A couple of hours later I woke up and decided to read some more in the book I was given about the animals to be found on Isildor. When I had looked at the book before I noticed it was divided into family types, I felt I was more interested in the cats, birds, and the bears so I looked mainly at those sections of the book. On Isildor there had been several species that spawned in different environments, and it told me the details of what made them different. For instance, there was a desert cat called a Mau that was able to burrow beneath the sands and attack from underground. Then there was a swamp cat that stayed in the trees for the most part and ambushed from above. The cat I found most interesting was reported to only be found in dungeons and could change its patterns to hide in many environments. Similarly, there were carrion birds, birds of prey… The list was endless, but it looked like the birds tended towards hit and run attacks so I would need something that could stand toe to toe so that I could still shoot arrows. Bears were interesting for that part as they were listed as the sturdiest of the beasts I was interested in. The issue with bears was the size. They would have trouble following me around in dungeons sometimes and would be restricted from assisting me indoors. It might still be worth it, but I would wait to talk to my instructor once I reached the planet to get advice.

About this time I noticed that a large freighter was pulling into the dock outside the viewport I got up and approached the window to take a look at it. Overall it appeared pretty massive, it was about 800 meters long, and from the angle, I had it would appear about 300 meters wide. It was a fairly squared off ship compare to the shuttle which was shaped more like an aircraft which made sense since it was expected to navigate in the atmosphere too. There was still about 2 hours until we were due to start boarding so I went back to my seat and continue to read while other people disembarked, and from other bays the ship had its cargo unloaded, and fresh stores and other cargo was loaded aboard. Once they finished, they started calling us aboard, and I went on board to learn where I was going to be spending the next few days while traveling. When were brought aboard they asked if any of us had not traveled like this before and I raised my hand, so a guy named James was assigned to show me around to the different facilities of the ship. It had a lounge area with a large viewport as well as where videos were shown. There were a workout and training simulator where they would simulate environments and allow you to train skills against computer controlled enemies. There was also a computer area where passengers had access to look up information they needed. There was also a dining hall for both passengers and crew. After this, I was shown to the passenger berthing area, and James explained that the front half of the ship was devoted to people, while the rear was mostly containers and other pieces of freight. I went ahead into my room, and it was appointed very similarly to the one I was given by Kimberly, pretty Spartan living, but beggars can’t be choosers, so I will have to start earning my way before things get better. In fact, that’s probably the reason why things are like this, to encourage people to stand on their own. Since it is already late, I decide to head to bed for the night and start working on training and learning as much as possible on my way to Isildor. The next few days on the way to the station hub in the Sirius quadrant pass in much the same way, I wake up, eat breakfast, research about Isildor and the expected levels of the monsters in certain areas, as well as where certain animals can be located. Then I go to the training simulator and try to increase my combat proficiencies. By the time I reached the Sirius station my stats had increased fairly well above what I had achieved at the Vortex headquarters. I felt good about my accomplishments so far and hoped that I would not get on the bad side of my new teacher. As I left the freighter, I found that Sirius station was much busier and the life forms were much more diverse. There were creatures I had never seen before like a pink and white furry creature that resembled a bear and human mix, or a gray creature that appeared to be made of stone, creatures with 2 to 10 legs, multiple arms, no arms, and one that even had no face. It was a lot to take in. I kind of wish now I had known what to expect. I do not even know what race my new teacher will be. Will we speak the same language? I was starting to get anxious about this journey and felt ill prepared for what lay ahead. I had no choice though so I went to the gate listed on my papers. Luckily there was not a long delay in this next departure, and I was carrying everything I owned on my finger, so I didn’t have to worry about losing anything. At the next gate, I found a lot more people that wore expressions similar to what I suppose my face must have shown, bewildered, concerned, pick an emotion. There were also a few people there that appeared confident, or even cocky. I thought to myself there must be more people here because it’s considered a starting world. These people are most likely just starting out like I am, that does explain most of the expressions. I decided to stick to myself for right now as I was unsure about those around me. I was told that this was an Immortalis planet. Thus I figured that most of these people would be of that faction. I wanted to see how my teacher treated me before I opened up to these people, plus they may be going to different places on the planet than where I would be meeting my teacher.

I found an open spot to wait and before long we were aboard again and departing Sirius on the way to Isildor. Honestly, I could not wait for the trip to be over. Once we arrived, I would hopefully be able to get some kind of routine going. Find a place where I fit and figure out my role. We had another two days of travel on this ship, so I started the same routine I had on the other freighter. Mainly training as much as I could. When we arrived at the Isildor station, I found the shuttle gate that would be heading for the outpost of Kantor which is where I expected to meet my trainer and take up my new life. I had about an hour to wait so once again I studied my book and compared what I could see of the planet outside the window to what I had learned on the computer. The planet itself was covered in about 60% water, the land that remained was made up of about 50% forest, 10% ice, 20% plains, and the rest was a desert. There was further division in that some of the forest areas was rain forest, other was in mountains and cooler areas, and some was swampy. Kantor happened to be set right on the edge of a plain and forest, so there was some diversity to the area. I still had not made up my mind on which beasts I wanted to focus on, though I could gain many of them, at first you can’t afford to feed yourself and too many beasts.

We boarded and undocked shortly later and made the thirty-minute trip down to the surface. I left the shuttle and found a desk and asked the lady at the desk where I could find Ranger Saila, she directed me to leave the building and follow the road to the right. About a quarter of a mile away would be a building called Odyssey Adventure Company or the OAC, she explained that they were responsible for assignments of adventurers and should know where to find the ranger or when to expect him back. I thanked her for the information and walked outside. Other than the shuttle port, most of the town looked like a cross between something from the old west with modern elements thrown in like computers, tablets and things of that nature. The only thing that was totally low tech was weaponry. The highest tech item I saw was a crossbow. I thought it odd that everyone was walking down the street fully armed and equipped, so I went ahead and equipped my gear as well but resolved to ask the reason later. On the way to the OAC building, I passed an inn, what appeared to be a brothel, a barber, and a few shops like potions, armor, and weaponry. I finally came to the OAC building and stepped inside. Inside was a counter with two people standing behind it, along the walls were boards with notices pinned to them which people were looking over and taking up to the counter. I got in the line for the counter, and once it was my turn, I asked the guy at the desk for Ranger Saila. He introduced himself as Steve Tasker and asked me what I needed with the ranger, I explained that I was sent here to be trained by him, he told me that the ranger was out on a mission and was not expected back until around dinner time. He then gave me the choice of waiting around there, going to the Inn which with no money was not possible, or taking one of the tasks on the board and trying to make some money and experience. I decided to try out one of the tasks and asked him about how to find a task that would suit me. He took me over to the board and explained to me “Look at the slip of paper, Odyssey recognizes them as quests, and if you focus on it you will get a popup that shows the difficulty related to your current level and skills. It will then color the message in one of five ways. Green would be below your current skill level and not really worth doing because the rewards would be insignificant for you, blue is below your skill but still rewarding to do, white would just about match your skill level, and the rewards would be perfect for your current level. The other two are above your skills and would be difficult or impossible to do alone. Yellow is slightly above you, and while possible, it is more likely that you would die, and that would be the end of you. Red is significantly above your skills, and you would stand no chance at your current skills. It’s the same way when you examine monsters. They are color coded the same way. When you find a task that you want, bring it to the desk, and we will log it out to you. You then have 24 hours to complete the task, unless a time limit is specified on the slip itself as some tasks can take longer to accomplish.” He then asked if I had any questions and when I said no he went back to his desk letting me know that he would let he ranger know I was here looking for him. I examined the board looking over the slips there until I found two that looked interesting

Help the alchemist obtain reagents. (see the alchemist for descriptions of the plants if needed)

Check the forest and the plain for 5 vordgrass and 5 vitae shrooms

Rewards: 100 experience, Alchemy training or 2 healing potions

And

Thin their numbers.

In the forest are minor wargs, kill 5 of them and return their hides to the tailor.

Rewards 100 experience plus, Either 1 silver or tailoring training.

I decided to take both of those since the herbs were white and the wargs were blue and took them to the counter. Steve was busy, so the other guy who was named Gary assigned them to me. I asked him for directions to the alchemist which he told me was 3 doors down on the opposite side of the road. I left the OAC and headed to the alchemist. He provided me the description of the grass as bright yellow with a broad leaf and showed me a piece he had. He did the same with the mushroom which turned out to be white in color with red under the cap. He then took me to his flower bed and demonstrated how to gather the plants without damaging them. I decided to head out and get the grass first since the forest was likely to take more time. I headed further away from the shuttle port to the outskirts of town and started looking around for the plants I needed, as I was doing so I saw a few animals out running around but they were not aggressive, and I was going to need my arrows for the forest, so I ignored them. I finally found a clump of vordgrass so I tried to emulate what the alchemist had taught me. I ended up breaking off about 5 stalks before I finally managed to get a stalk intact with the part that was growing inside the plant which is where the juices were that made the potion. I did not want to kill the plant, so I looked for another one to try to get the rest of the stalks off of. Overall it took about one and a half hours to get all the vordgrass so I headed back towards town and entered the forest close to the gates. I decided to go with my bow in hand, that way if I came across a warg while I was looking for the mushroom I could try to kill it. I thought about attempting to tame one, but according to the book feeding them over the course of several days was the best way to go about it. Honestly, though I have no idea what the ranger is going to want me to do, so spending multiple days just may not be possible. It took about twenty minutes to find the first mushroom because I was looking along the ground but these mushrooms actually were growing on the trees. Most of them appeared to be above the branches, and I only saw the one because it was below the lowest branch. It also appeared they only were growing on trees that were not healthy looking, almost like the mushrooms were sucking the trees life away. I was able to gather the 5 mushrooms while up in that first tree though climbing it was a challenge. I eventually had to use the rope that was in my storage ring to help get myself up to the first branch. I started to lower myself down but saw a small white furred warg come from deeper in the woods, it looked like a cross between a wolf and an alligator with large jaws and spines down its back. At this moment I decided I was glad I was still up in the tree and pulled my bow from storage and drew an arrow back. I sighted along the bow aiming for what Samantha had described to me as a one hit kill eyes, lungs, heart. Honestly, the eyes were not even remotely a chance for me at my skill, so I aimed for the chest area. The beast was about 25 yards away when I finally loosed the arrow, but unfortunately, I did not hit the lungs, I hit the front leg instead below the chest level. The animal snarled and whirled around trying to find what had hit it, so I quickly drew another arrow and aimed again, this time the arrow hit to the left of where I was aiming but still did a good amount of damage to the beast. Its blood was flowing quickly from its wounds, but its thrashing and turning caused it to break off my first arrow. At that point, it started to run away, so I quickly lined up another shot and loosed it, it hit the beast in the rear leg on the same side as the first arrow had hit. The warg was not able to support itself on the right-hand side and fell over. I was not able to get a clean shot at anything that would end its life, so I climbed down from the tree. I slowly approached the beast who was still bleeding all over the ground. I did not want to chance those jaws trying to end this with my dagger, so I drew another arrow from about 5 feet away and was able to hit its lungs and heart to finally defeat the beast. Upon its death, a box popped up saying

You defeated a minor warg!

Experience gained 20, gained 3% archery skill

I then approached the beast, and when I touched the corpse, a box appeared showing me the items on the body.

Arrow x3

Broken arrow x1

Warg skin

Warg liver

Warg meat x5

Warg Fang x4

I place it all in my storage ring and decide that the skin is for tailoring, the meat for cooking, the liver might be alchemy, but I have no clue what the fangs would be used for. Either way, that beast was pretty dangerous, I need to be really careful trying to kill 4 more of them. I try to use sneaking like I did on the transport ship training simulator as I need to get the drop on these wargs. I can’t just hope for one of them to wander to me if I sit in a tree all day so I head a little further into the forest and try to find another warg to kill. It takes about twenty more minutes, but I finally find another, I take aim again this time, this time allowing for gravity and the wind and release again at the beasts lungs. This time it’s a direct hit, and while the beast turns and runs towards me, it quickly drowns in its own blood with a much easier kill.

You defeated a minor warg!

Experience gained 20, gained 1% archery skill

Before I get a chance to loot the body I hear a growling behind me, so I quickly draw another arrow and release at the warg that got the drop on me, I miss completely and quickly think equip dagger. The warg rushes in and jumps at me, I dodge to the side, and its claws rake the armor on my arms as it flies past me. It lands and turns to face me. I try to remember what Samantha taught me and get into a fighting position. The dog lunges at me again this time as I dodge I slice its side with my dagger. It yelps and when it lands it turns to attack again, it does not lunge this time and just moves towards me I step back and to the side to try to keep it from closing with me while brandishing my dagger at it. Eventually, it jumps at me again and this time I do not dodge aside in time. It grabs my wrist in its teeth, and while they do not penetrate my armor fully, I can feel the pressure being exerted by the dog. I yell out and bring the dog closer to my dagger where I thrust it into its chest a few times, and it releases me and falls to the ground. A few seconds later a popup appears

You defeated a minor warg!

Experience gained 20, gained 3% dodge skill and 2% dagger skill

The rest of the time hunting is fairly uneventful. I make sure that there are no other wargs around when I take on the other two with my bow, I walk away with losing 2 of my 24 arrows, but I gained 100 experience plus the skills I increased. I will also be able to sell 20 warg fangs, 3 warg livers, 2 warg hearts, and a total of 16 pieces of warg meat. It’s been a long day though so I wearily head back to town to turn in the quests and see if Ranger Saila is back yet.

I go to the alchemist first and give him the herbs for the quest he registers it as complete with the system and lets me choose which reward I wanted. I ask about the trade skills whether I could learn more than one, he informs me there is no limit, other than the effort I want to put into the skill. So I decide to take him up on the alchemy training. At this point, I hear the gong of gaining another level, but I ignore it for now. He teaches me how to use a mortar and pestle, the beakers, burners, and other accouterments of the alchemy profession and has me practice making a health potion under his tutelage. I succeed on the second try and gain 1% with that skill. I then show him the warg fangs and the livers and hearts, he informs me that the fangs can be filed down and made into arrow heads that penetrate slightly better than normal metal due to the mana ingrained in them, and the heart and liver he uses for alchemy recipes. I do not have the skill to use them and will have to wait until I reach 15% skill, so I decide to sell them to him for 1 silver 20 copper. I then ask for the tailor shop, and he directs me to next door to the brothel I saw earlier today. I go there and present an older lady with the warg skins. I accept the training from her as well and gain a single percent in tailoring. It’s about 7 in the evening now, so I am hoping that the ranger is available now and head back to the OAC. Once I enter I find a tall man in leather that has been dyed green waiting near the desk, I examine him for a moment, and the screen that pops up identifies him as Ranger Saila, a level 45 ranger. He is an elf with blonde hair and blue eyes that look rather handsome though he looks tired. I quickly greet him.

“Hi my name is Alain, and I was sent to be trained by you, I am sorry if I kept you waiting long.”

I hand him the papers that Daniel gave to me, and he replies “It’s nice to meet you, and the wait is no bother. I am glad to see that instead of holding up a wall you decided to accomplish something. I can see by your bracer that you were taking on some wargs. That’s a good start, could you show me your information screen so that I know where we need to work?”

I think show Ranger Saila personal information

Spoiler: Spoiler

Personal Information

Name

Age

Class

Level

Faction

Alain

18

N/A

3

Vortex

Health

EXP /next level

Mana

35

100/400

28

Statistics

Strength

Stamina

Dexterity

Intelligence

Wisdom

4

5

10

4

4

Magic Affinity

Nature

Cold

Fire

Water

Light and Dark

8%

5%

1%

4%

3%

Combat Proficiencies

Stealth 5%

Dagger 12%

Archery 14%

Throwing 4%

Pugilist 2%

Defense Proficiencies

Dodge 8%

Parry 2%

Block 1%

Skills

Beast Taming

10%

Stat points remaining

10

Skill points remaining

2

Trade skills

Herbalist

4%

Skinning

1%

Alchemy

1%

Tailoring

1%

He says “Not too bad, I see you have some skill with dagger and archery. It's good to have both melee and range to back each other up. The path of the ranger is one of versatility, it takes longer to make something of yourself, but you always have something that will work for an enemy. Others might be stumped, but you are no one trick pony. I saved your information and will set up a training regimen starting tomorrow, and since it's getting late, we will save questions until then too. Let’s get you set up in the inn, for now, get a meal and head to bed for now.”

I agree with him, and we go back to the Inn. I get a room, and once again it’s serviceable but nothing special. The food is good though, and the beer is cold, what else do you need. I ask the inn keeper about learning cooking, and he says his cook can train me for 1 silver, I decided to take him up on that offer, and he teaches me how to cook my warg meat. By the time I am done cooking it all I gain 5% skill with cooking. At this point, it’s definitely bed time, so I head up to my room and set my alarm for 6:30 since Saila said he wanted to meet at 7.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Personal Information

Name

Age

Class

Level

Faction

Alain

18

N/A

3

Vortex

Health

EXP /next level

Mana

35

100/400

28

Statistics

Strength

Stamina

Dexterity

Intelligence

Wisdom

4

5

10

4

4

Magic Affinity

Nature

Cold

Fire

Water

Light and Dark

8%

5%

1%

4%

3%

Combat Proficiencies

Stealth 5%

Dagger 12%

Archery 14%

Throwing 4%

Pugilist 2%

Defense Proficiencies

Dodge 8%

Parry 2%

Block 1%

Skills

Beast Taming

10%

Stat points remaining

10

Skill points remaining

2

Trade skills

Herbalist

4%

Skinning

1%

Alchemy

1%

Tailoring

1%

Cooking

5%