Day 46 (Same day Niala escapes)

(Rick POV)

Damn slugpeople... I can't even properly communicate with them.

The best I could get was that the boss monster is responsible for the missing corpses and equipment.

I spent all this effort for nothing, worthless.

Well, no use for these nuisances. I leave the town behind me, the stupidly staring slugs not understanding my actions.

I return to the reverse gravity room, seeking to use the excess copper ore to make some crude weapons. I notice the room is quieter than before. The plant monsters were always rustling. The weird thing is the monsters are still here.

Something seems very wrong here.

Perhaps... perhaps the one that I killed was replaced by a variant monster?

I don't see anything out of the ordinary.

I look up at the floor (reversed directions since he is walking on the roof).

That's new. The entire floor is overgrown. The massive growth, twists and engulfs the entrance as I watch. Vines snake out and move systematically to search the roof.

Shit, it's hunting me! As I move to avoid it the monster plants move in concert with the variant, sealing me off in the far section. The vines grow and twist and I notice there is something odd about the plant movements I can't identify.

The weaker plant monsters on the roof aren't a threat by themselves but coordinated is an entirely different thing. As they crawl forward the smaller ones can sense me somehow; three are walking in

concert, step by step raising a hairy root and driving it down in sequence like a slow march. Behind them the mass of vines spreads and expands, covering the cut off section.

Damn triffids. Three at a time is pushing it for my abilities, the variant included makes this a losing scenario if I try to fight them off by hand or with some simple weapon, like shears or a machete. At best I'll only be able to produce copper weapons too, so they'll be very soft.

For the time being I meld spikes from the floor to slow them down as a fence. It won't hold against the big one but the small ones should be caught against it until the variant catches up.

I inspect the minerals, looking at the materials at hand. Lots of odd rock types as well as the copper and coal. A few odd minerals. I work on combinations.

The fence seems to be working as the trio of plants run aground on the barricade.

Hmm. Salt crystals. Must be where the slugs got them.

I merge a few broad axes out of copper, they should be a last resort.

The plants are starting to wind around the barrier of spikes.

[Rick too busy assessing materials to notice.] “So if I merge this with water and air...”

Two more small plants collide with the barrier to the left.

“Oh, and this is good too.” [Rick examining the coal.*+]

Anther plant reaches the barrier to the right, hemming Rick in completely.

The rat however is too busy examining the rocks. He tests each and triumphantly removes a hunk of flint.

“Yes! Perfect!” [Rick excitedly.] “This is amazing... by supplementing my knowledge with the weapon identification skill I can make things that are beyond this world's technical ability...”

With his resource detection skill Rick gathered branches and twigs, dry enough for tinder. As he did he raised a second barrier of unusual design; a thin bubble of rock. Around the inside of the barrier he formed a line of fire. The outermost barrier was a semi circle twenty feet in length

He formed a third barricade only a few feet wide but thick, solid stone with spiked outer edges.

Then he developed his most lethal weapon.

The vines and the lesser plant monsters were by now all pressing against the outer barricade. Abruptly it shattered under the slow compression. The plants then contracted their vines coiling tight upon the fragile barrier.

It shattered like glass, black powder that had been in a compressed environment spraying outward like an aerosol.

The powder itself did nothing.

Crafting small glass containers from sand filtered from the soil Rick readied his final trump card, waiting for his trap card to activate.

At that point he realized why the plant above had seemed to move strangely. It acted as if it ignored the gravity differences in the room. It was acting as if gravity was normalized for the variant.

Then the second fragile barricade came down. For a few long moments only the writhing of the vines as they touched the firewall was heard; the plants were green and fleshy, they didn't burn.

Then there was a moment of tremendous noise.

The powder finally came into play, the crushed coal densely packed in the air ignited causing a tremendous dust explosion.

The lesser plant monsters were slain in moments by the blast, torn apart. The greater plant was crippled, broken and mangled vines writhing more than fifty feet back from the source of the explosion. However the trunk of the plant, it's roots and most of the vines were still alive, having been too far from the explosion to take serious damage. It slowly sought to recover.

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Rick broke free from the cracked inner most barrier, designed to shield him from the blast. He came out with a bandoleer covered in glass globes. The frustrating part was that in order to strike the fatal blow he needed to be close enough to strike the vitals of the plant, in other words the roots.

The fire barrier had been blown out by the explosion like a candle. Rick climbed through the wreckage and looking at the vines chose a thick mangled vine, held together in places by fibers. The last thing he needed was to be captured and eaten on the climb up.

The climb itself was fairly easy for Rick, with his enhanced strength. The thigh thick vine smearing him in oozing sap as he climbed to the floor of the room.

The trunk had thick bark, with claws Rick was quite able to hold on. As he did so the plant sprung into motion, sending vines and roots clawing at him. It ripped him away from the trunk and as he struggled against the winding, powerful squeeze of the slow but unyielding plant the trunk of the plant opened into hellish jaws.

An eye opened in the center of the trunk, horrible yellow and black. It bit rabidly as it tried to stuff Rick down the maw.

A glass container shattered against the base of the tree, hurled with Rick's only remaining free arm.

The plant shuddered as the powder contacted the vital processes of the plant. It screamed as it tasted for the first time an agony beyond the searing of fire. It tasted herbicide. (Specifically 2,4D made from chlorine from the salt mixed with oxygen and hydrogen).

As it writhed Rick hurled a second globe down the gaping gullet of the monster, changing the tone of the scream from outrage to terror.

As the vines twisted loose he gave it a final gift, swinging close and ramming the last globe into the wide eye and grinding it in.

The plant was rapidly dying. This was most likely caused by the plant's own variant nature; it grew at an astounding rate, the speed it sent nutrients to the extremities of the plant was being hijacked by the chemical. It was killing itself by trying to recover fast. The roots were dead. The trunk dead too.

Rick hung there before having a bad realization. The gravity effect was no longer neutralized for the plant. It was being pulled out of the roof by it's own weight. Roots and all.

Rick tried to get down, but the vines he clung to now were short ones attached to the trunk.

“Shit... this is going to hurt...” [Rick screwing his eyes shut as the tree came loose]

As the roots left the soil the plant itself stopped for a moment then plunged back to where it had been rooted, slamming down on one side. The weird thing: so did Rick.

Then a shower of debris rained down as well. Pebbles, plant monsters all of it fell.

Gravity was abruptly back to normal.

Rick tried to under stand the suddenness of this change.

He did this by hacking open the monster tree's trunk with his slightly bent copper axes.

Inside that twisted, grotesque eye he found a strange carved cube of stone, with intricate knotted designs.

As he flipped it like a dice gravity suddenly changed in the room, sending him sliding sideways against the floor. When the cube tumbled from his grasp gravity normalized again.

…

The cube was a gravity manipulation device that only responded when held by an organic?! The device itself was probably limitless in usage, if the room was an indication.

Very carefully Rick carried the cube out into the hall.

Nothing changed so far...

Leaning against the wall he flipped the dice and instantly the wall became down in regards to gravity. He was lying sideways on a wall that had become the ground, the original ground now a wall.

Day 47

Rick started to climb the sheer cliffs of the honeycomb wall, taking a 'shortcut' to avoid the boss monster of the 'death' room. It was a long walk and eventually he arrived where he fell, flipping the cube as he hurdled the edge and skidding to a stop on the ledge he fell down from in the first place.

Niala, slave girl and the little rat staring at him from the passageway having been rebounded by the gravity of the room. Essentially the entrance way had defaulted to 'down', ejecting the other rats when they entered.

To explain: (This was the best I could find to give an example: now imagine down was to the right in a cave)

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Staring at the group in a bit of surprise Rick said “Oh, you got away already? Thank goodness. I was worried they'd have already sold you off or something!”

He looked and finally recognized the slave girl through the matted hair, stiff with dried blood.

“You caught her too, sis... now what do we do with you, traitor? I have plenty of ideas...” [Rick smiling crookedly]

What we learned:

Complex chemicals count as a weapon.

There are artifacts that exhibit strange, god-like powers.

Cliffhanger!