Chapter 11: Lizard hunt

After finishing up my registration, I had to move to the 2nd floor, which is where the mission terminals are placed. The entire room has a lot of tables and chairs for people to sit and check on the mission list through the terminal they get after they register as an adventurer. The players don't get this terminal as the system is connected to the players in their consciousness. The entire hall always has a lot of people filling the seats, although the hall never gets full unless it's an emergency mission or a special notice for all adventurers. The sitting arrangement is done as such the left side of the hall is for solo people, there are generally one small table with two chairs, whereas the right side of the hall is got groups. The group member count is permissible till five people, therefore there are five seats surrounding a large table. The middle of the hall is cleared for people to move around. People can also order small snacks and drinks while they choose their missions, for larger meals though, you have to head to the cafeteria at floor 5.

The missions are also separated by the adventurer's grade and unless you rank up, you can't see the higher rank missions, just a precaution so that lower ranked people won't get greedy or overestimate themselves and go after higher ranked targets. The quests are separated into several categories as well, such as subjugation, gathering, crafting, investigation, search etc. It is possible to take more than one quests since several quest targets can exist in the same area.

[Hunting lynx

Lynx meat required: 20

Reward: EXP, money, AP (depending upon the quality)]

[Hunting congo

Congo meat required: 20

Congo bones required: 20

Reward: EXP, money, AP (depending upon the quality)]

[Harvest naya roots

Roots required: 15

Reward: EXP, money, AP (depending upon the quality)]

[Gather baili leaves

Leaves required: 30

Reward: EXP, money, AP (depending upon the quality)]

[Hunt monka birds

Meat required: 20

Feathers required: 20

Beak needed: optional

Reward: EXP, money, AP (depending upon the quality)]

All of these quests are in the same area, and the creatures needed to hunt are attributeless, therefore, I won't get any elemental damage, something my gears can't defend against yet. There is also another reason I wanna go in the wilds and hunt.

[Adsorbing intent: harvest natural energy and elements.

Progress: 0%]

In order to increase my inner skill level, I need to hunt creatures or search for natural resources and absorb all the energy from them, generally, you can absorb one element like fire and focus on it, as you have to keep absorbing to increase the levels and also get some benefit of the inner skill, but these elements also affect your class selection, therefore the more variation of elements you absorb, the better are the chances to get some really good class choices. Natives have to absorb the energies from nature by cultivating, for players though, that part will come after gaining a class, so for now I can only absorb the energies from other living beings.

I didn't proceed to the higher floor since I don't have anything to submit or exchange. It is also not possible to buy those health regen chips or any other supplies since they are not cheap, so I headed outside the facility towards the western gate of the town.

The area of my missions is located 12 Km away from the city's western gate, into a marshland which follow inside a forest, though, the marshland is almost 27 Km long from it's entry point to the entry point of the forest. These entry points are situated just outside the wild zones where adventurers can rest and restock, also people gather there to sell their stuff that they don't need before heading back in the wild. But the main purpose of these facilities are to oversee the growth of the wild zones to make sure none of the living creatures in there grows too strong and harm the people, which is also why the lower grade quests are here, to have a control over the population inside the zones, if the population of any zone gets exhausted, that zone gets locked down and missions regrading that zone will become unavailable until the growth index, a tabular chart where the population of the zones are recorded, becomes stable.

The guild also offers free ride for adventurers till each entry points from the city. Taking advantage of that, I skipped a 12 Km walk and arrived at the Rakh'bal entry point. These points are a chain of small forts with barricade that surround the wild zone, cutting one side of it off from civilization. The forts are covered by some sort of shield to defend against any aerial beasts, they also have automated defense energy turrets and other weapons available, also part of the government army are situated to manage any situation if needs arise. The facility also has medical center, any injury during missions will get free medical support, that is also the respawn point for players, although, respawning using the facilities got penalty. There is a 20% reduction to experience, 5% reduction of money per respawn, also if you respawn more than 3 times, you will start losing a level per respawn until the next day. Any respawn point and surrounding area are also no combat zone, just like the big cities, fighting there will be a one way ticket for you to have a jail sentence, this was done to prevent any group of players to spawn camp. The fort is a no combat zone as well, military will directly take your adventurer license and put you in detention if violated. This goes for both the players as well as the natives, so people are probably the safest in these areas, unless you go and piss off the military or some higher authority personal.

Disembarking from the vehicle, I went towards the zone entrance, here we go through a decontamination room whenever we go in or come out, the room also scans our identity and adventurer profile. Going out from the chamber, I found myself in the marsh, there is a river 15 Km inside the marsh, which is the reason of this land's existence. I'll find the congo a little bit inside the marsh, they are 1.6 m long lizards with green skin, which is their main defense, they attack with their sharp nails and teeth as well as their tails, the males generally go out for hunting, whereas the females protect their burrows. These lizards also never hunt together, generally you will find one lizard 400 to 700 m away from the other, and the distance can increase but never decrease. The marsh also has many other creatures but the guild update the map of whichever zone you go to, so each creature's area of interest is clearly defined in there, as well as the general knowledge, their weaknesses, interests and how to efficiently harvest them.

Navigating through the marsh I found those lizards, one good thing about these are that even if you attack one of them, the others won't attack you unless it's the female counterpart, so you can take your time and kill them one by one. Sneaking around them though will be hard, they have a keen sense of their surrounding making sneak attacks fail, therefore the best way to deal with them is to use your light step skill and attack near their armpits or the joints in their legs and tail. Just like that, I ran using light step and stabbed the tail joint with my spear.

[CRIT! -25]

These lizards got a health bar of 100 points, so that took out ¼ of it's health, feeling the pain, it jumped and attacked me with it's teeth, which failed due to me side stepping, light step's evasive maneuvers help me with that, I stabbed again at its front leg join, causing it to stagger and taking out 17 health, then followed up on its tail join again. This got me a total of 44 damage, taking out almost 70% of its health. This time though it scratched me with it's nails, causing me to take 7 damage, my gears got enough defense to protect me against these attacks, but it also showed me that I couldn't see my health bar, or any other bars. I quickly finished up this lizard and contacted the team at our office to take care of these. Without a proper health bar to see, people might die easily if they don't have good defense. The fight also gave me 10 EXP and 5 PP on my spear mastery, my light step also got 3% progression.

Now time to skin it, the skins of these creatures are not in the mission requirement, but I can sell them at the guild to get some cash, so I followed the instructions and skinned it with a knife I took from home. Then I cut the meat and stored the bones.

[Congo skin

Quality: Poor

Used in alchemy]

[Congo meat

Quality: Poor

Used in cooking]

[Congo bones

Quality: Average

Used in alchemy]

"Ugh! Who eats lizard meat?! Nevermind, let's just make sure I won't."

I also got 2% progression on skinning and 1% progression on butchering. I'm guessing the better the quality will be, the higher the rewards, so I will be spending some time here to kill those and gain some proficiency. At this stage players might try to compete on who can gain levels faster, but all these skill proficiency will also matter later on, and harvesting higher grade creatures or plants with low grade skill will get you nothing, while once you rank up, you won't gain entry to these low grade zones unless it's a special request, so many people will get stuck and waste many materials when they actually need them.

Tidying up the place, I went towards another lizard, killing them due to my stats, which are the result of my body's training from childhood and armour is quite easy and I can take some rest to regen my health, another point they didn't showed, which should be fixed soon, hunting these lizards are easy, most of them are lv2 creatures after all. The thing that takes time is gathering materials from them, I got a ton of poor quality stuff, which at that point, I decided to turn them in to energy for my inner skill, each of these materials got me 0.2 natural energy, 0.1 life energy, 0.2 death energy. It's good that our inventory can store items in a time frozen field, so I could still get the life attribute points from them. At the end of the day, I got my skinning and butchering to level 3, gained enough materials for my quests at good quality. Going any further on these lizards are not possible. I also gained 680 EXP so I'm quite close to leveling up, got 9.6 natural energy and death energy as well as 4.8 life energy. Any animal will never drop any gears, they are only available from creatures that actually wear something or use any weapon, the only thing you can get from animals are materials by skinning and butchering them. I went back to the fort to log off right now, as it's been 5 hours since I logged in, my time at the office is also ending so I'll go home, get food and all, then come back again.

[Notice! We have discovered that health and other resource bars are not being shown, this will be solved within 20 minutes, please be patient!]