CHAPTER 17 - INTO THE MISTS
It was almost dinner time.
Not for him—
—But for something else.
He could feel it.
[ Perception Skill Increased: Novice, Rank 4 ]
Levan breathed out, kept his expression as neutral as possible, and kept walking.
The forest, peaceful, almost tranquil during the day, was only just now beginning to take on a sinister air, with an orange sun blistering above the treetop canopy, making the natural and almost storybook shadows of branches and trees stretch even longer, like many a storybook back on Earth had recounted when sinister tone began to grow.
It would have been almost gothic, if not for the blazing sun.
And when scales and keratin, not lupine fur and eyes, caught in the corner of his vision between the trees, the foreignness of the world only grew.
The creatures that ripped apart the animals in the barn in the dead of night and haunted children’s stories here apparently were reptiles.
A tail, rigid and spine, turned like a whip beneath a pair of shrubs, and Levan kept walking, trying both not to react and to seek out every little detail he could.
Stupid, stupid! A stack of wooden logs?
He’d played by those old crafting game rules of making tools and gathering resources on his first day.
He’d considered food and water too—a basic human need, but still easily forgotten in a world of exciting new skills and abilities.
He’d even considered shelter, but had brushed over it when the Codex had told him he didn’t need to sleep.
Except…
…In those crafting games that had absorbed so much of his time growing up, there was more than one reason to build a shelter—the monsters came out at night.
The forest around him had no distinct landmarks or features, nothing that stood out for him to turn into some kind of advantage.
Only a pack of tightly grouped Ironwood trees stood out from everything else.
I might as well—
They struck.
A lizard, low to the ground, clambered across the forest floor straight at him with six limbs clawing the earth in a fluid and eerie motion.
Each leg boasted a three-digit claw, with curved nails that looked sharp as wicked knives, even from a distance.
The head was flat and shovel shaped, with six eyes. Two facing the dirt with heavy, transparent lids closed. Two facing the sky, reflecting pools of orange as the sun blazed. Finally, the two largest eyes, black orbs that looked straight ahead beneath a wide lipped face full of triangular teeth that looked just as sharp as the nails.
Standing on the hind legs, the thing would have been rib-high, but it crawled low and flat to the ground, at least a hundred pounds of reptilian flesh, squished like a flatworm and tall halfway past Levan’s ankle.
It moved with incredible speed and fluidity, crossing the rooted soil and cutting at him from the side, tail swaying behind it, lingering six feet from base of tail to ridged, pointed edge.
Levan faked forward then darted backward, diving out of the way as a black curved claw swept past where his ankle tendons had been a half-second earlier.
Shrubs rustled and parted from one another as another one of the lizards, this one with grey skin the color of wet cement, tore from the brush.
Again, Levan tried to fake one direction and move the other.
This time, the creature faked being tricked.
The lizard turned as if to dive past him, then, in a black bolt of movement, the creature’s whip-cord tail cracked out to slash him on the lower back.
The fabric of the [ Bloodstained Acolyte’s Tunic ] ripped easily as the tail cut across his skin, and pain, red-hot and with an extra edge to it spread from his lower back to the rest of his body.
[ Condition Gained: Lost One’s Venom |Effects: ??? | ??? | ??? ]
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Great.
Levan winced again as a wave of pain emanated from the wound on his back as if being cut again for the first time.
The first lizard, this one a dark orange brown, was already circling, tearing up dirt and roots as it scrambled back again at him.
The grey lizard hadn’t slowed down, either.
It chased him, scrambling for the back of Levan’s left ankle while the dark brown lizard charged at him from the front and right.
Levan’s mind spun as panic set in.
A hundred crafting recipes, an ability core, an elemental affinity, and I’m still just a one trick pony.
Still…better a one-trick pony than a none-trick pony.
“Blade,” Levan whispered, his tone serious and hushed, the words coming to him automatically. “I call you from the Aether.”
A pale green translucence took shape in Levan’s waiting hand.
[ Equipped : Shortsword |Item Type: One-Handed Weapon, Sword | Item Quality: Common | Effects: (Aetherized) ]
Levan rushed forward, sloping low to the ground and cutting downward even as the aetherized sword was still forming.
The blade coalesced mid-movement, and Levan dragged the sword point through the top of the brown lizard’s spine.
[ Attack Resisted! ]
[ Lost One Hunter has resisted damage (Aether) ]
Hissing, the reptile spun, not seeming to mind when its turn sent Levan’s blade to drag through even more skin than it otherwise would.
It leapt forward and Levan had just enough time to swing the blade at his attacker’s face, cutting against the creature’s thin lips and shovel mouth of pale teeth nestled in greenish, blackish, brackish gums.
Another hiss, another lunge.
I can’t believe they’re resistant to Aether, Levan thought, narrowly escaping another claw across his leg. They said Aether was supposed to be a rare element. And the first monster I fight is resistant to it?
Stuck to him with a predator’s single-minded possession, the grey lizard was still chasing after him even as he passed the orange-brown one.
This one rose its tail once more, and poked at him in jabs like lightning strikes.
[ Condition: Lost One’s Venom x2 ]
[ Condition: Lost Ones’ Venom x3 ]
[ Condition: Lost One’s Venom x4 ]
[ You have resisted Lost One’s Venom ]
[ Increase your Inner Workings skill to learn more ]
That was something at least. Though, whatever effect of the Lost One’s Venom he currently resisted, the pain aspect was certainly still there.
Gaze stuck on the grey Lost One at his left, Levan didn’t look in time to see the second one coming at him.
This time, the pain wasn’t disproportionate.
There was no venom.
Just a good old fashioned four-inch talon ripping through his thigh.
An involuntary yelp of pain and surprise forced its way out of his throat as Levan’s right thigh suddenly struggled with his weight.
Gritting his teeth he pressed on, pure adrenaline carrying him out of the way as the space he’d just been became a hurricane of claws, teeth, and the points of venom-dripping tails.
They slunk after him, sprinting in their reptilian low-to-the-ground run across the forest floor.
The grey one was gaining on him, even though it had been second to join the fray and farther away.
He’d done some damage to the orange-brown one, two of its six eyelids fluttering disturbingly as each stride pulled at the wound Levan had inflicted on its spine.
They might resist Aether damage, but the sword itself had at least ripped a bit of skin.
In fact, it’s really slowing.
Wouldn’t matter for long.
His flesh eaten on a strange new world, devoured by giant, flat lizards.
And the worst part is it’s just like that goddamn fortune cookie said!
Would they find his body? The nation here, under attack? The army attacking it? Who even were these people? What even was going on?
He’d never know.
No, Levan decided. They wouldn’t find his body.
These things looked hungry.
Not a trace left.
Not a trace.
“Oh,” Levan said aloud, his eyes going wide.
He darted right and then left with renewed vigor, as he chanted the words.
“Nature I have felled, I call you from the Aether.”
[ Item Gained: x16 Wood Logs (Aetherized) ]
A bundle of logs roughly hip height formed at his position, and Levan didn’t stop running, hurdling over them instead.
The grey lizard climbed directly on top of the stack of aetherially-tinged logs.
The wounded brown lizard skirted tentatively around them.
Levan zigged, he zagged, he turned and turned again, taking a circuitous route back to where he’d left the first bundle.
“Nature I have felled, I call you from the Aether.”
[ Item Gained: x16 Wood Logs (Aetherized) ]
A second bundle materialized close to the first. He said the words immediately after, juking around his two stacks as a third one materialized.
[ Item Gained: x16 Wood Logs (Aetherized) ]
Just a little bit more.
His legs were screaming at him, his lungs were screaming at him, the lizards were screaming at him.
Probably hissing, more like, except—
Well, no, those are definitely screams.
He shuddered.
One more.
“Nature I have felled, I call you from the Aether.”
[ Item Gained: x16 Wood Logs (Aetherized) ]
The final bundle of logs materialized, loosely grouped with the other three. The four stacks of wood sat lonely and unremarkable in an otherwise uniform wooded forest, as he ran out the last of his energy with the reptiles.
He brought them back to where they had first ambushed him, and then, in a last desperate sprint, ran to his wooden log bundles.
His nose and mouth tucked back under the tunic, Levan ran through the wood log bundles, hands spread out, fingertips reaching.
“Aetherize!”
“Aetherize!”
“Aetherize!”
“Aetherize!”
The bombs went off.
All four wooden bundles exploded into pale green particulate, flooding the forest in an instant.
Levan squeezed his eyes shut, the but aether dust found its way into the corners of his eyes, forced their way through like they were stretching arm and leg to lift them up.
He took one hand away from his tunic to rub his eye.
Mistake.
Pain lurched simultaneously from his eye to his arm where he’d rubbed it. But there was other pain, too—a sudden crack at his ribs, and the taste of blood flooding his mouth as if he’d bitten his tongue.
The phantom aether pain of what might have been.
And that magic is mine.
It’s theirs, too.
He turned back to look, hurdling over a fallen branch as he exited his own cloud of glowing green dust.
One shadowy form slunk to the ground, lingering in the dust and not moving.
The dark orange lizard, fallen from the combined sword wound and aether particulate.
Tough way to go.
A grey shadow still sought its way through the dust, twisting its shovel head back and forth in rage and pain.
That was okay.
Any damage done by the aether particulate was a bonus—Levan had to assume they were completely immune.
This would be finished by the sword.
Bracing himself for the unpredictable pain—un-braceable, even—Levan tightened his grip on the short sword, eyes flicking back and forth to follow the grey lizard as it skittered left and right in the rapidly dissipating particulate.
The lizard hesitated, and without hesitating himself, Levan leapt into pale green dust.
