Anything ~ 26!

The fact that Luke found a Scar in under an hour was a testament to how badly mangled the world was in this area. There were many theories surrounding how Scars formed naturally, the most prevalent being that they formed in high-mana areas. Luke didn’t think that applied here; not with reality seeming so flat and false. “Not about low mana either, I bet. Gotta be about mana movement, and this desert is draining the power around here at a stupid pace.”

The mana wasn’t getting pulled anywhere, or anything noticeable like that. That would have made his life really easy by highlighting whatever anomaly was sustaining the desert. The fact was just that the area was so dead that the local ambient mana wasn’t being replenished at all. Then the surroundings would try to even out the mana in the world, and it would sink into the dead area like a storm moving due to a cold wind. That mangled the dimensional walls… or at least that was the feeling he got from Open Up as he looked at the jagged Scar in front of him.

“Weird. The portal is black.” Luke poked it, and it rippled like a cube of animal fat. “How can light be black? Is that a thing?”

He didn’t really care, it just seemed strange. He dove through the portal face first, and directly into a pool of water. It was shockingly cold, and his health started increasing right away. Luke kept his eyes open, catching the moment the local wildlife found that he existed. Huge schools of eels and various biting sea creatures swam through the wildly poisonous water and got after him. For the first time, the Murderhobo got to test his scourge to the fullest.

His weapon whipped through the water in vast arcs, the mana-made whip cutting though the water as if it, too, was an enemy. The creatures were fragile, and a single glancing blow was enough to rip them apart. Chumming the water like this brought even more creatures, and soon huge beasts were appearing.

As for Luke, he was starting to feel the pinch of not having air. Spinning the scourge in a tight loop, he propelled himself through the portal and into his base world once more. He took a deep breath and turned to jump back in; only to need to dive out of the way as the various swamp beasts started following him through in a seemingly endless stream of self destruction. More and more came through, and the ground started to blacken as the toxic water that coated their flesh was absorbed. Puddles started to form, brackish water full of death for most normal creatures.

He watched the creatures thrash around for a few minutes, all sharp angles and teeth, before they started dying en masse. If it was the lack of water, or lack of poison, he was completely unsure. “Not a drop of Potentia from all of that. Waste of time. Probably can’t even use the flesh-”

“Stop right there! You! Murderhobo!” A scream rang out as a group of people charged at Luke with weapons drawn. “The bounty is ours! Die, you little… *hack*.”

The group of eight people slowed as they got close, the poison from the drying puddles causing their eyes to roll up into their heads. They fell, of course directly into the actual water, and started to froth at the mouth. Luke sighed and went to gather them up. “I swear, if I get blamed for this, I’m just going to outright snap their necks.”

He walked over and tossed the slowly dying people up and onto his left arm, all eight of them piled up on one side, while he grabbed an extra-large fish off the ground. Luke wasn’t sure if Andre could do anything with a creature this toxic, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to check. If they were useless, he could always come back and close the portal. From the time he left, to the time he was back, only a couple hours total had passed. Andre was still asleep, so Luke dropped the people to one side and the swamp monster to the other. He laid down and tried to soak up some of the sun before full night came.

A short time later, Taylor noticed a foul smell and became aware of the large number of new bodies in the area. “Luke! Who are they? What is that?”

“It’s a fish. I think.” Luke stared at the creature that seemed to be made entirely of triangles, and shrugged as he gave up on thinking about it further. “It’s coated in a fairly potent poison. I wouldn’t touch it.”

Taylor came closer to look over the group of people laying on the sand, recoiling as a terrible stench reached her. She had thought it was coming from the fish, and some of it was, but the majority was the bandits. “Who are they? What happened to them?”

“In order: Bandits. They touched the fish.” Luke waved at Andre’s prone form. “I was hoping he could do something to help them.”

“They’re poisoned? Wait, if you want him to-”

“Shh. You’ll wake him.” Luke put a finger to his lips and shook his head. “I didn’t go through the trouble of knocking him out just so that we could wake him up before he’s rested.”

“Luke. They’re going to die if we let Andre get all his beauty sleep.” Taylor groaned as she walked over to the Druid and shook him awake. The sleepy man was startled by the sudden shift in scenery, but a quick gesture at the men got the powerhouse to his feet and moving quickly.

It didn’t take long for Andre to shake his head and insert seeds into the men’s nostrils. “They’re basically already dead. Whatever was affecting them was a terribly strong toxin. I might have been able to do something if I had a sample of the poison and plenty of time, but these guys… nothing I can do but keep them barely alive.”

Luke watched as a flower grew out of each of the men’s noses, and he tilted his head to the side as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. “Isn’t that what you used to save Andre?”

“It is, with just a slight modification.” Andre pointed to a few specks of color on the flower petals. “I’m pulling out the poison, but it’s only at the rate that the poison is being regenerated. For some reason, this poison is able to use organic material to propagate itself. If I didn’t get this in them right away, they would have melted into sludge.”

“Oh. Hey. Slight problem in that case.” Luke pointed vaguely into the distance, “I had a whole load of that stuff come out of a portal when I was stepping out to breathe. You think that’ll be an issue at all?”

“Celestials above, Luke.” Taylor rubbed at her head. “Could you please tell us this stuff with a greater sense of urgency?”

“Is this… thing… from the same place?” Andre turned his eyes on the mass of triangles. “It looks like it lived in that stuff, and it is filled with something analogous to algae.”

“Yup. Whole bunch of them came out.” Luke acknowledged with a nod. Andre hurried to the fish and had Luke chop chunks of it out. A spray of black sludge splashed across Andre’s face as Luke tore a large fin off, and Andre’s eyes widened in horror. He turned and shouted as blood flowed from his hands and formed a portal. He grabbed the fish parts as well as the fallen people with vines and tossed them in, diving through the portal in the next second.

The energy fluctuations ended, and the portal collapsed instantly, unable to sustain itself in this mana-barren wasteland. Luke and Taylor looked at the spot the Druid had vanished, then at each other. “Luke… did you just kill the first Druid the Hollow Kingdom has had in over a century?”

The Murderhobo thought about it for a long second, then shook his head. “I don’t think I did.”

Taylor whirled on him and growled, “How can you be sure?”

Luke tapped something only he could see. “No Potentia increase yet. Pretty sure if I killed him off, I’d earn at least a little. Anywho, I’ll go look for more Scars now. There’s gotta be something around here that’ll be beneficial to Andre’s desert development plan. Or maybe some Potentia. Either way.”