NOVPUB“Gods, it chafes.” Travis complained, adjusting his pants for the umpteenth time as he walked beside the wagon. “You’re not chafing?”
“It’s the moisture in the air.” Will said.
“There was moisture in the air on the Sixth Floor, and it didn’t chafe.”
Will glanced down at the Master Decoy and shrugged. “I can’t really feel it. Aspect of the Goat covers environmental discomfort.”
“Of course it does.” Travis groaned. “Alright, I’m taking my pants off.”
“Do what you gotta do, man.”
Thankfully Travis’s robe covered his legs anyway, but it was amusing to know he was swinging free under there. Amusing or disgusting?
Bit of both.
“Monster!” Reggie called, drawing the caravan’s attention to Alicia, who was pointing up and to the side.
From where Will sat atop the wagon, he could see a furry lump attached to a tree like a burl.
“Wazzat?” Will mused.
“Spectral Sloth,” Loth said from her barrel where she was studying a new insect. She had been collecting new insects from this Floor at a staggering rate, probably to make up for their absence on the Sixth Floor.
“They’re sneaky little bastards who can tell when they’re being observed and can cast an illusion that creates a mental dissonance between how fast they’re moving and how fast they appear to be moving.”
Travis perked up at the word ‘illusion’ and began hustling to the front to catch up with Alicia and the brushcutters.
Will watched the exchange firsthand, as the spectral sloth began slowly…releasing…it’s massive claws from the branch it was hanging onto…reaching a set of wicked claws over to the nearest branch, ever-so-slowly approaching them.
Under Will’s sight the sloth got rapidly faster, until it covered the last ten feet or so in a flash of motion, bouncing off of Reggie’s tower shield.
“You see, that thing didn’t actually move slow or fast, it took exactly that amount of time to reach them, but it goes invisible and projects an illusion that gradually catches up to itself, until it makes contact, giving the appearance of rapid acceleration at the last second.”
“That probably makes them a bitch to shoot,” Will mused, watching dozens of arrows fly wide, burying themselves in the canopy or sailing off into the distance to have their own jungle adventures.
“Reggie, go for a counter!” Will shouted as Reggie was assaulted by the palm-long claws that drew gouges out of his tower shield. If it was only where it appeared to be at the moment of an attack, the best way to hit it would be a counter.
“You’re welcome to step in any time!” Reggie shouted back as a nearby Climber drew his sword, aiming to join Reggie.
“No he’s not! Mine, mine mine!” Travis shouted, putting his fingers in his mouth and giving an annoying whistle that caught the spectral Sloth’s attention.
Thankfully Will was sitting behind Travis as the Master Decoy lifted his robe and taunted the monster, doing a stupid hip-gyrating dance. “You want somma this!? I’ll bet you do!”
The sloth began slowly turning towards Travis, ever-so-slowly approaching.
The last fraction of a second, the creature seemed to whip forward faster than the eye could follow, only slowing down as it landed on Travis and began ripping into…an illusion.
“HAH!” Travis appeared beside the creature, bringing a wood-cutting axe down on the back of the thing’s neck, causing it to go stiff and collapse to the ground, twitching as it began to leak Miasma.
“I can’t believe Travis would kill such a cute little guy.” Reggie said, shaking his head.
Alicia put her hand over her mouth in shock. “It was cute!?”
“It had a face with, like, a constant half-smile.” Reggie described it to her.
“Awwww…Travis you meanie.” Alicia whispered.
“Yeah, you’re a piece of shit, Travis,” one of the brush-cutter Climbers said, sheathing his sword as his Party nodded.
“Coool iit!” Will called from the wagon where he and Loth observed. Dogpiling someone was all fun and games until they went crazy and lured a boss monster into camp in a fit of violent retribution.
The Climber glanced up at Will and stiffened before nodding. “That was a clean kill,” he said, clapping Travis on the shoulder. “But we’re gonna have a little talk about who gets priority on monster kills, hmm?”
Travis glanced down at the corpse of the spectral sloth and nodded. “I’d be happy to come to an arrangement.”
Whichever brush-cutting Party was on rotation each day had first dibs on anything they ran across in the process of clearing a path for the wagons, and Travis had spit on that in a moment of blind greed.
“I really hope he doesn’t get himself killed.” Will mused as Travis and the brush-cutting Party Leader strode off to have a ‘chat’.
It would be a waste of a perfectly good decoy to have him get killed by their own group.
“He’ll be fine.” Loth said, not looking away from the long bug with thousands of legs winding around her hand.
Will closed his eyes and laid back on the wagon roof, letting the swaying wagon, Anna’s lap, the shade of the canopy and the sound of Travis getting punched lull him to sleep. The occasional combat roused him halfway, but the sound of battle was light and infrequent, allowing him to get a decent nap.
When sun went down, Will was on duty.
The caravan came to a halt and cleared a wide area, with the earth mages flattening the land, water mages taking care of the drinking and wash-water, while the other Civilian classes cut down the trees and disassembled the wagons into sleeping quarters in a matter of minutes, their Abilities allowing them to prepare the camp faster than what should’ve been possible.
The different Parties assembled into half a dozen clusters around a handful of fires that beat back the darkness, while an Anna at each fire stirred at a bubbling pot of stew or handed out the daily ration of sweet breads and booze.
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For a few minutes every night, spirits were high, and each cluster of brightness felt like it was its own little world, presenting an invisible barrier that Will could never hope to traverse.
If he approached, everyone would stiffen and call him ‘sir’ or ‘my lord’ and immediately focus all their attention on him. He could never simply be ignored until he said something truly funny or insightful enough to earn him a place in the circle.
One of the Anna’s caught his gaze and blew a kiss.
Well…I guess it’s not that bad. I’ve got work to do.
Nighttime was when the real terrors woke up and began stalking the Jungle, and it was Will’s job to hunt the area clean rather than simply wait for attacks to happen.
He was at least partially a scout archetype, after all.
Will jumped off the wagon and landed in midair, using the boosted Aspect of the Serpent to walk on the air, stalking silently into the pitch-black jungle.
As the bright light of the fire faded into the background, his Acuity picked up the slack, causing the star-lit jungle to grow in brightness until it looked like everything was bathed in a pale white light.
Will trotted around the camp in an expanding spiral, body low, trying to stay as quiet as possible. Due to his Relic’s bonuses to stealth, his body was mostly invisible, just a ghost gliding through the jungle.
Which is how he and another stealth-based predator bumped into each other.
Will bumped into a shadow perched on a tree branch overlooking the camp through a break in the foliage as he snuck through the canopy, his hip ramming into something fuzzy where there shouldn’t be anything.
The two stalkers were at a loss for an instant as they sized each other up, but then the claws came out.
The vague lump of darkness swung out, not giving away any sign of its presence save for for the sheen of starlight on five shiny black claws.
The claws raked across Will’s face and a bit of his shoulder as he raised it to protect his neck. The next instant, he swung his tomahawk through the creature’s space, feeling the weapon wobble in his hand as it caught on something.
The creature let out a brassy shriek, like a trumpeter being kicked in balls, before bounding away.
Now that it was moving, Will could…almost see it. A leaf bent here and there, and a silhouette more felt than seen.
He broke into a chase, sending his snakes ahead of him to catch the thing.
Half of them missed their target, but one managed to wrap around a hind leg, prompting the thing to turn around and unleash its fury on the offending snake, battering it with claw strikes that did concerning amounts of damage to the snake housing his Ring of Accuracy.
Will withdrew the damaged snake as he tackled the thing full-speed, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as he thrusted out with his left hand, his hand gliding up the creature’s chest until he discovered it’s neck and jaw.
Will whipped the tomahawk forward and buried it in the monster’s skull, and an instant later, the shroud of invisibility on it faded away, revealing…some kind of massive cat with black fur and retractable fangs like a snake.
…Ow.
It had occurred to Will to have Alicia scan for creatures at night, but he’d decided against it, because while she might be unaffected by light level, everybody else was, so if she pointed monsters out and said ‘right there,’ everyone save Will would say ‘I don’t see anything’.
Might as well use her during the daytime, while the things she pointed out were actionable.
Loth will know whether this thing’s any use, but I bet it’s a decent Rogue sacrifice, Will thought, offloading the wound onto the already damaged Pointer, and sent the mangled snake to rest in the camp, dragging the corpse behind it.
Will continued his patrol, running into a stand of vines that had needle-like hairs on their exterior, that seemed eager to drain his blood, reaching towards him as he approached.
Plant-based monsters weren’t fast like the cat, so Will disassembled them from a distance, wielding his tomahawk with Phantom Hand.
Thump.
The daily raid was done, and Will was eager to get back to camp and get some shuteye, there was a short window in the morning where he could get a couple hours of sleep, and another later in the day as they travelled, and he didn’t want to squander either of them.
Will strode back into the camp and spotted everyone still sitting at the fires.
Shouldn’t they be getting ready to move? Will thought with a frown.
“Come join us, Will!” Brenna Egan, the matriarch of the second civilian Party, patted on a nearby tree stump that was conveniently placed in the circle around the fire.
The seat of honor, where he could regale them with tales of all the crazy monsters he’d fought over the course of the night.
“Welcome back Will, would you like some pastries?” Anna asked, offering him a plate full of sweets…wearing nothing but an apron.
She stepped up close, leaning against him as she nuzzled his neck, while the rest of the Anna’s in the camp cried foul and rushed forward. Soon there were at least half a dozen of the plump young women offering him sweets, pressing in from every direction in a smothering wall of flesh…
Oh, godsdamnit.
Will engaged his Memory Key, a collection of hot-and-cold memories in rapid succession designed to shatter brittle mind control.
Muse in the window.
Nail through foot.
Sick soup.
Choking on stolen peanut butter.
Loth joining the Party
The scene in front of him smeared like someone dragged their hand over an oil painting before it resolved back into the darkness of the forest.
Except now his hands were pinned to his side by massive leathery wings, and something that looked like a cross between a leech and a bat was attached to his neck.
“Fuggoff!” Will shouted, his Phantom snakes grabbing the thing’s fleshy pulsating tube of a neck and dragging it away from Will’s veins.
Will dragged the restraining wings away from his hands and chopped the offending creature up until it stopped moving.
How do you know it isn’t just making you think you won while it continues to feed on you? Will thought. There was nothing quite like mind-control to make you paranoid. Will ran through the Memory Key again, and this time, everything stayed put.
Good’nuff.
Will sent two snakes up into the air above the canopy with a directive to kill any of those things they found before they got the chance to hit Will with another mental whammy.
Will dragged his bloody hand down his face and heaved a breath.
I can’t believe it dragged that out of my subconscious.
Will splashed a bit of healing potion over his neck, sent the bat-leech thing back to camp and pulled out his rations for the night.
Crispy stuffed dumplings.
Mmm.
Will checked one more time to make sure he wasn’t dreaming then continued on his way.
As the night went on, Will managed to exterminate several dozen different monsters stalking the outskirts of the camp, but none of them were quite as difficult as the one he blundered into or the one that got the drop on him.
For the most part, Will was a ghost, and always got the upper hand. The snakes did an excellent job dropping those bat-leeches out of the sky before they could notice Will and hit him with a mind-whammy, allowing him to remain reasonably safe.
Still, when he returned covered in blood, he got an interrogation from Anna, who was horrified to discover he’d been patrolling most of the night after being wounded. It didn’t matter to her that he’d patched it with a healing potion and gotten the blood back by eating.
The rest of the camp looked pretty damn impressed at the house-sized mound of dead monster bodies in the center of the camp slowly collapsing into miasma.
Loth and the caravan’s logistics officer were sorting through the bodies, with the beancounter using some kind of preservation Ability on monster corpses that were deemed to be ‘high value’. Will was happy to note that the giant black cat was on that list, as was the leech-thing.
Anna shook her head and yanked his bloodstained clothes off while another delivered a fresh set of clothes.
“Seriously don’t get yourself killed,” Anna said, shaking her head as she bundled up the rust-colored clothes and trotted off in a huff.
“What’s her problem?” the Anna delivering the clothes asked, watching her copy march away.
“You’re the same person. You know exactly what her problem is.” Will said, slipping the pants on. Spending months in close quarters had killed most of his modesty, but not all of it.
“I can’t do a bit?” Anna asked. “You guys are always doing a bit.”
“The dumplings were good. Thanks.”
“Ria made those, actually, you should tell her.” 𝖓𝔬𝔳𝖕𝖚𝖇.𝖈𝔬𝔪
“Again,” Will said, putting on the shirt. “You’re the same person.”
“Eh…” Anna waggled her hand and shrugged. “There’s actually some nuance there.”
As the sun began to seep through the canopy, Will laid down on top of the wagon and let the sounds of the camp wash over him.
It was a skill he’d perfected on the 6th Floor, trapped in close quarters on a ship with a dozen others. Just shut your thinking brain off and let the sounds fade…into the background. Time gradually lost its meaning and Will’s breath deepened as the dappled sunlight played over his face.
Shouts and the ringing of steel brought him abruptly out of it.
