Chapter 26 - Cinder and His Lackeys

[+5 Gold Coins to each party member]

[Bronze Pioneer Title awarded to all party members]

[+1 Bronze Field Boss Chest to all party members]

[+300 Regional Reputation]

[+500 Bonus EXP]

The rewards appeared before their eyes. With the bonus 500 EXP, Arthur was already really close to level 5! Tower, Suzy, and Point Blank had reached level 6 after receiving all the rewards.

They were still ahead of him, sure, but not by much. The early levels were easier to get through, so with all the bonuses Arthur had been receiving, he was quickly catching up.

Tower was still on the ground. He sat up and let out a sigh.

"Thank you, Cinder. I thought I was going to die and lose EXP for a second..."

He then looked up, reading all the notifications. Despite seeing all those rewards, his attention focused on one thing.

"Cinder and His Lackeys? Are you fucking kidding me?"

Tower’s face turned red with anger. The announcement had been sent to the whole server, meaning every single player had seen that...

Suzy and Point Blank weren’t mad about it. In fact, they started laughing after seeing Tower’s face.

"Relax, it’s just a joke," Suzy said. "Think about all the rewards we got, all thanks to Cinder."

Arthur walked over to Tower and extended a hand to help him up.

"We’re friends, chill," Arthur said.

Tower grabbed his hand and stood up. For a moment, the air between them wasn’t as tense as before. Maybe it was just temporary, or maybe their relationship had actually improved a little.

Anyway, the rewards were pretty good, especially the title. It increased their damage against Field Bosses by 2%!

Arthur knew about that title. He also knew it was possible to obtain the Silver and Gold versions, which stacked for a total of 10% bonus damage against Field Bosses.

That was fucking huge.

Only one party could obtain each Pioneer title, making them incredibly rare.

’I want to get the Silver and Gold ones too, but can I actually do it?’

As for the other rewards, they were good but nothing crazy. Arthur already had some money, so a few more gold coins wouldn’t make that much of a difference. His reputation in the region was already incredibly high as well, making the additional reputation less useful.

The chest, though, was pretty good.

Arthur decided not to open it yet. He wanted to wait until he was back inside the city.

The boss itself had also dropped one gold coin for each player, along with a mace. The mace didn’t go to Arthur’s inventory since equipment drops were randomly assigned between party members.

Point Blank was the one who got it.

She walked over to Arthur with both hands behind her back.

"C-Cinder, do you want this mace? You’re the reason we got the first kill, so..."

She wasn’t wrong. Without Arthur’s high damage, they wouldn’t have killed the Goblin Champion.

In fact, they probably would’ve all died.

For a moment, Arthur considered accepting the mace, but what would he even do with it? He could sell it for some money, but it wouldn’t give him that much anyway.

’If I want their help killing things in the future, especially with dungeons coming soon, I need them to get stronger.’

With that in mind, Arthur refused the mace.

"Keep it. Maybe sell it to another player and use the money to get better gear. Don’t sell it for IRL money, though. At this stage of the game, getting stronger is more important. Better gear will help you earn much better rewards later."

Point Blank smiled.

"Thank you."

She had offered him the mace, but deep down, she wanted to keep it. Selling something like that would give their party a decent amount of coins to spend on better equipment.

They all sat near the river to recover their stamina and MP. While waiting, Arthur opened the forums.

Once again, everyone was talking about him.

[He killed the first Field Boss, how? And he’s already the 9th highest-level player in the Aldora Kingdom, what the fuck?]

[Right, so he’s from Aldora? But I thought that place was snowy. How was he flying in that video? I didn’t see any snow.]

[I know someone from the Aldora Kingdom. I’ll try to track down Cinder!]

They were basically only talking about him, while also wondering who the other three players in his party had been when the boss died.

Their names hadn’t appeared in the announcement, and Arthur was currently the most famous player in the game, so naturally most of the attention went to him.

Tower was reading the comments as well. He glanced at Arthur from time to time but didn’t say anything.

"So, what are we doing now?" Suzy asked, breaking the silence.

"We?" Arthur said. "Well, I’ll be doing something alone. No more group content for now."

"Why, though? Aren’t you happy to be with us?" Suzy asked.

Arthur liked them. They weren’t annoying—Tower was a little annoying, but even he was getting better.

The thing was, Arthur simply preferred doing his own thing without having people around him all the time. Besides, he had a lot to prepare if he really wanted to secure the first Silver Rank Field Boss kill.

"I’ll add everyone, and we can do some content together in the future, but not now," Arthur said. "When dungeons unlock at level 15, we can run them together."

Tower might have looked stupid sometimes, but he wasn’t.

"How do you know that? There’s no information anywhere about dungeons unlocking at level 15."

He was right.

That information wasn’t included in the game’s initial guide.

Arthur realized he had fucked up.

The price of knowing too much.

"It’s just a guess," Arthur said, scratching the back of his head with a chuckle. "Don’t share this guess with anybody, though."

Before leaving, Arthur added all three of them to his friend list. They would definitely be useful in the future.

Tower, Point Blank, and Suzy left together, heading toward an area where they could continue hunting monsters. They had almost no real quests available before reaching the first major city, only basic ones asking them to kill a certain number of monsters, so that was what they planned to do.

Arthur was left alone.

’What should I do next?’

He had a few things in mind, like leveling his Beast Taming profession and finding someone for his second contract, preferably a class that could give him some healing.

But there was no point in giving contracts to unskilled players. The better the player, the better Arthur’s rewards would be in the long run, especially when it came to passive EXP.

So, for now, Arthur decided to focus on improving Beast Taming.

’Once I get my first beast, I think I can go straight to a level 10 mine, level up quickly, and gather ores to craft better equipment...’

That was his plan.

Arthur returned to Snow Pine City.

It was time to meet the man responsible for teaching Beast Taming.