At the foot of a big hill

John took a deep breath, having spent the past 3 hours climbing over hills, shooting orcs and waiting for his mana to regenerate while laying down in the tall grass. Up till now, he had not lost a single point of health, which was a great blessing all things considered. His mana, however, was spent as freely as he could get away with. At this point, he had little less than half his mana left.

At the moment, he was crouched between a few shrubs near the bottom of the large hill he had spotted from his ‘spawn’ location. From down here he had a good view at the straight roads in between the large, somewhat collapsed gray stone walls. Beside the buildings in between the walls and the castle further at the top, the large hill was covered in plants. Trees were seen growing from between the bricks, ivy flowing down one of the watchtowers as if it were the flowing blonde hair of that one princess with an affinity for pans.

During his trip here, John had used his skills freely, his Mana Arrow now at level 3, reducing the cost down to 4 mana and slightly increasing the damage. Camouflage while not his most useful skill had reached level 2, slashing the cost down to 8 and increasing his stealth ability slightly. Pitfall had reached level 3 as well. Something with John’s desire to see stupid creatures fall on their face had made sure he kept using it as many times as he could get away with. With the level ups, the maximum depth of his holes grew to 30 cm, still not a real trap hole, but it was decent enough to throw people off balance; the cost has also gotten slashed down to 8 mana, suddenly making it a bit more viable than before, even with his meager mana pool. Guided Arrow had just hit level 2 a few minutes ago; when the other skills all leveled up, except for the non combat ones, he decided: ‘no one left behind’ and leveled his minute control of his arrows a bit. The cost was unchanged, but he had learned that he could now make the arrow fly with a slight curve; it wasn’t much better than level one, but hey, it was better than nothing.

John got up from his crouched position, the joints in his knees making soft popping noises as he did. “Still disturbing,” he mumbled, never really getting used to those sounds. He patted some leaves off of his cloak, starting the small trek to the overgrown gate. Just as John crouched down to look around for eventual guards around the gate, he could hear the creaking sound of something about to collapse. John looked up, seeing the arch start to keel over. He took a few dashing steps back, then jumped, rolling back into the shrubs he had vacated moments ago. The entire entrance, complete with overgrown watchtower, came crashing down where he had stood moments ago, the pile of rubble and plants barring the way in now.

John wiped his brow, then slowly got up again, starting to move along the side of the wall he could somewhat make out in the thick foliage. The sounds of orcs yelling and running over to the collapsed entrance made John actually thank his lucky stars for not going in just like that; he could make out at least 5 different voices. He would have been swarmed if he had just went ahead and waltzed inside.

John slowly continued his way along the wall, eventually stopping when he was certain he was far enough away from the entrance. He looked up, seeing the thick branch of a nearby tree hanging over the wall slightly. Years of playing stealth games conditioned him for this moment: he took his grappling hook out of his inventory, aimed it at the branch and hit the trigger. With a slight thunk, the hook shot upwards, flying with a slight arc over the branch at which point John hit the button on the handle, causing the hook to deploy. The hook firmly wound itself around the branch after which John gave a tentative tug on the chain, seeing the branch not move an inch. Sufficiently reassured John infused a bit of mana into the launching device, the small motor inside of it starting to whir to life, lifting him off his feet towards the branch.

When he reached the branch he awkwardly wrapped his arms and legs around it, untying the hook from the chain after which he stored his device away again. With the hook back in his inventory, John started to move along the branch centimeter by centimeter, and hanging like a sloth, he made his way on top of the wall.

With a soft oof, John landed back first on the wall, the air knocked out of him as he looked up, rolling over to get to his feet a few moments later. When he was right side up again, he looked around, seeing that he was standing on top of a few rather well kept meters of the wall; the floor was cracked but holding and seemingly stable. About three meters below him, he could see a slimmer orc riding on a big furry creature; it took John a few seconds to figure out the orc was riding a gigantic guinea pig.

John cast observe on the mount as well as it’s rider.

John soon got the confirmation that the mount was fast: a rat came scurrying out of one of the collapsed buildings nearby, and the guinea pig was upon it seconds later, crossing 5 meters in two seconds. The rat was swallowed whole by the big furry creature that let out a satisfied burp as his rider nudged him in the side with his spear. “Stupid hunk of fur! You almost threw me off! Stop thinking with your stomach!”

Just as John started to strategise, thinking of a plan to efficiently take down the miniboss, the floor below John started to creak.