Chapter 271 - Avarice (Patreon)

Zeke and Jasper reached the edge of the Rainbow Forest after two more days, but thankfully, they weren’t subjected to the volume of attacks that had dogged the initial leg of their journey. Still, Zeke felt his shoulders sag in relief when he saw the series of yawning passages arrayed before him.

There were six of them, all at least ten yards wide and blessedly free of the ubiquitous and multi-colored vegetation that had been the duo’s constant companion throughout their trek through the Rainbow Forest. Two were adorned with aggressive stalactites jutting from the ceiling, making the tunnels look like the mouths of some great, rocky beast. The edges of the other four were more uniform, which gave them a distinctly manufactured appearance. That was further reinforced by the fact that those tunnels were markedly wider than the other two, which told Zeke that they’d likely felt the hand of some outside force.

That was not a comforting thought, and his mind immediately jumped to the wurms he’d seen in the wyrm caves back on the Radiant Isles. Those creatures hadn’t been particularly dangerous enemies – not to him, at least – but the idea of running into them in the tunnels beneath Min Ferelik filled him with worry, which was rooted in two facts. First, any wurm he encountered in this new world, which he’d referred to as the Eternal Realm, would likely be much more powerful than the ones he’d fought in the Radiant Isles. That alone was enough to give him pause. However, there was a second issue that seemed more pressing with every step he took – he was not at his best.

Without his armor, Zeke felt naked. Exposed. Vulnerable. He’d tried to solve that problem by equipping some various armors he’d looted during his previous adventures, but the pickings were pretty slim. And the armor was almost useless against the denizens of the mountain. No – he needed to finish his quest and gain access to his class’s defining skill. Once he did that, he would feel a lot more secure.

“Which way?” asked Jasper, standing beside him. Once Zeke had summoned his tower, he’d given Jasper free reign to equip himself with whatever gear Zeke had stored within his cellar, and the elf had chosen a slim sword and dagger combination that Zeke had looted in Jariq. And even though they hadn’t had to fight nearly as desperately on the latest leg of their journey, Jasper had been given the opportunity to show that he knew how to use the borrowed weapons. He was quick as a snake, with impeccable form and a surety of movement that suggested long years of practice.

However, Zeke had noticed that the dark elf had the peculiar habit of humming while he fought. It wasn’t loud, but it was more than noticeable to Zeke’s sensitive ears. In addition, any time Jasper wasn’t using the dagger he often held in his offhand, he was tapping it against his waist. At first Zeke considered it a nervous tick – he’d known lots of people who couldn’t keep still – but after a while, he realized something that should have been obvious from the very beginning. Jasper was keeping a rhythm.

Perhaps it was meant to help him with his footwork – some of the novice swordsmen back in Beacon had used a beat to help them with their drills – but Zeke felt that there was something more to it. Of course, he had no basis for that assumption; it was just a gut feeling that refused to go away.

It didn’t matter, though. Jasper had proven himself to be at least moderately trustworthy. That would likely change once the dark elf was freed from his shackles and regained his skills, but Zeke expected to have a better sense of Jasper’s motives by that point. If he felt that the elf posed a significant threat, then he’d do what was necessary. For now, though, Jasper was a good source of information and another pair of eyes to watch his back.

For a few seconds, Zeke continued to study the tunnels. If he chose the wrong one, their journey would be that much more difficult. He wasn’t in a hurry to return to captivity, but he knew it would be necessary if he wanted to accomplish his goals. After all, he would have to travel through a portal into Mal’canus – this plane’s version of a demon realm – to harvest the other two materials. The netherite might be found outside, but according to Jasper, it needed the demonic atmosphere to grow. And the black adamantine was almost assuredly in the actual demon realm – the portal to which wasn’t anywhere close to his current position. Zeke could barely even feel trace amounts of the demonic atmosphere, and it was getting weaker the deeper they traveled into the mountain.

He sighed, the pointed to the left-most tunnel. Without any way to choose, he reverted back to the tactics he’d used in the troll caves. He knew it was going to take a while – unless they got lucky – but exploring in an organized fashion was the only way to make it work. So, he said, “We’ll go that way first. But if it looks like a bust, we’ll backtrack and go to the next one over. Unless you have some information you haven’t shared.”

Jasper shook his head. “I have never met anyone who survived the Rainbow Forest,” he stated. “The rumors say that blood mithril is down here, but you know how rumors are, my friend.”

Zeke ran his hand through his sweaty hair. Even though he’d ended each day by summoning his tower and taking advantage of its amenities, the atmosphere in the Rainbow Forest bordered on tropical, which meant that trekking through that hot, humid environment was sweaty work. Still, he was much cleaner than he had been when they’d first encountered the curious, underground forest, so he couldn’t complain.

“It’s all we have to go on,” he said. “So, let’s go.”

With that, the pair continued on, taking the left-most tunnel as they descended further into the mountain. For the next two days, they explored that branch until they reached a dead end where they spent a further two days mining a black ore Jasper identified as deep iron. It wasn’t as valuable as blood mithril, but it was still worth mining. Even a few pounds of that material would be enough to satisfy their quotas as enslaved miners.

After they’d exhausted the vein, Jasper and Zeke set off back the way they had come; they made better time because they didn’t have to explore any side passages, and within a day, they found themselves back on the edge of the Rainbow Forest, where Zeke summoned the tower so they could rest.

Like that, they explored the branching tunnels for a little more than a week, encountering only moderate danger along the way. One tunnel was home to a curious category of creature called a rolling rock scorpion, which camouflaged itself as a mundane rock until its prey came into striking distance. Then, it pounced, unfurling into an insectile monster with hundreds of legs, a multitude of pincers, and a stinging tail. If Zeke hadn’t been on his toes, he might have succumbed to its first attack. As it was, the creature was like most ambush predators – deadly but lacking in defense aside from its ability to camouflage itself, and he and Jasper made quick work of it.

The same couldn’t be said for the only other truly dangerous creature they encountered. They were on the fourth tunnel when they ran into a hulking monster Zeke identified as a level forty troglodyte. To him, it looked like a shaved gorilla, albeit one with pale, white skin and lacking eyes. Troublingly, it was also incredibly durable, and though Zeke pummeled it with his hammer, it was almost entirely unaffected by the herculean impacts. Fortunately, Zeke wasn’t alone, and Jasper knew how to combat the monster.

Moving with deceptive quickness, the dark elf darted close to the monster Zeke had just sent stumbling backwards. His rapier found a home in the troglodyte’s empty eye socket, piercing through its brain with undeniable ease. Of course, that wasn’t enough to kill it, but it was the beginning of the end. After that, it moved with a drunken stagger, and it died after Jasper jabbed his dagger through its other eye socket.

In the aftermath, Zeke planted the head of his hammer on the ground and leaned on the haft in exhaustion. He’d spent almost twenty minutes hammering away at the troglodyte, but it had done almost no good, aside from moving it a bit.

“I guess blunt force is not always the best tool for the job,” he panted. He turned to Jasper, adding, “Thanks for picking up the slack.”

Jasper said, “Not a problem at all, my friend. I saw an opening, and I took it.”

“How did you know to go for its eyes?” Zeke asked.

“Most miners know,” the elf answered. “They are practically immune to any other damage. The only way to kill them is to attack the brain directly, which is only accessible through the eye sockets. There are rumors that some of the…ah…more powerful among us can defeat them in other ways, but most consider doing so to be…”

He trailed off, clearly uncomfortable with saying the obvious. So, Zeke did it for him. “Stupid,” he said. “Got it. Any other tricks I should know about?”

“Not that I can recall. But my knowledge is, unfortunately, limited. After all, my arrival in Min Ferelik only predated yours by less than a month,” Jasper said. “Surely, there are other dangers of which I am unaware.”

Zeke nodded, then said, “What’s new, right? I’m just walking into unknown dangers and hoping that I survive.”

Maybe everyone was right about him. He didn’t really look before he leaped, and often, he just trusted his advantages – both magical and mundane – to see him through. Zeke was self-aware enough to realize that there were some situations where grit, determination, and power would prove insufficient to the task. But for his whole life, that was how he’d approached problems. If there was an obstacle, he attacked it head-on, without subtlety and with only the most basic levels of planning.

Eventually, though, that wouldn’t be enough. At some point, he’d find something stronger than him. He'd already come close a handful of times. The wyrm queen. The demoness Zila. Micayne’s army of undead. That he’d survived those could be chalked up to luck almost as much as it could be attributed to his skills or determination.

This was a new world, though, and the threats were even more powerful than they’d been in the Mortal Realm.

But what choice did he have but to keep forging ahead? He knew it was probably safer to retreat and return with more information. Perhaps it was smarter to break free of his enslavement and find the materials to complete his quest elsewhere. But Zeke kept coming back to one simple fact: Oberon had put him here for a reason. And while he didn’t know precisely what the dwarf’s end goal was, Zeke trusted that Oberon wanted to make him stronger.

That would have to be enough.

After the encounter with the troglodyte, Zeke and Jasper forged ahead, fighting another few monsters along the way to yet another dead end. This time, they found a few gems that Jasper identified as valuable, but, otherwise, they came up empty and returned to the Rainbow Forest to rest before assaulting the fifth tunnel.

The next day, rested and ready, they embarked on the penultimate path. About a mile down the tunnel, Zeke recognized veins of red-and-white ore lacing the walls. According to Jasper, who was more familiar with identifying various ores and gems, the blood mithril they’d found was low-quality – comparable to what Zeke had found in the Mortal Realm – but it was a good sign of things to come.

With each mile they descended into earth, the quality of the blood mithril rose, and on the second day in that branch of the tunnel system, they found precisely what they’d sought for so long: a dense vein of high-quality blood mithril.

Zeke sighed in relief. He’d tried to remain optimistic, but the search – which had taken quite a bit longer than he’d anticipated – had taken its toll. And he had begun to wonder if he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. But now? Seeing the thick veins of ore tracing lines through the walls of the tunnel was more than a little cathartic.

After that, the pair started mining. Zeke eschewed the mining pick he’d been given, instead choosing to use his hammer. With his strength, it only took a few swings to dislodge a chunk of the ore, and it only took a day to satisfy the terms of his quest. However, he and Jasper continued to mine for a few days after that, stockpiling the valuable ore to help them meet their quota and earn extra contribution points. Zeke also expected that a skilled blacksmith could use it to make powerfully enchanted items as well – a concern for another day, but one that remained nestled in the back of his mind nonetheless.

It was that greed that ultimately proved their undoing.

As they’d mined the ore, they’d slowly followed the vein a little more than half a mile deeper into the tunnels. And to Zeke’s surprise, his senses told him that the quality of the blood mithril had continued to rise. He hadn’t even been aware that there was anything higher than high-quality, but judging by the subtle aura of power the ore emitted, there was at least one more step. In addition, the white parts of the ore had begun to retreat, replaced with even more crimson until it was almost completely red. According to Jasper, that was an unprecedented but encouraging sign.

Consumed by avarice, Zeke and Jasper continued along until, suddenly, the vein stopped. It was only then that Zeke realized that something was terribly wrong.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

“I think –”

Just then, a blob of red energy erupted from the ground, enveloping the two companions. Jasper screamed in agony, but Zeke only gritted his teeth. His racial tolerance diluted the pain to mere discomfort, but he had no defense against the sudden weakness that drove him to his knees.

Zeke tried to push himself back to his feet, but his body simply wouldn’t obey his commands. Whatever the red energy was, it had already sapped a good portion of his strength. And it wasn’t finished. He fell to all fours as the creature – if it was a being rather than a product of the environment – constricted all around him, robbing the air from his lungs.

Maybe they should have resisted the call of greed after all.