Name: Troy Arginstin
Age: 17
Level 3 EXP 18/113
Talent: SSS-Unlimited extraction
Base attack: 5
Base defense: 2
Natural abilities: ambidextrous, cool and collected
Skills: lump toss-upper F, Appraisal-B
Free attribute points: 10
Health-19/25
Mana-29/31
Stamina-25/43
Strength-47
Vitality-18
Intellect-20
Perception-23
Agility-17
Luck-53
Looking at his health, Troy was worried. He had yet to disinfect the wound, and he had no herbs or medicines that could heal him. The sun was setting, he was thirsty, and had found nothing to eat that day. The only good thing at this point was that he had marked a path back to the biome boss, and would try to take it down by day four.
He was currently at the edge of the forest, hoping that he could at least find a flesh-eating hare before nightfall, which was less than an hour away, and a moving body of water he could drink out of.
Pushing his perception to the maximum, he could hear things about 100 meters out, albeit very faintly. He was using this to listen for running water and the sounds of a moving creature. As he was moving, he was using one of the assassin's blades to carve arrows into the trees as markers of the Biome boss's position.
By nightfall, he was able to find a slowly moving stream. Setting up a fire, he quickly carved a wooden bowl out of a thick tree branch that had fallen to the forest floor. He boiled the water in it, not trusting that it was moving fast enough to be safe, before taking a drink. Hopefully, he got a water bottle of some kind out of a random chest. Chests found around the floors and not in special encounters like the mole crater usually rarely had anything other than miscellaneous, but useful, stuff inside.
Sitting by the fire, Troy hummed an old tune while making arrows. 'Phoenix by Netrum' if he remembered correctly. It reminded him of hope, hope for his seemingly infinite future.
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The next morning, Troy left the forest and entered the planes that he had started on with a full bar of mana and a plan. The plains were more dangerous than the forest, for two main reasons: the lack of cover and safety, and the felines. The plains were full of things like lions, cheetahs, and cougars. The tower was not like earth, which had these things on different contents. Here they lived together on the same hundred-kilometer island, albeit very few in number.
Troy searched the general vicinity of the area of the plains he was in for a Flesh-eating hare burrow. The things breed like crazy and so one burrow could have 25 or more adults, making it the best place he could get agility.
He found the burrow after searching for 20ish minutes. Looking at the hares, he knew he would get overwhelmed if he went there in his current state. Looking over his status again, he found the perfect solution to his problem.
{Lump toss-Upper F-rank skill: Condense a small amount of dirt into a soft rock and launch it at your enemies. Cost 3 mana per use.}
Using this skill, he sent a rock towards the closest flesh-eating hare. When it got it, it sprang up, looked around, and after not seeing anything, went to investigate. It passed by Troy, who was getting really good at stealth by this point. Killing it with a swift stab, Troy extracted it, gaining 3 agility this time. The last time he killed a flesh-eating hare, he got 2 agility and 1 strength. Using appraisal on several of the hares revealed that they all had the same stats on the same level. Troy made a hypothesis. "Is extract trying to balance my stats?"
Strength and agility effects went hand-in-hand. You could have 100 strength, but without the agility to properly use it, it would become a burden instead. On the reverse side, you could have 100 agility, but without enough strength, you could not leap into trees, do flips that should be impossible, or move as fast as your agility would allow your body to go. Agility was how nimble you were and allowed you to use your strength properly, and strength was the limit of your body. The two needed to be on similar levels, otherwise you would have a bad time. It was generally the case that everyone had similar strength and agility, with agility being a bit higher than strength. Of course, this differed from other animals due to differences in the body and the ability to create techniques.
Whatever was the case, Troy was happy, as it sped up the process of getting agility attributes.
Troy spent the next two hours simply killing and extracting attributes from the hares until he got a message from the system.
{Attributes too low to extract.}
This put a wrench in his plans, as he currently only had 41 agility. While he was wondering about why this happened, Troy saw a flesh-eating hare twice the size of a normal one come out of the burrow. Using appraisal on it, he got:
Flesh-eating hare alpha
Level 3
Skills: power jump-E, strong kick-E
Attack- 4
Defense- 3
Health-32/32
Mana-3/3
Stamina-34/34
Strength-13
Vitality-12
Intelect-3
Perception-12
Agility-20
Troy had never heard of this. Probably because nobody would spend the time to clear out a flesh-eating hare den, as they weren't good EXP, had only a small amount of meat, and their pelts were worthless, as they were too small.
Troy used lump toss once more, aware that he would need to wait for his mana to regen to be able to use it anymore afterward. This directly hit the alpha, which turned in the direction it came from. Troy moved away from his original position, and once the hare was there, used his bow for the first time. He knocked an arrow, aimed, and let go of the string, only to miss as the arrow went slightly to the left of where he was aiming. The alpha went to the arrow, most likely thinking it was responsible for the lump of dirt sent at it.
Troy aimed again, this time in a slightly right direction to correct for his bow's bad shooting direction. This time he hit the alpha, getting it right in the front leg. The alpha was able to find Troy this time, so Troy put his bow down and took out the right assassin's blade, keeping the left one hidden in his shirt sleeve for the hidden attack bonus.
Going up to the alpha hare, expecting a quick and easy kill, Troy instead got hit in the chest by a very strong kick by the hare's back legs which knocked him off his feet. The hare, not wasting the chance to get its enemy while they were down, jumped and tried to bite Troy's arm.
Troy managed to block the hare's teeth with a portion of the arm protected by the leather armor, and stabbed it with the blade in his other hand, getting it in the side. The hare let go of Troy's arm and used strong jump to jump high into the air, landing 2 meters away from Troy, facing away from him. Troy used this time to get up, pulling out both of his blades.
Turning around, the alpha once again jumped towards Troy. Troy was prepared this time though, as he moved to the side of where the hare would land, ready to strike the moment it landed.
As the hare landed, Troy slashed with his left blade, triggering the 4x damage. This cut one of the hare's front legs off, instantly putting Troy at the advantage. Using his right blade, Troy stabbed at its head. The alpha moved its head away from the blade and tried to kick Troy again. Learning from his experience, Troy moved back, putting himself on the back foot.
The alpha, now with an arrow in one of its front legs and the other missing, wanted to retreat, but Troy did not give it the chance. As soon as it turned around to retreat back to its burrow, Troy stabbed it in the spine. It screeched in pain, but Troy had lured it far enough for it to not get the attention of the other flesh-eating hares.
Troy got a hold of the alpha's neck and twisted with all of his strength, snapping its spine and killing it. He then sat down and breathed out. The kick the thing had delivered to his chest had knocked the air out of him and hurt like hell. After recovering his ability to breathe, he stood up and went over to the alpha's corpse. Using extract on it he gained 5 agility, 32 EXP, and the skill strong kick-E. Looking at his status panel now, it looked like:
Name: Troy Arginstin
Age: 17
Level 3 EXP 90/113
Talent: SSS-Unlimited extraction
Base attack: 5
Base defense: 2
Natural abilities: ambidextrous, cool and collected
Skills: lump toss-upper F(active, magic), Appraisal-B(active, magic), Strong kick-E(active, physical)
Free attribute points: 10
Health-19/25
Mana-3/31
Stamina-21/43
Strength-47
Vitality-18
Intellect-20
Perception-23
Agility-45(+28)
Luck-53
This was a huge status. In fact, it was probably similar to those who had just gotten to floor 5. This should be enough to fight the biome boss if he was careful. He was still injured from previous fights, and his vitality wasn't that high. He had just enough mana left for one lump toss use. He used this to lure one more hare to eat.
Going back to his campsite of the previous night, he cleaned the hare and cooked it, having a nice meal. By noon that day he was waiting for his mana to regenerate while having a nice meal when another human comes out of the woods and asks, "can you give me a piece of fire?"
Troy looked at the boy, probably around 18, strangely. "As long as you don't take the whole fire, I don't give a crap." Troy proceeded to watch as the boy made a fire and spit-roasted his own catch before leaving. "What a strange interaction," Troy stated to himself. Troy spent the rest of the day doing things like carving tools or arrows, practicing with his blades, or simply relaxing. He could have gone and gotten more attribute points by spending the time required to find an alpha flesh-eating hare, but this would give him even less time for his mana to regenerate, and could leave him with even more wounds.
Troy also spent the time getting accustomed to his new skill, strong kick.
{Strong kick-E: your legs have a very powerful kicking force. Uses 2 stamina per activation of this skill.}
Stamina was only reduced by long-distance running or high-intensity fights. A single normal kick would never take an entire stamina point, let alone two. In order to test the skill, Troy went a 30-second run from his camp before kicking a random tree. The first time was without activating the skill, and it went as he expected. The tree was not damaged or harmed in any way. On the second kick, he activated strong kick and instantly felt more tired than he had just a moment ago. When the kick landed on the tree, the tree shook a small amount and the area where the kick had landed was slightly deformed. Troy guessed that the force of his kick was increased by 20%. Putting learning actual kicking techniques on his list of things to do when he got to Checkpoint station, he went back to camp.
Troy rested for the next few hours before being bothered by a bear 50% smaller than the short-faced bear entering his encampment, probably after smelling the last of the roasted hare meat. Looking at its attributes, it was a grizzly, with attributes slightly worse than the short-faced bear on paper, but far worse in reality due to the enhanced strength biome bosses show.
Troy decided to use this as training for the fight with the biome boss. Getting up, he quickly climbed up the tree behind him. Getting on a branch that was right above the grizzly, he jumped down onto it. The grizzly, feeling something land on its back, roared and tried to shake it off. Troy, holding onto part of the bear's fur, was nearly shaken off, but barely managed to hang on. He slowly crawled forward, and once he was on the bear's head, stabbed the left blade into the bear's eye, triggering the 4x damage. His blade had failed to hit the bear's brain. Letting go of the bear's fur with his right hand, he held to the blade for dear life while slamming his right hand onto the pommel of it, slowly pushing it closer to the bear's brain.
At this moment the bear finally managed to shake him off. Troy was sent flying to the other side of the clearing, the bear mad and close behind him. Quickly getting up, Troy barely dodged a swipe of the bear's 4-inch-long claws. Running forwards, he stabbed his remaining blade into the bear's side and dragged it forwards before removing it. A nearly 2-foot-long laceration was opened up on the bear's side, pouring a large amount of blood. The bear roared in pain once again, and Troy once more jumped onto the bear, going for the knife in its eye socket. When he got to the bear's head, Troy sat on its back and held its fur for dear life while lining up a backward kick to the blade's pommel. His plan was to activate strong kick and push the blade into its brain, but he could not do so as the bear stood up on its hind legs and he fell off, back first.
Troy was unable to intake oxygen, and the bear was looming over him ready to strike. He forced himself to move, getting away from the bear. As the bear stood back down, Troy was just regaining his breath, and he ran up to the bear's face. He jumped up, and activated strong kick, and got the blade, just barely, sending it into the bear's brain and killing it.
Troy sat down, breathless. A combination of the hard landing and using up two stamina points instantly made him really tired. When the adrenaline from the fight wore off, he really started to feel both the short flight across the clearing and the rough landing on his back. While in pain, Troy was still able to move. He went up to the bear and used his talent on it.
{Extracted 1 agi, 1 str, 1 vit, Grizzly bear's pelt} {EXP from kill-25} {Level Up!}
As surprised to see three attributes extracted instead of just one or two, Troy was distracted by the level up. Like the last few times, he put three of the points into intellect and saved the other 5. His status screen now looked like this:
Name: Troy Arginstin
Age: 17
Level 4 EXP 2/170
Talent: SSS-Unlimited extraction
Base attack: 5
Base defense: 2
Natural abilities: ambidextrous, cool and collected
Skills: lump toss-upper F(active, magic), Appraisal-B(active, magic), Strong kick-E(active, physical)
Free attribute points: 15
Health-15/25
Mana-5/31
Stamina-8/43
Strength-48(+1)
Vitality-19(+1)
Intellect-23(+3)
Perception-23
Agility-46(+1)
Luck-53
With this status, as long as he had a good night's rest, he should be able to beat the biome boss with a good plan.
Looking at his other gains, Troy had no idea what to do with the bear pelt. He had never learned how to sew and could only craft rough tools because he had read about how to do it during his time in the academy. He would just use it as a blanket for now, as extract had left no gore on it.
Pick his stuff up, he left to an area near the biome boss. Nearing the area, he climbed up into a tree and fell asleep on a thicker branch with the bear pelt over his body. He would attack the short-faced bear in the morning.