Decay level 26 (55).
I nodded at Muu, who had since joined us and shifted to my fox form before leaping up into his arm. For the second time since he had come to this world, my former roommate pulled back his arm and used his bracelet to hurl me forward. I strobed with my eyes, blinking rapidly until I was just close enough to shift to my fox-man form. I didn’t dare touch him; he was truly losing his human shell now. It melted swiftly.
If I add a flame element to my Purify spell, could that do a lot of damage? It was worth a shot. This shit dragging on could be disastrous.
No, what I did was stupid. I felt a warmth around me that felt close to how Coal felt, then reached into my mana reserves and cast equal parts Purify with my flame tinkering ability. I spent all my mana and shoved the concoction toward Decay’s kneeling form as I flew over.
“Raaayyaarrrrrrrhggg!” Decay screamed. My body hit a large beam of some kind in the temple or whatever it was, and I tried to shift myself so that I could see.
I looked at my health bar, and it was low, about thirty-five percent. I had a broken bone icon and another unfamiliar one that looked like shaking symbols under the health bar that said I was paralyzed.
“Fuck,” I grumbled. I had to trust my friends.
I heard motion, shouting, and a loud crash that shook the ground hard enough to rattle me a bit more. A purring sound from behind startled me, but I couldn’t even flinch. I realized that it was Tmont when her tufted ear swayed into view.
My mana had recovered enough by then that I cast Nature’s Voice and asked, “What happened?”
“The cold one crushed the smelly one after you and the others injured him gravely. Once he was hurt like that, the one in metal with the shield cut him with his glowing sword.” She searched for the next words as she sat beside me. “As did the dark one who feeds us all. The lizard who does not care for me tried to help but was tossed away, and the scaled one hit him a few times. Master’s performance was the most interesting. His arrows made the smelly one look like a porcupine.”
“That seems a biased position.” I couldn’t help laughing at her descriptions of my friends. I’d have to tell them later.
“Yes, well, your tails are very unprotected as of right now,” Tmont observed pointedly.
“Sure thing, Puss,” I retorted. “Did anyone get hurt?”
“Other than the cat hater, the smelly one hurt your mate a little bit, but she seems to have taken care of the worst of it.” She purred louder. “She is a fine one to aspire to. You would do well to heed her, master’s friend. They come.”
“Yo, Zeke, you gonna just lay there and milk that shit or what, motherfucker?” Yohsuke stomped into the building.
“I’m paralyzed, you asshat.” I tried to sound angry, but honestly, I was happier to know that aside from possibly a bruised ego, my friends were okay.
“Hey, Jaken, you got anything that will heal being a little bitch?” Muu called. “I think Zeke needs two.”
“Oh, you’re all catching hands for this shit,” I growled. Kind of hard to be menacing when you can’t move—but I tried.
“Think we should shave him?” Bokaj quipped. “We all have very sharp tools.”
“I swear, I will sick Coal on all of you,” I grunted.
Jaken must have come in because I was being picked up and moved outside. I looked down, the only way I could look in my ragdoll state. I saw Jaken’s leg armor and then Maebe’s shadow dress. Jaken handed me to her, and she carried my limp body for a moment. We were inside a building before I realized it and I was on a bed.
“What about the disease?” I asked after seeing some of the dust on the floor in here from those mushroom person mounds.
“The majority of it inside the barrier was sucked back to the abyss with the fiend,” Maebe explained. “You will be fine here. The others went to clear some of the disease as best they could. You may do your work, Paladin.”
Maebe’s face backed out of view, and I felt radiant energy surround my body and move inward. I could feel my broken bones returning to their former positions. I felt a small pinch in my upper back and then immediate relief. Without even looking at my statuses, I could tell I’d be able to move now.
“Thanks, man.” I held my fist up for Jaken to tap.
“You got it, bud.” He looked me over a bit more, then sighed. “Gonna need you to stop doing crazy shit like that, man. You scared the hell out of me. All of us. I’m gonna go check on the others and keep Bokaj company as he tries to stem the spread of the disease. Rest. At least half an hour. Spend your stat points however, but you need to rest.”
I frowned and checked my notifications.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Level Up!
Name: Zekiel Erebos
Level: 25
Strength: 50
Dexterity: 37
Constitution: 33
Intelligence: 50
Wisdom: 36
Charisma: 17
Unspent Attribute Points: 15
“Three levels!” I sat in stunned silence after that. “How big of a boss was he?”
“He would have probably been as hard to kill as I would have,” Maebe explained. “He even gave me enough experience to level up once. That was very nice.”
“Congratulations.” I smiled at her.
“You did a brave—and stupid—thing, Zekiel Erebos.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and I honestly thought I might have to use my safe word again. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that if we didn’t kill him, this place was doomed. This place, my friends, and you—everybody in Brindolla—was in danger. I had to do what I could, and that was the best way I could think of to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.”
“It wasn’t a bad idea, but the execution lacked foresight.” She huffed. “If you had told me what you had been planning, I could have cushioned your landing. I could have helped you.”
“Communication is key, got it.” I looked at her, taking in the features that I had grown ever so slightly more accustomed to. Her features were drawn, and she looked tired. Worried. “Are you okay?”
“That was a good fight, but it is the first time in quite some time that I had to think of others as more than a numerical advantage on the field of battle.” Her tired eyes closed, and she sighed deeply. “Do not do something so reckless like that again without at least telling me. Do we need a stupid word too?”
I snorted and held my hand over my mouth. “Beg pardon?”
“Like a safe word, but something you say before doing something stupid so that I may help you,” she leaned closer, her breath mingling with mine, “or so that I might dissuade you.”
“Ooh, I like that idea. What word do you have in mind?” I spoke in a lowered tone. I leaned a little further up, my body rising from the waist.
“I think there was another kind of dessert you have told me of in passing conversation that you enjoy. I think you called it ‘pie?’”
I didn’t mean to, but I laughed so hard I almost headbutted her chin, and she looked at me in surprise before joining me. We just sat there, close to each other, laughing hysterically at the fact that a Fae Queen, one of the strongest beings I knew personally had just said the word “pie” to signal when I was about to do something stupid.
It was wild how innocent she could be at times. Her beautiful green eyes sparkled with obvious mirth, and I couldn’t fight the urge to just keep smiling there with her.
“Allocate your points, Zeke.” She kissed my forehead and brought her own status screen to her attention.
I sighed, wishing for more, but that could come later. Points to play with, man—focus.
I bumped my dexterity by three points, constitution by two, and the final ten I dropped into intelligence. My mana bar deepened in blue a little more, and I felt myself grow a little lighter. I felt healthier.
I watched as Mae allocated her points, however many the Fae had to use. I couldn’t see the information
, but I saw her motioning and thinking. It looked similar to the way my friends and I did it.
“Did the asshole at least have the courtesy to leave any loot behind?” I asked her after she stopped touching her screen.
“The fiend minion did, yes.” She dismissed her status screen completely and addressed me, “He left behind a large sum of platinum, a mask of some kind, and a sword, surprisingly.”
“Oooh.” I nodded my head. That did sound like some reasonable loot. “Any ideas on who wanted what?”
“Muu has decided to take both the sword and the mask, though he has agreed that it can change hands at any time as needed.” Maebe thought some more. “Yohsuke claimed the money to be split as best as possible once things had calmed down.”
Yeah, that was fair—dude was really good with money, and he was honest, so we could all trust him as the treasurer indefinitely if needed. Though it could be his decision if he wanted the responsibility.
I stood from the bed and stretched carefully to ensure that everything worked correctly. I felt a hand grasp my butt teasingly, and I turned to find Maebe’s radiant smile.
“Hello there,” I greeted her as if she hadn’t been there.
“Indeed.” She stood. She kissed my cheek and added slyly, “Later.”
“I’m taking that as a promise.” I waggled my eyebrows provocatively.
“Do.” She walked outside.
Play later, there’s work to be done, devil. I shook my shoulders out and left to look for things to purify and earn my favor with Mother Nature back.
It took the majority of the night for us cleanse the area closest to the cultist—formerly cultist—village. I wound up falling asleep earlier in the morning, eventually crashing out. We stayed in one of the buildings that had been left untouched by our fight with the fiend. We all had our own rooms, and it was nice to actually sleep in a bed once more, despite the fact that the owner had likely been turned into dust by either the asshole we had fought or us. Maebe’s company that night was reassuring and needed after the ass whooping we got.
I woke well rested, ready to take on the world. And honestly? It felt like I had by the end of the day. We traveled toward where we had come into the jungle with Laongal as our guide and began to systematically cull the disease that was left behind. Luckily, with the reason for its entire existence gone, the rate it spread had become more easily manageable, and it was easier to clear from the local fauna.
Still not a peep from Mother Nature, but we checked everywhere we could for the sickness. After a day of searching with the village as the epicenter and finding nothing—we suspected it was completely cleared, but Laongal did have news.
“The spiders,” he hissed. “Next, you must rid us of the spiders.”
It was dark now, and all of us sat together, enjoying a savory meal of poultry marinated in a thick concoction of Yohsuke’s preparation days before that had thickened enough to be used as a light gravy over rice. It was terribly good.
“What can you tell us about them?” I said after swallowing a large bite.
“They do not taste good, and I hate them.” He growled. “Also, they are things meant to remain beneath the land. There is a crater just before the cliffs that opens into their realm, but they had never ventured beyond it because of the land around it. The creatures were too strong.”
“Then how did they survive?” James asked.
“They have an ability that draws prey into their domain, where they have the advantage in numbers and terrain.” Laongal bit into the haunch, a different one this time that Maebe’s minions had brought for him. “Outside of their hole, they have to explore and take control slowly, but picking off the sick and starving was not an issue for them. They have taken control of the land there, draining the resources and killing the creatures, trees, and the very land itself with their mere presence.”
“Okay, so do they have any weaknesses we might be able to exploit?” Yohsuke passed a small loaf of sweet bread to us that would contrast the savory taste of the gravy. Bless him.
“They are weak individually, but they always travel in groups. I was lucky in that there were already other animals resisting them actively as I was passing through on my way to you.”
I snapped up the sweet bread covered in the gravy and some rice from my bowl and swallowed, then added, “So all we have to do is lure some away and take them apart systematically. What are the places they hold like?”
“It is difficult for me to describe, but know that I will lead you there and that you will surely know the place when you see it,” Laongal replied darkly. The blood and gore on his jowls lent him a much more terrifying visage than normal.
So we prepared for the next day how we could—enchanted arrows, stored spells, and a lot of hope that we weren’t the flies beckoned into the web.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Okay, you were right—these spiders are assholes,” Jaken grunted as we came into a much darker and desolate portion of the jungle.
The greenery had been eaten away, replaced by thick strands of dark gray webbing, and corpses littered the ground. The best part was there seemed to be no unnatural decay here that we could see.
The corpses, shells, and husks of life had been surrounded and obscured by webbing. Some were intact, perfectly molded to the bodies inside with a couple of holes to signify they had been turned into milkshakes already—or would those have been protein shakes? Yummy.
We tread carefully while avoiding the worst of the webbing, our feet shuffling at times. Other times we had to jump a little to clear some.
“Someone had better be watching our six. And three. Nine. Fucking high noon and shit too,” I grumbled. I really didn’t fucking like spiders, man. “Should we burn some of this webbing?”
“You run the risk of harming more jungle than freeing it from their influence,” Laongal growled. His nose began to twitch, and he sneezed. “We are close.”
I pulled Storm Caller from my inventory and prepared myself as best I could. I was exceptionally happy I had my favorite bug zapper with me right now. I wished Kayda was here; she would beat the shit out of some spiders. Sure, I could use Magus Bane, but I could call Storm Caller back to me, and I couldn’t do that with my newest weapon.
I also kept Coal in for this one, just to be safe. We should be fine, but there was no reason to risk him so soon. Right?
The burning could still happen. Easily. I had a pretty nice tinkered with Fireball spell stored in my ring right now.
Webs consumed the boughs of the trees above us. There was nowhere to go or see that didn’t have an abundance of the gray, silken material. Then I heard an eerie noise that sent a thrill through my body. The distinct chirruping of cicadas that usually announced the summer months began to fill the air, and dozens of large spiders and possibly hundreds more smaller ones scuttled into view.
“Who speaks for you?” Bokaj spoke in a commanding tone.
A trio of spiders came forward, their bulbous bodies and horrid legs moving disgustingly as they approached us. Each of them had a base color of black and gray bodies, but they each had what looked like racing stripes down the sides of their bodies that were different colors. One was green, another gold, and the last red.
“We of the tribunal speak for these kindred children,” the one in the center with red stripes hissed in the common language that we all understood, large fangs twitching. “You flies are brave to come so far into our territory.”
“Your kind were able to take this land only because of the disease that claimed the surroundings,” Bokaj accused. Then he pointed to us. “We have destroyed that plague and returned the jungle to its rightful state. Leave. You do not want any trouble with us.”
“Laongal, can you and I convince other creatures to fight with us in this?” I whispered to the lion.
His eyes never strayed from the arachnids above. “I have friends who will come if I call, but I cannot promise victory.”
“We might want their
help if this goes awry.” I turned my eyes toward the skies I couldn’t see, and I pleaded with the Mother, Mother, if you would be so kind and generous—send some help.
With no tangible response, I turned my attention back to the conversation my friend was having with the spiders.
“…lands.” The one on the right with sickly green lines on his sides spat, “You dare insult the rightful heirs to this portion of the jungle?”
“Hey, does anyone else smell food?” Muu asked and drew our attention. I took a sniff, and yeah, it smelled like Thanksgiving dinner. A finely cooked turkey with hot mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and all the fixings. My mouth began watering as I took a step to follow the scent.
Teeth pierced the flesh of my right hand, and Laongal drew his lips back with my blood on his canines.
“What the fuck?” I was angry now. Things seemed so weird and fuzzy, and now I was hungry. Hormones? Those fuckers!
“That is their influence.” Laongal swatted at Jaken and shoved him over. Then he leaped on to Muu. “All of you must stop!”
“Where’s it coming from?” I shook my head blearily and began to look for the source.
“The lower portion of the webs. The small spiders there,” the lion shouted, and suddenly, Bokaj was there and pointed his hands at a group of little brown spiders the size of chihuahuas.
“Fire in the hole,” I grunted and released the pent up spell I had stored. This one was a Fireball with a caveat. Instead of the radial burst damage, the spell would cause a flash of flames to travel up to one hundred and twenty feet at the same level in a circle from the epicenter.
The spiders giving off that scent were caught in the attack, then all hell broke loose.
“Attack them!” the spider tribunal hissed loudly.
Laongal roared with all his might, and I cast a true Fireball at the tribunal of spiders. A living wall of smaller spiders rose up before them and took the brunt of the damage before disintegrating and falling away in ash.
Into the Dragon's Den (Axe Druid Book 2) Page 46