A Warlock's Ascent

Walking in the strangely quiet forest, chills ran down Dave's spine, the eerie environment combined with the horrors he had seen, was making him jump with the slightest stimuli. Even the cracking of dry wood with his step was making him jump with horror.

As he made his way toward the Cloudhold, he warily looked around, trying to spot any monsters. It was good as well terrifying that he could not see any monsters. And with sunlight getting bleaker by the minute, he understood that night would soon fall on him, and the chance of him getting jumped by a monster would be increased significantly in the night. So he put haste in his steps and moved as fast as he could.

Climbing up and down the slopes of the mountain was not an easy task. He could not afford to get injured in any way, after all, he was all alone out here, so he every step very carefully.

From the information that Grump had told him, he would be able to reach the Cloudhold by midnight. But the old man was wrong, he had never been trekking his whole life, and getting down on the mountain itself consumed a lot of his time. And as the night fell, he couldn't even follow the smoke of Cloudhold.

No matter what that old said, he would not travel in the dark, especially in this forest. He decided that he should probably find a cave or something, to spend the night. Although he first thought that it would be a good idea to sleep on a tree, he realized soon enough how dumb that idea was.

He had fought with monsters, which could climb up the tree as easily as they could walk, so he dropped the idea hard. So instead he started looking for a cave. But his destiny had something else planned for him….

The night was about to fall, there was no cave or any sort of sanctuary in his sight, he had already made peace with the fact that he had to spend his night out in the open. Still, he was  wrecking his brain, trying for a safe place to sleep, but it was then he heard it

AHH!

It was very faint, but he heard someone's scream, the scream didn't sound alarming, it sounded more like the person was enjoying yelling out there. He started walking in the direction from where he heard the noise, he even took out his mask and put it in his inventory. He figured that walking to a group with a mask and bloodied clothes was probably not a good idea.

Soon he started hearing noises, people talking loudly, the sounds of laughter, from the sounds of it, this group was huge. While following the noises, he started formulating a story to hide his identity. He figured that he would tell these guys that he was lost and had recently been in a fight. He had lost his weapon and everything and now he was wandering around aimlessly.

With a solid plan in his mind, he got confidence in his step, he started moving toward them. It was then he spotted a bird, hovering over him, the peculiar thing was the bird was glowing like a firefly. He was curious about what that bird was, after hovering over him for a few seconds, the bird left, and with it, the chattering of people also stopped.

He stopped as well and started wondering why that camp had become silent. Still, he kept walking, he had come too close, and now he could not return. After a small walk, he found himself in a clearing, where stood a bunch of people with their weapons drawn was looking in his direction.

He didn't what to do. He wanted to show them that he was harmless, just another survivor wandering around, he raised his hands and put a bright smile on his face.

"Ah… Hello." He tried greeting them, but none of them even acknowledged his greeting, they just kept staring at him. It was then a woman with red hair and bright red eyes came forward.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"I… I am Davy…" he didn't know why he introduced himself as Davy, probably because Grump always messes up his name. So he still rolled with it. " I am kind of… in a pickle. I lost my weapon and my stuff when I got attacked by Kongs. I was wondering if you guys can help me out."

"Do you have any weapon with you? Davy?" the woman asked.

"No… You guys can pat me down if you want. I am not armed, just a fellow adventurer in a pickle." The woman then gestured to one of the men, to go check him.

The man went and patted down every inch of his body and found nothing on him. He then gestured back to the woman, it is only then the people lowered their weapons and sighed with relief.

"Can I join you guys?" he asked.

The woman put on a bright smile and gestured to join them. "Come on. Anything for a fellow adventurer."

The camp although welcomed him, but he felt that they are still very suspicious of him. Some people were keeping an eye on him, he could feel their gaze on his back, but he dared not to look his stalkers in the eye.

So he just went to a corner and just sat down. He didn't try to mingle with anyone or talk, he just sat down and looked around the camp. Eventually, he started getting bored, so he opened his status menu.

He knew that no one would be able to see him use his status menu, so it would be safe for him to check it out. As soon as he commanded the system to show him his status, he started getting a lot of messages.

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All the notifications were halted because players had been in one combat situation after another.

→Select this option to keep this setting enabled.

→Select this option if player wants to revert back to old setting

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You and your party member have killed the Tribal Chief.

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have leveled up

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You have been awarded 43 stat points.

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You have received 5 more invitations

Do you want to see them?

Y/N

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As he got all these messages at once, he was overwhelmed. It is then he realized that even after he had killed all those Kongs and Tribal Chiefs, he didn't get these messages. He loved this function and enabled it forever. As he dismissed the invitations and removed the messages, a status window appeared before him…

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Status

Name- Dave Gonsalves

Class- Newbie Warrior

Level- 16

Stats- <Think to expand>

Inventory- <Think to expand>

Quest- <Think to expand>

Skills- <Think to expand>

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Instantly he noticed that his class has changed, it is no longer the Newbie Swordsman, but instead, it had become Newbie Warrior. He didn't know the reason behind the class change, but he figured that it must have changed as he started practicing every kind of weapon, rather than sticking to just the sword.

I wonder when this class change happened anyway? Was it around the time when I was in Ravenshade or was it after that when he fought the tribal Chief, he thought

So pushed his thoughts behind his head and started looking at his stats, which were actually very important right now.

He had leveled up a lot, and now he could finally start distributing his points…

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Stats

Exp-3/100

Strength- 16 [+]

Dexterity- 11 [+]

Agility- 10 [+]

Arcane- 2 [+]

Intellect- 6 [+]

Stats point available- 43

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He took a lot of time to decide where he should put his stat, but after thinking about it for a long time, he finally make a decision. This time he decided to level up his Arcane as well, he may not have any use of mana skills right now, but in the future, he would have so.

After a long thought, he finally distributed his stats….

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Stats

Exp-3/100

Strength- 21 [+]

Dexterity- 21 [+]

Agility- 21 [+]

Arcane- 12 [+]

Intellect- 11 [+]

Stats point available- 0

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He distributed his stat points in such a way that his Strength, Dex, and Agility are at the same level because he wanted to jack of all trades, just like he envisioned to be...

When he was in Ravenshade, he talked to Grump about how he should distribute his stat points, and the old man has some compelling views on that matter…

"Well you have to decide it on your own, the stat distribution basically depends on your fighting style. If you talk about me, I like to use weapons, which require force, so most of my stats are focused on Strenght and Dex, but mostly on strength. While my agility, arcane, and Intellect are not that high."

After talking to him, he started thinking about what kind of fighting style want to achieve. If he thinks about weapons, he couldn't picture himself fighting with brute strength. Instead, he imagined himself fighting nimbly with sword and bow, with a little bit of spear and magic here and there.

But here contradiction started appearing, bow didn't need the strength that much. But sword and spear did. So after thinking about it a lot, he figured that he would keep his Strength, Dex, and Agility equals for now. After he had reached a certain level and had gathered more vision about his fighting style,  then only he would start focusing on a few specific stats…