~Cal~
“Tell me again why you aren’t attacking them?” Dani seemed frustrated that I was holding back my Mobs.
<Sure! You were in their camp yesterday right? Well there were other groups getting ready to come down if I am not mistaken, yes?> I was asking a leading question, so she stayed quiet.
When she nodded, I continued, <Here is my thought. We give off a sense of weakness to the really strong groups like this one, and they eventually become overconfident. When a weak group comes down, we catch them entirely off guard and make sure none return to warn the others. The strong group thinks the weak ones were killed accidentally, because they know how easy the fights are.> I really hoped she would like this plan.
“That is… actually brilliant.” She stated, eying me as though I had been replaced by someone else.
I pretended to be hurt, <Why do you sound so surprised?>
She brutally ignored my pain. “Aaaanyway, why do you think this will work?”
<Well, it looks like that strong group is going to be the first to show up every day, trying to soften me up for the others. You said they called this a ‘training ground’, correct?>
“Yeah. I see, that makes sense. So, most of the groups should be rather weak. I propose that we give regular fights to most of them, and only wipe out a party once a week or so. Enough people are showing up out there that I think that could be attributed to poor group decisions.” Dani amended my plan, prototypically making it a better one.
<That is… Brilliant.> I mocked her.
“Hey!”
<Ha! No, it really is a good idea. We don’t want too much attention or they’ll send high ranked people with the lower groups all the time.> I allowed my admiration for her to seep into my ‘voice’.
“I agree.” She brightened considerably, “How is the place looking?”
<I think I’ve got it all reset, I added a few more Bane types to the second room, I was feeling that the number of ranged Mobs in there was a bit low.>
She agreed with my estimation, “Sounds good, did you have any ideas for the acid yet?”
<Yeah, and I discovered a really interesting thing about it. I tried combining it with monsters, and it didn’t do anything, so I tried combining it with some of the different materials I had gathered. One combination seems promising. When I added hydrogen and oxygen to the mix, it vastly increased the potency of the acid. I tested a small amount of it, and it dissolved a rabbit within about ten seconds!> I tried to keep the volume of my voice down, but this scientific breakthrough needed to be known!
She dimmed, and turned a bit green in a way I had taken to mean ‘disgust’. “Wow. That is horrible. Also, I don’t know what you are talking about, Cal. I think that you forget that when you absorb things you learn their name, and what that name means. When you say those words to me, they have no meaning and I can’t remember them... Just tell me what you are going to call it.”
<Oh. I didn’t realize that. Sorry. I’m thinking of calling it ‘etching solution’ because it eats into everything it touches. Seriously, this stuff is dangerous.> I hoped she would heed my warning, that Basher had seemed like it was really in pain.
She looked at me questioningly, “When did you make this stuff?”
<Well, you went to sleep and I got bored-> I began sheepishly.
“And when Cal gets bored he creates deadly stuff for entertainment.” She interrupted dryly.
<Kinda.> I was a little embarrassed, but also glad she was starting to have a high opinion of me, even if it was a little dark. <It’s good for us in the long run though. Speaking of the long run, in your opinion what is it going to take to get me to F-rank nine?>
She started considering something, and spoke slowly after several seconds of intense thought, “Well, I think you have enough understanding of how things work, so now it is a matter of raw power. When your Chi spiral fills two thirds of your Core, you should break into F-rank nine. At the rate you are going, it should be only a few weeks, faster if you get large influxes soon.”
I did some quick calculations in my head, judging how much Essence I was gaining recently. <Well I am about half full of Essence in my spiral, but haven’t been getting many large inputs recently. If people start dropping I might make it in a few days.>
“No rush, Cal. Slow and steady makes for a strong power base. I was actually thinking you should try and compress that Chi spiral down. I don’t want to sound mean, but I think you’ve been getting complacent and layering it on without using all the available space. It’s a bad habit.” Dani admonished, directing my attention to all of the space I was wasting in my Core.
She was right, and under her watchful eye I worked on compressing it down as much as I could. There was a lot of empty space that I was not using, it turned out. By the time I was finished working to improve myself, I had a significantly smaller, but far denser spiral spinning at greater speeds.
“Good work! Remember that the faster it spins the more well refined it will be, and faster spinning makes for faster Essence gathering as well.” She sounded very pleased with my effort.
I knew she was right, and my laziness may have really been costing me, especially now that I saw how fast the spiral was spinning. <Sorry, my mind had been on other things recently. I’ll try to remember that real power is not in what something looks like, but in the quality of the effort that it takes to get there.>
She beamed at me, “I’m proud of you Cal! You don’t shy away from your faults, and work hard to improve yourself when you find them. Ooh! By the way, I think a new group is coming in!”
She was, of course, correct. I decided to follow her plan and give them a regular fight. When they came in to the first room, I ambushed them at the center and watched as my bashers got in several nice shin-shots before they finally took my minions down. Retreating at about half losses as usual, I watched as they paused in the room for a bit to recover and gather the loot. While they did so, I scanned their auras, double checking and pleased upon finding that this was a D-ranked group, none past the fifth ranking.
They continued onward, pushing through the pain as the promise of treasure stirred them from inaction. Already a few coppers richer, apparently the equivalent of a week's pay in the area, they were determined to make it big. The second room was harder for them, as I attacked with the rabbits before they killed off the Shroomish, making them work harder to block the poisonous thorns while their legs took a beating. By the time half the swarm of Bashers were defeated, inspiring a retreat, the men looked exhausted and filthy. Covered in blood from my rabbits, and bruises of their own, they certainly looked ready to call it a day. Most of them at least. One of the men, trying to convince them, pulled off his helmet and started arguing energetically for the group to continue.
He began stalking toward the next tunnel, very inspirationally shouting, “To money!!” I saw my chance. The Bane on the ceiling by the tunnel took a clean shot, impaling the man with a hand-sized thorn directly through his temple, piercing the skull in one blow! Even if the initial attack hadn’t been enough to kill him (it was), the poison though weak was administered directly to the man’s brain. He fell, and as soon as his aura winked out I was able to work on directly dissolving his armor with my influence, the process essentially aging them until they fell apart as tattered, useless chunks while I took the pattern I needed to recreate it. The suddenly rusted remnants of his armor clanging to the floor startled his team greatly, their eyes showing white as their faces drained of blood in shock.