Chapter 9: Chronicles of the Hell Tutor

Date: 3rdDay of the 1stWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Upon consideration of the future, Mc Neel’s secretary and Aide provided me with a Diary of sorts in which to write anything that I may need to remember in the future. After some considering I’ve decided to record my experiences from this point onwards in this diary, so as to keep a chronicle of my experiences and be able to look back to what I’ve accomplished and the friends I’ve made.

Upon sleeping for some hours in my room, I logged back into the Helix and began to work with the plan the Elder told me of. During this month, I’d be in charge of the task of leading the Maomer of the seaweed fields as they create a large amount of new plots of land. These plots will be prepared quite a bit farther than what they are used to and the number of plots necessary to be prepared is quite high. Morale amongst the workers was low when I arrived. In order to mince words: they didn’t want to work.

The attitude wasn’t going to cut it, so I arrived at the conclusion of allowing those who accomplish their daily quota to quit it for the day and even made a point by preparing a plot of land on my own. They began to work shortly afterwards, but their working speed was quite low and their usage of tools was alarmingly dumb. I was forced to explain the usage of several of the tools during the first hour of work. I wondered just how low was their will to work in order to not try to learn at least this much before…

Once the necessary knowledge was imparted, the working speed increased and we were just BARELY able to accomplish the daily quota after I provided help to some slower workers. I’ve decided to step up my game big-time tomorrow in order to ensure we can finish this on time…

Date: 4thDay of the 1stWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

I received the workers alongside my new pets and companions: Phio, Josh, and Colonel. As they began to work, I applied what can only be considered by most people “Spartan Training” on the workers. Their schedules were similar to my own last month when I was preparing the plot of land, just a few minutes of rest every few hours or so… Naturally, they didn’t like the idea and openly protested.

They were swiftly shut up with force as Colonel beat them into submission whilst Phio healed them up once again. I explained without any room for doubt that I was here to teach them how to prepare the lands better and that the work yesterday was inadequate no matter how nice he tries to put it. They NEED to do better or suffer the consequences. For this, he is going to make them work diligently and with as much vigor as they can muster… Or else…

Having heard his cue, Josh used a low-level electric spell which lightly shocked the workers. While the shock was mostly inoffensive as it didn’t cause too much damage, it still caused quite a bit of pain and surprise. The threat was clear and the workers began to work in silence, though they made quite a few of obvious mistakes.

By midday, the workers were seemingly exhausted and wanted to rest. However, when I asked him what his Stamina was at he was forced to answer that it was at 40%. I happily allowed him to rest as well as the others who had their Stamina at below 50%, much to their surprise and elation.

The rest of the day went by badly, as they made use of the “lower than 50% Stamina get to rest”-rule to take excessive amounts of rest. The final work for the day resulted only slightly better than the day before. It would seem that it was my fault to not expect workers to use every opportunity to slack off… I’ll have to fix this soon…

Date: 5thDay of the 1stWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Today I had the workers in the fields again; they were putting as much effort as they could to tire their bodies so they could slack off. However, much to their surprise, their Stamina never lowered below 80% and their bodies felt stronger and more energetic. When questioned, I merely told them that their bodies were probably becoming stronger and more capable of the work without tiring, much to the horror of some according to their faces…

Naturally, this was not the entire truth. Whilst it is true that they were already getting accustomed to the work and their bodies are becoming stronger, the main reason for their Stamina level would be Phio… And myself since I asked her to do what she is doing, I suppose…

During the day, she hummed her melody throughout the field; a melody that fused together with the sounds of the shovels, pickaxes and wheelbarrels and was never detected by the workers. While they didn’t detect the melody, their ears were still subject to it without their knowledge and they became blessed by Phio’s melody.

The song she hummed today was one of the blessing songs that Phio possesses: “Sea Current Aria”. This particular melody had the power to rapidly regenerate the Stamina of those who hear the song, as well as slightly increase their natural Health regeneration. As a side effect of both of these stats raising and lowering continuously due to the attempt of the workers to tire themselves out, most of them were having their physical stats skyrocket.

Seeing the workers continue working, I joined them and worked under the same conditions as them. Naturally, I was also under the effects of Phio’s Aria so my stats grew quite quickly. Though the amount by which they increased was lower than I expected due to the past month. This was definitely due to not possessing the Newborn status anymore… I have to wonder just how high my stats would’ve been had I figured out this method while I still was considered a Newborn…

Date: 6thDay of the 1stWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Today, I continued to work with the workers of before. They seem to have resigned themselves to their fates since they were forced to work from morn to noon yesterday without becoming tired at all. They didn’t even have muscle pain today!

Phio’s blessings were quite something… She had mentioned they were given to her by the Guardian of the Sea whilst she dreamed. I wonder if that’s some sort of God? There are no records of Guardians in the forums, but then again there are plenty of secrets in this world.

The day went by with no problems and due to the extra power the workers now possessed we managed to finish one hour before schedule. While this amount of good for the time being, what I want most at present is to be able to get some more extra hours…

Regardless, I managed to go to the library today and gather some books related to my classes. Some of them anyways…

It would seem that my tactics while fighting as well as the tools I utilized previously, my net and lazo, were the main reasons for my obtaining the Ranger class, as such using specialized tools will help me raise this class. Later on, this class seems to provide me with several skills and abilities that help raise survival in the wild and coexisting with nature. If I’m planning to travel throughout the world, raising this class’s level is a must.

The Hunter class was obtained thanks to diligent hunting for food and materials; as such my Harvesting Abilities will be of great use when raising this class. This class will provide me with not only an easier time harvesting monsters, but also with additional damage and skills specialized for specific enemies and/or races. A battle-hardy class in which I can depend on in times of need, though I will most likely only switch to it when harvesting as I’ll most likely prefer using my ools instead of the conventional weapons of the hunter… Well, there’s one exception to this as the Traps created by Hunters are of good quality and using traps can bring much to any battle if properly utilized.

The Farmer and Rancher classes are counterparts that deal with the production, care and growth of plants and animals respectively. These past days of work have already risen the level of my Farmer class to Lv-1, so I managed to receive a skill that allows me to plant seeds with greater care which leads to better results when they sprout. Later on, I’ll seem to be able to remodel the growth and evolution of the plants and animals in directions different to their natural growth, but that seems to be a far off event…

Botanist and Veterinarian are the medical variations of the Farmer and Rancher classes; they deal with the Health of plants and animals specifically. In the future, I’ll be able to cure my pets of illnesses that Phio is unable to cure with her abilities or so I believe. Though it seems unlikely as she possesses the ability to learn a variety of condition curing blessings… Most likely, I’ll make more use of the Botanist class as I take care of my herbs and plants. Oh, right! I’ll also be able to raise my Veterinarian class if I ever learn to take care of the corals in my room. I really need to visit the coral fields before this month is over…

The Tamer class hasn’t grown much, but this is due to me not giving my Pets any commands other than those of what to do with the workers… And while they were following those commands, I had the Tutor class equipped instead. Still, I managed to gain the first level and the spell Summon Pet, which allows me to summon my friends from a certain distance. In the future, I will receive skills and spells that will help me tame wild monsters as well as help the ones I have already tamed in battle. There isn’t much information in the compendium about this class since it greatly depends on the pets the Tamer has…

Actually, the Class Compendium I read had no information what-so-ever about the Biologist, Scholar, Tutor, Shaman or Druid classes… I’ll have to ask tomorrow about it. I should mention that whilst I did my research I had the Scholar class equipped as well as The Polymath title. While I did not earn any new skills or abilities, my Intelligence, Wisdom, Education, and Lore rose dramatically and my Scholar class is at level 4. Quite a difference between this class and the other ones…

Regardless of these advancements, soon after I was pulled back to my room by Colonel. He seems intent on knocking me out if I don’t go to sleep soon, so I better stop writing for now…

Date: 7thDay of the 1stWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Today was quite different from the previous days; being the end of the week, the workers first had to visit the Doc and get a Health Check before coming to work around 8 am instead of the usual 6 am. Some of them seemed to be quite happy for some reason and even gave me leery looks… I wondered what was up with that at the time, but… No, let me not skip over any details about today.

Making use of the extra two hours I had today, I went over to Mc Neel’s and asked him about the missing classes. Well, turns out Studious classes are quite different from other types of classes. For starters, in his words “They do not need to be equipped in order to grow, boy. As long as you put effort into the studying what the class deals with, the class should normally increase in level without any problems.”. This was quite vexing, as it means that I could’ve equipped another class while studying yesterday…

Anyways, while he could not give me details about the Scholar class, he told me that the secret to the Biologist class is field work with animals and plants. I will have to personally research life forms in person, reading books won’t cut it for that class. The more I discover in my field work, the better for the class. He refrained from mentioning the benefits of the class though…

The Tutor class is as I had suspected, it gives me extra stats that will make me more appealing to obey depending on my teaching tactics. I’ve already obtained the Leadership, Dominion and Sadism stats…

I’ll bite the reasons why I learned those first two stats, but I really do have to complain to the system as I don’t enjoy causing pain! Pain is just the best way living creatures learn! Otherwise they take way too long! Myself included! The only thing I got as a result as the Masochism stat… I was and still am aghast at the system…

Mc Neel almost keeled over from laughing when I mentioned the stats I had obtained. As I left with my ears burning from shame, he promised to call over Mr Rupert and the Elder to see if they could give him some pointers about the Scholar and Shaman classes. He didn’t know of any good Druids that I could talk to, but he was sure his Mam knew…

Back at the fields, the workers were back and waiting for me they seemed a bit… depressed for some reason unknown to me at the time. Anyways, the Doc was also there as well. He wanted to know why the workers were complaining so much as well as to why the workers were in such excellent physical conditions. He kept going for a bit about how some of them even had better conditions than some members of the Guard!

I laughed out loud when I heard the Doc’s praises and saw the mixture of infuriation and frustration between the workers. I invited Doc to oversee the rest of the work day. Needless to say, he was quite shocked at the treatment of the workers, but upon seeing that their safety, wellbeing and, much more important to him, their health were secured he gave the green flag to continue working them as usual. The dismay was obvious in the faces of the workers and a few that threw their weapons to the ground were even punished by Colonel and Josh; those two seem to be enjoying themselves…

Date: 1stDay of the 2ndWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Today work was overall better, though I had to deal with some of the workers making a shoddy job at separating the corals from the stones before sending them over to the architects… Their punishment was a bit more severe than usual as they were procrastinating during work hours. Today’s pay would have a deduction for those workers as well once Mc Neel hears of this news, much to those workers’ horror. Today they finally saw me as someone not to mess with… Seriously, are these guys only interesting in slacking off and earning money?

Regardless of the incident, work finished some three hours earlier than programmed, which gave me enough time to visit Mr Rupert. According to him, the Scholar class was a global studious class, which was quite different from the Biologist class. As long as I study something from any source for any reason using any method, I’ll gain experience for the class even if it’s not equipped. The benefits of the class itself are apparently exclusively stat gains which increase in quantity as the class’s level rises. According to him, the class has an unrecorded effect of allowing me to obtain certain advanced stats if the correct sources of information are studied.

Right, stats can be divided in some groups: the most basic stats are the ones given upon character creation, though these may vary depending on the race. The Beginner stats are the other basic stats that your race did not learn upon birth, but can still easily obtain just by doing some action or another. Intermediate stats can be considered evolved versions of stats and require certain criteria to be met in order to be obtained, the Education and Lore stats are example of this.

Advanced stats are rarer and have much stricter requirements which make obtaining them a hassle due to the difficulty of obtaining them using regular methods. Surprisingly, two of my pets possess such stats: Colonel has the Brutality stat which greatly raises his Skill limit and provides with extra damage, but requires him to be quite remorseless with his enemies, and Phio has the Devotion stat which not only increases her Mana limit, but also makes the potential effect of her Blessings that much greater. Devotion requires to be blessed by a God or Devil, but apparently being blessed by a Guardian works too…

By the way, he also gave me a small explanation of the Guardians. It seems that they are ancient beings who can be considered among the first to inhabit this world. They are the ones who shaped the ecosystems and allowed creatures to propagate and live on their domains. Since some centuries ago, they’ve been shutting themselves off from the world as a result of the wars between their inhabitants…

Date: 2ndDay of the 2ndWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Dio came over today along with Sir Sion and his guards; apparently, the Doc had basically ordered Dio and Sir Sion to bring over the guards to train alongside the workers for some days.

Dio seemed to be in a pleasant mood as he seemed to have had this idea before, but had no time to prepare a basis for Mc Neel and Sir Sion as such had left the idea for a later time. With the Doc’s orders, he no longer had to worry about such details and simply told Mc Neel what was to be done.

Sir Sion merely seemed curious as to what training method I had prepared for the workers and decided to stay behind to watch them, this in turn caused the guards to be determined to pass the training I had. Much to my enjoyment, they were surprised when they saw the workers rapidly mowing down an entire hill and preparing it for planting.

While the guards were a bit slow at the start, they managed to get used to the work by the end of the day. They couldn’t work at the speed of the ones who started doing this from the beginning, but the extra manpower easily allowed us to finish today’s quota by 6 pm. This gave everyone quite some time for leeway and relaxation… Or tutoring in my case anyways…

After saying goodbye to the guards and Sir Sion who seemed mentally exhausted, but otherwise fine, I began to tutor my Pets for the first time since nearly two weeks ago.

Josh has made SOME process with his magic, but his lower-than-average Wisdom and Intelligence is getting in his way as he doesn’t have enough Mana. He is also very reluctant to study… I was forced to have Colonel and Phio “help” him study… by Colonel punching him when he stops reading and Phio healing him up whenever this happens.

Josh seemed to be feeling betrayed, but I quickly shut up his complains when I mentioned that this was in order to make him into a mage. I spent the rest of that day ensuring that Josh was studying and figuring out as much as I could about Phio and Colonel while I had the chance. Deepening our relationship if you will.

Date: 4thDay of the 2ndWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

I had to skip a day in this journal do to not making it to my room yesterday, or sleeping for that matter… It’s been almost a month since I had a sleepless night, though this time it was due to training, not reading…

Anyways, the events went over like this:

At morn, I went over to the workers and guards to oversee them, but was called over by Dio who told me to go see the Elder today. He would be taking over my job temporarily, but since my pets were the key point to getting the work done efficiently I’ll still receive the payment. Guess that as long as my pets are there handling things I can get some rather more personal things done in the meantime without losing of coin! Go figure.

I went over to the Elder’s house over at the northern side of the village. I hadn’t had a chance to visit this side of the village due to spending most of my time working or buying things over at the center plaza, as such I was quite amazed by the spectacle.

The houses in this sector of the village were mostly made out of kelp, seaweeds and sea grass. And I don’t mean they were used for materials, but that they were grown in such a way that resulted in them having said shapes and forms! I spent some minutes just watching over the way that the plants had been grown in curiosity, but decided to go meet the Elder first so as to not make her wait too long and THEN gaze upon these buildings.

The Elder was expecting me, naturally, and invited me to her living room where she prepared some berry blend for us. As I expected, even the furniture inside the houses was mostly grown flora given shape, even the teacup in my hands seemed to be made out of some sort of living hard wooden plant…

After some conversation, we got down to business. The Elder was thankful towards me for turning the lazy workers into hardworking characters in a week’s time and wanted to help me with the basics of the Shaman class as a result.

According to her, the Shaman had different ways it could be developed: Spiritual or Natural. The first dealt with spirits, ghosts, curses and other similar super-naturalea. The second dealt with plants, their growth and mutation, their evolution and habitat… She didn’t had to say anything else in order for me to understand that I’ll be learning the Natural components of the class from her… or about the fact that she was the one mostly responsible for the appearance of the houses in this sector of the village.

She brought some bags of seeds and told me that I needed to identify them all, so I did so and obtained an ability from the shaman class when it leveled up: Flora Identification. This ability was an upgrade that affected the Identify ability, making it more likely to correctly identify plants and seeds. Useful as I had previously noticed that the Identify ability was quite bad at doing its job…

Once I obtained the ability, I re-identified the seeds and noticed they were all different types of seeds… Not one of them was repeated amongst the hundreds or even thousands in the bags! As the ability leveled up from use, I was able to see the name of each of the seeds just by looking at them offhandedly without even activating the ability. If I concentrated on a particular name, I was even able to quickly find the seed since the only visible name would be the one of that type of seed!

Seeing that I had finished and discovered the usefulness of the ability, the Elder gave me the task of placing the seeds in these bags in the proper locations in the warehouse room she has in her house. That place was quite large and filled to the brim with boxes containing seeds; a ladder was necessary in order to interact with the middle to top boxes. It took me some hours to place the seeds in their proper locations even with the ability I had now…

The Elder now wanted me to get her some seeds of a particular type: Gretashki Kelp Seed. I quickly brought her a bag full of them and she began the actual part of the training… She taught me to force the growth of the seedling up to adulthood as well as ripping small portions of the plant and “Transmuting” them into seeds of the same plant. It took me until midnight to actually do this and once I managed to do so I couldn’t stop in my excitement. I spent that night creating and disassembling Gretashki Kelps and obtaining large quantities of seeds. By the time the Elder returned, I had nearly a million seeds in total. This amount was naturally calculated by my inventory as I wouldn’t be able to count all the seeds one by one…

She began the next part of the training without regards for my lack of sleep. It was about causing mutations in the seed’s growth. At first, I could only cause it to grow in different directions than upwards, but after some guidance I managed to give the plants more solid shapes.

Around midday, I got an idea I got curious of and asked the Elder if it was possible. She seemed quite happy as she explained what I had to do in order to achieve my task, so I got right to it! I spent the rest of the day, as well as the entire stock of seeds I had created, in finalizing my project: new tools!

With Colonel breaking most of mine with the exception of the knives which I didn’t want to use in combat unless cornered, I needed to make new ones from scratch. Using the growth and mutation techniques of the Shaman class, I forced the seeds to grow into the tools I wanted.

There were a LOT of failures which were then disassembled back into seeds, but I managed to create some tools which I felt were good enough for the time being: 3 nets of different sizes and 6 different whips of different lengths and shapes: 2 “Scourges” one being Three-Tails and the other being Nine-Tails, a “Bull Whip” which if I’m reading it’s window correctly can cause a SonicBoom effect which will be quite useful underwater as it will have a similar effect to Colonel’s punches, a “Nagaika” (basically a staff with a whip attached to one of its ends) and two Lazos. These were the only ones I could call “successful, though the overall damage these whips can inflict is quite low…

Afterwards, by working with the Elder’s direct instruction, I managed to create a butterfly net/fishing net. The system merely called it Hand-Net. While it is much smaller than the other nets, it is much stronger and will be harder to break out of… I still think Colonel will be able to slice it to pieces with his razor pincers though.

She was happy with my progress and gave me some seeds as a reward for completing her training. She specifically refused to teach me any more about the class so as to let me get used to it on my own.

After this, I went back to my room and got beaten by Colonel for making them worry about me these two days… I’m not joking; he beat the crap out of me. I’m still shaking a bit as I’m writing this from all the wounds my body had while Phio recovered me. I suppose that I did deserve this as I went over to the Elder’s house and stayed there for two days without telling them anything… I’ll be sure not to commit the same mistake in the future.

By the way, I obtained the Endurance and Fortitude stats after the beating, just how hard was Colonel hitting me? Also I seem to have obtained the Focus stat while I was with the Elder, and my Concentration stat skyrocketed… I guess if I ever get any useful spells I‘ll easily be able to chant them without getting distracted or having them backfire on me, though for the moment the spells I have obtained are chantless…

Date: 7thDay of the 2ndWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

After resting a bit in real life, I came back to the Village of Sed and went over to inspect the workers and guards. They were at it quite well, especially the guards who seemed to have managed to catch up with the workers already. I guess being disposed for hard training makes quite a difference in development…

After making sure everything was in order, I excused myself and went over to the Eastern Coral fields; it was time for me to learn a thing or two about Coral care. I didn’t want to risk my food source dying on me in the future… Little did I know what I’d learn there… quite surprising even now as I’m writing this entry.

Turns out, the reports written in the library are out of date. Rather than coral fields, it’s more apt to call this section of the outskirts of the village a Reef. While the number of fishes and small creatures was on a lower scale than the weed fields and barn, there were a lot of sedentary and sessile species over here. Ranging from corals, anemones, sea sponges, conches, sea shells, clams, starfish, urchins, even a large variety of sea squirts were covering nearly the entire grounds of this place. Both of them…

The Reef, as I’ll refer it from now on, was made out of two floors. The lower one was the natural sandy seafloor that was already completely covered in fauna. The upper one was created by the Maomer, most likely the Elder’s doing given by the natural materials used, in order to be able to host a greater number of inhabitants.

When I arrived, some Maomer were checking up on the inhabitants, picking the produce they gave and providing support of some kind. Seeing this, I decided to go over and ask if I could help out somehow. They seemed happy to have someone else to share the workload as there were few workers here and a lot of ground to cover, so they easily agreed.

I spent some hours learning to communicate with the inhabitants who, while sharing the Aquan language, did not speak it too well… Instead, they communicate through a more primitive form involving the Polyps that live within most of them. Rather than communicate, it was more like trying to determine what they are saying by feeling the Polyp’s emotional stance. Not the most effective method of communication, but the Maomer caretakers explained that the Polyps are very primitive life forms and are unable to communicate in any other way.

Given this, I determined that making my corals pets would be a waste of time, as they would be unable to understand my intentions let alone accept the petition to become my pet. Still, another way to achieve some relationship with my corals was necessary, so I continued working with them during this day.

Around sundown, my Druid class leveled up and I learned a spell that allows me to slightly control the actions of animals, but the spell is limited to primitive animals without much conscious thought. The Druid class must be similar to the Shaman class in that the actions one takes determines the way the class progresses. Had I been working with some other type of animal, perhaps the ability earned would be much different or else I might’ve earned stats instead.

Still, this spell could prove very useful somehow, so I decided to train it a bit with the Polyps. To my surprise, I could control about half the Polyps within a medium sized Coral and have them modify the coral in various ways. With enough research, it should be possible to raise the productivity and health of my corals so as to receive greater quantities or higher quality berries.

As I was about to leave, the caretakers invited me over to the boss of this sector; a small lady which seemed quite to be of a young age, but was actually older than everyone here, Annie. While the caretakers jokingly treated her like a younger sister, they listened to her respectively. Upon meeting her, she seemed quite amicable and asked me if I had any particular reason for visiting today.

Once I mentioned that I was researching Corals, she grew curious and asked me to elaborate. After explaining about the corals in my room, my recent acquisition of the Druid class and my lack of understanding of various details about Corals, she became quiet and pensive. She asked me to return tomorrow so I returned to my room since it was night already. After explaining to the others that I’d be in the Eastern Sector of the village handling corals and sessile animals, I decided I would log out immediately after finishing this sentence in order to get something to eat.

Date: 7thDay of the 3rdWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

It’s been a whole week since my last entry and I’ve learned quite a bit. The primary reason for my lack of record of daily entries is due to being too engrossed in my training to do so. While I did return to my room daily in order to not push myself too much, I only slept some odd hours before returning. I couldn’t help it, it was an interesting subject! However, this means that after this entry I’ll take some time to rest up my real body.

Anyways, Annie received me today along with someone else who she introduced as Michael. He was a Coral Smith and his main tasks involved creating armor out of corals. Live Corals, not dead calcinated corals much to my surprise. He explained that the way he does this is by controlling the actions of young Polyps into creating the armor the same way they create the coral.

He brought me to his workshop were we began to practice making a chest plate. My first attempt… a fiasco… While I could control half the Polyps to work as I wanted, the other half worked in seemingly random manners, thus it became a situation where if I took control of one half the other half would go haywire and vice versa. The end result was something that could barely be called a coral, let alone a coral chest plate.

Seeing my troubles, Michael mentioned he expected much worse from my first attempt as he expected me to not even be able to control 1 of the Polyps, much less half of them. He gave me some tasks to do in the Reef while required me to control the Polyps within the inhabitants. Most of these tasks involved having the Polyps strengthen specific sections of their homes, which varied between corals, sponges and anemones.

At first, these tasks took me nearly half an hour to complete, but as I practiced more and the level of my spell rose I became able to finish them up in five minutes time. Still, I was not satisfied with this and continued practicing after finishing the tasks…

Around noon, I returned to Michael with the control spell at level 15, just enough for my purposes I suppose… Michael hadn’t expected me to take so long to realize those tasks, but put it behind him and simply asked me to realize the same thing I had this morning. This time, I was able to fully control the Polyps without problems and the result had at least a semblance to a chest plate this time! However, it was quite fragile; useless for protection…

While I was exasperated at this result, Michael was surprised at my development. In a day I had managed to take control over the Polyps as if this were second nature to me. That’s how the first day ended.

The second day was mostly me practicing in controlling the Polyps into creating hard surfaces. This would be particularly important since I’ll need the armor to provide a good amount of defense. Once I was satisfied with the strength they could create, I had them make a chest plate. This time it was very durable and provided higher defense than the previous armor, but its rigidity made it difficult to move in as I realized when I tried it on… Furthermore, the insides of the armor damaged my skin due to direct contact with the coral. Another failure… for a completely different reason…

The armor itself was good for knights and warriors who directly fight in the front lines, they can even wear chain mail below the chest plate to provide protection against the coral armor. Furthermore, they don’t have as much use for mobility, so the armor’s rigidity is of no consequence to them.

On the other hand, I prefer to be at least lithe enough to dodge my enemy’s attacks, so this armor was of no use to me. I spent the rest of the day trying to modify the chest plate with the Polyps in order to make it more wieldly, but ultimately was forced to give up on the idea of the Polyps creating armor favorable to my fighting style…

The third day went by with me going over the reef’s inhabitants and providing help when possible as I tried to figure out how to make good use of my Druid class… As I was tending to the Reef, an idea entered into my head: Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to find another way to make use of the class… Perhaps I just needed to change the target of my class’s spells…

Taking this into consideration, I looked around the Reef and began to look at its inhabitants, analyzing them; their shapes, textures, coloring, unique qualities, etc… As I analyzed, I tried to picture the chest plate I had tried to create previously and imagined the characteristics of each of these creatures placed within the chest plate in one way or another…

Around noon that day, I made my choices: Aragendo Coral, Kolomonos Coral and Hiatesides Sea Sponge. I decided to also pick some Sea Squirts and utilize the shells and scales I collected in my previous hunt as well as an experiment…

With the Polyps for the mentioned animals, a bag of sea squirts and the other materials picked back at my room, I went over to the workshop and began to work.

First I took out the large crab shells and began to inspect them individually in order to determine the ones that would serve my purposes. Once I decided upon 2 similarly shaped crab shells, I placed them over the table and took out the Kolomonos Coral Polyps. Controlling them, the Polyps began to create Kolomonos Coral around the two separate shells, entirely covering them in a thin-like film.

Once the shells were fully over grown, I made the Polyps stop and took out the Hiatesides Sea Sponge Polyps. They began to create a structure uniting the two pieces of crab shell, a rather soft structure that nevertheless held together with great strength. The structure was cylindrical, but had a large hole right in the middle of it, large enough for someone to squeeze into it. The interior of the structure was hollow once the Polyps finished their jobs, which served my purposes nicely…

I had the Aragendo Coral Polyps layer the lowest portions of the interior with their type of coral, keeping the air ducts free so that the Sea Sponge could breathe. Soon, I had them stop and ordered them to concentrate on the production of berries from now on. For a final touch, I gently placed some Sea Squirts in some key positions within the sea sponge.

With this, the first experiment was done. The armor was red in color, with the thin layer of Kolomonos Coral being transparent enough to allow the natural color of the crab shell to show off more than usual. The armor itself was very hard in the exterior, with the coral and shell combination having a strong synergy in terms of defense. Once I equipped the armor, it felt very light thanks to the Sea Sponge within absorbing much of the weight and impact from the armor. The soft skin of the sponge’s outside lightly tickled my chest, but it was a far cry from the pain I inflicted on myself with the previous armor.

Moving in the armor proved to be easier than the previous one as well, since the rigidity was concentrated on the front and back, leaving the sides of the armor with enough flexibility to move about a bit easier. While it still cut down on my mobility, it was to a much more satisfying extent.

This was just the chest plate of the armor, so I still had to create the other pieces of equipment. With this piece satisfying me, I began to work on the other pieces: shoulder plates, plated pants, greaves, shoulder plates, a gauntlet, a glove, and a helm. By the time I finished with all of these pieces, it was midday of the fifth day. Each piece had required the method to be modified slightly, but had in the end proven to be much more efficient than when I tried to create armor purely out of coral.

On a side note, when I tried the full set on and felt satisfied with it, the system pinged and named the armor I had just created the Crab Reef Armor Set. Really? Oh well… The status of the armor at the moment of completion was as follows:

If used correctly, this set should be of great use until I reach the early hundreds… though since I can modify the armor using the Polyps, it could last even longer. This is especially true now since they can repair damage incurred and run away into my inventory when their durability is in the danger zone… The stealth Option will be of good use during the hunts now since I can prepare for the fight long before the enemy detects me if I play my cards right.

Happy with the results of the armor, I showed it to Michael who congratulated me on the idea of using the Sea Sponge to counteract the damage of the coral as well as the other functions. He asked me if he could borrow the idea, which I said was fine. However, I asked him to give me the right to use certain Polyps and materials I thought useful, but were out of limits for newbies. He acquitted as long as I promised to be careful, one of those things I asked for was quite dangerous, The Boomakrox Coral Polyps. Not that the Coral Barnacles I asked for were any better for the ecosystem… I really needed to be careful here or I might end up causing a disaster!

How lucky this is all in the past and nothing horrible happened to me! Hahaha!

Anyways, the experiment I did this time involved using the Coral Barnacles as makeshift triggers for various effects. Well, that’s not the first thing I used them for as I needed to get used to them before I used them for such delicate procedures… Instead, I used their harder than average shells along with Kolomonos Coral and a very strong Crab Shell to create a heavy crab-shaped, Barnacle Shield. The shield provided greater defense than my armor, but was quite heavy and taxed on my stamina quickly. It would be useful to quick-equip it in times of need, drop it, then pick it up after the battle…

Once this shield was completed, I started to work on my new main weapon: a trident. Considering the main problem of my previous trident, I had two Kolomonos Corals be created in a stick-like shape up to two feet long. Then, I had a Barnacle dig into one extremity of each of the two segments and made sure to have them keep the trident whole with the help of some kelp, shaped into a chain through the abilities learned from the Elder. Once the two segments were united, I had one of them continue growing on the other extremity perpendicularly to the form it had now. From this point, I had three more Kolomonos Corals grow and sharpen into stake-like formations and placed six more Barnacles to unite the stakes to the base.

The end result looked like a common Kolomonos Trident, no better than the ones Michael had in store. However, the result was different as this version of said trident had the Barnacles within waiting for the trigger. Showing it to Michael, I ordered the Barnacles at the middle of the trident to release.

The trident’s two segments separated, with the tri-dented segment being shot out forwards until it stabbed the kelp walls. Almost immediately after it made contact, I ordered the kelp chain to retract, swiftly becoming whole again.

As Michael gazed at the weapon, trying to see it better, I called out to the barnacles at the tips and they shot one after the other, piercing the kelp wall once again at intervals of one second each. While one was returning, the other one got shot and the other was fastening itself back in its place. This trident would give me some extra coverage in situations where the use of whips is limited, yet enemies keep to a distance…

Seeing the success of these two, I knew I MIGHT be able to succeed in the next weapon. However, it was already late and it would be best to work on it while fresh and relaxed, so I decided to wait till tomorrow to start.

Today, the seventh day of the third week of my second month in the Helix, went by without inconvenience. Seeing as I’ve written so much and it’s nearing time for me to log out, I’ll just write the results for this day: Success.

The testing of this weapon will begin after I’ve rested my real body a bit. I’ll refrain from writing more about it or else I might keep writing for much longer…

Date: 5thDay of the 4thWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

I logged back into The Helix after taking care of my basic necessities, including sleep. There were only three days until the fated day in which the Elder’s plan will set into motion, which unbeknown to her at the moment will end up saving the Icarians overhead who I anchored by accident…

The progress with the workers and guards has been going well, they should be able to finish the preparations by tomorrow at midday. Hence, anything else I need to do I’ll need to do today in order to go meet them as they finish tomorrow.

I decided to bring along Josh for company as I tested my new gear and tried fighting alongside him for the first time. I’ve already seen and felt what Colonel is capable of, and he is still needed to keep some of the laziest workers under control. Phio on the other hand needs to be present in order to keep her blessing activated, as such cannot accompany us. She seemed bothered by the fact that she needed to stay and help the workers while Josh gets to play around… But once I mentioned that this was not playing around, but training Josh… She decided to let Josh go with a smile! How nice of her!

Josh and I traveled southwards to fight some Crabbulates. While I could definitely kill them before with ease, much more so now, Josh doesn’t have as much fighting experience. I want to see just how powerful his spells have become while he was forced to study as well as practice his spells on wayward workers…

It was my mistake it seems… Magic will always be OP no matter which game it is used on… Well, as long as the caster has a chance to actually execute the spell that is. Josh’s first enemy was scorched with his electric surge spell, leaving a blackened shell and overcooked crabmeat. Definitely low quality materials, but it could be interesting to see the effects of the electrified shell later on, so I harvested the monster quickly and we moved on to other monsters.

Josh did a pretty good job until he ran out of mana. Still, his maximum mana almost tripled from last time. This amount is still no good for a self-respecting mage however… I might need to ask for some help later on about what options are there to increase maximum mana since Josh obviously doesn’t want to study…

My armor kept the attention of the monsters on Josh until I actually had to make a move to help Josh out, and by then the enemy wasn’t prepared to get pierced by my trident from afar. The monster that became the most easy after my upgrades would be the spearfish, since I could trap him in my fishing net and turn it into a kebab if it struggled too much for harvesting.

Josh was excited all the time, buzzing off enemies or just excitedly inspecting my various tools. At one point, he grew scared that I had left him behind when I was right next to him which was pretty hilarious. From that point on, I traveled with him with my Helm’s visor off. Therefore, my stealth option was also off.

During sundown, we made our way back to the city when we found a demon clam. Josh wanted to have a go at it, but this is precisely the type of monster I wanted to test my new weapon on, so I stopped him. I took it out of my inventory and placed the visor over my face. Then, I started creeping towards the clam.

The clam seemed to detect my presence on several occasions as I approached, but the Armor’s camouflage worked and the clam’s sight grazed over me as if I wasn’t there. Once I was within 10 feet of the clam, I carefully aimed with the weapon. Once I was certain that I was aiming correctly, I yelled at the clam.

The clam immediately opened its shell and started to look for the enemy, but it was too late… I ordered the Barnacle to trigger and a tiny, black berry was launched towards the clam. The clam could only look confused as I ran away from the area and the berry quickly flew directly towards its face. Contact…

BOOM!

I fell to the floor as a large shockwave of heated water blew around. Due to me escaping the explosion’s range, I had escaped scathed but otherwise unharmed. The clam on the other hand…

There was only its hard shell left, colored carbon black and littered with cracks all over. I was quite surprised the shell even managed to survive the explosion! Had I not shot the Boomakrox berry directly into the clam’s face, perhaps it would’ve escaped without injury as well!

I made a mental note to collect some clam shells for the next time I decided to create heavy armor and accompanied Josh back to the village… This hunt was quite successful as I managed to obtain several new stats due to the different way in which I fought this time: Stealth, Evasion, Vigil, Flexibility and Finesse. These stats will easily counteract the lowered movement from the armor, enabling me to hunt more efficiently without danger to my life.

Date: 6thDay of the 4thWeek of the 2ndMonth

Location: Village of Sed

Today was a pretty short day. I helped out the workers in finishing the layout of the Elder’s plans, so we finished before lunch. Everything is ready to ensure the safety of the Maomer, as well as the Icarians…

Taking into consideration the possibilities for the future, I talked to the Elder about the Icarian’s plight due to our actions… She seemed a bit mad that I had kept this information until the last moment, but understood my reasons and decided to continue with the plan with only one modification.

She called over the village’s Warlock, Simon Q. He would be the one to talk with the Icarians on the Maomer’s behalf once this incident was resolved. When I asked about how he will survive outside of water, he happily announced he knew the Water Layer spell which covers the target in a film of water. So long as he stays in said film, he can stay out of water indefinitely…

Taking the chance that a mage was in front of me, I asked him about what Josh could do to gain mana without becoming more intelligent… He laughed a good while, even after he realized I was serious… Well, its little wonder as it turns out he is quite similar to Josh in this. While he is just as smart as your average Maomer, his wisdom is quite poor which severely cuts down on his mana. In order to make up for this loss, he learned Direct Mana Manipulation which in turn gave him the Arcane stat, an Advanced stat that greatly raises maximum mana. He cautioned me that learning Direct Mana Manipulation was quite serious and could end up hurting the fellow, so I had to be careful if I decided to have Josh learn it.

The end of the day came over soon after and I went to my room to sleep alongside my pets. Phio and Josh snuggled into my bed that night as it was chilly, but Colonel merely half-slept right next to the door. His Hemispheric Sleep is quite amazing, as it lets him make only half his brain fall asleep while leaving the other half stay alert all night long… Maybe I should get him to teach me someday? Nah, I like sleeping naturally… At least I dream like this…

Xeno closed the notebook he was writing on and placed it in his inventory. He looked over the peacefully sleeping kids on his right and the resting, but vigilant shrimp over the door. He smiled as he would be enjoying their company for real from tomorrow onward, as soon as this whole thing blew over and he was free to explore the world.

Xeno was itching to go out on an adventure already as he had been stuck in this village for 2 months already. He spent a good time here and made good friend and learned plenty of stuff… but after so long adventuring in other worlds, he needed adventure and exploration just as much as a bird needs his worm. He yawned deeply and snuggled within his covers. In little to no time, Xeno was fast asleep…

(TARK NORM)

Eliseus watched over as his men continued to try to pry off the thing that was keeping their island from floating away. It had been a month since their Isle had been anchored by what his scientists had identified as seaweed. He still found it hard to believe that mere seaweed had trapped them in the middle of enemy territory. This was quite a dangerous situation that they were in.

Tark Norm was a scout Isle from the Icarian kingdom. Its main job was to fly their island using the gravitational magi-technology provided and scout out the movements of their enemies. In this case, enemies refer to the Avariels, the winged elves and scourge of non-fliers. Normally, they would leave non-fliers alone and ignore them completely. However, the Icarians had long since discovered the secrets of gravitational forces and learned to float. To the Avariels, this was an insult to true born-fliers; as such they hunt down Icarians whenever they can…

Tomorrow, a squadron of Avariel would be arriving at their coordinates and exterminate the Icarians unless they manage to escape. Eliseus had half given up on escaping alive already as even if they managed to escape their entrapment they would be unable to outfly the Avariel. They were basically doomed already…

He slapped himself as he remembered the words of one of his old friends. She had insisted that even if they manage to remove the seaweed, they should NOT try to escape as help was on the way. While she had not mentioned exactly what kind of help in what kind of way was on the way, Eliseus trusted her enough to listen to her words.

Or course, if his country ended up destroyed because of listening to her; he would naturally make her pay. She was well aware of this, he was sure. He was always quite vengeful back at The Codex, but once he served his revenge he always went back to the relationship they originally had.

He wondered for a moment if Savi was still playing there or if he had finally decided to come over to this world. It was far more interesting than The Codex, but Savi seemed insistent that there were still things he needed to finish up there. He wouldn’t say what though… Oh, well! Eliseus decided to concentrate on the problem at hand instead of reminiscing about the past.

(Avariel Sky Brigade: Command Center)

“We shall kill the wingless chickens!” – Avariel

“WINGLESS CHICKENS!!!” – chorus of Avariels – “KILL!!!!!”

“Why was I sent on this mission?” – lamented a lonesome Eladrin as he watched the Avariel around him clutter and chant about how they were going to eliminate the Icarians. So far this trip had been horrible for the Eladrin who had no particular love for the Avariel. Sure he hated non-elven as much as any good natured Eladrin, but the attitudes of the Avariel went beyond simple extermination of their enemy…

“KILL THE CHICKENS!”

“THE WINGLESS CHICKENS!”

“WINGLESS KILL!!!!!!!” – screeched a rather old Avariel

“They’re like parrots… without brains…” – he murmured under his breath as he continued to watch the antics of these supposed descendants of the Divine race… If only they didn’t had Elven Blood in their veins, then he wouldn’t doubt for a single moment before plucking all their feathers and throwing them all into ovens…

The Eladrin rose from his seat in the command center and walked over to the window to take another look at the oddity ahead. Standing infinitely tall, a forest of seaweeds pierced right through Tark Norm, the target of the Avariel’s hatred… One of them anyways…

The Eladrin was curious as to what had trapped the Icarians in such a way and worried slightly over the possibility of getting trapped themselves… But placed the thought out of his mind; the ship had better defense capabilities than the ones recorded to be held by Tark Norm, so there shouldn’t be too much of a problem if they get attacked by seaweeds… Furthermore, even without the ship, the Avariel are more than capable of destroying Tark Norm in its current state.

Still, he wondered what this feeling of displacement was… As if the laws of causality themselves were being thrown out of balance and an unexpected participant was to change the outcome so completely he would be forced out. This feeling was quite heavy in his heart as the ship moved ever closer towards their target.

Chapter 8: Final Test

Sorry for taking so long writing this! I had to rethink the way to write this chapter in order to fit an entire month of events without skipping over too many details. Curse my idea of keeping volumes down to 10 chapters each!

I decided to go with a diary format for this chapter. Don’t expect to see many chapters in this format as I’ll only use it to move the story forwards in times of need, such as now. Here we see how Xeno prepares for the saving of the Icarians, how he upgraded his broken gear and learned more about his classes. As you might’ve guessed, due to studying under a Coral Smith he gained said class. He may not have said so directly in his diary, but the windows of the items he created tell you as much.

We also see some new characters here, an old friend of Savi and the Avariel enemies. I’m sure you all feel bad for the Eladrin that’s stuck with them… Until you remember the description given about Eladrin in the first chapter that it!

What will this Eladrin’s presence mean for the efforts of the Maomer to save the Icarians? Only a lot of time will tell you guys! Hahaha!