I feel like I’m hearing a ‘saaaaa’ noise I haven’t heard before. At first I thought I was just imagining it, but it’s gradually getting louder.
When I blow away the mist where the sound is coming from, I see trees splitting left and right.
“Treant!”
They really do slide through the ground.
I kind of wonder what’s going on underground, but this isn’t the time to think about that. It wouldn’t help anyway.
“Block their attacks first! Attack at your discretion! Orga and Hikari, watch our surroundings!”
The treants made an impressive entrance, but there could be more enemies.
It looks like they entered their attack range, because they start attacking while keeping some distance.
Their stretching branches are flexible like whips, and change directions suddenly in an irregular way.
Geitz and Siphon have a lot of attacks to block. I also cut them with my sword while blocking with my shield. And my sword has the fire element.
Rurika and Jin are also cutting at them, but the attacks aren’t slowing down.
Still, I can tell through Magic Energy Detection that the treants’ magic energy is slowly going down.
And thirty minutes after the battle started, the treants fall completely silent.
“That took a while.”
“It’s because there were three of them. And cutting their branches might not be very effective.”
Says Siphon, and Jin responds with his thoughts.
“Could be. And it felt like the treants stretched five branches at the same time, right?”
Says Rurika, and Hikari and Orga agree.
They could tell because they were a bit further back, watching our surroundings, but the fact that Rurika was fighting and noticed anyway is praiseworthy.
And she looks a little embarrassed when people praise her.
Also, from fighting more treants, we understand that attacking its main body… Or rather, its trunk, saps more magic energy than attacking its branches.
It probably takes more magic energy to regenerate its body.
But when Sera chops the trunk of a treant just once, it immediately falls silent.
That shows us that treants really can’t survive being cut from the ground.
I think we can all agree that not many people could perform such a feat of strength though.
“But apparently treant materials aren’t as valuable as they were.”
“They were sold for a lot at first. It’s probably because there were a lot of people hunting them, but not that many sorcerers.”
Siphon and I talk about treant materials while we take a break.
They were very valuable when we first came to Majolica, but they’re worth less than half now.
“I’m sure sorcerers are happy about it though. But that’s bound to change when they find other uses for this stuff.”
Siphon is saying that by having a lot of materials and making them cheaper, there will be more people who want to do research with them and figure out other uses.
“Like magic items that make it so even someone like me who can’t cast spells can use magic.”
Those things can still be found in dungeons, but they’re so precious, that only a few are put up for auction every year, if any.
“But do those staves have strong magic?”
“It varies depending on the staff. I think it’s possible to see how strong they are with Appraisal.”
There are monsters that only go down to magic, so rather than using them normally, they’d be more like a trump card.
“And for example, if it’s a staff that can use fire magic, it can boost the effect of fire spells.”
Those would be staves that are stronger than ones made from treant branches.
That’s probably because those specialize in one attribute, but I don’t know if that’s true.
We end up spending ten days on the thirty-fifth floor. And since we fought multiple treants every day, we’ve become pretty efficient at hunting them.
And the weapons Siphon got helped a lot.
Unlike staves, there are plenty of magic swords on the market, so they’re easy to get if you can afford them. But this time, they had the backing of the Republic of Eldo.
Also, everyone is tired by the time we get to the staircase, because exploring with such poor visibility really saps away the stamina.
It probably has to do with our numbers being too low too. The golems keeping watch at night helped us get through it.
It would be hard to recruit new people now, so I think it might be a good idea to make more golems.
The problem is that they might not be of use until they learn.
Join my patreon to support me and read ahead.
Thanks for the treat.