Summoner’s Ascent – A Power Leveling Isekai Litrpg - Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Due to the sheer lack of monsters he could find, Faeran had to get a little creative.

On the way to his destination in the forest, he paused beside a tree. Specifically, his eyes were on a rather large rock sitting beside it.

"A heave!" he crouched down, placing both hands on the rock and pushed, "And a ho baby!"

With a grunt, he pushed the rock aside to reveal a small hole in the ground. Something he'd carved out a few months back with his own two hands to stow away things he didn't want others, like Sister Maria back at the orphanage, to see.

They could bring up rather awkward questions.

Reaching down into the hole, Faeran quickly grabbed all he was looking for and lifted them out of the hole.

A crude knife formed using a thick, carved branch as a handle, with a blade of sharpened rock, tied tightly together with vines. And something that looked just like the knife, but was quite a bit larger, the handle more akin to a long staff and the blade a larger, sharpened rock head.

A very crudely formed spear.

One of many, in fact.

"I think I've got like ten in there now." Faeran chuckled, setting both crude weapons aside for a moment before pushing the rock back over the hole to hide it from view.

He didn't want anybody that passed by to discover his stash by chance.

If there was one thing to be thankful about his previous parents' attempts to curry favor and clout using him, it was that they had forced him into all manner of clubs and such growing up to make connections.

From sports and martial arts clubs, to Boy Scouts and even recently – for a few months before he ended up here – the army cadets.

He'd learned a few decent, handy dandy survival skills like how to make crude equipment in the process and it was hella useful.

In fact, these common, mundane skills were one of the reasons why he could even pursue the plans he had currently.

Though it was a hell of a lot of work.

"Nobles suck ass," the boy griped to himself to alleviate his annoyance while he picked up his knife and spear once more.

He was griping both about his former parents and maybe a little bit about the nobles here as well. Their benefits didn't just end at their inborn privileges after all, but even their wealth.

For instance, you wouldn't find a noble child going out to kill monsters for experience to level up. Rather, they would just pay adventurers to beat down and capture monsters then bring them back to allow the noble children to get the last strike in and gain most of the experience points.

It was why in the game at the noble academy, the average noble varied in level between five and ten. Without ever having to really put in any work themselves.

Granted, it was noted in the lore of the game world that despite their power most of them couldn't fight for shit.

Shaking his head, Faeran continued on, making his way to his destination.

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It only took a few more minutes for him to arrive and Faeran took the time to just stand there for a moment and breathe in deeply, before exhaling a moment later, taking in the view.

Before him, a large, glistening crystal blue lake swayed gently under the sunlight.

It had nothing on Loch Ness, but it was nonetheless a beautiful sight. It was the kind of place he'd love to visit with some friends on a hot summer day like today and swim.

Which reminded him: "Need to remember to get at least a half hour of swimming in.”

Cardio was important after all. Swimming and running were his main ways of training his cardiovascular system.

For him, currently, every single stat point he could scrounge up was important to his overall growth later on.

And speaking of stat points –

Faeran cast his gaze across the lake, looking at each of the four sides, and nodded to himself when he found what he was looking for. Nothing had gone wrong.

At each side of the lake, there was a rather large rock with a vine wrapped around it trailing into the water.

His own doing.

Walking over to the closest of the four rocks, Faeran placed his crude knife and spear on the ground before beginning to unravel the vine tied tightly around the rock.

Then, once it was loose, he grit his teeth and began pulling while taking steps backwards.

It took over ten steps before what he was pulling reached the surface, revealing a crude net woven from dozens of vines.

A crudely woven net … containing fish inside.

"There we go." Faeran grinned.

That was his plan for leveling up for now. After all, every single living being gave experience.

That included fish.

And fish tended to breed oh so fast, especially in a lake as large as this one.

As it turned out, after going around the large lake and hauling up the other three vine nets he'd cast into it –

He'd gathered quite the haul.

"Roughly … twenty nine in total I think," Faeran grinned as he stood over the four vine nets and counted his catches.

That was a lot more than usual. On average, he tended to get about ten to fifteen a day. This was more or less double the usual amount.

Well, no point wasting time. There was still a lot he had to do today and it was going to take longer now that he'd gotten so many.

Retrieving his knife, Faeran crouched over the vine nets and, one by one, began to stab the knife into the heads of each fish, piercing their brain as precisely as possible and ending their lives.

On the twenty-first kill, a shudder ran up Faeran's back, a rushing feeling swept through his veins and all of a sudden, the boy found himself full of energy!

His eyes widened. "Did I …?" Before the thought had even finished, he shook his head and outright commanded, "Status!"

And a moment later his status plate appeared in his vision.

Name: Faeran Odhar

Level: 2

Class: -

Blessing: -

Affinity: -

MP: 100/100

Strength: 4

Endurance: 5

Durability: 4

Agility: 4

Status Points: 5

Skills:

Faeran couldn't help but grin widely before laughing and whooping, punching his fist into the air in celebration, "Oh yeah – oh shit!" he yelped and jumped back.

His knife pierced through the air where his head was a moment ago.

He had completely forgotten about the knife in his hand and let it go by accident in his celebration.

Still, even that little near death experience wasn't enough to cow his excitement.

Finally, finally, finally!

After coming out here every day for over three months since he came up with this idea, he'd finally risen a level!

He could feel a noticeable increase in his body, a distinct increase in strength even now. And it was tempting, oh so tempting to put it all in his physical abilities.

It would speed up his plans immensely if he got physically strong enough for them quicker.

But, he'd already planned out the build he would gear his stats towards in advance.

He focused on the status plate and the five stat points he had to spend and mentally directed one each into Strength, Durability and Agility to raise them all up to five and directed the last two into his Magic Power.

It was surprisingly easy to do. Just a focused thought like how he called upon his status plate and it was done.

A rush, just like the one that occurred when he leveled up, ran through his body and made him give a shaky gasp of euphoria.

It was an amazing feeling.

The sense of his strength rising with just a thought. Too much of that at once and it may even be addictive!

"Level up junkie." He couldn't help but laugh at the thought.

Still, as he looked over his status plate, he couldn't help but find it much nicer to look at now.

Name: Faeran Odhar

Level: 2

Class: -

Blessing: -

Affinity: -

MP: 300/300

Strength: 5

Endurance: 5

Durability: 5

Agility: 5

Status Points: 0

Skills:

Though it was definitely disappointing to see his status points reduced to zero once more. It would take months, even more effort than he'd already spent, to raise his level again.

"At this rate, it's gonna take me a few years before I can get my class." The boy clicked his tongue, running his hand through his short, messy black hair.

He wanted his physical stats to reach at least between twelve and fifteen before he made the attempt. While the item he needed alongside his class was located in a dungeon, it wasn’t a high level one and more of another hidden one. He would still have to be cautious however, he was going to be conquering that dungeon alone.

He couldn't risk the item he needed being stolen, after all.

And while he could get there faster if he didn't invest any of his stat points in his magic power, he needed to invest at least some for the maximum benefit once he got the class he wanted.

The class he'd chosen to go with was Summoner.

As far as stats went, the Summoner class wasn't all that great. It gave an extra stat point in Magic Power and Agility upon leveling up, but that was it.

To be honest, it was actually a fairly weak class on its own. In game, it was used more for players who wanted to basically have a bunch of pets rather than anything else.

The main ability of the Summoner class was that it provided a sub-space inside the user's soul, where they could not only store items, but also the beings they … enslaved.

To be exact, a Summoner could only make a contract with beings they killed and whose souls they forced to submit.

It did have a small little equalizer. Because it was a magic based class, though considered the weakest magically, it had the passive benefit of a fifty percent increase in Magic Power and its recovery rate.

All in all though, not a typical build Faeran or anyone that wanted to be the strongest around would pick.

… Yet it had one single thing that set it apart from other classes and could allow it to go beyond them depending on how it was used.

A Summoner had the one time ability to choose one of the souls they'd subjugated and fuse with it. They would gain not only a large portion of the target's stats but also their skills and even magic affinity.

On top of that, the Summoner could even take on a transformation based on the chosen summon, which when used would enhance the user's stats. .

And Faeran had the perfect target in mind.

A lesser demon, one of the demonic foot soldiers created by the archdemons as a mockery of the gods and their enforcers.

The Demon Angelo.

There was one trapped in a dungeon, sealed for thousands of years and weakened horribly.

The title of lesser demon would make a typical person overlook it. But in actuality, even the strongest of nobles around in the world currently like the Queen of Levia would struggle to defeat one alone if they were at full strength.

Sad as it was to acknowledge, demons were just higher up on the food chain than humans as a species. And thousands of years had passed since they were sealed away back in hell, so even the blood of demons the nobles had inherited had diluted and weakened over time.

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Putting his thoughts to the wayside, Faeran got back to finishing up his work. And by that, he meant killing the rest of the fish he'd managed to wrangle.

Something odd occurred in the process though as he went about finishing them off.

"What the …" Faeran paused and blinked, staring down at the fish he'd just finished killing.

As soon as his knife entered its brain and it ceased its flopping, its body glowed with a deep blue light.

And it was only getting brighter.

Only, it suddenly died.

And sitting beside the fish … was a bronze coloured coin.

"… Huh," Faeran stared at it blankly, unsure how to react.

That was a skill token.

His first skill token was from a fish? He didn't even know they were capable of giving them.

Well, he supposed he had killed thousands of them already, so he was bound to get one at some point, and as expected of a fish it was the lowest tier of skill.

Skill tokens came in four varieties: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Bronze being the worst and platinum the best.

Ironically, or perhaps by design, this was how the coins of the world's currency worked as well.

I could sell it, he thought for a moment, before dismissing it. While he could make a nice tidy little sum for a skill token, he was still a kid that could be robbed easily.

And beyond that, no matter how weak, he needed every little advantage he could get his hands on at the moment.

With that thought in mind, Faeran reached down and picked up the bronze token.