Volume 1 - CH 14

I went ahead and fell asleep yesterday. The next day, I confirmed the map displayed before my eyes.

…I guess I’ll head into the unexplored northern area today. According to the map, the ocean I’d explored yesterday continues further north.

How many containers should I bring in my pouch? For now, I’ll do one antidote potion, and one normal potion.

I only brought one poison bee stinger back with me. I only had one so I could make an antidote potion at any time. I picked a momon fruit from my garden and then ate it as I walked.

Whoa, delicious!? Is this the effect of my cultivation skill leveling up and getting the harvesting skill? I’m really glad I can eat things this tasty every day… When I was living in the duke house, I would sometimes have to skip meals after all.

If I can make myself a house later then I’ll have nothing to complain about life here.

While looking at the map, I made my way towards the river to start with. I used the river water in place of a mirror and cut my hair with my dismantling knife before washing my face. Once I was satisfied, I went to the east zone. Once there, I began hunting sahuagins that came out of the ocean.

While hunting sahuagins and poison bees, I continued north along the ocean side. Maybe it’s thanks to sword technique leveling up, but I don’t find them hard to fight anymore.

I ended up getting stung by poison bees yesterday, but I didn’t have to worry about that today. While I handled things flawlessly, I continued north until… I came across a pier.

“…What’s up with this?”

I didn’t see any boats nearby. It certainly didn’t appear to be a large harbour given the size of the pier, but I still didn’t see any ships. Who made this? It was done very poorly.

I suspect someone without any construction type skills built it regardless of that fact. It looked very old, and even had some rotting parts. …The people who made this probably aren’t around anymore.

The fact that someone made this probably means that there is something out at sea. I tried looking into it, but all I found were sahuagins jumping out. I continued north while dealing with them.

Once things settled down a bit, I decided to give bestowal magic a try. I confirmed the details of bestowal magic. First of all, equipment I can use bestowal magic on must be of a certain level. For example, the clothes I was wearing were no good.

Of the equipment I had at the moment, I could only use it on my dismantling knife and my cow fang sword. I checked my dismantling knife first. There were three possible skills I could give it. …I could only put one of them on the knife though.

These three. I checked each of them with appraisal.

…I see. There’s a magic stone inside of each monster. In the upper world, a magic stone was treated as a luxury item. For the most part they seemed to be used for making magic staffs, but a lot of nobles also bought them as precious gems.

That’s why I’d been ignoring them up to this point but… It seems I’ll need to consume them to use bestowal magic. Now that I think about it, bestowal magic was treated as a miss skill in the upper world. Guess it can’t be helped if it consumes expensive magic stones…

Anyway, I’ll be using this for dismantling things, so I guess dismantling technique would be good. Since the knife could only be granted one skill, I gave it dismantling technique.

I appraised the knife.

…I see. So, I guess that this will make dismantling things easier? I wonder if the skill level correlates to the level of bestowal magic. In that case I’m expecting a lot from bestowal magic in the future.

Next, I took out the cow fang sword. Are the available skills the same for all weapons? Or is it random like the gacha?

…I had two iron magic ores remaining, but those were strictly for the sake of weapon repair. I shouldn’t experiment willy-nilly with it since bestowal magic still isn’t high leveled yet. It’s a different story if I find more ore though.

I used bestowal magic on the cow fang sword and three options for bestowal appeared. I checked all the skills I didn’t know with appraisal as I look them over.

…I already know sword technique, so I’ll remove it from my list of candidates. Even so, would adding sword technique with sword technique double its power? Even so right now I would like to have both of those new skills.

I’m a little curious about the Hidden strength of the fang cow… but it seems to be a basic stat enhancement skill. Right now, the effect of basic stat enhancement is rather subtle. So, I guess slashing technique would be better for now then?

Right now, I’m fundamentally restricted to close range combat. I don’t know how strong slashing technique is, but if it allows me to attack from a distance then I want it. Magic type skills take a lot of time to charge up. It’s the so-called chanting time. If I can use it without that, then I want slashing technique.

I went ahead and granted slashing technique on the sword.

I’ll try it out right away. I charged my sword up with magic power and swung it. Following the path of my sword, a slashing attack shot off it. Fast. It managed to cut about halfway into a nearby tree.

Th- this is pretty sweet. It would probably require a bit more power to finish something off, but I could probably defeat a distant enemy with this alone. Especially against a slow-moving enemy like the fang cow I used to make this blade.

I bet I could kill it without any resistance. Alright, I guess I’ll continue exploring.