"Guess there's really nothing else to it but to do it." I sighed, holding up the fork as I prepared to set foot into the dangers of the third layer.
"You sure you'll be fine?" Vastoria seemed unsure.
"It's gonna be alright." I reassured her, "Even if it does get me, I'll just return back here to try again. Besides, it killed me pretty quickly last time, so it's not even really that painful."
Having said that, I won't be doing this without my fair share of worries. I'm not volunteering to be the one to do this because I'm brave or anything. No, I'm doing it because I have no other choice. We can't hope for help to arrive, and the only way we'll ever leave this Shrine is if we make it to the bedroom layer. If we want to achieve that, I'm gonna have to be proactive...
"...Wait!" Sheep took the fork from me, "I'll do it."
"E-Eh?" I jolted, "No, Sheep, it's fine."
"You only have one hand, so holding the fork steadily in front of you is gonna be way harder." Vastoria too reasoned.
"But if Magnes goes instead of me, they won't be as likely to fly straight into the skewer." He shook his head.
"Sheep?" I tilted my head as he put the fork away by threading it through his missing hand's bandages, "What do you mean by...?"
Just then, everything was made clear to us. The reason behind his sudden urge to be the one to go through with this suicidal plan. Having now freed up his remaining hand, he undid the glove he used to hide away his initials with his teeth. I now finally understood why he kept his hands covered up all this time, why he was so secretive about them.
"Magnes, your golden part is your spine, so if you went up against them, they might not go for the fork directly." He said, showing off his five golden fingers, "Me, on the other hand, I'm the perfect fit."
"That initial...!" Vastoria was quick to inquire about it, "An S? No, but it has something else on it...?"
"Š (pronounced Sh), that's apparently my first name's initial." He explained, "It's not a letter in our alphabet, so I hid it away, assuming it was going to be shunned by the other residents."
Eh? That's the reason why he didn't want to show it to us? But doesn't that just mean he's foreign? Then again, everyone we've met so far only spoke this one unified language, and I never heard of anyone with foreign letters as their initials before. Maybe it really is outlawed in Heaven or something?
"Ah, I get it." Vastoria nodded along, "The Gods made sure we all spoke a single language in Heaven 2.0 so that we wouldn't naturally separate into factions."
"Is that true?" I furrowed my brows.
"They told me that once." She explained, "People who spoke another language are made to speak this one, but that doesn't mean their history has been changed. Their human life still hails from that foreign community, hence their initials cannot be translated as well."
"So it really is a big deal..." I looked at Sheep once more, "Sorry for being pushy about it before. Had I known..."
"No, you couldn't have known, so I'm not offended." He smiled, "Regardless, I think this situation is serious enough to warrant me showing you this little secret of mine. If we wanna make it out of here, I shouldn't be selfish. I want to give us the best chances of success."
Wow, he's really stepping up, isn't he? I'm proud of him, but it's also not quite right to get the wounded guy to do all the heavy lifting. I feel wrong not doing anything. Hmm, but maybe I don't have to sit around doing nothing...!
"Sheep, we got your back." I nodded at him with a confident smile, "Once it lunges at you, hold the fork out in front of you and don't move an inch until it skewers itself."
"Yeah?" He seemed confused, "Wasn't that the plan all along?"
"Just one more thing." I explained, "The moment its head makes contact with the fork, push it down to the ground with all your might."
At this point, both he and Vastoria were quite puzzled by my sudden addendum to the plan. He was a bit skeptical, given my lack of explanation, but trust was an important part of this plan working out. With a solemn nod, he agreed and—without further delay—set out to hopefully defeat the first of many bat roaches.
"Mn..." He looked around anxiously, "I don't see it anywhere."
"Just keep holding the fork out in front of you no matter what." Vastoria hollered.
"And fix your stance." I added, "If you don't, it'll send you backwards and the plan won't work!"
Doing as he was instructed, he kept darting his gaze around until his head got dizzy, constantly checking his stance and making sure his fork was pointed where his Eyes were looking at. The air was quiet, we were certain nothing was there.
"...Above you!" I saw it for a split second, "Jump back!"
Just in the nick of time, the large beast hit the ground at shocking speeds, but thanks to my warning and his quick reflexes, he managed to dodge the initial attack. Without even giving him a second of reprieve, the bat roach lunged directly for his fingers. The fork, however, stood in between the two. Just as planned!
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
"Bzzzzt!" The roach bat's mangled face tried to free itself from the fork's prongs, it's Eyes popping out of each socket as it wiggled around in front of him.
"Eugh, sick!" Sheep gagged before mustering up all his strength to send it down to the ground, "Magnes, now!"
"On it!" I shouted, running up from behind him with a somewhat large piece of the wall that fell off when the boulder from upstairs struck it, "Die, you nasty motherfucker!!!"
And just like that, its already half-dead and disgusting head was squashed under the weight of the rock. The sound it made had elements of both a popping balloon and a strong crunch, which made everyone sick to their stomachs. We were too scared to lift the rock up—and thankfully we didn't have to—because Sheep yanked the fork free the moment I hit the creature with the rock. That's one done, of Gods know how many more...
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"A..." Sheep fistpumped with all his might, "Alright! Eat that, sucker!"
"Yuck, its body is still twitching..." Vastoria refused to get near it.
"Let's get a move on." I looked around, "You never know when the next one will show its ugly mug."
Thankfully, everything about this encounter worked out perfectly in our favor, but that's probably not gonna be the case for every battle. Besides that, each time we win, I'll have to run back to our starting room and grab another large rock from the boulder's carnage. If we are to believe Vastoria, there are two more roach bats we'll need to fight before we find ourselves the shield. Once that's done, we should be a lot safer.
"S-! Stop..." Vastoria quietly instructed us to hide as we turned the corner, "There, on that wall, two of them."
"Just like you said." I recalled her room plan with the pebbles, "We could deal with them in a one-on-one confrontation, but two at the same time is a different story..."
"Well, we're safe here so long as they don't see us." Sheep shrugged, "We have time to think up a plan."
A plan, eh? That's all well and good, but I'm pretty sure we've exhausted all of our ideas back at the starting room. Now that we've come this far, it's kind of just a question of whether or not we're skilled enough to pull it off. If there was a safer strategy, however, I'm all ears.
"...What if we set a trap for them?" Vastoria recalled, "Even just using one of the traps from the previous floor as a basis would be more than lethal enough, wouldn't it?"
"No, that wouldn't work." I explained, "Those traps require a level of craftiness we simply don't have. And even if we did know how they worked, we don't have the tools to make them. I doubt such intricately hidden traps can be made with rocks and a fork."
"...But what if it could?" Sheep got an idea, "Back when the first one attacked me, I noticed a funny little pattern about the way it hunted."
"Is there anything funny about those... things?" I struggled to even use the two words in a sentence together.
"Once you hear what I mean, I think you'll call it funny as well." He smiled, "Back then, once it fell from above me and I dodged, it remained in place for a split second."
"Isn't that just its weight making it harder for it to change directions, though?" Vastoria asked.
"No, it was pretty light when I skewered it." He explained, "Meaning it can only be one other thing—They're too dumb to understand object permanence."
Object permanence, the ability to understand that once something is out of sight, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not physically existent anymore. Most animals and small children think this way, and get scared when their caretakers close the door on them, assuming they've been abandoned. I guess you could call that aspect cute, but only for those cases. I definitely wouldn't use the same adjective for those roach headed bat monsters...
"So what are you saying, we could use that moment to trap them?" I inquired.
"If we take our time to set up the trap and bait properly, we could take them out without even having to dirty our clothes." He grinned.
He seemed more than confident in his plan, so we let him take the lead on this one. After enough theorycrafting, he came up with the idea of using the nearby vines as a rope that'd carry the large rock meant for smashing them. Two of us would hide behind a bush holding the other end of the rope as the third person would serve as the bait, luring them to the position just under the rock. The bait would dodge, the monsters would flock to the correct position, the other two would drop the rock, and hopefully if all goes well...
"...We'll be done!" He tossed the vine up, lifting the rock into position, "Alright, who's gonna be the bait?"
"...Eh?" Vastoria and I paused, "Y-You mean one of us...?"
"Yeah, I was on the frontline last time." He shrugged, "This time I'll hold the vine, and one of you is gonna-"
"Absolutely not!" We shouted, almost waking the monsters just on the other side.
"...Ah, I got a way to settle this." He smiled, "Two beasts require two baits, no?"
"Wait, no-"
Yep, he made us both be the bait. As we stood underneath the large rock, our hearts began to sink. Somehow, I feel like he's getting back at us for making he do this last time. I can already see him snickering behind those bushes, the jackass... Regardless, it was now or never. We just needed to make ourselves look like the tastiest pieces of gold they've ever seen in their lives!
"Hey, uggos!" I shouted at them, "C'mere and eat us, bastards!"
"Y-Yeah, what she said!" Vastoria nervously raised her voice as well, "Come here and-!"
Ah, they're already flying full speed at us.
"Jump back!" Sheep shouted, preemptively letting go of the vine.
The moment we jumped back, the rock hit them both, thus trapping them on the floor. Quickly, Sheep ran to us with the fork, stabbing the roaches' brains out with it. It made for an even more disgusting spectacle than before, but at least we knew for certain that they were dead. This time, they weren't even twitching.
"...Let's go." He refused to even talk about it with how sick he felt.
"I felt my heart jump out of my chest for a moment..." Vastoria tightly clenched it.
"Lemme see." I put my ear up to it, much to her embarrassment, "Mn, you'll be fine."
"M-Migu!" She jolted.
Her reactions comforted Sheep and I in our time of need, allowing for us to continue the journey with a more relaxed mind. We still couldn't get the images of the mangled beasts' corpses out of our heads, but it's still better than having us be the mangled ones. After a few more minutes of walking, we finally made it to the first proper upgrade since the fork.
"...That's one weird looking tree." I thought aloud.
"Yep, and embedded within its roots is...! Eh?" Sheep saw the tiny shield we had set as our goal, "Vastoria, what is this?"
"Ehe~" She twiddled her thumbs anxiously, and with a slight chuckle she admitted, "It's... better than nothing?"
Better than nothing, she said. Goddamn... This shield is just barely enough to cover your goddamned hand, for Prylos' sake!