Frostbitten Wayfarer

The source of the sound wasn’t difficult to find. The rumbling echoed through the mountain and acted like a beacon of danger that Zoe was drawn to. She clambered over the rocks and down the cliffs as she made her way towards the source.

Her destination was about the middle of the zone and a ways off to the side off the barely beaten path. The familiar zombies that swarmed the surroundings that she’d gotten used to on Moaning Point were gone. Her only company was herself and the odd bug that crawled over the rocks with her.

When she first saw the source of the sound off in the distance she froze and stared. Far below her in a large crater was a towering, hulking mass of flesh. Fleshy limbs covered its body and flailed around it, smashing through boulders and carving deep grooves into the rocky crater floor as it rolled around.

Zoe was too far away for her Identify to tell her what level it was, but didn’t know if she did to know that it was a force. Each swing of its limbs shook the ground she stood on, each boulder that it smashed through exploded into tiny fragments that covered the ground. She wasn’t sure if it lived in the crater, or if it simply carved it out by existing in this area.

She tied off some rope on a nearby tree and climbed down another few dozen feet to the next plateau she saw, and then was interrupted with a surprising notification.

*Ding* You have received a message from Lila Jurgenhill.

Zoe looked at the distant mass of flesh writhing in the crater and climbed back up her rope. She leant against a tree and urged the system to tell her more about the message while she watched the destruction below.

Hello Zoe, this is Eliza. I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time. I’ve acquired a couple new skills for myself, and I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain. I tried to reach you at your hill, but I suppose you’ve since moved on. I’ll be in Flester for a few weeks for a job if you’re nearby and wanted to have a chat. But I’ll share what I’ve learned so far.

Unfortunately, what I’ve learned is that I don’t think my understanding of these skills will prove useful to you. How do you see mana? How does it behave? I’ve chatted with Lila about this at length, and we have very different perspectives on reality. It’s quite curious, and I could go on about what that possibly means for the system but I’ll leave that for another day.

The main point I would like to raise is that for me, mana is like water. It ebbs and flows through and with everything that makes up the world around us. It seeps into the ground and the sky, drips from the flowers that hang from vines and fills us with life. It’s a thing of beauty, really.

The way I managed to attain these skills was through manipulating this water like substance into specific forms. With the right colours and viscosity and filling a vessel in the right shape, magic was created and I got a skill for it.

However; when I spoke with Lila about this, she had an interesting addition. Mana to her is not like water in the slightest. To Lila, everything burns with bright, colourful flames. I’m apparently a bright blue flame to her, and Ash was a brilliant yellow. My manipulation of mana was utterly useless to her. Even the colours were different.

To me, the mana that fills me is a translucent yellow liquid rather than the bright almost opaque blue flame she sees. Fascinating, really. And it makes me wonder if there are two people who view mana in precisely the same way. Would they be able to make quicker progression than others if they shared their research with each other?

I suspect you have an entirely new perspective on mana that I would love to learn about if you have the chance to share it. However; I regret to inform you that I don’t think it will be possible for me to assist you in learning these skills yourself aside from providing you with study material.

At any rate, come visit me in Flester if you have the time in the next few weeks. I’m staying at The Chipped Mug on Gromp, just ask Penny for me.

Zoe dismissed the notification and felt it settle into her soul to be pulled up again later if she needed it. She had a suspicion that Eliza wouldn’t be able to help her with getting the Space and Time skills, if she were being honest.

If it were something so easy to share with others, Richard would have done so. Spending some time with Eliza and studying her use of the skills though might still be useful, so she’d need to find the time to go back to Flester for a bit soon.

The writhing ball of flesh below her hadn’t changed course while she read — or at least, it had but not unusually so. The creature bounced and rolled around the crater as it left destruction behind it, but didn’t seem to be able to leave the crater. The sheer walls that surrounded it stopped it from getting out, but it did seem to smash through the wall bit by bit as it travelled around. One day it might just dig its way entirely out of the mountain, if it kept going.

Was this really just a step up from the groups of mages? A simple improvement like all the previous? Each movement it took seemed to shake the entire mountain, would Zoe even be able to do anything about it? How would she stop its movement?

A wall of earth wouldn’t stop it, not unless she could make far more in an instant than she could. The boulders and cliffs already tried and even the sheer rock walls only just managed to hang on through the violent impacts. Rocks and dirt tumbled down into the crater as the creature carved out more space in its crater with each movement.

If she stood at the top of one of the cliffs and peppered it with projectiles, she’d have a chance at success. But if the creature focused its violence towards the cliff she was on then she didn’t expect to have a cliff to stand on for very long. Maybe she could run around the edge and keep it moving so she could keep an eye on it the whole time, but how much health would something like that even have?

Could she out do its regeneration? If slamming into the walls and smashing through ground with its flesh wasn’t enough to even hurt it, then how would her feeble projectiles manage to finish it off?

Zoe took a breath and climbed back down the rope. She’d give it a try, and if it didn’t seem like it was working out then she’d leave. But at least for now, the creature seemed trapped in the crater. If it was able to climb out, it did a great job of hiding that.

The approach was terrifying. The shockwaves from the creatures movements were intense from so close. Each time it slammed into one of the crater’s walls felt like she was standing on a flimsy sheet of paper balanced across two rocking boats. The earth rattled and Zoe struggled to maintain her balance. But with her dexterity and Expeditious feat helping her, she managed to stay standing.

At the edge of the cliff were jagged boulders, and Zoe used her Earth to help support the cliff edge as she peered over into the deep crater. The creature bounded around the crater and smashed into the walls and shook the rocky platform she made for herself.

Zoe grimaced and watched the creature for a while. Rocks broke off the cliff and fell around her, even her platform cracked from the quakes and Zoe had to keep reinforcing it.

After a few minutes, the creature slammed into the cliff below Zoe and large chunks of the wall she stood on fell to the ground and shattered. Her Identify was able to reach it, and she checked its level. Dark blue level one fifteen. It wasn’t much higher level than the zombies she’d fought before, but it did have another class.

And classes were much bigger than just some levels, Zoe knew. The difference between her Seasoned Cinders class at level seventy and her Chrono Enchanter if it lasted that far was night and day. The creature might not be much higher level, but it could have massive bonuses to its stats that Zoe was just missing.

Zoe took a deep breath and refreshed her suit of icy armour, in her hands was an icy long bow and an ashen arrow. She summoned several Frost projectiles and flashed an enchantment of Archery, Spear-fighting and an explosive Scorched Arsenal onto them, and then fired everything off.

Dozens of projectiles flew through the air, a lone ashen arrow amidst a cloud of icy cones. They slammed into the creature below her and exploded in a cloud of flame and soot.

A deep, guttural roar blasted through the crater and wore away at the stony cliffs that surrounded it. The creature launched itself out of the cloud of soot towards Zoe and slammed into the wall far below her. Its limbs a hurricane of destruction being wrought on the earth as Zoe struggled to keep her balance on her Earth platform.

A pillar of stone rose from the ground behind her and wrapped around her waist to keep her from falling down. The stone extended deep into the earth behind her for support, and Zoe turned her attention to her Frost projectiles.

Another cindered arrow appeared in her hand along with a dozen Frost projectiles around her. She flashed her Enchanted Mirror onto them and launched them at the beast below her. It let out another thunderous roar as the flames and soot seeped into it. Zoe saw smoke rising from the mass of flesh as her cinders were burning away at it from the inside. Smoke rose from its body, and Zoe let out another barrage.

The fight continued for only a few more barrages as the beast was unable to do anything to her so far above, but finally the beast relented and its flesh dissolved away. The massive black skeleton was drawn back into the mountain, and Zoe let out a sigh of relief.

Her Earthen platform was now a tendril of rock that stuck out from the cliff edge as the beast eroded away at the cliff, held together with her magical power. She walked back to the land proper and started climbing back up to the next zone.

After the fight with the beast, she felt confident in her damage output if nothing else. In a head on fight, she doubted that it would have been anywhere near as easy, but trapped so far below her? She dismantled it in mere seconds.

Zoe checked her stat sheet as she continued up the mountain, and saw she had another three levels worth of points to spend. All ninety were put straight into Vitality, giving her a total health of seventy six hundred. Plenty for her to not feel like the weak level eight she used to be.

A few minutes past the next zone marker, she ran into something she wasn’t expecting. There was what seemed to be a camp site set up, a few tents set up around a central campfire and picnic table. A dozen people were wandering around the campsite and chatting with each other. A few sat at the picnic table with papers, talking about their plans for the next section.

They were all dark blue to her identify, the lowest was one hundred thirty two and the highest was level two hundred one. Most were around level one hundred forty.

One of the women saw Zoe and waved. Her light red hair was tied in a braid that wrapped around her shoulders. “Hey! Haven’t seen you up here before.”

Zoe blinked a few times in surprise. “Uh, hello?"

The woman laughed. “You weren’t expecting a campsite right before the dungeon boss, huh?”

Zoe shook her head. “No, I mean I barely even saw people this high up and now there’s like a dozen of you?” She looked around. Some of the others heard her conversation and were looking over to her.

“We wait here for our turns. Was that you fighting the abomination down there?" She asked.

“The abomination?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah the big writhing ball of shit trapped in the crater?” The woman clarified.

“Oh, uh. Yeah, I was fighting it I guess. Why?” Zoe looked at the crowd. More people were staring at her now. The anticipation was palpable to her Vampyric Empathy.

“Did you win? Ya kill it?” The woman asked her.

Zoe stepped back and nodded her head. “I did, yes. Is that a problem?"

A collective groan resounded through the crowd and a man sitting at the picnic table spoke up. “Is it a problem, she asks. Hah!”

The woman at the picnic table spoke up. “You’re fine, it’s just annoying is all.”

“Why’s it annoying?” Zoe asked.

“Somebody killed it a week ago, and we just got it trapped again yesterday. Now we’re gonna have to go trap it again.” The red haired woman near Zoe answered.

“Huh. So you just trap it and leave it there?” Zoe asked.

“Aye,” a man walked up next to the red haired woman. “Pain in the ass to fight, that.” He shook his head. “And if it ain’t trapped, ya not gettin’ away from it. Damn thing’ll chase ya right up to the boss. Only way out is back down, killin’ it or trappin’ it.

“Killin’ it ain’t all too bad, but it’s much easier to toss the damn thing in a hole and ignore it, y’see?” He said.

“Ah. Well I’m sorry, then.” Zoe said.

“Ain’t a thing. Help us trap it and we’re even, see?” He said.

“I have to help you trap it now?” Zoe asked.

“Aye, ya killed it ain’t ya?" He grinned.