NOVEL NEXT Chapter 28: Corpse Run
The camp was dark and silent when Milo logged back in hours later. He sat listening but heard nothing but the slight sound of water coming from the wall near his tent. Once past the curtain, he could see slightly better. In the deep caves, Milo could see for a few yards in black and white, even when it was completely dark. He liked it better in the areas with glowing lichen and fungi on the walls. He skulked along the tunnel. At least if he ran into some creature, he still had his claws and tail. A poor human would have been totally blind and defenseless. And cold. He had two advantages: his fur and the rune-boned cowl. Being Soul Bound meant it came with him when he died.
He really felt horrible. This must be the 'death de-buff he had read about. His stomach was queasy, and his head hurt. People had talked about how the day seemed drab and dreary. That didn't really apply to Milo, down in a lightless hole in the ground. It was always dreary. He decided to eat another wheel of cheese and play with George for a couple of hours until he would feel better. A nap sounded fine too.
Waking up again, he waved to George and headed back down the corridor. The vertical shaft had more light. He quickly climbed up the cable and padded down the tunnel listening for any sound. Running into another copperhead would not be fun right now. Luckily, there was little chance of that. He'd spent part of the time offline looking them up.
From what other players had figured out, Elementals appeared where a high concentration of resources was present. A normal player would rarely encounter them, but someone gathering resources could expect to see them on a regular basis. Most of them were just Named bosses, slightly better than a regular creature of the same type. Loggers had encountered numerous Treants and Dryads who defended forests. Miners and stonecutters had fought several types of stone golems.
Because of their nature, elementals were vulnerable to certain types of tools. Axes worked great on Treants, picks on stone golems, and cleavers on meat creatures. A farmer had killed a giant turnip creature with his shovel. Elementals always dropped some type of rare crafting material associated with their type, making them sought after by many crafters. They were also an important source of enhancement points for crafters. If your skills weren't geared toward fighting, it was a lot easier to get enhancement points from elementals than hunting rare bosses in dungeons.
Probably, a couple of good hits from his pick would have killed the copperhead, but unlike many of the clumsier elementals, copperheads were as fast and agile as real snakes. Hitting them was a lot harder. His exploding skull spell was his best way to attack them. Since the spell needed a material component, it did more damage than a fireball and hit everything around it, negating the snakes' avoidance. The downside was that he needed to find more skulls. He would use his up quickly if he kept encountering the snakes.
Approaching the site of the battle, all was still quiet. Shadowblight and his pick were lying on the ground near his tombstone. 'Here lies Milo, the brave little mongoose who needs to dodge faster.' Well, he couldn't argue with that. Touching his tombstone made it fade away, revealing all the gear and clothes he had been wearing. He quickly dressed and felt better.
There wasn't much left of the Copperhead Vein-Lurker. Like the smaller copperhead, there was a piece of High-Quality Pure Copper Ore. This one was a 'chunk' instead of a 'nugget' and probably worth a lot more. Milo also found a copper snake fang about 2" long.
Copperhead Fang Talisman: This small copper snake's fang can be worn as a necklace or earring. Any attack made by its wearer will always do +1 point of damage and will do an extra point of damage, and always do a minimum of at least one damage.
Even the smallest of snakes has a deadly bite.
Every little bit helped, but Milo wondered when 1 point would turn the tide of battle. Still, he'd wear it. For now, he used a strip of rawhide, threading it through the hole in the top of the fang and putting the crude necklace on.
He cautiously examined where the copperhead had come from and found three more nuggets of pure copper and ten more chunks of ore. But that was it for this side of the vein. He'd have to start mining across the corridor, on the other wall. First, though, he wanted a break to spend some experience and enhancement points. He retreated back down to his camp. He set up the fondue pot and lit it to have some light and summoned George. Milo was a loner by nature, but he liked the little lizard. George immediately marched around the perimeter of the camp and cleaned up any bugs. He came back to Milo and sat waiting for a treat.
The cheese of the day was a small wheel of Gouda. It was hard and crumbly, with several flavors mixing together. He tossed George a chunk, and the lizard happily gnawed on it. Milo consumed the rest of the wheel, getting his usual notification of extra health and STR.
He had 500 experience to assign to his skills. From reading the forums, he now knew how much experience it took to gain levels in skills and stats. Level 1 was easy at only 50 experience. Then it jumped to 150 for level 2 and 300 for level 3. He could go as high as level 5 in his skills. So far, only a few of his skills had advanced. If he didn't use them, he didn't earn experience in the skill. The 500 from the boss fight could be placed any way he liked, but only in the skills used.
The obvious skills were Bonecasting, dodge, and weapons. Those were what he needed to get better at so he didn’t die in combat. The basic debate was, did he put a little experience into a lot of skills? Or a lot of experience into one skill? Based on the last fight, Bonecasting won. He put the 400 experience into Bonecasting, taking it to rank 4. He put the other 100 experience points into dodge. That also gave him 400 experience points in INT and 100 in AGI.
His next decision was how to spend his enhancement points. He had 10 of them to spend, from five saved and five from the copperhead. Several options stood out to him. Skilled Provider and Abundance would increase how much ore he mined and help him find more nuggets or gems. Silent Step would add to his stealth skills. He wanted the upgrades to tail fighting, and cheesemaking intrigued him. What would he need to make his own cheese? Was it alchemy?
In fact, he wanted a lot of those skills. So how would he get them? Killing Cronk had given him the most, but that was an impossible thing to do again. The most reliable source of enhancement points for him was actually the worst: killing copperheads. The snakes didn't hit hard, but their poison was going to kill him again. It was hard to hit something several times when it only had to hit you once or twice and wait for you to die.
Eventually, he came up with a plan. It was going to involve a lot of work. Milo didn't mind. He was always working in the real world. The secret was to have a plan, then break the job down and attack it one small job at a time. He had disassembled huge machinery and stolen it piece by piece, only to reassemble it where he needed it. Some jobs had taken months. He'd just apply the same logic here and add a large amount of cheese to the mix.
And he couldn’t forget one other task. He needed to find some type of old bone to take to the Arcane Library. Learning new spells seemed important. Maybe a bit more exploring before he went back to mining.
He went back topside and gathered up all his ore and nuggets. Then he slid back down the hundreds of feet to the mushroom cavern. He needed to pick something up and then go visit Harry.