Just how the hell was he supposed to scale that cliff? Moving forward with his longsword in hand, Marcello walked towards the rock cliff, circling around the perimeter of the pool at the base of the waterfall.

*Splash*

The pool of water erupted, and a beaver appeared from the depths of the waterfall bed. Except this wasn’t some normal beaver. Due to the excessive vital energies of the terrestrial plane, this furry fellow with a flat tail and large buck teeth was the size of an ice cream truck.

“Holy crap,” Marcello cursed, using identify as fast as he could before bracing for impact, as the beaver swam straight towards him.

[Level ? Earth Beaver]

The first monster he encountered in this new plane was already too high level for him to identify. Well this was just going swimmingly, wasn’t it. No pun intended.

The beaver burst out from the water, its tail propelling it forward like a rudder. Marcello aimed at it with his javelin in hand and threw as hard as possible, his strength now herculean when compared to earth standards due to the buffs he received from Breaker of Skulls, Lord Slayer, and his class and profession.

With 36 strength total, he was a monster by all rights. The only other stat higher right now was constitution at 38, due to the absolutely monstrous Enigmatic Bulwark Knight class growths for constitution. To put that into perspective, a normal stat like agility was at 11 and his wisdom and intelligence stats which got reduced by his class were both at 9.

This class truly showed the might of the ancient empire’s legionnaires.

His archeois javelin soared through the oxygen rich atmosphere, slicing through multiple floating droplets of water as it sank into the torso of the beaver mid air. Right before the beaver’s bodyslam could land, a giant ice elemental that had regrown to its full size limbered forward and tackled it, meeting the beaver’s bodyslam head on.

Thud.

Dirt and water flew everywhere as the beaver crashed to the side of the pool, the gravity defying biome suspending the water particles in the air while the dirt fell back to the ground.

The ice elemental’s power level was absolutely bonkers, but Marcello had grown a lot since his fight with the castle lord. It was time to show that he too could stand up against powerful enemies.

“Rahhhh!” Marcello shouted, dashing forward in his surprisingly nimble heavy plate armor. With the castle lord’s longsword in hand, he engaged the beaver who had just flipped back onto its legs.

The beaver gnashed at him at the same time his longsword swished forward, as the two buck teeth of the overgrown mammal painfully struck his armor. His longsword sank into the beaver’s cheek, drawing blood.

Marcello was surprised to see that the blood was now being drawn into and absorbed by the cursed longsword, and a very small sliver of health returned to his body from the cut. He was aware that the longsword had a lifesteal effect tied to drinking blood, but to see it in action was an experience and a half.

The sword to the cheek didn’t deal all too much damage to the beaver, though.

Oh yeah, what the fuck was he doing? He just received two brand new skills and probably should use them.

He activated sundering blow, swinging his longsword once again as Frosty performed a WWE level elbow to the ground at the beaver.

Blam.

Marcello and Frosty the not so gentle giant’s attacks landed at the same time, right as the beaver was trying to slowly back away towards the pool again. Not on his watch. The blow dealt additional armor penetration and armor crush, punching through the beaver’s hide but otherwise not doing all that much since it wasn’t particularly armored.

He tried to use it again, before suddenly realizing that it had a cooldown. Oops.

As the giant ice elemental held down the struggling beaver, Marcello tested out his other new ability, giant’s roar.

GGGGGGRRRRRRAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Even he was shocked by the sound amplification that actually did sound a bit like a giant rather than a human. The beaver flinched, but was otherwise unaffected. Tch. Seemed like he didn’t have enough constitution and presence to completely stifle the massive beaver with the ability.

Also, something was wrong. Despite taking a decent amount of damage from the beaver’s initial attack, Marcello realized that his health bar was replenishing far too fast for it to be normal. The same could be said about the beaver.

The beaver’s entire body glowed faintly as energies poured into it from what seemed to be the very biome itself. What the fuck was this? At this rate, it was going to outheal his damage!

Marcello cursed. This was really bad, as he was already expending some of Frosty’s remaining summon duration by making him fight intensely. If he didn’t kill the beaver now, he’d lose out on so much experience and also waste his summoned ice elemental’s time.

By the time he finished that thought, Marcello was already standing on top of the beaver, who had gotten flipped over by the ice elemental and was now being held in a choke hold by the ice giant. Crystals of ice appeared near its contact with the beaver, but its vital energies siphoned from the biome itself were pushing the ice back.

But if the vital energies were busy dealing with the icicle formation, then they couldn’t heal! Marcello held the castle lord’s longsword with both hands and slashed at the beaver’s belly, hacking and slashing and kicking and stabbing as he depleted the beaver’s health rapidly before it could heal back up.

Slash!

Thwack!

Sshkkk!

Frosty’s hug of death on the beaver was bringing it to its limits, as its exposed belly got slashed through by Marcello’s onslaught. It tried kicking and screaming, letting loose a high pitched squeal sound, but to no avail. Marcello was dead set on murdering this fucking beaver and he was not about to let anything come between him and this fat piece of experience he was going to get.

Finally, after the umpteenth slash and as its stomach was starting to spill out, the beaver’s head slumped over as its health hit zero.

You have slain [Lvl 22 Earth Beaver] - You are the sole contributor to this kill, and have received bonus tutorial points for the kill. Bonus experience awarded for solo contribution. Bonus experience awarded for killing a higher level enemy.

Ding! [Enigmatic Bulwark Knight] class has leveled up to level 16. Strength has increased by 1. Constitution has increased by 2.

Ding! [Human] race has leveled up to level 16. All stats have been increased by 0.1.

Ding! [Enigmatic Bulwark Knight] class has leveled up to level 17. Strength has increased by 1. Constitution has increased by 2.

Ding! [Human] race has leveled up to level 17. All stats have been increased by 0.1.

Marcello breathed a sigh of relief, taking off his slit visor full plate helmet for a moment. The nature of fighting in this biome was a lot different from what he first expected. He naively thought that it was just a matter of taking down large beasts, when in fact he had to fight against not only the beast but also the extreme vital energy that caused them to grow so large in the first place.

He shuddered to think about what this King Jaeger was that the system warned him about. Just like how the castle lord was considered inadvisable to fight against, so was the king jaeger. For once he might actually take the system’s advice.

Anyway, time to check out his new status screen after all that had happened in the last day.

Status

Name: Marcello Vivaldi

Current status: Tutorial initiate in terrestrial plane

Class: Enigmatic Bulwark Knight (level 17)

Profession: Carpenter

Race: Human (alive) (level 17)

Health: 150/160

Mana: 82/82

Stats

Strength: 40

Constitution: 43

Agility: 12

Endurance: 18

Vitality: 19

Perception: 12

Intelligence: 9

Wisdom: 9

Presence: 11

Sense: 100

Skills

Despair Intuition (inheritance), Giant’s Roar (rare), Sundering Blow (uncommon), Identify (unique), Bear Trap (upgraded), Quiet Footsteps (basic)

Titles

Breaker of Skulls, Lord Slayer

Heh. Felt kind of good seeing all the stat gains and titles and stuff that he earned. Even the new profession slot getting filled up was kind of satisfying in its own right. The numbers were now rounded to the nearest whole number, which was kind of nice.

Oh yeah, seeing the mana stat prompted him to try out the ability that the archeios javelin spear came with, retrieval with mana.

Marcello had never used mana before, so he was curious how it would work out. The javelin was sitting just a few yards away from him.

“Retrieve javelin!” he said rather sheepishly. He probably didn’t need to announce it, but saying it out loud kind of helped him focus.

Energy flowed out of the palm of his hand, traveling towards the javelin on the floor. Marcello felt that the mana was kind of just packaged and used in the spell, and the system did most of the work for him. He didn’t really have to control or manipulate the mana in any way, nor did he really see how he could do that. After a brief second, the javelin flew back towards his hand, landing in his palm.

Marcello checked his mana bar after the usage.

Mana: 61/82

Ugh, that was a lot of mana for such a simple ability.

He was also feeling really fatigued, not from the mana usage but from the fact that he hadn’t slept in such a long time. Adrenaline and bright lights had kept him awake for far too long. Marcello felt like he had half a day of energy left in the tank before he had to call it quits for the day.

But even something as simple as sleep was not so easy in the wilderness like this. Maybe he should’ve taken a quick nap back in the tutorial room, now that he thought about it. Oh well, no point in regretting it now. He wasn’t quite as fatigued as he would be before the system, but still the human body needed rest every now and then.

“Alright Frosty, our next job is to find a safe shelter for tonight,” Marcello said to his ever stoic elemental companion.

The ice elemental nodded.

A notification appeared unprompted.

Quest: [Carpenter’s first project] You have found yourself in a new environment, full of trees that can be turned into lumber. Chop down some trees and make some wooden planks. Planks made [0/2]

Well this was new. Heh. Maybe it was time to try out his new profession. But first, it was probably best to scout out the area and figure out if he could actually sit here and chop trees unmolested.

“Let’s check this area out first, Frosty. Then I’ll do some wood cutting for lumber,” Marcello communicated to his ice giant.

Marcello and his ice elemental companion walked around the biome, using the obvious landmark of the waterfall to mark territory as well as the tutorial scroll of pathfinding as a compass.

He went left from the waterfall, only to find out to his horror that this entire area was parked on one of the most precarious and strange cliffs he had ever seen in his entire life. From as far as he could see, wide rocky mountains supported wide and majestic trees growing at strange angles. Atop of those trees were entire biomes of their own which supported rock pillars and formations. And, you guessed it, those rock formations that were big enough supported more thick and strange trees, and the cycle continued endlessly down until he could no longer see the bottom, which was below the clouds.

In the distance, he could see a singular giant tree that pulsed with energy with a trunk thick enough that he had to turn his head to see the full length of its diameter even from this distance, and howling winds and gales circulating around it like it was the center of a tornado.

He knew enough about lore that he highly suspected that tree to be the Yggdrasil of legend, otherwise known as the World Tree.

Man, if only he could get some lumber from there… Marcello shuddered to think of what kinds of things he could build with that. But he was only here for ten days at most, and even if he flew in a straight line towards that tree it would take longer to get there. And that wasn’t even mentioning all the strange magicks guarding it, including that furious hurricane.

Anyway, he had now found out that his current location was that of a precarious mountain that sprouted trees that shot above. To reach the exit, he would have to begin an arduous ascent.

There were some other creatures living on this level, including some overgrown worm-like things and more beavers, but as long as he used Quiet Steps it didn’t seem like they noticed him. Honestly, they barely even noticed the giant ice elemental trailing behind him so as long as he kept his distance, he would probably be fine.

Surroundings, check. That meant there was only one thing to do now. Marcello rushed back to the waterfall and sized up a particularly straight and tall tree. Well, tall at least by earth standards. By terrestrial plane standards it was tiny, only the height of a building and a half. He tried to identify it, and surprisingly it worked.

[Tall Tree] – An overgrown tree unique to the terrestrial plane.

“Alright,” he said to himself. “It’s chopping time.”

Marcello took out an obsidian hatchet and swung at the tree trunk, the blade digging into it. Not bad. He then took out the rusty hatchet and swung at the tree trunk.

Thunk.

The hatchet blade dug into the tree with a satisfying thunk. It didn’t seem like that much of a difference compared to the obsidian hatchet on the surface, but the feeling, power, and precision behind each hit was far better when he used the rusty hatchet. It was as if he could feel every swing, each chip into the wood.

Marcello unequipped his armor, leaving him in just a t-shirt as he swung over and over again at the wood. Each hit reverberated through his entire arm, but the rusty hatchet really cut into the lumber as if it were butter… by wood standards, not by actual butter standards.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Sweat glistened off of Marcello’s forehead as he worked the wood, while Frosty sat by and watched. He could help, but Marcello urged him not to to conserve his energy.

Finally, after almost an hour, the tree showed signs of falling. It was hard work even with Marcello’s amplified strength. Walking to the base of the trunk, he pushed at the trunk, guiding it to fall away from him. It would be so sad if he got this far just to die to a falling tree trunk, he thought to himself.

THUD.

The regular tree by earth standards fell to the ground with a thud.

“Time to make some planks,” he said with a small laugh. Truly the life of a champion.