“HELLO EVERYONE, AIAG HAS IT BEEN A WEEK ALREADY?”

A chorus’ of hellos fly back at me, although the number of people seems to be a couple short. And by a couple, I count only 70 people.

“Why are 30 people missing?” I muse to myself

“BOSS” Tikari jumps onto me oh hello you “how are you here?”

“I died I think”

“oh, well your jinxed group and Squad Animal went after you about a week ago.”

“Oh, and why are you here?”

“I…got left in charge” Oh my, well everyone else seems to be here so she must’ve done something right. “it hasn’t been that stressful”

“Well keep being in charge I’m fine with that”

“No, no please I do that too much IRL I want a break”

“Oh cmon, why do I have to be in charge”

“You did designate yourself the leader, and there’s a choice between you and Braxel” She…has a fair point, two actually.

“Gah fine” I turn towards the crowd of people who are all sitting down, waiting patiently for me to finish whispering with Squirrel. “So, hello everyone, it’s been a while. Sorry I disappeared but I will get to what happened and you’ll be pleased to know I learnt quite a lot of things” And I hope you have learnt many delicious things for me in return! “The meeting will go as always…stats, then skills and then system-based knowledge. But we’ll also have a talk at the end on what to do, because having a quick look at everyone’s levels, it looks like everyone’s growing beautifully”

I may have had a quick look at everyone’s levels, and boy there’s a lot of things that I learnt. The first being that I didn’t die…or something. And also that everyone is around level 12-13 now.

“So, shall we get started? Oh and has someone got a copy of the last meeting?” A message from Tikari pops up as I ask, ah I forgot how much help you are.

Having a quick glance at the notes,

…

..

.

Wow, holy mother of Aiag, sorry, I have missed out on so MUCH!

“Ok, so stats, what has everyone learnt in the past week?”

…Nothing, really?

“Seriously not a single stat?”

“They’re actually quite hard to get, I still haven’t gotten all the magic ones yet” Sugar, the green bearded gnome, complains from the back.

“Well… glad I went on this trip then. Ok so the stats I’ve discovered are…” I look over to Tikari “Do we say rare stats?”

“Rare stats? Oh you have to.”

“I swear we had a talking about rare things?”

“Well we did. But you’ll tell me right.”

I squint my eyes at her “Maybe”

“But I can’t tell any of you because they’re all rare. Well all except Vigour. Whatever that is”

…

..

.

“Can we not convince you to tell us?” Braxel go real sweet its disturbing

“Well not like it’ll make a differenc if I do, because I don’t actually know how to get any of them.”

“then?”

“The npc’s had them”

That’s news to everyone, seems like they’re going to be inspecting Npc’s more often now.

And everyone’s giving me some really hard ot ignore puppy eyes.

“Fine, I’ll tell you all the rare ones, but I expect some real giving back for it” I almost cringe at the bright smiles coming my way, jeesus “The stats I saw were, Tenacity, Fury, Fighting spirit, Focus and Reaction. They’re all rare and I have no idea how to get them”

Nobody even questions if I’ve got more, huh seems like we’re missing both Anoobis and Ravenna.

“Ok so moving onto skills, I hope everyone’s learnt something new?”

…

..

.

Once again silence.

“We’ve mostly been trying to learn from last meeting, and a few people had to reset for stat changes so we really haven’t been learning much”

“Seriously? Well I’m not giving you any of the cool skills I learnt then”

“You didn’t input in the last meeting” Oh thanks Squirrel, very helpful.

Many murmurs of assent cave me in, well I mean from what I saw of their last meeting they can learn a lot when they get their heads into it, so hopefully it’ll pay off.

“There were a lot of skills…erm let me try remember…Err I may have forgotten all of them”

“He’s not lying” Nerisp calls out as everyone looks towards her, oh? Can she tell lies? Interesting.

“Its been quite a while but I do remember that there’s a lot of skills to learn, a lot a lot and some vert weird ones. Ok so this meetings going great. Moving on to system knowledge.” Nobody complains, well they’re faces are complaints enough but no verbal complaints at least “I’ll begin before you all break my hopes of learning something today. Titles are super important, because they give bonus stats, personal skills and at a certain point they can even lower your level”

A lot of people look very shocked and stranged out by that concept.

“Have you not realized that it takes more xp to level up now?” I remember noticing that with my fast learner it still took 100% to level up “So by reducing your level it becomes easier to level up and gain stat points. You don’t lose stat points when you reduce your level like that.”

Many O’s are seen around the farm.

“Also, don’t ever get paralyzed…because it sends you to limbo-”

Please don’t mention the time differences

-Droneurt

“For a couple of hours, not fun” Guess no reason to make everyone freak out too much. “its like jail but you can log out”

“You can’t log out when jailed?” the Blue-penguin, calls out, Anon was it?

“Nope, so don’t break the law kids. So anything on your side?”

Braxel raises a hand, quite civil of him “Not so much about the system, but a lot about the area. We’ve got the swamp to the east, Rock giants to the north, The deadows to the west and the south. The closest town beyond here is Kordash, a dwarven city.” Mostly everyone nods, well at least they got a layout of the land. “A group of Dwarves came from there a few days ago, another beta-testing group who seemed to have started in that city. They’re assholes but there’s only 12 of them”

“Another thing we learnt” Kale stands up garnering my attention “Is that getting more than one subclass starts to make things difficult, since they come with penalties which accumulate and can even clash against your class, reducing what skills you can learn and improve” Yeah that doesn’t sound good. And I do have quite a few subclasses, oh no.

Nothing else? Guess not

“So everyone in the past week has simply been improving on themselves?”

“Pretty much” A group of them call out

“And so whats the consensus, do we stay here and improve some more or head off to this new city?”

“Well I heard from one of the dwarves that its about level 20 over there” Nerisir speaks up and her fish sisters exclaim the same thing.

“levels are not as important as you think” Everyone gives me a bit of a strange look, well levels are supposed to give a numerical showing of your strength I guess. But not in this game apparently. “I killed level 30 monkeys, and I’m not even level 10. For us and Npc’s levels really just show how much experience we have and what we know. For monsters, levels are a bit more realistic. But even back when we were level 5, Squad Animal and I were able to take out level 20 fire elementals”

“So what’s the point of level’s then?” Blacky shouts out

“Tikari?” I have no idea what levels are for but maybe she understands

“From what I gather, levels give us milestones and stats, but I think you’re wrong about being able to beat high level monsters easily. If you remember we had to sacrifice someone to take out their core, which was a a good strategy but in a normal battle, even now it would probably kill a few of us if we all attacked it. And I’m not sure how you survived those monkeys if they were level 30, but it may have to do with the quality of monsters.” She produces a book out of thin air, cool “According to a lot of Monstologists, silly name I know, monsters have qualities similar to rarities. There’s Minion, Rookie, Commoner, Soldier, Elite, Noble, Ruler, Demi and God as far as I can tell. Things like goblins are all minon level, even the elite ones apparently. And so you probably fought against minion level monkeys. Level 30 but they’re stats must have been very low, low enough for you to be able to deal with them.”

“Well I could only deal with one and it wasn’t exactly easy to”

“Exactly, and did you fight anything else?”

“A basilisk I think…it killed me instantly”

“Basilisk” A few more books pop out of nowhere, and she flicks through two at once. “Nope nothing about them here, damn I need more books. But if it killed you instantly, chances are it was more than likely a rookie monster, Bit lower stats but a lot more dangerous than a minion. According to Ex. Jenkins 10 minions would be equal to 1 Rookie, 2 Rookies to a commoner, 5 Commoners to a Soldier. 100 Soldiers to an Elite, 3 Elites to a Noble. 1000 Nobles to a Ruler. 10 Rulers to a Demi and 3 Demi’s to a God. And that’s in terms of goblins, so I’m sure its different for other monsters.”

“You’re a walking information bank aren’t you”

“A little.”

“Is there any way to identify their quality?”

“Holistically, but it should be obvious with their social structures. I mean with those monkeys if they were minions there must have been dozens of them”

“Hundreds actually”

“Wow. how did you survive that?”

“I’m here aren’t I?”

“Good point” She snaps her fingers, poofing her books out of existence

“Well tat was enlightening, so maybe going over to the city is not a good idea”

“Acutally” Braxus raises his hand once more “I’d like the Legionnaires to go since we’re bored with fighting undead, we want a real challenge”

“Ok, how long should it take to get there?”

“A few days according to the maps” Tikari speaks up

“Then in a week or so time everyone else should be going to the city, Since I imagine everyone who’s not a legionnaire is busy with crafting of some kind?” Many many nods are given. “Perfect, ok I guess that’s meeting adjourned”

With a clap of my hands, everyone stands up and with a terrifying precision, 30 people form up into rows of five and begin marching in sync. Damn that’s a mini army right there. And I don’t recognize most of them. Guess they weren’t part of the village group.

“Ok so who do we have left?” I call out to the rest before everyone buggers off, might as well start an information network again.

“Sons of Satan!” The five satyr wannabe’s flex their muscles. Ok

“Birds and the Bark” Ook? So all the bird-beastmen and Bark are in a group..is that seriously their party name?

“We’re all waitressing here, but we can drop that whenever for a trip” The fish ladies all start moaning about their customers, guess service industry is as awful in games as real life

“Black gold” Blacky and Goldy dab…don’t do that guys that’s just awful.

“Training” Grawla growls out, patting her bloody whip…??

And apparently everyone else is still figuring out magic together, I really got left with all the mages? Sweet.

“Well everyone get to it and we’ll try to meet up in a few days to see whether its worth staying here longer”

“Pleaseee” Nerispi whines

“Why don’t you go with Braxel?” I ask

“Contract lasts for another few days”

“Ah”

“I know”

Everyone then just seems to potter off, and I’m left in the field, which is surprisingly clean seeing as how many zombies were slaughtered last night, with Pepper and Tikari.

“What are you two still doing here”

“Well Lux told me to protect you, I don’t know why so you’ve now got a bodyguard” I look at the pig man as he snorts with a tiny squeal. Really? I’d rather not? I’m a bit porkupied with not being followed around.

“And you, don’t you have more books to read or something, as I saw you’re supposed to be a librarian now”

“I’ve already read everything there, yeha I know stop giving me that look, I was very bored. And so I don’t really have much to do at the moment so…what do you want to do?”

“Err…I don’t actually know. I’m thinking to do a montage of skill learning? Anything that doesn’t give me time to think right about a lot things I’m trying to ignore right now.

“You are pretty far behind. I’m sure I can fill up your time without a problem Boss!”

“Oh tell me about it. Also do you think its wise to try go after the rest?”

“definitely not, they should be back soonish anyway. Baila did say a week but they may have gotten a little off track”

…

(Baila’s POV)

“INCOMING” a scream to my left makes me look up, spotting what the world knows as a flying fish, except its about a dozen feet long and with massive sharp teeth.

Jumping to the side as it crashes into the side of the ship, splintering wood, and getting itself stuck in the hull, She whirls out a needle and tosses it at one of the Drowned men clinging onto Thrash. To little effect sadly.

“SQUAD. FRENZYYYYYY” A roar comes from the starboard side and I can feel the pressure emanating from them all as they chop, hack and ram the drowned men back into the sea, howls drowned out by the frenzied squall.

Her attention is caught back to a blade slicing for her neck, to which she ducks and brings out her own butcher to slice off a lobstered claw and with a flick of the wrist changes the direction into its bulbous neck, spurting viscous sea water into her face. As it gurgles and falls dead to the deck.

“BONECRACKER” Anoobis screams as he sprints across deck, pointing to the giant flying fish which is busy boring into the ship. Barging through a crowd of drowned men, two still clinging on her arms with their suckers, BoneCracker grabs hold of the fish’s fin and wrenches it clear of the ship and into the maelstrom that we call the ocean.

Integro The ship begins mending itself under Anoobis’ magical care while BoneCracker tears the leech-like monsters off of her and tosses them into the half a dozen that charge her.

A thud comes from behind and I spin round to see a drowned man toppling over the railing, arrow embedded in its neck. And another one’s tentacle flops over the railing just moments after.

Sprinting up to it, I chop at its tentacle, hearing it lose balance and fall away screaming, but no time to rest as three others have already crawled onto deck. One even carrying a barnacle bow.

Diving to the ground as a fleshy arrow zips overheard, I slice at the peg leg of the spearman trying to stab me, and slide under its falling body as an axe slams into the deck where I used to be. An arrow flies towards me, but I just manage to push it enough to slice open my cheek instead, leaving a large gash on my hand and a burning sting.

But as soon as it happens I feel a healing warmth come over me and remove the sting, just as I reach the archer and disembowel him, eels wriggling out into the already slipperly deck. And for good measure I stab it in the face too, before ducking and whirling round, both hands on my butcher and slicing through a squishy leg and finishing my 520 spin embedding it in its downed face while I twist myself best as I can getting an axe in my shoulder rather than my neck.

Leaving my butcher, I pull out the square, other hand, holding onto its axe as I hook its leg and trip it, pulling myself ontop of it and with the kite stab through its clammy eye.

“BAILA” I wrench the axe out of me as Charmine rushes over, sweat and rain pooling off of her as she fumbles on her belt to grab a healing potion for me as I take a few second breather.

“HOW LONG HAVE WE GOT” I scream to the sky

“WHAAT” Charmine screams back, voice barely carried over the torrential wind.

Rolling my eyes, I scan my section of the rail, surprisingly empt-no wait there’s a crab one climbing.

Nodding to Charmine I rush over, Kit stabbing upwards through the armoured drowned man’s ‘helmet’ and into its brain.

Luckily they’re pretty squishy.

Another crash, this time on the other side of the ship, flings me off the ship, and with reflexes only know to me, I toss out a chain, just barely warpping it around the rail, causing me to swing onto the side of the ship, slamming into a climbing monster, to which I stab through the neck and let drop.

Absailing over the wood, I run along, one hand on the chain, other freely swiping at the dozens of climbers, all slow mind you, but swarming up the side of the ship. I thought it was bad on the skip but there’s so many climbers I can barely see any wood of the ship.

Of course a few try to fight back, a tentacle there, a few jump at me from above, which I’ve only just about avoided by changing direcitons abruptly, and one archer jumped off trying to shoot me as it fell.

And it wasn’t like I was alone here with Hino literally jumping monster to monster, hooking his axe into their backs, finishing them off with his broken rapier and then jumping to another before they fall off together.

For what might have been minutes, but felt like hours, I kept running along, killing dozens of the the drowned men until I feel a sharp tugging on my chain, trying to pull me up.

Dropping my spiral, I take both hands on the chain and clamber up, throwning myself over the deck into a pile of sea goo and a heaving Thrash, who’s is covered in blood and goop, howling happily into the wind as he tears apart a last drowned man.

“HOLD ON” He howls at me as he slams his claws into the deck, punching through and effectively grounding himself in the deck as it repairs around him thanks to a nearby Anoobis who’s half buried himself in it.

Rolling under Thrash I spider onto him, Chain re-wrapping around the both of us, as he plans himself on the ground to hold us both.

A wail is heard from the read of the ship, one you might here prior to a gas explosion and without further notice, we accelerate enough to feel both mine and Thrash’s arms break from trying to hold on, his actually being torn off, sending us both sailing into the air for a moment before slamming onto his back somehow held into the ship by his broken yet still attached legs.

A drowned man splatters into the stairs in front of me, an Anoobis grins to my right as his head smashes into the ground bloodily. A Bonecracker remains flat against a wall, with Charmine squashed against her, as well as half a dozen drowned men, little more than pulp at this stage.

As quick as this insane boost of speed occurs, it dies down just as quickly as the sea is replaced with sand, then trees as splinters and leaves whip about, one branch slamming into her behind with a sharp sting as it breaks off before another impales through her right buttocks, and into her elbow.

Then they finally stop, shop crashing into the ground with a great crash and groan in chorus to everyone there, those still conscious anyway.

“At least we made it to land” I sigh to an unconscious Thrash. Who’s got a very happy grin, stupid battle loving mutt.

“Now lets go find us a Joat”