image [https://i.imgur.com/BmFnjtv.jpg]
Knowing what difficulties to expect made paddling another day less arduous. To my relief, the canoe remained hitched to the Dark Room rope, unmolested by kobolds or other monsters.
Out of loneliness, I summoned Beaker, who appeared beside me in the canoe. After realizing we weren’t in Hawkhurst, he launched into the air and surveyed the shoreline, exploring the region. Beaker’s airborne wouldn’t have made the western shore particularly exotic, but my being down here energized him with the opportunity to show off his reconnaissance skills.
Beaker combed the area with enthusiasm. He soared from treetop to treetop, taking in the terrain beneath him with his keen eyes. When he returned to the boat, he brought a rabbit to eat, and I let him enjoy his meal before unsummoning him. I checked my skills, hoping to see a paddling skill that might overcome the tracking difficulties, but no such metric existed. But I worked up my survival skill to rank 22.
My character sheet verified that I had unlocked no powers. I’d spend my remaining power point only in a dire circumstance, but some of my options appealed to me. At level 29, levels came infrequently, and I wanted to ensure 30 wasn’t the cap.
Unfortunately, none of my potential powers included things that might help me fight underwater. Concussive Strike and Whack required successful bludgeoning and slashing attacks—which seemed unlikely underwater. I wasn’t sure about Polymorph Self, which allowed casters to change into crabs. Were all crabs capable of breathing underwater? I wasn’t sure. I’d seen plenty of crabs scuttling about on the beach or digging in the sand, but it wasn’t entirely clear if they could survive in freshwater lakes. Moving forward would be easier knowing I had a working escape mechanic for the depths of Otter Lake.
The player count in The Great RPG Contest hadn’t changed—the interface still listed 22 contestants. There hadn’t been a drop since Fabulosa knocked out Clootie, Treebiter, and Wetbottomz.
I paddled past the point where Yula and I disembarked—the clearing where we found the map leading to the warlock’s location. I didn’t recognize it, but my interface map confirmed the location.
Without Beaker, I drew Gladius Cognitus for company. He hummed at the bottom of the canoe as I paddled. His light ribbon trailed behind, but it wasn’t eye-catching in the midday sun. Relating to him wasn’t always easy. His impassionate opinions made for poor conversation, and I had to work to keep it going. His focus on structured ideas felt like talking to an encyclopedia or textbook, but we occasionally crossed topics that passed the time.
I asked him about aspects of Otter Lake and what monsters might lurk beneath its depths, but Gladius offered little insight.
He responded as well as he could. “I’m unaware of declarative knowledge of this environment. Little is known of the continent’s interior.”
I grunted. “Do you think your light trail will draw monsters?”
“Again, I apologize, but it’s hard to say.”
“The otters seemed to like it.”
“Yes, they did.”
“And it made them more relaxed about me. They’re such jittery little guys.”
“One cannot blame them.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are a human, after all.”
“Do humans in Miros hunt otters?”
“No. But humanoids are frightful. Your eyes face forward, like other predators, but humanoids are unique in the animal kingdom.”
“Yeah, we studied what separates us from the other animals in biology class. Our big brains make us special.”
My sword hummed in short, choppy cadences.
“Are you laughing?”
“Why yes? Big brains aren’t unique—at least, that’s not why you’re so fearsome.”
“If brains don’t make us dominant, then what does?”
“It’s your behinds—not your brains that make you special. You have buttocks.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Muscular buttocks allow you to walk upright—making you a highly efficient predator. While you’ve no claws or sizable teeth, you peregrinate through balance instead of expending energy. Quadrapeds use more muscles to walk than bipeds. This efficiency allows humans to exhaust larger and more powerful creatures.”
“Nah. It’s our brains.”
“Then I must be mistaken.”
I sheathed Gladius when the Miros’s pink sun disappeared behind the mountains. His light trail grew conspicuous in the evening, and attracting undue attention wasn’t on my agenda.
The southern edge of the lake grew very marshy. Paddling into shallows always sent my senses into high gear. Reeds and vegetation breached the surface, so I stayed a few hundred yards offshore. Exposed tree roots stretched feet above and below the waterline, blurring the distinction between land and lake. While I lost sight of the shoreline, the foliage sheltered the wind, and paddling became easier in still waters. Moss and vines hung from the branches, darkening the canopy.
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Despite the dangers of unfamiliar territory, the still lake at sunset relaxed me. The surface reflected the moons and clouds overhead. Without a bright sky reflecting off the surface, the water revealed a carpet of seaweed. Inside the sheltered shoreline, water ripples became more distinct, and nothing could move without drawing attention to itself.
And without my ears howling, the hum of insects and birds assured me solid land awaited inland. The humid atmosphere carried a bouquet of decaying vegetation. The shallow water felt warm, and a verdant foam of pond scum clung to the shore like suds.
When my first Exhaustion debuff appeared, I stopped for another night. I came far enough south to reach the relic tomorrow and didn’t want to take unnecessary chances. I tossed up the Dark Room rope and tied its end to my canoe. I positioned the canoe a hundred yards from the tree line, making it difficult for gnolls or kobolds to investigate the canoe tethered to a rope hanging from mid-air. The waning sunlight darkened the depths, and the weeds below obscured the bottom, but I guessed to be six feet deep.
I’d traveled far enough south that my map interface revealed details about Otter Lake’s southern shore. It showed a water channel drifting south, though the stagnant water made it difficult to know if the channel fed into the lake or if the lake fed the vast swamplands.
I summoned Beaker while I ate my dinner in the canoe. After trumpeting his end-of-the-day alarm, he flew off to hunt. I didn’t mind him making noise. Loud bird calls and griffons seemed fitting in the wilderness.
He returned with a dead caiman, which must have weighed 30 pounds. He beat his wings hard, yet the caiman’s tail dragged in the water. “Are you sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew?”
The griffon answered my question by tearing into his catch, eyeing me to make sure I wouldn’t take it away from him to eat it myself—as if my policy about eating griffon-food might change at any moment.
“Eww, Beak. That’s disgusting.”
Unable to watch him eat, I considered unsummoning him when the thought occurred to me. He might serve as an excellent watchdog at night. If he stayed in the canoe, he’d make a racket if anything onshore approached, and if he accidentally climbed the Dark Room rope, he’d harmlessly unsummon himself.
While my pet picked at the carcass, I hoisted myself into the Dark Room, removed my boots, flopped into a bunk, and fell asleep before I remembered closing my eyes.
Waking before my interface alarm hinted that something wrong had happened. Beaker’s distant scream yanked me into the harsh banks of consciousness. Before I could find my boots, the snap of breaking wood alerted me. For a moment, I worried that something had crushed the Dark Room, for wood paneling covered its interior.
After realizing that the noise came from outside, I peered through the transdimensional trapdoor and caught the last glimpse of my canoe. The water below thrashed around a tortoiseshell the size of a merry-go-round. Pieces of my canoe’s frame dangled from the Dark Room’s rope.
The tortoiseshell’s radial symmetry concealed which direction the creature’s head or tail projected, and its edges submerged into the dark, churning water, preventing me from seeing anything below the surface. I stupidly tried to cast Presence, for I couldn’t see well at night, but the spell didn’t work inside the Dark Room.
The shell dropped a few feet into the water, reducing the size of the moving island.
Throwing up my interface gave me a moment to think.
My events log showed me out of combat and cited no deaths or attacks, not even my Familiar. The Dark Room didn’t move, so I hadn’t drifted into the lake—which meant I hung within swimming distance of the shoreline—assuming I could call trees sprouting from the water counted as one.
The relic’s coordinates rested at 0, -68.9, but I had only gotten to -23, -67.6. Even with my Amphibious power, I had to swim all day to reach the correct position. The shore’s shallow water was warm, but the open lake would grow chilly. I once read that hours in even 80-degree water could induce hypothermia. The Miros equivalent incurred an agility debuff, but its later stages likely sapped stamina. Luckily, I wore a ring that regulated my body temperature, the Circle of Temperance.
Nor did the prospect of bobbing along the surface appeal to me. Since I hailed from Atlantic City, sharks didn’t spook me. They only attacked surfers mistaken for seals. Yet sharks liberalized their menu in the open ocean where food was scarce. Was this turtle a meat eater?
The question stopped my train of thought. Why would it attack the canoe? Even a monster could tell the difference between a meal and a bark-wrapped frame of wood. Was it like a giant kitten playing with whatever dangled in the water? It seemed unturtle-like behavior.
Then I remembered Beaker’s meal, that disgusting caiman, soaking the boat’s bottom in guts and blood. Of course, it had attracted something. And I thought my pet would make a good sentry. My internal clock noted that I’d awoken before dawn, so luckily, I’d slept enough to rid myself of Exhausted debuffs.
Figuring out what had lured the turtle to my canoe brought me no closer to deciding what to do.
I couldn’t be sure I could unhook my Dark Room while floating on the surface, and I didn’t want to waste my daily invocation of Hot Air.
The creature wasn’t fast—it was a turtle, after all. Losing one mode of transportation unlocked another.
After closing my interface, I dropped barefoot and unarmored from the Dark Room onto the turtle’s back. Wasting no time, I whipped the line’s end and unhooked it from its magical tether.
As I reeled in the Dark Room rope, the creature lurched, toppling me headfirst into the water. While Slipstream wouldn’t work in the water, I triggered the Amphibious ability to leap back on the turtle’s shell. I aimed for the shell’s center, still clutching the coiled line. I landed in a crouch and stashed the rope in my inventory. Losing the Dark Room over a stupid mistake wasn’t something I could bear.
Trying to shake me off, the turtle sloshed back and forth like a washing machine. When I held fast, the creature dropped into the water, but the deepest it could sink barely got my toes wet, so I maintained my balance. When it headed inland, I prepared myself for battle.
I reached for Gladius Cognitus before realizing I’d removed him with my other gear before going to bed. The void bag lay on the floor of the Dark Room, leaving me unarmed—wait—no, that wasn’t correct. From my personal inventory, I retrieved the short sword Sune Njal convinced me to fix against my belt. The occasion called for bludgeoning damage, but at least I had a weapon.
I plunged it into the shell.
/You hit Tortal Decapod for 0 damage (41 resisted).
Or maybe I didn’t have a weapon.
Tortal decapod? What kind of crazy monster had Beaker summoned? The damage mitigation listed by the combat log wasn’t surprising. What could I expect from hitting a giant turtle shell? Without another weapon, I could only ride the thing and see where it took me. Perhaps I could Slipstream into a nearby tree and call it a day.
The turtle rodeo got rockier as we neared the tree line. A constant splashing in the shallows beneath us didn’t sound right. Since Slipstream’s interface wouldn’t allow me to see underwater, I resigned myself to waiting until we reached higher ground—or any ground, for that matter.
“Moving Rocks!” Beaker’s telepathic words echoed in my mind. He circled above, agitated that this moving island had disturbed his slumber.
“I hear ya, pal. We’ve got one of those canoe-eating, moving rock problems.”