Chapter 79 – Faerie Wars

With that in mind, I tightened my control over the whip telekinetically and practiced different maneuvers on the struggling level 82 warrior, who was still at around two thirds health.

This reminded me of when I tried to train my whip skills on the practice dummies in that small guild training center back at the capital, but got accosted by that group of demons that Meat Shield called the apostles after I left the building. At least here in the middle of nowhere, I could use demonic energy as much as I wanted without having to worry about the apostles’ warning.

Thud.

Thwack.

Not gonna lie, having a live target to practice on was infinitely better than just practicing on a straw target dummy.

“Bad human!” a pink haired faerie yelled, stomping on the warrior’s face with her tiny foot.

Thwack.

Shwup.

Like a slave driver thrashing a minion, I continued to pound on the warrior’s heavy armor with my telekinetic whip, aiming it at different body parts and trying to be a bit more experimental than usual with my control.

The progress bar on telekinetic whip control rose steadily with this practice, and the warrior’s health bar was beginning to dwindle.

“Just kill me, please,” the warrior choked.

“Not yet,” I replied. The opportunity to level up telekinetic whip control without risk didn’t come by so often, and I was planning to milk the opportunity for as long as I could.

Telekinetic control has risen to level 5.

Even after the ability leveled, I continued the onslaught on the warrior in black steel, who gave up trying to attack me anymore and was curled into a ball on the ground while being pelted and stabbed by the angry faeries. I didn’t blame him. Every time that he stepped forward to close toe distance on me, I simply took a step back. It wasn’t like he could move very quickly while the faeries were on him, anyway.

Several minutes of torture later, the warrior finally died after his health was depleted. I didn’t notice before, but using love whip for such a long time actually fatigued me quite a bit. I had my hands on my knees and was panting as if I just ran a mile by the end of the torture session. It was as if I was a mage that just casted [Meteor] or something equally strenuous to perform.

[You have slain a player.]

[You have gained 9 tickets.]

That bumped my ticket count to 99 now, a large portion of which was from first blood. Not bad at all. Between the rock faerie ticket reward, the first blood reward, and kills that gave eight or nine tickets, this made yesterday’s ticket collection seem almost useless in comparison, but I couldn’t forget that yesterday’s circumstances were vastly different from today’s. Just like how a dollar in 2000 was worth a lot more than a dollar in 2020 due to inflation. Although, tickets still retained their intrinsic value, so that comparison wasn’t the best.

Several of the faeries floated towards me and circled happily.

“Thank you for helping us taking down the bad people~”

“Brother gravy is the best~”

The faeries showered me with compliments, a huge contrast in behavior compared to their angry expressions and aggression towards the two players that we just killed. I was grateful to not be the recipient of their anger, because despite their cute and sexy appearance and small size, the rock faeries were unrelenting in combat with their bows and swords and spears.

Checking tracker’s map, I looked for any possible shop icons that might have popped up. No luck.

The rock faeries were beginning to fly back to their base now. I called out to them while heading in the opposite direction.

“I’ll be back later. Keep the gift safe for me!” I shouted, referring to the platinum safehouse key that the rock faeries so graciously offered me in exchange for introducing them into the delectable, savory world of meat gravy.

“Yep!”

“Thank you brother gravy~”

The faeries waved goodbye to me and headed back to their rock outpost, while I began trekking to the east parallel to the lake, with my tracker’s map open in one hand.

But first, I decided to check which guild the two players I killed belonged to. Opening up the pdf file of all the different guild emblems and names, I manually scanned down the list in search of the emblem that was fixed on their armor.

“Ah,” I said finally as I found what I was looking for. It was the BG corporation guild. To be honest, I didn’t even know corporations were making guilds on Eclipse, but then again it wasn’t like there were any rules against it. BG was a rather large company in Korea that specialized in electronics, appliances, and telecom, so it was strange to see a company get involved in Eclipse like this.

But there was precedent– south korean conglomerates used to sponsor MOBA and RTS game teams, and some of the virtual jousts between two teams sponsored by rival telecom companies were fondly referred to as the telecom wars by casters.

After walking for a few minutes, a new icon appeared on the map. It was a drawing of a large striped snake.

Yeah... nope. I altered my route to circumvent the environmental hazard while continuing to explore. Although I didn’t have as much upfront power as famous rankers like Cold Hands or Bastion, these gold invitation perks were surprisingly powerful. Which was strange to say, because normally you wouldn’t describe a map as powerful, but in practice that’s exactly what it was.

Like the [Holy Longsword] from the auction site or a battle axe that cost a fortune or a divine tier robe with wing properties, the map was providing immense value to me, although the value it provided was not as directly obvious and flashy as a high grade weapon or armor.

Maybe I was exaggerating its usefulness a bit, but I thought about it this way.

Four gamers walk into a castle. They are tasked by the king to help participate in an upcoming war.

The first gamer is an action RPG expert. He asks for the best sword the kingdom has to offer.

The second gamer is a first person shooter connoisseur. He asks for the best bow in the kingdom, with as much control over its aim as possible.

The third gamer is a stealth game maverick. He asks for a cloak of invisibility and three smoke bombs.

And the last gamer is a real time strategy fiend. So, what exactly did the RTS player ask for?

...

He asked for thirty expendable foot soldiers and a comprehensive map of the area, so he could find a way to funnel the enemy army into a chokepoint and then ambush them with a concave with his soldiers.

Or maybe he could send two soldiers to harass the enemy army’s rations and distract them while simultaneously moving in with the bulk of the soldiers to hit an unprotected area of the enemy’s perimeter while they were busy with the saboteurs. The tactical possibilities were endless as long as he had a map and some minions.

-------

After searching for an hour while avoiding players and hazards as best as I could, a shop icon finally appeared on my map. I walked towards the location and finally reached it, as the crudely drawn figure representing myself immediately overlapped the store icon.

But I looked around, and there was nothing that remotely looked like a store, or even a room of any sort, in the vicinity.

“Where the hell is it?” I muttered under my breath as I walked circles around the forested area.

There was a rope and bamboo ladder fixed to one of the very tall trees, which must not have been visible to me from the other angle. Checking the map again, I confirmed that this probably led to a secret outpost shop location. It was a classic elevation problem with maps. Because maps tried to display three dimensional information in two dimensions, sometimes you could be standing right under or above the object you were looking for, and not be able to find it because it was at a different elevation.

I gripped the bamboo ladder with one hand and began to climb, making my way up the tree as the rope ladder with bamboo rungs swayed back and forth dangerously.

“Whoa,” I exclaimed, nearly losing my footing for a moment when a monkey jumped past in the trees below.

After climbing for a while longer, I reached a small treehouse. Stepping inside the treehouse, I was once again teleported to a different realm.

“Welcome, welcome,” the old ghost wearing a rice hat greeted me.

“Good to see you again,” I replied. I looked around the shop, which had a slightly different offering of food today.

The predominant offerings today were seafood based foods, from stuffed salmon to more of that fluorescent white fish meat served on a bed of rice and vegetables. It was really interesting seeing how there was a culinary merging of recipes that had their roots in reality with the strange and wonderful ingredients only found within this fantastical world.

Although some of these ingredients were definitely more strange than wonderful. I noticed a spit roasted pig with two heads on the end of the buffet banquet, and some mushrooms that looked way too phallic for my stomach to handle.

“Shopkeeper,” I asked. “Why do you stock so much food here?”

The clumsy old shopkeeper stopped for a moment to address me. “Oh, erm, my memory fails me these days... Ah yes, it’s because some of the biomes may not be as hospitable to you folks, so it’s better to give you all the option to eat here.”

“And we try to stock some truly scrumptious food,” the shopkeeper continued, reaching over and taking a seafood skewer from the table. He offered it to me. “Here, try it. On the house.”

“Thank you,” I replied, taking the seafood skewer from him and examining it for a moment. On the top was a jumbo shrimp, followed by a meaty white scallop, and then at the end was a fat tentacle. I bit into the scallop first.

The scallop was juicy, meaty, and had that amazing bounciness that gave the flesh a mouthwatering texture, and the taste was out of this world. It was better than any scallop I ever had in the past, as expected from what could possibly have been a species of scallop unique to this world.

Finishing the scallop, I quickly devoured the shrimp and then bit into the tentacle, which was so flavorful and supple that I couldn’t hold back eating the whole thing in two bites.

The rock faeries would lose their minds if they ever found this place.

[Due to eating a special seafood dish, your stats have temporarily reisen. Strength +1. Dexterity +1. Intelligence +1.]

Finishing the skewer, I placed it to the side and burped. “Wow, that’s really good.”

The old shopkeeper looked up, his long moustache bobbing as he smiled. “Yes, we have some of the best chefs working on our selection. You’ll find it hard to be disappointed with any of the food here.”

Nodding, I motioned towards the back of the store. “Got anything new today? I have some tickets to blow now, so I’m looking for some interesting armor.”

The shopkeeper nodded and led me to the back again. “We have a few new products today,” he said.

The first thing I noticed was that Poseidon’s Trident was no longer hanging on the wall. In its place was a scary looking morningstar, but I could immediately tell that the morningstar was nowhere near as powerful as the trident.

Checking the item description confirmed my suspicions.

[Mithril Morningstar]

“Shopkeeper, what happened to the trident that was here yesterday?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, erm, certain items are only available on certain days, so it’s best to buy what you can now or you might not see the item you want again.”

I nodded at his explanation. “Hmm,” I said to myself while browsing the shop for a second time.

The selection this time around definitely shifted, but I still managed to spot a few items that caught my eye.