Hunter crawled out through a tight crevice in the cave, inching his way out until he drew fresh air again, his eyes squinting as they adjusted to the sudden burst of light and fog of the outside.
What the drop to Thrall also gave was a shortcut down nearly to the base of the cliff, and Hunter emerged into the open world over halfway to the bottom.
Because the path to the bottom spiraled, it made the journey down seem far longer than it actually was.
By falling straight down, Hunter could cover far more ground than anyone in an instant.
Hunter estimated he was two thirds of the way down. He finished the rest of the run down without much issue.
The only enemies on the starting cliff were Wraiths and the occasional reanimated Skeleton, and all of these, he just sprinted by and dodged.
No time to deal with the riff raff.
The path down the cliff ended when it fed into a circular courtyard of relatively flat marble ground.
Down here, there was no fog, and Hunter took the time to look around.
The courtyard was massive in size, easily almost stretching out into the horizon of his vision, but he could just barely make out the bases of the ten cliffs surrounding it.
Nobody else was coming down the paths into the courtyard. He could not hear anything either, no clamor of battle or shouts.
Just pure, eerie, absolute silence.
Good.
>>>
New Location Found: Forest of Judgement
>>>
Hunter took in a breath, remembering bitterly the Forest of Judgement.
Called a forest because even though the area was a seemingly an artificially constructed courtyard of marble with ornately carved pillars dotted everywhere, everything was overgrown.
Vines, fungi, and roots grew freely, choking out almost every inch of the once pristine white marble.
At the center of this courtyard, there was a platform that teleported Seekers in groups of up to five into the boss arena.
Hunter started to make his way to the center. He mapped a strategic path out that avoided key pillars that hid enemies in them. Plant type monsters that would emerge from under the marble or within the pillars.
But one of these pillars, one out of one hundred, Hunter did not avoid.
Instead, he stopped in front of it with his dagger raised.
The pillar looked to be the same as all the others, fashioned at its head into the shape of a gargoyle covered in ivy, but there was one notable difference from the others: the gargoyle wore a broken half crown.
Hunter slashed at some roots that had grown through the pillar. The blade nicked into the root but barely cut it because his stats were too low.
Unlike the other plant monsters, this one had to be specifically aggroed.
Hunter stepped backwards as the pillar shuddered. The roots within it expanded, breaking apart the pillar into connected chunks of rock that formed the body of a living creature.
The gargoyle at the top of the pillar acted like a head, and its once dull marble eyes glowed green.
>>>
Root Golem
Threat: Five Stars
Level: 8
HP: 50/50
>>>
Hunter watched as information about the creature flowed into his system, the font of it all being an angry red because the monster greatly out-leveled him.
A threat rating of five stars, huh.
Threat ratings were based relatively using the Seeker's own strength to scale, so to Hunter who was still level 0, this Root Golem was the highest threat rank possible at five stars.
The font on his system interface was an angry red, warning him of the immense threat looming before him.
But Hunter only faintly smiled. He felt almost nostalgic to face something that could actually kill him easily in one strike, but he knew this was not going to be a real fight.
The Root Golem creaked as it uprooted itself from the ground, shattering the marble around it. It loosed an introductory roar to intimidate.
That was wasted time on the monster's part that Hunter abused. He withdrew a Molten Bomb, materializing it in a shower of blue sparks from his inventory, pressed his thumb on the trigger, heard it click, and then threw the silver sphere at the Root Golem.
The bomb slammed into the Root Golem's center and raged outwards in a flaming explosion that crackled and sent a squall of burning wind towards Hunter.
Hunter squinted his eyes and began to step backwards now. He heard the Root Golem roaring in pain, and when the fiery explosion died down, he saw that flames clung all over the Root Golem, burning its body of roots apart.
Though the stone of the pillar armored it, its true essence was comprised in the roots, and those took double damage from fire.
>>>
Root Golem
HP: 50 > 10
Status: Burnt
>>>
Forty points of damage.
This was infinitely quicker and better than hacking away at this thing with a melee weapon.
Even if Hunter had gotten to level 10, the maximum a Seeker could get up to in the tutorial, the Root Golem possessed powerful armor that would reduce even the strongest of strikes possible at this level to 3 to 5 points of damage.
Hunter watched as his system gave him an informative prompt that he gave a cursory glance at.
>>>
Status: Burn
When a unit takes too much fire type damage they will become [Burnt], losing 5% of their maximum health every second. The [Burnt] status may be refreshed with continual application of fire type damage.
>>>
He already knew what this all was, but the system treated him as if he had not returned. All the better. He would not stand out this way.
Hunter stepped to the side as he dodged the Root Golem extending out a limb of entwined roots, slamming it down like a club.
The blow cracked the marble beside him, but he did not flinch.
He inched backwards, egging the Root Golem forwards to hit him while it burned away, but not far enough out where the monster would de-aggro and return to its pillar form, healing up.
Dancing around the edge of aggro range like this, Hunter watched as the Root Golem slumped to the ground, the flames wreathing its body finally killing it.
The Root Golem's body disintegrated into a mass of blue particles that faded in the wind.
This was no fair fight.
But Hunter was not here for those. He was here to complete his run and get what he needed.
>>>
+60 EXP
Level 0>3
EXP: 13/30
*15 Stat Points available to distribute*
>>>
Every level gave five stat points.
Good to know that every base game mechanic was the exact same through the return.
EXP requirements for leveling up were the same too, increasing by a factor of approximately 50% for each successive level until level 100 when Seekers reached a cap.
A cap that Hunter had sought to break before he had died, for level 100 was only enough to reach the 50th World.
There must have been more. More power to take.
Hunter failed in his past life, but this time, he would not know defeat.
He distributed the 15 stat points accordingly:
>>>
Stats:
HP: 1/10
Mana: 5/5
Strength – 1 > 3
Vitality – 2
Agility – 1 > 10
Magic – 1
Attunement – 1 > 5
Perception - 3
>>>
Strength and agility were self-explanatory, and these stats, Hunter would use as they were the primary offensive stats he favored. In his past life, he had obtained a build so optimized towards sheer destructive power he was called the "Kill Shot" reputed to be able to slay bosses in one hit.
In exchange, Hunter barely, if ever, leveled his defensive stats. He was the ultimate glass cannon who blitzed through the mightiest of monsters, reading their movements, analyzing their patterns, and putting them down with brutal efficiency.
To Hunter, if he got hit even once, he had failed.
In speedrunning games, this was a common principle.
Why level up defensive stats when they just wasted more time you could have spent dealing more damage?
Why get hit at all?
To be fair, pure mage builds possessed the highest burst, but they had low sustainable damage because there was no such thing as mana regeneration. One had to restore mana by drinking mana potions or resting, and in the heat of battle, this was often times difficult.
For Hunter, who would be traveling, always moving, it would be hard to stick with such an unsustainable method of combat.
What Hunter needed most now was to get his optimized gear and the special class change that came with it, but by the fifth world, he would have the beginnings of it all.
As for the attunement stat, Hunter raised it because it provided spell slots to equip learned spells with.
Every five points of attunement gave one slot, and even if he was no mage, he still needed this one slot for his unique build.
A light shone from where the Root Golem's corpse had been.
A floating white orb, and inside of it was the image of a large seed made of gnarled rock.
Hunter put a hand to the orb and absorbed the item.
<<
-1x Dagger
-9x Molten Bomb
-3x Shard of Strength
Rank: Rare
Type: Material
Effects:
A shard of crystallized strength dropped by certain monsters or found in hidden locations. Utilized in Reinforcing weapons and armor. May be used to reinforce a weapon up to +5.
>>>
Hunter nodded to himself as he made a move on towards the center of the courtyard. The people behind him, far behind him, might not have known, but he had done them a great service.
The Shards of Strength were extremely important items that upgraded weapons, enhancing their durability and scaling, and there were not too many of them lying around, especially in earlier Worlds.
You needed three shards to upgrade a weapon to +1, and starting from +5 onwards, you needed Shards of Infinity for every upgrade with the final upgrade to +10 requiring a rare Shard of the Cosmos.
Reinforcement was different from the rank of a weapon.
Rank determined the weapon's base capabilities including its special effects while Reinforcement simply amplified those effects and stats.
Thus, it was also a waste to use shards on low rank weapons.
Regardless, there was a massive difference between a +0 and a +1 weapon.
Almost a difference of 50% in DPS, though the higher the reinforcement tiers were, the less this difference was apparent until +10 when an item became Unleashed, reaching the max of its upgradeable power.
But even if the people behind him knew nothing of this, they would all turn their heads at the item's rank being Rare, for the system would have informed them of basic mechanics like item ranks, skill and spell ranks, and so on.
It was highly likely that those lucky few people that managed to reach the courtyard had nothing but survival in their minds, and many would do anything to secure a Rare rank item.
There would have been a massive argument about who deserved the shards, and a fight would have inevitably broken out, probably killing quite a few.
But because Hunter took it all, there would be no fight.
Hunter reached the center of the courtyard without issue, evading aggro range for any pillars he knew to be monsters.
There were no other Root Golems that had shards in them, so there was no point dealing with any of them.
The center platform was a sizable, upraised slab of circular marble free of any vines and roots.
It was capable of comfortably fitting fifty people in, though it would only let parties of up to five pass through at a time. Most bosses had a maximum of five to a party, though this was a general rule with exceptions to it.
Hunter, though, was alone. Not that it mattered to him.
At this point in time, others would just slow him down. Though he would need a priest later to light Beacons. That, he would think about later.
Light emanated from the marble underneath him, painting over Hunter's figure with a faint white glow.
>>>
[Do you wish to proceed to the boss fight against {The Liberator}]?
>>>
Hunter nodded, twirling his dagger up in the air before grabbing it by the handle with practiced ease, this time with the blade faced up, ready to fight, ready to kill. The light underneath him burst upwards, completely covering him, blinding him, and then he was gone.