Chapter 12

How to make a monster

I stewed on those thoughts most of the way back to the tree house, but I eventually got over it. I picked up a rock at one point and threw it into the distance as hard as I could. It went pretty far, and that did help. It made me feel better. The little things, am I right?

The one thing that was kind of irksome was that the little T-rex guy's faces did kind of resemble a very large toad, which pissed me off even more. When we finally got to the tree house, I asked Beth and Janet if they wanted to dig up that gear we berried and store it in the bags of holding. We’d found that large items were more willed into the bags once you were holding them and would just kind of appear in your hand when called forth.

Janet groaned and said that she needed to relax and that we should just do it tomorrow. Beth just nodded and said tomorrow was fine with her, so I said fuck it, tomorrow worked for me, and we headed up into the tree house.

It was a night of drinking and fucking around, really. The highlight of the night was Janet so drunk that she took a kitchen knife and stabbed it between her fingers as fast as she could. She was actually amazing at it, like, it kind of blew my mind.

I was about to give it a go myself until she looked up at us drunkenly, amazed at her own skill, and cut her middle finger right off. She didn’t even notice.

At first, Janet and I had watched her slack-jawed, and I started laughing at her. She had been so proud of herself, like, Wow, I’m awesome look, then she cut her finger off. I was like, “Ooh, you cut your finger off, dam!!! Then being shit-faced, it took me a moment to realize what I’d just said.

my smile dropped, and my words registered with my ears. My eyes went wide, and then Janet let out an “Oh Shit!” And she put her hand over her mouth. It was hard to tell, but I think she was still laughing, and the hand over her mouth was just cuz she thought laughing might not be an appropriate response.

She managed to contain herself a bit, but then Beth looked up from where her finger was bleeding on the table, mouth a gape, and looked at us. For a second, it was almost like that moment right after a child falls. They hit the ground and don’t know whether to cry or be okay. In that moment, you can slightly influence the outcome if you act fast.

Well, it almost seemed like drunk Beth was living that moment right now. Out of know where and with perfect timing, Janet lost control of her laughter and started laughing her ass off. Beth blinked at her and then turned to me. I was just as bad as Janet.

I had been doing okay until Janet lost it, but when she did, I started laughing uncontrollably. Beth looked at Janet again and then back down at her finger, then back at me, still kind of dumbstruck. Then, out of nowhere, she just started laughing. She was belly laughing, too, which set me and Janet right off again.

That night, Janet and Beth passed out and snuggled up with each other. I stayed up on watch for a little while after the ladies knocked out. I just had a few more drinks by myself and practiced the night’s most enjoyable pass timecards.

We were a couple of shots in, and with our heightened constitution, it wasn’t doing much for us. I pulled out one of my decks of playing cards, and we all started playing Egyptian War. That went well and was fun for a while, then Janet lost all her cards and went out.

She got super pissed off and through her cards at the wall. We were about to yell at her for fucking up the game, then she just pointed at the wall, eyes sparkling with amazement. She said one word, “Look,” and we did.

There were like four cards stuck in the wall, and the amazement in her eyes turned dangerous. “Okay, rules: if your card doesn't stick in the wall after five throws, you drink a shot.” That’s all Janet had to say, and the game was on.

We had gotten really good at it really fast if I’m being totally honest, and now, as I sat there drunk off my ass, I could still stick a card in the wall nine times out of ten. It was super fun and, I guess, had a practical use in some sense.

I took that train of thought a bit further and picked up a knife off the table, and I remembered something about throwing knives I’d seen in a video once. I held the knife by the blade backward, sharp edge away from the target, and gave it a toss. It fucking stuck! When I walked over to pull it from the wall, it was stuck in deep, right up to the hilt.

I thought it was luck at first, but then I did it again five more times in a row, and holy shit, I was fucking good at this. I grabbed two more knives out of our kitchen supplies, and one two three, they went into the wall, and it wasn’t a loose grouping. The knives were lined up one after the other. I shocked myself. That shit kind of rocked me, and that was all. I did that till I saw the sun had started to rise. At that point, I just grabbed a blanket and passed out on the floor.

It was late the next morning before I woke up again, and there was a cold breakfast waiting for me, but hey, cold bacon is still bacon. Janet and Beth had already dug up the pit with the gear and stored it in the bags of holding.

They had even gone out and scavenged for a couple of hours, re-upped on our liquor stash, some food, and general necessities. That was awesome because scavenging was always a pain. It kinda of made me feel a little guilty. I pushed that shit down real fast, however, and just thanked them for going out.

If you thought about it, they were doing the new version of running errands. It’s just that running errands could get you killed nowadays. Added a whole new element to just going out for orange juice, be right back. If I’m not back in an hour, well, I died, so, okay, yep.

Kind of fucked up, but somehow, we were making it work. Janet was sitting throwing cards at the wall halfheartedly, and Beth was just tidying up around the tree house. I finished my cold breakfast, then walked over to Janet, pulled a knife out from a bag of holding on the table, and handed it to Janet.

“Try it with this,” I said. Janet had her arm cocked back, ready to throw another card, and she stopped and looked down at the knife in my hand. She looked back at me, then turned her body to face me. Her eyebrow rose, and she said,

“Really, you want me throwing knives in the house, Dad?” She started laughing but still grabbed the knife. Then, holding it by the handle, she just cocked back and threw it. It actually went in the wall up to the hilt. She kind of just sat there and stared at the knife.

Then she stood up and said, “Ooohhhhh yeah, bet you can’t do that, bet you! Wow, that was sick. We definitely should bet money on this, and hey, now we actually have real gold coins to bet with. Come on, let's go.”

I laughed at Janet's enthusiasm and pulled out four more knives, and one, two, three, four, they all went into the wall up to the hilt. She just looked at the knives in the wall of the tree house and then slowly turned to look at me.

“What the fuck? How? And that’s all she said, and then just stood their arms crossed. Then added some, hurry the fuck up bitch, to the whole look when she stated, tapping her foot. I looked at her for a second, taking in the full-body look of annoyance she was somehow pulling off. Then I just chuckled and explained what I’d done after the two had fallen asleep the night before.

When I was finished, Beth looked like she was thinking, and Janet said that she needed to catch up and retrieve the five knives stuck in the wall and get after it. Eventually, Beth let us know what she had been thinking about.

“I think we all need to think about things like this more. Like axe throwing, maybe, or at least some moving target training with the knives. We should start keeping a bunch of spare knives with us during our dives into the dungeon.

Hell, we have three bags of holding. We each should hold on to one, and then we can pull weapons out as needed. I’m thinking with our enhanced strength and dexterity now, we could probably one-shot some enemies if we got good enough.

That would be way safer for us, too. Easy XP.”

Beth finished speaking. Janet and I looked at each other, then back at Beth, and then we both kind of thought about what she had said for a little bit.

“Well, I really like it, and if it makes our encounters with monsters less dangerous, then I’m all for that,” I said.

“yeah, I like it, and throwing knives is just badass, and we're fucking great already. How much better can we get?”Janet chimed in. Well, it turned out a lot better. The rest of the day is basically just because of target practices. First, Beth led us outside. Then she brought out some paint and walked to a tree ten feet away from where she had left Janet and me and painted a circle on the tree.

Then she walked to a tree twenty feet away, and so on every ten feet or so till she was painting a tree that was about fifty feet away. After she was finished painting the tree she walked back and pulled out five knives.

“Okay, so I think the first thing we should do is see how far away we can hit a target,” Beth said.

“I like it. It's good to know our limits, and then we can push them further.” Janet said then with a slightly savage hint to her voice, then just grinned. The first hour was crazy. We were both worse and better than we thought we would be.

We could all hit ten feet easily, but at twenty feet, we started to lose accuracy. We could all hit the tree on every throw, but we were, on average, drifting about two feet to either side of Beth’s paint mark.

Thirty feet was funny. We would hit the tree almost every attempt, but we were all over the place, and at forty, we were missing four out of every five throws. That’s when we stopped. We didn’t have unlimited knives to waste.

We walked out and collected all the knives we could, and it seemed like we’d lost a bunch of them. Not great, we would have to get better fast, or we would be out of knives before too long. Then all this training would have to be put on hold, which would suck.

“So, all told, right now, we have about twenty-five knives left and about ten axes. The axes have short handles, so I think they’d probably make good throwing axes. How are we gonna do this?” I said to Janet and Beth.

Beth took a breath and then laid out a few next steps we could take. In her opinion, to get better at this, if we were really gonna do this, we had to take this seriously. We immediately agreed, and the next three days were filled with building targets, hanging ropes to swing said targets, and throwing knives over and over and over again.

We did not want to lose any more knives, so we took our time moving to farther targets, ensuring our accuracy didn’t stray too far off track. The moving targets are where we lost the most knives, but Beth set the moving targets up in a way so there was always somewhat of a backstop be hind it.

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At one point, we even dragged over some sheets of plywood and segments of fencing we’d salvaged to assist with the effort. When the three days were over. We had lost another seven knives and two axes, and I mean fuck, we got better, like a lot better.

Janet, Beth, and I could now hit a two-foot target at forty feet every time we tried with an axe or a knife. We also could hit a target moving at twenty feet with every attempt as well. We could hit targets while running, jumping, and falling. We tried as many different scenarios as we could think of.

Let me tell you I am one hundred percent certain that it was entirely due to the fact we had earned all those stat points in the dungeon we could do what we were doing. Janet had taken off the goblets, too while training.

She said that she’d rather learn with her limits un-boosted. She said she didn’t want to get a false sense of her true abilities, and I couldn’t argue with her logic. It was now about five o’clock, and we were back up in the tree house just relaxing. Me and Janet were fucking around while Beth was making some dinner.

“Okay, guys, chill with the knives. enough, dinners almost really set the table, and someone’s gotta pour me a shot, or I’ll show you a throwing knife. Janet and I had been taking turns throwing a playing card in the air, and the other person had to hit it with a knife, sticking it to the wall.

We stopped, though, at Beth’s words and got the table set. Then Janet poured Beth a fat short. We all ate dinner, got a little drunk, and then slipped off to the direct corners of the tree house.

Janet and Beth were each reading books. They had brought a small stack back from their scavenging a few days ago and had been all over them for the past couple of evenings. I pulled out a deck of cards I hadn’t let get fucked up yet and played some solitaire.

Beth was the first to pass out, and about ten minutes after that, Janet, who had still been reading, came over and sat on my lap. I was still playing solitaire, and I was kind of surprised she just came over and sat down, but yeah, that’s what she did.

Then she snuggled up, and we just sat there, Janet reading me and playing solitaire for another thirty minutes. At that point, Janet closed her book. She turned and put her hand on my cheek then we started kissing. That led to a good make-out section, then it was closed off, and Jane and I were making the two-back beast for the next hour.

When we were done cleaning up, I put my underwear back on and looked up at Janet just in time to see Janet was tugging my T-shirt over her head. When she finally got her head through the neck hole, she saw me looking at her and smiled.

“What?” She said, then walked over to me. I was shirtless and standing there in only my boxers. Janet brought her hand up and rested it on my chest. She leaned close and kissed me.

“Nothing, just, what’s Beth gonna say if she walks up and you’re sleeping in my shirt all snuggled up next to me? You don’t think she’s gonna start asking questions?” I asked her, smiling wickedly.

“Maybe I want that,” she said equally as wickedly, then she reached around and pinched my ass.

“Ow, hey. Watch it, girl.” I said as I smiled at her, then I leaned in and kissed her long and deep. After that, we just got to the bed. Janet lay next to Beth, and I hopped in next to Janet. When we were under the covers, and Janet had snuggled fully into me, one hand on my chest, one leg draped over mine, she whispered into my ear.

“You're a good guy, Travis, so don’t die on me, or ill fucking kill you. I know that we haven’t really talked about this. I don’t know if your activity avoiding the conversation, or it just hasn’t crossed your mind in the insanity of our new life…”

She stopped for a second, and I looked at her. Janet looked up at me with a questioning look on my face. She looked like she was thinking about how to say what she was thinking. After about ten seconds, she looked like she had decided there was no right way to do it, so she was just gonna go for it.

“So… well fuck, you don’t pull out. Like, we haven’t been using condoms, and when we have sex, you cum inside me. Well, shit, do I need to spell it out for you? I was still lost for a second then my eyes went wide as her face started reddening.

I sat up in the bed, “Janet, wait, Janet, are you saying you’re pregnant?” I said, looking down at her.

“Hey, keep your voice down. And wow. I take that as you not being happy about this. Cuz I could raise a child on my own. I’m a strong woman, Travis. I don’t need a man to raise my child, just another deadbeat dad.” Janet said, then started to roll over away from me with a sad look on her face.

I was freaking out, but I couldn’t let her know that. If she was really pregnant with my child, well fuck that was insane, but that’s what happens when you have sex. a lot of sex at that. Well, ok, I guess you do it, you got to deal with the outcome.

That thought process took me about two seconds, and then I grabbed Janet by the shoulders and turned her back to face me. I stared down at her, and then I leaned down and kissed her, deep and long. When we came up for air, I bent closer and whispered into Janet’s ear.

I will be there for you and our child, I will be there for you and if you want to get married or whatever the equivalent is now, I’ll be there. She put a hand on my chest and pushed me back up away from her a bit. Then she started, laughing quietly but intensely.

I was confused for a second. Then I realized that she had been fucking with me about being pregnant the whole time.

“Dam, your cold girl, you really had me for a second, but what are we gonna do if you do get pregnant? Not the best time to bring a kid into the world, if you ask me honestly.” Janet was still laughing but was starting to get herself under control.

“Well, it’s good to know you’ll be there for me and our child, Travis,” Janet said. Then she started laughing again. I just rolled and laid back on the mattress next to her. She leaned up on one elbow and looked down at me.

"Oh, don’t be like that. That was a good one. I fucking got you good,” Janet chuckled, then continued speaking. “ don’t worry about coming inside me and having a baby. The first time we had sex the next morning, when I woke up, I got a notification. When I checked, it said,

You are fertile and have met the prerequisites to become pregnant. Would you like to initiate this pregnancy? Proceed, yes/no.

The day I pick yes, I’ll let you know.” My eyes went a little wide at that, and Janet laughed at me. Then she put a hand on my chest.

“Don’t worry, or well, at least for now,” Janet said, then winked at me. I just let out a breath and then told Janet,

“I can’t take any more joking tonight. Let's go to bed.” Janet just laughed and then snuggled up close as we drifted off to sleep. The next morning, when I woke up. Beth and Janet were already making breakfast.

I looked at Janet and gave a thumbs-up when she caught my eye. Janet smiled and mouthed at me, we’re good. I smiled back at her, and while Beth’s back was turned, I blew Janet a kiss, and she caught it.

After we all had eaten and were just cleaning up, Janet posed a question. “So, back to the dungeon today?”

“I think so don’t want to push our luck and have the dungeon reset on us. I think we gotta go back and were as ready as we're gonna get with the throwing knives for now. We need to see how it plays in real combat.” I said.

Beth and Janet both agreed. So we made our way back to the dungeon, and fortunately, this time, we didn’t encounter any interruptions on our short trip there. Once we were inside, we all drank some mana-kissed water and walked back into the entry tunnel.

We got to the chamber with the four branching tunnels again, and there were no signs the dungeon had rest, but that was a real shot in the dark as the bodies from our first dive were gone. There wasn't a great sign.

“Okay, I think just to make sure the dungeon hasn’t reset, so I say we go back down tunnel two and see if there's still remnants of our fight or not. Then, if we find bodies will know that we’re good. At that point, we can just continue down the line with three, then four. Sound good?” I said, and Beth and Janet nodded.

We made our way cautiously down the tunnel until we came to the stairs where our fight had taken place, and yep, there were still bodies and blood all over the place. I relaxed a bit and started walking normally again instead of doing a slow, hunched walk, but I still talked in a hushed voice just to be cautious.

“So, looks like the dungeon hasn’t reset. So, that, at least, that’s a blessing. We don’t have to start this whole dam slog over again.” I said.

“That would have sucked,” Beth said. I had to agree with her maybe the XP would have been nice, but I just wanted to finish this dungeon once before we started a second run. We didn’t bother going on to the room where we found the chests. We knew what was down at the end of the hall, so we just turned around, heading back to the room with the adjoining tunnels.

We took the next tunnel just as planned, and it was a long straight tunnel that just went on and on for about twenty minutes until we encountered a small group of four Caprainki that actually seemed to be mining.

They all had pickaxes in hand. Two were actively mining when we attacked, and the other two had been on what might have been a short break, or maybe they were just slackers. Who knew?

We dispatched them easily enough, and Janet found a small bag on one of them, which turned out to be a bag of holding with a meager five slots. Considering they had three of the five slots filled to one hundred units with earth-infused iron ore, I was pretty happy with the hall.

They even had the fourth slot filled with forty-five until. All told, we just got three hundred and forty-five units of earth-infused iron ore. Whatever that was, honestly, the only thing I could compare it to was my elemental fire resistance. That would have to be a worry for future Travis.

Travis, at this moment, needed to take a walk back and try the next tunnel cuz this one ended in a dead end. He also needed to stop talking about himself in the third person. I definitely stopped that. Well, this is the last time. Travis is the best ever and super great. Okay, now I'm done. I swear.

We walked back and took the last tunnel this time. We had been walking for ten minutes, weaving and winding down the passageway when the atmosphere changed. At first, it started to get cold. Then, the air started to feel damp, and we all started smelling a truly horrible smell.

the smell was like old rotting garbage, and it was only getting more pungent the farther we walked. After another five minutes, we came to a staircase leading down into the dark. Torches still were methodically placed down the tunnel, but they were too dim to let use see more than fifteen feet down the stairs.

We all stopped at the top of the staircase and looked at one another. The smell was clearly coming from down the stairs case, and we all knew that meant trouble was down there.

“Fuck. Are we really going down there? Not gonna lie, this pace is getting creepy as shit.” Janet yelled-whispered at us.

“I mean fuck, yeah, this is getting sketchy as fuck, but it’s really the only way forward if we’re gonna clear the dungeon,” I said. Beth just nodded reluctantly. Janet just rolled her shoulders.

“I’ll go first. Come on, let’s get this over with,” I said, and I started down the stairs. Beth and Janet are following closely behind me. The stairs were long and steep, and that forced us to take our time so we didn’t slip. It seemed like that would be a long, painful fall, one I don't think any of us wanted to experience.

We made it to the bottom of the staircase after what seemed like forever, and all we found was a darker and damper hallway. The passageway we found ourselves in now had spider webs in the corners, and every once and a while, there would be small piles of what looked like shit near the walls of the tunnel that smelled awful.

It totally could have been actual shit. I hadn't seen a bathroom down here yet, at least. We continued down the tunnel until we saw light start to bleed into the tunnel from the entrance to a chamber about fifteen feet in front of us.

This time, however, we didn’t see any activity in the room, so we decided to proceed with caution into the chamber. As we got to the exit of the tunnel, we peeked into the room as decrepitly as we could.

There was some crazy shit going on in there. The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that there were little green men in what looked like lab coats moving about. They were running around what looked what you might think a mad scientist’s lab might look like.

The absolutely insane part was that the little green men were taking goats from a side room and leading them into a large glass chamber. They would then close what looked like an airlock. Then, they would fill the chamber with a dark, sickly greenish-black smoke.

We stayed and studded them, watching as the smoke filled the chamber. The chamber just sat full of smoke for at least a full minute. Then the smoke cleared, the airlock door opened, and out walked, and I mean on fucking two legs walked out a newly transformed group of Caprainki.

“Holy shit!” I whispered, and Janet just shook her head. I Beth say under her breath, “That’s crazy, to think that a Caprainki is really… this is all kinds of mad scientist weird.” I had to agree with her.

The newly born Caprainkis didn’t seem like they were fully there yet. They definitely seemed to be a bit disoriented after their, um, awakening? Yeah, I’m gonna go with Awakening.

“Okay, so what’s our move here? Like how the fuck are we gonna do this?” I asked Beth and Janet in a whisper. We backed into the hallway and talked it over for a few minutes. We ultimately went with a combination of both Janet's and my plan. “Okay, so like we discussed, Travis and I will try to creep into the room. The little guys seem pretty distracted with what they’re doing. We find cover, and we get some daggers ready to throw.

Once Beth gives the signal, we all take out the little green guys first. Then me and Travis charge the newborns while Beth cleans up the little green guys that are left. Everybody got it?” Janet finished.

Me and Beth both nodded in confirmation, and I added, “If they are pumping out Caprainkis, they probably have a staging room for them. You know, till they can gear them up and train them a little. We gotta find that room as well and take them out too,” Janet grimmest, and told us, “We’ll cross that Bridge when we got to it.” Janet and Beth weren’t worried, so I left it alone for now. After finalizing our plan, Janet and I entered the room and, in fact, did manage to make our way across the room and into different hiding spots less than twenty feet from the little green dudes.

We were on the opposite side of the room from the little green people. The tunnel opening was behind us, and the mad scientist setup was in front of us. We both looked back at Beth, and we watched her, ready for the signal to start our attack.