Wendell Jones looked at the complex, as well. “How very true. I sincerely hope that if only one dies, it is the god. It has been a true pleasure having you as my partner, Special Agent Jones.”
Clarence Jones turned toward Wendell Jones, a rare grin on his face, and clasped the offered hand. “Yeah. It's been a pleasure knowing you too, Special Agent Jones. I'm not going down like a bitch. Let's destroy some of those constructs, and see if we can make it to that fucking priest.”
Wendell Jones' smile reached his eyes. “Yes. Let us do that, Special Agent Jones.”
Joining a Party
*** Four Bones Goblin Lair - Battleground of the Damned ***
Return: Day 1
The ruddy light of the setting sun, illuminates the tunnel ahead. It took a bit longer than I expected to find the exit from the goblin lair. After all the subjective years between my first expedition and now, I could not recognize the which tunnel was which. The goblins made over a dozen attempts to kill us, but between Jinmu and myself, they were slaughtered every time. Without an orc king to drive them into battle, goblins lack the balls to push an attack, where they lack an overwhelming advantage. Their scouts are still audible, prowling the tunnels behind us, watching and waiting for us to let our guard down.
Exiting the mouth of the tunnel, we find ourselves on a ledge. It is wide enough to allow three people to stand comfortably abreast between the cliff wall and the drop. Maybe two hundred feet below, a river winds through a valley, until it reaches a curtain of silvery distortion and disappears.
“That silver distortion is a zone boundary?” Jinmu looks questioningly at me.
“Yeah, haven't you seen one before?”
He shakes his head. “Never one like that. All the zones I have been in seemed to be either entire worlds or giant continents that, appeared to be floating in space.”
“Many of those 'worlds' were not worlds. They were really a patchwork of zones, crammed one against another giving the appearance of worlds. Most players never cared so it became a little known game legend, but some caster players figured it out a long time ago. I don't know how they managed to do it, since I only learned about it third or fourth hand.
“Let's get away from this cave, and make camp near the boundary. I don't want to cross until we've had a chance to rest.”
Jinmu looks toward the shimmer, his face impassive. “Is it dangerous on the other side?”
“Usually, it's not, but it can be. It's another pocket zone, like this one. I want to cross it in one shot. This whole area is really nothing but little pocket zones.”
I start down the path, and Jinmu quickly catches up to walk at my side. We travel quickly on the relatively smooth path. The passage of feet, over untold years, has long since worn down any significant impediments in the red sandstone.
“Where should we go from here?”
“Bogwater, we practically have to go through it to get out of here anyway.”
Jinmu frowns. “That name sounds like one I have heard before.”
The canopy of trees, similar to oak and elm, rises to our left. The deep green of the leaves and the heat in the air, look and feel like the middle of summer, but my understanding is that this zone always looks and feels like this.
“The bag quest. You never did it yourself?”
Jinmu chuckles. “I only played the game to test out my martial arts in situations that felt as close to real life and death combat as possible. Rakhir, my character, his physical abilities so far outstripped my own, that once I trained his body for using the Urehara Style, I became almost unbeatable.”
“The Bag Quest, as it's called, is really just collecting rare monster parts for this . . . guy, who makes a variety of dimensional storage devices: backpacks, shoulder bags, belt pouches, jewelry, and who knows what else.”
“This . . . guy?”
As the path veers away from the foot of the cliff, we enter the forest. The sun is already below the horizon, and the verdant canopy of the woods closes over our heads. The calls of nocturnal birds, animals and insects fill the air.
I cannot help but laugh. “He looks like a giant humanoid frog. His nasty disposition, lecherous nature, and venomous tongue are almost as famous as the quest.”
“Lecherous nature?”
“That frog has a fixation with fucking human and Alfar women. I hear that he even gets his fair share of humans, by giving them free dimensional storage devices.”
“I find it hard to believe that women would lower themselves to have sex with a frog, no matter what the rewards.”
“You haven't been to an American high school lately. Sex is just another form of currency, and it's one they don't have to threaten mommy or daddy with a Child Protective Services call for.” I do not bother to try and keep the disgust out of my voice.
Jinmu is silent after that. His face has almost no expression, but he still has an air of someone deep in thought.
The path through the woods ends in a clearing, bordering on the silver energy curtain that is the boundary of this pocket dimension. At the base of a small spur of rock, a tunnel leads into the ground. There are nine stone circles with the remains of ashes, from past camps. This used to be a popular farming zone, because of the raw gems. Sometimes, there would have been upwards of a hundred people here at a time. Its relative inaccessibility caused the Four Bones Goblin Lair to lose popularity, when better places were found to farm wealth.
Jinmu points toward the tunnel. “That is the way out?”
“Yeah.”
“What is so dangerous about it?”
“Spiders. There's one straight tunnel about ten or twelve miles long, with who knows how many branch tunnels along the sides. The side tunnels are a maze that is the home of giant spiders. Legend has it there's a humongous queen spider in there somewhere, but I never heard of anyone seeing it. Usually, you won't find many spiders in the main tunnel, but sometimes they'll put up webs to block it and attack anyone going through.
“We'll camp here and start out fresh in the morning. We can tickle some fish along the banks of that river and save the freeze-dried food that's left.”
*** Spider Tunnels - Battleground of the Damned ***
Return: Day 2
As we set out, the valley is still shrouded in shadows. With a full night to meditate and focus my ki on healing, virtually of the damage done by using the Od is healed. No pain remains, and I do not feel even the slightest hint of discomfort.
Entering the tunnel mouth, the stone closes around us, blocking out what little morning light there is. Only the weak light of our flickering torch illuminates the passage. Both Jinmu and I have five spare torches each, which should be enough to walk the length of the spider tunnel twice over.
While the walls are rough, the floor, like the path up the cliff to the goblin lair, has been worn smooth by the passage of countless feet. Averaging thirty to forty feet wide, with a ceiling more than fifty feet high, this is a veritable underground highway. About twenty-five or thirty yards into the tunnel, the type of stone making up the walls abruptly changes. As though cut with monofilament and joined together, not even the smallest gap can be seen between the red sandstone of the goblin lair and the grey granite of the spider tunnels.
“We're in the Spider Tunnels proper now.”
Jinmu looks slight puzzled. “How do you mean that?”
I point at the division line in the walls, ceiling and floor of the cave, and Jinmu stands near the wall, peering closely at it. After a few moments, he stands on the red sandstone again.
“So now, we are talking across dimensions. Even if these are pocket dimensions, they are still dimensions. The distance between us can be considered to be infinite. The Urehara Group has a company that is researching cross-dimensional wave to transmit message. I wonder how the Chief Scientist would react, if he could see this.”
I almost smile. After I started teaching Urehara-sensei about ki, the way he acted around me began to change. Now that he has c
ast aside his original name and taken on the name Jinmu, he is showing an almost innocent joy with everything. His lust for battle, his fascination with the zone boundary, his open expression of emotions, I almost feel as though he is seeing the world through different eyes.
“We should hurry. I do not want to spend to much time in this tunnel. If the spiders swarm, we'll be fucked, without a strong AoE caster.”
“What is an AoE caster?” Jinmu may have had a character, but he was not a real gamer.
I half smile. “AoE, area of effect, a caster who specializes in large area spells. A good one could fill a hundred yards of this tunnel with elemental damage spells that would lay waste to at least a part of a spider swarm.”
Jinmu frowns slightly. “Lead on.”
In less than fifty yards, we reach the first side tunnel, on our left side. A man would have to duck-walk to use this tunnel, like many of the side tunnels leading into the maze. I heard stories about players trying to explore the maze, supposedly no one ever found anything besides difficult to negotiate tunnels, spiders, and more spiders.
After another three hundred or so yards, the floor of the tunnel begins to be littered with scattered bones, both recent and ancient. The bones of the prey of the spiders who dominate this zone: humans, Alfar, goblins, orcs, animals, birds, bats. Conspicuously, the last time I was here, I never noticed a single Dvergar bone in the tunnel. Even the spiders might be smart enough to not try and prey on a Dvergar, which would make them smarter than orcs and goblins.
We walk at a far swifter pace than we would have been able to maintain, before we started developing out ki. Many of the tunnels we pass are too small to walk upright in, and some are too small to even fit in, but a few are nearly as large as the main tunnel. Still, time seems to drag, as we traverse the tunnel. Periodically, we hear odd scraping, scratching, and chittering noises from the side tunnels, but no spiders make an appearance.
We have been travelling for about two hours when I see the dogleg in front of us. I have an uneasy feeling. The entry to the dogleg is slightly more than ten feet wide and about thirteen feet high. It does not get any lager for more than a hundred and seventy yards, while twisting and turning generally to the right in relation to our direction of travel.
Jinmu has stopped next to me, staring toward the dogleg as well. “We need to be careful. There is something there. I am certain there is danger, but I cannot say how I know.”
“This is the dogleg. The whole thing is narrow and the spiders set webs and ambushes in there. I don't think they're really intelligent enough to plan one out, but several species in here are natural ambushers. Once we get past the dogleg, it's a straight shot of less than half a mile to the exit.”
Jinmu pitches his torch to the ground and draws his katana. With fire flickering along its length, he begins to advance into the dogleg. “I'll take point. Spider silk does not do well against fire.”
Picking up the fallen torch, I draw a sword in my right hand, and follow at a distance of fifteen feet. I can close to strike in a single lunge from this distance, and Jinmu will have room to retreat.
“There are only three large tunnels branching off the dogleg, all the others are no more than two or three feet in diameter.”
Jinmu does not acknowledge my words and continues advancing. His steps are not a normal walk, rather it is more of a fighting stalk, that alternates his lead foot.
I walk in relaxed posture, my sword's pommel against my forearm, with the blade pointed away. My eyes look toward the ground, without really focusing on anything. I am letting my body pick up all the sensory data it can, while not trying to interpret it. My reactions will be much faster, if I do not have to break a focus. I will start to move, before I am consciously aware of the source of the danger. This is a habit I picked up in my years in my Half-Dvergar body.
Because of my time in Taereun, the game and the Lands of Despair, after the Great Fuck Over, our styles have become very different. Jinmu is a lethal combatant, a true master of the Urehara Style martial arts. In terms of mastery of his technique, he is probably the equal of almost anyone he will ever encounter. Still, in terms of power and potential, I believe my own fighting style is by far the superior one, but it would probably not suit Jinmu.
The exit from the dogleg is less that thirty feet in front of Jinmu, when the trap is sprung. Five giant trapdoor spiders spring out of side tunnels, that seem far too small to fit their bulbous bodies and near six foot leg span. A sixth drops from the tunnel roof, where it had been hidden by a downward projecting section of rock.
Stepping forward, his single step covering more than ten feet, Jinmu's katana slices through the legs on one side of the spider to his front left. The rest of the spiders pounce on the empty space he vacated. Spinning counterclockwise, he slashes at the rear legs of the spider that attacked from his front right.
I lunge forward my right foot striking outward in a thrust kick. The spider's carapace is undamaged, but my ki transmits enough of the force of the blow to the spiders internal organs. It collapses to the ground, dead from the internal damage. The spider that dropped from above, jumps at me, and I continue forward dropping to one knee, My sword slashes upward, with a whip like motion that cleaves open the underside of the spider's carapace. It entrails fall to the ground narrowly missing me.
I remember the first time I performed a move like that, when Taereun was a just a game to me. A giant troll, an extremely rare monster to encounter, attacked me in a swamp, while I was searching for a rumored lost temple. I ducked low to avoid its club and slit its protruding belly open. Its forward momentum spilled it guts outward, covering me with the reeking mess. Cursing, screaming, and kicking the troll's corpse, I swore to never again open an enemies guts, where I could get a baptism of entrails.
The second spider Jinmu attacked spins on him a bit unsteadily, and his katana cleaves its head open, setting the hair on its body aflame. The eyes not sliced open burst from the heat of the flames. Spiders brains are not in their heads, but it begins to flail wildly, no longer able to see.
The fifth and sixth spider close in on me from either side; my slide carried me into the middle of them. The one to my left is closest. The spider tries to sink it mandibles into my shoulder, but I slam the torch into its eyes, lighting the coarse hairs on its carapace on fire. My sword lashes the other with a rising strike. Its body is split open for more than a third of its length, by the ki enhanced edge of my blade.
I glance at Jinmu, before scanning for other dangers. He has already put down both of the spiders he injured and is scanning for new threats as well.
“Clear.” Jinmu's voice is calm.
“Clear. We had best move quickly, before more spiders show.” I start moving down the tunnel again, this time, at a steady jog. I do not sheathe my blade. I can hear the soft padding of Jinmu's steps behind me.
Something is significantly off. These spiders were too easy to kill, as were the goblins. Initially, I thought that the iron wolves had been constructed more for speed than strength and combat, but now, I just do not know anymore. I am confused. Could I have misjudged the levels of Jinmu and myself? Are we actually much stronger than I thought? Only more battles will give me a definitive answer.
We pass a zone boundary, and the stone changes from gray granite to a brownish granite. We have entered the Swamp of the Lost. I am unsure of the actual nature of this zone. Other than in this tunnel, I have never heard of anyone finding a zone boundary. The only exits from the swamp are singly linked teleport gates, each one only connecting to one other specific gate. Except for the one leading to the Duchy of Andover, none has any known connection that leads outside of the cluster of pocket dimensions. The Badlands gate just takes you in a big loop that eventually connects back into the Duchy of Andover.
“We exited the Spider Tunnels zone, where are we now?”
I glance behind us and slow to a walk. We are past all of the tunnels leading into the maze. “The Swamp of the Lost, it'
s the zone where Bogwater is, but I don't know how big the zone is. It could be an entire world. Bogwater is only a few days walk, but we'll have to pass though Zavin's Hole, if we stay on the road. Most players just called it the Shit Hole.”
“The Shit Hole, why did it get a name like that?”
I shrug slightly. “It's a den of outlaws and outcasts. Most players went there in strong groups, looking for a fight with the trash gathered there.”
Jinmu has a more than slightly predatory grin on his face. “That sounds like fun.”
I cannot stop myself from laughing. I may not be the only one looking for battles to test myself and determine how strong I am.
*** Swamp of the Lost (Zavin's Hole) - Battleground of the Damned ***
Return: Day 2
The Spider Tunnel is in a cave at the base of the escarpment. This area is more jungle than swamp. A little over a mile from the cave a waterfall cascades over the edge of the plateau, more than two thousand feet above the lowlands. The pool at the base of the falls is the headwaters of the Bull-rush River, with flows into the Swamp of the Lost proper. Bogwater is at the mouth of the river, but before reaching it, we have to pass through Zavin's Hole, which is only a few miles from the tunnel.
The vegetation in this zone is more of a yellowish-green that a true green. The most common trees grow sort of like a banyan, but have leaves with a shapes similar to a maple. Other trees resemble swamp oak and swamp maple. Though, I never found anything similar to a conifer, when I was last here.
It takes until nearly sundown to reach the Shit Hole. Rising from the muddy ground, like a festering boil on the ass of one of its whores, Zavin's Hole probably started life as a military fort or outpost. Now, the decaying stone walls have gaps, filled with rotting timber palisades. The gate, if you can all it such, is hanging open on broken hinges, a team of oxen or powerful adepts would be needed to close it again. The most common job for its inhabitants is banditry, so they cannot be bothered to learn much else, and all the manual labor is done by slaves.
Path of Transcendence 1: Ultimatum of the Nameless God Page 16