7. It's Grinding Time

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." — Colin Powell

Paul, at level 2, found himself in the perilous Zephorius Forest. However, he saw this as an opportunity, confident in his ability to farm the enemies within. His secret weapon? His templar class, a strategic advantage in the art of undead slaying, the very enemies he intended to farm. 

Additionally, he was confident in his maneuvering and footwork in-game. He knew everything about how sprinting and stamina worked in Harbinger's Call and all the small tricks to stay ahead of melee hoards and round them up without much issue.

Most people played Templar as a healer, especially early in the game's lifetime. Its class abilities were far and away the best at both sustained healing and burst healing compared to other classes, which led to it being pigeonholed into that role with every other variation. 

However, unlike some games, in Harginger, any class could fill any of the three cardinal roles with slight build and ability changes. This did not mean that some classes did not excel where others fell behind but every class could viably fill any role. 

This led to some of the strongest abilities in the game being buried in the hole of templars, only being healers. 

After leveling up after the first mission, Paul chooses Radiant Sweep as his first-class ability from the Wraith of the Heavens skill line, one of the three skill lines of the templar class.

Radiant Sweep: Summon a sword of light in the user's off-hand and slash in front of them, dealing magic damage and increasing the damage dealt by status effects by 50% for 4 seconds.

Cost: 172 mana

With this ability plus the breath amulet he was confident in being able to farm in the dangerous forest early on.

Breath Amulet: This amulet grants the wielder the power of the "Circus Pyromancer." Upon activation, the user can unleash a fiery breath, scorching the area in front of them. This devastating flame applies a burning status effect to all enemies caught in its blaze, continuously damaging them over time.

Cost: 765 mana

The synergy between these two abilities was very powerful since the undead base took an additional 20% damage from fire, allowing the stacking of buffs to enhance the burning damage from the amulet.

That without mentioning the buffs he could get from the fighter's guild, which he would level up by killing these undead, as he leveled up the skill line and unlocked the passives from it, giving him even more undead damage.

Unfortunately, he currently only had around 1,000 mana, meaning he could use both abilities once. Then, he would have to run around until he could regenerate it, which, without any gear, would take him around two full minutes. 

That meant for pretty much the entire time, he would be running from the enemies he grouped up, with only occasionally turning to cast his two abilities. On the bright side, since the enemies were level 15 in this area, he would not only level up quickly but could stay here until he reached level 20.

Without further ado, he took his basic steel sword and went around, slashing at any undead he could find and running away, gathering a pack of wolves, zombies, and other creatures into a pack before turning to face them.

Holding his amulet Paul suddenly breathed in deeply before exhaling as flames surged from his mouth into the group of undead. Without hesitation, he instantly summoned a sword that appeared to be made of light and swung it in a slash in front of him, causing the flames stuck to the undead creature to swell as his vision was filled with damage numbers and health bars. 

As he turned to run, he kept his eye on how much damage his combo was doing, and after watching the flames dissipate, he checked their health bar and exhaled again, this time with no flames.

It appeared he would need to do that combo 5 or 6 more times to kill this group.

Right when he was thinking about how long it would take, he had to dodge behind a tree as an undead wolf lunged at him and almost bit his head off. Fortunately, he was able to maneuver behind a tree and regain his composure before following his route, which zigzagged through and around the trees of the forest, neutralizing the disadvantage of being slower than some of the creatures chasing him. 

Two minutes later, he did the same thing again, and two minutes after that, he could make his first kills, around 10 minutes after the first combo.

The entire group didn't die together, although they were all level 15 undead. The different creatures had some variation in stats, meaning that some died during that rotation, and some were merely low on HP. 

Paul's XP bar quickly skyrocketed as he jumped from the beginning of level 2 up to a quarter through level 3 instantly, prompting a notification to pop up in front of him.

Level Up! Choose a resource to enhance. health:1,000 mana;1,000 stamina:1,000 

Picking to increase his mana without hesitation, causing it to climb from 1,000 to 1,100, he continued to farm without any intention of stopping anytime soon.

Although the game didn't say it explicitly, increasing his maximum mana slightly increased his mana regeneration, allowing him to use his rotation more often. 

Instead of needing 2 minutes to use his combo, it only took around 1 minute and 57 seconds. 

At the end of the day, progress was progress, and as he continued, he would only get faster until he reached the rate at which the undead respawned and would be limited by that. 

Unfortunately, by the time the entire first group had died, he was still not level 4, but it was only a matter of time.

As a silver lining, Paul felt the chaotic peacefulness of farming monsters without anyone around, which was calming and soothing. Others would probably need help keeping up with keeping so many undead together and staying alive, but he was skilled at managing his sprint and using the environment to his advantage. It was not his first or even second time doing this farm.

After another half an hour, he finally reached level 5, the junction to choose his next ability.

Arcane Reaver: Channeling raw magical energy into their blade, the Templar unleashes a series of rapid, wide-arcing sword sweeps. Each strike cuts through the air, emitting bursts of arcane force that deal magic damage and disrupt the enemy's defenses. 

Cost: 245 mana

This was one of the Templar's best damaging abilities, and he wanted to start leveling it up as soon as possible for higher levels; the amulet's ability was unreliable and had a massive mana consumption. In Harbinger's Call, the more you use an ability, the more you level it, causing one of the aspects of the ability to improve until it can evolve. 

Arcane Reaver had questionably the best skill evolution until its one-year anniversary. The ability to evolve skills a second time became available when its second evolution became even more ridiculous. 

As for the aspect that improved before evolution as it leveled up? There was a slight decrease in the mana cost, which seemed like it could have been better, but once the skill evolved, you could use it reasonably well as your only ability, so reducing the price was very useful, not to mention when he was lacking mana the most.

From then on, he resumed grinding, only now throwing in an Arcane Reaver after the original combo to build proficiency. This actually decreased his efficiency somewhat, but the faster he could unlock the skill evolution, the better, so a marginal time loss was acceptable.

Soon after, his Radiant Sweep skill leveled up to level 2, slightly increasing the damage the ability did. This was effectively useless since the damage it did was negligible; increasing the damage of status effects was the only important part. 

It took him another 2 hours to finally reach level 10; as he got closer to the enemies he was fighting, the relative XP he was getting started to decrease. 

He instantly heard a dull ding as he heard the game speak again.

Level up! Choose a resource to enhance health: 1,000 mana: 1,700 stamina: 1,000 Achievement Unlocked: level 10!

After assigning the point to Mana, he quickly looked at his ring to see if he had managed to be the first to level 10 in the world.

Unfortunately, he was not; no new gilded achievement was on his ring, meaning someone else had already become level 10.

"Well, I was late to get on, so it is to be expected; let's see if you can beat me to level 20.