chapter 68
“So how was the delve?” Thoron asked me while sliding me a cocktail that seemed to have more fruit than liquid.
I just spent a moment looking at it. While part of the reason I was looking at it so intensely was to figure out if there was anything inside that I couldn’t eat—there wasn’t—it was also to understand the point of adding so much fruit. Was this supposed to be some sort of snack and drink combined?
Taking a sip from the straw, it did taste nice.
“It was harder than I thought. Used up more ammo than I expected to.”
“Yeah, those monsters can be quite tough. You said that you had similar ones back on your home world?”
“We call them wolves.”
“Yeah, that’s close enough to one of the creatures we had. They always attacked our herds of sheep and goats.”
The universal translator—if you had a good enough key—could give you approximations of animals if they were similar enough, translating them into animal names I could understand. But right now, that didn’t seem to be the case. Yes, the translator still translated Dwarfish, but it translated that directly.
“What do these sheep and goats look like?”
“Let me just pull it up,” he said while from his pocket, he pulled out something that looked quite similar to a small tablet. Looks like whatever affinities he has, they also allowed him to protect technology. Although there are other ways to bond with items as well. Perhaps he went that route.
It takes him a bit to get the image pulled up. I didn’t know what to say or do because I was looking at animals that actually looked like sheep and goats.
Grabbing his tablet, I zoomed in, trying to look for anything that would indicate that the animals in the pictures weren’t sheep and goats that I knew from Earth. But I couldn’t find any differences that couldn’t be explained by selective breeding.
“What’s wrong?” Thoron asked. But I didn’t know how to answer.
How was this possible? There’s no way two animals could be so similar and develop simultaneously on two planets that were so far away from each other.
Then there was the cultural connection between dwarves, humans and elves seemed to have. Yet now, I was looking at a physical connection. Something was off.
“Are there any of these domesticated animals on this planet?” I asked Thoron, somehow sounding completely normal while I was anything but.
“Yeah, of course. They helped us survive for thousands of years; they're a part of our culture. We weren’t going to let them perish with our home world. So, what's going on? Why did you look so surprised?”
“They just look kind of similar to animals from back home.”
“Yeah, homesickness is something I’m familiar with. Most of the time, living in the shipyard makes you miss nature.”
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I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to reveal what I’d learned. He also wasn’t completely wrong about the homesickness part.
Both of us decided to enjoy our drinks while watching the waves crash against the shore.
Before we left, I definitely needed to go and check out these goats and sheep in person, and also get some blood samples. That way, I could definitely rule out coincidences. While it was incredibly unlikely for two such coincidences to happen at the same time, the universe was a large place. So perhaps... but with a blood sample, I could be sure of what they actually were.
My mind drifted quite quickly away from this weird discovery to a more pressing matter.
“So you have delved the Mountain Wolf Cave portal. Have you also delved the Green Canopy?” I asked Thoron.
“Yeah, that’s a proper beginner portal. The one you went into is quite close to the next classification, as those monsters are really durable.” Thoron answered and then continued after finishing his drink.
“Only thing you need to look out for is the boss of that portal. It's a sneaky one. But with your enhancements, it shouldn’t be too big of a problem. Just make sure you don't let your guard down, as it could attack at any moment after you've entered the portal.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
The next day went by quite quickly, as I spent most of it on the beach. I really hated not being able to talk to any of my AIs. There was still a vague sense of them, so I could tell if they were all right or not, but nothing more.
The delve I got this time only cost two and a half million. It wasn't a very profitable portal, and it was mainly made permanent to safeguard the area it was in. It was basically on the other side of this island, about a two-hour bus ride, near a small fishing village.
Fortunately, the bus ride itself wasn't uncomfortable, as all of the public transport was also meant to be used by the avian species here that were almost as tall as humans. The only rental place on this island, so I could drive there myself, unfortunately, it only had vehicles meant for dwarves. They all felt way too cramped for me.
That's another thing to bump up in priority on the list of things to build. I really needed to have, on my ship, some vehicles for planetary travel that I could actually fit into properly.
There was a similar fort here, but this time, as I walked in, I saw that the portal was actually already blue. This meant that they basically pushed me in so the reset time wouldn’t be pushed back further.
As I stepped in, I found myself underneath a canopy of trees interwoven in a way that you could easily move from one tree to another, if you were a small enough creature. The sunlight from above made the ground dance in shadows as the wind moved the clusters of leaves.
There was also only one type of enemy here: a four-armed monkey-like monster that was actually a lizard. It was a weird combination. The monster itself was quite weak, and there were never more than two of them in one place.
An interesting quirk with those monsters was that they didn't seem to care if anything happened even a little bit away from them. So even though I could already sense and see multiple pairs of the monsters, no matter how much noise I made, they wouldn't care to come and look.
The only exception to that being fire, which was highly discouraged from being used in this portal, as you would have a proper swarm on your hands.
Because of all this, instead of using my rifle, I decided to conserve ammo and use my revolver instead. My rifle was still ready to be used just in case, but this delve wasn’t about figuring out my combat strength. It was about figuring out my innate ability and seeing how useful it could actually be.
Another thing I can test is how much I will grow in strength after clearing this portal. The last portal gave me about 1/20 progress in my mind, body, and core rank, and about 1/40 progress in my affinity ranks.
It seems that grinding ranks is going to be a longer journey than I expected, and there seems to be an understanding portion as well. You couldn’t just endlessly kill to get stronger. At least, that’s the sense I got.
With that, I moved closer to the closest pair of lizard monkeys. Now that I could see them even better, they seemed to have greenish-brown, snake-like skin, but they had the body of a small monkey with four arms. About the size of my torso. They seemed to be holding some sort of hard object.
My drones quickly helped figure out that those were the nuts the trees produced. Their skin did help them camouflage a bit, but the surroundings were sunny enough that it didn’t really matter. Now, if it was nighttime, it would actually be a lot harder to see them.
My revolver rose as I aimed at one of them. Pulling the trigger made the monster’s head disappear, although their reaction times were pretty good. Letting my looting skill do its thing, it disappeared into coins before the body hit the ground.
The other monster had already thrown the nut toward me, but I easily dodged it. It wouldn’t have actually hurt that much, as the speed and mass they had wouldn’t have caused much blunt force. This time, as I fired, as soon as I could feel the connection my looting skill made with the monster, I focused on one of its hands.
There was a larger thump as its body hit the ground just a few seconds later, with only a few coins following a moment after. Inspecting the monster, I could see how mana seemed to concentrate in random parts of the body, with the rest seemingly withering away.
This was a quirk of the portals. Each time you killed something, everything they had would wither away, except for a few things that you could then bring out, as they wouldn’t crumble into dust when you touched them.
It was fascinating to see this process. Unfortunately, it seemed that I was unlucky, as a useless organ got saved along with some small patches of the skin.
The profitable parts of the monster you could get were a large portion of the skin and the two large claws its lower arm thumbs had. Some of its organs could also be used for alchemy, including its eyes. They weren't as valuable, but were still valuable enough to be collected.
There should be about 100 lizard monkeys in this portal. That should be plenty to properly experiment.
Reloading the revolver, I snapped it closed and started moving toward the next pair of monsters.