Damn an intelligent Gold ranked monster is no joke. This thing isn’t even as high a level as the Minotaur I fought when I was like level 60... I’m going to need to think about the fight before I go back in.
The moment she was out the door, Kelsey increased the opacity of her Telekinetic Armory skill and stored her telekinetically created clothing. She then made her way up to the first floor and the base camp near the hole and spent an hour setting up camp and getting comfortable as she considered what her next steps were.
First, clothing. Maybe even some real armor. It’ll need to be lightweight and thin in order to fit underneath my spatial armor.
Then I need to solve this telekinetic integrity problem. I’ve always been able to launch real objects with much more force due to not needing to also maintain their integrity as they travel and impact. If I can find a way to make my Telekinetic Creation skill faster, maybe I can add in the final part of the skill that solidifies the objects and makes them permanent?
Since receiving her skills, Kelsey had learned a few things about her abilities that affected the crossroads she was at now. That was, her Telekinetic Creation ability was obviously what gave her the ability to create real objects, but that took additional time at the end of a creation. Time she didn't usually have in the middle of a fight.
She could create temporary objects with the skill too, but she also had to maintain their integrity as she launched them. This wasn’t typically a problem, as the mana she used in most creations was easy to control. But, it still meant that she had to split her focus.
The result of this splitting of her focus was that she couldn’t attack with temporary objects with nearly as much force, precision, and power as she could with permanent objects.
I could go the route of manually creating projectiles before fights, and then retrieving each and every single one of them afterwards. It was something that was certainly possible, but it would be time consuming to have to do it frequently. If I want to beat that werewolf, I may be forced to do it though.
She spent the next hour considering her options as she was setting up her tent and a new campsite up on the first floor. After she was finished setting up the camp, she left and headed for the ladder leading back up to the tent city. She had some cores to sell and some armor to buy. She was also tired of eating shark meat, so she decided to buy some real food and spices as well. She had thousands of cores to sell, so she figured she would have plenty of cash.
Upon arriving at the shopping area inside the tent city, she realized how wildly bad the prices were. The shops buying monster cores in the tent city were buying them for so little it wasn’t even worth her time to sell them. She did some quick math and realized that if she were to sell every single sand shark core here in the tent city, she would only be given 95 gold pieces. She had assumed that they would be buying them for less than she could get in a real city, but she had no idea how much less.
Forget this, I’ll just teleport to Neim. With that thought, she walked back down to the hole, climbed down the ladder, entered her tent, and began meditating. She was able to use the long range teleport version of her skill to go anywhere she had been before, it just cost more mana the further she wanted to go.
She activated her teleport skill, thinking of an area that was roughly a kilometer south of Neim, slightly off the road that she figured would be a safe place to teleport into. The teleportation took over 6 minutes to activate and considering she was regenerating nearly 1,800 mana per second while meditating, her quick mental calculation told her that this teleport cost over 600,000 mana.
After arriving in the woods near Neim, she made her way into the city and headed directly to the Adventurers Guild to sell her cores. They were offering a price several times higher than the merchants in the tent city were offering. She sold all of the cores she had collected from both the sharks and werewolves for total earnings of over 450 gold pieces. Sadly, 400 of that went directly into paying back her debt to Thadius. Just how much money did he spend for Owen and Lisa to mentor me? I had assumed it was only a couple hundred gold. So far, I have paid like 500 gold in total...
Even with less money than she was expecting, it was time to do some shopping. She then looked around the city until she found a leatherworker’s shop where she bought a few sets of nice leather armor, as well as a few pairs of boots, and gloves. She then found a clothing shop that sold travel clothing and purchased a few dozen outfits as well. She wasn’t running out of clothes by any means, but she wanted to avoid the scenario where she would have to fight naked or something, plus, more clothing options never hurt anybody.
She then found a shop that was selling dried meats and purchased enough so she wouldn’t have to eat Sand Shark meat for at least the next couple weeks. She also bought some spices and sauces to make sure she didn’t get too bored of the different meats. Deciding that it probably wasn’t healthy to live on an all meat diet forever, she found a vegetable and fruit merchant and bought a few weeks' worth of greens as well.
Something she had noticed the last time she was in Neim was that some people had rings or necklaces with spatial enchantments on them that allowed them to store things similarly to how she did with her vault. Knowing this, she was significantly less cautious about people seeing her use her dimensional storage while she shopped, she didn’t hesitate to store everything immediately after buying it. It was much more convenient than carrying everything in a bundle until she was somewhere private and then storing it like she had been doing in Whitebranch.
While she was in Neim, Kelsey decided that she wanted to enjoy some of the finer things the city had to offer. When she was in the city before, she didn't have any money, but this time she had more than enough money to have some fun. So, Kelsey walked up to the north side of the city and explored. She went back to some of those first food vendors she saw and bought skewered meats, pies, candied apples, and a ton of small sweets. She also went around to some of the merchants that were selling things like jewelry, books, and other trinkets. She didn’t have quite enough money to buy presents for people, so she just stuck to small stuff for herself. She found a brass ring that she quite liked, some books that were written purely for entertainment, and a small pocket mirror. Books are so much cheaper when they aren’t teaching you skills.
She also wanted to find Melody the Magnificent and give her a tip, but she wasn’t in the location Kelsey remembered her being. Must be here too late, she must already be done.
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So, Kelsey went and watched some other performers. She saw several amazing shows, but her favorite by far was someone doing some kind of water dancing. It was a smooth, almost sensual, dance performed with water manipulation. The woman danced with such grace and poise it almost didn’t seem human. Her water control was extraordinary as well. Her act was like a silent play where the water itself played all the roles except the dancing woman’s. There was so much raw emotion and brilliant storytelling through facial expressions and body language that Kelsey nearly forgot she was just watching one woman and her skills.
By the end of the show, Kelsey was blown away. She had no idea that it was even possible to control an element with that kind of precision and mastery. Kelsey quickly dumped all six gold pieces of her remaining money in the woman’s bucket. Kelsey walked up to the woman and told her how impressed she was before Kelsey excused herself and began making her way out of the city.
She had spent all of her money, so unfortunately, Kelsey didn’t have much else to do in Neim. She made her way back down to the south side of the city, walked out to the woods where she arrived, and sat down before entering mediation and activating her teleport again.
As she arrived at her tent, Kelsey was shocked to see someone sitting outside on one of the chairs she had placed around the fire pit. Man, that's my favorite chair...
It was a man wearing a set of form fitting, clearly custom-made plate armor. He had a medium build with long, tightly twisted hair that cascaded down passed neck. She was unable to make out any specific colors with her domain, but she did see that he was wearing a long cloak with an embroidered lion’s head stitched on the back of it. Strapped to his back was a large great hammer with the same lion's head symbol carved into the side.
Stepping out of her tent, she immediately identified the person who had made themselves comfortable in her chair.
[Warrior - lvl 455]
Fuck. His level is by far the highest I've ever seen... Just who is this guy?
She could now see that the lion's head on his cloak and hammer was a bright red color and that his armor had red accents. The man had dark skin, black hair, and dark brown eyes. His skin was perfectly smooth, not a wrinkle or a blemish in sight. Something about him seemed almost angelic. Too perfect. All in all, he was a very handsome man. Unfortunately, that handsomeness was overshadowed by the hard, stern look he had on his face as he looked her way.
“Who are you?” the man asked before Kelsey was able to say anything. His voice was firm and commanding in a way that made Kelsey confident that this man was used to leadership.
“My name is Kelsey, sir.” she said a little hesitantly. “Can I help you?”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her for several long seconds before he spoke. “You’re not an Immortal, are you?” he asked with a hint of confusion in his voice.
“Uhh, no sir. I’m not.” she said, feeling confused. “Why?”
His face softened slightly. “Just surprised is all. I came over because I thought you were an Immortal Spatial mage I had never met. There aren’t too many mortal space-aspected mages who have access to a long range teleport skill.” he said contemplatively, before continuing with a slightly sterner voice. “I was also checking to see if this space mage was a threat.”
Kelsey’s heart leapt into her throat at hearing that. “No. No sir, no threat here. Just someone who got their clothes ruined fighting a werewolf and needed new ones.” she blurted out frantically. Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.
The man sitting in her chair barked out a single laugh before catching himself and saying. “Yeah, I understand now. Just a young woman who got her clothes ruined fighting some werewolves and needed new ones.” The man then stood up and reached his hand out for Kelsey to shake before saying “Listen, if you ever reach immortality, come find me here and I’d be happy for you to join my Guild. Our goal is to eventually clear this damned dungeon and we could use a powerful Spatial Mage.”
Kelsey took his hand and shook it before saying “Sounds good. I don’t know if I’m planning on joining an Immortal Guild yet, but if I decide to I’ll certainly come find you. What’s your Guild’s name?”
His eyes opened in genuine surprise. “You don’t know who I am?” he said before pausing briefly “Sorry, that sounded arrogant. I’m just surprised. My name is Leon Garley, I’m the leader of the Crimson Lion’s guild.”
Right. The guy that Lisa told me about. Neat.
“Oh sorry, I have actually heard of you before, I just didn’t put it together. Although, looking back, the red lions everywhere on you should have been a clue I suppose.” she said, chuckling a bit.
“Not a problem, have a good day, and just remember, just because you’re behind a wall, or in a tent, doesn’t mean that some people can’t see you.” he said as he winked at her and started walking away.
“Hey, wait. How did you know I would be coming back here?” she asked seriously.
Leon stopped walking and stood silently for several seconds before turning his head around and answering seriously. “I have a knack for being where I’m supposed to be.” Without saying anything else, he walked away confidently.
Hmm… Well, that was weird... Also, a pretty stark reminder that I’m not the only one with a domain. That should have been obvious, I guess. I wonder what he meant by ‘having a knack for being where he’s supposed to be’.
God, so dramatic and overly mysterious. Just be like ‘sorry can’t say’ next time. Must be a skill of some sort...
Leon Garley. The highest leveled individual in the public eye. I guess it makes sense he's such a high level if his Immortal life's goal is to clear The Trial.
Putting that strange interaction to the back of her mind, Kelsey sat down and went back to thinking of a way to beat the Bloody Werewolf.
She needed to figure out a way to both use permanent objects, and not deal with the downsides. She didn’t want to spend days creating thousands of permanent spears. Not only would that take a toll on her head, but she would also have to retrieve the projectiles after every fight. Plus, there was always the chance she would run out in the middle of the fight. On top of all of those problems, she would be taking mental energy and time to summon the spears from her vault which may end up nullifying any potential benefits.
No, she needed a different solution. Kelsey spent the rest of that night in her tent, thinking, planning, and preparing. Eventually, she came up with a solution that solved all her problems, and even had advantages that she hadn’t considered before beginning her creation. This new idea had the potential to change the way she fought forever, she just hoped it would work.
It was late into the night when Kelsey finally finished her preparation, having spent her entire mana pool dozens of times. Her head was throbbing from the drastic overuse of mana, and she wasn’t even halfway done with what she would potentially need to create.
But, she couldn’t do any more that night, so she stored her creations, got into bed, and slept a wonderfully peaceful night of sleep.
She woke up the next morning feeling confident in her ability to win the fight, deciding she would make the rest of her arsenal after winning the fight.