Before doing anything else, Thalion went to tell the news to his adoptive grandparents.
Arriving at their doorstep, the door was swung ajar, revealing a sharp middle-aged male Elvar. "Hey, little Thal, how did your oath and assignment go? Did you join the Guard or end up doing something else?"
"Hi, grandpa. I'm actually here to tell you guys that I've been assigned as a city lord of a city called Myrrdell. It's a valley town in the southern border. I'm thinking to leave this week since I already received the appointment letter." Thalion started with this piece of news as it was more important.
"What? Why are you going so far away so suddenly? Did you think this through?" Grandma's questioning sounded from inside the house as she walked over.
"That's right, what do you know about being a city lord? What about Myrrdell, do you know anything about it? You have to be prudent, Thalion." Grandpa Martherion naturally agreed with Grandma Alvassa.
"Hey, Captain Aelron said it was fine, he wouldn't trick me. Also, it's just a small town, it's not that complicated to manage as long as I'm not an idiot, I mean, it's probably doing well enough even without a city lord." Thalion felt like it wasn't that rash of a decision.
"Alright, since Aelron said it, it should be fine. But you better study up, okay?" Grandma was relieved to hear it was a regular small town.
"Okay, Grandma. But the way, did you guys really not know dad's necklace was a class scroll? It was a [Yggdrae Hunter] scroll, in fact. I ended up wasting some coin for canceling my order." Thalion made sure to remember every hit his wallet took.
"Really? That's great! We never knew, but it makes sense. Empyreon wasn't the type to give a purely cosmetic gift like a necklace." Martherion said. He and Alvassa knew his father well, they met him in their younger days when he was a kid.
"I feel more assured then, a Legendary class is an entirely different beast from Epic. At least those lovebirds gave you some good stuff." Alvassa finally stopped worrying when she heard about his class—she thought that combined with his armor and Khopesh should be more than enough to keep him safe. "Since you're leaving soon, why don't you eat here today? I was making some venison soup, eat some."
"Alright, thanks Grandma." Thalion decided to visit in the next couple of days before leaving as he had no one else that might miss him—this was the reality of a complete loner.
...
Two months later, Thalion was very close to arriving at Myrrdell.
He had run on foot for the past two months to get here.
On the way, he managed to kill some low level beasts.
Anything gave (their lvl*100) on kill, so he only leveled up to 11 by killing low level mobs.
That was about to change, though—Thalion found an orc group hunting.
He was definitely going to follow these orcs back to their tribe, it could free EXP if they're all as weak as these hunters.
Thalion managed to tail them without alerting anyone, so he found their tribe, 'Yes! There should be nearly a hundred orcs here. Most of them are not even level 10, there should only be thirty or so of those that are real level 10+ warriors. The chief should be a low 20s boss with maybe one or two close to him. If I'm right, this should be doable.'
In that moment, Thalion received a notification from his UI saying:
>>>Personal Quest Triggered: The Hunt Begins — Orc filth has defiled your territory. Cleanse them to protect Myrrdell. Leave none alive.
Reward: Legendary Dragon Tail Bone<<<
'They have a fucking dragon bone? And it's somehow my duty to cleanse the nearby territory of filth? So these orcs deserve this, even the women and children... I mean, yeah! Especially the women and children, they're the future of this plague. Anyways, I should wait until they sleep so I can set fire to these conveniently flammable housing they have going on. That should deal with most of them, then I can snipe off stragglers and kite the strong ones.' With a cleansing plan in mind, Thalion got to work and went to the last town he passed by to get some oil and coal.
By the time he returned, it was already nighttime, 'Perfect.'
There were two orcs on night patrol at the gates, Thalion used [Dew Mist Flicker] and [Twin Rend] to blink behind then and decapitate both of them in an instant.
Seeing that no one was awoken from the noises, Thalion was relieved.
He proceeded to encircle the village perimeter while dumping oil and coal beside the spiked fencing.
It didn't take too long to prepared what would soon be a ring of fire.
Thalion then went around pouring oil and coal around all huts, especially at the doors.
As an Elvar, he naturally had basic stealth training, so he wasn't useless and managed to be silent throughout the whole process.
When everything was done, he left to prepare some improvised fire arrows with oiled rags and coal dust.
Then, the sleeping orcs were woken by the vision of smoke entering their huts, scalding heat burning their skin and searing air cooking their lungs.
Immediately, only 20 or so warriors could escape the fate of burning to death.
'I'm level 21! Such insane profits! Hell yeah!' Only about a dozen level 10+ orcs died, but with the other 50+ lower level orcs, Thalion amassed around 50,000 EXP instantly.
'Stat points assigned. Now all that's left are the supposed elites. What a waste, 70 or so targets for skill leveling had to be lost just like that.' It really was a shame, but the appearance of a raging Lvl 25 chieftain going berserk took Thalion out of his ridiculous thoughts.
'[Dawn Heavenpiercer]!'
The fierce arrow managed to pierce through the chieftain's defense, but it hit him in the elbow.
Both physical and magical defense existed in the form of a Mana coating that had to be pierced for effective damage, and that even when broken still dissipated damage.
It had to be broken through each time and would reform relatively quickly as long as new Mana was provided.
[Dawn Heavenpiercer] allowed him to ignore part of the damage mitigation, but it didn't fully ignore defense like true damage.
Anyways, both the chieftain and Thalion were now pissed.
"Damn it! I knew I was too far, he managed to block his heart. Thank goodness he's not that strong, level 25 is still doable with only a dozen scrubs helping him." Thalion immediately used [Dew Mist Flicker] and [Uprooting Slashes] to kill three of the weaker warriors before the chieftain could react.
The orc leader then activated a berserk skill and screamed, rushing at Thalion.
Thalion obviously wasn't stupid enough to go for hand to hand combat, so he ran a few laps around the burning village, killing another two orc warriors and hiding outside the chieftain's vision.
The remaining orcs grouped up behind their leader.
Thalion then used [Divine Guidance] to fire three arrows that phased through the hut he was hiding behind and homed toward the chieftain's back—the last arrow was a [Dawn Heavenpiercer].
The moment the homing arrows were shot, Thalion immediately used [Mother's Gaze] on the chieftain and blinked with [Dew Mist Flicker] to use [Rootbound Execution] in the remaining orcs.
They were no match for the combo, the chieftain was immediately executed by the combined skills, while the others were easy pickings with a simple use of the [Rootbound Execution] that was out of cooldown—he just finished them off.
"Phew, it's finally over. Hehe, level 25, that's nice. I also earned some skill EXP."
Skill EXP was hard to gain, you only get 1 EXP per succesful/effective use of the skill in combat. Multi-target effects cap at 10 EXP even if they hit more targets, though.
>>>Level: 25 (4,200/5,000)
Potential: Mythic (+25% Stat Bonus)
Stats: STR 31/DEX 32/END 31/INT 31
Bonus: Mythic (+25%)
Final: STR 40/DEX 40/END 40/INT 40
Skill Points: 0
Skill EXP: 52<<<
"So I got 34 skill EXP from this, nice. The AoE skills are really good for farming skill EXP, huh? Too bad it's not that easy for my class and that it caps at 10." Thalion was still happy to finally have enough EXP to level his first skill.
"Hm, which one? I think [Dew Mist Flicker] is a good start, I have to level them all anyway for the Unique Mana Skill."
Skill Points: 0
Skill EXP: 2
Lvl 1 [Dew Mist Flicker] (0/50)
Does a spatial blink within a 202cm radius that grants 223% movement and attack speed for 2 seconds after use.
Cooldown: 6 seconds
"Nice, now where's my dragon bone?" Thalion looked at the chieftain's corpse, but there was just a filthy orc there, no Dragon bone.
He then looked at the chieftain's now burnt hut, and as expected, he found a forearm sized tail bone, it was extremely sturdy and Mana conductive, there was also a certain shimmer to it that made it feel Legendary.
"I should make my next weapon out of this, dragon bones are great to apply enchantments to. I can probably get a bow-Khopesh that shape-shifts between the two forms on demand, that'd be extremely convenient." Thalion thought.
"I just need some good wood for the bow and an alloy to infuse the bone into. The big problem is finding a good smith, thankfully I'm in the south, so the Dwarves are nearby." Thalion was extremely satisfied with his first quest.
He left the orc remains as they were since he was only one person, then, he left for Myrrdell.
...
After sleeping a bit on the way, he finally arrived before the dawn of the next day.