The longboat rocked back and forth a bit as everyone got out one by one.
“We could go to the merchants’ guild or head out to the mercenaries’ guild. Both of them should have some spare equipment or valuables lying about.” Sophie expressed her thoughts.
“From what I understand, we’re going to arrive just after nightfall,” Osmond reminded everyone as he got out of the boat. “We should head straight towards the safe area. It’s going to be hard to cut our way towards there, but it’s best if we stick to the well-lit and protected inner town area for the night.”
“He’s right,” Letty nodded. “I mean we’re all going to be tired. Once inside the inner walls, we can get some sleep and head out early in the morning.”
“But if we do that,” Amanda interjected as she looked around for any possible enemies. “It will give a chance to other people to loot what we want before us.”
“There’s no proof that they haven’t done that already to begin with. There’s a good chance that looters and scavengers have already gone to each and every place that we’re aiming for.” Quentin tried to keep the group’s expectations grounded.
“The best course of action would be to just check out the inner town first and to talk to the survivors. Maybe they’ll know something about the things we need.”
“We need to check out if they have any loremasters or maybe an archivist,” the dark elf noted as they finally made sure that the small clearing was safe. “If they have up-to-date information and a proper map of the country, we have to make them show it to us, even if it’s going to be an expensive trade.”
“So, all in favour of heading towards the inner town first?”
“Yes.” Came the answer from everyone at the same time as the other boats began to arrive one by one.
“What about the corpses we find and make along the way?” Khan asked. “Should we loot them and use that weird ass death ritual on them to get some shards? I mean, we’ll have to fight our way to the inner city. It would be stupid to leave any resources behind.”
“Are you really going to haul all the junk around on a friggin battlefield?”
“If I have to. I mean, we could find a cart or wheelbarrow or something.”
“We’d be sitting ducks while dragging along a pile of looted arms and armour.”
“I’m not going to protect your ass while hauling around a hunk of junk.” Cruz scoffed as she sat down to rest a bit.
The arriving mercenaries and guardsmen spread out throughout the small clearing to look for any possible enemies. Several cases of fighting soon resounded from the nearby forest areas when the warriors found undead stragglers stalking about. Everyone seemed tired, rowing upstream of the river took them a lot of energy. Rations were passed around, allowing the people to eat and drink. Everyone was ready to make the most of the time they were given to rest. An hour of silent resting later the captain of the third guard squad stood back up, heading towards the dock.
“Alright everyone, it’s time we had out!” He said, making it clear that their respite was over.
“Already?” Khan asked. “My arms are still sore as hell.”
“Just cast some lesser healing on them.” Amanda noted while standing up and hoisting her knapsack over her shoulder.
The low grumbling of the mercenaries was a sure sign that they too found the time given to rest too short, but there was nothing they could do. As the small army headed out, the longboats slowly gained speed once more. The river was turbulent and the disturbing sight of corpses floating downwards didn’t ease their wariness either.
“This is going to become worse and worse isn’t it?” Valerie asked as she looked at yet another corpse floating down the river.
“How come we didn’t see any bodies yesterday, or the day before?” Sophie kept rowing as her eyes wandered about on the surface of the river.
“There could be monsters in the water as well.” Osmond theorized with a disturbing calmness.
“Do you believe they have alligators or something along the lines here?”
“It’s possible, although Jakub hadn’t mentioned anything like that.”
“I don’t know what an alligator is,” Jakub spoke up finally. “But there are no monsters in the river, or at least, none that I know of. There are a few sorts of large fishes, but those really seem to eat anything larger than fishes the size of my fist.”
“In other words, you have no idea what made them disappear along the river either.”
“Sadly, no.” The old man shook his head as he held the rudder of the longboat.
“There’s the possibility that these corpses only started the flow downwards recently.” Fabian added to the conversation.
“That makes it even worse,” Regis sighed. “That would mean that there’s a battle up ahead that only recently started.”
“More like a massacre if you ask me.” Quentin joined in with an obvious worry in his tone.
“We can’t do anything about it while we’re sitting here,” Cruz scoffed. “The only thing we can do now is to try and row a bit faster. That way we can reach the next stop sooner, rest up and head out once again.”
“It’s not good to over-fatigue ourselves,” Amanda tried to calm her companion. “From what we were told, we will be arriving in an enemy-filled town. We’ll need our strength to fight our way to the inner area, so arriving there without enough energy to even swing our weapons is a bad idea.
“We have to keep our pace though, unless you want to arrive at the dead of night. I might be able to see in the dark, but not everyone is so lucky.” Regis stated as they kept on rowing.
“Yes,” Quentin let out a strained chuckle. “Us ordinary humans tend to lack such gifts. Thanks for reminding us about it.”
“Any time my friend,” the dark elf laughed. “Any time.”
The cringe-filled conversation somewhat soothed their troubled mind, allowing them to keep on rowing forward. The line of longboats was somewhat sparse as they tried their best to keep their own pace, held back by the heavy load. The clouds on the sky began to darken once more, scattering rain in an orderly fashion. The ominous growls of the clouds were sometimes cut short by a thunder that flashed with a distant light.
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Regis kept wondering if they would still find opponents at the docks upon their arrival to East Fork. Undead, by their nature, were drawn to living beings. This meant that any monster trapped in the city should instinctively seek out the inner town. The short report of the scouts that returned from the town didn’t shed light to the actual state of East Fork. They didn’t know how many survivors were still alive, or how many of those survivors were actual warriors capable of fighting. Nor did they know the state of the walls that protected them.
The report said that the weakest enemy was somewhere around the 5th or 6th level. Back in Hunor at least they had to fight monsters and average to the 3rd up to the 5th level with a few overpowered freaks showing up at the end. Here, they would be starting out with stronger opponents right from the get-go go and it worried him. He did everything he could with the limited resources and time he had, enhancing his companions’ equipment the best way he could. If he wasn’t so scared of anyone finding out that he had transmutation alchemy, he would have tried to use the new information and memories granted to him by his advancement in his craft.
The young spell weaver tried his best to calm his mind. Still, the memory of the material he never thought he would have access to in abundance now resurfaced in his mind over and over again. Arcanite. From what he understood; it was a scarce magical material that was worth its weight in gold, or at least in silver, and now he knew how to create it. It was a difficult process and it required several other materials. To be precise; it needed elemental stones representing the four basic elements. It also needed a fifth ingredient. An arcana stone. He tried to create pure arcana stones once but failed miserably.
For some reason, he couldn’t get it right while using the creation method used for the elemental stones. When he tried to fuse a quartz crystal with pure arcane energy, it always cracked and crumbled apart. Now he understood why. He simply lacked the skill and knowledge to create it. Now he had both the experience and the knowledge. To create a pure arcana crystal, one would need both a solid piece of quartz stone and quartz powder. First, he would have to start infusing pure arcana into the solid stone, then slowly add the quartz powder which would then fuse itself to the stone when it was cracking apart.
It would create a protective shell around the original crystal, preventing it from crumbling apart. The resulting arcana stone would then be able to be reabsorbed to replenish one’s depleted arcana reserves or to be used as a crafting material. The interesting part of it was that an altered form of this method could be used for the creation of other elemental stones as well. Where he once failed to use quartz powder before to create elemental stones, he now understood that he would first have to create a pea-sized solid quartz as a basis and the moment it began to overfill with elemental power, he would then add the quartz powder to it, turning it into a semi-stable elemental stone.
This stone, while being unfit as a crafting material for infusion enchanting, would be usable for alchemical purposes. The original elemental stones he had been making before would have to go through a separate set of processing techniques before being used as an alchemic resource. This one simply had to be ground in a mortar and pestle to be used. Regis shook his head, pulling his wondering mind back to reality. Slowly rowing upstream, the line of boats cut through the river beneath the falling rain. As they moved with a monotone rhythm, a small explosion of the water beside their boat shook up everyone.
“We got company!” Khan said as he pointed towards their right side.
A robed figure stood at the shore of the river, surrounded by several armoured people surrounding it. The hooded figure held its hand up, a fist-sized ball of fire forming above it, only to shoot forward. The roaring ball of fire fell short by a meter or so, exploding the river water with great force.
“Jakub,” the dark elf called out to the boatman. “Steer us closer to the other shore. It’s better to gain some distance from them.”
“Are they…”
“Fallen. A small group consisting of a spell caster, two archers and half a dozen melee fighters.” Sophie strained her eyes, trying to discern the composition of the enemy forces while Quentin blocked an arrow with his shield.
“Can you take down any of them?” Valerie asked while rowing.
The sun elf girl knocked an arrow on her bowstring and aimed a bronze-tipped arrow towards the undead spell caster. She let the arrow loose, watching it hit the axe-wielding abomination right beside the mage. It was clear that the rocking of the moving boat made for a terrible shooting aid.
“Don’t waste your arrows,” Quentin said. “It’s best if we get out of here, fast.”
“How far is the next stop?” Fabien turned towards the boatman, earning a slight head shake.
“Don’t get your hopes up boy,” the boatman said as he steered their boat near the left side shore of the river. “The next stop should be at least 2 hours away at your current pace.”
“That’s an awful lot of time.” Khan grumbled.
“And an awful lot of chances to get attacked again.” Osmond added.
“Then it’s best we start rowing faster!”
Everyone agreed with the suggestion, although begrudgingly. Throughout the next 2 hours, the line of longboats was attacked at least 7 more times by arrows shot from the shores. Varying-sized groups of undead appeared from time to time, most of them just aimlessly wandering around in the forest, hiding behind a canopy of trees and bushes. During the first hour, the rain picked up, letting thick drops of water shower at everyone with great intensity. By the time the next dock came into sight, the group of outlanders along with the few warrior refugees were soaked to the bone.
Their clothes were squeaking at every move as water got pressed out of them. Even Regis was soaked from head to toe as he had to give up on his cloak in favour of being able to row without being hindered. As they neared the run-down jetty, Khan pulled his paddle back, ready to jump out on the dock and tie out their vessel. Quentin immediately followed him with shield at the ready, staring at the edge of the clearing in search of enemies. He didn’t have to look too hard as several figures were shambling about in the clearing.
At least a dozen armoured warriors turned their heads towards the new arrivals and none of them were friendly. Pale blue flames stared back at the outlanders from the rotting eye sockets of the fallen that turned their way. An arrow got stopped by the shield of the wannabe paladin before it could reach Valerie as she was getting out of the boat.
“Thank you, darling.” The woman said before casting an arcana bolt towards the archer to take her revenge for the sneak attack.
Everyone moved out in a well-practised manner, attacking the nearest foes, and leaving the farthest ones to be taken care of by Sophie. Her aim proved to be improving by leaps and bounds as her arrows now reaped one lower-ranked undead per shot. Regis found himself going up against what he believed to be an undead squire, the sight of the bronze plate armour being a clear indication of the fallen warrior's previous distinguished standing.
His opponent moved with a speed unexpected from someone wearing such heavy equipment. For the first time, the young spell weaver had the chance to try out his gale blast spell on an actual medium-sized opponent. As the compressed air burst forward in a cone-shaped trajectory, the undead squire stumbled back with heavy steps, its head soon falling on the ground, severed by the bladestaff that whizzed by with a red glint running along its edge.
It was a surprisingly fast and anticlimactic fight, but he had no time to assess the changes brought by the development of his skills and attributes. A pair of undead warriors, one wielding a sword and one swinging an axe came at the same time. He sidestepped to the left to dodge the swordsman while deflecting the axe attack. He then cast a runic arcana bolt at close range, aiming at the swordsman’s head. The arcane projectile struck his enemy just above its ear, its head jerking towards the side as it collapsed with a heavy thud.
The axeman got a chance provided by the small distraction of its comrade’s death to take another swing at the spellcaster, pushing him back as the bronze-infused staff barely managed to block the attack while receiving a deep mark. Regis was pushed back a few feet, stumbling by the incoming force, yet before he would have the chance to take care of his opponent, an arrow sunk into its eye socket, ending its unliving existence.
The young spell weaver turned around, seeing Sophie nod at him before nocking on another arrow, only to let it loose at a swordsman that got too close to Osmond for comfort. By the time the second boat got moored to the dock, almost all of the undead were dealt with.