It's not difficult to find Goblins when they are fighting. They have no concept of subtlety, favouring loud and flashy attacks instead of precision. Some, like Loona, manage to find something to do in a town that allows them to pursue that innate obsession and break off from their tribe but most attempts fail, either because they aren't accepted or because they kill someone. I had to kill dozens of Goblins who tried and failed miserably to integrate themselves
The echoing caused by the tunnels complicates it a little but with the help of our higher Vitality and the "map" I scribbled, we manage to pinpoint the fighting to one location, a larger cavern split off from the Dunecrawler territory.
The pack of Goblins have surrounded one human who is dodging every single attack coming from them. He weaves between rocks shot from their slingshots and the strikes of the Goblins relentlessly pursuing him without getting hit once.
The Goblins are enraged and haven't noticed us yet, solely fixated on the robed person currently making strange hand gestures and mumbling something. I can't understand what they are saying because of the bloodthirsty screaming, they’re talking just loud enough so I can hear them. The Goblins have mushroom cap hats, tightly sitting on their head and wiggling around with their movements.
Kara and I sneak up to a slingshot-wielding Goblin each and while I impale it through the chest with a tendril from my amulet, she puts her foot through the chest of the other one, spraying gore everywhere.
[Your party has killed a Goblin- lvl8]
[Oblivion: A percentage of the target's highest stat (Dexterity) has been added to yours. +1 D]
[Your party has killed a Goblin- lvl9]
The Goblins don't immediately sink to the ground, turning their heads and hissing at us while dead before finally dropping like puppets with their strings cut.
The shower of gore caused by Kara alerts two of the other Goblins to our presence but before they can do anything, the robed person makes his move.
He does a grand gesture, sweeping his hands over the cave and yelling out a final word that I can't understand either but it looks like he is casting a Skill.
The Goblins drop dead the moment he swipes past them with his hand, every single one in his sight falling to the ground with only a few showing visible reactions, clutching their chest.
A sharp pain erupts from my chest, blurring my vision and forcing me onto a knee as I try my best to keep the bile from rising up.
I keel over, reaching for my revolver. I can't make out any shapes or even my position so I hold it at the ready, aiming at the general direction of him. I think.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, the pain stops, my vision clears and I can finally stand up again.
I just catch the end of his robe fluttering out of sight as he runs away into the Depths.
"Bitch!" Kara groans out, kneeling on all four in a small puddle of her vomit. It must have hit her harder than me, I refuse to believe that she'd vomit if that wasn't the case.
"Let's go," I say, grabbing my second revolver from beneath my coat.
"Wait," Kara says, staggering to her feet, "What if he does it again?"
I don't think he'd be able to do it this quickly, it looked like he has been preparing during the fight before but he probably has some sort of ace up his sleeve or he could already be preparing another Skill. It’s not worth it.
He did also run further into the Dunecrawler territory.
"Good point, let’s continue hunting. I don’t think I can sleep after seeing this, knowing he is around," I say. I don’t even know what he did, Skills like that are definitely not common enough for me to know, if that was even a Skill.
Artefacts like Siros definitely exist and don’t need Skills to use them so maybe he has one like them. Maybe he is another Chosen, something like [Dark]. Would the gods choose someone who is stuck underground?
We leave the Goblins laying there, they have nothing of worth on them except their mushroom caps that I am not entirely sure aren't poisonous so I am not touching them either way. My high vitality might save me from the spores but I doubt that it’s high enough to save me from direct contact.
A few hours of hunting later, we find an abandoned camp deep in the Dunecrawler territory. We purposefully went another direction from the potential chosen but I didn’t expect to find their camp.
There aren't any valuables laying around but there are clear signs of a camp having been torn down in a hurry. Two spots were cleared out for bedrolls with a small space in between, probably a fire gem griddle plate judging from the smell of food. I doubt that he'd start a campfire in a mine, a sufficient spark might detonate the entire mine.
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I hope I can negate the possibility of igniting the gems with my revolvers by wrapping the chamber in one of the tendrils.
"A second guy?" Kara asks annoyed, "I hope he isn't as strong as the other dude. Why did they make a camp this deep in the Dunecrawler territory when they are surrounded?"
"I don't know."
"This was not always Dunecrawler Territory. I had an associate," an unfamiliar voice, the Chosen probably, explains from behind us, "the best Diver I've ever met."
I turn around and use [Identify], anxious to have my expectations met or shattered.
[Shadow Sorcerer- lvl 25]
A level 25 main class?! At least he isn't another Chosen unless it's possible to turn the class into a sub-class.
No wonder he killed an entire group of Goblins with one gesture, even if he prepared beforehand.
The smart thing to do would be to shoot him on the spot, using [Quick draw] and [Reap Shot], but I stay still with a hand hovering over my revolver. My tendrils writhe anxiously, curling and uncurling around me.
The tendrils have continuously been getting more instinctive for me, appearing and interacting with stuff without my conscious effort. It hasn’t become a problem yet but I know it’s going to be one.
He pulls down the hood of his robe, revealing an old, rugged face, stained with ash and oil. His unkempt brown beard and oily hair gleam in the light as he continues "I am terribly sorry for the earlier scare but my spell can not be interrupted once I have cast it and I appear to have spotted you too late. If I might inquire what you two youngsters are doing down here?"
"We came here to deal with the Dunecrawlers, " Kara says, keeping one hand behind her back gripping her knife tightly. "Do you live down here?"
He smiles kindly before answering "It has been a while since I have seen the sun but yes I would say that these tunnels could be called my home by now. Why do you wish to deal with the Dunecrawler nest?"
"We got hired to do so, they've been disrupting the mine," I explain warily. "What are you doing here?" There is little reason anyone would stay in the Depths for a prolonged time unless they physically can't leave or have a mission.
"I do believe that the Dunecrawlers will not be the end of your problems but are merely one facade of it," he states, " Ganoderma Assecula is a parasitic type of fungus that expends the host's mana to sustain itself and provide longevity and strength to the host. I was studying the local strain of Ganoderma Assecula when the hosts became unusually aggressive and attacked anything they could see that wasn't infected, rapidly spreading until they reached the Dunecrawler territory."
So if we deal with the Dunecrawlers, Goblins and other monsters will replace the problem just as quickly, probably before we even get paid. If they sustain themselves with mana, wouldn't that make it vulnerable to the Dunecrawler venom?
"What's your plan?" I ask. He doesn’t seem hostile and if we can deal with both problems at once, everyone wins. I take pride in my work and even if I got bound to a geas, I wouldn't leave after hearing this. I can't just leave this ticking time bomb down here. Who knows how rapidly it would spread through a human city?
He grins widely, probably glad to finally have someone else to talk with, and starts explaining "I have been working on gas bombs, capable of destroying the fungus…"
I have a feeling this will take a while and probably give me a headache.
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The [Shadow Sorcerer] is very talkative, probably due to his long isolation and lack of talking partners, and enjoys going on long tangents about barely related stuff, like how his best friend had a fear of Spiders and this funny story about it.
Fundamentally, the Dunecrawlers are not the actual problem that we need to deal with as they are merely taking advantage of the fungus's innate weakness to their poison to spread their territory by gorging themselves on the corpses of the hosts and multiplying rapidly.
It's fascinating but his long-winded explanations have me zoning out from time to time but that stops when Siro starts prodding me, requesting me to ask further questions for stories and explanations. They must have found a kindred spirit, seeing as they both indulge in telling stories.
He plans to make an airborne version of the Dunecrawler Venom and stuff it into bombs to flood the tunnels with, killing any fungus or magical creature inside them, but that requires a ton of work that he has been slowly chipping away at for approximately five months now. I don't know how he keeps time or how accurate it is but that would explain why Nathan was having problems with paying his tab. I'd assume that the Dunecrawlers started their expansion around that time.
It takes a mountainous effort to not cut him off but knowing his capabilities is bound to be useful when we inevitably have to fight each other and he does not seem to have a suspicious bone in his body, happily blabbing about his Classes, Skills and Magic.
Yes, Magic.
"Excuse me," I cut in once I found a lull in his stories, "you mentioned Skills and Magic separately, aren't they the same?"
"Yes and no," he says. I settle in for a long explanation as he winds up "I do not know if others have managed to replicate my feat as I have been researching the Depths since before the System appeared and thus could not compare notes with anyone else due to being cut off from all civilization but I have [Advanced Mana Manipulation], a Skill that took a painstaking amount of training to get. It allows me to manifest runes of magic and anchor them to objects to create effects -I assume they mimic other Skills but I obviously can not test that- like the one I used against the group of Goblins earlier."
Like my [Runecraft] Skill. "What about this one?" I ask, tracing the Shocking rune in the dust on the stone floor.
He strokes his beard as he musters the rune, humming thoughtfully.
His humming is getting higher in pitch until he snaps his fingers and points to three different parts of my rune design in quick succession "The thingamajig is upside-down, you are missing a blub there, and you have no targeting or range indicator that should be here."
Wh- what?
A screech resonates from the small flask on his belt but stops just as quickly when he presses a small symbol carved into the side. "Sleep time!"
He rushes into the cavern, startling both me and Kara as he unfurls his bedroll in a practised manoeuvre, even if it is incredibly thin from wear and tears it still holds together, before laying a second one next to it and curling on top of it like a hyena. He then proceeds to loudly snore.
"He didn't even tell us his name," Kara states.
I look down at my rune and simply scowl. "What the fuck is a thingamajig?"