NOVEL NEXT Ch. 39: Risk and Reward
“Is it safe to bring you near the demon hunters?” Cass asked.
Probably not. Not if you tell them about me. Or if they figure out I am with you. Salos sighed. But I also have no other ideas.
“Well, what about if we fixed your thing first?” Cass asked.
‘Fix my thing?’ You mean how I am a demon? Salos laughed. Oh, my. Cass. No. It is sweet of you to think that is something we can do, but no. That’s not reversible. You cannot fix a glass that has shattered. You can’t fix a soul that’s broken.
“How do you know?” Cass asked.
That’s just how it is.
Cass scowled. “Fine, I’ll leave it alone for now, but I refuse to just give up on it forever.”
Thank you, I appreciate the sentiment, but you should.
Cass shook her head. She’d leave it for now, but if he was going to help her get home, helping him revert back from a demon was only fair. Besides, she couldn’t exactly take him home with her. There weren’t demons on Earth. She didn’t want a demon in her head forever.
“Anyway, we’ve gotten sidetracked a little, I think. Long-term goals are good and all, but we were talking about how to get out of these caves.”
Leaving the Deep is a good idea, yes. The easiest way is to kill the Lord.
“Uh-huh,” Cass muttered, unsurprised his opinion was unchanged. It sounded a dubious plan to her.
Sure, she was at full health again for the first time in forever and had more combat experience than she had any reason to possess on Earth, but she was still less than enthusiastic about the idea of purposefully hunting monsters.
It was time to take stock of her situation again. What supplies did she still have?
1 rain jacket (tattered)
1 sweater (tattered)
1 fleece PJ shirt (tattered; blood-stained)
1 fleece PJ pants (filthy; missing the left leg past the knee)
1 flashlight
1 pair of hiking boots (scuffed and bloodstained)
1 pair of hiking socks (disgusting)
1 scrunchy (beloved)
1 Zerden Madrone Staff
1 Azorth Necklace (possessed)
1 vineroot potato (cooked; apparently unneeded)
12 dreamweed berries (toxic)
1 handful of Verid’s Aster leaves
1 handful of Flintshoom (flammable)
That was not a lot.
Her sleeping mat was gone. She could probably ask Salos what happened to it, but it had been falling apart even before she’d been mauled by the rats. If it had been crushed in that fight and neither of them noticed it wouldn’t surprise her.
She was also just about out of things to make tea out of. That was maybe a minor concern, except some of the teas she’d made boosted her recovery speed, which was invaluable.
Also, she liked tea and it was the closest thing to a creature comfort in this awful place.
Maybe there was something down here that would be useful?
It couldn’t hurt to look for new supplies while she and Salos discussed her next move.
She stood and started walking alongside the pond, cycling Identify and Foraging as she walked.
“I really don’t think I want to fight the Lord of the Deep,” Cass said, returning to her conversation with Salos. “Isn’t there another way out of these caves?”
Probably, Salos admitted grudgingly. However, I cannot recommend we spend the time looking for them.
“Why?” Cass asked with a sigh.
Cumulonimbus Moss
[An unusual moss that grows even in the absence of light. It grows into thick mats of plush greenery. Named for its cloud-like softness.]
For one, time here is somewhat limited.
“What does that mean?” Cass asked. She knelt beside the carpet of moss, prying up a section as she spoke with Salos. It came up in clumps but disintegrated into thin fibers once free.
Well, it will be somewhat inconvenient to traverse the Deep once it is flooded.
“What?” Cass repeated, standing straight at the mention of flooding.
Unless I have mistaken the signs, Salos continued unperturbed, the valley is about to enter the Wet Season, if it has not already.
“It did look like it would rain any minute...”
I thought as much. Once it starts raining, you can expect it to continue for well over two months. That is two or more months of torrential downpour. The Deep floods.
Cass shuddered at the thought of being lost in submerged caves. That was how people drowned. Even strong swimmers and experienced cave delvers were at extreme risk in such conditions. Cass was neither.
Exactly. You do not want to be down here when the Wet Season properly starts. As such, there is little time to waste wandering about. You should go directly to the Temple of the Deep and get it over with.
“Why does that sound like a proper dungeon, with a boss and everything?” Cass groaned as she resumed her Foraging.
Lightcap - tall, tree-like mushrooms with wide glowing caps.
Red Shelps - small red mushrooms with wide caps.
Blue Shelps - small blue mushrooms with wide caps.
Airadaisy’s Trumpet - slender mushrooms with a sweet aftertaste. Highly toxic.
Dungeon? No, why would there be prisoners in a temple? The Temple of the Deep is the heart of this Trial. A Trial in a Trial so to speak.
“And let me guess,” Cass sighed. “It's packed to bursting with monsters around every corner, all leading up to the Lord of the Deep?”
Certainly. It's a maze of rooms and corridors, changing with every season so that it never repeats within any natural lifespan. Monsters roam the halls and the entire complex is presided over by its Lord. But, if you can make your way to his chambers and pass through to the rooms beyond, we should find the teleportation circle, which can take us out of the Deep.
“That sounds suspiciously like I’ll have to fight and kill the lord.”
Well. Yes. But, I mentioned this earlier, I have a method for killing him that will make that much easier for you.
Green Spones
[A fungus growth the size of a human thumb. Uncommon outside cool, damp areas with high ambient mana. Can be chewed raw for a mild pain-killer effect or boiled to increase Health recovery. The darker green, the more potent the effect.]
They were growing amid the stones framing the pond. All of them were a dark forest green and unpleasantly mushy to touch.
“How?” Cass asked as she pulled a couple of handfuls from the stones and shoved them in one of her pockets for later, grimacing the entire time.
You don’t need to kill the proper Lord of the Deep. Just anything with that title.
“And there’s just a weaker Lord of the Deep just hanging out somewhere?”
Yes.
Cass walked another couple of yards around the edge of the Safe Zone’s cavern, waiting for further explanation.
It didn’t come.
“Alright, I’ll pretend that’s a fully realized plan that I understand and agree with for now. There is still a whole host of other monsters, all of which I assume are stronger than me?”
Well, yes. But not significantly stronger than the monsters you would need to fight to get out the way you came.
“But stronger?”
Well, it is the heart of the Trial, he admitted. But, due to its structure, you shouldn’t run into too many monsters at any one time, while outside the Temple there is always the chance of encountering hordes and becoming overrun.
Cass set aside the obvious and unmitigated challenge this proposal entailed and moved back to the potential rewards. “And how is this better than fighting our way out of the Deep and returning to the circle I was summoned from?”
This plan has two additional benefits.
First, challenging the Temple will make you stronger, whether you succeed or fail, the experience will leave you better equipped to face future challenges.
“Or it will kill me.”
Salos hesitated for a moment before countering with, You won’t get stronger unless that’s a potential outcome.
Cass scowled, that was not what she wanted to hear. “Maybe I don’t want to get stronger.”
Frustration radiated off the necklace in sharp, hot waves. What do you mean you do not wish to be stronger?
“I want to survive,” Cass said, crossing her arms with another targetless glare. “I don’t need to become some OP fighter in the process.”
Do you wish to survive or thrive here? Salos asked coldly. Because to be anything less than all-powerful is to simply survive. If you want to choose your future you need the strength to fight for what you want. Anything less and you become just another pawn on another player’s board.
Is that what you want?
Cass’s scowl burned. “If that’s really how this world is then I want nothing more than to leave it as fast as possible.”
Fine. The second benefit may interest you more then. In the heart of the Temple, beyond the Lords Chambers, is a secret workshop. From there the creators of the Temple planned much of the valley and its many trials. There should be reference materials on the construction of the feeder circles which may be a useful clue in constructing a road home.
That was a good reason, Cass had to admit. Proper diagrams or notes were going to be more useful to whoever she eventually found to construct a magic thing-a-ma-bob to take her home than any amount of description or sketches from her memories.
But, to fight a big monster over it?
“All I need to do is slay a Lord of the Deep?”
Yes.
“A weaker one. Not the one that the creators intended for me to fight?”
Yes.
“Which is still in the Temple of the Deep?”
It will be fine.
“How?”
You are a slyphid, which means you have a Spirit-body. There are paths that most physical-bodied beings can’t follow but which you should have no trouble with.
We’ll just pop into the Lord’s spawning pool, kill an heir, and pop out again. You’ll have slain a Lord of the Deep and so will not be allowed to fight another. It will have no choice but to let you pass.
Cass’s frown deepened. “Kill its heir? As in kill a child?”
Baby monster, he shot back. But yes, I suppose. It is honestly not any different from the way you have been killing Lesser Cockroaches or the smaller Centipedes.
“Fine.” Cass didn’t like it. But it sounded like the danger was about even with the alternatives and the rewards were better. It would be stupid to refuse.