Chương 22: Chapter 20 — Deeper

[NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 487 / 5000 Day 55 The cave had three branches. They had established this on the first day of the advanced path and turned back at the junction. The signs outside had been specific about what lay further in. The darkness past the split was a different kind of dark than the entrance — deeper, older, the kind that didn't thin out as your eyes adjusted. They went left.

The left branch opened into a long corridor of natural stone, the ceiling low enough that Max's head scraped it in places, the floor uneven in ways that didn't bother Max and bothered Fenwick considerably. Sindy ran scans ahead and put the butterfly where she needed Max's attention. Fenwick kept one paw on a strap and the other ready. The first encounter came quickly. Four goblins, better equipped than anything on the surface.

They carried crude torches, short blades, rudimentary armor, and a clear sense of territory. They saw Max and spread with experienced coordination. Max walked into the first one. Not strategically. He had seen something on the cave wall, a patch of luminescent moss, pale blue, moving slightly in a room with no wind, and had ambled toward it directly through the goblin's position. The goblin made an annoyed sound; it wasn't used to being ignored. Max gazed at it.

The sword came up and ensured it was given proper attention. What followed was not elegant. It also didn't take too long. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP Current XP: 687 / 5000 Max came across as quicker because he was interested in the glowing blue. Fenwick tried to get them back to the entrance. The moss was what won. However, it wasn't a moss when they got up close. Sindy noted that the organism was a slime mold slowly moving to attack a mushroom farther away.

Max ate it on the way out. +0 XP, the slime mold isn't a creature. The next thirty or forty minutes were Max doing his bug hunting at the end of the hunt. The XP for the bugs no longer showed up for Max since he was level 3, but it seemed to make Max happy, and Fenwick made sure to plan the extra time. Day 56 The middle branch. The middle branch was wider. Fenwick thought it was great until they were surrounded.

The width meant room for more of them, and the goblins in the middle branch had clearly been briefed on what had come through the left branch the previous day. They had reorganized. There were seven of them in the first chamber; the two at the entrance slipped in behind them to cut them off, two flanking, three deeper in with spears. These goblins had held a meeting about this. It showed. Sindy put the butterfly on the nearest one before they had finished organizing. Max moved.

The goblins had planned for something that stopped when it was hit. Max didn't stop when he was hit. Max didn't appear to notice when he was hit. This was a different problem entirely and one the goblins had not planned for. The two at the entrance went first. Max dropped low and stuck his sword out behind him — one skewered himself. The second got close enough for Max to turn and bite his nose off while he was still crouched.

Then one of the flankers, who had gotten a good angle on Max's leg, discovered this was not the advantage he had expected. Max slammed the sword into him, still carrying the first goblin on it; they both stopped moaning after the crunch. The remaining flanker was decapitated as Max pulled his sword free, the swing carrying a little too wide. The three with spears had been advancing. They realized simultaneously that this was a mistake when the head landed in the middle of them. They ran to the rear exit.

The white paw came up. A third-level fire spell that made a loud boom. Two of the three went down. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. The third, singed and smoking, reached the tunnel and kept running. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP It was still early, and Fenwick decided to push deeper today. The second chamber had a shaman.

Fenwick felt the magic before he saw it, a low, ugly pressure in the air, a wrongness of power being used badly on purpose. The shaman was old, hunched, robed in something that had been several things before it became a robe, and it had a staff that was doing something Fenwick didn't like the look of. Yellowed eyes looked both Max and Fenwick up and down, focusing on the arcane power that radiated from the small guinea pig. The shaman pointed the staff at Fenwick. The bolt was fast.

It clipped him on the shoulder with enough force to knock him out of the harness. Fenwick fell off the shoulder entirely, hit the cave floor, rolled, which was undignified, and came up with both paws raised and a level three fire spell fully prepared and extremely motivated. The shaman had not expected the sword. When the weight disappeared off his shoulder, the light in Max's eye sockets turned red, and he rushed the old, weathered thing that called itself a shaman.

The sword went through the mouth and came out the back of the skull. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +150 XP NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED TOTAL: +300 XP Fenwick stood in the dark for a moment, slightly singed, shoulder sore, and with cave dirt in his fur, his paws slowly lowering. Max looked at the shaman with mild interest.

"I had it," said Fenwick. Max found a beetle. Fenwick looted the body before they returned. The staff was barely magic — it looked like it could hold a spell for about eight hours, and there was a large chance of failure. He kept it anyway for the Order to study. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 1287 / 5000 Fenwick confirmed his level up at the cave entrance, standing in the afternoon light with the quiet of someone who had just done something they were going to think about later.

A bit more mana was available; he could cast more spells. He noted it. He noted what the shaman's bolt had felt like when it came at him and the fall to the ground. Plans for a better harness to keep him more secure were brewing in his head. He had a great deal to think about. He thought about it on the walk home. Day 57 The right branch. The right branch went down.

The floor sloped steadily, the air changing quality as they descended, growing colder and older, carrying something beneath it that Sindy flagged without being specific about. The luminescent slime mold was more abundant here, in shades of blue and pale green, throwing strange light across the walls. Max watched it with the focused attention he usually reserved for beetles. Fenwick watched the dark ahead. The creature in the third chamber was not a goblin.

It was large and pale, and had been down here long enough that its eyes had changed into something that no longer needed light to work. Wide, filmed, they caught the slime mold's glow and held it. It moved with the slow certainty of a creature that had never needed to hurry and had not started now. It froze, focusing on Max. Max uncharacteristically froze, too. He had begun to show different mannerisms as his intelligence increased.

Something passed between them that Fenwick could not read, the exchange of two things that had both crossed the same line from one side to the other and recognized it in each other without knowing how. The creature lunged. Max caught it with his hands and looked at the creature as it swiped at him. The creature was larger than a goblin. It was also significantly less prepared for something that didn't react to what it was doing. It bit Max. Max looked at where it had bitten him with mild interest.

Then he bit it back. Crunch. The black blood from its neck spilled over Max's hands. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +200 XP NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED TOTAL: +400 XP The creature did not get up. Fenwick raised his paw, waited, and lowered it. The creature did not move again. He lowered his paw all the way.

"Hm," said Fenwick. Max stood in the blue-green slime mold light, covered in the creature's leaking, something Fenwick chose not to examine, holding something he had found on the cave floor that turned out to be a rock. He looked at the rock. He looked at where the creature had been. He dropped the rock.

"Max," said Fenwick. The head turned.

"Good." They walked back up the right branch, through the junction, past the luminescent slime mold, and out into the early evening light of the Thornwood. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 1687 / 5000 [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Sindy — Private Log — Day 57] Three days. Some new creature types, even one shaman. A magical item turned into the Order's repository. Fenwick leveled. He did not mention it. He sat on his cot, looking at his paws for a while, then fell asleep.

The creature in the right branch recognized Max. I don't have a framework for what that means yet. Something in the trees east of the path has stopped moving. I don't know if that's better or worse.