As it turned out, there were indeed more of the horrific enemies. Whether this was a good thing or not was debatable, because when they found the next one the fight ended up being just as messy. They were able to vaguely detect when a spirit thing was close due to that vague watching feeling returning, but even so they struggled. Once again, two of their party were lured before they could react, in this case being Zack again and Mia this time, and Catnip had to bail them out, everyone once again bleeding from their orifices as it took a while to kill these things. Even with the small amount of magical healing Mia provided and Catnip’s blood magic, repeatedly bleeding from fragile parts of your body probably wasn’t good for them in the long run. Plus it was already kind of bad because it temporarily incapacitated almost the whole party, Catnip managing to fight through the pain and shaking. It potentially let other mist spirits take the chance to attack, or something forest potentially.
Whatever creatures were in there didn’t seem to want to leave the undergrowth at all, but at one point Catnip did almost get hit by an acid blob launched from there, likely from another Lost Light of the Woods, Mia throwing a windblade in that direction to scare it off. At least neither monster types were very smart. The Lost souls of the Mist didn’t really react other than the screaming, not even trying to run away. There wouldn’t be much they could do if the monsters decided to do that, as their bodies of mist were still utterly indistinguishable from their surroundings. Catnip theorized that if someone had something like mana sight they would be perfectly visible, but unfortunately none of them had unlocked that isekai classic cheat skill at this point.
To make attacking easier for them, Catnip had picked up a somewhat sharp rock at some point and used it to slit their wrist whenever they needed blood. Mia repeatedly whispered to them that it wasn’t healthy to do so but they ignored her, mostly because they frankly didn’t really care about their own wellbeing and it was a helpful way to attack. The scouting group mostly tried to keep away from the forest and stay in the strip of land between the rocky slope and there, as they seemed to like living in just the open mist, and also the forest still was occasionally making eerie noises and they’d much rather not deal with all that right now.
They had to take a break after every soul they fought, partially due to all the bleeding but also to recover mana. Just to send all those sickles of blood out to kill the things, Catnip had to spend almost more mana then they had. And that was with Mia also sending blades of wind. Mia was not really a mage at heart either, instead focusing on quick movement and hand to hand combat where she usually just used her wind magic to understand her surroundings and anticipate attacks, so she also ran out of mana pretty easily. The only way she could currently use her wind magic to send out blades to attack with was by slashing with a knife and essentially extending the cut with wind, a sword projectile of sorts. The loss of her arm meant she could only send half as many as she could before, one arm being only able to move so fast. She could possibly eventually compensate by using blades on her shoes or something, Mia did fight with her whole body in close combat, but she simply wasn’t able to do so yet.
Zack couldn’t even attack the things most of the time. Generally it was just his job to spot them and help their comrades out of their trances, he simply didn’t really have a solid way to attack incorporeal beings. His only magic was apparently based around slipping away from the notice of others, which even worked on the Lost souls when he fed enough mana into it, but he couldn’t exactly attack with that type of magic. Catnip suggested trying to infuse something with his mana then throwing it at the misty beings or something, which ended up sort of working, creating a rock that slipped through the attention of all others even when it was thrown directly at someone or something. The problem was the mist’s body immediately dissolved the rock in seconds, barely taking any damage from what was essentially an ‘enchanted rock’, the magic itself dealing no damage, just allowing the attack to even hit an incorporeal being. The idea of infusing things with mana to allow even physical attacks to hit incorporeals was a good one, but it was crude, mana expensive, and damaged whatever you were infusing with mana. With a lot more practice, Catnip bet that the skill could be incredibly useful, but it required a level of mana control that simply none of them really had. Mia and Zack couldn’t really use it on their knives to hit the souls physically because it’d just ruin the knives.
Either way, although the cat girl continued suppressing level up notifications, they were making good progress according to Mia. The experience from each fight was apparently split between the 3 equally regardless of contribution, but that was alright. Catnip imagined Frank would also struggle with hitting these things, so him being able to get experience from it anyway would be good. Several hours of bleeding out of your eyes, almost being swallowed entirely, and being controlled on occasion were more than worth it. Once, when Catnip almost was drawn in completely to one of them, putting their other foot once again into the mist’s body and leading to their pants looking more like raggedy shorts than raggedy pants, they proposed the idea afterwards that this would be the perfect condition to test Flora’s theory on what Undying would do if their whole body was erased. Mia got all dramatic about that for some reason and shook them about while staring into their eyes, asking them to promise to her that they’d never do such horrible things to themself on such a whim. Zack just pointed out that even if they did regenerate, they’d end up naked, which would be kinda awkward. It was a valid argument, so the matter was put to rest.
When they decided they had had enough and that it was about time to head back to the ‘base’, they all realized they had utterly failed to discover a source of food or much at all other than these nightmare creatures, so Catnip proposed exploring a bit more along the border of the valley despite the unwise nature of such an action. Naturally Mia and Zack immediately agreed.
__
It had been another hour of walking along the edge, putting them almost 2 hours walking distance away from the base, when they actually found something interesting, or at least Zack did.
“Comrades. Come. I have found it,” he whispered into the wind, staring at them through the mist.
At the time Catnip did hear him but was a bit too busy cutting their own wrist and attacking the lost soul that had managed to ensnare Mia this time, getting her to walk concerningly close to it. They vaguely nodded at Zack, who nodded back, and continued chucking blood at the thing, Mia fortunately snapping out of it fast enough to add some of her wind blades to the attack. They were getting slightly faster at killing them, probably due to leveling, this one only taking like 30-40 cuts of wind or blood to kill. Which still took a while to do.
“Come,” he simply said again, somehow managing to ignore the blood pouring out of his orifices in response to the dying screams of the lost soul of the mist. Mia wasn’t quite as good at dealing with it yet, Catnip had to reach down and drag them over to Zack while she was still shaking.
“Alright. What’d you find?” they asked tiredly. He pointed at something, which turned out to be a red mushroom.
“This mushroom is edible,” he explained. He could probably be trusted about the edibility of wild mushrooms, although mushrooms always had a bit of risk regardless.
Mia looked at it. “It’s kinda cute.”
“I sorta thought you found something more dramatic than that to be honest,” Catnip said numbly.
“Oh. Yes.” He said, and pointed slightly off into the mist along the rocky wall, gesturing for them to follow. They walked past several more patches of the edible mushrooms, seemingly thriving around this specific bit of the slope for some reason.
Just when Catnip thought the mushrooms were all there was to it, Zack reached a sudden hole in the rock wall where even more mushrooms grew, and pulled them inside. To their confusion, the hole looked manmade, and Zack led them into a chamber past the ruins of a stone door that once covered the entrance. It opened up into an area clearly made lined with stone bricks, mushrooms growing sporadically around and stone archways leading away on each side of the room. If it wasn’t interesting enough that there might be something man made this deep into the mountains, their system pinged a moment later.
Ding! You have entered the Infested Carver Labyrinth dungeon.
“Huh. If these mushrooms are edible, and if we can clear out a few rooms from this area to live in, this seems like an excellent place to hunker down and level up to prepare for escaping the mountains.” Catnip commented after a bit of thought. “But I thought this area had always been uninhabited wilderness, or is this just a living dungeon that grew ruins on its own or something?”
Mia fidgeted. “Um, I think we may not know of any inhabitants of the area in recent history, but we don’t actually have all that much history written down.” She fidgeted again. “I know you wouldn’t know about it, being an otherworlder, but it’s well known that research has shown civilization had collapsed a number of times and seemingly restarted at least in this part of the world, seemingly after some great cataclysm each time. Longer lived species may know more about it but…” She looked a little nervous. “Truth be told, they’re very tightlipped about it, if they even feel like talking to shorter lived species at all.” Mia took a deep breath and continued, “Most of us have lived our lives knowing that everything can collapse in an instant due to some unknown cause, and although each nation does its best to prepare, especially with otherworlder heroes…” Zack nodded in agreement about the whole ‘knowing everything could collapse at moment’ thing but went back to eating a mushroom.
“Huh. That’s actually kind of concerning. So the ruins?” Catnip asked.
“Yeah, I was getting there. Um, the point is, due to all this ruins being found isn’t anything new. Different eras and groups had different building styles, and although they’re mostly scattered across less hostile areas, they’re still relatively often found in places we never could have lived in today. Ancient civilizations seem to have been much more advanced than us in a number of ways, which says something about our chances of surviving what they didn’t.” Mia took on a little bit of a lecturing tone, “Actually, although this portion of the mountain range has no known prior inhabitants, there is a well documented area on the Alvarian edge, a ways north of here and almost bordering the empire. It’s a very popular but dangerous delving location, good for both discovery and leveling and mostly filled with a large variety of dangerous deep dwelling monsters.” She tapped her chin while thinking for a moment, “I haven’t heard of a Carver ruined civilization before but Dacre with her noble education might know more.”
“Huh. Well, I think I know enough for now. Thank you for that handy exposition dumping Mia, I didn’t know you were a character that did that sometimes,” Catnip replied, nodding.
“Exposition dumping? Character?” She questioned. “Uh I, uh, I’m sorry. I think Flora would understand what you’re talking about and have a quip ready maybe but ummm I don’t,” Mia said in an apologetic tone. “Honestly it seems like you two are kind of made for eachother sometimes with the way you bounce off each other.”
“Really? Bet Flora would find it hilarious that you really think that,” Catnip responded, chuckling.
“Hey. Want one?” Zack interjected, holding out a mushroom, having clearly eaten a number of them himself.
“Sure, I suppose it hasn’t killed you yet so you weren’t wrong about edibility,” they said, accepting a rather large one he carefully passed to them and moving on to Mia.
Biting into it, it tasted like mushrooms. Probably healthy mushrooms. They would like to go on a 10 page rant about the incredible umami flavor of these mushrooms but they didn’t have it in them to understand the complexity of flavors the way Japanese protagonists did. Really, they always go on and on about things like, the richness of fire grilled meat or something, which is good for them, but Catnip didn’t have the tasting chops to understand such gourmet food.
“Anyway, so um. Should we actually get back to the group now? Maybe discuss with them about moving to this dungeon or leveling off the rather horrific beings of the mist?” Catnip eventually said.
“Yes,” Zack said in a monotone.
“Uh, yes, I um, we probably should,” Mia stumbled out.
“K”
Another 2 hours of walking and occasional orifice bleeding, they reached the cave everyone was held up in. Only to find!? Unexpectedly!?
Literally nothing out of the ordinary, just a bunch of nerds sitting around in a cave.
___
“- and so that’s how we discovered the joy of the rich umami of mushrooms at only the cost of a mental and physical well being,” Catnip finally finished, having worked with Zack and Mia to report everything they found.
“Huh. Cool. D’ya think I could manipulate mushrooms with my magic?” Flora eventually said.
“You’ve never tried doing it before? Surely you must have seen mushrooms before,”
“Actually it just never occurred to me, despite the incredible variety of mushrooms native to my hometown. You see, ever since I was a girl - “
“Okay people. What do you all think about moving to the dungeon then,” Frank spoke over her, “I question the wisdom of the plan to level off of the mist things but that seems like a good idea.”
“Rude.”
“Hmm,” Sorjorn grumbled, “It is a solid plan.”
“A dungeon! Not only is that better than this lowly place, but, I could explore my childhood dreams one last time before my duties bind me! Yes, let's do it!” In a very unladylike manner, she actually straight up giggled. Fresia’s usual professional blank expression melted at this, though still containing a little melancholy likely due to the whole duties thing. “Oh! Catnip, what was the dungeon name! What kinda group are we dealing with!”
Catnip wiped a fake tear from their eye. “You finally said my name.”
“I uhh, I didn’t know it mattered to you so much. I’m sorry, I’m not used to this whole ignoring status thing we’re trying out.” She looked actually apologetic.
“Anyway it said Carver or something.”
“Carver! But they’ve only been found in Serva before, a primarily nonhuman country! Carvers in human lands, in the middle of mountains when they’re known for labyrinths underneath older cities?! Fascinating! Oh I can’t wait, Fresia, get me some pen and paper, I need to record this discovery, get ready to sketch any of our findings!!” Dacre almost spun on the spot.
“Milady we unfortunately have no access to pen or paper.”
“Oh right.”
“Anyway, it looks like we’re all in agreement then,” Frank said with a clap. “We leave in an hour.”
“Wait neither Rose or Myra were able to vote on it …” Mia said, trailing off before noticing that neither Rose or Myra seemed to care.
Flora bounded over to Catnip and surprised them with a sudden hug.
“Hey cutie, wanna go sit in a corner and do nothing with me? These idiots were so boring with you gone,” she said, drawing out their words at the end and hanging off them while grinning.
Catnip could neither confirm nor deny the presence of an anime style blush on their face after being called cutie, but nodded. They were still unsure if such blushes could actually happen in real life after all, or if they were all that visible. So really, the fact that their face felt like it might be experiencing such a sensation didn’t confirm anything. And so they both walked over and chilled in a corner.
“Haaah, girls are so soft and nice…” they muttered quietly after a while of sitting with Flora in the corner, attempting to teach her chopsticks again. Flora scooted a little closer after that comment and cuddled against them more, then poked their cheek with a small grin. “I really wish I was a real one.” It took them a few seconds to realize they said that out loud, and another few seconds to realize that they just fucked up.
“Catnip?” Flora said in a bit of a worried tone. “What do you mean?”
“I…I’m not ready to talk about it,” Catnip deflected, using the ancient technique of procrastination, one of the few things they were actually skilled at. Even if they wish they weren’t and using it kind of made them hate themself.
“...Okay, I’ll wait,” Flora said a bit reluctantly. “But we can’t keep putting this off. We need a serious talk at some point, Catnip, because I feel like you’ve always been holding yourself back in some ways, and your Undying skill and the way you’ve used it is even more concerning.” Her concerned look deepened. “I mean, cutting your wrist just to use your blood to wake me up like you might splash someone's face with water? Girl, that is not normal or healthy in any way, and although I understand using your abilities to their fullest, the Undying skill isn’t an excuse to not care about your physical wellbeing at all.” They got the sense Flora would not be happy when she saw her fighting technique of slitting her own wrist. “And you apparently don’t even believe you’re a real girl…” she muttered, Catnip stiffening, which Flora noticed. “You’re dealing with a lot right now, and you can’t just ignore that fact. I mean, don’t otherworlders generally come from far more peaceful worlds? Many of us have been exposed to this kind of violence and trauma our whole lives and can at least somewhat adapt, but you…” She sighed. “We never even had that talk in the morning we were supposed to about your otherworlder status and self harming behavior.”
Catnip decided to not think about it for a second, and just hugged Flora closer and tried to absorb her warmth. They didn’t want to talk about it or deal with any of their problems, but the issue was Flora was 100% right. But saying more would put a burden on Flora that she simply didn’t deserve to have, and their problems were not her responsibility at all. Mia would probably end up being brought into this too somehow, given how involved she ended up getting in the transgender aspect of their mental health issues. Not that they themself are transgender mind you, of course not, it’s just that seemed like the best term to describe the entire gender self hate crisis they had going on.
The group was mostly ready by this point, but they still didn’t really know what to say. Maybe…
“How about… I’ll talk about it in a week, okay? With Mia too, she’s somewhat involved in this,” Catnip eventually muttered.
“Okay,” Flora replied quietly. “I’ll hold you to it.”
They finally checked their status from all that grinding and got ready to go head to the dungeon. Those had been a rank above them so they should have gained a lot. They dumped all of their free stats into mana because they were always running out of that and neither speed or strength had been an issue somehow. Catnip wondered how physical stats scaled, because at the rate this was going people at higher ranks would be many, many times faster than lower ranks, giving them practically no chance to respond. Mia, Zack, and Frank were all pretty damn fast when in motion admittedly, and Sorjorn had been insanely strong but still decently fast. They were still quite far from ranking up on anything, class or skill, but fighting creatures that were one rank higher than them for several hours had really caused their levels to jump up.
Name: Catnip
Species: Catkin
Gender: cracking egg??
Sex: Female
Titles: Otherworlder, Death Defying, Human Shield.
Class: Feline Fighter[Rank 0] lvl 49/200
Class skills - Feline Instincts lvl 64/200
2nd Class: Blood Mage[Rank 0] lvl 32/200
Class skills - Blood Manipulation lvl 43/200
General Skills:
Identify lvl 23/350
Undying lvl 18/100
Pain Resistance lvl 40/100
Poison Resistance lvl 43/200
Throwing lvl 18/150
Punching lvl 8/150
Claw Slash lvl 23/300
Very Weak Body Enforcement lvl 15/200
Mana Manipulation lvl 51/250
Blood Magic lvl 81/250
Mind Magic Resistance lvl 130/250
Mist Magic Resistance lvl 10/250
Stats:
Health: 160/160
Mana: 228/228
Strength: 93
Speed: 132
Mana regeneration: 22.8 per minute
Health regeneration: 18 per minute
Unspent Stat points: 0
Available classes:
Thrower[Rank 0]
Brawler[Rank 0]
Feline Fighter[Rank 0] in use
Student[Rank 0]
Blood Mage[Rank 0] in use
Nice. Although Undying hadn’t even leveled at all, probably because they hadn’t died. Catnip wasn’t sure whether they were glad of that or not. They did want to level the skill after all.
Even though both Flora and Mia seemed increasingly disturbed by the way they used it and its regeneration. Catnip was worthless and unskilled, so they had to use every tool they had. It didn’t matter how much it hurt them, mentally or physically, as long as in the end everyone else made it out safe. No matter what anyone else said or thought.
Thanks for the chapter! When the blood obsessed lady says you behavior isn't healthy its good to listen.