The three of us crept our way out of the second zone, and back to the first. We had to be on guard, since all of the scattered bones we didn’t claim were littered about the first zone. Thanks to that, it was clear that someone had recently been through the dungeon.
About halfway through the first zone, we saw the group of demons. First, I guided the girls towards the side, out of the demons’ path. Only then did I cast Observe to appraise the group.
The lone player was level one hundred and thirty, named FallenOne. I found the name rather ironic personally, but I wasn’t going to jump out and question him about it right now.
When my gaze swept over the others, however, my back stiffened. The lowest level among the six escorting demons was two hundred and fifty, with the highest reaching over four hundred.
As I appraised them, one of the demons began looking around in annoyance. The level four hundred demon looked over at him. “Lesha, did you notice something?” He asked, and the weaker demon grunted.
“Felt like someone was looking at us.” He said, and I quickly averted my gaze. He hadn’t noticed a casual glance, but once I started appraising him, one of his skills must have kicked in.
“Oh? Are the little bugs finally showing themselves?” The strongest demon asked, but I was already picking the other two up and fleeing with Glancing Steps-X.
Once we were back at the entrance, I collected the respawn anchor from my clone, dismissed it, and then left the dungeon without even considering to fight. The other two were surprised, but seemed to understand that this wasn’t a battle that we could take part in.
Outside of the dungeon, we saw a large ship sailing alongside the giant skeleton. It was made of dark wood and used red sails, with dozens of demons remaining on the ship to let it keep pace with the roaming dungeon.
I didn’t want to stop and appraise them, feeling that it was safe to assume that the strongest fighter would have stayed behind to protect the ship. In this situation, I didn’t even feel comfortable summoning the car so close to the other ship. Instead, I jumped down to the opposite side of the skeleton from them, and began using Glancing Steps-X to retreat at top speeds.
Only when the skeleton was no longer in sight did I finally create a platform large enough to summon the car and drive away with the girls. “How bad was it?” Diane asked, eyes narrowed.
“Over four hundred for the leader.” I answered honestly. “And they had an experienced scout with them, too. If we had been spotted, we would have been immediately killed.”
Thankfully, their leader didn’t possess the Tremorsense skill, given that they weren’t able to detect my location. Even so, I didn’t feel like pushing my luck to see if they had just not yet activated it.
Diane nodded her head, understanding the situation. “We’ll need to start looking for somewhere to make our base for the night. Since we know the demons are about, it would be best if we can find another cloud island.”
I agreed, since it was starting to get late. We only had a couple of hours left before Diane would need to log out for the day. So, I drove the car up high into the sky, making sure to tightly hug the platform behind us to not let part of it slip out of the Ghost Zone.
I only relaxed my caution once we were high above the clouds, and then began to roam around to look for any other flying islands. Which… I was surprised to find were actually somewhat common.
Within five minutes of driving at this altitude, we found a stormcloud in the distance, upon which sat a giant island. Driving closer, I noticed that there were serpents flying through the air over the island, their bodies crackling with electricity. The three of us braced ourselves for a fight as we drove closer, until we were near enough that I could appraise one of them along the edge of the island.
As soon as I appraised the creature, all of the tension left my body. Diane, seeing this, looked over in confusion. “Are they strong?” She asked, but I shook my head.
“Level twenty.” I answered, and her eyes went wide. “I’d say that this might be a feeding ground for other dungeon monsters, but the Storm Serpents are only a meter and a half long. Still big, but not enough to satisfy something like a Nightmare Whale…”
“Whales typically eat a large amount of incredibly small creatures.” Diane pointed out. “They might still be a threat. For now, it should be safe to set up a base here and quickly clear everything out.”
I nodded in agreement, parking along the edge of the island and getting out. Once the car had been put away, I entered my ‘Construction Dragon’ form. “You two clear out the lizards nearby, and let me know if you find the dungeon entrance. I’ll get the house made real fast.”
The two quickly left, while I made the house for the three of us. This house was big enough for each of us to have our own bedroom, as well as independent bathrooms and a dining area. Once I was done with that, I pulled out one of my wands and created three loaves of bread habitually.
Eating tasteless bread all the time was rather… well, it got old fast. However, it was the only reliable source of food that we had. Because of that, I had gotten a substantial amount of training with the Create Bread skill. Enough that I hadn’t even noticed that it was almost ready to evolve.
When the prompt appeared in front of me, asking if I would like to evolve Create Bread, my eyes widened. Naturally, I accepted the evolution right away, eager to see the upgraded skill.
|
Create Meal (Magic – 4☆): Evolved from Create Bread. Allows the user to conjure a small, simple meal of their choosing. Any conjured earthenware disappears after one hour. Mana Burden: 0. Level 1(0%) |
Finally… we don’t just have to eat bread. I thought to myself, immediately incinerating the previously created loaves. Thankfully, my current wand had two free enchantment slots. I thought about the enchantment that I wanted to make. I didn’t want to go from one constant meal to another. Now that we had the option, I wanted something that had some variety.
Thus, I focused on enchanting the wand with the Create Meal skill, but instead of specifying a single meal type, I imagined an entire list for the enchantment to choose from. Immediately, I felt my arm bursting with the energy of the skill going out of control, and my eyes narrowed. The first enchantment failed, ruining one of the open slots on the wand.
It had been a while since I had a failed enchantment, but I pushed on, maintaining the mental image for the enchantment. Once again, blood spurted from my arm, covering the nearby table and floor. However, just as it felt like the enchantment was about to falter, it managed to latch on.
Of course, after healing myself, the first thing I did was clean up all the blood. Then, I sent Diane a message, a picture of the new enchantment on the wand, which could now create a random meal.
Immediately, Diane dragged Bella back to the house, staring at me with wide eyes. “We don’t need to eat bread anymore?” She asked, and I nodded my head. “We can finish clearing the area after we eat. I’m not missing a proper meal because I had to log out.”
I chuckled, and Bella looked at the two of us in confusion, not seeming to have grown too tired of bread just yet. I aimed the wand at the table, and cast three times in succession.
The first cast yielded a bowl full of porridge, with dried fruits and nuts. The second was lamb chops with seasoned vegetables. And finally, the third was roasted trout. Each dish came with simple spoons or forks to eat with. Diane immediately went to the plate of lamb chops, and Bella simply chuckled, accepting the porridge. “It looks like you’re really happy about the upgraded meals?” She asked, and Diane nodded her head quickly.
“We’ve had nothing but hard, tasteless bread for almost a month now. The only time I had anything else was when we were at the tavern in Elvenwall. It got so bad that I didn’t even want to be logged in for mealtime.” Diane said as she began eating the food.
Naturally, unlike normal player-created food such as that created by Ennolf, these meals wouldn’t provide any status buffs. However, the fact that they could now make proper food with actual taste was more than enough for me to consider it an incredibly valuable skill. Granted, the meals were still fairly simple, but I was not about to complain about that.
Diane looked over at Bella after taking her first bite. “You said that you know the Carpentry skill, right? Are you able to make wands with enchantment slots?” She asked, and Bella blinked, nodding her head.
“I can. Though, getting more than one slot is pretty rare with my skill level.” She said, and Diane shook her head.
“That’s fine. If you can make another wand for Drake, he can train up this new skill, and then enchant a higher level version of it onto the wand. Maybe it will make the food even better?” She suggested, and Bella blinked, nodding in acceptance.
“…Am I going to be sitting here tomorrow, spamming this skill all day to train it?” I asked, and Diane gave a firm nod of her head.
“This is a safe dungeon for us to camp at. Because it’s positioned on a stormcloud, most sailing vessels won’t even consider approaching it, and our altitude is too high for them to naturally see us without already flying. We can stay here for multiple days without any worries.”
The way she said that, I narrowed my eyes slightly. “You want this for more than just the food, I can tell. What’s up?”
Diane hesitated, quickly taking another bite and only answering after she had swallowed it. “The devs announced the next update. They said that they’ll release the overview of upcoming changes in a week, and the patch will be next month. All that we know right now is the title of the update, Demon Invasion.”
My eyes widened at that. “When did they release this news?”
“Just today.” She clarified. “The update is one month from today. Other players should have seen the news by now, and are making their own speculation. However, it seems clear that the Demon Continent won’t be the frontlines anymore after this update. They’re either preparing for the forces there to be pushed back, or new staging points to appear in other areas.”
“That’s why, I’d rather wait until next week before we consider going to the Demon Continent, after we’ve seen the upcoming changes.” Diane explained, and I nodded my head in agreement.
“Do you think it has anything to do with the ship we saw earlier?” I asked, but Diane shook her head.
“It took two days just for Slithers’ ship to get from Ilsan to Evergreen. We’re more than a day off from the Demon Continent by ship, so even if they were making early preparations for the update, that’s too soon. That ship should have been one of the regular ships that Slithers told us about before.” She said confidently. “So, for now, I’d like us to spend the next few days here, maybe travel to nearby cloud dungeons. That way, you can train this new skill, and we can save ourselves from unnecessary danger if it turns out we don’t need to go to that continent at all.”
I sighed, nodding my head in agreement. It wasn’t such a bad thing to spend some time training Create Meal. Especially if I could also upgrade some of my other skills in the process.
