As I logged back into the game I took a deep breath, there was a refreshing feeling the night had come.

“Status.”

Name: Ezekiel Title: Redgrave’s Apprentice

Class: Novice Level: 6

Race: Dhampir Satiety: 100%

Health: 600 Mana: 600

Fame: 100

Atk: 69 Def: 19

Str: 23 Con: 13

Dex: 21 Int: 22

Wis: 17 Cha: 13

Sta: 13 Luk: 21

Drk: 35

4 stats over 20 while still a novice, this was going quite good, but it was time to meet the old man and then go hunting.

As I arrived at the southern gate I saw Theo talking with a guard, so I took out his signet ring.

“Greetings master.”

I greeted him while handing him his ring.

“Good, you’re here boy I trust all went well with the wizard?”

“Yes master, I gained a basic affinity to darkness and spell, and I managed to defeat my elemental to gain a second spell, though it requires stealth to make full use of it.”

“Very good, I expected you to defeat it, if you didn’t I might have banished you as my disciple fufufu, to get the stealth skill you simply need to be near an enemy while undetected, to this you need to firstly be out of vision, then you need to be undetected by their other senses, for their smell being downwind will prevent them from getting your scent while giving you their scent, though either of you have to have a good nose for this to be applicable, to reduce your sounds you need to be light footed, taking steps when your mark takes steps will also reduce the chance for them to detect you the last thing would be your breath, if you can breathe as little as possible it’s fine, but your breaths need to be as quiet as possible and if you breathe with your target it also reduces your presence.”

Quest Complete: Learn magic

Theo Redgrave is sufficiently pleased with you learning magic, in addition to items that will help you on your quest he has prepared a bonus.

Rewards:

Leather Helmet

Leather Gloves

Leather Vest

Leather leggings

Leather boots

Leather Greatsword sheath

Leather Belt

Food preparation skill book

Cooking set

Camping knife

Flint & Tinder

10x Rabbit Meat

Bonus Reward

You have levelled up

“Here’s what I got you for your quest, a full set of leather armour, a leather sheath this will allow you to wear your sword on your person, once you’re no longer a novice you won’t be able to use your inventory while fighting, the belt will allow you to wear potions if you get any, things you’ll need for cooking and the cooking skill book, cooking is the best professional skill because anyone can learn it and everyone can take it to grandmaster level, unlike some professions which require you at minimum having a relevant class to get the skill to intermediate, to go past intermediate level the profession skills require you to have it as your class, for example wizards just will never know enough about a sword to forge one past beginner level, they won’t be able to take their sword mastery past beginner level either, though a magic knight could, he still be bottlenecked at intermediate level if he takes blacksmithing, but everyone and their mother can be a grandmaster cook if they practice enough, even a professional blacksmith.”

“And this here is something special from my days of fighting.”

He said as he pulled out a brown satchel, likely all the items were inside the bag.

“A magical bag, it has increased carrying capacity, I’ve found much better bags since then so I don’t need it, have this as your reward for passing your trial of the magi, while I expected you to pass it, most magi die during it, if their master helps them by killing it the residual energy summons an elemental strong enough to easily kill the master.”

Silently I thanked Phenatos in my heart, when she said she would stop the trial if anything went wrong I didn’t sense any deception in her words, she truly would have put her life on the line for me a complete stranger, such kindness, these AI really are advanced I should cook her something nice when my skill is better.

Magical Satchel (75) has been equipped, total bag space is now at 100 slots, 3 bag spaces left.

I opened my inventory and equipped the leather provided, except the gloves, the equipment systems let you equip cloth armour under your armour so only the boots came off, the armour set had 5 defence on every piece except the vest which had 10, I took the gloves out of my inventory to attempt to fuse it with the claw, which I took off my right hand, a prompt came up.

Do you wish to merge leather gloves into Shadowfiend’s claw, doing so will make the item irrecoverable.

“Yes.”

The claw began to billow off a black smoke, the gloves slowly began to be dyed black by the smoke, the right glove started to grow a bit at the tips to look like the claw, which was great because prior to this the claw was very bulky, when they were finished I put them on manually.

“Hmm that’s a good thing you’ve got there boy.” Theo said raising an eyebrow “Try not to lose it, and

don’t forget to use your skillbook”

Food preparation skillbook:

Teaches the following skills related to food preparation under the skill set cooking:

Cooking: Allows user to cook food with appropriate tools and ingredients

Skinning: Allows user to skin the pelt off their kills, chance of dungeon mobs dropping their pelt

Herb Gathering: Allows user to successfully pick herbs

Butchery: Allows user to take meat from a skinned corpse, chance of dungeon mobs dropping their meat

The book turned to ashes and the cooking skill appeared in my skills tab.

“Good now what you need to know about a hunt like this, is that monsters that have taken area indoors like I believe they’ve done with the fort it becomes a dungeon, the area itself needs to have a unclaimed magic core somewhere, once a person claims the magic core they become the boss and it has become a dungeon, all minions attuned to the core will continue to respawn once you’ve killed them, they will spawn in the same state as the spawn setting every day at a certain time this updates, you would think this would make clearing it out impossible.”

“However there is a way around this, firstly when they take over an area like this it’s only a temporary dungeon, the monsters in the dungeon can change and still expand their territory, they can continue to level up and get stronger, the stronger they become the stronger the magic core gets, when the magic core levels they can then expand the dungeon, which can in turn support more monsters they can get stronger in an unending cycle.”

“Once the first time the boss of the dungeon is killed the magic core will freeze and can no longer evolve or update the spawn setting, it will no longer be able to record the memories of those who are attuned so every time they’re killed they lose their memories and every day at the same time their memories will vanish, thus they are doomed to live in the dungeon forever as a mockery of life, monsters attuned to the core will only drop a few items on their person and every time they are killed their items will reset to what they were at the time of attunement, but the first time a boss is killed they will drop every piece of their equipment, then the dungeon will freeze and they will begin to be respawned with full loot but will only drop some of their equipment, once they are killed a boss will no longer be able to leave the dungeon, but anyone else who was already planning on leaving the dungeon can, but being killed outside of the dungeon means they won’t spawn until their soul arrives back at the dungeon, you got all that?”

“Yes master, just a couple of questions, can you destroy a magic core and what are monsters in the fields?”

“You can’t destroy a magic core, though it may be possible for the gods, field monsters it differs, some are wandering dungeon monsters others are just living there, they live and breed there, the population mostly manages itself, if foxes were to almost go extinct before that they would receive a blessing from the goddess of love and abundance Aphrodite, then their populations goes up until they aren’t endangered anymore, the main ways to tell is either you see the monster spawn or when you kill it, if the body disappears and it drops items then nine times out of ten there is a magic core somewhere.”

“I want you to kill about a 1000 goblins in the forest, then go and find their boss who should be in the fort and kill him too.”

Quest updated: Goblin killing, kill 1000 goblins in the forest southeast of Wallenheim

With that he put two fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp whistle.

A large white stallion came with a golden mane flowing in the wind, he came up to me and whinnied and shook his mane as though to show off how great he is.

“This is Alexander my horse, he’ll take you to the forest, he’ll wait for you outside to come back when you’re ready just whistle for him, don’t bother to try fighting on him, it’s a lot harder than you’d think and you and the horse both need practice together alongside a skill, think of as though you combined to make a giant he was the legs and you were the upper body, until your minds synchronized you’d be all over the place, I can train you in mounted combat some other time, but don’t expect me to give you my horse.”

“Yes master”

I climbed up on the horse one foot in the stirrup then jumping on to mount him, the horse looked at Theo in the eye and a glint ran across his eye, Theo nodded to the horse and off it went.

Dear god this horse was so fast, the wind was roaring in my ears, my tears streamed across the side of my face, I grabbed it’s neck in order to stop myself falling off, the scenery was even more blurred than teleporting in Phenatos’ tower, I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out, I assume it’s because we had broken the sound barrier.