“Did you see? Did you see that, Sean!? I killed it with its own spines! Hahaha, right in its face!” Gel exclaimed with grand aplomb, waving Sean’s spine-covered right arm around as if it were a flail. Which it kind of had been at the end there, the slime warrior had to admit. “What kind of plant even has spines? Or a face? I love this place, let’s never leave.”
Sean chuckled along with his friend as he dragged the eight foot dancing cactus’s body through the rust-red sand back to their new hideout. The formerly bipedal plant’s dust brown, porous wooden body – along with that of the two they had already taken back – was going to serve as the base of their cookfire for the day. Along with some dried-up sticks and hollowed logs that had been piled up near the cactus-creatures for some reason.
“My favorite part was when its friend tried to bear hug us.” Sean said, recalling that initially alarming portion of the fight. Right before the dancing cactus’ needle-like spines had shattered against his bones. “Not the best plan against a skeleton, that.”
“Hahaha, oh yes, that was great.” Gel gushed. “I wish I could have seen its face when you ripped its arm off. Did you even need your shield that fight?”
“Hah, no. Just had to use my strong hand.” Sean joked, flexing the powerful bones of his left hand. The movement made the wood of the dancing cactus he was dragging crack.
His reaper’s hand had, interestingly enough, not changed all that much when Sean had picked up the ‘Thicker Bones’ node. At least outwardly. The flowing white bone that had covered the rest of him had stopped just short of that hand. Its color remained that of an endless black. Of empty, starless space stretching out into the void. Inwardly, Sean had felt as if his hand had grown… heavier. Whether that was a physical or metaphysical weight, the slime warrior didn’t know.
“Yeah, speaking of. What’s with that thing, by the way?” Gel asked curiously. “I read the description, but it still looks like a hand to me. Can it do anything special?”
“Dunno. Feels stronger than my other one did, but I can’t test that out right now.” Sean shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
“Why can’t we– Oh, right. The broken one. Hey, if it makes you feel any better I’m getting a lot more use out of it than you ever did.” The slime quipped, swinging said arm around a few times for emphasis. “Plus, it’s got upgrades now! Remember how your old limb couldn’t extend and was a finite distance away from you? Who wants to go back to those boring old days, right?”
Again, Sean simply chuckled at his friend’s antics. He did have to admit, Gel was making the best of his broken arm. The irritation Sean had once felt about not having control over one of his own limbs hadn’t surged up at all lately. What he didn’t tell Gel though, was that he was pretty sure there was something special about his left hand. Sean just wasn’t sure what it was, so he hadn’t brought it up yet. It was also a little hard to explain.
There had been a… resonance… of sorts, whenever he had used that hand to kill something. Only when he was the one delivering the final blow, though. Sean wasn’t sure what to make of it as no prompts had appeared, but he had a few running theories already.
When one of them pans out, I’ll bring it up. Sean told himself, before changing the subject to a more tactical conversation.
“Hey, next time we’re charged by a group, how about you attack the one on your side of the body first?”
“I have a side of our body now?”
“The right side. You have that arm, so go for whatever’s on that side and I’ll take the left.”
“What if there’s one coming down the middle?”
“Well, then we–”
Their conversation on future battle plans continued as their new hideout came back into full view.
The rocky outcropping jutted out from the top of one of the region’s larger dunes like shards of dark ice that had frozen mid-motion after being kicked. Each of the enormous rocks ended in a sharp point, and Sean had felt the same, though faint, feeling of comfort he typically did around greater concentrations of death mana. The feeling had gotten ever so slightly stronger the nearer they had gotten to the stones, so they had decided to go exploring. At the base of the largest rock, a simple, unadorned cave had stood out as an obvious shelter.
The cave’s former occupants – some wild jackalope-crossed-with-hyena-looking things called “Desert Nermites” – had been numerous, but not particularly troublesome. Sean’s heavy investment in his own defense on the manasphere had paid off just as handsomely against them as it had against the scorpion, and the creatures had fled after they had taken down the pack leader.
The chase afterward had been almost comedically Biley-Coyote-esque, and Sean could still hear Gel shouting invectives at his fleeing meals for their cowardice in his mind. His thick skull stretched itself into his version of a smile at the memory as he tossed the dancing cactus’s body atop those of its former friends.
Do plants have friends? I’m not sure where that distinction is.
A few feet away were the carcasses of everything else they had slain in the past hour or two. It was an impressive pile in Sean’s opinion, and the sheer size of it filled him with relief at not having to worry about food for a while. Gel had grumbled half-heartedly about not eating some of them right away, but had been mollified by Sean taking a single bite of each for taste testing.
Might even get a whole day out of this lot. Sean thought, eyeing first the pile and then scanning the surrounding lands from their new, considerably higher vantage point. Assuming that thing doesn’t come knocking. But we should at least be able to see him from a ways off up here.
They had killed half a dozen creatures so far, outside of the dancing cacti. Two nermites they had managed to catch after the pack leader fell. Another pair of those desert scorpions, and a large lizard-looking thing called a “Lacerten” that ran on ten legs and had two whip-like tails. Only one of the cacti had managed to hurt him, the last one, and it had dealt 2 points of damage through his toughness with some kind of green whip-tongue that dealt nature-type damage. That had increased the attack’s base damage enough to do the trick, but not enough to save the plant creature’s life.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
All told, their ‘haul’ had cost them only those two hit points, a little time, and had netted them a whopping 12 experience. 6 for the creatures, and 2 each for the cacti. They had spotted tougher enemies out there: the two-story tall walking tree with tan bark that had been pummeling a group of creatures they had never actually seen as anything but pink mist after its blows landed, a set of stacked boulders rolling across the dunes with humanoid arms on either side that Sean guessed was some type of golem, and what looked like a car-sized mosquito with seven different probosci.
They had swung wide around the first, passed the second without incident despite it coming right up on them without being noticed, and the mosquito-thing had flown off before they could make a decision on whether to attack or not. The corpse it had been slurping up was unidentifiable and naught but bone – much to Gel’s chagrin.
Definitely dangerous out there. Sean thought as they stoked the campfire. We’re going to have to fight some of that danger if we want to keep leveling up. I get the feeling beating on the same creatures over and over again may not be the best idea.
That feeling had come to him when they had slain their fifth creature in a row worth only a single exp. It wasn’t a warning or a prompt. The kill had just felt… off, somehow. Both of them had felt it, and neither understood it, so the moment had passed. Even so, Sean kept the occurrence in the back of his mind.
“Alright, so what are we testing this time?” Gel asked, pulling the seasoning box out of their satchel once the fire was going strong.
With it being broad daylight, Sean wasn’t entirely worried about smoke giving off their position. None of the dangerous creatures they had found had been nearby to this position, so at worst they would be attracting more ingredients.
“Well, now that we have more of a supply, we need to figure out how long it takes for corpses to lose their mana values. That half boar you ate when we got here gave us nothing, right?” Sean asked.
“Not a thing! Except for satisfaction, of course. There was plenty of that.”
“Right, so…” Sean checked his internal ‘clock’ on his mana upkeep to compare. “We killed most of these within the last hour, some earlier than that. So we’ll eat one, see what it gives us, and cook another while we wait another hour. Basically, I want to figure out if cooking the body extends the time we have left to eat the food and get what we need, and figure out how long we have once something is slain before it’s useless.”
“Useless, but still delicious.” Gel corrected, and Sean inclined his head to acknowledge the point. “Where are you going to put all those steaks, though? I don’t want any more sand on my meat than needs to be there, and I don’t remember you taking any plates from that farm.”
“I’m not making steaks.” Sean said, setting up a spit over their campfire with the branches they had found. The task might have been more difficult, but his hand was more than capable of shaping or breaking the branches as necessary – and it wasn’t like he had to worry about splinters anymore.
“Oh?” Gel’s tone was all curiosity now. “What are you making, then? You know I love new foods.”
“I do.” Sean acknowledged. “I’m cooking the whole thing at once. Going to try roasting them.”
“Why didn’t you do that before?” Gel asked, puzzled. “You made me wait all that time!”
“I wanted to try out my new pan.” Sean said defensively. “Besides, I didn’t hear you complaining about all those fat steaks I served you. You got to eat a whole half-deer piece by piece! Do you know what you would have to pay for that back where I’m from?”
“No.” Gel admitted freely.
“A lot.” Sean asserted as he got to work. “Trust me when I say… a lot.”
The next two hours passed relatively quickly as the pair chatted away while Sean cooked. It quickly became apparent that any residual mana left in a body dissipated entirely within roughly two hours after death. Cooking seemed to extend that time somewhat, but Sean couldn’t be sure by how long. There were too many variables, he didn’t have a proper kitchen, and he would need far more than just their meager pile of kills to really science this whole thing properly.
Luckily, seeing as how there had still been no sign of tall, dark, and filets-paladins, they had plenty of time for science. Or at least, so Sean thought.
“Hey, what’s with all that smoke over there?” Gel asked as Sean chewed down the lacerten’s slightly overcooked face. Sean had been willing to leave that part out, but the slime would have none of it. “I thought we were the only ones roasting meat today.”
“Smoke?” Sean looked up from his meal and scanned the horizon line. Sure enough, there was a column of spiraling black and grey smoke rising off in the distance. The kind of plumes you usually only saw from house fires when the flames had reached the chemical closet. The slime warrior couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a wagon wheel in the smoke.
“Think we should check it out?” Sean asked even as he lifted another piece of lizard-cheek to his mouth and swallowed. “Whoever that is, they’re clearly having a bad day. Might be the last of those paladins.”
“Maybe they should try cooking their food right.” Gel commented as the next piece fell into him and was quickly absorbed. “Happiness is a well-cooked meal, Sean.”
“I thought you said ‘Happiness is two friends munching on a well-cooked face together’.” Sean questioned as he stood up. “Wasn’t that you just five minutes ago when I wanted to toss out its burnt and busted face?”
“It wasn’t burnt, there was plenty of flesh left on there!” Gel protested. “And yes, it was. There are many kinds of happiness to be shared and eaten, faces are just one of them.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean said as he started smothering their campfire and preparing to bury their food until they got back.
“What are you doing?” Gel exclaimed. “We were eating that!”
“We were almost done with it, and we’re both full on mana. Whatever or whoever is burning out there may have some answers that we won’t get just sitting around here all day.” Sean explained, feeling good about taking back some initiative after having to flee into the desert.
“And what if it is those paladins?” Gel asked, though the slime stopped complaining. Sean’s right arm simply shot out, latched onto the rest of the lacerten’s face, and began forcibly stuffing it through the small hole in his chest. “What if that thing caught up to them?”
“It’s in the opposite direction as the forest.” Sean noted, pointing at the smoke which was roughly parallel to where they were but clearly deeper into the sands. “Ish. We’ve been watching out for that creature all morning, it’s probably still frozen.”
“Now that sounds like optimism I can get behind.” Gel announced, shoving the last of their meal through and dissolving it. “What if they’re still alive, though? You think we can take them?”
Sean recalled the beam of bright energy that had lanced through the trees and almost killed them outright. “Nope, but if they were in a good spot then they wouldn’t be on fire. So either it’s them and something out here got them after the battle – in which case we loot whatever we can find and call it a win – or its someone else and maybe we learn something about this desert. Either way, I say we get there before the buzzards do. Or that mosquito. Thing was creepy.”
“Then… onward!” Gel shouted happily as Sean finished ‘stashing’ (kicking sand over) their remaining spoils. “To glory! And our inevitable deaths!”
“Don’t you mean ‘their’ inevitable deaths?” Sean asked.
“Oh, right. Yes. That sounds way better.”