Adam flew through the air, only moments had passed since he watched Brian got tossed through the air, then the hissing bug-man had dashed over to Adam and picked him up, with his increased agility from his idol he had managed to just barely react in time and use some psychokinesis on the creature but the exoskeleton easily resisted any attempts at blows of force.
They were out in the open and while it had just popped out of a dark cave the beady eyed freak seemed to have no issues in the bright sunlight either. Surely their innocent adventure to the cave wouldn’t end like this Adam thought as he landed on the ground, feeling a crack in the side of his body as he rolled down the hill. Matilda was also on the hill tending to Brian via radiant bursts. A few of her casts cleaved onto Adam, helping with the searing pain in the side of his body, though he felt like he would be sleeping that one off no matter what amount of radiant burst healing he received.
The roach stood at the top of the hill watching them, standing perfectly still. Matilda faced the opposite direction, Adam watched in disbelief as it walked back towards its cave, leaving them alone. He couldn’t see over the top of the hill to see exactly where it went but he assumed back into the cave since it just walked back at a relaxed pace and in that same direction straight into the cave.
“Is it gone? Can I turn around?” Matilda said, dry heaving between her words.
“Yeah, he went back into the cave. Weird.” Adam replied.
“Not just weird, disgusting, let’s get out of here while we can. Screw this place.” Brian said shaking his arms and hands.
“Wait, it’s a bonus objective, it’s probably pretty good experience based on the other ones we have done.”
“No amount of experience is worth whatever that is, I’m sure we can find another task to do.”
Adam grew frustrated, Hammy had pointed them here and their own menus had give them a task, why leave now? The creature had decidedly not killed them, though it seemed it likely could have if it had wanted to. He couldn’t think of a way to convince his team and he certainly didn’t have the option of doing it alone.
“Adam, let’s just go. Matilda isn’t even functioning with that creature around.” Brian attempted to walk back down the hill back the direction they came from.
It hit him.
“Brian! The hiker menu, it said ‘fix the situation’. Not kill, not defeat or whatever. There’s a situation that needs fixing but clearly it isn’t by scaring the weird roach thing. I feel bad calling it these kind of names by the way. We wouldn’t like someone blasting into our homes like that.”
Matilda was still a wreck “I can’t believe you feel bad for it. We just need to figure out a way to burn it, that doesn’t involve me seeing it or going near it if we have to fix any situations. But I think it’s too strong for that so yeah please let’s leave.”
Adam jogged to stop Brian and Matilda from trying to leave. “I know it sounds crazy but let’s just check it out again, see what we can find and make sure not to startle it. This might be even easier experience if we don’t have to fight and just fix something for the bug. Bug-man. Whatever.”
Brian rolled his eyes “Fine, let’s just hope it doesn’t kill us when we annoy it again, I’m not looking forward to getting thrown down the hill again, I’ve never felt like less of a man.”
It took a lot of convincing but Matilda joined them in walking back up the hill, she would stay faced away from the cave and just freeze up and die if it came out again, they had mutually agreed.
They approached the cave entrance again, being careful not to go too close as they had a look around the area, they saw no sign of the ban-ban around.
Poking around the first side of the cave they didn’t find much, some strange looking, green mushrooms that seemed to faintly glow even in the sunlight. Adam expected everything strange to be purple at this point but when you are on a different planet and all. Wait, different universe. He knew he shouldn’t forget that part of it either, not that it seemed to make a big difference to his immediate situation.
They tried opening their menus at various spots, at various angles and near various objects to see if anything happened. Walking around to the other side of the cave they found what they assumed this situation was all about. A long leathery bench ran attached to the side of the cave, near a medium sized oak tree, stretching several body lengths down the wall of the cave. It looked very odd to Adam, it was like an enclosed rectangular shaped case with some jagged fins on the top of it with a slimy exterior.
“Oh, I know this.” Matilda shouted out, which drew glances from Brian and Adam who were still worried about the roach from before coming around and throwing them all over the place. Maybe just into the cave wall this time.
“Sorry. It’s an egg case, I forget the scientific name. I studied some biology at university, there will be like dozens of eggs inside. The monster we saw must be the mother.” She seemed to suddenly have some curiosity in bugs now that there wasn’t a man-sized one chasing her around.
They examined the egg case, there were some large, gaping holes in the top which looked to be rotting. Looking through the hole in the casing they could indeed see a row of eggs, somewhere around fifteen of them. All of the eggs were pulsing and had small twitches of movement.
“Any idea if they are going to hatch any time soon?” Adam asked, feeling mildly grossed out.
“No idea sorry. It was just an elective.” Matilda examined the eggs further. “It looks like the rot is spreading, I’d guess the eggs are fairly developed but I don’t know exactly how far along they are, insect eggs aren’t this big back home.”
Brian kicked the dirt “So can you heal it and we all go back to Hammy’s happy and levelled up?” He wasn’t admitting it or screaming and running like Matilda before but he was quite obviously not very happy to be here Adam thought.
“I can’t do anything about the existing damage, only our roach friend could rebuild it maybe, but I can heal the rot. Maybe. I think.” Her hands started glowing with golden light.
“I have to be honest, I don’t really know the nitty gritty details of how my passive considers anything as ally or enemy, even Vincent didn’t know for sure, in his experience it was just natural and obvious. I’ll try to keep my intent on the healing side and not blasting them away if I can.”
“Sounds like a plan, we can’t do much for now, we will keep an eye out though, if the mother finds us near the eggs she might flip out pretty hard.” Adam was still a little concerned but keen to get his experience and level.
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They waited around as Matilda began her magic, carefully laying light over the rot on the egg case. Bursting out of the inside of the cave was the same roach, the ban-ban, the mother of the eggs. She had just punched her way out of the inside of the cave, rocks went flying around. Adam placed barriers around Matilda so she could continue healing which blocked all of the oncoming rubble and rocks from hurting her or the eggs. The hissing was much louder than before now as the mother watched Matilda tending to the egg case. Her antennae wiggled and vibrated rapidly as she jumped into the air, almost to the height of the nearby tree. Adam again placed blocking barriers a little above where the ban-ban was going to land to stop Matilda getting stomped. She had frozen and stopped tending to the eggs at this point, frozen in fear at the sight of the vibrating, hissing monster.
Brian swung his axe up, gripping it with both hands. “Matilda, you just stare at the eggs and focus on your healing, I’ll fight this pam-bam thing and Adam will try to keep you blocked off. Think you can manage to finish healing the rot?”
“It’s called a ban-ban. Sounds good.” Adam said, watching Matilda slowly turn around with her look of horror still on her face, she bent down at the eggs which were almost waist height for her.
Brian began to swing wildly at the creature, Adam could tell he wasn’t going for killing blows, either that or he was just really bad at this barbarian thing.
“I’ll keep it distracted for a while, hopefully. I’m on the ball and not going to get caught off guard like last time. It’s just so damn fast.” Brian yelled as he tried to parry its blows and punches, one of them connecting into his ribcage and sending him back down onto the ground.
He stood back up. “I don’t lose this time. I can’t. I won’t.” He grimaced as he stood up, clutching at his ribs. He chopped away, a few blows connecting into the exoskeleton of the ban-ban, which didn’t seem to bother it very much, but he at least had the power to cut through it.
He continued chopping away and seemed to almost be gaining the upper hand, his swings increasing in speed and accuracy with each blow.
“Now that I’m actually doing damage to something, I can finally feel my leech passive, this is awesome, I can fight without Matilda showering me in healing bursts every thirty seconds.”
He spoke too soon as the ban-ban crushed his dominant hand into his body with one arm and managed to pick him up again. The roach threw him at the side of the cave, Adam attempted to create an almost waterslide like struture with his psychokinesis to ease Brian onto the ground from the throw, but it was just too difficult, he couldn’t create that much force over that much distance and the speed at which the ban-ban threw Brian was too difficult to account for. His force did stop Brian from having his head smash directly into rock but all his kinetic force did was slow him down slightly and push his trajectory into the end of the egg case, crushing one of the eggs. Brian stood up again, covered in a sticky brown goo, the entire egg had been completely crushed by the force of the throw. Despite it being from the mother’s own doing, her hissing become a scream at this point when she saw the crushed egg.
The raging bug smashed at them with it’s powerful arms covered in a thick armour of exoskeleton. Adam utilised his agility simply to keep up with the direction of the blows so that he could create kinetic barriers that would break instantly but do enough to stop a direct blow into his body at the very least. Brian hacked into the exoskeleton when he had the chance but was often just parrying blows, the bug had enough agility to fight both of them with ease, constantly turning and jumping around. Adam eventually had to give up defending himself well and save all of his focus and reserves on protecting Matilda. He took multiple blows to his chest and the sides of his body near his ribcage and the sides of his stomach, they now had massive whelps and bruises.
Just in time Matilda called out “It’s done, the rot is gone.”
“Great, now what do we do to not get killed?” Brian spat out some blood. “I’ve worked out this leech passive to keep going but I’m losing this fight regardless. Adam is even worse off.”
The berserking bug dug its arms straight into Brian’s shoulder blade, he cursed in pain pulling his body off of it’s powerful arm. Adam focused everything he had into a barrier for Matilda as the bug dashed right at her, towards the egg case. It smashed through the barrier in a fraction of a second in its frenzy. Jumping up, Adam used his truth compulsion on it in a last ditch effort, in this moment, he was truly scared they were about to lose Matilda and lose their lives.
Brian yelled out without even knowing about the truth compulsion “Can’t you see we are trying to help you?”
The bug made some noise with some odd sounding clicks and stopped, falling down to the ground from its airborne jump. Matilda backed a few steps away from the eggs, trying to point at the egg case. The large roach approached on its two feet, examining the healed egg case. It made a chirping noise as it crawled down onto all fours and climbed on top of the egg case, excreting some type of sticky mass on top of the holes surrounding the previously infected area. Down the other end of the case, one of the eggs at the end, the one next to the one Brian smashed to pieces and got all over himself, an egg began to hatch, it was fully exposed and out of the case on one side, crawling out of the egg was a baby ban-ban. It skittered over to its mother straight away, the mother pressed it’s antennae all over the body, stroking it, it was about the size of a puppy Adam thought.
Bonus Objective Complete! 2000 xp granted.
You have reached level four!
There was no level given for the task or the roach but that was a substantial amount of experience, Adam wondered if it was intended for higher level hikers to complete this objective or if the experience was just ramping up quick. Of course, he wouldn’t complain, he wasn’t expecting to hit level four so soon.
Adam walked over to his team mates to check out all of their new passives granted at level four.
Acuity: Agility now scales your cast speed and spell management potential, including maximum amount of spells simultaneously active.
This was too perfect he thought, with his Featherfoot idol granting him large amounts of agility his psychokinesis would become more useful than ever. It wasn’t going to let him do anything more powerful than he could already do but he had already escaped some tricky situations by trying to juggle multiple weaker spells and blocks of force with his psychokinesis, like with Grace.
Stamina: Unlock the stat, Stamina. Each two points of strength grants a point of stamina. Stamina increases your healing received, maximum survivability potential and passive regeneration.
“Looks like you were destined to get your ass kicked for us Brian” Adam poked fun at Brian but was very glad to see his ability would let him survive hits the rest of them couldn’t.
“Well if it means I don’t keep falling unconscious and almost dying I’ll take it.” He said, rolling his eyes.
Imbue: Grants the ability to imbue weapons with cleric spells and abilities.
“That’s interesting, wanna imbue my axe?” Brian asked with a slightly raised voice.
She tried focusing on her new ability in her mind, channeling a gentle breeze of radiant burst energy into the axe he was holding. It seemed to continue holding a faint glow after she stopped channelling.
“Cool, what does it do?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea Brian.” She smiled as she continued to avoid making any eye contact with the ban-ban who was sitting there crouched, still stroking its new baby with its antennae.
Adam had seen it as more of a monster than anything else so far but it seemed more human than ever when it walked over to the cave entrance and waved its arm at them, as if it was calling them over.
The ban-ban walked inside as they approached and quickly came out holding a small, golden ring. Matilda was facing the opposite direction back down the hill when the creature clicked at her, extending its hands out to offer the ring. Brian nudged her, she reluctantly turned and let out a small squeal as she saw its face close up. She quickly took the ring while wailing in fear. Slipping it on she opened her menu.
Ring of Mothers - +15 intelligence. Healing spells create a periodic healing effect on the target, healing for a fraction of that amount every two seconds for ten seconds.
Strength- 14
Agility- 14
Intelligence-42
With that, Matilda forced a smile and said “Thank you” in as steady of a voice as she could as the team walked back down the hill.
“We can tell Hammy we hit level four, I think he might be surprised how quickly we did it.” Adam said excitedly. Their jokes about the disgusting eggs and roach came to a halt as they come into view of Hammy’s farm and found a razed farm.