Battlefield Reclaimer, Ch 48: Leaving the Cavern (Patreon)

“Let’s head out,” Sam suggested as he looked around the cavern. The desire to see his family again was strong as he looked at everyone and then down at the amulet in his hand. “But first, let me activate this amulet and see what it can do.”

Now that the amulet was charged, he wanted to see how it worked. If it did what he hoped, it would make his trip back to the village possible. It would also give him ideas on how to advance it in the future.

He wasn’t sure if the avoidance effect would work that well on anyone here, since they already knew what he looked like, but it was worth testing.

As soon as he spoke, everyone started to move. His father and Krana had everything packed away and the guards were healed. They had just been waiting for him and Ayala to be ready.

Ayala was still meditating to recover her mana, but as he looked over at her, she opened her eyes. As if sensing what he intended, she nodded. Then she stood up, her posture changing to one of calm intent as she watched him.

Her transition to Priestess had come with a significant change in her personality, as if she had been fighting all the time before to be herself and to stay away from her duty. Now that she had accepted the necessity, it looked like she had unified the two sides of her thoughts, bringing her more peace. Perhaps those sides weren’t as different as she’d thought.

“Here we go,” Sam said, as he touched the amulet that was hanging on his chest, feeling the energy that was stored inside it. The attunement meant that he always had a connection. Perhaps that was why it had turned into a permanent enchantment.

There were a couple other possibilities for that too, including the binding pattern and the gem silver that could store mana on its own, or even that he’d combined both of those with an aura, but whatever the reason was, monster cores were not the only way to make something last.

He could feel the eyes on him as he activated the amulet with his will. As he did, the pattern on it flared to life and a shimmer of energy flowed out around him, surrounding him in a sphere.

He was watching the guards, since they had the weakest Wisdom, and as soon as the enchantment activated, he felt their gazes sliding away from him. Their eyes became unfocused as they glanced away and a trace of confusion passed through their expression.

A couple of points of mana flowed away from the amulet at the same time, and then a few more as the guards brought their attention back to him. It looked like they were struggling to focus on him. After a moment, their gazes slid away again.

Both of the guards had heard the conversation and knew what was going on, so it was no surprise that they were trying to see through the enchantment. They knew he was there and what the amulet was supposed to do.

“That’s damned annoying,” Lesat grumbled, as he shifted his gaze away from Sam. “You look all blurry and it’s making me uncomfortable. Every time I look at you, it’s like you slide away. I can still see you there, but it’s like looking at you through rain.”

“Easy to lose track of you,” Yeres grunted in agreement, before he turned away and just looked at the entrance instead. “You don’t seem too weird, though, just hard to see clearly. That curse isn’t getting my attention in the same way.”

“You’re still there,” Jeric agreed as he came over and patted Sam on the shoulder, “but definitely a bit blurry. Hopefully that helps to keep people from paying too much attention.”

Jeric’s eyes were worried and there was a frown on his face as he studied his son, testing to see how much the amulet helped.

“It’s not a perfect fix,” Krana agreed, as she looked towards Sam without any apparent difficulty, “but that should definitely discourage people. If they don’t know who you are already, that will help turn their eyes away before they can get too curious. How’s the mana expenditure?”

Sam touched the amulet with his senses. He’d felt points of mana flowing away every time someone looked at him, but it wasn’t too bad yet. The amulet was down 10 points over the last minute.

“Ten points so far,” he reported. “It drains more whenever someone looks back at me. It seems like 500 points might be enough for 500 looks. Very straightforward.”

“That should help,” Jeric said, patting Sam on the shoulder again. “Unless there are a lot of people on the road, it will last a while. There aren’t many folks who will keep trying to look back after the first time, if they don’t find anything interesting there.”

Sam nodded in agreement. Hopefully, his father was right, since that was what he had planned for when he created it. From the way Krana was looking at him, however, it was already clear that she didn’t feel much pressure. Either her class or her Wisdom was enough to see through it.

Ayala also didn’t seem to have too much of a problem looking at him, but after the first time, she politely looked away, studying the exit instead. Perhaps her Priestess subclass gave her an ability that helped, or maybe she was just helping him save mana. Either way, it looked like she was ready to go.

He deactivated the amulet with a brush of his thoughts, since there was no need to waste the mana in it. In the future, he’d have to figure out a way to exclude people from the effect, so that the people around him wouldn’t drain it.

Maybe he could add an attunement feature somehow, where he could imprint them onto it.... The ideas flowed through his mind until his father’s pat on his shoulder brought him back to the present.

“Let’s head out,” Jeric said, encouraging Sam to push aside his worries. The amulet was a sign of progress and it would help them on the way home. “It’s a long road out of the tunnels and then we still have to get across the Abyssinian Plains.”

The curving wall of the tunnel stretched into the distance as they left the cavern behind.

---

It didn’t take them too long to get through the tunnels and then past the remains of the basalt gnome village. There was little left of that, except for the rubble where the monsters had built rough houses. It was strange to think they had been remnants of Outsiders and that was why they had building instincts.

Perhaps the basalt gnomes had once been a real race of Outsider gnomes that had invaded Aster Fall, but more likely they had been an intelligent elemental race.... After the World Law absorbed their essence and auras, they had merged with some pattern of nature in Aster Fall and turned out like this.

According to Krana, basalt gnomes were extremely common in the world and a significant problem in dwarven mines. They popped up with no pattern to their existence except that the area had to have dense Earth mana. Over time, they would eat the stones around them, growing thicker skins and evolving.

Their evolutions didn’t stop at the warlord, either. That was barely in the middle of their more common varieties. Apparently, there were even basalt gnomes that could reach the First Evolution, but the dwarves tried to eliminate them well before that.

Sam shook his head as he thought about it. He knew that the World Law was able to recycle essence into experience somehow, but he had the feeling that the Aura of Basalt from them was even more important. It didn’t seem like the World Law had the ability to affect the aura in the same way, though, since it passed through the conversion process intact, and that made him think.

He still didn’t know what an aura really was, but his class description and experience so far gave him some ideas. Auras had something to do with nature, both a part of the world itself and something in the personality of the monsters.

The gnomes had their Aura of Basalt, which represented their attunement to the earth. The salamanders had Umbral Flame, and the spiders had Rebellious Flame. Every aura was like a condensed concept of the monster. Perhaps it was even what gave them their identities.

It wasn’t like their soul, exactly, although that idea did pass through his mind. It was more a representation of their elemental or spiritual affinity, or maybe a part of the world that they represented.

Did the Outsiders steal a part of the world when they broke through the seal, which then turned into an aura? There had to be some reason that civilized races didn’t have one, or at least not one that he could claim.

It was an interesting line of thought, but he didn’t have any way to prove it yet, so he turned his attention back to the tunnels around them as they moved past the gnome village. So far, there were no monsters here, only silent tunnels. The battles with the gnomes and then Outsider spiders must have driven everything away.

As they walked, he continued to practice with his skills, forming enchantments in his mind and theorizing how to improve his spell scrolls. When they stopped, he’d have to work on another message scroll, so they could use it later to keep in touch with his mother. It wouldn’t be fair to her to leave her without updates. Hopefully, she was doing alright.

It had taken Ayala’s party a couple of weeks to get through the tunnels, and then another month and a half to travel from Osera, so...even if they were quick about the return, it was going to be more than two months before they could make it home. It was much longer than he wanted, but at least it would give him some time to practice.

Time passed, accompanied by the granite of the tunnels as they walked on, heading toward the distant exit. For the first couple of days, nothing interesting happened except that he recharged his amulet on the first night and then worked on turning the salamander hide he had left into spell scrolls.

He had seven sheets of that, so he made two Earth, Fire, and Water scrolls, giving one of each to his father. Then, he used the last one and one of the new spider skin parchments to make two more scrolls for Wind, which was treading new ground. It was the same basic pattern, so he was confident in it working. He was looking forward to seeing what they could do.

He only used his own essence to infuse the scrolls this time, pouring both mana and aura into them, which made them a bit different from most spell scrolls. Each of them held 7-10 points before it was saturated, which seemed to be the limit for the salamander skin.

If he tried to push it past that, the parchment started to warp and the edges curled in as if it were about to burst into flame. The spider skin held more, up to 12 points on the one Wind scroll he tested.

There were clear differences between materials, which made him wonder if they’d encounter another flaw on the way home. He was almost looking forward to it.

When he was done with that, he had thirty-one spider skin parchments left, but he was planning to try more advanced things with them, once he decided on a design.

He had already started to combine his old knowledge with the binding patterns and support structures from the illusion amulet as he slowly created new ideas, theorizing ways to make the spell scrolls stronger, along with how to create an artifact or weapon that could help in battle. New designs were swiftly being added to his memory and his notebook.

Here and there, especially when he created the spell scrolls, small surges of experience flooded his body, but it was only a drop in the bucket compared to the amount he needed for 33. The major gain was that his efforts brought Essence Scribe up to Level 9.

He was pulled out of his thoughts about three days later as they moved into an unfamiliar area of the tunnels. There was a hiss of scales against the stone that didn’t belong, and his ears instantly swiveled toward it.

At the same time, Krana froze. She was walking just ahead of him and her eyes turned silver.

“Enemies,” she said quietly, warning them all as her warhammer appeared in her hands.

Instantly, everyone’s postures changed, their weapons appearing. A spiral of crystal flame began to condense around Sam as he stepped to the side, getting some distance from the others so he could see more clearly.

His father’s skin began to radiate with golden-yellow light as Stamina and Earthen Barrier started to flow around him, ready to surge into existence. Jeric gripped the two hammers in his hands as he prepared to see what was ahead.

Their party of six was not the same that had come down into the tunnels. They were all close to level 30 or over it, with Ayala the lowest at 24. They were a significant force and a well-balanced party now.

They’d encountered a few rats and small things over the last day, but those had only run away from them. Whatever was ahead of them, it sounded like it was something bigger, but confidence flowed through Sam as he listened for it. There was an urge for battle in his blood that was singing to him, like a low, compelling drumbeat that called him to fight. His hands flexed, the talons arching.

The first thought that passed through his mind wasn’t to be worried about the enemies. It was “New crafting materials.” Unless it was extremely strong, anything that bothered them was in for a bad time.

Krana’s eyes glowed more brightly as she waved them back, motioning them to move silently.

“It’s a pack of Ivory Scaled Pythons,” she whispered, frowning as she kept ushering them back a bit farther. “Don’t rush ahead. They’re dangerous in a group and all around level 20. There’s a larger nest behind them that has taken up residence in a cavern nearby. I don’t know how they got here, since we didn’t see anything this strong on the way in, but it’s no wonder we didn’t see many smaller things in the area. They probably ate them all. I’m getting a bad feeling about something, but I can’t pinpoint it yet.”

Once they were back far enough to have a conversation, Sam looked towards Krana and asked the natural question.

“How many are there?” If there were only a few, she wouldn’t have seemed so serious about it. He’d never heard of Ivory Scaled Pythons before, but there were a lot of different monsters in the world.

“About twenty,” she replied, her tone low. “They have powerful bodies, and it’s a bad idea to get tangled up in the midst of a pack. They’ll crush you before you can blink and they’re extremely fast. With our group, we can probably get through them, but we’ll need to....”

Her voice trailed off as she shot a look over her shoulder, and then she spun to the front as she shouted. “Get ready to fight! They’re following us!”

A smile spread across Sam’s face as a spiral of crystal flame poured out of him, swiftly looping around his body in a widening pattern. He hadn’t been much of a fighter before arriving in the cavern, but now the desire for a challenge was burning in his blood.

It had been growing ever since the battle at the gnome village where they’d nearly died and absorbing the essence from the spiders had accelerated it, turning it into a wild flame. Instead of making him lose his reason, the desire was blending with Crystal Focus, highlighting the world around him in intense detail as time seemed to slow down.

Even if they were dangerous, he was looking forward to seeing what these pythons were made of. There hadn’t been anything interesting to fight for the last few days now, ever since he finished the amulet, and he had missed the feeling of a challenge.

His father had his hammers in his hands and the guards drew their swords now as well. Ayala stepped to the rear of the party as her hands spread outward. “Bless,” she whispered as soft white light flew outwards from her like rain, forming into a spell of some type as it landed on each of them.

When it touched him, Sam felt the spell merge into his skin, followed by a surge of strength and toughness. The spell was enhancing his Strength and Constitution by a few points each. He’d never really been in a group battle before. No wonder people wanted Priests along.

At that moment, three white-scaled heads whipped around the curve of the tunnel, heading straight for them. They were moving so fast that they were almost a blur, like white whips streaking across the stone. The details were clear to him as Crystal Focus slowed everything down.

A surge of miniature stars rushed through his blood, like an echo of the essence he’d absorbed, as it brought additional focus and drive. It was an internal starscape singing to him of battle and blood. He had just enough time to realize that this was what the essence system was all about as the pythons arrived.

Ivory Scaled Python (Subterranean)

The three pythons were at least fifteen feet long and nearly a foot wide, with angular, diamond-shaped heads. Their scales were the size of a thumbnail, overlapping down their length in an interlocking pattern. Their eyes were pure red, giving them a slightly demonic look as it contrasted with their white scales.

Their group didn’t have time to get into a better battle formation, and the pythons wouldn’t have respected it anyway. They were too fast to stop easily. Instead of attacking the first thing they saw, they had some intelligence and they went for the weakest targets that they could identify. Two of them whipped like white lightning toward the guards and the third headed for Ayala.

The guards looked nervous, their eyes widening as they hacked toward the serpents. Ayala, on the other hand, was calm as she raised a translucent yellow barrier in front of herself. An Earth shield. She gestured with her other hand and two walls of stone began to rise in front of their group, dividing the tunnel.

Each wall covered about three-quarters of the path, one connected to the right side and the other connected to the left side about five feet farther on. It was a funnel of sorts, to break up the serpents’ path if any more came.

The key point was that Ayala hadn’t simply blocked the tunnel. It looked like she wanted to kill the rest of them too. Perhaps she realized that it was inevitable, so she’d started to fortify their position.

Sam could have sent crystal flame arrows ripping through all three pythons, but as he turned to look at the guards, he held back. He wanted to see how they fought first. If they needed help, he’d jump in.

It was an opportunity to study their classes that he wasn’t going to pass up. He was familiar with his father’s class, as well as Krana and Ayala’s to some extent, but he didn’t know much about the Guard class that these two had, or if they even had subclasses.

Guard was a fairly common class, a variant of Warrior that focused more on defending. He wanted to know how good they were and what the differences were between unique and rare classes and regular ones. A moment later, when he saw what was happening, a wince passed across his face.

Krissshhh.

Two crystal flame arrows shot out from the spiral around him. By that point, the serpents were completely wrapped around the guards like tangled, ivory balls. The guards’ attempt to attack them had only left an opening for the lightning-fast serpents. They had already surged around the swords and then wrapped themselves around the guards’ arms and waists, before tangling up their legs and starting to squeeze.

Their heads were at the top of that pile, their jaws unhinged as they started to bite down towards the guards’ skulls. That was when the arrows hit, slicing through the pythons’ heads. The snakes didn’t even register what had hit them before they died and their scales didn’t put up any noticeable defense.

Their bodies went limp, slowly loosening their grasp on the guards, and Sam just shook his head. The snakes had been too fast for the guards to even react appropriately. Their Agility had to be a lot higher than the guards, or perhaps it was a racial trait.

At the same time, the third python rebounded from Ayala’s shield and before it could do anything else, its head was crushed by Jeric’s hammer, which shot in from the side. A moment later, a second blow followed, breaking the snake’s spine as he flung it across the hall.

“More are coming!” Krana warned, as she looked toward the front. “The wall will help to slow them down a little, but they’re very fast.”

The two guards were pale, shivering as they tried to unwrap themselves from the pythons, and Krana went over to give them a hand. She yanked at one tail and then another, pulling them away so the guards could extract themselves.

Their classes either didn’t have shielding barriers or they just didn’t have enough Agility to deal with these pythons. The snakes were able to easily maneuver around them, which left them at a loss. It probably would have been difficult for the pythons to crush the guards that quickly, given their Strength and Constitution, but it wouldn’t have ended well for them. It was no surprise that nearly everything in the tunnels here had been eaten.

Sam shook his head again as he turned to look ahead, waiting for the rest of the pythons to arrive.