Logan had a distinct childhood memory. This was before the properties around his grandfather’s cabin became so desirable that they were only affordable by the super rich, and way before Eleanor moved in and tore down the property next door to build the modern cabin that stood there today.
Back then, the cabin next door had been like his grandfather’s… wooden and rundown. The dock had been within shouting distance of their own, and the owners had been eccentric and elderly. At least they’d seemed elderly to the child Logan was back then.
One day, Old-Man Reagon had come storming over, shouting his head off about the Ogopogo monster. For centuries, there had been a legend that the lake had its own lake monster, equivalent to Loch Ness. But they were just stories.
Until Old-Man Reagon came storming over to the cabin.
Reagon had ranted and raved that the lake monster had come to visit him. It had swum right next to his dock! he’d shouted. In plain view like a dolphin saying hello. According to Old-Man Reagon, the lake monster had been huge, the length of half the dock. Snake-like, with three humps on its back, it had paused right at the surface as if basking in the sun.
His grandfather had humored old-man Reagon. He’d nodded his head and pretended to believe him, while Logan and Lara had listened in fascination.
It was only after old-man Reagon had left that his grandfather explained that he tended to dip into hard liquor, and that Logan and Lara shouldn’t trust anything he’d said.
So Logan had chalked it up to a tale from his childhood. Whenever anyone had speculated about the supposed lake monster, Logan had held back an eyeroll and said that the story had been drummed up by people wanting to generate tourism dollars.
He’d never believed it.
After all, even if there had been a monster in the lake centuries ago, there was no way it was still alive.
Animals didn’t live for centuries.
And yet, in front of him was proof that something had lurked underneath the depths of the lake, something immense, something old. It was undeniable that the System had warped the lake monster during Integration, but it had to exist for it to be warped in the first place.
Beyond the blind snake hair that writhed liked Medusa, there was also an oddness to the monster’s hide. Something was moving. It was as if large worms were scurrying underneath its flesh.
As Logan watched, a slit opened in front of the thing’s throat, exposing green, glistening flesh and muscle. From within the slit, the head of a snake popped out, its flower tentacle tongue flickering. The gold tongue unfurled like flower pollen, droplets of gold dropping to the moss-covered ground before the snake retreated into its fleshy hole.
Holy shit, that snake tongue had resembled the undead minions’ tentacle flower tongues!
Ernie had mentioned that some of the fish had been transformed into undead fish, but Logan had assumed the transformation came from the undead sturgeons. This was too much of a coincidence to not be related. From the undead mushrooms to the undead minions, to the undead sturgeons. Had Logan just found the source of the infection?
And what the hell did [Queen Naitaka: Level ???] mean? Logan had a suspicion he didn’t like, a feeling of dread lodging deep in his stomach as he mulled over the possibilities. Did that mean that the monster’s level was so high that the System wouldn’t even translate it for him?
“Ernie,” he projected mentally. “Can you see the serpent’s level?”
“No,” he said. “I saw this in the ocean with Giant Squids and Rabid Humpback Whales! Ernie rivals all, but even he knew to avoid the question mark beasties. Usually camouflaging did the trick to make me fade from notice followed by a strategic, smart tactical retreat!”
Rabid Humpback Whales? Logan grimaced at the thought of a sick, twisted version of Moby Dick. But Ernie’s other statement had given him an idea. [Idiot’s Inspect] had told him that intelligence was the monster’s highest attribute, which meant it might be able to communicate. There was a chance that Logan could reason with it, but there was one huge problem. The thing was a serpent, and knowing the sadistic System, his [Eager Beaver] title would trigger it as soon as it saw him. There was no way to reason with a monster already enraged by an arbitrary System.
That posed a whole new question about the System’s influence. In a way, the [Eager Beaver] effect was mind control. That was unfair not just to Logan, but to the monsters. Hell, what happened if the System arbitrarily decided that Ernie should be influenced by those messages?
Logan kept as still as possible, not blinking, not breathing. A Logan statue. So far, the serpent hadn’t noticed his presence, but Ernie had been correct when he’d called the pile of jewelry ‘treasure.’ It was the treasure of a monster.
The serpent twisted its body to the right, going in the opposite direction—the side of the cave they hadn’t explored yet. So far, his luck attribute had been paying dividends. If the serpent had gone for its treasure, there would be no avoiding discovery and Ernie and Logan would have been a splat on the wall or a meal inside that thing’s belly.
Sweat beaded on Logan’s forehead as he watched the serpent dip its head low, like a dog stretching with its forepaws on the ground and ass in the air. Making a crooning noise, a humming that made the whole cave vibrate, it sung to something out of sight, like a warped version of a lullaby.
What the hell was going on?
But Logan wasn’t going to take the break for granted. The end of the thing’s tail was still inside the tunnel, the length of the monster’s body too long to fit inside the whole cave. At least on that side. Over on Logan’s end, the cave lengthened, and it might be just enough room for the serpent’s whole body. Even if they somehow managed to creep close to the cave’s tunnel entrance, with the width of the thing being as large as it was, there wouldn’t be any space to duck through. As soon as they brushed against its sides, it would know they were there.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
That meant they had to escape another way.
His camouflage skill was untried, purposely untried to better utilize his resources. There was nothing like testing a skill while his life was on the line.
“Ernie,” he said, “disguise yourself. Become the cave wall.”
“Already done.” There was a pause before Ernie whispered, “Logan… the Queen is fertilizing eggs.”
Fertilizing? Great, just what they needed. More of those things. His nerves were shot, images of Alien-like hatching eggs in his head.
Logan took a deep, silent breath and gave himself a mental talking to. Since the System Integration, he’d gone through the impossible. Losing a finger and a toe, suffering through burns and the agony of skill level upgrades. Stretching his body beyond anything he’d thought was possible and coming out the other end.
Logan, who’d had an office job before the Integration and who’s hardest decision was whether to sell the cabin, had killed monsters, undead minions, and two murderers. The System had thrown everything it could at him.
It didn’t want him to succeed. But he had to survive, if not for himself, for everyone else. There was an injustice happening to billions of people, billions just like him. Logan wouldn’t let it win. And that meant not giving up even against unsurmountable odds. Until this monster killed him, he’d give it everything he had, every ounce of willpower at his disposal.
But there was no winning against a monster that was so powerful that he couldn’t even see its level. That meant he’d have to outsmart it.
As the serpent kept singing that eerie song, Logan gazed at the cave wall—brown, covered in moss and trickling water—and then glanced down at his forearm guard. Until now, he’d been focused on utility and getting the biggest bang for his buck. That meant a shield, the camouflage features an afterthought. Still, he knew how to do it. He’d done it before.
Logan willed the Cursed Rope back inside his spatial collar and then closed his eyes, concentrating on the flexible sandstone shield. Everything that touched his skin, from his forearm guard to his chest plate. The surface of the sandstone was flexible; it wanted him to transform it from a dull, boring beige into colors that had a life to them, a mirror effect.
Logan opened his eyes, his lips parting in shock.
He hadn’t understood the true power of [Mimicry Armour]. The camouflage wasn’t a stationary image like camo clothing. He’d been thinking that he’d have to transform the image manually each time he moved to an area with a different background. Instead, the camouflage moved with him like a reflective mirror.
His armour was now invisible against the cave wall, a perfect replica of everything around him. Still, it only covered half his body—if that. Last time, when he’d spread the armour, it had depleted his Karma pool at a much higher rate. That was without the camouflage. Logan needed to be as expedient as possible.
Keeping a careful eye on the crooning monster, Logan willed a pile of sand from his spatial collar, depositing it mid-air and immediately utilizing [Mimicry Armour] to grab a hold of it before it could drop to the ground and make noise. Biting his lip in concentration, he spread the sand to the rest of his body and formed the sandstone Logan-exoskeleton. Plate after plate formed into the whole, covering his swim trunks and traveling down his legs.
He paused the armour right below his ankles. His feet were bare; his shoes inside his spatial collar, but now was not the time to experiment with armour boots. Logan would have to live with dangling, visible feet for now.
Merging the armour into one seamless suit, he also left his hands free, before focusing on his head and neck. The sandstone spread up the other side of his neck and chin, traveling up the back of his scalp, covering his hair and his forehead before he paused it, leaving his face bare.
He’d covered everything except his feet, hands, and the front of his face. It should have felt constricting, what Logan imagined an iron suit would feel like, but instead, it was airless and light, as if it weren’t there at all.
Since he’d already activated the camouflage feature, it spread to the rest of the armour as soon as he’d formed it. Glancing down at his arm, Logan blinked. Far out. He couldn’t see it against the cliff wall! It was only because he knew his arm was there that he could see a faint, faint outline, but to anyone else, he’d be invisible!
There was only one problem.
450/510.
447/510.
444/510.
441/510.
His Karma was depleting at a rapid rate. Logan would have minutes—if that. He began to wish he’d prioritized his Karma pool and regeneration rate. So many points had been wasted on attributes that in a pinch, didn’t mean much.
“Ernie, I’m going to lure the monster over here and make it think we’re trying to escape through the hole up above. It’ll be enraged when it sees its missing treasure and hopefully lunge over here, enough for its tail to come out of the tunnel. Once that happens, we’ll jump into the water and escape. But we’ll have seconds. Seconds only. You need to be ready.”
The octopus’ mental voice was a whisper. “Ernie will be very quiet. Very stealthy.”
Logan inched around, shuffling his feet as soundless as possible and turning his face towards the wall so that the armour camouflaged the back of his head. Then, ducking his hands in front of his chest and out of view, he willed a few pieces of jewelry out of his spatial storage and told the collar to deposit it up above, in mid-air, right in the middle of the cave opening.
As soon as the jewelry popped into the air, it rained down, one bracelet falling directly to the moss-covered ground with a slight thud, two other rings falling at an angle against the cave wall, clattering like pebbles down a hill.
The crooning abruptly stopped.
Even though Logan was hoping against hope that his plan worked, he couldn’t help feeling a trickling of dread, the hair on the back of his arms standing up underneath the armour. The serpent’s level was off the charts, and who knew what other abilities it had at its disposal.
A voice like a snake’s hiss echoed in the cave. “I sssmell your human ssstench.”
Oh fuck. Still, that meant it could smell him, not that it could see him.
“Coming into my lair, trespassing and contaminating my babies!” The ground shook, and dust and mold kicked into the air. Out of the corner of Logan’s eye, green scales glittered in the beam of sunlight, and something writhed, something too numerous to count. “A plague upon my home, a polluter! Depositing garbage and noxious odours, taking my food, harvesting the seaweed, pouring in chemicals and killing killing killing!”
Holy shit, this was without his [Eager Beaver] title kicking in?
Logan willed another handful of jewelry out of his spatial collar, throwing in a bucket of sand for good measure. They rained down from up above, as if someone were scrambling through the hole. Come on, take the bait.
“Thief. Polluter. Do you think I’m stupid?” Then, in a different tone, it commanded, “Babies, hunt.”
Oh shit oh shit oh shit. He couldn’t just stand there! Logan needed to at least know what was coming.
Ernie suddenly plopped onto his back, hanging on with his tentacles. His mental voice sounded unhinged and frantic. “Retreat! Retreat! Live to fight another day!”
That couldn’t be good.
Logan turned his head, and then his stomach dropped to the floor. The serpent was looking right at him, its green eyes glittering as slit after slit opened on its body, hundreds of undead snakes with flower tongues scurrying to the ground and slithering towards them.
“There you are,” the monster crooned.
Ding!
[Eager Beaver title in effect! This title earns you the enmity of all snakes and causes them to attack you on sight.]
And then a message flashed past that disappeared just as quickly, like a blip on the screen.
[Run, run, run, Idiot better run.]