Regnark was so big, in fact, that he had to have one of the Crystal Scorpions all for his own to ride. His weight was a little more than Eisa’s, Fred’s, and Deecy’s combined – though she believed it was almost entirely muscle underneath all those bear furs covering him; as a result of his bulk, however, his Scorpion-based ride was forced to slow a little bit down to make sure he didn’t break its back when it maneuvered this way and that. That might be a little exaggerated when its crystalline exoskeleton was considered, but she could definitely see it straining just a little bit to stay walking normally.
They made fairly good time after leaving the flattened remains of Gatecross, striking out towards the west through the forest. She was hopeful that they would eventually find the Guild and the Gatecross townspeople, but they had apparently had a month’s head start; while they were moving at probably twice or even three times the speed that the bigger group was likely moving, it could still take weeks of travel to catch up with them. And not only that, but the time was dramatically increased as they were forced to take detours to avoid some of the stronger Earth-based monster scouting parties.
The first monster party they came across shortly after leaving Gatecross was fortunately not that strong; a dozen human-sized Stone Golems had blocked their path, and it was quite likely that they were heading towards the commotion they had caused a short while earlier. Eisa instructed her Scorpions go around them, but the Golems were quicker than she thought they would be; they turned their bipedal forms into large boulders and rolled after them, keeping up with or overtaking the faster Crystal Scorpions. As a result, they were forced to stop and take care of them.
Everyone jumped off of their rides and got ready to defend themselves, but her own “defenders” waded into the mass of Stone Golems with deadly efficiency. They held off from using their tail stingers, as the poison in them wouldn’t do much against pure stone. However, they used their pincers to great effect, literally slicing the Golems in half with a pinch or two. Within less than a minute, and a minimum of damage done to the Scorpions themselves, all of the enemy monsters were destroyed, and she collected their Earth Mana they left behind. They all received a little more Essence (about 300 each) as a result of the fight, and they were on their way.
When Eisa had checked her “Shard Status” again after that fight – to see how much Earth Mana she had collected – she had the ability to create another defender: a Stone Golem. She mentioned it to Fred, and she could see that he was a little envious for some reason; when she asked him what the issue was, he admitted that he couldn’t get blueprints for dungeon defenders from killing them, only from absorbing them from Dungeon Cores. While Eisa felt a little bad at first, Fred told her that he was proud of her and that it just proved how special she was.
She could see and hear Deecy exaggeratingly gag at that statement – which sounded strange coming from a Dire Wolf Pup – but she didn’t care; she felt her heart warm at the thought that Fred considered her special.
The next few hours were filled with fighting and fleeing; the forest was so inundated with Earth monsters that Eisa was surprised that her group hadn’t been swarmed while they were still inside Gatecross. Along the way they faced off against monsters that they thought they could defeat or whom they couldn’t outrun. In one instance, they fought against another small band of three Crystal Scorpions with their Goblin Gnome passengers, but it was made much easier as Regnark’s Stamina had recovered a bit since the fight back in Gatecross. He proved how good of a Marksman he was when he peppered the faces of two of the Scorpions with powerful and accurate shots, and the third was taken apart by Eisa’s own giant bugs.
The Goblin Gnomes weren’t really a threat anymore and were easily defeated with a combination of Regnark’s warhammer, Fred’s knives, and Eisa’s Earth Elemental Form. After the battle – and before she turned back into her normal body – she caught Regnark looking at her funny. “What? What’s wrong?” she asked him, confused at what looked like a smirk on his face.
“You do know that when you do that, you’re na—” he began, before Fred cut him off with timely throat-clearing.
I’m what? Na? What does he mean by that…? She looked down at herself for the first time since learning how to use her new form and saw that she was essentially nude without a stitch of clothing on her. The compressed dirt her Earth Elemental Form was comprised of didn’t match her curves entirely, but it was close enough that it looked like her – only it was the very dark brown of dirt instead of bare skin. She let out a little yelp and immediately covered herself up, before she turned away from the staring looks of the two men.
Using her ability to manipulate her form, Eisa created an approximation of her normal dress covering up her body. It was actually quite easy and stayed in place even when she took her attention away from it; the only downside was that it wasn’t free-flowing like normal fabric, instead staying adhered to her body in an extremely form-fitting ensemble. With a little experimentation, she ended up slitting the middle of the dress up the middle near her legs, which allowed her to move freely instead of having them restricted in what otherwise felt like a long tube of compressed dirt.
“Why didn’t you tell me about that earlier, Fred?” she asked as she turned around, glad that the embarrassing blush in her cheeks couldn’t be seen in her Earth Elemental Form. At least she hoped they couldn’t see it.
“I’m sorry, I thought it might upset you again, so I didn’t mention it. You look lovely, by the way,” he responded with sincerity.
“In my dress, or before?”
“Both,” he said, with a smile on his face.
Now she was doubly glad they couldn’t see the blush on her face.
Chapter 8
As a result of the various attacks that they couldn’t avoid over the next few hours, Eisa accumulated more and more Earth Mana. They fought a few more Crystal Scorpions, two more groups of Stone Golems, and even a veritable horde of Goblin Gnomes at least 150-strong. Despite their diminutive size and low strength, the hardest fight was actually that Goblin horde, as the Crystal Scorpions were swarmed and took massive damage to their more-vulnerable heads and faces. By the time they had destroyed every single one of the little monsters, one of Eisa’s Scorpions had been killed and the other was hurt and extremely low on its Vitality.
Unfortunately, none of the “defenders” she could make would heal on their own like Fred said they would naturally do if they were in a dungeon after a while. Luckily, that problem was fixed when she extended some of the Earth Mana inside her body to her injured Scorpion, and it started to heal itself over the course of the next minute. She had to spend a bit of what she had collected to create another Crystal Scorpion for them to ride, but it was worth it to have the protection they afforded.
It was extremely fortuitous that the stronger Earth monsters they saw or ran into were relatively slow, because otherwise they weren’t likely to survive the encounters. Massive walking slabs of stone that Fred called Rock Giants roamed around, knocking down and crushing trees that got in their way. Their steps were lengthy but ponderous, as they couldn’t move quickly or even turn around without taking time to realign their enormous bulk towards where they wanted to go. These were extremely easy to outrun; the only danger they represented was if the group happened to be caught in a fight nearby one of them, as they would be hard-pressed to get away before they were squished flatter than the trees the Giants left in their wake.
There were also Enormous Sand Crabs, which were at least three times the size of one of Eisa’s Crystal Scorpions; despite their bulk, they could scuttle around quite quickly. Unfortunately for them, however, their large size made it difficult for them to navigate between the trees and trying to turn toward Eisa and her group was sometimes impossible without taking the time to remove trees out of their way. By remove, she meant using one or both of their giant claws to crush and snap a tree in half.
The last extremely dangerous monster that they saw from afar
– luckily – was a Golden Sphinx. It wasn’t as large as the Rock Giant or even the Enormous Sand Crab, however; its danger lay in the sheer power it represented in its relatively small package. While it was only marginally larger than one of Eisa’s Crystal Scorpions, when Fred somehow glimpsed the feline-looking woman-faced monster from afar in the dark forest, he had them flee in the opposite direction as fast as possible. Eisa had never heard of them before, but apparently Regnark had; later on, he said they were an extremely difficult dungeon monster that was only seen in A or S-Rated Earth dungeons. Fortunately for all of them, the Sphinx either didn’t see them or only saw the Crystal Scorpions that they were riding – and were left alone.
Overall, though, they were making progress in making their way westward. Dawn had already made itself known by the time they had traveled far enough that they hadn’t seen any Earth monsters in a while. Eisa figured that it was more than likely that they were being followed, as they hadn’t really tried to hide their tracks, but Fred and Deecy told her that most of the monsters weren’t that independently intelligent. He said that while the Dungeon Cores could instruct them on where to go (based upon the last attack), many of them probably wouldn’t know how to track Fred’s group precisely enough to find them. Or at least, he said he hoped so.
Either way, they finally got to the point where they needed to rest, as the night had been extraordinarily draining, tense, and long. They found a slightly secluded thicket of some younger trees and made camp, though it was more of a collapse-where-they-stood-and-fall-asleep type of campsite. Fortunately, Deecy had been able to nap – somehow – during their hectic night-time ride and volunteered to keep watch. Eisa left her Crystal Scorpions outside of the thicket on the more accessible sides, and mentally told them to keep watch; she chuckled to herself as she considered how second nature it was now controlling the monsters she created with her Earth Mana, though she had to admit that she had some prior experience with her previous necromantic ability to animate the dead.
Thinking of that as she fell asleep caused her to remember to think about finally choosing a class (or even two), as she had received enough Essence to progress to the F-Ratings. The ride had been stressful, because she had essentially been in charge of giving her crystal-exoskeleton bugs directions when they needed to alter their course; as a result, she was too busy and nervous the entire ride to think about what she wanted to do.
Oh well, I’ll think about that when I wake up… she thought, as the oblivion of sleep overtook her within moments of closing her eyes.
* * *
Eisa woke up to someone gently shaking her and opened her eyes to see Fred staring down at her with a smile on his face.
“Good…afternoon,” he whispered. “It’s past time that we left; a small group of Goblin Gnomes just attacked and got utterly destroyed by one of your Crystal Scorpions, so we better go.”
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with the heels of her hands as she sat up groggily. Definitely not enough sleep. “Why—?” she croaked out, her mouth a bit dehydrated. She cleared her throat and wet it enough to speak clearer. “Why do we need to hurry, if they’re all dead?”
“Because the Earth Cores will know where we are by now, and they’ll send even more of their defenders this way. What’s that expression I’ve heard before? Oh, yes, ‘we’re not out of the woods yet’ I think it is. And that’s quite true; I can still sense Nature – and even some distant Earth – territories nearby, which means we really have to get out of this forest before we’re hunted down,” Fred told her.
I guess that makes sense. She knew she would’ve thought of it herself if she had been a little more awake; now that the urgency of their situation made itself known to her, she was starting to become a bit more alert. She picked herself off the ground and saw that Regnark was already up and ready, standing next to Deecy in her normal Dire Wolf form. The Wolf’s aura was looking a whole lot better than it had earlier, so she was likely able to maintain that form without trouble.
She looked toward her Crystal Scorpions and saw that the one facing east had a smattering of small Earth Mana orbs scattered along the ground. Must be where the Goblin Gnomes that found us were killed. Almost as if looking at them had summoned them to her, they flew quickly through the air and impacted her body; instead of hurting her, though, they were immediately absorbed into her completely full brown Earth aura, increasing the maximum by a few points.
“Thanks, Fred,” she said with a voice that she hoped wasn’t too obvious as one full of pleasure. Whenever she absorbed any amount of Earth Mana, the feeling was highly enjoyable; not necessarily on an…intimate…level, but more one of relief and satisfaction. It almost felt as if she had been running for half a day and then sat down to rest, her protesting muscles giving a nearly audible sigh of relief as they were given a break – only more intense.
Fred turned to go, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Hold on, while we have the time, I want to select my class.”
Regnark snorted in disbelief when he heard that. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that all this time you’ve been fighting, you don’t even have a class yet? How is that—? Never mind; everything I’ve seen in the past few days has been so out of the realm of ‘normal’ that I’m surprised that I’m still on the same planet as you two.”
Ignoring him, Eisa pulled the Class Selector out of her PIB and plopped it down on the ground in front of her. “I forgot how heavy this thing was,” she commented as she looked down at the DAS device. When it was in her Bag, it was virtually weightless; once it came out, however, it regained all of its weight back.
Last night, she had been entirely too tired and paranoid of something popping out from around the next tree to pay attention to her Status and Interface, so she thought it was prudent to check them out before making any hasty decisions. She checked out her Interface first and found that it hadn’t changed all that much except to see that she was now F-2nd-Rated, after gaining enough Essence to increase her base Rating. She still didn’t have any abilities because she didn’t have a class and her other stats were still at the same place they were before; she was tempted to use some of her Essence to boost them up a little more, but she decided to wait to see what she needed to unlock and upgrade any of her upcoming new class abilities.
Her Shard Status, on the other hand, was an entirely different story.
Shard Status
Eisa Howells
Elemental Origin: Earth
Shard Level: 4
Next Mana Threshold: 1000
Earth Mana: 710/710
Defender Creation Options
Goblin Gnome (Level 1 Base Cost: 4 Earth Mana)
Stone Golem (Level 1 Base Cost: 25 Earth Mana)
Crystal Scorpion (Level 1 Base Cost: 125 Earth Mana)
Special Abilities
Earth Elemental Form (Activation Cost: 15 Earth Mana, Upkeep Cost: 2 Mana per minute)
Earth’s Renewal (Activation Cost: 5 Earth Mana, Upkeep Cost: 1-5 Mana per minute)
Every time she acquired more than her maximum Earth Mana, a portion of the excess was converted into increasing that maximum, which she assumed was how she increased her Shard Level – which was now sitting at four. After she reached a maximum of 500 Earth Mana, apparently, she had unlocked another special ability: Earth’s Renewal. She didn’t know exactly what it did because none of her new abilities came with any instructions, but just like when she concentrated on everything else that she could activate, she had an idea of what the ability would do.
“Fred, can I see one of your knives for a moment?” she asked.
Fred only hesitated for a moment before he took one off his belt and handed it to her. “Uh…sure, but what do you need it for?”
“Just watch.” She took the sharp knife in her right hand and used it to cut a line along her left arm; it was relatively shallow – because she didn’t want to actually hurt herself too much unnecessarily – but it was deep enough that it bled a bit. Sh
e heard Fred’s breath intake as soon as she did it, but before he could do or say anything, she activated her Earth’s Renewal Special Ability.
Eisa felt the warmth and comfort of rich, loamy, sun-kissed soil permeate her body, the feeling of the strong and solid Earth wrapping her in an envelope of protection. She looked down at the scratch on her arm and watched it quickly disappear, the edges of the parted skin mending together and leaving her arm as unblemished as it was before. The blood that had dripped down her arm still remained, of course, but the wound itself was gone.
She deactivated the ability and felt the Renewal fade away from her, leaving her wanting to feel it again. She smiled at Fred’s look of incredulity and gave him his knife back.
“Wow! That was unexpected; can you do that to…anyone, or just yourself?” Fred asked.
Eisa thought about it for a moment and decided to test it out. She extended her aura out from her and covered Fred in it, before activating her new ability and thinking about using it on him. She could see the moment it worked when he visibly relaxed his posture and a lazy smile lit up his face. Before she could react, Fred took the knife Eisa had just given back to him and cut the tip of his pinky finger off, the amputated portion of his finger flying off behind her.
“What the—?” she exclaimed, before seeing that the blood had already stopped flowing from his finger and skin sealed over the wound. Eisa felt an extra draw of Mana from her as the finger literally grew back before their eyes; she figured the healing energy needed to regrow missing pieces was why the upkeep cost of the ability varied from 1 to 5 Earth Mana per minute.
Within twenty seconds, his pinky finger was back and looking none the worse for what had been done to it. Just like her arm, though, the blood from the original wound still covered his hand, but the injury was completely gone.
Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 7
