Half an hour later.

Chan Si’s group had made good progress, with Gearme hitting level 11 and everyone else level 10.

The higher she leveled her group, the less advantage she would get from hunting higher leveled enemies, as the amount proportional experience difference between one level to the next decreased.

This wasn’t a bad thing however, as she would simply begin fighting the highest leveled enemies that Gearme could one-shot, or possibly slightly lower if it meant the rest of her part could deal with more enemies.

While leveling, Sunshine got another [Skill], and Ulna got two!

Sunshine’s was an AoE fire spell, Flame Pillar. The AoE was small and the damage middling for how much mana it required, but the raw values were not bad, and it had a long range. It wouldn't be used outside of special situations.

Ulna’s first skill was the passive base movement speed increase, Practiced Steps; Ulna now moved 1.5 times as faster than any of Chan Si's other characters before any other buffs!

Her second was a [Skill] Chan Si had been waiting for, Lift. It allowed the True Totem Demon to pick up an ally and move them around according to the True Totem Demon’s movement, though it would constantly drain the True Totem Demon's stamina.

Ulna could not attack or use damaging [Skills] while using Lift, but the companion she picked up would be able to, and Ulna could still use non-damaging [Skills].

This not only gave her an escape plan with the faster than normal movement speed of Ulna, but was something Chan Si thought had great exploit potential. If nothing else, it would improve the effective range at which Gearme could kite back powerful enemies, if she dedicated Ulna to the task.

Currently Chan Si's group was farming just south of the Weeping Forest. Now that they were of an appropriate level, she would spend some time gathering bones and obtaining Sunshine's two elementals before venturing into the Weeping Forest.

This is where Pickapart's potential was realized!

Chan Si needed a truly staggering number of appropriately powerful bones for their level to fill out Ulna's slots and make the gear.

The group set up near some Unusually Large Voles, a level 10 Uncommon enemy. They did not have an aggro group, but Chan Si recently picked up a few weak but fast firing bows, only 1.5 seconds. She had both Gearme and Ulna equip them to draw in as many Unusually Large Voles into the AoE as possible, while Maybetasty also used their ranged attack, and Sunshine focused on healing any of them who got low health from the enemy's attacks.

Pickapart's main damage routine: Light Pulling Weave, Light Pulling Weave, Light Pulling Weave, Light Pulling Weave, Gravity Binding Weave, Dark Charging Weave, Dark Charging Weave.

This damage would not be enough to kill the Voles, which was why Pickapart then used the Dark Charging Weave three more times.

The first activated [Collapsing Star], applying a 5 second debuff that reduced enemy Dark and Light resistance by 200 at level 10, but this did nothing as the Voles had no resistance to either element.

The second activated [End of Light], another 5 second debuff that reduced enemy healing received by 80%, and again it did nothing in this instance.

What Pickapart was after was the third and final cast, which activated [Absolute Oblivion], a 5 second debuff that increased enemy Dark damage taken by 40%; 50% after the 25% strength boost.

Then, the weave expired, activating every effect at once.

All the Unusually Large Voles died!

Immediately Ulna got to work ripping the bones from their corpses and crafting while the rest of the team continued to kill more voles.

When she was done, there were three sets of uncommon bone gear, and Ulna had fully replaced her own bones as well. Furthermore, the group had leveled again as a whole, allowing Gearme to equip Repeater.

Then Gearme applied the enchantments he had prepared to the bone gear.

For Pickapart, the enchantments were all threat reducers, it would severely reduce the amount of taunt skills needed later on to keep enemy aggro off her.

For Sunshine, they were the same, as healing could generate lots of threat.

It was an enchantment that could be applied to any slot of gear.

However, for Ulna, Gearme had three different enchantments.

For the boots and legs, an enchantment which resisted movement speed decreases - the first 10% of movement speed decrease would do nothing, per enchantment, so a total of 40%.

For the chest and helmet, Magic Resist. It wasn't a lot, just 2 points per enchantment, but it applied to all elements except Toxic and would assist Ulna in tanking against enemies with magic attacks. At level 11, she resisted the first 88 points of damage from all elements.

Finally, for the gloves, it was the-

“Salutations!"

Before Gearme could apply the gloves enchantment, the group was interrupted.

A lone human man dressed like a cowboy, but carrying a scythe for a weapon, approached the group. However, the scythe was carried haphazardly, and his other hand was raised in a friendly greeting. He had the easy gait of a confident, high level player.

The general collection of starting areas in the game were relatively clustered together and a low enough level that it was rare to see high level players outside player trading hubs unless they were traveling between them, but Chan Si's group was far off from the normal paths. She wondered if it was related to the two players that had been following Sunshine previously.

Gearme only stopped from his task momentarily, and went back to applying the Phantom Strike enchantment to the gloves, which applied a small constant range boost on melee attacks for the wearer. This would help Ulna hit enemies that were behind others even though she was not wielding a long weapon, which was useful to draw additional aggro in a congested battlefield.

Why would Chan Si waste her time talking to someone she had no reason to talk to? If they had something important to say, they should say it.

Otherwise, she would ignore them!

The scythe wielding cowboy turned on public display of his name, [Ludwig]. A player's name would generally only display if they chose to do so, if they used the in-game text chat, or if they engaged in PvP within the last 24 hours; Pickapart's name was the only displayed of Chan Si's group, for using Grasping Shadow on Maybetasty.

Between his appearance and his name, Ludgwig's was the same as the rank 99th player, of the [Wandering Executioner] class.

Nonetheless, Chan Si continued to ignore him!

Ludwig laughed. “I can see you're wary of me. Here, I'll prove myself."

He raised his scythe high into the air and began chanting.

The sky turned dark and many clouds rolled in.

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, and rain cascaded from heaven to earth!

It was a unique [Skill] of the Legendary scythe [Cloudkill]. It was the highest level Legendary scythe in the game, and currently only Ludwig was known to have one.

Of course, there was really no reason for him to do so, Chan Si had memorized the unique numbers next to the name of the top 100 players, able to confirm their identity with a glance. Ludwig was just showing off.

Thus, she still ignored him!

In fact, since she was finished here, she was already moving her group to obtain the elementals for Sunshine!

Ludwig brow's furrowed and lips curled down, but shortly thereafter a smiled returned to his face. “Alright, how many of you have mains that are a higher rank than me? I won't be offended."

Naturally, he received no reply.

He ran in front of the group. “I'll state it clearly, then. We want you,” he pointed to Ulna, “to join In Paradise!"

In Paradise was the guild in 6th place in the overall guild rankings.

This finally got Chan Si's attention, and she did not ignore Ludwig any longer, though she did not stop moving, either. Ulna asked, “What will you give me?”

Not ‘why’, not 'how did you find me', but ‘what will you give me’!

Chan Si did not plan to interrupt her farming, but if the benefits were high enough and costs low enough, of course she would join, take everything she could get away with, and leave the guild as soon as it was no longer convenient for her!

She did not care about her reputation. If they wanted to take revenge on her after she did so, she would make it as difficult as possible for them. It would likely take away from her effeciency, but the resources the top 10 guilds had access to were immense, gaining a good amount upfront would be overall more efficient even with that factor, in Chan's Si calculations.

Ludwig laughed again. “The guild leader will contact you in the next few hours.”

One could send a friend request in game to another player they could see, even if they did not know their name. Alternatively, if one did know their name and unique number, it could be sent no matter what. Ulna received one from Ludgwig and accepted, which allowed him to view her name and number to pass to the guild leader.

===

Ludwig ran off quite quickly - as a high level player, he had access to many out of combat speed buffs from items alone - but before he exited the area, he noticed a Ultomato skulking. Judging this ghoul to be weak, Ludwig figured he'd kill him for Ulna in case he was ganker, or otherwise bothering her.

If it turned out a misunderstanding occurred, smoothing it over would be as simple as explaining himself and giving proper compensation, a common practice for high ranked players who engaged in preventive PvP. Nobody important would be offended unless it was frequent or pretense.

Ludwig had not seen the clip, and wasn't a particularly clever person who would ask himself how Ulna was found.

Slorp.

Ultomato was decapitated.

Somewhere in Connecticut, there was a muffled scream.

===

Naturally, Chan Si put together she was being watched due to Ludwig approaching Ulna. She did not know it was a stream, but it was among her possibilities.

Her opinion was it simply did not matter!

As many or as few people could watch her as they wanted, so long as they did not interrupt her farming, or otherwise bother her plans.

There was a spot nearby that contains all kinds of common elementals. It was the [Pulsing Valley], just to the southwest. On the way, Gearme would occasionally fire an arrow at a nearby enemy, killing them instantly. Since Chan Si could have her group gain experience while moving in this way, of course she would.

Previously she did not due not wanting her group to have overly mismatched levels, but now of course she would so long as the enemies were one-shotable. Even if the kill was very low leveled such that there was a big experience penalty, as long as it was worth anything there was no reason to not due so.

It was poor efficiency as a farming method, but high efficiency in that Chan Si sacrificed basically nothing for it, only an arrow per kill which she could trivially replenish!

The group descended into the valley, and various Elementals wandered throughout. The closer one got to the center of the valley, the stronger they would get. Chan Si only needed to fight a small way through the outskirts to reach her first target.

[Fuelborne Beetle]

The Fuelborne Beetle was a fire-type Elemental in the shape of a large black beetle with a glowing red underbelly and pincers, looking like a hot piece of coal that walked. It had some of the best defensive stats among Common fire elementals, and would radiate a small amount of constant fire damage while in combat, helping draw aggro to it despite the lack of taunts. It could also jump and fly short distances quickly, making it easy to change positions if prudent.

Chan Si's group battled it until its health was low, being careful not to kill it, until Sunshine used her [Skill], Taming the Elements!

She now owned her first pet!

The game prompted her to enter a name for it, so Sunshine deleted most of the default to name it [Fuel].

The light elementals were in a cave system connected to the valley. The one Sunshine wanted was the [Bright One], which appeared as an ape with white fur, the wispy tail of a genie in place of feet, and a halo. They could taunt using bright flashes of light from their halo that could also inflict an additional miss chance debuff.

Elementals, even common ones, were very strange.

This capture was trivial as well, and Sunshine named her second pet [Brighty].

The most common name given to this pet by English speaking players was Glowrilla.

When Sunshine obtained higher rarity elementals they would have many more abilities, but this was good enough for the time being. They just had to sit and act as meatwalls, occasionally hitting enemies or taunting.

Before leaving the valley, Chan Si visited its secret merchant.

Some locations in the game had secret merchants players could sell things to, and pick up basic supplies from, though the former was under-priced and the latter overpriced. However, it was more efficient for Chan Si to sell to one the moment, rather than travel to a proper town, since she still had a lot of farming left to do and nothing she had picked up so far was particularly valuable.

Players did not know of the secret merchant locations at the launch of the game, but naturally they had all been mapped and placed on the wiki since then.

The secret merchant's body was wrapped in bandages, and stunk of expired meat. He was one of the few friendly NPCs in the game that never rested, and also seemed to be the same NPC at every location. If a player tried to steal from or kill him, he wouldn't attempt to stop them, but from there they would no longer be able to find or interact with him, even though he would still appear on other player's screens.

This was extremely rare among non-instanced content in the game, not even NPCs a player recruited for their town - a middle game mini game - would vanish from the main game world for that player.

Chan Si eventually wanted to try killing him with one of her characters, since she could experience the game reality from multiple perspectives at the same time, but would wait until she got more inventory space on all her characters just in case.

After selling to him, he laughed creepily and thanked Chan Si's characters.