You could see Herhail trying, and failing to chop wood. Next to him was the old man helping him do it correctly "No, no. Put one foot forwards so that you can put your force on it!"
Herhail quickly changed his footing accourding to the old man's words, and he finally got the axe in his hands into the wood "Finally!" Herhail did it again and again, finally getting the log into two halves.
Then before the axe timer stopped, he quickly halved those halfs. And the first of the logs needed to get the rust of his axe was chopped.
This happened 3 days since the last time we saw him, he had bought a rat to put into the 'null plane' card. As such it took an extra turn to completely get out all the cards, since you only get 7 cards at the beginning of a game.
The axe slowly dissapeared from his hands, then he used the other attributeless mana to summon the axe again.
After a few more days, Herhail had finally chopped 10 logs into firewood! Not that impressive really, but it meant a lot to him.
The rust on his axe slowly dissapeared, as if evaporating, making the intensity of the rust lessen. Herhail tried out his axe's new power, and felt it better than before, easier to chop into wood, less easy to break. Overall his review was; "It's better than before, better than any axe I've seen in these very slums."
That said something, since it was badly rusted. Like really bad, previously it looked like it would break with the smallest error, now it looked like it could be kind-of consistently be used.
Though it still looked extra shoddy, slum stuff was always super shoddy.
This was just a fact, though the axe dissapears every few minutes. Oh, there it goes.
"Come with me," The old man said "I've got something to discuss with you." He pointed to the shack in the barren land.
Herhail wasn't too worried since there was a rat inside, though it was just lvl 3.
When they entered the old man asked "Can you say the words 'storm' and 'murder'?"
"Yea of course I can," Herhail looked at him as if he were a fool "Sturn and murder."
The old man felt a little annoyed at the fact Herhail didn't realize a single problem "You have problems speaking words not to do with violence, death, or other things that bring pain and despair. It's like you're impaired! How do you not realize this?!"
Herhail listened, and processed the words "That's not true!" Herhail was honestly offended.
"Really?" The old man said with mock interest "Then say 'I love you', 'We're friends, right?', and 'I don't hate you'."
Herhail was completely confident in himself and said "I lowe yuo, wy'rr fwinrds, rhight? I dtwn't haat yuao."
Herhail paused, think of what he said, slowly understanding 'It was at this moment, I knew, I fucked up.'
"Now say, 'I'm going to kill you, and every one you love!', 'The most fatal place to to stab would be the nape, specifically between the 5th and 4th vertabre, slid that disc out and death is imminent', and 'Give up you second-hand grocery-store garbage, the sins of the father befall on the son, and nobody weeps for your inevitable death'."
"...I'm going to kill you, and everyone you love. The most fatal place to to stab would be the nape, specifically between the 5th and 4th vertabre, slid that disc out and death is imminent... Give up you second-hand grocery-store garbage, the sins of the father befall on the son, and nobody weeps for your inevitable death."
The twelve year old Herhail felt as if his face was slapped, he felt like he should cough up blood.
"See! You say these complicated phrases the first time you heard them as if they were ingrained into your sub-concious! But then a normal phrase with positive conotations, completely botched! How the hell do you mess this up so weirdly!?"
"Are you mentally disabled in the aspect of showing affection by word?"
Herhail was embarressed, no matter how much he didn't want to feel it.
The embarresment turned to anger in less than a second "What do you expect?! I'm an orphan if you didn't know! No one taught me how to speak Akerial! I had to learn by imput fool! You think I'd hear many things to do with affection in this place?! It's the slums, you know how many times you can hear the words 'I'll give you a choice, my shank in your aorta, or your food in my pockets'?!"
And as such, instead of the writing and reading lessons which were progressing at an alarming rate, it turned into speaking lessons on how to speak with words not to do with pain, voilence, despair and all that bad stuff.
In that time, he used 3 and 1/3 of an hour to put in 10 attributeless mana into the
[Tyrannosaurus-rex (Reptilian); 430000 exp
Tier 1. Strength; 32. Vitality; 20. Dexterity; 14. Endurance; 27. Magic; 0. Intelligence; 5. Charisma; 21.
Skills;
A Ruler of a world without magic, long long ago. One of the two thought of forms of the great ruler.
Costs 7 attributeless mana]
Not this one, this one even has a different form.
[Tyrannosaurus-rex (Avian); 430000 exp
Tier 1. Strength; 29. Vitality; 25. Dexterity; 17. Endurance; 28. Magic; 0. Intelligence; 6. Charisma; 19.
Skills;
A Ruler of a world without magic, long long ago. One of the two thought of forms of the great ruler.
Costs 7 attributeless mana.]
I mean this one;
[Utah raptor; 83000 exp
Tier 1. Strength; 12. Vitality; 14. Dexterity; 27. Endurance; 12. Magic; 0. Intelligence; 7. Charisma; 11.
Skills;
A pack hunter of an ancient time without magic, adapted to the heat of deserts.
Costs 3 attributeless mana.]
That's good, of ancient times indeed. Herhail had an interest, but was waiting for tomorrow, when he would have 10000 exp again! You may be wondering why it took so long this time to get to this point, well, Herhail doesn't have any monsters actively hunting at all times, because he was biding his time.
Yes...
So he bought an info pack, it was
[Deck building 101;
How do you build a good deck? Get a theme, or a core, and build off that.
Like my own deck, I use the card 'Slyther, the emperor of skies' in the game
First find out what the conditions are to use it; for my case it's 4 7-stared monsters with the 'flying' attribute in play to put into the graveyard.
Second find out what you can use your card for; You can use slyther to kill most monsters, and also use the special effect 'Sky horde' to create an extra 'Sky wyrm' every 10 seconds.
Third figure out how to support those effects and how to use them; If you use the item card 'Crown of the wyrms' retribution', which increases speed and attack by .1% for a max of 100% for each wyrm category monster in the 'Banished land'. After using the continious spell 'Sky wyrms' sacrifice' which let's you banish all sky worms in the graveyard into the 'Banished lands', with each banished sky worm giving a game-long boost of +1 random stat to a designated target. You get a combo of extreme power.
Fourth find out how to get out your correct hand(s) more often, to the level of certainty; I can get slyther through the card 'Slyther's descent', which only 3 copies are allowed. Then 'Sky lord' to get up to 7-star 'Sky' monsters into your hand, 5 copies. Then 'Wyrm's treasury' which let's you pick an item with the word 'Wyrm' out of your deck, 4 copies. Then 'Treasury of stolen crowns', which let's you pick out one of the crowns of the end out of your deck, 2 copies.
Fifth thin the deck dumbass; pretty much meaning, get a bunch of cards which let you pick new cards, also take a few cards to survive long enough to get the core card and support it.]
Herhail felt enlightened as he chopped wood.
[-1 rust]
And as such, after another 20 logs, the axe became even better.
The axe was held into the sky, proud of it's title as 'best axe in the slums', even if heavily rusted.
And chopping wood became an even more easy process.
Herhail had problems, big ones, because his cards had no special effects. Those were reserved for elite- and named cards. The ones he didn't have, since they was far too expensive.
Herhail sighed with melancholy from being poor.
Which was heard by a few people walking up from his front, some people from the hood, a new orginization recently created hidding around that was fighting against the gang.
"Yoyoyo, welcome to my world, where you need to pay me, not to end up in a gutter." The head of the 5 said.
Against that, Herhail said "Yoyoyo, I am better than you, so go back to your ditch before you go 5 feet under." He re-summoned his axe and pointed it at them.
They were all sickly and weak, Herhail was confident in the fact that he could keep them still until a super rat came, I mean- that wolf would come.
Surprisingly, the hoodlums actually took a step back "S-sorry, w-e were told to act like the bloody banner! We'd like to recruit you!" They were honestly intimidated with the axe way less rusty and higher quality than anything they had ever seen.
The bloody banner was the gang, Herhail honestly didn't know that they were called that, since refering to them as 'The gang' had been sufficient for a long time.
"Give me some time, then I'll give you the answer, with that I mean in a few minutes."
And there he stood for a few minutes, until he suddenly frowned as he saw some unexpected visitors of the unsavory variety "Well look-ey here! It's some of those hoodlums! And one of their new associates, (Who also didn't pay us last time). We must secure public safety with their death!"
They quickly took out their mass-produced shanks, as Herhail locked his eyes with the hoodlum boss and pointed at him, then at himself, then made a thumbs up. Then he pointed at the the blood banners, then he quickly made his thumb's top pass his neck.
Both sides nodded and readied their weapons, except Herhail chose to quickly throw his axe, since it's timer was almost out. Surprisingly, it actually hit the mark, right on chest of a weaker goon before dissapating.
Herhail quickly took out a shank on a short stick he created, making a dagger. He put it in a back handed grip as he called his wolf, rushing forward with the hoodlums.
He kept a bit behind the hoodlums to see the blood banners' attack patterns, if you jumped at them with a shank the stabbed forwards, so...
Herhail jumped forwards, but he rotated right before that, then twisted completely side-ways, and then pushed his chest back, causing the stab to miss. Then the dagger was jabbed into a major artory, causing a major stab wound and blood loss. Any true serf knows the vital/weak spots of the human body by heart.
If it wasn't obvious, the blood banners aren't 'true serfs', mere imitators created through family support, a commoner from outside, or just no longer saddled with the tough life of the serf.
Though the hoodlums were weaker in pure body and health, or hard stats overall, they were always showing a lot of proficiency with their shanks and an inherent instinct for battle, always going for an aorta or something, maybe the throat too.
Pretty much, although the blood banners, with slightly superior numbers, equipment, and stats, were losing because they just weren't good enough at murder. Not that they didn't do it often.