My pen pals contributed the necessary Frost Flowers and Black Pearls I needed to craft the two Surcoats I needed. I presented them to Balthazar and he approved them.
"You know your way around rings and robes, Wizard," said the ghostly crafter. "But are you ready for a true test of your skill?"
"Bring it," I said, grinning.
"Very well, I need you to craft me some furniture," he said. "Looking around this place, it looks like it needs some new bookshelves. Go to Toshio and learn the recipe for the Crimson Book Stand, then craft two of them and bring them to me. If you do well, you will earn the right to be a Master Artisan. You will need a housing Crafting Station to make them."
I shivered. This was it, once I completed this task, I would be able to craft my first house! "Already ahead of you there, buddy. I bought a housing crafting station weeks ago in Marleybone and bought the recipe while exploring Mooshu! I'll be right back."
It wouldn't be for a while, thoguh - I had everything... except Black Pearls. I was several short, but I knew Amber would come through for me. In the meantime, I had to regroup with Grace and work to find the Portal Stone to the Necropolis; Cyrus and Halston were waiting for us to get to the Labyrinth and get our goods!
"Rra Bookworm told us that the Stone Keeper is in the Plaza of Conquests, to the north," said Grace.
"Well, let's go there and talk to him," I said. "I doubt he'll give us a portal stone though."
Sure enough, Laszlo Starblade, the current stone keeper, refused us and ordered us to get a couple of recommendations. We had to first help a general defeat Sisyphus, a vile draconian warlord. (He took our hits like a champ but then I sneezed on him and he crumpled. :p)
Then we had to go through an obstacle course of enemies to get to a book detailing the history of Dragonspyre's wars. Even after that, we had to do some battles to learn more about Dragonspyre's history of war...
First we battled Mavra Flamewing. She had two glowing motes for allies which cast shields on her. But she didn't realize I had Shatter until her shields vanished and my ninja pigs hit her. ^_^ (This girl is Storm, so Ninja Pigs saved the day here. The Protection Poxs will spam Elemental and Spirit Shields on her, so Grace took those guys out first. Pierce or Shatter on Mavra because you ain't gonna stop them from placing all six types of shields on her and nerfing your attacks!)
We then got a crystal and summoned the Earth Elemental, a champion golem who had inspired rebellion. Its was a Life beast so we had little trouble fighting it. The Jade Oni was stronger but it took longer to take this guy out. (Ugh, boosts had hit the bottom of my deck. At least we finally got rid of that Kraken treasure card!)
Next we had to fight Sandor Spearcaller, who was a master of traps. I remembered Chester Droors trying to teach us about traps, but this 'teacher' had motes that cast traps and blades and made life miserable for us. We defeated him, though. (He's Ice-elemental and has two Damage Poxs which will spam Balanceblade and Iceblade - luckily they wasted most of the Blades on each other and we got a Storm Elemental out to spare us from a couple of rounds of damage[it went down though], but Sierra still took a ton of damage from the Ice Traps and Curses that were placed on her.)
We then used another crystal to summon a giant kraken called the Sea Lord, which was storm so Grace had trouble. I shuddered - I had heard that the great Ethan Mythblade had been defeated by it and was scared when the Sea Lord focused on me, but Ethan didn't have a Storm Elemental to protect him from the brunt of the damage... but we both had a storm buddy who Prismed and hit for the fina blow. The difference was MY Storm Buddy finished the creep off with Sirens. (This guys has as much health as Jotun. Unlike Zenmaster Blue's bad initial encounter with the Sea Lord, it didn't use Myth Shield, but Ninja Pigs still didn't one-shot him. We will need to start focusing on using spare training points - we're getting close to Grandmaster and Sun enchants - to get Death up to Feint, or at least buy the Amulet of the Feint to get that spell for them. The second arc will be much harder without that spell.)
Laszlo was impressed by our skill. "I hid the last portal stone in a vault in the Great Chasm," he said. I decided it was high time for a tea break...
Especially after what Milos said about the place...
[To be continued...]
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