Rupegia Ch. 02: Second Day

I frown and respond, "Hmmm... I don't think I want to become a priest. Is there any other library that I can access?"

Her mood slightly sours for a moment as she becomes a bit disappointed, but then she returns to her gentle and genuine demeanor and answers, "If you help the temple, maybe you can catch the attention of the head priest, and he's the only one capable of giving special permission, but our books are rather limited. Besides that, you can try the library at the magic university. It has a much wider variety than ours, but it costs a lot just to enter, and the books available to non-members are also limited..." She plays with her hair adorably as she reflects on something for a moment. "Are you perhaps a scholar? By your clothes, you look just like another commoner or starting adventurer, but you are way too smart to be either. You also can read and your curiosity is rather impressive."

Well, I guess this was unavoidable. I needed information, and there was no other way besides stumbling in the dark. Time to lie a little.

I give her a gentle smile as I lie, "Well, I'm from a very far away land, and I had to give up a lot just to come here, but I'm no scholar, I'm just a naturally curious person."

Half-truths. It may sound mysterious, but I don't have the knowledge required to craft a well-built lie where I give information such as birth-place, family names, and etc.

"Hm? Hahah..." She tilts her head and laughs awkwardly. "Well, I'm sorry for trying to pry into your business, but I can say one thing for certain, you're an interesting person."

It seems she understood I don't want to talk about my origins in detail. A person who hides his past is suspicious and untrustworthy, but I think I acquired enough goodwill that she can just let this pass.

This talk gave me some comfort, so perhaps I can keep coming here and asking more questions. It seems that the God of Creation encourages the sharing of knowledge, so I can ask questions more freely than I had imagined. The priests also don't seem oppressive, so I feel like I don't have much to fear from them.

Right now, I've heard enough about religion, and I still want to go back to the dungeoneering guild to look for info about the monsters around here. I've decided I'll carefully hunt as a primary way of making money until I'm more accustomed with crafting and the laws. I'm not a fighter, but I also know very little about trade and economy, so I'll need a lot more knowledge to get into that area, and fighting seems easier in comparison due to the skill system having so many combat skills in comparison to everything else.

I may not be a warrior, but I have a bit of knowledge about tactics and warfare, so at least I don't feel completely helpless when I think about where to start.

"Well then, I think I've heard enough for now," I announce and nod respectfully. "Thank you for your time. I really enjoyed this talk, so, can I come back another day and ask for more?"

She nods emphatically and replies, "It's part of our job to inform those who listen, so I would enjoy talking to you again. If I'm not at the temple, just ask for any other priest that's on standby."

"Well, if it's not too much, can I continue talking to you, specifically?"

I'd rather not talk to different people, and she looks much better than the wrinkly old priests I saw around.

She twitches in surprise, then smiles gently as she accepts, "O-okay, that's not a problem. During the morning, I either work at the clinic or the orphanage, and I help prepare lunch and dinner most days. Every two days, I rest during the afternoon, so I'm not at the temple every day."

I return the smile. "Alright, then. I don't know when I'm coming back, but it's going to be soon. Until then."

"Goodbye, Mr. Ryder," she gracefully says her farewell.

"Goodbye, Miss Ciel," I reply with decidedly less grace.

--

Since it's almost noon, I look for some cheap food. It seems it's the bean season, so most stalls are selling a variety of bean dishes.

I enter a restaurant and eat a green bean soup that reminds me of green peas. All they have here is goblin meat, though. Previously, I felt that my inn was expensive, but after tasting this meat, I feel like the price is justified.

I'll postpone going to the university for a while until I have a better grasp of magic and the life around here, so now I'll go to the dungeoneering guild to gain more knowledge of the area.

I still feel it's dangerous to say I'm from another world, so I'll avoid places where they might ask my background. If I told them the truth, I'd certainly cause a lot of ruckus, and in no novel would that end well.

As I'm walking back to the dungeoneering guild, I have some time to reflect on what I learned. Ciel said that the Humanoid Gods give blessings and messages, so there's really no question about the presence of gods here, therefore, being an atheist is just idiotic. Some "God" sent me here, but simply reneging all Gods would be an infantile decision, especially because I'm dealing with fucking Gods. It's just not something to take lightly.

I saw that there are sixteen gods, so maybe I should learn more about them and start praying to one. Since they also communicate, and they were once people of this world, then perhaps they're reasonable. It also gives me a little comfort in knowing there's a being that could help me if I show a little faith.

I notice something change within me. I open my stats and see that my "Piety" has increased by 1 (it's now 3).

It seems that the peepers in the sky can even read my mind.

--

I enter the dungeoneering guild and ask for the section with information on monsters and dungeons around this area. The attendant guides me to the second floor and shows me a section with dozens of cloned books. This seems to be a common inquiry around here, so the guild prepared a large number of copies of the books: "Monsters of Rabanara," "Dungeons of Rabanara," and "Advice for New Adventurers". The creativity in naming is heartwarming.

After taking a look at them, I learned that I'm one lucky motherfucker. The Grey Berserker is the most powerful type of monster in the region, and I met one when it was at its weakest. There's always a large bounty on them because they're smart enough to avoid the culling, so they're always a danger in the forest. The advised strategy to defeat it is a group of at least three fully armored people and one healer. The aim is to use blunt weapons to break the bear's bones since they're much more fragile than the hide, which makes most cutting or piercing weapons useless.

Goblins are like in any other game. They grow like weeds and require constant care so they don't choke your plants, which means your life. They give little rewards, but it's possible to sell a whole corpse for a considerable amount of money. The problem is that most people don't have enough carrying capacity to bring a lot of corpses into town. Goblin meat is tasteless and sinewy, but it's the base meat for the poor so they always sell, though most hunters don't bother with the corpses and only bring a proof of extermination, which is the right ear.

Mossy Fangpine is another dangerous enemy. There's a chance the mossy spines will poison the person; another evidence I'm actually lucky. They hunt in packs of three or more, and the one I fought was alone only because of the culling. The strategy is to hide behind a shield and wear at least leather armor, then counter stab it in the face after it jumps to bite, or just use magic since they are vulnerable to it. Arrows are okay to use, but they are fast and the spines can deflect arrows if you're unlucky. They have extraordinary noses, so they're likely to appear whenever a monster is killed because of the blood.

Another enemy is the Rabid Rabbit. This one, like the Fangpine, only charges and bites. The bunny acts alone and is extremely vicious. Their bites are poisonous and can even make a person go berserk. The meat tastes delicious and is considered a delicacy while the saliva glands are used in potions, so this monster is always hunted, making it hard to find.

In the sky, there's the Dragolite, a small dragon that doesn't have a fire breath. Their meat is somewhat hard to cook and has a strong taste, but it's still valuable. The farmers hate them since they like to kidnap the sheep around here but they don't kidnap the children and instead just try to kill them, so everyone who lives in a farm around here is trained in archery the moment they can hold a small bow.

The last part shocks me a little. This is really a brutal world. Also, this is the enemy that captured my summoned bird.

There's also the Giant Dragonfly. It uses its legs as spears and attacks with high speed. The easiest strategy is to just use a spear longer than their legs. They're weak but annoying to deal with because they are agile, and it's difficult to dodge or escape them, so it's advised for hunters to always carry a simple, disposable long spear in their [Item Box]. Due to the monster's nature, they mostly appear along rivers or lakes, and they don't fly too well among the trees, so that's why I haven't met one yet. Their wings and eyes are valuable crafting items, so they sell quite well.

The occasional migrating flock of wyverns is a threat. Different from dragons, who have wings on their back, a wyvern's forelegs are their wings. Also, this monster looks more like velociraptors with wings, while dragons are lizards with wings. Wyverns attacks are the most common threat to this settlement, so, sooner or later, I'll be called to defend the town against them.

They only fly as a way of long-distance movement since their huge bodies and low magical capability makes flying awkward for them. Unlike dragons, who can manipulate the wind with ease, wyverns tire easily if they have to be agile during flight, so fighting against them is always done on the ground. The best strategy against them is to fight behind shield walls using pikes and ranged attacks. Finding and destroying wyvern nests is heavily rewarded since this means that the attacks on the town reduce in frequency.

These are the common monsters that are born here, but the thing is that migrating monsters are extremely common, so the chance of meeting a random monster is quite high, which means that a monster hunter really needs to read a lot about their prey to be prepared for anything. This discourages me a little about hunting monsters in the forest for money. I also have little experience in tracking, so I think that looking at the nearby dungeons might be a better choice for now.

Dungeons have a lot of variety. There are some that are maze-like, whose floors can be many times larger than entire towns. Others are just large underground environments where monsters roam around copied fragments of the world above. Some even have artificial lights, allowing them to sustain some form of plant life. Plenty are mere dimensional doors to some unknown space, possibly full of traps, randomness, and constant change. The most popular among hunters are the small labyrinths, especially the ones that create a floor exclusively for a single party, which guarantees that no other party will influence your progress, but unfortunately they're much rarer. Most dungeons have some sort of "elevator," which allows adventurers to move to any floor they've previously explored.

Dungeons increase in depth the more they're allowed to remain undisturbed. Damaging the core forces the dungeon to reduce in depth to repair itself, while destroying the core makes it fall apart. The nobility is the one responsible for culling the forests and managing the dungeon depth, and in the book, it is implied that a noble that doesn't fight doesn't deserve their title. It sounds quite interesting, so I need to ask more about this later.

In the book "Advice for New Adventurers," there's some simple info about "Stats" and magic, which is extremely valuable to me. It says that the average stat for a commoner should be ten and that anything below that is concerning.

"Strength" is self-explanatory, but it says that the number represents overall muscular power, so the book advises adventurers to train their entire body instead of just a few muscles because the "divine system" gives people a little power boost every time the stat increases.

"Endurance" is like physical stamina, but it also helps with resisting magic or poisons. To increase it, I only need to do aerobics, and the book advises to never try training [Poison Resistance] without an authorized healer.

"Dexterity" pertains to the precision of muscular movement. It's the main stat for sharpshooters, but it also helps quite a lot with martial arts, so it's a secondary stat for warriors. There's no mention of a "thief" or "rogue" fighting style, though.

"Speed" is self-explanatory.

"Intelligence" is said to help with the speed of learning skills, which is excellent news to me since mine is pretty high. It's also a main stat for mages since they need a lot of skills to be effective, so the faster they learn, the more powerful they can become.

"Wisdom" is more mysterious, but it generally correlates with life experience, so mine is at the appropriate level for someone of my (counting Eath's) age, but I'm a bit of an odd 18-year old for Rupegia standards. This is the main stat for mages because the subconscious of their brain uses their knowledge of magical theory to do all the minimal adjustments and calculations that a spell needs to work, so I guess I might be kind of a good mage?

"Willpower" is all about mental endurance, and while I was never a slob or sedentary, I'm also not a super disciplined person. This stat helps with resisting spells that affect the mind and is also used by mages to "brute force" their spells, supplementing their lack of theoretical knowledge with pure will.

"Charisma" is a very mysterious stat and not much is known about it, though someone with high "Charisma" is instantly recognizable. The book also advises that adventurers should always be wary of merchants with a honeyed voice.

"Piety" is another obvious one, but it also tells how well divine power can channel through a mage's body, so that's why [Light Magic] didn't work when I had zero "Piety."

"Perception" is simply attention to detail. It seems to help with detecting spells and illusions, the "light-bending"-kind and not the "mess with your mind"-kind. I'm a bit surprised mine is considerably high, but I guess it's because I'm quite attentive and reflective.

"Sanity" is too complex for a simple book to explain how it's calculated, but all I should know is that it provides a good gauge of one's mental health along with their susceptibility to mind-affecting spells. Twelve is a good number for a well-adjusted citizen, and the book advises one to talk to priests if it's lower than that.

There's no way I can tell Ciel about my problems, at least not yet...

Since it's actually viable for someone to learn magic on their own, the book explains that "Magic Power" is simply how much one can alter reality with a single point of mana. It's advised to keep it at half of the max MP because, otherwise, the spells either become too weak and ineffective or too powerful and hard to control. My MP and "Magic Power" are still both too low to affect me like that, though.

There's also a short description of the magic skills. [Sense Mana] is self-explanatory, but the book says that all spells leak mana, which is what the skill picks up once the particles touch the senser's skin; [Mana Control] allows a mage to put more or less mana and modulate the spell's power, making it mandatory for powerful spells; [Mana Recovery] increases natural MP regen; [Mana Efficiency] helps with the natural mana leak and reduces the cost of continuous spells; [Reduced Mana Cost] affects only the initial cost of casting a spell, so it doesn't overlap with Efficiency. There's also some info about mana overuse, which happens when a mage uses too much mana too fast, and blackout, which is when a mage's MP goes negative, but the book only says to avoid these conditions because they're unhealthy even if someone has the Resistance skills to deal with them.

Lastly, the book gives me a small formula to calculate one's "soul potential." If the total number of skills (and their levels) some has is less than four times the person's level, they have "positive soul potential," and it's easier to learn skills; if the total is higher than that, then they have "negative soul potential," and it becomes increasingly harder to gain skills, the deeper into the negative numbers the total is.

I'm not sure how this relates to my cheat since I can just zero my total skills at any time, effectively giving me a positive soul potential any time I want.

It's quite tiring and time-consuming to keep reading all this information, so I don't really have time to go out of town today. I decided to go to a nearby dungeon tomorrow, Royd's Kerfuffle, a labyrinthine dimensional door dungeon that has an "elevator." The adventurer that discovers a dungeon gets the right to name it, and most of them have quite an eccentric naming sense.

This dungeon in particular isn't that popular since the monsters there do not reward much, but it could be a perfect training ground for me. Only at the lower levels that I need to be careful and look out for traps, and the worst of them teleport their victims to a random place on the same floor, so things only start to become difficult after the tenth floor, but the floor traps are always on the same spot, so it's easy to avoid them.

It's also a good place to train "Willpower" due to the monsters that spawn there, but they're pretty physically weak, and I have a cheat that lets me counter them.

Right now, I still have some free time until sunset, so I decide to go do some physical training.

--

The hunters' guild training grounds is a large dirt field. There's a large area for sparring; an archery range; a wide, long, and secluded place where I can see some mages throwing some flashy spells; a place where a few freakish; floating pieces of armor fight some people; a small building with barred windows; and a small fountain for people to drink.

Is that fountain magical or is there plumbing in this town?

I pay the toll to enter and approach one of the idle men with the symbol of the hunters' guild engraved on his leather armor.

"H-hello, I'm new around here. Could you tell me how I can use this place?" I stiffly ask him.

He's not big or burly, but he has a menacing gaze. He sports a buzz cut, his face is full of small scars, and his posture is intimidating.

How does one get scars in a world with magical healing?

He replies in an eerily calm voice, "Hm? Well, the archery range is free, and we can lend you a bow and arrow, but you'll pay for anything you break. The magic range is free, too, but you need a safety briefing so you don't hurt other people. The Living Armors are rented, and the manager deals with that. I'm an instructor, and I can give you training with weapons, but you can't monopolize me, so we have the students spar with each other once you're at a proper level." I listen intently and remain tense under his unwavering gaze, which makes me want to spontaneously look away, but I manage to resist it.

"Then, could you teach me the sword?" I anxiously ask.

He nods energetically. "Alright, let's spar so I can measure your skill. Put away your sword, and I'll give you a wooden one."

He goes into what I assume is the warehouse while I put my sword in my "Items," then he comes back with two wooden swords and throws one at me.

"What's your name?" He casually asks.