Chương 48: Hiram Forester

We have a small breakfast of jerky and hard cheese, then break camp and start off again. It's maybe eight in the morning when we start to travel. I realize as I walk that I'm using the signs of the forest to help determine what direction we're going in, and to keep us on as straight a path as I can. The sun isn't always shining down on us, and the sky isn't always entirely visible through the canopy.

So I have to rely on where moss is growing, which way the wind is blowing, and a hundred other little details to keep us heading in an easterly direction. No wonder my survival is continuing to increase. I'm using it constantly, without even realizing it. We spot the first webs at around noon. Rather than stopping for lunch, we start following the webs. Still generally east, but maybe a little bit to the north as well. This is deep forest, and it seems like this is the land of the giant spiders.

Those are nothing we haven't fought before, and we do have a quest to harvest their poison glands. So we start somewhat hunting them, until I spot the first one in a giant web, all by itself. Giant Spider. Advanced Rare monster, level 18. HP: 1800/1800. Not quite high enough level to count for our scouting quest of identifying level twenty monsters, but it does confirm one theory: the farther we get away from Elmspire, the higher the level of the enemies we come across. I hit it with a Sniper Shot for 612 damage.

It shrieks and tries to skitter into hiding. My alertness goes up as I watch where it hid, and I fire five more arrows into with Rapid Shot. If falls dead from the bleed a few seconds later. It looks like El is about to complain about me having all the fun, when suddenly the entire area just explodes into movement. They come from all the webs all around us, and there are at least thirty of them. El throws her javelin, pinning one of the spiders to the ground, and then she draws out both of her axes.

The weapons are clearly meant to be used with both hands, but she doesn't seem to have any problem with the weight or the size of the weapons. Maybe she developed a new ability to use two weapons at once. That might be part of her Battle Rager class. Gigi's sword starts to burn, and she slashes at nearby webs, setting small fires that begin to trace through the area around us. I put my bow away and draw my elven sword in one hand and the ghost blade dagger in the other.

I don't really have any skill fighting with a dagger, but there's no time like the present to try to learn how to use them in combination with one another. The spiders are big, but they work well together. I'm quickly surrounded not by four, but by six of the things. I swing my sword at one of them and use my buckler shield to block another, but I still get hit for 18 and for 17 damage by two more. One of them shoots some webbing at me, and I get a notification. You have been enwebbed. -10% attack speed. Shit.

That's not good. That's really not good. If they can keep doing that, that'll slow me down to the point where I'll start taking more and more damage. It was a miracle I was able to block and dodge four of the six attacks. I don't know if I can keep doing that if they keep slowing me down. I slash at one of the spiders, then stab it in the head with my ghost blade dagger. It does 170 damage. That's double what it should do. Ignoring armor must help me get the sneak attack damage.

Not for the first time, I wish I had something that explained how things worked to me. I wish I'd had a real tutorial. But the tutorial god was killed. I get bitten for 25 damage, then clubbed by large legs for another 8, 9, and 17 damage. I use Bleeding Strike, dealing 174 damage. With the bleed, that's worth 343 damage. That's about a third of the hit points of the spider around me. I don't like this. More spiders come out of the webs, and we're surrounded several spiders deep.

There are maybe fifteen of them for each one of us. That's not good. I cast Mab's Rage. It does enough damage that it will take out all the spiders in the area, I think. That means I just have to keep myself alive, keep my Shell active, and I'll be fine. I'm webbed again, and now I'm moving at what is apparently normal speed. I don't like it. Why isn't my magic resistance coming into play? The spiders screech as they attack, as they are buffeted with cold winds and shards of ice from Mab's Rage.

That spell is the best thing I ever bought. I can keep this up for a full minute. And that full minute is enough to kill every single one of the spiders. You have defeated Giant Spider x46. You gain (82, 800/3) 27, 600 experience. Now comes the hard part. We need to harvest their poison glands. That's going to take some doing. Thankfully, I have better tools for harvesting animal parts than I did in the tutorial. That alone makes me want to go back to Glacrow; he really did provide me with everything I need.

I'm not perfect, and I don't get every gland intact. But between the forty six spider carcasses that I have to go through, I'm able to retrieve fifteen poison sacs without trouble. My animal harvesting goes up to 13, and we each put five poison glands into our spatial bags. So that's another quest done that we just need to hand in. I'm only eighteen thousand experience points away from yet another level, so handing in those two quests will get me to level 29.

But I still want to complete more quests before we head back to Elmspire. This part of the woods is thicker than what we've seen before, which either means we've been heading deeper into the woods or that they're about to start thinning out and may lead us to the edge soon.

"That spell is clutch," El says, wiping spider blood off her arms after helping me harvest the poison sacs.

"That would've been a really annoying fight."

"Agreed," Gigi says.

"It was one thing to fight a dozen of those monsters. But forty six? That would've taken forever."

"Just remember that I can only do it once every two hours," I say.

"I'm hoping to level it up, and that doing so will increase either the duration or the damage."

"I was just glad to have a fight to break up the monotony of the day," El says.

"I hate all this running."

"It's good for you," I say.

"Keeping up a steady pace should help improve our vigor. Eventually, at least." Mine hasn't increased on its own in a long time. I hope that means I'm due. Every point of vigor, at this level, is twenty eight hit points and twenty eight points of Shell. So basically it's like fifty six points of health, the way it is for Gigi and for El. Maybe I should take that talent next time. I have a lot of hit points, but doubling them would be good. That'd make it even harder for me to die.

And if I do die, that'll make sure I start with a decent base of hit points. I don't want to be stuck with fewer than fifty points of health ever again. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Or I could pick something that specifically helped me with exploration. Extra health helps me do just about anything, because it reduces the danger of death by a significant margin. But there have to be other things that will help me explore even better.

Something on par with dark vision or with polyglot. Something that helps me delve into the dark places of the world. I have to keep thinking about it. It's what occupies my mind as we keep moving. About two hours after we faced the spiders, I start to notice that the forest is starting to thin out. And for the first time in a good while, I find tracks belonging to something bipedal. Looks like elves.

I notice that I'm unconsciously following the elves tracks about ten minutes later, when I realize that the elf sign is getting thicker, and the signs of monsters is getting thinner. There are still animal trails, but they're more just animals. Rabbits, deer, that sort of thing. I also notice the traps laid out to catch those smaller prey. They aren't anything that the three of us need to worry about, though I still point them out to El and Gigi.

But there are snare traps laid out along the trail, a tripwire that will drop a large net, and even a small pit trap that we all give a wide berth to. Not surprisingly, I get a skill called Detect Traps, and it goes up to level two. I'm sure that will come in handy. I could probably also develop some kind of skill for disarming traps if I wanted to, but that feels like a really rude thing to do. Whoever set these traps isn't trying to trap adventurers; they're trying to trap dinner.

They put a lot of effort into setting these traps, and I don't want to screw things up for them just so that I can have the fun of learning how to disarm traps. I'll figure that out later. Eventually, we come across a well traveled trail that is just lousy with elf sign.

"I think we should follow it," I say.

"Maybe there's a village or something. We might be able to turn in quests, or get a quest, or something like that. We might even be able to sell some of our loot." We didn't take much from the temple other than what was in the chest. We really don't have all that much loot, unless you count the poison glands from the spiders and about a hundred pounds of spider carapace that I put into my bag just in case they could be used for crafting. But we do have the weapons from the bandits still.

So maybe we could sell those for a decent price.

"What if it isn't a village, though?" Gigi asks.

"What if we just end up at some dude's house?"

"Then we just keep going," El says.

"No harm to it. But he might have some food we can trade for or something like that." The girls seem to be precognizant. It is indeed just some dude's house. He meets us at the door of his little cottage, standing in that door as we walk up. He has a bow in his hand, with an arrow nocked, but it isn't pointed at any of us. Hiram Forester, Very rare elite elf pathfinder, level 35. HP: 17, 500/17, 500.

"Ho there," he says. He seems wary but not unfriendly. Particularly when he sees me. Somehow, my presence seems to relax him a little bit.

"What's your business?"

"We're just traveling through the woods," I say.

"Came across your sign, thought we'd stop in and pay our respects." Hiram laughs.

"Pay your respects? I'm no lord, kid."

"But you're clearly hunting the monsters and animals in this area," I say. I gesture to the drying racks outside his hut, filled with animal pelts. Some of them are even stretched out and drying into leather. This guy probably makes his own equipment.

I can't make out the details of his equipment, but I do see that he's decked out in leather armor that seems to be made of the forest itself, similar in color to the point where he would be invisible if he were standing among the brush and not outlined by the frame of his door.

"That I am," he says.

"What's it to you?"

"We were hoping you had some spare meat you wouldn't mind trading," El says. I see the man's nostrils flare. He briefly tenses, then calms down a bit, looking at El more closely.

"Depends on what you're offering in trade," he says. I hold up my empty hands.

"We have some weapons we could trade you. Good steel. Or I have some spider carapace."

"Did you get the spider meat?" he asks. I shake my head, and he looks disappointed.

"You should have. They have good meat, especially the legs. Sweet, once you boil it." I'll have to keep that in mind. Most every monster is edible, when you think about it. You just have to know what to cook and how.

"I have some venison," he says.

"I'll trade that to you for your spider carapace." We negotiate the details, and in the end I leave him with ten pounds of carapace in exchange for ten pounds of meat. He invites us to stay with him for his evening meal, and we agree. Soon, we're cooking a boar on a spit over a large fire pit behind Hiram's house.

"I don't get many visitors," he says as I turn the spit.

"Generally, I like it that way. It's four days for me to get to the city. Haven't been in going on about a year's time."

"Do you miss it?" Gigi asks him.

"Or do you really prefer your solitude?"

"I'm not alone," he says.

"I have my owl. He's been asleep, but he'll go out hunting with me soon as the night falls."

"Owls don't make the best conversationalists," Gigi points out.

"Neither do elves," Hiram says with a quiet chuckle.

"And I'm not much of one for conversation." Could've fooled me. If anything, he seems desperate to talk. I don't think he would've invited us to stay for dinner if he didn't want to talk.

"Still, it's good to be social from time to time," I say. Hiram shrugs.

"I like my alone time," he says.

"People are okay in small doses, like the three of you for a few hours. But the city is too much. I never go up into the branches; too crowded."

"Do you go to the city to trade?"

"Ayup. I bring furs and bones and things I make out here. Get a few coins in exchange, use those to buy luxuries and things that I can't easily get for myself. It's a simple enough life."

"And you've lived out here for a year?" I ask.

"Years," he says.

"Going on nine, if I count right." That's a long time to be alone.

"Did something happen?" Gigi asks.

"Nine years ago, I mean. Did something happen that made you come out here?"

"Ayup," Hiram says.

"I had a wife for a while. We were in the army together. She passed, and I decided I'd rather be by myself than surrounded by people with nothing for me but pity and a desire to use my skills for their own ends. So I gave up my old life, changed my class, and came out here. Built this hut with my own hands. Now I hunt the forest."

"Sounds peaceful," Gigi says.

"It is," he agrees. He smiles at her.

"Peaceful and quiet. No one wants anything from me, no one bothers me. I can go about my life how I see fit. Mourn in my own time, and in my own way." I'm guessing his wife passing wasn't an easy thing. Probably not a quick thing, either. I understand. I don't think I'd want to be around people who reminded me of the woman I loved. If there was a woman a loved and I lost her, I mean. I'd probably end up a hermit, too.

"What was your old class?" Gigi asks him.

"Scout," he says.

"I was a scout for the army." Strange. Not that he was a scout, but that he went with pathfinder instead of tracker. I'm pretty sure he qualified for both if he qualified as a scout. Maybe tracker was too close to scout. Maybe I should go back and revisit the pathfinder class and see if there's a reason he prefers that one.

"I've almost unlocked that one," I say.

"Still need more survival and trap making."

"I could teach you a few things," Hiram says.

"If you like." I stop rotating the boar over the fire. Gigi comes and takes it from me.

"I'd like that very much," I say. Hiram is a good teacher, or I'm an attentive student, or both. But he teaches me how to make a few basic traps, like how to bend a thin tree over and wrap the tip of it into a noose, setting it against the ground with a small brace so that when an animal steps into it they set off the trap.

"This is usually good for catching rabbits," he says.

"Maybe a fox. Nothing much bigger than that." He continues to show me some of the more basic traps, explaining how to cover up a pit trap, how deep to make it, and what to put in the pit. It only takes him about an hour to explain all this to me, but by the time he does, I have earned trap making at level 3, detect traps at level 3, and disarm traps at level 2.

"That's all I can teach you today," he says.

"Come back after you've experimented some more and I might be able to teach you more." The boar is delicious. I haven't had any kind of pork in a long time, and the meat is sweet and juicy and just absolutely delicious. We eat our fill, getting a minor 5% boost for movement speed for five hours after eating it.

"Helps keep me light on my feet," Hiram explains as we share out the boar. He invites us to go hunting with him, but I can tell from the way he extends the offer that he doesn't really mean it. There's gratitude in his eyes when we turn him down.