Chapter 2 Floor 1, November 7, 2022, Monday.

The inn was fairly empty when I got up, I had set my alarm early as I wanted to get where I was going before anyone else. It was likely a few parties had already left for the second village, and I wanted to try and join one early on since they were more likely to have beta testers with good info. So I dressed quickly and headed out, I know you are thinking dressed quickly you mean selected equip clothes from the menu. Nope remember I was paralyzed, I hadn't been able to dress myself for a couple years in the real world, so at night I took off my clothes, and in the morning put them on; it was so cool.

I ran as fast as I could down the road to the second village till I was near the edge of the forest. It was only about 6 am by then and while some people were out killing boars it was by no means packed yet. I went ahead and hunted a few while watching for likely looking parties headed for the second village. The first couple I saw were rather scary looking being all older men (compared to me anyways), and after a couple hours I hadn't seen a good prospect when I saw another party coming up. To be honest I was almost to back off of asking them as well when I saw them but I heard them laughing and joking, and it sort of reminded me of some of the people from my dojo between bouts, so I gathered up my courage and approached them.

A rather unkempt guy with a rakish smile and a shock of red hair turned when he saw me approaching. I barely heard one of the others say "What's a little kid like that doing here!".

"Excuse me, if its not too much trouble could I travel with you to «Horunka Village»."

The person in front of me had a look of surprise on his face, and replied, "Are you sure, its rather dangerous don't you realize if you die here your gone."

"It really isn't that bad, as long as you have a group, so you can't be surrounded, and anyway there should just be wolves and nepents up ahead if I remember right."

"What really were you a tester? I thought they had an age limit on that."

"Yeah well I had a special circumstance, so I got in anyway."

He seemed rather assured by the fact I knew what was ahead, but seemed like he was wondering about what I just said, so I decided I might as well continue.

"Did you pay attention to the beta process? They brought in some people with problems like blindness or deafness to help test the systems, I got paralyzed about a year before the beta, and they had me testing for something they called phantom nerve synchronization or something."

"Oh shit, that sucks I'm sorry guess I shouldn't have dredged up the past for you."

(Giggle) "No that's fine, it probably makes me one of about 10 people happy to be stuck here after all."

"Were any of you in the Beta?"

"No, so if you could give us some pointers as we go I'd love to have you along. I should introduce myself, I'm Klein of guild «Fuurinkazan» and these are my friends."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, my name is Ningyo. I seem to remember something like Fuurinkaazan from history class, but I didn't think you could make guilds yet and there should be some type of symbol right?"

"Haha, yeah it's the motto of Takeda Shingen."

At this his friends yelled. "Speedy like wind, gradually like forest, aggressively like fire, immovably like mountain, secretly like shadow, actively like thunder.", and burst out laughing.

"Oh, and yeah you can't make official guilds yet, but we've been in a guild in lots of MMO's, and we will be in this too."

As we started walking into the forest I noticed his entire guild was wielding one-handed swords, most of them being cutlass's. When I asked them Klein said a player had taught them the basics so they were going with them for now, and asked me about my spear.

"Well spears, have a few advantages over swords in that they get better range so you can keep the enemies further away, swords are a bit more balanced as they can handle almost any situation at least decently, being able to both stab, and slash. Spears on the other hand are pretty much only for stabbing, but the range and power make them better if you are careful where you hunt. Of course in a party you probably want a mix of weapons. Spears are great at low level in parties since using a straight stab means there is little risk of hitting your team members, and the primary risk of being surrounded and having enemies get too close isn't a problem if you have someone with you. At higher skill you get some sweeping attacks that can keep an area defended, but they are hard to use in a party since you have to be careful not to hit your own party members."

Shortly thereafter we came across a wolf pack, or more accurately they came across us.

Grrr... I spun and a large wolf was practically on me with more sounds from all sides. Stabbing out quickly I got it to dodge to the side before it hit me, but fell down backwards, luckily One of the others tried to attack it before it could get onto me. It dodged away and I regained my feet before it could get back in. Around me most of them were doing really well, but they seemed to be essentially doing solo fights against the wolves. Having been in the Beta I had seen how wolf packs work together, trying to draw people apart and flank them, so I readied my spear and watched for a wolf that was getting ready to charge.

Seeing one starting to charge the side of one of the swordsmen I used «Lunging Thrust» putting all my energy into pushing off my rear foot, I shot forward stabbing the wolf in the side right behind the head. The wolf disappeared into colored polygons, and I was stuck frozen for about 0.2 seconds. «Lunging Thrust» was the second basic spear «Sword Skill», and while it was powerful it was risky to use due to the long recovery time at the end of an attack. Luckily all the wolves were too busy with the other 7 people around me, so it wasn't that dangerous at the moment. By now 2 of the other wolves were down, and only 1 of the players was down to yellow. I turned and looked for another opening, and saw some more movement in the forest.

Yelling "There's another pack coming." I made another «Lunging Thrust» into a wolf Klein had just knocked back, while they were both stunned for a fraction of a second. It might not sound like much, but being stunned for even 1/10th of a second is a big opening in a fight.

I really wasn't very worried, even with one and a half packs considering we were a group of eight it wasn't that dangerous. Wolves really only became problems when they had twice your numbers. Still with the other pack here it was time to stop using «Lunging Thrust» for a bit so they couldn't take advantage of the openings. I decided to stay at one side and just poke my spear at the right side of one wolf, and the left side of another to keep them occupied till a few more were dead. Since I wasn't using sword skills I wouldn't do much damage, but that wasn't the goal. Each time I stabbed at them they'd jump away bumping into the other. In a few seconds they AI would probably adapt and retreat them out of range, but tactics like this could buy you at least 10-15 seconds.

When the two wolves retreated a bit, I glanced around and saw 1 of the swordsmen on the ground in red with a wolf headed in to bite chunk out of him. Grabbing my spear in the middle I made a whirling spin bringing the tip of my spear whipping right above the the fallen swordsman, hitting the lunging wolf right in the eye's. Even without using a sword skill, hitting the eyes is essentially always a critical hit, and while it didn't kill the wolf since I hadn't used a «Sword Skill», it still took out over a third of its HP. Following it up with a «Forward Thrust» to the wolf's face, it shattered into countless polygons.

Unfortunately I had taken too long. The two wolves I had been keeping at bay were both mid leap towards me by the time I recovered. Bringing my spear around as quickly as I could I managed to set it for one wolf to fall on seriously injuring it, but the other came in low and viciously ripped into my leg. The pain as I expected was incredible, and I collapsed with a scream.

By now only 6 wolves were left and at my scream Klein rushed in with a «Horizontal» attack killing the wolf right after it gave another savage bite. The other wolf I had stabbed turned to face him, and got ran through by one of his guild members. My HP was still fine, not even to the yellow, but I was curled up on the ground crying and holding my leg. The others made short work of the wolves, while Klein tried to figure out what was wrong with me.

"I don't get it, sure it hurt's when they bite you, but only for a second and not nearly that bad, did something else happen?"

After another minute I got the pain under control, In this world it disappeared quickly since there was no lasting source to keep causing it. Eventually I got my voice back, "Well you know in the configuration it had advanced settings? One of them is pain threshold. Unless you changed yours its probably at 5-10%, I'm not sure if its changed since the beta. Mine on the other hand was set really high for the testing I was doing, and since I didn't expect to be stuck I didn't change the settings, so mines at 60%."

The people around me had their jaws drop. "Holy shit, what are you doing out here with things being like that? Every time you get hit you'll be have to go through this or worse, and there's no way to avoid getting hit at times."

"Well I know that I'm fine with the pain, it lets me know I'm really here. Though it is troublesome when it happens, it's why I wanted to be in a party going through here. I was hoping to just not get hit at all to be honest, but I knew it would happen sooner or later. I'm just glad you were here to take care of that wolf before things got dangerous."

"What do you mean, that's the first time you got hit so far? What have you been doing."

"Well until now just killing boars, maybe 50 or 60 of them. Those are simple though, and don't group together."

This seemed to shock a lot of them. To be honest when I had seen them in battle none of them were very good at dodging or blocking yet. They were doing fine anyway since this was so early on, and once you figured out how to use sword skills wolves and boars were no match at all one on one. I was actually getting slightly worried though, it seemed like they were barely more than newbies, and if we hit 3 wolf packs or something it could get real dangerous.

"So did any of you get the «Searching» skill by chance?"

"Ah no most of us haven't set up our second skill yet." replied Klein.

"I would suggest at least one or two of the more observant among you get it, it should show a cursor above mobs and NPC's at a fairly good range unless they have a «Hiding» skill. It could be bad if we ran into more than 2 wolf packs at a time. We should probably move along within another 3-4 minutes so those packs don't respawn nearby."

Klein asked a couple other guild members if they would get the searching skill since they were rather good at noticing things, and they proceeded to do so.

Shortly thereafter one of them pointed ahead and said there was a small pack of wolves on its own just off the path. It being a single pack and us for-warned we made short work of it this time. After a few more fights, and another 40 minutes of walking we reached «Horunka Village». It was still only about noon, so I suggested we go past an inn and get a bite to eat and I would fill them in on the area.

After having lunch, and telling them about the «Nepents» acid, and seed and such, I told them there was supposed to be a quest in town for getting a good sword, but that I had never done it so they would have to get it themselves if they were interested. A couple of Klein's friends also wanted to switch to spears, so we went past a weapon shop to buy them ones, and I bought three «Bronze Spear» and sold my old spear to one of them since it was better against the acid. The «Bronze Spear» was slightly better for most things though, and to be honest I was not planning on staying here to fight «Nepents». After helping the two that got spears to get down the basic «Sword Skills» I said goodbye. Klein said if I wanted to stick around I could join up with them, but even though they seemed pretty nice I felt sort of like I was some Anime Cos-player with a bunch of Otaku's around me, so I politely declined. I did accept Klein as a friend though, and told him if he needed something feel free to send me a message.

Level 1: Str 3, Agi 0+2; Spear 2