CHAPTER 140
“Let me do my job, Tom.” She said in a teasing tone.
“I’m not used to sitting on my bum, when others are…”
She placed a finger on his lips. “I know. Just like it’s hard for me to let you take the front in fights. I want to do everything too, but the game’s changed and now instead of having being a generalist we’re all going to have to specialise and trust the rest of the group.”
“I know.” he responded grumpily,
She grinned and then bounced down the corridor and vanished, although he could see the entire tunnel and there had been nowhere for her to hide.
My perception is shit, he thought to himself. It was another thing to improve. Another note to add to all the others. The list was endless, which was the issue with all the choices provided by the shop they had access to.
He waited impatiently for her to return.
“Move up to the first bend.” Everlyn’s voice came to him suddenly. “I’m in the left tunnel. Can you guard the other two? But be ready to retreat if anything too powerful approaches.”
Tom did as ordered. He frowned when he passed the residuals of what must have been two bodies. Everlyn was not just scouting. She was killing when required. They were little more than a smudge of residual mana having already decayed. Not elementals or physical based enemies.
“What are we facing?”
“Not sure. What you’re looking at was a spirit pest. Think of them as mice. Those two were rank three.” She stopped talking and he could tell she was focusing.
Tom found the bend that she had described, and the passage split in three immediately after.
He settled with his spear at the ready and watched the tunnels he had been told to guard. If an enemy came, he would defeat it or run and cave in the tunnel behind him to buy time. The connections to do that were already in place all it would take was the smallest tug of his magic to cause a calamitous collapse.
“Dead end.” Everlyn reported finally. “There was a nest of the spirit pests. Strongest was rank four. I killed them. Nothing of note.”
A short time later, she re-emerged. Grinned at him and then disappeared down the second passage.
The strategy of sending her to scout was sound, but it was boring. Part of him really wanted something to happen to elevate the action, but the intelligent part of him dreaded the idea.
Everlyn returned with a finger on her lips. She vanished into the third tunnel and came back a short amount of time later. She waved him back toward the exit.
He followed her and got to the first step. She leapt, got her fingers over the edge, and pulled herself up. It was easier for Tom with his extra height and when he the top; she relaxed.
“The first two tunnels were mostly abandoned.”
“Mostly?” Tom asked.
“They’re cleared now. A couple of harmless spirit creatures. The last tunnel, however, is more problematic. I think it’s best to show you.”
“We’re not retreating into a system room out here exposed like this.”
“It’ll only take a second. I’ll display the data and then come out to watch and you can go to your own and review it at your leisure.”
Tom nodded. He flashed into her room and then got kicked out immediately into the real world.
Everlyn smiled at him. “I gave you the information. Go check it out and tell me if you think we can fight it?”
Tom entered his system room and looked at the data displayed.
Roll Balls (Rank 14)
These creatures of energy are immune to physical damage and are highly vulnerable to water and ice damage. Defensively, they are significantly higher ranked with their overall rating reduced because of the lack of moveability in complex terrain and their damage, which is a limited short distance energy pulse.
Tom opened his eyes to look at Everlyn. “How many?”
“They’re smaller than your head and there’s maybe a hundred of them. They are guarding some Dancing Silver Flowers.” She said quickly at his look. “Yes, I’m being greedy.”
“I guess we could bring a group back to clear them out.” Tom said doubtfully. “How many flowers are there? And how valuable are they?”
“Not a huge number,” Everlyn admitted. “Possibly thirty thousand auction credits’ worth.”
“Then why are we discussing this? I doubt we can convince a large enough group to come for that sort of payout.”
She bit her lip. “Well. I was thinking we ninja the flowers.”
Tom considered that for a moment. “The description didn’t say what their perception levels were?”
Everlyn shook her head. “Good. Potentially excellent. They’ll see us especially if we touch the flowers. The Dancing Silver Flowers release energy fluctuations when disturbed. Once they know something is there, I have nothing that can stop them from seeing me.”
The bit about Tom being even more vulnerable was not explicitly raised. “Then how are we going to ninja them?”
“They can’t hit anything over a metre from them and they can’t climb only jump. It’s why we’re safe up here on the step.”
Tom shut his eyes clearly understanding what Everlyn was proposing. “And where are these flowers?”
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“Outside their range of course or they would have been eaten already.”
“You have a plan?”
“Yes. Do you want to guess it?”
“Let’s see. I could summon a lesser ice elemental.”
Everlyn shook her head. “It’ll absolutely work and you’ll be able to defeat them, but it will take hours and its definitely doesn’t count as ninjaing.”
“You can’t sneak past them and harvest the flowers or you would have just come out and said that. Which means it’s something I can do.”
She waved her hand to encourage him to keep going.
Tom considered the plan she had obviously come up with. The tunnels were tall and formed naturally. They had cracks, crevices and dirt section alongside it.
“Does geography change deeper into the tunnel?”
Everlyn shook her head.
“You want me to play the floor is lava?”
She laughed at that description and then frowned. “My kids and their cousins played that game.”
“My sister and her friends,” Tom told her with the same sad look. “I only mentioned it because that’s your plan however, and its everything under a metre is lava and to be honest, given the nature of their attacks it’s sort of literally the case as well.”
Everlyn looked up at the tall ceilings. “With your earth manipulation I think it’s easier than you’re imagining.”
“I’m taking the risks.”
Everlyn frowned at that. “Unfortunately. I’m not happy with it, but the plan is sound, isn’t it?”
Tom hit the rock under him and considered what he had to do. His crystal was only a quarter full, but the rest of his mana had recovered. If he made sure he preserved a big buffer, it would be safe enough there was no way he would drop into their enemy’s range.
“How far down the third tunnel is it?”
“Only twenty metres. Just around the bend there’s a natural step of about…” She indicated a distance of a about three quarters of a metre. “I reckon if they try they’ll be able to get over it, but they’d only bother if they were put into a frenzy, which explains why the other tunnels were empty.”
“And also, probably why there was nothing big in any of them.”
Everlyn nodded agreement at that observation. It was obvious to both of them that the Roll Balls would have broken out regularly and killed anything they could reach. A single ball would probably be sufficient to kill most things of similar ranks, given the tunnels let them close the distance effectively. Unless the enemy could fly or cling to the ceiling, they would be easy prey for the roll balls.
“And the ceiling never drops below two metres?”
“Not between here and the target. The tunnel the balls are in continues, but unless we’re setting up permanently, we’re not going to get time to explore it. Plus…” She hesitated. “It was too dangerous for me to investigate further. So, I don’t know what’s down there. It might be the proper underground or end a few metres beyond that.”
“Could we do that? Spend the next three days fighting through here?”
Everlyn bit her bottom lip. “I don’t think it’s a good match for us. We’re near the surface and the enemies are rank fourteen and swarm type. Which means the caves are probably rank sixteen and as we descended deeper.”
“The challenge will increase,” Tom concluded for her.
“And the matchup is kind of bad for our skill set. Yes, we can cheese the balls, but a more advanced version of them might be unkillable for our build. Both of us fight better against things with flesh and blood.”
With a sigh, Tom glanced down at the suddenly dangerous ground below.
“What are you thinking?” Everlyn asked.
“How best to do this. I’m worried about my mana levels diminishing and then slipping.”
“It’s only thirty thousand. We could leave…”
“I need the credits to rebuild Golly. And if you’re confident about the thirty thousand it seems silly to give them up. At worst I go slowly.”
“Yes. The value is definitely there. I was being conservative and I don’t have anything I need to buy now, so it’s all yours.”
“Then maybe we invest some credits into our future. If I buy some climbing gear, I can mitigate the risk of accidentally falling. I can rest safely then when the muscles are getting tired.”
Everlyn nodded as she thought about it. “That could work. Let me check.” Her face went mannequin like. Tom hated that look with a passion but a few moments later she opened her eyes. “Four thousand to get it now, or two and a half thousand if we go back to camp.”
Tom shrugged.
“We’ll buy it now.” Everlyn declared. “You need to spend money to make it.” Once more she went lifeless and when she returned, there was a portal in front of her.
She plunged her hand in and then pulled out a pile of rope and metal pitons.
“How much did you buy?” Tom asked, laughing at the quantity that she had piled up.
“Enough.” she said grumpily. “I’m not sending my boyfriend to hang above certain death and have him run out of equipment. We need to test if it all works before you use it above active balls, though.”
Tom frowned at the roof. It was heavily slanted and hardly equivalent to what the cave with the balls would be like.
“You can at least confirm here that the harness works, and the pitons will support your weight.”
“They will,” Tom said absently. When he sunk them into the stone, he was not drilling a hole. Instead, the earth was closing over the metal and securing it seamlessly.
She laughed. “Stop being silly. Testing will only take a few minutes.”
“Fair enough. There were no balls directly below us I was going to treat covering the distance to the step down you spoke about as my practice.”
Tom struggled to put on the harness. There were a series of carabiners that he put into position and at Everlyn’s direction he knotted several bits of rope to the pitons. Tom sent them into his inventory and then set up the first piton on the roof. There was no hammering. He just threw it at the ceiling and Remote Earth Manipulation caused the spike to sink straight into the stone. After the second one was in place, Tom used the carabiners to suspend himself. He hung there fully supported with his stomach facing the rock centimetres from his face.
After that, it was only a matter of reaching ahead of himself and pushing in another one of the anchors and then shuffling forward. Providing the anchors went in firmly he was safe. With earth manipulation, that was guaranteed. There was no way he was going to fall.
“It’s secure.” he told Everlyn.
“Good be safe. And remember just pluck the flower roots and everything. You can use your inventory without degrading it.”
“I remember.” He called out and then focused on moving as quickly as possible. There was a simplicity to the process. He would shove an anchor in, move his carabiner to the new spot, and then pulled himself forward. Rinse and repeat and he found himself actually able to travel relatively quickly. Five to ten metres per minute. Half an hour later, his arms complaining at overuse and his groin chafing with the strap of his harness dug in so hard that there was almost no point in healing because the damage reoccurred practically immediately.
Then he saw his first Roll Ball.
It resembled a translucent dark green bowling ball, but his assessment technique screamed at the rank difference between him and it. The damn ball squeaked apparently summoning allies, and he heard the noise of more descending upon them from further away.
He continued to move forward while watching in horror as it seemed like the entire colony responded. Within a minute, there were over fifty under him and every now and again one would bounce to try to get him. The one metre estimate was accurate. Jump half a metre and then shoot a similar distance.
Suspended in the air above them it was terrifying. He was suddenly very conscious of making sure none of his equipment dragged below. The tunnel he was in might have been a little over two metres high. If he had been walking through it, then that was a comfortable height. He would have been able to lift his hands above his head without hitting the roof, not stretch them out, but natural movement would have been fine.
Suspended as he was, that theoretical of over a metre of clearance was not much. There was some slack from the ropes he had hammered in. That removed a third of safety margin. His torso was another twenty. He couldn’t afford to relax and let a leg or arm sag. He had to maintain an almost perpetual tank position.
Touch Heal was working constantly to remove away the damage caused by the excess lactic acid.
Tom continued forward turned a corner with a sea of balls following him and cursed Everlyn.
She had taken unreasonable risks to get this far. She must have seen the first few balls and threaded through them and trusted in her stealth skills.
It had been reckless.
Finally, he emerged into the larger cavern that she had talked about. He could see the flowers and why she wanted to collect them. There were a lot of them. They grew on the walls above where the balls could reach, and there were hundreds of them.
“I see the flowers.” He whispered to send the message to Everlyn.