The Mountain Valley War
Page 7
“Consider it training,” said Rose.
“Can I at least toss in ‘Justice Strike’ for the spell damage boost?” I requested, knowing I needed to do everything I could to boost my class specific abilities regardless of whether it was a spell or skill.
“You do what you need, just remember, we need your magic damage to pick up a lot. We almost failed to kill that Ice Witch a few days ago because we didn’t have enough ranged damage,” Rose replied, reminding me of the fight we barely won when we rescued Mardi from the Stonebreaker Mafia’s boss, Cap Alone and his small army of thugs.
Rose was right, but it still made sense to me to add in ‘Justice Strike’ as it was only level 32 and getting it up to Rank II could only help my spell damage.
“I’m also going to add in my ‘Tangle’ spell,” added Baby. “Rose isn’t taking enough damage to make only casting healing spells worthwhile. It’s also boring and too expensive to chain cast. I also just found out that I don’t get experience for casting it if I don’t actually restore health to my target.”
“This might be harder than we thought,” I said, worried about our lack of progress. I was also worried we were over-leveled and overpowered for this province. Being over leveled meant we would get less experience for our kills and less experience for our skills and spells. Two things we needed quite badly right now, the skill and spell experience more than the levels.
“Well, I gained 10 levels to my ‘Exsanguination’ spell, so . . . you know, totally worth it,” said Rose, looking far too pleased with herself.
“Okay, now to drag the dead bear back to the wagon,” I grumbled, looking at the massive animal.
I tried to lift it but could barely lift one end of it from the ground. I had a carrying capacity of 515 lbs. and the bear weighed at least twice that, if not more. I tried to take a step as if to drag it, but the body didn’t budge.
“Rose, I need you to help me with this thing. It’s too heavy for me,” I explained, looking to her for help.
“I suppose,” Rose said, stacking her shields and hanging them on her back.
We ended up taking a foreleg each and dragging the bear back to the wagon. When the wagon and Olaf were in sight, we turned slightly, aiming for the back of the wagon.
“Olaf, help us with this thing already,” snapped Rose, straining to drag the bear.
“Alright, I’m coming,” said Olaf, pushing off where he was leaning against the wagon slightly.
Ash, put a hand on Olaf’s shoulder, halting him in place. Ash then jumped down from his seat, shaking his head, his brow furrowed. It gave me the impression he was irritated with us.
“What now?” Rose asked, dropping her side of the bear and putting her hands on her hips while I was suddenly scrambling to avoid having the bear land on top of me.
Ash rolled his eyes but pulled out a knife and approached the bear. He briefly pointed at Rose then me before pointing at his eyes and then the bear.
“Watch you?” I asked.
Ash nodded once. He then rolled the bear over and put his knife to work, slicing open the bear, gutting it like a fish right there then digging out the offal and piling it up off to the side. Finished with that part, he put the knife to work again, this time removing the bear’s head and skin then cutting the meat from the bone and piling it up inside the skin. He wrapped the meat tightly in the skin, setting the four claws and the head on top, pausing briefly to wipe off his knife on the fur before tucking it back into his belt. Finally, he stood over the pile of parts and bones, one hand held out over it. There was a burst of fire from his hand a moment later, setting the pile on fire, incinerating the left-over bits in short order.
Ash looked back to me, then nodded as if to say he was done, before retaking his seat on the wagon. It took him less than 30-minutes to do all that work, I was slightly in awe of the Dwarf’s skill.
“Wow,” I said, more than a little impressed by how quickly he cleaned and parted the kill, leaving the neatly put together package of bear meat and usable parts.
I tried to lift the bear bundle now that it was several hundred pounds lighter. It was still too heavy for me alone, but I could at least pick it up off the ground now. A quick check of my stats showed I was overburdened by 138 lbs.
“I got it,” said Olaf, easily taking the heavy bundle from me and placing it in one corner in the back of the wagon. Looking at the size of the bundle, we would be able to fit maybe 7 more bears worth of meat, fur and parts.
“Ash, just to be clear, you want us to use ‘Scavenging’ on these before we put them in the wagon?” I asked, making sure. ‘Scavenging’ was a skill I had picked up in Hurlig Ridge during my first dive but hadn’t had much cause to use it. Plus, it was very time consuming. Then there was my low level with the skill, which meant I was liable to do more damage to the bear than I was to successfully collect usable parts from it.
Scavenging
Level: 5
Experience: 12.58%
Skill Effect (20 Stamina): Scavenge useful materials from dead animals and broken machines. Chance to successfully scavenge something useful 1.50%. Chance to successfully scavenge something more useful 0.10%.
Ash nodded once confirming my fears. Then he motioned toward Micaela.
“She’s still spirit walking,” Olaf said, stating the obvious.
Ash rolled his eyes, before making a counting motion with his hand.
“How long?” Olaf asked. “No idea.”
Ash sighed impatiently.
“Vision, do you see any other bears nearby or maybe a rock giant?” I asked, looking to the blue spirit wolf.
“There is . . . something over that way,” Vision answered, pointing with his snout in the opposite direction of where we fought the bear.
“Great, let’s go check it out,” said Rose, eager to keep busy, to keep progressing. She didn’t bother waiting for either Olaf or me to follow her.
“Lead the way, Vision,” I said to the pup, quickly following him as he passed Rose heading into the forest.
“Is Micaela safe here with you?” Olaf asked, looking to Ash.
Ash nodded once.
“You coming?” Rose called back over her shoulder.
“I’m coming,” said Olaf, jogging to catch up to us.
“You know we’re going to butcher . . . destroy more meat and skin than we actually scavenge with the first dozen or so of those bears,” I commented to Olaf once he caught up.
“Yeah, not looking forward to that. We should have spent more time leveling ‘Scavenging’ before we left Hurlig Ridge,” Olaf replied.
“I get the feeling there are several skills we’re going to end up saying the same thing about.” I agreed with my friend.
Rose suddenly stopped, halting Olaf and I as well. I could see her head tilted upward and her jaw slightly dropped. “I think we found a rock giant.”
I followed her line of sight and found what she was talking about, the nameplate hovering above the floating collection of rocks read simply
“Any suggestions?” Rose asked.
“Taunt it then attack the rocks around it, hopefully those are part of its health pool,” I said. “I’ll try to focus my spells on the core. Olaf will do the same with his hand-cannons.”
“Okay, let’s see what we can do,” said Rose, clapping her two shields together. “Damn, I can’t charge it, it’s too high in the air.”
“Might be time to learn some other magic,” said Olaf thoughtfully, then added, “When did my wife become so insightful?”
“It’s Jack’s fault,” said Ros
e confidently, striding forward and into plain view of the giant. “Oi, Rocky, come get me,” she shouted at the giant floating rock formation, her ‘Taunt’ hopefully getting its attention.
The rocks surrounding the core suddenly started spinning faster while the orb turned an angry red color. One of the thin sharp shards of rock shot out at Rose, her shield raising quickly to take the hit, her HP dipping slightly from the damage. “Okay, I got its attention. But . . . uh . . . ‘Exsanguination’ didn’t absorb any HP. Looks like the actual rocks aren’t part of the things health.”
“Great, that means we’re going to pull aggro the first time we hit it,” I complained.
“No, let it beat on me for a bit, I should still be generating some aggro each time I block,” said Rose. “Baby, minimal heals.”
“You got it, Sis,” Baby shouted back from above us.
I didn’t like to stand there, watching Rose get hammered on by the sharpened rocks. For the most part her shield wall met the rocks, but every once in a while, one would slip around the edge of her shield and cut through her armor as if it was tissue paper, taking a significantly larger portion of HP. I could only stand and hope she was building up aggro every time she blocked.
One of the spikes shot at her again, but something was different this time. When it hit her shield, it didn’t return to the owner. Instead, it fell to the ground, completely inert.
I focused on the orb again, it’s mana was almost depleted if my ‘Perception’ subskill ‘Analyze Mana’ was giving me the right information. The thicker rock shards slowed and sucked in on the core, wrapping around it as if it was taking up a defensive stance. Focusing harder, trying to see the mana bar for it, I could see it was almost depleted but starting to refill again and picking up speed.
“It’s recharging,” I said softly, then more loudly, “It’s recharging, attack!”
I hit it with ‘Lesser Holy Fire’ and ‘Lesser Holy Shock’ in sequence when the really unexpected happened, my stun halted the mana recharge and caused the large rocks that were protecting it to fall to the ground along with the orb itself.
Olaf didn’t hesitate, charging in with his horns, Rose right next to him, hitting the downed orb as hard as she could.
Not to be outdone, I leapt in, using ‘Body Control’ to boost my strength to make the jump. While I normally would have hit it with a ‘Power Thrust’ to cause severe damage, for the sake of training I hit it with ‘Justice Strike’, putting magic vulnerability to it then hitting it with ‘Holy Smite’ dealing -338-HP to the core, taking almost an eighth of its total HP bar away.
The twin cacophony of booms from Olaf’s hand-cannons took the rest of its HP away, the bullets cracking through the shell and causing a spray of blue goo to explode out of it, splattering Rose and I with globs of the stuff.
“Ooh, sorry about that,” said Olaf, cringing when he saw Rose and I after the smoke cleared.
“I’m just guessing here, but would you say that was the blood?” Rose asked, wiping away a large glob that hit her cheek.
“Fair guess,” I replied, wiping some of the stuff off my neck.
“This is going to make getting the still beating heart difficult,” Rose said, continuing to wipe away some of the large globs of the rock giant’s blood.
“Might need to try to capture one after it’s mana is depleted and drag it back to Hammerton, crack the shell there,” I said, thinking out loud.
“You have your capture net. Unfortunately, without a way to drain mana, we’ll need to fight it until it drains its own mana,” Rose added.
“For now,” I started, kicking at the shell to break it open further. “We need to collect the heart,” I said, reaching inside with my utility knife and cutting away at the blue veins that were wrapped around a smaller core at the center of the shell. Plucking it free, I checked the item description.
Rock Giant Heart – The Heart of a dead Rock Giant
It was exactly what we needed.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” said Olaf, re-holstering one of his hand-cannons then stuffing an empty shell into his backpack. I assumed he reloaded while I was digging out the heart.
Rose gave him a withering glare. “Let’s just get back to the wagon. We need to hunt a lot more bears, especially if you two are going to mutilate them.”
I checked my experience gains to the few skills I had used to kill the rock Giant and I was honestly a little worried. I only got to cast each spell once before Olaf killed it.
“I think it might be best if we split into two groups,” I said as we hiked back to the wagon. “Things are dying too fast with all three of us. If the point is to get some training from this then we need to split up.”
“Jack is right,” said Rose. “For those Rock Giants, I think it is probably best if we stick together but, for the bears, we should take turns killing them in small groups. I think, you, Micaela and Baby as one group, Jack and I as the other. Jack should be able to heal me through a bear, they didn’t do much damage and Baby’s ‘Tangle’ spell should be able to hold it, so you and Micaela can kill it from range.”
“Works for me,” said Olaf.
“We’ll drag the bodies back to the wagon to use ‘Scavenging’ on them, just to be safe. Wouldn’t want a random mob to hit us while we were working on collecting the meat,” I added. “Plus, I noticed after dragging that bear back to the wagon, I gained +3-Strength. It might be a good way to build up stats.”
“Yeah, I noticed the same,” said Rose, following Vision back to the wagon.
When we returned to the wagon, Micaela was up and happily chatting with Ash. Or rather, Micaela was chatting, and Ash was absentmindedly nodding his head.
“You’re such a good listener, Ash. Has anyone ever told you that?” Micaela asked as we got into hearing range. “I bet you hear that all the time. Me, I’m a right chatterbox, I could talk for hours on end. Drives my husband crazy, but if you ask me, it’s one of the things he loves about me.”
“We’re back!” Olaf called out.
“Welcome back!” Micaela shouted, running the short distance to greet us.
I couldn’t help but notice the look of relief on Ash’s face, a small smile and the relaxing of his shoulders only emphasized that relief.
“So, this is Kodiak, Kody for short,” Micaela said, thumping her chest armor. “He is just the sweetest little teddy bear you ever did see. I can’t wait to get him a friend for my leggings. So, I saw the bear in the back of the wagon, but I don’t see one with you now. Couldn’t find him? And why are Bye-bye and Rose blue? I mean, why do they have splotches of blue paint all over them?”
“Rock giant blood actually,” said Rose, rubbing at her cheek again.
“Micaela, if your chest armor is two pieces, don’t you need two spirits?” Baby wondered aloud.
“The two pieces are attached to a single harness, so it counts as one piece,” Micaela answered succinctly. “I know, I was also sad when I found that out. I wish I could have one spirit per piece, that would be so overpowered. I would end up with over a hundred spirits from all the little pieces.”
“What about your boots then? Or your gauntlets?” I asked. I was curious how that worked.
“It also counts as one piece,” said Micaela, pouting a little. “I wish I could get another pony, one for each boot, but no . . . stupid equipment rules.”
“Yeah, but you still get a lot of spirits, babe,” said Olaf, reassuring his wife.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Micaela. “I’ll just need to make sure I get the most epic spirits of all time. I was thinking a dragon spirit for my gloves or . . . oh I wonder if I put a dragon spirit into shoulder armor if it would give me wings and let me fly.”
Admittedly, that would have been cool. Ash thumping his mallet against the side of the wagon again brought a halt to any further speculation. When he motioned for us to move on, I knew he was right, we were wasting way too much time. We already burned an hour and half of our time and only had one bea
r and one rock giant to show for our troubles.
“Move out, team,” called Olaf, stepping in line next to the wagon.
“Vision, keep an eye out for any bears or more of the rock giants,” I ordered the pup.
“You got it, Minion Number 2,” said Vision
“Micaela,” I groaned.
“It wasn’t me,” Micaela protested.
“If he calls me Minion Number 3, 4 or 5, I’ll neuter him,” Rose threatened, causing the little wolf pup to yelp and turn white, looking like an actual ghost.
“Don’t let her get me, boss,” whimpered the little wolf before he ghosted from view.
“You scared him, Rose,” Micaela chided her.
“Then stop teaching him bad habits,” said Rose, making her point clear.
“But it wasn’t me,” Micaela protested again.
“I don’t care if was you or not. You are his master, you are responsible for training him and making sure he doesn’t pick up bad habits,” said Rose, she wasn’t necessarily wrong, but she could have been nicer about it.
Micaela pouted a little.
“It’s alright, babe,” said Olaf, soothing his wife. “She’s just upset because I splattered her and Bye-bye with rock giant blood.”
I could tell Rose was about to say something stupid, but before I could warn her off, Olaf cut her off with a sharp look and a shake of his head. Rose frowned, looking put out. But instead of arguing further, she took up position on the other side of the wagon away from Micaela and Olaf.
“I’ll talk to her,” said Baby, flying over the wagon and fluttering in line with her sister.
“I guess I’ll take trail position,” I said, moving toward the back of the wagon.
“Is it safe?” a voice on the wind whispered.
“It’s safe, Vision,” I promised the pup, his blue ghostly form appearing next to me.
“Why was she so mad?” Vision asked, looking up at me with a sad drawn face, possibly the best puppy dog eye pleading I had ever seen, given he was a wolf pup, I should have expected it.