Chapter LXXXII (82) - Picnic

The sun was out, Kizu had successfully scavenged a bunch of food from the cafeteria, and this week’s tutoring session with Roba was canceled.

For a while, Kizu had been wanting to go on a picnic like he had back as a child with Anna. Originally, he intended to ask Emilia to go with him, but in the last couple weeks, his feelings had soured. Now, he spent his time avoiding her, rather than pursuing her. He couldn’t quite explain why, but he felt discomfort whenever she approached him. As if she expected something from him that he no longer wanted to give.

He had barely managed to avoid her when she appeared in the combatant rooms for the combat contest the previous day. Thankfully, he had seen her before she spotted him and overlain his image with the illusion of a student with slicked back black hair and a crooked nose. She didn’t glance twice in his direction.

He didn’t know what to do about Emilia. The longer he spent away from her, the more relaxed he felt. So, instead he spent his time avoiding thinking about her. She knew nothing about the Owl’s Respite, so she had no reliable way of finding him. Even the few messages she’d sent to his scrying orb hadn’t actually been all that long or deep. Just asking about his upcoming scheduling. At the very least, after tomorrow the higher ranked astronomy students would leave on the school trip for the week, Emilia amongst them. And the next week, it would be his turn to visit Tross. The thought of that little bit of breathing room relaxed him.

Instead of Emilia, he took Anata with him on the picnic. She held his hand as they walked through the forest and looked positively giddy. Kizu, with Mort perched on his head, carried a basket of food in his other hand.

“No spellcraft today,” he promised Anata. “I need a break from everything. And we both could use a bit of sun.”

And it was true. Even putting aside the goblin incident, Kizu was really starting to feel burn-out from his nonstop spellwork. His standings had once again improved substantially, his enchanting score leaping up to 245 from his week of constant cursebreaking, but if he had to examine one more slab of wood, he thought he might go mad.

There was now a winding trail beaten down from his and Aoi’s constant walks to and from the town. Kizu didn’t love having a path that led straight to his ship, but he and Aoi usually did a decent enough job of at least disguising the path’s entrance. The last thing either of them wanted was an adventurous kid from town to stumble on their hideout. Unfortunately, anyone who already knew about Owl’s Respite had no problem finding it.

“Kizu!” Basil greeted him from where he sat on a fallen tree. He wore the same appearance as he had the last time Kizu had seen him. “What’s that you’ve got there? A basket of something interesting?”

“Just food,” Kizu said. “What do you want?”

Basil put a hand to his chest and gasped. “I am hurt! Must I want something to visit my dear roommate? You already abandoned and replaced me, must you also treat me so venomously?”

“I went to our room two days ago and you’d converted my bed into a rotating closet,” Kizu said dryly.

“Well, I mean, if you’re not using it, it’s better to at least make the most of the extra space.” He stood up and stretched, his arms extending slightly past normal human limits for a second. “Anyway, where are you headed?”

“You really just came to visit?”

“I’m not doing anything else right now. I completed the finishing touches on my outfits for the school trip last night. Now I have nothing else to do until we leave tomorrow morning.”

Kizu looked down at Anata, who was patiently waiting for him to finish talking. She looked distracted, contemplatively staring up at some vines dangling from a nearby tree, but she didn’t look stressed or uncomfortable by Basil’s presence.

“Are you fine if Basil comes along?” Kizu asked her.

She blinked and looked up at him. Then she gave a short nod and returned to her musings.

“Well then, you are welcome to join us on our picnic if you really are bored.”

“Excellent!” Basil snapped his fingers and pointed forward. “Onward!”

The forest hummed with life. As they trailblazed through the forest, Kizu pointed out different insects and flora to Anata. She listened with rapt attention, hanging on every word he spoke.

Basil, on the other hand, whistled an unfamiliar tune. Forming several orifices across his body at once, Basil could create a chorus of whistling. Thankfully, he kept the volume and tune of it to a nonintrusive degree, to let Kizu continue to explain things as they walked. However, it still managed to lull Mort to sleep, as the monkey dozed on Kizu’s head.

They reached a small clearing that Mort had stumbled on a few nights back. The familiar had been ecstatic upon finding it, as the field housed thousands of grasshoppers. The monkey had spent that night proudly sending Kizu an impression of the field every time he caught a grasshopper. So, the location had been firmly seared into Kizu’s mind. Along with the insects' taste as Mort mashed them between his teeth.

Kizu unfurled a blanket and let it flap in the light breeze for a second before laying it out on the ground. A hundred grasshoppers leaped out of the way, which caused Mort to wake up and pounce down on them from above.

“Great spot,” Basil said, admiring the small field. “Good sun. Nice grass. A perfect opposite of where I’ll be stuck tomorrow.”

Kizu took out their food from the basket and spread it across the blanket to help weigh it down. “I thought you would be more excited. Aren’t you from Tross?”

Basil wrinkled his nose. “South Central Tross. Big difference. That’s where the life of the country is. The trip is sending us up to the Tross Tundra, beyond the Betsu Range.”

“Is the difference just in population? Less people in the north?” Kizu asked.

“You really need to pay more attention in history class. Tross is a conglomerate of different peoples and species. But it didn’t used to be that way. Before Hon’s interference, it was just the Kemon who lived there.”

“Kemon? And who are they?”

“Beast-people. You’ve surely seen them around campus. Only a couple tribes let them come here to study though. Most are pretty antisocial and despise the outside world.”

“Beast-people like Evie?”

“The first-year? That’s the porcupine girl, right?” Basil asked, but he didn’t wait for a response before continuing on. “Basically, the Kemon usually have some sort of animalistic characteristic. Wolves, voles, bears. Things like that. They’re really difficult to get the features right on. I can’t transform into animals, so taking on their characteristics is tricky. Anyway, they usually stick to their own nomadic tribes in the north. They left the southern shores when more civilized people started showing up. But it’s all still considered Tross. The nation is massive. Not quite as large as Edgeland, but still over four or five times the size of Hon.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Kizu was skeptical that the Kemon just abandoned their homeland out of an antisocial urge. But he decided not to voice that opinion. Instead, he passed both Anata and Basil riceballs wrapped up in a napkin.

Anata chomped down on hers, devouring it. After only a moment, she grinned at him, a dozen grains of rice stuck to her face, and held out her empty napkin for another.

“So, what’s wrong with the tundra?” Kizu asked, while passing Anata another riceball.

“Cold. Empty. Dark. Miserable. A better question would be, what isn’t wrong with it?”

“How bad was it last year?”

“Last year? I haven’t been to the tundra since I was a kid.”

“You didn’t go on the school trip last year?”

“Oh!” Basil said, finally understanding. “No. I mean, yes, I went on the school trip. But last year Krimpit escorted us around the ancient dig sites in Hon. It’s on a five year rotation, so students only ever travel to the locations once. I believe next year we’re scheduled to spectate some sort of menagerie performance? I don’t recall where.”

Kizu couldn’t help but feel a bit grateful to have missed Krimpit’s trip.

“Any chance you can get Emilia to stop being interested in me while you’re away?”

“Ah, you’re at that stage of the relationship.” Basil nodded sagely. “Normally, I love serving as a rebound, but I’m afraid you’ll have to figure this one out on your own. I already have a different romantic focus for the trip.”

“Do you have advice on how to end relationships?” Kizu asked glumly.

“Unfortunately, since you can’t completely permanently alter your physical structure on a whim, you might actually have to talk to her to break up. Being human must be truly dreadful.”

Mort, having managed to scare off all the grasshoppers in the near vicinity, returned to the blanket. Kizu passed him a slice of mango and the monkey nipped his finger in thanks before snatching the fruit.

Kizu pulled out his most recent acquisition from the library, a children’s book, and started to read with Anata. She had picked up literary skills quickly. In only a few weeks, she could already write a great deal of the Universal Script. Not quite fluent yet but approaching it rapidly. This story, a tale about a broken clockwork golem befriending other forgotten enchantments, was really well below her reading level, but Kizu thought she would enjoy the story of it.

“Did you feel that?” Basil asked, frowning and looking around at the nearby ground.

“No? What did it feel like?”

“Hm. Thought I felt an earthquake. Maybe the Labyrinth is just shifting below us.”

Despite the warm sun overhead, a shiver went down Kizu’s spine at the thought. He didn’t love the thought that the World Dungeon was always so near. He opened his mouth to say so, but then he felt what Basil had mentioned. The ground shook slightly. He had grown up in Hon, and wasn’t a stranger to occasional quakes, but this felt unique. Instead of the simple vibrating, the ground seemed to twist back and forth slightly at a rapid speed.

But the shaking ground didn’t stop Kizu from getting to his feet. While wobbly, he still maintained his balance as he put his weight on his good leg and heaved Anata up into his arms. And not a moment too soon.

The grassy ground split open in cracks all around them. While the cracks were miniscule, barely more than a millimeter or two in width, thick black smoke plumed out. It buzzed as it swelled forward.

Kizu quickly reached down and ripped a strip off the picnic blanket and covered Anata’s face with it. He manually repositioned her hand so she held it in place over her mouth and nose. Then, as an extra measure, he crouched down and created an air bubble around them. Like the ones he used to breathe underwater, this rejected outside substances, including the smoke. Mort leaped into the bubble as well, perching himself on Kizu’s shoulder and hacking next to his ear. There was something caught in his throat.

Basil appeared to be completely caught off guard as he still lounged on the grass nearby. The smoke expanded, obscuring Basil from view. Kizu felt a moment of fear for his friend, but then Basil stumbled out of the smoke and into their small pocket of air.

“Blech!” he spat. “Of all the repugnant, loathsome creatures!”

Kizu leaned forward, closer to the edge of the air bubble to examine the smoke. Which turned out not to be smoke at all, but actually millions of tiny flying insects. They battered themselves on Kizu’s wall of air, vainly attempting to penetrate it. Thankfully, while Basil could walk right into the air bubble, the insects individually didn’t have enough mass to pierce through.

“What are these?” Kizu asked.

“Bugs.”

“Astute observation,” Kizu said dryly.

“Why should I know any more than that? Do I look like an entomologist? All I know is that they fly and bite. I killed all the ones that bit me, if that’s any consolation.”

The air bubble warped slightly, as if a force pressed up against it, bending it inward.

“How did you kill them?” Kizu asked quickly.

“I excreted a poison from my sweat glands.”

Kizu picked up one of the dead insects that had been latched onto Basil when he entered. It looked like a winged termite but with the mouth and size of a tick. It twitched as he held it in his palm.

Kizu took stock of his options. He needed to prioritize protecting Anata. He could jump, but didn’t know how far it would get him with his vision obscured. The last thing they needed was to be jumped into a tree. But jumping set another idea into motion.

“Anata, I need your help.” He looked down at the girl. “I’ll protect your body here. Can you project your consciousness into the swarm? They can’t hurt you when you’re not in your body, right?”

She nodded and closed her eyes.

“Hold on, not yet. I need you to look for something specific. Swarms of termites act as a hivemind. They’re often used in mental enhancement brews. There’s not a guarantee that these creatures are the same as a termite, but there’s a chance based on their appearance. Look for an abnormally large insect. The size of my finger. It will be bulbous and pretty ugly.”

And with that, Anata slumped in his arms. He caught a glimpse of a faint ghostly image of her flicker in the swarm of insects.

Kizu dug his fingers into the grass below them. He managed to find three stones the rough size and shape of marbles.

“You know,” Basil said after the air bubble gained another massive inward dent. “I’m not a master elementalist by any means, but I could still just toss out some flames and roast the bugs. I admit it’s not an incredibly elegant solution, but far superior to just sitting back and getting eaten alive.”

“I already considered that. Anata is terrified of fire. I want to avoid using it near her. And with all the vegetation nearby, there’s a good chance it could quickly get out of control . I’m not counting it out as an option entirely, but let’s save it as a last resort.”

Anata jerked back into her body. She pointed at the ground a few meters behind Kizu. He silently nodded his confirmation and turned his attention there. He followed the exact direction of her index finger. Then used an elemental spell to launch one of his collected stones out in that direction.

Nothing.

The bubble of air shrunk as it dented inwards. Kizu struggled to focus on maintaining it while simultaneously casting other spells. Mort twitched from on his shoulder, finally dislodging the bugs caught in his throat. Kizu could feel his familiar’s unease both physically, as he pulled on Kizu’s hair, and mentally, through their bond. He let the part of him focused on their pocket of air shift to Mort’s focus, giving his familiar control of the spell.

Kizu took a deep breath and launched his second stone.

Nothing.

One last shot. He licked his chapped lips and prepared himself for his final shot. But then Anata moved her hand, instead placing it on his neck. Instantly, Kizu felt something meld into his consciousness. He knew exactly where the queen lay. Despite his obscured position, he could see its hideous bloated body, swollen from giving birth to millions of eggs. Its body enlarged to the point where the creature’s wings flapped uselessly. It remained stationary from where it had crawled out of the ground.

Kizu launched the final stone.