by A F Kay
Sift shook his head. “It means people go crazy in the water if they get in trouble. In their panic, they’ll drown the people trying to save them. I’m not the best swimmer, and I don’t have any Spirit. It means if you get in trouble, you are on your own.”
Ruwen’s mouth went dry as he nodded.
Sift turned, ran, and dived into the water.
A timer under Ruwen’s map started: 10:00, 9:59, 9:58
Chapter 15
Ruwen walked to the edge of the beach, where it butted up against the cavern wall. He searched the water to make sure nothing would jump out and grab him. Wondering how cold the water was, he stuck his hand in the lake.
A twenty flashed on his Health bar, and his arm went numb.
“Ouch!” Ruwen screamed and fell backward.
He shook his arm to get feeling back and dried off his hand. Was the lake electrified? Then he remembered the Coiled Lightning Rings on his fingers and the warning from Bliz to avoid water.
The timer had reached 9:42, and Ruwen quickly removed all five rings and put them in his Inventory. His Energy Regeneration plummeted from 28.73 per second to 3.73 per second.
Ruwen frowned as his Energy bar flashed red and dropped by three every second. What was going on? He opened his Profile and found his Energy Regeneration: -2.72 per second.
The timer had reached 9:35. Sift would be creating a diversion soon, and Ruwen needed to take advantage of it. Why was his Energy Regeneration negative?
He focused on his Energy Regeneration, and another window appeared.
Plant-Based Organism (Moss): 0.20 Energy per second
Plant-Based Organism (Alchemy Lab): 0.25 Energy per second
Divine Sliver (Amulets): 6.00 Energy per second
The six secret boxes Bliz had given him to carry! What was he going to do? Big D had made a big deal about how important the boxes were and how much trust she had placed in him. He couldn’t leave something so valuable just lying around, and he didn’t have anywhere safe to put them.
The water on the right side of the lake, about one-third of the way across, roiled. Sift’s distraction had begun. Ruwen’s Energy had fallen eighteen points already, and he had dropped to two hundred fifty-five.
Opening his Void Band, he removed one Coiled Lightning Ring and slipped it on. His Energy bar stopped dropping and ticked upward. Gritting his teeth, he made sure the Scarf of Freshness covered his nose and mouth and then stepped into the lake.
The clearness of the water made the depth hard to guess. What had looked to Ruwen like a drop of ten feet turned out to be much deeper. As he continued to sink, his ears began to hurt, and he moved his jaw back and forth to pop them.
The water pushed hard against his face, smashing the scarf and goggles against his skin. Worst of all, a constant pain shot from his right hand all the way up his arm. His Health bar flashed a two and then would tick up a tiny bit as his Health Regeneration of 1.31 tried to compensate for the damage. But the math was simple. At this rate he was losing 0.69 Health a second, and his one hundred fifty-five Health points would be gone in three minutes and forty-five seconds.
Ruwen finally touched the bottom of the lake, and the timer read 9:05. In reality though, he didn’t have nine minutes. He only had until the timer read 5:20 before the ring killed him.
Breathing took a little more effort as he sucked in air through the wet Scarf of Freshness. He scanned the area for large Octorse but didn’t see any. Sift had said the gem would be on the far side of the lake just past the glowing pillar.
Ruwen tried running, but that didn’t work very well in the water. In addition, stalagmites covered the floor of the lake, making a direct route to the other side impossible. After trial and error, he found a skipping jump worked well, and he made good time around the edge of the lake.
The water had been cold when he’d first entered, but his skin had numbed, and it no longer bothered him. Certainly not as much as the arcing pain in his right arm. The water made sounds seem odd, and a dull groan, like metal bending, reached him. Ruwen didn’t know if he had heard something Sift was doing or if Octorse sounded like that as they charged into battle.
Scanning the water, he still didn’t see any monsters as the pillar of light passed by in the distance to his right. The gem would be not that far past the glowing pillar. The timer had reached 6:30, and his Health bar had reached thirty-seven. There was no way he would make it to the gem, which he couldn’t even see yet, and out of the water in a minute. He needed to get the ring out of the water and regain some Health.
Ruwen jumped upward and pushed his arms down, but he only rose a few feet before being pulled back down to the bottom. His heart pounded as panicked thoughts of drowning flooded his mind.
It only took a second to understand why. Ruwen’s Fastidious Blade, attached to his right hip, only weighed 1.2 pounds, but his Baton of a Thousand Uses weighed a hefty twelve pounds. He unclipped the baton from his left hip, opened his Void Band, and shoved it in.
Ruwen immediately floated upward, and he felt his right hand being pulled toward his Void Band. He realized the water was draining into his Void Band. Not a bad solution if he had a couple of months, but he didn’t, and he also didn’t want to carry around a bunch of lake water.
With a tiny bit of concentration, he pushed the water that had already made it into his Void Band out the bottom. His left arm jerked away from his body and pulled him to the left. Ruwen stopped pushing the water out the bottom of his band, and his body straightened as he continued to float upward.
As Ruwen broke the surface, he smiled. The water he’d pushed out the bottom of the Void Band acted like a water geyser, propelling him in the opposite direction. He could convert his Energy into underwater propulsion!
The timer read 6:10, and Ruwen’s Health bar flashed red as it reached twenty-three. The Coiled Lightning Ring, now out of the water, stopped causing him damage. His normal Health Regeneration of 1.31 took full effect, and once again, he was happy to have the plus one Health from the Ring of Exploding Regeneration. He concentrated on the missing portion of his Health, and a value appeared telling him how long, at his current Regen rate, it would take to get to full Health: one hundred seconds.
That meant when Ruwen reached full Health, he would still have 4:30 minutes on the timer. But the damage from the Coiled Lightning Ring would only give him 3:45 minutes before killing him. He wouldn’t have time to do this again, so his actual time limit was when the timer reached forty-five seconds. That’s when he would die.
As Ruwen treaded water, he wondered if his Campfire spell would work on the surface of the lake. Even if it did, he didn’t want to risk drawing attention to himself. The water across the lake and behind him still bubbled and frothed, and he hoped that Sift was okay. Ruwen’s side of the lake looked quiet and peaceful. The waves from the distant fight rolled over him and splashed against the cavern wall five feet behind him.
As soon as Ruwen’s Health reached full, he stuck his left arm in the water, opened his Void Band, and channeled the water through at ten Energy per second.
The Void Band yanked Ruwen underwater, and his goggles and Scarf of Freshness were ripped down to his neck. He quickly angled his arm up and stopped channeling Energy. He flew out of the water and came crashing back a second later. If there were any Octorse nearby, they would have definitely heard that.
He put his goggles and scarf back in place and cursed himself for his excitement. He took a deep breath to calm himself and then stuck his arm under the water again. This time he channeled one Energy per second, and he was slowly pulled under.
Spending one Energy per second seemed about the same speed as the skip-jump he’d used earlier. He added another Energy and then another, angling his arm to move through the water.
He grinned in enjoyment.
Ruwen increased the size of his Void Band with a thought, and the wider it became, the faster he went. He quickly condensed it as his Energy bar dropped too fast. With the singl
e Coiled Lightning Ring and the Ring of Exploding Regeneration plus his base Regen rate, he Regenerated just over eight Energy per second.
The living things in his Void Band consumed just over six Energy per second. He had opened his Void Band to the size of his hand, which cost him one Energy per second, and forced water through the band at two Energy per second, which felt like a fast swim to him. This resulted in a net loss of one Energy per second. He had two hundred seventy-three Energy, which meant he could travel for four and a half minutes at this pace. Longer than his Health would hold out, which meant he could afford to spend a little more Energy if he needed a speed boost.
Ruwen had made it past the glowing pillar. His timer read 2:55, and he worried he’d misunderstood Sift about the gem’s location. A blue haze appeared in the distance. Curious, he activated Magnify and gasped as the blue mist came into focus. It wasn’t seaweed or algae or anything benign. He had finally found the Octorse. The blue color was his Perception displaying the names of the creatures.
Two things became immediately apparent. Sift had left out an important detail regarding their size, and there were far too many to count. The water distorted Ruwen’s vision, and Magnify made it hard to judge, but he guessed the Octorse were each about the size of his thumb. The blue gem floated in the center of the cloud of Octorse.
He focused on a single Octorse until its stats appeared.
Name: Shocking Pony of Terror, Sentry (Level 4)
Health: 32
Mana: 48
Energy: 110
Spirit: 0
Ruwen decided to call the Shocking Pony of Terror, SPOT for short. The head of the creature, while horse-like, looked thinner and longer. A ridge of spikes protruded from the top of its head, and its eight tentacles swayed lazily back and forth beneath it. In a strange way, they were cute, and he had the momentary desire to take one home and put it in a small aquarium.
The SPOT he’d focused on had dark red skin and yellow ridges on its head. The other SPOTs had colors that spanned the entire rainbow. It looked like a giant prism had fractured the light and colored the tiny little creatures. They really were cute.
Ruwen’s timer had reached 2:45, which meant he had two minutes before his Health reached zero, and he died. The cloud of SPOTs quickly approached, and he decided to speed up and burst through their defensive line. They were so tiny he didn’t see how they could stop him.
A garbled scream from Ruwen’s right reached him. He glanced to the side and saw Sift desperately swimming toward the far shore, a red mist surrounding him. Ruwen still had Magnify on, so he got a good look at Sift’s situation.
SPOTs covered Sift’s body. Their little tentacles firmly gripped Sift’s skin, and from this secured position, they tore tiny pieces of Sift’s flesh off. The SPOTs had rows of sharp teeth hidden in their long snouts, and they didn’t look so cute anymore.
Ruwen stared at the horrible scene and then clicked off Magnify before he vomited into his scarf. Maybe he should come up with a plan that didn’t bring him so close to the little creatures.
Turning back toward the gem, he realized it didn’t matter. He’d taken longer than he thought watching Sift’s terrible predicament, and Ruwen had already reached the first line of sentries.
The SPOTs had seen Ruwen as well, and a cloud of black mist appeared as all the Sentries used their poison. He added another two Energy per second to his propulsion and angled himself directly at the gem. He entered the cloud of poison, and his skin itched where it came in contact with the liquid, but none of it made it into his body. A moment later he crashed into the wall of SPOTs, and an eighteen flashed on his Health bar as his entire body convulsed from multiple tiny shocks. He immediately stopped channeling Energy through his Void Band as the convulsions jerked his arms and caused him to veer off course.
Ruwen floated toward the surface, his face down, and a debuff appeared under his resource bars.
Stunned (Electric): -100% Movement (Recovery 20% per second)
The gem sat directly below Ruwen. SPOTs attached themselves to his body and began to bite him. The Clapper Skin armor protected most of his body, but his hands and his face above the scarf were exposed. Each bite felt like a pinch, but they added up, and his Health bar pulsed with ones and twos. Worse, as soon as he regained feeling in his arms and legs, the SPOTs would slam their little heads into his body and shock him again, keeping the debuff active.
The timer had reached 2:17. With the damage Ruwen had taken, he had less than a minute to figure something out. His goggles had partially fogged over, and he couldn’t tell how deep in the water the gem sat. It was clear to him he needed to get out of the water as soon as possible. He could only think of one thing to try.
The water had turned red around him as his blood leaked into the lake. His stunned body slowly turned in the water, and he had to wait another five seconds until his head faced the beach with the exit. His Health bar flashed red as the timer read 2:07.
Ruwen focused on the gem and pictured the symbol for Retrieve. He said a prayer to Uru that he was within thirty feet of it. A fifty appeared over his Mana bar, and the gem hurtled through the water. The gem struck his hand, but the Stun debuff made grabbing it impossible. His stomach clenched as he watched the gem start to fall away from him.
With a thought, he opened his Void Band to three feet, costing him eight Energy per second. He used another eight Energy per second to draw in everything in front of his Void Band and then pushed the water out the band’s other side in a powerful stream. With a little luck, he hoped the gem had been pulled into the Void Band along with all the water.
Ruwen shot forward like an arrow, scooping up everything in front of him as he hurtled through the water. The force of the water ripped his goggles and scarf off his face, and they clumped together around his neck.
Notifications pulsed at the bottom of his vision, but he ignored them. As he sped toward the beach, he opened his Inventory, desperate to know if he’d acted in time to catch the gem.
Relief swamped him as he saw the blue gem. The grid beside the gem showed lake water, and the next ten grids each had a Shocking Pony of Terror in it.
His Energy bar flashed as it dropped under twenty percent, and Ruwen immediately closed the Void Band to the size of a one Energy per second and slowed the propulsion to a one as well. This would keep him about even with his Energy Regeneration. His lungs hurt from holding his breath.
The debuff wore off as Ruwen reached the surface. He opened his eyes and took a breath. He still had a lot of momentum from his initial surge and looked to see how close he was to the beach. It turned out he was close. Really close.
Ruwen struck the sand and did an ugly summersault. He staggered to his feet and held his left arm away from his body as the last of the lake water fell out the bottom of his Void Band.
SPOTs still covered Ruwen’s body. He tried to pull one off the back of his left hand, but it had splayed its eight tentacles like a star, and he could feel his skin ripping as he pulled. The feeling of the SPOTs covering his face drove him crazy, but pulling them off didn’t look like it would work without significant damage. The SPOTs on his Clapper Skin armor gnawed at the cloth but weren’t doing any damage.
Ruwen’s Mana had dropped to one hundred forty when he’d cast Retrieve. His Mana regen was 1.48 per second, and as he watched, his Mana bar passed one hundred fifty. He pictured Campfire in his mind, and five seconds later, his Mana bar flashed red, and Ruwen dropped to his knees, an instant headache appearing from the sudden use of almost all his Mana.
At the top of his vision, the Campfire buff appeared, and a moment later, he started to feel better. He walked on his knees to the fire and held his hands and face just over the flames. The SPOTs let out a shrill whistle, like the wind through a crack, as they quickly dried out and died. Ruwen almost felt bad, but all their mouths were covered in his blood, and he hovered as close as he could to the fire.
A scream from behind Ruwen made him jump. B
efore he could turn, Sift appeared beside Ruwen and then jumped into the middle of the fire, squatting down. Sift looked almost entirely covered in SPOTs. As the creatures’ died, their falling bodies sounded like a rainstorm.
The minimized notifications still pulsed, and Ruwen opened them. All ten had the same familiar text, but the timer had already reached zero.
Notice: A living entity has entered your Void Band. Estimated Energy consumption to sustain additional life: 8.75 energy per second. You are currently consuming 6.45 Energy per second. You have 10 seconds to make one of the following choices:
Choice 1: Remove the entity.
Choice 2: Select Yes, incur the energy cost, and sustain the entity’s life.
Choice 3: Select No, and the entity will perish
Ruwen opened his Inventory and saw ten dead SPOTs. Technically that meant there was a fourth choice: do nothing. Which resulted in the same as choice three. With a thought, he dropped the ten SPOTs out the bottom of his Void Band and onto Sift’s head.
“Hey!” Sift said.
“Quit taking the whole fire.”
“Can you make a bigger one?”
“No, now scoot.”
But Ruwen made a note to himself to check. Maybe there was a way to make a larger fire.
Chapter 16
The burning SPOTs smelled like rancid seaweed, and Ruwen wrinkled his nose. Once the flames had killed all the SPOTs on his face and they’d finally fallen into the fire, he pulled the Scarf of Freshness back over his nose. Lying with his back on top of the fire, Sift removed Io from his Dimensional Belt and gently pried off the SPOTs that hadn’t been roasted by the flames yet.
Ruwen ran his hands through his hair and then checked his arms one more time. It looked like they’d all died and let go. A leather bag, his loot for killing the SPOTs, sat on the beach next to Sift’s loot: a pile of golden seashells and a dagger made from a green gem. He still needed to do something with the gemstone for the quest reward, but he would take care of this treasure first. Ruwen walked over and gently emptied the leather bag with his reward into the sand.
