MMORPG: Rise of the Primordial Godsmith

“Alright.” Seeing that their camp for the night had been fully set up, Valyr called for the others to gather around him. Giving each of them a brief glance, he then slightly nodded. “As I mentioned earlier, the plains is a good spot to hone your combat experience, allowing you to get used to fighting beings that are at least a rank above you in terms of strength.”

“Not only that, but these aberrations also give out a ton of experience due to the disparity in levels between us and them,” he continued, though everyone there more or less knew what he wanted to say. 

“For the remainder of the day, all of us should go our separate ways and fight against these aberrations, whether it’s to hone our combat experience, gain XP, or just get a better sense of working around the world’s scant concentration of mana.”

“Speaking of mana, has anyone already tried out if magic skills work fine in the inheritance?” Hearing Valyr’s words, Loreina decided to speak up as she relied on magic skills a lot.

Pondering over the process he had gone through regarding the Outer Realm Scripture last night, a thought soon surfaced within the young man’s mind. “I did a bit of checking last night, and it looks like mana regeneration is the only thing that’s affected by concentration. I’ll have to do some more checking once we’re fighting against the aberrations.”

Loreina nodded back in response. “I’ll do some testing as well.”

“Got it.” As Vera said after Loreina that she would also do some testing, Valyr thanked the two of them before asking the others to add one another to each other’s friend lists. Then, after making sure that everyone had every other member aside from them added, the young man went ahead and created a party chat with the five of them as members.

“Since we’ll be going our separate ways for the meantime, this will serve as our method of communication. Whether it be questions that have answers everyone else would benefit from, findings in your area of the plains, or any other important stuff, please send those messages here.” Asking everyone to keep the party chat screen open at all times, the young man gave everyone one last reminder before the five of them went their separate ways.

Surprisingly, Vera and Loreina had decided to team up, while Hal went on his own in a direction away from the pair. As for Valyr, he was about to head in a direction away from the others on his own, only to be stopped by a young man trying to catch up to him.

“Wait a minute, Valyr!” Hearing his name being called, Valyr stopped in his tracks and turned, only for a mysterious expression to appear on his face when the one that called him was Faulus.

At first, the young man thought that Faulus looked to be arrogant towards anyone he did not deem as an equal, while those he deemed an equal he treated as a good friend. However, after the alchemist had suggested earlier that he should fight against the first aberration, the young man could not make heads or tails as to what kind of person Faulus was.

“What’s up?” Knowing that cooperation was key while exploring the inheritance, he put his lingering thoughts of slight rage to the side as he looked at Faulus with a raised eyebrow. Instead, if his train of thought was correct, what the alchemist would ask him might just be what he needed to get a better idea of what kind of person Faulus was.

“Well…” Twiddling his thumbs for a bit, Faulus took in a deep breath before giving Valyr a half-bow. “I would like to apologize for the matter earlier!”

At those words, Valyr’s eyes widened in slight surprise, finding it slightly more difficult to guess the man’s personality. Nevertheless, he nodded in response, telling him that he forgave him after the latter explained that his fears from last night had seemingly popped up after getting a closer look at the aberration.

After a bit more smoothing out between them, Faulus then asked if he could join the young man to possibly gain some more combat experience before they enter the depths of the inheritance. Naturally, Valyr agreed to the proposition, though he did tell the alchemist that he would have to slightly distance himself from the man once they found their opponents to fight.

“Now that I think about it, are you still using magic as your main combat style?” Roaming through the plains at considerably high speeds, the young man decided to make some small talk with the guy, hoping to find out more regarding the latter’s combat expertise.

Faulus replied with a nod, “Yeah, though I did pick up a weapon a week before the inheritance since the combat instructor that taught me told me to do so.”

𝗈𝑣𝔩xt.𝓬𝚘𝗆

“What weapon did you choose, then?” Valyr raised his eyebrows in curiosity.

“The staff.” Hearing Faulus’ response, the young man nodded in understanding. Though it was not as widespread as the sword or the spear, the staff was still a great weapon choice as the number of ways one could attack with it was nigh infinite. If anything, one could say that the spear is an extension of the staff, with the only difference being the fact that it had a sharp edge on one side.

Making a bit more small talk after that, with Valyr giving Faulus tips on wielding the staff from his treasure trove of memories, the two soon focused all of their attention on traversing the plains in search of aberrations to fight against. Fortunately, it only took a couple of minutes for them to arrive at what looked to be the boundary of a territory filled with these hulking creatures.

Looking at each and every aberration within his field of vision with [Hunter’s Tracking Eyes], Valyr slightly nodded before turning to look at Faulus. “As we’ve talked during our trek earlier, we’ll be fighting against these aberrations separately. Feel free to take a break every few aberrations or so to gain an idea of what you could improve on your combat style, though I’ll also give a few of my insights here and there.”

“And if one side is in danger?” asked the alchemist in response, which Valyr found slightly amusing.

“With the disparity between our stats and theirs, the chances of that happening are low,” replied Valyr. “But if that ever happens, the other side should always be ready to help the one in danger out.”

With that, the two of them went their separate ways, approaching the territory of aberrations in front of them from differing sides, making sure to not interfere on the other. Surprisingly, Faulus had brought out a staff Valyr had never seen before, to which the latter nodded in agreement.

“[Offense Aura+].” Confident that Faulus would mostly be fine against the aberrations, Valyr went ahead and focused his sights on one of the aberrations ahead of him as he charged up one of the stronger magic skills under his arsenal. 

Due to the fact that he was still unsure whether or not the mana concentration in the area would affect the power of his magic, the young man wanted to end the battle against the aberration before it began. With that, it went without saying that under the effect of [Hunter’s Tracking Eyes], the young man aimed…

At the aberration’s weakest point.

“[Crimson Blade Descent].”

Whoosh!

Bang!

‘-24,165!!!’

With all of his attention focused on the pitch-black circle within his vision, Valyr sent out a blade made out of crimson flames that was considerably larger than any of the blades he had conjured before. Then, wanting to catch the opponent unaware, he propelled the blade forward at great speeds, causing the aberration to die before it could even know what hit it.

Ding!

[With a 9 level disparity between the user and the opponent, the amount of experience obtained shall be increased by 180%.]

[You have slain a Level 64 Aberration (Legendary Elite). You have gained 1,075,536 XP.]

“Now that I think about it, does Mark of the Alltide have an effect on these things?” Slightly grinning at the fact that he had gained close to a million XP without breaking much of a sweat, the young man shared his current findings regarding magic skills to the party chat as the thought surfaced in his mind.

Deciding to read the messages that followed after the one sent later, he then traveled a bit around the idea, eventually finding an aberration that seemed to be away from the other aberrations. Inching closer and closer to the aberration until it hit the range of the curse, the young man did not know whether to be happy or sad at the fact the aberration had not been affected by the curse at all.

Nevertheless, with that query answered, he proceeded to slaughter all of the aberrations near him, relying on the cheat that was [Hunter’s Tracking Eyes] alongside his empowered set of magic skills. At times, he would also utilize his spear whenever he came across a considerably large group of aberrations, the damage values that popped up causing a wide grin to appear on Valyr’s face.

Then again, by the time he had gone through about 60 or so aberrations, a lingering thought eventually surfaced in his mind, prompting him to look at his palms with a pensive expression.

“Now that I think about it…”

“I should really get my hands on a magic weapon.”