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Chapter 43: Crabs, Crabs, So Many Crabs
🕑 Added 2024-12-13 00:00:04 +0000 UTC“Dave, come on, wake up man.” My eyes shot open to see the brothers standing over me, Cecile having been shaking me.
“Wha,” I mumbled, barely awake. The dream was fading from my brain. Had that really been my Dad?
“You were talking and shaking a lot, got worried, sorry,” Cecile said.
“No, it’s okay, weird dreams I think, hard to remember,” I said. As the sleep started to clear from my mind, I realized that I felt oddly refreshed. I wish I could remember what the dream had been. I didn’t usually toss and turn like that, as far as I knew.
“Come grab some breakfast. We made your favorite,” Cecile said. I pushed the sleep haze further from my brain and forced myself out of the tent to the smell of eggs. They were a little burnt but better than nothing. There was something on the tip of my tongue that the eggs had reminded me of, but I just couldn’t wrestle it to the surface.
My mana had recovered a bit from yesterday, and my core was full enough that as long as we didn’t run into anything as bad as the diredeer I figured we could handle it—still no quests for finishing the dungeon. I hoped what we got in the end was worth it for Cecile and Elicec. I doubted it would be for me. That was the downside of abusing the simulator, all levels, no mana orb growth.
“I can hear the water, so we can’t be too far from the last dungeon,” I said once I’d finished off my food, helping the brothers get the tent packed away.
“Good, I really want to be back in the archives by the end of the day,” Elicec said. The forest seemed to have bothered him more so than his brother, but neither of them liked it.
“Agreed, I’ve got a lot I want to take care of before we tackle our last two dungeons,” I said. I needed to have a long discussion with Mel and get every question I still had on my mind answered as best I could, then have a nice long talk with this dungeon core that was supposedly so apologetic.
It was a quick walk to the beach. The forest came to an abrupt end, with about thirty feet of sand separating it from the water. I guessed it was an ocean from how big it looked, but that was no guarantee, I didn’t even know if anything was saltwater on this planet. It was entirely possible the concept of saltwater bodies was rare throughout the Spiral. Those thoughts were forgotten as I stepped into the sand and felt the now familiar sign of a dungeon.
Hundreds of tiny red crabs popped out of the sand and started running towards us. We jumped into action, swatting them away, crushing and burning everything that could be hit, but it seemed endless. No matter how many we killed, more took their place. We fought on, killing crab after crab for what felt like hours. The exhaustion was rising again. I was sure if this lasted much longer, we were going to have to retreat.
Then I saw a strange blue crab surface just long enough to be crushed beneath Cecile’s hoe. The rest of the visible crabs disappeared with a pop.
Was that really it? There was nothing special here but the damned illusionist crab making us think we were getting somewhere. I don’t know why that pissed me off as much as it did, but man was I angry. At least it looked like that had completed all the dungeon quests. The quest menu called them a “3 Dungeon Marathon.” I wasn’t sure if that meant they were linked or if it was something else I hadn’t experienced yet. At least the experience had been nice. Forty thousand should go a long way on getting their levels up, and I had a few new things to try in the simulator.
“Damn, I accidentally smashed the dungeon core there, and it looks like there’s nothing else here at all. This was some terrible loot,” Cecile said.
“Well, we still have the backpack to go through, unless you just mean this beach, because yeah, that was awful,” I said. How had Mel even managed to learn about the crabs? Considering how dangerous the damned forest had been, we’d barely made it out of there alive.
“Well, let’s get back, no sense in wasting any more time. Cecile and I both hit level eighty-nine, and we need to figure that out as soon as we can,” Elicec said.
“Yep, and I ranked up my imbuing orb again. That’s gonna give me some fun options with the hoe,” Cecile said happily. I should probably look at that at some point as well, but the downside to having as many mana orbs as I did was the need to invest skill points across all of them. Most of my focus so far had been on the life orb for a reason; it was keeping me alive, but I was going to need to branch out more to make real use of this setup. For that, I was going to need to even more levels, or find another way to gain skill points. I had gained a lot from some quests, so it seemed entirely plausible as a path. I needed to go through all my quests again when we returned as well. I hadn’t been paying as much attention there during the dungeons as I should have been. There had to be a few of the mana skill quests completed.
The only difficult part of the return trip was the greased ladder that the deer had used to trap us. After the first several attempts and some bruised asses later, I had finally managed to climb past the grease and tie off a rope for the brothers to get past it. I planned to let Mel know about the issue once we were back. I’d have cleaned it off myself, but I just didn’t have anything to do it with easily while dangling from above.
By the time we got back into the adventurer’s hall, Mel had already closed up for the night. I left him a note saying we were all fine and we’d be down in the morning to fill him in. I didn’t want him to leave him worrying any longer than necessary, and we went our separate ways for long-needed showers and sleep, with a fair bit of analysis tossed in, of course.
The amount I was starting to enjoy all of this gamification worried me. Initially, my only plan had been to get back home and not worry about any of this again, but more and more, I wondered how realistic that actually was. I doubted the System was just going to let me go or that I could do anything to stop Earth from being integrated fully into the Spiral, and I had no idea what exactly that meant for the future of the planet either.
Could I get some mana orbs to bring back with me? I knew there were more types than what I had, but where did people get others? I might not be able to set my kids up with anything like I had, but I could at least help them prepare somewhat if integration was inevitable. These thoughts made me realize just how much I still had to plan out before my return.
I entered my room and found my new friend chowing down on the remains of some of the fish I had ordered for him. I really needed to come up with a good name for him as well. “Hey there, little guy, how would you feel about being called Chip?” I asked.
He wagged his tail in response; Chip, it was. I scratched him behind his ear and ordered us some more food. I needed to pack more the next time we went on another overnight trip. I had gotten too used to the dining hall here.
While chowing down on some roast turkey, I checked over my quests. As I thought, I had completed a few more of the mana skill quests after the orbs ranked up, all of them, in fact, for an extra fifty-five skill points. No new skills were unlocked after I gained their reward, though I had expected more for the chain, so that seemed odd. Maybe I just needed to push the orbs even further. It was possible the System didn’t really expect someone to have spent as many skill points as I had without higher-level mana orbs, and considering how far ahead of me the brothers were in that regard, that was the likely answer.
Checking over my skills I had added knowledge skills in batrachology, crystallography, vespology, and carcinology to my list. While I wasn’t entirely sure that batrachology referred to frogs, by process of elimination, I figured it had to. I had also unlocked a climb ability, probably from all the attempts to get back up the greased ladder and falling on my ass repeatedly. As much as I wanted to invest in some of the new ranks there, I held off for now. First up, I needed to run a simulation or two, and then I could decide where the new ranks went.
More importantly, I needed to take a look at the mana skills I still hadn’t checked out.
This was an easy choice as I had two orbs, and if I was going to head into the simulations tonight anyway, I figured I might as well put my new skill points here. I spent five to move the soul-core bonding up as well, since I had increased that maximum level with the increased rank, and then invested the same into the second orb as well. I really hoped these effects were stacking.
I instantly felt my mana channels thicken a little, and the flow into my core increased. I had to remember to do this immediately on rank-ups in the future. I needed to find a way to switch between my orbs faster to make the best use of all of this, though.
A crazy idea occurred to me involving just that problem and a certain core that had wanted to talk to me. I had no idea if it was even possible or something I was willing to try, but it was time for the promised conversation.
Those pursuing a path of body enhancement almost always leave the host looking radically different from when they started on the System’s path. For most, this usually shows up as a hulking battle-ready monster, but some go the far rarer route and specialize in mutation. Many a cult has spawned from someone claiming to be a divine angel or a hideous hellspawn. Still rarer are those that push only the power of their mind, not the most useful for many of the alluring Spiral careers, but these few are highly sought after for their talents. Despite the compensation that may come with this, the terms of the contracts forced on them by the faction leaders help ensure few end up rigorously pursuing this pathway.
The Adventurer’s Primer Volume 1 by Hume Grenderson
