Chapter Eleven: Treasure Cave
Amber City has few haunted places. Soren merely inquired slightly and pinpointed the approximate location of the hidden treasure cave; about a kilometer north of the Agate River lies a mass grave where ghostly activities have been witnessed more than once. This is one of the more obvious markers of the treasure cave, as liches always prefer to arrange these caves closer to d*ath.
“Are there ghosts?”
“Then we might need some holy water.”
To ensure Vivian’s safety, although Soren was confident about exploring the treasure cave, he was uncertain how much time it would take. Thus, he planned to send her to the Temple of Dawn to let Priest Anya Lee take care of her. This was the priestess who had once helped Soren but always treated him coldly. Having her watch over Vivian should be fine. Of course, the Temple of Dawn wouldn’t take in a little girl for no reason, so Soren had already prepared a donation for the temple.
The Temple of Dawn.
Soren slightly bowed to Priest Fei’er, the temple’s overseer. When the priest accepted the coin pouch he offered, the crisp sound of Silver clinking inside made him beam, “No problem!”
“The Lord of Dawn protects all believers in Him; this little girl can stay in the temple for a while. Just let her follow Sister Anya Lee to train.”
This is a world where money is indispensable.
Even powerful priests are no exception; they need to expand the faith serving the gods and draw in believers from the lower-class citizens. All of these things rely on money: maintaining the temple requires money, providing for the believers requires money, and conducting sacred ceremonies requires even more money. Nowadays, most temple priests openly sell divine techniques for healing, disease expulsion, and injury restoration, in exchange for enough wealth to sustain the temple and expand its faith. Hosting a little girl for a few days and selling a few gallons of holy water is trivial.
The Temple of Dawn isn’t particularly strong; it’s classified as a second-tier temple in Amber City.
Thus, nobles always have better options when donating. The sum Soren presented was quite valuable.
A total of sixty Silver.
Equivalent to the donations received by the Temple of Dawn over the past half month, allowing Priest Fei’er to replace some of the sacred ceremonial tools with a couple of silver items.
After all, these coins were made by the believers of the Goddess of Wealth, with twenty coins weighing a pound!
“Thank you, Priest Fei’er.”
Soren politely expressed his gratitude and then smiled at Priest Anya Lee beside him, saying, “I’ll leave Vivian in your hands for these few days!” “Hmph.”
The young priestess let out a soft hum, but did not refuse. Although she still disliked Soren, she was fond of the little girl at first sight. Anya Lee was certainly aware that Soren’s money was not clean; it was probably either stolen or related to conflicts with gangs in the slums. Nevertheless, Priest Fei’er had been preparing for her official priest ceremony for quite some time. It was rare for someone like Soren to willingly contribute such a sum, so it had to be put to use for the sacred ceremony granted by divine techniques.
If they had two official priests, the Temple of Dawn should soon rise to a mid-level temple in Amber City!
“Vivian, go with Sister Anya Lee first.”
Soren gently stroked the little girl’s head, comforting her, “I’ll come back to pick you up in a couple of days!”
He had already explained this to her before coming.
Vivian had no objections to Soren’s arrangements but obediently nodded, “Mm.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Vivian will be very good and won’t run around.”
Soren bent down and kissed her forehead lightly, then took the holy water and walked outside the Temple of Dawn.
Since the skinning incident had already occurred, he needed to pick up the pace.
Before the gods were forced to walk the world as saints, the temple should have been one of the safest places in Amber City, cloaked in the divine power gathered by faith, protected by temple guards, with not much evil daring to tread lightly. Even a second-tier temple like the Temple of Dawn had one official priest and six powerful temple guards.
Most were at least second-tier!
One of the temple guards even possessed third-tier strength, conservatively estimated to have a professional template of either 10th level Knight Squire / 10th level Knight / 5th level Temple Guardian, or 10th level Knight Squire / 10th level Warrior / 5th level Temple Guardian.
The first profession level represented the basic profession before their advancement.
For example, most native wizards had a 10th level Scholar profession level because they needed to learn to read before studying spells, which required a certain knowledge base. Similarly, many advanced warriors had a tranquilizer prefix at the 10th level, indicating they underwent militia-level training before officially becoming warriors.
As for Soren’s 10th level civilian level, it represented the lowest basic profession.
It didn’t have the weapon mastery attached to the militia nor the knowledge bonus of the scholar; the only benefit was gaining 25 skill points and the ability to advance to any career path.
As long as your talent attributes are sufficient!
Basic pre-professions generally do not add any attribute points, but there are some differences depending on the focus. For instance, the best pre-profession for melee is the 10th level Knight Squire, which provides an additional weapon specialty skill point. However, this applies only to the player’s profession template. If the template is applied to natives, it means that Soren was born a civilian. Since childhood, he received civilian education, and the growth of his attributes in childhood depended entirely on luck; it was hard to predict whether he would become a genius or a mediocre person until he advanced to become a thief.
The third-tier temple knight, on the other hand, received Knight Squire training and education from a young age, having combat training early on and mastering various weapons, which means his inherent attributes would be much higher than a civilian in terms of strength, constitution, and so on, which continued until he became a warrior or knight, beginning to improve his power as a professional.
Therefore, in the past, players judged the base attributes of a native by their pre-profession.
Civilian professions have average attributes, militia professions are slightly stronger, Knight Squires have comparatively higher attributes, and scholars have inherent knowledge advantages.
To summarize.
That is, the same second-tier professionists, temple guards are much harder to deal with than rogue warriors.
Rogue warriors might have lower attributes than them and only master basic swordsmanship, but temple guards would have higher attributes and master more than three advanced abilities.
The mastery of cross-swordsmanship left a deep impression on Soren!
………………
Mass Grave.
By the time Soren arrived here, it was already afternoon. He spent half a day finding the cave entrance.
It was a simple concealment mechanism, more like a kind of trap.
As a nearby rock was moved ten centimeters, a dark entrance appeared on the small hillside not far away. Once Soren’s figure entered, the rock immediately returned to its original position, and the entrance disappeared without a trace. No doubt it was a work of a lich, and some setups were quite brilliant in the eyes of Soren, a former legendary thief.
A realm of darkness.
Inside the cave, there were damaged torches on both sides. Ordinary people entering without lighting a torch would likely struggle to walk. However, Soren, imbued with one-eighth elf bl**d as a half-elf, still had some night vision abilities. Thus, he could see everything inside the cave without needing to light a torch, which was key to his daring to explore the treasure cave alone.
Stealth + Night Vision = Silently.
Not needing illumination tools means not disturbing the monsters inside the cave.
The safety factor increased dramatically!
Soren’s figure gradually blended into the darkness. As he awakened the professional specialty ‘Shadow Mastery,’ he was able to sense the existence of shadow power, a feeling different from before. In the darkness, his figure gradually became blurred, as if disappearing into the shadows, and only when he moved could one vaguely notice slight changes in the shadows.
His breath, his heartbeat, his scent were all concealed by the shadows!
“Creak.”
Ahead came the sound of footsteps. Soren gently drew out his dagger and hid in a corner of the cave to wait.
The treasure cave was not small.
After all, liches could not have simply dug a hole in the ground; there were many underground passages here containing various guarding monsters and traps laid out by the lich.
A skeleton appeared before Soren’s eyes.
Its eyes did not ignite with soul fire, representing that it was merely the lowest-level reborn skeleton, possibly due to the strong d*ath energy here, unconsciously guarding this place. Such skeletons were relatively easy to deal with; typical professionists could handle one or two, but wiping out a whole group would be impossible because they were roughly equivalent to formally trained militia and didn’t have any critical weaknesses. After all, skeletons belong to a category of extraordinary beings.
Even if it was the lowest-level undead.
Soren’s figure quietly approached, and the unconscious skeleton had no perception of him. It held a rusty iron sword, seemingly the remains of an adventurer who had died exploring here. The number of native adventurers was not less than that of players, and many even collaborated with players or attacked and eliminated players from the evil faction from behind. Anyone who underestimates the world of “Gods War” would pay the price.
A cold light suddenly burst into the darkness!
Soren’s figure emerged from the shadows, instantly thrusting the dagger toward the skeleton’s spine.
“Shadow Hide Successful!”
“Backstab Activated!”
“Backstab succeeded *2, dealing 18 points of damage to the target!”
“The target is severely injured!”
………………
This was the first time Soren succeeded in a backstab but didn’t instantly k*ll the enemy.
However, he was not surprised by this because he was wielding a regular dagger, without enchantments or extraordinary traits. It’s difficult to achieve a one-hit k*ll against undead beings, as they also had extraordinary bonuses. Although the skeleton had a challenge difficulty of only level 1, its health exceeded 30 points. The lack of flesh made it tougher than an ordinary person.
Clang clang clang!
The skeleton’s combat instincts remained intact. Its first reaction after being attacked was to swing its sword downward, producing a sharp slicing sound of the air. Soren blocked the attack with his dagger, causing his body to sink slightly.
“It has over 16 points of strength.”
Soren dodged the second attack and moved his slightly numbed arm, thinking to himself, “It must have been an advanced warrior in life, otherwise, it couldn’t have such high strength after becoming undead.”
10 points of strength is the standard for ordinary people.
12 points of strength is equivalent to a dock worker who laboriously works every day.
14 points of strength is relatively strong among ordinary people.
16 points of strength roughly equals that of a weightlifter in a past life.
18 points of strength is quite exaggerated; someone who can wield over a hundred pounds of weaponry with one hand and still not be out of breath is this type of person.
Generally, those who reach over 16 points are specially trained melee professionals.
Attribute points are the most challenging things to enhance; two profession levels only yield a single free attribute, and even when upgrading to level 20 to enter the legendary domain, only ten free attribute points can be obtained. In this regard, Soren had a considerable flaw, as his strength was only 12 points due to not deliberately training it during his childhood and not hailing from a divine bloodline, so his strength only matched that of the dock workers.
As for 20 points of extraordinary strength, a simple comparison can be made.
Hill giants.
A massive being about 5 meters tall, weighing nearly half a ton, usually wielding a weapon like a thick wolf-tooth club at waist height!
That’s right. This monster fits the standard of 20 points of extraordinary strength!
If not for divine bl**d, many warriors who upgraded to second-tier professionals might not exceed 20 points in extraordinary strength.
