My Isekai Fantasy Is All Wrong!

Chapter 5: Preparations Complete

[Observe]
[Name: Raw Ruby Stone Vein]
[Description: A Gem Vein mostly made up of Ruby Stone. Approximate total is 5,667 Kilograms, 1.4 Cubic Meters, or 17,000 Shop Credits]

“This is new,” I let out a low whistle as I reared back my pickaxe back and drove it a couple inches into the Gem Vein.

With Mining Level 5, I had an effective +7 to my Strength when Mining. Added to my Base 12 Strength, nearly made me four times as strong as I’d originally been. That was all to say that in next to no time at all, I’d cleared away every trace of anything even remotely red from the cave wall I’d been digging into for the past couple days.

This unexpected windfall was enough to finally afford all the Skills I wanted before leaving for an expedition. I’d already prepared everything else. I had the camping equipment, a weapon, a set of armor, various cooked foods and snacks to give myself an edge while traveling, I’d even Leveled Up, and completed another Survival Milestone Quest.

[Milestone Quest Complete!]
[Name: Survive 2]
[Description: Make it to your 1 week anniversary.]
[Reward: +20 Exp, +1 Skill Point, +1 Stat Point]

Since spending two Stat Points on Strength, I’d been saving all the rest. I also hadn’t yet used even a single Skill Point — of which I had four; two for each other Level Up I earned and two from the Quests. Hopefully, it would all pay off now that it was time to buy my new Skills.

In one swift push, I hit the button that confirmed I wanted to make the transaction. It pained me to see the tens of thousands of Kilos of mined rock drop down to less than a hundred, but at least now I had three scrolls to read.

“This is bullshit! Bullshit, I say! The tutorial texts, I can understand, but why are these not instantly converted into Skills, damn it?!” I may have lost my composure for a second. But, could you really blame me? I thought I was buying Skills, not “the means to learn” said aforementioned Skills.

Whatever.

This was fine. Everything was fine.

I took a deep breath, opened the first Scroll, and tried to read its contents. The operative word being “tried” as the scroll was written in what I could only describe as incomprehensible hieroglyphs that reminded me more of Wingdings than Ancient Egyptian.

Before I could get any more upset, the words on the scroll began to glow and the next thing I knew I had been transported to a grassy field that looked nothing like the mountainous forest outside my cave.

“The Foundational Sword is the origin of all Sword Techniques. Its creator is unknown, but…” In front of me, a suit of armor began to expound on the history of the Skill I’d bought. It talked about how it was created to teach anyone how to fight and how many different clans and noble families took the principles of the Foundational Sword to create their own signature techniques.

When it was done, it went through all the basic motions that were involved in each movement, explaining in excruciating detail even the most seemingly mundane aspect of why the sword needed to be held a certain way or one’s posture needed to be either soft or rigid to deliver a strike with maximum effect.

For whatever reason, the suit of armor had my full attention during the entire time. It was like I couldn’t even get bored or distracted even if I wanted to. When the full explanation of the entire skillset was over, this effect was broken as the suit of armor commanded me to strike it with a basic side swipe.

“Wrong! There is no torque to your waist!”

“Wrong! Even if you can’t find it in your heart to strike me like you mean it, you must never slacken your grip!”

“Wrong!” “Wrong!” “Wrong…!”

It took a while but eventually, I made it through all the basic attacks without the suit of armor screaming in disappointment. Alas, offense was only half the battle and once I passed the benchmark for performing all the attacks, the suit of armor shifted its posture rather aggressively as it spoke.

“Prepare yourself to defend.”

“Against an Overhead Slash!” It called out before lashing out with hardly any telegraphed movements I’d been specifically looking out for, from the moment it had taken an offensive stance.

Of course, I couldn’t block it in time, so its sword cut right through me.

“Again!” It cried out, while I was still waiting for the pain of being slashed to come. It never did for the first attack nor the second as my body parted around the sword only to reform entirely unharmed fractions of a second afterward.

“Again!” It took me until the seventh try to actually catch the attacking sword with my own. But even then, with just a bit of finesse, the suit of armor deflected past my block to cut me down anyway.

“Again! Soft defends against soft!” It yelled out, but it still took me another five tries to fully comprehend what it wanted me to do.

I kept on getting my block bypassed because of how tense I was immediately after catching its sword. Only when I loosened up and adjusted to its movements, did I manage to not come out of an exchange with any part of my body sliced through.

“Now, Against an Upperleft Swing!” I got cut ten more times.

“Against a Center Thrust!” I got cut nine more times.

“Against a Crosssing Right!” I got cut seven times.

We went through all the basic attacks, with me slowly getting better until he tripped me up with the more advanced Feinting maneuvers.

“I have nothing else to teach you.”

[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Name: Foundational Sword Lvl 1 | +10 Exp]
[Description: Hooray! You passed Basic.]

I bought the Tutorial Text for the Foundational Sword and breathed a sigh of relief once it was made clear that it would give me a passive 10% Bonus to my Strength and Agility when using its principles with a sword.

“Welp, that’s one Skill down. Two more to go,” I sighed before opening up the next scroll and going through a similar process to get the Iron Body and Cartography Skills down.

Between the three Iron Body took the longest for me to learn because it involved manipulating my muscles in a way I was pretty sure was impossible for conventional human biology. Cartography was the easiest because I was already proficient in drawing and a lot of the principles explained in the scroll were simple enough for me to instantly understand.

Of the three Iron Body was also the only one with a barrier of entry I needed to meet before I could learn the Skill. It required a Constitution and Vitality of 12 each, so there went half of my eight Stat Points. I think it was worth it since the technique had both passive benefits of 20% additional Consitution and Vitality when preparing myself for receiving an attack as well as an active effect that could raise that bonus to 50% temporarily for a steep Stamina cost.

Depending on the Food Buff I took, I could currently get my Constitution and/or Vitality up to the lower 20s if I needed to; and that was with Iron Body at Level 1. I could only imagine how much more ridiculous the bonuses would get once I improved the Skill with either a Skill Point or through continuous use.

For now, though, I would keep my Skill Points in reserve. Speaking from the experience of getting Mining to Level 5, it took exponential effort to increase Skill Levels. It was to the point where I doubted I’d see Level 6 Mining even if I continued grinding it out in my cave for the next week straight.

Anyway, now that I had a way to defend myself and map out my progress, just in case I wanted to come back to my cave if the expedition failed, I could finally set out. I was already in the Iron Armor Set I picked out and had all my valuables and belongings stored away in my Inventory. The only things I wouldn’t be taking with me were all the lights I had set up in my cave to continue mining. Those were cheap enough that if I needed more, for whatever reason, I would simply buy them on the spot.

Thus, my long-awaited expedition began!

Naturally, as any Gamer would, I took off in a hysterical sprint through the least tumultuous path I could find and kept the Skill by the same name active all the while. It would be a crime to do anything else when there would be no repercussions for my otherwise insane actions.

Unfortunately, I needed to make tons of slight adjustments while on the run since there weren’t any paved roads to smoothly travel through. It made charting my path through Cartography at every stop I made a bit of a hassle, but that was fine because I was making olympic levels of progress regardless.

[Instance Dungeon Found!]
[New World Quest!]

I nearly tripped on my face at the unexpected prompt. When I finally slowed down my sprint to a full stop, I checked out my Quests and couldn’t keep a grin from forming on my face.

[World Quest]
[Name: Dungeon Crawl #295]
[Description: You’ve chanced upon one of the twenty Common Timberwolf Instance Dungeons. Clear it of Monsters for fun and profit.]
[Reward: +50 Exp, Common Dungeon Chest]