Chapter 113: The Island of Elendroth

Zach weakly lifted his head and turned his eyes as the voice of their helicopter pilot drew his attention. Yawning, he listened as, with a casual, matter-of-factly tone, the pilot informed them that they were only five minutes out from being within view of the island where Kalana lived. Immediately upon hearing these words, Zach sat up straighter and felt a rush of excitement that actually caught him totally off guard, especially given how haggard he’d been just a second ago. Until just now, he’d been feeling groggy, run-down, and so utterly exhausted that it hurt. But with the pilot’s announcement, his fatigue was chased away so fast it gave him emotional whiplash: his weariness and sluggishness vanished without a trace.

Are we really almost there? he wondered, becoming enthusiastic at the idea of finally arriving.

At the moment, he was sitting in the back of a fairly spacious private helicopter with Kalana. Due to the loud noise of the propellers and the engines, they’d both been required to wear headsets in order to communicate with each other and also the pilot. It was cute how Kalana’s headset was pink and had the shape of cat ears on the top of them. Clearly, she’d picked that one out specifically for use on these special “shuttle flights” between Shores of Wrath and her island. Zach, on the other hand, had been fine with using whatever old piece of junk the pilot had lying around.

“Coming up on the pocket,” the pilot said as the helicopter began to slow. “Zach, if you want to sit up here in a few minutes, you’ll be able to see it on the horizon. Give ya something to finally look at other than water.”

Zach smiled. He really liked the pilot. He was an older dude with a bushy white mustache, a few patches of grey hair, and a pair of black sunglasses that complemented his white uniform. He had told them funny stories and had given them interesting bits of trivia all throughout their relatively short flight.

Although Zach wasn’t sure what he meant by “the pocket,” he trusted the old guy to know what he was doing. He was clearly an experienced pilot given how surprisingly smooth this flight had been so far. It seemed helicopters in general did not experience quite as much turbulence as airplanes did, and with a good enough pilot in good enough weather conditions, they experienced virtually none at all. Thus, aside from the occasional, slight rocking motion, it had been a mostly still, calm, yet noisy experience. It’d also been really comfortable, too. The leather, marble-colored seats felt more like big office chairs than anything else; each one had attachable neck cushions, long armrests, and cup-holders.

“You’re looking pretty excited, baby,” Kalana said to him, speaking into the stick-shaped mic on the right side of her pink, cat-eared headset.

Zach nodded to her then spoke into his own mic. “I am,” he said. “I don’t even know what happened, either. I was about to pass out, and now I’m totally amped.”

Zach wasn’t exaggerating. He had no idea where this sudden reserve of energy came from. Truly, he’d been beyond spent, as the trip over here had tested his patience in a way he wasn’t accustomed to and hadn’t been expecting. Considering the sheer extent of how tired he’d been, Zach had thought it a virtual certainty he would enter into a deep sleep for either all or most of the flight down to South Bastia just as he’d done during the flight to Varda’s Lair. And yet, for Gods-knew-what reason, not only hadn’t he managed to doze off for a single minute of the ten-hour flight, but he’d ended up being one of the only passengers aboard who didn’t get any sleep, and after about five hours, he'd begun feeling claustrophobic and lonely, too.

He'd also felt like a total asshole. This was because the first-class section had been an incredible luxury, especially when contrasted with the rest of the airplane. Not only had he sat in a big, wide seat that could fully recline like a bed, but he and Kalana had been served gourmet, chef-prepared meals along with an assortment of other snacks and cheeses, whereas the hundreds of other people aboard sat in cramped quarters and were fed microwaved dinners wrapped in plastic.

Zach had been so fortunate to be in first class—he was fully aware of that fact. He understood he should be grateful. Nevertheless, he hated it. Absolutely hated it. Even as the lights darkened and nearly every passenger on the plane—first class or otherwise—drifted off to sleep, Zach was left awake with his body exhausted but his mind racing. Not wanting to bother Kalana, who’d been sleeping peacefully, he’d felt alone and trapped for nearly ten hours with nothing to do but sit there while images of all the people he’d killed kept invading his thoughts.

As the seconds had ticked by with painful, torturous slowness, he’d even started to wish one of the people from before who’d bugged him for selfies would wake up and start speaking to him just so he’d have someone to talk to. No, seriously, he really did. He’d been that desperate. And it was crazy, too, because who would have thought that after all the shit he’d endured, a routine flight to South Bastia could cause him so much distress? Yet there was something about being stuck in an airplane for ten hours that he just couldn’t handle right now. And what made it all worse was the knowledge that it likely wasn’t even necessary, either. In fact, he knew for certain it wasn’t, because Fluffles, who would probably rather die than be stuck on a long airplane flight, had insisted he would “meet them there.”

This, obviously, could only mean one of three things: one, Fluffles was lying, two, Fluffles was planning on catching a later flight, or three—the most likely case—Fluffles knew of a dungeon within a reasonable distance that ran through South Bastia, and he was planning to use it to warp across continents. Zach was nearly positive it was the last of these cases, especially given how certain Fluffles had sounded about spending summer here with them. Yet, just before flying out of Whispery Woods, when they’d asked him to come on the private jet with them, he’d meowed and said, “I don’t like airplanes. I come later to play.” With that, he’d scampered off somewhere.

At the time, Zach had been feeling too detached and numb to really care how they traveled. But in hindsight, he now realized he’d have been so much better off going to Angelica’s with Kalana and waiting until someone with an exit door to South Bastia popped into the inn, at which point they could’ve simply walked through it. Yes, it was a matter of luck, and sure, it might even take longer than flying, but even if it would end up taking days—which he doubted, but let’s just say it did—Zach would still prefer that to being trapped on an airplane for so many hours.

Of course, the best option of all would be to simply find a dungeon that ran through South Bastia, but that would be a lot harder to do since Zach had no clue where to look and there was no way any of the adventurers were going to tell him no matter how nicely he asked. Despite having more than proven himself, the adventurers were still totally inflexible when it came to their ways and their customs, which meant that, due to a combination of his age and his level, they weren’t going to dispense “the answers” to him. Honestly, the only adventurer who might just outright tell him would be Fluffles, and that would require both a bribe and for the cat to be in a generous mood.

He better tell me. Never doing this again!

As torturous a trip as it had been, eventually, the plane had landed, and when it did, the sun was only first rising in the sky despite it being closer to noon where he’d come from, reminding Zach that the time-zone here was a few hours earlier than what he was used to. Like his previous flight, shortly after touching down, the plane was taxied to the gate, and then finally, along with Kal—who was stretching, having just awoken from a deep slumber—he’d been able to disembark. Yet for all his desire to be off the airplane, the moment he’d stood up from his seat, he’d almost fallen back down.

Faced with an insurmountable level of exhaustion, he’d half-limped, half-walked through another airbridge and into another airport. Or at least he was pretty sure he did. In all honesty, he couldn’t even remember what the airport looked like or walking through it. That was how dazed and out of it he’d been. He’d felt like a zombie, and he’d relied completely on Kalana to lead him wherever they were going. She’d taken his hand and guided him along, for which he was grateful. Given how tired he’d been at the start of the flight, the fact that he hadn’t been able to sleep through any of it had given him an overwhelming and growing fatigue that only continued to worsen—until right now, at this very moment, when it vanished into nothingness.

I can’t believe how awake and alert I am all of a sudden, he thought as he got out of his seat and moved over to the cockpit. I actually can’t believe it.

He sat in the adjacent seat, taking a moment to admire the countless controls, buttons, meters, switches, screens, and gauges. It was hard to believe a person could memorize what all of these did. Then he stared out of the cockpit window and became somewhat puzzled. For some reason, they were no longer moving; the helicopter had come to a complete standstill and was simply hovering in place in the air about ten-thousand feet above the beautiful blue ocean below.

“Why’d we stop?” he asked. Despite sitting right next to the pilot, he still needed to talk over the headset to be heard.

“I need to make sure I line everything up perfectly,” the pilot replied.

“Line…everything up?”

The pilot took his hand off the control stick for a second to flash Zach a thumbs-up. “Yep.”

Confused, Zach opened his mouth to ask a follow-up question, but Kalana chimed in and cleared it up for him. “I forgot to tell you, Zach,” she said. “The island’s surrounded by an invisible barrier. There are only eight or nine entrances that we know of, and umm, if you try to fly into it or boat into it without being careful, you’ll crash. It’s strange, too, ‘cause it only seems to stop vehicles from going through, not people.”

“No shit?” Zach asked, squinting his eyes. It was definitely invisible all right. He saw nothing but open air ahead of the helicopter. “So is that what you meant by ‘the pocket’?”

“Sure is,” the pilot said. “It’s only a wee bit bigger than the heli, so I’ve gotta make sure I’m oriented perfectly.” The pilot had taken out what looked like a clipboard stuffed with pages of coordinates and other data, which he began to flip through, alternating between looking down at it and at his flight instruments. “Definitely don’t want a repeat of last time.”

“Last time?” Zach asked.

At this, the pilot stiffened as though nervous. “I clipped the propellers on the way in. Thought I was dead. Thankfully, the princess saved me, the Gods bless her heart. Even bought me a new helicopter.”

Zach shook his head. He didn’t know what surprised him more: the fact that Kal could now afford to buy helicopters, or how annoyed he was that she’d bought one out of a sense of charity. But rather than start a fight about his greed, he was far too interested in watching closely as the helicopter made tiny, barely noticeable adjustments in position, hovering up, down, and up again slightly. Then the pilot tilted the nose downwards, and they began moving forward, albeit very slowly. Even still, Zach could see the pilot bracing himself and peeling back his lips as though fearful of an impact. But soon after, he released a sigh, turned his head towards Zach, and gave him yet another thumbs-up.

“I’m getting better each time,” he said. “Oh, and there it is.” He turned his thumbs-up into a pointing gesture. “Beautiful, ain’t it?”

Zach looked ahead and into the distance at the rapidly approaching land. For more than an hour, the only thing to be seen in any direction had been an endless stretch of ocean. But now, rapidly approaching, he could see the island Kalana had pleaded with him to come visit and had talked so glowingly about. And Gods, it was indeed just as beautiful as she’d described it.

It was also far, far bigger than he’d imagined, too.

Stolen novel; please report.

Although he’d gleaned from casual conversation that the island was about 40 square miles in size, he hadn’t really known how to conceptualize that number, and it hadn’t really sounded very big. That was why, when Kalana kept insisting that she’d “barely scratched the surface” in terms of exploring it, he’d wondered how that was even possible.

Now, he fully, truly understood. While the island may not have even been in the top-500 worldwide in terms of size, it was still a massive landform that Zach estimated could house twenty-thousand people if not for the fact that there were spawn points all over it. It was big enough that Zach, flying at what was now like fifteen-thousand feet, could only see what he estimated to be half of it as it filled his vision.

There was so much to see and do. And all of it was untouched. There were rivers, ponds, trees, and fields of green. There were several forests, and way into the distance, he spotted what he believed were a stretch of large hills that looked like they were almost tall enough to be very small mountains. There were also stunning, sand-filled beaches and what looked like a gigantic cave. And the fact that this was a truly untouched piece of land—the fact that he would get to really learn what Galterra used to be like—this, he now realized, was likely the reason his weariness and fatigue had evaporated so suddenly.

Zach became excited.

Too excited.

“How long until we land?” he asked. Then he frowned. “Why are we slowing down again? Did we just stop?” They were once more stationary and hovering in place over the ocean.

“Eh, sorry about that. Don’t worry. We’ll touch down in about thirty.”

“But why? It’s right there?”

“Gotta take her in slow, son. There are flying creatures there that’ll attack the helicopter if I don’t take a safe route around the western side of the island. Don’t worry. You’ll be there soon enough. Nothing you can do now but wait and be patient.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said with a sigh.

As Zach spoke those five words, he’d meant them only as a mindless, casual, and offhand remark. Yet a moment after speaking them, a sudden chill traveled down his back. Something was bothering him, and it caused him to really pause and reflect on what he’d just said. He began to seriously consider if it was actually even correct. Was it actually true? Or was that just more of his level-1 thinking?

It is, he thought. It is just level-1 thinking!

As insane and wild as it was to think such a dangerous thing, he knew that he was right. He did not have to wait and be patient. Just simply as a matter of literal truth, he objectively, demonstrably, did not have to wait. And what was more: he was tired of doing everything in his life in accordance to procedure or the wishes of others. Ever since the day that Varsh had killed his father, fate had made it so that every action he took had been either dictated to him or driven by one outside force or another. When was the last time he did something just because he wanted to do it? He honestly couldn’t remember.

But here he was now, free of the dragon, back with Kalana, and you know what? He was honestly fucking tired of doing things the way other people told him to do them. And that was why, even as batshit crazy as it might have been, he decided to give up on his level-1 thinking and commit to a foolish, stupid idea that came to his head and made him smile. He decided to do what he wanted to do. For once, he was going to take his own destiny in a path of his choosing.

“Thank you so much for the flight,” he said, patting the old guy on the head. “You’re a fantastic pilot. I hope you have a really safe flight home.”

“Huh?” the pilot asked, clearly confused. It was the same reaction Kalana had as he got up, took off his headphones, placed them gently and respectfully down on the seat, and then walked to the back of the helicopter where the love of his life was sitting.

“Zach, what’s wrong? What are you…?”

Without saying a word to her, Zach leaned forward and gently removed the headphones from her head, placing them down on her seat. Then, aggressively, he grabbed her and scooped her up into his arms, supporting her upper back with his left hand and her legs with his right before spinning around and carrying her towards the emergency exit.

“Z-Zach!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around him. “W-w-what are you doing?”

“Having fun,” he said.

Shifting her in his arms for just a moment, he turned his body slightly so that he could grab the latch and pull it. This, as he could hear the pilot shouting something at him. But he couldn’t really understand it, as without the headset, it came across as nothing but a garbled type of mumbling. Now, sliding the side door open, he was hit by a blast of very hot tropical air, a burst of sunlight that made him squint his eyes, and at once, the level of noise from the helicopter increased immensely as he took two steps forward with Kalana still in his arms until he stood on the ledge, fifteen-thousand feet above sea level and without any parachute to speak of.

“Gods, Zach!” Kalana shouted. “You’re not really gonna jump, are you? No way!”

Glancing down, he almost didn’t. A nervous hesitance caused him to feel an acidic burning in his gut: one that told him if he jumped, he’d die. But he reminded himself it was caused by level-1 thinking. He needed to break that habit, starting today.

“One,” he counted, laughing.

“Z-Zach!”

“Two!”

“Zach, you’re so crazy! You’re not really gonna—”

“Three!”

“Gyahhhhhhhh!”

Zach stepped out of the helicopter and then, with Kalana in his arms, he entered into a freefall down towards the ocean below. Within seconds, the tropical wind battered against him, invigorating him and filling his nostrils with the smell of the ocean’s breeze. It felt incredible. It felt freeing. And it was only the thought of how angry Kalana was about to be with him that made it something less than a perfect moment—at least until he met her eyes, and he could see that her screams had turned into playful laughter and soon after cheering.

“You’re so crazy!” she shouted. She pulled away from him slightly, and then she stretched her arms and legs out wide and flipped herself over so that she was in a reclining position with her belly facing upwards. The glow of the sun made her look like a divine entity, and Zach was mesmerized by the sight of her golden hair fluttering in the wind. “It feels so nice,” she said, her limbs spread wide and her eyes momentarily closing.

Zach laughed. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. He’d jumped right out of a helicopter. And he wasn’t afraid. He was loving every moment of it. Faster and faster, the two of them continued to pick up speed until finally reaching terminal velocity. Briefly, he met Kalana’s eyes, and she stuck out her tongue at him. Then she once more flipped herself right-side up, the wind blanketing the two of them as they continued their descent.

Right now, in this moment, Zach felt freer than he’d ever felt before in his life. He wished it would last forever. Down and down they plunged, falling for slightly more than a minute before the end of their freefall neared. Zach watched as the water approached closer and closer like a blueish-green wall. Simultaneously, he and Kal crashed down into the ocean at the exact same time with dual splashes he could only barely hear as his body became submerged beneath the water, cooling him off and refreshing him.

Moving so fast, Zach had no idea how deep he sank, but the fact he didn’t touch the bottom meant this must’ve been a very deep ocean. He had to have gone at a minimum several-hundred feet deep, maybe more. Yet eventually his motion leveled off as it became darker and darker, and the water chillier, yet even through this darkness, he could see Kalana just in front of him. He reached out with both his hands, and she took them, and then the two began to kick their feet as they swam up to the surface. As soon as their heads popped up above the water, she made a silly face at him then began to cackle.

“You’re crazy,” she said again, shaking her head as though to get water off her face as she began to tread. “I can’t believe you just did that, Zach.”

“It was fun though, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The buzz of the helicopter above was still audible, but glancing upwards, Zach could already see the pilot turning around as if to head home. “I hope that guy isn’t too pissed off.”

“Oh, Gulthor’s probably not upset at all, I don’t think.”

“No?”

“I really don’t think so,” she said. “He’s probably happy he doesn’t have to risk getting blown up by the Phoenix Fangs now.”

“The what?”

“It’s a mob. You’ll see them eventually.”

Zach smiled at her, and she smiled back at him. Then the two began swimming together towards the beach. “Fuck, I should’ve let him take us closer first,” Zach said as he realized he’d misjudged their distance. “It didn’t look so far away when I jumped.”

“Huh? It’s not. From here, it’s only a fifteen-mile swim, baby.”

“Only.”

Since she was Elvish, Kalana could hold her breath for a half hour underwater, see better in the dark, and swim far faster than Zach could. Yet, despite this, he was glad to see her choosing to keep pace with him. The joyful feeling he got as he swam side by side with her towards the shore under the early-morning sun was indescribable. He reveled in every moment of it. Having been trapped on a plane for ten hours, and having been trapped in a pattern of death and danger for weeks, he was finally, truly free. He could do anything he wanted. They both could. It was everything he’d ever wanted and hoped for. Right now, they were in charge of their own lives. No one was going to tell them what to do.

One arm in front of the other, Zach did the breast stroke, moving roughly as fast as a speedboat. After a considerable amount of swimming—all of which Zach enjoyed—the water eventually became shallow enough so that he transitioned into wading, then soon after walking. And now, emerging on a beach in a land that he could hardly believe existed on Galterra, Zach had to pause a moment and open his mouth wide to gasp in total awe at the multitude of fantastical sights that he witnessed before him.

All along the sandy shores were mobs. So many mobs. Hundreds of them. For miles! They were everywhere. Literally, everywhere. For as far as his eyes could see to both his left and right along the beach, there were a wide variety of different mobs at different levels and with greatly varying appearances. Some looked relatively normal, such as a whole lot of gigantic crab-like things that were interspersed in every direction. But others were just downright bizarre, like a pack of sharks across from Zach that were actually floating above the sand: just sort of hovering there. Some of the mobs were walking around, some of them remained perfectly still, and there were even a number of them that were fighting one another. There were also flying creatures of various shapes and sizes in the sky. But it was something about thirty feet ahead of him that really caught his eye and made his jaw drop.

“It’s…it’s a rock monster!” Zach said in disbelief as a wave crashed onto the beach and covered him up to his knees in warm water. “It’s a fucking rock monster, Kal!”

Ahead of him was a vaguely humanoid figure, only it was much, much larger and appeared to be made of nothing but large chunks of rock from its head to its toe. Its arms, legs, body, head, and face were all made out of this same, dark-blue type of rock that looked like granite, and it was just sort of…sitting down on the sand, doing nothing.

“Have you fought that before?” Zach asked her.

“Nope. Never seen that one.”

“Seriously?”

“Yah! I haven’t lived here very long, Zach. The island’s really big. It could take me a long time to see everything.”

Zach drew his sword. “I’m going to kill it!”

“Be careful!”

HP

57,300/57,300

Name

Slabert

Level

37

Soaking wet, Zach waded the rest of the way onto dry sand, then approached the rock monster even as his drenched boots made a squishing sound with each step. Upon coming within fifteen feet of the thing, it suddenly twitched, then began standing up before turning around to face him.

“Mohhhhh!” it said, moving towards him. “Mohhhhh!”

Zach studied it carefully. Though nearly ten feet in height, the monster was slow, lumbering, and it was easy to read. So easy to read, in fact, that Zach actually had to wonder if it was some sort of trap, as he knew what the thing was going to attempt to do to him well before it even got within range to do it. It was obvious from the way it’d begun drawing back its right, rock-built arm. Zach had no doubt its punches packed a great deal of power, but it performed its movements with such slowness it might as well have worn a sign announcing what attack it was going to use. Five full seconds before it even took a swing at him with its boulder-like fist, Zach was already bending his knees to dodge.

With a laugh, he moved in and sliced it across what he took to be its chest area, but he only hit for 959 damage while making a dull crunch.

“Mohhhhh!”

Zach tried again, swiping at it a few more times, more aggressively now, yet still to no avail. “Uh, Kal? I think this thing is way more powerful than I expected.”

“Nah-uh,” she said. “It’s ‘cause it’s just super resistant to sword. You probably need to use a hammer on it or magic. Can I help?”

Zach sheathed his sword, stepped to the side, and shrugged even as the mob was smashing its fist down against the sand where he’d been standing. “Let’s join a party together, first.”

“Mhm!”

Kal nodded then drew her daggers. She lifted her right arm and began to twirl her weapon around in wide semicircles. Then she swung it downwards, and along with the motion, a spear-shaped mass of what looked like red-colored water appeared in the air above and to her right. It then flew forward and crashed directly into the rock monster, eliciting a groan from the creature and hitting for 102,411. The creature then began to shake and vibrate, slowly at first, but then faster and faster until every rock that made up its form became detached, and all crumpled onto the sand. Then those, too, exploded with a poof and began rising into the air like mist.

+6000xp

“Not bad,” Zach said. “I got 6,000xp from that.”

“I got um, 11,000.”

For a moment, Zach wasn’t sure why she’d gotten so much more, but then he remembered that, while there was normally no xp penalty when it was just two adventurers in a party together, if one of the adventurers was at least two levels higher than the other and fighting a lower-level mob, it was cut in half.

Still good, though, he thought.

To Next Level

89,500/170,000

“How far away is your home, Kal?”

She grinned. “The complete opposite side of the island.”

Zach returned the grin with one of his own then looked around at the sheer amount of spectacular sights in every conceivable direction. “Let’s walk slow.”