NOVEL NEXT Chapter 36: Anyone here know how to hunt?
5/1 late morning
Surprising no one, hunting in an unknown environment for prey you are unfamiliar with is actually fairly hard. The only one of us that had any clue about tracking at all was Darcell, and she was more experienced with setting snares for small animals in a fairly sunny and open forest. We were basically just wandering randomly through the fog, looking for webs. I wasn't adding much to the tracking, so I started asking Drusilla about how to be a Warlock.
"Which part? Fel magic isn't too far off from arcane magic, but you need a conduit." She nodded at Noktog, who seemed strangely at ease in the ominous woods. "If you have one, you can channel more magic, much more strongly, without worrying about mental fatigue. Instead, it is your body that takes the strain." She looked at her hand appraisingly. "Not that it looks like it anymore, but I wrecked my body when I first started channeling. I intend to be a bit more cautious this time, but if things get bad enough I can channel quite a lot more than you have seen. Incidentally, if that happens I'd appreciate it if you focused your own efforts on me. From what I've been told, healing magic counteracts the strain quite tidily."
"I'll keep it in mind. Hopefully we won't get into too many situations that require that much from you."
"The other half of being a warlock is shadow magic. I'm a relative novice there. From what I know, shadow magic is similar to fel, but it strains the mind instead of the body. If I use both cautiously, I'm sure I'll be fine."
"I can learn quickly. If we see any spiders, try using shadow magic if you can; I'll be watching you. I'm at my best when I can observe."
"If you like. I have only learned a few spells from the book so far. It was written from a priestly perspective; honestly you are probably more equipped to use much of it than I am."
"Use what you can, explain what you can't. Honestly I have no idea how cross training will work. So far I've only learned holy magic. Next you'll need to show me how to summon an imp. I intend to have every tool in my tool kit." Everlasting talent gave me one edge that I intended to get some mileage out of: my skills would never deteriorate. I didn't need to practice to maintain, only to improve. I want to know at least a bit of everything.
••••••••••
The spiders, as it turns out, were ambush predators. The web thing didn't work too well because these were the kind of spiders that hunted. Mind bogglingly, they did so in packs. A whole team six spiders rushed us out of the fog, jumping out of piles of dead leaves with a horrible shriek.
It was a brutal little fight, and probably would have gone a lot worse for us if poison mattered. Darcell and Tessa definitely pulled their weight; it is really hard to focus on any kind of spellcraft when you have a spider the size of a husky biting you and trying to wrap you in webs. In contrast, the spiders were so focused on aggression and reliant on rapid paralysis from their poison that when a counterattack came, they didn't have many tools to defend. I only saw one spell from Drusilla before she was overwhelmed; it seemed similar to a power word, and had the spiders writhing in pain. Given that one of the first offensive spells a priest would learn in WoW was called Shadow Word: Pain, it seemed fairly obvious that this was indeed a priestly tome.
All told, it left all of us battered and feeling numb in our extremities; body resistance provided us with extreme poison resistance, but not total immunity. Tessa was the only exception, with her entire body covered by her armor she was basically invulnerable to bites unless she was very unlucky. Hopefully she would find it disrespectful to call my bullshit.
"Alright. That could have gone better, but what can you do? Best to take these back to the house and rest up for another go after lunch."
Tessa looked briefly like she wanted to strangle me, but she suppressed it. This disrespect thing was panning out well. "Are you sure? My companions might be in severe danger. I would like to continue."
"No worries. We will stop at the house, eat a bit of lunch, then head back out. I need to make contact with the Night Watch. I'm hoping they will be willing to pick something up for me if I pay them. We won't follow the road to get to them, and if we see any signs of spiders, we will check the area more thoroughly."
I was talking out of my ass, obviously. I knew where her people were, but I wanted to keep her near me for monitoring. Once she was fully mine, I could just explain it all to my loyal knight and she'd probably accept it all as one big, if regrettable, misunderstanding. That's how I saw it, after all.
••••••••••
Lunch was spider legs. We had more than fifty of them; we didn't know that much about the finer points of preparation, but boiling them worked well enough. We saved the spiders' heads in my inventory to turn in for the bounty, and I regretted that I didn't have wild talent yet. I bet that I could have harvested some silk or venom from these guys. Oh well.
While the legs boiled, I left with the last of the breakfast soup. Reheated of course. I needed to check in on my "master." My app confirmed that he had hit the breakpoint of 10 hours, and I was pretty sure that using a mysterious magic necklace provided by me for basically any purpose would qualify as "something he'd normally be resistant to."
I turned into my base muscle man form, put on my leather travel clothes, and tried to look like my own servant. I shouldn't have bothered. The old man was staring at the orb, his spoon still in hand. I gently swapped bowls, moved out of his line of sight to shift back to Otto, and picked up the orb. I held it in his line of sight as I left the shack, until all he could see of me was the hand holding it, hanging in the doorway. Then I used apportation to go back to the house. Hopefully he'd think he just spaced out while eating and rationalize away the lost time.
When I got back, I noticed something strange. A new mission popup, in a new section. Apparently it appeared at noon. Bonus Missions. Hello there, new friend. Let's see what you have for me.
Children's Week 5/1-5/8
Make a child's day by bringing a child from the Stormwind or Orgrimmar orphanages to see some cool and exciting things. The child must have fun and make memories that will be looked back on fondly for years to come. Bonus if you take them to at least 4 major landmarks (listed on your map) before the end of the week.
Rewards: instant capture/adoption of the child
Bonus: Arlo Lure
So, ingame holidays are a thing that The Company is going with? I don't think I'm likely to be doing this one. Having to take care of a kid isn't much of a reward on its own; I have little doubt that if and when I feel like becoming a father I will not have difficulty finding someone to carry my child.
The bonus seems like it would be useful though, if it didn't require me going to at least 4 remote zones to see giant architectural and magical wonders. If this lure is as strong as other lures are implied to be, women with a strong nurturing streak would be really strongly attracted. That may be a narrow category, but I'm pretty sure that I could get in close to the Dragon Queen Alexstrasza, guardian of life, ruler of all red dragons, and massive milf. I didn't know where she was right now though, so I could put it off till next year. I should have a teleportation network set up by then. Or be dead. Whatever works.
On a far less disappointing front, Tessa's shame trigger seemed to be pushing her into a deferential role. She had reached her breakpoint for a positive trigger a few hours early. Keeping in mind that I wanted to mold her into my bodyguard-knight, I decided on "personally assisting Erich" paired with arousal. Any time she helped me with something, she'd get pleasantly aroused. Euphoria would have probably worked at least as well, but I was aiming for a nice stoic exterior with a molten core of lust underneath it.
After staring into the middle distance for a solid five minutes without explanation, I turned to my girls. "Alright. So, spider legs ready? Once we eat, we can get out of here." We got to it. A small hammer was found among the silverware for this exact purpose, and we chowed down. They were good, if a bit bland.
••••••••••
About halfway to the crossroads outpost, cutting through the forest and relying on the tempest jewelry map, we started seeing thick strands of webbing. Figuring this was probably spider country, we followed them while carefully not touching anything. We managed to see one that seemed to be alone, and I splattered it with a strong smite. It had been with two companions, which were easy enough to dispatch when they revealed themselves, shrieking madly and trying to rush us.
We kept following the webs, as quietly as we could manage, keeping alert. We caught two more small pods unaware, and in general I thought things were going really well. The third time we managed to catch one and it's friends started screaming, it was almost passé. Then we heard more shrieks in the distance, carrying through the thick fog. A lot of them, moving towards where they had heard their friends calling.
Drusilla said it best I think. "We should go now."