Hand-Eye Coordination Cantrip Ingredients: 1 dragon’s claw (at least 85% of it) 5kg vines of vernal flytrap (powdered) 3g owl eggshell shards
!!!dEaReSt TaIpHa!!! I know talking is slow for you right now but who knows how slow the queen with the sword is? Maybe doing this cantrip before a speech one will boost your sword strats! Also way easier because this is only 1/3 of the total ingredients and I have the rest on hand.
Forest: lousy with owls
Northeast part of forest: think it’s lousy with flytraps
Regular-east: the third place you have to go
Quest: Collect Ingredients for the Coordination Cantrip Progress: 0% (0/3)
Bayce was right…it did feel slightly sad to be missing out on a speech cantrip. But that was only temporary. For now, we—or, more properly, I—had a mission.
From a low hill, I overlooked the Rabbitfoot Plains. The grass was calm and cloudy, stark contrast to the determination in my little racing heart.
Using my new Calico Ranger powers, I copied Bayce’s notes into a new document so I could always keep it in my mind’s eye.
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-1.png]
On second thought, yeah, I really did need this cantrip.
Well, I did manage to make passable notes on my second try. It took single-minded focus and an emphasis on making the letters as large as possible, but it could be managed!
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-2.png]
Something bothered me about this list, though. Yeah, there was the simply massive quantity of vines I’d need to collect from a creature I hadn’t even seen before, but also, namely…the lack of a name. For the dragon. What the heck kind of dragon was I after here?
It couldn’t be the Drunken Dragon, right? With the Drunken Dragon’s Blade?
Well, I bet it wasn’t, but even so, I was going after that mythical alcoholic bubble tree anyway!
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-3.png]image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-4.png]
Current Location: Rabbitfoot Plains (S.D3)
Quest: Explore the Vencian Wood Progress: 37% (11/30)
I was curving northeast. Not into the trees (which Bayce claimed were rife with flytraps), but into the flowers. And as I drew nearer, my nose rebelled, beginning to sniffle with the all-filling aroma of so many competing flowers.
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-5.png]
Current Location: Stinger Field (S.D2)
Wait, I hadn’t totally explored this area yet? Hm…better late than never, obviously.
Along the way, I stopped briefly for a few simple kills, doing quick early tests of a few simple Spells.
In my Inventory, I’d packed just about everything I could fit. No way was I leaving Bayce, Reed and Chora completely without, but some of these had been overflowing in the box, after all.
Inventory: 10/10 Chora’s Crystal
Debug Blade
Minor Heal x8
Book of Sister’s Shadow
Burlap Sack
A mildly convenient way to skirt any Inventory restrictions.
Lightning Spell x5
Ice Spell x5
Earth Spell x5
Water Spell x2
Attraction Spell x5
ZAP! The Spell I’d been most excited to try bounded forth and sizzled into the faces of a trio of wasps who’d gotten a little too close to my face. Electricity burned into carapaces—and had spread to some of the surrounding flowers in this thicket, adding an unwelcome burnt-ness to the overwhelming smells.
The wasps plummeted. I slipped backward. Then, no doubt after a few seconds of limb-writhing, the good news came in.
Victory! EXP: 99% (3114/3150)
R-really?! What a buzzkill. Or three, to be exact. (Well, they didn’t seem one-hundred-percent dead. Passing them by confirmed a slight buzz of life in the air.)
Yeah, the Lightning Spell was as straightforward as it sounded, in as literal a sense as my use of the term “buzzkill” just now. And of course, it streaked at light speed, which felt like an absurd degree of power to have.
The main downside was that despite that advantage and despite it defeating some insects I’d taken by surprise, it didn’t really seem as strong as a Fire Spell. I lobbed it at the side of a generic bubble tree from a solid fifty meters off. It burned a bit of a hole, but the fire it started in the bark died quick. The bolt also uttered a mighty thunder-CRACK that honestly I could’ve done without. Okay, it could strike a primal fear in the hearts of all who heard it, but…it just wasn’t my style to attract that kind of attention.
In fact, as I came closer to assess the damage, I was hearing not only a rising wasp-hum, but a suspicious hissing behind me.
Um, note taken. Spells prepared.
Something snatched my ankle—or tried to. I jumped away, botching the landing but at least making my getaway. Rolling, I banged against a rock, but only enough, at this stage in my Defense- and HP-upping life, to faze me. Too bad that rock rattled another snatching-something that reared up and revealed their fangs.
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Ah, so I wasn’t just fighting more wasps. I had snakes too! And I wasn’t scared in the slightest!! I was in the clear, as long as they didn’t have anything like a debilitating poison that even a Level Up couldn’t cure. And maybe just thinking that cursed fate, but so what? Sierra sure wasn’t returning my calls!
Two snakes, both black with rings of green, had me backed against the trunk of the bubble tree. Or so they thought…so I let them think.
I picked one as my target and tried another Spell, the next one on my list. Ice brought down the hammer.
A frozen bolt, just like a blue arctic fireball, engulfed the rearing snake. What I’d expected to make some kind of symphony of whooshes instead was a vacuum, a stilling of noise. And as it tried to still the beast, the snake only writhed all the harder.
In a single second, the Ice bolt had done most of its work: frozen blocks had grown all along the snake’s S-shaped body like crystal growths, leaving the animal motionless. Well, nearly—their head, still uncovered, never stopped hissing and was producing a definite jiggle.
But again, this happened in like a second. I wasn’t just staring at Snake #1, I was double-teaming and launching a second Ice at Snake #2.
And for this target, I used the other method of casting Ice, remembering how Bayce had mentioned two. Just like she’d told me, casting it either way was as simple as changing my intention. In my case, that was making a mental image of frozen air versus one of a big chunk.
And indeed, the chunk was slightly more boring, but hey, it had that caveman edge, and sometimes my fighting style was pretty close to “caveman.” A half-meter bludgeon in the shape of a teardrop rocketed at high speed toward Snake #2, smacking them to the ground.
The ice kept flying afterward. The snake, though, stayed on the ground. And immediately afterward started moving again. Clearly that wasn’t the best use of the Ice Spell, then.
Not only that, but I had not one-shotted the first snake. Nor had they admitted defeat! That ice was cracking before my eyes, and the rings running down their scales were beginning to glow. Time to use what had to be the better version of Bludgeon Ice: the Earth Spell.
A sucking THWOOM sound filled the air as a hunk of earth, twice as large as the ice gob, appeared where once there’d been nothing. It hurtled at Snake #1 in an arc, flattening them.
Great! I felt like flying in an arc was the way to go for a move like this. Bad Ice.
From that snake, I heard the kind of defeat-squeal I expected to hear from squirrels. What kind of a twisted world was this where my first run-in with a squirrel was utter defeat, but I could wipe the floor with these ambushing snakes?!
And yet I hadn’t gotten a Victory notification out of either of them. Stubborn!
The non-flattened snake was now coming after me, fangs bared and glowing hot green. Already I could hear the one underneath the rock heaving, striving to escape. But have no fear! There was another gambit up my sleeve.
Despite Water being the next thing on my list, I wasn’t actually ready to test it yet. There were only two of those in my Inventory, after all. And I’d tried casting Spells directly from the burlap sack earlier…didn’t work. So the “last” thing I had to test in the heat of the moment was Attraction!
Let’s see if I can do something tricky with this.
The snake sped into a charge, fangs aimed directly at my face. They sped up—to their surprise. The Attraction had just gone off in a puff of salt and poledust, two Spell ingredients that, for once, I recognized. And right before the snake hit me, I dodged.
Leaving one snake facing the other, rather than both facing my vitals, and helpless to avoid biting into each other!
…Is what should have happened, but instead, the snake I’d targeted with the Spell curved with me in an unnatural arc.
Oh yeah, okay—so it didn’t attract something toward itself or toward a point in space, or toward the caster for just a moment. Bayce told me that…I was just hoping I could cheat fate.
The fangs hit me dead-on.
HP 88% (525/598)
At least the one who’d come from behind was lost and confused. For like a millisecond. That one came after me too, and latched onto my back ankle.
HP 76% (454/598)
Aw, this was just irritating! Well, this is why we practice, Taipha, I said to myself as the sting of the teeth made me buckle.
It did give me more confidence to remember that that was all this was: practice. I was too strong to let this get me down!
Oogh, that current of weakness going through me had to have been more than nausea. These snakes were poisoning me, and I didn’t need to check my Stats to know that.
But with them so weakened by the Spells I’d lobbed at them, and me so close to a Level Up, I didn’t mind burning a little SP at all. A Slash burned through my claws, and the red tint in the air was highly welcome. Two whip-fast and razor-sharp moves was all it took to tear through each snake and make their mouth-grips go slack.
Phew! Feeling the weakness dissipate, shaking off the last of the pain, was its own reward. I was strong enough now—I had more than enough options—to weather harsher storms than this.
Level Up!
Lv. 21 → Lv. 22 EXP: 25% (809/3300)
HP 100% (625/625) SP 100% (600/600)
ATK 117
INT 69 (+2!)
DEF 81
WIS 76 (+1!)
SPD 96 (+1!)
I didn’t exactly keep rigorous track of all my Stat gains, but…did I just gain 30 points of HP and SP in a single go?
Thirty points?
Yep. Getting four bonus Stat points per Level felt…kinda broken.
But then when I considered the Sapphire Queen again, suddenly nothing felt broken.
That’s okay, I reassured myself. It’ll get broken!
And meanwhile, after gnawing on the tail of what my Meat Locker called a fluorocoil (described as “stringy”—that wasn’t the half of it), I ventured off to try and find that alcoholic tree.
At first I thought, naively, that I might find it by scenting the air for that distinctive wineyness. Nothing there but more flowers. I guessed that if the tree really was mystical, maybe the scent would just spring upon me. That was what’d happened the first time, after all.
Maybe unveiling the Debug Blade would help someway. If it was connected to the tree, then could it act like a homing device? Well, I unveiled it and touched it…put my paws on the blade, put the blade in my mouth…and again, nothing. If holding the blade was the key, I was absolutely unwilling to try that right now. Not while I was alone.
So I changed tack and used my Map to conduct a very orderly search of the place. There was a chance that by combing every square meter, I could narrow it all down.
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-6.png]
I snaked gradually from south to north, speeding east to west and back again when I hit the borders of the Map square. While I ran into (and raced and kicked around) a few rabbits and dragonflies in my path, the work was repetitive and not very rewarding.
I mean, sure, the beauty of the world was splendiferous, but I couldn’t really concentrate on that when I had potentially a galactic secret to unveil.
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map95-7.png]
But the search came to an end. Plains transitioned to forest and floral scents dissolved to pine as I hit the northeast corner.
I looked back, almost disbelieving that I had seriously found no trace of that one bubble tree and its heady wine. I had to content myself with the idea that my own grit and the sword itself were all I’d need to get the upper hand on a character about seven thousand Levels above me.
Well…there was a very slim chance that I could still track it down. I spotted a distant rabbit going about their business, and as they ducked behind a hill…
If a rabbit could find a blade the first time, maybe a rabbit could find it again. How would I know whether or not it found it? Um…I wouldn’t. So I decided against giving the animal a tracking marker.
Maybe I just had to stop worrying about it and embrace the journey. With that, I headed into uncharted lands.