Chapter 18: Skills

With my stamina restored, I resumed my hunt.

In primitive times, cavemen used to use stones to hunt animals. So I tried doing the same; I picked up a stone and examined it.

[Stone: Attack +2]

‘-What!? My bare fists do 3 damage and this stone does 2. How?’

I thought it was because this one wasn’t sharp enough. So picked up another one.

[Stone: Attack +2]

No matter what kind of stone I picked, big or small, sharp or blunt; the damage remained the same.

‘-Ahhh…perhaps grinding or breaking the stone to make stone weapons will increase the attack power.’

It makes sense that natural materials will be of less use on their own compared to when used to make an item. That makes the quests rewards oh the more valuable.

I didn’t have any other option at that time, so I picked up a stone that was easy to hold and approached a rabbit.

I grabbed the rabbit by its ears and struck it with the stone.

[28/33]

It wasn’t very powerful nor very flashy, but it was good enough. By using these stones my stamina depleted a lot slower.

Queeek!

The rabbit let out a final squeak before perishing.

‘-This is a lot more efficient.’

20 stamina remaining.

I needed to kill about three more rabbits to level up.

I sat down for a while before going after another. Slowly, I eventually killed all three rabbits and a beam of light appeared from the sky, illuminating me.

[LEVEL UP!]

I swallowed despite the fact that I was not chewing anything.

Thanks to the kicker, no one paid much attention to me bashing rabbits to death with stones.

Helper’s voice rang out again.

[Please Allocate your points]

I opened the status window and checked my stats. I had 10 points, which I had received from levelling up. However now an additional stat finally appeared.

Dignity was unlocked.

So now my stats looked like this-

[James, Lv2 (Warrior)

Power: 10 Blood Power: 1

Agility : 10 Energy : 1

Wisdom : 15 Spell Power : 1

Dignity : 1

The experience requirement to reach the next level is 40.

That is roughly 34 rabbits.

I sighed.

‘-It’s not like I am going to try being a ranker anyways and I am in no rush to level up either. Spending some days here doesn’t sound so bad.’

After all, my motto in this game was to be relaxed and easy.

Mr Taekwondo however had gathered quite a cult following. People were still following him, asking to join his party and such.

“Oppa~ Please…I will try my best.”

“Please sir, do consider…”

Damn, these guys were so clingy. Mr Taekwondo was visibly annoyed by them and ran deeper into the village.

‘-Well I should get to work too..’

I picked up the stone again and resumed my bash-the-rabbit strategy.

Queeek!

Queeek!

I slowly and steadily started gaining EXP. I followed the same distribution pattern when I got to Lvl 3 and then to Lvl 4.

After hunting nearly 100 rabbits, I was finally Lvl 5. I planned on sticking to the same points distribution till I reached Lvl 15. Of course, if a different situation arises and calls for a different approach; I would have to adjust accordingly. Until then I will stick to the 3 points in strength, 3 points in agility and 4 points in wisdom distribution.

‘-The experience needed to level up seems to double per level. It would be a pain to level up considering how little exp each rabbit drops. I would need to kill 3,200 rabbits to get to Lvl 10.’

Judging by current speed, it would probably take a month…

As I examined my stats, a kid approached me.

“Big Brother, are you using a bot?”

“Huh..No..? What do you mean?”

“Sorry, I assumed you were using some program to grind levels. You killed like 94 rabbits without a proper weapon.”

I laughed.

‘-So someone was noticing me after all.’

“No, I just have a lot of free time. But you seem to have a lot of patience, counting all of my rabbits like that.”

The kid rubbed the back of his head and smiled at me. By the looks of it, his avatar looked like a caucasian male with blue eyes. His appearance reminded me of Hollywood’s child actors.

“I observed your attacks too! Are you trying to be a wizard with increased strength? If so then can we team up? I have a great idea to help us level up faster and perhaps even make us rankers easily.”

‘-Damn it. This kid is good. He was able to guess my stats distribution just by watching me kill rabbits?! I have a bad feeling about this… Can I trust him? He already knows a lot about me. Should I decline his offer? But then again…’

“Why me though? There are other players here too. Did you get rejected by the others?”

“No…Originally I planned on teaming up with my friend but I messed up at country selection and ended up in the wrong kingdom. And this strategy is impossible to execute alone.”

He looked a bit embarrassed and said.

“I felt a bit sorry for you. I mean, you were working so hard when there was a much easier alternative.”

“Oh..”

“So I decided to offer you a hand.”

This kid offered to help me out of pity.

“Well, you are mostly correct.”

“Huh???”

“I am not a wizard with increased strength, but a warrior with increased wisdom.”

“What??? Why a warrior with wisdom?”

“I wanted to be able to read books.”

“Bro are you new to the game? I have never heard of something like that…Wait a sec…”

He suddenly grabbed my hand and started shaking it. It looked as if he was feeling something.

“Ohhh… Your sensitivity is 20, 10? No no, it must be lower than 8.”

“Ugh. I don’t understand what you try to achieve.”

I laughed at that and the boy shook his head.

“Ahem!… Sorry for doing that, I just got curious.”

“No problem. It’s fine.”

He laughed.

“By the way my name is James. What’s yours?”

“I am Vincent.”

“It was nice talking to you Vincent, let’s meet here again.”

“Sure.”

In other games, you could ‘add a friend’ via the means of friend request and ID swap. [New Century] however, didn’t have that function yet. So there was no way to communicate with someone other than directly talking to them.

“Ok then, have fun.”

“You too!”

That was an interesting experience. I hope we meet again later.

‘-Let’s head to the village, it’s time to learn some skills.’

***

The level to register oneself on the Ranking leaderboard is 10.

The minimum level to learn a skill is 5.

From Lvl 10 onwards I had to avoid NPC so these skills were going to be my lifelong skills.

I planned on honing them to their utmost capacity.

First, I headed to the hunter.

“What do you want?”

Well, for some reason he seemed to be in a bad mood.

“I heard that there are skills that can be learned as a traveller?”

“Uh. At that level?”

He gave me a judgemental look of annoyance and said,

“I am not going to teach you anything if you’re that low level. Here take this and read it yourself.”

He took out a scroll and threw it at me. It hit me on the shoulder. I picked it up and started to read.

As I opened the scroll, a wide window opened, and hundreds of different skills sparkled in blue light.

[James, Lv5 (warrior)

Power: 19 Blood Power: 1

Agility: 19 Energy: 1

Wisdom: 27 SpellPower : 1

Dignity: 1

[Conditions apply.]

Along with the guidance message’s fading, my energy was projected onto the parchment. In an instant, the blue light turned off, and only three skills remained.

[Energy Activation: passive(Lv1)

It activates the body with its energy.

Effect: Increase Agility by 2

Acquisition condition: Energy 1]

[Thief’s Sight: passive(Lv1)

You can secure a wide field of view.

Effect: 2% increase in map recognition range

Acquisition condition: Energy 1]

[Thief’s Instinct: passive(Lv1)

It detects a crisis and helps avoid a fatal blow.

Effect: Evasion rate increased by 2

Acquisition condition: Energy 1]

These were kind of underwhelming.

‘-What are the other skills?’

I looked at the skills that had gone dark.

[Secret Movement: Active(Lv1)

Accelerate movement with activated energy.

Effect: Increases movement speed and attack speed by 15%

Acquisition condition: Possess 3 energy.]

[Dark Attack: Active(Lv1)

Concentrate your energy and inflict a fatal blow.

Effect: Hit rate decreased by 10%. Damage increased by 20%. 1- second rigidity effect

Acquisition condition: Possess 6 energy.]

‘-The better the skill, the higher the requirement to acquire it.’

In addition to those, there were a lot of skills that increased attack power; in the dark, skills that increased your damage when using bows, shurikens and so on.

There were many skills related to throwing weapons due to the characteristics of the job of a ‘Thief’.

I learnt the skills using the window. As soon as I did, the hunter snatched the scroll from my hands.

The Helper’s voice rang out of nowhere. Almost scaring me.

[Passive skills are always on.]

[Note: Some passive skills might not be noticeable at low sensitivity. Sensitivity can be increased using a paid package.]

‘-They really want to sell those paid packages…’

Next was the blacksmith.

“What are you here for?”

“I want to learn the skills of a warrior.”

“Your body might break. Do you still wish to continue?”

“Yes.”

Denki smirked and handed me a scroll.

Same as earlier, I could only learn three skills as of now.

[Blood Concentration: passive(Lv1)

It strengthens the body with blood power.

Effect: Strength 2 increase

Class effect: Strength 5 additional increase. 5% attack power when below 20% health. 5% increased attack speed

Acquisition condition: Blood strength 1]

[Warrior Instinct: passive(Lv1)

Instinctually sense gaps.

Effect: Hit Rate + 2

Job effect: Hit rate + 5 additional increase. Attack power increases by 10% when below 10% HP

Acquisition condition: Blood strength 1]

[Warrior’s Body: passive(Lv1)

Like steel that gets stronger by hammering, the body of a warrior does not yield to pain.

Effect: Reduces physical damage by 1%.

Class effect: +5 damage reduction. When 10 levels are increased, height increases by 1cm

Acquisition condition: Blood strength 1]

It’s definitely the same basic skill, but it looks plausible since the job effect is added.

However, there was this one strange effect.

“What does the increase in height by 1 cm mean?”

Seeing the confusion on my face, the blacksmith explained;

“A warrior must have an imposing body to strike fear into the enemy’s hearts.”

He then started posing, showing off his muscles.

“You need these to wield a forge hammer and sometimes a war hammer.”

He kissed his triceps.

I was about to leave when he said something that wasn’t weird.

He pulled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo. A roaring lion was tattooed on his arm.

Then suddenly it started shaking, almost as if trying to roar.

In an instant, his body grew over 20 cm taller and he looked down at me.

“This is what a warrior’s tattoo does.”

He said that once per 50 levels, a tattoo is obtained after levelling up.

You can choose and tattoo one of 10 animals: wolf, lion, bear, dragon, eagle, owl, scorpion, monkey, horse, and bison, and they have the effect of increasing skill proficiency as well as stats.

It was the player’s freedom to get the same tattoo or a different tattoo.

He kept posing like a bodybuilder as I slowly walked away.