image [https://i.imgur.com/aW4ngdj.jpeg]
Heart of the Earth
In the deepest parts of the cave system, not a trace of life remains to feed even slimes.
Here, in the Heart of the Earth, only Earth Golems reign.
Cluster rank: 2
Variant enemies may now appear. Chance of variants increased.
Will was back in the caves. According to his map, this Space was adjacent to the one he’d fought the slimes in. This time, however, there were no glowing lichens on the walls. Without any source of light, the darkness was absolute, and Will’s only indication that he was even in the caves was the message window.
Back to the caves, but this time the third, and hardest Space. It looks like the second Cluster in each side of the Board is elementally aligned, and has some sort of environment hazard. This one is the darkness, which at least can’t kill me on its own. But the Cluster is ranked up, and the one variant I’ve fought before was really nasty. And this time I can’t even blame the bloody ‘roo for the Cluster rank. One of those stars is mine.
Main quest
Gather 5 Stonelight Crystals
Reward:
Space rank-up
200 XP
1 skill shard
Hmm. Gathering quest again. And with the name, it probably means the crystals might be used to provide light, like the Wild Sage Oil gave me cold protection. I wonder why the volcano didn’t give a quest to gather something which could give me protection from the heat?
Thoughts for another time, I think. Need to focus on this Space for now. First order of business is to see if it’s even possible for me to do, at this point. Can’t do anything if I can’t actually see. Shock Ball seemed to give off some light, didn’t it?
Will cast Shock Ball. For a brief moment, the yellow ball of lightning illuminated the cave. Will could see the rough, natural looking cave walls around him, and the open cave in front. There was a rough patch of stone to his right that seemed to call to him somehow, and a presence to his left that he didn’t have time to identify.
Then the spell reached the end of its range and exploded, the sudden increase in light blinding Will for…
A second? Two? More? There was no way to know, because by the time Will’s eyes cleared, the light from the spell was long gone, and the darkness was back, even more oppressive than it was before.
What the hell was that? Will spin towards the presence he’d seen briefly. He couldn’t see anything, of course, and whatever it was, it hadn’t attacked him. Yet.
Casting another Shock Ball, Will looked specifically at whatever was next to him, for the brief time the light let him see.
He’d assumed it would be an earth golem, or some sort of variant. Though he really couldn’t explain why one of those wouldn’t take advantage of his blindness to attack him.
What he saw, instead, was a familiar looking plant. He didn’t have the time to see any details, but he was absolutely sure that it was one of the Wild Sages he’d fought in the tundra Space.
And there was only one reason one of those would be in a completely different Space, and peaceful towards Will himself.
Is that my pickled Wild Sage? I’ve been wondering why it was still listed in my status, but it wasn’t around at Fili and Kili’s, or in the arena. Well, not going to look a gift pickle in the flowers, or something. Not sure how useful it would be against Earth Golems, but at the very least I’ll have a meat shield. Vegetable shield? Whatever. Better to have it here than not. Questions about how it got here and why it didn’t appear in the other Spaces can wait.
A little calmer than before checking his surroundings, Will walked slowly towards where he’d remembered the rough patch of stones he’d seen in the light of his first Shock Ball.
Let me guess. This is where the “mining” part of my Harvester skill comes into play? Like Gatherer did in the cloud fields?
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Touching the stone, Will activated his Harvester skill. He could feel that the skill did, in fact, have something to work on, and waited patiently for the ten-minute duration to pass.
Ore Vein harvested!
Gained 1 Chunk of Iron Ore (Good)
Damn. I was hoping for one of those Stonelight Crystals. Still, I’m getting good quality drops now, which is nice. Getting that Mining skill shard is already starting to pay me back.
Another message window was waiting for Will when he closed the drop notification.
New achievement “Master Harvester”
Congratulations! You’ve used each Harvest skill shard at least once AND harvested at least one item without using a skill.
Not leaving a single stone unturned is the sign of a true murderhoboadventurer!
P.S.: Don’t forget to break the urns!
Reward:
Harvester gains the Plenty aspect.
You keep snarking at me, and yet you keep giving out rewards for the same behavior you snark about, system. Be careful you don’t give me whiplash!
Aspect: Plenty
Tier: Expert
Level: 1
XP: 0/200
10% chance per level of harvesting 1 extra item.
5% chance per level of harvesting an item of 1 quality higher than normal.
1% chance per level of harvesting a special item.
This aspect cannot be removed.
It’s strip-mining in skill form!
The Plenty aspect itself was at the Expert tier, which from what Will understood meant that it took all of the available aspect slots on the Expert-tier Harvester skill.
It also couldn’t be removed and replaced.
On the other hand, the effects were much better than any other aspect he’d checked the skill with.
Yeah, I’ll definitely take it. It might even be worth the snark.
Will left the wall, moving slowly deeper into the cave.
Very slowly. It took eighteen minutes for Will to regenerate the mana cost of one Shock Ball, and each Shock Ball illuminated the cave for about fifty meters ahead. Which Will calculated to mean that he could move at about a hundred and fifty meters per hour, and still have most of his mana available for the inevitable fights.
Of course, reality had its own plan, and halfway through Will’s second fifty-meter segment, he could see a smaller tunnel leading downwards from the left wall.
Bet you fifty copper bits that there’s a room with monsters down that tunnel? Will asked his pickled Wild Sage. The pickle didn’t answer. And it wouldn’t have fifty copper bits to cover its side of the bet anyway. I thought as much. Oh well. We’ll wait for my mana to fill up, then light up the tunnel.
True to his words, Will waited just long enough for his mana to refill, and then fired a Shock Ball down the tunnel. The light from the skill showed a relatively straight tunnel, but the skill reached the end of its range before the end of the tunnel could be seen.
Will waited eighteen more minutes, then went fifty meters down the tunnel and cast again. This time, the light only traveled for about twenty meters before the tunnel opened up into what looked like a decently sized room. As soon as the skill moved into the room, however, Will started hearing crashing stone on stone sounds from the left side of the room. About one loud ‘clack!’ every two seconds.
Called it. Room with monsters.
It took a minute for whatever it was to move from the left side to directly in front of Will, and the wombat immediately fired another Shock Ball. It would have been impossible to aim Shock Bolt in the darkness, so Will chose to use the ball option instead, hoping to catch the monster in its area of effect.
Somewhat to Will’s surprise, the plan worked precisely as intended. The ball of lighting shot down the tunnel, reached its maximum distance of fifty meters, and exploded, catching a large, humanoid shape in its blast. The attack even had the added benefit of causing parts of the monster to glow, letting Will see it even after the skill’s effect had ended.
The downside of the whole endeavor, (and of course there’s a downside, Will grumbled to himself. There’s always a downside), was that the monster, which was fairly clearly one of the Earth Golems mentioned in the introduction, didn’t seem to be affected by the skill. Other than the glowing bits, of course.
It did seem to be extremely slow, and Will took some time to examine it. The Earth Golem was about two and a half meters tall, and looked to be made out of whatever random pieces of earth or stone were around when it was created. It was some of the stone pieces which were glowing after being hit by Will’s skill.
The golem had a vaguely humanoid shape, with a shoulder width of about a meter and a half, and a half spherical lump where its neck and head should have been. Two large pieces of stone were located close to where the eyes would have been on a human, both glowing bright yellow.
The loud clacking sound Will had been hearing were the thing’s steps, and Will estimated that it would take half a minute just to reach him. The sounds did indicate the kind of strength that made Will absolutely certain he didn’t want to be hit by the large lumps of stone that served as the golem’s hands.
He also had time to notice that the pickled Wild Sage was just standing next to him. Which was completely unlike the minion’s previous behavior, when it would attack any ‘living’ Wild Sage they’d encountered on sight.
What are you waiting for? Attack it!
At Will’s command, the pickle moved ahead towards the golem, while Will stayed back to watch.
The pickle reached the golem quickly, and started attacking with its razor-sharp leaves. The attacks didn’t seem to even scratch the golem, and the earthen monster stopped walking and slowly lifted its arms to strike back at the plant.
Very slowly. It took five seconds just to lift its arm, and then two more to lower them and perform the actual attack. If the pickle had even a tiny bit of self-preservation instinct, it would have evaded the attack easily. But as it was, the plant was too busy flailing uselessly at the golem to even try and dodge, and the hit landed easily.
Smashed from above, the pickle folded nearly in two, and Will could see one of its flowers get torn off. Not that it seemed to bother the Wild Sage, which just kept up with its own useless attacks.