CWD: GA ~ Fifteen

Nacho tossed a fresh flare to the bottom of the long stairwell. Huge beetles, each about the size of a fully-grown Doberman rushed to the light. The insectoid monsters were strangely colored; each section of their carapace a different hue, rough and pebbly. Their mandibles clacked, and their antennae waved wildly. Even so, Reuben chuckled softly. “Their shells look candy-coated. Did someone glue Nerds to their backs?”

Brie squinted to try and make out the colors in the shifting light. “Don’t really care what they look like. There seem to be a dozen of them, and I don’t want to fight them all at the same time. Ideally, I could fight them one by one.”

Nacho put a hand on the root wall, thinking. “If we could create an experience point farm, we could earn a ton of credits. We need to get closer to use the system view. If they are too strong, we'll just have to come back another time.”

The candy-coated beetles ignored the stairwell but appeared to find the flare endlessly fascinating. Nacho sat on the steps and lit an emergency candle from his backpack so they weren’t in complete darkness. “We know the beetles are drawn to the flares, but they could care less about a little romantic mood lighting. It would be nice to get a sense of the layout down there, but we’d have to fight through a good number of those bugs to get the info.”

Brie stood, hatchet and knife firmly gripped in her fists. “My Combat Dash skill is more dash than combat at this point, so I could dash down and dash back. Maybe they wouldn’t see me?”

“Or maybe they would.” Reuben’s worry was plain.

“The only way we’ll know for sure if I try. I can creep down and get close.” Their Berserker shrugged dismissively.

“We can try it.” Nacho broke their stalemate and Brie flashed a grin at him. “Gotta keep our eyes out for Gumdrop Grubs as we go. Once we get close, you can do your dashing.”

“On the steps?” Reuben shook his head. “She could catch a root and go down.”

“I’m very nimble,” Brie insisted instantly, her frustration clearly mounting. “You call me a nimble little minx all the time.”

“Quoting Ghostbusters?” the healer breathlessly whispered. “How dare you do so in public, where I can’t properly thank you for it?”

“Yeah, let’s move.” Nacho left the candle on the steps and crept down. Brie was ready for any more grubs to come springing from the ceiling, but that didn’t happen, and they stopped six steps from the bottom. The corridor below was full of Nerds beetles, at least a dozen, scrambling over each other to get close to the flares. A candy cockroach convention.

Nacho chanced a quick System View, focusing in on one of the monsters.

Candylicious Weta Beetle

Effective Tier/Level:?

HP: ?

The one question mark meant they were Tier zero monsters. What level, Nacho didn’t know, but Brie should be able to hack them to pieces. He thought he might’ve heard of weta beetles before back on Earth, but he wasn’t sure. The Candylicious part was almost funny, except for the cruel mandibles of the creatures and their spiked legs.

One of the beetles smacked the flare down the corridor to the left, and the other insects followed the light, tumbling over each other in a renewed rush to check out the spitting light. In seconds, the corridor was empty, which was very lucky.

It took a minute for Reuben’s eyes to grow accustomed to the lack of light, but when he did, he called out in a hoarse whisper, “Something’s glowing down there!”

Brie leaned over and hugged Reuben. Then she was running, moving like a shadow down to the bottom step, where she looked right, looked left, and then came running back, dancing over the roots until she was back with them.

She jabbed her finger upward, twice, clearly indicating that it would be too dangerous to talk so close to the Candylicious insects. They might not be currently swarming at the landing, but they were far from gone. Each of the humans could hear the scuttle of all those big bodies.

Once they had retreated back to their little flickering candle, Brie spoke. “There’s some sort of big chamber to the left with some stuff glowing in there. I’m thinking it’s something with natural bioluminescence. It could be a plant, it could be an oversized Firefly; I have no idea. That’s where most of the beetles are with their new favorite toy. To the right is a smaller chamber, full of roots. There’s a couple of beetles there, but they seemed different.”

Nacho had a fairly good grasp of the layout now. “Last thing. Are there roots on the ceiling and walls like in here like there are out here?”

“It’s the same as out here.” She was sweating, but there was a definite look of excitement on her face: she wanted to fight.

“What if we hacked up the roots and tried to cause a cave-in?” Reuben offered a non-standard option for them to consider. It did not go unnoticed that his plan was one where none of them were fighting directly.

Nacho liked the idea, but the stone walls seemed strong. He had another suggestion. “What if we tossed another flare into the bioluminescent chamber? Then Brie could fight the two beetles in the root chamber to the right. If we make a barrier strong enough, we might be able to hold them off indefinitely. Then we’d be able to pick them off one by one.”

Brie wiped sweat off her top lip. “We have wood up there around the dead tree. We could bring down logs and branches and wedge them into the root network on the walls and ceiling? Let’s be real here: if we can’t outwit beetles, we’re never going to last in the game.”

Reuben leaned close and gave his fiancée a regular hug. “She’s amazing! Isn’t she amazing?”

They retreated back up the stairs, but this time, Nacho had them collect three of the dead Gumdrop Grubs. He wanted to cut them up and try processing their Putrid Mana… but he didn’t get the chance. They were already liquifying. He didn’t feel too bad; there was bound to be a learning curve being a Satiation Player. This was completely new territory, for him and for everyone in the AKC, as far as he knew.

They made it back to the antechamber where they’d spent the night. It was going to be far harder to sleep there, now that they knew there were monstrous candy-colored bugs waiting below.

Outside, they gathered more logs while Nacho slowly built himself a saw. During those six months, he’d watched many UTube videos on backwoods survival, such as a Swedish backpacker making a saw using long sticks, a sawblade, screws, and some string.

Brie ate another bar to restore her Hunger—she was down to eighty points after her little stunt. Reuben pulled over logs, and when his saw was ready, Nacho cut them into lengths a bit longer than the corridor was wide.

It was late afternoon when they lugged the long logs and thick branches down the steps and piled them to the side. They could see the bluish glow from the bioluminescent chamber, but there was no sign of the beetles.

Nacho gave the emergency candle to Reuben. “This has to go quick. I’ll light our flares and toss them to the left into the big chamber. That should draw the Nerds over. Once we see them scurrying, we might not need to fight the ones to the right. If we do, Reuben and I will build the blockade, and Brie will kill the beetles. If she needs help, Reuben, you’ll have to go while I finish the barricade. How’s that for a plan?”

Brie looked relatively calm. “You just be ready with the food. I imagine I’ll be using my Defensive Whirl a lot. If I get hurt, my regen is going to be in the toilet.”

“I have some raisins and peanuts,” Nacho offered before creeping to the bottom of the descent. He plastered himself against the wall to the right, then hung his bow and his quiver of arrows on a root. Either Brie or Reuben would have to use it, since Nacho would only be wasting arrows if they didn’t get a single credit from him during combat.

He could see into the grub room, where fat worms wiggled in glowing sacks of milky liquid, all contained by little alcoves enclosed by roots. These worms were smaller than the gumdrop grubs, but who knew if all these insects were the same species?

The Nerds beetles were everywhere in that big chamber. Nacho inched over to the other wall, just able to make out the colorful carapaces of the two beetles in the smaller room to the side. They must be acting as guards. That gave him an idea.

Nacho readied two flares, then motioned for Reuben and Brie to come closer before striking the starter on one flare, immediately spinning around the corner and hurling it into the glowing worm room. A dozen of the beetles knocked into each other in an attempt to get at it. At the same time, Nacho lit the second flare and tossed it into the smaller room on the right.

The two monsters in the small space squealed as if it had surprised them, before they too leapt on the spitting fire.

“Get them, Brie,” Nacho hissed at Brie, who started forward, paused, then dashed into the root chamber to the right. Reuben set the candle down on the first step and sent a log scooting over to Nacho, who slammed it into the top corner of the corridor before wedging crossways into the floor to the left.

Brie let out a scream—a war cry—and slammed into the two beetles.

The System declared that Active Combat had begun.

Nacho watched Brie sink her hatchet into the face of the first distracted beetle, but it wasn’t enough to kill the thing. It lunged, trying to hook her with one of its mandibles, and she reacted by using her Defensive Whirl and spinning away. The other monster rose up on its hind set of legs, bringing the spikes of its legs down on her. She got gashed up pretty badly but firmly drove her knife into the belly of the insect, causing it to shriek in pain.

That wasn’t going to kill the bug either, but when it tried to catch her in its mandibles, she was able to Defensive Whirl away from its attack and find a chink in its exoskeleton to slam the hatchet into. The other monster attacked while she was thus engaged, ripping up her thigh.

Nacho could barely focus on her fight, since they had to get the barricade set up. Both he and Reuben were pulling the logs and branches over as fast as possible, slamming them into the roots. They placed the thickest logs diagonally to form a lattice, then shoved smaller branches to support them. The cook sank one support beam in place just as a Candylicious Beetle in the glow-sack room turned from the flare and lunged toward him, mandibles clacking.

The log jam squealed… but held!

“I need more wood!” Nacho yelled, the time for stealth long gone.

“That’s what she said,” Reuben breathlessly retorted. “Aw man, I totally just self-burned.”

Nacho heard Brie grunt in pain, followed by one of the other beetles piping out a dying shriek. He hoped that was good news.

Reuben drove a branch vertically to reinforce their barricade. The other beetles in the sack chamber had noticed them and were coming to bash down their wall. Mandibles tore at the branches as legs with spiky growths tried to pull the barrier apart. The structure creaked, the wood cracked, but Nacho and Reuben added another layer to their barricade, wood crisscrossing and holding.

His side of the barrier set, Nacho spun to check on Brie. Her clothes were bloody and gashed, but she’d hacked up both Candylicious Beetles. Their colorful carapaces were splattered with their black blood, and whole sections of their shells had been shattered.

Reuben set the last length of wood horizontally and anchored it in with his legs. The beetles were trying to shove their way through, but that wasn’t going to work. If they were smart, they would’ve pulled away the barricade branch by branch, but… they were beetles.

Nacho joined his friend and pushed against the horizontal log, dodging an insect leg just before it could impale him. “Status report, Brie. Where are you at with Health? What’s your hunger level?”

“Ravenous.” Brie joined them and swung her hatchet, cleanly chopping off a leg. “I’m down to ten, I feel crappy, and I would literally eat one of those Gumdrop Grubs raw at this point.”

Nacho turned and flipped his backpack upside down. “Hold the barricade, Reuben. I’ll get Brie some food. We’re still in Active Combat, so she won’t heal on her own, but I can help with the Hunger. When this is over, she’ll regenerate perfectly.”

He retrieved the Muscle Mania bar Reuben hadn’t eaten and also grabbed a big bag of peanuts and raisins. Altogether, it was a full portion, which would bring up her Hunger points to maximum.

“Wish I could hug you and make you better.” Reuben let out a hiss of pain. “Ouch! Those spines are sharp!”

Nacho sprang back to the barrier, joining in on holding it. On the other side of the barricade roiled a nightmare of beetle mandibles and insect legs. Their clacking and squeals were a storm of awful. “Reuben, grab the bow. Start shooting arrows while Brie eats.”

The big guy ran for the bow and quiver where Nacho had left them in the stairwell. He came back holding the bow in his right hand, trying to get an arrow onto the string with his quaking left hand. Brie could clearly see that her boyfriend had no idea what he was doing, so she clamped the protein bar in her teeth and took the weapon from Reuben, and he grabbed the food out of her mouth.

She chewed and wordlessly nocked an arrow, then sent a feathered shaft into the gullet of the nearest beetle—from its coloring, it was strawberry and grape flavored. The wounded bug went down under the whirring legs of the others. Reuben handed her an arrow and lifted the bar so she could take another bite.

Nacho gritted his teeth and braced against the quaking log. “Tell me you’re at least getting credits for these kills.”

“I am,” Brie mumbled around her mouthful. She fired the arrow into the face of another bug. Her fingers must’ve been throbbing from using the bow, and her sleeve was being shredded by the bowstring, but she didn’t seem to feel anything.

Reuben sprang into action once the bar was gone. He scooped up Brie’s hatchet and chopped off any leg that managed to poke through, also finding some eyes to stab while his girlfriend emptied their quiver.

It wasn’t long before the beetles had to crawl over their own dead to get to the wall, only making the barricade more effective. Once Brie was out of arrows, she reverted to her knife. She slammed the blade into the face flesh of any of the Candylicious Weta Beetles that came close, and Reuben began to laugh maniacally. “We have our experience point farm! Only, we don’t grow EXPs here, we grow credits. Since these bugs are monsters, they aren’t retreating. No survival instinct. Sucks to be on the wrong end of evolution, doesn’t it?”

Brie continued to knife bugs as Reuben took a breather from swinging the hatchet over and over. She’d killed at least a dozen of the insects. “I hate bugs, and I’ll never be able to eat Nerds again. Or… whatever. I’m still so hungry. Are you going to cook these up, Nacho?”

Nacho stepped back; the horizontal beam had done the trick, holding their structure in place. The last of the bugs skittered forward, and Brie ended the thing, hissing out with relief. “Now that was a workout. Gory. Disturbing. But probably not as bad as the typical Zumba class.”

Reuben rubbed the small of her back. “You okay?”

She nodded, though her smile looked like it had been cut into her face from all the ichor that had splattered across it.

Nacho was amused by how easily she had shifted to accepting this as normal life: killing monsters for money. “How much are we getting per kill?”

Brie let out a shuddering breath. “Eleven credits per kill. Each had thirteen Health Points, so it took a few swings to put them down. I killed fifteen, for a total of one hundred and sixty-five credits. Did you get anything for bravely giving me the Muscle Mania bar, Nacho?”

Nacho cackled at that. “Not a credit. But that’s okay; you did all the work.”

“I helped,” Reuben insisted indignantly. “I got three kills for another thirty-three.”

“Hold on…” Nacho held up a finger. “Wait for it…”

Reuben cocked his head. “Wait for what?”

Right on time, the System messaged them.

Congratulations, Player! Active Combat is over! Your little party certainly was clever, putting up that barricade. You get +1 credit for being so smart! Enjoy your Health and Mana Regen!

Nacho checked their credits. With the bonus five they had earned before, they were up to two hundred and five. This was very good news; in a very real sense, such a windfall might’ve saved all their lives.

Brie staggered against the roots. With combat over, the scratches on her hands began to heal, as did the bad gash on her thigh. Her left arm had been ripped up by the bow, and her fingers were swollen, but not for long. She made a face. “It kind of… itches. The Health Regen doesn’t help repair my clothes, so… good thing you bought us a spare set. Now I get why you asked me for my size last month. Hit me with more raisins and peanuts.”

Nacho handed her the bag, and she dove into them. Meanwhile, he and Reuben dismantled a small portion of their very effective barricade. By the time they were done, Brie was all healed up. The three of them walked into the grub room, weapons ready. The chamber was fifty feet wide, fifty feet tall, and all roots—all the time. Only the glowing worms in their bioluminescent sacks provided some variety. The worms themselves were a kaleidoscope of colors all swirled together to create a rainbow pattern of larval wonder.

“Hey! What’s that?” Reuben gestured to an alcove. The glowing bag of goo within didn’t just have baby worms inside it—a skeleton also floated in the fluid. The three of them held their weapons ready, Reuben with his knife and club, Brie with her hatchet, Nacho with his bow. Of course, they’d retrieved all their arrows.

When they drew closer, they realized that all the glowing sacks had skeletons inside, surrounded by the baby worms. Some of the worm bags also contained other items as well—armor, weapons, and gold pieces.

Brie wrinkled her nose. “Oh, gross. They were feeding their baby grubs with people.”

Reuben let out a whoop. “Gross, yes, but do you know what this means? We have treasure, people! If we’re lucky, one of those items might be magical!”

Nacho glanced at the hole leading out of the other side of the worm room with a worried look. They would need to keep an eye out for more monsters while they cut open the goo sacks and gathered the treasure. He knew from experience that in the Juxtaposition, a triumphant victory could turn into a wicked defeat in an instant, so he pointed to the suspicious exit. “Before we get too excited, we’re going to move our barricade. We don’t want any unexpected visitors.”

“Darn right,” Reuben agreed, finally managing to pull his eyes off the loot. “Monsters should call before showing up and trying to liquify our internal organs. *Tsk.* So rude!’

Brie sputtered a laugh, sounding rather joyful in the dark, strange depths.