The Fourth Realm (The Ten Realms Book 4)
Page 20
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You have reached Level 50
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When you sleep next, you will be able to increase your attributes by: 75 points.
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15,921,992/16,500,000 EXP till you reach Level 51
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Skill: Healer
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Level: 63 (Journeyman)
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You have become familiar with the body and the arts of repairing it. Healing spells now cost 5% less Mana and Stamina.
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Skill: Riding
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Level: 35 (Apprentice)
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Melee attacks while riding are 10% stronger
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Skill: Marksman
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Level: 62 (Apprentice)
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Long-range weapons are familiar in your hands. When aiming, you can zoom in x2.0. 15% increased chance for critical hit.
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Skill: Throwables
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Level: 45 (Apprentice)
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Your throws gain 5% power.
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I need to increase my level to be ready for whatever comes. Erik sent a message to Glosil telling him that he was going to take a short nap.
Erik then used a concoction to send himself to sleep.
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You have 75 attribute points to use.
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He couldn’t feel excited it was the largest increase he had ever gone through byt the cost was too high, taking three of his people’s lives.
“Okay, so I need to be as combat effective as possible. So far I have been increasing my physical attributes over my magical. As a commander I’ll be at the rear with the gear instead of on the front. So I need to increase how alert I am. Agility is still useful, if I get into a fight, it’s more likely that I’ll be using a rifle instead of my fists. If not, then mana blasts and bullets. Strength isn’t as important. Ten into stamina should keep me easily recharged after sleep, twenty into stamina regeneration would decrease the amount I need to eat and sleep. Forty five points. Fifteen into Agility. Speed up reactions. Then twenty into mana pool and ten into mana generation, my mana pool is still really small.”
Erik looked at his stat sheet, feeling anxious, knowing once he added these stats he couldn’t undo it. He accepted it before he could think on it too much and looked at the results.
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Name: Erik West
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Level: 50
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Race: Human
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Titles:
From the Grave II
Mana Emperor
Dungeon Master II
Reverse Alchemist
Poison Body
Fire Body
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Strength: (Base 36) +41
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770
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Agility: (Base 29) +63
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506
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Stamina: (Base 39) +19
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870
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Mana: (Base 8) +6
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740
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Mana Regeneration (Base 10) +55
33.50/s
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Stamina Regeneration: (Base 41) +53
19.80/s
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***
Rugrat read the journal through the night, learning about different hidden treasuries and armories, checking it against the dungeon map, he was able to find them easily.
The imperial city must not have been touched in centuries, Rugrat was eager to see just what kind of loot it held. Some would be affected by the fighting and time but any that were held within storage items might have been preserved. If so, the capital was a place of untold wealth and riches.
Rugrat rubbed his tired face as dawn was fast approaching, checking his notes against the markers on his map.
As the sun came up, Erik appeared at his door.
“Briefing is about to start.” Erik stated.
“Did you start building the totem?” Rugrat asked.
“Yeah, it is going to need special parts, though they’re all pretty simple. It shouldn’t take long to organize them but it’ll take three months for the totem to be built. Guess the Ten Realms has to do something with it,” Erik said, passing Rugrat a coffee as he got up.
“Thanks,” Rugrat took it and followed Erik, a side room had been cleared out for their meeting. The rubble had been pushed along the walls and used in parts with magic to repair the walls and supporting pillars and arches.
“Morning,” Erik said as he greeted the group of Yui, Glosil, Storbon, Roska and Han. Niemm and Domonos were out on watch, leaving Han and Storbon to watch over the briefing.
Rugrat stopped Glosil as he went into the room.
“I’ve marked down a number of locations that should have items useful to us. Just watch out—it looks like there are a number of them still with traps set up.” Rugrat passed Glosil his notes on the different areas and their possible traps and then transferred the information on his altered map to him as well.
“I’ll see to it,” Glosil said.
Erik pulled out a large map and put it on the table so everyone could see it.
“Welcome to Vuzgal, the once Imperial Capital of this area. It used to house millions, now it only hosts us and the undead. We have turned the undead into dungeon monsters. Minor change but means greater control and follow our commands. They are out clearing roads, building a totem, collecting storage items and dropping them off at the castle. A totem that will take three months to complete! Now, what we need to do is get to know Vuzgal. We have this map here and within a kilometer around the dungeon core, we know everything above and below ground. Beyond that, we’re going to need to scout it out. Domonos, your platoon will hold here and continue to sort through storage devices and repair the castle. Yui, your platoon will head out in teams to scout out the city. Roska, your team will head to the east to scout the forests and set up alarm formations along the road. Special Team One will do the same in the west,” Erik looked to Storbon.
“How far out do you want to have the alarm formations?” Roska asked.
“At least five kilometers,” Erik said.
“For the next three days we will scout the roads and the city, then we will move onto the second phase,” Erik looked to Rugrat.
“There is a dungeon in the valley to our south. The special teams will assist Erik and I in entering and checking this dungeon out. At the same time,” Rugrat tapped his map to the large map as markers appeared. “The Company will be looking to loot these areas. These markers are locations that I found with the dungeon core map or based on the Emperor’s personal notes that look to be of interest. There will probably be traps and it could be dangerous, so we need to take every care in entering these areas,” Rugrat said.
“Once we have an understanding of the dungeon, we will start to allow the rest of the company into the dungeon to increase their skills. We will have rotating times to give people some time off to decompress as needed.” Rugrat looked to Erik who moved forward again.
“We’ll have a ceremony for the fallen in two days, figure out who will be on watch. Make sure everyone’s kit is good to go and look after your people. Questions or issues?”
There were none, bringing the briefing to a close.
***
Glosil checked on the monster cores that they had gathered while killing the different beasts in the forest. They’d been on the run, so they’d just collected the cores and kept moving.
Now,
he saw they were different from the monster cores that had been in the First Realm.
“Toth, you have an appraisal ability, right?” he asked one of the nearby soldiers.
“Yes, sir.” She nodded.
“Can you have a look at these?”
She took the monster core from his hand, looking at it and then pulling out some notes. “I can’t say for sure but I think that this is an Earth-grade monster core.” She handed it back.
Glosil made an impressed noise. A grand mortal grade monster core could go for one hundred and twenty gold, though to the people in the Alvan army, that wasn’t important. The looting might have been removed from the army but they all lived comfortably and many of them had made a lot of money off the different things that they brought back from the battlefield dungeon. The battlefield dungeon was a proving ground for them to hone their abilities, earn rewards and learn to work as a unit.
They had become close with one another in their section but now their role was to defend Alva and its interests, not to keep on fighting in the battlefield dungeon.
Also, with a stable income and the responsibility that they were given, they weren’t like a regular military that looked at looting as a bonus. They looked at it as a job to be completed, organizing resources and sending them back to Alva as was their job.
“Thanks, Toth,” Glosil said. A Lesser Earth grade monster core is worth 24 mortal mana stones. Not that much in a realm that can produce Earth mana stones.
She headed back to continue working on her repeater while Glosil checked the other monster cores. All of them felt similar, so if Toth was right about the first one, then all of them were Earth-grade monster cores.
We are in an Earth grade realm now.
Glosil looked up as he heard people approaching, he looked up seeing Lieutenant Yui and First Sergeant Frost, commanders of the Dragon Platoon, appear by him.
“You ready to step off?” Glosil asked, standing up.
“All set,” Yui said. “You got your route?”
“Right here,” Frost, said holding out his map. Glosil transferred the information to them and included time spots when they should be in different locations.
Glosil nodded at it all. “Make sure that you don’t miss a building. We don’t know how long we’ll be here or when we might need to bug out. Anything that we can take back to Alva can increase our strength.”
“Understood,” Yui said.
“Be back before dark,” Glosil said.
“Yes, sir.” Yui and Frost nodded, holding back from saluting. No one saluted on the battlefield just in case there was an archer out there. It was something that Rugrat and Erik had drilled into their heads.
They headed off, rounding up their platoon. They checked their gear one more time.
They moved out of the main castle and got onto their mounts in one of the gardens that was starting to recover, shoots of color peeking through the ground.They left, leaving the camp in relative silence. The special teams had already ridden out on their mounts shortly after the briefing.
The Dragon Platoon took the time to increase the strength of their defenses, sort through the storage items, check on their mounts and work on their gear.
Glosil moved through the castle and paused in a large room with a broken window looking out at the capital. It was the first time that he had a minute to breathe.
Glosil opened his creature storage item. His panther appeared and stretched. The panthers loved activity and being stuck in the creature storage items didn’t give them much freedom. Glosil moved her armor around, releasing some catches so she could move more easily, and scratched her fur underneath.
The panther purred at the relaxing feeling from Glosil’s scratches.
A weak smile appeared on his face as he looked out at the capital, his thoughts on the men and women he’d already lost.
He took in a breath through his nose and let it out. He forced his emotions down, his eyes growing wet. He turned away from it and gritted his teeth, removing the man from the rank. All he could do was his duty to the best of his ability and try to keep the rest of his people alive.
Chapter: Looting
Erik and Rugrat were inspecting where the Totem would be built while a half section from Dragon Platoon watched the area.
“Smart idea,” Rugrat said.
“Got it from you making the mana storing formation,” Erik said. “With the houses and buildings in the area, we can easily destroy them with the dungeon’s interface. If we just cut lines in the walls, then the buildings will collapse, we don’t get all the mana impurities from the material and then the skeletons can clear the big sections quickly, clearing the area and making sure we don’t miss storage items or anything useful. We might need the materials to repair the city or build up the totem. It needs a lot of stone.”
Rugrat looked at the big circle that was formed in the slums of Vuzgal. Most of the buildings had been in bad condition with the fighting so there was little left to destroy.
“They’ve cleared, what, seventy percent of it?”
“Should be ready to start building the totem this afternoon. I gave a list of materials to the people looking through storage rings.” Erik passed Rugrat a piece of paper.
“What is this?” “Everything that’s needed.”
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40,000 stone bricks
10 Earth Mana stones or equivalent power source.
5,000 iron ingots
Will require: 90 days to complete
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“That doesn’t seem that bad, isn’t there a way to make it quicker though?” Rugrat asked.
“We’ll have to see but we need a ton of stone, and iron ingots. Thankfully there is a crafting area in the city,” Erik said. He patted Lola who turned away from the construction site.
“Group up, we’re heading to the crafter’s district.” Erik yelled.
They used their maps, crossing the city as they reached the crafting district, there were all kinds of workshops here.
They dismounted and began checking on the stores, in different states of disrepair, or in some cases, just piles of rubble. They searched through the buildings, collecting iron and other materials that were easy to collect.
Rugrat sent two mana bolts into the hinge of a door, kicking it back and sending it flying as dust was thrown up.
Rugrat stepped into the room. There were three furnaces along the wall and ten or so workbenches and anvils.
There were still words written on the board to the side of the room for orders that the customers had placed.
Rugrat moved through the room systematically, checking storage items he found and tossing the anvils or other solid iron items into an empty storage ring.He moved through to the front of the store and saw a staircase going downstairs.
He saw a formation on the door leading down but it had long since run out of power. Rugrat used his sound transmission device, “Erik I found a door going down in the place I’m at.”
“Coming over to you, this place it empty,” Erik said.
Rugrat took out a knife and cut through the locks.
“Must be Earth Grade Iron to take that long to cut through,” Rugrat muttered as he pushed on the door. With the Wood and attribute mana the door hadn’t degraded at all but the hinges were squeaky, making Rugrat wince.
“You trying to open some damn doorway into hell in there?” Erik asked, entering the store.
“You know it,” Rugrat said. He pulled out his rifle as he cast night vision on his eyes and then he stepped onto the stone staircase, heading below.
Erik already had his rifle out as he followed Rugrat down.
They scanned the room, there was nothing but crates along one wall and another locked door.
Rugrat and Erik looked at one another.
“Check the crates first?,” Erik asked.
Rugrat checked the boxes. “Minor storage devices, cheap and easy to make but have a greater capacity. I’ve got Mortal Mana
stones here,” Rugrat said. “Must be used to power the forges.”
Erik stepped back from the boxes. “Take a look,” said with a grin hanging from his face.
Rugrat looked inside the boxes. There was Mortal iron ingots and other metal ingots as well as enhancers.
“Jackpot.” Rugrat confirmed.
Erik pulled out his sound transmission device. “Going to need some help at my position, we’ve got a bunch of iron ingots here needing to be transported,” Erik waited for the reply.“Oh, good work, see if you can find more, that would make things easier for us,” Erik said and cut the channel.
“What was that?” Rugrat asked.
“They found some carts in storage devices, can hook them up to a mount, transport more storage items.”
“Now, the real question,” Erik turned and gestured with his rifle “What’s behind that?”
Rugrat created a blade in his hand.
“Want to find out?”
“Might as well, that means hell yea!”Rugrat moved to the door, using his mana sight to make sure that the formations around it weren’t powered and then used his inorganic touch on the door. Then he used his mana blade on the lock.
“Earth Metal again,” He said as he cut through it. Erik’s rifle was at the ready.
“Open!” Rugrat shouted, moving to the side as he readied his rifle. Erik pushed into the room, scanning it.
Rugrat flowed in behind him going left where Erik went right.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
They lowered their rifles. There was a locked weapons rack along the wall and there were a few large iron storage items off to the side.Rugrat went to the storage boxes as Erik went to the weapon rack.
“Looks like they were in a hurry, they’re unlocked,” Erik said, holding up the lock and pulling out the chain that held the doors closed.
Rugrat looked in the storage items.
“Shit yea, Earth grade ingots, high journeyman level enhancers, Expert grade tools,” Rugrat said looking through it all.
“Journeyman level weapons and armor, most mid level a few high journeyman pieces,” Erik said.
They cleared out the smithy and kept going, they still needed a metric assload of iron ingots.