Chương 148: Chapter 147 – Easy 500 Bucks

Cole was a bit surprised that anything on Curahee still had enough juice to bump him up to the next enhancement level. Level 20, in fact. He pulled his residue siphon out as he sifted through the flaking black cadaver of the monstrous hound, gathering the LF residue that pooled underneath the body. The pups he hadn't killed had scattered, so nothing bothered him for the time being. Bessie had a hell of a haul for a single creature, but it made sense considering her size.

A pistol, two magazines of ammunition, and a pair of gloves had dropped to the moss. He checked the gloves first. < Average scale gloves of fleet fire Increase speed by 1 while worn. Imbues melee weapon attacks with a small amount of fire damage. > Not bad. Fine leather material, too, with overlapping scales along the back that would protect his wrists. He tugged off his cheap PX gloves and pulled on the scale gloves.

<Above-average pistol of the scaled pack Damage and recoil increased by 22% Resilience of self and followers increased by. 5 per follower, up to five followers> That was fantastic. Especially for a team lead. Plus, he was pretty sure his own gun counted as a follower. When he had his whole team with him, he would be giving the entire team a boost of 2. 5 Resilience. For Cole, that would be almost a 50% increase. They'd all be tough as nails.

Cole pulled out the turncoat pistol, ejected the magazine, and tossed the thing away. Not even worth Field Stripping as he had little use for a bonus damage to friendly targets. It was no wonder the mid-level Kickers loved coming to clear the few elite enemies in the training area if they dropped loot like this. He loaded the magazine into the scaled pack pistol and slotted the new sidearm into his holster, feeling the armament subtly shift shape in his hands in order to fit.

Finding more gear that boosted raw stats was good, but finding loot that rewarded leadership would be a godsend. Apparently he needed to fight more monsters that traveled with a posse, like Bessie and that ape mage from Babel that he never got a crack at. Maybe even the steam dragon had dropped something like that. They'd had to leave a fair bit of that loot behind. Hell, his team often tended to leave a fair bit of loot behind, especially once they had a rescue in tow.

Seemed like they faced overwhelming odds so often that they were almost always on the run from something that stopped them taking the time to sift through bodies. The two magazines were packed with rounds that sported a red-hot, sparking tip. A quick look at the analyzer revealed them to be essentially napalm rounds enchanted with a clinging fire jelly, similar to Bessie's breath weapon. No complaints there. Even enemies that weren't especially weak to fire still hated being covered in it.

Checking the bodies of the other hounds he'd killed and finding nothing worth taking, he headed back to the top of the ridge to make his radio call.

"Bessie bagged, Ketchup. Unless you're looting Big Wood right now, this is my win." Morganstern's voice crackled on his radio." Ooh, letting the new guy show you up, Ketchup?"" I swear to god, he's not here," Ketchup called back." Airborne, you got that tracking ability, right? Could use your eyes."" Sounds like excuses to not pay out," Cole teased. But he started heading down toward the river at a jog." Aww, fuck off. A bet's a bet."

"Well, Bessie was out of her normal stomping grounds by a good bit, so I'm pretty close to your AO. Be there in twenty mikes." Cole jogged through the forest, avoiding what few monsters hadn't been flushed out by Bessie's roar. He reached the river a few minutes later. Rather than wading across, he burned a charge and vaulted completely over it.

On the other side, he trotted along until he spotted a familiar rise in the terrain to the south where he'd spent his first night on Curahee watching Morganstern battle the Beast Cult before drawing them in for an ambush. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. On a whim, he trotted up the incline to the ridge. There were still some signs of their impromptu camp site that hadn't been completely washed away by the daily rains.

A cleared depression in the ground marked where he'd bed down underneath his rain fly, and a pair of crossed fallen trees they'd sat on to drink instant coffee and wolf down flavorless meal bars. Cole moved to the side of the ridge, looking out over the terrain to the east and north. Ketchup should be somewhere up ahead of him between the eastern edge of the Silk Forest and the shore of the wide lake that made up the proving ground's far boundary.

Before he headed up that way, he spotted the shrubs he'd laid down amongst to catch the Beast Cult investigating a flare and drew a line out to the clearing a few hundred yards away where he'd taken the shot. Speaking of loot left behind… Another charge of Meteoric Leap had Cole soaring into the clearing from above, dropping down amongst the ferns and damp moss.

Not that he expected anything of the body to be left with the cannibalistic fungal zombies and scale hound scavengers, but maybe the mage had carried an armament or something. If he had, that soul key would have transferred to Cole upon death. He kicked around a bit, turning up a few torn scraps of red cloth and finally spotted a glint of metal barely visible through a patch of ankle-high mushrooms. He reached down and moved them aside.

A small silver amulet of a wolf's head snarled up at him, still hanging on to the tatters of a split leather cord. Probably snapped when Cole shot him or snagged on a stick or a snare when scavengers pulled the body around. He held it up and brushed some of the dirt and moss off it to get a better look before tapping it on the analyzer. <Greater beast-attuned blood locket of deific honing> Attuning and wearing this amulet while increasing enhancement level influences deific class evolutions toward bestial paths.

Increase range or affected area of deific energy abilities by 28%. > Cole clicked his teeth. His first piece of greater quality loot, and it was complete garbage for him, as well as everyone else in his team save for maybe Nona, who, even if she had also inherited the soul key, probably didn't want her class influenced toward whatever bestial paths were. Cole considered. Maybe the Beast Cult animalistic features were class ev manifestations like his accretion wraps? His face twisted in disgust.

Who would willingly disfigure themselves, like that? Well, they couldn't all be winners. He dropped the amulet into his pocket, just in case. So the Beast Cult mage had been more of a Beast Cult cleric—which made sense, since it was, well, a cult. But deific casters were supposedly much more rare than ethereal casters. Maybe that didn't hold true for worlds with actual gods roaming around. A rustle and snap in the forest behind him had Cole drop low among the ferns, twisting towards the approach.

Lurking just beyond the edges of the clearing, a dark shape moved through the woods far more quietly than its size would have suggested. The massive wood ogre had to duck under branches in order to enter the clearing with Cole. Its multiple heads scanned the clearing, silently tasting the air with flicking vine tongues from thorn-lined mouths. The ogre was easily three meters high and coated in thick, black bark.

Its legs alone were almost as long as Cole was tall, and its four gnarled arms still dragged on the ground. Cole keyed his radio and whispered into his mic." Big Wood spotted, fifteen klicks southwest of your position, Ketchup."" Are you serious? I must have gone right past him. Don't engage on your own, he might still be a bit too tough for a level 19. On my way to you, now."

"Good copy. I'll keep an eye on him." The massive wood ogre looked right past him underneath his camouflage ape-skin cloak. It took a few further steps into the clearing before all four of its heads turned north. It cut across the field in terribly long strides, reaching the tree line in just a handful of steps. Big Wood didn't bring a posse with him, so Cole had no way to charge up his rifle's damage bonus.

But he'd just gotten some flaming bullets that would surely turn that gnarled hardwood into kindling if his bladed bullets didn't pound it to sawdust, first. That bark looked about as hard as cast iron. But the ogre was already moving off. Cole switched back into his stalking mindset and followed the dark shadow back into the woods. Despite its size, the ogre was surprisingly hard to track without target marking.

Its tall legs and spindly arms made it look like so many of the thousands of knobby trees through the Curahee training valley. It also tended to stop and stand stock-still for minutes at a time with its viny tongues tasting the forest air. Cole was being careful to stay downwind of the thing so that he could observe. What was the massive creature thinking about? And why was it, like Bessie, so far from its typical stomping ground?

The oversized ogre's heads shifted to the north just a second or so before Cole also heard the snap and crack of thicket being torn through. Big Wood growled and surged toward the noise, long legs carrying it more than twice as fast as the other wood ogres Cole had seen." Shit," Cole muttered. If he wasn't careful, he could lose Big Wood, and Ketchup could be in trouble.