Awaken Online (Book 3.5): Apathy

by Bagwell, Travis

  Resisting the urge to throw the mold culture in his stupid, smiling face, Eliza pulled herself to her feet and retook her seat at the workbench. “What are you here for anyway?” she demanded.

  “I’m just a bit bored,” the Hippie replied, pacing around the laboratory and inspecting the vials lined up against the wall. He would pick up a container, sniff at its contents or dab a finger inside before placing it back on the shelf. Eliza briefly considered warning him that some of the ingredients were deadly, but then paused. Maybe he would kill himself… wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise?

  The Hippie glanced over at Eliza. “But you never answered my question. What’re you up to?”

  Seeing that the ingredients didn’t seem to be affecting the god, Eliza sighed in disappointment. “I’m trying to see if I can create… well, a living weapon I guess.”

  “Oh really?” the Hippie asked, his voice sounding more excited. In a flash, he was standing beside Eliza. “What are we making? Fire-breathing ants? Armor-plated wolves? Flying, poison-spitting spiders?”

  Eliza just shook her head, gesturing at the petri dish. “Not quite. More like a carnivorous mold?”

  “Is it supposed to be pink?” the Hippie asked in confusion. “Oh, I get it! That’s to throw off your enemies or lure them into a false sense of security!”

  “It’s not pink…” Eliza began and then trailed off as she looked back at the dish and saw the bright pink mold that now rested on the surface. “What? How is that possible?” she murmured.

  Her thoughts were racing as she inspected the dish more carefully. Had she contaminated the sample somehow? Or maybe the pellet contained a dye? Except she knew the pellets were little more than a mash of baked grain – she had helped Alma prepare them herself. So there had to be some other explanation.

  “Maybe it’s just a fluke,” the Hippie suggested, peering at the mold from a few inches away. “A rather charming accident, though. You could accessorize your living weapons to go with your outfit. Oh, or you could create different product lines and open a little shop! Eliza’s Rainbow Rot!”

  “Shut up,” Eliza snapped at the god, and he gave her a wounded expression, clutching at his heart before dropping to the ground as though he had died. “I’m trying to think,” she explained, ignoring his antics. As always, the Hippie wasn’t here to help, he was just distracting her, and yet…

  Something the god had said stuck with her. He had mentioned an accident. Eliza couldn’t help but recall her biology lectures from earlier that week. She had been a bit distracted by being put on the spot. What had her teacher been droning on about?

  “Microevolution,” she murmured to herself as the memory finally came back to her.

  “Micro-what?” the Hippie asked, sitting up suddenly.

  “In my world, plants and animals evolve naturally over time,” Eliza explained as she prepped another dish. There was only one way to test her theory. “Most big evolutionary changes happen over time – sometimes resulting in entirely new species. Like primates evolving into homo sapiens.

  “However, some evolution can happen much more quickly within a single species,” Eliza continued, settling the new dish on the workbench. “Sometimes changes can even be seen within a few generations. Certain types of organisms are more susceptible to this – especially things like bacteria that reproduce very rapidly.”

  “I think…” Eliza said, beginning to channel her mana and watching as a single drop of sapphire mana welled at the tip of her finger. The droplet splashed against the new mold culture a moment later. The mold expanded at a rapid rate, devouring another pellet. Eliza held her breath waiting for… something.

  “Umm, so were we expecting yellow this time?” the Hippie asked.

  Eliza ignored him, staring at the dish. A moment later, an object began to form in the mold. It looked remarkably like a leaf, and it tilted and twisted until its surface was pointed at the nearby window. An excited grin crept across Eliza’s face. Now this was incredible.

  “I think that by accelerating the growth of the mold, I’m triggering some sort of micro-evolution,” Eliza finally said in a distracted voice. “If this place operates in the same way as my world, the cells must be replicating at an amazing rate – with unusual mutations as the result. Like the pink color and that thing that looks like a leaf.”

  “Oookay,” the Hippie said slowly. “So how does this help?”

  “You’ll see,” Eliza replied quickly, already starting her preparations.

  She set to work gathering dozens of the glass petri dishes and prepping the cultures for the application of her Accelerated Growth. She used a few of the dishes as control samples, placing a single pellet in the center of the dish. With others, she tried something different. If she was right and the game was essentially replicating some type of microevolution, she could probably achieve different results if she intentionally introduced specific mutagens into the mix – something to encourage a certain evolutionary path.

  Fumbling around with a few different options, Eliza added more pellets to one culture. She added various ingredients to the others – simple and more complex mixtures of the plants and powders lingering around the room. She was careful to label each culture with the specific set of ingredients she had introduced so that she could keep track.

  As she was walking around the lab, Eliza noticed a batch of small mana crystals lying off to the side. She had never really used the crystals before, but she had seen Alma utilize them on occasion. The older alchemist sometimes used them when brewing complicated potions, dissolving the crystals slowly to add mana or water to a mixture or crushing them suddenly to inject water into the brewing apparatus.

  “This might be interesting,” she said to herself grabbing a few of the crystals and adding them to a petri dish.

  Finally, she surveyed her work. Dozens of cultures were spread across every available surface in the lab. It would be a royal pain in the ass to clean everything up, but this should give her a ton of feedback in a short period of time.

  However, as she glanced around the room, Eliza couldn’t help but feel like something was off. It took her a moment to realize that the Hippie had disappeared. He must have gotten bored during her experimental fugue and gone off to pester some other poor person. On the other hand, at least he wasn’t there touching everything and ruining her samples. With a shrug, she pulled up the in-game system console and created a new worksheet. She was going to need to plug in each culture with its own reference number and ingredient composition and then record the results.

  “This is going to take a while,” Eliza murmured.

  In fact, it took a few hours.

  When Eliza finally came back up for air, the sun had long since set, and the laboratory was illuminated solely by flickering candlelight. Her cultures spanned the entire lab, their surfaces covered in a panoply of substances – only some of which resembled the original gray mold.

  A few of the spores had merely changed color, picking up on the dyes and natural coloring in the mutagens she had added to the dishes. Others had undergone more dramatic changes. Half-formed leaves adorned more than one dish. One of the cultures had mutated to form spindly, almost animal-like limbs that stretched toward other sources of organic matter. A few of the cultures had actually managed to move, and she had been forced to terminate those cultures by tossing them into the nearby fire.

  That had been a little nerve-wracking…

  Now Eliza’s attention was focused on one culture in particular. This mold pulsed with a dull blue glow and she had transferred it from its original small petri dish to a much larger glass plate. She had added one of the water mana crystals to the culture along with some Calypsis Leaf. The mold had absorbed the material and the organic matter in the pellet and now throbbed with an eerie light. However, that wasn’t what was truly interesting.

  Eliza’s hand hovered over the plate, a single pellet suspended in her hand. She took a deep breath and then dropped it. As soon as the
pellet struck the glowing mold, the material seemed to ripple and contorted, blossoming in size as it devoured the organic matter at an incredible rate – growing at a speed she had only witnessed when she was channeling Accelerated Growth. In a matter of seconds, it had filled the entire plate. Then it stopped as it ran out of organic material to feed upon.

  She inspected the mold, and her eyes widened in shock.

  Carnivorous Mold (Mutant Variant)

  This mold has mutated under prolonged exposure to water mana, absorbing local mutagens and allowing the fungus to naturally accelerate its own growth. The growth scale is currently unknown, but preliminary observations suggest that that the rate of cellular reproduction may be relative to available consumable organic matter and the size of the initial spore culture. Further study is required to reveal additional information.

  Eliza couldn’t help but stare at the notification. There was still plenty of work to do to determine the growth rate of the mold and its limitations, but she could still feel excitement bubbling in her chest. Unlike using some sort of flammable oil, a swiftly growing fungus might address all of her problems. It would likely be easy to conceal and wouldn’t require her to ignite or start a fire. Most importantly, it offered plausible deniability, and it would likely grow slowly enough to allow the residents of the farm to evacuate.

  “This might just work,” Eliza murmured, shadows flickering across her face and painting her excited grin in a manic, almost macabre light. She would need to run some additional experiments, but her tentative plan was beginning to look like it might not fail horribly. What could go wrong?

  Chapter 29 - Surreptitious

  Eliza shifted uncomfortably from her perch atop the wagon. After she had agreed to brew the next batch of healing potions for Alma’s local customers, the alchemist had grudgingly allowed Eliza to borrow her wagon and mare. It had taken Eliza some time to figure out how to guide the old horse – who she had lovingly named “Shithead.” She wasn’t certain if the animal had a real name, but Eliza’s version fit perfectly.

  Shithead seemed to take every opportunity to wander off the road to nibble on nearby grass. Or, sometimes, she just wandered off for no explicable reason, and no amount of whipping the reins seemed to motivate the old mare to get back on track. By the time the walls surrounding Tollhouse Farm came into view, Eliza was beginning to wonder if the Hippie had a horse-shaped doppelganger.

  Eliza now sat on the wagon, looking down at Tollhouse Farm in the valley below as the mare gorged itself on the tall grass that coated the hills. The sight of the compound was sobering. It forced her to face the reality of what she planned to do, and she spared a furtive glance at the bed of the wagon behind her, where barrels had been stacked in neat rows. They were filled with a simple salve to help the sheep fight the infection. It had been expensive to gather the materials necessary to make several barrels of the substance and Eliza was now nearly broke – once again.

  She wouldn’t need this much salve to treat the sheep, but she did need the wagon. How else was she going to transport the massive bell to… well, wherever she was supposed to take it? The Hippie – in typical fashion – had failed to explain where she was actually supposed to deliver the damned thing.

  Eliza patted the pouch at her side. Lifting the flap gently, she ran her fingers along the jars and vials that had been carefully stored inside. She had spent the rest of her funds and time brewing a number of enhancement potions, focusing primarily on Dexterity and Strength – with a few potions that increased Vitality thrown in for good measure. Of course, she had also prepared a set of miniature jars holding small, virulent mold cultures. It was difficult to believe that she was carrying a biological weapon in her worn pack.

  As her gaze returned to the compound, a small sigh escaped Eliza’s lips. She could only hope her preparations had been sufficient. Now that she was finally here, it felt like a swarm of butterflies had been released into her stomach. Yet there was no sense second guessing herself now. She just needed to push forward.

  A couple minutes and a lot of cursing later, Eliza arrived at the gates to the compound, and a familiar voice greeted her. “Ho there, stranger!” There was a pause before she heard the voice continue. “Wait, is that you Eliza?”

  Eliza raised a hand to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight, finally able to make out a familiar face atop the wall. “H-hi Brian,” she replied tentatively. “I have Clarice’s ointment for the sheep.”

  “Great. Just give me a moment, and I’ll open the gate.”

  The entrance groaned as the wooden portal shifted open a few seconds later, and Brian’s smiling face appeared. He was dressed in the same worn leathers, and he had a bow lazily slung over his shoulder.

  “We were starting to worry that you weren’t coming back,” Brian said with a grin.

  “It just took me a while to prepare the salve,” Eliza explained, her gaze dropping to the bed of the wagon.

  “Whew, no kidding. You sure we need all of this?” Brian asked as he circled around the wagon to inspect her cargo.

  “Since we don’t know what’s causing the scratches, I figured Clarice would want some extra ointment. The alternative was me having to make this trek every few days,” she said, having carefully rehearsed her story.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad to me! I could use the company. I have to say it gets a bit lonely standing on a wall for hours at a time,” Brian replied, noting the way Eliza wouldn’t quite meet his gaze. Without warning, he hopped up beside her and took the reins, his fingers brushing hers. “Anyway, let’s get the wagon inside and meet up with Clarice. I expect she’s going to want to put us to work.”

  Eliza nodded numbly, trying not to think about how close Brian was sitting or about the fact that she was carrying a ton of mutant mold cultures that she planned to spread around the compound. She just hoped that she could avoid hurting the residents. Although, she expected that they would probably have plenty of time to flee. If not, she could use her mist to knock them out and then use a strength potion to carry them out of harm’s way. That was the plan anyway.

  “You seem quiet today,” Brian commented as the wagon lurched slowly through the farm compound. He seemed to have no problems directing the stubborn mare, and she could only assume the horse must have some vendetta against her.

  “J-just lost in my thoughts,” Eliza muttered. She ventured a glance at Brian, noticing the way he sat straight on the wagon’s perch and the easy way he guided the unruly horse. “I take it you’re used to dealing with animals… working at a farm I mean.”

  Brian chuckled. “I guess. I’m pretty sure I’m just one notch above incompetent. Clarice says I don’t have the knack for being a shepherd. That’s why I get the luxury of working the walls.”

  “Really? Because you don’t seem to have any trouble with shit- I mean, the mare. I could barely keep her on track on the way here.”

  “This old girl?” Brian asked, twitching the reins slightly and eyeing the old mare with a smile. “She seems like a sweetheart. Or maybe she just senses that I needed a break from sentry duty and is taking pity on me!”

  “Speaking of which, did I get you in trouble last time?” Eliza asked, suddenly remembering that Brian had been missing when she left the farm.

  He grimaced slightly. “I got reamed for leaving my post, but that isn’t exactly unusual. Besides, you didn’t make me leave – that was on me.” Brian sighed in frustration. “Not that I understand what the big deal is. Sure, there are some dangerous creatures living out here, but most don’t dare attack the compound. My job is booooring.”

  Eliza couldn’t help but smile at his tone. That sounded pretty close to her feelings about school – an unavoidable and extremely painful nuisance. “And you aren’t going to get in trouble for leaving again today?”

  Brian grinned at her. “Actually, I had the foresight to give some notice this time. Clarice has been expecting you for a day or two.”

  “Ahh, well that’
s good,” Eliza murmured. As their conversation dwindled into an awkward silence, Brian turned his attention back to navigating through the farm to the northeastern edge of the compound.

  Eliza shook her head when she found herself glancing furtively at Brian out of the corner of her eye. She needed to focus on her quest, not on… well, whatever this was. She discretely pulled a series of small glass vials from her bag, popping the cork lids with her thumb and flicking the little containers at the bell tower as they passed. It wasn’t important for her aim to be perfect, the vials just needed to land near a clump of grass.

  As she spread the mold cultures, Eliza said a silent prayer, hoping that someone – anyone – other than the Hippie was looking out for her.

  She had undertaken an extensive set of experiments last night, and she had discovered that the growth rate of the mutant mold was roughly exponential. If she started with a small culture, it could take hours for the mold to reach what she was calling “critical mass” – that point where the mold had grown large enough to easily extend to other sources of organic matter. She hoped that would give her enough time for the townsfolk to flee and for Eliza to figure out how to steal the bell. Her best option was probably to chug a bunch of strength potions and somehow try to roll the monstrous metal object onto the wagon.

  “And here we are,” Brian announced a moment later, tugging at the reins to bring the wagon up short. He then hopped down and offered a hand to Eliza.

  She just stared at it dumbly for a long moment before accepting his help. It felt weird holding his hand – especially when he kept meeting her gaze and smiling like that. He was probably just being friendly, but she wasn’t really used to that. It felt like she spent most of her time – in-game or out – trying to avoid being noticed.