Dinner finished up a few minutes after the incident with the Iron Thorns, so I took a break from putting stuff down in my notebook so that we could eat. I had gotten a chance to explore the thorns some, and they didn't even feel like wood or plants. The thick thorns that adorned the vines and even the vines themselves felt more like metal. I was beginning to be genuinely fascinated by the plant life that was possible in this world.
Sarah had been right about the berries; once they were cooked, the flavor was more like pulled pork than anything, making this an excellent dinner for everyone. It was a good day off, but we were all winding up for the next day of hunting.
"Listen, there's something I wanted to talk to you guys about." It was Grace that initiated this.
"What's up?" Sarah asked her. Grace looked like she was a little bit nervous about broaching the subject with us, but she went on anyway.
"How would you guys feel about going deeper into Goblins Reach tomorrow?" The group stared at her blankly.
"Why would we need to do that? Don't we have a good thing going already?" Derek asked. She had braced herself for this line of questioning and was prepared for it.
"I've done some asking around about the other people that came with us. The other parties from our batch of travelers are already gearing up to take the tag advancement test. Most of us still only have one skill each, while the other parties have five or six." I understood that, but we weren't doing poorly for ourselves. We'd been able to start having a good thing going.
"Do we need to start being like other groups, though?" Laura asked. Grace begrudgingly nodded.
"There are things about this world that we don't understand. But one thing that we do understand is we need money to do pretty much anything, right?" Tim answered her.
"Yes, but we're making a steady stream of income hunting goblins the way we are, aren't we?"
"To afford food and a couple of items here and there yes, but to make repairs that we need on the house? A new roof, a new floor, to build an indoor bathroom so that we don't have to come out here and pop a squat behind the back wall? It's gross. That kind of stuff costs real money. The money we are not going to be able to make by doing what we've been doing." The group looked around at our humble home.
We'd gotten so used to it at this point, and I guess I'd forgotten that it was a run-down dump. "The winter will be here soon; what are we going to do against the elements without a roof or proper walls?" We started to see her point. "We have to get stronger to be able to fight against stronger enemies and make more money. The first step to doing that will be each of us doing exactly what Todd did and saving up to pay our teachers."
"That makes sense," I said to her. "What is your plan?" She smiled thankfully at me for being the first to recognize our needs.
"We as a party are strong enough to fight against the regular goblins, and we average about 10-15 a day. But that's only because we've adopted a sit and wait strategy to lure them into traps. With Todd's new skill, we no longer have to lure them. We can bring our trap with us." She motioned over to the Iron Thorns.
"Now wait, I still can't control their rate of growth or the direction that they grow in."
"I know, but you don't have to. Those vines are big enough that if you activate your skill in a group of goblins, they could be wiped out in a matter of seconds. The rest of us can flank from the sides, killing any of them that escape." It sounded like a good plan except for one thing.
"How are we supposed to get to the bodies once the vines are all around them? Can you cut through them?" I asked her.
"No, I can't; my abilities will be steered towards defending the party based on the other paladins I've seen. That job will have to be up to our damage dealer." She looked expectantly at Derek.
"What I can't cut through those! They're way too hard!" Derek objected. Grace then reached behind her and threw a bag of money she'd been saving to pay her teacher towards the Fencer.
"Pay your teacher. Explain the situation, and get them to teach you a skill that can allow you to cut through them. I know it's possible because I've talked to other fencers as well. Every time I go to the Guild, I'm gathering intel so that we can make our lives better here. Please." She bowed her head to all of us. "Trust in me." My face softened at this. Time and time again since we've been here, Grace has been a steady, reliable person that we could all count on to take care of us.
"Ok. I vote we do your plan then. But only! After each one of you has another skill. I don't want us walking in blindly like we did the first time and getting hurt again." Grace understood.
"That sounds like a plan. We have a steady supply of food with the berry bush now, so we can allocate some of our funds into doing it. But until each of us has another skill, I want us to work longer days. We need to move faster if we want to get things done before winter gets here." The group nodded. Tomorrow morning Derek would learn his new skill leaving only four of us to catch up.
My friends all had determined looks on their faces. We would tighten our belts, and scrimp and save up until each one of us felt more comfortable to move deeper into Goblins Reach. With the plan settled, we noticed that the sun was setting. As it did, the flowers that I'd planted started to shine with a dim white light—another odd plant of this world. I marked down what the flower's reaction to the darkness was, and then I went to bed. Tomorrow would be a long day.
The day started with waking Derek up before the sun was even in the sky. Once he'd gotten ready and left, the others, including myself, began getting ready. Grace was outside practicing her blade work, and Tim was already doing his daily prayers, as well as filling his prayer beads with mana. I had harvested the seeds that I could find from each of the plants I had grown and replenished my supply.
I went on the other side of the wall this time so I wouldn't mess up the back yard anymore, and I practiced growing the Iron Thorns writing down any change or progress that I made and how I made it. By the end of it, I had made a few discoveries. The angle and position of my hand did affect the direction that it grew, but not the speed or the real general shape. They were still just randomly shaped vines, barely moving in the direction that I wanted them to go. 'I have to figure out what the trick is behind this.'
But I didn't make it very far passed this as Derek had made his way home having been able to learn his skill quickly. I went back into the yard to greet him, along with the other members of our group. He looked like he had just been through the wringer.
"It's not a skill like you'd think." He said begrudgingly.
"What do you mean?" Sarah asked him; he shrugged and walked over to the mess of Iron Thorn, still connected to the wall from the other night.
"Just watch." Derek lifted his sword in front of him, and a type of purple miasma began swirling around it. He then lifted the sword above him and swung down on the vines. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, but before too long, the Iron Thorn started to wither and die. Derek turned to us and explained.
"It's a skill called venom. As a fencer, the best weapons my teacher says we have are our minds and our speed. They developed this skill to deal with heavily armored monsters, but it works for stuff like this as well." It was an awe-inspiring skill, but we wondered why Derek looked so crushed.
"What's wrong, man?" Tim asked him. Then Tim started to sniffle a little bit.
"It's a high-level skill I'm not supposed to know yet! My teacher took pity on me when I explained the situation." This all sounded like good things to me; Laura seemed to agree as she was the next person to talk to him.
"That sounds great, though!" She exclaimed. Derek nodded his head slightly.
"It would be.... but I owe him a gold piece for the lesson!" Our eyes went wide with shock. 'That's twenty-five silvers. How many bronzes is that?' I tried to do the math in my head for a second, but Sarah beat me to it.
"That's 1,250 bronze pieces, though!" He nodded sullenly.
"I won't be able to get another skill for another year at this rate!" Grace shook her head at that.
"You won't have to wait that long. Remember, we're doing all of this to become stronger. With strength, we can fight monsters that are worth more, and even start taking those nice quests from the Guild that are worth a lot too." He remembered the discussion from the night before, and his tears started to subside a little.
"Oh yeah..." He smiled a little bit. "So really, it shouldn't take us more than a couple of months to be able to get me another skill!" Grace nodded to him before turning towards the rest of us.
"It's time to head out. Is everyone ready? Because we won't be coming back until later than usual starting from today on." We all agreed that we were ready and went on our way. Today would be the first day that we wouldn't be waiting for monsters to fall into our traps. Today we were the aggressors.
Once we were out on our hunting grounds again, the energy had changed. There were no more nerves having to do with these types of enemies. We knew their attack patterns, and we had the necessary skills to take them out. The plan was simple; we'd be taking on groups of goblins now, not just one or two of them at a time.
Sarah scouted the area until she found a large enough, but not too large group. Once she did, we would move in closer to them staying in hiding. Grace would come out and make them focus on her while Sarah and I hid in the trees, and the others behind bushes or rocks close by. Grace ran towards us, and we all knew that our timing had to be right.
As soon as our tank turned a corner to get out of the way, Laura created a sheet of ice underneath the goblins running towards us. I dropped a seed onto the ground at the end of the ice and made the wall of vines rise quickly from the ground. The goblins would continue to slide towards the Iron Thorn until some of them impaled themselves on the spikes protruding from the vines. The ones that didn't die from that attack were quickly ambushed from Tim, Derek, and Grace from behind, and Sarah from above.
The plan was executed with a proficiency that I didn't know our party was even capable of having. We just took out a group of eight goblins in a matter of seconds. Our confidence swelled as we moved forward throughout the day. At the rate, we were killing them, I didn't think that it would take more than a few days to get the rest of the party caught up with Derek and me.