Translator: Charlotte Editor: Weasalopes
I arrived in Legias.
Mio"s and Fiona"s stalls were as crowded as usual.
No, Fiona"s was a little more crowded than usual.
Mio and Len-Len were in the tent, and Fiona and Reina were working at the stalls outside.
I gave them a brief nod of greeting.
I bought dinner in the tent and took a seat close to the back.
On the menu was the same yakisoba and soup I"d eaten before.
I had a pretty heavy lunch, so I got full in no time.
「Welcome, Keith.」
「Thanks, Fiona. Your stall is doing pretty well, huh.」
「I don"t even know whether to be happy or to be sad about that anymore. I"m selling equipment for the tournament, but I didn"t expect things to get this crowded.」
Hmm…
Looking closer, I saw that over half of the people lining up at the stall outside were players.
A lot of them were carrying bows.
They were probably looking for Reina"s arrows.
「You have something for me today?」
「Yeah.」
I arranged all of the items on the table.
Evil Ant Stings and Evil Ant Sh.e.l.ls, Pheasant Wings, Striped Racc.o.o.n Skins, b.l.o.o.d.y Burdock, Pheasant Eggs, and Obsidian Rocks.
I added five sheets of Wild Horse Hide, and three pieces of Wild Horse Meat.
And finally, the Rabid Horse Meat and the Rabid Horse Cordovan.
「What"s this, it"s really pretty.」
Fiona looked at the Rabid Horse Cordovan with wide eyes.
It was a very high-quality piece of skin after all.
It had a dark brown colour, but its surface also had a gloss to it, almost like you were looking into a mirror.
Shoes, boots, bags, wallets, belts… The possibilities were endless.
「Are you going to make some new equipment with this?」
「I want to do that, but I"ve already gone and put in a commission yesterday for some new equipment…」
「But you still want to make something out of this, right?」
「Of course.」
「Well, then I won"t buy it from you. You"ll sell the other skins though, right?」
「Yes. I"ll just keep the cordovan.」
Fiona went into deep thought.
She was probably calculating the prices for everything.
Fiona was clearly interested in the cordovan, but she was happy enough to just take the Wild Horse Hide.
「Saki"s gone to the workshop today. Even with two extra helpers from our guild, I"m still super busy.」
「Well, hang in there, Fiona.」
「I can"t say for sure without seeing the real thing, but your request should be proceeding well.」
「Well, I guess I can make this into something else.」
This is bad…
I had no idea what to do with the cordovan.
「I can"t come up with anything.」
「Me too… Can you message me if you come up with something?」
「Of course.」
「In fact, I"d love to bring this to Saki"s workshop right away. It"s attracting a lot of attention… In a bad way.」
「Right?」
「…Well, I"ll take this much I guess. Mio!」
Fiona called Mio when she saw the number of customers go down.
「Yo!」
「Hey, nice to see you again.」
「Yea― Oh! Meat! And more Burdo―.」
Mio became stock still.
She was staring at the Rabid Horse Meat.
「Rabid Horse… Where?」
「Along the road on the way to here.」
「Was it strong?」
「Definitely can"t compare them to Stray Horses that"s for sure.」
「Is that so…」
「They probably have the same relationship Horned Rabbits have to Horn Rabbits.」
「I"d love for this kind of meat to be more readily available…」
Don"t wish for the impossible.
I didn"t even want to think about having to fight that monster again.
No, maybe one per day would be alright.
Actually, like the Horned Rabbit, I doubted it was a monster I would get to see that often anyway.
「Well then, let"s settle all the payments.」
「Yes please.」
I ignored the fact that Mio had been muttering to herself.
I wondered what she was talking about.
No, she was definitely imagining horse sashimi.
I sold a lot of items and got a lot of money in return.
I asked and Fiona told me that the Wild Horse Skins sold for the highest.
Great.
I was right in targeting Stray Horses.
The time flew by really quickly.
It was already 6:30 pm.
I quickly left the place and left Legias.
The sun was about to go down.
Time to switch out my Summon Monsters.
I switched Summon Monsters after arriving at Master"s House.
I kept Obsidian active.
I recalled Zangetsu and Helix and summoned Volff and Goki.
My MP bar went down by a bit, but I still had about 30% left.
As long as I stayed around Master"s house, that would still be alright.
I used【Night Vision】on myself.
I hunted the way I always did.
Stealing Pheasant Eggs from their nests on the trees…
Waiting for Evil Ants to call their friends before killing them all…
And repeat.
When I jumped off of a tree I had just robbed of eggs, an info screen appeared.
《【Jump】Level Up!》
【Jump】, huh…
A Support Skill I learnt a long time ago.
I totally forgot about it.
How did I even learn the skill to begin with…?
Ah. I remember.
It was after Master forced me to fight that one monster.
I"d been completely ignoring the skill after that.
Oh well.
Let"s get back to hunting.
I used my new rod to fight the Evil Ants. I missed that feeling in my hands.
But then I remembered how difficult it really was.
Twisting and pulling off their necks was a lot easier and efficient, but I had another goal in mind.
I wanted to level up Goki.
But more importantly, I could block attacks with my rod. I was hoping to level up my【Block】skill before the tournament.
I thought about what weapon I should bring into the tournament.
It wasn"t a bad idea to have weapons of different ranges.
Although since I had spells to rely on for long-range battles, I could focus more on diversifying my weapons for medium-range and close-range fights.
The rod would probably be my main weapon.
If possible, I would love to have a weapon that helped my punch attacks, and one that would help in extremely close range, when I could use my throw skills.
I didn"t know how the tonfa would do, and I wanted to keep my push daggers hidden for as long as I could.
I realised that without knowing who my enemy was going to be, coming up with strategies was going to be a lot harder.
That was probably the most important factor.
According to Sun Tzu…
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
A famous saying, but the continuation is equally important.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
In other words, if you don"t know your enemy but know yourself, you"ll win about 50% of the time.
Even when it becomes impossible to know the enemy, you can always know yourself.
And after that is…
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succ.u.mb in every battle.
Far from trying to know your enemy, if you don"t know yourself, you will lose every time.
Well, that was kind of obvious.
But to figure out a deeper meaning required some more thinking.
To know your enemy.
To know yourself.
Which was more difficult?
A very interesting question…
Reading it all at just face value, you might come off with the conclusion that Sun Tzu was just trying to say, "wake up and see your own limits".
But was that really all?
How many people are out there that don"t even try to do that.
The irony was so thick I burst out into a small laugh.
In any case, when you just think of the first sentence, the saying loses more than half of its intended meaning.
Ah, what was I doing again?
I didn"t intend to partic.i.p.ate in the tournament, but now that I was, I wanted to at least make it meaningful in a way.
Even if I couldn"t know who my enemy would be, the least I could do was learn about myself.
No, it was the only thing I could do.
But that involved looking straight at my weak points and being honest with myself.
I was sure I would be tormented by feelings of inadequacy all along the way, but it was a necessary process.
n.o.body likes feeling bad. I just had to prepare to tough my way through it.
That"s why it took courage to express opinions. Words that could raise unpleasant feelings and pain inside others.
Asking yourself the hard questions and improving would take courage too.
I was aware of my weak points.
For a long time, actually.
There was nothing I could do but use the cards I had to make do somehow.
Ah, I ended up getting off-topic again.
I was hunting, right?
While thinking, I hunted more Evil Ants.
I slapped myself to get myself to focus on just hunting.
《【Evade】Level Up!》
《You have acquired the【Evade】weapon arte【Sway Back】!》
《You have acquired the【Evade】weapon arte【Sidestep】!》
Looked like my【Evade】skill levelled up.
Honestly, I would"ve loved for【Block】to level up instead, but oh well.
Can"t be ungrateful.
Although I felt like I had been doing all those【Evade】weapon artes without even thinking about them.
I kept going.
I stood in front of another Evil Ant.
I killed some of them to keep their numbers down while waiting for more of them to come.
Goki was still at a low level, but he could take on three Evil Ants at a time with no problems.
I decided to keep hunting for about 10 minutes.
I set a stopwatch for 10 minutes, and stopped hunting when the alarm rang.
Nice.
《Summon Monster『Goki』Level Up!》
《Please add 1 point to a desired stat.》
Great.
I was happy, but I still felt like something was lacking.
I saw that the stat that went up during the level-up was STR.
I chose to put a point into DEX.
Goki Demon Lv1→Lv2（↑1）
DEX 17（↑1）
AGI 13
INT 9
STR 17（↑1）
VIT 17
SPI 11
Skills:
Bow Hatchet Buckler Block Evade Hide
Nice.
Although he still had a long way to go.
It would take a long while before I could get pretty numbers on his stats.
I decided to keep hunting for a while longer.
The clock hit 9 pm.
I didn"t really feel any effects from my【Evade】level-up.
Well, I could still evade most of their attacks, so that was alright.
It was past 10 pm.
Another info screen appeared right as I got tired of killing Evil Ants.
Could it be…
《Summon Monster『Volff』Level Up!》
《Please add 1 point to a desired stat.》
Yeah.
I guess it would be that.
Of course, it"s not like I wasn"t happy. I just wasn"t fully satisfied.
The stat that went up during the level-up was VIT.
I chose to put a point into SPI.
Volff Wolf Lv5→Lv6（↑1）
DEX 11
AGI 25
INT 12
STR 12
VIT 18（↑1）
SPI 11（↑1）
Skills:
Bite Dash Threaten Listen Sense Danger Pursue
Volff was the closest to my ideal Summon Monster.
Well, being the first, it was to be expected.
I didn"t get to level up my【Block】skill that day.
I could"ve kept going for a while longer, but I decided to just go to Master"s house. I wanted to read up on the tournament before logging out.
I headed towards the house.
In my room on the second floor, I read the tournament guidelines lying down on my bed.
A habit I"d been told to break since I was just a boy.
I recalled a time when I was scolded.
There were no bans on anything.
That made sense. Killing a player here didn"t actually mean they would die.
Although in my case, my fighting style revolved more around using pain-based attacks to force my opponent to give up. I hadn"t used my skills to kill any players before.
Oh, there was that one PK character I killed though.
I shook the fear that was crawling up on me off my body.
What was the point of learning deadly skills if you were never going to use them in the first place.
That would just be a dumb waste of time.
I kept reading the guidelines but nothing stayed in my head.
Ah… It"s no good.
I decided to look at my spell list and edit it for convenience.
When I was done with that, I logged out.
Protagonist Keith
Race Human Male Racial Lv7
Job Summoner Lv6
Bonus Points Remaining: 3
Skill Sets:
Staff Lv6 Punch Lv4 Kick Lv4 Joint Lock Lv4 Throw Lv3 Evade Lv4（↑1） Block Lv3 Summon Magic Lv7
Light Magic Lv3 Wind Magic Lv4 Earth Magic Lv4 Water Magic Lv4 Fire Magic Lv3 Dark Magic Lv3 Ice Magic Lv1 Lightning Magic Lv1 Tree Magic Lv1
Alchemy Lv4 Pharmacy Lv3 Gla.s.smaking Lv3 Woodworking Lv3
Cooperation Lv6 Appraise Lv5 Identify Lv6 Discern Lv1 Cold Resistance Lv3 Grab Lv5 Horsemanship Lv5 Precise Manipulation Lv6 Jump Lv2（↑1） Heat Resistance Lv3 Climb Lv3 Dual Wield Lv2 Mental Reinforcement Lv2
Speedcasting Lv1
Equipment:
Kaya Wood Rod x2 Snow Leopard Push Dagger x3 Wild Rabbit Breastplate+ Series Snow Ape Armguard Wild Horse Boots+ Snow Ape Leather Helmet Rucksack Item Box x2
Items:
Survival Knife Woodworking Set
t.i.tles:
Old Summoner"s Pupil
Guardian of the Forest
Man of the Middle Path
Spell Archive
Monster Summons:
Volff Wolf Lv5→Lv6（↑1）
DEX 11
AGI 25
INT 12
STR 12
VIT 18（↑1）
SPI 11（↑1）
Skills:
Bite Dash Threaten Listen Sense Danger Pursue
Zangetsu Horse Lv4（Asleep）
Helix Hawk Lv4（Asleep）
Obsidian Owl Lv4
Jean Bat Lv4（Asleep）
Jericho Wood Golem Lv3（Asleep）
Goki Demon Lv1→Lv2（↑1）
DEX 17（↑1）
AGI 13
INT 9
STR 17（↑1）
VIT 17
SPI 11
Skills:
Bow Hatchet Buckler Block Evade Hide