Chapter 22: Relaxation Day

  The moment Jason awoke from his deep sleep, he had to become acclimated to the new world he found himself in.

  One: The forest was burned to the ground, most of it, at least 65%, was just sticks and ash.

  Two: The animals within it all relocated to some underground place near that magical river, so the main forest, what was left, was completely fine and posed no issues. Not only could you look far into the distance now so nothing could possibly sneak up, but neither could people, so the group that they had was the group that was left.

  Three: Millie and Grace were apparently working for the prophet, and were cooking up a meal. It was unusually nice, a stew full of boar and chicken with broth that was made of marrow. They were both giving everyone the rundown, which was-

  “I’m sure you’re all aware that we aren’t one of you, so, let me make this clear, only one of you will be left here, we will judge your abilities, intellect and most importantly posturing, manners, and the ability to firmly hold down your own emotions.

  Jason was feeling no pain, no sense of wind touching his skin, his hair was gone, his eyebrows, lashes, one of his eyes was misaligned now and gave him a sort of lazy eye. He was put in a group with Lily, a duo as they called it for the people who have suffered injuries. Lily had a chunk of her side missing, and while nothing important was missing, with her clothes all messed up it was a disturbing sight.

  Marx and Joey were put into a group as well, while Millie was irritated about Fay not being here. Grace did most of the talking, she explained the process of gaining a pledge to the prophet, the honor it would give them.

  “Oh my god shut up!” Marx shouted out, “we get it, we get it.”

  Grace straightened up. “Quiet Marx.”

  “Or what? Genuinely.” He pressed his thumb to the space between his eyebrows, “look we are all prepared to die anyways, if you think any of us will wanna join your little cult then you’re an idiot.”

  Grace looked over at Millie, “Millie? Can you-”

  “Grace. Deal with it, I’m trying to locate Fay.” She kept cutting open her palm and dripping blood onto the ground, the blood kept soaking into the ground, where it should have been trailing in Fay's direction.

  “Marx is acting out of line.” Grace whispered.

  “Okay? And whose fault is that?” Millie wafted her hand and walked in a random direction, “I’ll be back soon, you handle it Grace.” Millie took off into the ashy wasteland that was left of the forest, her figure got smaller and smaller but never quite disappeared as Grace returned to her speech.

  “So. Only one of you will be here… I want you all to be respectful, as I was when put into this situation. You all are lucky, truly. Does anyone have any questions?” Grace waited for a second, then a second more, “please?”

  Lily held her hand up, “why’s your face look like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Ugly.” She giggled and took a step back.

  Grace exhaled deeply, “Perhaps I’ve built a reputation for myself, one of lax, but I killed Jacky, I can kill you too.”

  “Well no?” Lily circled around to Marx and squeezed his shoulder, she looked more confident than she should be on the surface, but her other hand was shaking and her eyes were pointed in every direction, “you just said you needed to bring back one person, and considering you don’t need to be doing this stuff, then I’ve to guess that you have orders, to bring back a good crop.” She ruffled up Marx’s hair.

  “Yes.” Grace nodded, “we’ve never quite had a crop as fantastical as you all. Especially Marx.”

  “So ain't that funny?” Lily lowered both her hands, “that really, us as the crop, you don't want us wilted now do you? And if I die, I’m to guess, my liege.” She bowed, “that Marx might attack you, and we’d both be dead.”

  Grace put her hands into her hood pocket and nodded, “very good. Lily. I guess I’d just kill Jason then and avoid the trouble.” She walked over to Jason and before they could even move she tapped his head and a bright light swallowed them all. Jason fell flat onto the floor with his eyes glassy. “Gone.”

  “Wh…” Lily looked at Marx, who didn’t move a muscle. “Marx, do something.” She kept tugging at his side, he didn’t make a move, just as Grace suspected.

  “I know your game Lily, you’re a parasite.” She crouched down in front of Jason and tapped his head again, his eyes swung open and he took a deep gasp of air, “you latch onto people so you can be strong…neither of you are doing anything. So don’t test me.” She sprang up and had a more gleeful tone, “okay? My little subjects? Sorry Jason.”

  Jason looked around and stared at a bird that was trying to find its nest in the burnt down tree, it was a small red thing with cool black spots on its face. “Birdie…” he said aloud, in his head however, he was thinking, he had no left hand, severe burns all over his body, whatever test this was, he was going to fail. He needed to get out. And he just had proof that the prophets he hated so dearly were right in front of him. So he would wait until he can strike.

  “So, now you all must relax.” Grace patted Jason on the shoulder, “I will feed and tend to you today, tomorrow will be the worst days of your lives, trust me.”

  Lily held up her hand, fully stretched, “teacher!” She was smiling again, somehow not losing confidence, “would you want me to tell Millie that you just almost killed Jason?”

  Grace stumbled over words in her head, “that is fine.” Grace nodded, “I’m… I’ll make you all food.”

  —

  Fay felt a gale of cold as an ice tooth viper tried to bite down on his side, they were about the same size as those midnight snakes but had a much rougher exterior, the scales would routinely slide open and rake against skin the way cheese runs against a grater, so his usual way for dealing with them was to punch their heads and not let them loop around.

  He slammed his fist against the viper’s small snout, its eyes popped out of its head as he did so and a gross crack echoed in the cave. The cave was dimmed with few mana crystals lacing a high roof, while whatever crystals were on the ground were eaten by these snakes to regenerate.

  Another ice tooth viper slid up from its brethren and tried to catch Fay off guard while he was checking his arm which was shredded a bit after his cloak got caught on a scale. He noticed the creature and kicked it in the bottom jaw, pushing it back and way, it didn’t die however, so Fay had to walk slowly around one corpse to arrive at the other, to then finish it with a simple bash on the head.

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  [Slain Ice Tooth Viper (LVL 2) x2]

  +40 xp

  They weren't even level threes yet, but close to it, very close. These things were probably in the upper echelon of level twos, the limit before whatever XP classification makes you a three. He wondered if it would be smart to not gather XP and focus solely on professions and skills to trick someone with an inspection skill to think that he was weaker than he was.

  Didn’t that girl have the inspection skill? He didn’t really know, Jacklyn, her name might've been. I'll ask her later what my status says. He noted, and continued down the cave. The same old vipers appeared, three of them this time, and he removed each one with a bored expression along his face. He found a rhythm that let him simply stand still and slap the creatures away; they couldn't do much about it.

  Despite all this, he was still rather weak on the defensive side, he knew if those things got their fangs in he would be ripped to shreds, or if he was hit and slammed into a rock he would easily lose consciousness and be eaten. So he kept his distance and made sure to always be outputting his snake strength when getting into contact with these creatures.

  [Slain Ice Tooth Viper (LVL 2) x3]

  +60 xp

  But then again, he had all that worrying in the back of his mind, he went further down the cave and had to take a left turn into a particularly bright area, ahead of him he could see a chest at the end. That was it? He walked forward, the chest had little stripes of gold along the ridges so he assumed it would be something important, he then, as he took another step forward, felt the ground beneath him disappear.

  [Activated Stop Momentum]

  [Activated Stop Momentum]

  He made sure to not freeze his hands or face, just his legs that were still on that downward stride, he looked below him and saw a deep dark pit that was hidden. Well, not really hidden, he was looking at the chest too long, so his attention was elsewhere.

  “Urghhhhh…” he sighed out and froze one foot, feeling it bear his entire body weight was deeply uncomfortable, but he kept it going as he shifted his other foot ahead of that one, then froze that one, and let go of the other.

  It was incredibly difficult to keep track of, to focus on specific limbs, but he had practice from stopping blood flow so he kept at it. He felt rings of blood try to push through into the frozen foot as he swung his other foot ahead of him and froze that too. Blood was trying to pump into the veins of the frozen foot and had nowhere to go, so it just stuck there like a clot.

  He hoped none of those clots would reach his brain or his heart or any important parts as he swung his leg again and got to the ground where the chest was. He felt pins and needles spike through his entire lower half, but that didn’t stop him from checking out that juicy chest. He was quite excited for this one, felt oddly drawn to it.

  He opened it up and found nothing but straw. He waved his hands through it, pulled it out and threw it on the floor, just straw, only straw. He then looked around trying to find a way out but couldn’t. It looked like whatever dungeon was mentioned in the notes was blocked off in some way. He grabbed a piece of broken mana crystal and walked to the edge of that cliff. At first he was going to use it to climb over, but he had a small idea. He let it drop, one second, two seconds, three seconds–then it broke, landing on a surface that seemed to open quite wide.

  Three seconds… he didn’t want to think too much about it and just jumped down, at the 2-second-and-a-half mark he activated stop momentum and felt his body reset, only landing an ankle-hurting height onto the ground below.

  It was dark, very dark. But he could tell the place opened up. He collected some shattered mana stone, held it up in his palm, and walked around. The place here was more intelligently designed, with a floor that was tiled with stones and flat walls made of tiles too. He traced his hand along the wall, scratching it up with his gloves to mark where he went, luckily the place was not a maze but had a simple one-exit design that he walked through, it was handmade in structure, like someone had dug out a hole in the wall with a pickaxe. That led into a hallway which finally, after several annoying cave fights, led to some more snakes. They were small things that scattered around the floor, hitting prisoner chains that were for some reason left there.

  Fay walked into the ending of the entrance and stayed there, he knew these things were likely dangerous. He could only stop up to higher uncommon venom so he took it carefully as he walked into the room.

  The place was a simple prisoner's cell, fit with bars along the wall, there was another cell ahead of the bars and probably a whole array that led on from that. Fay stepped another foot in and the snakes stopped and shot upwards, all at once.

  They made a low hiss sound together, harmonising while slithering slowly towards each other. Their yellow bellies twisted as they spun around and mixed and mashed together into a coil. Eventually the collection of snakes formed into what looked like legs, then a body was attached, then a simple face. They were too big to form any detailed facial features, but they did make a mouth out of two snake bodies.

  “Are you friendly?” He wondered, taking another step forward. The answer was inevitably no as the humanoid slung its arm out, spreading the snakes thin and slapping Fay along the side so hard that he hit his head into the bars, he felt his brain tingle for a moment before the creature stumbled forward and sent tens of snakes to bite his leg.

  [You have been poisoned x6]

  Fay twisted a fist along with his hip, landing a punch right at the face of the creature. But the snakes just ducked down, making the head drop into the body.

  [Activated Stop Momentum]

  Fay jumped back, removing his punching momentum and feeling his nails clack against the bars. They were fast, just about fast enough to make him unable to react visually, so he had to get them to strike his hand and needed to rely on feel rather than sight.

  Fay shut his eyes, making a wager that he would keep them closed for another 1 second and also fight, which rewarded him with two perception every half a second. “Okay…” He moved backwards until his back touched the wall, he could hear the slithering of multiple snakes pass by, and also the squash and the stretch of them.

  He waited, “come on…” and the moment he heard a squeeze of two snakes together, and the wind breaking as it tried to use the same hand motion against him, he swung both arms to his left and felt the slap.

  [Activated Stop Momentum]

  [Activated Stop Momentum]

  He froze the individual snakes and punted them quickly, tearing them to shreds. He held onto one firmly and kept it for safekeeping. He couldn’t see them but felt the distinct sound of four snakes hitting the wall. He walked back again slowly, away from the sounds of the constant slipping and slapping of scaly bodies.

  [You have been poisoned x1]

  Something changed as those sounds split into two, stalling for time. Something Fay had written off as moronic became clear the moment his cheeks warmed and his fingers lagged behind his movements.. It was planning on killing with its venom, obviously. And considering he just got injected again he was delayed quite a bit from being cured. Fay stood still and heard the slithering take place on his left and right, the left being far heavier.

  He chucked the snake he had in his hand at the larger pile, it shot forward and splattered along the ground, taking four snakes with it. With them all jumbled around Fay finally ended his wager and opened his eyes, kicking the rest of the larger pile until there were only four smaller snakes left, all in a pile in the corner.

  [Higher Uncommon Venom Extracted x7]

  [Venom Extract LVL UP]

  Higher Uncommon Venom -> Lower Rare Venom

  +1 endurance

  “If it was rare then you would have won.” He kicked the rest of the snakes, killing them all and leaving the cell to simmer in its uncomfortable silence. “No I’d probably have found a way to win.” He continued, not sure why he was saying what he was saying. “Crap am I losing it?” He picked up a pile of snakes, wrapping them around each other, like a rope knot. Then slammed it into the bars, breaking the old rusty things.

  [Slain Snake Golem (LVL 3)]

  +60 xp

  He squeezed through and saw the hallway of cells, at the end was a steel door that was slightly ajar, with a strange light on, orange like a flame, but much too yellow to be fire, and it didn’t flicker like fire would. Fay held his hand out and made each finger bump on the bars as he walked to the door, he found himself attracted to the light.

  He brushed open the door and looked inside, seeing a cluttered room with an orange crystal on a wooden desk. This room looked to be a researcher’s, given how there was a medical table in the middle covered in blood. There were notes on the desk that mentioned trying to steal creature’s skills and put them into stones to then be used, which sounded stupid.

  He picked up the stone and threw it on the ground, not liking the whole idea, this place gave him the creeps so he quickly found the exit, which was around a couple of barrels full of moldy blood. He opened it up and went up a couple of stairs, this whole dungeon was incredibly boring to him. He wanted to find a way to upgrade his profession, which meant fighting level three snakes. The door at the top of the flight of dusty stairs was made of some dark oak that had some sort of purple glittery streaks within it, texturing the wood like rivers through forests.

  Fay pushed it open and saw more caves, “My god…” he stepped out and saw a fork between two directions, he decided he didn’t care whatsoever and went right, his head was drooping to the side now, he didn’t want to walk so damn much.