The rest of the week in game was spent waiting for my spear and armor to be finished. I’d spent the days practicing sigils, mainly the toughness ones as I was hoping they would be able to help my spear hold together until I got my new one. Eventually though, it did break, and after staring mournfully at it for a bit, I put it into my backpack and went over to practice drawing up spells without my fingers.

The week did have some benefits luckily, I gained yet another point of wisdom from my meditative sleeping, along with another point in strength from training. Soon my new gear was ready for pickup so I went over to Kor’s blacksmith shop. I greeted him before he came out with my new spear.

“So this was definitely interesting to make, I removed the blades from most of the claws, and fused the spines of them with some bronze. The blades tips I removed and used as the tip of the spear. It’ll definitely serve you well, I accidentally cut into my anvil a bit while working with it.” Kor explained the basic process behind it as he handed it over.

Looking over it, it seemed to have three layers, the two spines of the claws along fused by bronze looking like a layered cake, or like the striations you sometimes see in canyons. Grasping it, it was significantly heavier than my previous spears. I’d definitely need to invest a point or two into strength to be able to wield it as easily as I had my previous one.

Imbuing it with some sigils to test it out, it seemed to be much easier than my previous spear, reaching five sigils without too much effort, and feeling like I could almost reach six. Curious about it, I asked Kor.

“Hey, why does it seem so much easier to imbue than my old weapon?”

“We’re not really sure. We know many monsters will naturally imbue their weaponry, so we assume it has to do with that, but we’ve never really figure it out, though the mages college has been doing research into it. You could go ask over there if you want to find out more.”

Nodding my head, I handed over the fifteen gold before asking what he was going to do with the rest of the blades.

“Well that’s why this spear ran you so cheap, I’m going to use the rest of the blades for some weapons for some other lucky fellows.”

“Oh, alright then. How much would it run me to have this inscribed to increase my magic output?”

“It’ll run you around five gold to inscribe it with a fifty percent increase, anything above that is going to increase ridiculously fast. A hundred percent boost will run you around a hundred gold.”

I winced at how expensive it could be, then went over to Alesya’s shop to pick up my armor. Passing over the ten gold required to the ever bored looking woman, I got back a set of armor of overlapping molt plates, which attached much the same way my warg leather set had. Thanking her, I decided to go find an inscription shop and get my spear inscribed before heading out to try my new gear and to see how imbuing would deal with monsters.

I soon arrived at the inscription shop, where an old man greeted me.

“Hello? I was hoping I could get this spear inscribed.”

“How much are you looking to spend on it?”

“Well Kor said I could get a fifty percent increase for five gold, so I was hoping to get that.”

The man sighed before replying. “Kor really should stop telling people that, we normally charge about seven gold, but I’ll handle it, hand over the spear please.”

“Oh, how long will it take?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes, I’ll handle it now.”

I handed over the spear and he took out a brush and a bottle of glowing purple ink from underneath the counter. I watched as the man slowly drew out runes I couldn’t recognize along the entirety of the spear, his practiced motions being done with unnaturally steady hands. As the brush would pass over, the ink would flare up in brightness a bit, then slowly fade down. Once he’d finished the entire spear, the light seemed to flow down the spear again before fading completely. Looking it over, I could see the runes, but they were extremely faint, and I wouldn’t have noticed them without careful examination.

I passed over the five gold, and thanked him before heading out, I was going to go pick on some mobs. It took a while to get out of the town’s area, but once I was, I soon found a molt skittering along. I imbued my spear with three sigils and then stabbed out, intentionally avoiding the joints to see how much sharper my spear would really be.

I was surprised when I felt practically no resistance, the spear sinking deep into the molt like a hot knife through butter. I then pulled out my spear and jumped back as it lashed out at me with its back few joints. I then stepped in again, stabbing down at its third joint, where the book had said its heart would be, and it instantly collapsed, only twitching a couple of times before lying still.

Blinking my eyes in surprise at how easy that had become, I smiled, then got to grinding.

Around fifty or so molts later, I leveled up, and I instantly put the point into strength so as to be more comfortable with the weight of my new spear. I was surprised how fast I’d leveled, but figured it had to be excess xp from soloing the king class craw. I spent the rest of the day hunting, slicing through molts and ents like butter, and the entire time practicing to cast my sigils faster, which seemed to have a bit of effect, unlike the first time I’d tried it.

Once the sun started to approach the horizon, I stretched out, and set up a small campsite. I took out some of the molt meat I had collected, and threw them in a pot along with some vegetables, both of which I had bought while waiting for my gear to be ready.

After enjoying my simplistic stew, I left my herbs by the fire to dry as I crawled into my tent and sleeping bag. I slowly fell asleep to the sounds of the wilderness, insects chirping, one of the few animal types which hadn’t been eliminated by the invaders.

I woke up in the morning a bit sore from sleeping on the hard ground, and spent a few minutes stretching to alleviate it. After I’d packed up my ward net and the rest of my campsite, I got back to hunting. By the end of the day, I’d collected a good amount of ent cores and molt carapaces, and decided that I’d spend the rest of the week out hunting, trying to make up for the time I’d spent in the city.

By the end of my hunting week, I’d gained another three levels, putting two points into vitality and one point into strength, and after that I finally felt comfortable with my spear again. I’d also trained another point in both agility and endurance from the constant hunting.

While chowing down on what was basically other world stir fry during one of my breaks, I mused on how my leveling hadn’t seemed to slow down, completely contrary to how drastically it had slowed down when I had overleveled the orbs and wargs. Deciding to ask about it next time I was back in town, I finished my meal, and was soon back to hunting.

Heading back to town in a slow manner, my backpack almost completely full weighing me down a bit after a day of hunting, I practiced trying to meditate while walking to pass the time. Not long after, I started in surprise. I’d finally had some more success with it! The mana had actually flowed out of my legs, and may have been able to complete a circuit if I hadn’t been so startled so as to stop my practice.

Cursing at my bad luck, I didn’t have any more success by the time I had arrived at town. I soon turned in all my loot, gaining almost a hundred gold. Smiling and feeling oh so rich, I decided that it was time for me to get a true aoe spell, my ice shatter was good for small groups, but I needed something that would be able to completely wipe a large area.

Arriving at the mage college, the building covered in runes like always, I soon walked in and was greeted by an annoyed looking youth.

“I was wondering if you had any large scale ice magics for me to learn? I could use something for large groups..”

He looked me over and replied in a testy manner “You’ll probably want either ice storm or flash freeze.”

“Well what do the two of them do?”

“Well ice storm creates a blizzard like area, except instead of snow it’s shards of sharp ice flying around. Flash freeze is just as it name implies. It instantly freezes everything, lowering the temperature. Weak enemies will just die outright from it, but unless you have high wisdom it will only slow down tougher enemies. Enemies who can imbue their armor may not even be affected unless your wisdom is very high.”

I thought for a moment before deciding on getting flash freeze. It may not be as useful immediately, but it may be able to instakill brags at least, and when I have high enough wisdom it would be very satisfying to watch enemies just drop after having their blood frozen inside of them.

“How much will flash freeze be?”

“As it’s a third circle spell, it will cost you 50 gold”

I winced, even with my recent windfall of gold, it would cost me over a third of my money. I sighed, then handed over the money. He then went back into the door behind him, returning with a scroll which he handed over, then started ignoring me as I left the store.

I soon arrived at the practice grounds, and found an area where there were a couple of practice dummies next to each other. I then took out my new scroll and opened it up. I looked over the pattern for a few minutes, committing it to memory, but kept it open in front of me while drawing the pattern out.

I failed a couple of times, and had to wait for my mana to regenerate after each attempt, this thing cost a lot of mana. The explosions from failing to draw it would probably have caused me pretty decent injuries if not for my new armor.

Eventually I got it right, and watched as a small ball of light floated downrange at about the same speed as my ice shatter, and then impacted the target on the right. When it hit, a blue light quickly expanded from the center, forming a circle with a radius of around five meters. After the light faded, I looked forwards, to see snowflakes gently drifting down to the frosted ground, likely water condensed from the air.

Stepping forwards, I patted one of the targets, finding it as hard as a rock in comparison to its usual flexible nature. Smiling at how the spell worked, I waited for a moment before opening up my grimoire and taking a look at it.

Spell Name

Mana Cost

Flash Freeze

100

The thing was damn expensive, but even if it wouldn’t outright kill some enemies, it would definitely slow them down, and it looked cool as hell to boot. Smiling, I went down to meditate while I waited for my mana to regenerate

While meditating, I mused on how well my character seemed to be coming along. My level may not be high, but my wisdom was definitely outside my level range at this point. I’d put half of my points into other stats, and I still could match the wisdom of someone who had put every point into their wisdom stat, which I’m sure many mages had done.

I may be lagging behind the monstrous players and competent hunting parties in level at this point, but for a solo player, I’m sure I was one of the better ones. Getting up, I practiced drawing my spell again, with the pattern guide in front of me this time, and smiled again at how pretty the scene was of everything just turning to ice, the snow forming from the moisture in the air instantly freezing slowly drifting to the floor.

By the end of the day, I was reasonably comfortable drawing out the spell pattern, though it took a bit of time with the extra oval in the spell pattern. Heading off to the barracks to rest, I smiled, I now had a large scale aoe spell, though it probably wouldn’t see much use playing solo.

I woke up in the morning with the sun shining in my face. My nemesis was back it seems. Grumbling at the annoying way to wake up, I got up, stretched, and headed out, I was going to try out my new spell on some molts to see how effective it would be.

Once I’d arrived at the hunting grounds, I found a molt, and slowly sneaked up on it, before preparing my new spell pattern. Releasing it, it impacted directly on it, and the surroundings instantly became white.

Each of my steps on the grass released a crunch, similar in feel to walking on snow. Once I’d arrived at the molt, I poked it a couple times with my spear, and noticed it hadn’t moved. I put my hand on it, then frowned. The loot window hadn’t appeared, meaning it was still alive. I then stabbed down into the third joint, puncturing it’s heart, and then the trusty loot window appeared.

Wondering if it would have died if I had just left it frozen, I decided to test it on the next molt. I flash froze it, then walked up and waited. When it hadn’t moved after a few minutes, and the temperature had returned to normal after only a few seconds, the cold disappearing as fast as the ice from my other spells melted, I went up and touched it.

It still wasn’t dead, but apparently it was wounded enough that it couldn’t move. Finishing it off with a force bolt, I moved on to do some more hunting. About midway through my hunting, I realized I could permanently leave up a sigil in my weapon, my mana regenerating faster than it would get used up, even in combat.

Deciding to do that, I continued my hunt, mostly using spells, but also my spear when needed or when I felt like it. While hunting, I noticed that there seemed to be far more mobs than normal, I was running into them unnaturally fast, sometimes enough that I would be out of mana for the fights. The day ended seemingly quickly, the hunting having been constant throughout the day, and I was soon back in town to rest, I’d had enough of camping out for now.

I grabbed some dinner, then headed into the barracks to go to bed. Along the way, I considered staying in an inn now that I had a decent amount of money, but decided against it. It may not be too expensive, and I had a decent amount of money, but every penny saved would get me that much closer to my next set of gear, and with how expensive a third circle spell had been, I was going to need as much money as I could get.

Advertisement A note from sushiaddict

Since I doubt I'll mention this in the story, the reason competent parties level quickly isn't only because they can handle far more enemies. Experience isn't evenly split between them. Say a party of five hunts a monster, they don't all get 20% of the xp, they all get closer to 40%. party of ten everyone gets 30%, and the lowest you'll get is around 5% with a party of one hundred. If you don't contribute you don't get any xp though, so large parties are impractical as only some of the people can contribute.

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