Suddenly, my shield began to react. It absorbed the grasses as I picked them.
Leaf Shield: conditions met
That reminded me, I hadn’t looked at the weapon book recently. I opened it, and focused on the flashing shield icon.
Small Shield: ability unlocked: defense 3
Orange Small Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: defense 2
Yellow Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: defense 2
Leaf Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: absorption ability 1
I decided to look into the help menus.
Weapon Leveling Up and Unlocking Abilities:
Weapon leveling up means that your currently equipped Legendary Weapon will change form. If you hold the weapon in hand, and picture what you wish it to become, the weapon will change into the desired form.
The weapon ability refers to abilities that can be unlocked simply by using the equipped weapon. Once unlocked the equip bonus will last forever.
Equip Bonus:
Equip bonuses are special abilities that can be used while your weapon is equipped. So if a weapon has unlocked the Air Strike Bash ability, that ability can be used as long as that weapon is equipped. If a weapon has an Equip bonus of “attack up 3,” the user’s attack stat will increase by 3 while the weapon is equipped.
I got it. So as long as the abilities were unlocked, you could use them even when you have a different weapon equipped.
The experience was something you earned, and slowly collected while you battled enemies and leveled up your equipment.
The world really was like a video game.
Despite being a little annoyed by the whole process, I did find the equip bonus of the Leaf Shield attractive.
“Absorption ability up 1.”
It must mean that I would receive some kind of bonus when collecting items.
At the moment, I had no money. What that meant is that I needed to find the best products to sell, for the least amount of effort. I quickly changed my shield into the Leaf Shield.
There was a sudden rush of wind, and suddenly my shield had changed in my hand. It was green now, and appeared to be fashioned directly from leaves.
My defense stat didn’t drop at all. Apparently my original Small Shield was as weak as they come. Now to test my theory; I reached for a clump of grass.
Blip!
A positive sound rang out, and the clump of grass tore free easily.
The clump of grass glowed with a faint light.
Absorption up 1
Aelo: quality: fair to excellent: medicinal herb for treating wounds
An icon describing the change appeared.
Well, it was nice to get such an immediate explanation.
I spent the remainder of the day walking around, mechanically picking grass and filling my bag. Also, and I don’t know if it was because I had been collecting grass all day or just because time had passed since I switched shields, the Leaf Shield equip bonus was unlocked.
The rest of my Small Shields also had the equip abilities unlocked.
I made my way back to town and decided to try and sell my herbs.
“These are in excellent shape. Where did you get them?”
“In the fields around the town. Didn’t you know it grew here?”
“I did, but I’ve never seen such high-quality stuff around. I thought only junk grew out there.”
We chatted for a little bit, and eventually he bought the grass off of me. My stash was worth one piece of silver and 50 pieces of bronze… which was much better than I had done so far. It was a new record.
I had a cheap dinner at a restaurant. As I was eating, a few people stopped by to ask if I would join their party. Unfortunately they all looked… disreputable. I soon came to find their intrusions annoying.
Ever since that day, all the food I ate tasted like nothing.
“I’ll join YOUR party, Shield Hero,” said some guy, who clearly thought a lot of himself.
Honestly, I didn’t like the idea of joining up with anyone at that point. Besides, they all had this look in their eyes that reminded me of her . Just looking at them made me angry.
“Fine. First let’s go over the
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