Chương 44: Midnight Shopping Spree

The results showed up on the chalkboard immediately. The indecipherable text shifted, blurred, rearranged itself, and a new entry appeared beneath Thorn's Edge: Unnamed Rift N5W12S#486 Tier 1 Progress: 16% Current Instances: 2 Instance 1 Occupant: Unknown, Unknown Instance 2 Occupant: Jerrold Jessup"Tier 1," I said, scanning the occupant list.

"That means monsters up to Level 10, right?"

"Correct."

"And the unknown occupants—they're unknown because they're Level 0? The System hasn't…" I let the sentence trail off. Taken over their bodies? Eaten their brains? Possessed their souls? I wasn't sure which phrase I wanted to fill in the blank. Chelsea huffed, a sound halfway between amused and indignant, but all she said was, "Also correct."

"Is it the middle of the night in the rift, too?" She made an equivocal gesture with her hand.

"It's impossible to say." But it might be. And it was definitely full dark outside. Were the monsters worse at night? The squirrels had attacked in broad daylight, so it might not matter, but a mana-crazed raccoon or owl sounded like a nightmare. Just reaching the rift entrance was going to be a challenge.

"What?" Chelsea's tone held surprise. I looked at her, confused by the question.

"You can reach any rift from your RMI. Just walk through the door and tell the System where you want to go." I blinked at her, feeling stupid. That seemed so straightforward. It hadn't occurred to me before she said so, though.

"Does that mean the rift entrance is here now?" I asked.

"In my backyard, I mean?" Two rifts potentially spilling monsters into my backyard sounded like a fine reason to stop collecting them, no matter how advantageous they might be.

"No." Chelsea shook her head.

"I brought the first one here after you declined an enclave, but you're accessing others through your RMI. There's no need to relocate them." Still perplexed by how the gates worked, I frowned.

"If I go into the rift and find the people inside, maybe Jerrold, maybe the unknowns, how do I get them back to where they belong? I don't want to bring them here." Okay, maybe if they were badly injured and it was the only way to save a life, I would. But I didn't want to accumulate a pack of strangers in my house.

"As a Rift Keeper, when you step through a gate, you'll be able to select your destination. Your RMI is always an option, but so is returning to the gate's physical location."

"Got it." I folded my arms, kicking myself just a little. I should have asked more questions before making that snap decision to select the nearby yellow pin. I'd been thinking of rifts as monster nests, but they were so much more than that. But then I lifted my eyes to the chalkboard and shook off the regret. Maybe I could have done better, but Jerrold Jessup and two unknowns were currently stuck in some dismal swamp, maybe in trouble.

It made sense to clear out the nearest monster infestations, especially if they were affecting my neighbors. Well, okay, people in my vicinity. I'm not sure the RV park's inhabitants could be considered neighbors, exactly. I'd just leveled up a whole bunch of times, so I had plenty of energy. And the highest-level critter in the swamp was no more than Level 10, so nothing in there would be a serious threat to me. [Body in Balance] meant slimes Level 6 or below couldn't even damage me.

But would I be able to damage them? My mental imagery of slimes leaned heavily on the glowy green ectoplasm blobs from Ghostbusters, and I didn't have a ghost-proof vacuum cleaner available. And Warden's Edge—while clearly the best weapon in the Multiverse—was probably not the right tool to use on monsters that could ooze their way around a heavy impact. Maybe I could throw dirt on them? Bury them? Set traps? Jack had killed slimes, hadn't he? That was how he'd leveled up before getting into the challenge scenario.

"I think I need to go shopping," I said, glancing at Zelda.

"You up for it?" She stood, stretched, and wagged her tail a few times. No Bear. Squeaky balls? she suggested. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I chuckled.

"Nope, just the Dollar General. And maybe the donut shop." I frowned, thinking back, trying to remember what I'd seen where.

"And maybe the gas station, too. First, though, let's sell our loot." I emptied all the bug chitin and ichor out of Zelda's treat bag, glad to be rid of it, and even gladder for the credits Chelsea gave me in exchange. None of it was worth much, but the credits added up. I spent fifteen of them on three health potions and saved the rest for later. When I stepped through the door, a dialog box popped up in my HUD, offering me my choice of rifts and rift instances.

I selected Thorn's Edge, and on my next step, my surroundings changed. I was back in fake Oklahoma, but it looked incredibly different. I'd fully expected it to be dark in the rift and it was, but everything—the trees, the brush, the road, the dirt, even the buildings in the distance—glowed. It wasn't glowing like glow-in-the-dark stickers, and it definitely wasn't the radiant allure promised by fancy skincare products. But it wasn't glowing like normal light, either.

It was like one of those filters on a social media app had been layered over my actual vision, painting a misty luminescent fog over everything around me.

"What the what?" I was tempted to turn around and go straight back to Chelsea to ask what the hell was going on with my eyes, but instead I took a few tentative steps forward, and then began walking with more confidence, picking up the pace. I wanted to get in and out of here as quickly as possible. We'd dash into the stores, grab the things I thought I could use, then head back to the RMI. I'd ask Chelsea my questions then. Maybe it was some kind of night vision. Except I didn't think I had a night-vision skill.

I'd never chosen one, and none of my new traits had mentioned it. Could it be my new Perception trait, [Senses Beyond Sight]? Except that trait's description had specifically said smell, touch, and hearing, and this was very definitely something wrong with my sight. Okay, not wrong. Under the circumstances, while hurrying through a dark forested rift in the middle of the night, it was quite helpful. But it wasn't normal. It couldn't be [Uncanny Insight].

I'd had that trait since the challenge scenario, and I would definitely have noticed if it had given me night vision. It would have made our goblin killing so much easier. Was something wrong with the rift? Maybe claiming it had turned it toxic, and it was now filled with poison gas that would kill both Zelda and me any minute. Or maybe my depression's propensity for catastrophizing was working overtime in a really, really stupid way. Of course the rift wasn't filled with poison. Oh! Duh. It was filled with mana.

I stopped my hurried walking in the parking lot at the Dollar General and took a long, slow look around me. At my side, Zelda gave a low, questioning woof. Big bugs? No smell. What is it? Everything in the rift was infused with mana. Mana permeated the air, the ground, and the objects, both living and not. [Mana Absorption] must have come bundled with [Mana Sight]. It made sense, I supposed. It would be easier to absorb something I could see. I just hadn't expected it.

"We're good," I said to Zelda, a little absently. In the parking lot, with the light from the store behind me, the mana glows were much less obvious. In full daylight, I would probably have thought my vision was getting blurry, and that I needed glasses. Given my points in Perception, I would have been seriously annoyed at the System for screwing up my eyesight. Would it have occurred to me that I was seeing mana? Maybe eventually. Not easily, though.

I might have noticed that the colors in the environment weren't quite right. The blurriness around the tree trunks had a faint green tint, but the ground looked browner, even in the parking lot. It was almost like a layer of dirt overlaying the pavement. And not Oklahoma red dirt, the way it ought to be, or even Florida gray sandy dirt, but a golden beige dust. Earth mana? Is that what I was seeing?

And the trees would have life mana or plant mana, and the almost invisible pale mist in the air would be some kind of neutral mana. Or maybe atmospheric mana? I was tempted to try [Mana Absorption], just to see how it worked, but the description made me nervous. I didn't want to be "weakened" or "altered," and if changing the environment might make it worse… well, maybe I'd practice in a place that wasn't where I fully expected to be doing my grocery shopping for the indefinite future.

I bet no one would care if I messed up the environment of the brackish swamp where Jerrold Jessup was currently hanging out. Instead, I turned and entered the Dollar General. To start, I went straight to the school supplies and picked out the biggest backpack they had. Zelda's treat bag held "eight cubic units."

I had no idea how big a unit was and I hadn't filled it, not even with all those pieces of bug chitin, but I planned on loading up now, so I'd stash the lightweight stuff in the pack and the heavier things in the treat bag. Next, I went to the cleaning supplies aisle. I grabbed three big jugs of bleach and stuck them in the treat bag. I wanted ammonia, too, but there weren't any bottles of it on the shelves, so I started reading labels. Pine-Sol, no. Mr. Clean, no. Kaboom, no.

I didn't want an aerosol, so the Lysol bathroom cleaner was no good, but I finally found some Windex with ammonia listed as an ingredient. I put two spray bottles in the backpack. Did I think that if I put both the bleach and the ammonia in the treat bag, they'd somehow spill and fill it with a deadly cloud of chloramine gas? Yeah, of course I did. One of the highlights (lowlights?) of a depression downswing for me was an ability to catastrophize about almost anything.

If I put these chemicals in one bag, I'd spend the rest of the night poking at my anxiety about it, twinge, twinge, twinge, telling myself I was stupid to worry and then worrying nonetheless. Keeping them separate might be pointless, but it would let me avoid the misery. After cleaning supplies, I went to the food shelves and cleared out the store's supply of iodized salt canisters. There were only six of them, but I had high hopes for the salt. In cooking, salt tenderizes by breaking down cellular structures.

Slimes seemed like the very definition of a cellular organism. I didn't know whether the salt could actually hurt them, but it might work as a barrier if they wouldn't touch it. Okay, maybe that only works on demons. But if it worked on slimes, I could build pathways, force them into my traps—well, the holes I would dig—and then dump bleach and ammonia on them to poison them. Would it work? No idea. But it was the best idea I had.

I roamed up and down the rest of the aisles, contemplating slimes and what I knew about them. Realistically, almost nothing. Digging holes and throwing dirt on them was probably as practical as any other idea I had. But it was a swamp and slimes were, well, slimy. I picked up a few more boxes of kitty litter. Maybe kitty litter would work like a dessicant? I finished my shopping by heading to the gas station. Jack had killed his slimes with the fire suppression foam from his school's sprinkler system.

Sadly, Dollar General didn't sell fire extinguishers. But the gas station had one mounted by the pumps, so I unhooked it and added it to the pouch. I slid my arms into the backpack's shoulder straps and shrugged it into position, patted the pouch where it rested on my hip, and picked up the boxes. Looking down at Zelda, I said, "What do you think? Ready to go explore a new rift?"