Tunnel Rat

[Your group has killed an Ancient Sea Hydra. While not a named monster, this creature was far above your level.

It was also a type of Eel and deserved to be turned into lunch and dinner.

You gain 5 Enhancement Points and 250 experience in combat skills. This is doubled to 10 Enhancement Points and 500 points for killing an ancient foe.]

Milo was a little horrified to consider how tough the creature would have been if it was a Boss. What else lurked in the deep oceans? He had no desire to find out. He applied the ten points to raising the caps on his stats and split the experience between Claw Fighting and Tail Fighting.

The steamed eel was tasty, but only for the first meal or two. Milo had sat with Captain Pike for a couple of hours, watching the ogre chow down on chunk after chunk of the cooked Hydra. Pike's most favored pastime, after hunting monsters, was cooking and eating them. But even he could only eat so much. Luckily there were a lot of hungry people in the city.

The fishermen got to work immediately, constructing racks to dry and salt the meat. The tough skin of the hydra would make thick leather, the fatty layer on the body would be rendered to oil, and the bones would be ground for fertilizer. Someone suggested building a tavern with the huge rib bones and spide of the body. Two-Screws loved the idea and got to work dragging the bones as he helped to butcher the creature.

Milo spent half of a day eating eel, getting lessons on how to correctly throw a harpoon from Captain Pike, and discussing various things the ogre had eaten over the years. Pike made humans nervous, especially when he was eating. Milo appreciated that. Way too many people wanted to talk to him, and he just wasn't in the mood. People would start to walk over, see the ogre tearing into his meal, and suddenly have something else to do. Milo needed some downtime. Some deep, deep, down time. What got him moving was when the dwarves started to argue.

When the rest of the engineers showed up, a huge row broke out. The captain of the ship they blew up wanted the Engineers to replace it. The Engineers sneered and told the scavengers not to play with critters too big for them to handle. At some point, Milo heard his name mentioned, and he quickly skulked away. This wasn’t his fight.

It was suddenly too noisy up here.

He had cheese and a smattering of other foods. He'd finished all his tasks. It was time to go someplace quieter. He'd almost got away clean, but hadn't counted on the Chief Engineer. He found the old dwarf waiting for him at the start of the mines, talking with Varihold and Shift-Stick.

"I need to talk to you. Figured it was easier to wait down here for you than deal with all the shouting going on upstairs. Bloody scavengers can't do anything without getting drunk and yelling for two days. Don't let it worry you though, this is a pretty amicable meeting. The boys haven't had a chance to go on a date for a few hundred years, and the lasses have gold to spend and are looking for a good time. And a blown-up ship is just an excuse to work together putting it back together."

"Oh, so they weren't going to fight?"

"Did I say that? Of course, fights will break out. Probably going out it tooth and tongs right now. That's just part of getting to know each other. But it does make things noisy for a while. You look like you need a break?"

Milo nodded. "I do. I need to go look for Harry, or any part of him that survived. He told me trolls can survive even horrible injuries. And I need to be by myself. Too many people in town now. Noisy people and too many of them want to talk to me for one reason or another."

The Chief nodded. "Feel that way myself. Part of why I waited down here for you. But take this. You have some studying to do before we toss some tests at you." He handed Milo a thick book titled Magic-Tech for the Beginning Engineer. Vol 1 of 15.

Milo thanked him profusely and couldn't wait for a chance to sit and read. But first, he had a troll to find.

He began his search for Harry where the battle had taken place. The remains of the dwarven tunneler were surrounded by a large pile of scrap metal and broken parts. Vary, Shift-Stick, and Pillbug were searching for any lost pieces and deciding what to keep and what to sell for scrap.

Milo gave them the story of what had happened up in the city. Pillbug was visibly upset when he heard it was a Scavenger ship that had been blown up. "Those thieving varmints will rebuild it, for sure, but they'll make off with any useful bit of metal or machine part in the city. They've got no sense about them. Drink all the profits, then complain they don't have money for a boiler refit."

When he asked about Harry, Vary told him that he'd found big chunks of what had used to be the huge troll, but in all cases, they were quickly decaying into the soil and sprouting mushrooms. They had done their best to put as many of his large pieces as they could find in one spot. Everyone had heard the legends of trolls piecing themselves back together. Details on exactly how that worked were hazy.

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Milo went and took a look. A large pile of mulch with mushrooms of all varieties sprouting out of it seemed to be all that was left of his friend. He sat down on a rock and stared at the pile. What good was killing a boss and getting loot if it cost him a friend? He went back over the fight, but there were too many variables to even begin to think of how he could have changed things to save Harry.

The mulch pile was a crappy memorial to Harry. He wanted to do something better. There were varieties of fungus Milo had never seen before. Harry would have added those to his collection. He carefully plucked one of each and decided he'd go start crops of them in Harry's basement area. Maybe he'd be back someday?

Harry's area was as he remembered it. But it seemed deserted. Full crops of mushrooms filled all the beds, and there were unwanted varieties starting to invade some of the carefully cultivated farms. Milo needed a break from the game and was planning on logging out here and getting to work on the place when he got back from Section E

The sound of snoring changed that. He followed the sounds into one of the side caves. Heaps of mushrooms had been scraped together to make a bed. Milo didn't understand what he was looking at for a few seconds. There seemed to be a huge arm in the bed. A five-foot-long forearm, thicker than his body. Only by following the sound of the snoring did he find the very small troll attached to the arm. It looked like Harry, if Harry had only been three feet tall, and his left forearm was twice his size.

The troll woke up. "Oh, Milo? Excellent. Can you be a good lad and get me something to drink? There should be a few bottles of a nice mycena and puffball solution in the lab. That should do wonders." Milo retrieved the large jug of ground mushrooms and water and helped Harry to drink it. His small stomach got bigger and bigger until Milo was afraid it would burst.

"Ah, that's what I needed. I should be able to grow big enough that soon I can remove this damned overgrown appendage without problems."

Milo squatted on his heels, getting closer to Harry, and asked, "Maybe you could explain what the hell is going on?"

Harry giggled, "Oh, I forget how odd this must look to non-trolls. When a troll gets old enough, they gain the ability to regenerate from accidents that would kill anyone else. It seems my left arm was the biggest chunk of me left, so that was the part that grew a new me. After I had a face and could see where I was going, I started crawling down here just using my hand. Thank the gods it wasn’t just an elbow or something. Much tougher to move. I've almost regrown a whole body but I can't remove that huge arm until I out-mass it. Otherwise, I'll just grow from it again. That could be annoying, having two of me fighting over who was real. I hate to impose, but do you mind sticking around a few days and helping out?"

Milo was happy too. Harry was a friend, and this place was quiet and dark. "I don't mind Harry. I'm going to take a long nap, and then I'll get to work on the shroom beds in a few hours, and mix up some more food for you." Harry nodded and went back to sleep. Milo did likewise and logged out of the game.

It took a few days for Harry to grow until he was roughly human-sized and his huge arm to shrink down to the point, he could drag it along behind him. During that time, Milo spent time offline fixing a section of a decayed sewer pipe, an exploded transformer, and a large water purification system that needed rebuilding. A day later, he asked for Milo's help in taking it off. Despite Harry telling him it was just fine; Milo was a bit squeamish about the whole thing. Finally, he gritted his teeth and cut off the huge arm with a saw Harry provided. Harry smiled, showing no pain at all, then tossed his abandoned body part into an empty mushroom bed.

"I'm glad that's over. Regenerating most of a body is such a pain. Take my advice and try to avoid it if you can."

Milo was also happy it was over. He'd put the time to good use, learning more from Harry about Mycology and reading the troll's books. One of Harry's books also dealt with molds and mildew. This drew Milo's attention because some cheeses used molds to become tastier. When Harry learned of Milo's interest, he simply gave him the book. "Take it. Glad to see it get some use. As a young troll, I bounced around a lot before I decided on Mycology. Mold is very popular with trolls and every village will have at least one chef that specializes in dishes using it. It just makes everything tastier."

Milo felt a bit ill at the thought. And he doubted even Harry would eat a bowl of moldy food cubes. Milo tended to forget to finish meals when working and often left future-Milo some nasty presents to stumble across later. Thinking about moldy cheeses made Milo hungry for some creamy camembert and tasty gorgonzola.

His stomach decided it was time for a trip. He'd clear out his Smuggler's Stash in the Arcane Library and then make a trip to the new village announced by the game. The name was certainly interesting and they would certainly have some tasty cheese there. If he was going to cut back on how much cheese he ate, he might as well eat the best he could get. The only cheese in Shadowport was cheddar, and most of that was in his stash. He'd heard of Limburger cheese but never tasted it. He hoped it would be worth the trip.

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