P-03. Trial By Magic, page 15
part #3 of PrimeVerse Series
When my light orb ignited, the thing looked up at it, its many faceted eyes zeroing in with much fascination. It lifted its wings off Ryan, a small billow of dust shaking off, and began pushing and scrambling with its feet against him to get off, but Kai held it fast. The force of the wings created a wind strong enough to blow around Ryan’s hair.
The look on Ryan’s face was lethargic; his features sallow and unmoving, his eyes closing like he was drugged. He had stopped moving except feebly, and as soon as the thing released its grip on him, Ryan simply laid on the ground.
The creature ignored the man holding it by the... stinger? Injector? Tail? And kept trying to fly towards the light endlessly. Like a moth to a flame... literally. Kai gripped it while it pulled and flapped its massive wings. “What do you think we should do with this thing?”
“Kill it with fire!” Ryan shouted from the ground as he shook his head, his eyes becoming more focused.
As if it understood, the moth immediately began attacking Kai with its sharp pointy legs, digging them into his arm with quick strikes. Kai grimaced but did not let go. The moth-thing slammed its wings together and a cloud of dust exploded into Kai’s face. He blinked, his eyes rolling back a little, and his limbs went limp, releasing his grip on it as he fell to the ground.
Kai immediately got back to his feet and shook his head. Whatever it was, the dust must have had a very temporary effect.
The moth flew in circles around the light, attracted to it stupidly. We watched for a few moments as it ignored us, mesmerized by the illumination.
I summoned another globe of light, this time closer to the ground, and cancelled the first one. As expected, the moth flew towards it and as soon as it got close Madison and I blasted it with spells. This must have activated a defensive mode or something in the creature because at the first damage it took its legs stiffened out in front of it and suddenly the light was no longer as interesting. I tried to dodge, but it was considerably faster than me, and its pointed legs slammed into my body, taking 10% of my health as it punctured me.
Madison zapped it with Shock, and I convulsed as it went through me as well, taking another 5% of my health.
“Sorry!” she shouted and tossed a Heal onto me.
The thing released me, buzzing into the air again and circling around us. It was fast, too fast for our spells to hit from any kind of distance, as it circled, taunting us.
We closed ranks, eyes focused upwards into the air. Soon enough, the moth came zipping back around, the buzzing sound escalating as it dive-bombed us. It jabbed at Madison, leaving a bloody gouge across her forehead. She grimaced, and her spell was interrupted by the attack.
I summoned Marle, the flunky jumping about my shoulders and jabbering excitedly, as if thankful to be alive again. When its eyes caught on to the flying bug, I swear she smiled and quickly climbed up to my head, her little claws doing minor damage in her haste.
The moth flew by again and dove toward us, but pulled up short, hovering briefly before slamming its wings together, sending a cloud of dust out at the four of us. Marle leapt just as it flew away, her claws just barely finding a grip. She nimbly pulled herself up and onto its back.
The dust cloud enveloped us, and we all faltered.
You have inhaled slumberdust!
We fell to the ground together in a heap, none of us having a high enough attribute to resist the effects. A host of debuffs popped up in my HUD; Paralyzed, Stunned, and Numb. They began blinking right away, showing how weak they were.
I watched as the moth was trying desperately to fly away as Marle rode it like a champion bull rider. She chomped down hard on the wing, causing the slow effect to land and, with a few sharp snaps, she ripped it out with her teeth. The moth lost its ability to fly, spinning into a corkscrew.
Marle leapt off and spread her glider flaps, sailing through the air towards me. She landed gracefully on my back as I was standing, then leapt to the ground, looking mighty proud of herself as she charged towards the fallen moth. Before she leapt onto it, I DualCast Flame, bottoming out my Mana as I incinerated the thing under my torrent of angry fire. I mean, the fire itself wasn’t angry, but I sure as hell was.
Congratulations! You have defeated a newborn mothsquito!
You have gained 5 XP! You have gained a party bonus of 2 XP.
I turned from the charred mess to look at Ryan on the ground, Madison tending to him. His bloody chest wound closed, and he groaned as he stood up. “That sucked.”
“It appears we need to be careful about our light,” Kai said.
“Did you guys notice that was a newborn mothsquito?” I asked. “Unless there’s some weird Benjamin Button crap going on, that was a brand new, tiny little baby. I do not wanna meet its mommy. I mean, they aren't spiders, but wow, those’re gross.”
Madison had moved from Ryan to inspect the goo its tail had spit all over the ground. “What is this?” she mumbled before asking, “Hudson, could you summon a light orb over here?” I did, and she scrutinized the ground.
The spray of goo had sunken into the ground a bit, leaving a sticky residue that was dotted with strange lumps.
She held one up between her thumb and finger, a shiny white, slimy orb. “It says it's a mothsquito egg, yuck.” She threw it on the ground and stomped on it, sending white goo out in a small pop.
I shot Ryan a look. “Aww Ryan, you almost became a dad!”
“Ugh, don't be gross Hudson,” he said, looking a little squrimy.
I turned back to the corpse and looted it, happily getting a magic item. Then my Lucky Find window popped up with a mothsquito core and a system message.
You have achieved a milestone in Lucky Find!
Milestone: Me first! - 100% chance to get a Lucky Find when opening a loot window on a new type of lootable item you have not encountered before.
Nice, hopefully that would help us out here in the wilds.
“Okay,” I said, “should we just put out the fire so we can get some rest tonight without attracting anymore of those abominations? Nothing in me wants to be probed with mothsquito eggs.”
“Probably a good idea,” Ryan said. “I'll keep the first watch, after all that I probably won't be able to sleep easy, anyway. You guys should get some rest.”
“You sure man?” I asked.
“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll take care of the fire.”
On that note we went to sleep, having wonderful dreams of becoming bug parents.
Chapter 20
I woke the next day to Madison gently elbowing me. My eyes opened to her face next to mine and I smiled. Any day I could wake up like that was going to be a good day.
She must have felt the same as she smiled also and gave me a light kiss. The devs apparently didn’t see fit to code in morning breath. Or maybe they just forgot. Either way, I couldn’t complain. I startled after a moment and looked out of the tent into the daylight. “Did you take a watch shift?” I asked.
“No, Ryan never got me, you either then?”
“No... I hope he’s okay.” I kissed her forehead, getting up and out of the tent. Ryan was beside the unlit fire, sitting on his dirt brick chair.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, why didn’t you get one of us for a watch?”
“Eh, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep after that attack,” he rubbed his torso where the mosquito had punctured him and shuddered a little, “so I just stayed up. It’s cool though, when I’m out in the wilderness I have a skill that lets me stay awake and refreshed. I don't get any sleep bonuses or anything when I use it, and it only works every other day, but it’s great for nights like last night.”
He stood up and walked behind the tents, waving for me to follow. A half circle wall of packed dirt, about four feet tall and ten feet long, surrounded the back of our campsite. “Besides, it gave me time to figure out how to do this,” he said as he waved his hand at the wall.
“You did all that during the night? How?” I tested the wall, pushing on it a little, and it seemed solid.
“Well, I experimented with the blocks as I summoned them. Here, take a look.” He summoned a block of earth, but before compressing it, formed a round divot on one side with the earth control skill, and a key on the other, like puzzle pieces, then he summoned another, repeating the process and laid them down, connecting them. “I was just playing around, I bet there are all kinds of ways we can do things like this. And watch this,” he picked up one brick and with an intense look, the brick crumbled into loose dirt.
That dashed my hopes a little. “Did you just destroy it with the control power? That makes it less useful as defense if other people who have the ability come against walls made like that,” I said. Madison had come out of her tent by this point and was watching with interest.
“That’s what I thought at first too, but here,” he jogged over and grabbed a brick I had created to make my bench. “Focus on the brick and imagine just reversing the feeling of summoning it.”
I did so and the brick crumpled into loose dirt just like his had. He handed me one of the bricks he had created. “Now try it again.”
I repeated the process but found I couldn’t get it to work on his brick. “Huh, that’s cool, so maybe not so useless after all,” I said. “You sure experimented a lot.”
“Ha, yeah,” Ryan nodded. “I bet if you had the skill higher it would allow you to work with other people's summoned stuff though so, you know, like anything in this world.”
Kai came out of his tent, looked at the long wall, then at Ryan and cocked an eyebrow. “Interesting,” was all he said before he began taking apart his tent.
We ate a light breakfast of, you guessed it, meat, and we were ready to go. “Well, should we keep going up?” Ryan asked.
“Up it is!”
We continued for over an hour before we saw anything. I hoped for a new kind of creature, but it was another hill bear. New or not, it was walking loot with teeth; good enough for me.
It saw us and charged, mindlessly. We withstood the charge and in a powerful Mana fist technique attack, Kai one shot the thing with a well-placed blow to the back of its neck. I super usefully stood and watched it die.
You have defeated an infected adolescent hill bear host!
You have gained 5 XP! You have gained a party bonus of 2 XP.
“That was surprisingly easy,” Kai said, standing near the corpse.
“Yeah, I-” I was cut off as the flesh under the bear’s fur began to bubble and boil, splorching sounds of stretching skin and goo, and finally exploding in a spray of viscera and squirming, shiny white larva.
We all took a chunk of damage from the explosion, as well as a Diseased debuff that stunted our natural healing. I got the worst of it, as I was in the middle of talking and got a nice mouthful of the wretched stuff, instantly sending me into vomiting.
My stomach had already emptied everything within it but continued to convulse. As I dry heaved, the larva squirmed and writhed toward us, disgusting worm things the size of my forearm that moved much faster than they should have been able to without any appendages.
I had a hard time telling how many there were through my nausea, but it must have been more than a dozen. Several of them wrapped around Madison's legs, but her armor seemed to prevent them from doing any damage as her health stayed still.
Kai and Ryan were not so lucky as groups of the revolting creatures swamped them, wrapping around their legs and slowly draining their health like a living DoT. They were swatting and kicking in an impressive dance at the massive leeches that had quickly covered their legs in swollen, purple hickies.
I dropped to the ground to roll away from the mess, still heaving, but two larva found me. They didn’t have any recognizable facial features, but there was just something about them that indicated they were quite happy to see a target on the ground. Maybe it was the excited little butt wiggle as they approached, like a puppy with a docked tail.
One of them slithered onto my chest and began inching its way towards my mouth. There was only one other place I could think of that sounded worse to have a larva near, so I did my damnedest to keep it away. It was like fighting a wet noodle, only the wet noodle was as thick as my arm and apparently quite muscular.
While wrestling with the slippery grub, I watched as the other contentedly latched onto my arm. It reared up- strange for something with no legs, I know- and opened its mouth, which was folds upon folds of flesh lining a dark hole, which it plastered onto my forearm like a giant suction-cup. It stung like the dickens for a few seconds before my arm went numb as it drained my bodily fluids.
Kai ignited his Mana fist technique, although he seemed to concentrate it into his pointer and index finger only, those two fingers glowing bright. He dug them into the first larva on him, his fingers melting through the flesh of the thing and it fell off him with a splorch.
Madison had cast her Shock spell, keeping the electricity playing within her palm and shocking the first larva that came close. The thing twitched and writhed, and Madison grimaced as her own health took a hit, but she was able to rip the thing off of her and fry it.
Finally getting my wits about me, I gripped the larva that was now on my neck, freezing it with the chilling touch of my Frost spell. I had guessed correctly that these things wouldn't like the cold very much as it became lethargic and listless. I slammed it onto the ground, splattering its gooey insides to the outside.
You have defeated a mothsquito larva!
Killing these things granted no XP. So now we have an enemy that comes in multiple forms, one of which is beyond disgusting, and also doesn’t give XP.
I ended my last larvae the same way as the first and stood up, poking at the swollen and bruised purple lesion on my arm. We finished the rest of the larvae off with relative ease.
“You know, I didn’t play those fully immersive VR games, or dive pod games or anything before coming here, but somehow I suspect they never hit on how gross these kinds of monsters could be. They really nailed the... goo,” I said, flinging off a long trail of larvae innards that resembled egg whites. I gagged. I’m not sure my stomach would ever be the same.
Kai chuckled. “No, they did not. I played plenty, spent a lot of time within virtual worlds, and the gross parts were always there but never felt quite real. There was always a layer of disconnect.”
“You played a lot of deep dive games?” Ryan asked. “You must’ve made some serious money out there, I could never afford time in those.”
“I did well for myself for a long time. I went far in many worldwide martial arts tournaments and used VR to help train people who could afford me.”
“It must’ve really annoyed you having to give all that up to come here,” Ryan said. “I was grateful, honestly. I had just lost my bar, something I had sunk my heart and soul- and all my money- into, my girl had left me, and she took my dog with her. I was a literal country song. So when my number came up in the lottery, it pretty much saved me. I was one step away from selling organs just to exist.”
“It was years ago when I was using VR to train people, and even longer when I was sought after to that degree,” Kai said. “My life had mostly run its course. Coming here was a way for me to continue to seek my Tao, my path in life. I, too, was grateful at the chance.”
I was listening to their conversation as I went to check the bear for loot. I knew the lottery, despite being presented as equal opportunity, only selected those who didn’t matter or were not useful to the state. Half dead, half broke, people who no one would miss. None of us here had lived a life of luxury or one of ease, or if they had, they must have made some enemies. We were a group of misfits with a lifetime of bad luck. And yet these people here are some of the best I’d ever met.
I touched the mangled bear, whose inflected flesh literally could not have smelled any worse, and a loot window and Lucky Find window appeared, with a quest offer popping up immediately after.
Wilderness quest! Only you can prevent forest infestation - You have found a hill bear impregnated with deadly mothsquito eggs. Find ten infected hill bears and put them out of their misery.
Reward: 15 XP
“Woah!” Madison said. “Nice quest XP!”
“I guess I should start tracking more bears then,” Ryan said. “I’ve seen plenty of signs of them around here but was ignoring them to continue up the slope.”
We spent the rest of the day hunting hill bears. Ryan hit level seven midway through, and Kai and I were level 8 by the end of the day. Madison was much closer to level 9. We had hunted down a dozen bears, and many of them in this area had been the infested version. We were more than halfway to our quest goal and had gotten a few magical items to boot. Not gonna lie, it was annoying collecting cool magic gear, knowing we weren’t going to keep it.
We found a belt that granted increased jumping skills, which Kai wore, a pair of bracers that increase fishing skill, some gloves that gave protection from thorns and thistles which I guess would have been great for blackberry farmers or something, a few random consumables that boosted skills none of us had, and a bedroll that always granted the good night’s sleep bonus, which was the item we were most excited about.
We hadn’t found any more hill bear patriarchs or nests, but were hopeful we would in the next day. We decided to set up camp, and this time to prevent any chance of becoming some mothsquito’s baby daddy, and to practice with Earth Control, we built a kind of dirt igloo.
It took us an hour of making interlocking bricks, and another hour to lay them all, but in the end we had fashioned a domed structure big enough for all of us. It was cozy, and I enjoyed laying so close to Madison, though it would have been a lot nicer had I not also been nearly spooning with Ryan and Kai. Regardless, it felt a lot safer than a tent and honestly was a fun way to use our new skill.
