Soulforge Legacy Series

“One bunny, two bunny, three bunny, four. Five bunnies, six bunnies, seven bunnies more.” I had been collecting so many bunnies that my mind was coming up with stupid rhymes to keep me entertained. Who knew that the most annoying part of killing so many creatures was cleaning up afterward? Not me, that’s for sure. Still, it wasn’t like I was cleaning up just because.

I needed the bodies when I turned in the quest. Plus, when I picked them up, I also found a few other interesting things lying around. One of which was a plant. Now you might be asking what was so special about this plant that even after the thing had been trampled, it was worth picking up. I thought the same thing until I actually took a second to look the things over.

At first, the plants looked like they were soaked in the blood that poured out of the bodies strewn around them. However, when I went to pick them up, I found that the plant only held a few drops on its leaves.

The glistening crimson color was the plant's natural color. Whatever wax or sap it had inside those leaves reflected the light as if they were covered in some sort of liquid. With a nail, I cut the stem and pulled up the description. What I saw caused me to groan in annoyance as the system was basically sassing me.

I am not kidding. Here is what it put for the description of the part I just harvested.

You just had to go and tear apart the stem of the plant. For most plants, this might not mean much, but this plant is very sensitive to such damage. Even the bunnies wouldn’t do such a thing. Next time, just take the leaves and leave the stem alone so it can be harvested again in the future.

See what I mean? Anyway, I followed its advice and the description was exactly what one would expect. Well, except for that last part. In all caps and blood red letters, it proclaimed that one should not use sapient blood to create this item.

Now tell me, what is sapient blood? Is it blood from a sapient creature or blood that is sapient? Could blood even be sapient? Actually, don’t answer that.

Though, it made me wonder what would happen if someone ignored the warning? Would some god strike them down or something? Actually, on second thought, I didn’t want to know.

With the crater cleared of bodies, I slid and crawled my way up the side of the crater. The loose dirt made the trek both harder and dirtier than it had a right to be. Well, maybe that wasn’t right. The stomping the bunnies did was enough to loosen what was there, enough so that they ended up falling into the pit themselves.

Finally, standing at the top of what was left of the hill, I looked out at the rest of the nearby hills. Each looked just like this one had before I had gotten here. Likely, each had quite a few bunnies on top of it. Though I suspected the nearest ones didn’t have quite as many. After all, the army had to have come from somewhere.

The sliver of sun that stuck over the horizon would provide light for another hour, tops. While I wasn’t afraid of the dark, I was a bit wary of what might lurk around the city at night. So, with one final look at the scenery, I turned back to the city. As I walked, I grabbed any body parts or crimson plants I found, not that there were many.

“What can I do for you?” The dwarf behind the counter asked in a bored tone. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but at work. God knew I understood that feeling.

“I would like to turn in two quests.”

He gave me a once-over, his expression dubious. “And what quests would those be?” He didn’t hide his thoughts on what he thought of me and what I might have to turn in. Given that my clothes were in tatters and I had tiny scratches all over, I didn’t blame him.

“The bunnies and crimson leaf quests.”

It was so obvious that he wanted to laugh at that. Hell, I had thought they would have been easy too. That was until I had been swarmed by over two hundred of the damn things. How do I know? The log just happened to have that information saved for me to go over.

{Level 1 Beater Bunny defeated. A small penalty has been applied for killing something 5 or more levels below you.} x61

{Level 2 Beater Bunny defeated. A small penalty has been applied for killing something 5 or more levels below you.} x37

{Level 3 Beater Bunny defeated. A minor penalty has been applied for killing something 2 or more levels below you.} x29

{Level 4 Beater Bunny defeated. A minor penalty has been applied for killing something 2 or more levels below you.} x41

{Level 5 Beater Bunny defeated. A minor penalty has been applied for killing something 2 or more levels below you.} x26

{Level 6 Beater Bunny defeated. A tiny penalty has been applied for killing something below your level.} x22

{Level 7 Beater Bunny defeated.} x20

{Level 8 Beater Bunny defeated. A minor bonus has been applied for killing something above your level.} x5

{Level 9 Beater Bunny defeated. A minor bonus has been applied for killing something above your level.) x5

While that seemed like a ton of experience, it was only enough to bring me to the next level. But hey, experience was experience. On top of that, the bunnies would net me a decent amount of money for how many of them there were.

“Place all of your quest items into this bag.” The dwarf said as he passed over a small bag. I could have done exactly what he wanted, but I was tired, hungry, and lazy.

I took out one of my bags that was already filled with everything and passed it over. “Here you go.” He took one look inside and grimaced. “Is something the matter?”

“No, but the quality of the bodies will affect the value.” I had expected as much. Hell, some of the bodies were no more than trash. They had been crushed and beaten to shit as bunnies landed and jumped off them in an effort to get to me. As he turned to put the bag away, he flippantly tossed a few coins on the counter. Not caring as one rolled toward the edge. “Here is your reward for the quests. Come back in the morning to go over our offer for the materials.”

Slightly richer for my work, I went to look for a table. Eager to find out just what was on the menu for the night. Tomorrow I would need to deal with getting a new outfit to replace the scraps that were left of this one, as well as get back to training. For now, I should probably go over everything. Maybe even buy a spell that is a bit more precise in its application.

While my regeneration was less than when I had Newbie Protection, my stats were not all that bad. However, I wish I could just increase whatever stats affected my mana and its regeneration. Then I could just sit back and fire at anything and everything before I had to close in. Unfortunately, while I could do that, I still had to keep the rest of the stats above the seventy percent threshold, or…now that I thought about it, no one ever told me what would happen. They only ever said not to let a stat get below that.

Not that it was that hard now. My highest stat gave me a bit of wiggle room to spread my points out. And the amount of room I had to play with would only get larger with time and work.

As I tabbed my way through the screens, I found that there were a couple of new tabs, including one listing my affinities, or at least some of them. However, the message that popped up on top was nearly as interesting as the information the rest of the page contained.

To find out your affinity for more advanced elements, please use a more advanced affinity detector.

It was interesting to look over the list. Apparently my highest affinity was fire. The value for fire was nearly double that of my second highest affinity, dark. Surprisingly, this was closely followed by my affinity for light as in my mind the two were complete opposites. Water, air and earth all fell into the single digits.

As I quickly flipped back to the last place I had read about the affinities and unlocking them, I found that there were at least two more affinities that were not displayed on the affinity screen. Space and Time. While I could see someone playing with space in the game to teleport, how in the hell would a programmer implement any time-related magic? Allow people to age an opponent? Maybe allow them to control entropy in a given area? Because doing anything more would be both broken and impossible.

Giving the point page a good look, I didn’t see anything worth wasting my points on. I mean, I could buy another element, but I barely had a handle on my one element as it was. As for spells and skills, I was learning them for free right now, so why waste the points? At some point during my mental perusal of the menu, my meal not only showed up, but I finished it. Not knowing what else to do, I went to bed. I was out like a light before my head even touched the pillow.