Enchanted Warrior

After wandering around for half an hour after noon without coming across any compass points, Go and I decided to check with the team and start heading back to the wagons. Using the land dragons to cover miles in an hour or so, we could travel ten miles ahead down the highway before setting out hunting again. Hopefully in an area with fresh event locations.

Along the way back to the wagon we were continually confronted every few hundred yards or half mile. More dusky gray and tan wyrm vipers and kobolds for the most part, but while passing through a copse of familiar fruit trees we disturbed a large family of giant bats. They were half the size of a goblin or tree vermin but there were over a dozen of the shrieking bastards fluttering around and diving at us.

Hermes, though, had the best reactions. His Burning Gale swept through the shallow valley and grounded the bats with a loss of thirty percent of their health bars. His attack also crisped much of the trees and fruits but there was nothing that we could do about it, now.

[+160XP]

[Acquired Citrus Creeper Wing x3]

[Acquired Citrus Creeper Pelt x5]

[Acquired Citrus Creeper Ivory Spur x3]

[Acquired Citrus Creeper Core]

[Acquired Gold x75]

The level twenty-plus bats were only worth thirty-two experience apiece but five of them bright in almost a hundred gold. The ivory spurs that were about the size of my pinkie finger were also a desired ivory for artwork because of its natural dark gray coloring. The core, though, was a good find because I had read that their cores increased Intelligence.

"This is what you named your first familiar after," Go points out with a wicked and toothy smile as he waves a bat wing in my face.

"If you don't want me to attach that wing to my body with the Cordyceps and unlock more achievements and powers, get it out my face," I say flatly, quickly ending his antics. "That's what I thought."

"Can you give the Cordyceps?" Go asks curiously while putting his toy materials away. "Like, make other metas?"

"No, I don't have an option for that just yet and I don't want to experiment with your first lives or the only lives of our familiars," I reply with a sad shake of my head as I make Hermes go pick whatever fruit were not ruined. "It's a living plague that I transformed into a singularly reliant symbiont. I don't mind experimenting, later on, but for now we should focus on every other achievement and power besides since this one is easy access. To an extent."

"Have you gotten any achievements yet?" Go asks curiously, knowing I had mostly been feeding the kills to him and the familiars. "I know your dad wants us to work on ours, too, but we have classes so our opportunities are a little more limited. Which, I guess, is kind of why it's so annoying when you keep popping up with all that random crap."

"Lil was right," I say quietly. "That paladin ghost tried to kill me because I hybridized the Cordyceps. I kept trying to befriend it but it literally took a god smiting the dense fucker to wake them up so I didn't have to kill him. Again. Now he simply knows better."

"Melpomene smote the ghost for you?" Go asks incredulously. "That's beast, we could use that against players."

"No, it wasn't even my goddess," I reply with a laugh. "It was Papi's god. When I told Dew that Papi was not compelled to kill me and served a Righteous god, he said he would not recognize such a god as Righteous. Boom, thunderstruck. Best part? Papi switched from the war faction of paladins to the wisdom faction before we left on the expedition. Papi and the ghost serve the same god!"

Go had a deep appreciation for such irony and laughed heartily when he heard the pious paladin spirit had basically denounced their own god by accident. Then, enjoying my companion's reactions, I started telling him everything about my gameplay from the tutorial forward. Even the dirty secret about my meeting with Lana that I tried to keep buried deep.

On top of these stories were the couple of times I had gotten sick or when I brought up being pissed on by a goblin in the middle of the survival event. As well I did my best to break down the way in which I approached NPCs like they were all a business deal I needed to go as smoothly as possible. Go had trouble dealing with random people in general so it was usually Merch's, Ivana's, or my jobs to liaison his business endeavors.

After an hour of spit-balling stories and ideas while fighting a variety of enemies, both of us finally acquired both achievements for one hundred kobolds in general and one hundred kobolds in a day. Kobold Hunter was a title for one hundred in general that raised our aggro and attack with kobolds a little. Kobold Slaughter was a perk for 'in a day' that made kobolds start to fear us and thus were slightly debuffed in our presence.

Both of them brought twenty reputation between them, making me hope that the others had managed to rake in the same benefits as camp came into view soon after the last fight. There was no sign of anyone but Dew at the wagons, though, but the land dragons were roaming about freely while the roadside was painted in dried gore in a few places.

Right beside the ghost who was once again just sitting by the fire and staring into the flames were a pallet of materials that I could only assume were collected from the dragons' kills. When we got to camp it mostly turned out to be 'hide scraps' as well as a few handfuls of odd kobold and viper parts. None of it was really valuable but Oleander could probably transmute it into proper leathers with her skills to make sale armor with.

Not long after hitching the dragons back to the wagons and getting ready to set out into the distance the others started returning to camp to report their findings. Overall, we discovered the meanings of over a dozen different compass points through our collective efforts. Nobody found anything like the lodge, but there were a few different camps as well as others.

Finally we found two locations that were directly related to spiders, a spooky looking tree with webbing that symbolized a copse of hardwood trees inhabited by the giant spiders. The other was an icon that looked like smoke on a horizon but was instead the dust trail of a giantula hunting party. The tree icon was more valuable, though, because it contained a big one.

Merch's team was all kinds of proud about their Gigantula parts and how much silk they had managed to collect, which was honestly quite a lot. However, after I told them how quickly it took my familiars and I to solo one only two levels lower than theirs they became unhappy. I could not blame them, but that was not all.

Worse still, I had Hermes show them how he made cordage from their silk and how much silk was actually used in the process. If it was still wet and preserved with mana through the system, an entire web was pulled out from the center and twisted while stretching. Gigantula silk was one web per silk and made a ten-foot thin rope, Giantula silk was the same but only produced five feet of even thinner cordage.

In order to make armor based on an advanced goblin's specs, we'd have to run and shuttle dozens of these cords and ropes in a loom to make a silk canvas base for high durability light armors. We could make simply linen silks by taking apart webs, but that was more for selling clothes with minor defensive properties and resistances. We wanted armor.

After that I left our camp's marker on my Regional map while leading the caravan of wagons and dragons down the highway. After lightly trotting for fifteen miles in only an hour, we parked for the last time on the roadside with the sun half of the way set down the sky. Then I divided everybody into pairs instead of teams for hunting parties.

The assignment here was to spend one hour traveling out just for confrontations while looking for compass points. This was the same practice that wary players used around cities and towns, but we were also out in the middle of nowhere. We did not have the safety of city walls to run to only a mile or two away but instead had our camp to turn right back around to.

Go was once again on my team because our goal was to seek out spiders at pretty much all costs. However, as the sun continued going down, we ran into wyrms less and less while kobolds grew more numerous. As well, now that there were two players and familiars together as the sky grew darker there started popping up one or two mature kobolds in the hunting parties.

The sun was most of the way set beyond mountains that rose up into the sky several hundred miles in the distance when we finally returned to camp. Most of the others were back as well and getting together their preparations for tonight's hunting. Some of the others were actually kind of tense.

Not only were the others all still just under level thirty in a level thirty area, their stat spreads were not as 'balanced' as mine and tonight's hunting would be different from previously. While each of them had either their magic stats or their two preferred physical stats to one hundred, other stats were not as well endowed. Merch alone had one hundred Agility and Willpower in an anti-magic build.

Putting my team to the test tonight was the fact that they would be out all night instead of coming back like the short trip the team was only recently gathering from. To help ensure the safety of their familiars, the others were all taking the land dragons bearing crude saddles for perching and climbing. As well, I tried to keep one healing capable player in each group.

I even had to split up Papi and Lil with Skooma and Ivana because Papi now had a regenerative blessing.

Despite this, though, I was fairly certain of everybody surviving the night and succeeding in acquiring titles to strengthen themselves and our future clan's reputation with. Not just because of their own strengths but because everybody was also given three pounds of roasted meat apiece. This roasted meat had healing values of fifty HP and thirty MP apiece after having marinaded outside and inside my inventory in a mixture of mana and health tonic syrups.

To top this off, they were also each given two of either the remaining twenty health and mana potions that I had made. Even if the wyrms appeared less at night, they were still venomous and my potions were the easiest detox anybody could get to without proper healers. As well, there was no telling what all appeared at night in the meadows.

Not even a minute after we had passed out of view of our camp of wagons triangled around a fire and shiny ghost my small party was beset by a hunting pack of kobolds. Go and I were both attacked by a matured kobold while a pack of seven juveniles surrounded Hermes' lizard. However, it was now night time and Duck was flying about overhead.

Seven juveniles became six before the familiars even started fighting back and the matured kobolds were immature in experience with attacking people. Both Go and I were attack from the front in a brief clash that was easily broken with mirrored front kicks to our opponents. While Go used his battleaxe to cripple his enemy, though, I simply pounced on mine.

Relying on the claws and fangs of my armor's gauntlets, I racked up a quick combo count that reached twenty critical strikes before the kobold was finally finished.

[+45XP*3]

By the time I turned around, though, the familiars had already handled most of the juveniles. The giant lizard was even eating one as Cweeper reloaded her crossbow and finished one that Missy had downed. Duck was just being Duck off to the side, eating the face from her only kill.

[Acquired Mature Canine x4]

[Acquired Kobold Hide x2]

[Acquired Mature Claw x3]

[Acquired Kobold Canine x5]

[Acquired Gold x124]

Only a few minutes after that we came across a promising compass point in a southerly direct that looked like a gathering of trees. However, what came into view after three kobold confrontations was instead a small grove of very large evergreens with what looked like vines growing up and about from their trunks. This was probably one of the magical plant and creature type of locations like the herb spots I found back in the Canfor forest.

Curious as to what we would find, I lead Go-Croak and our familiar closer and around the grove of trees until it turned out that there was a flickering bluish light coming from within the grove. "Mana crystal?" Go asks curiously once he also took notice of the light bathing the trunks of the innermost trees and flowering vine walls. "That's money."

"If it is, it is, it's it's not, might still be," I agree for the most part while experimentally channeling mana into my eyes. As I spent more mana, my vision as began to blur with slight zooms before clearing up and zooming in again. "Regardless, whatever is in there is going to be protected by something. Pour mana into your eyes."

[Acquired Skill: Telescopic Vision]

[+25XP]

[Telescopic Vision Uninitiated: Through using reinforcing mana on your eyes, you have learned how to change your visual perceptions to some degree. For (10)MP every .2x magnification, you can eventually see for miles all around and sustain for 3MP per second. To Initiate, spend one entire hour at 2x magnification]

[Learned Spell: Physical Enhancement]

[+50XP]

[Physical Enhancement Uninitiated: By using raw mana to reinforce your physical body for short periods of time, you can use Physical Enhancement to increase your physical stats by folds. 10MP can raise physical stats by (1) point apiece for (1) minute. Can stack up to (5)x. To Initiate, spend ten minutes with your stats raised by 5]

I thought I was happy with just these skills, but then I received even more notifications. Ones that I was fairly certain would take the happy expression right off of Go's face.

[Fusing Skills: Telescopic Vision+Physical Enhancement]

[Fused Skill: Self-Enchantment]

[+100XP]

[Self-Enchantment LV1: Every true warrior realizes at some point that they need more of an edge than just the one on their weapon. Magic is the extra edge in battle every warrior will inevitably use unless somehow blessed by the gods. The easiest magic for any warrior to learn is the magic that strengthens their sword arm as well as infuses the various powers of other magics with their body. For (15)MP, you can now raise your stats by (2) and double the strength of your senses for (3) minutes while allowing you to infuse your body with the elements at higher levels. Can stack up to (4)x]

[Acquired Title: 2nd Honorary Enchanted Warrior]

[+100XP]

[2nd Honorary Enchanted Warrior: Rare. Passive. As a classless player to unlock the mastery skill of an Enchanted Warrior class, you have been recognized as an Honorary Enchanted Warrior. Sadly, you are not the first. Permanent +5 to all stats and +5% to your Magic Resistance. +40 Imperial Reputation]

I simply abused the free-control over the system windows that Melpomene had given me to wordlessly turn the entire list of notifications around for Go to read. His own notifications were just finishing disappearing when he looked over with a bright smile. Despite my expectations, though, that smile only dimmed a little bit.

"I unlocked the class upgrade for an Enchanted Warrior," he declared proudly while simply waving aside my notifications. "I got two titles for it, for self unlocking it early and for being one of the first ten Warriors to unlock it early. Should I send messages to the others about it? We already have the early berserker and Agnes thinks she's close to an early class upgrade through a ceremony she's cooking up. We can hog the rest of the top ten positions."

"Merch first," I reply after careful consideration. "If Merch cannot unlock it because he is a merchant and not a proper fighter, then we'll wait a little while to find him his niche before we put the others in yours. Paladins might have a different branch with different qualifiers, too."

"Waiting is risky, we can use this right now so we should use this, now," Go argues. "What do you think your dad will say after you wake up form skipping dinner but only got everyone up like fifty points apiece? We're all already only a little over a hundred reputation."

"That's…" I start to say, thinking about how my father had said the top ten clan reputation positions all had at least a thousand points upon forming. "You know what, yeah, we can't afford to be picky about leaving people out. It's only everything you guys have been yelling at me for, right?"

"You're really going there, aren't you?" Go asks with a distinct impression of being unimpressed. "Sharing this is EXACTLY what we've been yelling at you about. Do you only listen to half of what we say?"

"You listen half what say," I reply with a perfect pokerface as I repeat every other word of his last sentence back at him.

"You're such a child," Go sighs while walking away. "No wonder the game scarred you with shitty underwear."

*