It was morning and I was feeling great but just a bit tired. I had managed to recreate some spells. Mainly from the basic tier of spells and 2 low tier spells. Spells were broken up into catagories. There was basic which pretty much anyone with that class or sometimes even without that class can learn. Then it goes up to lesser, intermediate, Advanced, Master and lastly Grand tier spells. I got up from the bed a bit sore walked over to put my armour on and get ready for the day. "It's rather annoying that trying to learn to high of a tier spell gave me such a massive headache."

I had tried learning higher tiered spells obviously but it didn't work out as I had planned. The spells gave me a headache when I tried to forcibly learn them and the higher the tier the more intense it got, eventually leading to physical pain across my whole body. I felt like I was going to die so I simply stopped and tried lower tiers. "I guess i'll have to increase my level before I can even attempt to learn stronger spells. That's rather frustrating."

After I had gone downstairs and we ate breakfast, the group head out towards one of the dungeons. Namely the one to the west of the city called the Golem Caverns. Ronia looked at me and asked "You probably haven't been to the Golem Caverns Dungeon have you? Well you better be extra careful in there. Those golems can be tough to deal with. They are made of various hard materials and really annoying to deal with. They are usually taken care of with magic or blunt force so swords won't work as well in there." I looked over to Herald and saw he was carrying a large warhammer along with his shield instead of his trusty sword. "Well this sword isn't going to be much use there then now is it." I said as I looked at my own sword. "At least swords arn't my main source of damage at least." I was extra glad I had learned those new spells last night as they would come in handy.

In games you don't really think about what weapons you are using, just how much damage it deals. The same was for Liberty of Immortals and I didn't care that I was using a greatsword and lightning spells against golems made of rock and the fact that realistically my sword should have broken dozens of times over while fighting there. Guess I need to pay more attention to these small details, I keep thinking like i'm still in the game even after so long.

We left the city through the gates and I saw some guards looking at me like they had seen a ghost. The hecks up with them? I looked behind me and saw no one else there so they were definitely looking at me, which was weird. We continued along without trouble for a couple of minutes. Thank god this dungeon isn't far from the city and is only a few Kilometres away. We were chatting and having a fun time when we saw a group of goblins and 3 ogres up ahead. "Ugh more of those things? Seriously, just how many are there? There was never so many of them around here the last time we came to visit." Ray grumbled as he charged an ogre. I fired 7 fireballs at the goblins, burning several of them and killing one. Ronia's bow started to glow and she then said "Rain of Arrows!" and then fired an arrow into the sky, with blue light streaking behind it. What followed that was dozens of arrows made of mana raining down on the 20 or so goblins and 3 ogres. All of the goblins were killed in one fell swoop by Ronia. Herald smashed the skull of an ogre while Ray and I took care of a second.

The third ogre was peppered with blue arrows made from Ronia's mana and was in pain, but was otherwise fine. It roared in fury and started to charge Ronia, raising its wooden club high above its bald blueish white head, ready to strike. Before I could even move I saw the original arrow fired fall from the sky still trailing blue mana, impact the ogre. The arrow dug deep into its skull, sending brain matter and blood flying in all directions as the ogre collapsed. I stared at her in shock as that was NOT how that skill worked in the game. I shook my head and made sure to remember this for the future.

~~~

We were cleaning up the last group of ogres and goblins and finally arrived at the dungeon, far more tired than we were expecting to be. "What the hell is wrong with this place?! Theres way too many ogres and goblins!" Ronia was literally beating goblins over the head with her bow and stabbing them with an arrow she was holding, and was doing quite a lot more damage than you would expect. I almost felt bad for the damn green turds, they were being mutilated. I made a mental note to not anger Ronia as she was hella strong when mad, as was evident with the pile of goblin corpses with dozens of stab wounds and severed limbs. It didn't look like this was done with someone swinging an arrow around and clobbering goblins with their bow.

"At least we made it here, and look on the bright side. I can store the goblins in my inventory so we can sell the corpses later on." I said but quickly corrected myself. "Well...not all the goblins. Some of them are not really in enough pieces to be sold." Ronia started to blush as she heard that knowing full well that she was the one who mutliated 82 goblins into mushy piles of meat.We had only managed to get 27 good goblin corpses and 5 ogre corpses before they were taken care of by Ronia.

"Well lets head on in! Golems here we come!" said Ray, trying to take Ronia's mind off of the goblin infestation we had fought through. He then looked at me and said "Also, Zane you can just toss the goblin corpses somewhere off in a ditch somewhere and burn or bury them. They arn't worth much to begin with and the ones we managed to rescue from Ronia are still in bad shape. We probably won't get more than 1 copper for each of them if anythi-Gubh!" Ronia clobbered Ray over the head and looked at him with a rather angry and embarrassed look on her face. As Ray whined about how much that hurt, I went to the side of the path near the dungeon and looked for somewhere I could burn the corpses without starting a forest fire. I saw a very unhealthy tree in the middle of a clearing and decided that over there was fine. "This tree is probably going to die anyways with how it looks so its fine if I burn it." I quickly dropped the corpses near the sick looking tree and lit the pile of bodies on fire. I was watching the pile to make sure I didn't accidentally set the whole forest on fire cause I did not want to be arrested for that, if they even arrested for that in this world.

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Ronia and the rest were still talking and laughing about something and I was about to leave to join them since the corpse pile had mostly finished burning and nothing caught on fire other than the dying tree when something started glowing. I saw mana pour out from the burning remains of the tree and it formed into dozens of glowing humanoid shapes. Not liking this one bit I called out to the others. "Hey guys! It seem's we have some trouble on our hands!" I was quickly prepping a lesser spell I had learned last night when the others arrived, and not a moment too soon. The humanoid shapes became dozens of goblins. "Theres so many damn goblins! Where the hell did these things come from?!?!" Ronia was ready to freak out at the sheer number of goblins that was in front of us. It was around 50 or so and it didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon.

"I burned the pile near a very sick looking tree. It had green veins of mana pulsing along its bark and looked like it was about to die so I just decided to burn it along with the corpses and next thing you know, theres a goblin army!" Herald was using his shield to bash away several goblins recklessly charging us while Ray stabbed and sliced others charging from the left side. Ronia was firing her bow like mad but looked like she was contemplating something while she shot them. I had readied my spell by this time and simply said "Back up and watch em burn! Flaming whirlwind!". In front of me a large whirlwind made of pure fire was roaring and spinning like crazy. I aimed at the horde of goblins and the source of the seemingly neverending horde, the tree remains, and fired it. The whirlwind swept up goblins from the sides and along its path, sending them flying in random directions with various burns.

The few who were unlucky enough to stay within the whirlwind of flames were burnt to a crisp and had their burnt remains sent flying. The goblins were mostly cleaned up with that one spell and so was my mana. "Man, that sure takes a lot more mana than I remember it taking..." I said before falling flat on my back, gasping for breath. The others finished the last few goblins and rushed towards me. I was healed by Ronia and some of the mana deprivation symptoms were alleviated. I was still recovering when Ronia yelled something. "I knew it!" She was digging through the burnt remains of the tree and was holding a cracked blue crystal with green veins pulsing within it.

"The reason so many goblins appeared Zane, was because you damaged a Monster Summoning Crystal. The crystal went haywire and started sucking in mana like mad and eventually damaged itself beyond use. The reason that tree was so sick and covered in glowing green veins like you said was because of this nasty piece of work." She held up the crystal and then handed it to me after helping me up. Here, put this in your inventory. It's the safest place we can put it. I'm sorry guys but we need to report this to the guild. This is far too serious to not do so immediately. I'm sure you know how bad having one Monster Summoning crystal near a city is. If there was one, there's definitely more hidden around. I'm already fairly certain that the reason theres so many ogres and goblins around the city of Namph is because of someone placing these around the city."

We all agreed that we should head back to the city and report this right away and started to head back right away, keeping a lookout for any sick trees or any plants with the telltale green veins of mana pulsing around them, showing that a Monster summoning crystal is nearby. We found 2 more of them hidden off the path thanks to Ronia's keep eyesight. I couldn't spot them from where I was but she somehow did. Probably a racial ability of elves or something. We recovered the crystals this time without them going haywire. I was trekking along when I felt that strong presence. It was looking in this area for some reason. I quickly put up some rudimentary mana cloaking to hide us. The others noticed me doing something and started looking around for something. I was already low on mana so the cloaking wasn't strong and I didn't want the person looking to find us. I was panicking when I remembered I had mana potions from that shop.

I quickly chugged both potions and pumped all of my mana into cloaking us from the probing of whoever it was that was scanning this area. I had sweat pouring down my head and was in terrible pain from overexcerting my mana. I had long since run out of mana and was down to using my own vitality as a replacement. I chugged both the healing potions and Ronia pulled out a mana potion to give me. The other's didn't know what I was doing but knew it seemed to be important enough for me to be risking my own health to do so and helped me. They kept looking around for someone or something nearby that could be causing this but didn't find anything. They probably wouldn't either since the person was in the city but I couldn't tell them since I was struggling to keep the cloak active.

After another agonizing minute the persons scanning ended and I dropped the cloak, collapsing in a heap. "Zane! You alright?! What the hell was that?! Some kind of attack on you? Zane? Zane answer me! Zane!" That was the last thing I remember seeing before passing out from the pain.