image [https://i.imgur.com/0fHDU9H.png]
Slime Caves
Deep in the cave system, where the kobolds aren’t bold enough to go, lies the domain of the slimes.
Will found himself in a big cave. The ceiling was at least two meters above him, and the walls were at least twice as far apart. Glowing lichen covered the walls, providing enough light for Will to be able to see the occasional stalactite or stalagmite.
Will himself seemed to be in the middle of a cave, with the tunnel stretching both in front of him and behind.
Main quest
Slay 10 Cave Slimes.
Reward:
Space rank-up
100 XP
1 skill shard
Slimes, is it? Sounds disgusting. And it looks like they’ll be on the stronger side of things, from the XP reward.
There wasn’t anything moving in Will’s vicinity, so he started moving. There wasn’t any way to tell which direction would lead where, so he’d decided to walk in the opposite of the direction he’d been facing when he appeared. Just to be contrary.
After walking for a few minutes, Will came upon a split in the cave. A smaller tunnel, about big enough for one human to walk down, lead downwards from the right wall.
Shrugging his armored shoulders, Will decided to explore the smaller pathway. Something about his wombat instincts seemed to like caves, and the smaller the better. The tunnel meandered its way for about ten more minutes of walking before opening into a medium sized chamber.
The ground inside the chamber was covered by patches of green moss, separated by swaths of bare stone. The source of the barren swaths was easy to identify, as two blobs of translucent, jelly-like substance were slowly moving about the chamber, consuming every bit of moss they encountered.
The blobs, which Will assumed were the cave slimes he was after, seemed completely oblivious to his presence, interested only in the moss they were eating.
OK, that’s somewhat less disgusting than I’d imagined. I don’t think I want to just charge at two of them before I know what they can do. Time to try my new skill, I think.
It only took a little bit of concentration for Will to summon a small blue orb in front of him, and launch it at the closer slime. The orb flew fast enough that it seemed to become a blue streak of light, hitting the green blob and leaving behind a small blackened patch in the jelly-like substance.
Almost immediately, both slimes changed direction and started to jiggle in Will’s direction. They were moving a lot faster now than they’ve been before his attack, giving Will time for just one more Mana Bolt before the closest slime reached him. Will swiped his claws at the slime, the bronze-covered digits barely slowed down by passing through the jelly. Unlike the Mana Bolt, however, the slime just pulled itself back together with no discernible damage.
Will’s paw, on the other paw, was reddened and feeling like he’d spent a few too many hours in the sun. Will backed away quickly.
Ouch. I guess that means physical attacks are out here. Joy.
The slime wasn’t about to give up on its new meal, and seemed to be fast enough to keep up with Will, leaving no time for the wombat to cast any more Mana Bolts.
Even worse, the second slime was also approaching, and Will didn’t think he’d be able to evade both of them at once.
This is going to hurt, Will thought. He moved around the closer slime, positioning it between himself and the other enemy, and started casting Mana Bolt after Mana Bolt. The slime, meanwhile, wasn’t idle, and was slowly engulfing Will, starting from his front paws.
It felt very much how Will imagined shoving his paw slowly into boiling water would. The slime was climbing up towards his shoulder, and Will was starting to panic, when after one more Mana Bolt, the slime shuddered for a second, and dropped away from his foot to lie inert on the ground.
The second slime was just a couple of meters away, giving Will no time to feel relief. The wombat thought frantically about his options while running away from the slime.
That first one took five Mana Bolts to kill. How much mana do I even have left now?
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Mana: 43/132
That’s not even close to enough! I’d have to stretch this for almost an hour to regain enough mana to kill it!
Will kept away from the slime, checking his status screen, inventory and skills as fast as he could for options. After a few desperate seconds, his eyes fell on the last entry in his equipment list.
The wand! It does minor damage, instead of the lesser my Mana Bolt does!
A thought caused the wand to appear in Will’s mouth. It tasted of vinegar and evil, and Will almost dropped it in disgust, but managed to control his instinctive need to expel it from his mouth for long enough to fire a stream of vinegar at the slime.
The slime’s substance hissed on contact with the vinegar, leaving behind a black patch, significantly larger than the one left by the Mana Bolt.
The slime, however, continued to chase Will relentlessly. It took all three of the wand’s charges before it stopped moving and flattened into an inert puddle.
2 Cave Slimes slain!
Gained 20 XP
That makes no sense, Will thought. Minor is two ranks higher than lesser. It should have taken less attacks!
Not expecting an answer, Will approached the dead slime. He touched the puddle gingerly, prepared to pull back at the slightest burn. The puddle, however, seemed completely inert, and Will tried to activate hunter-gatherer.
To no result.
Guess it’s neither a plant nor a beast then, Will shrugged. Pity. I need more money. More importantly though, I need a better way to fight these things. My wand is out until tomorrow. I could just say move on and to hell with this quest, I guess.
Will considered the idea of just going to the next space, but ultimately decided against it.
The other guy is still here, and his quests make things harder for me. I’m going to need to take every opportunity to get stronger to keep up. So, let’s see what I have.
Will buried himself in his information screen, talking to himself while he looked at his options.
With these two slimes down, I have two hundred XP. That’s enough to get Heavy Armor Proficiency to level three, which will reduce the cost of Mana Bolt by another two mana. Which means I can cast it…
Eight times instead of seven, assuming I start with full mana. That’s not going to be enough.
I can remove the armor and get thirteen casts, but that leaves me without the armor. Put that down as a last resort.
I could level up Mana Bolt and see if it helps. But then I can’t level up Heavy Armor.
On the other hand, I could level up both Mana Bolt and Mana Pool, which will still give me eight casts.
Yeah, that’s probably a better option for me. What else might work? Backstab is limited to physical attacks, which don’t seem to work against slimes, so that’s a no go.
What about the Electrical aspect? I haven’t checked it with the new skills yet.
Choose a target to attach your Electrical aspect:
Unstoppable Force (skill) Slow
Hunter-gatherer (skill)
Least Cure Wounds (Skill)
Dungeoneer (Skill)
Heavy Armor Proficiency (Skill)
Mana Pool II (Skill)
Stamina Pool I (Skill)
Mana Bolt (Skill)
Bronze Claws (Weapon)
Wand of Vinegar Steam (Weapon)
Wombat Breastplate of Lesser Life (Armor)
Unstoppable Force and Hunter-Gatherer are out, since they won’t help me here even with the aspect.
Least Cure Wounds gets a stun effect, which is just bad. Definitely counts as an adverse effect, for a healing skill.
Dungeoneer will enhance all other skill with an electrical aspect by a least amount, which might have been useful if I had more than one.
Heavy Armor Proficiency is interesting. It deals least lightning damage to anyone touching my armor. It’s a possibility, but I don’t like the thought of just letting the slimes attack me for long enough to kill them though. Not sure who’ll die first in that case…
Mana Pool II will enhance all my electrical mana-based skills. Like Dungeoneer, but more limited. It does say lesser boost instead of least, so a bigger boost to fewer skills. Same for Stamina Pool and stamina-based skills. Both aren’t going to help here.
Mana Bolt looks like a jackpot. Raise damage by one category and change the type to magic-electrical. I’ll check the rest, but I’m fairly sure this one is the winner.
Bronze Claws would have helped, but less than the Mana Bolt. Next.
Wand of Vinegar Stream Will get an instant of least lightning magical damage, just like the claws. Not good enough, and it’s out of charges for today anyway.
Breastplate… Same as the Heavy Armor Proficiency, except lesser instead of least. Again, a more limited but stronger option.
Yeah, Mana Bolt is the clear winner here. And if I’m going for it, I may as well go all in and invest my XP in it. I can get both the skill and the aspect to level two for one hundred fifty XP.
Skill shard: Shock (Mana) Bolt
Tier: Basic
Type: Mage
Cost: 10 mana
Level 2
XP 0/200
Fires 2 bolts of pure mana for up to fifty meters distance, each bolt dealing lesser magic damage
Pew! Pew! Pew!
Aspect: Electrical
Tier: Basic
Level 2
XP 0/100
Change skill to Shock Bolt, dealing lightning magical damage.
Bolt damage is raised by one category
Bolts have a 20% chance to stun target for 1 second
Jackpot! If I’m not mistaken, I just quadrupled the damage on this one, and got an added stun chance as a bonus!
After the upgrades to Mana Bolt, Will remained in the chamber for three more hours. Long enough to heal himself as much as possible, and get his mana pool back to full.
On his way back to the main tunnel, another message popped up in front of his eyes.
Rank up!
A main quest has been finished in a related space.
Variant enemies may now appear.
Bloody ‘roo!