Chương 77: Yellowspring Grotto

Both Gym Rats were still too tired or too shocked to speak. But their encounter against the Twigman wasn't quite finished yet, not until they picked up their hard-earned loot. Luckily, the Twigman belonged to a category of monsters that broke apart and withered away upon death, negating any need for monster butchery. As such, all Jordan had to do to 'harvest' the Core of Twisted Knots was pat the ground until his hand closed around a, well, twisted knot about the size of a golf ball.

By this point in their journey together, the Gym Rats had established a firm rule about divvying up loot. Namely that everything would be split evenly at fifty-fifty, except in the case of boss fights where they would alternate encounter by encounter. Well, this Lv. 12 Twigman certainly qualified as a boss fight, and since Jordan had gotten the boss loot last time, it was Pewter's turn to pocket the Core of Twisted Knots.

The Tetherer stowed it away carefully, anticipating the need for a Manasmith to capture the surplus. Jordan would be lying if he said he wasn't a liiittle jealous, especially with his own Vessel still some 35, 000 cc short of the next cap. But the feeling was fleeting and inconsequential. Needless to say, his partnership with Pewter was far more important." Whew!" Pewter was the first to break the silence, even as he lowered himself into an iconic Stormvaster squat.

"That really was something, Jordan! And thank you. I came this close to departing for the nether realm… and that was without any help from an esoteric Leafeller curse."" Hey, none of that," Jordan panted out a rebuke.

"That's such an… inauspicious thing to say! I thought you Stormvasters were more superstitious than that. Besides, when we agreed to join up as a party, we promised we would never owe each other anything. Which is also why I won't apologize for messing up your [Tethers] so badly." He referred of course to the ropes strapped around the Heavenly Cauldron. Parts of it had come undone in the heat of battle, which made it all the more ideal to serve as a [Meteor Cauldron] but less so to function as a backpack."

Only trivial, Jordan. I'll need some raw material for the repairs, but I'm sure that can easily be arranged once we're back in the Padma estate. Now, let's see about finishing what we started." Finishing what they started. The idea had been proper vague even when the pair had first set off into Threestone Forest. And now that he was standing at the threshold of Yellowspring Grotto, Jordan felt less sure than ever that he'd get anything out of this trip. The cave was dark. A darkness so thick as to be almost solid.

It was as if the very air changed into a different substance altogether, right at the edge between forest and cave. Pewter tried shining a bit of [Light] into it. Nothing doing. The light spread in a pitifully small radius before being absorbed by some invisible medium. It simply couldn't penetrate this particular brand of darkness—too total and too powerful to be tricked away by mere spellcasters." Okay, Plan B," Jordan said.

"Something tells me I probably shouldn't cave dive like I did last time."" That was your Plan A? Of course it's out of the question, Jordan! Even if you were to insist on it, I wouldn't cooperate."" Alright, relax, I already said I won't do it. Hmm, but we gotta do something, though! Otherwise, we came all the way here for nothing!" Wisdom DC 12: success Shennong:"Such is the way of things, young one. We all regularly exert ourselves without promise of clear reward.

Often, the reward is no more concrete than the knowledge and experience of that futility. I should know; I'm a gardener." Shennong spoke the truth. But it wasn't the truth Jordan wanted to hear. Not when failure here meant going back to the drawing board. Not when there were only seven days left to save Little Bean!" We can't leave empty-handed," Jordan insisted.

"Let's, uh, try some experiments." Experiment they did. It started out simple enough, with the Gym Rats simply yelling at the cave. Things like'helloooo?', 'can you hear uuuuus?', and'is anyone here from Blacksnake Hollow by any chaaaance?' Nada. Not even an echo of their own voice. It was like the sound, much like light before it, was being sucked up before it could make its way deeper into the cave." This is getting too creepy. Let's try something else."

Next, Pewter tied a rope to an arrow and shot it into the cave. The rope then went taut, which must mean that it landed on something. Yet Pewter claimed to have felt zero feedback. And when he tugged on the rope to try and retrieve the arrow, it refused to budge." T—try casting a spell?" Jordan suggested, though with a strong sense of foreboding. PEWTER SAPLING cast: Manipulate Ropes. The rope wouldn't budge.

It remained perfectly taut and perfectly stuck in place, not even showing any give or resistance, just nothing. Pewter's face screwed up in concentration, looking ready to cast another spell. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. That was when Jordan grabbed his [Dagger] and cut the rope at its base. It fell away soundlessly into the darkness, never to be seen again." Jordan? What did you do that for?"" I just… I had a really bad feeling about it.

Like if you'd tried any harder, you would have been sucked in next." A preposterous notion. Except… was it, really? Pewter certainly didn't seem to think so, as he went pale in the face and stepped back without argument." If nothing else," the Tetherer noted quietly, "that should put to rest any notion of either of us walking into the cave."" 100% agreed." What else could they try? The rule of threes dictated that the Gym Rats give at least one more experiment a go before calling it a night.

To that end, Jordan did the most obvious thing. What he should've done from the beginning, except he'd been too scared to try it as a horror-literate Earthling. He pulled out the wooden box. [Keepsake from Blacksnake Hollow]. Nothing happened at first. Long enough for Jordan to feel relief and disappointment in equal measure. He thought about sticking the box into the cave. But the mere thought of crossing the threshold while holding this thing in his hand made him shiver violently."

Nah, fuck it, I ain't about this life." He made to turn around, the wooden box still secure in his hand. And it was precisely this motion—the act of turning one's back on Yellowspring Grotto —that elicited the first real response from the spirits therein." No." A voice, thin and reedy. Plaintive. Begging to be heard. Jordan froze and looked back over his shoulder. Wide-eyed Pewter beside him shook his head as if to say: that wasn't me. Well, clearly, the voice couldn't have belonged to Pewter.

Or anyone of the mortal realm for that matter. Because the voice had come from somewhere inside the cave. When an experiment yielded results, the logical thing was to try it again—even if to do so went against Jordan's every instinct for self-preservation. He 'reset' by facing the cave, the wooden box now trembling slightly in his hands, then turned to leave." No!" The voice was real. The voice was louder. It was now clear enough for Jordan to identify it as female.

Terrified, he nevertheless forced himself to turn and look. One blink, there was nothing but the darkness of the cave. Two blinks, and Jordan thought he saw a feminine figure, long dark hair stark against an all-white robe. Three blinks, and the figure was gone. Where did it go? Surely, it hadn't somehow been lured across the threshold? This last notion pushed Jordan over the edge. Forget the experiment.

He now couldn't think of a worse idea than staying one second longer at the edge of Yellowspring Grotto, within haunting distance of a vengeful ghost." Let's go," he said tightly, then reached down for the Heavenly Cauldron, still standing where he'd left it. But as he grabbed a handful of tattered rope—" No! Come back! Don't leave! Don't leave me here!"" Xihe protect us!" Pewter exclaimed while jumping back a few steps." Holy shit," Jordan added his own Earthling swear, "we need to get the hell out of here!"

The Gym Rats turned tail and ran. At least Pewter succeeded, zooming into the forest with powerful mountain strides. Jordan, on the other hand, found himself stuck. It wasn't the weight of the cauldron. It wasn't that he'd gone weak in the knees. No, something was pushing him from the outside and toward the cave. No, not from the outside. The thing was in his hands. The wooden box and whatever was inside it now shook and clattered loudly, even as it tried to push its way toward the cave and take Jordan with it.

The simplest, smartest thing would be to let go. The box would get sucked into the cave, and Jordan would be free to run away, free to survive this horror movie scenario by taking the most basic precautions. But he couldn't let go. Not when he was convinced that this damned box was integral to curing deathtouch. Convinced that he needed to solve the mystery of Blacksnake Hollow to save Little Bean, Yarrow, all the pale lifeless people in the Padma infirmary. To save himself.

And so, Jordan pushed back against the box, putting every ounce of his mountain strength behind the effort." Arrggghhhh…!!"" No! Come back! Don't leave me again! Forgive me, Hanza! Forgive me, Shaza!" Wait, did she just call out for'Hanza'?? Jordan felt himself go slack out of sheer astonishment. Big mistake! In the tug-of-war between Jordan Yu and the nether realm, he'd just given up a lot of rope to the latter. He felt himself slip backward, felt himself lose the battle. PEWTER SAPLING cast: Enhanced Lasso.

A big, big boost from an ally! It was the Tetherer's strongest 'pulling' spell, reserved for the sturdiest and unruliest of monsters. On this occasion, it was used to drag a stubborn Gatekeeper out of the latest grave he'd dug for himself. The counterforce needed to break the stalemate. Jordan felt a sudden release as he shot through the air. The [Keepsake from Blacksnake Hollow] was still held securely against his chest. He then used the momentum to swing his cauldron onto his back. And that was when he saw it.

A faint yet unmistakable glow. The rosy iridescence of mana activating inside the Heavenly Cauldron. The glow lasted for but a second. It faded just as soon as Jordan found himself back inside the forest and far away from the cave. But he did see it, and he also knew what it meant. For at least one brief moment, as a Gatekeeper stood at the threshold between two lives, his Vessel had primed itself for a trip across the Void.