Before now, perhaps due to a sense of naivety, Clover hadn’t even considered what would happen if they encountered a Skill Stone.
Now, as the silence wore on, it dawned on Clover that the discovery had the potential to tear apart their group. There was no way to cut or distribute the item in even thirds. No matter what, someone would be walking away from the exchange a loser - only one of them could benefit from it.
"So, how should we do this?" Claire tentatively asked, glancing toward the exhibit's entrance.
“What’s the Skill?” Ron asked, calmly eyeing the chunk of wood.
"[Gardening]," she said slowly. "We could flip a coin to decide."
A darker, more sinister, and plotting part of Clover's mind noted that there was no way to confirm whether she had told the truth without massively escalating the situation.
"Do you have a coin?" Clover asked. If she had told the truth, which he was inclined to believe, then he doubted [Gardening] would be very useful to him in the short term, at least not enough to break up the team over. He had his hands full with the Skills he already had; adding another would only distract him from his core Skill-set.
Still, that didn’t stop him from wanting it. Deep down, he was just as greedy as everyone else.
“No.”
Clover let out a slow sigh. With [Lesser Potion Creation], she could use [Gardening] better than him. Presumably, that benefit would also flow over to him in the future in the form of better potions. "It's fine. I don't have any use for it. What about you, Ron?"
Ron shrugged. “Fair enough. The next one goes to us - to whoever it lines up with best.”
Clover let out a breath of relief. They all had relatively distinct Classes without much overlap in ability; thankfully, that defused the situation.
There was no reason to fight over [Gardening]. If the Skill Stone had been different - more powerful, things might have ended differently.
Claire and Ron were good people; they weren't like Phil, the one who had callously dragged the group into a dangerous fight against the Old Golem. They could work things out with their words.
"Thanks," Claire said, her shoulders relaxing. She, like Clover, had been unsure how the situation would end - whether it would end violently or not.
She tapped her finger against the air, interfacing with an invisible blue screen. Then, a handful of seconds later, the Skill Stone dissolved into motes of dark green light, buzzing fireflies of energy.
Off to the side, his dinosaur golem absorbed some of the light, reflecting back a new shade of green from its bones.
Before the embers of energy could completely fade away, Claire’s eyes flicked back open.
“What did you see?” Clover asked.
“What does the Skill do?” Ron asked at the same time, unable to contain his curiosity.
"It was weird. When I used the Skill Stone, I was transported to a garden in the middle of a forest, or at least, it felt like I was. I didn't do much. Mainly, I sat around and watched as squirrels that wore clothes and walked on two feet tended to the garden. Some used magic, and one of them carried around an oversized set of scissors. The scene didn't make much sense, but as I watched them work for what had to have been at least 30 minutes, knowledge crammed itself into my brain, forcing me to learn the basics of [Gardening]."
Her experience had been similar to his in that while inside the Skill Stone, their ability to absorb information had been boosted, but at the same time, the backdrop the scenes had taken place in had been drastically different. He wondered why.
“But who were you?” Clover asked.
“What?” Claire asked, an eyebrow inching its way toward her hairline.
“Were you a squirrel?”
“I was myself. Who else would I be?”
Clover stopped himself from visibly reacting to her response. Inwardly, he wondered why his experience had been different - from what he’d heard, inside of the Skill Stone, everyone else had been themselves. Of course, that sample was limited, he’d have to gather more data first before he could come to a concrete conclusion.
But, it still struck him as odd. Why had he taken the form of the one-handed sculptor?
With a dark humor, he couldn't help but note that he was well on the way to becoming a one-handed sculptor himself. If things kept their current pace, he'd be down to five fingers in less than a month.
Clover shrugged a moment later after gaining his composure, schooling his facial expression. “Well, if everyone else was a squirrel, why wouldn’t you be one too?”
“Magic. I don’t know,” Claire said. “Anyways, in the short term, [Gardening] should let me grow plants substantially faster and improve their Quality. In the long term, I think I’ll be able to more actively manipulate them, kind of like a superhero.”
“Sounds useful,” Ron said.
“Yup. Now, I don’t have to worry about running out of those crystal fruits from the Monster Nest. I can always just grow more to make more mana potions.”
"Before this, did you have any memories of gardening or direct experiences with it?" Clover asked.
“No, the closest I ever came to gardening was eating veggies at the dinner table,” Claire said.
Clover nodded along, lending half an ear as they continued to discuss the potential uses of the Skill.
Internally, he mulled over what he had learned about Skill Stones. From what he had heard, he could come to two conclusions. First, Skill Stones tended to take their users' memories and spin them up into training environments. Perhaps they did so out of convenience - to save energy - or, some other reason, he couldn’t be sure.
The next time he made a Golem, he'd try to implant a memory within its core - if the System valued memories, they had to have some sort of inherent value beyond the sentimental.
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In the event that the user didn't hold any relevant memories that the System could hijack, like in Clover's case, he had never sculpted before he had been exposed to the Skill Stone, the System piggybacked off of someone else's memories to create the scene.
No, he couldn't know that for certain. It was possible that even though the sequence of events with the one-handed sculptor had felt extremely real, they could have been fabricated.
Second, the monster who dropped the Skill Stone influenced the scene the user would be shown and possibly the Skill it would yield. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the Skill Stone featured anthropomorphic squirrels when it had been dropped by a squirrel.
“You ready to go?” Ron asked.
Clover nodded. Clover sent his dinosaur golem out in front of him, illuminating the path forward. As they continued to the Monster Nest, he occasionally pointed his flashlight at the Golem to recharge the soft white glow that emanated from its bones.
On their way, they encountered a lone Two-tailed Squirrel, but illuminated by the Golem, it didn’t stand a shadow of a chance. In a matter of seconds, it was eliminated.
Congratulations! You have significantly contributed to the defeat of a Two-tailed Squirrel - Lvl 1. +100 Exp.
With the kill, a well of energy created by [Bones Break So They Can Mend] filled slightly within Mr. Cat. Once it was filled with ten or so more kills, he'd be able to remake the Golem if it was destroyed.
Before long, they once again arrived at the Monster Nest. There, they no longer had to solely rely on his newest Golem to act as a light source.
The crystal fruits buried within the identical lines of twisted trees provided ample illumination, and as they delved past the trees to the entrance of the cave system where they had fought the two Level 5 monsters the day before, glowing green vines of moss lined the cave's walls providing an extra source of light.
A few paces ahead, Ron held up his hand, signaling for them to stop. He peeked his head out from around the corner, sneaking a glance into the larger cave ahead before ducking backward.
Clover, being an avid movie watcher, recognized the signal immediately.
“There’s a lot of them here today,” Ron whispered.
Clover slowly and quietly wheeled forward and poked his head out for a brief second. It was true. There were a lot of them. In the main cavern, there were twelve Two-tailed Squirrels, ranging in Level between 1 and 3, most on the lower end of that spectrum. Thankfully, there weren’t enough targets out here for the monsters to shoot up in Level quickly.
It seemed the monster's numbers had grown since yesterday. The System's warning that if the Nest wasn't cleared within a week, it would transform into something terrible rang out in the back of his mind.
Fighting that many at once, while possible, could be problematic, to put it lightly.
“What should we do?” Claire whispered back.
He carefully peeked his head out one more time, noting that about half of the squirrels were completely identical down to even the smallest detail. He wheeled back, bumping up and down slightly on the rough ground, putting some distance between him and the monsters.
“We could lure them out one by one, like with acorns or something,” Clover said, only halfway serious about the acorn part.
“Huh, that could work. I like that idea,” Ron said.
“The acorn part?”
“No, not the acorn part. I upgraded [Papercraft Advertisement] with a Map Aspect, so I can control them better now. At least for a little bit after I make them, I can chart courses for them to semi-accurately follow. I could probably annoy them enough to bait them out one by one.”
“It’s worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, I have a Class Skill, Ember. I wouldn’t have taken it if I had a choice, but I could probably set them on fire with it from a distance.”
"That could work, too," Ron said. "You ready?"
They nodded.
With bated breath, Clover watched as Ron summoned forth four sheets of paper. As if a breeze had taken them, they fluttered out of his hand into the cavern. Targeting the closest monster, a particularly small monsterized squirrel, the first and second sheets of paper missed, going wide over its head in an unstable arc, but the third poked it directly in its eye with its tip.
Enraged, the Two-tailed Squirrel screeched, clawing at the offending sheet of paper.
Its brethren turned, observing the disturbance for a moment, then went back to dumbly milling around, the sight not enough to hold their attention for long.
Ron’s eyes scrunched in concentration as he magically pulled the sheet of paper back toward the cave's entrance. Not very smart, the monster mindlessly followed the lure, furiously slashing at it.
The moment it entered the tunnel, out of sight from the main cave system, it was attacked from all sides. Mr. Cat clawed at its ankle. Claire slashed it with her sword, and Ron swiftly stomped down at it with a [Power Strike].
The attacks landed in quick succession, ending the monster's life before his dinosaur Golem could get involved in the battle.
Congratulations! You have significantly contributed to the defeat of a Two-Tailed Squirrel - Level 1. +100 Exp.
Clover nervously peaked his head around the corner, ready to accelerate away at a moment's notice. There was no need to. The fight had finished so quickly that the rest of the monsters hadn't even realized what had happened.
“Nice.” Clover smiled back at the group, somewhat surprised that their ridiculous plan had worked. “Let’s do it again.”
Ron nodded, summoning forth more sheets of paper. They filtered out of the tunnel into the cave; however, this time, they weren't enough to agitate the beast.
Two flew past its sides, and the other two landed flatly on the beast, dealing no damage. Even when Ron flapped around the papers, straining the limits of his control, the Two-tailed Squirrel continued to ignore them, instead focusing on devouring the moss on the wall.
“Damn it,” Ron muttered as the papers collapsed to the ground limply, the duration of his control expiring.
"Do it again," Claire said. "I'll set the paper on fire this time."
“What?”
“I’d be pretty pissed off if someone tried to set me on fire.” She shook her head. “I hate squirrels. Don’t overthink it.”
Ron conjured four more sheets of paper. With narrowed eyes, Claire wordlessly cast [Ember], generating a small flicker of flame that ignited one of the sheets.
The flaming sheet fluttered through the air, striking the monster. It wasn’t enough to ignite it into a glorious inferno, but it was enough to anger the monster as the flame burnt at the moss it was eating.
Like the last squirrel, it chased after the papers as they lured it back to the tunnel, recognizing their similarity to their assailant. With slightly more difficulty than last time, the monster was dispatched the moment it left the view of the main cavern.
Congratulations! You have significantly contributed to the defeat of a Two-tailed Squirrel - Lvl 1. +100 Exp.
They slowly continued the process of luring the monsters into the tunnel one by one, targeting those with the lowest Level first. As they systematically dispatched the beasts, Clover’s Exp counter slowly ticked up, and Mr. Cat, and to a lesser degree, the glowing dinosaur gathered energy, quickly approaching the threshold [Bones Break So They Can Mend] had set.
Most went easily, taken by the element of surprise. There were some, generally those of a higher Level, who survived a bit longer. However, even when the encounters got loud, and they drew an undue amount of attention to themselves, the Two-tailed Squirrels generally weren’t very curious, content to keep to themselves.
As long as the monsters didn’t visually see the fight, they were fine.
Monsters below Level 5 typically didn’t have Skills or special abilities, making the fights much easier - they didn’t have anything that could surprise them.
After they had eliminated roughly half of the group, five more of the Squirrels filtered into the cavern through the leftmost tunnel at its end. Three were identical in size, shape, and appearance - all Level 1. However, the other two, sporting a series of injuries along their sides, were Level 5.
It seemed something was driving the monsters out of the Nest's central areas, often violently.
Their luck held up, and they continued farming the monsters until Clover ticked over to the next Level.
Class: [Apprentice Golemancer] has reached Level 7. +4 Magic, +3 Intelligence, +2 Dexterity, +1 Strength, +1 Perception. +1 Vitality, +3 Free Points.
But, of course, that couldn’t last forever. The next squirrel, a simple beast at Level 3, didn’t go down so easily.