Chapter 100: Next Steps

Chapter 100: Next Steps

Luke gave me the details of where the griffins were last spotted; the direction I had in my head from the quest was further west than I expected. He also gave me a short briefing on what to expect; it sounded like it was just a big lion bird to me. He said I could hopefully lure it in with some fresh meat and even suggested I consider buying a small animal to act as bait.

As much as I would have liked to rush off and try to find them immediately, I wanted to recuperate a little and say goodbye to the others. There was a good chance I wouldn't see Dewi and Evan again until I visited this so-called capital, as I wanted to try heading towards the floating island as soon as I got a proper form of flight. I then headed to sit with Evan, opting out of the retelling of the battle and copious amounts of drinking.

"I noticed you in conversation with Luke. Are you already planning your next adventure?" Evan inquired, his first drink still mostly untouched.

"Pretty much. I had asked him to keep an eye out for any large flying monster quests, and he reserved one for me that came in while we were out." I answered.

Evan grimaced, "I hate flying monsters... Some intelligent ones know to target healers, but you can't exactly body-block something that flies."

"It's a pair of griffins. They didn't sound too bad from the briefing."

"Nope. Griffins aren't too bad, just territorial, and tend to flee when wounded."

"What flying monster did you deal with?"

"Harpies..." He said and finally took a drink.

"Can't say I've heard of them."

"Think bird woman; an apt comparison would be flying female orcs."

"Oh..." I murmured.

"Yes. I nearly got captured if not for Whitney having a good aim with her knives." Evan chuckled, "Although the landing was not fun. First time I had to heal my own broken legs."

"A perfectly valid reason to want to avoid flying monsters."

"I'm glad you haven't lost all your commonsense to Dewi," Evan chuckled.

We chatted a bit more before I remembered to ask him to show me that lifeforce talent. Evan seemed genuinely surprised I would want such a talent.

"Seriously, while it has its rare moments of usefulness against monsters, it's primarily used for healing." Evan tried to warn me. "Until you reach level three, the range is abysmal, and you must be face-to-face with a monster. And until higher levels, you basically can only differentiate between alive or dead."

"Even so... I'm sure I'll eventually find a use for it. And it's only one trait point, hardly worth having buyer remorse."

"Only one trait point, she says..." Evan sighed, facepalming, "Then again, I suppose you do have more race levels than most adventurers well into their advanced classes."

See the flow of life in other beings.

Trait level determines the applicable range and the ability to determine variations in lifeforce.

A sufficient trait level can allow penetrating through the lifeless.>

I didn't hesitate to purchase the trait; I still hoped to gather a bunch of sense-related traits and combine them into some super omni-sense. Also, detecting life was an advantage of one of my mutation options, and now I was getting it for free.

"Thanks, Evan," I replied with a smile.

"It's your point to waste." He sighed, "Activate the trait, and you'll see why."

I nodded and activated the trait, seeing a reddish aura around only Evan. I examined him up and down and tried glancing at other people at a distance but couldn't see anything.

"As I said, it's really bad at low levels. Because you can see my lifeforce aura, that means I'm alive, and that's all you can detect at this level. Eventually, you'll be able to see when the aura diminishes as someone who's injured."

"I see... Well, it's something to work towards. How much can you determine?"

"I can determine if someone is at full health, below half, or on the verge of death. Next level should give me another in between full and half."

I thanked him for the explanation and decided to just leave the skill on permanently for now. I had plenty of mental processing to spare and always had the option to delegate it to a [Sub-Core]. I was correct in predicting that the drinks at the guild wouldn't be the end, and we went to a restaurant situated along the inner wall for a celebratory feast.

It was an enjoyable evening. The party retold some of their time adventuring together and discussed their futures. Out of all the parties who could have found me in the goblin camp, I was glad it was them.

The next morning, I woke early and headed to the adventurers guild. I was happy treating the last evening as my farewell to the group, and I was sure I'd run into them again. I took the first available staff member and requested a class change, and after paying the small fee, I swapped back to [Shadowcaster].

Once I left the city, I started practicing my magic again. I had a lot to work on, so I appropriately distributed the tasks amongst all my [Sub-Cores].

I honestly didn't expect a flying monster so soon, but a lot had happened since I started making my initial plans. I thought I'd have more time but couldn't risk losing this opportunity, so getting it out of the way now would be better. I could always spend as much time as I wanted on the island and just fly back.

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'I could just live on the island for a while; there was no time limit on that dungeon Lisa wanted me to do.' I thought happily, as it would be refreshing just being a simple slime again.

I noted the gold coins I never used in my storage; I had wanted to experiment with creating a different persona and figured I'd need funds outside my adventurer tag.

'I even thought of the perfect name for my disguise, Sylvester.' I chuckled to myself.

Sylvester would be an older gentleman, borrowing a lot from that cleric I had fought as a goblin and stealing some mannerisms from Gramps. I had planned on having a big old wizard beard and would have pretended to be a sorcerer. I had thought joining the adventurer's guild for a second time would be too risky, so I could join the merchants guild instead and maybe try out one of the crafting classes. Moonlighting as an old sorcerer looking to get into alchemy or enchanting sounded like a reasonable excuse.

'Well, nothing is stopping me from doing that after the floating island. I could rejoin the city as Sylvester rather than Syl. As long as my guild tag says I'm alive, I think they shouldn't worry too much.'

The travelers I saw along the road gave me a wide berth, wary of someone openly practicing magic, although the ones with children pointed and stared in amazement, and I would always give them an extra flourish to show off. Between [Arcane Hand] floating objects and making shapes with [Kindle] or [Water Orb], I was quite the impromptu performer.

Speaking of magic, I had decided to set aside [Fire Magic] for now. It was by far my most advanced thanks to Dewi's aid, and the rest now desperately needed to catch up. If I combined [Flammable] with [Combust] and a [Fireball], I don't think there is much that would survive.

At the moment, [Water Magic] felt like I had hit a bit of a dead-end. I had tried repurposing [Combust] into a water spell, but something about the concept of water didn't mesh well with the damage over time aspect of the spell. I'd need to find another concept or something to merge with it, and I figured that progressing further in [Ice Magic] would likely be the solution as the interactions I saw between water and [Cryo Slime] showed a lot of promise.

[Corrosion Magic] still felt like one of my strongest options, and creating a new debuff and affliction was always my immediate priority. While I was using it in a more supportive role for my other affinities, I had two ideas I was experimenting with; creating an acidic affliction and a poisonous debuff. Both were possible, but portioning out the specifics for the individual components of Corrosion was the tricky part, and I hoped I'd gain a level in [Mana Manipulation] soon to help me progress.

This difficulty was inherent to working with one mana type; when I combine Fire and Corrosion, it's like working with oil and water, and they don't try to inherently mix. However, working with the individual components that make up Corrosion is like combining different colors of water and preventing them from just blending together. I needed to work with the separate red and blue colors; letting them mix to create purple was not an option.

'And that's not even taking into account Necrotic damage...' I mentally grumbled.

I had tried to tap into that aspect of Corrosion a few times, but anything that made up the [Decay] spell was far beyond my current comprehension. It made me wonder if it should have been a higher-level spell or if this was just something inherent to all forms of intermediate magic.

[Slime Conversion LV 4]

Attributes/Other:

[Soul Mastery LV 6]

[Enhanced Vitality LV 4]

[Magic Resistance (Lesser) LV 4]

[Defy Death LV 3]

[Prodigy]

Senses:

[Olfactory Sense]

[Dark Vision LV MAX]

[Mana Conception LV 5]

[Life Sight LV 2]

[Thermal Vision LV MAX]

Trait Points remaining: 9

Skills:

General:

[Universal Language]

[Equipment Swap]

[Dissection LV 6]

[Mapping LV 4]

[Tracking LV 1]

[Identify LV 4]

[Multitasking LV 2]

[Perception LV 4]

Combat:

[Evasion LV 4]

[Attack Mastery (Lesser) LV 6]

[Affliction Mastery LV 4]

Magic:

[Water Magic LV 4]

[Fire Magic LV 5]

[Corrosion Magic LV 4]

[Ice Magic LV 2]

[Arcane Magic LV 1]

[Mana Manipulation LV 4]

[Mana Suppression]

[Magic Efficiency LV 3]

[Meditate]

[Ritual Casting]

Sneaky:

[Vanish LV 5]

[Sneak Attack LV 5]

[Identity Fabrication LV 6]

[Acting LV 4]

[Rogue Expertise LV 4]

[Subtle Afflictions]

Skill Points remaining: 12