For once, rather than waking up to the sun shining on my face, I slowly woke up from my trance as the light inside grew a bit brighter. Yawning, I stretched, and smiled at another point of wisdom. The points were raining in now that I could spend a solid eight to ten in game hours on the seeming hybrid between meditation and sleeping. I hopped out of bed, grabbing my spear. Today I was going to go and try to hunt some of those new mobs I had seen listed on the quest board.

Before heading out, I headed over to the adventurers guild and started asking around as to where I could find the mobs I was going to be hunting for. Unsure as to which of them I wanted to hunt, I soon found out that all of them could be found further to the east, with each of them having their own preferred environments. Figuring I would find out where each individual one lives as I hunted, I headed off to get some more levels.

While walking through the farmland, I decided I was going to spend a few days out hunting, it was an hours or so walk to simply get out of the farmland area, and I figured with my new sleeping bag I wouldn’t mind hunting for a few days, and maybe I could catch up a bit on the hunting time I had lost while training.

As I walked, I continued my attempts to meditate while doing so, but it felt like I had made no progress whatsoever by the time the farmland ended. Seeing no mobs around, I continued my walk for a bit, until the first new mob found me.

It looked like a giant millepede would, if said millipede had no joints in its legs, looking like worms sticking out of its shell holding it up, and patterns on its shell that looked like that old painting the scream. Shivering, as I wasn’t exactly a big fan of bugs, I sent one of my upgraded ice spears flying its way.

It dodged to the right, but lost a couple of its legs as it did so, which continued to squirm on the ground even after having been detached. I switched to force bolt, if I wasn’t getting any direct hits, I’d prefer to conserve my mana, and I got off another two glancing blows on it before it reached me.

Once it got in melee range, I stabbed out with my spear, but it barely penetrated the shell of the beast, and it continued charging at me, lashing out with its jointless legs while it tried to get its jaws around me.

I dodged to the left, avoiding the very sharp looking jaws, but winced as it’s legs, which seemed to have extended from when it was just running at me, continued to hit me with a force that didn’t feel too much lighter than a punch. I stabbed out again at it’s side as it went by me, this time finding a bit more purchase as my spear landed in between two of the sections of its shell, and it screamed, almost making me cover my ears before stopping so as to not lose my grip on my spear.

I prepped another spell pattern as it turned its front half and started to try and wrap around me, but my frostbite caught it before it could finish surrounding me, and I stepped to the side, avoiding getting encircled and stabbed into one of its eyes with a sickening crunch.

It screamed again, but this time I didn’t flinch, and just stabbed out at another of its four eyes, this time sending the sper most the length of the blade inside its shell. It had just started to break free of the ice I had encased it in, but I twisted the spear, eliciting another scream, and pulled out a bit before stabbing in as hard as I could, embedding the spear up to the shaft in its head.

I pulled it out and stepped back, I wasn’t sure if it was dead, as it continued to squirm, but slowly the motion of its body stopped, and the only things left moving were the jointless legs. I then went up, touching the body to see what the loot would be, and found out it was called a Molt. I then pulled out my book on harvesting, looking for what could be harvested.

The entire shell of the thing was actually used for light armor, and also as a material in making this world’s equivalent of concrete. I sighed, I didn’t want to spend my next hour or so harvesting the damn thing, but I really could use a new set of armor, and given the way my spear had barely penetrated the actual shell of it, it would be a nice upgrade over my warg armor, even though I’d only had it for a short time.

Getting to work, I slowly worked my knife in between the different sections of shell, and once I had cut all around it, it came free with little resistance, revealing pink flesh underneath. I found out that the reason the legs had seemed to extend was because they had, curling up inside the shell, and they were extended in the front legs the thing had used to attack me.

Frowning at the grisly work, I soon had the entire shell harvested, but decided to simply use the goddess to harvest the things from now on, it simply took too much time away from leveling to properly harvest it. I then continued my trek, and soon headed off the road, intent on finding some more of the bizarre mobs that the developers loved to throw at us players.

I hunted a few more molts as I went, making sure to rest up and restore my mana after each fight, as I could probably only handle two consecutive fights before I ran out of mana. I sighed, while my spells may do some serious damage, they were also very expensive, especially in their upgraded forms.

I eventually settled on just spamming my force bolt when they were further away and more likely to dodge, and then switching to ice spear once they were too close to dodge. I continued this pattern until one fight where a second one was creeping up on my, and noticed too late to throw an ice spear at it, so I simply released my force bolt at it at a point blank range.

I gaped as I saw it impact straight on, and simply shatter the things shell, which apparently was weak to blunt force trauma, and then got off another two before the other one managed to reach me.

I jumped to the side just as it managed to reach me, and deciding to stick with force bolt, as it seemed to be the best bet for mana usage versus damage dealt, I prepared a spell pattern while stabbing out with my other hand. It found purchase, but the other molt managed to reach me, and got its pincers around my leg, and I cursed as it bit down.

I took a higher grip on my spear and stabbed down into its eyes as hard as I could, sinking the spear down to the wood into its skull, but it refused to let go. The other molt reaching me, I yanked my spear out with a sickening crunch from what was remaining of its eyes, and tried to step to the side, only to fail as the molt hanging on my legs was still there. It reached me, and got a grip around my body.

Seeing as how it was too close to use my spear efficiently, I prepped an ice spear as fast as I could, sending it into its eyes from point blank range, and smiled as it practically split its head in two. I then set back on the other molt, only to notice it was dead, it was simply hanging on in death.

I tried to pry its jaws free, but they seemed to be locked in place, so I switched tactics, and took my spear close to the spearhead, and slowly cut one if its jaws out from its head. That finally worked, and I got my leg free, only to see it start bleeding quite profusely now that the jaws were free of it.

Seeing as how I wasn’t intending to bleed to death, I downed one of my health potions, and decided that looking for herbs would also be on the list of things to do in the coming days. I then placed my hands on the two molts, and they faded out to be replaced with piles of their shells, which seemed to be thinner than the ones I had harvested myself, and there was significantly less, not even half, of what I had gotten when I had harvested them myself.

Putting the piles of chitin into my backpack, I stretched, only to wince from the cuts I had gotten on my chest and leg, which hadn’t fully healed yet even with the health potion. I watched them, and saw as they closed up slowly, but fast enough to be seen with my naked eye.

I had known that health potions weren’t instant, but this was the first time I had watched to see what they would do. The cuts slowly seemed to pull together, then new skin would grow, looking like scar tissue, before the scar tissue slowly faded, leaving nothing but the cuts in my clothing to know I had been wounded.

I stretched again, properly now that the cuts weren’t bothering me, and headed off to get some more levels. After six more of the insect like beasts, I was rewarded with one, much more quickly than I had expected.

Pulling up the forums of the game, it turns out that leveling actually starts to speed up once you hit the mobs around three and four stars, and doesn’t seem to slow down as easily as it did with the earlier mobs. Some people had even hit high forties, and the highest confirmed level was a level fifty-six.

Shrugging at how far I was behind, though I had enough skill points that I was equivalent to someone sixteen levels higher than me, I went off, I was going to try and catch up as fast as I could.

It took another three of the molts before I found my first new mob. This time it came in a group of three. It looked like a mass of rotting wood in human shape, with small insects constantly crawling inside of it. I sent a couple force bolts flying at them before they reached me, and noted that it seemed to explode a good chunk of the rotting wood off of them, but they simply ignored the wounds and continued running at me. When they got close, I impaled the rightmost one with my spear, and prepped a frostbite as I did so, releasing it at the one in the middle just as it swung its trunk like arms at me.

Ducking under the swing which wasn’t quite as fast as I was fearing, the frostbite impacted with a crackling noise, and froze a majority of the thing solid. I went to pull my spear out, but it didn’t come out when I pulled, and I turned to face it, noting that it was slowly pulling itself along the haft of my spear, ignoring that it was impaled.

My look cost me, as I felt a very solid impact on the side of the head, sending me reeling and making me let go of my spear. I fell down, rolling to the right to avoid the slam that came down after me, and once I got up prepared and released an ice spear at the one who had hit me.

The ice spear tore completely through the thing, leaving a gaping hole where its stomach used to be, but it only seemed to have slowed down a bit as it charged me. With the with my spear still stuck through it having fallen over somehow, I ran back, the monster that had taken the ice spear being slowed from the hole in it, and I fired a force bolt at one of its legs.

The leg exploded in a shower of splinters, and it fell to the side, but continued to crawl at me. Deciding to find out if a headshot would solve my problem as they seemed an awful lot like zombies, I released a force bolt at its head, and watched as it collapsed flat from its crawling posture to the ground.

I turned to the frozen one and the one with my spear still running through it, who couldn’t get up because my spear was in the way, I finished each of them off with a force bolt to the head. I then went up. I was hesitant to touch their insect infested bodies, but held my breath and did so anyway.

The things turned out to ents, and I looked at them askew, they were technically tree people, though they seemed to be completely rotten. Wondering if there was a non rotting version, I stepped back from their bodies while I looked through my book on harvesting.

The only thing of value on them was a core, which was located around where a heart would be on a human, and used as a mana conductor for staves and magic tools. I kicked apart the bodies, which seemed to be falling apart now that they had died, and grabbed the cores once I could see them, putting them into my backpack.

I then continued my journey, and soon arrived at a forest. This forest, unlike the one that had been near Ederheim, was filled with small growth, bushes everywhere, and trees interspersed along with them.

I walked through the shaded areas, the trees providing enough cover from the sun to prevent the bushes from growing and interfering with my walking along. I gathered a few more herbs as I went, hunting the groups of ents which I couldn’t quite snipe their heads from range, and a spear hit to the head wouldn’t take them down either, so I got hit a couple more times, though nothing like the solid blow they had landed on my head earlier.

I went along, hunting for ents and molts, and gathering herbs while I went. After looking through my book after finding some herb I didn’t recognize, I found out that it was poisonous, and could be used to make a weak poison that was useful when coating a weapon.

Deciding to do that when I had the chance, I continued my murder spree, until I arrived at a lake. Deciding to eat and rest, I took out my ward net, and set up a small camp. I still had a little moki meat left, so I took that out and started to cook.

While I was cooking, I noted some more mobs that were wandering around the lake, and would go back into it occasionally. They looked like giant crabs, with four legs and two arms which had scythe like protrusions and small gripper claws on the other side.

I watched them as I went, and pulled out my harvesting book to find out what they were. They were called craw, and apparently were quite delicious, even if they did look like a cross between giant crabs and a tarantula.

Having eaten, I soon decided that it was time to get back to hunting, so I packed up my ward net, put out the fire I had started, and decided to go try and hunt some of the craw. Heading over to the lake, I got distracted as I went by something I noticed, a small cave with lightly glowing barnacle like things.

Heading into the cave, I looked up and around, the interior past the entrance lightly lit by the glowing things, and was looking up when I missed my step, and fell down for what had to be a couple of meters, hitting my head and blacking out.