Eradin and Farah had been travelling on foot for more than a week already, and only just now were they able to see the Celestial Mountain Range upon the horizon. During that entire week, Eradin had engorssed himself within the books that contained information on the world, monsters, materials, legends and rarities. When he turned through the pages, there was even a brief section about the Celestial Mountain Range.
The Celestial Mountain Range has been on the continent since the creation of the world itself. It is neither the tallest nor the most dangerous, but it is the one surrounded the most by mystery and legend. Centralized inbetween the city of Elren and the Capital of Algon, anyone that can't fly must travel through this area without exception. With monsters and beasts averaging from level thirty to forty in the lower elevations, it is relatively safe to travel through the mountains with an adventurer escort of D or C Rank.
Under the light of the full moon, it is said that they have luminous glow which can't be explained encompasses the entire mountain range. There is a legend that has traveled across the continent as well. Some people swear on their lives they see an azure wolf larger than even the a dire wolf by three times that has silver stripes and the deepest sky blue eyes ever seen up at the higher elevations. However, when the strongest of adventurers travelled up to the very peaks themselves and resided there for months on end in an attempt to find it, nothing would appear. After years of this sighting occurring, no one knows whether seeing this wolf is a blessing or curse. In the end it sunk into legend, further adding to the numerous mysteries of the mountain range. Some go missing, others come back with treasures beyond there wildest dreams. If there is ever someone that says there is nothing abnormal about this place, don't ever take advice from them.
In conjunction with the Lydia's information, the novels information, and the information printed on the requests he was currently looking through, Eradin attempted to summarize it all and create an image of the mountain range in his mind.
Ok, so this place is not supposed to be dangerous and yet many people have gone missing. There is some random wolf that is probably what I guess will be called the Lord of the Mountain for now randomly appearing and observing people who enter its territory. But it seems to be smart and knows they for the most part all caravans passing through without attempting to cause problems. The beasts and monsters here all have at least one skill or trait that regenerates health or heals wounds. They have tougher bodies and are more inclined to earth and wind which is prevalent in their abilities, proabably because it is a mountainous terrain.
The mountain is barren of vegetation and instead is fraught with caves and small little groves of trees or there are gorges that fall for hundreds of feet. Some creepy magic is more than likely the cause of the mountains glowing under the light of the full moon, its probably some ritual. The deeper I go into caves or the higher up the mountain I climg, the more dangerous it becomes. Some people apparently get lucky and find things that make them rich in the common peoples eyes.
As for the plant life, Kilskir Flowers are commonly found within the gorges or deep in the caves growing in the darkness instead of sunlight. Great... that will lead to trouble if they are too deep in the caves. New Moon Flowers look like weeds in the day and only bloom under the New Moon, they glow with a black light when blooming and are coveted as treats for any monster or beast whether they eat meat or not.
So what is this place? It is a land of hidden opportunities for my level. But with these opportunities awaits many problems that are sure to arise. The Celestial Mountain Range is without a doubt much more dangerous than it is given credit for. So let's give myself a challenge, just how much experience can I grind out before enough Kilskir Flowers and corpses with a regenerative property are obtained.
As the sun approached the highest point in the sky, Eradin and Farah approached the foot of the mountain range. From here on countless rocky slopes, small thickets of trees, caves, gorges and so forth would appear. If they continued to follow the road, it would lead directly through the mountains but that was not the objective.
"I guess we are pretty much at the beginning of our next journey, what do you want to do first? Look for the Kilskir Flowers or explore."
"I just want to kill things."
Farah put her hand on her forehead and sighed. "Why did I even ask, of course that is what you want to do. Exploration it is then."
With Eradin in the lead, the two of them started to casually start walking off of the path and upwards into the Celestial Mountain Range. At the very base of the mountains, Eradin and Farah were virtually invincible so they decided to bypass the lower elevations directly and climbed a decent elevation until a small grove of trees came into sight. On the cliff just above it, a small cave came into view.
Eradin and Farah nimbly climbed the slopes that were covered with loose rocks. As they approached the caves, Eradin and Farah began to ready themselves. Eradin summoned the Death Gods Scythe and activated his sensory skills at maximum output, Farah held her staff and unchained the magic tome from her waist, ready to chant a spell immediately when the need to arose. Under the light of the sun, they entered into the cave. Eradin able to see all of the outlines with his inner vison and Farah using [Night Vision] were able to navigate it quite easily.
The cave started out with narrow walls that would hinder a scythes wide movements. Then as they traversed further and further into the cave, the width slowly started to expand and branched off in many directions. The walls and cave floor weren't wet, and yet they were slick and slippery to the point that they could have been mistaken as being soaked. Many jagged rocks pointed out of the walls that threatened to impale Eradin or Farah should they slip. Because of this, there were no areas where they could grab quickly to stabilize and balance themselves lest they be imipaled.
As they traversed, Eradin and Farah finally entered a small clearing. The cave split of into two directions. One shining with a black light which could be seen in inner vision but was also visible to the naked eye. The other was just darkness. Yet in either direction, Eradin was able to sense many entities. In both directions combined there had to be over twenty monsters or beasts.
"Farah, are you able to sense what I am sensing? Did you notice any magic? Because there area monsters and beasts no matter which path we take from here on out."
"No I can't sense anything or see anything yet. I noramally can in a range of fifty or so meters. How far are you able to reach with that weird ability of your?"
Eradin shrugged his shoulders while responding with a simple "I don't know." He absolutely knew that his Inner vision was able to sense well over 200 meters. He just didn't want to tell Farah that, after all he was already enough of a freak of nature in her eyes, did he really need to make it any worse?
"Really? You don't know? I find that very hard to believe. Well whatever, no matter how well you can sense, you still get lost like a child so easily."
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
"That doesn't matter right now, what path do you want to take, the left with that black light, or do you want to take the path on the right with no light but more opponents."
"Well obviously the path with the light, its not like they can catch us off guard with a trap. Since we know they are there, then without a doubt there could be a trap and we should be on our guard. That is if they are smart enought to make such things. And if they are beasts, then we should just kill them without worry for traps."
Before heading into the left corridor, Eradin switched his title to [Shadow Assassin] because it made much more sense to ambush and the probability of Boss Rank or higher life forms appearing wasn't very likely since they weren't that deep into the caverns yet. Approaching the left path, Eradin and Farah ventured inside. As they traversed further in, the walls widened and an opening began to come into view.
Eradin whispered to Farah while beginning to activate his concealment skills. "Use that fancy cloak of yours and attempt to subdue your prescence. We shall ambush them and create an advantageous position."
Melding into the darkness and moving silently, Eradin approached the clearing stealthily without leaking out the slightest bit of his aura and prescence. What he saw was a room shining in black light. The walls were reflective and created countless shadows. A putrid smell assaulted Eradin's nose, although it was nothing compared to when he had to eat food, that smell was thousands of times worse. The source of this was a group of monsters sleeping in the corner of the room. As for what they were, Eradin cursed not having some sort of appraisal ability, he didn't even see them in one of his books that outlined the different races and their abilities, strengths, weaknesses, average levels, etc.
The figures of the monsters looked grotesque. They appeared to be bipedal humanoids that had fangs close to five inches in length. They were muscular and covered in red fur. The muscles were three times the size of Eradin and yet they were all the same height as him, give or take a few inches. Shabby rags were the clothes they had on and broken shields with rusty weapons were the equipment. The most notable features had to be the set of hooves they each had for feet and the extremely long claws onthe human-like fingers.
Thankfully this time, unlike when he was alone in the Algaron Forest, Eradin had a walking treasure trove of knowledge accompanying him this time. "Farah what are the abominations?" whispered Eradin in an attempt to not wake the monsters.
"They are known as the Vyhild and are commonly found in caves such as these. Their strengths are having tough bodies that ordinary weapons can't cut through. They are usually in packs of ten or more like we see here. Weaknesses are simply that they are extremely unintelligent and that is putting it mildy. As long as you can survive the initial charge that they all do at once, you should be fine. To make it even more favorable for you I shall enchant your scythe with the power of darkness that I was able to learn the other day."
Chanting almost inaudibly, Farah invoked a spell from the Abyssal Night Tome that came from the enchantment section. A message with its description appeared before Eradin.
[Enchant Weapon:Chains of Darkness: Enshroud the target weapon with the power of darkness. The weapon corrodes any wound that the weapon inflicts like poison. The target takes additional damage every second (Scales with level of caster) and has a chance to be entangles in chains of darkness which negatively affects the speed of any movement, chanting, or attacking by 15% for ten seconds. Duration: ten minutes]
I am beginning to think the spells in her tome are not normal. There is no way that a spell that she can cast at such a low level will have this effect. At the most it should be 5% given our level. Although I know nothing about magic in this world, if I had to guess there are tiers to spells like in any other fantasy world. If this is a tier one or even tier two spell, then what would she be capable of at even higher tiers? She might possibly become a legendary sorcerer. I'll need to be very cautious around her the more we level up, if she wanted to use a high tier spell on me....
Eradin shuddered at the thought of a sixth tier spell -If there were even spells that high in level- being used against him. With such a thought, Eradin began to approach the Vyhild. They all fluctuated from level thirty-three to thirty-seven. Not a match for Eradin at all. He simply took the Death Gods Scythe and with a powerful underhand slash, he slit each of their throats so deep that they couldn't scream or even have time to breath with [Eviscerate].With the bonus damage of his title, the first Vyhild didn't survive.
Not looking behind himself, Eradin simply walked up to each of them before they could wake up and repeated the process. A giant puddle of blood began to form on the cave floor when Eradin was finished. The Death Gods Scythe was a gods weapon after all, just because they had tough bodies for monsters of leveled in the thirties, it didn't mean they could withstand a divine weapon.
[Experience: 28%/100%]
[Souls Absorbed: 12 Soul Points: 135]
I already predicted it, but it seems that soul points are governed by rank and level of the soul. So a normal rank monster such as this will give a rough estimate of eleven and a half soul points. If I could find many packs like this then unlocking the gods skills or traits from the soul shop shouldn't be too hard as long as the price doesn't exponentially increase every time I unlock more skills to buy.
Flinging the blood off of his scythe, Eradin began to notice the surrounding area. In the center of the cave room, there was a small patch of flowers, about ten of them. They all emitted a black light. To the right was a chest which Eradin could only think was where the Vyhild stored their loot from killing people. There was nothing else of value in the room.
Eradin looked at the corpses and couldn't tell if they were worth taking. He looked over to Farah who was approaching the chest and called out loud enough for her to hear him but not so loud that it would alert anything to their prescence. "Are these corpses worth storing away? Can whatever healing or regeneration ability they have be used in pill manufacturing?"
"Yes, any monster or beast above level thirty should have at least the lowest level of [Regeneration]. That is one of the racial characteristcs that belong to them alone since they reside in nature. Most of the intelligent races don't normally have a regeneration ability or something similar until they become exceptionally high level. Not many people, beasts, or monsters have maxed regeneration at 10/10 though, to level it even once towards mastery is extremely hard as you would need to suffer countless wounds that need to become more serious the higher the level of regeneration in order to increase its skill level by one. Since it is a racial trait of beasts and monsters, their blood is used in the creation of elixirs and potions with healing properties. If you can even three, that would be enough, my spatial ring might be able to hold one, so I would wait until we kill something that has a stronger healing ability."
Regeneration maxes out at 10/10? Then why does mine have a "?", can it level up indefinately or does it evolve? What does this mean? I'll need to pay more attention to this skill as well as the [Godkiller Attribute: 2/?]. But enought of that, it seems Farah doesn't know about my spatial bag.
"But my spatial bag can store anything that isn't alive."
Farah went numb, she should've expected it, how else did a pile of over 700 beasts all appear at one spot in Algaron forest. At this rate, nothing in the world would be able to surprise her anymore except for Eradin and his actions. "Fine then, store the corpses and pick the Kilskir Flowers as well. I shall look into the chest."
The Vyhild were sucked into Eradin's spatial bag and he picked the Kilskir Flowers, although they were harvested, they should still be alive for atleast a few hours so Eradin wasn't sure if they would enter his spatil bag. But he still attempted it. To his surprise it worked. Maybe any plant that was harvested no longer counted as alive.
Eradin began to walk over to Farah who was rummaging through the chest. All Eradin could sense was an outline of things that looked like rags and maybe rusty weapons. "Did you find anything useful?"
"Not really, there was a small pouch that contained a few silver pieces and one gold coin. There was also a few potions that had a minor healing effect, but for us it really isn't too noticeable if we drank it. It might sell for a few silver coins. Shall we continue deeper into the cave, it shouldn't have been that long since we entered this cavern."
"Yeah, let's continue. I hope this cavern has enough experience to get me a single level."
Farah sighed, this idiot still only thought of the world as a gian experience farm. But Farah headed deeper into the cave to explore with Eradin without any complaints. Their adventure within the Celestial Mountain Range had only just begun and wouldn't end anytime soon.