Reign of the Hunters

Chapter 12 An Overpowered Skill Book

Zol noticed Ye Ci right away despite the crowd. Ye Ci was the holder of several First Kills and was the one who activated the hidden side quest. Her prestige in the village was quite high, and the NPC’s in the village were always happy to see her. Even Zol, an NPC who was never overly enthusiastic to interact with players, greeted Ye Ci warmly.

“Oh, young Huntress, it’s good to see that you’ve grown once again. I’m sure that Elven King Dau’er would be glad that a Huntress with so much potential was born in the Elven race.” This was probably the longest sentence to ever leave Zol’s mouth since the game started.

Merchant and Instructor class NPC’s dialogues with a player could not be heard by any bystanders. If they could, Zol’s words would certainly make Ye Ci the object of all the player’s envy.

“Hi sir, I would like to learn a new Skill.” Ye Ci bowed humbly at Zol, showing her respect.

It didn’t matter what anyone thought. One does not simply offend an NPC.

“Let me see what skills are available to you.” Zol spread out his hands and closed his eyes. A faint blue light appeared on his palms. He opened his eyes after a few moments and said, “Oh, I see it now. You can now learn Pet Capture, Snake Venom Needle, and Falcon’s Protection. Of course, Slash and Bow Proficiency could be leveled up. Which skills do you want to learn?”

“All of them.”

“Oh really?” Zol raised his eyebrows slightly. Fees were required to learn skills in Fate, and the fees that Ye Ci needed to pay right then were nothing compared to the astronomical amount in the later stage of the game.

These skills cost 50 silver coins each, and most early lvl 10 players would not have more than 2 gold coins with them. Learning those skills all at once was unbelievably extravagant to them.

Zol candidly accepted the 2 gold and 50 silver coins handed to him by Ye Ci. A bright golden flash appear on Ye Ci’s character, and the system notified her that she had learnt Pet Capture, Snake Venom Needle, and Falcon’s Protection. Slash and Bow Proficiency had been upgraded to lvl 2 as well.

“Young Huntress, you have the grace of an Elf. You’re carefree and are never stingy. It’s always good to see such an excellent specimen among the young ones. I’m really very happy. If you can get me a hundred Wild Wolf’s Eyeballs, I think I have a little present for you.”

Zol gave Ye Ci a quest after teaching her the skills instead of making her leave.

“It’s an honor.” Ye Ci bowed and accepted the quest. She couldn’t help but think: another hidden quest... Was all my luck eaten up by my encounters with Hidden Quests?

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Ye Ci was about to explore the Icy Cave at Difficult setting to see if she could SOLO the dungeon. If she was lucky, she could even get an Elite Spider as a pet.

Changes came faster than the plan. Before meeting Zol, Ye Ci had never even thought that she would be able to find a Hidden Quest, and an easy one at that. Standing under the sunlight after leaving Zol’s house, Ye Ci took a look at the quest details and attempted to find out its rewards, that was if she could see it...

She did not expect to actually be able to see the rewards to Zol’s Hidden Quest, unlike all other Hidden Quest which had their rewards listed as question marks.

Quest: A Hundred Wild Wolf’s Eyeballs

Quest description: ...

Quest reward: Hunter’s Mark Skill Book

The quest reward almost made Ye Ci jump with joy.

Just like Pet Capture, Hunter’s Mark was the Hunter class’s trademark skill. When used on a target, a visible mark that could only be seen by the Hunter/Huntress’s party members would appear for 15 minutes. With each level increased, the skill would be able to deal additional bonus damage to the target. The Hunter’s Mark could deal up to 15% bonus ranged damage to an enemy.

It was a very overpowered skill when it came to PVP and PVE. Of course, if every Hunter or Huntress could learn it, the entire Fate world would be crawling with Hunters and Huntresses.

As mentioned earlier, Fate was a shameless game, and Glory was a shameless company.

If they could design such an OP skill, it meant that not everybody could have it... Why?

Game balance.

All the skills in Fate could be leveled up by Instructors, with the emphasis on “leveling up”.

It meant that players could find out about all the overpowered skills from the Instructor NPC’s. But... They were only leveling it up for the players. “What does it mean?” One might ask. It meant that players were required to learn said skills on their own first.

How? Two simple options. The first method, Skill Books. The second, learn from NPC’s that nobody had ever seen or heard of before.

Nobody even knew if the second option was real. The first one was more plausible to achieve.

There were only two ways to obtain skill books. They were either gifted by NPC’s or dropped by monsters.

Simply put, the chances were very slim.

Take Hunter’s Mark for example. Nobody had ever heard of an NPC that would give out the skill book. As for the drop rate from monsters... One out of ten thousand from the Final BOSSes of lvl 40 dungeons.

Cough, cough. “One in ten thousand” does not necessarily mean that the book would appear every 10,000 times a Final BOSS was killed.

Such an overpowered skill book with a ridiculous drop rate. How could Ye Ci not be happy?

To hell with Icy Cave and Forest of Stone! Ye Ci’s priority was at Wolf Canyon!

Ye Ci was able to make a profit from her adventures in the dungeon. She mailed two Blue chain mail to Gleaming Sunshine and Leftie (Dong Yin and Yi Cang), and sold the rest of the Blue equipment that were of no use to her to an NPC. She gained almost 2 gold coins out of that.

Of course, she’d earn a lot more if those were sold to the players. But that was not what Ye Ci wanted. It would basically tell everybody that she had been to the dungeon a lot of times. Although it was just a minor dungeon, it was always not a good thing to get attention from overly curious individuals.

Besides, she could save a lot of time by doing that.

Ye Ci was going to leave the newbie village for the city. The auction houses there were more convenient than having to set up roadside stalls just to sell items.

After getting a blacksmith to repair her equipment, Ye Ci headed for the junction.

A strange thought surfaced in her mind — was the fight still going on?

As expected, the crowd had not dispersed yet.

The fight was not as intense as before. Less than 30% of the newbie players were still having a standoff with the Spring Rain Guild. The guild’s members were already beginning to scatter.

Ye Ci thought of sneaking into Wolf Canyon through the battlefield, but not everything went smoothly.

Someone stood up abruptly from beside Ye Ci, after which she subconsciously dodged to the side. It was Everyday Meat who was being spawn camped. He decided to respawn, thinking that he was well-hidden.

He was not red-named, and had not reached lv10 yet. The newbie protection meant that he would not drop any equipment upon death, but... Being spawn camped for almost an hour was a torturing experience.

Besides, pain in Fate could only be reduced to a minimum of 30%. With so much death, Everyday Meat must’ve been driven to the point of madness.

“It’s you! You’re the one who killed me!” Everyday Meat saw Ye Ci who had not been three meters away from him. His eyes lit up with fiery anger as he tried to grab at Ye Ci without even waiting for an explanation.

Ye Ci was rather baffled. It had nothing to do with her at all. Why was she the suspect?

She slapped Every Meat’s hand away and said coldly, “Look carefully before you accuse me!”

“What do you mean I did not see clearly!” Everyday Meat spoke with his action. He drew out his staff and threw a Fireball at Ye Ci.

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Ye Ci shifted her body, and the Fireball brushed past her shoulder, and an arrow planted itself at Everyday Meat’s back. He immediately fell onto the ground on all fours.

Ye Ci looked at Everyday Meat. A mischievous grin crept onto her face as she knelt down beside Everyday Meat. “I told you, it wasn’t me. See!” Taunted Ye Ci.

She stood up, and clapped her hands together. She looked at the corpse and said, “I’ll be on my way. I’m telling you, your death had nothing to do with me.” She literally walked over Everyday Meat’s dead body as she left. The guy was so angry that he coughed up blood. He ranted in the Guild channel that he would find out the whoever that was responsible for his death.

Wolf Canyon was packed full of people.

There were a lot of wolves in the canyon, but they seemed to be the minority.

Ye Ci snorted. At this rate, she’d never be able to complete the her quest.

Thinking of the Hunter’s Mark skill book, however, she was willing to kill steal if that was what she needed to do.

She climbed onto a tree and began going scaling the cliff wall of the Wolf Canyon thanks to her high Balance. She managed to reach a flat ground at the hillside.

Ye Ci original intention was to have a bird’s eye view of the place, but she ran into 20-30 wolves instead. And more importantly, there was no one around!

Oh, she was mistaken. There was someone swinging his weapon wildly at the wolves with sweat dripping down like a waterfall.