Otjag This one got a bit long xD. Enjoy!!
While Artemis was busy absorbing the news in regards to introducing their newly discovered ability to their mother as well as what her sisters thought about Tiffany’s plan of a great wall to make the Antanoid great again, time went past quite quickly and the caravan reached an innocuous patch of forest that looked pretty much exactly as the rest of the surrounding terrain after leaving the last of the barrier trees behind them. The only thing betraying that once upon a time civilization had existed here were a few jagged stones that might have been part of a wall at one point.
Considering what Sveck had told the Antanoid during his visit however, the settlement hadn’t been lost all that long ago, which made the amount of destruction that had to have happened her astounding. Even if the date of the tragedy was 20 years ago or older there should have been some ruins left, but there were none.
Artemis couldn’t quite put her head around this. These humans had clearly been able to build with stone and adding magic into the mix, the buildings should be able to resist more time than that. It was also unlikely that the Xanai razed everything to the ground, why would they bother?
No, the only thing that she could think of was that someone had come back to the city after the battle and meticulously dismembered almost everything to take with him, but then again, why?
It was a mystery, one that would stay unsolved for the time being.
The group of sisters took one last break next to the river, refilling their water skins and then broke away from the running source of water, turning back to the north east. An hour later they then reached their goal, the dungeon.
Contrary to the town, remnants of what has once been could be seen quite clearly here. The dungeon entrance was surrounded by a plaza of sorts, though large parts of it were covered by dirt and various plants. Around that plaza were remnants of a wall, clearly meant to protect the outside from the inside. As the dungeon entrance was situated at the base of a hill, the wall didn’t go all the way around, but it was enough to pick off anything that might be inside the encirclement from a safe distance.
The moment they arrived Tiffany began to kick all her sisters into motion and the place quickly became a hive of activity. They didn’t know why there had been safety measures against the dungeon, but then again, they didn’t really know anything about dungeons for that matter so they all agreed that the walls had to be there for a reason. As such, the construction of the new rooms happened outside of the encirclement and proceeded quickly thanks to everyone contributing their silk.
Once the hunters were out of the building material, they fanned out and began to map out the surroundings in more detail. While they did that, the travelers started to clear out the space around the dungeon, uprooting plants and shifting earth to get the place back to its former glory. Not that it would stay that way of course, since there was no way they wouldn’t cover it in silk later on.
Artemis herself didn’t join either of these activities. Instead, she organized a small team of drones and ordered them to scout along the river in search of human settlements and activity.
With that done however, came something much more exciting that mother had been thinking about nearly nonstop for an entire week. So, accompanied by another team of five drones, one of which had a glaring wound on its eye, she tensely approached the dungeon entrance.
The entrance looked very much like a natural cave opening. A large cave opening, sure, but a cave opening nonetheless. Were it not for the plaza in front of it, it could have been any random cave and Artemis was sure that it would have taken them a lot longer to find the dungeon had that been the case.
Before she entered the cave she unslung her bow, checking it once over and did a quick count of her arrows in the quiver on her hip. There were 23, she usually had at least 30 on her when hunting alone, but it should be enough for a quick delve to find out how a dungeon worked. By her estimation she should be able to kill one of the toads with one shot anyway, so she might find herself hard pressed to use all 23 of her arrows in the first place.
With that done Artemis gave each of the drones a loving scratch under the chin, much to their delight and then walked into the cave.
A few meters inside she stopped again, surprised by a system screen popping up in front of her. The same definitely didn’t happen to the drones when they had entered alone, so the thing came a bit unexpected.
[System message]
You have entered a dungeon. Scanning…
Group detected, creating party…
Artemis (Leader)
Swarm Drone x5
All mana earned will be equally distributed between party members.
Do you want to [harvest] or [loot] the dungeon? (Note: This can only be changed at the entrance of each floor)
Decision pending…
Artemis stared for a few moments at the screen before she started to really comprehend what she was reading and, most importantly, began to realize the possible implications of such a message popping up.
For one, she only knew of 2 other instances that had happened. The first time was when someone's status opened for the first time and the second time was when the hive population had reached 50. In her opinion that made it quite possible that dungeons were a system function and probably wouldn’t exist without it.
Second was that the system screen had only now popped up when she entered, but not when only the drones had entered. Why that was, she wasn’t sure, though it might be because she was sapient and they were not.
What the system meant with mana distribution, Artemis didn’t know, but she would find out once she really entered one way or another.
That left only the decision between [harvest] and [loot]. It was possible to change later in the dungeon, which was good to know. The question was though, what was the difference?
Artemis let out a sigh and sat down. She would have to consult with mother about this through the hive connection and it might take some time. So much for quickly scouting the first floor of the dungeon.
—
Kai hummed happily to herself as she strolled through her home and watched her daughters go about their day. With so many of them away it was a lot quieter than usually, it was only temporary though, so she didn’t mind.
Anna was, as always, by her side and made sure she didn’t get lonely, which in and of itself was quite a feat with more than 80 daughters, yet Kai still managed to do it every now and then.
What was a bit worrisome as of late was that sometimes the girl spaced a bit out and when she came back to herself she always seemed to have a headache.
Was Anna alright? Maybe she was ill? Or maybe there was something bothering her?
Kai didn’t know and it made her heart ache. She didn’t know how to approach the topic though, her mother had never taught her what to do in such a situation.
Well, that wasn’t quite right. In a way she had shown her, when she-
A screen suddenly appeared in front of her. “Huh?”
[System message]
A citizen of your [Outpost] has entered an unclaimed dungeon within 50km of your settlement. You can claim the dungeon. Doing so will give you knowledge of the number of floors and might unlock other benefits now or in the future.
Do you wish to claim the dungeon for [Antana]?
Kai stopped her stroll to stare at the message more effectively, which earned her a concerned look from her daughter. “Is everything okay, mom?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I just got a system message without prompting it to.” She had not even realized she halted.
Anna gave her a smile. “That’s good to hear! What does it say?”
It was quite apparent that she had her daughter curious, so Kai didn’t beat around the bush and send her daughter the message over the hive, while she noted that Artemis must have entered the dungeon by now. Whatever preparation she had been involved in after the caravan arrived there seemed to be done.
Kai didn’t know what it was exactly. She had only noticed that her daughters had arrived and was then much too occupied dancing and singing with her cuties back home. A very important task of top most priority!
That aside, the system message was indeed interesting. For one, the dungeon having different floors assured her further that it was indeed similar to a fantasy dungeon that adventurers delve into for riches. Not only that though, claiming the dungeon could also unlock future benefits.
Kai wanted to claim the thing then and there, only the fact that whatever decision would also affect her daughters holding her back from doing so. This instance it might not seem like there were consequences, but if she didn’t consider them now, why would she do so in the future?
Better she trained now with something like this then make a mistake when her daughters lives are on the line.
With that in mind, what would or rather will happen once she claimed the dungeon?
A dungeon as she understood it, while certainly dangerous, was a strategic resource and it stood to question if the baron next to the barrier forest would simply let them claim it. Afterall it had been his once and while he might not have cared when it was ownerless, Kai couldn’t imagine him being okay with it being taken by someone else. As far as she knew from novels and books, nobles were petty like that.
It was thus very likely for her and her daughters to have a problem with the baron in the future.
However, the inaction also told her that, while important, dungeons weren’t that rare. This meant that it was incredibly unlikely for the kingdom to take any interest into the dungeon at all, which in turn meant that the baron wouldn’t come visiting with armies of thousands. She didn’t know how mana played into all this stuff, but hopefully a few weeks' time would be enough for her swarm to be enough to deal with a stuck up noble’s problem.
One thing was for sure, she didn’t want her daughters to get involved in any fighting with humans. That was way too dangerous.
“Good evening mother. How are you?” Artemis' rather stoic thought voice interrupted her.
Being able to contact her daughters whenever without having to use a smartphone was still rather weird and always caught her off guard when it wasn’t her that was initiating the call. It made her heart all jumpy and excited.
Kai quickly claimed the dungeon, closing the screens in the process and then fully concentrated on her daughter. There was no way she would keep her waiting when she hadn’t heard from artemis for two days!
—
“Good evening mother. How are you?” Artemis greeted her mother after she had made sure she wasn’t doing anything important right now.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the bubbly loving thoughts of her mother came back through the hive connection, bringing an exasperated but heartfelt smile to Artemis face.
“Hi Artemis! I’m good, how are you? How was the trip? Did you eat and sleep enough? Are you alright?”
“Everything is fine on this end mother, there is nothing for you to worry about. Rather, I called because I got a system message when I entered the dungeon and wanted to ask you something.”
She sent the image of the screen next and patted herself on her shoulder for tactically guiding her mother towards solving the problem at hand without having to answer all those questions.
“Oh? So you didn’t just call because you wanted to speak to your mother?”
Uhhh, maybe it wasn’t all that smart.
“Just kidding! Let’s see…”
Artemis relaxed a bit at that and waited for mother to read through the screen.
“Hmm, I’m not really sure about the mana distribution, but my guess is that it probably has something to do with stats and levels. As for [harvest] and [loot] that one is rather easy.”
She hadn’t yet even asked her question, but then again, her problem seemed pretty obvious or she had just triggered the - What was the word for it? Ah right - the mother intuition. Hopefully it was not the latter.
“[Harvest] clearly refers to the settings that the drones had when they entered alone, meaning that with this option you will get body parts of your kill or maybe even the whole body as reward. It might even let you collect potential plants or mushrooms and mine any ore, but that is only speculation from me.
“[Loot] on the other hand probably refers to the more game-like option. I can’t really tell you what the rewards might be here, but going by gaming knowledge you can probably expect coins, arrows, weapons, armor and any such items as reward, though since [harvest] is a thing you shouldn’t expect to get any body parts from your kill.
“Now, if you don’t fancy eating giant dungeon toads, I would recommend going with [loot] for the time being. Chances are that loot drops are something the hive lacks, but it’s your choice Arti.”
Artemis cringed a bit, imagining eating something slimy and squishy like toad. She couldn’t imagine the texture being nice and would rather stick to larger game and grilled insects. That was much more to her liking.
Taking mothers advice to heart, she selected to [loot] the dungeon next. “Thank you mother, that helped a lot. I will take a look at the first dungeon floor now.”
“Hmm, it’s no problem, I’m glad to help! Just be careful inside, okay?”
She rolled her eyes again. “I will be, mother. You don’t need to worry so much.”
“You better! Oh, and make sure to call me again when you are done and every now and then, yes?”
Artemis shuddered a bit. “I will, mother. Hear you later!”
And with that she quickly ended the conversation before a schedule could be made and swiftly started to walk deeper into the dungeon while the drones scuttled ahead to make sure nothing ambushed them.
The first cavern was very much the same as the last time, large, dark and aside from the stalactites and stalagmites empty. As such, Artemis made her way to the lit part of the dungeon without problems and worries.
Once there though, she readied her bow and kept an arrow nocked. Simultaneously she rearranged the drones into a more defensive formation with 2 in front of her, one to each side and one in the back. If everything went well they wouldn’t see combat today.
The last thing Artemis did before entering was to check out the mana in the area, but sadly she didn’t discover anything unusual. She had just thought that something might be different considering the mana distribution of the party and all that.
Then she began to cautiously advance into the tunnel. Here, too, nothing had changed and she found the same blue glowing mushrooms and moss on the ground. What she did notice only now though, was that it became noticeably more wet the further she walked, until small pools of water became fairly regular.
A minute later or so Artemis came across the intersection and took a brief glance into the right tunnel. The cave opened up into a larger chamber after a few meters here. Not noticing any danger, she chose to follow the left tunnel and leave the large cavern for later.
Artemis was pretty tense and hoped it wouldn’t take much longer for the first damnable toad to appear. She didn’t like being surrounded by walls like this. It wasn’t like hunting and she felt somewhat caged in by the stone around her.
Luckily for her and unfortunately for a certain toad, the waiting came to an end as she noticed a weird spot in one of the pools of water. It looked like the surface of the water was going over two pebbles, forming bumps that poked a bit out of the water. Besides that, she couldn’t see anything else, because the water conveniently reflected the surrounding light in a way that made it impossible to see what was inside.
Water usually didn’t stretch over rocks like that in Artemis' opinion and knowing that the toads were ambush predators, she didn’t hesitate any longer. Drawing her bow and taking aim, she let go.
A loud twang filled the air, followed by the splash of the arrow hitting water and the sound of bubbles reaching the surface.
The two vanguard drones quickly rushed after the arrow, but when they arrived the toad had already started to fade away, leaving only the projectile and a bit of blood, before that too disappeared.
Artemis followed her two protectors with a smile and collected the arrow, giving it to the drone behind her to carry. She preferred shooting with dry arrows and didn’t want to wet those in her quiver.
Still, this encounter made her much more confident in clearing the caves. She now knew what to look out for in the water pools and besides those the toads would have a hard time hiding from her.
Drawing another arrow she proceeded further down the tunnel and eliminated two more toads in the same fashion. Them also hiding in the water made this a walk in the park for her.
None of the toads left any loot sadly, but that didn’t discourage Artemis too much. She found it rather weird that a living being was supposed to leave behind some item on death, but she trusted her mother on this.
After the third toad the cave came to an end, forcing her to backtrack to the first intersection, where she found a toad hopping over the stone. She quickly shot it before it noticed her, though it didn’t leave any loot either.
That was the first one she had seen outside of the water and moving at that, but she didn’t think further about it. They couldn’t just sit around all day and had to do something after all.
Entering the large cave following the right tunnel turned out to be a similar experience to the left tunnel, only that the toads were scattered around and in one case two sat in the same pool. Overall, she shot 6 of the disgusting things here.
This time however, one of them left something behind. The generation of loot was quite weird to watch and had frightened the heck out of Artemis for a moment. The toad she had shot had started to fade away as all the others, but halfway through it had suddenly coalized into a single point like paint being collected at the bottom of a funnel.
Once that was over a small cube of what she assumed to be copper had been left. It had a diameter of about half a centimeter and Artemis had quickly collected it in her pouch, choosing not to think about it too much.
She ventured deeper into another tunnel afterwards, killing toads as she went. Here came the first surprise for her as a toad suddenly came falling down from somewhere. Suppressing a squeak she jumped backwards, nearly slipping on the wet stone and the drones rushed into her place, tearing the monster apart.
Without the distance it normally had, it didn’t manage to lash out more than once, ripping out a batch of fur from one of the drones and the fight ended shortly after.
Artemis chose to take a break to calm her nerves after the ambush, giving the lightly injured drone some love. This dungeon floor wasn’t all that difficult, at least not for her as she had the ranged advantage, but the incident taught her that in a cave she had to watch the walls and the ceiling for danger too. In the barrier forest almost everything lived on the floor or so high up in the canopies that it didn’t matter and the things that flew were pretty noisy, so this was a lesson well taught and better well learned.
A few minutes later she continued, giving her arrows a worried glance. It couldn’t have been more than an hour, but after shooting 13 toads she only had 10 left, though most of the others hadn’t broken and only needed to dry. Still, she didn’t know how large this dungeon floor was and she would have to get back somehow too, preferably without having to engage in melee.
Artemis found one more toad before the tunnel did a sharp U turn and opened up into another chamber, though it was a bit smaller this time.
Hoping that this was the last room, she entered and looked around.
While still looking somewhat natural, this chamber was circular and the center was void of stalagmites, giving it the impression of an arena in her mind. To the far sight of the room was the only pool of water, occupying a toad that was noticeably larger than the rest of them.
Artemis quickly took aim and shot it, not bothered in the slightest to take advantage of the free field of view. The arrow hit right beneath its mouth, burrowing about half the shaft inside.
The toad seemed to be surprised by the attack and tried to open its mouth to croak, but only hot air and a splatter of blood came out as it stopped the movement, obviously in pain.
Another arrow quickly finished the deal, earning Artemis another copper cube and a few interesting messages.
[System message]
First floor cleared! Calculating mana reward…
Congratulations! +2 stat points (open Status to see allocation)
You have already reached the full potential of the first level. -1 stat point
Mana is being given to team members instead.
Taking a quick look at her status she had indeed reached 96 stat points with the first already.
[Status]
Name: Artemis Antana
Species: Antanoid huntress
Level: 3
Level progress: 14%
Class: Huntress
Health: 100%
Mana: 114.95/114.95
Mana regeneration: 1.16/min
[Stats]
Str: 16
Agi: 18
Per: 18
Int: 15
Wis: 16
Wil: 13
[Class skills]
Bow mastery
Knife mastery
Tracking
Forest walking
Focus
Listening
Herbology (forest)
Steady breath
Aiming (bow)
Dismantling
[Active skills]
Identify
Body enhancement (strength)
[Passive skills]
Hive knowledge (archive) tier 2
Map of the subject
Mana sense
Mana manipulation
Perfect, now she only had to get back and call mother.
Artemis took a quick look around the cave and found another tunnel that led downwards, presumably to the second floor. Next to the tunnel was a swirling vortex of mana, showing the first cave of the first floor.
This, she thought jokingly to herself, might be a portal of some sort.
Very much untrusting and wary, she took an arrow and threw it inside and it seemed to appear on the other side. Then she sent one of the drones and it suddenly arrived in the target cave, so she followed with the rest.
When she turned around she could only see the stone wall and no portal whatsoever, as if that shit never happened.
Artemis stared a moment longer and then sat down and called her mother.
Otjag This one got a bit long xD. Enjoy!!
While Artemis was busy absorbing the news in regards to introducing their newly discovered ability to their mother as well as what her sisters thought about Tiffany’s plan of a great wall to make the Antanoid great again, time went past quite quickly and the caravan reached an innocuous patch of forest that looked pretty much exactly as the rest of the surrounding terrain after leaving the last of the barrier trees behind them. The only thing betraying that once upon a time civilization had existed here were a few jagged stones that might have been part of a wall at one point.
Considering what Sveck had told the Antanoid during his visit however, the settlement hadn’t been lost all that long ago, which made the amount of destruction that had to have happened her astounding. Even if the date of the tragedy was 20 years ago or older there should have been some ruins left, but there were none.
Artemis couldn’t quite put her head around this. These humans had clearly been able to build with stone and adding magic into the mix, the buildings should be able to resist more time than that. It was also unlikely that the Xanai razed everything to the ground, why would they bother?
No, the only thing that she could think of was that someone had come back to the city after the battle and meticulously dismembered almost everything to take with him, but then again, why?
It was a mystery, one that would stay unsolved for the time being.
The group of sisters took one last break next to the river, refilling their water skins and then broke away from the running source of water, turning back to the north east. An hour later they then reached their goal, the dungeon.
Contrary to the town, remnants of what has once been could be seen quite clearly here. The dungeon entrance was surrounded by a plaza of sorts, though large parts of it were covered by dirt and various plants. Around that plaza were remnants of a wall, clearly meant to protect the outside from the inside. As the dungeon entrance was situated at the base of a hill, the wall didn’t go all the way around, but it was enough to pick off anything that might be inside the encirclement from a safe distance.
The moment they arrived Tiffany began to kick all her sisters into motion and the place quickly became a hive of activity. They didn’t know why there had been safety measures against the dungeon, but then again, they didn’t really know anything about dungeons for that matter so they all agreed that the walls had to be there for a reason. As such, the construction of the new rooms happened outside of the encirclement and proceeded quickly thanks to everyone contributing their silk.
Once the hunters were out of the building material, they fanned out and began to map out the surroundings in more detail. While they did that, the travelers started to clear out the space around the dungeon, uprooting plants and shifting earth to get the place back to its former glory. Not that it would stay that way of course, since there was no way they wouldn’t cover it in silk later on.
Artemis herself didn’t join either of these activities. Instead, she organized a small team of drones and ordered them to scout along the river in search of human settlements and activity.
With that done however, came something much more exciting that mother had been thinking about nearly nonstop for an entire week. So, accompanied by another team of five drones, one of which had a glaring wound on its eye, she tensely approached the dungeon entrance.
The entrance looked very much like a natural cave opening. A large cave opening, sure, but a cave opening nonetheless. Were it not for the plaza in front of it, it could have been any random cave and Artemis was sure that it would have taken them a lot longer to find the dungeon had that been the case.
Before she entered the cave she unslung her bow, checking it once over and did a quick count of her arrows in the quiver on her hip. There were 23, she usually had at least 30 on her when hunting alone, but it should be enough for a quick delve to find out how a dungeon worked. By her estimation she should be able to kill one of the toads with one shot anyway, so she might find herself hard pressed to use all 23 of her arrows in the first place.
With that done Artemis gave each of the drones a loving scratch under the chin, much to their delight and then walked into the cave.
A few meters inside she stopped again, surprised by a system screen popping up in front of her. The same definitely didn’t happen to the drones when they had entered alone, so the thing came a bit unexpected.
[System message]
You have entered a dungeon. Scanning…
Group detected, creating party…
Artemis (Leader)
Swarm Drone x5
All mana earned will be equally distributed between party members.
Do you want to [harvest] or [loot] the dungeon? (Note: This can only be changed at the entrance of each floor)
Decision pending…
Artemis stared for a few moments at the screen before she started to really comprehend what she was reading and, most importantly, began to realize the possible implications of such a message popping up.
For one, she only knew of 2 other instances that had happened. The first time was when someone's status opened for the first time and the second time was when the hive population had reached 50. In her opinion that made it quite possible that dungeons were a system function and probably wouldn’t exist without it.
Second was that the system screen had only now popped up when she entered, but not when only the drones had entered. Why that was, she wasn’t sure, though it might be because she was sapient and they were not.
What the system meant with mana distribution, Artemis didn’t know, but she would find out once she really entered one way or another.
That left only the decision between [harvest] and [loot]. It was possible to change later in the dungeon, which was good to know. The question was though, what was the difference?
Artemis let out a sigh and sat down. She would have to consult with mother about this through the hive connection and it might take some time. So much for quickly scouting the first floor of the dungeon.
—
Kai hummed happily to herself as she strolled through her home and watched her daughters go about their day. With so many of them away it was a lot quieter than usually, it was only temporary though, so she didn’t mind.
Anna was, as always, by her side and made sure she didn’t get lonely, which in and of itself was quite a feat with more than 80 daughters, yet Kai still managed to do it every now and then.
What was a bit worrisome as of late was that sometimes the girl spaced a bit out and when she came back to herself she always seemed to have a headache.
Was Anna alright? Maybe she was ill? Or maybe there was something bothering her?
Kai didn’t know and it made her heart ache. She didn’t know how to approach the topic though, her mother had never taught her what to do in such a situation.
Well, that wasn’t quite right. In a way she had shown her, when she-
A screen suddenly appeared in front of her. “Huh?”
[System message]
A citizen of your [Outpost] has entered an unclaimed dungeon within 50km of your settlement. You can claim the dungeon. Doing so will give you knowledge of the number of floors and might unlock other benefits now or in the future.
Do you wish to claim the dungeon for [Antana]?
Kai stopped her stroll to stare at the message more effectively, which earned her a concerned look from her daughter. “Is everything okay, mom?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I just got a system message without prompting it to.” She had not even realized she halted.
Anna gave her a smile. “That’s good to hear! What does it say?”
It was quite apparent that she had her daughter curious, so Kai didn’t beat around the bush and send her daughter the message over the hive, while she noted that Artemis must have entered the dungeon by now. Whatever preparation she had been involved in after the caravan arrived there seemed to be done.
Kai didn’t know what it was exactly. She had only noticed that her daughters had arrived and was then much too occupied dancing and singing with her cuties back home. A very important task of top most priority!
That aside, the system message was indeed interesting. For one, the dungeon having different floors assured her further that it was indeed similar to a fantasy dungeon that adventurers delve into for riches. Not only that though, claiming the dungeon could also unlock future benefits.
Kai wanted to claim the thing then and there, only the fact that whatever decision would also affect her daughters holding her back from doing so. This instance it might not seem like there were consequences, but if she didn’t consider them now, why would she do so in the future?
Better she trained now with something like this then make a mistake when her daughters lives are on the line.
With that in mind, what would or rather will happen once she claimed the dungeon?
A dungeon as she understood it, while certainly dangerous, was a strategic resource and it stood to question if the baron next to the barrier forest would simply let them claim it. Afterall it had been his once and while he might not have cared when it was ownerless, Kai couldn’t imagine him being okay with it being taken by someone else. As far as she knew from novels and books, nobles were petty like that.
It was thus very likely for her and her daughters to have a problem with the baron in the future.
However, the inaction also told her that, while important, dungeons weren’t that rare. This meant that it was incredibly unlikely for the kingdom to take any interest into the dungeon at all, which in turn meant that the baron wouldn’t come visiting with armies of thousands. She didn’t know how mana played into all this stuff, but hopefully a few weeks' time would be enough for her swarm to be enough to deal with a stuck up noble’s problem.
One thing was for sure, she didn’t want her daughters to get involved in any fighting with humans. That was way too dangerous.
“Good evening mother. How are you?” Artemis' rather stoic thought voice interrupted her.
Being able to contact her daughters whenever without having to use a smartphone was still rather weird and always caught her off guard when it wasn’t her that was initiating the call. It made her heart all jumpy and excited.
Kai quickly claimed the dungeon, closing the screens in the process and then fully concentrated on her daughter. There was no way she would keep her waiting when she hadn’t heard from artemis for two days!
—
“Good evening mother. How are you?” Artemis greeted her mother after she had made sure she wasn’t doing anything important right now.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the bubbly loving thoughts of her mother came back through the hive connection, bringing an exasperated but heartfelt smile to Artemis face.
“Hi Artemis! I’m good, how are you? How was the trip? Did you eat and sleep enough? Are you alright?”
“Everything is fine on this end mother, there is nothing for you to worry about. Rather, I called because I got a system message when I entered the dungeon and wanted to ask you something.”
She sent the image of the screen next and patted herself on her shoulder for tactically guiding her mother towards solving the problem at hand without having to answer all those questions.
“Oh? So you didn’t just call because you wanted to speak to your mother?”
Uhhh, maybe it wasn’t all that smart.
“Just kidding! Let’s see…”
Artemis relaxed a bit at that and waited for mother to read through the screen.
“Hmm, I’m not really sure about the mana distribution, but my guess is that it probably has something to do with stats and levels. As for [harvest] and [loot] that one is rather easy.”
She hadn’t yet even asked her question, but then again, her problem seemed pretty obvious or she had just triggered the - What was the word for it? Ah right - the mother intuition. Hopefully it was not the latter.
“[Harvest] clearly refers to the settings that the drones had when they entered alone, meaning that with this option you will get body parts of your kill or maybe even the whole body as reward. It might even let you collect potential plants or mushrooms and mine any ore, but that is only speculation from me.
“[Loot] on the other hand probably refers to the more game-like option. I can’t really tell you what the rewards might be here, but going by gaming knowledge you can probably expect coins, arrows, weapons, armor and any such items as reward, though since [harvest] is a thing you shouldn’t expect to get any body parts from your kill.
“Now, if you don’t fancy eating giant dungeon toads, I would recommend going with [loot] for the time being. Chances are that loot drops are something the hive lacks, but it’s your choice Arti.”
Artemis cringed a bit, imagining eating something slimy and squishy like toad. She couldn’t imagine the texture being nice and would rather stick to larger game and grilled insects. That was much more to her liking.
Taking mothers advice to heart, she selected to [loot] the dungeon next. “Thank you mother, that helped a lot. I will take a look at the first dungeon floor now.”
“Hmm, it’s no problem, I’m glad to help! Just be careful inside, okay?”
She rolled her eyes again. “I will be, mother. You don’t need to worry so much.”
“You better! Oh, and make sure to call me again when you are done and every now and then, yes?”
Artemis shuddered a bit. “I will, mother. Hear you later!”
And with that she quickly ended the conversation before a schedule could be made and swiftly started to walk deeper into the dungeon while the drones scuttled ahead to make sure nothing ambushed them.
The first cavern was very much the same as the last time, large, dark and aside from the stalactites and stalagmites empty. As such, Artemis made her way to the lit part of the dungeon without problems and worries.
Once there though, she readied her bow and kept an arrow nocked. Simultaneously she rearranged the drones into a more defensive formation with 2 in front of her, one to each side and one in the back. If everything went well they wouldn’t see combat today.
The last thing Artemis did before entering was to check out the mana in the area, but sadly she didn’t discover anything unusual. She had just thought that something might be different considering the mana distribution of the party and all that.
Then she began to cautiously advance into the tunnel. Here, too, nothing had changed and she found the same blue glowing mushrooms and moss on the ground. What she did notice only now though, was that it became noticeably more wet the further she walked, until small pools of water became fairly regular.
A minute later or so Artemis came across the intersection and took a brief glance into the right tunnel. The cave opened up into a larger chamber after a few meters here. Not noticing any danger, she chose to follow the left tunnel and leave the large cavern for later.
Artemis was pretty tense and hoped it wouldn’t take much longer for the first damnable toad to appear. She didn’t like being surrounded by walls like this. It wasn’t like hunting and she felt somewhat caged in by the stone around her.
Luckily for her and unfortunately for a certain toad, the waiting came to an end as she noticed a weird spot in one of the pools of water. It looked like the surface of the water was going over two pebbles, forming bumps that poked a bit out of the water. Besides that, she couldn’t see anything else, because the water conveniently reflected the surrounding light in a way that made it impossible to see what was inside.
Water usually didn’t stretch over rocks like that in Artemis' opinion and knowing that the toads were ambush predators, she didn’t hesitate any longer. Drawing her bow and taking aim, she let go.
A loud twang filled the air, followed by the splash of the arrow hitting water and the sound of bubbles reaching the surface.
The two vanguard drones quickly rushed after the arrow, but when they arrived the toad had already started to fade away, leaving only the projectile and a bit of blood, before that too disappeared.
Artemis followed her two protectors with a smile and collected the arrow, giving it to the drone behind her to carry. She preferred shooting with dry arrows and didn’t want to wet those in her quiver.
Still, this encounter made her much more confident in clearing the caves. She now knew what to look out for in the water pools and besides those the toads would have a hard time hiding from her.
Drawing another arrow she proceeded further down the tunnel and eliminated two more toads in the same fashion. Them also hiding in the water made this a walk in the park for her.
None of the toads left any loot sadly, but that didn’t discourage Artemis too much. She found it rather weird that a living being was supposed to leave behind some item on death, but she trusted her mother on this.
After the third toad the cave came to an end, forcing her to backtrack to the first intersection, where she found a toad hopping over the stone. She quickly shot it before it noticed her, though it didn’t leave any loot either.
That was the first one she had seen outside of the water and moving at that, but she didn’t think further about it. They couldn’t just sit around all day and had to do something after all.
Entering the large cave following the right tunnel turned out to be a similar experience to the left tunnel, only that the toads were scattered around and in one case two sat in the same pool. Overall, she shot 6 of the disgusting things here.
This time however, one of them left something behind. The generation of loot was quite weird to watch and had frightened the heck out of Artemis for a moment. The toad she had shot had started to fade away as all the others, but halfway through it had suddenly coalized into a single point like paint being collected at the bottom of a funnel.
Once that was over a small cube of what she assumed to be copper had been left. It had a diameter of about half a centimeter and Artemis had quickly collected it in her pouch, choosing not to think about it too much.
She ventured deeper into another tunnel afterwards, killing toads as she went. Here came the first surprise for her as a toad suddenly came falling down from somewhere. Suppressing a squeak she jumped backwards, nearly slipping on the wet stone and the drones rushed into her place, tearing the monster apart.
Without the distance it normally had, it didn’t manage to lash out more than once, ripping out a batch of fur from one of the drones and the fight ended shortly after.
Artemis chose to take a break to calm her nerves after the ambush, giving the lightly injured drone some love. This dungeon floor wasn’t all that difficult, at least not for her as she had the ranged advantage, but the incident taught her that in a cave she had to watch the walls and the ceiling for danger too. In the barrier forest almost everything lived on the floor or so high up in the canopies that it didn’t matter and the things that flew were pretty noisy, so this was a lesson well taught and better well learned.
A few minutes later she continued, giving her arrows a worried glance. It couldn’t have been more than an hour, but after shooting 13 toads she only had 10 left, though most of the others hadn’t broken and only needed to dry. Still, she didn’t know how large this dungeon floor was and she would have to get back somehow too, preferably without having to engage in melee.
Artemis found one more toad before the tunnel did a sharp U turn and opened up into another chamber, though it was a bit smaller this time.
Hoping that this was the last room, she entered and looked around.
While still looking somewhat natural, this chamber was circular and the center was void of stalagmites, giving it the impression of an arena in her mind. To the far sight of the room was the only pool of water, occupying a toad that was noticeably larger than the rest of them.
Artemis quickly took aim and shot it, not bothered in the slightest to take advantage of the free field of view. The arrow hit right beneath its mouth, burrowing about half the shaft inside.
The toad seemed to be surprised by the attack and tried to open its mouth to croak, but only hot air and a splatter of blood came out as it stopped the movement, obviously in pain.
Another arrow quickly finished the deal, earning Artemis another copper cube and a few interesting messages.
[System message]
First floor cleared! Calculating mana reward…
Congratulations! +2 stat points (open Status to see allocation)
You have already reached the full potential of the first level. -1 stat point
Mana is being given to team members instead.
Taking a quick look at her status she had indeed reached 96 stat points with the first already.
[Status]
Name: Artemis Antana
Species: Antanoid huntress
Level: 3
Level progress: 14%
Class: Huntress
Health: 100%
Mana: 114.95/114.95
Mana regeneration: 1.16/min
[Stats]
Str: 16
Agi: 18
Per: 18
Int: 15
Wis: 16
Wil: 13
[Class skills]
Bow mastery
Knife mastery
Tracking
Forest walking
Focus
Listening
Herbology (forest)
Steady breath
Aiming (bow)
Dismantling
[Active skills]
Identify
Body enhancement (strength)
[Passive skills]
Hive knowledge (archive) tier 2
Map of the subject
Mana sense
Mana manipulation
Perfect, now she only had to get back and call mother.
Artemis took a quick look around the cave and found another tunnel that led downwards, presumably to the second floor. Next to the tunnel was a swirling vortex of mana, showing the first cave of the first floor.
This, she thought jokingly to herself, might be a portal of some sort.
Very much untrusting and wary, she took an arrow and threw it inside and it seemed to appear on the other side. Then she sent one of the drones and it suddenly arrived in the target cave, so she followed with the rest.
When she turned around she could only see the stone wall and no portal whatsoever, as if that shit never happened.
Artemis stared a moment longer and then sat down and called her mother.
