Chapter 17: Explosivity (Patreon)

The coin starts to break apart the moment projectile slides into it. I flick it with all my might, shattering the fairly delicate skeleton even as it coalesces into a whirl of dangerous magic. Understanding flows into my mind in delicate ribbons of light blue–the same colour as my Mind stat.

When a spell is cast, a small amount of magic is reserved to keep the caster safe from their own spell.

This ‘blowback protection’ is a function of all Class based casting methods.

The material used for this spell has absolutely no blowback protection.

Imperfect casts will seriously harm you.

While the information flows into my mind, the projectile fully appears in all its violent glory. The others I’ve cast before can’t hold a candle to the wicked storm of magic surrounding a single black orb in the very center. Tendrils lash out from the barely restrained whirl and lick against the glass, leaving wickedly clean gouges and devouring whatever would’ve been kicked up.

I instinctively hold my breath and raise my hand, which is somehow clutching a regular ghost quarter filled with shield. My entire being tells me to back away. It screams at me that these skeletons are way too dangerous. But a lone voice overpowers them in an excited whisper.

“You might be able to get coinbound projectile. Then there won’t be any downsides at all.”

Pearl gurgles, raises a hand to her mouth, then leans to the side with wide eyes and vomits out a mouthful of deep black… stuff. More than anything, I agree with her. But my body won’t let me. My mind won’t let me. I try to take a step back from the projectile to make space, but something takes hold of me and forces me to stand my ground. Not in some bullshit philosophical way, either. It actually feels like there’s something pressing down all around me, forcing me to stand and watch as the skeleton-made projectile finally touches the mound of sand.

Light and sound assault my senses, followed immediately by shards of razor-sharp glass and frozen sand. I raise my arms to block my face, but the coin in my hand has already faded away to create a shield tall enough to block the destruction. In that split second between my recognition and calling the shield, the projectile already did enough damage for some serious shrapnel.

A huge chunk of which is lodged in my shield. At face level. Just maybe… if I’d been in the middle of taking a step backwards… maybe it wouldn’t have had a shield to lodge into. Or maybe I would’ve been far enough from the explosion that the shield would’ve blocked the shrapnel that left these seeping cuts all over my body.

“Shelby? Are you okay?” Pearl sounds more than a little stunned as she shakes her head.

“I’m fine.” I assure her, even though the white spots are still clearing from my vision. “How about you? Still in one piece?”

She laughs shakily. “As much as I can be. Holy, moly, that projectile, though! That hole has to be at least five feet wide, and it even scoured away some glass!”

I buy a few seconds of vision-come-back time with a few noncommittal grunts. The scene that slowly comes into focus is straight out of some kind of secret military weapon testing. Random chunks of the glass have been carved out one inch wide and six inches long leading up to a mess of a crater in the frozen sand.

Just like Pearl said, it looks five feet wide. With a texture like some crazy person carved it out of the wall with a chainsaw and their fingernails. All the debris is strewn about on the floor, and the horrific stench is… nowhere near as bad anymore. That’s a wonderful surprise, compared to the very much not wonderful surprise of what the crater has partially revealed.

It’s hard to tell since my projectile pulped most of the visible parts, but there’s a very obvious flank of meat showing through the left side of the crater. Now I’m no taxidermist, or even a hunter, but from the fact that it isn’t bleeding–and the tiny ice crystals in the meat–it’s been in here a good long while. I almost reach out to deposit it in my inventory, but a lack of space reminds me why that’s a bad idea.

“Is that a great white dane?” Pearl asks as I lean in close. “Funny. That muscle structure’s a lot more… condensed than the ones I know. The one you sold Gil can’t hold a candle to this one. When it was alive, I mean.”

I pull the mana potion out of my inventory, stick it in my backpack, and gently touch my fingers to the frozen corpse. Spasm rock through its entire body, expelling thin rivulets of half-ice half-blood that clatter against the glass and start to melt. Then… nothing. No matter how long I wait or prod at the meat, the shark-dog doesn’t move.

So was it a spasm in death, or some weird post-mortem jerk? An image of parasites wiggling through the shark-dog’s body comes to mind, but I shake that off with a shudder and deposit the body.

Depthripper Speckled Grey Dane

Predicted Worth: (77)

Unsellable materials contained within–must be removed before sale.

Time until decomposition: ???

“Depthripper?” I wonder aloud. “Great white was actually a species of shark, but I’ve never heard of a depthripper. Pearl?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve heard of depthrippers before, but they aren’t painted danes. They were some kind of… deep sea monster. Maybe the system decided a new kind of painted dane needed to evolve?”

Painted dane? Is that what that entire species is called? Eh, sure, why not. Great white, speckled grey, makes sense to me. It’s… oh god, the smell’s starting to come back. But I just took a corpse out of the mound–shouldn’t that make it smell less horrific?

“The corpse must’ve had some kind of… smell-absorbing effect.” I gag and pull my shirt over my nose once again. I take a few steps back and ready a skeletal ghost quarter. “Close your eyes, Pearl. I’m digging through.”

Projectile after projectile flies at the mound. I slowly advance, ducking a little to stand in the newly formed hole and pushing a regular shield forward as I go. It looks like a dartboard by the time I reach the other end of the sand mound, and I’ve revealed another two depthrippers along the way. Maybe I cut through the tunnel, too, but I stopped caring about that when the depthripper corpses stopped absorbing the god awful smell.

I blink putrid sweat from my eyes and glance back at the mound. “There’s a hundred fifty Worth worth of corpses in there…”

“But you’d have to go back into the smell.” Pearl shudders. “Is it really worth it?”

It is. I know it is. But telling my stomach and poor, poor nose that we’re going back in is proving… more than difficult. I take two more potions out of my inventory in preparation for the corpses, take a deep breath of slightly less tainted air, and shrug my backpack off to make the trip as short as humanly possible.

“Aw.” Pearl whimpers. “I was hoping it wasn’t worth it.”

I chuckle, which wastes a little of my precious air, then break into a sprint. I duck into the tunnel and snap to the first depthripper–only about fifteen feet away now–and reach out to slap it as I run by. My fingers dig as deep into the frozen flesh as they can, and a thought pulls it into my inventory.

Depthripper Speckled Grey Dane

Predicted Worth: (57)

Unsellable materials contained within–must be removed before sale.

Time until decomposition: ???

This one’s worth even less than the last one. Well… it did kind of look like I blew off half of its head, so maybe that had a huge effect on the value. I swallow hard as the smell closes in from all directions and push myself to the absolute limit of my human abilities. If I had any blowback left, this definitely would’ve triggered it.

Instead, I sprint the fifty or so feet to the next corpse and unceremoniously slap it into my inventory. Then I turn on a dime, ignoring the notification that pops up until I get free of the prison of cold and stench, and scoop up my backpack without even slowing down. Breaths rip free from my lungs as I sprint down the unblocked tunnel. Something starts to glow in the darkness a little down the way. Cherry red slits, like wounds gouged into the darkness itself, followed by a jagged pattern that slopes down and traces along whatever’s standing there.

“Another painted dane?” I gasp out, tears welling in the corner of my eyes as fresh-ish air sides down my throat.

Pearl openly weeps from the smell, and as such, all she can do is nod.

Well, if I’m going to run headfirst into it anyway, might as well see if the system’s feeling generous on identifying. Maybe it’ll even be important to one of my quests.

Identification cost: 129 Worth.

My eyes almost bulge out of their sockets at that completely unreasonable price. I skid to a stop, eyes still locked on the glowing lines that must be almost a mile away. Anything that’s got an identification cost that high has to be dangerous. More than ten times as dangerous as the shark-dog if the Worth cost is relative to the danger.

Skeletal coins fill my hand. A few weak flips empower the lot of them. “Pearl.”

“On it.”

Dark awareness creeps in from the corners of my vision, and the deep darkness surrounding the thing bleeds away. Partly. The monster is obviously some kind of painted dane–it’s got a similar body shape as the shark-dog–but it’s a whole lot… smaller. Red luminescence crawls down its neck in long, gill-like slashes. Its eyes aren’t visible at all. And as it slowly starts to move towards me, the jagged pattern seems to bleed together into a mist of cherry red… magic.

Tendrils of speckled blackness spill forth onto my vision and coalesce around my left leg.

The painted dane blurs, then reappears in the spot marked by tendrils. A coin’s already left my left hand and is travelling to my right, but it won’t be fast enough. The thing’s jaws open wide, presenting rows and rows of saw-like teeth that are actually undulating inside of its jaw. Back and forth, up and down, fast enough to blur together in a cherry red mist.

I focus everything I’ve got on the coin in midair as the painted dane lunges for my leg. There’s no need to imagine the damage it’ll do if it gets a hold of me. Magic-empowered shark teeth on a magically empowered dog won’t even leave bone untouched.

Shield pours into the coin through a link that shouldn’t exist. The coin cracks under the weight of the spell, then shatters completely as the painted dane starts to close its jaws around my leg.

Teeth grind against my skin. Pain lances up my leg from brutalized skin, but it doesn’t go any deeper than that. The painted dane is thrown against the wall as my shield expands into it, pressing the thing’s head against the glass as cherry red struggles against my spell. I grip my chest and take a staggering step back, staring down at all the blood and torn skin that hangs off my leg like corned beef from a hastily thrown together sandwich.

Before I can even gather myself, the painted dane locks its head towards me. Twin clear globes rest where its eyes should be, filled only with wispy red power that flows like blood in perfectly clear water. One of them flashes, and for a split second, the wisp vanishes. Then the painted dane puffs into mist and my shield finally crashes against the glass.

I just… stand there for a few seconds with my heart beating uncontrollably. Panic never sets in, but the horrific sensation of death being just around the corner never leaves.

“Pearl… can healing potions regenerate limbs?”

She’s stunned to silence, but eventually shakes her head. “That’s a completely different thing. I mean, if you lost your limb and still have the severed part, maybe you could press the bloody parts together and hope the potion can do enough.”

“But if I lose the limb completely, I’m doomed?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘doomed’, but for our specific scenario… it’s probably a good word for it.”

I gulp and look behind me. Pearl’s awareness hasn’t faded, but it also hasn’t reacted to anything. There’s nothing to make out back there, and nothing on the other side of my shield either.

“It… it just teleported.” I state flatly, and partially in shock. “This is supposed to be a damn tutorial! Why is there a teleporting murder-shark-dog in the goddamn tutorial?!”

“Didn’t Gil specifically say that you aren’t in a tutorial because of your class?”

“...Maybe, but it doesn’t mean I should have to deal with shit like this when I’ve got two spells, no weapons, and I’m level goddamn 2. This is… like… a level five miniboss at least. Maybe even a level ten one considering how ripped up my leg is.”

Pearl raises an eyebrow at me. “How do you have a scale for this?”

“I… don’t, not really, but it just feels right.” I mutter. The painted dane slams itself into my shield out of nowhere, and I let out a pretty pathetic yelp. “COOL! AWESOME! It doesn’t even have to be in eyesight to teleport at us!”

It grinds its teeth as red mist spews through its jowls, lets out a single deep growl, then disappears once more. As if my heart needed to be beating any faster. I try to steady my breath, but the massive web of cracks in my shield makes that an impossibility. But… it didn’t teleport through the shield. It slammed into it head-first, didn’t even have to shake off the impact, and disappeared.

I reach out and run my fingers over the cracks. “It’s not teleporting. I don’t know exactly what it’s doing, but since I sealed the tunnel, it couldn’t get through. Plus, it already crashed into it once A very visible shield taking up the entirety of the tunnel. Maybe it actually can’t see. What do you think, Pearl?”

I cross my arms and stick my fingers in my armpits to keep myself from trembling. Then I wait for Pearl. She takes a little too long.

“Pearl? You alright?”

Slowly and cautiously, she peeks her head out of her shell. She takes a look around, then nods meekly.

“I wasn’t watching carefully and it really scared me. Sorry. I’ll keep you as alert as I can while we’re potentially in danger.” As she speaks, the darkness on the edge of my vision dissipates into an extremely thin outline. It makes my head throb a little. “It’ll put some serious strain on your mind, so when we find somewhere safe to rest, we’ll have to take a day or two just to make sure you’re okay. Tell me if it gets to be too much.”

I grimace and rub my temples at the newfound pressure. But if a little headache means I don’t get tele-devoured by a weirdly slender painted dane, I’ll endure as much pressure as it takes. I grip the remaining coins as lightly as I can manage, but even that is almost too much for their brittle structure. If I’m going to kill this painted dane, I can’t risk my own projectiles blowing up in my hand.

If I'm going to kill it, I need coinbound projectiles.