Chapter 196: Excitement* (Patreon)

The ten ton Knick-knack slammed the sampler down into the earth, the tube of Abyssal steel cutting through loamy earth and tough branches with the same level of ease. Once the ten foot tube reached its lowest point, the giant knick-knack gave a twist of the handle, cinching the bottom down tight.

The knick-knack pulled the tube back out of the ground, then pushed the sample out with the plunger, ejecting a perfectly round cylinder of dirt and roots.

“Damnit.”

Right in the middle, about six feet down, was a layer of slimy white fungus, about six inches wide.

Same as everywhere else they’d checked.

Calvin dipped a stick in it and smelled the gunk.

Yep. It’s the same stuff that’s in my jar. Calvin wrinkled his nose and tossed the stick in the fire.

“So, what is it?” Ella asked.

“Home field advantage.” Calvin said, wiping off his hands as he stepped away from the sample.

“What?” Kala frowned. Despite giving Calvin the hint that he needed to actually find the problem, she didn’t fully understand why Calvin was so agitated.

“Whatever took Baroke, it either is this stuff, or it’s using this stuff, to create a pocket dimension about the same size and shape of the fungus,”

Calvin tapped Kala’s map. He’d had a knick-knack transcribe it permanently onto canvas on account of its importance. “Whenever the thing gets bored, it takes someone to the pocket dimension to hunt them at its leisure. There might be some kind of energy limit, given that it seems to wait at least twelve hours between kidnappings.”

“Can you clear the land?” Ella asked.

“I don’t think so,” Calvin said, tracing the edges of Kala’s finger-painting. “This thing’s got a diameter of eight hundred miles, meaning the circumference is approximately two thousand five hundred and thirteen miles. If this stuff spreads a foot a day, it would be adding half a square mile of total area per day. I might be able to stem that tide.”

Calvin glanced at Aoehe.

“But it’s not going at a foot a day. How long was it between your first disappearance in the jungle, and your first disappearance in the village?”

“Two weeks.”

Calvin’s skin went cold.

He put his hand just under the genosian mountains. “This is your hunting ground, right?” Calvin asked.

Aoehe nodded.

“And this is the village.” Calvin pointed out the ironskin tribe’s location with his other hand.

“The distance between these two, at minimum, is half a mile. That means our fungus is spreading, at it’s slowest, a hundred and eighty-eight feet per day. Probably faster.”

“At that rate, I’d have to clear over a hundred square miles of land, per day.”

You could always design a bacteria that eats it like crazy and breaks it down into raw sludge. Lure it up to the surface by promising to write a book about it, then stab it with the concoction. No, wait, that’s a movie I watched one time.

Would that work?

Eeeeh, yeah, you could probably pull it off, but I wouldn’t waste a slot from Calvinian summoning on a bacteria. I don’t know if the system would even register a bacteria. You’re eating them every time you swallow, after all.

Calvin directed his gaze back at Kala.

“The scale of this is mind-boggling,” Calvin said. “We probably only have a few months until this hits Gadvera and my March, and by then it’ll be adding so many square miles every day that we won’t ever be able to choke it out.”

“I felt Warp emanating from the samples I was standing next to,” Ella said. “Perhaps the creature is using the Siphon as fuel for its growth.”

Calvin glanced at the center of the enormous inkblot, representing the heart of this thing’s territory.

“You know what? I think you’re right. I can’t contain all this.” Calvin said, motioning to the overwhelming amount of land. “But if it’s drawing Warp from a Siphon, I can definitely take control of an area that small. If that works, It’ll either kill the fungus or slow it to a crawl.”

“More likely the second. Ambient Warp is fairly high in the deep jungle, after all.” Ella said.

Hmm…

Calvin needed a way to automate the removal of the strange layer of fungus beneath them. Like Elliot had suggested, if he could breed some kind of living creature to eat the fungus, he wouldn’t need to spend a single Bent on it, they would simply consume and reproduce.

The possibility of dealing with a plague of vermin afterward wasn’t quite as harrowing as a creature that covered the entire planet and spirited people away at an alarming rate.

Calvin was fairly sure the one every twelve hours rule was going to go out the window when the thing got big enough.

He didn’t really have the weeks or months it would take to find or breed something that was anathema to this creature. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try, it only meant he wasn’t going to lean on that as his only plan.

He needed a way to accurately target it without being able to see it. The fungus was never quite at exactly the same depth, and sometimes it had multiple layers.

Simply digging up the top ten feet of earth and burning it was far too work intensive. Calvin briefly considered shrinking the knick-knacks down to thumb-size and sending millions of them down one of his bore-holes, letting them burn their way through the layer of mold.

That’s better than turning over the entire forest, but it’s still far too dependent on me to keep it going. I need to delegate this to someone else. I need to somehow arrange for tens of thousands of people to dance to my tune, surrounding the fungus from every side and pushing back it’s expansion. But there’s no way I could ever…

…Oh wait. I’m obscenely rich.

Calvin smacked his forehead.

“I totally forgot about that,” he said with a chuckle.

Calvin took the original map Kala had made and rolled it into a tight cylinder, then stuffed it in the inkwell. When he dismissed the duplicated paper, the real ink fell straight down, refilling the inkwell.

Calvin dipped his quill while Nadia placed his writing paper in front of him.

Calvin’s tongue poked out of the side of his mouth as he tried to keep his penmanship elegant and swooping, like a prince consort’s writing should be.

Dearest Charlotte, I find myself in need of a greedy bitch who would debase herself for money, and I couldn’t help but think of you. There is a task down here in the deep south that I could use your assistance with.

I’d rather not speak of the task in a letter, seeing as you Ilethan scum are constantly spying on each other. I will, on the other hand, speak of the reward. If you preform the task to my satisfaction, you will be further burdened with the challenge of transporting a pallet bearing seventy-five cubic feet of Nem back to your home.

- Sincerely, Calvin Gadsint: That kid who’s made a fool of you twice.

Calvin read over the letter a couple times, making sure it was perfect. All right, nothing misspelled, and it gets the message across perfectly.

“I have some notes,” Kala said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Crap.

***

After a lengthy lesson on how to write a letter like a proper noble, Calvin finally penned an entirely acceptable, yet entirely boring letter to the blonde witch, requesting her assistance with an undisclosed task in exchange for monetary compensation.

Once Kala looked away, Calvin jotted a quick post-script.

P.S. Alright, listen up you hag. I know the letter sounds weird, because we both know we hate each other, but apparently there are standards I have to follow, even if you are an evil bitch. I just want to point out that this isn’t a trap. Seriously. Show up, do your job, earn money, then get out of my life.

Calvin wrote the post script down quickly, then set the letter aside, waiting for the ink to dry while he started on his second letter.

Do you seek adventure? Accomplishment?

Have you always wanted to systematically murder a continent-spanning fungus-monster?

Well, now you can! Calvin Gadsint, The Wasp, Prince-Consort of Gadvera is putting out a call for adventurers and homesteaders to tear the Deep Jungle a new asshole!

One hundred Stone per month of labor! Food and board already included! This is your chance to make your fortune and make something of yourself! Join the new nobility of Calvin’s March! Any land you clear is yours, on top of your pay!

Excitement* and opportunity await!

*Excitement may include, but is not limited to: being eaten by giant insect monsters, sucked into a pocket dimension to be slowly digested for a thousand years, scurvy, gangrene, tetanus, loss of life and limb. ‘Excitement’ is inversely related to the number of applicants, as the giant monsters can only eat so many people at once.

“See what you can do with that.” Calvin said.

I’ll draft legislation to that effect immediately, ravager. Kurawe said in his head. Do you…wish to keep the asterisk?

“Nah, I just thought it was funny.” Calvin said, setting the letter aside. “If you can make it more compelling, do so. We need as many feet on the ground as possible.”

As you wish.

Calvin then penned a letter to Kala’s father, informing him of the situation, and his reasoning.

This time he made sure to follow Kala’s advice about formal letters as closely as possible. The Hash’Maje still had a substantial amount of influence over Calvin’s future as a wizard-king, and Calvin didn’t have any particular dislike for the guy, either, so it wound up being a simple greeting, followed by his warnings of certain fungus-y doom, followed by –

The guy generously plowing your daughter’s mound,

Calvin Gadsint.

There, Calvin thought as he set the quill down. Perfect.

Fingers pinched down on his right ear and wrenched it up and to the side, forcing him to follow the direction or lose the cartilage.

“Ow, ow, ow..”

“You can’t help yourself, can you?” Kala demanded while Ella laughed at them.

“I struggle with self-control, a little bit.” Calvin said with a shrug, his ear still in his wife’s vice-like grip. Ella’s braying was the only sound echoing through the jungle.

“I noticed, write it again.” She said, scowling at him.

“You don’t think he’d find it funny?”

“Write it. Again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kala hovered over his shoulder until Calvin finished the revised letter to her father, folded it up and sealed it with his house symbol.

Once that was done, Calvin created some Messenger Nadia’s

Calvinian Summoning

Chimera

Atom Ant.

27/47 Bent remaining.

Calvin made three normal-sized Nadia’s with two sets of wasp wings on their butts –Nadia’s center of gravity – each of whom was thirty-one times stronger, faster and tougher than she should’ve been. In their chests, they had tweaked Spinner flying organs.

In short, they were designed to be faster than a Toku with an assfull of salt, and tougher than a shit after Keroll beans.

Those expressions don’t translate. Elliot said.

“This one to Kala’s dad, This one to Charlotte at the Den, and put this one in Kurawe’s hands for posterity,” Calvin said, handing each of the Nadia’s a letter.

The three summons tucked the letter into their clothes before leaping into the sky. The three messengers cut through the sky like shooting stars, gone in a blink.

“That’s fast.” Ella said, shading her eyes.

“Indeed.”

Now all Calvin had to do was isolate the mutation the fungus was using that created a pocket dimension and find a way to reverse engineer a key to open aforementioned pocket dimension on command.

No big deal.

***Baroke***

Damn, I hope this works, Baroke thought, standing in the center of the empty firepit, arrow aimed at the sky. If it didn’t he’d be out of a life-saving shot, and they’d be in the same situation. It was practically a miracle he’d been able to stay quiet two days in a row, forcing Baroke to keep his mouth shut for a week was nigh impossible.

Oh well, here goes nothing!

Force Amplification.

Assassinate.

Called Shot.

Penetrating Shot.

Sirfen’s Prey

Pierce the Veil

Godslayer Arrow

The arrow shot up into the sky, disappearing like it always did, about fifty feet above the the ground. This time though, the sky rippled, before bursting at the seams, creating a massive rounded portal in the sky seemingly lined with dirt, spilling open to reveal another canopy, massive in scale, each tree towering hundreds of feet into the air.

In the center of the portal, was a giant who looked suspiciously like Calvin.

“He’s here!” The giant above him shouted, looking down at him in excitement.

The creature reached a hand through, it’s humungous arms bigger than all the nearby trees, the pressure of it’s passing pushing away the surroundings.

“Take my hand!” he shouted, his voice bellow-y and ponderous. “Let’s get you guys out of there!

Learner wasted no time, jumping on top of Calvin’s hand, and Baroke was forced to follow suit, clinging to Calvin’s ring-finger with everything he had.

“I got him!” Calvin shouted an instant before the hand began rising into the air with a horrifying speed, triggering Baroke’s fear of heights as they quickly rose above the treetops.

Don’t look down, just don’t look down, Baroke chanted to himself, content to keep his eyes shut and get reeled to saftety by whatever giant clone Calvin had summoned.

Until he started slipping.

Baroke opened his eyes and realized in horror that the finger he’d been clinging to was rapidly shrinking as they raised up into the air. He glanced up and saw the tunnel between him and the giant lengthening and shrinking in scale at the same time, a strange sensation that nearly made him lose control over his stomach.

“Ah, damnit!” Baroke cursed as his knee slipped off Calvin’s palm. It was suddenly too small to support his entire body. He wrapped his arm around Calvin’s wrists as everything stretched, then finally he and Learner’s palms overlapped as they struggled to maintain their grip on Calvin’s rapidly shrinking hand.

Baroke looked down and wished he hadn’t. The ground beneath him was shrinking, giving the illusion of hundreds of feet of distance, but he felt like if he reached out with his toes, they would crush the tiny jungle woods.

He glanced up and realized that the tunnel above them was shrinking faster than they were rising. It was going to close on them! The sky above them let less and less light into the hole as the earthy sides of the tunnel pressed in on them. Baroke tried pulling harder, tried reaching up, but nothing seemed to speed them up.

Finally the hole closed in on them completely, dirt crushing him from every side.

Is this what death is? Baroke thought for an instant as the pressure made him feel weightless, powerless, his need to breath slowly driving away rational thought.

The hand in his own gave a tug.

No, fuck that! I’m not stopping cuz of some dirt! Baroke pulled with everything he had, muscles straining.

….

Baroke breached the surface of the jungle floor with a gasp, overjoyed at sucking in real air. Right above him, Calvin was pulling on their hands as he and Learner climbed out of the earth. Baroke had to shove and kick huge clods of dirt out of the way as Calvin helped him drag himself up above ground level.

Once the two of them had it under control, Calvin let them go and sat back against a nearby tree, panting and working his arm like it’d fallen asleep.

Why were we in the ground? Baroke wondered, coughing up dirt as he crawled out of the hole and flopped onto his back, happy to breathe free air again.

“Thank the gods,” Baroke said, brushing dirt out of his hair as he climbed to his feet. Learner was calmly grooming herself, shaking off dirt on the opposite side of the hole.

“Hey, listen Calvin, there’s like a dozen or more Genosians trapped in there. We gotta find a way to get them out, too. Nobody deserves to have the suck monster suck out their blue stuff.”

Calvin nodded with a grimace before climbing to his feet. “We’ll figure something out for them soon. In the meantime, we should give your dimensions some time to adjust.”

“What do you mean, adjust? I’m fi –“ Baroke peered up at Calvin. “Waaait a minute. Why are you taller than me?”