by D Wolfin
During the rest of the week, I lead the party through a massive amount of different areas. Lush open fields slowly turned into honey scented forests and pollen rich hills covered in small white and yellow flowers. There was one particular dense tropical forest with a lot of mosquitoes and moisture in the air that proved to be rather difficult for tread through.
That rainforest contained strange little black monkey creatures, that while being only level 30 each, were easily as fast as the Giant Hornets. If not faster. The main concern with the monkeys isn't just their speed, but they had a habit of stealing your belongings. Anything hanging from the hips, jewellery, and even some stuff that was in the personal inventory.
I spent a good day chasing one such monkey through the trees after it stole my 'Fire Imbued Meridium Scramasax' barely hours after entering the area. I was once again saved by Shai'en's miraculous archery skills as she managed to finally hit it with an arrow from fifty meters away. Although this experience of chasing the Monkey did manage to get my agility to raise by a further two points at least, bringing it up to a total of 248 after my bonuses were added on.
During my trip, I also checked my 'Nightingale Helmet' once the auction finished. With my heart racing at a hundred miles an hour, I read the total sale price of $2,462! To be able to sell an in game item for such an exorbitant price, it is almost like a dream.
We took a lot of kills for ourselves while travelling and gained a few levels each, but the elf still took most of the experience and continues to grow her level at an alarming rate. It helps that she is fighting enemies immeasurably stronger than what she could on her own, but she gained a further twenty levels, overtaking both my and Fen's level.
She may currently be more than ten levels above Fen. But I believe that in a contest of strength between the two of them, the wolf girl would still win.
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I look up at the northern forest in front of us, awe shining in my eyes.
The entire forest is constituted by humongous fifty meter tall, ancient pine trees. A thin mist swirls and gently drift about throughout the forest, preventing anyone from seeing beyond a few meters. Fortunately, we haven't entered the area yet so are safe from the sight prevention.
Far off in the distance to either side and some slightly behind are enormous snow capped mountains. The forest seems to pulsate with a deep, icy chill that covers the grass in frost and sends a shiver up my spine.
"This is your home?" I say with a mild shock to the elf.
"Yes. Although it has been corrupted by the evil of humans and become somewhat more sinister, it is indeed my home."
"Somewhat more sinister? This forest gives me the damn creeps, I wouldn't be surprised to find the origin of all evil here, holed up in some old run down mansion with doors that need oiling and windows that don't open."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Never mind, it's nothing." I shake my head at the elf. Of course she doesn't understand the cliché, she is just an NPC in the end.
"We need to be careful here." I speak across the party chat, direct to everyone. "We have no idea what is in there. How many bandits, monsters, or their levels. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious."
I lead us as we walk into the northern forest, the mist swirling around us as we disturb the air currents with our movements. Thinking back to the 'Vexl Underground Prison', I am already aware that my speed and the mirages of my body will be useless in here thanks to my real body disturbing the mist while the fakes do not.
"Lost," Shai'en whispers right next to my ear, "I saw some movement over there."
She points to the mist, through a pair of trees where the mist seems to be swirling around. I cannot see anything. Almost as if she could see the future, four torches suddenly appear from within the mist, slowly lighting up the surroundings in a dull yellow glow.
The figures of four humans in rough leather armour appear from inside the mist, happily talking amongst themselves. Our entire party immediately duck behind the large trunks of various pine trees in the area, hiding from their line of sight.
"That Jire'min. She is one stunning girl. I may even give up this cruel life just to be with her."
"I heard she has a husband though?"
"Oh? Not anymore she doesn't. I took care of him three nights ago." Laughter emanates from the group.
"You could never give up this life. You enjoy it far too much!"
Just as they were distracted, I creep around the tree trunk until I can see them and breath the words "Creature analyse", bringing up their data.
Name: Northern Bandit
Level: 115
Health: 2470
Magic: 0
Stamina: 280
??
'What's with that enormous health?!' I scream in shock inside my head.
"They are level 115, have an enormous amount of health, and appear to be close combat specialists." I spread the information over the party chat, informing them of what I can tell from my analysis.
"I don't think we should have any problems dealing with only four of them though." Mason speaks back across the chat.
"No, we should be fine. Fen, you and I will take the two on the right. Mason, Matrix and Shai'en will take the two on the left hand side."
Without any notice, the bandits stop walking and two of them speak up in sync.
"Something, or someone powerful is here. Be careful and take them out." They say in voices just loud enough that we could hear them too.
'Shit, they fell under the effects of my 'Intimidating Aura'!'
Even though I don't give anyone the signal to move. As soon as I take action, so does everyone else.
I dash straight at the group, with Fen's ice attacks backing me up, and launch an all out assault against the first bandit I can reach. Mason and Shai'en send down a barrage of arrows on the far two bandits, keeping them away from the rest of the group.
Mason's bow glows sky blue, and a single arrow launched into the sky, brings down tens of arrows in a five meter radius on the enemy. Shai'en body start to emanate a faint blue and gold aura as she uses magic with a new spell she learnt. She simply draws back the bowstring and a thin arrow of highly condensed wind forms almost instantly.
This is different from Mason's sacred art 'Sky Piercer', which will fire an arrow of wind, only to dissipate and launch hundreds of wind blades in every direction. These wind arrows of hers maintain their condensed form and have an incredibly high armour penetration. I suspect they could even pierce through most shields. The best part is, while using minimal mana and not having to prepare arrows, she can continuously launch these arrows at a frightening speed.
"The land is my strength, the magma beneath the earth turns and provides it's fiery power to my strike. Feel the wrath of my inferno. Flame Blade." Matrix, devoid of all shame, sings out another one of his bogus incantations while using an advanced spell.
His entire sword roars as an inferno of flames erupt along the length of its blade . The flames condense and continue after the tip of the sword as well, extending the weapons length by a full meter. Kicking off from the ground, his fiery swords arcs through the air and tears through the bandits.
'How can that guy be so nervous most of the time. But when it comes to reciting self scripted poetry, it is like he is a completely different person.' I thought to myself.
Seeing everyone going all out, how can I possibly do any less. I spread out my mental senses and visualize eight different clones of myself.
Allowing my vision to shift to another perspective, my original body dissolves in the wind as I reappear elsewhere along with seven false images of myself.
I rush at the nearly dead bandits and launch one attack after another. My throwing knives are sent piercing through the air only moments before my short sword glide towards throats, the shoulder tendons and the achilles tendon. Each and every one of my blows is critical, crippling, or both. While at the same time, my attacks t
ravel at such of a speed they practically negate the opponent’s defensive rating.
The bandits also start their counter attack. They manage to split up right before death and escape the area of effect attacks. Using the trees as cover, they make it near impossible to hit them with ranged attacks. Even when Shai'en unleashes one of her magical wind arrows at them, they somehow manage to use a tree to intercept the projectile.
Dodging back and forth, they eliminate four of my mirages in a single attack.
'At least they are under my 'aggro' and will not attack the others like this.' I silently chuckle in my mind.
The bandits, while not being of any significantly large level, are incredibly cunning. They split up and use the surrounding woods to their advantage for cover, while converging and attacking from multiple directions shortly after.
We do land the occasional attack on them. Thankfully, due to our initial surprise attack taking away the majority of their health, they slowly die one at a time.
While the battle seemed to take a long time. In reality, it was only a total of four minutes. We spent most of our mana and stamina, but everyone only lost about fifteen percent of their health while I was already down to forty percent health remaining.
"They weren't so tough. And they drop fantastic experience too!" Mason was overjoyed by the amount of experience he gained from killing just one bandit. With one kill, he instantly gained seven percent towards his next level.
"Umm.. Their attacks were rather, umm, weak." Matrix nervously says while looking around bashfully.
"What are you guys talking about!" I shout at the brothers shamelessly, "They were simply aiming all of their attacks at me!"
"Psh, what are you talking about? You got to kill two didn't you? It is only fair to pay the appropriate price for getting the most experience." Mason complains in a mocking tone.
Ignoring the two, I simply lead our party further into the northern forest and the strange, chilling mist.
we encounter three more successive groups of bandits, each larger than the last. The second company of bandits were somewhat troublesome as we didn't manage to land a sneak attack on them and I was nearly killed thanks to my 'aggro' affecting four of the five bandits.
The third group was not so much of a hassle, we learnt how important it was to deal that initial strike and wipe out as many as we could. If we concentrated our attacks right, we could instantly wipe out three bandits while ignoring the others.
A fourth and fifth battle proceeded in turn. the deeper we got, the more bandits that we came across and the more frequently they appeared. If it was not for me picking up a large amount of medicinal herbs on the way, I would have been in trouble quite some time ago. Nobody else even seemed remotely concerned about death after seeing how I am basically the only one being attacked.
All of a sudden, I stop in my footsteps. Before me is a massive wall of wood. Not the kind like a man made wall of timber planks or logs. But almost as if the wood grew from the ground like a tree. It is even covered with bark like a tree. It stretched beyond my already near eyesight and disappeared into the fog. I could see the top clearly though, instead of foliage, it ended abruptly in a flat line.
"I believe we could have arrived at Eltreant." I say softly to the others.
"HEY! WHO'S DOWN THERE?" A thunderous shout comes from the top of the wall as a shabby looking man in worn leather armour pokes his head over the edge of the wall.
"THEY MUST BE THE ONES WHO HAVE BEEN KILLING THE SCOUTS! MEN, KILL THEM."
As his shout dies down, a gate not too far away in the fog creaks opens and a full copse of thirty bandits come rushing forth. At least, it sounded like thirty bandits based off the footsteps I can hear. I can't actually see them yet though thanks to the fog.
"We need to retreat, quickly! There are too many of them." I call out to the others through the party chat.
We all hasten our way into the trees behind us, a few arrows falling from the top of the wall land where we were only moments ago.
Ten minutes pass before we are confident enough to stop fleeing.
"I hope they aren't still following us." Mason whispers to the group, clearly aware of how dangerous that many bandits can be.
"I think we are safe for a while," I reply to him, "But, I think that they will probably split up into smaller groups like we fought earlier in order to search for us."
"Let's go back to Grenton." he lets out a resounding sigh. "Even I know when something is impossible. We need to recruit an army of players to siege the walls. Otherwise, we are pointlessly wasting our time here."
Not just me, but everyone else is silent as well. He is completely right, there is no way for us to break through the wall. I ponder the issue while everyone starts getting ready to leave. Everyone gives off a gloomy atmosphere, but Shai'en is clearly the most depressed.
'Wait. Hang on! If we can't go through and we can't go over, we will just have to-'
"Go under!" I call out verbally, no longer simply thinking in my mind.
"Huh, what?" Mason arches his eyebrows in curiosity.
"No need to leave just yet." I laugh slowly under my breath, "We are going to go under the wall!"
Everyone stares at me, looks of indifference on their face. One by one they exchange glances and gently shrug their shoulders.
"I'm... coming." Fen says in a non-caring voice while leaning her body onto my back.
'What is with you guys! Can't you look a little happier at my great idea!? Look at Shai'en. She is nearly in tears of joy over there. The least you could pretend to be enthusiastic!'
We all walk back towards the city wall while I cry out complaints in my mind.
"Speaking of which? How are we going to travel under the wall. I don't know of any skills that give the abilities of a mole."
"Oh, but there is a skill to do just that."
Once I estimate us to be about a hundred meters away from the wall, I pull out an iron pick that had been in my inventory so long I thought it was going to collect rust.
Mason laughs and nods his head when he sees what is in my hands.
"Of course! That could work! Lost, what is your skill level in mining?"
"...One"
"...What?"
The hearty expression Mason had suddenly disappears from his face.
"Don't worry too much. We are only tunnelling through dirt so it shouldn't take too long."
Despite my reassuring words, he still doesn't look like he has much faith in me.
I take the first swing with the pick, digging the end into the ground. As soon as the pick lands in the ground, a notification appears in front of me.
You have inadequate skill in 'Mining' to dig new tunnels:
- Tunnel digging speed has been reduced by 85%
- You will lose 10HP every swing of the pick
Silently cursing, I ignore the pain in my body as I continue swinging the pick. The head of the pick was unfortunately not wide enough to effectively scoop out the dirt as I dig, so Mason and Matrix use their hand to dig out the loose dirt with buckets and deposit them outside the slowly forming hole.
I ensure I dig in a diagonal direction down, so that we can all easily get in and out as need be. I spend an entire day digging, but the progress is extremely slow. I only manage to extend the tunnel by ten meters. I did however raise my skill in mining to level 4 which is a benefit.
Looking through my inventory, I realize I don't have enough medicinal herbs to keep going at this rate.
The second day I make it a further twelve meters. My pick had dropped to 50 percent durability, but that was partially due to me mining out a small amount of iron ore that I came across.
The third day I dug through fourteen meters, finally digging a third of the distance towards the wall. I was running low on herbs so I spent this day not using any and simply waited for my health to naturally recover whenever it fell below ten percent.
I found it incredibly surprising, that by exhausting my bod
y through mining until it nearly collapsed caused my mining skill to gain proficiency twice as fast as it had previously. After the third full day of mining, my 'Mining' skill reached level 9, my tunnelling speed was only reduced by sixty percent, and I only lost 6HP for every swing of the pick.
The fourth day however, the pick broke.
"Damn it." I cry out. "We didn't even get halfway!"
Everyone else also has dejected looks, starting to doubt my plan.
"Don't worry too much." I try to to reassure everyone. "We can still keep on going. Everyone, we need to go collect some loose wood from the forest."
While they all silently stare at me, I bring out the furnace from my inventory and indicate towards it.
half an hour later I am at the entrance to the tunnel staring at the furnace with no firewood. No matter where we looked there was no loose wood on the forest floor, and none of us had the 'Logging' skill to chop down one of the trees and turn it into timber.
A spark of insight flashes across my mind.
"Minor dire flame!" I call and form that malicious fireball in my hand.
All around me, apart from Fen, is filled with the scene of everyone's face darkening.
"What?!" I call out to the accusing looks, throwing the flame into the furnace.
The fireball splashes as it hits the base of the furnace cavity, lighting up the small interior in a deep crimson.
Placing pieces of iron ore into a small container made of the same type of stone as the furnace, I grab the cup and place it inside the furnace on a small rack above the flames. I wonder to myself how long the process will be for melting the iron as I close the small, tempered glass door.
The flames slowly lick the stone container, and cause its contents to start glowing the red of molten metal.
Removing the stone cup now full of molten metal, I pour it into a readily prepared pickaxe head mould I bought not too long after I got the furnace. I also have a standard longsword blade and axe head mould as well.