I woke up in the morning and did what had become a ritual for me, I hopped on the internet to see how the world was faring. The chaos had largely subsided in the more developed countries as the military took control, but in less developed countries, it was still madness.

I noticed that there hadn’t been any reports of monster waves yet, which led to quite a bit of apprehension. It would be wonderful if they never came, but it’s always best to plan for the worst, and I was going to continue to do so. Plenty of people online were trying to warn people about it, but only the people in the few towns in game which had experienced a monster wave had any idea how horrifying they could be, and they were largely drowned out by the people who insisted that the army would handle it without any problems, even though small arms could barely harm four star and above monsters.

I shook my head, there was only one day to go until the meetup with Loss and his group, so today I was going to just get through my training routine and go do some hunting with the militia, even if the mood would likely continue to be terrible.

Soon I was exercising, taking advantage of some weights I had bought after one of the outings with the militia. They weren’t a full set of weights, but I had some dumbbells going up to forty five pounds that could give me a pretty good workout, though they were quickly becoming insufficient with how fast my strength was increasing.

AFter that, I went for my run. It was no longer a relaxing jog that I had used to do, it was full on sprinting for as long as I could, taking breaks by jogging in between the sets. I needed to get as strong as I could, levels would help a lot, but as for now I wanted to push to the limit of how many stats I could get just out of training.

I mused on adding some weights in a backpack for next time I went sprinting as I slowly jogged back to the house, utterly exhausted. It used to be I would be almost out of commission from soreness the next day, but vitality seemed to heal sore muscles as quickly as it would heal wounds.

On the way back, I grabbed some dandelions I had spotted on my run to make into health potions. There was no reason to risk going hunting without some health potions, even if we had a healer in our group this time. I decided to see if the people on the wiki had found out what the new equivalent of stamina herbs were on the way back.

Once I got back, I ran to the store real quick, picking up a beaker and some corked bottles for my potion making and easy consumption, along with a mortar and pestle for making the potions themselves.

I was soon back home, and grabbed some of the used to be dandelions and then started wondering the best way to dry them out. Eventually, I decided to put the leaves in a toaster oven on the lowest temperature setting, planting the remaining roots in the hope that they would somehow survive.

It took a while, but eventually they started to brown around the edges, and I took them out to see that they were properly crinkly and dried out. I was soon grinding one of them up in my mortar and pestle, and I filled up my beaker with a little water.

Once the dandelion like plant had been ground into a fine powder, I added it to the water and started injecting mana into it. This time though, I did something I should have though to do long before. I oh so carefully felt the feedback of the mana, trying to sense when it would be done.

After a bit of slowly and carefully adding mana, it got to a point where it gave off a feeling of fullness. Deciding that I could fit a tiny bit more mana in there before it felt like it would explode, I added an oh so small amount, right to the edge of where it felt like it would explode.

Teetering on the edge of giving off an utterly filled sensation, I stopped adding the mana, and then took a good look at the potion. It was the right shade of pinkish red, and this time was far more opaque than any of my attempts in game had been. This potion was likely the best one I had made so far, and it was only my first attempt with my new way of making it.

I soon repeated my attempt with a few more herbs, along with some rose leaves for mana potions, and then sat back, mentally exhausted. It took a massive amount of effort trying to get just barely under the point where the potion would turn black, and I’d failed a good few times in my attempts, but it was clearly producing much better results than I had gotten when I was just trying to guess the point of saturation.

Finally, after resting a bit, I decided to attempt my new inscription ink making. I took part of a leaf off one of the tulips, put it in the toaster oven, and took out a moki claw I had harvested while hunting with the militia, something that had gotten me odd looks.

I sliced off a sliver, imbuing my knife with a sigil of sharpness as I did so, and realized as I was cutting that the claw was actually being cut maybe an eighth of an inch away from the blade of the knife itself. It seemed that rather than physically making the knife sharper, it added a sort of sharp aura that would help cut through things.

Musing on how nice that would be for my makeshift spear, at least until my boar spear I’d ordered online arrived, I finished slicing up the moki claw and waited for the tulip leaf to dry out.

It wasn’t too long until the tulip leaf had dried out, and I took it out, cutting it into half as just one of the leaves would be a bit too much. I then ground it up, and added it to the water in the beaker, throwing in the moki claw along with it.

As I added mana, I saw the moki claw start to fizz and dissolve. I slowly felt the sensation of the mana, and winced as I noticed it still gave out a spicy sensation, though not quite as bad as the still living plant.

Once it gave off the feeling of fullness, and feeling very irritable from the constant spicy sensation, I stopped adding mana, and looked at the now dark purple mixture. I smiled, and poured it into a cup, grabbing a brush I had lying around to begin my attempt in real at inscribing.

Before starting, I cleaned out my beaker again, then started the inscription process. I slowly painted on the runes in their interlocking patterns down the length of my spear, going as carefully as I could in the hopes I wouldn’t fail.

Luckily, I actually succeeded on my first attempt, and I got a big grin on my face. I got myself a spear of sharpness +1, I thought to myself. Once I was done, I took the spear, and cut oh so carefully into another of the moki claws, noting the same thing happened as when I had imbued the knife, it cutting slightly ahead of the blade.

I grinned, now I could keep up a sigil of toughness on my spear rather than keeping up the sigil of sharpness, making it much less likely for it to break on me. I put my spear away, then wondered how on earth I could keep it from cutting stuff. It still required a decent amount of force to go through the moki claw, but I didn’t want it cutting through my floor or walls.

I hopped in game for a bit, deciding to ask the man at the inscription store. I walked over, and soon found out that it was normal to make a sheath enchanted with inscriptions of toughness of the same level of the sharpness enchantment.

I was soon back at another store, purchasing some leather to craft my sheath out of, and got back home before carefully sewing it together with thick leather string. I then hopped back in game and practiced the inscription patterns of toughness for a while before hopping back out and inscribing it, though this time took three attempts, and the rest of the inscription ink I had made.

Carefully putting it around my now far too sharp spear head, I smiled as I saw it didn’t break apart. I wasn’t going to try and break it, but I was sure with enough force it could cut through the sheath.

Once I’d finished, I checked the time, then before going to bed checked to see if anyone had found the equivalent of stamina herbs, and soon found out that they were pine needles, which had changed into flat, more leaf like shapes. That wouldn’t be a problem, I could get them pretty easily if that was the case.

As I went to bed, I mused on how the monsters seemed to avoid the highways between cities, there were occasional reports of people crashing into them, but it didn’t seem to be any higher than the rate of people hitting deer.

The only exceptions were some of the more major highways, which four star mobs had invaded, and had to be cleared out by the army with large caliber weaponry.

Luckily, five star and above mobs had started to congregate outside the cities rather than inside them, as had most other mobs, likely finding the resistance within cities to be too tough. The world was slowly starting to change into something resembling the game world, with mobs building up outside the cities. I wondered if we were going to have to build walls around most cities, then slowly meditated myself to sleep.

I woke up in the morning to the blaring of an alarm on my phone going off. Sleepy, I instantly put it on snooze before realizing it was the day of my big hunt with loss and the others. Yawning, I slowly dragged myself off the bed and stumbled my way to the kitchen.

With heavy lidded eyes I started my electric kettle to make some tea, and poured out my cereal crunching my way through my breakfast. Once I was done, and with a steaming mug of tea, I was feeling slightly less dead, and went out to my car, it was time to see how our group would fare in real.

I soon arrived at our meeting place, a bit early it seems, and grumbled about how I could’ve let the alarm snooze. When I arrived, I noticed Sophie sitting around and went over to join her. We sat in silence while I sipped my tea from my travel mug. While waiting around, a group appeared that seemed to match the heights of Loss and the others, carrying a variety of weapons. Assuming it to be them, I waved them over, and was soon asking.

“Loss? Mars? Light?”

“That’s us” Loss replied with a grin.

“Well pleasure to meet you in real, out here I’m Roland, you?”

“Lars” Loss replied, holding his hand out for a shake. I firmly gripped it and shook hands, his being quite rough, clearly used to using them. I smiled, His in game name was obviously a slight change on his real name.

“Elizabeth, but I go by Liz” Mars said, giving her much smoother hands to me to shake with a smile.

“I’m Rachel” Light quietly mentioned. She didn’t give out her hand to shake. I wasn’t sure if she was shy, germaphobic, or just not the type to shake hands.

I introduced Jolie to them, and then we were soon headed to the downtown area that they had mentioned had plenty of three star mobs. We were within walking distance, and cars weren’t allowed within the quarantined zone, so it took a while until we arrived.

While walking I took a look at my group’s weaponry. Lars had a hatchet and makeshift shield looking to be fashioned from a plate of metal, with handles welded on to it. Rachel simply had a very solid looking walking stick, likely only to be used in emergencies, as she couldn’t have gotten it enchanted to boost her spells, and she didn’t need much weaponry due to being the healer of the group. Elizabeth, somehow, had managed to get an honest to god bastard sword. I wasn’t sure if it was an imitation or a fake, so I had to ask.

“So where did the bastard sword come from? I wouldn’t expect anyone to have proper weaponry this early on.”

“Well it’s not really a proper bastard sword, but it’s made of solid steel, and I keep it enchanted with toughness runes so it won’t break on me. I had to meditate like crazy and pump a lot of my points into wisdom to be able to keep up the enchantment. It definitely works well enough though” She finished the last sentence wearing a feral grin. “Anyway, to answer your question, I collect swords and replica swords, this was just part of my collection.”

“Well I’m glad someone has proper weaponry. I wonder how long until weapons become more common with all the monsters around.”

“Well guns are usually the weapons of choice, melee weapons probably won’t become popular until four star mobs start being hunted, they mostly can’t be killed with small arms.” Rachel commented, clearly having given the matter some thought.

“Well, I do wonder when someone will capitalize on the want for better weapons. I’m sure someone could make a lot of money selling them to people like us,” I commented.

Once we arrived at the quarantined zone, we were greeted by a good number of police and military standing guard around a heavily fortified roadblock. I was wondering if they would let us by, but we simply walked past and didn’t get stopped.

“They’re not supposed to officially let us in, but enough people snuck in to fight that they stopped bothering. They tend to just look the other way for people like us. Probably think we’re signing our death warrant though,” Loss mentioned.

I let out a sound of affirmation before we continued our walk. It took us about twenty minutes before we ran into our first group of mobs. It was a couple of molts, along with a few brags flying above them.

I instantly started to apply a sigil of toughness to my weapon because it was enhanced with sharpness already, and stepped forward before realizing I was the only long range person among us.

Feeling a bit sheepish, I stepped back again, and prepared a force bolt as the rest of the group approached the mobs. I released the force bolt as the brags noticed us, hitting the rightmost one in the wing, causing it to spiral down towards the ground at a quick pace.

Liz was the first one to reach the mobs, and bisected the first molt with a massive swing, but Lars wasn’t far behind, chopping downwards, leading to a solid crunching sound as he crushed the carapace of the molt.

Jolie took care of the brags flying over head, impaling one then then slashing through the wing of the other before finishing it off, along with the one my force bolt had crippled. We all had a grin on our faces after that, it was our first group of three star mobs we’d hunted, and it had been extremely easy, this was looking to be a good day to hunt.

“Guys, we probably shouldn’t be celebrating too much in an area rife with monsters,” Rachel quickly reminded us as we’d all relaxed and let down our guards entirely.

The entire group seemed to feel a bit bashful at her reminder, and we quickly got back to paying attention to the things around us.

The next few encounters went much the same way, hunting with ruthless efficiency. We’d been hunting for a while when we ran into another group, which had someone I recognized instantly. It was someone who had clearly paid for one of the full body scans to have the exact same body in game. It was Lily.