We Hunt Monsters 14, page 71
“Keep me updated then,” Keith said. “And please be careful.”
With that, he cut the connection and dropped from the sky, heading for the bunker’s entrance.
105
Keith sat in his favorite spot on the couch in his private bunker on the bottom floor. He knew he needed to move the entire thing, but that would mean moving the children as well. With that in mind, he’d need to go visit the teleportation site before doing that. For the time being, he was happy just relaxing.
Arya stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders and neck. He’d deactivated all his armor and changed into a set of lounge clothes. He was starting to feel stiff from the constant buzzing through his muscles and decided that taking a break for the remainder of the day was a good idea.
It was currently around seven in the evening, and having skipped through multiple time zones, he was feeling both rested and exhausted at the same time. It was an odd sensation, but he was doing his best not to focus on it. Instead, he relaxed mentally as he slouched back on the couch and allowed Arya to loosen his muscles.
“Dinner will be ready in half an hour,” Arya said, breaking his trance. “Would you care to take a bath before or after?”
“After,” Keith said, his mind running through all the likely possibilities for the following day.
More likely than not, he’d be catching up with his expedition. He hadn’t planned on things going this way, but given his life and all involved, plans never seemed to listen – especially when it came to personal or relaxing time.
Arya’s fingers dug hard into the backs of his shoulders, pushing deeper than they had before, targeting a small section of muscle that had been feeling particularly tight over the last day. He didn’t so much wince as acknowledge how much it hurt. It likely came from the stress his body had been under, especially when considering the pain the armor inflicted once activated.
Despite his lack of reaction, Arya began focusing on that area, as though knowing it was causing him pain. Within five or so minutes, the tension had eased somewhat in his right shoulder, though the left was being a bit more stubborn. At least, until Arya moved her other hand over and tackled it with both. Within the next minute, he was feeling a lot better.
“You really have been overtaxing yourself, master,” Arya said, pushing him forward a bit so she could reach farther down his back. “You need to take proper days for rest and recovery, otherwise you’ll be in a constant state of aches and pains.”
“I don’t have time,” Keith grunted his reply, deciding to give up on planning at least until she was done. “There’s too much to do.”
“And it can’t get done without your direct intervention?” Arya asked.
“Apparently,” he muttered.
Arya dug into either side of his spine, just below his shoulder blades, and found yet another tender spot.
“Well, how about trying to tell them no next time?” she suggested, pushing with her thumbs.
A wonderful heat seemed to emanate from her fingers as she worked, likely the byproduct of whatever skills had been trained into her. It was making a difference as some of his tension began to bleed away.
“It’s not that easy when entire continents are on the brink of collapse and I’m the only one who can pull together a plan that doesn’t involve saving what I can and abandoning the rest,” Keith replied.
“Why do you care so much about people you don’t know and will likely never meet?” Arya asked. “People who don’t know you exist and won’t even acknowledge that you’re the one who saved them? Is all the extra stress really worth it?”
Keith had to think about it for a moment, suppressing the snap decision to respond that he didn’t care and was simply doing a friend a favor, while strengthening an ally so that he could use him in the end. That was the way he’d thought not too long ago, but it seemed that despite his best efforts to the contrary, he’d become attached to people in this world.
“It’s less about protecting the people I don’t know and more about saving those I do. Even if my actions had only saved Chuck, Matilda, Jelly, and the few other friends I have on Humania, it still would have been worth it.”
“Why is that?” Arya asked.
“For a non-sentient automaton, you sure are nosy,” Keith said as her hands slid a bit lower down his back, gliding over his ribs through the shirt until she found another spot to tackle.
“I am simply seeking to understand why you put yourself under so much constant stress,” Arya replied. “My job is to take care of you. Keep you fed, clothed, and in peak physical condition. You may not have stated it outright, but given our interactions, those are the prioritized goals we have noted. If you were to jump into a monster hunt right now, you’d be performing at perhaps seventy-six percent of your maximum capabilities.
“Given your current stats, my analysis would be that you’ve been underperforming by a solid thirty percent over the last few days, given the lack of proper recovery, and every fight you dive into only makes it worse.”
“I guess that’s a problem even in this world,” Keith sighed. “Though I haven’t received any debuff notifications stating as much.”
“Well, as far as physicality is concerned, you’re right,” Arya said. “No debuffs means that you can technically keep performing as though you have no injuries. Your body still feels every bit of that fatigue, as witnessed by how much tension your muscles are under right now. While you might not be seeing notifications, your decreased performance is still very much a reality.”
“Unfortunately, knowing my luck, I’ll probably be in another fight within the next twenty-four hours. Perhaps sooner, given where we are. Is there anything you can do to increase performance?”
“Yes,” Arya said. “I’m doing it right now. If you would give the order, I can change some things in your meal, increase the temperature in your bath, and then suggest you go to sleep in no less than two hours and stay asleep for the next ten. I would also advise avoiding any form of strenuous activity following this for at least a couple of days, but I suppose that may be an impossible ask. So, doing this at least should help.”
“Very well,” Keith agreed. “I’ll stick with your plan for tonight.”
And he did. He followed the automaton’s directions as she led him through a series of strange stretching he’d never done before – which was saying something, considering his long lifespan – then subjected himself to another, more painful massage with a second Arya coming to help simply for speed more than anything else.
By the time he sat down to eat, he felt very sore, as though his body was bruised all over. Seeing as he’d been in significantly worse pain in his life, he ignored it and enjoyed his dinner, which was loaded with more carb-heavy foods. He’d already suspected he knew what they were going for and this confirmed it. They were treating him like an athlete from back on Earth, preparing him for hard activity the following day while trying to minimize injuries.
The problem – in his mind, anyway – was that he could heal any injury with a simple thought. Then again, given how tight all his muscles had been, Arya might be onto something. Besides, a carb-heavy dinner was quite enjoyable, and Bob glared almost the entire time while being forced to stick to his plate of stringy vegetables and a meager amount of fruit.
While his evening wasn’t exactly relaxing, it was far from the usual fare recently, which involved monster fights, invasive inquisitors, or would-be assassins out for his head. Once he finished eating, Arya sent him up to a scalding bath. While the heat was enjoyable, Bob complained profusely about the proper temperature of a good bath and how this was an abomination.
With the bath complete, Keith dressed in a comfortable set of night clothes and, at Arya’s insistence, went to bed, despite not feeling tired and the rest he’d gotten over the last couple of days. His body knew to rest when he could, though he knew the hard part would be staying in bed for the full ten hours, considering when he normally woke. Arya left one of her bodies in the room just to make sure. While he might have been annoyed at the babysitting, he decided he really didn’t care. Someone had to keep him accountable when it came to his own health, and if he hadn’t been doing it recently, he wasn’t going to begrudge someone else doing it for him.
Despite not feeling all that tired, he fell asleep easily, quickly drifting into the land of dreams. The problem was – as he’d predicted – that he woke before four in the morning, feeling refreshed and ready, only to have Arya’s disapproving gaze land on him the moment his head rose.
Bob had no problems sleeping, and while Keith did manage to get another hour in – after much struggling – he woke again around six and knew there was no way he was getting back to sleep. Despite that, he remained in bed for the next hour simply to appease the automaton.
“Well, it’s nice to see that you can take direction,” Arya said as the door opened and another one of her bodies walked in, carrying a breakfast tray and setting it to the side of his bed. “Let’s get you warmed up a little and do a few stretches, then you can eat.”
Keith already felt wide awake and had no problem with that. He was halfway through his first set when Selena reached out to him.
“Hey, I don’t know if you’re seeing this or not, but the storm’s getting heavier. We’re also getting closer to the middle section of the continent. The landscape’s undergone a dramatic shift in the last hundred or so miles. It’s been hilly and a bit mountainous, but now it’s completely flat again. We’re maybe fifty miles out, and I’m seeing an odd shimmer covering the sky ahead. No one’s sure if it’s because of the storm or not, but I have a bad feeling about this.”
“I haven’t been out yet today,” Keith said.
His eyes couldn’t pierce the bunker’s walls, which meant he was effectively blind unless he purposefully looked outside. The only way to do that would be to exit his room. Seeing as he was stretching and Arya would immediately know he’d been talking to someone, he refrained from doing so.
“As far as the landscape shift, is it really any different than how it looked when we landed here? Flat and open seems to be normal. And as for a shimmer in the sky, I have no idea. I’d need to see it in person.”
“Well, this certainly looks like a storm that’s about to break wide open. Melkin said it should have started hours ago, and the fact that it’s still building is very concerning. As for the landscape, I can’t describe it any better other than to say that it’s different. I do have some good news, though. I believe we may have found the entrance to another subterranean space. We’re going to see if we can get inside while Melkin’s group catches up. Wherever you are, please hurry. The others are becoming anxious given the lack of any real cover, and seeing you would probably go a long way to alleviating that.”
“What about the subterranean space?” Keith asked. “That should serve as good cover.”
“Assuming we can get down there,” Selena replied. “We need to find all the correct keys. Anyway, what I’m trying to say again is please hurry. We need you with us. Something’s been feeling off for the last few hours, and that shimmer in the distance gives me a bad feeling. I can’t explain why, but it just does.”
Their communication cut there. Keith concentrated on his stretches, careful to keep the small bead of worry at the back of his mind from his face. Arya didn’t catch him in the act – not that he really knew what she’d be able to do to him, if anything, if she did – and they finished his stretching without any incident. Following that, he had a large breakfast and another check over his arms, legs, chest, stomach, and back – basically, everything he used while in combat.
“You’re looking better today for sure,” Arya said as she finished checking. “But you’re still tense and coiled up. Like a snake ready to strike. Being in a constant state of stress like that doesn’t do you any good. Try and relax, walk without carrying all of that.”
It was easier said than done. It was something he’d been working on for as long as he could remember. Unconscious stress, such as clenching his jaw or tensing his arms or back, were so common that he normally didn’t realize when he was doing it. When he did, he had to forcibly correct himself, only to catch himself doing it again less than five minutes later.
“Well, I suppose this will have to be good enough,” Arya sighed as Keith changed into his armor, making sure to leave it inactive. “Just try and relax a bit today where you can.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Keith said as he stepped into the lift. “We need to transport the bunker anyway, and I can’t bring all those kids along with me, given my mode of travel today.”
“Will it be relaxing at least?” Arya asked.
“Very,” Keith said, giving her a toothy grin.
106
“Didn’t Arya say to relax?” Bob screeched as the carriage roared up the side of a steep hill, jumping rocks and divots in the landscape. The passengers inside were shaken all around despite the dampening shocks installed.
“This is relaxing,” Keith said, a near-manic grin plastered across his face as they flew over the lip of the hill, catching a solid five seconds of air time before crashing down.
The entire carriage bounced, the undercarriage scraping stone as it recovered and continued flying downhill, weaving between dense and heavy stone and avoiding the largest of the stunted trees in the area.
Keith hadn’t realized how much he’d missed this sort of driving. He could travel significantly faster and farther using his gate spell, but this was way more fun, if not quite as fast.
“Guess that’s what I get for asking such a stupid question,” Bob groaned as the carriage dipped hard to one side and felt like it was about to tip over.
Keith wrenched the wheel in the opposite direction and jammed down on the accelerator. Somehow, they managed a brief burst of speed, and the carriage righted itself just in time to barrel through a thick, stony trunk, shattering it to splinters as they continued on. He was having a great time, though he did notice the complete lack of monsters as Selena had pointed out.
The storm clouds above made the landscape almost black with how dense they were, despite the time of day. It should have been at least somewhat light out. The clouds themselves felt strange, though. They were oddly wispy and diffuse, as though they were made of something other than water vapor. Given the landscape they were in, he wouldn’t have been surprised, though this storm really was unlike anything he’d ever seen – especially considering how long it had been building.
From what he understood, they normally swept through in a ferocious wave and simply died out or continued on. They didn’t build and build in a single area – albeit a very wide one – before eventually bursting open. Every time the cloud-cover thinned a bit, Keith caught a glimpse of an eerie greenish light peeking through instead of the usual rusty orange or red.
He supposed he should be thankful that nothing was out. It meant he could enjoy the carriage to its fullest without risking bringing down a ton of monsters on their heads. They jumped another rock as they hit the bottom of the steep decline, getting a bit more airtime, though nothing was as impressive as when they’d crested the hill for the first time. The powerful headlamps pierced through the darkness, illuminating their surroundings. Even if they hadn’t, Keith’s eyesight was as close to perfect as could be, meaning that even if it were pitch black, he’d have no problems seeing anything.
“I don’t like how dark it is,” Bob grumbled as they hit a flat stretch of land, chunks of stone and dead trees poking from the ground.
“Is there anything you do like? Aside from food and being lazy, that is,” Keith asked.
Bob seemed to think about it for a moment, which gave Keith a bit of peace. It was how he heard the echoing roar in the distance, something he’d likely have missed if Bob were talking.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Bob shivered.
Keith narrowed his eyes as he peered out the windscreen, his vision tunneling and zooming as he tried to catch a glimpse of whatever had made that sound. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see anything, which meant the monster had to be pretty far off. He kept going, listening out for any further sounds but didn’t pick up on anything. As the hours passed, he began closing in on the groups as they moved closer to the middle section of the continent. He could see signs of their passing and noted small marks on the ground or around large boulders where they had likely taken some time to rest.
There were also boot prints that were certainly out of place on an otherwise barren continent and the occasional scrap of leftover food, which, under normal circumstances, would have been a grave error, considering the types of monsters that lived here. Seeing as there was nothing outside, it was understandable why they’d grown lax, but it was still something Keith knew he would need to address.
Within the next half an hour, he reached the trailing, second group and could see the lead group by zooming in on them. They were only about five miles ahead of them, and from there, he could see what Selena was talking about. An odd shimmer indeed sat on the horizon, seeming to cut across the landscape, pushing the storm back.
It was strange, to be sure, seeing what amounted to an invisible wall blocking the heavy clouds. He couldn’t see very far beyond, as a strange light was filtering down from above – likely the source of the strange shimmer – but Keith believed he could see something there. He’d need to get closer to be sure, though.
Everyone turned as Keith approached, the roar of the carriage audible to anyone who wasn’t completely deaf – and even they would have been able to feel the rumbling in the ground. Weapons were drawn, though when they realized who it was, the group relaxed, many looking relieved to see him as the carriage stopped and he climbed out.
The air smelled strange. That was the first thing he noticed as he stepped outside. Not like the usual sulfur, though that was still present. It smelled charged, somehow, like static and dust. Like a desert just before a heavy rain, one that would bring massive flash-flooding to the area, wiping out all life that didn’t move out of the way quickly enough.
