Legacy of the Fallen (Ascend Online Book 2)
Page 62
Must be a sign of just how tired I am and how long this week has been if I’m complaining about having Mastercraft quality materials to craft with, I thought while rubbing my face, hearing both Ransom and Lazarus echo similar sentiments as they collected the loot belonging to the Gloomstalkers that had also been killed during the fight. But that’s what barely four hours of sleep a night will get me.
Much like the few days that had preceded it, the last two days had passed at a breakneck pace since the discovery of the second Runestone. The promise of actually having a way to repair the Ley Line once we reached it having prompted us to dive back into the Twilight Grove with renewed excitement, intent on pushing faster and farther into the jungle than we ever had in the days before.
Yet for all our exuberance, we found our efforts neatly curtailed by the second wave of creatures that inhabited the deeper, yet unexplored section of the Grove, their numbers and ferocity increasing the farther we travelled. While we had all expected that there would be challenges in pressing on ahead, any hope I had about being able to at least progress as quickly through the deeper portion of the jungle as we had its border region were dashed after the third Gloomstalker ambush hit us, just barely thirty feet away from where the first one had ended.
Instead, I had been forced to resign myself to a slow grinding approach as we forced our way deeper into the jungle, whittling away at the seemingly endless horde of creatures that inhabited the place, buying every inch closer to the Ley Line with blood and sweat.
Which really wouldn’t be a problem for me if it wasn’t for our damn deadline, I thought, feeling a slight scowl cross my face as I looked in the direction that I knew the Ley Line to be in. We don’t know how long we have until the Ley Line is in danger of exploding, and our rest cycle is coming up fast! If we can’t get this all sorted out by Monday morning…we’re going to lose a day, and that’ll only put us even further—
“You coming, Lyrian?” Lazarus’s voice interrupted my mental spiral, causing me to turn back in his direction and seeing that both he and Ransom were ready to leave.
“Yeah,” I replied, breathing out a deep sigh as I moved to follow the pair, Amaranth moving silently beside me. “Just a little frustrated at the slow progress.”
“You call clawing your way up to level eighteen in six days slow?” Ransom replied. “If we have another day like today, tomorrow, then I think we can all hit nineteen. If not, then the day after for sure.”
“I meant more progress through the jungle,” I clarified, despite nodding in agreement with the half-orc.
“Believe me, Lyrian,” Lazarus stated, inclining his head to Ransom. “Neither of us are exactly thrilled to be here. You know full well that we’d rather be back in Eberia. But with that being said, levels are progress here. It’s only a matter of time until we’re cutting through these Gloomstalkers like we do with the Gremlinand Trogs.”
“Time being the key word there,” I pointed out.
“I’ll give you that,” Lazarus allowed with a nod in my direction. “But we’re not exactly sitting on our asses here, and you forget that the rest of your guild too has been poking around the jungle. It’s entirely possible that they’ve had more luck than us.”
“You mean finding, and surviving, a rare creature in the deep jungle isn’t luck?” Ransom interjected with a note of humor in his voice. “Two days ago, that Deathstalker would have killed us.”
“Two days ago, that Deathstalker did kill me!” Lazarus spat. “There are going to be more than a few people back at the camp happy to hear that it’s dead. Hey, by the way, I don’t suppose you’d be able to throw a few of those chitin pieces my way? Believe it or not, I’m still wearing level thirteen gear…and it’s not exactly holding together anymore.”
“I know what you mean,” I replied, glancing over at the half-giant’s armor with a critical eye, spotting countless tears and scars on it. Staring at it for several seconds, I slowly considered what the man had just said before shaking my head and snorting. “Damn, I didn’t really think about that.”
“Think about what?” Lazarus queried as he glanced downward. “My armor?”
“That we’ve essentially out leveled everything that we’re wearing,” I said, bringing up my own character sheet to verify. “Everything I’m wearing, with the exception of my sword is still level thirteen.”
“I wouldn’t say no to upgrading a few pieces,” Lazarus said. “We did get a fair bit of scraps from the early part of the ruins.”
“And we’ve been collecting a hell of a lot of hide, leather and other stuff from these Grove creatures,” Ransom stated, an optimistic note sounding in his voice. “Do you think you’d be able to craft something useful for us from all that, Lyrian? Better gear could go a long way…”
“Hmm,” I mused thoughtfully, feeling a smile creep across my face as I mentally inventoried everything that we had found over the last few days, my mental frustration fading away under the impending excitement of crafting. “You know what…I think I just might be able to come up with something.”
Chapter 45
Our journey back to Camp Sentinel was largely uneventful, in as much as a trio of Troglodytes, a quartet of Gremlins, and one very large Quillbear could be called such. Yet compared to the Gloomstalkers that we had faced deeper in the jungle, they were all barely noticeable speedbumps on our return route back to the camp, once again reinforcing just how much progress we had made to be able to deal with them so effortlessly.
Lazarus does have a point, I guess, I thought as I paused to look back at the sprawling jungle that filled the Twilight Grove from the high vantage point at the Camp’s entrance. It’s not nearly as bad travelling through the border parts of the jungle. At worse, anyone will only have to deal with a handful of creatures at a time now, instead of the huge swarms that roamed around during the first few days in the Grove, when all the creatures were trying to viciously defend their territory.
Staring out at the azure-tinted cavern for a few more seconds, I then turned away from the sight and began walking towards the tunnel, seeing both Lazarus and Ransom waiting for me.
“Are you planning on heading back up to Aldford to craft?” the half-giant prompted me as I rejoined the pair.
“No. I think I have enough materials down here already,” I replied, thinking over everything that I had in my pack. “The crafting area that Jenkins set up down here is fairly comprehensive and should suit my needs for the time being. He even managed to get small forge down here too.”
“He did?” Ransom asked, giving me a surprised glance. “Wouldn’t that foul the air in here?”
“Normally I’d say yes,” I answered giving the man a shrug. “But it doesn’t seem to be causing any problems. I guess the air flowing upwards through the open route and whatever magic the Nafarr enchanted the ruins with seem to be enough in keeping the air breathable. At least that’s the only thing that I can think of. With how sprawling and sealed off this whole installation is, they must have taken that into account somehow.”
“Makes sense,” Lazarus agreed. “If not, then there’s that whole jungle of plants and stuff that’s probably producing air for everything to breath.”
“Assuming that magically fueled plants even produce oxygen,” I said while shaking my head. “I don’t even know.”
“And here I thought you were the local Ætherbiology expert, Lyrian,” Lazarus said with a chuckle.
“Falling into a Ley Line hardly makes you an expert,” I replied, snorting at the newly coined name. “If anything, that should be a clear warning sign that I don’t know what I’m doing. Besides, I’m pretty sure I flunked biology.”
“So, mitochondria isn’t the mana-source of the cell then?” Ransom asked in a sarcastic tone, flashing a wide smile at me.
“Ha!” I couldn’t help but laugh, shaking my head at the warlock. “I didn’t flunk that badly.”
The next few minutes passed in a blur as we continued through the tunnel and enter
ed the camp, the stress of the day gradually unwinding with each step. Filled with a fairly sized crowd, we were far from the first party to return back for the day, but nowhere near to being the last. Scanning the camp activity with a practiced eye, I gauged that easily half, if not closer to two thirds, of the regular Adventurers that normally filled the camp were still out exploring the Grove, many of which would start trickling back in as the evening wore on.
“Well, Ransom and I are going to keep heading towards the surface and back to Aldford for a bit,” Lazarus said as we all came to a stop just outside the camp entrance. “I don’t know about you, but I’m long overdue to catch at least a glimpse of the sun before it sets and some fresh air before coming back down.”
“I don’t blame you,” I replied giving the pair an understanding nod. While I wasn’t quite missing the daylight myself, I knew what sort of psychological effect the sun had in perking someone’s mood and couldn’t begrudge him the break. “Just come find me in the crafting area when you come back so I can take some measurements for your armor. It’s going to take me a while to get myself sorted out anyway, so no rush.”
“Great!” Ransom exclaimed excitedly. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I said, seeing Lazarus nod in sympathy to the half-orc’s sentiments. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“Sure,” I replied taking a single step in the direction of the camp butchers when Amaranth’s voice caused me to stop.
“Wait, what?” I said, Amaranth’s reply taking me so far off guard that I had to process it a second time. “You want to buy your own food?”
my familiar replied, his eyes darting up to look at mine.
“Well, sure,” I replied to the cat, wrapping my head around the idea and not seeing any logical reason to refuse. “I mean I don’t see why you couldn’t, though you not being able to talk may be a bit of a barrier.”
Amaranth replied in a confident voice.
“I suppose it does,” I said, unable to completely disagree with the cat’s logic. “How were you going to go about buying the food you want?”
Maybe, I thought, thinking of several ways that Amaranth’s plan could go wrong. Yet if he truly wanted to learn how to…shop, of all things, I wasn’t about to stand in his way.
“I think that should work,” I told the cat. “Or at least communicate enough for you to be able to improvise.”
“That’s right,” I said to the cat as I caught the implied meaning in his mental voice and pulled out my coin pouch, counting out a handful of silver. Taking a moment to transfer the coins into a smaller bag, I offered it to my familiar, who gently took it from my hand with his mouth. “This should be enough to buy two pieces, assuming you want that much.”
“Well, if you need any help, I’ll be over in the crafting area,” I told my familiar and received an acknowledging flick of the ear in return as he turned away from me, his tail hanging high in the air with confidence.
I guess if I don’t hear any screaming or panic, I’ll just assume things are going well, I thought, slowly trying to accustom myself to my familiar’s sudden display of independence. It hadn’t escaped me that Amaranth’s personality was becoming more developed and nuanced as the weeks wore on, but having him expressing the desire to…buy something was the last thing that I had expected to hear.
But not a bad thing either, I added a heartbeat later followed by a mental shrug as I began to walk through the camp and towards the crafting area that Jenkins had set up.
I was hoping that I’d be able to catch the man at some point today, having barely had a chance to exchange more than a dozen words with him over the last two days. Ever since he found out that there were veins of metal readily available in the cave, both he and Ritt had dropped almost everything in favor of supporting the group of Adventurers that had claimed it and ensured that Aldford got the majority of the ore for its construction efforts.
That last move hadn’t exactly won them any favors with the rest of Aldford’s Adventurers, who also wanted all the metal that they could get their hands on. But since Ritt was willing to buy ore at above market rates and was bankrolled by Aldford’s rather deep coffers, there was little that they could do about it, short of going out and prospecting themselves. Unfortunately, however, my hopes were dashed when I arrived at the makeshift crafting area and found it to be completely empty with neither Ritt nor Jenkins anywhere in sight.
“With how much work I have ahead of me I’m sure I’ll run into them if I stay put,” I said wistfully as I dropped my pack on the ground and began to unfasten my armor, unable to conceal the grimace that crossed my face as I ran my fingers over the seemingly countless broken rings that comprised the chainmail. “I think at this point, it’ll probably be easier for me to dismantle the majority of this for scrap than it will be to fix it.”
With practiced ease, I peeled the layers of the now well-worn armor off me and laid it out on an empty table, carefully inspecting the damage that six days of practically non-stop adventuring had wrought.
“This leather is going to have to go,” I told myself as I appraised the now bloodstained hide that comprised the shoulder portions of the armor, my fingers tracing a deep scar in the leather that marked one particularly close call the day before. “I’ll have to relink some of this chain, but I think I should be able to salvage a good portion of it…”
Whispering softly to myself as I continued my inspection, I felt the wheels in my head begin to turn as I assessed what sections of armor were worth salvaging and just how I could reuse them going forward. Once I had a better idea of what I was working with, I then turned to my pack and began to inventory the crafting material that I had on hand, watching all the items that I had accumulated in the Nafarrian ruins and the Twilight Grove appear in my vision one by one.
[Blackened Chainmail Scrap] x 5
[Gremlin Leather] x 23
[Gremlin Teeth] x 76
[Troglodyte Hide] x 46
[Troglodyte Claw] x 31
[Large Razor Quill] x 12
[Small Barbed Quill] x 34
[Gloomstalker Chitin] x 25
[Deathstalker Chitin] x 10
[Deathstalker Claw] x 2
[Deathstalker Fangs] x 20
[Iron Ingot] x 20
[Nafarrian Sentinel’s Æther Core] x 1
“Huh,” I grunted as I fished through the pack. “I forgot I still have a few chainmail scraps that we found in the dungeon; I guess that will make repairs easier. I can also use the Trog hide to replace the leather in the armor easily enough, assuming that Jenkins hasn’t used up all that alcohol that Marlin sent down the other day…”
I felt my hand land on something that I wasn’t expecting and pulled it out of the pack, revealing
a glowing crystal, “…ah! I forgot Freya gave the Æther Core back to me…”
Turning the object over in my hand, I inspected the crystal carefully as I considered the best way to put it to use. It wasn’t exactly doing anything useful sitting in the bottom of my bag, and I was all too familiar with the idea of ‘saving’ a rare item indefinitely while waiting for the perfect chance to use it.
You’re making a new set of armor for yourself anyway, Marc, the pragmatic portion of my subconscious told me as I considered the item and the rather substantial bonus that it gave to all attributes. Given how brutal the Grove has been so far…you’re going to need every single edge you can get going forward. Plus, it’s not like you’re getting any closer to figuring out how to forge larger pieces with that Æthertouched Iron back in Aldford either.
“Isn’t that the truth,” I grunted to myself as memories of the uncooperative metal came to mind. Ever since crafting Splinter, I hadn’t had the time, or to be completely honest with myself, the inclination, to try experimenting with the Æthertouched metal. Having had a few days to think about it, I was confident that there was a fundamental step in the forging process that I was missing, and as satisfying as it would be to solve it, doing so simply wasn’t currently the best use of my time.
Right now, everything depended on us getting to the Ley Line and somehow finding out a way to seal the rupture before it reached critical mass. Only then, and once we were all confident that the danger of the town and surrounding region exploding in a cataclysmic storm of raw magic had passed, was I going to try working with the strange metal again.
Which meant that at the moment, I was limited to the items I had on hand.
“Which also means that I’d be a fool not to use this,” I said to myself, still staring at the Æther Core in my hand as I completed my rationalization process for using the item.