A gate to certain death

Currently, Luke was Level 0. His stats were all that of a basic commoner, and he did not have any skills or talents. All he had was 6 blocks of wood, a knife, a canteen of water, some dried meat, and a lighter.

Suddenly, a plan began forming around these items inside Luke's mind, even as he was swiftly running through the opened path formed by the monster.

Soon, he could clearly smell the scent of blood in the air. This gave Luke another shock. He was now sure that this was truly reality, and not a bug in the game, since the game could not emulate smell and taste. It could only emulate sight, touch, hearing and a few other senses like balance, etc.

He consciously slowed down his steps and carefully chose where to place his foot next, so as to avoid making noises.

He also checked to ensure that the wind was blowing against him, making him certain that it was unlikely for the beast to smell or hear Luke's presence.

Soon, he closed in on an opening. However, he did not enter it, instead Luke chose to remain in the thick vegetation to the side of the trail left behind by the beast.

Peaking inside, Luke could see an enormous bird like creature. It two pairs of wings, two heads and four feet. It was as if some crazy scientist has smashed together two similar birds, then given them steroids to create this abomination. Half its feathers had fallen off, revealing disgusting grey skin with pores the size of peas!

Suddenly, a mission completion notification popped up, along with the second part of the chain quest.

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Chain Mission (1/4)- Track

Follow the tracks left behind by an unknown creature to find clues about you lost friend

Difficulty- F

-COMPLETED-

Mission completion reward- 100 exp, 1 Talent point

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Chain Mission (2/4)- Distract

Your friend Gard in is danger. He has been cornered by the unknown beast, and is currently hiding within a small fissure in the cliff. However, he won't be safe for more than a minute. Distract the unknown beast until help arrives

Time remaining- 24 minutes 59 seconds

Mission completion reward- 1000 exp, 3 Talent point, 1 Skill point, Skill: Unbreakable Courage

Mission failure penalty- Loss of Gard Botson

Difficulty- E+

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Seeing the new mission, Luke's mind began racing. Although he had already received a Talent point for the previous mission, he did not have any talents to use it on. His stats were currently too low to do anything useful. The moment he left his hiding spot, he would be killed by the two-headed bird.

With this in mind, Luke came to the decision to spend all his exp to level up once and reach level 1. This would give him 10 free stat points, and he could use them however he wanted.

Clearing his mind of any strange thoughts, Luke used all his 100 exp and levelled up. There was a strange feeling coming from the depths of his soul for growing one step further. However, he did not waste any time on that, and instead quickly allocated his stats.

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NPC Status

Name: Lucas Ferland

Level: 0

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Path: None

Specialisation: None

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Vitality:5

Stamina:4

Intelligence:6

Perception:2

Strength:5

Dexterity:10

Charisma:2

Luck:1

Energy:14

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Skills:

None

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Talents:

None

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Note:

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Although he already had a rudimentary plan and so had decided to allocate a lot of stats to dexterity for this mission, he did not miss out on the most important stat for a magician, Energy.

With this done and out of the way, Luke silently got to his preparations. Within 1 minute and a half, Luke had already prepared what was needed.

He remembered 'The Ultimatumpedia', a player based initiative to record all creatures in ���Ultimatum'. This included almost all information, including preferred food, activities, strengths and weaknesses. It was mainly initiated by some fanatical enthusiasts from the Hunter pathway.

In it was included general traits about certain kinds of animals. Like snake like creatures were attracted towards heat generated from fires, and how bird-like creatures were terrifies of fires. Although Luke did not bother with most matters within 'The Ultimatumpedia' he still diligently memorized all the strengths and weaknesses of common, and rare creatures. This was to make it easier to battler Tamers from the hunter pathway.

Therefore, Luke had taken out all his wooden chunks. He skillfully used his knife to slice of wood shavings to act as tinder, and then used the lighter to ignite it rather quickly. Nest he used the flames from the tinder to ignite the main block of wood. This is the part that took nearly a minute to complete, since a block itself would take a really long time to ignite, Luke broke each block into around 5 pieces.

With at least 1 piece of a block lit, Luke unhesitantly used it to light another one. With a makeshift torch in each hand, Luke expertly threw one of them in between the creature and the crack in the cliff, from a nearly 20 m distance. This was a result of his improved dexterity, which would not only increase both his movement speed and agility, but also his accuracy and flexibility.

While the creature was panicking after seeing fire, Luke took the remaining torch and shoved it into a hole in a nearby tree, before collecting all the remaining wood into his basket and dashing for another hiding spot around 4 meters away.

Within a few moments of him reaching his new hiding location, another large bush, the two headed bird had already gotten over its instinctive fright of flames, due to how tiny the fire was relative to itself, and crushed the stick under its feet. Effectively killing the flames. It then looked around in vigilance, until it locked onto a flame that was still active behind it.

Unhesitantly, it lunged itself forward to stomp on the flame. However, all it did was crush another stick.

With this, the beast raised its awareness to the max, as if it was facing a formidable predator, yet excitement oozed out from its eyes, as though it was awaiting the enemy's next move.

Time slowly ticked by, and neither man nor beast made a move for nearly 12 minutes. It was complete silence.

Luke had already regulated his breath to the extreme, and was only breathing every 2 minutes or so, without any loss in ability to move. This could be accredited to the increased energy stat, which not only increased his energy reserve and regeneration speed, but also his control over his mind and body.

At the end of this stalemate, both heads of the creature suddenly perked up, as though it had come to an epiphany[1]. Simultaneously they turned their attention towards the cave once more, as though they had realized that the objective of the enemy was to distract them from their original prey.

Unhesitantly, it lunged forward and began scraping and biting the cliff wall once again, with invigorated spirits.

'Dammit!' Luke cursed in his mind as he began taking action on the second phase of the plan.

He too out two of the sticks and repeated the same process, however, instead of sticks, he sharpened one end of a stick and jammed it into another hole in the tree bark, with the pointed end sticking out and up.

Next, he used a few more sticks, and shoved them into the ground where shade from the sun was provided, making them hardly visible to the naked eye, all the pointed ends facing up and towards the beast.

Lastly, he lit a normal stick silently, and proceeded to light up only the one stick in the tree, while leaving all the other unlit, to make them even easier to ignore.

The he threw the flaming stick into the air, not caring where it lands, and he expertly dashed another 7 meters to the right, and entered a bush.

Right on the heels of that, he began silently shaping all the sticks he had into miniature spears, without caring about the outcome of his first attempt at injuring the beast.

When he had thrown the torch into the air, it had immediately caught the attention of the two headed bird, allowing for his smooth retreat into the bush. Next, the bird put out the fire of the torch, and unhesitantly leaped towards the second flame.

However, just as he landed near the torch, two of his four feet had been completely pierced through by 3 wooden stakes, while its other two feet had clearly just missed another 2 stakes imbedded in the ground.

Ignoring the pain from its feet, the bird monster pulled out the stakes with one beak, and put out the fire with another.

Silently, it then looked around itself warily, as though a more ferocious creature had come into its territory. A creature far superior than itself.

Another game of wait and see was formed which lasted for almost another 12 minutes.

Just as Luke was happily looking at the timer go down to 10 seconds, he heard a deafening screech. Turning around, he saw an enormous beak, large enough to fit his own head inside, opening wide, creating a gate.

A gate to certain death

10…

[1] Look it up you uneducated maggots!