Monster Hunting 401: A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure by Andrew Karevik (best books to read txt) 📕

got a Mind Blank ability. Second, we need to figure out how to boil water so fast that it’ll turn to steam almost instantly.”

“Interesting,” Trig said, rubbing his chin. “Hence why we’re at a lake. I thought you were stalling. Why do we need steam?”

“To kill the Eldest. Dehydration effects are extremely potent since the beast is made out of mostly, er, liquid. If we produce a high concentration of steam, we can raise the humidity and temperature rather quickly, killing it as fast as possible. Other methods, attacking or setting a fire would tip it off. But if we release a burst of steam towards the beast, it might die faster than it can think.”

“Huh,” Trig said. “That’s an interesting idea.”

I pointed to a few of the barrels that were hanging on the outside of the Stabwagon. Now empty, they were meant to carry large amounts of food, food that we had eaten weeks ago on our journey. Each barrel was enough to carry about 40 gallons of water. Would that be enough? Well, we had to find out.

Trig went into action, carrying the barrels to the lake, filling them up and then rolling them back to the wagon. I, with my increased strength but limited mobility, was able to hoist each barrel and rig it to the sides of the Stabwagon, so that they were hanging off. We had eight barrels total, four that could hold 40 gallons, four that could hold about half of that.

Carefully strapping the barrels to both sides of the wagons allowed it to appear like the wagon’s purpose was to carry such a heavy load. We made sure to make each side match, in order to create an aesthetic that wouldn’t be seen as strange or conspicuous. And, in order to draw attention away from the barrels, we placed the large gem atop the wagon, for all to see.

Once the water was in place, we then had to determine how exactly we would turn the liquid into steam. Fortunately, Trig knew a little something about that. His education from Maxwell’s Breach had given him some insight into how physics worked, though not enough for him to explain to me effectively.

The first step was to heat the water up, not enough to convert to steam, but enough to be primed for the boiling point. We achieved this by collecting stones and heating them in the cauldron, coating each stone in Firnin, which for some reason was able to retain a significant amount of heat. The alchemical substance was also denser than water, meaning it would settle at the bottom of the barrels. We had to use the stones instead of just pure Firnin simply because we didn’t have enough of the stuff. The rocks would heat the Firnin, which would then transfer the heat to the water, slowly but surely. At least, that’s what Trig thought. He made far too many jokes about not paying attention in class for my taste. But what else were we going to do?

Each barrel lid had an explosive attached to it, with a timer set for exactly five minutes. The explosives that Trig had put together, using the rest of alchemical ingredients, were going to be extremely hot, but not very strong. He had basically rigged up “dud” charges, grenades that could burst a great deal of flame and energy out, but not in a radius strong enough to hurt anything. Terrible for the battlefield, but exactly what we needed.

The third and final step was rigging the corks. I drilled a hole in the top of each barrel, then corked it up, running a string to each cork, until they were all connected via one long rope. Yanking the rope would uncork every barrel at once, releasing the trapped steam inside. That was plan A, an attempt to somewhat secretly release the steam into the area. If, for some reason, the heated gas didn’t move fast enough or the Eldest realized something was amiss, Plan B was for a second rope to be pulled, ripping the lids off of each barrel.

It took half a day of work, but we made a lot of progress. We couldn’t afford to spend the bombs to test the system out, so really, we had to rely on luck and prayers to see that it would work as intended. There was another failsafe, a desperate last resort measure that Trig had put together to ensure that the water did turn into steam as quickly as possible, but it was certainly our last resort. The wagon would not survive this method, meaning we would be effectively stranded in the dark without an alchemy workshop, a charm bench and perhaps even with a destroyed gem. But that was the risk I was willing to take.

Time was of the essence, so we didn’t really have much time to do anything with the crab beast, other than to harvest it for Bloodpoints and grab a piece of its corpse for charm making later. Thankfully, we didn’t have to argue about who gained the Bloodpoints. Since this beast was definitely a giant, my Giantslayer ability allowed me to gain the full 6,000 Bloodpoints without having to harvest. Trig was free to also gain that many points, thus settling any need for squabbling between us.

“There you are,” Trig said to someone in the darkness. I turned to see a few of the humans from the village had finally arrived, only a mere half hour after we had finished all of our rigging. They had a new leader now, a man who wore the exact same armor as Eckshaw. In fact, they were so identical-looking that for a moment, I thought I was facing Eckshaw himself, only to remember what had happened.

“We’ve been waiting forever for you,” Trig continued. “What took so long?”

“Navigating these woods can be treacherous,” the armored leader said. There was no pretense of humanity in his voice here, no feeble attempt to look as if there