The sandstorm raged in front of me. I stuck a hand out into the outer part of the transition between zones, and I could feel the grains of sand striking my hand, hurting it. I could also feel it burning away at the maximum allowance I had for my Body stat.
The Body stat allowed me to create and nullify a certain amount of force. Normally this wasn’t too concerning, since I just used it to kick off the grounds or take the very rare physical attack to reduce the impact.
But this sand, would scrape my skin away if I wasn’t using my Body stat to cancel out the force of impacts. It would lower my maximum mobility. Then there was the sand itself for the terrain. Followed by the sand getting everywhere, which would be just as bad as swamp water. I would need goggles and a robe to even think about touching this zone.
If I set back right now, I could get past the darklands before nightfall, but I hesitated as my curiosity grew. I had defeated a tower, and I was no weakling cowering from the dark. There was a void zone to my Northwest where a level 5 zone should be. So, I kicked off the ground and stayed in the transition area and made my way East.
I could survive the knife skeletons at night, even with a powerup, I wasn’t that worried. I wanted to see if I could find another type of level 5 terrain. Sandstorm would be hard to beat as the worst of level 5 zones. The more I thought about it, it was just as bad of the jungle since there would be very little visibility and it would be impossible to see the light source in the sky to keep track of my location.
Everything else could be managed, but the visibility issue was the most concerning the more I thought about the terrain type. Why couldn’t there be nice grassy fields for level 5 zones, or cake? I really wanted a cake zone. Well two terrain types left, so there was still hope.
After going East across half a zone length, the jungle was there instead of the darklands. The sandstorm turned into desert with rolling hills of sand. The air was distorted and as I approached, I could feel the sheer waves of heat rolling off the desert.
At least the visibility was good. I could give it a poke and I had a clear path of retreat. I entered the desert and stayed alert for a level 5 monster. Damn, it was boiling hot. I felt like my body was cooking like a turkey in the oven. My mouth was dry, and the water seemed to be sucked out of my eyeballs. I wouldn’t be able to stay out here for long. I kept glancing behind me, to make sure I didn’t lose sight of the jungle or the darklands.
Visibility was much worse, since the air shimmered and distorted quite a bit. My danger sense grew. That was when I saw a glint of red approaching. I quickly dodged to the side. I could see a thick tendril of energy passing through where I had been standing. Following that tendril of energy, I saw it lead to a speck of red in the distance.
I quickly retreated, hoping to pull the monster, whatever it was, closer to the edge of the zone so I didn’t aggro multiple at once if possible. I dodged another tendril of energy from the red speck. It kept the same distance as I retreated to the edge of the zone. I entered the darklands, thankful for the much cooler air.
The monster kept the same distance, but it became more visible. A giant Bloody Eye. It had to be the size of a house floated over a landscape. Its pupil dilated and I dodged another tendril of energy. Whatever that energy was supposed to do, I knew it couldn’t be anything good. Well time to test myself against this level 5 monster.
I kicked off the ground. Air Burst. Air Burst. I dodged an attack mid-air as I quickly approached the Bloody Eye. Acid Shot x5. Acid Shot x5. I did a follow up attack, since that tended to work against monsters.
The first attack spread out around the Bloody Eye, not touching it. The follow up attack struck the massive eye. Danger! Air Burst. I dodged down towards the ground, but hundreds of red tendrils of energy shot off from the monster. They were weaker than the previous attacks. One of them hit my left shoulder.
“AHHH!” I screamed in pain, as I collapsed on the ground. I thought I had a high pain tolerance. Oh dammit! I could feel my energy twisting in the spot that had been struck. The Bloody Eye turned to dust dropping a crystal, but I was far more focused on what was happening with my energy.
It was twisting, and it took all my focus to resist and suppress whatever was happening. It was curse damage. The pain spiked again, and I tried to suppress and expel the foreign energy. I felt something shift under my skin, and then a sense of vertigo hit me.
I quickly freed my arm from my shirt and looked down at the side of my left shoulder. An eye had opened on my arm and was bleeding. It was about the size of a pencil, much smaller than a regular eye. What the hell! If this is what level 5 monsters did, no wonder the Astrologer got ideas. Oh hell no. Just nope. Absolutely not!
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Reaching out with my right hand, I took a deep breath. I then ripped out the small eye that had formed on my left shoulder. “AHHH!” The pain was immense. I through the bloody chunk of flesh to the ground and my arm bled and it lost a lot of strength.
No more tumor babies. Not from the Astrologer and definitely not from some giant floating eye monster. One hundred billion percent, absolutely not. Screw level 5 zones. They could go screw themselves without me. By the Almighty System, if one of those tendrils of energy hit my head, or the full powered tendril hit me. I shuddered at the thought.
My arm was bleeding, but I would live. It wasn’t squirting blood as if I had lost a limb. It was bleeding heavily, but the wound was relatively small. I retrieved the point crystal so I could confirm the amount. After that I kicked off the ground and chose to cut directly to the Southwest through the knife skeletons to save time since it was getting late.
I didn’t want to be in the darklands at night and I wanted to reach the boarder with the jungle at the very least to try and avoid any monsters. I used Acid Shot on the skeletons as I raced by, my mind focusing on the Bloody Eye and what it had done.
If other level 5 monsters were like that, I needed a lot more Aura to resist area of effect attacks and to work on my curse damage even more. At least with the eye removed, the energy had quickly leveled out and the curse damage all but disappeared. Only a small trace of it remained.
I could see out of the eye. It was blurry, but it was also hooked up to my pain centers as well. Donkey, you are no longer the worst level 5 monster in existence. That role has been officially replaced by the Bloody Eye.
No matter how much I wanted to stop thinking about the Bloody Eye and the fight, I just couldn’t. I had killed the monster and won, but that attack was beyond depraved. Curse damage had left a big shadow in my heart and after my most recent experience, that shadow had only grown.
I was definitely going to get armor or something to stop nonsense like that. “Almighty System, if you are listening, you lost Michael points,” I muttered. I had grown used to cussing out the Avatar when I was by myself, but since she was suffering eternal paperwork, I lightly cussed out the Almighty System instead.
Just in case it was actually listening, I didn’t want to get smote by an all powerful attack because I was too disrespectful. But seriously, cursed eyes?! If there was a skill that could do that to other people, it would be horrific. The only person who could survive such curse damage was myself, with all the stats and knowledge I had.
Anyone else would be stuck with a shoulder eye forever. It would entrench itself into their energy, and getting rid of it would not be simple. Anyone looking to poke level 5 monsters would need anti-curse training. Or we needed dedicated specialists to fix this type of damage. Or a warning.
Even I wasn’t callous enough to hide the true horror of level 5 zones from other people. That tendril had gone through my clothing. What if it had struck somewhere else? I could think of a lot worse places. What if it did something like tongue? I shuddered at the thought.
The sheer body horror I was experiencing brought up all my nightmares from the tower. I had been suppressing those memories as best as I could, but they were coming to the forefront right now. The sheer visceral fear I had of my body turning into some unrecognizable mess. Even the possibility of getting an eye on the back of my idea was thrown out the window.
I was not going to mess about with crazy bleeding eyeballs or my body like that. Someone else could be crazy enough to experiment with curse damage and then lose access to the store or become some sort of horror hiding in the darkness. New Empire rule, no mutants.
Absolutely zero mutants were going to be allowed. Maybe in time I might change my mind, but mutants were not going to happen under my watch. It was just too creepy and horrific. Still research needed to be done, and there were always a Karen or two coming with the arrivals.
Governors could send criminals to the capital for research purposes. It was basically expected they each send one person from each arrival for human testing. Curse damage and fixing it would have to be research focus. Or blocking curse damage with equipment.
Whatever set of armor and equipment I eventually got, it had to stop curse damage above all else. No more tumors, eyes, or any other weird crap getting shoved into my body. I didn’t like drugs and had avoided taking crystal powder. I wasn’t about to start with curse damage. All of it was getting out of me as soon as possible.
I finally calmed down as I reached the border between this zone and the one to the West. I could see the jungle go directly South. I was going to hide in my capital city inside my anti-curse room and not come out, until every issue was purged from my body.
What a freaking nightmare. At least it was finally over, the monster was dead. The damage wasn’t that serious and fixable. I was still waiting for a cake monster. Couldn’t it have transformed my shoulder into cake? Now that would be a good way to get some emergency rations outside of the city. Curse someone into being cake and eat them.
I chuckled at the horrible thought, but it did break my dark mood. It was getting dark, but I would soon be out of this transition area between level 4 zones. I should reach camp around midnight. I had been so sure of myself after the heist that I could handle level 5 monsters. I was such an idiot thinking something like that. At least the lesson wasn’t too bad, even if it was incredibly painful.
The darklands to my right turned pitch black as the light source disappeared completely over the horizon. Another headache. Honestly, everything above level 3 was exhausting to deal with. Getting people grinding level 4 zones would also be a long-term headache. Well, more knowledge was never a bad thing and time was on my side as far as I could tell.