Chapter 9 A Bear? No A Turtle, Wait No Its A Bear [Edited]
"OH HELL YEAH!" Shaman punched the air in excitement.
'Seems like I can create any number of skills I want but then again I'm going to have to be creative for it to be counted as a skill.'
After examining her skill she headed further into the forest of beasts to test out her new skill.
*
Shaman encountered a pair of wolves and thought it was a perfect opportunity to test her new skill.
The oblivious wolves who had not seen Shaman were all of sudden attacked by a wind slash instantly chopping them in half with ease and even going through the second wolf.
Shaman was amazed by this as it cleanly cut them with little to no sound making it great for stealth.
'Wow that was surprisingly clean.' Shaman walked up to the bodies and let her system collect the cores from their bodies.
Shaman wandered around a bit until she noticed that it was dead silent. Nothing was around her and it felt odd to move so far without encountering anything. After that though, a loud thud could be heard shaking the ground.
Shaman jumped a little from the tremor and her first instinct was to run away from whatever made that thud. Wolfy, who was napping peacefully, jumped down and was getting ready to fight.
All of a sudden trees started to fall and a 3m tall bear appeared with what seemed to be a massive turtle shell on its back covering most of its body as well as a small tail.
[Quest received, defeat the tier 2 leader monster]
[Rewards]
5 attribute points
1 skill level up
Shaman ignored the quest as she was a bit perplexed by the bear's looks?
'No? A turtle, maybe a bear? Wait no it's both, it looks kind of stupid.' After trying to discern what it specifically was she was trying to hold back her laughter.
"Pfft." Shaman could not contain her laughter as she was seeing such a silly-looking creature although she expected a few odd beasts, this was beyond her expectations.
The bear was able to tell Shaman was mocking it, so it roared in anger.
"ROAARRRR!!!!"
'Oh, shit I made it an angry, time to run.' Shaman signalled Wolfy to run and opens up the inspect window to see if she could fight it.
[Beartoise (tier 4)]
[known for its hard shell being impenetrable but has a vital weakness, its behind]
"BHAHAHA!" Shaman laughed at this description as she couldn't believe what she was reading.
"Looks like I get to take one of the many wisdoms of Shiro and go for the best weak point." Shaman had a grin as this Beartoise was walking exp.
Shaman dashed to the side causing the bear to halt its steps and slide forward. Wolfy closely followed Shaman trying to not get in the way.
Using this brief moment where the monster is unable to move she moved behind it and used a wind slash. The wind slash easily cuts through the tail and then enters its behind.
The beartoise let out a roar from the pain and falls to the ground whimpering. letting out a weekend roar it quickly dies after suffering from many internal injuries. The system got all the loot and transferred it to her inventory while also getting the quest complete popup.
[Choose a skill to level]
'Oh? that was a reward, well let's go with wind slash since magic is cool and is my first actual spell.' Shaman selected wind slash and uses her free level up.
Her level also increased to level 8 getting her 10 more attribute points on top of the bonus 5 she received.
Unspent points: 15
Vitality: 15
Agility: 20 -> 25
Intelligence: 18 ->20
Strength: 15 -> 20
Dexterity: 9 ->10
Defence: 8 -> 10
'Alrighty, some progress and it seems like Wolfy levelled up a little as well.' Shaman checked Wolfy and to her surprise managed to get to level 4 in one go. Shaman gave Wolfy a few pats as it was good news that he would level up alongside her.
Wolfy was panting a little, looking happy as he was receiving more pats from its mother.
'I should probably let you kill some things so we can see what you can do.' Shaman wanted to make sure Wolfy could kill and was a reliable companion.
Wolfy let out a happy woof in response due to the connection they had he was able to get a general idea of what Shaman's intentions were.
*
After walking around they found another pack of wolves roaming and so Shaman let Wolfy kill them. Although a little morbid that it was his own kind, it seemed like Wolfy was not bothered by this fact at all.
Wolfy took a more stealthy approach and ran around making sure to stay out of sight of the wolves. using a shadow dash this caused him to blend in with the shadows and approach the wolves undetected in almost an instant. Thanks to the trees creating a bunch of shadows this created a straight path for Wolfy making his dash go straight to them.
After appearing out of the shadows, a massive shadow mouth came out of Wolfy chomping down on one of the wolves cutting it in half. Wolfy then followed up with a massive shadow claw that swiped across, cutting the head of 3 other wolves in the pack.
Shaman's jaw had dropped as she saw its baby wolf just massacre some other wolves in mere seconds and it had only been a day old. She was thinking she would have to save Wolfy because she was unsure if he had any survival instincts. She also thought he would be unable to know what to do in the fight but her assumptions were proven wrong.
After finishing off the wolves, Wolfy walked back to Shaman with puppy eyes wanting praises. Shaman could do nothing but give him praise, and so she picked up Wolfy nuzzling him for his wonderful effort. Then the system rudely interrupted their moment with a message.
[Wolfy has shared its skill with Shaman]
[User Shaman can use all skills Wolfy currently, however, it will not count as an element that has been learnt]
Shaman was shocked to get this message. She could not help, but hold her son even tighter as she now has more skills she can utilize. Wolfy also let out a cheerful woof as he was happy that he was getting so much affection.
"Oh, you are just such a good boy, I will never abandon you and do everything to protect you." After hugging Wolfy for long enough she put him on her head and concentrated back on her goal.
*
Setting out to hunt more monsters in an attempt to level up some more. Shaman was also letting Wolfy take some kills to make sure he was getting some exp as well despite it being shared the 50% cut was still harsh on Wolfy.
Although she had access to Wolfy's skills she was also trying to conserve her MP just in case anything bad happened.
She encountered many tier 1 leader beasts that were normal animals from her world with some abilities but nothing too hard. She could not find any tier 2 beasts, but since she only got a tier 1 map and she expected them to be in a different region not marked on the map.
After grinding for a few hours she finally reached level 10 and Wolfy hit level 7 then an interesting system message appeared.
[Evolution ready]
'!!!' The awaited evolution had finally come.
"I can evolve, let's hope this body gets some much-needed upgrades." Shaman looked down at her body and couldn't help but feel a bit depressed at her lost proportions.
'No matter, let's see if I need to do anything to evolve.'
[Evolve into a tier 2 fox girl]
[Requirements]
Tier 1 cores 10/10
Tier 1 leader cores 5/5
Or
Tier 2 leader core 1/1
'NOOO my money, is this system trying to steal my money.' Shaman clenched her fist and gritted her teeth.
[We can take more cores if you like but I recommend using your tier 4, as it may have some extra effects]
"Okay, I am convinced." Shaman changed her tone to a sweet one as she did not want to miss out on any benefits.
'I better save this till I get home, I don't want to be in the wild while evolving.' Shaman closed the system window and started back heading home.
After travelling for 30 minutes she finally made it back to the city of Victoria. Getting through the gate with no issues, she hands in her cores to the guild house for some coins and kept the tier 4 for her evolution. However, this time she did not get a rank up in her adventure rank due to her not getting any tier 2 cores but still an impressive amount of cores nonetheless.
She checks on her coin count to see just how rich she was.
[gold: 20 silver: 50 copper: 42]
'I can definitely live off this for a while without worry, I can probably buy some books on magic but I'm probably going to need more gold as I need to get it on more specific subjects which won't be cheap.' Shaman contemplated what to do with her newfound fortune.
Deciding on getting some nice food she looked for a restaurant to eat out at. But before that, she quickly headed home to wash off any blood or smell and got into some clean clothes. Shaman then heads out to go look for a place to go eat.
Shaman stumbled upon a decent-looking restaurant and just from the looks could tell the prices would be rather high. She entered and was given a seat almost straight as it was not a busy night. Looking at the menu She notices that things were relatively cheap but still hurt to spend her money.
After choosing 2 gold coins worth for her son and herself, she patiently waited for her food.
However, a thing Shaman had not realised that by being a fox, her hearing was also better and is able to hear conversations around her clearly.
"Hey did you hear that there are a lot of kidnappings of young girls lately?"
"Yeah, it is definitely dangerous being a young woman at the moment since they are only just granted the ability to protect themselves at 18 unless they are from a rich family."
"We should look out for some of the girls we know just to make sure they are safe."
"Sounds like a good idea."
Shaman listened to this conversation and her face cannot help but darken.
'Seems like I know why I was being hunted. They are trying to use young women for something and it seems like most of them are dead seeing as they would rather bring me back dead than alive.' Shaman had a grim expression as this explained a lot of the reasons why she was being hunted.
'I have to deal with this, not for my own sake but for the other young ladies around. After I evolve I need to see if I am able to take on these people that are hunting me.'