They didn’t have to wait long before the prompt Sean had really been counting on appeared. Apparently, their relentlessly angry antagonist had found a few more hapless undead to blast out its remaining mana on.
The Celestial Badger summoned by your Trumpet of Heavenly Furry has depleted its mana entirely, and has now returned whence it came! Truly, its presence shall be missed!
Sean rolled his orbs at that line of the prompt. He was about to make a sarcastic comment to Gel when a new prompt appeared. Tendrils of darkness shot off the borders of this one in every direction, giving it a spiral pattern that resembled an abyss. Its appearance was accompanied by a rasping, ancient laughter.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE EARNED THE TITLE: ‘PROFANE LUCK’! EXCEPTIONALLY RARE ARE THOSE WHO SURVIVE THE WRATH OF CELESTIAL BEINGS, AND EVEN FEWER DO SO WITH SUCH AN INCONSEQUENTIAL MODICUM OF POWER. NOT ONLY DID YOU SURVIVE, BUT YOU DID SO WHILE UNDER A DEATH CURSE BY A MEMBER OF THE BEING’S OWN RACE AND BY USING A MEMBER OF YOUR OWN RACE AS A SACRIFICE! TRULY, YOUR BLASPHEMY KNOWS NO BOUNDS.
This title grants a minor increase to the success chance of profane actions, with an additional increase should a Life-aspected creature be involved in opposition against said actions.
The first thing Sean noticed about this title was that it didn’t come with a ‘rare’ modifier for when it occurred.
Does that mean it happens every time? He wondered. Also, what is a ‘profane action’?
He asked Gel, but the slime didn’t know so Sean just let it go. At any rate, the title offered a further boost against ‘Life-aspected creatures’ which was probably what that celestial badger had been. If it applied to all ‘creatures’ as well, which he suspected it did, then that was even better. Given how hard celestial creatures hit, Sean would take any kind of benefit against them. The damn badger had done so much damage to his bone shield that the prompt hadn’t even told him how much it was.
Earned the hell out of that one. Maybe someone else will know what ‘profane’ actions are. Sean thought, though he had a feeling he already knew. The word ‘profane’ coupled with the fact that he had used another member of his own race as a decoy in order to survive most likely meant that he would only get a bonus to similar actions. Still, he would take it. Unexpected and esoteric as it was, a bonus was still a bonus. Even if it was one he hoped wouldn’t come into play for as long as inhumanely possible.
“Oh hey, it’s gone!” Gel said brightly, having received the same first prompt Sean had. The slime rattled Sean’s ribcage and used his right arm to help push them off the ground. “Now let’s get out of here before Bancroft notices what just happened!”
“Can he tell when one of his minions is destroyed?” The thought hadn’t occurred to Sean before, but it seemed especially relevant now. “Or where they died?”
“No idea.” Gel responded as they headed back down the tunnel. “But those are both good points, so I say we go back, get those spices, and then ditch this shack sack like a clean bone.”
“You don’t want to loot the rest of the town?” Sean joked. “It was going so well.”
“Actually, there is one other place we should stop.” Gel said, completely missing the humor in Sean’s voice. “If what I remember is still in there, it’ll be worth it.”
“What’s in there?” Sean said, standing back up in the hole and looking for handholds to climb with. There were none. He sighed and began digging some out with his hand.
“Should be a mana potion.” Gel said, and Sean nearly froze as that statement washed over him.
“As in… a potion that restores your mana?” Sean asked carefully. “Those exist?”
“Of course they exist. Hard to make, apparently, and expensive. Really expensive. But they exist.”
“Do you know how to make them?” Sean tried to keep the hope out of his voice, because he knew how much of a long shot that was. He mostly succeeded.
“Nope.” Gel said brightly. “One of the villagers bought one before they came here and hid it in their room. If it’s still there though, we should take it before one of these other boneheads finds it.”
Sean couldn’t agree more. He had been painfully aware of his two remaining mana ever since using his bone shield ability. Not having a watch was killing him, as he had never before tried to pay such close attention to the passage of time. The last few fights had felt like a blur, so he honestly had no idea how long it had been since the cost to keep him alive had last been paid.
But first, they had to get out of this hole.
It took longer than Sean would have liked. Climbing ten or so feet of packed earth didn’t seem like much, but when you only had one working arm and had to coordinate the use of the other one there were some tasks that just took longer. Thankfully they only needed to dig two sets of handholds before Sean was able to reach the edge and pull them up. As soon as they hit level ground again, the pair scanned the street for any lingering enemies.
At first Sean wondered why they even bothered. The scorch marks left by the celestial badger covered most of the street, and several nearby houses were on fire. There were a few piles of what looked like bone ash covering the ground in places which, combined with the shredded remnants of skeletal warriors littering the ground like randomly tossed confetti streamers, gave the town a distinctly war torn-battlefield look. Then he saw movement off towards the edge of town. Not much, just the gleam of clean white bone, but that was enough.
“Where’s the mana potion at?” Sean asked Gel. “We’ll get that first, hit the tavern, and then blow this popsicle stand.”
“Uhh…” Gel swirled his eyes around, and Sean moved in a slow circle to help the slime get his bearings. “There.”
Gel pointed at a house two doors down from them, thankfully located in the opposite direction of the patrol Sean had just seen. “Should be in the main bedroom on the second floor, first door on your left.”
“Perfect.” Sean said, sprinting towards the building Gel had indicated. “Is it locked up?”
“Small chest under the bed. Nailed to the bottom side of the bed though, so you’ll have to climb under there to reach it.”
“Or flip it.” Sean pointed out.
“Or flip it.” Gel agreed.
“Actually, maybe not. We don’t want to break the potion on accident.” It would be a truly boneheaded move to waste such a valuable item – assuming it was still there – just to save a few seconds of work.
“Any potion that breaks from just a light toss is probably a garbage potion. You need higher quality glass just to keep some concoctions from escaping or breaking out on their own.” Gel said this like it was obvious, but that was still news to Sean.
“Fair enough.” Sean acceded. “But I’m going to lift it slowly just in case.”
“That seems wise.” Gel said sagely.
This house wasn’t nearly as destroyed as the others Sean had seen. Its door was still ripped off, and the rooms had clearly been tossed, but there was no blood. Sean guessed whoever lived here hadn’t been inside when the attack happened.
Maybe they were part of the initial defense. Sean rushed up the stairs and into the bedroom, finding the covers disheveled and the dressers smashed. Relief welled up in him however, when he noticed that the handmade, hardwood bed frame was relatively untouched. He reached down, grabbed the end of the bed, and carefully hefted it up against the closest wall.
Lifting the large, roughly queen-sized bed barely took any effort at all, and Sean was surprised by how light it felt. His strength was definitely increasing. On the now-revealed underside of the bed was a simple wooden safe with a slide latch keeping it shut. It was small enough to not have been readily visible underneath the edge of the bed frame, and Sean didn’t see any sort of rune carvings on this one like there had been on Barry’s chest back at the barn.
“That’s the one.” Gel said, as if there were any doubt. “Let’s crack it open!”
Sean didn’t need to be told twice. He reached over, unlatched the lock, and swung it open. Inside was a stout glass bottle roughly the size of a lemon juice container back home. It was marked by two clear, straight notches in the glass at roughly the one-third and two-thirds points. It was also filled with a brilliant blue liquid with small bolts of what Sean suspected weren’t quite electricity arcing along its surface underneath a dark red cork. A small note, that the bottle had clearly been sitting on before its container had slid over to the side, lay in the back of the box. Sean quickly picked up both. He gave Gel the note.
“I, Johnathan Heimwobbler, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath this property and the entirety of its contents to the magnificent slime who finds this note.” Gel said, using a prim and proper voice Sean had never heard from him before.
“Ha-hah.” Sean said. “What does it really say?”
“It says the potion has three doses, and there’s a reminder not to drink all of it at once.” Gel said in his normal voice. “No warning on what that does though, so I say we ignore it.”
“I’m going to try for a single dose.” Sean said, not willing to risk potentially wasting a life-saving dose of mana. He held the bottle firmly out in front of himself. “Here, pop the cork. If one dose isn’t enough, I’ll take more.”
Gel obliged, and Sean swirled the bottle to get a feel for how viscous the potion was. It moved freely, like a liquid, but he noticed it did so in three distinctive patterns. There was no visible division or barrier, but each segmented third of the potion appeared to be separated somehow. Whoever had designed the potion clearly had figured out some way to prevent the imbiber from accidentally swallowing too much – though Sean didn’t see any release mechanism.
Handy. Sean thought, knocking the potion back down through his jaw. The crackling-blue liquid splashed down his non-existent throat, dripped down his bones, and the majority of it rapidly made its way down into Gel. The instant the potion touched the slime, Gel began to shiver as if in ecstasy.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
For his part, Sean felt like every drop of the potion was imbued with living lightning. Everywhere the drops touched his body, at least half sunk directly in as if he were a sponge. He couldn’t see how much of it had actually worked on him, but a soft-blue prompt immediately appeared in his vision with that very information. It was accompanied by the sound of a calm summer rain gently pat-patting across the length of a wooden roof.
YOU HAVE RESTORED FOUR MANA (BASE 6, 2 LOST DUE TO CURRENT MANA CAPACITY CAP) DUE TO AN UNKNOWN EFFECT!
Relief washed over Sean as he read the prompt, though he was curious about one thing.
‘Unknown effect’? Sean wondered, reading the prompt. How is a mana potion an ‘unknown effect’?
He supposed he really had no clue what he was actually drinking. All Sean had to go on was Gel’s word as to what this actually was, which was itself based on the absorbed memory of a villager who may or may not have known what they were buying. Looking at it that way, the prompt made a little more sense. Sean examined the bottle.
Two-thirds of the bottle remained, and not a drop more. Swirling it again, the invisible separation between the final two portions was still obvious. Sean decided to just chalk that factor up to ‘convenient magical shit’ and leave discovering the mechanics of it for later.
“Now THAT is what I’m talking about! Dee-lish-SHUS!” Gel crowed, before the slime began beckoning Sean to take another swing and announcing in a very norse-God-like voice. “Another!”
“Did that restore all of your mana, too?” Sean asked, curious as to just how much the slime had gotten. Based on what the prompt had said, if he could figure out a way to take half of a dose he might be able to extend the duration of this find’s life-saving properties even further.
“Sure did, and it tasted like I was taking a bite out of the sun itself!” Gel sounded elated initially, but then sobered up a bit. “But I take it by all the not-drinking you’re doing that we’re saving the rest for later?”
“Yup. Cork it.” Sean said, wiggling the bottle meaningfully. “This little beauty is worth hours of life, so we’re only going to use it as a last resort.”
“Hrngh… fine.” Gel grumbled, putting the cork back on. “You and your ‘logic’.”
“If it makes you feel better, the spices are next.” Sean pointed out.
“It does.” Gel relented. “If any of those boneheads took them while we were gone though, we are going to hunt. Them. Down.”
“Fair enough.” Sean agreed, carefully pulling out the leather bag of glass vials they had stolen from Bancoft and storing the potion inside. He returned that bag to the satchel, which took a bit of re-shuffling, and then returned to the front doorway.
Peering out, Sean saw only two pairs of skeletal warriors roaming the town. Neither were between him and the tavern, though they hadn’t seen the shroud before it attacked so that didn’t mean there wasn’t another one of those flying around. Sean took an extra minute watching for that particular floating pest. When he didn’t see anything, he decided to take a chance while the warriors weren’t looking. Exiting the home he was in, Sean rushed over to the tavern as quietly as he could manage. He had to use his free hand to keep the satchel from bouncing, but thankfully the loose earth that served as the city’s main ‘street’ didn’t make much noise.
Once inside, it was only the work of a moment to slip back inside the kitchen and get the spice box. Gel insisted on holding it, and Sean agreed under the condition that the slime wait until they were safely away from town before trying any more. Gel made a brief show of being disgruntled about that condition, but they both knew the slime understood the stakes. They needed to leave, and if they wanted to do so with all of their stolen loot then they needed to do so without any more fights.
To Sean’s great surprise given how the rest of their night had gone, fleeing the town went smoothly. No more than ten minutes and two dodged patrols, and they were away. Off towards a farm located a short distance from Dry Run that Gel swore would be their last stop before heading back out into the wild. Trusting in his gelatinous friend’s word, Sean acceded.
The farm, which Gel told him was called ‘Betsy’s Boopsies Moo-psies’ based on both a memory and the wooden sign nailed to a post just outside its gates, couldn’t have been another five or ten away. Sean wasn’t entirely sure if that was the real name or if Gel was having fun with the fact that Sean couldn’t read the sign, though he supposed it didn’t matter much either way.
They were careful to avoid notice the entire way over, sticking to the trees and bushes rather than traveling the worn path between the two locations. Even so, they saw no further patrols. Gel guessed that whatever minions had been nearby must have been called back by the shroud, and Sean agreed. A hopped stone fence and a shoved-open door later, and they were raiding the farm’s storage shed.
“Alright Gel, what are we here for?” Sean asked as he finished shoving the cracked door aside.
“Anything you think we might need before we head out away from any kind of civilization. I’ve got all I need right here already.” Gel said brightly, tapping the spice box against Sean’s hip for emphasis. “Dry Run was the last town any of the villagers knew about for a hundred miles, unless you count that one merchant city out in the desert.”
“Merchant city?” Sean asked, taking stock of the various remaining bits of equipment and tools that had been left behind in the shed.
He didn’t recognize everything, though it seemed like farming tools weren’t too much different here than back on Earth. It also looked like Bancroft’s minions had raided most of the stock here. There wasn’t much left, and he got the distinct feeling that what was still here had been left behind due to a lack of direct oversight over the horde rather than an unwillingness to grab it all. Sean saw a partially crushed wooden bucket and remembered Bucket-head from back in the basement. He suppressed a grin at the thought of wandering around like that himself.
Just need Gel to turn into a broom instead of an axe, at that point. Fear not, citizens! We come to clean your streets, not eat your meats! Sean internally chuckled to himself as Gel continued their conversation, oblivious to Sean’s wandering mind.
“Dervash. It’s supposed to have a portal linking it back to one of the larger nations, but that’s been broken for a century or more now. At least. The city was established enough to survive losing the portal, but never had anything worth enough to justify the expense of repairing it or building a proper trade route out there.” Gel’s voice had taken on the recitation tone he used when speaking from another’s memory, though his speech was slightly delayed, as if the slime were actively trying to speak from his own point of view. “The people of Dry Run weren’t just settling out here because they liked the ambience, they had been planning on being the first leg of a new shipping route for goods back to the major cities. That’s where the initial investment for all of that back there came from.”
“Sounds like Bancroft may have some enemies there. Especially if the people of Dervash know he just slaughtered their only chance at outside trade. Not to mention whoever ponied up that seed investment.” Sean noted, filing that information away for later as he began quickly setting aside the gear they would need. Gel had assured him there would be a pack in the farmhouse, so he simply arranged what they were taking into a pile for now.
A length of rope, made of some unrecognizable type of hair that he found hung from a rafter. A flint and tinder kit in a partially rusted tin. A sledgehammer that Sean had to dislodge from the wall of the shed because whoever had been here last had embedded the thing into the wood. A metal hatchet he pulled out of a pile of firewood. A pickaxe with more notches in it than Sean had ever seen on a tool before – thing looked like whoever had wielded it had smashed it into rocks at every angle except the one it was built for. And the last things he grabbed were a small metal hammer and a chisel with a dark wooden grip. All of the items were something Sean had used at one point or another in his life, and all could potentially come in handy out in the wild.
“You think we could turn the town against Bancroft?” Gel asked curiously.
“I would be surprised if they let us in. Are monsters common in cities?” Sean took a final look at the rest of the items in the shed, but he either didn’t need or didn’t recognize what remained. Nodding once at the pile he’d made, he headed over to the farmhouse.
“Don’t know. Never been in one. Most of the villager’s memories of actual towns were a bit hazy.” Gel admitted after a moment of thought. “I can tell you that anything they or the guards recognized as a monster was killed on sight, though.”
“That sounds like a pretty solid ‘no’ to me.” Sean pointed out. He didn’t waste time looking around the interior of the farmhouse. They had talked about what would likely be where before arriving, and he only had two stops in here before they would leave for good: the supply closet, and the kitchen.
“You would think so.” Gel said, the slime’s voice trailing off as if he were actively searching through memories as they walked. “But I have one memory of this traveling ‘Monster Circus’ caravan, and it was definitely let inside the city gates.”
“Not too keen on joining the circus.” Sean said, finding the pack they were looking for right where Gel had said it would be in the supply closet. There were actually two, and he stuffed one inside the outer pocket of the other. Carrying two openly alongside the satchel would definitely restrict his movement, and he may have to give up a tool or two, but this way they would have a backup just in case. “My mother would never forgive me.”
“My mother would have eaten the circus.” Gel said proudly, and for a moment Sean was curious if the slime was actually telling the truth. He had no idea how slimes reproduced.
Sean was about to ask that very question when he decided the reproductive lifestyle of gelatinous creatures was a topic that could wait until they were on – or rather, off – the road.
Stepping into the kitchen, Sean distracted Gel by feeding him the rotting remnants of the cupboards while he stacked as many herbs, spices, and assorted glass jars of various non-perishables into the pack as he thought he could fit. A thought occurred to him as he was packing it all away.
“How is this place so well stocked? If Dry Run was a frontier town on the edge of the wilds, and this is one of the few farms out here, how do they have all these spices?” Back on Earth, or at least medieval-equivalent-and-earlier Earth, spices had been incredibly rare. At least in the history books he had read. Wars were fought over them. Even that barrel of salt back at the tavern was probably worth a fortune, now that he thought about it.
“Most of that initial investment I mentioned went towards dry goods and building materials.” Gel responded in between moldy fruits. “The other reason they picked this area was the abundance of natural herbs, so that’s probably part of it. Easier to trade stuff when it’s right there waiting to be picked up.”
Sean supposed that made sense. He got back to his task, though he wondered what it said about Bancroft that the man had left those rock salt barrels behind. He also wondered how he and Gel might be able to acquire them for their own trading purposes later.
The pack had come with a number of belt loops on its exterior he planned to use for the big tools from the shed, which freed up the majority of its interior. He made sure to wrap the glass jars in the various hand and cooking towel clothes around the kitchen, and was disappointed to find that the silverware and knives had apparently been looted.
What kind of asshole takes a dead farmer’s knives? Sean thought, lamenting the fact that he was unable to do that very thing. He supposed they could use Gel for that, but with the unexpected find of a magical frying pan Sean’s imagination had treated him to an abundance of magical cookware options that may or may not exist here. None of which he found, and Sean tried to keep that from discouraging him.
Lodged underneath a kicked dining table adjacent to the kitchen, one covered in shattered plates and rotten, moldy food, Sean did manage to find a pair of tongs. He tucked those into the pack as his last grab, trying not to stare at the dark blood splatters left liberally around the room.
“Did we get everything?” Gel asked, just as the last moldy marmlat vanished into his ooze.
“Think so.” Sean said, doing one last quick check around the kitchen. They were leaving an abundance of supplies behind, but they could only take what they could carry so sacrifices had to be made. Sean consoled himself with the fact that they could potentially come back later if they really had to. “Just have to load up those tools and we’re outta here.”
“Then off we go, into the wild blue yonder!” Gel cheered in a sing-song voice.
“Climbing high, into the sun.” Sean echoed automatically, as he jogged back towards the shed. The words tumbled out so readily that it took him a moment to place where they were from. That was part of the Air Force’s song. How had Gel–?
“What? No, don’t be silly.” Gel said firmly. “If we’re climbing anywhere to eat stuff up there in the sky, we’re going to eat Nadir. Look at that deep, luscious green… and that size! It’s way bigger than the sun and I’ll bet you it has way more flavor.”
“Given that the sun would burn us both to death before we ever got there, I would have to agree with you.” Sean admitted, chalking Gel’s earlier words up to coincidence. “Though given how long it took us to climb out of that hole, we’re going to have to table those 'moon and sun eating’ plans for now.”
“Not forever, though.” Gel said, shaking Sean’s right arm up at the moon as if in threat. “Not forever.”