After the battle, and the clean-up, the night was approaching. I managed to keep the [push] knot carved into GB, but, with experimentation I created a knot that, with the right command, could be used as [or]. This led to a slightly more complicated weave of true essence and fire essence that could be used as before, creating a sweeping wave of fire with GB at the center, or a simpler double push that would shoot out a flamethrower jet of fire from either, or both, of the oddly-shaped stumps of his hands. The noose trees were a problem at first until we discovered that GB was just a little too hard for them to grab, since any time they would yank on a limb the vines would simply slide off the rounded limbs or sever themselves on the jagged edges our poor casting had left. There were three trees, and the third one managed to catch Gingerbread Man and stuff it into a yawning orifice in the center of the trunk, but with a command GB ignited and torched the damned thing to the ground in seconds, lumbering out afterward entirely unscathed.

The vines against the wall turned out to be incredibly acidic, which Raphael discovered when I mentioned that the seed pods seemed to have incredible medicinal potential. After flushing his hands with water and then having him sit for some time with my salve regenerating the skin and muscles in the palms of his hands, we managed to collect the seed pods. The eventual solution was to have Cassie’s mount, which she had creatively named ‘Bear’, pull them off the vines since he was an essence construct that seemed to be immune to poison or acid.

The rest of the valley was a treasure trove of medicinal herbs, and I even found some trees that had seed pods that strongly resembled coffee! I carefully collected every one of them I could, and even cut some saplings for wrapping and attempting to grow later. There were many small lizards scampering through the undergrowth, but my [observe] skill was faithfully letting me know what the medicinal or alchemical potential of each plant was, and by about midnight I probably collected a hundred pounds of ingredients and seeds. I even collected some plants that specifically produced certain types of mana for later perusal.

Blue Watercot

This aquatic lily produces strong levels of water mana. It only grows in slightly acidic, potassium-rich water without insect larvae to destroy its feeder roots. It will eventually produce flowers that, when eaten or used in a potion or as a spell or enchanting component, dramatically magnify the amount of water mana or its derivatives produced or refined.

The roots themselves produce tubers that are mildly toxic unless cooked. When cooked, however, these tubers will imbue a dish with a bonus of flexibility and dexterity and can help improve red blood cell production and bone health.

Unknown marigold variety, heat affinity. Tentative name ‘fire marigold’

Like many mana-enriched plants, the leaves and stems of this perennial can cause toxic damage to your mana pool. This plant requires a strong source of fixed hydrogen, such as decaying plant fertilizer or a swamp environment, and a large supply of water. It will eventually produce flowers that, when eaten or used in a potion or as a spell or enchanting component, dramatically magnify the amount of heat mana or its derivatives produced or refined.

While the leaves may be poisonous when ingested, they tend to absorb foreign essence and can be used as part of an enchantment, spell component, or salve to help weaken and remove cursed or sealed items.

Turtle Lettuce

While this particular leaf lettuce variety is not particularly rare, it is difficult to cultivate and is usually only available in small amounts. It requires a density of earth, water, and nature magic that is difficult to maintain to grow.

Its leaves are refreshing and full of vitamins and minerals when eaten raw but breaks down into a soggy, inedible mess when cooked. A salad using this ingredient leads to improved energy levels, and its crisp, almost minty flavor complements almost any other raw salad ingredient.

With these greens, and what I had collected before, we made a quick dinner of leftovers and a salad with eggs, pine nuts, and a mixture of sunflower oil and red wine vinegar which made a delicious dressing. We only got a small buff to physical and attribute training for 6 hours, but that evening’s training session, after we set up camp, had Shiana doing far more physically demanding exercises than I had expected. Raphael was the only one that wanted a really heavy meal, so I put together most of our leftovers from the last few days, which were still hot and fresh, for him to enjoy.

For the first time in my life, I was looking forward to eating leftovers, since my temporal storage was keeping them in the same shape that they went in. Cold beer, in addition, was a surprisingly popular treat, especially for Cassie and Shiana. I didn’t much care for medieval beer myself, since their methods tended to let all of the gases escape and made the beers flat, but I had high hopes for bottled ales and root beer in the future.

I sighed. In the future. In the future. I think I needed to just sell all of our untanned leather to a professional leatherworking shop, since, between the double harvest, we were getting overloaded on leather I just didn’t have time to deal with. I needed some training downtime.

While I was on watch, I was fiddling with one of the wyvern hides, trying out ideas while I kept my eyes and ears open. It turns out, that [push] and [water] can both dry and moisten a hide with little trouble. That and using less power would allow me to prepare a single hide in only a few minutes, the most time-consuming part was working the water and fat mixture into the hide with my bare hands, and using my temporal knife to peel any discarded shreds of fat from the inside of the hide. I had plans for that as well. By the time I woke Cassie for her turn at watch and to get some much-needed rest, I had finished most of our earlier hides and made decent inroads into the stacks of wyvern hides, and was looking forward to more experimentation in magical preparation.

The best part? I had, somehow, broken past the barrier to advancing survival! Probably due to both the new environment as well as using magical means at ensuring my survival abilities such as creating GB, my survival had advanced to master poor, and that new level allowed me to better analyze materials, as well.

Due to advancing your survival to master, you are now comfortable in temperatures ten degrees higher or lower than your previous comfort levels. You require ten percent less water and food to maintain health and fitness, as well as only four hours of decent sleep per night with your health bonuses. You can craft more powerful items using natural and scavenged ingredients, and due to your education in monster cores, you may add their power to harvested ingredients.

Master survival has unlocked mastery in improvised engineering potential as well. You may now add monster cores to your improvised engineering projects to power their mana pools.

I went to sleep dreaming of adding a core to my next sling that doubled or tripled its launch speed.

The next room was filled with giant Crocodiles, and the terrain was considerably marshier. I finally managed to perfect an arrowhead, gaining another rank in improvised engineering despite creating them entirely from magic. Even though each one cost me most of my mana pool, it was absolutely worth it for the brutally efficient arrows Shiana could create with them, and by the time our breakfast was finished, she had crafted and allowed me to temporally cure 6 arrows.

Masterwork high-carbon steel arrow.

These arrows are well-crafted, but each one is tipped by a magically created, incredibly sharp, razor-edged war arrowhead.

Armor that is not hardened is almost no barrier to these penetrating arrows, and unhardened armor rarely breaks them, although they may need to be sharpened occasionally.

Due to their magical material, when these arrows are magically divided by arrow storm or split shot, their damage and speed are not reduced, although they still have a larger chance of being dulled due to a large number of strikes.

When I scouted the room and came back, I was surprised by Raphael's big grin on hearing what the room was filled with, even with the heavier swampiness.

“Are you kidding?” he said, chuckling, “Crocodiles and gators are basically the same thing, they fight the same way. Yeah, they are bigger than I am used to, but I have been fighting these things my whole life. Leave this to me, but feel free to chip in if I look like I am having trouble.”

He pulled out the slightly longer knife, and crouched at the edge of the tunnel, then waved to Shiana and pointed at one of the Crocodiles. She nodded and nocked one of her normal arrows, and then took a careful shot at one of the giant lizards. I had informed him about the strangling willows, and so he leaped up to what looked like a squat baobab near the cave entrance, dodging the strangler on the opposite side.

A horde of ripples was rapidly approaching the cave, and when he noticed the first snout creasing the water, he leaped, and with a practiced motion buried the knife into the monster’s neck, right behind the eyes. I assume he severed the spinal column, because it stopped moving instantly, and he kept leaping into trees and dropping on the backs of monsters as they climbed the shallow bank towards our party. Barely 15 minutes had passed before I was back scouting the area again, discovering that, true to its reputation, all of the monsters would immediately attack each threat that entered a room instead of using tactics or hunting techniques. 14 dead gators in 15 minutes not only impressed me but also leveled up both Raphael and Cassie.

I sighed and we started dragging bodies up on the bank for manual looting, and this time Raphael joined Shiana and me. He was surprisingly adept at skinning the large lizards, and I had to assume that he definitely had real-world experience, although I did insist on checking for cores and materials before they started skinning each of the beasts. Our loot, aside from the hides and various alchemical ingredients, was 3 small water cores, 2 medium water cores, and a medium combined water/earth mud core that I was eager to experiment with.

I discovered a new herb, called a greater mandragora dungeon lily, that had a blossom similar to a tiger lily, but was nearly a foot in size. The blossoms and stalk were a poison similar to nightshade, but the silvery base of the leaves could produce a powerful pain and rash reducer.

Around noon, we started on the third room. Like the others, this room looked like a tiny pocket valley, but this time it was a heavy forest with only occasional damp spots. The recurring theme was getting a little boring, as was only a single monster type in each room, and I was not even slightly surprised when I started spotting pseudodragons wandering among the trees. Pseudodragons were very similar to wyverns, including the stinger-tipped tails, in the same way that chickens were similar to falcons. Where the wyverns were sleek avian predators, Pseudodragons where heavily muscled ground and tree predators that could use their stumpy wings for short hops and glides. Individually, they were much more dangerous than even several wyverns,

We set up an ambush similar to what we had used on the drakes, pushing rocks until they formed a low wall, and then using saplings with stakes attached to trap the walls. It only took me about two hours to regenerate my mana from low levels, and I had used the time while skinning and preparing crocodiles to help Shiana produce two more arrows.

This time, while there were only about a dozen pseudodragons, but each one of them were nearly as tall at the shoulder as Cassie, and my [observe] painted them as level 15. I had GB trot out past the line of traps to where his arsenal would not catch us in the blast, and then lie down flatly on the ground, as an emergency measure.

Shiana pulled again, catching the attention of everything in the room. I was a little surprised that the same tactic worked in every room, but so far the creatures, except for targeting en masse the moment one of them gained any aggro, had showed very little intelligence of any sort. They didn’t even run away when badly injured.

This time, while fighting, Raphael took 3 stingers. They were small, and his only wounds, and one of those stingers I was almost certain was intentional, as he winced but didn’t move as it shot into the uncovered part of his thigh, taking the hit in order to half-rip the head off another pseudodragon. It was only minor damage, but we were relieved to note that his poison immunity was definitely fully active, as he quickly healed up after we were done and had applied more of my ointment. I even gave him a brand new jar, and took back the old jar to reuse for more ointment. Cores might be worth more in the way of gold in civilization, but right now bottles and jars were in short supply and much more valuable for storing teas and ointments.

Essence density has been increaing as you travel deeper into the dungeon. I am trying to contact the local sprite, but so far I have had no luck. If you can clear out the next room’s boss, the essence density should be heavy enough to compress your core.

Thanks, Mnemosyne. I replied as I started collecting the cores, leaving the corpses behind for Shiana and Raphael to start skinning while Cassie kept watch. After a moment, Kalika used her knife to help, and I noticed that she actually seemed to be remarkably effective at rendering the bodies.