Chapter 489 – Not a Natural Treasure

Sophia’s plumes flashed as they hit the frog. The moment the glare cleared, Sophia knew it hadn’t worked. The frog glowed ominously with jade-green magic and a jade-colored feather lay in front of the frog.

Wait. One jade-colored feather? She’d used three feathers. It also didn’t turn the feather into a frog.

It was still a failure, since it didn’t deal with the magical frog, but at least it wasn’t a disaster.

Dav appeared behind the frog in one of his impossible steps. Sophia floated a feather towards the frog to catch its attention. 

Dav swung and missed as the frog jumped … mostly because the frog only made it about six inches in its leap. It was enough to avoid the blade, but not nearly as much as any of them expected, including the frog. That much was clear from the way the frog lay on its side and blinked for a long moment.

“Its left leg didn’t move!” Dav shouted across the mindlink. “I don’t think it can. That has to be from your strike. Do it again.”

The frog twitched and pulled itself upright with a twitch that led into another off-kilter short hop. 

“I’ll try,” Sophia answered, then grabbed several more feathers. Prismatic seemed effective enough to try again; if she could freeze its other rear leg, the only threat would be its tongue and that was something she could deal with at range. She was essentially burning money using fourth upgrade feathers, but that was how her Sphere worked. It would be worth it. Anything less than fourth upgrade feathers couldn’t be expected to work on fourth upgrade monsters when Sophia herself wasn’t fourth upgrade.

She felt a moment of regret that she couldn’t simply have Cliff summon an Echo, but that was a bad idea against this opponent. An Echo that was corrupted by the frog’s power would be worse than useless. 

It was probably a bad idea anyway. Sophia’s Echo would be only third upgrade, the same way she was. Her miniature dragons were useful and far more dangerous than they looked, but that didn’t mean they ought to be fighting fourth upgrade monsters, even ones that looked like frogs.

Sophia tagged four feathers this time. That was more than she could reliably handle when they were fully infused, but if she grouped them together as a single Plume Strike it usually worked. She’d just have to hope she didn’t miss. “I’m ready. Can you distract the frog?”

Dav took a step towards the amphibian and seemed to split in two. One of his copies stepped towards the frog with his sword ready while the other backed off. 

The frog hopped towards him cautiously, careful to avoid tipping over with its frozen leg. It waited until he was just outside the range it had shown, then leapt farther and faster. Its rear right leg still didn’t straighten, but it somehow managed to compensate for it with its forelegs as it launched itself straight for Dav’s face.

Dav disappeared as he released his Embodiment from his actual body, the one that stayed well outside the frog’s range.

The frog flailed as it sailed through the space where Dav’s clone was a fraction of a second earlier.

Sophia flung her infused Plume Strike split across four feathers at the jade frog. Since it was already in the air, there was nothing it could do even after it finally noticed the attack.

Well, almost nothing. Another jade feather fell to the forest floor. 

Dav moved forward to test the frog’s reactions again. As it turned out, Sophia hadn’t disabled its other rear leg … but she had gotten its right forelimb and its tongue, which was now frozen in the act of striking, a couple of inches from the frog’s lipless mouth.

With that, there was little the jade frog could do, so it was simply a matter of cleanup. Dav tried to handle it, but his blade bounced off the frog’s jade skin so they decided to let Sophia handle it.

It took six more Prismatic Plume Strikes of three feathers each to finally make the frog’s mana shift from the active monster it was to something that sort of matched the previous natural treasure they’d collected. When Dav poked it with his blade after that, it vanished into his Event Inventory, so it was clear that the World Tree agreed that they’d won.

Two of Sophia’s multi-feather Prismatic Plume Strikes completely missed the frog. The other six all left behind a single jade feather, which vanished into Sophia’s Event Inventory when she tried to pick them up. Sophia was far from certain she even wanted to know what the jade did; it seemed to spread, and that was usually not a good sign. The World Tree called it a treasure, but it was probably one to be careful of.

The next few caches they found were simple, with a single Cache Reward Chip. It wasn’t long before they found a group of bright orange boars and called over Rivexy’s team; the experience with the jade frog was definitely enough to tell them that they didn’t need to fight fourth upgrade monsters when they came in packs. 

The frog was a stealth-focused monster who looked helpless and had clearly spent a large portion of its power on that and its ability to transform things into jade, which Sophia and Dav could avoid. That made it a relatively good monster for them to fight. Neither of them wanted to run into something that countered them the way they’d countered the frog.

They moved away from the hollow that contained the boars and looped around their area. They were about two-thirds of the way around the loop when Sophia stopped at the sensation of a concentration of magic. This one was stronger than any she’d felt from a cache, but it didn’t feel like a cache. It felt like two or maybe three point sources grouped close together about twenty feet above the ground.

Sophia looked up. From where she was, she couldn’t see anything; there was too much fog. She felt a bit nervous after the frog; what if it was something like that again? “Dav? I felt something odd. Should we call for help or look into it?”

“What did you sense?” Dav waited while Sophia sent the feeling over the mindlink. “Let’s get a little closer and see if we can figure out what it is. That feels too small to be monsters unless it’s like the glass butterflies. It’s too bright to be another frog.”

Sophia nodded cautiously. “At least Vexy’s group is right there. Should we wait until they’re done with the boars?”

“Probably a good idea,” Dav admitted.

It wasn’t a long wait, but it was an annoying one. Sophia did not like waiting. She especially did not like waiting because she was afraid she couldn’t handle something on her own.

Well, not really on her own; she was never on her own. Dav was there for her and she liked that. A lot.

It did give them enough time for Sophia to get her magelight out, at least. When the fight with the boars was finally over, Sophia aimed the light in the right direction.

Something gleamed from the side of the tree. It looked like worked metal, so they moved closer. A treasure chest of some sort seemed plausible, but it wasn’t in the right place for that; it was on the outside of a large branch.

Sophia frowned and moved closer. They hadn’t seen any mechanical monsters, so it was probably not a monster; it was probably a cache. 

She had to get entirely too close before it was clear what she was looking at: a knife stuck in the tree branch. It looked like a small carving knife, perhaps a carpenter’s tool, rather than a fighting knife, but they wouldn’t know until they got a better look. “That’s not a natural treasure.”

“No, it isn’t,” Dav agreed. “Want me to go get it? Revexy didn’t mention any worked items as treasure but I don’t see how it can be a monster and it seems worth looking into.”

“Animated weaponry or telekinesis,” Sophia answered immediately. “I doubt it is, but I can’t rule it out. And, well. Go ahead; I can’t feel anything else so if there’s a monster elsewhere it’s as hidden as the frog … or it’s up there and I’m not seeing it. It still feels like there’s more than one thing up there.”

Dav climbed steps that didn’t exist in the air until he was level with the knife. “It’s not just a knife. There’s also a folded piece of paper pinned to the tree by the knife and a small box with a hook so that it can dangle from the knife.”

That was three items, just like Sophia felt. She had no idea why paper of all things would be magical, but it certainly sounded like it was. She had no way to tell if there was a trap of some sort from the mana, but she didn’t feel anything that seemed like one and that didn’t sound like something the World Tree would do in an Event like this one. 

Of course, the World Tree wasn’t supposed to be leaving behind worked goods, either. If this was left by someone participating in the Event, it could be trapped, though Sophia had no idea why anyone would do that. 

“Maybe touch it with your sword and try to pull it into your Event Inventory? That seems to work.” It worked on the jade frog, at least. “Be ready to stab it instead if it turns out to be a mimic.”

The knife, note, and box were not a mimic; they disappeared into Dav’s Event Inventory the moment he tried.

The final interesting encounter of the Event happened two hours before the end when they found an actual treasure chest sitting in a clearing. It wasn’t the first chest they’d found, but it was the first one that wasn’t even partially hidden. It also felt funny to Sophia, and when she pulled out her magelight and searched around the box, she saw a small leather pouch nearly hidden under the chest. That was enough of a reason to back off.

There was only one thing that was likely to be and unlike a fragile glass butterfly, a mimic was not a good matchup for Sophia and Dav. They could handle things that were relatively fragile, since both of them could punch above their weight, but there was no reason to believe a mimic would be fragile and every reason to believe it wouldn’t be. 

The chest looked like it was heavy wood banded with steel. Both Sophia and Dav could get through that if it was all mundane materials, but it would take some effort. The mimic was almost certainly tougher than mundane wood and steel, which meant they’d have to target its hopefully more vulnerable insides when it revealed them. They’d be more mobile than it was, but if they couldn’t hurt it from a distance that didn’t matter.

Sophia called Revexy’s team over to handle the mimic. It was a fun fight to watch, unlike most of the others. The mimic tried to eat Revexy repeatedly; even when someone else got between her and the monster, it dodged around them to go after the healer. In many ways, it made the fight easier, but it also meant Revexy had no chance to heal anyone until the fight was over. 

Sophia felt only a little better about skipping the fight when she saw that Revexy’s team had to kill the mimic by attacking its guts through the mouth of the chest. It took three of them to hold it in place long enough for a fourth to stab it while Revexy dodged the tentacles it used as legs. The method wouldn’t have worked with only her and Dav, but it would still have been fun to try. Maybe they’d see a third upgrade mimic at some point and have the chance.