Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! Bandit Raiding and Nin-Nining!

ANYWAY, The first big fight after a long time! Altough it was more of a group fight and such… As a note, all the places, characters and stories mentioned here are based on the same story where I took Gondorrer, Eldor, Arcus, El and Goulder. Only with minor alterations to fit the story.

ALSO, I’m kind of worried about one thing on this whole story… What do you guys think about the pace? I mean… We are ta chapter 21 and Wargon is still at level 8! This bothers me a lot more than it should.

ALSO(2), I’m really holding myself back so I don’t start writing another story to post in here. Like, really, a lot! Although I have no plan to slow down Insania’s updates since this takes a lot more precedence and would only work on it on my free time, but the updates would be really irregulars… Oh well…

ALSO(3), if you notice something wrong with the status screen, like a missing skill or something, please do warn me. I was using the Excel to track this but I Kinda of messed up by overwriting the newest archive… So some things might be missing. Except Smelt crystal, that kind of goes within Crystal tinkering.

Have a good read, Nin-Nin!

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It took us around three hours of walking to reach the entrance of the bandit’s base. On the way, I learned that both Arcus and El were specialized in melee combat, although Arcus was the full-blown muscle-idiot, and El actually focused more in the use of magic to enhance her attacks.

Arcus, as he had already told me earlier, was actually the son of two Element serpents’ breeders. These element serpents are the same as Whisi, who was a wind serpent. There were three other serpents besides the wind one. There was the water serpent, whose wings also worked as fins for swimming and had gills as well as lungs. Then, there were fire serpents, that had small horns on their heads. Lastly, the earth serpents, who have thick scales and spend most of their time sleeping. All of them had scales that shed around their eighth year, with the exception of the wind ones that had fur, and all of them could use some weak magic of their element.

When he told me that, I thought about getting one of them as a pet, and Arcus readily told me to look for his parent’s ranch and say that I know him, and they would give-me a discount. I also noted that El had been attentively listening to our talk, although acting as if it didn’t matter to her. Something a bit hard to believe while she was hugging Whisi so closely.

Also, I learned that Whisi is actually a female. Sorry for all those times I called you by he.

Then, I also learned a juicy information from Arcus. The Element serpents had a closely related species that was far bigger, far more powerful and far more aggressive, called Tempest serpent. These guys could use some really mean spells, and they are all born at level forty, and their average level as adults is around fifty-five to sixty.

I am so hunting them! What kind of weapons and armors should I make out of them?

After that, we heard about El’s story, or at least some parts of it. She said that she came from Ezoria Argus. When I looked completely at loss about the name, Goulder told me that it’s another one of the great capitals, this one being the capital of humans, Draconids, Constructs, and such being heavily focused on non-natural elemental magic development, those being Chaos, Arcane, light and darkness.

There is also the small detail that the whole city is stated above a bridge. Yep, you heard me, a bridge.

A FREAKING THIRTY BY FIVE KILOMETERS STONE BRIDGE!

It seems that it was created by the goddess as a way to link this continent to another one, which were separated by a valley whose walls were pretty much vertical.

When I asked Cyg about the bridge, the true story was a bit more… anticlimactic. She actually mistook the parameters for the width from meters to kilometers and was a bit too ashamed to change back. But in the end the results were better than expected, as it became one of the biggest capitals.

Goulder, who had noticed my curiosity regarding large monsters, also told me of a certain huge Bone-plated wolf that lived in that valley beneath the bridge. It seemed to be a gigantic wolf two meters high and four long, their whole body is covered with a ridiculously strong bone armor that naturally grows from them. They are around level one-fifity or one-sixty. They can hunt pretty much anything, but their favorite preys are dragons. FREAKING DRAGONS!

I can only wonder what kind of monsters these guys are.

Back to El, she also let us the hint that she actually come from some kind of noble family, but didn’t let it clear which one is, as her surname wasn’t actually her family’s.

After that, came Goulder’s story.

He is pretty much a war hero. Started as a mercenary in a mercenary guild called the Shattered Gauntlet, after a huge bravery feat on the battleground, he was invited to become a knight affiliated to Order of the Silver Chalice, his friends in the mercenary guild encouraged him to take the position. During a large war, both groups find themselves on the same side of the battlefield, only to be almost annihilated after a sudden betrayal of a large part of their allies. From there Goulder took over both groups and created the Silver Gauntlet, which is one of the biggest organizations to date. Now he likes to fool with newbies making them think he is just a simple old man who makes the registration.

As I said, he is pretty much badass.

Both me and Arcus started to look at him with new eyes as he laughed loudly.

Then came my time and I told them my story and dream. When they heard about the Four gods of disasters, they thought I had gone mad, but when I said that Wallace was the one who saw them, they became wide eyed. Arcus suddenly approached me and held my shoulders with strength.

“Look here, man, when you find one of those guys, you are going to call me, understood? No way I’m losing something so fun like that.”

I laughed at that while the serpent face-winged itself.

After some time, we finally arrived at the border of the bandits’ area. Goulder took some distance so he wouldn’t interrupt us while me, Arcus and El joined togheter.

“Okay, so how are we going to do this?” I asked them. Arcus looked slightly confused while El looked at me seriously. “Are we going ‘banzai’ and run there like idiots killing everything in sight while risking being surrounded, or are we going for the ninja approach? By the way, I’m not against the first idea.”

“Ninja? What’s that?” Asked Arcus confused. I could see that El also didn’t recognize the term. I smiled widely.

“Ninjas are master assassins, specialized on stealth.” I said in a whisper, making them approach me to hear better. “They wear clothes that cover their whole bodies except their eyes, it’s said that they can become invisible every and anywhere. They are master at martial arts and one ninja alone can take a whole army down by himself. Each ninja carry at the very least twenty three different hidden weapons, each one more powerful than the other! They are so strong that some of them can even walk on the water or make clone of themselves!”

“Wow! That’s awesome! Where can I find one of these guys?” Asked Arcus excited. I held back a grin and signaled him to stay quiet.

“Shh! Understand this. Ninjas are everywhere, at every time. There could even be a ninja between us right now!” I said with a slightly scared voice. I saw Arcus eyes widen and his face pale slightly.

Meanwhile, El and Whisi were face palming.

“I vote for the stealth approach. We know too little of our enemies for us to risk a frontal assault.” Said El after some time, back to her serious expression.

“Yes! I also want to be a ninja!” Arcus said excited.

“Shiii-sha lalalala”

“Whisi also agrees.”

“Okay, then first and most important.” I turned to Arcus who was excited. “As a ninja, you must always end your phrases in Nin-Nin. That’s the first and most important rule of being a ninja.”

“Nin-Nin?” He asked confused

“Nin-Nin!” I nodded.

“Understood. Nin-Nin!”

So gullible! I turned away while smiling widely. El was slowly shaking her head in disbelief.

“Okay, now, for starters we need information. How many enemies, equipment and positions. So we will need a scout.” El said, then she turned to the serpent she had been petting all this time. “Can we count on you?”

“Sha-ha!” Whisi said while making a salute with her tail, then she swung her wings and flew high towards the forest.

Meanwhile we decided what plan we were going to use. We decided that the best things would be by taking out whatever scouts they had then slowly move towards their main camp. For now we would try to capture the bandits, but should things go south, we are immediately going to chance to kill on sight.

After a while the serpent came back and landed between us. Through Arcus she asked for us to clear the grass from the ground, which El quickly did with a fire spell, then blew the ashes away revealing the ground beneath.

Then Whisi started to use its tail to draw on the ground.

It’s really humiliating when an animal draws better than you, you know? She did everything, from the camp, where the tents were, scouts position and patrol areas, landmarks and even where some wild animals were.

All the while, Arcus had been translating everything she was saying. It was downright bizarre how he could even tell the equipment the scouts were using only through a few hisses from Whisi.

Nodding according to the plan, we decided to start with the patrols.

Also, I might have postponed this for far too long, but since we are about to have a huge fight, I need to show you guys this:

NAME:

Wargon (Gondorrer Gravelheart)TITLE:

Pioneer of the craftsClass tree:WandererClass:NoneRace:GolemGender:Neutral (male)Level:8Experience:22%

STATUS:

Remaining points (0)Health Points:390/390HP regen (out of combat):1.5/secEnergy:100/100Energy Regen:10/secSTR:29(11)TGH:13(11)AGI:37(11)VIT:31(25)INT:11MND:11ATTK:5-23Extra:(none)DEF91M. Res.:39Satiety:79/100 (Satisfied)

SKILLS:

Derivation points (0)One-handed Sword Mastery [lvl 6]

-Slash (Active)

-Stab (Active)

-Slice ‘n dice (Active)

Dual-wielding mastery [lvl 2]

-Whirlwind (Active)

Bow Mastery [lvl 5]

-Power shot (Active)

-Quick shots (Active)

-Piercing shot (Active)

-Snipe

Martial Arts [lvl 2]

-Kick

Shield Mastery [lvl 4]

-Bashing - Shield slam*

Scale-mail Mastery [lvl 4]

Chain-mail Mastery [lvl 4]

Leather Mastery [lvl 1]

(Original) Roll [lvl14]

Skinning [lvl 6]

Mining [lvl 7]

Crystal Tinkerer [lvl 6]

Leatherworking[lvl 8]

Blacsmithing [lvl 7]

Taunt [lvl 3]

-Focused mockery

Racials [max]

-Nature’s bastion (Active)

-Rock Eater

-Sedimentary skin (Active)

-Nature attuned

Beatiful, isn’t it? So many points at such a low level! I could die happy.

Okay, scratch that, I don’t want to die.

For starters, we entered the forest while Whisi guided us to the nearest patrol. As soon as he got on sight, I signaled for both El and Arcus to stop, telling them that I would avoid the guy from calling reinforcement. Then I took my bow and withdrew one of the ice arrows from my inventory. Sadly, the quiver could only link to one arrow at a time, so I couldn’t really use it to pull the crystal arrows.

I nocked the arrow in the bow then waited. The longer it took, the more power the bow started to gather and the more I could ascertain about the distance and the position of my target, thanks to the snipe skill. As soon as the 15 seconds were up, I let go of the bowstring with the power-shot while activating the arrow with a fraction of a second of delay.

-51 (Critical) (459/510)

The arrow hit him right below the neck. The patrol who didn’t see it coming didn’t even have time to react as the arrow activated and the ice spread through his neck up to the mouth. Muffled, he didn’t have the chance to make a sound when both El and Arcus approached him in a dash and started to attack him, quickly overpowering him.

When I noticed he was about to run away, I activated the quick shots with the normal arrows twice on each feet.

-9 -8 -9 -8

-34 (234/510)

The arrows pinned him on the ground for enough time for Arcus and El to drop his health beneath 10%, when Arcus punched the bandit in the stomach, making him faint. He soon took a rope from his bag and tied the guy before using a cloth to muffle him.

As soon as he was done, he turned back to me with his eyes shining dangerously.

“Hey, Hey! What was that? Nin-Nin?”

El and Whisi also seemed curious about the arrow I used, so I couldn’t help but smile smugly.

“Trade secret… But it’s actually an elemental crystal and iron ingot for the arrowhead. This one can freeze the area around it, but it reduces the damage the arrow deals. That, and I only have fourteen more of these left.”

The three of them nodded in surprise, but then El frowned.

“Fourteen… Of these? You have others?”

Sharp, isn’t she?

“Yeah, I have one that can stun them, another that poisons, one that can either knock back or travel far and one that sets them on fire. I’m still looking for other kinds of arrows, but not having much luck up to now.” They widened their eyes, but soon nodded before we went towards the next enemy.

On the way, El stood by my side and told me in a low voice so that Arcus and Whisi wouldn’t hear.

“I’m sorry.” I raised my eyebrows and looked at her in confusion. She was looking slightly downwards ashamed. “I underestimated you earlier thinking that you wouldn’t be an asset to this job.”

I laughed slightly and petted her head. She seemed confused for a moment, but didn’t seem too bothered by it. Still, her reaction was boring compared to Yuu’s…

“It happens. If I were in your place I would have reacted the same.” I told her truthfully. She looked surprised at me for a moment, then nodded before walking off towards Whisi.

After that we dispatched of six more sentinels in the same way as before. I would freeze their mouths with an arrow then Arcus and El would go in for the kill. I wouldn’t deal much damage besides my initial shot, as I would risk hitting the two of them and the damage was a bit on the low side, compared to their 30+ hits, leaving me more for support.

Also, the two of them were refraining from using their most flashy skills as to avoid drawing attention. Not that they weren’t strong, mind you.

The next scouts would be a bit more problematic, because from what Whisi said, they always walked in a pair. We approached them cautiously until they were within my range. Taking two arrows from the inventory and holding one together with the bow, I slowly pulled the string. We were at their side and could barely hear them talking something about the new recruits and so.

I signaled for both of them to get closer, and as soon as they were in a good distance, I let go of the arrow hitting the farthest one. Before they could understand what happened I put the other arrow in the bow and shot it with the power shot, hitting the second one on the back of his head and scoring a critical.

As the two of them froze, my two companions jumped forwards focusing on the one the critical had landed on. I darted sideways while keeping my focus on the battle and on the other soldier. As soon as he tried to attack Arcus, I shot a stun arrow at his chest.

He stopped for a moment as his body convulsed due to the explosion. The lack of damage more than being compensated by the extra seconds it bought.

Seeing that the ice on his mouth was starting to melt, I pulled another ice arrow and readied the bow. He noticed me by now and looked in my direction, trying to predict my next move. I smiled wickedly as I suddenly changed my run towards him. Not understanding why an archer would run in the direction of a melee, he was left confused for a moment.

I landed a flying kick on his stomach right as the ice melted. The bonus knock back from kick making him fly backwards a little. Having lost my balance, I used roll right before I landed on the ground to regain my balance.

Having stopped right besides him, I quickly took another ice arrow and simply stabbed him in the neck and activating it immediately.

Afterwards, I stepped on his sword hand, locking it in place and started to shoot at his chest leisurely.

Even after all that, he didn’t lose more than a third of his health, and I felt as Arcus gently hit my shoulder calling me to step back. Just in time, as a huge scythe came parting the ground in two and lifting the man from the ground. Then El approached the guy and landed another two hits before he fell to the ground, finalizing him with piercing his chest with the blade while he was in the ground.

This left the guy with almost nothing of his health left as he fainted. We quickly tied the two guys up and walked towards the enemy main camp.

When we got there, I almost burst into laughter. Whisi had to use her tail to muffle me when I wasn’t managing to hold back on my own. It took me almost five minutes to manage to control myself again.

The three of them looked at me with curious eyes, and I pointed towards the group sitting around the campfire.

“Do you see that group there? The one that have the cyclops with an axe?” They looked at them with curiosity, then looked back to me. “Let’s just say that they were my victims twice already!”

They raised their eyebrows in curiosity, and I quickly explained them our the two encounters we had previously, and how they always end up getting fooled by the flash-bomb.

“What is a flash bomb? Nin-Nin?” Is he really going to keep up with that?

“Come with me, I’ll show you.” I slowly made my way around the camp, making sure that none of them would see me.

When we were the closest possible to the bonfire, I could hear the group talking about something. Mainly, it was the Cyclops complaining on how I always manage to run away from them and how he wanted to kill me already.

Besides him, there were two large warriors, each one carrying a large swords on their backs, like a couple of bodyguards. He was the only one seated on a true chair, while the rest sat on some wooden logs.

I quickly passed them a rough plan on what to do after the flash-bomb went off. Although they didn’t know what it did, they quickly agreed to the plan.

I took one of the leather balls hanging on my waist and showed it to them, then I activated it with a couple of seconds of delay and threw it in the middle of the bandit group. When the ball fell, all of them stood up drawing their weapons, but when they finally saw what it was…

“Aww… Not again!” I heard the cyclops complaining right before the flash went off.

Ok, now it’s definitive. That cyclops will always get a flash-bomb whenever we meet. No matter the circumstance.

The whole group cried in pain as their eyes went blind, and soon we saw El darting forward and jumping over one of the nearest thugs, landing in the middle of them. She took the large scythe from her back and swung it in a wide motion, the blade passing through the bonfire and sucking all the fire towards it. Following that, she slammed the edge blade on the ground, making the fire jump to the ground then jump away in five different directions until it reached the bandits circle. She lifted the scythe from the ground once again and started spinning it above her head, and all the five sparks followed her by lifting off the ground and spinning in unison with the scythe, creating a raging fire tornado that covered the whole group.

Arcus wasn’t anywhere behind. Just as El jumped over the guy, Arcus had reached the first bodyguard and brought him down with a leg sweep before piercing the guys chest with his twin blades. The other guard, somehow understanding what was happening, came towards him swinging his sword in a horizontal slash, which he dodged by jumping backwards before charging once again, using his two blades to slash at the guard. The guard tried to hit him once again by swinging his blade down, but he simply stepped aside and kicked the blade away, taking away the balance of his enemy.

I took my time to do the dirty job. I took my poison arrows and started to aim at any of the guys that somehow managed to escape both onslaughts. After ten or so seconds, El stopped the raging tornado, seemingly tired as she panted slightly. Did she use too much mana? I noticed that she started to use the long range of her weapon to keep the enemies that were still standing at bay, and from time to time would summon a small fireball and let the blade suck it to enhance her next attack.

I noticed one of the guys approaching her from behind and used my stun arrow to stop him, followed by a flame arrow. It seemed that El understood my idea, as she turned to the man and slashed at him, absorbing the flame.

Just then, we heard a shout.

I turned to Arcus and noticed he had lost some health now that the two bodyguards had recovered their vision, but it didn’t seem that he was bothered by it, in fact, he was smiling wickedly.

“BERSERKER RAGE! NIN-NIN!” He shouted suddenly, and a red aura covered his whole body. My guess would be that is a skill from the berseker class. Soon after he charged at one of the big guys. The guy swung his sword at Arcus, who simply ignored it and went straight in.

-72 (331/620)

WHAT WAS THAT DAMAGE? THAT’S TOO HIGH!

Just as I thought that, Arcus landed a punch on his gut, and the guy literally flew a few meters away.

-20 (245/650)

THAT WAS A PUNCH? I CALL HAX!

He turned towards the other guy and started a mad flurry of attacks with his blades, completely ignoring the guy’s attack. Not that he had much of a chance to attack.

-12 -15 -13 -16 -13 -16 -12

Combo! (x1.1)

-107 (121/720)

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT DAMAGE? HE DIDN’T EVEN USE A SKILL!

NERF BERSERKS!

El looked at him for a brief moment and smiled awkwardly. Seems like she really wasn’t liking being the weak one of the duo. She suddenly made a serious face and took a stance putting her scythe behind her.

For a moment I was confused on what she was doing, until I noticed it.

Red scales were starting to cover her whole body as well as some white fur, similar to the ones in her ears, forming in her forearms and ankles. Her hands and feet morphed into claws and the spikes in her back started to grow, with some even becoming a large pair of wings.

If I’m not wrong this is the Dragonid racial, Awaken blood. Once every two hours they can increase their power for ten minutes, but afterwards they are left drained of resources, and receive a debuff to their status and resource regeneration for ten minutes.

She slightly crouched, then in a jump she darted forwards slashing the enemy in front of her. The guy lost a third of his life in one attack. She started to zig-zag among the bandits pretty much one-shooting them one after the other.

RACIALS ARE OP! Well, even my racial is op, now that I think about it, I just have a hard time making use of it.

We had pretty much already won the battle when the two of them went berserk like that, as the one guy who might be some of a challenge had an extra blind duration due to the racial and was out of the battle until now.

However, there was another thing bothering me. It seemed that there was someone missing from the group.

Just as I thought that, I felt a presence besides me. On a moment I took a step back and saw a dagger passing in front of me, the hand holding the dagger was completely covered in fire.

“Curses” Spat the elemental.

“Hey there, hot head! Missed me?” I taunted the cloaked elemental as I jumped back to put some distance between us.

“Only this time, you bastardly golem.” He spat back with anger in his voice. “When I saw that flash, I knew you were here. Took me long enough to find you hiding in here.”

“Well, I didn’t want to go in there and steal the spotlight, you know?”

“Hollow words for someone who could barely fight back the last time.”

“Yeah… Took me a whole ten minutes to remember I had a dagger with me all the time, I felt really ashamed…” I told with a wry smile. The elemental’s shoulder dropped slightly.

“You… Aren’t the smartest one around here… Are you?”

“Nah. I would bet on the serpent.”

The elemental sighed once again, then took a stance with his dagger.

“Enough words. We have a fight to finish.”

I put the bow in front of me and smiled fearlessly.

“You know? I was thinking the same thing!”

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(dead) Author's corner: DAT STATS TABLE... Wasn't all that hard, actually.

And if someone wants to complain that Arcus and El are too strong, but not only their levels, but also their equip are really good, while the thieves are actually around level 12 or lower. (reccomended level for the job, mentioned back in chapter 18.)