Chapter 94: Enter the Edge
Threshold reached. Noxious Grasp XP has reached 623.
Noxious Grasp Rank has increased to 12.
Due to Noxious Grasp Rank reaching 12, it has undergone the following changes:
Mana Cost: From 4.82 to 4.94
Health Drain: From 17 to 17.85
Stamina Drain: From 8.56 to 8.99
I woke up to this notification, announcing the new Rank I’d gotten for Noxious Grasp. My work had paid off!
I’d done the math with my Mana/Minute, and realized that, if I didn’t have Light Plate active all night, I wouldn’t end up getting enough Spell XP to Rank it up by morning. Now, it really wouldn’t matter too much if I had to wait a bit longer to Rank it up, but, well, I just didn’t want to. If it was possible for me to Rank up overnight, I wanted to do it.
So, I decided to establish a system with Erani and the Dryad. While each of them were on watch, whenever they saw my Light Plate disappear, they’d come over to wake me up, I’d reactivate the Spell, put it back on, and go back to sleep.
Now, did I sleep well when I had to wake up every hour to put on plate armor? No. But was it worth it for the new Spell Rank? Debatably. I certainly felt like it was worth it, at least. It may not have been completely sustainable to do this every night, but at least for now, I was willing to make the sacrifice of comfort for the sake of an additional Spell Rank.
When I got up and Erani saw the bags under my eyes, though, she seemed to disagree.
“I told you that was a bad idea,” she scolded.
“Still worth it,” I muttered, then yawned.
“You got your Rank-up?”
“Yeah. Next costs 844.”
She nodded knowingly. “Prices really increase as you go on. But with your build, I have a feeling that won’t be as much of a problem for you. At least, not for a while.”
I nodded. With these fast-coming Spell Ranks, Noxious Grasp’s effectiveness would only go up more. At this point, I was enjoying the effects of Venomous Grasp more than the damage, so the additional Ranks weren’t too impactful, but the additional Stamina drain was a huge help. Plus, getting closer to that Rank 20 Upgrade was something I highly looked forward to.
Another thing I was looking forward to was my next Level. After that fight with the Mountain Troll, I’d gotten myself up to 1199 XP, out of the required 1300. Just from passively killing the Ghouls as we went, I was confident I could Level up today.
Level 16 didn’t inherently include anything important – nothing like a Spell or Talent Choice – but it still did have two things I was excited for. First, the extra points in Conjuration I’d get each Level would be much, much more impactful now that I had Exponential Reclamation to boost their effectiveness. So even getting those would end up being a pretty massive boon. The second…
Well, I wasn’t sure if I was excited, or nervous.
When I’d gotten my last Intelligence information rank – back when I hit 16 Intelligence – I didn’t actually get any new information. Instead, I’d gotten something strange.
Intelligence threshold reached. 16 Intelligence.
Your Intelligence information rank has increased.
Due to increasing your Intelligence information rank, you have been granted the following benefits:
-Trailblazer Title has begun collecting data on holder. All future thoughts, decisions, actions, emotions, and movements will be logged.
-Logged data will be used as Intelligence Information Rank increases further.
That was what it’d said. Currently, my Intelligence was at 19. And next Level, I’d get one more, and it’d go up to 20. Since it seemed like I got a new rank every 4 points of Intelligence, I’d get something new then. And, judging by the way that was worded, it’d have something to do with the ‘logged data’ the Title had been collecting on me. Who knew what that’d mean.
So we went ahead and ate ‘breakfast’ – that is, the Mountain Troll I killed the night before. Fortunately, the protection offered by Endurance also extended to protecting one from diseases and food poisoning, so for me, eating it wasn’t a problem. As for Erani, who had a lower Endurance, we just made sure she ate all the good parts from the inside that seemed safest. Even with the base 10 she had in the Stat, she should’ve been protected from the basic stuff.
The Dryad had been the one to take the last shift for watch, so she was already completely awake, ready to keep moving. She still wasn’t very talkative – at least, not with me – but I could tell from her body language alone that she was eager to head out. I just hoped her restlessness wasn’t due to a thirst to kill more people.
No, I chided myself, don't think like that.
Whether or not the Dryad could tell when I thought about her that way, it was just shitty of me. I understood her feelings a bit more, now. And specifically, I understood that it wasn’t as simple as her just wanting to kill people for the sake of killing them. Thinking of her as some bloodthirsty monster wasn’t going to help anything – showing compassion to her would.
“Hey,” I said as gently as I could to her, “are you ready to go?”
“Yes,” she responded curtly.
So we headed out. It’d take some time for her to warm up to Humans, but hopefully it’d happen eventually. For now, I just needed to make sure we kept moving toward the ever-approaching mountain range of Kingdom’s Edge.
A couple hours passed, and the Ghouls in the area continued to thin out as we got closer and closer to the mountains. At this point, they were towering over us, and I could actually see the entrance to the main valley pass. There was only one pass through the mountains that was even remotely near, carved through by some unknown Classer hundreds of years ago. Whoever they were, they’d probably done it to try and allow travel through Kingdom’s Edge. Unfortunately, the monsters around here made that still a pretty unattractive prospect to most.
Despite the lower Ghoul numbers, I was still able to kill a few as we traveled, getting me closer and closer to my anticipated 1300 XP mark. I could go and take massive detours to kill every single monster I saw, but that’d only slow us down, and I still wasn’t sure what type of ambush the Demons were setting up for us. Hopefully, if we got there quickly enough, they wouldn’t have time to fully set it up.
I also wasn’t sure about going out to kill more Mountain Trolls. Ironically, Erani was the one to suggest I do so while we traveled, and I was the one who shot her down because it was too risky. When she first suggested it, I thought she’d lost her mind. But then I realized what things must’ve looked like from her perspective.
The first time I fought that Mountain Troll last night, I only barely eked out a victory. It was great practice, but hard, and I even almost died a couple times. Sure, I ended up killing it, but I was left with low Health and Mana and a few injuries. Then, once I fought it the second time, I knew the fight, knew my enemy, and beat it easily.
But Erani only saw the second time, so to her I probably looked like some badass warrior soloing such a massive monster. But in reality, I’d probably need to use Time Loop any time I went up against one of those things if I wanted to take it down without sustaining major harm and draining all my resources. So I definitely couldn’t be pulling that while we traveled.
My XP was slowly increasing, though, as I killed the straggler Ghouls that stumbled out into the area. At this point, I’d probably just need to kill one more to get my next Level, so I kept my eyes out for any that got close.
But as we walked, we eventually approached the base of the mountain range. The ground was no longer spotted with caves in here – the Mountain Trolls, ironically, didn’t seem to make their homes in the mountains – but there were still some Ghouls up ahead. This valley was the only way through that wouldn’t take us climbing up and over the mountains themselves, so if we wanted to get through without exposing ourselves to the elements and harsh monsters of the peaks, we’d have to walk through this single path.
It winded and curved between the bases of the massive hills, to the point where, standing at its entrance, I couldn’t see very far ahead. We’d have to stay alert as we moved to ensure we wouldn’t get ambushed. Fortunately, I still had two uses of Time Loop at my disposal, so it wouldn’t be bad if we did, but I didn’t want to waste them if at all possible.
“You ready to go in?” I asked Erani.
“Not much of any other choice, is there?”
“Guess not.” I glanced upward at the mountain peak that seemed to house the Dragon that’d attacked us in the past. I couldn’t see well, especially from my current angle, but from what I could tell, it was still up there. At least, I didn’t see it flying around anywhere else. “Let’s just keep an eye out for anything that could cause us problems.”
She nodded, and we continued walking.
Kingdom’s Edge was famous for housing Dragons, of course, but that wasn’t all the monsters that lived there. Occasionally, Ghouls would wander in from the wasteland, as I’d already seen, but there were also Drakes that lived in the lower parts of the mountains, taking refuge from the much more powerful Dragons, and there were Lava Slugs that would lie in wait in the sporadic shrubbery for something to brush by them, where they’d latch onto you and suck out your blood until you ran dry.
Apparently, the Dragons and Drakes were big enough that they didn’t even notice when a Lava Slug or two latched onto them – and the Ghouls didn’t have any blood to begin with – but to a Human, the sensation would feel like fire in your veins, hence the name. But as long as you avoided brushing up against the trees and bushes that occasionally cropped up along the mountains, you could avoid them.
So it was with caution that we made our way through the winding path – both watching out for the Demons and the rest of the monsters that made their habitat here.
The first fifteen or twenty minutes passed uneventfully. I saw a couple Ghouls here and there, shambling up or down the mountain range, but they were all hundreds of paces away – much too far away to reasonably go and hunt down. Taking the time to go up there to kill one, just for a measly 30 XP, would be stupid. Going that high up could easily make me visible to any enemies that could be nearby, plus the Drakes and Dragons often made their territories high in altitude, so to climb a mountain would be like intentionally provoking them.
Eventually, I’d find a Ghoul down lower for an easy kill.
But as we rounded a corner of the path, winding around a boulder that’d fallen from a mountain into the valley, I saw something that immediately took my mind off the topic of Ghouls.
Marching through the valley was a pair of Infernals and a Human soldier. The Human was a Magic-Type, it seemed, judging by conspicuous lack of any melee weapon, and he was obviously working with the Infernals to do something. Surprisingly, whatever they were doing didn’t seem to involve hunting for me, as they marched along without any attempt to search the area for anyone that may be hiding.
However, they were moving our way, so I silently told the Dryad about the danger, and asked her to inform Erani that we needed to move back – I was really enjoying this new method of silent communication we had.
She seemed to get the message, and we fell back, fleeing from the bounder I’d glanced around and backtracking along the path until we hid behind a cliff face a few dozen paces away. From there, I glanced around as sneakily as I could.
The group turned the corner around that same boulder and stopped there. The Infernals were standing around doing nothing, just looking around, but the Human was casting some sort of Spell. Slowly, as I watched, a perfect square of stone was broken off from the massive rock, held suspended in the air by magic. I watched as the Human pointed his finger, and the large brick floated along, landing in one of the Infernals’ outstretched arms.
Then the Human went back to work, magically breaking off another slab of stone, floating it into an Infernal’s arms, and kept going until the entire boulder had been broken away into rectangular bricks, leaving nothing but pebbles that’d been shaved off by the Spell. The Infernals’ arms were full by now, each hefting their own half of the boulder’s-worth of material. And then, they turned and walked back the way they came.
I had an urge to attack them now that their backs were turned – the Infernals obviously had their hands full, the Human probably had his Mana reserves mostly drained by now, and we could probably capture one of them if we beat them to interrogate them – but I ended up deciding against it. We had no idea what kind of countermeasures they had, including whether or not they had any way to communicate back to wherever they were taking those materials.
So if we attacked and they sent back word, not only would our location become known, but it could take enough time for the Demons to send out teams to find us that enough time could pass for Time Loop to no longer be able to get us back to before we made our mistake. If we attacked them, we’d most likely be forced to use Time Loop right after, no matter what, to make sure that didn’t happen. And I wasn’t willing to use up that resource when in such a dangerous area.
“What do you think they needed that for?” I asked Erani once we were sure the group had left.
“Probably for whatever ambush they’re setting up in here,” she responded. “We know that scout they’d sent out had been returning to a full building that’d been built in the mountains, so this is probably construction materials to add on to that.”
I pursed my lips. If they were actively building something, that only meant we needed to move even faster – giving them more time to finish their construction would only make this harder and harder on us. “Yeah, seems like it. Let’s keep moving.”
But just then, I heard a sound behind me – the growl of a Ghoul. I instantly whipped around and raised my hand, shooting off a few Rays of Frost in the direction the sound came from. The monster’s face froze over as the beams impacted it and my mind was filled with notifications.
And then–
You have slain Level 9 Ghoul.
You have earned 39 XP. Your XP is 1.31k.
Threshold reached. 1.30k XP.
Your Level has increased to 16.
Due to achieving Level 16 in the Minute Mage Class, you have been granted the following benefits:
-You have gained 1 Endurance.
-You have gained 2 Conjuration.
-You have gained 1 Intelligence.
-You have gained 3 Stat Points.
-Recursive Growth has activated. You have gained 2 Dexterity, 1 Conjuration, and 1 Intelligence.
-Soft Cap has increased to Rank 9.
-Time Loop Talent Rank has increased to 16.
Intelligence threshold reached. 20 Intelligence.
Your Intelligence information rank has increased.
Due to increasing your Intelligence information rank, you have gained the following hindrances:
-You will increase your Intelligence information rank once per 8 Intelligence, instead of once per 4.
Due to increasing your Intelligence information rank, you have been granted the following benefits:
-You may choose an Intelligence benefit to replace your current benefits.
I blinked. Well, that first effect wasn’t very much of a ‘benefit,’ considering it only slowed my progression, but that wasn’t really what I was focusing on here. My mind was drawn to that second line. I got to choose one? And it’d replace my current benefits?
So, it’d replace my ability to see the names of my future Spell and Talent Choices, mainly. If it fully replaced that – something which was absolutely helpful – that meant the new benefits would all have to be even better than what I currently had.
I looked over to Erani. “Let’s find a place to sit and rest. I need to meditate.”
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