Chương 173: Chapter 171: Mountainside trek

There's a jewel in one of the eye sockets of the skull. I have to dig it out, which is kind of disturbing, but I do manage to wrench it free. Magic eye. Legendary. Allows the wearer to see magic trails and detect spells. +500 mana. Must be used to replace a living eye. That one ends up going to Vincent, too. None of the rest of us want it. He's not even sure he wants it. The bonuses are pretty awesome, but the fact that he'd have to cut out his own eye makes it much less appealing.

It would be one thing if he lost the eye on his own, but that sort of thing doesn't happen in this world. We all regenerate from any damage that doesn't kill us. It may not happen quickly, but it happens faster than it ever did on Earth, and much more completely. If one of us lost an eye, it would take at most a few days for the eye to grow back. At least, that's my assumption. None of us have actually lost any limbs, so I don't know for sure.

"Do you think the eye would grow back on its own?" Vincent asks, staring at the gem in his hand and trying to come to a decision.

"It might. Hit points all restore, and we don't get scars," Ash says. She shrugs.

"Maybe the crystal will stop the eye from growing back."

"You're not seriously thinking about gouging out your own eye, are you?" Gigi asks.

"I'll do it," El offers. Vincent takes a step back from her and holds out his free hand to stop her, but she doesn't move forward. I don't think she was serious.

"I'm just wondering," he says.

"We don't know if things grow back, do we?"

"Skin grows back," El says.

"That's enough for me." She's right. If one thing grows back, maybe everything does. Because the skin that grows back is fresh skin, not scar tissue. Our bodies would probably be covered in scar tissue if that happened. And while that is on one level kind of unfortunate – scars are cool, after all – it's also a really good thing. We've taken enough hits to have a lot of very disfiguring scars, and scar tissue just isn't as strong as normal skin. I do have scars still, all over my body, but they're from my old life.

From surgeries or from accidents as a child, not from lynxith bites or orc axes. It's actually pretty weird that I have the scars that I do have, if you think about it. I mean, this isn't the same body I had when I was on Earth. I've died so many times, and have had so many new bodies. But every body I get feels like mine, feels the same. And that includes the scars. Maybe they're there just to help me feel like that's my body. Maybe they stick around because I want them to.

Maybe the new bodies form from our memories, and they form the way we imagine ourselves. If Vincent cuts out his eye and puts in the crystal, then dies, will he come back with both eyes? We only get to keep one piece of equipment when we respawn. Will he keep the crystal? Or will he come back with both eyes and be none the worse for wear? What if he gets used to having only one eye, starts to see himself that way? Will he then come back with an empty eye socket?

"I wouldn't do it if I were you," I say, looking at Vincent. He shrugs. Then he puts the crystal into his spatial bag.

"I don't have to decide right now," he says. Fair point. We move on from the chamber a few minutes later. My stamina is still recovering, and my mana pool is a few hundred points below maximum, but I feel pretty ready for whatever we find. The rest will come back in time. If my mana gets too low, I'll take a few minutes of meditation to get it back. We follow the tunnel out of the room, and soon come out into the light. The very cold light.

That's something that you learn when you live in Minneapolis; just because it's bright and sunny does not mean it's warm. It can be bright and sunny and ten degrees below freezing. And it often is. We pull the fur cloaks and cold weather gear out of our spatial bags before stepping out of the cave, and the cold isn't really all that bothersome. It still bites at my face, but I'm used to it. It's winter for fourteen months out of the year sometimes in Minnesota.

Some months are so cold that they count twice or even three times. I'm used to walking around with just my face exposed. It isn't pleasant, but it's not that big of a deal, either. Looking out from the cave, I see that we're on a bit of a path that continues up around the mountain. It's wide enough for us to walk three abreast, but there's a sheer drop down one side. Glancing over the side, I see that we're a lot higher than two hundred feet up.

I know the tunnels were moving steadily upwards, but I don't think I was expecting this. We have to be at least five hundred feet off the ground. El looks down and lets out a soft whistle.

"That's a long way down," she says. We decide to walk in pairs. Gigi and Ash take the front, followed by El and I, and then Vincent takes up the rear. He's still floating, so I don't think there's any fear of him falling off the edge, but I still walk with my shoulder to the drop so that El doesn't have to. I may be a bit of a misogynist doing this. I mean, I'm taking the greater risk so that El doesn't have to.

Am I doing it because she's a woman and I'm a man, or am I doing it because she's my friend and that's just who I am? I can't honestly say for sure. Sometimes, we make decisions that are informed by our internal misogyny without realizing it. Sometimes we say or do things that are sexist because they are so deeply ingrained in us that we can't help ourselves. One of us had to walk on the outside. Might as well be me. But is it me because I'm a man, or is it me because I'm just protective?

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"I don't like heights," El says to me as we walk. It's kind of slow going; the path is a bit treacherous and covered in a sheen of ice. It gives us a lot of time to talk.

"I'm not, like, afraid of them or anything. But I don't like the feeling when I look down." I nod.

"I hate the intrusive thought that comes along whenever I look down," I say. She smiles at me.

"I hear that's the kind of intrusive thought everyone has. We all get the urge to throw ourselves off the cliff, just to see what happens."

"We might survive it," I point out.

"We've got a lot of health, and there is probably a limit to how much fall damage can do."

"Let's not find out," she says.

"I'm not that eager to feel like I'm flying."

"That's fair," I say.

"I don't want to risk dying, either. And I definitely don't want to have to go through the mountain again." She laughs.

"Yeah, that climb was a bitch. The cave trolls were fun, though."

"I think I expected more from them," I say.

"Me too. They regenerated, which is cool, but still pretty slowly."

"I expected them to be stronger."

"They were pretty strong," she says.

"But yeah, I know what you mean. This whole trip so far has been a bit underwhelming, hasn't it?" It has. I'm not sure why.

"Why do you feel that way?" She shrugs.

"We're climbing Olympus, man. It's supposed to be a culmination of everything that we've done so far. We should be facing monsters of truly mythic proportions. Every fight should be by the skin of our teeth. We should just barely be able to make our way up."

"We're a lot stronger than most people."

"Doesn't matter," she says.

"Most people should just fucking die trying to do this. We should at least be getting close. I can't believe that Amanda is doing this alone. She shouldn't be able to. She should need our help. Just like we should need hers." Sneaking past most of the monsters is a pretty good way to get up the mountain. Though I have to wonder why she went through the cave at all. Surely she could have just flown up the side of the mountain. So could Vincent. Why hasn't he done that? Why hasn't she?

"Do you think there's something in the mountain that stops them from flying to the top?" I ask. She thinks about it for a few seconds.

"I don't know. Maybe they didn't think of it. Maybe the world won't let Amanda do it for whatever reason. Maybe the journey is part of the destination."

"What does that mean?"

"I mean, what if getting up the mountain is part of the whole thing where you become a god. What if you have to know something from our time going up? What if there's only one path up? They might not be able to fly all the way up." It doesn't seem like a good answer. I would think that Amanda was smart enough to find the loophole, to find the way around all the difficulty. That seems to be what she's best at. She found the loophole of the death cycle, after all.

I'm not sure I would've found it if I didn't know that someone else already had. I'm not sure any of us would be here if Amanda hadn't blazed the path for us. And that's kind of what she's doing again. She's blazing her way through the mountain, even if she does leave most of the monsters behind for us to kill. She's still making her way up. We keep moving along the cliff for as long as the path lasts, which turns out to be almost a full loop around the mountain.

It keeps moving higher as we go, so I think we're close to six or even seven hundred feet up at this point. How tall are mountains? Everest is like twenty nine thousand feet, so we're nowhere near the top yet. We need several vertical miles still to go. But that's assuming that this mountain is as high as Everest. Which it could be. It could be taller. I doubt it will be, but it's a possibility.

Ash continues leading the way, and she pushes us forward and off the path we've been climbing to get up a somewhat cleared path that moves at a pretty sharp angle. It's not quite vertical, but it's sharp enough that we have to use our pick axes to steady ourselves and to allow us to move. It's a struggle to get every step, and our speed goes way down. Vincent, of course, has no problem moving, so he scouts a bit for us. The rest of us have to go up the hard way, actually climbing.

You don't have to be going up a sheer wall to be climbing. We could technically walk up this incline, but it's pretty steep. It's better to climb. The only problem with climbing is that we can't have our weapons out as we go. Which becomes a problem when we see the goats. Goats defy gravity. They can climb up inclines that are almost entirely vertical, and they move without difficulty. Of course, these aren't your ordinary goats. Dire goat. Legendary rare elite creature, level 52. HP: 260, 000/260, 000.

Vincent comes back to warn us about them, but I've already seen their stats. That's a lot of hit points. There are only three of them, but I'm not sure that will matter. We have to keep our balance while we fight them. They have to keep theirs, too, but they are much better at it than we are. I slam my pickaxe as hard as I can into the rock and then brace my foot in front of it, allowing me to stand up straight.

"Do we try going around, or do we fight?" I ask.

"Can you use Mab's Rage yet?" Ash asks, still hunched over with her shield on her back.

"I can," I say.

"But something tells me it won't be all that effective against these things. Goats tend to be okay with cold." Besides, while it will do a lot of damage, it won't do enough. I'd rather save it for when there are more enemies, or when the enemies seem like they'd be vulnerable to cold.

"Let's try to get them to run away," Ash says.

"Throw some fire their way." I throw a Fire Bolt at the nearest goat. I have a range of three hundred and thirty feet with the spell, giving me plenty of space to get it off and hit the goat. Of course, if it starts to charge at me, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. There's a lot of scree around here, and my footing isn't great. I might end up sliding back down a hundred or so feet to the path. And if I pick up too much speed, I might go over the edge. I don't want that.

Even if I can survive the drop, I don't want to go through all this again. The fire soars through the air and hits the closest of the dire goats. It does 1, 728 damage. That's double what it should do. That means they're vulnerable to fire. That will help us. The goat startles a bit, and takes a few steps back. But it doesn't run away. I look over at Vincent. He casts a fire storm on top of the goat, trying to make it move. Hopefully, it will decide to move away from us rather than towards us.

If we can get past this without fighting, I'll be happier. It's not that I think we can't win; I'm sure we can. Unless these things do in the multiple thousands of damage every time they hit, I just don't see them being that much of a threat. All they can really do is ram into us. And while that is dangerous, particularly on this slope, I'm not as worried as I would be if they had arms or weapons of some kind. But while we should be able to win this battle, it will take a long time.

And the longer it takes, the greater the risk that someone is going to slip and fall. And then keep slipping, and potentially keep falling. We might not die, but we might get hurt from the fall.