Chapter Sixteen: Rinse and Repeat

  I poured water from my magical pink water bottle over Riley’s injury, hoping that rinsing it off would be enough to make him feel better.

  It wasn’t.

  He whimpered when the water hit and as soon as I stopped pouring, he started trying to lick it again.

  I spent approximately fifteen seconds rubbing his chin and keeping his tongue away from the injury while considering our options: I could try to create a defensive perimeter and activate [Wild Sanctuary] with its rapid regeneration, or maybe we could help Riley level up by killing another monster or two.

  Then I said, “eff it,” and poured a health potion down his throat.

  Really, it was his health potion. He’d done the work. He and Bear had killed most of the bugs in our home rift and I’d let them, because it was good for them.

  Here’s a thing about depression: it lies. It lies in so many ways. Depression is your brain telling you that there is no hope, that there is no purpose, that nothing you do is ever good enough. Depression is this weird circular trap, this crazy loop of self-fulfilling prophecies. You think no one cares, and so you push people away, and hey, people don’t like being pushed away, and so they decide you don’t care, and they let go of you to protect themselves… it’s self-sabotage in the most obvious way and yet, even knowing what you’re doing, you can’t stop yourself.

  But I had been playing this game for years, and so I recognized it.

  Okay, not right away. I’d wallowed for a bit in recrimination and self-doubt first.

  But then I (metaphorically) smacked myself upside the head and got on with things.

  We had a rift to clear and Riley was fine. And like it or not, fighting and taking risks was how you got experience in this ridiculous new world, and experience was how you got better, stronger, faster, tougher. If I didn’t let Riley take risks, he wouldn’t be able to protect himself. If I wanted to keep him safe now, when the monsters were at least close to his level, I’d be setting him up for failure when the monsters were worse. I didn’t like it, but we weren’t going to be safer if we hid inside our house and tried to stay away from the monsters.

  It was a lesson that I was going to have to keep learning over and over again, though, because seeing him hurt, hearing him whimper, hit harder than even the worst of those goblins had. It felt like failure.

  Until the potion worked. Watching his skin heal and his fur regrow was … well, pure magic. It was like time-lapse in reverse, seeing the hot red fade to a healthy pink and then the fur sprouting in tiny wisps that quickly became his usual dense coat. His tail, which had been tucked tight, gave a tentative wag, then another, before he pushed himself up and shook himself off. Glad that’s over, he seemed to be saying, as he got to his feet.

  I heaved a sigh of relief, then turned my attention to Zelda. She was harrying the clay slimes like they were her favorite squeaky balls, picking one up and giving it the terrier kill shake, then dropping it and bouncing over to the next. The kill shake seemed to do about as much damage as the kitty litter had—in other words, none—but she seemed to be enjoying herself.

  I didn’t much want to touch the remains of the swamp creature, but I poked it with the toe of my wader. It disappeared, leaving behind what looked like a plastic bottle with a spray nozzle.

  I tapped [Analyze] and read the label that popped up.

  Name: All-Clean Cleansing Spray

  Type: Consumable

  Rarity: Uncommon

  Description: A magically infused cleaning agent derived from purified swamp essences. Removes dirt, grime, toxins and minor curses from surfaces, fabrics, and living tissue. Leaves behind a faint scent of mint or laundry detergent. Warning: Not for internal use. May cause sparkle effects from prolonged contact.

  Uses: 100/100

  I blinked, read it again, swore and kicked the nearest tree trunk. Then I hopped around for a few seconds, cursing under my breath. The waders weren’t nearly as good foot protection as my hiking boots and I hadn’t bothered activating my [Invisible Armor] when we came into the rift.

  If I’d just looted the swamp creature before giving Riley the health potion, I could have used this spray instead of wasting five credits. The timing felt so wrong, it was almost like the System was looking over my shoulder and laughing at me.

  But whatever. Riley was healed and that was what mattered. Still, I grumbled under my breath as I picked up the bottle and stuffed it into Zelda’s bag.

  How much control did the System have over the loot I got? The bugs had just given the same crafting ingredients over and over, but the first loot I’d gotten from the rift crystal in my own rift had been collar clips, clearly intended for the dogs.

  This loot felt almost as pointed. Although if I’d looted right away, would I have gotten the same thing? Five minutes ago, when Riley was still whimpering in pain, I’d have been delighted to find a magical cleaning spray that would remove toxins.

  I paused, thinking about it. Did loot appear when the monster died or when I looted the body? In the pre-System reality, of course, if you went around killing monsters (or, you know, people), all you would get would be what they were carrying before they died. Or what they were made of, of course. Meat, hides, that kind of thing.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  It couldn’t possibly work that way in the rifts, though. That swamp creature had not been carrying magical cleaning solution in some invisible pocket. The idea was absurd. Maybe not more absurd than magic in general, of course, but still… I did not believe the swamp creature had a stash of cleaning supplies. I just didn’t.

  But if the loot wasn’t completely random, maybe I could figure out how to influence what I got. Maybe I could ask for specific things. Stuff I needed or even just wanted. I still regretted not eating those spice gum drops when I had the chance. Or if I felt like the System really wanted to stab me in the back, maybe I should ask for the opposite of what I wanted. Use a little reverse psychology on it, so that I’d be the one laughing in the end.

  Except did the System actually determine what loot I got? The System didn’t control the rifts. If it did, it wouldn’t be rewarding me for collecting information on them. Rifts were created by mana, and the mana determined what was inside the rift.

  I can’t tell you how long I stood there trying to puzzle out the rules for rift loot, but it was too long, because when I finally looked around, the first thing I noticed was that Bear was gone. I took a deep breath and did not scream.

  “Riley, where’s your buddy disappeared to?” I asked, rubbing my hand along his neck. Zelda was still playing with the clay slimes, but Riley had stuck close to me.

  His fur sort of rippled under my touch, a movement that felt like a shrug. Exploring. It’s what she does.

  “Right.” I glanced around, looking for clues as to which way she’d gone, and wishing I still had my tracking ring. In books and movies, protagonists always seemed to find their way through strange environments without much difficulty, but I didn’t have a great sense of direction. I really needed something like Emma’s mapping ability. I wasn’t even sure which way we’d come from. The trees all looked pretty much alike to me.

  “Can you find her?” I asked Riley.

  He tilted his head up, sniffed the air, then headed toward a break in the trees.

  “Come on, Z,” I called.

  Zelda dropped the clay slime she’d been tortur—er, playing with and bounded over to me. Fun, fun, let’s go, her tail said, wagging wide.

  I debated for a second whether I should do something about the clay slimes—kill them, in other words—but then shrugged and followed Riley. They were no threat to any of us, and were unlikely to have any kind of worthwhile loot. I wasn’t sure yet whether I needed to kill everything in a rift to officially harvest it, so the clay slimes could be a test. I could always come back to kill them later if I had to.

  The light in the swamp was eerie, the glow from the mana mixing with the blue light from the moon, making the whole place feel like some sort of strange art installation. Or maybe some new attraction at one of the theme parks. I could be wandering through a Universal Studio Halloween horror zone, if only there’d been a few thousand people in here with me. As it was, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to start calling out, trying to find the one person that I knew was here, or whether that would just be giving the monsters an invitation.

  Not that it mattered if I invited the monsters to attack. We were tough enough to defeat them, and I still had experiments to run. Salt, fire, and whatever was inside the fire extinguishers. Bleach, obviously, was pretty effective, too, even without adding ammonia, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to brave that stench again.

  But I’d come to this instance of this rift specifically because I knew someone was inside. And if Jerrold Jessup had been kicking ass and taking names in here, that swamp creature should already have been dead.

  “Jerrold,” I yelled. “Jerrold?”

  I paused to listen, but even with my improved Perception-enabled hearing, I didn’t hear anything worth noting. No rustles in the brush, no barking in the distance, no human being calling for help. So we kept walking, Riley leading the way.

  The ground was squelching underfoot. It was still covered with the leafy purple plants, but they were growing out of a thin layer of smelly water, and every step I took sank a little deeper. I started walking closer to the trees, stepping from root to root to stay out of the mud, but keeping a watchful eye out for snakes and spiders.

  Every couple minutes, I tried calling again, and finally I got a response. Not Jerrold, but Bear’s distinctive ‘stranger danger’ bark. Riley woofed in return, before glancing over his shoulder at me.

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “You too, Z. Make sure she’s okay. I’ll be right behind you.”

  The two dogs loped forward into the swamp, splashing into the muck, and I followed, walking carefully to avoid doing the same. Seconds later, Zelda was back, jumping onto the root in front of me, tail between her legs, looking like she’d been dipped in gooey blue paint.

  Bad bath, she told me. Bad. She huffed out a disgruntled breath.

  “What is that?” I crouched, swiping my finger through the fur by her ears. I took a sniff, then coughed out my body’s appalled reaction, almost gagging in revulsion. Whatever it was, it was probably the reason this swamp smelled so awful. Toxic waste? Sewage?

  Fortunately, I had just the thing. I pulled out the looted spray bottle and spritzed Zelda with it. A palm-sized section of the goo poofed away, disappearing into dust. It took four more shots for her to be mostly clean. Well, sort of clean. Clean enough, considering she was likely to just get dirty again.

  “Carry?” I offered, stuffing the bottle back into the pouch and holding out my arms for her. She didn’t like being carried usually. If I tried picking her up for some reason, she’d give it about ten seconds before she started wiggling to get down, and thirty before she shoved herself forcibly out of my arms to leap to the ground. Under the circumstances, though…

  Her ears drooped, telling me that she didn’t like either of her choices.

  “Up to you.” I waited until she grudgingly stepped closer and stood on her back paws, putting her front paws on my knees, and then I scooped her up. I came within a hairsbreadth of toppling over, not because she was heavy, but because I’d automatically braced myself to hoist twenty pounds of dog and it turned out that twenty pounds of dog felt more like, I don’t know, three? Four? Incredibly light to me compared to how she’d felt just a few days ago, anyway.

  I’d started with a Strength stat of 2, and now it was 10. Did that mean I was five times as strong as I had been? Or did each point add a percentage more, say 10%, so I’d be more like 80% stronger? Or did it compound, like interest, each point adding a percentage to a higher base?

  I bet the numbers guys and scientist types were going to have a lot of fun exploring the variables of the new world. The ones who survived, anyway.

  I pulled Z close, letting her rest on my left forearm, and started moving again, even more carefully than before. Bear and Riley, easily twice as tall as Z, must have simply barreled their way through the goo puddle, but I’d rather not have to do the same.

  Zelda stayed still against my arm, calmer than she usually would be. Her head lifted to watch the trees ahead, her ears on full alert. I could feel the faint rise and fall of her breath against my sleeve, steady and somehow comforting. For a second, I flashed back to carrying her just a few days ago, with the gaping wounds on her back from the mana-crazed squirrels, the feelings of fear and frantic desperation. I froze. Then I drew in a breath, exhaled, and started moving again. We were fine. We were going to stay fine.

  The other dogs’ tracks were easy to follow. They were leaving goo puddles in the ground cover, blue liquid oozing over the purplish leaves marking every step they’d taken.

  Zelda gave a gentle woof and I immediately stopped moving. I listened. She’d heard it first. Someone was talking up ahead.