VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 36: Finger licking good
In the end, the only pelt that Belladonna took was the one belonging to the Barghest. While she had room for the rest, it would simply be dead weight dragging her down. With a grinding session ahead, as well as harvesting from the quest location, and no visit to the town in her immediate future it became all about picking the prime loot. Quality over quantity, as they said.
It was a decision that made her inner loot goblin wail in horror and pain, as every single sellable loot she left behind was like a fresh stab into the loot goblins heart, but it had to be done. As an attempt to placate that inner loot goblin, she took a few teeth and claws from the fallen wolves, so that she would at least get something from them. She also made sure to recover her bullets from their skulls, keeping the ones that weren’t misshapen.
The same principle of quality went for the meat. Only the prime - and as she now knew very expensive - meat from the Barghest was carved from the corpse and parcelled neatly in her bag. Aside from that, there was one final piece of loot she had to collect.
She pulled a collection of glass vials from her bag. They were similar to test tubes with a cork plugging the top and had been a gift from the Wizard that he had put in there during one of her training days.
’A Mage must always be prepared to collect prime samples at all times. You never know when you are going to stumble across a rare herb, and you don’t want to be caught out because you don’t have anything to carry it with’ 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
That was what he had told her when she asked about them, before following it up with a long story about ’This one time I found a star drop flower and blah blah blah...’ She had toned out the rest.
It was a bad habit, yes, but boy did he always talk on and on about things. Can you imagine how annoying that could be? Now, where was she... Oh yes, the vials.
Simple enchanted glass and a surprisingly basic cork, they were made to preserve samples for longer, but not indefinitely. It might not work for the ultra rare stuff, but that wasn’t around here anyways. Plus, it worked great for her purposes.
One by one, she filled them with blood from all of the creatures, marking the vials that came from the Barghest. It was good to know which were for bonuses and which were for healing.
With ten blood vials now clinking against each other in her bag, and two more looped through her armour’s belt for easy access, Belladonna smirked to herself. Her tongue glided over her hands, cleaning the blood from her fingers.
’Hehehe... I still can’t believe that I have this sort of cheat. I can only imagine how much money I will save on healing potions.’
[Sanguine Essence Absorbed. Stats have been temporarily increased based on blood purity.
VIT + 15, PER + 5, RES + 5
Consuming new Sanguine Essence will replace the current effect.]
She glanced briefly at the notification of the newest bonuses from the Barghest blood, before swiping it away and finishing her finger licking meal. With one last look over the field of death, Belladonna paused for a second and snatched up the Barghest’s chain after a moment of consideration.
She had to cut it free, but once it was she wrapped it around her body like a bandoleer and marched off deeper into the forest.
Although she did have a grinding mindset, she didn’t let herself get lost in it. Her path always led her in the direction of her objective as she made a B-line to it through the forest. Only this one clearly belonged to a drunken bee, stumbling back from a night on the town.
If you saw it from above and marked it on a map, her path would be an erratic and wriggling line that still had some semblance of direction, but clearly indicated her easily distracted nature.
Eventually, after many stops and a few more levels, Belladonna finally arrived at the destination indicated by the quests mental directions. Her grinding hadn’t given her crazy benefits.
It had resulted in three more levels, which on top of the one gained from the wolf pack put her at level 11 now. A respectable double digit number, with nice symmetry. However, even though she faced more than three magical beasts, including another Barghest, she didn’t gain another Source Remnants from any of them.
She really had been lucky the first two times, and now was suffering like all the other unlucky fools.
The quest directions had led her to a jagged cave entrance in the side of a sheer wall of stone that led to higher ground. She was not going up, however, but down into the depths of the caves.
Bones littered the edge of the cave, from countless animals that had died here and had their meat picked from their bones. That had to be the work of the guardian.
Throughout the forest behind her, as she had approached, she had noticed that there were trees marked with deep, long claw marks, and that the closer she drew to these caves the less beasts they were.
This ’guardian’ was marking its territory, and was very defensive of it, clearly.
A rumbling growl echoed from the belly of the caves, followed soon by the owner of those growls as the guardian emerged from its lair.
Its pure white fur flickered and moved like flames... No, they were flames, as when it stepped out and brushed against grass, the foliage caught alight and rapidly burned to cinders before the flames could spread.
Large paws thumped against the ground, with deadly claws as long as Belladonna’s entire finger. As it opened its mouth wide and let out more rumbling growls, which were actually yawns, it showed off its mouthful of flesh ripping teeth much more impressive than her own.
The Bear, bigger than any she had ever seen, strutted from the cave and looked around lazily. It licked its lips as if it was hungry, glancing around before its gaze landed on the girl hiding within the tree line.
