"They are starting again," Blue turned to Bonnie, who typed something in her tablet.
"Ok, so they fight for about 30 minutes, then they split off and go back for an hour or so, but some of the monsters are staying back even during the break. It seems like they are posturing and just roaring at each other. Another odd thing is that they are not killing. They hurt each other really badly but never deal the finishing blow," Bonnie explained after checking the information she had written down.
"This is oddly organized for a bunch of monsters," Blue sighed.
After arriving at the area where the monsters kept attacking each other, the group found a place to watch the creatures. The idea was to check if they had a way to sneak by them. Since there was such a large force here, there should be an empty nest or a less populated one around. The group was searching for a place filled with webs, the nest seemed to be the best fit for that description. The only issue was that this particular path was closed off from the rest of the room. According to the map, if they wanted to check that specific valley, this was the only path available to take. Because of that, Shane, Alex, and Mylo went ahead to see how many monsters were around and if there was any way to sneak past them. Hera, Silah, and Helena were on the protection team, watching out for stray monsters and making sure no one would end up being caught in a trap.
"Hera, can you see that," Silah pointed to the shadows.
Hera squinted, trying to see whatever her girlfriend was talking about but found nothing. She could only see the surrounding darkness.
"I can't see a thing. How about you, Lena?"
Helena looked around with her night vision, "Give me a moment," she raised her hands and used the shadows to grab the creature in the darkness. What followed were loud sounds of something being crushed and ripped apart. Suddenly, Helena was covered in a soft blue glow, "Yes! Finally, I need a minute now."
"Did you level up?" Blue looked back towards Helena.
"I did, and holy crap, those are a lot of points," Helena gasped.
"How many?" Bonnie asked
"A couple hundred. This should be the equivalent to… maybe ten levels? Holy shit," Helena was feeling shell-shocked by the situation.
"Go take care of that. Don't worry, we got this," Hera said with a smile. Seeing Helena be this happy was amazing.
"That is a lot of points. I think the captain was the only person back home who got that many points in a level up," Silah said.
"I guess that makes sense. She's already over level 60, so there is a good chunk that she would get naturally," Hera nodded.
They kept going with their watch for a few more minutes until the recon team came back.
"So, did you find anything?" Blue asked as the trio got closer.
"Not really. There are about 50 monsters on each side, and only 25 fight at once. The only way to go past any of the groups would be to brute force it, or maybe come back at night, but that's a whole different can of worms," Shane sighed.
"Right… and what's the plan? Do we need to prepare for a big fight, or are we trying someplace else?" Hera asked.
"Let's go someplace else. This seems too risky. We might need to get other groups to help or prepare a bit better. I don't think it's worth the risk when we have yet to search the other areas," despite her words, it was easy to tell that Shane wasn't all that thrilled with the idea of ignoring the place for now.
"Where should we go then?" Mylo asked.
"I was looking at the map, and I think we can try this valley," Hera pointed at a large valley that crossed most of the room to the left, that place was still among the unexplored areas, "According to what you said, Shane, the thing we are missing is the howling from the abyss. A corridor that long should give us a chance to hear that sound and try to follow it. Maybe the ruins will be closer to the 'source' of the noise."
"That is actually a good idea. We should get to the other side in what, half a day?" Bonnie started analyzing the map.
"Probably, more if we stumble on monsters. Well, I say that, but we have the level fake level 19 here now, so it might not be much of an issue," Blue bumped Helena's shoulder.
"Fake level 19?" Shane had a confused expression.
"I leveled up and got an absurd amount of attribute points. It should be enough to be worth 10 levels."
"So you are the person with the highest stats among us all now?" Shane asked.
"I wouldn't say that, but my stats should be closer to yours than to Hera and Blue's," Helena explained.
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"Let's get going. We can walk and talk," Shane said.
The group started moving towards that long corridor. The closer they got to their destination, the louder the howling sound became. Not just that, but the area became much windier. Not to the point of being a problem, but it was like someone was aiming a leafblower directly at their faces. The corridor in question was much larger than most. It was as wide as the main street of a big city. It would be easy to fit eight lanes of cars in here. However, the floor was rockier than the other areas. To top it all off, there were several tracks from different monsters. It seemed like this area saw a considerable amount of traffic. Despite that, the number of monsters they found was surprisingly small, and they only showed up in groups of three at most. This allowed Hera's party to move rather quickly through the area, even while fighting.
It didn't take long for them to understand the behaviors of the creatures that lived here. The spiders focused onbursts of speed, but as long as you avoided the initial attack, it wouldn't be hard to finish them off. The scarabs, on the other hand, were the slow but steady type. During the quick battles they had, those creatures would always move at a constant pace unless they were using the smaller hands to shot out their stingers. In that case, the speed was higher than the spider's attacks, but the projectile wasn't as strong as one would expect. Sure, if it hit exposed skin, it would be horrible, but it was like being shot with a paintball when hitting armor. Painful, but it would just leave a bruise.
Seeing Mylo take those hits with his bare skin and the stinger bounce off as if it was made of rubber was a sight to behold. Unlike most people who wore armor, he had skills and spells that made his skin stronger than steel. He always said that it was better to move without a heavy suit of armor, and this was his solution which worked surprisingly well. Not to say that there weren't any issues with that. Things like poison, fire, and other elemental-based attacks were more effective against him since they directly hit his skin. Using his staff, the man looked like a mix between a giant and a martial artist from a movie. At times, his attacks were heavy and wide, but at other moments, he spun around quickly with a dexterity that didn't seem possible unless he was seeing the world in bullet time.
During the figths Shane was doing her best to avoid using the fire bullet, it would make too much noise and the explosion was like a flare in such a darc place. Instead, she was focusing on the earth spike and her electric net. Using the buckshot bullet in the dark with such a large group of people was a bit dangerous, and she was trying to avoid that unless it was completely necessary. Still, who impressed Hera the most was Helena.
There was a moment when the party had to stop because it seemed that there was a large group of scarabs in front of them, but they weren't moving. Worried that the creatures could be just sleeping and that throwing light in that area could wake the creatures up, Helena stepped up and used one of her spells to control the shadows on the valley walls. She changed the color absorbed by the terrain, essentially making the bounce of the natural light stronger. It became strong enough to illuminate the bottom of the valley and reveal that what looked like scarabs was just an odd rock formation. Helena spent almost her entire mana pool for that single spell, but it still was something incredible. She managed to change the natural laws of the room, even if just for a moment.
Hera wasn't the only one amazed by that. Bonnie and Shane were astonished as well. This was the kind of magic that only was possible for high-level explores, but thanks to Helenas's synch, her [Reinforced Mana], and the boost she just got with her bonus attribute points, she could make this type of effect before level 20. One could only imagine how strong she would get when she became a high-level explorer herself.
"Maybe you should start thinking about what title you will get," Hera said with a smile.
"Stop that. I'm still ages away from having a title," Helena waved Hera off.
"Are you? The guild gives that whole spiel about titles being an honor above gold cards, but they are not the only ones who can give someone a title. I mean, as long as enough people start calling you by a name, what can they do?" Shane said.
"I'm just level 19. I'm not getting a title."
"Why not? I mean, Hera got a silver card in less than a year. Weirder things happened," Alex said.
"Let's not talk about that, ok. I just got my magic back. Let me enjoy this before you all start to put so much pressure on me."
"What pressure? We are just saying you are badass," Blue protested.
"Leave it, Blue. I get what Lena means," Hera tried to defend the mage since this discussion started because of her.
"Fine," Blue shrugged.
"Thanks, sweetie," Helena whispered to Hera, who just winked at her.
"What is, like, the reason people get titles?" Silah asked.
"Right… you don't know about the titles explorers get, right?" Bonnie turned to Silah and started to think about where to start.
"No, no. I know that part. The guild or someone gives people a title that matches what they do. That's why those two singers are Bright Night and Black Star, right? One of them can make a night get bright, kind of like what Helena did, and the other uses dark star magic or something. But like, how do you get a title? Is there a test, or is it something you pick or someday you just wake up, and someone tells you, 'hey, this is your title.'"
"Well, you kind of have to earn it. All those explorers who have titles did something to give them that name. In Black Star's case, her performances always included stars and other space-like elements even during the day, so she ended up with that title. I don't know about Bright Night, but I'm assuming it's the same," Alex explained.
"So anything goes? Like can a crafter get a title? Or a healer?" Silah asked.
"Yeah. As long as it is something other people recognize. I know for a fact that there is a crafter who specializes in musical instruments. He's called Fate String because he makes guitars, harps, and other string instruments with a lot of crazy effects. He can do other stuff too, but string instruments are his specialty," Bonnie said.
"Is that only for humans? Can dwarves get titles too?" Silah seemed excited about that idea.
"Anyone can, as far as I know," Shane replied, but she quickly made a motion for everyone to stop moving.
On the path ahead, there was some mist coming from below. The group pulled in their light spells and walked carefully. No one had said anything about mist here, and oddly enough, the fog was a visible shade of light grey even in this place with low light. They carefully approached that mist and noticed a massive chasm going even deeper than the valley. With a howl, the wind seemed to pick up and push some of that mist away, revealing another layer of valleys under the floor on the other side of the crevasse.
"I'm going to go on a limb and say. The ruins are down there," Blue sighed, already imagining how much work would be to go down.
"Maybe, maybe not. There is only one way to find out," Shane replied with a big smile.