Chapter 11
Being a wizard really is the most bad ass of all dungeon job classifications. I have so much power and abilities! This is enjoyable even!
Today I can see that.
In front of me,…
Is the first part of my epic thorny wall enclosure protecting the meadow lands!
Several hours earlier…
I stood near the edge of the meadow, which is normally dangerous at ~8:30 AM, after cleaning up and breakfast. I’d already had to kill 3 giant hornets this morning, which are now dissolving into the ground.
I decided to see if I could link and stack the spell formulas of the [Root Trap] together and link them. Because I’m a Life Wizard I should have the aptitute and qualifications for it. I’d been trying to get this to work, but I hadn’t gotten it to work until today.
First, I set down the first root trap horizontally flat in a 10 by 10 square. (-20 mana)(~8:34 AM)
Hm…the cost of the mana has been going down over time also. When I first got this skill it cost me about double that amount of mana, but with practice I’d whittled it down to about -22 mana until yesterday, when I got it to -20 mana.
“Good…now then…” I activated the skill again, placing the second Root Trap on top of the first.
At first the energy was settling in together well, but then something happened and the second spell formula failed.
“No that isn’t right. I need to tweak how the energy interacts with each other,” I thought aloud.
This time I was more careful. I practiced by linking three Root Traps together next to each other instead of stacking them. And then I purposely let out free mana in the edges between one trap and where its edge met the other. This I believe would be what makes it work; to try to ‘sew them together’!
(Lost some time doing this playing with it…)
(~8:50 AM)
I poured out loose mana along where the roots could touch each other, in the crack between the two boxes of vines, much like how masonry workers would layer material in between the bricks. I had to go slowly also, and try to not get caught in my own trap, and not get too close.
It took a few minutes to do this. And the root trap itself at first didn’t realize what I was doing. It took four different tries for it to start to adapt and seal the gap!
But this is because my element is life! So my element life is also synonymous to ‘growth’. And that meant when the two traps met each other they were feeling growth and vitality, which the plants would seek naturally!
Yes!!!
The two traps melded into one!
Then I began practicing it on the second joining, so that all three are joined together!
~9:15 AM
There are problems still…
A giant hornet just now came to scout out what I was doing and the root trap didn’t attack it, and even let it fly over it.
Damn…
That’s not supposed to happen.
I slammed the axe into the giant hornet (-34 damage). Then I kicked it for some bonus damage (-3 damage).
It charged at me, but I’d already used the status screen equip magic to switch directly to the katana and shield. It slammed into my shield hard, which hurt a bit (-11 damage to me). Then there was a series of both of us evading and dodging each other.
I then followed up with combos on it, as we fought each other until it was dead.
(~Breathing hard, leaning on my weapon.)
The monster encounter cost me -24 health, but I did save mana…until now.
I activated the minor heal to bring my health bar back up (-28 mana, +20 health)! This combat took less than five minutes.
!
“Oh interesting,” I thought aloud.
This is the first time I’d gotten the minor heal technique to be able to conserve mana without failing. It is now costing me only -28 mana, and not -30 mana. My health bar is only -4 points short of being full also. It does more healing per cast also since I’m a higher level also. I’m becoming more efficient!
But I’m wary now.
More goblins will come, I’m sure.
I began to work again, but had to kill a slime 3 minutes after that, and something like an monster oak sapling also. (~Approximately 9:45 to 10:10 AM.)
The monster oak sapling was interesting. It was nearly on my level and quite tough to fight. Because its skin was so tough and defensive I lost -42 health on it, and 10 mana casting a minor burn wave on it. The burn wave scared the sapling a lot and did bonus damage. He died after that. But this fight took longer because when its a new type of monster you don’t rush in right away, and spend time trying things and evaluating it.
But now my mana bar is down about 200 points when its only first thing in the morning! But on the plus side, the fights being dragged out meant my mana regeneration was working during the fight; some of that was replenished already.
Frustrating…
Health; 169/211
Mana; 591/761
Stamina; 176/200
I cast minor heal twice more to push my current health bar up to 209. My current mana bar is now at 531. (~10:15 AM)
I’ll have to stop soon, so I don’t lose all my mana before the day is up.
Huh?
The oak monster dropped something. I picked it up.
Its a form of currency maybe?
It seems like some kinds of tokens.
[You have discovered currency in another world] pings and shows up as a message box in my status screeen.
[23 Ris acquired.]
What…
So there must be civilization somewhere if there’s currency, right.
The goblins didn’t have this stuff when they went after me. So it seems that many monsters here do actually have drops? And why didn’t I get drops before? Maybe the goblin bosses robbed their brethen before sending them on patrol? Or they were the newborn poor goblins?
Well…technically the hornets would have any treasure they have stashed at their nest. After I finish my experiment I’ll have to go and check if I missed drops from the others.
I went back to working on my project to grow skills. (~10:16 AM)
I spread mana into the root traps again. This time I tried spreading the mana out over the top of the whole trap also and not just at the edges.
Strangely as I did so, the Root Trap starts to expand!
Wow, its working!
The root trap started to grow up and up. I kept feeding some mana. Initially, I was feeding the middle root trap block, but now with the other two on its sides connected, they also began to grow, but not quite as fast!
Ping!
I glanced at my system notification and see that its rewarded me for my efforts!
[Rejuvenate skill] acquired! (~10:37 AM)
I clicked on it.
Huh?
When I tried to read the description in the skill box, I haven’t unlocked that yet. So its giving me ‘???’ as the description for this skill. The mana cost also says, ‘???’.
‘So I have to figure out what it does by myself?’ I wondered.
And maybe I still need to alter this thing a bit more also?
What if there’s more than one type of function, that I can get it to do?
I had a series of cheap monster encounters with some weird dragonfly insects, that were also over sized like the giant hornets, as several single mob encounters from (~10:39 AM to 11:17 AM) I managed to preserve most of my mana bar, with a few minor heals fairly equal to my mana regeneration.
Its also going to rain soon, I thought also. That worries me also. In a pit house you have to be really careful about moisture getting inside.
Well I’ll keep working as long as I can.
Still…I can do this!
I’m so close to having another skill!
Wait, why don’t I test it on the monsters?
It didn’t take long before another goblin troop started marching up here. Like before its a patrol of about 7 of them. They are also marching in a formation of a line this time, with spears out set to receive a charge.
Weird?
Did someone train them? And they have better equipment this time.
I began to worry a bit.
They haven’t gotten here yet, so I watched them engage some of the giant hornets. The giant hornets banded together and carried one of them off and dropped him on his head from fifty feet up with a group of 8 of them. Then they did that to two more goblin, but the last one managed to get free with only minor injuries.
Looks like I’ll really have to engage them, I thought. And now they can see me!
My status screen clock says its about 12:09 PM.
When the goblins finally got to within attacking distance its 12:11 PM, after they’d rushed up the hill towards me. The high ground does seem to help me fight them.
I spread out mana into the 3 linked overgrown root traps as they are marching around it. The goblins started to charge…
But then the with the fresh mana into the root traps, the traps shot out with their vines and ended up grabbing several goblins!
!
“Woah,” I breathed out surprised.
What a nice surprise!
The goblins are terrified now that they see that the root traps can kill them even when they aren’t fresh! And that means I also still have 2 other root traps that were set off already behind me in the meadow. And there’s only 2 goblins left that aren’t entangled, with 3 of them entangled!
I ran back towards the other traps, the other two goblins charged after me with their wicked spears.
But when I approached the other root traps they grew terrified and wouldn’t come any closer. Its turned into a stand off with neither side willing approach each other. But this current team doesn’t have archers, while they are trapped! I have openings to finish them off easily!
I used my 3 throwing knives, with them all hitting the second goblin. Then I hit it with a minor flame wave.
Goblin 4 is slain, registers on my screen.
The last goblin then decided to run! I gave chase!
With my gear weighing me down it took longer than normal to catch up with him. I almost set off some of the giant hornets. But my katana severed his spine and sent him into the ground.
Goblin 5 is slain, showed up after a few quick strikes to finish him off.
After that I finished off the others.
Not a bad day. Its now about ~12:17 PM. And because of my cheaty system the root traps are still there!
…
I continued to work.
Near the end of the day, I was yelling “yes!” in excitement as the day paid off. I’d been continuing my research and building of root traps.
[Rejuvenate skill updated!]
The description for rejuvenate says it restores plants to health and heals the land, now that I’d unlocked its knowledge. Yellow grass becomes green, but also grows almost instantly. Seeds will be caused to sprout, by feeding off the mana energy (which can solve hunger). Plant monsters will be healed by this technique, barren spots in a space will be filled with the natural turf around them, such as a barren spot in grass being filled with live grass, but in woods, small saplings would start to grow but be limited to infant stage growth. Mana cost; 20. I don’t have to be touching the area supposedly, though that might not be the case early on while figuring out how to use it.
I sighed.
The mana cost is a bit too high, with not a lot of effect (yet). I’ll have to start practicing this to get it down.
This is exciting figuring out how to use wizard skills also.
And it was hard to get this because of all the combat interruptions of monster encounters of stuff coming up the hill day.
I did acquire ~71 ris currency also total today.
But that’s not the only boon…
[Improved Root Trap] skill acquired!
The improved root trap functions like the previous version, except that it costs -60 mana to setup. The improved version will also be able to ly in wait until an enemy target can pass by. The trap will also only target enemies of the caster but not allies or non-hostiles. Improved version will hold targets fast and incur a one time set of damage of (-2 damage per caster level) from thorn growth and sharp protrusions in the trap. Victims of the trap are stuck fast. And in my case, its holding them there for…I’m still not sure if it will ever end, or just starve or bleed them out.
This thing is actually pretty horrific. It basically has the vines reach out into the surrounding area and pull targets into the center of the trap, onto the thorn spikes.
But it could be improved still. Most monsters have 100 to 200 health. So the amount of damage its doing isn’t that great.
I then tried to feed mana into one of them to test it…
Yes!
This thing, can be fed rejuvenate energy also to also grow it a bit more than that!
This will seriously help out a lot as a game changer…
It means I can put surplus mana into trap making skills to prepare for the goblin invasion! And the rejuvenate skill is a sort of back door vine trap reset!
…
Once per hour I had been setting up a wall of thorn traps. This also is actually resembling a wall now also, since the the ‘walls’ can be grown by rejuvenate techniques. You can see this wall now, and its a bit taller than me already but not that long. It will be quite awhile before I can fill the meadow with these.
This ends up costing me -60 mana for the improved trap. And then I put in an additional -20 mana to grow it upwards several feet, so that I can seal the entire area eventually!
Still…
Its going to take a lot of work to finish the entire perimeter.
But already ideas are forming in my head!
I can twist the walls around to form a maze! I’ll have dead ends, and bigger traps also. I’ll be able to work a defensive fortification of towers and a castle eventually also! But it also means that I have to map out each grid and make it so that everything is very organized so that I’m not ineffective with the maze but not make it too easy also.
And especially while its incomplete the monsters will just go around to find an opening, so it won’t be effective as long as there’s holes in the walls.
This is going to be a lot of work, but an interesting achievement.
I wonder how big I’ll make this maze?
But no sooner had I started this, then it was almost like the monsters figured out something was up here and that it needed to be stopped! This was when the afternoon rush of mobs began.
I had at least one monster encounter per hour, but often 2 or 3 encounters per hour!
Often I’d managed things in such a way as to not lose health. After all, having a heal skill, and a trap that could keep enemies off me, as well as finally having a fairly good set of gear made it so I was cushioned well.
But that also meant the monsters were trying to get more cunning to figure out a way around my defenses. And this meant progress on my Vine Castle was slowed down considerably. Plus there were more night raids than before, which made me on edge more than the day raids.
Wait, that’s an interesting idea…
A ‘Vine Castle’?!
I could do it…
It would work. At the very least, I can do a vine maze labyrinth that I live inside the middle of! And my underground log house is going to be around the center. And at some point I could add another story on top of it. And then another.
But that takes time…
One day passed and I only had 5 new vine blocks set up in that 24 hour period, because of having to fight off so many invaders. It also seems like they want to interrupt my building.
The vine traps are working it seems…
But I’m not sure how often I need to push new mana into them?
I’d also tested that they won’t attack me, but do attack others.
Day 2 of working towards a ‘vine castle zone’; I managed to get down 7 more improved root traps, each one being an additional 10 foot by 10 foot by my height high. I’m trying to arrange them in blocked lines and rows, however, I can leave a single 10′ wide gap between them as ‘bait murder holes’ for the vine tentacles to snatch at those that are tempted to enter through.
Its still obviously not a castle yet. In fact this is just getting started on the yard area for such castle also. The castle won’t be till later. And I’d need some other skills for it too. I’ll need to turn the wall hedges now and start making a fully enclosable box shape; I hadn’t gotten that far yet.
However the overall, monster intensity actually increased today. I only got down the number of improved traps that I did, because I was trying to actively dodge and run while baiting monsters to run through the vine traps by following me.
Some time passed…
One day.
Then a second day.
I’d also tried to make an actual enclosure of a box like pattern like a trap fence around safe areas, to improve my ability to sleep at night. Without several of these I won’t be able to survive in fact. The box shape is starting to manifest though its not as big as I wanted it to be. Its kind of small actually, but has an opening in the front approach zone.
Day 3 came and I realized how raggedly worn out I feel. So many hits and wounds by monsters can cause the body to need a rest after awhile, even though I’ve healed myself up to full health after each encounter.
I ended up resting for what I could…but that wasn’t much.
I got a nap for two hours, but spent most of the rest of the time battling monsters.
But this shook me out of my rest mode as I realized the goblins had become desperate to take me out before I secure a fortress! They are actively trying to stop me from building a future!
I laid down 4 additional improved traps this morning; all of each one having the standard 10 foot by 10 foot area, which I stack as I build. I also found that by growing the existing traps with rejuvenate I could increase their reach and wall height, because of the traps being taller in their ‘wall height’.
I also discovered that casting rejuvenate on the brook increases and replenishes the number of fish in it! (This is a life safer, though I’m getting tired of eating only fish every day.) And I had been worried about over hunting the book. Now I don’t have to worry about that. Plus, it had been getting harder and harder to find fish lately. (Maybe the goblins down stream had been taking them.)