Chapter 25: Chapter 25: Scouting The Lake

[ Discovered Area: Western Eron Plateau. ]

So the mines had been the mid point of the zone. That was sensible design. She couldn't really see any difference in the mobs here in the west versus the east. Hill Lions were stalking the grass, Cyplopes were off in the distance, the eagle-like, and raven-like birds were soaring above, plus there was stuff was rustling in the grass.

From another vantage point she could see a river in the distance. She had crossed a couple on the way there. One on the eastern plateau that ran down the hillside, one that ran into Draven (half of it had been diverted towards the mines, probably to avoid polluting the city's water supply), and now this one which likely lead to the lake. She wasn't an expert, but she felt pretty certain that a lake needed at least one entry river, or some other source of water, and at least one exit river too. The Eronite Kingdom had many rivers.

Following the river was easy. The hard part was needing to cross the road. They were far enough into the day that it had a decent amount of traffic now. People walking; people on mounts; people riding wagons, and carriages. More than half of them looked like Adventurers of some sort, and parties of them would split off into the wilderness among the hills and grass at various points.

She could simply Sprint across the road. While she was reasonably certain she wouldn't get caught, the chances of being seen were high. If she got chased it would ruin her sightseeing. Stealth had its own issues in that her Erase Presence level was still low enough that she'd be easier to see through, but it was probably still her best option.

She waited in a secure spot as close to the road as possible, and looked for a large enough gap in the travellers to slip through. When the time came, she went as quickly as she could without breaking her cloaking. Cold sweat was running down her back the entire time she was crossing. That 20% movement speed boost would have been nice right about now. Though it was possible the max bonus for EP was something entirely different.

Once she was far enough on the other side to slip behind one of the rare trees in the zone, she finally felt like she could breathe again. Honestly she could probably handle a couple of people, but it would draw too much attention too quickly. She hurried onwards to find a good vantage point.

As the lake spread out in front of her, she felt her breath get taken away. It was large, but not that large. Perhaps around a kilometre across at the widest. It only had so much room before it started spilling over the side, after all, but it looked well nestled into the area, and it was sparkling beautifully in the sunshine. She was glad she had gone to check it out.

There was what looked like a large lodge, perhaps a hotel, sitting close to the largest stretch of beach along the lake. Maybe beach was the wrong word for freshwater bodies, she wasn't sure, but that was what it looked like. Quite a number of people were out there sunbathing, or regular bathing. It felt like they were around the start of summer, and it was already quite warm, so the water had to be refreshing. Maybe she'd sneak in a dip of her own later. Wet fur was a nuisance, but in the game it dried a lot faster than back on Earth.

The people fishing were situated more on either side of the beach, and beyond. They probably didn't want to get disturbed by the beach goers, and vice versa. She could also see piers that people were fishing from, and that also had boats you could presumably rent, though no one was currently using them.

There were several smaller lodges around the lakeside as well, though all of them somewhere along the northern and eastern sides, since there didn't look to be enough flat ground around the west and south.

It was pretty obvious why this was a popular tourist spot.

"Hey, what's that?"

Her ears twitched as she picked up someone talking in the distance.

"It's a Hill Lion, isn't it?"

"It's black, though. Aren't they all brown?"

She looked towards the source of the conversation, and saw a party of four Adventurers. She couldn't make out their classes from where she was, because they were still pretty far away. Her hearing was just that good.

Wait, they can see me? Oh shit, I must have moved so fast that I broke stealth. I was too eager to see the lake.

"Then it's a rare spawn, right? Let's get it."

Shit.

She immediately wheeled about, and activated Sprint before they could get within range to use their skills.

"Whoa, it's runni..."

Their voices faded out as she rapidly gained distance from them. The road was right ahead again. Did she have time to use Erase Presence, and wait for an opening again? The Adventurers might catch up, and might be able to find her depending on what skills they had. It was a risk either way. She waited for Sprint's cooldown to refresh while keeping an eye behind her, and then she set off.

Ah shit, there's a wagon.

It was one of those stereotypical ones with the white cloth canopy over it. No time to hesitate. She used Leap, and flew across the entire road, over the wagon, and landed well on the other side as she heard a ruckus behind her. People had definitely seen the big, black cat sailing through the air. Her not being in her wolf form might be a small mercy, but it wasn't the time to think about that. Run for the hills!

After running for a while, she ducked into the nearest cave she found, where a rather startled pair of Hill Lions were inside. They gave her a wide-eyed look, before they started growling at her.

"Please, I'm not here to fight, I just need to hide from the people following me," she tried to say in a desperate tone, having no idea if they understood her. Even if she was in Cat Form, she didn't know if that let her communicate with cats in the same way she could with wolves.

It seemed like they understood her intent at least, as they stopped growling, but they were keeping their eyes on her, as if saying: "Just don't try anything."

After taking a minute to catch her breath, she waved goodbye to the two cats, and went back outside with Erase Presence active. She couldn't detect any scent trails beyond a passing Hill Lion, her own, and some smaller creatures. Very carefully she crawled on top of the hill, and had a look around. Scouting towards the direction of the road she could see people searching, probably for her, but none of them had come this way yet. Though they were slowly getting closer. It figured that Adventurers wouldn't give up on a rare spawn that easily.

Sara went in the direct opposite direction of all of them in order to look for another cave. After about five minutes she found one, and was lucky enough that it was empty.

Aina?

"Already on it, Sara. Sleep well."

She let out a sigh of relief. She would need a minute to calm down before she could actually sleep. Then she had an idea.

With the spider silk, shouldn't she be able to make some sort of bed? She should be able to produce non-sticky silk, which was probably quite comfy. But where would it come out...

To her great relief she was able to make it appear from her paws. She didn't have any skills or limbs capable of manipulating the silk very well, so her options were limited. She could just try to dump a bunch of it onto the ground to make like a cushion, but... what if she stuck one end of it on that part of the wall... and the other end across from it there. That shouldn't be so hard even with only paws to work with.

[ Spider Silk Skill Level Up! ]

Then she could keep adding silk in between, and strengthening the attachments. She had to test how well it held her weight. Hm... she added some more silk.

[ Spider Silk Skill Level Up! ]

And voila! She had a spider silk hammock! Not a great looking one. Or particularly well constructed. But comfier than sleeping on the ground. And it hadn't cost more than... over half her SP. They weren't kidding about it costing SP to produce. Sure she had quite liberally applied the sticky silk to make sure it would hold, and used quite a lot on the size of the hammock, but she hadn't thought it would be that much. Though she had started at level 1 as well.

Well, whatever. Sleep now, think later. Mmm... soft.

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Le Hoot had happened to be in Hilmgrad when the forum posts about a possible new rare spawn in Eron Hills had popped up, so she had taken her mount (a leafy deer) up that way immediately. With the uphill climb it had taken a few hours to reach Draven, and it was past three in the afternoon when she finally got into the tavern to meet up with everyone else who had been close by.

The 'rare spawn hunters' as the playerbase had dubbed them, and the Guild of Unusual Taxonomy as they called themselves, had members spread out all over Moorhold actively looking for rare, and unusual mobs. They wanted to figure out rare spawns, catalogue named mobs, make guides to the various types of bosses, and so forth. There were a lot of different souls with similar passions that ended up in this group. They had even attracted about a dozen Resident members already. Of course some were more passionate than others. Scott McScot was probably the most infamous, but among the guild members they considered Le Hoot to only be marginally more reasonable.

They were also spread out so that at least some number of them were able to get together within short notice should any forum posts with relevant information go up.

The others who had shown up were Barls Stein: a Human Fighter who focused on tanking, and had initially joined because he was friends with Scott; Laloti: a Gnome Scout who was one of their best trackers (both of whom Le Hoot had worked with before); Grace Jansen: an Elf Priest who liked collecting all sorts of spell skill scrolls, and liked investigating what skills mobs had; Mirgon: a Dwarf Cleric who usually spent most of his time collecting materials for the guild's crafters, hence why he was up in Draven; and Sa Lamba: a Catkin Performer who was the most hardcore leveller in the guild because she really wanted to become a Dancer, but also just really liked animals, and thought the ones in Moorhold were neat. At level 29 she looked to be the first in the guild to get her second class change.

Most of the rest of the guild who considered themselves serious about the game were still around level 25 at this point.

After exchanging greetings, they got down to business.

"So, what do we know?" Le Hoot asked, since she was the last to arrive.

"In the forenoon a party spotted a black Hill Lion seemingly watching the lake," Laloti started to explain. "When they tried to go after it, it ran away at high speed. Shortly after a black cat was spotted jumping over the road just north of there before it vanished into the wilderness. I heard the news when it reached the lake, where I was fishing. A search party got started, and I joined when I caught up with them."

"What do you mean it jumped over the road?" Sa Lamba had been inside the mine hunting, so she hadn't heard any of the uproar until she decided to head outside for a lunch break. "Didn't it just run across?"

"No, according to witnesses it did a huge leap to get over a wagon that was in the way," Laloti continued. "They claim it was like five metres into the air, but that's probably an exaggeration. However the Resident who rode the wagon confirmed that the cat had jumped high enough to clear his roughly three metre tall canopy."

"I was outside breaking down some ore when I heard the noise, so I headed over, and met with Laloti," Mirgon said. "We were able to follow the tracks thanks to her, but at some point into the hills they just vanished. That's what you said, right?"

"Yeah. They just stopped around one of the mounds. I wanted to stick around, and examine the area more, but one of the Cyclopses spotted the large amount of people, and came chasing after us. We didn't really have the right group composition to fight one. Sucks, honestly."

"You're sure it didn't just enter stealth?" Grace asked.

"Pretty sure. I have my Tracking maxed, so even with stealth I can pick up some traces of footprints, or something, but it had just completely vanished," Laloti answered. "Besides, Hill Lions don't have Stealth."

"Rare spawns usually have extra skills," Grace pointed out.

"A black cat... and we're sure it's a Hill Lion?" Le Hoot asked.

"No one I talked to was able to Identify it, if that's what you mean, but what else would it be?" Laloti raised an eyebrow.

"Well, it got me thinking... the Druid Cat Form is black, and can use Stealth. It's even possible to get Vanish."

"Your point being?"

Le Hoot's eyes were sparkling. "What if it's a new mob that uses shapeshifting?"

"That's a bit of a stretch," Barls said. "Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be a player Druid in that case?"

"Then why didn't they reveal themselves?" Le Hoot was already letting this idea get to her head. If only she knew how close to the truth she was.

"Maybe they were roleplaying," Sa Lamba said. She dabbled in that herself. Most people who picked Performer did some amount of roleplaying. "Or it was just a black Hill Lion. Which makes the most sense."

"Besides, only players and Residents actually use shapeshifting, right? None of the Druid mobs we've found have shapeshifting skills," Mirgon said.

"But Scott and I were talking about the growing mobs, and what if it's one of them?" Le Hoot wasn't giving up.

"Yeah yeah, we've heard," Barls said. "But that's still just a hypothesis."

Le Hoot pouted. She wholeheartedly believed in it.

"What interests me is that it was checking out the lake," Laloti said, trying to steer the conversation back on topic. "That might be our best lead. What if it was heading down there, but got scared off? It might try heading back later."

"So we scope out the lake? I'm down," La Samba said. "I wouldn't mind getting some fishing done after spending so much time in the mines. I should be able to hit 30 tomorrow anyway."

"Whoa, congrats. I don't think any of the rest of us will get there before the patch," Barls said. At almost 27 he was well on his way thanks to running dungeons, but he wasn't sure if half a week was enough for getting all the way to 30.

There were some players in the game who had already gotten to their second class change, but not a lot. Even less who had gotten significantly past it.

"Based on what they've told us about what they're adding, and I'm sure they're keeping more stuff secret, it'll probably be easier afterwards anyway."

"And we can look for that rumoured 'lake master' mob while we're there too." That was what Laloti was ostensibly there to do to begin with, she wasn't just goofing off at the beach.

It was a nice two-for-one. If they found either mob it was a win, and otherwise they had just spent a day at a tourist location doing very little, which wasn't so bad either.

"What do we do if we find it, though?" Barls asked.

"I propose we just watch it," Grace answered before anyone else got the chance. "I'm more interested in what it's going to do, than what we might get if we defeat it."

"I'm cool with that," La Samba agreed. After all the reason she had joined the guild was to see neat animals.

"I'm in favour," Le Hoot agreed too. Unusual behaviour would be far more proof towards the 'growing mobs' theory than unusual drops. It was a shame Scott was off among the dwarves to investigate their mines, but they had a promising lead down there too. It was just a little ironic that it was at these mines where they had fresh witnesses.

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