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My early dinner ended up being a large pair of sandwiches that I ate in the living room while watching some of a movie with my siblings. Thankfully, it was not a newer movie so I did not need to actually watch it with them. I had already seen it so if there were ever any conversations about it then I would have no problem making a single offensive remark and not have to take part in the conversation any more.

While one of my parents were around, anyway.

Once I was back in the game after stretching out my diving chair and settling in for the night, the others were suited up and the camp was taken down in preparation to head out. Today's scouting party was already resting with a few hundred yards of distance between us and them, the snow in the area showing they had stopped trailblazing after the first fight.

Unlike the day before when the winds were only light flurries of snow and icy mist the general volume of the forest had almost doubled today with the strength of the wintry winds. Despite this, though, the others and their familiars all seemed to maintain relative comfort while riding together or about the wagons. Only a few minutes of driving the wagon into a headwind, though, I was greeted with an unpleasant notification.

[CordAniCol is being rendered inert due to local climates and conditions. -10% MVSPD until Thermal Conductivity is increased by 10%]

My current Thermal Conductivity was at seventy percent after my scorpion transferred the assimilation of an ice bird and rat to me and I STILL received a cold debuff because of today's weather. Luckily, there were several creatures we had gained numerous cores from who afforded thermal stats. Even though I could use magic to keep myself warm, it was currently safer for me to rely on an external item than spend my mana outside of combat.

Since my upper body armor was already buffed with a frost dragon core, the next obvious option was to use the same core on my coat. However, unlike the first core that brought me to fifty percent conductivity the second core only gave me another twenty percent. This was still a leeway of ten percent, but another experiment on my boots showed I only gained another twenty.

Though this brought me all of the way up to one-ten thanks to assimilation, this was only thirty percent of playroom for my body that was made up of cold sensitive parasites. Today's weather was only windy, what if tomorrow it 'rained'? Immediate fifty-degree loss of temperature in this perpetually stormy mountain forest.

As well, the others and their familiars only had fifty percent or less from the lesser cores used on the familiar armor. The familiars who did not live here needed one ice lizard core apiece at the very least while the others could make do with lesser cores like the ice rat or scorpion.

Considering the fact that everything here in this intermediate noob level area used some kind of ice magic, increases in the weather that exceed their current thermal buffering would begin shaving off of their resistances and physical stats. Instead of directly bothering the others, though, I distributed ice lizard cores to the few necessary mounts and leading familiars while giving the others most of our current stock of ice rat and sting king cores.

Cweeper distributed and used the cores throughout the camp, riding on my scorpion after using an ice lizard core on the gigantula silk riding harness on Hermes' armored tree dragon. Hermes distributed cores to the scouting party and left them to use them on their own after pushing his armored lizard hard through the 'cleared' terrain.

Thankfully, this process only took about ten minutes around the wagon and less than half and hour for Hermes to return.

Hermes, surprisingly, made a report that the scouting party had just seen its first troll leading a group of ice rats. This elite setting where the single troll was mounted and using other beasts was a testament to the actual strength of these mobs compared to the average players. However, considering Stonewall was every bit as much of a powerhouse as I was, the single troll configuration in general was confusing.

How much stronger than everybody else did the game recognize me as in order for four semi-elite enemies to attack my scouting parties in the first meet with that species? Did this not seem like the game was specifically trying to kill ME with those trolls? I mean, their eyes were on me even while fighting Go.

Out of millions of players my team was doubtlessly ranked in the top hundred of any of their preferred positions and professions by now, if not the top one hundred in their individual classes and styles. I was currently top of the world in at least one position. This alone was enough to make things dangerous for us.

I kept my map interface open at all times after receiving the troll sighting report from Hermes, not that it would display enemies but it would at least show whenever the scouting party entered combat while also keeping me aware of our position in respect to our mission region.

Right this moment we were still just a few miles out from the large circle showing our search area and afterward we would only be about ten miles from Melpomene's one to three-mile mark. If we were lucky we could get within a few miles of the mark and at least know what the actual terrain would be like.

We had already passed through numerous shallow valleys and ruined debris fall from the surrounding mountains so we knew there were plenty of elevated and low lying areas that covered entire acreage. Melpomene's mark on the map was probably just the specific area of this historically ruined settlement or city. Which would potentially be a small mountain in itself.

Despite the appearance of a troll organizing some ice rats, Stonewall was able to tank the occasion and all ensuing confrontations for the scouting party. This included over a dozen fights with no less than a dozen enemies in every confrontation. But, as our mobile fortress, that was part of his job.

As for the rest of us, we only came across two caravan confrontations. The first was a little before lunch as we neared the mission area, probably triggering a quest-related ambush of about fifteen birds and as many various tree dragons. Only a handful of these were the 'breath' using ice lizards, though, so most of them did not have any ranged attacks.

While most of the tree dragons swarmed the riders to keep them distanced from the wagons, the birds started targeting the wagons even as Hermes and Cweeper cast magic into the air. Fighting fire with fire, both of them easily impaled the ice armored birds with spears of ice. Then the tables started turning.

Now, I knew that I had agreed to try to capture less mobs, but during the caravan confrontations it was simply faster to immobilize the birds with a broad net of cordycep silk rather than try to hit them out of the sky. Instead, I left the much more rewarding tree dragons to the others to deal with.

In the second caravan confrontation we faced another set of over a dozen birds but this time they were paired with the second most dangerous enemies we had yet to face. Where trolls were the regional symbol of strength and vitality, these guys were one of the worldwide representations of speed and coordination. Wolves.

Standing almost as tall as us people, a pack of over a dozen wolves supported singled out our mounted defenders much more efficiently than the previous tree dragons two hours before. While they may not have had the defenses or vitality of tree dragons or trolls, these level fifty-five-plus 'Dire Wolves' could nimbly dance around our melee attacks and the attempts of our scorpions to grab them. Not to mention, they were smart enough to avoid the tails or pincers of our mounts while chomping at their legs.

Having Hermes and Cweeper protect the wagons and dragon with magic were the main priority for this event, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

They effectively immobilized the defenders around the wagon while the birds targeted the people around them. Our new tree dragon and scorpion mounts bore the brunt of these attacks, but much of it still splashed over onto my teammates in the first few seconds. However, those first few seconds changed everything for the wolves.

Luckily, I had foreseen the arrival of increasingly difficult enemies and made some adequate preparations for it. One stab, chop, or slash from our wetly shining weapons was enough to even the odds. The wolves may have had more than five hundred health, but they did not have more than one weapon or arrow strike and five hundred health. The first wolves to receive physical damage died out in less than ten seconds.

Just from being close to their comrades, the virulent poison from our weapons spread out through the wolves so that their movements speeds and stats dropped along with their health. Once their speed started going down, so too did they. After the second wave of attacks from both sides, there were no more winter wolves on the field.

Of course, I had almost greedily been capturing the ice birds so once the wolves were gone a few spells flew out and blew the remaining birds from the sky. Seven went into the clan store while the rest of the beasts provided us with loot. Not surprisingly, I soon learned after doing some appraisals that the wolf hides were almost on par with the mama bear hide.

Above them all were the troll skins that had density compared to elephant hide in their descriptions. Trolls and wolves just became the current main constituents for our future armor, if we ever needed it. Our current armor might be overpowered, but that was basically thanks to the same luck that brought me my titles of buffs.

What we used to make the armor was still lower grade than the region and monsters we were dealing. In the open-world, this did not matter unless you were dealing with elite mobs and such. However, in a dungeon, things turned out different.

Even though the armorer's dusk slayer armor had been overpowered, the berserker boss in the sepulcher nearly killed me with a single skill. That was partly due to the materials of my armor. While the spider silk and parts of our current armor all came from dungeon bosses, the kobold and imp parts were lacking by technicality.

Was I going to take the time to make a workshop here in Bum Fuck Egypt so I could spend an entire day crafting new armor again? Hell no, that can wait until we get back to Sierra with our stockpile or until absolutely necessary. Like, say, if we died in the middle of our mission because of a super boss.

Now, we had spider's silk for the base of pretty much all of our armors until we find stronger spiders. On top of this, I intended to make use of all this region's top mobs. From their descriptions, wolf cores inherited Agility while troll cores beget Regen and ice lizard cores gave protection from the weather.

Ice lizard cores might have been circumstantial in their uses, but the Agility and Regen were things everybody on the team could make use of. As well, mounts like our scorpions who were lacking in Agility could make use of such equipment. Even though they seemed designed for taking damage based on their bodies and skills.

After our caravan confrontation which introduced the wolves, I was forced to rearrange our mounted defenders and redistribute the familiars once again. At the risk of slowing the infected scorpions, I placed the imp familiars off the wagons with their masters while arranging the mounted defenders so that the swifter tree dragons were between each scorpion. Even with the added weight and the lack of 'defense' concentrated on the broad sides this formation would be harder to immobilize with the reach of the ice lizards and their breath as well as the increased individual support of the familiars.

Cweeper and Hermes had already proven that they had the ability to use elemental barriers for protecting the wagons by themselves and the poison had proven to be an adequate equalizer for the outstanding traits of most enemies.

When we finally stopped the wagons a little early in the afternoon, we chose an elevated position on a somewhat exposed hilltop just a mile or so from Melpomene's map marker. Here, we had to set up tall stakes with which to corral the area while also building a giant pavilion just for the ice dragons. The weather here, especially in an exposed location, was probably only going to get worse and worse.

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