Across the Trifer continent, there existed just 4 desert forests, and many nations take regular care to never let del trees grow uncontrolled as it would ruin great stretches of farmland or nature.
So then, out of a whole continent, the best place for them to go was this fortress city with a horribly dry forest nearby? Nowhere else in a two month journey would’ve been nicer to stay in and provide an equal selection of manuals and places to hunt?
Of course not. They discussed a few possibilities.
Fragheim won because it wasn’t very popular amongst the elves, giving them an easier time as they received free lodging. But more importantly, Arisil is a particularly great desert because the dragons took note of it. And as with all places the dragons took note of, it meant that something valuable that they wanted grew here. In fact, fifteen such items existed.
Icy and the group desired four of them to enhance their growth.
The one that they already obtained multiple of were called della bananas, and these grew on uncommon mutated del trees. A tree can produce several bunches every year, going from producing a tiny bud to the full bunch in merely three days. So, the moment they had located a single bundle, the group camped for the night to grab it upon ripening.
Besides tasting wonderfully sweet and falling to a fine paste from the slight abrasion, della bananas were a natural heat-resisting product. When utilised in certain potions, it was easy to survive in magma without the use of mana, going so far as to withstand weaker alchemical flames as well.
Incredibly cheap potions given the ridiculous degree of fire resistance. In a way, Icy wanted them most to overcome his gravest weakness, but it helped the whole group immensely.
One of the other items was a special snake in the forest with a venom that Mala would need. Imbibing it slightly increased mana control and increased the transformation rate of the body, but it also literally poisoned them. She’d have to take it in careful quantities.
The third was just a rare parasite which grew off the del trees, ingesting flowers on its vines which slightly raised the durability of a mind. This is not the mind palace, but rather the body’s avatar inside the mental space.
And lastly, saving the best for last, was the Draconic pillar.
These things were nearly impossible to come across. At most a dozen existed across the third world, and the dragons collectively agreed on never directly revealing where all the pillars are. To find the locations, you had to read through books on every location and hope that they contained the pillars. In other words, it was pure luck that of the viable places they considered near Aphtail, he carefully read the descriptions for this forest and found out about the pillar.
Dragons are hardly stupid enough to just leave pillars covered in Draconic about the world. They’d all be discovered in a few weeks, except in those stupidly dangerous places.
Instead, the pillars exist in unique sub-planes that can only be accessed through a Draconic spell.
And from there… Well, it wasn’t worth getting too deep into it unless the location of the pillar was found. He already learnt the spell, so where to look remained the only question.
For today, Raccelline and him only were game to check out his new eyes, and from there, they hunted a few snakes beneath the sands quite easily. Many of them were too stupid to tell when an opponent had found them prior to an attack initiating, at which point pretty much all of them in a thirty metre radius dashed through the fine sand.
He used a common technique for the pair this time round, casting a 35 word spell called Sand Jet, and then letting Raccelline cut the snake in two quite casually.
The spell simply pushed a pillar of sand up into the air with incredible force, and from there, it was a breeze for the powerful child to accurately cut a falling object. These days she tried to just cut off its head as that left most of its body intact, and therefore most of the valuable parts. They repeated this three times on different unintelligent snakes, but from the start, problems could be seen in this plan.
Raccelline barely cut through the snake’s head, slicing its brain in two. Its constant writhing and movement made a precise cut extremely hard to make, and while she always hit the snakes, death was not guaranteed.
On the second and third ones, she missed its vitals and merely lopped the two snakes into halves. Icy, in his merged state, approached them each time, and crushed their head with a single aura-empowered chomp. Killing enemies above or equal to your level really was the only reasonable way to level up.
[Killed Level 36 Creeping fear snake! Received 2% EXP
Killed Level 37 Idyllic ending snake! Received 3% EXP]
After hunting with Raccelline so much here, things below level 40 just didn’t give anywhere near enough.
Name
Icryladrom (Icy)
Title
Nexus Aid Bonus III
Complete Awakening
Magic Primary I
Species
Dragon
Bloodline
All-sight Ice-cream
HP
100%
MP
100%
Level
40
EXP
22%
Unallocated Stat Points: 40
Strength
0
Luck
0
Agility
10
Growth
15
Magic
50
Mutation Rate
5
He really needed to spend those points soon… But where to use them was really a tough question. Obviously, Agility and Mutation Rate interested him by far the most. And technically speaking, it was considered efficient to throw 20 points into Luck, although due to the Nexus Aid Bonus, he technically only needed 13 points to achieve that same effect.
While he had actually unlocked that all-important third title slot as well, he didn’t actually know what to replace Complete Awakening with when in battle. Obviously the mediocre Spellcaster titles which reduced mana cost for an equal tier spell existed… But it was a pain to select appropriate spells for that.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
With all three snakes dead, and his ability adequately tested, they returned to Fragheim.
“You two get anything good this time round?” At the Fortress city’s gates, they were stopped by one of the guards for a quick question. Many of the elven soldiers on gate duty knew of the two, and by now, frequently chatted with them as near-daily trips out the forest garnered a lot of interest.
Especially since Raccelline was a child that shouldn’t have an experience with techniques, so where exactly her power came from only interested them more.
He replied in a generic elven tongue, “Just a few snakes, I just tested a new ability to see if those things appeared.” Anyone who frequented these forests knew precisely what he meant with the enunciation.
“Don’t play about. Was it any good? Worthwhile evolution?” Developing innate abilities outside evolutions was extremely rare, so the instant he mentioned, they picked up on it.
“Things went well, doubt my group will have any problems for a long time,” he answered honestly. Building a fair rapport with the guards mattered immensely when they planned on staying here for quite a while, and telling them about an ability is hardly giving away secrets.
They both clicked their tongues when he confirmed the ability.
“I would've loved you on my team back in my days. Ah, also, the forest is closed off three months from now if you haven’t heard. Some big shot from the empire is personally coming here, they’ve been making a pass through a ton of random places the past year. Happens every few now and then.” The Mithril rank guard kindly gave over some recent news while they passed, Icy’s eyes closed slightly in concern but relaxed soon after.
“Thank you for the information, I’ll make sure to pass it on.” Raccelline waved the elven guards off and he walked back to the house once more.
Most nations didn’t particularly like the elven empire for obvious reasons, and so smaller nobles or officials rarely passed through, but those at the top did occasionally take continent-wide trips. But to come to a miniscule Fortress city with little strategic importance?
And travelling to random places, seemed too much of a coincidence.
In the ideal circumstance, the bigshot was merely someone checking on the dragon pillars. Items of such value to dragons naturally needed some maintenance, and it was an easy way to stay in good relations with the species’ higher-ups as a whole. But there was also a possibility that the elf searched for something else…
And so long as that thing wasn’t either of the two relaxing in the sitting room of a house, there was nothing to worry about, surely?
* * *
“Icy, this is a Sage, seriously! When did you become the slow one?” Later that evening, when everyone returned, he shared the news with the group with which a few already knew of the forest closing. It wasn’t a major secret, but for now, only a few select individuals heard of it.
Mala rolled her eyes and replied, “No need to be patronising, Jaren. Maybe it just seems natural for someone of that level to take their time.”
He couldn’t exactly tell if that was also an insult against him though.
Though, the cynic was correct.
“Alright, I’ll admit I was a bit overzealous. Ambassadors tend to spend quite a bit of time on locales, so I assumed the same for someone checking on the dragon pillars. These things are ridiculously valuable, you know?”
“If you say it like that, I kind of want to see if I can break into it on my own,” Rebecca popped her head out of the room’s shadows to speak. It seemed like a month in Fragheim had initiated some of her old habits once more… Especially as the group saw the plate full of some sauce-covered fried dough in her hand.
“The owners of that place don’t like selling to humans… How did you get that?”
Ice knew this by the simple fact of trying to purchase some with Raccelline at some point and the couple in charge of the food stall refusing to sell any. He made it up to her after, but naturally, the attitude frustrated him. They denied a child, of all things!
“I stole it, did you want some?” No one seemed to react to her words, and now he realised why her ‘heist’ plans over the years were treated jokingly. Rebecca shrugged her shoulders at his silence and returned to the shadows to continue eating. Recently she perfected a skill to block out all her bodily sounds, making eating and drinking a silent endeavour. In fact, she trained that specific skill in this way.
“Before I ask about her past… Fine, we’ll look into this group. A Sage would barely need a week to check all the pillars on the continent, you’re right. And if they have a way to access the sub-plane…” Icy snorted, already guessing the implication of this matter. This could end up being a trip with two-fold rewards if the person parading about as an imperial official was merely a fake.
The topic moved on, and Icy took out a small boiled sweet around the size of a cherry to suck on, listening as he finally got to hear more about their most secretive group member. Not that she hated telling, but rather he didn’t want to force anyone into giving up their past.
Most of them had rather tough starts that pushed them to this line of work.
“Rebecca’s past is really just a string of good and bad luck. But to put it bluntly, she’s just a kleptomaniac. Has been from around five? Maybe six?” He frowned at the age, imagining it to be some teenage angst from the behaviour, but to think it was such a deep-rooted addiction.
“Welllll, my mother claimed it was earlier, but I have no memories of that. Anyway, I took things because I couldn’t have them. Nothing to do with needing them. It’s really fun, you know, being able to have something that everyone refuses you to have, especially if that owner only allows themself to have it.” She explained her feelings on the matter, but to Icy, it sounded more like she was advocating for it.
There was hardly a wisp of regret about her words too. Then again, she was the one who most frequently took damage in battle besides Korridan. Perhaps risky business was ingrained in her mind.
“But what do you know, I ended up taking some potion cause the clerk refused to sell it to me, and turned out that place belonged to the local gang. Turns out even a Basic wizard can track a regular person with ease, and well, they trained me up. I’m not very happy with the other things I did there… and the stealing wasn’t amusing, just hurtful.” In a way, Rebecca’s thought process when talking about stealing somewhat mimicked Raccelline in general, perhaps it just triggered a childish side of her.
“She was pretty lucky the guys that took her saw how good her skills were. In those smaller towns, it’s not uncommon for worse things to happen to young girls who slight gangs and some merchants. Manus can’t help them unless they enter a church and pray.” Darak spoke up here. Naturally, he knew quite a bit about the situations of those towns and villages.
But the dryness of his voice, reminded Icy that he never actually asked what the priest’s past was to hate human traffickers so much. Obviously, the hate is justifiable, but what made it so personal?
“Anyway, some years later, they were all killed anyway, I escaped as a Bronze rank rogue and met with Korridan and Jaren sometime later. Oh, and if I do take things, I at least pay for them after. Turns out that works pretty well.” It was a rather nice ending, all things considered, although her addiction had hardly stopped.
It also seemed to only really rise when spending long periods of time in civilization, or if someone specifically annoyed her by refusing to sell at a fair price. Overall, he found no argument against her with a substantial basis.
Don’t steal because it’s wrong? Well, that’s hardly a useful argument against an addict, and him arguing ethics would’ve been an even bigger joke. She did at least pay for the stuff… So why fight it?
In fact, it amused him to a great degree.
The fact that she might have been just a small step away from instead being groomed by a small-time gang was the far more worrisome part. But, thankfully, she was alright in the end, and it seems her parents never received trouble for what happened. A far better ending than most of the group.
Mala spoke up this time, and he was prepared to continue discussing the dragon pillar. But she redirected things unexpectedly, “Also, you missed out the part where you evolved without anyone here?”
Almost swallowing the sweet in his mouth, he sheepishly grinned and replied, “I can hardly control it. The evolution I picked enhanced my eyes to match an Elder’s, I went and tested it on those beetles. And I can see them easily.” A few sighs of relief sounded out from that, and with that, they all continued the night as usual. He’d already done the important job of learning new spells for this bloodline, taking about 15 minutes to copy them into his Mind palace, and now the three new light element spells were ready for use.
Together, they talked some more, played some games if anyone was interested, discussed skills and magic, and most importantly, taught Raccelline for a few hours before she went to sleep.
While they often did their best to manage some degree of education for the hyper-observant child, it was only since arriving in Fragheim that they realised their slacking work in this regard. She trained far more diligently than a warrior triple her age, and yet they weren’t teaching her anything of importance?
Ridiculous! Icy actually picked up on this as he talked with her most, and realised she didn’t often speak because the topics barely made sense to her. He at least had the benefit of an intelligence no lesser than the adults.
So, for the most part, they’d spent a month slowly walking her through basic mathematics and money. Some geography helped her understand how big the world was, but they covered that months ago when travelling to Avril Port. So instead, they focused on learning about different environments and how to deal with them.
Camping on low ground can be dangerous in areas known for heavy rainfall or flooding, but if absolutely necessary, you can sleep on a tree branch.
Deserts can be dangerous both day and night, and many creatures try to avoid roasting in the harsh heat by staying slightly beneath the ground, but these creatures also evolved to better launch sneak attacks from underground.
In arid locations, like Arisil, it is harder to gather water from the air, so low-rank magical tools with such effects are far less effective. Instead, tools that directly created water are required, even if they use far more mana. And for the love of everything, if you don’t have a wizard, then buy anything that creates a magical, smokeless flame. Even if that smoke from a tiny fire disperses after just ten or so metres, it stands out so much that you’re sure to draw some attention.
Not to mention, smokeless fire makes camping in caves and narrow spaces possible.
General advice was the best they could give Raccelline for now though, when talking about specific creature habits, it’s easy to give entire lectures if observant and knowledgeable enough. Like when Mala tried to introduce the basics of spellcasting to her… that really failed horribly.