Chapter 5

“Okay! Not much farther until the next town!” The day after getting the Staff of World Tree and spending the night in the woods, Lorna began making her way to the next town, one eye on the map she’d found on the internet. The woods had no real path, and it was hard to know which way to go. But thanks to the map, Lorna knew there was a town nearby. And that wasn’t all… “The gathering point on the map should be around here som— Oh! Found it!” Lorna spotted an area to gather medicinal herbs right where the internet had said it would be. Item: Phantom Leaf Type: Material Price: 50,000 shil Effect: None Details: A rare medicinal herb from the Magic Forest that grows in very small quantities. Can be used as a material in high-grade healing items such as Elixirs and Elven Nostrum. Also used as an event item in the side quest, The Toxic Ambitions of Dr. Zariché. “Yep, it’s exactly like the internet said it would be. But wait, hold on a sec. This stuff sells for fifty thousand shil? It says it’s super rare, but it just looks like a worthless plant to me…” Regardless, Lorna stuffed as many of the leaves into her bag as she could every time she passed a gathering point. “Let’s see… It says some goblins made a pitfall trap around here… Is that it?” She could see that some leaves were piled up in a particularly strange way along the path. If she had been walking by and hadn’t known, she never would have noticed it. “And it looks like there are three Level 4 brown goblins hiding in the grass nearby…” Lorna pointed her staff at the grass in question. She guessed that the goblins were hoping to pounce on whoever fell into their trap. But that was nothing to Lorna—she could see through their ruse with the help of the internet. “Okay, let’s start with—Terra Drain!” This was the skill granted to her when she equipped her SSS-Rank staff, the Staff of World Tree. It allowed her to absorb the MP of all enemies within range. A massive magic circle shone on the ground underneath Lorna’s feet. “Gyah?!” came the perplexed cries of the goblins. At the same moment, light began flowing into the green gem at the tip of Lorna’s staff. According to the internet, once a monster’s MP was reduced to zero, it would become incapable of performing any actions for a set time. Lorna took advantage of the opening. “Brown goblins are weak to wind! So…Petit Gale!” Lorna used the MP she’d just absorbed to cast one of the spells she’d learned the day before. Fwooooooosh!!! A massive tornado appeared that sucked up all the goblins—and the nearby trees along with them. After a few moments, goblin gems and a host of other materials came falling from the sky. Brown Goblin swarm defeated! You gained 108 EXP! LEVEL UP! Lv. 17 Lv. 18 “…Th-this thing is way too strong,” Lorna muttered as she broke out in a cold sweat. She was glad she was able to use magic so effectively, but… “I don’t really need my spells to do this much damage…” She had only cast starter spells so far, but based on the outcome, she might as well have been using ultimate magic. I probably shouldn’t use any spells in town if they’re all going to do…this. Lorna looked back over her shoulder. She could see sharp rocks jutting up toward the sky alongside a mountainous glacier. Nearby, a scorched field still seethed with red-hot embers and a tornado raged, tossing whole trees hither and thither. It looked like the world was ending right behind her. All she had done was test out a few of her spells. But her staff was way too powerful. It was like the weapon had a mind of its own and was determining the strength of her spells without her input. “And to think, I got this staff just by following the instructions on the screen… The internet really is amazing.” But that wasn’t the only thing amazing about it. “It even has info on how to learn new skills and the weak points of monsters. No one knows that kind of stuff.” Those two pieces of knowledge alone were revolutionary. Lorna popped open the internet and looked up the details of the skills she had learned the day before. Skill: Giant Killer Effect: Boosts damage done to higher-level enemies based on the difference between your levels (difference in level x1 percent) How to Learn: Solo an enemy twenty levels higher than the character. How to Enhance: Solo an enemy twenty levels higher than the character. Skill: Art of Slaughter I Effect: Increases damage dealt and critical rate when facing five or more enemies. How to Learn: Overkill twenty or more enemies within one hour without being attacked. How to Enhance: Overkill thirty or more enemies while Art of Slaughter I is active. This is, like, way, way beyond the level of a national secret… In this world, the skills one was born with (what the internet referred to as the skill gacha) were highly valued. But that was because no one knew what the conditions were for learning or enhancing skills. Common sense dictated that if you trained hard, you would one day be able to get a skill falling somewhere between G-Rank and E-Rank. If there was a known way to train that would allow someone to obtain a D- or C-Rank skill, that knowledge would be considered a national secret or an esoteric mystery handed down only to chosen successors. But the internet listed the conditions for learning and enhancing all skills—even those of B- and A-Rank. How’s a person supposed to figure out any of this stuff without looking it up on the internet anyway…? It was the same for monsters’ weaknesses. Some were relatively straightforward and easy to figure out—the fact that plant-type monsters were weak to fire, for example. But something like brown goblins being weak to wind made no sense. Surely the only way to know would be to look it up. And knowledge like that was far too valuable to be made publicly available. Boy, I’d really love to learn some more skills, Lorna thought as she walked through the forest. Using Terra Drain a few moments ago had really gotten her blood pumping. New skills were always cause for excitement. “Okay. I should be coming up on the exit soon… But first, I’ve got one last job to do.” Lorna stopped and her expression grew stern. At that very moment… Clomp, clomp, clomp…! With that sound, a massive boar appeared, knocking over trees as it trundled along. It blocked Lorna’s path. The creature stared her down, letting out an imposing growl and exhaling a plume of white breath before slamming its front hooves into the ground in an attempt to intimidate its foe. …It’s just like the internet said! The gargantuan boar was the boss of this area—the lord of the Ipple Woods. Boss: Lord of the Woods Spawn Location: Ipple Woods Level: 50 Weaknesses: Fire, Ice. Weak points in the nose and stomach. Resistances: Wind, Earth, Poison, Slash Rewards: Opens main road out of Ipple Woods. Drops Lord of the Woods Gem (90 percent), Lord Pelt (70 percent), Lord Tusk (30 percent), Reckless Boots (20 percent), Chargefang Lance (3 percent) Details: The area boss of Ipple Woods Appears to block the exit when you try to leave the woods. Despite its very simple attack pattern, its high ATK, DEF, and SPD make it practically impossible to defeat early on in the game. The Lord of the Woods destroys trees and rocks when it charges, so hiding behind rocks or climbing trees is certain to get you hurt. …This thing looks so much scarier up close. But Lorna already knew everything she needed to about the beast thanks to the internet. I just have to believe in the internet. As long as I believe, everything will turn out fine! After all, everything on the internet is tru— “Groooooorgh!” “Whaaaa—?!” Thmp, thmp, thmp, thmp!! The frenzied lord charged at her. Its sheer power had her completely overwhelmed. She might have looked everything up ahead of time, but that hadn’t made the beast any less terrifying. “R-right! O-okay! Weak to fire and ice! I don’t want to set the whole forest on fire again so—Petit Ice!” “Gergh?!” The boss was hit with a powerful blast of ice magic from Lorna’s SSS-Rank staff. Even a massive beast like the Lord of the Woods let out a horrified cry as it was swallowed by a wave of ice. But… “Grrroooorrrg!” Ka-crk!!! The boar crashed through the ice and was soon charging at Lorna once more. Yikes! Maybe I shouldn’t have expected this thing to go down with one hit from a starter spell. It is Level 50, after all. It seemed to have taken quite a bit of damage. However, at this rate, Lorna wouldn’t be able to take it down before it reached her. …But she’d expected as much. “Then how about this? Petit Wall!” Lorna raised her staff and swung it in the air, and… Rumble, rumble, rumble…!!! …a tremendous wall of stone burst from the ground and rose up in front of the boar. Lorna had gained access to Petit Wall once her Magic skill rose to Magic V. Yet despite her efforts, the large boar smashed through the wall as though it were made of twigs. “Petit Wall! Petit Wall! Petit Wall!” “Grroooh?!” Lorna retreated backward, dipping into her abundant MP pool to create wall after wall after wall. This enraged the boar, who smashed through each of them in turn. But Lorna could tell that the beast was starting to lose steam. That was part one of Lorna’s plan. And she had more up her sleeve. “…You fell for it.” The instant the massive creature smashed through the final wall… “Groorrgh?!” Fssssshhhh! …it slipped, and its monstrous body tumbled into a hole in the ground. “Yes! Just like I planned!” It was the very pitfall trap the goblins had set up to trick passersby. Lorna had created wall after wall not only to keep the Lord of the Woods away from her, but also to lure it to this spot. “…?! …!” The beast fell into the hole headfirst and got stuck. Its hooves waggled in the air helplessly. The sheer weight of the beast’s massive body seemed to keep it from climbing out. It might have been able to avoid such a fate if it had been a little more careful. But the beast had been rampaging around blindly, and the walls had further prevented it from taking in its surroundings. It would have been a difficult fate to avoid. This is all thanks to the internet. Lorna popped open the screen and looked it over once again. Boss: Lord of the Woods Strategy: Its basic pattern of attack is to charge head-on, making pitfalls an effective strategy. The boss takes a long time to drag itself out of a hole, so surrounding it with pitfalls is a good way to keep it trapped. If you change the terrain inside the hole to Puddle, the boss will take damage over time, and you can defeat it easily. If you don’t have the Dig, Rabbit Hole, or Groundbreaker skills, you can use the nearby goblin pitfall instead (it was likely put there to be used during this fight). Wow, all sorts of helpful stuff is written on the internet, huh? But why is it all so specific? Are the gods just really bored or something…? It seemed strange to Lorna. But she had bigger fish to fry at the moment. Or in this case, boars to freeze. “Okey dokey, here goes…” Lorna pointed her staff at the Lord of the Woods, now stuck in the hole. “All that’s left is to attack it again and again until it goes down. Petit Ice!” She hit the defenseless beast’s weak point—its stomach—with a blast of ice. “Okay! Next is— Wait. Huh?” Just as Lorna prepared another spell, something happened. Poof! The boss’s body vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a gem and a variety of dropped items. Lord of the Woods defeated! You gained 7,500 EXP! LEVEL UP! Lv. 18 Lv. 22 SKILL UP! Giant Killer I Giant Killer II Obtained Title: “Lord Slayer” “U-um… It’s…over?” Lorna stood dumbfounded, her staff still at the ready. The Lord of the Woods was a monster that struck fear in the hearts of those living near the Ipple Woods. Even the Guugelheit family, with their high-ranking skills, stood no chance against the fearsome beast. And yet Lorna had defeated it with ease. The battle was almost too anticlimactic. Does this mean I could have just hit it one more time, without doing any of that other stuff? The wide gap between their levels had made Lorna overly cautious, and she’d felt the need to rely on the trap. But now that she thought about it, she had 3,600 M-ATK. In other words, her M-ATK was seven times higher than the kingdom’s strongest sorcerer. Not to mention the fact that the Staff of World Tree doubled the damage of her spells at the cost of using up three times more MP. On top of that, her Magic V skill increased the damage output of her spells by an additional 1.3 times. Furthermore, the thirty-two-level difference between Lorna and the boar meant Giant Killer I added even more damage to the equation: 1.32 times more, to be exact. And finally, she had attacked its weak point, which doubled the total damage. With all those factors combined, Lorna’s attacks dealt roughly seven times more damage than normal. “…Right, well,” Lorna said with a vacant expression, “I guess that means I’m pretty strong now. So that’s neat.” Lorna gave up trying to figure out her total damage halfway through. She figured it was fairly impressive the boar had even survived one attack from her. “I guess I should check what the boss dropped,” she said, snapping back to her senses. She picked up the beast’s gem and its pelt. The pelt was too big to fit into her bag, however, so she cut off a smaller portion. She assumed that would be more than enough to sell for her travel expenses. But she found something else, too. “H-huh. The boss dropped some finished footwear,” she said, pulling a pair of boots out of the pitfall. She assumed they were leather shoes made from the pelt of the Lord of the Woods. Uh… Why are these boots premade? This doesn’t make sense. Who made them? Lorna was confused, but she decided to put those thoughts aside and look up the boots on the internet. Equipment (Feet): Reckless Boots Rank: B Type: Boots Price: 5,000,000 shil Effect: DEF +80, SPD +300 Equip Skill: Reckless Rush (B) Effect: Doubles speed, but stopping is impossible for the skill’s duration Details: Boots dropped by the Lord of the Woods The equip skill for these boots comes in handy when traversing the world or escaping, and they remain useful even after their stats get outclassed by other boots. Activating the skill makes it very hard to control which direction you’re going, so be careful not to speed off the side of a cliff and die. “Wow, these are some strong boots…” It was hard for Lorna to fathom just how fast SPD +300 was. Until yesterday, I only had 6 SPD, so… After getting her SSS-Rank staff, Lorna was becoming desensitized to the ease with which she was earning high-ranked gear. Regardless, she was grateful to have a replacement for her old boots, which had become tattered from her long trip through the woods. Lorna wasted no time slipping into her new Reckless Boots. “All right! Not a bad find! ” Nothing could beat the feeling of getting one’s hands on some strong new gear. Lorna hummed a happy tune as she checked the internet once more. “Let’s see… It says the equip skill for the Reckless Boots is called Reckless Rush. Wow, double speed?” Sure, there was a drawback: Stopping was impossible for the skill’s duration. But that didn’t seem so bad to Lorna. And besides… “Apparently, it’s an incredibly useful skill. If the internet says so, it must be true.” When she thought of that, Lorna began itching to use it right away. Sure, trying the skill after she left the woods would be the safer bet, but why let that stop her? H-hey, I mean, I just got this skill. I should test it out, shouldn’t I? Lorna couldn’t resist the allure of a brand-new skill. And so… “Okay! Here! We! Go! Reckless Russssssh…?!” Lorna nonchalantly called out the skill’s name. And the very next moment… FSSSSH! …Lorna’s body was sent hurtling forward. Or more accurately, her legs seemed to be moving of their own volition, forcing her to run forward at an unfathomable speed. Taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka!!! The sound of Lorna’s recklessly rushed footsteps echoed among the trees as she ran through the woods, kicking up a cloud of dust all the way. “Fa-fa-fa-fast! Too faaast!!! Whyyyyyyyyy?!” Lorna had made another miscalculation when she read that the skill would make her run twice as fast. She had forgotten that, between her recent level grinding and her new equipment, she had leapfrogged from 6 SPD to 346 SPD in a matter of hours. The boost to her stats meant that even a regular run would have been more than fast enough. And now that pace had been doubled. “Ahhhhhh!!! I’m going to run into a treeeeee! S-s-s-stooooop!” Lorna screamed, tears welling up in her eyes. She had no idea how to disengage her new skill. And so she continued running through the forest at top speed, until suddenly… “I’m…I’m oooout!” …the dark thicket of trees gave way, and the scenery ahead opened up. Lorna somehow managed to screech to a halt, disengaging her skill with a mighty tumble. She looked up and was astonished. “W-wow!” Grassy plains sprawled out as far as the eye could see. A refreshing breeze was blowing, and the light around the sun formed a gentle halo. A bit farther in the distance, Lorna could make out a sprawling town.