“Elder Maurez, it has been a long time. I didn’t know that you would be joining as a supervising elder at this Beast Mountains competition.” Elder Oui, a skinny man, squinted as he forced a smile.
“So many old acquaintances. It should be good to see what the younger generation will do, seeing you are all gathered here.” A dominating pressure passed over everyone as a man walked out of the forest onto the stage that appeared in the middle of the Beast Mountains Forest.
He had a gloating smile on his face as he looked over everyone.
“Elder Rei, it seems that you have broken through into the nineteenth level.” Elder Maurez grit his teeth and bowed his head slightly to the other elder as he forced a smile.
“It is but a small matter. I was able to find a few lucky opponents in the northern reaches.” Rei’s eyes cut over to Elder Oui.
Elder Oui’s eyes thinned. “Interesting. There were a few of our elders who went there to visit some old friends, but it seems that they have gone missing. Does Elder Rei know anything about this?”
“Seeing old friends, is it? Well, I hope that they were able to find them and have a good rest.” Elder Rei laughed.
Elder Oui’s eyes only thinned more, sensing the hidden meaning in Elder Rei’s words.
After all, they were sent in search of a powerful Mana concentration. They had hoped to return with a medicinal ingredient or natural treasure, but they had never returned.
Elder Rei admitted to being in the area and his power had risen greatly.
There was no evidence that anything had happened, so Elder Oui could only let out a cold harrumph as more elders from the different sects and factions of the Second Realm that had become a part of the Beast Mountains trial emerged.
These elders ranged from level seventeen to nineteen. They were some of the strongest people in their sects, sent here to watch over the trial.
Only new disciples who were under level fifteen were able to compete in the Beast Mountains trial. First they would need to reach this stage by fighting or sneaking past the beasts. Once they reached this stage, then the elders would work together to open the path into the heart of the Beast Mountains.
Hidden in the depths of the Beast Mountains, there was actually a dungeon. A dungeon was a place hidden away from others, either built by the Ten Realms, or formed by people in the Ten Realms. These places could have great danger, but they could also hold great treasures.
The dungeon in the Beast Mountains was too hard for people in the First Realm to enter. It was only the people in the Second Realm who had the power and resources to open and compete in the Beast Mountains trial.
It was rumored that the Beast Mountains trial was built on a Mana vein and that the person who defeated the Beast Mountains trial would take control of the dungeon and the Mana vein underneath.
Of course, this was just a rumor. But if someone were able to take control of the dungeon, then not only would that person, but the entire sect behind them, increase in strength.
The dungeon gave birth to many powerful beasts, resources, and manuals. It could be opened whenever, but required a number of resources to do so.
“How many people do you think will make it to the third layer or higher?” Elder Oui asked a group of elders he had found. As one of the three most powerful elders in the gathering, many of them were willing to meet and talk with him. Becoming friends with him and the powerful Iron Spear sect could allow them to increase the standing in their own sect and even bridge an alliance to benefit both parties.
“There are many powerful new youths. One only has to look at Elder Oui’s apprentice niece Julia. With her powerful attainments with the Iron Spear training manual and her strong body and ten Mana gates, she is sure to pass into the fifth—no, sixth level!” One spoke up.
Elder Oui smiled. After all, who didn’t like being praised? “Niece Julia is wild in her ways, but she’s done this old man proud.”
“Does Elder Oui think that someone of the younger generation will make it into the eighth level?” another elder asked.
The ninth and tenth level hadn’t been touched up to this point. There had been various attempts to reach these levels but they were incredibly difficult to crack. This made it a great place for people to temper their skills and grow in power.
Chapter: Give a Redneck Napalm
Erik settled down in a place far away from where they’d killed the three-headed forest king snake.
Finally they had a chance to check out their gains.
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Skill: Marksman
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Level: 27 (Apprentice)
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Long-range weapons are familiar in your hands. When aiming, you can zoom in x2.0.
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Skill: Stealth
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Level: 20 (Novice)
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No bonuses at this time. You must prove your skills first.
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15,075/64,000 EXP till you reach Level 10
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Erik was more interested with the materials that had come with the snake.
He looked over the loot Rugrat had gathered.
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1x Common Mortal Grade Monster Core
1x Petty Mortal Grade Monster Core (Lightning attribute)
1x Forest King Poison sac
1x Forest King Gas Sac
12x Three-Headed Forest King Snake Meat
5x Three-Headed Forest King Snake Tendons
3x Three-Headed Forest King Snake Fangs
6x Three-Headed Forest King Snake Skins
2x White Vein Spirit Grass
==========
“We can probably sell the skins to an armorer, meat to a chef, tendons and fangs to a weapons shop, though the poison sac and gas sac we could use those,” Erik said.
“Flame bombs—nothing like napalm in the morning!” Rugrat said in agreement.
“Can take the redneck out of the South, can’t take the love of blowing shit up and setting it on fire out of the redneck,” Erik muttered.
“Got that right!”
“I am soo excited for when you can start making firearms.”
“I know! I’ve tinkered before a bit with them here and there, y’know.” Rugrat tapped his nose and winked at Erik.
“There is literally no government left here to report you to and if I did tell them, they’d probably piss themselves and move their capital to get rid of your crazy ass.”
“I wonder if I can get an achievement for that?” Rugrat actually looked as if he were thinking it through, which made Erik even more scared.
“All right, come on back down. I’ll give you the flammable gas. Just try to make something that won’t blow our fucking faces off,” Erik stressed.
“Is singed eyebrows okay?”
Erik let out a pained sigh, the fight going out of his body. “Fine, fine! Just you’re going to be throwing them every time then!”
“I knew I should have got that baseball bat.” Rugrat groaned.
“Fire bombs and you want to hit them with a fucking baseball bat?” Erik nearly yelled before waving his hands, as if to get as far from this lunatic as possible. “Fine, right, okay, of course. For the love of all things holy, warn me when you start lobbing these things around.”
“Will do!” Rugrat said with a pleased expression.
Erik looked right at Rugrat. “You’re fucking insane.”
Rugrat looked touched as he held his heart and bowed his legs, as if he were overly embarrassed. “Thank you. That’s the nicest compliment you’ve given me!”
Erik promptly turned around and smacked his face into a tree. “Get. That. Image. Out. Of. My. Head!”
“And that, kids, is how Erik got brain damage.” Rugrat walked off toward their next point.
Erik
made some unintelligent noise.
“He was never the same after that!” Rugrat’s words came out in a rush as he had to run to escape Erik’s hands.
Erik looked over the poison sac that he’d placed in his own storage broach.
The sac was highly resistant to poison and it carried about three liters’ worth of poison.
Rugrat was already experimenting with his sac. The contents of the sac were highly compressed; instead of being the gas that was shot out by the snakes, it was a liquid. Leading Rugrat along the path of making grenades while Erik’s mind moved in another direction. From what he’d seen, the poison gas burned one’s skin and affected their muscles. If he could find a way to use this poison, then he might have a chance of tempering his muscles and skin.
Then he would only need to temper his organs and his bones to reach Body Like Stone.
Since they were in a dangerous area, Erik put the poison sac away in his storage ring while Rugrat finished making his shrapnel and firebombs. The shrapnel bombs were filled with rocks and metal pieces; the firebombs had tape wrapped around holes. When throwing the firebomb, the liquid would turn into gas, being released out of the perforations before striking its target, where the match inside would be pulled against a piece of strike paper, igniting it.
Erik and Rugrat took a few slow days. They had spent a lot of time just running from place to place in the First Realm, so they spent it making different items, checking their gear, cleaning their weapons, and reading over the different information they had gathered and sharing it with each other.
***
Since they had talked about the roles that they wanted to take on, Rugrat now looked to improve his Mana system. Stealth spells, detection spells: this was the path that he wanted to walk down with ways to augment his weapons and their abilities.
As such, he had put eight of his attribute points of becoming a level ten existence into Mana Regeneration. He broke open two Mana gates in one night and was readying himself to open another, though it would probably take him at least half a day to do so.
The other two points went into increasing the size of his Mana pool. Rugrat was concentrating on Agility and Mana.
Rugrat would work with his rifle, aiming and firing with nothing in the chamber; they didn’t have the rounds to waste. “Damn, I just want to get in front of a forge to test this all out,” Rugrat complained on the second afternoon.
“I know. I just want to get some damn Alchemy formulas. If I have them and some information on techniques. I know that I’d be able to make some concoctions.” Erik sighed along with Rugrat.
“I don’t know how you haven’t gone mad memorizing that Alchemy book,” Rugrat said.
“I’ve got about half of it memorized now. I don’t know, if something’s interesting, you suck it up. Like how we know everything about weapons because we like them, but if someone asks us to do math tests we’d rather punch them in the face.”
“Unless it’s wind and range calculations, I ain’t touching math,” Rugrat said.
“Exactly. You find that stuff way more interesting and useful than any math could be.”
“Well, on that note of things we need to do,” Rugrat stood, “shall we go and check out that blue fennel?”
“Sounds good to me.” Erik checked inside his storage ring. “We’re going to need to pick up our supplies sooner rather than later. I’ve got eight mags left for my rifle, three for my pistol, and some twenty shells for my shotgun.”
“Not even going to use the bow anymore?” Rugrat asked.
“You be the damn elf. I’ll be a dwarf smashing things with my fists.”
They walked through the forest easily. They’d got used to it over the few days they’d been there.
They’d also been observing this area for a while. At around mid-afternoon, the creature that hid in the fennel would leave to hunt. They checked that it wasn’t hiding in the fennel and moved in.
Rugrat watched the area as Erik once again worked to pull the fennel out of the ground without destroying it.
They looked up to the sounds of movement. Erik increased his speed while Rugrat tapped his finger, ready to pull out his rifle in a moment’s notice.
An angry-looking woman rushed from tree to tree, her speed impressing Rugrat, as she held a long metal spear in her hands. She didn’t even seem to mind the weight as she ran onward.
“Erik,” Rugrat said, having a bad feeling.
“Nearly done.” Erik heard Rugrat’s tone, so he sped up his efforts, nearly failing in harvesting it. Thankfully, it came free of the dirt without any issues. A strong medicinal scent was released before Erik stuffed it into his storage ring and the two made to run off.
A party of five people appeared in the forest. Their leader made them pause before he pointed in a direction. “Bring me that medicinal plant,” he ordered imperiously, as if he were the ruler of this mountain.
The others shot off under his command.
“We’ve got company,” Rugrat said.
They both increased their speed, breaking stealth as it was clear that they’d been discovered anyways. They shot off into the forest, alarming the four people following them.
“Our young master only wants to talk to you. Why don’t you stay for a while?” One threw out a dart that pierced through a tree, missing Rugrat’s head.
“Well, sounds like he’s a right bitch, sending his dogs after us!” Rugrat shot back.
More darts whizzed through the air around him as he kept running.
“Their aim is worse than little Bobbins!” Rugrat yelled.
“Dude had one-inch thick glasses! How the fuck did he get past the recruiters?”
“I dunno!” Rugrat said.
“Must’ve eaten so many crayons he impressed the recruiter.”
“Fuck you, man!”
Erik laughed his way through the jungle as they continued to be chased but the four behind them were catching up.
They rushed into a valley that thinned down.
“Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning!” Erik yelled, pulling out a napalm bomb in his hand, ripping off the tape and throwing it.
Rugrat stepped off a wall and threw something from his storage ring. It left a trail of brown smoke behind it as he threw out two more.
“Fire in the hole, fuck.” The homemade napalm bombs went off. The sludge stuck to the four pursuers and ignited as the rush of air being burnt threw Rugrat around, screaming. “Heeaad, fuck, rock!”
Erik grimaced as Rugrat smacked into a rock and rolled through the forest.
Chapter: Raining Experience and Treasures
“I know that you might have been told to use your head more, but this is going a bit too far,” Erik said as he healed up the cut on Rugrat’s head and the brain bruise.
“Damn. That fucking hurt,” Rugrat said.
Erik settled down. Seeing Rugrat was okay, he opened up his screens.
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Skill: Stealth
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Level: 21 (Novice)
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No bonuses at this time. You must prove your skills first.
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You have learned the skill: Throwables
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Close-range and long-range weapons combining aim with the weapons at one’s disposal, the throwable increases the range that one can throw at and the accuracy they do so.
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Skill: Throwables
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Level: 7 (Novice)
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No bonuses at this time. You must prove your skills first.
==========
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You have reached Level 11
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When you sleep next, you will be able to increase your attributes by: 20 points.
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<
br /> ==========
67,387/100,000 EXP till you reach Level 12
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For killing an opponent 4 levels stronger than you, your Experience is increased by 300%
==========
Erik laughed to himself as Rugrat read his own screen,
“Wait, how much Experience did you get?” Rugrat asked.
“Like two hundred thousand, you?”
“Like a hundred and fifty. Dammit, that level Experience increase is savage!” Rugrat said.
“Well, it’s a lot harder to kill things above you in level.”
“You were using my napalmers!” Rugrat deflated against the rock. “Damn, if I knew it would be that good to earn Experience, we should’ve gone for dumbasses long ago,” Rugrat said. “What level are you?”
“Eleven, getting toward twelve,” Erik said.
“Hah! Still on top, baby!” Rugrat pumped his fist in the air. “Twelve and proud!”
“Mental age?”
“Fuck you, too.”
“Buy me dinner first, jeez!” Erik laughed. “I wonder why there are so many powerful people about? Think of the party that were fighting the snake, or that group we just ran into. All of them were a high level and they had good equipment.”
Erik looked at the two new storage rings on his hand. He hadn’t looked inside them yet.
“When I was working in the smithy, I heard a few people talking about how the Second Realm factions and sects come down and head to the Beast Mountains for something. Most people treat this as a forbidden ground. They treat it like a trial for their youngsters to increase in strength.
“The Beast Mountains gets all stirred up with it. Some of the people from the First Realm follow behind, collecting their waste as what’s not valuable in the Second Realm is a priceless treasure here.” Rugrat looked over to Erik as if to see what he was thinking.
“Well, I’m all about trying to gather some gold.” Erik smiled. “They might be experts in their sects and factions but they’re just hot-headed kids using their skills. Like damn second lieutenants, all squeaky and clean.”
The Two Week Curse Page 21