12/1/0
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[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Class: Adventurer 18
Strength: 10
Body: 8
Agility: 9
Dexterity: 6
Intelligence: 48+1
Willpower: 9
Charisma: 8
Stat points: 0
XP: 103/190
]
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[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Mana: 245/245
Spells:
Magic Missile: 6 Mana
Mana Fist: 35 Mana
Fireball: 90 Mana
Locate: 100 Mana
Locate (Map): 200 Mana
Summon: Skinning Knife: 20 Mana
]
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[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Inventory: 13/20
Copper 67x
Silver 58x
High Quality Mapping Parchment 10x
High Quality Pen 1x
Compass 1x
High Quality Stew 11x
Lemonaid 13x
High Quality Cloth 20x
High Quality Cloth 12x
High Quality Wolf Pelt 20x
High Quality Wolf Pelt 20x
High Quality Wolf Pelt 20x
High Quality Wolf Pelt 2x
]
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Cartography: 56
Skinning: 82
Cooking: 74
Tailoring: 50
Herb Gathering: 73
]
It had been a while now of mostly senseless grinding.
Once I had overleveled everything around the city, I shifted harder into professions, getting experience by making things instead of killing them. Selling what I made brought in decent money too, even with how limited the economy still was.
At the point I was at now, though, I had pretty much exhausted every good source of experience in the city.
The highest-level quest I had been able to get was level 12, and once you outleveled a quest, the reward got cut in half for every level above it you were. That made old work fall off fast.
So my only real option was the road to Dusk Falls.
Which was exactly where I was now.
Dusk Falls was a region wrapped in permanent shadow. The trees were so thick overhead that sunlight never really made it to the ground. What little light got through felt weak and colorless, and the whole place carried a bleak sort of stillness that made even breathing feel quieter.
The enemies here started at level 18.
Which meant killing them was quite difficult
The difference between a few levels was something I could tolerate, but only a few times in between rests
Because of that, I had gone back to relying on magic. I even sold my spear for a silver once it became obvious I was struggling to pierce things at this level with it anyway.
Instead, I leaned on a spell I had worked out fairly early into my time with magic.
Magic Missile.
It had a kind of beautiful simplicity to it. That was its greatest strength. The spell was about as simple as magic could get, which meant I could cast multiple at once if I needed to.
The force behind it was not terrible either. It was nowhere near what a swordsman with 25 Strength could get out of a blade, but it was respectable. About the force of a sling back on Earth, I figured. More than enough to kill weaker creatures, and still useful against stronger ones when used right.
Other than that, I had spent a lot of time working on optimization.
Early spells like Mana Fist had been easy to improve, mostly because my first versions had been so inefficient they were practically jokes. But more advanced spells took longer to refine, and the really simple ones were often the most frustrating, since there was just not much to trim.
Even so, getting Magic Missile down to 6 mana per shot felt like a major accomplishment.
With what I knew now, I doubted I would ever get it below 5.
My time working with maps and stretching mana had paid off too.
I had one locating spell that could find something within a range equal to my maximum mana in feet. If I had 125 mana, I could search 125 feet.
The other version used a map as its base.
That one came a little easier to me. Instead of searching a small radius around myself, it let me search across an entire region shown on the map, maybe farther depending on the quality of the map and how well I understood the area.
Right then, sitting with my back against a tree while I sketched out the local terrain, I was only half paying attention to the world around me.
With my current Intelligence, I had near-perfect recall and a very accurate internal clock. I had already figured out that the enemies in this zone respawned every eight hours.
Not that I was ever running out of them.
If I wanted to, I could walk a thousand feet in almost any direction and find a fresh area to clear.
But pacing myself mattered.
Even with High-Quality Stew and Lemonade, two things I had only figured out how to make after pushing Cooking past 50, which seemed to be the limit for The Meadows, I still only recovered about 50 mana an hour.
That was a good amount, honestly.
And the downtime gave me plenty of time to map.
No matter which inn you stayed at, your room always stayed consistent once assigned. So back in my room, I now proudly had a 100% completion, 100% accuracy map of The Meadows hanging on the wall. It was massive, and it had taken me an absurd amount of time to finish.
Still, I did it.
That was the completionist in me.
While I was drawing out the area, I heard a fight somewhere in the distance.
That was not unusual.
What was unusual was the voice I heard afterward.
"Good job, Falk. Iggy."
I looked up, and it took me a second to realize who I was hearing.
The hunter, whose name actually turned out to be Hunter.
Given that I had not even spoken to any of them in over a week, I figured I should probably say hi while I had the chance.
I got up from the tree, shoved my items back into my inventory, and headed over.
"Hey, Hunter. What's up?"
A hawk perched on his shoulder, looking smug in the way only birds somehow managed. A wolf stood at his side, calm and alert.
From our last real conversation, I knew he had taken a level 12 Beast Master path. Mostly a hunter class, but one that traded away some stat growth in exchange for an extra animal companion.
"Nothing much," he said. "Hunting."
He crouched beside the wolf he had just killed and started using a skinning knife on it.
Then he glanced up at me.
"You haven't seen a beast called a dire wolf, have you?"
"No," I said. "What should I be looking for?"
"Think werewolf. Or at least that's what I think."
He turned his screen toward me. For him, the System looked like a phone, which was fitting enough.
[Tame the Haunted Beast: Tame Level 25 Dire Wolf (Elite)]
[Reward: 250 XP, 1000 Reputation with Dusk Fall Hunters, Exotic Beast Master class option]
"Elite?" I said. "Haven't seen that one before. I'm surprised you're doing it alone, though."
"I didn't feel good dragging the rest of the group out here to chase a boogeyman," he said. "Especially with all that Sheral and Jake are doing."
I frowned. "What are they doing?"
He looked mildly surprised.
"Oh. Thought you knew. They joined the church. Sheral's training to be a priest, and Jake's training to be a paladin."
"Sheral? A priest?" I said. "I don't know, I'll believe it when I see it."
The idea made both of us laugh a little.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "But with the few deaths we've had, and John dying, it hit them both pretty hard."
John was the man who took up blacksmithing in the tutorial area, without him some of us would have probably died there. He was a good guy for what I heard, but I hardly knew him
"That's fair, I guess."
Then, after a moment, I added, "I take it you've gotten over it?"
He shrugged.
"Spent my youth in the military. Seen my share of death. Plus, I hardly spoke to John."
"Same here," I said. "Minus the doing something with my life part."
"Well, hey, you're not wasting it so far." He gave me a look. "I assume you're still the highest level on the layer?"
"God, no. Still level 18."
Saying it out loud made me feel more embarrassed than it should have.
"Wow," he said. "What class did you pick?"
"None. I've been waiting. None of my options are really jumping out at me."
"I guess," he said, "but you do have to pick eventually. I think the highest guy on the layer is already level 25 and on his second class."
He pulled out a pipe and started smoking from it.
"Damn," I said. "Didn't realize I was that far behind. Also didn't realize they sold tobacco anywhere."
"They don't. You can get tobacco past The Meadows in the Crooked Hills. Had a chef process it for me in exchange for enough to level him to Cooking 100."
"Fair deal, I guess. What level's the stuff out there?"
"28 was the lowest from what I saw. So I mostly just rely on Falk to keep me out of trouble."
He said it with a shrug, like that was perfectly normal.
"That would be nice to have," I muttered.
The conversation almost died there, but then I spoke again before I could talk myself out of it.
"I might be able to find the dire wolf."
That got his attention immediately.
"Really? How?"
"I have a locating spell. But I'd need a map first. If you're willing to play bodyguard for a bit, I could probably track it."
"Yeah," he said right away. "Sounds good."
"Though I'd want 50% of the XP."
That was something people figured out pretty early on. If you were grouped with someone who had a quest you did not, you could still share the reward if they shared the quest with you. Since this one had to be at least level 20, half the reward would still be incredible for me.
"Yeah, that's fine," he said. "You need it."
A new screen appeared.
[Quest Shared]
[Tame the Haunted Beast: Tame Level 25 Dire Wolf (Elite)]
[Reward: 1125 XP]
[Accept] [Deny]
I hit accept immediately.
"Alright," I said. "Lead the way, Hunter."