A coat. That was definitely the first item on my list of “things to have the eidolon tailor make for me when I get back to town”. The Northern Forest was a craggy, frigid zone full of absurdly tall pines. From the forest floor, I couldn’t even quite make out the canopy as it disappeared into the clouds. I shivered and made a mental note to be sure to grab some sort of pelts if I got the chance. If people in my town wanted materials, the first things they’d get would be stuff they could use for me specifically. What good is being in charge if you can’t get a little preferential treatment, after all? Especially since I was technically the Eidolon’s only available customer base, at the moment.
The Deep Roads Duster I’d received from the dungeon was cool to look at and had some great effects, but it was definitely designed with warmer climates in mind. Maybe I could just have the tailor hook me up with a cloak or some sort of overcoat to drape over the Duster.
“Oh! Maybe a fur lining!” I said aloud to no one in particular. The stoat, however, heard me and poked its head out of the duster’s inner pocket to see what I was blabbering about.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s just a bit too cold up here for my liking, that’s all.”
The stoat chirped, nestled back into its favorite inner pocket, and began to radiate a soft heat. I took the chirp to mean “You could have just asked, my guy.” Granted, the stoat understood me far better than I understood it, but I was pretty sure my interpretations were getting closer to the mark the longer we were around one another. I stopped shivering, almost immediately and patted the outside of my jacket softly in gratitude. I’d still need to get some sort of warmer attire for cold climate adventuring, though. I couldn’t and wouldn’t rely on the stoat acting as my personal pocket warmer every time we got a stiff breeze. For this trip, though, it would have to do.
We were well into the forest, and while I knew logically that the midday sun was high overhead, there was scarce evidence of it in the shadowy forest floor. The forest was so dense – with pines that would give Cali’s sequoias trunk envy, no less – that sunlight had a hard time reaching the ground. I used Environmental Mapping to see if we had reached a point yet where there was anything to farm nearby. A few resources were marked nearby, so I chose one and started to walk in its general direction. As I approached, I focused on the small plant to have a peek at its tooltip.
This one was definitely on Moira’s list. I plucked a small batch of them and put them into my inventory before doing another scan of the area. Several more resource nodes lit up on the map and I continued to wander around picking flowers of various types, including several that weren’t even on Moira’s list. Their tooltips suggested they were useable ingredients, though, so I figured she wouldn’t turn them down even if she was unsure on how to use them at first. As I was bending down to pick another handful of the snowbells, the stoat popped out of my pocket onto the forest floor and hissed, its fur standing on end.
“What is it?” I asked but needn’t have bothered. Less than a second after the words left my lips, a red dot appeared on my Environmental Mapping UI. It was moving faster than anything I had ever seen, and it was headed our way. I spun around, pulling my gun from its holster and the dagger from my belt. The stoat stepped up so that it was standing between my feet, which I’d spread into a fighting stance. We waited like that for several seconds, until eventually a thrashing sound began to build in the distance. A cavalcade of heavy thumps followed in rapid succession and soon, we could see the beast that had our scent. I used Threat Assessment as soon as it was in sight.
Forty Agility was absolutely insane. The stoat might be able to keep up with this thing, but there was no way I’d be able to. I fired two shots at the thing as it approached, both flew slightly off target. The stoat was about to attack, but I had a better idea. I reached down and picked the stoat up, against its protests and told it my plan. By the time I’d finished, the salamander was almost upon us. It leapt, just as I’d assumed it would, lunging toward us with an open mouth ready to consume us. At the last moment, I rolled out of the way and it slammed face first into the tree we’d had our backs to. Its wide mouth wrapped around the front of the tree trunk, stretching to its absolute limit and beyond. A loud cracking sound followed and the amphibian slid down the tree to the needle-filled ground. It turned to us, its lower jaw dangling off its natural hinge.
“Now!” I yelled and hit the salamander with Exploit Weakness. The stoat shot the salamander with the same attack it showed me back in the dungeon – the one that burned away my eyebrows and would have roasted me alive. As soon as the attack landed, I leapt backward several times, hauling ass to escape the heat of the miniature sun the stoat had created. I managed to get away unscathed, this time. The salamander wasn’t so lucky. The sun was created inches above its back and the kill notification was instantaneous as the creature vaporized.
“Well,” I said, “I think my Exploit Weakness buff may have been a little overkill there. Can you put out that thing, please?”
The stoat dismissed its attack and I gave it celebratory skritches on its little head as I checked the incoming achievement.
“We make quite the team,” I told the stoat, setting it back in my pocket and handing it a scrap of meat from my inventory.
“Hopefully we get some stronger enemies. This one barely gave me any XP at all, if it weren’t for the achievement.”
The stoat let out a series of satisfied chirps. It didn’t take a wildlife linguistics expert to translate this time: we won, the big snakey thing was dead, and now there were snacks. What the hell was I complaining about? Fair enough.
There were no lootable rewards from where the salamander had been. Apparently, if you completely destroy an enemy’s body there’s nothing left to loot. That made complete sense, but it still made me question whether we should really be using the stoat’s sun attack so willy nilly. We could be missing out on some valuable stuff by just burning it into oblivion. I’d have to think about how we could be more strategic with it in the future…but for now, the stoat was right. The enemy was dead, we were alive. That would have to do. Still, though, I’d definitely be planning for our particular brand of the old wombo combo to be emergency use only. We were efficient, there was no doubt about that, but I wasn’t at a high enough level where I could just dismiss the loss of potentially valuable loot, yet.
After the fight, the two of us went back to foraging for resources. Every time I picked up a new herb or discovered a new flower, I got a small amount of XP. At this point, I had gained as much experience from harvesting herbs as I had from killing the salamander. I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that. The thought occurred to me that maybe I could just become a hippy or a florist…or a hippy florist. That certainly seemed a viable route to cultivating levels if this little expedition had been any indicator. I knew, though, that path was only viable for someone who hadn’t chosen to be a superspy and then managed to accidentally get himself saddled with the world’s weirdest subclass.
Oh well, maybe I can be a pacifist in my next life, I thought, absently bending down to pluck at a tuft of interesting looking, crimson-colored grass. I pulled at it, but the grass didn’t budge. I frowned and really put my back into it, but apparently the plant had the strongest roots of all time because again I came up empty handed. The tooltip identified the plant as Crab Grass, and noted that it had some medicinal properties. I tried again to pull the patch up out of the ground, putting every point of Strength I possessed to work and finally, it moved. Actually, let me be more accurate, here: the plant didn’t move. The ground beneath it moved. It bulged upward where the plant was rooted into the ground, slightly. I figured the thing just had extra thick roots…maybe it was an actual root vegetable and that’s where the medicinal parts were. So, I yanked again. One final mighty heave that should have uprooted a medium sized oak tree, but again, bupkis. I plopped down onto my butt, breathing heavily. My rest was short-lived, however, as the ground began to move again.
I scrambled to my feet, backing away. There was no small bulging of the dirt surrounding the plant, this time. This was more akin to a seismic event. Within seconds, a large hill pushed upward. Rocks and sediment flowed off it like tiny waterfalls. Upward and onward it pressed until I noticed six thick legs protruding from beneath it, each one striking upward and stabbing the top of the ground as whatever this was climbed seemingly from the pits of hell. I continued to back away, and the stoat scampered out and up to my shoulder to see what all the ruckus was about. As the topsoil continued to fall away from it, more of its body was unveiled and the absolute absurdity of it nearly unmade me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned and tagged the beast with Threat Assessment.
That was fantastic. The System was accurately roasting me as an Infiltrator whose class relies on Intelligence and Charisma getting tricked and baited by a half-sentient plant with a punny name. Pun or not, though, the thing was gigantic. It was like staring up at the school bus as a kid…if that school bus had long, thick, exceptionally stabby legs. Then of course, you’d have to add the pincers that could probably crush an elephant’s skull, and the body of a blue UFO. Don’t even get me started on its face. Yeesh. Just as that thought occurred to me, two long eye stalks emerged from the top of its head, one on each side of its mossy tuft. It looked like carcinization had finally caught up to Ed Sheeran, turning him into a giant, gross crab monster.
“I wonder if he takes requests,” I said, thinking out loud. My first request would obviously be for it to go back in its hole and forget it ever saw me. That was likely off the table, though, so maybe…The Shape of You?