[NR] Sodden Yet Gaunt - Chapter 597

Jason breathed out and calmed down. He was getting ahead of himself. While the System hadn’t intervened all too actively yet, it was better to remove its influence first.

Besides, he’s a cultivator. While in his last life, he hadn’t exactly gotten the chance to do closed door cultivation, there were people who would close up for months at a time even at the lowest level. If they could afford the pills so they would not need to eat, of course. At the lower end, cultivators still need to do things like eat and drink.

Anyway, connecting more stats to his concepts isn’t going to happen overnight. So Jason settled down. He needed to figure out what connected his lines to his physical body.

All the while, Rosha and Courtney are out having fun. Well, Rosha is having fun. The deeper they manage to go with each journey, the more worried Courtney gets. There is a reason the Deep Wilds is considered end game content.

Shallow sections are fine for people like them or even new players. However, it is an area famous for unfair encounters. And not just unfair because of their power. Out in the deep wilds, there are things that the player base has filed under Lovecraftian.

Stuff that you can’t even fight because just knowing of its existence kills your character. In fact, there are players who can not enter the Deep Wilds to even the shallowest of depths because to do so would allow those fell powers to notice them again and they’d instantly die. Worse, the stranger something is, the less bound they seem to be. Only the fact that those entities prefer the deeper areas makes the Deep Wilds even possible for people to enter, let alone live in.

Though not all horrors are beings from beyond space and time, no matter how much they would fit in. There are times where mother nature gives them a run for their money. Like right now, as Rosha and Courtney fight some hound-like beasts.

They’re only flesh and blood, but their form alone causes distress. Their faces a sodden corpse white, the very wrinkles covering their face seemingly gaunt and yet swollen. If there are eyes, they are hidden in those folds of putrid skin.

Mouths curl back in an unsymmetrical display of five fleshy flaps with needles for teeth which are pointed inwards, down into a glowing hole that is their throat. Where does the glow come from? No one knows.

The beasts’ backs are bowed like the most worn out work horse, with blackened bones ruptured out of each of the spine’s discs. Not like spines, but rather, the bone just seems to continually grow outward like the tusks on some animals. Except instead of being worn down by chewing, these spinal bones appear to have some form of corruption or infection at the tips. A fungal blackness that has unevenly eaten away at them.

Though don’t take that to mean the back is weak. These nasty beasts’ bowed backs are unnaturally sturdy. The strange shape seemingly an adaptation to carry food with them as a couple have the corpses of previous prey impaled into place. That blackness of the bone having covered the corpses such that they are unidentifiable.

It is only their legs that are relatively normal. Though even there, a subtle oddness persists. While the joints seem normal enough, the beasts seem able to bend them much farther than would be natural. It doesn’t help that when bending too far, there are sounds of cartilage.

However, it is important to note that this ability to bend their joints farther than expected does not mean they can go all the way. So when Rosha whacks her staff into their knees and the legs bend all the way? Yeah, they definitely feel it.

Though if Courtney had to pick out their greatest weakness? Well, while they did attack together, they weren’t fighting together. These. Things. Weren’t fighting as a team and Rosha was tearing them apart because of it.

They constantly got in each other’s way. If it wasn’t for the fact that their mouth flaps could tear through the surrounding trees like they were made of paper, it would have been almost hilarious. Though that also led to any friendly fire being quite serious.

Not long after, Rosha is using some minor magic to wash herself off. The summoned water washes away errant gore before it vanishes as all summoned materials do. Though she isn’t quite pleased with the results. “Kind of hard to style my hair if my hair dries before I can comb it.”

Courtney, “I said you should have learned the cleaning cantrip.”

Rosha sighs, “But that’s one of the hardest spells to cast. If I’m going to put that much effort into a spell, it’s going be for combat. Besides, why didn’t you learn it?”

Courtney shrugs, “I specialized in healing and shadow magic. Well, technically, I specialized in healing magic and my race allowed me to add on shadow magic. Either way, I’m limited in what magic I can learn if I want to get some nice spells later on. Shadow illusion magic isn’t exactly easy to learn.”

Rosha, “Eh, I guess I’ll figure out the cleaning spell later. Too useful not to have someone that knows it.”

Courtney rolls her eyes, “So now you have time to learn it?”

Rosha, “Well, we hadn’t really fought anything that made a mess. These pseudo-hounds felt like a proper old school game mob, splashing blood everywhere with each hit. Now that I’ve experienced it, the need for a cleaning spell certainly stands out.”

Courtney smiles, “What if instead you fought better? Just look at Jason. He basically only fights by punching things and yet he comes out of it sparkling clean.”

Rosha made a sour face, “He cheats. I don’t think he actually noticed it himself, but it seems dirt and debris just don’t stick to him. I think it has to do with how he handles Energy. Almost as if he has a dirt focused force field around his body.”

Courtney nods, “I definitely don’t think he has noticed. Though we should probably bring it up to him, the next time we touch base.”