Chapter 71 – Hidden Challenge Part 8, Bjorn's Letter and Smoke Bombs

“Here’s five phials, sister Rosalia~. That’s all the phials I could find in the kitchen, so it’s five for you and five for Spoon for now, which should be enough~” the black cat with white mittens said as she handed over a few phials to Rosalia.

Meat Shield was right, five was just about enough. You couldn’t just binge the same kind of potion consecutively because consuming a potion started a cooldown. Otherwise everyone could just chug their way to full hp in the middle of a fight and healers would be obsolete and the balancing of the game would be atrocious.

Although the 50 health and mana restoration was about as effective as a light health and mana potion respectively, the 50 divine energy restoration and mild cleansing effect as well as the temporary buff made the item [Phial of Luxuria’s Hot Spring Water] unquestionably up to par as a divine tier consumable. Hell, I could sell this stuff by the thousands if I ever bought a deed for land and set up shop.

What a cool function of the hot spring bath, acting as a renewable source of free divine tier potions. Although, as appetizing as a divine tier potion sounded... I still felt a bit apprehensive about drinking literal bath water. Maybe it was better to think about it as spring water instead.

“Thank you~” Rosalia responded, happily petting Meat Shield. “Oh wow, it even restores divine energy. That’s super useful~”

Stepping out of the water, Rosalia wrapped a smaller towel around her hair and grabbed a strange wooden box contraption, along with three small round dark purple spheres and a pouch. “Bjorn wanted you to have these. He gave me some too, as a parting gift.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s back in Jagged Dorsa. After you died to the mimic, we decided not to go any further into the tomb, and headed back to his original waterfall base. We made it back after a week of traveling and hiding, and I stayed at the water base with him until the challenge started, which teleported me here.”

“Both Bjorn and I were in the bath when the challenge started, but since non-players can’t join the challenge, and my portal led straight into challenge grounds, the system moved him back to his originating location. So Bjorn is safe~”

“And he even said he’ll talk to the dwarven chief and convince him that not all humans are bad, so we can visit next time as guests~”

I nodded, relieved to hear that Bjorn was safe and sound. I was thinking of recruiting him in the future as a resident if I was ever in a position to establish a settlement. Having a dwarf as cunning and mechanically gifted as Bjorn managing the settlement would boost the productivity of the settlement by several fold. And most importantly, I liked and trusted him.

“Wait… what happened to Siege Tank Golem?”

“Oh, your golem didn’t make it… I’m sorry…”

“His core shattered in the acid rain, but we managed to save his core crystal, so maybe you can find a way to restore him in the future.

Rosalia handed me a red crystal with a wistful look on her face. “I’m really sorry about golem, he was a good friend…”

“It’s alright, he sacrificed himself so we could make it,” I said, although I had a heavy guilty feeling in my chest, as if I let my friend down.

Looking at the bright red crystal in my hand, I thought back on the stalwart rock buddy and vowed that I’d do everything in my power to restore his body.

I carefully placed the red crystal in Bjorn’s hand crafted pouch, then took a look at the contraptions that he gifted me. There was a letter tucked inside the pouch, which I took out and read.

Dear Spoon,

I hope this finds you in good health. Attached are a few items that may help you in your journey ahead. In the pouch are three smoke bombs and one of my favorite homemade contraptions.

To use the smoke bombs, simply crush the sphere in the palm of your hand and then pull the string. This will cause a plume of heavy purple smoke. The mixture is nontoxic so don’t be afraid to breathe it in. I’d prefer if you crushed the spheres in your hand instead of throwing them on the ground, because the bombs can be reassembled rather easily as long as you keep the base of the bomb. To reassemble the bomb, just use a powder made of dried juniper berries and crushed burnt tree bark, which are rather easy ingredients to find. Juniper berries can be found in low hanging shrub bushes in most areas, and for burnt tree bark, simply carve off some dry bark from a tree, then roast it over a campfire for about thirty minutes or until burnt black and flaky. The combination of these two ingredients is highly flammable, and will easily catch fire when exposed to friction from the string pull.

The wooden contraption is a prototype all purpose trap that I’ve painstakingly designed out of necessity. When you throw it, it will explode into a spike trap because of the pressure circuits interwoven into the sides of the wooden cube. However, there is also a thick string spool compartment that you can use to set up more elaborate movement triggered spike executions. I’ve drawn a diagram in the back of this parchment detailing how to use it, but it may be a bit difficult to understand for you humans, since Rosalia seemed to have trouble when I explained it to her as well. The trick is to use the leverage from the tautness of a reverse gordian knot to counterbalance and set up a tense string that will snap backwards when pulled, for example when something walks through it. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. This little wonder has helped me kill four raptors without any effort. Very deadly trap when utilized properly.

Thank you for all that you’ve done for me. I’ll be speaking with the chief to make an exception for you and Rosalia as honored guests at our outpost in Jagged Dorsa. Thor be with you in your journeys ahead.

P.S. tell Cerebi that I will have the most exquisite wild wheat beer prepared for her the next time she visits.

I flipped the parchment over and took a look at the diagram, which was insanely complicated. From what I could gather from a cursory look, the string system was what allowed the wooden box to explode after being thrown. I saw him use it against the mimic, but as a thrown weapon it was rather useless. The real value in this contraption came from its trap mode. Anything that could kill something as deadly as a raptor without any endangerment of the user was an item of interest to me.

The purple smoke bombs were immediately useful and rather self explanatory, especially because now I had [Blood Lust] to track player movements through a smokescreen, as long as they were wounded. What a useful gift. Next time I saw Bjorn, I’d have to give him something equally valuable.

Now that I was thinking about my time with Bjorn, I suddenly remembered that there was a locket in the real treasure chest next to the mimic chest. Summoning my inventory, I took the locket out and examined it again.

[??? Locket]

[Your lore is not high enough to properly identify this item. Please bring it to a shopkeeper with an adequate lore level.]

I put the locket on.

…

Nothing happened.

Maybe it was a treasure, but for now, it had no use for me. I stored it in my inventory and spoke to Rosalia.

“Gonna go now, I’ll see you later.”

“Bye~ take care, and be safe~”

Summoning a portal to the outside, I stepped back into the old castle courtyard with a new pouch fastened onto my belt.

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Dozens of dead bodies littered the hill above, as the melee intensified in fervor during my absence. The fighting had made its way down to the courtyard as well, as the level 86 orc player from before dueled a fighter and a rogue by himself. They didn’t notice my entry, so I snuck to the cover of a nearby tree to reassess the situation.

Using my demi-human enhanced vision and blood lust trait, which allowed me to see vague red mists leaking from open wounds, I saw that at least seven of the dead bodies on the hill were caused by [Backstab]. It had to be the work of that level 90 assassin from before, although I didn’t see her shimmering invisible form stalking around the battlefield.

I quickly looked behind me, just in case I was her next target. Nothing.

Since I was sitting relatively safe on nine tickets even after giving Rosalia two, maybe I could sit back and use telekinetic whip control to attack from a distance while they were busy fighting each other.

Sshkk.

-70 health.

An arrow embedded itself in my back, momentarily shocking me in pain. I heard the whistle of a second arrow head towards me, and immediately threw myself to the ground and barrel rolled to cover on the other side of the courtyard’s pillar.

A moment later, another arrow whizzed past the pillar I was hiding behind. Just a few meters in front of me in the courtyard, the level 86 orc warrior struck down the rogue with a powerful mace blow to the head.

Why the hell did the archer go for me instead of the easy targets up ahead? Well, I guess they looked a bit better armored than me, so maybe that was why…

As another arrow whizzed past my face, I noticed that the angle that it came from had changed, meaning that the archer was moving.

“Summon cat.”

Meat Shield plopped next to me, as I kneeled down and half whispered to her.

“Can you tell me where the archer is? I don’t want to poke my head out.”

Meat Shield nodded, peeking around the corner before reporting back to me. “She’s walking down into the courtyard. In about thirty seconds she’ll have a good angle on you, so you’d better move now~”

Summoning love whip in my left hand, I threw the whip in the air and telekinetically controlled it to float towards the general vicinity of where the archer was shooting from. Another arrow flew towards the whip, which was my signal to go. Taking advantage of the second or two that it took her to notch her next shot, I sprinted out into the open and located her.

I spotted her instantly, because she was standing out in the open. Level 81 female archer with a dagger strapped onto her hip, wearing the [Steel Guild] insignia over her leather ranger armor. Seeing that insignia instantly pissed me off, but I knew that the guild had grown to a point that this particular archer probably never even met Steel Slice.

She notched another arrow and let it loose straight at my head.

“Shadow.”

Bursting into a cloud of mist, I sped directly towards her with adamantite poleaxe in hand. The archer gasped and wavered for a moment from seeing my nightmarish ability in action, and shot another arrow that passed harmlessly through my cloud. After seeing that her bow was ineffective, she unequipped it and drew her dagger, which gleamed a deep blue. It was made of mithril, and looked rather expensive.

A moment later, I reemerged right in front of her with my poleaxe cocked back.

“Hyaaa!” I shouted, stabbing forward with my poleaxe. The spear tip dug into her leather armor, and blood dripped down the fresh wound.

112 damage.

I followed up with a slash, which barely missed her, and then another forward thrust that pierced her again. She tried to counter with a dagger swing, but the range of my adamantite poleaxe gave me an inherent advantage over her dagger.

107 damage.