by A P Gore
When Mathial was done, the armor looked like it was carved out of leather and metal by an epic craftsman. Noah’s skin tingled with excitement by the time Mathial was done patching the metal plates on the gut portion.
“What’s your strength number, human?”
“12.”
“I knew it would be low. Good thing I didn’t put too many plates on your armor.” He grabbed another piece of armor sitting nearby, handed it to Noah, and then donned the masterpiece himself.
Noah looked at his own armor with horrified eyes. While Mathial’s looked like a masterpiece made by the god of armor, his looked like a kid had been playing around with the smith’s equipment. He only had two metal pieces attached to his armor, both around the chest. “I thought…” He looked longingly at the armor worn by the hefty demon. “Why did you take my measurements then?”
“Just to cross check my estimates.” A mischievous smile appeared below Mathial’s mustache.
“Damn you, demon.” Noah cursed and looked at the armor in his hands. A property appeared.
Uncommon padded leather armor
Light Armor
Durability: 40/40
Required Level: 4
Required Strength: 10
Armor: 21
+1 to armor
Noah didn’t understand everything mentioned there, so he made a mental note to look up the types and rarity of armors the next time he was in the respawn room. For now, he was happy with whatever he was given. A 21 armor value meant his armor would soak up to 21 damage. Combined with his poison shield, it would be something like 21 + 20%, and that was… he ran the math in his head… 25.2. Great. He would be a tank now. A tank!
He was about to find out how naïve he was to think that way.
6. Herbalism
The fresh smell of jasmine woke Noah the next morning. He trudged to the only window in his room to look outside. The bright sun rays were hitting the white bed of jasmine that had bloomed overnight at the back of the inn. He inhaled the familiar scent deep inside his lungs. His dad used to grow jasmine in the backyard of their farmhouse. He always said they reminded him of his wife. Noah grew up seeing the flowers and seeing them across the inn’s backyard brought back cheerful memories.
“Daddy. Up.” Thia shouted his name from her red mattress. Her volume was much improved this morning, and she didn’t seem as fatigued. Noah picked her up and brought to the window.
“See the flowers, sweetie? Daddy used to play in them when he was a kid.”
“Thia. Want. Play.” She clapped her hands, a sweet innocent smile curling her lips.
“Not today, sweetie. I’m going out to find a cure for you. Once you get better, we will go out and play in the jasmine bed. You stay here and don’t go out. You are too weak right now.” He glanced at her health bar; it was down by forty percent. After the antidote given by the high mage, she’d been stable at 60% of her normal life. The Curse of Sumara applied a constant debuff on her for 40% of her life.
“Thia. Hunt.” She jumped on his shoulder, letting her legs relax over his chest.
“No.” He shook his head firmly. “Thia will stay put in her bed, eat, and sleep. Daddy will come back.”
Suddenly he was pulled into the realm of memory, finding himself standing next to his daughter, Tia, who was sick and crying.
“Dadda, please stay home today. I’m sick. Please. Please. Please,” Tia begged.
Noah looked at his watch. It was already ten o’clock in the morning, and he was supposed to be on the way to the research facility already. He had his next iteration of the experiment lined up. Today he was getting the new shipment of the crystals, and he would be free to do the experiment he’d been dreaming of for the last couple of weeks. “Sweetheart, why don’t you play with the nanny I called for you? Daddy has to do work. Lots of work is waiting for him.” He caressed her hair, love and responsibility warring inside him. His work was important. The project he was working on would change the lives of humanity forever.
“But Dadda, nanny is not my Dadda...” tears dripped from four-year-old Tia’s eyes.
“Listen up, girl. I’ve to go. Sorry.” He looked at his watch again. It was already five after ten, and he would be super late if he didn’t leave now. He bent to kiss her cheek and hurried off. The nanny had her magic signature recorded in the home authentication system, and the home-bot wouldn’t let Tia do anything stupid that would harm her. She’d be safe for half an hour until the nanny came.
Noah stood there, watching his old self making the same mistake once again. How could he leave his little girl for some stupid work? The memory also brought him more insight into the work he’d been doing, attaching a new piece of thread to his brain.
A second later, Noah was back in the inn, and Thia was sitting on the windowsill with watery eyes. He hated leaving her like this, but if he didn’t get started, she might die. He was once again being the asshole he was in real life, but this time it was for the betterment of his daughter. He bent forward and kissed Thia’s forehead. Her smile returned with that one simple action. He hadn’t done that before. It was always Thia who expressed her love through licking, choking him with her freaking strong tail, and so on. But for the first time he had kissed his new daughter, and he was damn happy for the smile it brought to her face.
The game to rewarded him with a notification.
Congratulations! You have shown dedication toward another other race and a child. +5000 reputation with Thia. New reputation level: Friends. Keep it going and someday you might become Family.
Heck with you, game. I’m already a family for her. The game acted weird, or it didn’t know that even the digital people had hearts.
“If you are finished doing doodle and fiddle, let’s go. We need to be back by evening,” Mathial called to him from the doorway. “And for you, lil’ one, I have extra tea and food set up in the kitchen. You know your way, so hop in whenever you are hungry.” He placed the plate he carried with him next to her bed. It had enough food to last for two days, and Noah doubted Thia would have enough strength to walk downstairs all by herself.
Thia watched Mathial over Noah’s shoulder and nodded.
Noah turned to face the smith. “You have shown her kitchen already? You restricted me from going anywhere other than my room and the smithy.”
“She is special, you know. Like my daughter.” It was the first time he’d ever said anything about his family.
“Where is your family now?”
“They were killed in a goblin raid, and then I came and settled here.” There was pain in Mathial’s voice. “Anyway, enough about my four-year-old daughter.” He moved his thumb over his mustache and crooked a smile at Noah. “She used to like my mustache. It was a stupid move to leave this town in search of a family. Death got her anyway.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Noah could understand Mathial’s pain. Losing a daughter was painful. Even though his was alive, he was missing twenty years of memories, and that was like missing her completely.
“Let’s party up.”
Noah accepted the invitation from Mathial.
“Why do you have Thia in your party? If she ain’t coming, don’t put her in the party. It will increase the monster animosity, and she’ll get a debuff for not being in combat.”
“Okay, I didn’t know that.” Noah removed Thia from party, losing his peek at her stats along with it. He turned to face Thia one last time. “Stay put, and don’t go anywhere before we come back, okay?”
She nodded, and Noah and Mathial headed out of town. While walking toward the gate, he peeked at Mathial's stats.
Mathial Level 12
Dark Barbarian
Strength 30
Dexterity 15
Other stats are hidden due to reputation lack.
Health 565
Stamina 515
Other stats are hidden due to reputation lack.
Skills
Cleave: Level 6
Professi
on
Blacksmith
Other stats and levels hidden due to reputation lack.
Wow! 565 life. That’s a lot of life for a level 12.
“Why are you drooling while looking at me?” Mathial eyed him suspiciously.
“Nothing, just wondering about the flowers and herbs we are going to find today.”
“For a creature class, you are too low level, human. You should up your skills a bit. That level’s not gonna cut.”
“Yes.” Noah knew it too. Every morning, the thought of his low level sliced his heart like a scalpel cut through a specimen’s skin in his lab. He needed damage, but he needed the next skill more than anything else. “I’m waiting for my second class to kick in.”
Mathial rolled his eyes. “Yes, I forgot you travelers can specialize in any class in the BlackFlame. Good for you.” He snorted.
Noah wasn’t sure if it was a jealous snort or just a snort. He ignored it.
After they left the city, Mathial led him toward the cave, but mid-journey they changed direction and headed perpendicular to their original path. When they reached an enormous thirty-foot-tall tree, they stopped.
Noah glanced up, gawking at the hugeness of the tree. It reminded him of a particular tree he had seen in his expansion area. It stood there, preventing sun from claiming even an inch of the ground. All the light that reached the ground below the tree was reflected light from the surrounding area. The tree easily covered fifty feet of the area with its wide, large branches. He tried to peek inside the tree branches, but it was as dark as the night, and even the reflected light couldn’t reach those areas.
“This is called a nut tree,” Mathial said. “It’s the home for lots of herbs. The tree provides the twelve months of darkness required for some special herbs that grew below the tree.” Mathial picked up a small leaf from the ground. “This is the first ingredient: tulsi. It is an antibacterial herb.” Mathial handed it to Noah.
Noah sniffed it, and the leaf glowed with a light blue color. A property popped up.
Tulsi - a medicinal herb, used as antibacterial ingredient.
Congratulations! Upon successfully identifying an herb you have received +1 to herbalism.
“Good.” Noah looked around and found a couple more saplings lit in blue color. Noah picked one, and another property popped up.
Twak - a medicinal herb, used as an antiviral agent.
Noah moved around, picking various saplings and identifying their properties. By the time he was done with his tenth herb, he received another +1 to herbalism, bringing it to level 3 and +1 to herb identification.
“Good,” Mathial said. “Now you can identify simple herbs. So, for an herbal tea, you need to collect twak, tulsi, adrak, and tea leaves. You can get most of them around here, but the tea leaves are a rare ingredient and only grow around a good source of water. Fortunately, we have a river flowing nearby, so let’s go there and identify those.” Mathial gave him a rare satisfied nod.
“So, do we just mix them together and get the tea?” Noah asked. He knew squat about real world tea as well. All he knew was that he could buy tea bags, get it ready-made from a shop, or get it from a food vending machine that could produce food from the input material. The input material was protein, carbohydrate, and fat sources.
“No, there is a process for that. You will have to dry these leaves, then roll them into a mass, dry them again, make it into a powder, and then you will have tea powder which you can use for three to four days. We have to repeat the same process for twak. But tulsi and adrak, we can use as-is for flavoring and medicinal properties. I’m using tulsi in Thia’s morning tea already.”
Noah remembered the aroma of Thia’s tea and how it had intrigued his taste buds each morning. It was somewhat similar to the masala tea he used to enjoy in the real world.
“So, if we are making the powder, how is it different from the tea powder we were talking about earlier?” Noah asked. The last time they’d spoken about ready-made tea powder, Mathial had reacted with disgust.
“The mix we will prepare can be used for four days. If we use it on the fifth day, the tea would taste foul. Like goblin poop.”
“Hmm. That’s good to know.” Noah paused to think about the whole process. It was jarring in lots of senses, and a tea powder would have been best, but he was up for the task, anyway. “I wonder if we can make coffee this way.”
Mathial’s brows formed a flat line. “Again, with the coffee. What's coffee?”
“Forget it.” Noah would have to search for the herbs himself. He needed to do the research first. He remembered seeing the name tulsi in some article he’d read in his academy days, and if tulsi was from the real world, and got transferred into the game world, that meant coffee or something similar would be available in the game as well. He would just need to find it. “Give me a minute to look around and find other herbs and see if I can pump up my herbalism skill further.”
“Sounds good. I’ll pick the main ingredients for the tea in the meantime.” Mathial circled around the big tree, picking a few more herbs and putting them in a basket he had brought with him.
Noah moved a bit away from Mathial and started inspecting different herbs. He identified a few more, but he didn’t find anything that smelled like coffee. Maybe he really needed the real-world information rather than trying to throw a stone in the dark. He should have been watching his back too, he realized, when a tail—sharp as a knife—pierced his neck, drawing blood from it.
7. Rihala
Noah tried to yank the smooth black tail out of his neck, but it was buried deep, and his life was dropping fast. He used all his might and pulled it out, but as soon as he did, it wrapped around his neck, squeezing the wind out of him. The owner of the tail slowly increased its pressure, and his windpipe was getting crushed inside.
Darkness clouded his vision.
His life wasn’t cheap.
In a last-ditch effort, he pushed his spirit to his neck, thinking to employ the principle behind the spirit run.
It worked. Spirit flew through the tiny spirit channels in his neck, strengthening it.
His muscles started resisting the demon’s tail.
When the tail loosened by an inch, he managed to take a deep breath, filling his lungs with the fresh forest air.
When he got an ounce of air inside his lungs, he conjured poison orbs in both hands and clapped them together around the tail.
There was a painful roar, and the tail unwrapped from his neck.
Noah dropped to his knees, fighting the pain, gasping for breath. His windpipe was almost out of commission, and he had to use all his energy to breathe in. After a couple of forceful breaths, he noticed the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He was bleeding from his neck. He traced his hand over his neck, feeling the wet blood and the hole created by the demon’s tail.
Something moved behind him. He rolled to his left, avoiding the slap of tail directed at him.
He was on his chest and hands, in an upward dog position, when he spotted the attacker: a female demon in skin-tight leather armor. At least it wasn’t the usual black-hooded demon who loved killing him for unknown reasons.
“Wait.” He raised his hand to stop her from coming at him again. “Check my title. I have a blessing from Goddess Sumara.”
The girl paused, confused. She rolled her eyes and stared at his head.
“A human, and a blessing?” Surprise echoed through her sputtered words. Her voice was rough and sweet at the same time. The contrast continued. Her attack had been rough—like a demon’s—but her round face and beautiful lavender eyes were sweet like an innocent woman. “My mom says only the respected high-level demons get a blessing. But you are a human!”
“Yes, it’s a long story.” Noah huffed as his life dropped below 250. He quickly grabbed a minor healing potion and drank it all. He pushed himself upright when his life rose to a respectable number.
Mathial jumped in from behind a small pine tree with a lar
ge ax held at the ready. “What are you doing here, female?” Noah was mildly surprised that he had a weapon other than his hammer.
“You got demon friends too?” She closed her mouth with both of her hands. Noah spotted a bow at her back. The leather jacket he’d spotted at first glance was black leather armor in reality. It was crafted so perfectly that it looked like a leather jacket from the real world.
“Friend?” Mathial looked at Noah in confusion. “He ain’t my friend, female, but a customer who owes me lots of money. And unless you have that on you, I won’t let you kill him.”
That was a bummer. Mathial could have called him an acquaintance or something along those lines. “We are kind of friends,” Noah said, ignoring Mathial’s claim. “What do you want? And why did you attack me?”
She fixed her eyes on Noah, examining him for a brief amount of time. “I don’t have to tell you that. But I want to know what a human is doing in our land, and why he has a blessing from one of the demon goddesses.”
“If you won’t answer us, then we have no obligation to answering you.” Mathial thrust the head of the ax on the ground with a thud. The force was enough to displace a good amount of soil around it, and a small puff of dust mixed in the air.
Noah wondered how much strength Mathial put in that one thrust.
“Let me help you.” She moved forward, offering a hand to Noah. But instead of giving him a hand up, she tripped and tumbled forward, falling flat on him. Her soft breasts flattened against his thighs, and her face was kissing his armored stomach.
“Are you all right?” Noah grabbed her shoulders, inhaling the sweet scent coming from her body. She smelled like a rose—not a red one, but an exquisite blue rose like the ones that used to grow on his farm when he was a kid.