Samantha grunted as she caught the narrow rock edge with her fingertips and halted her descent. A split second later the straps from her weighted pack pulled taut against her shoulders as its momentum caught up with hers. Despite her grip being stable on the cliff, the tenuous handhold had other plans. The small protrusion broke off from the canyon wall and sent her into freefall yet again.
With [Prey’s Awareness] she scanned the area for another suitable hold and spotted one rapidly approaching on her right. Reaching out, she caught it as she passed and dug the toes of her left foot into a nearby crack to avoid swinging around.
Your efforts to improve yourself have borne fruit! Training to master your body movements in combination with pushing your body beyond its current limits has granted +1 to Agility.
She smiled.
There it is.
She finished climbing down to the canyon floor and reviewed her attribute gains from the past couple of weeks.
Attributes:
Aptitude (Approximate Max Value):
Strength: 14 => 15
Average (23)
Agility: 23 => 26
Extraordinary (41)
Endurance: 19 => 21
High (32)
Resilience: 16
Average (24)
She’d been making the most of her time now that she didn’t have to stress about keeping Harold and Sandy alive.
One of the first things she did after settling in was visit the general store and purchase a basic, leather backpack in preparation for attribute training. It pained her to receive yet another 35 points of debt so quickly, but she deemed it a necessary expense. She planned to fill the pack with rocks and sand and carry it with her near constantly to improve her Strength and Endurance. When she eventually encountered something in the forest that she needed to flee from, being able to freely abandon the dead weight was important. This was something she couldn’t do with her current enchanted bag.
The next thing she did was focus on paying down her growing debt while engendering goodwill with the locals. Although the in-town jobs paid poorly, she made a point of completing at least one a day to create opportunities to socialize. She was happy to discover she had an unusual amount of flexibility on when she could complete the work, due to the high density of cultivators in the outpost and their reduced need for sleep. No matter the time of day there were always folks out and about, and there was never a shortage of tedious or undesirable tasks people were willing to outsource to her in exchange for a pittance of points.
After taking care of her ‘daily socializing’, Samantha would leave the outpost with Silas to do the real well-paying work: herb gathering.
The market kept an updated list of the desired plants and their purchase value available for anyone who was interested in selling them. Keeping that list in mind, her first days of foraging were decently lucrative. Silas’s [Herb Hunter] not only allowed him to generally sense the rarity of plants nearby, but also let him narrow down what he was searching for to a degree. While he couldn’t exactly look for a specific plant, he could focus on plants that ‘felt’ similar. This sometimes meant finding the species they were looking for, but could also mean finding herbs that had comparable effects, or even ones that would taste or smell similar to him. They often came across a fair amount of plants the market hadn’t listed–which Silas was more than happy to consume–but usually gathered 100 or so points worth of goods to trade in by the time they started heading back to the outpost.
Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, just as her non-membership to the guild made purchases more expensive, it also made her sales less valuable. About 25% less valuable, to be precise. To make matters worse, any and all attempts at haggling for better rates were promptly denied. Apparently, guild policy standardized a lot of pricing and any members caught bending these rules could be punished or fined.
Hearing of her plight–and running into several issues of his own earning points–Harold reached out to her to try and strike up a new partnership. He would pay her the full point value for the listed herbs she gathered, as well as pay for some plants that were unlisted but they had found useful on the journey here. This would let him craft potions much more affordably than if he bought ingredients directly from the market, which would increase his profit margin when he sold his goods to the general store. To sweeten the deal further, if she brought him ingredients for a specific potion he’d sell directly to her instead of making her buy a marked-up version through the guild. She had a sneaking suspicion his generous proposal was also an attempt to convince her that continuing their travels together was worthwhile, but that was something she could put off addressing until later.
Despite her distaste for the alchemist and desire to stop associating further with him, she couldn’t deny that the deal would be beneficial for the both of them. Weighing the potential social costs against the debts accrued from staying here, she eventually accepted. After all, there was nothing stopping her from going back to selling to the market if things didn’t work out with this arrangement, and she hoped that her regular interactions with the locals would serve to differentiate herself. If she was known more as ‘Samantha the cultivator’ than just ‘an ascendant’, there was a better chance that any mishaps Harold caused wouldn’t reflect on her.
Upon accepting Harold’s proposal, the amount of points she earned on a daily basis jumped up significantly. Seeing that she would be able to pay back her debt quickly at this rate, she decided to risk investing in some training enhancement powder from the general store. Unlike the powders she’d bought on the first floor which improved the rate individual attributes improved, this version would generally improve the effectiveness for all attribute training. It was a steep cost of 200 points for only one dose of the medicine, but she had an idea for how to make it more affordable.
Testing how far Harold’s goodwill would go, she gave him the enhancement powder and asked if he would be able to reverse-engineer the recipe to sell it to her directly. This request was technically beyond the bounds of their arrangement, but she also knew that Harold was nothing if not passionate about alchemy. Given the opportunity to pick apart the creation from a new floor and learn a new recipe in the process she doubted he’d outright refuse. Sure enough, he agreed to her request so long as she provided or paid for all the materials needed for experimentation.
A few days later he had formulated an alchemical with near identical effects. Per their deal, he would sell it to her for only 50 points if she brought him the ingredients to make it. Happy to oblige, she added the powder to the small catalog of items she purchased from Harold.
Apart from the enhancement powder, she also kept herself and Silas stocked with a set of his potent repellant and neutralizer combo in case they were in danger of being eaten. She occasionally would replenish healing supplies, concealment concoctions, and lesser repellants, but needed to use them less frequently now that she and Silas explored on their own. These purchases slowed her debt repayment down, but she was still on track to be debt-free well before the deadline. At the rate she was going, she’d probably even have a few hundred extra points on her emblem balance when the supply boat came by.
And so, she entered into a relatively consistent routine in preparation for her eventual departure. Every morning she would travel with Silas into the wilds beyond the outpost until he found an area that was relatively rich with quality herbs. While Silas searched for the varieties that had been specially requested or could generally be sold for the most points, Samantha trained her attributes at the canyon wall until she felt sufficiently exhausted. When her training eventually concluded, Silas would lead her along a path that collected the most valuable options and they would return to town. In exchange for his help and self-restraint, Samantha helped him to gather a stockpile of supposedly-delicious mundane plants and lesser-valued herbs that he could snack on at his leisure.
She briefly stretched and looked back up towards the cliff wall. She still had energy for more training, but had climbed this particular spot several times now. Not wanting to get too familiar with it, she walked along the canyon wall until she found a new section that looked to have an equally challenging climb.
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Though the sadistic trainer back on the first floor never explicitly said it, she suspected that novelty of actions played a role in how quickly attributes were improved. Otherwise, the trainer would just have had trainees do the same exercises each day rather than force them to do a wide variety of activities. As much as she wanted to add new types of activities into her training regimen, climbing up and down different sections of the cliff seemed to be the safest, most consistent option for now. Too many dangers were hidden in the forest and waters to make the continuous scouting effort required to ensure the area was safe worth it.
Beginning her ascent, she pushed herself to move as quickly as she could. Ignoring the burning in her muscles and taking risky routes up the wall that those without [Cloud Step] wouldn’t even consider, she left the ground far below.
After climbing a few hundred feet she noticed the potential handholds became exceedingly scarce, save for a long, narrow seam in the rock face above her. The diagonal line was only a foot or so wide, but stretched upwards for dozens of feet. Normally she wouldn’t use such a feature on a climb because it made progress too easy, but considering the lack of other options she decided to make an exception. She would just take a different route the next time she climbed so she wouldn’t have to rely on it again.
Bending down to give her legs their full range of motion, she leapt upward with all her might and caught the edge of the seam with her left hand. She slipped a short way down the crevice due to grabbing onto more loose dust and rocks than solid stone, but she managed to fix her grip before completely falling off the cliffside. As she came to a stop, pebbles started falling onto the top of her head and she instinctively tucked her head to her chest to protect her eyes from getting debris in them.
She waited a breath for the loosened material to stop falling, but instead of lessening the volume of it seemed to be increasing. Her hair stood on end with a sudden sense of danger, but it took a moment for her other senses to catch up. The sound of scrabbling claws rapidly getting louder. The pungent musk-like stench filling the air. The subtle, rhythmic vibrations beneath her fingertips.
Cliff Drake!
She immediately sped up her perception with her sphere of dominion and became viscerally aware of everything within 15 feet of her. Squeezing out of the seam above her was a familiar breed of horse-sized lizard, just outside the range of physical vision. Knowing first-hand how dangerous these creatures were in close combat, she brought her feet up and jumped backward and away from the opening. Simultaneously, the drake shot out from its hiding place in pursuit with an open maw filled with small, sharp teeth, attempting to snatch her from the air. She raised her left arm defensively and fortified her hand, forearm, upper arm, and shoulder with [Indomitable Body] to bring her effective Resilience up to 26 in those areas. She didn’t expect her hardened skin to completely fend off the predator’s teeth, but she did hope that her bones and tendons would remain intact for the fight to come. Just as the art finished manifesting, the spirit beast closed the distance, clamped down on her slightly extended forearm, and pulled.
Samantha anchored herself in midair with [Cloud Step] as the lizard tried to whip its head from side to side in order to smash her into the side of the rocks. With each mighty jerk of its head, she needed to refresh the fortifying art as its stored energy was swiftly spent keeping her arm attached to her body. Her only saving grace was that [Cloud Step] gave her slightly superior leverage compared to the lizard who only had the back half of its body secured in the crevice. Its front half was precariously overextended due to it needing to stretch out so far to grab hold of her.
She felt her head begin to ache as her sphere of dominion taxed her mind, and she canceled the ability before it injured her. Doing her best not to panic due to the unexpected nature of this attack, she began a tug of war with the beast and tried to regain control of the situation.
She shifted the angle of [Cloud Step] to let her lean back and take advantage of both her heavy pack and the full Strength of her legs. The joints and muscles in her arm groaned in protest as they were put at risk of being torn apart, but [Indomitable Body] was just enough to keep the limb intact. After a few seconds of a strained stalemate, the beast showed the first signs of weakening. It slipped a few inches forward, and Samantha took full advantage of the opportunity. Stepping back and anchoring a new platform to maintain the gained distance, she slowly pulled the spirit beast further and further out. Once she had moved it about a foot, it finally released her arm and its upper half fell until it could catch itself on the cliff wall. It hissed furiously at her as she moved fully out of its attack range and healed the deep gash in her arm with [Flawless Healing Touch].
She took a deep, shaking breath as she finally got the chance to [Inspect] her opponent.
Juvenile Cliff Drake (Rank 4 - High)
Highest Attribute: Agility (27)
Lowest Attribute: Endurance (15)
Cliff Drakes make their nests in cracks and holes along the walls of the Great Gulfs. Extremely flexible, they can squeeze their entire bodies through any gaps their heads can fit into.
At least this one is on the smaller side. A fully grown adult might’ve overpowered me if it got a hold of me like that.
She checked her qi pool and was relieved to see she still had 230.2/273.6 remaining despite her heavy qi expenditure just now. [Abundant Spring] was continuing to prove its usefulness.
Pulling Nethershot out of its holster, she took aim at the hissing drake and fed 10 qi points into the caster. The spirit beast, ignorant of the weapon’s capabilities, continued in its attempts to kill her. Its neck started to puff up in preparation for a venomous breath attack, but a thick beam of purple light punched through the side of its throat before it had a chance to fully activate the ability. Before the beam had dissipated, Samantha dragged it downwards to turn the hole into a devastating gash. Noxious orange gas spilled out of the wound as it recoiled from the injury and began retreating towards its den. She noted that the rock that had been struck by Nethershot had turned red and showed signs of melting, but didn’t look to be in danger of exploding. Though the extra bit of damage would’ve been nice, it was probably better to keep the fight on the quieter side. Predators and scavengers were easily drawn in by the sounds of a fight.
Normally taking on a spirit beast on the cusp of Rank 5 by herself would be unthinkable. In the case of cliff drakes, however, she was practically their natural enemy. These reptiles–at least the handful she’d encountered thus far–relied on spewing venom clouds or globs for long ranged attacks. So long as she injured their venom sacs early in the fight she was nearly untouchable.
She had tried keeping the organ intact before so she could sell it to the Delver’s guild, but figured out it wasn’t worth the risk after being hit by a venom cloud. Rather than causing direct injury, it interfered with her senses and concentration to the point where she was unable to use combat arts effectively. Falling disoriented to her death when she lost control of [Cloud Step] was a humbling experience, to say the least. She only avoided being eaten by using [Spectral Form] and [Telekinesis] to spread Harold’s most vile repellant over her corpse. She had to begrudgingly admit to herself that if not for his potion, she would have likely been truly dead by that simple mistake.
In any case, now that the poisoning capabilities of her current enemy were dealt with, all she needed to do was get in a few vital injuries with Nethershot and she’d have a second source of Delver’s points today. She lined up her shot, but before she had the chance to fire the lizard squeezed itself back through the crevice it had emerged from.
Unconcerned, she pulled a vial of lesser repellant from a robe pocket and threw it into the gap. She heard the glass shatter a moment later, which was promptly followed by the sounds of claws frantically scrabbling on stone. Aiming for the opening, she put another 10 qi points into the beam when she saw the cliff drake starting to come out. The shot fired just as the first third of its body was exposed, but the drake’s erratic movements caused the beam to blast through its snout instead of its head.
“Need any help?” Silas asked, noticing her unusual qi expenditure now that they shared the same pool.
“Nope. I’ve got it handled.” she replied, shooting another two beams at the drake. One entirely missed, but the second beam punched through the center of its neck. The drake’s tail and legs stiffened before it peeled off of the cliff and tumbled downwards. It impacted with a loud, echoing thud that spooked any birds nearby into flight. She inwardly cringed.
There goes the ‘quiet’.
“Unless you want to check inside the cliff drake’s nest? It’s a little too narrow for me to get in there.” she added, following the drake’s body down to the ground with long drops and [Cloud Step].
“Did you make it stinky?”
“...I did throw a repellent inside to draw it out.” she admitted.
“Then, no. I would rather find more herbs.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a better use of your time anyway.” she sighed. The only thing of value found in a cliff drake nest so far were broken eggshells. The shells had various useful applications if ground up, but they weren’t particularly sought after.
She landed on the ground near the drake and examined the carcass’s overall condition. Several exploratory pokes and prods confirmed her expectation of many shattered bones, which meant that she wouldn’t bother too much with getting cuts of meat. The bone shards likely damaged its organs and tore up surrounding muscle, which meant it’d be tough to find sections that were salvageable. The scales looked to be in relatively good shape though, which could be used for leather. Since she didn’t carry much with her on these excursions, she had to make due with a rough skinning job using her spearhead.
As she was in the process of rolling up the skinned leather to make it easier to carry, she reached out to Silas, “I’m ready to start heading back. Were you able to find any of the herbs we were looking for? I’d rather not stay too much longer since there’s now a fresh kill in the area.”
“Yes, I did! Come find me and I’ll show you the path.”
Having saved the messiest task for last, she cut open the drake’s torso and reached inside for the beast core. She was instantly struck with the foul stench of various punctured organs, but persevered until she felt the pearl in her hand and pulled it free. She wiped the gore off of the pearl and her hand with dirt and some water as best as she could, then used a concealment potion to try and mask the scent. It wasn’t perfect, but it would suffice until they made it to safety.