Racing to Catch Up
When Leila finally arrives, it's hard to keep the irritation out of my voice, "You're late."
"Am I now?" Leila says with a taunting smirk, "Oh my, the time must have gone away from me."
She's fishing for a reaction, I know this, which is why I master my expression. She's pissing me off, but I won't give her the satisfaction of showing it. Perri, of course, jumps straight into the trap.
"Manage your time better! You're just causing trouble for everyone!"
Leila looks like she couldn't care less, "Oh no."
This only makes Perri angrier, but I cut her off before we end up wasting even more time by tossing a heat stone at Leila, "Here."
Leila snatches it out of the air and examines it, "For the third level?"
"Yes, let's go."
We enter the dungeon, and we speed through the first level in record time. When we teleport into the second level, I pull out the guidance stone. A small blue light shines on the bottom-most part right now.
"What's that?" Wyll asks curiously.
"A guidance stone. The light on it always points towards the nearest checkpoint," I say, pointing at the orb behind us. When I rotate the guidance stone, the light stays in the same place, in the direction of the orb. "So for the first half of the level we know which direction to move away from, and for the second half we know which way to move towards."
I consider the stone for a few moments before handing it to Wyll, "You hold it, Wyll."
Wyll looks surprised, "Me?"
"I'll have my hands full fighting, I'll leave it to you to guide us," I say.
"Thomas!" Perri looks aghast, "You'd trust a peasant with this task?"
"You and I will be fighting—would you rather Leila guide us?" I ask. Perri blanches, and I take that as acceptance.
We advance through level two, blowing past the first flame gorilla with ease. Once we're done with that, Wyll asks, looking down at the guidance stone in his hand, "Are we going after the lycan matron again?"
"No," I say, "Tell us the shortest way to the next checkpoint."
We walk for a bit before I see the light on the guidance stone suddenly slide to the complete opposite direction. Wyll catches it as well and he leads us down where it's pointing.
When the lights in the crystals lighting the dungeon next turn red, we wait to see what will confront us.
And then, the trees themselves move. They have no faces, but their roots dig themselves up from the dirt to become their legs, and their branches become their limbs. They creep towards us, and I say, "I see. Spriggans."
I couldn't remember what the mid-boss ordinarily would have been at this stage, and I couldn't figure it out either. If chasing lycans led to the lycan matron, then we'd only been primarily facing flame monkeys from the last mid-boss to here, so it stood to reason that we'd be facing a flame gorilla. But, of course, we'd already defeated that as the last mid-boss.
I never considered the forest itself. There are trees everywhere, and the second mid-boss is a sort of evolution of that: a bunch of sentient trees. Naturally, none of this means anything in the grand scheme of things, all that's happened is that things have been made easy for me.
I ready my blade. "Abyssflame Slash!" I swing, and a wave of black flames crashes against the spriggans. They are too clumsy to dodge, and they all burn to nothing in mere moments.
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100 EXP
100 EXP
100 EXP
100 EXP
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This is the first time spriggans have died to Thomas Filmore, that must be why the number of experience points I gained is so high. I'm guessing those numbers will be a lot lower next time.
However, considering how many enemies we faced yesterday, and the experience points I got today, I must have levelled up again by now.
Stats, I declare in my mind.
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Thomas Filmore (Warrior)
LVL 14 (1254 EXP to next level)
Con – 10 (+3)
Str – 12 (+3)
Dex – 12 (+3)
Sta – 12 (+3)
Mag – 12 (+3)
Fai – 6 (-3)
2 Unassigned Stat Points
Skills:
Analyse LVL 1 (2/3)
Abyssflame LVL 1 (0/3)
Abyssflame Slash LVL 1 (0/3)
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I did level up, I wish the system would inform me when that happens.
But more importantly, I only gained two stat points this time. It was like this in the game as well, the number of stat points you gain for each level up is random. But I'm racing to catch up to Rex, and the world hands me this?
I feel frustration pound in my head and my fists clench on their own.
"That really is a powerful attack," Perri says from beside me, "You're amazing, Thomas!"
"…Sure," I say. I close the system window, I won't assign the points now; I'll wait until we're done for the day to decide where to allocate them.
"Wyll, do we just keep going straight?" I bark out more than ask.
"A little bit to the right, actually," Wyll answers weakly. He points at the direction we're supposed to go, and we continue down that way. We find the next checkpoint without encountering any more enemies and we teleport to level three.
This is when the value of giving Wyll the guidance stone will really show itself. Level one is largely linear, no matter which path you take, and it's easy to stop and find your bearings in level two. But level three has a blizzard that gets increasingly more intense and enemies can strike at any time from within that blizzard. We need to constantly be on watch there as we advance, and because of that we need a dedicated guide.
I can feel the heat stone in my pocket react to the colder temperature, and it warms up my entire body. It's not exactly toasty—I can still feel the presence of cold on my skin—but it doesn't penetrate deep like yesterday.
Then again, we are only at the beginning of level three. How it'll hold up remains to be seen.