Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe fell into a comfortable routine for the following few weeks. She’d spend most of her time at Ren’s place charging up the black sphere and then the rest of the day she’d spend at the Kaira park library researching everything she needed to know about Moaning Point. The black sphere had almost been filled and she had nearly met her fourteen gold goal at that.

She had a lot of fun researching the dungeon she planned to visit. She started by first researching dungeons in general, what kinds of things can they do? What should she imagine when people mention a dungeon?

There were a bunch of different categories of dungeons, but broadly it seemed people grouped them into four different types. There were the more typical dungeons that Zoe thought about called ruins. These were often ancient civilizations that fell and their kingdoms or cities had been taken over. But sometimes they would be a forest that had burnt or a desert oasis that had dried up.

The main defining point of these dungeons was that they were literal ruins of something that used to be, and were now overtaken by nature. Whether plants, wildlife or creatures. Often, these weren’t even true dungeons full of anomalous mana, they were just places people tended to explore. But even when they did, it never seemed like the mana had a goal of some sort like with the other types. Mana would just warp as it settled in, and the ruins would be reinforced through some means. Often monsters but sometimes traps or dangerous plantlife.

The second type of dungeon was like the dungeon spring west of Flester, and they were referred to as productive dungeons. These dungeons did something helpful, there was little or often even no risk associated with them. They were just areas that the mana warped into helpful creations. Relaxing springs, defended cities and even inns that wandered the lands.

Next were the challenge dungeons. Your class and level would be restricted on entry to some arbitrary point when you entered. All of your class bonuses and skills would be limited to whatever cap the dungeon had, and in exchange you would be rewarded with treasure and even experience. Though from what Zoe had read it didn’t seem like people often chose to clear them anyway. Just running a higher level ruin without restrictions ended up being both safer and more productive.

And finally was what Moaning Point fell into, a lodestone dungeon. They tended to have a scale of difficulty as you progressed deeper into them. In the case of Moaning Point, the dungeon would grow more difficult as Zoe ascended the mountain. People often used them to level their classes in a relatively controlled environment. You didn’t have to learn a whole new dungeon, new types of monsters. You could just climb and keep learning new things bit by bit.

Moaning Point was one of the higher level dungeons in the area. At the base of the mountain, most of the creatures Zoe would run into would be around level fifteen. But when she got near the peak she’d be seeing well above level one hundred, even reaching up to one fifty at times.

The creatures that made it up were, as Zoe had expected, primarily zombies. Meandering clumps of flesh that assaulted those who tried to climb the mountain. At the lower areas of the dungeon, they were weak but rather sturdy. As Zoe would climb, she’d find faster and stronger zombies. Even ones who were capable of magic.

At the base of the mountain was a small shanty town called Gafoda. Almost anything you could need to climb the mountain could be found there, though there was quite a markup on the convenience. Merchants from Flester often took advantage of the impatience of the climbers to bring over food and supplies to sell at a premium.

There was an abundance of inns in Gafoda where people could stay when they weren’t up the mountain and the rooms were quite affordable, though the food was apparently not so affordable from what Zoe was reading.

The trip to Moaning Point was quite safe, the road was very well travelled by both climbers and merchants looking to bring their wares to peddle. Most of the animals stayed well away from the roads. The main problem were bandits looking to prey on the wealthier looking merchants, but they tended to avoid the individuals or smaller groups of travellers.

Zoe made a note to not join a large caravan as she had originally been thinking. If she hasted herself and ran it wouldn’t take that long to get there with her lack of sleep so maybe it was for the best anyway.

With every new book she checked, her excitement for the journey grew. It seemed so doable, so approachable. She could make it to the dungeon, would have a place to rest at while she was there and have fun exploring what a mana anomaly really meant.

And for that matter, as she read about dungeons she began to maybe understand Eliza’s perspective on the system being created by somebody. It just seemed so convenient, so efficient. Would random chance really create a system like this? Would it be so organized if it were just happenstance? Zoe didn’t think so.

She checked out some books on the topic and it seemed to be something that many people far smarter than Zoe debated at length. Many thought that the system was created to advance society by some higher power. Others thought that the system was mana itself and it had a consciousness of its own. That it would read our thoughts and desires and try to form a world that fit them as best it could.

And many others thought that it was just the way things were, that there wasn’t some big conspiracy or explanation for it. That the system existed and dungeons worked the way they did because that’s just how it worked out. Zoe wasn’t sure which perspective had more backing, but she found herself leaning towards it being artificial in some way.

The next step on her journey was another exciting one. She had thirteen and a half gold sitting in her bag. Enough to last for quite some time with as much comfort as she wanted, and it was time for her first big purchase. A storage item — and a good one too.

Zoe wanted at least four bags and a convenient form factor. Not a literal bag that she’d have to lug around, not something that grew heavier as it was filled. Something simple and convenient for her to use. A bracelet, a ring. Necklace, maybe.

She had asked around a little bit and was recommended a store called A Warehouse In Your Pocket on Ohubi road. It was a newer building in the north eastern section of town where the elemental had attacked.

The building was quite small, just a glass cube with a table in the center of it and a few chairs set around it. Zoe could see a faint outline beneath the table that she suspected was a trapdoor of sorts. Sitting at the chair opposite the entrance was a scraggly man with white hair.

Zoe walked in and the man said hello while he gestured for her to sit down. She did.

“How can I help you today?” The man asked.

“I want a storage item and I heard you sold them?” Zoe asked.

The man nodded. “I do! What are you looking for? Anything specific?”

“Yeah I guess I want four bag capacity and a convenient form factor. Like a bracelet or necklace, maybe.” Zoe answered.

The man smiled and summoned an assortment of jewellery to the table. He pointed at some of them and explained the differences. “A basic four bag bracelet will run you a gold circle. These ones,” he waved his hand over a section on the table. “Have thermal control and will run you an additional gold coin.”

“What’s the thermal control do?" Zoe asked.

“It allows you to control the temperature that items placed inside it are maintained at. Each segment can be controlled independently, so you could have two hot bags and two cold bags, or all hot or all cold.” He explained.

“And it’s one gold extra?” Zoe asked.

“Yes ma’am,” He answered.

“So the other ones just keep it at whatever temperature it was when I put something in, or what?" Zoe asked.

“Things tend to equalize in temperature when left in a storage item long enough, if its full enough.” The man explained.

Zoe thought about it for a moment. She wasn’t actually sure if storage items kept food fresh forever or if people were just more okay with eating bad food here.

“Do the rings prevent food from rotting” She asked.

“They slow the effects of rot, and if you keep them in a colder environment then it slows even more. A great reason to invest in one of these more premium storage items.” He gestured at some of the jewellery.

What was Zoe really going to be storing in her storage item? She of course had clothes, supplies for camping and climbing. Random bits that she wanted to hold on to — both of her books, maybe some alchemy and enchanting supplies.

Was food really a priority for her, she wondered? Yes, she decided. It was. She wouldn’t have much trouble in Flester acquiring food, or even at this point in the forests around Flester as long as no more Okiu showed up.

But she wasn’t going to be in Flester, she was going to be climbing a mountain full of undead creatures that she didn’t think she could eat. And food was sold at a premium there, she had no doubt that the countless other capable mountain climbers would be hunting for their own food and driving the wildlife away from Moaning Point. If the dungeon itself hadn’t already done that.

Which, now that she thought about it, was probably why food was sold at such a premium in Gafoda. There just wasn’t going to be much available for her there. If she could store a few weeks of food in her ring and know it would last for that long, she would be able to feel a lot more comfortable spending time away from a stable source of affordable food.

The slowing effect that all storage items had on rot was good, but a single gold coin just wasn’t that much. That was four extra days of sticking with Ren to help him enchant his weird golem or whatever his next project would be. That’s not a bad cost for knowing she’d have food.

She looked through the selection of thermal controlled storage items and found a bracelet carved out of some purple stone. Flecks of blue and green shone as the light reflected off the bracelet.

“I’ll take this one then. Eleven gold, right?” She pulled out a few gold coins and placed them on the table.

The man nodded and brought the rest of the storage items back into whatever he was using, as well as the gold coins Zoe had given him. “Yes, thank you very much for doing business!"

“Yeah, thank you too.” Zoe said and left.

There were only a few more things left for her to do now before she could start on her journey to the dungeon. She needed a little more money to buy some more supplies and have a comfortable fallback plan, and some practice with her new skills.

But for today, she decided she already got enough done and made her way back to Kaira park. She had learned how to enchant multiple skills into an object a while ago from Ren and just never had the chance to try it out. She wanted to try and get meditation and enchanting into a coin and see what happened.

Zoe pulled all of the belongings she had on her into her new bracelet and then made her way to her favourite bench to sit down. She summoned a copper coin to her hand and started flooding it with mana.

When it was full she turned her attention inwards to try and find both her enchanting and meditation skills. It was simple when she only wanted to find one, but trying to get both of them at the same time was entirely new to her. It felt like trying to split her vision between left and right to read two different books at the same time.

At first, almost impossible. And as she kept trying, she realized it might be a bit easier than trying to read two books at the same time, although she never tried doing that either. As she kept poking and prodding around at whatever it was that made up her self, she managed to find both of her skills. Though they flickered in and out of focus as she saw one and the other.

Like looking at a spot the difference challenge cross eyed so the pictures overlapped and the differences stood out. She tried to focus on them a little more, trying to get them to feel more stable so she could build up an image of both of them together to push into her coin.

After a few minutes she was able to see both of her skills clearly. She focused on the image of them and started to push the entire thing into her coin at once. It felt natural, like doing any other skill she’d tried before and moments later she was done.

Zoe looked at the coin she’d enchanted and focused on the energies swirling around it. She felt around inside the coin at the solidified mana she’d enchanted it with and bits of the enchantment crumbled as it wore off. Energy gently swirled around the coin and rushed in to fill out the bits of the enchantment that broke off.

A constant cycle of destruction and restoration. The coin was stable, it sustained itself. It didn’t do anything, but Zoe felt proud of herself regardless. Next would be trying to fit in a useful skill as well, maybe a coin that never stopped feeling a little too cold, or a toy for Oliver that would last longer than a few minutes.

She wasn’t sure she’d be able to manage that yet, though. Just getting the two skills in was a long and arduous process for her. Fitting a third in as well might as well be impossible, but at the very least she might be able to manage enchantments that could be manually recharged. And that excited her.