I woke up in the morning feeling very refreshed. I had been too tired from the fight with the red moki to practice my meditation while sleeping, and so I had been sleeping like the dead. I got out of bed, stretching from the stiffness that always comes with a long night’s rest, and grabbed my spear from the side of the bed. While doing so, I wondered why nobody ever seemed to steal people’s gear while they were sleeping, but figured that it had something to do with the system in place, or the goddess as the in game lore referred to it as.

Heading out, I went over to the gates, today I was going to get out of the starter city and head on towards Kurheim and find some three and four star mobs to hunt. Walking out of the gates for what would likely be the last time, I looked back at the city, noticing for the first time the runes that had been inscribed at the top of the wall.

I wasn’t sure what they would do, but likely were to prevent any monster attacks from happening, or to protect the city if they did happen. I turned around, and headed down the road, checking that my warding circle and tent were all packed and ready to go.

As I walked, I attempted to meditate while doing so, as I wasn’t sure if I could, but the flow of mana would keep getting disrupted as I walked, my mind trying to focus on two things. I wasn’t sure if it was because you couldn’t meditate while walking, or that I simply wasn’t experienced enough.

Figuring I could find one of the trainers at the next city to ask about it, I continued trying, needing something to entertain me on my walk anyway, at least until the moglins and moki started to attack me.

It wasn’t long until the first moglins attacked, but they were easily taken care of with a few ice spears, which reminded me I still needed to upgrade it. Deciding that would be a more efficient use of my time than my attempted meditation, I started spamming ice spears whenever my mana was full, making sure to leave enough so I could handle any moglins who attacked.

For the first few hours, I had a relatively leisurely walk, occasionally killing moglins, and picking on the moki who didn’t move even as half as fast as the red moki had. After the sixth or so group of moglin attacks, I got a nice little notification that I had leveled up again, likely from all the experience the red moki had given me. I put the point into strength, as I wanted to be able to do a bit more damage in melee range.

I soon reached a signpost, and followed the direction the the little monolith with directions on it pointed me, off to the right. Not long after, the road started to be surrounded by trees, and I stepped off into the forest, staying in eyesight of the road while I searched for herbs. My mana potions were out at this point, I’d used them all in the fight with the red moki, and they had definitely come in handy, so I wanted to make some more when I set up camp.

The forest was relatively quiet compared to all the moglin and moki attacks that had happened earlier on on the road, so I leisurely went along, picking a good amount of herbs to practice my alchemy on, snacking on the travel foods I had prepared quite a time ago.

After I’d collected enough that I could get in a good amount of practice, I headed back to the road and continued my walk, spamming ice spear and attempting to meditate along the way. The rest of the day was relatively quiet, with only a single group of moglins attacking me, likely they gravitated more towards the city, as that was where all the humans were.

Once it started to get dark, I started to set up camp, putting up my warding circle around a large area, gathering some twigs and branches which seemed dry enough to burn, and setting up my primitive tent.

I then started myself a small fire, the sparks from my flint and steel easily catching on some dried leaves and then slowly flowing towards the twigs, slowly catching onto larger and large pieces of wood, the mist slowly becoming more transparent as the light lit up the area. I then set up my herbs to dry on a little rack I made above the flames, and I took out some moki meat I had harvested while hunting earlier, putting it on the rack to cook along with the herbs.

It wasn’t long until a delicious smell started to rise up, and I bit into the moki meat, getting a slight frown on my face as I was reminded of how stringy it was. Regardless, I finished my small meal, and left the herbs above the fire to finish drying out and hopefully not catching on fire themselves before turning in to sleep for the night.

Once I got into my tent, I grimaced. I had completely forgotten to get something like a sleeping bag, so I was stuck just hanging out inside the tent without any sort of bedding. I shrugged, it didn’t get too cold here, at least not for now as it seemed to be summer or spring here, so I laid down, and started my nightly practice of starting to meditate.

The next day, waking up after having been unsuccessful in my attempts, I got up, yawning while I collected my ward net, and packed up my tent. I then noticed that the herbs had indeed not caught on fire, so before heading out I decided to do a little more alchemy practice.

Taking out my mortar and pestle and my glass bottle to make the potions in, I ground up the herbs as finely as I could and tried to remember exactly how much mana to put into the potion to make it as deep a color as possible without turning it black.

Wondering why all the potions turned black when they failed, rather than different herbs turning different colors, I added the herbs I had ground up to a bottle while finely controlling the amount of mana I was adding into the potions.

My first two attempts were unfortunately failures, but on my third I had gotten the right amount of mana, and gotten it about as dark of a color as I had before, though still not the opaque look I was shooting for. I kept trying however with my remaining herbs, getting some potions that were slightly better, and some that were slightly worse. The better ones I added to the flasks on my belt, wanting to be ready in case I ran into something that would require a lot of mana or healing to fight against.

After I was done, my walk continued. I wasn’t sure exactly how long it would take to get there, but figured it couldn’t be more than a couple of days.

The second day went much the same as the first, except there were slightly more moglin and moki attacks, which I was grateful for as the fresh meat from the moki, even if it was a bit too stringy, was still much better than the travel rations I had packed. While I was walking I wondered if having a balanced diet was at all important in this game.

I wasn’t really keen on getting scurvy in a video game, and I felt the developers very well may have added it in, so I decided that I was going to eat slightly more healthy when I got the chance. The day was relatively uneventful, though I did think I was getting closer to being able to meditate while walking, I had been able to get the mana to flow down to my leg and back up, though it would always get interrupted about there, possibly from my excitement at being able to do so.

The evening went much the same as the day before, setting up my minimal campsite and setting a fire to roast some moki one, though I did spot a couple of moglins wandering around outside my campsite, and I held my breath, wondering if the ward net would be as effective as the shopkeeper had said.

I flinched as one of the moglins eyes glanced over me, and started to write up a spell pattern just in case, and when it started walking away, I started wondering what to do with the spell pattern I had made but not released. After musing on it for a couple of minutes, I noticed it started to fade, eventually disappearing all on its own.

Smiling at having found out that you could dispel a spell pattern, I headed off to bed, determining to test tomorrow if I could put up multiple spell patterns and release them all at once, something I hadn’t yet tried.

The third day was more interesting, with tons of moglin attacks, and I found out that you can indeed draw up multiple spell patterns to release at once, though I wasn’t quite sure why you would do so, as it would probably be more efficient to just release it as fast as you could draw it up, though I wondered at the effects of multiple frostbites.

Testing my theory on the next pair of moglins, I drew up two of my upgraded frostbites and released them at the leftmost moglin, and noted that the ice seemed to be thicker than before. Eliminating the other moglin with my spear, I watched to see what would happen.

It took a good deal longer than usual to go away, and when it did, instead of the moglin breaking free of it like normal, it was released when the ice started to melt, more slowly than the ice from my ice spear and ice shatter, but still much faster than normal ice would melt.

When the moglin got out of the ice, rather than charging at me, it simply collapsed, and I took a step back in surprise. Figuring that it had suffocated in the ice, I smiled at a new thing to add to my repertoire. It would be a bit overkill for normal mobs, but when it came to king class or simply tougher mobs, being able to hold them in place for an extended period of time would be very useful.

The rest of the day was spent fighting off mobs, and by the end of it, I was pretty exhausted, ready to get some sleep before doing some more walking on the morrow. I was able to get into my meditative fugue for the night, so when I awoke I was quite happy, stretching out the knots that had formed while sleeping on the hard ground, deciding my first move when I reached Kurheim would be to buy myself some travel bedding.

I was cheered up early in the morning when my ice spear upgraded to ice spear plus, adding a one times my wisdom mana multiplier in addition to the base cost, but when I tried it out, it was quite impressive, having jagged edges that looked very sharp, and it simply tore through moglins. While it wouldn’t directly kill them in one hit unless I hit their disproportionately large head, they would usually bleed out in a few seconds after, the jagged new ice spear leaving massive tears in their flesh.

I determined then that I would definitely need to start stacking wisdom, because while the damage was impressive, I could only get five casts out of it. While late game the 10 base cost would be negligible, it was eating up a good portion of my mana at the present.

It was about midday when I finally arrived at Kurheim, or at least the outskirts, a ten foot or so wall completely surrounding a massive amount of farmland, the wall stretching as far as I could see in both directions. When I finally arrived at the city proper, I gawked at the ridiculously large walls. While the ones around Ederheim had been maybe twenty feet tall, these were closer to forty, and they were entirely covered in runes rather than the ones only at the top that had been on Ederheim’s.

When I finally arrived at the gates, I had to wait in line for quite a while, until I got to the front, where a guard began to question me in a bored manner.

“Purpose of visiting Kurheim and identification please.”

I wasn’t sure of how to give any identification and so I asked. “I’m an adventurer here to hunt bigger mobs, but I’m not sure how to give any form of Identification, I’m one of the travelers who was summoned.”

“Just hand over your adventurers guild tag and you’ll be fine, we’ve had quite a few of you come in, I’ll hand you a map that’ll have the training areas and barracks listed.”

I handed over my guild tag, and he put it over a rune covered table before handing it back to me along with a map.

“Have a good stay in Kurheim, we could use the help clearing out the local monster population.”

I thanked him for the map, and opened it up. The city was truly massive, with a large market district, a military district, and a very large residential district. I figured with that large of a residential district, the farmers for the fields I had seen outside likely lived inside the city, probably to avoid any nighttime monster attacks.

The first thing I did was head over to the market district, I was going to get myself some sleeping gear, then I was going to head over to the adventurers guild to find out what the new mobs would be at three and four stars.

It took me a bit to get there, but after I’d arrived, it wasn’t hard for me to find a general store, and I headed in to buy myself some sleeping gear. They actually had what seemed to be a sleeping bag, which had to be made with orb fur, as it looked very similar, and I walked out two silver poorer, but very satisfied with my purchase.

As my next order of business, I headed over to the adventurers guild to do some recon on the opposition I would be facing. When I arrived, it was similar to the one I had seen in Ederheim, with a large outside area where all the selling of monster parts happened, and a larger building than the one I had seen in Ederheim.

Heading on in, it was a similar DMV like atmosphere,very business like, and nothing like the rowdy tavern style that I had expected before I started playing. I headed over to the three star board, and noted that this time there were five separate mobs to hunt, craws, ents, molts, phols, and brags.

Deciding that I was going to rest first, and go hunting later, I headed off, checking my map to find some food before heading off to the barracks I had noted on my map. I eventually found a little restaurant, and two silver less than before, I got a delicious stew along with some bread. The stew was filled with chunks of meat, which tasted like orb meat, and chunks of some unrecognizable vegetables, and I ate it as fast as I could, blowing on my spoon to cool it down before savoring the taste.

After having eaten, I headed off, it was time to head to the barracks to get some rest. Along the way, I continued to try my meditation while walking, getting slightly further than I had before, and hoping that the practice would be useful for doing my sleep meditation thing.

I soon arrived, and headed in, though this time, there were what had to be soldiers sharing the rooms with us, with the travelers having their own little section. Making sure to pick a bed right next to the only side of the room with windows so as to not be hit in the face with the accursed light again, I slowly drifted off while meditating, slowly reaching that state I kept searching for.