"Wow,” Romanus said as the three of us inspected our new perk.
“Yeah,” I responded absently. That was quite the upgrade. A perk that let us sense the presence of nearby monsters would help Romanus and Valens stay alive out here, for sure. It would be great for me as well, although I didn’t have a perception attribute to amplify yet; at least I didn’t think I did. Momma Lena hadn’t mentioned that as one of the normal attributes everyone had.
My hands absently reloaded and then holstered my revolver as I considered everything I had learned since leaving the city. I learned about safe zones. I learned about regional quests. I learned that I was strong enough to push back against a beast the size of a house and run fast enough to catch up to it as it fled. And I learned these two companions of mine were fierce fighters and trustworthy friends. It had been an eye-opening experience. I was very happy I had taken them up on their offer to join them.
“Well,” Romanus said, clapping his hands, “enough admiring our fancy new perk, I say! Time to get to work.” He pulled out his two daggers, which somehow looked like normal daggers now, and began to eye up the corpse of the mother. “I’ll start on the mother, and then if we still have room, we can get some of the brood.”
Valens nodded and gestured for me to follow him.
“We will need to protect him while he harvests the monster,” he told me. “Sometimes this can be the most dangerous part. The blood will attract monsters and we need to take care of them without distracting him as he works, if at all possible.”
“Sure,” I told him. “I learned the hard way about blood attracting monsters just the other day.”
I put my bonus attribute enhancement into my coordination and then followed Valens as he began to circle the corpse of the monster. With our new perk, I tried to sense any nearby monsters but couldn’t feel anything yet. I wasn’t sure how far away I could sense monsters yet, but if I didn’t have the perception attribute to enhance it, I definitely wanted to add that to my list of short-term goals. Being able to sense monsters from far enough away to avoid them would be monumentally helpful.
An hour had passed, Romanus’s butchery behind us the only sound nearby, when Valens looked to the east with a sudden jerk of his head. I couldn’t sense anything, but I followed Valens as he ran in that direction until he found a large tree to hide behind. I followed, crouching down behind the remnants of an old stone wall that was still partially standing.
A minute later, I felt a strange sensation in my head. It felt almost like I had an internal radar system that was telling me something was approaching from in front of where Valens and I were hiding. My sense told me a monster was approaching. I could also sense it was a weak creature, although I didn’t know if that was weak relative to me or relative to other monsters or if it was some universal constant determined by the system in our heads. If it was a universal system, it could be “weak” by their standards but plenty strong compared to us.
Despite not knowing exactly what counted as “weak,” I was feeling confident after our fight with the drakes.
I could hear the creature approaching through the fields and brush surrounding us. I waited until it got closer. My new perk kept track of the monster perfectly, keeping me informed of its progress since it had come within range of my senses. When it was close enough to see, I saw that the monster had the body of a salamander, but with large, oversized fangs that protruded from its mouth, similar to a saber-toothed tiger from my Earth. It scuttled toward us on rubbery feet that looked able to climb surfaces easily. I was surprised to see it in this area. It seemed like it could survive better underground or somewhere where it could cling to high surfaces.
As the creature ran past us, clearly fixated on the smell of the drake’s blood, its tongue flicking out past its protruding fangs, Valens leapt forward and struck the monster in its back leg, crippling the beast in a single strike.
I aimed and fired a full round of Penetration Bullets, striking it in the middle of its torso. My bullets knocked it sideways, which forced it over on its wounded leg, causing it to stumble even more. The scales on the salamander were significantly weaker than those on the drake, and each of my bullets blew a deep hole into the monster’s side.
The creature, crippled and knocked sideways, collapsed, slamming its head onto the ground and sliding forward. I reloaded and moved to the front of the monster, where it appeared to be dazed from the surprise attacks.
Not waiting to see if it would recover, I fired two more bullets into its skull, killing it instantly. I flicked open the wheel of my gun, reloaded quickly, and then turned to see how Valens was doing.
He was watching me with a curious expression on his face. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he just shook his head and returned to looking into the distance for any other monsters that might be approaching. I couldn’t sense anything, so I just walked over to him, holstering my revolver for now.
As the rest of the day progressed, Valens and I killed several more monsters that tried to approach the drake’s body. Fortunately, none of them ended up being a problem for the two of us. Protecting Romanus earned us another six hundred experience, which wasn’t quite enough to level me again, but I was close.
“Impressive work,” Valens said to me after we finished off the last beast, a large black wolf the size of a horse that lay in front of us.
“You as well,” I told him, equally impressed by him. His strength and speed were almost equal to my own. He must have more than just a single level 20 class, since my attributes scaled off my body, which had to be significantly stronger and faster than his.
Romanus had finished harvesting the drake and even had time to harvest several parts from the monsters that had been attracted to the drake’s corpse, but we ended up having to leave the smaller drakes because we couldn’t carry any more. According to Romanus, their weaker scales made them only moderately valuable anyway.
He and Valens quickly threw together a makeshift handcart to carry the massive skin of the drake, which Romanus had expertly harvested. The handcart was nothing but large branches tied together with a fine rope, but it was good enough that we could drag the cart behind us with no problem, even with the heavy, scaled hide on it.
Once the hide was secured to the handcart, they filled their backpacks with vials of drake blood and some blood from the other monsters we had killed. Then various claws and teeth were packed up and put into their backpacks or strapped to the sides. They looked like a couple of vagabond tinkerers, but everything seemed secure enough to get us back home without any problems. I had a bit of room in my backpack as well, so Romanus filled it with some of the smaller scales that had fallen off the mother drake and a couple of her back claws as well.
Once that was done, we put as much distance as possible between us and the corpses before night fell. I volunteered to pull the makeshift cart, eager to test my body further and carry my weight, since the other two had significantly fuller backpacks. The cart, even burdened with the heavy hide of the mother drake, was easy to drag behind me. Valens and Romanus guided me through clear areas so the cart wouldn’t get caught on anything, quickly clearing brush and other obstacles if there wasn’t a clear path forward.
That night, we camped in the open, not finding a usable home or cabin to sleep in. Thankfully, nothing approached us, although we could hear monsters fighting far off in the distance several times. Valens kept waking up, staring in different directions from time to time, likely sensing a monster nearby. I didn’t sense anything but wasn’t too tired, so I stayed awake just to be safe.
The next day, Valens took a turn pulling the cart, and I asked if they would mind me practicing my Dash since we had so much open space in front of us as we traveled.
“Learning your first movement skill?” Romanus asked me with an amused look on his face.
“Yeah . . .” I replied, grimacing. “I tried in the city, but the space was too limited and I ended up hurting myself.”
Romanus laughed. “You should have seen Valens when he tried out his Charge for the first time!”
Valens groaned in reply.
“We were celebrating our level increases and he decided to try his new skill out in the middle of the inn. Next thing I know, he’s flying through the window like a drunk being thrown out by the innkeeper!” Romanus laughed uproariously at the memory, and I saw even Valens had a smile on his face at how amused Romanus was.
“The first time Romanus tried his Shadow Step—” Valens replied.
“Nooooo!” Romanus interrupted, trying to stop him.
“The first time he tried his movement skill,” Valens continued, undaunted, “he disappeared from in front of me, and the next thing I knew, an old grandma was screaming murder from a window above us. When I looked up, there was Romanus, trying to climb out of the poor grandmother’s window while she pelted him with her dirty laundry.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Romanus laughed just as hard at himself as he had at Valens. Valens smiled warmly back at him, and I couldn’t help but laugh as well at the image.
“I, uhh . . .” I said, unsure if I should tell my story. “I tried it on an empty street in the middle of the city and ended up slamming myself into the side of a building. Next thing I knew, I woke up and it was dark out and I was lying in the middle of the building. I’m pretty sure almost every monster in the city smelled my blood and came to try to kill me soon after.”
I left out the part about the wall being made of stone and healing numerous broken bones over a matter of hours.
“No way!” Romanus said, doubling over in laughter.
“How did you survive?” Valens asked me, a genuine look of curiosity on his face.
I patted the weapon hidden under my cloak. “Once I killed the first few, the rest of the monsters were more interested in fighting each other than finding me. I just waited until the sun rose and promised myself I wouldn’t be such an idiot in the future.”
Romanus’s laughter doubled and we had to stop because his breathing was getting so ragged.
“You’re lucky to survive!” he said through gasping breaths. “I can just imagine your surprise waking up and seeing the sun had set. Oh my!”
Valens eyed under my arm where my firearm rested, but he didn’t ask me for any details about my weapon.
After Romanus recovered, we continued forward and he and Valens gave me several helpful tips about using a movement skill. They both knew someone that had taken the same skill as I did from the Archer class, so they had some knowledge about the skill and how to use it.
The key, they said, was to picture clearly what you wanted the skill to do. A movement skill reacted to intent, but it took practice to visualize exactly what your intent was. They urged me to repeat over and over in my head the distance I wanted to travel before activating my skill. They told me to continue doing that until I could move instinctively with the skill.
I spent the rest of the day practicing with them while they took turns dragging the drake’s hide behind them. At first, I overshot my planned distance by a significant margin. I could tell Valens and Romanus were a bit shocked by how far I shot forward, but neither of them mentioned the oddity, so I didn’t bring it up. I hoped I could trust them with how much I was revealing. I felt confident that I could, but I wasn’t exactly the best judge of people yet. I just had to hope my instincts were right and they were good people.
The neat thing about Dash was that when I did the skill right, I landed perfectly on the ground; my momentum stopped right when my dash ended. It was a strange feeling. Dash shot me through the air so fast that it felt like I was bound to plow into the ground when the skill ended, but instead, the skill just stopped all of my momentum instantly, placing me down perfectly when it ended.
I practiced through the fields as we traveled, zipping here and there until I could control the distance well enough that I felt confident I wouldn’t throw myself into any more stone walls. My high memory score, and my experience projecting my thoughts as an AI, made it fairly easy to control once I got a chance to practice safely. By the time the sun was starting to set, I could dash in any direction and for almost any distance I desired. I practiced with my gun in hand, dashing backward and mock-firing, dashing sideways and reloading, or dashing forward to strike an enemy with my left hand and then dashing back out of range.
“Aren’t you getting tired of that?” Romanus yelled at me from across a field at one point, but I just waved him off. I could practice for days without stopping, if needed. It was a pleasant feeling to gain control and precision with the skill as I practiced it over and over.
We camped in another abandoned house that night. I told Romanus and Valens that I wasn’t sleepy yet and would stay up, so they should just ignore me. They grumbled but turned in after a quick dinner of dried food.
I didn’t leave the house, not wanting to attract too much attention, but I found an empty room and practiced dashing only a few feet in different directions. There didn’t seem to be a cooldown, but I noticed that the longer my Dash carried me, the more I felt the physical exertion. The best I could figure, dashing a certain distance took the same amount of energy from my body as if I had run the same distance. So if someone out of shape could only run twenty feet without feeling winded, the Dash skill would leave them out of breath if they dashed for that amount of distance. Thankfully, with my body and my enhanced endurance, I could dash all day and night without feeling more than a little tired.
I practiced dashing and reloading, mock-firing, and shadow-boxing enemies as if I was engaging in hand-to-hand combat, mixing all three over and over. I wove my dashes into my mock-combat practice, learning to use it in a split second and trying to develop a sense of how to fight while utilizing the skill at the same time. My ability to repeat repetitive tasks, with no need for a break, helped me once again as I pushed myself to master the skill. I was sure someone watching would think there was something seriously wrong with me as I practiced for hours and hours without a break, but Romanus and Valens seemed to be sleeping so I cut loose and practiced to my heart’s content. I also had a feeling the two of them wouldn’t judge me if they saw what I was doing, although they would definitely give me some odd looks.
By the time the sun rose, I felt confident in using my new skill in and out of combat.
I greeted the two men as they rose, and we ate a quick breakfast and then set out for the city.
“You aren’t going to practice anymore?” Romanus asked when I offered to pull the makeshift handcart.
I shook my head. “No, I’m feeling better about the skill now. I was able to practice a bit last night.”
Romanus raised an eyebrow and Valens looked over at me, but neither spoke. I could tell they were skeptical. It probably took them weeks or months to master their movement skills, but I didn’t feel like trying to explain how rapidly my brain could learn and how much I had practiced last night while the two of them slept.
I pulled the cart throughout the day, wanting to make up for the two of them having to pull it all day yesterday. By mid-afternoon, we entered the outskirts of the city again, and I could see the shimmer of the barrier of Sycae ahead of us. No monsters had disturbed us, thanks to Valens’s skills, our perks, and his and Romanus’s knowledge of how to avoid the monsters in the area.
Once we were back inside the enclave, I was assaulted with several announcements in my head.
Personal quest discovered: Clear the City.
You have discovered a personal quest. Quest requirements: You must clear 20 dungeons to help secure your city. Reward: +1 to an attribute of your choice, 2000 experience. Quest progress: 10/20.
Personal quest discovered: Make a Home.
You have discovered a personal quest. Quest requirements: You must establish a home and secure it from your enemies. Reward: +1 to an attribute of your choice, 500 experience.
Personal quest discovered: Contribute to the Economy.
You have discovered a personal quest. Quest requirements: You must sell goods or provide services worth a fair amount of money, depending on your region. Reward: 1 gold core, 200 experience. Quest progress: complete.
Congratulations, you have completed Contribute to the Economy. Reward: 1 gold core, 200 experience.
Quest updated: Contribute to the Economy II. You must sell goods or provide services worth a significant amount of money, depending on your region. Reward: 3 gold cores, 600 experience.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 18.
Coordination +1
Both men stopped and watched me as I froze in place in front of the gate. After a moment, I recovered enough to continue on.
“More announcements?” Romanus asked.
“Yeah,” I responded, “but they are personal so I can’t share them. I never got them before, so there must be something important about getting the achievement for leaving the city.”
The two of them looked at each other and then back at me.
“Don’t worry,” I told them. “We will get it for you. We can talk more about it later.”
They smiled at me gratefully. We talked as Romanus led us through the city. Eventually, we reached the blacksmith he had sold his goods to before.
“Now,” he said as we approached the shop, “this hide is going to sell very well. I estimate at least one hundred gold orbs, if not more.”
“Wow,” I said, surprised.
“Yeah,” he told me. “This will make for some prime armor and could make twenty or more sets, at least. It’s probably the most mature drake killed in a generation or two, I would guess. The question for you, Alexander, is if you just want your share of the orbs or if you want a suit of armor made for yourself.”
“That’s an option?” I asked.
“Yeah, Barbaros can make us each a set from this hide that will serve us well, but it will be costly. I can bargain the price down for all three of us, if you want. Or we can take equal shares and do whatever we want, individually. I do think we would get a better price if we negotiate three suits together, though.”
“Hmm . . .” I said, thinking about my options. My clothing was the equivalent of most basic armors from Earth, but it took quite a number of shots from my newly empowered bullets to pierce the drake’s hide, and that had been on its more vulnerable neck. A suit of armor made from the thicker scales of its body would offer significantly more protection than my clothing. Plus, Romanus had said the drake was resistant to magic, so hopefully the armor would help with that as well.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go for three sets and we can split whatever is left.”
“Perfect!” Romanus said, smiling. “Especially considering you are out here fighting monsters in only a cloak and shirt!”
We entered the blacksmith’s shop, and I left Romanus to bargain over the loot we had gathered. The hide wasn’t the only rare ingredient we had collected, and even with the cost of the labor to make three suits of armor, we received sixty gold orbs from the blacksmith. My share was twenty gold orbs, a real haul for a frantic couple days of work.
“One of the most profitable runs we have ever made,” Romanus said.
Valens nodded at his words. “Not to mention a perk.”
“Indeed,” Romanus said, eyeing me. “When do you think we can clear that dungeon we spoke about? We are eager to try for that achievement you received for leaving the city.”
The blacksmith had told us it would be three weeks before our armor was completed. I figured we could probably complete a dungeon without it, but I didn’t really want to take a chance, so I convinced them we should wait until then. They invited me to go on another hunt with them, but I declined, wanting to work on some of my own goals for now. We made a plan to meet back at the inn in three weeks to collect our armor and go on their first dungeon expedition.
I turned in early for the night, thanking them again for taking me with them and wishing them well in their next hunt. Upstairs in my room, I spent the night replenishing my bullets and then managed to fall asleep for several hours.
