Chapter 9 The Way Of Fire

The next morning I sat at my table and started to think about my map choice. With the cost of living and the last day’s purchases, I had about 240 gold left, which wasn't much, so a map choice was crucial. With my elite minion, I think I should change my plan, and thankfully a good night’s sleep gave me a good idea.

In the adventure map market, there were many maps for sale that people sold for less than they were worth because they couldn't complete them themselves. There were many factors that would make a map unusable, like dangerous environments, monster types that would be too dangerous for you, and many other things.

For grey maps, that wasn't too much of a problem as you didn't have any extra factors that changed how the monsters or environment worked. One of the things that was clear was that no fresh adventurer wanted to tackle big monsters. They were profitable but one hit and you were done. Normally I would also be avoiding them, but my summon should be able to handle them, especially if they’re slow.

I should also be on the lookout for maps that have something to do with fire. So after I ate breakfast, I went to the map market. Being here early was important because those who are desperate would be also here early. So I started to walk around searching for maps that would fit my requirements.

It was a bit funny to think that a regular map would be my most dangerous pick. Normally others wanted something that had a simple landscape like grasslands, with simple monster types like mutated goats or something like that. Smaller humanoids would work as well.

Me, on the other hand, wanted places that were too hot for people to survive, monsters that spewed fire and nothing else, or big slow monsters thanks to my elite minion. Some of the maps were even too dangerous for me; one had an environment of a stormy ocean.

The adventurer who wanted to sell that was quite desperate, but he was quite stupid in trying to sell it as it was obviously way too dangerous, and he could get in trouble for that.

It didn't take me long to find something promising. It was a map called Rocky Plateau; the weather seemed to be normal but the monsters were trents. Huge tree-like monsters that were quite slow, but if their hit connected, it would kill me. My rock golem should be able to handle that, and the map only cost 50 gold coins. They were also vulnerable to fire, which was a bonus.

"I’ll take it for 45," I said to the adventurer who was selling this particular map.

"Fine."

I handed him 45 gold coins, which left me 25 in my coin pouch. I decided to deposit the rest and then register for a portal device time slot. It seems that I could use one in two days.

Fortunately, this map didn’t look damaged, which means that I should be able to get a couple of activations from it before it crumbled. Hopefully I will get enough resources from the drops that I could make a good enough profit. For the rest of the day and the next, I put together a more decent survival pack and purchased some better regular gear.

I would have an entire day inside the map, and the goal was to clear as much of it as possible. If my current build works, I should save up enough to buy myself a loot bag, or would it be better to purchase that gem before that? Well, let’s see how much profit I will make and if I could even clear this map before making plans on what to do with money I don’t have.

Two days later, I was in a small corner of the city where one of the portal-opening devices had been built. Every single portal device had guards around them 24/7. The portal device I wanted to use was already deactivated, but even with no one using it, I still needed to wait until my time slot to use it. Apparently they had problems in the past, so nowadays no one got even a second more than one day per time slot.

The map itself was a bit bigger than a dinner plate and a lot thicker, with the different symbols on it emanating a bit of grey colour. The guards watched me as I put it into the slot and then punched the red button at the side.

I took a step back as the device started to work. It took about 10 minutes for it to finish working, grinding its gears and making loud noises until it finally stopped with a big whine and then a blue portal opened up in front of me.

To the side, I checked the map to see a few cracks in it. With the amount of cracks in it, it should last for at least four more activations. That was good news. You never knew with maps; some only lasted one activation, while some on the other hand could manage ten. No one knew exactly what made some more durable than others, but the leading theory was the quality of items used.

Then I stepped into the portal and was transported to a new world. The feeling was exactly the same as it was every other time. It seems that it was quite early in the morning, but there was already light out. That was good news; night maps sucked—at least that’s what I heard. It was time to set everything up.

While I would have liked to test out everything beforehand, there really isn't anywhere private I could test things out without having to worry about being spied upon. One of the best ways to get ahead, especially early, was to steal, and if you knew what your opponent could do, well, you could plan to take care of him quite easily. Now, if you didn't know exactly what skill crystals or what that person could do, well, things were a lot different then.

First things first, I put the bracers on and then slotted the blue skill crystal. It was fascinating to watch it get smaller and smaller until it fit in that small slot on the right-hand bracer. I now started to channel my magic into it, and it took a bit of time before it was fully filled up; it took more than half of my magic.

When it was filled, the skill crystal on my command activated and in about 10 seconds, a colossal golem was in front of me. It must be at least 3 meters tall and 2 meters wide, with arms and legs the thickness of me.

I could feel it being connected to me and wanting to know what to do. I looked around a bit more. Everything was rock except, in the distance, I could see trees—singular ones that quite obviously shouldn't be on this kind of ground. I directed Greg to start walking towards one. He was indeed incredibly slow, but that gave me time to deal with my staff.

I took out the Flame Tips skill crystal and slotted it into the staff. As long as I was holding the staff, I could feel the skill crystal and that I could channel magic into it. I did so, noticing that it took about the same amount of magic as the skill crystal inside my sword. The two ends lit up like they were on fire. The ends of the staff also showed cracks like the fire was coming from inside.

I ended the skill and checked for damage. The merchant said that it didn't damage the weapon it was on, but double-checking it there turned out to be no damage. It seems like he wasn't lying; I didn't see anything wrong with the staff. I used it once again and then took a few steps towards the direction we were going, but Greg was going so slowly that I only needed to take those few steps to catch up to him.

This time I waited out the end of the skill, which seems to be about 3 minutes. After messing about for a little bit longer, I figured out that if I sent a small trickle of magic into the skill crystal to keep it lit for as long as I was supplying it. That was useful, and it seems that it was a bit more cost-effective to keep it lit than to activate the skill each time it ended.

So we continued to walk, and I started to practise the moves for my staff. It shouldn’t take me too long to get as good as I was with my sword, but it will still take time. As I went through the moves the staff trainer taught me, I realized that some of the attacks required me to hold on to the ends of the staff which were on fire.

That was an oversight on my part. Fortunately for me, that didn't matter; it didn't do any damage to me. So sometimes during some moves, my hand would basically be on fire, but the flames just licked past my fingers without doing any damage, and it was kind of awesome to look at. Still, I should be careful, as I wouldn’t want anyone to see this.

It took about 20 minutes of walking for Greg to reach the first enemy. I watched the trent open its eyes. That was weird—to see eyes on a tree—and it roared in a weird pitch, then started to move towards Greg. When they were about 10 metres apart, I watched it activate some sort of a skill and quickly dashed backwards, only to see vines coming out of the ground to catch Greg’s feet.

That didn't even stop my minion for a moment, and it just continued to walk forward and then started to slowly punch its opponent. The trent had been a bit surprised, so the first blow landed on it, but it didn’t do too much damage, although some bark did fly off.

The trent did attack back, but its branches did no damage. It, however, started to dodge the attacks of Greg, but they were both quite slow, so it only managed to dodge about one attack for every three strikes.

I continued to practise my moves, but after about 10 minutes I stopped as the fight was still going on. It seems that this mapped area was decently big, and I could see many more enemies just waiting to be killed, and each one I killed gave me experience and loot. If things continued at this pace, I won’t make my money back during this run and would need multiple runs to break even, which would be really bad.

"Greg, hug your enemy really hard," I said. I could sense confusion back from our connection, but it immediately did what I told it to do. The trent was surprised, and while it did try to get away, it wasn’t fast enough. The tree creaked ominously as soon as Greg started to hug it, and soon I heard loud cracks. Just a few moments later, the tree-looking monster was broken in half and it started to disappear.

Well, that was a lot faster. I went to see that it dropped a branch that was about the size of my forearm. I wonder how much I’m going to get for one of these. That didn't matter now; it was time to continue training and killing. The positive thing was that this monster gave a lot of experience.

I ordered Greg to run towards the next tree and tried to hug it. It immediately did so, slowly starting to get up to a decent speed—basically my jogging speed. There was a maximum limit of how far a minion could go from you, but that limit was bigger than this map. Because of that, I didn’t keep up with Greg as much, so I could still practice with my staff.

When Greg reached the next enemy, the fight ended immediately. This kind of enemy seemed perfect for Greg; they were themselves slow and big enough for it to truly use its strength. It did stumble and took a little bit of time to get back up after it killed this trent, but I just told it to do the same thing for the next one.

So while I practised, my minion ran around tackling and hugging the monsters of this map. It was a good thing that most of the time grey-coloured maps only had one type of enemy. From the looks of it, we had killed about half of the monsters after about five hours when we heard a large roar coming from the distance.

"Shit." There was quite a lot of loot, so I was currently holding an armful of wood, and a few armloads were already near the portal. I immediately started to run towards the portal and instructed Greg to do the same.

We made it there safely without even seeing what I was presuming was the boss. It seemed to know where we were, as it ever so often roared in anger and that sound was getting closer to us every time.

Eventually, I saw a huge tree somewhat awkwardly running towards us. It was at least twice as big as the trents, who already were a bit bigger than Greg. Its trunk was also a lot thicker. The question was, should I dismiss Greg and go out of the portal into safety, or should I give defeating the boss a chance?

It didn’t really matter if my minion died; I could simply re-summon it later, so why not try? "Greg, run at your top speed and crush that tree." Immediately, he started to do so, running towards the boss.

The boss tried to do the same thing as the trents—making vines to stop Greg from moving. Those vines were a lot thicker, and I think they might have even been able to stop Greg if he wasn't moving at a pretty decent pace, which made the vines snap.

Before Greg hit the boss, I covered my ears, and I was glad that I did as the noise of them running into each other was incredibly loud. For the first time, Greg lost bits of rock; the boss also cracked and lost bark but was still going. Greg then started to hug, making the boss creak, and slowly I heard cracks.

The boss, however, didn’t take it lying down, and its hits did damage. Greg continued to hug, slowly making progress, but he was also getting a bit weaker as pieces of stone were chipped away from him with every attack. Right now, I wasn’t completely certain who would win. "Greg, don't push; pull towards yourself!"

As soon as I said that, Greg stopped pushing against the boss, which was doing the same to Greg. This made Greg start to topple over towards his back. I watched basically in slow motion as Greg unknowingly did a wrestling move which would make him land on his back, but the boss, which was a lot taller than he, would hit the ground before it—I don't know what to call that, a head area perhaps.

The boss's head area hit the ground first, yet Greg was still holding onto its main trunk, which put a lot of pressure on that location that was already a bit cracked. The result was that the boss was now in two pieces, the lower half no longer working. The interesting thing was that it was still alive.

I watched my minion let go of the lower half, and while the boss was still trying to hit, he pummeled the upper tree trunk into pieces. It took a surprising amount of time, but finally the boss was dead as it started to disappear, and I got a lot of experience.

It left behind a piece of wood that was about the thickness of my leg but as tall as me. I wondered if that could be made into a better staff than the one I currently have. The problem was I was getting a lot of loot here that weighed a decent amount but was even bigger. How was I going to get all of it out?

What I did was dismiss Greg, as he was quite damaged—cracks all over him—and I didn’t think he could survive too many more fights, even with trents. While I waited for my magic to return so I could re-summon Greg, I tried to figure out how I was going to get my loot back.

Eventually, I figured that I would use rope and simply drag it behind me. It would be good enough. With that, I re-summoned Greg and ordered him to get back to killing. We had been here for nearly 10 hours, so I decided to sleep for the next 8 hours while my minion guarded me. When I woke up, I let him get back to work while I continued to train with my staff.

When there were only two hours left, I finished tying up the large bundle of sticks I had collected. Then I dismissed Greg, kind of wishing he could drag this for me. We had killed everything here, clearing the map, which gave me enough experience to level up twice, getting me to level 13. Both of those level-ups went into my defensive tree where I needed to put two more points so I could get access to a green gem slot.

The level-ups also helped me get a bit stronger overall. They weren’t, however, as impactful as the first ten levels, but when I reached level 100 I should be about 10 times stronger than I was before I got my heart crystal. Of course, there are a lot of other factors that influence this, but that's what the book said was the increase without any other modifiers.

When I got out of the portal and was dragging behind a pile of wood about as tall as me, they looked a bit amused.

"Near every portal device there's porters to help you bring in your loot. They do cost a bit but save you a lot of hassle," one of the guards said while pointing at a small-looking building with a fence around it and obviously a large enough gate so wide wagons could come in and out.

There was a person outside, and I waved towards him as I continued to pull my load of wood. "I would like to hire your services if it’s possible." The person looked at me, happily amused, and then leaned himself so he could see behind me.

"You would need to go to Frances' place to get the best price. It's about halfway across the city, so 20 gold?"

If he really knew the best place to get the best price, I would most likely pocket the difference even if I paid him 20. "It’s a deal, but can I pay you when we get there?" He didn't look too happy about that, but he did agree. I helped him load up one of the wagons, and he hitched two horses to it, and we started to move towards Frances' place, wherever that was.

He didn't seem the talkative kind, which I was glad about. In my backpack was the map I had just cleared, but hopefully, it was strong enough to handle a few more activations. While I didn’t know exactly what I would get for my loot, it should be around 200 gold, which would be excellent profit, especially because I should be able to get about the same next clear.

While selling loot, there wasn't basically any haggling. Every monster type was known, and the prices were incredibly stable. Exceptions for boss loot drops, as they were different enough even from the same boss that each one was treated as a unique item. I was able to get 192 gold for the amount of wood I had, which was excellent as I still had the boss loot to sell.

"I will be honest with you, Mark, it's a pretty decent piece, but it isn't anything special. It’s a bit too short to make you that staff you want, and honestly, it won't be anything better than what you currently have. Still, it will be good for other things, and it has a decent durability with enough flexibility that it won't break. I think it will be quite good for two-handed axes and hammers and short spears as well. I’ll give you 40 gold for it."

"Make it 45, and it's yours." I was a bit disappointed that it wouldn't be suitable for me, but there should be plenty of loot for me in the future. The merchant thought about it for a little bit before agreeing to the price.

The first thing I did afterwards was to go and deposit my gold. After that, I signed up for another portal device time slot. This one was a longer wait, about 3 days. After that, I went and ate a good meal and showered for about half an hour before I went and slept for about a day.

When I woke up, I felt better, but that day in the map had been quite exhausting. So I decided not to go training; instead, I went into the library to try to start figuring out my further build plan, now taking into account that elite summons were the way to go for me.

By the end of the day, I figured out that it was going to take a while to build out a useful build, and even then I most likely just needed to use what I had access to. Still, reading about all the possibilities would help me make better choices and know what is good and what is bad.

It seems like from elite summons you can't get elemental resistances with gems you can only give them yours, but physical resistance worked the opposite. I couldn’t give them physical resistances with gems, but they could give them to me. There did seem to be elite summons that could give elemental resistance or take my physical ones, but they were the features of specific summons and not gem effects.

That worked out quite decently; what was even better was the more elite summons I had the better my physical resistance would become. I could also give all of my elemental resistances to every single one of my elite summons.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t just purchase a lot of socket gear and just fit it full of elite summons. That connection that I had to Greg was the limiting factor. Currently, my limit was one elite summon, but as I levelled up, I should be able to increase that, but not by a lot. There seemed to be some gems and even some crystals to help with that, but they were most likely incredibly expensive.

Later on, there also should be gear that could help me boost the amount of elite summons I had, but that was even more expensive. So in the end, everything came back to money. Well, nothing else to do but grind for it then. It also seems like trents are an excellent enemy for me to fight, so hopefully, I will be able to find more maps for sale with them.