13 Stone age

Chapter 13: Stone age

His progress was flying, to say the least. He found back into a routine with extended hunting times the next day. Over the week he kept hunting down spiders and eventually, they couldn't afford to move in larger groups than three anymore. This meant that he had essentially cleaned up the border by the end of the week.

Of course, he kept count. Everything else would be boring, after all. He took down 27 spiders, taming nine. He rose one level. He got three more vials of venom, all of which he carried home. <Sneak> and <Quiet> both levelled up once, <Throw> did so twice.

It was a good haul, making him actually feel prepared for facing the Mother. She would be on another level entirely, of course, but hey, he had this for sure. So, after more than enough time of decimating the spiders' numbers, he decided to venture out to destroy them.

With hardly any patrols around it was easy for Mercury to infiltrate into the spiders' territory. There were lots of nets around in the canopies, but fewer ones near the ground, significantly reducing the number of his obstacles again. It was a relatively eventless journey. There were some singular spiders crawling around, but those he simply snuck by and soon, he was nearing the centerpoint of their domain.

The queen was easy to pick out. If the fact of being surrounded by eggs didn't give it away, her size sure did. If her size didn't do the job, her red stripes sure did. If the stripes didn't do it, well, at that point it really wasn't her fault anymore. She was twice as big as the other arachnids and had red stripes, what more do you want? Jeez.

Luckily, she was alone. Well, there were quite a few newly hatched crawlies on the floor, but other than that, he was free to beat the shit out of her. So, Mercury did. Well, kind of. He was lucky. There was a river nearby. Coming from the mountain. Carrying all sorts of rocks, small and big ones alike.

So he took the biggest one he could take and basically stuffed it into his inventory. It was almost thrice his size, but since the Inventory just slurped up things he wanted it to, he could stuff it into the slot for now.

Then, he climbed onto a tree, from where he snuck above the Mother. Then, he dropped a giant rock on her, no throwing, nothing. It squashed her. End of story.

[Killed the Mother of spiders. Get: 250 Exp, 100 Gold, Mother's venom (consumable), Mother's fangs (ingredient).]

[Sub Quest "Defeat the Mother of spiders!" completed. You have received: 2 Ability points, 100 Skill points, 250 Exp.]

[Level Up!]

After a job well done, Mercury headed home. Look, okay. It wasn't an exciting fight. He dropped a rock on an oversized spider. It was simple and incredibly effective. It killed her, boom, dead. Spider blood everywhere and the bitch was squashed. I can't do any better than that. Here, have his newfound data instead, we all love that shit, right?

Status:

Mercury Rainfall Starlight

Lv.: 6 -> 7

Species: Zetraspa

Titles: <Tutorial Completer>

Hp: 55/55

Mp: 77/77

Sp: 100/100

Strength: 25

Vitality: 16

Dexterity: 25

Agility: 28 -> 29

Intelligence: 20

Wisdom: 17 -> 19

Willpower: 23 -> 24

Luck: 14 -> 15

Ability points: 39

Gold: 629

Skill points: 860

Beast familiars: 0/1

This was, in fact, a very good amount of points. His Ability- and Skill points were fairly high now and his stats were okay. But at the same time his quests would now rapidly increase in difficulty. The Mother and the Stag were doable through strategy, but when it came to the Bear and mister Woofers, he was stumped.

The wolves probably raided as a pack of Elites, while mister McNightmarebear was a walking one-man-army. Essentially, he had absolutely no idea as for how he would be able to bring them down. His rocks wouldn't harm Bearboy, and Woofles was probably too smart to be hit by them.

That being said, he had to take one of them down first. After a while, he settled on Grumpyface, the bear, for two major reasons. He had already managed to hurt him once and he knew he could escape from him. If one of the wolves had more than 60 Agility, he wouldn't even be able to run away at all, basically dishing out a death sentence. Now, in order to do this, he had to use some items. Namely, one of the drops from miss Many-Children.

[Mother's venom: Poison used by the Mother of spiders. Will dissolve innards of the prey when applied. Extremely painful. Grade: unique E.]

Oh yeah, he was about to poison someone again. This was easily the best way to go about things, especially since he didn't know much damage any one rock would do to Bear Mc. Bearface. In conclusion, he might be going overboard with his resources a little, but there wasn't really any room for error.

Then, he actually had another idea. Now, that one might actually require some work on his part, but it sure would be effective. He wanted to starve the bear. Essentially, he wanted to watch the guy hunt. When he got something, Merc would throw stones at him until the bear got suuuuuuper angry. Then he'd run away, do a loopedy-loop and snatch the food up into his inventory before the bear could return.

It was smart, but he questioned efficiency. First of all, it needed him being up during the day, then it required him to anger the bear, which was dangerous and in addition to that he didn't know how much fat the bear had stored. So his strategy went flat and it was back to the drawing board.

And it hit him.

The bear was resistant to stone, probably, but what about other stuff? Sharp things, like arrows or spears. Oh yeah. A stick and some runecarving could make for a very good makeshift javelin. He was about to start making weapons.

It took a bit of time until he had found suitable sticks. Actually, he didn't "find" any at all. Instead, he cut some off a tree himself, since searching was getting tiresome. It took a few minutes, but being a bit stronger than a normal cat, he was eventually able to sever some branches.

He then started carving them, first removing the bark using his claws. He smoothed out the surface and made sure the stick was as straight as he could get it before sharpening one end to a tip.

[Acquired the Skill <Crude Weaponmaking lv. 1> through a specific action.]

[Successfully carved a crude javelin. Get: 3 Exp.]

When he got the Skill, Mercury smiled to himself. He was always happy to gain new powers, after all they would help him in his quest to become worthy of his name. In this case however, he had no idea what this Skill would become in the future. It would become one of the abilities he would be most well known for, after all.

Whelp, not gonna spoil it for you guys. In any case, Mercury wasn't quite finished after carving a sharp stick. It needed to be a very good sharp stick, actually. So, he continued his work.

This meant more carving, albeit a different kind. It was actually time to utilize his runecarving abilities, so essentially time for his hard work to pay off. He decided that carving the stick with mid-level runes would be smarter, since they would give a greater effect if he succeeded and there wasn't a penalty if he failed, except for them taking up some space.

After deciding on it, Mercury got to work. He could carve two runes before meditating, since they sapped half his mana each. Each rune also took about half an hour to carve. This might seem excessive at first glance, but Mercury was a little bit of a perfectionist apparently, which, in this case, was by no means bad. Runecarvers actually needed to be perfectionists, since a slight misalignment of two lines could cause you to fail. In addition, it required constant focus, making it very mentally taxing, so he also needed to take some breaks for each rune.

Combining these factors, carving them took a while, but he also seemed to have some luck, since...

[<Meditate lv. 3> has levelled up!]

Yeah, that. Mercury was very happy to see this, and a big smile spread across his face. This was exactly what he needed right then, since rejuvenating his mana more quickly meant cutting down on working time. So, with the regeneration of his mana now taking a little shorter, he was ready to get back to carving soon and actually nailed two more runes before meditating again.

Surprisingly, he actually went about this a little strategically. Instinctually, he placed <Sharpness> runes near the tip of the javelin and <Reinforce> runes on its shaft. This was smart, to say the least. He could reinforce the tip to break less easily, yes, but he actually just needed it to do its job well, so <Sharpness> was far more effective.

Now, while reinforcing the tip may have some merit, sharpening the shaft would be quite idiotic. Like, imagine you get hit by an arrow. Is the shaft gonna be cutting you? No? Well, there's a reason for that. It's a circle, meaning it had zero, or ,mathematically seen, infinite, edges. Sharpening a circle using runes was (literally) pointless. It's like wanting to sharpen a club. If you wanted sharp edges, use a sword.

In this case, Mercury was doing well. After meditating and refreshing his mana once again, morning was approaching. And after carving two more runes, the second of which he actually failed, Mercury went to sleep.

The next evening was more than refreshing. His headache was gone, there was no more spider hunting to be done, he could carve runes all day long which he greatly enjoyed, and he was also preparing for his next quest by doing so. This made the hare he had for breakfast taste all the better, too.

But Mercury wasn't quite satisfied with his efficiency. He disliked only being able to carve two runes at the time and was mildly annoyed at the rate of his mana recovery. So, he finally decided to use some of his points. Not all of them, that would be stupid, but he wanted to be able to do a little better than before, so he spend some.

Intelligence: 20 -> 30

Wisdom: 19 -> 28

He spent 19 of his 39 Ability points, keeping the other 20 in case he had to dial 911. It was an emergency joke. Mercury laughed at it. He realized it wasn't that funny, then laughed at himself before finally getting a move on and carving some more runes.

Now, turns out he got lucky. After he finished investing his points, he carved some more runes and they consumed 40 Mp each. For every point he invested into Intelligence, his max Mp were increased by 5, leaving him with a total of 127 Mp now. This meant he could carve three runes at a time. This was, in fact, lucky, since he had absolutely no clue how much mana the runes would consume at their maximum. They adjusted to his maximum mana, never taking more than half of it at once, after all.

But this wasn't enough to our friend, the king. After carving all three runes successfully, he meditated. Without using the Skill. Doing this had two main reasons.

First of all, he wasn't in a hurry. He could take his time for as long as he wanted to. He decided to use this opportunity to brush up his actual mana absorption abilities, instead of relying on the Skill. This also felt much better and more refreshing.

Secondly, this method would net him a higher total gain. The Skill might save some time in the short term, but did it have the potential to permanently increase the amount of mana within his core? No, it didn't. Maybe it would in the future, but how was he supposed to know now? This was a future proof way of refilling his mana. Albeit slow, it was most certainly effective in other ways.

And thus, while absorbing mana, Mercury watched the pop-ups roll in.

[Absorbing mana from the surroundings.]

[Get: 1 Exp.]

[Get: 1 Exp.]

[Get: 1 Exp.]

[Max Mp have increased by 1.]

…

Mercury enjoyed reading, so he literally went through every single pop-up and kept count. It sure was thrilling. I swear, the original has like… 2 pages of just Exp. I'm not gonna make you go through this, especially given the fact that Merc kept count. He might be a little obsessed with those numbers, but at the very least that meant transparency.

At the end of around three hours of meditation, which was quite a bit longer than the half hour it usually took using <Meditate>, he had gained 278 Exp and 5 max Mp. It was more than fucking worth it. This was an absolutely amazing haul, equal to taking down 5 spiders and taming one. Well, except for the Gold, but in exchange he also got the reward of a full point of Intelligence! This was simply amazing! And at the end of it he got yet another packet of good news.

[Mp has reached their limit, no longer absorbing mana.]

[<Meditate lv. 4> has levelled up!]

He still got mastery from this whole shtick! He was still improving the Skill even though he wasn't even using it! This was, simply put, fucking amazing, no two ways about it. Mercury was stoked about this, essentially jumping all around his log with a huge grin on his face.

After a few more minutes of bottomless excitement it was eventually exhausted. So actually, it wasn't really bottomless... anyway, not the point. The point was that he went back to carving runes, smashing another three on there. One of them actually failed. Also, as for their size, all of them were a little bigger than Mercury's pawprint. They had to conform to the curvature of the stick, of course.

After these three runes, Mercury was slowly running out of space on the stick, but there was still easily enough for him to fit a few more carvings, so he meditated again. Heck, even if he couldn't fit any more runes on this stick, one of them wouldn't take down Grumpy. Yes, that was the bear's nickname now. You could attempt to sue Merc over it, but I don't think you can convince a court to trial a cat.

Back to his meditation. This one took a little longer, actually, a whole two hours and ten minutes, but by the end of it a smile bloomed on his face again. 283 Experience and 5 max Mp. And after successfully adding two more runes to his makeshift javelin, it was completely filled with runes, all of them occasionally pulsing with slight, almost inconceivable silver light. So, it was time for the most fun part. Testing.

Mercury was looking forward to this. It was incredibly important to see the power of a weapon, after all. He also liked throwing sharp things. A lot. Though first he had to pick a target.

He decided on a tree, actually. Of course, this might sound a little risky since it was wood up against bigger wood, but that was the perfect chance for his runes to show off their power, right? They were mid-level runes, so they shouldn't break that easily. In order to test that, Mercury removed a circle of bark on his target tree.

He made sure to pick a perfectly normal tree, one that he hadn't marked as his territory, making sure to pick one that didn't have a rune. Then, he prepared himself, carried over the javelin, placed it at the perfect distance from himself, and stared at the tree. He didn't wanna make this a simple test. Instead, this would be about as valuable as a field test. Why? Simply because Mercury was maximizing everything he could. He was about to throw a stick at a tree with the full intent to massacre the fucker. He took aim as sharply as he could and when using <Throw> after mentally preparing for over a minute, he put in as much physical power as he possibly could.

The javelin soared through the sky, cutting the air with a whistling sound before hitting the tree with a satisfying thunk. It was a good throw, with a slight arch, the javelin's shaft pointing ever-so-slightly upwards as it stuck in the tree. Now, Mercury had to check how deep it was buried.

Since he didn't exactly have the capacity to grab the javelin with his paws, he tried to pull it out with his teeth and fully failed. It was absolutely not budging to that. Instead, he decided to use <Throw> on it again in the opposite direction. Sounds stupid, right? Well, it worked. Perfectly. So screw all you haters! The cat said that, not me.

Anyways, after removing the javelin, Mercury checked the depth of the hole. He couldn't exactly shove his paw in it, since the javelin was too thin for that, it was still made from a branch after all, but he could eyeball it. From the looks of it, his newly made weapon had sunk about 5 centimeters deep into the tree.

This was actually great. He threw it at wood, after all. Straight up the same material as it was made from. It's like throwing a knife at a sheet of steel, it's not gonna penetrate that deeply. Meaning that the depth was possible thanks to the runes. This made him quite a bit more confident.

Now, Mercury was a bit of a perfectionist, as we already covered. He also was alright at coming up with strategy and liked preparing for fights. In addition, he hated being afraid. So, in order to kill Grumpy he didn't stop at one javelin. He also didn't stop at two, or three, or five, or seven. He started off by collection some more sticks and carved a total of ten full javelins. He got a notification after carving three and eight respectively.

[<Crude Weaponmaking lv. 1> has levelled up!]

[<Crude Weaponmaking lv. 2> has levelled up!]

The quality of his javelins seemed to improve slightly with each level and the amount he needed to carve to get another level was fairly low, so Mercury decided to practice this Skill a little more in the future. Weapons are important after all! (This is a message in a fantasy/video game world context. This is not to be taken literally in real life. The author does not advocate for unlicensed use and/or ownership of weapons and does not advocate for violence.)

After carving his fancy sticks, Mercury moved on to making sure they packed a punch. He carved runes, then meditated, then carved runes and meditated once again. For a while. A fairly long while, actually, especially since with every time he meditated, his max Mp increased and the next time it would take a little longer until his mana was filled up. He would still level <Meditate>, but sadly the levels he had in the Skill didn't exactly influence the speed he could absorb mana at.

However, this also bore good news. Absorbing mana this way gave him max Mp, mastery for <Meditate> and Exp all at once. In addition, he was also carving runes the entire time, giving him additional Exp and mastery towards another Skill. Now, luckily our favourite cat also had an affinity for counting, meaning I don't have to read all of the pages full of numbers to you and can simply sum it up!

He could fit 14 runes per javelin and carved 9 more after the initial one, so the runes to be summed up here were 126. He failed a total of 15. This seems very little, but that's actually because his runecarving levelled up. A lot.

[<Beginner Runecarving lv. 4> has levelled up five times!]

He got it to level 9 by the end of it, which actually buffed up his chance of carving mid-level 1st grade runes to nearly 100%, which was pretty great. But of course, there were more levels to speak of.

[<Meditate lv. 5> has levelled up seven times!]

Meditate was soaring upwards, since each time he meditated it took longer, which just about balanced out the increase in mastery needed for the levels. So, he ended up with <Meditate lv. 12>. Now, those were the levels he got when it came to Skills, but he didn't just level those, right? Riiight.

He got a total of 10206 Exp and 73 max Mp. Also, some notifications were so beautiful that you need to see them.

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

He got 5 levels from it. 5 fully fledged level-ups, with stats and Skill points and all of that. This, however, also wasn't very surprising and it actually didn't beat his previous levelling speed. The whole process of preparing the weapons took a long, long while. A little over three weeks, actually. In exchange for those three weeks he also got a suitable amount of rewards though. Especially within his stats. Status?

Status:

Mercury Rainfall Starlight

Lv.: 7 -> 12

Species: Zetraspa

Titles: <Tutorial Completer>

Hp: 55/55

Mp: 250/250

Sp: 105/105

Strength: 25

Vitality: 16

Dexterity: 25 -> 26

Agility: 29

Intelligence: 30 -> 38

Wisdom: 28 -> 34

Willpower: 24 -> 33

Luck: 15 -> 16

Ability points: 35

Gold: 697

Skill points: 1360

Beast familiars: 0/1

Needless to say, this was a huge improvement, especially in the mana department. It was almost as though he was actually making progress.

Of course he didn't only get higher stats. He also grew a lot closer with Cherry, who visited once a week. They usually just chatted about what they were up to and shared a few stories. Mercury told her about his preparations and showed her his newest runes, while Cherry told him about how her practice was going. He especially enjoyed the stories about her stealth fails.

She also was making progress with her hunting skills, improving her archery and her tracking as well and, according to gramps, she was actually progressing very well towards becoming a fully fledged hunter. He even promised he might let her go out on her own more often if she kept up the good work! That story was also the one after which Mercury and Cherry both hopped around in excitement.

They then made some more plans, promising that at some point they'd go hunting together. It was a true bro moment, and Mercury even consented to have her pick him up and hug him. Brings tears to a grown man's eyes.

But of course, eventually Cherry left and Mercury was done with his new arsenal of pointy things. And thus, he started his watch near the pond, having his javelins hidden with him in the brush. Of course, water is important, stay hydrated kids, and the bear showed up after an hour or so. Mercury was a patient man. Cat. Male cat... mat.

A very patient mat. There we go.

So, he kept watching the big, bad, bitey boy until he put his head down to drink. Then, the first javelin flew at him. It hit and sunk into the bear's side, like a pointy stick into raw meat. A very fitting analogy if I do say so myself. Of course, this was met with an earth-shaking roar, since our newfound furry friend was very unenthusiastic about getting speared.

And, after roaring, the bear looked around, a fire intensely burning in his eye as he checked for where the attack came from. Mercury, on the other hand, had no interest in being detected by this absolute chad and circled around the edge of the clearing, before launching another stick at top speed into the bear's other flank. This was met with yet another roar and a rapid escape from the bear, which started running as fast as it could. This would be very annoying to deal with for Mercury, so he decided to avoid the bear escaping. He threw the javelin he kept in his second slot and nailed the bear's foot with it. It actually worked better than expected, running its lower leg through and sinking a fair bit into the ground next to it.

Then, Mercury made a quick visit to his stash of throwing spears and restocked on another two. Well, you may wonder why he threw one and then had to restock at the start? This was because he was carrying the poison in his inventory. And this time he picked it back up. He threw another spear first, aimed at the left hind leg of the bear, which he then also nailed to the ground. Then, when it roared again, Mercury threw the poison at it's maw.

Unluckily, the bear wasn't stupid. It immediately stopped roaring and ducked with a closed mouth. The vial flew over its head and hit the nearby trees. Mercury had whiffed. In addition, the bear had now found him. It was staring straight at our grey hero with the corner of its maw pulled up. It was grinning.

Then, Grumpy tore his legs free. One of the javelins was still stuck in the ground and only pulled out of his thigh with a wet, gliding sound, while the other one was snapped in half with little resistance, making the reinforce runes entirely pointless.

In case it wasn't clear, this was fucking terrible. The blood actually drained out of Mercury's face at this point. He was scared shitless. He only had six javelins left and his biggest weapon had just missed. In addition, this giant monster with a head thrice his size was charging at him full force. It was at this moment that he knew, he fucked up.

Mercury ran. He turned around, left behind all javelins other than the two in his inventory and sprinted away. He hadn't given up, actually, but fighting was currently very low on his list of priorities. He did stick true to his principle of distraction though, flinging dirt and pebbles at the bear's face with every step and after a while, the footsteps grew quieter.

He turned around and the bear was only visible in the distance. The chase had only lasted a few minutes, so he could probably make it back to the pond if he tried, but about half of his Sp was gone. Still, he couldn't give up this chance. The bear had two spears stuck in him and two holes in his legs. He was bleeding heavily and those injuries would only get worse over the duration of combat. Mercury was just exhausted, but Grumpy was in rough shape because of the sneak attack.

So, Mercury decided to go after him. He turned around and walked back towards the pond and after a few steps, he found Grumpy having laid down after chasing him, now licking his wounds. That wasn't happening tho. Mercury took out both of his leftover javelins, put them on the floor and simultaneously launched them at the bear's face, trying to hit his eyes.

[<Throw lv. 10> has levelled up!]

After the first one, he got a level. This put them out of sync, meaning that one hit the eye of the bear, sinking quite deep into its skull, while the other ended up smashing some of his teeth and pierced the back of his mouth. This made the roar of the bear quickly turn into a wet gurgling of blood, which then flowed out from its mouth as it snapped the javelin in half using its teeth.

With two spears in its sides, two holes in its legs, a javelin in its eye and half of one stuck in its mouth, the beast cane charging at Mercury again, absolutely furious this time, when the cat quickly ascended a tree. The bear smashed into it at full speed, shaking the crown before making it rapidly lower to the floor, but at this point, Mercury was already on another tree. With the bear following him, he hopped his way back to the stash of javelins, where he then dropped and waited a bit for the charging monster.

He let it come into his sight and waited until there were no obstacles. He was panting heavily and knew that his stamina was just about to run out, but he kept his paws firmly placed where they were, on four smooth sticks. And then, he used <Throw>.

Four javelins suddenly started levitating before flying forwards towards the bear. They struck, each one penetrating its skin, three sinking into its skull and one into the base of its neck. The bear staggered, then dropped to the floor, sliding forwards with its residual momentum until it hit a tree. The trunk shook, throwing leaves onto the ground, then slowly stopped and things were silent except for a mopaaw's panting.

[Killed the black Bear. Get: 400 Exp, 200 Gold, black Bear's tooth (ingredient), black Bear's hide (ingredient).]

[Sub Quest: "Defeat the black Bear!" completed. You have received: 2 Ability points, 100 Skill points, 250 Exp.]

HE FUCKING DID IT! He beat the bear! Mercury dropped to the floor in front of the bear's corpse. He was at his mental limit. Seeing something many times his own size charge at him with maximum force was fucking horrifying, and he still killed it! Holy shit. What the fuck, man. He had finally acquired the title of an absolute madlad in everyone's hearts. If only someone had seen him, he thought.

But in his heart, he knew we were with him.

Sadly, he didn't have any time to rest, so he got back up after a while and started on cleanup. He carried the drops and his six intact javelin back to his trusty log. The one that had hit the bear in the neck broke during the slide.

Unlike him, however, we actually have time for a break. Get yourself a glass of water for a second, staying hydrated is important. Afterwards, you can continue reading. Or don't, who am I to tell you, I'm just a disembodied voice or something. Well, whatever, still cooler than that medieval narrator bastard. I MEAN YOU, JEFF!!! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!

Oh, ah, hrm-hrm, I may have gone on a tangeon there, please excuse my behaviour and simply continue on to the next chapter.