After 20 minutes of full-speed travel, and passing through the array of spells that seemed to help keep the city veiled from the corrupted's perception, Jacob had finally arrived at the entrance to the city of Tel'Adre.
As he neared the entrance he saw a short queue coming from a building to the left side of the gate with a sign reading 'Registration', so he waited until it was his turn to be attended. He was faced with a male horse-morph with spotted grey and black fur who was sitting at a desk near the center alongside a fox-morph bearing the orange, white, and black fur pattern of the common red fox.
"First we'll have to assess the amount of corruption present in you and also have you answer some questions for my friend here to fill in the paperwork needed in order to get you an entry permit." The Horse-morph said, then continued "Should your corruption levels be considered to be too high then for the safety of it's citizens you'll be denied entry to Tel'Adre—though that is unlikely considering you made it through the veils. We have only had a few cases in the last year and they had only barely gone beyond the safe threshold."
He made sure to answer everything truthfully, or at least without outright lying, just in case they had anything equivalent to a lie detector. After they were done with the paperwork I was told to place my hand on a stone carved with runes. As i did so the gemstone located at the top of the device started to glow with a soft white light that faded to a very light grey near the end which seemed to even surprise the Fox-Morph slightly. "Unusually low corruption levels... at the very least it's below five points—We got ourselves one of the rare ones Zach!" The fox said to the horse-morph. "Y'right about that Mike, though this past month we've had an unusally high number of them; what is it now, like five or so? normally we see that many every year or two even."
"Well, you're all set then, Jacob. These are your identification papers, they allow entrance to Tel'Adre. Though they won't be enough if you are looking to get permanent legal residence in the city." Zach said, before the fox continued "THAT'll take you either many months of tolerating bureaucracy and paperwork, a lot of bribery to the right people—" he said, flinching from the hit to the shoulder that Zach gave him for the bribery comment before resuming "—or doing enough merc work outside the city, highly dangerous work which has by now gotten too many people killed or corrupted, and that's with like about half the guard pestering city officials and the guild itself to increase their standards and actually start testing the people that go there to register, but they don't seem to give much of a flying fuck about it."
"Right, many thanks for your help with all of this. Zach, " Jacob said to them before heading back to the gate and showing his newly obtained entry permit, now being allowed entry to the city.
'Well, that's one thing done, now I'll have to find a good way to earn money. A job inside the city would be a safe way to earn some money and get some basic gear but considering the refugee crisis caused by the war with the demons led by Lethice there are way too many people in the city and not enough jobs for them to do. So although more dangerous, going straight to the mercenary work that Zach and Mike mentioned is my only real way of earning money and also won't interfere with my potential growth. I find it unlikely that anything that fits into 'life-skilling' will net me any XP, as the likely only ways to get them are likely defeating OR killing opponents.' He reflected on the possibilities as he walked around the city, sticking to the main roads and avoiding any dark alleys because why the hell would he go through them.
Eventually he found his way into what acted as the Commerce and Entertainment district of the city, where almost every building was a shop, there were plenty of inns, many restaurants and bakeries and the ocassional forge where blacksmiths and armorsmiths hammered away, leatherworkers making all kinds of things from.
One of the streets led to a bazaar-like area Filled with stalls selling all kinds of things, from cheap to-go food, artisans making all kinds of things from carvings, to simple jewelry made of sting and some of the more colorful rocks and in some cases the lower value gemstones.
Luckily, likely thanks to the system either actively translating or having dumped the knowledge into his head during his reincarnation—aside from speaking he was also able to write and read in whatever the common language was called here, even if it felt somewhat off at first. 'Thankfully I won't have to waste time and money in learning to read and write in a whole new language.'
He kept going to see if he could find The Wet Bitch Tavern or any other prominent landmark of the city that he could recognize from the game. While he didn't find the Tavern he came across another place he was keeping an eye out for—a large building with a sign above the entrance that read
'Generic-ass name, I know Zach and Mike kept calling it "the guild" but bloody hell they could have been a bit more creative with the name.' He thought as he headed inside the building and registered as a mercenary, luckily without any other cliche situation occurring during the process. The receptionist explained that all new mercenaries began at D-rank and could always take missions up to one rank above their own though it was not recommended.
He quickly took a C-rank mission with decent rewards and 'farming' potential and headed on his way out of the city.
<"C rank: Imp extermination - 50 electrum per imp killed, present horns as proof. Extermination of any higher rank imps like lords, warlords, or overlords provides increased rewards.
Common Imps are classified as D-rank but often travel in groups of 2-5 where they are comparable to a low-end C-rank threat when fighting together.
WARNING: Groups containing Imp Warlords are classified as low B-rank threats while those containing Overlords are classified as high B-rank. DO NOT ENGAGE.">
'Hmm, I'm not sure if I want to go around killing too many imps since they still are sentient... actually, no. These Imps are part of Lethice's Army, and like 95% of said army is comprised of rapey lunatics. I'll just have make sure not to attack any imps that aren't part of Lethice's patrols. Because I know from both games that there are some demons that aren't completely deranged psychopaths.'
On the way out he stumbled upon Mike and Zach and gave a quick goodbye then heading back into the forest he came from, he made sure not to head too deep into the forest to prevent encountering anything too strong, although he was sure that he'd be able to escape regardless thanks to the Celestial Tracers and his
.
.
It didn't take long for him to run into a small patrol of three imps, which he thankfully didn't have a hard time fighting, though it took him a bit to get used to doing judo with his new body since it had different torso to limb proportions than he had as a human. He had just recently reached 3rd dan—Over four years of dedication spent in a professional dojo—He'd started attending hoping the extra exercise would help his condition, and liked the idea of knowing some martial arts for self defence. And he quickly fell in love with Judo, sinking years of his life and a LOT of money, and i do mean a lot, learning martial arts is NOT cheap at all.
Once he started getting used to his new body he started grappling them around easily then once he had them on the floor went after the neck, either collapsing their trachea or slitting their throats with his claws, flinching a bit at the blood and feeling a chill through his body at the fact of having taken three lives. 'They were part of lethice's patrols, they had this coming with the kind of things they have done' he thought to himself, to better justify the fact he'd taken three lives.
He didn't need to double-check whether any of them might still be alive since he received a kill notification for each of them. Then came the worst—due to not having any tools to cut the horns with for collection he had to rip them from the Imps' heads, further staining his body with their blood, and almost causing him to vomit from disgust.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck— I'm going to need a set of actual "harvesting" tools for doing shit like this, I don't mind some blood but this kind of shit is a bit too brutal for my taste. It's one thing to see in a game or series—or even from shit off liveleak—and a whole other thing to do it your-fucking-self. I'll also need a good weapon or two, I always liked the Egyptian Khopesh though I am not sure if any blacksmiths in this world have made a weapon like it, so I'll have to either get it custom-made or learn blacksmithing and make it myself.'
He repeated this process until he'd killed well over a dozen Imps, earning him two level-ups.
{[LEVEL UP > +1 on all stats, +5 free stat points.]}
{[LEVEL UP > +1 on all stats, +5 free stat points.]}
'That should be enough for now, I just need to find a nice safe place to set up camp. I wonder if I can find the place where the player camp was built in-game, I know for sure that place can be made as safe as a fortress with just some work.'
It only took Jacob a few hours to search for the location where the player would have set camp up back in the game as he had enough information to locate it. He followed along the rivers in the outer part of the forest until he managed to find that place. 'Perfect. Now I just need to buy some basic supplies from Tel'Adre, the whole fortification thing can come later.'
It didn't take Jacob long to reach Tel'Adre again, he quickly went through the entrance and straight to the mercenary guild. The clerk was surprised to see him back after only a few hours, especially with 17 pairs of imp horns, two of which were Lord horns worth 200 electrum each.
He was quickly given his reward of 1150 electrum, which he spent around 700 or so to buy three tents and bedrolls, cooking utensils, and some rations. All of which he stored inside his inventory as soon as he ensured he was out of sight.
'And now I'm back to being poor' He was not happy at all having to spend so much shortly after earning it but he needed to make sure he'd have a large enough encampment setup for getting some necessary allies settled. He was certainly going to invite Jojo since someone to help himself and others with meditation was one of the best ways to maintain corruption low, and the other was for when he would hire Luna to have in charge of cooking and camp maintenance.
He then went back to the forest to set up camp before thinking of his next actions.
'Right so what should I focus on right now? I could go to the lake and find Marae, hoping that she sends me off to disable the factory, but I don't know if she'll realize that I'm both not the 'Champion' and not from their Universe/Multiverse.' Jacob thought before remembering something else.
'Right, I almost forgot I need to practice the
{[
{["Guardian Spirit" species detected, source: unique individual 'Ori'. Analyzing potential]}
{[Level of members: high Grade 1 (average overall), perfection Grade 2 ('Ori' unique individual). Species quality: intermediate Grade 4.]}
{[Attempting to utilize karmic fragment authority to upgrade species quality... Success.]}
{[Species quality: intermediate Grade 4 -> perfection grade 4.]}
{[+5 STR, CON, INT, CHA. +10 AGI, WIS]}
{[Lesser spiritual sight granted to True Species]}
{["Guardian Spirit" species successfully added to
'Hmm? The bonuses from integrating species into
After processing everything he just learnt about his skills and the system he decided to finally try cultivating, how hard could it possibly be.