20. Power-Levelling.
After seven hours of continuous training with some rest in-between, Sunny choose to exit the Newbie Training Ground and came to the Central Plaza.
The number of players present in the city had shot up since seven hours ago. Sunny walked along the West Main Road and reached the West City Gate.
NPCs are able to see player icons. Hence, they know that players are the otherworlders mentioned in the oracle. Therefore, they are able to enter and exit any city of the race they belong to.
For any other race's city, players need special permission or be in company with a player of that race. They also have to pay certain amount of gate fees according to the situation.
Sunny easily exited the city and took a look at the surrounding scenery. Grassland spread around the stone-paved road leading to barren wilderness named Khandwa that is covered in sparse bushes and grass patches.
Snake monsters by the name [Two Headed Snake] infested the Khandwa wilderness. They are strong monsters ranging from level 10 to 20 with grades varying from D to B.
They also hunt in pairs and are able to execute a unique attack where they utilize their flexible body to coil around each other and then jump toward an enemy while executing bite attack filled with venom from four different direction.
They are absolutely the worst monsters players can go against while being in the level range of 10 to 20. Sunny also doesn't want to waste his time fighting them. After training against them in NTG's training space he confident in being able to slay them at the cost of some more time.
In the south of the Khandwa wilderness there is a rocky region where the same monsters reside in large numbers. But, they are defective as they develop a glaring weakness at the time of evolution from a normal snake to two headed snake.
When a normal snake evolves to two headed snake, their second head grow from the position of their hearts. Normal [Two Headed Snake] has their strongest scales at the back of their head and at the position of division to protect their hearts.
While [Two Headed Snake] monsters living in the rocky region are those that aren't able to form scales at the position of division thereby making their hearts vulnerable. The [Two Headed Snake] (Defective) are exiled to the rocky region exactly because of this reason by the others.
In his previous life, Sunny had read a post about this. A guild by the name 'Hunt the Pandas' had occupied this region and made good use of this easy hunting ground.
Sunny took around forty-seven minutes to reach the rocky area. On the way, he was obstructed by the snake monsters eight times. If not, he would have taken just twenty-five minutes for the journey.
The rocky region is spread in an area of about thirty sq.km. There are many small rocky hills present here. Every hill has two to seven cave structures where the [Two Headed Snake] (Defective) monsters delves in pairs.
Sunny entered one such cave at the outskirts of the rocky region with his wand at the ready. The cave was dimly lit due to presence of a particular glowing plant [Mach Light Vines].
This species of plant absorbs any sound in the vicinity of five meters around them and converts it into green colored prana elemental mana which is reason for them glowing. They are of some value if sold in the city alchemy shops, but Sunny wasn't interested in wasting time and labor collecting them.
About fifty meter into the cave, the path opens up to a small cavern about nine meters in height and roughly fourteen to seventeen meters in width.
In the middle of the cavern, two snakes with two heads each were laid with their bodies intertwined below the joint of their head. Just as Sunny reached the cavern, they stood up with their heads facing him. They were about two meters in length.
He found out that both of them were of level-10-D grade. Then they coiled back like a spring and jumped towards Sunny in the next moment and closed the distance of nine meters between them and him in less than a second.
Sunny had already dodged to the side the moment he noticed them, but not before deploying a [Mana Shield] at his previous location. The blue shield broke and the snakes stopped right before the cave path.
Sunny quickly executed the skill [Mana Bolt] at their back. Before the snakes could turn around and jump at him again, the blue ball of mana landed on their back and they were flung five meters into the path because of the skills explosion.
He then moved in front of the path and waited while casting the skill [Mana Chain] in a rigid rapier shape with a pointy end. Five seconds later the snakes turned around and again jumped at him. This time, the heads weren't much able to spread causing them to cover smaller attack angle.
He choose to dodge to the right side while burying the end of the rapier shaped [Mana Chain] into one of the snake's heart. That one dies instantly regardless of how much HP it had.
He didn't do that in the first time because of the wide cavern space allowing the four heads to spread further and cover potential holes in their attacks.
Due to the death of one snake the other one was unable to free itself from the entanglement. Sunny also finished it off quickly.
Its not like he hadn't thought about heading directly into the core area of the rocky region to fight higher level defective snakes and insta kill them for bonus exp. He had tried fighting the snakes higher level himself in the training space, but he didn't get chance to dodge in that case.
Agility is his secondary attribute after all and can't be compared to higher level agility type monsters. Monsters in the core region are also of higher grade which further elevates the difficulty with level difference. He is confident in his ability to take down same level B grade [Two Headed Snakes]. Going against higher level monsters now is just plain suicide.
Before the battle started, he had already crushed the [Exp Boost Token]-D. Hence, now he is enjoying its benefit while slaying some easy targets.
For the next four hours, Sunny went deeper into the rocky region while clearing the snakes from east to west. By the time the duration of [Exp Boost Token] got exhausted, he was only seven hundred meters from the center.
He only encountered two B grade monsters throughout the whole journey. Both of them were alone in different caves. Number of C grade monsters were also low because of their weakness that prevent them from reaching higher grades.
At the end of the day, Sunny reached level 18. This was in a way power-levelling. Just two more levels and he will be ready to go to the Goblin Race Territory.
He went to the cave occupied by level-15-B [Two Headed Snake]. Created some chunks of debris by using [Mana Bolt] on cavern walls and covered the path leading outside. Then he sat behind the protrusion in the middle of the cavern before logging out of the game.
This way there will less chances of other monsters discovering his avatar while he is not in the game. Most players also doesn't know that their avatar can die if they log out in the wilderness out in the open, yet.
The CEE game developers also didn't mentioned anything about it in the Forum. Players will only know about it after numerous suffering in the second week. Maybe earlier this time.
Anyway, after logging out Sunny quickly checked his account balance. The amount increased by 46,140 ⨄⨭. 24,640 ⨄⨭ from the first post and the remaining from second post.
Next day, Sunny logged into the game at 11:00 Am punctually. Today's goal is just to reach level 20 and some more shopping and training in preparation for the adventure into the Goblin territory.
The shabby cave block was blown apart by just three [Mana Bolt] at the right place.
Well, it certainly took him five hours to level up from level 18 37% Exp to level 20. Even though monsters here are easy to hunt but without 10 times exp boost, levelling will slow down.
From one of the level-20-C [Two Headed Snake] Sunny got an unexpected gain. A companion weapon.
-[Augmented Serpent Fang]-C (Companion)
Level 20-40
Requirement: Assassin; 50 Agility
+20 Agility; +25% Stack Regeneration; +5 Strength
Durability: 150/150
Note: Effects and Durability increases by 25% per level.
'Hmm... A weapon for assassin class. There's nothing I can do with it other than auctioning it. I will make sure to rip-off a ridikulous chunk of we-'
His stopped his internal monologue and shouted "Wait!!" and jumped up in excitement. "If I can get my hand on that item, then this will certainly be useful. Let's get that thing after I finish the task at hand."