Novels2Search

B1 C16: End of Day 2

With the arrival of Tony's team of 16 climbers, the quest to refill nine of the ten bathhouse buckets was completed.

{Quest “Refill Buckets” completed!

Quest Reward(s): 120 Berries}

Joseph welcomed the group back, and many cheered and snacked on their reward as they waited for their other food to cook, but the cheers died off as the climbers noticed the somber expressions on Tony's team, and the reduced number.

"We ran into a group of at least 30 goblins waiting by the river. It looked like they were expecting us. We lost seven people." Tony explained. The news that a large group of monsters had been guarding the river upset everyone, with people growing worried if their only source of water would eventually be taken from them.

"We need to work on finishing the bathhouse and canteen once we have enough buckets from the goblin killing quest to replace the ones from the bathhouse. If we're lucky, the canteen will provide free, or at least affordable, drinking water. If not, maybe we can steal water from the bathhouse by removing the buckets from our inventory while we're in there. If neither of those work, we'll have to consider building a fortified position on the river. Until then, it might be best if we have as many of us as possible head to the river whenever we need the buckets refilled. These were the best ideas we could come up with on the way back." Tony explained, and the mention of a plan did much to alleviate the concerns of the crowd. "To help with this, we decided we're going to put the money we get from selling the goblin corpses to buy as many axes from the general store as possible. Ideally we'll have one for each party, but I don't think we'll get that much." With that, Tony's team of 16 climbers from 4 separate parties made their way to the general store, and people went back to working on their food.

At this point, all but two parties of climbers had returned to the village, and begun cooking the animals they'd killed whether from deer, rabbits, birds, or wolves. Many had barely enough to feed everyone in the party, having returned almost immediately after they had enough for themselves, but two groups, one of 14 climbers led by the level 2 priest Joseph Moore, and one led by the level 1 warrior Doretha Luna, had obtained an abundance in the form of magic deer from the former and large birds and eggs from the latter.

"We ran into a group of bird nests in a large tree. We couldn't chop the tree down but Thomas managed to climb it and took what he could from the nests." The shield bearing woman explained.

"We found a group of magic deer, we'll share what we can with anyone who needs it, but first, we must cook them." Joseph added.

The two took time to finish preparing the food to be cooked, taking up the available fires given by the groups that had finished cooking. It was easy to cut up the animals and make a spit with the inventory's ability to allow someone to take out a piece of wood at any size provided it wasn't too large, though any sharpening or cutting away of the bark had to be done manually, as they could only create solid logs of varying size. The birds were put on a skewer, and for the eggs, Thomas first gathered the attention of nearby climbers.

"Most of you already know we can reshape the wood we gather by placing it into our inventory and then taking it out again, well we've discovered this works for stone as well. Complicated, and bent shapes, as well as an inward curve, aren't possible, but if you gather enough rocks, you can take them out as one combined rock anywhere from small enough to fit in your palm, to slightly bigger than a basketball." Thomas explained, turning over his palm to display a small rock, before turning his hand over and dropping a small boulder onto the ground. "I'm unaware of how well this might work, but in the absence of any other cookware to cook eggs with," Thomas touched the boulder and it disappeared into his inventory once more, before a mostly flat, plate sized stone appeared in his hands, "I'm thinking we can try to use something like this to cook the eggs on top of." Thomas walked over to one of the fires, and pulled out two short and thick logs to sit on either side of the fire, separated from the fire itself by a small mound of dirt between the pillars and firewood, before placing the stone plate on top of it. "Stone pillars would work better, we'll have to be careful not to let the support logs catch fire, but I didn't gather enough rocks to create them too." Thomas explained, as he pulled an egg out of his inventory, and waited for the stone to heat up before cracking it open and dropping the yolk onto the stone with a hiss.

The groups led by Joseph and Doretha shared their food with the climbers who hadn't yet eaten their fill. The rest was returned to the inventories of their parties for later. The sun was high overhead by the time parties began heading out again. Ultimately, the goblins only managed to be worth enough for three harvesting tools, and Tony's team kept two of the axes, explaining that with their group of now 20 climbers from four new members, that they had enough to protect two different groups focusing on woodcutting. The remaining axe was given out to the team of 9, with Joseph's group deciding they'd focus on hunting for food, but would pick up what resources they could without the use of a tool.

James watched as everyone set out once more, but his attention quickly turned to one of the parties that had remained outside the village, as he noticed one of the groups was pulling up weeds from a large field full of them.

"You're right! These weeds are healing grass! How did you know?" One priest asked, looking towards a merchant woman James vaguely remembered.

"When I leveled up after the tutorial, I picked up a skill called "Appraise". I've been casting it every few minutes, but this is the first time it's said something beyond wood, rock, or monster." The woman said as James read her name, Karen Walters. "I won't learn more about them until I level up the skill more, but I imagine they're less useful than the healing potions we have now. They can be sold a few of them at a time for a gold coin per bundle." James watched as she and the others in her party worked on pulling up the weeds. The ability to place an item in one's inventory requiring the item to not be attached to the ground. The weeds themselves looked like faded green grass with spots of reddish brown, but were attached to the stem and roots of what looked like a flower with red petals. James was worried the field of healing grass would make a good spot for an ambush, but the bloodstains of monster blood in the field and areas where the field looked trampled by someone laying on the ground suggested that any monsters that had been near the weeds had already been dealt with.

James switched to the observer of the lone rogue, watching Elizabeth Smith as she stuck to picking off small groups of monsters. James only noticed one time in which she stumbled upon a large group, and through having the Sneak skill on almost constantly, simply slipped by without instigating a conflict. I'm surprised she's doing so well on her own, no one else has tried to fight without a party. I wonder why she's doing it, though. Elizabeth had a hard time in one fight with a pack of three wolves, as their sense of smell aided them in finding her as she moved. She's quicker with her stealth ability than I thought she'd be. She must have experimented with how fast she can move without deactivating the skill, and how much she can get away with when she exceeds that before the skill deactivates. She uses it not only to turn invisible right after an attack, but to disorient enemies as she darts around so they don't know which direction she's moved in until it's too late. It's almost like she's doing a bunch of short ranged teleports. James thought as he watched her kill the three wolves, flickering in and out of sight as she stabbed one, then another, reactivating the sneak skill every time she was brought out of it whether by an attack from herself or from receiving one from an enemy.

"That was close." The rogue mumbled to herself, as she added the three corpses to her inventory and drank a low quality health potion. "I'm almost out of potions, I'll have to head back for now." She said aloud, turning invisible again with a whisper of "sneak".

"Hey look, a cave!" James heard a climber say, and switched his focus to a screen showing a group of four climbers approaching a cave. It was tall enough to walk into, and wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder, and filled with a number of blue blobs the observer quickly pointed out as Slimes.

"It's a slime cave!" The climber closest to the cave said, and James switched so he'd be watching through that climber's observer. "I was wondering if we'd run into one of these. Can't have a fantasy adventure without slimes." They said to a mix of reactions. One party member nodding with a smile while another sighed and the last simply glared into the cave.

"Careful." The glaring climber said, a rogue who had already had their dagger in hand. The climber in front nodded as they walked inside, wielding a katana and wearing the garb of a warrior. They watched the slime crawl along the ground before readying their weapon.

"It has a ball inside of it. I think it's a slime core. I'm going to try to stab it." They said, before thrusting the katana into the slime and watching as it stabbed into the core.

{You have slain a Level 1 Slime!

15 Experience rewarded!}

James saw the pop-up appear in front of the warrior as the slime's body quickly began to dissolve, the core no longer able to maintain the slime's form.

"I did it!" The warrior exclaimed, and was in mid turn to face their party members when the observer flicked upwards, revealing another slime already mid-fall from the ceiling.

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A gasp rang out as the priest of the group ran forward. Already the slime had swallowed up the warrior's face, and a sound like someone was screaming underwater came from the warrior as the slime muffled the scream of pain as the acid began eating away at the warrior's face.

Without delay, the priest reached the warrior who was blindly trying to pull the slime off of their face and failing, the core deftly moving around the warrior's hands. The slime either didn't notice or was unable to dodge the priest however, who stuck their hand into the slime and with a grunt of pain, grabbed the core and tore it out of the slime's body.

Immediately the slime began falling off of the warrior's face without the core to keep it there. He's... Alive... His skin is red, like it's been burnt or blistered, but it didn't eat through the skin enough to kill him. The warrior was sporting a few bald patches where the slime had eaten through his hair, but he looked no worse for wear until he opened his eyes.

"My eyes, they... I can't see." The warrior whimpered. The acid ate into his eyes. Did it eat through his eyelids, or did he not close them before the slime got him? The eyes are still there, but one is milky white, and the other is missing a piece like it could fall out if the guy looked down. The priest immediately cast a healing spell, retrieving a staff from her inventory, and held a hand over the warrior's eyes.

"Please work." She muttered as the spell took effect, the warrior's face regained some color beyond the irritated red, but little else changed except for the eyes, which slowly recovered until they looked fully healed. "Oh thank god." The priest sighed in relief, as she helped guide the warrior out of the cave as he stumbled before he adjusted to his new eyes.

"I didn't know slimes could be so horrifying." The warrior said under their breath, receiving a nod from one of the two climbers who still stood at the end of the cave, before the one who had been glaring widened their eyes.

"We need to get out of here. Run back to the village." They said, pointing behind the warrior and priest, who turned to see five slimes moving from further within the cave. Rather than crawl along the ground, they were hopping, bouncing off the ground like living basketballs, and making good pace towards the cave entrance. The warrior and priest looked back and saw the sight of the bouncing slimes, and quickly joined the other two members of their party in running back to the village.

Slimes are much scarier than I remember them being depicted as in fiction. James thought.

James watched other climbers fight in small skirmishes with the local monsters. A few parties dispatched the monsters around them without trouble, while most suffered from a few injuries in every fight, and eventually turned back towards the village after a few hours. One climber from a party died from a combination of being the sole target of an ambush, dying before the priest could cast a healing spell. Many parties that returned to the village clearing stayed just outside the village walls, some even starting fires to cook food for lunch while feeling relatively safe and still progressing the Explore Floor 1 quests.

It doesn't look like any of the smaller groups are being swarmed by a large number of monsters again, but almost every time I've looked at Joseph or Tony's teams they're in the middle of a fight. Tony's especially. James thought to himself, as he watched the group fight off the third wave of half a dozen wolves thus far. They've also fought a group of six horned rabbits, and at least fifteen goblins, though the monsters hadn't appeared all at once, the nearly constant fighting was taking its toll. Nevertheless, Tony's team of climbers managed to cut down three trees before they started heading back, quickly running into another group of ten goblins. Any thought of watching the fight was taken away by a panicked shout echoing from another screen, where James saw the team of 9 climbers was dealing with a group of over 20 goblins that ambushed them not with arrows or a group of warriors jumping out of bushes, but by five hunters jumping on the mages and priests as well as a rogue.

The fight ended quickly from there, with the healers taken out early and the approaching group of seven warriors led by a shaman flanked by two archers prevented the other 4 climbers from focusing on helping their comrades. The five taken by the hunters quickly died, with one mage setting himself on fire, whether as a poorly aimed spell meant to kill only the goblin or a suicidal act to take the goblin down with them, James didn't know. Regardless, while the flames killed the goblin, it killed the mage as well. The remaining four climbers, a merchant, two warriors, and a rogue, managed to kill the goblin warriors with only the merchant sustaining serious injuries. The merchant pulled a low quality health potion out of their inventory, but were unable to use it as an arrow hit the merchant in the neck and caused them to drop the potion. One warrior helped the merchant as the other joined the rogue in killing the shaman and archers, and the warrior succeeded in pouring the potion over the wound left by removing the arrow to stop the merchant from bleeding out.

Unfortunately, the goblin warriors had succeeded in distracting the four from the remaining goblin hunters, who James watched reenter stealth partway through the fight.

I have to do something! Create Quest! James said. I'll create a quest to warn them that the goblin hunters entered stealth again. I doubt they forgot the goblins that attacked their friends, but I don't want to just sit here and watch if they get ambushed!

{You have activated Create Quest. -10 Tower Points. 72 Tower Points remaining.}

Quest name, goblin hunters, recipients, the four climbers I'm watching right now, quest type, mandatory party-participant. Description "FOUR GOBLIN HUNTERS HAVE REENTERED STEALTH AND ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU" Progress tracker, goblin hunters 0/4. Reward... I don't have enough to create a low quality health potion with them still costing 75 points...

{You have added “8 Bundles of Healing Grass” to the Reward(s). -40 Tower Points. 32 Tower Points remaining.}

Only eight? I wanted to add ten! Fine! Whatever! Confirm quest!

[The quest: “Goblin Hunters!” has been finalized and is being sent to the proper recipients.]

James held his breath as the four climbers, two of which had just finished off the shaman and the archer, and one of which was helping another as they drank a second low quality health potion, received a quest prompt. "What? Goblins again? I-SHIT! Look out! Invisible hunters!" One of the climbers shouted, the others quickly looking around in panic.

"Just swing at everything around you!" Another climber suggested, taking a step forward and swinging wildly, causing a goblin hunter to become visible as their weapon dug into the goblin's face. The others followed suit, another hunter getting stuck, but the other two managed to get behind their targets, and performed what James was beginning to think was their only method of attack.

Luckily, without any other goblins to distract them, the two who weren't attacked quickly helped the other climbers remove the goblin attacking them, the warrior who was attacked downing a health potion right after killing the hunter that had jumped them. Unluckily, the merchant had been one of the two attacked, and combined with their other wounds and the low amount of healing brought about by the low quality health potion, was quickly bleeding out.

"Shit, shit, I'm out of potions!" One warrior said. "The others!" The rogue shouted, running to the five fallen climbers and adding each one to their inventory one by one. "Here!" The rogue returned to the merchant still laying on the ground, two health potions in his hands, he handed one to the warrior standing over the merchant. "Pour this over his wounds, I'll pour this into his mouth." The rogue instructed, and together they went to work.

James waited, not making a sound as he tried to be as still as possible, a task which was oddly difficult despite the lack of a physical body to move around, or lungs to create a need to breathe. Time passed as the two climbers watched the merchant to see if he'd stop breathing, the other climber anxiously keeping watch.

"Wait, we received something called healing grass as a reward, the item says it can help restore blood loss when eaten. Feed it to him." The warrior keeping watch said, handing over the eight bundles of healing grass that had appeared in their inventory.

Time passed with the barely conscious merchant chewing bundles of weeds shoved into his mouth by two of the three climbers watching over him. The man ate seven before groaning and spitting out the eighth. "No more, please, these taste terrible. Just let me die." The merchant complained. Was it an attempt at a joke, or a delirious comment made by a man in immense pain?

"We're not letting you die, damn it! Now eat!" The rogue said, trying to shove another bundle into the merchant's mouth, but the merchant turned their head, and waved an arm in the air.

"Damn it! Stop-" Whatever the warrior was going to say was interrupted by another low quality health potion appearing in the merchant's hands, and the warrior quickly uncorked it before pouring it into the merchant's mouth.

"You had another health potion the entire time!" The rogue exclaimed, but the merchant shook his head.

"N-no... Also got... The grass... Sold it, for the potion." The merchant said. Do all merchants have personal access to the general store? James wondered, as he watched the climbers hovering over the merchant give a sigh of both exasperation and relief as they helped the semi-conscious merchant to his feet.

James watched as they made their way to the village, by good fortune somehow making it without another attack. As they joined the other climbers in waiting just outside the village walls until their quests were completed, James noticed they had much less time remaining than the others, having not returned to the village for breakfast earlier that day. As climbers waited just outside the walls, the occasional skirmish broke out from goblins or wolves that entered the clearing, but were quickly put down through overwhelming numbers. I don't remember any monsters entering the clearing yesterday outside of when they were chasing someone, but was that just coincidence? With so many people right outside the village the noise must be attracting monsters regardless.

Eventually, the remaining hours to unlock both the five gold and the low quality mana potion passed by. The sun was beginning to set, and everyone began heading into the village for the night.