I Built This City Chapter 49: Chapter 49

Read chapter 49 of I Built This City by ThePudding on NovelPedia.

Hunter Ellen The snowfall had picked up about halfway back to Onroc. It wasn’t a problem for Ellen. She’d waffled a little bit about which Class to take when she had hit 11 so rapidly, but in the end she’d opted to go for Landkeeper again, as she hadn’t gotten the chance to truly explore its capabilities before she’d died. It had too much potential to ignore, even if she could have leaned more toward a druid-like profession if she’d wanted. The nice thing about a Landkeeper was it was very hard to get lost, even in the snow. The heavy swirling flakes reduced visibility and forced Ellen and her sister-self to a slow trudge, but they managed to mostly stay on the right path. When they drifted, it wasn’t hard for Ellen to correct and bring the two of them back on the right track. It gave her an excuse to look at the Settlement Interface, as well. She’d been examining it more often, of late. Places where she’d been more recently had more information available, and she could even see that despite what she’d told Merchant earlier, there were in fact two wolf packs prowling the forest. Neither were anywhere close to Onroc as yet, but the fact that she could get an estimate of wildlife in the forest after she’d walked through it was both interesting and powerful. She’d had to rotate the map and zoom in to see where Apprentice and Healer had died… and it concerned her when she found the cave. Their exploration inward had revealed the part of the cave they’d travelled through, but now that the twins were dead it was unable to show the rest of the cave system. Or maybe the map only expanded where Ellen went, because she was a Landkeeper . She couldn’t be sure, yet. What she could be sure of was that the dungeon’s area of influence, even with the somewhat fuzzy borders, normally wouldn’t extend into that tunnel. Now that she could examine clearly, she could see the slight bulge away from the mostly-spherical dungeon influence area that pushed into the area. The dungeon had explicitly expanded toward the mana plume. Some people did think dungeons were thinking beings, though their intelligence was likely alien to that of humans. This didn’t prove that this one could think—plants would grow toward sun, and it stood to reason the dungeon wanted the mana plume—but it was one more piece of evidence that the dungeon itself had goals and ambitions. Its intent to kill any Ellen that walked into it was now more worrying than ever. She’d have to talk to the others about it more thoroughly when they got back. Beside her, Smith slipped and stumbled, but Ellen had already seen the footing was treacherous and extended her arm out. At least, she was pretty sure she’d seen Smith about to slip. She hadn’t really thought about it when she held out her arm, and Smith hadn’t said anything when she latched onto it to steady herself. “Mmf, we need someone who can predict the weather,” Smith grumbled. “I’m pretty sure that’s a Tier 3 thing to get anything resembling accuracy,” Ellen replied with a soft huff. She tugged her scarf up and tucked her free hand into a pocket, once Smith released her. Neither had worn gloves or mittens for this trip, so her fingers were starting to go numb. Smith said nothing. She’d probably already known that, and was just grumbling about the snowstorm. And it was a storm, if a mild one. They might have trouble getting in and out of the longhouse if they weren’t careful about it. This would put on hold the plans for building during winter, despite Carpenter’s new ability. Although without a similar one for Mason to set and cure mortar, they had limitations anyway. A few more stumbles finally brought the two into the clearing, and after a long trek that had seen light fading as dusk approached, the longhouse was within sight. The promise of relief from the cold put more energy into their steps, and at last Ellen thumped on the door to be let in. It was, of course, chaos inside… but not the kind of chaos she had expected. “Hunter! Smi