by Arthur Stone
And straight at my knife.
A third wisp appeared.
Beko shot like an idiot. He didn’t appear to even aim, and so he missed. I did not fuss at him. The greatest source of surprise I felt was how calm and collected I remained. It was not every day you fought flying balls of courage. They confidently threw themselves at prey ten times their size, so they must have some dangerous abilities. I should have been terrified. But my hand stayed firm, and despite the uncomfortable lay of the battlefield, my next throw struck true.
“Reload!” I shouted, going for another knife.
A dark blob appeared in the fog. It grew rapidly, honing in on its target.
Then, it collapsed to the ground as a knife cut through its side and flew beyond. The wisp had lost its ability to fly, but it wasn’t giving up. It moved along on its grotesque arachnoid legs, like the latest postmodern mockery of the art of ballet.
I watched the tail coil, its stinger ready to strike, and realized I did not have time for another knife throw. So I stabbed the creature with the spear I had been clutching in my left hand for the whole battle.
My mind was a computer calculating every possibility and outcome.
But as I heard another growing buzz and saw Beko bring the crossbow up, I knew I could not delay. I had only one throwing knife left, and they had proven to be my most effective weapon.
So I rushed towards the nearest dead wisp. I yanked my knife from its carcass and went for another.
Just then, two more of the creatures flew out of the fog. These acted strategically, not hurling themselves at a single target. I met mine with a chop of the ari, casting the pest aside like a tennis ball. The second one was too far for me to reach in time, but Beko dealt it a solid blow with his ax.
Just as I was smiling at my comrade’s success, I saw another wisp emerge from the fog behind him.
Beko managed to react in time—but not very effectively. Hardly even looking, he turned and swung his ax, but only hit it with a glancing blow that cut off one of its legs. It turned sharply, struck with its tail, and then rushed away.
The ghoul fell with a thin scream, and before the wisp could make it much farther, it met its death at the end of my spear.
I crouched down to hurriedly grab a third knife and place it back in its sheath, then anxiously moved to Beko. All humming noises now were in the distance, but at the speed those creatures moved, that could change rapidly.
The ghoul was alive, but his face was whiter than ever. He lay on the ground, clasping at a bleeding wound in his left shoulder.
“Let me,” I commanded, placing my hand on it.
“Kill the wisp!” Beko started. “Kill it. The one who stung me. Otherwise we’ll both die!”
“Calm down. You didn’t see me kill it immediately?”
My talent stopped the bleeding, but Beko groaned, his voice quavering as he asked, “Can you remove the poison?”
“Poison!?” I thought through what I knew about my talent.
I didn’t think I could.
The ghoul understood the look on my face. “You have to run. I can’t. You go.”
“Why can’t you?”
“My legs are all locked up. This is wisp poison we’re talking about.”
“Are your legs the only thing it paralyzes?”
“That’s what they say. Wisps want their prey alive but immobilized.”
“To hell—er, to Chaos with them. We’re not prey. We’re winners! Oof, Beko, you need to start eating a little less!”
I had trouble carrying my comrade. Not just because he was heavy, but because I had to stay alert in case any new wisps arrived. It seemed like we had killed the entire swarm that attacked us. The humming of others was heard in the distance, but it was fading.
I didn’t realize immediately that we had broken through. Adrenaline continued to push me mindlessly forward until I felt puddles under my feet. Then, I kicked the pace down a notch. I had to; running in mud quickly is dangerous.
After a few minutes, the outline of the same large, flat stone appeared. I had no idea how I had ended up in the swamp again—why hadn’t we broken out?—but all I hoped for now was that the wisps wouldn’t chase us this far.
We needed to rest.
Chapter 37
Talents of Chaos, Talents of ORDER
No Stat Changes
Despite the poisoned stab he had endured, Beko was not going to die. I had a rough idea of how much poison could have been delivered.
The ghoul also recovered his spirits, realizing that the threat of the wisps was gone. In fact, he was almost having fun. Though still pale and immobile, he did not have the look of a man with one foot in the grave.
“No one dies of wisp poison, Ged. I don’t think so, anyway. But it can lay you flat for a day or two.”
“That’s all? Alright, well, rest up then.”
“This place could be dangerous. Everywhere is dangerous out here.”
“I didn’t see any other tracks in the swamp, just ours. And in all of our time scouting this area, I heard none of that buzzing. It looks like the shore is cut off from the Grove by the wisps. They don’t let anyone this way—but neither do they come here themselves.”
“The waterfall might be keeping you from hearing them. It’s not that far.”
“Beko, you yourself told me that wisps only fly where cystos grow. They won’t come after us here. Relax. Now, I’m going to make us some moss beds on this rock and put the tarp over them. We’ll make camp. I don’t think it’s safe to build a fire, sadly, so we’ll have to eat raw fish. I’ll catch some from the raft.”
“Why don’t we just camp on the raft?” Beko suggested. “We can push off a ways from the shore and wait there.”
“No anchor.”
“Chaos! How could I forget that?”
“No worries. We could try to lodge the raft in some driftwood on the river, but I don’t see much point to that. Are you sure that poison isn’t fatal?”
“They say that everyone the wisps sting survives, as long as you get them away from the wisps quickly. Otherwise there will be nothing left of the man stung. Sometimes even experienced hunters die this way.”
“Why do they even go into those places, then?”
Beko smiled nervously and raised a shaking hand. He unclenched his fist to reveal two ugly mushrooms. Their stems were corkscrew-shaped, and their conical caps were red with black dots. The fungi looked terrifically poisonous to me. I wouldn’t even so much as avert my foot to avoid squashing one. But the ghoul had, apparently, been collecting them when the wisps came our way.
For Beko, greed was a force stronger than fear.
“What’s that for? Finishing yourself off before the wisps could?”
“No, these are hups. Not the beer flavor stuff. Magical mushrooms that bring hunters from all around to the realms of the cystos.”
“So they’re valuable,” I concluded.
“More valuable than garpike caviar,” Beko said as the madness grew in his eyes. “And they’re mine! Mine!” Then, looking at me greedily, he corrected himself: “Ours. There were more there. I saw them. A whole field of the mushrooms, a king’s ransom. We have to get them.”
“Let me look at one,” I asked.
I rolled the mushroom around in my fingers. Despite its unsightly appearance, it smelled nice. “Can you eat these raw?”
“Yes. Or dried. Or cooked or fried. It’s a rich spice, after all.”
“Perfect,” I said as I tossed the whole hup into my mouth.
It was pretty small. Easy to swallow whole, if I wanted.
Beko’s eyes blew up like balloons. I had not thought it possible for his face to become more pale, but it did. “You ate a hup! Ate it whole!”
I began to morally prepare myself for an emergency stomach purge, but first clarified. “What, can you not eat them whole? Are they poisonous?”
“Poisonous? Hah! Do you know how much those are worth? We could eat for a whole winter on t
hose! Two winters! But you ate it. That was my... that was ours!”
I raised my hands in a calming gesture. “You eat the other one. If they’re so valuable, it means that they give us useful perks. Maybe your legs will heal up faster.”
“Eat this hup?”
“Right. Enjoy. Well? What are you waiting for? It didn’t poison me, so it won’t poison you. We’re stuck here, Beko. I don’t know how long we’ll be here. The river dragged us along all night, meaning we have a long way to go back to the trading post. We haven’t even started, and already we’re running into... adventures. With only one small backpack to our name, there is no way we could carry a bunch of mushrooms. They’re useless extra weight.”
“Useless?” Beko screamed. “It was only two mushrooms! If we dry them, they’ll weigh next to nothing, and take up next to no space. They become little tiny withered things. Things worth a winter of feasting!”
“How do we dry them, then? In this fog? They’ll just rot!”
“No, these are hups. Look—see how they’re getting wrinkly already? They dry out fast, no matter where they are.”
I watched as Beko practically kissed his last remaining mushroom and shrugged. I had more important things to do than convince Captain Avarice that we didn’t need a little extra weight. I did a mental inventory. Backpack, pot, two spoons, two axes, ari, crossbow, two hunting knives, and three throwing knives—all I had been able to recover. My new navigation talent would easily allow me to find where the other three were located. Was it worth going back? Perhaps, but it definitely wasn’t worth rushing.
My ghoul friend was no help setting up camp, of course. The moss I had laid down on the stone was so damp, I could feel it squishing beneath the tarp. I took the raft back out into the river, keeping away from the waterfall and moving among the deadwood, in slow water, until I found a fresh pine tree. It must have fallen down from up high and got carried here by the current. Still, there were enough dry twigs sticking out above the water and I broke off a bunch of them to use as bedding for the both of us.
Camp was done in short order, and I followed up with a short rest during which I examined what the killing of the wisps had earned me.
I only recognized two of the prizes. First, the lesser standard universal state. I liked these very much, as they could add 0.01 to any state. Picking up 100 of these would level up a state. For example, I could boost my Equilibrium by 1 and then unlock another attribute level.
Enhanced Enlightenment was also clear. It wasn’t as versatile, since it could only boost one specific state: my chi reservoir total. I considered this less important than most other parameters. But it might matter.
All of the other parameters were dependent on total chi in my reservoir, after all. Eventually I would hit the upper limit and become unable to boost or unlock anything until I increased the capacity of my reservoir.
When I would reach that limit, though, was entirely unclear. I knew that developing Enhanced Enlightenment could postpone that moment, whenever it was destined to come.
All of the other prizes I knew nothing about.
There were several forms of life that coexisted here in the world of Rock. Many of them were not purely of one kind or another. There were even hybrids so bizarre that they defied classification even with caveats.
Natives, along with most of the creatures they lived near, were from ORDER. Their nemeses, the creatures of Chaos, resided in places like the Dead Archipelago and the Far North. With millennia of interaction between these two groups, some mixed creatures had emerged.
I understood trophies dropped by ORDER creatures. Enough had passed through my hands and my mouth that, even if I had been an idiot, I would by now have complete mastery over what they did. Besides, the schooling I had received during the first few years of my new life had directly answered such questions, numerous times.
I knew that chaosites and hybrids were very different creatures. But I didn’t know the details. I had never needed to deal with items like this before. Meaning I had never seen them, held them, or received them from mother.
Perhaps she would have wanted to experiment with them—but they must be worth a fortune. Chaos creatures only rarely wandered into our parts of the world, the chances of them dropping prizes were small, and they were quite expensive.
I had been lucky to survive my battle with them today. My degree 0 condition had functioned to boost their drops just as it did on creatures of the ORDER. Plus, the more outnumbered a fighter was by his opponents, and the more superior such opponents, the higher his chances of a solid reward. Since even the weakest creature was infinitely stronger than I was—dividing by my big fat zero—I always earned maximum loot.
Division by zero was dangerous business, but so far it had only worked in my favor.
I did not necessarily understand the purpose of all these items immediately.
The Chaos marks seemed straightforward enough. They must be analogous, though antagonistic, to chi symbols. In other words, they provided the energy of Chaos, not of ORDER. This could be used to develop Chaos attributes and connected Chaos talents. Perhaps it had other uses, too, which I was unaware of.
“Lesser attribute powers” was harder to comprehend. I vaguely remembered hearing of some way to double the energy of an individual attribute by using special Chaos trophy drops. But this was only a guess.
I would have to become a guinea pig in order to find out. My inventory held 5 units of lesser power, one for each wisp I had killed. Strength was the weakest of my main three attributes, so I decided to try an attribute power on that.
It worked like a charm. The last unlocked Strength attribute level now contained 55 units rather than 50—giving me a Strength total of 205, instead of the former 200. In theory, I was now 2.5% stronger. In practice, though, calculating physical strength was not so straightforward, but there was definitely a difference.
The five units of warrior energy boosted the expected parameter, Warrior Energy—but they only gave a boost of 0.05. I had no way to evaluate the importance of this increase, since I didn’t have a single talent that used this energy.
The Monster Connoisseur talent mark was clear enough. It would unlock a new skill, tier 1, with that same name. I did not use it at this time, since that would require a large number of lesser marks of Chaos. Just as ORDER talents required chi. I had only 7 of these lesser marks, and I needed 10 in order to complete the first tier.
Now, I had heard that Chaos talents were very rare and usually valuable. I wasn’t sure about the latter point, but the former was confirmed by the fact that only one had dropped for me, even though I had killed five creatures. The kotes had given me an average very close to one per fish. My magically pathetic fingers found drops a thousand times more often than those of a typical native.
Running a little math made me realize that a skilled hunter would have to kill about 5,000 wisps in order to obtain such a talent mark. I was raking in trophies a thousand times faster.
Did the trading post workers often send parties to hunt wisps? Judging by the fact that Beko didn’t even know they could fly, I doubted it. So, it was possible that the whole region did not contain a single living native with a Chaos talent. Perhaps even the whole world. That didn’t mean the talent would be incredibly useful, but I definitely wanted to test it out.
At some point. For now, I had nothing to unlock or develop it with. Into the bag it went.
The lesser primal essences were beyond my understanding, as was the emblem of valor. I did know for sure that certain items related to working with artifacts only dropped from Chaos creatures. As well as items that could improve certain raw materials and ingredients. Such as steel which yielded blades of unmatched sharpness and fabled strength.
But did my loot have anything to do with these activities? I didn’t know. There was still so much I didn’t know. So, I would hold onto these prizes, hoping that they were not just garbage.
I did know that improved metal weaponry
was extraordinarily expensive, and so I surmised that the raw materials which made it must be worth a fortune.
I could find that out later. For now, the Chaos talent interested me the most. Its name suggested to me that I could use it to get information about creatures such as the wisps. Given that those buzzers were blocking our only exit from this foggy lowland, I wanted to know as much about them as possible.
Simple plans for the immediate future began to form in my head. I would catch kotes and garpikes, taking an occasional foray into the red lands. The creatures’ buzzing sounds would guide my step. Perhaps I could find a way to take them out one by one without risking getting attacked by a swarm.