by A P Gore
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
Profession
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, strengthen
ing 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 large 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.
She raised her face with a sheepish smile and, with his help, pushed herself up. She once again offered him a hand, and this time without any incident he got up. Her hand was soft, like she hadn’t been using her bow for long.
“Thanks,” Noah said, releasing her hand. She smiled sheepishly again.
“Now, tell me… Why are you here? Is it a trick? A spy from the human side?” she asked.
“If he was a spy, the goddess wouldn’t have blessed him in the first place,” Mathial said. “And I can confirm that when he arrived here, he was just a level one puppy.” He chuckled, stroking his mustache.
“Come on.” Noah kicked dirt toward Mathial, but that movement alone was enough to put the female in combat mode. She drew her bow in a split second and had an arrow mounted on it. The arrow was an inch away from Noah’s face. The world slowed down, and everything blurred expect the arrowhead in front of his eyes. “Woah, wait! I was just...” He paused and looked in her suddenly black eyes, trying to decide if they looked sexier than they were in their original color. “I’m a traveler. So even if you kill me, I’ll come back. And I ain’t a good enough leveled character for experience.” He cast a quick perception on her and received very few details. She was a level 5 archer. That’s it. No name. No class. No information. If she killed him, he would only remember her ravishing black leather armor and her two lavender eyes.
She lowered her bow but kept the arrow nocked. Her eyes went back to their normal lavender, a color he could stare at for hours if she were a human.
Damn! I’m not here to admire women. I’m here to pick herbs and improve.
“By the way, I’m Noah.” He extended his hand.
She started at his hand and then slapped it with hers. “I’m Rihala. And I’m not doing the weird thing you want me to do. My mom says stay away from the strangers.”
“What weird thing?”
“I’ve seen a human men and woman. They wrapped their hands in each other’s and then kissed each other and started removing their clothes. I’m not doing that.” Her face reddened with each word.
“Wait, I didn’t mean that when I asked for a handshake. Forget it.” Noah looked away. The more he looked at her cheeks, the more tomato-red she turned. “So, Rihala, what brings you near the demon town of Sumara?” He asked the most mundane question he could think of, hoping to ease the tension between them.
“I’m here to check on the dungeon. The cave of Xamphala.”
“Okay.” Noah wondered for a moment if he should reveal his desire to go into that cave or not. He chose not to. “We are here for a girl that is suffering from the curse of Sumara. She need help, and I think we can help her by collecting some special herbs.”
“Oh? How old is she?”
“Four.” Noah sighed sadly.
“How in the Zedusa did she end up in your cursed town? That’s the town of death for any female. I wouldn’t even tell my enemy to live in that town. Leave it now, human, and you may survive to tell your tale next year.” Her voice had suddenly turned serious. A loud thud echoed from nearby, and her movement changed. Her body stiffened, and her eyes circled around. “I have to go. Stay away from that town, human. And sorry for this mess.” Those were her last words before she jumped over the head of an orc, coming at them with an arrow sticking out of one eye, and ran away.
8. Ice Shot
This orc was different from the last one Noah faced. It was shorter, but more muscular than the previous one. The worst thing was it stank profoundly.
Blood dripped down from the orc’s right eye where the arrow was stuck. He looked at them and turned back to look at the running shadow of Rihala. For a moment Noah thought he would run after her, but instead he turned back, facing them with grimy eyes that evoked fear in Noah’s heart.
The orc grabbed the arrow and pulled it out of his eye.
Noah lost his breakfast when the eye of the orc came out, stuck on the arrowhead.
The orc roared with pain and raised his club in the air. “You. Hurt. I. Hurt. Hard.”
“Great. We’ve got an orc on our tail. How considerate, bitch!” Mathial shouted after Rihala, then faced Noah. “Listen, human. He is tougher than a stone, because he has the title of toughness, but he’s weak against magical attack. I hope you’ve got some flashy spells. I’ll do the dirty work, you just support m
e with spells.” He glanced at the vomit on the ground. “Get yourself under control, human! You’ll see worse than this in the future, and you’d better be prepared for that.”
Noah nodded. Mathial was right. If he had to do this, he’d better get tough, and better sooner than later. He cast perception on the orc, who was still grunting at them while trying to remove another arrow stuck in his gut.
Perception partially successful due to a title revealed by a higher level member of the party.
Orc of toughness
Level 13
Health 910/1000
Other stats are hidden due to level difference.
Noah took a step back when the orc removed another arrow from his gut. The only good thing was the orc was already missing 90 health, maybe because of a critical strike or a special arrow. A surge of anger rushed through Noah as he realized why Rihala had run away after saying sorry.
“Roger, sir. Go ahead, I’ll support you.” Noah sped away from the orc, moving behind Mathial. There was no way he could kill the orc by himself at his current level.
Mathial started chanting in some strange language, and his body began to emit a strange black aura. The aura spread to Noah and surged through his body as well, giving him a strange sensation. He felt more powerful than before. A quick glance at his stat sheet told him that it was a War Cry of Endurance. All his physical stats were bumped by 2 points, pushing his health to 445 and stamina to 270.
When the black aura stopped radiating through his body, Mathial charged the orc, who met him halfway with his club raised high in the air. Mathial’s ax and the orc’s club slammed against each other, knocking them both back with the sheer force of the impact.
The orc recovered first. He raised the club to hit Mathial again. Mathial swung his ax horizontally, scoring a cut across the orc’s midsection. Blood sprayed out, painting Mathial’s ax in red. The orc lost momentum, but still brought his club down at Mathial’s head. Mathial jumped nimbly out of the club’s arc.