Chapter 60

 

Night of Day 12 since entering the gnome’s warren.

Dream state of the demon item box

After what seemed like a full minute of falling somehow we all splash into an underground lake...I think. How could I be sure? Or was it an open waterfront? The water is ice cold but somehow I manage to stay conscious. My body feels a bit numb. Somehow I kept the axe, but it was close. My near panic nearly made me drop it.

I’m lucky though. If I’d been holding it close to my body it would have hit me in the face on impact with the water from above. I think the only reason it didn’t is because I had my arms above my head. As things happened it did barely graze my ear though. This is a classic example of something similar to not running with a sharp pencil or scissors that you learn when you are young.

It takes me a few minutes to swim back up to the top of the water. While desperately swimming upwards to what I think is most likely the top I have to be careful not to drop my weapon but it feels heavy as I pull my way up. In the end it’s almost like I’m pulling a sack of rocks to the surface. I want to give up as my air stretches tight in my chest. We’d fallen for awhile and so we’d gone deep under the surface. I’m lucky that I remembered which way felt like it was up.

I’m lucky I didn’t drop my weapon in the water. And it’s hard to swim while holding one.

The others soon come to the top too. I think I got there after they did.

“Shun! Shun! Where are you?” I hear as my face and head break above the water. It took me a minute for my ears to clear so I could hear it as I sputter and desperately fight for air.

“Air…” I croak.

It takes me a minute to recognize which of the two the voice came from.

“He’s over there!” Fox Girl calls out.

“Sunghee, Fox Girl can you swim?” I called out to be sure. I’m not sure if both of them can swim. It’s rare that people can’t but I have to be careful in assuming so.

I’m relieved when I hear Sunghee call back first, “I’m treading water. Weird though, I think this water tastes salty somehow.” She saves her breath.

“Silly humans. Don’t drink salt water. Fox people are born to fish while swimming as part of our instincts,” Fox Girl also seems to be OK. Yep, she still has her pride so things must be OK.

I hear both of them are close to me, but maybe about thirty feet away. How did they land so far away from me in the water? Was that because of the box? It actually helped us not kill each other landing in the water but it was annoying because I couldn’t tell where they were. We were less than five feet from each other when we started to fall. But it’s hard to tell where they are since it’s so dark.

That’s another thing…why was it so freaking dark here?!

But then I have a bad feeling.

“The current! It’s pulling us somewhere!” I said. More than seeing it I can feel it. It’s like there’s a strong undercurrent. I’m fighting just to stay where I was in the first place. It’s not a fast current but it’s a very solid deep flow.

“Stay there, I’m coming to get you guys,” Fox says. “Just tread water!”

“Yeah, as if I had a choice,” Sunghee says. “Something isn’t right about this place.”

The others are also alarmed, except for Fox Girl. I think she’s desensitized to trouble and danger though so she doesn’t count. Quickly we start to get closer to each other first. They both call out and I swim towards their voices. Not only are they getting closer, but they are both really afraid.

“OK, where are we first?” Sunghee calls out. “Do you recognize anything?’

“So…cold…don’t see anything I know,” Fox Girl shivers. “Hope we can get back to land so I can start a fire.”

“It’s partly because you are tired. We have to hurry before our bodies succumb to the cold,” Sunghee answers back.

“Yeah, I know… I should have gone back to sleep,” Fox Girl suddenly says. “I don’t get why I’m helping you small fries. I should quit while I’m ahead.”

“I can’t see. It’s like pitch black in here,” I said. This is scary. I have no idea where we are.

“Me neither,” Sunghee says. “Fox Girl can you see?”

“Yeah…but I’m still deciding if I want to go along with all this,” she replies dryly.

“Please, help us,” I plead.

It’s silent for a bit.

“OK. Since you asked nicely. I’m still not sure why I’m doing this…”

“That falling was pretty awful. It was worse because it was so dark!” Sunghee exclaims.

“Yeah I know right? You still have the weapon though right?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s scary how dependent we are on weapons just to live. But it’s not easy to hold them while swimming. I’m trying to contain my panic while I’m treading water. We’re slowly trying to calm down. The others had a noticeable effect of feeling better once they were reunited together with the three of us.

We’re trying to work out our situation now. If we can’t even tell where we’re going which direction do we go?

“You know weapons won’t help us much if we don’t figure out which direction land is in,” Sunghee said.

“I agree. What do you think? Use your sharp senses to tell me what clues you see,” of all of us Fox would have the best senses, so I directed the question to her.

“Don’t worry I can see for us,” Fox Girl says. “Just tread water, while I get my bearings.”

“But we can’t tell where the current is going. If you leave us we’ll get washed away and separated,” I said.

“Easy, easy does it. I’ll be fine. Just stay with me,” she said.

“But how come you can see and we can’t?” Sunghee asks.

“I have night vision. Fox people are a higher evolution after all,” she replies.

“So fox people have night vision?” I asked.

“Nope.” She leaves it like that and doesn’t explain.

Suddenly I feel something strange tickling me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Grab on,” Fox Girl says.

“Is this….” I didn’t finish saying it, but held onto something that felt like …a wet dog tail? It would be fluffy if it weren’t totally all wet and drenched. No way. I sometimes forget that she has two tails. It seems that Sunghee is also holding onto the other one. Sometimes her shoulder brushes up to mine as we’re carried forward.

“Hey this is cool!” Sunghee says it like its fun. “It’s like a ride! Haha.”

“Like a fail raft?” I couldn’t resist to say.

“Hmm a fox boat,” Sunghee chuckles; I guess her spirits are still high from being free even though to us this is hell.

“Sh-shut up,” fox girl blushes.

We keep going like this for some time. My watch is probably not going to deal with the water very well.

I can still feel Fox Girl glaring at both of us, “I still want my dignity. If anyone hears about this…” she makes a cutting motion across her throat. Somehow she seems more cute than hostile.

Is it just me or has it gotten easier to see?

We’re able to rest for a bit while Fox Girl swims for us buoying us up. Wow she’s really amazing. I wonder what else she’s hiding in that head of hers? I really want to find out but this isn’t the time for it.

It seems she’s a really powerful swimmer despite looking like she’s more slender than Sunghee. I thought I was a good swimmer before now, but I’m really humbled now when I realize swimming in an area besides a pool is way different. There’s real danger from all the undertow and current forces pushing you around.

“Haha, I love this! I should make you my pet!” Sunghee chirps.

“Laugh it up kiddies. I’ll have my revenge,” Fox Girl says, but somehow her tone of voice doesn’t sound mad.

“Don’t piss her off please,” I said to Sunghee, who just chuckles.

“Come on, it’s like my first time being out!” she protested.

We can feel her pulling us through the current now and it seems like she’s been heading the same direction for awhile.

“You seem like a good swimmer. I’m impressed,” I said.

“Fox people have to know how to retreat through water to throw off predators and carry other young to hide them. It’s one of the first things we start learning as kits and adolescents,” she says.

“Kits?” Sunghee is surprised by the word.

“Well that’s a general term. Youth, whatever you want to call it,” she answers back. She seems a bit calmer now.

After a few minutes we find ourselves being pulled towards something. We’re still fighting the current. Occasionally we try to help Fox Girl but she just tells us to save our strength.

“Wait I just felt something brush by my leg,” Sunghee says in alarm. Her normally calm eyes look really big and wide. “Help!”

“Yeah, it was a two headed shark,” Fox Girl says like it’s nothing.

“Sh-shark?!” she asks.

“Two heads? When did they evolve to that?” I wondered.

“Sh! Stay quiet for a bit,” Fox Girl seems to be looking around us in the water. I would look too if there were more light, but because there isn’t and I can’t do anything I just hang on.

“This reminds me of when I’m little and my parents don’t shut the big scary closet in my room and turn out the lights,” Sunghee says nervously.

“Except this time the monsters are real,” I finished for her.

“Eh? You had that dream too?” she asked me.

“I think all kids do, right around when they are five years old,” I guessed.

“Yeah that would be about right,” she answered back.

“You kids are so noisy. Be quiet. It takes concentration to watch for sharks here,” she said. We quieted right down after that.

Ah shit. I’m almost paralyzed with fear. I don’t like the idea of sharks being here.

A shark wouldn’t be as scary if we weren’t in like near pitch black darkness…and could actually fight it. But I haven’t even had to think about fighting in water, and I doubt Sunghee has either.

“Shark?” Hic*, Sunghee has a high pitched hiccup. She’s stressed out nearly as much as me. “When are things going to get better?” she asks.

I don’t respond because I don’t know either. I don’t believe in lying or false hope. I do believe in fighting against the dark however.

“Yeah about the sharks…they’ve been following us for the last five minutes,” Fox Girl says.

“There’s more than one?!” I gasped.

“Weren’t you going to tell us?! That’s a long time!” Sunghee exclaims.

“Yeah this lake is full of them. Don’t worry they haven’t attacked yet. They seem to be waiting for something. None of you are bleeding right?”

“No?” We both say. We can’t really tell that well anyway.

“They didn’t always have two heads on this world. I’ll explain that later though…” she changes the subject.

There’s like a sudden splash and I felt something like a weapon brush by me and splash the water. It’s not a small splash but sounds like something heavy like a street sign post or like one of Akira’s logs. Waves of water crash up and there’s a huge up tide surge that throws me and Sunghee around.

Fox Girl yips from her tails being pulled too tight from or being pushed away from her. “Damn, that hurt! Don’t pull so tight,” she cries out.

“Uh, sorry,” I said quickly.

“What was that?” Sunghee says desperately.

“I hit one of the sharks in the nose when he thought he could get close. He’s not dead, but…his friends will think he tastes good,” Fox Girl says dully. “You are bleeding a little and that’s what got him close to you,” she adds while looking at me.

“Shit!”

“Well at least we’re still alive right?” Sunghee asks trying to encourage us. Neither of us answer because we feel pretty exposed in the water like this.

“Eh? Was that a weapon I felt go by?” I asked.

“You have good instincts Shun. I do have my own weapon. It’s made from shadows and shadow mana bound together so I can conceal it,” she said.

No wonder. But if that was one of her secrets…what were the others?

I hadn’t expected that, but of course she’d have had something to fight off the orc boss with. I still didn’t know what it looked like.

“Eek! I felt another one!” Sunghee said like a kid. She comes closer to me, grabbing at my arm for safety. She feels warm.

“Resist the temptation to thrash about. It draws them faster, since they think you are like a wounded fish,” Fox replies boredly.

“You aren’t going to kill it?” Sunghee questions like it was expected.

“Why would I do that?” she replies. I don’t understand her logic, but still we keep going.

“How do you stay calm under all this pressure?” I wondered.

“That’s the right question to ask kid,” she chirps back.

But after a few minutes it got me thinking...with the slave collar did she respond like that because someone besides the slave collar owner asked that question? Suddenly I was very curious how it was affecting her. If a normal human asked her for something and she was very paranoid against humans then maybe that would have been her normal reaction if I’d asked for things without the slave collar encouraging her.

We kept going like this for another half hour of swimming. It felt like a long time but somehow Fox Girl didn’t seem to falter her pace. It also seemed like the current here wasn’t as strong. The physical activity forces our hearts to pump faster and warm us up, but now my teeth are chattering.

I wish it wasn’t so dark.

I can’t even tell what this place looks like.

“Are you going to be OK, pulling us like this?” I said after awhile.

“It’s fine. We can rest soon on the beach ahead. It’s getting to be like not quite as dark, but still pretty black in the sky. I think can see my hands now and the others near me with their heads sticking out of the water.

We continue for a couple more minutes.

“Eh? There’s a beach! I love beaches!” Sunghee says happily.

“Almost as much as you love sharks?” I asked.

She swears in Korean. I don’t understand it. She nervously looks about for them.

We finally collapse on the beach despite not wanting the crisp white clean sand to stick to our wet clothes like glue. Unlike beaches on Earth this one stretches for a long time and feels good. The sand here is very clean and pure. I can’t see anything near us except the beach stretching as far as I can see. There are mountains near us but I don’t see anything like lights in the distance like a city might have.

If it weren’t for what we’d just seen I’d mistake this place for a paradise.

We can finally see now. It’s not as light as the Earth but somehow it works out. We rest for a few minutes. I don’t push Fox Girl since she’s already been doing a lot. I can’t believe how much she’s given us so far. I still don’t want to sleep yet for many reasons; not being sure of our safety yet being one of them.

Fox Girl has somehow used her magic to change her clothes to something looking like Sunghee’s clothes, a school uniform blouse and a miniskirt. It wasn’t by choice. Her heavy robes earlier would have drowned her with us helping.

But I’m surprised that Sunghee hasn’t bothered to close or button up the blouse I gave her yet; well actually there wasn’t time. And then she had to hang onto a weapon and fox girl’s tail at the same time. It’s also a blouse that’s a bit too small but it was the first one I’d grabbed because we were under a lot of pressure and trying to move quickly. They were all similar sizes. Did Sensei mix them up and only get the ones that younger kids had?

Or...she may have tried to pick something Rina’s size. Sunghee is slim but Rina is like petite slim. Plus, Rina has almost no breast tissue.

So this is going to be a big problem!

What’s also worrisome is Sunghee is taller and slightly older than high school kids because she’s like mid twenties. So …we would have to find her some other clothes. I’m partly fascinated by what’s hanging out of the shirt. I blink a few times seeing how healthy she’s grown.

The sneakers worked and fit; thank goodness. It would be difficult to move well without shoes. Somehow she hadn’t lost them when we fell but the wet white blouse was also now see through because having gotten wet and she didn’t have a bra on underneath. Her nipples are huge too from all the abuse she’s had over the years. The shirt tries to close unsuccessfully. And because it’s wet anything that is covered is seen anyway. They stick out permanently at nearly an inch, but Sunghee seems to not notice or not care that everything is pretty much hanging out in the open. Are they that big from some of the orcs’ drugs I wonder? The overall swelling is perfectly shaped but not bigger than a human should have, but for the nipples…human nipples I doubt should be that big. She also has a warriors body, rather than a couch potato’s.

But why doesn’t Sunghee notice? Is it because of the slave collar? It must be affecting her mentality I reason.

“Hey are you going to button that up?” Fox Girl asks.

Sunghee gives us both a weird look. “Well I tried. But the shirt is too small. It’s made for like a fifteen year old or something.” She shows us how the buttons can’t quite make it, but only invite more temptation instead. “Besides I already am with Shun right? If it’s him that sees me then it’s OK.”

My mouth hangs open dramatically. Gulp*

“Don’t you have anything bigger?” Fox asks.

“It was pretty hard to get what I did. Asakura also had a lot of weird ideas from me asking her to scrounge for women’s clothes,” I said defensively.

“I…see…” Fox lowers her head.

I rummage through the demon box. She tries the other two shirts, but they have the same problem. While trying them on she doesn’t both to hide anything. She seems to enjoy showing them to me…

And wow, her nipples stick out super erect, way longer and thicker than a normal human’s!

“Oh well, guess I’ll just have to let them hang out,” Sunghee says huskily to me with her tongue stuck out a little. Her eyes are on me like I’m a mouse and she’s a cat. She winks.

Wow. An adult girl…Gulp*I don’t know if I can handle her.

After that we use a bit of ocean water to get the sand off us. But I can still feel the salt in the water but it’s almost unnoticeable.

“Hey look at that!” Sunghee says pointing up.

Above us is the most weird ass moon I’ve ever seen in my life.

It looks like a strange planet that’s like ready to collide with this one, except it’s like a weird half eaten apple. But it has all kinds of strange appendage like asteroid crystal lines shooting out of it. And two hemispheres over the half eaten part that goes all the way around.

“What is that?” I asked distracted by …I’m not even sure what I’m looking at.

“That’s some weird stuff,” Sunghee admits in shock.

“But you’ve been here for like ten years longer than me right? You act like you haven’t seen this before? And what happened to the two moons we saw before?” I asked. “We can’t have changed planets…”

This is confusing.

“Uh, I’ve never seen anything like this. This is way different than what I’d experienced so far. I’ve only seen two moons, not this big near collision eaten up moon above us,” Sunghee replies.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Do you know the story of Atmos?” Fox Girl asks.

“Atmos?” I wonder.

“I’ve heard of an Atmos blade in Final Fantasy games,” Sunghee says.

Huh…she played some before she came here it seems. I guess that might have helped her mentality to adapt to a demonic world.

Fox Girl shook her head. “Wrong Atmos. This isn’t a game. In the legend, Atmos is holding up the world trying to prevent the collision between the planet and the heavens. History records he faltered a few times, when he was bitten by a dragon. That’s why the moon is half eaten when it fell it started to break into two parts.”

“Wait a minute. That sounds like our version of the Greek mythology Atlas holding up the world,” Sunghee says.

“Yep. That’s because they are the same. Where else do you think that legend came from?” Fox Girl said. “Think about it, Atmos, Atlas? Haven’t you ever studied a foreign language and find the same word with the same meaning but just written a bit different because people talk weird?”

“Are you sure?” Sunghee asks.

She nods confidently. “As languages change they’ll replace a consonant sound with an evolved very similar sound.”

“Eh?! But how could people on Earth have the same story and with nearly identical names, when they are from clearly different planets?” I asked.

“That’s simple. It’s because some very rare few people from our planets have been able to visit and cross worlds. At some point someone must have brought that story here and embedded it into your planet’s mythology,” Fox Girl said.

“Eh? So there’s a way to go back?” I ask desperately.

But next to my Sunghee seems conflicted. I wonder why. Fox Girl noticed it too.

“Don’t you want to go back?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I=I don’t know. I’ve changed so much. So has everything else. What if they won’t accept us like we are now? If I went back I’d just be a rent paying slave as much as I would here. Here I fight to live, but I don’t have rents and taxes. I can live free. I can own property within a year with no mortgage. I can’t do that at home can I? And… they would be disappointed to hear all the bad things that happened to me.”

I’m shocked to hear her say that.

“But you did want to leave…” I reasoned.

“…to leave the demon box…” she corrected.

“You aren’t a disappointment. You are like our guide and pioneer. We need you,” I reassured Sunghee putting my hand in hers.

She blushes. She squeezes my hand back. “Thanks!” She gives me a wet kiss on the forehead. She also is still holding my hand.

But we’re momentarily pulled back from our distraction.

“There’s not really a way to go back without becoming some kind of demi-god status at the very least. That’s according to the calculation of how much mana it would take,” Fox Girl reasons. “The reason people don’t go back and forth all the time is because of the huge amount of mana required to cross worlds. The farther it is the more mana you have to pay. There aren’t very many creatures that have that much mana or that could pull that off. Even among dragons you wouldn’t find very many of them with that much mana.”

“Shit, dragons exist too? We’re really screwed aren’t we?!” I exclaimed.

Sunghee who still is holding my hand nods, “yeah they do unfortunately. But they don’t roam that much and sleep a lot it seems. I’ve not seen one myself but I’ve had acquaintances who did. They say you can’t even walk because you are paralyzed with thousands of tiny fear spells that are dripping off them like sweat. Even the top adventurers have trouble moving in such environments and they were only in the same valley, not even being close to it.”

“Wow.”

“Hmm that’s interesting. I’d heard such things but hadn’t any confirmation on the fear spells till now. But some among my kind had suspected as much,” Fox girl said.

“Eh? So to go back to our own planet… I thought it was one mana cost for one trip no matter where. That’s how it works in games,” I reasoned.

Fox Girl shook her head, “Nope. Each kilometer adds more mana, and so does carrying more people and more weight too. That’s partly why people would kill to have your demon box Shun. All spells use tons of mana, and something that can affect that. You have no idea…”

“Eh?!”

“It’s also why you will never be safe and need to cultivate a group of loyal bodyguards,” Fox Girl says seriously.

“Thanks for helping me Fox,” I said sincerely bowing to her. I was grateful she was so honest.

Instead she was gaping. “Even though I’m trapped by the slave collar too, you are polite? It’s so unbelievable,” she’s shocked.

“Yeah he’s cool right?! I knew when he saved me from the orc filth that he was the right one!” Sunghee happily jumps at me giving me a hug. It feels really warm, since her shirt is open and because my clothes are wet too.

She gives me a big French kiss leaving me stunned.

“Hey cut that out! He doesn’t belong to you!” Fox Girl protested.

“Yet?” Sunghee taunts her.

But Fox Girl pulls her away. In the process she accidentally pulls open Sunghee’s shirt more leaving her right boob totally exposed. Sunghee having Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t mind. I’m pretty sure its something like Stockholm Syndrome, though I’m not a psychologist.

“Uh, let’s get on with it. This area isn’t safe. I don’t want to stay here for very long,” Fox Girl says.

I was momentarily shocked too by my just treating them like they are human beings. That orc boss really brainwashed them. It’s said.

“So I’m confused. This is like a planet landscape but I thought we were in the demon box?” I asked.

Fox Girl nods, “yeah…small problem there. Turns out this is worse than the demon box. Somehow it decided to spit us out instead. We’re in the demon realm instead.”

“What the fudge, that doesn’t even make sense. I thought you said the box wants to kill us or get revenge so it can eat us and take our energy or something like that,” I complain with my arms folded across my chest.

“It does,” she reiterated firmly. “That’s why this is weird.”

“But isn’t that place like super dangerous?” Sunghee says in a frightened voice.

“Which place?” I asked.

“The demon realm,” Sunghee said. “It’s more dangerous and unpredictable than anything you can imagine.”

“Yeah, it’d make living in the demon box seem like a picnic. So either we’re in the demon realm or we’re in a room in the demon box designed to hold and house monsters similar to that realm or that looks like it. We’ll soon find out which,” she added.

“Let me guess. We find that out by it trying to eat us like before,” I groaned.

“But why would it spit us out here? Wouldn’t that be like giving us more freedom?” Sunghee wondered.

Fox Girl shook her head. “It’s not that simple. The Demon realm is like a sub-realm as part of this world, being connected to it. It’s way more dangerous than the box. The only reason it would do that is if it didn’t have enough power to kill us outright.”

“But you said it was a powerful artifact so how would it not have enough power to kill us?” Sunghee questions closely. She seems unconvinced and has her hands on her hip.

“Simple, you, Sunghee are too attached to Shun already. The box naturally draws power from the slaves hating or wanting to escape from the owner of the box. When you were too attached to Shun and saw him as a Savior like figure it actually weakened the box’s ability to harness that hate significantly and probably felt like a toothache. The box wouldn’t like a pure thought or something positive like love, so that wouldn’t feel good. It’d be like mixing white paint in a black paint bucket. So it spit us out. But it didn’t want us to just get away so it did so in the worst possible environment.

“It wasn’t love, it was …lust… I think,” Sunghee blushes.

“...”

“Well, maybe there was some love after all?” Sunghee paused after thinking about it.

The demon realm…I sighed. Can’t we just be in one place? It’s confusing to even keep track of what’s going on.

“So just to make sure. We’re still on the same planet right? I’m not sure my sanity could handle going to another planet,” I said.

“We’re on the same planet, kinda,” Fox said reaffirms.

Why did she say it in a weird way?