Chương 81: Chapter 82: Back to the forest

Between more mammoths, a few groups of dire bears, and an ambush by bargheasts in which I get to enjoy the fruits of my resistance to fire, we rapidly get back into the twenties for level. By the time we've gotten out of the mountains and into the forest, we're all back to level twenty two. I use the sixty three points to boost my strength, agility, vigor, presence, and willpower all by 10, with another eight points into charisma and five points into awareness. I notice something strange when I do that.

My magic resistance is 105%. It's always been linked to my awareness, so it's not exactly surprising. But it means something. You can't be more than one hundred percent resistant to something. That doesn't make sense. Unless I'm going to be absorbing magic and actually healing from attack spells. And I know it's not that. Because I asked Ash to shoot me with her spell.

"Are you sure?" she asks.

"It's an experiment," I say. She doesn't hesitate past that. I have Shell, and I have more than six thousand hit points now. She's not going to be able to kill me. But I have to see what happens when she shoots me. The Ice Bolt hits me, and I do take damage. I pull up the notification for the hit to see what happened. You are hit for (100-81) 19 damage. Okay. So it did nineteen damage when it was supposed to do a hundred. But where does that eighty one come from?

It's not from my magic resistance; according to my magic resistance, I should have taken -5 damage from that strike. So where does it come from?

"What's your spellcraft?" I ask her.

"Twenty four," she says. That's it. One hundred and five minus twenty four is eighty one. Just to be sure, I have El hit me with a spell too. We compare the damage reduction to her spellcraft, and sure enough, it checks out. Okay, that makes sense.

"So you subtract your spellcraft from their magic resistance, and reduce the damage by the resulting amount of magic resistance. That means people who aren't all that aware of their surroundings are going to take a lot more damage from spells."

"I feel like I should be insulted by that," El says.

"Why?"

"Because my awareness is only 42," she says.

"But I like it at 42. It's funny that way."

"I'm more talking about people who have their awareness in the teens or the twenties," I say.

"Forty two is a respectable awareness."

"I don't have anything in the twenties," El says.

"In fact, awareness is my lowest stat."

"Mine is charisma," Ash says.

"And it's at fifty."

"Mine is also charisma," I say.

"But it's at 83."

"You have an 83 charisma, and it's your lowest stat?" El whistles.

"We definitely need to have sex."

"What's your highest?" Ash asks me.

"Agility, at 231," I say.

"235 with my bow."

"I'm about to hit two hundred fifty strength and two hundred vigor," El says.

"That's probably why you have higher stats; you spread your points out more."

"Yeah," I say. Ash nods, like she's satisfied with something. Was she thinking about going back to Wrax for another round? We've hit the level where we can handle it, where we've made up for the deficit of losing our lives. Does Ash want more power that badly? Or is it just that she wants to make sure she and I are balanced?

"So what's our plan from here?" El asks.

"Now that we're back in the forest. Are we going back to Elmspire? Because I don't have that much money. We've been doing all this training and crafting and leveling and dying, but we haven't actually done any adventuring. We don't have loot to sell."

"That's a good point," I say.

"And the idea was for us to adventure, not just head straight back to the city. We've got a few days; let's go find something worth selling."

"You have any ideas?" Ash asks me. She sweeps a hand out to the path in front of us.

"If you can see a trail that leads back to a hoard of treasure, I'm all for it." That is a problem. How does one find the dungeon when one wants to delve into it? There isn't exactly a sign laid out saying "this way there be treasure." So how do we find it? I look at the tracks in front of us. From the looks of it, there are more dire bears we could track down, or we could track down a trail of some kind of wolf creature that is much larger than a regular wolf or even a shadow wolf.

There's also scorpion trails that suggest a scorpion the size of a motorcycle. And then, almost impossible to see among the other tracks, I spot it. A human footprint.

"Maybe another fortress," I say, pointing it out to the two of them.

"Maybe a group of bandits at least."

"Bandits are hardly worth it," Ash says.

"They might be in the twenties out here," I point out.

"And they may be more than just bandits."

"Every little bit helps," El says, starting to look excited.

"We could also turn around and go kill Wrax if we wanted." I look at her. She would say that. El has 8, 360 hit points now. That's a lot of health, and enough to resist several hits from Wrax. Ash has just over seven thousand, and I have just over six. Could we kill Wrax? Could we kill another dragon instead? I'd much rather kill another dragon. Even though he's killed me a bunch of times, I don't want to kill Wrax. I kind of like him. But could we kill him? We each do over 500 damage per hit.

He's got 160, 000 hit points. We'd have to hit him a little over three hundred times before he killed all three of us. And it would probably be a pretty serious fight; I doubt he'd want to keep working with us if we tried to kill him. Can we hit him more than three hundred times in the time it takes him to kill each of us? I don't think we can. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"The dragon is still out of reach, I think," I say.

"But let's follow these human tracks and see where they lead."

"Maybe they'll lead to more people from the Sylvan Lords," El says.

"Then we can tell them that we've been hunting in their territory and see them get all red and blustery." We follow the trail backwards to its origin. I'm hoping we find an encampment at the very least, or a fortress if we're lucky. I don't know if the three of us can take a fortification that's well supplied, but we can do a lot of damage between the three of us, so anything is possible. And, worst case scenario, we end up dead and back with Wrax for another round of getting more and more powerful.

I don't think we need that, but I'm wondering if Ash would agree. The trail soon joins other tracks of more humans and elves, but there's something a bit odd about them. I don't know if it's that these are the tracks of players from Earth or if they're a different type of elf, but they don't have the same flowing movement that I've seen from the forest elves. These are feet that are marching, not moving with nature.

I have my bow in hand as we go, looking around to see if there is anyone waiting for us at the end of the trail. Again, I'm hoping we find an encampment.

"If we do find players, don't use your spell this time," El says.

"I want to fight them normally."

"Yeah, okay," I say. I won't use Mab's Rage unless it looks like we're losing. If our Shells go down, and we don't have time to put them back up, then I'll use it. We can survive a minute and a half with our natural hit points. I don't think anyone else can. After maybe half an hour of following the trail, we do come across a campsite. There are three tents set up around a campfire. But there's no one here. The fire is burned down to embers, but there's no one tending to it.

All the footprints lead back here, but there's no one around. We could loot the campsite. I doubt there's going to be anything worth taking, but we could look around. Maybe they're piling their loot together instead of keeping it in their spatial bags. That would be stupid, but maybe they don't have the space. Maybe they're trying to keep everyone honest. We go through the tents. They're larger than the one El has; looks like each one is meant to sleep four people.

That means at least twelve people in this camp, if they all come back at once. Possibly more, if they keep people on guard duty. Though if they kept people on guard duty, it would make sense that they leave at least one to guard the camp during the day, while the rest of them are out doing whatever it is they do. So maybe it is just twelve of them. Based on the tracks leaving camp, they aren't all traveling together. I can see groups of three leaving together from a couple of different directions.

Enough of them that I think it's safe to say that there are actually fifteen of them using this campsite, all told. So they keep three people on guard at any given time. Except right now, of course. I build their fire back up and pull out some of the mammoth meat to cook over the fire. Ash laughs at me.

"Are we just taking over their camp?"

"Might as well," I say.

"They don't have anyone here."

"It'll be super intimidating if they come back to find that we've just taken over and started cooking on their fire, too," El says. She seems excited by the idea. Mammoth meat tastes like beef, though a little bit hardier. I put some of the meat to smoke into jerky and sit to enjoy my meal. The sun will be down in about an hour, which I'm guessing means that the people will be returning to camp any minute now. We settle in, our weapons close at hand, and wait.

Sure enough, before the sun sets a group of three people come into the camp. They are chatting with one another and seem to be happy, until they see that we are not their companions. Then they stop and draw their weapons, eyeing us all with suspicion.

"What the hell?" one of them asks. I identify him as Carlos, a duelist. I can't see his level, but I know it's higher than mine. I don't know how many hit points he has, but I'm guessing it's a lot less than I have.

"Who are you?"

"We're just some travelers," I say. I don't even get up from my seat around the fire. I barely look at Carlos.

"We found this empty campsite and decided to help ourselves to the fire."

"You can't do that," one of the others asks. I glance at her. Sherry, sword saint. Ooh, never seen that class before. I wonder what it takes to qualify. She looks like she's ambidextrous, as she has a sword in each hand. She's also higher level than me.

"What's going on?" another voice asks. I turn and see another group of three. Two of them, both scouts, have bows pointed at us, arrows drawn. This is starting to get serious. Maybe I should stand up.

"Are you guys with the Sylvan Lords?" I ask.

"We are," Carlos says.

"Are you?" I consider lying.

"Nah," El says, taking the opportunity away from us.

"We just like hunting in 'your' lands."

"Are you with the Vikings?" Carlos asks.

"You don't look like you're Vikings." So there's a guild calling themselves Vikings and dressing the part. That's cool.

"Nope," I say.

"We're not part of any guild. We just like going wherever we want and doing whatever we want." Ash pulls her mace off her belt and cracks her neck.

"Do you all have a problem with that?"

"I have a problem with you invading our camp when we weren't here," Carlos says.

"And I have a problem with you using our fire."

"But do you have a problem with us killing monsters in your grinding area?" I ask.

"How do you have so many hit points?" Sherry asks.

"Did you manage to take the toughness talent multiple times?"

"Can we do that?" El asks.

"Because I'd do that." I laugh at her. She's going to hit five digits of health sooner than later. She doesn't need to redouble hit points.

"Look," Carlos says, looking around and seeing a third group of three come into camp. We're somewhat surrounded.

"How about you just get up and leave, and we'll pretend this never happened." That tells me a lot. He can see our hit points, and so he can see that we have a fuck load. He must be thinking that our levels are either wrong or that we're leveling back up after dying. He probably is wondering if he can take us, even with nine of them and three of us. I stand up, my bow at my side, an arrow nocked but not pulled back. I face the two archers who seem to have their arrows focused on me, following me as I move.

They aren't going to fire in case I'm taking Carlos up on his offer.

"I don't think we want to leave," I say.

"And I don't think we want to pretend this never happened."

"What? Why not?" Are we really doing this? Are we really picking a fight with a bunch of level thirty and higher players, just to see if we can?

"We've been out of the world a bit," I say.

"And we were hoping you guys could enlighten us. Is your little guild still claiming this area of the forest for yourselves?"

"Yes," Carlos says. I look at him, and I clock his eyes looking to the forest, where I hear another group coming in. I can practically see all twelve of them, standing nervously, unsure what's going to happen. This feels like a bad idea. We're letting them surround us, and we're picking a fight that we don't need to pick. I look over at El. She has her axes in her hands, flexing her grip on them and already smiling at the carnage she is sure is to come. Ash also looks ready to charge ahead.

If I want to avoid a fight, I have to be careful. But do I want to avoid one? I mean, killing these people is just going to help them, right? It'll make them stronger. Is that the kind of thinking that I have now? Maybe it's a good thing we left Wrax's cave when we did. This is insane.

"We don't recognize your authority," Ash says.

"We will hunt wherever we want whenever we want. Do you have a problem with that?"

"I have a problem with it," Sherry says.

"We're in control of this area. This is where we grind our levels. You can't be here. Go get your levels back somewhere else. It's a big forest." She's blustering. Bluffing. I don't think she wants to fight. Or maybe she's thinking that all we did was dump points into vigor, leaving our other stats woefully behind. We may just be big sacks of hit points to her, and she might be willing to whittle us down with her masterful use of her two swords.

"We're just traveling through," I say, holding up my empty hand, the bow and arrow still in the other hand.

"We'll kill whatever monsters we come across, but we'll make our way through your territory and then you won't have to worry about us."

"No deal," Sherry says.

"This is our territory. You want to hunt here, you have to pay a fine." Here we go again.

"That's not a good tactic," I say.

"Last time your guys tried to make us pay, we killed all of them." That's not the kind of language that stops a fight. Damn it.