*rustle* *rustle* *rustle*
At that moment Soren grabbed the hilt and waited while looking motionlessly and after using his sixth sense, he sensed some sort of wobbly creature that was moving through the bushes, before it continued on its merry way without noticing Soren's camp.
"This is the eighth or ninth time for this stupid fake alarm." Soren said after he sighed in relief. It has been around two hours since Lavenza has started resting in the tent, while he was on the lookout for anything that may invade the camp. He wanted to avoid killing anything, so everytime something came nearby the camp, he would grab the hilt to prepare himself for battle, but everytime it would also leave after a couple of minutes, hence this entire situation had Soren on edge for a while.
As he kept watch, Soren decided to converse a bit with the system so he could get a bit nore info about it.
'Say, system. Is it possible for me to break through the tier threshold by killing a monster that is, let's say 2 tiers above me?' Soren asked with his mind.
[Impossible. Although it is technically possible to kill something, at least a couple of tiers above you, this level up system was for the reason to avoid situation like those.]
'What do you mean?'
[It's easy to tell. Don't bite more than you can chew. If you try to fight something way ahead of you, you'll obviously die a dog's death, hence this limitation was made so it would force its users to improve their skills, not to create miracles.]
'So in a way, it was made to discourage the overconfident people who thought that they could take on anything.'
[Whatever floats your boat.] The system commented on Soren's last thought.
'So, how come you only use textboxes to communicate? Don't you have a voice or something?' Soren thought a bit curiously after putting the comment from before behind him.
[Your settings has set the communication setting on text-only mode. Do you wish to change communication settings?]
'Sure.'
[Settings:
General
Visual
Audio
Communication:
Universal Translation: ON
Subtitles: OFF
System Communication: Text-Only
Interface
Others]
This interface appeared in front of him and was suprised by the amount of settings in front of him. He even thought that the system was an actual game interface for a moment. After touching the "System Communication" tab, this appeared:
[System Communication: Text-Only
Text-Only [Active]
Voice-Only
Text-Voice]
'Activate Text-Voice option.' Soren thought in his head.
"[Activated Text-Voice Option]" At that moment, an interface appeared and a robotic female voice was heard in Soren's ears, something that caight him off-guard.
'Hmmm... Interesting. Didn't know she had a female voice and for sure I didn't know she was so... emotionless, despite the sass she has dropped.' Soren thought to himself.
'Activate Voice-Only option.'
"Activated Voice-Only Option." This time, only the robotic female voice was heard and no interface appeared.
'Activate Text-Only option.'
[Activated Text-Only Option.] This time only the interface appeared and Soren decided to stick with this for now.
After another couple of hours passed, Soren felt like he was nearing his limit this time and decided to wake up Lavenza.
"Pst. Lavenza. Wake up." Soren said quietly while waking her up.
"Reny~..." Lavenza looked still half-asleep.
"Come on, it's your turn for lookout now. Just wake me up when the lights come and don't fight anything unless it comes into the camping area. Don't provoke them just because they are passing by. Good night." Soren said before he entered the tent. The tent itself only had a big cloth at the bottom and no sleeping bags or pillows or anything of the sorts, so Soren could only sleep on the cloth with his sword as a pillow at best.
As Soren was sleeping, Lavenza still felt a bit sleepy, so she thought to sleep for a bit more before she started her watch, but as she was about to fall asleep, her instincts suddenly started screaming danger and woke up immidiately. She tried looking around and even used her sixth eye, but nothing appeared nearby. After a few seconds passed, the instincts of danger left and the only thing that remained, was a relieved Lavenza just laying down on the ground. Whatever that was, it clearly was intimidating and probably way out of their league, considering the amount of danger it gave.
Ever since then, she stayed vigilant for the next four of five hours, at least until the day came. After the day started again, she woke up Soren who looked slightly tired, due to the fact that he didn't have a very comfy sleep.
"Good morning Lavenza. Did anything happen while I was asleep?" Soren asked while rubbing his right eye a bit.
"Kyuu~ kyuu~." Lavenza nodded a bit eagerly.
"What happened!?" Soren asked slightly shocked.
"Kyuu~ kyuu~ kyuu~." Lavenza tried her best at explaing things.
"Something appeared last night?" Soren asked for confirmation.
"Kyuu~." Lavenza anodded eagerly.
"Was it powerful?"
"Kyuu~" She nodded again.
"Did it do anything or enter the camp?"
"Kyuu~." She shook her head this time.
"Hmmm... Probably some powerful beast that passed nearby. It probably was on its own merry way, because if it was hunting, he wouldn't be alive now." Soren hypothesized after getting all the info he could get.
"Just something final. Did you see it?" Soren decided to ask quickly while he was gathering the tent and putting it in his bag.
"Kyuu~..." Lavenza shooke her dejectedly this time.
"So something dangerous that we don't know hoenit looks, is roaming the forest. What a way to start this day." Soren said with an annoyed expression.
"Can't do much about it for now. Let's eat a bit before we get started on our hunt again." Soren said seriously before he took out a few cookies to eat with Lavenza. After eating, their next course of action was to explore the forest again to look for either a Ravaged Wolf, or a Mer-Hobgoblin, or if they got lucky, the Crystal Charger was also a valid option for a tier upgrade.
...
*rustle* *rustle* *rustle*
"Hmmm... Stay frosty Lavenza." Soren said quietly as he was moving towards the rustling noise. After getting near, he saw a lone white slime just wiggling and minding its own business.
"Just another salt slime again. Let's move on Lavenza." Soren said a little bit annoyed after seeing the rustle was made by a slime. The duo has been looking for any tier 2 monster for at least three hours, but only things they found were Salt Slimes, Jellyfish and the occasional trio of Mer-Goblins. They did find the occasional pack of Sea Wolves as well, but their learders were at most level 9 Sea Wolves, which just brought more disappointmen on Soren.
"Kyuu~..." Lavenza was also slightly dejected as well.
"I wonder what we are doing wring this time?" Soren said after he sat down on a nearby rock.
"Kyuu~?" Lavenza just shrugged.
"Maybe I'm just getting a little impatient, that's all. I mean, we did get lucky, or unlucky I should say, with that pack from yesterday, but the damned tier system is making things just more complicated than it needs to be. I just wish I had, at least a level of potential that was higher than 10, at least that way I would save myself all of this unnecessary trouble." Soren complained for a little while.
"Kyuu~ kyuu~ Reny~..." Lavenza patted on his right shoulder trying to console him a little.
"For now, let's just persevere and if all else fails, we shall take the L and focus on completing the mission. The tier upgrade won't go anywhere, but if we fail the mission, we will lose our job for sure. So let's keep looking again." Soren said after getting up looking a little bit better than his previously irked mood.
...
-Western Highway, 30 miles outside Crystalia City-
On one of these roads, there was a mermaid with long black hair, a pair of purple eyes and a shiny purple tail with round scales. The person was also wearing a pair of black clothes that covered most of her skin and had a sheathed black blade on her hip. As she was swimming down the road, she smelled blood going through the water, so she got curious and decided to check where it came from. When she arrived at her destination, she saw the remains of a battle left from not that long ago. Those remains were actually the Sea Wolf corpses that Soren didn't bother picking up, as well as some part of the trees slightly damaged.
"Hehe. This is a good smell hunter. You may leave your game behind, but that stench of yours never leaves you." The mermaid said in a casual, yet slow and slightly creepy manner.
After a few hours of traversing through the forest, she found Soren and Lavenza having already set up camp and Soren was going in the tent already. After he entered, she realised that the hunter she was interested to, was actually the guy she called a retard, when they bumped in the library. At that point, she was so angry that her menacing and dark aura started to seep out and Lavenza was on extremely high alert. After that, she just left because the last thing she was in the mood for, was a bickering match with a guy she badmouthed. Although she was enticed by the efficiency of the hunt, the hunter himself still was a rude guy she wasn't willing to give even a second of her time.