Soul of the Warrior

Chapter 273: Ancestral Wisdom

Reivyn was absorbed by the contents of the journal. Not every entry was exciting or terrifying, though the author, Relthinor, did a fairly good job of leaving out mundane topics. Sure, those were in there, but it was usually to add a bit of context more than to just document everything the man did.

There was very little personal information provided in the journal. Reivyn guessed Relthinor assumed anyone who read it would either know who he was or have the ability to find out. There might be records of additional memoirs of the man that provided that information, but it wasn’t important to Reivyn.

He had no idea what the man’s Class, Level, or Tiers were. He didn’t even mention the Affinities or Spells he used. When he recorded an entry involving combat or some other form of Spell Casting, he would keep it simple like “I blasted the monster with Magic until it died,” or “we stabbed it until it stopped moving,” or even such exciting retellings as “we defeated the monsters.”

Reivyn didn’t really need the breakdowns of the combat. He doubted he would glean any useful information for his own style of combat. What he was picking up from the diary was the overall journey and the types of incidents one could expect.

Relthinor’s journey definitely started off dull, quickly escalated to untold heights, but then became pretty routine. Their Party reformed the very next day after scattering from the nightmare creature. They weren’t so complacent that they didn’t have the very basic protocols in place in case of certain situations. From the way he wrote about it, they were probably taking it as a matter of course that they would become separated at least once sometime in their excursion.

Day 13

We circled around the area of influence we thought the creature controlled, using our communication magic to coordinate with the other groups, and we quickly regrouped. Nobody else had died other than the initial group of Adventurers that had walked right up to the portal.

It didn’t seem like the monster was going to leave its lair. At least a little bit of good news after that fiasco.

Some of the others had been struck with the barbs, but they didn’t encounter any null zones on their side. Like I had suspected, there was no poison or corrosion associated with the barbs, so that’s good.

Day 17

Things have been going well. We’ve all adjusted, and though we’re still grieving for our friends, things have returned to a normal routine.

We’ve encountered only a small scattering of various monsters and beasts even this deep in the Wilderness. As far as I know, it’s completely random what kind of creatures we’ll encounter. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it.

It’s not that we’ll find more at the half-way point or even closer to the border of the Tier 5 Region. The shifting of the Mana density zones don’t allow for such structure. The only thing one can count on is that the chaos is more pronounced in the center of the Wilderness between the Upper and Lower Regions.

It’s almost like organized chaos if you think about it. It can be conceptualized that there’s a hairline fracture between the two different Regions and it radiates chaos toward the two regions. The closer one is to the Upper or Lower Region, the less influence the fracture has on the space.

Despite taking a bit of a detour and a day of rest, we’re making good progress. We’ve come up to the metaphorical fracture, and we’ll be crossing it sometime tomorrow in the early afternoon.

Day 18

I don’t know what I expected, but at this point, I should expect to not find what I expect. Does that make sense?

We couldn’t even tell the difference when we finally crossed the invisible border of the half-way point. There are no landmarks or features to indicate the line, and the change in the level of chaos is so subtle we can’t notice it from one moment to the next. It takes days of traveling to consciously notice a difference in the surroundings.

I did finally feel what it’s like to experience two different Mana densities at the exact same time.

It was weird. That’s all I can really say about it. That’s all my uncles would tell me about it, and now I know why.

It was like standing in a breeze that wasn’t there? A breeze you could feel on the inside but not on your skin? Yeah, weird.

And no, that wasn’t the line. That happened almost first thing in the morning, hours ahead of the projected time of reaching the midway point.

Typically, the change in Mana density is gradual. Relative to the difference between different Tier Regions it’s quite abrupt, but that’s only relative. Sometimes, though, there’s a hard break. It happens when there’s a significant difference between two different zones. We crossed from a Tier 5 equivalent density to a Tier 1 in an instant. It was definitely noticeable.

Reivyn placed the journal down for a second.

Huh, I hadn’t thought about that, either, he realized. I guess I was thinking there were little pockets of Mana density and it was a hard-line between each pocket. That’s not what he’s describing here. It seems like it’s rolling waves with peaks and valleys that shift about with rare cliffs.

Reivyn brought the book back up to his face.

Day 24

So, maybe that creature is stalking us. We don’t know.

We’ve seen several portals since that day, but we’re not foolish enough to approach any of them. Are they the same portal just moving about, or are there many of these creatures?

At least the portals can always be found near a peak Mana density zone, so I doubt we have to worry about an invasion of these things into the Lower Regions. In fact I doubt they would be comfortable even in the Tier 5 Regions of the Upper Regions.

Some have speculated that the creature is some sort of trap hunter that can move its portal about. It’s common knowledge that Space is “thinner” in the Wilderness - “Is it common knowledge, though?” Reivyn whispered to himself - so it would kind of make sense for the portal to be easily moved if it is in fact a creation of that monster.

That begs another question: If it is that creature, is it actively hunting us, or is it random?

If it’s hunting us, it’s not doing a very good job, honestly. If we’re too afraid to get close enough to it for it to notice us and it's not willing to come out, what good does it do? Is it just messing with us?

Personally, I think it is that monster, but it’s just moving about randomly and we just happen to be inside its hunting ground. Occasionally we can see bloodstains on the ground outside the portal if we look close enough. There are never any bones, though.

Yeah, no way we’re walking up to that death trap again.

Day 33

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

We finally made it out of the Wilderness.

The variability in the shifting of the Mana has been relatively stable for the past several days, and there haven't been any surprises. The portals didn’t follow us past a certain point, and we haven’t seen them for nearly a week.

The change from being in the Wilderness to being in the Tier 5 Region, the lowest Tier Region in the Upper Regions, wasn’t necessarily obvious, but kind of intuitive. There have been no changes in the ambient Mana density for a day, but before we actually crossed over there was a sort of potential.

That’s the only way I can describe it. It wasn’t there, but we could tell that it could be, if that makes sense.

Anyway, tomorrow marks the first day of actually being in the Upper Region. We have a loose itinerary, but we’re mostly just going to be exploring to explore and gain Life Experience. Dedicated harvesting and Dungeon delving will come later.

Day 35

These little buggers are everywhere!

We all understood on an unconscious level that we were in a Tier 5 Region, but it didn’t really hit us until after we had casually attacked a couple of goblins we found just roaming about.

Those things were little monsters, and I mean that in more way than one. We thought we could just casually dispatch the little creatures like any we found in Tier 1 Regions, but we were shocked when they easily dodged our strikes.

Not only were they quick as all get out, but when we finally did slash one across the chest, the Adventurer said it felt like dragging a dull butter knife across a piece of hard leather. There was barely even a scratch.

Luckily we’re not amateurs. Even though we were surprised at their fighting prowess, we quickly adapted and began to gain the advantage over the little buggers.

That’s when the rest of them showed up.

A horde of thirty or more goblins surged out of the surrounding woodlands and threatened to overwhelm us. We had to form up in a military-style formation to maintain order and fight them off.

We only killed one of them in that first encounter.

After several intense minutes of fighting, when things didn’t go their way, they had the clarity to retreat.

I’ve never seen goblins retreat before.

The first few minutes of combat, we could all tell that they were basically the same as their Tier 1 counterparts in that they ignored everything to attack and kill us. Oftentimes they would resort to their claws and fangs even though they had weapons.

It seems like their instinctual bloodlust has a time limit, though. When things started going south for them, one was dead and several others were on the verge of death, there was like a light of understanding that bloomed in their eyes. They stopped their aggression, grabbed their wounded, and fled into the trees.

We thought about chasing after them, but we’re not used to moving so quickly in a military formation, and we were worried that we would just play into their tactics fracturing our teamwork like that, so we let them go.

I don’t know if that was a mistake, but it definitely had consequences.

They keep showing up every couple hours to harass us. They’ll pop up out of nowhere, shriek and scream while biting and thrashing for a couple minutes, we’ll kill one or two, and then they’ll disappear.

We thought we could whittle them down slowly over time if they continued such hit and run tactics, but they’re replenishing their numbers somehow. We’re guessing their actual community is much larger with little groups scattered about doing whatever and they’ll join in the ambushes when they return to the main group.

It’s been a slog trying to get anywhere. I think we’ll build a little fortification and defend it until they actually go away or we kill them all.

Day 38

Building a little makeshift fort was the right call.

Some of the others wanted to press on a bit further, but the number of goblins ambushing us didn’t just stop depleting as we killed them, it started to grow.

The others were finally convinced when some of the Casters actually effectively ran out of Mana and some of the Adventurers got seriously hurt.

It was surprisingly difficult to clear a space in the woods and build a little palisade. The flora of the Tier 5 Region has been inundated with higher concentrations of Mana than anything we’ve ever seen in the Lower Regions.

There seemed to be some sort of qualitative change once reaching a certain threshold. It’s more than one would think if they just look at the scale between different Tiers in the Lower Regions.

After some little effort, we got our fortification built. We had a small palisade, a ditch, and some spikes lining the ditch and bottom of the wall. Even the dirt itself was more difficult to dig through.

Like clockwork the goblin horde showed up and attacked us. They weren’t able to get through the barriers in their frenzy. They had the tools, numbers, and strength necessary to breach the walls of our little palisade, but like I said, it seemed like they were taken by bloodlust and not able to utilize their true potential.

I don’t know why they’re like that. A lot of humanoid monsters are, but goblins have always been the worst.

I wonder if Tier 1 goblins would eventually give up and run away when their bloodlust is exhausted? We’ll probably never know because they’re so weak they get killed too fast to find out. It’s something to consider, though, for anyone researching monsters and how they work. It should be pretty easy to set up a situation where someone baits some goblins and just waits for them to tire themselves out without killing them.

Anyway, this isn’t a research tome. The goblins continued their hit and run tactics. The next couple of fights had a few more goblins in the little horde each time reaching up to a grand total of 45 or so, but then they stopped increasing.

I don’t know if that was their entire group or if there are little pockets of goblins all over the place and now that we’re stationary there were none to join them or what, but they finally reached a point where they were no longer getting reinforcements.

They also didn’t wait to fully heal and replenish their Health, Stamina, and Mana. It was like just knowing we were there would cause them to succumb to their frenzied state and attack us against their better judgment.

They couldn’t sustain such a strategy, and after another couple of fights finishing deep in the night, we killed the last few that tried to storm the palisade in a pathetic state.

Unless we want to March about in a military formation and frequently build little forts all across the Tier 5 Region, we’re going to need to work on our tactics a bit. Now that we can rest without worrying about getting attacked every couple of hours, we might be able to take the time to do so with the new information and experience we have fighting them now.

Day 45

We reworked our teamwork and broke ourselves into more cohesive, smaller units. Instead of having a full Party spread about in the usual manner one would tackle a random nest or Dungeon - you know, vanguards up front, damage dealers mid-front and rear with any healers in the center - we’ve pulled the formation in tight where everyone can support each other.

The largest problem we had was positioning and flanking. It wasn’t difficult to solve the problem, but it was harder to do with such a large number of people. Our expedition has four full Parties after the Adventurers died to the nightmare beast. Now we have ten groups of three with the two groups with the healers having four.

We could have done any number of configurations, four being the next best solution, but a small triangle allows us to be back-to-back while being easy to cover each other, and each of us, even the Casters, have extensive practice with melee combat.

Our Weapon Skills are a little lacking, so that’s definitely something we’ll have to focus on, but being able to cover each other from each direction makes up for it.

This isn’t a treatise on the strategy one needs to use to survive in the Tier 5 Region. I’m getting a bit lost in the weeds here. I just want to paint an accurate picture of what we’ve been doing.

Splitting up and being able to cover each other individually means we could also make use of our little groups to cover the other groups. It worked out wonderfully.

With our new setup, we increased our pace by leaps and bounds. The little annoyances were still popping up all over the place to no end, but now with the understanding that there’s probably a bigger group around any smaller groups we find, we’ve been baiting them into traps and finishing them off in one encounter instead of a multi-day prolonged battle. Battles? Battle.

It’s still just one fight, just with breaks and stuff.

Anyway, we moved through the territory much faster after that. I’ve also seen tremendous growth in my Weapons Skills. The Experience gain has been pretty reasonable, too. We’re not going to run into the problem of out-Leveling our Life Experience any time soon, so that’s good.

The terrain has been pretty similar to Wispan. I realized I hadn’t said a lot about the environment at this point. There’s been no noticeable difference that it didn’t even cross my mind. Without the different ambient Mana density, I wouldn’t really even be able to tell a difference.

The stranger environments - the floating islands, the gravity-wells, the mutli-season landscapes - are all in the Tier 6 and above Regions according to my uncles.

We’re definitely not ready for that yet. Not even considering the challenges with facing brand new environments. There’s no way we’d be able to handle a roaming horde of Tier 6 goblins.

Could you imagine?! I can’t. Not right now. I thought I understood what I was getting into beforehand, but without seeing it firsthand, even kind of understanding the truth on an unconscious level, without experiencing it first hand, imagination just doesn’t do it justice.

One day. One day I’ll be hopping back and forth between different floating islands while fighting a horde of monsters, but that day is not today. Or tomorrow.

Reivyn once more snapped the journal closed as he contemplated the information he had just read.

It seems like my emphasis on small-unit tactics with the mercenary company will come in handy with our own preparations for the journey, he thought. Let’s see what else there is to glean from the wisdom of our ancestors.