Chapter 20 - Hit the Road
Let it never be said that I don’t learn from my mistakes. Well, some mistakes more than others.
Last time I saw sunlight on this planet I nearly died from light exposure, an experience I wasn’t in a hurry to replicate. This time, I was doing it right, preparing myself for anything and everything. Laying out a meticulous plan that could not possibly fail.
This had nothing to do with the fact that I’d just blown myself up, and I needed my HP to regenerate before I could chance another encounter with Ralqir’s generally hostile environment.
Once I felt well enough to sit up again, I got to work preparing for my emergence into the outside world.
The sun was going to be a problem, of course, but I also needed to consider the wildlife.
Something cold tapped my foot, startling me, but it was an old friend. My iron ammunition worm, fresh from the water, wobbled there in the mud. The little guy snuck up on me, but I was glad to see it. Apparently, Detect Iron had fallen off sometime while I’d been unconscious, and the presence of real light had distracted me somewhat. Otherwise, I would have seen this coming. The construct was inert now that it had done its job and returned to me, its body back to being long and straight and the legs drawn back into its mass.
I’d been tossed all over this cavern after the monster swallowed me for the second time, and the thing had probably slithered along for hours trying to reach me. “Glad to see you made it, little buddy. What a journey you must have had,” I whispered.
For some reason, I didn’t want to raise my voice in this place. Maybe it was the memory of having to share the space with a predator earlier in the day, or maybe it was the weird, screaming orb thing. I’d felt a little guilty waking the thing up or setting it on fire or whatever I’d done. Now, I was a little worried it was listening to me or I was disturbing it by being here.
The armor I looted from the mockvine was a pretty nice upgrade considering I was wearing next to nothing right now. The problem, however, was that it was just the metal parts of the gear. I imagined that the people that wore these things met the same end I almost did, inside a bulb, covered in acid, but, unlike me, they didn’t make it out and have supernatural regeneration. The mockvine’s victims’ organic bits dissolved along with their clothes and whatever padding and straps they used to make their armor wearable.
Regardless, I compiled a set of the best pieces and set it aside to put on later. I’d take a little discomfort if that meant I wasn’t literally running around naked.
Next I refilled my two remaining aluminum oxygen tanks, this time making use of all the extra empty space this cavern afforded me, allowing the aluminum balloon to stretch far and wide before I shrunk it down to its compressed form. If I had to guess, they’d last twice as long as the original model, which was good, because I had no way to get the others back.
After that, I felt it was time to cannibalize some of the leftovers from the loot pile to improve my handgun somewhat. My single shot model worked, yes, but the design was a function of having few materials to work with and needing it to be compact for use in tight spaces.
Well, I was about to get out into the wider world, and that meant I may need more than one bullet. I still needed to keep it simple, though. With how filthy this water was and the amount of silt on the bottom of the cave, I had mud and grit to consider. Fewer moving parts meant fewer malfunctions which meant fewer chances at me becoming a corpse.
After some time thinking, I settled with a sort of hopper system, essentially a six inch boxy funnel that would hold five bullets, attached to the chamber part of the weapon. After I fired a round, I’d release the catch on the side of the pistol, pull the slide back, and a new round would fall into place. With how exact my measurements were, I felt that my chances of jamming the weapon were pretty close to zero unless I dumped a pound of mud into the hopper or tried to shoot at a weird angle..
I practiced a little with the new set up, holding the weapon in my metal hand, then racking the slide. With my fleshy hand, I would then summon more ammo to appear between my fingers and slide into the hopper. I had five shots, and reloading the hopper took about ten seconds.
Good enough for now. Just need to hope I don’t have to shoot at anything while upside down. Note to self: make a real magazine ASAP.
My setup wasn’t perfect, but I was on borrowed time here. I hadn’t counted on the water being so dirty by the time I escaped the mountain. Honestly, I hadn’t thought too far beyond: “Get out of my cell. Find air. Repeat.” Now, though, I had to consider that I was back to having no fresh water to drink, and I was fresh out of food.
Seeing how close I was to being out in the wider world again, I felt woefully unprepared. How much of that was my fault and how much was unavoidable, I didn’t know.
My HP was nearing the full mark at 98 now, and I had one more thing to do before I left.
Stretching my aching muscles for the first time in hours as I stood, I glanced over at the water’s edge where I’d uh… left the brightsteel. Yes, it almost killed me when I tried to shape it, but I wasn’t about to leave it behind. You never really knew when an exploding sword blade would come in handy, afterall, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about just how it worked and what it was made of. The occasional explosion was a small price to pay for that kind of potential. I had HP now, and if I didn’t treat it like the resource it was, I wouldn’t be using all the tools available to me.
I did, however, take precautions before I went to pick the brightsteel up. I slipped into my new set of rusty armor consisting of the chain hauberk which hung down to my knees, a steel wrist guard, and the top of the steel helmet, the rest of which I’d used to modify my firearm.
I tried on a set of foot coverings that the System labeled as ‘chausses’ but I couldn’t get them to stay up, even after some Shaping. As my legs flexed, the material just worked its way down until I was wearing them around my ankles. After a frustrating twenty minutes of trying to get them to work, I added them to the scrap list.
So, wearing my chainmail dress and steel cap, I approached the brightsteel again. This time, I was going to keep my mana away from the thing until I was in a safe enough place to experiment with it. I placed my hand on it and willed it to go in my spatial storage.
Instead of the gentle glow that I usually got when I did this, the blade flared white, flames licking up and burning my hand even as the item disappeared.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth and rubbed my hand on my armor like I’d just touched a stove, but, after a brief mental check, I sensed the brightsteel was, indeed, in my spatial storage. I felt it settle in with the rest of the stuff I had in there. My new toy didn’t play well with my mana. Was it still burning inside my storage? I hoped not.
Better have full HP when I bring it out again. Just in case.
At least I didn’t have to hold onto it.
With everything in hand or tucked away in a mysterious pocket dimension, I set out into the water once again, headed in the direction of the light. I stopped only to gather an armful of vines from the cave wall that I could drape over my head as a shield against the light doubling as a rudimentary camouflage.
My environment got much much brighter once I crossed the threshold from the cave to the outside, but there was almost zero visibility. The death throes of the mockvine hadn’t done the clarity of the water any favors. Murky and full of floating debris, it was like trying to navigate a jungle in twilight.
Detect Iron helped a bit, giving me a clear picture of the slope of the terrain and where the plants were. I even spotted a few little darting fish and insects that made the water their home. I trudged along the bottom in the murky yellow glow until I felt the tint of the light change overhead, hopefully indicating I’d found a spot of shade.
Gnarled roots of a nearby tree jutted out into the water and stabbed down into the mud at my feet. They’d be as good a climbing aid as I would find. If I wanted out of this water, now was the time.
My exit from the water proved difficult. I was heavy before I’d donned armor. Now that I wore the stuff along with pounds of plant matter concealment, getting off the bottom was nearly impossible without something solid to grip, and even then slick creeping algae and mud fought my attempts to hold onto my handholds.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
I had to use both hands to grasp the roots and haul myself up, meaning I had to store my air tank, climb for a bit, then summon it again to take a breath. It was slow, tedious progress toward the surface, but I got there.
Climbing is now level 6.
When my head broke the surface, I took in a long, deep lungful of air, my first untainted by disgusting water in half an hour. The stench of sulfur was still everywhere, but it was more muted than inside the cave. Almost instantaneously, a cloud of tiny flying insects buzzed around my face.
Glorious.
Crawling and slithering out of the muck, I pulled myself onto dry land one slow inch at a time. Nothing was dry here, much like the cave. Even the dry land was a soup of sulfuric decay with a film of algae that clung to my armor and skin.
I was in a swamp. That much I’d guessed even from below the water, but seeing it was another thing.
So far, all I’d seen of the surface of Ralqir was grand, cyclopean forests of towering trees with trunks the size of buildings.
The land here was also covered in trees but of a different species to the giants. They were short, twisted things with knotted bark, covered in gray, fluffy moss that periodically fell in clumps to sink down into the bog. The gnarled dwarfs hunched over the water with long, whiplike branches that hung down to brush the top of my head. The humidity hung heavy in the air, blurring distant landmarks and prevented a true, unfiltered view of my surroundings.
Everything felt like it was invading my personal space, reaching out to touch me or smear something on me. This part of Ralqir felt closer than I was used to, more claustrophobic, and that was saying something coming from a guy that just spent months locked in a goblin broom closet.
Back the way I’d come, the greenery was thinner, and what little there was sagged, waxy brown leaves raining down from above to disappear into the muck. If I squinted, I could almost see the trees decaying in real time and succumbing to rot as their roots turned loose from the soil and allowed the bog to claim them entirely.
They aren’t real.
The realization came as I watched one of the rotting tree trunks curl in upon itself and shrivel to half its size.
Just as I used the dead vines to disguise myself as I swam, the mockvine used a disguise as well. It had bugged me that the vine was green, yet it had flourished in a place with no sun. Producing chlorophyll underground didn’t make any evolutionary sense, but maybe it used these parts of itself, camouflaged as other types of plants, to get sunlight while it lured animals in with its spells. It was plausible.
I shook my head, mentally adding all the plants to the list of things that wanted me dead. Then, I got underway, picking my way between the deeper parts of the water and doing my best not to slip as I followed the snaking path the tree trunks made, away from my cave and into the unknown.
For all of five minutes.
It was so sudden. I was so busy looking down to be sure of my footing that when I stepped onto the cobblestone surface of a road, it took me a full ten seconds to realize what I was looking at. I turned my head to the right and left, squinting to make sure I really was seeing what I was seeing.
A road.
It was civilization. A path of worked stone about as wide as a large truck, comfortably able to fit six or so people abreast. It stretched on into the distance in either direction where it slowly curved out of sight. The rocks were a dark grayish color, unbroken except where one stone gave way to another. Though there was debris on the road such as dead branches and decaying clumps of moss, nothing grew on the stones or between them. No weeds or algae. No fungus. The trees still blocked out the sun overhead, but I noticed that none of their branches grew down far enough to be in danger of brushing against the cobbles either.
Out of curiosity, I bent down and wiggled one of the stones out of its spot and held it up to my face. It was fairly smooth on its surface but the edges had too many right angles to be a natural thing. What’s more, it felt cold, colder than the underriver even.
Weird.
After a few seconds, the cold felt extremely uncomfortable in my palm, like tiny knives digging around near my bones, and, now that I thought about it, my feet were starting to feel the same. I transferred the rock over to my prosthetic, hoping for some clarification.
Consume Quellstone? Y/N
“No, thanks,” I said, selecting No then putting the little rock back where it came from.
Quellstone. Might be best to walk on the side of the road instead of on, at least until I find some boots or learn more about the stuff.
There was no question that I needed to follow this road. Roads meant people. People meant sources of fresh water and food, unless they were weird frog people or something. Then I’d be back to square one.
The real question was: which way?
Both ways led away from the cave, which I was happy about. The landscape looked mostly inhospitable and swampy in either direction I looked, and the road didn’t have any signs or landmarks. Generally, people built roads between things, so, theoretically, either way I chose would lead me to people eventually.
So, with no other way to make my decision, I simply chose to go right.
My bare feet squished into the mud to the side of the road as I made my way. The quiet, close feeling the swamp had exuded before began to fade after maybe a quarter mile, feeling more alive by the step.
There was no wind here, not even a breeze, but I was past my need for moving air to feel comfortable. It was amazing how much you could hear in the quiet like this. Frogs or something like them croaked from the slimy pools next to the trees, and screeching black birds called to each other from fat nests of dried moss. Some kind of deep, rhythmic barking animal was out there somewhere too, its calls seeming to dominate the other creatures of the swamp, forcing them to take a collective breath every time the louder animal made its noises. Whatever it was, it had to have been in the trees or in the water, because I couldn’t see it from where I walked.
Fine by me. You leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone.
The peaceful stroll didn’t last.
The road took a winding route through the swamp, around the trees, probably by necessity of the geography, so I didn’t see the bodies until I was almost right upon them. Strewn about the road were six corpses of varying sizes, their dull colored clothes ripped in some places, bloodied in others.
I stopped and crouched down to peer over the surface of the cobblestone, doing my best to search for danger among the trees before I let my eyes lock onto the dead people.
My scan netted me nothing. The swamp looked as devoid of threats as ever, present company excluded.
I didn’t like this. They were just there on the road, lying down like they’d just decided to take a nap. While I was sure I’d find out what killed them if I investigated, it bothered me that the bodies looked so unnatural. No flies or the equivalent buzzing around the area, no scavengers picking at the corpses. Nothing. If this had just happened, I could maybe wrap my head around that, but I didn’t get that vibe from the scene. It felt like I’d stumbled upon an open air morgue, and it was setting off all my alarm bells.
The frustrating thing was that I needed to know what kind of people I was dealing with here on Ralqir, other than goblins. It was knowledge I had to acquire if I was going to interact with other species of people at the end of this road, if only to lessen the surprise factor if said people were some creepy variant of insect or cephalopod.
Plus, I… just couldn’t let it be. They weren’t human, but they looked close enough to trigger that part of my brain that felt for my fellow man. I’d dealt with enough death in the recent past but not quite enough to make me callous. Maybe these folks had families that would want to know what happened and where to find their loved ones’ bodies. Maybe the killers could be found and brought to justice eventually.
I sighed, resigned to my course of action.
Make it quick and get the hell out of here.
Slipping out of my hiding spot, staying low, and stalking and over to the corpses, I rolled the closest one over on its back.
It was a man, not like me but mostly humanoid and definitely male. He was hirsute with brown hair covering most of his skin and a bushy beard that covered more of his head than it should have, encircling his face more like a mane than anything I was used to. Furthermore, he had a flat nose and narrow eyes, clouded over by death but still an easily discernible yellow. His throat sported a wicked gash with blackened, dried blood smeared over the skin.
To the hairy guy’s left was a woman, face down on the cobbles, her dirty blonde hair caked with blood and speckled with plant debris. She had familiarly narrow facial features and little horns at her temples, indicating she was the same or a similar species the mockvine had used as a lure in its illusion. This lady didn’t seem like she’d be dancing over any lakes though, since both of her legs were mangled messes of punctures and slashes from some kind of…
A hollow whistle sounded out from somewhere, and something hard and sharp slammed into the back of my leg, digging deep into my hamstring. My leg buckled, and I fell sideways onto the cobblestones. I clutched at the wound, feeling something cold and foreign protruding from my flesh. A pained groan escaped my throat as I bent at the waist to check the damage.
Unknown attacks you for 11 slashing damage.
You are bleeding [1 HP/sec]
It was a hatchet, on the small side but sharp and heavy enough to bury itself deep in the muscle of my leg. What bits of the blade I could see were nastily serrated, and crude etchings decorated the flat of it. Blood flecked white feathers hung from a cord affixed to the haft. I wrapped my hands around the ax head, vacillating between attempting to rip the thing out or press the wound together to stanch the blood loss.
High guttural warcries rang out from everywhere at once as my unseen attackers swarmed toward me.