“So I would usually have suggested that we turn around right about now, but since you’ve taken on the Lizardman Dungeon, I think we can handle this. This settlement of Killer Kobolds pretty much just has numbers, so as long as we don’t do anything stupid, I think we can take it.”
Grifith and I continued going down the river, killing every Spider, Kobold, and Slime in our way. Which turned out to be quite a lot.
I was refusing to look at the quest details since it would only stress me out, but I knew for a fact that we’ve killed more than the 20 necessary to complete the quest. At this point, we were just racking up kills for the payout when we got back to the city.
As we continued downstream, the number of monsters increased. I was dealing with one every two minutes before, but now that’s doubled. The same goes for Grifith’s 1 a minute going to 1 every 30 seconds. It felt like we were taking 10 steps then killing a monster. Take another 10 steps and kill another monster.
Frankly, it was excellent practice. I wasn’t low on mana, since I decided to keep the Mana Bolt Arc to 5 bolts, strictly base casting and refusing to empower anything or split any projectiles at the moment.
When the monster rate doubled, we found out why shortly after. We rounded a bend in the river and found a large section of the river that had essentially expanded to be a lake.
There were some basic huts built out of long branches and tied together at the top with spider silk. The Killer Kobolds seemed to be a bit on edge, so we assumed they knew we were here. When one of the monsters spotted us, it shrieked and dove into the water to come attack us.
Soon after, around 50 Kobolds had either jumped in to cross the river, or started charging at us on land.
“You get water, I get the land?” I asked Grifith. He only nodded in response and prepared himself, sword having been never put away since lunch break.
The ensuing slaughter of Kobolds happened far quicker than I ever would have imagined. It took us a mere 8 minutes to wipe out the entire settlement. None of the Kobolds ran away, they all attacked us and kept going until the last one fell.
The cluster of claws surrounding our feet made it more unstable to walk. I kicked them all into a pile, making sure not to step on any, then added them all to my storage in one go.
“That was pretty fast. I don’t think we’ll have to deal with any more for at least a few minutes. Want to take a break, or keep going?” I asked Grifith.
“Let's take a short breather. 15 minutes then we get back up.” I nodded and he walked over and took a seat on the ground beside me. I sat down too, then put a 50 point barrier around us. I’ll regenerate triple the cost before we go, so I wasn't worried about spending the mana.
“So you got any pointers for me? We’ve fought a few good battles the last couple of days. I’d love to hear any advice you have to offer.” I asked Grifith .
“You rely on your regeneration too much. If we were to get into a long and drawn out battle, you’d run out of mana too quickly.”
Okay, fair. But like, feel free to hesitate some dude.
He continued, “Your Regeneration skill is truly impressive, and I think you use it wonderfully to your advantage, but I also think you need to work on moderating your spells. You fire quickly with too little hesitation, which is good when you know the monster’s weak points, but if we come across something that we don’t know about, I think you’d run out of mana much quicker than you’d realize.”
“That seems perfectly reasonable.” I nodded along, drinking from my water skin while I listened.
“Another thing I've noticed is you don’t use your barriers as much for defense as you should. Which ties in with my previous point. If you use weaker Barriers, you could funnel the monster into a more manageable line and deal with one at a time, rather than dealing with the whole swarm of them at once.”
I thought back to the Lizardman Dungeon, when I literally fought with a horde of 70 monsters.
It would have been a lot easier if I had put up some guiding walls to take away a certain degree of their number advantage.
“Sage words. I can already think of a time I could've used it.”
He nodded along and asked if I had any advice for him. I had to think for a moment before I came up with anything, but there was one part of the fight that stuck out to me.
“I think you could stand to be slightly more offensive. As it stands, I think you are too afraid of getting injured to really get into the beauty of the battle. If you were to use your detection skill in tandem with your melee combat skills, I think you would be a terrifying force to reckon with. You could swim through a rhetorical sea of these Kobolds and come out with minimal injuries.”
He thought about it for a moment then said, “You have a point. I know exactly where every monster is within a certain growing radius of myself. I could see myself doing something similar.”
“Hell dude, if you know what direction, how far, and how fast a monster is coming at you, you should be able to take it on blindfolded. That being said, I think that’s something to practice on a different quest when we’re not surrounded by monsters in practically every direction.”
Grifith laughed and agreed. It would be a mistake trying to change fighting styles in the middle of a quest.
After relaxing for a few minutes, catching our breaths and recharging some mana, we moved on down the stream. We decided against destroying any Kobold huts, since they seemed harmless. That and having a place where we know the Kobolds like to hang out will make them a bit easier to spot in future journeys through the woods.
I asked Grifith if we were done with the Giant Slime portion of the quest yet, and he said we still needed a few more. When we killed 10 more total, we headed back to where we entered the woods.
We got back to our camp as the sun started to set. I suggested we start heading west for a few hours, at least until the sun is fully set, and Grifith reluctantly agreed. He looked hesitant. Since we had just cleared the area of monsters, we should be a lot more safe here than if we were to go towards an area that was still teaming with monsters. I mentioned that we were still a few miles from the start of the forest’s edge, and that I'd be making a strong barrier that even Bran would have to take a few hits to destroy. He conceded and we headed west.
We ran for 3 hours before calling it good. And by run, I mean Grifith was back to his old antics of running at me with a blade, threatening to give my health regeneration a run for its money. It reminded me why I was hesitant to ask him to join me in the first place.
The first time I collapsed was when the sun had fully set and I tripped on a loose root on the ground. After that, I cast a Ball of Light and had it fly a dozen feet in front of me, providing a clear line of sight as to where I should place my feet to avoid being ran through by the psycho behind me. The second time i collapsed was when i told the fucker to just kill me and get it over with.
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He laughed, put his sword away and started setting up camp. I did my part by casting a 760 point barrier then laying on the ground catching my breath for a few minutes. The best part was I had gained another level in Enhanced Body yesterday morning, and the results were at last showing. I wasn’t even completely exhausted yet.
I pulled up my basic status and looked at what was going on throughout the day.
User: Claff:
Health 320/320 (336*/hr)
Stamina 137/320 (32/hr)
Mana 100/960 (637.6*/hr)
SKILLS
PASSIVE
Enhanced Body Lv 11 [43%]
Increased Mental Capacity Lv18 [21%]
Regeneration Lv18 [50%]
ACTIVE
Arcane Magic Lv 14 [90%]
Barrier Magic Lv 13 [97%]
Game-like Storage Lv12 [25%]
I had started making immense progress with my Arcane Magic and Mental Capacity skills. I was looking at almost half a level a day since I started practicing using my Arc method. Pretty soon I'll be hitting level 20 in two of my passive skills, and I'll be getting level 15 in Arcane Magic before lunch. That should give me plenty of time to learn the hopefully new spell.
It had been a while since I got my Arcane Explosion spell, and while I absolutely love it, I need something other than my first spell to attack with. Preferably something cheaper that i can just use as something like a machine gun of bullets.
Though I guess I could do something similar with Mana Bolt. Just downcast teh spell and I should be able to use up to 20 at a time. And since i got multicasting, i don’t need to limit myself the same way i had to with just projectile split. Regardless. I want a new spell. I have too much fun learning new ways to abuse the spell modifiers. I can’t wait to try it with a new toy.
With no new spells to learn for now, I dumped the remainder of my mana into the Barrier pattern and fell asleep.
Grifith woke me late in the night with a tap of his boot into my side.
I swear if it’s for anything less than a swarm of Trolls, I'm going to end him.
Turns out it was just a swarm of Skeletons that he wanted help with. I held my head up to see what he was talking about, and it turned out that we were completely surrounded on all sides by an undead army.
I sat up and immediately checked the integrity of the barrier. It had taken a couple points of damage, but it would hold for a few more hours at this rate, even if I did nothing.
Relieved, I took my water skin out of storage and took a long swing. Then I handed it to Grifith who took a drink as well.
I checked my resources, and they were all full, including my stamina pool. I estimated we had gotten around 6 hours of sleep, since the sun hadn’t shown yet. I could tell it was almost time for the sun to rise though.
“Well, I’ll take care of it.”
I cast 10 Mana bolts and started sending them at any skulls in my field of view. I recast and kept the waves of bolts going until there was only one Skeleton left. I sent the final bolt towards its head and lay back down from my seated position. I then went back to sleep for another hour.
“Rise and shine, Mr. Show Off.”
Please. Mr. Show Off was my father. Just call me Show. I giggled a bit at my unspoken joke.
“Yeah yeah I'm up.” I threw my sleeping bag off of me and started packing. After I put everything into storage, I looked around outside of the Barrier.
So that wasn’t a dream, huh?
There were piles of bones laying around. There had to be at least 100 out there.
“How many Skeletons were there last night? I didn’t keep count.” I checked on the charge left on the Barrier and saw that it had over 900 points of mana still in it.
“You killed what could have been an invading horde of Skeletal monsters, and you don’t even remember how many there were? What even are you, Claff?”
I blushed a little before defending myself. “Well, if I hadn’t been chased to the point of exhaustion by a sword wielding psycho last night, I might have been more aware of the Undead army around us. Now I ask again, how many were there? I figure there’s around a hundred bones scattered around us. I don’t know what the drop rate for the bones are, but I know it’s not 100%.”
“It’s closer to about 50%. You killed around 200 skeletons last night, and you weren’t even fully awake for it. Wow. Just wow.” He looked at me weirdly then went to gather the bones into a pile. When he was done, I put them all into my storage, since it all took only one slot for me.
We had our breakfast under the barrier and got ready to head west again.
“When we see any small groups of Skeletons, we should at least slow down a bit so I can trap them in a draining Barrier. I’d rather not let an army of the undead reach civilization. Given that we’re here to kill monsters, I say we should probably take at least the first half of the day to go into the undead portion of the Dark Forest so we can do a bit of monster control.”
Grifith didn’t look happy about it, but he agreed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. But you’re absolutely right. It probably wouldn’t have been as bad earlier if we had taken out a couple groups on our way to get the Kobolds and Slimes.”
“Agreed. Like I said, let's just spend until around noonish killing Skeletons, then we can move westward to get the Wolves. I doubt we’ll make it there by sunset, but I'd rather make some progress than no progress.”
We talked strategy for a bit longer, then I looked at my skill list to see if the festivities last night had given me the push I needed to reach 15 in Arcane Magic.
SKILLS
PASSIVE
Enhanced Body Lv 11 [49%]
Increased Mental Capacity Lv18 [27%]
Regeneration Lv18 [60%]
ACTIVE
Arcane Magic Lv 15 [5%]
Barrier Magic Lv 14 [15%]
Game-like Storage Lv12 [82%]
The grin on my face told Grifith everything he needed to know.
“Let me guess, you leveled your Arcane Magic during the annihilation that happened last night?”
I nodded with a goofy smile and focused back on my skill list. I learned the Barrier magic first, as was customary. I knew if I learned Arcane Magic first, I'd be having too much fun with it to bother leveling Barriers.
At this point, I don't even really use it during actual battle. Though I really need to start though. Maybe this level will give me something good?
I said that last part as a bit of a prayer to Hagrid, then learned the spell.
Barrier Effect Dampener has been learned.
It seemed simple enough. It was a passive effect that basically increases the amount of force needed to damage the barrier, effectively making each point of mana i add to the Barrier’s Pattern go that much further. It looked to have a 2:3 ratio, making the Barrier 1.5 times more effective than before. I also didn’t have to consciously use this effect. It would be applied regardless of if I wanted to have it in effect. But I could turn it off if I wanted to, which I saw no reason to ever do.
Alright, this is a whole lot more usable than Darken. That one felt like a waste of a modifier. Now it’s time for the Big Guns.
I switched my focus from Barrier Magic to Arcane Magic.
Exploding Bullet has been learned.
Oh sweet mother. THAT'S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
I quickly pulled up the pattern and was about to cast it into a tree when I thought better of it.
Let’s focus on the information first to see what it does. I’d rather not cause a forest fire on accident.
As I thought, The bullet would be launched with great force, then on impact, an altered mini version of Arcane Explosion would go off at the impact site.
I cast the spell, keeping it under my control and refusing to allow it to fire. I examined the pattern closely and saw the portion relating to the explosion. Part of it felt incomplete somehow. It felt like there was more to the spell than was being shown now, but I couldn't for the life of me imagine what.
I pulled the pattern for Arcane Explosion up to the front of my mind and compared the two. I couldn’t see anything that felt missing about the Arcane Explosion pattern, but there was a part of Exploding Bullet that still felt missing to me.
Grifith nudged me with the toe of his food and told me it was time to get going.
“I get your confused about how your new spell works, but you can practice it more when we see some monsters for you to kill. But for right now, either add it to your array of floating missiles, or let the spell go. We should get started so we have enough time to do any sort of damage control before we have to leave in a few hours.”
I know he’s right, but I can't get my finger on what’s wrong. None of the rest of my spells made me feel this way when I first learned them, so why am I getting that feeling now?
I put the whole thing in the back of my mind and focused back on the task at hand. We had some Skeletons to re-kill.