Chapter 102: Destination
Felix Sythias’ POV:
The first thing we did was have a drink. We didn’t even wait to boil or filter the water. I’d never seen someone enjoy a drink of water as much as Alex did. He actually moaned after his first gulp. He didn’t even seem to mind the aftertaste.
I’d drunk at the lake, so I wasn't as thirsty for water as Alex. But I still drank my fill from the bag. It took a lot of effort to not drink too much. And I actually had to stop Alex from doing the same.
He leaned in to get another mouthful, but I blocked him with my tail. He looked at me confused. “I think that’s enough, Alex,” I said. “Any more and you’ll just get sick.”
Alex reluctantly sat back. “Yeah, alright,” he said.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then grimaced when all he managed to do was get his snout dirty. Between the initial collapse and all the stone dust that had come from it, the days we’d been stuck down here, all the combat we’d done, and now the water of the lake, Alex’s clothes were starting to get quite disgusting. The only boon we had was that Alex didn’t sweat, so at least the clothes didn’t smell too bad—only a bit stale. If we’d had more time at the lake, we would’ve washed them, but we hadn’t.
“I can’t believe out of all the things that I miss from home that doing laundry would be near the top,” he said. “I’d kill for some clean clothes right about now.”
I chuckled. “Well, I suppose we could fashion you some clothes from monster hides if you want. I doubt they’d look or smell any better, though.”
Alex smiled, then turned back to the water. “So, how much do you think we managed to get? A hundred liters? More?”
I turned my neck to look at the saddle bags. They had a volume of about 80 liters each. I had two of the bags, both of which were half-filled, so in total we had about 80 liters of water. My body didn’t waste much water, so I could live off about 5 liters per day, but I could do 4 liters if I pushed it. And Alex needed about 2 liters per day.
I did the math and figured we had roughly 13 days of water here. I’d start having issues by the end of that period though from dehydration. But it was a start for sure.
“We have about 80 liters,” I told Alex. “So that’s about two weeks worth.”
He nodded. “So, what now? Do we stay and wait, or do we go and continue exploring the tunnel?”
I hesitated, thinking it over. “Why do you think we should stay?”
“I don’t necessarily want to stay,” Alex said, shrugging, “but I can’t deny that having a steady source of levels wouldn’t be nice. Plus we have water and food here. I imagine getting more water would be a pain, but it’s entirely possible. Especially if I level up in the meantime. Eventually we might be able to claim the lake for ourselves.”
“Yeah, alright. But do we really want to stay here that long?”
He shook his head. “No, but it’s certainly a possibility.”
I began having an idea, so I decided to share it with Alex. “Or something to fall back on. We could explore the tunnel for a few more days, try to find a way out. Then, before we reach a halfway point with our supplies, we turn around to go back. We’d need to account for evaporation, but I’m sure we’d manage. And if we find an escape while we search, great. If not, we just return here and maybe try again later?”
Alex was nodding along. “Yeah, I think that’s for the best. A bit risky, but I think staying here isn’t any less so. We’ll need to leave messages behind again, though.”
The idea was gaining momentum now, and solutions for problems were starting to form in my head. “We’ll figure that out last. First we’ll need to make some kind of stand to hold the saddle while I’m not wearing it. If I sleep like this, it’ll spill everywhere.”
“I’ll do that,” Alex said, nodding. “You should go hunt so we can make some jerky. I’ve almost run out and we won’t be able to get food there.”
I shook my head. “Let’s make that stand first. I don’t want to spill anything while hunting.”
He blinked, then snout-palmed. “Right, fair.”
We went off to collect some wood and we quickly constructed a small stand using the last bit of string we had. It was really just two tripods with a log in between them. It was nothing like the fancy stand I had back home, but it would have to do. Now we just needed to test it.
Together with Alex’s help, I put the saddle on the stand, holding it in place and slowly letting the weight settle onto the wood. It strained and creaked a bit, but held. I smiled and high-fived Alex with my wing.
With that out of the way, I set off towards the forest to begin searching for good prey while Alex went collecting firewood. I wanted to find something with lots of calories, but that also didn’t taste like dirt. It didn’t take long for me to find something—pigs. I snatched one up in my claws, breaking its neck while I flew away.
I landed a few hundred meters away from the camp and stripped the corpse of its meat, leaving behind the entrails to serve as a distraction for when we started smoking the meat. I didn’t forget to drain the corpse of its blood before I did any of that, though. Sure, we had water now, but I could drink this safely. There was no reason for me to waste our relatively meager supply just because it tasted better. Besides, my growing mana-pool was a nice bonus.
Since I’d started drinking blood, my mana-pool had grown almost three times the size of what I’d come down here with. The progress was starting to slow down, however. Even adjusting for the fact that each liter of blood had a smaller effect on my pool percentage-wise now, each liter was giving me less and less growth. It was odd for sure. I thought it might have something to do with either the monster’s strength or the type of monster. Maybe I just needed different or stronger monsters. I’d find out sooner or later.
Taking the meat with me, careful to not let it touch the ground, I flew back to camp. When I got back, Alex already had a nice fire going. He had a sizable pile of wood nearby, as well. Lots of bigger pieces of wood that looked like they’d been snapped in half by someone’s hands. Looking over to the fire, it seemed Alex had started constructing a smoking rack, too. I stored the meat somewhere safe and began helping him. Soon, we had a few fires with meat smoking above it. I had to hunt another pig, and we had to improvise a bit with the coverings to keep the smoke in, but we made it work.
It would take hours until it was ready, so we decided to keep an eye on it, but to sleep and leave tomorrow. I considered bringing up the book now, but honestly, I was exhausted and really not in the mood to read—not even smut with Alex. So we took turns keeping an eye on the fires and feeding them all throughout the night until the jerky was ready. Without any seasoning or salt, it wouldn’t last too long nor be very tasty, but like with many things these last few days, we’d have to make do.
We stored it away in the morning and packed up camp. I hunted one last monster for a quick but filling breakfast with fresh food, as well as one last drink of blood for me. And then we were off.
We quickly found where the tunnel continued, and there was even a nice and convenient path to get there, well-trodden and littered with the occasional web. Inside, we traveled like we did with the previous bit of tunnel, killing the spider monsters, lighting up every other lamp we came across, and being careful of traps.
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Eventually we lost that caution though, when after another day of travel didn’t reveal anything dangerous—just a boring tunnel. We were still careful, but we didn’t travel at a snail’s pace anymore. During the day, we came across two more of the barracks. They had similar talon prints and writing on the wall, but no real furniture or anything else. Though one of them also had smaller handprints on the walls, matching the small figures we’d seen on the carved doors a few days earlier. We decided to make camp at the second one we came across since it was quite late anyway.
Despite having carried the water all day, I wasn’t as tired as I’d expected. I was still pretty tired, though. It didn’t seem like all that much water when you looked at it, but by the stars, was it heavy. Still, I had plenty of energy left, so as we laid there in what might once have been a common space or a living room, I decided I could ask again about the book.
“Hey Alex, do you want to read for a bit before we go to sleep?”I asked. “We can cuddle and everything.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Of course we’ll cuddle; we only have the one book, so we have to if we both want to read. Not that I mind. The opposite in fact.”
“About that,” I said, then hesitated, “we don’t just have the one book… I figured after you, um, we rubbed our bits together like that, that maybe you’d like to give it a shot.”
Alex blinked, probably not expecting my question. Several expressions flashed across his face while he thought—confusion, reluctance, excitement, and finally resolution. He nodded. “Yeah, a-alright.”
I tilted my head at him. “You sure? You sound a bit nervous.”
He nodded again, more firmly this time. “I am. It’s just… last time was a very spur of the moment thing. I really didn’t think about it. And this feels a lot more direct, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. You mean there’s no intense horniness driving you on this time,” I said, and Alex squirmed at me calling him horny, and he opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “What? That’s what you were, weren’t you? Horny? We both were, really.”
“Yeah,”he hedged, “but it’s weird to hear you say it out loud like that,” he said after a moment, then hesitated, and from the way his tail twitched, I knew he was debating whether or not to tell me something. “And knowing that you know how horny you make me when we’re together…” he trailed off, staring at the ground, and I was sure his cheeks were red-hot with embarrassment. I didn’t think he said all he wanted to say, but was okay.
I smiled. “I do, huh? What did you like most?” I asked, enjoying watching Alex squirm. I watched him attempt to speak a few times, only to fail. I waited a few more moments before speaking again. “You don't need to tell me, Alex, it’s fine. I was just teasing you.”
He raised his head to meet my eyes. “Sorry, I really want to tell you. I really do! But I just can’t seem to find the right words, and when I try to improvise, the words get stuck in my throat.”
There was frustration clear in his eyes, so I gestured for him to come closer. He did and he gently pushed me onto my back before climbing onto me. I wrapped my arms around him just like he wrapped his arms around me. “Thank you for being so patient with me,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “We have all the time in the world. Besides, this was one of the reasons why we wanted to read the book together, right? To learn how to talk about sex together? Don’t forget that this is all new to you—to both of us really—so don’t get frustrated with yourself. You’re doing great,” I said, emphasizing my point by stroking my tail past the insides of his thighs—not at his slit, though. We hadn’t talked about his boundaries about that yet, but I knew for a fact he was okay with me teasing his thighs.
“That tickles!” Alex said with a giggle, grabbing my tail and pulling it away. He hesitated for a moment, moving my tail back a bit, then shook his head and let go of my tail. I pulled it away. “I’m… I’m sure we can have some fun with your tail sometime. In fact, I know we’ll have some fun with your tail sometime, but I don’t really feel like doing something like that right now. Besides, we still have that book to read.”
I nodded. That worked for me. These creepy old barracks didn’t feel like the right place anyway. The book would be fine, though. It was all the way over in my pouch however, and I’d taken it off already. And I couldn’t exactly stand up with Alex wrapped up in my arms. It took a few minutes and some creative use of my tail, but I managed to extract the book from the pouch and get it close enough to pick it up. I did so and handed it to Alex.
We both read the title, Unbalanced. The letters were written with golden and silver ink, and the dark leather had a scale pattern to it, like Alex’s bookmark. If I remembered correctly, it was about two friends falling on hard times and finding comfort with each other. Except, one of the friends hadn’t yet realized they weren’t straight. It would become known soon enough though, and they’d get in a relationship not long after. And there was a lot of sex involved along the way. It started out rather mild, though.
“Do you want to do the first chapter?” I asked. “I read a bit ahead and I can promise you, the fun doesn’t start until chapter two.”
Alex rolled his eyes, but began reading anyway. “I spot her just after midnight. I’m hanging out with the guys down at the Fang…”
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I woke up from Alex’s prodding. He looked a little sleepy still, but he’d already put on his clothes and gear. I yawned once and stood up. Looking around the room, I noticed Alex had also cleaned up our camp a little already—including Unbalanced. I tried thinking back on last night, but I genuinely couldn’t remember us putting it away; or even finishing the first chapter for that matter.
“We fell asleep reading?” I asked.
Alex nodded. “We did. Well, you did. I finished the chapter by myself after you fell asleep. I’m liking the book so far.”
“Really? What did you think of the first chapter?”
We chatted about the book for a bit. One of the characters had just been kicked out, and after a night of drinking, his friend had offered to let them stay at his place. They’d just gone home together after meeting up at an inn. I knew from reading ahead that the night would get a little frisky, but not much more would happen as the gay friend didn’t want to do anything while drunk.
While we chatted, I put on the saddle again, but not before taking a drink. We packed our last bit of gear then left. The tunnel was the same as yesterday, and was increasingly boring. We did notice there were more and more barracks though, and even a few new kinds of rooms. We found ruins of what must have been a storage room, two stables, a washroom of some kind—though there wasn’t any flowing water anymore—and a few we just couldn’t place the purpose of.
We cataloged every room we found, and Alex made a quick sketch of each of them. Aside from a few more talon-marks, small handprints, and appropriately sized accommodations for both species, we didn’t find anything new or super exciting.
At some point during our exploration, though, the rooms stopped altogether. Despite walking at a brisk pace for well over an hour we didn’t come across a single one. We soon found a possible reason why. There was a fork in the road.
“So…” Alex said, drawing out the ‘o’, “do we go left or right?”
I looked at the split, taking in every detail. There wasn’t much to be seen, though. It was just a split in the tunnel. One became two, each going in a slightly different direction. There were no talon marks on the ground to judge foot-traffic by, no difference in air quality or flow, and no other way to tell which direction was better.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true.
There was also a sign pointing down each tunnel, but the text was unreadable. It was the same text as had been on the painting and walls. I’d decided to just call it dragon-scratch in my head, a play on chicken-scratch, which was also nigh unreadable. My instincts still reacted to the dragon-scratch, though, as if I was supposed to know what the signs meant. But I didn’t. Still, when I listened to the feeling deep inside my wing bones, I swore the sign pointing to the left was more promising.
“My instincts say we should go left,” I said.
Alex shrugged. “Then we go left,” he said. “I mean, as far as I can tell, we’d be guessing anyway, so we might as well go with your gut-feeling. We can always come back if it's a dead end.”
I scratched a cross into the wall of the tunnel we’d come from, then we were off down the left path. It was much the same as before, though it was still mostly devoid of side rooms. We only came across one more barrack. The rest of the day we walked down the same dull tunnel. It was to the point that I wondered if we were making any progress at all. When the last few hundred meters looked the same as the next few hundred, how could you know for certain you actually moved at all? What if you just imagined it? It was slowly driving me insane.
But before I could ask to make camp for the day, we spotted something in the distance. An end to the tunnel. So we pressed on and made it to the end in a record pace, both of us were that excited for a change of scenery. When we got within a few hundred meters, I could see what it probably was, and that was only confirmed when we actually got there.
It had taken us days of travel and exploration, but we’d finally found a possible exit. Right before us was a door, and it was the same kind as we’d found on the way in.