Picking yourself up. [Solo/Main Class.]

[Aka Kitsune]

Every once in a while, every living being will come to terms with what they are currently capable of. Every once in a while, you would meet a wall, a wall which your current abilities wouldn't be able to carry you over. Once those situations arised, a choice would have to be made. Some would beat their heads againsst the wall, attempting to gain experience and knowledge of the current wall and nothing else. With that knowledge, they would knock the wall down and pass by brute force. For Aka, that would mean studying the stranger, who he was, how he fought, thought processes and weaknesses. It was an option she did not have. Aka knew next to nothing of the stranger and had no way of investigating further. In fact, she wasn't even sure she'd ever meet the same wall again! Another option people would apply, was to find a way around the wall, ignoring it completely and continuing down a path of their own. For Aka, that would mean giving up on every single fight where people were ahead of her, accepting being killed over and over by higher level bandits, losing her items left and right if she'd be trying to explore. Being unable to go where she pleased, simply because of an overwhelming power disadvantage. To Aka, it would be running away, accepting defeat and crumbling under the new world order. An outcome where she would be powerless to have a say in her own fate. An outcome that was utterly and entirely unacceptable. The last one was perhaps the most obvious one. Gaining new skills and power, so that any kind of wall like this would be passable without having to ram your head against it for days. Being overpowering enough that such kind of a wall didn't even exist, that was the goal. The means however, she figured had to be carefully planned, as simply grinding it out would take a lot of time. For now, creating chaos and exploration would have to wait. Aka would have to find the most efficient way to gain experience. Experience not only for levels, but also for how the combat system in Log-Horizon functioned. Having spent quite a while thinking it through, she thought she had a decent idea. The levels and difficulty of the opponents generally corresponded to how much experience you'd get for defeating them. Aka had already had the first engaging combat experience fighting off huge amounts of slime with a group the other day. While it had certainly been helpful, she had also come to the realisation that having had an offensive spell rather than blink, would've made the first couple of levels many times easier. In that realisation lay another answer too, though. Currently the biggest strenght the girl had, was her mobility. So, the most effecient way of gaining experience would be to find relatively challenging mobs that stood a good distance from each other. Then, if she had the health between each enemy, she could simply blink to the next and get started immediately. If she did not have the health, she'd not be in range of pulling additional enemies.
In addition to that, she had been informed that there was a certain mob which, for its higher level, was relatively easy to defeat. The Fungal Spore. A spore which main ability seemed to be leeching mana off of its opponents. Especially because Aka didn't currently use mana for anything but blink, this seemed like the perfect opponent to level up against. At least until she'd reach a high enough level to find something else to take her wrath out upon. Having been shown rough estimates by some scribes on where she'd be able to find them, the girl figured she'd be ready to go in a few moments time. The sun had only just shown itself, it was still early morning, and with the whole day ahead of her, she was aiming to get quite a few levels under her belt before nightfall.

Having gotten a tiny bit to drink and just a loaf of bread to eat, she was now tightening her sandals carefully, strapping the wooden staff onto her back, she adjusted it slightly till she felt comfortable. Making sure her clothes and hair were sitting as she wanted them to, so they'd not inconvenience her in any kind of situation, she wrapped fuzzy-red-fox-tail around her waist like a belt, almost tying a little knot on it to make sure it stayed in position. Everything was ready, and she was heading out! Orientating herself in correspondance to the position of the sun, Aka slowly walked through the part of London which the other players were trying to rebuild as fast as they could. Vines were being torn down, stones and walls were attempted to be rebuilt. Shaking her head, it was obvious that their crafting skillls weren't high enough, as what they were trying to repair looked even more unstable than the old buildings they were working on. This restoration would take time, it'd even seem to take quite a bit more time than anyone had anticipated at first. Manually working on cleaning out something of such huge proportions simply wouldn't work, if anyone were to ask Aka. If they'd have any kind of clue, they'd be working to skill up their crafting, so they could create tools. Through the crafting of tools, like lifts and the like, the process would be much easier, and thus many times quicker. Not only would the city be easily restorable, they could also start working on things outside the city, like trainstations and what not. Reclaiming this world as their own, as they were now forced to live within it for who-knew-how-long. As Aka was ragtagging through the abandonned streets of London, the further she got away from the centre, the more things were starting to look like a city-jungle. Vines were sprouting up walls, making them seem more vibrant than crafted. Small animals and birds were creating their nests in the broken windows and rooms, almost making it seem like humans had moved out in favor of the animals moving in. The dominating scent was of flowers, trees and fresh air. Not a single grain of smog bothered her nose, in the middle of London! Smiling towards the sun, Aka wasn't quite sure if she preferred the green hippie style London, or the city-scape iron London. They both definitively had their own kind of charm, and she quite liked both versions of it. Having lived in London, she had figured she'd be able to remember some of the locations. The virtual London however, didn't seem to be an exact copy, so she had long since given up on finding her own place in here... even if it would feel a lot more like home that way. The ciyscape was slowly clearing up, and the expanses appeared as fields. In the distance, she could even scarsely make out the destination of this little travel. Trees, and lots of them. A whole forest, where the spore enemies she was looking for would be waiting. Windsor Greatwood. Just traveling there on foot would be taking quite a bit of time, so the little Fox-tail had prepared herself to spend a night sleeping outside under the stars.

Having estimated the travel time to be a couple of hours, she didn't actually know how much time she had spent on the road. Doing intervals where she'd be jogging and walking, she really was travelling forwards as fast as she could. Every time blink was off cooldown and she had mana to spend it, she'd flash forward, cutting seconds off the travel time with every cast. When she finally arrived at the outer rim of the woods, the sun was halfway up, so it was clearly somewhere around midday. It would seem she couldn't have been much wrong about her estimated time of arrival. Leaning softly against the first tree of the woods, she slid down of it, sitting by its base. Thinking for a moment, Aka agreed with herself. This was the perfect time to have a minor break, restore her stamina and mana. Sweating some, breathing somewhat heavily and having her feet actually slightly throb from the none-stop walking and jogging, she knew that wasting time would be bad for her efficiency. So this downtime was used to get more accustomed to the menus. Opening them, changing spells, going through her inventory, resetting and doing it all again, every cycle she got through she'd take a bite of bread and sip of water as a self-deserved reward. The faster she could browse through the menus to get what she needed, the less time she'd be spending on doing nothing useful. After having spent what felt like an hour playing through the different menus, and getting herself fed and rejuvenated, Aka got back to her feet and dusted her leaves and filth off of her butt. Doing a series of stretches that she knew from gymnasticss, a confident smile was spreading across her lips. The time had finally come to hand out some ass-kicking to the un-suspecting spores!

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[Aka Kitsune]

Stepping into the woods, it quickly became apparent to Aka, that she didn't actually have much in the way of finding the actual little buggers. Having never seen or identified a spore before, it was quite likely it'd take some amount of time to even identify their habitats. Stopping for a moment to think about the situation, she followed the most logical way of handling the issue. At least, everything else in the game seemed to progress quite logically! Spores were usually one-celled living things, organisms that would reproduce, of sorts. Knowing that most were related to fungi, anywhere damp and warm would be ideal. So to find the spores she'd simply have to look for some kind of water-source and thick growth of either plants or trees. Where the leaves fell to the ground, rot and decay would create heat and thus make it perfect for fungi and spores. So, rather than searching in circles, Aka searched in zig-zag patterns in an attempt to find something like a creek or waterhole. It didn't take long either, before she found a creek. Thinking of herself as being quite intelligent, the simple next step was following the creek until she found spores. That thought process seemed to work just fine aswell, as she after few minutes of walking came upon thick vegetation within the woods. There they were, floating around seamlessly preoccupied with whatever spores do with their spare time.

There were plenty of spores, and with the average respawn timer for enemies of this level being quite low, she could probably stay in this general area for all of her training exercises. The only issue was, that for her, they were stacked too close together. Handling one of these spores with her current skills would be hard enough. Dealing with two would be her absolute limit, while three or above would result in her quick and painful demise. Releasing the binds that kept her staff in place, she swung it around a couple of times as she was getting ready for combat. Being well hydrated, well rested and well fed, there was nothing stopping her from going at this for at least a couple of hours, and so the quest to the top of the ladder started. 

Approaching the first spore slightly from the side, it didn't seem to mind her pressence at first. When it sensed her however, it immediately turned hostile, spitting out some sort of needle like gas. It barely grazed her arm, as she attempted to dodge in behind a tree. Although it was barely a graze, her health still dropped quite a bit due to the level difference. In turn, her mana was also slowly dropping due to the spore's leeching effect. If this had been a mob that was designed to deal damage, rather than drain her mana, she'd already be in trouble by now. It seemed to have been a smart choice of opponent. Getting out in the open again, as the spore prepared to launch its attack, Aka blinked behind it. The gas-like needle missed completely and entirely, as she swung the staff over her head, bringing it down onto the spores core. A brigt damage number flashed, and the spores health lowered. Immediately rolling away, she put distance between herself and the spore. Having figured that its attack was quite linear, she would be abusing that fact to blink in and whack it over the head whenever it had an attacking cooldown. Thats when she noticed her mana bar going dry stupidly fast. The drain and the usage of blink to abuse openings were taking its toll. It wasn't a strategy she could employ constantly, so she'd have to find another means of approach.

                                         Word Count: 624

[Aka Kitsune]

The spores attack was linear, ranged, drained mana and seemed to have a minor cooldown, stopping it from firing repeatedly like a machine gun. So while moving in a circle you could dodge all of the spores attacks, assuming you were moving at the relative speed needed, at however far the distance was between the individual and the spore itself. Thinking that the time was right, Aka changed directions and headed for the spore in a zig-zag line. Having gotten a decent hang of its attacks cooldown, she simply tumbled in whichever direction she could just as the spore was about to fire. As she got in range to attack herself, she used the staff somewhat like a lance. Holding it in one hand and pushing it forward with the other, the reach extended, quite akin to how fencing functioned as a sport. Once again damage numbers flashed above the spore, and its health had dropped considerably since she had entered combat. Keeping up the attacks in a flurry, by swinging the staff continously, the damage for each hit went down drastically while the attack speed went up. While she couldn't dodge all attacks, especially at this short range, Aka did her best to avoid taking any critical damage. The spore and the fox-tail exchanged blows for a few seconds, before a low bang followed by a wheezing sound declared Aka as the winner of their little matchup. A decent amount of experience was given, far better than what she had gained from fighting off dull slimes with that group earlier...

Breathing heavily, Aka was sweating badly. From having taken all of those hits inside a timeframe where the mana-leeching debuff couldn't expire, her mana bar had absolutely and entirely depleted. All the running and dodging drained any sort of stamina she was currently sporting. Health bar standing at approximately 35% of her total pool, slowly regenerating. The downtime before she'd be regenerated to high enough healthpoints to dare and face another spore was quite significant. Having done some broad figures in her head, it was still more experience per minute spent in combat, than if she were to give up on the spores and go hunt slimes instead. For every improvement she made here, the difference in experience per hour would simply grow larger. Besides, having some downtime wasn't an entire waste. Being able to go through the menus and check properly for any kind of item drops was well worth the time spent.

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