The Newbie?

After reaching a relatively secluded spot near at the edge of Misty Woods, Manco took out the Collector.

On the corner of his HUD, he noticed a representation of the six barrels. Like he did with the gun's previous form, he assigned the only two spells he knew to two of the barrels. With a thought, he switched which barrel he wanted to fire out of. In response, the gun's cylinder rotated so that the barrel channeling the selected spell was at the topmost position.

He tried firing at a tree stump about thirty meters away.

[Mana Bolt]!

The shot went wide, hitting another tree a good two meters off target.

"Shit! Are you kidding me?" He said in disbelief.

He tried several more time, and the shots were similarly inaccurate. The gun could only reliably hit targets within ten meters. At least it was more precise than the weapon it was based on, which was useless beyond point-blank range.

"How am I supposed to use this?" He muttered.

That was when he noticed a small symbol next to the six barrel. Focusing on it opened up a small menu.

[Switch form]

> First form - Derringer

>> Second form - Allen

"Oh, thank fuck!" he said with a relieved sigh and selected the first form

The gun instantly reverted back to the tiny two-barreled pistol he was familiar with.

"At least the durability's increased!"

Remembering there was a new effect he didn't check, he expanded it, and read the description.

[Tag!]

[Active effect: Mark a living creature. For an hour, the marked target's approximate location is revealed to the weapon's owner. When Tag! is used on another target, the first target becomes unmarked. Usable 3 times per day.]

"Hmm. Interesting…" Unlike the previous effects which were passive and took effect automatically, this was an active effect and quite a handy one at that. Already, Manco could come up with a dozen uses for it. Tracking an elusive creature, stalking a player, the possibilities were endless.

Looking around, he saw a squirrel on a tree nearby. Aiming at the creature, he activated [Tag!].

A small, paintball-sized projectile flew out of the barrel and hit the squirrel, splashing blue "paint" on it. The creature squeaked, more startled than hurt, and scurried higher up the trees, hiding in the thick leaves.

"Nice!" as the squirrel disappeared from view, Manco saw that its position was marked on his vision as a pulsing blue diamond. In addition, on his minimap, a blue arrow point at its direction.

There were only a handful of spells and skills that could produce this effect. Possessing one at level 25 was a surprise boon for him.

"Not bad!" Pleased, he put the gun away and returned to the village.

Cordelia showed up at the tavern five minutes before their agreed meeting time.

"You ready?" Manco asked.

"Yes!" She replied. The girl had apparently done some preparation by herself. Manco noticed she had had her armor repaired and changed her bow and dagger.

"Alright, let's go!"

After leaving the gate, the pair followed a small road and began making their way south at a fast pace.

"Keep your stamina at 50% or more at all times. Take a break if you have to." Manco instructed Cordelia.

"I know. In case we're attacked, right?" She replied, having caught on.

"Yes."

As it turned out, Manco's stamina was lower than Cordelia's, as he only put just enough points in Constitution. They mostly had to stop for him to recover his stamina.

The animals around these parts were weaker than those in Misty Woods. However, they made up for this shortcoming with sheer numbers.

After a relatively uneventful first hour, they were set upon by packs after packs of ROUS (Rodents of Unusual Size) and other small to medium-sized creatures.

After another hour, they were attacked by a swarm of hundreds of giant, ravenous rats.

"I never made it past this point!" Cordelia said as she put an arrow between the eyes of a charging giant rat. Drawing her dagger, she dodged backward as two others pounced on her. Simultaneously, she plunged her dagger into the first one's left eye and slammed her heel on the second one's head, stunning it. Unleashing several quick slashes and stabs, she finished off the blinded rat then made short work of the second one.

"I can see why," Manco replied tersely.

With his left hand, he unleased an arcane surged mana blast, blasting apart a dozen rats. Holding the skull wand, he used Dark Implosion to clump together another dozen then followed up with another mana blast.

They were fighting on a low hill, in the middle of a mass of boulders of all shapes and sizes. Cordelia had suggested this area as they could improvise choke points and avoid having to face the whole swarm of rats at the same time.

The big swarm was ideal for Manco to use his area of effect spells. Any rat that slipped through was handled by Cordelia.

After around ten minutes, the assault waned. Having realized their prey were tougher than expected, what was left of the swarm retreated. Some of them dragged along the corpses of their fallen pack mates, presumably for later consumption.

"Whew!" Cordelia said and wiped her sweaty forehead, "That was fun!" With a flourish, she cleaned up her dagger and sheathed it, then activated her healing spell to heal herself.

Manco inspected the slain creatures. Most of them were not worth harvesting. Only the larger ones might have something valuable.

"Should we butcher them?" the girl asked.

"Just the big ones," he replied.

"Okay," she immediately started the task and Manco did the same.

"Meat, pelt, fang, some coins. Ooh! There's a ring here. Do you want it? This one's your kill." Cordelia said, holding a ring in her fingers. It was pretty easy to tell apart their kills. Hers only had stabbing and slashing wounds, while his were often twisted, wrenched and dismembered by magical forces.

"You keep it," he shrugged.

"Thanks!" She said and put on the ring, "This game's pretty stingy with drops, doesn't it?"

"It is. Most of the good stuff has to be crafted," he agreed while waiting next to a dire rat for the harvesting countdown to complete.

After harvesting, they were back on the road.

"What do you suggest we do with the meat!" Manco asked her.

"Uh," creasing her brows in thought, she answered "We can use it as bait? No, wait, we don't want to draw them to us. Oh, we can also draw them away from us, so that they'd be less likely to attack us!"

"It's a bit more involved than that, but that's the idea."

"I never thought of it that way. This game is much more complex than I thought," she commented.

"It is," he agreed, then on an impulse, he asked her: "You never learned any of this during beta?"

"No," she said, frowning.

As they walked, Cordelia told Manco how she was power-leveled by her friends. Within two weeks, her archer character was leveled up to level 100 (which was now impossible thanks to changes to the experience gain algorithm, and the various level caps). After that, they dumped a set of high-level equipment on her and took her to level 150 plus raid instances.

"No wonder!" He shook his head. She never had the experience to hunt and level up by herself and had little knowledge of game mechanics beyond fighting high-level mobs. She was indeed no better than a newbie.