Day 7 - July 09:53

One was enjoying the new buff. His increased movement speed made the game feel much more fluent. He was really looking forward to the higher levels where is speed would increase through his base stats. No matter how fast he tried to run, he was never able to get into a speed that was remotely close to a real life run. Now it was closer at least. And as his stamina was no issue it felt very satisfying.

As soon as he reached the temple he tried to talk to every single priest. Not a single one had a quest for him. One had hoped that the token quests he fulfilled so far had triggered a follow up quest. Sadly that was not the case. Emotes, and different variations of speaking as he approached them was not working either.

A bit annoyed left the temple again and looked around. The temple area now stood in all it’s pride. Summer had come. All the grain shined yellow and golden from the fields, which surrounded the rather big farmhouse. Stony trails up to the templeside cut it’s way through evergreen grass and fields and in the distance the fields gave way for the forest. Olaf’s cabin was just barely visible through the woods. In winter it had been hardly notable, unless you knew what you were searching for. One continued to look down the hill, that the temple called its home.

Aside from that One was able to see the rocks down the fields where he had practiced his [Miner: Beginner I] up to 48%. Maybe there was another job hiding somewhere? But since One was only able to perceive woods, woods and nothing but woods behind the fields, he would have to try and find something beyond. The newly received [Buff: Enlightened 1 Week] carried him to the edge of the forest quite quickly while he was hitting himself periodically to increase the speed.

The details that were to be found ingame were astonishing as always. Small mice, climbing up the wheat in the wind, trying to grasp the corn on top, butterflies, falling prey to small birds or dragonflies and the general presence of wind and weather was astonishing. Gladly the summer heat was not inflicting any debuffs onto him. Maybe the heat resistance was fire related only? As One never had gone all too far into the woods until now he was very careful.

The main reason for him to do so was simple. Beasts. Wolves, bears, a wild boar or other mythical creatures could lurk around any corner. He had seen what a small squirrel messenger of a god was enabled to do. Being careful was first order of business, since One suspected the game to be unforgiving towards deaths. They would not just let you respawn, they would have something in store. Otherwise this game could become a “slaughter each other continuously without any reason whatsoever” PVP-Style of game. And if you took the strategy out of such an in depth game, that would be tragic.

At least One hoped that his thought process was right in that regard. Otherwise all the care would be for naught. After a short while he left familiar waters. The woods did not grow darker, or in very many ways different, they pretty much remained the same. Sometimes pines overtook the other trees, on other parts there were more bushes, yet it remained the same kind of forest. After walking carefully for a while he was able to spot a larger bush moving. As it seemed to be a rather big beast, he carefully turned and ran as fast as he could into another direction. No way he was gonna fight a wolf or a bear! Shit, he had trouble with those bunnies already!

He encountered a couple of deers as well, but they ran as fast as they could. At least those knew the natural food chain. He also found quite a few [Seed: Pine Cone] on his way, and he picked them up randomly along the way. Now, as he was looking instead of just walking and also found [Seed: Red Oak Acorn] and a few [Seed: Birch Tree]. The birch tree seed’s looked kind of like brownish grapevine fruits, just a lot smaller and harder. As he continued to cycle around the whole perimeter of the temple so that he would not stray too far away, he spotted a small cave. Smart as he was he scouted around to see if there was any clue of an inhabitant. You could also call him scared, but better safe than sorry. As he was not able to find any traces (not that he knew how to properly track animals in the wild) he entered it. Just a few steps in it was pitch black and he hit his head.

[You took 3 damage.]

[Enlightened was activated. Movement Speed increased.]

After a quick moment of grasping around in the dark, he realised that the cave was just not very deep. He also needed to find a possibility to create a fire. It would be annoying if he really was in a deep and dark cave later on. Luckily his eyes adapted to the looming darkness. As he inspected the very small and rather thin cave, he spotted something and proceeded to inspect the ground closely.

[Copper Lode.]

[After inspecting the ground it became clear very quickly that this is a copper-containing stone.

[You need to be at least [Miner: Beginner III] or higher in order to mine here.]

Now that was really interesting. Copper could be worth quite something if it was possible to mine it in large quantities and print coins out of them. Hopefully it was not only ore that could be used for crafting weapons or gear. One had not found any other indications of minerals or ores so far. Another clue, speaking towards the fact, that they might be quite rare. Just in case he remembered where the cave was and set to leave a few moments later. Right now it was not the time to be curious or greedy. He really wanted to finally finish this quest.

After about twenty minutes of scared running through the forest alongside the evading of possible threats he finally found a glimmer on the horizon shimmering through the trees. When he approached he realised that it was a large lake. And sitting in front of the lake there was a priest sitting with a fishing rod.

One facepalmed himself.

[You took 2 damage.]

Ever facepalmed yourself so hard you took 2 damage? One was really upset. Another grinding quest. This would take another couple of hours at least. Maybe even days. So boring. Grumpily he approached the priest. “Hello. How are you?” He asked with a fake smile. No answer came from the fishing priest. Obviously he pretended to be deaf. One put up a begging emotion with a sad downward face. “Please, can you teach me how to fish? I could help you with something too if you would like me to?” He changed his expression to reflect curiosity and waited. After a while the priest sighted, yet he still gave no response. “Mister?” One pretended to be misunderstanding. He waved his hand before the fisherman’s face and mumbled to himself: “Maybe he is deaf?” That did the trick.

“What is it kid? Can you not leave me alone? Here take this and go away.”

[Received: Fishing Rod Level 1]

[Fishing Rod Level 1]

[Just a stick with a bit of string attached. Hardly a fishing rod. In stone age you used spears. More effective than this. Somebody clearly does not like you, if they are having you work with this. Using it will unlock the [Fishing: Beginner I] Jobmastery.]

One laughed at the description. Summed up the conversation he just had with his new “teacher”. But he still had not received any quests. One decided to be a persistent little twat about it. After all the priest had been clearly unfriendly as hell. No way he was just gonna leave him alone and leave to work on fishing for no reason. Plus: he really wanted his quest!

He approached the grumpy priest again and decided to play the retarded average player. “How do i use this thing. I called out Fish! Use Fishing Rod! and a lot of other orders but nothing works?” With a confused emote he repeated the question three times, just to finally get an answer out of his newly found teacher. Who really got upset. He stood up threw all his stuff to the ground and shouted: “Listen up kid, if you got time to mess around i am gonna bury you out in the woods headfirst and watch you die a slow death!" He drew a rather large and very expensive looking dagger. Green liquid dripped off of it as well. Poison? "I can use this dagger better than most can use swords or axes, so you better watch yourself!”

The priest clearly was not as old as he had first seemed. His scrawny and thin figure alongside the grey, almost white, hair made him look very old. One instantly changed his emotions from dumb to ecstatic.Full of joy he smiled from one ear to another. A small part of him really smiled, and congratulated himself for his decision to be annoying. “You are a warrior? You can teach me how to use a dagger right?” His friendly behaviour and the cheerful smile clearly irritated the priest. After all he just had threatened to kill him very slowly and painfully.

“What?” One was quite sure the thin priest did not really comprehend his question the first time. “I want you to teach me how to use a dagger! Can you? Can you? Please? Pleeeeease???” He asked using his “annoying begging kid” emote. The diversity of emotes was really impressive in this game. You just thought of which you wanted to use and the game displayed it automatically. Then you just had to follow along. Smiling or crying, all while thinking that this is a waste of time. The dream of every introvert person society has ever seen. The game clearly did not want them to feel left out of character conversations just because they are socially awkward. Milo had been socially awkward too when he had been younger. But his problems faded away slowly when he got used to talking with girls. Which he only did because they also played the same games as he did. Like a true gamer. How would he have gotten to know girls otherwise? Later on he even found out that he could do that on parties too, which made things far easier.

The old guy was clearly confused. He packed his dagger away and returned to his fishing spot. “I cannot teach you. You do not have a weapon. Your dagger clearly is made of wood and this classifies as a blunt weapon at the most. If you return with a soul weapon, or at least a common dagger made of metal i could teach you. I got nothing to say anymore. Scram kid. I like my peace!” The thin priest sat down again, looking very tired.

[Received: Quest: Soul Weapon: Dagger.]

The Dagger Master Ubba revealed the condition for your training. Return with a soul weapon and show it to Ubba. His assassination skills are known all across the land. Studying under him would be of great honor.

Objective: Bring [Soul Dagger: Stage I] to Ubba, who is fishing at the lake of assassins in the [Temple Grounds of Loki].

Reward: 1x [Token of Skill]; [Skill Book: Flying Dagger: Pierce I]

Decline: Not accepting the quest would result in Ubba being left alone. Maybe even better than the rewards, don’t you think?

Now One was really hyped up. What was a Soul Weapon? And he would finally learn a skill with this? Awesome! Finally some fighting that was not entirely auto attack based with only a opportunistic chance of evading your enemy. Flying Dagger could mean a distance attacks? That would be even more awesome! But where would he get a Soul Dagger? He clearly needed one in order to advance towards the sacrifice quest. Otherwise he would never receive his 10x [Token of Skill].

Now it was time to finally show some of his very best and ultimate skills that he perfected in Midgard so far: How to annoy NPC’s. This Ubbe would wish he never crossed his path when he was done sucking out every single piece of information he had held back!