CHAPTER 5 LEARNING SCOUTING

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First year of Genesis, Gods were tired of the never-ending wars among the races on Hero Continent and opened the super continent in another dimension, New World! All the races and countries on Hero Continent stopped large-war fighting as expected and begins the rush to colonize New World! But only the minority strong people can pass through the dimension gate opened by Mages to reach New World. All kinds of production resources, weapons and equipments cannot be mass-transported. At the same time, wealth from the New World cannot be mass-transported back. In addition, the massive amount of strong monster made the development work at New World very slow in 100 years.

Genesis Year 145, trail blazers working at New World harbor suddenly discovered a drift bottle from the old world. This proves that there is a natural ocean dimensional gate connecting the old world and New World, large amount of resources can be transported between the 2 worlds! A movement to find a course to New World “Grand Line” unfolded tragically!

Year 150, January 1,  fully prepared and with elite crew, exploration ship St. Antonio, under the leadership of the experienced voyager Captain Renoir, set sail from St. Paul Harbor with Empire’s blessings and hopes. Following pioneers’ trails, it challenged the unknown dangerous territories yet again! Court Astrologer, Sir Makarl is also among the exploration team.

Year 156, April 20, St. Antonio created a miracle by successfully returning from New World! But was attacked by Undead’s fleet on the return voyage! Sir Makarl became the last survivor of the battle and persisted until the arrival of Empire’s rescue team after stranding on a deserted island! To commemorate this grand achievement, that unnamed deserted island was named as Island of Miracle!

Year 157, January 1, the recovered Sir Makarl officially accepted the Empire’s ennoblement ceremony for his great achievements in opening up the Grand Line and was promoted to Duke, Lionheart Empire’s Chief Court Astrologer and became the century’s greatest scholar, voyager, explorer!

Year 159, the prospecting of New World’s course was officially finished, Light faction and Darkness faction each controlled 1 ocean dimensional gate that leads to New World and heavily guards it. The New World development movement is in full swing.

Genesis Year 160, to accelerate development speed, Gods sent Children of Destiny (which is players) to descend upon Hero Genesis!

……

It is Year 160 now. This is the related introduction about the game’s background and Grand Line on the official website. No mention about Mithril Island and Empire’s New World map also does not have Mithril Island and not to mention any Underground Sea. The reason of the shipwreck is slightly different from the blood and tears-filled accusation on the notebook. Of course, it is precisely because it is different, there is a conspiracy. It is nothing less than Makarl wants to pocket that Mithril Island, I guess?

But, be it Epic Quest or Legendary Quest, these are all too far away! It is not something a Level 2 like Bro should be considering about. The urgent matter now is to think of a way to bump Blood Sea Mad Waves off! Then again, Bro getting this Quest should definitely raise the value of this account by 100 times, right? As he said, even if Bro is screwed beyond salvage, at most log off on the spot and get contacts to sell the account. Naturally, there will be bosses sailing ship to take over! Therefore, Bro has no qualms now too, wahahaha!

The biggest reward now is this Scouting skill book.

——Basic Scouting: Increase Hero’s field of view by 20%, can obtain enemy’s information like troops count, morale and supplies information.

——Intermediate Scouting: Increase Hero’s field of view by 40%, has a certain chance of finding hidden enemies in the surroundings and can forewarn hidden enemies’ attack, increase player’s chance of dodging the attack.

——Advanced Scouting: Increase Hero’s field of view by 60%, can draw map and has a certain chance of discovering hidden resources or treasures that normal people has a hard time finding.

——Expert Scouting: Increase Hero’s field of view by 80%, can check enemy hero’s equipment from a long distance and can train the unit: Scout in Hero’s Castle.

Scout: Level 1 unit, Attack 0, Defense 0, HP 10, Damage 0-1, Attack Speed 10, Movement Speed 15, Command Point 1, special ability: Advanced Scouting, Stealth. Training Cost: 500 gold coins (Most expensive Level 1 unit).

——Master Scouting: Increase Hero’s field of view by 100%, obtains night-vision ability, can maintain normal field of view in the night. (Note: Field of view decreases by 90% in the night)

Sub-skills as below:

——Gather Information: When Hero fights with unknown monster, it is possible to obtain monster’s stats and made into information card. Selling information cards to scholar or nobles can receive money, Fame and certain NPCs’ Relationship points.

——Remove Trap: Ability to pick lock and destroy traps.

——Camouflage: Anti-Reconnaissance, hostile enemy or wild monster will have difficult seeing through the detailed composition of your troops.

——Stealth: Lets enemy troops and monster unable to discover Hero in a certain range, effects are related to level of Scouting, monster, time and environment. While using Stealth, Hero cannot lead any units. Learning prerequisite: Advanced Scouting.

——Conceal: Hero’s troops can ambush in the field and be difficult to be discovered by enemies. Skill effects is related to time, environment, troops count, enemies’ skill level of Scouting. During Conceal, troops cannot move. Learning prerequisite: Must posses Master Scouting.

——Analyze Information: After obtaining all the detailed information of unknown monster, Hero can discover that monster’s weak point and ignore 25%-100% of its Defense during combat. Learning prerequisite: Grand Master Scouting.

——Phantom March: When your troops is marching in the wild, it is difficult to be discovered by enemies. Learning prerequisite: God Level Scouting.

……

So this is Scouting! A skill similar to the thief class in traditional games! This thief class always manages to create inconceivable miracle at the hands of those imaginative and creative players!

But in this game Hero Genesis which is about leading units to war, this skill is probably a bit awkward. After all, there is no offensive skill in the beginning so leveling in the beginning will not be smooth. Although Grand Master’s sub-skill Analyze Information, God Level’s sub-skill Phantom March is eye-catching but Grand Master abd God Level are all floating clouds!^[1]

Leveling after changing class at level 10 will get more difficult and those that maxes out Offence skill before level 10 will be slaughtering mobs fierce and fast. While during the stage between level 10 and 30, Leadership skill which increase the limit of units count and Armorer skill which increases units’ HP and Defense is even more urgently needed. It is not possible to spend skill points on learning Scouting. After reaching level 30, leveling is even more difficult and even more not possible to learn Scouting already or else it will affect the leveling speed and the initial advantage will be all gone. Probably only purely-casual players, commercial players not interested in fighting wars or major guilds, teams will specially train a Scouting-based account like this.

While Da Fei is of course a commercial player, Da Fei’s goal is to earn money from freighting. A freighting merchant probably cannot defeat pirates but at least must be able to discover pirates in advance and evade in time so Scouting is a skill Da Fei must learn! Not to mention, it is not easy to get a book after drifting to this desperate situation. Not learning it will result in retribution.

Therefore Da Fei, with a grateful heart, opens the book without hesitation! Golden light flashes!

——System Notification: You have learned Basic Scouting, your field of view increased by 20%! Can obtain enemy’s troops count, morale and supplies information.

Now Da Fei’s field of view is 70% more than ordinary people after the bonus from the skill and Binoculars. Da Fei is satisfied while raising the binoculars and looking towards the sunken ship again and says after laughing sinisterly: “Wait for it, after Bro^[2]  learned Stealth, I will sneak onto the ship!”

But seeing how hardworking  Blood Sea Mad Waves is in killing mobs day and night, Da Fei is even more pissed! Damnit, Bro is trapped at the reef after high tide and cannot do anything. Leveling time will be shorter than him by half! No choice but to wait unit the tide ebbs after night fall. Since Da Fei is so free now, he might as well flips the journal and see what is all this Mithril Island is about.

T/L note 1: Beyond one’s reach

T/L note 2: Da Fei actually started to refer himself as Your Father at the end of the chapter but i left it because it is hard to find an equivalent in English that will not make it sound odd.