Return of the Runebound Professor

It turned out that the Wastes were a fair bit larger than Noah had initially thought. Traveling through the ruddy orange-red desert wasn’t exactly the most comfortable experience. He was fortunate enough to have brought his flying sword along with him, but since Lee no longer had her ability to transform, they all had to squeeze on and cling to each other for dear life.

After a few near-crashes, they eventually found a setup that worked well enough to let them stay in the air. Moxie stood at the front of the sword and Noah held her to his chest while Lee clung to his back like a mixture between a monkey and a backpack.

They flew relatively low to the ground, not wanting to get too high and risk a crash being fatal.

Lee had been right about the desert being more than just dirt and sand. After just a few hours, they started to pass large protrusions of hole-filled rocks that rose up from the ground, some as large as three or four story buildings.

The holes were large enough for a person to squeeze into if they were so inclined, and according to Lee, many of them stretched far underground. Noah had no desire to investigate. From what she had said, the only thing that lived in the area were weak demons.

Several times, he could have sworn that he caught a glimpse of eyes peering at them from within the holes or from the edges of the stone structures as they passed. They were always gone by the time he checked again and they were moving too fast and were still too far for his Body Imbuements to be of much use.

Hours flew by — literally — as they zipped across the Damned Plains. Lee occasionally yelled for him to change directions, but the Wastes seemed to stretch on and on without any end. The only way to track the time was by watching the enormous moon overhead. Something told Noah its cycle wasn’t the same as the ones he was used to.

Even though he could have sworn it had been nearly a full day of flying by how hungry he’d started to get, the moon had only crawled a short way through the sky. That meant he was delusional or the day-night cycles here were considerably longer than they were on the mortal realm.

Lee smacked her forehead into Noah’s shoulder twice, which was their established signal for ‘land the sword’. He adjusted his course, leaning forward and bringing it down toward a dune near a tall outcropping of black rock.

“What is it?” Noah asked, glancing around the desert. It looked just about the same as every other part that they’d passed through to his eyes. “Do you need to relieve yourself?”

“No. We need a sacrifice if we want to enter the city,” Lee said. “And if you’re planning to pretend to be powerful, then we’ll probably need one for each of us.”

Noah tilted his head to the side. “Powerful means giving up more? From what I know of demons, I would have thought that showing up with almost nothing would have been a way to act superior.”

“No. Giving up more shows you’re so strong or rich that giving it away doesn’t even affect you,” Lee explained.

“Okay, I can see that,” Noah allowed. He glanced around again. “So… why did we stop here?”

“To get our first sacrifice. There should be something pretty strong in this area.”

“Really?” Moxie asked, looking equally as befuddled as Noah felt. “I thought you said these areas were mostly devoid of strong monsters.”

“That was back in the main part of the Wastes,” Lee said. She stared at them like they were spouting nonsense. “Look around. This part looks really different.”

“It really doesn’t,” Noah muttered. “What about it is different?”

“The moisture in the ground is way higher, and the rocks over there are more porous. They smell a bit sweet too. That’s because there’s some mushroom growth somewhere in them. Anyone could tell that.”

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Noah raised an eyebrow and tapped his nose. “Anyone?”

“Any demon,” Lee corrected. “You should work on that if you’re going to pretend to be one.”

“You know, I don’t think every single demon has the incredible sense of smell that you do,” Noah pointed out. “You might be unique. Azel certainly didn’t seem to.”

Lee tilted her head to the side, thinking for a moment. Then she frowned. “Huh. Maybe. Either way, this place is super different. There’s definitely something a bit stronger that would have moved into this location.”

Noah used his tremorsense to scan through the red dirt at their feet. There was nothing in the immediate area around them. He exchanged a look with Moxie, but she shook her head.

“I’ve got nothing unless I want to use my plants, and I think I should save that for a more opportune time,” Moxie said. “I haven’t practiced making them out of any organic matter in the Damned Plains, so I don’t know how easy it will be. Better to keep the fast plants for fights. Can you smell anything else, Lee?”

The small demon tilted her head back and sniffed at the air. Her nose scrunched and she waggled a hand back and forth. “It’s kind of hard to pick up really detailed smells in the Damned Plains. There’s probably something in the area, but the whole place smells and covers up a lot of the demon.”

Well, that’s a good thing. Even if other demons have Lee’s sense of smell, if it’s difficult to tell what people smell like, then I’ll have even more cover for myself.

“I suppose we’ll do it the old-fashioned way then,” Noah said, stretching his arms over his head. He was a bit stiff from the long flight. His mouth was parched and he was hungry, so a decent fight would have been a blessing. Killing something would get them some energy to sustain off.

“Can you hold onto this?” Noah asked Moxie, holding up his gourd. “Just in case.”

“Yeah.” Moxie took it from him and hung it from her belt as Noah took the lead in heading toward the rock outcropping. She and Lee trailed along a few steps behind him, leaving enough space to make sure they didn’t get caught up in any sort of surprise attack.

Energy swirled within Noah, held at the ready and prepared to burst forth the moment anything startled him. Just because he had a life to spare didn’t mean he wanted to have to lose a pair of clothes. He only had a few pairs in his bag.

“What kind of demon could we be up against?” Noah asked as he stepped onto the stone and approached one of the large, spongelike holes that led into it.

“There are a lot of different kinds,” Lee replied. Her brow furrowed in thought. “It’s hard to say exactly which one would be here. The smell of mushrooms is actually pretty strong, so it might be something that really likes them. An Ettercap, maybe?”

“What Rank are they on average?”

“I can’t remember,” Lee said sheepishly. “But I remember they were pretty strong. Every time one approached my hiding place I ran. They’re not monsters I would take too lightly. They really like ambushing you, so watch out for—”

Noah’s senses flared a warning as something shifted in the shadows. A flash of wrinkly beige flesh caught Noah’s eyes and he spun toward it, thrusting his hands forward and releasing the energy from Natural Disaster that he’d been holding at the ready.

A brilliant flash of yellow light lit the cave, revealing a big, lumpy mushroom nearly half Noah’s height. It had a bright red cap covered with white spots and, for a flicker of an instant, a shocked expression crossed the beady features on the mushroom’s stalk.

Then it exploded with a loud pop, splattering mushroom matter all over the ground as it pitched back, dead before it could even make a move. The three of them stared at the corpse as energy rose from it and entered Noah, who was too stunned at the pathetic attempt at putting up a fight to even try Sundering it.

“Er… was that a baby?” Moxie asked.

Lee poked at the dead monster with a toe. “I… don’t think so. It’s about as big as I remember them being.”

“Lee, one quick question,” Noah said. “When you said that the monsters in this area were powerful, was that in reference to how strong you used to be? Or how strong you are now?”

After a second of hesitation, Lee scratched the back of her neck and gave Noah a sheepish smile. “I think it might be a little bit of the first one.”

I can’t really blame her. After all the time she spent stuck here wanting to escape, it’s only natural for her to have the memories of how dangerous the monsters that were once a threat to her locked in her mind, even if they don’t stand a chance against us anymore.

“It’s okay,” Noah said. He looked down at the pulped mushroom. “Would this really be enough to be as sacrifice?”

“Now that I think about it, I don’t actually know what the sacrifices usually were if you were strong,” Lee admitted. “I almost never went to the cities. They aren’t kind to really weak demons. But if the Ettercap is actually this much worse than I remember…”

She trailed off and they all exchanged a look, coming to the same conclusion at the same time. If the goal was to come off as powerful as possible, they couldn’t roll up to the demon city with just a squished mushroom.

“We’re going to need to find some stronger demons,” Moxie said.

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