As soon as [Deepwater Explorer] deployed, Logan’s airways opened wide and he received a shot of pure oxygen. He hadn’t noticed the effects of the smoke beyond itchy eyes and a sore throat, and with his constitution attribute as high as it was, that meant the environment outside must be off the chart’s toxic. He’d convinced himself that keeping to the same schedule made sense, and that Lara would be all right, but that level of smoke in the air didn’t give him confidence that the fire wasn’t getting worse.
Logan had dealt with smoke every summer for decades; there were times that due to weather patterns, a wildfire from hundreds of miles away would send smoke over to the Okanagan and then sit there until the weather changed and a windstorm moved it out of the area. However, there were also times when localized smoke transformed the city into a smoke-apocalypse.
That protective brother syndrome was kicking in with a vengeance. The thought of Lara and the kids in the path of an inferno caused his mouth to dry with worry, a chasm of anxiety opening in his stomach.
But it was that same dilemma all over again. He could be worrying for nothing, and if he arrived early, he may not be able to find her. Still, there was one thing he could do in absence of the cell network. During the day, all he’d been able to see was smoke and smog, but at night, if the fire were moving closer to the city, Logan should be able to see it. In the dark, especially if the power were down, you could see wildfire tree candling—a great, bright fireball explosion—for miles.
Tonight, he’d be on the watch for more than just monsters.
Logan shifted the fishing net to his other hand, using his dominant arm to steady himself. Ernie was darting around the lake almost too fast for him to see, searching high and wide. Surprisingly, they’d been underwater for more than ten minutes and he’d yet to see a fish other than a handful of thumbtack-sized minnows.
“Anything?” he projected to Ernie.
“The tasty treats must be hiding,” replied Ernie, his voice glum. “It’s as if they don’t want me to catch them!”
Logan rolled his eyes. “That’s kind of the point.”
Ernie swam closer and hovered in front of Logan. “We shall have to go into the depths.”
For fuck’s sake, he was back to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea again. “How far?”
Ernie’s skin fluctuated from the blue of the water to the sandstone chest plate of Logan’s armour. So far, the water hadn’t affected it, the armour still as flexible and durable as if it were above ground. Logan had reviewed his Karma pool off and on since he’d dropped underwater, and it was holding steady at 499.
Although he would rather avoid running into another snake army, he wouldn’t mind looking for a few monsters. Back when he’d first encountered the undead sturgeon, level 32 had seemed insurmountable. Now look at Logan. He was level 30!
To tackle his goal of leveling the hell up and becoming a powerhouse to challenge the System, he needed the chance to do so. As long as he kept the risk manageable, he could grind out level after level, upgrade his Karma pool and Karma regeneration rate, and eventually increase his other attributes at the same time.
“Be on the lookout for undead sturgeons,” he said, following Ernie as he swam over a fjord drop and down an underwater slanted cliff. The cliff was full of algae-covered rocks, with long strands of seaweed rising through the jagged edges.
Ernie came to an abrupt stop, his tentacles jumping in startlement before he swum back around to face Logan, his skin fluctuating between the green algae on the rocks and the brown stems of the seaweed. “Slaughter time?” he asked with an eager glint in his eyes, two small growths forming on top of his head as his skin continued to fluctuate in color. They reminded Logan of small horns or insect antennae. They made Ernie look less like an octopus and more like an actual monster.
What the hell? Was that normal?
“Ernie, you…”
“Yes?”
The horns were jumping up and down in excitement. Logan hesitated. Ernie had already picked up an odd fashion sense awareness; if Logan mentioned he had weird growths on his head, he might become self-conscious.
“Never mind,” he said, pushing off the cliff with one foot to propel himself further into the deep. Even though it was growing progressively darker the further they went, Logan could still see everything with his [Deepwater Explorer] skill. It was odd, since the water was absent of fish, absent to the extreme. When he’d been searching for fish during his Quest, they had been sparse, but not this sparse.
“We’re on a schedule, so we can’t spend too much time hunting, but if we come across an undead sturgeon while fishing, I wouldn’t be opposed to a little slaughter.”
Ernie flashed past him like a bullet, his tentacles trailing behind him in a straight line. “Slaughter! I will find them! We shall kill them, yes yes yes.”
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Logan held back a sigh. One of these days, Ernie’s eagerness would get them into trouble.
They dropped further, to the point where he couldn’t see where the surface began. He lost sight of anything underneath his feet—nothing but bottomless blue. Being a fjord lake, Logan knew the lake could drop as low as 700 feet, but surely, they couldn’t be that low? Where the hell were the fish?
He hoped his [Deepwater Explorer] skill held up. There would be nothing worse than reaching his limits and having to level up the skill while surrounded by crushing depths.
Eventually, as they continued to drop, Ernie paused, hovering around something Logan couldn’t make out until he moved closer. It was a rocky outcrop, another sharp, shear rockface, but in the middle of it, there was a wide hole the size of a small car.
“Intriguing! An underwater cave! A good fishing spot. I found these in the ocean. They had many, many tasty treats inside.”
Logan didn’t like the look of that cave. It had a wide opening, but inside the entrance, there was a sharp, twisting turn. There was no way to see what was inside without entering. “Ernie,” he said. “Why don’t—”
“There could be undead sturgeons inside!” Ernie darted past him with a gleeful face and darted into the cave like a rabbit into a burrow.
It was like having a murderous ping pong ball as a companion. He didn’t have a problem with going inside to explore, but a little discussed strategy would have been nice. And hell no was he going inside of that thing unarmed. And yet he still didn’t have an alternative other than the Cursed Length of Rope. The guns were untried, and he suspected that as he continued to encounter higher leveled monsters, a bullet would be like hitting an elephant with a pebble.
Although he was fond of his baseball bat, it might be even worse. It was regular wood, and eventually, if he used his strength to bash it against a monster that had a body as hard as metal, it would shatter. Logan either needed to find a weapon that could handle his increased strength or suffer through using the rope.
As the seconds ticked by and Ernie continued to be nowhere to be seen, he finally willed the rope out of his spatial collar, holding his breath as he did so. When it materialized in his hand, it looked like its normal inert version—brown, rough fibres—a regular rope once again. Until he deployed it with the intention of using it, it might remain in its lifeless form. At least that was something.
Logan kicked his legs, pushing into the cave, the rope in one hand, his armour protecting his chest and his arm. The cave appeared to be normal—nothing but bare, brown rock covered in algae. As he moved into the bend, it narrowed slightly. The rock transformed from brown to black rock that was bare of all life, no algae at all—as if a massive machine had just swooped in with a car-sized excavator and tunneled out the earth.
Logan crept closer to the cave wall. A green tint caught his eye, a sparkling like a rainbow prism. The vibrant colors lit up the cave, filling the water with light. Intermixed in the stone, tiny grains of precious gemstones sparkled like emeralds.
Logan thought he knew what he was looking at, and before he could even think of deploying [Idiot’s Inspect], the System confirmed his suspicion.
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… 4500 KarmaCoin awarded. Further awards available upon mineral carbonation deployment.]
For a second, he thought he’d read it wrong. But no, he really had just received 4,500 KarmaCoin. 4,500! Holy shit! The excitement surging through him had a distinct flavor of greed. This discovery was the equivalent of stumbling over a bag of gold. He was rich!
Although Logan would classify his family as middle-class, once he’d moved out on his own, he’d continuously struggled, bouncing from job to job. Any money he managed to save on the side soon went into a bottomless pit of bills. It was a constant struggle back and forth. Receive a bonus at work? Eaten by his truck’s leaking oil tank. Flush with cash after receiving a promotion? Lose it all in a hand of poker with his buddies. That one had hurt.
So, to feel successful with money was something of a novelty and almost too good to be true. And it wasn’t so much greed for greed’s sake, but what he could do with the money. Logan didn’t know how many people had been given access to a tree fridge, but it couldn’t be many. After all, he’d only been granted access after being subjected to the trauma of Eleanor’s death and having the wisdom to recognize his mistake and the resolve to change.
The more KarmaCoin he raised, the more items he could buy from the Fridge, items that could help Tasha and Jack, and most importantly, Lara and the kids.
Logan suspected there might be something to this other than money, too. It was one thing to award him with KarmaCoin for growing trees, but another thing to award him for discovering a rock that in its current form, wouldn’t do much towards reducing carbon. No, there was something else to this that he needed to figure out.
A flash out of the corner of his eye had Logan tightening his grip on the Cursed Rope, but it was just Ernie. He was rushing over, his body vibrating with excitement. His skin was fluctuating from emerald green to the darker stone around them. “Logan!” he said, beaming. “I rival all! I rival all!”
“Did you find a sturgeon?”
“I found a shiny thing! An immense, immense sparkling orb!”
Had Ernie found more olivine? “You mean the rock on the walls? It’s all over the place.”
Ernie made a disparaging sound. Logan wasn’t sure how that worked when they were speaking mentally, but it came across as clear as day. “A pittance! My discovery dwarfs all. Come come come!”
Logan felt as if he were humoring Ernie as he followed him. He was so excited he’d forgotten that Logan was human and lacking tentacles. Logan struggled to keep up as Ernie streamed through the cave. They took another turn, twisting, and then went sharply down. Just how far did this cave go?
Going another fifty feet through yet more cut stone, Logan slowed as the cave opened into a chasm. The chamber had to be the size of a tennis court, its walls round and circular with jagged stalactites hanging from the ceiling. But that’s not what gave him pause. What gave him pause was the glowing light.
Logan tightened his grip on the Cursed Rope and barely breathed underwater.
Creeping forward, his eyes opened wide. It was as if hundreds of neon light bulbs were blasting the area all at once.
There was one source of light.
In front of him was a circular sphere the size of a garden shed, its walls fluctuating as if Logan were looking into rushing space, starlight zooming by too fast for him to comprehend.
In awe, Logan could only gape. He was looking at something that seemed impossible. Too advanced. Beyond this world. With not even a semblance of normal technology to be found. And next to the sphere was an etched lodestone that reminded him of the tree fridge.
A portal.