RD 3 Ch 34

Chapter 34

The serpent’s role couldn’t be understated after that. I continued through the forest as the lashers dropped fruits. I suspected that the whole drop function in the vault was actually being controlled by the demons. Despite that, I focused on sweeping up as many fruits as I could, clearing my quadrant.

There was no reason to abandon these fruits. Once I was out of the vault and had time to experiment I was sure I could remove the detrimental debuff, or at the very least find some time to eat them and wait it out.

After several hours, it didn’t seem like there were many fruits left. Only a few Garrotes flew through the air as I headed back toward the central castle, everything was clear.

 Pulling out my rocky talkie, I asked, “Gloria, how are things on your end?”

A chipper voice of Simone squeaked out of the rock instead. “We’ve pretty much wrapped up. Antonio split off from us to finish collecting all the fruits we hadn’t touched yet. Meanwhile, Gloria and I are almost back to the central castle,” Simone added. “He said he could get the rest of the fruits and still beat us back.”

“What about the Mul Branova?” I asked.

There was a long silence before Simone spoke again, her voice quiet. “We lost three of them. Some fell in the initial attack; the Garrotes were fairly brutal on them. Another was taken down by Lashers. Apparently, their group didn’t even realize she’d been attacked until it was too late.”

I closed my eyes in mourning for them. Going into the dangers of a vault would always have casualties, but it was still hard news to hear. I couldn’t protect everyone. No, protecting them all from these challenges would only make them weaker in the future, I reminded myself.

Simone continued her voice picking up, “On the other hand, there’s been a massive growth in levels for those who survived, as well as plenty of harvesting. Someone reported that the Lashers were taken care of by someone with an ability called upheaval. The raccoons were easy pickings. Apparently, they didn’t have any serpents in their area.”

“Noted,” I replied. “I’ll be at the central castle shortly. I’ve finished clearing all the fruits in my quadrant. However, there seems to be something quite large in the north.”

“Yeah, we heard that too, kinda hard to miss” Gloria said. “Whatever it is, it has to be absolutely giant to make that much noise.”

“Giant doesn’t necessarily mean strong,” Simone interjected.

“In this case, I think we can assume it does,” I countered. “I’m interested to see what’s happening with those two pillars of light. Have the Mul Branova reported anything new?”

“Yes,” Simone replied. “They said their beam is an exit. They had one person step into it  now that they’ve finished clearing, they were beamed up to what I assume is the next trial.”

“Good. Tell them all to get out. Even better, we can send Antonio’s guild that way as well.” I told them.

“And what about us?” Gloria asked.

“I think that big monster might be worth investigating—at least for Merlin, Antonio, and myself,” I said, starting up the argument that I knew was about to come.

“You’re leaving us out?” Gloria and Simone said in unison.

I sighed and shook my head. “Fine. You can join, but I’m interested in both the giant monster and the portal. Given that one is on the weaker side of this trial and the other on the more difficult side, I assume there might be some effect from exiting through the stronger side. I don’t think we should risk the Mul Branova any further trying to get them over there.”

“That makes sense,” Simone agreed. “The Mul Branova have done plenty in this trial. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many levels they’ve gained and how much fruit they’ve gathered.”

“We must have at least 10,000 stats worth of fruits,” Gloria added.

I could hear the pride in her voice through the rocky talkie, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the giant grin on Simone’s face.

“Well done,” I said.

Simone chimed in, “We’ll have to be careful, though.”

“If things get dicey, we’ll need to run. What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Gloria laughed, a touch too cocky for my liking. “We’ll give you all the fruits. With those in your spatial ring, you can ‘Bran things’ should the worst come to pass.”

I rolled my eyes. “Happy to see you’re still so confident in me. ‘Bran things’” I scoffed.

She didn’t waste a second, shooting back. “Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, smirking.

"He was totally rolling his eyes," Simone said, agreeing with Gloria. "But I think he feels properly chastised now. Good job."

"Hey, thank you both." The two of them were like two peas in a pod, especially after their work on the trial together. 

I saw the central castle up ahead and darted in through the door. Spotting Merlin resting by the entrance, she pushed off the wall as I entered. 

"How'd you do?" Merlin asked when I appeared. 

"Is that Merlin?" Simone's voice came over the walkie-talkie, causing the woman in front of me to frown. 

"Merlin, wait till everyone's here to give a full report,” I said to her before talking into the rockie-talkie. “I'm going to hang up on you and check the inscriptions on the castle. I love you both. Hurry your asses here." I clicked off the rockie-talkie and stowed it away in my spatial ring. 

I nodded at Merlin, giving her at least some form of acknowledgement before sweeping through the castle to the room where I had laid hundreds of inscriptions. The whole thing glowed with my blood. I began activating several of them from a central console.

It was easy to build a room like this with enough time and someone like Merlin to shape the stone. 

As I began to play with the console, a large inscription in the center began to glow and show a map of the area. Most of it was covered with a faint gray fog. Meanwhile, the center was outlined in a ring of green dots. Three of the green dots had X's over them, having been smashed somewhere during this part of the trial. Meanwhile, within the ring there were a handful of blue dots heading in this direction. I easily picked out the paired blue dots to be Simone and Gloria. The one lone dot was likely Antonio. Meanwhile, the two groups of four had to be the rest of his guild. 

"Good, looks like they didn't encounter any more trouble," I said to Merlin as she studied the screens next to me. I activated another few buttons on the console. This time, red dots peppered the view. My quadrant was empty save for two lone dots. Merlin's was mostly empty, with an even spread of red dots. The other half had some clusters, some lone dots, and to my surprise, one hulking red spot in the northwest quadrant. 

"Those must be Lasher's," she said, pointing to her own quadrant, glancing at me. "How did you deal with them?" 

I grinned at her. "I lured them to the surface using a paralyzed serpent. Took me an accident to figure that one out. But once I had it figured out, it was relatively easy to keep bringing their main bodies to the surface so I could take care of them. Not to mention, the Lasher's dropped fruits." 

The last part of my comment made Merlin's eyes snap open wide, and that constant feigning of disinterest disappeared. "They had fruits?" she exclaimed. 

"Yep," I grinned back at her. "That, and if you kill other initiated, apparently they drop the fruits they've already eaten." 

"Bran," Merlin said, her tone warning. 

I held my hands up in surrender. "They came after me and wouldn't leave me alone even after I used one of the castles to hide. They had a lightning mage that was far faster than me." 

Merlin scowled, but the look wasn't directly at me. "Idiots. They weren't even close to being your match, were they?" 

"On paper they were," I said, shrugging. "It was clear they'd already eaten some fruits, and their stats were close to mine. However, inscription played a significant role. Using the castle I was able to deal a decisive blow." 

Merlin's scowl deepened before it washed away, as if the tide of the next moment carried it. "I suppose that's all that can be done then. They're going to keep going after you and will just have to learn the lesson the hard way." 

I nodded. It was my intention to keep as many initiated alive as I could, but given the tenacity at which they came at me, I could only snuff them out. I certainly wasn't going to roll over and die. 

"Did you encounter any?" I asked. 

"Two groups, but they left me alone. I will say, one group required the others to argue briefly before making the wisest decision of what otherwise promised to be very short lives. But they came to the correct decision and got to live another day for it," Merlin grinned. 

"However, I'm very worried about that." She pointed at the red dot. "Is there any way you can check for other initiates rather than monsters with these inscriptions?"

Merlin's comment about locating other people reminded me of another check I wanted to complete. I pulled out a talisman and a shoddily made rangefinder for Nyx, then began to wrap the talisman around a bent coat hanger.

"What are you doing?" Merlin asked.

"Checking for the fourth member of our group that entered." I said distractedly.

"The Gorgon?" Merlin asked.

"Yes, I guess with the change and the trial, perhaps she'll join us." Inwardly, I thought it was very possible that if some demon was grooming her to be possessed, he would throw her back into the trial at this point to collect even more rewards. After all, eating more fruits would mean lower spirit and higher stats, exactly what the demons wanted.

I finished setting up, and even before then, as I held her talisman, I could feel the slight pull that told me she was once again in the trial. I let out a breath, wanting her close to me again.

Suddenly, my mind filled up with images of Nyx and I realized that I might have grown a little more attached than I thought. Once again, I was different in this life. When time came, I doubted I’d pick the Wandering King again. There were too many things tied to me this time. Too many things I wanted to protect.

I put the rangefinder together and held the bent coat hanger as it tugged slightly. Loosening my grip, I pivoted and glanced at the map before checking my direction and trying to pick out which dot belonged to her.

However, the result made me triple check everything. By all indication, it seemed Nyx was directly up by the giant dot.

"What?" Merlin asked. She must have read some expression on my face.

I glanced at her before pointing up towards the giant red dot. There were a number of other dots there, but it was easy for her to know which one I was gesturing towards. After all, it was the one that any of us would be concerned with seeing. "She's near that, or at least in that direction."

"Check again," Merlin said

But I shook my head. "I already triple checked. Now let me see what I can do."

I focused on the inscriptions. It would be hard to pick out initiated from monsters using the system I built. It was essentially only tracking movement. The other dots showed up as a different color because they held talismans that I had created. Instead, I gripped the console, drawing on the actual vision talismans as my mind split into over 2,000 separate sceneries. The move gave me a massive headache, and I could already feel a small trickle of blood running down my nose, but it was worth it for Nyx.

Quickly, I sorted out all of the vision talismans not in that quadrant, easing the strain on my mind and body considerably.

Then I began to flip through the remaining views one after the other, trying to find Nyx and the giant monster.

Several of my talismans disappeared from my control. If it had been a single talisman, I would have chalked it up to a lucky scratch by one of the Garrotes. However, over a dozen going out at once was some large-scale attack.

The other talismans showed a bright flash, and I quickly swept away any that weren't showing me anything before one showed me a raging inferno.

Fire billowed down from a hulking form in the darkness, landing on the pine forest while swirling tornadoes of fire spun away. The light was barely enough to illuminate the edge of the massive creature, and I wished I was looking at it with my own eyes so that I could use Soul Gaze, because it was quite the oddity.

Standing what must be at least ten stories high was the head of a raccoon, patches of hard scales showing through the thin fur on its muzzle. I thought raccoons were rather cute, but this thing had a nefarious angle to its eyes and face. Or perhaps the giant gout of fire coming out of its mouth and the pair of even larger, draconic wings flapping behind it gave it the insidious presence.

"What?" Merlin asked again, and I picked out a talisman so that she could see what I was seeing and slapped it to her forehead before she could react.

Merlin gasped. "It's so cute!"

"What's cute?" Simone asked, having come into the castle behind me while I was caught up looking through the inscriptions.

One look at me and my nosebleed caused her to frown before she peeled the talisman off of Merlin's head and slapped it on her own. "Well, that is kind of cute."

Gloria then got the talisman pasted to her head. "It's like a raccoon dragon? Not sure why you all think it is cute."

"All of you, whether it's cute or not, doesn't matter. What matters is that Nyx is near it, and we need to go get her." With the new objective in mind, I was already forming my plan.