As Logan walked to his campsite, the ground became uneven the closer he got to the forest. He might find what he needed there.
Ernie perked up when he saw Logan. “Slaughter time?”
“Almost. One more thing to try.” Logan gestured for the octopus to move and then cleared his campsite, willing the blanket and other supplies back into storage.
Ernie nudged Logan’s leg with a tentacle. “I thought your noble quest was urgent. But now you are sightseeing. Tsk tsk.”
“I’m not sightseeing. I’m on a scavenger hunt.”
Ernie brightened. “For fish?”
“For something much better.”
Ernie bobbed his head. “Exciting! Then I shall come.”
Before Logan had a chance to protest, Ernie had latched onto him. Using his tentacles, he crawled up Logan’s torso, trailing slime. Then, grabbing onto Logan’s hair, he perched on top of his head, tentacles dangling down his neck and back, suctions steadying his perch.
“Proceed, noble steed.”
It was one thing to entertain an octopus as a hat for the sake of a skill, but another thing to contemplate doing it just for the heck of it.
“You comfortable up there?” Logan said dryly.
“It's very high up. I’m a giant,” Ernie whispered.
Logan moved into the forest, tightening his grip on his baseball bat as he looked around, every snap of a twig or rustle in the bush making him hyperalert. He didn’t have far to go before he located a massive boulder sticking out of the ground next to a tree that easily had to be half a century old.
Green moss and dirt covered the boulder. The width of a barrel at least, it would have taken an excavator to lift before the System, and Logan had doubts whether he’d make any progress even with his increased strength.
“What are you looking at?” asked Ernie. “It looks like a rock. Where’s the treasure?”
“The rock is the treasure.” Logan willed it into his spatial collar, only to feel resistance, as if an elastic were pushing back. Then, with a snap, the boulder shifted in place, rising slightly from its depression in the ground before disappearing with a clap like thunder.
“Did you do that?” Craning forward and peering into the hole, Ernie made an excited sound. “Oooooh, shiny!”
Logan gaped. In the ground, there was a large hole where the boulder had rested, and inside the hole, a severed rock. It shimmered a dark green color like an emerald. Had he found a hidden gem?
But how had that happened? It looked like the boulder had been attached to a further network of rocks underground. Logan had severed the connection when he’d thrown the boulder into his collar. That alone implied too many possibilities to count.
Could he use his spatial collar as a severing tool? If he could, that meant he could cut other things, things that he couldn’t cut with his bare hands. Stone, metal; hell, even diamonds. Well, maybe not diamonds… they were way too small, and why would he want to? If he found a diamond the size of a gold nugget, you better bet your ass he was keeping it as is.
Still, he had so many questions. Was the ability only applicable to items that had a defined shape above ground with a hidden section below ground? Would it only be a matter of imagination?
Logan was about to use [Idiot’s Inspect] on the mineral when the System interrupted him.
Ding!
[You have successfully discovered a source of olivine, a mineral that absorbs carbon when crushed and scattered on the ground. 10% Mass Murderer title penalty in effect. Calculating reward for discovery… 90 KarmaCoin awarded! Further awards available upon mineral carbonation deployment.]
Holy shit! Logan had read about this! That biology class he’d struggled through in college hadn’t been useless after all. There were naturally occurring minerals that absorbed carbon. But for them to be effective, they had to be ground up, exposing as much mineral as possible. That’s where the magic happened.
Rain came. The carbon captured in the water dissolved the mineral and turned it into things like calcium or other compounds that went into lakes and oceans. Logan recalled that many of the sea creatures used that very mixture to help form their shells. Maybe Ernie even needed it? Either way, it was all connected.
Nature was awesome.
With the ten percent penalty, that meant he’d actually earned 100 KarmaCoin but ended up with 90. If the System awarded him for finding olivine, what would it give Logan if he ground it into sand? The rock inside the boulder hole had a ton of that shiny emerald rock, which made him think it continued further out. The area was uneven, full of lumps. What if grass and pine needles were covering an olivine depository?
Ernie shifted on top of his head. “The treasure is shiny, but I think I much prefer a mouthful of fish. Speaking of…?”
Ernie was right. Regardless of Logan’s excitement, he couldn’t spend time mining olivine for money. Lara took priority over getting rich. Still, Logan took a mental note of the location. Once he picked up Lara and the kids, there wasn’t a reason he couldn’t make a pitstop.
But he needed more boulders. Logan wandered away from the olivine until he found others. These had a different color, a pale beige, as opposed to the other’s dark, black tinge. Logan willed them into his spatial storage one after the other. Most gave him no trouble, only a few giving him that elastic resistance. In total, he’d managed to find over twenty boulders, one the size of a horse, the others the size of tires.
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“That’s enough,” he said to Ernie. “Let’s go.”
***
Logan was relieved to see that Ernie was happy perching on one of the canoe’s seats, four tentacles dangling over the side and into the water. It would have been awkward as hell to paddle with him perched on Logan’s head. He’d made a promise to catch fish by dangling a net over the side, but it was debatable whether it would work.
“It’s a magic fish entrapment!” Ernie said, preening and trailing one tentacle around the top of the net greedily. He’d mimicked the colors of the canoe—green and white, but as each tentacle touched the net, they took on the same hues. It seemed to be unconscious, a natural camouflage that his body completed the same way Logan breathed air.
At least Ernie might have fun while he watched water pour through the netting, and his quick-acting tentacles would be able to latch onto fish as soon as Logan started their journey and built-up speed.
Logan grabbed hold of the wooden paddles. His burn had fully healed now, and his index finger almost looked normal. It felt only slightly awkward to wrap his fingers around the handles. It felt like something was off, as if he were wearing a glove on his finger while the rest of his hand was bare.
Logan began paddling, his motions steady as he built up momentum, gradually increasing their speed as they streamed through the water. The sky was full of smoke, the sun a bright red, and there was a layer of dimness to the day that should be bright with sunshine. His eyes began burning, his throat tight.
Despite his perception attribute, the smoke was so bad he could hardly see half a mile in front of them. He knew he was going in the right direction, but he couldn’t make out anything across the lake, and Logan could only see the vague resemblance of trees and the occasional cabin on the shoreline closest to them.
His biceps started to burn, sweat beading on his forehead as he quickened his strokes.
Ding!
[You have earned one Endurance point! Endurance daily limit capped for the next 24 hours.]
Hell yes. The System notification came in as expected. Now he only needed strength.
Logan let up rowing for a second, wiping away sweat from his forehead, and then considered. He was still wearing the same shirt, and even after soaking it, splattered blood stains decorated it like spilled paint. Plus, it was soaked with sweat and starting to stink. Logan had left it on since he hadn’t wanted a sun burn, but even if he did receive one, his constitution stat might take care of it pretty quickly.
That did it. Logan took it off, then willed it inside his spatial collar before dipping the oars into the water once again. If he could up his physical attributes with the cheat method every day, he might be able to increase his speed so rapidly that he’d arrive at Hope’s End in five days rather than six or seven.
The smog thickened to the point where he couldn’t make out the closest shoreline. To be safe, Logan put distance between the waterfront and the canoe, angling the boat further into the lake so he had no chance of running into rocky, winding shoreline.
They travelled for what had to be an hour at least, and he finally received his last cheat as he reached, angling the paddles deep into the water to deliberately increase the water resistance, his muscles straining.
Ding!
[You have earned one Strength point! Strength daily limit capped for the next 24 hours.]
Logan squinted through the smog, blinking, thinking his eyes were playing tricks on him. It looked as if he were closing in on land, but that made no sense. He wasn’t anywhere close to the shoreline. But there was something…
An island.
The island was nothing but a massive rock. There was no beachfront at all, nothing but ragged, sharp rocks on the shoreline. Scattered pine trees struggled to grow out of the ground, surrounded by rocks on all sides.
Logan used his right paddle so he could angle the boat around the island. That had come up way too fast! If the smog had been any worse, he could have driven right into a pile of towering rocks.
Logan squinted at the island, and then he realized where he was.
Rattlesnake Island.
The island had been a feature when he’d been a child. His grandfather had driven the boat to it many times. But despite the alarming name, there were no rattlesnakes. As a child, he remembered being so let down when he learned that the ‘rattlesnake’ referred to rattlesnake grass rather than snakes.
His alarm turned to nostalgia as he let the current drag the boat closer to the island before it slowed, and he came to a stop over shallow water. He could just see the glint of more rocks underneath them, as if they were on top of a layer of lava rock.
When he was younger, his grandpa had anchored his speedboat right next to the rocky shore, deploying his fishing rod, while Lara and Logan had jumped up onto the rocks, climbing until they discovered crumbling stone stairs. Someone had carved the stairs into the rock bed, creating a staircase that looped up the top of the island.
“Hmm,” said Ernie, peering down at the water. “Those don’t look very tasty, but I suppose I could try them. It’s important to have a diverse diet!”
Logan turned his attention from the island to the octopus. “What?”
Ernie was leaning over the side of the boat and looking directly at the shallow bottom.
Logan peered over the side of the canoe and then promptly froze.
At first, he thought he was seeing things.
Underneath them, hundreds of snakes coiled together, writhing. They rubbed their bodies against each other as if in a twisted mating dance. Each were the length of half a person, dark grey, with green fins on their sides. It reminded Logan of that scene in Indiana Jones, when Jones had dropped into a pit of writhing snakes.
It was like an acid trip on steroids. But this wasn’t acid, it was real.
A pit opened in Logan’s stomach as his skin grew clammy and cold sweat broke out on his body. Adrenaline spiking, a ringing noise in his ears, he didn’t dare move.
Biting his lip, Logan used [Idiot’s Inspect] on the snakes.
[Flying Hunting Snake Level 18. A snake that has evolved from a rodent hunter to a freshwater hunting master. Their amphibian wings let them glide over water and snatch prey before diving deep for a further snack.]
[Flying Hunting Snake Level 25….]
[Flying Hunting Snake Level 15….]
[Flying Hunting Snake Level 29….]
[Flying Hunting Snake Level 13….]
[Flying Hunting Snake Level 30….]
Because there were so many of them, [Idiot’s Inspect] didn’t seem to know which one to scan, so he received message after message, as if his acid trip had turned into a glitch in the matrix.
Logan didn’t dare breathe. He didn’t dare twitch. There were over a hundred of them! A hundred level 15 to 30 monsters! Holy shit, they were so dead.
“Ernie,” he hissed. “Don’t move! Don’t attract their attention. We can’t win against that many.”
He could cut the tension with a knife. Sweat pouring down his neck and face, he slowly, slowly reached for the paddles, keeping the snakes in view and not daring to move his head.
Logan dipped one paddle into the water, just breaking the surface, his brow furrowed in tension. They were still writhing and hadn’t seemed to have taken notice of the boat.
Logan dipped the other paddle into the water on the other side.
They might make it out of this.
He was about to push the boat along, when, as one, they stilled.
[Eager Beaver title in effect! This title earns you the enmity of all snakes and causes them to attack you on sight.]
Oh fuck.