Chapter 12: Strong Acid Trap
2014-11-28
Author: Floating Tower
Ding ding ding!
The dagger fractured under continuous parries; after all, it was just an ordinary weapon, and normal wear and tear was quite severe. Back when Soren had not yet elevated his strength to the second tier, he always carried more than three weapons on him to have spares available in case of battle damage. Ordinary gear could generally be bought at a blacksmith shop, but enchanted extraordinary equipment was quite rare. Soren had obtained a suitable weapon during an exploration of ancient ruins.
It must be mentioned that the weapon Soren excelled with was rather unique!
Not a dagger, but a curved blade.
Qualified curved blades were difficult to purchase in southern cities, even ordinary plain ones. A slightly better-quality steel curved blade could cost around five gold denders. Thus, for a long time, players newly entering the God Wars struggled to obtain a decent quality plain weapon. As for the dagger Soren held, its quality was actually considered gray equipment; true plain daggers should be forged from folded fine steel. “I should really get a curved blade first!”
Soren sidestepped, twisting his waist one hundred eighty degrees, and the dagger struck the back of the skeleton’s neck, instantly shattering the last trace of d*ath energy in its body, reducing it to a pile of bones. He glanced at the 45 points of killing experience displayed, discarded the nearly ruined dagger, and murmured, “There are no curved blades in southern cities; to find a suitable one, I’ll have to go closer to the grasslands.”
Soren did not use an ordinary curved blade.
In fact, according to his strictest standards, he would not find the curved blades he needed even on the northern grasslands; only the top forging masters in the Underdark could craft the curved blade he required. The crescent curved blades from the sage’s desert were too light, while the bone-picking curved blades from the northern grasslands were too brittle. Only a heavy curved blade that incorporated some properties of the Tang kn*fe and advantages of the big sword could satisfy Soren. This type of curved blade was very heavy; even the spine could crush an ogre, maximizing damage during chopping. Soren once cleaved through a three-foot thick marble with a single stroke.
One foot is about 30 centimeters, so three feet is nearly one meter thick!
Even an adult giant dragon couldn’t withstand the force of his strike; otherwise, a legend of a dual-blade violent thief wouldn’t be circulating in the Underdark. Some even said that if he had advanced not as a stealth assassin but as a part-time berserker, sword saint, or weapon master, he could contend against an ancient red dragon in a one-on-one duel. Using a heavy curved blade required a minimum of 14 points of strength!
Soren’s pair of curved blades were legendary weapons specially crafted in the Underdark, one weighing 18 kilograms and the other 16 kilograms, requiring over 18 points of strength to wield effectively.
His figure gradually blended into the shadows.
Soren did not expect to obtain an extraordinary weapon right away; he would be satisfied just acquiring a high-quality military standard weapon.
Generally speaking!
Around fifteen gold denders could buy one.
At this stage, the Southern Duchy was still using a silver standard, with silver denders recognized as currency; gold was merely a precious metal. Even gold denders crafted by believers of the Goddess of Wealth circulated only among the high nobility. One gold dender was worth ten silver denders, and whether gold or silver, the weight of twenty pieces was exactly one pound. As for copper denders, many were privately cast by the lower classes, often crudely made, with fluctuation in their proportion to silver denders, leading many to suffer losses!
Players had complained about this for a long time.
It’s precisely because the God Wars were incredibly realistic, even lacking a unified currency.
If not for the assessment of currency leverage by the Goddess of Wealth, the conversion of currencies among various races and regions would have driven many people to despair!
However, such extreme realism in world rules still attracted many followers.
Soren was one of them!
For him, the God Wars was an entirely different world, an indispensable part of his life experiences, or one could say, an extension of his life.
That’s why he so easily accepted everything.
………………
As he ventured deeper into the cave, the eerie feeling grew more intense.
The first fork in the road appeared before Soren, along with three corpses that had completely rotted into white bones.
“It’s a trap.”
Soren picked up one of the bones and observed, murmuring, “Looks like this guy was shot dead by crossbow bolts! There should’ve been a very powerful crossbow trap set up here.”
Three of the ribs were shot through, and Soren could instantly tell the individual had been hit by at least ten arrows.
It’s challenging to set up a trap that inflicts this many attacks.
Soren shrugged and rummaged through the corpse, retrieving some silver denders, a piece of rotting unknown paper, and a copper medal. He pocketed the silver denders, then examined the paper, which had become completely illegible. The copper medal, however, looked familiar; it was the emblem of the Adventurers’ Guild, signifying an official E-rank adventurer.
“What an unfortunate fellow.”
“Looks like after he died, his companions used his body to block the trap a few times.”
Indeed, adventure was the best way to make a fortune.
Soren merely searched through the bodies that had perished in the trap and found over ten silver denders, along with two shiny gold denders.
That was roughly equivalent to what he earned from eliminating a gang in the slums!
“One, two, three.”
Soren tossed the bones aside. Perhaps due to having gone through too many experiences in the God Wars, facing real white-boned corpses didn’t bother him; he merely spoke to himself, “Including the initial skeleton, the four guys here seem to be armored warriors; spellcasters probably wouldn’t join such a low-level adventuring team.”
“What about the thief though?”
Wizards, priests, druids, and sorcerers were all typical wealthy professionists.
A single arcane missile scroll costs thirty gold denders; how could they possibly join such a low-level adventurer team?
Because power fluctuates significantly, all spellcasting professionists in the God Vault were referred to as spellcasters. However, being a spellcaster also meant being synonymous with hardship; the standard first-tier arcane magic consisted of over thirty types, and copying and learning them through arcane scrolls would cost roughly 1500 gold denders. If seeking a native teacher, it would only require half the cost, but it would still be nearly seven to eight hundred gold denders.
And that was just the cost of first-tier arcane magic!
Priests and druids could use divine techniques, but whether the ‘Divine Blessing’ ritual or the ‘Gift of Nature’ ceremony, both required over 500 gold denders in materials. If one chooses to worship a deity, a portion of the costs would be borne by the temple, but it would still require around 300 gold denders. Sorcerers, while possessing the advantage of bloodline awakening and automatically gaining spellcasting abilities, faced even steeper costs for their bloodline advancement rituals.
If Soren recalled correctly, the first ritual to enhance bloodlines required materials worth around 1000 gold denders.
At that time, he had borrowed the majority of his savings from a sorcerer companion.
In contrast!
Melee professionists had it much easier; with just a blade, they could cut people down.
Generally, spellcasters’ profession levels were only around five, while many melee profession levels had reached eight or even above ten.
You can sense the difficulty of making money by seeing Soren’s current value.
To gather that enormous expense, over 90% of spellcasters had experienced quite a difficult period of struggle.
It was once said in taverns!
—“Adventures with returns uncertain above 100 gold denders cannot entice those spellcasters!”
Low-tier spellcasters have low combat power.
To exert sufficient power, at least 5 profession levels are needed. Therefore, most low-level adventurer teams do not have any spellcasting professionists.
Thus!
Soren deduced that there must be a thief.
In the absence of spellcasters successfully executing ‘trap detection’ with over 90% success, only the thief had to rely on professional experience for judgment.
Don’t have too high hopes for the detection rate of low-tier thieves!
At this stage, thieves could pick locks decently, but their grasp of trap skills was lacking, leading to many cases where they stumbled upon traps, failed to disarm them, and ended up dead inside.
Adventures, since they had high rewards, naturally also came with high risks!
A successful adventure where no one in the team was injured would mean a round of drinks for everyone once they returned to the tavern.
In reality.
Soren seldom had the opportunity to buy drinks for everyone at the tavern.
………………
Soon.
Soren discovered the corpse of a thief at the cave entrance ahead.
He wasn’t interested in deducing why the thief had died here based on clues; instead, he directly lifted the body and observed its half-missing head, his expression souring, “Strong acid trap?”
It must be a strong acid trap.
In the early stages, this was one of the traps that caused the most headaches for all thieves, as well as the most lethal!
Otherwise, it’s rare for any other trap to dissolve half a skull, and there were many small pockmarks on the ground, remnants left by splattering strong acid.
“Looks like we have a problem.”
Soren took out a small wooden hammer and gently tapped on the ground. To avoid triggering traps by rats, many traps had their trigger mechanisms set according to adult weight standards; that’s why halflings were the most popular thieves in adventuring teams. Strong acid traps could be divided into magical traps and physical traps; the former involved setting up a magic circle connected to a trigger device, while the latter involved installing refined strong acid on the trigger device to spray the acid when the trap was activated.
Before entering high-tier bloodline awakening.
Even a warrior with profession levels above 5 could be instantly killed by a strong acid trap!
Even if one survives, they would be nearly incapacitated.
During the later stages of profession enhancements, many bloodline advancement rituals could allow astonishingly robust warriors to withstand strong acids, blasts, lava, etc., still thriving in battle!
However, at this stage, Soren didn’t feel confident that he could endure a hit from a strong acid trap.
If caught.
It could be said to be d*ath without a doubt!
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