My grandfather wasn’t big on dispensing wisdom. He liked napping. And drinking… Nobody’s perfect. But he did give me that one nugget of wisdom that I’ve always held on to and it got me through a lot of hardship with work and… well, the other big thing.
Now, I was going to rely on it once more. There would be no help coming. And I had a whole lot of ants to slay. For that I needed energy and I needed my belly be full.
I really, really needed to eat.
That did not make it any easier to chomp down on a piece of raw lizard meat. If lizard is supposed to taste like chicken, I was horribly reminded that raw chicken tastes like shit.
The meat was warm at least. Blood still oozed out of the hind leg I’d carved off for myself. Thinking about digging in deeper into the carcass only served to make me nauseous. My torch burned cold. The nearest torch that looked to be real fire was in the next hollow, right by one of the hulks. Right then, I didn’t feel like fighting the creature was a grand idea.
Weren’t you supposed to bleed fresh meat? Would I have to hold it upside down or something? It bled anyway.
“I need my strength. I need to eat.”
I tried to hype myself up and build the courage to take a big, scrumptious bite.
A string dropped out of the leg, and I realised it was a vein. I almost did the opposite of what I needed and had to force myself to swallow down the scorching vomit. It didn’t make the poorly skinned leg any more appetising.
I kept staring at it.
The leg kept bleeding. Some of it coated my hand. It was getting cold and gooey.
“If this place—” I puffed my cheeks and closed my eyes. “If this insight doesn’t open up the universe to me.” I brought the leg close to my face. It smelled coppery. “I am going to tell Eternity to go fuck itself. And then I’ll go and live like Crystal, in the middle of the forest where no one can ever find me again.”
I took a bite. It was gross and it was hard to rip the meat off the bone. Took a few attempts but got there in the end.
Next was the chewing. Almost lost that fight. Twice.
Then the swallowing. With nothing to wash it down with, I made damn sure I swallowed in small chunks. It helped. Not much, but it helped.
All in all, I managed to get down half the meat off the leg and was ready to swear myself as an honorary iepurran and never touch meat ever again.
Still, the difference a full-ish stomach makes is hard to overstate. Almost immediately I felt myself stronger and whatever lingering aches I still had were drowned away. It had taken me close to half an hour to get to this point and I was aware of Crystal and Tusk’s risks above. But charging in blindly—again—wasn’t going to make things any better. At least now I could rely on my own body’s help in the next fight.
With blood on my face and my hands, nothing to wipe it off on except my ragged shirt, I snuck forward. I left the torch behind, hoping I wouldn’t come to regret it. But I needed my hands and there was enough light to at least fight by.
New tactic this time. I wasn’t going to try and blitz the big guy with [ADRENALINE SURGE]. I’d noticed the first one had kept up with my speed, but stopped the moment I dropped out of the surge. Maybe it had been a fluke, but I wasn’t going to waste MP on a second test.
Instead, I pressed myself to the far wall, spat, and took off at a sprint towards the shelf and down the path.
Going into a fight running at full tilt down a narrow shelf of stone by the side of a deep pit is not, technically, a sound plan.
But ramming into the enemy with my shield coming in at that speed… is a pretty good way of getting said enemy off its feet. For the enchantment it didn’t really seem to matter where the force came from as long as it hit the proper side.
The big guy flew off its feet as if hit by the same metaphoric truck his friend had slammed me with. The impact also left me dazed and staggering, but I was at least stumbling in the right direction, sword already raised above my head. I sliced down with all my strength, praying that for once I wouldn’t miss.
I didn’t. The sword’s edge met the hulk’s rising head at such a perfect angle that I sliced off half its stupid anty head. Compound eyes dropped to the floor with a spurt of yellow-ish ichor, along with the entire front half of its face. The sword left behind a neat cross section where I got an uncomfortably good look at the creature’s brains… or what remained of them. It twitched two mechanical arms my way, then fell back with a heavy thud, its gem bag spilling.
Immediately, something slammed me from behind. Strong arms wrapped almost fully around my torso and something hot tried to stab into my shoulder. I was prepared for once and immediately pitched forward before the arms could lock around my chest. The ant on my back got lifted off its feet and slammed head-first into the ground. I had to drop my sword to do it, but it helped me avoid an ugly bite from those mechanical jaws.
Before the ant could get up, I football kicked it the side of the head. Chitin cracked. Its eye burst. The gears of its mouth made a cranking noise, as if they’d just seized up violently. It wasn’t enough to kill it, so I stomped down on its face as soon as I regained my balance.
Its body jerked once more, limbs spasming, then remained absolutely still.
No time to celebrate. Hairs on the back of my neck prickled and I spun with the shield held out. It smashed into the next ant at full force and sent it down on its ass, squirming on the ground. That thorn enchantment kept on giving as I raised the shield two handed above my head, and slammed it down on the ant’s own, edge first. Two whacks later, there wasn’t much left of that ugly head but an ichor-leaking crater.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: FURNAR DRONE DEVIANT x2]
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: FURNAR GATHERER DEVIANT x1]
I breathed out a sigh of relief and took in the hollow. There had only been the two ants and their minder, this dig site much smaller than the first. Somehow, I’d managed a fight unscathed. It was all I could do not to dance a little jig.
Mainly because I saw something glinting on the other side of the cavern. It must’ve been about fifty metres across, estimating by eye. Still, I did catch one of the hulks looking my way. Then it pointed. Then it dug into its bag and threw something.
I barely got the shield up in time to block the cannon ball-like piece of obsidian. It smashed to shards against my shield with a sound like a gong. The impact nearly ripped the thing out of my hands.
“Fuck!” I lowered the shield to peer over, then raised it back just in time to defend against another projectile. The fucker could throw! And it didn’t look like the enchantment worked long range.
I was only saved by a thick wall of smoke rising from the depths. It obstructed the light from the other side and I took the opportunity to scurry away. Not back towards the stairs, since the smoke didn’t reach that way, but down the incline, straight into the third hollow.
There were two hulks here and four ants working. I activated [BULWARK] the second I got into range of the first hulk, and swung my shield almost like a poorly thrown punch. The invisible edge caught the monster straight in the throat and passed clean through. It sent the head flying. Neat. Fucking neat!
I whirled and slammed the shield down, point first into the ground, and braced for immediate impact. It came just as expected. The hulk swung its bag of obsidian shards with enough force to almost crater my only defensive item. Had I not been cringing behind the bulwark, the blow probably would’ve shattered every bone in my body.
As it stood, the hulk got its just desert. And my shield grew sizzling hot, as if I were overtaxing it.
Tough shit!
With the big bastard stumbling back, arm shattered to mechanical detritus, I went on the attack, painfully aware of the smoke thinning outside the hollow, and the four ants taking notice of me all at once.
I swung with the sword and was deflected by an unreasonably large metal fist. It sent me stumbling but I brought the shield around. Not a graceful blow by any measure of the words, but it caught the hulk straight in the face. If I’d had a tiny bit more space, I could’ve used the slicing invisible edge. Still, it worked well enough to push back the monster. Ichor spurted from its mandibles and dribbled down its bare chest.
Absurdly, I took note of how the creature was dressed. It wore only some loose linen pants that obstructed the lower half of its body. Its feet were bare, and were just little more than claws. Funny what the brain picks up on when your blood runs hot.
This time it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the sword. I buried it in its throat, at a bad angle, but it was enough to make him topple. It almost dragged me with it, but I’d learned my lesson since the bear. I braced a foot against his crotch, shoved with it and yanked my sword out.
[BULWARK] ran out of MP the very moment I stumbled back. A black missile passed through the space my head had been occupying a fraction of a second earlier. I felt it whirring past my ears, and ducked on instinct.
The ants were on me, arms extended, mouth grinders spinning up. The sniper on the other side of the cavern lined up another shot, announced only by the tingling I felt in the back of my head. Or maybe it was just abject fear. No idea.
Thank whatever force watched over my misadventure for the small miracles in life, and the oddest bursts of luck. One thing remained true both for the creatures in the dungeons and those in the forest: they were dumb as shit and single-minded to the point of self-destruction. All four ants clustered on me and swung their clawed arms trying to grab hold of and tear my shield away.
I spun with them all, trying to put them in path of the makeshift canon balls.
And it worked! In spectacular, explosive, pants-shittingly horrifying fashion.
Two of the inexpressive heads simply evaporated a heartbeat later as I was trying to jostle them off me. One second they were reaching out to bite at my face, the next only a ragged stump remained atop their necks. Brain matter, ichor, chitin dust and whatever other fluids sandblasted my face in that instant. It all got in my mouth and tasted of motor oil and rot.
The shock of impact earned me enough space to shove the other two back and impale one of them on the sword before the sniper launched on me again. I smashed the remaining ant with the shield, then dove aside just as another projectile almost cratered the wall. It didn’t actually hit quite that hard, but in the thrill of that moment, I expected eating any of those obsidian shards would mulch me.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: FURNAR DRONE DEVIANT x4]
[YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 5!]
[YOU HAVE GAINED: 1 ATTRIBUTE POINT]
[YOU HAVE GAINED: 1 SKILL POINT]
I would’ve whooped for joy if not for the immediate danger. My enemies were dead around me, decomposing, but I’d been pushed to the far side of the hollow, away from the edge, back figuratively and literally against the wall. There was nowhere to run.
Or—
A small crack lay in the far corner of the hollow, nestled in a grove on the wall. I had no idea where it led, but it was there and looked just large enough to fit me.
I held the shield out, now stinging-hot to the touch, and huddled behind it as tight as I could, waiting with bated breath. My heart hammered my ribs as I counted the moments.
Aim for the head. Aim for the head. Aim for the—
BOOM!
I felt that blow all the way into my spine. It had been a larger chunk. The shield was almost too hot to handle anymore, but I barely noticed the burns. Instead, I turned, ran, and dove into the crack in the wall.
It turned out to be large enough for me to slip in with shield and sword in hand.
And it was perfectly smooth and perfectly slippery.
And damn near vertical!
I dove in headfirst and found myself plummeting. I bounced off the walls a couple of times, sparks flew from where sword and shield scrapped against the smooth rock, and wind rushed by my ears.
From the frying pan to the fire. It took several panic-fuelled, despairing moments for my mind to catch up to my situation. I raised the shield and, with my renewed MP, activated [BULWARK] again. The stop was immediate, painful, and stomach-lurching. My shoulder popped out of its joint as I hung there in perfect darkness, panting hard, heart running madly away from me. Nausea hit me a moment later, as intense as ever before.
I had my fifth level! I could combine skills.
Without even thinking, I activated the interface and immediately dropped the skill point into [CLING].
[CLING]
[BECOME ATTACHED TO ANY REASONABLE, FLAT SURFACE]
[COST: 5 MP / activation + 1 MP / second]
The MP bar flashed once, grew by the usual amount, absorbed the green side, then changed shape to a much more slicker one, almost purple in colour.
[CONGRATULATIONS!]
[MP THRESHOLD REACHED]
[REWARD: YOUR MP POOL HAS DOUBLED. MAX MP: 150]
[NEXT THRESHOLD REQUIREMENTS: 10 SYSTEM SKILLS + ONE ATTRIBUTE ABOVE LEVEL 15]
I threw the spare attribute point into my constitution again, taking it up to level 10, to equal my supposed intelligence. At least with constitution I could feel it helping me as I healed from scrapes and bruises. If intelligence would’ve done anything to make me even a bit brighter, I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess right now.
Temper. Temper. Now is not the time for a temper tantrum, I had to remind myself as I hung there, my MP draining, shoulder on fire. With some difficulty, and a lot of cursing, I managed to get my sword in its scabbard.
Then I began swinging my legs out until my heels touched the wall. Given the day I’d been having, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if the shield straps gave way just then and I plummeted to my death.
Swinging while you’re held up by a dislocated shoulder is not something I would ever want to repeat in my entire life even if I got up to live for a thousands years. The pain sent exploding stars in my vision and made the raw lizard meat boil in my stomach. But, in spite of it all, I managed to plant a foot on the wall.
I took a deep breath. Held it. Breathed out slowly.
Then I activated [CLING].
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. 3 chapters / week, with about 15-20 on Patreon after I finish some edits and finally post more of my backlog there. Currently sitting at just 7 chapters, but will adjust that this weekend.