Double-Blind CH13

In the early thirties, while the rest of the world was experiencing a hard come down from the roaring twenties, an Australian Major named Meredith was given a simple task. He was to cull an invasive species plaguing local farmers in a venture later known as The Great Emu war. And he didn’t skimp on resources. Meredith brought a trained army, transported by truck, armed with machine-guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Trained men with machine-guns lost to birds.

I say all this to provide context, for how a less experienced, much more sparsely armed boy might find himself in mortal danger from a field of rabid flowers.

I yelped and dropped my crossbow, grabbing the flower by its stem and tearing it off me. Its mouth was red, its teeth bloody as it snapped at the air. The movements were bursts of ravenous speed interspersed with lifeless stillness. But like a snake, I’d grabbed it too high on the neck to give it an angle to bite me again.

Vines wrapped around my wrist.

I fought back the panic. It was becoming increasingly hard to hold on to, but it had no interest in getting away. Instead, it was snapping towards me, presenting its face as an easy target.

I stabbed straight downward with The Blade of Woe. Unfortunately, it reacted to the movement and snapped down on the blade, holding it in its mouth with a viselike grip. With a painstaking application of torque, I twisted the blade edge up in the creature’s mouth, thrusting the tip and edge back and forth, aiming for whatever primordial lump this thing had that might pass as a brain.

It began to panic, vines unraveling from my arm and sinking into the ground instead. But I was making progress now. There was no way I was letting it go. Finally, there was a tearing sensation of the blade tearing a barrier into something soft. The flower dropped.

The clearing had taken on a more sinister feel now, previous serenity all but forgotten. Every patch of high grass was a suspect, every swath of shadow hid a potential threat.

“Meeeeeeat.” Inhuman voices carried on the air. Mostly satisfied that there was nothing in my immediate vicinity that would ambush me, I looked up, spotting the flowers that had previously sat on the ridge of the clearing. They moved forward slowly on a joint mess of vines, each green tendril needing to sink fully into the earth before the next could move forward.

They’re slow. Slightly slower than human walking speed. But the vines give them range. And if two or more latches onto me, I’m probably finished.

What was the point of starter armor if it was this useless? I glanced down on at the wound on my arm in irritation. It had given me some coverage, but had broken around the most direct points of contact, leaving an oval-shaped imprint of torn skin.

There was a pained whisper below me. I hopped away quickly, glancing down.

The smaller flower was still either dying or severely damaged, fallen helplessly on its side. A single vine tried to propel it towards me, but it was sluggish and uncoordinated. I didn’t have long, but this was an opportunity.

I grabbed it, holding it far from my body and turning its head away from me. Blade of Woe’s effect kicked in. It seemed to only work when I was concentrating directly on a target. The last time I’d used it, on wife-beater guy, all I was able to see was vital organs in red and weak points in yellow. This was different. More detailed. Maybe because I was closer? There was a shade of blue around its mouth and head that probably indicated armor. The petals around its head turned light orange, and I noted a dark red halfway down where its stalk thickened out into a split assembly of vines.

Bingo.

I leveraged the dagger and plunged it into the flower’s stalk. The flower made a brief wailing noise and collapsed. Most of its petals wilted and shed, only a few remaining, leaving spindly brown beneath. Its head twisted unnaturally to face the sun, then grew still.

<Omnivorous flower defeated.>

<System Notification: The skill One-Handed has increased from level 3 to level 4>

<System Warning: As One-Handed is not a traditional Ordinator skill, it will level more slowly than skills attuned to class.>

<Drop received:—>

Little busy here, dammit.

There were plenty of questions to be asked later. Questions like why was I receiving simple skill notifications now? Why had one-handed started at level 3 instead of 1? And what was that penalty about?

But they were questions for a time when I wasn’t in a hostile environment, potentially surrounded by things trying to eat me. I swiped the window away, surveying the oncoming group. They were still tied together, but now I knew where their weak points were.

A plan started coming together in my mind. I was still afraid. But there was a vicious excitement that deafened the fear. So many things in my life felt insurmountable. There were challenges with no ends, battles with no rewards. But this was achievable. And there was a reward as tangible as it was intoxicating.

I was so absorbed in the feeling that the idea of stepping back onto the elevator and retreating never even occurred to me.

I sighted my crossbow and started shooting. One bolt went wide. Another landed in the mess of slithering vines, disappearing all together.

The crossbow was mostly accurate, but its weighting—and more critically, its trigger pull—was vastly different from the handguns my father trained me to use.

It took several tries before a bolt finally reached the target. Its metal tip bounced off the central flower’s stalk. Disappointing, but I’d suspected as much. The crossbow and bolts were both common items, while the dagger was uncommon.

The flowers’ expressions grew more grotesque as they grew closer, their plant-like bodies quivering with anticipation, vines slashing at the air before them.

Fine. I smiled. We do this the hard way.

Just seconds before they were close enough to grab me, I danced away. A vine lashed out, thorns whizzing by my face as I ducked under it instinctually. I nearly stumbled, surprised by my reaction time. I felt lighter on my feet, too.

Agility was a good call. Better make the most of it and get in position.

I moved around the amalgam of flowers, giving them a wide berth as I retreated to the other end of the clearing. There was a small voice in my head, chiding me for not testing my ability more before I was in a life or death scenario, but this was in some ways the ideal situation to explore it. I was up against monsters that were slow and only seriously threatening when they got close.

And sure, I could have experimented more with Probability Spiral outside the dungeon, but playing around with an ability that seemed to innately make things go wrong around a group of people who were both well armed and on edge struck me as a terrible idea.

The monstrous amalgam of flowers seemed to be moving slightly faster now, irritated with the prey that evaded them. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I needed to get them to separate, ideally one at a time.

There was one on the outside left edge that seemed like a good choice. Smaller than the others and slower, practically being dragged by the two at either side.

Probability spiral. I held out my hand and called the ability, aiming for the target flower’s vine. It failed to take purchase, and the flower stumbled. The one on the edge hissed at it with angry scrabbling noises.

I hit it again, aiming this time for the ensnared link that joined them. A joining vine nearly came undone, the target flower pausing to fix it, only partially successful before the others dragged it on.

One more was all it took. The flower on the edge was clearly tired of the target flower’s shit, and broke from the pack even as the others hissed after it. It was faster on its own, but seemed to be expending much of its energy to close the distance. By the time it got to me, the attack was almost half-hearted. I barely moved my head to dodge the lashing vine, catching it in my hand.

I gave it a savage grin, and said the one word I knew it would understand. “Meat.”

Either it was slightly more intelligent, or simply understood what happened to the first flower I killed. It screeched like a banshee as I reeled it in, its free vines scrambling for purchase on the ground. Only when I got a firm hold of it did it begin to fight in earnest before my knife plunged into its core.

One by one, I slew them all using the same tactic. They were simple creatures, slightly more clever in a group, all-but-idiotic on their own. When I discovered that they still needed sunlight and would avoid the shadows that grew longer as the fight went on, it became all but trivial. Even the central flower died easily once I’d peeled off its companions.

<Adaptive Dungeon, Second Floor has been cleared.>

<XP Reward: M>

<Congratulations! You are the first to clear this floor of the Adaptive Dungeon>

<You are currently ranked 1st on the Leaderboard!>

<System error. User name not found. Placeholder will be used.>

<Bonus Reward: +1 to Perception>

A sense of accomplishment washed over me as I collapsed in the clearing, using a small incline of grass as a pillow. Even the headache from the perception increase couldn’t dampen my mood. It elevated further when I finally read the message feed I’d been ignoring.

<Ordinator has reached LVL 4.>

<Ordinator has reached LVL 5.>

That was strange. A huge win but I had to wonder why. The fight was exhausting, yes, but not all that difficult. What was the disparity in experience between this floor and the last? But that seemed almost unimportant when I read the second part of the entry.

<Ordinator has reached LVL 5. A new class ability has been unlocked.>