Ruined Hounder's Lodge

Hermes was off the lizard before the next kobold even entered view, flipping into a Flying Guillotine that met the kobold's leaping body in midair with a cleaving crescent blade. One kobold in the air fell to the ground in two halves from the insane power of Hermes' self-made skill. Then Cweeper was standing up on the tree dragon's back and spewing fire from her hands out into the grass. As the hilltop we fought on began to burn, five more health bars appeared running through the grass around us with a steady drop of two and three percent per second.

The fire only lasted for a few moments but when it was gone so too was all the grass for twenty yards around us and roughly thirty percent of the health of every other kobold. The one under my fist that was still pinned to the ground continued flailing at me and draining away one or two percent per hit on my armored arm. I was actually considering capturing and taming this creature.

Instead, I summoned icy mana around my hand with water magic to form a set of icy blades impaling the kobold. Half of their remaining health vanished as Hermes and Cweeper fought the remaining kobolds at close range.

While I used the ice to conduct St Elmo's Fire into the kobold, Hermes tanked the remaining kobolds with relative ease while Cweeper danced around the edges with their naturally dark skin and armor blending with the ashy ground and dark of night filling the air. It was almost like the assassin had traded classes with an off-tank and Cweeper had stolen the assassin's skills. She was even performing singular spin attacks at every available opening as if to prove herself.

Duck, on the other hand, simply dropped down on a single kobold's back and started pecking it in the head after breaking their legs and spine. The kobold was dead in seconds after having already been burnt up. Right before the eyes of everybody in view, Duck started eating the dead kobold's crispy eyes and softly charred facial tissues right in the middle of combat.

One kobold actually had the bright idea to try flanking the eating owl in the clearing its landing had made in the surrounding ash cloud. However, Hermes tripped them with a light kick and Cweeper pounced in for the kill. By the time my one kobold had been electrocuted to death with minimal mana, the others had also died.

[+32XP]

[Acquired Kobold Tail x7]

[Acquired Kobold Canine x5]

[Acquired Kobold Claw x12]

[Acquired Kobold Hide x2]

[Acquired Kobold Bezoar]

[Acquired Gold x63]

Seven enemies for more than half a hundred gold? These kobolds were worth not much less than nightwings! Not to mention the bezoar, I had yet to find one of them in the stomachs of other animals.

On Earth, a bezoar was a near metamorphic rock of undigested bits and pieces of everything from bone to hair to plant skins to bug carapace and everything else that enters an animal's stomach. They were often found in goats because of their insane omnivorous activity and were sometimes believed to be lucky or protective from disease and evil among other so-called magical or even religious purposes.

In this game of actual magic and indisputable 'gods', the bezoars of some creatures were a smorgasbord of magical and mundane trace materials. Anyone with an alchemy skill would break them down in a light oil, ether, or just water and create a literal random super potion. Or poison.

Kobolds were creatures I had read about and would have probably seen some of within the edges of Canfor had I gone hunting today instead of tending the wagons. They were not often magical but they had a few evolutions like imps whereas goblins had an entire evolution tree. They were omnivores, meaning anything could be in my bezoar, and they had a natural affinity for the earth element

If I made armor from their skins it would probably have the same style of effects as basic goblin skins or hunter imps. If I were to use the skins of their greater versions, though, instead of just warrior and hob claws and fangs, the resistances would probably have come out stronger. The same would apply here as well, but the 'matured', 'beta', and 'alpha' mutations of these kobolds were harder to find in the wilds.

Like hunter imps, the juveniles were raised hunting for themselves until they reached maturity and became proper warriors in the pack. It was at this time that the alpha would present them with the fantasy staple of a nose ring or ornament. It depended on what the kobold killed as a test of its adulthood. A person would usually warrant some form of jewelry.

Checking my compass bar for surrounding points of interest, I find several that look like they would be combat oriented such as what looked like a broken brick wall from the shading of the compass marker it was still a few hundred yards out from my position. However, it was usually broken things, something with a hole, or marked doors that symbolized beast activity or homes.

If I wanted to find the bigger versions of wild creatures then I usually had to look for their homes, right?

Wondering what kind of hunting the others were up to, I made my way through a brief confrontation with a trio of nightwings who targeted Duck on my way across three hundred yards of plains region. Sadly, there was not as much to appraise here besides a few tall thistle plants like the ones I had used to make potions.

However, the trees here were thin evergreen soft woods like firs and larches. While these were not exactly weaponry woods, they did have other uses. On Earth, fir trees are an important source of timber and resins for a variety of uses.

In Bygone Era, the NPC were already processing it for industrial glues and resins as well as general lumber and even some paper uses. Players, though, were probably secretly processing flammable ethanol and preparing to introduce it to the game's markets and industries. While we could not directly create motors and engines, we could create fuels to guide the NPC to mechanization while finding uses for what we made.

For myself, though, I simply chopped down the smaller conifers only a few times taller than me and trimmed them down to store in my Player Inventory. Later one when I had time I would break them and other woods down through physical or magical means to work on my own projects. There were a hundred and one uses for everything, both in reality and the game.

When the broken wall icon finally illuminated I found myself in sight of a what looked like a large hunting cabin set in a dry valley bed. The ground here was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers but they were all shorter than the surrounding hills. More specifically, the ground around the rundown cabin was all trampled down with similar paths leading out between the hills.

The ceiling and high areas of the walls where windows probably used to be were full of broken and jagged holes in the wooden structure while what used to be a pair of double doors was now another large gaping hole in the building with a few dry rotted pieces of wood scattered around. Somehow, this place had a name. Ruined Hounder's Lodge.

Once upon a time this was probably a decent place where travelers could find rest and company with two stories and roughly a thousand square feet of building. Now, though, it had become a home to some random monsters. Honestly, I did not even care if it contained mature kobolds or not.

Approaching the building quietly and carefully, I creep up to the closest side of the building and then steal around toward the front before peeking at the entrance. When no activity showed itself I mentally cast Mana Radar on my own and watched numerous bunches of dots appear throughout the lodge. It was almost enough to send a tingle of excitement down my spine.

[Mana Radar Leveled]

[+15XP]

Silently waving for Duck to land on the roof above the doorway, I wait and watch my mini-map with a new range of forty yards until I finally receive some activity. A group of about a dozen red dots were making toward the front door while another group was heading toward the back of the building, around, and then toward the front. It took me a second to figure it out as I waved Duck down to the ground before calling her over to me.

The second group went up the stairs.

Not long after I realized that, a group of ten or more large spindly legged bodies rushed out of the door in pursuit of Duck. With bodies alone that were around the size of Pup back at the Maran estate, a dozen spiders that stood more than half as tall as me were suddenly pursuing Duck across the 'lawn'. Right toward me.

"Fly, f- Duck!" I cry out as I charge up electricity in my right hand and spew streamers of liquid fire from my left. Duck was already opening her wings before I called out, easily escaping out from the building and into the sky. The creatures tagged as Giantulas, however, remained in the line of fire.

First of all, I did not mind bugs. Giant beetles and other insects, even if they flew, would not me much of an issue. Arachnids, now, WERE NOT BUGS. People called them bugs from time to time, I called them bugs out of spite, but they were not insects and I was terrified of their sinister long and skinny legs and hairy looking fangs.

Like insects, though, their bodies were covered in an exoskeleton made out of keratin. Keratin, like many non-flammable or even flame retardant substances, melted. Once my unending streams of liquid flames from five fingertips washed over one of their bodies, their joints began liquefying.

While liquefaction helped to extinguish my flames early, their joins and body plates cooled together as solid pieces.

On the roof, however, were now another dozen spiders leaping into the air. Previously, they were seeking Duck who had landed on the roof. Now they were suicide bombing my position with their own bodies, aiming the legs down to impale me upon landing.

Lo and behold, though, a sudden roar of heat and light in a thunderous wind swept through the air overhead. Hermes had cast his Burning Gale skill, sending the airborne spiders over into their statuesque companions. However, even as Cweeper took over pour flames on the doubled group of still living spiders, the dots inside he lodge were now on the move.

Releasing the electricity I had charged up into the level thirty-plus giantulas, I watch active bolts of lightning arc among the wet bodies and finish the mass of stuck together spiders. I even got all of their experience in one big notification.

[+960XP]

Spending a third of my remaining mana on charging lightning in my hands as dozens more spiders start spilling out of the building, I stomp my foot into a controlled Quick Quake that rushes forward with most of the mana still at my disposal. The spiders rushing out of the lodge and around the front toward us were greeted by a softened quicksand that their spindly legs speared straight down into under their weight.

Spending the rest of my mana literally spitting Splash out onto the quicksand that continues to fill with spiders, I trust Hermes to blow the airborne spiders once again leaping from the roof into the killing field. When I no longer had enough mana to maintain my grip on the supercharged St Elmo's Fire in either hand, I threw my hands together and unleashed a single massive lance of lightning.

Thunder rumbled loud enough to shudder the lodge and push me back several yards, deafening everything with ears within the valley as well as blinding their eyes with the brilliance of lightning. When my vision and hearing returned after a quick cast of First-Aid, dozens of trapped and wet spiders were smoking and arcing in the wet quicksand while their health bars continued to drain.

Lumbering off to the side as my equilibrium takes a savage blow from the swift and steady depletion of my mana, I find myself collapsing to the ground at Hermes' feet. He was in sweating profusely from the heat of his own Burning Gale and the strain of sustaining its power as the roof of the lodge began to burn. However, he was looking down at me with an almost curious expression.

"Shit happens," I say with a shrug as I roll off to the side and Cweeper walks up to unleash streaks of electric claw marks into the quaked quicksand. "Just look at how we met. Now look at us. Shit happens."

Looking at the last spider to be blown off into the quaked ground, Hermes points at the dying spiders before growling, "Shit. Happen."

HE SPOKE. THE MOTHER LOVING GOBLIN-LOOKING SON OF A BISCUIT SPOKE.

"Yeah…" I say in quiet awe of the speaking familiar, wondering if I would get a title for it. However, nothing came up. "That's some shit, dude."

[+1920XP]

[Leveled Up]

[Elementalism Leveled x3]

[+300XP]

[Quick Quake Initiated]

[+50XP]

[Acquired Giantula Carapace x19]

[Acquired Giantula Leg x20]

[Acquired Giantula Fang x12]

[Acquired Giantula Eye x15]

[Acquired Giantula Silk x7]

[Acquired Giantula Venom x21]

[Acquired Giantula Core x3]

[Acquired Gold x792]

"Holy hell!" I exclaim after reading the amount of gold and experience I had gotten. After some quick math I realize that each spider was only worth about eleven gold and forty experience but I had killed seventy-two of them! In this one lodge!

[Congratulations for clearing the abandoned ruins, Ruined Hounder's Lodge. After having been inhabited multiple times by a variety of beasts and outlaws, the location has long since been forgotten and gone without ownership. For having cleared the land only a mile out from the main highway, you now have priority claim on the land. Build a barrier around the property to stake the land you wish to claim, report it to the Canfor authorities, and pay the appropriately discounted price to own the land you have claimed]

This location was still in the Canfor regions, which meant that the city of Sierra still oversaw the land rights and maintenance and laws. I could easily buy this property and built it up as a small outpost through the Delai family. It could serve perfectly as a checkpoint or outpost for expedition teams heading to Winter Wood and other regions, at first.

Eventually, though, it could potentially grow into a clan settlement or fort between Sierra and Winter Wood for trade and other forms of revenue. Instead of buying a place in the city, I could grow a place just outside the forest where clan members can camp out in either region for farming and make trips to higher level locations with ease.

Winter Wood was just inside the next region to the north, off to the side and all around was a neighboring mountainous county that surrounded the barely populated and moderately dangerous Winter Wood area. Winter Wood itself was the kind of location that players like us would dive into to claim guild and clan territories and hunting grounds. Because of this, though, the lodge would probably remain a lodge while I sought somewhere further afield to Winter Wood for the clan.

Currently stuck with the problem of claiming this land for the Delai family, I decide to spend my time recovering my mana looking around inside the lodge. Luckily, both of my leading familiars were handy with fire to light up the way. However, there was not much to see besides webbing old and new alike covering the walls and ceiling.

The first room of the lodge was a large commons that took up the entire front half of the building with a wide staircase leading up to the second floor in the middle of the back of the commons opposite the doorway. Where there was probably once tables and chairs and a long bare across the left half of the building for serving food and drinks was now ruined scraps of wood and metal with broken bits of planks and framing still standing where the bar and its accessories once stood.

At the far left and far right sides of the room were two medium sized fireplaces set in below the floor. One was now ruined with most of its rustic cobblestone chimney scattered about the floor and inside the fireplace while the other was only missing its fireplace. I felt like the game AI or whoever designed this place was probably lacking in either time or imagination because the fireplaces were the exact opposite of one another.

*