[NR] Cerulean - Chapter 598

After their encounter with the sickening wolf-like beasts, Rosha and Courtney continue their trip. While seeing such horrors would normally have them turning back, those monsters were actually natural beasts. Well, not natural, but at least native to NeoRealm’s universal constants.

Which because of NeoRealm’s rules, is actually easy enough to determine. Any time the ladies killed something from outside NeoRealm or would be labeled pseudo-natural begins to disintegrate, sort of. It isn’t like anything they had fought was completely foreign to NeoRealm except maybe some summons. Though battle summons don’t count as part of the magic that brings them in will adapt them to NeoRealm and the bodies just puff away. Same as with any summoned material.

However, any part of those freaks that was unnatural? Well, those bits and pieces steam and sputter as they seem to eat through space itself, like some kind of acid, until they vanish. Most of the monsters are a homogeneous mix and so this reduces the body to a slurry. Bad for loot, but easy to notice.

Much more problematic are those with a specific organ or part that is unnatural. Not only does this potentially hide their origins after death, but also tend to provide unnatural powers. It was only last trip out that they ran across what Courtney determined were True blink dogs.

As compared to the blink dogs native to NeoRealm proper, the True blink dogs were a terror to fight. The native monster had an ability that allowed them to occasionally use the classic teleport spell, blink. Those with a special organ from outside reality? They were in a constant state of blinking, only physically present half the time or less.

Rosha shivers as she remembers the fight. It was a pain and a nightmare to fight that which does not belong. And once you start seeing them on the Deep Wilds? It means you’re getting into an area with an active incursion of some sort. Well, it would be called an incursion within NeoRealm proper. Out in the Deep Wilds, it is just another piece of the whole. In theory, if you went deep enough you could even find areas where the basic physical rules of reality begin to change. Suffice it to say, the two want nothing to do with such things.

Rosha’s thoughts come to a sudden halt before she can continue going over what she had learned about the Deep Wilds. In front of them is a cliff face. Which, to be fair, isn’t the rarest thing to find. However, this one was a surprise, which was odd. You tend to see them coming.

This time, however, the cliff snuck up on them. However, it wasn’t some sort of spatial warping. Instead it was a very simple trick. They were climbing up a gentle hill for a while now and had finally created it, only to reveal a much steeper descent that ran right into the cliff they could now see.

The cliff wasn’t even as tall as the rise they had just climbed up. That didn’t mean it wasn’t too tall for them, though. While they could likely climb it, Rosha and Courtney would be left tired when they reach the top and without a safe path of retreat. Sure, at the top end, regular falling damage stops being a thing you have to worry about, they certainly weren’t there yet.

Worse, the cliff just went on and on to both sides. There was no option to go around and so they decided to start their return trip. Except in doing so, it ended up bringing them right back through the warped wolves’ territory and this time it was worse.

The two saw the first hints of it, well, heard, when the howls began. It had a strange warbling quality to it which eased in and out of audibility. Though undoubtedly it continues both above and below their hearing range.

Or maybe it was going in and out of reality? Because once the “wolves” came into view, the two knew they weren’t going to like how things would go. While similar in shape to the previous abominations, these took it even farther.

Their backs shaped like a horseshoe and the spines extended through each other, an odd glimmer along their edges that the two had begun to attach to things that weren’t quite real. All wolf-like features gone from their faces, instead the unsymmetrical mouths extended over the entire head, curling back to howl. And the legs! They bent as if there were too many joins or the monsters simply didn’t have bones and kept the rest of the leg straight simply because it couldn’t bother not to.

Courtney took a step back and put a hand on Rosha’s shoulder who promptly drew out an arrow and took aim. Magic coursed down Courtney’s arms, dark lightning edged in silver, and the arrow lit up with a cerulean glow. The wolven anomalies reared back at the sight, anathema to their presence.

That arrow zipped through the air. A head shot turned into a deeply penetrating body shot. The blue glow eating into the target’s chest. Though despite the placement right where a heart would normally be, it didn’t die and blood did not flow.

Around it, the other monsters pulled back and released gasping hoots as needle-like teeth clattered against each other. While the cerulean buff wasn’t as powerful as an elder sign, the color provided a certain oomph that the two had found useful more than once. Besides, this power could be imbued on their weapons, which allowed it to be used offensively instead of just as a defense.

Not that they wouldn’t like the extra defense a sign would provide. It was just that to be more effective the sign has to be carved into the correct kind of material. And when rare and needed for high end adventuring comes together, you find all but the high end priced out. To get one at so low a level certainly implied a system gift or terribly powerful backing. After all, even the heirs of families bigger than Rosha’s can’t get one. The elders needing them much more.