NOVEL WEB Chapter 17 – The grind begins
We ended up chatting for a while as we walked, getting to know each other better and finding out what the other wanted to do in the future. During this time I went over my plan for the next month in the back of my head. There were three ways that I could go about getting experience, the first one would be training the way my future class would.
For example if I wanted to be a fighter then I would need to exercise or spar with people while if I wanted to be a mage then I would have to learn more about magic and practise new spells. This is the safest, and most common, way to get experience but also the slowest so I didn’t have the option of doing it even if I wanted to do it.
The second way was to slay monsters, the experience would range depending on the level of the monster with higher level monsters giving you more exp. This is the fastest way to level but it is also the most dangerous so most people avoid it. I was planning on doing this as I wanted some proper combat experience and it was the most reliable way to level. Plus I didn’t have to worry about dying, although if I did then I would have to give Val enough time to run away.
The third, and final, way to level was to either get new skills or advance them. I couldn’t really do this as skills usually took a very long time to acquire and even longer to advance and I didn’t have the resources to find teachers. I may have gotten the [Minor Leadership] skill after just a week but I had been incredibly lucky to find a good teacher.
As a dungeon I also gained experience when people delved into me as I was syphoning a little of experience when they killed my monsters as payment for giving them a safer way to level and grow. Technically it was just the second way to get experience just without me having to do anything. I didn’t want to rely on this because I wasn’t sure how much I would gain from it and I would get bored with all the sitting around and waiting.
This was why I was currently out of my dungeon searching for some good monsters to hunt. Not only would it accelerate my growth but it would also give me an opportunity to get more monsters for my dungeon. In this case it would be goblins as I wanted to use them on my fifth floor. The way this works is that if loot from monsters that don’t originate from my dungeon enters it I can disassemble it and then if I gather enough I will get a pattern from the monster that dropped the loot.
A part of me also wanted to do this because when I imagined what would have happened to Val if I hadn’t found her in time my blood would boil and I didn’t want to let them do that to anyone else. Thanks to the information I got when I became a dungeon I knew that goblins tended to live in large colonies so I knew that there would be enough for what I needed.
I was more worried about not being able to take down all of them but if it looked like there were too many then I would just return and tell the guild about them. We had walked for about two hours before we arrived at the first destination, the area that I found Val. There were no bodies left around here which I was expecting.
Because all monsters are made out of mana when they die the mana becomes unstable and either dissolves into the ether or condenses into loot like a monster core. Although any equipment that the monster used that wasn’t made at the same time as the monster would stay around. Unfortunately any loot that might have been here is long gone. There were only four goblins though so it wasn’t a big deal.
I wasn’t really sure which way to go from here so we decided to stop and have some breakfast while keeping an ear out for anything that came across our path. Half an hour, and a very quiet meal, later and, unfortunately, we didn’t see or hear anything so we had no particular direction to go in. With nothing to go off of we decided to just wander around and hope that we came across some goblins and go from there.
We walked around for a good few hours and I was starting to think that I had sent us on a wild goose chase when we finally saw what we came for, four goblins just ahead of us hunting something. Luckily we saw them before they saw us so we climbed a nearby tree to get a good look at them before I engaged them.
It seemed like whoever was running this colony liked sending out their minions in squads of four and this group was no different having one archer, a warrior with minimal armour and a rusty short sword, and two standard goblins with clubs. It looked like the goblin with the sword was in charge as whenever it grunted the other goblins changed what they were doing.
I took out an arrow, knocked it, concentrating for a second with my breath held and then, when I was sure I would hit my mark, I let the arrow loose. It travelled faster than I could follow it straight into the archer's green bald head, killing it instantly. Next I took out 2 arrows and shot them in quick succession at the warriors body and straight through the weak, rusty metal.
The goblin was too slow to dodge the attack so both arrows struck true. However, it was a good thing I used two arrows as it was still barely alive even with both arrows sticking out of its body. With the ranged threat taken care of and the warrior heavily weakened I turned my head on the two generic goblins. From my previous fights with them I knew they didn’t have enough HP to take even a single hit if placed properly and they didn’t have enough strength to shake me out of my perch.
This knowledge let me be calm as I took care of them in quick succession, shooting an arrow through each one of their hearts. They both crumpled to the floor, proving my assumption right, as I turned to Val and asked, ‘You want to take care of the last one?’
‘Uhh, sure’ Val answered a few seconds later, she grabbed her dagger out of its sheath before carefully jumping off of the branch and on top of the last goblin. She may not have much strength but gravity assisted her enough to let her slide the knife into the goblin, right between the chest plate and its neck.
With the fight over I checked to see if Val was ok before recovering my arrows and looting the bodies, the archer had 12 arrows on them but they were very badly made so they weren’t as good as the ones I was using. I took them anyway and just put them in my backpack in case I ran into a big group and needed more arrows.
I took the four monster cores that monsters always drop but that was all they dropped so we moved on in the direction that the squad had been coming from after having a short break. Over the next few hours we came across 3 more squads that were easily dispatched without much issue, getting twelve more cores, three teeth and a wooden club. By this time it was starting to get late so we made our way back to the dungeon without coming across any more squads.
At the end of the day I was happy with our progress today, now that we knew roughly the direction that the goblins were coming from it would be much faster to find them from tomorrow onwards.
Two weeks passed as we got into a routine, both of us having levelled up a week ago. Thanks to these two factors we slowly got further away from the dungeon each day. Our progress had given us a lot of confidence and we were regularly in a good mood. Unfortunately that couldn’t last as around noon we came across something we weren’t expecting, two squads that were within eyeshot of each other.
Even though I was feeling confident all our fights had been against four goblins and we almost always had the element of surprise but this time at least one of the squads would be able to fight us at full strength. I wasn’t sure that we could take them together at our level so I whispered to Val ‘What do you think? It might be too difficult for us and there is no shame in leaving them alone and going around them.’
Val thought about it for a second before responding ‘I think it would be best for us to wait until they split up more. A lot of the stories I read when I was a kid would warn about adventurers getting overconfident and dying.’
‘Yeah, that makes sense. I have even seen a few parties fail my dungeon due to being overconfident.’ I replied, ‘I agree with your plan.’ With our plan decided we followed the weaker of the two squads and followed them until I felt like they were far enough away that the other goblins wouldn’t be able to hear any shouts for help.
Since I was stronger now I didn’t need to just sit in a tree and take them out one at a time. Instead I had started to stay on the ground and hide in a bush, take out the most dangerous foe, usually the archer, and then move to a new location while they were still confused before taking out the next one. I would then repeat this process whittling them down until they were all dead.
This strategy worked like a well-oiled machine and as we finished taking down the second squad I felt a power rush over me that I was slowly getting used to as a notification appeared before me.
I was so excited about finally getting to level 5 I immediately used the system to give me an in depth explanation on what each of my new skills did, foregoing looting the corpses or recovering my arrows. The first skill I looked at was [Minor Nature Magic] since I had seen [Critical shot] used before and I was more excited about being able to do magic than [Quick shot].
[Minor Nature Magic] [Makes it easier for the skill holder to cast minor spells that are attuned to the Nature aspect]. Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to use it quite yet as it wouldn’t outright teach me how to cast a spell, I would have to figure it out myself first. Next was [Quick shot] [activate to shoot up to five (ammunition) in the time it would take to shoot one for a medium accuracy and force malice].
It seemed like a great skill for dealing with loads of weak enemies at once, the only issue is that it had an accuracy penalty and it would go through my arrows extremely fast. Next was the final skill that I had received from reaching level 5 [Critical shot] [Ten seconds after activating will shoot (ammunition) that will aim for the weakest area on the target that you are aware of on top of dealing extra damage].
The ten seconds of charge up sounded pretty bad as it would most likely be unusable once the fight started but it was still a good opener. Once I had gone over what they did and told Val about them I decided to give the two different shooting skills a try. The first one I decided to try was [Quick shot] and it did not disappoint.
After taking a few seconds to figure out how to activate my skills I felt my body move on its own as it took out an arrow, knocked it and then shot it at the tree in front of me faster than I could ever move it by myself before repeating four times. When it was over I took a minute to think about what I had felt while using the skill.
I got three instincts about it, first was that I could stop it at any point but the mana cost would be the same no matter how many shots I used. Secondly, as I improved my aim the malus on the skill would decrease and thirdly, I would have to wait about 30 seconds before I could use that particular skill again.
The feeling of not being in control of my body felt strange and it took me a while to get comfortable with it but I am sure the more I used skills the more in control I would feel. Once I had gathered as much as I could about the skill I looked at the result of it more closely, the arrows were scattered around where I aimed it.
If I had to guess while I had gotten to the point at which I could hit the centre of the target a quarter of the time the skill would never even hit the target as it is right now. Once I was happy that I had learned all that I could of [Quick shot] I walked back to where I had stood before and knocked another arrow as I activated [Critical shot].
10 seconds passed as I felt power being imbued into the arrow until it glowed a light green. Once the 10 seconds were up the arrow flew through the air faster than any of my other arrows up until this point before hitting the tree and going straight through to the other side. The power of the shot shocked me quite a bit as, even though I had gotten stronger and the skill added even more power, I wasn’t expecting it to go straight through the tree.
This was mostly because the normal arrows I had shot before were only embedded into the tree halfway up its shaft. Not to mention the [Quick Shot] arrows that barely made it past the bark of the tree. I did the same thing I did before and took a minute to see what I felt casting the skill. I felt mostly the same except that for this skill if I moved at all then the skill wouldn’t work and that better control over my mana would make it more powerful.
Now that I had cast both abilities I wanted to see how much mana I had used up by casting my skills while also seeing where my new stat had been placed so I opened my status screen.
Now that I had cast both abilities I wanted to see how much mana I had used up by casting my skills while also seeing where my new stat had been placed so I opened my status screen.
In total I had used 9 mana with [Critical shot] taking 6 mana and [Quick shot] taking 3 mana. This meant that, taking into account that I can only activate each ability once every thirty seconds, if I only used one of the skills I could use either [Quick shot] 31 times or [Critical shot] 12 times before I would completely run out of mana. With my testing finished I gathered up all the loot the two squads had dropped before moving on.