Since it's almost noon, I look for some cheap food. It seems it's the bean season, so most stalls are selling a variety of bean dishes.
I enter a restaurant and eat a green bean soup that reminds me of green peas. All they have here is goblin meat, though. Previously, I felt that my inn was expensive, but after tasting this meat, I feel like the price is justified.
I'll postpone going to the university for a while until I have a better grasp of magic and the life around here, so now I'll go to the dungeoneering guild to gain more knowledge of the area.
I still feel it's dangerous to say I'm from another world, so I'll avoid places where they might ask my background. If I told them the truth, I'd certainly cause a lot of ruckus, and in no novel would that end well.
As I'm walking back to the dungeoneering guild, I have some time to reflect on what I learned. Ciel said that the Humanoid Gods give blessings and messages, so there's really no question about the presence of gods here, therefore, being an atheist is just idiotic. Some "God" sent me here, but simply reneging all Gods would be an infantile decision, especially because I'm dealing with fucking
Gods
. It's just not something to take lightly.
I saw that there are sixteen gods, so maybe I should learn more about them and start praying to one. Since they also communicate, and they were once people of this world, then perhaps they're reasonable. It also gives me a little comfort in knowing there's a being that could help me if I show a little faith.
I notice something change within me. I open my stats and see that my "Piety" has increased by 1 (it's now 3).
It seems that the peepers in the sky can even read my mind.
--
I enter the dungeoneering guild and ask for the section with information on monsters and dungeons around this area. The attendant guides me to the second floor and shows me a section with dozens of cloned books. This seems to be a common inquiry around here, so the guild prepared a large number of copies of the books: "Monsters of Rabanara," "Dungeons of Rabanara," and "Advice for New Adventurers". The creativity in naming is heartwarming.
After taking a look at them, I learned that I'm one lucky motherfucker. The Grey Berserker is the most powerful type of monster in the region, and I met one when it was at its weakest. There's always a large bounty on them because they're smart enough to avoid the culling, so they're always a danger in the forest. The advised strategy to defeat it is a group of at least three fully armored people and one healer. The aim is to use blunt weapons to break the bear's bones since they're much more fragile than the hide, which makes most cutting or piercing weapons useless.
Goblins are like in any other game. They grow like weeds and require constant care so they don't choke your plants, which means your life. They give little rewards, but it's possible to sell a whole corpse for a considerable amount of money. The problem is that most people don't have enough carrying capacity to bring a lot of corpses into town. Goblin meat is tasteless and sinewy, but it's the base meat for the poor so they always sell, though most hunters don't bother with the corpses and only bring a proof of extermination, which is the right ear.
Mossy Fangpine is another dangerous enemy. There's a chance the mossy spines will poison the person; another evidence I'm actually lucky. They hunt in packs of three or more, and the one I fought was alone only because of the culling. The strategy is to hide behind a shield and wear at least leather armor, then counter stab it in the face after it jumps to bite, or just use magic since they are vulnerable to it. Arrows are okay to use, but they are fast and the spines can deflect arrows if you're unlucky. They have extraordinary noses, so they're likely to appear whenever a monster is killed because of the blood.
Another enemy is the Rabid Rabbit. This one, like the Fangpine, only charges and bites. The bunny acts alone and is extremely vicious. Their bites are poisonous and can even make a person go berserk. The meat tastes delicious and is considered a delicacy while the saliva glands are used in potions, so this monster is always hunted, making it hard to find.
In the sky, there's the Dragolite, a small dragon that doesn't have a fire breath. Their meat is somewhat hard to cook and has a strong taste, but it's still valuable. The farmers hate them since they like to kidnap the sheep around here but they don't kidnap the children and instead just try to kill them, so everyone who lives in a farm around here is trained in archery the moment they can hold a small bow.
The last part shocks me a little. This is really a brutal world. Also, this is the enemy that captured my summoned bird.
There's also the Giant Dragonfly. It uses its legs as spears and attacks with high speed. The easiest strategy is to just use a spear longer than their legs. They're weak but annoying to deal with because they are agile, and it's difficult to dodge or escape them, so it's advised for hunters to always carry a simple, disposable long spear in their [
Item Box
]. Due to the monster's nature, they mostly appear along rivers or lakes, and they don't fly too well among the trees, so that's why I haven't met one yet. Their wings and eyes are valuable crafting items, so they sell quite well.
The occasional migrating flock of wyverns is a threat. Different from dragons, who have wings on their back, a wyvern's forelegs are their wings. Also, this monster looks more like velociraptors with wings, while dragons are lizards with wings. Wyverns attacks are the most common threat to this settlement, so, sooner or later, I'll be called to defend the town against them.
They only fly as a way of long-distance movement since their huge bodies and low magical capability makes flying awkward for them. Unlike dragons, who can manipulate the wind with ease, wyverns tire easily if they have to be agile during flight, so fighting against them is always done on the ground. The best strategy against them is to fight behind shield walls using pikes and ranged attacks. Finding and destroying wyvern nests is heavily rewarded since this means that the attacks on the town reduce in frequency.
These are the common monsters that are born here, but the thing is that migrating monsters are extremely common, so the chance of meeting a random monster is quite high, which means that a monster hunter really needs to read a lot about their prey to be prepared for anything. This discourages me a little about hunting monsters in the forest for money. I also have little experience in tracking, so I think that looking at the nearby dungeons might be a better choice for now.
Dungeons have a lot of variety. There are some that are maze-like, whose floors can be many times larger than entire towns. Others are just large underground environments where monsters roam around copied fragments of the world above. Some even have artificial lights, allowing them to sustain some form of plant life. Plenty are mere dimensional doors to some unknown space, possibly full of traps, randomness, and constant change. The most popular among hunters are the small labyrinths, especially the ones that create a floor exclusively for a single party, which guarantees that no other party will influence your progress, but unfortunately they're much rarer. Most dungeons have some sort of "elevator," which allows adventurers to move to any floor they've previously explored.
Dungeons increase in depth the more they're allowed to remain undisturbed. Damaging the core forces the dungeon to reduce in depth to repair itself, while destroying the core makes it fall apart. The nobility is the one responsible for culling the forests and managing the dungeon depth, and in the book, it is implied that a noble that doesn't fight doesn't deserve their title. It sounds quite interesting, so I need to ask more about this later.
In the book "Advice for New Adventurers," there's some simple info about "Stats" and magic, which is extremely valuable to me. It says that the average stat for a commoner should be ten and that anything below that is concerning.
"Strength" is self-explanatory, but it says that the number represents overall muscular power, so the book advises adventurers to train their entire body instead of just a few muscles because the "divine system" gives people a little power boost every time the stat increases.
"Endurance" is like physical stamina, but it also helps with resisting magic or poisons. To increase it, I only need to do aerobics, and the book advises to never try training [Poison Resistance] without an authorized healer.
"Dexterity" pertains to the precision of muscular movement. It's the main stat for sharpshooters, but it also helps quite a lot with martial arts, so it's a secondary stat for warriors. There's no mention of a "thief" or "rogue" fighting style, though.
"Speed" is self-explanatory.
"Intelligence" is said to help with the speed of learning skills, which is excellent news to me since mine is pretty high. It's also a main stat for mages since they need a
lot
of skills to be effective, so the faster they learn, the more powerful they can become.
"Wisdom" is more mysterious, but it generally correlates with life experience, so mine is at the appropriate level for someone of my (counting Eath's) age, but I'm a bit of an odd 16-year old for Rupegia standards. This is the main stat for mages because the subconscious of their brain uses their knowledge of magical theory to do all the minimal adjustments and calculations that a spell needs to work, so I guess I
might
be kind of a good mage?
"Willpower" is all about mental endurance, and while I was never a slob or sedentary, I'm also not a super disciplined person. This stat helps with resisting spells that affect the mind and is also used by mages to "brute force" their spells, supplementing their lack of theoretical knowledge with pure will.
"Charisma" is a very mysterious stat and not much is known about it, though someone with high "Charisma" is instantly recognizable. The book also advises that adventurers should always be wary of merchants with a honeyed voice.
"Piety" is another obvious one, but it also tells how well divine power can channel through a mage's body, so that's why [Light Magic] didn't work when I had zero "Piety."
"Perception" is simply attention to detail. It seems to help with detecting spells and illusions, the "light-bending"-kind and not the "mess with your mind"-kind. I'm a bit surprised mine is considerably high, but I guess it's because I'm quite attentive and reflective.
"Sanity" is too complex for a simple book to explain how it's calculated, but all I should know is that it provides a good gauge of one's mental health along with their susceptibility to mind-affecting spells. Twelve is a good number for a well-adjusted citizen, and the book advises one to talk to priests if it's lower than that.
There's no way I can tell Ciel about my problems, at least not yet…
Since it's actually viable for someone to learn magic on their own, the book explains that "Magic Power" is simply how much one can alter reality with a single point of mana. It's advised to keep it at half of the max MP because, otherwise, the spells either become too weak and ineffective or too powerful and hard to control. My MP and "Magic Power" are still both too low to affect me like that, though.
There's also a short description of the magic skills. [Sense Mana] is self-explanatory, but the book says that all spells leak mana, which is what the skill picks up once the particles touch the senser's skin; [Mana Control] allows a mage to put more or less mana and modulate the spell's power, making it mandatory for powerful spells; [Mana Recovery] increases natural MP regen; [Mana Efficiency] helps with the natural mana leak and reduces the cost of continuous spells; [Reduced Mana Cost] affects only the initial cost of casting a spell, so it doesn't overlap with Efficiency. There's also some info about mana overuse, which happens when a mage uses too much mana too fast, and blackout, which is when a mage's MP goes negative, but the book only says to avoid these conditions because they're unhealthy even if someone has the Resistance skills to deal with them.
Lastly, the book gives me a small formula to calculate one's "soul potential." If the total number of skills (and their levels) some has is less than four times the person's level, they have "positive soul potential," and it's easier to learn skills; if the total is higher than that, then they have "negative soul potential," and it becomes increasingly harder to gain skills, the deeper into the negative numbers the total is.
I'm not sure how this relates to my cheat since I can just zero my total skills at any time, effectively giving me a positive soul potential any time I want.
It's quite tiring and time-consuming to keep reading all this information, so I don't really have time to go out of town today. I decided to go to a nearby dungeon tomorrow, Royd's Kerfuffle, a labyrinthine dimensional door dungeon that has an "elevator." The adventurer that discovers a dungeon gets the right to name it, and most of them have quite an eccentric naming sense.
This dungeon in particular isn't that popular since the monsters there do not reward much, but it could be a perfect training ground for me. Only at the lower levels that I need to be careful and look out for traps, and the worst of them teleport their victims to a random place on the same floor, so things only start to become difficult after the tenth floor, but the floor traps are always on the same spot, so it's easy to avoid them.
It's also a good place to train "Willpower" due to the monsters that spawn there, but they're pretty physically weak, and I have a cheat that lets me counter them.
Right now, I still have some free time until sunset, so I decide to go do some physical training.
--
The hunters' guild training grounds is a large dirt field. There's a large area for sparring; an archery range; a wide, long, and secluded place where I can see some mages throwing some flashy spells; a place where a few freakish; floating pieces of armor fight some people; a small building with barred windows; and a small fountain for people to drink.
Is that fountain magical or is there plumbing in this town?
I pay the toll to enter and approach one of the idle men with the symbol of the hunters' guild engraved on his leather armor.
"H-hello, I'm new around here. Could you tell me how I can use this place?" I stiffly ask him.
He's not big or burly, but he has a menacing gaze. He sports a buzz cut, his face is full of small scars, and his posture is intimidating.
How does one get scars in a world with magical healing?
He replies in an eerily calm voice, "Hm? Well, the archery range is free, and we can lend you a bow and arrow, but you'll pay for anything you break. The magic range is free, too, but you need a safety briefing so you don't hurt other people. The Living Armors are rented, and the manager deals with that. I'm an instructor, and I can give you training with weapons, but you can't monopolize me, so we have the students spar with each other once you're at a proper level." I listen intently and remain tense under his unwavering gaze, which makes me want to spontaneously look away, but I manage to resist it.
"Then, could you teach me the sword?" I anxiously ask.
He nods energetically. "Alright, let's spar so I can measure your skill. Put away your sword, and I'll give you a wooden one."
He goes into what I assume is the warehouse while I put my sword in my "Items," then he comes back with two wooden swords and throws one at me.
"What's your name?" He casually asks.
"Wolf Ryder."
Now that I've said it again, I think that I've made a mistake. This name certainly doesn't suit me. My parents were right, my original name was better.
He taps his chest with a closed fist and replies, "I'm Toga. You make the first move, and I will start attacking after a while."
So I start my session. I rush and attack, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Because the skill system takes over some of my movements I'm at least confident that I know how to slash and thrust.
Toga effortlessly blocks, parries, and dodges my attacks. It feels like I'm a child throwing a tantrum while he holds me back by simply holding my head. Then he starts attacking and in three strikes my sword falls out of my hand.
"Well, your technique is a mess, who taught you the sword?" He questions with a deep frown.
"Self-taught," I answer meekly.
"Mystery solved," he responds and laughs out loud. "You know how to attack, but you're lacking a 'flow,' so it's easy to find openings to counter, which means that the first thing you should learn is how to defend yourself. Now, what sort of training do you want?"
"How many types of training are there?" I reflexively ask back.
He sighs softly and gives me an odd look. "Depends on what job you want. Adventuring warriors want any 'Physical' skills that they can get their hands on, and their role in a fight depends on which skills they have an affinity for; soldiers train to have a balanced selection of weapon and defensive skills like [Block] and [Parry]," -he scans my body up and down- "but they need 'Stats' more than they need skills, which you're lacking; and knights train mostly their weapon skill and other enhancement skills like [Muscle Explosion] and [Enhanced Strength] since they use enchanted weapons and wear heavy armor, so they don't need defensive skills as much. Archers have it easy, though, since all they need is [Bow Use] until they're high level."
"I want to work as an adventurer," I immediately confess.
Then he smiles a bit creepily. "I see. So, do you want to train the
proper
way, or the
easy
way?" And his words give me a chill.
I know what's coming. It's going to be painful, but this is an opportunity to see what true sword fighting is like, and what kind of man or boy would say no to that?
"The... proper way," I weakly answer, starting to waver.
He grins evilly and commands, "Then defend yourself like your life depends on it, because it does."
Then he beats me up.
--
My body is bruised and bloody. I didn't imagine that a blunt wooden sword could make such a cut. Toga crushed me and he's barely out of breath. He's certainly a scary man. Did I choose the worst instructor by any chance?
While I'm sprawled on the ground, Toga calls for someone. Another instructor comes by and touches my arm, then he starts singing something like a prayer.
"[
Heal
]," he softly sings after finishing the strophe, then my body suddenly hurts a lot less, the bruises return to normal color, and the cuts stop bleeding then close up, all in just a few seconds.
This is [Light Magic], and it's much faster than my [
Regeneration
] spell.
Oh wait, was that a chant? Do people normally need to sing something so that the spell activates? I don't know anything about that, but it's a common trope in video games to balance magic, and they make it so that powerful magic takes a long time to chant.
I get up and notice there's a small number of people watching me, and quite a few of them are grinning, then embarrassment fills my heart and makes me blush.
What's so funny?
"Good job surviving, boy," one of the grinning men praises me half-ironically.
I fail to hold back a small smile. They're making fun of me for getting beaten up, but I just can't deny it must've been a spectacle.
Toga stops in front of me, and I notice a hint of kindness in his tone as he reports, "Your body is weak and your technique is poor, but you got enough 'Willpower' to withstand the training. Keep coming and you'll be a proper swordsman in due time."
I had noticed people greet each other with a clear nod, so I mimic that and politely state, "Thank you for the session, teacher. I'm very tired now, so I'm going to retire."
I'm not sure what's the etiquette when dealing with the instructors here, so I just call him "teacher" instead of saying his name.
"Goodbye," he calmly replies with a nod.
I turn around and wash my face in the fountain, then I leave. Now I'm just going to pass by the hunters guild for a quick look.
--
Near the entrance, I notice something I had ignored the first time I came here due to nervousness. On one of the walls, there are two large black boards where I can see something written in white. The first board is named "Notable Hunts," and it displays a magically scrolling list of hunter names with monster names next to them, and I get a chill when I see my name with "Gray Berserker'' right next to it. The second board is named "Confirmed Kills,'' and it displays a list of the hunter names coupled with the number of monsters they've killed that scrolls much faster than the first one.
I walk towards the notice board and see that most of the notes there are about the prices for the bounties or corpses of the common kills around here, like the goblins, Dragolites, or monsters from the dungeons, while the rest are bounties on specific monsters sighted. Some contain a rough drawing, but they all contain the name, the last seen location, a short description of the monster, and a threat level.
From what I understood by reading monster books, the threat level goes from 0 to 10, the numbers have the following meaning: 0 = harmless, 1 = capable of killing a child, 2 = capable of killing an untrained adult, 3 = capable of killing the common soldier, 4 = capable of killing a soldier squad, 5 = capable of killing a knight squad, 6 = capable of killing veteran hunters, 7 = capable of killing a soldiers company (100 men), 8 = capable of killing a division (10,000 men), 9 = capable of destroying a fortress, 10 = unkillable.
Why are knights ranked lower than veteran hunters? Is it a matter of specialization? I see that there's a permanent bounty on the Grey Berserker, and his threat level is four. Dragolites are threat level one and Mossy Fangpines are threat level two.
When I decide to leave, I notice that there are a few people looking at me, then I recognize that at least two of them were here in the morning when I sold the bear.
Do these people do nothing besides sit here and drink?
It's probably what Sonny said: other parties will be interested in me since I killed a Grey Berserker all by myself. It doesn't matter that it was half-dead, they don't know that.
I decide to quickly leave and go back to the inn to rest.
--
Dinner is a red bean paste with minced meat and spices to put on the bread. Feels like it's spiced with paprika and cumin, so now it only needs some spicy pepper for it to be just like chilli.
After dinner and a bath, I go back to my room and reflect upon today. I look at my skills and see that they all have two numbers on their level separated by a "plus" sign. [Sword Use], [Dodge], [Parry], and [Block] all have a 1 on the right side of the plus while the rest have a 0.
The fuck?
I try to manipulate my skills, but only the number on the left of the plus sign changes, and I seemingly can't remove the skills with the 1 on the right side.
Did I "learn" these skills? Does this mean that trained skills are different from the ones assigned with the system?
I guess this also means that I can't learn [Parry], then remove the skill, then learn it again, and repeat as a way to accumulate skill points.
No exploits in this game eh? Mine not included.
This is how my skills are right now:
--
['Wolf Ryder Skill Report']
['Physical']
[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]
[Sword Use: 5+1 | Dodge: 2+1 | Parry: 0+1]
[Block: 0+1]
['Magical']
[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]
[Mana Efficiency: 3+0 | Mana Recovery: 3+0 | Electric Magic: 4+0]
[Nature Magic: 5+0]
['Miscellaneous']
[Skill Name: Level]
[Andraste Language: 10+0]
--
['Info']
[Name: Wolf Ryder | Age: 16 | Race: Human]
[HP: 100 | MP: 110 | Magic Power: 180]
[Level: 5]
['Stats']
[Strength: 8 | Endurance: 8 | Dexterity: 9]
[Speed: 10 | Intelligence: 20 | Wisdom: 15]
[Willpower: 11 | Charisma: 10 | Piety: 3]
[Perception: 15 | Sanity: 9]
['Other']
[.Status Effects: 'NONE'.]
[.Titles: 'NONE'.]
[.Affiliations: 'NONE'.]
[.Companions: 'NONE'.]
[.Crimes: 'NONE'.]
--
After that, I almost doze off thinking about the Tale of Creation. The name "Reigurando" keeps coming back to my mind, as it reminds me of something, but I just can't put my finger on what.
Then something hits me. The Japanese language lacks some things required for them to pronounce foreign words properly, and their way around it creates an accent that some even find funny. After a while, I've started to notice the patterns in their speech and now it's become easy to understand what foreign word they're trying to say.
The Japanese way of pronouncing the English word "Playground" is "Pureigurando," while RPG, Role-Playing-Game, is pronounced "Arupegi," which is incredibly similar to Rupegia.
Oh, no.
I'm truly stuck in a fantasy video game, and it's made by the Japanese. Then it also hits me that "Demon King'' is a very common trope in Japanese light novels.
I really am an "isekai" protagonist…