I woke up what was hopefully only a few seconds later, and held my head as I stood up. Just to be safe, I took a health potion, I had plenty of herbs on me to make some more, and I wasn’t going to risk any sort of brain damage, which could very well exist in this game. Once I stood up, I took a look around.

The walls were lit with the same glowing barnacle type objects that had lit up the cave earlier, and a tunnel stretched in both directions. Up above I could see the hole I had fallen through, and it didn’t look very feasible to climb up

I shrugged, I could always try and climb up later if the tunnel didn’t lead anywhere interesting. Deciding to walk along and see what I could find, I turned away from the hole I had fallen down and headed down one of the paths I could see.

The tunnel was tall enough for me to walk standing up, and I did so, continuing to look at the interesting glowing lifeforms as I did so, I clearly hadn’t learned my lesson. It took a while, but eventually the passage started to open up, and then it arrived at a massive cavern.

I looked out over the cavern in awe, it was a massive thing, well above my head, with gigantic stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Everywhere could bee seen the small glowing things, keeping the entire cavern lit , with only a few shadowed spots.

The cavern was also completely filled with those crab tarantula things that I had seen by the shore, and above them flew another kind of mob that I hadn’t seen yet. They were like bats, except their wings were far larger, and stretched down to the bottom of their legs, with sharp claws at the edges of their wings. In addition to that, they had what looked like a very nasty stinger on the ends of their tails, which stretched about the length of their body behind them.

They looked like thinner, bonier stingrays to be honest, and as soon as I had finished looking around the cavern, a couple of them noticed me. I instantly went to back up, not wanting to get mobbed by them all in the large cavern filled with plenty of things that would tear me apart if they got to me.

I ran back down the tunnel I had come from for a while, and turned around to see three of the flying things coming at me. I instantly prepped and fired a force bolt, which knocked one of them down, slamming into the ground with a crack. I winced, that had to have broken some of its bones, but I wasn’t going to complain if these things were pretty easy to take down.

I took the next one on my spear, and dodged to the side as the third one went flying by, the sharp looking claws on the edge of its wings leaving small scratches on my cheeks. I kicked the one off of my spear, and went to attack the last one, when it screamed.

It was insanely high pitched, just at the edge of my hearing, but it was loud as hell, making me wince in pain as I stabbed out to silence it. With my spear sticking through it the scream slowly faded, and I sighed. That had been a relatively easy encounter, they had died as easily as I could’ve killed the orbs at this point.

Just as I was relaxing, I started to hear massive amounts of wing beats coming from the direction of the cavern. I cursed. Of course that scream had been to call allies. Seeing as how I could hear massive numbers, I prepared an ice shatter, drawing up the spell pattern, and releasing it as soon as I saw the first of the bat like things coming around the light curve of the tunnel.

The slow sphere of energy impacted on the third or fourth of the monsters to come around the curve, and it exploded into a massive amount of spikes, impaling what had to be seven or eight of them.

The rest simply ignored the plight of their brethren however, and continued to fly towards me as fast as they could. I impaled the first one on my spear, and started prepping another ice shatter, releasing it before the rest of them were on me. I released it, and it impacted a bit too close to me, the spikes maybe an inch or so away from me.

The mobs continued their charge however, and the first reached me, making me lean to the side to avoid the claws, which scraped by on my armor. I pulled my spear back and stabbed out again, only catching the next one in the wing, and it stabbed its barbed tail at me, luckily hitting only armor.

As that happened though, another went by me, cutting open my arm a small amount, and I winced in pain. Pulling my spear back to try and stab again, I stabbed out, but missed this time, the pain in my arm making me a bit slower than normal. My head was jerked forwards by another blow, and I felt some liquid trickling down my neck, so I rolled to the side, deciding that keeping my back to the wall would be the best course of action.

With my back against the wall, I could see them all, at least fifteen or so of the things, and that was after my ice shatters had whittled down their numbers. Luckily, they went down pretty easy individually, and I wasn’t going to give up when I’d finally found something interesting like this cave system.

I stabbed out again, catching one directly in the body, and leaned back as one flew past me from my right, leaving a small scratch on my nose. Preparing a force bolt, I released it as another went flying past me, trying to copy the one which had just scratched me, and caught it in the wing, sending it spiralling downwards.

I smiled and started to prepare another force bolt, but was distracted when one of the things stabbed me in the thigh with its stinger, causing the spell pattern to explode, and sending me back into the wall, slamming the back of my head against the rock.

Luckily, the explosion did grant me some space, and I could see some holes in some of the membranous wings of the creatures, so it had at least hurt them too. I started up my spell patterns again, and this time stabbed at one that tried to go at me and catch me with its stinger, cutting into the wing, and leaving it flopping around on the ground.

Me slowly whittling the numbers down was interrupted however, when I started to feel woozy and lightheaded. I cursed, of course the damn stingers would be poisonous. I continued stabbing out however, missing as often as I was hitting now, and got some nasty cuts on my legs and arms, but I was finally starting to see an end to their numbers.

I was down to three of them when I started to feel utterly exhausted, and taking a glance at my stamina bar, it was almost completely empty, so I grabbed one of my two stamina potions from my belt and downed it. Taking my attention away from the battle however, turned out to be a pretty poor move, as I took another stinger in the arm.

Feeling even more woozy, I stabbed out at the creature whose stinger was still stuck in my arm, catching it in the wing, but nearly dropping my spear when it hit it from the weakness I was starting to feel from the poison. I pulled it out in a heaving motion, requiring far more effort than it should have from the weakness, and started preparing another force bolt.

The last two creatures weren’t going to let me finish with ease however, and both flew at me as if to stop me from finishing it. I stabbed out at one, and the other impacted my chest with its claws, luckily stopped by the warg armor. Dropping my spear, I grabbed the back of it and threw it against the opposing wall, releasing my force bolt at it when it hit the ground.

I leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily. That had probably the most intense fight I had had so far. Once I had caught my breath I grabbed my spear from the ground, and went to finish off the ones that were still moving but unable to fly due to their wing damage.

Once I had finished that, a notification popped up, telling me that I had gained a level, and I smiled, at least I had gotten more out of that fight than a bunch of cuts and a woozy head. Once I had finished, I went back against the wall and set up camp, I was in no condition to do anything until this poison had worn off. I eventually decided to put the point into wisdom, my mana seemed to be the limiting factor at the moment, so I should probably work on increasing that.

I relaxed within my ward net, laying down on my new bedding, until the most severe of the light headedness and weak feeling had worn off, then got up, it was time to harvest my loot. Putting my hand on one of them to see what the loot popup window would say, I found out that it was called a brag. The loot item itself was a small sack of poison that was located by their stingers.

Deciding that I really didn’t want to harvest that myself, I’d had enough of their poison getting into me for the day, I pulled out my book on harvesting to see what it was used for at least. It turns out, that the poison, when mixed with some herbs, is used to make an antidote for poison. Pulling out my book on alchemy that I hadn’t really touched except to learn the most basic potion recipes, I looked through it, and soon found the recipe.

All it called for was the poison in the sack, in addition to a portion it referred to as a pinch of ground healing herb, and two pinches of the stamina herb. It also required mana to be added three times, once when you added each of the ingredients, and each time requiring a different amount of mana to be added.

Deciding that I’d try it out as soon as I could get a fire going to dry out my herbs, I packed up my two books and started touching each of the bodies, collecting a total of twenty six poison sacks. Putting all of my loot into my magical backpack, I got up, I was going to go back to that cavern, though I was going to be a bit sneakier this time.

It didn’t take me too long to arrive back at the cavern, and the first thing I noted was that my slaughter of the brags didn’t seem to have knocked down their numbers too much. I had killed twenty six of the things and there had to be at least five times that flying around or nesting at the top of the cave.

The craw weren’t in quite such large numbers, but with their armored shells, they would probably be quite hard to take down even one on one. I was interrupted in my assessment of the situation by my stomach rumbling, telling me that I really should eat something, so after backing back down the cave a bit, I pulled out some travel rations and started to chow down, deciding what I should do at this point.

I could try to head the other way down the tunnel, I could try and whittle down the numbers here, or I could try and climb up back the way I fell down. I could also just suicide and respawn, but I wasn’t sure if I would respawn at Ederheim or Kurheim. I would have to ask once I got back to town.

Deciding that the first thing I should do would be to head down and see where the other side of the tunnel went, I packed up my snacks and started walking. Along the way, I noted the hole I had fell down from, but maybe thirty minutes later I was staring at a cave that would make me get down and crouch walk, and probably get on my stomach to shimmy through further in.

I sighed, I wasn’t particularly claustrophobic, but that would be a bit much, and I really didn’t want to risk getting stuck along the way. My spear and backpack being there would also probably get in the way, and I had no intention of leaving those behind.

I figured maybe someone who liked to cave would be willing to explore it, so I should probably ask around when I got back to the city. Heading back down to the direction of the large cavern, I noticed some driftwood on the floor and started. That was not a good sign. If driftwood managed to get here, that meant that the ocean would come up and fill this area up with water when high tide came.

I had no idea how long that would take to happen, especially considering the two moons in the sky. For all I knew, it could take months before the high tide was high enough to be able to fill up this area, and it likely would take quite some time seeing as how dry it was, but I’d rather get out of here sooner rather than later to be safe.

I arrived to where I had fallen down, and continued on towards the giant cavern. It wasn’t too long before I arrived again, but this time, I kept myself standing up, and tried to get the attention of one of the brags again. It wasn’t too long until one had noticed me, and I ran back up the cavern.

This time there was only the one following me, and I sighed in disappointment, stabbing it before it could scream and gather another group of allies. While I wanted to hunt them a few at a time rather than by the single, I had no intentions of gathering another group that large, I only had one stamina potion left, and I didn’t want to risk getting poisoned earlier in the fight and dying.

After killing it, I collected the poison sack and went back to the cave to get another couple. I soon got into a rhythm of collecting a couple, and killing them before they could scream, though there were a few close calls, and it didn’t take too long until I had cleared out maybe a fifth of the brags flying around.

I was going to go back and hunt some more, when I was interrupted by a large yawn. I then decided that the best thing to do would be to get some rest for the night instead of try and stay up hunting. I soon set myself up a small temporary campsite, not bothering with the tent this time, and snuggled up in my new sleeping bag like bedding. I then meditated, focusing on that sensation I was always searching for while sleeping, and was able to find it without much of an issue, slowly fading into that mix of meditation and sleep.

I awoke the next morning, and continued my extermination of the brags, grabbing a couple each time and killing them off. It was relatively painless until one of them screamed again, and I panicked, stabbing at it as fast as I could in the hopes that it would stop the next wave from appearing.

My hopes were in vain as I heard the sound of flapping wings coming down the tunnel, but I smiled in happiness as I noted that only ten or so had come this time. I finished them off without much of an issue, whittling down their numbers beforehand with an ice shatter, and this time catching one of them before it went to scream and gather even more allies.

I waited around for a while, waiting for the few cuts I had gotten to heal up naturally, or at least as naturally as a game world healing can be, and then got back to my busy work. I was through almost all of them when I got another level up. I smiled, and put the point into wisdom again. I was going to catch up to those level grinders without much of an issue if things continued this way. It took maybe an hour after that to finish off all of the brags, and I let out a breath I had been holding in.

It seemed it would indeed be possible for me to clear out the mobs for me to continue my exploration, the only ones I had left were the craw. I smiled, and decided to go get me some of that craw meat the harvesting book had described as delicious.