Chương 61: Chapter 62: Reunited

Now that I'm out of the guild halls and have a few minutes to myself, I check to see what being a ranger gets me. Ranger: All your ranger skills are improved and will grow more rapidly. Add your agility to the damage of all ranged attacks. Gain sneak attack when appropriate. Your nature based spells and abilities will level up faster. Your steps are 20% lighter, allowing you to run for longer and preventing you from leaving a trail in most environments, provided you are sneaking when you move.

That last one is pretty cool. It means I move even faster than I already do, and I only leave a trail in mud or snow. That's pretty awesome. Seems like rangers are good at whatever environment they're in. That explains the need for survival. I wonder what the level thirty bonus will be, and if I'll get to keep it when Wrax finds me and kills me again. I really don't want to think about that right now. I spend the rest of the night at the forge, working on upgrading my bow.

I manage to get it up to level 22, which increases the base damage by 18 points, both minimum and maximum. It also increases my bowyer skill to 6. Around the time I'm finishing up with my bow, I get a message from El. Are you awake and around? She asks. We're just outside the clearing, talking to a guard. He doesn't seem to want to let Ash in. Which direction are you? I ask. I'll come to you. When I get there, I see why they're having trouble letting Ash in, but not saying anything about Vincent.

Vincent looks almost human. He's got two little horns on his forehead, and I'm pretty sure he's got sharp teeth, and his eyes appear to be yellow in the early dawn light, but otherwise he looks human. Ash's skin is charcoal black, her eyes are red, and her hair is white. She has long horns that sweep back over her head, seemingly keeping her hair in place, and she definitely has sharp teeth. They look shark like, in fact. Also, she smells of sulfur.

But I'm not sure the guards at the gate are taking that into account.

"Look, what's the problem?" she asks as I'm walking up.

"It's not like our peoples are at war or something. Why can't I go in?"

"It's nothing like that, good miss," the guard says.

"And I'm not saying that you can't go in. Of course your kind – er, of course you're welcome in Elmspire. I just need to clear it with my captain. He just needs to take note of your entry, is all. Standard procedure, you know." I can't smell a lie in any literal sense, but that one just stinks. They're profiling her, and they're going to keep a tally on her the whole time she's in the city. They just want to keep track, to make sure they know where she is. I'm sure it's all very innocent.

Except it's treating her like a criminal without her doing anything at all wrong. I shake my head. Then I step forward and interrupt the proceedings.

"Hey guys," I say.

"We don't need to go into the city. Let's just head out, okay?"

"We'll be back," Ash says, pointing a finger at the guard.

"And when I come back, I will be entering the city."

"Yes ma'am," the guard says, trying to be diplomatic.

"Of course you'll be welcome, miss." We walk away. Ash mutters to herself for a few seconds, then turns to me and smiles. The smile is a little bit disconcerting, but it's still the same smile she had during the tutorial. The teeth are just a little more sharp and jagged.

"Caleb!" she says, reaching out for a hug. I hug her back, my arms barely coming together around her armored form.

"Hey Ash. Missed you guys." Vincent just shakes my hand, smiling warmly. I take a moment to look at all of them and inspect them. Vincent. Xanar blood warlock, level 28. HP: 1, 120/1, 120. Ash. Veka blood paladin, level 31. HP: 3, 720/3, 720. El. Bear blood battle rager, level 32. HP: 5, 440/5, 440. Gigi. Leopard blood knight, level 32. HP: 4, 800/4, 800.

"You made it to ranger!" Gigi says, patting me hard on the back. Then she looks me up and down, really checking me out. I notice that her cat eyes linger on my face, on the cut of my jaw. I scratch the thin beard that's started growing there.

"You look good," she says. Is she flirting with me? Well, I did increase my Charisma five times over. I'm probably better looking than I used to be. Maybe she is flirting with me.

"Yeah, you look sexy as fuck," El says, giving me a hug that almost crushes the air out of my lungs.

"And it seems like death can't really keep you down, either."

"Yeah. Funny story about that," I say.

"Did you really die again while we were coming back?" Gigi asks. She laughs at me a little bit.

"I mean, I know it's more dangerous going out alone, but I didn't expect that you'd put yourself into any real danger without us. Why didn't you just wait for us?"

"That's kind of a long story," I say.

"Can I tell you guys as we walk?" If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Yeah," El says, smiling at me and giving me a very long and almost lewd once over. Then something occurs to her, and she clears her throat.

"Hey, we found a dungeon on our way back. Do you still have the quest to clear one of those?"

"Yes I do," I say.

"And clearing the dungeon will probably get me another level."

"You've gained the most levels out of all of us," Vincent says.

"Did you say that you made it all the way back up to twenty nine before you died again?" I have gained the most levels. And the most stat points. By a pretty wide margin, actually.

"That's right," I say.

"But I had help." As we walk towards the dungeon they have marked on their map, I tell them about my adventures leveling up by myself. I tell them about Wrax, and about what he said about the god slayer. Then I tell them about Wrax's plan, and how he started to enact it.

"You rode on a dragon?" That seems to be all Gigi cares about from this story.

"What was that like?"

"It was like riding on the outside of an airplane," I say.

"Or like riding on a motorcycle at three hundred miles an hour. It was exhilarating. And terrifying."

"But cool?"

"Yeah," I say.

"It was pretty cool. Right up until where he killed me."

"It's a pretty good trick," Ash says.

"I mean, I'm not saying I want to volunteer for it, but it might be worth it. Where are your stats right now?"

"My lowest stat is my manipulation, at 35. My highest is my agility, at 106."

"Over a hundred?" Vincent says, raising an eyebrow.

"That is impressive."

"Yeah. You get ten thousand experience when you break a hundred in any stat, too," I say.

"I'm not sure if that's true of multiple stats. My charisma is the next highest, and it's only at 60."

"Sixty charisma?" Gigi asks. She looks me up and down again and bites her lip.

"Yeah, that would explain it."

"Explain what?" I ask.

"How you got so hot," El says, laughing.

"Your stats are all high," Ash says.

"Impressively so. You have a lot of hit points for your level, especially since you never took toughness. I take it your vigor is pretty high. Well, wait, I can do the math. Your vigor is... fifty nine, right?" I nod.

"Yeah, that's pretty high. Seems like this trick really works. Maybe we should consider finding Wrax and taking him up on his offer."

"What, let him kill us a hundred times?" Vincent asks.

"No thank you."

"He could be like our party's patron," Ash says.

"Get us levels quickly, then kill us and repeat the process. We all get really high stats, and then we go after the god slayer together."

"I'm not convinced that we need to go after the god slayer at all," Vincent says.

"How do we know that he is even a threat? Maybe he's not trying to kill any gods. Maybe it was a mistake, or a desperate act, or a one time goal. We don't know that this person has nefarious goals. Maybe he just wants to be left alone."

"And maybe they want to conquer the world," I say.

"Maybe they want to destroy this world as revenge for what it did to our world. What if they blame this world for the end of our world, or they think that destroying this world will get them back to our old world? Shouldn't we be ready to stop them?"

"But what if they're right?" Vinvent asks.

"What if destroying this world will get us back to our old world? What if it will get the world back to what it was?" Gigi shakes her head.

"You can't go back. Everyone is dead. They were killed by lynxith and other monsters. Destroying this world isn't going to bring them back. It isn't going to put things back the way they were. You can't go back to the way the were. You can't just hope that everything gets undone. Time moves forward, and you can only deal with the way things are now. You can't try to go back to the way things were."

"I'm still not convinced that we should want to kill the god slayer, whoever he is," Vincent says.

"Well, we should still consider getting ready to," Ash says.

"Yeah," El agrees.

"Whoever she is, the god slayer is dangerous. We should at least close the gap between her and us in case we need to take her out, or to protect Elmspire from her."

"I'm not sure I want to protect Elmspire," Ash says.

"But I do want to be ready. It's something to keep in mind." The rest of the walk, we talk about the adventures that Ash and Vincent have had as demon bloods. Their starting city is about as far away from the border of the forest as Elmspire was in the other direction. Their city was on a hill between two branches of a large river. Reminded them of Minneapolis and St Paul. They adventured together and even had some run ins with one of the guilds.

"I don't like guilds," Ash tells me.

"They're too controlling. I much prefer to be able to decide for myself what quests I take and where I go."

"Yes, they were very stifling," Vincent agrees.

"But they did have access to quests that the normal faction guilds did not, so there is that."

"I've only met one guild person since we got here," I say.

"He seemed nice enough, though. He never mentioned anything about specific guild quests."

"And guild loot," Vincent adds.

"Which you buy with the renown you gain for their guild, same as the faction guilds." I haven't actually purchased anything from the faction guilds yet. I almost bought a spell, but I decided to wait until the shops were open in the morning to see if I could find something else that I liked better. Now I've missed my chance. I just need one more spell. I don't even care what it is. It could be as useless as Magical Dart. Wait. Magical Dart does my spellcraft +4 damage now. Last level it did +2.

It's still not enough to be worth the ten mana it costs, but that does suggest something. If it's an exponential increase, and the next level adds +8, then +16, it will get to a useful level much faster. I thought that maybe it was a spell that was only useful to the dedicated mages. Like I assume Vincent has a spellcraft around 30 or 40, where it would just start to be useful.

And I know that it always hits, which might help against particularly well defended creatures or opponents, but that didn't seem to be enough to offset the terrible damage. But if it does that kind of progression, then it will become useful in a manner of levels, and worth practicing as a way to drain my MP so that I can meditate to get it full again. Another thing that Wrax would need to let me do if we were to go through with his plan. I wonder if we could alternate days.

One of us getting power leveled by the dragon while the rest of us worked on skills, spells, and abilities. That would definitely be a better deal for Wrax, and make it a lot faster to be able to do the level up and kill thing. I can't believe I'm even thinking about doing this. It's a crazy plan, and it involves dying. I don't want to die. That's the goal of life: not dying. It's like the number one priority. Worry about that later. Right now, my number one priority is getting to level thirty.

And to do that, we have to go through a dungeon, and clear it out. I've never been in a dungeon before. I don't know how big they are, and I don't know what kinds of monsters we're going to find. Because we have to camp on the way, I'm assuming that it's going to be monsters of relatively high power. If it were within one day's journey of Elmspire, I wouldn't worry. But this dungeon is more than a day out, at least at a casual pace. We only make it about twenty miles from Elmspire before we camp.

I could have moved at maybe five times that pace if I really wanted to, but we're not in a rush. We're just walking and talking. Catching up and reminiscing about that time two weeks ago when we all met in a world that was ending.