“Hyung, what’s wrong?”

“Ah Pow, I’ve hit the skill limit cap…”

“Money-san, you really should not have picked up so many weapon skills.”

“Hyung, you have to look at it positively. Now you no longer have to be stressed about some action giving you the wrong skills, like picking up the Blacksmithing skill when you smelt ore.”

Blacksmithing was one of the skills that Jinyang had wanted to gain as it would greatly increase the earnings he would get from using the Mining skill by letting him sell ingots of processed metal rather than raw ore. The price difference was substantial plus he could make weapons and armour using the mined metal.

“Yes Money-san, you already have the bandage skill and weapon skills so weak skills like Alteration magic and Elemental magic aren’t needed. Power-san and I will pick those in your place instead.”

“…”

“Anyway hyung, if you need to climb anything like stairs, either of us can help you since you’re so unskilled in it.”

"Yes Money-san, we can help you with ladders, ropes and other difficult things that require climbing."

“…”

Since they knew each other to be at least as dedicated, knowledgeable and underhanded as themselves, seeing a major rival like that trip was always something that would require gloating. Jinyang silently called them names but he could not really blame them since he would be doing it himself if the victim was one of the others. Plus it was his own choices that led to him hitting the skill limit so soon. It had seemed so easy to repeat the Basic Training Program with the other weapon categories with Thorny's help and the fact that little actual attention and effort by him was required was seductive. He was now paying the price for taking the easy way to increased stats though.

It could all be solved by taking up a class but selecting a class in haste to solve a short term problem was always going to be a bad idea in the longer term. Many of the hidden classes and normal classes in the original game had been exposed and explored so using them was not something that was exciting, full of unknown potential and more importantly “special”. Everyone wanted to be unique and in a MMORPG with hidden classes, a class that came with the expansion was the best way to show everyone else their distinctiveness. Plus any hidden classes from the expansion that he could come across would be a bonus for his write-up of the game

Still he had to maintain his image as the oldest party member as he forced himself to calm down, he redirected the conversation to something else.

“Ah Girls, you have to climb that tall tree that to see what’s around us. I’ll look around to see if I can find some food to eat while Ah Pow starts a fire to cook.”

Neither of them objected to his plan as it was simply a process of elimination. As the unskilled climber, it would fall to the other two to climb the tree while GimmePower was out of the running as he was the only one with Cooking skill. That left only GimmeGirls as the tree climber.

As they went about their missions, Jinyang walked deeper into the jungle looking for berries or other edible plants. There were none to be found though and as he travelled further in, a dim light caught his eye. It was a glowing mushroom growing in the shadow of a tree. The entire mushroom glowed with a neon green light. As he picked up the mushroom and held it out against the light, the green glow disappeared, replaced by an ordinary looking yellow appearance. Intrigued, he moved the mushroom back into the shadowed area and the green glow reappeared. Since there seemed to be no plants or fruit that looked familiar, he started picking the mushrooms nearby. Into his backpack went more of the glowing mushrooms, several yellowish white leaf like mushrooms, some purplish pink ones and a few handfuls of a white mushroom with a surface reminiscent of a bee hive. He also found strands of berry like fruits hanging from several trees which he predictably stripped clean.

Slightly over two hundred meters away, past a stream, he could see some pineapple like fruits growing near the edge of the other side of the stream but he had already moved nearly fifty meters away from the site they had chosen as their camp. If he walked over to pick the fruits, he would need to travel half a kilometre in total to gather lunch. Without an effort saving device like the cart, he loathed having to walk so much.

"Eh, these berries and mushrooms should be enough. We only need enough to eat for today anyway. Something will probably attack us and we can eat it as tomorrow's meal."

Carrying the load of food back to the campsite, he saw that GimmeGirls had already returned. After heaping the collected foodstuffs next to the cook fire, Jinyang sat down to hear what GimmeGirls had seen.

“Ah Girls, so how is the terrain and landmarks around here.”

“Money-san, from what I could see, its jungle all the way up to the horizon and nothing else. We’re in a sort of U shaped area with the mountains ringing the jungle. I would suggest we wait until night fall and check for lights on the horizon nyaa.”

“Agreed, that sounds like the best method Ah Girls. If there’s no lights or other indications of civilization, we will just move straight west."

GimmeMoney had been half listening to GimmeGirl's report while pawing through the heap of gathered foodstuffs.

"Hyung about these things you picked up for lunch, I don't think this is edible, the rest should be ok."

GimmeMoney held up one of the glowing mushrooms while separating the foodstuffs into groups of the same type.

"Ah Pow, how did you know that's not edible?"

"Well hyung, before I made my character, I memorised as much of the edible stuff found in South America and Africa that I could find on the World-Wide-Net. The inedible one is called foxfire in common terms while the purple ones are Lentinus Strigosus. Those are hard and taste bitter but still edible. The white ones are Polyporus Tenuiculus and quite useful for satisfying hunger. The berries are from an acai palm and used as a staple food in South America. The ones that look like a leaf are Cotylidia Aurantiaca and... Aish!"

"What's wrong Ah Pow?"

"The system just gave me the Herb Gathering skill! Now one of my skill slots has been used up!"

"Ah Pow, you must look on the bright side. Now you are skilled enough and can pick what raw ingredients you need yourself without having an unskilled person like me blindly gathering useless things."

"Yes Power-san, you can still use everything you memorised and the system will tell you whether you are right or wrong. It is fun like a quiz nyaa."

"..."

Though GimmePower had identified the food ingredients without using a skill, the system had apparently marked those as successfully identifying the plants. Since the skill used to identify plants was Herb Gathering, he had been given the skill similar to how Jinyang could gain the Mining skill though successfully mining some ore. As he had already memorised large numbers of different flora, use of the Herb Gathering skill to identify plants was rather redundant.

The only major benefits he could get from having the skill was identifying fantasy plants, the improved amounts harvested and a lesser chance of failure for the collected plants while preserving or processing them, the reason being that he was only interested in finding edible ingredients for cooking rather than any of the effects of the Herb Gathering skill.

Since utilizing the harvesting and processing effects required GimmePower to personally handle the plants, Jinyang was celebrating as now he was free from having to wander around the dense jungle to find food ingredients as he could always use the excuse of this lack of skill in gathering the plant matter.

However GimmePower was not going to take the verbal jabs lying down especially since they were dependent on him to cook. Lunch and dinner ended up being extremely spicy and some of the glowing mushrooms even ended up on their dinner plates, resulting in both being slapped with the poisoned status and losing considerable amounts of health.

GimmePower blamed it on a mix-up between the foxfire and the Cotylidia Aurantiaca mushrooms even though the former clearly glowed and looked nothing like the leaf shape of the latter. Both Jinyang and GimmeGirls could say nothing since they neither knew how to cook anything other than boiled eggs and instant noodles of which the latter was not found in game nor were they willing to spend time cleaning, cutting and cooking the food in game.

As night fell, GimmeGirls climbed one of the taller trees again and reported seeing faint lights beyond the horizon towards a westerly direction. As they had full satiety as well as both glowing mushrooms and a lantern to light their way, it was decided that they should move towards the discovered lights immediately. Trudging through the jungle proved to be slow going but otherwise uneventful as it took them five hours to reach the area that had given off the light and surprisingly it proved to be a village of humans.

The village was a mix of houses made with reeds, packed earth and stone. As they had approached in the small hours of the morning, an alarm was raised by the villagers on watch. Wisely the three of them stopped their advance and awaited parley. In less than half an hour, an elderly white haired man dressed in a white robe with a rainbow coloured sash approached.

“Strangers, what is it you wish at this hour when only thieves move about?”

“Oh wise elder, we are wanderers lost in your lands. We aim only to fight evil creatures to test ourselves against them and aid in protecting the innocents of the land.”

Jinyang had given an answer he thought was the safest and most politically correct one. He was right but it did have its own consequences.

“Well strangers, if you would fight against evil, then prove yourselves to us. A great and hidden creature of darkness has been preying on those who live at the edges of our village, if you can find and defeat it, you will have earned our trust.”

Slay the monster threatening the village

The village elder has asked you to kill the creature that has been attacking and eating those who live at the village’s edge

Difficulty level:D

Rewards:

Unrestricted access to the village

Improved friendship with the villagers

Quest requirements:

Quest fails when you tell the elder you cannot do it

A quick glance at each other provided the decision.

“Of course, elder, all of us will do our best. Can we rest in your village until dawn though as darkness is the ally of any creature of evil.”

Your party has accepted the quest

“Yes you may but you may not enter any of the houses in the village nor enter more than ten paces from the village’s edge.”

The entire reason they wanted to enter the village’s boundaries was to set the village as their new respawn location. The three of them had no great desire to explore the village anyway and agreed readily. As the stepped into the village with the elder’s permission, a system message appeared.

Due to being allowed to enter a civilized region, you will now respawn at the boundary of this location when you die

“Hyung, we got the big prize!”

“Yes now we don’t need to fear getting killed and having to travel back to this area nyaa.”

“Heh heh heh, the elder gave us the biggest treasure he could have done without even knowing it.”

“So hyung, that creature?”

“Ah Pow, Ah Girls, we will use plan SS, agreed?”

“Ooohohoho, of course Money-san, that’s the only plan that would fit.”

“Hehehe, hyung, I can’t wait to use plan SS.”

At the crack of dawn, all three ran into the jungle scattering in different directions. Each was attacked by a variety of things, from giant amphibians to monster bats to huge insects to carnivorous plants and anything they could bait or attract with yells and combat. When they were in danger of being overrun or killed, they would run back towards the village, passing the buck of handling the monsters to the village warriors while bandaging before once more running back into the jungle. Their seeming incompetence became a source of gossip and cursing amongst the villagers as they were unhappy of having to clean up the monsters that the three had brought to the village.

What they did not know was that plan SS was plan Spider Snake aka doing what they had done to the spider and snake monsters to everything they could get to attack them. Because of the level difference and the number of poisonous species in the jungle, their Defence and Poison Resistance rose at an incredible degree. Each of them tried to get themselves surrounded by as many monsters as they could while still maintaining a getaway route and in doing so, a single successful dodge ended up dodging several monster attacks at a time and the system would count it as multiple successes when tallying the total successes needed for awarding an increase in Defence. Though it was more difficult to accurately dodge attacks coming in from multiple directions, each such successful or semi successful dodge allowed their Defence to rise at amazing speed. Their Combat Bandage skill was the one skill that was rising at a similar rate as they had not attempted to harm or kill anything but rather just maintaining their health.

Dying was avoided at all costs still as although they would respawn at the village, being locked out for 24 hours or 4 game days was a major loss. The presence of the other two became a powerful motivating force as being rivals each wanted to at least maintain parity with the others if not winning at the stat growth race.

Day and night it continued, as they spent as little time as they could in logging out to sleep and eat. This amounted to over three game days of insanity plus several game hours logged out for every 1 real day that passed. At the end of the eighth game day, a few of the villagers had even begun to pity them thinking that they had their heart in the right place but simply lacked any sort of ability.

Even the village elder had begun to reconsider his preconditions and simply grant them full entry into the village. It would save a lot of effort by the warriors defending the village from having to eliminate the train of monsters each brought back every few hours.

It was on the ninth game day when GimmeGirls ran into the monster they were supposed to slay for the quest by pure luck. He had stumbled upon a cave that was filled with human bones while trying to bait more monsters into attacking him. Seeing the owner of the cave sleeping within, he identified the monster as a new subspecies of troll before quickly escaping back to the village awaiting the others. The wait was not long as Jinyang and GimmePower showed up minutes apart from each other after half an hour had gone by.

“Ah Girls, you’re sure that it’s the quest monster?”

“Not a hundred percent Money-san but ninety nine percent nyaa given the number of bones.”

“Girls-ssi, it was a troll? Those are hard to kill since they recover health so fast.”

“Again I cannot guarantee it but the look of the creature was similar to the picture of a forest troll I saw on a forum Power-san, except the monster had a much darker green colour nyaa”

The known troll species were notoriously hard to kill as they recovered their health quickly though they were physically weakened in sunlight. The troll could only die if their brain was pierced through but given the size of their brain was about the size of a pea, hitting it was extremely difficult. It could regenerate any other part of its body other than its brain like a lizard re-growing its tail, only a hundred times faster so most players ended up having to beat the troll to negative health then pierce its brain.

“Hyung, do we try to lure into sunlight?”

“I don’t think that’s wise Ah Pow. A fight in the open would lure more monsters to us and since this troll is a new subspecies, we do not know if it’s more powerful than a common forest troll so fighting multiple opponents would be a worse idea than normal. Plus if it’s a named monster, the fight would be even tougher.”

Named monsters were monsters that had fought many battles and raised their levels from the base level of their race. They were commonly the ‘boss’ monsters of a dungeon but they could also occur naturally in any location where large numbers of violent species existed together

“Money-san, since forest trolls are level 130 and mountain trolls are level 150, this new troll type would probably be 170 or 180, probably 200 if it was a named one, nyaa.”

“We won’t know until we go in and whack it… Hyung what do you say?”

“I say we call this operation IGAT for ‘I Got A Troll’. The reward outweighs the risk, agreed?”

“I am with you Money-san, nyaa.”

“Hyung I will back you up all the way, no fear.”

“Hello my friends, perhaps you will welcome help?”

The sudden addition of a fourth voice spooked the three as a tribesman had approached them silently and greeted them. The three of them looked at each other a hidden conversation spoken through their faces and eyes. Jinyang was the first to speak up.

“Your offer is welcome oh great and mighty warrior but our quest must be done by ourselves…”

“That is not difficult my friends, I can ask the elder to give me the quest as well, if you would have me along.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“You are a player nyaa?”

“Yes I have been here three days before you came. The villagers have treated me very well since I have been here.”

“Three days… hyung…”

“Er…”

“Call me Eke my friend.”

“Er… Eke-ssi, how did you reach here?”

“Ahh, by flying across the mountains. I bought a pair of wings online and used it to get here. It melted after landing unfortunately and now I am here.”

“Er… please wait a while Eke, the three of us will need to discuss if we can bring you along on the quest.”

As Eke nodded his affirmation, the three of them huddled and whispered.

“The Wings of Icarus… Money-san, those are so rare that only three were known to exist and one was sold for over twenty thousand Euros nyaa…”

“I know Ah Girls, no one actually uses the wings because it’s so expensive and can only be used just one time but he actually bought and used it plus his weapons and armour are all low requirements but high powered rare stuff.”

“Hyung, I think he must be one of those that really wealthy people that just spend money to get stuff.”

“Power-san, I despise such people who pay to win nyaa.”

“I understand Ah Girls, but you heard what he said. The villagers treated him very well that means he must have a lot of the charm stat. None of us have even had the stat created for us yet.”

“So hyung, what you mean is that we should get him to be the face of the team?”

“Yes Ah Pow. Like those Korean girl groups where they have various roles with the vocal, dance and visual…”

“Power-san, I don’t see why none of us could be the ‘visual’. The girl groups in Japan are all ‘visuals’ too.”

“Ah Girls, we are obviously handsome, manly and suave but that counts for little if we don’t have a charm stat.”

“Hyung is right on that Girls-ssi. We need someone who can get the NPCs to talk to us or give us discounts.”

“Alright Power-san but I hope we don’t have to slow down for him to keep up nyaa.”

“Ah Girls, how about this. We accept him first and party with him so we can check out his stats, then if he sucks we kick him out.”

“That does sound like a good plan hyung,”

“Yes agreed Money-san. If he is bad we kick him out.”

With the decision made, Jinyang turned back to Eke.

“We have unanimously decided that you would be an excellent addition to the team Eke. You can join our party so we can see your abilities and add them to the team strategy.”

“Of course my friends, it is good to be a part of something and rest assured that I will not be a drag on you.”

Once they had partied up, each of the three looked at Eke’s stats.

“Eke stat window”

Character NameEkeAlignmentGoodLevel271ProfessionGreater Nahual WarriorTitleNoneFame1722Health5855Mana1200Strength676Agility698Vitality431Stamina336Wisdom112Intelligence120Luck30Leadership0Charm248Resilience194Offense349Defence349Magic Resistance: NoneAbilities: Nahual Warrior

+50 to all physical stats and Charm stat if possessed

May transform into a puma or jaguar for 30 minutes per day

Ability to call upon the power of an animal, gaining physical boosts

Stamina costs for any action reduced to 50%

Greater Nahual Warrior

+120 to all physical stats and Charm stat if possessed

+30% of total health

Ability to call upon the power of an additional animal, gaining further boosts

May transform into a toucan or snake for 30 minutes per day

“…”

“…”

“…”

GimmePower was the first to recover.

“Eke-ssi is very powerful. Eke-ssi, you could easily do the quest yourself. We will quietly follow behind you supporting you in any way we can.”

“Yes Eke-san, you are so strong that walls would crumble if you hit it, we will need you protect us from the horrible monsters in the jungle nyaa.”

“Brother Eke, you are amazing. Definitely few players in the game could match you and fewer monsters still. We will all be counting on you.”

Their praises had only one aim, to get him to be the tank as that way they could retreat without running too far away, recover and return to the battle. For their ‘battles’ in the jungle, there would be no need to run back all the way to the village since Eke alone could delay the monsters sufficiently for them to treat their injuries. He would be a great time saving appliance.

Eke merely nodded. He had not looked at their stat windows as their shabby armour and weapons showed that they were low level. One of them even had a high level armour but with a massive hole in the chest area that rendered it worthless as a form of protection. They would definitely need his help.

--