Aethelgard: The Survival Game (Chloe) novel Chapter 1

Chapter 10 The Plush Bed

Chloe couldn’t afford to show weakness. A mutant rabbit and a mutant lamb were still lurking nearby.

She grabbed the water bottle filled with collected dew and downed all seven ounces in one go.

The darkness clawing at her vision finally pulled back. Two small monsters left. Nothing she couldn’t handle. She raised her staff and fired off an aqua sphere.

Something about the earlier attempt had sharpened her feel for the spell. The sphere’s size, damage, and velocity all hinged on the caster’s subconscious focus.

Casting meant learning to steer that awareness, to regulate how much magic flowed into each strike. The staff in her hand made the whole process easier, giving her something tangible to channel through.

Chloe could sense the magic now, a faint current humming just below the surface. The feeling was still hazy, like trying to read through fog, but it was there.

She fired off another aqua sphere. Both creatures crumpled one after the other.

[Congratulations! You have defeated Mutant Rabbit.

[Congratulations! You have defeated Mutant Lamb.]

All four dead creatures dissolved into glowing loot chests.

The hound left behind a silver chest. The rabbit dropped a bronze one. The fowl and the lamb each yielded a wooden chest.

Chloe tossed another log onto the grill and sank to the ground, chest heaving. Tonight had been rougher than the last.

She had ranged magic, firelight, plenty of food, and zero hunger debuffs, yet the fight had still wrung her dry. Other players were probably getting torn apart out there.

She rested for a beat, tore off a chunk of dinner roll, and crawled toward the chests.

The second she let her guard slip, something burst out of the darkness. This was no ordinary mutant.

Crimson scales covered its serpentine body from snout to tail, and a pair of jagged wings jutted from its back. The thing looked like a snake that had sprouted wings.

Chloe scrambled backward, her heart slamming against her ribs.

The serpent’s wings beat in a furious blur, filling the air with a low, threatening drone. Its entire body flared molten red, and a ball of fire coalesced at its jaws.

Chloe reacted on instinct, conjuring an aqua sphere that snuffed out the incoming fireball mid–flight.

Her energy was running on fumes. Taking this creature down was out of the question.

She glanced at the time and did a double take. Nearly ninety minutes had slipped by since her last kill. ‘How are they still coming?‘ she thought.

All Chloe could do was hang on. The serpent refused to cross into her territory, content to hover just beyond the boundary and spit fireballs from the air.

The standoff dragged on for a full two hours before the serpent finally beat its wings and melted back into the darkness.

Chloe doubled over, gasping. Every last drop of dew she had collected was gone.

She swept her eyes across the perimeter and waited. Nothing stirred. Only then did she approach the chest and crack it open.

[Items acquired: Raw Rabbit Meat x4. Raw Lamb x3. Raw Poultry x3.

[Acquired: Hound’s Fang Dagger (Advanced Weapon).

[Items acquired: Rabbit Fur x10. Sheep W

Successfully unlocked!

1/3

Chapter 10 The Plush Bed

[Items acquired: 9–Slot Storage Chest x1. Cubic Yard Soil Plot x2. Rare Plush Bed Blueprint x1. Random Stat Card x1.]

And the list went on. The haul was enormous. Those two soil plots alone made the entire ordeal worth every second, and every ounce of exhaustion Chloe had been carrying evaporated on the spot.

Sitting at the bottom of the list was a rare plush bed blueprint. Like the slime cabin blueprint, it was single–use. One build, done.

[Plush Bed Blueprint: A soft single bed crafted from furs and cotton. Boosts energy recovery during sleep, with a chance to trigger “Energized.” Trait: Single–use. Quality: Rare. Materials: Fur x30, Wooden Logs x20, Plant Fibers x15.]

‘A bed!‘ Chloe thought. Every knot of tension in her body came undone. She was finally going to have an actual bed.

Before anything else, she activated the two soil plots. Five cubic yards had been nowhere near enough space to work with. The expansion brought her total up to seven, which gave her just enough room to breathe. She had been grinding nonstop for days, terrified of falling behind. Cubic Yard Soil Plot was the single most valuable resource in the game, bar none.

The last time she had the materials ready for the slime cabin, the system had shut her down on the spot. [ Insufficient space. Cabin construction requires a minimum of six cubic yards.]

Seven cleared that threshold, but once the cabin went up, she would be left with exactly one cubic yard of open space.

Chloe let out a sigh as she checked the territory upgrade requirements. She needed at least two building facilities, and her plot barely had room to turn around in.

The plush bed blueprint alone called for 10 feet of floor space. She didn’t have a single inch to spare.

The whole setup gave her flashbacks to living in a shoebox apartment in the city, the kind where you could touch both walls with your arms stretched out.

She wanted room. Real room. A proper bed, a cabin, something bigger than this. The tent had been so cramped that she’d spent every night curled into a ball just to fit inside.

Chloe was fresh out of options. She pulled up the random stat card and used it without thinking twice. [Luck +1. Current Luck: 5]

It was Luck this time, not the endurance or energy she’d been hoping for, which stung a little. Then again, luck was one of those stats nobody could prove actually mattered. She’d take it.

She opened the trading post to see what the rest of the server was up to.

]

MoonGlow: [Seriously? Monsters are sticking around for two hours tonight? Just my luck.]

Rich DragonWolf: [What the hell? Why is energy even a stat in this game?]

Rich DragonWolf: [I can still move just fine, but the screen’s telling me my energy’s bottomed out and I need to rest NOW or I’ll pass out.]

RichDragonWolf: [Good thing I cleared every last one of ‘em before I dropped. Otherwise I’d be toast right now.

MintyGrass: [Anyone got an energy recovery potion? I’ll trade a soil plot for one.]

Anonymous Player: [Trading soil plots for advanced weapons.]

These messages were all from about 15 minutes ago. Chloe had been fighting for her own life at the time.

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