FMH: Everything ~ Forty-One

As it turned out, Luke's search for liquid mana took almost no time at all. Zone twenty-one was set up in a wildly different manner than Zone twenty. Instead of being wall to wall with monsters, this floor was set up nearly like a puzzle. The ground was extremely dry, with no plant life to be seen whatsoever. Thankfully, he was able to spot an anomaly in the distance. He started walking toward it and received an information packet from Murder World.

Welcome to Zone 21! This area is filled with alluring situations with a variety of monsters! There's a Zone clear condition, and for the first time, you get to know about it ahead of time! How exciting is that? Very, we think. In order to exit Zone 21, what you'll need to do is create a continuous path for liquid to flow from the first Monster den all the way to the end of the Zone.

This can be done by defeating the monsters in the pools of liquid then choosing a direction for the liquid to flow. You may only choose one of three directions and must defeat the monsters where the liquid collects in order to change the direction once more. If, at any time, the liquid reaches the rightmost or leftmost edge of the Zone and falls off, the flow of liquid will end, and you'll need to restart! Make sure to plan ahead and use the lessons your instructors have taught you.

“You know Abyss well that I don't have any instructors!” Luke grumbled at the air, which seemed to talk to him every once in a while. Then his head jerked to the side, and he stared at Cookie, backpedaling slightly. “Yes, I suppose, technically, you have taught me a few things. Doesn't mean I consider you an instructor. I taught you how to turn goats into paste, and I've never claimed a special title for it, have I? Exactly, thank you.”

Moving toward the anomaly in the terrain, Luke quickly figured out what he was looking at. There was a small mound of dirt built up in a dike around a deep pit, which revealed itself to be an oasis when he got to the top and looked down. Hundreds of gallons of liquid mana were placidly swirling, and beautiful women sat atop rocks and other interesting locations, their bodies at least partially submerged in the mana.

All of them seemed to see him at once and began calling out to him in sweet voices. The words themselves were… just slightly wrong. Just different enough from his actual language that he couldn't understand anything that they were saying, not that he cared to listen either way. He only had eyes for all of that glorious, flowing power. “Now, the only real question is… how do I collect enough to bring back?”

Luke started down the slope, much to the delight of the women who had apparently been trapped here, alone, for uncounted millennia. The closer he walked, the clearer their voices were, both in tone as well as diction. When he was only twenty feet from them, they were speaking the language of the Hollow Kingdom perfectly.

“Finally! A man! Look at those rippling muscles, that enormous, flowing mane of hair!” The words of the first lady he could understand made him stop, anger crossing his features before settling into resignation.

“Abyss.” He waded into the liquid, and the laughs of the women went from sweet and tempting to cold and malicious. When he didn't pop like a unicorn that had just been punched in its underbelly, the laughter stopped, and they started moving toward him with clearly malicious intent. “I'm going to lose all my hair again.”

Even as he said the words, the incredible density of power in the air swirled around him, and his shoulder-length, messy hair fell out as a large, single clump. He raised his hand and rubbed it over his bald, scarred head. “It's the goats all over again.”

The monsters were moving through the liquid faster than he would normally have expected. But anything that could survive in this dense concentration of power had to be stronger than it appeared at first glance. He knew that firsthand, having seen his own reflection once or twice. The first of the incredibly alluring women lunged at him, her arms opened wide as if she were coming in for a tackle hug, her lips pursing as though she were going to give him a smooch. His hand flashed out, palm open wide, closing over her face before he turned and bodily threw her out of the liquid and up the hill.

His armor had come into effect, and every point of contact on her face had been penetrated by the passive effect it generated. The human-looking mouth that she sported had opened wide like a lamprey as she screamed in pain, her lower half revealed as a long fish tail. “Yuck. I hate fish. If I wanted brain food, I would crack something’s skull open.”

Now knowing for certain that these weren’t going to be creatures he would get in trouble with his Sigil for killing, Cookie lashed out and cut across the surface of the water, impacting the nearest mermaid and cleanly separating the bottom half from the top. It splattered across the surface of the mana before sizzling and fading away. “Really, Cookie? I have no idea why you would be jealous about fish; you know I don't like fish. Too fishy. Why would you leave half a fish floating in the water with me? Fish.”

Damage dealt: 518 blunt damage!

Congratulations! You have slain a Bewitching Mermaid.

Potentia Gained: 100.

For a long moment, everything seemed to go still. Then Luke's face twitched, his eyes began to whisk around the open pool, and his lips curled back from his teeth. “These things… are worth… one hundred Potentia each?”

For the next five minutes, there were only three sounds that could be heard emanating from the deep pit in the ground. The bellows of joy from Luke's lungs, a walloping crash as Cookie hit the water, and the mermaids screaming in pain or for mercy. Luke had learned his lesson when going against the unicorns: never stop killing when a monster asks you to stop. The sounds only settled down when the surface of the liquid mana had bobbing fishtails and a light scum of blood that rapidly popped and fizzed away.

He had ravaged the open hole, using his oversized bone to pummel its depths, finally deciding to leave as the smell of rotting fish began to overpower the natural sweet scent of the area. As he pulled himself out of the ring at the top of the pit, an option to choose a direction for the flow of the liquid appeared in front of him. He considered it for a long moment then decided he would enlist the aid of his team to make that decision for him. “That way, if they get it wrong, I can blame them.”

It was only at that moment that he remembered why he had come here in the first place, and that was to bring back plenty of liquid mana to pour on the collected pearls. Casting around for a suitable item, his eyes landed on one of the large boulders that a mermaid had been lounging upon. He returned to the bottom of the pit, wading through the liquid to the edge of the boulder and heaving it out of its position. For some reason, it was far heavier than it should have been. He carried it out of the liquid then began using his mana manifested weapons to carve the boulder into an oversized bucket.

Shaping the stone had taken longer than he originally planned, but what was the point in making something if you didn't add the proper embellishments, inscriptions, or ornamentation? Lifting his brand new, beautifully crafted stone bucket, he returned to the water's edge and filled the item. He estimated that he had perhaps fifty gallons of the liquid and hoped that would be enough for what he was planning to do.

His return to his team was also slower than he expected, mainly due to the fact that he needed to carefully balance the bucket so as not to spill anything. When he was finally nearing his friends, they began retreating away from him. All of them were looking at the bucket apprehensively, and Taylor was the one to call out, “Please be extra careful with that, Luke! If you spill it on the ground, we're going to have to run for it.”

“I wonder if you have any idea what you look like right now?” Zed conversationally interjected. “You're holding a massive barrel in one hand that is releasing mana like a forest fire creates smoke. If we were anywhere other than Murder World, what you're holding right now would be considered a crime against humanity.”

“Would it?” Luke challenged him as he walked to the edge of the hole. He peered in, noting that the trench he had dug was already half-full with pearls, and more were crawling toward them as if they were being carried by ants. “You know what, Zed? I don't think it would be considered a crime at all.”

“Oh? Somebody is in a good mood today,” he said putting his hands on his hips and jauntily cocked his head to the side. “Well, then, Mr. Murderhobo, please enlighten me as to how this wouldn't be considered a horrible thing in a lower world.”

“Never said that. This one’s easy. Has anyone ever been able to walk around with a barrel of liquid mana before?” He wasn't waiting for an answer, as he didn't know how long the process was going to take. Luke tipped the barrel, pouring the contents directly into the trench. The pearls within it began to smoke and hiss, and the liquid mana churned as it heated up.

Zed hesitated slightly before speaking. “No… because an entire barrel's worth of liquid mana wood would be considered a world treasure, not just a national treasure.”

“Right. It wouldn't be a crime against humanity or a war crime.” Luke chuckled darkly as the pile of Skill Pearls rapidly shrank. “It's never a war crime the first time.”

His team was silent at that moment, digesting what he had just stated and watching with great interest the process of the pearls consuming each other. Luke blinked as he remembered a secondary effect of the pearls and hoped that the liquid mana wouldn't all boil away. The stronger the Skill Pearl, the greater the effect on any individuals near it. Higher-rank pearls would tempt them, trying to convince them to swallow them so that they could gain a Skill… or explode, if they didn't have the correct class to process them.

The Murderhobo didn't feel the need to warn them about that effect. He had mentioned it before, and they had seen it in person with Cindy's necklace. If they couldn't remember to keep their filthy hands off his pearls and wasted them by blowing their heads off… it would be a fitting punishment. He growled low in his throat, a natural predator's reaction to scavengers circling its food. When they didn't react to it, he assumed that they were all frozen with fear and was able to calm himself down.

“How much longer do you think before all of them are collected?” Luke directed his question at Andre, who blinked a few times before getting a concentrated look on his face.

“It depends. How long do you want to wait here?” The Druid shrugged and gestured vaguely at the upward slope. “There are tens of thousands more coming down the grass, from where the Sentinels are still being destroyed by my thorns. Otherwise, where they are already collected down here along the edge of the Zone? Probably a few hours before they've all been dropped into the trench.”

Luke pondered the question, finally coming up with an answer that was acceptable to himself. “I don't know how many have been gathered so far, but I’ll be reasonable. Going by the Skill I got earlier, these are Tier five Skill Pearls. Unless we don't have enough, I want to keep collecting them until I am able to combine them into a Tier nine pearl.”

“How many pearls will you need for that? I'd like to get going and see what the next Zone looks like,” Taylor quizzed him impatiently, which Luke appreciated. He also wanted to get back into combat, and standing here while there were so many willing sacrifices was making him antsy as well.

“Since they’re Tier five pearls, we only need six and a quarter million of them.” Luke estimated how rapidly the liquid mana was draining away and nodded solemnly to himself. “Be right back; I think we're going to need more water.”

“Luke, that's not a reasonable number of pearls!” Andre called after him, but Luke didn't care.

He had his bucket, and Luke remembered reading somewhere that it was important to complete short-term goals. The Murderhobo hummed cheerfully as he skipped down the slope, secretly hoping that the monsters in the pool had been given enough time to respawn.

“This is the most fun I've had in decades. Best day ever.”