It took us nearly ten minutes to break down the tree enough to start draining the sludgy liquid. It started off as a little trickle from a hole Jun had managed to puncture near the base of the tree, then began roaring out in amounts that the tree couldn’t possibly hold when I got in there and helped her wrench it into a wide gash. It was as if an entire underground reservoir was voiding its contents onto our boots, and Jun and I stared at each other dumbly for a few moments before laughing and jumping out of its path.
“Do you really think this is a grave?” Jun asked, smacking the side of her fist against the dead tree with a wet thunk. “Or is that just hyperbole?”
I shrugged and leaned against the tree to watch the flow of sludgy wood. “Maybe a little. But this thing is dead, and we are robbing it.”
“Robbing it of little gemstones.” Jun sighed, flicking her wrist and staring at the gem that appeared between her fingers. She was quickly getting used to using her interface. “Does being ‘depleted’ rarity mean this thing is extremely powerful?”
“Not… necessarily.” I hesitantly said. “Powerful, yes, but not extremely powerful. Gemstones in general are useful for upgrading and creating armor, weapons, and trinkets; but depleted rarity doesn’t mean it’s going to be more powerful than a lower rarity gem. It just means there are way less of them.”
Jun nodded and dismissed her gem, then returned to watching the sludge spill out. We said next to nothing to each other while we waited for it to drain enough to expose whatever I’d felt on the inside, completely soaking the dirt under our feet into swampy muck in a matter of minutes. It was gushing out at a torrential pace one moment, sending splinters of wood out in a shotgun-like blast as it forced the small hole open, and then completely died out the next. No slowing trickle, no last dregs leaking out of the hole; nothing. It was there, and then it wasn’t.
I looked over at Jun, then scrambled over the tree once more to get a look at our prize. I stared down through the hollow tree with excitement, then froze when I saw what I’d brushed my hands over.
The top of a misshapen skull sat atop a body curled into the fetal position. The body’s spine was long and jagged, as if it had been cracked over a mountain range, and the skull had a bizarre jaw that ran from the skull’s top to its bottom in a perfect vertical line.
“What creature did that belong to?” Jun asked incredulously, leaning over to brush the skull with her fingertips. “It looks like someone tortured it before it died.”
{Is that the custodian?} I asked the errors, horrible possibilities running through my mind as the // popped up without any words to follow them.
//NO.
//THIS CREATURE DOES NOT POSSESS THE SAME GENETIC MARKERS THAT CUSTODIAN DOES.
//ANY FURTHER INFORMATION WILL INTERFERE WITH THE SANCTITY OF CLEARING THE HAZARD.
//SO I WILL NOT BE GIVING IT TO YOU.
Jun tapped me on the shoulder, stirring me out of my thoughts. She gestured excitedly at the skeleton’s skull, then sighed and spoke as if she was repeating herself. “Look; there’s a hole in its head. And it looks like the perfect size for a moss tube.”
I shook my head to clear my thoughts and nodded, pressing the handle of my sword and letting the moss tube slip into my hand. The error messages were withholding information from me, but it was for a damn good reason. Figuring out the hazards on my own made them far more rewarding.
“Here goes nothing.” I warned, slipping the tube of moss into the creature’s skull. It flashed green for a second before the skeleton was shot through with a web of cracks, deep black things that bled barely green light into the dead tree around it. I’d seen enough things like this to know where it was going.
“Get back.” I ordered, rocking back and pulling her shoulder with me.
The stump exploded as the skeletal creature bellowed a shrill cry, splinters of wood and copper smashing against my armor in the maelstrom of its awakening. I pulled out my sword and shifted it into the shape of a greatsword, steadying myself for this thing’s first attack.
An attack that never came.
The thing looked around frenetically, completely passing over Jun and me, then lunged at Jun. She raised her sword with a surprised yelp, but that was apparently exactly what the creature had wanted. It ripped the sword from her hands with a triumphant clattering of bones, then bolted off in a random direction. Each and every one of its footsteps created a miniature garden of copper flowers with glowing green etchings, an obvious path to follow if I’d ever seen one. But something felt horribly wrong about this. Horribly, horribly wrong. And I couldn’t place why.
“What in the abyss just happened? Am I hurt?” Jun asked, feeling her armor and clenching her hands as she counted her fingers under her breath. “Why did it take my sword?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I tapped my own weapon where I’d removed the sample of moss. “My best guess is that it wanted more of that moss, and that we were extremely lucky we both had some of it.” I shuddered at the thought of what could’ve happened if I’d only had one sample of moss, memories of the other hazard bosses I’d fought and almost died to flashing by one by one. “We should follow it. Maybe we can get your sword back.”
“Obviously. But look; these things are full of… something.” Jun mumbled, leaning over a flower and brushing her fingers against its petals. “I don’t think it's alive, but it’s something. Should we take them with us?”
“Of course we take them.” I said seriously, bending down and plucking the small flower with a fluid motion. It had no roots, and I barely had to put any strength in to remove it. “As long as you have space in your inventory, take everything that seems interesting or valuable. And when you don’t have any more space, then you can decide what’s worth keeping.”
We hurriedly followed the skeletal custodian as quickly as we could while also taking every single flower from its footstep gardens. I was getting dangerously close to my weight limit when I shifted my weapon out of a form that gave me a power bonus, but I’d leave my own hand behind before anything that might be valuable.
When we caught up to the thing all of my ‘bad feeling’ instincts flared up again. The skeleton kneeled at the water tree’s roots, its head bowed to look at the ground, and its hands raised as it presented an offering to the heart of the hazard. Jun’s sword was nestled perfectly in the thing’s hands, but everything in me was screaming not to touch either the blade or the skeleton. A level one hazard was not this complicated.
“So cool.” Jun excitedly murmured, walking fearlessly up to the skeleton and tracing her hands along the now patinated scars that snaked through each and every one of its bones. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Is this one of…” She shot me a glance, then shook her head. “No, it can’t be one of your people. Unless your armor does a really good job hiding your back. And your face doesn’t actually match what your skull looks like.”
I rolled my eyes and stepped up to the thing, pressing down on one of its upturned palms to test how durable it was. It felt like I was pressing down on a solid block of steel. I gingerly removed Jun’s sword, then tossed it to her when the thing didn’t come alive again. “Don’t put your sword there again no matter what.” I decreed, locking my eyes on Jun’s visor to ensure she heard me. “This doesn’t feel like a level one hazard. Hell, there were more monsters near that dead tree than I’d seen in level five hazards.”
“You said it’d take a week to clear, didn’t you?” Jun pointed out, but stepped back anyway and shot a nervous glance at the skeleton. Her gaze strayed to the ground near the tree, then froze. “Seb? Were those runes there before?”
I followed her gaze to see that there was now a circle of runes under the skeleton. “Fuck.” I hissed, pulling out my sword the moment I recognized what was happening. “I’m going to be weaponless after this. Protect the fuck out of me.”
Jun nodded seriously, readying her sword and pointing it at the skeleton that was surging with power. The damned thing was on a timer. I slammed my sword onto its palms and dove back as raw power coursed through the skeleton.
A geyser of vibrant green erupted around the thing, a screeching and bellowing mass of power that lasted only an instant but gave me an overwhelming feeling of fertile ground and exposed rot. Somehow the geyser felt like an entire season of spring was passing in its moments of life, and when it fell silent, my sword was a part of the skeletal statue.
I say ‘statue’ because what I saw before my eyes was no longer bone. It was patinated copper with fractures of forest green moss peeking through, spots of brighter green blinking in and out of existence along to an unheard heartbeat. I ignored the mass of warnings that had piled up in my interface and reached out to try and reclaim my sword. Hoping for nothing, I was massively surprised when it came away without any resistance. And after watching the statue silently for a good few tense minutes, it looked like I was free to keep the blade.
“Skies above, what just happened?” Jun asked incredulously, looking around in confusion. “Seb, my interface is telling me that this isn’t a level one hazard anymore. Is that even possible?”
“Possible and probable, unfortunately.” I muttered, wiping the back of my hand against my sword and checking for any changes. There was nothing new except that the small hole in the hilt was once again filled with a glass tube. “I thought it was strange that we hadn’t found anything remotely like an exit yet, but now it all makes sense. The exit will only show up once we’ve set this place to its maximum hazard.”
I pressed my sword back into the statue’s hands and felt the world shift around me. Jun yelped in surprise as the copper tendrils of the trees turned to iron, the rust covering the metal now a thick and flaky deep red. I held out a hand to stop her when Jun started walking away, then removed my sword once more and grimaced down at the skeleton.
A quick once-over of all the messages told me everything I’d already assumed. And since none of them were errors, I didn’t feel an immediate need to start panicking. “We’re in a level 3 hazard now, which outranks both of us. If we want to go back to the spring forest, all we have to do is put one of our swords on this thing’s hands.”
“Go back to the spring forest?” Jun asked with a frown in her voice. “Spring, as in one of the six seasons? That’s what you mean, right?”
Six seasons. I looked down at the tree and saw that the ground had been desecrated in around a sixth of the tree, then groaned and shook my head. “Spring, summer, fall or autumn, and winter. What’re the fifth and sixth seasons?”
“Tempus is technically third, since it comes between summer and fall.” Jun informed me. “It’s the season of storms back home, and we get almost constant rain and flooding. That one’s my personal favorite. Then there’s Celaura, the season of the stars, between autumn and winter. Sky-bound stars and aurora are really common, so everyone has to buckle down and watch out for falling rocks.”
I stared blankly at Jun, then shook my head and sighed. “Your planet sounds a lot more dangerous than mine. Or at least more dangerous than where I lived.”
Removing and replacing my sword returned us to the spring forest, and I stepped away from the statue with a strange amount of confidence. “We need to finish everything here and level up our hazard tolerance before we even think of venturing into the summer forest.”
“I’m guessing that involves killing a whole lot of lichenthropes, right?” Jun asked.
“Killing them in very specific ways.” I corrected, then shot a glance down at my armor. “But before we do any of that, we need to go find a whole lot more transforming swords.”