Road To Sierra Pt7

Unceremoniously tossing out the soul stone toward Ivana, I say, "That right there is your race evolution. Let me be clear with everybody right now, I know I broke my character and you guys hate it but believe me when I say I'm trying to spread the wealth. This time I cost us the Hardcore Mode of our first private dungeon, but in the process I acquired shared legacies from the group.

"Skooma got the general's swords he left behind meant to protect the inheritor of a race, those are by no means any small item. Merch was gifted the general's ultimate defense technique with dual swords, and Lil received the inheritor's healing spell and saving grace. Besides this, there is a swordsmanship mastery skill I am holding onto until I have a means of sharing it like the Elven Mana Purification book.

"However," I say seriously while still looking dead at Ivana. "That right there is a race evolution that is probably still applicable for cordyceps. That's some serious ass you owe the party. Beyond that, wait until we get to Sierra before using it. Next, These pies are some serious shit. You cannot eat them. The remaining stew, though, is riddled with its own enrichment that you can consume without committing to Gourmet Life Gathering. This will change your entire body to run on mana more than proper food and also create a minor evolution of sorts.

"If you're going to eat this pie, you need to be ready to put in the work," I tell the group just as seriously while looking everybody but Go and Lil meaningfully. These two I did not care what they did and would honestly support them in every way possible. Then I say, "All of you will need to make one hundred copies of the mana array practices I put together earlier to be distributed to the clan in waves or just special occasions. After this, though, mana concentrating exercises like before may not function properly."

Everybody was suddenly silent and thoughtful, but eventually Oleander pointed out, "If we were to continue those practices, we would need environments at the same level as the raid dungeon. At the very least, all of us would need a giant mana crystal like the one we sold to the ferry. This looks complicated, but it's probably our best bet for continued advances without breaking the bank."

The others all sounded out in various forms of agreement while Lil and Agnes openly questioned how this kind of training could effect their actual bodies. They liked being small and were worried this would make them huge. In the end, though, I relented and gave everybody a pie while storing the remaining twelfth for myself later.

Since this cross-training could not really change my physique, I Devoured my first pie whole and waited to see the benefits. A list of 'Assimilating' notifications appeared for different components in the food as well as the energies in the array. However, only a few of these actually brought in any benefits.

[Assimilated: +7% MA3]

[Assimilated: +4% CF2]

[Assimilated: +4% DG2]

[Assimilated: +2STR]

[Assimilated: +2% Ice Affinity]

[Assimilated: +10% Mana Affinity]

[Assimilated: +25HP]

[Assimilated: +10INT]

Plus twenty-five Health Points was downright negligible to me, only bringing my natural HP value up to five thousand three hundred and ninety-seven the ice affinity, though, was always welcome considering cold was technically my weakness. It did not work as strongly as resistance but it still helped. As for mana affinity, I had no idea what that was until I looked in my stats.

Among my actual list of affinities, the first affinity that stated 'ALL' now had '(medium+10%)' behind it instead of just medium. It was a decent advance toward the next level of my mana affinities. The spells at my disposal were all normal or intermediate skills, but the way I used them was advanced. With a higher affinity, I might be able to better learn more advanced magic skills and spells from my abilities.

As for everything else, stat points were always welcome and the near instant advances I made in the different aspects of Mana Assimilation were nothing small at all. If another pie brought me the same percentages, I could find a way to make a hundred of these things and gain at least a level-and-a-half of all three aspects with just those pies.

However, I refrained from eating the second pie and thus turned my attention to the remaining stew, skewers, and fillets with ravenous intent. Everything the others had not already rendered themselves into a bloated state with was smoothly Devoured in under three minutes. However, I only received little more than ten and twenty percent for the side and then main aspects of Mana Assimilation.

As for stats, I only received some HP, MP, a boost of thirty points to my PDEF, and another two percent to my mana affinity. These gains were relatively small compared to the pie, but the pie was made from the stew made from everything on the table and more. It was like recycling what I already ate for second chance benefits.

Since the others ate much more slowly than I did, I still had more time to work on study materials wich ended up being time spent studying. Like when converting the ancient recipes to modern versions, much of what these elven training manuals contained was irrelevant locations and species.

Even after dinner I had no choice but to sort through all of my different books from Lady Mara studying geography and biology to find descendant-like variations of plants and animals from 'ages' ago. Fun fact, the longest lived elves could go over nine hundred years old and thus a generation of elves was called an age and several generations made up an era.

Beside the imperial date was the current elven generation since the founding of this empire, which said a lot for the importance that elves held in general. Even if they were not the current party in control of the empire, they were still a determining factor in its power. From what little I could tell, though, we were actually in the fourth age since the founding of this empire.

An age was about a thousand years and the time before the empire was considered a previous era. My original estimates of the legacy being around two thousand years old was based on the year itself. Now that I had figured out the historical significance of an elven lifespan, though, I realized that the legacy was actually twice as old.

This made my work even harder because I simply lacked the necessary historical information to track events, locations, and thus materials. However, some things like mana crystals and other natural treasures were timeless and certain beast with certain affinities and grades could still suit our purposes. I just had access to much fewer recipes and methods than I had anticipated.

By the time the others were ready to go to sleep, though, I had no choice but to join them and continue on to the next day. When we awoke the next day we quickly divided the harvests from our familiars and cleaned up camp to once again hit the road. Despite Fast Traveling through what would have originally been over a week of distance, only two calendar days had actually passed in the civilized world.

After the clan store was used as a treasure vault we found that our clan members had been busy in the private areas of the clan. Besides the announcements on the front page which were only visible to members, there was also a small forum area where clan members could share news, general information, discoveries, and even organize into parties.

Over the last calendar day that we spent traveling, dungeon diving, and studying the entire city of Sierra had made progress in its mystery event. Most of the herds of animals had been taken care of but now mobs from outside the region were herding through the forestry. As well, towns and villages in the forest had been falling out of contact or reporting missing persons.

At this point, most of our clan members were mixed groups of mid leveled players from my generation and new players who spent more time outside the cities than in them. Since they had been spending most of this event camping out, they were dispatching their groups in a web like dispersal to deter herds or seek out the smaller settlements.

They had only just gotten started on checking out the missing persons reports, mostly pertaining to hunters and youths who would normally be out protecting the settlements from small herds of mobs. However, it was clear from the few investigations made that there were little to no signs of these people even with magic forms of tracking provided by the NPC.

Even some kind of bloodhound diving rod one of our people got their hands on could only track a group of youths to a certain location before all tracks were gone. However, the place they found was chewed up from combat among the tree trunks and shrubbery with signs of fire and large amounts of water usage in the area.

Since no tracks led away from such a location, it was determined that magic means were used to cover their tracks. Only highly intelligent and thus high dangerous monsters would use such tactics and the likelihood of such things in Canfor and its surrounding regions were minimal. Especially with the sheer size of the surrounding plains region.

Instead, it looked more and more like the work of people.

Personally, I had no idea any of this was going on until Go and Merch brought it to my attention after handling their leadership duties. I honestly barely listened while studying mana purification practices up until the end when they were going back and forth with those clan members themselves.

Apparently, all of the fire was sourced outward from a single point but the origin point was too large to have been an accident. The origin point was among a small grove of fruit trees with a space large enough for a small party to set up camp. It was speculated that this location they were led to was the actual camp of those missing persons.

In which case, it became clear that those persons set the surrounding forestry on fire either in a bid to escape or die with a superior enemy. Of course, there were no signs of escape and there were no bodies at all. However, the fires had been put out beforehand so that group of youths was probably surrounded and suppressed quickly.

Even with the water in the area, there should have been clear signs of death or blood in the area. To me, this was clearly the work of people who were more intent to capture than kill. Why would they be capturing people and what their relation to the mob herds was, though, I had no idea.

The only thing we could really do was hurry back to Sierra and look around ourselves. Thus we spent most of the next day in Fast Travel until we came out early in the evening with a familiar large grove of enormous evergreens in the backdrop of the region.

Because we were in something of a rush, only my party and I left the highway and jogged- well, I jogged while most of the others sprinted- for several minutes out through the smooth and low-cut driveway from the highway. It had been well over three calendar days since the last time we were here so the golem was sure to be finished resting. What greeted us at the expanded grove, though, was fairly surprising.

Inside the slightly mystical horizontal treetop walls surrounding the expanded grove, the driveway was now lined with patterned rows of berry bushes and flowing thorny vines. As familiar with the surrounding regions as I was, I could easily recognize the various bushes as C and B grade fruits from not only the plains but the Canfor forestry as well as the deadwood borders of the Winter Wood.

The single thorny flower vine that grew protectively all throughout the slender acreage was also a fairly toxic C grade vine from near Sierra. The flowers carried an all-purpose anti-toxin nectar but the thorns carried a paralytic anticoagulant that worked like anesthesia. Prick a finger and the finger goes numb or grab a vine the wrong way and your hand goes limp.

If a lightly armored noob were to step on a couple of thorns, everything below the knee would lose feeling. If they fell and took a few thorns to the different body parts, they would be a dead from the waist down in about half a minute. These were a perfect natural defense mechanism for animals and weak players or NPC.

If I were to roll around out there, plants would simply disappear into my body. By accident! If anyone in my party went out and played with the vines, though, they would simply get itchy after a while thanks to their sheer stats and levels.

As well, it was an incredible deterrent in general. Most of these berries had strong healing or empowering effects like frost resistance or increased mana efficiency so anybody who came here would be more apt to try their luck in this nap-time field than the actual grove.

Surrounding our small manor sized tree trunk bunkhouse, though, were an assortment of patch herbs, berries, and even common vegetable gardens. The manor of their setting was interesting and unique in that everything was set in a clustered mound of usually three bushes or veggies per mound. The herbs, though, grew like old school Chia Pets in large mounds covered in waves of previous mosses or small flowering plants.

Unlike the previous fields leading to the treetop walls, the acre on either side of the bunkhouse entryway was protected by only a simply fence of crossed and stacked branches. Directly beside the front edges of the horizontal trunk bunkhouse, though, were simply openings in the fence to allow entry. There was not even any protection from animals at this point.

The long and broad driveway through the bottom floor of the bunkhouse, though, was defended well enough for the entire driveway to the property.

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