Chapter 8.

We journeyed outside the beginner village to a rocky cliff nearby. I took out four bricks from my inventory and handed two over to the hero. He stared at the two bricks with a dumbfounded expression.

“Uh... so this art really uses normal bricks as the name suggests?”

“Yeah. Got a problem with that?”

“N-No.”

“Now watch carefully, I’m only going to show this to you once. Whether you can gain any insights into this art is entirely up to your own luck.”

“Yes!”

His eyes grew more serious as he scrutinized my every move from that point on closely.

“By the way, if I teach you this, you must know that you can never reveal to anyone anything about where you learned this technique from.”

“Yes, I understand. I will never tell anyone about this.”

“Good. Because if you ever do, you would die.”

I took in a deep breath, then exhaled out slowly.

I slowly extended my left arm out with the brick in one hand and stopped it only a centimeter before it contacted the cliff.

“Brick.”

I pulled my left arm back then thrust my right arm forward with the second brick in hand and slammed it heavily against the wall.

“Break!”

BOOOM!

The next instant, the entire cliff suddenly collapsed in an outward V shape.

“There, did you get that?”

I turned back to the hero and noticed his eyes popping out of his skull, completely shocked by the cliff turned into a field of debris.

“Well? Stop standing there with your jaw dropped like an idiot. Did you get it, or not?”

He stupidly shook his head from left to right.

“Well, that’s not my problem. I said I’d only show it to you once. Whether you can learn it or not is up to you.”

“Anyway, I’ll show you another technique in the great art of Brickwondo. Pay attention, I’m not doing it again.”

I took out a hundred bricks from my inventory then tossed them high up into the air in all directions. I jumped up then leaped off of one of the bricks, I kicked off of it with ‘all my strength’ and instantly appeared in front of another brick. The first brick I kicked off of was sent flying and plummeted to the ground in the distance leaving behind a large crater in the ground.

In under five seconds, I jumped around in the air from brick to brick and explosions went off like a machine gun. Once I landed back on the ground, the area in a full circle around us was littered with craters.

“This is a technique that has a variety of uses in combat. When you’re surrounded on all sides by enemies it can deal massive damage. You can also use it to avoid being hit, it is both a movement technique and attack all wrapped in one convenient package. You can easily get from one place to the next while taking care of countless enemies when surrounded. Do you now understand the great power of Brickwondo?”

The hero’s eye lit up and he nodded his head profusely.

“That was so cool! How the hell did you do that? They’re just bricks, right? Why are they so powerful?”

“Any art form when mastered to an extreme can yield immense destructive power. As long as you keep practicing and training, one day you will reach such a level. Anyway, just remember you can’t tell anyone about what I’ve just shown you, especially not your party members.”

“Yes! I swear on my honor that I will never reveal any of this.”

It’s a shame these heroes are always so stubborn and never take my suggestion to give up on this storyline before the final boss. They always end up losing everything because of that stubbornness.

“Then, now that I’ve shown you, it’s up to you to learn these skills.”

Well, he has a fifty-fifty chance of success with the first skill. I secretly used Enhance beforehand on one of the bricks I gave him. With the enhancement the brick gets because of my broken stats, that brick is honestly stronger than that crappy carpet (legendary sword) I gave him.

As long as the enhanced brick is in his right hand he’ll succeed if he’s following exactly what I did. He’ll probably think that it’s his lucky brick or something. As for the second skill, you don’t really need unreasonable stats or enhanced bricks, even he should be able to eventually succeed with it after enough practice.

With an AOE attack and a powerful single-target attack, he shouldn’t have too much trouble now. Wait, what am I doing helping the hero out? Am I stupid? It was probably just because I felt a little guilty since he was a noob.

I left the hero behind by the cliff to let him practice on his own then returned on my own to the beginner village alone.

When I was only a hundred meters away from the beginner village, I came to a stop.

“Hey, I know you hate my guts but are you really planning to try and ambush me out of the blue like this?”

I turned to a tree nearby and a white-haired woman stepped out from behind. Her identity, the spiteful woman in the hero’s party who wanted nothing more than my death.

“I’m surprised a weak level 1 guide NPC would notice me so easily. I heard a loud explosion from nearby and was on my way to check it out, I never expected I’d come across you out here.”

And that was exactly why I left the hero alone there. I figured with all the commotion, someone was bound to go and check it out. Other heroes would probably head over there to see what was going on. They might even attack him.

“I know you want to kill me, but that hero of yours is probably going to be in danger. I stumbled across him training and if the commotion was that loud that it drew you out, other heroes are bound to swarm him. Rather than bothering with me, don’t you think you should go check on that hero?”

“He should be strong enough to deal with your average player by now. Besides, I’m not his caretaker. We may have gone around in a party together, but that was only so I could find a way to draw you out of the safe area in the beginner village where I’m unable to kill you.”

“Why are you so hell-bent on killing a little NPC like me? Is it really just because I got you a bit mad on a few occasions?”

“A woman can hold a grudge forever you know.”

“Could it be you became so smitten by me that you can’t get me off your mind?”

“Yeah, I really can’t get you off my mind. I just want to kill you so badly, it’s the only thing I can think of lately. Because of that quest you gave us, two of our party members had their characters wiped. I’ll never forgive you for the ridiculous quest you gave us.”

“Is it my fault you were dumb enough to go and fight the Orc Demon General’s army? Why are you trying to blame me for your stupid choices? Because you wanted to get the quest over in a rush, you went and got in over your head. You could have just gone to the wild orc zone instead and taken your time killing orcs there.”

“Why didn’t you do that? It’s obvious, you were too damn overconfident because you’re a stupid little girl who thinks just because you’re ranked tenth on the national leaderboards you can do anything. You and your party members let your rankings get to your heads thinking you were invincible because it was a world that some noob hero got.”

“Shut up!”

“Pathetic. Why do we even call you people heroes when you’re nothing more than some dumbass kids out of touch with reality? Morons with your heads up your asses, that’s all you so-called heroes are.”

“You’re just an NPC! What would you know? This is just a game!”

“Yeah, it is just a game. You’re not wrong. But to us NPCs, this is our reality. This is the world we live in. Honestly, we don’t need heroes. It’s only because the devs have programmed us to think we need you that you have any sort of purpose in our world. You’re all just children trying to run away from the reality of your shitty world. You just come here to throw tantrums. None of you are heroes, you’re all just escapists. From the bottom of my heart, I despise you heroes. Why do we have to entertain useless shit heads?”

“Just die you shitty NPC! Don’t push your philosophical bullshit on me when this is just a game!”

She kicked off the ground with all her strength and punched me in the gut with all her strength. As she did so, I jumped back in sync with her punch and rode the momentum as I flew through the air back toward the village. I bit on the packet of ketchup I always kept between my cheek and teeth then let it fly out.

My back collided with a building that stopped my momentum.

A hundred meters away from me, she stood in disbelief while looking back and forth between her fist and me with confusion written all over her face.