Chapter 65 - Kanterbury plains

He quickly went along the new path and in a couple of minutes reached a small camp filled with tents. There was a ground with a few soldiers training in fight against each other. There were few guard towers in the vicinity and a small keep near the training ground. There were trenches and anti-cavalry spikes around the entire area.

There was a small gateway beside the keep that allowed player to get outside the trenches. A few guards were in waiting by the gate who seem to be giving quests to the players. He went ahead to talk to them.

"Greeting adventurer, there have been a lot of changes in the area around the Kanterbury plains. We would like you to investigate and kill any monsters you see there," said the guard. "We are willing to reward you for any monsters you kill or information you bring."

[Help the garrison against the increasing menace of monsters] (Difficulty Level: ??)

Quest Description: You have accepted the request of the garrison. Investigate and/or kill any threat to the garrison.

Progress: Monsters killed: 0

Though the difficulty level being indicated by ?? confused many players, Shadow knew that it implied that the difficulty can vary based on the monsters or characters he found. It is completely random and depended on the movements of the player.

These kinds of quests can be very dangerous or very easy, depending on how far the player is willing to go and continue the quest. Sometimes, they even involve higher leveled boss monsters too.

With the guard allowing him to go through the gate, he made his way to observe the landscape. The map he had, only showed the topography up till the barracks. It was a completely new zone for him, and he was going in blind. It would be a lot harder to explore than the Blackrock hills and Arwild forest as it wasn't there in the game during his previous life.

Once he crossed the gate, he went to a side and began production of the Alva's tincture. All basic potions involved heating up some water and adding the ingredients. The instruction specified the different shades of it is supposed to be at every stage.

The only issue was the time it took to make them. With the materials he had, he quickly managed to make 5 of the potions. He had materials for 10 potions and managed to produce 5 potions. "Hmm, that is 50% success rate. It is good rate in general but for someone who had played the game in previous life, I guess I could do better," though Balthazar as he poured a potion into the sprinkler.

He went into stealth after he was done potions and made his way across the plains. The plains were filled with tall grass as far as he could see. There were a few trees sparsely thrown at random places in the grass. The river before the blackrock continued into the plains.

As he moved through the grass in stealth, he could see a few fanged antelopes, stags and prairie boars. These were all mostly level 7 and level 8 monsters. With the sprinkler and poison, he just needs to use it and attack the monsters without much worry of retaliation.

Most of the monster like the fanged antelopes, stags and prairie boars moved in the areas near to the river. The stags and antelopes didn't actively attack players and usually ran away at a high speed when they saw anything. Injuring them to generate aggro wasn't usually an option with these monsters.

These kinds of monsters were usually referred to as docile monsters by the player base. It was always suggested to ambush and quickly kill them before they get out of control and escape. They also attack but their attacks are always used to create an opening to run away.

Luckily, these monsters tend to have little defense which was best for ambush attacks but if the failed to control it, they would easily escape due to their extremely high agility and movement speed. The developers of the game clearly decided to trade, defence and attack of the creatures for high agility.

The only exception was the prairie boars. It was possible to aggro the prairie boars and they attacked and even called for reinforcements. So, it is best to find isolated boars to attack. These would also attack if they find players attacking other monsters.

[Fanged Antelope] (Common monster)

Level 7;

HP: 2500/2500;

[Stag] (Common monster)

Level 7;

HP: 2500/2500;

[Prairie Boar] (Common monster)

Level 7;

HP: 2500/2500;

The fanged antelope have horns and fangs. Their most common attack involved using their horns or kicking before escaping. The same held true for the stags. So, it was always advisable to stay away from their legs.

Putting them in a stupor with cheap shot or the alva's tincture and then using garrote to strangle and make them bleed was considered one of the best methods to solo take down such beasts. Luckily, he already has the required weapon and tools to do that.

He slowly made his way towards the river and slowly crept behind a fanged antelope. He quickly used cheap shot and began attacking the beast with his daggers. Even though the garrote is a good way to control as well as injure them, the damage was dealt at a lower rate than using daggers.

The damage was (2 x Strength + 15) which was 97 true physical damage per second if he used a garrote. But each strike with a dagger cause 100 physical damage. With his agility he could land at least 2 attacks per dagger in a second. Even with the defense these monsters had, with the daggers, he could deal three times as much damage as the garrote per second.

After 4 seconds he used the sprinkler to put it in a daze. With the daggers he already managed to reduce its health by half and the potion gave him enough time to change his weapon to garrote, swung it around the antelope's neck, pushed it down and began to choke it with the garrote.

"+65 experience points"

Within 15 seconds, he managed to take down a level 7 antelope alone. At this rate, he would be able to kill at least one beast per minute without much issue. He quickly started looting the corpse and found antelope fangs, antelope horns and antelope meat.

Antelope horns and fangs can both be used in making equipment and even in some potions while the meat like all other meat is used in cooking. He went into stealth and began attacking beast one after the other. With cheap shot, the alva's tincture and the garrote, the monsters were always controlled, and the surrounding ones didn't even usually notice him killing.

In 40 minutes, he had killed enough to even allow him to level up. He not only killed antelopes but also managed to kill a few stags. He made enough experience to even level him up.

Character: Shadow Tyrant (Human)

Affiliated Village: Black Rock Village

Title: None

Job: Assassin

Level:

Exp: 40/2800

HP: 2500/2500; MP: 800/800;

Physical Attack: 92

Defense: 64; Attack Speed: 60; Movement Speed: 62; Willpower: 18; Balance: 27; Focus/Search: 36; Reflect: 1; Magic Resist: 17; Luck: *; Charm: *;

Attributes: Strength 46, Agility 44, Endurance 22, Intelligence 17, Vitality 32, Perception 18.

No Special Racial Attributes or weakness.

Free Attributes Points: 6

With this method he already had started to gather decent amount of materials for exchanging with Kade for contribution points. Kade had asked him specifically for materials from higher leveled monsters from the start and this was no better place to farm them than the Kanterbury plains.

He had used three of the free attribute points in intelligence and three in perception. He had already had all other attributes with values above 20 and continuing to neglect these two attributes would make his character imbalanced. Intelligence along with endurance would improve his magic resist and perception is very important for assassins as then need it for better scouting activities.

He continued with killing the monsters in the plains. It was a decent way to increase his experience and he could also get decent materials. Apart from these, these monsters also dropped a few equipment rarely. Though they didn't have great attributes, he could sell them. As the days continued more people would join the game. The demand for equipment wouldn't drop anytime soon.

He also occasionally fought boars. It was much harder to use the garrote on the boar because it had a wide and short neck. But, as the boars got easily aggroed, they kept coming back to attack, allowing him to repeatedly practice his garrote skill on it and kill it.

Unlike other thieves, who had low stealth and attracted only boars while the stags and antelopes ran away from them, he managed to get deeper than others into the plains.

This also made him the lone player who explored so far into the plains. He was at least a couple of kilometers ahead of any other team that ventured into it. He used the explorer's orb to make a map of the plains.

In another two hour he would reach the lake which the river dumped into. It was at the end of the updated map. He was also getting better at using the garrote. He was able to even choke the monster by holding both the handles of the garrote in one hand while using the dagger in the other hand to inflict damage at a higher rate.

With these monsters being at the same level as him, there was no level subjugation. Though he got lesser experience per monster than when he was at level 6, the damage he could deal per second increased compensating for it. The experience would decrease further when he leveled up again but the rate at which he was gaining experience would still be worth continuing to farm at the plains.

The only thing that concerned him right now was that his team would complete the elite mode of the dungeon and he would be asked to join them to attempt the hell mode. As expected, about 30 minutes later, he got messages from both Slaine and Merlin that they finished the elite dungeon in 76 minutes putting them in top 5 of the fastest records.

Merlin immediately suggested him to join the group to attempt hell mode. Their run in the elite mode dungeon had them all excited and they definitely wanted to try hell mode. Tetsujin also showed them how useful a martial artist can be in crowd controlling monsters.

Shadow knew that he couldn't dissuade them at this time. The best he could is finish the hell mode dungeon as fast as possible and return to the plains to further explore.

He also sent an image of the map of the plains to Slaine. He had plans to get his team to explore the plains along with him after the dungeon and he would also like Rudra and his guild to be exploring the plains. During this time, he hardly got a couple of kilometers into the plains.

He would be able to get more information from Slaine, if he had the map and explored into the plains a bit. He definitely would like to know more about the monsters near the lake. A change of terrain always resulted in a few new monsters, resources and tools.

He channeled his hearthstone to get back to the town. He met with Merlin and the others. Merlin being considered the main cook for the team was given all the meat collected by Shadow. Also, they exchanged any equipment they might need.

He quickly went to the bank to deposit the antelop horns and fangs, stag horns and prairie boar tusks along with the equipment he had in his bag. He also told both Slaine and Rudra to keep on the look for red moss in the auction house without revealing to them about the alva's tincture.

With these done, he along with his team teleported to the 'Cave of Wargs' again to attempt the hell mode of the dungeon. He was already level 7 and the rest of the team was level 6. If he leveled up again, he wouldn't even get a decent experience nor will his achievements of first clear be considered by the system as the limit was up to level 7.

He quickly bought a few torches and opened up the portal for Hell mode dungeon. As expected, the hell mode was quite different from the elite instance. It was darker and gloomier than the elite instance.

As usual he went into stealth to scout. It was mostly the same except that the level of wolves and wargs increased by one. Luckily, their behavior still was the same. But he didn't want the team to advance right now as he was sure just this wouldn't cause the others to fail to finish the hell mode.

He went further but couldn't find anything. "I guess there must be some change at the end of the dungeon," thought Shadow as he returned to the team and asked them to move forward.

He didn't wait for the team and began killing the wolves one by one. With the wolves being at level 5 they were subjugated by him easily. The combination of garrote and dagger allowed him to kill a hungry wolf in less than 5 seconds even after they leveled up and had higher HP.

Though the rest of the team used the torches to frighted the wolves, the wolves tend to evade their attacks and a decent number of them missed. Unlike them, Shadow always disables them and then uses the garrote and dagger.

It had the advantage of the martial artists choke skill and didn't have a cooldown. It also dealt damage at the same time. The team waving their torches always attracted the attention of the wolves. This led to Shadow solo killing the wolves at a faster rate than the rest of the team together.

This had them extremely surprised, especially the new weapon garrote that he used. Even Merlin and Tetsujin were impressed by his skill in using a garrote. The garrote attack when used in controlled mode required the opponent to be stunned or still to use it perfectly. But Shadow used it on the quick and fast-moving wolves, which clearly showed them that this man could actually attack using a garrote in real-life. It not only put them in awe of him but also a tiny spark of fear crept into his team.