by Arthur Stone
Handling one wisp was easy enough. I would not attack two. Perhaps with Beko at my side, but he could not yet even stand.
“Beko, how are you feeling?”
“I don’t know. I’m sleepy, but I can’t go to sleep.”
“Just don’t die, OK?”
“No one dies of wisp poison.”
“Why did you yell at me to kill the one that stung you, then? Revenge?”
“Revenge? Why would anyone take revenge on a wisp? It’s not a person. It’s not a thinking being.”
“Then why did we have to kill it?”
“Wisps don’t work on their own. They paralyze anyone who walks among the cystos. Once the wisp stings the hunter, it goes to tell its master that the prey is ready. The master comes and claims it.”
“Master?”
“A beast called a rukh.”
“A strong beast?”
“Of course.”
“What kind of beast?”
“I don’t know. No one has ever told stories about the rukh, because no one has ever seen one. Those who have—well, they don’t tell any more stories ever again. Not even Degree 20 Enlightenment can save you from a rukh.”
“What about degree 40?”
“Why would someone with degree 40 hunt the land of the cystos? The rukh would never come for such a man, because that man would easily kill all its wisps. They would be unable to paralyze him. The rukh only comes for the paralyzed.”
“Maybe he’s not that strong, then, if all he can catch are invalids?”
Beko turned his head to look at me, fear in his eyes. “Ged, don’t even think like that. Chaos has passed through these very lands. I know we’re winners and all that, but this is a rukh we’re talking about. A rukh!”
Chapter 38
The Wisdom of Chaos
Degrees of Enlightenment: 0 (337/888)
Shadow: 337
Attributes:
Stamina: level 7, 350 points
Strength: level 4, 200 points
Agility: level 5, 250 points
Perception: level 3, 150 points
Spirit: level 2, 100 points
Energy:
Warrior Energy: 150 points (+4.89)
Mage Energy: 100 points
Talents:
Extreme Boatman (tier 3): 10/10
Fishing Connoisseur (tier 3): 10/10
Cure Wounds (tier 3): 10/10
Throwing Knives (tier 3): 10/10
Apprentice Navigator (tier 3): 10/10
Free Talents:
Spinning Rod Master (tier 3): 10/10
States:
Equilibrium (15.44): level 15
Enhanced Enlightenment (0.79): level 0
Shadow of Chi (0.69): level 0
Measure of Order (3.28): level 3
The dark shape of another wisp appeared in the fog. Like the others, it approached me at a relatively slow speed, moving in a straight line.
I gave the wheel ten more turns, and the ridiculous creature continued as if hypnotized, a dozen paces away from me.
I stopped turning the wheel and pushed the rod out to the left as my right hand drew a knife. I threw, ready to grab the spear I had stuck into the ground in case I missed.
You are using cunning to attract the wisp’s attention. You have tricked the wisp. You have dealt significant damage to the wisp. You have dealt fatal damage to the wisp. The wisp is dead. You have defeated the wisp. This creature is part Chaos (Chaos Power 5).
You receive:
Lesser Chaos Mark x12
Lesser Attribute Power x1
Lesser Concentrated Warrior Energy x1
Lesser Universal Chaos Talent Mark x2
Lesser Enhanced Shadow of Chi State x1
Lesser Enhanced Measure of Order State x1
Lesser Primal Essence x1
Lesser Standard Universal State x1
The wisp is a part Chaos creature.
You receive Emblem of Valor x1
What was that, the 70th wisp I had killed? The 80th? Something like that. What mattered was that my method was nearly perfect.
I was an intelligent opponent, after all. The first thing I had considered was how it was that wisps noticed their prey. Vision was not much use in a fog so thick, but still, they could notice you from a distance. Did the balls of poison have some kind of talent that let them see through the mist? Or was their sense of hearing just that good?
I suspected the latter immediately. After all, the first five wisps had not dropped me a talent mark related to finding prey in fog. Of course, since Chaos skills were so rare, this was not incontrovertible evidence. The creatures’ behavior and body structure was suspicious. A flying, buzzing, hollow ball with strange, perforated appendages on its sides and front. They literally deflated when punctured.
Also, their flying was awkward, at best. Their lift was fine, but their acceleration, stopping, and yawing from side to side looked like a blind man groping for a stair rail.
I decided to test their hearing.
How? Not by approaching them and shouting, of course.
That would have been great if I was looking to encounter a swarm of wisps, personal paralysis, and then an audience with the rukh himself.
That would make for a great story. A great, untold story.
Taking stock of what we had available, I soon devised a simple and reasonably safe way to lure the creatures. Fishing was my primary specialty. I put a bunch of lures at the end of my line, with no hooks attached. It came down to a weighty enough load, which tinkled when it moved. I could cast it far enough and make a lot of noise, which was exactly what I wanted.
Then, I wandered the edge of the red lands for a long time, listening for the buzzing of the wisps. I noticed no patterns in these sounds—the concentration of the creatures varied greatly from place to place and from time to time.
I began to select the places and times where the wisps showed minimal activity. I would make a rapid push forward of about fifty yards, swing the spinning, sending the clanking bundle flying—and then retreat to my start position, unwinding the line behind me.
Then, I would start jerking the line a little bit, creating some noise at the other end. Sometimes, the wisps would ignore this, and I would have to start all over. Other times, numbers of them would fly over, and I would hear two or more creatures buzzing. When this happened, I stopped jiggling the rod and waited for the creatures to calm down.
I wanted to lure only one at a time so that I could deal with it easily. When I did draw them in, they moved as if hypnotized. Even as close as ten feet from me, the wisp would continue to putter along, staring at the source of the jingling noise. I probably didn’t even need the throwing knives—the spear would have been enough.
But I used the knives. There was no sense taking unnecessary chances.
And so, for two days straight now, I had been massacring wisps. Never did I come under attack from more than one. There was too little space inside the creatures for a decent brain, especially with all the air they had to hold in there. If the local hunters had rods and wits like mine, they could have generated a business from these beasts.
Beko had claimed that the drops were miserly, though. The only thing that could be extracted from them was their poison glands—and that was a risky and unprofitable business. The glands were not a spice, just an ingredient for low-value potions and weak ointments for joint pain. And there was always a risk of encountering the wisps’ master. What if people’s conclusions were wrong, and he sometimes attacked not just the paralyzed but also the whole? Perhaps no one had ever tried to develop a method like mine.
I did not kill wisps everywhere—only near the place we had encountered them the day before yesterday. I wanted to inspect the battlefield and recover my lost knives.
The buzzing had been reduced significantly, but still I decided not to venture further inward. I took a few hours the next morning to fish. There were plenty of kotes here, under the shelf, but most were medium si
ze or larger. I had to pay attention in order to avoid hooking a torpedo-sized fish that could tear my tackle clean off or even pull me off the raft. All the while, of course, I kept an eye out for garpikes.
The fishing trip was rather uneventful. It got us some food and got me some more chi, which I hoped to spend soon on the Artificer talent. My instincts told me that would be a useful addition, and one that I should not delay—since the amulet’s charge would not last forever. I wanted to somehow be able to work with it right now, not after it ran out.
Still, that Chaos talent was the most intriguing for the short term. At last I had enough marks to get it.
You are about to learn the talent Monster Connoisseur. This is a Chaos talent, but it can be learned by your species. The consequences of learning Chaos talents are unpredictable. In order to reduce the likelihood of failure, make sure you eat well over the next few days. Use the strongest spices you can obtain.
This was the first such warning I had ever seen the ORDER provide. Chaos talents must have been rare and protected indeed. I had to follow this advice.
We were too fearful to light a fire, so I had to make do with raw fish. There were gobs of fish, of course, so we could pick the best parts. It wasn’t exactly luxury food, but I wouldn’t go hungry. So I was good on that part.
Spices, though? We had already grown weary of munching on kote brains and livers flavored with precious garpike caviar and hups, the fungi worth more than gold. Many a noble would envy us if they knew our diet here. For breakfast today, I had consumed as much spice wealth as my mother’s entire estate had earned in a year. She had not been the richest noble, of course, but a few dozen peasant families had worked for those left in the Crow Clan by the end.
I made no hesitation to activate the talent mark.
Thankfully, I did so sitting down, or I would have collapsed.
My vision went dark, and my legs felt like strange mounds of wadding. I nearly fell over on to my side. The sounds of the surrounding world had vanished, muffled by the thundering of my heart, which had decided it should make all attempt to jump out of my chest.
This was certainly a unique item.
For a few minutes, I became helpless. All I could do was mentally curse my own stupidity. I should have left the red lands before I began. So what if there were no wisps here, near the outskirts? I didn’t know the complete behavior profiles of these creatures. What if they arranged a massive assault right now?
My death would be swift and stupid. I’d wake up in the digestive tract of this mysterious rukh, and no one would ever even know how I died. Just that the river swept Beko and me away. The ghoul wouldn’t survive without me. We would both die.
Thankfully, none of the buzzing balloons approached my limp body. A half hour passed before the negative effects subsided. Only a slight nausea and weakness remained, and my hands trembled.
Monster Connoisseur talent learned! It has adapted itself ideally to your specie’s capabilities. This is a rare characteristic for Chaos talents. Now, you can develop it, choose various talent branches, and duplicate it. This should not cause any significant negative consequences.
The ORDER was being very sociable today. It was congratulating me on my success. There was even that unambiguous indication that my well-being would not suffer in the future.
Still, I rose and limped back to the swamp. I sat down at the very edge of the red land—any further, and I would have to sit in a puddle—and began to boost my new talent.
Only once I reached level 10 of the 1st tier did I actually investigate my new abilities. They were unclear at first. The user interface ran into all kinds of bugs, glitches, and delays when trying to manage a Chaos talent. But I was a stubborn boy, and undoubtedly clever despite my many mistakes, so within a half hour I knew what I wanted to know.
The talent seemed like a real gem.
I rushed back to the place I had last hunted the wisps in order to confirm my suspicions. Crouching down above the carcass of one, I touched its broken wing with my finger, which looked huge against the bug’s deflated body.
Then, I checked the interface again and involuntarily smiled.
There it is! An encyclopedia with information on a multitude of creatures from the world of Rock was now available to me.
The wisp was included. Whether the ORDER or Chaos itself had composed the writeup that followed I did not know. But it was protracted, and included information known neither to me nor to Beko.
It even mentioned the rukh.
Including information so valuable I wanted to jump for joy.
Wisp carcass. No potential artifacts. No signs of life. No signs of undead life. Danger: This creature’s stinger can cause its poisonous effects for days after the creature’s death.
The wisp cannot see stationary objects well, but it notices the slightest movement. Like its master, the wisp has a poor sense of smell. However, its hearing is excellent, able to perceive the slightest vibrations in the soil (when in walking mode, without the energy of its master).
The wisp is a creature of both ORDER and Chaos, but more of Chaos. Wisps have been encountered ranging from the 1st to the 9th degrees of Chaos. The common range is 2nd to 6th degree. This small creature lives in the lowlands, where cystos grow. It only ventures outside of these regions rarely, and only together with its master. This happens only in dry weather, since liquid water is a powerful poison for the wisps’ master, able to cause significant damage on contact.
Wisps are bound firmly to their master. Adult wisps cannot change masters. They choose their master during the larval stage of their development.
Wisps are able to walk across the red soil on their legs, which are also sensitive organs that detect the slightest vibrations in the soil. Once they do detect any, wisps begin to panic and signal their master. The master will transmit special energy to all panicking individuals, lightening their weight for a time. With this reduced weight, wisps are able to fly at low altitudes for a limited time. But without their master’s energy, the wisp’s small wings cannot lift it, and only help them balance and move on their vibration-sensing legs.
Wisps are not carnivorous. They primarily feed on rukh excrement. Each rukh rules a swarm of several dozen wisps. In rare cases, when a very old rukh is involved, a swarm can grow to a hundred or more individuals.
Wisps are aggressive. Their primary prey is cystos pollinators, which they hunt during mating migration seasons. Once they smell their prey, the wisps rush towards it and sting, injecting a strong paralyzing poison. After stinging, the wisp immediately goes to the center of the swarm, where the rukh is located, and signals the position of its prey with special buzzing patterns. This brings the rukh out of meditation and causes him to move towards the prey, traveling along the ceiling of the cystos structure. Once he reaches the indicated position, he leaps down on the prey, landing precisely and crushing its bones or shell with his immense weight. Then, the rukh swallows his prey entirely. It can even digest teeth or wool. Then, the wisps wait to digest the rukh excrement.
When their master dies, wisps lose their aggression and enter a state of total apathy. They gather by their rukh’s carcass, without responding to any stimulus whatsoever, until they perish of hunger or inactivity.
This description pleased me so much that I barely had the willpower to force myself back to the swamp. I wanted to keep pumping this talent, right here and right now.
But I remembered what had occurred when I activated it. Don’t take unnecessary chances.
None of the specialization choices struck me as particularly attractive. The best I found was Monster Instinct. It allowed me to determine the probability that Chaos creatures were near. But this only worked if the creature’s power level did not exceed the enlightenment degree of the talent user. And as long as the distance wasn’t too great.
For tier 3, I selected Mark Monster. If the description rang true, I could use this talent to mark a chosen creature. It would remain in my field of vision eve
n if there were obstacles between us. The description specified that this was “for a time,” but I didn’t know whether that was seconds, minutes, or hours. Distance limitations were also unclear. It was obvious, though, that the maximum distance grew with talent tier, and that everything depended on the power level of the monster targeted. This talent didn’t just work on Chaos creatures but on ORDER creatures as well. It might even work on humans—though I wasn’t sure about that.
Of course, I could try it out on Beko.
But first I would stay here just a little longer. I wanted to figure out my way around the marker system. Being able to mark monsters and map points was obviously a useful perk—but I wasn’t at all accustomed to it yet.
If I could indeed track the movement of individual wisps, that would provide me important information. Information I needed to finally get out of these foggy lowlands.
