Chương 9: Time to Strike

Kevin's leg had been an easy fix, some bones had needed to be pushed into place and the wound had needed some stitches. Simple considering that Nihil was now a 'human' made entirely of threads. Sure, he'd left behind maybe 0. 00001% of his body in Kevin, which sounded a bit wrong, but after a few years in the tower you got used to these little oddities. He'd stayed with Kevin long enough to verify that his new employee had everything he needed.

The monkey creature had brought a stolen plastic tarp after the impromptu surgery to collect some water with. So now, as long as Nihil brought the food, Kevin would never want for anything ever again.

"My commitment to humanitarian causes," Nihil muttered after he'd jumped off the rock outcropping and started making his way back to the other camp.

"Sometimes, it is frightening even for myself." He threw one last look behind him as his feet dug into the sand, seeing a small fish-like ink creature jump out of the water in an attempt to escape something, before promptly being caught by a hideously spiked tentacle and dragged straight into the depths. Nihil shook his head.

"Good luck with that one, sheesh," he muttered to himself. -/- One special thing about the levels of the tower was that sometimes you could just get unlucky. For example, Nihil was uniquely suited for beating up some humanoid creatures with bad eyesight stumbling through a tropic environment they weren't biologically evolved for. Drop him into the sea with a bunch of aquatic monsters however? He'd probably die a miserable death. That was just the thing, wasn't it?

There was no all-encompassing skill that would allow one to face any and all dangers. Specialisation inevitably occurred and bad luck was always a factor when it came to match-ups or events. Just like how Nihil was suited for exploring the jungle, Kevin was suited for exploring the seas. Summoning a variety of creatures based on one's drawing ability was perfect as long as one had the food to replenish one's blood supply.

Even with his former necromancer build he would have been quite reluctant to send his minions to get killed in the depths without some sort of assurance that they'd find something worthwhile. But that was the trade, wasn't it. Nihil had used to be able to reanimate quite powerful minions that could have beaten even at the earliest levels, several dozen of Kevin's small creations.

On the contrary however, sometimes being small and cheap to create was just the disposable reconnaissance or minor attack threat tool one needed. Sort of like a military drone, when you thought about it.

"I wonder if he believed me when I said I'd kill him if he didn't find anything?" -/- Night had already long since fallen by the time Nihil reached the campsite of the other seven survivors, most of whom were still awake. Deborah, Aliyah, Musk and Plastic Man were sitting around their large bonfire with exhausted looks on their faces while the three others slept. Nihil noted that the first to notice his presence was Musk, a turn of the head that coincided with the annoying buzz of a mosquito.

"The prodigal son returns," Musk said sarcastically as Nihil stepped into the light circle created by the fire and sat down.

"What crawled up your ass and died?" Nihil asked, genuinely curious. The slightly chubby and acne-ridden Plastic man, seemingly having grown a pair of balls since yesterday, chortled at the question.

"It's more of what crawled out of his ass!" he said with a laugh. Nihil nodded sagely as he understood, reminiscing about his first experience with the level back in the day.

"The diarrhea burns, doesn't it?" he asked rhetorically with a shake of the head.

"Shut up!" Musk shouted with a red face.

"You come here every night to enjoy the fire without contributing anything. Probably you're also the one stealing the tarps and the coconuts! I bet you're just hunting animals in the jungle to eat some meat."

"Oh, you think I'm not pulling my weight?" Nihil asked curiously, non-chalantly standing up.

"It's alright, I can leave and not come back."

"Stop," the older Deborah suddenly exclaimed and put a hand around Nihil's arm to pull him back down. He let her.

"Did you find anything?" Aliyah asked curiously.

"Let's say that our camp is south," Nihil said.

"Going by that I verified that the fishmen in the jungle can approach the beach up to a distance of about a kilometre. My theory is still that they run out of oxygen going further, which would explain the markings on the trees. Today I found that the same is true for the west." If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. He drew a large circle on the sand at his feet.

"This is the edge of the water, we can't go beyond this circle or we risk death." He drew another smaller circle close to the line of the outer line.

"This is the edge of the beach and the jungle. We know that the safe zone lies between these two lines." Next he drew a circle of dots further inside, taking up about half of the island.

"This is the boundary line I am starting to suspect the fishmen are restricted by." He waited a few seconds, before shaking his head.

"However, it's not perfectly verified that the fishmen can't go beyond this line if they're motivated enough by, let's say, seeing a juicy human." He pointed at the large round area between the edge of the jungle and the fishmen territory.

"There are some animals at the circle beyond several hundred meters from the edge and towards the fishman territory. However, the true animal biome of the jungle lies squarely in the yet unclearly defined fishman territory. My hypothesis is that if we want meat, we'll have to risk hunting in the same area as the fishmen, therefore making us direct resource competitors."

"What kind of animals are on the outer circle?" plastic man asked curiously. Nihil shrugged.

"I saw some beetles, flies, small snakes, small birds, geckos and hummingbirds. Further inside you start getting doves, large spiders, large snakes, some sort of dark brown/grey-blue bird I can't quite identify." Deborah suddenly perked up.

"Was it grounded, fat and shaped a bit like a ball?" she asked.

"It seemed to have quite small wings," Nihil replied casually. The woman gasped.

"That might be a dodo! They went extinct back on earth hundreds of years ago."

"Well, there you found your staple food source if I can eradicate some fishmen and clear up hunting space," Nihil said simply.

"Bring back some snakes," Musk suddenly ordered.

"We can roast them on the spit." Nihil shook his head.

"There are some small ones in the safe zone, go hunt them yourself if you're that hungry," he said with a shrug.

"I'm focused on stealth until I've identified all the possible dangers. I'm not risking the rustling and following silence of violence to alert the fishmen before I'm ready."

"Fuck you're useless," Musk cursed quietly.

"You could also just not eat," Nihil proposed kindly to the gaunt man.

"Burning fat cells won't give you diarrhea." Musk threw him a hateful look.

"Burn what fat?" he cursed, holding up a thin arm, before looking resentfully at Deborah and plastic man.

"I never thought I would wish I was fat."

"Maybe you could try creating a sort of plastic net to catch the fish in the sea?" Nihil asked Plastic Man after looking around the beach and verifying that they really had enough plastic tarps out collecting water to not need anymore. It seemed they were going all out, even wanting to gather enough to shower. Plastic Man dodged Nihil's gaze awkwardly.

"Mmmm, I tried, but," he shook his head, stood up and went to get what seemed to be a plastic rod with a net attached at the end. Or, well, rather, what used to be a net. Bite marks had destroyed everything, turning it into frayed nonsense, even reaching up the rod to take chunks out of it.

"Whatever's in that water, it can pack a hell of a bite, or rather, hell of bites," Plastic Man said despondently.

"I see," Nihil muttered. Of course he remembered trying something similar with a basket woven out of treebark, but he'd been holding out some hope for the hard plastic. He looked around, finally seeing the logs which seemed to be in the process of getting stacked up in something resembling the foundation of a house.

For the moment the three sleeping members of the group were simply snoring away under a plastic tarp tied to a tree and creating a triangular tent as it went down to the ground where it was weighed down by more logs. The backend was closed with more tarp, as was the tree-facing side and the floor. This left one entrance and honestly looked like it might be enough to ward off some wind and rain for an hour or two before falling apart.

"I'd suggest accelerating the hut structure," Nihil said non-committedly, before immediately switching the topic.

"I found the thief by the way, the one who stole the coconuts and the tarp."

"What?" the group exclaimed collectively.

"Why didn't you lead with that?" Musk asked before starting to curse softly under his breath, his mosquitoes vibrating in the air around him.

"Didn't seem that important," Nihil said with a shrug.

"Anyway, we can't do anything about it. Found a small monkey-like creature running into the jungle while carrying a coconut. Didn't want to follow it too far but I verified that it seemed to be made of some inorganic material. My theory is that we do in fact have nine survivors on this island, but that one of them decided to not join us and hole up in the jungle somewhere. Maybe they found a nice cave, I don't know.

Regardless, they likely have the ability to either transform into a creature, or summon creatures, which they have been using to collect what they need around the island."

"They're probably scared of people," Aliyah posited quietly.

"It's clear everyone had different experiences on level 0."

"Someone taking a few coconuts and tarps isn't really a priority," Nihil said, waving the matter off.

"Just wanted to share the information so there's no longer any confusion or mistrust." Despite Nihil's mostly truthful statement, Musk continued giving him a suspicious look.

"Anyway," Nihil said as he stood up.

"Just wanted to notify you. I see you're enjoying the camping trip so far and managing well enough on your own. I have to start walking now if I want to approach the jungle from the north before dawn." In reality he did need to walk, but also didn't see the point in staying with this bunch of downers. Also, practicing his new skill was still very important until his grasp of it became instinctual and for that he needed privacy.

"I'll come with you," Aliyah suddenly said, standing up.

"Sure," Nihil said with a shrug, the two of them waving goodbye to the group.

"Can we go the other way actually?" Aliyah suddenly asked as Nihil turned to where he'd come from. She blushed, "I left the… in the other direction." They left the other way, Aliyah digging up the severed hand from underneath some bushes and starting to practice animating it. Nihil noted that her control was improving at a rapid pace as the hand scrambled its way across the sands on its fingers like some sort of demented crab. He shook his head and started practicing his own abilities.

An extra hand might not seem like much, but the experience gained manipulating dead body parts had a much higher ceiling than converting materials into plastic. If he didn't know that she'd likely just eat it, Nihil would have maybe brought Aliyah a dead animal to practice with. After all, maybe it would be useful to have some backup when he went and started killing off the fishmen. However, he'd been serious when he'd claimed that he couldn't capture any of the larger animals in the fishman zone yet.

He needed to keep his presence light until it was time to strike. Attacking an enemy that knew you were there and one that was wholly unprepared were two completely different things. It would be time soon…