Dungeon of Niflheim

Chapter 54: Chapter 54: First quest

“The Northrend forest in relation to Furano is section Beta and is further divided into 12 smaller sections.” Ron pointed out the areas as he spoke.

“The closer you get to the Glacial Mountains the stronger and more numerous the monsters become. For the two of you even if you’re confident in your strength there’s no need to go any deeper than the outskirts, mainly sections 1 through 4.” He looked up to make sure that Frost and Maya were paying attention before moving on.

“For gathering red dwindle, section 2 is best as there’s much more areas of growth there than other sections however with more red dwindle comes more monsters luckily in your case it’s primarily frost goblins. They use red dwindle to heal their wounds just as we do so they tend guard these areas. So, if you want to complete both your quests in time, you’ll need to head to section 2 of the beta quadrant. The other three sections only have at least one of your targets or are in reduced supply.” Ron lined the borders of section 2 with his finger and then helped explain its position in relation to Furano.

Frost was amazed at the intricate detail of the map, surprised to see it on an adventurer and one so young at that. He looked at Ron with gratitude, this information would be incredibly helpful in their quests.

“Thank you, Ron, we’ll heed your advice and search in section 2.”

“No need for thanks, as your senior it’s my duty to show you the ropes.” He laughed while folding up the map and storing it back under his leather chest plate. Frost was tempted slightly to steal the map, given the value of information it contained but instantly expunged those thoughts. Ron had assisted them; it would go against his principles to return a favour with malice.

Ron saw Frost’s focused look upon his map and smiled happily.

.....

‘At least he knows how much it’s worth.’

“By the way you can purchase a similar map from the guild for 1 gold coin, mine is a bit more detailed due my own additions as well as those of my comrades. I highly recommend you purchase one as soon as you can afford it, they also sell basic ones for 10 silvers in some shops as well as the adventurer camp in the Northrend forest.” Happy that he could help a couple of new adventurers he stood up to leave.

“If you have any queries about quests or need some advice, feel free to ask me anything whenever we cross paths again.” Ron smiled as he bade farewell and left the guild hall. He had his own quest to fulfil.

Frost and Maya were left smiling as they watched him walk away, their initial bad first impression of the guild completely overturned.

“What a nice person.” Frost felt that he’d come across so many nice people in Furano.

“Yeah, this town is lovely.” Maya nodded her head in agreement, she was enjoying their time here.

“If he enters the dungeon, I’ll go easy on him.”

“Sounds fair.”

The two of them then stood up and walked out the guild hall together, prepared to leave Furano for a few hours in order to complete their first quests.

After a short walk they arrived at the northern gate where they first met Kato, unfortunately he wasn’t there so they couldn’t say hello. They instead spoke to the gate keeper on duty, showed him their guild cards before he allowed them to exit without any issue.

“Ron said to head slightly northeast from the northern gate to reach section 2.” Even though the forest was divided into 12 sections, these sections were absolutely massive covering tens of square kilometres each and looked very similar.

Frost and Maya then walked together side by side until they once again reached the Northrend forest. As long as you were in the right area, finding goblins of any kind was easy, out of the monster races, on land, goblins were by far the most abundant. They bred rapidly even more than rabbits and became fully grown in just a few short months. They are also one of the most annoying monsters in relation to regular life. They mess up fields, kill livestock, damage buildings etc, a damn right nuisance. And worse of all none of their body parts are really useful in any way other than fertiliser and even then, they’re not as good as regular animal waste.

Annoying and unprofitable, is how they’re frequently described, the only solace is that they’re the perfect monsters for newbie adventurers. Low intelligence, weak combat abilities and their short stature make them prime monsters for new adventurers to take on with little risk. Of course, there are some exceptions, higher ranked goblins are difficult to handle, and large groups can cause tons of devastation so to help prevent that, there’s a permanent kill quest that can be accepted by any rank.

It didn’t take Frost and Maya long to come across their first frost goblin, it was alone and sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the trees.

“It certainly feels more barbaric than the ones born in the dungeon.” Frost commented as he saw it in the distance. It looked a lot like the group that entered the dungeon a couple days ago. Uglier and smellier than his goblins. He didn’t feel bad about hunting this kind of goblin.

“I’ll make it quick, [ice bolt]” Frost raised his arm in the frost goblins direction. His voice alerted the creature causing it to begin charging in their direction, screaming as it moved. He simply cast the ice bolt spell quickly generating a metre long bolt of ice which flew through the air and punctured the goblin in the chest, killing it instantly. Regardless of frost goblin’s having minor resistance to ice magic, there was nothing it could do after being pierced through the chest. It collapsed with its eyes and mouth open in disbelief, its blood pooled on the ground. Since they weren’t in the dungeon the body wouldn’t be absorbed.

Standard protocol for adventurers when they kill a monster; after claiming the usable parts they should either burn or bury the body unless there are using it as bait. This was to help prevent disease, attracting stronger monsters and or to prevent it from becoming an undead creature.

Frost moved over to his first monster kill, doing his best not to gag from the smell.

‘God this thing stinks, the humans were much better in that regard.’ The smell given off by the frost goblin corpse was revolting as if it hadn’t washed in years. With reluctance he cut off it’s right ear with an ice chakra blade before preparing to set fire to the corpse with ignition, another lifestyle magic that produces as small flame on the caster’s finger allowing them to set something alight. It’s primarily used to start campfires but setting a small goblin corpse on fire was doable. If it was alive however it wouldn’t work.

Holding the goblin’s right ear in his hand he was stymied for a second.

‘Ah I should’ve bought a backpack for storage.’ He looked towards Maya with a little guilt in his eyes. He knew that she had a storage device, but it was filled with her clothes and personal items, he wasn’t sure if she’d accept placing it there.

“Haaaaaaa” Maya sighed before looking at Frost begrudgingly, she knew what he wanted without needing to hear him speak. Luckily, she had removed some items beforehand and placed them in their room back at Kathy’s inn so there was space but.... She looked at the ear that was still dripping blood... she really didn’t want to say yes.

‘As soon as we get back to Furano, he’s taking me shopping at the very least.’ Although she was filled with reluctance she gave her permission, allowing Frost to store the quest items within her storage bracelet.

“I really need one of those.” He felt envious every time he saw Maya magically pull things out of her bracelet, even his new glaive was currently stored there -it was the only thing he was allowed to pack.

“You’re either dozens of gold coins short or at least 100,000 DP short to afford one at even half the size of mine and much less stable.” Her bracelet was made by the Dark God himself, removing the fact that it was handmade by a God just the size and stability of the dimension was so much greater than the standard storage devices found in monster lairs or created by artificers. Although there was a storage magic spell, it was incredibly rare and expensive.

Frost could only sigh in frustration.

‘Guess I’ll just have to make do with buying a backpack for now.’ As soon as he got enough money or DP however he was planning on purchasing one or the scroll to cast the magic directly.

‘Wait a minute, my specialty is ice magic, would I even be able to cast space magic.’ He remembered Maya explaining his magic situation when they first met.

‘Ice magic will come incredibly easy to you, and you’ll face little bottlenecks however you’ll have difficulty learning other elements. Some you may never be able to use.’

It would be much cheaper in the long run if he could use the magic instead of relying on items that could be lost or damaged but if he couldn’t use it then he’d have to rely on items.

Frost released another sigh when he realised this, but whether or not he could use space magic is a problem for the future, with their current stock of DP he was a long way off.

As he handed the goblin ear to Maya for storage and prepared to cast the lifestyle magic ignition to set the corpse ablaze, he felt an energy flow into his body from the goblin’s corpse.

“Huh?” The energy flowed towards his chest where the dungeon core used to be, it filled him with strength similar to when the dungeon absorbed DP when an intruder was killed albeit at a much lower dosage. Frost instinctively cancelled his spell and brought up the dungeon menu in its simplified form.

On the screen next to his current DP amount there was the number 40 in brackets. It wasn’t there before. Frost looked towards Maya for answers.

“Maya, do you know why there’s a bracketed 40?” He quickly went through the information given in the dungeon guidebook, but this wasn’t mentioned. Any DP gained by the dungeon even when he is not within the vicinity should appear as normal. When they were travelling through the Northrend forest he checked on the DP level every few hours and DP gained was displayed as normal. Why was this any different. Frost grew worried that something may have happened to the dungeon, even with his father’s insurance policy he couldn’t help but want to return just in case.

Luckily however Maya came up with a theory alleviating his worries.

“Dark God-sama said multiple times that he wouldn’t tell us everything about how dungeons work, you need to experiment yourself to find the answers, perhaps this is one of those times.” Maya cupped her chin as she spoke, thinking out loud.

“You received 40DP and it was shortly after killing this frost goblin, and in the dungeon, you’d normally get what 200DP, no?” She looked at Frost for clarification.

“Yeah” Frost started to understand where Maya was going with this.

“How did Dark God-sama explain how DP worked to you?”

“He said that everything contains some form of life energy and DP is just a renaming of this energy along with a scale”.

“The purpose of the dungeon core is to collect this energy in order to allow us to use the power of creation.”

‘Ah’ Frost understood what Maya was getting at causing her to smile and nod.

“By killing this monster outside the dungeon, you were able to still absorb it’s life energy or DP. Since you were the one to kill it yourself and were in such close proximity you acted the same as the dungeon core albeit with a lot lower efficiency” 20% efficiency in regards to the frost goblin.

“I see” Frost understood, the dungeon itself acted as some kind of containment which absorbed the full amount however the majority of it escaped since it was in the regular world.

“The 40DP in brackets is probably highlighting the amount you’re storing in your body, when we return to the dungeon it should align with the rest. I wonder though how much you can store?” Maya queried the limit of what Frost’s body could be without the dungeon core, perhaps 100DP a 1000DP or 10,000DP it could be unlimited they’d have to find out.

Frost realised that this was properly another one of Darks ideas to help promote exploring out with the dungeon. If you could earn DP outside that would help solve a major downside of leaving your core unprotected.