The Land: Predators

by Aleron Kong

  He had just needed to touch Sion and have him trigger the magic, before he did what came next. Richter chose “Yes” on a black and gold prompt in his vision, and another window appeared in Sion’s.

  Richter of the Mist Village has made you his Heir. Upon his final death, all Mastery and items he owns will become yours.

  Sion looked at his best friend in all the world and shouted, “What are you doing?”

  Richter looked back with a faint smile. As he let go of his grip on both Sion and this life, he said, “I’m saving the fucking day, brother. That’s what we do.”

  As soon as he let go, the bracelet’s magic activated. Sion only had time to reach his one free arm out in a vain attempt to grab Richter before he shot up through the air. The sprite screamed, “Noooo!” his eyes locked on his friend, until he rose too high and Richter was swallowed by the blackness. After that, the sprite was left with only the image of his brother’s resigned smile.

  Sion and Alma flew through the shrinking portal and arrived back in the Dungeon. The blast of magic had destroyed almost every red stone pillar and had turned the floor of the barrow to scorched earth. He flew through the ruins of the barrow, hurtling towards the egg Room and the small red gem Richter had hidden within it. Just before stopping, his speed slowed to a gentle float with no negative effects and he alighted on the ground, as softly as a feather. The devastation around him did not matter to Sion at all. He just started running, faster than his wounded body could handle, as soon as his feet touched down. He had to get back to the portal! With Alma cradled in his arms, he ran back towards the shrinking gateway. His eyes were still locked on it when it shut forever, without a trace.

  Sion stared at the empty air in disbelief. Blinking he softly said, “no”, before falling to his knees and screaming to the heavens, “No!”

  Richter had watched his friend and familiar fly to safety with a calm joy. His village would continue. His friend would live, and he knew in his heart that Alma would fly again. As the portal winked out of existence, the ground continued to rumble under his feet. It only grew in strength as the entire tower prepared to drop into the abyss.

  CHAPTER 108 – Day 150 – Kuborn 39, 0 AoC

  Richter would have stood in that one spot, with the darkness only lit by the few spheres of Far Light that had stuck to the ground, but then he heard a familiar roar. His head swiveled to the side in disbelief. It couldn’t be. It was the work of a moment to weave his hand in the spellform required to cast Night Vision. His vision became an overlay of greens and blacks. The small white spell balls burned in his vision, but they also let him see as easily across the immense cavern as if he was outside at noon. He had to search for a few seconds, but then he saw it. The mauler was clinging to the side of a nearby pillar of stone. It was driving its hardened talons into rock and had almost climbed to the top. One of its legs was missing below the knee, but its regen capability ensured that almost no blood was leaking out.

  At first Richter didn’t know how to feel, so he just studied it with clinical detachment. It looked different than before. The matte black of the void was gone, but there was still something weird about it that he just couldn’t place. Analyze filled in a lot of the blanks.

  Name: Hellspawned MaulerDisposition: Soul Malice (MORTAL ENEMY)

  The raw magic released by the Exile Rakshasha has changed the tovuut mauler into a hellish creature. No monster such as this has ever walked The Land. No longer able to draw on the high ambient magic of the Labyrinth, such a creature cannot survive long away from a hellscape. It must feed on the souls of other beings or it will be sucked back into an appropriate dimension. This creature is your Mortal Enemy and hates you above all else.

  Level: ???

  Health: 714/6981Mana: 192/192Stamina: 388/2377

  Strength: ???

  Agility: ???

  Dexterity: ???

  Constitution: ???

  Endurance: ???

  Intelligence: ???

  Wisdom: ???

  Charisma: ???

  Luck: ???

  He still couldn’t read most of its stats, but he knew enough. The fucking thing was on its last legs. It was some sort of hell beast now but, as he gripped the hilt of Black Ice, he realized he had a demon of his own. It also didn’t look like the mauler had seen him yet, so surprise was on his side. In that moment, Richter realized what he was feeling and it wasn’t just the bulge in his pants! He would get to kill this thing before the end. A broad and sadistic smile grew on Richter’s face as the ground continued to shake under his feet. Excitement and a sense of purpose bloomed in his heart. If he was going to fall into darkness, he was going out Gandalf-style!

  Backing up as much as he could, he sprinted forward. With a last powerful surge, he sailed off the edge of his pillar. It took three air jumps, but he made it to the top of the mauler’s column. After dismissing his night vision, he cast Darkvision. Then he silently drew Black Ice and waited. Only a minute later, he heard the mauler drive its talons into the stone just beneath the lip of the drop off. A moment after that, it threw one hand over the top. That was what Richter had been waiting for. He looked over the side and got to see what shock looked like on his mortal enemy’s face.

  With a broad grin, Richter yelled, “Did I ever tell you about the Native American orgy?” The mauler quickly recovered from its surprise and began to roar in furious response. The chaos seed didn’t give it any more time than that. He just swung his Named blade and shouted at the same time, “It was fucking intense!”

  The powerful weapon cut straight through the mauler’s fingers. Two of the talons remained embedded in the pillar’s top. Blood shot out of the stumps and the former Labyrinth boss pulled its arm back in agonized reflex. That motion made its other hand rip free from the column’s side as well. It began to topple back into space, only supported by the talons of its remaining leg that were driven into the stone. It strained to keep its leg straight, to grab hold of the pillar once more, but Richter didn’t give it a chance to save itself.

  He could have watched it struggle. He could have stayed on the shaking pillar. He could have gained himself a few more precious minutes of safety by remaining atop the column of stone, but that was not who he was. When he had chosen to come to The Land, he’d been offered a life of adventure and danger, love and betrayal, power and wonder. Here, at the end of all things, he couldn’t say that he hadn’t had it all. In that moment, he accepted the truth. The true balm of his heart had never been peace. It had always been the chaos of conflict. That was why, in accordance to his truest self, he chose to fall.

  As his mauler tipped back into the abyss, Richter jumped onto its body with his blade held high. His former Blood slave craned its neck to look up at him with a hate-filled eye, and the chaos seed grinned back in response. With a mad cackle, he plunged Black Ice through the plate-sized orb until his hand was buried in eye fluid. His blade had sought the mauler’s brain once before and failed, but this time, it flew true. Black Ice penetrated the monster’s grey matter and released its Shatter effect. Its brain was turned to slurry and pieces of its skull shot out of the back of its head. At long last, his mortal enemy’s health fell to zero. Its body grew limp. Its leg came free of the pillar.

  A prompt appeared in Richter’s vision, but he minimized it without reading. This was not a moment to be distracted. As the abyss finally claimed him, he laughed out loud in wild celebration. He laughed in remembrance of a life well lived, of strange love, random shoes and riding the wave all the way to the end. He laughed because he had lived every moment to the fullest, and most importantly, he’d done it his way. With one hand thrown high into the air, he rode the body of his vanquished foe into oblivion, all the while shouting, “Yaaaaaaahoooo!”

  CHAPTER 109 – Day 150 – Kuborn 39, 0 AoC

  Everything… HURT.

  His neck hurt, his body hurt, his teeth hurt! How the fuck did his teeth hurt? Richter thought about it, but couldn't come up with a good reason. H
e remembered the fall, seeing the ground rushing up at him at an impossible speed, a wet sort of crunch and then… nothing. Richter groaned, a wave of pain coursing through his body. He had been pretty sure that becoming a “mindless shade,” or whatever the curse was going to do to him, would suck, but he hadn’t expected his damn teeth to hurt! Was this why undead were such assholes all the time? He shook his head and sighed heavily.

  That was when it connected. He still wasn’t exactly sure what a shade was, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be sighing and breathing heavily if he was one. His mind began to clear, and he realized his recent thoughts were the equivalent of mindless babble. He also realized that, against all odds, he wasn’t dead. He was just beat all to hell.

  How he was alive he had no idea, but pain and all, he’d take it. Richter slowly became more aware of his body. Absently, he thought about how it just couldn’t be good for him to get knocked out like, four times in an hour. He shifted slightly and a fresh wave of agony swept through him. Lying still again, he waited for it to pass. He also realized that one of his initial thoughts had been spot on. EVERYTHING hurt!

  He swallowed hard, his throat dry as sand. Without thinking about it, he reached for his Bag of Holding to get a water skin. His hand only found what felt like his own torn clothes. His brow wrinkled in confusion. Where was his armor? Had he been teleported or something? His Darkvision spell had elapsed, so at least twenty minutes had passed, but he had no other frame of reference.

  One thing he knew was that he was tired of not having answers. He was also tired of feeling like a taint in a garbage disposal, so he cast Minor Slow Heal. The healing energy flooded his body and took away the worst of the pain. The flash of magical light also showed that he was in a small white dome with no exit. It wasn’t large enough for him to stand up in, and he could see cracks running through it. Casting Simple Light let him look around more thoroughly, but didn’t reveal anything else.

  With nothing else to go on, he accessed his prompts. He’d gained an insane amount of notifications during the battle, but he started at the end. The words on that single notification both solved a mystery and let him know how he was still alive.

  Know This! Using the scales of a Unique creature gave a powerful bonus to your armor called Shell. This unique property activated at the moment of your imminent death. In the case of impending catastrophic damage, the Shell Material Bonus of your skeeling armor transformed your armor into a dome with a defense equal to your armor’s durability. Activating the Shell bonus has destroyed your armor. The shell will only last for one hour, but you can destroy sections of it beforehand. Be careful while you do so, as breaking one section may compromise the entire shell.

  So that’s what “Shell” meant, Richter thought. When he’d examined the skeeling armor he’d assumed it was something powerful, seeing as how it came from a unique creature, but he hadn’t expected his armor to turn into a mini-fort! The fact that he was now left without any defenses wasn’t the best, but then again, if the dome hadn’t deployed he’d be a mindless shade, so he really wasn’t complaining. His heart thrilled as he realized what all this meant. He’d been given a second chance.

  He just had to survive seven days. If he did that, even if he was killed right after, he had a chance of respawning back in his village. That also assumed that he had another life to spend, but he’d just killed a level ninety-two hell beast and survived a fall to the bottom of the world! He could do anything!

  When he’d seen Sion disappear, Richter had already accepted the fact that he was going to die. It had seemed like a fair trade for saving his friends and his village. Now though, after surrendering himself to the jaws of death, death had spit him back out! True, he was buried who-the-hell-knew-how-far underground, he didn’t have any armor, and Black Ice was nowhere to be found, but he was alive. Richter grinned fiercely. He planned to stay that way. He looked around the shell dome. It was time to get back to work.

  The chaos seed placed a hand on the top of the dome and wondered how he was supposed to break out. To his surprise, the entire dome turned translucent at his touch. What he saw made him curse. The dome was also completely buried under rubble. His claustrophobia began to surge again, but he forced himself to be calm. The prompt had said the shell would only last an hour. All he knew for sure was that twenty minutes of that was already gone. He had to work this problem and he had to work it now.

  Richter began to go over every inch of the dome. It took ten minutes, but he finally found a reason for hope, though not much of one. Near the ground, there was one spot that was not covered in rock. It was only three feet across and a foot and a half high, but it extended outward. It was a narrow tunnel. He had no idea where it led, but he did know it was his only chance.

  Richter placed his hand on the dome and willed that one spot, and only that spot, to break. The section of dome in front of the tunnel began to crumble. A few seconds later, there was a small hole in the dome. The air rushing in through the opening was dry and had a strange smell, something that was familiar but that he couldn’t place. Richter’s hand wove in a spellform and he cast Far Light. A ball of white luminescence shot down the tunnel and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. It struck a wall after fifty or so yards and he could see that the opening in the rock led to a larger chamber.

  Looking around the small dome a final time, he didn’t see anything else of use so he started crawling. If his dislike of confined spaces had surged in the dome, it supernovaed in the tunnel. His already-torn clothes snagged and ripped on the rock. Each inch forward made pebbles and dust fall from the unstable ceiling. The tunnel grew narrower and began to squeeze his shoulders. Richter’s breath came heavier and faster as panic filled his mind and heart. At some point, he began scrambling forward like an animal in a trap, convinced he would be crushed at any moment. When he finally emerged into the next chamber, he still struggled forward another foot before he realized that his head had cleared the tunnel.

  Once he was fully out, he just lay back against a wall of solid stone, his breath coming in deep gasps. The solidity and firmness of the rock wall helped him focus and calm down. A minute later, he felt up to taking stock of his surroundings. He was in a small cave made of light brown stone. The walls were pockmarked and rough. There was barely enough room to stand up, and the only two exits were another tunnel that led downward at a steep angle and the way back.

  Richter stared bleakly at the dark opening, but he knew he couldn’t wait long. If he let himself start thinking about the weight of all the rock above him, about being buried alive or being crushed, then he’d never have the nerve to leave. If he had still had access to food and water, he might have just stayed in that small cave for seven days until the curse faded away. After that he’d have happily rolled the dice on being reborn if it meant that he didn’t have to keep squeezing through corridors that had never been meant to accommodate men. He couldn’t wait here though. It was a death sentence, and it would be his final death.

  After healing his small scrapes and bruises, he cast Far Light down the new tunnel and started crawling again. This time, the passageway was sinuous and he could never see more than five yards in front of him. After each turn, he thought about how if this tunnel led nowhere not only would he be out of options, but he might be stuck, unable to back up. Fear threatened to overwhelm him, but he pushed it down and kept crawling. One hand went forward, the other followed it and with a heave, he pulled his body along. Left hand, right hand, heave. Left hand, right hand, heave! It became his mantra as he crawled through the bowels of The Land. All the while, the tunnel angled deeper. Every inch forward was an inch further from home. He continually pushed that thought away and focused on the one thing he could control. Left hand, right hand, heave!

  It wasn’t long before he realized that familiar smell was getting stronger. It was like rotten garbage and ammonia. He still couldn’t place it, but he knew he’d smelled it before. He kept going. Richter wasn’t sure if hours or just
minutes had passed, but finally, at long last, the tunnel began to widen. Even better, the ball of Far Light did not strike a nearby wall, it shot forward one hundred yards before dissipating. He’d found a larger cavern!

  At this point, his throat felt like sandpaper. He needed water and he needed food. He would have needed a bathroom, but that particular problem had solved itself halfway through the tunnel. The solution hadn’t helped his mood or the smell. Still, he felt nothing but pure joy as he scrambled to the end of the passage. There was a short drop but he managed it easily. The smell was much stronger now. That was when he heard it. A skittering sound, like a hundred sharp legs on rock.

  That sound, and the image it conjured, made him remember. One summer, he had visited his aunt in the country. The very first night he’d stomped on a centipede as it ran across the floor. The dead insect’s body had filled the room with a horrible scent. A smell like rotting garbage and ammonia. In a panic, Richter cast Night Vision and began casting Far Light in every direction.

  The first thing he saw were bones of all sizes strewn across the cavern floor. Then he saw what was making the noise. A centipede was flowing towards him, but it was no mere bug. Its body was a foot in diameter and it was at least thirty feet long. Its carapace shone black in the light of his spells, and its eyes glowed in his night vision. When it saw him look right at it, the giant bug bared a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth at him. Large pincers framed its face, and drops of saliva dripped down to hiss against the rock. Through a doorway at the back of the cavern, he saw more glowing eyes looking at him.

  It continued to flow towards him and he used Analyze.

  Name: IchorpedeDisposition: Ravenous Hate

  Ichorpedes are large insects that hunt in packs. Their acidic spit dissolves the internal organs of their victims. They then drink their prey using their needlelike teeth.