Born a Monster

292 192 – Scent of Vanilla

Plot Thread: Main

Chapter Type: Conflict (vs Nature)

When the air stopped rushing inward, the smell of vanilla wafted outward.

“That is unexpectedly pleasant.” Du Jing said. “What manner of moss is that?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Xeng Dai said.

“Beware for giant insects.” Do Meng said. “Giant ants in particular like eating this type of moss.”

I pulled my shield out of inventory (a cheap, nameless, wooden one this time) and strapped it to my arm.

“Oh, I see.” Du Jing said. “One of us has melee skills.”

“Why?” Xeng Dai asked. “Warriors die in droves.”

.....

“Oh, I’m far too wounded to take point. I’m just offering to hold the entrance until one of you goes topside and gets four or so soldiers. Preferably with spears, but definitely soldiers.”

“And if, so sorry, I order you to take the lead?” Du Jing asked.

“Then, so sorry, my orders are to return afterward. I can’t do that if I proceed into what may be an entire nest of giant carnivorous insects. I must obey your orders within what doesn’t put me in undue danger.”

“You will speak to Du Jing with respect.” Xeng Dai said.

I waved a hand dismissively. “Tell me which word or collection of words was disrespectful. I am treating with her as I do my officers.”

“A small miracle they’ve not had you tried and executed, then.” he replied.

“Champions are often given greater latitude.” Do Meng said.

“It must be a great deal more than I am thinking.” Xeng Dai said. “Well, you are the junior apprentice, you should go.”

Do Meng looked at me. “As our military liaison, perhaps you should go?”

“It’s the stairs, isn’t it? As the person with the highest endurance rating, it makes sense I should go.”

Do Meng thanked me, and then waved me to make haste.

Telling the sergeant of the guard that we needed four spearmen got us assigned an entire squad and their sergeant. I didn’t have time to argue, so I went through the proper threefold ritual of thanks, and led them below.

“Remember to keep your shields at the ready.” I said. We don’t know how much area has been dug out or how many insects there are.”

“So there might not be any at all?” asked one of the unfortunates to be assigned to the front rank.

“There might not be any at all.” I said, “But I have heard from our expert that it is likely.”

“I hate bugs. They have too many legs.” he said.

It was worse than just bugs, it was beetles, about the size of large dogs, but with chitin thick enough that it took more than a single thrust to finish them off. Battle spears lacking the crossbar that boar spears do, we had two soldiers up on the surface before the others caught onto the idea that if two of them speared a beetle from different angles, those soldiers could hold it while others finished it off.

“Does the fungus have any other traits other than being vanilla scented and edible?” I asked.

“It’s not edible.” Do Meng said. “It’s incredibly toxic.”

Nope. Not in the slightest. My System may be uninformative about a lot of things, but it gets nutrition right, to include several poisons. And, it sometimes detected useful evolutions, such as one that gave a bonus point of nutrition when one consumed fungus. This was the third distinct one I’d found, and I really needed to spend some points unlocking those. Biomass and its related nutrition were always in short supply; being able to gain extra nutrition seemed like exactly the thing to survive when there just wasn’t enough food to go around.

Of course, there wasn’t enough food to go around on half rations, which meant there just wasn’t the biomass to gain those evolutions. I was curious whether they stacked or not, although I suspected they didn’t. After all, could two different things both process the same bit of food?

The extermination, as I said, was going well. Unfortunately, beetles have a decent sense of smell. And, although I had eaten beetles, I didn’t know they gave off a scent when they died, a scent that drove the others of their kind into a murderous frenzy.

“Fall back.” I shouted.

“Hold the line!” shouted sergeant Zhou Wei shouted.

“The line can be back here, at a choke point!” I shouted.

“Fine. Fall back!” the sergeant shouted.

I think we all took wounds that day; the soldiers, not the mages. Move Earth is a quick spell, but combined with a good arm, you can use it to turn thrown stones into dangerous missiles. Like using a sling, but on a larger scale.

The dead and dying beetles vaguely smelled like cinnamon; it complimented the scent of vanilla, and my stomach growled in anticipation. “Where do we send the beetles to get them cooked?” I asked the sergeant.

“Why do I care? Kill them first, worry later about your stomach!”

Unlike when the Guild took me into the spider den, there were no actual casualties, in part because when our third wounded soldier was taken above ground, the army flooded the caverns with spearmen. It would turn out that I wasn’t the only one to think of cooking them. I hope I was the only one to chop the end off a leg and eat it whole.

Not for the nutrients, but for the evolutions.

Insects often have changes that don’t scale well to larger creatures. I was hoping that the beetles, already being close to human size, would have evolutions easily adapted to my almost human sized body.

It was only after the battle that I wondered if they were possibly sentient, and something else.

“How did the elementals get the beetles and moss into these caverns?”

“What makes you think they did such a thing?” Du Jing asked. “Generally speaking, spirits never do anything in the physical world without a cause, a driving purpose.”

“Master, I have gotten turned around in all the fighting. Can you sense the wall above?” Xeng Dai asked.

“Someone get all these soldiers out of here!” Du Jing ordered.

“You heard the mage.” the second order sergeant ordered. “Gather what food can be carried, and get back to the surface.”

“Second sergeant Kwon!” sergeant Zhou Wei beckoned. “My squad is too diminished to remain, but we should leave them at least a squadron in case there are other threats in the dark.”

“Why do you think children instinctively fear the dark? Of course there is something else down here that will also try to kill them.”

I had just had a garlic and ginseng bandage wrapped around my left bicep. “What sorts of things eat beetles?” I asked. I hadn’t been intending that as a challenge, but the soldiers made haste to finish their task.

“All the way back to the surface!” sergeant Kwon boomed. “Let nobody die in this cursed place just because they were unable to withdraw. Two soldiers at each choke-point.”

Du Jing’s eyes came into focus. “It won’t be needed. These caverns are both natural and extensive. We need only close off part of the area to fill in the rest of this side.”

“And that will make the walls safer?”

Xeng Dai nodded. “We will pull the stone from that side, leaving the air pocket underneath land outside the walls. Work they meant to collapse our wall will instead make our defensive position that much easier to hold.”

At first, sergeant Kwon looked suspicious, but then nodded. “You know that which you are capable of. I trust you to know what can and cannot be done.”

As the soldiers began to filter out, Du Jing and Xeng Dai began closing off choke points and moving stone in larger volumes than I would have felt safe moving.

“How long have they been doing this, that they can invoke so much mana at once?” I asked Do Meng.

“Focus on providing them mana now, there will be time later for questions.”

It turns out, I didn’t care about questions when we stopped. My fingers and feet tingled; Do Meng and I needed to lean on each other to get back to the surface, and once we had to go back for the others.

Around and upward we trudged, our fatigue different than that of the soldiers around us, but no less real. I didn’t even argue or try to return to the rice gate; I took my bunk near the breach in the wall, crawled under a quilt, and fell almost immediately asleep.

[Lucid Dreaming successful.]

How? I didn’t have the mana for..

the elder elemental sent,

In case I don’t get to it later, it does assist, but not at a full ratio. Every multiple of two adds an additional +1 to the effect. I would eventually learn this, after the siege. Silly me, I initially thought of it as another way for my System to steal my nutrition and biomass.

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