Lanek rose the next morning with a sense of purpose. With a restful sleep behind him, he was now ready to work even harder on his home. His plan was to build three walls in front of the cave to create a small open yard that encompassed his fire pit, give him a space to work in relative safety, and provide him with more protection from the wind when he retreated into his cave for sleep. He wanted to anchor the wall to the inside of both sides of the cave entrance. Now, he didn’t plan on making a massive palisade wall or anything of the like, he wasn’t worried about it standing up to an attack, it just needed to provide privacy, shelter, and enough of a barrier to deter the wildlife.
Ideally, he wanted to be able to eventually put a roof over the yard area with a hearth and small chimney so he could be completely sheltered during the winter and have a fire through the night and not die from smoke inhalation. Essentially, he wanted the cave and yard to eventually be one large room with a single door to the entire structure. This would take a lot of planning on Lanek’s part as he was confident in building the main structure, but did not have much of a clue when it came to the hearth and chimney.
Additionally, while he was sure that there were numerous ways to build a safe fire inside the cave and simply build a door, he didn’t know how to do that either. By building the fenced-in yard, he still had the option to leave it open to the air if he couldn’t pull off a fireplace and chimney and just assemble a second door to cover the entrance to the cave.
After a light breakfast, Lanek wrapped Sanguineus’ vessel around his right arm, and slipped his kanabo and mattock into the loops on his belt. He had decided to return to Caelis for a few more building supplies and possibly a search for more tools. For his structure, he would love to find a saw and shovel, but at the very least he would be able to find more rope, twine, nails, and another empty pack at the general store he had found a few days ago.
He felt much better about his chances in the city with his kanabo in easy reach rather than tucked away in a pack. Likewise, he found the presence of the mattock reassuring, but not for combat. The pick end of the mattock would be invaluable if he ran into a locked door or container and was unable to find a key. Considering how even most modern locks from back on Earth couldn’t really hold up against a good strike from a pick, these locks should not be a problem.
Lanek made his way to the general store with a spring in his step until he received the familiar notification that he had entered the Ashen Depths. This dampened his mood, serving as a reminder about just how dangerous this place could be and that he shouldn’t get overconfident. Sensing his change in mood, Sanguineus became more alert as well while Kazuma chuffed in approval.
Once in the general store’s storage room, Lanek again filled an entire pack to bursting and carried it outside of the city. This pack he had filled with the last coils of rope, twine, and nails in the storeroom. Before leaving the general store behind, he went into the living area and went straight to the fireplace. Had he not been preoccupied looking for tools on his prior visit, he would not have overlooked the large cook pot and fire poker in the hearth. Not wanting to be weighed down by such unwieldy items, Lanek took those outside of the wall to stow them with the full pack.
With these supplies in hand, his home would be more comfortable, but he could still use more. Lanek decided to grab the final empty pack from the general store before locking the store room for the foreseeable future. While the remaining cloaks and traveling gear could be useful, he didn’t particularly need them at the moment.
Lanek regarded the streets before him and considered his options. He could continue to stick to the outskirts of the city where he was safer and could make a quick retreat or he could venture deeper into the city where there was far more risk involved. Ultimately, he decided he needed to go deeper, reasoning that the shops and homes closer to the city center would have more items as the people would have had less time to pack all of their belongings and flee from the dungeon’s creatures.
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Damn… I feel like a bloody ghoul. I’m planning my loot path based on how likely it was that people died or ran away before they could gather up their worldly possessions. This… is not a good feeling.
He steeled his resolve. This needed to be done and the dead had no need for their possessions. With an angry growl at the situation, he marched down the street in a straight line away from the wall. He needed to do this quickly so he had time to loot and get out of the city by nightfall, he didn’t have time to take a meandering path through side streets and alleys. Lanek did, however, walk along the side of the street so he could duck into cover quickly if needed.
Lanek deliberately avoided the streets heading toward the adventurer’s guild, not wanting to run into the creature that had debilitated him with its incessant chanting or whatever pack of creatures had made the bestial roars while hunting a gaunt.
Rather than stop to check all of the houses along the way, he kept an eye out for signs on the buildings or remnants of signs hanging from the walls. He knew that he could be passing some of the tools he required in those homes, but a single shop would likely be worth more than all of those homes combined in terms of resources.
Eventually, Lanek spotted a bit of an oddity in the layout of the buildings. One particular structure had a small fenced-in plot out front with a tree stump. Now, the main reasons that this caught his eye was that no other buildings he had passed had such a yard or plot and the stump had a band of metal fastened around it. That looks like a chopping block. Judging from the shed and fenced-in stump, it could be a firewood seller. Merchant? Whatever, let’s check it out.
He approached the structure when Sanguineus’ hackles rose and he rumbled at the structure. Kazuma froze alongside the wolf for a brief moment before dissipating into mist and drifting into the building. Lanek stood alongside Sanguineus and waited several long moments before sensing a pulse of alarm from the mist cat as his mist form came flowing back out of the building.
Lanek tensed as several sounds became audible. It was a series of thumps, followed by a loud scraping sound. The pattern continued, thumps followed by a scrape, almost like metal being dragged on the floor. The noise was unnerving enough that Lanek was tempted to flee, however he stood his ground. This seemed like the most likely place to recover the tools he needed most. He would not allow spooky sounds and a fear of the unknown to deter him now.
When the source of the sounds became visible, Lanek stared in revulsion. What squeezed through the door was the skeletal figure of a very large man wearing laborer’s clothing and dragging a woodcutting axe along the ground. Lanek’s revulsion only grew as the abomination entered the light and he could see that the skeleton had a skull fused to its lower spine.
From this second skull, another spinal cord extended out to a second pair of legs like some monstrous centaur. Extending down from the second spine were thick ribs and a second pair of arms just slightly down from the point of fusion. These arms stretched to either side like macabre wings.
When Lanek’s eyes reached those arms his revulsion instantly turned to fury. He wanted to scream at the creature, at the dungeon itself. He felt the need to demand answers from this world and the System about how it could possibly allow such abominations to exist. He knew that evil existed and he knew that in this world monsters were real, but this was just too much. Even with his love of horror movies back on Earth, his mind refused to accept what he was seeing.
For at the ends of those wing-like arms, there were no hands. Instead, each of those arms ended in another skeleton, almost as if the skeleton at the end of each arm was a hand puppet. Except hand puppets did not have gaping maws with sharp gnashing teeth and small arms ending in grasping, clawed hands. These skeletons were also much smaller than the skeletons forming the main body.
And they were still wearing little floral dresses.