Life 22/154
Mana 0/72
He didn’t know where he was, but apparently he’d been blasted most of the way across the battlefield. The Dusk Dragon had been pressed up against one of the valley walls when he threw the Apocalypse Bomb, although he’d lost any sort of orientation at this point so he wasn’t sure which wall or where he’d gone. He had a rough idea of directions based on the hole in the Salton Barrier, but even that wasn’t particularly helpful.
His HUD had been raining in achievements and messages like crazy. He had no idea what they all said. He didn’t have time to look.
In the corner of his character sheet where he managed his Ranks it said, “+196 waiting”. He didn’t do the math, but it meant he was well above Rank 200 now. He had acquired a massive amount experience, several thousand times more than he had gained in total thus far.
He also had several dozen new Achievements that he dismissed for now.
That seemed good. He hoped he lived long enough to use some of it.
The Jett effect was over. The Jett Hangover was brutal. Where once the world echoed for him, giving him crucial seconds to make any decision he needed to, he now felt like he was trapped in oil. Worse yet, it hurt to move anything. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to even think. It hurt to see for that matter.
On top of the Jett hangover, he was back to being just Boyd. The Apocalypse Bomb blast had deleted a large portion of the Dusk Dragon. The remaining corpse, a portion of the Dusk Dragon that hadn’t been fully deleted from existence, was smoldering in the dirt, several hundred meters below him, half gone with the non-explosion. The valley walls were also obliterated. Nothing was alive where the Apocalypse Bomb had gone off.
He pushed a finger in his ear to figure out if he was deaf or not. He quickly realized he wasn’t deaf, other noises were just being drowned out by a massive sound that he couldn’t place. He swung his head around, immediately felt like vomiting at the sensation, and then looked up to see a burgeoning new set of problems.
Foremost, miles across the battlefield, a horde of about 100 Dog-beasts had formed a pack and were charging towards him. He didn’t know their purpose, or even if he was what they were coming towards, but it seemed unlikely he would survive the encounter. If any of them were remotely of the strength of Jellybean Jenkins, there would be no way to win.
Second, the destruction of the Valley walls had lead to some serious localized geologic issues. Foremost, the river that had flowed in the area above them through some sort of magical or unique geographic happenstance was now functioning under normal gravity again and had begun spilling into the valley. Previously, the river was prevented from entering this area via the walls of the valley, and had somehow failed to erode its way down to lower ground. That was no longer the case on account of the very large holes in the valley walls. The river roared into the valley, rapidly filling it with water. This also explained the noise, as a river that looked like a large branch of the Amazon back on Earth was now filling what amounted to a bathtub in comparison, with Boyd standing in the bottom of it.
Finally, on top of all of this, shit was piling through the Salton Barrier still. There were planes and projectiles and indescribable whatnots, all of them blasting into Zenith’s gravity at top speed, and commonly exploding in the process. The sky quickly turned into a war zone as groups fought to enter Zenith’s atmosphere, but success rates seemed low. Debris from all of the would-be interlopers was falling from the sky in droves. Some of the items were hitting the ground and emitting creatures that ranged from things Boyd had seen to things that he couldn’t even imagine, but a larger portion of the objects smashing into the ground were either already destroyed or were actively burning. Boyd had to assume most of it was not going to survive contact.
He still hadn’t seen Salia again, and as much as she had shit on him, he worried for her safety. Was she one of the random flaming projectiles striking the battlefield?
The water had gone from his feet to his ankles in a matter of seconds. He could barely move as it was, so long-term treading water wasn’t going to be a great option. The Jett Hangover should end soon, but he wasn’t sure if it would even matter. He was weighed down by guns, Party Marty, his leather armour and more. He could strip to the bone and probably survive it, but at this point he wasn’t sure if he could keep replacing everything he’d worked for on a nearly daily basis.
The Dogs were still approaching too, four of them had broken off from the pack and were heading for him directly. He wasn’t sure where the others were heading, but it didn’t matter. He pulled his rifle and tried to draw a bead on the one in front. He fired but missed widely. He actioned the lever on his rifle as fast as he could, but he could barely focus enough to shoot. With the Jett Hangover pounding in his head, he slipped in the ever increasing water at his feet, but stumbled his way back up. The Dogs were already halfway across the field at this point and closing fast. He pulled his rifle to his shoulder and fired again, catching the front Dog in the chest. It went tumbling backwards, but so did he, unable to maintain his footing. The Dog was up and running again before Boyd could get back on his own feet, although he could tell it was in bad shape. He fired again and missed wide.
The Jett Hangover has receded to almost nothing by this point, but he was still woozy from the damage alone. He Manatapped back a few more health and pulled his Rifle back up to his shoulder to try and get one last shot in before he switched to his revolvers. Party Marty had fell off his back and was somewhere in the dirt beside him. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t fight these things toe-to-toe regardless.
Across the field of battle, Boyd looked over to see that the water had stopped moving.
All of it.
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The river breaking into the Valley was a stroke of luck. If nothing else, it kept things nice and humid.
Zualt didn’t like dry weather.
He Transposed directly into the valley itself from a growing puddle of water. His fleshy green legs appearing first, then his flowing red cloak and finally his head, adorned with a helmet made of Ranamium. The first thing he did was take control of the local resources. It was a relatively small volume compared to what he was used to dealing with back home. The river stopped and he diverted its flow to himself. Now, the full force of the river lay motionless behind him.
He had wanted to do battle with the Dusk Dragon, it had become sufficiently powerful, but this would be a different sort of fun. There wouldn’t be the thrill of the challenge, but it would be a good introduction to Zenith.
The Dog in the front of the pack, much larger than Zualt was, ran towards him ready to swing his axe. Zualt didn’t bother moving, he simply stared. The Dog stopped motionless and fell to the ground, wet with blood and urine and fluid. Water was his to command. He had simply removed all of it from the approaching Dog, instantly and spontaneously, from every pore. The remaining corpse was “leaking” badly, staining the ground with a mixture of water and dilute fluids.
The other Dogs were still charging, but were several dozen meters away, so he hopped onto a small stump and began casting his spell. The water rose up behind him, hundreds of feet tall, and then sped forward and washed over the attacking crew. They were cast aside, many of them dying in the wave, the rest drowning in the pools. He still set atop his stump, watching the battle.
He quickly formed the river into a Water Elemental which was doing battle with the remaining Dogs. They couldn’t hurt it, and Zualt didn’t feel like extending things any longer than needed, so the Elemental simply placed large orbs of water around each of their heads and watched them struggle as they drowned on dry land. They pawed and kicked at the ball of water, desperately trying to pull it off their heads, but it remained steadfast. After a few minutes they all fell over dead, and the Water Elemental washed back into the dirt.
He hopped a few feet forward and pulled in some water to encase himself in ice. This was one of his least favorite tricks, it always left him cold, but it was highly effective. He had spotted the Serpen ship as soon as he Transposed in, so he assumed the missile attacks would be coming any second. No matter what else was happening, if the Serpen knew he was there, they would attack him first. This was smart thinking.
He would drown them all.
Serpen missiles moved in a serpentine pattern and were hard to shoot down. Because of their erratic movement, they were notoriously inaccurate. These missiles were no different. They landed a few meters off and the ice block easily prevented the blast from damaging him.
He looked into the water at his feet, still entombed in ice, and scryed the position of the Serpen Warship. He triangulated its position using the direction of the missiles and his scrying water to estimate where it would be and how fast it was moving. A spear of ice shot directly into the air below the ship. He wouldn’t be able to pierce the hard hull of the Serpen ship, but he didn’t need to do so. The ice began growing around the ship. Water was seeping into every nook and cranny. It was only a few seconds until the ship began to lose its airworthiness and came crashing down. More dead Serpen. A nice bonus to the day.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
He hopped back onto his stump with the Serpen threat eliminated and looked around. Across the battlefield, a severely injured Boyd Bridges was trying to pry a Dog’s teeth from his shoulder. Another Dog lay dead next to him and the third and fourths were now encircling Boyd Bridges until they could find an easy opening.
Zualt casually began hopping in that direction, but it seemed like it would resolve itself shortly.
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Life: 41/154.
Mana: 0/78.
He mostly firing off pot shots trying to keep them away. Something about the pistol really bothered them. The poison must be highly painful.
He’d kill the lead dog shortly after it arrived. Party Marty was stuck firmly in the back of the creature’s head. At this point, he was mostly just pacing around in circles firing potshots trying to keep the Dogs back. He was spamming Manatap mentally hoping to get enough Life back to kills these things. They were not nearly as strong as Jellybean, but they were every bit as vicious.
One of the Dogs jumped at him, so he dodged to the left and fired two rounds in his direction. The Dogs had figured out his pattern though as the other had already jumped where they knew he would be. This meant there was a Cocker Spaniel digging its teeth into the shoulder attached to the arm holding his revolver. He dropped the gun from the pain, but the Dog wasn’t able to bite through his leather armour yet. The bite wouldn’t kill him, but it was incapacitating. The next one would go for his throat and that was that. He started kicking at the dog trying to get it off his arm.
Fuck Cocker Spaniels.
He pulled his rifle from the slot on his back and fired it one handed at the Dog jumping at him. It caught the Dog in the gut and sent it sprawling. He began beating the Cocker Spaniel over the head with the butt end of his rifle to minimal effect. The Dog clamped down on his arm and he fell to the ground in pain, expecting to die.
Life 154/154.
Boyd looked up to see the Cocker Spaniel sprouting mushrooms and vegetation. He picked up his rifle off the ground and fired off rounds into one of the Mutts that had been attacking him, but the Dog was too fast. It pounced on top of him, mouth first, but he caught the Dog’s mouth on his rifle just in time. He could feel the drool dribbling down his rifle muzzle onto his hands, weakening his grip. The Dog suddenly flew off of him and skittered to a halt before a flaming pillar engulfed the Dog. It stumbled around, caught in the flames before dying.
Boyd counted three dead. He looked around to find the last remaining Dog, but all he saw was a large vegetation covered slime mold. He waved at Gmol and then yelled, “Thanks for the heal!” Gmol was sprouting all sorts of beautiful, oddly shaped flowers out of him and had grown in mass. His internal rune was largely covered but it shot out a Thumbs Up sign. Boyd gave a thumbs up back. Gmol went back to his business and slimed his way forward, planting small flowers on the myriad corpses around the battlefield. Boyd correctly assumed that was all the help he was going to get.
Boyd scrambled to find his revolver before the next Dog could attack. Since he changed to Bushwhacker he consistently underestimated his Agility, but in the moment he didn’t have time to think. He rolled towards where the revolver had fell, fired the remaining rounds towards the approaching Dog on a second roll and scrambled over to where his Party Marty was still embedded in the first Dog’s head. He vaulted over the corpse and placed his foot on the creature’s head to pry the billhook out. The Dog had already caught up with him though, and slashed him in the back with a giant claw. It followed this up with a kick to the back of his head that sent him sprawling.
Life: 81/154
Boyd reflexively Manatapped some of his health back and then started dodging the Dog’s continued blows. The Dog was faster than him, and landed glancing blows repeatedly, but couldn’t make solid contact. Boyd was hoping to avoid this but he pulled another Jett crystal from his pocket, crushed it in his hand, and snorted it as fast as he could. The world slowed down again and the fight became a dance.
SYSTEM: Your Jett addiction has become less manageable.
SYSTEM: Achievement: …but why would I do that when I can choose Jett? Whatever addictive chemical is on your native planet probably doesn’t hold a candle to Jett. You are on an extremely slippery slope and given your prior history, I’m guessing we are at most two weeks from finding you in a back alley with tears in your eyes and some random creature’s sexual protuberance inside whichever one of your holes they prefer. You might want to slow down on this one. No experience granted, but I’m guessing you are going to get plenty of experience out of this deal.
He immediately felt better. The Jett hit faster than a 22 year old Mike Tyson on a coke bender. It made the world easy. He hadn’t noticed when he wasn’t on Jett, but now that he was high he followed the Dog’s movements with ease. The Dog overextended his legs on every slash. Boyd pre-emptively moved left and then dumped his entire magazine into the creature’s leg. The creature tried to leap backwards during the shooting, but its leg gave out. Boyd pulled Party Marty from his scabbard and chopped deep into the other leg. He tried to pull Party Marty out but it was buried deep. He decided to finish the fight was quickly as he could since the Jett was already starting to wane. He pulled the rifle and pressed it against the Dog’s head and smiled.
Then it rocketed 300 feet in the air on a pillar of water. The Dog yipped and whined as it bounced around on the giant puddle of water.
A two foot wide bullfrog that was about 8” tall in a red cape and a metal helmet hopped up to Boyd. “Please don’t kill him. We might need him.” The frog spoke with a perfect Midwestern accent, and could well have been from Northern Kansas. Boyd had kin there, and they sounded just like the frog.
"Wow. You’re kinda adorable. Also that thing’s going to die. It’s full of poison.”
The Jett Hangover hit and Boyd started projectile vomiting.
The frog looked up in the sky. “The poisons are aqueous. I removed them. When your Jett condition resolves, we should talk. My name is Zualt, the Eternally Damp, Supreme Hydrophosist of the Namidian Domain.”
Boyd spewed vomit into the water below. He wiped his mouth and said, “I’m Boyd. Just Boyd”
Boyd set down on a nearby clear spot and looked up, waiting on the Jett Hangover to resolve.
Above him, the sky was buzzing with the presence of thousands upon thousands of tiny ships piling through the Salton barrier.
Around him, the world was burning.
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In the center of the valley there was a massive plume of water that went further than the eye could see. It was the breadth of a football field and was pulling in sources of water from almost 360 degrees that coalesced into the massive fountain.
Boyd had recovered from the Jett Hangover but he felt awful. He was vibrating with some sort of sickness he couldn’t understand. He sat next to Zualt on a single stump. He was currently fighting an odd compulsion to pet the frog.
“The Salton Barrier cannot be repaired by this method alone. My fountain of water will hold things out for a while, but not forever. The good news is that the Barrier appears to be slowly resolving itself. I am hopeful I can keep but a minimal number of additional creatures from entering Zenith.”
Boyd stared blankly at the frog. He felt like he was going to shit his pants.
“Next matter, I should explain myself. You might think I bear you ill will but I promise you this is not the case. In fact, I have been watching you closely since you arrived on Zenith. My people’s ability to combine magic and water is unparalleled. We are particularly capable of Far-seeing through water. We call it scrying, although you would probably just think of it as Sorcery. It has given us access to watching happenstances on Zenith even when I am not here. Unfortunately it appears like the ability to watch the happenings of Zenith will now be present for nearly everyone, as the sky has filled with messengers, drones, battle ravens and Frog knows how many other tiny devices for transmitting information. No matter for now. I have come to believe that our little problem with Transposition, the one wherein you usurped my spot, was not your fault. Not only could you not have done this intentionally, but I have increasingly solid data that supports the idea that the mishap was actually quite intentional. This is an odd question, but by any chance have you been contacted by anyone since arriving here that struck you as odd?”
Boyd was definitely going to shit his pants. His bowels were gurgling. He wasn’t sure how to excuse himself, so simply he stood up, walked behind a piece of charred piece of some nearby spacecraft and proceeded to paint the ground brown. He wasn’t sure if it was the Jett or the constant fear and anxiety, but he was in the grips of gut crunching diarrhea for several minutes. Zualt merely followed him and kept talking, avoiding the increasingly large pile of diarrhea spewing forth from Boyd.
“Very well then. My understanding is that you are the only one who knows the true depths of Jellybean Jenkin’s power. We have been keeping a close eye on you Sir Boyd. What you lack in skill you make up for in cunning. I believe that you and I can help each other. I have been tasked with saving Sir Fleon and I believe your help could be invaluable. With your more intimate knowledge of the Wolf-Lord, I believe we might be able to best him. So what do we do from here? We will assemble a new Foray. I can serve as Foray leader given my Rank and reputation. We will need to parse through the remaining Combatants using the Mercenary system. Because neither of us entered Zenith as Foray leaders, we will have to apply for a new Foray through SYSTEM. This comes with a substantial gold cost, but I can afford to pay. We will need to be very thoughtful about who we invite as after we have rescued Fleon, we will want to replace one of the members with him. We can possibly find some person who is willing to spend a limited amount of time with us, mercenaries that provide this service are usually available by this Level. I am assuming Jellybean Jenkins has absconded away with Fleon to deeper Levels thus we will need to follow them. I do not know his goals, but whatever they are, we should focus on stopping him. A rogue Necromancer in control of the High Paladin of the Filary is no trifling matter. We should be able to track them if we include a Ranger with the Track Foray Skill. Although anyone that specialized in tracking might have miserable combat skills, I am more than capable of guiding us to at least the 100th Level with my powers alone. I don’t anticipate we should worry on that front.” Zualt’s throat bubbled and let out a burp-like noise that Boyd thought was probably laughter. “We should look to garner at least a few frontline fighters who can keep enemies away from me while I use my Sorcery. What say you Sir Boyd, shall we be off to the nearest Hub City to recruit? I am thinking the name of the name Zualt’s Zany Zoological Zealots! Would this suffice?”
Boyd wiped his ass with a nearby piece of fluttering cloth-like material and then washed his hand in a clean puddle a few feet away. When he was done, he emerged from behind the wreckage and looked at the magical frog.
“No.” Boyd began walking towards the edge of the valley where his group would have exited if not for the carnage.
“What do you mean Sir Boyd? We need to rescue Fleon of the Filary! The Empress demands it. We must purge Zenith of this menace! I command you! Come back!”
Boyd kept walking away and flipped the middle finger.
“I. Just. Want. To go. Back. To Ok-la-fucking-homa.”
Rockrot hits you for 5 damage. Rockrot cannot be cured without Essence of Earth.
END BOOK 1: