Lil Imp

After everybody had gained a few free stats at the smithy, I checked the time to see that it was just passed twenty-one-hundred on the game clock and started yelling as we walked, "Selling goblin hide armor, seven defense all but cap, cap does ten! Yell 'here'! Selling goblin hide armor, seven defense all but cap, cap does ten! Yell 'here'!"

"You're the worst," Papi says while Lil laughs, taking his daughter's hand and slowing down so that he would not be seen with me screaming down the road. However, I did not care in the least and kept yelling as we made our way through the city. Thanks to my Peddling skill, though, not only did I catch the attention of some players who showed interest in swords as well as armor but also some NPC who hunted in their spare time for spare money.

I ended up selling the rest of my current suits for at least seventy gold apiece because each piece did seven defense but nobody would go over either because the sets did not come with proper boots but layer-soled moccasins. However, that was still making back most of the money I spent at the smithy. The swords I sold were pure profit.

Once we got to the city gate I went through my friends list and saw that Skooma was online. "How long will everybody be on for?" I ask curiously, knowing I would be on for at least another five hours in reality. Tomorrow, though, I would have to take a lunch day and then continue alternating.

"We'll be on about as long as you," Ivana replies, looking out of the gates and along the main highway leading into and around the city.

"Same," Lil replies while glaring at her father.

"Alright, so, do you guys want to go dusk imp hunting with a party that is closer to level twenty first or go earn your goblin titles first?" I ask curiously, knowing that I severely needed to replenish our stocks of goblin skins and raise all of our skills levels with it. "If we go now since it's still evening, we'll make it there around midnight and fight for maybe an hour if you guys can handle it then meet up from there with Skooma and his people. Around noon tomorrow we can go goblin hunting again."

"Goblins," Papi says. "I'm level sixteen just from traveling here so fast and dragging Lil, she's still only eleven. And, well… Go is our off-tank and he's only level ten right now."

"Our main tank right now doesn't even use a shield," I point out the flaw in his weaponry and the fact he was also only and off-tank character. Our main tank, a shield guardian, was going south. I was honestly a little touchy when it came to people picking on Go even though he could flip most people over his shoulder like sacks of grain.

It was probably because this dude could hurt people that I ended up doing all his fighting as kids. Shaking my head as Go simply shrugs to show his decision, I say, "Goblins it is, then. Follow me. Lil, you got any familiars yet? If you want a ferecat or nightwing we can work on it while we travel."

"I have a wood sprite and she gave me quick vines," Lil replies cheerfully, skipping along as he strategically cute method of working her Endurance stat. Because hers was also a fighting as well as magic class that can cross with a few other classes she probably had the highest Endurance in the group right now. "Other than that, I can only duration regen and make you move faster right now. I might be able to ride a nightwing."

"That's the best thing I've heard all day," I say with a wistful sigh, thinking of how many time I had been hit in my rampant freestyle. "Papi, what are you bringing to the table?"

"I can't heal, yet," he replies a little quietly, as if embarrassed by this. "But, I have one blessing that raises our Strength and Endurance by a few points as well as another blessing that gives us ten points of defense. For now they last for like ten minutes but they cool down for thirty. I've been casting them every chance since I got them but part of the class is to initiate each blessing with one hundred casts before it even starts leveling."

Fifty in-game hours of never missing a thirty-minute interval. That was one hell of a way to limit the growth of overpowered classes. I knew anybody could gain relations with the gods and thus earn similar blessings, but they were usually only for the individual.

As we traveled I got to hear more about their experienced up til now, like how their tutorials went when they picks their starting classes and how they were made to interact with the supposedly temporary NPC. Someone like Lil who had the druid class made friends with some NPC by healing them or driving animals away from crops- which was what both she and Ivana did with their different classes.

Go, as a simple warrior, had a tutorial like mine but instead was asked to clean a small nest of tree vermin. Papi's tutorial started with leaving an abbey only for it to come under attack by cultists. He got the best rewards for the experience boosted tutorial he paid for that let him out into the world at level ten.

Unlike me, though, nobody got a skill like First-Aid or any skill that did not come without their classes.

We traveled specifically to compass points along the way, finding goblin camps and 'ferecat groves' among fruit trees. Since we were a group the numbers were never less than two-to-one and even when we ran into simple confrontations there were never less than five enemies to kill. However, there was a big difference in weapons and skill between players like Go or Papi and players like Ivana and Lil.

Ivana was a bloody casual who tried their best while Lil was used to playing a strictly magic character as a younger girl, usually a summoner and-or healer. Using a spear as a weapon was different form her usual back row roles and in this game we were forcing the casual to play hardcore. Full sensory and movement control, she will never get better if it never hurts.

While Lil was at a level where she could have several lesser familiars with her non-combatant sprite she did not show much interest in ferecats. I could understand why. Their main attack pattern was for one to commit suicide while the other attacks right behind.

However, our last of four compass points before reaching the Elder Oak Passage revealed to me a most important icon that ended up serving multiple purposes. Something that was brought to my attention was combining goblin with dusk imp to create stronger demon-based resistances in armor. The icon for a dusk imp's home was a cluster of mounds or hills with a hole in each of them.

This would be a huge money-making point for my group, especially once our magic characters came back with the tank.

While we did not come across the actual nest but instead a hunt of sorts, we found three warrior imps and six half-dead starved and wounded hunters fighting a large pack of ferecats. From the looks of it, the warriors who never left home were sacrificing the old hunters to draw in prey while raising the next batches. As soon as I was about the give the signal, a written message from Lil appeared.

'I want the big one with the sword'.

I could only think-write the quick reply, 'Going in first, all count three then follow and fight without me'.

Right after sending that message, I sheathed my sword while they read and prepared before taking off running at a dead sprint. We had managed to get about twenty yards or more from where the mobs were fighting each other so it only took two or so seconds to enter the clearing in the trees.

Once there, I ignored everybody but the five-foot tall hobgoblin-sized dusk imp variant wielding a skinny club set in one side by a row of its own claws. As part of their training, the queen of an imp colony will pull out the dagger-like claws of one hand from every warrior imp to make weapons and such with. It was an effective Endurance training method.

Approaching the short human sized imp from the side, I end up stomping on an unsuspecting ferecat in the process of tackling the imp to the ground. Rolling about with the imp, I quickly pull us off to the side of the combat while the others run into the fray as well. Even though Endurance was the warrior's highest stat its Strength was lacking because of their fragile but high-speed builds.

Not even bothering to hold it there, I got up and let it do the same before swiftly stepping forward with a quick cycle of three fists jabbing forward one over the other. Each blow connected with its forehead and staggered it further and further backward as it searched for its weapon. It never even got to lay eyes on it before a knee suddenly rose up into their chin and dropped their health to only a little over half after lifting their feet off the ground.

Stomping forward as they rose backward, I punch downward with my weight and plant my fist with a twist into their gut to slam them back down on the ground. This was a combo I was used to using to smaller mobs of various forms in different games because I usually played a speed-DPS fighter or monk of some sort. For the intent and purpose this game, the dusk imp was dropped to around thirty perfect five-hit combo.

I drew my sidearm dagger from my hip and smoothly threw it into the back of another dusk imp three or so meters away with a single rotation.

[Throw Leveled]

[+15XP]

Satisfied that my combo counter was not wasted, I roll the dazed mob over on its back and sit on it while watching the health bar of the warrior I stuck slowly trickle down as the knife remained in the wound. The battle was pretty intense with a large amount of pressure on Go and Papi from the start without me there. Go's goblin-like clubs, though, made quick work of the wounded hunter imps while Papi's battle hammer could send multiple ferecat bodies in the air per swing.

After two or three minutes of fighting, the lot and experience was divided to everyone but me. Until I got a pleasant surprise.

[Acquired Skill: Capture]

[+10XP]

[Successfully Captured: Dusk Imp One-handed Warrior]

[+30XP]

[Would you like to tame?]

[YES/NO]

"No, not this time," I reply cheerfully as the dusk imp begins recovering from its dazed status despite my obvious success. "Lil, coming at ya!" I call out, standing up while casting First-Aid on the warrior imp before grabbing its leg and slinging it a few yards along the ground toward the others. It only weighed around one hundred and twenty pounds.

Pouncing on the recovering imp, the tiny elven girl literally body slams onto its back and wraps it up in a choking camel clutch. Then she started talking in a weird language and the imp began slowly calming down. A moment later, she was up and sheering, "I got a new skill called Submission and a new familiar! The skill makes it easier for me to enslave monsters using dominance but has the opposite effect on natural animals since I'm a druid."

"We won't talk about that skill, just keep it to yourself," Papi says, patting his daughter's head as a reward for her accomplishment.

The dusk imp in question slowly stood up from the ground and looked around suspiciously at everybody but Lil. Me, though, he sized up and down before stepping closer to Lil. The warrior imp was afraid of me.

Growling at the imp with a smirk, I take Go's old armor pieces from my player inventory and toss them to the ground in front of the imp. As for a weapon, my current swords were all too heavy and my new Elder Bokuto were too weak to give to the imp. Instead, I retrieved a spare normal Bokuto from my player inventor and said, "Dusk imp claws, forward please."

Knowing what I was about to do, everybody with claws from the fight passed theirs forward from one another to me and I set to work. First, I cut one third of the side from the claws of warrior imps and then used my trusty slate stone to grind them with long serrations on the back.

Carefully embedding these dagger-like claws along the Bokuto's blade by the points of their serrations, I take out my dagger that was returned to me after the fight and say, "Lil, I need a flame." Lil happily bounced right over and held out a finger with a small fireball burning at the end of it. I used that flame to heat the end of my dagger without worries about the tempering of the weapon I did not even care for.

Melting small holes through the sides of the embedded claws close to the holes, I wind tendons through the nails around the Bokuto to further secure them in place before tightly knotting. By the time I was done, the damage of the weapon had gone up by six and it was named the Savage Dusk Bokuto. Then I actually sharpened the outer edges of the blade claws and the damage went up to sixteen.

[+30XP]

[+30 Primitive Crafting]

[Primitive Crafting Leveled]

[+12XP]

[Leveled Up]

[All stats raised by 1]

The levels were basically just icing on the cake for me right now because I could cheaply make skill training weapons and raise the value of my real swords through them. A Bokuto would train both sword and staff or cane skills so their value to people lay in experience gains while their value to me was in their low primitive durability that would require selling multiple Bokuto.

Once the goblin was outfitted and actually looked a little threatening, I say, "Lil, it's time to christen it with a naming ritual by proving your position as its new master. Rip off the claws it still has. Then you use them to craft a shortsword version of that Bokuto whenever you have time. It's what the queens do. If I present him a weapon of its own claws, it might cause confusion even though its bound to you."

Glancing sidelong as the imp that had taken up a protective stance beside and behind the druid girl, the same druid elf simply states, "Hand." The warrior imp held out the hand not holding its sword and Lil proceeded to hold its wrist while savagely ripping its large claws from its fingers. Then she healed him and patted its head.

After looking at its newly declawed hand after not making a noise through the entire process, the imp tries gripping the Bokuto with both hands and seems to like it.

*