NOVEL NEXT Chapter 74: You don’t save Mason
[Chimaera killed. Group experience awarded (moderate). You have earned level 7.]
[Objective completed: cleanse the Great Tree Rot. Group experience earned (major). You have earned level 8.]
[Title earned: Burnt the boats. Voluntarily enter a deadly challenge. +1 to a random stat.]
[You have a new power to select, and a power to enhance. As a settlement patron, you have seven days before the selections will be made for you.]
Blake didn’t particularly have the time to be pleased with himself. Of course he was anyway. Had he been thinking slightly faster he might have plucked his brother off the falling beast with Telekinesis. But frankly he hadn't been expecting it to just drop.
“Mason!” Rebecca ran to the edge of the platform to watch the creature fall. The ground shook, and Blake was fairly certain it wasn’t a terribly wise move.
The moment Blake had severed the heart in two, bits and pieces of the ceiling began to collapse. The platform shook, and the walls looked like they were rotting in real time.
Blake closed his eyes, opened his Mental Influence link with his brother, and held his breath.
They all heard the splash.
“Oh my God.” Rebecca was on her knees, hands in her hair. “We have to go down and get him. He might be unconscious and drowning.”
Calypsa looked at Blake, then at the quickly blackening halves of the Chimaera’s heart.
“We have little time. We must escape this place or die.”
“How?” Blake looked off the edge of the platform, gut fluttering as he considered jumping.
“I can take us with the pool,” the nymph said confidently, stepping into the water. “You must all link hands. We will return to the grove.”
“We can’t just leave him!” Rebecca looked at all of them like they’d gone mad, finishing with Blake.
A pillow sized piece of wood fell from above, landing a few inches from Seul-ki’s head before she jerked away.
“The druid is powerful,” Calypsa said without emotion. “He can take care of himself.”
“Unless he’s half dead and drowning!” Rebecca’s voice was turning slightly hysterical now, and Blake sent a wave of calm with Mental Influence. She visibly relaxed as her breathing slowed, and Blake held onto the nymph and stretched out his other hand.
“Becky, look at me. Calypsa is right. You don’t save Mason, he saves you. Now take my hand. We have to get out of here. Right now.”
Becky’s eyes filled with tears, but she stepped forward and took Blake’s hand. He reached down and lifted Mason’s compound bow and tossed it over his neck. Then Seul-ki took the nymph’s other hand, and the beautiful creature closed her eyes.
“Do not stray from me. Walk only with the light.”
Before Blake could say something clever, the water seemed to rise and swallow him down, then everything disappeared.
* * *
[Chimaera killed. Group experience awarded(moderate).]
[Objective completed: cleanse the Great Tree Rot. Group experience earned (moderate). You have earned level 14.]
[Level available. Please select your new power in the next sixty minutes, or you will gain a power at random.]
Mason was in too much pain to celebrate victory or curse the system for rushing him. He’d clearly broken his legs in the fall.
The agony took turns lancing through him, but one thing he’d learned in the new world—the human body got confused with enough suffering. Even if you were injured quite badly in multiple ways, you usually just felt the worst thing. Turned out that was his ribs.
So he kicked with broken legs and swam with mostly whole arms, doing his best to find somewhere to swim. The corpse of the giant mutated creature was sinking beside him, and when he looked down to make sure it was dead, he saw something move beneath the churning waves.
He swam faster.
Soon he saw a long, dark shape, at least as large as the chimaera. It moved straight to the sinking corpse of the monstrous beast, then the water churned with violence and blood.
Pieces of wood and who knew what else were now falling and splashing into the pool. A piece bounced off Mason’s shoulder hard enough to near break another limb, and he scanned the cavern one more time before accepting reality—there was nowhere up there to swim.
He shivered at the thought, terror freezing his mind and body and blanking any thought or hope of survival. Then he cried out in rage, and forced himself to move—he swam down into the murky water.
[Apex Predator activated. Affinity: elemental.]
Mason blinked and felt his body shift. He opened his eyes, and instead of the usual pain of being exposed to water he felt some kind of film protecting them.
Regretting it almost instantly, he glanced over to see what looked like a giant crocodile tearing chunks out of the chimaera.
Then he swam down and swept the walls for any break or gap or really any possible thing that could conceivably be…there!
Light bent slightly in a curving arc near the bottom of the cavern. Some kind of tunnel, maybe, or a drain, or a hole. At this point he’d take anything.
Mason swam for his life.
Several hard strokes reminded him he had two broken limbs. His thrashing broken legs managed to overcome the agony in his chest, and he saw bubbles as he unintentionally opened his mouth to scream.
He forced himself to calm down and keep moving, but still his lungs burned and increased the overall trauma, and even though he saw what was clearly now a tunnel he knew he wouldn’t last long without air. He thought of Apex Predator, and with something close to faith or madness, he closed his eyes and tried to breathe.
Somehow, it worked. Sort of. Water sucked into his nose and mouth, then left before they reached his lungs. It wasn’t remotely what he’d have called a satisfying breath of air, but he wasn’t dead, so that was something.
He swam on, down into the tunnel, then through a darkness so deep even his enhanced senses couldn’t pierce it. He pulled forward, hand over hand into what felt like nothingness, trapped in some lightless world of cold and wet and dark. Then he was through.
He blinked and found the gentle slope of another cave, and soon crawled up from the water to collapse onto dry, hard stone.
I’m still alive, he thought, rolling over to laugh with a slightly mad tone.
[Discovered dungeon secret: The Crone’s Lair]
He blinked at the text, then groaned and froze as he turned over to see what looked like an old woman by a cauldron, watching him with a frown.
“So who are you, then?” she croaked as if she hadn’t spoken in ages.
Mason reached for his bow and found nothing, wincing when he had no idea where he’d dropped it. “A ranger,” he said, after the deepest breath he could manage. “And a druid of the great forest.”
The crone looked him up and down, then sat back on an old wooden stool, and stirred whatever was in her cauldron.
“What is this place?” Mason said, forcing his legs straight and hoping they’d heal properly.
“A tomb,” said the crone. Then, with a shrug, “a place of knowledge.”
Mason took a better look around the cave, finding a bed of leaves, many kitchen utensils, and with surprise, what looked like a steaming pool in the far corner.
“The Pool of Wisdom,” said the crone. “If such a thing appeals to you.”
“It does,” Mason crawled slightly closer.
“By the looks of you, I’d say you need a pool of blood.” The crone chuckled as she stirred. “But you’ll live, won’t you? I suspect you’re not polite enough to die when you should.” She sighed and turned rheumy eyes in Mason’s direction. “But you found my lair, and so I must offer. What do you seek, young buck? It’s not wisdom. Speak plain, and maybe you’ll receive.”
Mason tried to think past the pain. Whether this old woman could offer anything of value he had no idea, but something about her felt important, and he had no desire to play games or lie.
“Power,” he said, slumping to the stone. “To protect those who need it. To protect those I love.”
“You are more ranger than druid, certainly,” said the crone.
“And what do druids care about?” Mason asked, trying not to let the pain affect his tone.
“Life. Knowledge.” The crone shrugged. “But you are young and brave, and I will still help you. Catch a fish from the red waters. I will mix it with the sacred pool, and cook it for you in my cauldron. Eat the fish, and gain the pool’s power.”
That all sounded rather insane to Mason, but then this was ‘the great game’, the robopocalypse, and at this point he didn’t think twice.
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