HC: Pacifist | Ch. 268 - Striped Lake (Patreon)

Note: I realize I called it Striped Lagoon in the previous chapter, but I did a little more research into what a lagoon is, and calling it a lake is more appropriate.

Thank you, and have fun!

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The Striped Lake would have been more appropriately called a Striped Ocean. From this shore, Roth could not see the other side. 

“Why is it called ‘striped’?” Roth asked curiously.

“I suppose I could show you,” the lizardman said after some thought. He moved the long stick and took the boat farther and farther from the shore. The undulation increased, and undoubtedly, so did the depth, but it couldn’t be too much because no matter how far they rowed, the stick always seemed to be long enough to reach the bottom of the lake.

The smell started changing. True, the scent had always been far from pleasant, but there was something natural about it; it smelled of life. The new smell assaulting Roth’s nose was different. It was the smell of death and decay. He’d felt it only once before when he had teleported into the Dark Abyss.

As the lizardman persisted in rowing, there was also a strange sound. It wasn’t the sound of crashing waves or of the wind blowing on the surface of the waters, but a rhythmic pop, pop, with a persistent wheeze in the background. “What noise is this?” asked Roth.

“You’ll see.”

The sound grew louder, the stench stronger, until finally, Roth could see why the lake’s name was adequate.

“Here we are. Welcome to the Stripe.” 

The lake had two colors. The waters were divided into two by an invisible wall. On one side was the murky dark brown sludge that Roth had gotten used to seeing in the swamps. In the other, the water was pitch black.

Roth gulped as he smelled the stench of the black water. All over the surface, viscous, slimy bubbles slowly formed, slowly inflating, until the surface couldn’t hold, snapped with a pop or deflated with a psst.

“What makes the waters separate like that?”

“Not water. It’s only water up to here. After that, it's abyssal tar.”

“Abyssal tar?!” Roth asked, confused. 

“Yes. Even the waters of the dark lands are fetid,” the lizardman complained. “Whatever rain falls on the dark lands dissolves all the toxins and ash, forming the abyssal tar. Thankfully, the combination of poisons, chemicals, and toxins is so thick that it doesn't mix with the swamp’s water, otherwise the lizardmen would have nothing to fish.”

“Is that so?” Maybe it was a little bit like oil and water never mixed. In that case, the liquids split horizontally, forming layers. In this case, the developers seemed to have added a little spice to how the swamp was separated from the dark abyss by splitting it vertically. “What about the bubbles? It doesn’t feel hot.”

“Those bubbles aren’t formed by heat. It’s gas that accumulates and travels slowly to the surface.”

“I see.”

As he watched, a slithering form emerged from the dark waters, only to dive again. It looked like a massive snake with gills. Caught by surprise, Roth couldn’t help but yelp. “What was that?!”

“Just a tar eel. They feed on the corpses at the bottom of the dark waters.”

“There are living things inside that?”

“Yes.”

“And they eat corpses? What corpses?”

“I don’t know. Some elders say that the great lizards of the past are buried under the waters. The black waters are so poisonous that the bacteria that usually break flesh down can’t survive, and the bodies are preserved, just as in the day they sank.”

Roth twisted his mouth at the thought of floating mummies at the bottom of the lake. The ferryman continued, “Legend has it that Jabri, the Swamp Savior, asked the tribe to bury him with the giant lizard ancestors in the dark waters. Who knows. Perhaps the eels got even to the great Jabri if his body didn’t fall too deep. The deeper, the more poisonous. Not even tar eels can reach the bottom.”

His heart suddenly raced as Roth heard the lore behind the black waters. “So this lake boils without being hot.”

“Yes. That’s what I told you. It’s just gasses.”

“It freezes the past, too! There are dinosaurs at the bottom. They are perfectly preserved.”

“Yes, Mmartyr.”

Roth’s gears turned furiously as he opened his notes containing the riddles that could take him to the Corvid Emperor.

1) What is faster than light?

Darkness.

2) I bubble without boiling. I freeze the past without getting cold.

????

3) “A man is on one side of a river, his dog on the other. The man calls his dog, who immediately crosses the river without getting wet or using a bridge or a boat. How did the dog do it?”

The river is frozen.

4) “Three spies, suspected of being double agents, speak as follows when questioned:

Albert: “Bertie is a mole.”

Bertie: “Cedric is a mole.”

Cedric: “Bertie is lying.”

Bertie

5) Three rats are sitting at the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Each rat randomly picks a direction and starts to move along the edge of the triangle. What is the probability that none of the rats collide?”

25%.

He had been stuck at number two, but he finally had gotten the answer.

2) I bubble without boiling. I freeze the past without getting cold.

Abyssal tar.

“I figured it out! That's it!”

The lizardman didn’t mirror Roth’s excitement. “Shall I take you to the alligators, or should I just leave you here?”

“Take me to the alligators. Thank you. Thank you!”

“Fine.”

Roth didn’t feel the rocking of the boat nor the stench of the tar anymore. All he could think about were the clues. He had finally gotten a lead. This was way too exciting.

Roth tried to connect all the clues. When he had cracked all the riddles given by the corvids to help him find Count Crow’s office, it hadn’t been enough to find the individual answers. He had to connect them all until he found the fake branch that revealed the count’s secret, shiny hideout.

But how did all of these clues connect? Maybe the answer to riddle number two wasn’t even abyssal tar, but it was ‘Striped Lake,’ a landmark that would help him find the Crow Emperor. If that was the case, what other landmarks were there? He went through the different riddles again, and his eyes landed on number three. A frozen river. Was there any frozen river in the game?

He opened the forums and typed 'Frozen River'. There was one. It was in the mixed biome of the Dark Abyss and the Water Cave, one of the largest mixed ecosystems of the game, considered by some as a region of its own: the Frozen Tundra.

He opened the map of AstroTerra, which was much more complete now that he’d visited all of its regions. He marked the coordinates of the lake on one side and the coordinates of the frozen river on the other. Now what? How did the other clues connect?

What if the first clue hinted at the region where the Crow Emperor lived? Maybe ‘darkness’ was a reference to the Dark Abyss. Since two of the clues were references to mixed ecosystems that included the darkness element, it wasn’t farfetched.

If that was the case, all that was left was another landmark, something that narrowed down the search area within the Dark Abyss region. He looked through the riddles again—the last riddle. The answer was 25%, but maybe the clue wasn’t in the answer but in the riddle itself. It mentioned rats running around a triangle. Triangulation! Three reference landmarks that helped one find their location. In that case, what was the third landmark? The only riddle left was that of the undercover moles.

“No. It can’t be.” Roth stared at the map and found a pin that formed a perfect triangle with the other two reference points. It was a pin he had left when Molly had taken him underground to the Molympic Colisseum. What if the fourth riddle was a clever reference to moles? Wasn’t one of the competitions in the Molympic Games precisely to uncover who in a story was a mole? That was suspiciously similar to what the riddle did.

The Crow Emperor had to be at the center of the three landmarks. He went on to the forums and looked for maps of the Dark Abyss for sale. He found a listing left by Pegasus. Even though this was money in Loki’s pockets, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to crack this. He bought a rough map of the Dark Abyss from Pegasus for 100 gold. It was a total rip-off, but it did mark the main landmarks in the region. 

Sure enough, at the very center, between the Frozen River, the Striped Lake, and the Molympic Colisseum, was a mountain. The Crow Emperor had to be there! Roth sat back down. It all happened so fast and unexpectedly. What a rush. He had finally unlocked the clues in the enigma diamonds! 

But how could he go to the Dark Abyss? Wasn’t it Pegasus’ turf? He looked at the ferryman and grinned. “Out of curiosity, do you transport passengers across the tar?” Roth probed.

“Into the dark lands?”

“Yes.”

“Not if I can help it.”

That wasn’t an absolute no. “How much would it take?”

The lizard eyed him squarely. “100 gold.”

“50 gold!”

“90!” the lizard countered. Roth immediately made another offer, seeing that he was willing to negotiate.

“60”

“75, and not a penny less,” the lizardman said, annoyed.

“Deal!”

After finishing Mario’s quest, he already had a new destination. He would visit the Crow Emperor and get that quest out of the way. 

The ferryman kept propelling the boat across the lake, bringing it away from where the waters divided, veering toward one of the shores. A series of mangroves formed a beach of tangled roots where a few alligators lay, resting out of the water to balance their body temperature. 

“You wouldn't know which one is Mario's mother, would you?” Roth tried.

“Although we maintain a peaceful relationship with the alligators, we aren’t close friends. I can guarantee safe passage to their nest, but who will you meet with and how is up to you, Mmartyr.”

Roth shrugged. That worked as well as anything. The ferryman coasted the boat. 

“Thank you for bringing me here. Would you mind waiting for me before we cross into the dark lands?”

“Fine. But I’ll charge you for the time you keep me waiting,” the lizardman said in his slurred, slow tone. Roth threw the lizardman a golden coin. Seeing that the ferryman sat down and would wait, he approached one of the alligators and greeted it. 

“Hello. My name is Pax.”

The charisma bonus didn't trigger. Roth clicked his tongue. He had met Mario before. Even though he was in the Cyborg Union, he was also a alligator; therefore, the charisma bonus didn’t activate. It had been used up.

“I'm here to look for Mario's mother,” he said, hoping that the mention of Mario would cause a reaction. The alligators kept ignoring him.

Roth sighed. Given their lack of reaction and difficulty getting out here, they were a higher-tiered race than the four-legged lizards. His current charisma wasn't cutting it. 

He could either wait for [Fox Form] to come off cooldown so that he could sway the alligator with the sheer power of stats, or he could try to work out another way to befriend them. What would be the key to getting a friendship going with these giant lizards? What did alligators like? Meat, obviously, but he wasn't about to feed them any. What else did he know about alligators? 

Roth tried thinking about Mario. In many of his interactions with the cyborg, he had only shown his half-machine's expertise in programming and a dry sense of humor. But what part of Mario’s personality was more crocodilian? 

He thought of when they signed the trade agreement. Mario had made himself cry, thinking of his mother, so that he could shed alligator tears. The item sold very well, and Soros loved it. He had never seen any other race cry before in the game. That might be his entry ticket.

What could he do to make the alligators cry? Roth sat down next to them and decided to tell the saddest tale he knew: “Hello, alligators. My name is Roth Taylor, and I am a rageaholic. Let me tell you how I ruined my life. It all started when I was a child—a poor, misguided child.”

The alligators around him fidgeted, the first reaction they gave him. Roth took a hefty breath. It had been a while since he'd been to a rageaholic meeting.

Ch. 267 - Ferry

INDEX

Ch. 269 - Memory Tears