"Herald, over here!" Megantress called as she waved her hand. She stood with Kezodilla and Nitana2003 at the bottom of the ramp going to the tunnels at the back of the village.

"Did you guys wait long?" I said as I trotted up to them, minding my hooves over the uneven rocks. "I was shopping for a good shield to slot the Ocadule Shards Kezo gave me yesterday."

"Awesome!" Kezo boomed. As was his nature, he gave me two thumbs up to go with his creepy Mardukryon smile. "Have you transferred your LS points to them?"

I nodded. "My Gnawing Rot is level four while Withering Brand is three."

Lvl. 4 Gnawing Rot: Spread a festering miasma over a small area (maximum of three), causing any enemies entering it to lose 54 Armor and 54 Magic Armor each second inside it, up to a maximum of 315. The effect of the decay persists for 10 seconds after leaving the area.

Cost: 65 Energy

Duration: 40 Seconds

Cooldown: 5 Seconds

Lvl. 3 Withering Brand: A long-forgotten incantation that targets an enemy with a curse, reducing its Movement Speed, Attack Power, and Magic Power by 15%.

Cost: 45 Energy

Duration: 12 Seconds

Cooldown: 7 Seconds

There was an NPC inside the Chief's Lodge who reset Greater and Lesser Skill points for a fee. It cost fifty thousand Artas for each LS spent on an Ocadule Shard. I only removed the three LS of [Rusting Grounds], spending a total of a hundred fifty thousand Artas. I didn't touch the points of [Greater Pyro Shell]. Weakening my shell wasn't a good idea given I was already squishy—such a great journey of building a tank so far, I sardonically thought.

I didn't put any points on [Enfeebling Burden]. Given it was only a Link Shard with the purpose of boosting Skill Shards, it was better to focus on [Gnawing Rot] and [Withering Brand] that it was supposed to amplify. I couldn't even max those two out; there were definitely no spare points for [Enfeebling Burden].

"Improving little by little every day, that's what we do." Kezo held up his fist in front of him, starting off our team meeting with a motivational talk. "Not only individually, but we also improve as a team. Building individual strength and teamwork is the key to competing with the big guys," he continued, referring to the established parties with veteran players we'd be up against.

Personally, I think we were going to get run over and flattened on the pavement like pancakes. Which begged the question: why are there pancakes on the pavement?

On a more serious note, we were admittedly the weakest kid on the playground. Nevertheless, I wasn't disheartened. In fact, I was elated to be the underdog. I had been on the top for a few years now, and I forgot how fun it was to struggle. Well, it's not fun. Struggling as a teenager dropping out of school and juggling multiple jobs, struggling as a free-to-play player while fighting whales back in Nornyr Online.

Not fun, but the challenges made me feel more alive.

Desperate situations brought out the best in me—although I was already the best. 'Bester', if there was such a word. And there should be. In moments of struggling, it was when my most brilliant ideas come forth. It was during these times that I ceased box-like thinking.

“Just a bit over an hour of practice and we already improved by a ton,” Megan said.

"True," Nitana drawled. But her expression was less bored than yesterday. "This might not be such a bad idea after all.”

"That's the spirit!" Kezo exclaimed. "We should all be proud of what we accomplished."

After our successful first attempt as a party to bring down the Rotted Cedarlyon, we killed it twice more, working to better our movements, coordination, and tactics each time.

While we waited for the mini-boss to respawn, I told Kezo that I was going to buy a shield to use my new, actually second-hand, Ocadule Shards. Megan also wanted to change her build and switch around some of her items to better suit our party.

However, Kezo told us to hold off any changes; he also wasn't going to tweak the build he was using. He wanted to use our setup as a baseline to see how our teamwork improved our killing rate the day after—which is today.

"Yesterday, our last fight against the Rotted Cedarlyon lasted just a bit after the second wave," Kezo said. "And that's a huge difference compared to our first try where we reached something like..."

"The start of wave five," I said.

"That's right. Terrific progress." A couple more thumbs up to emphasize his words. "And now, I hope you guys are ready to reveal your brand-new selves! Let's see how fast we kill the Rotted Cedarlyon this time around."

"Those Shards you gave me and my three-slotted shield are the only changes I've made." I cast [Gnawing Rot] at an area to my right to demonstrate I could already use it. Tendrils of sickly green fog seeped from the ground and swirled in the air. "I'm going to wait until right before the Great Hunt to do some major upgrading. By then, I might reach level twenty."

The stats of level twenty gear had a major jump compared to levels before it. It was the same case as level ten gear. I supposed it was structured that way for a clean and round number players could aim for to measure their progress—manufactured psychological stages to growth. The stock market also had psychological support and resistance levels, not because of anything on the technical side, but simply because people naturally loved whole numbers.

Talk of psychology aside—there was no aspect of Herald Stone that was a psychologist—I was uncertain if I could reach level twenty within a week. Should I stop farming low-level monsters now?

But the Artas! I was already going to sacrifice a week of farming; two would be too much.

I observed my party mates. Will they agree to leech me?

"I don't have any new equips at all," Megan said, raising her hand to get our attention even though we were right in front of her. "And it's not like there's much to change with stuff anyway. I just spent several hours grinding to push my Ocadule and Cidules higher. I did manage to level some of my skills, so that’s cool."

"And you also bought—" Nitana began to say.

"Oh, yeah!" interjected Megan. "I almost forgot that I bought three-star foods for all of us...with my last pieces of Artas."

"You don't have any money now?" I asked her. "I should be the one buying food because you gave me—"

"No, no!" she replied. "That's my gift to you." Then she gave Nitana a sidelong glance.

Nitana frowned at her friend. "Wait...am I also supposed to say what I worked on?"

"I know you bought Shards yesterday. You were asking me about choices."

"Fine." Nitana shrugged. "Yeah, I did buy some Shards. I built my character to be more of an AoE damage type of caster. Kill lots of mobs fast to level and then log out for the day. Megan and I are going to change races eventually anyway. But thinking about it more, I also kinda want to do my part for the Great Hunt so I worked on my single target damage and that kind of stuff for boss hunting."

"That's so sweet of you," Megan said.

"Thanks for helping out the team," Kezo chimed in.

I sensed it was my turn to drive the encouragement train, so I added, "We'll be able to kill bosses faster." Nitana rolled her eyes, but she also sported an amiable slight smile.

"Now, I feel the pressure to say something too," Kezo said with a hearty laugh. "I actually have a new Ocadule from the Hunter-Warriors with parry and other defensive sword skills. That way, I can dual-wield and Nitana doesn't have to spend half her time protecting me. Going to take a while to level this though, but I'll see what I can do."

Fueled by high spirits at the progress of the party, we moved on to planning how to quickly kill our target mini-boss. Kezo explained that other than its similarity to a Fulgurian Mammoth in stats, the mechanic of the Rotted Cedarlyon calling for mobs would prepare us for a fraction of the chaos during the actual Great Hunt.

"Imagine a dozen Fulgurian Mammoths," he said. "The Cragodons, the Fengharls, plenty of other event monsters. Throw in Elites and bosses. And then pile on the other parties trying to kill as many monsters as they could. That! We'll try to avoid all of that. This is why we need to kill our targets ASAP so we can move—"

"Well, well, well," interrupted a loud voice that I immediately recognized even if we had only conversed once. “What do we have here?”

Well, well, well? I repeated incredulously in my head. Did he think he was in a movie?

With an arrogant swagger, BeetsByLuds strode out of the shadows of the tunnel to reveal himself. He descended the craggy ramp from the mouth of the caves inside the cliff wall to our spot. His chemistry set bodysuit of flasks and glass tubes clinked together, their colorful liquid contents sloshing around inside them.

His party mates, Wharmonger and Quivercess followed him down the rocky ramp to our spot.

Quivercess, or Nic, as she told me to call her, wore an uncomfortable expression like she had an upset stomach while glaring at the back of Luds' head. She turned to me and gave me an apologetic bow as if saying sorry in advance for the assholery that was to come from her friend.

"Cool, cool! The two people I didn't expect to see in Kurghal Village." Luds guffawed as he slowly clapped his hands. "The Cheeseman himself and the new guy. I guess I lost my bet to you, Wharton. Two bets!"

His friend peeked from behind him. "Told you they were still around."

"What do you want, Luds?" Kezo coldly said, folding his arms. Apparently, he had the same opinion of this clown as I did.

"Nothing at all, Kezo, my man. Just passing through. Wharton here, he harvested his glow-in-the-dark shrooms. And now we're off to harvest my precious plants."

"Don't let us keep you then." Kezo stepped further back even though there was ample space for Luds' party to pass, and gestured with his hand that they continue walking.

"Come on, Cheeseman," Luds said. "Don't be like that. I was so sad when I heard that Jensen and the others changed races. I really thought you were going next. Let's chat a bit. What are you doing here with the new guy and..." He looked at Megan and Nitana with a puzzled face. "Aren't you two going to quit as a Mardukryon too? What's this little gathering, huh? Y’all talking about which new race to pick?"