With his new set of memories, no matter how broken, Zed felt a new sensation. One that made his heart beat faster and his eyes waver. He turned his head from side to side. Certain he was still alone, he got back to his feet and turned left.
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Quest: [The House in the Woods]
You have found yourself in desperate need of clothes and a decent shower. Before you is a barren cluster of trees. Get to the house hidden within.
* Quest objective: Go to the house 0/1.
* Objective reward: shirt and pants.
* Bonus objective: Defeat [mana beast] 0/1.
* Objective reward: [Mana beast core].
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Zed stared at the notification from a different perspective. The information he’d gotten from the pocket memory, while incomplete, had given him something useful. For starters, of all the memories he’d seen and the emotions he’d felt, there were only two he felt were genuine: the boy who loved his mother and the man with two names.
What he’d gotten from the both of them, however, were slightly controversial. The most important had him looking at the skin of his arm. He was met with more red than anything else, his skin hidden beneath all the gore.
“Well,” he mused, dropping the arm, “I’m not black anymore. And I don’t think I was when I woke up.” He touched a lock of his caked hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “Definitely not wooly. I wonder how that happened.”
The second thing he learned was of the notification.
Apparently, it had been a part of his life to some extent in the past. It hadn’t always been this detailed and talkative, but it had been useful. It always guided him to where he needed to be and gave him the tools he needed. Unfortunately, his rewards weren’t always given to him. Sometimes he was merely placed in a position to get them.
If shirt and pants were the rewards of getting to the house in the woods, then it meant the house in the woods had at least a shirt and a pair of pants. And if defeating a mana beast was a bonus objective. Well, that only meant one thing. He hefted his piece of bloody wood and made his way into the woods in front of him.
“From one to another,” he muttered as the new woods swallowed him amidst scanty trees. “Let’s go get me some clothes.”
…………………………….
The stretch of trees was very much unlike the one before it. The trees were skinny and dry, flakey even. The soil was rough beneath Zed’s feet with dried leaves and snapping twigs. He walked gently with his wood raised beside him but every step was announced, so he gave up stealth for caution.
He wasn’t sure exactly what this place was but he highly doubted it classified as woods. If it did, then the place he’d just left would be a forest.
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* You have entered an area with higher [ambient mana] density.
* Recovery rate has increased.
* Mana recovery rate is at 13%
* Stamina recovery rate is at 15%
* Health recovery rate is at 10%
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That’s odd, Zed thought, sighting a cabin built in a patch of clearing through the trees. You’d think with all the starvation here it’d have less mana, considering mana gave a certain kind of stren—oh, he paused. I know what mana is.
He scratched his jaw, amused. I guess that’s another thing settled.
…………………………..
The cabin was less a cabin and more a wooden mansion. It looked like what the queen of England would live in if she had a cabin in the woods. Well, an abandoned cabin in the woods.
A dilapidated cabin in the woods would be more accurate.
The building was worse for wear. Its paint, once white, was a pitiable emulation of the color. It was cracked in too many places, peeled in others, and needed a lot of renovation to get it occupant worthy again. It was high, almost as tall as the trees in the woods he’d awoken in, and from his place in front of the elevated porch, he could see multiple loose slabs of wood hanging loose.
It would need more than just external renovation to get the work done, he thought, noting how easily rodents could scurry in through the many holes as he climbed up the stairs. If whoever owned it ever wanted it back, they’d have to spend a lot of money to get it fixed. Then again, if they owned such a place, they certainly had enough money to get it fixed. For a small price he’d be more than willing to help them sort it out.
He knew a guy, after all.
Zed took the steps up the porch and was almost at the door when he paused. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. You’re most likely the kid, he told himself. Why? Because you’re not black and you have red hair, so you can’t be the brutal African killer, and I think that’s answer enough. So how exactly are you supposed to know a guy that does home restorations?
He frowned slightly at that before approaching the door. Whoever knew a guy, it wasn’t him. But his money was on the loving father since he didn’t see why a tyrant or a brutal killer would ‘know a guy’.
The door to the cabin was dislodged, old, and broken at the center. On top of it, however, was something new. A piece of paper was affixed to it, mildly torn at the bottom but held firmly with some kind of liquid. Zed touched it and found it was viscous.
Tree sap? He wondered, unsure, before pulling the paper free to look at it.
On the paper was a single large inscription that looked charred in some places and wet in others, almost as if someone had tried to dry the ink they’d used to write it in a hurry with fire, only to burn a few parts of the bold inscription.
The inscription was one massive work that consisted of two parallel lines and a curved line that ran through them at an angle his brain interpreted as impossible. It hurt to think of the reason for it. The pain rose so sharply and ached Zed’s head so much that he abandoned the endeavor. He’d felt the sensation trying to understand it gave him enough times in his memories of The Berserker to know what it was.
A rune.
And if someone was putting up runes in a dilapidated building, it meant two things. Someone was using the house, and…
A crash inside broke Zed from his thoughts and he had his answer. Someone didn’t think it was safe being here.
He shoved his way through the door and bolted forward. He stepped into a wide space of broken wooden floor, torn velvet carpets and old, ripped up couches, singles, doubles and triples. There was a stairwell to his right that led up and two doors to his left that led where he didn’t know.
He turned to one of the doors on the left and heard another crash upstairs, followed by shouting voices with words he didn’t catch.
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People, he thought. Were they the owners of the house? Did he leave them to their vices or help them, considering he was most likely here to steal some of their clothes?
Another crash echoed from one of the doors to Zed’s left, then a low growl that rumbled in his chest followed. That was answer enough for him.
He turned to his right and made his way up the stairs.
He was barely half way up when one of the doors broke behind him and something inhumanly impossible burst through it. He had only enough time to catch a glimpse of it and he ran faster.
“Not today, not today, not today,” he panicked as he got to the top and took a left.
The creature scrambled after him with six fleshy arachnid legs pulling its hairy bulbous form up the stairs. It was as fast as a six legged creature had every right to be and as terrifying to look at as was to be expected from something that looked like the head of a sloth if it was as big as his torso and as hairy as a gorilla.
It caught up to Zed in seconds and he turned to defend himself from a pounce with a raised wood only to be slapped aside by one of its legs.
The blow sent him careening through the wall and into another room. He flew into the new room amidst a shower of splintered wood and dust. But rather than hit the floor with a thud, his body righted itself and he landed on his feet.
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Attribute: [Equilibrium] (Physical)
* Increased resistance to stun effects and knockback. You have bathed in the stasis of a mana surge as it stabilized its world and now understand the concept of stability.
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“Yeah,” Zed groaned from a throbbing pain in his side and waved the notification away, “I got that.”
The creature shoved its way into the room, shrugging off the splinters of wood and debris in its path. It faced him with a constricted rage on a face that had only a mouth. It opened its mouth to reveal an enormous set of lamprey teeth all fanged and razor sharp, and shrieked at him.
If Zed’s time fighting against mutated tigers had taught him anything, it was that he was stronger than he’d initially thought he was. And so was his wood.
The beast scrambled after him and he swung the wood with all the power he could muster. His blow connected with the beast, sending it flying into the wall on the side of the room. It smashed into it and the building shook from the impact. The wall cracked but did not break and Zed was already rushing after it.
He charged into the beast with a burning desire to crush it and rammed it through the wall.
One moment they were going through a wall and the next they were tumbling through the air. The sound of gunshots cracked the air before they hit the floor and was lost in the chaos of the descent.
Zed pushed himself to his feet, running on adrenaline, and kicked the monster in the side as it struggled to rise, staggering from one broken limb.
He turned his head, looking for his wood and found something more interesting on the floor.
He reached for it, instead.
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* You have acquired [Tomahawk (weapon, unranked, common)].
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He grabbed it by its curved haft and swung it down. Its bladed end came down in unbridled violence. It bit into the bulbous body of the beast and it squealed something furious.
“Oh, shut up.”
He pulled the tomahawk free and swung at one of the creature’s functioning limbs. It tore through flesh and bone, and lopped it off. All the creature’s limbs twitched in pain and blood spurted from its new wound.
“I said,” he raised the weapon and brought it down again. “Shut up!”
The creature’s squeal dwindled but didn’t die, and he struck it once more.
One of its limbs swung at him from the side and he caught it a moment too late. It swiped into him, throwing him into another wall with less force than he remembered the creature having. Another gunshot echoed from somewhere in the distance and Zed ignored it as he struck the wall and fell back down to his feet.
He felt pain inside him and he coughed up blood.
Facing the beast with labored breath, he held the tomahawk out to the side in one hand. In front of him, his opponent was struggling just to remain standing.
With one broken limb and one incomplete limb still leaking blood, Zed couldn’t fault its hesitation to approach him. He’d be terrified too if a strange red beast that walked on two legs and carried a tomahawk was trying to kill him.
The beast scuttled forward and Zed moved. But rather than find himself scaling a distance to re-engage it, he found himself stopping as the beast scuttled back. It shrieked at him and the sound came out like that of something drowning as blood pooled from the injuries riddling its body, rivulets of its reddish green bathing the floor.
Blood leaked from its mouth as its sad attempt at intimidation came to an end and it staggered once. It was severely wounded and, while Zed wanted to rush it one more time, he was wary of its remaining limbs. Even in its current state, it still had the strength to send him flying with a single swing.
“Come on, then,” he goaded it. His breathing was coming easier now and the pain was growing numb. “Let’s end it.”
Another gunshot boomed through the air and he realized it was closer now, just behind the wall he was standing in front of. He tried to recreate the building in his mind as he faced off against the beast, to reconstruct it and decipher what laid behind the wall. He failed. The thoughts came, he saw the building from the front, but each time he tried to turn it, his attention wavered.
Not willing to risk his life more than he already was with the distraction, he abandoned the endeavor and took a step towards to the side. The beast scurried to the opposite side in response.
Good, he thought. It’s not willing to fight anymore.
If they could just go their separate ways, he could find clothes and be on his way. Where? He had no idea. Sadly, as much as he wanted to believe that, there was a part of him that told him an enemy that wasn’t put down today was an enemy that could put him down tomorrow. The brutality of the instinct shocked him momentarily as he found himself taking a step forward instead of another to the side.
The beast backed up two steps in response.
“Oliver!” someone shouted from somewhere behind the wall. The voice was so soft and effeminate it pulled Zed back to his memory, back to that soft smile that warmed his heart.
The idea of the voice in trouble made him turn. It was a mistake he should not have made. A mistake his opponent was determined not to let him make twice.
It scurried forward, closing the distance between them. The uneven beat of its limbs against the ground drew Zed back to the importance of his situation and he turned just in time to watch it slam into him.
They tumbled over each other, spilling out of the building as they broke through the wooden wall.
At some point Zed found his body tossed into the air after hitting the ground and he came down swinging the tomahawk. He felt resistance as he scored a blow against the monster before hitting the ground heavily, only to tumble amidst limbs and flowing blood then get raised into the air again.
Pain filled his thigh as he was lifted off the ground and he knew he’d been stabbed. Differentiating between injuries was beginning to get easier. He was beginning to recognize what it felt like to be stabbed and the difference between it and being cut or—as had been most of the case—being torn.
He ignored the pain to the soft touch of the air and raised the tomahawk over his head in both hands as he went back down.
When he crashed to the ground this time there was no tumble or turn, no toss or lift. He came down hard. Again, he scored a blow and the weapon lodged itself in his quarry.
Its limbs spread out, lifeless beside it, and it twitched once more. He dragged the weapon free and swung another vicious blow. “Why,” he swung again, “won’t,” again, “you,” again, “just die!”
Each strike sprayed him in more blood and the creature squealed horribly, twitching with each blow.
Until it wasn’t.
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* You have defeated [Arachnid blob (Beta, category 1].
* Bonus objective complete: Defeat [Mana beast] 1/1.
* You have received [Mana Beast core].
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He raised his weapon and swung down one final time. The creature didn’t even twitch.
“Arachnid blob, my ass,” he spat to the side, staggering away from it. “More like Nightmare blob. That thing’ll haunt my dreams for days.”
He pulled a long piece of bone, most likely from the creature, from his thigh with a yell and tossed it aside, then looked back at the thing.
He sucked in a deep breath and read the last part of the notification again. “Received mana beast core. Yeah, right. I don’t have anything, though, do I?” He held his arms out to his sides, tired, and the tomahawk dangled in his hand, bloody. “I’ve received nothing at all.”
The air was a soft touch on his skin that did little to pierce the armor of blood and gore that coated him. Luckily for him, the pain in his thigh was already dwindling and he could at least pretend to enjoy the air.
“Don’t move!”
Zed turned at the sound and was met with the sight of a short, hooded figure holding a shotgun aimed at him. His hands went up on instinct. The person was short, reminding him almost of a teenager, perhaps five feet and four inches—five inches if he was being generous.
He opened his mouth to say something, found nothing to say, and closed it back. He tasted blood and fought the urge to spit.
The person’s voice was soft and he recognized it as the one that had called out for Oliver a few moments ago. The one that had distracted him enough to bring him to this point.
He pressed his mouth in a thin line as fear for his life battled with still pumping adrenaline. He knew what guns could do—had seen enough of it in his pocket memory—and wasn’t ready to be on the receiving end of one. Worse, her shotgun barrel had been sawed off, so the impact was going to be worse. Dodging was not an option.
When she spoke again, her words left him confused.
“What’s your level?” she asked in an angry voice.