After a lunch of those flavorless little bits the system refers to as 'dried fruit', which to be clear I still have yet to identify, I was still feeling a bit exhausted. As it turns out, even if your stamina gauge is full, you aren’t really at 100%; I’m not certain exactly what it relates to as far as biology is considered. In the end, I opted to take the rest of the day off from any sort of training and considered what my afternoon would entail.
“Okay, so if I learned anything this morning except for my apparent novel status as a badass, pending actual combat, it’s that this town… village, whatever, is a lot more intact in some places than others; with any luck I can find some bits and bobs to make life easier.”
With my course of action decided, I emptied one of the bags and started my search pretty close to home. For as long as I’d been living in the chapel I’d never made a full circuit around the structure and I was surprised to find a basement had been dug beneath it. Past the angled wooden doors and down a set of steps was a solid stone chamber with a domed ceiling; four oddly seamless walls with inset shelving bordered the room and in the center a stone slab rose up to just above waist height. I was worried at first that I’d be walking into a catacomb but on closer examination, I can only assume it used to be a root cellar or... whatever medieval people called a mortuary; most cultures had some kind of tradition about staying with the dead for a set period or doing some kind of preservation of the body back on earth, and it's presence under a church lends to that theory. No matter though, it was a full 10 degrees cooler down there and seemed clean enough now.
“Well… no corpses here now thankfully. I guess I can use the place to store stuff if I end up here for a while.”
Continuing my search around the village I discovered something else that caught me off guard, intact metal tools. Behind a fallen in structure was a somewhat rusted but still serviceable lumber axe, underneath a heap of rubble in the folded shell of a house was a cast iron pan and a cauldron not far from that. There was more too, shovels, utensils, arrowheads, a few miraculously intact barrels, and even some more glass bottles; by the end of my search I practically had a medieval kitchen's worth of goods and a toolkit to boot, just needed to clean it... and get food.
"Damn, this is a nice haul... now if I can remember how to remove rust from cast iron. Might have something for it in the reagent case."
I’ll admit, I wasn’t exactly clear on what I expected to find, but it wasn’t anything as much as this; I can’t make any sense of how old this place actually is. The presence of intact wooden furnishings and only slightly rusted iron fixtures over the hearth in the church means its probably only been a decade or two at most; but most of these buildings look like something out of an archaeological dig. I puzzled over that fact while carrying my heap of miscellany back to the church and just sort of stuffed most of it into the storage room. By the time my search was done the sun was low in the sky and I didn’t quite feel comfortable traipsing about after dark; no matter how much I needed a bath it’d have to wait until morning.
“Yeah, this doesn’t make much sense at all, I mean sure everything metal is rusted but how is it that the buildings are this eroded and the metal isn’t completely gone?”
I thought aloud while moving things into more organized piles and setting aside the glass bottles and jars; I'd need to boil those to make them safe to use if I ever got the cauldron clean. In the end I got too tired to finish or take proper inventory and just went to bed before hunger tempted me to eat another ration.
Dried fruit again for breakfast; dry, flavorless, and unsatisfying as usual. I chewed on some thoughts while I chewed on the leathery ration.
“I have to start getting food, this preserved stuff is getting old.”
“I know I have ‘locked’ skills like hunting, foraging, and fishing that’d help but I think I’ve got to actually use the skill to unlock it”
I washed down my breakfast with the minty tea and leaned back on the pew, trying for a relaxing stretch but only ending up feeling a twinge in my back.
“I wouldn’t mind an upholstery skill, this is possibly the worst bed ever.”
After suiting up for my day, I was standing in front of the church with the crossbow in hand, doing my best to aim at a roughly marked target; I’d made it with the camo paint kit by smearing red dye on that old oak. Now the thing was peppered with holes from crossbow bolts in a scattershot pattern.
|
Learned Skill [Crossbow] Lvl 1 ►Confirm◄ |
“Damn it, I’ve got crossbow at level two but I’m still struggling to get reliable shots in.”
Again my confidence deflated, though I suppose it’s better to learn like this than by bleeding out on the ground.
“Alright, so maybe imaginary goblins are a bit less fearsome than real ones.”
I sat down against what I think used to be a fountain and gave some thought to what I'd learned about the system; abilities were easy enough to understand, they moved your body in a preprogramed way like a macro. It was like a perfect execution of a single action, probably all things you could do without Abilities but not as easily. Skills seemed, for lack of a better word, different. It was like having an expert in your head or over your shoulder giving a few pointers as you went; it was still up to you to follow through on it. There might be some other effects to Skills, like the menu information from alchemical analysis or herbalism with their organized description and grading methods. I made a note to read as many as I could; some of them seem to have tidbits of cultural information, however small, and that could be vital to integrating when I do find society.
"Alright so... it seems like abilities are just... sort of automatically doing a single specific thing and skills are just... knowledge? Technique? Muscle memory?"
I pulled up the menu and took a look at mine, I only had two available above level 4; I've gotten a lot and they've leveled pretty quickly... so either I'm a prodigy or...
"I'm way behind the curve..."
I let my head sink into my hands, and my stomach rumbled again.
“And that isn’t helping, all this dried crap isn’t cutting it; I need to eat real food if I’m going to be at my best.”
It was at that point that an idea came to mind, an incredibly stupid and effective idea. I remembered something from my old life.
Growing up in the more rural parts of Florida means experiencing and doing a lot of inadvisable morally questionable things. One of which was spending an afternoon with my drunken uncle and some of his buddies dropping cherry bombs into the lake and scooping stunned fish off the surface; horribly destructive to an ecosystem, but as much as I love nature, I love food more at the moment.
“Blast fishing… uncle Jeffery you brilliant dumb ass. I’m not going to thank you for taking a ten year old out on a boat to play with explosives, but this could solve at least one of my problems.”
|
You're quite the lateral thinker, some might use the word 'insane', but you don't pay them any mind. Effect on Equip: Your mind travels down strange paths and you come to unique conclusions thanks to this. That sort of experimental thinking lends itself to learning. +5 Intellect, +5% bonus to experience gained ►Confirm◄ |
“Hah! That sounds about right.”
From there it was just a matter of loading up and walking down to the shore. I scratched at the dried camouflage on my right arm... its good to know it doesn't rub off easily but I had my concerns about safety; another memory bubbled up, a few months of art history classes.
"I really hope the white paint isn't lead based or anything, I should be careful with the greens and oranges too... could be poisonous or even just straight radioactive."
After a thorough scrubbing with sand and lake water, I stood on the shore with a bag full of magical explosives doubting myself and starting at a brick of blasting putty. I will admit I took my time setting down my bag and carefully removing a brick of blasting putty, probably more than necessary all things considered. The blasting putty came in bricks of 450g wrapped in parchment paper, kind of like giant sticks of butter; just holding it in my hand felt dangerous, but I tried to calm myself down.
“Yeah Amber, just… think of it like it’s butter… high explosive butter…”
I puzzled over it for a while, trying to figure out how to activate my alchemical analysis without having to taste it; I heard that C4 is poisonous and by my guess magic C4 has to be something like… double poisonous. I unwrapped the brick slowly revealing the reddish-brown material and gave it a sniff and my nose wrinkled at the weird stink. I can’t say I’ve ever handled the stuff before unless somewhere in that 77% of my missing memory I have a storied military career, but if my guess is right you can just sort of… break off some like clay.
“Wait… C4 needs a charge right? I wonder if the blasting putty will even work with just a fuse.”
Slowly and carefully I pinched off about 5 grams of the stuff and balled it up in my hand, working it between my palms into an even bead and finally got my skill to work.
| [Blasting Putty] |
|
Rarity: Very Rare |
“Oh… oh wow.”
I was suddenly a lot more nervous handling the stuff and almost dropped the bead, It says its safe… but I’m less certain after reading that. This description was helpful in a few ways though, now I knew that dwarves existed at least; at worst when I got to civilization I’d just be freakishly tall, assuming they looked anything like I imagined.
I shrugged and set to work, first things first I had to confirm this stuff even worked under water; I trimmed a length of fuse about 10 cm long and stuck it into the bead of putty. Thankfully after all the practice I’d had with the flint and steel, it was easy enough to get the fuse lit; I chucked it overhand into the water and waited patiently to hear the boom.
The actual explosion was just a little blorp beneath the lake water, but it confirmed what I was hoping to be true; the fuses burnt under water. I won’t waste the words detailing out my fumbling steps determining the proper size for the charge I needed.
What is important to note is that through my experimentation I learned to use blast compression and directional blast; more pertinently another piece of the puzzle slotted into place, I learned what Mana was for. It was a strange sensation and it took several tries to understand it.
Abilities are automatic, but after using them you can still tell what muscles they flex and this was like using one I didn’t even know I had; it was electric and fluid, hot and cold, perfectly natural and completely beyond words. It probably doesn’t help to put it this way, but nothing I’ve used to describe it comes close to the actual sensation; it's like trying to explain a new color to someone through interpretive dance.
“Woah, that is a freaky feeling…”
A part of me flowed out of my hand and shaped itself around the charge; I could still feel it even after I threw it, either holding the blast in like a bottle or forcing it into a specific direction depending on which ability I used. The abilities weren’t completely effective, but I’d have to keep them in mind if I ever used explosives in close range combat; changing the direction or shrinking the radius of a blast could mean the difference between scorch marks and losing an arm.
“Alright, that’s enough fucking around in the shallows… I should move somewhere the lake bed isn’t all stirred up and aim for a school of fish.”
I did just that, moving down the shore a bit and keeping my eyes peeled for a school of the little silver scaled fish. My first try was a bit of a dud, I was stingy with the fuse and the charge blew too high up in the water; the fish didn’t even look nettled. In my frustration, I prepared another charge with a bigger glob of blasting putty and a longer fuse, hoping I could get the timing right.
That’s about when things went wrong; I might’ve overcompensated, until now I haven’t used more than about 10 grams at once. Using a hundred was perhaps hasty, but we’ve all done stupid things while hungry; it worked though. I was knocked back on my ass by the blast and could only stare at what I saw. The water parted like a Charlton Heston flick and what’d been ejected from the lake by the explosion rained down in sheets, soaking the beach.
Quick fun fact, clear lakes can look shallower than they actually are and more importantly, things that are far away look smaller than they really are. The artificial rain was accompanied by the wet thumps of fish hitting the sand next to me; tuna the size of bottlenose dolphins.
“Oh fuck me running!”
I call them tuna, but to be clear that’s really not entirely accurate. These ‘tuna’ had foot long spines along their backs, rows of fangs and beady black eyes that displayed an eerie intellect; of greater concern at the time, they were angry.
The bulk of them flopped back towards the water and splashed their way in, but three of them were moving in my direction with surprisingly competent flops across the sand. Despite being literally out of their element, I was pretty certain I couldn’t make it to the tree line before one of these demon-looking fish caught up and took a bite out of me. No really good options presented themselves, so I drew my dagger and prepared to engage. They might be fast at flopping in one direction but I doubted they could maneuver very well.
Before we go on, I would like to state for the record that this is possibly the most pathetic fight there’s ever been.
I was fighting fish.
On land.
I ran forward and to the right flanking the closest monster and thrusted forward with my dagger to little effect.
“[Quick Stab]!”
The blade skittered across the scales sending up literal sparks, like I was trying to punch through steel. I brought the knife down five or six more times fruitlessly before I actually paused to think; this was getting me nowhere.
“Oh great, they’re armored fish.”
Taking time to sass was a mistake, that thing's giant tail whipped up and impacted my chest like a linebacker's tackle. The force of the blow threw me back, I barely landed on my feet and I swear I heard something crack; by the time I'd recovered the other two were changing direction to join the fray, so I opted to back off with my ability.
“[Disengage]!”
The world rushed by in reverse as my rapid motion left two rivulets in the moist sand of the beach. I grasped for options and my subconscious desire was enough to display my status in the corner of my vision. Disconcertingly, my army of one title was active.
| Status (Truncated) | |
|
[Bio] [Name] - Amber Primary Class: [Guerrilla Fighter] Lvl 15 [199/2190] Subclass 1: [None] Secondary Class: [Combat Alchemist] Lvl 12 [15/1130] Subclass 1: [Mad Bomber] Lvl 9 [239/485] Health - 363/446 +38/Day (413/496 +43/Day) Phys Def: 38 (43) |
[Status Effects] [Lesser Blessing of The Unnamed Goddess]
Constitution: 13 (14) Agility: 33 (37) |
“Holy Shit, one hit deals 80 Damage; if this is what fish can do, I’m screwed.”
Seeing the damage made everything feel a lot more real. The soft gloves were off, this wasn’t about food anymore, it was about surviving.
“[Disengage]! [Disengage]!”
I rushed backwards twice more and found my back to the water, inwardly I cursed my bad choice of positioning and then put my mind on more helpful trains of thought. I stuffed my hand into the pouch on my side and pulled out a bottle of something; apparently mental summoning of goods isn’t possible in combat, another mental note for the pile.
I didn’t even look as I chucked the jar of blue fluid forward and activated two abilities at once; making a big gamble.
“[Directional Blast]! [Disengage]!”
A wave of cold air swept past me, and even with directional blast I felt frost forming on my sodden armor; the lake froze and I skidded across the ice. Thick fog rolled across the ground and cleared revealing the scene; ice coated the sand in slick sheets and the three monstrous fish seemed frozen in place for a moment. The radius was impressive, a circle of ice stretched out below me and behind me into the clear lake, at least a foot thick.
“HAH! I win you frozen dinner looking sons of bitches!”
I was feeling confident prematurely however, the thin shell of ice around one cracked and then shattered in a cascade of shimmering sleet. I had merely slowed them down apparently; some part of my mind remembered antarctic fish with antifreeze blood as they resumed their furious pursuit.
“Oh shit.”
My stamina and mana were both close to empty and I could feel it, I grasped at straws trying to find some way to deal with the situation. Then, the icy surface of the lake in front of me exploded and my own tiny berg was set adrift; I fell to my knees and gripped the edge of the artificial ice floe with numb fingers, eyes locked on what I saw.
A crocodilian creature the size of a greyhound bus crawled free of the silt clouded water and just devoured two of the fish, crushing the head of the third under one if it’s massive feet while emitting a rumbling bellow that made the water vibrate.
“JESUS TAP-DANCING CHRIST!”
Shouting might’ve been a bad idea, but show me someone who wouldn’t do the same in that situation and I’ll show you a liar. It turned to face me, tail splintering a tree into toothpicks behind it, and stared at me with frighteningly intelligent eyes.
I started screaming and didn’t stop until I was out of breath.
The mind of the average crocodilian is an uncomplicated thing. The [Lake Guardian] was not however average by any metric. He was an example of the peak of monstrous evolution, a ‘boss monster’ if you will.
He considered the course of events that had lead him to where he was; four days ago, the beast groggily stirred from his sleep. Often he slept for decades, and even once for a century, but very rarely did he wake due to outside influence.
He watched from the bottom of the lake as a small land-thing floundered and struggled across the surface of his domain, pleased by the novelty of the situation. He hadn’t seen a small land-thing for seven sleeps, maybe eight, and this one smelled of smoke, sweat, and blood. Through the water, he felt the footfalls of more land-things, the green ones, and considered his options.
Was the small land-thing food? Perhaps. Though it seemed it might be better bait than food, and certainly better entertainment. No, the small land-thing wasn’t food.
With a low bellow the [Lake Guardian] informed his subjects of this fact and included, if one were to translate the nonverbal communication, a warning that any who made that mistake would be food.
Silently he tracked the small land-thing towards the other shore and felt a sort of… well, something. If he had known the word camaraderie and had the capability of speech, he would’ve used it.
It was just so helpless, it wore other skin around it’s own skin and smelled of fear, but it kept going; admirable really for something so weak.
It reminded him of his youth some uncountable ages ago as a level 3 [Crocodilian Whelp]. Of course now he was a level 1879 [Grand Emperor Gator], the biggest fish in a relatively speaking small pond and extremely bored for it.
The tiny scaleless thing was still helplessly floundering towards the island in his lake when the green land-things trespassed on his domain, their bloodlust filled his nostrils as they inexpertly tread the water towards his chosen source of entertainment. Their insolence would not go unpunished.
He swam silently from the lake bed to guard the small land-thing’s retreat, cutting the water like a razor, he dispatched the little green land-things with quick snaps of his jaws and heard the voice that let him know himself inform him he had become greater.
He chuffed in satisfaction before settling back into the silty lake bed and closing his eyes to focus his senses on detecting vibrations, watching without eyes as events unfolded.
He was not disappointed, the following days were full of entertainment, this new small land-thing was living in the old place for soft land-things and made many entertaining loud noises as it moved around rocks in the silly way land-things did. He had to stop his observations twice to consume more of the green land-things as they trespassed, but was otherwise undisturbed until today.
The entertainment factor of his favorite new land-thing rose today, it came to the shore again and made a great many loud noises in the water, scaring away the smaller denizens of the lake. If he were capable of laughter, he would’ve been in stitches, the land-thing was copying his bellows of dominance in it’s own tiny way and it was actually working; hilarious!
Then things went a bit too far, the land-thing somehow split the water and three [Grand Tuna] were after it on the shore. Still, it moved fairly quickly and did some interesting things so he watched and waited; somehow, it even made a small winter happen. Still, he couldn’t allow it to die, even if the fight was entertaining, so he swam up and resolved the situation.
He realized part-way through the meal that the land-thing hadn’t killed to eat recently and remembered they needed to do something like that pretty often… one [Grand Tuna] was a fair trade for the entertainment so he merely crushed it’s head.
Now, he sat on the beach and stared at the land-thing scrabbling to stay on the piece of winter water; still making cries of dominance even as he smelled it’s fear. Good, if it had been silent and shown it’s belly it wouldn’t be worth keeping around; cowards are anything but entertaining.
Satisfied in his work, the [Lake Guardian] dove back into the water with a thunderous bellow, scattering the eager [Grand Tuna] that had forgotten his warning and gently slapping his tail against the piece of winter water to send it towards shore.
I screamed a lot when that thing moved towards me and even more when it whipped its tail at my little chunk of ice hard enough to skip it across the beach. My body went ragdoll rolling across the sand and after skidding to a stop I just laid there next to the bloody corpse of the giant fish that the crocodile didn’t eat like a snack.
I was there for a long time, lying sprawled across the frozen sand bleeding and staring into the blue afternoon sky before I mustered the effort to speak.
“... Fuck you uncle Jeffery...”
I sat up and looked at the disaster area, replaying the scene five or six times before deciding I should probably call it a win and get the hell out of here before the big motherfucker came back.
The only trouble now was how to move and preserve the fish... what, you thought I'd leave behind this much food?
well, that's crazy, I thought the goblins just didn't know where she was, but that's definitely a better long term solution, in terms of plot convenience
But, another great chapter. It's interesting how our main character is being protected by a overgrown Crocodile. Can't wait to see what's going to happen next.
Thanks very much for reading! Seeing your comments when I release chapters is an amazing dose of motivation to keep Writing!
Fighting fish on land? Nah, this got her beat for pathetic levels, and it's under water: https://youtu.be/iqCXI2km-lU?t=41
starting at a brick - staring
Hahaja the crock eating goblin forces. Hilarious. Well bombing lake and waking him proved as a cool solution for a goblin problem. Not that our hero even has a slightest idea of this. Which makes it even more fun. Her abnormal luck stats get the job done lol
[Gift Box: Welcome Bonus Pack] x 10
[Gift Box: Universal Administration Reparations Pack] x 10
When is she gonna use them? They seem important.
Roxy I think you forgot to add Amber's allegiance in the status section. Her allegiance is Mercenary.
Ack! Good catch! I'll have that patched in properly in a moment!
It's always something isn't it?
@Roxyreads You're welcome.
@Megamink Extra thanks, turns out that was missing from several entries! I was so caught up in the numbers I hadn't noticed!
@Roxyreads didn't the main character level up one of her classes recently? Did you add that level to the overall level count?
@Roxyreads Nevermind forget my comment.
@Megamink hah, no worries! It actually was missing for a few moments before!