Fox_Aqua Regalia [Monster Progression LitRPG]

It was funny.

The animal looked so normal. It seemed undeserving of the histrionics it inspired in her.

It was a small, ruddy thing who’s only distinguishing characteristic was the dark stripe that ran along its spine. Spindly limbs and ape-like shoulders held its body high off the ground. Delicate finger-bones clenched its wing membranes along its wrist like a folded umbrella. Stalking it from across the cave and following its every change and twitch of expression, Cas paid attention to the fox like nothing else.

It was in this intense frenzy of attention that she noticed, tracing the furred edges of its black lips, a subtle, dark, dampness that wet the fur.

Naturally, it had gone to drink water, to wash out whatever toxic slime had caused it to flee in the first place.

But that explanation only filled her mind with an even more wondrous question:

Where was the Oasis?

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The sheer face of the great rock held no perch.

Four hundred feet below, the tower had more character. There, weathered by wind and sand, subtle cracks and chips pock-marked its surface, and occasionally she’d even seen flies and other small insects making their home in such places.

She almost felt sorry for them before remembering that she lived in a large crack at the base of this thing, at which point she decided to stop feeling sorry for them and start feeling for herself. Still, the cave was better than her LA apartment in some ways, spacious, remote, and good neighbors, too, considering there’d only been one murder attempt against her.

Up at this altitude, the rock was quite clean of sand and life. The harsh winds only grew harsher as they screamed up the sheer surface – blasting against Cas and shaking her body with their force and turbulence, as if trying to push her off to the depths below.

Cas looked down at all this with a surprising lack of vertigo. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the strangeness of the sight, or because her biology didn’t fear heights, but either way, she felt quite at home on the cliff face.

Five hundred feet below, the desert had an unreal, painterly look. The distance obscured the coarse features, and the sun washed away all details that remained. The world outside was now rendered from three, simple shapes:

The base was composed of the desert, stretching out to the horizon, above that was the clear sky. And, in the midst of it all, the black shadow of the mountain – hour by hour – struck across the empty terrain like a magnificent sun-dial.

A terrifying gust of wind came, and she instinctively flattened herself against the stone, stretching into a thin carpet barely wide enough to contain her eye.

Why go to all this trouble?

Well, as she’d planned her search for the oasis, a dim memory recalled itself.

You see, on a spherical earth, there was one common rule: “if you want to see far, go high.”

It was the same concept as having a crows nest on a ship, or having lighthouses erected on towers. Raising yourself up, allowed one to ‘peek’ over the horizon. Working through some half-remembered calculations - Cas sketched the numbers in the sand outside her cave and figured five hundred feet up would let her out see for… about thirty miles.

She knew that mandatory math course had to be good for something.

Guessing vaguely the direction of the Oasis by watching the fox’s flight patterns, Cas took a long walk to the other side of the tower, and began her search there.

...

It had been a long search indeed.

The sundial struck 12, and her trip around the stone moved her onto the sunny-side of the baking rock just in time to greet the noon-day sun.

Crawling up vertical surfaces was a simple matter for her. Still, it slowed her crawling speed to… well, a crawl, and she’d barely made any progress in her orbit around the stone when the trouble became obvious.