Chapter 9. First encounter with an Elite

'Auxiliary skills?' He called up his status window at once. Once it was up, he immediately noticed an additional page after the Battle Skill page. He turned to that page.

*

Auxiliary Skill

Gatherer

-        Forage: basic apprentice

-        Lumbering: basic apprentice

-        Mining: basic apprentice

-        Fishing: basic apprentice

Artisan

-        Blacksmith: basic apprentice

-        Alchemist: basic apprentice

-        Cooking: basic apprentice – see available recipes.

-        Scroll Making: basic apprentice

Support

-        Lockpicking: basic apprentice

-        Detect & Disarm Trap: basic apprentice

-        Runecraft: basic apprentice

-        Inspect: basic apprentice

Social

-        Leadership & Teamwork: basic apprentice

-        Diplomacy: basic apprentice

-        Haggling: basic apprentice

-        Influence: basic apprentice

*

He studied the Auxiliary page intensely, but there was no explanation for each of the skills. He didn't remember reading about these skills in the Beta Guide either. They were all at basic apprentice level.  He guessed he would need to repeatedly use these skills in order to increase their grade, like the star proficiency of battle skills. If so, it would probably take a great number of uses. He had still not filled up one-tenth of the first stars of his battle skills, Power Strike and Mana Bullet, after continuously using them for two days,.

"What's wrong, young man? You seemed to space out. Was my fried rice that good?" Bill's voice disrupted his train of thought.

Hearing Bill's comment, he realized something.

"You didn't see my status window?" Jack asked him.

"What window?"

'So we can only see our own status window,' Jack pondered. 'That's good, it will prevent people from learning about my stats and equipment attributes if I look at them while other players are around."

"Try opening yours," he said to Bill

"Open what?" Bill was at a loss.

"You can mentally call it up, but, in your case, you can try it for the first time by saying 'status window.'"

"Status window?"

After he said the words, Bill immediately jerked up from his chair. He stared at the empty air in front of him bewilderedly. His hand waved forward trying to touch something. Jack imagined his status window projection was floating in front of him.

"What's this?" Bill asked.

"It's the description of your status," Jack explained. "The first page you must be seeing now is your attributes window. It contains numbers that describe the basic limitations of your body."

"Huh?" Bill seemed more confused after the explanation.

Jack sighed. He then asked Bill to sit down and began to go over what he knew. He explained about the attribute, skill, and inventory system. It took him almost an hour to cover everything, with multiple interruptions for questions, which, mostly, Jack couldn't answer with any certainty.

"So, you are saying we are in a game world right now?"

"I'm not sure, but the rules governing this world do seem like a game world system."

"So, this is not real? Can we go back to the real world?"

"I don't know."

"What about my wife? She is not here, so she must be fine in the real world?"

"I don't know."

"How do we go back to real life?"

Jack sighed. This was getting out of hand.

"Let's call it a day," he suggested. "Tomorrow we can work on figuring this out somehow."

Bill opened his mouth to ask another question, but then decided against it. He nodded. "All right, let's take a rest. If you really have been walking around town all day, you must be tired. Let's go upstairs. I have a spare guest room you can use."

Jack nodded in gratitude and followed him upstairs. They came up to a spacious room at the top of the stairs.  Not much furniture was in the room; there were two stuffed chairs with a coffee table and rows of bookshelves along the walls. Many cookbooks filled the bookshelves. It seemed like his host might be a professional chef. There were several doors on two of the walls. Bill brought him to one of them.

"This will be your room for tonight, that door beside it is the bathroom."

Jack was about to thank him when he heard a beep from his God-eye monocle. He looked at his radar and was surprised to see a red dot that was slightly larger than usual in the vicinity. The red color on this particular dot was also slightly different. It was a darker red, like blood red. Its direction was around the front side of this house.

"Where's that door lead to?" He asked Bill while pointing to a door in the other wall.

"That's my room," Bill answered.

"Does it have windows facing out to the street?"

"Yes. I didn't board them up, but don't worry, those things can't climb up to the windows."

"I need to see outside, please excuse my rudeness," Jack said while dashing into the room without waiting for Bill's approval and went directly to the windows opposite. Bill followed behind with a dazed look.

Jack crouched down under the window sill and gestured for Bill to do the same. He gave him a sign that they should be silent. Bill complied and crouched down beside him. Jack then peeked out of the window in the direction of the unusual red dot. When he saw the thing that was outside, he was shocked. It was a three-meter tall monstrosity wearing thick plate armor, it held a humongous saber that emitted an eerie light. Inside its horned helmet was a grey skull with two abyss-like holes for eyes. Those eyes scanned the surroundings like a hunter search for prey. The aura Jack felt from this creature was completely different from those Zombies and Skeleton Thugs.

Bill gasped when he saw the monster. "Wh– What's that?"

"I don't know. I've never seen this one before. Let me check." He used his God-eye monocle to identify it.

*

Skeleton Captain (Elite monster, Undead)

Level 6

HP: 1200

*

Level 6?! It was 3 levels higher than him, and it had an Elite description on its name. It was certainly much tougher than the ordinary Basic monster. It was not an opponent he should be facing at his current level. Not to mention its HP was over a thousand, it would take a long time to whittle down that amount of health, even if he could manage to stay alive while doing it.

"Stay in hiding, don't let it discover us," Jack told Bill.

He nodded silently to express his understanding. They stared at the Elite monster outside unblinkingly, fascinated and terrified at the same time. It was walking slowly along the street, when it was about to pass by the house they were in, it stopped. It turned left and right as if unsure which way to go, then it made a loud stomp that cracked the street pavement and created a small tremor, then it looked to the sky and let out an ear-piercing roar.

Jack heard a bump behind him and then a loud crash. He looked back and saw Bill sitting on the floor with a broken bed lamp by his side. Jack looked out at the street again.  This time the Skeleton Captain was looking straight back at their window.