The dungeon’s clammy walls shimmered as light from the surface grew weary and ended its march in brilliant god rays. Cachea’s ship effortlessly crumbled chunks of clay blocking passages of the darker kind between cavernous corridors. Giant strands of kelp that would have incapacitated propellers merely dispersed silently from the streams of his eager jet propulsion.
Malevolent creatures peered with crimson perception from the unlit ripples, but receded from any possibility to be watched.
“I know you are here,” whispered Cachea into the abyss.
For some time, there was no event, no creature who opposed his passage through the sunken architecture. Cachea gazed at the code etched into the ore. Many of the tiles were overtaken by organic growth, yet slowly, here and there, the story of the abandoned manor emerged.
What could be understood was that this ruin was once a thriving marketplace of some unknown species. Marks indicated favorable exchange rates between elo and common goods. Cachea noted that everything appeared exceedingly affordable: the items, at least the ones he could recognize, were sold for less than one percent of what they cost in Soulia. “Inflation, perhaps?” he puzzled. He daydreamed, quite greedily, about getting his hands on a rare mechanism drop for a bargain. With renewed determination, he pursued the leviathan’s lair.
“A haptic of red, and then you are dead. Find him wherein the dark depths the merchant’s daughter bled.” The NPC’s uncharacteristic interjection resounded in his mind. Then Cachea spotted it. Blood.
It speckled faintly around the symbol of an item. He had been piloting cluelessly about this whole time, imagining the flecks were just some overzealous algae. On closer observation, the red pulsed and spiraled, zigged and zagged. There were no obvious direction indications, and it didn’t appear to be denser in any particular way either. Cachea scouted around for more and identified three distinct splotches. There were decals on two items: [UNBLOSSOM, ICTHYS_SCALE] and one creature, a fen.
“Mmm, urrrgh” he considered. “I know how to grow an unblossom, and I can capture a fen... a single Icthys scale costs more than my ship though,” Cachea considered creative approaches to how he might obtain such treasure.
After some time he resigned to the optimal strategy that some repetitive resource grind lay before him and a boss fight. “Or I could siege another player’s manor,” amused Cachea. “perhaps Fira would lend aid.”
…
“You need a WHAT?” gasped Fira.
“You heard me,” quipped Cachea. “It’s non negotiable.”
“I did say I would help in the terms,” she quivered. “Nevertheless, even I don’t hold enough elo to purchase one outright, stealing something that sacred is out of the question”
“What if we tracked down an Ichthys?” nudged Cachea.
“Don’t be ridiculous, no ecologist in any of the upper seasteads has reported an encounter in thousands of cycles. Even with the best sensors on the market we’d be blasted to scrap by pirates or robot creatures before long.”
“Congruent.” agreed Cachea. “I hope you’re ready for a few cycles of grinding” he glummed.
“The highest elo-per-cycle activity I can find on the wiki is cryocanth farming, but it requires at least level 5 manor parts to prevent them from... escaping.”
They grimaced in poverty.
“What’s the second highest?” Cachea suggested.
“Pocket crabs”
“Pocket crabs?”
“Yeah, they’re like tiny weak crabs. They’re not worth very much, but apparently it’s very easy to, you know... replicate and raise them. There’s an NPC in Soulia who’s gullible enough to buy them for one elo each.”
“Ha! We’ll have the scale in no time” Cachea could hardly believe it. “Where can we snatch some crab eggs?”
“Actually, the pocket crab duplicates entirely by cloning itself in a symbiotic relationship with another creature. Neither of them are sold in any market I know of.” Fira continued her exposition. “The pocket crabs collect their biomass in plants and digest it into a slime. Once they’ve generated enough they spit it out. Over time it grows and then eventually shrinks and hardens into an approximate of themselves. The wiki says that the clones often die prematurely or are dramatically mutated. Look!”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Fira rendered low fidelity static scans of the crab’s lifespan.
“They’re pocket sized after all,” thought Cachea, dipping his hand into his pocket absentmindedly.
To call them crabs though, that was generous. They more closely resembled geometry primitives booled together and yanked out of a computer simulation halfway through evolving to scuttle; only then to be forcibly scattered with procedural stubs.
Cachea raised his eyebrow, “Why do you think they look so…”
“Ugly?”
“I was going to say, distinct.”
“The wiki doesn’t mention anything. It’s very likely they evolved this way in an origin ecosystem to counter a predator or replicate more efficiently,” Fira was passionate about understanding ecology, and wanted others to be aware of this.
“Icthys scales cost about ten thousand elo… How common are these in the wild, and what depth are they anyways?”
Fira gestured for the compendium.
Creature
Pocket Crab lvl[1]
seas[MEDIOCRISEA] biome[FISH] depth[9:10]
drops[] None discovered
Description
A friendly herbivorous crustacean, eager to grow smarter and bigger, but limited by their tiny size and brains :(
Aptitudes
____[0:1]
____[0:1]
Agency[1:3]
Computing[0:1]
“They have two undocumented agency child aptitudes. Do you think it’s narrative, Fira?”
“Unlikely, I predict systems->aquaculture since they must consume specific plants or replication fails.”
“Such a brutal life,” Cachea felt empathy for the creature’s desperate condition. “Alright! Let’s flood the ballasts!”
“Patience!” Fira’s gentle yet commandeering voice laughed “Let me check out the slime’s data.”
Creature
System Slime lvl[0]
seas[MEDIOCRISEA] biome[ROBOT|FISH|_] depth[7:_]
drops[] None discovered
Description
A hungry grey automata that seeks transcendence.
Aptitudes
Computing[1:3]
“Nothing threatening,” she reasoned, skimming the minimalist entry. “Alright Cachea, let’s pilot your sunshi to scout for some.”
“I wouldn’t have it else,” he flashed a grin. There’s a downwell just seventeen y coords from your manor.”
…
“I didn’t consider the system slimes were so much larger than the crabs!” Fira exclaimed. The system was slowly migrating, absorbing plants on the surface. It had swallowed everything: leaving a tail of flattened lifelessness in its wake.
“I wonder what would happen if I…” Cachea stretched out his hand towards it in cheeky anticipation.
1 dmg →BLOCKED
1 dmg →BLOCKED
1 dmg →BLOCKED
Cachea’s horned heart pulsed with a subtle glow as a damage interval ticked precisely every second.
His arm was a cool monochrome: encased within the creature’s dynamic bounds. Earlier in the game, the constant damage could have been dangerous, but he wasn’t concerned now due to his equipped CLAY_FIELD mechanism blocking a threshold of minor damage. He stepped fully inside the creature.
Fira watched curiously as her companion grayed. Cachea swam about the vicoscious form, and reached a hand out to her in a playful invitation.
Fira hesitated for a second.
AFFLICTED→ HUNGER III
500 dmg → lost KNIGHT(4) PEASANT(13)
DISTINCT(1) remaining (0.1 cycles to tick)
Cachea’s expression unfolded into absolute shock and terror as the merciless onset of HUNGER III shattered through his hard won heartstrings.
Fira and Cachea met eyes for a moment. She was equally shocked, but also felt a faint glimmer of pride that her cautious play-style had saved her from such a dramatic affliction. She had much more heartstring to lose than Cachea, after all.
1 dmg → BLOCKED
Fira grabbed for his hand to pull him out, but in a desperation like drowning Cachea had already retracted it and began to flail wildly towards her on his own.
2 dmg → BLOCKED 1, lost DISTINCT(1)
Heartstring depleted.
Cause of death: DIGEST attack by lvl 2 System Slime.
Agency lvl 16-1=15
Computing lvl 8-3 = 5
Cachea’s body decayed like a dissolving plant in the system slime, likely to be future-formed into some peculiar pocket crab.
System Slime Aptitude Raise x3!
Computing 2+3=5
Cachea respawned in his sunshi nearby: now only level 15, slightly humbled, and no longer afflicted by HUNGER.