POV Jacob
So it turns out mystical crystals extracted from the corpse of an oversized centipede created by insane Gods tastes surprisingly bitter and have a gooey centre that fizzles in my mouth. Oh, and it makes my body freeze up as energy floods into every fibre of being before quickly dispersing again, leaving me breathless as I sag against the stone wall, panting heavily.
“Was that…” I start but quickly stop as I vomit a mouthful of liquid stone, monster flesh and crystals onto my lap as my body seizes up again.
“Ewww.” I hear Ella retch from the display as she backs up away from me. Luckily Ava washes me off with water and a spray of soap, soaking my already damp form.
“You alright?” Asks Noah while Mia just comments that nothing changed for the army group. I just give a brief thumbs up, waiting for Ella to come back and run a diagnostic on my body.
‘The energy is a good sign? Didn't feel like I kept much of it though.” I clench my fist trying to determine if the energy did anything to my body like I theorised. After getting confirmation that I wasn't going to explode or anything after eating the crystal from Ella I proceeded to grimace and pop another one into my mouth. However, this time I sat away from my friends and angled my head away from my body so when I threw up it just went onto the cold grey stone floor.
‘This fucking sucks.’ I retched even before popping the third crystal into my mouth and clenched my stomach in pain as beads of sweat started to form on my forehead. My body was clenching up in cramps as my insides shook and muscles spasmed even as Ella healed me.
After the 5th crystal, I could start to feel a tenable difference in my body, I felt lighter as I pulled myself off the ground, and my muscles felt ever so slightly stronger and faster to react. Of course, I could just be imagining it to justify my self-destructive behaviour as my friends looked on in mild disgust and concern.
“I think it's working.” I rasp out as I grab two crystals at once.
“Ok, but maybe you should take a break? You look like shit.” Ava says as she continues to wash away the vomit to try and reduce the rancid acidic smell.
“Nah I’m all good.” I managed to say before consuming the two crystals at once to speed up the process.
“That was one of them,” Mai says, not really paying attention to us as she spies on the other group.
“Jacob, slow down a bit please, you're trembling,” Ella asks in a concerned voice, her hand placed on my back to monitor my health.
“Am I injured?” I ask her as if my insides aren't being rearranged by my mild self-destructive behaviour.
“No, but..” She starts but I just grab two more crystals.
“Then I’m good to go,” I say and bring the crystals to my mouth and begin chewing only to throw it back up after a moment as more foreign energy floods my body.
“Jacob!” Ella yells in annoyance as I eat another two crystals but this time the reaction and energy that entered my body has halved.
“Yes?” I grab another two crystals and quickly eat them only to notice there was no reaction from the energy this time. ‘Did I get everything I could from the cave crawler crystals or are these just duds?’
“Why? Why do this to yourself?” Ella asks as she tries to grab my hand and the crystals within but I just twist away.
“I don't want to slow us down and to sit around for too long.” I let out a laugh and eat the crystals, feeling the strange power rush throw me but not interact with my body in any way. ‘Because I refuse to be weak and mundane again.’ I think internally but keep my thoughts to myself as I look at Ella, matching her angry gaze with what I hoped was an easygoing look on my face.
Lucky Mia interrupted us by letting us know that the last tracking mark was gone and that we should head off before the people with guns decided we were too much of a mystery to ignore. ‘Properly for the best, it looks like I can only eat 10 crystals at the moment. I wonder if eating a different species will help?’
After a few moments to pack up my stuff my friends and I headed off into the dark passages of stone. My body felt ever so slightly enhanced as I walked and fought my way through the tunnels and Cave crawlers but my abilities felt the same as before leading me to believe that whatever that weird energy was it only affected my physical form and ignored any physical relation to my powers.
Of course, I am working off very little knowledge and data and when Noah asked how much the crystals helped me I gave a vague estimate of a 10-15% increase to my body. However, my lack of data did not stop me from making notes in my sketchbook about future experiments I intended to conduct once we had stopped for our nightly rest.
But until then I was occupied by trying to bend rock and develop echolocation as we ran from one Army ‘, It was apparently what a group of centipedes is called according to Ava,’ of cave crawlers to another, collecting their venom, crystals and amour.
When we killed as a group the crystal distribution would follow a set rotation so that everyone had a chance to earn whatever currency they could be exchanged for even if they were not in direct combat. This system allowed for Ella to still gain crystals despite her bow and arrows not being able to piece the Crawler's thick amour.
I had also gotten into the habit of eating the hearts of our kills even if they tasted disgusting. The idea was that they would have a high concentration of beneficial nutrients that allowed my consumption ability to process what my body needs easier allowing me to grow faster. Another method of growth I was chasing was to improve my respiratory system.
After discussing athletics training with Noah I decided to breathe as little as possible to try and increase the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in my bloodstream and make my body more efficient at using oxygen to produce energy. Or something like that, I didn't get the technical jargon he listed off as we ran through the tunnels but I decided to give it a try with my adaptive body and ability allowing me to not breathe it should work. I hope.
Despite my new training regime incorporated into our running, I did notice that Sam was becoming increasingly short tempered and paranoid while trying to make us turn around for no apparent reason. Ok, that's a lie, Ella told me when I failed to pick up on it and was making things worse, she said something about him being upset about the death of the cannibal snake lady and wanting to join the group from the uni. I just nodded along and tried to give him space.
Like this, we ran through the tunnels for two hours with me forgetting not to breathe and eating raw hearts like one of those fake naturalist bodybuilders who definitely don't use steroids until we came across something new. A forest of webs blocked off our narrow passage alluding to spiders. Very large, very angry spiders that shot balls of webs out of their mouths and whatever the ass-looking body part is called.
“It's called an abdomen Jacob,” Ave corrects me as I use my body as a human shield to protect her and liquefy the webbing. It was still sticky but most of it ran off my body as I jumped towards one of the labrador sized arachnids in the 5 spider cluster. They had venomous looking fangs easily the size of my fingers and large blade-like legs that they used to scuttle across the walls and viciously stab at us.
I barely dodge its long chitin covered legs as I liquify the floor, trapping the appendage upon impact. But with seven other legs and fangs it didn't stop the arachnophobes nightmare from trying to skewer me like a kebab, lucky with one leg down and its webs rendered useless the large tunnel spider wasn't that much of a threat as long as I continued to dodge. I think while getting stabbed in the calf, its blade-like legs tearing through the seam of my armour and into my calf.
Quickly solidifying my blood to stop it from going any further I let out a hiss of pain before jumping onto the enlarged spider and repeatedly stabbing it in the eye until I reached its mushy brain matter that leaks out of the empty eye holes as its corpse collapses. Rolling to the side I hurl the melted corpse onto its comrade cause it becomes trapped in the resolidified chitin while blood and guts fly everywhere.
Trusting the improvised restraints would hold, I use the trapped monster as a springboard and launch myself at my next target while ignoring the stinging pain in my leg. Large fangs try to meet my descent but a quick dip into the spirit realm allows me to appear behind the engorged spider and stab into its joint connecting its abdomen and upper body making it squeal in pain as blood begins to drip from the wound.
‘This is far more fun than the centipedes.’ I let a smile form on my face and let out a soft laugh before quickly dodging a sharpened void in my senses and spinning around to see a leg trying to impale me. I just grin and melt the stone it lands upon trapping my would-be assailant before I continue dissecting the injured spider and manage to kill it in time to see Noah and Eva kill the two trapped spiders while Mia and Sam finish off the last creepy crawly together.
“Must you always fight like you have a death wish, Jacob?” Ella asks in an accusatory tone as she patches up my leg and Sam's bruise.
“Sorry, old habits die hard.” I give a grin as my leg finishes stitching itself together with Ellas' power before I start to collect a few legs, balls of webb, crystals and some venom.
“Yeah, we could have used your help with some of the webbing,” Sam says with a scowl as he struggles to rip off a few thick white strands of webbing so he can continue to scratch his head absentmindedly, a habit he seemed to pick up within the last few hours.
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“Oh yeah, that's a good point.” I hum to myself while ripping apart a spider's head to find its crystal and venom sack. “I will try to help out more next time, ah there you are.” I collect the crystal and venom before moving on to the next corpse. “But I can't be everywhere at once so remember to keep an eye out.”
After collecting all the available crystals along with a bit of venom we moved on with our journey as we ran through the tunnels and trained in our own way. We came across more groups of Spiders and another water Cave which we cleared out without much hassle now that we knew what to expect from the various monsters. Despite this the spear-tongued toad/frog still managed to piece my leg, causing me to use up more of the healing tonic before taking it back to my friends.
On the plus side, the influx of small crystals from the leeches allowed me to trade with my friends for 11 of the spider crystals at a rate of 1 leech and 1 Cave crawler crystal or three leech crystals per spider crystal. This exchange rate was based on the rough size of the crystals of each monster and our assumption that it would determine the price in the future once we could finally leave this claustrophobic hell. Like seriously the only thing keeping me sane from the restricting stone walls and stagnant air was the training and fighting the seemingly endless monsters.
‘Properly not a good sign for my mental state but I was built for freedom Wheels damn it…why is there a wall of darkness?.’
We stop to look at the end of the tunnel only to see a wall of pitch black that swallowed up the light from the glow moss and flashlight.
“Is that… Did we reach the end?” Ava asks in confusion as I’m about to poke the darkness with my spear.
“It’s another cave, and there's something in there,” Sam says in an irritable tone like we were being stupid for not having night vision. ‘Or I suppose it would be a seismic sense.’
“Many somethings, we can hear them,” Mia says in a much more helpful tone as twitch the rabbit hopes around, ears on a swivel.
“So make a bottleneck/kill zone and lure the somethings out of their spooky…Noah fancy word for no light?”
“Um, Umbra?” Noah responds in confusion.
“I’m not sure that works but thank you.” I thank him regardless.
“Jacob, please focus,” Ella says in exasperation.
“Sorry, claustrophobia is jarring, anyway…” I start before Sam interrupts.
“Or we could just turn back, we don't need to go through there,” Sam says as he frantically begins to scratch the back of his head again with such ferocity that I wouldn't be surprised if he drew blood. “I mean it's just a cave, we can find another one somewhere back the way we came from. It wouldn't take too long to get back the way we came. It’s not too far.” Sam starts to ramble as he keeps scratching at his head and looking around frantically as he slowly starts to head back the way we came.
We all stare at him for a moment before Mia suddenly yells, “Nope I think they heard us and are coming.”
“You!... You talked too much and we have to fight them, why do you make us fight everything, you bastard?!?.” Sam snarls out with both hands scratching at his head in clear discomfort and anger as he screams incoherently.
“Right, guys I'm starting to think Something is off with Sam. Mia, could you give him the head massage you gave me this morning?” I asked Mai referring to the metal check to see if anything was interfering with my mind.
“Noooooo,” Noah says in what I assume is sarcasm while talking out his shield and hammer while looking between the Cave and Sam as if he is unsure of what to focus on.
“There's nothing wrong with me! You are the one trying to kill everything! You're insane! You're all insane for following him! I’m going back! I need to go back, don't try to stop me!” Sam roars as he starts to pull at his hair and scream.
‘Kind of an inconvenient time to have a breakdown, Sam.’ With a flex of my will I enter the spirit realm and reappear behind my panicking friend and sink him roughly a foot into the ground before sprinting over to the entrance to the large cave. I jumped up to the roof and sank my fingers into the softened stone so I could channel my power into the brittle material causing it to melt and sag towards the floor, narrowing the entrance into our passage.
“Let me go you…” whatever Sam was screaming was quickly drowned out by the sound of countless flapping wings and high pitch screeching that slammed into me with a combined force capable of, knocking me off the roof and towards Noah who had taken position by the door as a one man shield wall.
A quick dip in the spirit realm allows me to travel through his position with only a minor collision, a quick roll back into reality later I find myself rushing to Noah's side and rapidly stabbing as a swarm of something. I couldn't make out their black forms against the inky darkness of the cave but they bled red just the same when I plunged a knife into their flesh.
But no matter how much I slashed and stabbed the swarm just kept coming, biting and scratching at my face and anything they could get a hold of. Biting the head off one of whatever they were I give a quick glance towards Noah to see him unharmed as the creatures couldn't break through his amour and cysteine skin as he waved his hammer through the air in the hopes of landing a hit against our agile foes.
A void approaches my eyes causing me to flinch backwards and focus on the swarm of unseen enemies, After a few moments I notice Ava come to my side with a kinetic hammer made from water and chipped stone that tore through the monster with ease, making it rain crimson and finally giving us an outline of the creatures we were facing.
They were a large bat-like creature the size of a toddler with claws on the tips of their wings and feet that slashed out at us with selfless abandon as their comparatively small head released an endless high pitch scream that only stopped once it lay on the floor dead. While we could barely make out the blood covered individuals it did not give us an idea as to how many were in the swarm. It appeared endless as they kept diving at us in a suicidal rush that would have Ava and I die by a thousand cuts in under ten minutes if nothing changed.
I tried to think of a solution but I couldn't bring down the roof from here and the wall of flesh would make any Molotov cocktail more likely to hit us than cause the swarm any real damage. ‘Maybe a red scream? I don't know if it works though, wait, where are Mia and Ella?’
I turn my head quickly to look behind me to see a large horrific humanoid looming over my friends as they hold Sam down as he thrashes around like a wild animal. It has gaunt grey skin with bulging black veins that press against the thin membrane, it moved with slow unnatural twitchy movement while panting like a mutt in a midsummer heat. Its disturbingly human face was stretched into a manic grin as it stared at Sam with a look of unrestrained hunger.
By some twisted sense of fate, none of my friends noticed the slowly advancing monster that seemed to bled into the stone walls and shadows as they tried to heal Sam.
‘Oh hell no.’ I’m about to try and yell a warning over the black bat's screams when a claw finds its way to the back of my head making me stubble. I spin around in self preservation as another bat sinks its fangs into my neck and laches on like a Vampic parasite.
With a snarl of rage, I fully exhale and rip my way through reality into the spirit realm, dragging the latched on bat with me causing it to immediately let go of my neck before falling through the floor dead, blood pouring from its ruptured eyes and ears.
Dragging it here put a large strain on my soul but I didn't care, I just inhaled the toxic crimson miasma into my empty lungs. I hold in the scream of agony and jump back into reality and blow the putrid red mist into the swarm to test the red scream sub-skills.
Instantly the screams changed from an annoying high pitched squeal to a guttural roar of anguish as the bats fell like flies. Not having time to use my inventory I reach into the pile of corpses, holding in the gag as my stomach lurches with power, and make a spear of solidified corpses, turn around and launch it at the creepy monstrosity closing in on my friends.
Not trusting my aim I aim the spear made of solidified blood, flesh and bone at its malnourished torso. It hits true, tearing through its skin and into its stomach before exploding into a shower of gore once my power ran out.
It stumbles back and grasps at its wound, the manic hunger gone from its deranged face and pain spreads through its body like a terrible virus that ravished its body. If it made a noise I couldn't hear it over the swarm but the blood splatter finally got Ella out of her trance allowing her to see the monstrosity looming over her.
She flinches back in horror, as I bring out a healing tonic, dumping it over my head with one hand and bringing out my spear with the other. My wounds start to slowly heal and I throw the second spear at the creature, hitting it just under the lower rib before Ell snaps out of her shock and shoots several arrows at the beat causing it to collapse as an arrow pierces its eye.
By this point the swarm had more than recovered and were tearing into my back and were starting to slip past me so I quickly got to work on reducing their numbers again. I filled my lungs with the non-toxic air to enhance my body and let out my frustration at seeing my friends almost be mauled to death by doing my best to resemble a blender as I tore into the swarm.
Despite our best efforts, along with Ella and Mia joining us it still took us a couple of minutes to finally kill the last of the swarm, the pile of corpses reached up to our torsos which helped bottleneck the last of the suicidal bats into a easier position to kill.
After a short dose of blessed silence, Mia confirmed that was the last of them and that whatever was affecting Sam died along with the creepy grey creature we hatefully named the stalker. After a few moments of rest, we started the long process of butchering the bats for their crystals in a production line to try and make the process faster, if more mundane.
Noah would pass me a corpse that I would dismember for the wing leather and crystal before handing them over to Ava who cleaned off the desired parts from gore. The crystals were small, similar to that of the leeches but they made up for it in sheer numbers. We estimated there to be over a hundred of the creatures in the corpse pile.
Meanwhile, a freed Sam kept watch with his enhanced senses while Ella and Mia started collating a dark moss from the Cave. It was the reason it was pitch black within the cave as the strange plant seemed to absorb all the light it touched. We weren't yet sure what to use it for but figured it would be useful to have.
“I’m sorry.” Sam starts, startling me as I was focused on trying to use my power to map out the internals of the bat as I dissected them.
“Don't worry about it mate,” Noah responds, handing me another mutilated corpse with a grimace on his face.
“What for?” I ask, removing the crystal from the pile of gore before going back to my ability practice.
“For yelling at everyone, being an ass and calling you all crazy?” Sam asks in confusion.
“Don't worry about it,” I waved him off with a bloodied hand. “You were possessed or some shit we've all been there, and we may as well be crazy at this point.”
“I haven't been possessed yet and I really hope it's not a common thing,” Ava says, rinsing a crystal in a bucket of bloodied water.
I snort “Hopefully you don't turn into a rage monster, I don't want you ripping me apart from the inside out with my own blood. Or drowning me with sexual fluids”
“Thank you, Jacob, for that mental image,” Noah mutters.
“Changing the subject, You got anything on these lists of yours to stop possessions, Jacob?” Sam quickly asks.
“Hmmm, I made a few notes earlier about Mia checking us, just being stronger, mind palace bullshit or making your mind super tailored to you as an individual so nobody else can make use of it,” I say trying to think back to my note making while keeping up my practice.
“What do you mean by 'tailor your mind'?” Ella asks on her way back from collecting moss.
“Well if we develop how we experience the world through our abilities it would confuse an outsider. Like how I’m trying to see matter and voids through my powers, that along with the mental discipline from a mind palace and growing stronger might help. But fuck if I know.” I answer, trying to express how little I actually know or understand the topic we are discussing.
“Hmm, It's worth a try,” Sam says while Ella nods slowly.
“Not sure mind tailoring will work for me but on the topic of getting stronger, if we are going deeper we need to be more organised so we don't get overwhelmed again,” Noah states with certainty, leaving little room for negotiation on the matter.
“I mean, do we want to keep going deeper?” Ava asked.
“If we want to do as well as we can and survive long term then we need to push our bodies and powers so they can adapt and collect crystals to sell sooooo yeah,” I add, removing yet another crystal and passing it to Ava.
“But what if we can't make it long term because we die short term?” Mia asks the logical question.
“Well that's why we need to organise better, and if we can't survive the short term then we definitely can't last the long term,” Noah states again.
“What would you suggest?” Sam asks him.
“Um, well, Mia would need to check our minds, say every meal time and scout ahead with her pets. And um… any suggestions?” Noah trails off.
“If I may be slightly controlling.” I start and look up from the corpse mapping to see Ella nod in a go ahead. “We need to practise making a kill box so we can be more prepared for overwhelming numbers. Mia needs to check us and Scout, and Sam would need to watch our backs so nothing else sneaks up on us. I can make improvements to our gear on my watch and while you eat. Noah can cook and Ava can use her water to clean off the gore for practice and hygiene. Ella, you need to heal us after the venom doses and adaptation training. Also if I start going on some random ass tangent at a critical moment, feel free to slap me.”
“I’m not comfortable with self-harm, like really not comfortable with it,” Ella responds looking less than pleased at the suggestion.
“What if we did it to each other instead?” I ask.
“That doesn't help.” Ella shakes her head.
“I’m also not comfortable with it.” Mia agrees.
“Then don't watch, you managed to heal Noah before with his training and we need to adapt but we can't be weak afterwards waiting to heal up when we could be on the move,” I say with finality.
“Fine, I will try. Just don't go too far.” Ell finally agrees while Mia just looks uncomfortable with the idea.
With the initial groundwork laid out, we spent the last few minutes ironing out our new schedule and roles before we finally packed up the last of the 96 monster crystals, giving us 16 each, and heading off to see what else the caves had installed for us.