With the two of them insisting, I couldn’t just decline to help them. So, I pointed out the various slimes that I saw with my Detective Analysis, creating projections of arrows over their heads. Immediately, Diane dashed out, daggers out the ready while Bella switched to her pistols.
Unlike her rifle, she wasn’t able to reliably kill these slimes with one shot using just her pistols, but her rate of fire more than made up the difference. Black bullets shot out rapidly, piercing into each target. Some of them burst into flames, others poisoned, and some released electric shocks that paralyzed them.
Either way, once I had marked the locations of the monsters, there was little more that I had to take care of. Finding them was easily the biggest problem that the duo had, which was understandable given how well the slimes blended in with the surroundings. All that I had to do was keep an eye out for any ambushes Diane might face, and erect a small barrier to parry the attacks if one launched at her blind spot.
Like this, it took less than ten minutes for us to clear this snowy area. Though, with that said, we weren’t finding any chests thus far. I scanned the area the entire time that we were walking, but failed to spot any hidden paths or secret tunnels. Wherever the chest was here, it was hidden rather well. We’d need to get the Twisted Eye involved to map the place out later.
Eventually, we came across a narrow pass, carved within an icy cliff. This seemed to be the passage to the next zone, so Diane led the way through, sticking close to Bella and myself. On the other side of the pass, she was almost crushed by a giant, frozen foot crashing into the ground only a few feet away from her.
Immediately, she jumped back, taking a defensive stance with her eyes narrowed. However, the foot hadn’t been targeting her. Instead, it belonged to a large golem of ice, which seemed to be patrolling the area. Since Diane was still within the range of my Ghost Zone, it simply hadn’t spotted her.
Looking around, we were able to see dozens of other golems wandering the frozen tundra, with more shadows visible beyond the haze of the blizzard. “Drake,” Bella’s voice called out to me, her eyes locked onto one of the golems in the distance. “Is that…?”
I followed her gaze, focusing my sight to track the golem she was watching. Inside its torso, I saw a silver chest with golden decorations. “The chests are in the monsters?” I asked incredulously. Now, I had to wonder whether or not we simply missed any chests in the previous area because they were inside roaming monsters that we just never encountered.
“It would seem that way,” Diane confirmed, taking a deep breath. “That will make it difficult to create an effective farming map for this dungeon, but it shouldn’t matter for us. Are their levels the same?”
I appraised the golems, before nodding my head in confirmation. “That’s right. Still level two hundred.”
As soon as I said that, Diane dashed out of the stealth zone, swapping to her draconic form. Unlike the slimes, she needed more power behind her attacks now. Her first target was the golem which had nearly crushed her when we entered the area.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she appeared at the golem’s feet. Dark energy wrapped around her blade, slicing at the golem’s knee. A crack formed, and the monster began to fall. At the same time, Bella aimed both of her guns forward, firing off several rounds towards the golem’s chest. Despite these being the same black rounds as before, each of them seemed to melt into the ice golem’s body with a sizzling heat. Only after this did they begin to inflict their random status effects.
That must be the innate elemental superiority, I thought to myself as I watched them go about their hunt. Clearly, the bullets had dealt fire damage, going simply by their initial impact.
As the first golem fell, Diane glanced back at me, and I realized her hidden meaning. With a sigh, I dropped the Ghost Zone, transforming into my fire dragon form. The snow melted beneath my feet, sizzling away to show a hard, stone surface. The blizzard seemed to halt in my presence, unable to approach me.
With a roar, I generated dozens of flaming spears, launching them at the golems nearest to me. Each golem received three or four spears, sending them tumbling backwards. In order to make sure that Diane and Bella received experience, I was careful not to target any vital areas, leaving them alive btu crippled.
The two rushed over to finish off the monsters, while I began to attract the next wave. Of course, I wasn’t forgetting to pocket these golems, preparing to harvest them later. Unlike slimes, they should’ve been worth quite a bit.
“Drake!” Bella shouted as she saw me lure over the monster with the chest in its torso. “Try to harvest that one! Maybe you can store it in your inventory to upgrade it?”
My eyes twitched wider at her suggestion, and I nodded my head. This time, I didn’t wait for the other two to finish the monster off. Instead, I focused myself, and released a concentrated beam of flaming energy from my mouth.
As soon as the monster fell, I reached out one of my claws to scavenge the golem. A dim light shone, and the golem disappeared, falling into my inventory like the others. However, the chest remained, dropping onto the ground with a soft thud.
Bella was visibly disheartened to find out that her idea hadn’t worked. “I thought you might have been able to cheat and get a boss chest…” She grumbled under her breath, earning a soft chuckle from Diane.
“The game won’t be that easy. If he did manage to get it to work, the system would probably intervene and stop him from actually looting it. Or, he might cause a glitch.”
At the mention of the word ‘glitch’, Bella’s face went deathly pale. She knew the horrors of glitches, and so immediately abandoned any idea of tricking the system into letting me scavenge the chests.
Still, we continued to hunt the rest of the nearby monsters, only stopping when there were no more shadows visible through the blizzard. In the process, we managed to find three chests, each held within the body of an ice golem.
The three of us each took turns to open the chests, though Bella’s smile only seemed to grow wider as we did. Not because of the two skills, Frozen Fist and Frozen Armor, each of which we received three of. No, none of us really cared too much about those. After all, neither of them specialized in ice, and I could easily replicate similar effects with Water Intent-X.
No, what had Bella so happy was the pistol and rifle that appeared in the chests. The rifle looked like it was frozen over, a layer of frost clinging to its frame. Small icicles hung down from the scope of the rifle, which seemed to be carved out of ice. The pistol had a similarly frozen aesthetic, and Bella asked me to appraise both of them.
When I told her that the two guns were of a higher quality than her own, she immediately swapped to using them. Now, she only had one of her original pistols, though would no doubt switch it if we managed to get yet another stroke of luck.
“How much are the golems worth?” Diane asked curiously, shaking her head as she put the skill books in her inventory.
At her prompting, I began to dismantle the golems that I had picked up, waiting to total up their value until I saw how many were upgraded by my skills. Once I finished, I felt my mouth go dry. “If we manage to find a vendor that can take it all… we could probably get a hundred platinum.”
Diane’s eyes twitched wider, and she looked thoughtful. “Do you want me to sell it through my connections, or do you want to give it to Sarah to sell?”
I thought about that briefly, before shaking her head. “You can sell it. I need to try to keep my own spoils separate from the riches of the nation. Otherwise, it will be too easy for me to be tempted to use the nation’s wealth as my own.”
At the current moment, we didn’t have enough reliable avenues for income for Fallcry. Sure, there were the surprisingly lucrative Transform skill books, but they could only be harvested once a day, and in small numbers. This simply wouldn’t be enough if I wanted to fuel a nation, especially once I had to pay wages for knights defending the territory. I couldn’t afford to let myself be tempted to take what money we were making.
If the worst came to pass, I would donate some of my own funds, but I had to be careful not to withdraw them for myself. With that thought in mind, we began to explore this region. We had yet to encounter a boss, so there was clearly more to go.
The next region had us passing through an icy cave, its walls erected as a mirror maze of ice. Even when I burned the walls, they simply froze over once more before we could pass through. I had to use my Tremorsense-X to help us navigate, scoring another two chests in the process.
Bella clicked her tongue as another rifle dropped instead of her final pistol, but we continued onwards into the fourth zone. This one, clearly, was the boss fight. Standing at more than a dozen meters tall was an icy giant, its figure more distinctly humanoid than those we faced in the second zone. It wore a billowing cape, one that seemed woven from snow, and held an icy blade in one hand.
“Level two-twenty, Pristine Ice Golem.” I announced, already shifting into my fire dragon form. A golem of this size might be worth a small fortune, but I knew that it was more important for us to get the loot from him first. There could be traits or other rare items, after all.
The other two nodded their heads, Diane entering her own draconic form while Bella readied her rifle. “Ready when you are, Drake.” Bella said, lining up her shot.
I took a deep breath, concentrating my flames in my mouth. With a burning roar, I dropped the Ghost Zone, shooting a breath that was more akin to a laser. It slammed into the chest of the golem boss, sending it tumbling back. A moment later, a gunshot rang out, and a black bullet slammed into its head.
The impact created a black mark that drew lines over the creature’s body. Its movements seemed sluggish as it swung its blade, unable to properly leverage its impressive strength in its strike. Meanwhile, Diane scurried up the golem’s back with ease. Once at its neck, she braced herself, conjuring a black scythe that she placed at its neck. The weapon looked almost comically small against its target, but the blade was more than wide enough to deal a critical hit.
Seeing her intent, I sent a blast of flaming energy at the golem’s neck, softening it enough that she could drag the blade back and decapitate the boss. She had an almost feral look as she spread her wings, gliding down to the ground and dismissing her scythe. “Shall we?” She asked simply, returning to her stoic expression as soon as she landed, her draconic form fading away.
If I hadn’t caught the feral look that flashed across her face before, I might have missed just how excited she had been to face such a large foe like that. Still, I simply chuckled, looting the body. The golem shimmered and vanished, the boss chest dropping from its head with a heavy thunk. However, nothing of interest dropped, leaving me supremely disappointed.
Even when we went through the boss chest, the most interesting thing any of us got was a contract scroll. While valuable, I was definitely regretting not butchering the boss myself.
