Ethan stepped out of the rain and into the burrow once more, his entire body trembling a bit. He hadn’t noticed it until now, he’d been so lost in thought, but it was cold, and the frigid rain had not helped at all. Ethan still needed to see what Gred had found, but that could wait; it wasn’t like Ethan could safely go and check it out thoroughly in the rain, anyway.
He picked his phone up off the burrow’s ground and turned on the flashlight, briefly noting that the phone was on ten percent. He grimaced at the thought, but Ethan consoled himself with the knowledge that much of its functionality was lost without the internet.
Shaking his head, Ethan continued inside until it opened up properly. Alyssa was sitting near the fur pile, and judging by the many bite marks and scratches than ran down her arms, she’d been trying to tame the Wyrdfur pup.
“So it bites?” Ethan said, startling Alyssa. Her head turned so quickly he worried she’d snapped it, and then she let out a deep sigh.
“She does, yeah. I tried giving it a bit of the Ferrow meat- it was going bad, since you forgot to give it to the goblins- and it ate it, but then it hid in there again. I wanted to see if I could get it to like me in any way whatsoever, but it just kept clawing and biting me anytime I stuck my hand in.” Alyssa explained.
“Do what you want with it.” Ethan said; it wasn’t worth fighting over, and she needed something to do, anyway. If it ended up somehow killing her, she’d only have herself to blame.
“I was going to do that regardless,” Alyssa snapped, and then winced. Ethan was tempted to respond in kind, but he didn’t let it show; his face remained perfectly neutral.
“Sorry,” Alyssa said quietly, breaking the few seconds of awkward silence. Ethan opened his mouth to respond, but Alyssa was a bit faster.
“My mana core’s full right now, so I’m… having a hard time. I could waste some of it, but I don’t know if that’s a smart thing to do in a survival situation.”
“It’s fine.” Ethan said simply, turning off his phone’s flashlight.
‘What’s fire got to do with… ah, that’s a stupid question. Fire’s associated with intense emotions pretty often, sort of like how red’s the color of passion.’
“…How’s Fred?” Alyssa asked.
“He’s alright; he spent a while whining, but goblins seem to heal fast. His hand’s pretty alright already.” Ethan said, tacking “Wish I healed that fast,” on the end. He’d gotten used to the aching in his leg, and he could walk with only a minor limp, but it was still annoying. The bleeding had stopped, though, and the wound looked visibly better.
Alyssa didn’t say anything, and Ethan decided to steer the conversation forward. “Gred says he found something interesting. Once the rain stops, we should go investigate- carefully, of course.”
“I hope the interesting thing is food; the Ferrow meat’s all gone, so we’ve got nothing still.” Alyssa said.
“Me too,” Ethan agreed, “By the way, you suggested hanging the fur sheet over the entrance a while ago… but how? We don’t have anything to hang it by.”
“Uh… I don’t know. Aren’t you meant to be the clever wizard?” Alyssa replied, and Ethan’s ego was definitely a fan of being called clever. A few seconds passed, and Ethan slapped his own forehead a bit harder than he’d intended to.
“I’m dumb. There’re fallen branches everywhere on the ground… I’ll tell Fred to grab one and then hang it from there.” Ethan said, putting a damper on his ego.
Rather than leave the burrow and tell the goblin in person, which was significantly easier, Ethan decided to get some practice in on his ability to speak through their summon link.
He fell into deep concentration as he fell into a mental wrestling match with his own mana for almost a full minute, and just as he felt like he was getting close to winning…
“What’re you doing?” Alyssa asked, sounding concerned and weirded out. The slight disturbance caused the mana to win, and Ethan’s eyes snapped open as he sighed heavily.
After explaining what he’d been doing, Alyssa apologized sincerely, but Ethan shook his head.
“It’s not your fault. To you, I just closed my eyes mid-conversation and did nothing for a full minute without explanation.” Ethan reassured her, “I’ll go tell Fred now.”
∑
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Ethan stood at the burrow’s entrance for a while, directing his goblins- Gred and Cred had unexpectedly returned while he and Alyssa were talking, and Fred was just lazing around atop a tree.
With the help of eachother and the occasional bit of guidance from Ethan, Gred and Cred managed to form a map that they both agreed was accurate. He’d already learned that the goblins were pretty good scouts, but they actually seemed remarkably intelligent while arguing about the small details.
“The dark tree was over here, not there.” Cred said angrily to Gred, using his sharp claws to pointedly mark where he thought it was.
“Idiot, I was closer to the dark tree. It was in my area!” Gred responded, standing up and puffing out his chest in a weird attempt to intimidate Cred.
“What do you mean by dark tree?” Ethan asked, having not spotted any trees that could be described that way.
“Dark tree glows,” Gred said, and Ethan gave him a very weird look. Fortunately, the goblin wasn’t finished- he’d just taken a weird pause, likely at the contradiction. “…everything around it dark. Not see anything at all. Eat the light, kind of.” Gred told him.
“So… the tree itself glows, but everything around it is dark?” Ethan asked, and the two goblins both nodded.
“Cred saw from top of very tall tree. It not where Gred say.” Cred told him, and Gred simply sighed very heavily and very dramatically.
“I don’t think it really matters, does it? Let’s move past the tiny details and work on the broad strokes, alright?” Ethan asked.
It took a very long time to steer the goblins away from arguing over every minor thing, but he eventually got a map of the surrounding area that he hoped was very accurate, with how hard it had been to make the goblins get over the details. Ethan had to prompt them to do a few other things, too, like giving the dark trees a marker that wasn’t just another tree. Overall, Ethan was very happy with their scouting ability… but they definitely needed guidance, which the hobgoblins would hopefully help with. Once he could summon them, that is.
They’d made the map in the dirt, and so it was a bit hard to tell due to the rain, but Ethan made sure that the finished product was locked within his mind, sent the goblins off and headed back into the burrow and out of the rain. Fred had tried to set up the fur sheet over the entrance, but it’d fallen apart. That it’d held up for as long as it did was impressive, frankly, even if it was only because of how delicately they treated it.
“You took quite a while,” Alyssa commented once Ethan returned. He tried to take a minute or two to tell her about the goblins’ findings, but she didn’t particularly care. She did, however, protest against simply calling the dark trees, well, dark trees.
“What do you want to call them, then?” Ethan asked.
“Give me a second to think.” Alyssa said bossily, but Ethan didn’t mind. He’d only been somewhat paying attention to the conversation to begin with; the majority of his concentration was being spent on analyzing the map.
In the center of the crude map was the Wyrdfur burrow they’d taken over. Ethan arbitrarily decided that the entrance was pointed North, since he realized that the sun here didn’t necessarily rise from the East.
To the North was little. It was where they’d come from, and Gred had even stumbled upon the remains of the Wyrdfur they’d killed. There wasn’t much left, which was very strange considering the desolate nature of the Verdant Gauntlet- ‘Why is it so desolate, anyway? Wasn’t this meant to be a very difficult Tutorial? Aside from the starvation, we’ve only been attacked twice in twenty-something hours,’-but ultimately meaningless.
“Call them Lighteater trees,” Alyssa said. The words registered in his mind, but only distantly; they didn’t interrupt his thoughts.
Gred hadn’t found anything more than they’d already seen to the North, although it was supposedly riddled with Ferrows- the goblin swore that he saw them sprinting amongst the roots, but Ethan wasn’t sure why the goblin hadn’t been attacked when he had, so the claims were suspicious. Cred had explored the East, which was mostly composed of hills and was where the recently-named Lighteater tree had been spotted. There was also another burrow very much like their own a mile or two away, which likely housed a Wyrdfur.
To the South, Cred had found that the hills transitioned into mountains, where the trees were very sparse. Bushes and grass were around here, and Cred had actually spotted something resembling a chipmunk in one of the trees, meaning that there was likely a possibility of foraging there. Cred hadn’t been able to as thoroughly search this area, unfortunately, due to the rough terrain. He’d have gotten it done eventually, but he’d also had to search the East.
Lastly, and most importantly, was the West. Their burrow was apparently located at the very end of the hills, as it hadn’t taken much before the ground gradually flattened out. Soon after that, the trees became very sparse, and Gred came across the interesting thing he’d told Ethan of- an enormous meadow of grass and fruit-bearing trees. Best of all, they were seemingly normal. From Gred’s description of its appearance, Ethan guessed that the fruits looked like apples, but he wasn’t sure.
It almost sounded too good to be true, but of course, it was not.
The meadow was also littered with what Gred had described as dirt statues that looked like human warriors. They weren’t actually statues, though, as Gred swore on his life that their glossy eyes were tracking him creepily.
After looking over the mental map rather thoroughly, Ethan fell into thought. North was dangerous and didn’t have any food, which was the thing they most urgently needed. There was a Wyrdfur and a Lighteater tree to the West and no obvious food sources, meaning that the only potential value was another chest within the Wyrdfur’s burrow.
To the South was a bit more promising, as the bushes and small animals that Cred had spotted could be potential food sources. Lastly, the East seemed like it would be a great place to stay once they became stronger. Significantly stronger, because Gred drew a minimum of a hundred little lines meant to represent the earthen warriors- he just hoped that the goblin was really bad at counting.
“The moment that the rain stops, we’ll head south.” Ethan told Alyssa, receiving an accepting grunt. He was glad that she seemed to trust him and his goblins enough to decide where they were going, although it was also very likely that she just hated geography, judging by how quickly and strongly she’d denied the opportunity to see the map or receive even a vague description.