Summoned A Hundred Years Too Late

Two days later, at dawn, Alexandra stared at her journal, thinking that she might have gotten carried away a little.

Just a little.

Basic Enchantment Training Quest Completed x 1 -> 40 contribution points

Basic Enchantment 2 -> 3

Basic Enchantment Training Quest Completed x 2 -> 120 contribution points

Basic Enchantment 3 -> 4

Basic Enchantment Training Quest Completed x 2 -> 160 contribution points

Basic Enchantment 4 -> 5

Light Training Quest Completed x 2 -> 40 contribution points

Light 1 -> 2

Daily quests summary: One Quest Completed -> +10 exp, +1 DEX

Daily Quest Streak: 76 -> 77

Manyfold Style Training Quest Completed x 5 -> 1,500 contribution points

Manyfold Style 3 -> 4

Manyfold Style Training Quest Completed x 1 -> 400 contribution points

She’d stayed at the base camp and spent the entire day enchanting, except for a little detour to complete her daily. At dusk, when the Troll Cave opened again, she’d ripped through the dungeon, killing everything she could to get her points.

Yet it wasn’t enough.

Contribution Points: 4,986

She played with her orb of light as she walked the forest path leading her back to the Iron Library. Just a few hours to go, and she’d get the points.

She checked her journal again, hoping that something would have changed, but it was improbable. There was no way that—

Contribution Points: 4,992

Alexandra stopped dead in her tracks. It had to be Kam. The Training Quest cooldown had expired at the same time as her daily quest reset timer the previous day.

“Nice of him to complete the quest so early,” she whispered.

Then she flipped the pages of her journal to receive today’s quest.

Quest Journal

Daily Reset: 06:00 | Streak: 77 Days | 5% All Stats, 5% Skill experience

Next Milestone: 100 Days

Daily Quests:

Hunt a Mossback (0/1)She let out a low groan. This wasn’t good for her point business. Farming the Troll Cave was perfect. The regeneration she extracted from the trolls made the process safe. As a result, her Manyfold Style was growing more slowly than it should have.

Getting into a real fight with an actually dangerous beast would ruin her plans.

She tapped the line in her journal. She knew of Mossbacks. After her run-in with the Silver dog back then, she’d made sure to know the sort of dangers that lurked in those woods. Mossbacks were among them. They were Silver pig-like monsters hiding underground, with only their moss-covered backs on the surface.

Alexandra sighed. At least, she’d finally get to upgrade her achievement.

She turned around, and instead of walking toward Kator, she followed the path deeper into the forest.

Finding a Mossback wasn’t going to be easy. Those beasts liked to stay hidden, only coming out of their spot when prey stepped on them. Her eyes scanned the undergrowth, looking for suspicious patches of moss.

The issue wasn’t so much that there was no moss; it was that there was way too much moss. Every spot on the ground that wasn’t covered by leaves or bushes was a carpet of moss that never seemed to end.

Of course, every corner of the ground didn’t hide a Mossback. Silver monsters were not rare by any means, but they were not that common either.

Once she felt that she was deep enough in the forest, she stepped off the path, her orb trailing behind her. She’d never seen a Mossback with her own eyes, only reading about it in the library. The description was not very forthcoming on how to identify them when they were hidden.

To her, every patch of moss looked like another patch of moss. Since she was coming back from the Troll Cave, she was carrying a spear on her back. The extra range was welcome when fighting monsters larger than her.

In this instance, she was happy to have it. Mossbacks were supposed to be quite large. She unstrapped the spear from her back and started poking at every patch of moss.

Nothing.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

An hour later, she still hadn’t found her target. She stopped in the middle of a clearing and took stock of her situation.

It was early morning, so she had a lot of time ahead of her. She wasn’t too worried that she was going to fail her quest. If anything, the fight would be the real challenge. But going around the forest poking at moss wasn’t the most stimulating experience. She could be doing so much more, like farming her skills. She also had to check in with Willow and Kam about the contribution points.

Speaking of which.

Light Training Quest Completed x 1 -> 40 contribution points

Contribution Points: 5,032

Journal in hand, she opened the contribution point shop, then the skill tab.

Common Skill: 5,000 contribution pointsShe licked her lips, wondering what buying a skill would do. Perhaps it would be wiser to save points and wait until she could afford an uncommon skill, but the pull of curiosity was too strong.

With her intent, she selected the common skill option.

She felt something click in her mind, as if she had just connected to a vast vault of knowledge she didn’t know existed. It was almost like browsing the kiosks in the Iron Library, except the directory was larger.

Alexandra felt a million skills and more, all jumbled together in an ocean of power.

She frowned. Homing in on a specific skill seemed difficult. Browsing the catalogue almost impossible. She wouldn’t be able to read a list of skills and pick from them. What she needed was to know the skill she wanted and communicate it to the system.

“What skill do I want?” She tapped her foot on the ground.

Something she could farm? She shook her head. A common skill would never pay for itself, so there was no point in taking a suboptimal skill just because she could extract a few more contribution points from it.

Then what? She hadn’t come with a specific idea of a skill. In all her time in Laika, this was the first time she had to choose one. Usually, her daily quests gave her a skill quest, and that was it.

“Wait…” She looked up to the sky. “Fuck, I forgot about the skill quest discount.”

Ten percent of 5,000 was 500. Not much, but not insignificant either. For common skills where the quests would be relatively easy, it would be a waste not to take advantage of it. She didn’t let her oversight bring her down. She’d only delayed her pick by a few hours. Nothing dramatic.

Her focus returned to her skill selection. Considering all she knew, there had to be a skill for Basic Alchemy. Maybe it was worth pursuing? As the thought crossed her mind, she felt the shop sift through the list of skills, landing on the one she was thinking about.

Basic Alchemy – Common

Slightly improves your proficiency at brewing potions.

Each level increases the effect.

Basic Alchemy: Study alchemy to the level of apprentice (0/1)

Alexandra wasn’t sure. Sure, she benefited a lot from potions curing her sicknesses. But it would take a while to get good enough at alchemy to replicate that, and she already had Curse Unraveling. As for the other uses of alchemy, she already had a lot on her plate with enchantment, martial training, and general magic.

She tried thinking of another skill.

At the moment, she could certainly use a tracking skill. Mossbacks were elusive. It would save her a lot of time.

The page of her journal rearranged itself.

Mossback Tracking – Common

Points you toward the nearest Mossback.

Each level increases range.

Mossback Tracking: Find a Mossback (0/1)

“Maybe a tad too specific.”

Strength dailies were hunting quests more often than not, so a general tracking skill would always be useful. A skill dedicated to Mossbacks, however…

Tracking – Common

Helps you identify and follow trails of living creatures

Each level increases detail detection.

Tracking: Successfully track a creature (0/1)

This was better. Less potent by itself, but she didn’t need a Mossback compass.

Hunched over the pages of her journal, she almost went ahead and selected the skill when a strand of her white hair fell on the pages.

Alexandra looked down at her missing finger.

Perhaps she hadn’t been looking at the big picture. A tracking skill would be useful, but she was confident she’d find a Mossback without it. Sure, it’d take longer, but that was fine.

She was still planning to leave the Iron Library when the opportunity arose. Wherever she went, white hair and a missing finger would attract unwanted attention.

Her first thought was a skill to recover her lifeforce. A few common skills apparently did that, but they were all more distasteful than the other.

Human Sacrifice – Common

Sacrifice humans to steal their lifeforce with a conversion rate of one in a million.

Each level minutely increases the conversion rate.

She might as well use Life Drain, dye her hair, or wear a wig.

As for her missing finger, there was no common skill that could help with that.

She turned her attention to the idea of hiding her divine class. She’d hoped Mana Concentration would do the trick, but while it helped restrain her mana inside her core, someone looking deep enough would see through it anyway.

Combined with A Face Among Many, which redirected attention from her, it was almost a working solution. Almost.

She let her intent form and inform the system of what she needed, and the words appeared on the page. She read through several skills, all of which came up short of what she wanted, before settling on one.

Stasis Core Seal – Common

Seal your mana core into a stasis, making it unreadable. Using mana will break the stasis.

Each level reduces the time required to set up the seal.

Alexandra tapped her fingers on the page. This skill was the best she could find, yet it had a very clear downside. If using mana broke her disguise, she’d have to be very careful. That said, it was the only skill that offered some guarantee. Perhaps a better skill simply didn’t exist in the common shop.

The skill quest, however, seemed complicated.

Stasis Core Seal: Go two days without anyone seeing your mana core (0/2)

Now, it wasn’t difficult per se. She just had to stay isolated for two days. For example, she could stay in the forest.

She grimaced. Except she now knew for certain that Sera or some other Keeper was keeping an eye on her. She could hide in the dungeon. But the monsters wouldn’t respawn until she exited. Was it worth wasting two days to save 500 points?

Alexandra was about to purchase the skill at full price when a final hesitation stopped her.

She wanted the skill, but didn’t need it now. She needed to never use it before her escape, so as not to raise any suspicion.

She looked up at the forest around her, at the moss on the ground.

There was still time to save up for another skill, and Tracking was a fine purchase too.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she didn’t want to spend her day poking at moss.

Nothing at all.

She bought Tracking without bothering with the discount.