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SOM - Chapter 16 - Rolling in the Deep
🕑 Added 2024-03-24 23:23:48 +0000 UTCWhen Luke stepped onto the streets his metal boots clanked against the cobblestones. One enchantment his new armour was missing was one to quieten footsteps. Despite his system boosted [Agility], stealth wasn’t his strong suit. That was ok; Luke didn’t intend on hiding.
Though he was fairly confident that he had cleared the surrounding area, Luke still kept his senses alert as he set off. This proved prudent when he discovered a small nest of plague rats he had previously missed. The building they were in had collapsed so he hadn’t bothered searching the rubble. It was only because of his fancy new armour that he detected them at all.
Undead didn’t give off heat, but they consumed it. With his heat vision the nest appeared like rat-shaped patches of darkness against the rest of the building. The nest appeared dormant, with the rats in the hibernation stasis he often found them in. He guessed it was a way of conserving energy in a city where the only living person to feed on was himself.
There was no real reason to disturb the nest. None of the rats he had fought had been over level five, and they gave crap loot, if any. The level difference meant he would get next to no experience from them.
Harvesting aether from defeated foes was apparently a relatively common method of rapid growth in the omniverse. Why would powerful psions buy expensive treasures when they could just go on a killing spree? Fortunately for souls everywhere, absorbing aether from killing weaker souls was an incredibly ineffective road to power. The omniverse was a dark place, but most major powers wouldn’t sacrifice so many workers for a single powerhouse.
Even if Luke wouldn’t get much in the way of experience from the rats, he was still eager to see how well his armour would perform. He took Fenn out of storage and held the hammer loosely in one gauntleted hand. The hammer continued to grow, and the metal head had grown little spikes on its face. It looked less and less like a carpenter’s tool and more like a weapon of war.
Waking the rats was as simple as making enough noise to wake them. Killing them was even easier. Just to satisfy his curiosity, when the last rat emerged he allowed it to land a free blow. The rat tried to gnaw on Luke’s legs, but didn’t even leave a scratch. He still remembered what the yellow teeth could do to unprotected flesh. It didn’t even leave a scratch. The enchanted aeldrin was tough, and further hardened by Luke’s [Bulwark] domain. He kicked off the rodent and crushed it under his boot.
[You have killed a level 2 Plague Rat. Loot generated.]
[Fang of Decay - Basic (Mortal) - A primitive dagger with the Decay domain.]
Barely bothering to read the description, Luke threw the dagger onto the marketplace. He listed it for only one hundred credits. Basic items were scarcely better than mundane items without any aether. The yellow bone dagger was an item he had looted twice before from a plague rat. It wasn’t even very sharp. Despite this, someone, somewhere seemed to have a use for junk, as both the previous fangs looted had sold when he priced them cheaply enough. Though he was curious, Luke didn’t waste time wondering.
Luke headed back towards the train, in the direction he had designated north. On the way he encountered nothing exciting, and after about twenty minutes walking at a brisk pace found himself by the riverside. The river of souls was as awe-inspiring as ever, but Luke felt less intimidated looking out at it this time. If the giant sea serpent appeared in front of him he had no illusions about how that would end, but the ghosts themselves didn’t make him nearly as nervous.
Focusing his ability to sense auras, Luke reached out to a ghost close to the shore and tried to get a feel for it. If an army of ghostly spectres surged from the river towards him, he was ready to dump his free point into agility and run back to the forge with his tail between his legs. That didn’t happen.
When Luke touched the ghost’s aura he found it didn’t really feel like an individual creature. The ghost was just a small part of a larger concept. Styx, the river of the dead. Luke thought. It was just part of the scenery, though that didn’t mean it was harmless.
Luke had come to the river for a reason, so he looked away from the ghosts and refocused. He had no idea where the sewer gates were, and unfortunately Rurik hadn’t been much help in that regard either. However, he knew the city had toilets, and a plumbing system that was at least superficially similar to that of a modern city. He assumed that much like any modern city, the sewage would flow into the river below.
All Luke had to do was walk up and down the river until he found a sewage outlet. Then he could trace that back to the main sewage system. He hoped to find the Deep Gate as quickly as possible. It stung his pride a little that after all of his explosive growth he was hunting rats in the sewers. It was practically a cliche.
However, unless he wanted to turn on his only friend, this was his only chance at a golden ticket. Luke did not have enough hubris to venture into the Gothic cathedral, deep in nightwalker territory, to find whatever boss controlled that segment of the city.
After a short stroll along the stony shoal, Luke found what he was looking for. Jutting out of the stone cliffs above the shoal was a pipe carved of stone. It blended well into the cliff face, and if he hadn’t been looking for it, he likely would have missed it. As Luke approached, he noticed a small stream of water flowing from it. Much to his relief, the water looked relatively clean. Even so, Luke would sooner take a fireball to the face than drink it.
The pipe was just about wide enough that Luke could crawl through it, but was too small to stand or crouch. After poking his head inside Luke was re-assured that it didn’t seem to narrow at any point. He considered if he should look around the city for a different access point. The streets didn’t seem to have any manholes, or sewer grates, and Luke had no idea where else to look. Ultimately, he decided to brave the pipe.
War hammers were ill suited for fighting in tight spaces, so Luke instead held a glowing blue rock in one hand, and he pulled the dagger he looted off the marketplace to hold in the other. Taking a deep breath, Luke climbed into the sewers.
Inside the pipe, Luke found the noises of his own body amplified. He could hear the air flow in and out of his nose, and felt his heartbeat in his ears. Fortunately, it didn't take long for the pipe to open up into a large tunnel. Relief swept through him, but was dampened a moment later. With his heat vision, he saw a small patch of cold air by the entrance. He cursed under his breath. There was a plague rat hibernating ahead. It lay half dangled into the pipe, and half resting on the walkway above.
Even though Luke had tested his armour against the oversized pests, he would rather avoid a fight in such close quarters. He paused. Less than an hour ago it had been Luke waiting outside a tunnel to stop on the rats as they came out. Is this karma? Is karma a Concept? Luke thought.
A few moments passed, and the rat showed no signs of stirring. Internally, Luke debated turning back, but his pride drove him forwards. It was only a rat. From experience, Luke knew their senses were sharp, but while hibernating they slept like the dead.
It was only when neared that the dark patch stirred. Luke scrambled towards with a burst of speed born from claustrophobic anxiety. In his haste Luke dropped the dagger and instead grabbed the rat with his gauntleted hand. He grabbed it by the throat before it could stand up. Finesse was not something Luke excelled at, but he appeared to have a talent for brutality.
Blue lights flickered as Luke smashed his glow stone into the undead monster. In his uncoordinated assault he focused less on destroying the brain, and more on just pulping the giant rodent into bloody paste. The result was the same. The corpse gave no loot, but earned him a little [Murderhobo] attunement.
Luke was trying to shape his perception of the concept, so that he didn’t have to remove it. Chipping away at the gold ranked concept would take a lot of soul surgery he would rather avoid. Step one was expanding the definition of Murder, so that he could cultivate it without killing his fellow humans. It seemed to be working.
In the crapped confines of the sewer tunnel, Luke stretched his large frame. Aether gathered in the shape of a hammer, and Fenn formed in his hand. It wasn’t an ideal weapon for the sewers, but he was trying to increase his affinity, and manifest his [Warhammer] domain. To do that he had to use it.
The journey through the tunnels was nerve-wracking. For starters, pulverising the plague rat with his glowing rock had broken it. This dimmed the light it gave off, and it occasionally flickered off entirely for several seconds. Heat vision eased the problem a little, but he almost fell into the water several times, only saved by his enhanced reflexes.
Even if light hadn’t been an issue, Luke only narrowly avoided a bigger problem. He got lost. The tunnels probably had some structure to their layout, but on foot it was practically impossible to keep track. Luke ended up borrowing a trick from something he remembered Nathan saying. When solving a maze, always turn right. For good measure he started marking the walls by scratching crosses into the rock with the claw of his hammer.
Funnily enough, the rats themselves were barely an inconvenience, even though they were many. Even when they snuck up on Luke, he dispatched them with ease. Even entire swarms were manageable. They just couldn’t hurt him. Loot flowed into his storage space, and he put junk items up for pennies on the marketplace just to get rid of them quickly. Every little bit helps, Luke thought, as his credit balance hung around the five thousand mark.
Just when Luke was thinking he should head back for the day, he turned a corner and the tunnel opened into a large chamber. The change was abrupt, and unexpected, but welcome. Finally, he thought.
For the first time in hours Luke could comfortably stretch to his full height. The chamber had pillars and arches stretching high towards a domed ceiling, and the walkway extended a few feet from the walls, but left a large pool of murky water in the middle, with a waterfall from above flowing into it. The deeper into the sewers Luke walked, the deeper the water had become, and this room seemed to serve as a reservoir of some kind.
Thankfully, the chamber had several sconces fitted with glow-rocks, and with a flick of his intent Luke illuminated the room. The increased visibility allowed Luke to notice two things. Beneath the waterfall was a large stone door, with a large metallic tumbler. Carved into the centre of the tumbler was a screaming face with no eyes. Creepy carvings aside, Luke had a bigger problem.
Water that had been still moments ago churned like a kettle put to a broiling boil and turned from relatively clear to the colour and consistency of tar. A sudden breeze in the chamber flowed outwards like a giant exhale.
Something’s in the water.
