Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 45
🕑 Added 2023-05-22 13:04:01 +0000 UTCHe walked past the dark stone dragon statue and through the small tents then past the falling rock trap continuing through the cave. Just as he suspected, the cave was simply a short winding passage that led to a stone beach. Floating into the air, he glided further into the cave over the lake as high up as he could which was only a few meters. The lake was a weird shape stretching down tunnels and into the alcoves of the natural cave. The first passage he encountered was just to his right as he wound his way over the lake.
Looking inside, there was a sort of a chamber where the lake only encompassed a small area in the center with a stone surface around it. Floating inside, there was a massive Devoured serpent corpse on the beach to the left that had likely once been a sea creature, judging from it’s fins and tail. On the beach to the right there were three skeletons, two large and one small. They all wore the remains of what appeared to be fancy silk clothing, though it hadn’t held up well. The skeletons were positioned closely together in a comforting way that kept Felix from blasting them with spells.
He was wary of the skeletons maybe being undead, but the way they were positioned also indicated that they had likely been close, probably a family, comforting each-other in the end. He cautiously floated over to them and spotted just a single piece of jewelry among the three of them. Based on their robes, he had expected multiple rings on each finger but instead, the only piece of jewelry and the only thing that appeared to have survived, was an amulet.
The amulet was around the neck of the small skeleton and wrapped in their bony fingers like they were praying into it. While Felix didn’t want to disturb the dead, he also suspected the amulet was the last treasure so he carefully pried the amulet from the child’s fingers and carefully removed it from their neck. The amulet was simply a thin silver chain with a pendant that looked like a light green marble.
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World Event
Rothden Family Vault
You have successfully found all 4 of the noteworthy treasures in this vault. Exiting the vault at this point will seal the entrance and make inaccessible to anyone else in the future.
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Before heading for the exit, Felix positioned the bodies so that the larger skeletons were holding the smaller one as well as each-other’s hands. Felix was happy leaving the vault because if he had missed anything, it wasn’t likely to be very important or valuable. He headed through all the chambers he was certain were not trapped, the ones he had traveled through before and touched the picture like surface of the portal.
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World Event
Rothden Family Vault
Would you like to leave the vault?
Note: As you have successfully collected all of the noteworthy treasures, you will not be able to enter the vault again.
Yes.
No.
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Yes.
The picture came to life and light poured through. The leaves in the distance from trees in adjacent yards rustled and a warm breeze gently blew through the opening. Felix stepped through back into the wrought iron maze in the backyard of the Rothden estate. Turning around, the portal had vanished but the orb and statue had remained exactly where they were and appeared no different from how he remembered them. Felix carefully retrieved the orb and stowed it. The statue seemed to be affixed to the basin of the fountain just under the feet on a short cylindrical platform. Morphing his staff into large saw blade, Felix began cutting through the platform. It took him a few hours but eventually he managed to free the statue and even stow it in his inventory.
Felix chose a random direction and began flying over the mansions to the west. Before he had entered the vault, he had seen people and movement on the outskirts of the town, just starting to spread out. Now, he saw signs of looting and even a couple of people at just about every one of the manors on this platform. Some of them sported fresh scorch marks, others had Devoured corpses strewn about. He found an estate that appeared to be mostly untouched, likely due to the large Devoured chained up in the back. They looked like they had once been different kinds of four legged beasts, some tigers, others rhinos and a lot of beasts Felix couldn’t identify whatsoever.
Whoever had once lived at that particular estate seemed to have either been a beast tamer or had a thing for dangerous beasts, likely their ego if Felix had to venture a guess. The yard was one of the biggest in the area, almost twice the size of the average on this platform. Devoured beasts were either chained or fenced in and separated from each-other all throughout. It was almost like a zoo except there was no obvious way inside other than through the mansion at the front. Felix descended down into the backyard and walked towards the manor, figuring he should clear that out first. The backdoor was a set of large wooden doors with metal banding around them. Pulling the doors open revealed a woman with a brown ponytail, leather armor, a bow and slit like predator eyes.
“This vault’s mi- Oh, it’s you.” Jackie said.
“Sorry to intrude, I’ll go find a different vault.”
Jackie walked out the door Felix was holding open and into the backyard, “People kept running scared from this one, something about beasts everywhere. I just finished clearing out the house but the key to the vault is in or on one of these things.” She said as she gestured to the beasts throughout the yard.
“I take it there was a journal or something?”
“Yeah quite a few autobiographies. They… this guy was a self absorbed prick, his autobiographies were awful.”
“Any chance I could take a look at them? I’m only interested in books, diaries and autobiographies specifically.”
“How about this, you help me find the vault key, you can have all the books and literature I found in the house.”
“Deal.”
“Don’t expect to come into the vault with me though, I fight solo.”
“That’s totally fine by me.”
“Stupid Devoured are too dumb to put up a real fight and they don’t even give any experience. It’s like slaughtering cattle wearing plate armor.”
“You take that side I’ll take this one?”
“Sounds good. Scream if you need help.”
“Likewise.”
Felix headed off to the far end of the yard, his side, while Jackie walked up to the pens nearby. The farthest pen from the house was some kind of a jungle biome which obscured any Devoured that might be hiding within. He flew over the massive fence and dropped down in between the trees. Looking around, the jungle there was more tropical than the one back on Trenus. There were more vibrant colors and vines with fruits and flowers decorating the trees in every direction. If there were Devoured in there, it was a toss up on whether or not they were hiding or they hadn’t noticed Felix yet. At this point, Felix had encountered mostly dumb Devoured with low perceptions but there had been at least one that was the complete opposite. Odds were pretty high that these would be the dumb variety, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility they were more intelligent.
Felix walked around the jungle with a translucent blue barrier in front of him. It made it difficult to weave his way through, but he didn’t dare take it down. The jungle area wasn’t that big but everything was obscured by the trees, flowers and other unidentifiable plants everywhere. He was starting to wonder if this pen was empty when a he caught a black mass with the corner of his eye way up in a tree. It stood just under twice Felix’s height and was covered in muscle head to toe. One side effect of being Devoured and having all the fat in their body sucked out was that they looked like body builders. On this creature, that already had a huge amount of muscle mass, the effect was so much greater. The gorilla’s body looked like it was made of thick, wrapped cables with the muscle striations showing through it’s tight black skin.
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[D] King of the Jungle: Devoured (Lvl 147) .________________________________________________________________________________________
A tiny dart of solid mana struck the King of the Jungle in the head causing it to turn it’s head, stand tall on the branch it was perched on and bellow out a massive roar. It looked in the direction the projectile had originated but saw nothing. It looked around with a confused expression then saw a flash of white light in the side of it’s vision and felt a burning sensation spread through it’s left arm as all of it’s muscles tensed.
It jumped to the left destroying the branch it had been standing on and holding the trunk of another tree a couple dozen meters in the air. A few moments later, it felt the same burning sensation accompanied by all of it’s muscles in it’s back and shoulders flexing involuntarily. It was enough for the gorilla to let go of the tree and fall to the jungle floor, but not enough to put it down for good. After another couple of Lightning Bolts the King of the Jungle was defeated without ever catching sight of who was attacking it.
Ding You have slain a [D] King of the Jungle: Devoured (Lvl 147)
After looking through the rest of the jungle, there didn’t seem to be any other Devoured prowling around so Felix moved on to the next area. The adjacent biome was a large sandy desert, only slightly larger than the jungle but otherwise the complete opposite of the jungle. The desert was completely open and visible, looking around, Felix could see every single corner of the area, however, he saw no creatures whatsoever. He searched around, walked across the dunes and even used gust and force to search beneath the sand but he couldn’t find anything. He just shrugged and moved on to the next area.
The next pen seemed to be a forest surrounding a lake. The trees were entirely evergreens and the terrain was varied enough in height that Felix suspected it was meant to simulate a mountainous area. Considering the ground and trees made up such a small portion compared to the lake, Felix suspected the monster was some kind of lake monster.
Since he didn’t want to fight it underwater, in it’s home terrain, he needed to draw it to the surface, at least into view. Felix flew up into the air then, the surface of the lake suddenly erupted, water flying everywhere, then again a few moments later. Tiny beads of force rained down from Felix circling overhead. His backup plan, if this didn’t work, was to start experimenting with sound spells since he knew sound traveled faster through water.
Luckily, it was just a minute or two before a massive turtle jumped up from the surface of the lake. It was covered in spikes, both it’s shell and skin, about ten meters across at it’s widest point and had six large fins instead of feet. It’s shell was still a deep navy color but it’s skin, everywhere that was exposed was black and taught against it’s body. Felix darted off to the side, it’s jump luckily rather slow, and fired off a barrage of lightning as it fell back into the lake.
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[D] King of the Lake: Devoured (Lvl 144) .________________________________________________________________________________________
Luckily it wasn’t one of the smart ones so it continued to jump into the air in an attempt to catch Felix, allowing him to hit it every time it did.
Ding You have slain a [D] King of the Lake: Devoured (Lvl 144)
Up to this point, Felix had been looking for a key hanging off of a collar but he was starting to think he was going to have to start dissecting the creatures. He still had a few more to go on his half of the area so if he found nothing after killing them all, he would come back and dissect them. The next area was an artic biome that Felix was surprised to find mostly frozen over. The enemy had clearly once been like a polar bear but with six legs and more muscle than fat, considering there wasn’t much room left on it’s body now that it was Devoured. It wasn’t a very difficult fight, Felix just stayed in the air and the creature ran in circles with no way to get to him. If it was any smarter, it would have taken refuge in a nearby cave but it didn’t seem to be one of the more intelligent Devoured.
Felix turned to the next pen but stopped when he spotted Jackie standing at the top of a rather large cliff, bow drawn. She tracked a Devoured that looked like a badger except that it was walking up a vertical wall by sinking it’s claws through the stone. Her arrow flashed green for just a moment then Felix heard a screech from the other side of the canyon. He hadn’t even seen the arrow leave the bow or travel through the air. In an instant, the Devoured fell to the floor of the canyon writhing around for a minute or so before curling up into a ball. Jackie’s bow vanished and she turned to leave when she spotted Felix. He flew over and dropped down next to her.
“You finish off all the ones over there?”
“Yeah. Didn’t see any kind of key.”
“Shit. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to dissect the stupid things.”
“Yeah… Any chance I could see just the books? I’ll still help you find the key, just that there might be information in the books so we don’t have to rip into all of the corpses.”
“That’s going to take forever to read them. I already skimmed through them and didn’t find anything. You really think you’ll be able to find something in less time than it would take to just cut the stupid things open?”
“Uh… I’m a pretty fast reader. How about this, you show me the books for 1 minute. If I can’t find anything in that time, we can dissect each and every one of them.”
“That’s just dumb. You aren’t going to find anything in a minute. Fine, whatever.” Books began pouring out of Jackie’s inventory landing in a pile in front of her on the ground. With Felix’s current intelligence it wouldn’t take him more than a few seconds to scan the entire pile. Unfortunately, though it wasn’t clear in the skill description, he couldn’t scan in parallel. The skill scanned books in his vicinity one by one. He could focus on and choose a specific book to scan, but that was the extent of what he had figured out about using the skill. Just a few seconds later, all of the books had been scanned without Felix having moved an inch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
