The expedition continued along the path to the next town of Kalida. Monster were abundant in the area so they had to keep their guard up. This was more evident since they were traveling in a large group.
When a large number of enemies enter into their territory, monsters tend to attack more often and in larger groups.There were quite a few exceptions to large monster attacks. That was in the case where either the group is small and hardly noticeable or if the group is overwhelmingly big. In both of those cases it was very difficult to find monsters.
This of course was not always the case. Even with small and large numbers, monsters will fight and defend their land if you happen to stumble into their base.
“Haaaah haaaa.”
The signs of fatigue began to become more evident amongst the paladins. They had been extremely lucky to have survived the countless onslaughts of enemy attacks. Even if there had been three priests healing them, there were a hundred paladins that required healing so there was no way to heal them all at once. If the monsters had been more powerful then a few paladins would have died. However, if this kept up then there would surely be casualties.
“Calvin, we need to find somewhere safe to rest.”
There was a need to maintain the paladins in their optimal conditions. There was a limit to their mana so they could not restore all of the paladin’s health and stamina. At this time, most of the paladins had less than 20% stamina left and around 50% health, with about 10% of their mana remaining.
Calvin, Sun, and Alveron didn’t have enough mana for all of them, with 20%, 10%. and 30% mana remaining respectively. The reason why they didn’t use all of their mana was because they were conserving it in case of an emergency. Even with their fast mana regen, they were constantly using mana on scouting magic and buffs so their mana was barely replenishing.
Calvin wiped the sweat from his forehead off. Even though he was a priest that mainly did not do much physical activity, the constant spell casting was having its toll on his stamina and mental strength. Sun and Calvin were hardly doing any better, with the signs of fatigue evident all over their bodies.
“That sounds like a good idea, but where?”
Calvin looked around the forest. There were all manners of dangerous animals lurking in the shadows and one wrong move could spell death for all of them. They constantly kept a spell active to warn of incoming enemies but it did not protect them from accidentally walking into a group of enemies. That was because the spell warned them if there were any creatures with malicious intent nearby. If they wandered into a monster’s nest then it wouldn’t warn them.
“Let me check around.”
Sun cast Elemental Perception once more. This time, he was looking for a place that they could use to rest for a bit and avoid fighting enemies. Looking around the area, he wasn’t able to find anywhere that could serve as a refuge for a few hours.
“It’s no good. I can’t find any safe open regions”
Alveron thought about it for a second before asking him.
“Are there any caves nearby?”
Sun looked at him questioningly.
“Why do you ask?”
Caves were hardly ideal for a resting spot. Most of the time they were filled with monsters. However, if they could find one, then they could rest up while having a nice defense against monster attacks.
Sun scanned through the area one more time.
“I found three caves. However, there seem to be monsters camped out in front of two of them.”
“And what of the last one?”
Calvin asked hopefully. If they couldn’t use the last one, then they had to take the risk of fighting their way through one of the encampment of monsters.
“There seems to be nothing around it. From what I can tell, it looks like its empty. I can’t seem to find any other information about it though.”
“It sounds like our best bet for now though.”
Calvin decided since it would be far too dangerous for them to remain in the middle of the forest and just as dangerous for them to fight an encampment of hundreds of monsters.
Using some of his mana Calvin cast the Silent Footsteps spell, which would decrease the amount of presence they had in the area. It wasn’t a stealth spell but for a large group such as their own it would greatly reduce the chances of an enemy attack.
‘Carefully now.’
The entire expedition cautiously made their way through the forest. If a group of monsters attacked there was no certainty that they would win the battle in their current condition.
Soon they reached the cave that they were looking for. They checked around the area for any signs of monsters. After seeing that the area was clear, they entered into the cave to rest.
“Haaaaaah so tired....”
The paladins collapsed onto the floor lifelessly. Even with their high amounts of stamina and other sustaining stats, they had fought against waves of relentless monsters. They were at the worst possible condition that they’ve been in their lives, both physically and mentally.
The priests were quite exhausted as well but not on the physical level. Casting high level holy magic constantly was very straining on a priest’s mental strength. When their mental strength was depleted, their physical strength begins to deteriorate.
Since they were already resting, they decided to set up camp in the cave. Some of the paladins set up tents to sleep in while others simply passed out onto the ground.
It was very helpful that they had managed to find this cave. Now that they are properly resting, their condition will improve considerably. If they had continued fighting in their exhausted state, then they would have collapsed during battle and die.
They needed to rest for at least an entire day, with the possibility of a second day depending on the physical condition of the paladins. The paladins had been straining themselves considerably over the past few weeks. Even with their enhanced regenerative abilities, their entire body should remain sore for quite some time.
Fwoosh.
Sun decided to start a campfire since it was already dark. Then he went and reached into the wagon and pulled out a bag. Walking over to Calvin and Alveron, he pointed to the contents of the bag and asked them.
“What do you think?”
The latter agreed with him that it was a good idea. They reached into their own bags and pulled out some supplies.
“Sun where do you want me to put this?”
“Put that over there.”
Since Alveron didn’t know how to cook he could only assist with small tasks. Sun and Calvin began to season the meat in herbs and spices. They set the meat up on their cooking appliances and began to cook it.
The aroma filled the insides of the cave with the fragrant smell of seasoned meat. They were cooking steak!
Since the paladins were very labor intensive they needed a lot of energy. For this reason they had purchased a significant amount of meat. Since they had been traveling, they did not have enough time to make a proper meal and had to cook food that could be prepared quickly. Since they were finally taking a break, they decided it was time to feed the paladins some quality meat.
Of course it would be ridiculous to only have meat. Since they were cooking steak and other meats, they also prepared rice and salad. Sun took out the supplies that he had bought earlier in town and started to bake bread.
Once he pulled the bread out it was soft and fluffy. He ripped a piece off of it take have a taste. It was a little bit sweet but not overly. Even with his abnormal standard for sweet, he couldn’t make it like that for the paladins so he had to make it normally. However, he did take the time to make some bread pastries for himself and Alveron.
He handed a choco cornet to Alveron while he took a bite out of a cream puff. The smell of the food gradually awoke the paladins that had fallen asleep. The food greatly restored their stamina and satiety. Now that they were full of good food they could now rest comfortably. At this time, they had recovered to about 50% of their maximal condition.However, since they had leveled up considerably since the start of the expedition, they were about 70% of the condition that they had at the start of the expedition.
Sun had leveled up considerably as well since the start of the mission. After he had returned and turned in Senior Priest Harold’s quest, he had reached level 165. The one month travel to Koress had raised his level to 172. They had spent another month traveling through the woods and fighting monsters. The next town was still a month’s travel away. However, Sun was currently level 180 with very high stats and skill masteries.
After a couple of hours it was sunrise and the paladins were ready to set off again. They were not in the best condition but it was a significant improvement from before.
“How far away is that suspicious spot that you were talking about?”
Calvin asked him as they got ready to leave. They were in the middle of breakfast so they had time to talk.
Sun compared the distance to the location in his mind.
“We should be able to find it today.”
An area devoid of elements was probably the most suspicious thing in the area. There was no way of knowing if it was related to the undead, but it was worth checking out.
They began to make their way out of the cave when suddenly the paladins stopped moving forwards.
“Sun...”
Alveron said almost inaudibly as his face paled.
“What is it?”
***
“Hiya!”
Feng Yun spun around as she stabbed her knife into the last enemy, finishing it off.
“Is everyone alright?”
Da Xia asked the rest of the party. They had suddenly been ambushed by a few rogue PKers on their way to the next kingdom. Usually most users would have panicked in the situation and gotten killed by the PKers. However, they had learned quite a lot recently and knew how to adapt to unexpected situations.
The group of four PKers were relatively infamous bunch that targeted weak users. However, the party had significantly increased their level, skills, and equipment to the point where they could defeat the quartet.
“That was quite surprising.”
Yong Li said as he stretched out his arms. Thankfully the weapons that they got from the church were much better than ordinary weapons. It also helped that the PKers were horribly unskilled.
“How far are we from the next kingdom?”
Yong Li asked Hou Yi, the archer of the party that is usually given the task of scouting and navigation.
“From the looks of it, a few more months.”
The party had been traveling out of Rosenheim and were trying to visit other kingdoms. Once users reached a certain level, they went and visited other kingdoms to find better quests and hunting grounds.
“By the way, have you seen the video on the Hall of Fame yet?”
Hou Yi asked the rest of his party.
“You mean the one about the Orc?”
Yong Li answered in response. The freakishly long video was gaining popularity as more people watched it. They finished up looting the PKers before starting up their travel once more.
“I wish we had enough fame to go on adventures like that and be on the Hall of Fame.”
Being on the Hall of Fame meant that you were some of the most famous players in Royal Road. It would still be quite some time before they would even be close to being on it. But now they were near their level 200s so they had reached a checkpoint to their goal.
“I hope Sun can come party with us again sometime.”
Feng Yun said as she put away her weapons. They all thought pretty highly of Sun since he had helped them a lot and it was mostly due to him that they were high enough level to leave the kingdom.
“Yea, that would be nice. I wonder what he’s doing right now?”
***
“Damn it to hell, it was nocturnal.”
A several meter tall spider stood at the foot of the cave, with its venomous fangs leaking acidic poison onto the floor. From the looks of it, this cave had been its nest.
Sun cursed at his horrible luck. The monster had not been in the cave at night since it was out hunting but now that it was daytime it was going to sleep.
“Everyone get ready to fight!”
Calvin shouted his battle orders out to the paladins. In the meantime, Sun and Alveron were preparing their holy magic to assist the paladins. In a fight in the giant poisonous spider there was a great need for Anti-Poison and Cure spells since the monster dealt heavy acid poison damage.
The spider lashed out with one of its limbs while giving off venomous fumes from its mouth. The paladins had immediately entered defensive formation with their shields. They formed an encirclement around the spider as to limit its movements. Every now and then a paladin would strike at one of the limbs with their sword.
Puuuash!
The spider would spew venomous acids at paladins from time to time. Sun would then cast a quick spell to heal him and cure him. However as the fight continued, it became evident that the spider had enormous vitality and that they would run out of mana if it kept using it’s main source of damage, its poison.
Using his quick thinking, Sun reached into his bag and pulled out one of his precious bottles. He didn’t have time to be picky since he needed to stop the monster’s poison. He grabbed the glass bottle and threw it with all his might at the spider’s face. Upon impact, the bottle shattered all over the spider. The spider became enraged at the sudden attack and became more violent.
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“Sun, what the hell was that about?”
Calvin yelled out as he cast another healing spell on a poisoned paladin.
With no time to explain, Sun quickly took out three more bottles and threw them again. The spider began to move more sluggishly as the number of bottles increased.
It was then that Sun made his move. He had made sure to hit as much of the spider’s face as possible. He began to channel his spell for Holy Fire.
Holy Fire was a spell that dealt fire damage but not as effectively as a mage. It was only super effective on undead and dark type monsters.
However, he had thrown various bottles of high proof alcohol onto the spider’s face. Once the spider began to show signs of intoxication, he ignited the alcohol on its face.
With the alcohol, the fire quickly spread over its face and some of its body. Since the spider was very hairy, the fire stuck onto its body. With its face now horribly burned, it was no longer able to use its poisonous spew anymore.
The paladins took notice of this and pushed onwards with their shields.
“I stand ready to protect our land and battle the infamy! Decisive Strike!”
Hacking away at its legs with their swords they finally stabbed their blades into the monster’s head, silencing it for good.
Ttiring!
-For defeating a powerful enemy, you have received 10 fame.
-Faith has increased by 5.
-Charisma has increased by 10.
-Leadership has increased by 4.
-All stats have increased by 1.
For defeating the enemy, the entire expedition received a number of stat bonuses.
They did not have time to rest though. Just as they were about to set down their swords, another spider climbed up from the cliff.
“Of course there’s going to be another damn spider.”
From the looks of it, it was the spider’s mate. Now that the other spider was dead, the mate was enraged. The spider smashed one of the paladins before he could defend, sending him flying and crashing into a wall. He wasn’t dead but he was still severely injured.
“I’ll heal him up..”
Alveron managed to heal any lethal damage but the paladin was now completely unconscious and would be of no further help in the fight.
The spider mate didn’t have poison like the other spider, but it did have much higher physical abilities in comparison.
Sun took a moment to analyze his options at this point. From the looks of it, the spider only had strong vitality and strength. Other than that there were no inconvenient special abilities.Even it it was stronger than the other spider, the lack of a special skill meant that would be easier to deal with than the poison spider.
Sun decided that the best choice of action would be to use one of his spells.
“Light Binding!’
Sun had previously used the skill to hold down the Centaurs with shackles of light. Since then, his skill mastery had improved to Beginner Level 6. Now he was capable of creating up to four shackles of light. Using the four shackles, he bound up half of the spider’s legs and offset its balance.
Every now and then it would use its immense strength to break one of the shackles, but he would quickly replace them and chain them around the surrounding environment to increase the strength of the bonds. Now that it only had four legs available, it did not have enough strength to stand up properly. The paladins wasted no time on ripping the monster to shreds.
Ttiring!
-Level up!
-For defeating both of the spiders, the entire party has receive the Spider Hunter title.
-Fame has increased by 25.
-Faith has increased by 5.
The monsters were considered a pair and gave additional bonuses when both were slain. The monsters had been meant to have been fought together but the spider mate was hunting at a greater distance from the first spider and needed longer to return. It was due to this that they were able to fight them individually. Another convenient thing was that the spiders were fought in the daytime so they didn’t have the night time bonus to their stats.
They quickly looted the dead bodies of the spiders and threw the loots into the wagon. As expected, the spiders did not have much equipment but there was mountains of japtem. Although they had just rested earlier, they decided to take another break since they were now exhausted again and they needed to wait for the paladins that had been knocked unconscious to awaken. At the very least, the cave they were in was now safe since they killed its owner.
***
They decided that they should just rest another day so that they could be in top condition. After they had cleared away the spider corpses from the cave, they continued their journey. Now they could finally investigate the region that Sun was talking about.
“It should be just up ahead.”
Sun said as he checked the location once more. The group trotted along the forest path until they came to a clearing. They looked around to see if there was anything unusual.
“Sun, are you sure it’s here?”
Calvin asked to reconfirm. From the looks of it, there was nothing in this large open field. Sun looked over the field with his Elemental Perception to find the exact location.
“I found it.”
Sun walked over to the side of the field and pulled aside a bush. Behind the bush there was a opening that was large enough for them to walk through. The elemental void he had sensed was coming from within.
“Hm...”
Calvin began to weigh the situation in order to come up with a course of action. Making up his mind, he decided on the most optimal choice of actions.
Since the opening was only large enough for them to walk inside, they couldn’t take the horses and wagons in. They couldn’t very well leave them alone so they needed to be guarded. The opening wasn’t that big so they couldn’t take a large number of paladins with them.
The group was split into two forces. The group that would stay behind was going to be led by Calvin, with a force of 60 paladins to defend the wagon. Sun would head into the cave with the remaining 40 paladins to investigate. Once they found something they would return immediately, but if they took longer than 8 hours then Calvin’s group would send a dispatchment to find them.
“I’ll come with.”
Alveron volunteered to go with Sun so they made their way into the opening.
Walking into the cave, Sun’s group gradually walked down the path. After the first hour, they seemed to reach what they had been looking for. Walking up to the path, Sun noticed something distinctly different on the road. Despite the fact that he could see the path ahead perfectly fine, he felt a lack of elements in the region ahead.
To test this void, Sun sent one of the paladins forwards to investigate. However a few minutes after the paladin had walked into the path, he reappeared from behind the group.
‘What could this be?’
Sun thought to himself. A strange looping region that connected the path ahead to the path that they came from. He didn’t know the technical terms for it, but he guessed that it was some sort of portal that infinitely looped itself.
However, this made him even more wary of it. The teleportal that they had taken in Somuren was clearly made out of various elements whereas this one was invisible and elementless.
Sun walked up to the strange phenomenon and tried to see if he could touch it. He could feel something there but nothing definite. From his experience, this definitely seemed like a magic. However, magic that does not use elements? Sun found the very idea of it absurd.
“It looks like a magic field.”
Alveron said as he looked more closely at it.
If it was magic, then he had an idea about what he could do. Taking a few steps back from the area, Sun then took out his staff and poke it into the elemental void. Surely enough, the portion of his staff that he stuck inside had visibly disappeared. Using his magic, Sun cast a simple spell.
“Dispel.”
After a short moment, electricity sparked off from the portal but remained intact. He repeated this a few times until the barrier broke. Once the spell had been removed, the path ahead had changed considerably from before. He had made a guess and it had succeeded.
The idea behind it was that the area was enclosed in an infinitely warping field that linked region A to region B. However, he had placed his staff into the warp field and forced it to be within 3 regions of space: Region A, Region B, and the Region that was causing the distortion.
Since he had access to the distorted region that was the source of the magical phenomenon, he was able to nullify its magic. There was still a need to be cautious though. Whatever had made this thing was strong since it had created an elementless portal.
Half an hour later, they reached the end of the path. At the end there was a small study filled with books and magical reagents. Typical of a practitioner of magical arts, there were several items that were associated with magic. Looking around there room, most of the items had been severely damaged over the years. Many of the items looked hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.
“What is this place?”
Alveron said while looking around. Sun then glanced over around the walls to see if he could find anything helpful.
In an old picture frame on the wall, he found a worn out painting of two men standing next to each other smiling. One of the men looked like he had been the owner of this magic study, given his standard mage robe. Given the poor state of the picture, he could not see any defining characteristics of the two men.
Looking on the desk, Sun found the cause of the elemental phenomenon. Apparently its creator had been studying a form of magic that allowed the complete masking of elemental presence. Using that magic, he had used it to conceal his study from the world.
Most of the materials in the cave had been badly damaged but Sun took what he could salvage. Now that it had been investigated, Sun headed back out of the path to meet up with Calvin.
“So what did you find?”
Calvin asked as they continued onto the path. Sun began to explain the room that he had discovered and then pulled out the papers he had salvaged.
“More ancient language huh?”
Calvin couldn’t help but say. It sounded too far fetched to think that all this ancient language was not related to each other. There was nothing they could do about it for now so they simply set it aside to give to the High Priest later.
“I’ll give it to him when we get back.”
Since Alveron was the Pope Candidate, he could reach the High Priest faster than they could. Alveron put the papers that Sun had found into his bag so that he could give them to the High Priest to translate.
Fighting their way through more monsters, now that they were in better condition, was much easier than it had been before since they had increased their levels quite significantly. The paladins were already quite high level to begin with and now they were even stronger.
“Does anyone had something I can eat?”
Sun asked as the expedition carried on. He was slightly hungry but didn’t want to bother to stop the expedition to eat. SImply put, he wanted something he could eat quickly..
Calvin reached into his bag and pulled out some jerky.
“Here, eat this.”
Sun took the jerky and started chewing on it. It was pretty good considering the taste. However, it didn’t seem like it was beef.
“Hey Calvin, what is this?”
Calvin took some more jerky out for himself.
“Hey throw me some of that.”
Calvin chucked some of the jerky at one of the paladins. Then he looked over at Sun while chewing on some of the jerky.
“It’s some of that centaur that we killed before. I made it into jerky.”
Sun spat it out before yelling.
“What the hell are you trying to feed me?!”
“I just said that its centaur jerky.”
Despite the small disturbances along the way, they managed to reach Kalida within a month’s time. They decided to ask around town for any signs of undead activity.
“Have there been any unusual occurrences lately?”
While they were gathering information, they decided to replenish their supplies. They took care of all their necessities such as repairing their items as well. With the various japtem that they have gathered along the path, the church made considerable coin off of it.
“Excuse me, do you have a moment?”
A member of the Church of Freya from Kalida asked them as they passed by.
“Yes, what is it?”
The members of the Church of Freya were always open to requests from other churches.
“The thing is, recently there have been sightings of the undead...”
The group suddenly became more attentive to the man’s words.
“The undead?”
They had thought that most of the undead had already disappeared from the region but apparently that was not the case.
“Yes, we don’t know where they came from. We want to quickly get rid of them before the situation escalates further.”
This sounded like what they had been looking for. Questioning the priest further, they found that they undead had been sighted slightly north of the town. They decided to stay in the town for the day since it was already night.