Chương 207: Searching The Settlement

"Well that was unproductive," I muttered. We had been searching the settlement and had found nothing of value for the last week. There were no corpses either, from demons or beastkin. Even targeting the wealthier and central areas of the settlement, they had been picked clean by the beastkin or the demons. There were a couple pieces of jewelry made of gold and silver that we had found, but they weren't worth much.

The central refinery, entrance to the dungeon, and protective wards around the settlement at the center had all been destroyed.

"Are you giving up?" Lanner asked. He had gone with me on the first two days, but after that he preferred to stay out of the cold.

"Kind of. Still doing my daily walks to check the outside. There is nothing but debris, junk, and metal," I replied. I had more than enough metal and had stocked up quite a bit. I had cut away several walls and was going to make more large runic plates out of the metal rather than stone.

"I will be working on Mana Manipulation and some other skills," Lanner said. I just nodded at this. He didn't have to tell me. But at least he had the right mindset of working to improve himself. I looked at Ozy who was still asleep and could only shake my head. My lazy pet was resting near the heat source I had set up in the room. Getting out the metal plates I had cut off buildings I slowly began working on them. The trick I was going to use was to create one runic plate to shape the rest of the metal.

This was a crafting related skill. While I wasn't skilled enough to shape metal like putty, I could take a metal rectangle and make it a uniform rectangle. The metal plates would be small, just slightly larger than my hand and as thin as I could reasonably make them. Not as thin as paper tags unfortunately. But they would be thin enough, I could easily pull one out, activate it, and throw it. Unlike using Mana cores as bombs, this was more refined, controlled and powerful.

Basically, the boundary for the explosion was better managed. Rather than just exploding the Mana, the metal plate would create a slight atmospheric boundary to limit blowback from the attack. I would also have some larger metal plates as well. Fire was a classic for a reason. While I didn't expect to need all these items, I wanted to be prepared. Preparing for a future fight was a good use of my time while also studying from various books and practicing other skills.

Stillness, Empowered Stealth, and the three gnomish counter divination skills of Veil, Mask, and Obscure were my main priorities at the moment. I would go outside once every day working on my stealth and Cold Resistance. Then I would work on the rest of the skills and craft metal runic plates. There were two main reasons I had decided to work on the counter divination skills. After getting Compass of Desire, I realized how broken divination could be. It was like a cheat code for information gathering.

I disliked people being able to track me at a distance. The null stone plate that the gnomes had gifted me was coming in handy. I spent at least four hours just sitting there, trying to sense the minute amounts of Mana leaving my body. It was incredibly tedious and slow. Veil involved sensing and altering the Mana profile of my body. The first was to sense that profile. While Lanner had an understanding of these skills, he had learned them as a young gnome and with the cursed skill he couldn't talk about them.

They were a part of his gnomish identity. If I could learn Veil by the end of the dark season, I would be happy. The biggest problem was skill overlap. I had the same issue with Physical Resistance and Empowered Toughness. Stillness, Empowered Meditation, and now Veil all slightly overlapped each other. Each skill had their own use, but it was a problem to unlock a new skill that was overlapped by others. This wasn't a problem I had in forever.

Other people would have run into this issue in the past, but I never really had to struggle to learn a skill that I wanted. The second major reason why I wanted to learn the gnomish counter divination skills was the quest that was looming over my life. Sneaking to this forge and destroying the blade would not be simple. While we had moved from the White Wastes back to the settlement, I had kept a close eye on my two directional skills. Compass of Desire was locked onto a dungeon entrance.

Based on the distance and the slight directional change of the skill, I used my math skills to work out the distance from the angle the skill changed and the distance covered. With around 40 kilometers covered and an 8 degree angle, the rest was just working out the math. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. It was very rough math, but we were about 286 kilometers away from the nearest dungeon entrance.

As for the forge that my Tier 7 cursed skill was pointing towards, it was around 783 kilometers away since the angle was around 3 degrees. For comparison, the trip from the White Wastes to this ruined settlement was around 40 kilometers. These two locations were in completely different locations. Almost in opposite directions. That was unfortunate, but I didn't have a good understanding of how this continent was laid out, even after looking at a map.

I knew the beastkin had four settlements leading from here to the coast, well three now. But beyond that, the rest was fairly unclear. There would probably be more ruins and abandoned settlements near the coast, but beyond that I didn't have a good understanding of the layout of the terrain. Not that it seemed to change much from snow, ice, and rocks or some variation of that. I would need to get specialized stealth gear for the terrain once I returned. Something white would be useful.

I still had the beastkin cloak that blocked scents, but I considered it too risky since didn't trust it. Whiteclaw might not have directly betrayed me, but he wasn't trustworthy. I would have a craftsman disassemble it and devise a better enchantment for me to use. That was why I hadn't been using it after I had left the settlement previously. There was just too much risk. For all I knew it could act like a beacon to draw in threats.

"Urg," I let out a groan as I stretched and got up from the runic plates.

"Any luck?" Lanner asked me.

"No," I replied and got to work preparing dinner.

"Well, I am sure you will get it eventually," he replied.

"Eventually is the key word," I said.

"Going out after dinner?" he asked me.

"Of course. I got to keep working on my stealth skills in this terrain and Cold Resistance. Hopefully I can get it up to Cold Immunity," I replied. I was making progress, but there was no chance of maximizing Cold Resistance during our long break period. The skill just took too long to level. That was another thing to work on when I got back. All my resistances would need to be worked on at a training hall. Another thing to add to the list of things to do once I returned to the Eldarin continent.

It was growing longer, but that was fine. When I came back here, I would prefer to be prepared and ready for whatever came my way. I was catching demons by surprise who had the strength of a legend. But that was because they couldn't handle the combat pressure. The legends from back home were stronger, due to being more well rounded. Most legends specialized at the higher tiers of skill use, often with a signature skill or two.

But they also tended to be generalists up to a certain degree with lower tier skills, that they had found to be useful or helpful in their adventuring. The demons didn't have that kind of knowledge to draw upon. If they had the same number of spell skills that I had, then the fights would have been much more difficult with their greater Mana reserves. They could have bombarded me from a distance. But they had been melee combatants.

That was why I didn't let myself get a big head despite my victories over superior opponents. A real legend would crush me. Well maybe not crush me anymore with all my skills and stats, but they would defeat me. That was my greatest strength, my tricks and versatility. I didn't like that. Having to win with the wand the gnomes had given me felt like I wasn't living up to my full potential. I knew it was silly, but the wand wasn't one of my skills. The Explosion spell skill was definitely one I wanted to learn.

The College didn't teach it and it appeared to not be widely known. I could be wrong, but I hadn't seen or heard of that spell skill before coming to this continent. I would have to directly create the spell skill through Mana manipulation. I knew how it worked thanks to the wand. Compress a bunch of Mana, shoot it out, have it explode on impact. But that could come later. I had too many other skills to work on and learn, like Veil.

It was going to be a long dark season in this abandoned settlement, but things were looking up. I had a way back home, which was critical in my mind. Having a safe base to operate from was key to being a successful adventurer. Getting siloed into this part of the dungeon had been a complete and utter nightmare. My Danger Sense increased slightly. That wasn't a good sign. The fact that it had changed at all indicated that there was a problem.

I didn't panic or get excited while Lanner I enjoyed another vegetable stew. A warm meal made everything seem better, but I didn't let it lull me into a false sense of security. At least no one could get to where we were without a high degree of stealth or specialty spell skills. That was the nice thing about being inside a building, deep into the rock. When I went outside I would continue to be careful while pushing my skills.

I had pieces of cloth trailing behind my boots to erase any obvious footprints in the snow. Not wearing armor made it a lot easier to be light on my feet. While I was more vulnerable, I was confident in my sensory abilities, especially Danger Sense. I tried to check the nearest living thing, but I just got Lanner or Ozy. I couldn't easily exclude things. It was Compass of Desire, not Compass of Complicated Requests. While I could quantify my desire by wanting a creature I could speak with, that included Lanner.

I couldn't exclude him. Same with the dungeon entrances. I couldn't desire to find the second closest dungeon entrance or something like that. I got the direction of the nearest thing that fit what I wanted. A powerful skill, but the limitations cut out a large chunk of the utility I could have gotten with it.