Thariel let go of the reins and turned to the blind saint with a dull stare. "Hey, can you tell me why this thing-" she pointed a thumb behind her in exasperation, "ran away the moment I landed a successful hit at its neck?"

"It is an animal, they have self preservation instincts," replied the automation sagely.

... It made sense honestly. Thariel never considered that.

As Thariel considered the implications of panicking animals during a fight, the blind saint went ahead and helped her by raising one finger and shot out a tractor beam that lifted the corpse of the Thostasaurus like it weighed nothing.

Thariel frowned in displeasure upon seeing this.

"I had to drag that thing back here like my life depended on it." She commented- more like complained really. She did have to fight boars and other scavengers while doing it. Which wasn't fun. At all.

"You should have made it run away in this direction then."

Thariel raised a finger to spout out a rebuttal but found that she couldn't for the life of her. Damn it. It had a point! Stupid robot and its stupid arguments.

"Yeah I have no rebuttal to that." Thariel murmured softly, "it makes sense in hindsight, I should have done that." She admitted, "darn it."

"We all make mistakes, the best we can do is learn from them." The saint began, sounding more and more like a teacher by the second. This is what Thariel expected it to act like the first time because this is how the saint was back in the game dialogue-wise.

The one she got is... More eccentric.

"Yeah, whatever," Thariel looked up at the skies, how do the insects up there survive such harsh conditions? "So what can I make with this much material anyways?" She asks, "some kind of weapon?"

"A cloak." Replied the saint. It gave Thariel a side glance which spoke volumes of how the automaton found her question strange.

Well Thariel felt the same way! Is it telling her she hauled a freaking dinosaur across the snow for god knows how long to make a single cloak?!

"A single cloak." Thariel replied, her voice dropping in energy as the realization of just how close the damn fabricator was like its game counterpart came to her. "A single cloak."

"No need to repeat it, I already told you this was the case."

"I hauled that thing for what felt like miles!" Thariel screamed, she wanted to let out a screech more than anything but held herself back.

"The fabricator does not work the same way as a common crafting tool," replied the saint with a dull voice, "there is a difference between the device and a common smith,"

"Like what? Using souls to craft?" Thariel snarked.

"Precisely." Nodded the saint, "soul crafting takes energy, and I'm afraid biological matter would be the one providing that instead of the shrine." The automaton explained softly, "it also helps that the extra mass is turned into abilities rather than more items, in game terms, the cloak you'll get would be "Legendary"."

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"Ugh," Thariel groaned, she didn't even listen to what the saint was saying anymore. "This is so stupid."

Everything moved forward regardless of Thariel's complaints and after a hot shower, the Damphir proceeded to make her cloak and added it into her gear.

She honestly didn't get it.

The stupid leech was able to make two things all by itself so how come the fabricator is only capable of making one item out of a giant dinosaur literally ten times her size?

She decided wondering about it was pointless. It did what it did and that's that.

With time to spare, Thariel decided to go back out and ask the saint what its last quest was about. She had enough gear to fight a Thostasaurus and win, she's sure that whatever is about to come her way will be taken care of easily enough.

"You want to do the last quest now?" The saint looked at her, it looked perplexed and sounded concerned. Thariel read the ominous tone of the automaton just fine, she just thought that its concerns are completely unfounded.

"Yes." How bad could it be anyway?

"A blizzard is about to form so this would make it easier to find the last creature but are you sure? The ones about to whirl into existence are harsher than normal." The saint asked her if she actually wanted to go along with this again, "the creature you are about to hunt is perfectly adapted to traversing and living in such harsh conditions,"

"I'm fine," Thariel replied. So what if what she's about to hunt is adapted to living in blizzards? She's fine with fighting something like that in their home turf.

"I suppose this is also an appropriate time to teach you not to be overconfident with your skills." The saint nodded, "I see, I'll allow you to do this, just be careful."

"I won't die, and I'm not being over confident here," Thariel reassured, "more like, I wanted to get this over with."

"You will learn to temper your impatience the hard way, it seems," chuckled the saint, "very well, the creature you are about to hunt was known to my creator as the "Guro Yaiv" or in translation; Blizzard Hypnotist."

"Blizzard hypnotist?" Thariel asked.

"Yes, they are large wasp-toids with moth like features which emerge from tendon tunnelers after they pupate." Those large worm things? They're just larvae?

"They are capable of producing narcotic and hallucinogenic effects with the microscopic scales on their wings and are considered deadly due to this,"

"So don't get hypnotized by covering my face, got it," Thariel nodded, "I'm gonna hunt something to make a mask-"

"No, you will improvise, you will do the quest now as per your own admission," damn it. "You can find such creatures around thermal veins, where they wait for unsuspecting victims they can inject with their eggs."

Oh. So that was what she was dealing with? Wasn't there an actual species of wasp back on earth that does exactly this to cockroaches?

"Do I need to kill one in a blizzard specifically?" Thariel asked in which the saint responded by shaking its head. She sighed in relief, "oh okay, then we're good."

Guess she'll be the one ambushing the wasp than the other way around. Good to know. Now, if only she knew how to search for one or when to know that there's a hypnotist hiding in one of the veins before the blizzards form...

Thariel looked at the saint and contemplated if she should ask but thought better of it.

"I'm going," Thariel said in confidence, she didn't feel that way though.

Thariel inspected various thermal veins after leaving the shrine and she was able to figure out a few things:

One, her quarry prepares its ambush before snowfall, specifically when the air turns hot and mist starts to form. She's walked back and forth in one of the boundaries where one of the creatures is hiding and sensed them hibernating.

Two, they had a limit to how much heat they needed to sense to emerge and thus burrowed further away from the vein itself to make sure they don't pop out prematurely because they mistook the heat from the vein as coming from a creature.

And three: they relied on both heat and also sensing vibrations from larger animals to know when to strike.

Thariel wasn't large or hot enough to attract their attention so she was able to move above the ground one of the creatures is hibernating in to prepare a trap.

The line of plant fibers she strung along the perimeter of the burrow were tipped with regular arrows and weighed with large rocks to ensure that the resulting hunt ends up becoming quick and clean.

If given the choice, Thariel would rather not have the hypnotist leave the ground and take flight. Hence why the snare trap.

Once all her preparations were done, Thariel sat back a few meters away from the burrow and waited for the insectoids to come out. It shouldn't take long for an animal needing heat to stumble their way here.

A large plated dinosaur soon made its entrance and when the hidden hypnotist felt its body heat and movements, it began to dig itself out of its burrow, allowing Thariel to get a good look at the creature as it emerged.

The insect was covered in thick fur, it had a pair of antennae growing out of its forehead and below the stumps of these sensory organs are four bulbous eyes.

It broke the earth with armored legs and tasted the air with dagger-like mandibles.

It was blue. Light like the sheen of hanging icicles exposed to the sun with spikes of dark blue chitin popping out of its fur, its abdomen was engorged and had a sword-sized stinger growing out its backside.

Wings, dark blue with white veins and full of reflective scales. The scales are metal-like in their narcotic sheen and alluringly reflective.

Its wings began to vibrate violently as the horse-sized wasp prepared to take flight.

Thariel pulled on the clothes she wrapped around her face to further cover her nose before holding onto her bow and priming it with an arrow.

Thariel fired a shot at its head as it attempted to escape the bindings of her trap. It died seconds after getting a hole punched into its chitinous skull.

Thariel brought it back to the shrine without fanfare.