Ascension: Online

Chapter 15: Farming XP

After spending the SP and AP I had received from levelling up, I rested for a bit to get my energy back, then started heading for Tianyin City once again. It was only then that I realized I hadn't eaten dinner today. Perhaps that was why I still didn't feel energized, despite having already took a break. I decided to get something simple to eat once I arrived in Tianyin City. I still had 50 gold coins left, after all. That should be enough to secure a meal.

Of course, getting there wouldn't be easy. If I faced another sickleboar head on, I could probably win with my STR stat of 5 now, but back in the Earthen Reality Plane, wild boars travelled in groups known as sounds. It would be safe to assume the sickleboars of this Reality Plane were the same. Back there, I just got lucky. That sickleboar just happened to be alone. I wasn't so nave as to think my luck would keep protecting me until I reached Tianyin City.

So, I came up with a plan.

The sickleboar from before had used the bushes and the cover of night to attack me by surprise. I would now return the favor to its friends, using the same strategy. Because of the fight earlier, I now knew that one good dagger stab driven deep into their hide was enough to kill them. That made things easy. All I had to do was approach them stealthily, making good use of my surroundings to help me do so.

For this reason, instead of walking on the path made of rough gravel, I chose to lay low in the bushes on the sides. When I walked, my sandals scraped on the gravel, which made quite a loud noise - hence why I decided to take this alternative path instead. It was difficult to walk here as it was a little steep and slippery - the ground was dirt, after all. I could deal with it though. Better fall to my death then get eaten. I would respawn either way.

It didn't take long for me to spot my first target. The sickleboar had its back turned to me, and seemed to be munching on some grass. Poor guy. Little did it know, it was about to be turned into XP.

I crept closer to the sickleboar, dagger in hand. I moved through the bushes slowly, being very careful not to make any noise. There were plenty of other sickleboar around - the moment I was spotted by any one of them, I was dead meat. So, stealth was crucial here - and so was the ability to strike down the moment an opportunity presented itself, without any hesitation.

Because of this, the moment I was within slashing range for my dagger, I stabbed it into the boar's back and pushed downwards until the poor animal's legs gave out. Needless to say, it collapsed, never to move again. It didn't even have a chance to cry out in pain.

I took a deep breath, and looked around. The other sickleboars were completely clueless as to what just happened. They had no idea one of their own just fell dead.

I slowly pulled out my dagger from the boar's body. It immediately disappeared into countless tiny shards of light, and flowed into my body. I didn't receive a prompt that told me I leveled up, so I automatically assumed that leveling up got progressively higher as you went up the levels, requiring more XP. However, I did receive a different prompt. A hologram appeared in front of me - it read:

[Obtained 'Sickleboar Meat' x1.]

The hologram disappeared shortly after. So, I got some meat. Not bad, I suppose. It probably went directly into my inventory - I didn't bother to check.

After that, I crept up on the other sickleboars, one by one, and murdered them in cold-blood. Bushes were everywhere, providing the perfect cover for me. They were also quite a distance from one another, making them easy targets to pick off. I came close to getting caught a few times, but in the end, I managed to slaughter all of them with stealth. Sickleboars, being unintelligent animals, didn't have the brain capacity to observe the fact that their fellow beasts have disappeared, one by one.

It was a massacre.

By the end of it all, I had reached Level 5 and gained about 20 sickleboar meat, 14 sickleboar skin, and 3 bones. I could guess what the meat was useful for, but the other two, I had no idea. Selling for money, perhaps? Or was there a Crafting system designed by A.R.X.A.? I would find out soon enough...right now, in fact.

I opened up my System, and was met with the Profile tab. Under the header that read 'stats', I saw that I had gained 30 SP from reaching Level 5. Add that with the 6 SP I had leftover from earlier, that made for a total of 36 SP I had to spend. I also noticed that my STR stat had passively increased from 5 to 10 through that experience, without spending any SP. I killed way more than just five sickleboars, but I didn't really struggle against any of them. That was probably why I only powered up 5 times in terms of the STR stat.

Interestingly enough, my AGI - agility - stat also increased. It went from 0 to 10 directly. I was 90% certain this was because I had taken down all of the sickleboars using stealth and careful movements. That fell under the AGI stat's control, so it made sense I would level it up. I thought my INT - intelligence - stat would also increase since I came up with the brilliant idea of stealthily killing them one by one, but...

...Okay, fine. It wasn't all that brilliant. Anyone with half a brain would've thought of doing it.

Anyway, my current stats looked like this:

STR: 10

AGI: 10

INT: 0

DEX: 0

MAG: 0

LUC: 0

After some thought, I decided to distribute my stats like so:

STR: 10 -> 15 (Cost: 5 SP)

AGI: 10 -> 15 (Cost: 5 SP)

INT: 0 -> 5 (Cost: 5 SP)

DEX: 0 -> 5 (Cost: 5 SP)

MAG: 0 -> 10 (Cost: 10 SP)

LUC: 0 -> 6 (Cost: 6 SP)

For now, my two main stats were strength and agility. Strength was a given - the most important stat for playing solo in a video game like this. Even though it wasn't completely a video game for me anymore, the theory still applied. As for agility, I decided to power it up because I actually enjoyed moving in stealth quite a lot. When I took down the sickleboars one by one, I felt a thrill of excitement.

However, I was also curious about this 'magic' stat which A.R.X.A. explained to be a direct factor in how powerful my 'hidden arts' would be. I didn't know what hidden arts were, but I had no doubt they would come in handy in the near future. There was a whole stat made for it, after all.

For the other stats - intelligence, dexterity, and luck - I just distributed the remainder of my points evenly so that I wouldn't be extremely lacking in one particular area. This was because a simple shortcoming now would eventually evolve into a fatal weakness for my enemies to exploit, which I didn't want. As for why I put 1 more point into luck than the others...well, call it a gamble, I suppose. With any 'luck', this may turn out to be quite the profitable decision.

With that, I had spent all of my SP. But I wasn't quite done yet.

I clicked on the 'Skills' button below the list of stats.

A new screen appeared, showing me the familiar enormous skill tree I had witnessed once before. So far, the only skill I had unlocked was 'Looter', a passive skill that was a member of the 'Basic' category. I then looked to the top left corner. It read:

[AP: 3]

It seemed I had 3 ability points to spend. I decided to check out some of the other skills under the 'Basic' category first. I clicked on each of the four that I hadn't learned yet, and read their descriptions:

[Name: Crafter]

[Category: Basic]

[Type: Passive]

[Description: Unlocks the 'Crafting' system.]

"The Crafting system, huh? So I was right," I murmured to myself, then took a look at the next one.

[Name: Traveller]

[Category: Basic]

[Type: Passive]

[Description: Unlocks a minimap.]

"Hm...a minimap. That could be extremely useful at times," I mused, then proceeded to the next skill, skipping over the one in the middle - Looter - since I already had it.

[Name: Summoner]

[Category: Basic]

[Type: Passive]

[Description: Increased chance of taming normal animals and Magic Beasts.]

"Hm...so there are normal animals in this world too. Which category does the sickleboar fall into?" I wondered aloud to myself. "Eh, I guess the Magic Beast category, since it didn't look like a normal boar at all. Now then..."

I clicked on the fifth and final 'Basic' skill. However, it was very different from the previous four.

[Name: Creator]

[Category: Active]

[Type: Basic]

[Description: Manifests any one thing the user wishes. However, the user must know where the object is located exactly and how the object looks. Cannot manifest living things.]

[Cooldown: (one-time use only).]

Huh... that's interesting. An infinite cooldown...a skill that can only be used once. However, for a 'basic' skill, this was quite powerful. The restrictions set on it are quite strict as well, but this was an incredible skill to have nonetheless. I wonder why A.R.X.A. included something like this in the game. I didn't bother asking her though - she was probably tired of me consulting her for every tiny little question that comes up in my head. The plan was to only call on her once in a while, and ask her all the questions I had saved up.

I already had quite a few - and I would get the answers to them once we arrived at Tianyin City.

With that in mind, I bought all of the passive skills except for 'Summoner', which just wasn't that useful to me as of right now, and closed up my System.