Day 26, 1:05 PM
We’re six lessons in, and we’re finally at the edge of civilization, such as it is, on the border of the corrupted lands.
“Remember, I can only use minor magic and those with mostly internal effects. I can heal you, I can enhance weapons, ignite small flames and such. Any larger show of magic would draw all nearby abominations towards us, and we would probably die. So, I’m not doing it.”
That’s the third time she’s saying the same thing.
“Yes, Edna, I know.” I look at my new staff, made of enhanced mantis shrimp chitin and cool rocks I found in the dungeon. “Thanks for making it black, it feels just right.”
“I don’t know. I still think you should’ve kept it multicolored. The pattern was mesmerizing, and it might have distracted your opponents.”
She’s got that right. It looked like a licorice stick candy made by someone overdosing on acid. The problem is, I would have had to look at it all the time, and whirling it around was a great way to induce seizures.
“So, how do we find a minor abomination?”
“Walking around this area? Starting a fire is a great way of attracting them, but there’s no guarantee only one will show up if we did that. You could also try making loud noise, but again, there’s no guarantee only one will come. Abominations, in general, are solitary creatures, devouring those intruding into their territories or getting devoured by those intruders. Usually, moving around loudly should do the trick.”
Yeah, I was hoping for something more elegant than dressing myself in mustard and dancing around, but I already know what’s my lot in life, and apparently playing bait is no small part of it.
I look towards the mutated flora with as much reluctance as I can muster.
“Edna, if I don’t make it back, tell Fred I never liked him. He’s a real bastard.”
Her lips twitch. I almost got a smirk. “Get going, you said you could handle the fortieth floor without injury, that means you can handle a minor abomination or two. Off with you.”
“I said thirty-eighth floor,” I mutter with a frown and head towards a thornbush sprouting tentacle-like leaves and tulips with tongues for petals.
I half-expected the slimy flowers would lick at my thigh as I pass them. Much to my relief, they don’t. The leaves are static and other than sticking their tongues at me, the tulips are fine too.
I hit the bush with my staff and instead of rustling it makes a noise similar to flesh slapping or possibly awkward clapping. The octopus applause stops, and nothing happens. The light wind is still blowing, my supernatural nose informing me of dozens of scents carried on the breeze. Including the smell of carrion.
That seems equally unpleasant and promising. The abominations eat, they eat a lot, in fact, if Edna’s stories are true, and the decomposing body I smell is either an old meal, or something they might still be enjoying. Per Edna’s suggestion, I make sure to hit an occasional branch with my new staff.
Is it fine to call you Batsy II?
The staff is sturdier than my old weapon of choice, but bugs here seem tougher than armored soldiers, so the upgrade is warranted and not entirely vanity.
I pass a trampled bush. Or to be more exact the shredded, dug up, bush-like thing with withered tentacles stabbed into the ground. The flora is so twisted and alien, even by Fyoor’s standards. I can tell because I have no idea what the bush is, what it’s good for, or whether it’s good for anything.
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The only thing I get from my skills is a warning to stay the hell away from unknown plants growing in the mutated forest. In fact, my skills are telling me to get the hell out of the said mutated forest. Good advice. Sadly, it’s inapplicable.
I turn around a tree, making sure not to touch its oozy bark, which looks more like sore skin, and see the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. I call it a thing, despite it obviously being a flower, because calling it a flower insults half the flora I know and love.
It’s the shape of a giant rotting donut, smelling just as bad as it looks. Worse, even. It’s the source of the carcass stench I caught, and that fact makes me slightly angry. Following Edna’s advice, I hit it with Batsy II, and the donut farts.
Yellow gas escapes the tear I made, sounding like someone beating half-dead bagpipes. The noise is quite loud. In my mind, it matches the definition of the forbidden loud noise Edna mentioned mere minutes ago. I retreat, and fortunately, there’s no sign of Edna, she would’ve probably nagged me to death before the abominations even got here.
Then the ground ripples. A mole cricket over ten feet long, with two pairs of giant tusks protruding from its maw, erupts from underground, splashing earth. The abomination’s forelimbs are giant serrated shovels, a cross between mole cricket’s limbs and those of a praying mantis. But then I see the most important weapon the already insanely dangerous aberration has, a looming scorpion tail nearly as long as the body itself.
It flickers the brushlike pectines hanging from its torso, and shifts to face me. The damn tremor-sense found me without error. Now the question is do I keep running to open the distance from the massive fart and risk getting stabbed in the back, or stand my ground, fight, and risk getting surrounded.
Both options suck. I want to climb a tree and fight from there, but given the Everrain trees, especially these mutated things that are as likely to wink at me as they are to try to digest me, that seems like a horrible idea.
I keep running, darting between hostile and mocking flora, using my one advantage against subterranean bug which sees through sensing vibrations - it has no eyes. The massive mole horror behind me crashes into a tree, and something hisses in pain as the creature uproots the whole plant and stumbles towards me.
I cover three hundred yards, hopefully enough distance to escape any other abomination’s notice, and turn around to face the mole cricket from hell. For all my maneuvering, and the cricket’s stumbling and collisions with trees, I have to wait a mere half a dozen seconds before it’s upon me.
The tail sweeps towards me, stinger dripping neon-yellow poison, probably potent enough to melt my face if it slaps me. The sweep seems like it will come up short, but the mole cricket arches its back and the stinger is suddenly almost at my chest.
With a loud crack, I bat away the tail, but the damn thing is flexible enough not to snap. Battlefield Mastery possibly kicks in, since my blow threw the mole cricket off balance. With a flick of my wrist, the staff’s trajectory changes. It spins and twists through the air before the mole cricket recovers its balance and smashes into its head. The monster’s carapace cracks and it hisses, confirming it wasn’t the trees crying out when it collided with them.
The carapace has cracked, but it’s not broken, and the scythe-spade-leg slashes at me, followed by a swing of the wicked tail. I somersault back, smacking Batsy II at the bladed limb. I use the extra energy and push myself away, landing on my feet three yards from the abomination, with a tongue-tulip bush between us.
The mole cricket plows through the bush, its stinger lunging towards me. The strike is short, but I know what’s coming. The mole cricket arcs its back, and Batsy II smashes downward, striking the stinger and sending it down, straight for the mole cricket’s head and its cracked carapace.
The stinger pierces the already damaged armor, and the fluorescent poison does its job. I can’t see the damage it deals from the exoskeleton, but the flesh smokes and gives off a putrid smell. The mole cricket curls up, dead before I finish the breath I was drawing.
“You can try to sense mana.” Edna emerges from behind a tree the moment the mole cricket dies, nearly giving me a heart attack. “The poison is overflowing with it, and now’s your best chance, while it’s fresh.”
“Are there any other abominations heading this way?”
“No, but next time try not to disturb corpse lilies. They are toxic carnivorous plants we made to fight the aberrations.”
I want to ask more questions, for starters whether the entire creepy forest was designed by the mages to counter the wormlord’s abominations, but Edna points at the ground with a hard expression.
“Sit, make yourself comfortable, and try to sense mana oozing from the abomination’s corpse. This one has a modest to moderate amount, and it will dissipate in an hour or so.”
I sit down and close my eyes, giving it my all to sense a new form of energy and develop a new sense.