Drip-Fed Pt. 09

The Ilumni faded, the wind kept howling and the rain poured on, as they sunk into a calm slumber.

Funatic

And that marks the end of the catch-up. New chapter every Wednesday from here on out

The journey to Summer Rest was an easy, if lengthy one. Every day they travelled elevated further the knowledge that Azenia-Ra was several levels larger than Ctania. Their first impulse was, much like getting to Clearwater, to try and simply fly over the ocean. As soon they discussed the scale of things, however, the absurdity of that idea became obvious. Even the shortest gap between the north-western island they were currently on was about half as wide as Ctania had been.

They would have needed to fly for two to three consecutive days in order to get across the ocean. As far as the map showed it, there were no islands to rest on. Even more than that, they could easily lose orientation above the open sea. This Leaf wasn't fundamentally flat, limiting the range of the vision considerably. One gust of wind, a light left tilt at a moment of dropping concentration and they could find themselves lost with nowhere to land. They had a map, but a compass was not in their possession.

All of that came before the issue of food and water. Taking the shortest route was, in purely logistic terms, suicide.

Instead, they had to follow a traditional path. This proved to be less of an issue than they initially feared. Once they knew in which direction to march, something made thankfully easy thanks to wooden signs that marked the occasional crossroad, all they had to do was follow the road. The first two days, they mostly marched off the road, keeping to the protection of the loose forest. Eventually, it became apparent that the road wound itself properly through numerous environmental hazards, like small bogs, hills, and rivers. Once the trio walked on it directly and had a number of encounters with other travellers that were all defined by a simple passing, they kept their detours into the treeline to their nightly rests.

It was the first time for Apexus that he properly used things created by civilization to get somewhere. Whenever he had been in the proximity of civilization before, the slime had felt like an animal observing a new environment, scavenging for a necessary resource. Now he was a traveller like anyone else, using the road for the same purpose as the other people they met. In a way, he was now part of that civilization.

He walked over dirt and paved roads, the state of the road depending on the wealth of the area. Soon, he came to expect a certain look to the houses in the upcoming village or city, depending on the amount of nature that had reclaimed the streets. The more weeds stuck out on the road, the higher the likelihood that the houses would be basic or in a state of mild disrepair. The deeper the trenches at the side of the roads, the more carts he expected to roll around.

It wasn't too different from the wild, from tracking animals by their footsteps. Many smiths pointed towards a mine being nearby, many hunters but a low number of leatherworkers pointed towards a migratory herd of animals that happened to be in this area by chance, a swelling of travellers on the road pointed towards a market day, and so on. It was all so similar to seeing leaves missing on a bush up to a certain height, to reading imprints on the floor, to measuring a half-devoured carcass to see what size its predator must have been.

As Apexus made those comparisons, he felt less alienated by this thing called civilization. A house was just a very intricate burrow, a market just another competitive ecosystem. The results of things may vary considerably, but the fundamental rules weren't that different.

It was quite impressive what humanoids could do when they banded together. Especially since they lacked the natural unity ants had. By some incredibly complicated process, they seemed to thrive on outcompeting each other, rather than working together. It was as if humanoids had taken the entire process of survival of the fittest from nature, limited it to their own species, accelerated it and also taken the majority of deadliness out of it. All at the same time.

Apexus found that ludicrous, but that's what he kept seeing.

Now that he understood that, or started to understand it anyway, and was himself a part of it, Apexus felt a strange sense of comradery with those humanoids. His paranoia continued to force him to stay at least three metres away from anyone he didn't know to feel safe. Aside from that though, Aclysia. Reysha and he were fitting in relatively well. They traded more animal parts from their daily meals on their way south and slowly acquired a bit of money that way.

Apexus' ultimate revelation the humanoids were absurdly crafty came when they were about to go from the north-western island to the western one. It wasn't any city. Apexus got houses. They usually weren't that complex. The principle was to stack rocks on each other and support them with extra things the larger the hollow pile got. There had been impressive buildings he saw, sure. None of them competed with the ridiculous bridge that connected the two islands, however.

It was absurdly long, spanning a larger area than most of the cities they had come across. Arch after arch spanned from one stone pillar to the next, each of which vanished under the water. They all supported a pathway that was entirely artificial. Rocks were glued together by cement and plaster; a grey path illuminated by metal lanterns that were mounted onto the bridge's stone railing.

"How?" was Apexus' only question.

"How what?" Aclysia asked, her and Reysha both turning to the flabbergasted slime. She was preoccupied being thankful about the fact they arrived and would set over during the dark hours. There was a city on either end of this bridge and she didn't want the attention.

"How did make-" he stopped himself to reformulate his sentence in a grammatically sound way. "How was this bridge made? Did the gods place it?" That would have made this ludicrous construction sensible as far as the origin was concerned, although Apexus was still confused about how the middle parts of the thing didn't just sink downwards.

"Doubtful," Reysha said and pointed towards the stacked stones at the rim that made it difficult to tumble into the water. "See those holes? Seems like stones are missing, they probably fell out with time. When gods add things like this to the environment, they are usually magically maintained in some fashion."

Aclysia nodded and led the way onto the bridge. Apexus was still confounded. "How then?"

"I mean... it's a bridge?" Reysha didn't know what the big deal was.

"A tree that's laying over a river is a bridge," Apexus blabbered in his confusion, feeling even more overwhelmed by the size of the thing when he stepped on it and it felt just as firm as any other solid ground. "That's three to ten steps. This is hundreds of metres, maybe several kilometres. How did they even start building this?" He gestured over the railing. "How did they make the pillars? Did they just throw rocks into the water until something stuck? Where did they even get all these rocks? How?"

"Huh," the tiger girl scratched her head and looked at the bridge in a somewhat puzzled fashion. "When you put it like that, yeah, I guess this shit is pretty impressive."

That she hadn't even thought about it made Apexus wonder what other manners of ridiculous humanoid accomplishments were out there. Little did he know that this bridge was a miniscule drop in the bucket in the ever-growing Omniverse. As neither Aclysia nor Reysha had any answers for him on this topic, he just had to take his befuddled state and live with it.

They arrived on the western island as dawn arrived. It had taken literal hours to cross that bridge and its soft rise had eventually brought them a solid fifty metres over the ocean. 'Absolutely ridiculous,' Apexus kept thinking, even as they searched for a spot to rest for a few hours.

The western island wasn't much hotter, but a whole lot more humid. The forest was denser than even those. Oddly enough, it was neither the underbrush nor the trees that seemed to dominate the forest, but a large number of plants that grew by hanging from the high-hanging canopies. This created a jungle where the view was obscured and moving was a pain. The floor was covered in roots, making footing difficult, and every step had to be accompanied with brushing motions. One unlucky step could have had anyone stumble into a basically invisible thorn bush.

Luckily for them, this jungle didn't approach the eastern coasts. They only stayed in it for a bit of sleep, a very insecure and shallow rest. Buzzing, large insects, crying birds, screaming monkeys, they all made for a green hellscape of sounds that made it impossible for any of them to relax. They made very slow progress on the following day. The day after that, they finally arrived at their destination. A strait between the western island and the one called Summer Rest.

The humidity dropped, while the temperature rose. It was a noticeable and pretty quick change. Pairing the warm climate with frequent ocean breezes and it was all very pleasant. For a human, anyway, Apexus could have done without the wind. It cooled him down when the warm environment supplied him with a whole lot of energy.

The Summer Rest island was similar to Ctania in some ways and different in others. Like the island they had come from, the forest wasn't all that dense. A number of steep hills could be seen in the south and Apexus kept towards them when they initially set over. It was the point that seemed the least densely populated and, because he had to carry Reysha, Apexus had morphed into the quadrupedal shape again. He would need to change back before they could get to any cities.

They spent a few days in the hills, scouting the surrounding area, getting used to wildlife, and other such things. Everything the gnome had said seemed to be true. The animals around were weaker and fatter. They didn't taste as good due to a lack of magical energy though. They had traces of it at best. Which made them unfit for Reysha to subsist on. They needed to get into the actual dungeon to get a steady supply of food.

Something they had quite an easy time doing, thanks to the layout of things. The Summer Rest dungeon was quite similar to White Wood. A beginner-friendly dungeon located inside a large tree. The insides were populated by different monsters, but that wasn't the main difference that was important for the trio. All they cared about was that it wasn't overseen by the Adventurer's Guild.

There were two large cities in relative travel distance, settlements of several tens of thousands of people, but neither were so close to the dungeon that they had any real way to keep track of who entered and left the dungeon. The trio could use the dungeon as their food supply without any issue. It was safe, easy, the environment was forgiving and pleasant and isolation was easy to come by. Most people on the island lived in those two cities, a very low count of villages connecting the two. It left most of the forest free for whoever wanted to rest anywhere.

An offer many people had clearly taken, now and in the past. The forest was practically defined by former campsites or other places of temporary dwelling. Caves with left-behind possessions, digs that were still filled with sand and ash and outlined with stones, holes that had served for sanitary purposes, and so on.

At first, the trio stayed in one of the caves, then they located a wooden cabin that had clearly been deserted for a while. It wasn't much, a shack hammered together by someone that barely knew anything about building. A single room with minimalistic furniture, tree stumps for chairs, a stone slab on the dirt floor instead of a table and other such primitive things. The flat roof and the walls had large gaps in them, but it all wasn't that bad. Only rain would be an issue. A trade-off they took happily, as this cabin was simultaneously harder to find than the cave, settled in a narrow valley between two hills, and closer to the dungeon. It also wasn't frequented by bats, which was a huge bonus.

Three weeks after they had gotten the map, Apexus fell asleep in a bed for the first time in his life. The mattress was full of holes and the feathers therein lain through to the point of non-existence, but it was a tad nicer than stone regardless. They cuddled up in there like they had done in nature before. Within a few days, they would make it their home, the first one they had since returning from the Clearwater dungeon. They had arrived somewhere safe.

And were without concrete goals.

'Today is a bad day,' Apexus thought, when he woke up.

The origin of that wasn't any aches the slime had. It wasn't even related to his mood in general. Rather, it lay with the tiny wet spots on the sheet under Reysha's face. Circles made by tears shed during sleep, a giveaway that the tiger girl wouldn't be useful for much today. Carefully, to let her have as much rest as she could have, Apexus moved out of the clean bed and grabbed his robe.

Two months had passed since they arrived at that little hut. A simple life had started forming. On the daily, Apexus would move out into the dungeon, often accompanied by the two women. For the most part, they went in there for food scavenging, but, since the dungeon was so far below their level, they had pushed to clear it once. It had been meant to be combat training for Reysha, but the Rogue continued to suffer from her mental blockades, finding herself unable to use her abilities properly.

Regardless, they cleared the dungeon. It was an easy boss fight and Apexus got nothing out of it. Now they only went there to get food. They picked up a lot of items on the side though, which they sold to the nearby cities as they had basically nothing else to do with any of it.

Initially, there were a lot of things to do with that money. The equipment that could be bought locally was made from beginner materials, but it was made competently. Apexus got his own adventurer's bag. Aclysia got a proper Priest's robe for combat, the blessed fabric giving her a minimal amount of protection, particularly against magic, while keeping so light she could fly around without problem.

Reysha, although she insisted that she couldn't fight, meaning equipping her was a waste of money, got some upgrades to her leather armour and the kind of heavy belt that could carry all the necessary tools of her trade. Two daggers, throwing knives and lockpicks, all were acquired with the money they got from the dungeons. Although she didn't manage to properly wield the weapons, at least the lockpicks came in useful. Sometimes they would find locked chests in dungeons, so her having those tools allowed her to 'pay back' for the other acquisitions.

Once those immediate needs were taken care off, they started to get things that were either somewhat or entirely superfluous. A second set of clothing for everyone, a casual dress for Aclysia, a light shirt and comfortable pants for Reysha, and an extra robe for Apexus. Reysha even got a second pair of shoes. They were stored easily in the adventurer's bag.

Then they started fixing the hut. Through labour and investment, they closed the holes in the walls, they stuffed the mattress with new feathers, they got a new sheet to throw on top, a pair of thin blankets and a whole lot of other, small stuff that made life where they were a bit more bearable. After a month, they had just about everything that they could think off to make life inside the hut as pleasant as it could be.

Money just kept trickling in. They had a fourth adventurer's bag that was purely their purse. Aclysia kept it on her, as the metal fairy had taken to managing the finances. She did it well, although the fact that they didn't have to buy food certainly helped. At this point, they had managed to scrape together a small fortune, at least compared to what the average household had. It was purely a product of having so little things to spend their money on.

Through those two months, Apexus had realized that they could categorize things in about three ways. There were good days, fairly rare, where they managed to make a bit of progress with their situation. The slime and his beloved angel had managed to largely come to terms with things by now. They still behaved illogically in certain aspects, they had each other to point that out to them. Aclysia was extremely careful to not make them stand out in any fashion.

To get the feathers for the mattress, she had arranged there to be an exchange where they left the money somewhere and the farmer, who had feathers to sell after plucking his birds for a feast, simply left the bag standing there. All to avoid the farmer seeing them. That was suspicious in other ways, of course, but Aclysia was only concerned about people finding out where they were, so keeping their identities as hidden as possible had to be the priority.

Apexus still had issues trusting anyone outside of those two. Any concentration of people that was denser than what he could keep in view at any given time put him on edge. For that reason, he didn't go into the city alone at any point. Not that Aclysia would have been happy if he did.

The medium days, the majority of the time that had passed, were when they woke up, went through the motions, and went to sleep. Nothing of note happened. They got the food they needed, they got the water they needed, and they earned a bit more money. Albeit they all knew that their current security could be ended by the threat of Apotho at any time, this normality was worth the time.

The bad days where those were Reysha was overwhelmed by her lingering issues. Even on good days, the tiger girl continued to be a burden. Apexus and Aclysia didn't see carrying her as anything to be bitter about, but that didn't change the fact that she was, at the moment, a burden. She couldn't fight on her own, she couldn't go to the city on her own and, on the bad days, she couldn't even be on her own. When she cried in her sleep, that was a clear indicator that she would spend the majority of the day apathetically sitting around.

Apexus left the little house and went outside, where Aclysia was doing her usual circle around the area. Twice a day, she looked for any suspicious changes in the area. "Morning, my melody," the slime greeted in a happy tone. Despite their position in life at large, their current situation justified a certain amount of joy. Letting the threat of Apotho ruin every second of their existence would be exactly what the traitorous warlock wanted. Apexus wasn't willing to spend more time than necessary with a prey mentality.

"Good morning, darling," Aclysia responded, trying to stay positive herself. "Is Reysha still asleep?"

"Yes," he answered with a nod and jumped directly into the necessary discussion. "Will you stay with her today?"

Aclysia, having gotten up about an hour earlier, had already noticed the tiger girl's state. The decision was already made. "Yes," she answered with a simple nod. "I would be thankful if you could keep your feeding to a minimum today. We don't require the money, so the less time you spent potentially running into adventurers, the better."

"I'll see what I can do," Apexus promised. "If I can, I'll bring some food back for Reysha."

"Just remember to pick a monster that doesn't bleed too much. Cleaning an adventurer's bag is a horrid task."

The slime didn't even know how to begin with that, so he said something affirmative and accompanied her on her remaining round through the woods. "Is this the arrival you wanted?" he asked, when nothing else to talk about came to mind.