CHAPTER 37

“That was amazing!” Cici exclaimed in wonderment. “Celeste is none too pleased I’ll have you know, but I am impressed.”

“Wasn’t exactly what I was going for,” Kopius replied, still astonished by the outcome.

“But you got the same result by the end, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kopius answered begrudgingly. “Went up a level, too.”

“Excellent! What’s that now, level 5?”

Kopius nodded.

As he caught his breath, something dawned on him. Kopius opened his interface and looked at his status bars. His health and mana bars looked to be even and, to his best knowledge, full. His stamina on the other hand was well below the halfway area.

Keeping his profile window open, he summoned a vial of stamina and quickly drank half of it. His body felt an immediate rejuvenation, his muscles loose and ready, breathing slow and steady. His stamina bar filled almost instantly, so he capped the vial and offered the other half to Cici.

“Come now, lad,” Cici said with a laugh. “I’ve got enough stamina for the both of us and then some. Anything you can do, I can do twice as long.” He started winking at Kopius, making obvious what he meant. His lips joined in with odd shapes as the winking grew more exaggerated.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Trying to get you to relax. You're all tense, serious.”

Kopius kind of gestured at the surroundings, wondering what he could possibly find peaceful about the scenery. He checked on his injured cheek, relieved that the pain had subsided.

He slipped on his gloves and picked up one of the several skulls that had survived the explosion. It burned in his hands, but the gloves kept him protected for a short while. He dropped it back to the ground before he got to the count of twenty.

Nice, something that works as advertised.

Opting to leave the gloves on—given the combustible nature of everything—Kopius pointed at the last three sets of bubbles and then raised his hands, gesturing a question.

“More of the same, I’d wager,” Cici answered with a shrug.

“Same plan as last time?”

“Are you going to let us get involved?”

“I’ll keep the ‘’Spartas’’ to myself.”

“Sounds good then.”

Cici trotted off to the distance, and Kopius readied himself.

At first only two figures emerged. A pair of skeletons wearing soaked, shredded cloaks stepped out of the pond. In their bony hands, each carried an illuminated orb; bowling ball-sized spheres requiring both hands to carry. Once fully exited, they stopped, turned, and faced each other. The orbs were basically the same size and both emitted a soft glow, but that is where their similarities ended.

The right-side orb had a dense, deep-purple hue with another, smaller orb bobbing inside. The inner, semi-white orb played peek-a-boo with its visibility like the answer die in an old Magic 8 Ball. When Kopius could see the inner orb, it resembled an eyeball long deteriorated and horrendously bloodshot.

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The left-side orb, with its translucent mustard-yellow and puke-green swirls, looked as though it had inside it some kind of dark brown, plant-like, alien parasite. There was also a feces-type funk on the outside of the orb, continually dripping off in chunks to the ground. The blackened blobs slapped against the soggy dirt before puddling. The orb seemed to have an endless supply of this discharge, as it had been defecating since the moment it breached the surface.

Three things happened to Kopius almost simultaneously. First, a blank window lined with blue crystals and white stone masks appeared. Then Cici woo-hoo’d in the distance and lastly, by fractions of a second, Kopius heard the sweet, sweet sound of leveling up.

Ding-dang.

Kopius closed the window, and immediately another Ripple quest border popped into his field of vision.

“Here we go now!” Cici shouted from behind.

Kopius tried to close the window, but it remained visible. Before he could think it over, he heard another yell from behind. “Accept the quest, lad!”

Yes.

The window closed, and he looked over his shoulder to see Cici jogging back in his direction. Right before Cici reached him, a third Ripple quest window popped into existence, causing the big man to slow his gait. Kopius closed that window successfully and tried to remain unannoyed. Cici finally made it over and was shaking his head, a giant smile on his face.

“You won’t like that one bit,” Cici said with a laugh.

“We finish the quest?” Kopus asked, wanting some clarity for all the fanfare.

“That we did.”

“Was it a chain quest? That’s what I said yes to, right?”

“Sequence, yes.”

“Whatever. What was that last one? That third notification.”

Cici's smile grew wider, and he just kind of shook his head.

“We don’t have time for that now.”

Cici motioned back towards the pond as a third skeleton breached the surface. Instead of a smooth rounded skull, jagged metal was the first thing they saw. When it became fully visible it looked like a medieval great helm except both sides had been bent back and away, exposing the entire bony face. The shoulders came next, shreds of chainmail evident. By the time it was completely out of the toxic sludge, a somewhat armored, shield-and-sword wielding mountain of a skeleton stood at the water's edge.

The massive set of bones stood almost twice as tall as the two holding the orbs, making it at least two feet taller than Cici, probably more.

Not that size mattered, but Kopius still took a cautious step back. Its armor had seen better centuries, at least what was left of it. However long it had laid stagnant at the bottom of the funk did not do it any justice. The skeleton was missing a gauntlet and one side of leg armor. It had both boots on, a door-sized wooden shield, and a half-broken sword that was still the length of a pool cue.

It took a knee in between the two orb holders, prompting them into action. They both raised their respective spheres in the air like soccer players ready to do a throw in. Turning to face their kneeling comrade, they drew back and then rammed their orbs into its empty eye sockets.

“I could have guessed that,” Kopius said under his breath. The two men stood there, unsure if they should attack or wait out the ceremony being performed in front of them.

The giant skeleton stood and reared back, somehow letting out an ear-screeching cry. The sound ripped through the air and pierced Kopius’s and Cici’s ears like nails-on-a-chalkboard had a baby with the sound of metal being dragged across cement. Kopius’s teeth felt like someone was using sandpaper on them all while Cici stumbled as though he had a few too many drinks. When the screaming stopped, the two men regained their bearings to find the two lesser skeletons pointing at them; at Kopius really.

“They’re pointing at you, lad.”

“I can see that.”

Kopius returned his weapon to his inventory and immediately felt naked.

“What’s in your head?” Cici asked with concern, seeing his friend's weapon disappear.

“They were useless against the ones I blew up,” Kopius replied. “We need–”.

The two dove away from each other as the larger skeleton spewed out steaming hot goop from its toxic eye orb. Kopius rolled away and then quickly got to his feet. He looked over and saw Cici in roughly the same position opposite him. Between them flowed a bubbling tar pit, a river of searing-hot lava-oil leading straight back to the three bony combatants.

To his left, Kopius spotted three flaming skulls laying a short distance from each other. He moved over like he was fielding a ground ball, scooped up a skull, and sent it hurtling. It THAWKED! off the door-sized shield and then tumbled smoldering to the ground. Whatever Kopius had hoped for never materialized—internally, he ruh-roh’d.

The taller skeleton took a giant step in his direction as the smaller two took shorter steps towards Cici.