Volume 3: The Crypt Chapter 1 From Netcom to Telecom
"Where is this?" Seeing me standing at the edge of the cave in a daze, Nocturne in B-flat Minor came over and asked. He looked down:
"Wow, it's really dark..."
"This is my first time here too, I don't know what's down there."
"Do you want to go down and take a look?" Nocturne looked at me inquiringly, the light of the torch reflected in his eyes, revealing a light full of curiosity.
"Hmm..." I lowered my head and thought about his suggestion. So far, we haven't encountered a very strong opponent. Although the group of bats in the tunnel is difficult to deal with, we three can pass through it safely. So according to common sense, even if there is something terrible in the cave, it won't be much stronger than the group of bats. The possibility of the three of us continuing to move forward is still...
"ah……"
Just as I was hesitating, Niu Baiwan's hysterical scream suddenly came from behind us. His high-decibel noise with huge energy came so suddenly that Nocturne and I staggered at the same time, and almost fell into the bottomless abyss.
"ah……"
Another sharper and more piercing scream sounded at the same time. In terms of the impact and penetration of this scream, it was probably several points higher than Niu Baiwan's. It was like a bolt from the blue, deafening.
"Enemy attack!" This was the first reaction that came to my mind. I immediately grabbed my sword, turned around, and prepared to deal with the upcoming second battle.
What I saw was an extremely strange scene:
Niu Baiwan threw his big wooden stake on the ground, held his head with both hands and stuffed it into the crack in the corner of the cave wall, completely ignoring the two huge horns on his head that were stuck outside the crevice of the stone. He kept screaming heart-wrenchingly while doing so.
On the other side of him, a huge black bear that looked intimidating at first glance was squatting on the ground with its hands folded across its chest, eyes closed, weak and helpless. The terrible scream that was enough to shatter porcelain came from its mouth.
Damn it, when did the bear learn the vampire bat's "ultrasonic vibration" trick? And the bear also had a name on its head that was distinctive of an aerial being: Fairy Descending to Earth and Landing on Her Face.
What is going on? This weird scene is so confusing to me.
"Ah..." I was surprised for a long time. These two guys who were obviously frightened by each other were still screaming endlessly...
"Stop... stop, stop, stop, stop..." I couldn't help but yell, and my voice echoed in the hall. The two guys, the cow and the bear, were startled and stopped screaming immediately. The cow was still frozen in the moment of trying to get into the gap, his butt sticking out ugly, and his tail twitching; while the bear kept squatting and hugging his chest, stretching his neck to look at me. The two guys were like two animal sculptures with a sense of postmodern magic realism.
"What's going on?" I coughed lightly, walked forward, kicked Niu Baiwan's butt, motioned him to turn around, and asked him.
"I... I was here just now..." He pointed to the entrance to the hall, "... you two both went over there. I was just about to go over to your side when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around and unexpectedly saw... I saw this guy... I was so scared... I almost had a heart attack..."
"I... I'm not a 'guy'..." After hearing what Niu Baiwan said, the black bear suddenly stood up and softly retorted. The voice of "it" was crisp and pleasant, like a natural crystal reflected in the sun, clear and bright, with a hint of warmth and friendliness.
As soon as the words fell, a green halo suddenly swirled up from under the black bear's feet and instantly surrounded its entire body. As the halo dissipated, an elven girl wearing a fur robe, a headband with a few feathers on her head, and holding a short wooden staff appeared in front of us.
"...I heard some noise over there just now, so I wanted to come over and see you guys. Then I saw you guys here...I wanted to say hello, so I just patted his shoulder, and then he...started to scream. He screamed so loudly, and he looked so scary, so I...I couldn't help but scream out in fear..."
The elf girl named "Fairy Descended from Earth with Her Face on the Ground" lowered her head and hummed. The blush on her face caused by the fear just now had not completely faded away. She looked both pitiful and cute.
"Who would greet someone like you? You came over so quietly and turned into such a horrible appearance. Even gods would be scared to death by you..." Niu Baiwan changed the subject and began to brag shamelessly again, "...Luckily, I am brave. If it was someone else, how could they be scared to death by you?"
As he spoke, Niu Baiwan murmured to himself: "You think others look scary, but you are pretty, right?" Although he argued like this, after he finished speaking, he still couldn't help but secretly glanced at the elf girl a few more times out of the corner of his eye.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” The girl apologized repeatedly, “…It’s too scary here, and sometimes there are a lot of scary big bats, so I always stay in the black bear form. I was so excited to see you just now that I forgot to change back…”
"How did you get here?" Nocturne in B-flat minor asked curiously, "You didn't come here alone?"
"I... I was brought here. My friend had some problems over there. So when I saw someone coming, I wanted to ask you for help..." Having said that, the elf girl lowered her head shyly again, only daring to look at us expectantly with the corner of her eyes, as if she was afraid that we would refuse.
"What happened to your friend?" Seeing her embarrassment, I guessed that her friend was in big trouble. Rescuing people in distress when you are able is a good quality of a qualified adventurer, so I said to her:
"...Where is he? Take us to see him."
The surroundings of this underground hall were not smooth stone walls. Instead, the edges of the hall were made up of some tortuous and rough lines. In some places , these tortuous stone walls formed a corner that was large enough to accommodate two or three people.
The fairy came down to earth with her face on the ground and hid in such a corner with her companions.
This weak and easily blushing elf girl is a druid. Druids are advocates of nature and neutrality, and are the favorites of the goddess of nature, Nethenia. They regard mountains, dense forests and wilderness as the home of their souls, and are a group of hermits who exile themselves freely with the wind.
Druids are the beneficiaries and protectors of nature. They are loved by the goddess of nature and have obtained special powers that can keep the world in balance. They rarely use elemental magic in the traditional sense, but use their own way to merge with nature to obtain unique magical abilities, which allow them to control the magical power of nature and even transform themselves into animals such as wolves, leopards or bears, integrating themselves with nature in a more wild manner.
The magic of Druids lies not only in their special magical powers, but also in the fact that most of them possess extraordinary healing methods. Unlike the priests favored by the Supreme God, these darlings of nature cannot use the power given by God to directly heal other people's souls, but they can use the power of the goddess of nature to heal other people's bodies, dispel pain and illness, and make wounds heal faster. Every druid is a welcome travel companion. They are friendly and helpful, and can provide the necessary assistance to their companions no matter where they are - as long as you can tolerate their small paranoia in certain beliefs.
The teachings of Druids are very similar to the traditions that the elves have always upheld, but not all Druids are elves, and not all elves believe in Druid teachings. In the eyes of many proud elves, the beliefs of Druids are just their most ordinary lives, they are just "close to the truth" but have not yet obtained it; and in the eyes of many Druids, the elves are just some "products of natural evolution", and they have not really received more grace from the goddess of nature than other lives.
I don't know what attitude this elven druid in front of me holds towards her bloodline and beliefs. I think it is a good idea to keep silent about issues related to race and beliefs in front of a believer of a foreign race.
What I didn't expect was that the druid girl's partner was actually a half-orc warlock.
Among the practitioners of many magical arts in this world , "warlocks" always appear unwelcome.
They are a group of metaphysicians, agnostics, believers in mysticism and pessimists. They believe that in the countless planes of the universe, anyone and anything can happen, and everything is rooted in a certain coincidence. Our existence, the existence of the Falvi Continent and even the existence of God are just part of these countless coincidences.
They put forward an argument: since the existence of God is a confirmed possibility, then perhaps there are powerful beings similar to God in the myriad planes. God can grant power to faithful believers, and they can also obtain it through another channel - for example, find powerful beings in the outer planes and exchange their power for the cost of sacrificing their souls.
They believe that what they do is no different from other believers of various religions: dedication in exchange for power. However, what these believers of gods dedicate is their own faith, and the process is decorated with a false halo of holiness and full of false sense of sublimity. What they dedicate is the souls of other lives, and the whole process has been commercialized into a simple and straightforward exchange of money and goods.
Only the most daring and crazy lunatics would dare to make such a crazy assumption, and the crazy thing is that this assumption has been confirmed to some extent. Many talented and extreme spellcasters have really made contact with powerful creatures from the outer planes and reached agreements with them. Those powerful people from unknown planes sent their own clones to help their trading partners. These clones are usually called "servants". The servants help the warlock fight the enemy and share the hunted souls with the warlock.
This kind of partnership is dangerous. When a servant demon thinks that the warlock is too weak and cannot complete the transaction, he will turn around and collect the warlock's soul. Therefore, most warlocks are guys who love killing and do not respect life. At the same time, they do not respect everything in this world, even the gods. And many of their behaviors are also intolerable to the druid doctrine.
Let's not talk about how this half-orc warlock named "Ding Ding Xiao Ge" could end up with a gentle female druid. Just looking at his current situation, he didn't seem to be in trouble. He was sitting alone in a corner, scratching his itch out of boredom.
"Hello." As soon as he saw Ding Ding Xiao Ge, Nocturne in B-flat Minor walked over and greeted him in a friendly manner. But he didn't expect that the half-orc warlock didn't pay any attention to him at all, and just sat there as if he didn't see us.
"What's wrong with him?" Nocturne felt a little resentful at being treated coldly. He frowned slightly and asked the elven druid girl.
"He...he's stuck..." The fairy replied with a face downcast, and then said something I didn't understand, "...he used Netcom..."
"Oh..." Nocturne and Niu Baiwan suddenly understood, but I was still confused.
"Hello..." It was only at this time that Tintin spoke his first words in a slow and ethereal voice like a sleepwalker. This was obviously a response to Nocturne's first greeting, but when he turned his face to the place where Nocturne had just been, the dwarf bard was no longer there.
"...Brother, I sympathize with you. From Netcom to Telecom, it's really not that close..." Niu Baiwan said sincerely, patting the orc warlock's shoulder.
"...according to the time difference...it's farther than the distance between Earth and Mars..." After a long while, Ding Ding Xiaoge's voice sounded again.
Netcom? Telecom? What is that? In this cave full of bats, I can only guess that these are the names of two new species of vicious and ferocious large vampire bats...
"Are there only two of you? How could he get here? How much courage does it take, and how many corpses does it take to get in here!?"
"Well... it's not just the two of us. Actually... there were actually three other people who came in with us just now. They were all the people he had hired to help him with the mission, but now... they're all gone..."
So, through Tintin's frequent and always belated answers and interruptions, we learned about their experiences along the way here in bits and pieces from the fairy's face-down mouth.
In addition to being a warlock, Ding Ding Xiaoge is also an ambitious miner. He likes metallurgy more than magic. The reason why he was able to reach the current level 9 is that more than half of the experience is gained from improving his miner's skills.
Because of his superb mining skills, he accepted a professional mission as a miner: to go to the underground cave of an abandoned mine and look for the lost hammer of the original excavator of the mine, the dwarf metallurgical master "Quencher" Robert Willanster.
Including the fairy descending to earth (for those long and difficult names, I still like to use their abbreviations), a total of four people accepted his request and came here together to help him complete the task. They not only came to the underground hall, but also walked underground along the plank road of the huge cave. There, they encountered a group of skeleton warriors of unknown origin. These four brave adventurers (because of their slow reaction, Tintin and Little Ge had nothing to do with the battle along the way) resisted the undead and found Robert Willans's big hammer at the bottom of the cave.
Just as they were happy about successfully completing a task, something happened.
Standing in front of the hammer, Ding Ding Xiaoge bent down, and when his fingers were about to touch the hammer handle, he...
...He is offline...
This is the original words of the elven druid girl. I don't know what kind of mysterious and profound meaning is hidden behind this seemingly short and clear word. It sounds like it means that I can't stay in this world for some reason - "disconnected"? Could it be that the space travelers are walking on tightrope to cross the turbulent space and time of various planes?
Under the attack of the skeleton warriors, the four of them finally managed to drag Tintin Xiaoge's stiff body back to the hall, and the mission of course ended in failure. The other three seemed to have lost confidence in the mission, and after Tintin Xiaoge came again, they all left the mine...
Although I didn't fully understand what the fairy said, I got a general idea and had a deeper understanding of the plane-traveling ability of the space-traversers: the space-traversers could not move in this world without restrictions, they seemed to be always restricted by a certain "net". Sometimes, their souls would be hindered by the "net" and could not merge with their bodies in time, and they would be slow to react like Ding Ding Xiaoge...
"You are so kind that you can stay here to protect him..." Niu Baiwan exclaimed sincerely after listening to the fairy's story of descending to the earth with her face on the ground. I had the same feeling in my heart.
When a companion is obviously becoming a burden and doesn't even have the basic ability to protect himself, this elf girl is still willing to stay by his side and protect his life in the face of a group of vampire beasts. How much courage and perseverance does this take?
The Elf Druid blushed and lowered her head shyly, as if she was embarrassed by Niu Baiwan's straightforward praise. Her blushing appearance was so beautiful that she was like a blue flame grass growing underground, which could give birth to the magic fire in a person's soul.
Seeing her like this, we didn't know what to say. Some words of praise were stuck in my mouth, but I couldn't express them. I could only stare at the beautiful elf girl with my friends.
"…She didn't stay here out of kindness…" Just when we came to our senses and realized our own gaffe, Ding Ding Xiao Ge, who was always late no matter what he did, finally spoke up and told the truth.
"…She was about to level up, and wanted to level up here before leaving. But after she leveled up, she realized that she couldn't take me out with her…"
"...I was also very touched at the time, so I told her to go on her own and not to bother me anymore..."
"...But actually...she doesn't dare to go alone..."
"…Because…she is afraid of the dark…"
"…She didn't dare to go out, and she wouldn't let me log off. She forced me to stay online and talk to her, so she wouldn't get scared…"
"…She has been pestering me for more than two hours, not even letting me take a nap. If you hadn't come, I would have almost gone into shock…"
"…This is illegal detention…The torture used by the Chongqing Sino-US Cooperative is no more than this…"
"...Three heroes, please be merciful and save her... Take her away quickly..." The Orc Warlock pleaded loudly with a sad face.
The elf girl lowered her head even lower...
