Janet flung the remains of the murder squirrel off her spear and wiped it off on the foliage. "Well okay, this is getting pretty easy." She said, stepping back to let Zach take a turn.
"I'll say. You made that look downright professional." Miria replied, while Zach aggroed another couple of monsters, handling one of them and letting Alice rush in to handle the second, Jack keeping overwatch.
"Thank you! I'm thinking I want to try going solo. I'm confident I can handle it, or at least run away if I get into trouble. What do you think?" Janet asked.
Miria chewed on her lip for a moment before nodding. "Alright, makes sense. How far out do you want to go?"
Janet shrugged. "Not far. Maybe ten, twenty minutes out at most?"
"Okay, in that case, maybe walk out to the creek and scout it? See if there's anything exciting to be discovered out there. Though, just back out if you find anything, we can go back and scout it in force later." Miria replied.
"Sure thing boss, will do." Janet said, before setting off.
Claire paused her work on the hedge wall to wave at Sasha as she approached furtively. "Hey! What's up?" She said, and Sasha bit her lip.
"Well, uh, I wanted to give you something. I know you've been putting in a lot of work lately, and this should help you out some..." She said, handing Claire a glass jug.
"...Milk? Where did you get this? Wait, hold on...!" Claire said, glancing down and then back up, and smirking as Sasha's cheeks reddened. "I should have guessed, huh?" She said, grinning.
"D-don't be weird about it, okay!? O-Or I'll stop sharing it with you!" She said, crossing her arms and glaring, to which Claire giggled.
"Hey, hey, I'm not trying to be mean! I think it's great. If you feel I'm being too mean, you can bully me over my flowers, how's that?" She said, grinning as she leaned forwards and pointed to them, then opened the jug and took a quick drink. "Oh damn, this is really good though." She said, and Sasha covered her face with her hands and groaned.
"Glaaad you like it. It should increase your mana regen or whatever? So, hope it helps you." She said, which elicited a further eyebrow raise from Claire.
"It does? Well fuck me, that's amazing actually. I'll take as much as I can get then." She said, and Sasha sighed.
"I was afraid you'd say that. I'll see what I can do..." She said. "Oh, I've also started work on lunch. Finally got a cooking skill and everything. Even tried butchering some of the monsters, so we'll have fresh meat, albeit not that much of it." She said, sharing a dialog with Claire.
"Wow, that's really good! I'll definitely look forwards to lunch, then." Claire said, winking at Sasha.
"Okay, check all this out." Sarah said, grinning as Claire, Joey, and Zach all gathered round. "I said I cracked detection spells, right? Well, take a look." She said, sharing a couple system dialogs.
"Just some basic proofs of concept, but they're already pretty useful." Sarah continued, looking pleased with herself.
"Huh, yeah that does seem really good. Show me the life one?" Claire asked, and then watched as Sarah cast it. "...Yeah, okay, I think I can learn that. Ain't gonna be nearly as easy for me as it would for you, though..." She said, sighing.
Sarah nods. "Yeah I figured. I can keep showing you, though. We'll spend an hour or two at it later. For now, anybody got any suggestions on what to do next? Zach and Joey should grind some more levels obviously, that's our easiest source of new spells. Claire is busy doing stuff, but she should probably see if the plants will teach her more spells at some point or whatever. I'm going to work on an upgrade to my matter sculpting spell I think? And see what else I can make in terms of sensory spells. Though actually, maybe see if I can get a level up for my spellcasting, first..."
Janet crept through the forest, listening carefully, before turning to face the monster trying to creep up on her. "Yeah I hear you bitch. Come get some, then." She said, smirking as it flung itself at her in a fury, before neatly cutting it down with her spear. "Hell yeah." She stretched and turned back to the forest, returning to her pace, the ground beneath her starting to descend into a gulley where the stream flowed.
She made her way down to the bank and paused, listening and scenting the air, then turning to follow the stream uphill a ways. It got slightly steeper as she made her way, the earth beginning to present eroded stone and the occasional boulder. Slipping around one, she paused as a system dialog presented itself:
Would you like to learn the Skill [Scouting]?
*Don't mind if I do.*
*Perfect. Just the thing.*
She returned to her scouting, searching the gulley for anything of interest - and then pausing as she heard a noise. "Oh? Well! Hello there!" She cooed, squatting down and beckoning...
"There we are." Joey said, finishing off the razorleaf seedling and backing up to let someone else take point. "Lets see what I got... Oh. Well that's pretty neat actually." He said, sharing the dialog.
Claire and Sarah raised their eyebrows while Zach traded off the point position to Alice, with Chomper as backup, and came to look too. "Oh, hmm. Well, try it out?" Claire suggested.
"Hell yeah. Here, Alice, lemme have one...?" Zach said, and got growled at for his trouble. "Okay, fine, I know you just got point. But like, soonish, please?" He said, and she ran up a tree to scrap with several saprolings, one of them level two, and then came back down with some faint bite marks and a mostly depleted health pool a few minutes later.
"Fine, whatever. Uh, hey, Claire, my favorite mage...!" Alice said, to which Claire sighed and grinned, rolling her eyes.
"Uh huh. Suuure." She said, healing the wolfgirl up. "We definitely need to get you better weapons, this is the third time I've had to heal you up..."
Alice huffed. "Yeah yeah, I already talked to Jack and Maxim, they're working on it." She said, turning to watch as Joey lined up several approaching monsters - and then unleashed a blast of fire on them, leaving the lot of them staggered and singed. Her eyebrows rose as she watched him neatly finish them off with his spear. "Alright, not bad!"
Sarah made a thoughtful noise. "Hmm, I see. Well, there are some new shaping and channeling elements I can use there - definitely think I can upgrade my sculpting spell now. Something to look forwards to."
Where did you get this?
Thats a good question actually. If that mental block is still in place then she had to get some help to make that. If the mental block becomes too problematic or doesn’t break down more naturally for some reason. ;) it’s a good thing there’s a budding mind mage around.
Lesser Sense Metal
- Cost: 2 MP
- Casting Time: 5 seconds
- Duration: 10 seconds
- Range: 75 feet radius
- Sense the presence of metal, along with details about what kind of metal it is.
Lesser Sense Life
- Cost: 3 MP
- Casting Time: 5 seconds
- Duration: 10 seconds
- Range: 100 feet radius
- Sense the presence of life, along with details about what kind of life it is.
Well those are certainly going to come in handy. Especially when the Nazi’s eventually start poking around. Cost is good, the casting time isn’t terrible, the range is decent but they’re going have to see if they can do something about that duration if they want it to be useful in combat situations or hazardous environments.
"Thank you! I'm thinking I want to try going solo. I'm confident I can handle it, or at least run away if I get into trouble. What do you think?" Janet asked.
NEVER go solo, maybe alone for a couple tens of feet or so but always stay in groups or you will become easy pickings for anything!!
"...Milk? Where did you get this? Wait, hold on...!" Claire said, glancing down and then back up, and smirking as Sasha's cheeks reddened. "I should have guessed, huh?" She said, grinning.
"D-don't be weird about it, okay!? O-Or I'll stop sharing it with you!" She said, crossing her arms and glaring, to which Claire giggled.
I mean she is the resident chef, she could just sneak it into the food. The benefits are insanely good just mix it with some fruits and vegetables and call it a nutritional tonic made of fruits and vegetables that your skill helped you make and that wouldn't be lying it would just be making them assume you meant cooking skill.
Merci pour ce chapitre !
Thanks for the chapter
Sasha's sloooowly coming around :3