Hal wished the bandlight didn’t make it so easy to see the monstrosity before him.
It looked like a crocodile if crocodiles had insectile legs, two spine-filled tails, and a pock-marked scaley green hide with angry red pustules.
With the same ease as Hal had dug the spiny tips of his essence limbs into the ice, the creature clambered out of the water and made its steady way toward him.
“Flork that,” Hal grumbled.
Summoning the power of Convergence to his legs, he released his essence limbs at the same time as he pushed off. Securing his hold on the Rhino Beetle, Hal leaped at a sharp angle over the head of the croc.
Besal’s shadowy wings beat at the air, buying him precious extra seconds aloft.
Hal’s skin crawled as he saw what was inside those blood-red pustules. As soon as Hal soared over the creature’s head, it twisted and snapped its jaws at the air. A pustule on its back broke open to the droning whine of dozens of wings beating the air.
Your Evasion Skill has risen to Level 17 (22).
+1% Evasion speed (+22%).
-1% Stamina cost (-22%).
Mosquito-like insects the size of Hal’s fist broke free from their prison on the creature’s back and followed Hal.
They weren’t particularly fast, but as Hal landed on the next ice floe, he realized they didn’t have to be.
Unlike him, the pests could stay in the air indefinitely. Even the icy wind of the Shiverglades didn’t bother them. They were too large to be knocked off course.
Making good use of his essence limbs, Hal leaped from one ice floe to the next. And while he didn’t slide off them, even when he hit them off-center, causing the ice to tilt precariously into the water, he wasn’t putting any space between himself and that buzzing whine.
The mosquitos were gaining.
By the time they made it to the other shore, the buzzing whine of a dozen mosquito wings filled the air.
Hal released the Rhino Beetle and turned, drawing out [Emissary].
Besal stepped out of Hal’s body, drawing his own [Bone Longsword] as Hal cast Bomb Toss and lobbed the fiery payload at the gaining swarm.
Half-expecting the cloud of mosquitos to now be a flaming cloud, Hal readied himself. But to his surprise, when the flash of fire vanished, so too had the mosquitos.
Their whining buzz was blessedly silenced, but strangely, Hal had received no notifications. There was no essence, no EXP, nothing.
Hal shut his eyes, trying to focus on the predators around them. But they were amid a sea of creatures. There were too many to differentiate between the one that had just attacked them and the rest.
A few tense moments passed as both Besal and Hal waited for the crocodile creature to show itself. But it never did. Black water sloshed over the marshy soil, but no more threats showed themselves.
Hal looked at Besal, “Maybe we should have gone around.”
Besal nodded, and together they turned to forge deeper into the Shiverglades.
The farther they traveled, the warmer it became. The trees grew tall and wild, even larger than they had seen so far. Their size dwarfed buildings.
Moving around them took time. The pair plotted their course as much by the keinse overhead who squeaked down instructions, as by the avenues that opened up between the gargantuan trees.
For most of the trip, Hal expected that creature to show up and ambush them. And while they were definitely followed by something, it never made itself known.
They came to a wild cluster of smaller trees, which meant they were the size of a small shack instead of an apartment building. The bark glinted strangely in the night, until Hal took a closer look and realized it wasn’t bark at all.
Polished metal rings decorated the trees. They were as wide around as many of the trunks, and in some cases, even wider. A few rings littered the ground like gigantic hula hoops.
Branches held most of them aloft, others were partially grown over by the steady growth of the trees.
Curious, Hal walked up to one at shoulder height and inspected it further. The surface was mirror-smooth without the faintest hint of blemish or age.
There were no sigils, no markings that he could see. It was odd, like nothing he had ever seen before. He could see himself clearly reflected in the bright polished metal.
But there was something off about the reflection. It had a watery quality to it that didn’t seem right. As if Hal wasn’t entirely there.
When he reached out a hand to touch the metal, he expected a violent reaction.
What he didn’t expect was the way the mark on his left forearm lit up. It hadn’t glowed that fiercely since he had gone into the depths beneath Murkmire.
In turn, each of the metal rings rippled as if they were made out of water. One by one, they revealed similar geometric designs to Hal’s mark. Not the same, but clearly of the same origin.
And that, more than anything, did not sit well with Hal.
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“Must you touch everything?” Besal asked.
Hal shrugged. “Human impulse.”
The forest lit up in hues of gold markings and silver bandlight. Even with normal human vision, it would have been easy to pick a path ahead.
Hal studied the markings a little more, trying to find some connection or reason for them. Placing his hand on the metal again did nothing, but he did note that it wasn’t solid as it seemed.
There was a subtle give, like he was handling stiff foam.
As he turned away, a sound began to fill the forest around them - creaking, groaning sounds like that of a ship in the dead of night.
Before Hal’s very eyes, the tree directly in front of him began to grow. Bark slowly expanded layer by layer, visible to the naked eye, until it partially enveloped the metal ring.
As the bark rolled over the metal, it slowed considerably until the last half inch was barely visible. It was just a gleam of metal within the bark, but the explosive growth seemed to stop.
Hal searched the ground for one of the rings left abandoned on the grass. He bent down to touch the golden-marked surface. It was much too large to fit into his inventory but it was feather-light.
Despite the hoop’s lightness and the subtle give when Hal squeezed the metal, he could not bend or twist it into any smaller shape. With a shrug, he dropped it back to the ground.
I’ll have to come back for it some other time, he thought. With a whistle, one of the keinse came down, and Hal asked her to mark the area for him so he can find his way back to this spot.
His map, it seemed, had stopped updating at all. It had filled in most of the Shiverglades, and as he continued to explore, he received small quantities of EXP here and there but nothing more.
No new areas revealed themselves to him.
He was obviously discovering new locations, or else he wouldn’t be getting EXP from his Explorer perk. But he couldn’t figure out why they didn’t have names or at least let him give them one.
The keinse flew back up into the air with Hal’s instruction. Hal, Besal, and the Rhino Beetle soon left the strange area behind, only to stumble upon an even greater mystery an hour later.
Throughout it all, the trees with silver hoops never ceased. All were lit up with golden marks, but none of the trees were growing as the first ones had.
Many of the golden marks were weaker here, and the farther they traveled, the less powerful their glow became until they were barely visible anymore.
Hal’s mark had similarily dimmed until it was no longer showing through his bracer. Not that he minded it all the way out in the Shiverglades.
If somebody was out there looking for him, they probably didn’t need a glowing mark to identify him.
The forest broke unexpectedly, and Hal’s next footfalls fell atop aged stone blocks. He soon discerned it was an ancient roadway of some sort. It followed the natural curves of the land, rising higher and twisting off to the left.
Following it, they came across ancient crumble
d stones and moss-covered obelisks.
As they crested the rise, a wondrous sight greeted them.
Ruins of Cirta
You gain 1,500 Experience Points.
In the area below were towering, monolithic structures with moldering tapestries draped over them. Faded paint decorated the larger structures. Smaller homes and one-story buildings with faded blue roofs littered the distant floor below Hal.
Water coursed throughout the ancient city. Bridges of pale stone leaped over wide carved channels to restrain and divert the water. In some areas, the ruins were flooded where the waters had flowed unchecked, or the protections had been eroded with time.
Vines choked many of the buildings, but there were clear marketplaces, avenues, residential areas, and official buildings. That a place so massive could be so close to his Settlement was intriguing.
A massive palace up on the left, half-hidden by overgrown gardens and trees loomed and drew his attention. It rose on a shelf from amid a wide pool of water constantly fed from a series of man-made waterfalls erupting from various channels in the worked stone.
The size and scope of the place was more than Hal could imagine. No wonder the keinse had seen the ruins. It would have stuck out easily to them from so high above.
Your Perception has risen to Level 21.
+2% Perception highlight chance (+42%).
+5% Awareness of magical items (+105%).
He made a mental note to use the keinse again in the near future to find such treasures as this.
An ancient city, right before his very eyes. He couldn’t believe it. There was just the small matter of getting down there.
They stood upon a rise that curved off to the left, and as Hal followed that curve, he came to a weathered set of stairs carved out of the hillside.
Taking them carefully, one step at a time, Hal made his way down to the ruins.
Everything loomed so much larger now that he was on the ground. Buildings he thought were large before, seemed disturbingly gargantuan. In fact, every building looked too big for his sensibilities. Even the closest structures had gaping doorways that were easily twenty feet tall.
And he suspected they would be even larger as he came closer.
Water flooded the broken, cracked stones that made the roadway into the ruins. An arched bridge crossed a placid river of water that leaked out of the cracked stone facing and spilled into the roadway.
But what stood out most to Hal were the strange, smooth stones. As far as his Shadesight enhanced eyes could see, the stones rose up at regular intervals every twenty feet. A crimson rope was looped over the top of the smoothed man-sized stones and then draped toward the next stone in line.
Standing ten feet tall and half as wide, the smooth dark stones looked rather imposing. Whatever markings were placed on them were faded with time to the point that Hal couldn’t even make out what was there.
The rope hung low enough that Hal would have to duck beneath it. For a moment, he thought to cut the cord with [Emissary]. He quickly thought better of it.
It would be just like him to unleash some horrible evil by disarming whatever protections were keeping it inside. Instead, Hal ducked beneath the cord and slipped between the stones.
“Do not damage the stones or the cord,” Hal warned.
Besal glanced at the red corded rope, then Hal. With a shrug, he slipped below it as well. The Rhino Beetle wasn’t nearly large enough to cause a problem, and he ambled right in after them.
“I don’t feel any particular sensation of strife or battle between creatures. Are you sure this is the right place for the second Communion?” Hal asked.
Besal continued without breaking stride or turning to look at Hal. “This place is steeped in strife. Can you not feel it? We will find what we seek within, of that I am sure.”
There was no ominous bellowing, no gonging alarm. In fact, the entire place felt long-since dead. The sound of the waterfalls Hal had spied from above was the only sound aside from a faint breeze every so often.
If it hadn’t been so dark or so cold, it would have been pleasant. Hal could imagine how beautiful the place must be when the sun lit it up.
The ruins rose and fell in great terraces with large sweeping stairs that curved up the side of the rounded cliff faces. Tall columns marched across some of the distant terraces, marking them as temples of some sort.
Throughout it all, Hal kept his guard up, but he felt oddly at peace. Relaxed. Even Besal stopped his usual wary, predatorial glancing.
“This is almost… nice,” Hal subvocalized.
“Yes. There is a soothing peace to this place that is in direct opposition to what I felt before passing those stones. And that worries me more than anything, yet I cannot find the strength to grow angry or alarmed. Do not trust the peace you feel, Hal. Something is not right.”
Hal was pretty sure that Besal would distrust a warm bath, but he kept that thought to himself.
Ancient pillars dotted the avenues that were choked with weeds and overgrowth. A few pillars were broken and crumbling, some still held a crystal aloft as if it were meant to light the way.
Whatever magic may have been within the crystals had long since been spent, and the crystals were dark.
As Hal had suspected, the buildings were taller up close. The smallest building was easily fifty feet tall, and that was a small single-bedroom home. Peering inside, Hal saw that everything was sized for a resident that was much larger than he was. Not quite a giant, but certainly close.
The tables came up to Hal’s chest, and while he could sit in the chairs, he had to hop up into them. Bookshelves with half-rotted books lined a few of the walls, floor-to-ceiling.
Every home was the same, whether multi-story or single, they all were fairly uniform. Moldering books that he couldn’t salvage, no treasure or loot that he could find.
By the time they had reached the circular area Hal had assumed to be a marketplace, the sun was already lighting the sky to the east a hazy pink.
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An arc of brilliant, scintillating light broke the gloom of the forest, followed quickly by three more swerving missiles. Elora wasted no time in dumping her MP.
With Wildsmaster set as her Focused Class, she wouldn’t be limited to Leveling Up only when she deposited EXP into the Class from her Discordant Stone.
Rather, as soon as she got any EXP, it went straight into Wildsmaster. It stopped her from being able to Level Up her Paladin or Thief, but she didn’t want to Level those anyway.
More importantly, it meant she could Level Up while she was fighting. Elora could drain her MP dry, killing this Morbolger with extreme prejudice, only to have it fill up again as soon as it died.
Elora’s Lightning Barrage performed flawlessly, as it was wont.
The Morbolger’s coiling limbs rolled up in great spirals. Whatever control it had over its body was gone, done in by its severe weakness to Elora’s lightning elemental arrows.
She watched, as she had every time since the first Young Morbolger Elaise had shown her, as the creature tore itself apart.
It couldn’t help it. Every fiber of its body was ripped and shredded as the conductive innards of the monster were forced to contract at the same time. Morbolgers were powerful things. If given half a chance, they would crush the life out of a heavily armored adventurer.
But now, thanks to Elaise’s “lessons,” Elora understood how to turn their strength into a weakness. Arcs of blue electricity danced along the Morbolger’s body. Its powerful vine-like tendrils burst open with explosive force, showering the area in ichorous goo.
The foul liquid splashed across the mossy ground in front of Elora, standing just outside its range. Aside from being incredibly conductive, their blood was also highly flammable.
Some strange magical property of the plant monster kept it from burning alive, and so while most plant-based entities were weak to fire, a Morbolger was emphatically not.
It would turn into a toweri
ng torch of rage. Eventually, it might succumb to the bite of the ravenous flames, but not before it destroyed everybody nearby and burned their remains for good measure.
You defeat the [Morbolger | Lv.50]
You gain 1,800 Experience Points.
You earn 180 Sparks.
Wildsmaster reaches Level 21.
You have 5 unspent Attribute Points awaiting distribution.
Your HP, SP, and MP are fully restored.
Your Archery Skill has risen to Level 34.
+1.5% Ranged damage (+51.0%).
+1.25% Effective distance (+42.5%).
Your Arcane Archery has risen to Level 12.
+1.2% Magic damage potency (+14.4%).
-0.4% Mana cost (-4.8%).
Once the forest stilled, Elora took a look around at the remains of the monster. Elaise hopped down from a branch high above and motioned her over.
Together, the pair continued on. They were making good time, felling monsters only when it was for a lesson, or when it behooved them. Like Elora, Elaise was a fine fighter. Neither would shy away from a fight if it was worthwhile.
But speed was of the essence. Something was wrong with the Shiverglades. Monsters that should have been long-since dormant were waking up.
There was a presence, a disturbance according to Elaise, that was riling up the Shiverglades. As if a contender were stalking about, shouting for a challenge. It happened suddenly late last night and hadn’t abated since.
The morning was coming fast to greet them, burning off the low-lying chill fog that clung to the roots and soft black earth of the Shiverglades’s forests.
Far to the south and east of the Settlement, the pair had put miles between them and that first Morbolger that Elora had put down.
As Elora followed Elaise, glad that Komachi was sleeping in her pocket dimension where she could dismiss her familiars to, she was tempted to fiddle with her attributes.
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