He thought about what to answer, and eventually he told her at least his current feelings about the idea of what comes next, "Depends. I do think that the forest could serve as a proper base for at least some time, but if we end up finding more people, or even hell, entire groups of them, it might be more beneficial to leave for good. We'll have to leave eventually for expeditions out into the wider world if we plan on leveling up more and seriously trying to earn what we came here to try and accomplish. Whether or not we come back, I guess depends on how attached to this place we end up getting."
"That's good to know. I'm also glad that you're starting to say we a lot more. Happy to see that my feminine charms are working," she replied happily but a little sarcastic.
He rolled his eyes and chuckled, "For now, I think we should just focus on tomorrow's excursion into the cave."
She gave a nod as she took out their packets of food and grabbed some forks for them to eat with. As they both opened the package and smelled the deliciousness of the food inside, they enjoyed a calm night by the river eating some yummy steak. Tomorrow would be quite a major event depending on how things ended up going for them.
Eventually, one morning came. Benedictus was the first one up. Emma was sleeping next to him in bed, and she looked so cute and peaceful. He gave her a few pats of her head and down her back and a couple scritches under the chin. She, too, woke up and began licking his face in response.
"Time to get up and do a perimeter check. Let's go girl," he said after giving her a little smooch on the snout.
They both got out of bed, and after he grabbed his gun, they walked outside the cabin and started checking around. He had changed the layout of the pit traps so they could more effectively catch any creatures trying to enter from the edge of the tree line while remaining well hidden by vines and leaves from anyone who didn't know they were already there. He also used the wood from the trees that he had shot down a few days back when he was testing the increase in power he got from Arcane ancestry to create a wooden wall around the clearing right behind all the pit traps. Outside of the pit traps, he also set up some net traps he made primarily with plant material that he was able to turn into more primitive rope.
Thankfully, nothing had set off any of his traps and the ground outside the wall looked undisturbed by anyone outside of them. It did help that he had moved the corpses of all of those dead vinuu out into the forest around the area. This lets the smell of the corpses both bring creatures to the area, only for the number of corpses to scare them away. Most animals, upon seeing enough corpses, associate certain areas like that with extreme danger or sickness.
For now, it must have been sufficient in warding off any creatures trying to come closer to this part of the forest. Feeling satisfied, he went back to his cabin and grabbed a change of clothes. He took the largest pot they had and filled it with water. He set it on the makeshift stove and walked up to the door of Marcelina's shelter.
Giving it a knock, she slowly woke up, and she said, "I'm up now. I'll purify the water in a moment."
With that, he went back over to his cabin to grab his bathing supplies. This was now their routine for mornings as it allowed them to get in a somewhat primitive bath and change into fresh clothes before they headed out into the forest.
It was about an hour later, after both of them had thoroughly washed themselves and changed into fresh clothes, they had finished up eating some of Ben's snacks for breakfast and took some water bottles with them. They made sure that all of their weapons were ready and Ben actually wanted to do something special.
"Could you hand me your pocket knife? I'd like to try something," he politely requested from her.
"I don't see why not," she spoke as she handed it to him.
He took both his pocket knife and his switchblade and, with all three of them in his hand, he used his minor geo manipulation to merge them all together into a proper dagger. Since they were all made out of only metals, it was easy for him to shape them into the rough form of a dagger, and then use some of the nearby wood from nearby sturdy trees to create a comfortable handle. With some of the plant life around, he created a plant-based fiber wrap around the handle with a similar design to what you would see on traditional Japanese tanto daggers with a primitive design that would be more comfortable to hold. Once he was done, he checked the edge to make sure that it was sharp enough to work with and gave it a few cuts and stabs into a nearby tree.
Seeing that it held up just fine, he handed it to her and said, "Here you are. Fighting with a pocket knife is not the best if we're going to go inside their nest. Something with a little bit more reach and lethality will go a long way. Especially since you don't use magic like I do, and your powers are more support-based."
"Thank you. It looks very nice. I'm sure it will be very useful," she thanked him, gladly taking the now improved weapon.
He gave her a nod and then created stone stairs with his geo manipulation that they used to walk to the top of the wall and then walk down to the bottom outside before making them disappear back into the soil, "It will take 3 hours of walking to get there and once we've arrived we can take a brief break. Once we've rested enough after arriving, we'll head in and see what the hell that cave has in store for us."
All three of them gave him a nod, understanding the mission, and they began to head out in the direction of where the cave was. They did not know if they would come across any creatures on the way, but they were certain that inside the cave there would be at least a couple of vinuu. He did not know how many they might find there or if the cave was really the nest of those creatures. He hoped that it was because those creatures were starting to become annoying and getting rid of the rest of them would also provide quite a bit of XP and safety.
Realizing that they were probably about to have to do a lot of fighting, Benedictus went ahead and finally allocated his stat points and skill points that he had been holding off on assigning. He increased his brilliance to 38, his endurance to 26, and his might to 16. He increased his perception to 33, his arcana to 30, and his animal handling to 31.
With that, he did some quick mental math to try and get an understanding of just what he was doing in overall damage currently. All of his spells are level 1 and share the same base damage of 18 to 72 with some of them allowing him to add his Brilliance to the total damage dealt. For those specific spells, it brought the overall minimum and maximum up to 56 at the minimum to 110 at the maximum. That was before adding the overall plus 70 to the damage that he gets from his two positive traits, battle hardened and magical genius.
All in all, this means that his spells that don't apply his brilliance to the damage dealt was 88 to 142, and the ones that allowed him to add his brilliance to them would deal 126 to 180 damage. He couldn't help but smile at that, seeing as such damage made him very effective at dealing with enemies so long as he hit them with whatever attack he was using. He hoped that if he could make the right choices, he could potentially become a more DPS focused magical tank.
He was cut off from his thoughts as Marcelina asked him, "I see you smiling over there. Found something interesting on your character sheet?"
"No.... Just went over some mental math for my current damage output. I'm very happy with my current combat capabilities is all," he explained while trying to hide the smirk on his face.
"As long as I'm not on the receiving end of that, I will be happy," she remarked while giving him a cautious smile.
He reassured her, "You haven't given me a reason to even consider that yet. You're fine. So long as you don't suddenly start trying to kill me for no reason, I won't ever have a need to defend myself against you. Besides, I like having you around at this point. Your positive attitude is starting to become infectious."
"Well, optimism is better than pessimism any day. Life is always going to be hard, but it becomes easier when we choose to look at the brighter side of things. At least that's what I've come to accept," she commented nonchalantly, just happy to feel appreciated.
Emma and Charles made happy noises in agreement with her which made Marcelina and Benedictus chuckle a bit. They then turned their attention back to focusing on getting to the cave. Thankfully, the next 3 hours of walking flew by without issue, and they arrived to the outskirts of the cave without encountering any wild animals that seemed to want to attack them.
"Finally made it...... Now let's take a 20-minute break. I made sure to grab my backpack and bring some snacks and drinks so we could make sure we won't go in fighting hungry or thirsty," Ben told her as he took off his backpack.
At the same time, Marcelina used her class-specific ability, which allowed her to look over the surroundings and spot differences and changes that most people couldn't. She was happy that there didn't seem to be any wild creatures lurking about outside the cave. She informed him while gladly taking another bottle of water and two granola bars, "The coast also appears to be clear, and my Wild Sight doesn't show any beast lurking about hidden in the surrounding area. We should be good for now, but keep your eyes and ears peeled in case anything decides to go in the cave or come out of it while we're taking a rest."
"Noted," he replied while grabbing some dried fish that he had prepared in advance for Emma and Charles.
They all took essentially about a half hour break outside the cave. For the most part, nothing interrupted them until towards the end when they had heard howling nearby. Looking in that direction, they saw a pack of at least 8 vinuu returning to the cave with some of them dragging back what appeared to be a deer creature. But instead of having fur, it had feathers and its hooves and horns seemed to be made out of marble.
There was a response howl from inside the cave from several different similar creatures that seemed further in. It looked like none of them had noticed the group hiding nearby and keeping a watchful eye on the situation. The group chose not to intervene as attacking now would probably result in many of them running away or worse. Sitting and watching silently, they saw the pack enter the cave with this freshly caught and killed prey.
They chose to wait another 10 minutes just so they could see whether any creatures would exit the cave. They were at least certain now that the cave was desperately a nest for these creatures. After 10 minutes of further waiting and seeing nothing exit, they stood up and got ready to head inside.
"Once we enter, we don't leave unless we have to, or we have finished the job. Keep in mind safety first, as none of us are going to be doing anything heroic. I don't want anyone dead or severely injured. Understood," he instructed like the old sergeant that he once was.
They all gave an affirmative nod, and he responded with a nod of his own before leading the way. He chose to cast Infuse Flame on his pistol as they reached the mouth of the cave, and he took one final deep breath, preparing for the battle ahead. To his surprise, the second he looked into the cave, once they had reached the entrance of it there were at least 6 vinuu right there just a little bit inside, partially hidden in the darkness, watching the entrance for intruders.
He recognized that these must be the guards of the nest, and they immediately got aggressive. Without hesitating, he knew that they were either going to signal the rest themselves or the fighting would definitely alert the nest. Seeing no other option, he chose to be the one to initiate things, firing a bullet straight into the first one he saw. The sound of his gun firing echoed through the cave. But he kept shooting as he accurately shot all six of them.
The explosions from the impact scattered stones and body parts from the creatures. Although that dealt with the entrance guards rather easily, he took note that he only had 10 bullets left, and he could hear all the nearby vinuu rushing towards the entrance as they started howling to alert the rest of the nest further in.
When he saw the first glint of light reflecting in the insectoid eyes of the creatures charging towards the entrance, he fired off a bolt of lightning using his minor electro manipulation. The lightning not only struck but burned and fried the creature inside and out. It also created a temporary bit of light that helped him to see the roughly 20 or more creatures charging towards them.
He led the charge towards them as he tried to close the distance. The rest of his group followed behind. He was happy that the narrowness of the cave forced the creatures into a tight enough space that when he just started shooting there was no way he could miss so long as he aimed low enough.
He quickly emptied the rest of his pistol's magazine, but he watched as the blazing bullets tore through at least 18 enemies as they impacted and pierced through a few at a time. The ones hit by the initial impact of his bullets definitely died. He was currently out of ammunition and as he put his pistol in its holster, he cast Static Fists on himself and red lightning enveloped and sparked around his hands.
As some of the creatures leaped towards him, Marcelina quickly dispatched one of them with her new dagger, piercing it straight through its skull from under its mouth and slamming its body to the ground. Charles rammed into another, crushing its head down into its chest.
Charles then dodged out of the way as one of the creatures went to go for a bite at him, only to see it get blown back by Emma. She was breathing boiling hot water from her mouth with enough pressurized force that it was equivalent to being hit by a sledgehammer. It was an ability she showed off a few days ago and has been slowly getting better at using in combat.
As the two of them started dismantling and ripping into several vinuu by themselves, Ben and Marcy found themselves back to back in this part of the cave close to the entrance. While watching each other's blind spots and attacking any enemies that get close to either of them, Marcelina's eyes started to glow as she used Wild Sight to see in this much darker interior.
She knew that they had killed most of the ones that were charging towards the entrance, but there was more that came from further in the cave to help the first group. She saw that there was still about what she estimated to be 15 left. None of the bigger and more dangerous vinuu seem to arrive yet. She saw some of them started running on the ceiling of the cave, which she pointed out to Ben as he punched vinuu to death. She watched as Ben accurately shot them down wherever she pointed, even though he couldn't see them the way she could.
In between pointing out ones on the ceiling, she stabbed into the heads, eyes, and necks of any that got close to her and Ben. She killed some of them but the ones that she couldn't Ben would kick to death. Marcelina, seeing how Charles and Emma were handling things with the enemies that came their way, used one of her other abilities to give them an extra boost.
Activating Beastial Boost, she watched as Charles and Emma both radiated with a faint blue glow of energy. Emma started attacking with much more force and speed. But Charles especially got a much more significant buff from her ability, since he was her actual bonded animal companion. The ability temporarily increased Agility, Might, and Endurance by +10 while also granting +10 to AC and +50 to HP to up to 5 animals of her choosing within 100 feet of her for 10 minutes. If any of the animals she boosted with this ability happened to be bonded to her, the benefits provided would be doubled.
This single ability was the main thing that made Emma and Charles much more effective at killing any creatures that had been trying to attack them while they were scouting the forest. Now it really got to shine as they started shredding through the approaching vinuu with greater ease. At the same time, she watched how the number of enemies quickly thinned out to only 3 left and Ben blasted a massive torrent of flames from the palm of his hand to finish off the rest that were still approaching.
With that, they killed roughly close to 50 vinuu in total, and it didn't sound like more were approaching. The burning corpses that were set on fire by Benedictus illuminated more of the cave, making it easier to keep an eye out in case more showed up. Ben and Marcy took this opportunity to go ahead and start checking any of the corpses or soul cores while Charles and Emma watched her enemies.
They moved quickly since most of the corpses were destroyed enough that it was easy to check a lot of them and only a few seconds. For the ones that were still more intact, they butchered them with great swiftness. They were trying to make sure they didn't waste the buff that Charles and Emma were currently enhanced by. The 5 minutes that it took them to check the bodies was worth it as they found about 3 soul cores. Ben took all three of them and put them into his character sheet's inventory so they could be stored in the pocket dimension for now. With that, they chose to continue into the cave.
Marcelina had prepped some makeshift torches for Ben so he could see in the darkness of the cave. He gladly took one and used one of the still burning bodies of a dead vinuu to light it. Maintaining the lead, he began following the cave while Marcelina continued to use her Wild Sight to get an accurate description of everything inside. She helped describe the layout and kept an eye out for enemies.
As they were walking, they took a note that they had not leveled up, but they did get a notification that they had entered into the Staghorned Vinuu's Nest. It appeared that this cave was some kind of game-like dungeon. It at least meant that their suspicions were correct. Now they can handle it appropriately.
They were in luck as no enemies seemed to show up at first while they traveled the long paths of the cave. That was at least until they reached it. The central chamber where the nest actually was. It was illuminated by bioluminescent mushrooms, and they could see that it was a massive chamber where there were 20 of the alpha vinuu guarding what they could only assume was the queen. It would appear that they had a similar way of structuring their pecking order, like ants, with noticeable changes to be similar to wolves.
The queen quickly became the main focus as she was nearly triple the size of one of the alpha vinuu. She also had a horn on her snout, but it was more reminiscent of a coconut rhino beetle and that was not counting the antlers she had growing out of her skull. Her antlers seem to be made of a greenish metal. She also had six eyes in total. Her body was not only bigger than the rest of her kind, it was longer, and she had more limbs. She had a total of 12 legs and where her tail should be there was an insectoid thorax where she seemed to lay eggs from.
To their surprise, upon entering the chamber, they got a notification stating the following:
You have entered into the chamber of the great vinuu queen of the Polakka Forest. Kill the Staghorned Vinuu Queen and her royal guards. Completion of this quest will reward you with the title of Vinuu Slayer, 1 free ability point, and one random 3-star item.
Optional quest: Upon killing the queen and her guards, harvest their corpses.
Seeing this, Benedictus immediately reloaded his pistol and cast Infuse Flame on it. Marcelina reactivated beastial boost on both Emma and Charles. At the same time, she activated one of her abilities called Mutual Bond.
The ability allowed for her to select the two highest stats from her bonded animal companion and boost her own stats of that same type for half of the number of her companion's. Charles' highest stats were Agility and Might, and currently, with him under the effects of Bestial Boost, they were greatly enhanced. Both of the stats were currently at 42, which meant that she was able to boost her own might and agility by 21 points for the next 10 minutes. Learning that the synergy between those two skills of hers created that loophole made her feel like she had some kind of cheat skill at first, but now she felt it was perfect to help her survive in this situation.
They didn't get much time to discuss any plans, as the light from the torch revealed them to the enemies and the royal guards prepared to protect their queen. They were getting ready to charge towards the group when Benedictus ran towards them in return. He took the torch that he was holding and turned it backwards. Using minor pyro manipulation, he focused on rapidly increasing the amount of fire produced and focusing it in a way to replicate the fiery propulsion of a jet engine. This caused the torch to go flying from his hand at high speed, stabbing into the skull of one of the alpha vinuu that was charging at him.
The force of the torch stabbing into its head was enough to kill it instantly while its comrades charged past its now dead body. However, many of them died quickly alongside the first guard to fall, as Benedictus pointed his gun at them and unloaded. 16 shots rang out inside the chamber in quick succession. Most of the bullets fired struck the heads of the alphas, killing them, while only a few seem to hit other vital parts of the body, still causing heavy damage enough to kill.
He was about to quickly reload his pistol with his final full magazine, since there was enough distance for him to do so, when the queen opened her mouth and started spewing out a liquid similar to that of green glue in appearance. As a result, Ben had to quickly put up a defensive structure in the form of a stone wall to keep himself from getting hit by this liquid. The liquid hit the wall of stone he had rapidly brought up and left acidic burns on it before rapidly hardening into a sticky green substance similar to bubble gum, with how it seemed to react once hardened.
Benedictus started running out from behind his makeshift barrier while using his geo manipulation to conjure up a couple more in case the queen felt like chucking some more of that acidic sticky substance his way. He decided to focus on her, while Marcelina, Emma, and Charles focused on the rest of the guards. It surprised him to see that they were already doing just that without him needing to give the order.
Marcelina and Charles zipped around the enemies in rapid quick dashes, inflicting damage more passively. Marcelina focused on hit-and-run slashes while moving at a speed similar to that of a cheetah at maximum sprint with how much dust she was kicking up as she ran. She also seemed to display a level of dexterity and flexibility as she bounced off of some of the enemies in an acrobatic style that he didn't even know she was capable of, and might not actually be normally, if not for her skills enhancing her.
Charles worked well alongside her, leaving deep impacts from horn bashes and powerful kicks as he bounced around at an even greater speed than her. All of this left the alphas open for the finishing blow dealt by Emma, as she would use the distraction presented by Charles and Marcy, to fire off her blasts of scalding hot water. Anytime one of the alphas got too close, Emma would use her wings to quickly take to the air to dodge out of the way.
The queen wanted to assist her guards in dealing with the three of them, but she was prevented from doing so by Benedictus. She was getting ready to spew more of that substance in the direction of the rest of the group when Ben repositioned himself behind her and shot her with a bolt of lightning. To his surprise, it didn't instantly kill her. He did see that the strike dealt a considerable amount of damage but not enough where he felt like it was severely wounded enough. Although he was successful in getting the queen's attention back on him.
She started trying to attack him with her large paws, but he was able to dodge out of the way easily enough. At least that was until she went to try to take a bite out of him. He was quickly able to use minor geo manipulation to create a stone wall that she accidentally bit on instead while backing away to put distance between him and her.
Using the distance he gained, he used minor geo manipulation to create a part of the ground in the shape of a disc under his feet, and used it to rapidly pull him further out of its range. He quickly jumped off of it once he was far enough away and then used that same control he had over the disk to fling it as fast as possible back at her. The stone disc slammed into one of the eyes of the queen with enough force that it smashed it.
It let out a loud scream in pain that shook the inside of the chamber and the alphas immediately tried to turn to focus on Ben, as it essentially had them change aggro to him. Despite that, Ben was not worried, as Marcelina and Charles took that chance to focus down on the remaining alphas, slicing and crushing their limbs as they tried to focus on Ben instead of them. This ended up giving Ben enough time to test something he had not tried before in the heat of combat.
He used Static Fists and the red lightning reappeared around his hands and arms. Due to the wording of Infuse Flame, he suspected that it might be possible to stack it with Static Fists. If this worked, it would be a major boost in damage output. If it didn't, it would just be a bit of wasted mana.
As he let the mana flow at that moment, he felt a sensation of exhilaration when he watched the flames ignite around his fists and arms. Now with his hands and arms coated in burning flame and arcing with red lightning, he rushed back into the fray with the queen creating another stone disc to rapidly move him across the battlefield. This time though, the queen was ready, and she quickly turned and smacked him off of the disc with her thorax.
The force was strong enough he felt his left arm almost break as he used it to defend himself from the blow. It was definitely severely bruised and hurt to move, but the bones were still intact. But his focus was on the fact that he was rapidly flying into the nearby wall from the sheer force of the hit he took. As his back slammed into the wall of the cave, his world became consumed in pain. He then tumbled to the ground, now lying on the cave floor. The queen swiftly turned around and prepared to strike the final blow.