“Ready?” I asked Baltos as I gripped the handle.
“Ready to kick some ass!” he exclaimed.
“All right, Mr. Glorious,” I said with a smile as I tugged open the door. “Let’s do this.”
59
The Sea Lantern
I checked for the moving green light before stepping back into the cramped wooded street. I could still see a soft glow from ahead of us, but if we moved quickly, we’d be able to reach the end of the street before whatever was causing it pathed back around towards us.
“Come on!” I hissed, racing quickly forward between the shacks. At the end of the street there was a small square with countless other alleyways leading off in every direction, and across from us was the most hideous, strange monster I’d seen in all my time in Carrethen.
It had the legs and torso of a human, but with five arms that hung limp like wet rope. Embedded in its flesh were countless barbed spears, some of their tips protruding out through the creature’s pale slimy skin.
Where its head should have been was a massive bulbous cluster of green pustules like oversized fish eyes. Each of them glowed slightly. The monstrosity in front of us was the source of the light we’d seen earlier.
Sea Lantern—Level 140.
“Did you see its level!?” Baltos whispered.
“Yeah,” I muttered as the thing turned, its atrophied arms swaying like flags in a breeze. “Let’s just go around. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.”
But the Lantern was pathing around the square towards us, and we had limited time. I grabbed Baltos and pulled him to the left as the monster circled to the right. We kept low, trying to avoid its gaze, but with no apparent eyes, it was impossible to tell where that was.
Planks creaked under our steps, but somehow the Sea Lantern didn’t seem to notice or care, and we quickly moved across the square when suddenly something popped beneath my feet. I glanced down to see it was a green egg that resembled the others that clustered on the Lantern’s head. Before I could move, a beam of light struck me with inhuman precision.
I spun around to see the Sea Lantern’s glow focused on me. Before I could react, it leapt into the center of the square and tugged on a rope that I hadn’t noticed. Instantly, a bell rang out through the entire town. The thing had sounded the alarm.
“Shit!” I cried out as a dreadful roar sounded from all around us. “Run!”
“Which way!” Baltos shouted. There was no time for an informed decision. I picked one of the streets and sprinted towards it.
Something heavy and wet hit my back and I looked over my shoulder to see the Sea Lantern firing its eye-like things at us. Each hit dealt significant damage and we had no healer with us. I ducked and hurled myself in between two buildings and landed on my face. Baltos landed on top of me.
“Heal up, fast!” I hissed, using my Health Kit to get my HP back to just below full. Baltos did the same, but just as we were about to continue running, another group of enemies came barreling down the street towards us.
Dogs. Dogs with enormous mouths like fish or sharks, their bodies slick and hairless, bulging with muscles like a Pit bull on steroids. There were four of them, racing towards us with open mouths, snarling with blood lust.
I drew my bow and fired at the one in the lead, burying an arrow in its open mouth and tearing off half of its health. I fired again, but it leapt out of the way, kicked off the wall and dove towards me. I barely had time to swap to my daggers before it hit.
Its jaws clamped onto my shoulder at the same time that my blades slid into its chest. A debuff flashed in the corner of my vision as I slashed the dog down. Baltos leapt through its death cloud, activating his speed buff, and started pummeling the beasts.
As I got to my feet, I felt sluggish, slow, and checked the debuff.
Sea Sickness—Reduces the target’s Quickness by 10% for 2 minutes.
Baltos took two bites before finishing off his dog, and cried out as he used some special attack that stunned the last one.
“This debuff stacks!” he shouted as the light from the Sea Lantern spilled into the alley behind me. It let out a terrifying screech and pelted us with its disgusting blobs. They rained down on us like toxic rain, picking away at our health with each impact.
“We have to get out of here!” I shouted, using a Health Kit to get myself back above half, but the Sea Lantern was powerful, and with the dogs stacking debuffs on us, it was only a matter of time before we were so slow that the high level mob caught up with us and finished us off.
Another pack of dogs rampaged through the street towards us. I quickly used Blade Flurry as they attacked, managing to kill two of them and wound another three before taking another bite. Baltos raised a hand in the air and it rang out with a deep bass drop before he slammed it into the wood, causing a seismic shock that rippled out like an impact crater, stunning the pack of dogs where they stood. He slammed his fist into one and killed it as he raced away.
“Come on!” he shouted. I threw myself forward, slashing out at a dog at my feet and finishing it off as the Sea Lantern continued to spit at me from behind. The bell still rang out as we ran, ducking and weaving through side streets. It seemed as though the entire town had come alive. We had to think of something fast.
I swapped to my bow as I leapt over a fallen barrel of fish and landed safely on the other side. The road forked.
“Left!” I shouted, but Baltos had already gone right. I had no choice but to follow.
I took the turn, but the Sea Sickness debuff had my legs feeling like wet, over-boiled spaghetti, sort of like that feeling you get when you try to run in a dream. I careened to the left and slammed into the wall as an entire pack of dogs swam over me like a wave of teeth and jaws.
“Baltos!” I cried out as about five more debuffs stacked onto me. I spun around and used Eye Gouge on one of the dogs, stunning him, and blew the rest of my cooldowns finishing him off. My health dropped dangerously, approaching half before Baltos was back at my side. He charged in and slammed his fists into two of them at the same time, knocking them back with an impressively heavy blow.
He hit one with an uppercut ability, sending it flipping into the air, snatched me by the hand and pulled me to my feet. More of the Sea Lantern’s eyes splashed into the wall above my head and stuck as I did my best to run, but my Quickness had been reduced by 60% and it was like trying to run through mud.
“I can’t, Baltos!” I cried out, stumbling forward as the dogs regrouped and leapt into pursuit. “The debuffs!”
“Shoot behind us!” he shouted. “I’ll get the front!”
Drawing my bow, I twisted and fired over my shoulder, just missing the dog in the front. I tried again, but missed. My legs just weren’t working and it was affecting my aim. I nocked another arrow and fired Scatter Shot, which thankfully didn’t require any precision. It split against the wall and ricocheted everywhere, creating a piercing wall of death that chewed through the creatures, killing all but one of them.
“Nice!” he shouted. The last dog leapt at me, snapping at my ankles. Pain flared in my leg as I kicked it off of me, slamming it into the wall.
“Jump!” I heard Baltos shout and looked back just in time to see him hurl himself off the edge of a dock towards the water.
“Wait!” I roared, but there was no time. I had no choice. Two packs of dogs spilled out of the alleys around me and raced towards me. It was a swarm, unbeatable, even at my level. All those debuffs would freeze me and they’d chew me to pieces. And then there was the Sea Lantern…
I kicked off the deck as hard as I could, launching myself into the air. Looking down, I saw Baltos land in a small rowboat, almost toppling it, but my legs weren’t working like his, and I could tell I wasn’t going to make it.
The cold water of the marsh swallowed me up like a massive mouth of slime. I plunged into the icy darkness and kicked for the surface, but my legs were useless. Looking up, I could barely see the glimmer of lig
ht above me and the bottom of the boat. Several hounds slammed into the water and kicked towards Baltos. An oar cracked one of them on the skull and a fist slammed into another as I struggled to swim to the top.
This damn debuff!
I tugged with my arms against the freezing water as it did its best to suck me down. Slowly, I began to make progress. I kicked with everything I could, trying to get the most out of my near useless legs. But my breath was gone and out of pure biological reflex, I gasped and swallowed a lungful of water.
In the old Call of Carrethen, you simply had a breath meter to keep track of. But here in Carrethen 2.0, I actually felt as though I was drowning.
Chunks of my health began to tick away as pain and cold fire raged through my chest. I kicked hard and reached out, managing to snag the bottom of the boat, but my hand slid off. I pulled hard again and saw Baltos’ hand break through the surface of the water. I reached out and grabbed his wrist and he pulled hard, tearing me from the lake and back into the air.
Gasping, I pulled myself into the rowboat and fumbled around with my Health Kit and used a charge. Baltos dug in with the oars and began fiercely rowing away from the docks where the Sea Lantern stood, its green spotlight bearing down on us.
“Holy shit,” I coughed, slimy sea water spilling out of my throat as I rolled over in the bottom of the boat.
“That was close,” Baltos said as he rowed for all he was worth, hauling us away from the Stilt Village and into the mist of the swamp.
“You did it, Mr. Glorious,” I joked as I took the seat in front of him, taking a moment to recover.
“I mean—I am glorious.” He smiled. He was proud of himself, and he should have been. I was proud of him.
“This swamp better not be that big,” I chuckled. “I hate swamps.”
“Especially ones with Sea Lanterns and those crazy dogs in them?”
“You got that right.”
As Baltos rowed us through the mist, I realized just how good it felt to be reunited with him. It was similar to how I’d felt when I encountered Gehman back at Stoneburg, but Baltos and I had been through a lot more than I had with Gehman, and for a moment, if I closed my eyes, I was almost able to pretend that I was back in Carrethen with the rest of my friends, instead of wandering lost through the Dark World searching for them.
60
The Targanic
The swamp leading away from the Stilt Hamlet was dark and depressing but seemingly devoid of any enemies. Baltos continued to row while I let my mind wander. We had made it out of Jahannan, just barely, but were down my entire group. I’d lost Kodiak, Sabotenda, Curafin and Anwi, although she wasn’t continuing on with us anyway. But I’d found Baltos, and that was a major win.
If Stitches hadn’t done what he’d done, the chances of me finding him would have been slim to none. The chamber where the Befallen Grub was waiting was so well hidden I wondered how any normal player would have ever found it. Maybe the boss was normally the end of a quest or something and an NPC had directions on how to find it.
What I still couldn’t wrap my head around was why Stitches had been wearing Hectar’s armor and why he had tried to trick Anwi like he did. Thinking back to when we first encountered him at the Forgotten Grove, I could remember him muttering something about a woman. Was there some sort of history between him and Anwi? Did Stitches have a single person in this world he could call friend?
Nothing moved in the swamp, save for the small waves created by the bow of the boat as Baltos pulled us forward. I’d dried off but a chill still ran through me. Cara seemed so far away, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the others were doing. As if he could read my mind, Baltos broke the silence.
“So, do you have a guild here or anything?” I asked. “Who else have you run into? Have you seen Jack?”
“I haven’t,” I replied, feeling a pang in my chest. I felt like a failure not having a good answer to give him. I’d restored him, sure, but all I’d done was bring him into a cruel dark world where he was even more lost than I was.
“Cavey? Xavier? Anybody?” he asked. “Bonecrusher?”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “Don’t even go there. But no—I haven’t seen anyone else. Just Gehman. But I made some new friends. This great guy Kodiak, he uses a dagger, Sabotenda and Curafin. I actually restored Curafin like I did with you. He was trapped in the body of the Bishop of Chilgrave Castle. He’s a mage that buffs himself up and uses a flaming sword.”
“Wow!” Baltos exclaimed, digging in with his oars. “You sound like you’ve been up to a lot! How long have you been here?”
“Just a few days,” I told him. “But yeah, I guess I’ve been through a lot since I got here.”
“Been back to Stoneburg?” he asked.
I nodded sadly. “Yes. It’s a wreck. Wintermute’s backup messed up so many things. Stoneburg’s basically a ruin.”
“Wintermute?”
“The A.I. that contacted me when I was on the outside,” I explained. “The one who created this world, gave me my powers.”
“I see,” he replied. I could tell he wanted more information than that, but I made it clear by the look on my face that I didn’t want to go into it. I was still unsure about the whole Wintermute thing, and for the moment, I just wanted to forget about it. “I’d love to see Jack again.”
“Yeah…” I muttered. “Me too.”
Baltos went quiet again for a moment, realizing he’d touched a nerve, then tried to lighten the conversation. “So, we’re going to see Vayde? That should be cool!”
“Yeah, we ran into a dispatch from his guild back near Cara, the only intact town we’ve seen so far,” I explained. “They said he was at Neydeesa Castle near the Velsilial Isles. Part of Fallen God’s alliance.”
“Fallen God.” Baltos grinned. “What a great name for a guild.”
“Yeah, well she’s got the wrong idea about how to handle the Sunken.”
“Sunken?” he asked. “What’s that?”
“When you die here, you don’t just die like you did in Carrethen. You start to go Sunken. Lose your memory and eventually your mind with every death until there’s nothing left of you. That’s how I found Gehman, hammering away in his smith’s hut like a zombie.”
Baltos shuddered. “Sounds terrible. But I’ll tell you what, being stuck in the body of a monster isn’t much better!”
I smiled and gazed over Baltos’ shoulder where the mist of the swamp was starting to clear up. I glimpsed something moving in the sky behind him, but we were still too far away to make out what it was.
“See something?” Baltos asked.
“I think so…” I muttered, standing up for a better look. I could hear something too, not too far off in the distance. I cocked my head to the side and listened, then realized what it was. Running water.
“You hear that?” Baltos asked, taking a break from his rowing.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, listening intently. I looked down and realized the boat was still moving despite the oars resting on the sides. Residual momentum maybe?
But that wasn’t it. After a few more seconds the boat actually started to pick up speed, and to my left, I saw a small dip in the water. There was another on my right, and as we drifted forward, the sound of running water grew louder.
“Uh, Jane…” Baltos said, turning around in the boat to look ahead of us. “I think I see a—”
“Waterfall!” I cried out. The mist broke in front of the boat and I could see it, clear as day. We were headed straight for a waterfall. In the distance, I saw the shapes I’d seen earlier, only much clearer this time. Floating islands hanging impossibly in the sky above a large fertile valley.
Targanic.
Dropping to my seat, I snatched up the oars and began rowing backwards. I dug in as hard as I could, but the current was growing and it was just too much for me. As hard as I tried, the boat kept making progress towards the falls. I glanced around frantically, searching for something I could grab onto or a plac
e to beach the boat, but there was nothing.
The water around us was running quickly now, white rapids pulling us forward towards the drop. Using my Bindstone Shard was not an option. I had to keep moving forward, and there was no telling where Baltos would end up if he died.
“All right, Baltos,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Looks like we’re going over.”
“Yeah?” he asked nervously, glancing at me then back at the water tumbling down into nothing.
“Take a deep breath and swim for shore,” I told him. “Hopefully the fall doesn’t kill us. Use your Health Kit as soon as you possibly can.”
“Got it!” he called out. The roar of the falls was beginning to drown out his voice. We only had a few seconds. I stared out at the Targanic far beneath us. The grass was actually green, and to my complete shock, tiny shafts of sun were breaking through the clouds and reaching the ground, the first sun I’d seen since arriving in the Dark World. Then, I felt the boat lurch forward and braced myself.
“Here we go!” I shouted as the raft went over the waterfall.
I splashed through the waves as they swept over the cliff, then found myself in freefall, plummeting through the air towards a crystal clear lake beneath us. I looked to my right and saw Baltos falling upside down, struggling to right himself. I tried to reach out to him but he was too far away. I shifted slightly, trying to catch the wind in a way that I could get over to him, but a gust swept over my legs and threw me further away.
“Jane!” he cried out as I slammed into the water.
The impact dropped my health to critical and the force was enough to send me straight to the bottom of the lake. My feet touched the dirt and I kicked off hard, driving myself up towards the surface. The sound of the falls was a dull roar behind me as I swam towards the closest shore.
A school of purple fish split in front of me, passing over me like I was just another random obstacle in their way. As they flicked their tails, thin veins of blue light flashed across their bodies. The Dark World had been so dark for so long that seeing them sent a surge of hope through my body, and a huge smile was on my face as I surfaced.
Lord of the Flame: A LitRPG novel (Call of Carrethen Book 2) Page 28