The battle wasn't really a battle. It was more a massacre.
Marisol gave her spike traps and all our caltrops to the Dolls and they set them up, halfway to the treeline. The Cursed Encrova didn't react, as we weren't anywhere near the trees. The Dolls could go only a quarter of the way to the trees before the Encrova dropped again, leaving their babies on the ground as they surged after the dolls which were speedwalking back toward the traps they set and the paths they'd left for themselves to walk through.
The Encrova were clever enough to stop surging forward after they saw the ones in front getting killed by traps or injured by Caltrops- but we had the Stun Balls held in reserve.
The Encrova were only D rank because of their speed, maneuverability, numbers and the fact that they had a 'curse' status. They were entirely too easy to kill, especially as Patrice didn't have to walk up and get close to take shots on the stunned ones. She just had to dash out behind the line and fire, fire, reload and fire again. They didn't stay down that long in the stun, but it was longer than the Wargs stayed down. Meaning a D rank stun was more powerful than an F rank, but also the Wargs had more endurance against stunning, most likely.
They were kicking up dust everywhere, which made it a bit difficult, but not nearly difficult enough to justify the D ranking.
"God, that was brutal," Patrice sat down once the bulk of the creatures were dead and looked ill. "I had to use my skills again on the ones that ran away, but I don't think I can, anymore. Ugh..."
"The adults are mostly dead," Marisol said. She'd been using a knife I'd given her, but it wasn't looking great the last time I'd seen it.
I found a way to create the melting knives so as to use them multiple times. Just pop them in the inventory directly after creation, then only take them out when you attack and pop them right back in after. It was difficult to get the hang of it, especially as it popped into existence where you wanted it to, but couldn't go in your curled fingers. You had to pop it out on a flat palm.
We'd managed to kill a good number of them that way, but now our knives were on their last legs. The next attack was going to completely melt them down. Unfortunately, I had to 'purchase' Hvísla instead of Frysta, so I didn't get my 'to freeze' skill that might've helped with that little problem.
I still wasn't sure how. Freezing and heating something was bound to make it break. But there had to be some way to use a cooling spell to keep the Brenna heat controlled at a specific temperature.
"There's just a few left," Annika wrung her hands. "Can't we just leave them and go and purify?"
"We can now," I said. "The group is small enough, they'll likely avoid attacking us, now. Let's figure this out."
Annika smiled and turned, pointing to the big tree that Marisol had been looking at in the beginning. "That tree is the biggest here. I don't have any skills for analyzing trees, but I think it's probably either a landmark or a clue."
"Why?" Patrice asked, her voice drawn and tired.
"We need to rely less on game and fantasy logic," I said. "Those things were all designed by someone. Real life fantasy shit is just... scooped up and planted here? It might be a form of design, but we have no way of knowing if the System is following the 'there has to be a way to win' logic. Or the 'obvious big signals are the answer' logic."
"It's gotta be bigger for a reason," Annika insisted.
"It's the oldest, Annika," I retorted. "That's the 'reason'."
Annika huffed and sat down on the grass, crossing her arms as a huge cloud of dust went up around her. "Well, I have no other ideas!"
"Okay," Marisol walked over and sighed, sitting next to Annika. "Let's talk about it a little more."
Patrice and I also sat on the grass across from them. It was silver, like the tree bark. Not purple like the leaves...
"Something is strange," I said. "Why are the leaves purple when everything else is silver?" My tone meandered from wondering to sharp. "Because everything silver is dead, and the cursed parts are purple."
"How do you figure that?" Patrice asked and then plucked up a silver blade of grass that immediately turned to dust as soon as it was lifted into the air. "Oh wow. That is either super dead or super cursed."
"The leaves are the only part left alive," I said. "Otherwise they'd have fallen off the trees a long time ago. This Grass is disrupted by our steps," I pointed to the places where we'd stepped and it'd become silvery dust. "That means the wind blowing through here should've knocked off at least a few of the leaves. And I'm betting those Encrova are cursed because they eat the leaves to live. But the leaves still grow on the dead trees. How?"
"They're cursed to regenerate or something?" Marisol mused. "Like that guy who keeps getting his liver eaten?"
"Prometheus," I said. "But if there's no suffering to be had, then why?" And then I have another thought. "We need to drag the carcasses out of here immediately."
I leapt to my feet and started moving, but the others seemed to not understand. I hate having to explain perfectly obvious context.
"THEY'RE GOING TO REGENERATE, NOW HELP ME!" I shouted at them while running toward the corpses we'd left on the ground.
We managed to get a good bulk of them outside the portal, with Annika putting as many in her inventory as was possible... before they started coming back to life.
"I hate being right," I muttered as the few left on the other side of the portal began to writhe and put themselves back together. "Marisol, do you have any traps left?"
"I can re-use the spike traps," she said in an uncertain tone.
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It wouldn't work again. The Encrova were smart enough it barely worked the first time. We had to use other traps to supplement, then.
Thankfully, the things rushed into the trees before they did anything else. It gave us a moment to breathe.
"So the trees can't die, and the leaves bind you to this grove, so you can't die here," Patrice said after poking her head through the portal to check on Annika and the corpses. "But you can die if you leave."
"That means the grove itself is cursed, not the trees or the Encrova," Marisol said. "But what's the center of a grove? We're in a clearing. Is that not the center?"
"Water," I said. "A lake, river or underground grotto that feeds the whole place water. The Encrova might've been drinking it, too."
"Shit, yeah," Patrice clapped her hands. "That's how the trees got it! and the grass!"
"How are we going to find it if the Encrova keep attacking us?" Marisol asked.
"One person needs to run around, drawing their attention while the others find the water source, or vice versa," I said. "We can send the dolls to look for water, but that's not their instructions, so maybe they can just keep the things busy and Marisol can monitor and give orders to them while we go find the water."
"Can't leave her all alone," Patrice said. "You go, you've got spells that can protect you, Marisol only has shields and traps."
"Fine, but I'm going to need some way to purify the water or cleanse the curse," I said.
"Let's find something in the Shop," Marisol said and we all stepped out of the portal. At which point a timer popped up.
Cleanse the Corruption or lose access to the Grove in:
1:23:05
"Well fuck," I said and hoped that weird pressure in my head wasn't an incoming migraine.
"Hmmm," Marisol was in her menu. "Okay, I found something, but it's... expensive."
"Let's pool our coin for it," I said. "What is it?"
The coin pool popped up in front of us and it only said '0'. No explanation of what it was. The System worked off context way too often for my tastes.
"It says it's a curse purification ritual kit," Marisol said. "And the reason it costs so much is that you need ingredients that are REALLY hard to get. Like a Phoenix feather!?"
"How much?" I asked.
"Fifty-two hundred," she said with a grimace.
"That's thirteen hundred apiece!" Annika said. "I can afford it maybe, but... it'll tank my savings."
"Until we sell the parts of the Encrova," I said. "And if we can purify the place, maybe there'll be something in there even more precious than the cursed animals."
"I say we take anything purple, put it in our inventory and THEN purify the place," Patrice said. "No way to know what's valuable and what's not until we get it back to the Appraiser."
"Not a terrible idea," I said. "Pick as much as you can, WITH GLOVES," I emphasized. "And we'll use the ritual wherever we need to use it to purify the place. We only have an hour. Let's go."
We each purchased a pair of rubber gloves after the ritual kit and ran back over the threshold, without Annika, of course. She was watching the carcasses. Thankfully, we had a shared party inventory, though it couldn't hold much, it was useful for 'quest items'. If they found the water somehow, they'd be able to change the plan and Patrice could perform the ritual. And if I found it, I could just as easily use it.
Marisol and Patrice immediately ran past the dolls, Marisol shouting at them to follow. The Encrova jumped out of the trees to follow them. I waited for several seconds and then went the opposite direction.
I had five cards in my quick-draw slot. Which is a much better name for it, when you're using cards. I would be fine, even if I encountered one or two little creatures. Even if they leapt at my face, I'd just activate a shield and it would bounce them off. Hopefully.
The forest was incredibly beautiful, cursed or not. But now that I'd noticed our footsteps were breaking the grass and making silver dust, it became much more morbid. I used one of my inventory boxes to scoop up the dust. The gloves were extremely helpful, but I had to be careful not to breathe in the dust, either. Even if it wasn't cursed, it was likely unhealthy.
I then picked off pieces of bark from trees as I walked by them. Any time I passed one I just yanked off a good stretch of Bark. The others were going to pick up only purple things, most likely, but I wanted to study the dead parts, too. The box went back in my inventory and I stopped to look around when I hit... healthy trees?
Looking back, I could tell the trees I'd been passing had been in the process of dying, not actually dead yet. Which meant this was the end of the corruption.
So I followed it around. I knew it would take a long time if I walked, so I ran. Heedless of any Encrova around, I just kept my eyes out for any sources of water or bigger monsters. But eventually I got to the other side and could see Marisol and Patrice in the distance. Which meant I knew the full radius.
That meant that was the center...
A massive mound of earth that seemed to be some kind of hillock, but what was befuddling is that there were no special features I could see. I ran all the way around it and there weren't even any caves. That made me think 'you must have a way to win' was definitely not a rule here. It was so huge, it just seemed like part of the landscape, like the other hills and dips. But this one almost looked manmade... it was too perfectly round.
When I got to the side the others were on and found... a weird little rock bowl on a rock plinth? I thought that must be the answer.
It was like those things you saw in games sometimes for offerings to gods or forest spirits or something...
"System... if you're mimicking games, that means there have to be clues and things to find to complete the puzzle." I said. "If there's no way for me to figure this out, then it's not a fair game and we never would've asked for that."
There was no response. Usually that meant the System just had nothing to say. Which could either mean it didn't have the authority to change that, or there WAS something to find.
The Grove was small. Incredibly small. The difficulty was likely due to the 'undying' Encrova and figuring out that you needed to remove them from the Grove. And finding the offering cup and whatever went into it if you were purifying the place.
I walked over and touched the grass on the Hillock. But it wasn't different, it dissolved like the...rest.
Under the grass was stone, not dirt. I could tell the difference when I pressed my palm against it. So I started erasing the grass over the stone. I cleaned an area of like, twenty feet across and six feet up. And it had murals...
I checked the timer, now that we had access to it and we had used thirty minutes already. Shit, I really moved slow when my hyperfocus started in on me.
There was shouting. "LILA! We have to go back! We're cursed! We'll come back in a minute!" Marisol shouted at the top of her lungs.
It was fine, as they led the Encrova right past me and they were agitated. They would stay around the clearing to watch for them to come back. I had time. Even if not a lot of it. Close to fifty minutes, though I wanted to finish in thirty, which is why I said we had 'an hour' because cutting it that close was NOT the best of ideas.
We had no idea if this thing would spit us out... or close up with us inside it.
I had to find the answer.
The Mural was pretty self-explanatory, but... I didn't know if dead was the same as living, or if cursed was the same as uncursed.
A small fluffy Encrova with one tail stands in the bowl in the first image, then in the second, there's only the tail in the bowl. The next image is a hole the Encrova walks through. In the last image, the Encrova walks OUT of the hole and they look... bigger. Fluffier. More tails. Three, to be exact.
The adults put their babies on the ground when they attack, to make it easier to grab them and run somewhere, but they also leave them totally unguarded.
When the others came back through the portal and started running the opposite direction, toward where I went before, I took my opportunity.