Jonathan couldn’t help but let out an appreciative whistle. The chance of activation was pretty low and while Jonathan was sure that there would be some shenanigans he would have to deal with associated with the ability, 37% was still better than zero.

He wanted to say that his luck was making a turn for the better but he didn’t want to tempt fate, because on Arda, fate was a colossal jerk and it knew his name. Plus the pun was terrible besides. Still, he wondered why he got the ability after his luck reached 50. His strength and agility were both above 50 and he got no bonus ability with them. His first speculation was that luck was some sort of special stat and there was no real evidence to prove him wrong so he stuck to it.

Lamenting the fact that he could never really effectively min-max himself, he dumped the rest of his 23 stat points into strength, agility and defence and after a few moments deliberation, magical defence. This brought them up by 7, 6, 5 and 5 respectively. The fact that he had no ability to use magic didn’t mean that he was dumb enough not to try and defend himself against it. Even the shittiest spells could probably kill him or do something close enough. Hlazas’ [Paralysis] spell was a prime example, for what looked like a simple spell; it gave him a free hit on basically anything.

On that note, Jonathan decided to try and see how much Hlaza grew, an action that Hlaza enthusiastically agreed to:

Name:

Race:

Gender:

Title(s):

Class:

Level:

Traits:

Hlaza

Ogre Runt

Male

[Spawn of the King][Heretic][Unwanted][Bloodied-Partial]

Bloody Ogre Mage

27

[Racial] Hunger [Character] Slightly Anxious-Fading

Attributes:

Strength:

Attack:

Defense:

Agility:

Magical Power:

Magical Mending:

Magical Defense:

Luck:

63(+27)

63

68(+28)

60

72

50

10

7

Skill Points:

32

Skills and Magic:

Skills:

Magic:

[Fear][Instinct][Follow][Desperation][Starved][Survivor][Hunter Gatherer][Inner Trust][Precocious][Bloodlust-Low]

[Paralysis]

Abnormal Status Condition

Heretic

Mages’ Curse

Runt of the litter

Failed Mage

The Bleeding[Partial]

Your status as a mage in an Ogre horde leads all ogres to deem you unnatural. All Ogres have an instinctive dislike of you.

Your physical strength is always half your Magical Power

Your growth is slower than all the members of the same generation of Ogres.

Your anxiety causes you to mistime and misaim spells.

By defeating a creature of a higher grade than you, you have proved yourself to be a true warrior. You receive a bonus to your strength and defense equal to your level.

“Whoa.”

The death of the crimson wolf did wonders for Jonathan but it turned Hlaza into something else entirely. Even with the status conditions limiting his abilities, the [Bleeding-Partial] condition seemed to ignore [Mages’ Curse] which turned him into a beast. In one battle he stopped being a squishy wizard and became a tank, and looking at his agility, he was a fast one at that. It looked like the condition was exclusive to ogres or monsters in general. Jonathan wanted to shout ‘hacks!’ but held himself back. Instead, he looked at the new skills Hlaza gained;

[Inner Trust]

The power was within all along. You feel more confident when making decisions and are 25% more likely to ignore mental attacks. You receive a +5 boost to all stats when you fight for what is important to you.

“Hacks!” Jonathan shouted out suddenly, startling Hlaza before explaining why he shouted it out to Hlaza. Hlazas’ look of confusion turned into a shit eating grin very fast. Jonathan was glad that Hlaza was becoming more confident in his capabilities but the ‘u mad bro?’ look Hlaza was giving him was…a lot right now.

Jonathan sighed and looked at his other skills;

[Precocious]

Aren’t you growing fast! Your rate of growth is increased by 10% You are 25% more likely to learn new skills.

“No comment”

He decided to look at the last skill Hlaza got:

[Bloodlust-Low]

You have discovered a hidden love for action and violence. When fighting an enemy of your strength or higher, you gain a 3% boost to your highest stat and feel less pain.

“This one might be a problem. Still, more hacks bro. It looks like you’re going to be the frontline fighter from now on. I don’t much like fighting anyway.”

Hlaza seemed hesitant but agreed after Jonathan pointed out that Hlaza was stronger than him without allocating skill points. This was without including the fact that Hlaza knew magic and was smart enough to use it effectively. Even if he didn’t have much one on one fighting experience before, this increase in stats should give him an edge. Besides that, Jonathan had already planned on preparing before moving out, this would mostly include fighting.

After some deliberation, they decided to put 10 stat points into agility, 12 into magic power and 10 into magic mending so that [Paralysis] would have more shots. Jonathan then sat back and looked at the difference in physique caused by the jump in stats in both of them. Hlaza was larger now, larger than him in fact and a few inches taller with toned muscles along with a darker skin tone. Jonathan himself was no taller, he thought so at least, he had no frame of reference but knew he had more mass, most of it muscle. He didn’t have defined abs or anything of that sort but his arms and shoulders were thicker, his legs and pectorals were toned and he felt full of power.

Along with this new feeling of power, he couldn’t help but feel confilicted. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror since he came to Arda but he was sure that when he did, he would look unrecognizable. He didn’t know how to feel about it. On one hand all the ladies would love his new physique; he wasn’t naïve enough to think that Marie hadn’t found some other guy by now though so that would be an awkward conversation if he ever made it back.

After resting for long enough that his wounds stopped itching, Jonathan decided to shrug of his melancholy and went to work on making their equipment. He found a few large rocks over which he stretched the pelts, the flesh side sticking outwards. He then used his ruined short sword to scrape out the flesh from the pelts and left them to dry after cutting the smallest pelt into strips to make belts and fur boots for both of them. Jonathan made the boots by wrapping pieces of fur around rocks that were around the size of their feet and then leaving them to dry.

He then collected the bones from their meal, which Hlaza was still going at in full force, three wolves was a lot of meat to eat, even for growing boys such as them. He tried to make weapons out of their bones but was unable to make more than a club using the bones without breaking them or making it structurally unsound. Jonathan eventually decided to use the femurs to make shafts for spears. The spearheads were made using two horns and held in place by strips of leather. He thought about using the wolf heads to make a hood but ultimately decided against it, they were too small, especially when including their increasing bulk.

After he was done he decided to rest and think about their plans going forward when he got a notification;

[You have reached the requirements for the skill: [Rudimentary Crafting]].

“Huh, let’s look at what this does.”

[Rudimentary Crafting][Lv.1]

A baby playing with blocks can put things together better than you. You gain a clearer idea of what you craft when you craft it. Crafted materials get a +1 bonus when used by the crafter. This bonus is equal to the level of this skill.

‘Well that was rude.’

Jonathan thought about putting the skill at the back of his mind but he just...couldn’t. There was opportunity here, he could just feel it. Most of his skills were received after the week his spent in the empire. This was not important, what was important were the requirements for each skill. With some difference in obtaining them here and there, all of them were obtained by simply repeating an action over and over. More important than this was the fact that most skills provided some sort of flat increase in stats or ability. If Jonathan could acquire skills that covered the same range of stats or abilities and stacked them….Jonathan shuddered to think of the possibilities.

So, Jonathan got to work. He did a series of rolls before jumping up in the air in an effort to increase his agility stat and at the end of his…impressive display of skills he received a notification;

[Congratulations! You have reached the requirements for the skill, [Tomfoolery]]

[Tomfoolery][Lv. 1]

You sir, are a fool. When you activate this skill during battle, you will have a 5% chance of confusing the enemy…and embarrassing your allies.

‘That was not what I was expecting but it works as a proof of concept I suppose.’

When Jonathan thought about explaining what he had done to Hlaza, why he had done it and what the results were he didn’t expect the ogre to laugh at him. But that was what he did when Jonathan explained it to him. He laughed hard. So hard that Jonathan started to worry that the laugh would carry all the way to the empire. More than anything though, Jonathan was surprised, since when did Hlaza have so much personality? Jonathan always knew that Hlaza was much more human than anyone would have expected, much smarter too.

Maybe it was because Jonathan started the habit of talking to him in normal conversation and including him in the decisions they made or maybe it was because Hlaza just felt more confident. Either way, Jonathan was happy.

‘This is good; I should start talking to him more. The communication we had before was awkward at best.’

Despite the…dubious success of the attempt to learn new skills, he tried again, this time by doing runs between two trees as fast as he could. For the first hour or so, nothing happened besides the [Tomfoolery] skill levelling up twice. Just before he gave up, a notification appeared before him;

[Cardiovascular Conditioning][Lv.1]

Why the hell are you running man? It’s weird. Your lungs allow you to absorb more oxygen with each breath and your heart pumps blood throughout your body with more efficiency. There will be a 1% increase in ability when in battle. This will increase as the level of this skill increase as the level of this skill increases.

‘So basically I have to exercise to get this skill stronger? Damn.’

Jonathan was happy. Ignoring the underwhelming skill and the method of improvement-Exercise? Really?-he was validated. He could get stronger by learning skills and stacking their effects. This, Jonathan realized, would have limits however. He and Hlaza needed battle related skills and randomly messing around wouldn’t necessarily give them anything useful. It could just give them skills just like [Tomfoolery] which while sort of funny, would suck.

Jonathan talked to Hlaza about it and he agreed. They needed battle related skills and the only way to get them was to go into battle. Jonathan continued to work on their equipment while Hlaza looked for more herbs-if they were going to fight then they were going to get hurt. They might as well plan ahead.

By the end of that day, they had both fur ponchos fastened around their shoulders and skirts made out of fur and held together by strips that Jonathan cut from the wolf pelts. Both their skirts were made from the Crimson Wolf pelt while their ponchos were made out of the silver wolf pelts. Their fur boots ended up being more like fur socks. They felt weird but Jonathan was happy that he had anything covering his feet at all. In the end they both received a +5 bonus from the shoddily made fur clothing meaning that the ‘clothes’ they had gave them a plus 4 bonus on their own.

Their spears gave them a +2 bonus to their attack which was nice but meant that Jonathans ability was still a bit…bad….because that meant that the way the spear was made, it only gave them a bonus of 1 which was awful considering the material used to create the ‘spears’. They would soon need new weapons. The left over wolf ‘leather’ was used to make bags to store Hlaza’s herbs, some leftover fur and bones and Jonathans sword shards.

At the rate that they were healing, both of them decided that they would be ready to train the next day.

They started their morning by looking for any nearby settlements to both avoid a nasty surprise and to choose enemies to fight. They decided to search in the direction of the Valley of Wolves without entering the territory because if they found something stronger than them, they could theoretically run to the valley to gain an advantage since Jonathan knew the layout of the territory.

It took them until noon to find anything. About 3 hours from the Valley of the Wolves they found a signs of a goblin settlement. By signs of a goblin settlement they meant three goblins fighting over a crow wing. They both agreed it was better than nothing.

Jonathan moved around them, trying his best to ensure that the goblins couldn’t tell that he was there while Hlaza jumped out to attack them. Hlaza speared one in the neck, startling the others. Jonathan jumped out and stabbed a second goblin in the back. The third goblin saw all of this happen and tried to run before tripping on a tree root. Hlaza moved to attack it before Jonathan stopped him to Hlazas’ annoyance.

“Trust me bro”

They let it stand up and run before Jonathan motioned to followed it. They kept the goblin in sight while they ran after it being careful to ensure that they enough of a distance that the goblin didn’t feel cornered.

The goblin ran around like what could best be described as a headless chicken. Jonathan didn’t blame it; he would do the same to. After about 20 minutes, the goblin met up with another duo of goblins where it exploded in a series of panicked grunts and roars before pointing to their general direction. It looked like they were too far back for the goblin to see. Jonathan found this weird because they were standing out in the open in the middle of the day. These new goblins were large and armed, with one holding what looked to be a dagger and the other holding a one sided axe.

The goblins grunted back and motioned for the smaller goblin to run in a different direction while they moved in the Jonathan and Hlaza’s direction. Seeing this, Jonathan asked Hlaza to hit them with [Paralysis] as soon as they were in range before exposing themselves by shouting out and flailing his arms. The goblins roared before the one with the axe ran forward, swinging wildly.

Hlaza hit it with a [Paralysis] spell bringing it a stop before its momentum drove it onto the ground giving Jonathan an opening allowing him to drive a spear into its neck. Seeing this the second goblin briefly debated between fighting and running before finally deciding to fight. It died when Hlaza threw his spear at it, hitting it in the chest destroying the spear in the process.

While Jonathan held his head in sadness as he lost an hour of work, Hlaza took the axe off the one goblin and swung it a few times before shrugging. He loved it apparently. Jonathan couldn’t help but be sad but he had no choice but to let it go.

After Jonathan took the other goblins dagger, they continued to run towards the direction the first goblin ran. Two more goblins appeared along the way, both the same size as the two that just died. As soon as they saw Jonathan and Hlaza, they put their hands up in the air in and backed away and made noises like whines mixed with grunts. Hoping that Hlaza could understand, Jonathan looked to Hlaza to explain which Hlaza tried to do with various pantomimes and hand gestures for about 5 minutes before Jonathan understood them to mean ‘Please follow us’.

While Jonathan wondered why exactly they wanted to him follow them, he received a notification as an answer :

[You have received a challenge from the leader of the Eastern Viridi Goblin Horde!]

[Respect My Authority!][Challenge]

The Eastern Viridi Goblin Chief has felt your presence in his territory and feels you are a threat to him. He wishes to fight you in front of his goblins to prove his dominance. What say you?