“Oh, hey! Something just appeared there!” Clutter calls out before I can think any further and dives into the monster. “It looks like… huh. Is this an egg or a fetus? I can’t really tell. Whatever it is, it’s pulsing a whole lot and–oh my goodness.”
I step into the monster behind him as he makes room for me. It smells… like absolutely nothing at all. Not that it doesn’t have a smell, but that I physically can’t smell anything at all from the second I stepped in here. The scent of wet ground and dry grain seem hundreds of miles away, and even the sweat and blood on my shirt lost their scents.
With a wrinkle of my nose, I kneel down over the thing. “How come you didn’t mention this smell-blocking thing?”
Clutter tilts his head to the side and looks at me with wide eyes. “You can’t smell anything? I thought it was masking my sense of smell a little, but if you can’t smell anything at all, then I guess it’s stronger at whatever this is than I thought. Ooh, do you think it’s a smell that’s so strong it cancels all the others out, but we don’t have the right sensors in our noses to detect it?”
“If that’s the truth, then I don’t know how we’d prove it.” I nudge his tail with the back of my hand to reveal the egg-fetus-thing. The moment I get my eyes on it… I have to admit he was right. “Wow. You weren’t kidding.”
The entire thing pulses with a dull heartbeat, as if blood is actually pumping through it, and I can see the start of two limbs curled up around it like headphones wrapped around a portable speaker. That would be enough for me to say ‘fetus’, but there’s a sheen all around it–one that definitely looks like a shell–and a layer of fluid between the thing itself and the shell.
“Well, it probably won’t matter soon enough, so let’s just go with ‘egg’ for now.” I lean in and gently rest my hand on the thing. Unlike the monster, this thing feels warm and alive. And… squishy. “Eurgh, that’s not a pleasant sensation. Think we should take it out?”
I turn to see Clutter’s reaction and get an eyeful of his entire face just inches from mine. A frown spreads over my lips as I try to feel at my awareness, but it feels… weird. Not weakened, and definitely not missing, but… overwhelmed? Sure, that’s close enough. There’s something here that my awareness is sensing so hard that I can barely look for what I want to look at.
…Just like how Clutter can still smell a little. Hrm.
“How aren’t you excited by this?” Clutter whispers loudly and pats the egg. “It’s made of the plastic we’re looking for! This has to be the clue!”
Pearl shakes her head before I can say anything. “Nope; this is just another monster. Whatever we’re looking for isn’t in the egg–it’s still here somewhere.”
I shake my head and take full credit for Pearl’s awareness. “It’s just another one of these monsters. Whatever we’re looking for is somewhere else in here.”
“But… how’s that possible? I’ve looked at everything in here!” Clutter spreads his arms and motions at the entirety of the monster for emphasis. “If there’s anything else in here, it’s got to be invisible. And scentless. And completely incorporeal. Which means that no matter how long we look, we won’t find it!”
He breaths heavily as he finishes, obviously overtaken by a passion that I don’t reciprocate. I stare at him for a few seconds while his chest heaves, his arms outstretched as if he isn’t finished showing me that he made his point.
“If it’s unfindable, then we should move on.” I stand and wipe the gunk off my knees. “There’s something here we don’t have the tools to find. Maybe we need a spell, or a skill, or there could be some variant of the plastic we don’t have that we need. Could even be the stuff from the graveyard that the tree took for itself.”
Clutter grimaces and looks around desperately. “No! I… there has to be something else we can do. Everything else until this point has been using phase stuff to find these, so maybe we can just use the phase stuff to find this thing. That would explain why it’s unfindable right now, right? Because it technically doesn’t exist right now, but it’s leaking into this reality, right?”
I raise both eyebrows and shrug. “Hey, if you think you can find it, I won’t stop you from looking. My problem is that we have no idea where to start looking from, and my skill’s on cooldown so it can’t help look for it. Unless you’ve got some scout spells and or skills you haven’t shown me yet?”
“Mrgh.” Clutter mumbles, pouts, and looks away. “I’m specialized in movement and information gathering. Not in finding hidden secrets. If I was, I would’ve had an answer for you when you came back, not a bunch of leads and a little more plastic.”
“You can specialize Classes? No, I guess I already knew that, but… how?” I ask as I turn to watch the opening for danger. “Can you buy spells from your Class Card? Do your skills actually change depending on what you want to do?”
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“They do.” Clutter confirms, but now that I’m looking away, I can’t really feel him in my awareness. That bothers me more than I thought it would. “There’s a bunch of starting skills, and depending on how well you do on your quests and tests, you can choose some. What you choose locks you out of other things, so if you do really well, they call you a ‘true scout’ because you aren’t locked out of everything. Or a true whatever else you are. Isn’t it the same for you humans?”
I shrug and don’t offer him an answer. Only a moment of silence answers before a long breath of frustration escapes from Clutter’s lips, and a glance over my shoulder confirms that he’s gone right back to staring at the egg. Whatever he took my silence as, I highly doubt he came to the right answer.
But… it does make me wonder if the other humans are always considered ‘true classes’ from the second they get them. I’ll have to ask the next person I meet that I semi-trust to get a straight answer.
While Clutter messes around with the egg, I pull out my Class Card and swipe through it. There’s nothing new to see, and a double check that I didn’t get any Worth from the mass at the graveyard proves true. Something’s bothering me about this entire thing, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Sure, we’re struggling to find the quest, but how did the other horizonguard find it? Is there something obvious-ish that we’re overlooking? Or are we knocking on the door to some high-level quest without knowing it?
“Shit, what happens if I don’t have the clearance to do the quest?” I mutter to myself as I send my Class Card away. “Will it still let me in but won’t give me the rewards, or am I just completely screwed?”
“That depends how much over your clearance it is.” Clutter responds. “If you get it and it actually shows you numbers instead of question marks or a bunch of gibberish, then you’re okay. Otherwise it’s just like when your mind stat won’t let you hear something. But for the quest acceptance screen.”
Hrm. That’s about what I expected, but actually hearing it isn’t doing anything to lift my spirits. I drum my fingers against my thigh and glance around, idly looking for anything that might be even close to another clue, but nothing jumps out at me. Pearl doesn’t seem bothered by the weirdness in here, and she hasn’t chimed in about finding anything, so… I guess it’s just me.
As I’m about to turn around and go back to helping Clutter, a stalk rustles in the distance. I frown and hold up a hand to block the sun–did the farmers finally decide to come down here? That’s going to be a major annoyance if they insist on making Clutter explain himself, especially since he’ll give in to them without a second thought.
“Clutter, don’t leave the monster until I either send you a message or I come to get you.” I drop a relocation coin at my feet, then push a shield into a coin and step out of the monster. “And don’t bother with any noises you hear–I’ll deal with this.”
He nods seriously and digs his feet into the monster. “I’ll keep it here for as long as I can. Which should be a long time. What are you doing, anyway?”
“Just welcoming some uninvited guests.” I smile and drop the coin into the opening, sealing Clutter in with the egg and everything else. “Good luck finding whatever’s in there.”
“Thank you! Good luck fighting those people!” Clutter says happily, then turns back to his work.
Well, I guess I wasn’t really being that secretive. I smile to myself and prepare a few more shields, a single purification, and two projectiles; that should be more than enough to make some farmers ignore us for a few minutes. Not that I even want to hurt them in the first place, really, so I’ll have to make it up to them when we’re done and I have enough Worth to do shit with.
“Alright, all of you, come on out. We can discuss this like adults.” I spread my empty hands in a show of good faith while smiling wide with intimidation. “If you’re willing to leave us alone for an hour or two, we’ll just leave on our own. No need to get physical.”
The rustling slows, but doesn’t stop. I let my smile die and close my hands, breathe deep, and focus on my awareness to feel the shapes walking through the stalks.
“So you don’t want to talk, huh? That’s a real shame; I’m not that great at holding back. Don’t blame me if you walk away with some broken bones and salted wounds.”
Something sharp and quick zips into my awareness. I snap my foot back to dodge it, and it sinks deep into the dirt from the force it was thrown with. Confusion washes over me as I stare down at the thing, not quite understanding how it can be there. Because it looks almost exactly like a swiss army knife, complete with the red shell and an empty hole where a pair of tweezers would go.
“The… what… why the hell would you throw a pocket knife?” I ask the empty air in utter disbelief. “Surely there’s a thousand better things you could’ve thrown. Like, maybe an actual throwing knife? Or even a fist-sized rock?”
Silence. My sneer deepens; there’s no way these are the farmers. And if the pocket knife is any indication, I’m dealing with my own kind. Maybe opportunistic scavengers. Or more people hired by the same client that tried to kill me and Clutter in the first place. But I know better than that. With what just happened a few nights ago, there’s only two–maybe three–options for who these people are.
HuSt. The Preservation. Or Gisela’s little group. I grit my teeth and focus on my awareness, trying to understand why I couldn’t tell they were humans from the first glance. Two of them break off from the third and circle around me, closing off my potential escape routes. The final one finally walks out from inside of the stalks, twirling a pocket knife on a keyring around their finger as casually as I’d expect to see back on Earth.
I can’t make out their face. Or their body type. Or even their species. All I can truly see is the shard of a white mask on their forehead, held in place with a simple circlet. Before I can say anything the other two emerge from the stalks, revealing chunks of masks of their own–one an eyepatch, and the other a triangle over their nose.
“Who the hell are you?” I growl as I latch onto a shield with my awareness. “Who sent you?”
The one in front of me shakes their head. “Not important. Now are you going to die easily, or are we going to have to get our hands dirty?”