Book 1: GRIM Adventures - 2

The small furry animal and the young woman sat on the large boulder, passing the left-wrapped bundle of nuts and berries between each other.

However, the silent peace of the meal didn’t last as two figures rounded the corner for the umpteenth time.

//aaaaaaaahhhhhhhAAAAAA—//

“AhhhhhhhhhaaaaaAAAA!!!”

A large metal blur and a young man in web-covered robes rushed past them, screaming the entire way. A moment later, a third, dog-sized figure rounded the corner and gave chase. Cords of twisting mycelium formed eight spindly legs that extended from the puffball-shaped body. Eight glowing red eyes blazed at the end of the stipe with fury as it gave chase.

“SKKKKKRRRREEEEEE!!!”

Jill sighed and turned to the small gopher sitting beside them. Her voice was flat as she asked.

“Did you want to do it this time? Or should I?”

Mr. Gopher paused mid-bite and tilted his head, considering the offer. After a moment, he waved his paw in the three screaming figures’ direction and popped the rest of the berry into his mouth. Jill stood with a grunt and turned to the path.

3… 2… 1…

Just in time, their two companions rounded the corner once more.

//—AHHHHHHaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!//

“AAHHHHHaaaaaahhhhh!!”

Jill slammed her foot into the ground, and a line of frost erupted from her heel. It traveled for several meters before stopping and forming a small ice patch directly in the path of the oncoming young man. Said young man, so focused on his escape, only noticed the icy patch once it was too late. He hit the ice at speed and pinwheeled, desperately reaching out for any kind of support. The closest of which was the large metal creature flying next to him.

Jack wrapped his arms around a protruding section of the metal creature’s body, pulling it down as he fell. The metal creature’s flight was thrown off, and the two quickly tumbled in a heap. Their pursuer gave a screeching cry of victory, then avoided the icy by leaping into a nearby boulder. It then used its momentum to leap again, legs spread, dripping fangs bared, directly toward the fallen Jack.

Jack turned, eyes wide, and cried out.

“No! Stay away! STAY AWAAAAAYYY!”

He reached out his hand, a vibrant green spell circle forming almost instantly in the air between them. Thick roots erupted from the ground at either side of him, slamming together just as the [Second-Circle] Puffspider passed by. The area for several feet, Jack included, was sprayed in a fine mist of maybe-mushroom juice.

Jill walled up to him, slowly clapping. Her voice was just as flat when she spoke.

“Good job Jack. Next time, try not to take 20 minutes to kill a little spider. Especially one several circles lower than you.”

Jack pointed to what remained of the Magic Beast and yelled,

“Little?! Did you see the size of that thing?! The little ones are bad enough! No spider has any right being that big!”

She looked down at her sticky brother before sighing and waving her hand. A waterball materialized out of the radiant Spirit energy and fell on top of him, washing away most of the offensive substance. Jill responded in a sharp tone.

“Well then, maybe you shouldn’t go poking at random giant mushrooms you find on the side of the road! Dealing with that Crag Tiger already set us back an entire day! If you two trouble magnets—”

Both Jack and the recovered metal Spirt Beast had the audacity to look away.

“—would start behaving, we might actually get out of these mountains by the end of the month! Why were you even running to begin with, Jack? You should have just squashed it and been done with it! You even made me spill my lunch!”

Jill pointed to the small white puddle by the wayside.

Jack turned back to Jill, pointing as he spoke.

“Hey! I can’t help it if those abominations freak me out! And who brings junket on a mission, anyway?!”

Jill pinched the bridge of her nose and pulled her older brother up.

Jack was promptly tackled by the large metal Spirit Beast, who continued to rattle on in that incomprehensible language, even as her brother struggled to breathe in its crushing embrace.

Jill only shook her head and walked to the remains of their campsite to pack for the day. She still wasn’t sure what to make of their new “companions.” Jack liked them, but then this was the same man who’d brought home a Sparkadile hatchling because he “thought it was cute.” It had taken the entire tribe to calm and appease the mother, even if half advocated feeding the idiot to her.

After being dragged into the chase with the Crag Tiger, it had taken all four working together to chase the Magic Beast off. That, in itself, was strange; Crag Tigers, while not docile, didn’t bother with most creatures. They were lazy, sluggish creatures that would almost starve rather than hunt. She had to wonder what had got it so angry that it would chase them for so long.

Then again, Magic Beasts were strange like that. Mana did… strange things. Where Spirit energy reinforced the existence of things, Mana altered them. Spirit energy made something “more” than it already was, where Mana transformed things into “what they could be.”

The philosophy and relationship between the twin energies was a topic that had been explored by far wiser people than Jill and for more lifetimes than she could fathom. All she needed to know was that at the end of the day, it boiled down to Spirit Beasts being stronger, faster, and smarter, while Magic Beasts were… weird.

A famous pearl of wisdom in the Adventure’s Guild was “Spirit Beast that kills you will be the one you didn’t study enough. The Magic Beast that kills you will be one you thought you knew.”

Not that the opposite couldn’t be true either, but the idea held some truth. Spirit Beasts were predictable; they were heavily reliant on their bloodlines and innate nature. You could counter them effectively once you knew what a Spirit Beast could do.

On the other hand, Magic Beasts seemed to be constantly mutating and changing. Even within the same species, two individuals might show vastly different variations in skill or ability.

Some suggested this was because Spirit energy favored stability and reinforcement, while Mana encouraged adaptation and change, but again, that was delving into subjects Jill never had the mind for.

Whether the Crag Tiger was a mutation or just really, really peeved didn’t matter in the end.

Only that they got away, and as her brother said, “make some friends along the way”…

sigh…

The large metal… box… creature had instantly bonded with her brother. She’d never seen anything like it before and couldn’t name it. But it seemed intelligent, at the very least. From the moment it met them, it had continuously spoken to them in some unknown language. Her brother hadn’t even questioned it and nodded along knowingly the whole time.

Great, now she had two of them to keep an eye out for…

The strange Root Gopher wasn’t any less of a mystery. She wasn’t too familiar with the Spirit Beast; she knew they were classified as “Minor” beasts, barely more than common animals, with minor earth manipulation abilities, but that was about it. They weren’t even native to this area, preferring the distant prairies of the Radiant Sea far to the southeast and at other similar locations.

What she was absolutely sure of, however, was that they shouldn’t be as intelligent or… expressive as this one was. If Awakened Beasts, both Spiritual and Magical, didn’t have the instinctual ability to sense other Awakened Beasts, she’d have thought the Root Gopher at least partly sapient.

Not that she’d never heard of a Root Gopher tribe. Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been impossible. The chances of a Minor beast like a Root Gopher forming a Beast Core were so astronomically small it had likely never happened in the specie’s entire existence. Or it had been harvested almost immediately. Such a thing would have held immense value simply for its novelty.

Coupled with the chance of such a being becoming a true Progenitor, not a single Awakened Beast tribe could trace their heritage to a Minor beast. Even their own ancestors, the Iron-Tailed Oreplanter Squirrels, were fully fledged Spirit Beasts, able to form cores and break out of the lower [Mortal Foundation] realm, even though it was exceedingly rare.

Their own Progenitor, Jonny Rubyseed, was said to have been responsible for planting many of the treasures found in these very mountains. The stories had always fascinated Jill, even if they were more myths and legends after so many tens of thousands of years. Jonny Rubyseed had been an Iron-Tailed Oreplanter Squirrel like any other. The different “Planter” Squirrels were common throughout the Skybreaker continent and were famous for squirreling away various Spirit materials, similar to how mundane squirrels would hide nuts and seeds.

Often these catches would be forgotten and slowly grow over time, giving birth to various treasures. Many a fortune had been made by finding an old squirrel’s nest. Whether through luck or some innate instinct, the legends say how Jonny Rubyseed’s catches would link and form powerful natural formations. This, in turn, would raise the Spirit energy level and quality in the area, further boosting Jonny’s growth.

At the end of the day, Jonny was just a squirrel. Soon, he would be pushed out of his home by stronger, more fierce creatures seeking power there and forced to start anew. In such a way, thousands of Spirit-rich “hotspots” were created in the surrounding mountains, many of which remain even to this day. In time, Jonny would grow to such power that he could no longer be so easily pushed from his home, and so began the story of the Squirrel Tribe’s Progenitor.

Unlike most of his kind, however, Jonny wasn’t the forgetful type and had remembered all the treasures left in his old homes. Instead of returning and collecting them himself, however, the playful Progenitor left hints and clues to these hidden catches for his future descendants, hoping they might one day help lift his people to greater heights.

Unfortunately for Jonny, those descendants weren’t as wise or future-sighted as he had been. Many of these clues and riddles had been sold off over the generations, fueling only the selfish growth of a few. In Jack and Jill’s generation, few of these treasured secrets remained with the tribe itself, in part leading to the tribe’s current destitute state.

It had been in one of these few remaining stories that the sibling pair had learned of the mystical [Pure Water Spring]. Said to reside in the deepest cavern on the tallest mountain, the springs were a treasure Jonny had left behind in his later years before his ascension. Called the “physical manifestation of cleansing power,” its waters were rumored to have the power to not only totally unblock a person’s meridians, regardless of their realm, but perfectly cleanse their body and Spirit of all impurities.

It was a treasure that clans and sects worldwide would have fought bloody wars for had its existence been publicly known. But Jonny had been a smart man and locked its secret behind countless protections, intrusting the knowledge to only his wisest and most talented descendants. Hidden, it would likely have remained for countless generations more had it not been for Jill’s… accident.

Regardless of her strength, it had been stupid of her to think she could oppose Coldfinger like that, in retrospect. The man hadn’t risen to the top of the Halirosa criminal world because he was weak. Even more so when your town of operation just happened to be the world’s number one haven for Adventurers as well. Yet she’d grown sick of the man. Sick of the constant threats and ever-increasing debts.

Even the fact that he’d not killed her and simply frozen her cultivation was him mocking them, laughing at the foolish squirrels.

The fire burning in her heart at the memory was almost enough to warm her perpetually icy hands. Almost.

Her family had tried everything to correct her deviation, but whatever Coldfinger had done was… devious. Even if she broke her cultivation and started over, she’d face struggles as the Spirit energy moved through her meridians like an icy slurry, drastically slowing down her progress.

It had only been the old tribal matriarch, three times removed now by her children and grandchildren, who had thought of a solution. The old woman had seen Jill’s struggle and talent from an early age and passed down a tale to her she’d kept even from her own children for fear of its abuse. For the first time in a long time, Jill had felt hope, like finding an old cabin in the middle of a raging, endless blizzard.

But Old Jonny Rubyseed was a wild old coot. Jill knew finding this treasure would test everything she had. But what other option did she have?

So she and Jack had entered their ancestral mountains, armed with only an ancient seed and instructions to look for the place where “the roots meet the sky,” whatever that meant.

Jill shook herself from her reminiscing and finished packing. She turned to find Jack stuffing several vials full of the spider goop into the strange spatial storage area in the metal creature’s shell; another alarming, though welcomed surprise.

She called out as she heaved the heavy pack onto her shoulder.

“Are you done playing in the mud? Let’s get going! I want to get to the base of the mountain before nightfall. Who knows what else is lurking around here?”

With those words, the Root Gopher hopped on top of her pack, and they turned toward the mountain road.