It wasn't simply quiet in the cave but somehow muffled like in a barrel. There wasn't even an echo. Kongamato were still flying over the crater outside, filling the neighborhood with their cries, their melodious trills rival with a circular saw. But here these sounds came as if through a thick layer of cotton wool.
The closer I got to the surface of the water, the more obvious it became that the lake was illuminated from within by something like underwater mushrooms with soft swaying hats. They drifted smoothly in the water as if carried by an invisible current. The water was clear and transparent so that the light in it spread perfectly, even so dim and shimmering.
I looked around. The lake seemed to fill the entire bottom of the cave, but closer to the walls there were small islands sticking out of it. In the wall farthest from me, I could see a few more holes in the ceiling, much smaller than the central gap through which I had gotten in, but it was also illuminating the interior of this huge dome. The edge to my right was hidden in the shadows. There the ground went up, and several large holes were visible in the wall.
They must have led to the system of adjacent caves, which Hanuman warned me about. I remembered that he was talking about some mother of the pack. Strange. All other kongamato nested on the surface, and the main one was hiding in the underground tank? How would she even get out? Of course, the cave was huge, but not big enough for pterodactyls with a ten-foot wingspan to fly into it. These weren’t bats. I figured that the mother of the pack would have to wait. If she was there, she was probably somewhere by the lake.
I was hovering right in the middle of this picturesque scenery. That was the perfect spot for me. Hanuman said that I needed to look for the deepest cavity at the bottom. And if the fiery tear was a meteorite, then the bottom of the lake should be a kind of funnel, and the stone itself would be somewhere in the middle. The water froze in a still mirror about five feet under me. I didn't even want to break that perfect surface.
"Can you dive?" I whispered to the cub, watching the glowing mushrooms under the water in fascination. "Because we have to."
Before sinking into the water, I moved my armor to the slots to prevent it from soaking. Plus, swimming was going to be easier this way, too. Deprived of his usual support, the cub squeaked in dissatisfaction.
I released the Stinger, and before the rope could get back into the holder on my wrist, I went under the water. The cub seemed not to know how or want to dive, so he stayed on the surface, dabbling. Meanwhile, motionless, I submerged to the bottom.
On the way, I felt good about my foresight in developing the skill of breathing under water of the protective branch of the School of Water.
Water breathing. Using a charge of Pure Qi, the Monk gains the ability to breathe under water. Duration: 1 minute + 5 seconds per skill level.
At that time, I had an excess of Qi pearls, so I got some bells and whistles, some of which I haven’t yet used. Now the breathing under water skill was at the third level due to the bonus +2 to all protective Water skills that I got from the Nuy Va tear. So, it would be almost a minute and fifteen seconds for each Qi charge. To save charges, I decided to try holding my breath first. That way, I would gain another minute or two.
But the very moment I thought about it, something happened that made me almost spit the air out of my lungs.
Those glowing growths, which I took for mushrooms from above, were moving! And they were not even mushrooms but humongous jellyfish the size of a gym ball. Each of them dragged with it a long bundle of thin tentacles, like algae. One of these tentacles touched my arm. The sensation was like a red-hot iron was pressed to my skin. I jerked, snarled, and let out a firework of air bubbles.
Somehow, I managed to calm down and freeze. The pain passed quickly, but I wanted to avoid any sudden movements. The jellyfish floated slowly around me, and their tentacles seemed to fill the entire space down to the bottom.
I had to use the underwater breathing skill a lot sooner than I thought. It felt weird. I made the first breath carefully, expecting that water would rush into my lungs. But breathing was exactly the same as above the surface of the lake; although, my body had the sensations of being under water. However, there was a bigger problem to take care of.
There was a lot of jellyfish around, but this was good because they illuminated the entire area down to the bottom like live neon lamps. I was just unlucky enough to get into the middle of their group and had hard time getting out of there, while avoiding the poisonous tentacles. It did get easier. I swam further in search of the deepest and darkest cavity. Given that the bottom of the lake was like a large funnel, I found this cavity quickly.
At the bottom, partially embedded into the rock, lay a black like coal stone five feet in diameter, which, at a first glance gave the impression of a foreign body. At first, I was horrified: how was I going to pull this behemoth up? But, having come closer, I saw that this rock had cracked, and its halves were opened like a shell of a pistachio. Inside, there was a cavity with shiny uneven walls as if drenched in solidified mercury.
I got close and grabbed the flaps of this open geode with both hands. It was a little dark inside, and I didn't want to put my hand in it. Given that Artar was full of tricks and surprises, some crazy beast could easily be hiding in there and could snap my hand right off. I even took my staff out of the quick access slot and fumbled in the cavity. It seemed safe.
Inside the geode was as empty as a walnut shell. But only at first glance. I felt the walls with my hand and found a heavy piece of metal the size of a fist. It was as heavy as lead.
I fished the nugget out and fiddled with it in my hands.
Fiery tear. The class of the object: legendary. A nugget of pure adamantite.
Weight —9643 lbs.
"The moment the Azure Dragon breathed the first sparks of life into Artar, the universe responded with waves of pain. The ocean was boiling and crashing against the ground. The heavens wept fiery tears. Violent storms tore the surface of the earth. However, when all was quiet, in the sky flashed a rainbow, and the sunlight sparkled on the waters of the Lake of Life."
Yes, everything was clear without the description. Adamantite couldn't be mistaken for anything else. It didn't look like mercury, it was more like a molten mirror, slightly glowing from inside.
How much is it worth, I wonder?
Even according to conservative estimates, it was much more precious than gold of the same weight. One could find out by putting it as a lot at the game auction. And this hasn't happened yet because no players have ever come across this legendary metal. But it wasn't even about the money. What could an adamantite weapon do in the right hands? It really could decide the outcome of a fight. And sometimes one fight decides the outcome of an entire war…
I didn't spend much time admiring my discovery and immediately put it into inventory. I had mixed feelings, just like I did with the Eye of Dahamesh. On the one hand, it was joy and delight. But a fair admixture of fear ruined everything. Once again, I was technically stealing the trophy from under the noses of those who were supposed to get it.
It's too early to rest on our laurels. First, I gotta get out of here before I’m noticed. It seems to be your specialty, Mongoose.
As soon as I came to the surface, I started looking for the cub. I was seriously worried that he could have drowned or got caught in the tentacles of jellyfish. But as it turned out, the baby was perfectly fine, just floating, and much more wary of the silent glowing monsters.
Trying not to splash too much with my hands, I swam away from the center of the cave to the wall, which had the side passages. Once ashore, I put my armor back on and looked around.
Going back through the crater in the ceiling of the cave was out of the question. It was too high, and I couldn't reach it with the Stinger. In addition to that, a whole horde of kongamato was at the top, and there was no guarantee that I'd be able to slip past them a second time. However, I could try to get through those caves. According to Hanuman, the
y also lead to the surface. Although, after the setup with jellyfish in the lake, it was hard to believe the monkey king again. Why the hell wouldn’t he warn me?!
I gently rubbed the long, swollen burn on the back of my hand. There was almost no pain, but if I touched it, it responded with a new flash similar to a current.
Man, oh man. My own fault. I should have looked around. I got off easy.
I headed away from the lake in the direction of the largest gap, but the cub wasn't fond of this idea.
"What's up?" I asked.
He suddenly froze and trembled. It seemed that he was going to become Hanuman's oracle again, but instead of the familiar voice, the monkey king sent me another vision. It was fleeting, fifteen seconds or so. But it was more than enough.
It felt as if I had detached myself from my body and slid forward in a disembodied spirit towards the tunnel into which I was about to go. I dove into the damp musty darkness that was giving off a strange musky smell. I saw the walls covered with fluffy moss and plastered with dozens of large, football size whitish eggs, glued together with viscous odorous mucus. I saw the horror lurking in those dark depths. I looked for a moment into its red and black eyes, of which there were eight pairs and which were located one under the other on an elongated black muzzle, ending in crescent-shaped mandibles. I saw hard and smooth like polished wood, chitinous legs with serrated, like a saw, outer sides. The beast’s belly was huge, swollen, and deathly pale as a fresh corpse. I saw the walls of the eggs, bursting with a sickening sound, and the many-legged evil getting out of there.
The mother of the pack.
When Hanuman told me about it, for some reason, I thought he meant kongamato. But pterodactyls filled the surface of these rocks. Here, in the depths, reigned a completely different creature. A huge, ugly spider the size of a buffalo. The red vanara was right—the mother should not be disturbed. I didn't even want to see her again, let alone fight her. So it was better to get out of there through one of the secondary passages, for example, the one that was above me. The mother of the pack wouldn't fit through that one.
The rock tunnel was similar to the long and winding wormhole, but in the end, it led me to the adjacent cave, vast and hilly with a low ceiling, baring snarled fangs of stalactites. The first thing that caught my eye was orange spots of light dancing in the distance.
Torches!
They were still far in the distance, and I couldn't see people yet—at this point, they looked like huge blurry shadows. There were only a few options for me. Hardly anyone, except players, used open fire in the jungle. Terekhov's squad wouldn't step underground. The guys were probably still fighting kongamato on the southern boundary of the nesting site unless they have already brought the genocide of these poor creatures to a logical conclusion. The probability that a squad of strangers would be wandering here was also extremely small. So that could only be Genghis.
Hell, I thought I'd have more time!
Chapter 18. Pinpricks
Fast traveling is not easy in Artar. There are no teleport systems here if you don't count the ability to instantly move between the Great menhirs, located at the stronghold. To do that, the player must "open" the appropriate menhir—that is, at least once to reach it on foot. I also have not seen mounts faster than conventional horses.
So the only form of transport that allowed for long distance travel was Shadowbirds. But those were rigidly attached to the system of their towers; plus, they were not very fast. For example, it took more than half an hour to get to Uobo from Golden Harbor with a layover. These flights weren't cheap, either.
Largely because of this, the expansion of players to the West was moving very slowly.
But still, every player had one way to instantly overcome the distance of several hundred yards to a couple of miles by using the standard Return spell. However, it was just not that easy. For example, it could not be used in combat or when you were bound or trapped. If you suddenly decided to go back to the place of teleportation, you could only do it by foot. If you didn’t choose one of the Great menhirs you've discovered as your destination, you'd be thrown to the nearest ordinary one. So when you were in an unfamiliar location, you had no idea where you could end up. Finally, rollback of the Return was so long that you could only use it a couple of times per game session. Therefore, players usually kept this spell in a deep stash as the last resort and used it when they needed to get out of Artar, but were reluctant to look for the nearest menhir.
For me, it was one of those times when an emergency evacuation was the only way. I could, of course, have tried to sneak past Genghis's squad using the shadow crystal. Sixty seconds of invisibility... But I thought my chances were too slim. Besides, it was easy to uncloak a person with dusts or certain spells. Genghis's detachment probably had those—they weren’t slobs like us.
Anyway, having estimated my chances, I decided not to risk it.
After the darkness and the musty air of the dungeon, the jungle met me with such bright light and vivid colors that I involuntarily closed my eyes.
The stone block of the menhir was located on a flat, as if cut with a knife, top of a small gray rock hanging over the river flow. Far to the right, upstream, a flimsy suspension bridge swayed above the water. Its rope railing was completely covered with vines, and between the boards of its flooring, holes gaped all over the place. To the left, the river widened, crashing against the sloping boulders sticking out of the ground. There were several dozen of them—the foaming stream of water was a bath for a whole herd of petrified bison. On the opposite bank, thickets of bamboo rose like a wall, covering the view behind it.
Hmm. Well, where did I end up?
I checked the map and got my bearings. It turned out that the kongamato nest was to the northeast of me, across the river. I could see the familiar yellowish rocks only when I climbed higher up a tree.
I sent a couple of messages to Terekhov in the chat. In the first one, I said that I had the fiery tear, and there was no need to linger near the nesting site. In my second message, I sent my locale.
Soon after, I received a voice message:
"Great work, Stan! But, to be honest, we have already retreated. We killed about thirty of these creatures, but then another crowd showed up. Even bigger than the previous one. We had to run into the jungle. Did you see Sting there? You're next to the menhir, right?"
"What, did he die?"
"Who knows. One of the creatures took him somewhere. Apparently, to feed the chicks. Wait for us. We'll be there soon. There seems to be a river ahead…"
I was quite satisfied with this state of affairs. This sortie was nerve-wrecking, so now it was time to relax a bit and heal myself. The pain from the jellyfish tentacle still persisted.
Freaking Hanuman! He warned me about the mother of the pack at the last moment, but forgot to mention the fact that the lake was infested with deadly jellyfish! What if I dove straight into the group of them? The whole plan would have gone down the shitter!
Anyhow, the monkey king kept his word, and that was good. We had the fiery tear, and Genghis was left in the lurch. He would lose a lot of time searching the cave before realizing that it was empty. However, given that we nearly collided, we didn't have much of an advantage.
I took my find from inventory and examined it again, reading the descriptions. Sadly, I found that even though the system gave the nugget "legendary" rarity rank, it could not be attached to an individual player. Therefore, if I fell off a branch, and my body was found by another player, they could just take the nugget from my inventory along with the rest of the loot.
That was dangerous.
On the other hand, it was understandable why the fiery tear wasn't attached to the player. It was just a piece of metal that could be divided, melted, or processed. It was going to change a lot of owners before becoming a weapon or item of armor. Even after that, it could belong to more than one person in its lifetime.
Together with me, the cub also examined the shi
ny nugget, hanging over my shoulder. Apparently, in his system of values, adamantite took a much lower level than a fat bright blue caterpillar the size of a large banana, crawling on a branch near us. It brought him to childish delight, mixed with a fair share of apprehension. The caterpillar was going about its business, moving directly toward me. The cub jumped off my shoulder and got closer to it, but he didn't dare touch it. He squeaked, pointing at it with his tiny finger, as if saying: “Look at the damn thing I found!”
Ew, that's gross! I nudged the insect with the end of my staff, shaking it off the branch. It wasn't very humane, of course, but I didn't want close contact with that thing at all. The critter resisted to the last, clinging to the bark with its tiny sticky legs. But it couldn't compete with the great Mongoose, the Master of the element of Water! Finally, it gave up, curled in a ball and plopped down, giving out a loud verbal curse at the landing.
I was taken aback for a second. Did I hear it right? I hung from a branch, peering into the bushes. Ha! Well, of course, who else could it be!
Sting must have just revived near the menhir and now fastidiously shook off the creature that had fallen on him from the top.
"What the hell!" The archer muttered under his breath. "Freaking nasty, everywhere I go!"
He looked strange, as if he had climbed out of a sewage.
"Oh, Mongoose! Here you are! Did you get it?"
"I did," I chuckled, patting the bag.
"Ugh, good, it was quite a shit show..."
Wincing in disgust, he removed some scraps from the hood with his fingertips.
"What did you get yourself into? Terekhov said kongamato took you."
"Well, if that's what you call these fucking pterodactyls, then yeah. One of these winged reptiles seized me and took me to its nest. Which, in fact, was a real mess. Remains of half-eaten corpses. These stupid chicks screeching..."
He winced and scratched himself mechanically below his back, where he wasn't covered by hard leather armor. He must have remembered something unpleasant. Grunting like an old and sick grandpa, he sat down on the ground, leaning back against the menhir. He looked horrible: earthy face, dark circles under the eyes. A posthumous curse. It'll take him ten minutes to get over it.
The Azure Dragon Page 24
