Hunger: A LitRPG Adventure (Unbound Book 3), page 3
"The Pathless provides guidance," he had continued, eyes closing briefly as if in prayer. "The God that Remained when all others fled, he entreats us to follow the High Laws: to seek Order, Strength, and Purity. That, uh, that's how the priests put it, at least." Mervin had scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. "I don't know much about the Inquisition, just that they hold to the High Laws and that they root out Sorcery."
"Sorcery?" Felix had frowned. "Like Mana Skills?"
"Oh no no, of course not. Everyone uses Mana Skills, well a lot of people. Not me. I don't know any yet. Sorcery is different. An abomination." Mervin shook his head and shivered. "It sunders your soul."
He had gone quiet for a time, and Felix tried to order his thoughts. Sorcery isn't magic? Or the magic I know isn't Sorcery? Was the Maw's blood magic Sorcery, then?
"Can you give me an example of Sorcery?" Felix had asked.
"Oh no. I've never seen it." Mervin had paled at the question, his ever present-fear rising quickly to the surface. "Pathless provide I never do."
"Then how do you know it's bad?" Felix had asked the question while he kept a lookout, and when he had returned his gaze to the Tin Rank, he found him staring with no little disbelief. "What?"
"S-sir, it's bad because it's Sorcery." And that had been that.
Apparently, the Inquisition had been called due to the serious uptick in powerful monsters emerging from the Foglands. Mervin had described it as "vile monsters crawling out of the forest" like the Razorwing Skinks, all of them headed toward Haarwatch for some reason. The Inquisitors claimed it was the work of Sorcery out in the untamed wilds—that something had been awakened.
"Far as I understand, the Guild has been running patrols the whole time, keeping an eye out for any more monsters and clearing up the smaller ones. This… this was my first time out." Mervin had looked off into the woods. "I hope everyone is safe."
"Monsters coming from the woods… were any Chimeras?" Felix had asked, scratching Pit behind the ears.
"Beasts, mostly. No Chimeras have been seen since the fog faded. It's like they disappeared. S-save for yours, sir."
Felix shared a glance with Pit. He had a feeling his Companion was going to be conspicuous in Haarwatch, even if the widespread illusion no longer made him look so hideous to others. The way Mervin had reacted to Pit had been a good indicator of how people still viewed Chimeras, even after three months.
Good thing we have Convergence. It only lasted twenty-seven minutes, but it was better than nothing. He had to level up Etheric Concordance further, or find a better option. Something to mask Pit, like an illusion? He almost asked Mervin, but stopped himself. He was likable enough, but was he trustworthy? Especially considering the Inquisition and this Pathless religion. Dude seems like a real believer, too.
Felix had been an atheist back on Earth, so he wasn't all too comfortable with this talk of gods and militant religious organizations. He knew his history well enough, and the word "inquisition" had few good and plenty of bad connotations. This may be the Continent, but I doubt it's much different from home. People are people. We’d better be careful, Pit.
The tenku had let out a pulse of assurance that felt like a warm breeze.
That conversation had been over twenty minutes prior, and the three of them had walked in silence ever since. Mervin watched the woods with nervous eyes, but Felix felt at ease for the first time in a long while. He couldn't sense anything dangerous nearby, and his Manasight only picked out a few huddling auras belonging to low-level beasts, creatures that were clearly not a threat to him or his Companion. The Tin Rank, however, seemed to view every rustling bush or snapped twig as a dire threat. He was wound tighter than a spring.
Given the moment, Felix used his Voracious Eye on his boots and satchel, something he'd been too rushed to do previously.
Name: Far-Afield Boots
Type: Armor (Enchanted)
Lore: Armored footwear of impressive quality and ancient design.
Stamina Reduction II - Decrease Stamina consumption by 10%
Steady Footing I - Increases the wearer's sense of balance and decreases chances to slip or fall.
Name: Valdarian Satchel
Type: Container (Enchanted)
Lore: Made of supple Harnoq leather and stitched with enchanted silk, this satchel is both sturdy and waterproof. Perfect for forays into the wild.
Self-Repair II - By absorbing ambient Mana, minor holes and tears in this object will repair themselves over time.
Weather-Sealed II - Rendered waterproof and resistant to the effects of fire, abrasion, and tears.
They were nice, no question about that, the enchantments on them alone proving them fascinating additions to Felix's capabilities. Plus, he thought they looked good with his stolen pirate shirt and jacket, torn up or not.
Maybe I'll get more armor once I'm in town. Actually have some protection for once. His thoughts drifted to the pouch of 500 gold crowns in his satchel. Was it enough to buy armor? To live on? Felix thought about food and lodgings and other expenses that would doubtless come up, and a surprisingly terrible idea occurred to him. Am I going to have to get a job again?
That thought was entirely too depressing, so Felix looked to his newly acquired Title: Voidwalker. The Title was a bit lackluster, though the wording of Voidwalker suggested he would get a 10% bonus to Void Skills at all times, not when just in that… place. The conditional bonuses to WIL and ALA were less than pleasing, especially since he had zero reason or interest in ever going back there. If I never see the Void again, it'll be too soon.
It was potentially very useful, but not nearly as good as if he'd gotten that Title while still in the Void. He had spent so much time traversing the Void, pushing his Will and Alacrity to their limits. If he'd had Voidwalker, how much faster would his ship have traveled? Would he have outrun the Whalemaw without nearly dying every ten minutes?
It raised the question: why didn't he receive more? For completing a supposedly impossible Quest, he had received a single level and a single Title. How was that fair? He had expected… he wasn't even sure what he expected, but more than that. Was it because of what the completed Quest has said?
Quest Complete!
Escape the Void!
You have managed to escape the clutches of the Void with only minor physical impairments! However, the Maw still resides within you!
Always comes back to the Maw, he thought with a flash of irritation. It was inside him, even now, locked in his Bastion. Or was it? It hadn’t made itself known in a while…
Shit.
He had to check.
"Mervin, a moment," he called out.
"Is there something wrong, sir?" Mervin looked nervously up and down the path. He looked nervously at everything. "Is it—is it a monster?"
"No, just a rock in my boot. Gimme a sec."
"Uhm, alright."
Giving Mervin a final glance, Felix settled against a toppled bole, closed his eyes, and delved deep.
He fell through a bright blue sky and landed lightly atop the tallest tower in his Bastion of Will. One of his earliest Epic Skills, Bastion of Will had saved his butt time and again, and somehow had formed a literal fortress within his core space. A whole world, in fact. The wind buffeted him from this high, and Felix noted that the central (and only) tower had grown by another entire level.
Glancing over the crenelations, he saw below him a square fortress with high walls made of dark stone, and the walls were unblemished. When last he'd seen his Bastion, the walls had been ripped apart, the grounds sundered, and the green, acidic ocean just a half mile from its gates. He'd put in a lot of effort to fixing what he could, but it had remained unfinished, despite spending the strange Essence he'd been able to extract from Voidbeasts.
Now all of that was repaired, somehow. The walls were no more than a hundred feet high, and the central tower was twice that now. The green sea had certainly receded further, now more than a mile in the distance, while the landscape around the Bastion was filled with wildflower meadows. Further out, a huge forest covering rolling hills with jewel bright trees. Felix inhaled, tasting vinegar and rich, earthy loam on the breeze. "How'd it repair itself? Was it returning to the Continent that did it?"
In the Void, the System was… thin. Leveling up Skills and stats was all but impossible unless you had a workaround, and eventually your core space would simply waste away. If returning to the Continent had sent that burst of System energy and boosted his Skill levels, who said it couldn't repair the damage done when he'd strained it against the Maw?
That brought Felix back to the reason he was there, and his appreciation for the view soured. He turned around and walked up to the door leading inside the tower. Strangely, he had known it was there before looking, like in a dream. It was thick and banded with silvery metal, and it opened at a touch of his hand. The Bastion felt both less and more real than the tree he was seated upon, back on the Continent.
He sped down a winding staircase, searching for the room where he'd placed the Maw. Felix knew he had made the cell below ground—where else would you place a dungeon?—but it was such an instinctive move that he had no idea how to get there. So he followed the staircase all the way until they stopped, which turned out to be one floor below the earth. There, at the end of a short ten foot hallway, was a stone wall.
Behind it, he knew. The wall was smooth, without joint or seam, and Felix had to briefly exert his Will to create a tiny, bar-filled window. The stone molded and flowed away, and inside he could see a small fifteen foot square space, completely bare of human comforts like chairs, toilet, bed, or even a window. In the exact center hovered the Maw.
"Took you long enough, worm," it hissed. Its face was even more gaunt than before, almost skeletal, and its blue green eyes burned in the dark. It had no pupils. "Do you despair without my company?"
Felix snorted. "I have questions for you. And if you have any interest in escaping this dungeon, you'll answer them. Do you understand?"
The Maw bared its teeth at him and hissed again. Felix met its stare without blinking; he'd had enough of the Maw's abuse and dissembling. This was his Body, his Mind. After a minute or so, the Maw jerked its head in what could generously be described as a nod.
"Good. I earned a Title and a level for escaping the Void. Why so little?"
The Maw laughed, and cruel delight twisted its features. "Do you think the System unfair, Felix Nevarre? Do you wish it to hold your hand and pat your head, to wipe your tears?"
"Answer the question, Maw." Felix tried not to grit his teeth, but it was hard. "Am I being punished for your presence?"
The Maw amusement vanished. "You ask dangerous questions, Unbound."
Felix frowned. "Dangerous? Why?"
"Oh child, I wish I could properly explain. Truly. But this confinement is doing terrible things to me," the Maw let out a breathy laugh. "Just let me out again, and I—"
"No." Snarling, Felix slammed a solid wall back in place, erasing the bars he'd created. He could hear muffled screams from the other side, but the Nym ignored it. He took a calming breath before walking up the stairs.
At least I know I can hold her now, weak as she is—IT, he corrected himself, shaking his head vigorously. IT. Not a woman, not even close. He smiled. I may not have gotten the answer I wanted, but there's something there, something it's hiding from me. His smile gave way to a frown. Or it’s lying.
Muttering to himself and taking one last look at the cobbled courtyard he'd climbed up onto, Felix ejected himself from his Bastion of Will—
—and opened his eyes to find Mervin standing inches away.
"AH!" The Tin Rank wheeled backward before falling on his butt. "You're awake, sir! I thought you'd succumbed to some evil spell."
Felix frowned and looked around. He was still sitting on the toppled tree, but at some point he had driven his fingers deep into the tree, as if he had been trying to crush it. He hadn't sensed his body doing that from inside the Bastion, had lost his external senses altogether and that… that was a problem. He cleared his throat. "Just thinking. Sorry."
"No, no I'm just glad not to be out here alone, sir." Mervin adjusted his helmet and sheathed his shortsword again, pointedly not looking at the chunk of tree Felix had collapsed. Felix gave him an awkward smile and started walking again. Pit was in the woods, having taken a nap during Felix's little sojourn. Now he followed after them, padding through the undergrowth. Mervin hung back for a moment before hustling to follow.
"So, ah, Mervin. Do you know about any people who returned from the Foglands? Around two or three months ago?" Felix wasn't sure how long it took to travel from Shelim to Haarwatch, but a few weeks should have been feasible. "Guilders like you. Name of Onslaught and… and the Shieldwitch."
Mervin winced at the names. "Yeah. I heard of them, though that was before I came to Haarwatch. News of them though, that's been all over town for months. People said they had something to do with the new monster attacks. Something bad. Onslaught got demoted to Bronze, and the Shieldwitch…did you know her, sir?"
"Yeah, I do." Felix felt a sinking sensation in his gut, and he couldn't help but notice Mervin's use of the past tense. "What happened?"
The kid looked uncomfortable, and refused to meet Felix's eyes. "I-I don't really know. I just know her body was brought back by a Silver Rank." His eyes met Felix's for a moment before turning away again. "I'm sorry."
Felix didn't know what to say, though he'd feared that this had happened. The woman had sacrificed herself to get him into the Vault where the Maw had been held, had pitched him in so that at least one of them could survive. I should have stayed. Even someone as strong as Magda couldn't have survived the charge of so many Frost Giants without help. He'd have died too, a small voice argued in his head, but guilt drowned it out.
He swallowed, then focused on the path. They had a ways to walk yet.
The approach to Haarwatch wasn't subtle. The forest, which dominated the area with huge trees and thick underbrush, suddenly stopped. It had been cleared for a hundred yards leading up to the walls of the large city, which was situated firmly between two sweeping mountains. The wall—or Wall, as Mervin referred to it—gleamed red-gold in the early morning light, a formidable defense for the western approach while the mountains guarded the city from the north and south.
The ground was pitted and charred in places, depressed or raised in others. Pitched battles had occurred here, many of them. The air swirled with the remembered scents of blood and fear, and the ambient Mana, while dimmer than in the forest, was filled with a sense of wild violence. Manasight translated that for Felix, and though he'd experienced it in the past, he still wasn't sure how, exactly.
Something to ask in town, maybe. Felix glanced down at his hands, calloused after weeks of conflict. He had many questions he hoped to be answered now that he'd reached civilization. Gonna need to find a library or something. Maybe even the Guild. Felix had previously considered joining the Guild, but the news of Harn and Magda's treatment didn't sit well with him. Something's going on there. Politics, maybe. They had mentioned the Elders were conniving.
Even before they left the comfort of the treeline, Felix could tell that the walls were high, three hundred feet at least by his amateur guess. His Voracious Eye, having no distance limit, identified the walls as made of orichalcum. He smiled, remembering when he'd used an Essence Draught of Orichalcum. Magda said the metal was used for city walls, but the way she said it… This is no simple fortification. Even from so far away, Felix could feel emanations from the walls, faint Mana signatures that swirled around his senses. He had no idea what they meant, but it wasn't something he'd felt from any common material.
Mervin picked up his step once the city was in sight.
"I can't wait to get back. I truly hope my squad made it home safely." Mervin glanced at Felix and grinned. "There's a great inn just inside the gates called The Fat Horse, and it has the best pork pies. You just gotta try one."
Felix smiled as his stomach gurgled. He hadn't eaten anything in at least a day—not unless he considered his Ravenous Tithe to be eating, and… no. He definitely didn't. "A meal and a bed sound wonderful right about now."
Pit warbled in delight.
But before they left the comfort of the trees, and while Mervin stepped ahead, Felix used Convergence. With a flash of light, Pit disappeared from his side and took up residence in his Spirit. The tenku trilled in curiosity, a little surprised at the suddenness of Felix's action. We don't know who to trust in this town. Better for you to stay hidden while you can. He could spot two tiny figures standing outside the orichalcum walls. Huge gates were closed behind them, simple and completely flush with the wall itself. He Eyed them both as he caught up with the anxious little Guilder.
Name: Keryk Dalserris, Acolyte
Race: Human
Level: 20
HP: 132/132
SP: 242/283
MP: 189/189
Strength: More Data Required
Weakness: More Data Required
Name: Lafei Retter, Acolyte
Race: Human
Level: 20
HP: 152/152
SP: 203/215
MP: 200/200
Strength: More Data Required
Weakness: More Data Required
I can take them easily enough if it comes down to it. The question is, how many more are there? I'm not gonna fight a whole city of enemies. He paused at an accusing trill from Pit and raised his hands in admission. Again.
Prepared and on the clock—Convergence only lasted twenty-seven minutes, one minute per level—Felix hurried after Mervin. If the Tin Rank noticed the absence of Pit, he made no mention of it, but Felix wouldn't have been surprised; the kid was fairly perceptive, but he was extremely set on making it out of the Foglands.
