Ch 2 - Sword Master Online

Chapter 2 - Exploration 


(TL: flarewk)

Hey, Han Mu's face expression is just like mine!

Although his headache was recovering way faster than what he had originally thought so, his first priority is to check on current events.

The World Map on the upper left-hand corner had disappeared, which means that he is unable to pin-point exactly what location he is at.

Under good circumstances, not too far from here there should be a small town or village, where he could then be able to pinpoint his current location.

But likewise, under bad circumstances humans might not exist in this current world, but of course the chance of this occurring is very low, although it cannot be ruled out.

Called out [Control Panel].

Pressed [Character Stats].

On level aspect-wise, Han Mu gasped in shock, as he's actually Lv220. You must know that in <Sword Master Online>, the maximum character level that one can hope to achieve is up till Lv200.

Recalling that during the final battle, Chaos protector [The beginning(De départ)]'s max HP had fallen to 1% and was about to unleash it's Time Reverse, when Han Mu thrust his holy sword of light <Hercules> into it's heart.

Since he gave the final blow to the boss, can it be because of that attack he made, that made him jump by 20 levels?

But as expected of a 20 levels difference window, as his stats had increased by a significant amount.

Pressing the [Title] option revealed an extra [The Discoverer] title within. Having an excited interest to know what it is, upon equipping it Han Mu became shocked once more.

All of his stats actually got multiplied by 3!

His own power was already specially strengthened to begin with, it wasn't just any normal character one could use to compare.

As a result, he had reached a horrifying level of strength, even Han Mu now felt it's possible that he could single handedly defeat the [The beginning(De départ)] all on his own.

Other than that, he had also gained two new active skills: [God's soul] [All elemental resistance (God tier)].

Han Mu first pressed onto [God's soul] skill's explanation, and the explanation for it was short and simple, four words.

[User will be blessed.]

An extremely simple, four worded explanation. Han Mu checked his own stats, but it seemed like there wasn't any change, his Luck column was still the same [ A ] rank, no changes.

Then he proceeded to activate [All elemental resistance (God tier)].

Like what the sentence of the skill implied, his own resistance levels had been boosted to unfathomably strong levels.

But in the first place, due to his hidden class as a <Holy Dragon Knight>, all of his natural resistances are already absurdly high. So Han Mu didn't place much thought about it.

The <Holy Dragon Knight> hidden class is one of SMO's many hidden classes of jobs; your character must have achieved certain warrior class jobs requirements like having a Fighter lv20 (Max level) , Holy Knight lv20 (Max level) and Dragon Knight lv30 (Max level) as a prerequisite, then after clearing some complicated series of quests to be able to advance into such a tedious hidden class.

But because Han Mu is a NEET who relies on gaming to earn his living, so for the sake of saving the cost of those scamming potions plus the ability to solo often, he carefully chose this as his main class after much deliberation.

Due to him being a Holy Dragon Knight, his character's race is free to switch between [Human] or [Dragon], with the added convenience of allowing Han Mu to not only complete Human-only assigned quests, but also able to accept quests only unique to Dragon races.

Since Han Mu himself needed to depend on the game to earn his next meal, how he earned money is by him accepting multitude of quests from many different races, hence in the aspect of character's popularity, the Dragon race and Human race are of a [worship] status.

Don't even mention about other races though, for even the Demon race had a [friendly] status meter with Han Mu. But as a result of that, his <good-evil> meter had dropped to -50 , causing certain in-game functions like church-revival to suffer; he would have to fork out an extra 50% for it.

But for the sake of accepting the Demon race's bountiful reward quests, Han Mu could close a blind eye to that tiny flaw.

Also worth mentioning is that the <good-evil> meter is a min-max range of ±200, if a user had shockingly reached the <good-evil> ratio point of -200, then you'll be unable to use the church, and can only rely on the guild or the trade market's goods to revive.

Next up is to check his [Storage], this storage already exists within the system itself.

Nothing seemed to be missing from it, all his materials, as well as potions and weapons are within it.

There seemed to be a few extra stuff though, these items are dropped from the final boss [The beginning(De départ)], while no one went to claim these items equips earlier, the system decided to pass it all to the squad leader, Han Mu.

Han Mu quickly checked these few items.

[Chaos protector's Halberd]

[Chaos' bracelets of protection]

[Necklace: Chao's successor]

These three items seemed to be a set, and the set effect is to become Chaos protector.

(TL note: Whaat? I thought it would add +65% boss damage, +40% total damage, +40% attack/ magic attack, +35% defense ignore, +35% all stats, +5000 hp and mp... wait, you're saying this isn't Maplestory? Oh, wrong game... bye then.)

Han Mu's eyebrows frowned and kept the storage.

Gu~

What sound is that!?

Gu~

Looking downwards, Han Mu realized that it's actually his stomach that's growling?!

Him inside a game, being able to feel hungry?! This was a most unexpected and strange development for him already, but thinking back, didn't he drank some water previously when he suffered a bad headache.

(TL note: since he had super high resistance to almost everything, I suppose the bad headache is a result of crossing dimensions.)

What is exactly going on? If this is said to be a game, then it would be too realistic already. Han Mu had never encountered such things before either.

Although it was mentioned previously he ate food in-game, but it's all artificially flavored, it won't leave any recurring sense of hunger or fullness at all.

The ability to feel hungry was indeed something that he slightly missed; he took out from [Storage] a loaf of Bread, this is the only object within his [Storage] that looks consumable.

Bread is a low-level beginner consumable that recovered a little HP, many games had that kind of setting as well too.

Tears slid down Han Mu's face as he took a small bite. The bread tasted extremely disgusting, it was as if like he was chewing cardboard paper.

Finally managing to swallow the bread, Han Mu heaved a sigh of relief. Taking out a leather pouch from [Storage], he started filling filling it up with water from the small river beside him. What Han Mu did was for precautionary purposes, in case there's an event of an shortage of water.

This leather pouch is also known as the <Dragon Pouch>, and within it, one can contain up to roughly half a swimming pool's amount of water.

After he finally filled it up with water, the preparations for setting off had finally been completed. But then Han Mu's eyebrows frowned, what should he do next?

Water is the source of life; normally in the modern world, from ancient times till now there would be traces of villages or towns nearby sources of water. You could even say that water gave birth to countless glorious civilizations.

But then whether that rule still applies in this world, Han Mu wasn't sure on that.

The worst expectation was that there is no humans at all in this world, even though the chances of this occurring are rather small, it cannot be ruled out.

(TL: even if there's a one percent probability of it happening, we must take it as an absolute certainty!!)

The river's flow from upstream seemed to be rather clean, it doesn't seemed as if there's someone living uphill. But it's also possible that the locals are very careful about keeping the environment clean.

After a few minutes of mind-debate, he decided in the end to follow the river downstream to search for life.

Actually the most easiest way would be via using [Contractual Summon: Ignatius] to summon out his mount, a lv190 ancient Red Dragon King, then he would be able to look downwards from the sky, that way he'll be able to quickly find the nearest town.

But just like what he had thought, this world had too many uncertain elements, he should not have done this kind of stuff that would easily attract people's attention.

Perhaps that once he was already up in the air, he would have already been attacked by the beasts of this world, and since he had no idea how strong this world's beasts are, he had to be extra careful.

But if the situation forced him to play that hand, he wouldn't hesitate to do so.

Right now, there are still quite an amount of distasteful Bread from [Storage], if he ate it conservingly, it should be enough to last Han Mu for a year. Hence he's far from being desperate right now.

Being a Lv220, Han Mu's energy is quite abundant; he walked for an entire day and night, never resting in-between his journey.

On the second day nearing noon-time, Han Mu then heaved a sigh of relief.

Through the skill [Life Scan], Han Mu could feel there were many human-like lifeforms not too far off south, and based on the lifeforms densities as well as many other separate scenario's analysis, it's a high chance that it could be a human settlement.

Meanwhile Han Mu realised that the usage of skills are still the same as in how it operates in a VRMMO game.

Han Mu heaved a sigh of relief, but still keeping his guard up.

[Presence Suppress]

Han Mu tried to use this skill, but then suddenly realized he could not activate it. He checked his MP status, it's currently full.

Suddenly being reminded of something, Han Mu opened his Character Status page, and unequipped the title [The Discoverer].

[Presence Suppress]

As the skill began to activate, Han Mu's presence seemingly vanished.

As expected, it's because of the issue with the title itself, just that he is unsure that how the title and the skill clashed with each other. Could it be because his presence was too strong thus he couldn't even suppress it?

Or could it be a limitation that was designed for players using the title [The Discoverer].

After all, this title seemed to much of a BUG, there's bound to be some sort of weakness designed into it by the game developers.

[Physical Defense Ultra Strengthening]

[Magical Defense Ultra Strengthening]

[Trap Perception]

[All Attributes Ultra Increase]

.......

Casting onto himself nearly 30+ positive buffs in a single breath, Han Mu then slightly relaxed as he proceeded towards that 'town' to explore.

After carefully walking for nearly one hour, Han Mu arrived at the south part of this 'town', hiding in a secluded distance as he observed it.

(TL: wait, that means his [Life Scan] is kinda overpowered, wasn't it)

This rough-looking village seemed to have been built onto the valley itself, the construction had a really distinguishing feature to it; most of the houses were constructed by using logs to build supporting pillars, thereafter using tarpaulin or some unknown rough-looking clothed material to cover it, leaving out a gap for the door. The roof's surroundings were then decorated using sharply-grinded animal bones.

Two guards standing sentry by the valley's entrance attracted Han Mu's attention, those two people should be werewolves?

Han Mu's suspicion arose as their outer appearance differed from what was saw in games.

Of the two werewolves, the left one does resemble the ones in video games, which is a like a normal wolf that is able to stand on it's rear legs and walk around. He's wearing leather armor that protected the area around his heart, as well as proficiently wielding a bone lance.

As for the other werewolf, she had an unmistakable appearance of a human being, while also wearing leather armor that protected the area around her heart. Tanned and healthily energetic, her face was a little rough, and beside the hairband on her head there's clearly a pair of perked wolf ears. The wrist area had not been trimmed of wolves' hair, and it felt like she was wearing some kind of a handband. Behind her butt is a long grey tail which was standing upwards.

Then that means even though they are both wolves, one is more of a beast, and another more of a human right?

It's quite likely that this village is populated by these two kinds of werewolves.

Using the skill [Appraisal], which consumed a set amount of MP, Han Mu confirmed the two wolves' level. The guard that resembled a wolf was lv27, while the guard that resembled a human was lv28.

As they weren't Han Mu's game friends, he couldn't check their individual character stats.

But what's for sure is that their level is way underneath his, right? Although he doesn't know how strong this world's power level scales to his previous world's.

Who knows, perhaps this world's Lv20 could massacre his previous world's Lv100 in terms of power levels.

But since he had finally managed to find this village, even if it's a village populated by werewolves Han Mu still doesn't want to miss out on this opportunity, who knows when will be the next time he'll be able to see the next village.

Besides, from the level's point-of-view, the other party did not looked to be really strong, and although this village wasn't the best kind that Han Mu was hoping to encounter upon, he was already pleased with it.

Han Mu then took out from his storage the legendary-ranked equip [Camouflage Mask]. This useless-yet-necessary mask, for the sake of killing a world-class level of boss, required him to complete three days worth of quests to be able to finish crafting it.

Although the item rarity for it is a legendary-ranked, there is no passive boosts while wearing it, it only gave the user an active skill, [Imitate].

What's more is that [Imitate] itself can be easily seen through with many other skills, rendering it rather worthless.

But then the mask itself had a special purpose for keeping it; since it was already made, Han Mu didn't disassemble it, placing it into his storage collection, which it proved useful today.

Placing on the mask, the mask then assimilated into Han Mu's skin.

A pair of wolf's ears, a long stout greyish wolf tail grew out, even the wrists had grown out a bundle of wolf-hair handband, and his skin became slightly tannish.

Taking out a mirror from his storage to glance at his new self, just from outer appearance alone he looked like a human-wolf. Except that it felt like he looked a little strange.

Han Mu glanced at the werewolf standing guard on duty, then looking at himself. Found out that the issue was on his equipment.

His current set of top-class equipment, was made either using extremely rare materials dropped from the most toughest of bosses, or made by using exquisite dragon's iron, elves cloths these kinds of high-quality materials. Style-wise, it differed too greatly from the other party.

Leather armor and rough clothing huh? He wasn't too sure if there was such stuff inside his storage.

After searching for quite some time, he finally managed to locate a set of leather armor and a roughed-looking attire from nearly the depths of his storage!

This set of beginner's attire gave Han Mu plentiful of nostalgic memories.... due to it's stats being not too shabby, he wore it until he reached Lv50 before replacing it off. No wonder he didn't bear to disassemble it that time.

If this kind of equipment still exists in his storage, then that means........ Han Mu rummaged around his storage to check.

.........

Found it! An axe from within his backpack.

This was his favorite weapon he had used when he was a fledging beginner last time.

[Blue Goblin Battleaxe]

He took off all of his legendary-ranked equipments, while equipping onto these beginner items instead, and he felt that as if he had gone back into the old days of being a newbie, having that kind of cautious, careful feeling within him.

Activating the skill [Info Falsification], Han Mu changed his current level's appearance, in case that the other party had the ability to see through his powers, his own revealed level would then show Lv35.

Right now his appearance should be completely OK, but if it still doesn't work then he would have ran out of ideas.

Before proceeding, Han Mu took out a legendary-ranked one-time-only usable item, the Transfer Key, and placed it into his pocket; if the situation had gone amiss then he would quickly activate long-distance instantaneous teleportation.

About the issue of language conversing, as his class is a <Holy Dragon Knight>, he had an active skill [Dragon's Language], which should allow him to understand other races languages in general.

Probably.......

While praying in his heart that the other party would say something that he is able to understand, Han Mu appeared from the secluded spot and walked towards the guards.

The two guards noticed Han Mu walking towards their direction, and when they discovered that the other party is also a werewolf, they relaxed their expressions.

The human-ish guard opened her mouth.

"Traveller, where did you come from?"

Excellent, he could roughly understand what the other party is trying to convey, even if there's a few voice tones that he didn't quite understand, he could roughly piece two and two together to get the entire meaning.

But to be on the safe side, Han Mu did not dare to approach them too closely.

"I came from a very distant place."

"Traveller, what is your purpose for coming here?"

"I want to understand the surrounding geological situation, to better aid my next travelling stop destination plans. If you two could allow me inside for some delicious food reception, then that would be great. But I'm afraid that i don't have anything here that I could use to pay for, for the meal. If there's any heavy work needing to be done, I could help on that in exchange."

"We are very willing to welcome you, distant friend. But since you came from such a long distance did you have any human currency on you? If you don't then it's fine."

Humans!?

Han Mu gained yet another useful information, looks like this world also had humans in it, and it seemed that it's possible to use human's currency to spend inside this werewolf's village. It looked like the relation between the two wasn't too bad.

But then again. since Han Mu just only arrived onto this world, he didn't have on him any of this world's currency. Although his storage had mountains of gold coins and agate gems, it's best that he doesn't reveal his wealth, as long as he didn't ascertain on this village' character, he wouldn't blatantly flaunt his wealth, to prevent himself from attracting murderous intentions.

But if this village leaves a rather good impression onto Han Mu, under non-risky conditions. he won't be stingy on aiding them either.

"I'm sorry about that, my friend."

"That so, that's a pity."

The guard gave off a look of pity.

"Then traveller, please wait here for a short while, I'll go see Shaman-sama if he's available to welcome you."

"Thank you for the trouble."

That human-ish guard went inside the village, while the other werewolf seemed to be the quiet sort; as even though Han Mu wanted to talk to him, the other party seemed reluctant to speak.

Since the other party doesn't wish to have a conversation, Han Mu didn't force it upon him; and the both of them just stood there dryly.

After around half an hour later, that guard earlier had returned.

"Shaman-sama is willing to welcome you, please come in."

The guard turned around, indicating to Han Mu to keep up, and after a moment's hesitation Han Mu followed.

Going past the huge door, inside is a stretch of alley littered with full of werewolf guards, while Han Mu noticed that the leader of these pack of werewolf guards is a Lv39 werewolf warrior.

This werewolf warrior leader upon seeing a stranger werewolf like Han Mu, had his eyes cautiously onto him, but he didn't say anything, letting Han Mu ahead.

After passing through the alley Han Mu finally arrived into the village, one very, very energetic village.

What surprised Han Mu was, he saw some sort of domestication-like building in the village, inside seemed to have been raising some small animals, the modernity of it all truly shocking him.

(TL: what the author trying to mean here is that Han Mu is shocked that other races like these could know the benefits of having a livestock)

The village isn't really that big, and after a short while he reached one end of the village, there's a stone wall at the end. On the stone wall there's an entrance, while standing sentry were two werewolf guards. Both of the werewolf guards' level was Lv30 and above.

The moment Han Mu arrived at the cave' entrance, he heard an elderly hoarse sound coming out from within the cave.

"Come in, traveller."

According to the [Life Scan] skill, Han Mu noticed that inside had only 1 person, hence he promptly went in.

The cave wasn't too deep, inside had a chair covered with beast's skin, and half-sitting half-lying on the chair is an extremely aged beast-like werewolf, this werewolf's age seemed to have been unfathomably huge, as there are many places on him that had already balding wolf-hair.

Looks like this person is the chief of the werewolf village, Shaman-sama.

"Good day, Shaman-sama."

"Haha, come, let me have a look at you."

While saying so, this Shaman-sama stretched out a half-balding claw (hand).

Seeing no reaction from Han Mu, this elderly Shaman's eyes narrowed into a line.

"Come, place your head closer, let me have a look at you."

Han Mu then finally understood what this Shaman is trying to do, so he actually wanted to stroke his head, with then he immediately leaned his head forward.

As the claw was placed onto Han Mu's head, Shaman closed both of his eyes.

After roughly two minutes, Shaman then retracted back his claws.

"My child, what's your name? I felt that you should been from a very, very distant land."

"My name is Mu Mu, Shaman-sama. I came from a very faraway place."

"What a pitiful child, I felt that you had suffered plenty in your journey. You have gained many things, yet you had lost equally much too. The feeling you gave me was that you're good at heart, if you're willing to stay here, we are more than willing to welcome you."

"I'm grateful to Shaman-sama's good intentions, only just that I still have some important things that I needed to go accomplish."

"Alright, I understand, then you'll first stay here for a couple of days in that case, and feel free to stay here for as long as you liked. Waller! Let Wutatawusu take care of this traveller that travelled from a far place."

Hearing Shaman-sama's summons, a guard responded as he walked inside the cave.

"Traveller, please come with me."

Following this guard Han Mu walked out of the cave, and proceeded to a small house not far from him.

"Is it Waller oniichan?"

A girl's voice floated out from inside.

"Wutatawusu! Shaman-sama wanted you to take care of this traveller."

"Really? That's great!"

A small little girl leapt out from within the house, it's a human-ish werewolf, with two greyish wolf ears atop of her brownish hair, and exquisite facial features. Her age looked like she was around 12 years old, as well as being extremely cute too.

Her tail wagged furiously.

"You're the traveller~?"

"Yeah, my name is Mu Mu. I had travelled here from a faraway land."

"That's great, it's really a traveller, come tell me the interesting stories you've heard before~~~"

"Uhh......"

"As long as you're willing to tell me some stories, I'll treat you to some jerky tonight!"

Waller coughed.

"Heh heh heh, sorry about that, once I've heard Mu Mu-san you're a traveller, I became agitated again. Let me introduce myself, I'm called Wutatawusu, just go ahead and call me Wu!"

Whilst saying so, Wu grabbed both of Han Mu's hands.

"Let's go into the house before talking."

If it's a lolicon, it would probably be something to be happy about. But Han Mu didn't particularly feel anything.

Hearing the name Wutatawusu, the first feeling it gave Han Mu was that it was like a name of a strong muscular werewolf warrior.

Unexpectedly the owner of that name is a little small girl, and she was assigned to take care of him as well.... that made him feel somewhat troubled. Looks like if he wants to obtain some information, he would have to slightly change his current approach.

-ch 2 end-

Important note by TL: 

I'm keeping the japanese down to a minimum with these series, with only the appendixes behind the name calling. (-chan, -sama, -oniichan)

Why japanese? Becoz I feel that it's closer to the original term than using english. Also, i've read quite a number of jp novels so im biased. 

E.g:  "姐姐好开心啊!"

if i used pure english to tl: "Big sister is so happy~!"

if i used english with jap syllables to tl: "Onee-chan is so happy~!"

😐, you see my point here?

(<5.2k words to TL)