Chương 80: Chapter 81: The Climb

I have four levels of climbing. I don't know if either of the girls have any. I'm sure we're going to have more by the time we get down. I press myself against the cliff and search for a foot hold I can move to, then find handholds along the way. Climbing down is a lot harder than climbing up. You can't see where you're going, so you have to find everything by feel. And you're very, very aware of high up you are. You know that one slip and you'll fall for a while before hitting the ground.

How long would the fall be? Ten feet per second per second, right? So that means ten feet the first second, then twenty more the second second, then thirty more the third second and forty more the fourth second. So four seconds to fall a hundred feet. That's not very long. What will I think about on the way down? What will I do if one of the girls falls? Do I climb back up to retrieve them? Do I keep climbing down and hope that I make it?

Do I call it quits on the whole climbing thing and fall myself in a weird sort of suicidal solidarity? No, I don't think I want to do that. Up or down, but climbing all the way. I keep moving down, kind of wishing I'd taken the advice I gave Ash and removed my own armor. It just keeps getting in the way. It makes it a little bit harder to move, which makes it exponentially harder to climb. My foot slips from under me, and I kick at nothing for a while, scrabbling to get it back into a foot hold.

My arms aren't tired, and don't seem to mind holding me up for a few seconds while I do it. We're maybe twenty feet down when I find the first problem with trying to do this climb. My stamina is flashing. It keeps dropping and then going back up. Not a problem for me; my regeneration seems to be keeping up with the drain. But what about El and Ash? They might run out of stamina before we get to the bottom. What'll happen then? Will they just fall the rest of the way? How far is safe to fall?

How much damage is the fall going to do at fifty feet? What about at forty? We can probably survive a forty foot drop. They can, at least. They've both got 300 or more hit points. As long as it's not like ten damage per foot, they should be fine. Still, it's probably going to hurt. I try to move more quickly down the cliff, though my stamina keeps regenerating. I figure that if I move faster, they'll move faster too, and that will mean they will end up falling from a lower height.

I move down, hanging from one hand and finding a foothold, practically dropping down five feet at a time. I look over at El, and she is doing the same. She looks like she's dropping and catching herself several feet at a time. Ash does end up falling the last ten feet, and lands heavily on the ground. El makes it all the way down, and I make it down just after she does. They're both panting for breath, with Ash rubbing her legs and needing some time to recover her hit points.

The damage wasn't ten per foot, it was five. Which means we would only take about five hundred points of damage if we fell out of the cave all the way to the ground. That's enough to kill us now, but it's not that much in the grand scheme of things. After everyone is okay and ready to move on, we start moving across the scree and to the foothills of the mountains. There's not much space for us to be stealthy; there's not much to hide behind.

But as the mountains turn into hills, there are at least hills we can keep between us and any monsters that we come across. About an hour outside of Wrax's mountain, I spot an enemy. I mean, we all spot them, but I'm able to identify them from a good distance. Stone giant. Very rare elite monster, level 30. HP 15, 000/15, 000. Even though there's just one of them, we can agree that it's still out of our pay grade at the moment.

But we should try to get close, so that we get credit for engaging with the creature and get some experience from the giant. If we get close enough to get experience, that'll be worth probably a couple of levels. And it won't take many levels before we will be able to kill something like the stone giant. I lead them around a hill and slowly towards the giant, watching it as it stands around, a tree trunk club in its hand as it yawns and stretches out.

I keep an eye on its head, waiting for it to turn this way, waiting for some indication that it's seen us. I don't know what all it can do, but I know I don't want to find out in a way that sends us right back to Wrax. So I keep an eye on it, watching its eyeline, waiting for it to turn towards us. As soon as it does, I use Distraction, sending it looking in another direction. It stomps off, the steps having enough impact that I can feel the ground shaking underneath my feet. I let out a breath, sighing in relief.

Ash puts her hand on my shoulder, and I can feel the tension there. Did we get close enough? We weren't within melee range, but we were easily close enough for me to hit the giant with an arrow, or with a spell. We were close enough that I could smell him, an earthy odor tinged with the smell of urine. Was it close enough? You have evaded Stone Giant. You gain 1, 000 experience. It's not as much as killing the giant would've gotten us, but it's more than enough for us to level up to level four.

That gives us seven points to spend. I put one into agility, two in vigor, two in presence, and two into awareness. I was close to breaking a hundred with awareness when I last died, and I'd like to actually get there. That puts us all at or over a thousand hit points. Amazing for level four.

"Do you think we could take the giant now?" El asks, looking back to the direction that the giant tromped off to.

"Five thousand experience would go a long way right now." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"I don't know," I say.

"I'm not sure how much damage it will do to us."

"I think we consider it for the next thing we come across, but not go chasing down a giant," Ash says.

"Maybe we'll run into another one as we walk through the hills." She starts getting out her armor.

"Maybe we don't need to sneak as successfully as we have been. Maybe we just need to sneak enough to get the advantage of surprise when we attack." I take out my bow and nock an arrow. I'm not sure it's a good idea for us to try to take out even something like a stone giant at our current levels. But then, I'm not sure I have a good grasp on just how much more powerful we've gotten in our time with Wrax. I do more damage with my bow than I literally ever have, and it's because of how high our stats are.

I don't think I had a thousand hit points when we left the tutorial. I know that at level 27 I had less than twelve hundred. We're going to have so many hit points as we level up. And our defense scores are really high, even just now. I mean, my sheet is ridiculous. Caleb Strong, level 4 wolf blood ranger. XP 400/500. HP: 1000 MP: 360 Stamina: 400 Defense: 262 Magic Resist: 82% Strength: 125+10 Agility: 216+4 Vigor: 125 Manipulation: 70 Presence: 90 Willpower: 100 Charisma: 70 Awareness: 84+4.

Skills: Animal Harvesting 17, Alertness 24, Bow 36, Climbing 4, Cooking 3, Dagger 7, Detect Traps 6, Disarm Traps 4, Dodge 28, Haggling 5, Intimidation 3, Meditation 14, Negotiation 9, Pick Lock 15, Riding 8, Scrounge 13, Shield 10, Sneak 36+4, Spellcraft 38, Subterfuge 3, Survival 14, Swimming 2, Sword 32, Throwing 12, Tracking 26, Trap making 9. Secondary skills: Armorer 19, Bowyer 7, Fletcher 5, Scrapping 12, Smithing 24.

Talents: Darkvision, Exemplar (Agility), Polyglot, Regenerate (stamina), Fast Reflexes, Toughness, Resist Fire. Hunter (steel): 220, Adventurer (steel): 120, Scout (steel): 125/225 All that, and just level four. We climb up on a hill, and I spot some creatures that we could actually hunt. Spined Mammoth. Rare elite creature, level 32. HP: 8, 000/8, 000. It looks like an elephant, but with spikes coming out of its spine and two sets of tusks instead of one.

There are five of them on the plains between us and the forest. That's a lot of experience. And probably a quest to hunt them back at the hunter's guild. Also, I wonder how their meat tastes. The girls seem to be on the same page as I am. El has a javelin in her hand and Ash has a bow. Wordlessly, I draw back my own bow and take a Sniper Shot at the nearest elephant. It deals 1, 305 damage. The rapid shot I follow it up with deals 2, 424 damage.

That's not enough to kill it, but when I throw in a Power Shot for 1, 865, the combination of the three attacks and their bleed are enough to kill one of the mammoths. The rest of them turn towards us and charge, peppered by Ash's arrows and punctured by El's javelins. They're already wounded, but they're closing the gap quickly. I manage to get off another three shots, dealing 370, 368, and 373 damage to the lead mammoth, then I move out of the way of their charge.

Not surprisingly, they have a hard time turning while they charge forward, and I manage to get out of their line. El does not. She stands waiting for them, and takes a heavy hit from one of the tusks. I can't tell how much damage it did because of her Shell, but it looks like a lot. She isn't slowed by it, though, slamming her axes down at the same time, right into the skull of the majestic creature. The axes skip off the thick skull, but I can tell they did a lot of damage.

One of the mammoths turns towards me and lumbers in my direction, not quite charging but rather just closing the distance so he can gore me with his tusks. I shoot it again, then draw my sword and prepare to fight it in melee. I'm pretty sure it can cover ground faster than I can, or at least fast enough that continuing to kite it and shoot it might not be a winning strategy. We'll see how much damage it deals when it hits me.

I don't want it to hit me, so I make sure to duck and weave, to move around the flailing head. I use Chop and deal 597 damage. I think I actually do more damage with my sword than my bow now, despite having nearly a hundred extra points in agility. I may need to invest in a new bow when we get back to Elmspire. The mammoth then hits me with the whip of its trunk, slamming into me and pushing me back several feet. It does 168 damage to my Shell. That's a lot. And that's the trunk, not the tusks.

I keep backing up, trying to stay out of range of the monstrosity, but it keeps pace with me, trying to either stomp on me, gore me, or both. I use Bleeding Strike for another 597 damage. The mammoth in front of me is down to about six thousand hit points, and it continues to try to gore me. It manages, after two of my strikes hit it, to gore me. This time, it does 288 damage to my Shell, leaving it almost halfway gone. I shoot a Fire Bolt at it for 504 damage, amazed that the spell does so much damage.

Then I dive out of the way of another trunk swipe, rolling on the ground and coming to my feet just far enough to do another Fire Bolt before it closes in on me. That's five thousand hit points it has left. I use Stinging Defense, something I haven't leveled up because it requires something to attack me for me to use it. It still only does 50% of my defense every time the enemy attacks, which works out to 131 damage every time it tries to gore me or swing its trunk at me.

I manage to dodge most of the attacks, but I do eventually get hit with another 168 damage. So it's still hitting about one out of seven times. And it's down to four thousand hit points. I hit it with another Bleeding Strike, then another Chop, dropping it down another fourteen hundred points while it bleeds, the blood splattering everywhere as it whips its wounded trunk around, trying to hit me again.

The trunk is covered with wounds from Stinging Defense, and it's clear that the creature is mad with pain at this point. Not that it was particularly lucid and scheming before. I keep dancing around it, letting the Stinging Defense slowly whittle away its hit points, dropping it down to two thousand, then to one thousand about the time it hits me with another 288 point gore. My Shell is almost down, but I'm not going to recast it just yet.

Let it hit me one more time and I will, but I can take a bit of damage to my fleshy bits, and I don't want to waste the time to cast the spell until I have to. I hit it with another Chop, this time taking away about half of its remaining hit points. I just need to hit it one more time. Bleeding Strike won't come off cooldown in time to use that, but Chop comes off after just two seconds, and I put the mammoth down. As the mammoth attacking me dies, I get a look over at what El and Ash are doing.

They're currently working together to finish off the last of the mammoths, hitting it again and again. I don't even have the time to get over there to join them. You have defeated spined mammoth x5. You gain (40, 000/3) 13, 333 experience. You have gained several levels. You are now level 12. You have 39 attribute points to spend. El laughs, happy to be back to double digits and happy to have so many points to spend. I decide to put my awareness up sixteen points, just to get it to one hundred.

As soon as I do, I complete a secret quest and gain 10, 000 more experience, which puts me up to level 14 and gets me 12 more attribute points. So I now have 35. I put five each into strength, agility, vigor, manipulation, presence, willpower, and charisma, spreading the points evenly across the other attributes. That brings my hit points up to 3640, my MP to 1330, and my stamina to 1470. Those are insane numbers. Ash also got boosted to level 14, and has even surpassed El with hit points.

Not by much; El has 4320 and Ash has 4480. But I think it's the first time El has lost the spot for having the most hit points.