NOVEL WEB Chapter 49 - Wolves and Mushrooms
Novaris. Quattur. 905. AGC.
Nodel. Last Quarter 🌗. Day 23.
“How do you know that!? How does your power know that?!” Alyx and Lili yelled at the same time, attracting attention from the other adventurers who were using the stairs.
Thankfully, Alyx quickly tapped a little badge on his jacket. Then Tesilim heard and felt an odd popping noise as if there had been a shift in pressure. The pop was followed by a level of silence that clearly stood out against the buzz of noise that had been going on in the rest of the guild. Tesilim looked over at Alyx and just stared, clearly asking the question his mouth failed to produce.
“This is a privacy bubble, Tesilim. Now, we can continue our conversation.” Alyx responded
Tesilim, needing to test it out, yelled very loudly.
“TESTING! TESTING! ONE, TWO. ONE, TWO. ONE, TWO, THREE! MIC CHECK!”
The tactic just seemed to annoy his companion, and he received a glare from Alyx, followed by a slap on the back of his head from Lili.
“Stop being an idiot!” She said.
“Okay, so explain.” Alyx continued seriously.
“I don’t know, Alyx. I already told you it somehow works through the World Crystal, and you yourself said that the thing is basically a god who created this world.”
“That is true. And more than likely, it knows what's going on, always. So, it can provide that information. Still, that's very powerful. You essentially have a clairvoyance and divination spell capable of telling you all this information.” Alyx responded with a serious face as he pondered the implications.
Tesilim matched his tone and gave some more insight into the power. “Sure, but it only seems to work for already public information, at least to some extent. Also, it didn’t really give me any personal information about the clients.”
Alyx thought about it for a second or two before nodding in agreement. “True, true.”
Lili, who had been quietly listening to the conversation the whole time, finally spoke up.
“It's all very nice. Any other powers you have that we should know about?”
“Not really. I honestly just learned about that when you guys did.”
“Alright, well, let's keep up appearances and go speak with a clerk anyway.”
Something both Alyx and Tesilim agreed to.
After speaking with the clerk and getting the exact information Tesilim already had, with the addition of actual maps to the places they needed to find, the party left the guild and headed back to Lili’s shop.
On the way back to the shop, they agreed to wait until the next day before heading out and doing the first mission. The first mission they decided to do, or at least for Tesilim to do, was the one with the wolves, as it was the most straightforward. From there, they would do the willow tree one and, finally, the nature spirit quest.
Tesilim also prompted Alyx to see if he knew the cleric who was experimenting with the orb of binding. And it turns out Alyx did know the cleric, as they had both argued about the possibility of the experiment actually working. Essentially, it boiled down to Alyx's belief that the captured elemental essence would be more like a power source than anything else, with the other cleric insisting it would not and even possibly have some conscience of its own to assist it in its golem-like duties.
The motivator behind the experiment, at least from Tesilim's perspective, was that a regular golem acted more like a program that would do instructed tasks that were built into it. Meanwhile, the cleric instead wanted to make a basic AI that would enable learning and progress without the more annoying things brought about by sapiency.
Nodel. Last Quarter 🌗. Day 24.
Tesilim began the day by rolling his six-sided dice to see what weapon he would get. Happily, he got the katana again, but only for one hour, which meant it was gone before they even made it out of the city. He definitely needed to stop rolling the thing so early in the day.
So, after his katana popped back into dice form, he rerolled it.
Tesilim's excitement grew as a red laser blaster appeared in his hand, and he instantly cast his identify on it.
“With magic's touch, let truth unfold;
Illuminate the unseen, bright and bold;
By word and sign, let all be clear;
World Crystal, show what's hidden here."
Then, with a jingle, came the notification for his new weapon.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Ray Gun - Item Rank: Uncommon - A cartoonish-looking ray gun created by Earth’s imagination and brought to life using magic. The red blaster is enchanted with self-repair and sturdiness. It can shoot magical missiles that are better at piercing through magical defenses. The blaster has four different colors that change the magic of the missile and will change colors with each summon in the order below. Each missile travels in a straight line, and its range and damage are based on the amount of mana spent.
1 - Red - Fire.
2 - Deep Blue - Ice.
3 - Light Blue - Lightning.
4 - Light Yellow - Acid.
🔷
Sadly, the blaster didn’t last long either, disappearing after an hour. Tesilim did get plenty of use from it, though, blasting rocks and trees throughout their walk through the forest. And, of course, as soon as the blaster disappeared, Tesilim rolled again.
Getting the shield again was pretty awesome, especially after it lasted more than one hour, which meant it was either going to last for 12 or 24 hours. Still, it would be odd fighting wolves with a shield, but Tesilim had gotten plenty of practice with it, and maybe it was good after all, and he could just knock out the wolves.
After another hour of walking, they finally made it to the mushroom area of the forest.
Tesilim wasn’t sure why, but he expected the place to be murky, with spores and dust flying everywhere. It wasn’t. It was just the forest, but mushrooms were growing everywhere.
Trees had mushrooms, leaves had mushrooms, mushrooms had mushrooms, and, more importantly, animals had mushrooms. Which began to worry Tesilim as he feared mushrooms would start growing on them as well.
“Hey, guys? Mushrooms aren’t going to begin growing on our skin, are they?” Tesilim questioned worriedly.
“No.” Lili and Alyx answered at the same time without offering further explanation, and as they were more experienced than him, Tesilim took their word for it.
Walking through the forest, Alyx and Lili taught Tesilim how to use his presence to spook beasts and weaker monsters, so they didn’t have to fight everything. It was a useful trick, and even with D Rank monsters, it would work if they outnumbered the creature. They did warn him that some monsters didn’t care about such tricks and would attack regardless of what happened.
Tesilim did ask about stronger monsters. As in, if they ran into a stronger monster what would they do? The answer did not help Tesilim’s worry. Basically, it was a “it is what it is” situation. Apparently, cities and kingdoms did try to create zones of control within civilized territories. This involved them setting certain boundaries by patrolling them, causing monsters to be wary of crossing into certain areas. Usually, this meant the closer to the city you were, the less likely you were to stumble into a D Rank creature. Then, the risk would increase the further out you went. Sadly, the world wasn’t fair, and if you left civilization without power, you just had to take the risk.
Eventually, they ran into a pack of wolves with mushrooms growing out of them. The wolves looked like normal wolves, meaning they had varying coats of grey and were just as big, if not bigger, than Tesilim. However, unlike normal wolves, they had mushrooms growing out of them. Much like the ones in the rest of the mushroom grove, the mushrooms were of all sizes, colors, and patterns. And based on the bit of the late response from the wolves, this pack was definitely negatively impacted by the mushrooms.
However, eventually, and as a unit, the wolves all turned towards them and opened their mouths, unleashing a gust of spores that headed straight for them. He then heard Lili tell him to get ready as Alyx chanted a spell.
"Winds of might, hear my call;
Breeze to gust, rise and sprawl;
Swift and strong, with power unfurl;
I summon thee, oh winds of the whirl."
As the spores were about to hit, Tesilim felt Alyx’s spell finish, and a blast of light green wind gushed outwards, scattering the spores and revealing the wolves that were running towards them.
Looking over at Lili and wondering why she was still wearing the dress, Tesilim decided it wasn’t time to question things in the midst of combat and threw the shield while activating the spinning lash, aiming for the lead wolf. Sadly, the dude jumped over it, and it hit the wolf behind it. Unfettered, Tesilim charged forward as he summoned the shield back to his hand. As he ran, he activated his body enhancement before holding the shield in front of him and, with a grin got ready to activate the kinetic slam ability. He activated it right before meeting the lead wolf, which caught it by surprise as Teslin slammed through the pack and sent the supposed alpha sprawling backward with its head bashed in.
Coming to a stop, Teslim looked back at the scattered pack of seven and decided to end the fight.
"From my hand, let frost take flight;
With icy force, scatter their might;
Frost missiles, heed my call;
Strike my foes with bitter frost.
Chanting the spell, Tesilim decided to infuse it with his chaos mana and spent 50 of his 52 available mana to give it a good boost. Finishing the chant, he saw the seven large icicles in flight as they struck each of the wolves' heads, causing them to explode in a bit of frozen gore.
After their death, Tesilim saw the notice of his Chaos Event, and his smile left his face as he waited for whatever was going to happen while yelling at Lili and Alyx to get ready as well.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Warning! Chaos Event Imminent, prepare yourself.
Rolling d20. 11. Rolling 1d6. 2. Rolling 1d4. 3.
🔷
Looking up to await his doom, Tesilim was surprised as a pizza slammed into his face.