The Forerunner: A GameLit Progression Fantasy, page 7
Zed thought it would be convenient to use a poisonous gas that could go through the tunnels and kill them, but he didn’t know anything about making chemicals. Even if he did, he had no ingredients. He could try to smoke them out with a fire, but smoke rises and so it wouldn’t go through the tunnels.
‘I could cap off the tunnel entrance so the smoke would spread, but then the fire would die because it would run out of oxygen. I wonder if it’s possible to make a semi-permeable membrane (yay High School Biology!) that would let oxygen through but not smoke?’
Zed tried to experiment by pooling his mana over the fire, which wasn’t terribly easy on its own. Then he willed it to make a membrane that could trap the smoke. At first the mana responded very sluggishly—the farther it was from him the harder it was to control—but it did eventually turn into something that caught the smoke. He had no idea if it let oxygen through or not though, so he tried to get the mana to encircle the fire. The membrane started to expand but then it fell apart. Obviously he needed more practice.
Over the next few nights he continued working on the idea. His control over the mana gradually improved but not enough to make capping the ant tunnel feasible. Zed took a big step forward when he discovered that he could create large mana structures. He pushed out mana where he wanted the structure to be, and joined the mana together as he went. The mana continued to follow his will for a while even with distance, though he found that as the distance increased he lost control faster. With this technique Zed was confident he could make the cap by walking around the tunnel mouth. Problem #1 solved.
The next issue was, could he make something that let oxygen through, but not smoke? Zed was nervous when he created caps over his cookfire and airflow tunnel to see if the fire would keep going. He kept envisioning tiny oxygen molecules passing through but not larger smoke particles. Zed was elated when 5 minutes later, the fire was still going strong, and smoke was accumulating.
“Eureka!" Brutus looked askance at Zed when he started jumping up and down, then decided that Zed was just being weird and lay back down. Zed didn’t mind because he was getting close to taking on the ants. All that he needed now was to create a fireball spell.
**
Every RPG that Zed had ever played, including the granddaddy of them all, Dungeons & Dragons, had included the fireball spell. There’s a good reason for that. Everyone who plays a wizard wants to throw fireballs around and introduce their enemies to the joys of barbecue.
Now that Zed was living the dream (cough), he wanted to be able to toast enemies at a distance. That wasn’t the reason he needed it though. The ant tunnel mouth was nearly vertical, and Zed didn’t want to go down it until the ants were dead. He needed a fireball to get the party going. And, you know, fireball.
It didn’t take long before Zed realized that inventing spells with deadly amounts of energy is not the safest thing in the world to do. Especially since the critical part required him to do multiple things at once. First he had to expel the mana into a ball, and then heat it up as much as possible while simultaneously “throwing” it as fast as possible. All while losing control of it as it gets farther from him. Piece of cake.
Zed decided to focus on the expel-then-throw sequence. He figured that had the least chance of blowing him up. Throwing the mana was actually easier than he thought it would be. It wasn’t hard to get it moving quickly. He realized after not pulling it back the first time, that throwing the mana meant losing it. Like, forever. He was going to have to throw the fireball, and then pull the mana back before he lost it.
After practicing for an hour he had the process down cold. Now there was no reason to keep putting off adding the heat anymore. He decided to see just how hot he could get it first by creating the ball and then moving 3 meters away from it. He then willed it to get as hot as possible, imagining the air molecules speeding up and bouncing around like crazy.
When Zed opened his eyes he initially didn’t see anything other than heat waves, like you’d see above the hood of a hot car. Then the ball started to glow a dim red, and brightened to orange, yellow, and then an extremely bright white. The heat was incredible, and at this point the ball looked like liquid that slowly undulated. Honestly, it reminded Zed of what lightning would look like if it was trapped in a liquid ball.
‘That actually makes sense, Zed, since lightning also creates plasma,' Iris said.
“Plasma, huh? It’s pretty cool, even if it’s not exactly what I expected. Let’s see what it can do," Zed said with his best evil scientist grin. He then mentally hurled the plasma ball at a tree. It impacted on the tree like a water balloon and instantly caused everything that the plasma touched to light on fire. Some of the tree even vaporized before the fire could start.
“Not bad, not bad. I think that will do nicely. Of course, now I have to do it faster while not burning my hands off. Wish me luck, Iris.”
‘Good luck!’
Zed proceeded to practice heating the ball and throwing it at the same time. It went… not terribly. Zed was once again immensely grateful for the regeneration. Because of it he still had all 10 of his fingers. After a couple more hours of practice he was able to throw reasonably powerful fireballs every five seconds or so.
It was time to take on some ants.
Chapter 8
Zed almost decided to call off the attack when he saw two soldier ants guarding the colony. For his plan to work, he not only had to kill them, he had to do it before they warned the colony and caused another ant stampede.
Zed decided it was worth the risk and moved forward. He was trying to be smarter about it than the first time he tried. Instead of running up like he would do with a normal opponent, he walked very slowly and gently. He was pretty sure that the ants were sensitive to tremors in the ground, so he was doing everything he could to not make any. He was also coming from downwind to prevent them smelling him via their antennae.
If he was right about the ants, they shouldn’t know he was coming until he was among them.
Brutus and Zed crept up slowly. One of the ants seemed to stir, with its antennae becoming more active and turning slightly in their direction. Zed paused and held onto Brutus’ ruff to get him to stop too. After a few moments the ant seemed to calm down and they continued on. Although he was doing his best to stay calm, Zed felt a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead as he got within 10 feet of the nearest ant.
At this point the ant clearly sensed something and turned towards him. Realizing that the time for stealth was past, Zed activated his physical and mental enhancements and sprinted towards the ant. Brutus ran to the other. With his subjective time slowed and his increased speed and strength it was easy for Zed to guide the knife to a spot in between protective neck plates and slam it home, severing the ant’s nervous system. Whether it was alive or dead was not important. What was important was that it would not be able to do its warning dance or chemical alert. Zed pulled the knife out and ran without pause to the second ant that Brutus was already harassing.
Brutus attacked it from the side, so Zed went to the other side and again aimed for the neck. It was difficult to aim precisely with the ant moving around, so when Zed stabbed it off-center he kept the knife in and started sawing it up and down, working his way to the center of the neck.
The ant finally dropped after what seemed like a long time but was probably around two seconds of objective time. And best of all, Zed did not hear a stampede of ants on their way to defend the colony. Step 1 accomplished.
Brutus stayed to deal with any worker ants that came through while Zed hurried to get the dry wood that they had stored nearby. When he got back he saw a dead worker and one that wasn’t long for this world. Seeing that Brutus had things well in hand, Zed ignored them and tossed the wood down the tunnel into as tight a pile as he could.
‘Alright, time for a little magic.’
Zed quickly found out that achieving the necessary relaxation and focus while being hyped up on adrenalin is not the easiest thing to do. His first few attempts to expel mana into a ball failed. Realizing what was happening, Zed took a deep breath and slowed down. He went through an abbreviated version of his meditation which got him into the necessary frame of mind to expel the mana. A few seconds later the wood pile was burning vigorously.
‘Time to get more wood!’
Zed hurried to get another load, this one a mix of dry and green wood. When he got back to the tunnel he threw the dry wood down it and started making the smoke cap. This time he had prepared himself mentally and releasing the mana went far smoother. Once the cap was complete he tossed in the green wood and stayed long enough to see that it lit. The fire would be okay while he got more wood.
When he got back the cap looked like a smoke-filled bubble with black, churning air inside.
‘I hope that the smoke doesn’t choke the fire itself. I wonder if I can direct wind into the tunnel, both to give it more oxygen and to spread the smoke into the tunnels faster.’
Zed thought about it while tossing the latest load of wood into the tunnel and going back for more. The solution came to him on the way back with a new load of wood.
‘I need to add a fan to the cap. If I can “throw” a fireball then I can “throw” air too.’
After tossing the new wood in he paused to add more mana to the cap. The job of this mana was to act as a fan, throwing air downwards. Once that was setup the smoke thinned and the fire, which had started to gutter out, revived.
Zed kept feeding the fire with wood for another couple of hours, cutting more green wood when he ran out of what he had prepared previously. The plan seemed to be working well. It was definitely making a lot of smoke anyways. After an hour he saw a column of smoke about a mile away that gradually grew in strength.
‘Dang it, that’s another tunnel, isn’t it? I wonder how many ants escaped.’
After another half hour a second column of smoke appeared in a different direction. Zed sighed, feeling bummed about the situation, but knowing that he couldn’t have done much about it. An hour later, confident that any ants that were still in the tunnels should be dead or incapacitated, Zed let the fire die and released the smoke cap. Once it had died down a bit he pushed dirt onto the fire to smother it, waited for the air to clear, and then jumped down. Experiencing how nasty the air was still, Zed wet his shirt with the water from his canteen and tied it around his face to filter out the worst of the smoke.
It didn’t take long for Zed and Brutus to find worker and soldier ants. After they found 10 ants and Zed put their corpses in his ring, he declared the mission a success.
“We may not have gotten all of them, but we didn’t do too bad, Brutus. Nice work, buddy.”
After they found 30 ants, Zed was amped, and he started to wonder how many the ring could hold. After 60 Zed got the sense that the ring was nearly full. And then he found the mother lode.
“I think that’s the ant queen, Brutus! Woo hoo!”
It was a big, bloated ant with a body too big for its legs. It probably tried to leave, but couldn’t in time. Knowing that there was no way he was going to get that body into the ring, Zed decided to cycle the energy right now. Having done it with numerous beasts by now, he was far more experienced and efficient than he was in the past.
‘Man, I’ve never seen mana density like this before.’
As his mana gathered the queen’s, it became a rolling tide of increasingly staggering proportions. He started to get worried, because although he’d gotten used to it, he’d never taken in anywhere near the amount of mana that was on its way. Beads of sweat started to run down his forehead, creating tracks in the soot-stained skin. Although it would slow things down he decided that he had to break collecting the mana into chunks, temporarily ignoring some of the queen’s mana channels while harvesting the others. In this way he took in smaller portions of the queen’s mana at a time.
Absorbing the mana was like a continuous feeling of well-being, almost ecstasy, that taxed his powers of concentration. He forced himself to buckle down and not lose focus. Once he finished he let himself rest and enjoy the moment.
“Holy crap, Brutus. That was a rush." Brutus seemed to ignore him as he continued to chew on ant flesh.
Once he felt up to it Zed continued to drain the mana from the other ants in the room, and then in the hive. He had no idea what percentage of the ants was caught in the attack, but even if it was 5% this was a massive gain for him. And he would have all the soldier ant acid that he needed to continue his body tempering.
Things were looking up.
**
After he got back to their camp, Zed decided to take a look at his status.
‘Nice! Big jump in the mana pool. I need to upgrade my abilities and develop some new ones to take advantage of my capacity. The knife and spear skills are coming along too.’
Zed still hadn’t found any wood that could make a decent spear shaft, and was pretty sure he wasn’t going to find any where he was at. Now that he had dealt with the ants it seemed like it was a good time to visit the nearby town, or what he thought was a town.
“Brutus, let’s take a little trip. We’ll hunt on the way.”
Brutus woofed happily. As he fed on mana-rich creatures he too became bigger, stronger, and faster. Zed was pretty sure he was even getting smarter. Unfortunately, all that growth meant he had the appetite of an elephant. An elephant that, you know, just ate meat.
**
The next day they started their trip. The daily routine was pretty much the same—weapons practice in the morning, hunting during the day, and studying at night—only they hunted in one direction and set up a quick shelter every night. That was another reason to do the trip now—the colder it got the harder it would be to stay warm enough at night. Of course, having Brutus as his portable heater made things a lot easier. At any rate, Zed hoped that he could get a sleeping bag and some other supplies in town.
On the third day Zed and Brutus came upon a brown bear that was lazily scratching its back on a tree. Seeing them it slowly dropped to all four legs and ambled towards them with a hungry look, obviously not considering them a threat at all.
Zed tried to change that first impression by pulling out the knife, making himself look as big as possible, and shouting at the bear.
“Get out of here! Yah!”
The bear was less than impressed. In fact, it started trotting towards them, snarling as it went. Zed could tell that it wasn’t going to turn back. He lowered his center of gravity so he could move and change directions faster, and prepared for mayhem.
At night he had been doing book learning and also practicing his mana skills. He was much more confident with the physical and mental enhancement abilities, so he immediately maxed out his increased speed and strength and started sprinting at the bear. Then he turned on his increased mental speed which made everything seem like it was moving slower.
The bear didn’t seem terribly fast to begin with but Zed knew that that was probably deceptive. At any rate he wasn’t going to take any chances because one good swipe with a paw would mangle him.
Zed sprinted to the bear’s right side and when he saw it raising its right paw to smash him he quickly shifted direction and leaped over the bear's left shoulder. While moving through the air in slow motion he slid the dagger into the bear’s left eye, letting it slam home and then wiggling it around as he was passing its head. Rather than try to pull it out he left it there and turned the leap into a forward roll behind the bear. Zed returned subjective time back to normal and backed off from the bear to assess the damage. He knew that if he hadn’t killed it, they would be in trouble. In the meanwhile, he started preparing a fireball.
The bear roared, first in anger and then in agony. Zed almost felt sorry for it before remembering the look it had when it was coming to eat them. The bear swayed for a few moments and then dropped to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
“Not bad, eh Brutus? What was that? You wanted to have some of the fun? Tell you what, I’ll let you have the next one.”
Brutus wisely ignored him and started gnawing on one of the bear’s ears.
**
Not long after Zed was covered in blood and filth while doing his best to skin the bear. His knife’s sharpness made cutting the hide much easier, but everything after that was miserable. His studies with Iris had taught him that one of the ways to skin an animal was to cut it around all four ankles, around the neck, and from the neck to the groin, and then to pull the skin off like a glove.
Zed took one look at the bulk of the bear and knew there was no way that was going to happen. He was going to have to take the hide in the biggest portions he could and call it good enough. The problem was that once he cut the hide his knife was actually too sharp to do the work of separating the hide from the muscle and fat. The task required scraping, not cutting. After a few mishaps Zed found a palm-sized rock with a decent scraping edge and got to work.
It sucked. Not “back on fire in freezing water” sucked, but it was definitely exhausting and dirty work, even with his regeneration boosting his stamina. Eventually he did get a couple of pretty good sized pieces of hide that didn’t look too awful, so he switched to preparing food. He cut off a big hunk of meat for Brutus, and then put meat on skewers.
“Teach you to eat me…”
‘You know, Zed, talking to one’s self is usually not considered a sign of good mental health,' Iris said.
“Yeah, well, neither is believing that you’re on an alien planet with a talking AI while eating Yogi the Bear, but here we are.”
‘Hmm, you make a good point. So how do you feel about that?’
“Kind of a strange question, Iris.”
