It was the night before our trek to the dungeon and everyone in the Red Wolves cabin was packing their gear. I had already packed up what little gear I had. I wouldn’t be able to buy any more with the last of my funds having been spent on Finley’s upkeep while we were gone.
However, a pile of junk on my bunk had me at a loss. Pest slept amongst it like a dragon with the biggest shit eating grin on his little face I had ever seen. I didn’t even know he could grin, and here he was looking like a wolf that ate the lamb.
He looked fluffy, like he did when he was freshly washed, but his hat was missing, and his pants were torn up. A bandage was around his chest under his vest had dried blood where it had seeped through. I checked the party interface, and it listed him as lightly injured. I frowned at myself for missing that and set the display to stay active in my vision. I should have had that going all day, but I didn’t think he would have trouble killing a couple rats.
A tiny rucksack was at the foot of the bed, turned inside out, and the pile it had disgorged had the most random assortment of odds and ends.
He had a handful of eating utensils made out of wood, and judging from the little marks on their handles, he had chew tested each one. A tiny clay jar of something that looked like mayonnaise, a handful of loose papers, a small bean bag doll, one leather glove, a sack filled with dirt, a dull fishing hook with a wooden bobber, and a pearlescent clam shell. I Inspected everything in his little pile and only the little jar of white goo was worthwhile.
Name: Jar
Material: Clay
Durability: Undamaged
Value: Average
FLAGS: NONE
Contents: Healing Salve
Contents Flags: RESTORATIVE
I snatched it out of his pile and smelled it, it smelled faintly herbal, but mostly of lard. RESTORATIVE was keeper for sure.
“What the hell is the point of healing items, anyway?” I asked aloud. “We heal every night.”
“It isn’t as straight forward as that.” Halloway said. “There are times you don’t heal. Like when you are in active combat when the reset happens. We were in a dungeon when the day changed and didn’t even notice the time until we left it and it was midday. The dungeons must be some sort of instance.”
“Oh,” I said simply and scratched at my face, I had the start of a beard coming in. I guess it had been some time since I was forced to shave. I hated shaving, my skin never reacted well, and I bled like crazy. Plus, beards were awesome, and anyone that says different just can’t grow and was jealous of a luscious, beautiful beard. The poor fellas.
I stole a few utensils from Pest’s pile and added them to my pack. I roused Pest enough to strip his clothing off him, it reminded me of changing the diaper of a sleeping toddler, he hardly even woke. It gave me a spike of sadness, bringing my daughter to my mind. Forever lost to me now. If I could I beat this tower. No. When I beat this tower.
His little sharkskin vest was whole and hardy, but his little cargo pants needed some repair and modification. I borrowed Dark’s sewing kit again and used my Repair and Sewing skills to fix them up. I even added a little hole in the pants for his tail. I stuffed his clothes and my flask into his tiny rucksack and went to visit the outhouse.
I took MENDING from the vest and applied it to everything I had with me, my jacket, the flask, and all of Pest’s gear. I looked closely at his cargo pants which I had repaired but were not of the best quality since my Sewing skills were not that great. MENDING seemed to not repair them any further. I picked out a few of my stitches and those slowly mended themselves. I surmised that when the flag was added to the item set the baseline. That must mean I couldn’t cheat some easy repairs on long broken things, and no worry about removing my alterations to items, like the tail hole. That was good I suppose. A gentleman didn’t want anything dangling to become sewn into his pants, no matter front or back.
I felt pretty confident now with navigating containers without making them explode, so I opened up the rune-code to my precious flask. I took down AEGIR from the anointed section and started to pull BOTTOMLESS from the flask. The flask exploded as soon as I pulled the first rune from BOTTOMLESS.
It didn’t explode into a thousand violent little pieces like the glass mead bottle had, but rather exploded like a rupturing pressurized tank. A bottomless object, that held a few hundred gallons of water, suddenly became bottomed.
[You have taken *???* Damage.]
I was sitting inside the outhouse, tinkering away, then suddenly I was on my back some feet away from the outhouse soaking wet.
I groaned. I felt like I had done a belly flop off a high board into a pool of jelly.
Not even the system knew how to classify the damage I took.
A Toros guy who had been in an outhouse next to me came out and gaped.
“Que carajo comiste?” he asked in Spanish. I saw him hesitate to help me, as I was soaking wet having just been ejected from an outhouse. Who knew what the hell I was covered in?
“I’m okay,” I groaned out and waved him off. He sure didn’t hesitate to leave quickly.
I picked up my soggy self and looked at the damage. The outhouse had burst, the walls all splayed out and the roof completely missing. The things I was working on littered the area and the now bright pink flask was off to the side. It looked like a soda can that was left in the freezer and had split down one side. It was slowly pulling itself back together from the MENDING I had added to it. I gathered my scattered things slowly and by the time I returned to the flask it was repaired, if still pink.
I hobbled away from the area as a few other Toros came back and were standing around muttering about the loco gringo.
I found a new hiding place in the small alley between the backs of the cabins. I took some to recuperate, I was sore as hell. Slowly I finished my work. Unfortunately, I could hear some of the goings-on in the cabins around me. The Vinlanders had noises coming through the walls that were unsavory. I did my best to ignore them as I finished.
I got BOTTOMLESS from the flask and returned it to normal, it looked to be fine at a glance, but it was now empty and had NONE listed in its contents. I’d have to refill it.
I decided to apply BOTTOMLESS to Pest’s rucksack as an experiment. It didn’t turn into a blackhole vortex or anything like that, so I took that as a small victory. No matter how cool it would have been to create a blackhole.
Looking inside of the rucksack, I could no longer see the insides of the bag, past the mouth of the opening everything was just an unlit darkness. I reached inside all the way to my shoulder easily and felt nothing. Taking my arm out didn’t reveal a missing hand or anything of that sort.
Next, I picked up a stone and tossed it inside. It disappeared. I reached in and tried to retrieve it but still couldn’t feel anything. I tried to summon it, using methods of mental, vocal, and System commands, but the rock didn’t come back out.
I upended the bag and immediately the stone fell out, no worse for wear. It seemed to be incredibly inconvenient to retrieve things from the bag, but it was a never-ending storehouse of anything that could fit through the mouth of the rucksack. Perfect for Pest with his kleptomaniac habits, but not ideal for quick retrieval.
I finished my experimentations with the little rucksack by applying CHOSEN_ARMOR to it. It grew to my size as I tried to slip it on and didn’t exhibit any weird warping or distortion that happened to the knife, that I had given Pest. Coincidently it made the bag’s opening larger, which would be convenient to fit in larger things, but I didn’t plan on taking this prize from my little buddy, and assumed when it shrank down to his size, it would have an opening that would just fit the size of my fist.
That left only one more test I wanted to preform for tonight. I took one of the little slips of paper that Pest had found. It was soggy and wet after the water explosion and the ink had blossomed across the paper, ruining whatever had been written on it.
I applied TEACH_POWERWORD – ANALGESIC to it.
Nothing obvious happened to it, so I Inspected it.
Name: Scroll of the Word
Material: Paper
Durability: Friable
Value: Treasure
FLAGS: TEACH_POWERWORD – ANALGESIC
It was very delicate, like it would tear apart in my hand at any moment, but it was recognized as a Scroll of the Word. The flag must have had specific requirements necessary to be applied without crumbling. I carefully put it into Pest’s infinite rucksack, hopefully it would be safe in the nothingness in there.
We would stumble across it in our adventure at first opportunity and give it to Mave. Hopefully the Word applied wouldn’t break her magic being not specifically designed as a spell.
After finishing that and getting thoroughly disgusted by the noises of a Vinlander finishing. I went back into the cabin.
“What the hell happened to you?” Halloway asked me as I came in still water-logged.
“Got wet.” Was all I said as I went over to Pest and surreptitiously slipped the rucksack into his arms. I had been concealing it best I could in my jacket so someone wouldn’t notice the change in size. It shrank down to his size and I left it and his clothes with him.
I stripped off my wet clothes as the others kept giving me strange glances. I decided to ignore them. It had been a long day even before the water-splosion.
I had found a group of construction workers building a longhouse and traded my labor for some education. My Construction skill went up one, and I found out about all sorts of carpentry tools and techniques. I also gained a level up in Primitive and Fundamental Crafting. I’m not sure if it was gated by my crafting level or just coincidental, but I had unlocked some schematics for basic house components which culminated into unlocking an overall schematic for a longhouse.
I finished getting my wet clothing off and hanging in my cubby to dry before taking the empty bunk above mine to go to sleep.
The stupid blue alarm clock woke me up bright and early, as it was prone to do, the next morning. This time I wasn’t the only one who got up with it. Everyone grumbling and groaning about the early hour as they stretched and went about their morning routines. Armor and travel gear got equipped, rucksacks shouldered, and hip bags tied on.
I had a moment of panic as Pest wormed his way inside of his rucksack. I upended it quickly and he stared at me with wide eyes.
“Don’t do that!” I told him in a whispery panic.
“Big,” was all he said. I glared at him and started stuffing his collection of stuff inside of it.
As he stood up from his sprawl the now dried off Word paper that I had constructed was there.
“Hey, Mave.” I said.
She looked at me and scrunched her nose. It was an odd and cute behavior. I noticed she would do it instead of asking ‘what?’.
“Looks like Pest found something good in his rat quest yesterday.” I said as I handed her the now slightly brittle little piece of paper. It felt like a leaf in the fall, ready to be crunched. Her eyes squinted at the paper with its ink stains.
“What is it?” She said with forced politeness. “An ink blot?”
“I think it is a Word. When I was messing with it, I got a notification saying I couldn’t use it. Because I wasn’t god-touched.” I lied.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the Deception skill!] [Congratulations! You have gained one stat point to allocate!]
I tried to blink past the notifications and keep up with the conversation.
“Got damn, a Word?” Mave asked looking at the paper. “You are giving me these?”
“Not me.” I held up my hands in innocence. “All Mr. Pest.”
“Mister Musty Man?” She said and looked at him. He was busy running back and forth between my gear cubby and his rucksack on the bed. Apparently moving all his treasures to it.
“Guess so,” I said and smiled.
“But I can’t read it,” she stared at the paper and frowned.
“Oh.” I said and blinked at it. I cursed violently to myself. I forgot the whole point was the Word scroll was to teach people how to read the damn Word. If there was no Word to read there was no way to learn the Word. “Here let me take a look.”
I squinted at the frail little paper, since I knew the word already, I was hoping I could see something. Faintly under the original writing that had spread out were the faintest of an impression of the runes.
“I think I can see the letters, I wish I had a pencil, I might be able to trace it out for you.” I muttered.
“Oh!” She said and went over to Dark. She quickly returned with a thin piece of charcoal that was bound in fabric making a crude pencil. I looked at it then over to a sulking Dark. It was a jerry-rigged eyeliner pencil.
I took it from her with a smirk and nod of thanks. Very gently I traced the runes. I had to use a good amount of the thin charcoal stick to get the whole line legible.
“Thank you!” she said with a wide smile. “I don’t have good eyes.”
I looked at her eyes behind her glasses, they were a hazel color, or maybe green.
“They look good to me.” I said without thinking and handed her the paper. I was halfway to my bunk before what I said registered in my head. My wife would murder me. I decided to ignore it completely as my face heated.
I handed her the paper slip and charcoal pencil. Dark was glaring at me as Mave handed it back to him.
“What, I didn’t use all of it.” I told him, deciding to misinterpret his hostile look. “I’m sure there is plenty left for your eyes.”
His scowl deepened and his eyebrow threatened to become a single thick black line across his forehead. Nobody else commented.
Mave scrutinized the paper and sounded out the Word. It took her a few tries, but she managed to say something correctly. I couldn’t understand the sounds that she spoke but as she got the whole word out, the paper flared white and evaporated into the air.
I looked at her expectantly.
“I have learned analgesic, painkiller.” Mave said with a large smile. Her cheeks scrunching up her eyes in happiness. “The notifications isn’t normal, I don’t think the grammar is good. I should be able to use this to numb pain, I think?”
“What does it say?” I asked curiously.
“Congratulations, you have learned the word for analgesic.” She read off a screen only she could see. “This word grants you the ability to consume to provide pain relief.”
“Consume?” I said, trying to hide my alarm. “That sounds worrisome. Are they normally written oddly like that?”
“No,” she said as she stared in the air with a puzzled expression.
“I volunteer Dark as genie pig.” I offered magnanimously.
“Hah!” Mave barked a unexpecting laugh, and Dark scowled.
“Seriously though, give it a try.” I said a moment later, still trying to hide my nervousness. I knew the word was from something normally consumable, so maybe the flavor text just didn’t mesh well? I hoped so, else it might be some sort of messed-up vampire ability.
Dark punched me in the arm.
[You have taken Blunt Damage.]
“Hey, what the hell!?” I shouted at him.
“What? You need something to relieve pain from, don’t you?” He said.
“You’ll have to hit harder than that.” I said in a manly fashion as I rubbed my arm.
He hit me again.
[You have taken Blunt Damage.]
Just as I was about to turn some righteous anger towards him, Halloway derailed my wind-up by punching me on the other arm.
[You have taken Blunt Damage.]
“What?” he asked innocently as I turned my glare onto him. “It looked fun.”
Just as I was about to start swinging, Mave spoke something unintelligible and a sensation ran over my body. It was like the tingle and prickle of a limb that fell asleep running through me briefly. The ache in my arm was gone.
“Hey! It worked!” I announced, silently congratulating myself for my black-market Word scroll. A wave of euphoria hit me and I had to lean against the bunks to stay up. Mave looked very concerned and rushed over to me.
“What’s wrong, are you okay?” She asked.
“Yeah,” I stretched the word out. “An unmentioned effect, I feel high as shit. Should call that Word of Opioids.”
***
We finished gearing up after that, my high mellowing enough that I could function properly. Ryan finally came out of his room about an hour later.
I noticed the token of protection that Mave had haggled for was pinned to one of his leather chest straps. To the boss goes the spoils, I guess.
We went to the Tavern and had a hearty breakfast as a final farewell to real food before travel rations became our normal. Dark was still glaring at me the entire time.
We headed out of the city without any trouble and started heading down a road I knew very well.
“You have got to be shitting me.” I complained to Halloway. “I just came this way.”
“Well, a few days out is another dungeon, just past a homestead out east.” He explained. “That dungeon that was right next to the city was kind of a freak occurrence, they are normally never that close.”
“Harold’s farm?” I asked.
“Haroldstadir.” Halloway corrected me.
“Party.” Ryan said.
I willed my intent at him, and the System created a party for us.
[You have joined the Ryan Wolfe Party!]
[The party consists of Ryan Wolfe and Alan Halloway.]
[Pest has joined the party.]
[Mave Pollaris has joined the party.]
[x_x_DarkEdge_x_x has joined the party.]
“Party time. And a long ass boring road to party on.” I complained and my first heavy footfall landed on the same road that brought me into Volstad. I got a notification.
[Congratulations! Hiking has increased to Level 3!]
Well, I supposed it was time to grind hiking.
The stroll along the road was uneventful. We took the fork that I had ignored while entering the town. The one that didn’t follow the treacherous cliffs. I didn’t see why Oskar preferred it, other than it might have been a slight shortcut.
We camped and hunted as needed. I collected interesting herbs and Pest practiced taking down prey with his little knife-sword. After the first night I gained another perk fragment, putting me at seven collected so far.
We passed through the Fat Pig, stuffing ourselves on pork and spending a night in real beds. Idunn was a little surly at my return but didn’t give me too much of a hard time about how I fled, leaving him a messy cart full of ruined produce. He fed it to the pigs, he said, so it brought some value. Even being fed on goblin, the pork tasted great.
The inn showed no signs of the battle we had a week or so ago. All evidence of the goblin raid gone, and Idunn had no more tales of new attacks.
I chatted Idunn up most of the night, the others just ate and went to their rooms with small pleasantries. Ryan didn’t manage more than some grunts and paying the bill, without tip I noticed.
In the evening I got a big notification with fanfare and everything.
[Achievement Unlocked – Chain Breaker]
[You are the reason that a slave has been released from their bonds.]
[Chain Breaker - Benefit] +25% Chance to slip bonds or confinement.
I guessed Ingamar had finally worked up the courage to approach the earl and buy her freedom. Good for her. With that I went to bed in good cheer and slept great.
We left early the next morning and reached Haroldstadir around mid-day.
Harold was at his gate waiting for us. His longhouse was the same as I had left it. He leaned against an upright post and had his arms crossed with a large scowl.
“Where is my cart?” He shouted at me when we were close enough.
“Goblins trashed it.” I shouted back. I found myself at the front of the group as we approached. I held out a hand for a friendly shake and he begrudgingly obliged. “I sent back Oskar with coin as repayment, did he not give it to you?”
“Oskar has yet to return,” he said with a frown.
“That’s odd, he should have been here a few days before us. And the road was clear of any sign of trouble.”
“We are going to do a few…” I paused and looked at Halloway who shook his head and held up a finger. “A single dungeon before heading back to town. I’ll check up on him when we get back.”
Idunn nodded.
As we chatted Ryan had taken the lead of the group and kept going, only Halloway polite enough to linger with me as I shared news with Harold. I started to get the feeling that Ryan didn’t think much of the tower’s residents. He didn’t seem to give them any more attention than absolutely necessary. He was like the background NPC’s who ignored Chosen at every opportunity but reversed.
We caught up with them as they skirted Harold’s border fence then followed a relatively straight path out into the meadows.
I almost asked how much further, but instead pulled up my map. The dungeon smudge from the poorly drawn wall map showed it ahead of us about half a days’ worth of hiking. As we were getting closer, the group’s mind started to get more on point of dungeon raiding and we started talking more about tactics and dungeon mechanics.
“Traps used to be a given, but now that creatures are involved it can go either way. In the last dungeon, a good majority of the traps had been set off by the goblins while they were fighting the spiders.” Halloway explained. “I will tank, Ryan and Dark follow behind me in a arrow formation and Mave takes the rear doing whatever support things she can pull off or the big nuke spell if things start to go sideways. Like I said before we hold that as a reserve because it pretty much drains her energy for the rest of the day.”
“Where should I fit in? All I have to use is my hatchet and bow. I’m getting better with the bow, but the hatchet is mostly untested. I tend to hit things with whatever is handy more than using a weapon.” I told him. “I even got a skill for it.”
“Why don’t you cover Mave and use your bow as needed until we see where you can best fit in. Just don’t shoot us in the back.” Halloway said.
“Sounds good for now.” I agreed with him. Best just hang back and see where I could help until I got better at fighting, or could find a place to fit myself in. Right now I felt a little useless to the group. I’d have to show my worth somehow.
By the end of the day, we hadn’t found the dungeon. We had passed through the marked spot and kept going. Someone really needed to work on their Cartography skill.
The grassland meadow we were in started to change. At first the hills became more pronounced, and trees started to dot the landscape more frequently. I thought that we were entering another forest zone, but the trees were sparce and of a different sort than the ones in the forests I have seen thus far.
We crested a hill and found ourselves looking over a valley that had completely different vegetation. Shrubs, flowers, and tall reeds grew amongst pools of standing water. I inspected a herb that was tickling my Herbalist skill and found something worthwhile.
Name: Flora
Species: Valerian
FLAGS: RELAXANT
I dug up some of the roots, Ryan grumbled at the wait. We descended into the valley and the grounds turned soft and wet.
“What is this, some sort of swamp?” I asked as I stared at the ground.
“No. It’s a fen.” Ryan told me.
With his southern accent I assumed he had dealt with wetlands more than I had. Wasn’t the south all about swamps and ‘gators and stuff like that? The standing water looked gross, filled with algae or moss of some sort. Not something I would want to drink from.
“Should we camp here, before we get to deep into all this?” I asked a little trepidation entering my voice. “I can’t imagine the amount of mosquitos that this place must produce.”
“Yea, we will camp on that little island.” Ryan said as he pointed out a firm looking patch of ground that bordered the valley. A few trees standing at its center.
I figured it might be better to do it before we were surrounded by bug infested waters, but whatever, it wasn’t worth the fight I assumed he would give me for offering an alternative viewpoint.
We set up camp as normal. I used my skills to beat the earth into submission and set up a fire pit while Halloway fetched firewood. It was Dark’s turn to cook, so naturally Mave did it. The worthless little twerp. However, I couldn’t give him too much hassle, Mave’s cooking was much better. Ryan never took a turn cooking. At least Dark feigned to cook before Mave shooed him away from the task.
Before long, night had fallen, and we were eating some lightly spiced skewers of meat and vegetables. It wasn’t bad for trail rations.
“Ophelia.” I said aloud. “I had a dog named Ophelia.”
We were in the middle of a conversation about our former lives. We had all lain down on our sleeping mats and were around the fire, chatting away as happy campers tended to while staring at the stars.
“Ophelia? All that makes me think of is pedophilia.” Dark said.
“Why are you thinking about pedophilia?” I asked him. “Ophelia is a good name!”
“Pedophilia is kind of a pretty word if you don’t consider the meaning.” Mave said in an offhanded way.
“Pretty damn gross. Pedo. Pedophilia. Ophelia.” I responded as I tested the words on my tongue.
“Could we stop saying pedophilia?! What if people heard us talking about this?” Ryan shouted angrily. We all stopped, and the others winced like whipped dogs.
I stared at him, and he glared at me from the other side of the fire.
“You hear me?” He angrily said to me.
“Yes,” I said simply as I stared him in the eye.
“You got something to say?” He demanded from me.
“No.” I responded coolly.
He stared at me for what felt like a good few minutes as I refused to look away. He grunted finally and turned over, throwing his blanket over himself.
The mood soured, we all turned in for the night.