A hand went around the leather-wrapped hilt.

An arm pulled a weapon slowly from its sheath.

The weapon slowly emerged, the blade a black color that looked like it devoured the light and patterns engraved on the blade both making it look more like a work of art than a dangerous weapon.

And finally, a beat began in its wielder's head, until the holder of the sword burst out in song.

"I believe in miracles.. where you from, you sexy thing?"

In an off-key tone borne from exhaustion, sleep deprivation and madness from having to hunt all those monsters just for the tomes to raise his statistics, Jake Smithson was belting out the tune of the one who has done very good work and has earned a very good prize.

"Where did you come from, baby? How did you know I needed you?"

His satisfaction was such that he simply could not keep a sword he'd battled countless monsters for in his inventory, storing it in his back on a sheath it conveniently came with.

And every now and then, he'd simply draw the weapon and look at it.. and then burst into song once more.

"I'm too sexy for my shirt. Too sexy, it hurts."

Jake smiled as he finished going down the mountain, his happiness at such a level that he didn't notice that he was talking to himself – out loud.

"People are going to want to hook up with me now.. for monster hunting parties. Whereas before, no matter how I look at it, it's the lack of a badass weapon's fault I'm not popular.. well consider that meme dead and gone!"

It was only after he had finished his descent from Mount Mushin and was making his way back to Brino that he remembered that the package also contained another item.

He promptly opened his inventory, navigated to where he stashed his unread tomes, and stopped at the one he needed to use, now that he had the strength to do so.

[Would you like to acquire the Great Sword Mastery skill?]

'Oh, hell yeah.'

As soon as the effects of the book poured over him, Jake grinned.

His first thoughts were obvious.

'Status window.'

[Name: Jake Smithson

Level: 1

Class: Shopping Addict

Basic Stats:

Strength: 40

Agility: 14

Intelligence: 14

Mana: 2

Physical Defense: 4

Magic Defense: 3

Luck: 2

Skills:

Shopping (Awakening Store Beta access, Black Label access)

Great Sword Mastery Lv.1]

"I do hope that all this effort helps me look cool, too. Swinging a bat works, but it doesn't look as appealing as a sword does."

Yet, as he continued back home and took a few practice stances and swings with the Swiftstone, he found out that the skill he learned was only to wield it more efficiently.

Something felt off, though.

Like, the moment he held it out in a stance, it felt lighter than the bat he used to wield, and his body seemed to move to the proper place before taking a practice swing.

He gripped the hilt tight with both hands and swung.

Sometimes he swung the bat too hard and ended up spinning.

This was not the case here, as the Swiftstone became a black blur as it cut through the air, a deep whoosh following through.

'That was pretty good.

When it comes to wielding this sword, I have to anticipate attacks properly and attack accordingly. Since even changing my stance can alert enemies on what attack I'll use, I will have to vary the intensity of my swings to bait out counterattacks and then strike hard to overwhelm their guard – wait, did reading that book also show me how to think like a swordsman or something?'

Jake was surprised at his thoughts taking a turn into the subtleties of wielding a two-handed sword.

Before this, the only bladed items he was acquainted with were kitchen knives, but now, though.. it felt strange to him.

He wore a very self-satisfied smile as he re-sheathed his weapon.

Rather feeling odd with the situation, he was full of self-satisfaction.

Furthermore, like a typical shopping addict, he justified himself with shopping through the incident.

'And this is what you get when you buy a lot of stuff. Everyone tells me I don't save for the future.

But now.. that doesn't matter anymore, does it?'

'Anyway, level 1?' Jake asked himself as he looked through the status screen in detail again. 'Does this mean I can level this skill up and get better at it?

If I can, the question now becomes how do I do it? Use the skill a lot, hunt a lot of monsters.. or both?'

It took him a moment to make his decision.

'Who cares. It doesn't mean much if I don't gain points from this. Making bank is what really matters.

On to the next challenge, and more points for me.'

"After grinding all night, I'm going to window-shop all day, and no one's going to stop me."

He made up his mind halfway back to Brino, and began the rest of the journey back to town.

Even though he has already acquired himself a gift through shopping, he was yet insisting to get another one.

It was an hour's walk, but being able to rest and recover within the town's limits was also important.

Half an hour later, the gates of Nohas loomed before him.

Not only that, something else was waiting.

A group of Awakeners were getting ready to sally forth when their leader saw him.

"Have you seen Seamus?" he asked. "A knight with armor like mine, has a warhammer as well?"

***

Jake had a look of surprise as the knight in charge walked up to him, asking the question. The others were looking at him and exchanging whispers of their own, which he could barely make out.

"Sera went along with Seamus... "

"Where are they all now? Were you not with them?" the knight asked again, and Jake shook his head.

"I think they followed you to where you were going, Jake," another Awakener, this time wearing wizard robes and carrying a staff, asked. "Did you not see them?"

The knight turned his head to the wizard and nodded. "They left town since yesterday and there's no sign of them."

"They haven't come back yet?" Jake asked, a trickle of cold sweat going down his back.

'I stayed on the mountain and even slept for an hour or two in a cave while grinding for all those strength books.. but why haven't they returned? I didn't see them on the way back, either.'

Hunting was a very stamina-consuming activity, and one would have to take breaks if they wanted to hunt all day – even Jake had to take a few hours off while hunting at night.

'Could they have done the same? Set up camp somewhere?

But if they did, surely they would be returning now.

Or had they run into some sort of unknown enemy?'

In Jake's case, he didn't think of hunting down monsters as an act of survival; he thought of it as simple labor. He did it for the points, he did it to buy the things he wanted – simple as that.

Just like how working at an office all day gets you a paycheck every 15th and 30th of the month, to Jake, for every monster defeated, the points he gained would go into the things he wanted to buy from the Awakening Store.

He had bought enough items to improve his stats that all he had to do was swing his bat mechanically at an enemy, take the occasional hit, and after it didn't get up anymore, the points would start flowing into his Awakening Store account.

And seeing his point total progress towards the cost of the items he wanted served to give him a second, third, and even fourth wind when hunting monsters, enough that he thought that sleep was for the weak.

'I thought they'd return to town as soon as they took care of that bird?' Jake thought, forgetting that not everyone was like him.

'Are they shopping around somewhere too? If they had the same class as I did, that might have been the case.. but they're not. If they were, then they wouldn't have asked me about how to get stronger.'

The Awakeners staring at him made him even more uncomfortable.

'Why haven't they returned yet? Seamus and his party were struggling with just a single vulture. But hunting them overnight? Seamus was the type of Awakener who only cared about saving his own skin. I saw this when we were battling the goblin scouts and the Werecrocodile.

Someone like him wouldn't be investing his time hunting monsters for an extended period of time.

So what in the world is going on right now?'

Jake's thoughts were interrupted when someone else spoke up.

"Yes, I haven't heard anything from them yet. They've been gone overnight, and we both know how exhausting hunting itself is. I'm sure they aren't hunting monsters for 10 consecutive hours. Have you even seen them out there?"

Jake gave a hesitant nod, and thought about Seamus. Despite his not-so-pleasant encounters with the knight, he knew that Seamus was someone who established order within the Awakeners gathered in Nohas.

He and the members of his guild helped out Awakeners, kept the peace, assisted the Awakeners who weren't used to the setting.

To Jake, it wasn't a surprise to him that a lot of lower-leveled Awakeners looked up to him and his entourage.. and were now concerned about his well-being.

"I did see them for a bit," Jake said, speaking carefully, "while I was hunting. But that was late afternoon, yesterday."

He tried to keep his body language as neutral as possible as more ominous thoughts passed through his head.

'Could the Iron-Beak Eagle have taken all of them out? Unlikely. One bird isn't strong enough to take out six Awakeners.

They're some of the stronger Awakeners here in Nohas, they keep the peace here. And if they got ganged up on, maybe one or several of them could escape.

Or it was just bad luck, period.'

"You saw them? Do you think you can guide us there? We have been worried since last night," a lower-leveled magic user – a girl clutching a staff twice her height – said.

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"It would help if you went with us," the wizard added. "We know Seamus went with his entourage and there is no news of them yet."

"That's right, it was six of them," the knight confirmed.

"All right," Jake answered without a moment's hesitation. "I'll guide you there."

Though he didn't like Seamus and his entourage, he didn't hate them enough to just let them die.

He left them to the vulture because he knew that they were good enough to defeat it without his help.

"Come on, let's go," the knight said, and the party ventured forth from Nohas to Mount Mushin, with Jake leading the way.

During the journey, the bad feeling Jake had ever since he saw the adventuring party at the gates of Nohas only worsened.

'Man, I wanted that bird to knock Seamus down a few pegs, not nearly slice off his guild mate's arm.'

Jake was hoping to see them alive upon reaching the mountain, but the worsening feeling in Jake's gut told him otherwise.

'I have a bad feeling about this.'

***

But the bad feeling wasn't just in Jake's mind – it was also about turning his back on them.

'Should I have helped them? Last I saw of them was Seamus crying out for help.

And I turned my back on them. Because I knew they were strong enough. That they would pull through. That one of those birds wouldn't take them all out. Oh, who am I kidding! This is ridiculous. They were in the fight with the Werecrocodile with me, of course they can handle it.'

It was with this thought that Jake led them to the base of the mountain.

"Welcome to Mount Mushin," Jake announced. "Home of the Iron-Beak Eagle."

He motioned them over to a spot where there were old bloodstains, tattered feathers and skid marks.

"This is the place where I saw Seamus and his group last."

"Thank you," the knight leading the search party said. "Okay, we're going to comb the base of the mountain together! Everyone form up, like what Seamus tells you!"

"Roger!" the search party answered, and Jake's thought that they weren't weak enough to die to just one of those birds strengthened.

Because they were going as an entire group, the search party moved very slowly.

Any Iron-Beak Eagles that appeared was taken care of by Jake, who made sure that the search would be uninterrupted by monster attacks.

Thanks to his newly-acquired weapon and skill, he didn't have trouble picking off the giant birds who were thinking about attacking the search party, and after a few failed attacks, the birds left them alone.

They had already gone to the place where Jake saw Seamus, but there was no trace of the knight or his entourage to be seen.

"Maybe they went to a spot that had monsters that were easier to hunt than these birds?" Jake asked, and the knight heading the party agreed.

With that, the search party moved on, looking in the areas with less or with easier monsters to hunt. They did run into some Iron-Beak Eagles here and there, but Jake's presence ensured that they were nothing more than annoyances to the search party.

'Come to think of it,' Jake thought, 'they might have thought that this place was too difficult for them and moved on elsewhere.. I was worried for nothing.'

It was a reasonable guess, but a few moments later, his guess would be proven wrong in the worst manner possible.

A scream of consternation cut into the base of the mountain, and on cue, several Eagles dove in, searching for the source.

They never made it due to Jake showing up and carving them up with his sword.

By the time the last Eagle crashed to the ground with its head and wings chopped off, Jake was already sprinting to the source of the scream, anxiety gripping his heart like a vice.

There were no monsters in his way, so he didn't take that long to run to the source of the sound, his heart pounding like a jackhammer as he returned to the search party.

He arrived to see the magic user with the large staff collapsed onto the ground, blank eyes pouring tears staring dead ahead.

"What's happening? What's wr-" Jake tried to ask, but several gasps interrupted him.

He turned to the sound only to see the rest of the search party, their faces aghast at seeing the same thing the magic user did.

And as soon as he turned towards what they were seeing, Jake Smithson's face immediately turned white: it was a ghastly sight that met his eyes as soon as he took in the scene.

"What the fuck is going on?" Jake asked, as he saw the corpses of Seamus and his entourage scattered around a clearing not too far from the base of the mountain.