I think I'm becoming like Ryuugi or Mizuki Stone. Well, except with the being popular bit I...
New Game Plus [The Gamer/Danmachi]
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New Game Plus 1
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
I think I'm becoming like Ryuugi or Mizuki Stone. Well, except with the being popular bit I guess. Danmachi information will be relegated to wikia, anime and the first four novels since that's the most I can have access right now. When I reach the cut off point in this series it will become an AU.
As for The Gamer, since it's still going on at a somewhat glacial pace it will be an AU by necessity, though I will reference events in the webcomic at a later point.
Now, story start!
~~~~~~~~OOO~~~~~~~~
"Infinite mana arrows!" I said while pointing my staff towards my enemy, who expertly weaved around the hundreds of magic arrows going after him. Fucking precog ability, that's totally cheating!
"What happened Gamer, losing steam?" Said my infuriating opponent before he dodged to the side as another attack came from the air, this time from my air elemental Zephyr, before my fire elemental Salamander and Lightning elemental Lei continued the assault. To my side my companions from the Nine Gates did their own support to my attacks, and we where starting to overwhelm the fucker in front of us.
Yes, I know, I'm swearing a storm even on my own head but I think I'm entitled to at least that for what he did.
Mom, dad, Sun-Il, master Loli, they all fell to him when this madman concocted a plan to open Gaia's true nature to the whole world. It only involved killing an harvesting a tremendous amount of thought power and souls, far too much that could be safely handled by the Abyss, and the bigshots called for aid from all Shinjin class ability users worldwide.
I had really come a long way since that fated day when I woke up seeing the names of everyone on top of their heads, worrying Sun-Il and being taught by master Loli. Now I was one of the strongest natural ability users on the planet with my levels almost touching on the fourth digits and I had became strong enough to protect myself and those I held dear.
Or so I thought until this motherfucker appeared.
He gathered an incredible amount of followers, both ability users who he employed against en masse, and normal people that acted as his personal cult. It was still unknown how he managed to do even a tenth of what he accomplished, but for me I didn't care one iota of that. I only wanted him dead, by my hands if necessary.
The other shinjin ability users keep the pressure on this monster as I deactivated my ongoing skills and I prepared my strongest spell, one I barely had mana to cast even with all my skills lowering the overall cost of all my skills. It had a long charge time but it's effects were devastating. As power poured into my hand and formed itself into a spear of light, I aimed my attack at the enemy.
"Brahmashirsha Astra!"
He looked at me surprised for a moment before smirking, an almost identical spear forming into his hand, with five rings at the tip of it's head. "Bhramanda Astra", he said and threw the spear.
The two weapons hit each other, and though I had leveled my own attack over the years to the exhausting point I had yet to prestige it. Still it was a relief that he had used such attack to counter mine since the reverse couldn't be said, but it was also chilling that he held this trump card with him and yet he didn't thought to use it beforehand. I'm fairly certain that my companions if they had something on that scale they would be throwing at him without reservations.
"That was close", he said while fanning himself, "it would have seriously inconvenienced myself if that hit. Now, for the grand finale~"
He gathered more energy into his hands and let out a hail of black attacks to hit everyone. It was literally impossible to dodge and it pierced magical protections like it wasn't even there. I only survived because I had maxed Physical Endurance a long time ago and Prestiged it twice, once into Dragon Blood Blessing and All Creation Oath of Safety, the first being the invulnerability conferred to Siegfried on the legend and the other being the one granted to the god Balder into myth. Still even with those abilities the attack managed to pierce me and deal a good chunk of damage to me.
"So you're still alive? Guess I put too much effort into anti-regeneration, anti-immortality, anti-invulnerability effects into the attack and forgot to simply pack a stronger punch, huh? Well, it doesn't matter. You will be dead soon anyway, after all you're all alone."
It was true, my companions had all perished on the last attack and I was alone. I was low on mp relatively speaking, low on hp and most of my equipment had broken down from how long and brutal this conflict had been. Still, I had one last trump card.
"Don't get cocky", I told him while bringing my inventory and drawing the weapon that would win this war, "it's only over when it's over."
The weapon I pulled looked more like a drill than a sword even if you were supposed to use it like that. It was red with guard inlaid in gold like substance, cylindrical with three moving parts and was named after a god.
It was a weapon I was loath to use since in it's lowest setting it could raze a city and blow up mountains alongside always, always breaking a illusion barrier it was in. Most of all, it worked even outside a illusion barrier regardless of witness, being a dangerous weapon without equal.
It would also instantly kill me if I ever used it at full power, but it was more than enough to end this threat once and for all. I just hope that using it won't blow up the continent we're in with the bleed out effect of the attack.
"You wouldn't dare", my enemy said with fear, if not in his voice then in his observe status panel. "The nine gates entrusted this weapon with you because you would never use it, and you know that nothing less than it at full power can stop me!"
"Things change", I told him as I started charging the sword power, dodging the follow up attack from my enemy. He was desperate to stop me, but I had trained enough with this weapon on the wilderness to keep up the charge time even while being attacked, and I had just enough mana to bring out my defenses and set up my evasive skills.
"Just die already!" He yelled as a spear of light hit me on the gut, and I felt like fire was pouring out my insides, but I still keep up the charge time, until it was ready.
Through the haze of pain I smirked. "Enuma Elish!" I quickly teleported to his face and unleashed the attack, air, space and time distorting while the world shifted and a new reality was imposed over the previous one, preferably without that asshole in it.
Sadly I was disappointed by the sight. Standing in front with his body mangled, but still very much alive, was the fucker I wanted to kill.
"What... it takes to kill... you", I asked, already feeling the effects of the weapon destroying my body as a price for using it at full power.
"You just did", he said in an almost calm tone, "though I will be the last one laughing." He brought his two stumps together and created some kind of vortex just as reality crashed around us back into the real world, to the sight of the bodies of his various cultists. "The ritual is complete, and it has just enough leftover energy for a last fuck you towards you. You, no, your soul will never reunite with your loved ones. Fitting, for someone who claimed to had been my enemy only for vengeance and a need to protect his loved ones."
With a last effort I charged at him with my weapon in hand before cutting him in half, but he had already finished what he started and I fell on a mass of darkness, and I knew no more.
~~O~~
I woke up on the ground, my clothes shredded into rags and bloodied and a howl of sorts around me. I gingerly stood up before something behind me caught my attention and I immediately rolled away from the axed coming at my neck. Looking up, it was some kind of monster resembling a kobold, thought it was closer to a dwarf werewolf if I were to be honest with myself.
"Spinning Mana Arrow" I said on reflex, but nothing came. I didn't panic, because somehow I was expecting something like that, why I still don't know, but at the same time it was annoying as hell. I quickly tested some of my other skills, and nothing worked.
Suddenly I saw more of those kobolds coming from the walls, almost as if the cave had birthed them, which was eerily reminding me of a MMORPG with it's respawn features. Not even an illusion barrier gave me that impression and I had gamer powers!
Still the situation felt nostalgic. Surrounded by enemies, no weapons, no armor, no magic, and an inexplicably serene demeanor to myself I would only question later. I could't help but smile, remembering simpler times, even if my life was already n danger back then.
Standing up, I looked at my enemies dead in the eyes before uttering the only thing I could come up with.
"Bring it."
I had no intention to taunt them and make things worse, but hey I did eventually got the skill Bravado. Got to use it once in a while.
As for The Gamer, since it's still going on at a somewhat glacial pace it will be an AU by necessity, though I will reference events in the webcomic at a later point.
Now, story start!
~~~~~~~~OOO~~~~~~~~
"Infinite mana arrows!" I said while pointing my staff towards my enemy, who expertly weaved around the hundreds of magic arrows going after him. Fucking precog ability, that's totally cheating!
"What happened Gamer, losing steam?" Said my infuriating opponent before he dodged to the side as another attack came from the air, this time from my air elemental Zephyr, before my fire elemental Salamander and Lightning elemental Lei continued the assault. To my side my companions from the Nine Gates did their own support to my attacks, and we where starting to overwhelm the fucker in front of us.
Yes, I know, I'm swearing a storm even on my own head but I think I'm entitled to at least that for what he did.
Mom, dad, Sun-Il, master Loli, they all fell to him when this madman concocted a plan to open Gaia's true nature to the whole world. It only involved killing an harvesting a tremendous amount of thought power and souls, far too much that could be safely handled by the Abyss, and the bigshots called for aid from all Shinjin class ability users worldwide.
I had really come a long way since that fated day when I woke up seeing the names of everyone on top of their heads, worrying Sun-Il and being taught by master Loli. Now I was one of the strongest natural ability users on the planet with my levels almost touching on the fourth digits and I had became strong enough to protect myself and those I held dear.
Or so I thought until this motherfucker appeared.
He gathered an incredible amount of followers, both ability users who he employed against en masse, and normal people that acted as his personal cult. It was still unknown how he managed to do even a tenth of what he accomplished, but for me I didn't care one iota of that. I only wanted him dead, by my hands if necessary.
The other shinjin ability users keep the pressure on this monster as I deactivated my ongoing skills and I prepared my strongest spell, one I barely had mana to cast even with all my skills lowering the overall cost of all my skills. It had a long charge time but it's effects were devastating. As power poured into my hand and formed itself into a spear of light, I aimed my attack at the enemy.
"Brahmashirsha Astra!"
He looked at me surprised for a moment before smirking, an almost identical spear forming into his hand, with five rings at the tip of it's head. "Bhramanda Astra", he said and threw the spear.
The two weapons hit each other, and though I had leveled my own attack over the years to the exhausting point I had yet to prestige it. Still it was a relief that he had used such attack to counter mine since the reverse couldn't be said, but it was also chilling that he held this trump card with him and yet he didn't thought to use it beforehand. I'm fairly certain that my companions if they had something on that scale they would be throwing at him without reservations.
"That was close", he said while fanning himself, "it would have seriously inconvenienced myself if that hit. Now, for the grand finale~"
He gathered more energy into his hands and let out a hail of black attacks to hit everyone. It was literally impossible to dodge and it pierced magical protections like it wasn't even there. I only survived because I had maxed Physical Endurance a long time ago and Prestiged it twice, once into Dragon Blood Blessing and All Creation Oath of Safety, the first being the invulnerability conferred to Siegfried on the legend and the other being the one granted to the god Balder into myth. Still even with those abilities the attack managed to pierce me and deal a good chunk of damage to me.
"So you're still alive? Guess I put too much effort into anti-regeneration, anti-immortality, anti-invulnerability effects into the attack and forgot to simply pack a stronger punch, huh? Well, it doesn't matter. You will be dead soon anyway, after all you're all alone."
It was true, my companions had all perished on the last attack and I was alone. I was low on mp relatively speaking, low on hp and most of my equipment had broken down from how long and brutal this conflict had been. Still, I had one last trump card.
"Don't get cocky", I told him while bringing my inventory and drawing the weapon that would win this war, "it's only over when it's over."
The weapon I pulled looked more like a drill than a sword even if you were supposed to use it like that. It was red with guard inlaid in gold like substance, cylindrical with three moving parts and was named after a god.
It was a weapon I was loath to use since in it's lowest setting it could raze a city and blow up mountains alongside always, always breaking a illusion barrier it was in. Most of all, it worked even outside a illusion barrier regardless of witness, being a dangerous weapon without equal.
It would also instantly kill me if I ever used it at full power, but it was more than enough to end this threat once and for all. I just hope that using it won't blow up the continent we're in with the bleed out effect of the attack.
"You wouldn't dare", my enemy said with fear, if not in his voice then in his observe status panel. "The nine gates entrusted this weapon with you because you would never use it, and you know that nothing less than it at full power can stop me!"
"Things change", I told him as I started charging the sword power, dodging the follow up attack from my enemy. He was desperate to stop me, but I had trained enough with this weapon on the wilderness to keep up the charge time even while being attacked, and I had just enough mana to bring out my defenses and set up my evasive skills.
"Just die already!" He yelled as a spear of light hit me on the gut, and I felt like fire was pouring out my insides, but I still keep up the charge time, until it was ready.
Through the haze of pain I smirked. "Enuma Elish!" I quickly teleported to his face and unleashed the attack, air, space and time distorting while the world shifted and a new reality was imposed over the previous one, preferably without that asshole in it.
Sadly I was disappointed by the sight. Standing in front with his body mangled, but still very much alive, was the fucker I wanted to kill.
"What... it takes to kill... you", I asked, already feeling the effects of the weapon destroying my body as a price for using it at full power.
"You just did", he said in an almost calm tone, "though I will be the last one laughing." He brought his two stumps together and created some kind of vortex just as reality crashed around us back into the real world, to the sight of the bodies of his various cultists. "The ritual is complete, and it has just enough leftover energy for a last fuck you towards you. You, no, your soul will never reunite with your loved ones. Fitting, for someone who claimed to had been my enemy only for vengeance and a need to protect his loved ones."
With a last effort I charged at him with my weapon in hand before cutting him in half, but he had already finished what he started and I fell on a mass of darkness, and I knew no more.
~~O~~
I woke up on the ground, my clothes shredded into rags and bloodied and a howl of sorts around me. I gingerly stood up before something behind me caught my attention and I immediately rolled away from the axed coming at my neck. Looking up, it was some kind of monster resembling a kobold, thought it was closer to a dwarf werewolf if I were to be honest with myself.
"Spinning Mana Arrow" I said on reflex, but nothing came. I didn't panic, because somehow I was expecting something like that, why I still don't know, but at the same time it was annoying as hell. I quickly tested some of my other skills, and nothing worked.
Suddenly I saw more of those kobolds coming from the walls, almost as if the cave had birthed them, which was eerily reminding me of a MMORPG with it's respawn features. Not even an illusion barrier gave me that impression and I had gamer powers!
Still the situation felt nostalgic. Surrounded by enemies, no weapons, no armor, no magic, and an inexplicably serene demeanor to myself I would only question later. I could't help but smile, remembering simpler times, even if my life was already n danger back then.
Standing up, I looked at my enemies dead in the eyes before uttering the only thing I could come up with.
"Bring it."
I had no intention to taunt them and make things worse, but hey I did eventually got the skill Bravado. Got to use it once in a while.
Last edited:
New Game Plus 2
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
The kobold in front of me charged and I meet him with a sidestep and knee on his gut, grabbing his axe as he tipped over and in a single motion I decapitated him. While I didn't raised much my blunt weapon mastery, and I still think that axes counts as bladed weaponry, it was also a simple weapon to use and I had trained extensively in a couple of them in order to raise my mastery skills and martial arts skill since I just keep getting more and more of those weapon drops I never get to use.
The monster dissipated into black smoke leaving some kind of gem stone on the floor but I ignored it for now and dodged the second and third follow up attacks from the surrounding enemies. One of them managed to lightly clip me on the side, and much to my relief the wound had disappeared almost instantly meaning I still had Gamer's Body running. I kicked one of the other charging kobolds while slashing at another in the skull, splitting it's head open.
Ugh, this was easier when I could fly and spam mana arrows at them.
Entering the guard of one of the kobolds I disarmed him before slashing at his gut once and then swinging my weapon towards it's throat upwards. Two more kobolds came at the same time and I blocked the attacks before countering with my own. I might not be a master axeman, or even a master swordsman, but after fighting so long you do pick up some things on how to generally handle yourself in a fight.
When the latest kobold fell I could see even more of them charging me and I sighed in annoyance. Less about the enemies around me, and more about the showing I was giving. From going toe-to-toe with gods to struggling against a small horde of scrub tier monsters I had really fallen far. I was grateful that I was still alive, but if the price of using the Star of Creation was to go back to normal it was one more incentive to never use it if I can help it. I know I should be more surprised at my current poor showing, but somehow once more I wasn't exactly surprised by this turn of events.
I dodged a strike that came within millimeters of gouging out my eye from a spear form another kind of monster, probably a goblin by it's looks, and once more I sighed and got my head back in the game. Those monsters aren't going to kill themselves, after all.
~~O~~
As the last enemy fell I took the time to look at the loot they dropped, some kind of gem stone. Sadly I didn't had my skill observe so I couldn't really check what it was, but now that I had a bit of breathing room I could do a few things.
"Status", I muttered and my status window appeared, though it was different from what I was used to.
I winced at being reminded at my age, even if I don't look like it. So what if I spent an inordinate amount of time on the time dilated dungeons? I did managed to figure out that youth extending spell anyway. Shacking my head I went back to more important things. My level went back to one and I was missing the 'stat' tags where my level up stat points were supposed to go, so I probably had to increase my abilities another way. I also had lost my intelligence and wisdom stats, being jammed together into the magic stat. Convenient, though I will certainly miss the enhanced intellect effect having both at high level gave me.
Good bye perfect recall and genius level tactical acumen, I will miss you both.
I had two 'speed' characteristics, one that probably governed my dodge value and another to govern my accuracy value. While I prefer the old stat sheet I can work with this.
"Inventory", I said, getting the normal panel and this time I felt incredibly annoyed, even if in hindsight I should have expected it. Everything was gone, and by everything I mean my crapload of shit I had accumulated and just put on my endless inventory for safe keeping. From magical items to normal items to completely useless items, everything was gone. My equipment screen also showed me only wearing my casual clothing that by now became a bunch of rags and the axe I stole from that kobold earlier. Well, soon my inventory will be full of those small gems I got, but even so losing everything had hurt. Some of those stuff were irreplaceable rare items, and some had sentimental value, and a good portion of them I had made myself.
Taking a deep breath to calm myself I start collecting the gems on the ground until everything was done.
"Skills", and this time I was greeted with my familiar panel, and with a quick thought I changed it form the basic grid to a list format for ease of use. I admit I'm a bit ashamed that it took several years for me to stumble into that mode, but it's not the time to dwell on that. The skill list was depressingly short, but it was more informative than my stats screen.
I instantly noted that those skills didn't had levels, even Gamer's Body and Mind had levels before, even if they came out maxed. Their descriptions haven't changed so I looked at the other skills.
Gaia's Magic
The ability to use magic as a native from the world of Gaia
Well, that was promising. Looks like even if I missed some my previous skills there's a chance I can regain them as they were, or close enough I suppose. It also implied somehow that using magic as a native of Gaia was actually a big deal, but without more information I wasn't quite sure on what to think about it right now. Hopefully when I find civilization I can set some thing straight.
Inventory filled and with weapon in hand, I set out to get out of this cave. Hopefully things will make more sense outside here.
The monster dissipated into black smoke leaving some kind of gem stone on the floor but I ignored it for now and dodged the second and third follow up attacks from the surrounding enemies. One of them managed to lightly clip me on the side, and much to my relief the wound had disappeared almost instantly meaning I still had Gamer's Body running. I kicked one of the other charging kobolds while slashing at another in the skull, splitting it's head open.
Ugh, this was easier when I could fly and spam mana arrows at them.
Entering the guard of one of the kobolds I disarmed him before slashing at his gut once and then swinging my weapon towards it's throat upwards. Two more kobolds came at the same time and I blocked the attacks before countering with my own. I might not be a master axeman, or even a master swordsman, but after fighting so long you do pick up some things on how to generally handle yourself in a fight.
When the latest kobold fell I could see even more of them charging me and I sighed in annoyance. Less about the enemies around me, and more about the showing I was giving. From going toe-to-toe with gods to struggling against a small horde of scrub tier monsters I had really fallen far. I was grateful that I was still alive, but if the price of using the Star of Creation was to go back to normal it was one more incentive to never use it if I can help it. I know I should be more surprised at my current poor showing, but somehow once more I wasn't exactly surprised by this turn of events.
I dodged a strike that came within millimeters of gouging out my eye from a spear form another kind of monster, probably a goblin by it's looks, and once more I sighed and got my head back in the game. Those monsters aren't going to kill themselves, after all.
~~O~~
As the last enemy fell I took the time to look at the loot they dropped, some kind of gem stone. Sadly I didn't had my skill observe so I couldn't really check what it was, but now that I had a bit of breathing room I could do a few things.
"Status", I muttered and my status window appeared, though it was different from what I was used to.
Name: Han Jee-han
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Class: The Gamer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level: 1
Health: [GREEN]
Mana: [BLUE]
Power I 0
Endurance I 0
Agility I 0
Dexterity I 0
Magic I 0
V$: 0
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Class: The Gamer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level: 1
Health: [GREEN]
Mana: [BLUE]
Power I 0
Endurance I 0
Agility I 0
Dexterity I 0
Magic I 0
V$: 0
I winced at being reminded at my age, even if I don't look like it. So what if I spent an inordinate amount of time on the time dilated dungeons? I did managed to figure out that youth extending spell anyway. Shacking my head I went back to more important things. My level went back to one and I was missing the 'stat' tags where my level up stat points were supposed to go, so I probably had to increase my abilities another way. I also had lost my intelligence and wisdom stats, being jammed together into the magic stat. Convenient, though I will certainly miss the enhanced intellect effect having both at high level gave me.
Good bye perfect recall and genius level tactical acumen, I will miss you both.
I had two 'speed' characteristics, one that probably governed my dodge value and another to govern my accuracy value. While I prefer the old stat sheet I can work with this.
"Inventory", I said, getting the normal panel and this time I felt incredibly annoyed, even if in hindsight I should have expected it. Everything was gone, and by everything I mean my crapload of shit I had accumulated and just put on my endless inventory for safe keeping. From magical items to normal items to completely useless items, everything was gone. My equipment screen also showed me only wearing my casual clothing that by now became a bunch of rags and the axe I stole from that kobold earlier. Well, soon my inventory will be full of those small gems I got, but even so losing everything had hurt. Some of those stuff were irreplaceable rare items, and some had sentimental value, and a good portion of them I had made myself.
Taking a deep breath to calm myself I start collecting the gems on the ground until everything was done.
"Skills", and this time I was greeted with my familiar panel, and with a quick thought I changed it form the basic grid to a list format for ease of use. I admit I'm a bit ashamed that it took several years for me to stumble into that mode, but it's not the time to dwell on that. The skill list was depressingly short, but it was more informative than my stats screen.
Gamer's Body
Gamer's Mind
Gaia's Magic
Gamer's Mind
Gaia's Magic
I instantly noted that those skills didn't had levels, even Gamer's Body and Mind had levels before, even if they came out maxed. Their descriptions haven't changed so I looked at the other skills.
Gaia's Magic
The ability to use magic as a native from the world of Gaia
Well, that was promising. Looks like even if I missed some my previous skills there's a chance I can regain them as they were, or close enough I suppose. It also implied somehow that using magic as a native of Gaia was actually a big deal, but without more information I wasn't quite sure on what to think about it right now. Hopefully when I find civilization I can set some thing straight.
Inventory filled and with weapon in hand, I set out to get out of this cave. Hopefully things will make more sense outside here.
New Game Plus 3
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
I found a couple of stairs leading both up and down, and logic dictated I went up since I was underground. As I did so the number of monsters appearing went down a bit and I could more easily deal with them. I keep getting the gem stones of the enemies since they must be useful for something, until I reach the cave exit and I'm greeted with the sight of a city. I was already deep into the night and the street was mostly empty, save for a couple of people that were coming in.
A party of five, they all wore some of the worst kind of breastplate I ever saw before which offered little protection on the chest area while leaving the more vulnerable stomach area completely bare. It barely counted as steel hater top! They also had swords on their belts and were wearing a backpack, looking suspiciously like a group of adventurers. In fact they kind of reminded me of the character sprite for apprentice on the MMORPG Ragnarok Online. Except the apprentice in that game at least was wearing actual breastplate.
"Uhm, excuse me?" I asked the group coming to the cave entrance, and they stopped once they saw my state. I wasn't looking good with several parts of my outfit torn and ragged, I looked more like a hobo than anything. "Can I ask a few questions? I'm a bit lost and I want to get some information."
The man on the left most side, short with a five o'clock beard, looked at me up and down before answering. "Heh, looks like you're a complete newbie. Did you even register at a guild before entering the dungeon?"
"Assume I know nothing", I told them and he barked a laugh at my expense.
"Heh, a real newbie. If you want some info go to Babel. They have night shifts just for this kind of emergency even if they don't encourage people adventuring at night since almost everything is closed at this hour."
"And where is Babel?" I asked, and got your standard 'are you stupid' look from him.
"It's the bloody tower that reaches the heavens you dolt. How did you miss it when you got to Orario?"
I looked around and sure enough there was a gigantic tower that reached the heavens. "Huh. How did I miss that?"
The man shook his head before continuing walking, followed by his companions. "Whatever newbie, just don't get yourself killed on the first floor with that thing on your hand." With those parting words and a last barking laugh they entered the dungeon.
Well, now I have something to work with at least. So long as I can get some sleep and food, anything's fine really."
~~O~~
Inside Babel I found a place that bought the gemstones, or magic stones as they were called, which gave me some currency and allowed me to eat and take a shower. I had to pay a premium for them though since I was outside the Guild standard hours, but fortunately they had a good enough service in case of emergencies like these, after all 'some adventurers prefer to hunt at night with the lesser competition' or so the saying went as a woman dressed like a waitress said.
Once more I had to pull the 'assume I know nothing', and I passed myself as a country pumpkin that got hilariously lost before entering the dungeon by mistake, after all I don't think they would simply buy my 'I woke up there after fighting a battle the save the world', not if the suspicions I had were bearing fruit.
"Thanks for having me in, miss Eina", I said to the elf in front of me, though she looked more like a half-elf since aside from the ears her face structure and body type leaned more towards a human one than the waif like an elf posses. "I appreciate it."
She just nodded with a stern expression on her face. "You should be ashamed of yourself for risking your life like that. Did you just randomly walk around the city before deciding to enter the dungeon? Didn't you ever heard of stories about Orario?"
I just shrugged, earning a glare from her. "I have a talent to have things escalate pretty quickly around me, much to my detriment. Fortunately I got experienced enough to survive my own stupidity", i said a bit in a self depreciating manner, hoping that admitting to my thoughtlessness would help curb some of her nerves, "but I think I hit my head or something, because my memories are all jumbled together into an indecipherable mess, so if you would be so kind to tell me everything I need in order to survive, I would appreciate it."
She frowned at my remark, "I think we can spare some spirit healing if you had a concussion this serious. If that were the case I advise you against going back to the dungeon", I could hear the 'ever' in that remark.
"I know my limits, and it isn't the first time I was beat silly until I couldn't distinguish up from down and left from blue."
"Don't you mean left from right?"
"I know what I said."
There was a small pause between us two before I continued. "Anyway about that information?"
"What do you actually know?"
"Hmm, I remember my name, the name of my hometown, the names and faces of my friends and how to fight." I said before remembering my cover story, "and wandering towards this town I guess, before going into the dungeon for a bit of exploration."
"Ha~~~~~", she sighed, "why I always have to deal with the troublesome cases?"
Once more I shrugged before starting to listen to her lecture, I knew it would be a long one but so long as I get some actual information out of it I'm fine with it. Afterwards I would rent a bed and get some well deserved shut eye. Damn, it's been ages since I'm going to sleep because I'm tired.
~~O~~
"... I'm sorry. After all you did, this is the best I can do for you." Said a sad feminine voice before I felt myself reply to her.
"It's fine. You already did a lot for me, after all I'm a Natural Ability User, right?"
I felt more than saw her smile. "Thank you for being understanding, but shouldn't you wake up now?"
~~O~~
You slept on a bed. Your Health, Mana and status effects where completely restored!
Well, at least there's still that. As I properly woke up I stretched my back before setting out for the day.
As Eina said before a proper adventurer is part of a Familia, formed after a god who descended from heaven created a guild of sorts and bestowed their blessings on mankind, the Falna, that allows them to fight against the monsters on the dungeon. The gist of it is that the dungeon is apparently infinite, or so large and so deep nobody ever saw the bottom yet in recorded history, and adventurers explore it for glory, fame and riches.
So standard adventurer fare.
The basic idea for today was to affiliate myself with a Familia so I can be officially inducted into the adventurer ranks since technically I'm just an unfortunately lucky 'kid' that got caught in the dungeon business by mistake. If I want to become an adventurer I need the patronage of a god or goddess in order to receive my Falna but I suspect, no I'm certain that I already have it. Now I could try my hand at being into a well established Familia to get some support for myself, but I didn't wanted people to ask questions when they inevitably found my Falna, whatever it looks like which I had to explain how I got it, which would probably lead to asking me what I was doing on the dungeon, which would lead to...
Damn, even with my wisdom reaching past one hundred I still had a lot of blindspots in my thinking. So much for supernaturally high common sense stat. Now that it had probably dropped back to normal human norm I would be back to my mostly reckless ways. Well, not like I ever stopped being reckless but if current me can call past me reckless that should tell you how reckless I was before.
The plan was to find a small Familia, preferably one that was just starting out and join it while it was on it's starting stage, and then I would join and probably rise in prominence on it, and slowly make a name for myself while I was on this world.
Yes, world. I knew that I was on another world, and the last words of that motherfucker came to mind. Somehow, perhaps it was gamer's mind, I was at peace with this, and decided to take the most of my situation. Besides I made a living in the Abyss, it won't be much different this way.
Now, if I could only find that Hestia Familia I heard about...
A party of five, they all wore some of the worst kind of breastplate I ever saw before which offered little protection on the chest area while leaving the more vulnerable stomach area completely bare. It barely counted as steel hater top! They also had swords on their belts and were wearing a backpack, looking suspiciously like a group of adventurers. In fact they kind of reminded me of the character sprite for apprentice on the MMORPG Ragnarok Online. Except the apprentice in that game at least was wearing actual breastplate.
"Uhm, excuse me?" I asked the group coming to the cave entrance, and they stopped once they saw my state. I wasn't looking good with several parts of my outfit torn and ragged, I looked more like a hobo than anything. "Can I ask a few questions? I'm a bit lost and I want to get some information."
The man on the left most side, short with a five o'clock beard, looked at me up and down before answering. "Heh, looks like you're a complete newbie. Did you even register at a guild before entering the dungeon?"
"Assume I know nothing", I told them and he barked a laugh at my expense.
"Heh, a real newbie. If you want some info go to Babel. They have night shifts just for this kind of emergency even if they don't encourage people adventuring at night since almost everything is closed at this hour."
"And where is Babel?" I asked, and got your standard 'are you stupid' look from him.
"It's the bloody tower that reaches the heavens you dolt. How did you miss it when you got to Orario?"
I looked around and sure enough there was a gigantic tower that reached the heavens. "Huh. How did I miss that?"
The man shook his head before continuing walking, followed by his companions. "Whatever newbie, just don't get yourself killed on the first floor with that thing on your hand." With those parting words and a last barking laugh they entered the dungeon.
Well, now I have something to work with at least. So long as I can get some sleep and food, anything's fine really."
~~O~~
Inside Babel I found a place that bought the gemstones, or magic stones as they were called, which gave me some currency and allowed me to eat and take a shower. I had to pay a premium for them though since I was outside the Guild standard hours, but fortunately they had a good enough service in case of emergencies like these, after all 'some adventurers prefer to hunt at night with the lesser competition' or so the saying went as a woman dressed like a waitress said.
Once more I had to pull the 'assume I know nothing', and I passed myself as a country pumpkin that got hilariously lost before entering the dungeon by mistake, after all I don't think they would simply buy my 'I woke up there after fighting a battle the save the world', not if the suspicions I had were bearing fruit.
"Thanks for having me in, miss Eina", I said to the elf in front of me, though she looked more like a half-elf since aside from the ears her face structure and body type leaned more towards a human one than the waif like an elf posses. "I appreciate it."
She just nodded with a stern expression on her face. "You should be ashamed of yourself for risking your life like that. Did you just randomly walk around the city before deciding to enter the dungeon? Didn't you ever heard of stories about Orario?"
I just shrugged, earning a glare from her. "I have a talent to have things escalate pretty quickly around me, much to my detriment. Fortunately I got experienced enough to survive my own stupidity", i said a bit in a self depreciating manner, hoping that admitting to my thoughtlessness would help curb some of her nerves, "but I think I hit my head or something, because my memories are all jumbled together into an indecipherable mess, so if you would be so kind to tell me everything I need in order to survive, I would appreciate it."
She frowned at my remark, "I think we can spare some spirit healing if you had a concussion this serious. If that were the case I advise you against going back to the dungeon", I could hear the 'ever' in that remark.
"I know my limits, and it isn't the first time I was beat silly until I couldn't distinguish up from down and left from blue."
"Don't you mean left from right?"
"I know what I said."
There was a small pause between us two before I continued. "Anyway about that information?"
"What do you actually know?"
"Hmm, I remember my name, the name of my hometown, the names and faces of my friends and how to fight." I said before remembering my cover story, "and wandering towards this town I guess, before going into the dungeon for a bit of exploration."
"Ha~~~~~", she sighed, "why I always have to deal with the troublesome cases?"
Once more I shrugged before starting to listen to her lecture, I knew it would be a long one but so long as I get some actual information out of it I'm fine with it. Afterwards I would rent a bed and get some well deserved shut eye. Damn, it's been ages since I'm going to sleep because I'm tired.
~~O~~
"... I'm sorry. After all you did, this is the best I can do for you." Said a sad feminine voice before I felt myself reply to her.
"It's fine. You already did a lot for me, after all I'm a Natural Ability User, right?"
I felt more than saw her smile. "Thank you for being understanding, but shouldn't you wake up now?"
~~O~~
You slept on a bed. Your Health, Mana and status effects where completely restored!
Well, at least there's still that. As I properly woke up I stretched my back before setting out for the day.
As Eina said before a proper adventurer is part of a Familia, formed after a god who descended from heaven created a guild of sorts and bestowed their blessings on mankind, the Falna, that allows them to fight against the monsters on the dungeon. The gist of it is that the dungeon is apparently infinite, or so large and so deep nobody ever saw the bottom yet in recorded history, and adventurers explore it for glory, fame and riches.
So standard adventurer fare.
The basic idea for today was to affiliate myself with a Familia so I can be officially inducted into the adventurer ranks since technically I'm just an unfortunately lucky 'kid' that got caught in the dungeon business by mistake. If I want to become an adventurer I need the patronage of a god or goddess in order to receive my Falna but I suspect, no I'm certain that I already have it. Now I could try my hand at being into a well established Familia to get some support for myself, but I didn't wanted people to ask questions when they inevitably found my Falna, whatever it looks like which I had to explain how I got it, which would probably lead to asking me what I was doing on the dungeon, which would lead to...
Damn, even with my wisdom reaching past one hundred I still had a lot of blindspots in my thinking. So much for supernaturally high common sense stat. Now that it had probably dropped back to normal human norm I would be back to my mostly reckless ways. Well, not like I ever stopped being reckless but if current me can call past me reckless that should tell you how reckless I was before.
The plan was to find a small Familia, preferably one that was just starting out and join it while it was on it's starting stage, and then I would join and probably rise in prominence on it, and slowly make a name for myself while I was on this world.
Yes, world. I knew that I was on another world, and the last words of that motherfucker came to mind. Somehow, perhaps it was gamer's mind, I was at peace with this, and decided to take the most of my situation. Besides I made a living in the Abyss, it won't be much different this way.
Now, if I could only find that Hestia Familia I heard about...
New Game Plus 4
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
It didn't take long until I found the headquarters of the Hestia Familia. All I had to do was ask around for the goddess Hestia and people would point out to me to a certain direction in the city until I found a building that looked suspiciously like a catholic church in a state of disrepair. Reaching the door I knocked it three times loudly before waiting for a response.
I had to wait for a bit but I could hear footsteps from inside the building, until it finally opened.
"Excuse me, I would like to... huh?"
For a moment I was confused as there was nobody at the door before I looked down. I was greeted with a youthful girl that barely reached my chest if at that (though to be fair I got another growth spurt when I was eighteen and became a couple of centimeters taller to my already taller than average height). She had her long black hair tied in a twin tail with a pair of ribbons with a bell motif. She had round blue eyes a cute face and... well...
I called her a girl, but even with her height she's definitely a woman with those curves and that much chest area. I soon realized that I was staring and that was rude. "Sorry. I was looking for the goddess Hestia, I wish to join her Familia."
"You do?" She said with hope in her eyes before grabbing my hand and pulling me in, "come in, come in! Bell, there's someone else who wants to join my Familia!"
As the petite girl lead me inside I heard more footsteps coming in our direction, and a boy about a head taller than the small woman came to greet us. He had silver hair and red eyes, and it kind of reminded me of a rabbit to be honest. He looked friendly enough at least, and was wearing a set of casual clothes with a knife strapped on his back. "Is it true that you also want to join our Familia? There's only me here for the moment and it would be really nice to have someone else with us."
I nodded. "I have my own reasons to become an adventurer, mostly because that's what I did before coming here and my prospects at finding another job are pretty much nil, and to be honest I seek the excitement that this life bring". It was hard to admit that to Sun-Il, and he wanted to strangle me when I confessed to him, but honestly after so many time spent grinding, so many quests performed and so many denizens of the Abyss I had to deal with I simply wasn't cut out to live life normally anymore. You only had to look at Part Time Magician to see how a powerful Abyss denizen would have so much trouble fitting in on normal society.
"Isn't it wonderful Bell? You don't have to go down on the dungeon alone anymore!" Said the smaller woman to the boy and they both hugged each other. Ah, brotherly love, how nice to see it in action. "Are you just starting out yourself or are you an experienced warrior?"
"I'd like to think that I saw my fair amount of battles in my life", I replied to her and she nodded.
"I see, then I would welcome you to my Familia and gladly grant you my blessing."
I blinked at that for a moment. Did she just said what I think she said? "Are you telling me you're the goddess Hestia?"
"Of course", she said pompously before narrowing her eyes. "Is there a problem?"
I was expecting someone taller I wanted to say but decided to be diplomatic, "I never meet a goddess before", in this world at least, "I didn't knew what to expect."
Her eyes narrowed further into slits and puffed her cheeks. "You're lying. If you can't be honest with the future head of your Familia we will start on the wrong foot."
Lying? How did she caught that? With my Gamer's Mind active I can have the best possible poker face without having the actual 'deception' skill on hand, unless...
This time I narrowed my eyes to her. "I heard gods that descend from heaven have their powers sealed, but that doesn't mean they are entirely powerless, right? So it isn't so far off to know you have an ability, or at least a superlative skill in determining falsehoods, right?"
"That's not inaccurate", she admitted, "though we are barred from using our Arcanum, we still have abilities that reflect our purview as gods."
"I see, then let me try again", I said before cleaning my throat, "'I never meet a goddess in this world before'".
She blinked at me once, twice, before tilting her head. "I think there's a story somewhere there."
"And you'd be right. If you have the time I can tell you all of it later."
She slowly nodded. "You're still not being entirely honest", she lowly muttered with her eyes cast down. Oh well, if I got busted there's no need to hide it anyway.
"I thought you would be taller", I admitted, and she fell down on her knees, a look of despair on her face.
"Why people keep saying that. There's nothing wrong with my height. Beeeeeeell, I'm being picked on!"
The boy, Bell, quickly went to her side and started consoling her while patting her on the head and I found the sight... cute actually. Like an older brother consoling his little sister, though if she's the goddess then their circumstances should have been reversed but whatever. "Sorry if I was rude", I apologized to the duo, "but I really want to join your Familia. Is there something I need to sign or some token I'm awarded with to make it official?"
Hestia quickly recomposed herself, before standing up. "No, all you need to do is to take my blessing and swear fealty to me. Now, please pull out your shirt so I can engrave the Falna on your back."
I nodded, before pulling it out and turning, before hearing a gasp from the goddess.
"You already have a Falna? But you said it's the first time you meet a god. Then how?"
"This is the least I can do for all the services you rendered to me. While I can't help you directly anymore, go knowing you have earned my blessing twice over."
"Thank you... Gaia."
I blinked at the strange memory, before turning around with my suspicions confirmed. "I think I know what's going on, and it relates somewhat to my story if you want to hear."
They both nodded and I motioned them to make themselves comfortable, it was going to be a long story.
~~O~~
At the end of my tale they both had their eyes bulged in surprise. I can't blame them to be honest, though it was a bit surprising for both of them to act like they believed my story without problems. Hestia I could understand considering her lie detection skills, but Bell appeared to be a mundane boy so he's probably a bit too trusting. Something that could be dangerous in his line of work.
"You, you fought to save the whole world", said Bell in awe while looking at you, his eyes sparking. "That's incredible Jee-han Hyung!"
So I finally got called that, eh? Guess I got some respect after all this time. Still for him to call me 'hyung' meant that we were speaking korean right now, or some kind of magic was in place that allowed me to understand and be understood by them or something. My money is on the second one to be honest. "It was a group effort to be honest, and the motherfucker still had the gall to technically survive my final trump card, at least long enough to give me a final fuck you out of spite. At least I'm still alive and he isn't."
"Still that doesn't explain why you have a god blessing already." Wondered Hestia as she took another peak to my back. "If you came to another world, how that's possible?"
Instantly I assumed what I dubbed 'lecture pose number seven'. Man, my tutoring skill sure got a lot of use those past few years. "As I said before Gaia empowered certain individuals with a certain ability, and we called them Natural Ability Users. Those had powers similar to those blessed by gods in this world, except with more variance in effects and power. As Gaia was the Planet Will instead of being a mere goddess her power was unimaginable, and if she somehow knew in advance about the world I would fall in, it shouldn't be too strange that she could bless me in the same way as the gods of this world. Technically speaking, that would make me the sole member of the Gaia Familia, even if the head is currently AWOL."
"Hah..." sighed Hestia, "I wish I could have initiated another adventurer myself, but I will take what I can get. Do you want to know of your status Jee-han?"
Hmm, it's not like I can't see it whenever I want, but it would be interesting to see the process which they do it here. "Sure, why not?"
"Then sit down and turn around please."
I complied and she quickly set out to work. I saw from the edges of my vision a faint blue light before Hestia gasped. "Already three skills..." she softly said and not too long later it ended, with her giving me a piece of paper for me. Looking it over aside from a couple of numbers I couldn't understand a single thing it was written there, so magical translation was the reason I could understand anything. There was a couple of changes from my latest view on the sheet, but nothing too drastic. The only thing of note was the section that was blank. I handled the piece of paper back to Hestia before turning around.
"What does 'Gamer's Body', 'Gamer's Mind' and 'Gaia's Magic' mean", asked Bell as he took a peek to my character sheet.
Time for lecture pose number three. "They were both skills I had back in my homeworld. Gamer's Body allows me to live my life as a video game, twisting myself and the world around me to emulate electronic games, like games of adventure or shooting to RPGs. It's end result is very similar to getting a Falna since most people, even those with power, didn't had such convenient representation of their abilities, though I'm not entirely sure the full extents of this skill in this world."
"What's electronic?" Whispered Bell to Hestia.
"What's a video? And what ar-pee-gee means?" She replied with her own whispered question.
I decided to ignore that for now, plenty of time to tell them stuff later. "Gamer's Mind is a skill that emulates the detachment a 'player' have when playing a game, since while a 'character' can show strong emotions, be surprised and perform irrational behavior by being victims of powers or the plot, a player simply controls the character and isn't affected by those effects, and can even take their time to choose the most optimal option when prompted, simulating a character quick thinking and planning skills. As for Gaia's Magic it's a new skill I never had before, but I believe it will allow me to use magic in a way closer to that of my homeworld than what you use here, though I'm unfamiliar with the specifics."
"Hmm", pondered Hestia as she looked at my character sheet. "It's unfortunate that you are only level one and with such low levels in your stats, but certainly with your experience you can bridge that gap."
I just shrugged, "they were at zero when I woke up on the dungeon yesterday, though I was hoping they would increase more after going climbing up the four levels of the dungeon."
Both Bell and Hestia blinked at the same time. "Four levels?"
I nodded, "had to kill a couple of monsters in the process. Got a bit of money out of it, but not much since it was late at night when I arrived and they charge some money to exchange on their off hours."
"Where's your armor, where's your weapon?" Hestia asked, surprise evident in her voice as if what I did was rather extraordinary.
Frankly I'm not sure why she's so surprised. I did say I was an experienced fighter and she can confirm I'm not lying, after all. Still I took the small hand axed I had grabbed from one of the kobolds. "Here. I had to steal this from one of the kobold like creatures in the dungeon and used it to kill my way through the dungeon."
She stared at my broken, cracked weapon but before she could say anything Bell started, realizing something. "Wait, you said the kobolds were using weapons? But they only use their claws and teeth while fighting!"
I simply shrugged, "special enemies? About half of the enemies I killed held weapons, so I didn't think much of it at the time."
Both Bell and Hestia looked at each other for a moment before looking back to me. Hestia sighed before looking back up with a small smile. "At least things will be interesting from now on, and Bell won't be alone on the dungeons anymore."
"Please take good care of me Jee-han Hyung!" Said the boy in an earnest manner and I nodded. He seemed like a good kid, it would be a waste if he got seriously hurt while hunting alone.
All in all, things seen to be progressing rather good. Perhaps I will take it easy for a couple of days, get myself settled before going back to the daily grinding. I was kind of missing it after reaching the level I had, since even killing thousands of high level monsters gave me a pittance of experience. The thrill of combat, earning xp and raising your stats is one of the best feelings I ever had, and it will be good to be back at it.
It felt so good that I thought nothing could go wrong.
I had to wait for a bit but I could hear footsteps from inside the building, until it finally opened.
"Excuse me, I would like to... huh?"
For a moment I was confused as there was nobody at the door before I looked down. I was greeted with a youthful girl that barely reached my chest if at that (though to be fair I got another growth spurt when I was eighteen and became a couple of centimeters taller to my already taller than average height). She had her long black hair tied in a twin tail with a pair of ribbons with a bell motif. She had round blue eyes a cute face and... well...
I called her a girl, but even with her height she's definitely a woman with those curves and that much chest area. I soon realized that I was staring and that was rude. "Sorry. I was looking for the goddess Hestia, I wish to join her Familia."
"You do?" She said with hope in her eyes before grabbing my hand and pulling me in, "come in, come in! Bell, there's someone else who wants to join my Familia!"
As the petite girl lead me inside I heard more footsteps coming in our direction, and a boy about a head taller than the small woman came to greet us. He had silver hair and red eyes, and it kind of reminded me of a rabbit to be honest. He looked friendly enough at least, and was wearing a set of casual clothes with a knife strapped on his back. "Is it true that you also want to join our Familia? There's only me here for the moment and it would be really nice to have someone else with us."
I nodded. "I have my own reasons to become an adventurer, mostly because that's what I did before coming here and my prospects at finding another job are pretty much nil, and to be honest I seek the excitement that this life bring". It was hard to admit that to Sun-Il, and he wanted to strangle me when I confessed to him, but honestly after so many time spent grinding, so many quests performed and so many denizens of the Abyss I had to deal with I simply wasn't cut out to live life normally anymore. You only had to look at Part Time Magician to see how a powerful Abyss denizen would have so much trouble fitting in on normal society.
"Isn't it wonderful Bell? You don't have to go down on the dungeon alone anymore!" Said the smaller woman to the boy and they both hugged each other. Ah, brotherly love, how nice to see it in action. "Are you just starting out yourself or are you an experienced warrior?"
"I'd like to think that I saw my fair amount of battles in my life", I replied to her and she nodded.
"I see, then I would welcome you to my Familia and gladly grant you my blessing."
I blinked at that for a moment. Did she just said what I think she said? "Are you telling me you're the goddess Hestia?"
"Of course", she said pompously before narrowing her eyes. "Is there a problem?"
I was expecting someone taller I wanted to say but decided to be diplomatic, "I never meet a goddess before", in this world at least, "I didn't knew what to expect."
Her eyes narrowed further into slits and puffed her cheeks. "You're lying. If you can't be honest with the future head of your Familia we will start on the wrong foot."
Lying? How did she caught that? With my Gamer's Mind active I can have the best possible poker face without having the actual 'deception' skill on hand, unless...
This time I narrowed my eyes to her. "I heard gods that descend from heaven have their powers sealed, but that doesn't mean they are entirely powerless, right? So it isn't so far off to know you have an ability, or at least a superlative skill in determining falsehoods, right?"
"That's not inaccurate", she admitted, "though we are barred from using our Arcanum, we still have abilities that reflect our purview as gods."
"I see, then let me try again", I said before cleaning my throat, "'I never meet a goddess in this world before'".
She blinked at me once, twice, before tilting her head. "I think there's a story somewhere there."
"And you'd be right. If you have the time I can tell you all of it later."
She slowly nodded. "You're still not being entirely honest", she lowly muttered with her eyes cast down. Oh well, if I got busted there's no need to hide it anyway.
"I thought you would be taller", I admitted, and she fell down on her knees, a look of despair on her face.
"Why people keep saying that. There's nothing wrong with my height. Beeeeeeell, I'm being picked on!"
The boy, Bell, quickly went to her side and started consoling her while patting her on the head and I found the sight... cute actually. Like an older brother consoling his little sister, though if she's the goddess then their circumstances should have been reversed but whatever. "Sorry if I was rude", I apologized to the duo, "but I really want to join your Familia. Is there something I need to sign or some token I'm awarded with to make it official?"
Hestia quickly recomposed herself, before standing up. "No, all you need to do is to take my blessing and swear fealty to me. Now, please pull out your shirt so I can engrave the Falna on your back."
I nodded, before pulling it out and turning, before hearing a gasp from the goddess.
"You already have a Falna? But you said it's the first time you meet a god. Then how?"
"This is the least I can do for all the services you rendered to me. While I can't help you directly anymore, go knowing you have earned my blessing twice over."
"Thank you... Gaia."
I blinked at the strange memory, before turning around with my suspicions confirmed. "I think I know what's going on, and it relates somewhat to my story if you want to hear."
They both nodded and I motioned them to make themselves comfortable, it was going to be a long story.
~~O~~
At the end of my tale they both had their eyes bulged in surprise. I can't blame them to be honest, though it was a bit surprising for both of them to act like they believed my story without problems. Hestia I could understand considering her lie detection skills, but Bell appeared to be a mundane boy so he's probably a bit too trusting. Something that could be dangerous in his line of work.
"You, you fought to save the whole world", said Bell in awe while looking at you, his eyes sparking. "That's incredible Jee-han Hyung!"
So I finally got called that, eh? Guess I got some respect after all this time. Still for him to call me 'hyung' meant that we were speaking korean right now, or some kind of magic was in place that allowed me to understand and be understood by them or something. My money is on the second one to be honest. "It was a group effort to be honest, and the motherfucker still had the gall to technically survive my final trump card, at least long enough to give me a final fuck you out of spite. At least I'm still alive and he isn't."
"Still that doesn't explain why you have a god blessing already." Wondered Hestia as she took another peak to my back. "If you came to another world, how that's possible?"
Instantly I assumed what I dubbed 'lecture pose number seven'. Man, my tutoring skill sure got a lot of use those past few years. "As I said before Gaia empowered certain individuals with a certain ability, and we called them Natural Ability Users. Those had powers similar to those blessed by gods in this world, except with more variance in effects and power. As Gaia was the Planet Will instead of being a mere goddess her power was unimaginable, and if she somehow knew in advance about the world I would fall in, it shouldn't be too strange that she could bless me in the same way as the gods of this world. Technically speaking, that would make me the sole member of the Gaia Familia, even if the head is currently AWOL."
"Hah..." sighed Hestia, "I wish I could have initiated another adventurer myself, but I will take what I can get. Do you want to know of your status Jee-han?"
Hmm, it's not like I can't see it whenever I want, but it would be interesting to see the process which they do it here. "Sure, why not?"
"Then sit down and turn around please."
I complied and she quickly set out to work. I saw from the edges of my vision a faint blue light before Hestia gasped. "Already three skills..." she softly said and not too long later it ended, with her giving me a piece of paper for me. Looking it over aside from a couple of numbers I couldn't understand a single thing it was written there, so magical translation was the reason I could understand anything. There was a couple of changes from my latest view on the sheet, but nothing too drastic. The only thing of note was the section that was blank. I handled the piece of paper back to Hestia before turning around.
"What does 'Gamer's Body', 'Gamer's Mind' and 'Gaia's Magic' mean", asked Bell as he took a peek to my character sheet.
Time for lecture pose number three. "They were both skills I had back in my homeworld. Gamer's Body allows me to live my life as a video game, twisting myself and the world around me to emulate electronic games, like games of adventure or shooting to RPGs. It's end result is very similar to getting a Falna since most people, even those with power, didn't had such convenient representation of their abilities, though I'm not entirely sure the full extents of this skill in this world."
"What's electronic?" Whispered Bell to Hestia.
"What's a video? And what ar-pee-gee means?" She replied with her own whispered question.
I decided to ignore that for now, plenty of time to tell them stuff later. "Gamer's Mind is a skill that emulates the detachment a 'player' have when playing a game, since while a 'character' can show strong emotions, be surprised and perform irrational behavior by being victims of powers or the plot, a player simply controls the character and isn't affected by those effects, and can even take their time to choose the most optimal option when prompted, simulating a character quick thinking and planning skills. As for Gaia's Magic it's a new skill I never had before, but I believe it will allow me to use magic in a way closer to that of my homeworld than what you use here, though I'm unfamiliar with the specifics."
"Hmm", pondered Hestia as she looked at my character sheet. "It's unfortunate that you are only level one and with such low levels in your stats, but certainly with your experience you can bridge that gap."
I just shrugged, "they were at zero when I woke up on the dungeon yesterday, though I was hoping they would increase more after going climbing up the four levels of the dungeon."
Both Bell and Hestia blinked at the same time. "Four levels?"
I nodded, "had to kill a couple of monsters in the process. Got a bit of money out of it, but not much since it was late at night when I arrived and they charge some money to exchange on their off hours."
"Where's your armor, where's your weapon?" Hestia asked, surprise evident in her voice as if what I did was rather extraordinary.
Frankly I'm not sure why she's so surprised. I did say I was an experienced fighter and she can confirm I'm not lying, after all. Still I took the small hand axed I had grabbed from one of the kobolds. "Here. I had to steal this from one of the kobold like creatures in the dungeon and used it to kill my way through the dungeon."
She stared at my broken, cracked weapon but before she could say anything Bell started, realizing something. "Wait, you said the kobolds were using weapons? But they only use their claws and teeth while fighting!"
I simply shrugged, "special enemies? About half of the enemies I killed held weapons, so I didn't think much of it at the time."
Both Bell and Hestia looked at each other for a moment before looking back to me. Hestia sighed before looking back up with a small smile. "At least things will be interesting from now on, and Bell won't be alone on the dungeons anymore."
"Please take good care of me Jee-han Hyung!" Said the boy in an earnest manner and I nodded. He seemed like a good kid, it would be a waste if he got seriously hurt while hunting alone.
All in all, things seen to be progressing rather good. Perhaps I will take it easy for a couple of days, get myself settled before going back to the daily grinding. I was kind of missing it after reaching the level I had, since even killing thousands of high level monsters gave me a pittance of experience. The thrill of combat, earning xp and raising your stats is one of the best feelings I ever had, and it will be good to be back at it.
It felt so good that I thought nothing could go wrong.
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Character Sheet
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
Latest Update: Monsterphilia 8
Name: Han Jee-han
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Class: The Gamer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level: 1
Health: [█ █ █ █ █]
Mana: [█ █ █ █ █]
Abilities
Power G 201
Endurance H 196
Agility G 209
Dexterity G 215
Magic H 131
V$: 106500
Magic
Observe
____________
____________
Skills
Name: Han Jee-han
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Class: The Gamer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level: 1
Health: [█ █ █ █ █]
Mana: [█ █ █ █ █]
Abilities
Power G 201
Endurance H 196
Agility G 209
Dexterity G 215
Magic H 131
V$: 106500
Magic
Observe
____________
____________
Skills
Gamer's Body
Grants the body to live life as a video game
Gamer's Mind
Allows for peaceful state of mind and prevents psychological effects
Gaia's Magic
Allows to use magic native to Gaia
Taunt
The skill to taunt and enrage a target. Skill effectiveness increase with user's level
Very High chances for nearby enemies to switch targets to yourself
Moderate chances for increased encounter rate
Low chances for inflicting Berserk on a single target
Intimidate
A skill to inspire dread and fear on the target. Skill effectiveness increase with higher user level and higher ??? rank.
Moderate chance to cause the status effect shaken on targets.
Small chance to cause the status effect frightened on targets.
Sword Mastery
A skill to determine one's proficiency with sword type weapons. Skill effectiveness increase with higher user level and higher ??? rank.
Moderate increase to Power and Dexterity when using a sword type weapon.
Low increase to Endurance and Agility when using a sword type weapon.
Grants the body to live life as a video game
Gamer's Mind
Allows for peaceful state of mind and prevents psychological effects
Gaia's Magic
Allows to use magic native to Gaia
Taunt
The skill to taunt and enrage a target. Skill effectiveness increase with user's level
Very High chances for nearby enemies to switch targets to yourself
Moderate chances for increased encounter rate
Low chances for inflicting Berserk on a single target
Intimidate
A skill to inspire dread and fear on the target. Skill effectiveness increase with higher user level and higher ??? rank.
Moderate chance to cause the status effect shaken on targets.
Small chance to cause the status effect frightened on targets.
Sword Mastery
A skill to determine one's proficiency with sword type weapons. Skill effectiveness increase with higher user level and higher ??? rank.
Moderate increase to Power and Dexterity when using a sword type weapon.
Low increase to Endurance and Agility when using a sword type weapon.
Observe: Use Activated
A magical skill that allows one to learn information about a target. More information can be learned at higher user level and higher ??? rank.
A magical skill that allows one to learn information about a target. More information can be learned at higher user level and higher ??? rank.
Last edited:
Birth of a Crazy Duo 1
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
"So Bell, can you explain to me where I can get some set of actual equipment? I rather not have to try and steal my next weapon and armor from my enemy, you never knew where they were", though if it were in some games like Final Fantasy Tactics where the enemy is wearing unique, utterly overpowered weapons and armor I wouldn't mind stealing them.
"Oh, the Guild can provide with weapons and armor on loan for first time adventurers. I can take you there if you want."
"Thank you", I nodded and we departed to the Guild building. We passed through the ruins section of the city before entering one of the main roads straight into the Guild building, which was close to Babel. "I will introduce you to my advisor too. She will probably help you too get settled on Orario, even if you already fought in the dungeons before. Oh look, she's there. Eina!"
Who greeted me was the by now familiar face of the probably half-elf bespectacled woman. "Ah Bell, do you need something?" She tilted her head when she noticed mytaller form behind him. "Jee-han?"
"Hey", I waved at her as Bell went towards his advisor. "Look who joined a Familia recently?"
"Did you regained more of your memories since yesterday?" She asked with concern on her voice before, making Bell slightly confused.
"Memories?"
"Some things came back, while others are still far away. I'm holding up though, and I'm already combat capable if you're wondering that." I said before pausing. "Well, except for that fact that I'm only armed with a half broken hand axe and have no armor. I heard you guys give weapons and armor on loan for first time adventurers?"
"Yes, we do", she said with a nod and her expression becoming more stern, "do you wish to formally become an adventurer, a professional one?"
"There are amateurs?" I asked, genuinely curious about that prospect.
"Some people enters the dungeon without fully understanding what it entails, some goes as far as entering without the blessing of a god. If you plan to join the ranks of the professional adventurers it's better if you heed the advice of the Guild."
I nodded in understanding. "Sounds fair I suppose. By the looks of it I will be needing to fill some paperwork or something, right?" She nodded and I turned to Bell, "why don't you go ahead on the dungeon? I will probably be around here for a while so I will catch up with you later. Just don't go too deep and I should be able to find you."
"Sure thing Jee-han. Eina, I will be off then, please take good care of mister Jee-han." He said with a bow before turning back and heading off.
"Bell, wait! ...he's gone." Eina sighed before shaking her head. "He's always so reckless. Now mister jee-han, please follow me and we will get everything in order."
Nodding I followed her, knowing this would take a while. Still, the translation spell must be adapting to teach me the local language since I'm hearing 'mister' now. Convenient, that.
Sitting on the chair across her she pulled a couple of papers and showed them to me to read, which I couldn't. "Hm... will this be a bad hour to tell you I'm illiterate?"
She stared at me trying to discern any falsehoods, before sighing once she found none. "This will take a while."
~~O~~
When we finished several hours had passed. She taught me of the proper system of exchange for magic stones and directed me to the stores that would sell essential equipment, like common medicines, weapons and armor that wasn't on loan by the Guild. She also taught me a bit of the monsters on the first four floors, but advised for me to stay on the first floor since I was a complete beginner. Meh, the goblins and kobolds were complete chumps last I fought them even when they outnumbered me.
They also had a bit of selection for arms to loan, so I took a long sword and a breast plate. An actual breast plate, not the horrendous thing Bell was wearing. Sure its overall more expensive compared with the standard knife and not-breastplate Bell was wearing, but it wasn't by much and I thought the better quality of the equipment were worth it. It's a bit harder to move in it than bare chested, but once again not by much and I can handle the small discomfort.
"Make sure to stay on the upper most floors", reminded me Eina, "and remember, an adventurer shouldn't go on an adventure."
I just nodded, not really trusting my voice not to say something sarcastic. Frankly she reminded me of Sun-Il at his greatest mother hen phase.
As I remembered my childhood friend I sighed. He died as the conflict started to pick up pace, considered both a dangerous foe and a leverage to make me lose my resolve. Now he was on whatever afterlife was more fitting to him, and even if he reincarnates a thousand times we will never meet each other again. Not like we would remember if we had ever meet each other after reincarnating, but it's the thought that counts.
I closed my eyes, sending a silent prayer to an entity that likely couldn't hear me, and I entered the dungeon.
Time to earn my keep.
The dungeon entrance was a bit crowded, with several teams waiting in a line to enter and it reminded me of some MMORPGs where you formed a line to enter the maps where a special event was unfolding. "Is it always like this?" I asked someone else on the line as I waited for my turn.
"Only at this hour. It's common sense to enter earlier to avoid the rush hour but it couldn't be helped this time." I nodded in acceptance before waiting like the rest, looking at everyone and everything, trying to discern details and information from them.
I had lost the ability to see people's names, levels and titles at a glance in this world but that's to be expected since that was a more blatant aspect of Gaia's influence about my powers. Still I had a theory that I could re-learn some of my previous skills if I trained hard enough with them. Hopefully this theory will pan out in the end.
... still, that's a pretty damn big line.
~~O~~
Even with the line not really stopping it still took nearly an hour to enter the dungeon, but waiting for so long paid off in the end in more ways than I hoped.
Through a special action the magic skill Observe was created!
Observe: Use Activated
A magical skill that allows one to learn information about a target. More information can be learned at higher user level and higher ??? rank.
And it only took me looking at several different stuff as if my life depended on it, though considering that I got Observe after looking at a single enemy intently the first time and now it took me nearly an hour of constant effort while looking at several people, their equipment and even some of the architecture around me meant that skills would be hard to come even if they were simple before I came here. I shudder to think what it will take for me to relearn some of my best skills, and what kind of hell I will need to go through in order to relearn Brahmashirsha Astra once more. Then again it might be a good thing for me not to learn that spell, being at least four times stronger than a Brahmastra on it's lowest level, it was utterly devastating and could wipe out a large city like New York or Seul with a single strike.
I don't think there will be anything in this world that requires that much firepower.
"Observe", I muttered, but nothing happened and I frowned. I brought my skill list and sure enough, the skill was there so something else was wrong. Looking back at the skill description I noted how it was a 'magical skill', so this time I brought the Magic list which I learned was a thing yesterday when Hestia gave me my character sheet.
I was greeted with three empty panels, and once I clicked on one of them another panel appeared with a single icon on it. Changing it to a list sorting I saw that it was my observe. Clicking on it the skill appeared on the formerly empty panel. I toyed by putting the skill on any of the other empty panels but there wasn't any noticeable change so I left it where it was initially. Closing the panel I looked at someone else and muttered observe.
Not nearly as useful as I initially thought but then again observe did started out quite basic. The fact that I can't really see the full health of the target other than a general full green bar was a bit annoying, but I will take what I can get. It was also interesting to see that he didn't had the magic ability, so it's not something that everyone could perform. In that regard I was fortunate that I was allowed to keep my magical talent. I wonder if Bell had magic.
That aside I noticed my own Mana bar sliding down a bit and slowly regenerating itself. Very, very, very slowly. While I didn't had a numeric value to represent my health and mana anymore, differently from my other traits, I did had an instinctual understanding of some of it's hidden values and I knew that it would take quite a while for my mana to regen itself to full. Hopefully with an increased magic stat things would change.
In the end I got how the magic worked for me. I got a magic skill and I had to equip that magic skill in order to use it. I had only three magic slots to equip my magic and they took a chunk of my mana bar when I used it, which regenerated at a glacial pace.
Looks like it will take a while for me if I want to become a magician once more. Back to basics I guess.
Time to sword my enemies to death.
"Oh, the Guild can provide with weapons and armor on loan for first time adventurers. I can take you there if you want."
"Thank you", I nodded and we departed to the Guild building. We passed through the ruins section of the city before entering one of the main roads straight into the Guild building, which was close to Babel. "I will introduce you to my advisor too. She will probably help you too get settled on Orario, even if you already fought in the dungeons before. Oh look, she's there. Eina!"
Who greeted me was the by now familiar face of the probably half-elf bespectacled woman. "Ah Bell, do you need something?" She tilted her head when she noticed mytaller form behind him. "Jee-han?"
"Hey", I waved at her as Bell went towards his advisor. "Look who joined a Familia recently?"
"Did you regained more of your memories since yesterday?" She asked with concern on her voice before, making Bell slightly confused.
"Memories?"
"Some things came back, while others are still far away. I'm holding up though, and I'm already combat capable if you're wondering that." I said before pausing. "Well, except for that fact that I'm only armed with a half broken hand axe and have no armor. I heard you guys give weapons and armor on loan for first time adventurers?"
"Yes, we do", she said with a nod and her expression becoming more stern, "do you wish to formally become an adventurer, a professional one?"
"There are amateurs?" I asked, genuinely curious about that prospect.
"Some people enters the dungeon without fully understanding what it entails, some goes as far as entering without the blessing of a god. If you plan to join the ranks of the professional adventurers it's better if you heed the advice of the Guild."
I nodded in understanding. "Sounds fair I suppose. By the looks of it I will be needing to fill some paperwork or something, right?" She nodded and I turned to Bell, "why don't you go ahead on the dungeon? I will probably be around here for a while so I will catch up with you later. Just don't go too deep and I should be able to find you."
"Sure thing Jee-han. Eina, I will be off then, please take good care of mister Jee-han." He said with a bow before turning back and heading off.
"Bell, wait! ...he's gone." Eina sighed before shaking her head. "He's always so reckless. Now mister jee-han, please follow me and we will get everything in order."
Nodding I followed her, knowing this would take a while. Still, the translation spell must be adapting to teach me the local language since I'm hearing 'mister' now. Convenient, that.
Sitting on the chair across her she pulled a couple of papers and showed them to me to read, which I couldn't. "Hm... will this be a bad hour to tell you I'm illiterate?"
She stared at me trying to discern any falsehoods, before sighing once she found none. "This will take a while."
~~O~~
When we finished several hours had passed. She taught me of the proper system of exchange for magic stones and directed me to the stores that would sell essential equipment, like common medicines, weapons and armor that wasn't on loan by the Guild. She also taught me a bit of the monsters on the first four floors, but advised for me to stay on the first floor since I was a complete beginner. Meh, the goblins and kobolds were complete chumps last I fought them even when they outnumbered me.
They also had a bit of selection for arms to loan, so I took a long sword and a breast plate. An actual breast plate, not the horrendous thing Bell was wearing. Sure its overall more expensive compared with the standard knife and not-breastplate Bell was wearing, but it wasn't by much and I thought the better quality of the equipment were worth it. It's a bit harder to move in it than bare chested, but once again not by much and I can handle the small discomfort.
"Make sure to stay on the upper most floors", reminded me Eina, "and remember, an adventurer shouldn't go on an adventure."
I just nodded, not really trusting my voice not to say something sarcastic. Frankly she reminded me of Sun-Il at his greatest mother hen phase.
As I remembered my childhood friend I sighed. He died as the conflict started to pick up pace, considered both a dangerous foe and a leverage to make me lose my resolve. Now he was on whatever afterlife was more fitting to him, and even if he reincarnates a thousand times we will never meet each other again. Not like we would remember if we had ever meet each other after reincarnating, but it's the thought that counts.
I closed my eyes, sending a silent prayer to an entity that likely couldn't hear me, and I entered the dungeon.
Time to earn my keep.
The dungeon entrance was a bit crowded, with several teams waiting in a line to enter and it reminded me of some MMORPGs where you formed a line to enter the maps where a special event was unfolding. "Is it always like this?" I asked someone else on the line as I waited for my turn.
"Only at this hour. It's common sense to enter earlier to avoid the rush hour but it couldn't be helped this time." I nodded in acceptance before waiting like the rest, looking at everyone and everything, trying to discern details and information from them.
I had lost the ability to see people's names, levels and titles at a glance in this world but that's to be expected since that was a more blatant aspect of Gaia's influence about my powers. Still I had a theory that I could re-learn some of my previous skills if I trained hard enough with them. Hopefully this theory will pan out in the end.
... still, that's a pretty damn big line.
~~O~~
Even with the line not really stopping it still took nearly an hour to enter the dungeon, but waiting for so long paid off in the end in more ways than I hoped.
Through a special action the magic skill Observe was created!
Observe: Use Activated
A magical skill that allows one to learn information about a target. More information can be learned at higher user level and higher ??? rank.
And it only took me looking at several different stuff as if my life depended on it, though considering that I got Observe after looking at a single enemy intently the first time and now it took me nearly an hour of constant effort while looking at several people, their equipment and even some of the architecture around me meant that skills would be hard to come even if they were simple before I came here. I shudder to think what it will take for me to relearn some of my best skills, and what kind of hell I will need to go through in order to relearn Brahmashirsha Astra once more. Then again it might be a good thing for me not to learn that spell, being at least four times stronger than a Brahmastra on it's lowest level, it was utterly devastating and could wipe out a large city like New York or Seul with a single strike.
I don't think there will be anything in this world that requires that much firepower.
"Observe", I muttered, but nothing happened and I frowned. I brought my skill list and sure enough, the skill was there so something else was wrong. Looking back at the skill description I noted how it was a 'magical skill', so this time I brought the Magic list which I learned was a thing yesterday when Hestia gave me my character sheet.
I was greeted with three empty panels, and once I clicked on one of them another panel appeared with a single icon on it. Changing it to a list sorting I saw that it was my observe. Clicking on it the skill appeared on the formerly empty panel. I toyed by putting the skill on any of the other empty panels but there wasn't any noticeable change so I left it where it was initially. Closing the panel I looked at someone else and muttered observe.
Jason Mint
Age: 22
Class: Blessed Adventurer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [GREEN]
Mana: [X]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility H
Dexterity H
Bio: A beginner adventurer that specializes in bows. Member of the Ganesha Familia.
Age: 22
Class: Blessed Adventurer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [GREEN]
Mana: [X]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility H
Dexterity H
Bio: A beginner adventurer that specializes in bows. Member of the Ganesha Familia.
Not nearly as useful as I initially thought but then again observe did started out quite basic. The fact that I can't really see the full health of the target other than a general full green bar was a bit annoying, but I will take what I can get. It was also interesting to see that he didn't had the magic ability, so it's not something that everyone could perform. In that regard I was fortunate that I was allowed to keep my magical talent. I wonder if Bell had magic.
That aside I noticed my own Mana bar sliding down a bit and slowly regenerating itself. Very, very, very slowly. While I didn't had a numeric value to represent my health and mana anymore, differently from my other traits, I did had an instinctual understanding of some of it's hidden values and I knew that it would take quite a while for my mana to regen itself to full. Hopefully with an increased magic stat things would change.
In the end I got how the magic worked for me. I got a magic skill and I had to equip that magic skill in order to use it. I had only three magic slots to equip my magic and they took a chunk of my mana bar when I used it, which regenerated at a glacial pace.
Looks like it will take a while for me if I want to become a magician once more. Back to basics I guess.
Time to sword my enemies to death.
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Birth of a Crazy Duo 2
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
There was a large hallway on the first floor which was named Beginning Road, and once we passed it the group I was following in spread out themselves to do their own thing. I did the same in order to map out the dungeon. Literally, in this case.
"Minimap", I said and sure enough a map of the region appeared in front of me and I was glad that I retained that feature, though it had it's own quirks. I need to have a map item on my inventory for it to work right since I don't have Gaia acting as a GPS anymore, and I had to keep a blank sheet of paper on my inventory if I wanted it to display on a new location. Fortunately blank paper was cheap enough and I bought it in bulk for my needs, alongside a map for the first floor to make sure that my minimap was working as intended.
With sword in hand I walked through the dungeon, exploring each hallway and room, all around me hearing sounds of battle from the other adventurers fighting the monsters. I turned into a few rooms where adventurers where fighting against monsters but they looked like they had it well in hand.
"Observe".
The two lowest grade monsters were dispatched quickly by the adventurers fighting them before they noticed me there. "Hey you, what are you look for?"
I raised my hands in a placating gesture, "just looking. First time in the dungeon, that's all".
"Yeah? Well, get back to your own business them, we're busy here!" The rude man said before picking a dagger and starting to disembowel the monsters. "Why are you still here?"
"What are you doing?" I asked, a bit curious. My answer was another glare from him.
"I'm going to pick up the magic stone, what does it look like?"
"Oh right, that. Sorry, just got a brain fart, that's all. I will be on my way." Looks like to anyone else the body don't disappear on a black smoke once they kill their enemies. Looks like my original 'loot' power is kept intact, even if it wasn't all that unique to me since 'loot plundering' was a thing on the Abyss. I just took that to a whole new level.
Turning back from the room I continued searching for some monsters to kill, with little success. After about half an hour of wandering the hallways did the wall at my side cracked and I prepared myself. A kobold emerged from it and was ready to charge at me first thing but I was faster and had already plundered my sword on it's chest, twisting it and slamming the monster on the ground for some extra damage. The creature whined once, before dissipating into black smoke and leaving behind a single magic stone the size of my nail.
Putting it on my inventory and I set out to the deeper floors, since this wasn't working. Perhaps at floors two or even three I will have more luck? When I arrived here yesterday there were more monsters coming after my hide before, but then again it was already late at night and there were few people coming in the dungeon. Perhaps until I get a feel for the dangers of the floors I should come only at night or dawn to avoid the rush hours? Heh, it reminded me of my days playing MMORPGs to be honest.
~~O~~
I was on the third floor which was still packed with people, and I still had killed a grand total of about three monsters after the course of one hour on the dungeon. The other adventurers protected their spots jealously and there was always a group of people going in and out across the hallways like a typical RPG character going in and out trying to trigger random encounters.
Though even with the rush hour, this was ridiculous. There's no way I can make a living killing monsters on the upper floors like this, let alone get stronger if that's how much opposition I will have while here. I was getting annoyed and though Gamer's Mind prevented me from acting irrationally from extreme of emotions, even protecting me from certain status effects like Berserk and Confusion it was still irking me to no end the current state of affairs. This felt like logging into a free-to-play server of a popular game and finding it packed with people.
I didn't dare to go too deep in the dungeon since I still need to find Bell and at the fifth floor onward the difficulty would ramp up slightly and I rather have some backup from someone more experienced like Bell to at least know when to run and cut my loses. Still, I was getting really irritated by this turn of events.
"Come on!" I yelled to no one in particular, letting my frustrations get the better of me for the time being, "is this the better you can do? Are you even trying to kill me, or are you afraid? Give me your best shot you coward!"
Through a special action the skill Taunt was created!
What, really? Out of all skills that would come back easy it's that one I get? I looked at the skill description and was surprised by it's content.
Taunt
The skill to taunt and enrage a target. Skill effectiveness increase with user's level
Very High chances for nearby enemies to switch targets to yourself
Moderate chances for increased encounter rate
Low chances for inflicting Berserk on a single target
All around me cracks started to form on the walls. One, two, four... ten cracks total, no wait, there are also some in the ceiling and one on the ground too. I readied my sword as the enemies came into view taking a moment to growl menacingly to me.
... I was fine with this.
Charging at an enemy in front of me I chopped off the top of it's skull, ignoring its death to go straight to the next enemy in line. Group battles were a grim, dirty thing, different from duels between two contestants. In a duel you can see both fighters using a lot of fancy techniques if they are good enough, but on group fights the rule of survival was basically to kill an enemy with a single strike and going at the next enemy immediately without letting them catching you off guard, since being held up for so long against a single enemy meant the ones behind you had a clear shot to your back and wouldn't hesitate to kill you with a sneak attack. There's no place for honor on the battlefield.
I stepped back and used the pommel to smash a goblin coming at me from behind, hearing a light 'crack' as I hit it's skull. Since the goblins where smaller it was easier to get head shots on them. I took the enemy taking a few steps backs as an opportunity to kick it back towards a couple of more goblins trying to swarm me while I quickly turned around and slashed at a kobold on it's tight earning a howl of pain before I turned to it's companion, disemboweling before twisting myself and finishing the kobold I had cut on the tight earlier. With this I created a gap in their formation and I quickly put all of them in front of me and I caught my breath for a moment before the enemies came charging at me once more.
They were relentless and had some degree of team work going on for them as they tried to circle me and never got in the way of each other, but making them get in the way of each other was mostly my job and I knew how to do it really well. Shoulder tackling a kobold back while tripping him made a patch of the floor the other enemies had to either turn around or jump over to get to me, and I showed them what happened if they tried to stay on the air as soon as it happened. When they turned around it became easier for them to block the passage of those behind and I keep tripping and throwing the enemies whenever possible until I managed to cull down those numbers into a manageable size and I started to finish off those enemies I had tripped before hand.
In no time all my enemies had been killed, and I started collecting the magic stones with a grin on my face as I confirmed that my health bar was still at high levels.
Yes, this is more like it.
"Minimap", I said and sure enough a map of the region appeared in front of me and I was glad that I retained that feature, though it had it's own quirks. I need to have a map item on my inventory for it to work right since I don't have Gaia acting as a GPS anymore, and I had to keep a blank sheet of paper on my inventory if I wanted it to display on a new location. Fortunately blank paper was cheap enough and I bought it in bulk for my needs, alongside a map for the first floor to make sure that my minimap was working as intended.
With sword in hand I walked through the dungeon, exploring each hallway and room, all around me hearing sounds of battle from the other adventurers fighting the monsters. I turned into a few rooms where adventurers where fighting against monsters but they looked like they had it well in hand.
"Observe".
Name: Goblin
Race: Goblin
Class: Monster
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [YELLOW]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility I
Dexterity I
Bio: The lowest kind of monster in the dungeon. Can pick up lost weapons and use them.
Race: Goblin
Class: Monster
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [YELLOW]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility I
Dexterity I
Bio: The lowest kind of monster in the dungeon. Can pick up lost weapons and use them.
Name: Kobold
Race: Kobold
Class: Monster
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [RED]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility I
Dexterity I
Bio: The lowest kind of monster in the dungeon. Can pick up lost weapons and use them, though it's rare.
Race: Kobold
Class: Monster
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [RED]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility I
Dexterity I
Bio: The lowest kind of monster in the dungeon. Can pick up lost weapons and use them, though it's rare.
The two lowest grade monsters were dispatched quickly by the adventurers fighting them before they noticed me there. "Hey you, what are you look for?"
I raised my hands in a placating gesture, "just looking. First time in the dungeon, that's all".
"Yeah? Well, get back to your own business them, we're busy here!" The rude man said before picking a dagger and starting to disembowel the monsters. "Why are you still here?"
"What are you doing?" I asked, a bit curious. My answer was another glare from him.
"I'm going to pick up the magic stone, what does it look like?"
"Oh right, that. Sorry, just got a brain fart, that's all. I will be on my way." Looks like to anyone else the body don't disappear on a black smoke once they kill their enemies. Looks like my original 'loot' power is kept intact, even if it wasn't all that unique to me since 'loot plundering' was a thing on the Abyss. I just took that to a whole new level.
Turning back from the room I continued searching for some monsters to kill, with little success. After about half an hour of wandering the hallways did the wall at my side cracked and I prepared myself. A kobold emerged from it and was ready to charge at me first thing but I was faster and had already plundered my sword on it's chest, twisting it and slamming the monster on the ground for some extra damage. The creature whined once, before dissipating into black smoke and leaving behind a single magic stone the size of my nail.
Putting it on my inventory and I set out to the deeper floors, since this wasn't working. Perhaps at floors two or even three I will have more luck? When I arrived here yesterday there were more monsters coming after my hide before, but then again it was already late at night and there were few people coming in the dungeon. Perhaps until I get a feel for the dangers of the floors I should come only at night or dawn to avoid the rush hours? Heh, it reminded me of my days playing MMORPGs to be honest.
~~O~~
I was on the third floor which was still packed with people, and I still had killed a grand total of about three monsters after the course of one hour on the dungeon. The other adventurers protected their spots jealously and there was always a group of people going in and out across the hallways like a typical RPG character going in and out trying to trigger random encounters.
Though even with the rush hour, this was ridiculous. There's no way I can make a living killing monsters on the upper floors like this, let alone get stronger if that's how much opposition I will have while here. I was getting annoyed and though Gamer's Mind prevented me from acting irrationally from extreme of emotions, even protecting me from certain status effects like Berserk and Confusion it was still irking me to no end the current state of affairs. This felt like logging into a free-to-play server of a popular game and finding it packed with people.
I didn't dare to go too deep in the dungeon since I still need to find Bell and at the fifth floor onward the difficulty would ramp up slightly and I rather have some backup from someone more experienced like Bell to at least know when to run and cut my loses. Still, I was getting really irritated by this turn of events.
"Come on!" I yelled to no one in particular, letting my frustrations get the better of me for the time being, "is this the better you can do? Are you even trying to kill me, or are you afraid? Give me your best shot you coward!"
Through a special action the skill Taunt was created!
What, really? Out of all skills that would come back easy it's that one I get? I looked at the skill description and was surprised by it's content.
Taunt
The skill to taunt and enrage a target. Skill effectiveness increase with user's level
Very High chances for nearby enemies to switch targets to yourself
Moderate chances for increased encounter rate
Low chances for inflicting Berserk on a single target
All around me cracks started to form on the walls. One, two, four... ten cracks total, no wait, there are also some in the ceiling and one on the ground too. I readied my sword as the enemies came into view taking a moment to growl menacingly to me.
... I was fine with this.
Charging at an enemy in front of me I chopped off the top of it's skull, ignoring its death to go straight to the next enemy in line. Group battles were a grim, dirty thing, different from duels between two contestants. In a duel you can see both fighters using a lot of fancy techniques if they are good enough, but on group fights the rule of survival was basically to kill an enemy with a single strike and going at the next enemy immediately without letting them catching you off guard, since being held up for so long against a single enemy meant the ones behind you had a clear shot to your back and wouldn't hesitate to kill you with a sneak attack. There's no place for honor on the battlefield.
I stepped back and used the pommel to smash a goblin coming at me from behind, hearing a light 'crack' as I hit it's skull. Since the goblins where smaller it was easier to get head shots on them. I took the enemy taking a few steps backs as an opportunity to kick it back towards a couple of more goblins trying to swarm me while I quickly turned around and slashed at a kobold on it's tight earning a howl of pain before I turned to it's companion, disemboweling before twisting myself and finishing the kobold I had cut on the tight earlier. With this I created a gap in their formation and I quickly put all of them in front of me and I caught my breath for a moment before the enemies came charging at me once more.
They were relentless and had some degree of team work going on for them as they tried to circle me and never got in the way of each other, but making them get in the way of each other was mostly my job and I knew how to do it really well. Shoulder tackling a kobold back while tripping him made a patch of the floor the other enemies had to either turn around or jump over to get to me, and I showed them what happened if they tried to stay on the air as soon as it happened. When they turned around it became easier for them to block the passage of those behind and I keep tripping and throwing the enemies whenever possible until I managed to cull down those numbers into a manageable size and I started to finish off those enemies I had tripped before hand.
In no time all my enemies had been killed, and I started collecting the magic stones with a grin on my face as I confirmed that my health bar was still at high levels.
Yes, this is more like it.
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Birth of a Crazy Duo 3
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
I grabbed the last of my magic stone and put it into the inventory, thanking planetmom that things inside of it stacks if they are similar enough. It would drive me mad to have to look for each individual magic stone I put there after I killed a hundred of those enemies. Not bad for about two hours of work. My basic idea had been simple: go to a large enough hallways and start taunting the dungeon until it coughed enemies for me to kill, kill them, ???, profit! It was genius in it's simplicity, really. The only sad thing was that at some point the same section of the wall and ceiling stopped giving me more monsters once I kill enough.
I could still hear the sounds of battle around me coming from the other groups, which meant the rush hour was still going strong. I was tempted to turn back and have some lunch, but frankly with Gamer's Body I don't need nearly as much food as a normal human, the status effect Starved only coming in after a whole day passes with me not eating anything, so I can work with only supper if I have to.
Looking at my blade I couldn't help but grin at the youthful reflection on it. I had tweaked the youth retaining spell to keep my looks on my early twenties, and I'm glad it's effects where still in effect. It was a rather high level spell after all, derived from a couple of minor related spells that I had prestiged before, technically counting as a life extension spell instead of a true youth regeneration spell.
Back to more important matters though, my blade was already starting to get bad from all the fights I had. I think the goblins and kobolds hide counted as at least leather armor and their bones where quite tough. Only when I got a good hit on their skulls on certain softer parts I could cut clean though it, but otherwise they resisted my blows quite persistently. As a result my blade was already starting to show signs of wear and tear, I probably need to invest on a whetstone to properly maintain my equipment. My armor is still in good condition, but that's mostly because I didn't get any good hits in. Hmm, if I want to regain my Physical Endurance skill I need to take damage but doing so in the dungeon is too risky. I guess I will need to do that, and though I'm loath to resort to such methods that skill saved my life more times that I can count.
A crack opened at my side but I simply elbowed the goblin before snapping it's neck as it came out of the wall, appearing on the world already dead and turning into black mist as soon as it touched the ground. I grabbed the magic stone before sighing. Should I head back to keep the outside and turn in my money and buy some more supplies, or keep going until my health hits fifty percent?
A man running for his life with a broken sword came in, and I turned my head to see he was being chased by a dungeon lizard, a somewhat rare monster compared with the goblins and kobolds that came to the bucket load. While I killed plenty of them with my taunt skill I had seen only seen about a dozen of the dungeon lizards being spawned by the walls.
"Observe".
So the guy running from the lizard probably messed up when attacking and got his weapon broken. With a quick roll to the side I let the lizard go past me and I stabbed it on it's hind legs, making the creature hiss in pain before I jumped on it's back and stabbed through it's head, killing it instantly and getting my magic stone.
I made a decision, and started to look out for the entrance to the fourth floor. I will throughly explore this floor at a later date, for now I want some more spending money, so I can start stock pilling on essential pots. Wonder how much would cost mana potions.
~~O~~
The fourth floor was more empty with certain sections of the dungeon, notably those away from the floor entrance, where I didn't need to use taunt for enemies to appear to me.
Still taunted the hell and back of the dungeon though, since to be honest the monster of this floor were all push overs, but even with their pathetic showing their greater taunt aided numbers managed to clip me a couple of times and I'm down by twenty five percent health and soon I would be pressed to return. It would be tempting to continue doing this until my health lowers to twenty five percent, but I wanted to play it safe for now until I got a good handle on my current limit.
Or I could stay here until I finally unlocked that mastery skill I was waiting for. Either a slashing weapons mastery or a sword mastery is fine by me at this point. When I heard some stepping sounds coming I prepared my weapon, but instead of seeing a goblin or a kobold running towards me it was a very red looking, and slightly cow stinking Bell,
"Hey Bell, what's uuuup?"
He promptly ignored me and keep running at top speed back to where I knew the floor entrance was located. What happened to him? I looked back on from where he came from, but nothing appeared from there. Also, I'm not really sure if there's anything with that much blood on him, it was a veritably shower of blood that he found himself in since there was no splash marks on his clothing that indicated that he were fighting with whatever did that to him. I had half a mind to follow him when the walls started to crack and another group of kobolds came in from the walls.
"Is that the best you can do? I saw little girls hitting harder than you!" Though calling master Loli a girl was a misnomer since she was already above... I can't do it. Not even in my head I can say her real age without feeling my Gamer's Mind to work on overdrive to suppress the shudder of deep seated horror I felt after first mentioning her age out loud.
When those last words came out of my mouth I heard more cracks on the walls coming from a long distance, not only the wall sections nearby me, and the kobolds that were already halfway through the walls howled in challenge, foaming at the mouth. Probably they got the status effect Berserk on them.
Challenge Accepted.
Well, at least taunt makes sure they focus on me instead of other people. I would feel terrible if some adventurer got killed because I was taunting the dungeon.
Dodging the sloppy attack of the enraged monster I put my head back into the game and started hacking at my enemies, sparing a brief thought to how long it would take for me to get that damn mastery skill.
~~O~~
"He he, yandere dungeon", I said with a giggle as I walked back from the streets towards the guild building. It was already noon and soon the primary exchange booth would close, and I didn't want to pay a premium for my nightly exchange from the more shady exchange booths (and wasn't that a kick in the nuts when I figured that out) or stay on that damn line that goes on and on and on.
"It's not like I send monsters to kill you because I care. Idiot", I muttered once more suppressing my giggle.
"What are you talking about mister Jee-han?" Came the voice of Eina as she came out of a booth, having finished talking with one of the adventurers she advise. "You seen to be in a good mooooo what happened to your armor?"
"It's a joke from my homeland, you wouldn't understand the reference I think", I said. I only knew the word yandere since I watched and read plenty of manga and anime on the internet, and there was plenty of video links to stuff on gaming forums after all.
"As for the my armor", I looked at where a kobold had gotten lucky and scratched my side, tearing some small chunks of it leaving three deep gashes on it. In the front there were some holes where the kobold stabbed at me leaving some large finger sized holes where my lungs where supposed to be. "Some kobold with unusually tough claws did it to me", it didn't helped that it was in a berserker state, and that it was a lot of kobolds instead of one. "No need to worry though, I'm fine", which was true. Even with them berserking my health only dropped to a little under fifty percent, enough to make my health bar turn yellow, but nothing to worry about.
"Let me see your body!" She said in a desperate tone, and the people around us stopped for a moment before focusing on us.
"Uhm, Eina, phrasing."
She realized what she said, turning a deep crimson. "Let's just... go to the private booths and talk alright?"
There was more snickering and she blushed even more, quickly scurrying to one of the private booths for us to talk to. Once there she demanded to see how hurt I was and I complied. As expected she saw my bloodied clothing, but underneath it there was unmarred skin. She sighed in relief but looked clearly curious as to how I managed that feat.
I debated with myself for a while before deciding to tell her the technical truth, the best kind of truth. "I have a skill that helps me with healing."
She looked pensive for a moment before nodding. "You're really lucky to have developed this skill as early as you did. Plenty of adventurers got themselves killed by not taking care of themselves."
I shrugged, already used to the way the Abyss worked. The strong lived, the weak died or became a mana battery. It was a truth that my friend both tried to protect me and warn me against, both in the sense that he didn't wanted me to be kidnapped and in the sense that he didn't wanted me to involve myself in the shadier dealings of the Abyss. Not that it worked, but it's the thought that counts, right?
"I was always been hard to kill", I said lamely to her before putting back my shirt on. "Still it's a shame the armor is damaged. Do I get a discount to repairing her if it comes from the guild or is it cheaper to buy another one?"
"I'm sure the guild can loan to you another one. If you diligently train on the upper floors you will be able to pay us back in no time, so don't worry about it and worry more about your safety."
Once more I shrugged. "Alright, though I plan to pay my loan as fast as possible though. Specially now that I have to get some new set of armor. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to exchange my magic stones and drop items if you don't mind."
"Oh please, go ahead", she said while standing up, "here, let me lead you to the booth."
I nodded and followed her, getting into a small line on it. "Uh, if you don't mind me asking, where are you keeping your magic stones?"
"Magic", I told her and she got a surprised look on her, "though technically it's a skill instead of a proper magic spell, but it's good enough to carry lots of stuff."
"Two skills so soon..." muttered Eina, "you're really lucky, did you know that Jee-han. Most adventurers takes years to get even a single skill, let alone two. Even high level adventurers don't have that many skills themselves."
"I was always a very skilled person", I said with a chuckle, though most of my early skills were related to gaming before I got The Gamer, and then I had myself more skills than a World of Warcraft character.
"You're from the Hestia Familia too, aren't you Jee-han?" Eina asked, looking at me form the side.
"Yes. What about it?"
"You seen to be a more reasonable person, recent accident aside. Please make sure to help curb some of Bell's recklessness."
I snorted at that. Who I am to tell others about recklessness? Still I had to say something reassuring I suppose. "I will help him to the best of my ability."
"That's all I ask. Oh, you're there already."
Sure enough I was already in front of the booth so I brought my inventory and pulled my stack of magic stones, taking a handful of them.
Then another, and another, and another, and another, until the box was overflowing with the little magic stones. When he got the magic stones inside the booth I opened back the small drawer and put the rest them into it.
When that finished I took my drop items, the items that remains when a monster is killed which symbolizes how stronger than the norm that particular monster was, all ten of them. five kobold nails, four goblin fangs and one dungeon lizard tail.
As I impatiently waited for the clerk to exchange my earnings for the day I took a glance around, seeing some of the other adventurers looking strangely at me until I saw Eina standing there, slack jawed while staring at me.
What's gotten into her?
"Did, did you loot the corpses of some of the adventurers you found on the dungeon?" She said with her voice a bit higher than normal.
"Really now? I thought I was higher on your esteem than that. If I found them dead on the dungeon I would bring them here for a funeral, not look at their pockets for loose change."
She sighed in relief before her eyes widened in realization. "How many monsters did you kill? How deep did you go?"
"Fourth floor", I said, "and I think I killed about a three hundred and something? The overwhelming majority were kobolds but I killed plenty of goblins and quite a few dungeon lizards."
The other adventurers looked at me with surprise, and some scoffed. For a moment I wondered how many monsters a typical adventurer kills through the day. Assuming a group of five monsters come out of a room each twenty minutes after eight hours of work that's about only twenty four encounters per day. On the other hand if they get the same amount of monsters each five minutes that's nearly a hundred. Hmm, yeah, that's how it went.
To be honest I was slightly disappointed with myself, even back on my scrub days I could kill a hundred zombies in less than one hour, but then again zombies, and I had more skills aiding me at the time. Hopefully when I get my mastery skill I can increase that number significantly.
Back to Eina though, she looked pissed. "You went to the fourth floor. Alone. On your second day, and you claim to have fought over three hundred monsters. Why didn't you run away earlier? What where you thinking?"
"Now now, don't be like that", I said in a placating tone, "I wasn't seriously injured. Everything turned out to be fine in the end, and I might not look like it, but I'm actually quite experienced in monster slaying."
She looked right into me, once more trying to divine any falsehoods like Hestia could. "Are you really a level one adventurer? You did say you lost your memories yesterday."
"I didn't had a Falna until yesterday if that's what you're asking, but I have plenty of experience killing monsters and making the most of the skills I have." Once more thank you Sun-Il, Sae-Young noona and master Loli. "But if it sets your mind at ease I will probably team up with Bell from now on to make things easier. I'm not in a hurry to die, after all."
She sighed in relief, before something clicked on her head and her eyes widened in horror. "Oh gods, there are two of them, and both Bell and Jee-han are of the same Familia. They can team up." She seemed to be weak on her knees and I caught her before she hit the floor.
"Are you alright Eina?" I asked her with concern, and she weakly nodded once before straightening herself up and looking sternly at me.
"Jee-han, you need to promise me not to do something as foolish as that again."
"Define 'foolish'".
"You know what I mean!" She said harshly, "I saw the state of your armor and if you fight against those odds the chance is that you will get seriously hurt or get yourself killed. As an adventurer you shouldn't go on an adventure, least you get yourself killed. Don't you fear death?"
I was silent for a moment thinking on my reply, and when I opened my mouth the window of the booth opened and the clerk handled me a heavy bag of valis.
"We will talk more later, it's already late and I still need to go back to my Familia." I said and she glared at me.
"This isn't over Jee-han." She said after a few moments, still frowning at me.
I just sighed. "I promise I will talk more with you. Later. See you tomorrow Eina."
With those last parting words I left, but I still count hear the faint voice of Eina back in the guild.
"What I am going to do with those two..."
~~O~~
"I'm home", I said as I entered the church, descending the stairs and reaching where we were sleeping for now. I was sharing the couch with Bell while Hestia got the bed, even if she made some insinuations about Bell sharing her bed with him, making the poor boy flustered.
"Welcome back", said Bell with some primitive toothbrush.
Hmm, need to get my essentials tomorrow with the money I just got. I hope either Bell or Hestia can help me with that.
"How did you day go?" He asked and I flopped on the ground, creaking my neck and sitting with my legs crossed on the couch, my two arms spread as I stared at the ceiling.
"Tiring, but profitable. How much do I need to contribute to the Familia's general funds. Fifteen, twenty five percent?"
Hestia looked up from where she was staring intently at Bell while pouting. "You don't need to worry about it right now. Just get yourself settled for now, but for future reference the usual tithe is only about ten percent, though Bell likes to provide more out of his own pocket even if it's not necessary since I also work myself."
"Let's call it twenty five percent then. Do you have a bag?" I said while bringing in my inventory and pulling out roughly twenty five percent of my earnings of the day. "I hope it's enough for general expenses. This place sure is falling apart at the seams."
"It's not that baaaaaWOAH!" Said Hestia when she looked at the amount of money I brought, about sixteen thousand, five hundred vali. "Where did you get this much? Did you steal from someone, you didn't had to go that far!"
"Why people keep calling me a thief or grave robber?" I said a bit annoyed at the implication. "I earned that money fair and square by killing the monsters and taking their stuff." I said with a huff.
"Sorry, it's just unusual to see that much money available." Hestia admitted with a blush. "I mean, not on your second day in the dungeon. But you didn't need to give us all your money, you can keep it for yourself. We are three people now, and if we all chip in we won't be in dire situations."
"Actually, that was the twenty five percent cut I was talking about. For myself I got sixty six thousand vali total, so I still get nearly fifty thousand for myself, plenty to stock on essential civilian and adventuring gear for myself."
They both bulged their eyes at my admission. "You're incredible Jee-han hyung!" Said Bell in an earnest tone. "As expected of someone who saved the world once."
I scoffed at that before flopping down on the couch. "I just grinded a lot. Got a new skill to help me with that by sending increasing the monster encounter rate. More xp, more money, can't really complain."
"Another skill?" Asked Hestia, "that's highly unusual, it's your fourth skill already right?"
"Fifth", I corrected her, "I got another skill, a magical skill called observe. Allows me to see other people stats and general information, though for now only bare bones of information is available."
"You also got magic", said Bell with a sigh, "haaaah, I really wish there was a way for me to increase my stats faster."
"I think there's a way for that, but first we need to get some more money first to get some more decent arms and armor. Then we can go grinding like crazy."
"Of course", he said while muttering 'whatever grinding means' before flopping back on the opposite side of the couch.
"Hey Jee-han", came Hestia voice and I opened my eyes, "don't you want to update your stats now?"
Right, I didn't even look at my stat screen today. Guess I need to take a peek at it more often since the level up mechanics are different now.
As I flopped down on the bed without my shirt, got over my back. "Hey Jee-han".
"Uh?"
"Did you had someone back in your world?"
"What do you mean?"
"Someone that you well... liked."
I was silent for a moment before I replied with my own question. "What prompted that question?"
"I mean... I'm just curious that's all. And maybe you can give me some tips?"
Tips? I looked up from where I was and saw Hestia blushing while taking a glance at Bell. Heh, so that's how it is.
"Sorry", I told her, "but I had no one. I tried going out with a few girls, but it didn't worked quite as well. I was still single when crossed to this world. As for tips... well, the only thing that I know works regardless of circumstances is to be honest. If it were to work out between you and whoever you have in mind being honest is the right thing to do."
"I see, thank you Jee-han, for everything."
"Huh?"
"You came here only yesterday and is already bringing in more money than both me and Bell combined in a single day, and you plan to further help Bell become stronger while keeping him safe. I really appreciate the help you're giving to us."
I stayed silent for a moment before just shrugging. "We're family now, right? And family help each other, so no big deal."
"Right." She said and I could almost feel her smile when she said that. "There, done. You raised your stats quite high today. It really shows that you worked hard."
"Heh, you saw nothing yet, just wait and see until I pick up some steam."
I could still hear the sounds of battle around me coming from the other groups, which meant the rush hour was still going strong. I was tempted to turn back and have some lunch, but frankly with Gamer's Body I don't need nearly as much food as a normal human, the status effect Starved only coming in after a whole day passes with me not eating anything, so I can work with only supper if I have to.
Looking at my blade I couldn't help but grin at the youthful reflection on it. I had tweaked the youth retaining spell to keep my looks on my early twenties, and I'm glad it's effects where still in effect. It was a rather high level spell after all, derived from a couple of minor related spells that I had prestiged before, technically counting as a life extension spell instead of a true youth regeneration spell.
Back to more important matters though, my blade was already starting to get bad from all the fights I had. I think the goblins and kobolds hide counted as at least leather armor and their bones where quite tough. Only when I got a good hit on their skulls on certain softer parts I could cut clean though it, but otherwise they resisted my blows quite persistently. As a result my blade was already starting to show signs of wear and tear, I probably need to invest on a whetstone to properly maintain my equipment. My armor is still in good condition, but that's mostly because I didn't get any good hits in. Hmm, if I want to regain my Physical Endurance skill I need to take damage but doing so in the dungeon is too risky. I guess I will need to do that, and though I'm loath to resort to such methods that skill saved my life more times that I can count.
A crack opened at my side but I simply elbowed the goblin before snapping it's neck as it came out of the wall, appearing on the world already dead and turning into black mist as soon as it touched the ground. I grabbed the magic stone before sighing. Should I head back to keep the outside and turn in my money and buy some more supplies, or keep going until my health hits fifty percent?
A man running for his life with a broken sword came in, and I turned my head to see he was being chased by a dungeon lizard, a somewhat rare monster compared with the goblins and kobolds that came to the bucket load. While I killed plenty of them with my taunt skill I had seen only seen about a dozen of the dungeon lizards being spawned by the walls.
"Observe".
Name: Dungeon Lizard
Race: Lizard
Class: Monster
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [GREEN]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility I
Dexterity I
Bio: A lizard type monster that walks on all fours and attacks with it's bite.
Race: Lizard
Class: Monster
Title: none
Level 1
Health: [GREEN]
Power I
Endurance I
Agility I
Dexterity I
Bio: A lizard type monster that walks on all fours and attacks with it's bite.
So the guy running from the lizard probably messed up when attacking and got his weapon broken. With a quick roll to the side I let the lizard go past me and I stabbed it on it's hind legs, making the creature hiss in pain before I jumped on it's back and stabbed through it's head, killing it instantly and getting my magic stone.
I made a decision, and started to look out for the entrance to the fourth floor. I will throughly explore this floor at a later date, for now I want some more spending money, so I can start stock pilling on essential pots. Wonder how much would cost mana potions.
~~O~~
The fourth floor was more empty with certain sections of the dungeon, notably those away from the floor entrance, where I didn't need to use taunt for enemies to appear to me.
Still taunted the hell and back of the dungeon though, since to be honest the monster of this floor were all push overs, but even with their pathetic showing their greater taunt aided numbers managed to clip me a couple of times and I'm down by twenty five percent health and soon I would be pressed to return. It would be tempting to continue doing this until my health lowers to twenty five percent, but I wanted to play it safe for now until I got a good handle on my current limit.
Or I could stay here until I finally unlocked that mastery skill I was waiting for. Either a slashing weapons mastery or a sword mastery is fine by me at this point. When I heard some stepping sounds coming I prepared my weapon, but instead of seeing a goblin or a kobold running towards me it was a very red looking, and slightly cow stinking Bell,
"Hey Bell, what's uuuup?"
He promptly ignored me and keep running at top speed back to where I knew the floor entrance was located. What happened to him? I looked back on from where he came from, but nothing appeared from there. Also, I'm not really sure if there's anything with that much blood on him, it was a veritably shower of blood that he found himself in since there was no splash marks on his clothing that indicated that he were fighting with whatever did that to him. I had half a mind to follow him when the walls started to crack and another group of kobolds came in from the walls.
"Is that the best you can do? I saw little girls hitting harder than you!" Though calling master Loli a girl was a misnomer since she was already above... I can't do it. Not even in my head I can say her real age without feeling my Gamer's Mind to work on overdrive to suppress the shudder of deep seated horror I felt after first mentioning her age out loud.
When those last words came out of my mouth I heard more cracks on the walls coming from a long distance, not only the wall sections nearby me, and the kobolds that were already halfway through the walls howled in challenge, foaming at the mouth. Probably they got the status effect Berserk on them.
Challenge Accepted.
Well, at least taunt makes sure they focus on me instead of other people. I would feel terrible if some adventurer got killed because I was taunting the dungeon.
Dodging the sloppy attack of the enraged monster I put my head back into the game and started hacking at my enemies, sparing a brief thought to how long it would take for me to get that damn mastery skill.
~~O~~
"He he, yandere dungeon", I said with a giggle as I walked back from the streets towards the guild building. It was already noon and soon the primary exchange booth would close, and I didn't want to pay a premium for my nightly exchange from the more shady exchange booths (and wasn't that a kick in the nuts when I figured that out) or stay on that damn line that goes on and on and on.
"It's not like I send monsters to kill you because I care. Idiot", I muttered once more suppressing my giggle.
"What are you talking about mister Jee-han?" Came the voice of Eina as she came out of a booth, having finished talking with one of the adventurers she advise. "You seen to be in a good mooooo what happened to your armor?"
"It's a joke from my homeland, you wouldn't understand the reference I think", I said. I only knew the word yandere since I watched and read plenty of manga and anime on the internet, and there was plenty of video links to stuff on gaming forums after all.
"As for the my armor", I looked at where a kobold had gotten lucky and scratched my side, tearing some small chunks of it leaving three deep gashes on it. In the front there were some holes where the kobold stabbed at me leaving some large finger sized holes where my lungs where supposed to be. "Some kobold with unusually tough claws did it to me", it didn't helped that it was in a berserker state, and that it was a lot of kobolds instead of one. "No need to worry though, I'm fine", which was true. Even with them berserking my health only dropped to a little under fifty percent, enough to make my health bar turn yellow, but nothing to worry about.
"Let me see your body!" She said in a desperate tone, and the people around us stopped for a moment before focusing on us.
"Uhm, Eina, phrasing."
She realized what she said, turning a deep crimson. "Let's just... go to the private booths and talk alright?"
There was more snickering and she blushed even more, quickly scurrying to one of the private booths for us to talk to. Once there she demanded to see how hurt I was and I complied. As expected she saw my bloodied clothing, but underneath it there was unmarred skin. She sighed in relief but looked clearly curious as to how I managed that feat.
I debated with myself for a while before deciding to tell her the technical truth, the best kind of truth. "I have a skill that helps me with healing."
She looked pensive for a moment before nodding. "You're really lucky to have developed this skill as early as you did. Plenty of adventurers got themselves killed by not taking care of themselves."
I shrugged, already used to the way the Abyss worked. The strong lived, the weak died or became a mana battery. It was a truth that my friend both tried to protect me and warn me against, both in the sense that he didn't wanted me to be kidnapped and in the sense that he didn't wanted me to involve myself in the shadier dealings of the Abyss. Not that it worked, but it's the thought that counts, right?
"I was always been hard to kill", I said lamely to her before putting back my shirt on. "Still it's a shame the armor is damaged. Do I get a discount to repairing her if it comes from the guild or is it cheaper to buy another one?"
"I'm sure the guild can loan to you another one. If you diligently train on the upper floors you will be able to pay us back in no time, so don't worry about it and worry more about your safety."
Once more I shrugged. "Alright, though I plan to pay my loan as fast as possible though. Specially now that I have to get some new set of armor. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to exchange my magic stones and drop items if you don't mind."
"Oh please, go ahead", she said while standing up, "here, let me lead you to the booth."
I nodded and followed her, getting into a small line on it. "Uh, if you don't mind me asking, where are you keeping your magic stones?"
"Magic", I told her and she got a surprised look on her, "though technically it's a skill instead of a proper magic spell, but it's good enough to carry lots of stuff."
"Two skills so soon..." muttered Eina, "you're really lucky, did you know that Jee-han. Most adventurers takes years to get even a single skill, let alone two. Even high level adventurers don't have that many skills themselves."
"I was always a very skilled person", I said with a chuckle, though most of my early skills were related to gaming before I got The Gamer, and then I had myself more skills than a World of Warcraft character.
"You're from the Hestia Familia too, aren't you Jee-han?" Eina asked, looking at me form the side.
"Yes. What about it?"
"You seen to be a more reasonable person, recent accident aside. Please make sure to help curb some of Bell's recklessness."
I snorted at that. Who I am to tell others about recklessness? Still I had to say something reassuring I suppose. "I will help him to the best of my ability."
"That's all I ask. Oh, you're there already."
Sure enough I was already in front of the booth so I brought my inventory and pulled my stack of magic stones, taking a handful of them.
Then another, and another, and another, and another, until the box was overflowing with the little magic stones. When he got the magic stones inside the booth I opened back the small drawer and put the rest them into it.
When that finished I took my drop items, the items that remains when a monster is killed which symbolizes how stronger than the norm that particular monster was, all ten of them. five kobold nails, four goblin fangs and one dungeon lizard tail.
As I impatiently waited for the clerk to exchange my earnings for the day I took a glance around, seeing some of the other adventurers looking strangely at me until I saw Eina standing there, slack jawed while staring at me.
What's gotten into her?
"Did, did you loot the corpses of some of the adventurers you found on the dungeon?" She said with her voice a bit higher than normal.
"Really now? I thought I was higher on your esteem than that. If I found them dead on the dungeon I would bring them here for a funeral, not look at their pockets for loose change."
She sighed in relief before her eyes widened in realization. "How many monsters did you kill? How deep did you go?"
"Fourth floor", I said, "and I think I killed about a three hundred and something? The overwhelming majority were kobolds but I killed plenty of goblins and quite a few dungeon lizards."
The other adventurers looked at me with surprise, and some scoffed. For a moment I wondered how many monsters a typical adventurer kills through the day. Assuming a group of five monsters come out of a room each twenty minutes after eight hours of work that's about only twenty four encounters per day. On the other hand if they get the same amount of monsters each five minutes that's nearly a hundred. Hmm, yeah, that's how it went.
To be honest I was slightly disappointed with myself, even back on my scrub days I could kill a hundred zombies in less than one hour, but then again zombies, and I had more skills aiding me at the time. Hopefully when I get my mastery skill I can increase that number significantly.
Back to Eina though, she looked pissed. "You went to the fourth floor. Alone. On your second day, and you claim to have fought over three hundred monsters. Why didn't you run away earlier? What where you thinking?"
"Now now, don't be like that", I said in a placating tone, "I wasn't seriously injured. Everything turned out to be fine in the end, and I might not look like it, but I'm actually quite experienced in monster slaying."
She looked right into me, once more trying to divine any falsehoods like Hestia could. "Are you really a level one adventurer? You did say you lost your memories yesterday."
"I didn't had a Falna until yesterday if that's what you're asking, but I have plenty of experience killing monsters and making the most of the skills I have." Once more thank you Sun-Il, Sae-Young noona and master Loli. "But if it sets your mind at ease I will probably team up with Bell from now on to make things easier. I'm not in a hurry to die, after all."
She sighed in relief, before something clicked on her head and her eyes widened in horror. "Oh gods, there are two of them, and both Bell and Jee-han are of the same Familia. They can team up." She seemed to be weak on her knees and I caught her before she hit the floor.
"Are you alright Eina?" I asked her with concern, and she weakly nodded once before straightening herself up and looking sternly at me.
"Jee-han, you need to promise me not to do something as foolish as that again."
"Define 'foolish'".
"You know what I mean!" She said harshly, "I saw the state of your armor and if you fight against those odds the chance is that you will get seriously hurt or get yourself killed. As an adventurer you shouldn't go on an adventure, least you get yourself killed. Don't you fear death?"
I was silent for a moment thinking on my reply, and when I opened my mouth the window of the booth opened and the clerk handled me a heavy bag of valis.
"We will talk more later, it's already late and I still need to go back to my Familia." I said and she glared at me.
"This isn't over Jee-han." She said after a few moments, still frowning at me.
I just sighed. "I promise I will talk more with you. Later. See you tomorrow Eina."
With those last parting words I left, but I still count hear the faint voice of Eina back in the guild.
"What I am going to do with those two..."
~~O~~
"I'm home", I said as I entered the church, descending the stairs and reaching where we were sleeping for now. I was sharing the couch with Bell while Hestia got the bed, even if she made some insinuations about Bell sharing her bed with him, making the poor boy flustered.
"Welcome back", said Bell with some primitive toothbrush.
Hmm, need to get my essentials tomorrow with the money I just got. I hope either Bell or Hestia can help me with that.
"How did you day go?" He asked and I flopped on the ground, creaking my neck and sitting with my legs crossed on the couch, my two arms spread as I stared at the ceiling.
"Tiring, but profitable. How much do I need to contribute to the Familia's general funds. Fifteen, twenty five percent?"
Hestia looked up from where she was staring intently at Bell while pouting. "You don't need to worry about it right now. Just get yourself settled for now, but for future reference the usual tithe is only about ten percent, though Bell likes to provide more out of his own pocket even if it's not necessary since I also work myself."
"Let's call it twenty five percent then. Do you have a bag?" I said while bringing in my inventory and pulling out roughly twenty five percent of my earnings of the day. "I hope it's enough for general expenses. This place sure is falling apart at the seams."
"It's not that baaaaaWOAH!" Said Hestia when she looked at the amount of money I brought, about sixteen thousand, five hundred vali. "Where did you get this much? Did you steal from someone, you didn't had to go that far!"
"Why people keep calling me a thief or grave robber?" I said a bit annoyed at the implication. "I earned that money fair and square by killing the monsters and taking their stuff." I said with a huff.
"Sorry, it's just unusual to see that much money available." Hestia admitted with a blush. "I mean, not on your second day in the dungeon. But you didn't need to give us all your money, you can keep it for yourself. We are three people now, and if we all chip in we won't be in dire situations."
"Actually, that was the twenty five percent cut I was talking about. For myself I got sixty six thousand vali total, so I still get nearly fifty thousand for myself, plenty to stock on essential civilian and adventuring gear for myself."
They both bulged their eyes at my admission. "You're incredible Jee-han hyung!" Said Bell in an earnest tone. "As expected of someone who saved the world once."
I scoffed at that before flopping down on the couch. "I just grinded a lot. Got a new skill to help me with that by sending increasing the monster encounter rate. More xp, more money, can't really complain."
"Another skill?" Asked Hestia, "that's highly unusual, it's your fourth skill already right?"
"Fifth", I corrected her, "I got another skill, a magical skill called observe. Allows me to see other people stats and general information, though for now only bare bones of information is available."
"You also got magic", said Bell with a sigh, "haaaah, I really wish there was a way for me to increase my stats faster."
"I think there's a way for that, but first we need to get some more money first to get some more decent arms and armor. Then we can go grinding like crazy."
"Of course", he said while muttering 'whatever grinding means' before flopping back on the opposite side of the couch.
"Hey Jee-han", came Hestia voice and I opened my eyes, "don't you want to update your stats now?"
Right, I didn't even look at my stat screen today. Guess I need to take a peek at it more often since the level up mechanics are different now.
As I flopped down on the bed without my shirt, got over my back. "Hey Jee-han".
"Uh?"
"Did you had someone back in your world?"
"What do you mean?"
"Someone that you well... liked."
I was silent for a moment before I replied with my own question. "What prompted that question?"
"I mean... I'm just curious that's all. And maybe you can give me some tips?"
Tips? I looked up from where I was and saw Hestia blushing while taking a glance at Bell. Heh, so that's how it is.
"Sorry", I told her, "but I had no one. I tried going out with a few girls, but it didn't worked quite as well. I was still single when crossed to this world. As for tips... well, the only thing that I know works regardless of circumstances is to be honest. If it were to work out between you and whoever you have in mind being honest is the right thing to do."
"I see, thank you Jee-han, for everything."
"Huh?"
"You came here only yesterday and is already bringing in more money than both me and Bell combined in a single day, and you plan to further help Bell become stronger while keeping him safe. I really appreciate the help you're giving to us."
I stayed silent for a moment before just shrugging. "We're family now, right? And family help each other, so no big deal."
"Right." She said and I could almost feel her smile when she said that. "There, done. You raised your stats quite high today. It really shows that you worked hard."
"Heh, you saw nothing yet, just wait and see until I pick up some steam."
Name: Han Jee-han
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Class: The Gamer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level: 1
Health: [YELLOW]
Mana: [RED]
Power I 1 -> 39
Endurance I 1 -> 30
Agility I 1 -> 35
Dexterity I 1 -> 40
Magic I 0 -> 20
V$: 49500
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Class: The Gamer
Job: Adventurer
Title: none
Level: 1
Health: [YELLOW]
Mana: [RED]
Power I 1 -> 39
Endurance I 1 -> 30
Agility I 1 -> 35
Dexterity I 1 -> 40
Magic I 0 -> 20
V$: 49500
Last edited:
Birth of a Crazy Duo 4
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
"Will I ever see them again?" I asked the being in front of me, dreading the answer.
"Would it really matter? A soul reincarnated doesn't remember their time on the afterlife, and eventually everyone will return for another spin at the wheel of karma."
"I know souls that were intimately connected once in their lives would eventually find themselves attracted once more in their next lives. My mother, my father, my friends, I would eventually meet with all of them. Will I be denied that?"
"I'm sorry", she finally answered, "but you are already far out of my grasp. This is only a recorded message, if an intelligent one, used to guide you on your next life. I can't bring you back, and even if you had the power to travel between worlds there's no guarantee that you can find me once more."
I felt like I had been stabbed on the chest, and for the first time since acquiring Gamer's Mind I was at complete loss of words, confused, angered, despaired and generally unable to properly think. It was difficult to breath and my mind was working on overdrive, reminding me of the good and bad times I had with those I cared about that I would never see again, neither in this life or the next.
A hand caressed me on the cheek. "I truly am sorry for what happened, but unfortunately I only have enough power to keep yourself alive after using the star of creation and to give you my last blessing, one that will manifest itself once you arrive into your new world to fit it it's metaphysics while giving you something close to what you already had. This is the least I can do for all the services you rendered to me."
There was regret in her voice before she closed her eyes and kissed me on the forehead affectionately, like a mother would their children. "While I can't help you directly anymore, go knowing you have earned my blessing twice over."
"Thank you... Gaia", I said at last, and the ground I was standing in shattered and I fell into the darkness.
~~O~~
You slept on a bed. Your Health, Mana and status effects where completely restored!
When I woke up I saw Hestia nestled between my legs and Bell chest. It was a bit uncomfortable, but I managed to slip away without waking both of them before I took the little goddess on my arms and putting her back on her bed. While the sight was cute I think that would be too much excitement for the poor boy of fourteen.
I stretched my back, hearing a loud popping sound before scratching my chin. I need to take this day to buy some things for me, and probably start cleaning up the place to get a proper sleeping room. Probably repurpose the upper floor into proper rooms, but I need to clean up the place, take a lot of trash out and buy a couple of screens to make it work. Hestia can keep the actual room for herself as the head of the Familia.
I will probably have to ask Hestia to show me around the city in order to buy my stuff and the supplies I'm thinking on bringing, though it's probably wise to ask her opinion on the matter. Or perhaps I could make her write down a list for her to buy while I go and make some more money for today, while I think that forty nine thousand was a good number I doubt it was enough to buy everything. Hmm, speaking of writing down stuff, I need to take some time and become literate in this language. While I could understand everyone well enough, I had absolutely no idea what any of the characters meant. It wasn't chinese script or western alphabet and definitely not korean.
"Fuaaaa~" Bell yawned on the couch, blinking his eyes and slowly waking up. "Good morning Jee-han".
"Good morning to you too", I nodded to him before he too stretched himself and started to get ready for his day, "are you going to accompany me to the dungeon today?"
I shake my head, "no, I was thinking on going shopping. While my armor didn't got totaled it's currently unusable, I need to buy a whetstone, not to counting I need to buy a few knick knacks for myself, like hygiene products and a larger set of clothes since what I'm wearing is already getting too torn down. That doesn't count the fact that I plan to refurbish the whole church to make it into a proper home, let alone a good enough headquarters for the Familia."
"You really have thought it through, Jee-han hyung. I mean you're only here for two days and already have a plan of action." He said while brushing his teeth.
"What I have are ideas instead of plans to be honest. I'm sure Hestia wanted to clean this place up, but with you tied most of the day going to the dungeon and the low amount of funds she couldn't do much I believe. Now that there are two of us we can have enough money to cover basic expenses and start improving our house."
He nodded before sighing. "Haaaa, I wish I were as reliable as you Jee-han hyung, sometimes I feel like I'm not contributing much."
I looked at Bell for a moment before walking towards him and slapping him behind his head.
"Ouch!"
"Don't say that. I had friends and mentors to help me, not counting the fact that I have years of experience in monster hunting and general combat while you're still a young newbie. It's only natural for me to have an edge for now, though it's also natural for someone in my position to help a young clueless adventurer like yourself", I said with a teasing smile, "just you wait, with my guidance you will be standing shoulders to shoulders with the best in no time flat."
"Heh, I really hope so Jee-han hyung, maybe if that happens..." he trailed off, with a dreamy smile on his face. I raised an eyebrow at him, but choose not to comment on what he was fantasying about.
A few minutes later he was done and left the church, leaving me with the unenviable task to wake up the little goddess so she can help me with my personal things and perhaps help cleaning up this mess.
... maybe I should go to the dungeon, after all.
~~O~~
Gamer's Mind proved it's worth once more as I struggled over the utterly boring task of cleaning the place, chopping wooden benches into firewood, sweeping the floor until it was utterly clean, taking away broken windows and generally cleaning the place of trash. While this much work was far from tiring, I still felt mentally drained. Who knew I would be missing that cleaning skill?
Still Hestia lived up to the goddess of Hearth purview she had and helped me organize everything I need to bring here to make things more comfortable, with us buying some more furniture for the house. She reluctantly agreed that Bell deserved to sleep on somewhere better than the couch without even a pillow to his name. A single bulk bed, sheets, pillows and two screens later and we had beginning of the 'boys' room. It was severely lacking in terms of privacy if I were to be honest with myself, but it was much better overall than trying to fit in that cramped couch. Hestia would still see plenty of us since the water and bathroom was on the lower floor attached to her own bedroom. We sill had plans to make a living room on the upper floor, but for that I would need more money.
With the leftover money I brought a couple of change of clothes, hygiene products, a new set of armor, a whetstone and I paid the loan for my sword and armor. It still left me with two thousand vali after several other expenses were paid, like stocking the pantry of the house, but I knew that I would eventually need more so I had to go to work today.
"Thank you for helping me today Hestia. I didn't knew you were working part time, if I did I wouldn't have dragged you into this."
"It's fine", she replied with a smile, "when I told my boss that I was helping my Familia get better settled he was understanding, I will only need to change my day off with someone else. Still you did most of the work inside the church, I only helped you with shopping."
"Which was admittedly the harder part in my opinion, since I couldn't read". While my observe helped distinguish when an item was of low or high quality, the places Hestia showed me were respectable enough that I didn't need to use that feature (much) to know when I was being ripped off. Her own innate ability to discern falsehoods also helped in that regard.
"You should take more pride in your accomplishments, for someone who didn't had anything before you did quite well yourself in such short amount of time".
I shrugged. "I just don't want to be a freeloader, that's all. Looking back I was always fortunate in my life, having it easy and only struggling at anything a few times in my life. I think that if I don't do my best I would dishonor the memories of those I left behind."
I felt something soft grabbing my hands, and I stared as Hestia had them clasped within hers. "You're like Bell, in a sense. I can tell, that you also lost something dear to you, and I wouldn't want to replace it in your heart, but perhaps your new Familia can help heal your emotional wounds."
Can I even get emotional wounds with Gamer's Mind? As usual when that question appeared I made my best to ignore it. Gamer's Mind was too much of an advantage to me to angst over useless things, though I still appreciated the concern Hestia was showing me. "Thank you", I finally replied with a smile, "but I'm fine, really. All taken care by Gamer's Mind."
She simply looked sadly at me, but nodded nonetheless. "Still, as part of the Familia, don't hesitate to ask for help. Both me and Bell would be more than glad to help you with your concerns."
"Thank you, really. I appreciate it", I said before I remembered something. "Well, speaking of concerns I need to take care of something now."
"What is it?" She asked clearly curious after seeing my grimace.
"I have an appointment with my advisor, and while the dungeon didn't managed to kill me until now, she will certain try if I ditch her today."
"Would it really matter? A soul reincarnated doesn't remember their time on the afterlife, and eventually everyone will return for another spin at the wheel of karma."
"I know souls that were intimately connected once in their lives would eventually find themselves attracted once more in their next lives. My mother, my father, my friends, I would eventually meet with all of them. Will I be denied that?"
"I'm sorry", she finally answered, "but you are already far out of my grasp. This is only a recorded message, if an intelligent one, used to guide you on your next life. I can't bring you back, and even if you had the power to travel between worlds there's no guarantee that you can find me once more."
I felt like I had been stabbed on the chest, and for the first time since acquiring Gamer's Mind I was at complete loss of words, confused, angered, despaired and generally unable to properly think. It was difficult to breath and my mind was working on overdrive, reminding me of the good and bad times I had with those I cared about that I would never see again, neither in this life or the next.
A hand caressed me on the cheek. "I truly am sorry for what happened, but unfortunately I only have enough power to keep yourself alive after using the star of creation and to give you my last blessing, one that will manifest itself once you arrive into your new world to fit it it's metaphysics while giving you something close to what you already had. This is the least I can do for all the services you rendered to me."
There was regret in her voice before she closed her eyes and kissed me on the forehead affectionately, like a mother would their children. "While I can't help you directly anymore, go knowing you have earned my blessing twice over."
"Thank you... Gaia", I said at last, and the ground I was standing in shattered and I fell into the darkness.
~~O~~
You slept on a bed. Your Health, Mana and status effects where completely restored!
When I woke up I saw Hestia nestled between my legs and Bell chest. It was a bit uncomfortable, but I managed to slip away without waking both of them before I took the little goddess on my arms and putting her back on her bed. While the sight was cute I think that would be too much excitement for the poor boy of fourteen.
I stretched my back, hearing a loud popping sound before scratching my chin. I need to take this day to buy some things for me, and probably start cleaning up the place to get a proper sleeping room. Probably repurpose the upper floor into proper rooms, but I need to clean up the place, take a lot of trash out and buy a couple of screens to make it work. Hestia can keep the actual room for herself as the head of the Familia.
I will probably have to ask Hestia to show me around the city in order to buy my stuff and the supplies I'm thinking on bringing, though it's probably wise to ask her opinion on the matter. Or perhaps I could make her write down a list for her to buy while I go and make some more money for today, while I think that forty nine thousand was a good number I doubt it was enough to buy everything. Hmm, speaking of writing down stuff, I need to take some time and become literate in this language. While I could understand everyone well enough, I had absolutely no idea what any of the characters meant. It wasn't chinese script or western alphabet and definitely not korean.
"Fuaaaa~" Bell yawned on the couch, blinking his eyes and slowly waking up. "Good morning Jee-han".
"Good morning to you too", I nodded to him before he too stretched himself and started to get ready for his day, "are you going to accompany me to the dungeon today?"
I shake my head, "no, I was thinking on going shopping. While my armor didn't got totaled it's currently unusable, I need to buy a whetstone, not to counting I need to buy a few knick knacks for myself, like hygiene products and a larger set of clothes since what I'm wearing is already getting too torn down. That doesn't count the fact that I plan to refurbish the whole church to make it into a proper home, let alone a good enough headquarters for the Familia."
"You really have thought it through, Jee-han hyung. I mean you're only here for two days and already have a plan of action." He said while brushing his teeth.
"What I have are ideas instead of plans to be honest. I'm sure Hestia wanted to clean this place up, but with you tied most of the day going to the dungeon and the low amount of funds she couldn't do much I believe. Now that there are two of us we can have enough money to cover basic expenses and start improving our house."
He nodded before sighing. "Haaaa, I wish I were as reliable as you Jee-han hyung, sometimes I feel like I'm not contributing much."
I looked at Bell for a moment before walking towards him and slapping him behind his head.
"Ouch!"
"Don't say that. I had friends and mentors to help me, not counting the fact that I have years of experience in monster hunting and general combat while you're still a young newbie. It's only natural for me to have an edge for now, though it's also natural for someone in my position to help a young clueless adventurer like yourself", I said with a teasing smile, "just you wait, with my guidance you will be standing shoulders to shoulders with the best in no time flat."
"Heh, I really hope so Jee-han hyung, maybe if that happens..." he trailed off, with a dreamy smile on his face. I raised an eyebrow at him, but choose not to comment on what he was fantasying about.
A few minutes later he was done and left the church, leaving me with the unenviable task to wake up the little goddess so she can help me with my personal things and perhaps help cleaning up this mess.
... maybe I should go to the dungeon, after all.
~~O~~
Gamer's Mind proved it's worth once more as I struggled over the utterly boring task of cleaning the place, chopping wooden benches into firewood, sweeping the floor until it was utterly clean, taking away broken windows and generally cleaning the place of trash. While this much work was far from tiring, I still felt mentally drained. Who knew I would be missing that cleaning skill?
Still Hestia lived up to the goddess of Hearth purview she had and helped me organize everything I need to bring here to make things more comfortable, with us buying some more furniture for the house. She reluctantly agreed that Bell deserved to sleep on somewhere better than the couch without even a pillow to his name. A single bulk bed, sheets, pillows and two screens later and we had beginning of the 'boys' room. It was severely lacking in terms of privacy if I were to be honest with myself, but it was much better overall than trying to fit in that cramped couch. Hestia would still see plenty of us since the water and bathroom was on the lower floor attached to her own bedroom. We sill had plans to make a living room on the upper floor, but for that I would need more money.
With the leftover money I brought a couple of change of clothes, hygiene products, a new set of armor, a whetstone and I paid the loan for my sword and armor. It still left me with two thousand vali after several other expenses were paid, like stocking the pantry of the house, but I knew that I would eventually need more so I had to go to work today.
"Thank you for helping me today Hestia. I didn't knew you were working part time, if I did I wouldn't have dragged you into this."
"It's fine", she replied with a smile, "when I told my boss that I was helping my Familia get better settled he was understanding, I will only need to change my day off with someone else. Still you did most of the work inside the church, I only helped you with shopping."
"Which was admittedly the harder part in my opinion, since I couldn't read". While my observe helped distinguish when an item was of low or high quality, the places Hestia showed me were respectable enough that I didn't need to use that feature (much) to know when I was being ripped off. Her own innate ability to discern falsehoods also helped in that regard.
"You should take more pride in your accomplishments, for someone who didn't had anything before you did quite well yourself in such short amount of time".
I shrugged. "I just don't want to be a freeloader, that's all. Looking back I was always fortunate in my life, having it easy and only struggling at anything a few times in my life. I think that if I don't do my best I would dishonor the memories of those I left behind."
I felt something soft grabbing my hands, and I stared as Hestia had them clasped within hers. "You're like Bell, in a sense. I can tell, that you also lost something dear to you, and I wouldn't want to replace it in your heart, but perhaps your new Familia can help heal your emotional wounds."
Can I even get emotional wounds with Gamer's Mind? As usual when that question appeared I made my best to ignore it. Gamer's Mind was too much of an advantage to me to angst over useless things, though I still appreciated the concern Hestia was showing me. "Thank you", I finally replied with a smile, "but I'm fine, really. All taken care by Gamer's Mind."
She simply looked sadly at me, but nodded nonetheless. "Still, as part of the Familia, don't hesitate to ask for help. Both me and Bell would be more than glad to help you with your concerns."
"Thank you, really. I appreciate it", I said before I remembered something. "Well, speaking of concerns I need to take care of something now."
"What is it?" She asked clearly curious after seeing my grimace.
"I have an appointment with my advisor, and while the dungeon didn't managed to kill me until now, she will certain try if I ditch her today."
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Birth of a Crazy Duo 5
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
I looked at building with dread before entering. Once there I asked for Eina who was attending to another adventurer that time and I waited on the lobby for a while. A few minutes later she appeared and looked calm, almost happy before seeing me and schooling her features.
"You really came back", she said in a light tone, "some of my coworkers thought you would run away."
"In my experience running away only makes you die tired", I answered. I was firmly an advocate of the tactical retreat option, but to run away from problems and hope they go away or pretend they're not your business anymore was never something I would condone. Sadly that was the wrong thing to do since Eina made a face.
"Perhaps it would have been better if you learned how to run away", she said softly while we walked to the more private booth. Once we seated, she went straight to the point. "Now please tell me how did you managed to fight against that many monsters in the dungeon, and why you thought it was a good idea to challenge them."
"Now, the way you mention it is like I fought against this large swarm at once, when in reality most of my encounters were against five to twelve enemies at once."
"That's still a dangerous number to fight against", she said before frowning, or at least frowning deeper. "Even if you fought against five enemies at once, you'd still take several hours to kill that many. In between the fights, extracting the magic stones and wandering the dungeon in search for more monsters to kill. Even if you can defeat all your enemies in ten minutes, there's at least another five to ten minutes to extract the magic stones, then at least five more minutes for another group of monsters to appear from the wall. Even assuming that you got", at this she hesitated, not really wanting to use the word 'lucky' or 'fortunate' here, "the events lined up to to match your story, it would still take an inordinately large amount of time for that to happen. I thought it over yesterday with a cooler head and the only method which you could have gotten that many magic stones where if you stole almost all of the adventuring parties on the first four floors, but since we didn't get a single report of thievery yesterday that's extremely unlikely."
"That's a good analysis", I nodded to her, "though it's based on wrong data. I can correct you on some assumptions, but so long as this information isn't leaked. I prefer to keep my secrets close to my chest and this isn't something to be shared with someone outside my Familia."
"You have my word that your secret is safe with me." She said and I stared back at her trying to discern if she was lying. Sadly my observe wasn't good enough yet to help me distinguish when someone could or couldn't be trustworthy.
"It will have to do for now", I said with a sigh. "Let's address the issue of numbers first. To put it simply, I have a skill that allows me to call more monsters to me. With it I can call between three to five batches of enemies in quick succession from the same part of the dungeon and they all come in packs of five to twelve enemies, after that I run to another section of the dungeon and repeat the process once more." She gasped at my admission, though I wasn't certain if it was because I had yet another skill or because I always fought a large number of enemies at once.
"As for my skills I'm actually an experienced monster hunter. Against unarmored enemies with amateurish technique with only their instincts helping them I can usually deliver a single killing blow in between one to five seconds it takes to reach the enemy depending on the positioning. I admit I had more problems against dungeon lizards since I didn't knew exactly where their weak spots were, but once I figured them out it was fairly easy to dispatch them. I could keep up this pace since I'm really good at keeping my pace, if I don't have a strong opponent to occupy myself I can deal with scores of mooks basically forever."
She was staring at me a bit skeptical of my prowess, but the gears on her head were turning. There was only one last part for the puzzle pieces to all fit in. "There's also a last skill that makes sure that after a monster is killed I can extract it's magical stone as easily as picking it up from the ground meaning I don't waste time gutting the monsters to pick it up", I finished with the technical truth.
She stayed silent for a moment, doing the math in her head before she nodded. "If that were the case, then the amount of magic stones you brought would match up with the number you claimed to have killed. Still, that's what, four skills you have not even getting a Falna for three days?"
I shrugged, "I was always a very skilled person", I said earning a groan from Eina and I grinned at her. "Hestia said that I started with some skills already, and that while uncommon it wasn't unheard off. I did gain my last skill, the one that increases the encounter rate inside the dungeon while exploring it. To be honest I was getting bored while wandering the halls of the first floors until everything started to go crazy and the dungeon tried it's hardest to kill me. I admit it was a bit tiring and there were a few close calls, but overall everything went according to plan. What I do might look crazy, but there's a method to my madness." I finished, and she took a deep breath before sighing. "Besides, I already had a Falna beforehand. I now got most of my memories back if you're wondering."
"Oh, that's fortunate Jee-han. Can you tell me then what happened for you to be doing inside the dungeon without armor with a scavenged weapon?"
"No. Sorry, but I prefer to keep the particulars of that story to myself and make it a secret I will take to the grave."
She chuckled, a bit more at ease than before. "Must have been an amusing tale then."
"You have no idea", I muttered to myself before standing up. "Well, I think that's taken care off. I'm off to the dungeon to earn some pocket money since I spent most of what I had earned yesterday on essentials and new equipment."
"I saw your new armor", she said in an appreciating tone. It was a set of armor with a chain vest underneath an unadorned breastplate with matching greaves and breastplates, an open helmet to protect my head but still open enough to not impede my field of vision or hearing. "I must say you're quite dashing in that outfit."
"I admit I'm not used to wearing armor, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I performed a few test swings with it on already and it won't impair my movements much. The extra protection will certainly come in handy, though it was a bit expensive overall. Still, the Hephaestus Familia does good work."
"They certainly do", she said before looking down, "sorry Jee-han for doubting you. I thought you were some kind of clueless rookie that got in over his head and didn't knew how to quit, but clearly you know what you're doing. Still, for my peace of mind please be careful with your skill to attract more monsters, for your sake if nothing else."
She sounded almost desperate when making her plea, and I could see her point. The dungeon was already dangerous enough with the normal encounter rate, to have it increased on demand was simply surreal from her point of view. After all who would put yourself into danger like that willingly? Only the foolish and the desperate, that's who.
"Don't worry, I'm not irresponsible enough to call a large mob just to be unable to kill it later so you don't need to worry about large groups of monsters wandering the dungeon corridors. I also make sure to only engage with as many enemies as I'm comfortable with. I said that running only makes you die tired, but I'm a firm believer of the tactical retreat option so you don't need to worry for me doing something reckless for no reason."
"I admit its a bit unbelievable the tale you told me, but according to my coworkers there are stranger tales floating around. Still, come back to me if you have any question about the dungeon or the enemies within it. At the very least with that skill you don't need to go deeper into the dungeon for a while. Even if you're stronger than a rookie that doesn't mean the lower floors aren't difficult to deal with normally, let alone if you call more monsters to yourself. Please make very sure you can deal with those monsters before doing anything reckless on the lower floors, after some point the enemies not only become stronger, but they also become smarter."
I nodded grimly, smart enemies where the worst enemies even if they were individually weak since they never came alone. Considering taunt can bring in a whole horde of enemies and there's a chance for them to go berserk if I use it too many times or don't time it correctly when they are appearing on the wall.
"Also please don't drag Bell into your expeditions. While you appear to be fine while fighting such great number of enemies, Bell is still inexperienced and weak as a rookie adventurer. While I don't want to speak ill of him behind his back, that's the factual truth."
"I promise I will keep an eye on him and will help him get stronger", I said while turning around, waving at her with my back turned. "See you tomorrow Eina."
"... that's not what I asked him."
"You really came back", she said in a light tone, "some of my coworkers thought you would run away."
"In my experience running away only makes you die tired", I answered. I was firmly an advocate of the tactical retreat option, but to run away from problems and hope they go away or pretend they're not your business anymore was never something I would condone. Sadly that was the wrong thing to do since Eina made a face.
"Perhaps it would have been better if you learned how to run away", she said softly while we walked to the more private booth. Once we seated, she went straight to the point. "Now please tell me how did you managed to fight against that many monsters in the dungeon, and why you thought it was a good idea to challenge them."
"Now, the way you mention it is like I fought against this large swarm at once, when in reality most of my encounters were against five to twelve enemies at once."
"That's still a dangerous number to fight against", she said before frowning, or at least frowning deeper. "Even if you fought against five enemies at once, you'd still take several hours to kill that many. In between the fights, extracting the magic stones and wandering the dungeon in search for more monsters to kill. Even if you can defeat all your enemies in ten minutes, there's at least another five to ten minutes to extract the magic stones, then at least five more minutes for another group of monsters to appear from the wall. Even assuming that you got", at this she hesitated, not really wanting to use the word 'lucky' or 'fortunate' here, "the events lined up to to match your story, it would still take an inordinately large amount of time for that to happen. I thought it over yesterday with a cooler head and the only method which you could have gotten that many magic stones where if you stole almost all of the adventuring parties on the first four floors, but since we didn't get a single report of thievery yesterday that's extremely unlikely."
"That's a good analysis", I nodded to her, "though it's based on wrong data. I can correct you on some assumptions, but so long as this information isn't leaked. I prefer to keep my secrets close to my chest and this isn't something to be shared with someone outside my Familia."
"You have my word that your secret is safe with me." She said and I stared back at her trying to discern if she was lying. Sadly my observe wasn't good enough yet to help me distinguish when someone could or couldn't be trustworthy.
"It will have to do for now", I said with a sigh. "Let's address the issue of numbers first. To put it simply, I have a skill that allows me to call more monsters to me. With it I can call between three to five batches of enemies in quick succession from the same part of the dungeon and they all come in packs of five to twelve enemies, after that I run to another section of the dungeon and repeat the process once more." She gasped at my admission, though I wasn't certain if it was because I had yet another skill or because I always fought a large number of enemies at once.
"As for my skills I'm actually an experienced monster hunter. Against unarmored enemies with amateurish technique with only their instincts helping them I can usually deliver a single killing blow in between one to five seconds it takes to reach the enemy depending on the positioning. I admit I had more problems against dungeon lizards since I didn't knew exactly where their weak spots were, but once I figured them out it was fairly easy to dispatch them. I could keep up this pace since I'm really good at keeping my pace, if I don't have a strong opponent to occupy myself I can deal with scores of mooks basically forever."
She was staring at me a bit skeptical of my prowess, but the gears on her head were turning. There was only one last part for the puzzle pieces to all fit in. "There's also a last skill that makes sure that after a monster is killed I can extract it's magical stone as easily as picking it up from the ground meaning I don't waste time gutting the monsters to pick it up", I finished with the technical truth.
She stayed silent for a moment, doing the math in her head before she nodded. "If that were the case, then the amount of magic stones you brought would match up with the number you claimed to have killed. Still, that's what, four skills you have not even getting a Falna for three days?"
I shrugged, "I was always a very skilled person", I said earning a groan from Eina and I grinned at her. "Hestia said that I started with some skills already, and that while uncommon it wasn't unheard off. I did gain my last skill, the one that increases the encounter rate inside the dungeon while exploring it. To be honest I was getting bored while wandering the halls of the first floors until everything started to go crazy and the dungeon tried it's hardest to kill me. I admit it was a bit tiring and there were a few close calls, but overall everything went according to plan. What I do might look crazy, but there's a method to my madness." I finished, and she took a deep breath before sighing. "Besides, I already had a Falna beforehand. I now got most of my memories back if you're wondering."
"Oh, that's fortunate Jee-han. Can you tell me then what happened for you to be doing inside the dungeon without armor with a scavenged weapon?"
"No. Sorry, but I prefer to keep the particulars of that story to myself and make it a secret I will take to the grave."
She chuckled, a bit more at ease than before. "Must have been an amusing tale then."
"You have no idea", I muttered to myself before standing up. "Well, I think that's taken care off. I'm off to the dungeon to earn some pocket money since I spent most of what I had earned yesterday on essentials and new equipment."
"I saw your new armor", she said in an appreciating tone. It was a set of armor with a chain vest underneath an unadorned breastplate with matching greaves and breastplates, an open helmet to protect my head but still open enough to not impede my field of vision or hearing. "I must say you're quite dashing in that outfit."
"I admit I'm not used to wearing armor, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I performed a few test swings with it on already and it won't impair my movements much. The extra protection will certainly come in handy, though it was a bit expensive overall. Still, the Hephaestus Familia does good work."
"They certainly do", she said before looking down, "sorry Jee-han for doubting you. I thought you were some kind of clueless rookie that got in over his head and didn't knew how to quit, but clearly you know what you're doing. Still, for my peace of mind please be careful with your skill to attract more monsters, for your sake if nothing else."
She sounded almost desperate when making her plea, and I could see her point. The dungeon was already dangerous enough with the normal encounter rate, to have it increased on demand was simply surreal from her point of view. After all who would put yourself into danger like that willingly? Only the foolish and the desperate, that's who.
"Don't worry, I'm not irresponsible enough to call a large mob just to be unable to kill it later so you don't need to worry about large groups of monsters wandering the dungeon corridors. I also make sure to only engage with as many enemies as I'm comfortable with. I said that running only makes you die tired, but I'm a firm believer of the tactical retreat option so you don't need to worry for me doing something reckless for no reason."
"I admit its a bit unbelievable the tale you told me, but according to my coworkers there are stranger tales floating around. Still, come back to me if you have any question about the dungeon or the enemies within it. At the very least with that skill you don't need to go deeper into the dungeon for a while. Even if you're stronger than a rookie that doesn't mean the lower floors aren't difficult to deal with normally, let alone if you call more monsters to yourself. Please make very sure you can deal with those monsters before doing anything reckless on the lower floors, after some point the enemies not only become stronger, but they also become smarter."
I nodded grimly, smart enemies where the worst enemies even if they were individually weak since they never came alone. Considering taunt can bring in a whole horde of enemies and there's a chance for them to go berserk if I use it too many times or don't time it correctly when they are appearing on the wall.
"Also please don't drag Bell into your expeditions. While you appear to be fine while fighting such great number of enemies, Bell is still inexperienced and weak as a rookie adventurer. While I don't want to speak ill of him behind his back, that's the factual truth."
"I promise I will keep an eye on him and will help him get stronger", I said while turning around, waving at her with my back turned. "See you tomorrow Eina."
"... that's not what I asked him."