NOVEL NEXT Chapter Seventy One
Climbing this stupid mountain is absolutely the worst. My roots got better pretty quickly when they had a day of fresh air and not having magic constantly forced into them, but that doesn’t mean that they miraculously figured out how to not suck on this terrain! I’ve been having to use my tentacles almost exclusively to get around, almost like climbing picks, just because this place is so freaking steep. And surprisingly enough, there’s almost nothing on this section of the mountain except those odd goat-wolves! Well, I guess it makes sense, since none of the other monsters really had anything that would have helped them climb in such a sheer place. Maybe the chickens with the claws would have been able to? But I doubt their claws would have liked it very much; They’re probably not self repairing like my tentacles are.
Anyways, I finally made it close to the top of the mountain. From what I can tell, apparently at the top it just turns into a series of progressively higher and higher rolling hills? It’s not pointed at all like you’d expect the top of a mountain to be. I’m guessing that this hilly area must be where the Ice Guardians live, right...? It’d be crazy if that wasn’t the case, considering there’s not really more up that they could be…
Interestingly enough, there’s actually a few cute little buildings I can see scattered about across these hills. Well, I say ‘little’, but that’s probably just perspective since they’re far away. For all I know, these things could be horribly big. There’s not a ton of ‘em per se, I mean, I personally can only see about three, although that’s with my possibly limited vision. And man are they totally spread out.
Welp, there's nothing better to do, so let’s do the obvious thing and go check these things out, shall we?
~~~
Man, okay, so traveling around these hills isn’t nearly as bad as scaling the mountain was, but damn are they still icy and hilly! In fact, the hills are so covered in ice that I basically spent most of my time moving around just kinda skiing while using my tentacles for balance. What, is this the ice that the Ice Guardians are supposedly guarding? Is this it?! Because this is kind of actually really stupid, let me tell you! It was only fun for like, the first 10 minutes, but it was sooo hard to actually stop once I made it where I wanted to go, and that made everything significantly suckier! A trip that should have taken about 15 minutes took double that time, and I was moving very very fast!!!
Anyways, here I am, at this odd little building. It’s seriously basically a hut, from what I can tell. A very very large hut, maybe the size of a villa, really, but still definitely a hut. Or maybe a yurt would be more accurate? It looks somehow… tribal, in a sort of ‘Hey we live in a crazy cold place!’ kind of way. Very covered in patchwork fur. Lots of skins of those stupid yetis and other things I fought sewn in, along with some that I don’t recognize that are much much bigger. Crazy.
There’s a door, installed on the front, weirdly enough, but it’s perfectly sealed. It being a door for freaking giants is pretty bad for me, both because there’s no way I could possibly operate it, and because it totally shows how big these dumb Ice Guardians are gonna end up being. Really worrying stuff. But hey, if I’m gonna fight against ginormous stuff one day, then I gotta start somewhere, right? I can’t decide if something’s beatable or not without even giving it a single look, can I?
Yup yup, let’s break in there!
I’m using Shui as a chainsaw far too often these days. He’s actually very useful for plenty of other things, really, but uh… Yeah, chainsaw dog I guess. Poor Shui. One day it’ll get a chance to show off what else it can do, I’m sure. But for now, it’s helping me carve a little hole in their patchwork!
The inside of this little yurt didn’t look anything like I expected it to. I’d thought I’d immediately find some Ice Guardians to look at, but apparently that isn’t the case; Instead it’s just completely empty in here. There’s a few tables that seem to have some big supplies on them, but past that, not really much going on at all. There is a hole in the floor with what I can only assume are some super big ladder rungs, though, so I guess I know what I’m
doing next!
I’ll play your game, Ice Guardians!
See you in a moment~!
-Is what I say, but apparently a ‘moment’ is more like ‘falling down a big-ass pit for about ten minutes or so’. At least, it felt like it could have been ten minutes. Thankfully I had the foresight to make sure I fell close to the rungs so I could latch on before I made it to the bottom, or else falling that long miiiight just have done a bit too much damage. Or maybe not, I mean, it’s not like I have bones in this body, and I usually fall all the time and end up just fine. Maybe I snap a root or tendril here or there, or have a flower or two fall off, but it’s all just minor, healable crap usually. Still, not chance-ing it this time; That’s just a testament to how far and long I fell.
So what was at the bottom, you say? I’m glad you asked! There’s a freaking civilization down here!
If you want my quick and dirty opinion of it, it’s like a community of dwarves, living deep underneath a mountain or something in a small cave network, except there’s no lava or magma or whatever, and the dwarves are actually giants. Big, blue, giants. Just looking at ‘em, I think I’m probably only the size of their eyeballs, or maybe just a teensy bit bigger. They have hair like snow that's extra thick on their arms, shoulders, and limbs, and have thick tusks sticking out of their mouths. Still, they look plenty more humanoid than those yeti-like things did; I mean, they’re at least wearing clothes, unlike the yetis. Sure, it’s not a lot of clothing, and sure, the females don’t seem to be, ahem, decent in the upper body area, but hey, who am I to talk? I’ve seen tits plenty enough times, and gigantic blue boobs aren’t going to be enough to distract me from my purpose!
Okay I say that, but I admit that I did let my vision rest on a few pairs a few times while I scoped the place out.
They at least move like real breasts, unlike mine, so you can’t blame me if they caught my eye!
Sue me!
Anyways yeah, blue giant metropolis or whatever. Or, I guess Ice Guardian metropolis. Great. Cool. I’m finally here.
So uh… What am I supposed to do to, you know, kill some of these guys?
I guess I have a few ideas, of course, but the fact that they could literally press one of their fingers down and squish me to pieces is a bit concerning. I don’t know, the females are a bit smaller, so maybe they’d need like two fingers or something. Still, not so good seeming odds, either way. Idunno, they look so sturdy that I don’t think even Shui’s teeth could get through ‘em. Heck, even if it could, it’d probably be slow enough for them to go ‘ouch’ and then swat us like we were mosquitoes or something. I guess this is gonna have to be a stealth mission if I wanna survive, huh? Greeeat…
Please don’t look at me, everyone! I’m just a friendly little house-spider! Don’t mind me~!
~~~
I used my comparatively tiny little size to my advantage and stuck to the shadows so they wouldn't notice me. There were a few times I caught an eye or two turning my way, but I scurried fast enough that they didn’t have a chance to look for too terribly long. I found out pretty quickly that there are actually these weird frost-spider looking things that live in the nooks and crannies of this place, just like any place would have, which was definitely unexpected but greatly appreciated. Luckily for me, they’re about my size, and whitish, just like how I look with this pelt I’m wearing, although if anyone looked too clearly, they’d totally see that I’m something very very different. I mean, let's be real, I'm sure just the splotches of bloodstains all over this fur would probably be enough to give me away. But still, I’m small and I’m mistakable, so I’ll gladly take it!
Plus hey, when I get hungry, those stupid little spiders are a great treat! Sure, I gotta look out for their frosty little webs or whatever, but I’ve fought spiders before, and they always seem to live alone here, unlike in caves and tunnels, so these things are a breeze to kill. Really, compared to what I’m gonna have to do to take down one of these stupid blue giants, this stuff is basically a walk in the park! It’s like they’re asking to be eaten!
Still, the problem of how I’m gonna take down one of these Ice Guardians is definitely gonna be a big one.
I’ve spent a few days now just wandering around and observing them, but it doesn’t really seem to be bearing much fruit. What looked like a huge-ass civilization to me when I first got here is actually just the size of a tribe, or maybe a village. There can’t be more than about forty-ish giants living here, even though I think their set-up is pretty darn neat. I don’t know if they dug this place out, they found it like this, or it was made for them, but it’s quite perfectly sized for them, and there’s even a bunch of crystal veins in various colors that’re lighting the place up for them, too. Their rooms are decently sized, they have songs and booze and dances… Their clothing is pretty primitive though, and their language sounds mostly like it’s made up of grunts or something, so I don’t think they’re particularly too advanced yet. Bet it’s because food is so scarce for them, considering how big they are. I’ve seen them bring in a few huuuuge boars, almost half their size, with their hunting parties (which christ am I glad I didn’t run into out on the mountain, because I’m sure those things would have absolutely wrecked me with the crazy amount of tusks they're packing), but other than finding those on occasion, they have to survive on the much smaller yetis and wolves and stuff. Hard to make advancements when food’s so hard to get, I guess.
Which brings me to a very important point!
I can’t communicate with these guys!
Since they don’t talk in whatever the hell language I do, I can’t even try to be diplomatic about all this. Not that, you know, I would have been any good at it, but at least that’s a load off my mind. And no matter how hard I looked, it seems that I can’t find where they hide their dead people’s Aqua Cores anywhere. I’m sure they keep ‘em somewhere, but I guess it’s like an alien coming to earth and trying to find where we hide our dead bodies; What kind of psycho would just assume we’re hiding them in the ground or turning ‘em into ashes and putting ‘em into jars? It’s probably just a cultural difference or something!
But yeah, I’ve firmly established that killing a few of these guys is gonna be the only way, so now I have to figure out how teeny tiny little me is gonna go about slaying the supposedly ‘vicious’ big blue giants.
I’ve had a few ideas, but they keep getting thwarted left and right. As I thought, Shui’s no good against them, and they’re much too big for me to try to poison with my gas. From the looks of things, these Ice Guardians are actually insanely strong, and pretty darn athletic, so trying to overpower them in any capacity is definitely not going to work out. Honestly, at this point I’m wondering why the heck the Water Spirit even wants to decommission these damn things, since they seem like an excellent warrior race!
Well, I guess even warriors have their own weaknesses.
Actually, there’s still one plan that I haven’t gotten to try just yet, because I wasn’t sure how it would go. See, I’ve actually been sticking around in this one particular house, studying this older seeming giant. She’s slightly slower and more feeble than the others that I’ve come across so far, and she also lives completely alone, so I set my sights on her in the hopes that she’d be an easier target. Still, she’s definitely big and fast enough that direct attacks are completely going to fail. Maybe she might be easier than the others, but killing her is still going to be hard. I’ve been keeping track of her habits, though, and I’ve discovered a particular one that sticks out to me. See, I guess every civilization has its comforts, right? Booze, drugs, they all have something. And this big blue old woman here… She seems to love her alcohol. Drinks two cups from the barrel she has in her little storage pantry, every night, without fail.
…Can you see where I’m going with this?
Maybe I can’t kill these guys directly, but indirect kills are definitely still allowed! There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and big problems require well thought out solutions! Creativity is key, and all that jazz!
Really, what it all boils down to is this:
This old giant is getting poisoned tonight~!
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AN: Psssst.
patreon.com/user?u=63286737
Just gonna leave that there. You know, as an option for ya. ;P