The Arcane Archer - Chapter 30 Underground Hot Spring

I watched the rest of the fights and laughed here and there at some stupid stuff they did. Grel tried running around the area to tire out Gunther but Gunther just threw a fire-bolt at him and successfully knocked him out in one hit.

Flint (The bard) tried seducing Vondal but I think we can all see where that ended up. During the matches I also occasionally poked at my bruises to see if they still hurt or not and they still did.

Eventually training came to an end with the General telling all of us to go clean ourselves, get something to eat, and then go to sleep so that we’d be prepared for training tomorrow morning. Hearing the General, everyone started leaving the room and heading towards this worlds version of showers.

A couple of minutes passed before we eventually made it to a giant open area with half of it being filled with hot water that was steaming the entire time. On the side of the rooms were small little areas to personally wash yourselves before you actually went in the hot water or so said my group.

Everyone immediately stripped down to their underwear and rushed over to the little cleaning areas. I just shook my head in disappointment from their lack of embarrassment but then again, they’ve probably been doing this their entire lives.

I bought a bathing suit for 15 System points, used the system to equip it and store my gear, and then went to go clean myself. The water used for cleaning wasn’t that warm and made me actually shiver a bit from it. After finishing that up and making myself still decent, I joined the others in the Hot Spring to “unwind” from all of today stress and training.

They all jumped in but as I got closer to the spring, I noticed how hot it was. Just by standing about 20 or so feet away from it, I was sweating like a the one guy from the Airplane movie by Paramount pictures .

Forcing myself to take one step forwards, I expected {Fire Resistance} to make it easier for me to handle the heat and level up but instead I was rewarded with the {Minor Heat Resistance} skill. Asking the system why, it said that {Fire Resistance} only protected me from heat generated from an actual flame while {Minor Heat Resistance} was just for heat in general.

By the time I finally got to the hot spring, {Minor Heat Resistance} already leveled up to level 4 and even then I was still only barely manageable. Dipping just a toe in, I took 15 Scalding damage and immediately had {Minor Heat Resistance} level up.

Eventually {Minor Heat Resistance} got to level 8 at which point it became akin to a very hot bath, though to get to this point, I took almost 100 damage. Once I finally was in, the group came over and talked to me to help pass the time.

Around a half-hour passed as we enjoyed the heat and talked about stuff. I was able to convince them to talk to me about the world from their perspectives and all I learned was pretty much the same from Eric from the inn except what it was like for them.

Thankfully, this was enough to finish the quest that I had gotten from what I would say was around 13 chapters ago if this was some sort of story, which it isn’t.

The basis of the quest was just to learn more about the past from other race’s perspectives and the reward from it was a random high-ranking Human skill. It asked if I wanted the skill now or wait collect it later (which I found no point in) so I accepted it immediately.

[Rolling die for random high-ranking Human skill….

…..

…..

Die has landed on {Human Adaptability} but because user has the Ultimate version of skill, die will be re-rolled.

Re-rolling…

….

….

Die has landed on {Quick Improvisational Thinking} allowing you to think of something on the spot by allowing you to use past experiences to think of a solution.]

I stared at the skill in confusion as I assumed that literally every race was able to do it. Shaking my head to stop thinking about it and just accepting the skill, the group and I finally got out, dried ourselves off, got dressed, and finally went to the mess hall to get something to fill our stomachs after the hour long training session with the General.

At the mess hall, there was a lot of meat and mushrooms with some things of bread here and there. There was also of course the weird drink that the dwarfs seemed to love and I was still thinking about avoiding just because it irked me wrong.

However, even though I was thinking about it, I was unable to avoid it. Flint brought over around 10 entire mugs filled with the stuff and put one in front of me. This mug had only a little bit and everyone in the group was cheering me on to drink it, even Vondal who as a Paladin, I was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to peer pressure someone.

I tried refusing multiple times but eventually I drank a bit of it and honestly it went against my expectations. Though it smelled and looked both rotten and foul, it actually tasted pretty sweet and wasn’t that bad.
for visiting.

But it also made me drunk immediately.

My vision almost immediately became useless as everything I saw was blurred and constantly moving around with every little head sway and my attempted movements almost never did anything I wanted it to do.

Time seemed to pass in a flash and the next thing I knew, my head hurt.

And holy fucking shit did I mean my head hurt.

Whatever happened after trying the drink I couldn’t really remember. There was some laughing and a lot of puking from what I could vaguely recall if not for the taste I had in my mouth when I woke up back in bed where I woke up from the first fight.

I got myself into a sitting position and cradled my head. Taking a quick peak at a long list of notifications my drunk self didn’t pay attention to, I saw that I had level 4 {Alcohol Resistance} and {Headache Resistance} leveled up 3 more times.

I could only imagine how bad the headache would be without the skill being at it’s current level, even though it was only level 5. Looking just below that notification from the system, I groaned in self disappointment at what I saw.

Apparently, I was wrong about my drunk self not looking at the notifications. It seems I was actually so smart that to allow myself to stay drunk in my drunken mess that I was, I had the system delete both skills whenever I was rewarded them. Luckily I didn’t ask it to make it impossible for me to get those skills anymore or else I would be dying.

In good new though I had a long rest and got 8 more points into Intelligence which increases the effectiveness of my spells and ability to learn things. Wooo!

Pulling out my magical bottle of water that could hold 10 gallons of water and started chugging like my life depended on it and from what I could feel from the headache, it really seemed like it did. The headache went down a bit as I replaced the much needed bodily fluids that kept my life blood nice and healthy….

I’m never saying/thinking those words again. That was just horrible.

Anyways, I looked around the room and saw that literally everyone was fine. I blame it on their dwarven resilience or something. It probably gave them advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance against poison damage too!

(Author Note- Good job if you thought this was funny, I thought it was but my friends just shook their head in disappointment.)

Getting out of bed, I went to the bathroom, looked in horror at myself in the mirror, cleaned myself up, and then joined the others on their way to breakfast. While there, they were constantly talking about what I did last night and I had no clue what was true or false because some of those things seemed highly impossible and others made a lot of sense.

One of them was me apparently using my bow to try and shoot a roast turkey out of the air that someone threw. Then, miss dramatically and hit them in the neck with the turkey landing on their lap. This one seemed probable.

Another one was that I joined Flint in a mission to seduce the ever living hell out of everything I saw. and I. Mean. EVERYTHING….

Fine, I tried to seduce a chair….

Not my finest hour but hey, I was drunk…

I got up from where I was seated and went to get more food to calm my mind and stomach.

“Fuck you guys.” I said as I passed them.

They just stayed silent for a few seconds before starting to cry and laugh at the same time.

“Really. I fucking hate you guys.”