God Mode: A LitRPG Adventure (Mythrune Online Book 1) Read online

  Defense increased by 1!

  And with that, I pulled up my character stats again.

  Character Stats

  Name: Zane

  Title: None

  Race: Urok, male

  Level: 2

  Total Attribute Points: 11

  Attribute Points to next level: 4

  Health: 2 (40/40 Hit Points)

  Attack: 2

  Defense: 4

  Speed: 1

  Agility: 1

  Intelligence: 1

  Luck: 0

  My eyes were drawn to the “Attribute Points to next level” line. Only four more until level three. In MythRune, levels were calculating using basic division. At least initially. You took the total number of allocated Attribute Orbs a player had, and divided that number by five. After you hit level ten, however, the required number of Attribute Points needed increased and then increased again every ten levels after that. Since your level increased with any combination of Attribute Points, however, being a higher level didn’t always mean you would come out ahead in a fight. An opponent could min-max and be a total glass cannon with extreme Attack and zero Defense. Most of the focus and emphasis went into the Pursuits, since many skills didn’t require a minimum level to unlock.

  As soon as I closed my menu, Durfa was holding out a pair of…leather pants? That and a rolled-up parchment I desperately hoped was the map I’d been after in the first place. My happy guess was confirmed as I accepted the items.

  Map Acquired! You may now access your world map from the menu at any time. As you explore or acquire additional maps or knowledge, more areas will be revealed in detail.

  Rawhide Leggings

  Description: Coarse leather leggings that feel as though they were made of sandpaper. +3% Defense Rating.

  Quality: Poor

  “Got the map from Hurka for you to save time,” Durfa explained.

  I muttered my thanks and opened my menu. While I could now pull up the map with no issues, it wasn’t exactly the most complete map. The only area that had been uncovered was the camp, the cave, and the space in between. I assumed it would fill out as I visited locales or obtained regional maps. Had to start somewhere, I guessed.

  As soon as I closed my menu, Durfa nodded at my rawhide leggings impatiently.

  “Well, what’re you waiting for? Put those on — I’ve got more work for you, sonny!”

  I looked down at the leggings in my hand. They reminded me of cowboy chaps, if those things had been made out of sandpaper, anyway. Given the reality of the game, chafing seemed like a real possibility. Though, given the added Defense Rating, I would have been a fool not to try them out. But the idea of dressing in front of this old hag and her idiot son… Call me a prude, but even in my dozens of hours of game time during the beta, one thing I never really got used to was the idea of undressing in front of the NPCs.

  “Oh, no,” Durfa said, annoyance lacing her voice. “Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed. Trust me, it’s nothing I ain’t seen before.”

  “Well, I…”

  “Did you, by chance, happen to have a look at what you’re wearin’ now?”

  I looked down, remembering that I’d spent the better part of the day running around in a loincloth like Urok Tarzan. Old habits died hard, though.

  I excused myself and disappeared behind one of the huts, removing my soulbound loincloth as fast as possible before yanking on the leggings. The description hadn’t lied when it said these things felt like wearing sandpaper, and I’d foolishly just scraped them all the way up my legs and past my waist like a lunatic. Forget sandpaper. These things felt like they’d been put together out of those rawhide dog bones — with an extra coat of sand thrown in for good measure. I didn’t want to think of what it might be like to wear them without the default diaper-like cloth wrap that appeared surrounding my Urok-male-hood when I’d removed the loincloth.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the Medium Armor Pursuit Sphere! Open up your Pursuits Menu for more information.

  Medium Armor: Medium armor is worn by a variety of adventurer types and combat groups. Items in this armor class provide decent protection without sacrificing mobility.

  I instinctively lifted one of my legs to see how high I could get it. Not far. Maybe after putting in some miles, they’d loosen up. Or so I hoped.

  “Now, don’t consider me rude,” Durfa said when I sheepishly returned from my makeshift dressing room, “but I can tell you’ve been hoarding some of your Skill Points. You’re more than welcome to do that, but they’re not doing you any good just sitting there, hmm?”

  The old Horuk woman had a point. I pulled up my Pursuits Menu to find I had:

  Unused Skill Points:

  Unassigned Warrior: 1

  One-Handed Battle Axe: 2

  Two-Handed Battle Axe: 6

  Survival: 2

  Unassigned: 1

  The Unassigned Warrior Skill Point could be used in any Pursuit that fell under the Warrior Pursuits category, the Unassigned Skill Point I received when I leveled up in the cave could be used in literally any Pursuit period, and the others were very specific as to how they could be allocated.

  So far, I had only unlocked Pursuits within two main categories: Warrior and Adventuring. I started by looking at my Warrior Pursuits. I quickly moved on from the One-Handed Battle Axe Pursuit Sphere, since I wasn’t planning on specializing in that area.

  Two-Handed Battle Axe Pursuit

  Tier 1:

  Hook and Hack — Hook your enemies with your axe and hack at them once they’re down. Requires 3 Skill Points.

  Lock and Twist — Hook your enemy’s weapon with your battle axe and twist it away. Requires 5 Skill Points.

  Cyclone — Spin around in circles with your axe in hand, taking your ferocious enemies down in style. Requires 3 Skill Points.

  Swing Speed Increased by 5% Requires 10 Skill Points.

  Medium Armor Pursuit

  Tier 1:

  Comfort Comes First — Yes, medium armor items may be great, but they’re not always the most comfortable of the bunch. Use this to help give your item an extra dose of softness and decrease chafing. Requires 4 Skill Points.

  Unlike the other two Adventure Pursuits, Medium Armor only looked to have one skill to unlock in its Pursuit Sphere in its first tier, and I had to admit…it was a tempting one. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough Attribute Points even with the Unassigned ones added in to unlock chafe-free heaven. The rawhide leggings were my burden to bear, apparently.

  This left the Two-Handed Battle Axe Pursuit Sphere. Technically, I had up to eight points to spend there if I counted the Unassigned points.

  I opted to start with Cyclone. As a solo player, it’d be helpful to have that move to ward off large numbers of enemies at once.

  A miniature image of me spinning around with an axe popped up in my vision as I selected the skill, along with a metallic ring.

  You have learned the skill Cyclone!

  As if immediately uploading the skill to my brain, I felt the muscle memory take from my shoulders all the way down to my legs. There was no mistaking it. I instinctively knew how to perform Cyclone now, and I could execute it flawlessly. Well, as flawless as a beginner could, anyway.

  Technically, this left me with three more Skill Points that could be utilized in my Two-Handed Battle Axe Pursuit Sphere, but first, I wanted to check my Adventuring Pursuits.

  Survival Pursuit

  Tier 1:

  Overnight Lumberjack — Allows your character to chop up 10 pieces of wood while logged out with no risk of death — perfect for collecting crafting materials! Can only be used once every day of MythRune play. Requires 2 Skill Points.

  Firestarter (Unlocked) — Allows you to utilize the proper materials to create your very own fire. An adventuring essential.

  Gimme Shelter — This skill allows you to utilize fitting materials to create a shelter that can help hide you from enemies and protect you from the elemen
ts. Requires 3 Skill Points.

  Tree Climber — Climb up to ten feet off the ground in a tree without branches. Let your enemies try to follow you then! Requires 8 Skill Points.

  Exploring Pursuit

  Tier 1:

  Backtrack — Set an anchor point that allows you to trace your trail back to it like breadcrumbs. Area of effect: One half of a mile. Requires 3 Skill Points.

  Dungeon Diver Level 1 — Can’t find the exit? This special skill will allow you to map the safest route from entrance to exit of any room in a dungeon classified as Level 1 — though “safest” doesn’t always mean safe! Requires 5 Skill Points.

  Pathfinder Level 1 — It ain’t easy being green in the world of exploring. While “as the crow flies” is the quickest way to get from point A to B, the terrain of any landscape sometimes makes that impossible. Based on your skill level, you will be able to search out hidden paths of varying difficulty. Requires 3 Skill Points.

  What’s That? — This skill will allow you to better notice items hidden off the beaten path, or even ones hidden in plain sight! Requires 6 Skill Points.

  As appealing as the Exploring Pursuit looked, the reality was that I couldn’t afford any of those skills just yet. If there were no skills in the Survival Pursuit that I had my eye on, I might have been willing to wait around a bit, but as it stood, the Gimme Shelter skill was one that I would likely find some use for, given the wide-open nature of the land around me. After giving it a few more moments’ thought, I went ahead and dumped my two Survival Skill Points and my Unassigned Skill Point there.

  You have learned the skill Gimme Shelter! This skill can be activated from your Survival Pursuits menu.

  For this particular skill, the need to activate it made sense. The last thing I wanted was to be plagued constantly with highlights for things that could be used to throw up a makeshift lean-to. With that, I didn’t have enough Skill Points to unlock anything else at the moment.

  “So, big adventurer,” Durfa said, clearly waiting for me to finish up with my menu, “are you ready to finish the job?”

  A new quest notification popped up.

  Quest: Ghoul Me Twice, Shame On You

  Any job worth doing is worth doing right. Go back to the caves and kill the remaining ghouls so that the Horuk tribe may move their camp to the area. Maybe you should have done that in the first place?

  Objective: Kill the remaining ghouls in the cave.

  I ground my teeth at the quest description. It was like the game had read my mind and knew I’d contemplated pushing on while I was still back in the cave. I hated quests that made you run back and forth — especially as precious as time was for me in MythRune. But there was nothing else for it — looked like I was heading back to lesser cave ghoul hell.

  7

  Ghoul Me Twice

  After taking one last look at my stats (my HP had risen back to full health following that cheap shot from Durfa), I said my goodbyes and made the trek back to the caves. Before I knew it, I was back to the good old ghoul crib.

  I entered the mouth of the cave with little hesitation, but halted near where I’d made my first lesser ghoul kill. Rather than finding another living ghoul, however, I found only the dead one I’d taken out earlier. This trend continued as I made my way deeper into the tunnel, counting my steps as I went. Three dead lesser ghouls here. Three more there. It was a virtual bloodbath of the little guys, and had I not been the one responsible for it, I might have been a little creeped out.

  That being said, the implications here were still a little disheartening.

  While I appreciated the fact that MythRune was advanced enough to remember when a player had made their kills along the way, it would likely make grinding a bit tougher. In beta, basic monsters reset whenever players left and returned to a specific area, so this was a new thing for the game. I briefly wondered if the cave ghouls would be alive for someone not in my party visiting this cave — if there were a finite number of monsters in this world, or if they were on a delayed respawn schedule, I might have serious issues grinding out levels.

  Ping!

  +1 Exploring Skill Point

  I’d been keeping a mental count of the number of steps from the entrance of the cave. Looks like counting those seventy yards had helped to gain a point. It made sense, though. With the Exploring Pursuit not being quite as tangible as the Two-Handed Battle Axe Pursuit, they had to find ways to reward players for every little thing. Though it didn’t make me feel too comfortable knowing the game was somehow reading my mind.

  At around one hundred yards from the entrance, which seemed a lot farther from the entrance than it had the first time, I reached the spot where I’d made my last kill. From there on out, I faced all new territory.

  After a few more steps, I noticed an odd, faint glow up ahead. On the ground was an unexpected neon-blue-and-green patch of moss. Actually, there was more than one of them. There was a whole mess of them, mildly lighting up a hole in the ground.

  Yeah, that’s right. There was a hole right there in the ground. Had I not been so taken by the neon-lit moss, I could have accidentally stepped right into it. Sure, there was a steep, naturally made set of stairs that went down, but it would have been easy to just walk off and fall a solid ten feet down. Not cool.

  I got down on my stomach and poked my head into the hole. In the dim light, I spotted another tunnel that continued on in the same direction as the one I was going in — only this one wasn’t lit by sunlight poking through holes in the ceiling, but rather more of the neon moss. The entire tunnel was coated in a psychedelic blue-green color. And walking around in the lower tunnel were about half a dozen lesser cave ghouls.

  I could hear their squeaky, ratlike chirps reverberating off the walls, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was another mess of them even deeper in. While it was tempting to jump in and execute my Cyclone spin in style, I didn’t want to get in over my head, either.

  I chose a much smarter approach and tossed a couple of rocks down the hole at the cluster of ghouls. I hoped to aggro a few of them in the process, drawing them up to meet me. As soon as I threw the first stone, I heard another notification ding. I winced involuntarily, even though I knew the sound was only audible to me.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the Combat Assessment Pursuit Sphere! Open your Pursuits Menu for more information.

  +1 Combat Assessment Skill Point

  While I was a bit annoyed at the timing of the thing, I wasn’t going to complain about being rewarded for out-of-the-box thinking. I took a quick look at what this new Warrior Pursuit offered me.

  Combat Assessment

  Some Warriors look before they leap into combat. Combat Assessment allows the scrupulous to quickly study their opponents to determine if fight or flight is the best course of action.

  I tapped into the actual Pursuit Sphere to see if my single Combat Assessment Skill Point and Unassigned Warrior Skill Point could do me any good here.

  Tier 1:

  Basic Combat Assessment — This skill color-codes your enemies so that you can know at a glance whether or not they are worth taking on. Ally levels may also be revealed for select NPCs. Requires 2 Skill Points.

  Leveled Combat Assessment — This skill allows you to see what level your enemies are. Requires 4 Skill Points.

  Weak Spot — Mostly useful with bosses, this skill allows you to identify the weak point in those particularly hard-to-kill enemies — if such a weakness exists. Requires 10 Skill Points.

  Party Planning — In the heat of combat, it’s just as important to know what your friends are doing as well as your foes. Party Planning allows the user to mitigate area-of-effect damage (friendly fire) to the other members of their group. Outside of battle, Party Planning doubles as a passive skill that tracks the general location of party members within a one-mile radius. Must be lead party member in order to work. Requires 5 Skill Points.

  Basic Combat Assessment seemed like a skill well worth the p
rice. I wasn’t quite sure how it would work out, but why the heck not? I tossed in the Combat Assessment Skill Point and my Unassigned Warrior Skill Point and a window appeared explaining the skill’s uses:

  Know thine enemy, adventurer! There are few things worse than jumping into a battle you’re unprepared for. Using Combat Assessment, you will not only know the names of your foes, but their names will be color-coded so you can know whether or not you stand a chance in battle. The colors break down as follows:

  Gray (A waste of your time)

  Green (Easy peasy!)

  Yellow (Be careful)

  Orange (Proceed with extreme caution)

  Red (Run for yo’ life, foo!)

  White (Too high above your level to adequately assess — also, RUN FOR YO’ LIFE, FOO!)

  This would be very useful. I couldn’t count the number of times in open-world games like this that I had stumbled into an area, only to find myself flat on my back when an unexpectedly high-level monster appeared out of nowhere.

  I activated the skill and immediately saw the Lesser Cave Ghoul name in green text appear above the monsters, indicating they’d be a breeze to take down. No surprise there.

  I tossed another rock down at them, since the first hadn’t attracted their attention. A few of the little monsters shrieked and looked around to see where the rock had come from. I expected them to at least haphazardly glance my way, but the bastards gave up after just a few seconds and continued sniffing at the ground.