novelhk Chapter 141: Descent
Chapter 141: Descent
chapter 141: descent
progression tracker [0.6.0]
marker_1: afterfight [20th fallow]
marker_2: predelve [21st fallow]
span: 22.3 hours
synchronization
strength: 4.4 -> 5.3 (+0.9)
focus: 10.1 -> 12.2 (+2.1)
clarity: 200 -> 203 (+3)
slots
accolade
bonus
4 [2x2]
the ice cavern
+40 strength
4 [1x4]
the halls of corruption
+40 focus
3
the lair of embers
+1,000 heat resistance
3
we can’t just call it ‘the lair’
+200 force resistance
2 [1x2]
the solar temple
+400 stamina
2
southshore rat warren
+1,000 health
1
everdeep fortress
+10 perception
known skill trees
tier 0: 144
tier 1: 144
tier 2: 144
tier 3: 135
tier 4: 0
richmond rain stroudwater
class
lvl
cap
dynamo
18
18
exp
next
total
22,749
22,750
1,644,832
vitals
cur
max
rgn
health
2,780
2,800
400/d
stamina
999
1,000
500/d
mana
11,700
11,700
3.0/s
attributes
200/180
eff
total
base
accld
misc
syn
str
9.54
90
10
40
40/40
10.6%
rcv
19.6
40
10
30/30
49.0%
end
12
30
10
20/20
40.0%
vgr
29
50
10
40/40
58.0%
fcs
29.3
“no idea,” rain said with an unconcerned shrug.
ameliah frowned, glancing at rain’s shield.
“it’s not that,” rain said, shaking his head. “i’ve mostly got a handle on the interference now as long as i remember to focus. it’s just that whatever kind of monster that is, it’s not one i’ve encountered before. it isn’t moving.”
“okay, stay back,” ameliah said, sending her light to hover around rain’s head. she slipped out of her pack, setting it on the ground. “i’ll go deal with it.”
“hold on, you don’t need to—“ rain started, but she was already gone. flames sprung up around her as she dashed forward, filling the tunnel with orange light. the fire almost seemed to be propelling her down the tunnel, though rain knew shrouded by flame did nothing of the sort. she was just that fast. the orange light faded as she rounded the curve in the tunnel, but soon it returned with a vengeance, accompanied by a whump of detonation and a blast of hot air.
your party has defeated [lesser rockshell], level 9
your contribution: 1%
0 experience earned
not long after that, ameliah appeared back from around the bend, still blazing as she jogged toward them. “there. problem solved,” she said. “anything else around?”
rain shook his head. “what was it?”
ameliah raised an eyebrow, her fiery cloak going out. “i only got ninety-nine percent. i assumed you got the rest. didn’t you see a message?”
rain nodded. “i did, but i have no idea what a rockshell is.” he stuck the remaining piece of jerky between his teeth, then bent to pick up ameliah’s pack and offered it to her.
ameliah shrugged, accepting the pack. “it was some sort of crab thing. i didn’t stop to paint a picture of it.”
“rockshells are a common creature of the depths,” tallheart said. “there are many kinds, most with an aspect. what was the exact name?”
“lesser rockshell,” rain said, still chewing.
“hmm,” tallheart said. “no aspect. we are fortunate. it seems we will begin in a neutral biome.”
“whatever,” ameliah said, turning back to rain. “will you be able to sense them now?”
rain wiggled his hand as the three of them resumed their progress down the tunnel. “lesser rockshells specifically, yes. rockshells as a category, i’m not sure. you didn’t have to run ahead, ameliah. we could have fought it together. it was only level nine.”
“yes, and we didn’t know that,” ameliah said, sounding annoyed. “i’m not taking chances.”
“fair enough,” rain said, digging in his pack for another piece of jerky. he wasn’t particularly worried about himself yet, but their supplies were another matter. he might be monster-proof, but the double gamgee wasn’t.
he stuffed the piece of meat into his mouth, chewing with enthusiasm as he activated essence well to send ameliah a little mana. damn, this stuff is good. i hope we find some nice plant monsters for tallheart down here.
rain shook his head as they passed the remains of the rockshell. if it had been a crab, there was no way to tell, now. other than a few charred bits of shell, there was nothing left but a blackened pile of ash, still smoking slightly. she is not kidding around. was that fireball, or something else?
he reached for his pouch of jerky again, then forced himself to stop. gotta save the good stuff. who knows what we’ll be eating a few days from now. to distract himself, he voiced his question aloud. “so, ameliah, was that fireball that you used?”
“no,” ameliah said. “just an overcharged firebolt. i didn’t want to damage the tunnel.”
“that’s...terrifying,” rain said honestly. “i think i need to check my math.”
ameliah shrugged. “there’s a reason fire mages are so common. it might not be a fancy build, but it has plenty of power. the only issue is how narrow it is.”
“yeah,” rain said, nodding. ameliah had picked the class partly because of how resistant rain was to heat. an equally resistant monster could present a problem.
rain scratched at his beard, then closed his visor to put another barrier between himself and the jerky. “that reminds me. what happens if we find a heat biome? will you change your build?”
ameliah shook her head. “it depends how deep we are. it takes me a lot of time to switch.”
“you really haven’t found a way to speed that up?” he asked.
“no,” ameliah said with a sigh. “it takes one hour per skill. always. the only thing that’s gotten better with practice is how much i need to concentrate on it. i can usually keep it going now while i do other things, but if something distracts me too much...boom. start over.”
rain frowned. “damn, that’s annoying. maybe it will get better at gold.”
“i’m sure it would,” ameliah said. “if i ever got there.”
“you will,” rain said. “we all will. one day.”
“hmph,” tallheart snorted. “even below the earth, your head remains in the clouds. you remind me of me.”
rain smiled. “anyway, we’re almost at the third chasm. i can sense the gap now. no more monsters yet.”
“okay, stay back from the edge while i check,” ameliah said, walking out in front. she stopped, then held up a hand. “actually, just stay right there. get a torch going so i can bring my light with me.”
something in her tone made him stifle his argument against wasting a torch. what’s eating her?
“hurry up,” ameliah said.
rain did his best, fumbling an evertorch free from his pack, then lighting it with a spark lighter. ameliah’s expression had hardened even more as she watched him go through the gymnastics required to do this, burdened as he was by his packs and the shield on his left arm.
“there,” rain finally said, straightening and holding the torch aloft.
“and you’re sure you don’t want to leave some of that stuff behind?” ameliah asked, giving him a look.
“absolutely sure,” rain said. “once we’re deeper, we’ll camp, clear, and then move, just like tallheart says. i won’t bring all this with me when we’re clearing. for now, it’s safe enough.”
“fine,” ameliah said, crossing her arms. “but you two will be staying with the supplies once it comes to that. i’ll be doing the clearing, not you.”
“no,” tallheart said, shaking his head slowly. “we must all work together. i will not allow you to protect rain by taking the danger upon yourself.”
rain nodded. they’d had this argument before. he opened his mouth to continue it, but ameliah cut him off.
“just stop,” she snapped. “we’ll talk about this later. right now, i’m checking the chasm. end of discussion.”
“i...sorry,” rain said.
“don’t move,” ameliah said, walking away. she took her lunar orb with her, leaving him and tallheart alone in the pool of torchlight.
“hmm,” tallheart rumbled.
rain nodded in agreement, keeping his mouth shut. this place... that has to be what’s bothering her. it must remind her of brightside. the third chasm is similar enough to what she described, though it isn’t full of poison mist. i wonder how long it’s been since she came down this far?
he shook his head, then glanced at tallheart. “how are you doing?”
tallheart raised an eyebrow.
rain gestured awkwardly. “you know...with being in the depths again.”
“i am fine,” tallheart said, his face unreadable. he looked away. “do not lower your guard. something could have spawned behind us by now.”
rain nodded. i owe them both so much.
the wait for ameliah to return quickly grew to be intolerable. rain tracked her for as long as he could with detection, and then by the echoing sounds of explosions once she’d gone past the edge of his range.
it was almost twenty minutes before she finally re-appeared, the last ten having been nail-bitingly silent. rain practically collapsed in relief as detection picked her up, though rationally he knew that linksight would have told him if anything had happened to her. she was still in the party; the system just wasn’t giving him notifications for her kills. this wasn’t a lair, and he’d had nothing to do with them.
a few moments later, ameliah appeared at a run, slowing only as her orb’s light merged with that of their torch. “clear,” she said. “any problems here?”
“no,” tallheart said. “what took you so long? rain was becoming distressed.”
“i was not,” rain said.
“i was scouting around,” ameliah said. “now come on, before something spawns. i left a few burning corpses, but they won’t stay lit forever.”
“how often should we be expecting spawns, anyway?” rain asked as the three of them continued.
“constantly,” tallheart said.
“yes, but like how fast?” rain asked, pausing as the edge came into view. unbidden memories of a certain umbral charger had popped into his mind.
“it is the same as above,” tallheart said.
rain frowned, speaking as he extricated himself from his packs for the descent. “right. so, for a given area, only so many monsters can spawn in a day. the rate depends on the essence level, the new monsters’ levels, and what other monsters are nearby. since ameliah just cleared out a bunch of them, the chance of a spawn is higher, right?”
“yes,” tallheart said.
rain nodded to himself. just like when i was trapped outside the fells, then.
“how are we getting down?” ameliah asked.
tallheart walked right up to the edge and looked down. he grunted, then tossed the two metal cases he’d been carrying over the side. six seconds later—rain counted—there was an almighty clang of impact, followed by a monstrous screech and a clatter of tumbling metal ingots.
“mmm,” tallheart said. “it appears that something has spawned. i believe i hit it.”
holy shit, and it didn’t die? that had to have been at least a hundred kilos of metal at...who the hell knows how fast. i’ll do the math in a second.
rain glanced at ameliah to gauge her reaction, but tallheart distracted him by jumping over the edge. rain gasped as the cervidian spun in mid-air, rock cracking from his grip as he caught himself on the lip of the chasm. cracking booms echoed from the walls as he began his descent. from the sound of it, he was making his own handholds by literally kicking holes into the solid cliff face.
“well,” rain said. “i suppose that works. it’s not particularly subtle, though.”
“not particularly, no,” ameliah said over the continuing racket. “at least it will make a good distraction for us. do you feel like climbing too, or would you rather jump?”
“i’ll climb,” rain said, thinking of the fragile supplies he’d brought. he’d have said ‘fly,’ but he knew ameliah didn’t have the spell anymore. that was another argument he didn’t want to have. redirection was better for combat, true, but it just wasn’t the same. in a chasm like this, proper flight would have come in extremely handy.
he pinged with detection again, still not finding the bottom of the chasm, even this close to the edge. he frowned, setting down the torch and kneeling to extract a coil of rope from his pack. one hundred meters should be enough, right? i wish they had nylon. this stuff is too thick. i could have brought way more.actually, wait, i could ask tallheart to make me some metal cables or something. he shook his head. later.
he searched his memory, then muttered a curse to himself under his breath. damn. i can’t remember the freefall formula. this isn’t the time to be mucking around with winter, though, so i guess i’ll just derive it. speed should be acceleration times time, and i can integrate that for distance, so...d=1/2at2. he smiled. yeah, that’s right. now i remember. even with overmana, i guess i can still have brain farts. okay, i’ll assume g is still 9.8m/s2 on this planet, which i can round to 10 to make my life easy. six seconds of falling means...180 meters. damn. i’m going to need to tie two coils together. hell, three to be safe.
“rain?” ameliah asked. “why are you staring into space? did you sense something?”
“sorry, sorry,” rain said, fishing out another rope. “i was just calculating how far down it was.”
“calculating?” ameliah asked. she sighed. “i’m going to regret this, but...how would you even do that?”
“calculus,” rain said, tying knots as he spoke. “i counted how long it took for tallheart’s cases to hit the bottom. stuff falls with a constant acceleration, ignoring air resistance, and you can use that fact to derive the formula for the distance. i could explain how, but this isn’t the time. for now...hmm. damn, it doesn’t really work in common. anyway, just remember five times time times time. that will get you close enough. oh, that’s in meters, obviously.”
“obviously,” ameliah said, watching rain as he began lowering his pack over the edge. “you’re still checking for monsters, right?”
“yes,” rain said, beginning to let the rope slide quickly through his hands. the sound of breaking stone stopped after a moment, then there was a brief silence before a faintly-heard crunch.
“sounds like tallheart’s reached the bottom,” ameliah said.
“samwise, too,” rain said, feeling the rope go slack. he tossed the end over the edge to join the pack below.
“i still can’t believe you named your pack,” ameliah said, shaking her head.
“and i can’t believe we never thought to name the forgewagon,” rain said. he concentrated, nudging one of his focus-boosting accolades out of its slot and replacing it with the one that enhanced his grip strength. as he approached the edge, his stomach clenched up, but he pushed through the vertigo, refusing to let his fear show. he swung his legs over the edge, then lowered himself down to hang near where tallheart had started. his current effective strength made it easy, but he panicked anyway, scrambling until his foot found the first of the smith’s improvised handholds.
ameliah watched, frowning slightly. she walked right up to the edge, moving her light to help him see what he was doing.
rain was immensely grateful to her for that, and for not commenting on his struggles. this wasn’t something he’d exactly done before, and his heart was beating fast as irrational terror tried to make him freeze. he’d thought he’d conquered his fear of heights, and perhaps he had, but clearly, his fear of subterranean chasms was still there in force.
something we have in common, i guess. i refuse to let it stop me. i must not fear. fear is the mind-killer.
rain grit his teeth, then removed his hand from the edge, grasping for a lower handhold. the fall wasn’t dangerous. not with all of his force resistance and force ward on top of it. even his base health was probably more than enough at this point. that didn’t mean it felt safe.
step by careful step, rain crawled his way down the wall. he nearly fell twice, but the accolade proved its worth, making him feel like spider-man the way it helped his hands stick to the stone. ameliah followed after him, though she could have easily jumped, keeping the lunar orb positioned so rain could see. she made it look easy, literally only using one hand, as she’d brought the torch in the other.
finally, they reached the bottom. rain looked around, not seeing tallheart, though the smith was clearly nearby. the sound of his hammer was ringing through the deserted chasm, the echos making it hard to determine the direction. from where he was standing, rain could see two dark passages leading off the fissure itself, which was strewn with metal bars and still-smoldering monster corpses. he had to resist the urge to immediately use purify to wipe them away. he wanted to have a look at them before he did that so he could get an idea of what was waiting for them and if any of it was edible. besides that, corpses were also useful for keeping monsters occupied, tallheart had said. anything that spawned would be distracted by the free meal before it went searching for them.
“here,” ameliah said, hefting rain’s pack, then handing it to him.
“thanks,” rain said, slipping it back on, then starting to reel in the rope. he pinged with detection, then gestured. “tallheart’s that way.”
ameliah nodded to him, following. they found tallheart squirreled away in a narrow crack in the stone, blocked with the shattered remains of a few crabby things that must have been rockshells. he’d set up his anvil and was busy pounding his ingot cases back into shape. his enchanted spectacles were perched on his nose, which rain knew would allow him to see in complete darkness.
“mmm,” tallheart rumbled in greeting. “i will require a few minutes. i would like to test the rocks here for metals before we continue.”
“no worries, tallheart,” rain said, setting his pack down beside the broken monsters tallheart was using as a door. “i wanted to take a little break, anyway. i’ll go collect all the ingots and check for crysts and stuff. ameliah, can you make sure nothing eats me while i do that, please?” his stomach rumbled. “and after that, maybe we can hide in there with tallheart and have breakfast? the monsters will leave us alone if we stay quiet, right?”
ameliah snorted, seemingly having relaxed a little bit, though she was still watching the darkness warily. “didn’t we have breakfast before we left?”
rain smiled. “we had one, yes. but what about second breakfast?” he chuckled to himself at the long-suffering look this got him.
“that’s a reference to something, isn’t it?” ameliah asked.
rain nodded. ah, screw it. so what if i’m not done recovering the books yet? it’s going to take me ages to read it out loud anyway. i’ll be able to keep up, and it will help her get her mind off things.
he smiled. “while we eat, i think it’s finally time for me to start telling you about hobbits.”