Chapter 8: Ch. 7- Grinding and Goblin Evolution
Following my usual routine, I wake up and eat a breakfast meal of pancakes and sausage while also having my summons eat their usual core meals alongside me. In addition to their standard meal, I threw in an extra augmenting core for each of them in preparation for their upcoming evolutions.
There's a shield bear core for Jareth and an illusion crow core for Brutus, hopefully, these cores would strengthen their evolutionary direction and improve their traits when they evolve. I've noticed as of late that Jareth seems to be reaching the limit of strength that he can have in his current form and has stopped growing altogether.
With that hardy breakfast out of the way, I head towards the gate with a full belly and plenty of energy to start out the busy day I have planned. I'm in my hunting clothes with the new dagger I had made on my hip and all of my new emergency supplies in storage ready to take out as needed.
After summoning Brutus and Jareth in preparation for our hunting, we head out into the dense evergreen forest determined to kill as many monsters as possible to raise money for better equipment and more cores, as well as to jumpstart Jareth's evolution.
Jareth looked different from what he originally looked like when I first got him only a few days ago. No longer was he a short and lanky little grey child-like goblin, instead he was taller with more muscle and had an even darker metallic looking skin closer to black than the original grey.
Before we begin hunting I told each summon what their role today would be in order to work more smoothly together. Jareth was to be the one fighting and Brutus would act as support and pick off any additional mobs that might show up. I had Brutus taking a backseat in these fights in order to jumpstart Jareth's evolution through stimulating battles with minimal support.
My hope was that these conditions against difficult monsters would drive him to the edge and push through the evolutionary wall to start off what would hopefully be an evolution that would grant him far greater abilities than he currently possessed. I could already see the credits we would be raking in with the stronger monsters we would be able to fight after Jareth's evolution.
They quickly tore through the outer forest full of tier 1's, they hardly put up any resistance at this point. The weak monsters would be wiped out after a single swing of a club or bite from the jagged maws of Brutus.
By the time we reached the edge of the tier two middle area of the forest, they had killed 14 tier 1's by not avoiding any potential battles, despite not really slowing down and stopping to fight the monsters.
Jareth had only a few scratches to show for the battles, which was caused by him being ganged up on by 3 giant centipedes that had made a den at the base of one of the trees that our party had gotten near.
Brutus took on one and allowed Jareth to fight off the other two, by sacrificing his body, Jareth was able to deal a crushing blow to one and then took on and killed the other shortly after. Thankfully due to the centipedes' low tier and limited capabilities, as well as Jareth's tough hide, there were only a few shallow cuts on his left arm.
After taking a short break for lunch and feeding my summons another goblin and wolf core respectively, we finally entered the tier 2 area of the forest with plenty of time left for additional hunting.
The first monsters we encountered were a pair of cement frogs when we had neared a small pond. They managed to avoid the sticky projectiles shot out by the frogs and ended them quickly when they got within range.
Luckily their speed was greater than the cement balls shot out from the frog's mouths, I saw what happened to anything hit by them and it's safe to say nothing would be moving anytime soon when hit. The balls themselves were fairly small but exploded in a wave of a quick-drying cement-like substance that completely covered anything remotely near it.
Continuing our crusade in the increasingly dense forest of giant green trees, our party was surprise attacked by a spade beaked sparrow. It had targeted Jareth after recognizing who seemed to pose the most danger, it dove down from it's heightened position while aiming its sharp beak towards Jareth's neck seemingly to cut him down in one swoop.
Unfortunately for the sparrow, the surprise attack only managed to create a medium-sized cut on the thick-skinned goblin's shoulder. The next time the bird monster came around, Jareth was ready and smacked it down with extreme prejudice, killing it instantly with a great swing to it's reinforced head that snapped its' neck rather than crushing the skull, likely due to the mutation of its' beak and head into essentially a moving arrow.
Since Jareth had yet to evolve despite the battles he had faced so far, I gave him a hobgoblin core in hopes that this would push the matured goblin over the edge. After resting and assimilating the tier 2 core, Jareth was ready for a fight and felt that the next monster he fought would allow him to evolve, which he conveyed more through the bond than through any actions on his part, although he did seem to have an unusual bounce in his step likely in anticipation of the fight to come.
Luckily for Jareth, the next monster we came across after having rested enough for the wound on his shoulder to heal, was a steel-shelled turtle which had outstanding defensive capabilities but little offense whatsoever and relied on predators not being able to break its' shell and eventually giving up.
Jareth was up to the challenge presented by the overgrown turtle with its' cauldron-like shell and quickly began to slam his club onto the shell while avoiding the head that would shoot out from the front and snap at anything that came close enough to it.
Jareth realized the futility of hitting the shell with his club and instead baited the turtle after a little prompting from me. The turtle eventually fell for the trap and when Jareth got close enough and acted like he was about to slam at the shell with his club again, the turtle shot out its head to snap at Jareth with it sharp and powerful jaws.
As soon as Jareth saw something begin to shoot out from the shell he redirected his swing to intercept the head of the troublesome turtle and managed to get lucky and directly hit the turtles' head smashing its skull in.
Jareth let out a yell of victory and feeling that he was close to evolving cut out and ate the core from the turtle after receiving my permission to do so. He seemed to feel that the core was vital to him advancing, so I saw no reason to deny his request.
Not 5 minutes later after the steel shelled turtle core had been assimilated, Jareth began to glow with a strong light and the physical changes to the summon could briefly be seen as it got larger and its limbs extended and bulked up making the former goblin look even ganglier.
The changes eventually came to an end and what remained was a Steel Hobgoblin with an iron mace in its hand rather than the wooden club it had possessed earlier. One of the most noticeable changes aside from the sudden growth was the color and pattern of Jareth's skin, his skin now resembled wrought iron and had overlapping scale patterns on his skin as a result of feeding him cores from multiple metal reptiles.
Another change was the bone like armor covering Jareth's shoulders, elbows, and knees, very likely due to the influence of the iron shelled turtle core that he ate right before he evolved.
As Jareth was changing, I noticed small motes of light drift off from him and flow towards me and oddly enough disappeared into my chest. With each mote, I felt small changes in my body and realized that this was the feedback enhancement from having a summon evolve after having bonded with them.
By the end I felt boundless strength in my body, I surmised it was close to the strength of a tier 1 monster. My skin also changed slightly, with it becoming tougher and darker as the evolution process continued, I supposed Jareth's notable trait of a tough defense had passed on to me a bit and would be a great tool for survival in the coming monster break.
The last thing I noticed was a feeling of boundless energy infusing into me, and guessed that greater stamina had been transferred over to me as well, with all of the lethargy leaving my sore muscles after traveling through the woods all day. These feelings became understated after the process ended, but I could still feel the noticeable effects within my body, which I surmised to be permanent.
To say that I was ecstatic would be an understatement, and I wanted to immediately test out how strong Jareth was now. Figuring it wasn't necessary for Brutus to remain for the coming test, I unsummoned him and allowed him to rest after working so hard today, I would need him fresh and ready to fight should anything dangerous occur.
Jareth and I then went off further into the tier 2 forest looking for enemies to test out the power of Jareth as he was now. First, we stumbled upon a large and grizzled looking Shield bear and figuring that it would be the perfect enemy to pit himself against, Jareth went off to face the bear.
It soon became apparent that although the bear was strong and had a powerful defense, it was no match for Jareth who quickly dominated the bear with crushing blows from his iron mace and receiving only a few shallow scratches in return due to Jareth's newly upgraded defensive hide. With a blow to the skull after having both shoulders of the bear fractured, it quickly died with almost nothing to show for its' struggle.
Figuring we still hadn't reached the limit of Jareth's abilities, we continued our happy little carnage spree and quickly killed 4 more tier two monsters before deciding to call it a day as daylight we beginning to wane. We went through the outer edge of the forest, escaping into the relative safety of the open plains and settled down to retrieve all of the cores remaining in the bodies of the dead monsters we had killed. After finishing the messy dismantling, we headed towards the gate to make it back to civilization.
After making it back to the city, I went to the core exchange and turned in all of the remaining cores we had harvested today, except for the bear's core which I would feed to Jareth in the future. I received a total of 84 credits due to hunting many more tier 2 monsters than usual.
After that, I went towards the Summoner Association, as usual, to sell off the bodies in my storage. After getting in line for the familiar association attendant Max, when it finally became my turn, I sold off the 3 centipedes for 5 credits each, the rest of the tier 1 bodies for 33 credits in total.
I also sold all of the shield bear's body except for the hide and claws, which sold for 20 credits, but would have been 50 credits if I had sold it in its' entirety.
The 4 tier 2 corpses were sold for 25 credits each, and the steel shell turtle was sold minus the shell for a total of 20 credits, I planned for the shell to be commissioned into a shield and would have been 55 credits had I sold the shell as well.
This made a total profit today of 272 credits, and my total amount of credits became 320 credits after a 4 credit dinner at a nice restaurant which I treated myself to after the success of evolving Jareth into a variant hobgoblin.
Once my dinner was finished, I went to find the same leather-smith who had made my wolf hide jacket which I wore currently, and commissioned him to make another jacket with a hood this time out of the bear hide, along with a pair of boots and knuckle gloves.
Any extra hide after the clothing was made, the leather-smith would be able to keep and as such he only charged 25 credits for the 3 articles of clothing. He told me that the order would be available in 3 days' time as it was a large order.
With that out of the way, I then went to the weapon-smith who had made the dagger and commissioned him to make a shield out of the steel turtles' shell. I requested for the handle to be made out of a shield bear claw, with the remaining 19 claws to be turned into throwing knives.
I also commissioned for a bandolier to be made to house them so that I could easily access them while fighting. The shield would be 30 credits due to providing the material for it, and the throwing knives would cost 20 credits due to the amount of throwing knives being made and having to use his own leather to craft the bandolier.
With 245 credits remaining after commissioning the equipment which would all be ready in 3 days' time, I decided that I would once more expand my storage by 5 cubic meters giving me a total storage space of 17 cubic meters and leaving me with a measly 120 credits after all of my spending. With nothing else left to do for the day, I left for home and after feeding each of my summons, I went to sleep.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone