From Player To Npc

Chapter 39: Rest of the week

================================

STATUS

NAME: Shingi Maki

CLASS: None

PROFESSION: Scholar Master

RACE: Blessed Human

HP: 80/80

SP: 40/40

MP: 38/38

STR: 12

AGI: 14

END: 16

INT: 16

CHA: 4

Mana Pool: Earth and Light Element

Skills: VISUALIZATION (Base Rank), MANA MANIPULATION (Master Rank), MANA SENSE (Base Rank), PERCEPTION (Master Rank), STEALTH (Base Rank), IMPROVISED THROW WEAPON (Master Rank), SMITHING (Master Rank), ACCELERATION (Master Rank), MARTIAL ART (Base Rank), GLASSBLOWING (Base Rank)

Spells: MANA HAND (Low Grade), FILTH EATER (Ungraded), MINOR ILLUSION (Ungraded), LIGHT (Ungraded), ROCK THROW (Low Grade), CAMOUFLAGE (Low Grade), INVISIBILITY(Base Grade), DOME OF SILENCE (Base Grade)

Blessings: Blessing of ??????, Blessing of Dlog

================================

It didn't seem like there was any ranking up to any of his skills or stats. Still, his SP had increased since he last checked it, but he wasn't sure if it was cause some time passed. He was less affected by the time he used his Breaking Limit state or cause he got more used in his body after fighting stronger opponents like that. During the battle, he noticed that the cost of his ACCELERATION, which was the most SP costly skill of his, was a little less than before but was barely noticeable.

Also, even if the System didn't count it, he could feel his spells have increased quite a bit in how much proficient he was using them. Many people had said that you could make more progress during a battle of few minutes than the training of few days, and it was true in this case. But the progress he had made during the fight wasn't as significant as the one he did while training in the TRANCE ROOM, but it wasn't too far apart.

Then he turned his attention to the Status Window of Annoue to see her progress, and it seemed like the battle has helped her quite a bit.

================================

STATUS

NAME: Annoue Maki

CLASS: Arcane Blade (Apprenticeship State)

RACE: Blessed Human

TITLE: First Student

HP: 108/108

SP: 42/42

MP: 23/23

STR: 15

AGI: 10

END: 12

INT: 12

Mana Pool: Air Element

Skills: COOKING (Low Rank), LIFT (Master Rank), PUSH (Master Rank), MANA MANIPULATION (Base Rank), MANA SENSE (Base Rank), AIR SLASH (Base Rank), DEFLECT (Low Rank), ENCHANTMENT (Low Rank), MARTIAL ART (Low Rank), COMBAT INSIGHT (Low Rank)

================================

Her INT was raised by 1, which should boost her Mana skills as this was supposed to be the base requirement for them. She also got two new skills, MARTIAL ART and COMBAT INSIGHT.

MARTIAL ART should have unlocked cause she fought using just her hands but didn't only deal damage but hit in specific places to have different effects, like the neck chop that she did at the start of the battle. As for COMBAT INSIGHT, since her training with Shingi and fighting this opponent of more incredible speed and skills, she had to adapt. She seemed to be a quick learner. If only she had more AGI, she would be able to beat Shingi too. Of course, that would be in theory only as Shingi has some tricks up his sleeves and has learned to adapt to all situations quickly.

Even her HP, SP, and MP values changed somewhat, with HP having the most significant change, but this may have been the cause of the craziest change in her status.

Her class.

As with Shingi, Annoue didn't have a class, and now after one battle, she was an Arcane Blade but not entirely since she was at Apprenticeship State. A class had some states before it was considered unlocked for NPCs. Players had to complete some quests most of the time and get the class of their choice as the System did the rest, but that wasn't the case for the NPCs.

When one NPC had met the lower requirements of a class, he would start at Apprenticeship State. Next, he needs to work on more standards, which could be to learn more skills or spells of the class or reach a few specific skills to a certain Rank or find a master to teach you the class's ways. Fortunately, the Arcane Blade was a class that didn't need to have a master, even if it could speed things up if one had one. To go to the next stage of the class, which would be Base State, she had to reach her ENCHANTMENT skill to Base Rank. The easier way to do that was to learn more enchantments, which wouldn't be too hard with the Enchantment Trinket and the notes he gave her.

She also had to learn 4 Weapon Skills that needed the blade and have them all at least at Base Rank. She already had 2 Weapon Skills, AIR SLASH and DEFLECT, so she had to learn two more and Ranking them and DEFLECT to Base Rank.

After she reached the Base State of the class, she needed to pass some more requirements, and she would be a fully-fledged Arcane Blade.

They were similar requirements like knowing and using more Enchantments and more Weapon Skills. But you had to have at least one Master Enchantment and one Master Rank Weapon Skill, making this class impossible for simple people to earn.

But Shingi was confident that Annoue would handle it until now; things worked out quite well. Her spirit seemed to be always high and not giving up, which was an important characteristic one should have in these situations.

'She is progressing even faster than I thought she would, and at this rate, she will surpass me if I don't try to keep up' [Shingi]

Shingi has done and learned a lot since he became an NPC, but he still kept his mind on one important task.

His MAIN QUEST.

He had completed two tasks back when he trained with Annoue by getting a title and a blessing, but after that, no matter what he did, he had made no progress on the quest. He knew that he should fulfill the only task to earn a Class, but he still made some progress in acquiring one.

He was aiming for one to have an Arcane Nature, but he knew that with his current skill set, he wouldn't just count on his spells only. Of course, he didn't aim to be also an Arcane Blade as even if he could use quite a few Enchantments, it wasn't much of his style to focus on that type of magic.

But he didn't overthink it and just went with the flow and made progress with his Skills' ranks and Spells' proficiency as he considered then to fit his style.

And so he focused on his VISUALIZATION and making the TRANCE ROOM. This time changed it to be their Tree Hideout instead of their room, and after a few minutes, he got the notification if he wanted to use it as a TRANCE ROOM.

He worked similarly as last time to raise his Master Rank skills proficiency and all his Spells. He seemed like he could barely use his MANA SENSE, which appeared to have gone very near to be raised to Master Rank.

Of course, in the room, he could sense the mana around him without the skill. Still, it was quite different as with the skill. He could tell more details like estimating the amount of mana its element and where exactly it was. While without using it, he could tell that there were some mana and its general position.

He even visualized his dagger and made his Light Blade as it seemed like quite a good attack, but even here, it seemed quite hard to handle for a lot of time. The best he did was 7 seconds after that; even here, he wasn't able to keep the mana together like it was exploding and released. It seemed like he was lucky that it lasted 5 seconds for the first time he used it, and probably it helped that he used the Mithril dagger, which he couldn't replicate here.

None the less he had made much progress on his INVISIBILITY and CAMOUFLAGE spell and his ACCELERATION skill most of all as they were ones he worked on the most. When CAMOUFLAGE was used now, he was confident to hide from anyone with no Master Rank PERCEPTION while he was staying still even if he was next to him. Even if one had Master Rank PERCEPTION, he could use it to make his attack less predictable and cause confusion, but only if the target's PERCEPTION were on the early levels of Master Rank. But that didn't consider if he combined it with his STEALTH skill or if one knew to use the PERCEPTION skill at its limits.

As for his INVISIBILITY, he was confident that he was at the limit of the spell that one could reach without the appropriate Arcane Words that he wanted to research at some point. He improved his spells to be used to others and was almost working the same at others as at him. Last time when he used his INVISIBILITY at Annoue if he didn't cause a distraction. They were lucky that the players were on guard against Shingi, so they were extra focused on him; she wouldn't be too hard to be detected.

Even items he didn't touch, he could turn them near invisible using the same technique he used at the last battle. He let the mana be transferred to them through his MANA HANDS to surround them with the CAMOUFLAGE field. His range was around 5 meters, which significantly improved from the little more than a meter he had during the last battle. After that range, he needed to use more mana to be considered in the safe zone, so unless having no other option, that was his range for now.

His ACCELERATION skill didn't have many improvements in how fast he could go and how quickly he could react. The ACCELERATION skill boosted you using the adrenaline, but that wasn't causing your senses to increase as much as your body capabilities. So he had to find a balance between them to control his moves better. Cause no matter how fast he was, if his brain didn't register that an attack comes right at him, it wouldn't be beneficial.

The TRANCE ROOM's time ended, and once more, it went in 24 hours cooldown, so nothing changed from last time. But Shingi wasn't upset as most people never even got the chance to get access to something like that even once in their lifetime.

It was another morning, and Garry had left them a note at the kitchen that he would be away for a couple of weeks and they should continue their work at the shop in the meantime. Of course, he didn't mention why he had to live, and even Annoue found it strange as even if sometimes he left the house, he never really have left a note like that in the past.

The young brother and sister went their way to the shop with Shingi being on guard all the way, but fortunately, nothing happened.

He continued using his mana to create some of the superior dust he wanted to use; he also used MANA HANDS to work on some of the orders as also helped Annoue with her training. This time he did it specially.

He cast one MANA HAND and had it touching the shoulder of Annoue, which seemed to be weirdly considered like him touching her for his Blessing's active effect to be able to work.

The DEFLECT skill itself was considered a Weapon Skill, so it was affected mostly by STR and AGI. Still, COMBAT INSIGHT was mainly influenced by a user's INT.

So with the effect of the Blessing, he boosted the INT of Annoue. All he had to do was increase the difficulty of his attacks making Annoue use her COMBAT INSIGHT skill. This would make his moves way more comfortable to read and so, at the same time, helping at her DEFLECT training.

Also, he didn't forget the title of Annoue as his First Student, which made it easier to learn skills from him. So with everything, that one hour that his Blessing was active had the most significant effect.

At the time, he wasn't using the Blessing's effect; he either worked on some of the orders that his MANA HAND couldn't handle. He was also using his MANA HAND to fight Annoue to gain experience fighting against different opponents of strange nature. Getting used to fight only a specific opponent wasn't granting you real strength.

And like that, the week passed with no accidents or hearing about those Guild Players, but he knew it was most likely the calm before the storm, but he could only prepare and wait for now.

The week came to its end, and it was finally the time that he and his student players were waiting for.

The day to explore the nearby Dungeon.