Chapter 6: Flavor Text
As Zach kicked a frog the size of a dog into the wall opposite him, he turned around and began walking away even before seeing the puff of smoke as the dead creature evaporated into nothingness. Wiping sweat off his brow, he reached into the submersible bag and tore open yet another bag of chips, then downed it with a bottle of water. With an exhausted, fatigued sigh, he tapped himself on his right shoulder four times and glanced at the stats that appeared before him. Even though he’d checked just a few minutes ago, somehow he’d become compulsively addicted to checking his experience every time he killed something.
Zachys Calador: Level 2
(52/100 xp)
2 strength
1 dexterity
2 constitution
1 intelligence
2 speed
1 luck
“This…isn’t as fun as I thought it’d be,” he said, taking a seat. “Still, I’d do this twenty-four hours a day if I could. It’s all going to be worth it in the end.”
Kalana nodded but somehow still managed to smile energetically. “We’re more than half of the way there now, too.”
Since beginning a little more than four hours ago, Zach’s lack of sleep had slowly begun catching up to him. It wasn’t even because of the effort required to clear the three mobs, either. Actually, it was the opposite: it was the waiting. It was sitting down for half-hour stretches in a place with no furniture and uneven, rocky terrain. His brain and body were sick and tired of being in this damp, hot, and dark cavern. Even with two hand-held flashlights, his head-mounted light, and a few portable LED work lights, he still felt the oppressive force of this sunless dungeon. Genuinely, if this were outdoors, it would be so much easier. Something about being in this below-ground, lightless cavern felt wrong, as though humans just weren’t built to reside for very long in this kind of environment.
I wonder how the Dwarves put up with this.
Apparently, there was a continent far to the north where ice and snow blanketed almost the entire continuous stretch of land from coast to coast. Other than a few daring—or stupid—researchers or illegal-contraband smugglers, almost no humans ventured there, and not because it was inhospitable, either. It was because far below the icy plains was the Dwarven kingdom, where millions of them spent most of their lives, rarely traveling to the surface. Ever since King Peter IV, on the world stage, demanded the recognition of superiority of the human race, diplomatic and trade relationships between humanity and other sentient life on Galterra had essentially been cut off.
Every day on TV, the news would go on for hours and hours about efforts to restore diplomacy, and the same few hundred annoying leaders and representatives from each of the human guilds would then be shown in this giant plenary room shouting at one another in complete disagreement how to proceed. Some even wanted to go to war. Thus, humanity had been confined to North and South Bastia, which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly the worst thing in the world since the two continents also happened to be the largest and most resource-rich on the planet.
Still makes the world feel like a smaller place, though, he thought. Then again, I’ve never left Whispery Woods, so who am I to even care.
“Respawn in 25 seconds,” Kalana said.
Zach nodded and jumped up to his feet. Without exchanging another word, he calmly moved forward and stood with his back to the opposite wall of where he knew the three creatures would appear. He and Kalana had now done this enough that it felt routine in a sense. Even the rat-thing no longer posed any real danger, as the bolt of lightning from Kalana’s dagger always killed it on the first go with exactly 11 damage. Zach was beginning to get the impression that the amount of damage the weapon’s ability claimed to do—between 5 and 15—was not in fact random but a range based on factors and conditions he didn’t yet understand.
Maybe certain types of mobs are more susceptible than others?
He had no way of being sure, of course, and even if he was correct, he also had no way of knowing the specifics of how any of this worked. A thousand years ago, it would have been common knowledge, but today? The information just didn’t exist—at least not for the general public. The guilds might know, but even if they did, they weren’t going to share it.
“Five more seconds,” Kalana said cheerfully.
Zach drew back his foot and counted the seconds down in his head. Then he kicked out with his right foot an instant before the frog to his left reappeared. He knew exactly where it would be and when, as these things not only seemed to respawn on an exact timer, but when they did respawn, their location never deviated. Zach wondered if this was true for all mobs or just these.
Whispery Woods used to be a giant forest filled with things like these, he thought as he watched the frog roar in pain as it slammed into the wall behind it. I wonder how many times these things were killed before me and Kal found them.
Zach had learned his lesson about being distracted during combat, so it was only because of how routine things had become that he was able to let his mind drift and fight at the same time. He effortlessly slipped out of the way of one of the frog’s kicking attacks as he imagined what the world must have been like all those years ago. People must have come to this exact spot he was in right now. They must have grown stronger fighting these specific creatures. It almost was enough to make him feel a pang of sadness for what the world had lost—what the world had needed to pay in exchange for hover cars, hospitals, hell…the internet!
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Refocusing his attention to the last remaining enemy, Zach unleashed a fast combination of strikes into the red-striped face of his frog-foe. First, he banged his fist into its left side for 4 damage. Then, he followed up with a right hook that scored him another 3. Finally, he bent his knees, drew his arm back, and hit out again with his left, delivering a straight punch that actually caused the creature to make an audible grunt of pain. To Zach’s surprise, he topped his previous high, managing to deal 8 damage in a single hit. The creature rolled over and died, on the heels of which followed the usual puff of smoke.
“Nice one,” Kalana said.
“Thanks!”
Zach began to turn around and walk back to what the two had come to use as their “sitting and waiting” area when something caught his eyes. Immediately, his heart began to beat faster. As the puff of smoke faded, Zach realized there was something left behind in its wake.
“Oh, wow. K-Kalana, hey! I think we got a drop!”
“Really?” she shouted, rushing over. “Oh, and it’s yours, too!”
It was definitely his. Zach could tell from the way it seemed to glow a white, shining color whenever he looked at it. Oddly enough, this shining light did not seem to cast shadows or even illuminate its surroundings, making Zach wonder if it could truly be called a light at all. Squatting down, Zach grabbed the box-shaped object that had been left behind for him.
“What…is this?” he asked, though the question was more to himself than Kalana.
He glanced down at what appeared to be a cardboard box wrapped in packaging plastic. It was only slightly bigger than the size of his hand in terms of height, and its width was only around the size of a short paperback novel. “This is…really, really weird,” he whispered.
The front of the item had a cartoonish picture of the frog he’d just killed jumping off a tadpole under a cartoon, smiling sun. In yellow lettering at the top of the box in a goofy, squiggly font were the words “Frog Snax.”
Shaking his head in confusion, Zach flipped the object over, and on the back of it were the words: Fun Fact #6: When the Great Ones decided to add Face-Eaters to the Leviathan River, adventurers grew so frustrated that they decided to build a bridge just to avoid boating across the treacherous waters. Some still insisted that the Face-Eaters were unfair and that the deaths of their loved ones was unjust. Sympathetic to their plight, the Great Ones created Frog Snax in their 1.32 terraform. Enjoy!
“Kal, you gotta read this. It says—”
“I saw,” she said from directly behind him, causing him to flinch. He was so captivated by this strange item in his hands that he hadn’t even felt her resting her chin on his right shoulder as he examined his drop.
Zach blinked and then reread the words a second then third time just to ensure what he was seeing was real. He flipped the item over and back a few times just to make absolutely sure that this wasn’t some hallucination brought on by being in this dark, uncomfortable cavern for so many hours. “What’s a Great One?” he asked.
“I’ve never heard the term before,” she said.
Zach turned around to face her, and the curiosity and wonder in her beautiful green eyes told him that she was just as perplexed and mystified as he was. While holding the object, he tapped himself four times on his shoulder to bring up his stats. Then, for the first time in his life, he reached out and touched a new word that had appeared above his name and level: inventory. His stats vanished, replaced by a single line that read: Frog Snax: picked up by Zachys Calador. Now, he touched the air before him where these words floated, and then more words began to appear below.
Frog Snax: picked up by Zachys Calador
Summons a wisp of light that causes the nearest non-boss, non-enraged aquatic-type enemy to become distracted for 45 seconds, forgetting its target.
(10 uses) 500 range. Only 1 wisp may be active at a time. Not usable by Goblins, Dwarves, or Shadowfangs.
For almost a minute, Zach did not speak as he tried to make sense of what exactly it was he now had in his possession. Closing his inventory, he lowered his eyes to the item in his hands. By all appearances, this looked like a sealed package of snack food one might find on the shelf of a grocery store.
“What’s a Shadowfang? Kalana, have you ever heard of that before?”
“Nope,” she replied. “I dunno what that is. I didn’t really understand anything I just saw, Zach. Is the item…good?”
“I don’t think so, Kal. I think this…this is useless to us.”
“Why?”
Zach pointed to the sealed package. “This is totally a guess, but I think you were supposed to eat one of these, and there’s probably like ten of them in here. And then if you were being chased or killed by an ‘aquatic’ mob, which I guess means a mob that lives in the water, it would probably summon something to make the mob forget about you so you could escape. But since there are no aquatic mobs anymore, at least none we’re ever likely to see, it’s just a useless snack.”
She frowned. “Are you upset?”
To his own surprise, he wasn’t. “Not at all. This is…forget the fact it’s useless. It’s a priceless artifact that contains information and terms on it that even the world’s best historians might not know. I’m getting chills down my back just thinking of what a ‘Great One’ might be.”
He wasn’t lying or exaggerating, either. A prickling sensation moved down from his neck to his hips then even into his legs as he contemplated what in the name of the Gods-above he had just read. He knew that drops could be weapons or gear: you’d have to live under a rock not know that, as even if you hated learning history, the yearly tournaments talked about ‘drops’ when the guild’s finest competitors discussed how they had acquired their shiny new equipment. No one ever said anything about this, though. It was literally a packaged food product. Why—or how—could something like this even exist?
“Should we try one?” Kalana asked. “I wonder how they taste.”
Zach tapped his finger against his chin. “I don’t know…this thing could be worth a whole lot of gold. If we open it, it might ruin the value.”
Kalana folded her arms. “Fine, but if we get another one, we’re eating it.”
Zach laughed. “Even if I could tell you right now for certain it was worth a million gold…like if somehow I just ‘knew’ that or whatever, you’d still want to eat it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Even if it turns out the snacks literally taste like frog.”
“Yep.”
He sighed even as a smile came onto his face. “You really don’t care about money or power, do you?”
“You wouldn’t either if you’d lived my life.”
“You’re probably right.”
Returning back to their makeshift sitting area near the submersible duffle bag, Zach stored the ‘Frog Snax’ and waited for the next spawn. In just a little while longer, he would be level-3. Just thinking about that gave him the energy to ignore the fatigue his sleep deprivation had caused him. Unlike Kalana, he was hungry for power. For coin. For a future anywhere but here. And if that meant starting a business selling rare artifacts no one else could acquire such as Frog Snax, he was all for it. Even if he had to eat some of the profits to keep his partner happy.