《Petmaster Evolutions》 Chapter 1 - Introduction (edited 9/2/17) My name is Chris Radford, I am 40 years old, divorced, with one child currently in the fifth grade. My story up until now has been pretty normal. I grew up in a small town which I left as soon as I graduated. I then moved from job to job for the next fifteen years until finally becoming an air conditioning repair man. It pays the bills and makes sure that my family is taken care of, what more can you ask for? The divorce happened soon after my son was born as I did not approve of how she wanted to raise him, and she did not care for my methods either. This has caused a lot of contention between us and leaves him stuck in the middle more often than I would care for him to be. The day that everything happened to me started out normally but went to hell pretty quickly, but looking back now I can¡¯t say that I would change much. I had just finished a long day of work installing a new system in a customer¡¯s house. Of course, the damn thing was in the attic in Florida in August, so I was completely worn out and frustrated which is not a time that you want to hear from the ex. ¡°Hello?¡± I answered the phone. ¡°Chris, we need to talk,¡± my ex-wife Chelsea¡¯s said. ¡°What is it about this time?¡± I responded. ¡°Justin,¡± my son, ¡°told me about you taking him out with you on a date with some whore, I do not want him to exposed to the trash you could pick up. If you want to slut around don¡¯t you dare involve my son with them!¡±, Chelsea yelled, ¡°If you don¡¯t I will take you back to court and take away all of your rights.¡± Chelsea had been that way forever. She wanted complete control over everything I did which I put up with until she started doing it to Justin too. Since then it has been an ongoing fight over who should have the right to decide how Justin would live his life, his mother or Justin himself. While an eleven-year-old is not responsible enough to make every decision, they should be able to decide at least what color they like. ¡°Listen, Chelsea, we have been over this before. There are no women. This is a single woman. I have been dating her for over a year, and it is time she gets to know OUR son. I want to see how they do together before I go further with her¡±, I said. ¡°You have got to be kidding me!¡±, Chelsea screamed, ¡°I am not allowing some two-bit whore to be around MY son. You either break it off or kiss your visitation rights goodbye¡±. ¡°So the men you date is none of my business, but a woman that I may want to marry is all your purview? Do you hear yourself, why can¡¯t you understand that you can¡¯t treat people like this?¡±, I yelled. Things just went downhill from this point, and I don¡¯t really want to bore you with further details of that conversation or the lawyers called as a result of it. Now here I am nearly 8 PM, but it¡¯s still pretty light out since the sun will not set until about 8:30. I am finally at home, relaxing and cooling off by the pool with a beer in my hand. Unfortunately, my girlfriend won¡¯t be coming over since she is an RN and is working nights for the extra money right now to try to get out of her lease early to move in with me, so all I have to take out my frustrations is a twelve pack and a bug zapper.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I am just laying here by the pool in a lawn chair, waiting for it to get dark enough to see the stars. I honestly hate the summer, it¡¯s too hot, too humid, and it never gets dark early enough to relieve some of the miasma that constantly surrounds you. I have been flying over the surface of this planet for several days and have found no one. This planet is worthless, there is no one here, and these people are so intolerant, it¡¯s a wonder how they survive at all. Luckily the only intelligent life in this world lives on the land masses, so as soon as I finish this one stretch of land, I can finally get out of here and back to civilization. I wish I could have used my ship, but they might have detected it with what scanners they have on this planet, thinks Denala while flying down the west coast of Florida on her griffin. The griffin being a magical creature is invisible to normal humans. The ship would be too because of the magical shield, but the normal engines put off heat which would be detectable so better safe than sorry. Of course, right about the time she thinks, that is when her scanner goes off that she has been spotted. ¡°You have got to be kidding me, there is someone with potential here?¡± 3 beers down in 30 minutes. The sun is finally setting, and soon I will start to get my stars. I don¡¯t know why, but laying out and looking at the stars has always been relaxing, well that and playing RPG''s but I really do not want to deal with people after today that¡¯s for sure. ¡°That is one strange looking bird,¡± I mumble. ¡°Just my damn luck,¡± Denala mumbles, and then louder addresses her griffin, ¡°Talon loop around and land near here so I can check out the local.¡± The doorbell interrupts my lazing around and has me stumbling to the front door where I find some chick in a uniform. ¡°May I help you?¡± I say. ¡°My name is Denala, and I wanted to ask you a few questions if I may,¡± she responded. ¡°Honestly it¡¯s been a hell of a day, so if you are doing a survey, I think I will pass.¡± I slur out. She rolls her eyes and mumbles something under her breath before shoving past me into my house. ¡°I am not here for a survey, did you see something flying over a few minute ago?¡± Denala asks. Instead of answering I get belligerent and yell, ¡°Who do you think you are, you don¡¯t have the right to just waltz in here and ask me questions about some strange bird.¡± ¡°So you did see something?¡± she confirms while ignoring my question. Confused I respond ¡°Yes, but what does that have to do with you and why are you barging in here?¡± I ask. ¡°I am a recruiter that was assigned to check this world for new members, but honestly I did not expect to find anyone. This world has no mana so there should be no way for someone to develop who could detect, much less see through a mana shield.¡±, she said. Great I think, crazy ex-wife, and now bat crap crazy walks through my door. Today is just not my day. ¡°Please get out before I call the cops. I have had enough crazy today and do not want to deal with more right now. I have a nice buzz going that you are currently ruining so please just leave.¡± I say. ¡°Sorry, no can do. You have to come with me.¡± She responds. ¡°Like hell, I do crazy woman,¡± I grab her arm, ¡°get out of my house.¡± Unfortunately, I cannot seem to budge her which is odd considering she is a lot smaller than I am. ¡°What the hell,¡± I say. Calmly she replies ¡°I am much stronger than you are currently, and no you don¡¯t have a choice in the matter. My scanner logged your sighting, as such I have to recruit you. Basically, you have a join or die scenario. We cannot allow word of your existence to get out.¡± Being fairly drunk I still think I have a chance at this point and pick up my phone to call the cops. ¡°Don¡¯t do that, I do not want to have to incapacitate you,¡± she says. Being that Denala looks like she is 5¡¯5 to 110 lbs to my 6¡¯2 220 lbs I think to myself like you could and continue to dial the phone. The next thing I know I am lying on the floor with my head ringing. I feel myself being moved and hear her say, ¡°I warned you.¡± Chapter 2- Abduction (edited 9/2/17) I wake up to find myself bound while lying in a bed surrounded by a metal room. There is no one around, but I can feel almost a vibration all around me. Honestly, I do not really care since I otherwise feel awful right about now. ¡°I know I have said it before but never again will I drink like that,¡± I mutter, then I start to remember the events of last night. That damn girl, what did she do to me? Did I get arrested? All I was doing was sitting in my backyard drinking, no laws against that! ¡°Hello,¡± I call out, ¡°anyone there?¡± There was no immediate answer, so I tried again louder, ¡°Hello!¡± I can hear some noise coming from beyond the door, so with as much patience as I can muster I yell, ¡°I can hear you out there, get in here and tell me what the hell is going on!¡± A handful of seconds later a voice replies from the speaker, ¡°My mistress is busy at the moment, she asks that you have patience while we are in transit and to let you know everything will be explained once you arrive.¡± ¡°Why am I restrained?¡± I ask. ¡°Because of your belligerence, my mistress was not able to explain everything to you before departure, as such she felt it was better for the restraints so that you could not do any harm while you recovered.¡±, the voice said. ¡°Who are you?¡± I asked. ¡°My designation is MC-8173, but my mistress just calls me MC¡± the voice replied. ¡°Well MC would you mind unbinding me and releasing me? Tomorrow I am supposed to pick up my son for the start of my week with him, and I have stuff I need to do before then.¡± I say. ¡°I am sorry sir that is not possible, we are currently further away from there than you could possibly guess, and more details will have to wait until we arrive back at headquarters for your induction,¡± MC says. Induction, I do not like the sound of that. What are they inducting and why drag me along with them anyway? It seems like I am getting nowhere fast here, maybe if I try a different tactic, I can escape I think to myself. ¡°Hey MC I call, I really don¡¯t feel so good, would you bring me some water to drink?¡± I ask. MC replies, ¡°That will have to wait about an hour or so, we woke you up early so the effects would wear off before we got you back, the alcohol you consumed was purged from your system immediately when you arrived. We just kept you out to make sure we did not have trouble before we got you back and had time to explain everything.¡± ¡°So basically you are just here to placate me and put me off until we get wherever we are going to make sure I do not cause any trouble even though you have me trussed up like a turkey right now?¡± I ask. ¡°Exactly¡± MC replies, ¡°and mistress said you were too stupid to figure it out, guess she was wrong for once.¡± ¡°Tell her thanks for the vote of confidence for me then,¡± I say while thinking to myself what a bitch. ¡°Mistress, I will take your Griffin to the holding pens after we land, I told the human it would be about an hour so. That should give you sufficient time to inform the elder about his arrival and arrange everything. I do not think your plan is wise though, I know that our faction needs more members but hiding a new mana world, not preparing them for what is coming. Its just wrong, plus he has a family. If he ever finds out, it could backfire on us.¡± MC says. Denala replies, ¡°You are probably right, but it is too late now. Everything is already in place, and once he goes through the treatment, it will not matter anymore anyway. We need more people on our side and cannot let the other factions get more people against us. Any new blood could be an advantage against them. Besides, it will be years before his planet is effected, there is no harm in harvesting from it to bolster our numbers before starting preparations on that world.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. MC sighs, ¡°I may be an android, but you are the one who has no feelings. What would you do if it was your child? I would urge you to reconsider your plan and tell him the truth. You will turn him into a blank slate for your cause, but will not be able to instill any loyalty. What if someone tells the truth instead of you? This way you will get a soldier, but not a comrade.¡± ¡°Enough¡± Denala yells ¡°it¡¯s already set up and we will go through with it. Honestly, it was a mistake to wake him up to begin with, I can¡¯t believe you would do that. Now I have to wait to use the sedative again, or it will not take hold properly. He was not supposed to wake up at all until we were ready for him to¡±. ¡°Mistress I am sorry,¡± says MC, ¡°I neglected to reset the timer after the last dose and allowed it to wear off by accident. At least it was far enough out that you would not have to wait too long to administer your treatment. Maybe since he is up anyway, you can try explaining things to him.¡± ¡°No, I will escort him to the elder, and then we will do what we have to. His former life will be too much of a draw, he will not do what is necessary if we do not do it this way.¡± Denala said. <45 minutes later after the scout ship lands> ¡°Elder the new recruit is not under sedation, he was allowed to wake up on our return, but we should be able to put him under again very soon for the procedure to take place. Then you can teach him what he needs to know about our society.¡± Denala says. ¡°We will need to keep an eye on his home world quietly. His appearance means that this Earth is now being inundated by mana so we can gather more soldiers as they appear as long as the other factions stay in the dark. As of right now, all of the other factions believe that Earth is a dead world, so they do not go there. We need to get more people from there without having to shell out large amounts of resources to win a claim over the other factions.¡± The elder instructed, ¡°In the meantime, let us go and get our guest and show him the way to enlightenment.¡± The door is finally opening after the longest hour of my life, I cannot wait to finally get some answers and maybe get the hell out of here and go home. A man in a dark robe with richly embroidered details walks in and says to me ¡°Hello Chris, my name is Elder Takien and I am here to help you understand what is going on. First, let me tell you, you are no longer on the planet you were born on Earth I believe.¡± ¡°You guys are even crazier than I thought,¡± I reply. ¡°You will come to know the truth eventually, for right now you can believe I am crazy. Would you like for me to remove the restraints and allow you to come with me? I understand you have not seen or talked to your son in several days.¡± The elder said. ¡°You mean to tell me that was not last night this all happened, what the hell did you guys do to me?¡± I screamed. ¡°Please have a little patience. I understand exactly where you are coming from. Denala has been reprimanded in your case for what has occurred. Now would you like to see your son? No, he isn¡¯t here, we have a special device that allows you to view him and see what is going on from vast distances. It is not on this ship, you will have to come with me to the control room and maybe on the way I can show you that this is all true and after you see your son I can explain what is going on and let you come to a real decision.¡± Elder Takien said. ¡°I would appreciate that,¡± I say, ¡°if you could remove these restraints please.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± he says. After the restraints had been undone, I was finally able to get up and leave the room. The first thing I notice is how cramped the spaces are in here. Once we get outside, I turn around and see a ship, an honest to go alien looking space ship. To me, it looks like it¡¯s a cross between one of those ships from Wing Commander and that ship from Firefly. Either way, it¡¯s pretty impressive. Either that ship is fake, and this building is fake, or this is the real deal. I am more inclined to believe fake right now, but something is odd here. I thought. I continued to follow him through several passages until we came to a room with a large slab that had a set of headgear on it as well as various stations around the room with people standing at the ready. The elder then said to me, ¡°If you would lie down on that table, my people will assemble that equipment upon you, it is better able to read your thoughts and memories so we can try to locate your son easier.¡± I was really nervous about this, but what choice did I have. I am apparently stuck somewhere far from earth in a room full of humans and non-humans too. If they really wanted to, they could just put me up there, and I would not be able to do anything about it, and so far this elder has been really nice, maybe a show of trust will help to get me home sooner. I thought to myself, but oh how wrong I was. Chapter 3 - Redesigning Me I laid out on the slab with much trepidation, I could feel the cold through my clothes while I waited for them to place the device on me. I really should call it more than that, it consisted of a part that appeared to strap against my head, with lots of attachments but not for wires, it looked more like small tubes than what you would consider seeing at a hospital like for an EKG or something. The technicians started by placing the piece over my head which also had lenses that covered my eyes, once my eyes were covered I could only see darkness. ¡°I thought I was supposed to see my son through this, why do they darken everything out?¡± I asked. The elder replied, ¡°Once the device starts up you will be able to see properly. First, we need to finish connecting you for that to happen.¡± ¡°OK,¡± I said. It¡¯s not like I could do anything about it at this point anyway. I could feel them placing the tubes against my body at various points, once they finished they called out in a language I could not understand, and I felt the table respond by shifting slightly. Then I could feel my hands and legs being restrained. I started to fight against this, but by then it was far too late. A chest band and waist band surrounded me, and I was held against the table. I started yelling, but then they placed one of the tubes against my mouth, so I tried to seal my mouth closed. Then it really got bad. The tubes were not just tubes, it felt like teeth ripping my body open at the locations where they were placed, and then at some spots, it felt like liquid fire was entering me and others it was ice cold. I could not keep my mouth closed at this point and when I opened it the tube invaded my mouth and worked its way down my throat. This was a timeless period for me in darkness and pain, it could have lasted hours or seconds, I have no real way of knowing now, but eventually, I passed out. The technicians have finally finished laying out the tubes getting the inductee ready for the procedure, so I watch as he is restrained. I don¡¯t particularly like tricking these people, but we need them loyal, and without stripping their memories they would never give us the devotion that we need to overthrow the other two factions. Luckily we have done this enough that it¡¯s almost a science now. ¡°Start the process¡± I call out and watch as Chris finally goes limp. On the display we now see his readings and statistics, and unfortunately, they will not do at all. ¡°The age is much too high, why was he not found before now?¡± I wonder out loud, in a louder voice I call out ¡°Start the genome process, set his age at 18 years of age, and adjust his body accordingly. Make sure you adjust his appearance so that it looks like he appears non-human, maybe elfish, I want him to think he belongs somewhere else so if he does remember anything other than what we leave him, it will appear to be dreamlike instead of something possibly real.¡± They make several changes on the computer until finally I am satisfied, then the slab lowers Chris into a liquid bath just below the floor level, it dissolves what remains of his clothes then with what the tubes are pumping into him starts the modifications on his body. While that is happening, I have other people going through his memories, erasing anything other than those things having to do with education, though writing and language are changed so that no one realizes he is not an elf. Anything personal, anything that identifies him, or someone that he cares about we take so that he is pretty much a blank slate when we are done. Once he was elevated to the surface and the restraints retracted, we allowed the headgear to come alive for him, inserting the system called Odyssey into his mind and allowing him to interact with his statistics and to learn magic and other skills. The technicians also remove all the tubes and gear placed over his body which will allow him to awaken and begin his training. I awaken on a table and am immediately confused. I do not remember any of this. I don¡¯t even remember my name. I start to get upset and sit up to hear from off to the side of me. ¡°Relax, it''s ok. I know you are confused right now, but everything went fine. You are fully integrated now and part of our family. No longer will you be an orphan on your old world, we will take care of you. My name is Elder Takien, and I will make sure that you are well taken care of while you learn what is necessary to help us all.¡± The old man continued, ¡°Now being this is a new start for you, what would you like your new name to be?¡± I ponder this question, and my memories seem so confused I pick out the first name that comes to mind. ¡°Alain,¡± I say. ¡°Welcome Alain, now please put on this robe, and I will escort you to your instructor who will then provide you with everything you need to get started.¡± Elder Takien says. I do as he says and follow the elder from the room down several hallways and then outside the building. The sun is shining down brightly from overhead, and it feels quite warm out. We head across the plaza towards an area where I can see some people outside swinging swords at each other. There are other people shooting bows, and some also appear to be casting spells. So since he spoke of training, I guess that this is the place. We go inside the building and upon the walls are various banners and trophies whose purpose I am unaware of, though they do look impressive. We end up at a room near the back where a man sits behind a desk, he looks up as we walk in and addresses the Elder, ¡°Hello Elder, this is the new one I¡¯m assuming?¡± The man is wearing glasses and appears to be about five feet five tall, he really does not present himself as a trainer but more of a number cruncher in appearance. So I am confused as to his purpose. The elder replies ¡°Yes Daniel, this Elf is Alain, and he just underwent the induction. I have not told him anything or started his initiation process yet, so I will leave that up to you as well as discerning his disposition and assigning him a trainer.¡± He then turns to me, ¡°Alain this man will help you to understand everything that is going on. You are young still, so you have plenty of time to learn and grow into your duties. I will get back to mine.¡± As the elder leaves, I heave a sigh of relief because for some reason I just can¡¯t be comfortable around that elder. The man Daniel snorts upon hearing the sound and says to me ¡°I know what you mean, don¡¯t rightly feel I can do anything right around him. Either way, my name is Daniel Fax. I am the master of training here. That does not include swinging dangerous items around, but just over helping newcomers to figure out their roles and make them aware of all their abilities.¡± ¡°Thank you, Daniel, my name is Alain, and this is all confusing, what was I inducted into, what initiation. How do you figure out this stuff?¡± I asked. He responded, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, we will have you straightened out in no time. First, we will handle the testing your skills to see what roles suit you best, then we will handle the initiation. That will actually explain a few other things to you during the process. What you will need to do first is think to yourself some key words. Once you get into the initiation process, you will know better what you want to select for yourself as you go through everything. Now come with me to the testing room so we can check your aptitudes.¡± ¡°OK¡± I reply and follow him out of the office and back down the hall towards the exit. We take a side door about midway down the hall and enter a room with an orb on a pedestal. Daniel walks towards it and goes behind it and presses some keys that cause the orb to light up and the walls to start going through a color sequence. Daniel then says to me ¡°Once this finishes warming up you will appear to be in a room, you should exit the room and try your hand at anything that appears and see what you like best, and what likes you best. You may like singing, but other people may not like your singing is what I mean. This orb will measure how well you do at whatever you try, and once finished you will appear back here in front of me. Now keep in mind that this does not set you on a path, even if you do not have the aptitude, you could still select a path that you like and build the skill, it would just take longer. Do you have any questions? I shake my head no, and Daniel presses another key. Instantly the room erupts in a riot of colors, and I close my eyes. When I open them, and my eyes adjust I find myself in the same room just no orb. I turn around and walk out the door which now leads outside. In front of me, I see a training area that holds a sword and a shield leaning against a dummy. I pick them up and put the shield on. The training dummy then starts to move. It takes a swing at me, and I bring up my shield but instead of using it to deflect the blow I take the hit straight on, and it knocks me back and hurts my arm. I try taking a swing back, and the dummy side steps the blow. This goes on for a couple of minutes before I am absolutely worn out. The dummy then steps away from me approximately two dozen feet. I notice a bow and quiver sitting next to me. I replace the sword and shield for the bow and arrows and immediately notice that I start feeling better and less fatigued until I am back to normal again. I take the bow in hand and already feel much more confident than I did while trying to use the sword. I begin to aim at the dummy and let fly and manage to hit the dummy in the arm when I was aiming for the chest. I knock another arrow and try again, this time I account for the wind and hit the chest within a few inches of where I was aiming. I knock again, and the dummy starts to move around. I shoot over and over again, most of the time I hit something, but a few times I hit nothing. After I empty the quiver, the dummy bows to me and disappears, I look around and find a book and a globe laying on a chair I had not seen before now. I pick them both up and sit in the chair to read the book while the Orb sits in my lap. The book has instructions on what to do next. It says that I should hold the orb between both hands and close my eyes and feel inside myself for a place that feels warmer than the rest of me. Once I locate that warmth, I should try to push it from that location towards the ball in my hands. Once I think I have done it, I should open my eyes and look at the orb. It takes a while to locate the warm feeling, and even longer for me to get it to move to my hands and into the ball. The instructions were not clear on whether I should continue to push at this point or just stop, so I keep pushing until I suddenly start feeling tired. At this point, I look at the orb, and it is glowing brightly in my hands, It is bright green with some white and shades of blue and black around the edges. Once I notice this the orb fades away. I then hear a growling sound. I turn my head, and a huge dog is inside the fence surrounding this training area just a few feet away from me. I seem to remember as a child that if you look less threatening animals sometimes calmed down and would let you pet them, so I again faced away from the dog and kneeled down, so I was not quite so big. I also stuck my hand out behind me palm up so that the dog could sniff me without me looking directly at it in a way challenging it. The growling continues, but eventually, I feel a cold nose nudge my hand and some sniffing sounds. I still do not move and allow the dog to get used to me before slowly turning my head and looking at the dog. It watches me warily but is no longer growling, so I turn my hand over and attempt to pet the top of its head slowly. The dog accepts this, and I start bit by bit turning my body to face the dog as I build up trust with it. Once I turn fully around there is another flare of lights and when I reopen my eyes, I am back with Daniel.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Daniel says ¡°Well you have some decent aptitude with both animals, magic, and archery. Sword skills are very low. I did not allow the test to continue into the more rogue-like skills such as pickpocketing and daggers, though I could send you back for that if you feel those would be better fits for you.¡± ¡°No¡± I replied, ¡°those do not sound like skills that would suit me. I really enjoyed the archery, and maybe if I could get some dogs, I could use them to help me hunt or something.¡± ¡°Son don¡¯t sell your self short with dogs. You could tame beasts with enough skill to help you in many situations. It¡¯s a good skill and will take you a long way. I would actually recommend taking all three of those skills eventually. You have high aptitude with nature magic, a smaller aptitude with cold and water, and finally a little bit of aptitude with light and dark magic. ¡° I nod my head and reply ¡°That actually sounds pretty good. Can I learn to heal using that magic?¡± Daniel replies ¡°Definitely if you can find someone to train you in it. The thing is¡­ Well, I am getting ahead of myself first let¡¯s get you initiated. When you get in there now, you know your aptitudes. You will be able to select a single skill and spend five statistic points. Just from how you were raised and your body type you will start out with some base stats. The way these stats work is that strength affects how much you can carry and how much damage you will do when you swing a sword. Stamina affects how far you can run before becoming winded, as well as the amount of health you have before succumbing to death. Dexterity affects dagger and bow attacks, as well as your ability to dodge, or parry attacks. Intelligence increases your overall mana, and finally, wisdom increases your mana regen and increases how quickly you progress in your skills. It has been argued that there are some hidden stats that affect a wide range of things referred to as luck and charisma, but as far as it¡¯s known they are unchangeable and the only way to ascertain their value is to head to a bar and try to pick up some ladies.¡± And with that, he barks out a laugh. ¡°My recommendation if you want to go with pets and using a bow would be put points in Dexterity, Stamina enough to live or to run away to fight another day, and then Intelligence and Wisdom to keep you in mana once you learn some spells. Any questions before you start?¡± he asks. ¡°No, you covered it fairly well so far,¡± I said. ¡°OK, what you need to do is think to yourself the words start initiation.¡± He said. I thought the words start initiation and right in front of my eyes a box appeared.
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 1 N/A
Health EXP to next level Mana
21 100 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 3 7 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Skills
N/A
Stat points remaining 5 Skill points remaining 1
I heard Daniel say, ¡°Once you think that line your status box should appear. If in the future you wish to review this information all you need to do is think Status. Next to increase your base statistics you just need to think something like Increase Stamina by 1 or whatever you wish to change. Go ahead and set those stats now, and say when you are ready to continue.¡± I think about what he told me and decide to follow his advice. I go ahead and raised my dexterity by 3 points bringing it to a total of 10, then increase stamina to 5. I do not have any magic yet, so I am not going to worry about it this time. After those changes, my Status page changes to
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 1 N/A
Health EXP to next level Mana
35 100 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 5 10 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Skills
N/A
Stat points remaining 0 Skill points remaining 1
Based upon this it looks like I will get 7 health for every stamina, and the same for mana and intelligence as well. I have no way to test mana regen yet, so I do not know how much effect wisdom will have on everything, but since it helps skills to level I am guessing it¡¯s going to be worth investing in. ¡°I¡¯m finished with that¡± I inform Daniel. ¡°OK,¡± says Daniel, ¡°now we move to the skill point. Skill points work differently than Stat points. Stat points you will get 5 every level, so they are important. Skill training points you get only from three ways. You will get a skill point at level 1, 2, 3, and then 5. After that, your next skill point from leveling will be every twenty levels starting at level 20. The second way to gain a skill point is from completing certain hidden quests. They could award a skill or a skill point depending on who is offering the quest. Finally, Skill points are available for purchase from the Odyssey store. They cost more than a cruiser class space ship, so you definitely will not be buying skills anytime soon. I hope this impresses upon you the importance of your skill choices. When you are ready to think show skill list, and the list will appear. I am going to again suggest with your aptitudes selecting either beast taming, or shooting skill first, as healing will not help you until you have a way to kill something.¡± I go ahead and bring up the list and it spans three columns, there are skills like piloting, flying, riding, even fishing. Page after page of skills and lots of it I did not test for. ¡°Why are there so many skills listed, a lot of it is technology based like explosives, and gun handling? What¡¯s the deal with the use of technology and the use of things like bow and arrows? Wouldn¡¯t a gun be better than a bow?¡± I ask. Daniel replies ¡°The system and the factions have rules in place for planets where we hunt and train, I will cover factions later on, but for now technology is only able to be used on certain planets. There are some areas where technology is outlawed other than shuttles back and forth to space stations. The reason we are focusing on low technology is that all the starter areas are limited to low tech. It allows you to learn and skill up in less danger than starting you out where the baddies are shooting at you with laser rifles. Plus you cannot afford technology yet. Get some quests done, gain some levels, and eventually, you too can afford your own personal ship from your Odyssey points, which again I will go over later.¡± ¡°Makes sense¡± I replied and go back to hunting through the list. I go back to the first page and decide that I can still shoot a bow without having the relevant skill, but I might not be able to tame a beast without that skill, so I choose that for my first skill leaving my stat page as
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 1 N/A
Health EXP to next level Mana
35 100 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 5 10 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Skills
Beast Taming 0%
Stat points remaining 0 Skill points remaining 0
¡°Ok, I am finished,¡± I said. He replied ¡°Good, I am ready for something to eat so let¡¯s do that for now and continue after lunch. To get rid of the status screen for now just think Exit." Chapter 4 - Further Instruction I follow Daniel out of the building and head west this time. We enter a two story building, and he directs me into a large open room to the left with many tables though only a few have people at them right now. He explains to me ¡°We actually missed lunch due to finding out your aptitudes so technically it¡¯s not normally available like this. Honestly, you should not get used to this anyway as unless you are stationed here you will be responsible for feeding and housing yourself.¡± I ask, ¡°Do I need to learn how to cook for myself or will food be available to buy wherever I go?¡± He replies ¡°Learning to cook is always a good thing as it can save you money especially when just starting out. Usually, food is available near where you will be hunting at. The way things work is that Odyssey starts bombarding a planet or moon with mana when this occurs monsters start to spawn. The longer the mana is sent into a planet, the bigger and harder the monsters are that spawn though it generally takes about ten years before the mana level is high enough to start spawning even weaker monsters. That¡¯s where the factions come in, when a planet is found to have begun this process the three factions bid on the planet to any current residents of the planet. Whoever wins gets to build a space station and place buildings for their faction planet side. As a result, they tax all transactions that take place on the planet and serve as way stops for all the Odyssey adventurers. The contract with the initial faction is for five hundred years as it takes about one hundred to two hundred years before the faction will start to recoup the initial investment.¡± We go ahead to one of the staff and ask for plates, and they brought us some meat and mushed up vegetables when I am asked I am told its cockatrice and crushed tubers. We take these plates to an empty table, and I think to ask, ¡°How are these planets found?¡± He then tells me ¡°The factions keep in their employ scouts. They go to planets and scan for mana or for people who show signs of mana infiltration, as those are the first signs of a new Odyssey planet. Once they find a new planet, they are to report it to their designated faction, who will then alert the other two factions. The scout and the faction will be paid a finder¡¯s fee by the other factions and representatives will be sent out to start educations and negotiations with the planets current populace, if any. Honestly, the finder¡¯s fee is worth quite a lot and some people have never had to hunt again after finding a new planet.¡± After this explanation, I start to eat the cockatrice, and the thought crosses my mind, it tastes like chicken. Which confuses me as I cannot remember what a chicken is or how I would know what it tastes like. Evidently, I have enough of an expression on my face when I paused eating that Daniel asks me, ¡°Have another question?¡± Setting aside my thoughts I ask my next question ¡°What are the factions?¡± ¡°Well, the three factions are Vortex which we belong to, Immortalis, and Karma. Each of us has different goals. We of Vortex are trying to find a way to stop or at least slow down Odyssey. There are not enough adventurers, yet Odyssey keeps spreading like a plague. On new planets, even the locals can take down the monster spawns without too much trouble. On the older planets, you can hardly leave the cities without taking extreme precautions, and there are just not enough adventurers to take out the monsters or to keep them thinned out. It¡¯s not safe, and you can¡¯t just relocate the planet''s inhabitants. We tend to actively try to find and recruit the orphans and misfits, so families are not broken apart when someone is found mana infiltrated¡± he tells me. ¡°Second we have Immortalis, they are a decent group of people that believe in some ancient fighting spirit that lives on in them. They tend to be more helpful to residents of planets and others around them, just don¡¯t screw with them because they revere their spirit as a being of vengeance and will come after you hard if you wrong them.¡± ¡°Third is Karma. They tend to follow the golden rule in all things, which to me is kind of stupid, but if they are wronged, they believe that karma will fix it and overall remain neutral for the most part. They tend to arbitrate disputes between the rest of us, and while they do not hold as many stations and planets as us, they don¡¯t seem to really care and are still a quite powerful faction.¡± I then ask him ¡°What about on planets that already have the technology yet are newly mana bombarded? What happens there, do the factions just outlaw all tech to the adventurers and the planet''s inhabitants use their guns?¡± He gets a thoughtful look on his face ¡°That is one of the mysteries. When a planet starts developing mana, technology starts failing that is not made with mana. That is part of the bidding process, new mana crafters, and mana crafted infrastructure to replace what is going to start failing. People have tried shields and other methods, but nothing has worked. Stuff made without mana just stops working.¡± he admits then continues ¡°As far as bringing in guns and advanced weapon technology to a planet. The factions need training planets, so it was agreed that until monsters spawn that actually warrant advanced weaponry, just the good old classics would be used.¡± By this time we have finished our plates, so he directs me to deposit my plate on a tray after throwing our trash away and to follow him out. Once outside the building, he asks me what skill I had selected when I told him Beast mastery he instructed me to think show beast mastery. Once I did, I got this popup
Beast Taming - 0%
This skill increases the chance of increasing the loyalty of an animal, or beast type monster. Upon success, the animal¡¯s loyalty rating will increase, and an attempt will occur to make the target bound to the skill user.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Increase targets loyalty by 1%+ skill total. Chance to tame 20% +Loyalty + skill total ¨C target level
He then explained to me ¡°As you can see with the skill unlocked, but not trained up you have an extremely low chance to tame a beast of any kind. If right now you went up to a dog and tried to make friends with it, you could try to use the skill many times before it would finally trust you enough to follow your commands. If you had not unlocked it yet, it would still be possible to do, but it would take even more coaxing to get the pet to follow you.¡± Luckily this was semi transparent as I was walking, so I was able to follow him back to his office without issue. He then directed me ¡°Your next task is to raise the skill to ten percent, honestly, doing this will take the rest of the day and if you dally part of tomorrow but it¡¯s important. Here is a map, I marked on it where a farm is where the cockatrices are raised. They are not aggressive, so you will get a chance to raise your skill, without having to deal with aggression issues, just remember if the skill works and increases loyalty move on to another bird. You will not have to worry about actually taming one since they are domesticated, they already have an owner, and as such, the skill will fail that part. To use the skill you need to focus on one of the birds, you should see above its head a bar appear that shows you the animal¡¯s general information. After you see that think use beast taming to activate the skill. Once you finish with getting to ten percent come back to me, do not bother trying to raise the skill higher it¡¯s capped on domesticated animals. If it¡¯s already dark go to the food area and ask for a room for the night if not come to me and we will go from there. The map showed that the farm was about a mile away to the north, so I left the building and followed the road away from the barrack and towards the edge of town. It took about fifteen minutes to find the place, and once I was there I asked one of the workers where I should go, he directed me to some holding pens that each held a bird used for egg laying. The birds themselves were about four and a half feet tall with horns on the back of their heads and a long, scaled tail that resembled a rat¡¯s tail. The body lacked feathers except on the neck and wings, and the feet held spurs that were about four to six inches long. Overall I was glad it was domesticated because it looked very formidable. I then focused on the bird and information appeared above its head
Cockatrice (female) Level 11 Owned by Takien farms
I began to think use beast taming, and my body started to move of its own accord, and I started to feel pretty embarrassed when I started imitating what the birds were doing flapping my arms and scratching around with my feet. I really wish Daniel had told me about this part then I might have changed my mind about the whole beast taming thing. I then received three messages, one said the spell was resisted, the second said target invalid and the third said that beast taming had increased by .5%, while I was pondering this the bird swatted me with its tail and I thought to myself it¡¯s going to be a long day. Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 1 N/A
Health EXP to next level Mana
35 100 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 5 10 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Skills
Beast Taming .5%
Stat points remaining 0 Skill points remaining 0
Chapter 5- Upwards and Onwards I keep working on my taming skill until it is completely dark out since I have no desire to come back and dance around the second day. I finally achieve the required ten percent towards the skill and start to walk back to the barracks. When I finally arrive and look at the clock, it is already eleven thirty. I start wandering around the building looking to see if anyone is still awake and working to help me get a place to sleep, but it seems that no one is on duty right now. I walk around some more until I notice a door open with a light on so I move forward to that room. I glance inside and find that it a small bedroom that contains a single bed, a wooden nightstand, a chest of drawers, and a small desk that a woman was sitting at. Since I do not seem to be having any luck with finding a place to sleep, so I knock on her open door. ¡°Hello, my name is Alain¡± I call out, and she quickly turns around and faces me with an annoyed expression, ¡°I am sorry to bother you, but Daniel told me to come here to find a place to sleep tonight. I guess I took too long and no one is around to help me find an empty room. Would you happen to know of one?¡± She replies to me ¡°You were supposed to return hours ago, we close at 7, not 11. You had better have a good explanation for why you took so long. Otherwise, you will sleep outside.¡± As far as I can remember I was never scared of women but this particular one *shudder* she looks like she could snap me like a twig and her expression makes it look like she is seriously contemplating it. ¡° I was training ma¡¯am¡± I quickly reply, ¡°I had no desire to go back tomorrow and dance around those chickens some more so I finished gaining the 10% I was required before returning. I thought that there would always be someone working and did not consider that the barracks were only open certain hours.¡± When I said that she actually snickered at me before turning back to her computer and typing a few seconds. She then starts outright laughing and calls me over. There I am on video no less acting like a chicken. ¡°Daniel got you good¡± she replies still laughing while I am really getting angry at her for laughing at my embarrassment. ¡°If you had researched the birds beforehand, or asked someone what they liked then you would not have done that at all. If you know how to deal with making a beast like you, then you can manually attempt taming them without the stupid scratching. This almost makes up for you being so late!¡± She continues still laughing with tears coming down her face. ¡°Why didn¡¯t he tell me that?¡± I ask her. ¡°I don¡¯t know, but it sure is funny,¡± she says, then when she looks at me and sees how upset I have become, she tries to regain control. ¡°Seriously, if you decide you want a certain beast, find someone who has one and asks about what they like and doesn''t like, or read a book on the animals. It¡¯s not like they can tell you what they need or don¡¯t need after you tame them. You need to learn about them before so that you can take care of them once you tame one.¡± ¡°That makes sense, but man that was embarrassing, what did I do to Daniel to get him to do that to me?¡± I ask. ¡°You would have to ask him tomorrow when you complete your quest.¡± She replies, ¡°Either way I am sure you are tired after your day so let me show you to one of the open rooms. By the way, my name is Kimberly.¡± She tells me. I follow her down the hall to another door which she opens, then hands me the key. ¡°I don¡¯t know how long you will be here training, but this room will be yours for the duration. Once you are given an assignment and move on then return this key to the desk at the front, or the box if it¡¯s late again.¡±, she tells me. ¡°Thank you Kimberly¡± I reply. As she moves off back down the hallway, I close the door and take a look around. This room is very similar to the one that she has except nothing is on the bed, no chest of drawers and no computer on the desk. I think to myself I guess I need to get one of those. I hear a knock at the door and open it to find Kimberly back with a backpack and a stack of items. ¡°I almost forgot, here are some more clothes and other necessary items for you. I am sorry for laughing at you but, you have to admit that was pretty funny.¡± She says handing me the items, then she turns to leave again calling a good night over her shoulder. I place the items on the bed and find inside the backpack a few shirts, pants, smallclothes, and things like deodorant and soaps. There is also blankets and sheets for the bed. I go ahead and make the bed now and decide to take a shower before laying down to sleep. As I walk into the bathroom, I am passing a mirror and notice myself and realize that until this moment I had no idea what I looked like. I take a few minutes to examine the stranger staring back at me. He has light brown hair that reaches his shoulders and hazel eyes, a thin straight nose and rounded chin. I will guess that I am around 6 feet tall if the doors are 8 feet. My body looks athletic, not super built but with a decent muscle tone. Overall I think I look fairly good, then I get hit with an image of a human that looks older with a small gut and dark brown hair. Otherwise, he seems fairly similar to me in some respects, but I do not know who it is at all. I figure it must be someone from my past, but since it¡¯s not important at the moment, I decide to go ahead and shower and head to bed. The next morning I wake up to a knock and see that according to the clock on the nightstand it''s 6:00 and I groan. I get up and answer the door to find Kimberly there. ¡°I realized I forgot to tell you eating times last night so I figured I better wake you up in time to eat.¡± She says. ¡°Thank you¡± I reply then thinking about walking in that room alone I decide since she was friendly now to ask ¡°would you mind if I joined you for breakfast, I do not want to eat alone.¡± She smiles at me, and I notice she looks much more attractive after a shower, sleep, and with a smile. ¡°That would be fine, I am heading down now just join me when you get there, and I will save you a spot.¡± ¡°Thanks again¡± I reply and head back into the room to dress in the new clothes. About 10 minutes later I head out of the room and realize I am not sure of the way to the dining room, but luckily breakfast is a rather noisy affair, so I follow the noise and the scent of food back to its source. I grab a plate and load it up with some fried meat of some kind and eggs, as well as some toast. I then grab some coffee and look around to find Kimberly. She is sitting at a table with Daniel and two others, and I almost decided to eat alone because of it. I decided against that because I will have to go see him after breakfast anyway, plus I want to know why he did that crap with the skill to me. I walk over to the table and Kimberly waves, and Daniel says ¡°Hello Alain. I¡¯m not sure how you got Kim on your side, but she told me off for not telling you about the other way to use taming. I¡¯m sorry, but I just didn¡¯t have time yesterday to walk you through all the cockatrices likes and dislikes. At least if I had told you before I sent you out there like that might have been embarrassing, but at least you would have known why.¡± Then he turns to Kimberly and adds ¡°That good enough?¡± Kimberly replies back ¡°I suppose so, anyway Alain these other two are weapons trainers like me, we head up this facility together to train everyone and keep them all in shape. Honestly, though it doesn¡¯t look like you will be staying here that long as we deal with mostly martial matters either hand to hand with Jonathan, daggers with Samantha, or swords with me, bows train elsewhere and with different methods.¡± Samantha speaks up ¡°I want to train with him some this afternoon after he completes whatever you require of him Dan before you send him off. Daggers and ranged weapons work off of the same statistics, and since you did not test him for daggers, he could be just a suited to that as ranged weapons. At least give him the shot to see if he would prefer that before he gets sent away.¡± Daniel thinks for a minute and says ¡°Go ahead and take him after breakfast and run him through what you can. I have instructions from the elder that have to be fulfilled so I can¡¯t delay sending him out tonight, but if you start now, you can teach him the basics at least.¡± He then turns to me and says ¡°Alain go with Samantha and learn all you can from her, but tonight you have a flight to your trainer at one of the beginner planets. Unfortunately this particular planet we do not control, it belongs to Immortalis I will give you more information later, but for now, we need to finish eating and get started. In the meantime¡± he appears to concentrate a second ¡°here is your reward for completing my assignment.¡± Another box appeared before me saying
Assignment complete- ¡°Dances with chickens¡±
Reward 100 EXP and one set of beginners equipment
Then a chime sounded in my mind, and I received a notification that I had gained a level. Not too shabby one whole level plus some equipment too. Then I thought about the 7 hours I spent mimicking birds and decide that maybe it was crappy rewards for the time spent. Daniel continued ¡°After you finish with Samantha stop by my office and we will get your new set of gear sorted out, plus I will get you a book about the beasts you can find on the first planet you go to that you can read on the way.¡±If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. I nod my understanding and the chat some while I focus on eating and answering any questions they had for me. I decided to wait on investing the points from leveling until after I had gone through dagger training, as I might like it better than using a ranged weapon. Once we all finish eating Samantha directs me to follow her, and we go inside the barracks. We head up to the second level and into a room that has some training dummies set up in various areas, some with armor some without. Samantha takes me over to a wall that has some bandoliers on it and hands me one as well as a wooden dagger and starts teaching me, ¡°What I am going to teach you will help you in either path you choose to take. The first thing you need to know is your weapons work best in certain scenarios. If you are fighting a person in armor, you need to not only know the weak points of the armor but also which places to hit to inflict the most damage. You want to make sure that your target is down as quickly as possible, and if possible before he even knows you are there. Eyes, brain, heart, lungs, and kidneys. If you can hit these, you can do significant damage, if not kill your opponent in a single strike. You can also cut throats too, but that requires significant levels of stealth to do so. If you fail and the target closes with you with a sword to your dagger or bow, you will be at a disadvantage and have to try to break off or hope you are better than he is.¡± She then started me through various strikes on the dummies until lunch time, then after lunch, she started me on throwing weapons. By the time she was done with me, I was ready to go back to dancing for the cockatrices, I had never been so tired before in my life. She finally released me from her torture chamber around 3 in the afternoon, and I went and got a nice shower and fresh clothes I went to find Daniel in his office. When I reached his door, he beckoned me in, and I sat down in front of him. Once I was seated, he gave me a book titled Fauna of the Isildor Wilds. He then said to me ¡°Isildor is the planet you are going to, and on it you will find Ranger Saila, he is a member of Immortalis, which is part of the reason you are going to an Immortalis planet to start with. Our faction does not have a trainer that has both beast taming and ranged skill plus he owed us a favor, just keep in mind one day you might become a trainer for us. You will be leaving in about 5 hours on the next shuttle to the station, then will take a flight to a hub which then will connect you to Isildor. It will take you about a week to get there, so that should be ample time to familiarize yourself with the animals listed in this book. Please do not start a war with Immortalis while you are there. You may also want to hold off investing the points you gained until you speak to Saila as I am sure he would have better advice for you. Now if you will follow me, we will get you outfitted so that you are ready to show those Immortalis people what a real adventurer looks like.¡± He then led me from the room and back towards the main entry, from there he went to a larger set of double doors and unlocked them ushering me inside the room. He then walked over to a wall and started pulling out pieces of gear along it and handing to me. None of it was special, but upon examining it, I got the popup
Leather Breastplate Common
AC 6
Durability 100%
There was a helmet 4ac, breastplate 6ac, leggings 5ac, two bracers 2ac, and boots 3ac to make up this set. It would give me a total of 22 ac when fully equipped. He also gave me
Ashwood Bow Common
Damage 7-10
Durability 100%
Fey Iron Dagger Common
Damage 2-6
Durability 100%
and a quiver of 24 arrows. Once I had all of this he handed me one last item and said ¡°This item is considered a loan because of the cost associated with making one. It is called a dimensional storage ring and inside this one is camping gear, rope, a torch, and enough food to live in the wild for one week. You own everything inside, and thus you will be responsible for making sure it contains everything that you need, and it can hold about forty more items before it is full. To store stuff inside it think store and the item and it should disappear. To pull it back out think, retrieve or equip the name of the item. Think inventory and you will see a list of everything inside the ring. You have to pay us back for this ring, it will eventually belong to you once it is paid off, but that will take about a year of questing to do. Until it is paid off, you will be taxed 5% of your earnings.¡± That sounded a bit steep to me, but then again being able to carry forty plus items in a ring was godlike to me as well. Plus it could equip items directly. I stored all the armor and weapons Daniel gave me then as quickly as I could I used the equip function to put on all the gear. It took me about a minute to get it all on this way, and Daniel smiled at me. ¡°Over time as you get used to it, you can equip everything in about 5 seconds with that ring, possibly even faster, so it¡¯s a nice perk.¡± He told me, then continued ¡°either way you are equipped and ready to go, so let¡¯s go back to my office and get you the rest of your paperwork for your flights. I would advise you to get a personal communication device as soon as you can afford to, as it cuts out all this paperwork and allows you to bypass a lot of the red tape.¡± I thanked him for the advice and told him I appreciated the help everyone had given me, and he responded that we all had to work together towards our goal, so it was not a big deal. I exited his office soon after that, and it was nearly dinner time, so I decided to have a last dinner with Kimberly and the sadist Samantha before leaving if they were in the cafeteria. I found them once I had my plate and told them I was going to Isildor and they asked me why there and not a Vortex planet. I explained what Daniel had told me about the trainer and they said that they understood and wished me luck on my journey. I thanked them, and we finished our meal together. Once we were done, I went back to my room and decided to look at the book that Daniel had given me since I still had an hour before I had to leave to make my shuttle. I examined the storage ring, and its popup informed me
Dimensional Storage Ring Rare
Holds 50 items Currently, contains 13 items
Durability N/A
I though retrieve the book and it correctly pulled out the book, and I wondered what would have happened if I had two books in there. A test for another day I suppose and started reading it. Once my time had expired, I left the building after returning my key to Kimberly and went back to the main building where I had woken up since it also housed the shuttle terminals and hangars for private craft. I gave my paperwork to the person at the gate and entered the shuttle to await departure. The pilot of the craft eventually came across the speaker and said for everyone to strap in that we would be leaving 5 minutes while I had been lost in thought. When the five minutes were up, we were pressed in the seats, but overall it was a very comfortable lift off. No shaking, no anything I would have associated with going from the ground into space. I watched from the window as the ground pulled away and felt disconnected again as if I was adrift heading off on an adventure of sorts. I had trepidations, but I was also excited to see what the future would bring. The space station was on site, and we would be there soon, it was shaped like a large mushroom with the stalk having multiple protrusions on which some ships were connected, we moved towards an empty spot and connected. I unbuckled the harness and headed out of the shuttle and into the space station and found it was fairly quiet inside. There were not many people around and surprisingly I had not seen anything that I would call an alien yet. Everyone I saw was either human, elf, dwarf, or some other humanoid that was so similar I could not tell the difference. In a way, I was disappointed, but then again this was a home world. Most of the people would be on the planets or in hubs, so maybe the next leg of my trip would be more exciting. I wandered for a little bit until I found my way to the gate for the next part of my journey I still had around 5 hours before my next departure, so I decided to get comfortable and take a nap. Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 2 N/A
Health EXP to next level Mana
35 200 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 5 10 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Skills
Beast Taming 10%
Stat points remaining 5 Skill points remaining 1
Chapter 6 - Kantor A couple of hours later I woke up and decided to read some more in the book I was given about the animals to be found on Isildor. When I had looked at the book before I noticed it was divided into family types, I felt I was more interested in the cats, birds, and the bears so I looked mainly at those sections of the book. On Isildor there had been several species that spawned in different environments, and it told me the details of what made them different. For instance, there was a desert cat called a Mau that was able to burrow beneath the sands and attack from underground. Then there was a swamp cat that stayed in the trees for the most part and ambushed from above. The cat I found most interesting was reported to only be found in dungeons and could change its patterns to hide in many environments. Similarly, there were carrion birds, birds of prey¡­ The list was endless, but it looked like the birds tended towards hit and run attacks so I would need something that could stand toe to toe so that I could still shoot arrows. Bears were interesting for that part as they were listed as the sturdiest of the beasts I was interested in. The issue with bears was the size. They would have trouble following me around in dungeons sometimes and would be restricted from assisting me indoors. It might still be worth it, but I would wait to talk to my instructor once I reached the planet to get advice. About this time I noticed that a large freighter was pulling into the dock outside the viewport I got up and approached the window to take a look at it. Overall it appeared pretty massive, it was about 800 meters long, and from the angle, I had it would appear about 300 meters wide. It was a fairly squared off ship compare to the shuttle which was shaped more like an aircraft which made sense since it was expected to navigate in the atmosphere too. There was still about 2 hours until we were due to start boarding so I went back to my seat and continue to read while other people disembarked, and from other bays the ship had its cargo unloaded, and fresh stores and other cargo was loaded aboard. Once they finished, they started calling us aboard, and I went on board to learn where I was going to be spending the next few days while traveling. When were brought aboard they asked if any of us had not traveled like this before and I raised my hand, so a guy named James was assigned to show me around to the different facilities of the ship. It had a lounge area with a large viewport as well as where videos were shown. There were a workout and training simulator where they would simulate environments and allow you to train skills against computer controlled enemies. There was also a computer area where passengers had access to look up information they needed. There was also a dining hall for both passengers and crew. After this, I was shown to the passenger berthing area, and James explained that the front half of the ship was devoted to people, while the rear was mostly containers and other pieces of freight. I went ahead into my room, and it was appointed very similarly to the one I was given by Kimberly, pretty Spartan living, but beggars can¡¯t be choosers, so I will have to start earning my way before things get better. In fact, that¡¯s probably the reason why things are like this, to encourage people to stand on their own. Since it is already late, I decide to head to bed for the night and start working on training and learning as much as possible on my way to Isildor. The next few days on the way to the station hub in the Sirius quadrant pass in much the same way, I wake up, eat breakfast, research about Isildor and the expected levels of the monsters in certain areas, as well as where certain animals can be located. Then I go to the training simulator and try to increase my combat proficiencies. By the time I reached the Sirius station my stats had increased fairly well above what I had achieved at the Vortex headquarters. I felt good about my accomplishments so far and hoped that I would not get on the bad side of my new teacher. As I left the freighter, I found that Sirius station was much busier and the life forms were much more diverse. There were creatures I had never seen before like a pink and white furry creature that resembled a bear and human mix, or a gray creature that appeared to be made of stone, creatures with 2 to 10 legs, multiple arms, no arms, and one that even had no face. It was a lot to take in. I kind of wish now I had known what to expect. I do not even know what race my new teacher will be. Will we speak the same language? I was starting to get anxious about this journey and felt ill prepared for what lay ahead. I had no choice though so I went to the gate listed on my papers. Luckily there was not a long delay in this next departure, and I was carrying everything I owned on my finger, so I didn¡¯t have to worry about losing anything. At the next gate, I found a lot more people that wore expressions similar to what I suppose my face must have shown, bewildered, concerned, pick an emotion. There were also a few people there that appeared confident, or even cocky. I thought to myself there must be more people here because it¡¯s considered a starting world. These people are most likely just starting out like I am, that does explain most of the expressions. I decided to stick to myself for right now as I was unsure about those around me. I was told that this was an Immortalis planet. Thus I figured that most of these people would be of that faction. I wanted to see how my teacher treated me before I opened up to these people, plus they may be going to different places on the planet than where I would be meeting my teacher. I found an open spot to wait and before long we were aboard again and departing Sirius on the way to Isildor. Honestly, I could not wait for the trip to be over. Once we arrived, I would hopefully be able to get some kind of routine going. Find a place where I fit and figure out my role. We had another two days of travel on this ship, so I started the same routine I had on the other freighter. Mainly training as much as I could. When we arrived at the Isildor station, I found the shuttle gate that would be heading for the outpost of Kantor which is where I expected to meet my trainer and take up my new life. I had about an hour to wait so once again I studied my book and compared what I could see of the planet outside the window to what I had learned on the computer. The planet itself was covered in about 60% water, the land that remained was made up of about 50% forest, 10% ice, 20% plains, and the rest was a desert. There was further division in that some of the forest areas was rain forest, other was in mountains and cooler areas, and some was swampy. Kantor happened to be set right on the edge of a plain and forest, so there was some diversity to the area. I still had not made up my mind on which beasts I wanted to focus on, though I could gain many of them, at first you can¡¯t afford to feed yourself and too many beasts. We boarded and undocked shortly later and made the thirty-minute trip down to the surface. I left the shuttle and found a desk and asked the lady at the desk where I could find Ranger Saila, she directed me to leave the building and follow the road to the right. About a quarter of a mile away would be a building called Odyssey Adventure Company or the OAC, she explained that they were responsible for assignments of adventurers and should know where to find the ranger or when to expect him back. I thanked her for the information and walked outside. Other than the shuttle port, most of the town looked like a cross between something from the old west with modern elements thrown in like computers, tablets and things of that nature. The only thing that was totally low tech was weaponry. The highest tech item I saw was a crossbow. I thought it odd that everyone was walking down the street fully armed and equipped, so I went ahead and equipped my gear as well but resolved to ask the reason later. On the way to the OAC building, I passed an inn, what appeared to be a brothel, a barber, and a few shops like potions, armor, and weaponry. I finally came to the OAC building and stepped inside. Inside was a counter with two people standing behind it, along the walls were boards with notices pinned to them which people were looking over and taking up to the counter. I got in the line for the counter, and once it was my turn, I asked the guy at the desk for Ranger Saila. He introduced himself as Steve Tasker and asked me what I needed with the ranger, I explained that I was sent here to be trained by him, he told me that the ranger was out on a mission and was not expected back until around dinner time. He then gave me the choice of waiting around there, going to the Inn which with no money was not possible, or taking one of the tasks on the board and trying to make some money and experience. I decided to try out one of the tasks and asked him about how to find a task that would suit me. He took me over to the board and explained to me ¡°Look at the slip of paper, Odyssey recognizes them as quests, and if you focus on it you will get a popup that shows the difficulty related to your current level and skills. It will then color the message in one of five ways. Green would be below your current skill level and not really worth doing because the rewards would be insignificant for you, blue is below your skill but still rewarding to do, white would just about match your skill level, and the rewards would be perfect for your current level. The other two are above your skills and would be difficult or impossible to do alone. Yellow is slightly above you, and while possible, it is more likely that you would die, and that would be the end of you. Red is significantly above your skills, and you would stand no chance at your current skills. It¡¯s the same way when you examine monsters. They are color coded the same way. When you find a task that you want, bring it to the desk, and we will log it out to you. You then have 24 hours to complete the task, unless a time limit is specified on the slip itself as some tasks can take longer to accomplish.¡± He then asked if I had any questions and when I said no he went back to his desk letting me know that he would let he ranger know I was here looking for him. I examined the board looking over the slips there until I found two that looked interesting
Help the alchemist obtain reagents. (see the alchemist for descriptions of the plants if needed)
Check the forest and the plain for 5 vordgrass and 5 vitae shrooms
Rewards: 100 experience, Alchemy training or 2 healing potions
And
Thin their numbers.
In the forest are minor wargs, kill 5 of them and return their hides to the tailor.
Rewards 100 experience plus, Either 1 silver or tailoring training.
I decided to take both of those since the herbs were white and the wargs were blue and took them to the counter. Steve was busy, so the other guy who was named Gary assigned them to me. I asked him for directions to the alchemist which he told me was 3 doors down on the opposite side of the road. I left the OAC and headed to the alchemist. He provided me the description of the grass as bright yellow with a broad leaf and showed me a piece he had. He did the same with the mushroom which turned out to be white in color with red under the cap. He then took me to his flower bed and demonstrated how to gather the plants without damaging them. I decided to head out and get the grass first since the forest was likely to take more time. I headed further away from the shuttle port to the outskirts of town and started looking around for the plants I needed, as I was doing so I saw a few animals out running around but they were not aggressive, and I was going to need my arrows for the forest, so I ignored them. I finally found a clump of vordgrass so I tried to emulate what the alchemist had taught me. I ended up breaking off about 5 stalks before I finally managed to get a stalk intact with the part that was growing inside the plant which is where the juices were that made the potion. I did not want to kill the plant, so I looked for another one to try to get the rest of the stalks off of. Overall it took about one and a half hours to get all the vordgrass so I headed back towards town and entered the forest close to the gates. I decided to go with my bow in hand, that way if I came across a warg while I was looking for the mushroom I could try to kill it. I thought about attempting to tame one, but according to the book feeding them over the course of several days was the best way to go about it. Honestly, though I have no idea what the ranger is going to want me to do, so spending multiple days just may not be possible. It took about twenty minutes to find the first mushroom because I was looking along the ground but these mushrooms actually were growing on the trees. Most of them appeared to be above the branches, and I only saw the one because it was below the lowest branch. It also appeared they only were growing on trees that were not healthy looking, almost like the mushrooms were sucking the trees life away. I was able to gather the 5 mushrooms while up in that first tree though climbing it was a challenge. I eventually had to use the rope that was in my storage ring to help get myself up to the first branch. I started to lower myself down but saw a small white furred warg come from deeper in the woods, it looked like a cross between a wolf and an alligator with large jaws and spines down its back. At this moment I decided I was glad I was still up in the tree and pulled my bow from storage and drew an arrow back. I sighted along the bow aiming for what Samantha had described to me as a one hit kill eyes, lungs, heart. Honestly, the eyes were not even remotely a chance for me at my skill, so I aimed for the chest area. The beast was about 25 yards away when I finally loosed the arrow, but unfortunately, I did not hit the lungs, I hit the front leg instead below the chest level. The animal snarled and whirled around trying to find what had hit it, so I quickly drew another arrow and aimed again, this time the arrow hit to the left of where I was aiming but still did a good amount of damage to the beast. Its blood was flowing quickly from its wounds, but its thrashing and turning caused it to break off my first arrow. At that point, it started to run away, so I quickly lined up another shot and loosed it, it hit the beast in the rear leg on the same side as the first arrow had hit. The warg was not able to support itself on the right-hand side and fell over. I was not able to get a clean shot at anything that would end its life, so I climbed down from the tree. I slowly approached the beast who was still bleeding all over the ground. I did not want to chance those jaws trying to end this with my dagger, so I drew another arrow from about 5 feet away and was able to hit its lungs and heart to finally defeat the beast. Upon its death, a box popped up sayingUnauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
You defeated a minor warg!
Experience gained 20, gained 3% archery skill
I then approached the beast, and when I touched the corpse, a box appeared showing me the items on the body.
Arrow x3 Broken arrow x1
Warg skin Warg liver
Warg meat x5 Warg Fang x4
I place it all in my storage ring and decide that the skin is for tailoring, the meat for cooking, the liver might be alchemy, but I have no clue what the fangs would be used for. Either way, that beast was pretty dangerous, I need to be really careful trying to kill 4 more of them. I try to use sneaking like I did on the transport ship training simulator as I need to get the drop on these wargs. I can¡¯t just hope for one of them to wander to me if I sit in a tree all day so I head a little further into the forest and try to find another warg to kill. It takes about twenty more minutes, but I finally find another, I take aim again this time, this time allowing for gravity and the wind and release again at the beasts lungs. This time it¡¯s a direct hit, and while the beast turns and runs towards me, it quickly drowns in its own blood with a much easier kill.
You defeated a minor warg!
Experience gained 20, gained 1% archery skill
Before I get a chance to loot the body I hear a growling behind me, so I quickly draw another arrow and release at the warg that got the drop on me, I miss completely and quickly think equip dagger. The warg rushes in and jumps at me, I dodge to the side, and its claws rake the armor on my arms as it flies past me. It lands and turns to face me. I try to remember what Samantha taught me and get into a fighting position. The dog lunges at me again this time as I dodge I slice its side with my dagger. It yelps and when it lands it turns to attack again, it does not lunge this time and just moves towards me I step back and to the side to try to keep it from closing with me while brandishing my dagger at it. Eventually, it jumps at me again and this time I do not dodge aside in time. It grabs my wrist in its teeth, and while they do not penetrate my armor fully, I can feel the pressure being exerted by the dog. I yell out and bring the dog closer to my dagger where I thrust it into its chest a few times, and it releases me and falls to the ground. A few seconds later a popup appears
You defeated a minor warg!
Experience gained 20, gained 3% dodge skill and 2% dagger skill
The rest of the time hunting is fairly uneventful. I make sure that there are no other wargs around when I take on the other two with my bow, I walk away with losing 2 of my 24 arrows, but I gained 100 experience plus the skills I increased. I will also be able to sell 20 warg fangs, 3 warg livers, 2 warg hearts, and a total of 16 pieces of warg meat. It¡¯s been a long day though so I wearily head back to town to turn in the quests and see if Ranger Saila is back yet. I go to the alchemist first and give him the herbs for the quest he registers it as complete with the system and lets me choose which reward I wanted. I ask about the trade skills whether I could learn more than one, he informs me there is no limit, other than the effort I want to put into the skill. So I decide to take him up on the alchemy training. At this point, I hear the gong of gaining another level, but I ignore it for now. He teaches me how to use a mortar and pestle, the beakers, burners, and other accouterments of the alchemy profession and has me practice making a health potion under his tutelage. I succeed on the second try and gain 1% with that skill. I then show him the warg fangs and the livers and hearts, he informs me that the fangs can be filed down and made into arrow heads that penetrate slightly better than normal metal due to the mana ingrained in them, and the heart and liver he uses for alchemy recipes. I do not have the skill to use them and will have to wait until I reach 15% skill, so I decide to sell them to him for 1 silver 20 copper. I then ask for the tailor shop, and he directs me to next door to the brothel I saw earlier today. I go there and present an older lady with the warg skins. I accept the training from her as well and gain a single percent in tailoring. It¡¯s about 7 in the evening now, so I am hoping that the ranger is available now and head back to the OAC. Once I enter I find a tall man in leather that has been dyed green waiting near the desk, I examine him for a moment, and the screen that pops up identifies him as Ranger Saila, a level 45 ranger. He is an elf with blonde hair and blue eyes that look rather handsome though he looks tired. I quickly greet him. ¡°Hi my name is Alain, and I was sent to be trained by you, I am sorry if I kept you waiting long.¡± I hand him the papers that Daniel gave to me, and he replies ¡°It¡¯s nice to meet you, and the wait is no bother. I am glad to see that instead of holding up a wall you decided to accomplish something. I can see by your bracer that you were taking on some wargs. That¡¯s a good start, could you show me your information screen so that I know where we need to work?¡± I think show Ranger Saila personal information Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 3 Vortex
Health EXP /next level Mana
35 100/400 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 5 10 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Combat Proficiencies
Stealth 5% Dagger 12% Archery 14% Throwing 4% Pugilist 2%
Defense Proficiencies
Dodge 8% Parry 2% Block 1%
Skills
Beast Taming 10%
Stat points remaining 10 Skill points remaining 2
Trade skills
Herbalist 4%
Skinning 1%
Alchemy 1%
Tailoring 1%
He says ¡°Not too bad, I see you have some skill with dagger and archery. It''s good to have both melee and range to back each other up. The path of the ranger is one of versatility, it takes longer to make something of yourself, but you always have something that will work for an enemy. Others might be stumped, but you are no one trick pony. I saved your information and will set up a training regimen starting tomorrow, and since it''s getting late, we will save questions until then too. Let¡¯s get you set up in the inn, for now, get a meal and head to bed for now.¡± I agree with him, and we go back to the Inn. I get a room, and once again it¡¯s serviceable but nothing special. The food is good though, and the beer is cold, what else do you need. I ask the inn keeper about learning cooking, and he says his cook can train me for 1 silver, I decided to take him up on that offer, and he teaches me how to cook my warg meat. By the time I am done cooking it all I gain 5% skill with cooking. At this point, it¡¯s definitely bed time, so I head up to my room and set my alarm for 6:30 since Saila said he wanted to meet at 7. Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 3 Vortex
Health EXP /next level Mana
35 100/400 28
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
4 5 10 4 4
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Combat Proficiencies
Stealth 5% Dagger 12% Archery 14% Throwing 4% Pugilist 2%
Defense Proficiencies
Dodge 8% Parry 2% Block 1%
Skills
Beast Taming 10%
Stat points remaining 10 Skill points remaining 2
Trade skills
Herbalist 4%
Skinning 1%
Alchemy 1%
Tailoring 1%
Cooking 5%
Chapter 7- Training Regimen The next morning I wake up to my alarm and go down for breakfast. I decide to save the meat I cooked last night for lunch and purchase some bread to turn it into sandwiches and get some eggs and bacon for breakfast. About the time I finish Saila comes in and sits with me. He explains to me that he wants to increase my stamina, strength, intelligence, and wisdom. He claims to have all of my stats within 20% of each other. He tells me that eventually, I will want to learn some spells to go along with my elemental bonuses such as healing or adding elemental damage to my arrows with an imbue skill, or straight out spells for things like rock monsters. Also having higher strength will help me with my overall damage and give me longer range options than just a dagger for damage. He explains that the more options I have, the better my chances of survival. I ask him about spending my stat points from leveling, and he says to me. ¡°That¡¯s a personal question. You can use those points and boost your stats to the point I suggested. However, you have to realize that we are working on diminishing returns. When you have lower statistics, you can boost them easier through training which I am sure you have noticed. The higher your stats, the less you are able to gain them. I would suggest saving all of your points until your statistics all get over 100 then spending them once you know more what your actual needs are. That being said it is none of my business if you want to spend the points as you get them and thus bypass all the training I will be giving you. The training is hard, it gets more difficult over time in fact, but if you cannot see the benefits you will gain by the hard work, then there is nothing I can say to sway you.¡± Knowing that it would just require hard work and I would gain extra statistics over time almost giving me free levels I decided I would do the training as long as possible so I asked him what would be required. He said ¡°Hard work is what is required. First every morning you will go to the training yard behind the OAC, there you will find a backpack and wrist and ankle packs that will hold weights, you will start at the 5lbs overall additional weight and run the course with that until you are able to complete the obstacle course with that weight. You get three chances per day doing the obstacle course. There are three additional tasks that are to be done between each of your attempts. All of these are to be done under the additional weight. First, you will do calisthenics for thirty minutes after which you will make your first run of the course. Second, you will run laps around the yard running full out for 5 minutes, then jogging for 10, then back o running. You do this for 30 minutes total then you rest for 15 minutes before your second attempt at the course. After that you will train using the sword and great sword at the pells, then in a skirmish with other fighters training there. After which you will make your final run of the obstacle course. On the day that you successfully complete the obstacle course with that weight, it will then be increased to ten pounds until you can complete the course with that weight. I am sure you see where this is going?¡± I nod my head to Saila, and he continues ¡°After you finish the training it will most likely be near lunch time so you should eat and then go back to the OAC and take up missions as necessary to train and to keep yourself fed and sheltered in the inn. Keep in mind though that this is not all to be done. Afternoons will be devoted to strengthening your mind. You must be back in town by 3PM to report to the mage school where they will assess you and decide how best to bring up your mental skills. As you earn money you will be able to buy training in spells as well, just keep in mind it will cost about 25 silver to learn even a basic spell. Once they release you, then you are free to do what you wish, though I would recommend sleep because it all starts over again tomorrow. Any questions?¡± I ask him, ¡°What about gaining a beast, what would you recommend to that department?¡± Saila shakes his head at me, ¡°You can gain a beast any time you are able to, but I would recommend learning how to hunt by yourself first. Get comfortable with yourself and increase your skills before you try to tame a pet. Eventually, you might lose a pet and then lose your life because you do not know how to handle yourself alone. Get a foundation first before you gain a pet, after all with your low archery score you would be very likely to shoot your pet, rather than the monster.¡± ¡°OK, that makes sense to me.¡± I agree with him. With that, he stands up and tells me ¡°I will leave you then with your training. If you have any questions, just leave a message for me at the OAC, and I will join you for breakfast or dinner. I would also recommend that you do some tasks with others that you will meet at the training grounds. They will be your colleagues, and it is beneficial to have people who you can call on for help if you need it. There are quests you can gain out in the wild occasionally that will require others, unlike the OAC board. Once you feel that your training is done, let me know, and we will go from there. Training is for your benefit, so it¡¯s up to you as to when you are done.¡± I thank him for his time and finish my breakfast before heading over to the OAC. I go around to the back to see what I am in for and meet up with a trainer there. I explain what I am there for and he directs me over to the weight pouches and backpack, and I put them on. I then start doing the calisthenics to warm myself up before I make my first attempt on the course. I watch as other people run the course and it looks pretty difficult, only a few people actually make it through, and most of those are not wearing the additional weights. There are jumps, rolling logs, places where you have to go rope-to-rope, inclines, rope climbs, and then finally a hanging ledge across to the end platform. All of this is over water as well, so if you fall, you get to be wet too. Knowing this I remove my armor and store it and just wear regular clothes for the rest of training. I finish warming up and step up to take my turn at the course. I make it about ? of the way before I fall into the water when I was trying to go rope-to-rope and couldn¡¯t hold on. Once I get out of the water, I go ahead and start my run around the perimeter. I can¡¯t even make it through the first 5 minute running before I am out of breath, I try to just jog and run when I get my breath back, and I am down to near walking by the time I get to the 15-minute mark. I keep pushing as much as I can, and once the thirty minutes is done, I pretty much collapse. I don¡¯t know how I am going to do this, I obviously am completely out of shape here. After I rest for the 15 minutes, I get up and make my way to the course start. This time I do not even make it to the rope-to-rope area I fall in after the third jump transitioning into a rope swing. I leave the water and dry off a little before going to the pells area and taking up a sword. I decide to go with a great sword first as my stamina is already shot so I would rather have the one hand sword last before my last attempt. Today I did not spar with anyone I just worked the pells, and for my final attempt at the obstacle course, I made it almost where I did the first time. By now I am exhausted and ready for lunch, so I head back to the inn and sit down and order a burger. I think to myself that I need to be careful with choosing an assignment. In my current state, something difficult might get me killed, so I need something fairly easy.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. After I finish my lunch, I head back to the OAC and examine the board. It turns out that both the tailor and the alchemist need skins and herbs again so I take those as they should be easier than yesterday. I head out to the field again and gather the grass then turn back to the woods and quickly find the tree from yesterday to get the mushrooms. After that, I start hunting the wolves, but I do so a bit quicker than yesterday since I am on a strict time limit to meet at the Mages School in just under 2 hours so I have to kill 5 wolves, turn in everything and find the Mage School. Luckily the wolves are fairly easy to find near the same spots as yesterday, so I kill them without any great mishap and go back to town to do the turn ins. The downside is that the wolves yesterday gave me 20 experience each, today they only give me 15 experience I guess this is because I leveled up. Once I get done turning everything in and selling off everything I have 5 silver in my pocket, I will have to give up 1 silver for the inn room and meals, so that leaves me 4 silver towards buying my first spell. I head to the mages guild and am sent to train with another initiate named Marla, she appears to be my age and is also an elf, and she stands about 6 feet tall and is very pale with platinum blonde hair. Overall at first, I find her very attractive, but as soon as we start talking and she finds out, I am an orphan her personality tells me that she is completely superficial. While disappointing, I really do not care that much. I am sure there will be other people to meet in the future. The trainers have us work together to solve puzzles, read books and answer questions based on those texts. Marla gets additional training because she knows some spells already and the teachers inform me when I learn a spell I will start that training as well. All in all mage training took another 3 hours. At 6PM when I got out I was mentally and physically exhausted. I went back to the inn and cooked up the steaks from the wolves and then ate dinner before heading up to bed thinking about what a long day it has been. I finally decide to take a look at my statistics after all the work today to see what kind of improvements I got. Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 3 Vortex
Health EXP /next level Mana
49/49 375/400 35/35
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
6 7 11 5 6
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
8% 5% 1% 4% 3%
Combat Proficiencies
Stealth 8% Dagger 13% Archery 18% Throwing 4% Pugilist 2%
Acrobatics 4% Sword 5% Greatsword 4%
Defense Proficiencies
Dodge 9% Parry 5% Block 1%
Skills
Beast Taming 10%
Stat points remaining 10 Skill points remaining 2
Trade skills
Herbalist 4%
Skinning 1%
Alchemy 1%
Tailoring 1%
Cooking 9%
So overall I gained 2 strength stamina and wisdom and one dexterity and intelligence. That¡¯s a great increase for a single day working even though it was very hard. I decide then to go ahead and get sleep since I am so tired anyway, tomorrow is going to be another early start to another long day. Chapter 8 - Group Quest Over the next month, my training did not vary all that much, I got to know a few of the people around me and found that as I grew stronger, I no longer struggled as much to do everything. I kept on training each day, but after the first week I stopped doing the OAC wolf and herb missions and kept the pelts and herbs to work on trade skills after I was done in the evening. I still worked with Marla every day, and while she seems to put up with me, I would not qualify us as friends in any manner. She is good at being a mage, but that¡¯s all she cares about, that and her image. I have been taking off every third day to recuperate and just relax, fortunately, while I am not making a killing, I do make enough from selling the armor I have made and the potions to stay at the inn and keep training. About two weeks after I started I was finally able to finish the obstacle course for the first time, then a week later with the upped weight, I did it again. I am currently working with an extra fifteen pounds, and I think in the next couple of days I will be able to do it again and move up to twenty pounds. I have noticed that my bow is no longer hard to draw at all, in fact, it¡¯s getting to the point where I have to be careful not to break it. I need to see about getting a better one soon, but I only have 20 silver to my name right now. I have my eye on a reinforced Jalo horn bow. Jalo lives out in the planes near where I am at. If I can kill one and get the horns from it, the bowyer will accept those and 30 silver in trade. Without the horns, though I would need 1 gold 30 silver, or 130 silver, which is what I would have right now had I bought no spells at all. The problem is that Jalo is level 10 so at my current level, I just don¡¯t think I could do it. This left my stats at Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 N/A 8 Vortex
Health EXP /next level Mana
70/70 18,275/25,600 70/70
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
11 10 14 10 11
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
14% 8% 1% 8% 3%
Combat Proficiencies
Stealth 18% Dagger 16% Archery 25% Throwing 4% Pugilist 2%
Acrobatics 16% Sword 8% Greatsword 6%
Defense Proficiencies
Dodge 13% Parry 10% Block 1%
Skills
Beast Taming 10%
Stat points remaining 35
Trade skills
Herbalist 14%
Alchemy 10%
Tailoring 11%
Cooking 18%
Right now I learned a nature-based healing spell, an ice shock spell that uses my cold and water affinities, and a nature-based root spell as well. In combat, I don¡¯t really use the shock that much as I tend to lose concentration still with it. Root I have become pretty proficient with. I normally hunt for two wolves at a time lead off with a root spell, then hit the other with my bow till it closes to melee range. I then finish it off with my dagger after trying to get at least one shock off on it. Then I repeat the process with the other warg. I only get 5 experience per warg right now, and I know the next level will make them give no experience at all, but I have been able to get some spells and increase my tradeskill abilities with them, so I didn¡¯t mind leveling slower than other people are, until I started having to worry about breaking my bow anyway. Now I need to level up so that I can take on a Jalo.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Last night the trainer at the mages guild told Marla and I that she had a task for us and that we should report to her after lunch instead of the normal 3PM. I am heading there now to see what she wants us to do. When I arrive, I head to the training room that Marla and I usually use and find the trainer is there, but Marla is not yet. She is usually pretty punctual, so I am not overly worried about it, so I ask the trainer about the task. She replies that it¡¯s better to wait so that we can both hear the task and ask any questions that we have then. I decide to pull out my guide to the beasts here locally again to see if there is anything that I want to tame that could help me take on a Jalo so I can get the horns faster. I am pretty confident in my skills though I do not have much in the way of group skills right now. About 10 minutes later Marla walks in and the trainer motions for her to have a seat and then stand up and pulls out a couple of pieces of paper to hand to us.
Investigate the disturbance in the ruins (Group Task)
People and animals have been disappearing in ruins in the forest. Investigate this matter and if possible resolve the issue.
Rewards 8000 experience plus variable reward (how the mission is resolved affects the rewards)
She gave us a minute to look it over and then told us that we would be joined by a warrior recommended by the OAC trainers. Marla asked the trainer how we were selected for the task and the trainer responded that she had personally suggested Marla as the mage representative, the warrior was selected by the appropriate trainer at the OAC, and I was selected because of my training methods at both the OAC and mages guild gave me multiple approaches to help resolve the situation. At that moment I felt proud to be noticed and equally happy that the methods that Saila suggested were paying off. I asked the trainer, ¡°What does variable reward mean?¡± The trainer responded ¡°That just means that what you do on the mission will reflect in the reward you receive. If you just go out there and see what the problem is and return, all you will get is the 8000 experience. However, if you go out there and find a monster encampment, bandits or something like that and then take steps to put a stop to it, you could get bonus experience, money, or items in addition to the 8000 experience. It all depends on the effort you are willing to put into the quest.¡± I then asked how far away the ruins where, and when we would leave. She replied that the ruins were about 1 full day away which means that camping is the best option. She gave us a map and told us that it would most likely be better to depart this afternoon, camp overnight, then finish the mission around midday tomorrow. If all goes well, you could be back as soon as the day after. She then told us that the warrior was going to meet us at the west gate of town at 1:30 PM so we headed out to pick up any supplies that were needed. Honestly, I was nearly ready to go as it was. In fact, I had about 30 of the warg meat sandwiches in storage at the moment, I just needed more water to be ready to go. I ended up at the gate first then Marla joined me, and we waited for the warrior. At 1:35 another person showed up at the gate. He was wearing chain gear and had blue skin. His name was Alexandre, and he was of the race called Kioth. He said he naturally saw well at night and underground and that he had trained to use a sword and shield exclusively. He was level 10 and had almost 200 hit points with only 25 mana. We talked tactics between Alex and us decided that Marla was going to be our dedicated healer and ranged damage dealer. She had light based healing spells as well as dark and fire based damage spells. Alex was going to be our tank, he had abilities that would increase the anger of his targets toward him and was able to hold them to him. I, on the other hand, was going to be flexible. Because of my stealth, I would be the one who would scout ahead of us. I would also in combat either stay at range or move in close and use my dagger to damage the enemies. I would also heal and root when needed to take pressure off. We also discovered when we joined each other in a party that we knew where each other was instinctive. It was almost like a map in our heads leading to each other. This would make things easier for me as the scout. I left about 10 minutes ahead of them and led them around obstacles and mobs that we didn¡¯t need to fight. Eventually, I found a small cave about 6 in the evening and stopped there for us to make camp. When they joined me in the cave, I was surprised to discover that Marla and Alex appeared to have become friends when I could not accomplish that task in an entire month with her. When I listened to them talking, I found out it¡¯s because like her, Alex came from an affluent family and thus she found him worthy of being friendly to. They were not exactly rude to me, but the let me know that I was considered beneath them in subtle ways, with off-color remarks about orphans and such. I decided that I would keep the first watch rather than listen to any more of their garbage, that way when it was time for me to be relieved I could just go to bed and not have to deal with it. My watch was uneventful. Some wargs came to investigate but I killed one, and the other ran off quickly. At eleven I was relieved by Alex who said he would take watch till 4 when Marla would pick up watch. I went back to my tent and laid down until my alarm went off at 6AM. I got up and packed up my gear. Marla was sleeping on watch, so I woke her and she had the grace to appear embarrassed. She then went into camp and started packing her stuff and woke up Alex as well. I told them I was going to start scouting ahead and started heading towards the ruins. About twenty minutes behind me I felt them starting to get on the move. I knew from the map that it would be approximately noon before I got to the ruins, so I kept moving forward until I was about half an hour away. I then started looking for a spot for Alex and Marla to wait while I scouted out the ruins. Eventually, they caught up to me, and I explained what I wanted to do. They agreed that it was best for me to try to sneak in and see what we were up against. I left them and started heading towards the ruins. Eventually, I saw them in the distance in a clearing in the forest. I could hear talking though I was far enough away that I could not understand what was being said. I realized then that I was up against humanoids at least. That meant that there were most likely sentries placed that I would need to avoid or take out. I moved closer watching the trees and ground warily for any movement. I never did see them, but eventually, right at noon, I saw a person coming from the ruins who relieved the sentry that was only about 200 yards ahead of me. I decided that if I took out that sentry, then I would have several hours before he was missed as they just changed shift. I watched the sentry¡¯s location carefully while I moved into position to take him out. I was finally able to see him clearly, and I inspected him to see
Level 11 Forest Bandit (Kyle Newberry)
Seeing that he was 3 levels higher than me I started to have second thoughts, but I figure if I can get in close with my dagger maybe I can silently kill him with one stab. I was not going to trust something this important to my bow skills alone. I went to the side of him and used the trees to screen my approach until I was able to approach him from the direction of the ruins behind him. This meant I was visible to anyone leaving the ruins, but it couldn¡¯t be helped right now. I got within 5 feet, and it seemed like he either heard or felt my approach as he started to turn. I lunged forward with my dagger and took him in the throat he reached up to grab his throat with his eyes going wide, and a gurgling sound and I stabbed him again in the chest. I stabbed him a couple more times in quick succession just to make sure then eased him into cover so he would not be found. I then decided to loot him and found he had a better bow than mine, some extra arrows, and a few silver. I took it all and immediately equipped his bow. I then moved towards the ruins again, moving quickly to get to the wall, I then went to one of the openings and found that there were several more bandits inside the ruins. I listened to them talking for a while and found that the bandit chief was level 13 and his camp had 10 other people, well 9 after the one I killed. I decided that was enough information, but I wanted to help our odds out a bit. There were 5 people in ruins with the chief which meant that there were 4 other sentry¡¯s out and about. If I could eliminate them then perhaps we could take out this camp easier. Unfortunately for the sentry¡¯s they were visible from the ruins themselves so I was able to spot them fairly easily and then sneak up on them and take them out much the same as the first bandit. It took me about 2 hours to get them, then another hour to work my way back to Alex and Marla. When I got back, I told them that it was a bandit camp with the leader being level 13 and the rest being level 10 to 12. I told them that I had taken out 5 sentries and that left 6 in the camp. I suggested we move towards one of the sentries location and make noise and try to lure out a few from the camp to investigate. If too many came we would run away while using range attacks, if only a few came, we would ambush them and whittle them down before the main camp. Alex thought this was a good idea, so I led them to the closest sentry location, and then I yelled out. I heard a returning shout from the ruins, and a few seconds later two guys came out in our direction, with two more heading towards the one of the other sentry location. Seeing that they were split like that and that the chief had not come out, Alex ran forward to engage the bandits while the others turned and started our way with a yell. We would only have about 30 seconds of us 3 vs. 2 bandits before the other 2 bandits joined in, so I started shooting right away while Marla cast some dark spells. Luckily we both targeted the same bandit otherwise we might not have gotten him down so quickly. I turned at that point and used my root spell on one of the approaching bandits, while Marla and Alex took on the remaining two bandits. Because of the positioning, I could not use my bow on either bandit without hitting either of my companions, so I ran forwards and drew my dagger to engage the bandits. I stabbed as soon as I got into range and got a lucky strike on one of the bandit''s sides, he flinched and dropped his guard, and Alex followed up by striking him in the face with his shield. At that point, the second bandit was down. Marla then cast a heal spell on Alex because the bandit I had rooted was shooting at him with his bow. I engaged with the last bandit in melee range along with Alex, and we quickly finished him. About this time I hear a roar from the camp and the bandit chief is running towards us in full plate armor. He was not wearing it earlier so that must be what took him so long to join us. I started casting my frost shock spell at the bandit chief since I knew that my arrows would not go through, and my dagger didn¡¯t have much of a chance either. Alex focused on the last regular bandit with Marla while the chief chased me around. Fortunately, the plate reduced his dexterity enough that I could keep ahead of him and with my training regimen I could run like this all day. Eventually, Alex and Marla finished off the last bandit but I was out of mana, Marla only had a little mana left, and Alex only had about half his life left. The bandit chief, on the other hand, had taken 5 of my frost shocks. He had less than half life left surprisingly, but with his two-handed swords, he could still do a lot of damage. I ran towards Alex, and he interposed himself between us. I then pulled out my bow and tried to find an opening in the chief¡¯s armor. I noticed when he raised his arms to take a swing at Alex that there was only leather where the arms met the body. I targeted that, and the next time he raised his arms I let fly. Unfortunately, I missed, and he swung again at Alex shaving off another 10% of Alex¡¯s hit points even through the shield. I cursed and took aim again waiting for the shot that had to come. He raised his arms again, and I fired. That time I hit directly on the leather and penetrated a lung. The chief screamed and dropped his sword. At that point, we backed off to wait for the inevitable. Eventually, the chief collapsed, and we closed in to finish off the bandits. We sat and rested for a while after that, just gaining mana and healing up. We then went around and looted everything. We got several bows, some daggers, swords and the plate armor and great sword. We decided to let Alex have the plate and to split everything else to sell once we got back to town. We also looted over 1 gold in coin as well split three-way I got 33 silver. I decided I was going to explore the rest of the ruins and see if we missed anything else before we headed back to town. Overall I found just a campsite on the outskirts of the ruins and nothing at all towards the center. I then saw a shadow below the ruins of a foundation and walked towards it. When I got about 5 feet away, the ground collapsed, and with a scream, I fell into the dark, hit my head and lost consciousness. Chapter 9 - Alone in the Dark I wake up in absolute darkness. I check my hitpoints and find that I am at 20/70 so the fall really did some damage. I take stock and don¡¯t really feel anything wrong with me, so I cast heal on myself which is not a direct heal like the light based ones are. The nature heal is called rejuvenation and increases my health in pulses for 45 seconds. Once that fades, I am at 50/70, so I cast it one more time. I then go through my inventory trying to find my torch since I have never had to use it yet. Now I have to wonder how long it will last. About this time I realize that I had party members, I mentally check around and find that Alex and Marla are heading back towards town. They left me to die. I know they think they are better than me, but still, just the idea to leave your teammate behind. Then again according to the clock, it''s almost dark out, we have no idea if more bandits are due back here. Maybe it makes sense to head back and get help. I guess in the meantime I will see if I can find my own way out of here. I light up my torch and examine the room I am in. There are loose dirt and rock all around me, the walls though are manmade. That gives me hope to find a way out. All I have to do is follow the passages, and I am sure to find some way out of here. I am not sure which way to go, so I flip a coin and decide to keep heading the way I was walking in the first place. It seems like I walk for a while following the passageways until they open up into a room with greenish glowing crystals on the walls. I enter the room grateful for the light and extinguish my torch. Then I hear growling. I quickly light my torch again so I can try to find the source of the growling. I step towards the noise and eventually see a black cat in a crevasse on one wall near some sort of altar. It looks like this is an underground temple of some sort. The altar has images carved in it of a great cat, but honestly, I do not take much notice of that as the real cat is much more important right now. I slowly back away and the cat goes to move to follow me and then mewls in pain. I then notice that arrows are protruding from its side. I make a quick decision and pull out some of my warg meat and throw it to the cat. The cat looks suspiciously at me like only a cat can. I step further away and kneel down now that I know it can¡¯t move quickly. The cat and I have a stare off for a few minutes before it reluctantly moves towards the meat. I had thrown three pieces, and it makes quick work of them before lying back down. I inch my way forward until it growls again where I stop and offer additional meat. I would almost swear the cat is trying to tell me something with the way it is looking at me, but again it takes the meat but leaves a single piece on the ground. It goes back over by the altar and lays down. I decide to take a chance and cast my Rejuvenation spell on the cat, and I see it take effect, the cat sits up quickly and yowls loudly from whatever that caused the arrows to do to it. I move forward again and lean against a pillar. I am sure now that the cat will not die in the time being. I will relax here and rest and see if the cat will come to trust me. I think to myself I can¡¯t keep calling you cat if I want to tame you, I wonder if you are a boy or a girl cat. I can¡¯t explain it, but right now I feel safe. Like I am being watched over, and nothing bad will happen. Against my better judgment, I fall asleep. I awaken in the morning. I now notice light coming in the room from openings along the walls near the ceiling. I am still leaning against the pillar but notice now a warmth by my side. I glance over and see the cat from last night. I jump at first then decide if the cat wanted to kill me, it could have done so while I was sleeping. I take a chance and reach over and pet the cat¡¯s fur, it¡¯s so soft and silky feeling, and I can¡¯t believe I am petting a 9-foot long black panther. The arrows are still sticking out of its side, so I take a moment and pray that the cat doesn¡¯t kill me and yank one of the arrows out while casting my heal spell. The cat yowls and its claws embed in my legs, but it doesn¡¯t make any other move. It actually relaxes after a minute, so I wait for my heal to fade and I grab the other arrow, the cat tenses, and I pull again and cast my heal again. The cat starts panting and having spasms, I stand up and move away before I get hurt. I cast heal again when it fades a few more times until it is laying there calm again. I put a few more of the meat in front of the panther, but it makes no move to take them right now, so I decided to look around the chamber. Honestly, other than the altar there is nothing to really see in here, so I approach the altar and examine the pictures. It appears that this temple is dedicated to a cat god and her followers. I am not sure what all the glyphs mean, but cats are very apparent. I decide to rub off some of the dust on the top of the altar, and as soon as I touch it, I feel like my hand has been glued to it by electricity. My entire body arches from the feeling, and I pass out. When I wake again, I immediately see a pop-up screen that says
You have bonded with the companion Mafdet, she will protect you from now on.
I dismiss this screen and see that I am no longer alone. A woman is standing in the room, with the panther sitting beside her. When she notices I am awake, she turns towards me and offers greetings. I also notice that I no longer sense Alex and Marla¡¯s location in my mind and wonder what happened to them. ¡°I am Baast goddess of cats and family, and I thank you for saving this one of my servants. She did not have long left before you wandered in and your caring for her has made an impression upon me. I wish to give you a gift in thanks for saving the last of my servants in this world. From now on you will be able to speak and understand each other until she gifts you fully.¡± I do not understand so I have to ask, ¡°What does gift me fully mean? I had wanted to tame an animal to be my companion and aid surely gift enough would be her company and the ability you spoke of. It would be nice to be able to speak to each other.¡± She responds, ¡°You either will or will not find out from Mafdet if she deems you worthy. I will give you a warning though. Mafdet is a jealous cat, she has chosen you as you have chosen her. If you try to gain more animals, it will go badly for you.¡± Mafdet chose that moment to show some her claws that I already had a healthy respect for, I made the determination then that she would be the only pet I needed. Baast went on, ¡°I have to inform you of something else too. Your memories are not true. You are no orphan, you are no elf, and you do not come from where they say that you do. I cannot give you more information than this, it will be up to you to find out the truth concerning yourself. It will take time and be dangerous but you need to follow through, or the people on your actual world could be in danger. Keep this knowledge secret or your life may be forfeit too.¡±
The truth shall set you free.
Baast has told you that your memories are false and that your homeworld is in danger due to this. Find out the truth and take whatever steps necessary to rectify the situation.
Reward 1,000,000 experience, true memories, save your people.
With that, she disappeared by fading away, and the altar broke. Mafdet looked toward me, and I heard clearly in my mind ¡°I¡¯m hungry¡± I say yes Mafdet and pull out more meat for her and she starts to purr. When she finishes, I ask her about a way out of here to get back above ground. She responds that it isn¡¯t far and asks me to follow her. As I follow I ask how she goes injured and she tells me, ¡°I was hunting the ruins above looking for game, and I heard the voices of men where men are never at before. Everyone knows these ruins are sacred, so they never trespassed before that time. They caught me by surprise and managed to wound me. We will need to be careful if they are still here.¡± I told her that my party had killed them all and that they were bandits that had killed many people and animals which is why we were sent to hunt them. I told her what I knew about myself though I had to wonder now how much of my memories were untrue. We headed back towards town and made camp about ? of the way back since it was early when we started. Mafdet made a great sentry as her sense of smell and ability to see in the dark was second to none. She could also hear better than I could so she told me to just sleep, and she would wake me if needed. I decided to trust her and fell asleep almost immediately while she slept in a tree. The next day we made it back to town, and I went to see the mage guild trainer with Mafdet in tow. When I finally got to see her she asked me my side of the story, I filled her in on everything that had transpired except about my memory and was informed that Alex and Marla had told everyone that I had died during the raid on the bandit camp. I wondered what happened when they had disappeared, but it looks like they had disbanded me from the party. They had already been rewarded for the successful completion, and as such, they were now being summoned back for a court appearance, without them knowing I made it back in. I was kept in the back and only brought in after they had given testimony. When I walked in you could hear Marla gasp because they had just made the statement that they had buried me on the field of battle. I told my version of the story, and the judge gave them an opportunity, to tell the truth.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Now that the truth had come out they decided to tell the truth which matched what I had said, and as a result of leaving a team member for dead they were fined all quest rewards to the offended party, as well as turning over to their faction head for disciplining. They both belonged to Immortalis which is wholly against wronging others and being wronged, so they were kicked out of the faction and removed to their homeworlds. The judge then turned to me and awarded me 24,000 experience for the quest, plus a sword that had been granted to Alex
Fey Iron Sword of Shocking Rare
Damage (shock damage) Upon hit casts shock on target, even if physical damage is resisted, shock damage still applied. 15-20 (5-10)
Durability 95%
He also gave me a ring that had been given to Marla
Solandite Ring of Shielding Rare
Upon activation casts mana shield on wearer Shield absorbs 100 damage for 10 seconds, 15-minute reuse
Durability 100%
These items were great, an on command oh crap item and a sword that can shock, and the shock will go through armor, even plate armor. Finally, the mage trainer presented me with my reward for the quest.
Reinforced Jalo Bone Bow of Freezing Rare
Damage (Freezing damage) Upon hit imbues the target with freezing damage which reduces run speed. 20-25 (1-5)
Durability 100%
I was shocked at this, a bow that reduced the run speed of my target, plus now I had a friend who would always be partied with me! I felt bad about what happened to Alex and Marla, but they had brought it on themselves. When I was dismissed, I decided it was time to stop training and time to start moving forward with my goals. I needed to get my memory back. I needed to know who took it. Was it Vortex or was it someone else. I just had no way to know. I went to the OAC building and left a message for Ranger Saila letting him know I wanted to meet with him. I also asked about what I needed to do for Mafdet to make sure that there would be no trouble for her coming around with me. They suggested I store her but when I told them about the ability to speak with her, and her view on being stored they agreed that wasn¡¯t such a good idea. Instead, the devised a collar to show that she was not wild that she would have to wear. While not ideal, it did allow her to stay near me, so she put up with it. I went back to the inn to wait to see if Saila showed up tonight and check out what I needed to do next I also asked about recovering memories. I explained to anyone curious as to why that I was an orphan and wanted to see if I could recall anything about my parents to try to find them. An innocuous reason enough so it should suffice at least here and not on a vortex world. They told me of an item that alchemist could make that would recover any memories that were lost or stolen, but it was very expensive and required items from level 50 monsters on several planets. If I wanted to make it myself, I would have to get alchemy up to 40% and gain those items. If I bought the elixir, it would cost me over 2000 gold instead. A cheap spaceship only cost 500 gold, and a decent spaceship that would fit four people was about 1500 gold, so this elixir wasn¡¯t cheap, but I had been told that many lives were on the line, so I had to do this. Eventually, Saila joined me that evening. I told him that training was never going to be done, but it was time for me to move forward. I introduced him to Mafdet and told him about everything that had happened, I also told him about my search for the truth about my parents to give me an excuse to make the elixir. He informed me that this planet would stop being beneficial about level 15, at that point experience would come in too slow. However, I would need to save up for the purchase of a ticket to get off the planet, for both me and Mafdet. He said the next planet I should visit that would help me build up my alchemy skill, and level would be Eonia. He told me to go there would cost 1 gold for both of our tickets, at this time I only have about 55 silver, so I need to do more hunting though I do have the items I looted from the bandits to sell from my storage space. I decide to take on some higher level requests at OAC tomorrow and just keep making potions and give up on tailoring for the moment. Saila said after this it would be up to me to research where I needed to go to continue to train both alchemy and find the herbs for the elixir but he wished me luck. I head up to the bedroom and look at my stats because the rewards from the quest and the trial, plus the bandits had to have leveled me up. Spoiler: Spoiler
Personal Information
Name Age Class Level Faction
Alain 18 Beast Master 9 Vortex
Health EXP /next level Mana
91/91 28,275/51,200 98/98
Statistics
Strength Stamina Dexterity Intelligence Wisdom
13 13 18 14 14
Magic Affinity
Nature Cold Fire Water Light and Dark
19% 12% 1% 13% 3%
Combat Proficiencies
Stealth 28% Dagger 22% Archery 31% Throwing 4% Pugilist 2%
Acrobatics 16% Sword 8% Greatsword 6%
Defense Proficiencies
Dodge 20% Parry 115% Block 1%
Skills
Beast Taming 50% *warning further use of this skill may cause death*
Stat points remaining 40
Trade skills
Herbalist 20%
Alchemy 19%
Tailoring 16%
Cooking 21%
To say I am shocked by what I see is an understatement, first off I got a class, I have no idea when that happened, maybe one of those periods when I was unconscious, or when Mafdet chose me. Second I am over half way to level 10, third I have more mana than hit points now, and finally the warning about my beast taming skill. When I ask Mafdet about it, she just purrs at me which offers no comfort at all. I lay down, and Mafdet jumps onto the bed with me which means that I have zero room to sleep, I get as close to the wall as I can and Mafdet occupies the rest of the space as we fall asleep.