NeoRealm – Staring Back Into the Future

Penny stops for a moment before continuing to speak, “Most adventurers would spend their first month around town. Even us natives go by that though some fools ignore it. Taking up errands for the first bit. Then graduating to killing the monster rabbits every town keeps around them. This works well enough to get 90% of them on their feet. If you do this though your path will be set. Those innocuous rabbits have a tiny amount of mana or qi in them depending on whether they travel the path of the winged rabbit or horned rabbit. When you absorb the world force or as some of your types like to call it ‘experience’ that bit of energy would be absorbed as well. It doesn’t matter which. The fact your pure Energy interacted with either will start it changing. That will prevent you from training in Energy as from then on anything you do will speed up the change.”

A sigh escapes her mouth, “Luckily there is a monster within the town radius which has pure Energy. Sadly, it isn’t a beginner friendly monster. I need you to ignore all the fetch quests, delivery missions, and critter killing. Instead, the Rockback Turtle will be your target. Harmless in most aspects this turtle has instead turned to Energy to makes its shell comparable to rock. They are considered a nuisance as nothing preys on them. For you to kill them will be a grind but I want you to get to level 5 that way. Even if you don’t continue from there, I will consider it as having completed my quest as at that point you can learn a skill I created. If you still want to continue at that point then we can talk further.” With that Penny finishes up a few more bits of paperwork before sending Jason away. As he is leaving though she calls outs, “Oh yeah, they live on the beach. Hard to miss, just go the opposite direction of any other Adventurer.”

A while later Jason is standing on a beach deserted of any intelligent life. All that can be seen is rock after rock. The entire view is covered in uniform looking rocks of varying size. If it wasn’t for the occasional one munching on vegetation, it would be hard to realize they were all turtles. Hundreds and Hundreds of rocklike turtles keeping the beach to themselves.

“At least I won’t have to worry about aggroing something else here. They also don’t seem to be hostile so I should be able to try some things on the edge. My first attempt will probably be the stupidest though. I can break bricks but this is a little silly. Still, I need to know what my normal punch will do to them.”

With a plan in mind Jason follows the beach looking for a good opportunity. Soon he finds a small Rockback by itself. Not really needing to do anything fancy he just goes up to it and punches it.

*-1*

The turtle doesn’t even seem to notice as it readjusts itself. The sound of snoring can now be heard as Jason realizes it wasn’t even awake. ‘Obviously the straightforward method won’t work here. Honestly a spear or similar to at them would probably be best but that would be admitting defeat. Maybe later on weapons would be an option but right now that is out of the question.’

*+1*

‘And it just gained that life back. Okay this might be tougher than I thought. Penny didn’t seem to think this was impossible. Then again I didn’t exactly advertise I wasn’t using weapons. At this point I am weakest against defense based opponents. My best chance is when they are eating but I need to prevent them hiding in their shells once I get some damage on them. Guess I need some traps and a bit more observation.’, Deciding that Jason spends the rest of the afternoon watching this one turtle.

Eventually the turtle wakes up and moves to rejoin the rest of them. It becomes clear though that sleeping is likely their favorite activity. Except for them eating none of them move. However the important piece of information he notices is that they don’t just eat anything. The whole beach is covered in small bluish plants but they don’t eat that. Only every once in a while when a specific plant glows do the turtles eat it. A quick trip back to town to ask around and Jason realizes why. Those plants are a special alchemical ingredient used to enhance recovery potions. Not just Mana, Qi, or Health potions but all of them and the glowing ones have a higher success rate. While called ‘Blue Weed’ or when glowing, ‘Glow Weed’ by the townsfolk Jason now has a personal name for it. This plant clearly gathers Energy and when it has enough it glows. After returning to the beach he brings up the system menu and renames it ‘Energy Herb’ for himself.

‘And that will make my plan a bit easier. With the mature Energy Herb as bait I can set up a trap that should let me kill them.’

Now that he has a plan Jason gets to work. A quick survey of the beach and he finds a good place. Some actual rocks are positioned close to each other on the edge between the beach and a forest. While compared to him they aren’t really close but none of the turtles will fit through it without going a bit sideways. Quite convenient for his second step. For that though Jason needs to head into the forest. Not exactly dangerous but still a problem. After all, if anything notices him the only option is to run. Can’t go and kill something that isn’t one of the turtles.

As Jason sneaks into the trees nothing much stands out but the farther in the less cover there is for him. Now with only light ground cover and a nearby tree to hide behind he spots something coming into view. A simple boar. Not the most threatening thing but clearly Qi using as it’s tusks have a glow to them and seem sharp even from this distance. Nevermind the fact that it is already many times his level this spells big trouble.

Not one to just hide Jason quickly gets behind the tree. Once out of the Boars line of sight he starts climbing. While it makes a bit of noise he hasn’t ever heard of a boar climbing a tree. This thought has a couple holes in it though. The most obvious to him now is that climbing the tree isn’t the only way to get to him. For instance the boar who is alerted to his presence by the noise could batter the tree down. More specifically, it is doing that quite well, what with it’s Qi infused tusks.

Being so close to the boar allows Jason to identify it. This goes a long way to explain its success. Lv3 Juvenile Battertusk Boar definitely sounds like it knocks over trees for fun. Though this might just be the chance he was looking for. A fallen tree or two are what the trap needs and a fresh one would work best.

As the tree tilts more and more our hero waits for the right moment. With one final crash from the boar the trees creaking doesn’t stop. Now gaining momentum it falls but Jason was ready for it. A quick leap and he catches a thick branch on the next tree over. Frustrated the boar starts its work all over.

Soon the ground is littered with fallen trees. Though the observant viewer would notice that besides a few they all have fallen towards the beach. Now only a short run from his goal Jason doesn’t go for another tree. Instead after the boar crashes into the current tree once more he quickly swings down from the tree. While the boar is still recovering from its head-butting, he makes a run for the beach. Soon he can hear the boar charging at him. Running without looking back he focuses his all on this sound.

At the last moment Jason ducks behind a tree as he passes it by. With a loud crash the boar hits it and is once more delayed. Now without certain death as a distraction he puts on a burst of speed and crashes through the dense foliage at the edge of the forest. Right behind him the boar doesn’t give up as it continues to chase him.

The boar doesn’t seem to have learned its lesson from the tree much to Jason’s luck. Reaching the nearest turtle he dodges behind it which is quickly followed by a loud crash and some a red number.

*-12*

The turtle doesn’t take to well to this abrupt form of waking up and bellows in anger. This is soon followed by a number of nearby turtles answering it’s rage with roars of their own. You would think they would be slow but these turtles are anything but when enraged. A flurry of blows and soon the boar has been reduced to nothing but some red spots on the ground. If it wasn’t for the fact you don’t get any experience from it, this would probably be a popular spot. Luckily none of the turtles care about Jason or he would have died even quicker. With this though he had almost everything needed. Just another quick trip to town to buy some rope that he forgot about last time and it was time to set up the trap.

A couple trees draped across the top. Tie another up at an angle with a quick release knot. Throw up another on the other side with the same rope. Use some foliage to make a hiding spot and done. Now the just need to get some ripe energy herb as bait to make one of the turtles stick their head into the trap.

Now this would normally be hard. The beach is the only place it really grows well and the turtles get a bit annoyed if you take their food. Luckily he had an idea on how to fix that. Using his new ability Jason quickly finds a plant that is almost grown and with no turtles nearby. Placing his hand on it he channels his energy into the plant like he did with the guilds stone. This takes a bit of time but soon the plant is glowing.

And with that Jason gets down to growing some plants. Luckily the turtles aren’t too bright and don’t notice when the mature herb is in his bag. Dropping a glowing herb in the trap he goes off to find a low level turtle. Not the hardest thing to do as the first one he punched is still there. After laying down a path of mature herbs Jason tosses another herb right near the turtle before running towards his hiding place.

That herb wakes the little turtle right up, and it is soon following them towards the trap. Upon getting to the boulders without a care in the world it stretches its neck out and takes a big bite out of the last herb. Sadly for it at that very moment Jason pulls the rope. With a loud thud the two logs fall down on the turtle's neck. While this doesn’t hurt it much the head is trapped and unable to retract or cry out. This isn’t exactly a fair fight, and it takes too much time to be exciting but after what seems like forever he pummels it to death.

Jason thinks for a moment, ‘Just one point right now but it goes up with each bottleneck. Almost seems unfair that at level 10 you get almost as many points as you got from 0 to 9. Well not that important’, “lets throw that point in Energy”.

‘And there we go. The most basic and annoying character sheet upgrade. I had half a hope it wasn’t but with Mana, Qi, and HP being auxiliary stats as well there wasn’t much chance.’, “Okay put the point in Agility and show character sheet”

‘Now just to repeat that a few too many times’

Akhier

Things I wanted to mention but didn’t:

It might be self explanatory but knowledge bonuses come from knowing something while discovery bonus is from finding it out yourself. As an example, if he had learned about the Energy herb stuff from a book then he would have only the knowledge bonus. Teachers with an actual Skill for teaching (any skill which gives a bonus to having someone else learn a skill) have a chance to pass the discovery bonus onto their students if they have it though in that case it would be called a learned bonus and will generally not be as powerful. An example of this would be if a teacher had taught Jason about the Energy Herb he would have gotten the ability to identify the herbs maturity without the extra +1% bonus. This is quite important as the bonus there was to using the herb in general (behind the scene this actually helped with his traps chance to work as he used the herb as bait)

Auxiliary stats tend to just be ones either too powerful to allow someone to manually put points in or made by combining other stats or similar. You can make some auxiliary stats into basic ones though. A good example of this is with Defense. It is auxiliary because most only get it from equipment. However with the right race or trait this stat can become a basic one such as a lizardman developing a tough scale style trait. Even then though they tend to have caps, after all a regular lizardman’s scales can only be so tough.