Finding The Temple

With my mana bar refilled, I press onwards, walking leisurely to the closest hill. Conservation of energy is also important, which is why I’m not hustling more. Once I get to the crest, I survey the landscape once more. The environment looks fairly consistent in every direction, so there are a couple of ways I could approach this.

I could pick a random direction and start walking, but I don’t fully like that idea. There’s a smarter way. Deciding to test something, I turn back to the small area I just came from, and use my ice magic to shape a statue. It’s a crude outline of Ivy, not very refined due to my lack of practice in the details of shaping my ice constructs, but it works well enough.

Doing that cost me another 200MP, so while I wait for it to regenerate, I cross over the crest, turn away from the statue and sit down. I stand back up and check once my mana bar is refilled. The statue is still there, which is really useful. I know from previous experimentation that my ice constructs don’t disappear with time, and if the dungeon doesn’t auto remove them, I should be able to use them to mark where I’ve already been.

Satisfied with my discovery, I create another statue on the top of this hill to mark it as explored, before turning to the rest of the environment. I scan the horizon carefully, looking for any signs of either the temple, or a barrier wall. I can’t see the temple, but I do manage to spot the haze of a barrier wall, a little ways off to my right.

I walk to it, avoiding clusters of lizalfos as I do. Once I reach the barrier, I look down it both ways, trying to see if I can spot the nearest joining edge. I manage to see it, and foregoing energy conservation for the moment, I take off sprinting at top speed towards it. It’s time to approach this mathematically and see just how large the area is that I have to search.

Once I reach the next edge, I turn and run the length of it too, running the entire perimeter of the barrier. I find that it’s a square shaped barrier, and thanks to my high mental stats, calculating distances like this is fairly easy. Each side is roughly 2km long, leading to an area of 4km2. Assuming a gridlike structure and that each valley is roughly 100 metres apart, that gives roughly 400 gridpoints to search.

Of course, I don’t need to search all of them. The most efficient way to search is to break the grid in halves of decreasing size until I can narrow in on where the temple entrance is. Thanks to my scouting of the barrier limits, I can also mark off all the points within the immediate view of the perimeter. I take another rest for a moment, eat a snack and have some water, before continuing with my search.

The next hour is rather uneventful for the most part. I keep my pace to a light jog and do my best to avoid large clusters of lizalfos, taking out smaller groups whenever I see them and constructing statues in my wake. With my high agility, a “light jog” pace is still fairly quick, but also slow enough to keep me rested and my mana bar almost always topped off.

I cross off gridpoints mathematically, walking the barrier length parallel to the perimeter, then diagonally. Nothing unfortunately, so I start to cross off other gridpoints in my mental map. I also start to run into more problems, as I need to start taking more specific paths to search particular areas.

This happens particularly when I run into a large group of lizalfos with colour variants that I haven’t seen before. Throwing out rapid observes, I manage to ascertain 3 different things: among them are fire and ice lizalfo variants that throw out elemental attacks, they also have ranged specific lizalfos in the group, and there’s a total of 13 of them, all of which have aggroed onto me.

Shit. Thinking quickly and remembering from the observes that fire-breath lizalfos are weak to ice, I fire out blasts of ice in rapid succession. The first and third find their mark, the second misses by a hair. 2 lizalfos disintegrate and I have a little less to worry about.

Before I can do anything else, a volley of arrows are racing towards me. Dodging swiftly to the side, I feel the small impact of one of them hitting mana shield. That spell is such a lifesaver for me. The remaining fire-breath lizalfo is already spitting flames at me, and I retaliate with more ice magic. Taking down weaker enemies first is always a good strategy, and enemies that have a weakness to the magic I’m best at are easy pickings for me.

I dodge again to one side as a regular lizalfo slashes its sword at me. It keeps on the aggressive, and I manifest a sword of my own to parry. A shield in my other hand allows me to block yet more arrows from the ranged units, as I deflect the lizalfos attacks, rapidly hacking away at its defences. As it dissipates into golden mist, so too does my sword.

I don’t hesitate for a second, moving fluidly onto the next enemy. Deflecting a blast of ice from one of the ice-breath lizalfos, I launch thorn chains at the other two, yanking hard on them as soon as they connect. The lizard creatures stumble off balance, their aim redirected at their comrades. It’s too late for them to stop their spell and they launch balls of solid ice straight at the other ranged lizalfos.

The bow wielding lizalfos scatter, diving off into different directions and I take advantage of the chaos and test how well my fire spell works on the ice-breath lizalfos. The answer is not very, it’s a pretty low level spell with not a whole lot of damage, fairly ineffective against a level 90 opponent.

Mana bolt is a little more effective, so I fire as many as I can before they can recover. I manage to tear through one of the ice-breathe lizalfos and leave another wounded. I finish it off with an axe cut across its neck, and I now only have 7 of them remaining. I’m painfully aware in that moment that I’m not the best equipped to fight enemies with high ice resistance, and that I need to upgrade my arcane spells.

The remaining group of lizalfos consists of one ice-breath variant, three bow wielding lizalfos, and three melee units. They’ve recovered by now and have already coordinated an attack on me, all at once. I send out a wave of freezing magic in an effort to slow them down, and leverage my superior speed to circle around them, avoiding the three charging melee fighters entirely.

Before they can react, I’ve already frozen and shattered one of them. Six to go. My senses tell me that I’ve missed something and I look up in alarm to see a ball of solid ice about a foot from my face. I move but I’m too late and the spell slams into the side of my head. Thankfully mana shield tanks the impact, but it’s still 400 mana obliterated. This is not a fun way to be reminded that my ice elemental resistance only applies to my health and armour, not my mana shield spell.

I better end this quickly. I start swinging my hand at the closest melee lizalfo while manifesting a mace, using the existing momentum of my hand to generate power without sapping too much of my strength. In the same moment, I conjure another thorn chain, sending it hurtling at the remaining ice-breath lizalfo and yanking it towards me as it stabs into the creature.

The mace impacts and my enemy is sent flying to the right. Dodging more arrows and throwing out a second thorn chain, I briefly dismiss my ice weapon to reposition my arm, then manifest an axe in a two handed, overhead swing at the next closest one. I aim slightly to the left to avoid the massive horn sticking out of it’s head, instead slamming the axe down right on its eye.

Greenish blood spurts out, and I fire a mana bolt directly at its face to finish it off. It disintegrates and I dodge out of the way again as more arrows head my way. I use another thorn chain to pull the ice breath lizalfo the rest of the way towards me, bringing my axe back for another powerful swing, the momentum of the backswing knocking another one off balance.

I bring the axe forward, heavily denting the ice-breath lizalfos armour, but not managing to cleave through. Spinning out of the way of yet more arrows, I opt for a simple knife and stab at the creature’s neck. It gurgles and a second stab turns it into golden dust. With what I consider the biggest threat out of the way, taking down the remaining four lizalfos is a piece of cake.

The knife is pretty effective and to combine it with my agility means using tactics closer to an assassin. It is dangerously intoxicating to be able to dart between enemies and take them down so quickly with only a couple of cuts and stabs. Without their strength in numbers to overwhelm me with simultaneous attacks, none of them can see me coming.

At the end of the fight, I check my mana bar. It’s down to half, and I sigh. Bit of a waste, but that’s alright. I have a quick regeneration rate, and it won’t be too long before I’m back up to a full bar again. I take the opportunity to sit down and rest for a few minutes. Thanks to Gamer’s Body, I can go a lot longer than most without rest, but resting when I can is still a good idea to be in peak performance.

After resting for ten minutes and eating some snacks, I stand back up again to continue on my search for the temple. And as I cross over the very next hill, I spot it. The very clear entrance to a temple. It’s a small entrance, with the opening looking just big enough for me to fit through, but it’s definitely the one. Complete with twin columns holding up the triangular roof, set in a small wall of stone. I breathe a sigh of relief that I’ve found it. Now it’s time for the second part of the dungeon.