A Soldier's Life - Chapter 148:

Chapter 148:

Maveith’s question on whether I would also use the reader hung in the air. Maveith’s physical attributes were impressive for an elf, I guess. I wanted to build trust with the goliath but was worried about him seeing my high magic affinities. He may not be able to read Elvish, but he could probably figure out numbers fairly quickly, and there were just too many non-zeros in my affinity.

I decided in a distraction, “I don’t think so, at least not right now anyway. I wanted to show you this.” I placed the obsidian stone on the floor. I could still feel the heat emanating from it. “I found it my first time in the dungeon.” That was sort of true, as I hadn’t realized I had been carrying it until then.

Maveith approached the stone, his hand just inches away. His brow furrowed, “A fire starter? This would have been useful, but perhaps we can use it to cook inside the dungeon. Brutus had most of our firewood in his pack.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. But I just thought it was thermal stone for heating a room,” I replied, feeling the heat for myself. The air in the dungeon was cool but not cold.

Maveith apparently knew a little bit about thermal stones, “There are different grades of thermal stones. It depends on how fast they can convert aether into heat. The material they are made from is mined and shaped on Stone Mountain Island, and artificers from around the world purchase it from goliath miners and crafters,” he said proudly.

He touched the stone and drew his hand back. “This is a high-quality fire starter. The more aether you channel into it, the hotter it will get. To cook, just channel the aether until it turns red.” The gray-skinned goliath considered the stone, “It should remain hot for an hour or so before cooling off slowly based on its size.”

“How long do they last? How many times can I charge it?” I asked the goliath.

Maveith shrugged, going to his pack for materials to cook. “As long as the stone is not damaged, it should last forever. My father,” he paused, “my father had one passed down from my great grandfather. We should cook something,” Maveith said excitedly.

He had a lot of weight to put back on, so I was not surprised. He went to his pack and pulled out the mostly frozen fillet. He soon hummed to himself as he charged the stone to red color and carefully balanced the pot on the stone. He meticulously watched and cooked the fish. Without oil, the skin stuck to the pan, but Maveith didn’t seem to care about the lost nutrition. He was happy about the normalcy of cooking and reminiscing about cooking with the thermal stone.

The smell of the cooking fish soon permeated the room, and as Maveith focused on that task, I figured out how to clear the tablet reader. The surface was blank, and without Maveith seeing it, I activated it, cleared it, and returned it to my dimensional space. I took a place to sit along the wall to puzzle out my reading.

I had to think way back to my last reading to calculate the changes in my head. None of my affinities for magic had changed.

My physical, mental, and magical attributes had changed; some of them had even decreased.

The first thing I tried to puzzle out was with the essences I had consumed, my potentials seemed right in line with expectations. But if this tablet reader were made for the elven physiology, wouldn’t my potentials be different? Some type of sliding scale?

The second part of my confusion was the decrease in my attributes. With weeks of starvation, it made sense I would lose attributes. I was probably twenty-five pounds lighter, if not more. Maybe I would recover quickly with the more food that I consumed.

I thought back to the other men in the company, and our fighting effectiveness had definitely dropped, but not as much as you would think for how little we were eating. Konstantin had mentioned that the essences fortified your attributes and made it more difficult to lose ground over time. Maybe my slow aging also played an effect in helping mediate my losses? I thought I had fared much better than a lot of the others in the company.

Maveith had finished cooking and presented me with half the large fillet. The fish was flaky and tasted buttery except for the tiny strings of cartilage, which I had just swallowed. Maveith ate contentedly as well, savoring the fish while the fire started slowly changing from red to black in its cooling process.

“Are you healthy enough to fight?” I asked Maveith a while after the meal.

He nodded slowly, “I can swing my hammer. What are we facing?”

“Two shapeshifters that are masquerading as elven children. They tried to trick me to come into the room. The room is covered in a carpet of green moss. I am not sure if it conceals any danger.” I pointed at the wall, “Apparently, this room was an unpopular starting point as the elves did not map it.”

Maveith stood painfully, wincing as he stood. “We should also try and find the others.” He pulled his hammer from the loop on his belt and nodded to me. To Maveith’s amazement, I stored both our packs in my dimensional space. Best not to be slowed down by them. Together, we made our way down the corridor, side by side. The width and height of the passage were around ten feet to a side. As we approached, the two elven children were standing at the entryway, blocking our access to the room.

The boy spoke in elvish, “Look, he has returned and brought a friend.”

The girl added, “I think they have come to play. It has been so long since we played with anyone.”

Maveith’s hands flexed along the handle of his sledgehammer and questioned me, “What are they saying? Their mannerisms seem unnatural for children.”

The girl switched to Latin, “Oh, the big one speaks the new tongue. I want to play with him first!”

I couldn’t help my own curiosity and asked the pair, “Are you the dungeon talking through these creatures?”

“He calls us creatures! You are the creature! Coming in here to kill and loot over and over again,” the girl berated me in Latin. “We are not the dungeon. Just playthings of it. If you are not going to play with us, leave.”

“I have never heard of creatures in a dungeon talking before,” Maveith said worriedly. “Are you sure we should be fighting them?”

The boy teased Maveith, “Look, you have scared the big one. He is going to be too afraid to enter now.”

“Back up to the center of the room, and we will enter,” I requested of the pair. Could you even reason with these creatures? The two looked at each other creepily, then back at us. They started to take steps back, their bare feet leaving footprints in the mossy ground that quickly disappeared.

“Maveith, we cannot leave the dungeon as there was a rush swarming the tavern, and the summoner’s wyverns may be there. We only have one path to follow in the labyrinth, and it leads us here. I will take the girl, and you can take the boy?” I said it softly, but it was clear the creatures overheard as they failed to hide a smirk and were anticipating the fight.

“They have no weapons,” Maveith said, assessing our opponents who stood twenty feet apart in the center of the chamber awaiting us.

“Shape changers, remember. My guess is once we enter, they will change their form. Ready?” Maveith studied the two children and slowly nodded.

I rushed forward, prepared to use my ability, and react to anything. The ground was spongy as I led with my round shield and black blade in the other hand. The two children just smiled, and I risked a glance at Maveith, who was two steps behind. I had let my adrenaline get the better of me.

Twenty feet from the children, their eyes blinked to a yellow. The girl’s body started rapidly stretching first, quickly tearing through the rags she wore as she gained girth and height. Her skin stretched and became gray and veiny. Her messy hair retracted into her body as her face head became bald and ridged with bones over the eyes. The creature had grown from less than four feet to over eight in the short time it took to cover the ground. Long, lanky arms sported imposing black claws. The rags gone; the creature appeared genderless. The creature took a defensive stance as I reached it.

The creature’s head suddenly disappeared. My aether bottomed out after a brief struggle with its resistance. I changed my direction, pivoting in the moss, and my black blade slid into the outline of the ribs on the boy that had also grown into the similar horror.

The surprised creature backhanded me, and I easily intercepted the strike with my shield. I did not expect its immense strength as I was flung back, and my sword hilt was torn from my grasp. I had held it long enough to wrench the blade sideways through the body. I skidded on the carpet of moss, the berry bushes slowing me slightly.

I caught Maveith swinging his hammer into the knee of the creature. It had turned to face me, giving the goliath a wide opening. A satisfying pop resounded in the room as the knee bent at the wrong angle, and the creature fell to its knees. Maveith was already winding up for another swing at the creature’s head. As the blow was coming, the creature’s arm lashed out and grabbed the shaft, preventing the goliath from completing a swing. The creature’s arms were deceptively long even as the seven-foot-plus goliath towered over the kneeling body. The other hand punched out into Maveith’s leather armor, causing him to backpedal while releasing air in a huff.

These things were just too strong. The only good sign was my black blade embedded in the creature was dripping a stream of blue-black blood. Its flat face had no mouth, but it still managed to hiss in pain and anger, but no recognizable words came from it. Standing, I realized my shield shoulder was dislocated. Pain flared when I tried to move, and I was unable to raise my arm, so I let the shield fall to the mossy ground.

I drew the elven dagger with my good hand but kept my distance. “Maveith, how are you doing, big guy?”

Maveith coughed painfully as he supported his weight on his hammer. “Some broken ribs, but I can still fight.”

The creature was looking back and forth between us as we flanked it now. It touched my sword exploratorily, but it decided not to extract it. With the flow of blood coming off the sword, I doubted it could live much longer. Maveith had destroyed one knee, so it should remain immobile. We watched as it struggled to stand and then gave up and lay down on the mossy floor.

“Keep an eye on it,” I said, moving to the other creature’s corpse. The aether-rich dungeon was helping me recover quicker than normal, but it was still going to take some time before I could bring out the collector. Minutes passed slowly until I finally materialized the collector. I placed it on the corpse, and thick blue smoke was pulled from the body and onto the collector.

“What is that? Do you have a collector?” Maveith asked from the far side of the room.

“Yes,” was my short reply as the smoke coalesced in an apex essence. A myriad of ever-shifting colors swam inside the sphere as I picked it up. It felt weighty in my hand, denser than previous apex essences I had held. I slipped the essence under my armor and into a pocket. I circled wide of the creature and stood next to Maveith. He was audibly wheezing. I just hoped the reward for this room contained a healing potion.

“Give me a few minutes, and I will retrieve your bow for you. You can make sure the other one is dead.

“If you have your own bow in there, perhaps it is best if you shoot it. I think it might be too painful to draw my bow,” he said with difficulty.

I laughed, “My shoulder is dislocated, but I can wait until I can heal myself. Go sit down and rest, Maveith. I will watch it.” Maveith gratefully collapsed onto his back on the mossy floor. I stood over him. “Grab my wrist and pull straight down,” I swung my arm to him, and he reached up. I figured it would save some aether if he got it back in the socket.

Maveith yanked down, and a soft pop resounded in my body. It had not been too bad. I was able to move the arm but raising it above my head was a burning pain. Minutes later, I drew the bow and missed from ten feet. Konstantin’s voice echoed in my head, mocking me. Truthfully, I almost missed it now. My second, third, and fourth shots connected without the creature stirring.

Cautiously, I moved in with the collector and used it to the same effect as the first time. Another swirling prismatic orb. From my experience, it was definitely a magic essence. I had Castile’s library in the dreamscape, so I should be able to find it. Now, if I were a reward chest, where would I be hiding?

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