Chimera Summoner: A Deckbuilding LitRPG, page 7
“Some good, some useless for us,” Gareth said. “Unless we find someone with an insect affinity.” His gaze lifted to the far wall. Whilst he had been opening the booster and examining the cards Imelda had begun her climb. “And honestly, I’ve had enough of bugs for now. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Six
Gareth tugged on the rope experimentally and was glad to see that it didn’t immediately fall from the top of the rock face. He trusted Imelda, but it was impossible not to stand at the bottom of the chasm and not tug on the rope. It was human nature, after all, Gareth was about to climb up the side of a sheer cliff and whilst the burrows made by the insects did make things easier it was hardly the safest thing in the world.
“Looks a lot higher from down here, don’t it?” Krunk said. The groblin had resumed his role as Gareth’s living backpack, one hand wrapped around his neck whilst the other gripped a sunstone. “You reckon we can make it all the way up?”
“I don’t see why not,” Gareth said, though he wasn’t being entirely truthful. He could think of plenty of reasons why he couldn’t do it. “Positive mental attitude and all that. You just keep your hold on me tight and that light pointing upwards, ok?”
“Sounds fair.”
Gareth tied the rope around his waist, pulling on the knot as tight as he could. In his mind, he couldn’t help but compare it to all the times he had seen people climbing on TV. There they always seemed to have a dozen different ropes all tied to a full-body harness along with a whole collection of people at the top and bottom. It wouldn’t be the first time he would have done something unreasonably dangerous.
“No time like the present then,” Gareth said, raising his hands and gripping the edge of one of the burrows. He hoped desperately that the skitherak hadn’t just retreated into them. He knew that his deck would protect him from a sneak attack, but it certainly wouldn’t guard him against letting go in fright and falling to the ground. Gareth was only fifty-fifty on if his knot would hold if he fell.
With an overdramatic heave, he pulled himself up, his feet finding purchase on the burrows as he climbed. It was proving easier than he expected, though Gareth knew deep down that he would quickly grow tired. He decided to make the most of his surge of confidence, pushing himself as hard as he could to climb.
“Slow down there,” Krunk said. “I’m struggling to hold on back here.”
“Just trying to get up as quickly as I can.”
“Oh, I get that, just need to remind you that whilst you have a rope I certainly don’t. If I fall, I’m going to be a greasy green smear across the ground.”
“Right, yeah,” Gareth muttered. He had genuinely forgotten about his passenger. He slowed himself and immediately regretted it, feeling the ache building in his muscles.
“So, are we going to talk about what happened down there?”
“We fought a bunch of big bugs. Not that unusual really,” Gareth said, trying his best to suppress a shrug. He didn’t need to buck off Krunk accidentally. “Pretty average day for us.”
“Not the bugs, though yes, that’s very messed up that’s normal for you. No, I mean your summons, the primitive groblins-”
“The goblins.”
“Yes, the goblins,” Krunk said with a sigh. “One of them spoke. They aren’t supposed to do that, right? I’ve seen plenty of duels in my years, even managed to snag tickets to watch a tournament once or twice, but I’ve never seen a monster that’s popped out of a card talk. That’s bloody weird.”
“Yeah, they’ve uh, never done that before. I’ve seen them do little things, tiny sparks of personality here and there, but talking is new.”
“What do you reckon it means? It has to mean something, right?”
“Who knows?” Gareth said. “Maybe it’s just so rare that most people haven’t seen it? Maybe it’s just because we’re close to the ley lines near the tower or something like that. In the grand scheme of things, it’s at the very bottom of our list of problems.”
“Maybe. You know what was really weird about it though? That goblin called you boss, it knew who you were and what you wanted from it. It was like it had no problem just rushing into a fight that would kill it.”
“So? It’s a summoned monster. It’s not even a real goblin, just mana forced in a particular shape. There’s nothing there really.”
“An elemental is alive though, and those are just mana shaped in a particular way when you think about it. It’s a tough one, ain’t it? One of them philosophical whatsits. Maybe it’s because you’ve got more of a bond with goblins than most people do with their thingys…what do duellists call it? They all have one specific type of monster, right?”
“Their affinity. And what makes you think I have more of one than anyone else?”
“Well, they might be our backwards cousins, but I know enough about the old ways to recognise that staff. Only the high priests used to carry them, back in the tall days.”
“The tall days?” Gareth said
“Yeah. Legends say the first of our kin were much taller, easily bigger than most races.”
“Like the hobgoblin I have?”
“What’s that when it’s at home,” Krunk said. “Never head of a hobgoblin.”
“Oh, it’s a card I have. It’s a goblin, but…bigger.” Gareth let out an embarrassing grunt as he pulled himself further up the cliff. He was over halfway now, a feat that would have impressed the old Earth him but in this specific moment felt like a failure. The others were much higher, Gareth was lagging behind.
“Fair enough, maybe then? I would have to see it. Anyway, the only way you would have gotten that staff is from a goblin that really trusted you. I reckon maybe having it makes you more…goblinly.”
Gareth didn’t speak, instead focusing on climbing the wall as he considered Krunk’s statement. The groblin had a point. Not about the staff, Gareth couldn’t see how owning it made him any less human, but he was certain that the more points he put into Goblinkin the more he was changing. It was subtle, the tips of his ears getting pointier, his skin getting paler, but Gareth was certain it was just a prelude to the real changes. Sarkuran’s old demonic form was thanks to a particular skill, so it seemed logical that the same shape-shifting property was true of others. Gareth was a little surprised with himself to find that he didn’t mind the changes happening to him. He had never been that attached to his human form anyway and ultimately if it made him stronger as a duellist it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.
“Maybe,” Gareth finally said. “Doesn’t really matter why does it? Unless it starts impacting my magic in some way, good or bad. If the monsters talk, they talk.” That wasn’t quite true. If they could talk it meant a million other worrying implications. Did they feel pain? Did they have free will? If Gareth pushed the strange event to the back of his mind it meant he wouldn’t have to consider the ethical problems it raised. He simply couldn’t afford to consider them when he relied on his deck to survive.
“Who knows, maybe we can ask them next time? Maybe my magical cousins might fancy a chat?”
“Somehow I doubt it,” Gareth said. “Worth a shot though.”
***
A hand reached down and grabbed Gareth’s pulling him up out of the chasm. He smiled at Imelda as she kept pulling Gareth glad to be free of his climb. His limbs were killing him, the climb getting more difficult as he ascended, the burrows becoming smaller and less frequent. By the end, he had been forced to climb the rope itself, hand over excruciating hand.
“You’re the last ones out,” Imelda said, gesturing to the others gathered behind her. “Good to see that no one got eaten by any giant bugs.”
“No one has been eaten by any giant bugs yet,” Mazel said, feeling the need to clarify. “You know we’ve not known you lot for even a whole week yet and so far, I’ve nearly died more times than I have in my entire life. Starting to regret this whole coming along and helping thing.”
“You can always just return to your city,” Sarkuran said. “Thot-Ankor is but a teleport trip away. I’m certain the elementals would help you down their mountain.”
“What elementals? And besides, the browncoats have to have our names and faces now. We would be strolling right back into some bloody cell, or worse.” Mazel shuddered at the thought. The Thot-Ankorian secret police weren’t known for treating their prisoners kindly. “That’s certain death, at least walking around with you lot is only a high chance of it.”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess?” Gareth said, spinning his hands around at the wrist as he tried to breathe some life back into them. He rolled his shoulders, the groblin passenger he had been carrying hopping down as Gareth had climbed out of the chasm. “Where too next? Please tell me that this entire ordeal has been worth it.”
“We should be close to the repository now, or at least the cliffs where Henig thinks it is,” Imelda said, having memorised as much of the layout of the jungle as she could from atop the tower. She was relishing exploring a forest that didn’t change its pathways every few hours.
“Let’s find out then, shall we?” Mazel said, producing her mana dowser from the front pocket of her overalls.
The corkscrew looking prong on the end began to spin slowly, the groblin similarly rotating herself on the spot as she tried to pinpoint the nearest large concentration of mana. She came to a sudden stop, the head of the device spinning furiously as it picked up a trace. It was shuddering in Mazel’s hands, the groblin struggling to hold onto the dowser as it worked itself into a frenzy.
“Oh boy, yep, definitely picking up something. Huge mana signal in this direction.” Mazel’s face beamed with pride. “That or something else radiating pretty high amounts of magical power. Like a big scary death elemental for example.”
“We don’t have those here, or at least we shouldn’t,” Gareth said. “Not when we cleansed the necrofungus.”
“We?” Magda said with a raised eyebrow.
“Anyway, I would have thought most monsters would be kind of…negative magic? If that makes sense. The spiders and Luthor feed on the mana of the leyline, and that wouldn’t make sense if they weren’t consuming it in some way.”
“Depends on the beast,” Krunk said, stepping in front of his colleague with his hands tugging at his overall’s straps. “At least, in my experience. A death elemental can hardly keep itself together, magic pours out of the damn thing, corrupted though it is.”
“Still, my theory holds, right?” Gareth said. “That’s because the elemental can’t hold itself together, right? It’s like someone who’s constantly bleeding, just trailing it around behind themselves all the time.”
“Regardless, this gives us our destination, for now, correct?” Sarkuran stepped over to Mazel and crouched down to get a better look at the dowser. “At the very least it will be interesting.”
“Right yeah, let’s just, rest for a minute, yeah? I think my arms and legs might fall off if I don’t sit down for a bit,” Gareth said. He sat down on a thick root curving out of the ground, implying that there was only one answer to his question.
“I have to admit I am rather tired,” Sarkuran said.
“Yeah, me too,” Magda added. “Resting for a little is probably a good idea.”
“Fine,” Imelda said, putting her hands on her hips like an annoyed mother. “But we should do this further away from the big hole that’s home to a bunch of angry bugs. Just in case they decide to come back.”
“Ugh.” Gareth didn’t try to hide his annoyance. He knew Imelda was right, which is why it was so frustrating. “Fine, fine. Lead on then, Imelda.”
As the wyrmkin turned and began to lead the party away, Gareth opened his menu. If he was being forced to walk who knew how far before Imelda was happy enough with the spot to allow him his blessed rest, then he was going to at least make the time useful. Levelling up in the depths of the chasm had granted Gareth another seven skill points to play with.
He found himself wishing there was some kind of skill that allowed him to play more than one card at a time or at least a feat. It had been frustrating having to ditch multiple cards to summon a reasonable sized force and it had revealed a flaw in Gareth’s tactics. Summoning vast waves of cheap goblins to increase the benefit of his boosting effects had been effective at times, but when he was up against a single powerful monster it took too long to reach the point where his strength became overwhelming. Gareth needed to find a way of summoning his monsters faster.
Ideally, he would have liked to either shift his deck to be more mid-ranged like Imelda’s, slightly more expensive monsters with impactful immediate effects. It was an odd quirk of the way that deck power was tied to his level. On Earth card games generally had some kind of progression to the cards you could play. Either they had a mana cost and the resources available to you ramped up slowly over time or needed other cards to be sacrificed first. Acamida was different, a one-mana goblin was useful when you were low level, but because you had access to all your mana immediately there came a point where it just wasn’t good enough. Gareth had nine mana available, and it was hard to justify taking his time to spend the one mana to summon a Puny Goblin when he could easily afford something like the Hobgoblin brute or Zollof instead. What was considered a cheap throwaway card would be constantly shifting as Gareth grew in power.
For now, Gareth followed his earlier line of thinking, spending another five points into Goblinkin to at least eke out what value he could from his current cards. With the two spare points, he decided to place them into Cartography. The skill let him map everything around himself in a radius and it had been more useful than he had expected when the party had plunged into the fractal universe. A bigger radius couldn’t hurt, and the skill helped everyone in a way.
Gareth closed his menus just in time to duck beneath a low branch, avoiding giving himself an embarrassing bruise. The others had come to a stop in a small clearing immediately ahead. Imelda had to have finally found a spot she was happy with.
“This good enough?” Gareth said, hoping desperately that it was.
“Yeah, yeah this should be ok. Those bug things would have trouble flying through those trees so if they do come at least, we can funnel them into this clearing.” Imelda’s hand danced back and forth as she pointed at the canopy and then the ground. “We won’t stay long though, don’t want to get caught out at night.”
Gareth allowed himself to slump to the ground, resting his back against a tree trunk. “Fair enough. I have to imagine those things would have the advantage in the dark.”
“Those and the ancients.”
“Right yes, the killer dinosaurs. Somehow I had forgotten about those.”
“We really need to have some harsh words with whoever designed this jungle,” Magda said, a smile creeping across her face.
“That’s you though, right?” Krunk said, falling for the bait. “It’s real weird to think you’re the Magdalena. Wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Well, an older version of me. If it was up to me, the now me, I would have things far fluffier and with less teeth.”
“No arguments here,” the groblin said. The was a grumble, a low rumbling that tumbled out from within the Krunk’s gut. “Uh, sorry about that. Forget to grab any breakfast, following you out here was something of a spur of the moment idea. Though it ain’t like you can grab some hot bacon and eggs round here.”
“We’ve got eggs,” Imelda said, missing Krunk’s point a little.
“Big nasty monster eggs, yeah. They taste weird, not bad, just not what I’m used to.”
“You’re just a fussy eater,” Mazel said.
“I got taste you mean.” Krunk pointed an accusing finger toward Mazel. “I’ve seen you drop stuff on the ground and then pick it back up.”
“Twelve-second rule, ain’t it?”
“That’s not a thing,” Gareth said. Occasionally he found it easy to forget that things he took for granted didn’t necessarily apply to Acamida. He heard people espouse a five-second rule back on Earth, but he didn’t think anyone really believed it. The only time he had seen it invoked was when someone had dropped something on a clean worktop or kitchen counter. If something had fallen onto the ground most people knew enough about dirt and germs to not pick it up again. “Uh, don’t do that, you’ll get sick. Trust me on this.”
“Nah, I’ve been fine so far,” Mazel said, finding herself a seat on a small rock. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Your funeral.”
Imelda swung her pack from her back, the bag flopping about as if it were empty thanks to the runes etched into its leather. She reached inside and removed several stripes of smoke and dried ancient meat. “Thankfully we’ve got plenty of food that hasn’t been dropped on the floor. Let’s eat, get some energy back, and then get going again.”
***
It was bigger than Gareth expected. The repository was a massive structure, a huge temple nearly as big as the tower itself though time had been much less kind to it. Part of the cliff face had fallen away, covering most of the entrance in heavy rubble. A statue lay shattered across the steps though it was obvious it had once flanked the entrance. Its counterpart seemed to be missing, perhaps crushed totally by the avalanche.
“It looks…worse for wear,” Gareth said, trying to couch his words. He didn’t want to offend Magda, after all the building was dedicated to her.
“It looks like a mess,” the goddess said, not having the same reservation. “Are we sure there’s anything still left in there at all?”
“Dowser says there is.” Mazel held up the tool, the top now just a blur from how fast it was spinning. “Definitely some powerful magic in here.”
“Reckon it’s like the tower?” Imelda said. “Bigger on the inside?”
Sarkuran nodded. “It’s a fair assumption. Likely also trapped in addition. We should be on guard.”
