HC:Pacifist | Ch. 58 - Ssewerss (Patreon)

To Roth's surprise, the creature made no aggressive moves; instead, it fixed its gaze on him unblinking. A nervous lump formed in Roth's throat. He had never encountered a snake before, let alone established a friendly rapport with one.

You're meeting the snake race for the first time. Charisma bonus activated.

"Hello, I am Roth. What's your name?"

"Ssss...sssss ss sss sss." Was that its name? There was no way he could pronounce that. The serpent reached out toward Roth and touched his arm. It kept smelling the air with its tongue. Why was it smelling him so much?

Of course! Roth opened his stat window and went to revisit the description of the Zoomorph race.

Zoomorph (Hidden Race)

Race Description: By spending much time with different mutated beasts, your cells have captured the essence of some of their strength. The Lord of the Woods has awakened your genetic potential, allowing you to exhibit some of its unique strengths.

Racial Effects:

Nature speaks to you, and you listen;

All animals like your smell.

Bingo! It says that animals liked his smell. His mind returned to the baroness' and the ratan's reaction to his change in race. They all liked his smell!

Did this mean that when he met an animal race for the first time, they wouldn't take the initiative to attack him, even if he didn't have a friendly relationship with them?

That was so OP! Roth couldn't take it anymore; he had to break his dance moves. Roth started to make his cheesy dance.

"Sssss. Sssss. Sss." He had forgotten that the snake was wrapped around his arm!

Your charismatic dance moves entrance the snake.+9 reputation with all snakes.

What in the world? Snakes liked dancing? He chuckled. Since he had nothing else to do and the bonus to his charisma wouldn't last forever, Roth let his feet loose and started dancing as his new friend kept sibilating away. For a moment, Roth forgot the discomfort from the sewers and just had fun.

As Roth danced, more and more snakes kept poking their heads out of their pipes, following his movements with interest. To Roth, their reaction was a testament to his unparalleled talent, confirming his unrivaled dancing prowess. The snakes began to mimic his movements, their sinuous bodies contorting and mimicking his steps. They weaved around one another, forming intricate patterns mirroring his every sway and stumble. It was a bizarre, surreal ballet.

What a phenomenal step you just made there. Your audience of serpents is pleased. +14 reputation with all snakes.

He had to admit that the time that foxes hadn't enjoyed his dance moves had hurt his feelings. Finally, he had found a race that could appreciate his fantastic sense of art. The bonus to his charisma lasted for an hour, and Roth was planning to give it his all until the time was done. As the audience increased, the points he gained kept growing.

Your charisma gives you such grace and elegance. Your audience of serpents loves your dance. +16 reputation with all snakes.

You are now friendly with all snakes.

Gone were the days when befriending a race was enough to give him a title. He had noticed that with the treeants and the dwarves, he hadn't been given any titles from just befriending them. Could it be that the races found in the beginner zones were easier to befriend to encourage beginners? If so, more advanced races would have more work and time before their friendship could give fruit.

Other than the first snake that had come aboard his arm, others had joined the party and moved up and down his leg. They would twine up his arm and leg and sometimes give him little taps. When they did, he would get a notification.

You start making sense of the taps the snakes are giving you. Progress in learning: Snakish 4%.

With water up to his knees and hugged by different snakes, he danced on. When his one-hour bonus to charisma ended, Roth received a hear-breaking notification.

Your bonus to charisma has ended.

The snakes look at your clumsy dance moves and feel disrespected by your lack of grace.

-8 reputation with all snakes.

What? The outrage! The system had called his dance moves clumsy! Roth felt the blood in his head boiling but forced himself to calm down. It's good that he just had one hour to unwind; otherwise, he would have lost it. It turned out that snakes had been entranced, not by his dance moves, but by his charisma!

Anyway, even after stopping his dance, he was happy to see the snakes stayed on him, quietly tapping away at each other and at him while entwining themselves in Roth's arms and neck. Roth kept patiently waiting as he saw the bar progress. Had he not had the [Polyglot] title, who knows how much longer this would take?

Progress in learning Snakish: 100%.

You have learned Snakish.+100 reputation with all snakes.

Roth tried to speak Snakish, but nothing came out. Even so, he could understand the snakes talking to each other around him. It seemed that Snakish was the first language he couldn't speak and could only understand. He spoke to the serpents in human tongue while they communicated with their tactile language.

"Hi, I'm Pax."

"Hello, Pax."

"Why didn't you attack me when you first saw me."

"Becausse of your sssmell. You sssmell like a sserpent." As he suspected. He had to confess that he was a bit sour with how changing into a [Zoomorph] granted him no bonus to his base stats. But this bonus was more than enough to make it up to him. Not being attacked by animal races he met was a fantastic boon for his character's progression.

"I have some questions I want to ask you."

"Sssure."

"I have just come from a ratan nest. A weird ratan oozing black liquid attacked them. Do you know where it comes from?" The serpent climbed up Roth's arm and regarded him squarely while slightly moving his head from side to side.

"Yesss." It turned around toward the direction that Roth was heading to. "That way."

"Do you know what's wrong with it?"

"Hmmm... Yesss. Follow me." The serpent slithered down Roth's leg until it was at water level and gracefully swam. It reached a pipe with a large diameter and sat still. Roth heard slithering and was met with a disturbing sight.

Two giant snakes were dragging one snake oozing black liquid with flaring nostrils. Roth looked up their information.

Constrictor (Friendly)

3000/3000

Lvl. 18

He hadn't read anything about constrictors in the forums, but they seemed different from the snakes he'd seen earlier. They were beefier and had more HP. They hugged the oozing snake, limiting its movements as if they were two straight jackets.

"What's wrong with it?"

"We don't know. It tried to sssneak past us and reach one of our nessstsss. But we caught it in time."

"Why are you imprisoning it rather than... you know..."

"We can't kill it. Our most potent poisssons only slow it down. We can only conssstrict it."

"So they just constrict it indefinitely?"

"Not indefinitely..." Trailing off, the snake jolted upright. All the serpents became taut and started hissing. They had heard something. Could it be the alligator?

"Run, friend. It comesss." The serpent entwined in its arm jumped into the water and agilely swam until it could reach a pipe. Roth saw that the two constrictors, rather than crawling back into their pipe, came out of it, dragging their victim and holding it securely in the middle of the waterway.

"What comes? What?" Roth began hearing a mechanical clanking sound coming from afar. Could it be the alligator? Or maybe it was one of the oozing monster ratans? He took the serpent's advice and began running in the opposite direction. As he reached the wider tunnel, he turned around, waiting to glimpse what was coming. After all, if it were the alligator, it would like his smell and not attack him, no?

It turned out it wasn't an alligator. It wasn't even an animal. It was a robot of some kind. It had a gaping mechanical maw that opened and closed repeatedly as if chewing on the murky water. The mandibles reminded him of those of an alligator with their long jaws. The mechanical sounds he had heard earlier were those of the robot chewing up debris.

As the robot came through the tunnel inhabited by the snakes he had just befriended, sometimes it stopped near one of the pipes and scanned them. Laser beams came off its side, leaving the smell of charred snake meat hanging in the air. Some snakes hadn't run fast enough.

As the robot came closer, it approached the constrictors, holding the snake in place. Roth turned around and ran. He didn't want to see what was about to happen. He didn't want to discover what it felt like to be chewed by those jaws or hit by those lasers either.

What in the world was that? It was the first time Roth found a mob that wasn't a mutated animal. The sight of the robot shooting lasers left a deep impression on him. He had explicitly asked Scratchy if there were any other creatures in here. Why did he not mention these robots?

After turning around and ensuring he wasn't being followed, he returned to the Gazette, looking for clues to the identity of these scary robots. As soon as he wrote 'robot sewers,' he immediately got a hit.

They were called gatorbots. They patrolled the sewers and dredged and crunched any big debris to keep them from clogging. Not even players over level 40 could put a dent in its armor. When you spotted one, the advice was to run away or risk being caught and terminated.

Roth failed to determine why the robots were called gatorbots. Maybe it was because their crunching maws resembled that of an alligator? Wait. Hadn't Scratchy said that the alligator was in charge of plumbing? Wasn't that what the gatorbots were doing? Could the alligator and the gatorbots be somehow connected? That seemed like a reasonable conclusion. He would ask the snakes.

Roth leaned his ear against the moist wall. He couldn't hear anything. He should be in the clear. Relieved that the monster machine had gone the other way, Roth returned to the tunnel where he’d been dancing for his reptile friends.

As he jumped into the murky water and walked toward the pipes, one of the snakes cautiously poked its head out. It sniffed the air with its tongue and looked left and right, ignoring Roth. It slithered from the pipe toward Roth only after the coast was clear.

Roth stretched his hand invitingly, and the snake came aboard.

"Are you OK?" The snake curled into what Roth guessed was a shrug. “Does that thing come around often?” The snake tapped him gently with its snout, and Roth could hear the words in his mind, courtesy of the game system.

“Every day, at least onssse.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It’sss that damn aligator’sss fault. At leassst, it hasss itsss usssesss." A reference to the macabre show the constrictors had put on earlier. Roth shivered at the way snakes had found to protect themselves from the oozing monsters. It was ingenious but heartless.

Anyway, his hunch was correct! Now that he thought about it, it couldn't be any more obvious. Alligator cyborg. Gatorbot. He patted himself on the shoulder. At the same time,

"Asss if it wasssn’t enough for him to eat usss, hisss machinesss also have gone berssserk and go around killing everything it ssseesss.”

“I feel sorry for you. It can’t be easy to live fearing being hunted like that.” Roth didn't say this to gain reputation points. He meant that. It seemed that he and his new friends were in the same boat. Whereas he was hiding from potential dangers lurking above the surface, serpents did the same by hiding inside the pipes from these mechanical hunting machines.

“It isssn't usually like thisss. Usssually the robots only clean the waterways and pipesss. But a few daysss ago, sssome of usss ssstarted going crazy. Around the sssame time the robotsss ssstarted doing the sssame. It's ssso ssstrange."

You've received a new quest: [Down the Drain].

Down the Drain (Rare)

Quest description: Life has always been challenging for the inhabitants of the sewers, where resources are scarce and strife abounds. But strange things are happening in the sewers below the city of Hilsford.

Quest objectives:

- Discover the origin of the monsters;

- Investigate why the gatorbots have been driven mad.

It seemed that the problems in the sewers weren't only affecting the ratans but the other races living here.

Ch. 57 - The Sewers

INDEX

Ch. 59 - Up and Down