February ~ 11!

CHAPTER 11

*Squeak*!

“That’s driving me crazy.” A herd of hoofstock was startled by the noise, and he delighted in the fact that the stampede temporarily drowned out the noise. Sarge had gone silent for the past couple of miles, which always made Grant nervous.

He was right to be nervous. The ground went orange, and Sarge’s cheerfully malevolent voice bellowed out, <Start running! Keep your knees up and lengthen those strides. Run! Look, you’re carrying precious cargo!>

Looking behind himself, the young man found three bright orange beauties sitting in the cart, nursing various wounds. <These are three people that you saved, and their lives are in your hands! Prove that they’re capable hands, and get them to safety! The monsters are coming!>

Grant did as he was told. The change did bring benefits. He found that he was able to maintain a faster pace, with each bound seeming easier. The only problem was his sword; with every step, the scabbard collided with his leg. He suffered the same issue during The Three Mile Tumbler, his leg was still bruised from the constant collisions. <Do. You. Not see the problem?>

He jerked his head up and glanced around fearfully, but Grant saw no monsters closing in. “No?”

<Your sword, Grant. I don’t want to be slapping on your leg like a drunkard hearing a funny joke! Brace me on properly.>

“I don’t know how? Wait, this is on wrong?” Grant touched the scabbard, which hung from his now-overly-large belt.

<Do I have to teach you how to wipe yourself, too?> Sarge growled and groaned, <Hold. It. Still. Brace the scabbard with your hand, pull the wagon with the other. You’re a cultivator now, not a farm boy!>

“Yes, Sarge.” He did as he was told, and the sword instantly stopped slapping his leg. “Hey, it works!”

Grant bounded through the grass, somehow pulling the wagon along just as easily with one hand as he had been with two. Birds swarmed into the air to escape the intruder careening through their territory. <This, Novice, is called ‘running with the sword’.>

As he moved along at a moderate pace, Grant found that it took a little longer for his muscles to begin to burn than the previous day. Then the monsters started appearing. Bright orange hoofstock were now stampeding at him, birds were swooping, and he just knew that there were going to be ambush creatures on the road. “Defeat them or outrun them!”

It only took a few more minutes before his muscles protested, and he was a long way off from escaping the stampede. He focused on the rhythm on his feet and suppressed the burn in his lungs and legs, keeping an eye on the road for the hidden hazards.

To his surprise, Sarge started offering encouragement and advice. <Looks like the stampede kept going past you! Now that the major threat is gone, slow down. You lack the fitness to maintain a sprint pace for more than a few minutes.>

Following orders as always, Grant slowed to a jogging pace once more. The expected relief never came. Instead his breathing became ragged and his head felt like it caught on fire. <Hey! Maintain your form! If you let yourself get wobbly like that, your energy will dry up in a flash. You’re making far too many unnecessary motions, so stop it. Ya think your opponents aren’t going to use that against you?>

The first of the ‘orange beauties’ died at this moment to a swooping bird, and the other two began to wail and curse, cursing Grant for some reason. They started hitting him with sticks and screaming at him; to the point where he wondered if the actual test was to figure out they were monsters and destroy them. His hand drifted from the sheath to the hilt of February Twenty Nine, but Sarge interjected.

<Don’t. This is something that really happens. They’ve lost someone, and the only person around to take it out on is you: they don’t know you. Understand this. Accept it. Save them, even if they act like they don’t want to be saved. If you let them go, they die… and you fail.> Grant had no choice other than to grit his teeth and bull onward; soon enough the whipping sticks left him alone.

Then another died from a snake that had somehow gotten on the cart, and the third retreated into silence as Grant killed the serpent and got back to running. <Build a rapport with the people you’re protecting! They saw the snake, they just didn’t know what to do.>

“I hate this.” Grant’s eyes were overflowing; every time he looked back at the sobbing lady, his heart broke for her. He knew that she wasn’t real, but… orange or not, she seemed human.

An hour of jogging and fighting later, they reached a tree that grew alongside the road. It was difficult to judge distances out in the open, but he had seen this nearly thirty minutes before now, and had been trying to make sense of this terrain. As it turned out, this tree wouldn’t help with that at all. It wasn’t a mere stump, it was an ancient giant of a tree. Standing under it as he was, the light of the sun struggled to penetrate its dense canopy.

An opening stopped him in his tracks. He couldn’t see inside but felt the urge to investigate. “Sarge, can I have permission to investigate this hole in the trunk? I think it leads somewhere.”

<Adventuring permitted. We will resume your training immediately afterward, understood?> The sobbing beauty froze in place, and Grant let out a huge sigh of relief. He couldn’t believe how much of a toll that had been taking on his mentality.

“Yes, Sarge. Thank you.” Grant stepped forward, hand on his hilt. Carefully inspecting the area, he found that the bowl of the giant tree was unremarkable. Disappointed, Grant knelt to pluck one blue cap mushroom and two red ones. His plant insight skill was going wild, so even though he hadn’t discovered a use for mushrooms like this, Grant was sure they would come in handy.

“Well, that was an exciting adventure.” He sighed and headed for the opening. A gust of ice-cold wind made his oversized clothes flutter, but the wind didn’t come from… outside? “That was odd.”

He swept his sword around, in search of the source of the wind. He felt air resistance and plunged his sword into a small knot of wood. A chunk of wood fell inward, creating a hole, just wide enough to fit a man even as large as Grant. The aroma of damp and dirt was overwhelming, and something else almost familiar… but he couldn’t place the scent. After scrambling down the steep slope, he looked down what appeared to be a natural tunnel. With the tip of February Twenty Nine leading the way, Grant began moving along the opening.

The deeper he went, the more the tunnel became coated in a sticky white substance. It was everywhere, and clung possessively to his armor and face. The skittering of many feet set his senses on edge, and he hoped that it was just his mind playing tricks on him. “Spiders. Gotta be spiders. Sarge… tell me those orange assassin spiders are from somewhere else. Are those native to February?”

<Might be from anywhere, Grant.> Sarge informed him noncommittally.

“I’m out.” Curiosity paralyzed him just before he escaped, and with a grumble led him onwards deeper into the mass of cobwebs… then he just flat out changed his mind. The reward, if there was any, just wasn’t worth the risk.

Grant sheathed his sword, dropped to the ground, and rolled back to turn around in the claustrophobic confinement of the tunnel. He got to his feet… and his heart nearly stopped at the sight of bloated bodies and hairy legs skittering towards him. The spiders paused in their pursuit to observe their prey. Hundreds of pinpricks reflected at Grant through a multitude of eyes. “I… don’t suppose any of those are orange, my new favorite color?”

He backed up a step and the spiders realized their ambush was blown. The horde attacked in various ways; leaping into the air, skittering at him, or preparing webbing. Poison-tipped fangs dripped acrid liquid, and Grant realized that was the smell he couldn’t place. It was so similar to the giant rats in the Royal January Mill, this must be the source of the poison used against them! His body recognized the threat, and his muscle memory kicked in. Somehow his sword practically leapt out of its sheath and into the first of the bloated, hairy bodies. The perfect attack halved the first spider and continued on to burst halfway into another. Both died, and the notifications blocked Grant’s view for a moment.

Damage dealt: 29 slashing. (Critical!)

Damage dealt: 12 slashing.

Skill gained: Iaijutsu (1/5). This skill is designed for instant strikes, a way to take an opponent off-guard or defend against sudden attacks. You have shown initial mastery! Congratulations!

Tier one effect: When prepared to attack, sword instantly leaves a sheath and slashes or penetrates target, increasing on-hit damage by 10%.

Disorientated, he flailed around and made sure to make rapid slashes. Dozens of the cat-sized spiders died each second, and Grant screamed as teeth tried to sink into his arm… only to fail to penetrate. It still hurt, but no damage was done, and no poison entered his blood. His armor and armor cultivation seemed to stave off the worst of it.

Damage taken: 0 (10 mitigated)

Now knowing that they couldn’t hurt him, Grant attacked with wild abandon. He whimpered as the fangs bounced off his flesh, and retaliated in kind. Soon, the small number of survivors hissed at him and slunk away into the deeper shadows of the tunnel. Heaving for breath as his adrenaline faded, Grant looked for a notification and couldn’t find one. “No monsters in there?”

<Two, actually. You just got them before they could close in. They’re set up as assassin-type creatures, with a huge amount of damage and damage-over-time, but very low health.> Sarge pointed out two of the corpses, and Grant swallowed as he realized that the fangs on those were nearly as long as his middle fingers. <Toss the whole body in your pack, let a professional collect the materials. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I think your coinage troubles are over.>

Grant put the bodies in his pack after stabbing each an additional time, just to make sure they were dead. Now he wasn’t sure if he should be heading back towards the exit, or deeper within the maze of spiders. He looked deeper, and just before deciding to turn back… something metallic glinted and caught his eye. “Treasure?”

Rolling around to get back on the path of descent, he followed the glint until the tunnel opened into a chamber. It was tall enough for him to stand upright, and at the other side of the chamber he could make out what the ‘treasure’ actually was: a mass of bones. They appeared human, and were suspended in a rope. The gleam came from a rapier that rotated in the air, waiting to be claimed by a courageous adventurer.

The lure of adventure and the promise of riches proved too strong, enticing him towards the blade. Before he could doubt himself, he reminded himself that he wasn’t defenseless. February Twenty Nine was unsheathed, it’s blade tested and true against the denizens of this odd dungeon. Grant crossed the gap and approached the mound of bones. There were three bodies, each at varying levels of decomposition. A realization made him stop in his tracks, “They all must have come to claim the sword.”

“No. I fought the spiders off already… pretty sure?” He considered searching through their belongings, but balked at the idea of disturbing the dead. They should at least be allowed to rest in peace. The sword, on the other hand…! He reached out and plucked the shining blade from the sticky white ‘rope’.

Do you, Grant Monday, wish to absorb the power of February 17th, ‘Stolen Sunlight’? Accepting ‘Stolen Sunlight’ will override any previous Wielded Weapon power absorbed in the current monthly series. If not overridden by another weapon of the same month, this ability will vanish at the end of the year, unless the quest ‘Heal the World’ has been completed.

Accept / Decline

“Accept! A Wielded Weapon, here? Done deal.” He popped the blade into his pack, and started back to the entrance, eager to be free from the claustrophobic surroundings. His sword suddenly became a beacon, blazing with light. Strangely, it didn’t hurt his eyes, but he felt it should have as it bathed the chamber in luminescence.

It also highlighted a serious problem.

*Hiss*.

Descending from the ceiling on a rope of white silk was a bulbous spider body, several orders of magnitude larger than its small skittering brethren. Its body dropped in an instant and blocked his exit. Above its twelve-eyed head was a red skull and the name ‘Snippy the Gleam-Fang Stalker’.

The spider was deadly and way above his level. Grant backed up and his foot collided with the pile of bones, disturbing the grave. Snippy reached the ground and extended its arm-length fangs. They oozed sizzling green liquid, looking more like a pair of long knives wielded by a member of House Saturday than anything a natural creature should have.

<I can paint it orange for you if it’ll make you feel better?>

“That’ll make the damage it deals disappear?” Grant’s answer was half dry, half hopeful.

Sarge took a long beat to reply. <Maybe you just fight it without access to wishful thinking like that.>

Grant slowly knelt, not taking his eyes off the multifaceted eyes before him. He slowly pulled the rapier out of his pack, then whipped it at the spider. It easily skittered to the side, firing a spray of silk in Grant’s direction. He took the opportunity to run past it and into the tunnel, scooping up the Wielded Weapon as he sprinted. Relief washed over him. There was no way the spider could fit in here. He glanced back, hoping to catch sight of the creature… and seeing far more than he wanted. It was skittering towards him, its legs held tightly to its side as it came after him.

He pounded his legs or scrambled on all fours along the dark, dank tunnel, all the while the sound of skittering grew larger in his ears. The tunnel went into an abrupt incline and he knew he’d almost reached the exit. Grant scrambled along up the steep slope, hands chafing as they skated off sharp rocks. He slipped, almost falling back towards the razor-sharp mandibles.

“Only a few more steps, then freedom!” He slammed his sword back in the scabbard and tossed the rapier out ahead of him. The tunnel was plunged into darkness as the light of the sword was held at bay by the scabbard. “Ahh!”

Snippy uses Gleaming Fang! Piercing attacks have a lower critical threshold!

Damage taken: 7 piercing (13 mitigated).

Pain lanced through his foot, and Grant didn’t need to look to know that the spider had pinned his foot to the ground. Dropping to all fours, he braced himself on the floor and kicked in the direction of the creature’s eyes. It pulled back and his pinned foot slid free. Grant scrambled up the last few feet and into the bowl of the giant tree. He sprinted away, ignoring the searing pain coursing through his leg, powered only by pain and copious amounts of adrenaline.

<Back to training, that’s the spirit! How was your adventure?> Sarge let out a deep, bellowing laugh just before an unholy *hiss* echoed across the grasslands. Grant looked over his shoulders to see eight hairy legs sticking out of the opening, along with a multitude of eyes glowing in the dying light of the day.

<Grant, you forgot your cart!> Sarge waited a long moment as Grant continued to limp-sprint further away from the massive-arachnid infested tree. <So… you just don’t want it, or…?>