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Chapter 11 by CrusaderofTruth CrusaderofTruth

In which direction do you head?

To the mountains.

Scaling up the cliffside, you begin to head towards the craggy passes.

It is a long climb, mostly uneventful, (look, a bird!) and you pass the time by running the various contraptions and traps you can now make through your mind. At some point, you recall the ore-extracting knowledge you obtained, and consider what possible use you could have for 'malachite' and 'hematite'. It's a mystery, although you keep an eye out for signs of these types of rocks.

Crawling past one small cave, you spot a den of larger spiders, guarding clusters of eggs, large silken cocoons of prey tied up nearby. You give them a wide berth, and you feel... distinctly detached from them, which is an odd feeling. Before, you had always felt pity for your siblings, who died over and over again, seemingly unaware that they were stuck in an endless cycle of ****, and sometimes jealous of their ignorance. Pushing the feeling aside, you climb higher.

Colder and colder it gets, wind blustering over you. Arriving at the entrance to one craggy pass, you press forward, past several loose rocks and boulders. As you wander through this pass, you open your statistic menu, and switch to the options page. Reading through them again, you spot a few new options. One is simply titled -additional HUD information-. Selecting it, you suddenly see a shift near a hawk sitting close by. Above it, you can see a numerical health display, the name of the creature, (Rock Hawk, in this instance), and the level of said creature (Level 1). Buzzing with excitement, you suddenly anticipate the next creature you see, hero or no. Picking that buggy option is really working out so far!

Night falls, and you resume walking through the pass. You are untroubled by the need for sleep and food, like you know heroes are, for whatever reason. You know certain creatures and monsters need food and sleep, but you never did. Perhaps it was because the designers didn't bother, what with your environment being so small. However, just because you don't need to, doesn't mean you CAN'T...

After some hours of walking, you emerge into a large open plateau, with a camp in the middle. The camp is surrounded by a pretty shitty ring of palisades, with several inconsistent gaps, and some small grubby looking humanoids, wielding spears. Goblins, it seems, from the green skin and pointy ears, and total lack of the physical brawn that would paint them as orcs. The two specimens you can see guarding the front of the camp look bored and sleepy. Off to the side of the camp, you see a few posts, with some fellow spiders tied to them. By their relaxed stance, they seem to be happily slaved to these insipid goblins. These spiders are larger, tarantulas of some sort, equipped with crude saddles, easily large enough to carry two, maybe three goblins.

A curious dilemma. Nothing is stopping you from simply bypassing the camp and carrying on, although the potential experience from slaughtering a camp on your own is very tempting, although difficult. Possibly freeing your fellow arachnids is a bonus, although whether or not they would follow you in an uprising is... questionable, at best.

How do you approach this?

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