Three hours later, Karl sat with his back against Thor in the ruins of the battlefield. The humans had won a Pyrrhic victory at best, and with the losses that they had suffered, if there had been any Fae left alive, it might have been counted as a loss.
The town that the humans and their allies were defending had been half razed, and most of the civilians were presumed dead, less than one in fifty of the original thousand or so warriors were still alive, and all of them were currently catching their breath.
The battlefield smouldered where Hawk had bombarded it with fireballs to prevent the trolls from regenerating, leaving acrid smoke hanging over the plains, which were now largely devoid of life.
After meditating for the last ten minutes to recover some strength, slowly spreading the energy from the focuses in the beast spaces to improve their quality before rebuilding the focus to improve everyone’s strength, Karl opened his eyes and decided it was time to get back on his feet.
Karl looked out at the massive number of bodies, and slowly got to his feet, ready to go check them for loot and valuables. With that many, there had to be some good stuff there somewhere.
However, as soon as he got up to go check the nearby bodies, those familiar magical words appeared on the ground.
“Trial successfully completed. Time two hours forty-seven minutes.” Tessa read.
Then they all waited to see what the next message would be. Would it send them to another round? It hadn’t said failed, it did tell them that they were successful, despite the heavy casualties and the damage to the town behind them.
[Rewards Granted]
Everyone waited to see what they would get, but there was no sign of prize boxes, no additional notification, and then they were back in the plain room with the braziers again. That was when the prizes appeared. One small box in front of each of them.
There were three silver boxes, three gold boxes, two platinum boxes, and one that looked like it was made of pure ruby.
Prince Corbin looked at the boxes. “Well, I think that we can guess how they’re supposed to be distributed. Now, you just need to pick one from your group.”
The three Awakened Rank members all looked wistfully at the boxes with other colours on them. Dana certainly had experience with these reward boxes, and the better your rank, the better the box’s contents.
However, there wasn’t another mage in the Ascended group to plead with, and Alice was unlikely to give up her loot for an Awakened Rank box after spending three hours keeping up barriers and eventually being held upright by archers who ran out of arrows so that even when she was too exhausted to stand, she could stay within the protective circle around Thor and regain her stamina.
Dana and the two Awakened Spellblades went first, then traded boxes until they got one that they could open.
Both Spellblades got new swords in a similar style to the ones they were using, while Dana got an ornate wooden wand with golden patterns down it.
“Not bad, the wand is rechargeable and casts magic missile up to twenty times.” Dana informed the group.
That wasn’t too bad at all. It would save her a bunch of mana during fights that she could consume when they weren’t in danger.
She already knew Magic Missile, so her proficiency with the spell would extend to the wand, allowing her to split the magic missile into multiple missiles, though the damage would drop. That would give her an advantage against weaker targets, and help with the rapid clearing abilities of the team.
Lotus handed out the next round of boxes, and surprisingly, none of the three needed to be exchanged.
Karl opened his reward box and found a beautiful crystal bow inside. Strangely, it had no string, but when he held it, he instantly understood the concept. If you made the motion to pull the nonexistent string, intending to fire it, the bow would create an arrow and fire. There was no mana cost, and no listed capacity of charges, it was just a magical bow.
However, he could attach skills to those magical arrows, and send them to a much more distant target. The range on Shred and Rend wasn’t bad, but that was for the average battle. Anything beyond twenty metres, and they began to lose power. But attached to an arrow, they could fly two hundred metres, and they would still be fine.
“It looks like it’s weapons day.” Lotus laughed, waving a carved wooden staff around.
“It doesn’t have to be a weapon.” Tessa disagreed, holding up a red and gold metal shield that matched her robes.
“Smashing tools are still weapons.” Lotus shrugged.
Larry laughed and passed a box to Alice, while Corbin moved to the ruby chest.
All three took out weapons, a gold wand with clear crystal inlay for Alice, and swords for both of the others.
“It looks like the reward system is judging us for our low damage output.” Karl noted.
“It definitely is.” Dana sighed.
She had [Destruction], plus two heavily upgraded golems and multiple attack spells, and it had still given her a weapon. Though, it was one to save mana, so perhaps that was the issue with her combat skills that it was concerned with.
Prince Corbin looked at his watch and frowned. “That took longer than I expected. We should head back to the entrance, where we know it’s safe to rest. We will call it an early day because none of us will be up for another one of those trials today.”
There were no objections to that. They had three solid hours of combat in that second room, and another long fight would simply be too much for them.
It was only when they reached the first room that they realized going back might be as much trouble as going forward. The door leaving the first room, that they had very deliberately left propped open, was closed again, and they were looking at the same scene that had triggered the last two trials.
“Alright, we will set up camp for the night in the last trial room in case the Goblins in the larger cave aren’t the only ones around. They have a way of finding a way through the smallest cracks, and who knows what’s hidden under that moss. If the way back is sealed, we’re as safe here as anywhere, but we will keep watch, in case the trials reset and not just the doors to the rooms.”
“What is the watch schedule?” Karl asked as he prepared to head back into the second trial room.
Prince Corbin gestured to Karl. “We will use a two-person watch, so one can defend while the other wakes the group. One Commander with someone else. Karl, you and I will take first, who wants second?”
Alice nodded. “I will take second with Rose.”
“And that puts me and Darryl third.” Larry agreed.
“Everyone else has the night to rest, and we will cycle partners tomorrow if it’s reasonable. Nobody wants the healers to be overtired.”
Karl couldn’t argue with that logic. When things were bad, it paid to have the clerics on your side fresh and ready to work. So, he set down his pack and took out his sleeping bag, wanting to have it ready to crawl into when he finished his watch.
Dana set up next to him while the clerics prepared dinner.
The Spellswords were about to take out ration packs when they noticed that there was a rather surprising amount of food available.
“Where did all that come from? Do you carry a whole kitchen?” Rose asked.
“No need for that. We can both used advanced food creation blessings. This is all magic, it didn’t exist two minutes ago. Just get comfortable and it will be cooked in fifteen minutes.” Tessa explained.
They were making some sort of stew with the ingredients they had conjured, so Karl offered up a large chunk of meat from one of the Awakened Rank reptiles they had fought that morning. Hawk had claimed the body, but it would take him forever to get through it all.
“Here, cut this thinly, and it should cook quickly enough.” He offered.
Prince Corbin looked dubious about the mystery meat from nowhere, but he didn’t say anything, and decided to just trust the clerics not to poison them all. Even if they did, they were the ones with the cleansing spells, so it was in their best interests to be safe with the food.
But they seemed to trust Karl’s food supply, and as soon as he passed it over, Lotus began to cut paper thin slices that would cook in seconds in the stew pot.
