013 - WHAT IT TAKES TO MISS THE COMFORTS OF SLAVERY

The Lizard King was armored head to foot in layered plates of chitin that glistened with mother of pearl. A cape of deep red hung over his shoulders and in one hand, held like a regal scepter he carried a long spear. At the base of its sharpened tip, steel and not bone like his minions, a hanging cluster of human skulls clacked gently.

“This is not how I pictured it,” Karina said, taking a step back.

Buck mirrored her, staying at the back of the group, “Thinking maybe you’re right.”

“Spells, Buck?” Joy asked.

“Need a some time to recharge still,” Buck said.

The Lizard King raised his spear and pointed it at the group and hissed. The whole line of the monsters began to scintillate with magical energy in what looked like it might be a massive version of Tireless, and, as one, the line of guards rushed forward.

“Ah, shit!” Buck shouted.

Karina glowed with power, her whole body emanating a green light as she darted forward to meet the oncoming mass. Her movements were so fast she seemed to teleport from creature to creature, skill lending incredible speed to her already impressive combat abilities. And as she moved she swung with the same ferocious energy at the oncoming enemies, striking each in turn.

These creatures were much more than the common rank and file though. Where they didn’t outright block her attack with raised shields or skillfully interposed weapons, their armor often deflected her weapon.

When the glow faded and she used her last burst of speed to return to the line the band still held she had only managed to kill two of the things. The only other accomplishment seeming to be a temporary regrouping and reordering of the line.

“Blunt weapons work better than edged on this armor!” Conrad said, frustrated she hadn’t figured it out after already having been fighting for several minutes.

“Shut up!” She growled, but out of her inventory manifested a large two handed mace, replacing her broadsword. She might be like an angry dog, but apparently she could still listen to good sense when she heard it.

“Cooldown?” Conrad asked.

“Too long,” Karina replied.

The monsters came on, and behind them the King stood in silent observation. Conrad and Joy stood together, shields up to take the brunt of the attack. Joy’s ax crashed through the helm of one of the creatures, blood pouring down over its open jaw and Conrad swung attempting to do the same.

A shield came up and blocked his attack easily and then… pain.

Conrad looked down as two inches of bone sword were pulled from his stomach, and in his distraction took another cut to the arm, then another sword jabbed into his leg. He managed to put his shield up in time to stop the blow that would have taken off his head, but the Mauler who swung was so powerful the hit knocked him off his weakened legs.

Tumbling head over heels, Conrad suddenly found himself in the stream next to which they had made camp.

And he was being swept away.

Thinking quickly he sent his weapon and shield into his inventory and grasped desperately for anything he could get a hand hold on along the river. The current was so fast, much faster than a stream of comparable size on the surface might be.

The riverbank lit up with orange light as Buck finally let off whatever spell he had been cooking, but it was only a moment before the whole scene was swept from Conrad’s view. His focus now was entirely on staying afloat and getting rid of the remnants of his makeshift armor.

What pieces he could ditch he struggled to pull off as the water overwhelmed him. His inventory had a small delay in between uses or he would have just sent the whole set of garbage in and dealt with it later. Instead he was left a tumbling, struggling, mess of bloodied water and rapidly tangling thread, string, and leather.

He smashed into a rock, water rushing over him pinning him against it and forcing itself directly into his mouth and nose. Spluttering he managed to get turned around and to take a gasping breath. His health indicators flashed dangerously and the bleeding, combined with the chill of the water, was making it harder and harder to move.

Whenever in the past he had been close to being overcome with emotion of any sort, his reflex was to invoke Silver Tongue. The skill was often enough to let him think of…Tireless!

He invoked it as well. He realized that along with the lack of a sense of being fatigued by his motion or injuries he was also left with the bonus of not actually needing to breathe. The panic began to subside. He would survive this. He hadn’t come this far to be killed by chaos taken water!

Adrenaline Rush gave him the perception of having more time to think and work through getting out of this jam, and after a few more moments he was free of the equipment that wanted to drag him down to the bottom. With a powerful jumping motion- and excruciatingly painful in the case of his injured leg - he pushed off the rock and began edging his way toward shore.

After more than a minute of careful, slow progress he managed to swim to the bank - opposite from where he had fallen in.

Outside of the pain, of which there was plenty, and the cold, the disorientation, the subsiding adrenaline… apart from all of that Conrad registered a single, intrusive, almost alien thought pressing at him insistently.

I’ve got to get back to Karina.

Part of him knew that if he wasn’t well and truly lost, if he had any inkling of how to get back to the Seekers other than to travel upstream, that thought would be a mental scream. But even if he started walking right now, he didn’t know how far away they were, wasn’t sure how far he could make it wounded as he was, and even if he’d find them again if he somehow managed to find the site of their battle. They had been on the verge of retreat when he had left them.

It was likely they were already on their way to -

Get to the staircase. Get back to Karina.

“Shut up!” he growled. In his inventory he selected some of his tattered armor and manifested it into his hands. He cut a piece from it and began creating a makeshift bandage. The stomach wound was the worst… after that the leg.

He took an involuntary step back up stream.

“Not yet, damn it!”

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As he tied he looked around. This was a jungle. Lush with all kinds of plant and animal life so there had to be something he could use to heal himself up, to make a splint, something to help him make this situation a little better.

He managed to shove the compulsory desire to return to Karina and the Seekers into a corner of his mind while he finished bandaging himself. The indicator showing his bleed status had reduced significantly and his remaining health was only ticking down marginally, maybe one point per five minutes or so. There was time to fix this.

“Work the problem… not the solution…” he told himself, “So what’s my problem?

He took a step and winced.

“Gotta walk or else… you might have to crawl?” he mumbled.

A long stick on the ground looked like it might make a passable walking stick - good. That was one problem solved. Bleeding was next. He knew exactly nothing about Herbalism, a general skill and so available to anyone, but if Order was good for anything it was providing knowledge to those who were willing to put the work in and funnel a little XP.

He began casting Identify on every plant, flower, tree, and piece of vegetation he could see, though his limited mana had him needing to slow down every three casts to recharge and try again. It seemed it would all be Creeping Vines or Common Ferns and then… Jungle Red Bark? That sounded promising.

Jungle Red Bark

Rarity: Common

Description: Common tree to most jungle biomes, the redbark contains a reddish sap - from which it gets its trademark color.

Effects: Herbalism Required

Merchant Class Bonus:

Would you like additional information?

Conrad selected yes to the prompt for more information:

Additional Information:

The sap is useful in many alchemical concoctions and so is likely to earn a higher price when sold to Alchemists or adventurers with an interest in potion making.

Promising. Now how to harvest it… he took out his dagger, silently thankful the Seekers hadn’t told him to give it up and they hadn’t all sat down to divvy out loot.

Examining the tree he didn’t see anything obvious, and so began peeling away the chunky, reddish bark. Almost immediately it began seeping a viscous red liquid. Conrad reached a hand out and touched it. It was sticky but not quite as sticky as the pine sap of trees he had been around on the surface. It smelled musky with a little sweetness and, realizing he didn’t have any vials or really any means at all to contain the liquid he shrugged. Either he tried experimenting with basically everything he found or he surrendered to bleeding out slowly.

“Time to toss the dice,” he said and licked his fingers.

The flavor wasn’t bad per say. Dirty. Earthy, yes. But the same sweetness that he had smelled on it was present in the flavor as well.

He waited a moment but nothing happened, so he tried a little bit more. Then suddenly a popup appeared.

Skill Discovered!

Herbalism

Paydirt! Conrad immediately spent the 100XP required to earn the skill

Skill Earned

Name: Herbalism

Description: Herbalism is the basic skill required for any foundation in the use of herbs, potioncraft, or ritual based magic. Herbalism adds additional context when Identifying plants, and at higher proficiency levels can increase the positive effects or reduce the negative effects of ingredients.

Level: 1

Progress to Next Level: 0%

He checked his status. The bleed effect was still there but it had reduced by 5%! Quickly he pulled a large leaf from a nearby bush and shaped it into a rough cone shape that he then wedged into the red bark tree to capture the oozing sap.

Licking his fingers, he set to identifying other plants around, allowing the Herbalism skill to determine if anything else around was worth taking a look at.

Several minutes of this yielded few results, but he managed to raise the proficiency of Herbalism to level two after returning to swallow down the collected sap. The bleed effect reduced by a further 75%. But next he would need to handle his wounds - If he came across any monsters out here in his current state he wasn’t sure he could take them.

Now that he had time though, he was able to move more carefully through the underbrush, and after an hour of searching he had managed to find some Blue Water Lilies, which restored two points of health per lilly he ate, which was a chore in and of itself that almost made the health restore not worth it. He also found some moss that, completely by mistake, he got onto a gash on his arm. The moss, Candid Fudada, produced a cooling sensation and actually caused a very slight health regeneration.

With these three ingredients he set about experimenting, eating all of them, combining them, rubbing them into his wounds. He managed to increase Herbalism to level three, which gave him the first 5% bonus to positive effects and 5% negation of negative effects, but it seemed that simply stuffing the moss in his wounds and eating sap covered lilies was really the best he could do for now.

The murmuring in his head to find the Seekers was growing stronger, urging him forward, but along with it so too was his fatigue. At times, his exhaustion was so great that he found himself literally sleep walking. He’d blink and suddenly realize he had wandered away from the stream or simply that he didn’t recognize his surroundings. And it was in one of these moments that he managed to stumble into a patch of thorns.

“Damn it,” he said, examining the long scratches on his arm, He looked over the herbs and plants in his inventory as he extricated himself from the bush. The pain at latest had woken him up slightly. He ate a few of the herbs and rubbed the moss into his scratches as he looked around for where to go next, when suddenly, his knees buckled.

“That’s not right..” his vision was blurring and the air seemed somehow thicker. Drawing breath took effort, like he had just finished a long sprint.

He checked his status, seeing a green and pulsing POISONED indicator.

What? How? He looked down at his scratched up arms and then used Identify on the thorn bush:

Thorny Midnight Arrow

Rarity: Rare

Description: Rare and dangerous, this cluster of thorns has resisted all attempts both at culling and cultivation. The intensity of the poison it inflicts leads many to believe that, despite no obvious orifice or animal-like qualities, the plant is actually carnivorous.

"Does it eat people? Who cares? Maybe just don't get killed by something not even chasing you." - Gemma Tell, Botanist.

Effects: Poison - Causes drowsiness, disorientation, and severe spell disruption

Merchant Class Bonus:

Would you like additional information?

Rare? Order have a little mercy! Stumbling through the woods he managed to fall into a rare patch of thorns?

He was about to select ‘Yes’ that he wanted more information when the combination of fatigue and poison overwhelmed him.

At the eighth floor, on his own, unarmored and only barely hanging on, Conrad’s last thought before he passed out was, “Not how I thought I’d get out of the contract.”