"Alright, I think this is where I leave you guys." Merlin spoke up, "I've got a few more wolves to kill before I get my white name back."
"Aww, okay." Snowbunny sighed in disappointment. Typhoeus seemed a little sad about hearing these words too. "We could help you farm them if you wanted."
"It's all good, I've got a pretty effective grinding spot. I don't think it'd work any better with multiple people." Merlin explained. "Just keep levelling up and we'll meet up in the future."
Before he left, Merlin began chanting out the skill for cleanse, starting with Snowbunny. He started talking while waiting for his cooldown to end so he could cleanse the other one.
"Oh, and when you get to Macedonia, send me a message. I might have a way to get you guys into the thieves guild without you having to jump through hoops." Merlin suddenly had a thought and wondered if it would work.
"Thieves guild?" Both of them looked at him with confusion.
"Yeah, even if you're not going to be a thief, doing the first quests will give you four points in dexterity which helps a fair bit." Merlin continued while cleansing Typhoeus, and after ten more seconds he had finally cast cleanse on himself, allowing his white hair to be free of the blood and filth they had soaked up in the dungeon. "There we go, all clean. Alright, I've got to get to work before the server shuts down, I'll catch you guys later."
Upon saying these words, Merlin left the party. He watched as Typhoeus and Snowbunny's names had shifted from green to white in an instant. If a person that wasn't in the party was around to see, their names would all have appeared red before two of them suddenly became white.
Merlin said his goodbyes to his friends before dashing back into the forest, and after checking that he hadn't been followed and that nobody else was in the area, he tracked down a level five dire wolf that was roaming around alone.
He would only have a few more minutes left until he received the notification to logout, twenty at the best, so he sped up his process.
After tracking down the wolf, he did the usual thing of entangling their legs so they couldn't run away before beating it within an inch of its life. What happened next strayed very far from his usual technique however, as he left the creature barely alive, and began shaving a section of its fur away with his dagger.
"The things I do for power." Merlin sighed to himself before sinking his teeth into the wolf's flesh. He ignored the disgusting texture of the wolf's muscles being torn apart in his mouth as he chewed. A disgusting tangy metal flavour flooded his taste buds, but he still forced it down.
The wolf had died, and a small chunk of its corpse had been eaten, it was a fair bit smaller than what he had made Alvira consume, but it was most likely more than enough, she was the test dummy so that he didn't have to suffer without a guaranteed reward.
He repeated this several times, moving from wolf to wolf, beating them down within an inch of their lives and finishing them off with a bite, only to eat part of its corpse and skip to the next wolf. After the fourth wolf he was starting to feel really sick, but he forced himself to continue on for a total of ten wolves, promising himself that he'd eat real food when he was done.
He finally got the two titles that Alvira mentioned earlier, and quickly took a look at their stats.
┌───────────────────
[Predator.]
Those at the top of the food chain need only their fangs to kill.
• Jaw Strength: +100%
• Bite Damage: +50%
└───────────────────
First up was the title he was familiar with, it wasn't really useful unless you played with race souls that actually utilised bite attacks, like werewolves, vampires or some zombies for example. But having extra buffs, regardless of their usefulness, always felt good to Merlin.
┌───────────────────
[Corpse Eater.]
A sickening hobby practised by the most vile of creatures.
• Resistance to Consumed Poison: +60%
• Resistance to Consumed Disease: +60%
• Grants the skill ⟪Ghoulish Tendencies⟫.
└───────────────────
The next title was corpse eater, one that he was unfamiliar with. As he read the stats, everything that Alvira had said was correct. Resistance to consumed poison and disease, these two buffs were incredible, especially if you were doing a quest where having your food or drink poisoned was a possibility, such as a quest involving political figures, especially those with roots in the criminal underworld.
Merlin checked the skill that the title granted,
┌───────────────────
⟪Ghoulish Tendencies⟫
What a tasty looking corpse, perhaps just a nibble?
• You have obtained the ability to determine a corpse's freshness at a glance.
• Regenerates 5% of your maximum health per second while actively consuming a recently killed corpse.
• Passive health regeneration increased by +200% for 5 seconds after consuming raw meat.
└───────────────────
It was an oddly useful looking passive skill, and Merlin would consider it overpowered if it wasn't for the morbid aspect of corpse eating required to both get the skill and trigger its effects.
Besides from corpse eating to regenerate his health, which was the only feature he was aware of due to Alvira's brief explanation, it contained a few utility abilities that he wasn't sure how he'd be able to use right away.
The first ability being able to determine a corpse's freshness at a glance, which seemed to tie in with the main ability pretty well, but it may have some unrelated benefits down the line.
The next ability was one that improved his passive health regeneration by two hundred percent for five seconds, and this one didn't actually specify corpse eating, but rather just raw meat. He would have to test what the system considered raw, but he was actually pretty happy about this part.
He stood up and began chanting the cleanse skill, causing the blood that had begun drying on his chin and neck to slowly peel off his body before vanishing.
「Skill ⟪Cleanse⟫ Activated.」
"There we go, that feels better." Merlin scratched his neck that had recently been caked with blood. It was an uncomfortable feeling no matter how many times he had been caked with blood in the past four sessions.
A large red notification box appeared before him, warning him that he was about to get logged out.
┌───────────────────
[Message from the devs!]
The server will shut down in five minutes, please find a safe place and log out.
The server will forcibly disconnect those who do not log out in time.
Thank you.
└───────────────────
While usually the first one out, this time around Merlin wasn't in a safe location, so he spent four minutes in a full sprint trying to get back near the main road at least. When he determined he was safe enough, he quickly logged out of the game, causing his body to get sent back into the white room.
One he was in the white room he slapped the logout button, causing his virtual body to be thrown back into the void, and the next time he opened his eyes he was inside his capsule that had just started opening.
Arthur stepped outside of the pod, his senses were still getting readjusted to the outside world so it took him a few moments before he felt stable.
"You're later than usual." Maria and Acai were hovering around his pod, waiting for him to come out.
"I was deep in the forest when I got the notification, I had to sprint to safety." Arthur said while laughing.
"Did you clear your red name?" Acai asked, but Arthur shook his head in response. "You shouldn't be far off then."
"I'll have it cleared within an hour without issue." Arthur explained while walking towards the briefing room.
As the group travelled together, they came across a group of four that were standing around in the hallway chatting. A lanky looking guy with glasses, a tall curvy redhead, a hefty guy, and a familiar looking short girl with long black hair instead of the blonde hair the group had seen in-game.
"Oh hey, it's the grape ghoul." Acai blurted out while pointing at the small girl as his group approached the roleplayer's group.
"Who are you calling a grape, dim reaper." The short girl remarked, shooting back an insult that caused Maria to chuckle in the background.
"You were saving that one up for a while, weren't you?" Arthur stared at Acai while shaking his head slightly. "And you still got destroyed."
The two groups joined up and walked into the briefing room together, finding a set of seats where they could sit together to chat. More people started coming in, and the developers at the front were still setting up for the briefing, so it was fine to chat for a while longer. The roleplayer group began talking about how difficult it was to move up north, due to the high level disparity, and Arthur suggested that west was probably the safer option if they wanted to visit a new city.
