――You have acquired the skill “Ferocious Squirrel Bite.”
“Damn, another useless skill again, huh?”
Sighing as I checked the skill I obtained using my Status Device after acquiring it through Magic Stone Hack, I scattered the remnants of the shattered magic stone across the forest.
Quite a bit of time had passed since I first hunted a Fortune Squirrel. There are two skills I’m aiming to get from these squirrels, but neither seems to have dropped yet.
Like with the Wall Snail, I was targeting its juvenile skills, but in the worst-case scenario, I’d have settled for a regular skill, even if it couldn’t grow.
Anyway, in this particular case, it was crucial just to possess the skill.
I stuffed the fur I obtained from the Fortune Squirrel and the nuts it stored in its cheek pouches into an already packed backpack and moved on.
This time, I had brought two backpacks with me.
One of them contained a large supply of poison smoke bombs that I purchased using almost all my savings. Since I’ve been using them during every hunt, it’s considerably lighter now.
By the way, since I kill the squirrels using poison, their meat gets contaminated. The bones and teeth can only be used as crafting materials, and since they sell for a low price, I leave them behind. The only valuable things are the fur, magic stones, and nuts. Every time I acquire a magic stone, I hack it and crush it.
“I wish I could be more efficient…”
It’s difficult—I muttered to myself but quickly shook my head.
If I had the Appraisal skill, I could kill only the squirrels with the desired skills and acquire them from their magic stones. Unfortunately, the Appraisal skill is buried deep in the skill tree of the Hacker class.
I’ve leveled up by continuously defeating Fortune Squirrels with poison smoke bombs and earned some skill points, but I still haven’t unlocked it.
That said, even though I have the points, I wasn’t planning on acquiring Appraisal.
For someone with Magic Stone Hack like me, it’s faster to kill a monster with Appraisal and steal the skill than to allocate points to a branch of the skill tree that has Appraisal.
Though, the chances of encountering a monster with Appraisal are pretty low.
(The real issue is my low proficiency in Magic Stone Hack.)
When I try to acquire skills from magic stones using Magic Stone Hack, skills like ????? Success Rate: 54%, ?? Success Rate: 23%, ???? Success Rate: 11% appear in my mind. I can choose one of these to obtain.
Since I know which skill I’m aiming for, I choose based on the character count of the skills I acquired back when I played the game, but I often end up with duds like Ferocious Squirrel Bite.
“Do I really need Appraisal after all? But then again, sometimes Goblin Magicians have it.”
Humanoid monsters like goblins and kobolds often have a variety of skills, useful or not.
While that randomness is kind of like a lottery and fun in its way, it makes goblins a bad choice for specifically aiming for Appraisal due to their sheer variety of skills.
(If I want a sure shot, going into a dungeon might be better… but that would defeat the purpose.)
What I want is a skill from the Fortune Squirrel, so going into a dungeon would make all my efforts up to this point meaningless.
Of course, if I manage to get the squirrel skill I’m aiming for, I might consider running a goblin marathon to get Appraisal. But first, I need to focus on the squirrels.
“I guess I’ll have to take it easy and be patient. Well, good thing I read that plant encyclopedia at the guild.”
The nuts I obtained from the squirrels usually require the Plant Appraisal or Plant Knowledge skills possessed by Hunters or Druids to be identified, but I had studied the guild’s plant encyclopedia thoroughly beforehand.
Feeling a little hungry and wanting to lighten my load, I ate some of the nuts I identified from the plant encyclopedia as edible. I washed them down with some sparkling water I conjured using my Life Magic—a carbonation spell I developed myself.
While I was doing that, my Exploration skill, part of the Adventurer skill set, detected an enemy.
“Hmm… Damn it, goblins. Come on, luck, do your job!”
I’ve been hunting squirrels to boost my Luck stat, and several nuts that increase Luck have dropped, which I’ve eaten. However, just like in the game, Luck doesn’t seem to affect monster encounters.
As I walked through the forest searching for squirrels, a group of goblins suddenly ambushed me from between the trees.
The green-skinned creatures, sneering as they spotted their human prey, gripped rusty daggers and swords.
(Goblins from the forest’s middle layer, huh?)
Even though I’ve killed countless Wall Snails and squirrels, they’re juveniles and small animals, so the experience points I gained weren’t significant, and my level isn’t that high.
To make matters worse, my current classes are Bounty Hunter and Hacker, which allocate much of my combat power to support abilities rather than direct fighting skills.
In a straight comparison, my combat ability should be a head lower than other classes at the same level.
“I’ll only become truly strong when I unlock my second subclass or gain some high-powered physical enhancement skills…”
About a dozen goblins charged at me. If a regular adventurer at my level encountered this many solo, they’d be killed in an instant.
“Skill My Set—‘Combat’!”
But I’m different.
With a smirk, I sneered at the oncoming horde of goblins, my prey.
