NOVEL NEXT 158: F17, Out Fishin'
I look at the beast. My voice is even as I speak and say, “I’m still going to kill you. You’re useful to me now because you can help kill the dogs and you can bring me down into the abyss but after that…” I almost smile. “Doesn’t that bother you at all? That you’re looking at your future killer? Shouldn’t you be angry?”
His wolf’s head doesn’t even twitch. He's as still as a statue, but not out of fear, or any emotion like that.
my answer will not change.>
His eyes narrow.
“What—” My voice gets caught in my throat. ‘What do you mean by that?’ I want to ask, as if I don’t know. As if playing dumb will get me anywhere. As if shouting accusations will somehow shift my anger away from myself. My fists clench and unclench, knuckles turning WHITE. But, in the end, all that leaves my throat is a little sigh. “Fine. Okay. You don’t care… sure. What now?”
He tilts his head. You know. Like a dog.
“If you tell me that all I have left to do now is to defeat fifty—sorry, forty dogs, feed you the coins and then go into the abyss, I’m killing you right here and now.”
deny the truth when spoken plainly.>
“Yeah, well, we all have our moments to shine, don’t we?” I huff.
A shadow of a smile flickers across his wolfish lips.
I roll my eyes since he won’t do it himself. “Fine. Kill dogs. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. At least I won’t have to eat like ninety per cent of them to kill them properly…”
The beast watches with curiosity as I waltz over to the killed dog, grabbing its purse from the ground. So, if I understand this correctly, the beast doesn’t actually want the purse—he just wants the coins inside. Gotcha. Oh, I understand it now! Once he’s eaten a hundred coins, he’ll finally be heavy enough to sink rather than float! Ah, maybe I should suggest a lead-based diet? Oh, then again, this is a world where they’ve yet to invent bullets. Bummer. Guess coins of unknown value will have to do.
Removing the string from the purse, I grab one of the drowned dog’s fangs and tie it to it, and if we then tie the other end to a dog femur, we’ve got ourselves a makeshift fishing rod! Amazing, wow, fantastic, best thing I’ve ever made, etcetera.
Taking a seat next to the puddle, I throw the hook inside and wait.
And I wait.
And I wait.
And…
I turn to the beast. He’s still sitting with his back to the puddle, but he’s got his head turned to watch me. “What?”
time to rest before the next
drowned dog emerges.>
“...Rest?”
Curiously enough, the voice echoing through my head takes a turn for the amused.
with several minutes of rest in between,
usually alone. Then, as time moves on,
more and more will appear in greater
amounts with a higher frequency.
A natural increase in difficulty
that you seem to have rejected wholly.>
Turning away from the beast, I pull up my line. Nothing. I throw it back in. “Yeah, well, maybe I don’t have any need to spend minutes or hours or days waiting for my wounds to heal.”
merely the physical.>
I smirk cunningly. “Well, funny thing to mention, because I also don’t need to sleep, or eat, or drink, or… you know. Anything like that. I’m perfectly fine without it, so I don’t.”
and sleep than the physical need for it.
When did you last truly rest?>
…Truly rest? Like, actually rest? Well, sleeping… I slept… I think I slept a couple of months back, probably. But that wasn’t very comfortable, and I didn’t exactly wake up too refreshed. Do I count when I passed out from drinking? No, I wasn’t exactly resting… Then, drinking honeyed water with Moleman? That was pretty relaxing, but it wasn’t exactly rest in that sense, so… Before the tutorial? But even then…
The beast watches me silently.
I bare my teeth at it and glower. “And? What’s wrong with that? If you’re trying to pity me, all I can say is that I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from the likes of you.” A pause. “Except a little bit of help here and there, I suppose…”
for yourself. I merely ask that
you consider if the trail you are on
truly leads to where you want to go.>
“Of course it—” I bite my own tongue. A memory of a smiling face flashes through my mind and I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. I just have to survive, and keep going, and then the rest will solve itself.”
He looks at me. When I find the strength to look back at him, all I see in his pale eyes is my own reflection, looking back at me. I see my reflection flinch.
You could stay here.>
I scoff. “Yeah, right. I’ve had that bone dangled in front of me before, and my answer is still the same.”
For once, the beast makes a sound that isn’t just telepathically shot into my brain. It actually gives a little dog sigh.
Still, it is a shame that you refuse
to rest yet.
I can see why the creators have
such faith in you.>
“Faith?” I say in sheer disbelief. “In me? Hah! You’ve got your doggy-wires crossed. The minute they have faith in me is the minute the world ends.”
The beast watches me for a second before speaking again.
on the line.>
“Yeah, of course I know what I’m talking about! Psh, the gods? Faith? In me? Might as well suggest the world is carried on the back of a slug…”
“Huh?” My eyes flash down to the murky puddle. A pair of blank eyes look back up at me, line clutched between its loose teeth. “Oh!”
Heaving it into the air, I quickly dispatch it through a combination of beheading, dismembering and robbery, stealing the coins from its purse without making the mistake of popping its bloated belly. And while the removed head is still snapping its jaws and yipping, I feed the coins to the beast, killing it properly.
<2/50 purses collected.>
With that done, I sit back down, throwing my line into the water. But I still can’t calm down, and shooting seething glances at the beast is infuriatingly unhelpful. “So?” I say measuredly. “Why do you think the gods would have any sort of faith in me whatsoever?”
It meets my gaze patiently.
a matter of opinion.>
“Are you trying to say it isn’t?”
And now I learn something fun. Namely, apparently, wolves can chuckle. That doesn’t seem physically possible, but it’s also huge and has the tail of a fish, so what do I know?
I grumble and toss a nearby stone into the puddle. “If you don’t want to answer me, you can just say that.”
For almost a full minute, we sit in silence. I fish, and it watches me, clearly in deep thought. Assuming beasts can have thoughts to begin with. I’m just about to assume that we won’t be talking any more on this floor when he suddenly shifts, standing up and turning around so that when he then sits, he faces me fully. Somehow, having two wolf eyes stare into me rather than one makes my heart waver a little.
we are the same.>
“Survivor…” I mumble. ‘For now,’ I restrain myself from adding. I turn back to the fishing rod, the line making the otherwise motionless surface bob with little waves. “How can you be a survivor if you were made by the gods to be in the tutorial? That doesn’t make any sense.”
It blinks at me.
you aren’t incorrect either.>
Before I can ask him to elaborate, he does it for me. Neat.
I was simply brought here by the
God of Harvest to help save the world.
Our worlds. In return, He gave me a soul,
split it into four, and left each of us to
guide the challengers to beating this floor
on each difficulty.>
I can feel my brows furrow, but before I have time to question him further, something tugs on my line and I pull it out, only to find the dog-tooth hook missing. Grumbling, I pull a new tooth out of my inventory. The beast absently continues.
I feel it pertinent to mention
that at this moment, none of my
three brothers have been killed,
or even so much as threatened with death.>
I wipe at my nose. Snff. “Are you trying to complain?”
Another wolfish smirk. He’s got to stop doing that. It’s really upsetting to look at.
That makes you special. And although
that may scare some of the creators,
to others, it gives you all the charm
of a hidden trump-card.>
…Now that I think back on it, even that herald seemed pretty surprised by my actions. But being unpredictable is only good in some situations. Certainty is valuable in and of itself, and apparently, I’m in sore lack of it. Okay, so, to summarize, he just insulted me.
…Hey!
Ignoring my poorly hidden ire, the beast continues. How beastly.
sides of the argument.>
“Is this about my planning to kill you again?” I say, smirking.
The beast smiles back at me.
I don’t mind dying to help you
continue your quest, however,
it saddens me that my death may
become a bother for my creator.
The temporary soul shard He granted me
would be lost and would have to be remade.>
His smile turns sad.
it needless to provide another guide
for this difficulty. I would not hope for it,
but I can imagine that few of the creators
believe another challenger of the Hell Difficulty
will reach this floor.>
I’m pretty sure that going by the way he’s looking at me, he wants a response of some sort. But I haven’t got any to give. I just bite my tongue and continue fishing.
Not my problem. Whatever happens after this floor is up to the gods, not me.
Not me.