The Cursed Length of Rope was a game changer. Logan didn’t have to worry about catching fish. Hell no. As soon as he closed in on one, the rope took care of the rest. But this wasn’t fishing. It was fish shredding.
As he caught yet another fish and stuffed its carcass inside the net looped over his upper arm, a surge of optimism replaced his worry. He had a real chance to finish the quest in time.
He’d also managed to level up [Deepwater Explorer] two times without having to resort to escaping for the surface, saving precious time. Leveling the skill had still been torture, and each time the pain seemed worse, but pain was starting to be routine in this new world.
Ding!
[You have successfully caught one edible fish!]
[Quest Progress: 15/20. 25 minutes remaining.]
The rope was mangling the bodies to all hell—half skeleton, half fleshy bits—nothing Logan could eat, but it didn’t matter. It could mangle the fish to its hearts content if it satisfied the System requirement of ‘catching’ a fish.
Logan scanned the underwater forest. He’d had to resort to moving further inside the thick strands, and as he caught each fish, less and less of them seemed to hang around the area. He was going to need to go deeper.
He moved away from the seaweed and glanced down the sharp incline. Before, it had been a bottomless pit of dark, but now he could clearly see that it led to a deeper area. What was at the bottom was another question.
There was only one way to find out.
Logan kicked-slash-stepped down the incline, using his arms to push himself, the Cursed Length of Rope swinging in one hand. The incline felt slimy against his feet as he stepped over large stones and pebbles covered in algae. As he dropped, the temperature plummeted from a pleasant warmth to a chill, and he was thankful he’d decided to wear his long-sleeved shirt.
Logan couldn’t believe his eyes when he reached the bottom. He was expecting rocks, algae, more seaweed. What he wasn’t expecting was an ancient looking transportation truck. Algae covered it like the worst mold in the world, but underneath, it looked painted white. It had rounded edges, that distinct style you’d only see in the 1950s or 60s. Logan knew things dropped in this lake and you never found them again, but what the hell? How did a truck even get this far?
But fish might love something like this. The windows were smashed—they could swim inside. Black, spiky algae even stuck out of the front windows. That had to be a magnet for life. Logan swam closer and then used his sleeve to scrub off the algae on the side of the truck. In big black letters, he could clearly see DAIRY. A milk truck.
Weird ass shit.
He didn’t have time to explore further; time was ticking, and he still needed to catch five fish.
He was in luck. A school of fish had gathered at the back of the truck, swimming in circles like an underwater fish tornado. It was almost too easy. Creeping forward, he swung the Cursed Length of Rope.
It did the rest.
Ding!
[You have successfully caught one edible fish!]
[Quest Progress: 16/20. 20 minutes remaining.]
[You have successfully caught one edible fish!]
[Quest Progress: 17/20. 18 minutes remaining.]
Fish after shredded fish went into his net. Excitement surging, Logan couldn’t hold back a wide grin; the thrill of things going well almost too good to believe.
He caught the nineteenth fish, needing only one more. It was going so well, he was tempted to try his hand at the spear gun, but then he felt disloyal. The rope had gotten him this far. No reason to change a winning strategy when his life was on the line.
Logan deployed the rope on the remaining fish in the school. Most had scattered, but a handful lingered—easy pickings.
Ding!
[You have successfully caught one edible fish!]
And then an even louder Ding!
[Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed the Quest: Big Fisherman! 30 bonus attribute points awarded. Keep it up, Idiot! You’ve defied our low, low expectations!]
Hell yeah, he was a Big Fisherman! Elated, filled with excitement yet at the same time swamped with relief, if a mountain of water wasn’t all around him, Logan would collapse in a sprawl. It was hard to believe it was over.
Catching twenty fish hadn’t been the problem. It was knowing failure equaled death that had his stomach lurching the whole time.
And after that whole ordeal, he had 30 bonus attributes to allocate. Thirty! That was six whole levels worth of attribute points.
Logan debated allocating them while still underwater, but he needed to start moving to the surface. He’d already been underwater for an hour, and he needed to return to his campsite before it got dark.
Still, he could spare a minute for one more experiment. The fish within his fishing net were mangled like a cat had shredded them with its claws, and if the rope secreted acid, there was no way he’d brave cooking them. This place was a goldmine for fishing, and he’d like to give the spear gun one more try. The school of fish had scattered, but the truck might be full of them. Talk about easy pickings.
He swam around the truck, heading for the back, scanning for gleaming scales, lurking fish. The back doors were open. Either they’d been that way when it fell into the lake or the force of the truck slamming to the bottom had done it.
Logan peered inside, squinting. His new skill illuminated the water around him, but the water inside the truck was thick with some kind of milky substance, like spoiled cream in coffee.
Two red lights blinked at him in the darkness.
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For a second, his mind rushed from wondering how a dairy truck from the 1960s could still have power underwater, when he realized those weren’t lights.
They’d blinked again.
They were eyes.
Feeling a trickling of dread, Logan froze, the chilly water and silence around him making the feeling that more acute. Fish didn’t blink, and if those lights were eyes, they were huge. His trepidation made him tighten his grip on the Cursed Length of Rope, and rather than reacting to his clear intent to proceed with caution, it once again took the opportunity to rebel and display its recklessness. Disobeying Logan’s mental command to stay, it leaped forward like a whip into the depths of the truck.
You little shithead. Still, Logan didn’t know what he was dealing with yet. Didn’t some algae glow in the dark? It could be a trick of his eyes, any number of things.
The rope communicated glee glee glee which quickly turned to confusion and then panic panic panic as it recoiled, retreating to Logan’s side and transforming into its inert, fibre version as if it were cowering and wanted to hide. If the crazy rabid rope had retreated, that couldn’t be good.
He was starting to regret not leaving while he was ahead. Logan didn’t need to fish that bad! Taking a careful step back, he swung his arms to push further away in the water.
It was too late.
The rope had disturbed whatever was inside the truck, and there was no putting the genie back in the bottle.
The first thing he saw was a pointy head, a head larger than a crocodile’s, with red eyes the size of glass jars. It was pale, so pale it was like a ghost, black bones clear under its translucent skin. The thing swam forward and grew closer and closer.
End to end, it must be nine feet in length at least, the width the size of three anacondas on steroids. It had to weigh a ton! On the top of its long, elongated body, it had pointy fins that were more like bones, as well as one large fin in the shape of a shark’s fin. At first glance, what he’d assumed was black algae sticking out of the truck’s broken front windows had actually been this thing’s tail.
Holy shit!
Logan frantically deployed [Idiot’s Inspect].
[Undead Mutated Sturgeon: Level 32. A bottom feeder by nature, warped by its transformation to turn everything it touches into undead minions who cling to the bottom of the depths, luring in prey to add to the minion army.]
Forget fishing! Level 32 was intimidating enough, throw in the size of this behemoth and there was only one thing he could do: run! Unfortunately, running underwater was better said than done. He kicked with all his might, trying to propel himself forward, but when he glanced behind, the sturgeon was right on his heels, swimming leisurely, as if it were going purposely slow out of amusement to let Logan wear himself out.
That did it! Logan allocated his free points so quickly he might as well have gotten points-whiplash.
[Agility: 21]
[Agility: 22+]
[Agility: 35]
[Endurance: 21]
[Endurance: 22+]
[Endurance: 35]
He divvied them up equally between agility and endurance: 15 points each.
Logan embraced the boost, hoping against hope it would give him the leg up he needed to get away. And it was a hell of a boost. As the upgrade took effect, he felt like swimming ten Olympic size pools back-to-back at the same time as doing flips underwater.
The problem was, Logan was still human, with human legs and arms. He didn’t have fins and the abilities of a fish. No matter how agile he was, it could still outswim him.
His one hope was that it was a lumbering giant, not wanting to do Logan harm. Maybe he was just in its way.
Changing directions, he turned in the direction of the incline that led up to higher ground, anticipation and dread making every ineffectual kick that more frustrating. Logan glanced behind, hoping hoping hoping… FUCK!
It was right on his heels, red eyes full of dark amusement.
Okay, okay. Panic wasn’t helping him think his way out of this. Logan took a deep breath underwater, and he tried to calm down at the same time as doing his best to put distance between himself and the sturgeon.
[Idiot’s Inspect] had labelled the sturgeon undead; did that mean it was similar to the undead minions? He’d killed the minions with brute force and his baseball bat, and the bat wasn’t a good option underwater. But he had a wealth of supplies inside his spatial collar. What could be used against a fish? It may be undead, but it still looked like a massive sturgeon. There had to be similarities.
He’d used a can of hairspray against the bark ants, but that wouldn’t work in a lake. No, no, there had to be something else.
Logan kept kicking like crazy. Was it just his imagination, or had the thing gained on him?
There was one option he could try. A desperate, Hail Mary option. Back in college, he’d been forced to take a biology class to receive his degree. He’d barely squeezed out a passing grade, but he’d picked up inane crap in that class.
Crazily enough, fish didn’t like their own reflections. They would either attack a mirror, thinking it was another fish, or avoid it like crazy.
And he had just the thing to try, one last, desperate measure to get one up on the behemoth. In addition to the hairspray, he’d stored anything he thought Lara’s kids might like, what he thought as ‘girly things.’ He’d thrown in towels, body wash, shower caps and a robe. But Jack’s bathroom also had a massive, rectangle portable mirror, the kind that lit up. It might be just the thing.
Logan willed the mirror out of his collar and grabbed it with one hand, the cowering rope looped around his other wrist.
Kicking with one foot, he swivelled around, holding the mirror right below his chin so he had a direct line of sight. The sturgeon was still leisurely swimming after him, close on his heels with an aura of sick satisfaction. As soon as its swishing back tail pushed it within sight of the mirror, its black web fins stood on end, red eyes opening wide.
It crept closer, cautious as it caught sight of itself in the mirror. Blink, blink, blink, went its red eyes as its mouth parted, displaying black teeth. At the same time, that milky substance from the dairy truck spewed from its mouth, dissipating in the water around him.
Instead of attacking the mirror, it seemed enthralled. It had forgotten Logan as it focused on the mirror to the exclusion of anything else, its tail swaying excitedly. For the first time, the sturgeon’s pale skin took on a tint of color, a blush blooming over its head and long back.
This was his chance.
It might be his only chance.
Logan tightened his grip on the Cursed Length of Rope, communicating with everything he had that he wanted it to attack. In response, the rope communicated unease back it him and… something else.
Vivid, as vivid as a 3D movie, he saw a scene in his mind. In the projection, the rope slithered through the water, moving like a snake as it approached the sturgeon. As soon as it touched the thing’s sides, the sturgeon’s attention snapped from the mirror to the rope, moving like a shark as it chomped down with its dagger teeth and tore the rope in half. Bits and pieces spread throughout the lake, slowly drifting to the sandy ground where it eventually faded away, fibre by fibre.
Just like that, the scene was gone, leaving Logan to blink in disbelief.
The rope kept surprising him. How could the System not consider it alive if it thought, felt, and was able to project images? There was something hinky at work. Still, a cowardly rope wouldn’t help him defeat the sturgeon. Logan willed it back into his spatial collar and then took out his last, desperate option.
The gun.
The handgun felt foreign in his hand, and he had no idea if it would fire underwater, but he needed to use all the resources at his disposal. Back in the mushroom clearing, the spider rat had been bullet-proof, but that was at a distance. If the gun fired, the water had to reduce the power of the bullet, but he was close enough that it might do real damage.
The sturgeon was flicking its tail back and forth in excitement, completely enthralled with its own image. Logan could do this.
Biting his lip as he got ready to aim, he turned off the safety, his hand on the trigger—
A rush of water was his only warning.
Tentacles.
Suction cups.
So many tentacles.
With a movement too fast for him to follow, eight tentacles wrapped around the back of the sturgeon, digging in and twisting. With a slick wrenching snap that was audible even in the water, a monster the size of an otter somehow twisted with such force that it cut the sturgeon clean in half.
Guts, blood, and a milky white substance saturated the water around him.
An octopus.
The octopus was pale with black lines, resembling the flesh of the now-dead sturgeon. As Logan watched, the monster finished twisting and let the remains of the carcass drop to the lake floor.
Logan frantically deployed [Idiot’s Inspect].
[Murderous Octopus: Level 55. A marine cephalopod.]
Holy shit!
It blinked at him, tentacles reaching.