Chapter 36: The calm before the storm

Skills are granted to us by the system. In some ways, they are more flexible compared to stats, in others less so.

The skills we gain are tools, each and every one different. Some are comparable to a hammer, able to blow anything apart, others are like a scalpel where you need to be precise to get the best result.

Upgrading skills, fusing them, the milestones, there are many ways to improve skills, change them and make them better. However, one thing to keep in mind is that a higher rarity skill is at least twice as strong as a skill of the rarity below it, growing worse with the higher rarities.

That is also what makes skills of that rarity that more rare. They aren’t called Legendary skills for nothing. To have one, to gain one, you have to transcend and become a legend yourself.

Berliss, Rashaa (B)

***

*Time remaining 298 days, 16 hours, 2 minutes, 38 seconds.

The five spores that grew into guardians all look different. From the caps they have on their heads to how they carry themselves as they stumble and crawl over the carpet of moss, they are different. I now want to know what the third layer of this world looks like. Is it as filled with mushrooms as Sairal said?

I lean closer to one with a perfectly round cap coloured orange like a sunset in late fall.

“You should name them,” I say while looking at the others.

Sairal scratches his cheek while his eyes are zoned out, signifying that he is going through one list of the system or another. “You want to name them?” he asks despondently.

I fold my arms over each other drawing his attention, “In that store, you said that it helped giving them personality. They need to have a name. It’s important.”

The dryad’s face sours slightly when I use his own knowledge against him. “Fine,” he grumbles, “Just know that only one might make it to (G) grade. Don’t get too attached to them.”

I turn back to the five little mushroom guardians that have focused their attention on me. The (J) grades are as tall as a human hand, their flesh being several tones lighter than the ordinary grey, showing that it is far softer since they have only been born hours ago.

I lean closer to the first one. Their cap is almost ashes in colour. Thick, inky liquid drips down from it occasionally. He looks at me unamused. “What about Leo?” I ask both Sairal and the tiny guardian.

Sairal shrugs, “Fine by me. Just don’t give them weird names.”

I nod and move on to the next one. She is almost folded into itself, whatever she is doing, she refuses to look at me. Is she shy?

Her cap is a gentle white that bleeds into magenta closer to the centre. “What about Azure?”

Sairal snorts, “A bit on the nose.”

My arms fold over each other again, “Can you come up with a better name?”

“…no.”

I arrive at the guardian with the orange, perfectly round cap. I lean a bit closer over the mossy carpet and realise that she’s actually a bit shorter than the others. “Sulli.”

Second, to last is one that stands tall and proud. His beady eyes stare at me unblinking. His cap is a mix of grey and pale blue. Curious I reach out with my finger. He looks at it and bites me. His stubby teeth don’t pierce my bindweed but it feels strange.

“Aeru?” he nods happily and moves away to the two larger guardians.

Finally, I turn to the last one but find only empty space.

Next to me, Sairal keeps swatting away a tiny mushroom that is trying to climb up to his shoulder. He has a red cap speckled with black spots like a ladybug. “Cinella.”

Sairal puts him down on the ground with the others.

“You named them all?” he asks to confirm.

I repeat the names pointing at each of them. “The names aren’t that bad,” he grumbles.

“So what are they going to do now? Hunt (J) grade Cave crawlers?” I look at the small figures. They look like a breeze could snap them in two like a twig, much less a monster.

The dryad shakes his head and pulls out vials with spores and other ingredients. “No. They will be consuming organic matter and converting it into experience.”

I gasp, “They can get stronger by eating?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Sairal rolls his eyes, “Yes mushrooms can. And you shouldn’t act like it is something special. You can get stronger by standing in the sun.” He points out.

“Fair enough. Anyway, I should be heading out. The humans seem to have retreated for now and I’ll take full advantage of that. I need some more levels and I want to get some of those event points.” I look over at the clearing and the quickly regrowing trees, hoping to find my first target. My eyes land on the lake with the tentacle monster. “Aren’t you going to take care of that thing?”

Sairal follows my gaze and shakes his head, “Why should I? It’s a low (F) grade and up to now it hasn’t bothered me. It might even become an asset in a few weeks.” He pours the contents of a potion into a mortar. He then quickly adds spores to it and begins grinding it up.

“But it’s dangerous for the mushroom guardians,” I huff.

He doesn’t seem to be amused. “So? If they can’t see that the tentacle creature is dangerous, they will die anyway. You don’t understand them, Green. Small they may be, however, they are already intelligent.”

I say my goodbyes and head out.

***

Wandering around the forest, there are already changes. Not two days in, the forest is already getting damaged in places. I pass another tree, bare of leaves, plucked by the greedy insects of the Depths. Never did I think that they had an empire beneath our feet.

They were just pests in my mind. Ceaseless, mindless pests that should be killed. But it turned out that all the ones I fought are the weak ones. The weakest of the weakest.

And Cobalt has been fighting these monsters relentlessly since she came here?

I pass another tree, this one also bare of leaves.

Since the Cave crawlers are listed as an invading faction, I should go after them. I probably won’t get any levels from them, but event points are good too.

I head in the direction where there are more bare trees, searching for a cave entrance or an outpost.

Not long later I find it. Hundreds of them are working together, pulling leaves off the trees, stripping the bark off them, and finally cutting the remainder of the tree into small pieces that can be carried by the (I) grades back to the nest.

What remains after, is a stump; the only reminder that a tree once grew there.

This is worse, much worse than the camp I saw before. The longer I look at them, the more there are. What I thought to be hundreds of them, can also be thousands.

Luckily, over half of them are in (I) grade. A few (H) grades are scattered around the outpost, often guardian the weaker ones or helping them cut down a particularly tough tree.

What worries me are the two Cave crawlers that stand in the middle of the camp, towering above all the others. They are too far away to be identified but without a doubt, they are in (G) grade.

Each one of them is the size of a bull with a carapace as tough as metal, and a set of mandibles that puts any army ant back on Earth to shame.

They laze near the cave entrance, watching the smaller workers scurry out with dirt in their mandibles.

My eyes narrow in disgust.

They are digging new tunnels.

The Illusion of peace I held into till now begins to fray at the edges. Bit by bit it dawns on me how many beings will be moved by this event. Some things the event store offers are insane. Elixirs that permanently give stats are the least of my worry. There are rare metals to be bought and items made by the system to be taken.

Before I went to sleep today, I took a bit of time to scroll through the artefacts the system offers and they are insane, right out of a DnD manual. From boots that let you walk in the sky, to a lantern that lets you capture souls. There’s even a sword that is able to rend space itself.

I turn my focus back to the Cave crawlers. They must be taking down the trees for biomass like forester ants. Though, are they gaining event points from it? What will they even buy with those points?

I can’t allow them to buy anything. Advantages will only snowball and Luxia will get wiped.

Slowly, I follow one of the scouting groups that left the outpost. I can’t take on the camp. Not yet at least. What I can do, however, is whittle them down. Group by group until none remain.

Darting from tree to tree, I hide from the Cave crawlers. Since they are monsters that dwell in the Depths, they have a lot of weaknesses here up in the forest. One of them being their poor eyesight.

It gives me enough space to manoeuvre in, waiting for them to be far enough from the outpost so that I can safely take them down.

After a dozen minutes of tapping against a tree’s bark, tasting the leaves and inspecting the ground, the Cave crawlers stumble upon a green rabbit.

The rabbit flees the second it sees the Cave crawlers. With the stupid monster's attention focused on the fleeing rabbit, I strike.

A thin vine of bindweed, the same colour as the grass, causes three of the seven to trip and stumble over themselves in a flailing mess of limbs.

Confused they look at the thin green vine as it becomes alive and slithers on the ground towards them.

The Cave crawlers look around them and notice more of the green vines slithering over the ground like snakes, slowly converging on them.

One clicks it mandibles as a warning.

The green snakes don’t listen as they jump up and wrap around their limbs. I push more Stamina into them, manipulating their shape and causing thorns to grow.

Like saws, they dismember the Cave crawlers bit by bit.

They snap their mandibles at me as I step out from behind the tree.

One by one I finish them off, not interested in testing my skills on them.

I count the kill notifications and change some things so that the event points now are also displayed.

*You have slain [Cave crawler] lvl 2/10 (H). 0.22 Event points awarded.

…

*You have slain [Cave crawler] lvl 7/10 (H). 0.67 Event points awarded.

My face scrounges up at the number of event points I gained. Even the cheapest things in the event store cost hundreds of points. And what is even more strange is that the system is being weird about the points awarded per each Cave crawler.

Looking over each kill notification, the only logical thing I can come up with that explains the number of points gained is the level of the Cave crawler. But even that is strange.

Two of the Cave crawlers I killed were level four but they gave a different amount of points, albeit a small one.

There is probably more going on behind the scenes with the System’s calculations. Maybe the level of the monster is only a part of the equation? Perhaps even the monster’s species counts toward that too.

I need more kills to get a clearer picture.

I flex my neck from side to side, imagining the bones in my neck popping.

It’s time for another group of Cave crawlers to die. Who knows, when I kill the entire camp I might even be able to buy something good from the Event store.