by Arthur Stone
However, the prizes for the kotes increased substantially. Just now I received four marks for various attributes—and this was the second instance of such a prize. All of the others dropped three, except for only a few who dropped two. The fish themselves were no different than before. They were perfect for my experiment. Nothing larger swam here, in the shallows above the submerged part of the sandbar.
Activating Fishing Instinct, I looked towards the left river bank. Then, to the right. The two sides were equivalent: about a dozen young kotes stayed close to large, isolated rocks underwater, or slowly patrolled back and forth, ambushing any smaller creatures drifting by. They were predators, and were actively feeding now—which meant they also threw themselves at my spoonbait like drunks at beer in a tavern. At this rate we would have the baskets full before long, and it would be time to start stringing them upon on a piece of cord. We would have hundreds of pounds of fish by evening. An amazing profit, especially since this counted as elite food and dropped two kinds of spices. Only rarely could a miner earn more in a day on his ore, and only when he located an unusually rich vein.
The amounts we were hauling in was already the talk of the town. I would be unable to put everything I earned to immediate use—my last round of self-improvement had shown me that. My body could not withstand such large leaps in strength and ability without equally large periods of rest. Perhaps these overloads might have longer-term effects, too. It was best not to risk it.
The gossip was turning to darker places, as well. Many were jealous of our success—after all, a cripple and a poor newcomer had struck it rich. The people might decide us unworthy. Why should a level 2 teenager and a ghoul make more than even the miners? Yes, we were legitimate trading post workers, but that didn’t mean that Ash and his people could or would protect us from everything. We were still expendable.
These thoughts did little to calm my avarice. I needed these fish. Lots of them. Today, I would deliver wheelbarrows upon wheelbarrows of them to the innkeeper. Tomorrow, perhaps I would consider holding back a little.
I activated my talent yet a third time, keeping it running for three whole seconds as I examined the center of the arm of the river running around the beach to the right. This was where the current was the strongest, so few fish swam there, as they were unable to deal with such strong waters. Those who were in the rush were struggling towards the shore or the sandbar, attempting to escape the current.
That was where the larger kotes were hanging out. Not as many fish as in the shallows, but quite bigger. Around twenty pounds on average, and sometimes a good bit more. I was ready to try my chances against them—after all, I was much stronger now.
Sometimes, even in the fastest stretches of the river, I saw swift shadows swim by. These resembled an elongated kote, but I doubted they were the same species. Kotes were always loners, unless the scent of blood or magic drew them together. These newcomers, however, swam in schools of five to seven. My eye was trained well enough now, too, to know which movements belonged to a kote and which did not.
It was likely another species. A predatory species. Fish which ate plants instead of other fish moved more slowly, feeding at a leisurely pace.
It was possible that these speedsters would like my tackle. I saw the dark swirls of eddies here and there. My anchor rope was only twenty-five feet long. If it did reach the river bottom, it would only barely. That was a poor idea, especially in a strong current.
“What do you think about sailing by that cliff?” I asked.
“I’m not in favor of that,” Beko replied. “We just hauled in whole pile of kotes. Why would we sail over there? There are plenty of fish here. Our fish!”
“And there are even more over there. Some of them larger.”
“I think it’s good enough here.”
“We should always be looking for better. But fine, we won’t rush it. This is a good place. How about we talk about this again after lunch?”
Chapter 29
The Treasures of Blackriver
No Stat Changes
It turned out I was right. We did not catch as many kotes in the new location, but those we did snag were noticeably larger in size. Meaning that they yielded more spices. Disproportionately more. A fish weighing double, twenty pounds instead of ten, yielded two and a half times as much spice. Or even three times as much. Most of our squares were in exchange for brains and livers.
One of these predatory fish was particularly perilous. It weighed at least thirty pounds. I sweat profusely as I fought with it. It was just the test I needed in order to be sure of the results of my experiment.
I defeated it, and with dignity. Only once was I scared, as the fish began to yank back, past the stern of the boat. If it passed close to the bottom of the river, after all, the line would become hopelessly entangled with the anchor rope—in which case I would almost certainly lose both my prey and my tackle.
Thankfully, that was avoided. The fish yanked mightily, but I still had plenty of strength left, and I heaved it into Beko’s net. Together, we dragged it on board and knocked it out with a couple of blows to the head.
I was delighted by the rewards this earned me. They exceeded the wealth of five small kotes. Not as rich as that first monster who had pulled me into the drink, but decent.
Beko hooted in glee. “I got an Agility mark!”
“Great!” I joined in his joy.
He only rarely got such rewards, even though he played a big part in catching large fish, clubbing them, and gutting and cleaning them. The ghoul was an ordinary native, after all, not a bottom-dweller like me, so the ORDER didn’t see fit to reward him too much. The whole of yesterday had earned him just a couple of lesser chi symbols—and he had been happy to tears. Beko claimed that sometimes, even though he kept himself busy with work, he did not earn so much in a whole month.
My rewards are like consolation prizes. They’re great because I suck, that’s all. Soon, I would have to face my inability to boost my useful talents higher than certain tiers—since I would have attribute level prerequisites to deal with. I hoped that would not be too soon. For now, I had to seize for myself as much advancement opportunity as possible, while this opportunity existed.
That would give me a chance to avoid groveling in poverty, as long as I worked hard on my Measure of Order. Raising that state to a high value would ensure decent trophies for me even down the road. It seemed to me that, the higher you climbed the Enlightenment ladder, the less the ORDER was inclined to spoil you. I planned to summit the thing, so I had to prepare.
Beko set to work gutting our catch, while I sat at the edge of the platform and started munching on a piece of cheese and a hunk of rye bread. No matter how much I ate, it was never enough for more than an hour. By the time that hour passed, I would be unable to think about anything other than food. I felt like a bottomless abyss had opened in my stomach.
“Want a bite?” I asked the ghoul.
He shook his head. “We need to collect all of the scales and spices. It’s all ours.”
“Keep at it, then,” I replied. “We have three baskets left. This monster will nearly fill two of them—we’ll have to lash any new ones to the raft.”
“We can do that with these wild leek stalks,” Beko replied. “Lots of fish is good. Our fish. Plenty for us to buy lots of delicious food!”
“And clothing and everything else,” I agreed. “First, though, we have to repay our debt. I do not wish to owe anyone. We can handle that today, once we sell this batch. We’ll have plenty left for food. Then, we can figure out how much some good clothing and shoes cost.” Beko was used to walking around barefoot, but that was no way for a winner to live.
And then what? Well, I would keep catching more and more fish, squeezing every bit out of this windfall that I could. The rewards the ORDER granted me were automatically stashed in the pouch I had received from mother. It was now bursting at the seams—I had to find somewhere to stash everything.
Wh
en the ORDER has nowhere to put something, it puts it right in the winner’s mouth. And since marks and symbols can be quite substantial, I had heard some stories about their recipients choking on them.
My case might prove much worse. A particularly successful catch would see the ORDER packing my mouth so full of goodies that it might break my jaw.
Or dislocate it, at least.
I did not want that. This evening, I would redistribute my loot into other containers. I did not want to take it out of the invisible pouch, of course—but there was nothing else I could do.
After finishing up the last bite of bread, I considered an additional raid on the supplies. Fifty yards upriver, a double splash punched into the air. This was one of the signs of a school of those mysterious fish I had wanted to get to know better.
Fishing Instinct convinced me I was right. Six agile silhouettes glided straight down the river, barely deviating from a perfect line, along a constant depth. The only exception in their steadfastness was an occasional rise to the top, producing the double splashes. They were only minor splashes, true, since the fish kept very close to the surface.
My spinning rod had not yet fought with this kind of fish.
I would rectify that shortcoming.
Standing, I activated Fishing Instinct again. Casting a line at these bolts of lightning was a real undertaking.
I had to aim and swing while keeping my talent active. All of that after allowing the school to come closer, of course—my spinning rod and tackle, though unique in the world of Rock, were still primitive and capable of little.
My cast was true: just ahead of the pack. After giving the spoonbait a moment to begin sinking, I hastily began tugging it. Normally, I would have given it more time, but the current was already pulling. Unless I moved quickly, my lure would simply float, exhibiting none of that sparkly rotation that attracted predators of all kinds.
The line tugged back. It was a single pull, sharp and powerful, nothing like the string of lesser tugs characteristic of the kotes. A surge of water erupted from the fish as it jumped clean out of the river. Its dark flesh flew into the air, as high as my eye level—it was not gigantic, but this leap proved that I was in for a fight that could not be matched by any kote.
The battle would be legendary. Once the remarkable fish reentered the water, it made straight for the bottom. For the first time in my fishing career, I had to release the spinner and give the fish some slack. I was not strong enough to hold my prey during this burst of energy.
But keeping it at a greater distance was actually what I wanted. This way, it would not encounter the anchor line. So, I gave the fish more and more slack, biding my time until it ran out of steam.
Even the most powerful creatures in Rock had limited Stamina, and this was not a powerful creature.
The fish’s efforts began to fail. Its pulls grew weaker and its jumps lower. Soon, it did not surge to the surface with enough force to fly out of the water, just to stand on its tail for a moment and then fall, allowing me to pull it another foot closer.
Once it was close enough to the boat, the net went in, the clubs went to work, and then the ORDER recognized the battle as over.
You have dealt significant damage to the garpike. You have dealt fatal damage to the garpike. The garpike is dead. You have defeated a garpike (4th Degree). This is your first victory over a garpike! You played a decisive role in its defeat.
You receive:
Garpike Defeated
Lesser Symbol of Chi x30
Attribute Mark, Agility x5
Attribute Mark, Stamina x10
Attribute Mark, Strength x7
Lesser Standard Attribute Mark x2
Personal Talent Mark, River Battler x1
Personal Talent Mark, Detect Traps x1
Personal Talent Mark, Natural Instinct x1
Personal Talent Mark, Orientation x1
Lesser Standard Talent Mark x14
Personal Talent Mark, Fishing Instinct x1
Personal Talent Mark, Trolling with Spinning Rod x1
First Victory: Garpike! (decisive role)
Medium Symbol of Chi x1
Medium Attribute Mark, Agility x1
The fish most resembled a sturgeon, and it weighed a little more than twenty-five pounds. Its nose was shaped differently, though, and it had plates protecting the carcass from all three sides—its white underbelly being the exception. Scales grew there, too, but they were underdeveloped, like rough warts.
It was a smaller fish, I thought, than that first monster kote I had landed—the one that nearly pulled me under. God only knows what would have happened had I not chanced upon that sunken snag. However, the ORDER told me this here was a level 4 creature, which would be a fair match to my first victory.
The rewards I received were much more generous than usual. Perhaps that was my Measure of Order state at work, or perhaps garpikes had some unique loot-boosting characteristics.
Even with its smallish size, the fish had been level 4, which was nothing to sneeze at. It was a good thing I had boosted some of my attributes.
I was no longer the weakling I had been.
“Look what we caught, Beko! It’s a garpike. No scales, so no need to clean it. Convenient, don’t you think?”
Something was wrong with my ghoul friend. For a moment, I was scared that the fish might have hit him with some deadly fighting talent just before the final club blow. Beko himself looked like a fish out of the water. He stared at the prize, without blinking, and made awkward bubbly movements with his mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked tensely, trying to remember the principles of CPR.
“It’s m— m— mine! It’s mine!” Beko screamed madly. Then he shook his head and calmed down a bit, but there was still something abnormal about his voice. “Ours. It’s ours! All ours!”
“What the hell is up with you?”
Beko turned towards me with a moan of excitement. “A garpike!”
“Right. That’s what I said. A garpike. What about it? You’re behaving like a man skewered by the emperor of pain’s speartree!”
Beko half jumped in the air, chortling deep in chilling glee as he slapped his knees with both hands. If I were responsible for casting a horror film, I would have hired him on the spot. Every audience to the film would have gone gray early.
There was a reason these people were called “ghouls,” after all.
Beko stopped laughing, and his voice was almost back to normal. “You know a lot of things, Ged, but not everything.”
“Right, so what don’t I know?”
“This is a garpike.”
“So?”
“So I’m very happy to see it here. We hardly ever catch garpikes. The whole last year, we caught twenty, and that was only at the end of summer. They’re unusual fish, spawning their eggs at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, instead of in the spring. During that time, they become easier to catch. But not much easier. They’re like kotes, in a way: they avoid nets, they avoid hooks, and often they even avoid the surface. So we don’t catch many of them. Much, much fewer garpikes than kotes make it into our baskets, and like I said, those that do only come between summer and autumn.”
“Judging by your reaction, though, it’s not the garpike’s rarity that has you excited, but something else.”
Beko nodded. “Right. This isn’t a kote. It’s worth more. A lot more.” His eyes sparkled. “And it’s ours! All ours!”
I saw pure avarice overtake his eyes. It seemed like the garpike really was worth a pretty sum.
I tried to calm him down. “What’s so valuable about it?”
“Caviar,” Beko replied.
“What else?”
“At summer’s end, it starts to spawn caviar.”
“Right.”
“Well, that caviar is worth quite a lot.”
“I had guessed.”
“It’s not the most valuable spice in the world, but it’s up there. An
d it’s ours! All ours!”
“More valuable than kote brains?”
“Hah, kote brains is what we use to prank the Carps!” Beko snorted. “No, this stuff is rarest of the rare. Each egg is a square! And this is a female, which means it should have caviar. We can buy so much food now. The best food. We’re not going hungry this winter. We’re not going hungry ever again!”
“If caviar is really so valuable, we should catch as many of these garpikes as we can,” I murmured.
“What? What do you mean?” Beko blinked.
“I’ve seen schools of garpikes pass through here, where the current is strong. I saw them from shore—but I didn’t know what they were. Some sort of variant kote species, I thought.”
“You’ve seen more than this one?” the ghoul’s eyes widened in multiplying greed.
