CH.446 Seaside Paradise Fissure, part 2
CH.446 Seaside Paradise Fissure, part 2
I spent the few days I had before we headed out making upgraded resurrection bracelets. Ribbon of Rebirth just makes for better ‘one time resurrection’ items than Rope of Life. Laura tested the Factory prototype, and it proved that the Ribbon of Rebirth version resurrects someone at full HP, while Rope of Life resurrects them at 800 HP.
I guess that does mean that the Rope of Life variant is better for anyone with less than 800 HP, but I don’t think we’ll be having anyone that low level in our raid party.
And yes, I’m making these items for the raid party. I’ll be lending one to each member, and if they pull their weight, I’ll let them keep them.
Also, and yes there is more, the best part about Ribbon of Rebirth resurrection items is that I can use cheaper materials for them. For the Rope of Life resurrection bracelets, I had to use either Fenrir or Behemoth hair. The worldweb spider silk also works, but I won’t be using that, because it is way too useful for other things.
I should try and see if I can get a summoning contract with a worldweb spider, or at least an S-rank spider monster. Having access to cheap spider silk will be so good.
But back to the resurrection bracelets. When Laura made prototypes for Ribbon of Rebirth resurrection ribbons, she figured out that we could use S-rank materials, instead of SS-rank. And while both are rare, HomeBase does sometimes spawn S-rank monsters. While SS-ranks are basically fissure only.
The material we used for this set of Resurrection Ribbons was some wing membrane from a winged sea serpent. They sometimes appear on floor 49 of HomeBase, so I have three corpses worth of materials from them.
Honestly makes me wish I had some op plants we could grow. HomeBase has the mana necessary for high quality plants, but we just don’t grow any currently. We just grow regular foodstuff.
I’ll look into it with Cailie after this entire adventure, but maybe we can grow some cotton or something. And I can probably use the Dungeon Developer to make some super cotton, which we can then use to make super cloth that can take overpowered installs without burning up.
Soon enough, too soon if you ask Wilma, it was take off day. Wilma didn’t get too many projects, but she did have to upgrade the gear of Einar and Eline. Not their weapons, but their armor.
They had some alright stuff, but it wasn’t quite up to the fights I’m expecting. We are heading to an SS-rank dungeon, so it will likely be as difficult as clearing HomeBase was. Which means that the average monster we will have to fight will be B-rank.
And while Einar and Eline’s stuff is fine against B-ranks, A and S-ranks are a bit too much. So they needed an upgrade.
But because we never do anything half hearted, they now had armor better than my armored jacket. Yes, I’m still using it, as we are still figuring out how to work with dragon scales. They are nearly impossible to work with, unless you use Draconic Magic. … and I don’t know if you know this, but I’m not all that good with Draconic Magic, yet.
And yes, I could have some of my monsters do it instead, but none of the dragons I can summon are exactly armor makers. The closest one I have would be Dark Paladin, but he isn’t a dragon. He just knows some anti-dragon fighting styles, and a bit of Draconic Magic.
Though he only knows those because he wants to kill dragons, not live in peace with them.
So yeah. We are working on it, but it will have to wait. And my armored jacket has been serving me well enough.
… And honestly speaking, I’m not sure how Lady Janina would react if I asked for her help. Would she be honored or disappointed? I want to ask, but I’m just afraid she will call me worthless and stop teaching me or something.
…
…
… fine, I’ll ask her. But after this fissure. Even if she agrees to help, we don’t have the time to do anything before it anyway.
But I’m getting sidetracked again.
Our group heading out consisted of myself, Alice, Cailie, Unika, Einar and Eline. And on our way to the seaside city Marionette, we had a few S-rank adventurers, and one party, to pick up.
Our first pick up was in the Ruiso Royal Capital and we were picking up Rudevik, the cookie monster. It was nice seeing him again, as it has been … since our A-rank exams when we met.
After him was an S-rank party we picked up from the Hero’s county. They were technically a retired party, now working in different administrative roles either in the Hero’s country’s Adventurer's guild, The Sage’s tower or at the church. They were a four member party, and their leader was someone I’d consider a friend. A female swordswoman named Wendy Hero. In her party she also had a priest, a sage and an archer/scout.
I liked having her party with us, but I was questioning it a little after their archer questioned why we were bringing children along, referring to Einar and Eline.
I honestly may have just left them at the Hero’s country had Wendy not stopped her archer from making any more derogatory comments.
After that was an S-ranker from Bella Kingdom. He was technically a member of an A-rank party, but as the other members of the party are A-rank, only the S-rank leader decided to come. He was a guardian and had a massive shield with him. I’ll be sure to pay him extra attention in case I can steal some of his techniques, as I do have access to the guardian class race. Oh, and he is a ram-kin, an evolved sheep-kin, by race. Which I just think is … interesting.
Something else that I found interesting is the distribution of races. I’ve noticed it before, but now that I’m this far east, it gets even more noticeable. Within the Kingdoms, the further you go east, the more beast-folk you see. And the more you go west, the more humans you’ll see.
In places like Alewatch and Sawyer city, the distribution of humans to everything else is about 9 to 1. Or about 90% people are humans, the last 10% being everything else. Ruiso Royal Capital is about 6 to 4. In the Hero’s country, it is about 4 to 6. Actually, if you count all the aquatic races, more like 3.5 to 6.5. The ‘other races’ are the majority there.
But as we were getting closer and closer to the east coast, the numbers were more like 1 to 9. Humans are the clear minority here.
But that is just something interesting I noticed. It doesn’t really matter. Just something to think about if I want to blend in around here. Being a cat-folk will be much better than being a human.
Once we reached the seaside city, I beamed us all down to the ground, just outside the city gates. Luckily I’d warned the local guild master about our appearance trick, who in return had warned the guards, so we didn’t get attacked or something.
And no, I’m not as arrogant as beaming us straight to the yard of the guild building.
Getting inside the city was simple enough, just a show of cards with no inspections. But I feel like at least half of that is because Wendy was here. Not many people want to question someone whose last name is Hero.
Once we got inside the gates, we learned that a few carriages were waiting for us. Nothing fancy, just open air carriages with basic wooden seating, something even a regular person could afford to ride in.
They took us to the guild and we met with the guild master. He told us about where we could stay, for free, we could choose a different place if we were willing to pay, before he made a request for me.
He wanted me to go pick up another party. They are in Narra Kingdom, so there is no way they’d get here in time. I agreed to go pick them up, and even got the GM’s permission to just land directly in the guild’s yard.
So a quick trip later, which I found out the raid party used to get acquainted with each other, I had picked up another three S-rank adventurers, and one A-rank.
After we arrived, we also got acquainted with people. Which we did by having me flex … I mean show off my summons with the new party as my opponents.
They were honestly quite powerful. Any of their members were about equal to 2800 or 2900 attack vanilla monsters, except the A-rank member. He was more in the 2500 area in terms of power. It is impressive, because I’m honestly not sure if I could stand up against monsters of that level. … Well, I can because of Summoner’s Unity, but without Unity boost, I can’t.
And because it was funny, I may have summoned House Dragonmaid to one of their opponents. Because what is more fun than seeing a maid casually kicking S-rank adventurers in the face.
Over dinner, I told everyone how fissures usually go. Again, I didn’t use the word fissure, instead just calling it a miasma blob.
Our battle plan was somewhere between simple and adjustable. Basically, my job is to summon Exodia and make sure he can do what he needs to do to close the fissure. So I’m on guard duty for Exodia.
Wendy and her team is the main fighting force against whatever pops out from the fissure, along with ram-kin guardian and the cookie monster. The S-rank party from Narra is on standby in case the primary force needs a break, or if one of the dungeon monsters evolve into something overly dangerous.
As the rest of the HomeBase crew, their job is to mop up any of the weaker monsters that appear in the battle area, as well as protecting the dungeon master that will be traveling with us. Alice is leading that team. It will hopefully not be too much for them, but as long as they summon some of the monsters they have access to, they should be able to manage.
The next day we picked up the supplies the city had prepared for us, not that all of us didn’t already have our own, and headed for the dungeon entrance. It was about an hour carriage ride away from the city, and like with the Green dungeon near Ruiso capital, it had its own town around it.
There has been an evacuation order given for the town, but there were still people inside the dungeon, so a full evacuation wasn’t possible. But all of the non-combatants had evacuated, and even low ranked adventurers had. Anyone left in the town was either a knight, or a B-rank or above adventurer.
And I don’t think I need to mention this, as I’m sure you are all smart, but both this town and the dungeon we are about to head to is right by the sea. As is the seaside city of Marionette.
Our group got more than a few looks from the people remaining in the town. I guess a group of well equipped adventurers will do that, especially given that there is an evacuation order in place.
We got some info from an A-rank party, mainly about the dungeon’s layout, and then we met up with one of the three dungeon masters of the Seaside Dungeon. Yes, this place has three dungeon masters who alternate between the three of them. And yes, this place is a live-in dungeon, so at least one dungeon master is with the dungeon core at all times.
We also learned of the local S-rank party which was already inside the dungeon. They are currently trying to find and evacuate all of the parties inside the dungeon, so we will hopefully be able to group up with them inside. That party apparently has two S-rank and four A rank members.
Before we headed in, I made sure to hand everyone a new generation resurrection bracelet, or more accurately called the resurrection ribbon. And I placed five trap cards onto each member of our party that accepted them. That was Wendy’s party and Rudevik.
I also forced the guild master to take some traps. His were 100% defensive ones that would keep him safe.
And then, we were ready to go.