Now that I stood close to him, I could see he was bleeding from dozens of shallow wounds. I flinched, Ouch, that’s gotta hurt, I guess I can’t blame him for being cross with me. Time for some flattery. I thought.
“Sorry Vrick, I might have overdone it a bit,” I apologize. “But look at you! You learned how to use a shield! You can now stand up to tougher enemies! Also, that excellent armor you made proved itself, the warriors barely managed to injure you thanks to it.”
He seemed to consider my words for a moment, then let go of my shirt. “I guess you’re right” he said sullenly, then grimaced with the pain of his lingering wounds. “But next time, give me a warning first!”
“Sure Vrick,” I agreed hastily. “Promise.”
I looked him over, “Now, think you are ready to grab a spear along with that shield and fight back?”
“Damn right I am!” he roared and went to pick up his spear.
I let Vrick battle the two warriors, while carefully monitoring their health to make sure they weren’t injured too severely with Bek being unable to compensate.
Vrick’s fighting technique was impressive. He was vastly superior with his spear than the warriors. He used his Apprentice rank ability several times to much effect, while he kept most of their counter attacks back with his shield hand. Bek continued darting in and out occasionally to heal the injuries, he was doing a fine job. Not once did I have to intervene.
Suddenly Bek froze in place and seemed startled. “Bek?” I asked in concern, “Anything wrong?”
He didn’t answer back but instead, raised his hand performing the simple gestures he normally made when healing someone, only he wasn’t within a touch range from anyone, but it still worked! Suddenly one of the warriors Vrick had just injured glowed with the familiar signature of golden-green light as his wounds healed. Bek had healed him from almost 3 meters away!
I quickly checked Bek’s stats, and saw that he just leveled his Heal skill and gained the Apprentice rank, which allowed him to heal from afar, keeping him safely away from the fight. Right on time!
In the meantime, Vrick continued molesting his warriors, although he was only 1 level higher than them, his equipment and higher skill levels made a significant difference.
I monitored his stats continually. Once he had reached Shield skill level 5, the progress seemed to halt almost completely. That was it. He exhausted the training potential of facing the two warriors. From now on, he’ll have to level up his skills against real enemies.
It was about time I stopped standing at the front lines, taking the brunt of the attack. I opened Vrick’s Shield skill description.
Shields (P)
You are proficient with using shields in combat. You add the shield armor value to your total, and can use it to block incoming damage.
Blocked damage base dependent on the shield used and is modified by the skill level.
Level: 5 - Novice
Effect: Increase shield block efficiency by 5%
I checked the shield stats next. It had a base block value of 50% of the damage, modified to 52% by Vrick’s skill, not bad at all for a 6th level goblin.
Yep, I now had a tank.
I let everyone rest-up for a while, before we continued our training.
In the meantime, I opened up the Energy Options Interface. I now had 232 available EP. I pondered my own skills for a few moment and then decided that tomorrow’s will require all the edge I can muster. I clicked the ‘+’ icon.
Skill increase: Drilling Arrow 11, Cost: 32 energy. Confirm? yes/no
32 energy would put me back exactly at 200, my original reserve goal. I decided to take it as a good omen, and clicked on ‘yes’.
Drilling Arrow Skill level increased to 11
New Rank: Apprentice: You can now launch two arrows by expending 2 extra MP. Every 10 skill levels (21,31,etc) will add an additional arrow at additional 2 MP cost.
Excellent. It was just the upgrade I needed to give me some extra fighting power for our cave scouting expedition tomorrow.
“All right, you’ve rested enough,” I told the group. “Time to practice some formations.”
I kept them at it for hours. I made them practice the same moves over and over again, until it seemed that even the dimwitted warriors got the hang of it.
When we finished, it was dark again and I concluded that we had achieved all that we could for today.
We joined the rest of the clan at dinner around the campsite.
I checked the daily progress report. Rabbit yield had increased to 15, Fish to 4, Tika’s hunt produced another 15 raw meat - just covering the upkeep. The new Gatherer raised their skill nicely to level 5, bringing in 3 units of food and 3 cooking ingredients. So, after daily upkeep, and Guba keeping true to her word for burning a piece of food, we now had a stock of 38 spare units of food. Things were looking up again! I could summon a new goblin.
I badgered the reluctant Guba again into sending 30 units of simple food to the Breeder, then I summoned a new Stonemason worker. What a nice surprise, another female!
Per my now established custom, I greeted her into the clan, and analyzed her:
Goblin worker, Female.
Level: 1 (0%)
HP: 14
P:2, M:0, S:-1
Skills: Haul 1, Stonemason 1
Well, no sense in waiting to raise her level, I surmised. Better the extra level be put to good use gaining me more daily energy, even if that would put me below my 200 reserve goal. Besides, it was mere hours away from midnight, when my daily energy allowance would raise me back to 200.
I paid the required 50 EP and raised the new worker to level 2.
“Do you need anything for your work?” I asked her.
“Pick, ‘Steamed Totem,” she promptly replied.
“Damn!” I swore audibly, both for hearing my badly pronounced title again and for the fact that we didn’t have an extra pick at camp. Well, stone was the most important resource at the moment, so I made the Miner worker give her his own pick and sent him to help Zuban in construction instead. Even if he only contributes 1 BP, it’s still better than nothing.
That seemed to be everything, I got up, bade everyone good night, and went to my house.
I lay on my sleeping fur for a long while, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow, we’ll be courting danger.
Tomorrow, we’ll finally find out what’s inside that cave.
16 - The Cave
Despite the looming danger, I awoke the next day just as any other normal day.
I checked the energy reserve and sure enough, it got its daily allowance at midnight and was currently at 209 EP.
Now that my course had been decided, I was eager to get on with it.
I exited my house. Vrick, Bek and the warriors were already waiting for me outside, as I had instructed them last night.
It looked like Vrick had put some work into his new armor during the night, as most of the holes and the damage it had sustained during training seemed to have vanished. He proudly wielded the steel shield, strapped to his right arm, while holding a spear in his left. I checked his status screen. 30 armor, not bad for his level. High armor rating was important for him since as our group’s tank his job was to draw most of the aggro onto himself. Bek and the warriors looked just like they always did, just normal, simple goblins, though the levels they had gained gave them an edge over the common variety goblins.
I looked them over, “Everyone ready?”
They all nodded.
“Then let’s go.” I quickly opened up a menu and created a War Party with everyone.
I led the way toward the cave opening, just a few dozen meters from my house.
As we approached, we could see more clearly the cave’s mouth, but the inside of the cave was still too dark to see. As we approached, I once again felt the vibe of bad premonition emanating from the cave, but this time, I discarded that feeling and daringly, proceeded toward it.
We finally reached the cave e
ntrance. The opening was large, about 5 meters across and 3 meters high. Had there been any Ogres nearby, they would’ve found the cave well suited for their size.
The interior was dark. The sunny day behind us neutralized our low-light vision, so we still had no idea what was awaiting us inside.
“Alright, into formation, just like we practiced,” I ordered.
Vrick took a step forward, and raised his shield to cover the front of his body, while the two warriors moved to either side of him and a step behind, making a sort of V formation. Bek moved to stand a few steps behind Vrick, and lastly, I moved behind Bek, covering our backs. Essentially, we created a simple arrowhead formation, one of the most common ones when moving with a party of 5.
Slowly and carefully, we made our way in.
As we walked a few paces inside the cave, our vision slowly started to shift into its low light configuration, and the interior of the cave became visible.
We were standing in a medium sized chamber, about 20 meters in diameter. The floor was rough and uneven, same as the walls and the ceiling, which was about 5 meters above our heads. Everything about this place indicated it was a naturally occurring cave and not some man-made structure.
Directly in front of us was a huge, perfectly circular tunnel, its top reaching the height of the cave’s ceiling. On either side of the main tunnel were two additional smaller tunnels that seemed much more naturally-occurring.
In my experience as a player, that huge, well-shaped tunnel, was probably the result of some gigantic earth burrowing monster. Some sort of a giant worm, maybe a Rocksnail or an Earthshark, either possibility was not good, as any monster capable of creating such a huge passage was bound to gobble us up without even noticing our efforts to attack it. But something didn’t sit well with me. Such monsters were generally mindless and incapable of premeditated attack, so it was unreasonable for me to have a vision about it attacking our settlement. No, something else was going on in here.
I immediately decided not to follow the main tunnel, but to scout one of the smaller ones first.
“Over there,” I whispered pointing toward the left tunnel. We slowly progressed, keeping our formation intact, ready for anything.
The tunnel was narrow, barely wide enough for two humans to walk side by side, but luckily, it was wide enough for goblin sized creatures and we managed to maintain our formation in the tight space.
The tunnel was much darker than the first chamber, but some glowing lichen on the walls gave off just barely enough light for us to be able to see using our low-light vision.
As we progressed, we spotted an opening to the left side of the tunnel, it was another chamber.
We slowly approached the opening, then stopped and peeked inside. It was a huge dimly lit chamber, overgrown with mushrooms. There were mushrooms everywhere along the ground, the walls, even coating the stalactite hanging down from the ceiling. They were in all shapes and sizes, wide ones with short leg, narrow ones with long legs. Mushrooms that were smaller than my finger and some as tall as an Ogre. In short, it was a spectacular sight.
Not seeing any enemies, we progressed further into the chamber. Are those edible? I wondered to myself. Such a find could greatly increase our food resources and speed up my settlement development. I bent down and picked two different small mushrooms.
I guessed that Analyze which was meant for creatures and items just wasn’t suitable for plants, that required another skill, Herbalism I believed. I’ll have to ask Guba about those, I thought to myself and put them in my inventory.
Suddenly, something jumped at me!
In an instant my vision went completely dark, I couldn’t see anything, and I could barely breathe. It felt as if a blanket was thrown over my body and then tightened around it, holding me immobilized. I struggled, trying to break out, but I failed. I heard my goblins shout in alarm, it sounded like they were crying ‘attack!’ and then a piercing pain shot through my body
Goblin warrior spear hit you. You take 7 damage
.
Goblin warrior spear hit you. You take 8 damage
Vrick’s spear hit you. You take 12 damage
Bek hit you with Drilling Arrow. You take 11 damage
I felt rage building inside of me. How dare they betray me! I fumed. my pain and anger fueling my special boss ability. I activated Blood Wrath. A burst of pushing force erupted out of my body in a large radius, blasting away anyone who stood nearby.
The force had blown away the blanket that was wrapped around me, throwing it away to land on the ground a few meters away.
I stood there raging, looking around. All my treacherous goblins were sprawled around me on the ground, groaning and nursing their limbs that just got smashed into the earth by the power of the blast.
I looked at Vrick. He was the only one who managed to gain some sort of footing and was half sitting on one bended knee, clutching his spear for support as if it was a walking cane. Did the harsh training method I put him through yesterday provoked him enough to betray me? I thought in anger, or was he never truly loyal and just now found the opportunity to attack? And I groomed him, invested in his development! I taught him my skills and combat tactics, I even awarded him with a shield! Whatever the reason is, it was going to be their last mistake. I thought coldly. I activated my Mana Shield and started to channel an empowered Drilling Arrow, pouring more and more mana into it.
Suddenly, the blanket that just a moment ago was thrown around my body, moved! It was not a blanket after all, but some sort of monster!
The blanket thing reshaped itself, slender long bones and tendons become visible as it moved, shaping it as a sort of freakishly mutated octopus. From the middle of the blanket area sprouted 6 long limb-like bones, each ending with a vicious looking talon that it used to move around. More than anything else, it looked like a moving black tent, from hell.
I immediately realized my mistake. I wasn’t betrayed after all! That thing probably jumped me, and my goblins simply tried to attack it. But seeing as it was so thin, all their attack simply pierced through its body and hit me as well. And I thought they betrayed me. I was inches away from killing them!
My fury blazed hotter at the realization, I targeted the octopus thing with my now fully charged Drilling Arrow and launched it at him.
Two brightly lit arrows immediately materialized and launched at it, their rotating drilling points tearing through the monster’s body easily, rending him apart.
Drilling Arrows hit Shadow-Touched Cave Hugger for 50 damage, [(12+13)X2]
Combined with the damage it had previously sustained, the arrows did enough damage to kill it. I looked back to my party, they were all banged up from the force I unleashed. Though I felt sorry for that now, it was the only option available I had, other than to let them keep stabbing both me and the Hugger, hoping it’ll die first.
I cast Heal Followers twice, which was enough to bring everyone back to full health.
“Everyone alright?” I asked.
“Yes Esteemed Totem,” Bek replied quickly, “Just little hittings.”
“I am sorry for injuring you,” added Vrick, “We were surprised and didn’t know what else to do.”
“That’s alright Vrick,” I replied in a reassuring voice, “You did the right thing. Your attacks were actually what enabled me to throw that thing off of me.” Had I only used Mana Shield before venturing into the cave that wouldn’t have happened, but I tried to conserve my mana, and to act more as the ranged support of our party instead of its shield. Actually, it was probably very lucky that things happened the way they did. Had I had the Mana shield active, that monster might have targeted one of the others, in which case, he would have probably died. I was the only one strong enough to reasonably survive such an attack. Hehe, Lucky Bastard proved itself again, I mused.
Also, it looked like I had made the r
ight decision to invest the settlement energy into my Drilling Arrow. The new ability to fire two arrows at once, albeit at a slight increase to cost, was well worth it. The charged-up arrow I used cost only 16 MP, but its destructive power was substantial. At skill level 31 it’ll grow to 3 arrows, increasing its deadliness even further.
Bek cast his Heal spell, curing me of the rest of the damage. In the meantime, I analyzed the monster’s body.
Shadow Touched Cave Hugger. Dead
Level: 8
Resistance: mental 100%
So, this thing was an infected variation of its race. Whatever this ‘Shadow touched’ title meant. Good thing I didn't try to dominate it, seeing as it had immunity to mental attacks. Shame though I didn’t analyze it while it was still alive, I was curious to see its full HP stat.
The monster body was almost completely black, it didn’t have any discernible head or mouth, just the blanket-like body, strewn across a thin bone structure. I checked it for loot just in case.
I was surprised to actually find several items. 6 X thin hugger bones [Crafting, arrows], hugger leather, gallbladder.
That’s right! I thought with a sudden realization. I had a quest to get cave dweller gallbladder back to Guba, so she can prepare more perma-potions for me. I took all the items and put them in my inventory.
Vrick was scanning the ceiling with his eyes. “What are you doing?” I asked him.
“That thing jumped at you from up there,” He pointed up. “I’m trying to see if there are any more of those creatures, but they are so dark I probably won’t spot it even if I was looking straight at it!”
He was right, it should've also occurred to me. There was every chance in the world that thing wasn’t the only one of its kind. They had probably situated themselves at specific points in the ceiling and waited for unsuspecting prey to walk below them. I scanned the ceiling as well, but as Vrick said, it was too dark to see anything. Those things had a near-perfect camouflage.
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