Second World

They encountered another two packs of wolves before they reached the foot of Siren Hill. But since they were now more familiar with how the wolves fought, they were not as flustered as the first time. There were also fewer wolves in those subsequent packs. One had only four; the other had five. They collected another nine Wolf's fur from those two packs; three for each of them.

During the journey, after witnessing Fierce Flame's fighting style again, Jack silently asked, 'Peniel, I am familiar with Fighter and Magician class' skills, but I never really learned about the Ranger class' skills. I have my assumptions after seeing the way several Rangers fought, but I would like to know for sure. Can you describe their skills to me?'

'Heh, took you quite a while to ask,' Peniel replied with her accustomed disdain. 'All right, let me educate you.

'The Ranger class has a single target offensive skill called Swift Stab that they receive when they start the class, much like your Power Strike. It deals only 120% damage at level 1, but stab speed is increased to 200%, it has 5 seconds cooldown.

'At level 2, a Ranger receives Roll skill. It increases defense by 100% during the roll, it has 10 seconds cooldown. Of course, they can still do their own roll during the cooldown, the difference is it's a manual roll that doesn't receive the bonus defense."

'At level 5, they get the Throw Weapon skill. It deals 150% damage with a range of 8 meters, and has 30 seconds cooldown. Do not expect the Ranger that performs this skill to be weaponless! After the throw, the weapon is automatically returned to the Ranger's hand.

'And the last skill a Ranger in basic class will receive comes at level 10; the Silent Step skill. It reduces the sound of their footsteps when they move. It's useless during a fight, but very useful for initiating an ambush.'

Jack nodded. Some of the skills were more or less as he had presumed, but knowing the details of those skills was helpful. With this knowledge, his tactics would be more effective if he had to fight another Ranger, and he would also be more efficient when cooperating with one.

When they reached the foot of Siren Hill, the sun was about to set. It was probably not more than half an hour until they would lose the sunlight. The hill was rather large and they were not sure that the area they arrived in would be the place where they would find the flower, but there were a number of fields with grasses and flowers scattered around the place. Since he didn't see any red dots on his radar, Jack recommended they divide the fields amongst them to save time in searching.

Jack took the middle section while Bowler and Flame went to his left and right, he told them not to wander too far. In this way, he could still notice if any beasts showed up to ambush them. Jack opened up his Quest window to the image of the flower and compared it with the flowers he saw around the field. Some looked similar, but weren't the right color. Most of the flowers in the field were white or red; no blue ones.

After searching the first area without result, they moved to another part of the bottom slope of the hill. When the last ray of sunlight disappeared behind the mountain range in the west, they still hadn't found the flower. The visibility was now low, so it would not be effective for them to keep searching.

"Let's find a place to spend the night and look again in the morning," Jack suggested.

The other two agreed and they climbed a little bit up the hill. They found a flat clearing that allowed good visibility of their surroundings and decided to set up their camp there. The three tents were easily built as they were system-based items. They then collected dry wood and leaves and started a campfire. Jack took out his cooking tools and made dinner for them.

As he had been cooking a lot since back in the Tutorial Period, he wasn't surprised when he heard a notification congratulating him for becoming an Intermediate Apprentice Cook.

After finishing cooking, he took out his blacksmith tools and 3 iron ores and made three whetstones. Because Jack didn't use the blacksmith job often, it still needed many more proficiency points before he would upgrade to Intermediate Apprentice Blacksmith rank.

He gave Flame and Bowler one whetstone each.

While Jack cooked and blacksmithed, Bowler also took out his Alchemist tools and created some basic healing potions. He gave Jack and Flame two of the potions each.

"I found a shop that sells the ingredients," Bowler said, "so it's easy for me to concoct the potion now, though the ingredients were rather expensive."

Jack inspected the potion.

Basic Healing potion (Normal consumable)

Recover 200 HP instantly

cooldown: 3 minutes

The potion had a cooldown? That meant he couldn't abuse it by drinking the potions continuously to keep his HP up. But the instant recovering effect was quite good compared to medicine and restorative foods like bread which restored HP gradually.

Flame was the only one of the three who didn't practice any auxiliary jobs. She thought it was a waste of time; better to focus on honing her fighting skills and leveling up.

After they finished their meals and cleaned up, they divided the watches for the night; Bowler would go first, Jack second, and the last would be Flame.

As Jack was about to enter his tent, he paused. There were three blue dots heading towards their camp.

Jack warned Bowler and Flame and then stood facing the direction that the blue dots were approaching from. Was it Weary Wolf gang again coming to look for trouble? But they should have been locked up by the guards for two days. Or was it the Death Associates people? They had been quiet for a while. Jack wondered if they had decided to take action now.

Two of the three blue dots stopped some distance away; a lone blue dot kept coming towards their camp. It stopped not far from them. From its position, Jack calculated it to be behind a big boulder around ten meters away. He could roughly see a shadow poking out from the boulder. A person was peeking at them.

It might have surprised the peeper to see that all the people he was peeking at were aware of his existence and were looking directly towards him, but the fellow acted with aplomb and straight away strode out from behind the boulder and greeted them.

"Good evening, gentlemen…" When he noticed Fierce Flame, he smoothly added, "… and lady. Fancy meeting such a lovely group of people way out here."

Jack scanned him using his monocle

Saint John (Magician, level 12)

HP: 220/220

Jack was speechless looking at the name. Who the heck was boastful enough to call himself a Saint?

"My name is John," the stranger introduced himself. Jack was not sure if John was his real-world name or he was referring to his alias of Saint John.

Getting no reply, he continued, "Seeing that you've made it all the way out here, you must be pretty capable players. And I happen to be in need of some assistance from capable players. Would you be willing to help me as a favor to a fellow player?"

"Not interested," Jack answered without hesitation. He was wary of involving himself in the affairs of strangers. An NPC asking for help might lead you to quests, but another player looking for assistance usually ended up bringing you trouble. This was Jack's wisdom after playing VR games for a long period.

"Don't be too hasty in rejecting me, please," John said as if expecting their refusal.

He then brought something out of his bag. It was a tiny flower with six blue petals. Jack and the others recalled seeing the flower somewhere. Wait! Wasn't that the flower they came all this way for?

"I assume you are on a quest looking for this flower?" John asked with a grin.