Tainted sewages - 3

Ceaselessly grinding my stealth skill it finally reaches a point where I only need one-third experience left to level it up.

"Bro, where are you? I'm in front of the stairs leading to the entrance of the sewer."

"I can see you from down here." I released my stealth and stand up with my gaze still on the darkening skies. "Looks like it will rain hard. Well, we'll see what happen hereafter. Let's go inside, but before that clear the debuff on me with that Cleanse spell of yours. I've been infected with Level 2 Disease, I survive thanks to my new skill."

I look at Rudy aka King Glory walking down the stair who's standing a meter taller than me because of our different position and his gaze is root on my feet. What did he look on so intently toward my leg for? But he looks startled by my question and answers hurriedly.

"Got it bro, but first we need to make a party group. [Cleanse] [Cleanse] [Cleanse]"

I accept the party invitation that pop-up in front of me. After three times of Cleanse, my health stops decreasing because the condition back to normal and the regeneration began to fill in my lost health.

This is my first time partying with other players though I only know him Still, he looks like he got few unanswered questions. I ignore his expectant eyes and ask for the food pills because of my running low satiety and stamina. Why is this game like no other game without energy and stamina and satiety and stuff? Is it because they want to strive for a real 'reality'?

"How many food pills did you bring? Give me 30 for now, I read it only recover 10 points of sate. I probably need to stock some now that one of my skill use sate point as its fuel."

"I bought 50 of them. They weren't cheap by any mean, each one cost 10 copper coin considering their taste and usefulness beaten by food made by chefs. By the way, why are you not wearing any footwear bro? The mask and the robe totally would make you unrecognizable but noticeable though. Totally like a suspicious person in town. After all, this place is different than frontier, where you can see many suspicious players all around the corner."

"Stop your babbling let's go. The faster we finish the quest the more we can do later. Who knows maybe we can get another quest like this."

Five meters into the sewage entrance I notice that my health dropping again. Opening my Status I saw that my condition is back to Infected with Level 1 Disease.

"Wait. I got infected again, I need you to remove it for me again please."

"Why are you getting so formal, bro? we're bro, of course, we would help each other even though we may not be related by blood but our bond won't be as less as one bond by blood. [Cleanse]"

His words honestly prick something in my heart but, I who always act frank and fierce toward him cannot change the way I talk to him instantly furthermore, this was already not my original character. Be it of how I've changed into trusting people more and hold my distrust of the world and people, then I met Zen Gramp. It is kind of weird how I become like this after my body got wrecked.

Seeing Rudy with his silly expression, I can't help but smile internally.

For Rudy, you need to put a serious face when saying serious stuff or people would start to exclude you from their groups, was the experience I had when working at labor works. This fatso could be classified as one of those people... (Probably.)

"Hmm… so level 1 Disease can be removed with one cleanse spell."

I see at the corner of my eye that the blue bar under his name is almost empty.

"Your mana almost exhausted. Did you have something to recover it with?"

"I do, I can recover them in under 2 minutes, 100 seconds to be precise; with my passive skill[High-Speed Mana Regeneration]and I can absorb some mana from my puppet as well. The skill name is [Summon Wooden Puppet] at the moment I can only summon two. The materials to create them is not hard to find or expensive but the problem was mana require to make them 'alive', I need to insert 100K of mana and it can only be filled with my own mana. That's also one of the reasons why I can take back their energy because it's basically still my own mana after all."

"Then how can you create those 2 if it's so hard to finish? Does it mean you can spam your spell at your enemy as you please with those 100K of mana?"

"Well, the 100K mana was considered as material, the puppet can only hold 10K worth of mana. By the way brother did you want to know the story of how I obtain this skill and job?"

Without waiting for my reply he starts telling his story to me. I suppose I can listen to his babbling for the hassle he'll receive of detoxifying me only until he fully recovers his mana.

"The story starts on day third, I played the game as usual but I lack information so I do some research here and there. It somehow brought me to one of the farthest frontier towns where I need to travel for two days before I arrived there. It's a bit embarrassing but after I reached the said town I'm totally broke. The transportation fee was soo expensive that I exchange all of my saving into a few gold coins.

Few events lead me to this beautiful lady and she gave me a quest for a hidden job. Apparently, I need to have three of my jobs available to get it and with me not yet choosing any job or rather too busy searching for ways to make money, I didn't have any job yet. After I finish the quest, she gave me five wooden puppets as a gift.

With my new exclusive job that can be considered battle-production type, I got cocky after checking all the skills I had, like making wooden puppet or puppet explosion. The thing is, I thought making puppets shouldn't be difficult because I know all the material require to build it is cheap (didn't know the second step was to input 100k mana) at the frontier town I passed by before. Then on my way exploring a forest nearby, I found an injured half-lord boss inside a cave, the boss which is a giant blue frog had one of its legs tore off and bleeding heavily. And I with my new skill bravely test my luck.

I summon a puppet while hiding and command the puppet to get closer to the injured boss. After the puppet reaches 15 meter the boss opens its big eyes and stare at the puppet who still walking closer to boss step by step. Around 10 meters away from the boss, it suddenly attacks my puppet with its tongue in lightning speed and swallowed the poor puppet in a single gulp. Just then a realization hit me, would it still be possible to explode the puppet even if its get inside the damn ugly frog stomach? So, I active the skill. Then, I heard a muffled explosion from inside the frog, it pukes blood and stuff but it didn't kill the frog, unfortunately.

Instead, it looks toward my hiding place and ran with its front leg and one of its back leg to support its weight, now I think about it the frog looks kind of funny with its missing limb but with its enrage eyes I know that I'll be dead if the frog get closer than ten or so meter and I don't know if it still got another way to attack me from far away or not. I instantly ran getting away from it. I didn't forget to summon another puppet though and command it to latch into the frog ugly face. Finally, It's dead after I explode two more puppets into its ugly face. Money really drives people mad but sometimes it helps because that's where all my current money comes from. Nice isn't?"

This fatso chattiness is really on a different level than other people I know. Not that I know a lot of people but he's for sure on a different scale than normal.

"Your mana has already been filled five minutes ago. So how much did you get from selling the carcass of that frog? Wait, how can you bring the body into the town? I'm sure that it won't fit into your inventory."

"In frontier town or village you can buy an item name 'emergency firework' that would shot into the air and then the guard will come to help you. The downside is, it won't work if you were far from town and it's expensive as well. Luckily there is patrolling guard at the edge of the forest and come to me. Three of shows up. Then I made a deal with them I'll share thirty percent of the profit if they help me brought the body to the town where I can sell it whole. I didn't sell the core though. With the core, I probably can make an epic rank puppet."

"I'm asking how much did you get from selling it- nevermind let's go inside its already drizzling." I cut him off when he looks like want to continue his storytelling while I point my finger toward the sewage and said: "Did you forget why we are here?"

Finally, we were back on track and walk past the entrance of the sewage. The smell is still as horrible as the time when I was here. Nothing change except the place got darker because of the rain outside covering the sun and it's almost dusk as well so the dimmer light can't pierce the cloud. With this weather condition, I feel a bit uneasy, if the water level is rising then we may need to postpone the quest.

"Nice, this is an Instance."

"What do you mean by instance?"

"Don't you get the notification when passing the entrance brother?"

I shook my head and ask him further what he mean by instance, and the notification.

"Brother, what mode did use right now?"

Seeing my perplexed look Rudy instantly answer his own question.

"It's like this bro, there are four modes to play. First, full-assist or auto which assist you from battle to almost anything, it's like you were moving your body without your own control, you can still move your body if you want. Second, semi-assist is the one most people are using right now and mage usually uses this mode to control their spell. Third, full-dive it is a mode where you need to control your skill, body, to everything by yourself like controlling the energy to launch a spell or skill. Fourth, custom-made which mean you can edit it as you please. And you were probably using the fourth mode right now."

My noob-i-ness kick in again. It would help if the forum doesn't have a subsection of the subsection inside subsection on and on that would even make normal person backed away. I would always get lost in the sea of information (even though most of them are useless but interesting stuff would still be interesting after all) that makes searching for free guide for a newbie is exhausting. The things I should've known is unknown to me. I remember what that old-dwarf always saying, "Knowledge is power." If you had one then your life would be easier he said.

"Hoo… then what should I do next? Previously it always poped-up at any moment."

I listen to his instruction and stuff, keenly. Based on what he said each mode had a different advantage by itself, for example, a player who uses full-dive mode had what they called execution damage, the damage would either double or half, it is base on how well the player executes their skills.

Shorting out the information I got and tuning up the setting we start moving again.

"[Lumen] [Lumen] This place is so slippery [Summon Wooden Puppet] and smells bad."

Two glowing golden orb float after he chant Lumen twice and he directs one orb afar to the front while the other one stays near us to illuminate the surrounding area. The two puppets he summons looks almost identical with the one I fought at Verm basement but shorter by a couple of inches and less imposing.

"Boom'

A loud ramble sound outside startles us followed by a lightning flash, a thunderstorm. A few moments later the drizzling rain changes into a downpour like a waterfall. Now, this makes me more uneasy.

"Thud'

Hearing the sound of something falling I look toward the source and found one of the doll Rudy summon is head-diving the ground. Not long after the big one is fall as well with muffle sound because of his plump butt cushioning his fall.

"Ugh, this place is really not visitor welcoming site."

"What do you expect? This is the place where the people in the city dump their wastes. Solid and liquid matter."