Chương 56: 1.3.12 - Ant-I Climax

Thankfully, no giant ants crept up on us last night. Randell was nice enough to give me the last watch so that I could recover from my injuries yesterday. When it was almost dawn, I got a fire going and heated some of our rations in water so that it was easier to eat — and also because I personally always felt good when I had warm food in the morning.

"Good morning Damian. How considerate of you to make breakfast" Annie thanked me when I handed her a bowl after she returned from a stream. She had quickly rushed off when she woke up, saying she had to clean herself up by the stream. I had no idea why she had to do that when she could just conjure water and wash her face in front of us.

"No problem at all. Could I trouble you to refill the water skins later?" I asked as I sat down beside her after I scooped a bowl for myself. I noticed a pink flush on her face, wondering how she had such good skin in the middle of the forest. A few wet strands of hair still clung to her face, probably from when she washed it.

"Were there any movements during your watch?" Randell asked as he ate.

"Nothing besides some small critters. I caught a brief glimpse of a beast lurking at the edges of my perception but it went away before I had the chance to wake any of you. Scattering some beast repellant around the camp must have worked."

"We'll need to rinse our equipment to make sure none of it remained as we look for the ants." Waldo reminded Annie, who answered with a nod. We finished our food quickly and packed up once there was enough light to trek through the woods properly. We made sure to gather a sample of the required plants as proof the scouting took place, just in case we did not encounter any of these ants and needed to bring evidence back. The initial trek was relatively quiet.

I realized Waldo had a tendency to wander off the path from time to time, and Annie had to call out to him every now and then to remind him not to run off on his own. For some weird reason, this Waldo had a lot of similarities with a Waldo I knew back on Earth. By the time it was close to midday, we had already encountered another two Yellow cored beasts which we dispatched quickly. Even though both of them had Earth affinity, one went to me while the other went to Annie.

Like with the Sabertail Panther, we only harvested the most valuable parts and did not bother with the hide as that took too much time. Despite encountering two Yellow cored beasts, we did not encounter or spot any of these giant ants. If they were a variant of the Geomyre ants, I would be hard pressed to detect them underground even with my Electrolocation. We did, however, come across some unusual markings on some tree trunks.

"What do you reckon?" Randell asked Waldo, who was inspecting the markings.

"Hmmm, does not look like claw marks of any beast we know. And Glimmerwasp mandibles are smaller than this with slightly different markings. Could be the giant ants stated in the mission brief" Waldo shared his hypothesis.

"Anything?" Randell looked at me next. I just shook my head. I had scanned the entire area using the extended range of regular Electro Perception but did not see any giant creatures with 6 legs.

"If we want to collect the full bounty of 5 gold, these markings would not do. We need an actual body part from these ants." Randell said. If we failed to collect the full bounty, it'd mean a full gold less for each of us.

"Should we continue with the trek? Even if we did not find any ants the expedition wasn't entirely a lost cause. There's the 1 gold reward plus all the beast parts we have harvested so far." Annie said with a hint of urgency in her voice. It seemed like giant bugs appealed to her even less than to the rest of us.

"Hmmm." Randell held his chin as he thought it through.

"I agree with Annie. We haven't seen signs of their nest, these markings could be days or even weeks old. If we trek fast enough and reach the dungeon entrance, we can take the cleared path back and reach the town before the sun sets." Waldo shared his opinion as well.

"What do you think Damian?" Randell asked for my opinion last.

"If I'm honest, it'll be a long shot hunting these things. I have quite a far range and I didn't see anything on the trek in yesterday, or the whole of this morning." I thought for a while, and decided that this bit of information wouldn't hurt.

"If the ants are anything like Geomyre ants, their nest is made out of material that blocks my sensing spell. Unless they jumped out at us, I wouldn't know even if they were right underneath our feet." That comment seemed to have made Annie look at where we were standing and take a step back, afraid that what I just said would manifest.

"Please don't say things like that... you never know when it might come true..." Annie said.

"It's decided then, let's head to the dungeon entrance quickly. If we come across these ants then great, otherwise let's cut our losses and take another mission after we head back. Annie's right, the beast parts plus the extra gold would make up for our time." This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Besides another few similar markings we spotted, the rest of the trip was rather uneventful.

Once we reached the dungeon entrance, the rest of the trip back was even faster as it seemed like it was a regularly travelled road between Hollow's Reach and Hollow Delve. There was even another party that we ran into on their way back and we decided to travel together for the extra safety.

"Yea, none of us wanted to take that as the request seemed far-fetched. I could make more hunting the beasts on the first level of the dungeon" one of the adventurers from the other party said when they heard which mission we took.

"Shall we meet in 3 days?" Randell asked us once we reached the town's western gate.

"I'll need tomorrow to report in to the guild, offload these parts, and replenish our supplies. Another day of rest would do you good after the beating you took. Waldo and I wouldn't mind visiting the Rising — uh-hmm wouldn't mind some rest ourselves" Randell did not complete his original sentence after Annie glared at him.

"What's this Rising place you both keep talking about?" I asked with a perplexed look.

"It's nothing, just some dirty place they like to go. Walk me to my tavern? Where are you staying?" Annie quickly pulled me away from the other two men. I made some excuse and parted ways with Annie halfway to her tavern, not wanting to let her know that I actually stayed at the orphanage south of town. I found a hidden corner and changed out of my adventurer gear before heading back home. I finally went through the notifications from the mission yesterday as it was already late by the time I got back.

[Lightning Bolt leveled up 8 -> 9] [You have increased your Mana Core Capacity by 1, 800] [You have leveled up 6 -> 7] [You have absorbed a Yellow Core. You have increased your Mana Core Capacity by 250] [Electrolocation leveled up 4 -> 5] [You have increased your Mana Core Capacity by 1, 000] Next, I pulled on the Weave to open my status. I wanted to do a stock take of my situation.

Status Core: Lightning Affinity (Perfect) Core Stage: Yellow Stage Level: 7 Mana Core Capacity (MCC) Progress to Next Level: 1, 976/2, 500 Core Mutations: - Lightning Brain - Lightning Adaptation Spells: - Electrolocation (Tier 2) - Level 5 - Lightning Bolt (Tier 2) - Level 9 - Lightning Infusion (Tier 1) - Level 10 Soul Mutations: - Adaptive Soul - Nature's Constitution - Myelin Insulation"Hmmm, I remembered the book did say most people with the common affinities usually develop some kind of elemental manipulation spell as the first thing.

That's definitely missing for me." I also recalled the issue with how I was currently using my Lightning Infusion. If I was caught in a position where I did not have a preconfigured movement set, I could not use it effectively to accelerate my movements. In summary, there were three things on my list that I needed to do, two of which could potentially help me with my recoil issue.

Develop some kind of lightning manipulation spell so that I could use it to generate magnetic fields and reduce the recoil of my coil gun Research and hunt beasts that might give me soul mutation related to muscle enhancement or strengthening effect, increasing my ability to physically resist the recoil Upgrade my Lightning Infusion spell to be more flexible to account for different scenarios I honestly had no idea where to start for the second and third, but I had an inkling of how I could develop my manipulation spell.

Recalling the runes from the book, I first started with a single Thread Rune and pushed my mana into it. I could will it to move around a little and bend the shape but with limited mobility. It was also not as fast as I would like. I tried to twirl it around into a spiral shape but it would dissipate every time it got close to forming a circle.

"Hmm, maybe it needs some other rune? Though I thought usually tier 1 spells have only a few runes. Maybe lightning is an exception?" I tried adding the Ring Rune to supplement the transformation and was able to shape it into a spiral shape like the springs in a shock absorber. However, it was too far apart and any magnetic field would be too dispersed. I added an operator rune next to compress the shape so that the rings were much closer.

I held the spell form over one of the iron slugs I had laid out in front of me but there was no movement at all.

"Did I get it wrong? But it can't be, the copper coils could generate a magnetic field so it should work in theory. Ah wait, the electricity needs to be flowing." I added a Vector Rune to control the direction of mana flowing but my output was not stable. At least I could tell it was working as the iron slug started to wobble and move in reaction to the spell form. I needed something to stabilize the output.

When I added the final Sustained Discharge Rune I could feel a ping in the back of my head, and the iron slug floated up to the middle of the spell form as a constant magnetic field was generated.

"Fuck yes!" I let the spell form drop before letting the notifications appear. [You have learned a new spell 'Lightning Manipulation (Basic)'] ['Lightning Manipulation (Basic)' leveled up 0 -> 1] [You have increased your Mana Core Capacity by 100] I navigated to the latest entry on my status screen to pull up the description. Lightning Manipulation (Basic): Allows shaping and sustaining of discharged lightning mana into stable external forms. Forms persist while mana and focus are supplied.

Stability, size, and complexity of forms scale with level and tier. I might develop more spells in the future but it finally felt like my basic spell kit was complete. I could already imagine all kinds of applications with the ability to manipulate electrical current in mid air. I would need to do more tests to figure out the extent and limit of the spell. That was for another day. The more immediate thing to test was whether my new spell would be sufficient to reduce the recoil from my coil gun.