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Chapter 53: Village Journey
🕑 Added 2022-12-21 18:53:45 +0000 UTCThe walk to the Faerie village was tiring, especially when I was forced to spend all of my Stamina on Regeneration in order to keep myself alive. Despite the extra Health from the Talent, I was still net losing Health every hour – just not as dramatically. It was coming up to midnight, and my Health had dropped to 19.
As Erani helped me walk along, I also decided to go ahead and looked at my options for what was called a ‘Time Loop Upgrade’. I had the time while we walked, and whatever it entailed might end up helping us on our mission.
It was hard to meditate while moving since I had to keep my eyes closed, but Erani was already helping me walk, so I just had her guide me as I tried my best to sink into my own mind. Before I looked at my upgrade options, I first looked at Time Loop itself.
The Time Loop Usage Increase was true – I could now use Time Loop twice per day, instead of just once. Of course, I couldn’t reap those benefits yet, but after midnight came – it wouldn’t be too long, at this point – it’d essentially be twice as good. That was an incredible increase in power.
Then, I looked at my Time Loop Upgrade choices.
So it was like a Spell Upgrade, I mused. Three options, each of which added a new, unique ability to the Talent. And they were all incredibly powerful. Extended Loop would make it take me much further back in time, Invigorating Loop would give me a temporary boost in physical strength every time I used it, and Incrementing Loop would give me extra XP whenever I went back in time after killing a monster.
Invigorating Loop was the first one I looked at. It was an intense increase in power – just about tripling my Endurance and quadrupling my Strength and Dexterity – but I actually didn’t like it that much, regardless of that insane enhancement. Especially with Recursive Growth, as time went on, that Upgrade would get worse and worse, since the amount it increased my Stats didn’t actually go up at all. Sure, it’d quadruple my Strength for now, but once I was Level 20, would it even double my Strength? Eventually, it’d barely do anything at all.
Besides, it actually had a surprisingly limited range of uses, even now. It wouldn’t be much help in the situations when I didn’t go back right into the middle of a fight, because of the extremely limited one-minute time limit on the Stat increases. Even if I went back to redo a fight, if I gave myself any time beforehand to rest and think, the buff would wear off by the time the fight started. And even if I went back into the middle of the fight, if it dragged on too long, I’d also lose out on the buff.
Incrementing Loop seemed incredibly useful. Over the course of, say, a year, it could easily gain me enough extra XP for multiple additional Levels. If I killed something and got 100 XP, then went back in time, I’d arrive in the new timeline with 200 extra XP – plus I’d still get to kill the monster again. Given enough time, I could end up way ahead of the curve. But…
Venom is coursing through your veins. 1 damage.
Your Health is 18.
I wasn’t sure if I’d survive to see the next year. Or the next month, week, even day. I’d been burned many times now for getting too greedy and taking options that didn’t do anything at all in the immediate future. And now, I needed help more than ever. So taking an Upgrade like Incrementing Loop that would do absolutely nothing now, even if it would work incredibly well later on, felt like a mistake.
Extended Loop felt like the perfect in-between. It didn’t explicitly gain me more XP, but by going back an entire hour, I could fit more time into a single day, and still end up getting some extra XP. It had an immediate use of multiplying the amount of time I could go back by a factor of almost six, and with its benefit only increasing as I Leveled, I could soon find myself with more time than I knew what to do with, rather than scrambling for every second.
Plus, that much extra time would only be more powerful as I continued to get more Time Loop Usage Increases, effectively multiplying the amount of time I could go back for every one I got. It felt like a reasonable in-between of the short-term benefit of Invigorating Loop while not giving up on the long-term strength of Incrementing Loop. It’d help me now and later.
So, I picked the Upgrade.
Time Loop has gained the Upgrade Extended Loop.
I also went ahead and assigned my Stat Points – I’d completely forgotten to do that in the rush of trying to keep myself from dying of poison.
You have used 3 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.
Your Conjuration value is now 58.
Once I did that, my Mana/Minute increased to just barely past 12, which meant that I was now officially making 1 Mana every five seconds. It felt good, despite the circumstances.
When I finished with my meditation and opened my eyes, I noticed we’d stopped. I’d been so enraptured in my focus that I hadn’t even realized. I was currently leaning against a tree, squished between Erani and the Nymph.
“What’s–” I started, but Erani interrupted me with a shush. She nodded her head in a direction around the tree, and I leaned over to see what she was talking about. I realized that we weren’t just leaning up against a tree – we were hiding. A group of armored soldiers walked through the forest on the other side, examining the area and looking for something. It was obvious what they were searching for.
That guy with his Dryad must’ve snitched to the guards about us, I thought. They obviously weren’t those royal guards from before, with the blue-and-silver plate armor, instead they seemed like normal city guards. They had simple swords and spears and some leather armor with the most important bits covered by small pieces of metal, an emblem of a sword and hawk’s feather blazened on their chests.
Normally, I’d be confident we could take them. But…
Venom is coursing through your veins. 1 damage.
Your Health is 17.
My Health was abysmally low, and wouldn’t be going up any time soon. If I even got poked, my Health would drop dramatically, and even if the strike didn’t kill me, it’d put me in a position to be killed much sooner by the venom.
I was incredibly thankful to have Erani to keep me out of danger there.
But now, I wasn’t sure what we could do. It didn’t seem like Erani knew, either. We were close enough to the soldiers that if we ran, they’d immediately see us and attack, and if we stayed, they’d eventually find us, anyway. The Nymph seemed to have its own ideas of what to do, drawing its whip from its side and pulling it taut in its fingers.
But we couldn’t fight. If we did, they’d only attack me, and…
Well, actually, maybe the Nymph was on to something. If it was the only one to come out, the soldiers would just think it was a random monster attack. It hadn’t been tied to us yet, according to the fliers we’d seen posted around the area, and if they were distracted by the fight, Erani and I could flee without being seen. After that, the Nymph could safely disengage and follow us, and the soldiers would think it just ran away.
I wasn’t sure how I could actually communicate this to the Nymph; not only could I not speak due to the nearby enemies, but it didn’t even understand my language, anyway. I’d just have to hope it could figure it out as it went. Who knew, maybe it had the same idea we did.
The Nymph tensed, readying its attack, and Erani put up a hand to stop it, but I grabbed her wrist and held it down, shaking my head. She seemed to understand that I intended for it to attack. I pointed to us, then pointed in the opposite direction of the soldiers. She nodded.
I watched as the Nymph waited a few seconds, took a breath, and dashed out from behind the tree, thorny whip held tightly in its hand. The moment I heard the soldiers shout in surprise and draw their weapons, I dashed off, Erani’s hand held tightly in mine, and didn’t look back as I fled. I didn’t want to slow down for even a second.
The sounds of battle became quieter and quieter as we ran into the night. Once we were far enough away that it was totally silent, I stopped, hands on my knees, to catch my breath. I’d been spending so much Stamina on Regenerate that I barely had enough to move around.
“Where’d they come from?” I asked Erani.
“No idea,” she said. “We were just walking along, and I randomly saw them walking through the treeline. Obviously looking for us.”
I nodded. “Think the Nymph can handle them?”
“Yeah, hopefully. Seems strong enough that it can handle its own against some simple town guards.”
“I guess,” I furrowed my brow. “Think we should just wait for it to come after us?”
“Seems like it.”
We waited for a few minutes for the Nymph to come back and find us. When it didn’t come, we waited a few more. Once enough time had passed that my Health had dropped down to 11, I knew something had to have been wrong. The Nymph was a quick fighter, and its combat shouldn’t have taken longer than it took for us to even run to where we were, much less minutes longer.
“We need to go see what’s going on,” I said. “It could be in trouble.”
“It’s too risky,” Erani shook her head. “If they’re powerful enough to give the Nymph trouble, they’re powerful enough that we can’t go after them.”
“But if all it needs is a bit more help so it can escape, we can’t just leave it to die. What if it misunderstood what we intended to do, and thought we would have its back? We can’t just abandon it.”
Erani sighed. “I’ll go ahead, you trail behind and yell if anything happens. If I wave my hand like this,” she demonstrated, “it means it’s too dangerous for you, go back.”
I didn’t like feeling like dead weight, but I guessed that was pretty much what I was.
“Fine,” I said.
We cautiously made our way back, with me a couple dozen paces behind Erani as she crept her way forward, glancing around as she did so. It was eerily quiet as we approached. Had the soldiers really captured the Nymph and taken it off somewhere?
After a few excruciatingly long minutes – both mentally from anticipation, and physically from the poison – Erani arrived at the area of the fight. I was too far back to see, but she stopped and stared ahead, looking shocked and afraid. She didn’t wave her hand, though, so I kept approaching. What was up there to make her look so fearful? Some sort of calling card? Or a ransom note?
When I got there, I understood.
Scattered throughout the woods was red. The trees were painted with blood, the leafy ground fertilized with intestine. A bone here, flayed skin there.Though it all obviously came from Humans, there were no recognizable bodies in sight. Though, it was less likely that they had been taken away, and more that they were all around us. A crushed heart lying alone on a stone, a lung inside a log. In the dark, it was somewhat difficult to see, but it was obvious that the Humans that were once here had been completely obliterated. The entire location was completely unrecognizable from what it had started as.
And, sitting inside this cathedral of chaos, the only green thing in these red woods, was the Nymph, alone and unharmed, cleaning off its bloodied weapon.
It looked up and saw us, smiling and running forward. It handed me a piece of metal, one that I belatedly recognized to be the emblem of sword and hawk feather from the armor of one of the soldiers. It was offering me a trophy from its hunt.
“What the fuck…” Erani was clearly at a loss for words.
“Well… at least it was okay,” I exhaled.
We continued on our way after that spectacle, leaving the reddened battlefield behind us. Neither Erani nor I spoke of it as we left, and I suspected it was because we were both trying to hold the contents of our stomachs inside our bodies. The smell from back there was so nauseating, the sight so horrible… Still, it wasn’t so bad as to make me faint, or anything. Ironically, the abstract nature of the scene – the fact that I couldn’t really even recognize anything there as coming from a human body – made it a bit easier to stomach. We were getting close to the Faerie village, anyway, so I quickly distracted myself with thoughts of anticipation.
Eventually, as we walked, I finally felt a sudden change in my mind, like something had been unlocked. It was the familiar feeling of Time Loop coming off its cooldown and becoming available to use again. Only, this time, it was slightly different, like a second lock I didn’t know was there had been unlatched, as well. It was my second use of Time Loop, added by the Usage Increase. So I had two one-hour redos now, in case anything went wrong. Of course, if I died to the poison, there wouldn’t be much I could actually redo – my mistake there was a day in the past, not an hour ago. So I’d have to do everything in my power to remedy it soon.
My Health continued to tick steadily downward, and as it got to the low single digits, my Stamina also finally got high enough for another activation of Regenerate, and I eagerly did so.
You have activated Regenerate. You will gain 14.3 Health over the next 10 seconds.
34.3 Stamina Cost. Your Stamina is 2.
Dropping my Stamina down to 2 wasn’t a very comfortable sensation, to say the least, but I had to do it in order to stay alive. I fought the urge to drop to my knees – give it some time, and my Stamina would regenerate a bit. After the ten seconds, my Health was up to 19. I’d done the math, though, and my totally exhausted Stamina wouldn’t recover fast enough for it to get to 34 before my Health reached 0. In other words, that was my last activation. I had 19 Health left, and I’d either use that timer to cure myself of the poison, or I’d die trying.
As I trudged along, completely drained by the sudden loss of almost all of my energy, I realized my ability to figure out this cure would be put to the test sooner than I’d thought. Because just off in the distance, I could see thatch roofing come into view, colored a pale blue and purple from some magical lights set up in the nighttime.
We had arrived at the Faerie village.
Comments
Andry Arhiri
Is it my impression or ereni isn't really improving level wise as much as she should ?
Reg Rome
Shoot, you're right. I somehow used the wrong number from my outline for the poison damage! It was supposed to be 44. I'll go back and fix it though, thanks for pointing that out!
merr49
Why is he panicking. Regeneration + health regen give him 23.019 health an hour against 22 poison damage.
