Chapter 56: Needle worms

A light-green tree with tiny legs in the boots and slim arms with brown-leather short gauntlets already made a comical appearance but an armor on a tree and a helmet just placed, barely holding on the highest branch on top, was a punchline. People around laughed at the sight of a lousily armored tree, he looked more like a scarecrow on the field than a warrior.

“Fuc* you guys! I hate my character!” Disheartened, Safo went to his character's menu to choose the option that hid the armor from the view. Most players turned on that option to show off their character’s look, and conceal the strength of their armor on higher cubes. Luna did the same, straight after she bought her ability-based armor set, a while ago.

“Hey, nice to see your healthy twigs and leaves again, my cellmate.” A deep but somehow hurt voice came approaching Safo Nur.

“It is you. How are you, man? You don't look good.” Safo greeted BlackSly whose character was a humanoid cluster of flesh with no skin to properly combine all the meat and bones. The animation of the character was that once in a while a piece of meat or a bone fell off to the ground, and a constant buzzing of flies occupied the orifices of the bloody-meaty body.

“Damn, I started to appreciate my character’s look after seeing yours. Haha.” They both laughed while Luna felt sick and went to stay as far as possible from BlackSly.

After some time of chit-chat about good old jail days, they teleported to the Enchanted Forest using their scrolls. It was pretty easy to use, one was supposed to unroll the scroll and stand on top of it, on the image of the place that was printed on the paper.

A short time of a black screen and a quartet was already in the Dwelling of the Living Trees, the heart of the Enchanted Forest. The rest of the events passed uneventfully. Due to Milouds tight schedule, they had no time for sightseeing. Safo swiftly approached the main enormous oak-type tree and got the option to choose his first reward. His options were between three types of orbs: Strength, Agility, and Mental Orbs.

Safo didn’t ponder for long on that question; he accepted a Mental Orb. First of all, he heard that it was the most challenging monsters type to hunt and his second and main reason was that he was eager to train martial arts in the game. He had to spend more time on his hand-to-hand combat skills, thus he wanted his stats not to be too high from others, so he could fight longer.

With his new Mental Orb and after consuming the Strength Orb that he gathered from killing mud monsters his stats went a lot higher. Safo, physically, even to it was impossible, felt how his body got stronger, each wire of his muscles thickened a bit. He felt the energy flow throughout his plant body.

“Are you done there, follow me, faster.” Miloud tapped Safo’s green body to gain his attention. Then he walked towards a guy with a huge yellow shield.

“Oh my god, is it what I think it is? No, no, don’t tell me that you actually finished that quest. No way!” Miloud sounded like he had been replaced by someone else. Apparently, someone who talks in a high pitch tone and has a habit to gesticulate as if he was on the theatre stage, acting.

His usual monotone voice and his bleak personality were like a dark cloud that was blown away and playful tiny colorful clouds came to sing songs and juggle the snowflakes.

Confused, Safo Nur followed him as an obedient pupil would do. When he came closer, Safo was in a range where he could fully praise the shield in front of him. It was massive, as tall and wide as its wielder, a bulky pink-skinned man with bleached hair and green eyes. The shield was nearly two meters long, a bit wider than one and a half meters, and thick as a fist.

“Can we touch it?” Miloud almost screamed out his excitement. He looked at Safo and for a moment his face changed to grave serious and he said: “Touch it.” Then, once more Miloud wore a mask of a kid in a toy store.

The owner of the shield had no boundary to his pride, he was the hero of the day, in his dreamland. Quickly they parted their ways and returned to their companions.

“Your gauntlets can replicate weapons and shields, right? You will need this shield on your list. The first lesson for you, if you want to be an assassin; learn to lie.”

While in high spirits they went back to Cilla Village to go to the hunting spot that was in Miloud’s head.

“Alright, man, we are walking for an hour now. I’m not saying that I’m tired but I’m tired. This thing is heavy as hell.” Safo recreated the “Oak-Lord Wall”, a legendary Tier 3 tower shield. While the original had unbelievable stats, the copy that Safo created was the only Tier 1, and its health points were only 50% of its owner’s HP. But the weight and size were the same. Miloud told Safo to carry the shield from Cilla Village to the designated spot where Miloud was about to finish his weapon quest.

Safo was impatient to kill more monsters, despite his exhaustion. The first several that he killed were low level and he managed to kill them with one hit with his gauntlets on. It was before Miloud, his teacher, ordered him to create a shield and train his endurance.

[Name: WorldDestroyer

Level: 5

Exp (Experience) 4/200

HP (Health Points): 30/30

MP (Mental Points): 0/0

Defense: 1.5(armor set) + 3(God’s gloves)

Strength: 0.5 + 1(orb)

Agility: 0.5

Mental Power: 0.5 + 1(orb)]

Completely drained, Safo Nur and his party of Luna, BlackSly, and Miloud arrived at their destination. The place was swarmed with worms thick as logs, all mixed and jumbled in the pit. After a brief instruction from Miloud, they had basic knowledge about worms of that particular area.

Needle worms had a needle inside their bodies and could spit it out with great speed. With their quantity, which was a lot, around a couple hundred of them, they could easily create a rain of needles to protect their alpha, which was the target to finish the quest. Only by killing it, Miloud could obtain his favorite weapon.

“...So, we need to clean this place. Usually, when I’m on my own, it takes me a couple of days to get rid of all worms before reaching the alpha but with your help, I plan to finish the quest in a couple of hours.” Miloud turned out to be a decent leader, considering his young age. He placed Safo Nur in the front with his shield before him, plunged to the ground, while BlackSly covered his back. Luna was behind everybody on top of the huge boulder that gave a shadow to the pit of worms. Miloud played a damage dealer role going from place to place and finishing off or engaging in a fight to draw attention.

God’s Gloves that Safo equipped had three mods: short or long gloves, and a weapon mode. The purpose of the short and long gloves was purely to give more fashionable options to the owner and didn’t affect the damage dealt by gloves. On the other hand, while using a weapon mode gloves themselves didn’t possess any damage, only the weapon properties worked on that mode. But the shield was a different story.

Wielding a shield gave Safo a great boon because he could use both his shield and a glove itself to fight. Meaning that he didn’t suffer a damage-dealing shortage. His current strength points were at 1.5, which was multiplied by ten, awarding him 15 damage. Which was enough to kill the level 5 Needle worm.

The first batch of worms came chasing Miloud, they already spit their needles so the team had a window before worms could recreate a new needle inside their bodies. It starts its creation right after an old needle's launch, taking it beginning from the rear segments of the worm slowly growing to the front segments. While still being inside its maker a needle is not solid and could take any chape and bent easily.

“Now!” Miloud screamed the order to attack, Safo and BlackSly jumped out from behind the shield and threw themselves towards unarmed worms. In no time and without a long struggle they managed to annihilate the slimy creatures.

[ You have killed a Needle worm. You gained 7 Exp. ]

[ You have killed a Needle worm. You gained 7 Exp. ]

“Yes! Did you see that, were you watching guys? I killed two in a row.” Safo jumped with his fist stretched to the sky. It was his first level 5 enemies.

BlackSly had killed the remaining one worm. And they both swiftly returned to their position behind the Oak wall.

“How many have you killed so far, Luna?” Safo looked back at Luna who was sitting on the boulder with her bow in her hands.

“Eighteen…” She charged her bow with a regular arrow that she bought for a very cheap price in the village and the next moment it became an ice arrow. Crackling and sending white smoke it flew to the sky when Luna pointed her bow high and released the string. A second of swooshing noise and the white arrow landed on the pile of worms afar inside the pit, killing one or two of the worms instantly.

“Twenty.”