Rumor, gossip, and outright lies. Our so-called competitors are nothing but squabbling, envious children telling tall tales of the big bad Ad Astra corporation simply because they are unable to keep up with our level of progress.
Our corporate worlds are developing faster than our most optimistic estimates. Those who disparage us know that we require cutting-edge transportation to meet our business needs, as soon as possible. As such, they will say anything - any nasty untruth, any wicked deception - to slow us down in both the galactic courts and in the eye of public opinion.
So no, gentlebeings of the media, I personally guarantee that Ad Astra has not, is not, and never will cut corners in regard to vital safety infrastructure. Any rumors you’ve had whispered in your direction that Ad Astra are utilizing dangerously untested experimental hybridized life support and power systems aboard our new flagship vessel are completely baseless.
We are, after all, a People Almost First (™) company.
-Chairwoman Nina Ellory, Ad Astra Space Shipping, Passenger, Mining, Acquisitions, Exploration and Exploitation Corporation.
It took a few seconds for things to more nearly slot into place in Alex’s mind to process. There was a moment - fractional, to be sure, but it was there - that his brain protested at the sheer immensity of everything he’d had to deal with thus far.
There was a train. In space. Alex had an impossible task ahead. There were fantasy creatures such as orcs and elves and goblins. In space. Walking plant monsters battled jeweled crabs. Dungeons. A tree sucking the life out of people. Entropy as a manifested type of negative energy. Magic. Swords and spears and sickles. On a train in space. The fuck was Alex supposed to do with this? There was a vine attached to a goblin’s chest-
A breath. Two. Okay. Alex opened his eyes without realizing that he’d even closed them. The scene hadn’t changed, but Alex had. He kneeled down and looked closer at the - holyshitthere’saVINEinhischest!! - prone figure. There were two many unknowns. That had been the case ever since his arrival in this mad place less than an Ad Astra day ago.
So let’s find things out.
Alex’s skill use had been very generalized thus far. Even his most-used skill, [Evaluate] had been utilized like slapping a flowerpot with a pillow - a very general and wide-focused strike. Nobody had told him otherwise, but surely if a thing is made up of other things, you should be able to examine specific parts of that thing, right?
With a frown, Alex concentrated hard, trying to ignore the ick factor as he glared at the thing attached to the chest of the goblin. He wanted to know about that part. Just that part. I want to [Evaluate]-
>Evaluation of Creeper Umbilicus: Sickly. Poor outward flow. Poor inward flow. Entropic decay. Chlorosynthesis delivery stagnated due to poor genetic transition. Suggested repair: Increase power. Remove entropic decay.
Chloro…synthesis? Genetic transition? Alex’s frown deepened. Outward flow, inward flow…it’s not just taking his life, it’s replacing it with something. Something from the tree?
>Evaluation of Feeder Creeper: sickly. Multiple partial blockages. Entropic decay. Poor outward flow. Poor inward flow. Suggested repair: Remove blockages. Remove entropic decay.
“Guys, it’s not just draining his life. It’s putting something into him as well.” Alex said aloud, explaining what he’d discovered so far. Patina leaned over the goblin’s chest, as if peering more closely at the thing would help her understand.
“Something else like what?”
“Good question. We need to figure it out.”
“We need to be careful what we do next, “ Step said softly. The other two glanced where she was pointing. The battle was getting more frenzied - chloromunculi continued to push toward the dungeon entrance, battling against waves of jeweled crabs that spilled from the hole in reality. “The plant monsters are slower, but stronger. The crabs are more numerous and quicker. They seem focused on each other, but it’s only a matter of time before one side or the other realize that we’re here and we have another fight to run away from.”
“What’s the point of all this?” Alex muttered to himself. “The dungeon is broken - how? And what does that really mean? The tree is attacking it - why? Everyone is linked to the tree, fueling it but also being given…something from it?”
“Alex?” Patina nudged the man.
“One second. There was something…” Alex pushed his mind against it. It had to make sense somehow. Whether this was an event or not, no matter how weird things were, there had to be some sort of sense to it. His eyes traveled over the scene, taking it all in.
>Skill Received: [Holistic Rebuild]
>[Holistic Rebuild] - Rank 1 (0/100) (Uncommon) (Active/Passive Skill)
>This is a [Mender] path skill.
>Active Time: 15 minutes.
>Cooldown Time: 17 hours.
>Well, you’re no Dirk Gently, but you’ve definitely developed a feel for how things affect other things. Everything is interconnected on innumerable levels - Syntropy is awesome like that, and now you’ve got a taste of it in [Holistic Rebuild]. Or, at least, a glimmer of understanding, when it comes to how shit works.
>Tinkers, engineers, doctors, even programmers have a habit of stringing all sorts of little things into their work that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to the layperson and, sometimes, even to themselves. Whether by inspiration, experience, or just sudden whimsy at the end of the day, seemingly random bullshit just seems to somehow make things work better (or at all) when it shouldn’t.
>The interconnectedness of things is real, and powerful. Nothing exists alone. No matter how esoteric a system is, you’re able to peer into it and get a basic understanding of not only what it’s doing, but how it’s doing it and maybe even why.
>And then you can fix it.
>Active skill: Visual aids provided.
>Passive skill: Intuitive suggestions and understanding.
>Shit, Alex, I don’t even know. [Mender] seems to pull its skills out of its ass. Just a heads up, you probably have two or three more of these spontaneously generated skills left to manifest before the rest is down to hard work and leveling-
>ALERT: Your Interface Liaison has been penalized 1000 path points for continual messaging infractions.
Ouch. Sorry Peri, you gotta stop doing that. But…holism? That’s a skill now?
Not only was the use of a holistic outlook a thing, but was also very strange in how it manifested in Alex’s vision as he took in the system involving the tree, the dungeon, and everything around both. It all started to make sense; A demented, skewed sort of sense, but it was there. Everything was connected in some way. Some of those connections were supposed to be there and, more importantly, some of them were not.
Alex saw a golden glow around the parts of the system that were meant to be working together - the tree, the dungeon entrance, a ring of low shrub-like mounds that surrounded the tree a hundred or so feet out, and some of the vines - not all of them - were visualized as part of the system.
The many hundreds of forearm-thick vines that were connected to the people here had a red haze about them, a sense of wrongness to their existence. The thick attacking vines that held open the dungeon entrance had the same red/wrong aura, as did all of the chloromunculi. The crabs, oddly, were golden, and the unconscious thousands of people had no color at all.
And, to cap it off, the overwhelming feeling from the whole setup was not one of combat or destruction, but one of life and growth. From the dungeon, the tree, and the shrubs, though the system definitely felt broken, Alex felt that it was meant to all work together to provide something - something for the train - that was important for life.
The red/wrong parts needed to be excised.
“Oh, ” Alex said. “Got it.”
“Got it? Got what?” Patina asked.
“I sort of know what’s going on and, more importantly, I think I have a plan. We need to get down there.” Alex pointed, using his finger to circle the air where the low bushes sat ringing the tree.
“Down there? But-” Patina gestured to the goblin laying on the stone. Alex nodded, and looked again at the holistic connectedness of things. Everything was connected, but the people weren’t supposed to be.
“I know. We’re going to disconnect them, but we can’t run around hitting one at a time.”
“What’s your plan, sir?” Step asked.
“We split up, “ Alex grinned, though it was forced. He felt terrified inside. “And it all starts with a brave, talented, and most of all agile mousekin going down there and distracting the hell out of everyone.”
“What?” Step looked at Alex, startled. “You want me to fight them alone? I mean, not that you were fighting last time, but still!”
“I don’t want you to fight. Just distract them and keep their attention from what we’re going to do.” Alex pointed at Patina. “Can you do that?”
*
The plan was both simple and insane. Alex was okay with that - nothing had been completely straightforward about his time on the train thus far, so there was no reason to expect this to be either.
Alex allowed a total of two minutes for Patina and Step to voice their many, many objections once he went into further detail about the plan, and then cut them off with a gentle suggestion that since the goblin called him ‘boss’ and Step was referring to him as ‘sir’, if they didn’t have a better plan right now then moving forward with his was better than standing around talking ineffectually.
That was why Step found herself creeping around the battlefield chaos. Getting to where the dungeon entrance hung in the air wasn’t terribly hard given her skillset. [Hiding], [Sneaking], [Quiet Steps] - these were all selections she’d made along her path, and spotting the [Rogue] in her work would have been difficult even if there hadn’t been a fight going on.
Her part of the plan was, according to Alex, the easy one. Get close to the dungeon entrance, make a hell of a lot of noise, and then run around like crazy keeping everyone’s attention on her.
Step was somewhat fuzzy on the understanding of exactly how this would help Alex with his part of the plan, but when the mousekin had asked he’d rattled off something about bringing ‘all the parts to a harmonious whole’ which said a lot about the human’s current mental state.
Still, Step was glad that some sort of decision had been made. The mousekin wasn’t a natural leader and though she could be quite autonomous in her duties she still preferred someone to lead - if for no other reason than to take the fall when things inevitably fell apart.
With stealth, Step was able to make her way to her target position with little fanfare. Only twice did she have to stop in place to allow a shambling chloromunculus to pass, both of which were heading as fast as they were able toward the dungeon entrance. She followed along behind, careful and quiet as her feet pressed down on the soft moss with no sound.
Soon enough she arrived, and Step looked at the dungeon entrance with curiosity. When she’d first been selected to enter the dungeon, the entrance had been hidden away inside a locked room labeled “9997 Auxiliary Power Station” which, Overseer Vod had explained, was nothing to worry about.
That first day of stepping into what was essentially another dimension attached to reality had been an insane and frightening experience. The entrance had been a narrow slit in the universe that the chosen few had to pass through in single file. Now the vines choked up a large part of the entrance, but the cut in reality itself was much wider than it had been - the thick vegetation literally tearing it further open.
Alex had been vague, his eyes taking on a strange golden glimmer, but he’d been adamant that Step didn’t need to fight; Just a distraction? She could do that. Step took one more look at the crabs and plant monsters, lumpy pools of dark and rotting vegetation mixed with the crushed remains of jeweled carapaces littering the moss-covered stone, and took a steeled herself.
It was said that centuries ago the battle cry of the mousekin tribes would strike great fear in the bladders of their foes; Something about the pitch made people need to pee, apparently. Step wasn’t sure about the biology of the crabs or the chloromunculi - she was a carriage girl all of her life before starting to dive the dungeon, and creatures like these weren’t part of growing up on a space train normally - however the cry should at the very least get everyone’s attention.
Whiskers twitching, Step took a deep breath in and channeled the warrior’s call of her ancestors. Or, at least, a reasonable approximation considering the mousekin tribes hadn’t existed for many centuries and all she had to go on were the stories her parents had told her as a child.
As the battle cry echoed across the battlefield, the tree shivered, and Step felt the heavy weight of attention settling upon her furry shoulders. Then, hoping that Alex’s stupid plan was going to work, she started to run.
*
Some years back, there had been a snippet of a video that had been making the rounds on the Internet. Alex remembered being delighted by it and had searched for the source. National Geographic had done a piece on the grasshopper mouse as part of one of their nocturnal creatures documentaries.
Not only a ferocious little brawler, the grasshopper mouse had a habit of declaring its territory by howling like a tiny wolf; A thin, eerie cry that Alex had thought was so adorable he could die.
The sound that came from near the dungeon entrance was just like that, only much louder and containing a level of I Will Fuck You Up threat to it that curled in Alex’s lower abdomen. Crabs and plant monsters alike froze in place for a moment, and then both sides of the combat moved as fast as they were able in the direction of the sound.
“Okay, “ Alex turned to Patina, “My turn to- Hey! Are you okay?”
The little goblin clutched at her ears, pain written all over her face. Patina gritted her teeth and shook her head quickly. “That was fucking loud.” she said with more volume than was needed, “What did you say?”
“I’m off, “ Alex pointed toward the tree, “Wait until you see my signal.”
“I still think I should be the one to ah bilge, he’s gone.”
Alex had slipped off the edge of the stone tier to avoid the argument, and moved as quickly as he was able. The stone was springy with moss and damp enough that he had to be mindful of his footfalls, but Alex concentrated on getting down the strange stone construction. Falling and rolling down multiple stone tiers that had five-foot drops between them would not have been ideal.
The whole construction was weird to Alex. With the way things had been made, it was evident that no normal person would be using this space - there were no steps for people to use (and, his mind pointed out in a random pop-up thought, no safety rails) and the entire place was starting to remind Alex more of an open-faced pit mine than a colosseum.
Descending, Alex had to grip some of the thicker vines, cringing slightly as they occasionally shifted a little under his gloves before he’d even put any weight on them. Red/wrong haze still permeated his vision when he looked at these growths, and Alex recalled that the skill had a time limit when used in an active way.
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The concept that everything was connected in harmony and balance wasn’t a new idea to Alex, but the prolonged gift of insight he’d been given by this new weird passive skill was highlighting the things that belonged to a particular system, and those that were definitely not part of the harmonious whole. There wasn’t time to do anything about it now, but there had been some red/wrong haze within his goblin companion as well - just a little, but it was there.
It’s nothing to do with the tree-dungeon system, but something to deal with later.
Still half distracted with thought, Alex stumbled over the legs of a prone orc woman and almost fell. He called out an unnecessary apology to the unresponsive figure as he kept moving. The closer he came to the tree, the more his [Holistic Rebuild] was suggesting certain levels of wrongness that existed.
The tree is too large - way, way too large. It shouldn’t be a tree at all, his mind processed the half-visual and half-intuitive suggestions from his skill. It’s being given too much food. When the dungeon broke or overloaded or whatever, it must have pushed too much energy into the tree which it couldn’t disburse quickly enough. It was all just whispers in Alex’s head, but Alex felt that because the entropic energy had no other place to go it had caused the tree to experience a massive amount of growth that was corrupted or twisted by the entropy that it was forced to channel.
And much like any plant that gets overfed or overwatered, it was being killed by the process. This, [Holistic Rebuild] suggested, would be very bad for everyone.
Alex hit the lowest tier, a flat surface that served as the main battlefield between the tree and the dungeon. He looked up and saw Patina’s tiny figure high above. How am I this deep? Is the train seriously this tall? Or is it part of the whole dungeon reality-twisting thing?
There were no monsters in Alex’s immediate area thanks to Step. Alex’s way forward was clear despite the dungeon continuing to spit out jeweled crabs in groups. Fewer in number, the tree’s defensive guardians were made with…what? Chlorosynthesis? For a brief second Alex thought that the people were being turned into the plant monsters, but there was no flesh and blood inside the creatures when Step and Patina had been attacking them earlier.
Chlorosynthesis. That part still evaded Alex’s understanding, but he’d have to worry about it later. The why of it was on the horizon, far enough away that the immediate concern was to stop whatever the process was whilst at the same time cutting off what was apparently a secondary fuel source for the tree.
A chloromunculus spawned. Alex flinched as he saw it happen whilst he was looking in the direction of the tree. The act of creation was almost instantaneous; A split appeared in the trunk of the Dendrian Sapling - a weird name, considering the size of the tree - and a plant monster stumbled out of it. The tree sealed back up afterward, and the chloromunculus staggered away.
A quick look in its chosen direction was enough to see Step dancing ahead of a larger group of monsters - crabs and plants alike - that chased her. The mousekin’s expression was hard to make out from this distance, but Alex liked to think that she was doing okay.
The system needs to be balanced, he felt his skill urging him on. Starting THERE.
The ‘there’ in question was the closest shrub-like mound. The closer Alex got, the less natural it looked; instead of simply being a plant instead it was a strange fusion of plantlife and technology. Buried under the clusters of vines and thick, dark foliage was a construction of shaped metal and plastic. Panting with the exertion of reaching the thing, Alex fired off an [Evaluate] whilst catching his breath.
>Evaluation of Distribution Node #7: Malfunctioning. Forcefully rerouted. Entropic decay. Multiple blockages. Incorrect flow routing. Suggested Repair: Remove entropic decay. Remove blockages. Reroute flow to original purpose.
The original purpose did not include roughly three thousand people being drained of life to fuel it. Alex carefully pushed through the leaves and encasing vines with his fingers and saw an open access panel on the node. The plants had grown into the circuitry, fusing with it in ways that he couldn’t understand. He didn’t need to though - all Alex needed to do was start cutting.
Alex took a moment to look up and away to where Patina still stood, clutching her spear like it was a life preserver. A golden glimmer settled on the little goblin, but Alex was vaguely interested to see that the spear was red/wrong in his vision. Not that it mattered right now. The [Mender] raised his hand in the air and waved it at the goblin, who waved back with her spear.
Having signaled readiness, Alex turned his attention back to the vine-covered node, and more specifically to the hundreds of feeder creepers clustered all over it that stretched out to people in roughly Patina’s direction. It was hard to decipher which one exactly led to the prone goblin Patina stood near, but Alex made a guess, held his little sickle tightly, and began to cut.
The first slice sprayed dark fluid in the air, and the vines began to shake.
*
Patina was angry. And scared. And worried. And frustrated. Still, the bulk of the emotion contained within the little goblin was anger. She was stuck up here watching as Alex awkwardly made his wan down toward the tree. The human was putting himself in danger, and Patina had to just…stay. Idleness had never been a part of Patina’s makeup, even when avoiding the cleaning tasks she’d been assigned to do her own thing.
And Alex is doing something to help people. I’m not, she grumbled inwardly. That would change though, she knew, and Patina would become incredibly busy if Alex’s theory played out correctly. She had no idea how he suddenly just knew stuff about what was going on, but she could admit that she didn’t have any better idea of what to do, and if Alex was correct…
…they were going to save a lot of lives. And that was something that appealed to her soul. Even if she had to be left behind up here in order to do it - once the people started to wake up - again, if Alex’s suddenly random confidence was correct - a familiar(ish) face would be helpful to them.
Patina couldn’t even see Step. That damned [Rogue] was stealing all the limelight by being so very capable and agile and talented. Patina told herself she didn’t feel envious that she was a [Cleaner] whilst the mousekin had a much more exciting path to follow - one of the rare few in the carriage - no, there was no envy there, she was quite adamant about that.
The little goblin just really, really wanted to be the one doing awesome stuff like fighting monsters and being a hero. Not that the mousekin was actually fighting. She was apparently just running around and pulling the attention of the monsters away from-oh!
Patina waved with her spear as she noticed Alex was in position and signaling her. Down below, Alex cut one of the feeder creepers at its source. The effect was fast; The creeper immediately began to wither, starting at the cut end. The withering plant turned to dark sludge that spattered on the ground as it traveled up to-
“Bilge!” Patina leapt down one tier and made a mad dash to another goblin just as the connected part of the creeper dissolved into dark ooze. Patina didn’t recognize this one, but he immediately shot up to a sitting position screaming as he clutched at his chest.
Patina slid on her knees to reach the screaming goblin. Breathlessly she started to speak in what she hoped were soothing tones. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. Please stop screaming. You’re okay!”
“I…free? What?” the goblin stammered in confusion once he’d stopped panicking. He looked down at his chest where blood was trickling from a small wound, and then up at Patina with the wide eyes of their species. “What happened? Where are we?”
“Dungeon break. Altered reality. Long story, “ Patina said quickly. “I’m Patina - a [Cleaner]. Everything’s gonna be okay. I’m going to get everyone out of here.”
>A Promise Has Been Witnessed.
Fucking WHAT?
Patina blinked quickly, confused by the message that had appeared in her Interface. The goblin frowned, and looked around again. His face twisted as he saw the prone forms of people with whom he had lived and worked among for years all unconscious under the eldritch ministrations of the vines.
“Right, “ he said firmly, “Help me up. Genjaro Mays. [Cleaner] also. I can help.”
Patina took Genjaro’s hand and felt the slick sensation of blood from where he’d been clutching his chest. The other goblin chuckled.
“That’s going to need a good clean. Lucky for us, eh?”
Patina hauled Genjaro to his feet, the other goblin wincing in pain as his body adjusted to being upright again. He swayed for a moment, and Patina frowned.
“You okay?”
“Better than.” the other goblin let out a deep breath. “Actually, I feel fairly great.”
“Good, because my boss is waiting for me to let him know he can keep going.” Patina stood, and began to wave her spear down at Alex, signaling that the person he’d cut free from the tree’s strange machinations was as fine as could be. Alex mirrored the gesture, and began to cut other creepers in earnest.
“Vod’s here?” Genjaro frowned, absently scratching his armpit. He felt a lump there, and prodded at it. It wasn’t painful.
“No. Even longer story.” Patina said. As she spoke, another creeper began to wither, raining down dark sludge as it dissolved. And then another. Both of them were in opposite directions, one up a tier and one down. “You go down, I’ll go up. Make sure they’re not going to-”
Someone began to scream, and Patina winced. With a quick mutual nod, the two [Cleaners] got to work. Things very quickly became far too busy for the little goblin to worry about heroic battles.
She had people to take care of.
*
Alex knew that he was putting a lot of pressure on Patina - even more so than he had with Step. The mousekin was skilled for the type of thing she was doing. Even with her heart set on being more than what she was, Patina was a [Cleaner], and didn’t have much in the way of path skills to help her with this.
Not that Alex cared much for the whole “stay in your lane” path system to begin with; It was frankly absurd that people here didn’t try to branch out and learn more than what their path gave them. Whatever the reason was, it didn’t matter right now because the little goblin was the best suited out of the three for staying up high and out of trouble.
With she’d given a specific wave of her spear - the one he’d quickly designated as “Alive and good enough” rather than “Alive and needing urgent attention” or “dead” - he began to cut additional creepers as quickly as he could.
From what he was gleaning with this strange sense of holistic insight, the tree was losing the fight with the dungeon that it was trying to drain and the only thing keeping it in the fight was the additional resources it was siphoning from the people linked to it. He needed to deprive it of as many nutrients as possible, as well as halt whatever the hell chlorosynthesis was. It didn’t sound beneficial to the survival of the residents of the former cargo bay.
The sickle flashed as he grabbed feeder creepers, slicing downward close to the node. It wasn’t a difficult task - the sickle was quite sharp, and despite being a city boy Alex had used a sickle before. Once, anyway.
For one incredibly early morning in the Napa Valley where he’d been staying overnight at a friend’s vineyard, Alex had been enlisted to help harvest grapes. There was no special event or issue to deal with, it was just one of those learning experiences that seemed to pop up from time to time, and so Alex had been shown how to use a sickle on the grape vines.
In all honesty, he hadn’t been great at it, but since the grapes didn’t actively fight back they weren’t exactly an issue to cut away with the sharply curved blade. This was quite close to that experience, apart from the dark sludge building up around his boots and the increasingly violent shuddering from the thicker vine which connected the node to the tree.
Alex felt as though his time doing this was limited, and that Step’s distraction would only keep up for so long as the tree didn’t fully notice what was going on. So he cut, and cut, and cut again, ignoring the ache in his shoulders and the rotten vegetable smell of the dark fluid. There were hundreds of creepers on this one node, and ten more nodes still needing his attention…
*
Progression was very much like an avalanche. The fact that the people in stasis woke up immediately once the feeder creeper had been disconnected, and the high level of pure vitality they felt upon waking meant that Patina could quickly direct them to assist others as Alex released more and more Ad Astra employees. Though Patina wanted so badly to be down in the thick of things, she also felt as though she was accomplishing something good here in helping to get people moving.
Where they would all go was a question for near-future Patina to worry about. For now, this was good.
With a roar, one of the victims surged to their feet the moment her vine was removed, snarling and grasping at the poor goblin who had been closest to her. A minotaur woman, lacking the usual horns of her kind but definitely not lacking in muscle, bellowed in rage and confusion until Patina had run over to explain what was going on.
Explaining to people that they were stuck in the wake of a dungeon break - something most of them had only ever heard of in stories - took too long, but she tried to say a few words of encouragement to as many people as she could. Explaining why they shouldn’t just charge toward the tree below or, more sensibly, flee toward the closest blast door and try to batter it open somehow, was harder. For those with demands about the strange, painless lumps beneath their armpit or on their neck she had no answers at all.
She felt like she was being pulled in all directions. There were so many now, some quietly sobbing, others stumbling about, and more asking for help or even begging to assist. Patina gritted her teeth at the chaos but kept moving. There were still so many left to save.
*
Step knew when Alex had done enough to get the tree’s attention. It had been exhausting to keep the interest of the slower-moving chloromunculi whilst staying ahead of the faster jeweled crabs, especially as both sides were just as easily distracted by each other. Still, she’d been mostly succeeding up until the point that suddenly she wasn’t.
The crabs still gave chase for the most part, but the chloromunculi had peeled away from the chase in order to shamble toward where Alex worked. The human had cut away close to two thirds of the creepers from the strange shrub-like growth, and that was apparently enough for whatever passed for the intellect of the tree to assess Alex as a threat.
Squeaking a curse, the mousekin raced along quickly to head them off.
“Sir! Look out!” she cried, seeing that she wasn’t quite going to make it to Alex in time.
Alex was slow to react - Step had noticed that several times now. Instant reaction to sudden surprises was not one of the human’s strengths, and so he was unable to get out of the way as a plant creature rammed into him. It didn’t even bother to use its arms, simply using its bulk to batter him away.
>HP: 3/20
Alex’s Interface flashed. It wasn’t really health, despite the letters standing for Health Points. He’d been told that. The HP label applied to some sort of aura or shield that kept a person from taking true damage. Still, that protection was very nearly gone and Alex scrambled back as best he could to avoid the plant monster’s next strike.
Step sped past, her sickles slicing a deep gash in the plant monster’s side that was threatening enough to turn its attention back to her. The mousekin danced away quickly, tail flicking in the air as she moved.
“Th-thanks!” Alex called, but the [Rogue] was busy trying to collect more chloromunculi to respond. Some crabs reached Alex, but he was able to get back to his feet again and avoid them. More plant monsters were approaching, and Alex was forced to abandon the node he’d been working on and move to the next, leaving some of the feeder creepers still attached.
*
He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up. After a new pair of chloromunculi, freshly created and still staggering as they got used to their legs, emerged from the trunk of the tree to converge upon Alex, he was pushed to the next node along. Then the next, after cutting away what creepers he could. He was leaving more and more behind, and hoped that circling around he could get back to them again, but two things were making that more difficult.
Alex was tired. His body ached, and his breath came in short ragged gasps. Sustained activity wasn’t abnormal for Alex, but this was far beyond normal. The tree must have been getting desperate now, because all of the plant monsters were converging upon Alex, practically ignoring the crabs that still bit and snipped at them.
The moment Alex knew that he was definitely in trouble was when the vines became animated. He’d known it was possible - Alex had been attacked by a vine right at the beginning of their exploration of this place - but seeing several thick tendrils rearing up and writhing like snakes was cause for grave concern. The vines were fast.
Fuck! Fuck! Fucking fuckity fuck! Alex’s thoughts raced as he ran, dodging as best he could. The vines shot at him with the intent to stab, to pierce, to do to him what they’d done to thousands of other bodies already. Alex felt so very close to panic that he almost dropped his sickle as he ran.
Still attempting to do what he could, Alex circled around and cut a feeder or two from a node before running again, narrowly avoiding the heavy strikes from the ones that pursued him. He had to keep going, despite it being unsustainable, because out of the corners of his eyes he could see a beehive of activity up on the stone tiers as more and more people were moving; Released from their stasis the denizens of carriage 9997 helped each other, awkward and jerky in their movements.
The burn in Alex’s legs and lungs was too much. More than that, the nodes were becoming inaccessible - learning his movements, the tree had directed its spawn to guard the nodes instead of chasing him. Jeweled crabs glimmered as they attacked, even reaching the tree itself in their assault.
What can I-
All thought was interrupted with pain. Actual, real pain; a feeder creeper took advantage of Alex’s rather predictable movements and managed to pierce the [Mender] in the calf. He cried out in startled pain, and found himself hitting the ground hard.
>HP: 0/20. You are now taking true damage.
SHIT!
The sudden panic was immediately replaced with a sense of relaxation and calm. It wasn’t Alex’s [Unflappable] doing the work this time. Alex felt a cool sense of serenity flowing up through his veins; this serenity came with suggestions to stop, to lay down, to sleep…
“Alex! Sir!” Step noticed Alex stumble and fall, but she was unable to reach him as more feeder creepers became active, targeting the mousekin. Between dodging those and the crabs, Step was thwarted in her attempts to assist the fallen human.
Sleep. Relax. Just stop.
Alex tried to fight, to resist the powerful suggestion, but he failed. With fluttering eyelids Alex’s head rested on the moss that seemed so much more comfortable than it should be. He had to cut the feeder creeper away, he knew that. It was sedating him, just like it had the others. But his arms and legs couldn’t move, and wouldn't respond to Alex’s increasingly confused mental commands. All he was able to access in this state were his skills.
Skills… Alex struggled to focus, concentrating as best he could on the feeder creeper attached to his leg. Another was slithering close, aiming for his chest but that didn’t matter. Alex desperately thought as hard as he could, with one still-active concept in his mind.
Everything is connected. [Repurpose!]
Alex felt his skill flowing out through the feeder creeper attached to him. He then felt something on the other end of the connection start to fight back.