“Which will make our journey back to Aldford a world easier,” I replied, my heart already racing as I read the buff’s description as it appeared in my combat log.
You have been affected by Garr’s [Presence of Nature]!
While in range of this aura, all wild creatures under level 30 will no longer be automatically hostile to you, choosing to ignore you unless you threaten or attack them first. In addition, while under this ability’s effect, you are able to ignore all movement penalties while traveling over any non-magical natural terrain.
Forget us just getting back home, this ability could let us wander the Hartwyld with almost no fear at all, I thought, my mind immediately considering all of the possibilities. It could allow us to raid the Dread Crew and the orcs on the plains. Hell, even more than that, we could even use it to move a whole force behind them if we didn’t have to worry about all the creatures picking us off or alerting their scouts.
“And our escape from the orcs as well,” Garr added with a nod, his eyes lingering on mine a second longer than needed as if he knew what track my thoughts had taken. But instead of saying anything further, his attention shifted over to look at Berwyn, the monk choosing that opportunity to step forward with a large sack in hand.
“A moment before we leave, Lyrian,” the monk said without any preamble as he held the bag out to me. “It seems that the spirits have left something behind for us as a reward for our troubles. Though I am afraid we’re faced with a familiar problem once again.”
“They did? And we are?” I asked, at first not cluing in that the sack that Berwyn was holding was, in fact, a loot bag from the encounter that we’d just endured. But after staring at it for a second, my mind finally clicked into place, and I reached out to take the bag from the man. “Oh, right, loot.”
Glancing eagerly inside once it was in my hands, it only took me a second afterward to realize what Berwyn had meant as a set of five somewhat familiar items appeared in my vision.
[Lesser Essence of Celerity] x 84
[Lesser Essence of Serenity] x 61
[Lesser Essence of Brawn] x 76
[Lesser Essence of Fortitude] x 59
[Lesser Essence of Focus] x67
“Ah, I see what you mean,” I replied as I stared into the bag, going as far as to reach into it and pull one of the mysterious items out to inspect, its nebulous and spongey shape feeling strange in my hand. “More essences. A hell of a lot from them from the looks of it this time.”
“As there would be after the number of spirits that we were forced to slay,” Garr commented, his eyes moving to fixate on the Essence of Celerity that I held in my hand. “But at least it is a bounty that the orcs will not be able to enjoy for themselves.”
“A bounty?” I repeated, caught completely off guard by the gronn’s words. “Wait, do you know what these things are?”
“They are…essences,” Garr replied in an unsure voice as he looked back towards me, a look of wary confusion crossing his face. “Do you not know what they are?”
“Honestly? Not even a little bit,” I answered with a shake of my head. “We’ve been finding them for quite some time now, but we’ve never figured out what they are for.”
“You mean…your people don’t make use of them?” Garr replied, the confusion on his face growing into disbelief.
“Make use of them for what exactly?” I asked, starting to feel a little bit excited for where I felt the conversation was heading.
“For everything,” the druid answered with a shake of his head as if he couldn’t find the right words to explain himself. “There is nary a thing that an essence couldn’t be used for. From making, to mending, to…something like this garden. Their use is only limited by what ideal the essence represents.”
“An ideal?” I repeated, readying myself to press the man for more details but managing to catch myself before the flood of questions within could burst free. “Actually, you know what. Maybe this would be better to talk about once we’re farther away from there. It looks like we both have questions to ask one another.”
“So it does,” Garr agreed with an eager nod, his eyes flicking curiously between the essence and my face as he went on to repeat himself once more. “So it certainly does.”
With his words hanging on the air, we all finished what preparations were left before unceremoniously leaving the clearing, setting out southward into the blighted garden. Moving at a brisk pace, we only had to endure the consequences of our actions for a short while, the withered and rotting crops surrounding us eventually giving way to the healthy—and still living—trees of the Hartwyld. Feeling reenergized to be surrounded by life once again, it was just a matter of minutes from there until we reached the wards bordering the garden’s limits, stopping only briefly to destroy the nearest ward post powering it.
And just like that, our raid on Khudazal was over.
Running into the Hartwyld at what I would have considered reckless speeds once we entered into the forest proper, we began to put as much distance between us and the orc city as we could manage. All of us knew that it was only a matter of time before the orcs discovered the full extent of our raid, and none of us wanted to be anywhere nearby once they did so. So to that end, we ran as fast as our legs could take us, Garr and his fellow gronns’ spells allowing us to not only completely ignore the creatures of the Hartwyld but also physically ease our journey.
Even the ground feels softer beneath my feet, I thought at one point as I considered the effects of Garr’s aura and how it caused the entire forest around us to subtlety react to our presence. No longer did we have to find a path around a wall of intertwined branches or hack a trail through thick foliage while watching for twisting roots beneath our feet. Instead, the wild moved to accommodate our journey, with hard branches parting themselves in anticipation of our passage as we drew near, or vicious brambles refusing to bite us if we accidentally brushed by them, allowing us to pass unmolested.
The result of these two effects combined together turned what had before been a harrowing and perilous journey into a relaxing one in comparison, leaving us with little to worry about beyond the actual act of running. It was enough that after the first hour of our flight without any sign of pursuit that I allowed my attention to shift towards the various notifications that I’d pended after our battle with the spirits—if only to give my mind something to do.
Seems surreal to think I’d be a little bored running through the forest after a night like tonight, but I guess I’ll take it compared to the alternative, I thought idly to myself as I mentally called up one of the flashing notifications in the corner of my eye, watching it expand in my vision.
Battle Summary Update! War: The Town of Aldford vs. The Dread Crew & Orc Tribes of Khudazal
Monday, April 22nd – The Raid on Khudazal
Outcome: Victorious
Allied Player Casualties: 2
Allied Non-Player Casualties: 21
Enemy Player Casualties: 2
Enemy Non-Player Casualties: 231
Captured Slaves Freed: 183
War Objectives Completed:
Find Khudazal
Find Aldford’s Lost Settlers
Rescue Garr
Rescue Senzin
Rescue as Many Slaves as Possible
Blight the Southern Garden
Blight the Eastern Garden
Rewards:
Glory Points: 833
Experience: 75,500
Leadership Experience: 20,000
Well, I guess that explains how I hit level twenty-eight, I thought as I reviewed the battle summary, my eye backtracking to fixate on one war objective in particular. Oh! It looks like Trivium and the others did manage to end up blighting their garden too! That’s great news! I guess we ended up getting credit for it because we helped them escape from the slave camp? Whatever the case, that helps us out greatly. We might even stand a chance against the orcs now.
After finishing my review of the ba
ttle summary, my attention shifted towards my newly gained level, and I opened my character sheet. As I did, a pair of highlighted sections alerted me that in addition to my unspent attributes, I also currently had a little over a thousand glory points and four leadership skill points to assign somewhere. Eyes widening eagerly at the plethora of points to spend on improving myself, I didn’t waste a second longer in doing exactly that. Starting first with the simplest decision, I assigned my five attribute points into strength, once more bringing it into line with my agility score. I knew that I would eventually be forced to pick between the two attributes and choose one to specialize in, but with me now so close to level thirty and the advanced class that came with, I was loath to break the pattern I’d followed so far.
I’ll figure it out when the time comes and I see what options I have to choose from, I thought as I confirmed my selection, moving onto my leadership skill tree next.
Skimming over it briefly to refresh my mind about my previous selections, I saw that I’d managed to finish the first tier of skills and that I was finally able to progress onto the second. That progression though came with an increased skill point cost for each rank, with each one now costing two of the precious leadership skill points that I’d managed to accumulate. Despite that, however, it only took me a second to make the decision to spend the points on Improved Health, which would grant a tiny bit of bonus health to any group that I was leading.
And given our experiences so far, we needed each and every tiny bonus that we could find.
With that section done, I moved onto the final one remaining to me, my glory points, where I was effectively faced with the same choices that I’d just made with my leadership skill points.
Looks like there’s a bit of crossover here between the two skill paths, I thought as I spent six hundred of my glory points to max out the Increased Mana ability and then dumped the remaining four hundred into Increased Stamina, which netted me two ranks in the ability. Sure, the increases for each of them were somewhat incremental, netting only a percent and a half and a percent respectively, but at the same time, they were skills that would continue to scale as my level and attributes grew. I wonder what options I’ll get once I max out this first tier here for the PvP skills and move onto the next. I’m sure it’ll end up being something different.
Confirming my choices once I finished spending the last of my glory points, I took the time to review my new and improved character sheet, checking over the changes that the new level and skill point spending had brought.
Statistics:
HP: 1827/1827
Stamina: 1607/1607
Mana: 1993/1993
Experience to next level: 58245/76100
Renown: 7110
Attributes:
Strength: 93 (129)
Agility: 88 (126)
Constitution: 91 (95)
Intelligence: 114 (117)
Willpower: 33 (36)
Leadership Skills:
Health Regeneration +10. Rank: 10/10
Mana Regeneration +10. Rank: 10/10
Stamina Regeneration +10. Rank: 10/10
Enhanced Movement +10%. Rank: 10/10
Improved Health: +1%. Rank: 2/5
Improved Mana: +0% Rank: 0/5
Improved Stamina: +0% Rank: 0/5
Improved Leadership I. Rank: 1/1
PvP Skills:
Increased Health – Increase total Health by 2.5%. 5/5
Increased Mana – Increase total Mana by 2.5%. 5/5
Increased Stamina – Increase total Stamina by 1%. 2/5
And it looks like we’re already making good progress on our way to level twenty-nine already, I noted as I read through my character sheet and saw that I was already more than halfway through my current level. It looks like our grind through the forest, the battle with the Behir, and managing to hit all of those objectives during the raid really paid off. We even got more experience here than we did during the battle at Valor’s Point, now that I think about it.
Feeling happy with both the personal progression that I’d managed and our success in hurting the orc war machine, I closed my character sheet with a profound sense of relief flowing through me. While we hadn’t managed to achieve one of our original goals in finding the giant construct that we’d seen in the leaked Dread Crew feed, there was little doubt that our raid on Khudazal had been a resounding success. Not only did we find out valuable intelligence about the orc reinforcements heading towards Aldford, but we managed to seriously cripple the orcs’ food supply, which I was all but certain would hurt their ability to sustain any prolonged war against us. But even beyond that, we managed to free a substantial portion of the slaves that they’d captured while also simultaneously making several allies in the process in the form of Garr, Senzin, and Trivium.
Because of that, it no longer felt to me like we were back on our heels for this war, just desperately trying our best to survive another day. Instead, it felt like the balance was finally starting to shift in our favor, the immense pressure that I’d felt riding on my shoulders giving way to an emotion that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Hope.
Chapter 48
The Hartwyld
“Well, if you want to start with full details of our adventures so far, then…that’s a pretty long story, but I suppose we finally have the time to get into it if you’re interested,” I began as we all sat down around the campfire I’d just finished building up a few minutes earlier, the smell of cooking Behir meat wafting tantalizingly upwards from it.
It had been several long hours since our escape from Khudazal, our flight from the orc city having lasted until the first hints of the morning sun finally started to break through the canopy above. With no sign of pursuit up until that point, and both our legs and minds starting to turn to jelly from exhaustion, we all elected to stop for a much-needed rest. Finding a place relatively easily thanks to Garr, Arcturus, and the others, it was only a short while from there until we found ourselves hidden away in a tiny pocket of nature, all of us practically collapsing to the ground the moment we were safe. From there, we all then caught a desperately needed sleep for as long as we dared, eventually waking up for our next most pressing task.
Which was to finally trade our stories with one another now that we finally weren’t in danger.
“Or instead,” I continued, “if you want to get right to the point of what happened to me and why the corruption doesn’t affect me, then I can answer that easily right away. It’s because I used an Irovian artifact—something called an annulment sphere—to destroy the specter of a Naffarian slave-king that had come back to life. Unfortunately, in doing that, I ended up doing something to myself that resulted in me looking like this. Because of that, though, I can now absorb pretty much any magical energy and turn it into mana for me to use.”
Staring at me as they all processed my opening words, I was met with a variety of expressions from the gronn that had gathered around the fire with me, ranging from shock to surprise and a few instances of outright disbelief.
“You…faced a slave-king?” Garr repeated, his voice matching both the wonder and disbelief written across his face. “That’s…impossible! The Nafarr are dead, their civilization long since buried and forgotten.”
“Well, they might have been buried at one point, but lately that really hasn’t been the case for us,” I replied. “But that’s where the long story comes in. Because we’ve found and explored a pair of their ruins over the last couple months. Hell, Amaranth and I even fell into a ley line together inside one of their ruins at one point, which is why he looks the way he does.”
“Wait, you fell into a ley line? How does such a thing even happen? If my memory serves me, they are buried deep within the earth, are they not?” Garr asked incredulously, a flood of questions flowing out from the man. “And you are also telling us that you all have discovered two intact ruins from the ancient ones?”
“So far,” I answered with a nod,
feeling all of the gronn’s attention on me intensify with every second that passed. “But if we’re going to be completely honest here, we’ve actually found four ruins in total so far in this region. Two belonging to the Nafarr and two to the Irovians. That’s not counting Khudazal, either.”
“You’ve found four ruins,” Garr repeated, his tone completely deadpan as spoke, the man pausing to glance at his fellow gronn who simply shook their heads in disbelief as they met his eyes. “You have any idea at all how rare that is?”
“To be honest? No, not really. Even after finding the ruins, we still barely know anything about them or what caused them to disappear,” I replied, any surprise that I might have had about them knowing about both the Irovians and the Nafarr having long since faded. The topic had already come up the day before while we were still with Aryana and the resistance, with both the arakissi and gronn among them simply nodding in familiar understanding when we’d asked if they were aware of their existence.
This clearly meant that both long-since-dead races’ legacy stretched even further than anything we’d originally thought.
“So I see,” Garr said as he turned to look back towards me, shaking his head back and forth in amazement. “I believe that it might be best if we started first with your experiences leading up to this encounter with this…slave-king you spoke of and how you gained this ability of yours to absorb magic.”
“Fair enough,” I replied with an understanding nod, pausing briefly to collect my thoughts before I continued. “I’m that case, I suppose the best place to start would be just after we reached Aldford…”
Talking then for the next few minutes, we were all treated to numerous flashes of surprise and amazement across their faces as we described the highlights of our adventures, such as the spider invasion from the Webwood, our battle with the spider queen, and my fall into the ley line. Given that we were planning on welcoming the group into Aldford for the duration of the war as allies, we wanted them to know exactly what they were getting themselves into and with no hidden secrets between us. Continuing from there, our story eventually climaxed with our battle against the Naffarian slave-king, the mention of the ancient ghost making all the gronn look visibly uncomfortable. But for all of their reactions as we told our story, none of them compared to the one I received when I mentioned the annulment sphere and the role it had played in destroying the vengeful spirit.
Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4) Page 62