The cart full of iron had despawned while they were talking, and the interior of the smithy had changed to show the full stock of iron they’d returned to Bertrin. He stood in the center, gazing in sorrow at a wall with dozens upon dozens of nails driven into it. Soot outlines of various tools stood out against the wood.

Kana noticed the quest hand icon next to his name, something he’d missed the first time he’d talked to the NPC. He also noticed the icon had popped up on his map, so it seemed like there were a few ways to know there was work available besides just talking to every random person he came across.

He walked over to Bertrin and triggered the script for the next quest. “My father made most of the tools that used to hang on this wall,” the NPC told him. “The ones he didn’t, I made myself. It’ll be a job and a half to replace them all. Bah. Getting sentimental in my old age though. I’ll make new ones. Still, I’ll miss ‘em. Those swine wouldn’t know how to use any of them anyway, probably leave them out to rust and break.”

A new quest notification window popped up, informing Kana that in order to advance the quest, he needed to retrieve Bertrin’s tools from the orcen raiders cache of plunder on their ship anchored just off the coast. At the same time, a marker popped up on his HUD noting the direction the quest was in.

“Ready to go?” Spiral asked.

“Yeah.”

While they walked, Kana opened up his radial menu and started reading more about how the game worked. He knew from the starting area that dragoons got more powerful from both strength and agility, but not how. According to the help menus he was reading, agility both increased his critical strike chance and his accuracy. For dragoons specifically, a higher agility made it harder for enemies to break combo chains by dodging an attack.

Strength contributed in a similar way, providing a straight buff to his damage output and making it so that he had a better chance of breaking through an enemy’s parry to continue his combo chain. Spiral had been right on the money when he said the class revolved completely around stringing special attacks together. Most of them couldn’t even activate on their own. He had to start his combo with a melee attack before he could use arc lance, and if he was understanding correctly, arc lance being in recharge was a prerequisite to use an ability he didn’t have yet known as rising slash.

The menus didn’t go into too much depth about how to play the class after that. He could see more articles that were greyed out about other abilities he didn’t have yet, about crafting professions, purchasing a home, joining or starting a guild, using the bank, renting stalls at the bazaar, and a dozen other topics.

His reading was interrupted by an animalistic snarl. Surprised, Kana looked up from the radial menu to see a pack of six wolves spread out in a half circle around them. They’d crept out of the nearby underbrush and gotten far closer than he’d have thought they could have without being noticed. He felt a bit of morbid curiosity at that, wondering if he would have even known they were there if they hadn’t started snarling.

Valit let out a squeak of surprise and stepped back from the wolves. “Go stand in the front,” she said, pushing on Spiral’s shoulder. “That’s what you’re here for.”

“Hah. Right. Sorry, not used to being the guy in heavy armor,” he said. He put up his shield as he approached the wolves and sent out a probing thrust with his sword. The wolves danced away and, as if that were the cue to go, all rushed the party. Kana set his spear to catch the first wolf that leaped at him, then flung it off the blade of his weapon and swung it in a wide arc.

It caught a second wolf, and he gave ground to the third one approaching him to keep it at the edge of his attack radius. Valit started casting a spell, and Kana readied himself to react with an arc lance towards whichever ones she didn’t slow down, but that didn’t happen.

Instead, a flurry of glinting ice shards materialized and peppered the wolves. Despite the fact that he was right in the middle of the attack, none of them hit Kana. More importantly, all three of their hp bars dropped by half. That was a good enough opportunity for him to start his combo. He chose the most wounded one to hit first.

He slashed it with his spear and followed up with a clipping sweep to the closest wolf that had been rushing him, then spun in place and struck the next closest wolf with arc lance. The coil of lightning leaped off it and electrocuted the initially injured wolf, killing it outright. Another regular attack to the one he’d arc lanced was enough to put it down.

The third wolf bit down on his shoulder and dragged him to the ground. The stunned debuff popped up as he hit the dirt, counting down from two seconds. The wolf bit him again before he came out of the stun, and then he was on his ass and it was way too close for him to use his weapon. Its jaws ripped him into him a third time, and his HP went into the red.

Desperate now, Kana used a move he’d only just discovered he had a few minutes ago. It turned out that in addition to being masters of the spear and mid-range combat, they were also powerful kickers. He got both feet up and lashed out, catching the wolf in its chest with a double-legged kick that sent it tumbling backwards.

Before it could close back in, he brought his spear down on its skull and finished it back off. Then, HP still dangerously low, he lunged into melee with the wolves that Spiral was fighting. They’d circled the knight and were taking turns nipping at his flank as he spun in place to defend himself. Valit had slowed two of them with frost beams, which was probably the only reason Spiral was keeping up with blocking three at once.

Kana picked the one with the lowest health to start his next chain on. Melee attack followed melee attack, then he knocked a wolf down by clipping its back two legs and finishing it with a third melee attack. Arc lance came off recharge then, and he fried the last two wolves with that. As soon as they died, an XP window popped up and informed him that he’d gained 24 XP and advanced to level 4.

A loot window popped up next to it with three wolf fangs and one pelt in it. When he examined them closer, the window informed him that they could be used in crafting to modify a weapon and increase its damage output. Similarly, the pelt was a material used in in making light armor. If he wanted more information, he was going to have to unlock a crafting profession first.

“That was a big pack,” Spiral said. “I thought for sure we were going to get wiped out and have to walk back from the shrine. Good thing you guys have got some firepower.”

“Uh, yeah. I nearly did have to walk back,” Kana said. “I’ve got a solid 14 HP left. One more hit would have finished me off.”

“Did you use your potion?” Spiral asked.

“I… forgot that I had it.”

“Nooooooooob.”

“Shut up.”

Spiral laughed while Kana stared at him. “I know where you live,” he told the knight.

“Yeah, yeah. Well, it worked out fine. We all made it. What’s your passive recovery at now anyway? Maybe we need to rest for a few minutes.”

Kana pulled his stats up from the radial menu and searched until he found the number he was looking for. “20 HP per minute. So that’s ticking up by one every three seconds or so. Five minutes and I’ll be back up to full health.”

“Wait, seriously? 20 HP per minute? Mine is only 8! How much HP do you have? 100?”

“102, but yeah.”

“Probably some sort of game balance thing. I’ve got 187. I guess knights really aren’t designed to be a solo class.”

“I read something about speccing them out for solo builds,” Valit said. “I think the theory was to be suicidally reckless, then use long recharge abilities to live through it. It’s not very popular though because it’s got a ton of downtimes while everything is on recharge and if you wanted to play that way, you could have just been a berserker instead.”

“Yeah. I just need to make friends with a mystic or a conjurer so I can get some of that sweet, sweet healing.”

After a few more minutes, everyone was back at maximum HP and they started out again. The quest marker gave a general location to search for the orcen ship, but Spiral had done the quests already and Valit had been dying to the marauders all day, so they both knew exactly where to go. Kana followed along, splitting his attention between the help menus and watching for more predatory ambushes.

When the ship came in sight, Spiral stopped. “That’s a lot more orcen than I remember,” he said with a frown.

“Yeah… there weren’t that many when I was trying to do this earlier. Not even close. Maybe a third of that total.”

Kana did a quick count of the ship, and came up with 14 orcen in plain view. They were doing laps across the deck, slow and methodical like they were searching for something. “Oh!” Spiral said. “Someone’s doing the marauders’ attack plans quest. The game spawns a bunch of extra marauders to hunt for the person on the quest, but it’s a level 10 quest so you can still complete it because all the orcen are in the 2 to 4 range. Or rather, you don’t die if you fail it, because the whole point is to sneak onboard for the plans and not get caught.”

“Can we still get the tools?” Kana asked.

“Uh, in theory? If we could fight our way through. We’re not under any obligations to be stealthy. But that’s a lot of orcen. We just about got beaten by those wolves.”

Kana considered the ship for a minute. “How do we even get out there? Are we just supposed to swim?”

“Normally there’s a boat that goes back and forth to the beach with two orcen that are transporting their stolen cargo. When the boat lands on the beach, you kill the orcen and steal it. It looks like someone already took it though.” Spiral pointed. “You can see it there against the side of the ship where that rope ladder is.”

“Are we just waiting then?”

Valit shrugged. “I guess we can go grind for a bit?”

Spiral made a face. “Uhhh, do we have to? Maybe just take a lunch break and come back when whoever is doing the attack plans quest is done here and it goes back to normal?”

“Looks like he’s done,” Kana said, pointing to the boat. A slim figure was climbing down into it and rowing towards the shore while the orcen were distracted by a fire that had erupted on the deck. The trio watched as the boat got closer. When it hit the sand, a man jumped out and stood facing them. Kana was surprised to find that he recognized him.

“You were in the training section with us,” he said. “Exodus.”

“Wait, how are you doing the marauders’ attack plans already? That’s a level 10 quest!” Spiral asked.

Exodus shrugged. “That’s just a recommendation. You don’t have to actually be level 10.”

“Sure, but we killed the boss of the training area together, and we just got to level 4. There’s no way you’re a high enough level to solo that.

“It’s called skill, noob. Some of us are good at this game.”

Now that Kana got a chance to get a good look at him, he noticed the man’s gear had changed considerably. Gone was the red half-cloak, replaced by a black number of similar cut but made of something higher quality than a burlap sack. He was wearing some sort of leather shirt with a number of straps across it, including a bandolier of throwing knives. The daggers on his waist had been upgraded too. One had silver wire wrapped around the hilt, and the other had a small gemstone set into the pommel.

Exodus walked off, leaving Spiral to stand there and fume. “That guy is the biggest asshole,” he said. “Whatever, at least he’s done. Give it a few minutes and everything should reset.”

Sure enough, a minute later, the whole scene just faded away to be replaced by another one. The fire, along with half the orcen on the ship, vanished. Piles of crates and barrels appeared on the shore, and two orcen whose HP bars labeled them as marauders spawned on the beach next to the boat. They started grabbing cargo to load, but before they could get into it, Spiral leaped forward to attack.

The marauders definitely had more HP than the bandits they’d previously fought. Kana combo chained all the way through two arc lances before the monsters died, but the fight went smoothly otherwise. Spiral barely lost any HP, and what was lost he recovered by the time they got the boat into the water and started rowing over to the ship.

“Here we go,” Spiral said, one hand on the rope ladder after they’d reached the ship. “I want to say there will only be six marauders, two up top and four below deck. But I’ve been wrong about the numbers all the way. This is going to be the biggest brawl yet. Focus on controlling the crowd and hitting individual targets hard and fast. If we don’t get their numbers taken down in the first rush, they’ll overwhelm us.”

Then he scrambled up the ladder, Kana and Valit right behind him.