Quest updated: The Western Frontier.
New bonus objective has been added.
Bonus objective: Solve the mystery of the structure hidden below the Eclipse Forest.
Psst, hey idiot. This could be extremely helpful in understanding the Queen of the Forest… only a complete moron would ignore this objective.
“You all got that too, right?” Shadow asked.
“Yep,” Honeypot answered.
Arika nodded.
“Did yours also hint that this would be helpful for the quest, then call you a moron?” Orion already knew the answer before the words left his mouth, but he thought he should check anyway.
“No?” Shadow and Arika said simultaneously in a questioning tone.
“Ugh, no fair!” Honeypot looked to the roof, as if asking the universe why he was so afflicted. “Why do you get the sassy, yet vaguely helpful flair from the System? All I get is the bland text that these squares get.” He gestured to Arika and Shadow. “… no offense, of course.”
“None taken.” Arika smiled. “If being a square means I’m unlike you, I’m all for it.”
“Alright…” Orion cut into the conversation before it could go further off-course. “At least it makes our choice easy. We go this way.”
The party set off in the direction that Femera had indicated.
The path forward was… bland, for lack of a better word. The only thing changing in the surrounding brick tunnel was the direction in which they were led. Orion kept his eye on the map as they traveled, both elated and relieved to find they were traveling in a direction that was generally west. The linear path had branched a few times, each time Femera following her nose and letting the party know which way to go.
Eventually, Orion sensed something in the air, too. There was an almost chemical feel to it, and it was odd that he could feel it as much as he could smell it. The bombardment of his senses left him feeling uncomfortable, and his anxiety spiked.
The monotony of their journey into the structure was broken as they entered a room filled with equipment. There were giant glass containers—some as tall as Shadow—lining the walls of the room. They reminded Orion of the alchemy equipment Carl and Dave had set up in the basement below their shop.
Some of the containers were filled with different colored liquids. Some were smashed, their glass strewn across the floor. Peering closer at a green-tinted container, Orion stepped forward as he saw something suspended in the liquid within.
It was the size of his fist, with long appendages floating lifelessly out from its body. Leaning closer, the appendages were tentacles, and a chill ran down his spine as he noticed it bore a striking resemblance to Doc the Destroyer, the slime boss from the first dungeon they’d conquered. Honeypot stepped up beside him, peering into the container.
“Woaaah! How did this container get one of our hats?”
Orion smiled and raised an eyebrow at Honeypot, then looked around at all the other broken glass containers in the room, counting them. There were eleven broken vessels—meaning there could be at least that many monsters that escaped, if that was indeed the source of these creatures.
“This has to be where the slime came from…” Shadow said.
“It certainly looks that way, but there’s no way to be sure. What if someone captured one of Doc’s offspring and housed it here?” Orion said, though he thought it unlikely.
They inspected the remaining intact containers. Most were empty, but some contained other abominations. In one container with a red tint, there was a praying mantis the size of a small dog. It had sharp, angular lines to its body with nasty looking spikes protruding all over. In another with a blue tint, there was a scorpion the same size as the praying mantis creature, but with four front pincers and three vicious looking stingers.
Arika shuddered after looking at the scorpion. “If we come up against that thing, you guys are on your own.”
“Hey now, you know scorpions aren’t spiders, right?” Honeypot nudged her in the ribs lightly. “No need to be afraid.”
“That thing has thirteen legs if you count the pincers and stingers.” Arika gestured down at the offending scorpion with disgust. “That’s entirely too many limbs. I stand by my statement.”
“Come on, you can at least hit it with an Explosion from a distance! That’d be almost therapeutic!”
Gizmo made a whirring noise, and a multitude of extra arms shot out of his body, making him look like a hedgehog. “I, too, can have entirely too many limbs.”
Arika swung her staff down to hit Gizmo on the forehead.
He let out a satisfied hum.
“Stop that.”
“Hmmmm. Again, please.”
“Nice, Gizmo.” Honeypot fist-bumped one of the arms. “You should keep that form all the time.”
“Do that, and I’ll never hit you with an Explosion again.” She scowled. “Even if it’ll save my life, I’ll withhold the flames, you little sadist.”
As quickly as the arms had extended, they were gone, and Gizmo looked around the room as if nothing had happened.
Orion felt himself receive a notification. Judging by the startled reaction of everyone else, they did, too. He checked it.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Quest updated: The Western Frontier.
Bonus objective: 1 of 2 requirements complete.
You have found the origin of the monsters plaguing this land, but how did they come to be?
Maybe ask one of you smart friends. Honeypot seems nice, and he has more than two digits in his IQ stat.
Vowing to never tell Honeypot what the System had just said, he dismissed the interface and looked at his friends.
“Well, I guess that confirms this was the source of Doc…”
“What about the other creatures?” Shadow knocked his hand on the container holding the slime. “Merv, Azeria and Gileal?”
“No, I don’t think so. They were just evolved animals—corrupted by Doc, sure, but creatures nonetheless. Doc and the other creatures in these containers…” Orion shuddered. “They’re altered.” He looked around the room at the floating creatures. “Is this human experimentation?”
Receiving a new notification, Orion checked it.
Quest updated: The Western Frontier.
Bonus objective: 1.5 of 2 requirements complete.
Wow, never mind! Even fools can see the obvious! Now if only you had some proof to substantiate your claims…
Orion dismissed the screen to see his friends staring at him, questioning looks plastered all over their faces.
“Notification?” Arika asked.
“Yeah, you guys didn’t get it?”
“Nope. What was it?”
“It said I’d completed one-point-five of two bonus objectives after I asked if these monsters were a result of human experimentation…” Orion bent down, looking at the praying mantis creature again. “Basically, it confirmed that it was, but I think we need to obtain some kind of quantifiable proof before the System will consider the bonus objective complete.”
“The System has been oddly helpful since we got down into these tunnels, right?” Honeypot’s eyes lost focus as he stared in thought. “Is that because it’s a critical quest? We haven’t received hints, or even a nudge, in the right direction before this.”
Orion had been thinking the same thing.
Is it the System’s nature to help more with critical quests?
He hoped that was the case.
At least then we’d be able to make sense of it…
The ugly head of anxiety reared itself within; the pressure of what was to come and the unknown possibilities threatened to shatter Orion’s mental footing. He closed his eyes, pulled a breath deep into his chest, and did his best to ignore the sensation.
No matter what would or could happen, they had to finish this quest and get back to town as soon as possible. He focused on moving forward, doing his best to push his anxiety to the side.
“It doesn’t really matter why.” Orion stood up straight. “We have to finish this quest and get back to town. Let’s go.”
He walked out of the room without further comment, heading in the direction they hadn’t come from. The party followed quickly behind, picking up on Orion’s urgency.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Honeypot asked.
“This way.” Orion kept walking. “Femera, do you smell anything else?”
“Not right now,” Arika responded for her familiar. “She said she may smell something when we get further away from that experiment room.”
They traveled ahead, Femera unable to get the scent of anything different at every crossroads they faced. After a score more intersections where they picked the direction they thought would go further west, Femera picked up the scent of something again.
After almost a full day of traveling like this, with the party seeing nothing but each other and winding corridors, they decided it was time to rest for the night.
They didn’t know the exact time of day, but thought that it was roughly time to get some sleep based on their exhaustion; there was no way of knowing how long they’d have to traverse these subterranean passages, and it’d be no good to run into an enemy while sleep deprived and exhausted.
After some searching, they found an almost empty room that must have been used as some sort of sleeping quarters. There were bunk beds lining one wall, the rest of the room left plain and bare. They all chose beds, laying their sleeping mats on top of the metal bed-frames after Arika ejected the aged and desecrated mattresses out of the room.
Shadow and Orion set up their profession workstations, Shadow getting dinner started, and Orion preparing himself to experiment with some of the ingredients he’d gathered. He had an idea of what he was trying to create, and believed that the ingredient would allow it, but there was no real way of knowing if it would succeed or not. He caught himself worrying about potential failure and banished the possibility from his mind.
I will succeed, He thought.
He pulled out a Bony Blood Fish and the Moon Dust from his inventory, placing them in the cauldron with no other ingredients at first. He raised the heat slowly, feeling how the ingredients handled low heats together. Feeling no resistance, he increased the heat, feeling it reach optimal levels around low-to-medium heat. Struck by inspiration, he could tell exactly what the rudimentary concoction needed, and he added pinches of other powders and elements to the cauldron.
He continued to boil it down, constantly adjusting the heat over hours as every drop of moisture was turned to vapor and flowed out. Eventually, it was done, and Orion inspected the dry, pink powder that was now the only thing remaining of all the ingredients added.
Bloodmoon Dust
Epic
An extremely dangerous substance, this dust has the following effects depending on exposure and fortitude of the target: confusion, hallucination, paralysis, and death.
I know you’re a mouth-breather, but try not to breathe this one in.
Orion let out a slow breath and swept the dust into his inventory with a small effort of will.
He checked his notifications.
You have successfully created a new recipe: Bloodmoon Dust! Any Bloodmoon Dust created by you will automatically have its quality upgraded from rare to epic. Epic upgrade: more efficacious.
Psst, that means more effective, idiot.
You now have the ability to teach other alchemists how to craft: Bloodmoon Dust.
The powder had been surprisingly easy to craft, but he supposed that was his Journeyman rank coming into play—it was a relatively simple thing to make, after all. Two key ingredients that were both stable, and all he had to do was combine them with some other components, then remove any moisture. Orion called over Honeypot, who was watching him work from one of the beds.
“I think you should hold on to this. If anyone will find a way to use it, I think it’s you.”
Honeypot accepted the power and inspected it in his hands. His eyes widened, and his mouth spread into a grin. “This… this is evil. I love it. Shouldn’t you hold on to it, though?”
“Why me? You’re the sneaky one.”
“You could Swap this into the mouth of something like you did with that big gorilla, right?”
“I could.” Orion grinned back. “Which is exactly why I’m making more batches right now.”
“Oh. Ohhhh. Do you need more fish? Here, have more fish. You can make as many fish as you want into more this deliciously deadly powder.”
Orion scooped the offered fish into his inventory and began the work immediately.
A few hours later, he breathed out a sigh and rubbed his tired eyes. He’d created more of the powder than he knew what to do with and had only used a small portion of the Lunar Moth Dust to do so. The supply of Honeypot’s crime-against-humanity of a fish was dwindling, but they were used on a worthy cause.
I don’t know for what yet, but I can tell we can use this to our advantage, was the last thing he thought before he faded off to sleep.
The next morning, he awoke to his anxiety once more—even worse than it had been the morning before. It seemed to all of them that their particular negative emotions grew with each morning, leaving a feeling of dread in the pit of Orion’s stomach.
A similar thought crossed all of their minds.
If it’s this bad today, how will it feel tomorrow?
They set off after a somber breakfast, and they weren’t given long to ruminate on their own thoughts.
The first corner they rounded left them face-to-face with a horrifying sight.