Chapter 019

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‘ ‘ for thoughts.

“ “ for speech.

* * for actions.

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After dealing with the annoying PKers, Jack proceeded travelling southeast. He was careful to maintain his pace so that his PP regen countered the cost of moving and kept his PP almost full. This is because he didn’t want to be caught by more ambushes, even if he wasn’t travelling at his maximum possible speed.

After around 15 minutes of jogging, Jack observed three humanoids. They were slightly taller than goblins and had green skin. However, that’s where the similarities ended. They had a snout like dogs and their skin was scaly and hairless, almost reptilian in nature. A couple of them were wearing some sort of chainmail and had decent iron weapons. One of them wasn’t armed, instead wore rough pelts as clothing had some sort of tattoos on his arms and face.

Jack: ‘My danger senses didn’t tingle this time… maybe they aren’t hostile to me? It’s probably worth a try, to communicate with them. The nearest fantasy creature that I can think of looking at them is kobolds. The one in animal pelts is probably some sort of caster’

Jack: “Hello There!” *Carefully approaches the kobolds*

The three humanoids looked alarmed and became alert as if expecting confrontation. They went into a defensive posture and waited for Jack to attack. When they weren’t attacked by Jack, they seemed confused. They communicated among themselves in a mixture of yelps, growls and hisses. Finally, after their internal debate, the tattooed Kobold approached Jack.

Tattooed Kobold: “You human, yess?”

Jack: “Yes. I am human.”

Tattooed Kobold: “Not kill uss? Humanss alwayss attack uss.”

Jack: “I attack only if you attack first.”

Tattooed Kobold: *pauses*“Human help uss? Chief give rewardss.”

Jack: ‘So a quest for not being hostile to these kobolds? Nice. Rewards will probably be shit though… looking at their equipment. But quest from these critters means probably killing something so can expect some xp and loot at the very least.’

Jack: “All right. I will help you. I am Jack.”

Tattooed Kobold: *confused* “You human or Jack?”

Jack: “I am human. But my name is Jack.”

Tattooed Kobold: “Name? What iss that?”

Jack: ‘Looks like they don’t have concept of name.’

Jack: “If more than one human is there, other humans call me Jack.”

Tattooed Kobold: “Humanss are sstrange. Follow. I lead to Chief of our tribe.”

Jack was then led by the kobolds. They were heading in the southwest direction. It was a detour for Jack, but he wasn’t about to leave an opportunity for a hidden quest. After travelling for a few hours they reached a small hill, densely surrounded by trees and undergrowth.

Tattooed Kobold: “Human Jack, watch carefully. Follow uss clossely.”

The tattooed kobold communicating with Jack then snapped a few limbs of a nearby bush. Jack carefully observed the order in which the tattooed kobold snapped the branches. The tattooed kobold then went down on all fours and crawled into the undergrowth and vanished. The other kobolds gestured at Jack to proceed. The branches were back in their original state.

Jack: ‘So looks like only the tattooed kobold can speak with humans. I guess I am supposed to copy him and crawl into kobold wonderland.’

Jack then imitated the tattooed kobold and crawled into the underbrush after snapping the branches in order. After crawling in, it appeared that he was crawling in an underground tunnel which was shoulder high. After crawling past a few bends, the tunnel grew in height and width. He emerged in a small room like hollow. The tattooed kobold was waiting for him.

Tattooed Kobold: “Human Jack, follow.”

Jack: “Lead the way.”

There were a few other tunnels in the cavern, tall enough for Jack to walk upright. The tattooed kobold went inside one of the tunnels and Jack followed. The tunnels were illuminated by some kind of magical fire torches placed along the walls. After navigating what felt like a maze of tunnels for 15-20 minutes, they finally arrived in a large cavern.

In the center of the cavern was a large bonfire, about 8 feet tall. The bonfire’s flames danced without any fuel. Jack’s spirit senses clearly identified the flames as extremely potent magic. There were many kobolds in this chamber, quite a few of them tattooed.

The tattooed kobold guiding Jack, lead him to the most intricately tattooed kobold. The particular kobold seemed weaker, somehow frailer than the rest. However, all of the other kobolds seemed to respect him. The kobold guiding Jack seemed to communicate with the Chief kobold in barks, growls and hisses.

Jack: ‘Guess he is the kobold Chief of this tribe. I can’t really be sure which kobold is what gender; they all look largely the same except for the tattoos.’

Chief Kobold: “Sso you human Jack. Not attack uss? Help uss?”

Jack: “Yes if Chief rewards me.”

Jack: ‘I don’t plan to do social service for you after all. Let us be clear on that.’

Chief Kobold: “Of coursse. If you help uss, we let you meet our father sspirit. He givess you rewards, if you are worthy.”

Jack: ‘Father Spirit? Looks like the kobold casters are shamans then, taking a position fo leadership in the tribe. Probably won’t be wise attempting to eat their father spirit though. Hopefully, I am “worthy” and can still squeeze out a spirit contract or something.’

Jack: “Of course Chief. Now what is my task?”

Chief Kobold: “Nearby Giant lizardss have begun breeding. They are hunting lot of nearby animalss. That meanss little food for uss. Human Jack, kill them all.”

Jack: “Sure Chief. But why not exterminate them yourselves?”

Chief Kobold: “We have tried. Lizardss have poisson deadly to our warriorss. Fire from our sshamanss issn’t effective either.”

Jack: ‘Giant venomous fire resistant lizards. The quest keeps on giving.’

Jack: “Can some of your warriors or shamans help me at least?”

Chief Kobold: “No Human Jack. Many wounded, remaining needed for hunting. Now will you help uss?”

Quest InformationNamePest Control: Giant LizardsGradeE+Description

The Chief of a friendly kobold tribe has tasked you to clear the nearby giant lizards who are rapidly breeding and reducing the surrounding food supply. They lizards are venomous and resistant to fire, so the kobolds have difficulty clearing it. If you are successful, you will be able to meet the Father Spirit of this tribe.

Duration / Time LimitFour days.Privileges

You gain knowledge regarding the location of the giant lizard nest.

Failure

You abandon the quest, or fail to complete it within the time limit.

On failure, the friendly kobold tribe turns hostile towards you.

Rewards

Meet the Father Spirit of the friendly kobold tribe.

???

Jack: ‘E+, 4 days? Come to think of it my first quest was E+ too. I have roughly one in game day before my day job. Meh, I can probably call in sick on Monday if required.’

Jack: “Yes Chief. I will deal with the giant lizards. I need to know where they are, however.”

Chief kobold: “Of course.” *hisses and barks at the tattooed kobold who guided Jack*

The tattooed kobold then explains to Jack the location of the giant lizard nest. It was a couple of hours to the west, in an underground cave system. The kobold carefully explained the landmarks on the way, and Jack memorized them. A new location ‘Infested Caves’ was updated in Jack’s map.

The tattooed lizard then guided Jack to the exit. He also instructed Jack to leave the lizard corpses undisturbed, as they planned to use it as food. He was also instructed to bring back as many lizard eggs as he could, and to destroy the rest. He was also shown where to find kobold sentries, when he returned, so that he could be guided into their dwelling.

Jack: ‘Interesting. The kobolds plan to rear the lizards as livestock? Or do they just want some quick reptile omelets? Either way, looks like I don’t get to loot the lizards. Your Father Spirit better give me the good stuff, kobolds.’

Jack then consulted the map, and started jogging briskly towards the infested caves. He was trying to cultivate a habit of pacing himself so that his PP was full most of the time. He didn’t want to be caught pants down in an ambush with low PP. He planned to travel in this way, unless speed was absolutely necessary.

After around an hour and half of jogging, Jack reached the entrance of the infested caves. The entrance looked like a wide pit surrounded by rocks and underbrush. He hadn’t encountered any lizards nearby, but his MAP indicated that this was the entrance to the infested caves

Jack carefully entered the dungeon. He readied a dart in his hand, just in case. The dungeon was dark and gloomy with most of the light coming from some sort of fluorescent moss. However, between that and his spirit senses, Jack had little difficulty navigating the dungeon. After a while, the tunnel he was travelling through widened to a cave.

He perceived a group of 3 lizards in the distance. They were almost waist high on all fours, and were around 6 feet long. They had dark greenish skin and wicked looking fangs and claws. Their yellow-orange eyes had vertical slits and were glowing in the dark. Jack wanted to test the difficulty of these lizards. He used a force imbued dart on one of the lizards.

The giant lizard lost barely 4% HP, but that wasn’t the main aim. The lizard got provoked by Jack’s attack, and separated from its group and rushed towards him. He backtracked a bit till the lizard caught up with him and engaged him in melee. Jack punched the lizard without any form of magical enhancement, and the results were lackluster. The lizard seemed barely affected and lost just 2% HP.

Jack: ‘Well that was shit damage, if I say so myself.’

Jack had little difficulty evading the lizard’s simplistic slashes and bites, while he tested out the damage of his various attacks. Jack then used mana fists on his right hand and punched the lizard in its head. As his right fist made contact, he released a force blast in the lizard’s head causing the lizard to be disoriented and lose around 12% HP. Jack followed up with a mana glove enhanced punch with his left fist to the lizard which caused his opponent to lose around 9% HP.

Jack: ‘A mana fist critical is more damaging, but mana gloves is more efficient considering the PP costs… but still lackluster damage.’

The lizard still had around 60 % HP left. It recovered from Jack’s melee attacks and attempted to bite him, who quickly sidestepped and equipped his sword. Jack slashed the lizard with his sword, and it did around 2% damage, almost the same as his plain unarmed attack. Jack then quickly used force blade on his sword, while dodging another slash from the lizard. He retaliated with a slash from his force blade enhanced sword and did almost 15% damage to the lizard!

Jack: ‘So a plain sword slash is almost as useless as my plain unarmed attacks. But a regular mana blade attack seems to be more effective than a mana fist critical! These lizards probably have a high physical defense. Now it is time to try spells.’

Jack dodged the lizard’s attacks and created a bit of distance between them. He then fired a void bolt at the charging lizard. The void bolt was most effective among his various attacks and caused the lizard to lose a fourth of its HP, leaving it with only a third! Jack then prepared a void breath and unleashed it, finally killing the lizard.

Jack: ‘So these lizards have low magic defense ehh? Seems kind of unfair though that my basic bolt spell takes a quarter of its HP while a plain attack causes it to barely lose 2% HP. My physical attacks on most melee foes are useless without enhancements, it seems.’

It was one of the reasons due to which reason that parties were formed. Monsters specializing in melee had generally high physical defense or were extremely agile. Most melee players, relying on system assist in battles found it tedious to fight high defense melee foes. Their damage output was governed purely by their stats. Things like chance to hit and chance of critical hits were determined by the system based on player and monster stats.

Furthermore, their chances to dodge, block and parry attacks were also purely determined by their respective skill levels and stats, instead of their reaction time, battle sense and adaptability. These factors made it necessary for warriors to party with priests and mages, while they were relegated to a tanking role. Priests were necessary, as due to their reliance on system assist, the warriors expected a steady stream of incoming damage.

Mages were necessary to deal damage to these high defense melee foes, as the warriors couldn’t control their skills to be critical hits. While a bash did great damage for a warrior, there was no guarantee that a system assist aided bash would be a critical hit. A warrior could spend almost all his stamina spamming bash on a target, and even one wouldn’t necessarily crit. Whereas, the next regular attack could critically hit…but do negligible damage nevertheless.

Most priests in turn, had almost non-existent damage dealing capabilities but were very valuable to party due to their support role, even if their buffs and heals had cast times and cool downs. Mages on the other hand, were extremely squishy and needed to be protected by warriors as they had spells with significant cast time and obscene cool downs. Offense oriented priests played very similar to hermetic mages.

Although Jack didn’t know it, his methods of dealing damage were extremely versatile compared to other classes. On foes with high physical defense, he had spells targeting their magical defense. If there was a caster foe with high magical defense, Jack had skills like force blade, which allowed him to convert his magical attack into physical attacks targeting the foe’s physical defense!

Jack also had varied options while dealing magical damage. He had access to fire spells, which were the most damaging due to their burning DoT auxiliary effect. In case the enemy was resistant to fire, he had void and soul. The soul and void elements were quite rare and very few enemies had resistance to them. These factors combined with his high magical attack, for his level, meant that he had a variety of options while dealing damage to various foes.

Jack wanted to check his defensive capabilities against the lizards next. He baited another lizard with a force imbued dart. He had noticed with the fight against the first lizard, that this variety of giant lizards had two primary attacks, a slash with the claws of their forelimbs and a bite with their jaws. Their claws seemed to be venomous as there was some kind of fluid coating it.

Jack endured a slash attack on his thigh from the lizard. The lizard’s claws were painful and stung like a wasp sting. The attack caused him to lose around 5% HP and he was poisoned. However, he barely received any detrimental effects or DoT form the poison. He had trained his indomitable spirit and poison resistance on venom from the giant spiders, who were much higher leveled foes with venom which was a lot more potent!

Jack then whittled the lizard’s HP with attacks from his force enhanced blade while dodging the lizard’s slash attacks. He was waiting for the lizard to execute its bite attack, and soon the lizard bit his forearm. The lizard had powerful jaws and he lost around 10% of his HP. He quickly finished it off with a couple of void bolts before he went to deal with the lone lizard with void bolts from range. The lizard was dead in a matter of seconds before it could reach Jack.

Jack: ‘Ouch Ouch Ouch. Why the fuck did I have to check its offense firsthand like a retard? The bite hurts like a bitch. 50% of real life pain is still painful! Fortunately I don’t have any fracture debuff, probably due to my significant vitality. I will simply nuke them with void bolts from range now, as I should have been doing from the start! Looks like the lizard’s venom is kind of useless to me though…so might as well leave their corpses for the kobolds.’

Having gauged the effectiveness of his attacks, Jack then proceeded to slaughter the lizards. They were usually in a group of three to five. He used both his arms to fire void bolts alternatively. On an average, he was able to cast 3 void bolts per second using both his hands to cast simultaneously. This meant that every second, he could destroy three forths of a giant lizard’s HP if all his attacks hit a single lizard.

Jack would shoot void bolts like a machine gun, whenever he spotted a group of lizards, in the few seconds that it took them to approach him, most of the lizards would have their HP reduced by half. As they approached him, he would prepare a void breath and unleash it, reducing most lizards to a critical state with less than 20% of HP.

He would then utilize a soul scream, and while the lizards were disoriented, finish them off with void bolts or slashes from his force blade enhanced sword. Jack couldn’t avoid all attacks, and occasionally a lizard would slash or bite him, causing him to lose 5%/10 % of HP respectively. It was quick work disposing the lizards with his rapid cast spells.

However, the process was PP intensive, and Jack exhausted half his PP after dealing with five to six large groups of lizards. Dealing with each group took him hardly 10 seconds with this PP intensive manner of hunting. However every time his PP was depleted by half, he had to meditate around a minute to fully recover his PP and a bit of his HP.

Whenever his HP depleted below half, Jack would be more cautious dealing with the lizards. He would use force imbued darts to lure them and finish them off one by one at range with his void bolts while backtracking and evading. He would hunt the lizards in this manner and take breaks for his PP until he had regenerated up to 2/3 rd of his HP.

Jack: ‘I may not have powerful spells like fiery orb that PKer used…but lack of cool downs and short cast times are fucking amazing.’

Jack: ‘Those retarded hermetic mages would need a shitty warrior to tank for them. Those shitty warriors will need more brain-dead priests to heal them. Whereas I can hunt solo if I am careful with my PP and the opponents are melee monsters.’

Jack: ‘Who gets all the xp and loot? I do! I do! Well the kobolds get the loot in this case. But whatever…’

He was extremely pleased with the speed at which he was clearing the dungeon. It took him only four hours in game to clear all the lizards from the first level. He estimated that he had cleared roughly 50 groups of lizards, with an average group consisting of 5 melee giant lizards.

He left most of the lizard corpses for the kobolds, but cooked a part of one lizard to fill his satiety. It was very though and Jack felt that he was chewing leather. It also tasted bitter and had caused an astringent like sensation when swallowing. While it wasn’t something unexpected, it tasted absolutely horrible compared to the barbecued birdie he last ate.

While he felt that the lizards were an easy opponent due to their reliance on melee attacks, they were around lv55, and thus provided him very good exp. This caused him to level up multiple times, from the first level alone. He was sure that he had cleared the full level, but still he hadn’t encountered any lizard eggs. He was on his way deeper into the next level of the dungeon.

Jack: ‘Perhaps their breeding ground is in the next level? Hopefully I can finish this quest before I have to get up in RL. I hope there aren’t any ranged attackers in the next level. Those ones are annoying to deal with.’

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A/N: I had little RL stuff to do this weekend, and my day-job didn’t require any overtime either. That means I had an ungodly amount of free time.

On the flipside, I have a packed RL schedule the next week, so I probably won’t post a chapter next weekend. I will try to if I find time, but no promises.

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