Chapter Twenty-Eight — JourneyBun
I stared at Mister Menu, reading and re-reading what was written on his blue-ish surface. The broom in my hand was a little slack and if Juliette made the rounds to see how things were going with the cleaning she would probably have been disappointed to see me slacking off.Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Cleaning skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank B costs two (2) Class Points“Two class points?” I whined. That was so many! In fact, that was every point I had left, and I had no idea when my next level-up would come around.Jumping was going to rank-up soon too, would it cost two points to get it to rank B? That was awful! I would be stalled forever.I pouted at Mister Menu while I finished up my cleaning work. Only a bit over a dozen rooms had been left unlocked, which meant I was making a lot less money per day cleaning than I had expected. Enough for a meal at the inn or to rent a room for the night, but not both. I had enough coins set aside to last a long while, but I was going to start spending more than I was making.Returning to the main floor, I found Julliette tidying up around the bar. “I’m done,” I said. “fourteen rooms in all.”“Do you want ze coins now?” she asked.“Can you use them to cover for another night? The same room and all?”Juliette nodded absently. “Fourteen for ze room and a meal. Just one.”“Really? Thank you Juliette! You’re the best,” I said, my mood lifting considerably. “Hey, do you know about rank B skills?”“Rank B? Ah,” Juliette said. “You cleaning has gotten better?”I nodded vigorously. “Yup! Just a few minutes ago.”The big frog matron returned to her work, passing a cloth between bottles to dust them off. It was work that I could probably have done, but then Julitette would be left with nothing to do. “How do your skilll ranks display zemselves?”“Eh?”“Do zey appear as colours? Numbers? Shapes?” she asked.“Um, they show up as ranks? Rank F at the start, then they go backwards through the alphabet.”Juliette made a noncommittal sound. “Very well. Every person sees zem differently. Well, mostly differently. I see ze letters and numbers of ze first language I learned. But my ranks feel like... bottles being filled.”That kind of made sense. If someone didn’t know how to read they still needed to be able to interact with their system. “So each person’s system is unique?”“As unique as you are a unique human,” Juliette said. “Zat is to say, most humans have legs, two arms and a head, but zey are not grenoil. Most people from a place will have similar, what did you call it, systems.”“Neat,” I said. “So do others need class points to raise their ranks, or whatever?”“Zey do. Ze name for each rank when you don’t know ze people you’re dealing wiz is novice, intermediary, apprentice, disciple, journeyman, expert, master. Zere are some above zat, but you won’t see zem anytime soon.”I sang the alphabet song in my head a few times to get all the letters and names right. “So to get to disciple you need a skill point?”“Yes, zat’s right.”“And journeyman needs two?” I asked.Juliette nodded. “Zen expert needs three, and master five.”“Five?!” I asked. “That’s five levels worth of points.”“Above master needs even more,” she said. “Which is why you won’t see skills zat high.”I slumped onto the bar’s surface, letting the overwhelming despair get to me. “It’s going to take forever before I’m super powerful,” I muttered. “So much work.”Juliette croaked and tossed a dirty rag onto my head. “My bar is a happy place. Go be mopey elsewhere.”I huffed at her, but cleaned her rag all the same then left it on the counter next to me as I got up. “You’re right. I need to think a little and maybe go on an adventure again! Ah... wait, do you know what Cleaning does at journeyman level?”“No. Now go. Supper won’t be served for anozer four hours. Not until ze adventurers return.”I waved Juliette goodbye as I ran off to my room and started looking for my things. I hadn’t made my choice about Cleaning’s rank B yet. The numbers were still working themselves out in my head, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t do other things. Dylan’s little quest sounded like an easy enough task.I’d get to explore a little beyond the outpost, and I’d maybe make enough silver to... buy myself something nice. Like that book on basic magics. Oh! And I could practice fireball while out of the outpost. The lands around here were pretty marshy, so it was unlikely I’d light the whole world on fire.Probably.I was grinning as I set Orange on my bed then started slipping on my armour and gear. In no time at all I was ready and set for adventure! Then I realized that I didn’t need all my stuff if I was returning, so I left some things behind. I brought my shovel, my herbology book, the firestarter and a candle and some food and water for the trip. My silver and gold I tucked under the mattress. If I needed more than the ninety odd coppers I had on me I could always return.“Let’s go, Orange!” I said to my kitty companion.The archway into the outpost was guarded by the same two bored-looking grenoil as the last time. “Hello boys,” I said as I approached them. “I was wondering if maybe you could help me with some directions?”“I’ve nothing better to do,” one of them said as he leaned into his spear. “It’s a long walk to ze dungeon from here zough.”“No no, I need to find the, ah, Dunwich dungeon place. I’m going flowerpicking.”If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.“Flower— whatever. It’s to ze west and north of here. Can’t really miss it. Ze whole place stinks of rot. Follow ze smell.” He pointed off in a direction that I suspected was northwest. Which... after looking around, made me realize that the big city-Port Royal-that I had been using as my north was actually to the northeast.“Oh, I have a map,” I said before pulling Leonard’s map from my bandoleer. “Could you tell me where it is on that?”He looked at it, then at me. “You see ze big skull and crossbones?” he asked. When I nodded he continued. “It’s zere.”“Do you know anything about the place?” I asked. It wouldn’t hurt to know what I was getting into. Leonard certainly seemed to think that knowledge was important for an explorer and I was willing to bow to his experiences on the matter even if he has been a big grump.The guard who had been the least talkative so far nodded. “Group of divers went a week or two back. Came back right startled zey did. Said zere wasn’t anyzing worz looting zere zough.”“Zere used to be a dungeon zere before some filzy dog broke its core. World curse zem. Ze area has bad air, but most monsters know better zan to stick around.”“Spooky,” I said. “And awesome! I wanted to know why Leonard didn’t want me to go there. I guess I’ll find out! Thank you mister guard.” I smiled at the pair then spun on one heel and marched off.My pack was lighter on my back and I had a full tummy, which was enough of a change that I could move a whole lot faster than before. That, and instead of the meandering kind of lost way I had scurried across the forest a few days ago, I now knew more or less where I was going, which was very helpful.As soon as I was out of the clearing around Rockstack I took to the trees and climbed the tallest one I could until I was standing on a branch that let me see over the swaying forest all around.Northwest, as it turned out, was towards a range of big mountainous hills. Not big pillars of stone like the mountains to the Northeast, but still impressively big hills with windswept tops and a distinct lack of plant life.I could see a cliffside up ahead that was going to be tricky to climb up. “Seems that’s where we’re going,” I told Orange as I walked off the branch and plummeted to the ground with a whoop.I landed in a skill-enhanced crouch like a superhero and instantly felt a thousand times cooler. “Hey, Mister Menu, is there a ‘cool’ skill I can unlock? Pretty please?” I asked.The menu didn’t deign to answer.Shrugging, I started walking, mind contemplating different things like superhero landings and how hard they would be to do with pants on. It would be super embarrassing to land in front of some bad guys only to have the inseam of my pants tear open. I vowed to avoid doing that.Reaching into my pack, I pulled out the fireball scroll and unrolled it a little. The advantage of a proper scroll was that with both hands I could reveal only as much of the text as needed, though reading and jumping proved to be too complicated after I nearly ran into a bush.Grumbling, I set aside the scroll for later. There were just so many things I wanted to do, but so little time to do them in. Maybe I could learn some time magic to give myself more hours in the day in which to do stuff.My jumps grew a bit riskier as the number of trees around me started to dwindle, soon I was forced to land and start walking across rough stony ground, feet brushing over brown grass that barely reached my ankles.I took a deep gulp of breath, expecting to get a lungful of fresh mountain-y air but... not. The air was off. Not something I could pin right away, not until I remembered what Dylan said about negative mana being strong in the area. Did that mean that negative mana was an actual thing, or was it just an absence of mana? Like a shadow being an absence of light?The more I learned about my strange new home the more I realized I didn’t know much at all.I used a bit of mana on my shoes, cleaning them of dirt and dust and mud in an instant, then I kept an eye on my status while I started climbing uphill. I didn’t have a timepiece on me, but it felt as if it took far, far longer than usual for my mana to tick up one point.Scary indeed. I could imagine that people used to a more or less fixed return on the amount of mana they had would be spooked by the change. Or maybe it was something else about the area that had them scared?I arrived at a spot where the uphill cimb shifted from a slight slope that was good for the calves to a rising cliff that rose half a dozen meters above me, all jagged stones and rough rock walls that seemed impassable at first glance.But the cliff probably wasn’t expecting the intrepid Broccoli Bunch to tackle it!I crouched down while scanning for a nice spot on the wall, then I found a place where I could land-just a small ledge about a third of the way up. There was another outcropping a little higher than that too, one I could use for a final hop to the top.The first jump had me just barely overshooting the ledge, and I found myself hugging the wall to avoid going splat. After calming myself down I jumped up another meter and a bit to the second outcropping, then shot upwards to the top.It was only when I was at the top of the cliff that I noticed the path leading up it to the side.Oops?Shrugging, I started following the road, probably one dug in place to allow for carts to get to and from the dungeon. I was getting just a little excited at the idea of exploring a whole new place, even if there wasn’t much to see there.
Chapter Twenty-Nine — Mad Hare
The Dunwich site was kind of strange. I didn’t just mean that the air felt off, which it certainly did, but there was a sense that everything was just a little too... light. I bounced on the spot a few times and tried to pinpoint the feeling, but it wasn’t easy.Once, when I was a much smaller Broccoli, my parents and I had gone camping near a mountain. We went hiking one day and spent the whole afternoon climbing towards the peak. It was a big slopey mountain, so the climb wasn’t too rough, and there were well-trodden paths leading all the way up. As we got closer to the top the air felt harder to breathe, lighter. The air around Dunwich felt the same, but without the altitude to explain it.That, and there was a stench to the air, as if someone had farted nearby and I was only catching stinky whiffs of it when the wind shifted.I scrunched up my nose and started looking around. The Two-Lipped Tulips might be hard to find. I hoped they weren't. It had taken a few hours to arrive, and I suspected that it would take a couple more to get back to Rockstack. I didn’t want to be stuck in the woods at night.The path ahead turned one final time and the ground evened out onto a plateau. To my left I had a spectacular view of the Darkwoods, a sea of trees stretching out to the distance, with marshes to the East and mountains stretching out to the North. I even caught a glimpse of what might have been a huge lake way off in the distance to the South.Those things were all far away though. I focused on what was to my right.There were a few buildings still standing even against the test of time. The nearest pair were wooden shacks with tiled roofs, just like the buildings in Threewells. The final building, this one further on the plateau, was a huge construct of corrugated tin, with a rusty metal roof and huge streaks of muck on its sides.The tin building looked like an abandoned warehouse from back home, strangely out of place in a world where I expected everything to be made of wood and brick. It just made me want to explore it even more!Orange jumped off my shoulder and started walking in the air before me as I made my way towards the first little shack. There were big windows on the front of it, windows that had been broken inwards some time ago. The door was a few meters away, left to rot on the stoney ground.“Yikes,” I said as I moved into the darkened interior and took it all in. There were chairs and a table and a couple of bunk beds at the back. A small cast iron fireplace sat to one side and there was a tiny little closet against one wall. Not even a bathroom.The place had seen better days. No chests, no floorboards to hide anything under, and a tug at the creaky door of the fireplace just revealed ancient coal sitting on a pile of brownish ash.“A bunk house then,” I muttered. “Probably for the adventurers coming to the dungeon.”Orange ran back to me and I picked her up to set her on my shoulder. I poked my head out of the front door to make sure there wasn’t anything mean around, then left the bunk house and headed for the next.This one was in worse condition than even the bunkhouse had been. It was a small home, with two floors and a tower built into the side that rose up even higher. A guard station, maybe? Or a more permanent residence?Either way, I found the door smashed in and moved into the darkened interior. The place had a pair of offices at the front and, as I moved towards the back, I found a small clinic with a tall bed and some rusty tools left on the floor. There had been tables and desks and chairs and other things here, but most had been broken or kicked aside. Footprints on the dusty floor suggested that it hadn’t happened all that long ago.The adventurers from Rockstack? That was a distinct possibility.The second floor had a few small bedrooms and access to the tower proper. It was on the top floor that I got my first glimpse of what had to be the Dunwich dungeon itself, or the place it had been.The Dungeon’s entrance was shaped a little like a mining shaft, a deep dark hole in the walls of a rocky outcropping. Wooden beams formed a rough archway around the entrance, all of them scorched black as if something had exploded out of the hole.The ground around the dungeon was blackened by fire and the few bits of vegetation around it were all skeletal and dead.“I am not going in there,” I said to Orange. I had seen horror movies before, I knew what happened to cute girls going down dark shafts.I was on my way down the tower when I heard a strange sound, a sort of yowling roar as if someone stepped on the tail of a giant cat.You have heard the screech of a creature of madness! Your mind is shaken.I stumbled down the next few steps and had to hang onto the creaky rails to prevent myself from falling even further. The world swayed.I giggled, because it had been such a funny noise.I was smiling so hard it hurt when I made my way to the first floor and stepped out without so much as looking around. I didn’t need to look around because looking too much was just silly.Orange moved ahead of me and blocked my path, so I stepped around her.She floated before me and blocked my path again. “Get out of my way, you stupid cat,” I said.I blinked.Orange gave me a kitty glare.Shaking my head I tried to refocus and found my mind all fuzzy and strange. My next step had me stumbling sideways until I bumped into the house and just clung to the wall for balance. “What?” I wondered.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.The noise, the screech. It had to have done something. I re-read the warning mister Menu had given me with mounting horror.“Oh, that’s bad,” I said. I knew it was bad, and yet I wanted to either start laughing or curl up in a ball and scream and I couldn’t decide which to do.Orange pushed herself against my neck and I felt her entire body rumbling with a gentle purr. Had she been trying to stop me? But stop me from what? The madness had only lasted a little bit, but it had been pulling me towards something, making everything but the idea of walking over to it seem like a distraction at best.Very spooky.I took a deep breath to resettle myself, then fired a small bust of cleaning magic aimed at myself just to freshen up.It was like wiping away the fog on a window. As my cleaning magic moved through me I felt it pushing into my head and the cobwebs cleared up. It wasn’t as if my thoughts returned to me so much as the strangeness receded.Had I just cleaned away insanity?A glance at my status had me wincing.Health 111/115Stamina 84/125Mana 76/105I had lost health to that scream, not to mention the heavy cost to my mana reserves to wipe the insanity away. And yet I still didn’t have the slightest clue what the thing screeching at me had been.The options I had were pretty simple. I could return to Rockstack right away. The few silvers I’d get from finding the Tulips might not be worth all the trouble. Or I could look for the thing making the noise and at least see what it was.The third option, and the one I chose, was to push off the wall and head over to the next building.I did so slowly, cautious of the world around me and wary of anything that made any noise. I was going to snoop around that final building and at least try to get an idea of what had happened here.The Dunwich site was kind of creepy, but in the full light of day there wasn’t anything to worry about.Something scuffed against a rock and I turned around towards the dungeon entrance to see a monster waddling out from behind a rock. It was about the size of a big dog, with, at a glance, seven feet and three arms that ended in long-fingered hands. Its mouth reached from just below the hole where a nose should have been to its upper chest, a gaping pit in its front that dribbled with saliva.Pale skin chafed against a rock as it wiggled against it, the stone digging into flesh that peeled off in lumps. It opened its mouth wider and a pair of long tentacles slid out of it to rub at its side.“Nope,” I muttered.A hungry Dunwich Abomination, level 8.“Nopity, nope, nope nope.”The abomination must have heard me because it turned its strangely dog-like head my way and locked eyes with me. Much to my growing horror, the monster’s skin began to shift and warp and between one moment and the next it turned the same colour as the stones behind it and became nearly impossible to see from afar. That was, until it started wobbling towards me.“Oh shoot!” I said as I turned and started running away.The abomination screamed. It sounded human.You have heard the screech of a creature of madness! Your mind is shaken.I stumbled forwards, then came to a slow stop. Why had I been running? It was probably a nice monsty. And it was hungry. I could feed it!Cleaning magic burst through me and my mind cleared in fits and starts.The abomination was closer.I ran, putting every effort into outpacing and out-distancing the monster on my tail. There were some rocks ahead which I thought to weave through, until they started to wiggle and move my way.“Oh no. No no,” I said between pants.A leap brought me over the line of abominations and let me shoot past them, but I could tell that they were still right on my heels.The cliffs were ahead, a dip in the ground that would lead me to the forests below. I didn’t have time for the normal path, not when it meant looping back and forth a few times.This bun was not going to get caught by any number of tentacle monsters.I shot off the side of the cliff with a squeak, my stamina reserves dipping down as I tried to make get as far from the cliff’s edge as I could.I crashed into a tree.Something screeched behind me before a sickening splat sounded out across the region.Congratulations! You have caused Dunwich Abomination, Level 7, to drop dead! Bonus Exp was granted for splattering a monster above your level!Luckily for me, I had aimed at a large pine, so other than a body-full of sharp needles, I was mostly okay as the tree bent back with the impact then swayed to return to its original position.Turning, I looked at the top of the hill to see six abominations all standing in a row and glaring at me. “Hah, Made it!” I called back.They sprouted large, deformed wings.“Oh, that’s not cool,” I said as I started to scramble down the tree. Forget the flowers and forget Dunwich. It was a silly place for silly people and I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. It would suck to tell Dylan that I had failed, but better to fail a small quest than get tentacle monstered.The abominations landed in the woods just as I hit the ground and the chase continued.Trees blurred past as I ran deeper and deeper into the forest, my path hampered every few meters by fallen trees and thick brush. The abominations weren’t as fast, but they just barreled through the bushes in their way, not even breaking their flailing stride.And that’s when I ran face first into a very angry tree.
