Green Wonder

The next day, a group of adventurers arrived at the church and introduced themselves as Green Wonder, the party assigned to train us for the next month. They were, according to Assess, generally between levels 30 and 35. The first thing they did was ask Alicia and Nero what kind of weapons they wanted to use. They gave us a quick demonstration of the differences between using a sword, a dagger, a bow, a shield, and a spear, then the leader, a burly, bearded man named Brad, told us with a broad grin, “There’s plenty as pick something for smart reasons, but personally, I chose the sword because it was cool.”

After some discussion, Alicia chose to use a sword, while Nero chose daggers. With that decided, Green Wonder took us into town and bought them each a cheap weapon to use. From there, they took us to a field outside the city.

“Most cities and towns’re built in areas with low concentrations of natural magic,” Brad explained. “So at most you’ll find such critters as Horned Rabbits and Pufferfluffs.” He reached into the grass and pulled out what looked like nothing so much as a huge dandelion. “But even these can kill a normal person who’s not bein' careful, so don’t drop your guard. Stand back, now.”

Once Nero and Alicia were safely out of the way, Brad stabbed the dandelion thing with his sword at its roots. It writhed briefly, then fell still, at which point he laid it on the ground and used the tip of his sword to prod at it, revealing sharp teeth concealed within the knot of roots. “Pufferfluffs. They’ll spread spores that inflict Sleep, then they crawl up onto you and use their saliva to dissolve and eat you.”

Brad studied Nero and Alicia, then nodded, apparently satisfied that they understood the danger. “Assume any monster you encounter can kill you, and make it a priority to read up on common monsters for the areas you plan to visit, because even things that look innocent can be monsters. Every Adventurer’s Guild has a library, and it’s not a bad use of your time to read through it.”

“Um, why did you kill it instead of your summon?” Alicia asked, raising her hand as though she were still in school.

Brad’s summon was an SR Treant, and it looked like a small sapling that followed him about wordlessly. He nodded towards it. “Ash there could kill it no problem, sure, but… Well, Ash, Water Leaf. Attack the Horned Rabbit over there.”

Blue leaves made of, apparently, water rushed toward a spot of grass and converged on it with a large splash. Brad led us over, and I felt my stomach turn. He’d said this was a Horned Rabbit, but all I could make out was a smear of blood, guts, and fur. The only recognizable feature left was a solid white horn. “Monsters have two types of materials: drops and parts. You can use your summons to get drops. Even if you annihilate the monster, the drop won’t be affected, like this horn. Parts, on the other hand, are only as good as the corpse’s condition. Drops aren’t guaranteed, though, while parts are.” He reached out to stroke his summon’s bark. “Most summons aren’t able to attack in ways that’ll leave viable parts, so you’ll have a tough time of things if you depend on your summons to fight.”

“But,” one of his party members, an older man named Eddard, said, “your level depends on your summon, so let’s get that taken care of today.”

After that, the party power-leveled Heather and me. They ganged up on the low-level monsters surrounding the city and held them down for me to scratch or Heather to stomp to death. I’d thought, given the timeline, that leveling to thirty would be a slow process. We’d been given a month for it, after all. However, by the time the day ended, despite only killing Horned Rabbits and Pufferfluffs and a couple of other low-level monsters, Heather and I were both level 20. Apparently, it would only take us another two days or so to hit 30. My expectations for leveling were ruined.

Alicia and Nero were equally dismayed by the boringly efficient leveling process. “That’s all it takes?” Nero demanded as we sat around a campfire he and Alicia had been forced to make themselves. “How is everyone not level 30 then?”

The adventurers laughed. Brad was the one to explain, “Now hold up. Cats are one thing, but how many things do you think a horse kills in its lifetime ordinarily?” He smiled at the way Nero hung his head at the realization.

Eddard spoke up. “Wasn’t always like this. Use ta be, you’d get your summon and that was it. Just a decade back, no one told you what to do like they do now, so you’d have all sorts becoming adventurers. See my Angelina?” He pointed to his bird summon. “She’s just a normal robin. I wanted to be an adventurer, so I became one, but I’ll never reach D-rank, because my first summon was Common. Nowadays, only Rares like you get any kinda choice, but that’s only been since the current king came into power.”

Another of the older adventurers chimed in. “Some of it’s good. Use ta be, a lotta young men and women died from stupid crap like those Flufferpuffs. There weren’t no oversight, just every man for himself.” He shrugged. “An some of it’s not so good. Luck’s always been a funny thing, so you’ll have ten kids as wanna be adventurers and one who wants to stay home and tend the farm, and you can bet your britches that one’s gonna be the only one to get an SSR, ha ha! Back then, you could choose what to make of your fate, but now how rare your summon is decides for ya.”

Alicia stared down at her feet, digging her toes into the dirt.

Brad nodded. “Anyway, once you hit level 30, everything slows down a lot. We were killing things about level 5, give or take, right? So here’s some numbers some big-shot researcher out of the capital passed along. It takes about 2500 kills like that to go from level 1 to level 30. Right?” He grinned like he was about to pull a magic trick. “To go from level 30 to 31, once you’ve evolved of course, would take you eleven thousand kills of the same.”

Nero’s jaw dropped, and Alicia lifted her head to stare at the man incredulously. “Eleven thousand?” she repeated faintly.

Brad laughed loudly. “Yup! Course, that goes down a lot if you’re killin' things the same level as you. About 200 kills or so, I remember it being. But still, the difference between pre-evolution and post-evolution is night and day, and it only gets worse.”

“Still,” Alicia said after she’d absorbed that, “if it only takes us a couple of days to reach 30, why did the sisters say you’d be working with us for a month?”

Nice job, Alicia, asking the question I wanted answered!

“Well, levels are one thing, but even if they’re called ‘experience points,’ they aren’t the same as real experience. Levels just give you the stats and the points to obtain skills. They don’t teach you how to use those stats and skills. That’s what the month is for. We’ll teach you how to camp out, how to navigate, how to use your weapons… We can’t teach you everything you’ll need to know, but we can give you a nice head start.”

Another adventurer agreed and continued, "Speaking of skills, now that they’ve got a decent number of levels, you should check out your summon’s Status and consider what you might like them to learn." She went on to explain how to open the Status screen and how to browse and purchase Available Skills, which sounded similar to the Skills Store.

I frowned - not that anyone could tell on my cat face - and wondered whether they were able to buy skills for themselves. I still hadn't seen Alicia or Nero use any skills, even though they should have had the points for them. Assess! Ten Magic later, I'd learned something annoying. Nero had earned Daggers Lv. 6 and Camping Lv. 1, and he had four points remaining. Alicia had Swordsmanship Lv. 6 and Camping Lv. 1. She, too, had four points remaining. I had a sinking suspicion that their skills were obtained based on a combination of what they were doing and how many points they had, rather than being something they consciously decided upon.

I examined Heather, but her skills hadn't changed at all. I, of course, had been upgrading my skills as we went.

Nero approached, cutting off my consideration. "Status, Luna!" he exclaimed loudly, earning laughs from the adventurer party, who shouted back that he just needed to think it. Nero turned red, yelled at them to shut up, then squatted down in front of me. "Let's see, your Available Skills are... wait, what?"

"What's up, kid?" Brad asked.

Nero looked up at the man. "Uh, you said to buy Luna skills, but... She's already got them."

"What?" The man frowned down at me. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, she doesn't have any skill points available, and she has Assess Lv. 2, Shadow Claw Lv. 6, AGI UP Lv. 1, INT UP Lv. 1, and LUCK UP Lv. 1."

Brad stared at him, confusion and suspicion clear in his gaze. “And you say you didn’t buy those for her?”

Nero shook his head.

“It's already got the skills? And one of 'em's Shadow Claw, huh?” Brad muttered. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given it’s a Shadow Cat, but can’t say I like hearing about it. Dark magic, that.”

"Is Dark magic bad?" Alicia asked, coming over with Heather at her side.

The adventurers shared uneasy looks. “It sure ain’t normal,” one offered. 

Eddard rolled his eyes. "That’s just superstition. Supposedly, only demons use dark magic. But I've met humans as use it. Stuffy research types who want to learn about everything and anything. If they met a demon, they'd spend more time dissecting it than making deals with it. So don't worry about it. It's just a kind of magic that's rarer than most."

I shuddered and resolved to search for a means of concealing what I was. I couldn't have someone realizing I was actually a Demon Cat. Regardless of whether they tried to kill me or tried to dissect me, I wouldn't enjoy it. Suddenly, my tail shot up, my ears flattened, and I looked at Nero as I realized something. He was staring at me. He could see my Status. In other words, he knew.

After several seconds, Nero looked away. "Well, at least that makes things easier for me!” he said brightly. “What skills are you grabbing, Alicia?"