It was about 6pm when they got back. Sadie and Heather had set up their tents not far from the fire, and were sheltering from the sun by sitting just inside them as they watched over the drying fish. Danielle noted that there were four more medium-sized fillets around the fire; the two of them must have harvested the fish trap again.
“We brought dessert!” Danielle announced as the foraging party returned to the fire.
“Dessert? What, did you find honey?” Sadie asked.
“Nothing that exciting,” Danielle said. “Just a bagful of berries! Cassy says they’re salmonberries – kinda like orange raspberries. We think we’ll need to make some special equipment to dry them. Apparently they’re pretty hard to dry whole, but there’s a work-around.”
“We’ll need time to make the tools, so this batch is just for eating!” Cassy said with a grin.
“We have miner’s lettuce, too,” Akari added. “Looks like you got a couple more fish; did you re-bait the trap, or are you figuring to eat whatever we have in the snares?”
“Oh, we forgot about the snares!” Sadie exclaimed. “There’s bait in the fish trap, but we should check the snares.”
“Yeah, and take them down for the night,” Cassy said. “If there are predators around, we don’t want them coming close to steal rabbits or whatever we catch. We’ll be keeping watch with a fire for the meat we’re drying, but the stuff in the traps is just cougar-bait overnight.”
“I think that’s a little paranoid, but I don’t blame you for not wanting to risk it,” Danielle said. “Let’s see what we’ve got and pull the snares, and then we can decide what to do for dinner and what to smoke. Oh, and Akari can check the fish trap, since she’s got to wade out to the island to check her snares anyway.”
“Let me go out and come back before you all head into the woods, then, in case there are fish that need killing,” Akari said. “Did you take a turn on the fish while we were out foraging, Heather?”
“Yeah, I even let Sadie talk me into gutting it,” Heather said.
“All right, then it’s Cassy’s turn again,” Akari said. “For fish, I mean.”
“Go ahead if you’re going,” Sadie said.
Akari rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll be right back.” She waded out to the fish trap with a basked in hand, and glancing in, promptly put in the basket so that it blocked the opening. “Come on out here, Cassy,” she said. Then she went on to the island to check her snares. “I got something!” she yelled. A moment later she added, “It was a 40-pointer!”
Cassy, meanwhile, had waded out to the fish trap. “There’s two fish,” she said, “Who else is taking one?”
“Are you still over eight hundred remaining?” Heather called back to her.
“Yeah, of course I am,” Cassy replied. “I was over nine hundred this morning!
“All yours then!” Heather said cheerfully.
“Danielle, do you want a turn?” Cassy tried.
“Well yeah, but I’m under five hundred, I can’t afford the mana absorption.” Danielle said.
“UNDER FIVE – Wait, you mean for your Class, right?” Heather said.
“Oh, yeah. My base level still needs about eight-fifty,” Danielle told her. “I still don’t want my class buffer filling up unnecessarily. I mean, you guys are just barely as close to level 2 as I am to level 3, and I have to last two more weeks before it’s even safe to risk putting my pointer back there; but until we get to the Access Point, that four hundred and whatever point buffer is all there is between me and serious mutation risk.”
“You’re going to do so much fish killing once we catch up, Danielle!” Cassy said.
“Once you all catch up, I’ll be doing about as much fish killing as the rest of you,” Danielle replied with a grin. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to avoid doing chores forever.”
Cassy set about catching and killing the fish in the trap, while Akari was presumably gutting her catch on the island. Cassy just barely made it back to shore before Akari came back into view. “I have no idea what this is,” she called as she waded across the river. “It looks like a cross between a beaver and a rat!”
“I think that’s the biggest thing we’ve caught yet,” Sadie said, and went to help the two of them up the bank. She held the fish basket while Cassy climbed up, then took the snare meat from Akari while she climbed out. “Look at this thing,” she said. “It’s gotta be two feet long. It’s even bigger than the marmot.”
“It’ll make a lot of hot-pot,” Danielle said with a grin. “I hope it tastes all right.”
“I wish we’d cleared the snares earlier,” Sadie fretted. “We don’t have time to start brain-tanning tonight. Unless it’s earlier than I think?”
“It’s after six, so no,” Danielle said. “We can go back to the pit we dug for it last time, though, once we get home tomorrow.”
“I guess that’ll work, assuming we’re still planning to head back pretty early,” Sadie said.
“Yeah, we might have to put up a tent at the work site this time, though,” Cassy said. “We don’t want to make our sunburn worse.”
Danielle looked at her arms. “It’s not too bad, I don’t think. We haven’t gotten any redder.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Come on, let’s get the rest of the snares,” Sadie said. “We’ll probably be roasting Akari’s thing, though, just because it’s too big to haul around as dead meat.”
“I’ll guard the fish,” Akari said, taking off her denim shirt and kneeling down by the river bank.
Cassy hopefully started to ask, “Any chance you feel like – “
“I just gutted the beaver-rat, the fish are still yours,” Akari interrupted.
Cassy sighed. “I knew you’d say that, but it seemed worth a try,” she muttered.
Danielle and Sadie chuckled and led the way into the trees. Their snares were spaced out across a wide area, though they were potentially within sight of each other. Danielle found quite a small rabbit in hers. Somewhere to her right – which was to say, roughly south - Cassy squealed, “Ooh, I finally caught something!” and Heather replied, “Good, ‘cause mine are empty!”
“Danielle, can you hear me?” Sadie asked in a weirdly sing-song voice. A trace of urgency threaded under it as she continued, “There’s a moving vine and it’s around my ankle already and it’s got thorns, and I’m afraid to shout or jolt so I sure hope you can hear me ~ “
Danielle jolted to her feet. “I hear you, I’m going to move a bit further away before I yell for the others,” she said, unceremoniously stabbing the rabbit. She got a burst message for 20 mana, but it was nothing compared to another vine monster but with thorns. She took the rabbit and ran for the fire.
“Akari get your work gloves on, Sadie’s got another vine monster trying to snatch her and she says this one’s got thorns.”
Akari paled and dug in her bag for her work gloves. Danielle grabbed her bag too, then pulled off her shirt and wrapped it like an odd-shaped scarf around her neck and face. “I hope the catalog has safety goggles,” she said distractedly, grabbing her staff again. “Got your hatchet? Get close to Sadie before I yell for the others, and I’ll be right behind you; hurry but don’t stomp.”
“Yes, mother,” Akari said exasperatedly, but she also took off for the trees.
Danielle followed her, but when Akari got in sight of Sadie and slowed down, she stopped entirely and waited until Akari was right up near Sadie, hatchet in her gloved hand. She turned and gave Danielle a serious nod.
Danielle nodded back, then took a deep breath as Heather had taught her for vocal support, and yelled, “Vine Monster with thorns at Sadie’s snares, please come cautiously and help!”
As they had feared, the vine creature reacted to the noise by lashing itself into motion. Even as Heather and Cassy were shouting “What?!?” and running over, Akari was chopping the vine around Sadie’s ankle, and more vines were whipping towards the two of them. Danielle ran towards the source of the vines, her own hatchet on her belt, enhanced staff in hand.
Sadie had drawn her sword, and raised it edge-on to block the vine swinging at her head. Akari grabbed it in her gloved hand and yanked it taut to chop off a large segment, then yelled out in pain as another vine whipped across her neck. Danielle activated Staff Apprentice and Combat Medic and searched for a spiral or whatever was at the center of the creature. A fourth vine slapped at her arm, the thorns dragging shallow cuts across it; like Akari, she grabbed for it with her gloves and yanked hard.
The yank didn’t break the vine, but it did disturb the dead leaves the creature had hidden its central stalk in. Sure enough, it was a woody spiral; but instead of the other vines sprouting from the spiral, they seemed to emanate from the base of it – one in each primary direction. The good news was, there were only four. The bad news was, they weren’t stuck inside the structure they needed to protect like the other vine monster’s vines had been – at least, the parts that were close to the base.
Danielle kept hold of the vine with one hand and swung her staff with all the power she could muster from the other hand. The spiral gave a loud crack, and the vines thrashed so hard that Danielle lost her grip on the one in her hand. Akari and Sadie dashed in with hatchet and sword, both pouring blood from multiple gouges, but if it didn’t stop them from fighting it could wait.
“There’s only four vines!” Danielle exclaimed, grabbing for the nearest one again. She missed, then shouted “DOWN!” swung her staff over Sadie’s back where the third vine was trying to take advantage of her position as she reached down to grab for the second. Akari went to her knees right next to the spiral at the plant’s core, and chopped off the rest of the half-vine nearest to her before grabbing the spiral itself and starting to chop at it.
“Aim down and in a little more!” Danielle shouted, batting at the two vines trying to reach over the spiral and grab her friends from above.
Sadie was also down on one knee, pinning a vine close to the plant and sawing at it with her sword. “It’s tougher than the other one!” she exclaimed. “One swipe doesn’t do it!”
“Thank you God that I brought my hatchet!” Akari exclaimed, chopping again.
“AMEN!” Danielle agreed, using her enhanced speed to dismay the two remaining vines.
Cassy and Heather ran up at that point. “Are you seriously praying right now?!” Heather shrieked; she sounded panicked.
“Blood it if you can and then get back, we’re going to need all your mana for healing!” Danielle called out.
“I’m not getting anywhere near that thing!” Heather practically screamed; she didn’t run, though, drawing her sword instead.
Cassy circled around while Danielle tried to wrap one of the flailing vines around her staff. “I’m going for a stem hit in four, three, two, ONE!” Cassy shouted. Sadie and Akari both leaned back. Danielle was too busy keeping the vines off them to process what Cassy was doing until the sling came down in the center of the spiral with another loud crack! The stem tilted crazily, and the vines thrashed again, but Danielle managed to twist her staff and loop one around, catching the other in the loop so that both were tied up.
“I got the vines!” Akari shouted, leaning over the half-broken spiral to chop off another vine close to the stem. Danielle kept her staff moving, frustrating the monster’s efforts to untangle itself, then yanked hard on the last attached vine as Akari brought her hatchet down.
A disturbance in the soil was probably the monster trying to flee, but Sadie grabbed the spiral and lifted, putting her legs and back into it as she leaned up and back out of her kneeling position. The spiral creaked, bending back in the other direction.
“Let go!” Akari yelled. “I can’t chop if it your hand’s that close!”
“It’ll dig itself in and get away to regrow!” Sadie protested.
“Someone lend me a sword!” Cassy exclaimed.
Danielle drew her sword and tossed it at the ground near Cassy, who snatched it up and proceeded to swing it around under the straining plant-creature, grab the point with her other hand, and yank it back towards her. For a terrifying moment, Danielle was afraid she was cutting her own palm to add power to the strike, but then she realized Cassy was actually pulling against the flat of the blade. The edge was diagonally down compared to the direction of movement, but that still brought it against the plant’s roots, and severed them with a series of loud snaps and pops until the last one went, and Cassy fell backwards.
“OK, that’s that, then,” Sadie said, dropping the core off to the side.
“It’s not dead until it mana-bursts!” Cassy exclaimed, struggling upright, and swung at the core where it had landed, sideways, on the ground. Her blow finally severed the spiral. Danielle immediately checked her blinking notification.
- Mana burst detected. 110 mana has been added to your class (Basic Sneak). Remaining cost to level, 352 mana.
“Hah. Well there’s my mana for the day!” Danielle gasped out, feeling slightly hysterical.
“Me too!” Akari said. “110 mana,” she announced, sounding strained.
“I got the 110 mana too, but I kind of wish I’d gotten a big enough burst to level a Trait. It’d be Cut Resistant for sure, I’m shredded,” Sadie said. “This hurts so much.”
“I got 220 mana,” Cassy said. “I guess because I had the killing blow.”
“That does seem to be how it works,” Danielle said.
“How can you all just stand there talking, you’re bleeding all over!!” Heather exclaimed.
“You know what, that’s a good point, even if you’re also panicking,” Danielle said. “Everyone grab a vine and let’s go toast them around the fire while Heather shows off her Class Skills.”
“I vote we toast them IN the fire!” Akari said, but picked up both halves of the vine she’d split at the very beginning of the fight, and stood up.
“And waste these strong, sharp thorns?” Sadie said, grabbing the one she’d knelt on. “No way. I bled for these; I’m using them.”
! Paid tiers already have the end of volume 1, which is chapter 19. Starting next week, $10 patrons will be able to read at least two weeks ahead. $4 Patrons get the week's posts as a single big chapter on the Saturday before they appear on Royal Road. I'm planning some occasional bonus content there as well, but I'm not promising a schedule on that. Finally, Patrons can join Discord with special roles to gain access to a special character Q&A channel.
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