Chapter 19

Preemptive Self Defense

“Kill anyone interesting lately?” I asked the man. He stepped back with a shocked expression.

“How the hell do you know I killed someone?”

Fuck, a noob PvP player… that’s a bad combo. At least he was decently strong, so he couldn’t completely suck. Pulled out a hand mirror I had picked up somewhere and showed it to him.

“Your name’s red. That only happens when you have attacked and killed another player and weren’t defending yourself. It goes away after they respawn. The bad part for you is that while you are red, anyone can kill you without becoming red themselves. Lucky for you I might be forgiving if you tell me what happened.”

He leaned forward to see his reflection and the damning red name above his head. “I just hunt whatever I find deeper in the woods, sometimes its players, sometimes its animals, I’m not that picky. It’s a game, people can’t expect there not to be PvP. I only hunt those around my level though, I have that much honor. I’ll even save noobs if they’re in trouble. I had absolutely no intention of fighting you.”

I chuckle, “Good choice”. Aside from his hilarious idea that being level 40 made him not qualify as a noob, he didn’t seem that bad. It was the beginning of the game, and PK guilds hadn’t formed yet. Those bastards became a real headache post-merge. PvP is fine when people respawn, although it’s still dickish and rude, when they don’t it’s just murder.

If you want to fight people, do it in arenas with protective magics or use the Duel system for one-on-one combat. If you offer a duel and it's accepted the system isolates you and your opponent from the rest of the world, it also declares the winner when one person would die and resets both participants to how they were when it started.

This system could actually be abused if you were smart. Scouting expeditions where people fought while exploring and couldn’t be hurt by monsters became a mark of the elite scouts in the future. To pull that off, you couldn’t refrain from attacking your opponent for more than a certain amount of time or the system would declare you the loser. You could only go a certain distance from the origin point and couldn’t pick up items. This meant you had to be highly coordinated and both initiate and end duels while moving through rough terrain full of monsters. Bad timing could result in loss of life if the duel was forfeited partway through an attack by leaving the duel area, or while next to a powerful monster. Best team I ever saw was twin brothers that stayed at level 35 and explored zones up to level 500. A single mistake would have killed them, hell the air could kill them in seconds in some of the places they scouted.

Of course, the duel system wouldn’t unlock until post-merge, like so many other things.

“So what? You just saw my mana practice and decided to say hi?”

“Something like that, I also wanted to thank you for those information packets you released, and the stuff you shared in your interview. I spent a rather excruciating hour dying of smog on the rooftops of the Metal District while sucking on exhaust pipes. It paid off, though. I can now do this.” He stretched out his hand to the side and a grey-brown fog billowed out. “It’s a perfect way to hide and smoke out foes since I can see through it. I would never have come up with the idea without all the advice you have shared around, so thank you Sensei Lazarus.” He gave me a small bow.

Oh hell, was this one of those Japan enthusiasts or an actual Japanese guy, the later was fine. The former though were a pain in the ass. For example, it is somewhat disconcerting when you see giant blond Scandinavians running around in yukata and yelling about ‘waifus’, whatever the fuck those were.

Those oddballs had a higher-than-average survival rate though, so we had to learn to live with it. Maybe the monsters were as confused as everyone else.

“It’s fine, happy to help everyone get stronger and all that. Just to be clear, I’m no sensei, just a guy that distributes information.”

RockyRoad smiles, “In my country, you are a Sensei, a Teacher. I’m afraid you’ll have to endure the title, it's already stuck.”

I could practically feel the Sensei profession upgrade unlock at his words.

“Shit, well thanks for the warning. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

“Oh, I just wanted to say hello and watch the battle. You have already done more than enough.”

I didn’t believe that for a second, I could see an anticipatory gleam in his eye. I had a feeling the battle he wanted to watch wasn’t my rendition of the Battle of Bunker Hill. My life sense picked up a blob entering the clearing behind me.

“I thought you didn’t want to fight me?”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise, “I don’t. The man who was hunting me is a different sort, though. He loves looking for challenges to overcome, always looking for bigger game, so to speak. I’m afraid he got a bit overconfident.” He gave a small smile.

He obviously was looking forward to seeing me trash this guy, whatever their relationship was.

I had been maintaining a large pool of oil all throughout my mana practice; I triggered Return of the Ancients right as the guy leapt for my back. The Raptrilla swatted him out of the air and into a tree. Ouch, as a stealth-type that had to hurt. The funny part was seeing RockyRoad’s face when my summon appeared, the mix of shock, fear, and confusion, was priceless.

It was my turn for a surprise when my summon suddenly destabilized and collapsed. I was curious enough to bother turning around to face my attacker.

Standing next to the puddle that used to be my summon was a short person entirely dressed in black cloth, I could only tell they were male because RockyRoad had told me so, with that hint I could sort of make out a male build under all that cloth. I still wouldn’t have put money on it.

He was holding an extra-long tanto in one hand, and a glowing crystal in the other. It looked like some variation on a ward-breaker stone, pretty rare for someone to have something like that this early. It still wouldn’t be a problem.

I conjured six blades of ice around him and drained most of my Ki to send flying slashes from all of them. His crystal glowed brighter after I made the blades, and they soon shattered into motes of blue light. He wasn’t fast enough to keep me from firing my slashes and had all four limbs removed and a deep cut in each side as a result.

I heard RockyRoad mutter “What the fuck” behind me.

The guy actually looked like he still had some fight in him, not sure what he was going to do with no limbs, but I guess I needed to drive the point home. I used the last of my Ki to set off a small Gravburst behind him. Being on the edge of the effect, it just pulled him up in the air as the gravity collapsed and then exploded, tossing him right at me. I caught him by the throat. His name was also red.

“Well, what do we have here? Did you really think you could attack me and get away with it? PvP might get you some good exp, but it causes genuine pain to the people you kill. I let this other guy live because he didn’t attack me,” I look back at RockyRoad, “although… I might change my mind. You, on the other hand, tried to kill me. So goodbye, anything to say before I send you to the Death Lounge?” The assassin’s tag showed his name as Shinobi.

“Heh, I knew it wouldn’t work, but I had to try. You are the top, the best, I had to see how I compared. See bro, told you Sensei Lazarus was the best, I couldn’t get a scratch on him. You owe me a soda.” He coughed blood as he spoke. If I didn’t end him, it would just prolong his pain. I decided to give him some advice first.

“I’m not invincible. Your trick with the stone was a good one, and if you have it set into a necklace or something, it would free up a hand. You still wouldn’t have beaten me since I’m not just a magic user. My advice to you is to either add more to your skillset from other paths or to delve deep into the rogue training. A pure rogue can be very deadly, with the right training they become downright supernatural with their skills. As good as that is, it never hurts to have an ace or three up your sleeve. You seem to be going the ninja route, that’s a solid skillset, but you might want to add in some of the fictional powers of ninjas as well. Ki, Elements, Shadow magic, even the monk path as a secondary class would work to give you some stuff to fall back on. The rogues can teach you how to substitute mana for stamina when learning things like shadow magic, the ability is limited though. It won’t be easy, but it should go a long way towards fixing your weaknesses. I think Lifebane Monk is in the class list I released. Might want to look into it while you wait to revive.”

With that, I snapped his neck and dropped him. I turned to his brother, “I won’t take his items, just give them back to him when he revives. I would recommend against killing players though, it makes enemies and more importantly, it makes you an asshole. Self-defense is fine, but treat this game as if it was your real life, that is how you thrive here. The question is, are you the sort of person who kills people in real life, who wants to? If those players wouldn’t revive, would you still kill them? Your actions have consequences here, and they can be far-reaching. You have been warned.”

Level 44 Human [Level 17 Ninja] killed in self-defense

+12500 EXP

Player killing can give fantastic experience, but it has the drawback of an even worse penalty for killing low-level players than for monsters. It halves the experience at just 10 levels below your overall level, and it becomes a 75% cut at 20 levels below. The level difference allowed doubles every 200 levels, so at level 800 you can still kill people 39 levels below you for full experience. At level 800, forty or eighty levels doesn’t mean nearly as much as 10 or 20 when you are below level 100.

With that I start the walk back to Cloudburn, I think I will do some training in the city instead. I have lost my taste for wilderness training for the moment. That guy was good though, very good for the amount of time he had to practice in fact. I turned back to RockyRoad, “Your brother was skilled, is he a trained fighter?”

RockyRoad had just been standing there, looking at his brother’s corpse, but my question shocked him out of his thoughts. “Yes, he has training, extensive training actually. I will think on your words, this does indeed feel like a real world. Maybe I should reexamine my actions, who I am, and who I want to become. I thank you for your wisdom.” He gave me a quick bow.

Oh fuck, what did I do this time? Did I accidentally plant the seed of some sort of ‘Code of Lazarus’? If it keeps player killing to a minimum, I could deal with it, but I won’t like it. Over the years, I seem to have influenced a lot of things on a disproportionate scale. Santa used to keep track just to bug me. I hope it doesn’t become a cult, that would put me at 20 accidental cults. A warrior sect would be much better, I've only inspired 5 or 6 of those. Wait a second, this is the past, none of that has happened yet. Take that Santa, it wiped my score clean. Now we can start the damn competition over again. With the right words at the right time, I bet I can convince people he's an ice god in disguise or something, that should teach him. Maybe I can even convince people he's part of a slow buildup to a Christmas event. I got back to the adventurer’s guild feeling a lot better.

Having gotten the idea from the wannabe ninja, I posted a quest for people with authentic fighting or weapons experience to meet me at noon tomorrow game time, as long as they were above level 40. My party was good, but they were still noobs. With all the crazy shit we had gotten up to, they were now overpowered noobs. That wouldn’t help much against the Shadow King once I found him. For that, I needed people that could fight. My party would get the skills in time, but right now they were more likely to be a hindrance in that fight. What I needed was the elites of Cloudburn. I gave even odds that I would know a few faces at the meeting.

After that, I went to the Warrior’s Guild and bought some books on warrior skills and tactics for Dave. I also picked up a book about Hearts, Domains, and Combat Styles. It cost me 30 gold for that one book, but along with the Willpower Primer that cost 10, it was the most important pair of books a warrior could read.

Dave was in no way ready to work on forming a Heart, let alone a Domain, but he could get some use out of knowing about them as he forms a Combat Style. I’ll have to talk to him about it later.

A quick stop at the cathedral netted me a book on Soul Strengthening Exercises, a useful thing for Kate and Dave to share. It irked me on principle, but I picked up a couple of manuals on the gods and holy magic. Got to get rid of that mindset. I’m no longer the unholy deathknight wizard, a bit of light or holy magic might be useful to have in my toolkit, or at the very least an understanding of their basic spellforms.

I bought a bunch of paper and went to a nice outdoor café to practice Runescribing for the next few hours.

Rune Affinity 3 Gained

Runesribe Skill Level 12 Gained

Runescriber Profession Level 6

Damn, without the Control stat this was so much harder. I would need at least 50 in Mana Manipulation to unlock it, though. Even with my training in the forest, I was only at level 35, I either needed more Wisdom to get it higher, or a lot more time dedicated to it. At least now I should be able to use my mana to brand the simplest runes onto things.

I chose to forgo sleep and stay at the café, updating the class lists and reading some of my books until late in the morning when it was time to head over to the Adventurer’s Guild.

The first round of maps had been submitted, and I collected them before moving on to the private room I had reserved for the meeting. The receptionists at the Guild were required to be very good at Identify and were instructed to only let level 40 and above players attend. Whoever was there would surely be interesting. I just hoped they were amenable to my plan of killing the Shadow King… before he killed us.