... its a pity she''s still chained to that paralyzed bloke. She should just remarry.¡± ¡°Its not possible, she would vowed celibacy if he dies... I want a wife like that too¡± ¡°Look, something is coming out of the cave.¡± ¡°Oh my... you and your big mouth... Prepare to fight!¡± ¡°Wait!... That''s Theo, Lumen and that Champion¡± ¡°They seem to be carrying something, lets go help¡± At about midnight, the group of 4 exited the mine. The whole expedition took less then 6 hours with most of the time spent on their descent. More then 4 hours had passed before the group reached the underground river due to plenty of fights with the Nasika, slow moving for safety and Theo dismembering the corpse of their foes. The remaining time was spent at the craven lake for making both the bramble wall as well as the shrine. The trip back was much faster: After about half an hour of walking, the group return to the surface. With their return, they brought along some of the meat bags that Theo had previously stacked. The food situation in Hafford was still stressful even after Oliver offered seeds and created a small vegetable garden. The plants would take time to grow, so the bloody bags of amphibian meat, the group had retrieved, was gladly appreciated. The village could depend on these proteins to last them till their new farmed crops ripen. Meat would spoil quickly if left in their bloody state, to prevent wastage, Theo sent one of the ex-adventurers to gather a team to recover the remaining bags the group could not carry. The meat would also need to be salted so they could last for months instead of days. A good amount of villagers were woken from their slumber to help process the food. This night, many would lose sleep again... but they had smiles on their faces. Unable to sleep due to troubles and unable to sleep due to preserving valuable food... Although both cases led to sleep-deprivation, they had an extremely different feeling. The butchers, chefs and many other villagers had not experience such high spirits burning the midnight oil before. Oliver had brought nothing but happiness to the people in Hafford. Be it the plants that grew on barren lands, the garden of greens, the clearing of the mine or the large haul of meat, all were due to his coming. As they learned of the Priestess-class having the ability to heal missing limbs and sickness, even more gained faith in Goddess Dietrich, making this village the first holy bastion of the budding religion. Oliver seemed to have overestimated himself earlier when he claimed he had obtained Hafford Village. But by this time, the village was indeed within his grasp... Then again, all the things that happened, from then till now, could have been planned and foreseen... But that did not matter anymore, because what that was important, was the result.
Author''s Notes: - All plants involved are normal plants that can be found on Earth - Most plant abilities are mostly exaggerated - Plant names in Italics are their scientific names, so they are easier to google.