About a dozen had the butchering skill and an equal number had the skinning skill. There were two who had the herb gathering skill- Kittikork and Shemi, but one was missing and one was awaiting respawn. The final notation on the list showed that Shemi was an Alchemist (Proficient-26) That would likely be useful. But none of those skills would build us a new village.

  Beneath the list of current crafting skill holders was another list of available skills.

  Carpenter Energy: 125 XP: 600

  Laborer Energy: 75 XP: 300

  Blacksmith Energy: 150 XP: 700

  Hunter Energy: 100 XP: 500

  Fisherman Energy: 75 XP: 400

  Leatherworker Energy: 125 XP: 600

  Enchanter Energy: 800 XP: 4500

  Tailor Energy: 100 XP: 500

  Runesmith Energy: 900 XP: 5000

  Cook Energy: 125 XP: 450

  Skinner Energy: 75 XP: 300

  Butcher Energy: 75 XP: 300

  Herb Gather Energy: 50 XP: 250

  Alchemist Energy: 700 XP: 4000

  Farmer Energy: 75 XP: 300

  Mining Energy: 125 XP: 450

  Woodcutting Energy: 100 XP: 400

  If I understood this list, it was showing me basic gathering and trade skills that I could have the villagers earn. So presumably either they would need to spend the requisite XP or I would have to spend energy. For now, I just moved on to the Construction Tab.

  Available Buildings:

  Long House Energy: 1000

  Chief’s Hut Energy: 800

  Storage Hut Energy: 500

  Dining Hall Energy: 1800

  Barracks Energy: 2000

  Forge Energy: 2000

  Alchemist’s Hut Energy: 2000

  The list kept going on and on. The energy costs for some of the items were staggering. For example, a Tier 3 Keep costs 178,000 energy. I had no idea how we earned more energy, so I started searching the tab for any indication of tutorials. The first thing that I found was an ability to open up a more detailed description of each building.

  Long House- basic mass sleeping structure for ogres. Each one can comfortably house 50 ogres but as many as 75 may be placed inside with a reduction in rest and capacity.

  A little further digging showed me that energy could be used to build a structure instantly but that if we had skilled craftsmen and the necessary materials, then we could build it the old-fashioned way or for a significantly reduced energy cost. I couldn’t get the specifics, but at least that is what I understood.

  As far as energy production, it appeared to be rather straightforward. We got one energy per day for each ogre under level 10. Ogres between level 10 and 19 were worth 2 per day and ogres at level twenty up to an unknown point were worth 3 per day. That meant that we were earning 387 energy per day till the other elders got back.

  Something didn’t make sense to me though, because that was far more energy than I had expected. Within a month, we could raise several craftsmen and plenty of buildings. Then I noticed that each building had a daily upkeep cost. That was set at 5% of building cost if it was insta-built or 2% if it was hand built. That explained a great deal. Even the basic six buildings they had before would have a daily upkeep of 365 energy.

  Nothing could ever be easy. I also got the sense that we could earn extra energy, but there was no specific chart for how to do so.

  The treasury tab turned out to be an extra-dimensional storage space for the village. I assume all the elders could access it. My question, of course, being what would happen if I was able to raise up most of the village to level twenty. Anyway, a problem for another day. All that was in the treasury was the weapons, cloth, and various items recovered from the caravan we hit. It almost made me feel bad for not putting the gems or evolution crystal in there, almost.

  So, now I needed to decide what to do with these resources. Right now, everyone was pretty confused, but we were going to need housing and food. The common protocol now was that all the warrior type ogres went out and hunted each day, but none of them had ever gained the hunter skill. Thus, returns were pretty low. At least they had been until we started working in teams to level up.

  I think that would probably provide us with enough food. It might be good to get hunters later, but for now we would be fine. Farmers were not even a consideration. From my time here, I knew ogres could live just fine on a meat only diet. We already had enough skinners, butchers, and cooks to get started.

  That meant that shelter was the next priority. For that, we would need buildings. The cost of the buildings was just too high to make them automatically. Maybe if we got our energy production up some, but for now we would need to do it the hard way. That meant that I needed lumber, metal, tools, and carpenters.

  Given the amount of energy that I had, I decided to focus on gathering first. I asked for volunteers but then realized who I was speaking to. Ogres were more like sheep. They just needed to be told what to do. Which gave me another idea. I created a lumber team and a mining team.

  Each team had twenty of the melee type ogres who were under level ten. I used the energy to create four miners and five woodcutters. The wood cutters all came from slashers, so they had edged weapons to use. It was far from ideal, but they would work until we could make other tools. The miners I selected from brawlers since we didn’t have proper tools, but they would be strong enough to smash rocks. Hopefully, we’d be lucky and get some ore.

  Then I instructed each of the teams to follow those that I gave the skills to. They were told to kill anything that got in their way but not to level up. I hoped that if they followed the instructions or at least examples of those with the actual gathering skills, they might be given the opportunity to buy the skill for XP.

  I had to bash in a couple more heads and then heal the fools before they agreed to do as I ordered. The idea of buying skills with XP was something alien to them. The same went for holding back from leveling up. I initially made the mistake of trying to explain it, but then gave up and sought obedience rather than understanding.

  After that, I had to come up with tasks for the rest of the village. Idle hands would not be a good idea for ogres. Fortunately, we had been doing some leveling work prior to the entire village being wiped out, so they understood that concept at least.

  Since the party system allowed for up to six members to a team, I put five warriors with each of the forty-five shamans. They would level slower than trio’s but they should be able to kill faster. The remaining thirty-five ogres were the strongest of the warriors and I broke them down into six groups to send them out as well. They were going to have go a bit further afield than the lower-level teams, so it should work out.

  As a final instruction, I ordered them all to hunt the rest of the day and the entire night. The cooks were ordered to come back a few hours earlier to prepare a meal. With any luck, most of the lower-level ogres could earn a couple levels at least by the end of eighteen hours of non-stop killing monsters. The bigger problem would be running out of monsters.

  If we could get even another hundred over level ten, our energy production would jump up. Maybe if things went really well, even the higher-level ogres would gain a level or two. Now, though, I had my own hunting to do. A few of the ogres had offered to go with me, but I gave them what I hoped was my most intimidating glare. I definitely wanted to do this alone. I had new spells to try out, and I needed to push hard on leveling. There was no time for slowing down. Wolf Spirit was gonna be a godsend now as I streaked off into the forest, aiming for areas closer to the human kingdom. I believe that to be where I would find the next level up of monsters.

  Interlude 3- Stalling

  “What do you mean you want to talk about it? What is there to even talk about?” Tauri demanded.

  “There are two quest paths to follow. That wouldn’t be the case if it wasn’t an actual choice. Legends of Selmia is never as obvious as people want to act like it is. Didn’t you ever read that poem by Robert Frost?” Elgar retorted.

  “You say the strangest things. How old are you in real life anyway, Elgar?” The half-elf rogue asked.

  The wizard sighed. He wasn’t really that old in real life. Forty-five didn’t feel that old. But he suspected Tauri was in her early 20s at the oldest. “It’s just a good lesson. Sometimes the less obvious path is the one which will make all the difference.”

  “C’mon, one of the quest lines gives us guaranteed rewards. The other one does what? Gives us a chance to maybe become friends with ogres. I bet that is gonna be great fun,” Tauri replied.

  Then, as if on cue, Robert yelled out in pain loudly. He didn’t curse. That wouldn’t have been proper for his paladin character. Elgar wasn’t sure if the guy was that good at roleplaying or if it was settings from the AI, which helped modify how his responses were perceived.

  Either way, both the wizard and rogue jumped up from around their campfire and moved to where the paladin had been trying to feed their ogre hostage. They had a limited supply of the sleep poison needles, so until they figured out how to proceed, they had to settle for keeping her tied up.

  Given that she was an ogre, they had used so much rope it made her look like a caterpillar wrapped up in its cocoon. The beast was just so strong, and she was supposedly just a level eight shaman.

  Tauri started to laugh as they both realized that their friend wasn’t in any real danger. They were hiding out in a cave. It would be a safe place for them to log out. Their campfire was up near the mouth of the cave and in the back, they had the prisoner bound to a stalagmite.

  For now, the paladin was shaking his hand in the air. He looked at the laughing rogue. “This isn’t funny. She almost bit my finger off.”

  A warm glow surrounded his hand as the paladin healed himself, but that didn’t stop Tauri from laughing. “I’m sure Elgar will lecture you for sticking your fingers in its mouth.”

  The wizard shook his head. “I’m not trying to lecture anyone. I just want us to consider all of our options. Besides, when have I ever led you astray?”

  “It’s not like you are some elite player, Elgar. You are just a level seventeen wizard. If you were level forty or something, I might be impressed,” Tauri taunted.

  “What makes you think this is my first character?”

  “He has a point, Tauri. There is a reason that we follow him around. I’ve only been playing this game for a month and I’m already catching up to players who have been at it for three times that long,” Robert said.

  “Fine, have it your way,” Tauri said as she stomped her foot. “We can wait until we find this Oogliefrank, at least. Then we will decide what works the best.”

  Chapter 25- New Abilities

  I felt lighter as I got further away from the village. Being a leader was never something I had wanted. I enjoyed gaming for the same reason that the vast majority of the modern world did. It was an escape from the dismal reality we lived in. Or that I had lived in.

  This was my life now. I wasn’t thrilled with it. I hated it had happened to me rather than choosing it, but even with the threat of being eventually absorbed into the system, I found myself strangely content. All I really needed now was some good company. For that to happen, I needed to connect with some players.

  The forest eventually gave way to an open area. As I stared at it, I realized it wasn’t grass lands, it just had that appearance. It was actually a valley, and I was up at the top of the ridge. The valley was miles across and even more miles in length. Looking down, you could see that there were large hills scattered over the valley.

  It constituted its own zone, known as the Valley of Hills. Another great naming convention by the AI. It was home to a number of monsters. Legends of Selmia didn’t have barriers between zones, but monsters tended, for the most part to stay within their own zones. That didn’t mean that various monster tribes didn’t fight each other over spaces.

  There were hill giants who made their homes in small families here, but in the center of the zone there was a necromancers camp. It was supposed to be run by a powerful NPC necromancer, although I had never seen him. I had seen some of his servants and they were level thirty plus, so definitely had required a full party at my old level.

  Their undead minions weren’t as bad to deal with. There were rumors though of barbed devils which would have been significantly strong, although again I had never run into any of them. The easiest targets to hunt were some wildlife in the form of bears and giant beetles. A bit tougher than those were the various breeds of drakes that hunted the bears in this zone. But it was the hill giants that everyone came to the zone for.

  They hit super hard but were slow and easily outmaneuvered as long as you could do so without getting adds. Their value was in their drops. Ingredients and components for crafting were often the most valuable drop of non-dungeon creatures. The hill giants, however, dropped decent amounts of coin for some reason. There had been many discussions about why that was.

  Right now, though, I didn’t care what complex system the AI had set up for the interactions between various NPCs to account for how hill giants had gold. The simple fact was that they did and so they were hunted for that.

  I hadn’t realized that Ghazban village was so close to the Valley of Hills, but it was convenient. The pouch of gemstones I had probably meant I wouldn’t need to farm gold for a while, but it was also a zone where I might find parties of players. It had taken me about ninety minutes of running to get here even with Wolf Spirit, but that wasn’t too bad in a game that had limited quick travel options so far.

  Now, I felt a burning desire to go down into the valley. There were plenty of monsters here that could eat me for lunch, but I shouldn’t have too much problem with the beetles, bears, or simple undead. If I was careful, I could make this work. It would definitely be a good place for me to try out my new spells.

  Before I could change my mind, I started climbing down the ridge. There were paths from other zones that led directly into it, but those would be more hotly contested spawn sites. I didn’t want to get into direct conflict with any players yet. As I climbed down, I double checked to make sure that all my buffs were still good. I would just refresh them when I reached the bottom of this ridge, since they all had less than an hour left. Always better to start out with full buffs since you never knew what kind of trouble you might run into while hunting.

  This also would serve as an excellent opportunity. I sat down in the grass at the foot of the ridge. It was the very edge of the zone and hopefully I would have peace here. It shouldn’t be in the path of any roaming monsters. There were no guarantees. As I had seen with the ogres, monster behavior patterns were complex in LoS beyond any other game I had ever played.

  As I sat down in the grass at the foot of the ridge, I took the opportunity to cast all my buffs and then switch out Scale Skin for Snake Spirit. I wanted to see how long it would take to change spells. Outside of combat, it only took a minute to change the spells. I had the sense that it would get faster the more I did it. During that minute, I was pretty helpless though, so I was glad nothing had disturbed me.

  I stood up and cast Scale Skin to add it to the rest of my buffs and then I saw my first target, or targets, rather. A massive grizzly bear was fighting a trio of skeletons. They were getting battered by its superior strength, but each wielded a long spear and repeated pokes were making the bear more cautious.

  The first step was to Assess these enemies. I had fought them before as a player, but didn’t want to take a chance on getting integrated any further just because I rushed into a battle.

  Skeletal Warrior Level: 17

  HP: 209/440 HP Type: Undead

  Weakness: Fire, Radiant Immune: Necrotic, Piercing

  Grizzly Bear Level: 20

  HP: 414/700 HP Type: Beast

  Weakness: Piercing Resistant: Blunt

  I grinned. This would be easy. They were doing half the work for me. First, I reached out and cast root on the bear. Dark tendrils, like twisted tree branches, sprang up out of the ground and immobilized the bear. As expected, the skeletons continued to ignore me. They were fixated on stabbing the bear, who could no longer move away from them.

  All I had to do was wait a bit more. I watched until the skeletons were each below one hundred HP. The roots might keep the bear from running, but it didn’t stop those big paws from smashing the skeletons. I channeled extra mana into a Flameburst. When I was content that it was about twice as powerful as normal, even if it cost me five times as much mana, I released it.

  The AoE was great enough that it hit all the skeletons and of course the bear. The skeletons burst apart due to their weakness towards fire, but the flames broke my root spell, and I now had an angry bear charging at me. The thing is, a thousand-pound grizzly bear may look massive to a human, but it just looked like a big dog to me in my ogre form.