I may have forgotten to add something important so I had to go back and change this. When a character levels up they get ten stamina, health, and mana as well as stat points. Oops. That’s why my math looks weird to some people. That and the confusing the first ten stat points are also responsible for the base 100 in the hp, stamina, and mana pools.

Explanation: 45 vitality- first ten points are the hundred base points

-the rest of the thirty points are 35x5 for 175

-This totals to 275, plus 50hp for chosen and 90hp for level 10 (first level does not get 10 point bonuses.) Total 415.

I hope that clears things up. Why so complicated? Blame my producers. Did I make experience points complicated too, using equations and all that nonsense? Yes. Why? Apparently, I hate myself.

I’ll have a lot more free time for a while so expect chapters more frequently now.

Please enjoy.

Chapter 11: Learning

Frost

“Status.” Frost looked at his current status having recently allocated his points to where he thought he would need them. He needed to have a lot of health, speed, stamina, and strength to take down enemies as a solo player so he continued to build them up, putting a few points in Dexterity as well. Hero’s Burden was an incredibly powerful starting modifier. He was able to build himself as an all around character focused on speed. The higher his level, the further everyone else would be behind him. Normally, this would still be a bad choice because anyone who had it would fall behind their group in levels and have no one to fight with. Even now, Frost was far behind many of the other players when it came to levels. It would take them longer to catch up to everyone else and then they would have to fight alone. For Frost, though, it was perfect.

Frost Winterstorm Lvl 10Health 415Mana 214/214Stamina 297/390Strength55Vitality45Dexterity35Stamina50Wisdom21Intelligence29Agility70Luck30Health Regeneration0.55/sMana Regeneration0.31/s

Frost was currently heading South towards the mountains, trying to raise any of the stats and skills he could on the way, while also killing monsters that were a high enough level. With Kharz Forest on his left, he continued to run until he started to encounter higher-level enemies at the entrance to the hills that preceded the mountains. They were an almost comforting enemy, being similar to typical fantasy orcs. They were dressed in heavy clothes, but he could still see their green or brown skin in places the clothing didn’t cover.

The orcs were also easy to recognize when they started to charge him with weapons raised, bellowing war cries. He drew his sword, counting four of them, and noting that they were actually called orcs, which he could see when they were close enough. They had crude weapons made of wood and stone, their clothes made of furs and cloth. Their levels were in the mid teens, from fourteen to sixteen, and they looked dangerous enough to be worth fighting.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down as he waited for the enemy to get a little bit closer. He had put most of his points from level ten into agility, raising it up to seventy, and now he was extremely fast. He could swing his heavy sword easily, thanks to the strength and speed his character had. He had worked hard to increase his stats, and it was about time he started using them to their fullest potential.

The orcs had different speeds, and raced to be the first to reach him, so they separated bit by bit as they closed on him. Frost dashed forward and instantly made a mistake. He wanted to use Heavy Blow, Furious Strength, and Lightning Blade all at the same time, and disable them immediately after he struck. He expected neither of the activated skills to work but continued to swing his blade anyway at full strength and speed. His sword lit up with a flash of pale blue light, as it moved with ridiculous speed and power, cutting through the side of the first orc. He was so surprised that he almost stopped moving. He heard a ding as he moved past the first enemy and onto the next.

He increased his speed to the limit as he charged the next enemy head on, dodging an axe at the last moment and cutting through the neck of that enemy. His momentum carried him past but he turned around and impaled the enemy through the back. The last two orcs had arrived at that point and the first one was holding his side as he growled in pain and rage. The three of them glared at Frost while the body of their companion fell limply to the ground.

Enemies died easily if you knew where to hit them. Hitting certain places such as the neck or other vulnerable spots did more damage and had high critical strike chance which was further increased by luck and dexterity, though only a little bit. Stabbing humanoid enemies in the back was one of those attacks that seemed to do more damage. DWO was one of those games that liked to maintain some essence of reality where fighting was concerned. It was easy to kill and to be killed, so you had to use skills and cooperate with your teammates in order to survive.

The three began to spread out so they could encircle him. He let them distance themselves from each other, eyeing each of them in turn as they did. He waited until they were almost where they wanted to be and dashed toward the orc with the lowest level, aiming a feint straight downward. The ugly beast moved to block so he twisted his grip after the sword had missed the creature’s club, turning the downward momentum of the blade into a sideways motion slicing across the creature’s stomach.

The orc tried to punch him in the nose but he managed to somewhat dodge, receiving only a glancing blow across the cheek. Frost rolled to the side as the other two orcs came up behind him and tried to strike him down. He hopped forward, and tried to do again what he had done earlier, swinging with full strength while trying to simultaneously use his active abilities. The sword sliced through the air and through the head of the first injured orc, knocking it to the ground. It didn’t look like it was going to get up anytime soon, so he quickly hopped away from the orcs before they could try anything.

The one had a club while the other had a pair of axes. If possible, he wanted to take out the club wielder rather than risk a daze or stun effect from the bludgeoning weapon. At that moment Frost decided he would learn how to throw knives when he had the chance. It would be useful for baiting enemies or doing damage from a short distance. The two orcs were staying close together now, doing what they should have done from the beginning. It appeared that the orcs were greedy and wanted to take the kill and the spoils for themselves.

Only now did they realize their error in letting Frost fight them one at a time. He circled them, getting closer as he held his sword in front of him. ‘Lightning Blade. Furious Strength.’ He still had plenty of stamina so he decided to go on the offensive with quick, powerful strikes mostly focused on the axe wielder who wasn’t able to block as easily as the orc with the big club. He still struck at the club wielding orc to throw it off balance until he was able to knock one of the axes out of the other orc’s hand and stab it through the throat.

He danced around their attacks and their defenses, cutting and slashing away until another one of the orcs collapsed, its health bar depleted. Frost deactivated his abilities before they drained away his stamina. He still had more than enough to take down a single, injured orc though. His attacks did a surprisingly good amount of damage. Fifty-five strength points was a lot considering how early in the game it was. Frost rushed the last orc, attacking him with an onslaught of blows until it faltered and he was able to strike it down. The orcs gave pretty good experience but there was another window that grabbed his attention.

Active: Lightning Flash

A single attack made with +30% attack speed, 130% damage, and ignores 15% of armor.

Cost: 30 mana and 30 stamina

Frost thought about the class the wolf spirit had offered him and worried that he should have taken the class. If he had, he might have new skills and abilities, as well some stat bonuses. It was also definitely a secret class that was not easy to obtain, but it wasn’t what he wanted. He needed a class that would allow him to fight outnumbered or against strong boss monsters alone.

There was a good chance that that wolf quest had been meant for an entire party of people. The group, or at least the party leader would have been offered some sort of guardian class that would give party buffs. That might have been a good class, but due to the nature of the buffs being intended for an entire party, they wouldn’t be as effective on a single person. If he could find a different secret class that better suited him, then he could conquer the rest of the game while continuing to play as a solo character.

By this point, over a month had passed in the game and Frost continued to stay around the orcs. He moved among three orcs, dodging their attacks but receiving small cuts. His health slowly dissipated until he was below twenty percent and began to feel the weakness and slowness that happened when a person went below twenty percent health. Frost’s eyes flashed and he began to use the staff he had just been blocking with seriously. After that, the orcs didn’t last long at all.

The reason he had been doing this was to see if he could increase his vitality by recovering from heavy injuries through regeneration. He had done this multiple times and met with some success but it was taking longer each time and soon it would no longer be worth the time it took to allow his enemies to injure him safely. However, something unexpected happened in the form of a message window.

*Ding*

You have 1 new skill

Passive skill: Adrenaline

Activates when below 20% health

Normal effects of low health negated.

Strength increased by 10%

Speed increased by 10%

Once again, Frost was learning amazing skills, but he wasn’t very happy. If it was that easy for him to learn skills, then it was that easy for everyone else as well. If everyone had strong abilities, then it would come down to the skill of the user. That was fine though. Frost was confident in his ability to take down other players with the same or similar skill sets. It was the ones with special skills and perhaps magic users that would be the largest problem in the tournament. Frost was learning more about how the game worked every day he tried something new, which he doubted was true for everyone else.

He decided not to worry about it any longer for now and chose to concentrate on the current predicament. Earlier in the week, Frost had stumbled upon an orc village and had been chased away by orcs riding oversized boars. Luckily they were distant when they started chasing him and he had recognized the danger immediately. He was fast enough to keep ahead of them for a while until he was sure they weren’t going to get reinforcements. He turned to face them since they were gaining on him and saw that they were retreating.

Since then, Frost had been trying to get more information on the village. Ten-foot wooden walls surrounded it with sentries posted sporadically along the walls. The town seemed to have no particular shape. It was as if the orcs had decided where to build their homes by tossing rocks and building where they landed. Then they put up a wall around the collection of buildings.

Frost knew he could climb that wall, but he would need to train a skill first. He returned to the forest and started running at trees, using some of his parkour training by turning the forward momentum into friction against the tree so he could reach a greater height by effectively jumping off the tree. He continued to do this to train himself, or at least his ability to jump. With his high strength and solid technique along with the game’s fairly realistic physics, he was quickly able to train up his jumping skill to reach the height he needed.

He returned to the fields at a run and waited for his stamina to recover as he watched the sunset. A waning moon with a little less than half a celestial body lit the night with the aid of the stars. It was a soft glow that wouldn’t reveal him as long as he was careful enough. He approached the village, keeping a low profile to reduce the chance the sentries accidentally saw him. He managed to get close enough to the wall to ready his next move.

He had been studying them for days and noticed that sentry duty was a sort of punishment or was given to the lower ranking members of the orc society. They were fairly laid back, considering they didn’t have any real enemies out in these parts. Anyone who might have a problem with them didn’t have a large enough force to do anything about it. The torches that lit the wall, which was the biggest reason he wasn’t afraid of being seen, blinded the few scattered sentries. They wouldn’t be able to see anything approaching until it was close.

He waited until one of the sentries moved past the part of the wall he was looking at and then ran straight at it. He jumped into the wall and propelled himself upwards with the wall jump he had been practicing. Then he pulled himself over the top and dove into the village, the whole thing making nothing but a few scuffling noises as he slipped between two poorly made wood and thatch dwellings. His heart raced as he stood there in the dark, waiting for some kind of alarm, waiting to hear that they had noticed him.

One minute passed, then another as he started to move and figure out the layout of the village from the shadows of the decrepit shelters. He made sure to mark his path of escape as well as a few backups while he drifted slowly towards the center of the village. There was a collection of finer buildings that could actually be called houses in the center of the area, five in total. There were more guards posted at the fronts of some of those buildings, his targets. He was hoping to find their treasures stored in those buildings.

If the game followed traditional mechanics, this area would have been designed to challenge a small raid group, meaning there was the potential for enough loot for a group as large as twenty-five people. Those buildings he was circling were where that loot would be. After spending twenty minutes checking the different buildings, he was ready to move in.

Frost started at one of the buildings without guards first. He tried the back door and found it locked, not that that was a surprise. The windows were simple shutters so he went there next. Making assumptions about the design of the windows, he took out a small knife made for cutting food. He jammed it in between the shuttersjust below the middle. The wood was thick so he didn’t get the knife as far as he needed. He wrapped the end of the knife in a strip of cloth and used the pommel of his sword to hammer it in.

Luckily, the wood was soft enough for him to get the knife in to the point that he could use the tip of the blade to open the latch on the inside. The window opened and he quietly entered. He moved about with purpose, checking the house for any residents. It was empty of living things. Since he didn’t have to fear waking anyone up, he could move a bit quicker through the house.

In the bedroom, he found a small chest with a single ring in it. He took the ring and put it in his bag, moving on from there. He didn’t find anything else of value until he reached the basement where there was a larger chest, hiding behind some wine barrels. In it he found a sack of coins and a glistening silvery hammer. Both were tucked into his magical bag. He closed the window as best as he could and moved to the next house.

The entire time, his heart was racing and he expected that he would need to make a break for it at any moment. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm himself. He repeated the process at the next house, this time finding a pendant in the bedroom and an armory in the basement. The armory was mostly crude weapons and pieces of armor just lying around. The few items that looked sturdy enough to use weren’t really worth taking when he thought about his own equipment. He left the armory untouched and moved to the next building.

To his surprise, the back door in that house was unlocked. On closer inspection, the door didn’t even have a lock. Instantly, Frost’s sense of danger skyrocketed and the comfortable house robbing felt a lot more dangerous. HE didn’t expect that orcs would leave a house undefended unless there was nothing they considered of worth there. It didn’t seem likely that it was just an easy target.

Still, he didn’t want to leave anything behind and the danger only made it more exciting. He went inside, moving slower than before, searching for traps as he carefully checked each door. There didn’t seem to be anything on this floor but a large common room and kitchen. It may have been where they all had their meals, like a mess hall, so it was unlikely there was anything here. He could be wrong though, so he remained cautious as he made his way upstairs.

He reached the top of the stairs and was confused for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the area and he began to make out what all the shapes were. He froze. There were bodies spread around the room in makeshift beds or cots. He tiptoed back down the stairs. It wasn’t a mess hall he had entered. It was a barracks. As he moved swiftly to the back door, he heard some voices approaching the building. He was right next to the door at that point and had been reaching for the door.

He had no time to try to escape through the front of the building and it was too risky anyway. He had no choice but to throw himself at the closest door and enter it as quickly as possible. He realized afterwards that it was the door to the basement he had opened earlier. There was a light coming from underneath a door to the room at the bottom of the stairs and there were sounds coming from inside of it. He was trapped with enemies on both sides and no way out.

He realized all of this and so he had to ask himself a question. If he was in a frightening life or death situation, trapped between enemies with no escape, why did he have such a big smile on his face? ‘Oh. I’m having fun’ His smile grew bigger as he pulled out his sword as quietly as he could muster. ‘I’m having a lot of fun’ Advertisement Previous

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Bio: Apparently, I am a special snowflake.

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