Chapter 226

“Good job everyone.” Everlyn said, eyeing the corpse of the chieftain. Despite them attacking it for a full ten minutes, none of the wounds on its back appeared to be fatal. Lots of small cuts and continuous blood loss had been what had brought it down. “It was surprisingly robust.”

“I’m not being a pedantic wanker,” Michael interrupted. “But we countered that boss pretty hard, and it was difficult to kill. If a lair is this difficult, we’re going to have to be super careful in the future.”

Everlyn waved the comment away. “Look I agree, but I’m no amateur. We only accepted the fight because it lacked movement skills. If it didn’t… nope… wouldn’t have touched it. We would have left and found somewhere else to attack.”

“Her class gives her some amazing identification abilities,” Tom told them. “Everlyn knew what we faced.”

“Correct. And Michael,” she smiled at the healer. “Stop stressing. We won this. We’ll be stronger for the next fight and after winning that…get stronger again. If we can’t take them, we’ll flee, but the longer we’re here the less likely that is to occur.” She nodded at the collective bodies around them. “Let’s choose the loot option to get rid of the mess and then discuss the next steps.”

Tom shut his eyes and stepped into the system room, made the selection and immediately opened his eyes, checking none of the other details. Everyone else had done the same as him. They were all here present in reality. No one had lingered to assess their gains or to start spending them.

Instantaneously, the bodies of all the corpses combusted and burned themselves to nothing. There was a pause and then Tom became aware of the loot portal that had appeared right near them because he spotted it out of the corner of his eyes. Then he couldn’t ignore it. The portal was a metre wide with flames going up to his shoulders.

Michael rubbed his hands in mock excitement. “Something big.”

Everlyn shook her head in disappointment. “Which means almost certainly useless to us. Who wants to do the honours?”

Toni stepped forward and thrust both arms into the giant portal and searched within it. She smiled as she found the object and then she pulled against it and strained to bring it forth. She shifted back half a step, straining to shift something.

Nothing happened. With a look of annoyance, she stopped and retreated away from it. Her hands were empty. “Well, this is embarrassing, but I need help.” She looked up sheepishly. “It’s too heavy. If there are some big strong men…”

Thor, Rahmat and himself moved forward instantly. The four of them, including Toni, instinctively stood in a half circle around the portal and then together pushed their hands in.

Tom immediately found what Toni had been struggling with. His hands banged into something metallic. Possibly a pot with a rounded lip. He adjusted his finger positioning and got a firm grip on it with both hands. Tentatively, he tried to shift it and frowned at its weight. If he put all of his strength into it, Tom figured he would probably be able to rock it. Lifting it up and out was a different matter.

“On three,” Thor instructed quietly and then counted down.

Tom strained in tandem with the others, and the object shifted and then with a jerk lifted from the ground. With a grunt of effort, they pulled it from the portal, which immediately vanished.

“What on earth is it?” Thor asked bemused, staring at the object they had extracted.

It was not a pot, rather it was thick metal, which was sort of like a conch shell but was the size of a microwave.

Artefact: Thornbird Imbue Chamber - Tier 3

This item is specially designed to aid with the elemental infusion of the thornbirds. It is specialised to keep the chicks alive and increase the survivability from the standard 70% to 78.5%.

“Junk.” Everlyn declared, sounding disappointed. “I’m not even sure we’ll be able to sell it.”

Thor step forward and put his hand firmly on it. “Worth risking the cost of putting it on the auction house. Hopefully, some other humans can use the metal. Melt it down or something.” His eyes immediately went distant as he entered his system room to engage the auction house.

“I hope we get back the cost of transportation.” Everlyn stated.

“We should,” Michael said tiredly.

“We will,” Harry corrected confidently. “It’s tier three metal and heavy. Junk objects like that retail at about a quarter cost. What?” He said in response to Everlyn’s look. “I enjoy watching the sales and imagining what creative purpose the purchaser is using an item for. This…” He shook his head. “This will be melted for scrap.”

“At least here we can sell junk and get a small return.” Michael said. “In the tutorial, we would have dumped this and walked away with nothing.”

Thor returned to the real world, and there was a crackled of energy as the strange object got teleported to the auction house.

“What now?” the healer asked.

“Purchase skills and head off to the next fight.” Everlyn suggested.

“Agreed, but,” Tom held up his hand in a stop gesture. “Everyone needs to remember that end game here. We’re not facing the dragon tomorrow. We need to suck as much experience as we can from the days we have. Stay as weak as possible to maximise gains. Get skills and the spells you need to round out your build. For example, we should all buy a chaos bolt before leveling up.”

“Are you enforcing that with the contract?” Keikain asked.

Tom glared at him. “No, it doesn’t give me the right to do that.”

Keikain looked doubtful at that statement. “Are you sure?”

“It’s irrelevant. If it did somehow convey that power, I would never enforce it.”

Toni laughed. “Well, if it’s optional I’m putting all of my experience into levels. If I rank up quickly enough, I won’t ever have to clear another breeder warren.”

“We should spend our experience.” Everlyn declared, choosing to ignore Toni. “We’re technically in enemy territory. She didn’t look convinced with her eyes travelling to where the bodies had laid and were now gone. The lair was cleared, so they theoretically shouldn’t have been in any danger but none of them would ever fully trust the system. The exceptions, as they say made the rule, and the GODs were happy to smack down complacency. “At least we need to treat it like that. We’ll do our purchases in two shifts. First group.” Everlyn pointed out the people she wanted to go.

Immediately everyone but himself, Everlyn and the two killers went inanimate.

Everlyn instantly rounded on Keikain. “Were you trying to start something there?”

The earth mage raised his hands defensively. “No… I wouldn’t get anything…”

“Because it sure sounded like it.”

Keikain looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I was only teasing. I tried to lighten the mood, and it didn’t work. Tom was being a little intense. Someone had to do something.”

“Everything he said was sensible.”

“Was it? No offense, Tom, but everything you said was obvious,” Keikain countered. “It was unnecessary and insulting, which was why I interjected. You don’t want people thinking you treat them like imbeciles.”

“Not everyone is as analytical as you.” Everlyn appeared frustrated. “Sometimes it’s better to reiterate and make sure they understand.”

“We’re not children.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Clare interrupted tiredly. “Keikain agreed and apologised already.”

“I agree with Clare.” Tom said finally. “Let’s leave it. Keikain wanted to help, and at worst he might have been a little zealous. Who cares?”

“But?”

“Evie.” Tom said sternly. “Let it go.”

The two of them glanced at him with some colour entering Everlyn’s cheeks.

“Tom,” Keikain said. “I was serious. I wasn’t trying to be problematic.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He raised his hands. “It’s okay. I wasn’t offended.”

They fell into uneasy silence while Tom considered what to do once he got into the system room.

It would depend on the experience granted for clearing the lair. If there was enough, he would get his healing skill, but otherwise, it would be the dagger skill. Get it early and let it level up naturally. With the role he had been forced to take on he would be using the daggers frequently going forward.

One by one the others returned and when it was only Harry still in the system room from the first wave Everlyn clicked fingers. “Okay, second group let’s go.”

Tom stepped into his room and looked at the wall.

High experience gain single loot item reward selected for clearing the goblin lair.

Personal contribution assigned to clearing the lair is 32%.

Share of experience allocated 45,000 minus direct experience already awarded.

It was a lot of experience but not sufficient for him to purchase Directed Remote Heal which would preserve Healing Tranquillity even if Touch Heal evolved into something bigger.

“Buy Skill Daggers.” Tom ordered immediately.

The description of what he had purchased immediately appeared on the wall.

Skill: Daggers - Tier 1

This skill grants an understanding of how to fight using daggers and passively increases the sharpness of any knife strike.

Cost: 8,000

Tom nodded to himself. In the tutorial, the first part had been the most important component of the purchase. Gaining experience in using the weapons at a level beyond shoving the sharp end into the enemy had helped immensely. This time he would get zero benefit from that knowledge, as his technical skill far exceeded the information provided. As for the second bit, the extra sharpness would not have a noticeable impact on his effectiveness. By itself, this skill would add almost nothing until he had sufficient levels to earn threshold bonuses.

What it would deliver was the capability to stack up on complementary skills.

“Buy Skill Deep Cut: Daggers.”

Once more, the wall changed to display his purchase.

Skill: Deep Cut: Daggers - Tier 1

When activated, a dagger strike will cut deeper than normal.

Cost 7,000.

Tom paused for a moment and wondered if he should get additional dagger skills or save his experience for the healing spell.

“Show tier one dagger based taunting options,” he commanded.

Skill: Inflict Pain: Daggers - Tier 1

When activated, every successful cut with your dagger will cause additional pain to the recipient. This is a good way to create a sense of threat and cause monsters to attack you.

Cost: 6,500.

Skill: Taunt Aura: Daggers - Tier 1

Creates an aura where the glint of light from your daggers creates a feeling of threat in anything that observes them. Monsters will be more likely to attack anyone with this aura active.

Cost: 9,000

Skill: Implied threat: Daggers - Tier 1.

When you miss with a dagger thrust, the apparent danger associated with the strike will be magnified. They will perceive the attack to be four times more dangerous than what it would have been if you hit the opponent.

Cost: 9,000

Tom read through the options and immediately discarded the middle skill. The idea that his ability to taunt the monsters near him would rely on the glint from his shiny daggers annoyed him on a fundamental level. What happens when they got covered in blood? The other two however were both interesting.

Implied Threat: Daggers was a skill that would be useless to most people, because what sane person would want to be tethered to an ability that required you to deliberately not stab the monstrosity trying to bite you in half. For Tom, it kind of made sense because it would complement his existing tanking method. His dodge skill often had him flailing around and moving at speeds that were ridiculous for his ranks. Incorporating dummy stabs and slashes into his movements would hardly require a change.

The other option was a more standard way of tanking. It acted in the same manner as Lightning Enrage by imparting pain on the opponent. Against stronger monsters, Tom would often not bother attacking at the start of the fight because he was aware of how futile the attempts would be when the creature’s fate was greater than his own. There was no point in striking out if all he could do was cause a minor scratch. But with this, he could attack, and fate was unlikely to block what was an insignificant cut and then the effort he put in would taunt the monster.

He did not want to pay for both. A dagger appeared in his hand in the system room and he tossed it up. It spun, and he caught the handle effortlessly. Tom repeated the movement while considering the two options. The Implied Threat skill was the better ability for right now. Tom could see straight away by the numbers listed that as a taunt it would be effective. Those ten goblins in the first fight wouldn’t have pulled away if he was using the ability… But…

Tom chuckled to himself. It was not a good long-term purchase. Without the precognition built into his dodge skill, he would not be a tank for ever. It would become suicidal to get close to high levelled monsters and then this skill would be useless. Not to mention it only worked in group battles, anyway.

The single target inflict pain on the other hand was a different matter.

“Buy Inflict Pain: Daggers.”

He nodded to himself. There was no twinge of regret, which sometimes happened when you made a decision and then realised it was the wrong one. He was happy with the skill, as it was one that would grow with him. It had immediate utility in creating an effective taunt on monsters without requiring mana. Long term the skill would be useful even in one versus one battles. A slight cut causing abrupt agonising pain in an opponent could create an opening that his other skills would be able to exploit.

Tom returned to the real world.

He felt the new skills settle and get downloaded into his skull. There was no knowledge sent through on how to fight just as he had known there wouldn’t be, instead he suddenly knew how to activate the two active skills.

Tom looked around and noted that the killers and Harry remained in their system space.

He tried once more to activate Earth Sense with his filter to understand all the nearby fault lines.

It failed dismally.

Patiently he waited for his mana to fix itself. Keikain reappeared while Harry and Clare were still in their system room.

Tom shut his eyes. His fate was at a hundred ninety. That was not full, but it was close. He imagined what he wanted. The filter to make Earth Sense instantly into something useful. He mentally reviewed his failures one by one while ensuring he focused on exactly what he required.

Fifteen fate left him as he kept the image steady in his mind.

Tom did not immediately act. It was a sign of madness to keep trying the same thing and expect a different outcome. Instead, he let his mind drift and think about everything he had done wrong and right.

Mentally, his brain jumped from topic to topic. He remembered the initial problem he had of not filtering anything and the damage he did to his brain. Then, after fixing that issue the output the recreated spell produced was all jumbled. He had tweaked bits and pieces, but the tweaks, while changing things had not solved the issue. The modifications he had put in place had broken the entire spell and left him with unusable garbage. Tom focused on that thought for a moment.

There was something there… A clue he was missing. Earth Sense without his meddling produced a basic outline of everything near him.

Why did he lose that?

And if he kept it what then?

Maybe he was trying to do too much with his filter. A host of thoughts assaulted him.

He didn’t need his filter to create its own way of envisaging the world around him. That was what he had attempted but practically it was too hard. Instead, he wanted it to be linked with the spell’s base functionality. If the spell’s normal view was the anchor of his overlay, then all the bits of information wouldn’t collapse into a single point.

Then maybe it would work.

Tom reviewed what he had constructed and started adjusting it.

The first alteration was to change what he was excluding to ensure the basic processed outputs of the spell still flowed through to him. That was easy, a simple modification, and it was done.

The second step was genuinely difficult. He had to overlay the results of his personal filter with that standard output.

How could he do it? He thought to himself. Really, he didn’t need to. His filter was already breaking things down into strips, and those strips could be mapped to the default output of the spell. In fact, Tom could see the small tweaks that would be required to achieve that. It was as if Earth Sense was designed to be manipulated like this and all he was doing was shifting sliders like in a character creation screen. He wasn’t required to paint the full picture only adjust existing toggles.

The nature of the filter was tweaked under his expert attention. The changes he made were nothing like what he had gone through in the development of the Spark domain. Those steps had been taking a spell and manipulating it to do something well beyond what was intended. These adjustments to Earth Sense were configuration steps. The spell would work with or without fate.

Tom did not regret the expenditure. If it worked, then it was worth the investment in fate, even if it had not actually been required. Sometimes problems became simple when broken down in the right way.

He triggered it.

Then he smiled. He could sense the world around him just like before he started fiddling with the spell form, but there was more to it. An extra layer of information was there that he could sense and if he touched it… yep it worked as expected. The final change he had put in activated. The flood of data tagging each of his companions lessened significantly. New data became available… Tom looked closer.

“Yes!” he exclaimed unable to help himself in his excitement. Without having to use Remote Earth Manipulation, he could see four spots nearby to create rock falls. He searched further away and found other potential locations. But there was even more information than that. Ten metres below ground there was a seam of gold. Excavating it might only yield a fistful of the stuff, but it was there. On earth, even with such little volume it would be worth a fortune… here it was less useful and probably not worth the time to extract it.

“Keikain, how long would take the two of us to burrow down ten metres?”

The earth mage looked at him. “Why?”

“There’s some gold.”

“And you want to mine it?”

Tom nodded.

“Why dig? And where is it.”

He pointed mostly down, but at a slight angle. “How far and how spread?”

“Twelve metres and most of it is…”

“I see it,” Keikain interrupted.

He couldn’t sense Keikain’s magic even though the mage was clearly doing something. That was another thing for him to develop. If they were fighting against monsters with innate earth magic, Tom wanted to sense their spells before the ground under their feet liquified. If he was going to get an earth domain, he might as well ensure he was king of it. Another entry was added to his list.

One piece, the second largest beneath the earth, moved and started shifting up through the rock toward them. Now that Keikain was visibly moving the metal Tom found it easy to monitor him.

“Did you really have to?” Everlyn asked.

Keikain shrugged. “Its probably worth five thousand credits. I don’t really want to leave it behind. Plus, Harry still looks busy.”

A few seconds later, the first lump of gold appeared. The next chunk moved.

Tom jogged around the edges of the cave. He smiled as additional information was presented with every step. The moment new ground came into his view he could see the overlay of the stress factors perfectly. This was definitely going to help.

When he returned to the group, he realised over eighty percent of the gold below had been extracted and it was not because the latest bit to pop through the surface was the size of a flea it was because he could physically sense what was left. “Someone better wake Harry. It’s time to get going.”

There was no way he was going to wait for ten minutes to let Keikain get the rest when it was only worth a thousand credits. Their time was better spent killing goblins.