Chapter 40: Lights out
*Time remaining 292 days, 7 hours, 15 minutes, 3 seconds.
The encampment; the bustling Cave crawlers that stole pieces of the forest to take to their queens is no more. I stare out at the battlefield, breathing in the awful air through my mouth.
Everywhere I look are their bodies scattered on the ground. In some places, they are piled up into small hills of broken chitin and green guts and gore.
The ground is painted with their green blood. A fitting punishment if you ask me. They took the trees, they took the grass, and now they will give back the greenery they stole in some way.
I search the camp for Cobalt, idly wiping the blood off my skin and pulling out the tiny fragments of shell that have gotten stuck between the strands of my bindweed.
The System tells me that I still have unopened logs and notifications to look at. I hold off for now. This moment of victory isn’t one to spit through the hundreds or thousands of kills. Though, my eyes do gradually lower to the HUD in my vision; especially my Event point counter.
It is weird seeing it having grown so much in not even an hour or two. From the meagre 500 points, it went to almost 900. I have Cobalt to thank for that. Keeping away most of the strong Cave crawlers proved valuable for both of us.
Actually, where is she? I crawl up onto one of the hills made of corpses and search for a blue smudge between the green and brown.
Seconds later I find her sitting on the corpse of the (F) grade Cave crawler, feet dangling over the edge as she stares around her at all the dead.
From this far away, I can already tell she’s happy about this. And I’m too. The pesky insects had it coming for them once they started attacking Luxia. They should’ve stayed in the depths.
I make my way over to her and climb up on the corpse with some difficulty and sit next to her.
We don’t say anything for a while, just looking at our work in all its glory. How many lives did we save by taking out these monsters preemptively? How much did the war shift in our favour thanks to this?
It is nothing compared to the tides of humans that’ll barge into the forest any day now but I’d like to think this helped someone, somewhere.
Cobalt turns towards me, her back straight and her posture still unbending, “I wish they could’ve seen this.” She resumes looking at the carnage.
I stare at her. Like me, she hasn’t gotten off scot-free. While she is clearly better off than me, her carapace still has hairline cracks running through it. Her mandibles are chipped in some places. Though, she’s healing already.
“Who?” I ask her.
“The people on my Homeworld. This would have been a triumph there. A celebration would’ve been thrown. We would feast on what we had. Never enough to fill our bellies. And that didn’t matter. Because of this,” she gestures to the fallen outpost, “We would have been filled with hope.”
I don’t know what to say. What do you even say to something like that? Luckily, I don’t have to come up with anything as she finds more words to speak. “Even if I’m now in a different world, a different universe even, I dedicate this triumph to them. I will never know the outcome of my actions and I have to atone for that. I broke under the hope they placed upon me, However, I will carry it in this world. I will take my revenge.”
Once again I don’t know what to say. Her previous life was bad according to Sairal, and I can easily believe it. Though, like I’m unwilling to pry into his past, so will I do with her.
A few of the Cave crawlers, wounded not dead, flee or try to flee from the battlefield. Together with Cobalt we take down the Stragglers and fetch the backpack I dropped just before we attacked them. Thankfully, nothing has touched it and all the glass jars in it are still intact.
“So what now, Mandrake Green? Return to the lake?” she asks while looking away.
I follow her gaze and find the entrance to the Depths where the insects came from. I fold my arms over each other, “You want to head into the caves and kill more of them.”
She turns back to me, “As pleasurable as that would be, the depths are dangerous, especially now. I’m unable to guarantee your safety down there. If we go down, it will be a risk.”
I move to the lip of the cave and stare into the darkness that pools into it. There is barely any Valeroal moss down there, most of it long gone thanks to the Cave crawlers.
“I’d rather do something possibly stupid now, rather than die later,” I comment.
Cobalt stares at me unblinkingly and nods, “Well said, Mandrake Green.”
“Just give me a moment to prepare. I haven’t checked in with the system yet.”
While I do that Cobalt moves away, killing a few more of the stragglers that managed to slip between her fingers.
*Congratulations you have gained a level. You are now level 6.
+10 HP +15 SP +2 Strength +2 Agility +1 Perception +2 Constitution +2 Endurance +2 Mind +4 Unallocated stat points.
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*Congratulations you have gained a level. You are now level 7.
+10 HP +15 SP +2 Strength +2 Agility +1 Perception +2 Constitution +2 Endurance +2 Mind +4 Unallocated stat points.
*Mandrake Scream (Un) lvl 7/20 -> Mandrake Scream (Un) lvl 9/20.
*Identify (C) lvl 16/20 -> Identify (C) lvl 17/20.
Claw Infusion (C) lvl 8/20 -> Claw Infusion (C) lvl 10/20.
Dance of Death (C) lvl 3/20 -> Dance of Death (C) lvl 7/20.
Bindweed Manipulation (R) lvl 9/20 -> Bindweed Manipulation (R) lvl 11/20.
Bindweed Conjuration (R) lvl 8/20 -> Bindweed Conjuration (R) lvl 9/20.
Two levels and plenty of skill levels. At this pace, I might start using those skill points to increase the skill caps soon.
I wave towards her, showing that I finished up and all too soon we set our first steps into the Depths. Cobalt enters an offshoot from the tunnel and plucks some brown Valeroal moss off the walls that the Cave crawlers didn’t bother with. She hands one of the clumps to me, “To light the way.”
I nod and walk next to her deeper into the core of this world. The silence is overwhelming. With each step, I think that Cave crawlers might burst out of the walls or that the ground will fall away under my feet. But Nothing happens.
There are no new Cave crawlers. There is just the silence. No doubt that the queen or whatever ruled over the encampment has gotten word already.
“Having second thoughts?” Cobalt asks, her mandibles lifted in a smirk.
I scoff, “No.”
We exit the artificial tunnel and find ourselves in the cave system that spreads on endlessly beneath the surface of this world. The Valeroal moss is more abundant here, though still lacking the shades of green that the insects seem to prefer.
I couldn’t tell two caves apart from each other, literally needing a skill to assist me in getting back to the surface. Nonetheless, even I sense something different.
Where the caves used the be alive and diverse, being the home of countless species of monsters and plants, it has changed. The plants that grew in the hubs or in the tunnels have been trampled. Monsters have fled from the threats that loom in the darkness and even the air has grown stuffy and stale.
I don’t feel reassured by Cobalt’s presence anymore. As she said, this is a risk. One I’m not willing to take, but am forced to. If the die isn’t cast now, I’m afraid that the chance will be taken from me.
Deeper we go, rounding corners, passing through large caverns, crawling through smaller ones. I draw comfort from the moss, holding onto one of the few familiar things here.
My heart hums in my chest, each beat rapid and painful when we round a corner, only for it to be yet another cavern; devoid of life.
Keeping track of the time with the event countdown, I know that we’ve been here for hours already and yet we haven’t found a single monster.
I speak up in the deafening silence, “Cobalt-”
“Be quiet, Mandrake Green,” she leans closer and her voice is barely a whisper, “I’m aware things have changed. It is in the air.”
I nod in affirmation, glad that the absence of light and the lack of space isn’t slowly driving me insane.
Deeper we go, tension sets in, to the point where frost vapour rolls off Cobalt’s form, telling the world that she’s on a hair trigger.
We continue, seeing nothing but the rocky walls of caverns and Valeroal moss. She guides me through the caves, never stopping at an intersection, always knowing where to go.
We enter another of the hubs where dozens of caves, all varying sizes, connect to each other. She leads me to one of the caves and points at the entrance, “The fastest way to go deeper. It’s a natural speedway that leads almost to the second trek where we might find something”
My forehead wrinkles in confusion, “What are the treks? You and Sairal keep talking about them but no one ever tells me what they actually are.”
Cobalt sighs, “Layers of the World below, in most cases, stick to a magical element or a certain path of progression. The treks are the segments they are divided into. The element is still the same, however, the terrain drastically changes,” she whispers.
I scan the walls for any threats while she stares into the distance where the cave leads us in a steep decline.
“Treks have names too, right?”
She lets out another sigh, “They do.” I give her a long look and she finally elaborates, “The trek we are currently in is called The Gateway since it connects to the surface. The one we are heading to is called the Final Sunset,” She says in an annoyed tone, slightly peeved that I don’t know something that’s considered common knowledge.
The book that I got from the Wandering Bazaar pops into my mind. If this event didn’t happen, I would now probably be reading that book, standing in the sun near the lake.
We pass another intersection of caves and continue to descend. The stale air and silence cling around us, weighing on me until I can’t stand it anymore, “Where are the monsters? We should have found something by now.”
Cobalt leans over me, getting uncomfortably close. “Yes, Mandrake Green. Kindly, stop blabbering and asking questions. Something is wrong and I don’t want whatever that might be to find us. We are here to kill pestilence, find out what is going on, and-”
“To find mushrooms,” I whisper and point at a patch of them growing in the shadows of an intersecting cave.
She nods, “Indeed. Be careful. It might be a trap.” We don’t move, staring at the patch of darkness, waiting for some horror to reveal itself.
Cobalt seems to be content with waiting, even so, it makes me even more nervous than I already am. I pull some Valeroal moss off the walls and throw it into the darkness. With its faint hue, everything is revealed.
I walk forwards, unzipping the backpack.
Cobalt pulls me back. She gives me a blank stare and leans forwards again, “I grew up in a sort like environment. When I say you wait, you wait, Mandrake Green. Many warriors greater than you have died to carelessness.”
I swallow a lump in my throat and take back my position behind her.
She continues scouring the cave for anything out of place, even going as far as to use her Aura of Frost, searching for monsters in hiding. Finally satisfied, she lets me harvest the mushrooms.
Gently, I pluck them, doing my best to lose the least amount of spores. Mission accomplished, we resume. There are a few more patches of mushrooms we collect along the way.
Then half an hour later we stop. The Valeroal moss; a steady companion of the depths just disappears. Beyond a certain point, there is darkness. Utter and utter darkness as if ink has been spilled.
Together we stare into that blotch of darkness. But when you stare into the abyss, it always stares back.
The ink ripples, purple light comes into existence in a thin line, interchanging colours like the aurora in my soul, or like fish that live in the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans.
Cobalt screams. “How is that here? How is that here!” she yells, shredding any form of cover we had.