[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 69 – Rock and Stone

“Nice,” Sose whispered to himself and Cluckley the house, rubbing his paws together with a snicker. “Okay, your turn.”

From unseen hands, a square bag stuffed with beans gracefully arced through the air and landed just slightly ahead of the oppa’s.

“Dang, you’re good, Cluckley!” Sose shook his head. Somehow, the house was still beating him at the Game o’ Beans. Must be on account of all the enchantments and whatever else witches did to create their crazy abodes. “I’m not done yet, though. Sure, maybe you got a winning streak going a decade long, but I can still beat ya!”

Judging by the ethereal clucking that echoed around the living room, the house didn’t appear to agree.

***

Surprising even the Countess, Shrubley’s Copper aura sprang to life. He surged ahead, drawing that wicked sword of his, the [Death’s Razor]. Before Smudge was even aware of the danger overhead, the shrub had leapt through the air and made a wild series of slashes. His sword left a blur of Green essence magic behind.

The coiled ball of hissing and biting snakes fell to the ground in pieces while Smudge the slime bounced along quite happily and utterly unaware that the pattering sound behind him was definitely not rain.

Shrubley landed beside the pink slime and gave him an encouraging thumbs up. For a moment longer, his Coppery aura surged around his leafy body, rustling the leaves as if he were in a high wind, then it winked out.

Despite herself, the Countess was impressed. “Well done, Shrubley. You have more control over your Copper aura than I would have guessed, but I’m willing to bet that little stunt took a lot out of you.”

Shrubley looked around in the cave for any other threats but nodded all the same. He felt more strained than usual.

It had happened so fast that he let the power surge into him without trying to ease into it like he had with the serpentii assassin. The whiplash of going from his normal self to Copper empowered, then back again was staggering.

“Every leaf hurts,” Shrubley admitted as they stepped up to Smudge, admiring the glittering blue essence reflected on his pink body.

“That’s because you strained your body,” the Countess explained. “I don’t know how it works precisely for somebody with a body like yours, but in most other people, what you just did would tear muscles and pop joints out of their sockets. You have to ramp up the power gradually, or at least in stages. Mistress–” She swallowed. “Mistress Ceasewane suggested that we go in fifths.”

“Fifths?”

“Five stages of power, zero to twenty percent, twenty-one to forty, so on and so forth. It provides the body time to acclimatize to the stresses of using an aura.” She looked at him. “You don’t even know what it is you’re doing, do you?”

Shrubley contrived to look abashed. “Not precisely, no.”

Smudge bounced around the essence stone excitedly, but held himself back and looked over at Shrubley to see if it was okay for him to take it.

Shrubley, in turn, looked to the Countess, who said, “He is looking to you for leadership, Shrubley.”

Unaccustomed to telling people what to do, Shrubley shuffled his feet. Stone essence would be a good fit for Smudge. Even Mistress Ceasewane had suggested it. But it would also be useful for Slyrox.

She was a fisticuffs type and preferred to get up close and personal. Stone essence would help her there.

“Are all Stone essences Blue?” Shrubley asked, peering at the azure light coming off the stone, indicating its color.

“Not necessarily.”

That intrigued Shrubley immensely. He began to wonder what else his essences could have been if they were a different color before he refocused his attention.

Since that Stone essence was Blue, then it wouldn’t be as useful for Slyrox after all. She could use it to defend herself, but Stone was heavy. It would slow her down. Smudge was already slow. He was soft and squishy too, and while that meant a lot of attacks could just bounce off, he was still the most vulnerable of the entire group.

Shrubley remembered all too well the mewling cries of Smudge when he and Shrubley had first met. The adventurers had been bad people, or at least misguided. They would have hurt Smudge if he hadn’t stepped in.

He was so small back then. Now he was the size of a beach ball, bouncing around happily without a care in the world.

And yet, he felt bad making this decision for Slyrox.

The koblin, however, watched Shrubley with the same sort of hope and interest. Her ears flopped as she tilted her head to the side.

“Your father didn’t like to be the leader either,” Mistress Ceasewane had told him at the campfire. “He didn’t like the responsibility. But it is always the people most uncomfortable with such power that should have it. They don’t take it lightly, and they make good decisions. People want to feel like they’re being taken care of, that their wants and needs are being considered. It’s a heavy mantle to bear, but if you don’t do it, young man, somebody else will. And they won’t be as considerate as you.”

“Take it, Smudge,” Shrubley told him. He looked at Slyrox. “Sorry.” The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Mistress Ceasewane’s other nugget of advice was not to apologize for making decisions.

“That’s the role of a leader. You do the job in front of you, and you don’t make excuses one way or the other.”

Slyrox gave him a thumbs up all the same, showing that there were no hard feelings, but Shrubley still felt as if he had done something wrong.

He didn’t want to be a leader, he wanted to be an adventurer. Carefree and wild, able to roam wherever he wished.

“Pyuu!” Smudge cried out victoriously and swallowed the azure gem whole. The slime eagerly awaited the powerful surge of a new essence saturating his jelly, just like the Hunger essence had.

[Stone Essence]

(Blue Essence)

(Copper Rank) (★☆ Uncommon)

A rough blue jewel with a faint inner light.

Imprint: Upon use, grants the user the [Stone Essence], provided they have free essence slots.

You have 2 out of 3 essence slots remaining. Bind to a free essence slot?

Y/N

And then… nothing much happened, other than a couple errant plops escaping his outer shell.

If Smudge had any semblance of a brain, some brain cells might have gotten together and put forth the rather reasonable argument that just maybe, just maybe, the slime should offer some sign of mental affirmation to the Shard.

“Smudge?” Shrubley asked gently.

“Pyuu?”

“I think Stone essence doesn’t work the same way your Hunger essence did,” Shrubley suggested.

Slyrox sidled over, inspecting the slime. She prodded his jelly, causing it to ripple. “Short-think Hunger essence being eaten matches style. For Stone? Maybe not so much.”

Smudge looked between them, unsure what to do.

“Concentrate on the essence,” Shrubley told him. “And think, ‘yes’.”

Thinking was still something of a novel concept to Smudge. While he was a newly Awakened monster, he still was very much a slime without a brain. There were certain limitations, particularly for a Mundane Ranker.

Slyrox picked up on Smudge’s ongoing inner struggle. “Could tongue-flaps yes?”

Now that, the slime understood quite quickly. “Stone essence, yes!”

You have successfully bound [Stone Essence].

You gain the essence ability, [Harden].

A thin crust of gray stone crackled around Smudge, turning him into a roughly hewn piece of stone with that silly slime face. He bounced once and then landed with a hearty THUD! shaking the entire cavern with his weight.

“That’s impressive!” Cal said, admiring the way the slime was able to lift its own weight up off the ground as easily as when he was a light and gelatinous pink thing. “You could blend in pretty well around here, I bet.”

Smudge looked up happily and in a very innocent and sweet voice said, “Hard!”

“What did you just say?” the Countess asked in utter disbelief.

“Hard!” Smudge repeated. He liked the way it sounded, bouncing off the cavern walls as it did. “Smudge. Hard!”

“That you are my friend,” Shrubley said, patting him gently.

“Somethin’ off about that,” Slyrox muttered. “Dunno why.”

“I don’t get it,” Cal said. “He is clearly hard. Why is there an issue with that?”

The Countess put her large hand over her face. “Great.”

“Hard!” Smudge said again with even greater glee. He reverted to his pink gelatinous self, bouncing ahead of the group. The cave shook as he changed mid-air into a rock that slammed down into the ground, then back into a squishy slime as he leapt into the air. “Soft! Hard! Soft! Hard!”

“He’s going to be saying that a lot, isn’t he? And there’s nothing in this forsaken world that I can do to stop him,” the Countess said miserably.

“He’ll get it out of his system,” Shrubley assured them. “Let him have this. He’s very new to the whole Awakened business, I think. Plus, he doesn’t have a brain.”

“I don’t have a brain,” Cal said slowly. “Am I dumb?”

“You probably have something up there,” Shrubley told him. “Maybe like a shadow brain.”

“He’s funny,” Slyrox said, giggling behind her mitts. “Weird, but funny.”

“All right kids,” the Countess said, sweeping them up in her long-legged gait. “Let’s be on the lookout for a Water essence before it turns to Ice.”

The air was so cold that it was crystallizing. Little droplets of moisture froze and dropped to the ground with a faint tinkle.

“Would ice be muchly good for mitt-fisting?” Slyrox asked.

The Countess stared a little too long at the koblin. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Frost was gathering on Shrubley’s leaves by the time they decided that they weren’t likely to find any Water essence. Any Water mana that might have existed outside of the strange confluences of Water and Stone was frozen solid with an odd greenish hue.

It was not Ice mana. It was the absolute absence of life and the warmth that manifested from the loss of the Guidance Stone of Vitality. The Countess hurried them toward Cluckley.

The hut was the only thing in the area without at least a little sparkle of frost, and Miranda assumed that was only because of the powerful magic Mistress Ceasewane had imparted to it.

As soon as they were aboard her porch, the witch hut stood up and began to head out. The quarry was closer to Taamra than to the manor. They would need to pass dangerously close to the town. Going over the hills and through river country would take too long, even for the ambulatory witch hut.

It was a risk worth taking.

The air warmed slightly from the heat and life coming off Cluckley, which was a little unsettling, even for a vampyr Lady. She turned to the others. “Listen, before we arrive there are a few things I need to tell you about the manor and what we should expect.”