My heart was halfway to Areestra.
I took the scene in because I was too shocked to do anything else.
“The fuck happened?!”
I may have screamed.
I didn’t hear myself screaming. Because my ears were ringing. Also, I was upside down, plastered against the wall, with only the iepurran backpack between me and the fucking unscheduled explosion. I’d forever praise that leather worker for the quality of his pack, because the thing probably saved my life. And it was still in one piece.
Everything. Fucking. Hurt!
For a moment I worried some of the black sludge sloughing off the walls was Crystal herself. I hoped it wasn’t, because the moment I got my wits back, I wanted to wring her fucking neck.
Of course the bloody gnark survived. She crawled out from under what remained of one of her knickknack shelves, cursing in some language I didn’t understand. She coughed, dusted off her grubby clothes, then stared up at the dripping remains of her cauldron with fists on hips.
In the meanwhile, I found my feet. They were still attached, thankfully, but wobbled dangerously as I leaned on the wall for support. The ringing in my ears was far more of an issue than my balance, but it was slowly going away.
“Eternity, what the fuck happened?” I asked the air. My dew drop was nowhere in sight.
Eternity had to reform itself from the smoke, something it had never needed to do. I felt a slight tug on my MP when the dragon reappeared. It scowled balefully in Crystal’s direction.
“Our host tried to use an entire verdant heart in her brew, in spite of my protestations.” It beat its wings a few times before finally settling atop my head. “I apologise but I did not have enough time to warn you. Verdant hearts exposed to intense heat,” Eternity said, looking pointedly at the still shuffling form of Crystal, “can detonate with little to no warning.”
Noted.
“Heart stupid.” Crystal coughed on the other side of the burrow. “No explode in soup. Why this explode? No make sense.”
“It exploded because you dropped a whole fresh heart in your fetid, boiling stew,” Eternity grumbled. “It reacted with some of your other ingredients. You could have killed yourself.”
Crystal waved her hand dismissively. “Bah, gnark princess hard to kill.”
I stuck a finger in my ear and opened my mouth, trying to pry away that horrible ringing. It only made it worse.
“Will I heal from this?” I asked, still trying to pop the pressure. “Do I need to farm my next level?”
“In time,” Eternity answered. “Once your constitution is high enough.”
Well, that was plenty motivation for me to get out of that disaster area. I’d been too tired earlier to deal with my level up, so I put it off for when I was better rested. Foresight, yes?
Wouldn’t it have been fucking hilarious if I died in a freak home appliance accident?
One thing I wasn’t going to do was stick around in that hole and suffocate to death on the rancid fumes. The air was a thick soup of smoke, stench, and God only knew what else. And I wasn’t going to help Crystal pry that stupid thing down from her ceiling. She made her own mess, she could damn well clean it up.
I wobbled my way to the door, dragging my backpack after me. Legs felt like jelly. Head like the tree father had hold of it again. My stomach hurt and I had an odd taste in the back of my mouth.
Maybe it had been the explosion. Or maybe I was just hungry. My vision blurred and swam as I fumbled with the latch on the door.
I stepped outside and was met by a distraught Tusk. He bolted inside past my legs and nearly knocked me down in his rush.
“She’s fine,” I called after him. “Just an idiot.” I left the door open so the smoke could clear out.
The burrow had its top nearly ripped off, bulging out like a geyser ready to burst. How I was alive was a matter that would probably keep me up a few nights. Stupid luck or stupid resilience?
Anger drilled at the edges of my mood. After all I’d survived, to almost get smooshed to paste by Crystal’s shenanigans was beyond ironic. But faced with the clear day stretching out in front of me, it was hard to hold on to the anger.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked as I took in the sun at its summit, the clear blue sky, and the absurdly vivid shade of green covering the world. A storm looked to have come and gone as the grass remained wet and glistening.
“You’ve been asleep for close to thirty hours,” Eternity said. “Crystal tried waking you but you said something profoundly disturbing, then promptly fell back asleep.”
I did a double take at that. “Are you serious?”
“Of course.”
Well, if everything I was feeling wasn’t due to the exploding witch’s cauldron, sleeping on my ass for thirty hours would explain why I felt so wrung out. A deep pang of hunger announced itself with a monstrous rumble of my stomach.
“Fuck me,” I grumbled. “Guess I was more tired than I thought.”
Before I got distracted by some other random bullshit, and before I dealt with my body’s needs, I dropped my stat point.
[Congratulations!]
[A threshold has been achieved]
[Evolving stat: CONSTITUTION]
[Primary bonus: Gained improved healing from non-life threatening wounds, disease and toxins]
[Species bonus: Gained slow regeneration of lost appendages]
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
[Class bonus: Gained increased physical resilience]
[Each new point added to this stat will improve these effects by a small amount]
Damn. That was indeed juicy. A jolt ran up my back as I read, leaving me oddly energised and ravenous. My skin also felt different, a bit like it got thicker and less sensitive.
I’d just gained quite a bit of healing. It would definitely take the edge off some of my future encounters, which I wasn’t sure was a great thing in itself what with my recent excesses.
With Crystal busy and a beautiful day outside, I was about to do something very out of character for me.
I sat down in the wet grass and put on the ol’ thinking cap. It was about time I used my head for something else than a punching bag.
“Eternity, my survival rating’s terrible, right?”
Eternity remained atop my head, tail swishing down my neck as it thought. “You know I can’t say,” the dragon huffed. “I can however say that it could be better.”
“How?”
It probably didn’t matter much, how Eternity perceived me. But what with the past couple of days and how everything ultimately shaped out in Harriet’s Heap, I had to face facts about myself. Chief among them was that I was incompetent.
For my own safety and survival, that had to change.
“You would need to severely change your approach to challenges,” Eternity said after some consideration.
“I rush in pretty often, don’t I?”
“Not how I’d phrase it, but yes. You are your own worst enemy, Klaus. This is not an exaggeration.”
I was competent enough to fight and surprised at myself for how quickly I’ve been picking up the skill set. Okay, I was flailing around a lot, but ultimately managed to dish out more pain than I was dealt, so that counted as a win. But, even after Methol warned me about my recklessness, I’d still gone ahead and almost got myself killed in the forest.
Far as I could understand myself and my actions, I recognised that I had the makings of a berserker. Not what I thought I’d be when the chips went down, but here we were. Once my blood started pumping, my brain took a backseat to the whim of every other gland squirting its cocktail of hormones.
I was at the mercy of a hyper-excitable nervous system. I could try to fight it, or learn to work with myself in a way that wouldn’t have me bleeding every other day.
Fighting felt good. Getting hurt and surviving also felt good, odd as that might sound.
Not thinking before fighting… well, that was a wrinkle I needed to iron out.
“Do you have Ever there?” I asked.
Eternity’s head leaned over my forehead. “Yes. She and Methol are resting. Do you need something from them?”
I did, yes. What I really needed was a rubber ducky, but in its absence Methol would have to do.
“Ask Methol if I can find someone to train me in Dragon’s Tear. Someone that can actually teach me how to control myself. You can explain my recent fuck up if you want.”
Fact was I wouldn’t get much better on my own. I would try to, of course, but that sort of self-reliant learning had its limits. My skills would keep developing, sure, but my own growth felt like it would stagnate if I didn’t get over myself somehow.
I’m generally too proud to admit I need help, but this had my neck on the line.
“Methol says she could arrange something for you, provided you reach Dragon’s Tear with at least your fourth Insight level.”
“Why do I need that?”
“Because else Tiamat can’t take you in. Fourth insight will be fractionally acceptable.”
Tiamat? She’d mentioned him to the Nobody and sent the thing running scared. Sounded like a big deal.
“Who’s that, again?”
“Tiamat is a Protector who’s gone above level 100. His Insight level currently sits at nine. He has the possibility to take you under his direct tutelage as an apprentice.”
I sputtered a little at that and my stomach loudly growled, perfectly showing my surprise. “Fuck me, that’s a lot.” Bigger deal than Methol herself. “Doesn’t this break your protocol?”
Eternity took off my head and landed on my knees. It made that motion that I interpreted as it shrugging. “You are not motivated by outside influence in asking for this support.”
“So you can read my thoughts!”
“No.” It levelled a glare my way, as if uncomfortable to explain itself. “I can understand your intention. It is part of our developing bond. And your intention now is to better yourself, motivated by self-reflection. Protocol is satisfied, even if the way you arrived at your conclusions was, in some measure, guided by Methol.”
I didn’t even argue against that. Fuck it. It’d make sense eventually, or prove the universe was run by an insane AI. Whichever came first.
“I’ll do my best,” I finally said. “I’ll probably move towards the next one in a couple days.”
And, just like that, my quest list grew by three more items.
Find and clear a third dungeon.
Find and clear a fourth dungeon.
Find Tiamat in Dragon’s Tear and become his apprentice.
Now, to complete the quest I was already on, which was to get myself a lamp and learn some foraging from the resident hermit.
I still had one more item on my to-do now that I was resting with nothing to hurry me along.
Methol’s ring. I wore it on my right hand and could feel the way it demanded MP. I fed it some and, immediately, a little window popped up in the air next to me, just large enough that I could fit my bag in. The volume inside wasn’t huge, barely more than a hatchback’s trunk, but plenty when I didn’t want to deal with lugging stuff around.
“Neat,” I said once I figured how to send stuff in there, see it in the inventory, and then retrieve it. “I owe Methol a world of gratitude. Remind me to buy her a beer or something.”
Though, given my streak of chaos, I’d probably end up with my finger lopped off at some point and that ring lost until some gnark picked it up from a river.
“Right, food.” I clapped and pushed myself up, with Eternity taking to the air. I still felt twinges of stiff muscles and pain from the impact, but it was all regenerating nicely.
By now the smoke had cleared from Crystal’s home and I could peer inside at the devastation without my eyes watering. “You okay in there?” I called to the sounds of crashing and smashing.
Tusk came out, dragging a whole bag of stuff that he tossed in an already growing pile. He grumbled, then went back in again.
Crystal herself was busy sorting through the stuff that’d been knocked off the shelves. A lot of it she threw away. Her pickled spiders were on the floor, feebly trying to crawl away from the remains of their jar.
Her face was a nearly purple colour.
“Stupid. Stupid heart. Bad time. Bad.” She was mumbling and probably not in the mood to get any food. I knocked on the open door and was met with a glare so black that it would’ve stripped the skin off my face. “What want, human? I busy.”
“Food, for one thing,” I said, not engaging with her tone. “And a good vantage point.”
“Tusk take you.” She shooed me away. “Tusk, show him tree. Show food. Bring back for me.”
“And I want my lamp,” I added. Tusk grumbled as she emerged from under what was left of a whole bunch of jars. “I want to leave soon.”
“Yes, yes. When you come back. Bring food.” She dug out some earthen jug from the pile, sniffed at it, then threw it hard against a wall. It shattered to dust, sprinkling some white powder around. “Go go. Burn daylight.”
Tusk grumbled his way out and then made a straight line towards the forest edge, with me hurrying to keep up. I had to admit, the next couple hours were a strange education. Nothing could have prepared me for exactly how skilled a forager he was, and how well he could explain what to look for without a single word.
Never pick up fruit from the ground. Tusk crushed any that we ran across, no matter what shape or form, or how ripe or green. He demonstrated how, when crushed, many were filled with critters, or they puffed out various spores. Don’t eat stuff fallen to the ground, got it.
As for fruit on branches, he gestured to the very opposite of what I would’ve picked. Whatever was small or clustered together, like grapes, got his seal of approval. Larger fruit he generally snorted at, aside from those that had thicker rinds.
“These fruit are not poisonous,” Eternity said as I picked some orange-like things off a low branch. “The thicker rind protects them from parasites because the flesh inside is non-toxic.”
Mushrooms were a whole deal altogether. He only let me touch those that grew around particular trees. Anything that grew around a fruit-bearing tree was off-limits. Same thing with dense covers of leaves. I could, however, eat anything that grew beneath fallen logs, or around trees with thick coverings of moss.
Also, the moss was edible, if stupidly salty. Eternity grumbled when I took my first taste, but otherwise didn’t complain.
Before I knew it, the sun was starting to descend. I’d been eating various fruit and berries, and storing the excess in the ring’s space.
Finally, after what felt like way too much walking, the vegetation parted to show a tree trunk so massive that its high canopy blotted out the sky entirely. Tusk sat at its base and looked up, as if daring me to climb the thing.
Well, it seemed I finally got my vantage point.
“You are not going to climb that, I hope,” Eternity said from my shoulder.
“I am so sick of this forest like you can’t imagine,” I grumbled. “If I can get out of it at long last, I’ll climb five of these things.”
The bark was gnarled and rough, and the lowest branches were, maybe, twenty metres or so up in the air. I had no choice but to draw my knife and activate my [Cling].
I spat in my hands, took off my boots for what felt like the first time in forever, and attacked the climb. Time to see where the fuck that third dungeons was.