When the last wurm finally disappeared, Mike relaxed his body, allowing it to shift out of his encasement, taking special care to not touch the ground, before he retethered the cubs to his back and began climbing up the side of the cliff.
The rock face was sheer, and handholds were few. Before the System, it would have been deemed too hard to even professional climbers to scale, but for someone with three times the strength of the average human and six times the dexterity, it wasn’t overly challenging, despite having two passengers on his back. After ascending 300 yards, they crested the cliff’s edge, and found themselves standing on what appeared to be a large plateau. It stretched for miles in every direction, and if it wasn’t for the thousands of birds roosting on the surface, it would have been an amazing place to explore. Thankfully, the birds appeared to all be sleeping, and Mike was able to slowly inch himself backwards over the edge, and back the way he had came–which was much more challenging than going upwards. Once he had reached around the halfway point, he changed his direction, working his way sideways in an attempt to find some sort of shelter where he could make camp.
After two hours, his legs and arms were burning, and he had to accept a smallish ledge as the best he would be able to find for the night. He needed rest, and something told him that if he was just hanging onto the side of the cliff in the morning, he was likely to be eaten by a bird, before being regurgitated to feed its young.
The edge he found himself on was barely wider than his foot, forcing him to stand in an uncomfortable stance with his feed splayed out sideways–which was made even more precarious by the two cubs pulling his weight backwards. Even so, it was a rest compared to the climbing he had been doing, and after a few minutes of catching his breath, he formed a pickaxe of Quicksilver and began digging into the side of the cliff. The stone wall was a far cry from the lush soil of Montana, and after only a few minutes, he found himself wishing desperately for the extra stats he had pushed into Intelligence.
One he had made a shallow divot, he reformed his pickaxe into a hammer and chisel, and slowly chipped away, making slow but steady progress.
Two hours before the sun rose, he had managed to dig out a small burrow, 3 feet deep, two feet wide, and one foot tall. He had had to foresight to set the tunnel at an angle, so that even if the sun shone directly on it, there would be room towards the back that would remain shaded. It was way too small for himself, but large enough for the cubs, and after depositing them into it, then began focusing on widening the ledge on which he stood. Unable to bend over in his given position, he instead started right beneath the hole he had made and began carving the rock away in vertical strips. Going with the grain made the process easier, and within an hour, he had widened his area to the point where he could crouch slightly, relieving the stiffness that he was feeling in both legs.
An hour before the sun rose, he heard the birds for the first time. It started with a single incessant squawk, likely a youngling asking for food, but the chorus was soon taken up by all of its counterparts, until the air was practically humming. At length, the occasional reply of the parent, harsher and angrier than the babies’ began to be interspersed into the mix, and the hum turned into a deafening roar. The hubbub seemed to annoy more than just Mike and the cubs, as not too long after it commenced a bird's cry erupted, overpowering all of the other birds with ease, and suddenly, Mike understood why the wurms hadn’t dared touch the rocks. By the sound of its voice alone, he was convinced that it was much larger than even the giant wurm that had chased them the night before. What better predator to feed on the large sand wurms than a giant bird? The birds quieted down in response to their larger leader until the hum was painful, but not deafening.
Retrieving the wurmskin that was always used as a covering for his shelters, Mike wedged it into the rocks around him, covering himself and the burrow in shade and settled in to wait.
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Throughout the morning hours, the sun had shone directly upon them, and it was only through constant hydration that they had managed to survive, that and being completely shaded from the sun from just after noon onwards. Once the sun was no longer hitting them, it had cooled off enough for Mike to quietly work on enlarging their shelter, which also dehydrated him and forced him to drink more often. These combined scenarios meant that at the end of the day, the shelter was wide enough for Mike to lay down in, but there was only one vessel of water remaining. It wouldn’t be enough to survive the heat of another morning. As the light faded, Mike stretched his legs out in the burrow while watching the birds circle ahead through the small holes that dotted his shelter.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
As the sun died, so did the maddening, omnipresent voices of the birds, and he finally felt safe to leave. Saying his farewells, Mike left the cubs and began his search for water. He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that the birds had to be close to a steady source, so with that in mind, he made his way to the top of the cliff, and peaked over the edge.All was still, the only noise being the constant inhales and exhales of the thousands of creatures. After watching for 10 minutes to make sure the coast was clear, he pulled his body over the edge and began to infiltrate the enemy.
Using the skills learned decades ago, he deliberately placed each foot, testing the ground to make sure it wouldn’t shift and awaken the numerous creatures that would happily eat him. He balanced this deliberateness with speed. It was a necessity to find water tonight, and there was a lot of ground that needed to be covered.
Eventually his explorations led him to locate a small rift in the ground. It was so dark outside, that he had nearly fallen into it and had been forced to throw his body backwards, causing rocks to fall over the edge. A few birds near his location stirred briefly at the dull noise of his body hitting the ground, but thankfully, none fully awakened. He winced at the sounds of the rocks hitting the ground in the rift below, but thanks to the depth of the hole, the sounds were distant and the birds’ breathing didn’t even change. Noting the rift as a possible place for a shelter in future, he rose from the ground and continued his expiration.
After circling the outside for a while, he changed his direction and went towards the middle of the plateau, where the shifting rocks were more scarce, but the feces were far deeper. Breathing to avoid smell and breathing quietly is surprisingly hard to achieve, and he was forced to breathe quietly, gagging against the fowl smell. The joke brought a smile to his face, causing him to inhale deeply, which made him gag even harder. Tears streamed down his face as he struggled to hold in his mirth and the wurm meat he had eaten for dinner. Reining himself in with thoughts of his mother scolder him, he continued on his journey towards the center of the plateau.
It was well past the middle of the night when he finally located the water source, and right next to it, the largest bird he had ever seen in his life. It was easily the size of a Bowing 737, and dwarfed even the largest birds he had encountered that night. Beside its sleeping body was a pool of water. Though filth covered every inch of the ground around him, the water was crystal clear and seemed to unnaturally emanate the moonlight shining from above.
Pristine Solar-Lunar Water
Quality: Exquisite
Durability: Low
Rarity: Mythic
Elemental Attunement: Very High
Attributes: Water that has basked in the light of sun and moon undisturbed until it has distilled their essence. Always remains pure. Contains high amounts of cosmic energy.
He was shocked by the high Quality, Rarity, and Elemental Attunement of the water, and the it containing cosmic energy was an added bonus as he wouldn’t have to kill to continue leveling up his skills. More than anything though, he was thrilled that it was pure water. Hurrying down to the small lake, he filled every storage container he had available to him. When those were full, he formed containers out of Quicksilver and filled those as well. When he was done, the small lake was little more than a pond.
Elated at his find, he was able to ignore the stench as he made his way back to the clift and to his home. He spent an hour digging the tunnel back even further, creating an s shape that made it so their bodies were two corners away from the sun, then he covered the opening and bedded down as the baby birds began to awaken.
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A screech rent the air, causing Mike to awaken and jump from his bed… or at least he tried to. He succeeded only in hitting his head hard against the cave floor that was only a foot above it. Though dazed, he didn’t miss the second screech, this one just as loud and angry. A multitude of angry voices joined it. Mike rubbed his throbbing head and went to peak out of the shelter through a small opening he had left for ventilation. Birds were everywhere, some in the sky, some within reaching distance of where he lay hidden. They were angry and they were searching. Mike took a sip of water, sighing softly at its cool, pure texture, and crawled back into his cave. It was nice to be fully stocked again.