Leap Slash

Most of the Melee Weapons skills were things even I was seeing for the first time. The ability itself was the most basic one in Farming World, but the skills it handed out changed with rank, the grades of those skills changed, and the ones it recommended changed with the weapon in your hand. An SSS+ rank ability was a first for me, so it was only natural that the effects would differ even when the names stayed the same.

But this far?

"This is basically a movement skill, isn't it?"

The original Leap Slash is not that kind of skill. Taken literally, the mechanism is to leap—using your agility as a springboard to close a short gap and swing the sword. In a way, it was hard to even say the two were different. The description on the SSS+ rank Leap Slash had been written in those same terms.

The numbers were the problem.

"A hundred meters...?"

I may have come up through the humanities, but I'd taken Newton's line—that speed is relative—into my body through fights with monsters. When you're the one standing still and something charges without warning, the attack arrives faster than the brain can register, and there is no dealing with it. So Leap Slash amounts to a kind of acceleration skill. That is the whole of it. Wanting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anything more would be the strange part. It is the most basic skill under Melee Weapons, and the simple fact that you can land a fast first strike on a monster is already enough for it to fulfill its role as an active skill.

The SSS+ rank version, though, carried two effects beyond that. Setting aside that the basic leap could practically be used for travel, what I truly liked was the extra attack effect scaled to Agility and Strength. A skill for crossing ground and a skill for killing, both at once.

"Five mana a cast isn't bad, either."

I currently held 50 mana, so I could use it ten times in all. In this game, mana is an extremely important resource. It wasn't a game anymore—it was reality—but this system, tied into the Hunter System, still recovered 20 percent of your mana per minute. Stand still, and even if you'd emptied the tank, you were back to full in five minutes. In other words, how well you spent that opening 100 percent was the so-called skill that decided whether you could keep firing active skills and sustain a long fight. In Farming World exploration, a user's mana management was counted as a critical factor.

Of course, there was no need to worry if that particular skill ran low. Farming World isn't that kind of skill-check game, so mana management isn't the only thing that counts—you can make up for a weak hand at it by raising other skills instead. Namely, by increasing your total mana pool. Equip items. Learn an ability and raise mana through a skill. Boost your recovery. In the end, with regen fixed at 20 percent a minute, if you don't think you can manage the resource, you just inflate the pool until you can spend it like water and still not run dry.

"It refills by ten a minute, so that's twice a minute..."

For a D-rank Magic stat, the pool seemed a little generously rated, and yet something still felt lacking. If I could break two hundred meters a minute, it would be perfect as a movement skill—but maybe my standards had climbed too high. Either way, I wanted to try it, so I activated the skill.

"Fuck, that is expensive..."

I didn't feel like it was a waste. Playing Farming World had taught me that if you could buy a skill with points—not even SSS+, even an SS+ rank skill—you bought it, no questions asked. And this kind of performance for a mere ten points? I knew all too well this was something to accept with gratitude. Leap Slash (SSS+) cost only ten Farming Points because I already held the SSS+ rank Melee Weapons ability required to learn it. The same reason a six-million-dollar luxury apartment lets you use the building's community center at a price that suddenly looks cheap.

Even so, I couldn't help the feeling of hard cash flying out the window as those ten saved points vanished. The ability and the skill differed only in rank and wore similar names, so the comparison came whether I wanted it or not. What did the original even cost...

"Might as well try it."

A shame was a shame. The moment the second SSS+ rank skill of my life—and my first active SSS+ skill—settled into the skill window, the corners of my mouth started twitching upward.

How was an active skill supposed to be used? I took the wooden sword in hand and dropped into a slight crouch. I wasn't hesitating because I didn't know how to activate it. This place ran on a system like Farming World, but it was reality. What I wanted to know was whether I could fire the skill by will alone, without barking a command like "Leap Slash!"—the way Master of Melee Weapons simply took hold the moment I swung a blade, passive as breathing.

I loaded my coiled legs and kicked off, nothing in my head but the thought of shooting forward like a released spring. Fwip—!

"Whoa!"

Shk-shk-shk— The heart of Leap Slash is swinging the sword rapidly as you leap. With my current Agility I was supposed to manage five swings during the leap, so I tried to swing fast. In an instant the world around me stretched, then changed.

"Whoa. Shit..."

I nearly ate dirt. It wasn't so much that I couldn't handle the speed as that the first taste of it threw me, and I couldn't keep my body in line. That's why I only managed three swings. When I looked back, Ruru—who had been right there with me—was nowhere in sight, and the cottage had shrunk to a speck. I had leaped without a second thought and covered a hundred meters.

"This is actually insane."

Mana had dropped by five, of course, and there was no fatigue, no backlash, nothing at all.

"This rules."

Now that I'd actually used an active skill, I thought I understood. I was closing in on day six—a character whose body had become a reality I had to accept—and until this moment I hadn't really felt that any of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was all that different from Farming World. You could say the virtual reality had simply been that well made where realism was concerned. But the instant the skill fired, I knew. The feeling itself was different. From the dopamine of doing this with my own body, all the way through the process of adapting to the skill, I could tell the gap between merely using a skill and truly wielding it would open far wider than it ever had in the game. And that only made it more fun.

"Let's go!"

"Haaah... Master! All of a sudden, how did you—"

"Hold on tight."

I snatched her out of the air as she hurried over, burned through the rest of my mana, and skipped the distance in leaps of Leap Slash.

"Kyaaaaaah!"

Her scream—pure thrill-ride terror—stretched thin and rang in my ears every time the skill went off.

A person ought to live wisely.

Five minutes on foot, even at a brisk pace, would get me maybe five or six hundred meters. Walk those five minutes and spend the mana recovered along the way, and a kilometer in five minutes was possible. I wasn't even cutting through the sprawling weeds as I went, so my speed had no reason to drop. Set the direction right, and three kilometers was nothing—coverable in under fifteen minutes.

"Ah! It's here, Master!"

That was the theory. Ruru knew the direction only in the vaguest terms, and the sewer was a foggy memory, so we spent close to an hour taking to the air nearby before we pinned the entrance down again. Even so, it was far better than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the time I would have lost if I'd been thinking of walking the whole way, and I was glad of the savings.

The sewer mouth was a fairly large hole. The map was huge, so the underground channels connected to it probably ran just as large. Nothing sealed the entrance the way a real sewer grate would, either. Wander past at night, miss your footing, and you'd drop straight in—die of a broken ankle, or die of a broken neck. One of the two.

"Uegh. Master. The smell is too much."

She wasn't wrong. The moment I closed on the entrance, the stench stabbed up my nose hard enough to drag a curse out of me. Sewers are content you more or less have to clear in Farming World, which is why plenty of people skip them outright over the smell—and why even the mods that erase sewer stench are surprisingly popular. In my heart I wanted to install one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠myself, but effects on this map weren't something I could tack on just because I felt like it.

"You're not gonna die. Knock it off. Let's go."

"M-me too? Can't I just stay here? I'm really weak to smells, Master. Hing... kyaaah!"

I ignored Ruru's bullshit without a second thought, snatched her up again, and closed my hand around her. Flap those wings and thrash all she liked—what was she going to do in the grip of S-rank Strength, Agility, and Endurance? Ancient fairy or not, a fairy who hadn't grown was just a Rank 1 Blabbermouth, hovering at my side and running her mouth.

"Here we go."

"Uweeeegh! I'm really going to throw uuuup! Kyaaaaaah!"

A massive sinkhole with no floor in sight. I jumped, Ruru in hand, and a message rose to meet me.