Chapter 44: Arc VIII – The Warren – Chapter 44 – No Soup for You!

Chapter 44 - No Soup for You!

“Damn it, Hess! What the fuck?!” I shouted into the darkness of the hallway.

Hearing that, Jax winced and turned back to me, “Master, please do nay swear so. It be beneath ye.” Giving me a quick kiss, she turned her attention back to Hess, who had just walked up, “Hess, ye humming, hoaching, glaikit of a jackey. I can nay believe ye’d go so far! Watching us like that? Ye dog-licking nettle-puss, done a pure riddy, ye have!”

“Alright, alright!” Hess interrupted her, rolling her eyes. And probably none too soon. From the way that Jax was keyed up, she probably had another hundred or so of those chambered and ready to go. Shrugging apologetically, she said, “What can I say? I was horny.”

As apologies went, it was as close to being one as possible while simultaneously being the complete opposite.

“Bloody waste of time, scolding ye,” Jax grumbled. “And besides, yer always gagging for it!”

“So are you,” Hess winked back. “And at least you got to scratch your itch.”

“An itch? Ha! Like ye’d know,” Jax scoffed. “I were having a lovely feed before yer taint washed in.”

Starting to blush, and all too aware of the fact that Jax was still sitting on my lap despite Hess being right there, I loudly cleared my throat, “Uh, Jax? If you wouldn’t mind?”

She blinked at me a few times, frowning as she mentally shifted away from berating our third wheel. Seemingly concentrating on something, she grimaced, “Uh… hold on. I ain’t quite figured…” She began to shift from side to side in apparent frustration.

“Just stand up, Jax,” Hess sighed. “It’ll slip right out.”

“No, ye nay understand,” she replied, starting to look a little worried.

She shifted just a tad too much, and my eyes widened in alarm, “Ow! Ow! Easy!”

“What do you mean, ‘ow’?” Hess asked, confused. “This shouldn’t be complicated. Just stand up!”

So saying, she came to stand behind Jax and gently started to lift her off of me. And I came up with her. Whatever was going on down there, it felt like I had suddenly been grabbed by a pair of fleshy pincers, and they were not letting me go.

Needless to say, what followed was a lot of very confused screaming.

 

Some time later, we had arrived at the ladder leading up to the town.

I was still hobbling awkwardly, despite having healed myself. There was no visible sign of damage, but it still felt bruised. And the telltale taste of vomit had yet to dissipate in the back of my throat. I kind of wanted to go back for another swallow of water, but… then I would have to walk all the way back. It really was not worth it.

As we came to a stop, a sudden flash of that very specific and deeply seated pain lanced through my groin, and I audibly winced.

Jax looked at me in concern, “Are ye sure yer alright?”

“Uh… not really. Just… I’m having a moment here,” I wheezed.

“I’m… so sorry, Donum,” Hess said sympathetically. “I really had no idea.” Now she was apologetic.

“I told ye to wait, did I nay?” Jax said, rubbing me high on my back. “Ye made me hurt him!”

“It’s… it’s fine, Jax. Honestly,” I said, trying to be reassuring. It would have even been convincing if I could have just managed to stand up straight. “Most of it is phantom pain, anyway.”

She had been absolutely beside herself when she had realized what had happened. Which was understandable. I would have been, too, had our positions been reversed. Still, from the way she had carried on about it, you would have thought it was her…

I grimaced. I really did not want to think about it any more.

“How was I supposed to know that would happen?” Hess argued defensively. “I’ve never seen something like that before!”

Jax sighed, “I… suppose we should share the blame.” Though from her expression, it was clear that was grudging. “I were greedy and started using things afore they were ready.”

“Are you… are you not done?” Hess asked. “Still?”

“Sure felt done to me,” I quipped, trying to sound light-hearted about it. But I had yet to master myself, so it might have come off a tad facetious.

Jax bumped me with her hip. “I nay think so. There be a muscle down there what controls it, and I ain’t quite figured the working. Feels like something be missing.”

“Mmm… do you mind if I take a look?” Hess asked. “I’ve never seen a vagina that works like that, and… you know…”

Jax nodded. Hess would one day likely have something similar going on. We were at the frontier of sex ed for a brand new species here. So, it was the decent thing to do. Plus, it was not like we had anything like boundaries anymore. No, that little social nicety had been left by the wayside quite some time ago.

Kneeling in front of her, Hess brushed aside Jax’s breechcloth. “It looks just the same as yesterday.” Prodding it for a moment, Hess looked at me, “Come here, Donum. I’m sure you’d like to see this, too.”

Unsure, I glanced at Jax. And somehow, despite everything we had already done together, she was managing a demure little smile. The little flirt!

So, with a bit of a bemused smile of my own, I shuffled over and squatted down. Between her legs, there was a pair of puffy lips concealing the flower within. There was no discoloration, everything visible had the same even skin-tone as the rest of her body. As far as I could tell, Jax’s undercarriage looked perfectly normal. For a woman, anyway.

“So, what’s this you said about a muscle?” I asked, trying to adopt a clinical mindset. I was aware the existence of a groin muscle, naturally. It was a frequent target for sports injuries, and normally, a person could clench it to a certain extent. Not hard enough to do that, of course. Actually, thinking it over, I was not really even sure what it was used for on a day to day basis.

“Be what lets me open and close it,” she explained simply. “But I ain’t got the working of it yet.”

That… did not sound right. I had seen my fair share of porn in my day, and if girls were able to just open the thing, then I was pretty sure that would have come up at some point. In fact, I was fairly certain that women had to use their hands to do that, normally.

And the look that Sherr Hess had on her face was confirming that rather conclusively.

“What, by the ‘Stits, do you mean it lets you ‘open’ it? It does more than just grab things it shouldn’t be grabbing?” she asked.

Choosing to ignore the barb, Jax shrugged, “Be what I said. Try to open it, if ye don’t believe me.” So saying, she widened her stance in invitation.

Hess pursed her lips, and with a roll of her shoulders, she reached up again. Firmly pressing her fingers to the lips, she attempted to pry them apart. Then, when that did not work, she brought forward a finger with her other hand and began to press it between them in a drilling motion, trying to wedge it in there. But she was unable to penetrate. Sighing, she said, “I think that’s all I can do without hurting you. That is really strange. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Trouble is, I nay can not do it,” Jax groused.

Hess frowned and glanced at me for a moment before turning her attention back, “Then how did you ever manage to have sex?”

“I dunno. I just… really wanted him in me,” Jax mumbled, glancing at me. Then continuing a bit louder, she explained, “I weren’t quite right in me head.”

“Can confirm,” I added bluntly.

“Mmm… that was pretty intense,” Hess added. “Too bad it was over so quickly.”

“You saw that part, too?” I asked in dismay. “Geez, Hess.”

Ignoring me, Hess looked up at Jax, “What if Donum tries to open it?”

The second she suggested that, I quite clearly saw Jax’s lower lips twitch, and a hint of moisture dripped to the floor.

“Uh… that… that may not…” Jax inhaled sharply, and started again, “If he gets in there, I ain’t sure I can let him loose again. And didn’t ye say ye were wanting to try for them sheeps?”

On cue, Hess’ stomach rumbled loudly.

“I did, yes. It’s getting fairly intolerable,” she admitted. “Still… from the way you were going after him earlier, I would have thought you would pounce at the idea.”

“I hurt him, Hess,” Jax said, emphasizing the consonants. “I’ll nay risk doing it again. Not when I ain’t got proper control.”

“It’s alright, Jax,” I cut in. “I’m not really in the mood at the moment, anyway. And I would appreciate having some real food.”

Hess sighed, “Shame that. I would have… I… I would…” She closed her eyes and trembled for a moment before mastering herself.

Jax nodded sympathetically, “Maybe ye ought to take yer Great Gem? Take a skill like mine? I can feel the desire growing strong in ye again.”

She shook her head, “No, once we go hunting, it’ll discharge, and I’ll be fine.” Heaving a sigh, she stood and hiked a thumb at the ladder, “Come on.”

So saying, she turned and began her ascent.

“You should really remember to shut me out while we sleep,” I reminded her as I began to climb behind her.

“Mmm… but I do so love the dreams it gives me.”

 

As we broke free into the town again, we quickly discovered that the place had not quite burned to ash. There were still a few standing structures left, though they were mostly a charred ruin. In any case, there was enough there to give us a bit of cover as we escaped out into the fields.

We could easily see hints of the monster, even now roaming the center of town through the burned out slats of the buildings in the alley. The fire had apparently done little to damage it, but we were not here for that just yet. Though I was quite anxious to finally be done with this place, I had not gotten an infusion since the episode with the rats, and I had slept twice since then.

So I was famished. And some real meat sounded heavenly.

Hopping the low stone wall, we plopped down into the mud and paused there for a moment. My highlights really did not work all that well in large open spaces. They tended to give everything a flat appearance, and it was hard to judge distances with accuracy. Still, it was quite evident that the scarecrows were gone. And that was the main thing.

“Anyone see the herd?” I asked. All I could make out was the over-emphasis the spell was making of the grass swaying in the breeze.

Neither of my companions replied for several long seconds as we scanned the open field until Hess finally pointed, “There! I think I saw something move in that direction.”

I grinned. Sheep were not nocturnal by nature, I was pretty sure. So, it was likely that they would be asleep right now. To see one move at this time of night and from that distance was a huge stroke of luck.

Without another word, we set off.

 

And unfortunately, our luck ran out there.

Before we got to within a hundred paces of them, the sheep caught wind of us and fled. None of us were exactly consummate hunters, and it had not occurred to us until it was too late that the wind was at our backs. And we had not seen a bar of soap in weeks.

Now, I would not say that I was any sort of an expert on sheep or their behavior, but they do have a bit of a reputation. If there is a singular and monumentally stupid thing for one to do, inevitably it will do it, and the entire rest of the herd will do it, too. So, instead of scattering or just keeping their distance from us, they immediately panicked and arrowed straight towards a familiar blue light. Putting on a burst of speed, Hess barreled towards them, hoping to cut them off. But before she had managed to close to within half the distance, the last of them had carelessly hopped into the dark hole beside it.

She was less than pleased.

“Bunch of ‘Stoe sucking fuckers! I hope the lot of you die of belly rot!” she howled. “Come out of there! I will eat the testicles off of each and every one of you!”

Jax crossed her arms sourly, “Blighters did that on purpose, I’ll bet!” It was best to just agree with someone when they started screaming angry gibberish.

“You’re damned right, they did!” Hess shouted. “Never wished for a bow so hard in all my ‘Stoe sucking life!”

“Well… now what?” I asked diplomatically, still slightly out of breath from the sprint.

Hess did not answer for several breaths. She just stood there, clenching her fists while she stared into the black. The gaping maw sat there, indifferent to our plight while the great cobweb draped over its entrance fluttered in the wind. And then a sheep’s bleat echoed out of it. It might as well have been taunting us.

And probably was.

Finally, Hess sighed, “I’m still hungry.” And then, resolutely, she started marching forward.

“Ye can nay be serious?” Jax said, an edge of concern in her voice.

“You all saw it,” she replied. “The Dungeon may as well have just tossed a Maeve’s Kiss at our feet. Want food? Go get it, peasants!”

I had no idea what Hess had just referred to, but from Jax’s scowl, it probably was not good.

Hess paused at the entrance and looked back at us, “Incidentally, how far does that vision spell of yours extend out, Donum?”

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I had no idea, but Jax chimed in before I could say anything, “Several full hands of paces. After that, it goes dark.”

At my questioning look, she elaborated, “Found that out in the rat maze. Can nay get too far from ye and still see.”

Hess sighed, “I don’t suppose I could get you to make me a torch, then? Before I go?”

I blinked at her, taken aback, “You mean to go in alone? Don’t be ridiculous!”

She frowned at me, “It’s almost certainly a death trap. I can’t ask you…”

“If ye die in there, then we die out here!” Jax interrupted. It was a simple fact and undeniable. “At least with the…” she paused and glanced at me, “At least Donum can help ye see.”

Hess smirked. It was clear to the both of us what she had been about to say. She had eavesdropped through the whole thing, after all. And clearly, Jax was still having a little difficulty leaving bedroom talk for the bedroom. But she chose not to pay the slip any mind. Which was decent of her.

Lifting her shoulders in a simple shrug, she said, “I’m going in. Follow if you want.”

And then she disappeared into the gloom.

Jax and I shared a look, hesitating in the pale blue light cast by the nearby crystal.

“For the record,” I opined, “We are absolutely going to regret this.”

 

When we entered ‘the mighty hole’, as the Dungeon had titled it, we discovered a winding path that lead us around for quite some time without us seeing much of anything at all. It was just one long O-shaped tunnel, lined all around with webbing and tree trunks. No sheep. No monsters. Nothing.

At first, anyway.

We heard it before we saw it, the plaintiff cry of a sheep in distress. It called to us from out of the darkness, beckoning us forward. And when we turned the final corner, there, right in the middle of a four-way intersection, was a young lamb. It had been caught by a web and was dangling by its back foot, jerking about as it tried to free itself. Calling for its mother.

My eyes instantly went to the ceiling, looking for what I knew had to be waiting for us. This could not have been more clearly a trap if it had been labeled. In fact, I was pretty sure that if I looked hard enough, I would find the ACME box the webbing had been shipped in. But I did not see any spiders. Or even a coyote.

I did not see a damned thing. And that had me paranoid.

Hess and Jax slowly ventured forward, heads on a swivel as they cautiously circled the bait. Their weight on their back feet, they each patted at the floor ahead, searching for pitfalls or any other sort of obvious mechanisms. But eventually, they came up short.

“Mmm…” Hess hummed in her way. “Maybe it really just got caught?”

Jax snorted, “Aye. And maybe me arse’ll grow wings, and I’ll fart me way to the moon.”

Chuckling, Hess eyed her, “Who knows? Stranger things have happened.”

“I’ll have ye know,” Jax announced airily, “I ain’t broken wind in a weeks! Kind of miss it, truth to tell.”

“Really?” Hess replied, surprised. “What about the other kind?”

“What other kind?”

I loudly cleared my throat, “Right… well. Perhaps, we should leave this be?” I gestured to the lamb, still hanging and clearly distressed at being caught. Of course, I was referring to the conversation, as well. Stepping forward, I continued, “If we can’t figure out the trap, it would be best to…”

As soon as my foot crossed into the room, dozens of flaps, camouflaged in the webbing around us, sprang open, and they were on us.

Beetles. Gigantic beetles.

I know. Who would have thought, right?

In any case, they stood at about knee height and were easily three times as long. Their carapaces, gleaming dully in the faint light filtering through tangled branches above, were sleek and hard, and the stridulations of their legs as they rushed us were so numerous, it was almost a roar. And they could fly.

Because, of course they could.

Jax and Hess immediately sprang into action, waylaying about themselves with abandon. Hess was an absolute nightmare, caving Beetle heads in with her club and sending balls of spinning death about. Jax, on the other hand, was having more difficulty. Her axe kept skipping off of the hard armor of the huge insects, unable to find any purchase. She had to hit them straight on to do any real damage.

It was when they started spitting webs at us from above that things rapidly got out of hand.

Just as I was about to get my accuracy buff going, one of them, either by accident or luck, managed to hit me right in the face. As I staggered about, trying to free myself, I discovered their real weapon. Feeling a sharp pain in my calf, a burning sensation rapidly started to course through my veins, and I fell to the ground, paralyzed.

I do not know much of what happened after that. The bastard that bit me started to drag me away, and before either of my companions even noticed, my useless body had been absconded with into one of the many holes. The flap, a random mishmash of webs and twigs, slammed closed behind me like the hammer of doom.

It was not long after that I got the notification of Jax’s death.

 

Eventually, I was brought to some sort of large room. It was roughly circular, with little alcoves here and there, and a dozen or so unidentifiable shapes hanging from the ceiling. The Beetle that had taken me in tow dropped me somewhere in the middle of the room and began to attach long branches lengthwise along my body with its secretions. This continued until I was completely encased with both wood and web, leaving only a bit of my face uncovered.

Satisfied, the creature flew me up to the ceiling and attached me there, dangling like some morbid ornament. And then it left.

Soon enough, I ascertained exactly what my intended fate was to be. Every once in a while, the paralytic venom would wear off in one of the other ‘ornaments’ in the room, and a sheep would begin to struggle and bleat in an effort to free itself. Then, one of several of the insects that seemed to be stationed in this room would fly up, and ‘quiet’ it. And periodically, some Beetle or other would show up to feed.

They liked to start from the head, I found.

That said, I quickly discovered that one of the benefits of being paralyzed was that, by definition, I could not move. And when you have a specific skill that takes advantage of that particular foible, it was not long before the Beetles forgot I was there entirely. I would have smiled if I could have moved my lips.

But what to do now? My companion was dead, however temporarily, I was as useful as a plank of wood, and I had no idea of the fate of Sherr Hess. I just had to hope that her own prowess would see her through this. I refused to believe that she had died as well. I really could not handle that thought right now.

In the meantime, I would have to rely on myself to see me through. But all I could do was think and breathe.

And play with menus.

Well… first thing’s first. Let’s get those stat points assigned.

Quickly pulling up my stat sheet again, I considered my options.

Sure enough, pushing Intelligence up any further was going to cost me two points, so for now, I decided against that. My other go to attributes, Toughness, Wisdom, and Charisma, were all still cheap, so that was easy enough. That just left Strength or Agility. Or I could save the last point for later.

I sighed. I doubted pushing Strength up would give me the necessary power to break free of my bindings, and Agility might help me wriggle loose. Or attract attention.

Yeah, no. That’s out. Option three it is, then.

That out of the way, I set my mind to possible skill picks. And that was a quandary. There were so many factors at play here.

For one, I needed something to help with the paralytic venom. Then there was the issue with escaping from the webbing. And once all of that was accounted for, I would need to actually survive the escape attempt.

Okay, Donum. Let’s take this a step at a time.

I was not going anywhere until this venom was dealt with. Technically, I knew that it would run its course. I had seen that with the sheep, after all. But if I got bitten again, which was likely during any escape attempt, I would be back to square one.

Lady Bline? I would like to purchase a skill now. Please? Hopefully, I could do this part mentally, as well…

Yes! Okay… I need something to help me resist a paralytic venom.

Her reply was instantaneous. Apparently, this came up rather frequently.

Hmm… That would do it, alright. Though, it seemed like a waste to take something quite so specific. Fiddling with the Lady’s skill creation system for a few more minutes, I had a couple of other ideas assembled.

Both of those sounded fantastic, if slow. Particularly that Resist Poison. If only I had that one during the Tongue-Flower fight. The other aspects to them, such as why some of them could be upgraded and others not or why one was ‘lesser’ and the other ‘minor’, where as yet a mystery to me.

And, that was all well and good, but honestly, I felt that the concept was all wrong for me. I was a support mage, dammit! I needed to have skills to support my allies, not just a bunch of resistances. Never mind that I did not actually have any allies at the moment. That would be rectified in… less than twenty-two hours, according to my respawn timer.

Oy… Well, I’ve got a shit load of time to kill. May as well keep going.

After that, I messed around with auras for a while. I already had the one, after all. Those turned out to be similar in flavor to the Passives I had found, only a lot weaker. So, I ended up abandoning that idea.

Then, I started toying with basic Status Ailment removal spells. Quite quickly, I discovered that if I wanted to get something very specific, like Paralysis Removal for instance, then it was no problem. Cast the spell, one and done. I assumed that it would cost me a bit of endurance, but the spell card did not specify. More generalized spells, on the other hand, were either less powerful or much costlier. For example, I could take a spell that would remove all Status Ailments from a target, but I would have to sacrifice an ‘equivalent amount of Life Energy’ to do it.

Naturally, I was less than keen on that idea. Plus, I could not actually speak at the moment, so…

In any case, the pattern was quite clear. The more exact a skill was to its use, the stronger and cheaper it would be. Conversely, generalized skills were either weak or expensive.

But then, I had a bit of an odd notion. What if I could somehow come at this from a different angle. Like… could I convert Ailments into something else?

And the answer was, yes! I could.

It turned out that conversions were quite cheap, as a matter of fact. For instance, I could take a Passive skill that would instantly convert any form of Paralysis into Blindness. Or Deafness. Or really, any Ailment I could think of. And… it turned out that there was a subcategory called Emotional Ailments, of all things. So that meant I could directly convert this Paralysis into Anger or Laughter or even Lust!

Of course, it was still an Ailment, so no doubt, it would debilitate me somehow. And I did not particularly want to experience ‘debilitating Lust’. But Jax probably would! My lilim absolutely loved it when I was horny, and according to her, it served to keep her strength up. So that was a consideration.

Still, while it was potentially fun, it would be quite a problem in combat. So then, what to do with it?

Can I… convert Lust into Life Energy?

I was quite deep into this line of questioning already, eliminating options from direct stat boosts to urine. In any case, trying to get the Lady of Power to divulge useful information was always an exercise in patience, but when you are literally paralyzed and hanging from the ceiling… well, it beats counting sheep. There were fourteen, incidentally.

Well, well, well… Is that so? I was not sure that Bline had intended to let that particular bit of information slip.

There was potential here, but how to go about it…

I knew that Jax fed off of my lust, but I had never known her to be able feed off of her own. Nevertheless, Bline had just implied that she could. Hmm… Was she unaware that she could do that? Or no… most likely, she would need to grab a skill or something.

Okay, let’s say that Jax has that skill. That would be fine for her, but it would do me no good. She could not just feed on me until it went away, could she? Actually, I was not sure about that part. In any case… could I maybe shunt Status Ailments over to my lilim?

The answer here was, again yes. And it followed much the same pattern as before. Specific Ailments could be passed on at no specified cost at will, while Ailments in general could either be shared, lowering the overall effectiveness of the Ailment, or shunted off completely at a minor cost to Life Energy.

And that meant that I had a potential skill chain in place. I could convert the Ailment to Lust, shunt it to Jax, who could then convert the stuff into Life. After that, I felt sure, she could then send at least some of it over to me. After all, she was already doing something similar with her Life Steal. Or she could even use it for her own abilities.

Hells yeah, baby! This was the kind of Twinkie wiener bullshit that gamers lived for! And yes, technically, I would be using two skill points, plus the points that Jax would have to invest, to do one job, but we were talking net gains here! Free Life Energy generation!

Or well… sporadically, anyway. First though, I needed the skill to start the chain…

Some time later, I had a good candidate for the job. And as usual, Bline’s naming conventions were… apropos.

It was almost comical, in a way. All of the other skills that I had rejected had perfectly normal names. It was almost like the Goddess knew which one I was going to want and went out of Her way to make sure that the name was ridiculous. Then again… it was likely that the skill I had just created was fairly unique. Who the hell would even want a skill like this?

Well… me, that’s who.

It had turned out that making the skill include all Status Ailments had not changed the price at all. Which made sense. After all, it was a sideways movement. Who cared what the original Ailment was? You were still going to get blasted with Lust. And it had only added the time component when I had made it into an aura.

On a side note, this was the second version of the skill. The first one did not have the little blurb at the end about being able to turn it off. I had made certain to add that in. My last aura pick served as a reminder on that front. And as far as I could tell, nothing else had changed about it.

Cheeky little… No, no… Let’s not go getting upset at the Goddess. She had been most helpful.

I took a deep breath.

Alright, Lady Bline. I accept the skill.

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