It's been nearly two months and a week since that raid we've done on the ruined mud town where I saw Jeremiah take the treasure from that loot runner before turning him into his minion, Deacon thought to himself as he cracked open a chilled can of cola and leaned against the second floor patio that overlooked where the campfires were placed.
Speaking of which, I need to start thinking of how I want to kill Jeremiah. He fucked me over during the tournament because of his Artifact, and for what he said and tried to do back by the Waystone for Floor Zero, he's just become a dead man walking, Deacon thought to himself as he took a sip. "I just need to find the perfect opportunity to kill him without bringing any undue suspicion on me that would ultimately screw over my friends."
As soon as they found the room within the basement floor of the mud building that was filled with gold, enchanted gear, a few oddball artifacts, spatial storages filled with even more treasure, and that map of the Isle of the Damned, they didn't waste time and immediately hauled ass straight back to base before anyone with half a brain caught wind of what went down.
Unlike when we left for that raid, I brought up the rear this time, making sure nobody'd be able to follow us home and to cover up the tracks we both made and were making.
And if I'm being honest, Deacon smirked as he looked down to see his friends checking their Status Pages and celebrating how they unlocked their first Class Skill. Cleaning up the tracks everyone made was the furthest thing from being easy.
Sam runs like he's got bricks strapped to his ankles and always leaves behind heavy imprints on both bark and mud, and for some reason, Bonehead has this weird tendency to drag his feet like a toddler who doesn't want to leave the playground.
And comparatively, Esmerelda wasn't much better than them as she was too busy scanning every tree and mushroom for "new spirits that are speaking to her" to watch where she's stepping. Only one who didn't give me hell with cleaning up their tracks was Jass. She was smart enough to coat her feet in her half-formed earth armor and soften the ground beneath her with every step in order not to leave any tracks behind when we ended up running out of trees to hop to and had to run on mud.
By the time we finally got back to our treehouse base and were safely under the protection of our wards, it was creeping close to 4 a.m. When we first entered the courtyard, we noticed that the campfire was still lit, and the kid, Arne, was somehow still awake, waiting for us on the very same patio he was on now. He held a rudimentary-looking bow made of tree branches and animal tendons, along with a couple of rough-looking arrows, keeping watch over the base and waiting for us to return.
It wasn't until we'd all dropped off our loot on the second floor that Esmerelda led him down to the campfire and sat beside him. Only then did Arne finally fall asleep, his head resting on her shoulder. After that, with my help, we brought him up to the treehouse and let him rest on the floor below us. Deacon thought to himself while watching Arne practicing his archery.
The loot tally from their raid ended up somewhere around 170k in gold coins and another 400k-plus in enchanted gear and Artifacts, of which there were four that were pretty basic, all things considered.
All of it went into the spatial storage packs that they stole and decided to use as temporary guild vaults so that when they officially found the perfect place to set up their guild base, they had the funds to hire the builders needed to build it, along with the material needed for it.
After getting his fill of the humid jungle air for the moment, Deacon headed back inside the second floor of their treehouse base, the one with the Compact Cooling Unit on, and stared back at the map they had pilfered from the place they decided to label as Jeremiah & the lesser nobles mud town. The reason for the name was due to a 214-page contract they found inside one of the spatial storage packs.
Sam, using his noble knowledge, was able to deduce that Jeremiah and twenty other nobles from lesser noble houses had banded together. They had agreed to neither harm each other nor take any of the gold from within their makeshift treasury until they finished Floor Five. After that, they would evenly distribute their accumulated wealth except for certain items that were claimed earlier or stipulated within the contract.
I wonder how things are still going on with them? Deacon smirked as he looked at the red X crossed on Jeremiah & the lesser noble's mud town base on the map.
Turning his gaze to another location that was crossed off the map, The Ruins of Elarin, one of the five locations that were marked on the Partial Map of Floor Three given to him upon the completion of the Hidden Quest: Revival of the Witch of the Cursed Forest.
Unlike his previous decision to head to the Waning Grove back when he received his reward, the team unanimously agreed to head to the Ruins of Elarin, as they were still riding their treasure high four days after the raid and having collected more than enough valuable items to be able to clear Floor Three in less than two weeks in it.
After deciding on their next raid, they took one of the longboats that the Viking lookalikes used and sailed off to the Ruins of Elarin, which were on the rightmost island, west of where their treehouse base was.
As they were packing up, Arne tried to come with, but we all quickly shut that down. While the kid might be a decent shot with a bow in hand, he was still a level 0 and physically weaker than Esmerelda, not to mention the bows he used would always break after the fifth or sixth shot he made. He pouted and tried to argue with them in the few words that he picked up from them, but ultimately, he stayed back at the base.
The ruins themselves weren't much to look at from the outside, mostly crumbled up mud brick walls wrapped in vines, a half-collapsed tower, and what used to be some sort of temple buried underground.
Inside, though, was a maze of old corridors rigged with every trap under the sun. Deacon had gotten hit with a fire-spewing trap to the face not ten minutes in. It singed off a good chunk of his armor and left parts of his face with first-degree burns that lasted the rest of the day, even after coating them in burn salve.
From there, both Jass and he took the lead and tanked most of the traps that they couldn't disarm. Esmerelda and Sam handled disarming what traps they could with their mana manipulation from afar, and throughout their temple dive, Bonehead mostly kept them patched up while taking samples of whatever herbs he came across while inside the temple.
The enemies they ran into within the temple and ruins were small fries; aggressive Lv 3 macaques, a few oversized Lv 2 parrots that'd screeched like sirens, and Lv 4 spider monkeys that flung their own shit at them.
At the end, when they were back on their longboat and heading back to their treehouse base, they learned that the total amount of treasure they collected amounted to a total of around 100,000 gold in value. One of the few standout items they found was an enchanted sundial with growth-enhancing runes that was used by an old Aztec druid.
It immediately went to Bonehead for his herb garden.
Then we headed to the Waning Grove after resting and exploring more of the island we were currently on… I wish we didn't have to, Deacon mused as he stared at the eastern section of the central island with a grimace.
In short, the Waning Grove was a pain in the ass and not the usual, "ugh, too many enemies" kind of way – no, this was the "this place is made to break your sanity" kind of way.
They were on hour four of what should've been a simple recon run, and by then Deacon was pretty sure someone put them in some sort of illusory looping trap as everything around them looked the same and led them around in a circle.
It wasn't until Sam accidentally slipped and fell into a donut-shaped cavern that they had been circling, that the true Waning Grove was revealed.
And to give credit where credit is due, he managed to quickly cast the wind spell, Gust mid-fall, and overload it with enough mana to slow his descent, landing softly on top of one of the many trees within the cavern before slipping yet again and landing face-first into a mud pit.
Esmerelda immediately tossed herself down into the cavern right after Sam fell, similarly casting Gust to break her fall, and rushed towards him to help him upright and forcibly make him drink an entire Health Potion before he could even speak.
The rest of us quickly scaled down into the cavern and rushed to Sam to check if he was okay, which he thankfully was, as the overloaded Gust spell he cast had taken most of the inertia generated from his fall, and the tumble he took off the tree he landed on was softened by the mud pit he landed in.
After collecting his bearings and getting cleaned up with the use of the very same spell Jass and Esmerelda used on him after diving into the seawater lake, they then began to explore the forest inside the cavern, the true Waning Grove.
And it was filled to the brim with various creatures you'd expect to live in a grove; Lv 6 Poison Dart Frogs, Lv 5 Capybaras, and some Lv 6 basilisks called the Basiliscus Basiliscus. Needless to say, they'd emptied out all of the Poison Resistance Potions, Poison Cure Potions, and extra Health Potions Bonehead had on him.
But unlike the Ruins of Elarin, the Waning Grove had already been scavenged by another group or groups of people, and by the end of the day, they had collected a total of 15,000 gold in value, with the majority of the gear they found providing a minor resistance towards poison.
And by chance, when Bonehead tossed one of his acid-throwing flasks at a group of the small Poison Dart Frogs, as they were melting, Jass, out of the corner of her left eye, caught sight of a key floating atop a puddle of what used to be its guts.
"We were lucky to find that," Deacon chuckled as his eyes traveled to the Emberblood Pool.
Because of their lack of Health Potions, they headed toward the Emberblood Pool, which was a quarter of a day's journey away from the Waning Grove. And as per its play on name, it was filled with various herbs and alchemical ingredients that could be used in both healing and hemotoxins.
Along with the lack of treasure within the Emberblood Pool were the creatures that either secreted hemotoxins from their bodies or injected them through bites – such as the Green Iguana, the Red-bellied Piranha, and the Diving Bell Spider, which excreted webs coated in hemotoxins.
"Oi, Deke!" Sam shouted from below, snapping him out of his self-musings and making him head back onto the second-floor patio with his still chilled soda. "You ready? We're all just waiting on you to take on the Abandoned Dungeon!"
"Yeah! I'll be right down!" He shouted back as he tucked his chilled soda back into his Spatial Sling Bag and leaped off of the patio rails and grabbed hold of an extended vine.